Character: Kerberos Age: +1 (1 Cycle) Magic Level: +3 (Pupil) ROUND 1 Attempt: +4 Penalties: -0 ROUND 2 Attempt: +7 Penalties: -0 ROUND 3 Attempt: +18 Penalties: -0 ROUND 4 Attempt: +5 Penalties: -0 ROUND 5 Attempt: +1 Penalties: -0 Total: 39

Character: Giggle Age: +1 (1 Cycle) Magic Level: +3 (Pupil) ROUND 1 Attempt: +16 Penalties: -0 ROUND 2 Attempt: +14 Penalties: -0 ROUND 3 Attempt: +12 Penalties: -0 ROUND 4 Attempt: +17 Penalties: -0 ROUND 5 Attempt: +1 Penalties: -0 Total: 64

WINNER: Giggle

~ ~ ~ m warning;; swear

Don't you ever tame your demons

But always keep 'em on a leash

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Kerberos did the first truly sensible thing in his life and plopped down on his belly, legs splayed out, and finally tried to fix the mess he had made. His forepaws frantically tried to get the gunk off of his face while his ungunked face frantically licked at his tail. The air was still wigging out a little and that made him uncomfortable. He knew he had done it but he didn't know how to make it stop.

Aside from frantic pawing and licking himself, however, he more or less held still as he was told and avoided looking at Giggle. She was very mad at him and he felt quite quite bad about it. Maybe she would just disappear and he would be able to slink away (after kidnapping a bone, perhaps) and forget this had ever happened.

Something told him, however, that he was not in charge-- he had lost the "play"-- and he was in deep, deep dog shit.

Her body was trembling slightly with the aftershock of adrenaline rush. Her mouth was filled with blood from her biting her tongue, and fear still quaked in her.

She had never fought before. She wasn't a fighter. She was a talker, a doer, not a fighter. She didn't want to fight--she hated it. She hadn't known that before, but she did now.

It took the hyena a few brief moments to shake herself out of her daze; she stood a few feet away, blinking down at the three-headed pup. It was with mild surprise--and she was still a bit shocked by the combat, or she might have also been pleased--that she noted that Kerberos was quietly cleaning himself.

Now. Now. Act now.

Still, she hesitated a brief instant. She had to keep the situation... well, non-volatile, really. Everything else, she could take or leave. She cleared her throat slightly, and swallowed past most of the bitten-tongue-blood, but her teeth were still coated in it as she spoke, her coat still dripping and hanging with clots of black fungus. And how to handle it? ...Truth be told, there was an urgency to all of this that demanded simple, swift truth. No games. No playful pretending, no shouting to prove a point--just words and truth.

"Kerberos." She let it hang in the air for an instant--both for dramatic, stern effect, and because she was almost too frightened to speak. Give this dog two weeks and he might be twice her size. And he was ferocious. "Do you want to clean that off? ...You can use the water back by where you ate the meat. You can stay here, or you can visit me. But you must be polite. Say please, and thank you, and don't attack. And listen to your middle-head. He has sense," she added, more quietly.

Should she tell him what she'd seen in the bones? ...Maybe. But not just now--maybe in a moment, but she had to see, first, what he was going to do. Too much would overload the young pup's mind.

Well. ...Minds.
________________

Roll the bones.

~ ~ ~ m warning;; swear

Don't you ever tame your demons

But always keep 'em on a leash

αριστερά . κέντρο . δεξιά
The pup and all three of his heads stopped when Giggle said his name, though each set of eyes only met hers for a moment before looking down at the scattered bones. Each head nodded when she spoke of cleaning off, shaking up and down at just slightly different rates. The heads put the words to memory, please, thank you, don't attack, and carefully the pup got up, hoping that maybe she would forget that he had maybe tried to fight her. When he was bigger maybe he could win the bones, but not until he was older. He knew when he was beat.

"Okay," he woofed, a paw rubbing at his mucky face still. "Please?" Another head offered, only to be corrected by the head Giggle seemed to think was the smartest-- which might have been true-- "Thank youuuu." With the formalities aside, the one and a half faces that could see lead his great, lumbering baby body back to the puddles and ferns.

He paused before he got too far away though, his floppy head glancing back at Giggle with the hesitant of a thought. "Giggle come too?" His paws kept going after he asked, though he continued to stare back. It was only kind of a problem, with literally only one ungunked eye watching where he was going, but it wasn't long before he stumbled back to the lair of the hyena, and promptly flopped in the water.

