The last time Pestilence tried to sneak out of the territory went terribly. Not only did she get her butt stuck in a tangle of vines, but she got invited to live with the Legion wolves and promptly had her dreams crushed by a foul-mouth lady who seemed very angry with Alarr. For a moment she'd felt so freed by the invitation, and her confinement within Ashen's territories was even more suffocating then before. She was still angry with her siblings, especially Venom for not siding with her after Gadreel kicked their butts. Even more she was angry at her mother, for promising she'd take them home but instead bringing them further east to yet another new land. This one was closer still to the volcano, and she could hardly look up at the looming, angry mountain without remembering her father and how he'd suffered there. The only good thing about her new home was it's proximity to the Legion wolves and her friend Alarr. At least play-dates were easier when she didn't need to travel as far. She'd definitely be trying her luck to adventure multiple territories away as she had with the Briar, so instead she merely crossed the border of the Shrine and waded along the shallow riverbank in The Rio Grande. Fish swam between her paws and she swiped at them pitifully, the motion half-hearted at best. She hadn't come here to fish, but to hopefully catch sight of her friend whom she knew lived nearby. All the pups in Ashen were religious nutcases, and she knew as long as she had the yearling as a friend that he could help her keep her head on straight and avoid falling into the quicksand that was spirituality. "Speech" "Thinking" "You."

Soon enough Legion would be back in its homelands but in the meantime Jupiter was traveling between them and the Basin frequently just to keep an eye on things. Make sure no one moved in thinking they were vacant or anything like that. So far so good. All was quiet and he hadn't seen hide or hair of any mischief-makers. It was a bit boring, honestly. Just one little scrap now and then or a lost, winsome traveler taking refuge in the barn. That's all he wanted. Was that too much to ask for?

He was yanked from his musings about winsome rogues by the dark shape of what looked like a pup traipsing into the river. The creature had the youthful gangliness he associated with the off-the-tit-but-still-within-suckling-range age group. The pup was alone and that fact was enough to remind him of his younger self. How much time had he spent alone as a pup after his mother disappeared and he'd deliberately eluded his father's company? A great deal. If not for Amadeus who knows what would have happened to him.

"Hey, kid," he called without making a move towards her. She might take his advance the wrong way and bolt, and he didn't want that. "You're shit at fishing."

It didn't take long for her solitude to be broken, and for a hopeful moment she thought it might be her friend Alarr. Her head lifted with excitement, though her expression soured quickly when she realized who it was that was talking. It wasn't a wolf of Ashen, nor one she'd ever met before. Her first thought was danger and how she should run home before she became someone's snack, but his words caught her attention and made quick work of flipping her switch from flight to fight. "Well you're.." She tried to respond, attempting to mimic his easy tone as she thought quickly upon an appropriately insulting response. "..uh, you're shit at.. talking." It didn't come out right, and Pestilence's face contorted in confusion directed at her own choice of words. She'd need to try a different response. "No, wait. You're shit at..." Damnit. Start over. "Well, you..." Her mind whirled desperately to grasp upon something that she could jab at. "... you're pretty, like a girl." With her bumbling done, the princess lifted her head defiantly in his direction before turning back to the stream where somehow her angrier swats at the passing fish were even less effective then before. "Speech" "Thinking" "You."

The kid seemed a bit taken aback which, honestly, Jupiter expected. That was a common reaction to 1) his appearance 2) his mouth or 3) both. Most of the time he liked it. Any attention was good attention. This kid was no exception. She was just too fucking precious and bless her heart, she tried. He reined in his smirk so as not to bruise her little ego too much.

'Too much' meaning he was going to bruise it a little. She was as shit at shit-talking as she was at fishing and he would be doing the world a favor if he took the piss out of her for it and taught her a lesson. He sniffed dispassionately, scratched his chest with a forepaw, then said, "Aw, thanks kid. That's what I aim for. Being pretty like a lady." Yawn. If she riled easily hopefully his lack of genuine hurt would ruffle her feathers a little.

He eyed her speculatively then added, "For real though, kid, you gotta work on that shit or no one's ever gonna take you seriously. Didn't your parents ever teach you how to talk to people? You meet someone who gives you shit you gotta bust them balls otherwise they'll just walk all over you." And have fun at your expense like he was.

