Private Roleplay~ IOD

demon • 20 July 2015 at 5:25 PM

To say that Zan hated the sight would, while not exactly be lying, be extremely misleading to those not knowing better.
Zan was indeed a cool cat, allergic to the very concept of physical exercise and god forbid, that horrifying human excretion called sweat. The mere word, 'gym' gave him a case of the chills that had, when he'd woken up that morning, almost had him scrambling frantically over to Bliss's bedside to beg to know what was wrong with him- hopefully something severe enough to keep him tucked up and toasty in his blanketless bed, right? Only then he'd heard the voices and remembered how very not speaking he was with his doctor.
In short, it would be no trouble to convince the ice power he had a phobia for physical exertion. Was there a fancy long name for that? Well, if there was Zan didn't know it.
But whatever his issues with that may be, loathing was not the only thing he felt when he walked into the hall. An almost perfectly proportioned square, with a rounded dome ceiling far enough above to make it feel more like the primitive cut of some grand theatre, waiting to be fixed with fine, smooth panelling or plaster painted with the scenes of classic mythology. As it was now, it was perhaps not as elegantly impressive, but the strength its form held was undeniable. Zan looked up and saw the dust in the air, shimmering under the powerful beams of the stagelights hooked up on the walls. They had the dust turning purple, blue, green, yellow, orange with such fierce intensity Zan wondered if they hadn't been infused with the drive of a feral. God knows where Rai had had those pinched from, it had probably been one heck of a job. Rai was not an easy guy to work for. But powers liked a challenge. They loved him for it.
And Zan was no different. While he would swear to the ends of the earth that he was nothing like these spirits of blind, mindless destruction... He was what he was.
The bright dust fell in dazzling showers to the beat of the trembling rock beneath his feet. It was shaking from the impact- whenever a power's force was ruthlessly smashed against it, the floor and heck, probably the whole mountain vibrated. Like a terrified child curled up and quaking... Or like a satisfied cat, contentedly purring? It didn't matter.
Zan couldn't help but feel just a little bit excited. What kind of power wasn't intoxicated at the thought of stretching their wings, seeing how high they could fly? It was the most basest element of their being. The desire, no, desperate need to feel... Powerful. It was only natural, right?
He tried to rein it in as he felt Bliss's eyes resting heavy on his side, saw the healer discretely pulling his ridiculous coat tighter around his torso. Instead of leaping into the fray- not an option he'd seriously considered, naturally, though nonetheless a power's usual course- he led Bliss over to the safety of the sidelines, where only a couple of powers lay, grabbing a breather and already looking a bit like someone'd taken a shoe to them, but still looking starry-eyed and raring to go again. Eyes narrowed against the dangers of raining glitter, Zan kept a safe distance between them and the others, careful not to draw anyone's fire.
"Wow! What do you think?" Bliss shouted at him over the crashing waves of assorted noise.
Not even trusting himself to speak with that simmering feeling in his stomach, as if the dust had gotten there too already, Zan just gave a look and pointed to his ears like he couldn't hear.
Despite his caution, the other powers (who were not too otherwise occupied) couldn't fail to notice Zan. It was hard to ignore a body thrumming with so much unspent energy as his always was. And now that it was singing with excitement, how could they not glance his way?
And then there was Bliss. Not a power. Everyone knew it, the instant he walked into the room. He felt different.
So they stared, some more shamelessly than others, some muttering to each other and occasionally to themselves.
Zan's weird attitude was not well-liked. Bliss was a user, and they sure weren't well-liked. Needless to say, the attention was not a good thing. Still, the rebels were focused on their own movements, that is, pounding one another. So while watchful eyes lingered, they did nothing- yet.
In the mountain, no matter the space, Zan always felt trapped.

taffy789 • 21 July 2015 at 2:50 PM

Zach followed Dreadlocks out the door and decided he really didn't want to waste what little energy he had trying to catch up with them. So, instead of walking faster to close the gap between them, he just spoke to them in a louder voice than normal.
 "I saw what sorry state my assistant was in after visiting this girl you call Viki," the Fifth leader called out to Dreadlocks, "And I'm really not in any mood to meet what I assume is the stampeding herd of rabid moose you call a veteran. So I'll much rather go do the leader thing than get trampled over so early in the morning."
 Zach found himself wondering if the leader thing happened to detail getting stomped on by a rabid moose... For a moment, he felt compelled to check it out with his power, but he quickly decided not to extend the effort for something so obvious. If anything, the leader thing probably detailed paperwork, or... reading over things...
 He quietened before adding to Dreadlocks, " And if you can find my assistant for me, then you can do that."



Since Gale had spent most of her time in the solitary confinement observation room, it only made sense for that place to be the sanctuary to beeline for. Upon arriving at the room's door, however, she was dismayed to find it locked. Knocking on it solved nothing either, despite the fact it made sense for someone to be inside... maybe whoever was on shift went out for a quick bite to eat?
 Gale backed away from the door with a frown, and that frown turned into a startled expression when a voice behind her questioned, "Leader Seven?"
 The Seventh leader glassed over her jumpiness with a passive countenance and turned around to face one of Nine's underlings.
 "Yes, it's me," Seven said breezily, "I'm here to check up on the rest of the ferals, to see how they are all holding up. However, the door seems to be currently locked."
 "Ah," the underling gave a rare sympathetic smile. While the Ninth worker did work in the torture division, she reserved empathy for Seven's plight, as the girl must have someone she cared about in a solitary cell if she visited the torture hall THIS much... Actually, just who the Seventh was visiting was THE whispered gossip flying around the new Ninth division. Some claimed she had a feral best friend in cell #3. Others said family in cell #7. The most persistent rumor- and the one the underling herself believe to be true- was that Seven had been secretly seeing the boy in cell #5 before the rebel invasion. Of course Seven had to be coming every day to check up on her tragic boyfriend! The underling felt assured that no one would brave the torture halls for anything less than love.
 "I can get the door opened for you, if you would like," the underling replied, all serious, as was practically demanded by her job- especially when TWO was still in charge...
 "Yes," Seven answered, "I would like that."
 The underling nodded. "Well, then, follow me."
 She led the Seventh leader through the halls for a while before arriving at a door.
 "This is Nine's office, but when I was here last, Ford, the new Ninth assistant, was inside. He should know where the key is located." She said this, not mentioning that how "Ford SHOULD know something" was very different than him actually knowing it. Ah, it was worth a shot anyway. Anything to help a lovesick heart, right?
 The underling did something that would've been unthinkable if Two had still been in charge of the place- she knocked on the door.
 The door opened after a while, and the underling made a soft "oh" sound upon seeing who all was inside.
 "I'm extremely sorry to bother you, Nine," the underling quickly amended, "but you have a visitor."
 Gale, standing just outside the doorway, remembered her and Nine's last meeting and tensed slightly, like a deer caught in headlights. She resisted the urge to pull her hood up, cover her face, and run screaming from the potentially awkward pleasantries and the unanswerable question of why the Seventh leader of the Falchiones base had nothing better to do than bum around in the Ninth division hallway all day and watch doomed ferals scream and throw themselves at the walls of their cages.
 Instead of flailing and screaming, Seven untensed as quickly as she had tensed, and she gave a small smile and nod to Karen in an attempt at a greeting.