His paws scrubbed at the sticky mucus, his tail flicking through the cool water, getting all of the gross stuff off as best as he could.

Giggle considered, and then followed, albeit at a distance.

"You're welcome, and yes," she offered as she stalked along behind.

She lapped at the water farther from the pup, at first, letting him wash himself; he seemed to be mild-mannered enough, now. Hm.

The hyena did not want to be ambushed later on by a giant three-headed monstrosity. She'd rather keep tabs on him--and she had a vague idea blooming in her mind as to just how she might do that. She glanced at the dog as she drank, rehydrating after the fight, her trembling finally beginning to subside.

How can I do this without him noticing...? And maybe gather a bit more loyalty in the long run? Ahh... I know. It'll be tricky...

Casually, she turned and strode toward him.

"Hold still," she instructed. "This will help you heal faster." She went to his tail, nearish to the wound. She sniffed around it; and then turned and nudged her own coat; fungal spores drifted down like dander, and she tried her best to get them to embed in the dog's fur near the tail.

It worked, and she nudged around to try and spread the spores out a little. A brief test of her senses told her she was linked to the spores, and she would soon--once they had matured--be able to reach out and locate the dog--and perhaps find out what he was doing--no matter where he went. She wasn't sure how long it would last, but hopefully long enough for her to at least heal, and make some preparations for an eventual rematch.

"There," she said, stepping back and away. "Keep the wound clean and it should heal quickly enough." Then, still acting as casual as she could, she went back to lapping at the pool's stagnant water.

________________

Roll the bones.

Don't you ever tame your demons

But always keep 'em on a leash

αριστερά . κέντρο . δεξιά
The pup blinked, soaking wet noses tilting up towards her as she instructed him not to move. Was she going to do something bad to him, for trying to eat her? Maybe she was hungry now, and wanted to eat him. He snorted, grumbling and mumbling to himself. "What she want?" "I'unno." "Is fine." "Yeah'huh." The heads went on to groom each other, licking the wet off, the gunk mostly gone, and then stopped abruptly when he felt something peculiar happen on his behind.

"Fix tail?" Asked the head most concerned about the state of his tail, glancing back at the tingly, strange feeling on his rump. He blinked, the other two sets of eyes watching as Giggle came around to lick up some water. She hadn't tried to eat him, not like Baratheon had. Perhaps only white beasts belonged at the top of the food chain, though she had beat him... So where did that leave things?

Things simply didn't make sense to the pup. "Giggle," he whined, tilting his scarlet nosed head nearly ninety degrees inwards, getting a ear full of tongue from the middle head. "Bones didn't show anything." The other heads considered this statement. "Bones tasty though." This was something that all of him agreed with, each head nodding in acknowledgement, the weird feeling on his butt forgotten almost immediately. It didn't hurt, just felt odd.

"You eat bones, but not Kerberos? You could eat Kerberos. Would eat you back. Yeah... But you could. Won the play, stronger than... No! Stronger. Maybe..." The heads exchanged a glance, and in a low growl, insisted, "Don't attack."

Giggle glanced back at the pup with some surprise, black muzzle wet with water now rather than with blood. She licked her snout, considering.

What was he asking, exactly...? He hadn't seen anything in the bones, and he wanted to know why she hadn't eaten him. And--was that aggressive-head already considering another fight? She sighed softly through her nose.

"There are things for eating, and things not for eating. Things that talk are not for eating," she explained. She wasn't really sure about this, but it sounded right, anyway. "There are rats, and cave rats and lizards here, and deer, too. That's where some of these fresh bones came from. They don't speak. Those are what you can eat." She didn't think she'd yet encountered a deer that could talk, but maybe some could? Bah, no use confusing the pup.

"If you eat ones that can talk, they will eat you back. It doesn't matter how strong you are, because some of them are in big groups. You eat one, and its whole family will get angry and eat you, and you will die. If you eat things that can't talk, they won't eat you. Well--the cave rats might," she added wryly.

"And as for the bones--they are very tasty. Most Gembound see nothing but bones, but I saw things in them. Some things about you," she added slyly, glancing up at Kerberos. "They say you will be a hero, some day. The sort of Gembound that the others look up to and worship. But you've a long way to go before then."

Let him chew on that, for awhile. If he even understands it.

________________

Roll the bones.

