``city of ghosts (Kat)

[Django Santana]

This place reeked of the diseased. Not just the Carna docks. The entire place stank of rotting, decaying humanity. It was disgusting; he had never felt so isolated in his life. Even when he was laying in the gutters in Chicago, at least there were the other homeless for him to pity. He was so much more than this place deemed him. If only they could see that he may have been infected with the Shifting Disease, but he would over come it. He would be the Cure that he and Dr. Lancaster had tried for years to discover.

But for now he was forced to suffer alongside these fools, these beasts. The ones who had succumbed to the disease and allowed it to ravage their brain, turning them into savage beasts with depravity as their closest companion. Sighing, Django shoved his hands deep into his coat pockets, ignoring the beads of sweat that formed on his forehead for now. It was spring and mildly hot, but his jacket was meant for the harsh winters. It was sort of stifling, but he figured that the more he suffered and thus thrived, the better he could prove his case to the Keepers. If only they would listen.

But in the meantime he would focus on surviving. But he couldn't last without another thrill. It had been too long since his last "high" from the adrenaline rush that he'd gotten from squaring off with a Virus. He'd gotten out with a few scratches and a cold, thanking his luck that the Virus hadn't been some fatal disease. Although in this hellish place, he supposed even the common cold could do you in. So he was visiting the Carna, supposedly one of the most violent and dangerous Rings in The Menagerie. It would be interesting if he could get more than just a cheap thrill out of a fight. He heard the Carna were kick-ass fighters who didn't hold anything back. They were what he feared most in The Menagerie, if only because he was afraid he would end up corrupted and completely diseased like they were.

He'd been there for a good 20 minutes and no one happened upon him. Damn, it was hot. He cast his eyes out to the bay and wandered further out onto the docks, well within eyesight of any passing Carna. Hopefully he'd catch one soon. For now he continued to walk along the docks, descending one of the ramps onto a lower platform that was closer to the water. He peered into the murky depths and wondered what creatures lurked there.

ooc -- sucky first post but xD is a postt

[Katalina Cienfuegos]

Water. Water. ..Water!
After months of lurking through the wretched Menagerie and finding little to no sources of water, she’d finally followed the lingering scent of the ocean to the docks – the bay, conveniently belonging to the Carna. Conveniently? Sarcasm.
Every second lingering in their territory was a second you had to take a deep breath, count your blessings – the few and little you most likely had – and get ready to run and escape at all costs. But to someone native to the sea, the price was well worth it to take a dive into the deep, enthralling (if not slightly murky) waters that splashed around and lapped up in waves on the nearby beach. There were other sources of water in the dome, of course.. It was sometimes dropped in by the Keepers in bottles, found in puddles, and slithering through the occasional river, which was pathetically satiated with freshwater. All of those sources were full of water that lacked any salinity! It was a cruel place to be fish – or any salt.water-loving creature, for that matter. Therefore, the risk of having all the Carna in the world come after her was well worth it. Besides, surely they weren’t as cruel as everyone else deemed them to be, right? Everyone thought the cruelest of giants, who often turned out to be gentle. Whales were hideous, man-eating, murderous creatures..until they were truly ‘discovered’ and not thought of as just another sea monster.
In that sense, the word ‘Carna’ was almost synonymous with ‘sweetheart’. It absolutely made sense – it must!
And it did – even if the thought wasn’t shared by those who’d actually run into the cannibalistic leader and his puppets, the theory of them being nothing more than balls of fluff was very much alive in Kat’s head. Not many people would waste their time trying to correct her, anyways – it’d be too much of a hassle, and disproving any of her beliefs resulted in something comparable to a kid learning there’s no Santa Claus. (Whom, by the way, is absolutely real, bona fide, and a living saint! …to Kat.)
And so, with this little belief that they were nothing more than kittens, she often made the trip to and from the bay fearlessly. It was an odd thing that she’d never been caught or chased around before – did her naïve, ignorant yet bliss nature make them let her slip by? It was a puzzle that few would try to solve, seeing that there was a severe lack of rational answers.
Still, with no personally traumatic experiences to speak of, she’d made it to the docks around dawn, diving into the cool water like it was nobody’s business.
Instantly, she shifted, the water sliding against her rubbery, friction-less skin and letting her slice into its depths. For hours, she swam – she’d linger around the bottom of the ocean, exploring its sandy floor and poking holes in it, sometimes getting a little anxious and messing it up completely, making little clouds of sand around herself before it could all settle back down. She hunted, explored, and sometimes shot right out of the water like a bullet firing from the barrel of a steaming gun, only to do a few flips in the air and dive back down into its depths. It was a careless thing, really – she didn’t care who saw, and it was clear that somebody must have seen her fooling around.. Luckily, she had the benefit of doubt, considering that water washed off the scent of being a rogue.
After hours lurking around in the salty waters of the ocean, something caught her attention. Through the rays of light that shone through and scattered on the ocean floor, there was a set of colors – a murky shape – that hadn’t been there before, and it moved!
She eagerly rose to the surface, letting her natural buoyancy carry her without much effort. Her snout peeked through the surface of the water, her eyes following soon after so that she could get a clear look at the creature. It was a human – well, a shifter. Was he from Carna? Nah… Maybe. Why was he looking at the water? Was he suspicious? What if they’d found her out?!