Pestilence was severely confused, her head tilting far to the side as she observed the man. Was he even a man? Maybe he wanted to be pretty like a lady because he wanted to be a lady. Well, whatever. Pestilence wasn't the type to judge - women were miles better then men regardless. His words continued to bite at her, and the pup wished she knew better how to respond to such a rude and brazen wolf. Her experience in Ashen hadn't taught her that, people generally treated her well aside from the other pups. He continued speaking, lecturing her on the proper way to act when someone gave her 'shit.' The pup's ears perked towards him. "I'm told that it's beneath a princess." She retorted plainly, remembering her sister telling her not to stoop to Gadreel's level when she'd blatantly called out his status as an orphan. Her voice didn't hold much confidence, her opinion on how a 'princess' should act being very different to her words. She considered for a moment, thinking hard on what response the blue man might approve of. "If you want to be a lady so bad, I could bust your balls." She said finally, stabbing her paw vaguely towards his man-parts. Truthfully she had absolutely no idea how to dismember a man of his sausage, but Uncle Hari had said it was a sensitive place to attack. The entire attempted insult felt weird, and she frowned thoughtfully. "I don't know, it's hard being me, okay?" Pestilence huffed and then kicked at the water. How were you supposed to be a regal princess, named for two powerful bloodlines but still be a respected and feared warrior? Kindness didn't earn any sort of respect in this world, you needed to be witty and rude for a wolf to take you seriously. "Speech" "Thinking" "You."

Jupiter reared back as though startled and fixed Pestilence with his best exaggerated surprised face. He clutched a paw to his chest and said, "It's beneath a princess to stand up for yourself but perfectly acceptable to threaten to literally bust someone's balls? My dear! That doesn't sound like the behavior of a respectable princess." Okay, act over. He slumped back into his usual casual manner and quirked a brow at her. "Of course whenever I think of princesses I think of snotty little bitches getting carried around on pillows and shit. And honestly that sounds overrated so take your best shot, kid. Bust away."

Oh ho ho, really? The self proclaimed princess had it rough? Yeah right. Jupiter smirked. Though his words were a bit harsh he was nothing if not chill. "Hard to be you, huh? Yeah, I bet. What, mommy and daddy not give you your own cart and pony or something? Lemme guess, that's why you're out here. Because your life is so hard, right?" He sat down hard and kicked out his legs like he was about to explain life to the little silver spoon whelp. "I bet you've never had to do anything hard a day in your life and at night you curl up between mommy's titties all safe and sound."

He eyed her, trying to decide what was too far when dealing with a kid. Jupiter was probably well past the point of acceptable behavior and even though he didn't care a helluva lot about the kid's feelings, he decided to roll his snark back some. "Alright, alright. In all seriousness: that wasn't half bad ball busting, kid. You're off to a good start. So, why's it so hard to be you?"

Pestilence's jaw dropped and somehow she became more incredulous with each new sentence he spewed. Just when she thought he'd said the most offensive thing possible he dialed it up further and the young pup was horribly, terribly startled. She struggled to respond, flabbergasted that an adult would ever speak this way to a child. He'd obviously never been around a pup in his life, or if he was Pestilence sure as hell didn't want to meet the poor soul who'd obviously be corrupted beyond repair. She remained stunned into silence, feeling the fish below her brush past her legs without reaction. How could she ever top a single thing he'd just said? The male had told her that she had to have something to say back to someone who was 'giving her shit' but Pestilence did not have nearly enough words in her vocabulary to even come close to his blunt speech. After a while she stepped out of the water, plopping her rear upon the dirt heavily as if his words had knocked the energy out of her. "Wow." She breathed. "Who hurt you?" She let that sink in a minute, and then shook her head in disbelief. Her conversation with Valdis came back to her, and how she'd very nearly gotten the woman on her side with her lies. Surely her fibbed life sounded much worst then her real one, and she wanted to express to this man exactly how terrible her life was even if it meant embellishing it a little bit. "My family are religious heretics, and sacrificed my dad to the volcano." She told him bluntly, her eyes daring him to claim that the event was anything less then terrible. "My sister is going to be the next Empress because she's got weird shit going on with her body that the pack thinks are 'blessings,' and I need to entrust these obviously poor decision makers with my future." The princess did her best to stay as close to the truth as possible, while playing up the parts she thought might invoke the most sympathy. She wondered how further to gain his favor, and the most obvious answer was to return his conversation with as foul a mouth as he had. "I don't even want to be the friggen Empress." She began. "I just want to be able to kick the shit out of anyone who bothers me when I grow up, but it's hard to focus on my training when half my lessons are about a stupid, fake God." There. If he wanted to picture her curled up beside her moms boobies then at least he'd picture Deathbelle as a volcano-loving, father-sacrificing fanatic. The thought gave Pesto pause, and she cursed herself quietly. The idea was not to paint her beloved mom in a bad light, but she'd gone and done it again. Crap. "Speech" "Thinking" "You."