Don't you ever tame your demons

But always keep 'em on a leash

αριστερά . κέντρο . δεξιά
Kerberos didn't understand what talking had to do with how eatable something was. He figured as long as he could put it in his mouths he could eat it, but he remembered the sweet bone that he had to destroy before it tempted him to eat it. His tail flicked, slapping against the edge of the water. Rats and lizards-- he had eaten a rat before, and he had almost caught his own lizard, but he didn't know what a deer was... It must have been bigger than a rat or a lizard, though not by much, if it belonged to these bones.

Finally, the pup's eyes went wide as he listened to the reason why he couldn't eat the talking ones. They had friends. Family, she called it. They would eat him if they had more teeth than him. He nodded, finally sinking in. If he wanted to eat someone, he had to make sure they didn't have more teeth hiding somewhere. At least, that was how he rationalized it. It was hard to get more teeth if you couldn't talk. All three mouthes grinned when she suggested a cave rat might eat him, knowing that he would shred any rodent that came across him.

... The last thing she had to say, however, made the grins fade. There was something strange about her words, something that didn't make any sense to him. Words too big for him, ideas to grand for him. He didn't know what to make of her fortune, no, maybe one day he would understand. The way she said it made it sound like he wasn't supposed to get it yet. "Long way to go... Which way?" He asked, shaking out his soaking ears. The other heads had some sort of answer, which probably made less sense than Giggle did. "Some day soon..." "Can't go there now, have to get it first." "It?" "The bones, maybe." "Bones and... And eating things." "Too little." This seemed to click for orange flopster. "Not strong enough yet! I'll get strong like Giggle first."

The middle head shared a grin with the others. "Yeah!"

Giggle listened to the heads, wondering what exactly it was they'd made of her statement. They each seemed to have made their own interpretation, and she wasn't sure they were in agreement even with one another. For a fleeting instant she got the feeling that they had seen, as she saw--and perhaps they had.

But here was a chance--a chance to make the pup tame himself, or at least, to educate him without him eating everyone he saw. At the very least, it might keep her fellow Bonebound safe. And perhaps it would actually lead him toward what she'd seen in the bones.

"Listen." The word was still calm, but sharper--not rude, yet demanding attention. She stared intently at each of the three heads in turn. "If you really want to survive--to get smarter, bigger, stronger--you need to learn. Everyone in this cave knows things that others don't. Some might know a secret of the rock, some might know about a new type of magic, someone else might know how to understand something you don't. What if you went, and spoke to everyone you could find? What if you learned from all of them? Don't eat them--eat the rats, the deer. But if you learn everything you can, from everyone you meet, one day you will know everything, and then nothing can stop you."

It was, in a sense, true--and she knew that, if he had the patience and the attention span to follow through, she may well have created a monster. Or rather, strengthened a monster. But it was her hope that in fulfilling this--in speaking to others, in learning--that Kerberos would become something more than a mindlessly aggressive beast bound to kill others before getting slaughtered himself.

"Go and speak and listen and learn, and you will be both wise and strong. And nothing can stop those who are both wise and strong."

She stared at him, trying to look as wise and mysterious as she could.

I hope this is convincing enough, because if it isn't, everyone in this cave is going to have a lot more to worry about than bones and fortunes, Giggle thought grimly.

________________

Roll the bones.

Don't you ever tame your demons

But always keep 'em on a leash

αριστερά . κέντρο . δεξιά
Kerberos came back to the idea of teeth, as he listened to Giggle. Talking was important. Valuable. It was how one gained more teeth, made it easier to hunt and eat. As a pup, he had been fed by all those who he had met so far that could talk, and while he considered that once he was bigger he would simply eat them-- Baratheon, Usui, Giggle--... Well, the words perhaps had a similiar effect as the spores did. Subtle. Potentially long lasting.

"Nothing," echoed the one head, though the others stayed silent. The pup rose to his paws, shook out the water from his thick fur. He looked around, sniffing at the air, pondering. He had to meet a lot of gembounds-- and somehow not eat them-- for this to work. He had a feeling he was about to go very hungry for a while... Unless he kept getting food from everyone he talked to. Something about that hit his pride oddly and made red nose snort.

On one hand, perhaps Kerberos had learned something. On the other, perhaps he was just taking her words a bit too literally. Go and speak and listen and learn... "Thank you." He said slowly, with each head, all at once. His tail wagged gently, and he picked his way over to one of the bones that he had cleaned before, picking it up-- it wasn't a thigh bone, but that was alright. It was a rib of some sort, maybe. Strong. Sturdy. He cast a glance her way, and as if he had figured something out from all of this, he abruptly bolted off.

He would certainly return when he got hungry again... Or, maybe, when he was older and wiser. If such a thing was possible.

;; kerb exit :O