Regardless of that, she wanted some company and so, all her paranoid thoughts seemed to get shoved to the depths of her mind – surely, he’d be up for a little fun, right?
She stayed quiet, fighting the urge to utter a series of chirps and clicks and lurking closer to the docks. She dove down again, almost touching the ocean floor before twisting back up, spiraling towards the air like a bat out of hell and flying significantly high. She aimed at his pants, hoping to pull his pants down (or off). Oh, how she wanted to see the look at his face!
Before she could realize if she had or hadn’t gotten a grip of them, though, gravity pulled her back down, and so she spun a bit, hoping to dive in nose-first.

ooc` .. it turned salt water (without spaces) into salfiddlyfarter.. ....

[/blockquote]

[Django Santana]

The waters were actually quite soothing. Back in Chicago there wasn't any place to go like this. Sure there was the River...but that was too far away. There was the docks, too...but it wasn't as quiet there. There was always someone coming or going, making so much god-damned noise it made his head want to explode. He was over-sensitive to sounds, always had been. He supposed it was some unresearched side effect of being a god damned crack baby. He found himself wishing for a cigarette, nerves starting to jangle. The nicotine helped a little to quell the shakes, but never for long. He could feel the edges of it, the very beginnings as a shiver ran up his spine, sending his head twitching sideways. He could feel the subtle ripple of electric-like numbness surge through him, the old familiar twinge that told that any moment he would be racked with pain.

Django slipped out of his jacket with a grunt, hanging it on a broken hand-rail, hoping that it would alleviate his discomfort. Nothing really seemed to help; his body didn't produce endorphins any more; Dr. Lancaster had told him it was the effects of heroin. Or something. God knows he'd taken his fair share of that, plus anything else he could get his hands on. Life in this place had been tough for him, like it was for everyone else. But it was paired with a pain that for most was unimaginable. With a sigh, his shoulders slumped forward and he teetered on the lip of the dock, contemplating diving in. The cool air blowing against his sweat-speckled skin was enough to give him a chill, though. He didn't want to risk getting his cold back; hell, with his system the way it was he'd probably get pneumonia.

He was about to turn away, tired of peering at the hollow eyes reflecting back at him at the water's edge when there was an eruption of movement and noise, a violent splash of water. Django grunted something out, a mix between a shout and a snarl as he stumbled backward as something leapt out of the water at him, but he wasn't fast enough. He felt the teeth latch onto his pant-leg and with a twist, the creature fell back into the sea and Django along with it. Whatever had him by the pants let him go underwater, but when Django exploded to the surface and clung to the side of the floating dock he looked down and realized that whatever it was that had grabbed him...god damn it. "What the hell?!" He'd just been pants'd. Chest heaving, Django wiped the salty water from his eyes and looked out to the calm waters, wondering what the hell had done this to him. He hoped it was a freakin' shark; or really, some part of him hoped it would be. It would be at least some thrill.

ooc -- balls

[Katalina Cienfuegos]

The water splashed up all around her and another body, though she disregarded the strange object for a few seconds. Once again, the cool water glided against her skin as she shot down to the sandy floor below, arching her body and pointing back up quick enough to gain some resistance before she hit bottom. The man that she’d gone after on the dock had, unfortunately, been dragged down into the water along with his pants. It wasn’t much of a bad situation, but it would definitely turn into an interesting one.
She laughed quietly underwater, knowing that the ocean would mute most of the sounds she made as long as it was under the surface.
Oh, his face! She could see his face – it was a bit distorted in some areas due to the ripples and waves from the impact they’d made, but she could see it – and boy, he did not look happy.
I wonder.. she thought, inching a bit closer, though keeping quite a bit of distance. Would he shoo her away if she bugged him a bit? What would he do if she poked him and nudged him around? Would he cry out thinking she was a shark?
Deciding against her better judgment to just leave and let him be, she drew closer. Always, Kat had come across one specific issue – she couldn’t find enough self control in her body to avoid the trouble that might come from her actions. It’d always ended up in a few detention slips when she was in school, but no-one really seemed to reprimand her for it otherwise, they just grew frustrated for a few seconds then decided to let it go soon after. Would this be one of those moments when luck trickled into her life, or would it be different? There was only one way to find out.
Her body rose to the surface slowly, but she didn’t allow all of it to peek out – just her dorsal fin, while the blowhole and everything else remained submerged. After closing in some more, she distanced herself about a foot and started circling him slowly, hoping that he wouldn’t catch a glimpse of the horizontal tail fin and the elongated snout – both of which were telltale signs that she was, after all, not a man-eating creature of the dark.

After a few minutes of circling him, however, she remembered one of the few important parts of this – she had to breathe!
Reluctantly, knowing that this would spark some curiosity in him, she surfaced a few inches more, releasing the old, used up air and drawing in a deep breath before plunging back down again and descending until she was five feet from the surface. Her eyes shifted back up towards his legs, a mischievous spark lighting up briefly in them as she leapt forward through the water, hoping to grab his foot and take him along for a ride.