He'd said a lot and not given the kid a chance to get a word in edgewise so he was eager to hear what she had to say. She seemed mouthy enough to come up with something eventually but not quite confident enough to be fast. With practice she'd get better at it. No one, as far as he knew, was born an awful shit. It was something wolves grew into over time.

"Wow," she breathed finally and Jupiter almost scooted closer in anticipation. This was gonna be good. She'd had time to think about it, hadn't stuttered around. So this was gonna be- "Who hurt you?" Jupiter couldn't help it. He busted out laughing. Alright, alright. That was cute and it was fair. He was a jackass. Even a pup could see that. "Some pretty ladies aren't born princesses," he answered cryptically.

Interesting. So her family was made up of lunatics, her sister was a freak and she belonged to a pack of sycophantic zealots. He wasn't about to dive into his own childhood, how first his mother then his pack had disappeared leaving him entirely alone in the unforgiving North. How, as a small boy, he'd wandered on his own for a season until his father had found him. Or how he'd lived in a semi feral state until his father had introduced him to their family and convinced him to join Legion. But yeah, her totally not made up story of lunatics and sacrifices was totally worse. In a voice that toed the line between sarcastic and sympathetic, he said, "That is the saddest shit I've ever heard."

Jupiter drew in a deep breath, held it for a second, and then let it out in an explosive sigh. "So why don't you just say fuck 'em all, huh? You can be family, be around and whatnot, without swallowing the bullshit they try to feed you and then when you're old enough - you're a bit young now, I don't recommend it yet - you fuck off into the sunset and only visit on your terms." Look at him being all Dr. Phil and shit. Maybe he'd add counseling to his list of services. "As for the shit kicking, that's easy. Wolves will try to tell you it takes years to be a serious opponent for someone, and to an extent that's true, but you can cut a lotta corners if you're willing to throw decorum out. So don't sweat it, kid, if you have the basics and you're a dirty fighter, you'll be fine."

When her retort drew a laugh from the blunt man, Pestilence couldn't help but grin with pride. Surely that meant she'd done a good job, right? Her tail beat against he ground happily, his reaction encouraging her on her quest to shit-talk. She wondered how he'd respond to her extremely embellished life story, excitement drumming up within her before his voice crossed the distance and soured her. It was the saddest shit he'd ever heard, though! Pestilence literally could not think up a more terrible childhood and glowered at his stupid sarcastic face in response. It took effort for her to not simply stick out her tongue at the man, though she decided that such an action would likely ruin the image of maturity that she was going for. Instead, her jaw slacked once more and she looked at him with bewilderment. "Where do you come up with this shit?" She asked, her tone equal in disbelief and honest curiosity. "Seriously, do you just talk to yourself in the bath, come up with nuggets of wisdom and then hoard them until you find someone to unleash them on?" Pesto was hard pressed to believe that he was simply born this witty and quick-tongued. When Iolaire told her that as a leader you needed to have intelligent people on your side, the princess thought it was a ridiculous and stupid idea. Though meeting the blue man definitely made her question herself - there'd sure as shit be benefit to having a smooth-talker like this guy on your side. He suggested she simply leave - 'fuck off?' - and do her own thing when she was grown, and Pestilence rolled her eyes skyward at the advice. "I know you can't understand princess, but even though I may be surrounded by idiots of religion, they're powerful idiots of religion. I 'fuck off' into the sunset and now all of a sudden I join a boring pack and do boring grunt work for the rest of my life. While it sounds fun to have plenty of free-time for baths and thinking of witty retorts to strangers, I'm aiming a little higher in life." She eyed him carefully, having done her best to throw equal amounts of salt and sass into her words to earn another rewarding response from the man. "I'm willing to throw whatever out if it lets me win, that's how you become the best. Though good luck walzing into a warrior's training session and asking for lessons in fighting dirty. My mom oversees those lessons, y'know." She conveniently left out that she had specifically asked for lessons in that subject during Uncle Harbringr's last meeting.   "Speech" "Thinking" "You."

