ORIGIN

Ravage picked his way across the rock, grimacing as he carefully avoided the white threads of Order that had settled here. It wasn't easy, especially given his gangly teenage body--huge, but lanky and with those messy proportions one gained somewhere between adorable cubhood and powerful adult.

He'd learned to use caution when navigating Canis--not only to avoid the fungus, but to stay beneath the notice of the myriad drones and scouts that the Hive had sent here. His mother had been perhaps overly stringent in drilling in the dangers of it all, so much so that the lessons had left him fidgeting with boredom--but now, alone, he found that her words had imparted a sense of trepidation that lingered.

The drones mostly left the actual residents of Canis alone. The danger, Giggle had explained, would be in doing something that pissed them off--so such lessons as 'look around you before you start burning mushrooms,' and 'don't go biting the giant ice-looking bugs' had been the most important. Secondarily had been 'also, you're descended from Chaos Forge and you look like a Chaos Forge and Order hates Chaos Forge so watch your butt.'

He was being careful, then, or at least as much as he could without magic to warn him of a Drone's approach. He scanned and sniffed, ensuring to the best of his abilities that he was alone, before summoning up his smoldering magic.

Ravage winced (that shit still burned) as smoke poured up from around his paws. Hastily he pressed it to a nearby clump of fungus, and watched with satisfaction as it blackened and withered into ash.

As to why he was doing this--well, his mother had told him in beautiful detail of what Canis had been like before its infestation. Her opinion of the Hive was one of disdainful disgust, mockery in it. This he'd sort of adopted as his own, as children did.

This, then, was satisfying. Black lips peeled back in a hyena's grimacing grin as he studied his work. And a flick of his ears assured him he was still alone; he'd notice any approach except, perhaps, those of owl's wings... or cat's paws.

He startled--a jump and a half-spin, wide glowing eyes darting around until dropping low, lower--and settling upon the Pallas Cat. Instinct tensed him for a moment as his predator mind said "FOOD?" in capital letters branded over his brain, but then he blinked and relaxed.

And hesitated.

Food--that'd be easy to deal with. But chitchat, with a stranger? There was a lot of good to be said about his upbringing thus far, but one of the poorer points was that he was quite over-sheltered. Giggle was a protective mother and hadn't exactly encouraged him to go out and meet other Gembounds, so this was relatively new territory for him.

Ravage belatedly processed what Tourmaline had said, and nodded. Ears flicked back, tongue lashing a little nervously at black muzzle as he looked around. "Yeah. Yes. Uh-..." He looked back to her, and then his attention fell on the patch at her feet, and he blinked. Awkwardness gave way to enthusiasm. "Oh! You have the same magic?" he blurted, padding over with the heavy thuds of a teenage hyena's gait. "Ravage--I'm Ravage. You can call me Ravage, I mean. It's my name," he clarified, proudly, belatedly realizing that maybe he was really fucking up this whole "new introductions" thing. After a moment he shrugged that thought off, and turned away, nodding into Canis as a whole. "Do you live here, too? This stuff's everywhere. Mom says it didn't used to be like this," he added, glancing back with bright eyes.

Was Tourmaline old enough to remember that time-? Could she tell him about it, too? Or maybe she had stories of other places.

He looked down again, and in a brief moment that looked vaguely like anger, began to deliberately stamp and trample around the fungus. Smoke curled up from his paws in thin tendrils, and lips peeled back from thick fangs, a wince twistsing his face with pain. But he worked nonetheless, seemingly determined to clear his family home from the mold that grew throughout.

Tourmaline. Ravage took a moment to roll this name over in their mind. "Pretty," he said, at last--the way one might (forgive the irony of this metaphor) admire a pretty stone. And, because "nice to meet you" was an unknown phrase to the hybrid, he gave his response a personal twist: "Cool to meet you too." Sounded good to him.

He listened, as he pressed paws to another patch of fungus. He winced, hissed and let out a low and rumbling growl at the pain that seared his paws--but more white curled away into black underfoot. He half-limped along, leaving ash in his wake.

"You say that so poetically," he answered, when Tourmaline had finished--and there was dark amusement in it. It wasn't admiration, unlike his note of her name being pretty; but it wasn't insult, either. Just an observation made with very little social grace. "But that's basically what Mom said, too." He paused in his thoughts, noting to himself that he really needed to increase his social sphere. Everything came back to 'mom,' and that felt... embarrassing, somehow. He didn't know why, but it did. "You don't like Order, either? -What's Polaris like?" he added, a blurted question, again oblivious to such niceties as 'giving someone a moment to answer your first question before launching a second.'

He glanced to her, surprised, then looked back at his paws. "It does?" He'd been practicing with the bones, with Giggle, so much so that he'd sort of neglected his native element. And it was something she hadn't mentioned to him. Maybe she doesn't know? That thought was... worrisome. He'd never considered, before, that there might be a lot his mother didn't know. (Sheltered, indeed.)

"Wordy?" he considered, padding over to another patch of mold, one that rode the bones like little white teeth. "Nah. It just sounds like-..." and here he paused, paw midair over his target, trying to think of how to put his thoughts to words. "Uhh. Poetic." He hesitated, realizing he'd already said as much--but he didn't know such words as 'enchantress,' 'prophet,' 'witch.' He glanced at her, black muzzle wrinkling in consternation. "...-Magic?" he tried, then shrugged hulking shoulders. "Not a bad thing, anyway."

Paw pressed down, a wince and backward rotation of his ears again signalling the lingering pain that scorched the pads. Black smoke curled around his paws, the little fungal fruits melting at his touch; a tight, quiet growl of pain escaped him. He listened to Tourmaline, letting her words drown the worst of it out.

"A spring-?" he asked, at last, after mulling over all she'd said.

Ravage then stepped back, looking over his work--at the black, dripping streaks of burned mold--before turning his full attention to her. "It sounds--pretty?" he half-suggested, unsure, but again without any real approval or disapproval. 'Pretty' didn't seem to be good or bad, to him; it just... was. "So why'd you come here? You don't like Order, you came to get rid of it? Can I ask why? Uh-..." and here he faltered, hesitating, again searching for his words. His youth, again, was fully on display, his inexperience leaving him both ignorant and somewhat graceless. "If you came here from--there, glowing-crystal-place, you must have a good reason to want it gone?" He watched her intently. Giggle had been clear as to why she didn't like the stuff, but she didn't seem to hate it. To her, it was an irritation, and she looked down on it. Was it the same for everybody else-? This was one of Ravage's first opportunities to find outside opinions on something, and he relished it.