Jane entered the First Division break room as she always did, quietly, effectively, and without making waves. She ducked her head down, stayed silent, and gave only an acknowledging, passing glance to the people she recognized. She couldn't afford to do any more. Between the Front Lines information current and between the probable feral running around and between her still missing boss and between the dying cigarette stuck between her chewed fingernails... The Eighth assistant simply had too much on her plate.
 Which was why she would solve each problem one step at a time.
 "Harry," Jane softly greeted the boy she knew to be Nine's new assistant, "if you are not already aware of me, I am the assistant to the Eighth leader here." She paused, giving a second for the introduction to sink in... not to mention any pity and/or amused contempt he might hold for someone in her position.
 "If you do not mind or are not currently busy, it would be of great help to me if you could lead me to where the Ninth Division keeps it's recently made records. Or even," she added, "you could show me to your leader, Nine. If she is not currently preoccupied, of course, as I wouldn't want to be a hassle if she she is doing something of importance."



Entering the training room close behind the healer, Wither glanced around the large, empty space with dislike. He'd gotten hurt in a similar large, empty space a few days ago, and since powers had plenty of knives here and were cutting other powers up with them, he would probably get hurt here, too. But at least the healer was close by. If any energy tried to escape his body through a wound, the healer could stop the energy for him. With this reasoning in mind, Wither moved towards the center of the training powers.
 It was loud and everyone was yelling, but Wither put up with it because everyone was scraped and bleeding too. He walked through the crowd without any confrontation for a while, allowing his hair to darken to black and his skin to become warmer with all the energy he sucked in. His path was suddenly halted, however, by a power with missing teeth and two cuts, as Wither sensed, on their back calf. Not deep nor fresh, but he could work with it.
 "Aren't you that power that caused the riot the other day?" the power sneered into his face, and Wither simply nodded in reply.
 "Ha! I saw you fight," the power mocked, "you should've DIED. I'm not sure how you escaped death once, but I know you aren't tough enough to take me. DO you think you're tough enough to take me?"
 Wither thought the question over for a second, then nodded again.
 "Fine then," the power smiled in reply, an evil, murderous smile, "Let's 'train' then. Me and you. Power against power, no weapons. Let's see how tough you are."
 As the power began to get into a fighting stance, Wither just stood in place, thinking something over. The power growled when they saw how their 'training partner' wasn't preparing for the fight at all.
 "Come on," the power commanded, "fight me!"
 "...No," came Wither's reply.
 "What!?" the power shouted, and then suddenly jumped sideways to avoid a knife slashing through their ribcage. The blade nicked them and sent a splash of red soaking through their already tattered and torn shirt.
 "Not just powers. Also knives," Wither explained, holding up the bloodied knife for the other power to see. "...I like knives," he added, just now realizing that knives were another thing he could put on the "Things He Liked" list.
 ...
 The other power, enraged, grabbed their enemy's wrist and waist, shifted their body weight, and then suplexed Wither backwards into the rock hard floor of the arena, sending a tsunami of dust shaking down from the ceiling above.

[Author's note: I can't believe Wither is freakin' dead] 

asi • 25 July 2015 at 11:22 AM

Dreadlocks made a strange sneezing sound, which was apparently their personal interpretation of laughter. They held their head over their shoulder as they walked- strangely fluid but with the occasional erratic jerk like they were infected by static electricity- to make sure Five could catch everything they said despite their soft way of saying it. "Stampeding. Aww man, that's funny. Right charmin'. Why doesn't she like you?"
They continued; "I had wondered what the little birdie would do when I gave no instructions. Obviously, it is not go to you." Their hidden eyelids, darker in colour and practically hairless, flickered down and up as Dreadlocks eyed Five all over again. Except not as far as the shoes. Still not looking at the shoes.
"But this is good. We are glad to find you so willing to help. I think that, you and Viki, you will do well together," they bobbed their hair up and down in satisfaction. "You know, the veteran, well... She often does not take well to headquarter princesses." Beneath the tangle of dreadlocks, there was clearly a solemn smile pasted on the guy's face.
"And do not worry. We will give other things for little birdie to do. You will not need her for your work, I'm sure."
They waited for a moment, seeming to hold a door for Five, only to drop it and keep going along a new corridor as soon as he approached. They kept walking while looking backwards because apparently they didn't need to see where they were going- or they had eyes at the back of their head that the dreadlocks kept covered.

The scene on which the Seventh leader opened the doors on was probably not what should've been expected from the serious resident torturer's office chambers. Nine bent grimly over her paperwork, scribbling up a storm while her underlings lounged around in comparative bliss, having just been freed from the near constant state of fear they had lived in under the tyrannical rule of Two; that's probably what one would expect. And that's what Seven would have found had she arrived but a few minutes sooner.
Instead, what greeted her was an ocean of varying wallpaper designs, paint palette colours and pictures of all the different furnishings one could imagine cut out of magazines, all laid out on the floor. The actual furniture of the room had all been pushed to the edges to make space for this artistic monstrosity.
And in the middle sat Nine and her two subordinates, laughing and chatting and arguing over all the pages.
"Pink does too go with green!" the girl insisted loudly against Nine's assurances to the contrary. "Come on, back me up here!" she appealed to the boy, who mysteriously blushed and then adamantly refused to get involved.
Karen also looked different, with an uncharacteristically pretty pink ribbon pulling up her hair, dark pink in colour. Curious to anyone who would notice, since the new Nine's wardrobe had so far featured outfits that were well-fitting and yes, right on trend, but rather severe, without embellishments and certainly nothing the least bit bright in colour.
When she saw who exactly her visitor was, Karen flushed a bit too, staring at Seven for a number of moments at a complete loss of what to do. It was so embarrassing, and yet her mind was still busy rebelling against the idea of a world where that shade of pink and that shade of green would go together ever existing... Karen was about to say something along the lines of, "Nice to see you back again," when a horrible sense of Deja vu warned her that those were the exact words she'd used last time this happened. After standing up quickly she instead tried;
"Seven! Hi. How can I help you?" and hoped she didn't sound to much like one of those annoying assistants who bugged you in clothes stores.
Glancing guiltily back at the two on the floor, she thought about how this had to look and immediately started cussing herself out in her head.
"You aren't bothering us, we were just having a break," she made sure to clarify before these two drew their own conclusions and promptly dragged Nine's reputation through the dirt.

He turned immediately, delighted to be called upon. After all, it just made him look more impressively important, right? Especially if it was a girl- preferably a blonde with blue eyes, it was too bad the assistant to third had that drab shade of green-
Oh. Then he saw the girl.
"You? You're Eight's assistant?"
To give some credit where it is due, Ford did notice how the expressions around him changed, and he did cut his scoffing short. He did have some sense- unfortunately that was about as far as it went.
"Look, I appreciate how desperately you need my guidance, but hey, you know my rank. Of course I'm busy!" He gestured expansively at the small group of first division kids whose table he'd invaded. "So... Can't you find anyone else?" he looked at her accusingly, annoyed that she had to bother him for such a menial task. Surely anyone at the ninth's offices could do the job, and most of them would probably actually know where the place she wanted was without consulting someone else or a map.
And forget Ford showing this girl to Nine, not after the way she'd kicked him out of her office, muttering something about how 'aggravating' she found his presence... He was pretty sure she thought he didn't understand what she meant, but in reality he was at least a little acquainted with a dictionary and yes, he did know what that word meant.
Ford couldn't help it if all the girls were insanely attracted to him. He just came that way, with a warning label on the package that read, 'too dang hot for the chicks to handle.' It was his own quiet tragedy.
"Yes, he is very busy," one of the first boys at the table quietly agreed with him after a moment. "But he would be less so if he spent less time here complaining to us about it. Sorry to bother you when you're the one coming here for help yourself, but please do us a favour and make sure he gets back to Ninth?"
He was so taken aback by this kid's unbelievable daring, that Ford could barely do more than splutter and give the guy an utterly poisonous glare. And then; "You're just jealous, aren't you, hah, what a loser," he laughed at the boy who really just looked a bit shocked.
Meanwhile, the girls at the table, who seemed to have been contemplating violence for quite some time now, were apparently on the precipice of actually executing it.