Jupiter lifted a hind foot and began to scratch his belly with it. While doing this he shrugged and retorted, "I'll have you know I pull it out of my ass on demand." The quality of his shit talking largely depended on who he was up against. Lightweight bullshitting was easy and thoughtless. He said the first thing that popped into his head and added expletives on as necessary. Versus a heavy weight he would have to flex a bit more and work a bit harder to figure out what made his opponent tic. Jupiter liked to personalize and he considered the difference between general mouthing off and personalized slights to be similar to the difference between swinging blindly and swinging intentionally.

He fixed Pestilence with a serious look, his first one through their whole exchange. Funny how she thought the only alternative to staying home was joining a "boring" pack. Where was her imagination? "So what I hear you saying is that you ain't shit on your own. What, you can't make something of yourself so you're going to stay in your sister's shadow forever? That's the social equivalent to eating her table scraps - and that's some piddly weakass shit. 'Aimin a little higher' my ass. If that's how you think maybe you are just a pillow-sitting princess."


Jupiter sighed dramatically. "Kid your lack of creativity is fucking disheartening. Shit." He looked her up and down speculatively and then shook his head in exasperation. "You don't fight dirty in the training sessions, you dunce. That's how you get in trouble. Are you sure you're a kid? This is basic 101 kid shit. You find a lowlife piece of shit willing to give you nuggets of wisdom." He quirked a brow at her, clearly hinting (or maybe not, her lack of creativity was seriously depressing) that he might be one such lowlife piece of shit.

Pestilence hummed softly over his insistence that his shit-talking genius was something he could call upon at anytime, thinking about how valuable a skill that sounded like. Surely if you could confuse and insult your opponents before a match, the fight itself would go much easier. Earlier in the season her and her sister had gotten into a melee fight with her half-brother Gadreel, and Pestilence could see now that her shit-talking had missed the mark there. Even Venom must have seen it, as she told her sister not to stoop to his level. Pestilence should have stooped further and said much worse things, that much she was sure now.   For the first time in their conversation, Jupiter's words had struck her hard enough to make her legitimately sad. She thought she could see truth to them, but regardless did not like his idea of her plushy pillow life eating her sister's scraps. The pup did her best to not take it too far to heart, but felt the sting through the rest of his words. However, he had now proven that his wit extended to more then just casual shit-talk, and that he could jab at a wolf expertly. It was a skill Pestilence wanted to learn. "But can you pull it out of your ass on demand?" She asked carefully, scooting closer to him with interest. "For example, what kind of things could you say to an orphan to really hurt his feelings?" The idea of receiving a lesson in being a low-life was something Pestilence couldn't turn down, and she wondered exactly how much backwards knowledge she could really squeeze from the blue man. The pup gasped suddenly. "Oh! I know. You can teach me how to fight dirty while at the same time teaching me how to talk dirty! I already have a mentor, but I know he'd be impressed if I found this shit out without him!" Would Harbringr be impressed? Pesto only needed to consider it for a moment before deciding that yes, her Uncle was the kind of wolf she could definitely 'shit-talk' with for practice. "Oh, and excuse you but I am creative. I painted an alpha's ass pink earlier this season." She wiggled a bit out of pride, standing straighter. "And I was this close to causing a poo-epidemic within Ashen." Her upper body lifted, her paws coming close as to display the very small distance between them for emphasis. "Speech" "Thinking" "You."

"But can you pull it out of your ass on demand?" He jabbed at her chest. If she let his paw get close enough he'd flick her chin when she went to look down at it. "Is that not what I just said? You got servants back home who do the listening for you too? Come on, now, pay attention and don't make me repeat myself." As for the orphan... Jupiter squinted at her, pretending to take issue with her request. Being a bit of a contrarian he was awfully fond of saying and doing the opposite of what was expected of him, so she wasn't going to get the answer she wanted. "What kind of awful dipshit makes fun of an orphan?"

