Where the Cursed Dwell

Babel Gilles de Rais was a very unusual girl. She sat alone in a both inside a Gothic Lolita themed club in the middle of Japan, watching Japanese girls in maid outfits run around and giggle while remixed versions of J-pop songs blasted through the air. The whole entire scene was a such a clash of cultures that to anyone but the people who called it home, it would be, no doubt, a cacophonous fusion confusion.  

Babel was dressed with a white coat, white hat, white gloves, with fur trimming it all, white boots and black stockings. She was dressed more like a Russian snowbird than any kind of lolicon but her petite frame and childish look passed the theme well enough. If it weren't for her bright white smile that seemed to glimmer in the darkness, a passing club goer could easily have mistaken her for a brooding loner. Indeed, she was. It had been a long time since she had come out in public. She had spent many months locked away in a dank AFW boiler room, her own personal coffin stashed away there.

But Babel was tired and hungry. The blood she fed on did not come easily. She had even resorted to eating rare steaks. Cows blood was the next best thing when there wasn't fresh human necks to devour. But tonight, the Mistress of La Borde needed to hunt! There was a powerful desire welling up in her and as she scanned the club with her cheerful Aqua eyes, she licked her lips and chuckled.

Lurking about the outskirts of the dance floor, Sayumi Hiraga began to fidget anxiously. Having arrived at the AFW only a week ago, she was still quite unused to the area and how different things felt here in Tokyo compared to her hometown of Kyoto. While Sayumi was not exactly a social creature, 'She' had gotten restless and was tired of them staying cooped up in their apartment, await their first match to finally be scheduled. Hearing about this club on the internet, she decided to give it a visit, thinking it might prove either a nice distraction or, ideally, a place where some of her urges might be satisfied.

Alas, the poppy music and the girls in frilly outfits didn't quite lend itself to the more... physical atmosphere she had hoped for. Dressed in a tight, white buttoned blouse with a very short black skirt and thigh high stockings, showing off her petite yet well curved form, even her appearance seemed just a little out of place too. Maybe it was just her eyepatch. There was still something about this place, though...

"You can feel it too, can't you?" she whispered to herself. Venues like this tended to attract certain kinds of people, no doubt even more so seeing at is was so close to the AFW, creating a area full of unique personalities. A logical deduction, but Noroiko preferred to pass it off as a 'spiritual sense'. "There's someone else here too..."

Doing her best to restrain her violent bloodlust, she continued to hover around the dance floor, glancing around with her one uncovered eye. Surely the other evil (or two) here would make its presence known, and Noroiko longed to involve herself in whatever havoc might ensue...

This club was a distant departure from the little holes in the wall she haunted back in Cardiff. There was so much more energy and life with these bubbly little maids flitting about, but then again this wasn't a goth club in the strictest sense. No industrial music; no Siouxie and the Banshees; a noticeable deficit of glow sticks and pacifiers laden dark ravers. Mina had only just stepped through the door and it was painfully obvious that she was a long, long way from home. Half camouflaged amongst the teeming sea of maids she wore a black Victorian style party dress that covered her from the chin down to the wrists and ankles, trimmed with white lace. Her curly brown hair was straightened and dyed a silver-blue before being put up into a pair of high pigtails and recurled into near perfect drills. The only hint of color on the girl, for her skin was deathly pale, was the red skull motif visible on her black stockings before they vanished beneath the lacy ruffles of Mina's petticoats.

Hardly looking at the other patrons of this dubious establishment the young woman lethargically drifted across the floor as if sleepwalking. There was only one way to start off the night, if the house music would allow, and that was with a liberating dance. Not that this particular dance would have any particularly freeing properties; Mina simply felt more at ease after dancing out some of her inhibitions. Stepping out onto the dance floor, amidst the spasmodically writhing schoolgirls, Mina raised her arms with an eerie sort of ghostly grace and began to sway. Her slender body swished from side to side in a serpentine manner, causing the numerous pewter pendants that hung against her chest to jangle below the din of the indigenous tunes, and her arms flowed and entwined around one another in constant and fluid motions as though swirling some unseen medium in her hands.

It was only after she had settled in to her slithering dance that her hazel eyes, having not opted for the contacts tonight, began to scour the crowds for anyone who might distract her for the evening. She had met few lasting friends this way; well, exactly none; but even a brief diversion would make her sojourn worth the effort.

Continuing her hunt, one girl in particular seemed to attract Noroiko's attention. While her clothing blended her in among the sea of lace and frills, both her hair and facial features had the distinct look of a foreigner, a notable contrast from all the local Japanese girls around her.

"Is it her...?" she murmured to herself, following the girl out of the corner of her eye. In the middle of such a crowd, her instincts (or rather, her imagination) could not pinpoint the supposed 'presence', but somehow this one girl had definitely caught her evil eye.

Immersing herself within the sea of Gothic Lolitas, Sayumi nimbly slipped her way through, creeping closer to the foreigner. If she could get close enough, maybe her 'senses' could tell for sure...