"Oof!" The ground shook once more, another curtain of dust cascaded, and Bliss stumbled forward, scrabbling at his eyes and coughing up a small fit.
Zan observed this coldly. "Not so cool now, is it?"
Still leaning over, Bliss looked up at him, relieved the guy had suddenly changed his mind about the talking thing. He was whimsical like that... Actually, it was a trait common among powers; usually their only consistent urge was wrecking things. Realizing that this train of thought would only lead to Bliss drawing parallels between powers and mythological fairies, the doctor hurriedly disembarked there. "The dust is," he gave another short hacking cough, "a bit cumbersome, I'll admit."
It was clear to Zan that this fellow would indeed keep insisting, maybe not in so many words, but in his mind- that everything here was fine, better even. He could tell by the way the doctor's mouth twisted at the corners and the crease between the eyebrows and the way what weak aura he did have pulsed unpleasantly that Bliss found this place anything but to his liking. Yet he still acted as though he'd always wanted to be the wallflower in a gym/nightclub where crazed possessed teens used each other to smash the rock around them to bits. No, this guy was going to pretend everything was great until suddenly it wasn't.
Ah, whatever. Zan just hoped the guy wouldn't panic too dreadfully when his self-inflicted rose-coloured glasses did snap. He didn't want to pick up anyone else's pieces.
Zan clearly had his own crap.
To distract himself from the tingling now spread to his palms, he kept a tight eye on the matches, one in particular catching his focus. It was unusual, wasn't it, for these powers to use weapons unless they were so instructed? Yet this guy favoured a knife... Well, there was a fair number of oddballs among the group, considering they did call themselves rebels- they were supposed to be rebellious, right? The whole thing was a really weird concept, now that he thought about it: organised power rebellion. If that was really what this was.
At least they didn't make them wear uniforms like the Falchions did.
Zan looked down with tired eyes at the leopard spots stretched over his chest. He pulled the fabric close and idly sniffed the thing. The result was unfortunately very human, but still... This human was Blaine, and that smell... It was like home. God he missed home.
"Hello, Zan. Are you just going to stand on the side-lines all day? It's a shame."
Ah crap someone was talking to him, that was the real pity.
"I'm saving myself for when the actual session starts," he lied quickly. No, he really wasn't planning on expending any level of energy higher that what he was now.
Then he glanced at the power he was talking to and did a double take. "Why is it you talking to me?"

demon • 29 July 2015 at 2:53 PM

Zan blinked, rubbed his eyes, held them wide open, pinched his elbow, even tapped his heels together and frowned when he saw it wasn't a red pair he was wearing.
This display just incensed his audience. "I was feeling better!"
"You were?" he inquired politely, honestly secretly rattled by her firecracker ignition. He'd expected her temper to hold together a bit better than that.
"I was, until I talked to you," she growled, deep in her throat like a mastiff, causing Bliss to slide behind Zan, despite the horrible fit, in a weak attempt to hide. Zan had to agree with the spirit of it: the girl powers were so much scarier.
"Why did you?" He couldn't help but probe, unspeakably curious. Didn't this power hate him so much more than the others? Then he noticed her long sleeves and turtleneck look, and realised he was surprised about absolutely the wrong thing. Of course she wasn't fighting; the real question was what she was even doing out of bed. "Your injuries..."
"Shut up!" The metal power glared fiercer than ever, before sweeping a look around to make sure no one had heard. "I'm only over here to give you a message!"
Not only was she giving so many words, but she also had a message's worth more? Zan could only think that she really was still very sick. "Alright, what is it?" he asked warily.
To her credit on Zan's list of moderately bearable powers, she didn't grin gloatingly about it or anything malicious like that. Unfortunately though, she still was the messenger of a particularly unwelcome message.
"'Verse asked for you to call the place into order, you know, to start the training. Says she'll be late."
Then she turned away, leaving behind one doctor who was rather nonplussed, wondering how one could possibly get the attention of all these wild powers... And one Zan who actually understood what had been asked of him, and was wondering instead how on earth he was going to simultaneously fight every power in the room and crawl out of it even precariously alive.


Her feet were blue again. It was cold.
Eyebrows knitted together in confusion.
Or was it the cold that meant there was blue in her feet? Did her blue feet even have anything to do with the cold? Her feet were blue, but was it actually cold?
She made the grey toes on the blue feet wiggle back and forth. They looked like strange, ugly worms. She stared in rapt fascination.
How could she tell, when she couldn't feel a thing?
The blue feet, she rubbed them together, hoping it wouldn't cause them to burst into fire. That would be bad, for some reason.
They didn't, they just hurt. Immediately, she stopped. Feeling nothing was better.
In a moment of clarity, Angel remembered a girl who had been caustic and dark-haired like the granite stone. She'd been levitating then. When she tried to remember the conversation, her head hurt, so she stopped that, too. But the floating thing, she could attempt that.
It only took a thought, a wish to rise up, but in the next second she was sent crashing back to the ground.
She lay there on her side, with a tangle of grungy blonde hair thrown across her face, and did not bother to move it, because while staring at the wall, she'd remembered why she didn't float anymore. Because there was nowhere here for the wind to go.
Why had they thrown her in this room? Hadn't she been listlessly walking the tunnels before, hadn't she been sitting quietly at a girl's bedside? Hadn't she been fine? Angel was fine, so they'd let her out soon, right?
Riley was here, so he'd come for her soon, wouldn't he? Where was Riley?
Angel swept herself up into a sitting position as the boy walked in through the wall.
He stopped and they watched each other for a moment. Slowly, she held out her hands towards him, as if the wrists were tied together by an invisible cord. "Let me out?" she asked him quietly.
He shook his head, putting down the tray of food right by the wall by the others, not daring to come any closer, and in fact barely trusting his mouth to speak. Her aura wasn't acting up, not violently at least, but it was still so heavy, he could hardly stand it. "Mael's not back yet."
Mael... Who was that?
Oh, she remembered, and smiled. Such a sweet kid.
Seeing how spaced out the girl was, the phaser was actually freaked into saying more than he intended. "I- I don't know how long he'll be, sometimes it's weeks, but usually only five or so days, and it's already been two..."
She just continued smiling, and lifted her hands higher. "Let me out?"
He stumbled back into the wall, almost jumping out of his skin when the thing was solid and he didn't go through it. "Mael'll let you out, y-yes!"
She nodded, and fell back down to her former lying position, arms and hair splayed out about her, eyes looking out at nothing, as if she was playing dead.
Now truly spooked, the phaser slipped backwards through the stone, tripping over himself in his haste to turn, and then ran.
She never touched the food.
Angel remained motionless, still like the air in the chamber, both of them trapped there together. But unlike the other, the cogs in the girl's brain continued whirling round, generating her scattered, starved thoughts.
Earlier, when she'd first caught the fear in the boy's eyes, Angel had remembered something again. She had killed someone new, again, hadn't she?
Then she wasn't fine, she was a bad girl, and Riley wouldn't come for her.
But Mael, he would set her free soon, he just wasn't here, right? So where was Mael?