Quite honestly, she didn’t know how he’d take all this playing around – but in a way, she didn’t care much. She wouldn’t exactly try to drown him or anything..she was just playing! Surely he’d understand that, right?

[Django Santana]

[atrb=border,0,true][atrb=style, width: 391px; height: 448px; background-image:url(http://i51.tinypic.com/ndsxoo.png)] Django clung to the dock and though he prided himself on being relatively unafraid of almost anything, he had to admit to himself that the murky depths of this bay gave him a twinge of unease. Especially since he’d just been dragged into the water by something, and it didn’t help that he had no goddamned idea what it was. He considered diving under and taking a peek, but he was wary—he’d been to the ocean once, a long time ago and remembered that the salty waters had been hell on his eyes when he’d gotten bitch-slapped by what had to have been a ten foot wave. Still, his curiosity was overwhelming; he was just about to dive under when not too far off, something broke through the water. A dorsal fin. His eyes widened for a moment, then narrowed as he watched it circle to and fro in front of him, slicing through the water with ease. He’d seen the movies. This was either a dolphin, or nothing other than the grinning devil itself—a shark. He found himself hoping for the latter, knowing that it would give him one hell of a rush to escape the gaping jaws of a beast like that. He felt himself grinning in spite of the danger, a wild glint flashing in his eyes as they hungrily followed the fin, searching the murky water for those vicious jaws. He pushed off from the dock and started swimming slowly towards the big fish, treading water ever so slowly. But the sudden burst of air and spray of water left him with a shuddering disappointment, and he rolled his eyes. It was a goddamned dolphin. It was some jackass shifter who was fond of pranks, more than likely. Grumbling, Jango started to swim back to the docks; he was never a very good swimmer, so it took him a bit. But as he was reaching out a hand to grasp the slick wood, something took hold of his foot. It wasn’t a bite, really, more of just a tight grip. He let out a sharp grunt and was greeted with a mouthful of water when the dolphin jerked him down. The dolphin didn't keep him under for too long and he burst to the surface, but it still had hold of his foot and was zooming along. Snarling, he took a deep breath and curled his upper body so he dove downwards, nearly folding himself in half (or so it seemed). He twisted around and managed to shake his foot free, grasping onto the dolphins fin and twisting around behind it, holding on for dear life. He felt he could almost laugh at the odd experience; hell, he was riding a dolphin! He ran out of breath soon and had to let go, bursting to the surface and treading water. He looked around and realized with a start they were farther out than he'd anticipated. "Shit." He said, slapping a hand on the water. "Hey! Dolphin!" He shouted, his throaty voice echoing a bit. The water around him was silent, and he called again. "You stupid fish! You the one that got me out here, now you best be takin' me back!" ooc -- ffuu. Jango, why are you so difficult to write with?! D< sorrz for the wait </3

[Katalina Cienfuegos]

She swam straight for the horizon, the water slipping past her skin’s slick surface – the only resistance that did manage to slow her down a bit came from the fact she was speeding along, dragging another shifter on her trip. Whatever had inspired her to take that first leap out of the water and drag him under, it’d certainly resulted in a lot of fun – she now had someone she could toy with. Would he be happy? Would he be scared?
She wanted to go as far as the eye could see – or, at least as far as the giant glass wall would allow her to.
If the obstruction wasn’t there, she would have happily swam until the sea met the sky.
She was somewhat started by the sudden release of the man’s leg, but it wasn’t entirely unprecedented – usually, whatever she carried In her mouth did try to fight back and release itself in some way. The difference was that this one, though he’d pulled his leg away, had latched onto her dorsal fin and continued with her for a bit longer, until he finally let go.
At this, she descended into the waters, which were a deeper shade of blue – and clearer – than the area by the dock.

Why’d he let go?
She peeked up from several feet below, circling him underwater as if to figure it out. She could practically see his lungs heaving as he tried to catch his breath, which made a mischievous little smile spark up on her beak as she inched up towards him again, watching as he quickly resorted to yelling something out and slapping his hand against the water.
The echoes of his voice rippled through the water quite loudly, but it was the slap that caught her attention the most – he was certainly angry, or at least more annoyed with her than most of the people – and things – that she carried out so far.
Land-lover. She thought to herself, shaking her head slightly and being slightly offended as he called her a fish.
She was certainly not a fish.
Her playful nature melted into the small pool of angst that’d started to well up in her emotions, casting her in a new light as she resorted to a little rough-housing.
Giving a mental huff, she let herself float towards the surface until she was at an adequate distance. From there, she practically bulldozed her way towards him, the surface of the water shifting slightly due to the sudden movements. She wasn’t going to hit him head on, per se.. She was simply going to brush by him swimming very fast, and hope that he caught on to what she was doing and hitch the ride back to the shore. Otherwise, she’d happily leave him stranded for about ten minutes, just to see his reaction when she surfaced again. If he didn’t like dolphins before, he surely wasn’t going to like them now – but hey, it was all in the spirit of fun. She wasn’t exactly doing him any harm..