[Fallen_Snow]

The seamless blue sky stretched above Amanda as she flapped her way over the forest. She had been searching for anything, anything interesting for hours, and now she was beginning to get bored. But she would not give up. She was determined, and-

Holy crud what's that?! she thought to herself as she dived down into the forest, a bright flash of pink disturbing her vision. As she dived through the canopy she changed her scale color- it becoming a rough hunter green - and landed heavily on a dead log, splitting it. She growled; she hadn't been as stealthy as she would have liked to. She swung her head around, trying to find the pink smudge that had caught her attention. A small pink blossom was wedged in the roots of a tree to her left. She slowly lowered her head and stared at the bloom carefully. "OOOoooh, you're very pretty, yes you are!" she hummed, her Windgill feathers ruffling excitedly. She had never seen a flower like it.

"I'll call you the Aylen Blossom. No! The Amanda Lily. Hrm... how about... the Double A Glory! Does that sound nice to you?" she asked the flower. Suddenly she slashed a paw at it, ripping the petals apart. "Now you're dead, Double A Glory." she said with a smirk. She shook her paw to clear away the pink shreads of the flower and folded her wings against her body. Let's see if I can find myself a victim.

[Adelie]

There were quite a few times he wished he could fly.  This, apparently, was one of them.

For one, there was a huge mass of thorns that had obviously been created by an over-descriptive author purely to annoy (strip?) the wingblades off of him.  He was quite sure they weren't native to this area of the Lands, as well as the massive flock of mosquitoes that found it their duty to try and drink muse-lucain blood.  (As much as going ethereal helped here, somehow mosquitoes still managed to do bad things to him.  He was starting to blame all of this on an amateur author having too little to do with her time.)

He was never going into a rainforest again.  Giving up on whatever strange motivation had driven him here, he turned around (pausing to try and rip off the strangely clingy vine now permanently attached to his tail) and attempted valiantly to find which way was out.  But wait, there's more!  (This was promptly followed by Omigosh, I'm reciting advertising lines now, too?)

He looked around, ears swiveling to try and find the source of the sound he'd just heard, something weird and extremely random that seemed to tell of a murder, though he doubted anyone'd name their kids Double A Glory.  Whatever.  He still had to take a look, didn't he?

Setting off into the underbrush (ow!  eek!  I'm going to die!), he looked for whatever, or whoever, was there.

[Fallen_Snow]

Amanda shut her eyes and pictured the scene around her. The dead flower that lay slain in front of her; the broken log behind her; the tree that was keeping her from spreading her wings out; the muddy green-brown grass below. And she faded into the scene, her body becoming a living picture.

She heard somebody coming. Oh, she heard it alright. But she wasn't that good of an assassin yet- was she imagining it? "Helllooo?" she called out, but did not continue. Whomever it was(unless they were incredibly careful) would come to her to satify their curiousity. It's what most did. This she learned from her many years of playing hide and go seek with all the funny humans who liked to scramble around and try to find her. The lucky ones ran into her, and the even luckier might've been able to restrain her. Might've. But then again, she was prone to knocking people down with her clumsy fishtail. And blow them over with her powerfully feathered wings. Or she sometimes consented to nip them in the backside, and they'd go scrambling again. Oh, she might seem cruel, but that was all part of hide and go seek! Avoid being seeked out at all costs. And that was how she played.

She hoped this one was slow.

[Adelie]

Oh great.  Ghost voices.  He stood there, having pinpointed the exact source of the particular "hello" that had come from, oh, the empty patch of rainforest in front of him.  Nekki was really starting to hate this.

He was pretty sure he heard the patch of rainforest chuckle, but that couldn't be--it must be coming from somewhere else, or maybe he was just hearing things.  He looked around, eyes growing wide just in case he was missing something--and found nothing.  Really.  Was this place haunted, or something?  Shaking his head to clear it, he walked forward to see if he was wrong about where the noises had come upon, stepped on a ruined flower (ooh, someone must have been here before)--and bumped into a patch of air.

Wait.

A patch of air?

Nekki carefully looked around for a wall to slam his head into in frustration.