taffy789 • 29 July 2015 at 10:34 PM

After Naji had spent a considerable amount of time curled up on his cot and dreading his future, Samuel groaned, sat up, and set his sleepy eyes on his clearly awake tentmate.
" 'Morning Naji," he yawned, "How's the day treating you so far?"
 When Naji couldn't find the words of explanation in his fear rattled brain, Samuel continued on before the silence got too awkward. "It's still pretty early, isn't it? Have you been up long? Personally dude, I think I'm going to pass out again in a sec, but first I need some water. There's no air conditioning in this god forsaken desert." 
Saying that, he threw his covers off of himself and staggered to a backpack near the tent's door flap, and he knelt down to retrieve a water bottle from the bag. He paused, then ventured to ask, "Do you need a water bottle..?" to Naji, who remained in his state of terrified muteness.
 Samuel uncapped the bottle without speaking again, downed half the water in it before stopping, recapped it, and finally turned to speak to Naji.
 "Hey man, I get it if you don't like to converse with others or anything. That's your own business. But at the same time, if you're afraid of talking to Jorge or me, you don't have to be afraid of that? Personally I think we're pretty chill people, so we won't bite your head off or-"
 Naji sucked in a deep breath of air and said, "I'm not afraid of that, it's-"
 He cut himself off there, but now Samuel's full attention was on him so it wasn't like he could just drop the topic now, could he?
 "There was this card," Naji said, closing his eyes, "taped to the door. It was summoning me, calling for my number specifically. I think..." He opened his eyes and took another big breath, "I think I'm going to be sent on one of those suicidal death missions you told me about yesterday."
 Samuel listened carefully, and when he was done listening, he blinked out of confusion.
 "...Naji," Samuel asked, " Where is this card?"
 "Um, on the ground outside somewhere? I sorta, um, dropped it?"
 Without saying another word, Samuel stood up, unzipped the tent door, and walked outside- confident enough, Naji noted in surprise, to parade around outside in nothing but a pair of pajama shorts. After a minute or so, Samuel returned, triumphantly flashing a white index card at Naji.
 "I couldn't find it at first, but then I found this blown near the base of our neighbor's tent," he explained as he handed the card back to its intended recipient, "I thought it was gone to the wind for a while there! Now, read it, Naji."
 Although hesitant to even TOUCH the horrible death sentence again, Samuel's presence emboldened Naji enough to take the card and read all of it over.
 
"#2385694,
 You have been requested to report to duty at tent #28, also known as the infirmary. The chief healer of the encampment would like to speak with you and needs to instruct you of your daily off-mission duties. Please arrive around mid-morning today.
   Signed, Healer-In-Chief Dylan Velazquez
 (P.S: As you can tell I had to handwrite this note by myself. We are horribly understaffed.)"

"Oh," was all Naji could say upon realizing how stupid he'd been. 
 "Yeah," Samuel began, "I figured it wasn't an order for you to be sent on a death mission. For future reference, since we're part of a team, when one of us gets sent on a mission, we all go. Uh, usually we all go. I suppose there could be exceptions, but I doubt it in this case? Anyways, it's also really unlikely for you specifically to get sent on a mission like that Naji," Samuel shrugged, "because like, you're a healer, and we're a bit short on those right now. I'm sure you're as irreplaceable as they get at IOD, so I don't think you have to worry about getting sacrificed for a dumb mission like that one."
 "R-right," Naji agreed, yet he remained unconvinced by Samuel's assuring words.
 "Yeah, with your healing powers and all, you're basically guaranteed a life of easy importance," Samuel continued with a laugh, "people like me and Jorge though? God! Forget about that. Our powers are more suited for the battlefield."
"But," Naji winced, "My official title is 'field medic'... Which means they expect me to... fight back and heal people at the same time, right?"
 "Nah, it means you can lay low and let us protect you, and then you repay us by helping us not die." Samuel, who still stood next to Naji, reached down and patted the medic's back in a friendly, if also rough and overbearing, manner.
"You'll be fine so don't sweat it! Just show up to that infirmary tent today, do your job, and remember that your situation isn't all that bad."
 'It isn't all that good either,' was what Naji wanted to reply back, but he didn't. Instead he said, "You're right. Thanks, Samuel."
 "Like I said before," Samuel grinned and then started back for his cot,"we're all friends here, so you can call me Sam. And it's no problem, really. Glad I could help."
 "Yeah," the half asleep Jorge suddenly grumbled from beneath his pillow, "Sammy is great at the motivational speeches. Really loud ones that only accomplish waking me up..."
This comment resulted in Samuel throwing a pillow at Jorge so hard that the latter fell off his cot, and Naji ignored the following commotion in favor of brooding over all that could very easily go wrong for him.



Although she felt like a total dork, Annabell walked the now dimmed hallways to Riley's office while wearing dark sunglasses.
 Her attire reminded her of that guy, Raven's friend, Blaine. Except unlike her, he had a perfectly normal excuse for wearing sunglasses indoors. If the excuse of "without glasses I might encase people in an iceberg" was considered normal for people with superpowers, that is. 
 She then found herself wondering if that "iceberg" excuse itself was a lie so he could wear the glasses? Annabell hadn't known the guy that well, after all, so she maybe she wasn't allowed to ponder over his questionable fashion choices. Blaine was a feralized rebel now anyway- another person it was up to their little sad trio of super school kids to save. And hopefully, if Annabell's glasses worked, they could add a fourth member to their trio... 
 Not that the glasses had anything to do directly with saving Leon. They were, however, serving as a safety precaution.
 Eight was missing on the base. How anyone could manage to go missing in a heavily monitored facility, Annabell did not know, but she did know if anyone could do it, it would be the crazy Eighth leader.
 Given Eight's past... experiences with Leon's only hope, the power repressors, Annabell wanted to keep the last remaining serum out of anyone's hands but her own.
And she'd heard rumors, nasty rumors, about Eight running around and changing memories out of pure boredom... If the leader could do that, couldn't she easily memory search Annabell to find out her hiding place for the last power repressor?
 She... didn't want that to be a possible outcome, even if she did doubt Eight's ability to think of such a plan. So instead of risking a trip down memory lane arriving via Eight, Annabell had borrowed a pair of sunglasses from a nice guy in the Eighth division and had been wearing them everywhere since.
 ...Even if wearing them everywhere did make her feel like a loser...
 She did her best to wave away the self-conscious thoughts upon arriving at Riley's office, and Annabell knocked on her friend's door and waited. A card had been slipped under the door to her room, telling her to report to the office of Four, and so she had dutifully reported.
While Annabell wasn't looking forward to whatever potentially dangerous mission the appearance of the card was most likely alluding to, she was, admittedly, happy at the prospect of leaving the base. Worrying about Eight twenty-four/seven was beginning to mess with her head, and she needed the sunlight and clean air.
 Not to mention, if Riley was somehow involved with this mission of hers, it couldn't be THAT dangerous, right? Her friend would watch out for her, right?
 ...
 Still wearing her dark shades, Annabell stared at Riley's door and waited for him to open it.

awesomeness • 31 July 2015 at 10:29 AM

 "Yeah. I'm not a princess, so I'll be fine," was all Zach had to say to all of Dreadlock's jabber.
 He couldn't be bothered to try and understand the implications of every word spoken. All he heard was something something, the violent veteran didn't like Raven, something something. Every other word had been a noisy blur, one that Zach was unprepared to deal with while slowly rotting from sleep deprivation.
 Instead, the Fifth leader followed Dreadlocks past many doors, past many people, and almost past a final door, but here his guide came to a stop.
Now, Zach found it in him to pose another question. 
"What exactly is this leader thing I need to do, anyway?"
 He scrutinized Dreadlocks with a judging stare and awaited a good answer.