Whoa, whoa, whoa. Jupiter threw up a paw as Pestilence mentioned learning how to talk dirty. She didn't mean it like that but it made him squirmy anyway. "Okay, whoa, hey, let's get one thing clear: when it comes to language I'm teaching you how to shit talk. Talking dirty is..." Oh fuck how to explain this... "The kind of thing you do to people you wanna..." He squinted at her and blew out his lips in exasperation. "You know what? That's the sort of thing your parents should teach you." Hah. He would give anything to be a fly on the wall when she brought up that topic.

Jupiter stepped back to give himself room to demonstrate. As he did so he acknowledged her accomplishments absently, "If that alpha's your mother it don't count for shit." Wait a what epidemic? He tilted his head and looked at Pestilence sideways. "Really? Hm," he grunted thoughtfully. "You lose points for the 'almost' but that coulda been some funny shit."

"Okay, let's get down to business. Rule one of fighting dirty is this: go for the soft stuff." He paused to let that sink in. "So you go for the eyes, poking, biting, kicking dirt if you can do it sneaky otherwise you'll get pegged as a chickenshit. If you're squaring off with a guy dem balls are wicked painful. A solid blow there will knock the thoughts right out of his head." Jupiter side-eyed Pestilence. "You with me so far? Soft spots are important."

Pestilence's nose followed his reaching paw, the flick landing upon her chin and causing a startled and betrayed gasp to pull from her throat. Her eyes narrowed, but before she could retaliate he was continuing. "I don't have servants or pillows." Her grumbled retort came, but regardless she kept her gaze upon him as he considered her question. "What kind of awful dipshit makes fun of an orphan?" The pup stood then, her jaws parting in disbelief as she stared up at him. "Oh come on, not you too. I thought you were cool." What the hell was wrong with making fun of an orphan? Gadreel deserved it, and Pestilence would go to her grave saying so. Somehow her words seemed to off-center the man, and Pestilence could not possibly understand what she'd said wrong. She stared blankly at him, not understanding his distinction between the two types of speech. "Isn't this pup 101? to find a low-life piece of shit to teach you the things parents won't?" The pup squinted suspiciously at him, wondering how this is the ethical hill he'd choose to die on. "If mom hears me say even one word of this I'll be on my ass out the door." Her sentences were coming slower now, a great deal of thought being put into each and every one to ensure she injected the proper naughty word. This wolf was good at undermining her, and Pestilence laughed sarcastically and without humor in his direction. "No, the alpha wasn't my mother. That's small shit. The alpha's name is Sirius and he's probably a better fighter then even you are." She sniffed, turning her head a small ways away from him as if the very thought was beneath her. "And by the time I had enough herbs for the poopedemic the fucking volcano had to come ruin everything." Pestilence found it hard not to be upset at the angry force of nature, especially when it came perfectly timed to prevent her from polluting the lake with laxatives. When he spoke about getting down to business, Pestilence's tail began to wag. She crouched low as if she was to pounce, eagerly awaiting the lesson she'd dreamed of. Kicking dirt? She'd never thought of that. But his words gave her pause and she directed a questioning frown his way. "Who cares if you're a chickenshit?" Pestilence sure as hell didn't. He mentioned the balls, and the pup squinted over at the blue man's own parts. Typically in a lesson, her teachers let her practice on them. Should she dare? Lavender gaze drifted back up to his face and the hastily decided that any ball stomping should be limited to family members who wouldn't be able to retaliate. After a moment of consideration, she spoke up once more - voice flat. "I can't reach the eyes. This advice will be useful in like two years."   "Speech" "Thinking" "You."

[/b]

Okay she needed to let the 'dirty talk' talk die already. They'd only been on the name for a few seconds and he'd already had enough of it. There was a lot of things he would have talked to Pestilence about. She could have asked him any number of sex related questions and he would have been cavalier about it, but there was something about talking dirty that crossed a line for him. Perhaps that was a line he should have drawn sooner, but the way he saw it, some knowledge about sex was useful even at a young age, to protect one's self and shit like that, but seduction or simply knowing about seduction was different. She was just too damn young to lose that naivety. And yes, any discussion of sex between a strange man and a kid was really fucking weird, but he wasn't exactly a fount of good social skills. "How about this: you keep asking about it and I throw you out into the deep end? Does that sound like a plan to you 'cause it's sounding pretty good to me."