[Fallen_Snow]

Fur brushed her chest. She supressed the need to giggle as it tickled her belly. Stiffening, she directed one invisible eye down to look at the tickler. She wasn't exactly sure what it was- it had some kind of odd prickly things on his back- maybe they were wings, like CrystalWing-ed Paragon! She took a small sniff.

Ugh! Her snout wrinkled. He smelled horrible. Some kind of male dog thing. Similar to the other yappy dog things that existed at her own home(there was a particular one she didn't like, he had bright yellow wingblades and shouted a lot. He was very annoying.), she knew that he was a Lucain because of this. She didn't want to, but she sighed. She wasn't allowed to hurt Lucain. They were against the rules. Why couldn't it have been rolly-blue-and-silver-Malizian? He was fun to chase, and clever. He could find her as easily as she could him.

She went back a step, trying to avoid being tickled by his fur again.

But she wouldn't be discouraged by it either! Her claws were poised towards him, ready to snag them in his thick fur at his throat. Just take another step near me, pup...

[Adelie]

And now the patch of hard, scaly air was gone, just as quickly as it had come.  Great.  Just great.  Of course, he had been leaning against the hardened air in the moment right before it had disappeared, and these thoughts came to him while he was tumbling through the air.

Then he hit what was probably the exact same patch of hardened air, just a few inches removed from the initial location.  Ah.  There was either two (or many) of these strange, invisible creatures or someone was playing with him.  Again.  He suspected the later.

Looking up from his location suspended between his legs and a patch of air, he twisted to his feet and then asked, ruffled and slightly annoyed, "Excuse me, whoever you are, but would you mind not being invisible or transparent or whatnot?"

[Fallen_Snow]

Amanda lifted her hackles as he fell against her. Alright, he was either incredibly stupid or out to annoy her. "Hey, watch it, pal!" she shouted, and brought a clawed paw to just touch his neck. "Or you'll be joining the Double A Glory." she whispered in a conspiritorial tone.

Geez, this was too easy. Her claws were barely at his throat and if she just put a bit more force on it-

She dismissed the thought. Assassins were to kill, but only if they were hired to kill. Or the person made them exceptionally angry. He was just annoying her. She would let him slip- for now. But only if he could beat her...

She imagined her body, her colors, her markings, her shape. She faded back into existance, her gray paw now visible against Nekki's neck. Haha, Nekki's neck.

Anyways.

"How about-for your life-you play me in hide and seek? Extreme hide and seek."

[Adelie]

Oh dear.  Oh dear oh dear oh dear and insert swearword of choice here.

He wasn't sure where to start.  First, there was a patch of air that suddenly turned into an obviously non-patch-of-air paragon who was surely not there before.  She was also rather mad-looking, in two senses: the "omg! insaneparagontryingtokillme" sense and the "omg! angryparagontryingtokillme" sense.  (Oh, how he loved words and the various things you could do to them.  Though perhaps this was not the time to be musing over the ways in which he could create atrociously unfunny puns.)  Oh, and then it looked like she was trying to kill him, or at least had the capacity to kill him, considering that some very sharp claws were at his throat.  Oh dear.  Oh very dear.

And she was asking him to play hide-and-seek with her.  In a JUNGLE.  He was seriously considering fainting, but his bodily systems were not exactly obedient to him at this point in time.

"Is there any chance I can talk my way out of this?"

[Fallen_Snow]

She frowned, her brows following her maw. "No talking in hide and seek! Do you want to be found?" she growled in frustration. My, what a stupid Lucain! She knew smarter ones than him. She didn't want to waste her time... her claws moved closer to his throat, the tips now tickling skin. She was surprised he hadn't backed up yet. She would've if she was in the same situation. Though her size may have something to do with it. She stared down at her other paw, which was about twelve or so feet below her. The Lucain barely came past her elbow.

"I wanna play hide and seeeek!" she whined at him. She stomped her back paw. "It's not fair! No one ever plays hide and seek with me. They always get all angry. You're not gonna get angry, are you?" she asked, her head flying down to stop inches from his, her eye as big as his maw was long. Black feathers ruffled and reached out to Nekki.

[Adelie]

Well, he could see why no one wanted to play hide and seek with her.  She was rather scary.  And whiny.  And--why was his mind thinking of these things when chances seemed to favor him getting killed?  (He suddenly realized that he was, technically, a muse and therefore not exactly susceptible to getting killed.  But what's-her-name's claws were really big and very scary looking.)