The pleasantries weren't all as potentially awkward as Gale had feared them to be, and she thanked Nine's relaxed little designing break for that fact. Stepping into the room, Gale bent down to pick up a small, abandoned paint palette sample, and she examined the blue shades and hues for a split second before her attention drifted around to the rest of the room.
 She took in the room, the walls, the pushed-to-the-side-furniture, the horrible shade of green and the pink one Ninth worker was insisting went well together, and she took in Karen.
 The Ninth looked good. Had something like yesterday's occurrence had happened to Gale, she probably would have locked herself away and brooded alone for a week straight. Then again, Nine did appear to be both physically and mentally stronger than her... Appear being the key word.
 It suddenly occurred to Gale that she herself should know better than anyone that appearances lied, and as she looked at Nine, her gaze momentarily faltered in its passivity.  Gale found herself really hoping that Karen felt as good as she looked.
 "I," Gale began. Behind her, she could hear the Ninth worker that brought her here shut the door quietly and leave.
 The Seventh then spoke the next sentence following a tense, exhaled breath, "I don't need any help, actually. I was just... wandering around again I guess."
 Her words came out unsure, and Gale realized that she didn't even know what she was doing there. Of course, she'd come to the Ninth division with the intent to watch the ferals and avoid thinking too much about her current lack of control over anything- most alarmingly herself. But did she even want or care to keep watching the ferals, truly? Or did she only want something to do, period?
 She focused on the wall across from her to avoid meeting any eyes in the room. Her hand twitched, and she became aware of the palette sample she was still holding, the one now creased into four uneven squares by her overly active hand.
 "So," Seven began once more, "I'm sorry for interrupting, even if I guess I'm not bothering anyone, because I guess there's no real reason for me to be here, bothering you?"
 Ugh, speaking. Gale gritted her teeth and decided to power through her embarrassing "I guesses". How could she focus on eliminating any and all verbal tics from her vocabulary when she was so... Tired. No, stressed. No- confused. All of the above; some twisted combination of all three. 
She wondered if she had dark bags under her eyes, like those sickly death-heralding ones she'd saw underneath the Fifth's eyes before he'd left on that uber-special assignment. Knowing her luck, Gale guessed that she too had those dark raccoon rings above her cheeks.
Yeah, she probably did have them. But it wasn't like she knew what she currently looked like. She hadn't tried to find a mirror after escaping the archives... which could easily mean... 
...Her hair was unstyled and messy too, wasn't it? Oh god.
 Feeling self-conscious from the direction her thoughts had turned, Seven ran her hand that wasn't still creasing the palette card through her pixie cut, and then she attempted to better compose herself.
 Deciding to do something other than standing awkwardly near the door frame, Seven finally stepped further into the room and was forced to less-than-gracefully dance around all the objects scattered about. After making it a foot away from where Karen stood, Seven decided the only logic course of action was to return the palette sample to its proper place.
  "So," Seven remarked as cooly as possibly while setting down the now creased palette sample with its siblings, "since I really had no reason to interrupt, I can leave, really, if you want." 
After thinking her chosen words over, Gale kicked herself for saying anything at all. Why did she even have to ask if Nine wanted her gone? Nine didn't seem to be anything like her heartless predecessor, so it wasn't as if she would say "You're right Seven, get the heck out of my office already, can't you see all the trauma you've put my poor palette sample through?". Yes, people who didn't create a reputation out of being feared by all followed certain social rules, and those rules dictated that it was rude to announce you wanted to kick someone out of your office. With that in mind, wasn't Gale asking if Nine wanted to throw her out actually just some subconscious, self-deprecating way of begging to stay???
 Ugh. Gale's head hurt. Thankfully, it didn't hurt in that horrifying "power takeover" way, but in the more socially horrifying, "I have no idea why these words are coming out of my mouth and I cannot stop them" sort of way. It would be better if she left already.
 Before she could begin the awkward dance back across the decorative minefield, she glanced at something and her tired mind couldn't resist making a comment. Since she was standing near Nine, Gale turned to her, met the leader's eyes, and mentioned in the most off-hand way she could muster, "Oh, and also I totally agree with you. That green is way too dark of a shade to compliment the pink."

taffy789 • 31 July 2015 at 10:33 AM

Amused contempt coupled with a dash of egotism. Somehow, Jane had pegged Ford's reaction to her to a "T".
 It wasn't as if she hadn't been warned of this. Upon questioning a few knowledgable Eighth workers about Nine's new assistant, she'd been met with laughs and disclaimers of "No, Miss Jane, do NOT try to talk to him. You'll have better luck conversing with one of the base's metal walls."
 Still, it was proper to at least introduce herself to the newest assistant she would have to be working with, and Jane felt assured that if she could handle Eight, then she could handle anyone.
 Her knowing that did not make the conversation with Ford any less irritating, though.
 Halfway through Ford's scoffing, Jane found herself checking the purple watch on her left hand out of habit. While she wasn't concerned for the time, despite time certainly being of the essence, she checked her watch because it was her go-to action to signify she wanted the conversation to end. 
Admittedly, like many of Jane's more nervous habits, this watch-checking had its roots in her dealing with Eight... When one routinely chatted with Eight, there was always the threat of "lost time" occurring. Getting into a short conversation with the leader around noon could lead to one suddenly sitting in the cafeteria five hours later. Jane had shown up to the archive room thinking it was earlier than it was twenty-one times too many. The watch, at least, helped assure her that her perception of time remained steady with the seconds, and that her mind hadn't been recently hijacked by the eldritch monster canidate that was the Eighth leader...
 Following the snub from Ford and the request from a first division boy, Jane gave a small smile to the boy and said, "It's no problem at all. I'm heading to Ninth anyway. But, excuse me for a second."
 Her blackened cigarette butt was leaving ash on the floor, so she found an ash tray by the couch to toss it in. She sighed after completing this task, wondering what she managed to get herself into.
 Although, she supposed that it wasn't entirely her fault. Nine's new assistant was simply a tragic choice. Especially considering that Jane rather liked the old one, poor Tyler. It had saddened her to hear about his death, for she chatted with him often about the lack of information coming from IOS. Whenever she found an old file about past IOS science developments, she tried to share the find with him...
 This Harry kid, it seemed, was much less agreeable.
 As she approached the table again, she noticed that a large and imposing first division boy had pulled up a chair and was now sitting at the table, giving Ford a particularly dangerous glare...
 "Hello Raymond," she greeted the first division boy, who'd up until recently had been one of the rare Eighth field ops.
 "Hi Miss Jane," he greeted her back and then shot Ford a dirty look. "Is he bothering you?"
 "No," she answered with a slight sigh, "In fact, I believe Harry and I were both about to re-acquaint ourselves with the layout of the new Ninth division."
 Jane didn't need much re-acquaintance, if she was being honest. Her asking Ford for his aid in the first place was simply a miscalculated attempt at introducing herself. She wouldn't let it happen again, but now she could at least save the poor first division workers from the walking torture that was the resident torturer's assistant.
 Tapping her ever anxious fingers against the tabletop, Jane turned to Ford and said, "Isn't that right, Harry? We should get going, shouldn't we?"