Offhandedly he interjected, "Your mom sounds miserable, but go on, I'll quite interrupting." Who had a problem with swearing? It was like the fat on a piece meat; it added flavor.  Okay, apparently he lied about not interrupting because at the mention of Sirius he couldn't help but snort. "Is there really some schmuck runnin' around named Serious? I don't think I can take an alpha named Serious seriously." He waved his paw dismissively. "Okay, that's it, I'm done. Nothing but business from here on out."

"This advice will be useful in like two years." He smacked a paw over the bridge of his nose and pressed down as though he were getting a migraine. With a sigh he said, "My god this is like talking to rock. How about you focus on similarly sized midgets until you hit a fucking growth spurt? Because there is no wisdom under the sun that I can lay down right now that will suddenly turn all 20lbs of you into a grown up smiting ninja." Jupiter pulled the paw away from his face just enough to peek at her out of one eye. "So how's about you thank your lucky stars I'm telling you anything at all, take this shit seriously and quit asking me dumb questions? You think that's doable?"

If Jupiter were less of a charismatic wolf to the pup, his threat might have cowed her. In fact his massive size, ego, and blunt way of going about things should really have clued her in to the fact that his threat may very well be real but Pestilence had a hard time taking him seriously. A small giggle slipped from her as he mentioned throwing her into the deep end, but she nodded her intent for obedience regardless as to not turn him off her new lesson altogether. "Okay, okay-" She paused, looking bewildered for a moment. "Wait, what's your name?" Somehow regardless of her upbringing as a princess to be polite and introduce herself, they'd gotten far already without her knowing exactly who he was. She needed his name for sure, especially if she was to go tell Alarr about the fucking awesome blue giant who had schooled her.

He continued to interrupt her speaking, and each time she glared at him playfully. Finally his short came through at Sirius' name and she rolled her eyes at his pun. "That was fucking lame." She giggled again, her tail wagging slowly behind her. "I really expected better from you." Sure, she'd never thought of making fun of the titan's name but Pestilence too wanted to mess with the blue man.

At his theatrics she let out a small gasp, lifting her paw to his chest as if he'd wounded her. "So you're above making fun of an orphan but not a midget? Look here old man, I bet I could take you." She moved into a play-bow, tail thrashing behind her as she growled at him half heartedly. After a second of deliberation, she stood back up. "Wait, fuck, actually first, maybe a few more tips on how to turn the fight in my favor. You do need a handicap of some sort, right?"

At no point in the conversation had it occurred to Jupiter to get the kid's name. He just...didn't care enough to ask? That sounded harsher than how he felt. It simply hadn't mattered enough in the conversation to 1) think about asking and 2) interrupt the flow. But now that the topic had been raised he was curious. Jupiter was fully expecting the kid to have some kind of pastel pink, pretty pretty princess kind of name. "Name's Jupiter. And lemme guess you're uh...Princess Lily Shimmer Sparkles or something like that, huh?" As for the Serious joke... He had been semi serious, but he waved a capitulating paw at her anyway. "You're right, you're right. My bad."

Jupiter made a face at Pestilence. "Okay first of all, you don't stand a chance. With my foot I could drive you into the ground like a nail. Secondly, your midgetiness is temporary and you are entirely undeserving of sympathy you little orphan mocking monster. Thirdly, don't change the subject. I'm giving you tips for handling other vertically challenged individuals, not goliaths or grown ups or any other group that will gobble you up in a heartbeat. I'd hate to find out later you got yourself eaten by a bear. Big fucking waste of my time that would be."

"So. Fighting similarly sized midgets. I'm sure your teacher has taught you how to sweep legs and all that, right? So say you do that and you manage to get your opponent on the ground. If you have a heart you might be tempted to give 'em a break and let 'em get up again, right? Don't do that shit. They're on the ground for a reason so keep them down and keep attacking until they squeal. Go low if you have to. Stomp 'em in the stomach or the dick if they have one. Bite them feet if they stick 'em in your face."