He wasn't going to get angry, at least.  Hopefully she'd like that and not kill him for that.  (He was more "shaking in his non-existent boots" than "really really mad.")  "Er, no, I'm not going to be angry."  Nekki then realized that was a bad idea, since she didn't like it when he talked.  Oh dear.  Well, he'd risk it in order to try and figure out how to survive hide-and-seek.  Extreme hide and seek.

"So, are there rules?  And can you get your claws off my throat?"

[Fallen_Snow]

"Oh! Erm..." no one had ever actually asked her if she would move her claws. They always yelled at her, and, predictably, got angry at her. She put her paw down, but eyed him warily. "You try to run away and I'll find you. I'm the hide and seek master." she warned, then circled about so that she could find a comfy spot to lie down in. "Well, the rules to extreme hide and seek are number one, you must find a hiding spot and stay there until the seeker counts to one hundred. Second, after the seeker is done counting, you may move from your spot. Third, if the seeker finds you, you are not out yet. The seeker must catch you, and has the freedom to kill if decided between them." she watched him for any signs of running. She realized that sometimes the screamy people were just frightened, though he hadn't screamed yet. He might be screaming on the inside though. She shrugged the thought away. Unless this kid had a lot of self-control, she was sure that he wasn't that scared of her. She was starting to gain a sort of respect for him, actually.

[Adelie]

He winced a little at the last line of her rule list, though he didn't exactly run--a little birdie told him that would result in worse things.

Okay.  Hide-and-seek seemed simple enough, though the "you might die" part was...er...let's call it a major drawback, since Nekki was resolutely avoiding thoughts of death, destruction, and bad things that might happen to him.  He was rather succeeding at it too.  (He hoped that death wasn't permanent.  He'd never experienced it and was hoping not to find out today.)

"So, when do we start?"  He tried to look eager to get this game started and not scared out of his wits like he was feeling, and mostly succeeded in looking rather constipated.  "And why do you like hide-and-seek so much, anyways?"

[Fallen_Snow]

She frowned. "Did you not hear the last rule? We have to decide between each other if we want to kill each other. Unless you wanna die- I mean, I have no problem with that, but usually people don't wanna die." she was very confused by this little black dog... thing.

And then he had to go and ask about why she loved hide-and-go-seek. "HIDE AND GO SEEK IS THE BEST GAME EVER AND THERE'S NOT MUCH YOU CAN DO ABOUT IT SO DEAL WITH IT BUCKO." She sounded like she had a lot of growing up to do. "Try to change my mind and I'll change yours permanently. I can do that now!"

[Adelie]

He considered it, cocking his head to one side until he realized that it was probably likely that he didn't need to consider that option.  This paragon was really confusing him.  "Er, yes, I don't think I want to die.  I'm pretty sure.  Er.  Why am I even saying this, anyways?"

He also cringed at her next statement, which hit his poor, sensitive ears with the impact of a load of all-caps words hitting a computer screen at once.  (And in case you didn't know, the computer screen never likes it when you do that.  Lesson to all n00blets. )  "Well, okay, it's not like I'm going to do anything about you and hide and seek.  Just asking."  He considered backing away slowly and decided that was just a recipe for disaster.  (Oddly enough, it didn't include cinnamon.  He thought all recipes included cinnamon--why was he thinking about that now?)

[Fallen_Snow]

She smiled as he stated that he didn't want to die. And he still hadn't run! She was beginning to like him a lot. "You know... I like you." Wow, did I predict that or what?

"Though I'm not sorry that I frighten you. Being frightening is a good thing to have. And you better not try to change my mind about hide and seek, or anything for that matter." She said, looking down her snout with an egotistical air. "No one can change my mind. Try to and I'll make you wish you were born without wingblades. I could always use claw extensions..." she said, eyeing his silvery blades.

"Hmmm... well, I guess we could play hide and seek..." she said, her tail now lazily flicking back and forth, the translucent TailFin catching the light that filtered through the canopy. "Or we could talk. You're lucky you're likeable." she said, smiling at him and letting out a small laugh. "But I wanna play hide and seek. So! I'll count to one hundred."

"Go!"