 When Wither regained the air knocked out of his lungs, he found himself having to breath in the foul odor of a sweaty armpit.
 His foe sat on top of him, holding him in a headlock that wasn't a headlock as so much as it was an excuse to suffocate him.
 Wither found the lack of air familiar. As he gasped for breath and was rewarded his a tighter chokehold, he remembered the fight he had a few days ago. He had been choked then, too. Being choked, Wither decided, was something he did not like.
  To stop being choked, Wither knew he needed his knife friend, but knife friend had fallen out of his hand when he had hit the floor. And since when he opened his eyes everything was blurry and looked like arm hair, he couldn't SEE knife friend either. 
 But Wither could sense it.
 Knife friend was dripping in energy, and Wither reached out to where he felt the energy dripping, grabbed knife friend, and with a quick motion let knife friend release more energy out of his foe's hand.
 When his foe shouted and withdrew his hold, Wither rolled over and scrambled out from under his foe's heavy body in a mad rush. He stood up and began running, past many other fighting rebels and to the bleachers. Wither almost made it to, had his foe not had shouted louder, blasting him forward with a super powered scream and launching him into the stone cold stone hard bleachers. Above, another round of dust shook down from the ceiling.
  As Wither laid in the bleachers, feel very much hurt, his foe stomped up to him.
 "Coward!" his foe snapped, gritting their teeth into a snarl, "Why don't you stop running and fight me!?"
 Picking himself up slowly, Wither untangled himself from the rock seats, stood up, stared at his foe for a good minute, and then sat himself down on the bleachers.
 "Because I want to win," Wither informed his foe honestly.
 A look of confused anger spread itself on his foe's face, so Wither demonstrated how he would win by using knife friend- which he had kept a tight grip on- to slice through his foe's forearm in practically the same manner he'd made the first surprise cut.
 "See?" Wither said, then added for extra honesty, "Also your breath stinks."
 It was at that point his foe realized that Wither wasn't even worth the effort. Out of spite, the sound manipulator power growled, shouted Wither backwards, and disarmed him easily. Then, the power stabbed Wither in the gut with knife friend before turning around and leaving him to bleed out or crawl off or something. Whatever breed of idiot Wither was, he wasn't worth the power's precious training time, that's for sure.
 Back on the bleachers, Wither was in pain. From his spot collapsed on the rock seating, he saw knife friend  in his stomach, releasing his energy.
  Wither had never felt so betrayed.

asi • 17 August 2015 at 6:19 PM

He took short, clipped steps down the corridor. With a head lowered to watch the floor, and shoulders bent over around his neck, the boy looked more like he was braced to walk into a headwind. Not walking down a secure corridor deep underground, stirred by only the slightest flow from the air conditioning.
The air conditioning which, while in his opinion totally unnecessary temperature-wise, was at least somewhat comforting and familiar. Even with its eerie lack of hum or whir, he could feel it sifting through the air.
He wasn't nervous, but it was obvious he was anxious, from the way his fingers flitted from first clutching at the strap of his rucksack, to cramming themselves into the back pockets of jeans wound too tight around a stick-figure frame.
He was thinking about his last shift of the boring but wonderfully easy job the month of Truce had afforded him. In particular, the incident which had interrupted the slow, dragging sensation of the gluttonous work feasting away at the day. It had gone a little something like this:

"... Four?"
It was an ambush and kidnapping, not to mention painful neglect for their workstations.
He'd been taken, hauled off more like, completely by surprise, from the serving counter surface right into the kitchen's deep, fiery depths- okay, more like just behind the next wall and out of sight. Well, not out of sight of the busy worker bees at the volcanic elements. But they obviously weren't being considered as important as the other guy over there- despite the constant and unavoidable hazard they could pose should you ever manage to frink any of them off.
"Ah, what the heck, Florence! Whadya want now?" He'd growled and snapped, not even missing a beat.
Having established they were now both out of sight and distinguishable sound, the girl crossed her arms and stared him down. "What were you doing, talking, tipping the customers off, huh?" A pause, an advancement of the chin; now for the real question. "Was that really Four in my cafeteria?"
He sighed and slouched against the wall. Phew. For a minute there, she'd really had the fear in him that there'd been complaints about his serving. What did he care if he put the salad and the slop in the wrong slot? It was all going to be a mess in first their stomach, and then the bathroom anyway. "They're not customers, they don't pay anything. And yes, that was Four. Prob'ly wandering off disgruntled with a half done tray now."
"Exactly!" She cried, distracted and missing completely every word he said after the opening statement. "Even less reason to give them what they want- or not what they don't want, in this case- because it's our job to keep them healthy, not happy!"
The server raised one brow. "Why?"
"What?"
"We're all going to die of something here, why not malnutrition?"
They managed to hold each others' gaze for a total of twenty serious seconds before disintegrating into snickers and barely muffled laughter.
"They actually think there's anything nutritious in this crap?"
"Pffft, as if."
"You know that lot's nothing but gullible," she grinned, patting his shoulder with perhaps excessive fondness, causing him to wince a bit. "They have yet to witness the magick workings of my mystical kitchen..."
"Yeah, okay, okay," he extracted her friendly appendage from his shoulder with difficulty, and smiled a catlike smile with his eye closed tight. "So now I'm gonna get back to my station like a diligent little worker..."
She blinked her big eyes at him, then grabbed his arm right back up again. "Like heck you are! What were you talking to Four for, huh? Tell me tell me you dizzy little brat!" With her spare hand, the one not holding him captive, she reached over to the nearby counter for something... Knowing her, probably her favourite hitting- uh, frying pan.
Ugh. His gaze slid down the wall as if hoping without hope a thorough investigation would yield the secret passageway to out. "Don't call me that..."
She turned utterly gleeful. "Try'na butter him up, aren't you? I always knew you were a scheming lil' batch 'a cupcakes beneath that stupid, dizzy exterior!"
"I'm not, not-" he stared at that wall with frustration fraying at his nerves. Then his shoulders slumped. "I'm working with him for my next mission, al'ight? I said something only 'cause I thought it would be more awkward later, to not." At this point he was glaring. Still only at the wall though. "Now I better hope he didn't really see me at all, or I'll have to explain..." Unfortunately, 'your actions' wasn't exactly something he could say to his boss, even if the time he had left on the job was down to the mere hours now. He didn't want to do anything to get dragged off to the Punishment division... Although Nine was significantly less scary than her predecessor to the office, it was certainly never going to be a popular place!
The girl got the idea though. "I see... What mission is this?"
Uh oh. "I can't tell you about it."
"Is that why you didn't say a single word about a new assignment? Surely I should get to know when my own little lunch boy is being snatched away?"
"You knew I was done here with Truce month anyway-"
"And you thought all the other times I saw you off for missions were flukes huh? How long've we been friends?" She pointed rather violently at the calendar hanging on the wall. If someone had been unfortunate enough to be standing there, they might have lost their right eye. Well, not this boy, but- Apparently his boss was demanding that he look the date up. "I wrote it in!" Not surprising, since the whole thing was a mess of scribbles.
Dutifully he located with difficulty the relevant little box. 'Made a new friend! < 3' was puffed up inside in pink... This was not a common entry, despite the thing pretty much being a diary of the cafeteria lady's personal life, rather than future menu plans like it ought to be. "Three months," he sighed tiredly. It was hard to believe he'd lasted so long.
"So why didn't you tell me, your best-" only- "friend! Did you tell anyone?" A horrible pause. "Did you tell your-"
"Of course I did!" he yelped loudly, and fooled no one.
"... How long have you known?"
"'bout a week..."
"Oh, Dizzy-Izzy," she sighed.
He snapped, "Don't call me that!"
She looked up and the result was not pretty, all angry eyebrows and hard frown lines. "That's your name isn't it? How else could you be so scatter-brained-" Oh, she hadn't managed to get her hands on the hitting pan, but it seemed she'd found the spatula of doom- "hare-brained-" and was using it and Izzy's head to punctuate each word- "bird-brained stupid!"
Izzy winced repeatedly during and afterwards, dazedly looked up from the wall he'd STILL been eying, with all the air of a survivor of a nuclear holocaust just emerging from their bunker. Scared stiff to see if it was over yet or still had more to explode.
"Honestly, if I had a hot date like that...!" She hit him once more for good measure, then looked actually concerned. "When do you have to head off?"
"... After work."
"Izzy!" She exclaimed, horrified.
"Don't even have time to shower," he muttered vengefully, as if there was someone he could blame and hunt down for that. Not that this guy ever would.
Then she fumed. "You're hopeless! Just, beyond help!"
The lunch lady stormed off and that was the last the lunch boy saw of her, the last dribbles of his work there being scooped clean from the bowl without any further incidents- or anything remotely interesting.