Slender limbs drifted in fluid twists as if under the influence of some tidal force unfelt by mere mortals. With a deft step and a graceful turn Mina moved her attention around the room, her delicate skirts fluttering out about her for just a moment to caress those who wandered too close. Hazel eyes, shifting from blue to green in the ever changing lights of the club, settled upon a young woman who looked wholly out of place in here. Dressed in white and fur she stood in stark contrast to the cookie cutter lolitas that schooled about her. Something in this girl's soft, pale features seized Mina's attention as if she had been ensnared by some unseen hand or ensorcelled by some charming trap.

Continuing her dance heedless to the world about her now she didn't notice the eye-patch clad young woman wandering past. Standing upon the girl's 'blind side' it was likely that neither had yet to perceive the other; that is until one of Mina's willowy arms swept listlessly out in a semi-circle on a direct path for Noro-chan's face. Incidental contact was common place out on the dance floor, but one did usually endeavor to avoid smacking her fellow dancers in the eye.

Maneuvering her way through the throng of club goers, Noro-chan silently stalked her prey. Or, at least, she tried to. It was much harder tracking the girl while in the middle of the writhing mass, not to mention her short stature and her eye-patch limiting her peripheral vision making things even more difficult."Curses... where has she gone..." she hissed quietly in her 'evil spirit voice', having completely lost herself amid the crowds of the dance floor.

Distracted and hardly able to see where she was going, Sayumi was blindsided by a rogue arm swinging out, bashing her right in her face on her eye-patched half. "GAH!" Crying out in both pain and surprise, she staggered back a bit, bumping into a group Lolitas behind her.

"Who did that!?" Noro-chan demanded loudly, furiously looking about with her one uncovered eye for whoever had dared ambush her.

Mina was disrupted from her reverie by a sudden riot of unwelcome sounds upon her dance floor. Someone was angrily shouting and a number of the local girls were chirping and clucking like so many distraught hens when the fox arrives. Staying her dancing she turned her attention towards the source of the disturbance and spotted a weird little local girl with darkly dyed purple hair and an eye-patch. She seemed to be upset about something... Come to think of it she did feel something bump her hand rather rudely.

Her attention drifted form the cycloptic cutie to her own hand still held aloft as if frozen in the middle of an interpretive dance. But she wasn't exactly looking at her hand, but rather the bracelet that clung to that slender wrist and the charm that dangled from it. The charm was of a sinister eye rendered in dark blue, a protection against evil; one of many that she wore. Curious... Perhaps it was only a coincidence, or had the charm done its job and protected her from some fate worse than death?

Sayumi's uncovered eye quickly zeroed in on Mina, the very girl that had caught her interest earlier, strangely holding her arm up as if it were a practical admission of guilt. Was it coincidence, or maybe fate? No... surely what she had sensed (i.e. imagined) about this girl was true. She had an air of spiritual energy about her, and most likely was skilled enough to perceive Noroiko's approach and tried to strike first! Truly a worthy opponent! Pointing and posing towards the foreign girl as if to challenge her, she announced:

"Ufufufu... So it was you! You may think you're good, but it'll take mo -ooooooooooWAH!" Her speech was quite suddenly interrupted as one of the Lolita girls she had bumped in to, clearly displeased at the lack of apology, gave her a hard shove from behind, sending Sayumi staggering clumsily, with arms flailing, right towards Mina.

Hazel eyes, like prisms, shifted blue to green in the pulsating lights of the club. The little witch's focus pushed past the upraised charm and onto the mysterious creature who now addressed her. As the one eyed 'girl' extended a finger threateningly towards her Mina drew a hand up to brush her own slender digits across the myriad talismans that glittered against her breast. Just what was this... thing before her? The spell she would need to cast relied entirely on just what it was she was facing. This club was likely full of malevolent spirits and unwholesome beings, but that was what brought her here.

Pointy toed shoes shifted apart in readiness for some furtive maneuver on the little Japanese girl's part; taking up a fighter's stance, or her best self-taught facsimile of one. She was intent on using this strangers monologue to its fullest, taking the time to analyze its foul aura. What Mina was not expecting, however, was for the creature to go berserk mid-sentence and tackle her!

Noro's wild floundering startled her foe who instinctively threw her hands up in a frail attempt to stay the onslaught. Mina succeeded only in keeping the swinging limbs from battering her about the head and shoulders, but their bodies would collide as Noro lurched forward. Both girls legs would become momentarily entangled in a mixture of limbs and taffeta sending them both crashing to the dance floor in an undignified heap.

Upon hitting the ground Mina panicked, and grasping one of her pendants began hurriedly chanting the first spell that came to mind, "I bind you, demon! Bind you from doing harm! Harm to yourself, and harm to others!" This she would repeat no fewer than three times for full effect.

The two girls went tumbling to the floor, bumping into even more club patrons and further increasing the blind uproar. Though disoriented from the fall, the realization of their compromising position, coupled with the incantation suddenly spewed in her face, caused Sayumi to quickly recoil and leap back to her feet. "Y-you...! No... Ah... "You think a spell of that level can contain me? Fool!" Re-immersing herself back in to her Noroiko persona, she assumed a threatening stance, readying herself to strike.

As entirely unintentional as it was, the surrounding chaos amidst the other denizens gave her the perfect cover to try and get involved in a brawl to appease her restless soul. "You will be my first prey tonight!" she cried out, lunging at Mina and aiming a wide, open-palm slap at her face.