There was a girl standing there... A girl with blonde hair.
However, as soon as Izzy tilted his head to grab a better glimpse with his eye, he was flooded with disappointment. Way too white... Way too skinny. Of course his friend hadn't come out here. There was no way she could know where they were meeting, even if she still wanted to.
He took a spot against the wall a safe five metres away and went back to staring at the base's steel just like before. In his brief, dizzily hopeful look, he'd noticed the girl here seemed to be fixated on the unresponsive door... She was probably new. She'd learn soon enough that leaders were sucky, selfish jerks who were laws unto themselves and knew it. They'd probably be waiting here for an entire crappy hour after Izzy had rushed here, skipping his shower or even returning back to his room... It just so sucking happened it was leaders you had to suck up to.
He was only in the fourth division, for god's sake, what had he done to end up here? He hoped at least, he thought pessimistically, sulking at the wall, they'd be going somewhere hot. He didn't even have a single hoodie with him.

demon • 17 August 2015 at 6:24 PM

"Hah," snorted the other after the leader's non-claim to royalty. "That is waiting to be seen."
Five's local guide opened the door and, with a sweeping gesture of their dreadlocks, bid the leader to enter. The sarcasm was only very subtle.
Inside was a veritable mountain worth of large, inconveniently-sized crates. They lined the walls, piled so high one could just barely see the corners of the room. Which could be better described in actuality as a rather spacious storage closet. Or it would be if it wasn't so cramped with boxes upon boxes.
"Here is your duty," Dreadlocks explained with a monotone to rival the master's- that being Two's. "These are needed at our base's Station C. The time they are needed by is the day after tomorrow, so you have some time. Also," they warned, "The boxes, while not heavy, are containing some very delicate supplies. Very delicate," they nodded, quietly knowing. "So care is needed."
For a moment, they seemed to actually contemplate the complete listlessness of Five's worn body. Perhaps it occurred to them that he could use a coffee. Maybe it even struck them that the guy was truly in no plausible state to achieve much more than blow bubbles and stare at the ceiling.
In any case, any such worries seemed to wash away within the very next moment, as Dreadlocks decided they really did not care very much. There was certainly no pity in their dark, lumpy-hair-hidden eyes. So after only a barely respectable pause for the undoubtedly soon future funeral that would be taking place for the boy in front of them, they finished tonelessly with; "There are not many people trusted with this that I know. I would not want to let the veteran down."
They then began to leave, with the assumption that Five could better contemplate his impending doom alone.


She watched Gale enter with some well-concealed amounts of surprise. There was no real reason why, but she didn't expect her to take any interest in Karen's little design project. Perhaps maybe due to the lack of any from her super school friends back in the day; the only art they'd been interested in, seriously at least, was music.
"N-no, you're free to stay- or wander- wherever," Nine tried to assure the other leader with only the slightest awkward faltering. How she wished Seven was not so awfully polite. This was her superior after all: Nine could probably not tell her she'd have no problem kicking Seven out of her office and be believed.
On the other hand, Karen definitely wouldn't want to be guilty of that crime- now that she managed to properly tear her mind away from the colours for a moment, she saw the Seventh leader did not currently look good. There were purple marks under her eyes, and her hair, well... She looked like she'd just rolled out of a bed she hadn't slept in.
Seven looked tired... Stressed... Or something else? In any case, Nine felt the overwhelming urge to not punish someone- which was good because no one here deserved to be punished anyway. But trying to take care of someone, even the tiniest bit? Unless you counted Lily's crying fits, that was totally new for her. And she was undoubtedly going to be horrible at it.
As Nine observed Seven approaching and placing down the cutting she'd brought over, her stomach wobbled and sloshed its contents nervously as it identified what she was about to attempt as, 'being social', that one thing Karen considered more petrifying than her own power.
Then Gale said what she did about the colours.
"See?" she turned on her guard with even a somewhat teasing smile. "Seven agrees with me, thus saving the Punishment halls from also punishing our eyes." As it happens, Karen had learned a snarky thing or two from so much time putting up with Alex- provided she was enough in her element to share.
The girl sniggered, amused enough by Nine's uncharacteristically relaxed dramatics to be appeased about the discarding of the colour scheme. "Okay then, what do you suggest, Miss Fastidious?"
"Better than bad taste, even if it takes longer," Nine answered loftily, before promptly crouching to examine the colours once more. "Hmm..."
Meanwhile, the boy groaned, apparently being the only one having remembered there was not just one leader in the room, but another, unfamiliar and even more important one. Then again, uh, hadn't his last leader played video games right on through other peoples' visits?
... But that guy did what he wanted.
"I was thinking this one," Karen pointed thoughtfully to a dark purple... Actually, it was very close to something Alex had once called Byzantium purple, when she'd showed Karen what her aura supposedly looks like. But then a palette of blue caught her eye, and with a frown, she picked it up. "These... These are actually pretty nice." It was slightly creased in places... She realized it was the one Gale had had before.
"You don't maybe want to um, help me educate these ones on proper taste, do you?" Karen looked over to meet the other leader's eyes, felt her stomach shift, and quickly looked away.
"Do you want tea?" She asked the two guards suddenly. "I want tea..."
The boy nodded quickly, jumping up. "I'll get something," he said, traversing the 'decorative minefield' with clearly trained ease. He opened the door... Just in time for Nine to catch the last few lines of a certain conversation taking place outside.


"Fine, Fine! We're going," he absolutely glowered at the big hulking ex-eighth division worker before spinning away and heading right on out of the room, not shortening his long strides in the slightest consideration for the girl.
Instead, Ford just gave her an ugly look as soon as they were away and in the corridor. "You didn't have to set your big ugly ogre of a boyfriend on me, did you? Christ," he moaned as if in pity for himself, before shooting her another glare, a bit more calculating this time. "I bet he's actually your boyfriend, isn't he, you make such a cute couple," he chatted maliciously the entire time while leading her with perhaps surprising promptness to the Ninth division offices.
Well, it would be surprising if one didn't realise his only motive was to get rid of the girl quicker.
As soon as possible, he put on his most sarcastic smile and barfed out this small little speech: "Anyway, while the rest of that conversation was fun, I actually do have things to do, like REALLY important stuff, you wouldn't know, but you didn't actually expect me to like, show you all the attractions and local specialties, did you? Great, well, here's Nine's office, isn't that handy? Have a great time!"
Then he actually looked over at the door in the process of turning away, and realized the door was wide open and Nine was staring at him with a face like thunder.
"... Eeek..." he managed.

asi • 17 August 2015 at 6:35 PM

"What are you going to do?" Bliss asked him curiously, as Zan began making the strangest nervous wringing hand motions- as if to shake himself into gear with as minimal a movement as possible- that Bliss had never before seen, and doctors sure witnessed a lot of nervous quirks in their waiting rooms.
"Heck if I know," Zan muttered, stilling his hands, pressing one to the side of his face like one with a headache might, then peeling that hand off with painful slowness. He took a deep breath in case all that wasn't dramatic enough to ground him in the moment. "But I'm going to do it. Okay," he stepped down onto the hall's fight-laden floor, and quickly disappeared into the chaos.
Bliss squinted, but that really didn't help him see anything. In fact it just got dust from his brows to fall down into his eyes and he spent the next five minutes rubbing at them trying to get it out.

"Ow, crap," Zan cursed, as almost immediately after he attempted to thread himself through the fray, a fist and a foot came flying at him, and while the first was avoided, the second caught him on unawares and had him clutching his calf.
At least it wasn't his horribly tender bruised torso, which he took extra care to keep shielded, even if he had to sacrifice his arms to do it and subject them to the occasional blow. That said, none of these attacks were actually aimed at Zan. They were only the ricochet, in a manner of speaking. Otherwise, Zan would probably be a bruised bloody heap by now. But still, his calf hurt and the rebels weren't even paying him the slightest attention.
Living was just fabulous, and he wished all of it on Blaine, the fabulous little kid.
Why did Zan have to be here?
He sighed, reached out, and with a handfull of ice, grabbed one power by the foot and forced them to halt.
"I need you to stop-" he began.
The power snarled at him. "What, you want some too?"
And then the power that power had been fighting started attacking Zan with their giant ugly claws.
This had got to be the least effective way of getting the hall in order, ever.
But how was anyone going to take notice of him if he couldn't even make it to any kind of central ground? He could have tried shouting from the stands, but really, no one would pay him any heed from there. It was where the losers hung out and yelled obscene things to try and distract those engaged. He could say anything in the world and they wouldn't listen.
But words never really did work with powers.
And Zan's attention should not have been straying for even a second. A seriously enlarged hand was coming slamming at his back and with the claws and the assumedly mental type holding him cornered there was no way he could leap out of the way to dodge. This wouldn't have been a problem had the guy been fast enough and prepared to throw up some ice as shields-
He wasn't.
It was chaos on the floor and 'order' was gonna get pummelled.

Having once again achieved vision both through his eyes and his just bearably transparent glasses, Bliss looked out again into the crowd, trying to catch sight of the only relatively friendly power...
That's when a guy stumbled over to the bleachers with a knife in his stomach.
"Oh my god!" The medic in him quickly kicking into action, Bliss dashed over and... Looked to the guy for permission to help. This doctor had tended to WAY too many dangerous kids to dare surprise anyone like that.
Naming no names.
Spence.
That little incredibly violent twerp...
Bliss hovered anxiously above the wounded guy, trying to gauge how responsive he was. Especially how aggressively responsive.
That's when the entire hall began to grow cold.

Dust... Stopped falling. The air was no longer crisp and dry. The mist of one's breath could even be seen in the glare of the stagelight. Under the rebels' sweat, goosebumps began to rise, their hairs sticking out on end.
It wasn't until the first rebel slipped that they started noticing.
The stone was cold, then damp, then slick with water... And then brittle with frost. Something was actually dripping from the ceiling through the rising fog, then it was spitting like the cave had a sprinkler system. A rebel started to shiver- and then everyone was shivering. Finally, the last stubborn power skidded, crashed into a wall, and very decidedly stopped fighting.
It kept getting colder.

"Alright, now that's enough of that!" A voice yelled, and Zan found himself yanked up from his place on the floor by the back of his shirt. That definitely hurt. Then he was ruthlessly tossed aside.
'Verse grinned her vicious grin at the crowd while the frost quickly melted like a dream from the waking world. She spread her arms out wide and declared with a voice like a lion's roar; "Training starts NOW."
A wild, exhilarated cheer rang out through the gym. Oh, she had their attention all right.

taffy789 • 23 August 2015 at 7:11 PM

When the door didn't open, Annabell figured that Riley was not present, for whatever reason that was. Hopefully he was at least out doing something healthy like eating fruit or light exercise and not like, working himself to the bone!
...
 Wait, was she the "mom" friend?
...
Ignoring this obvious revelation, Annabell sighed and turned away from the door, and her dark shades set themselves on the lone figure leaning against the wall, watching her. Was this boy waiting for Riley too? Well, there was only one way to find out.
 "Excuse me, uh, hi," she greeted him hesitantly, "are you also here to get briefed by Four?"


Cramming his neck upwards to better take in the source of his impending doom, Zach didn't complain as Dreadlocks abandoned him amidst the towers upon towers of hard manual labor. Good riddance to them.
 The Fifth leader moved slowly to a nearby box on the ground and attempted to lift it, and he was unsurprised to find the cardboard box light yet a total pain in the butt to carry.
 What purpose was a box so wide one's arms could barely wrap around it? This Zach did not know, and this Zach did not care enough to find out.
 What he did want to know was this: What kind of supplies were so neccessay that the Falchions required thirty ridiculously large boxes of it? He expected something medical, but his cynicism told him it was most likely something stupid.
 Zach searched himself for a knife after setting the box down. He found one sheathed on his belt; apparently, he'd gone to sleep with it fastened against his hip. Not that he'd noticed, and not that he'd actually gotten any sleep last night.
 With all the precision of a drunk surgeon who was missing at least three useful fingers, Zach sliced through the taped top of the cardboard box, opened the flaps, and peered inside.
 ...
 There was another taped cardboard box inside the bigger cardboard box.
 Although everything fiber of his being told him to quit while he was ahead and not angrily burning a room of inconveniently sized boxes, curiosity and spite got the better of him, and Zach ran his knife through the second line of tape. He then pulled the freed flaps open and discovered an army of beady black eyes staring up at him.
 His exhausted mind tried to figure out what his reaction to this situation should be, but it couldn't come up with anything, so instead Zach pulled out one of the many small boxes labeled "Marshmallow Peeps" and had a staring contest with the little yellow birds.
  He had only the faintest recollection of what these things were and had no memory of what they tasted like.
 ...
They looked sugary.
 ...
The slightest wave of apprehension traveled down Zach's spine before his knife tore through the protective plastic, but he brushed the feeling away. Even if the Veteran had sold her soul to get the Peeps for... whatever reason she wanted them for, if she was going to make the Fifth leader lug her sugar-coated snacks for her, she better be expected to give him some of the cut.
 After wriggling a yellow bird out of it's plastic wrapped prison, Zach held the newly freed Peep, glanced it over once, and then bit off its head.
 He chewed and tasted, chewed and tasted, and the next thing Zach knew, he was three Peeps deep into the box and was already finishing his fourth.


 After the Ninth assured her that she wasn't about to be kicked out, Seven shrugged, said only "okay", and stayed, because at that point it would've been rude to walk out. Yes, Gale stayed- standing awkwardly and listening to the others chat- even if she knew she should flee before her body and mind rebelled against her and made her say something incredibly stupid and socially awkward. 
Although she did manage to foil the plans of her insurgent tongue by caging it behind her teeth, Gale's passive countenance was instead betrayed by that small snort of laughter she made when Nine snarked because, oh come on, that was funny, and despite everything she tried the Seventh leader could never fully repress her love for comedic wordplay.
 Or, for that matter, old hobbies.
 As Nine thoughtfully shifted through the color swatches, Gale picked through the colors with her eyes and mentally paired up a few different palettes that she thought would look nice together. All the colors and choices laying at her feet took her back to seventh grade art class, back to when her thirteen year old self had just been introduced to the magic of serious watercolor painting... After years and years of painting-by-numbers and soaking every half-finished, hand-me-down coloring book she owned to the spine, it was only natural that she would... completely suck and be totally unprepared for the reality of less childish watercoloring.
 Considering how her first painting had turned out (that orange blob was supposed to have been Naruto, not Garfield, but it wasn't like she'd wanted correct her teacher for a lessened grade), it surprised even Gale to admit that by eighth grade and a lot of staying after school, she had become passably decent.
 Now the colors called to her again, and Gale finger's twitched for want of a paintbrush, or a good sharp sketching pencil, or at least a pen so she could commit that bad habit of hers in which she turns her thigh into a canvas of stick figures and shapes and bad doodles until her mom slaps at her hand and tells her "Abigail, stop that, you're going to die of ink poisoning".
 But the most important of all that was neither here nor there, nor anywhere within a thousand miles, so the Seventh simply pondered over whether or not she should mention how adding a border to the chosen wallpaper or paint would broaden the color scheme options...
  Then Nine asked if she wanted to help with the project, and Gale was completely thrown off guard because that's exactly what she had been doing in her head for the past four minutes. Had she jumped the gun with all the mental color pairing? Probably. Thank God she hadn't yet voiced any of her not-asked-for advice out loud...
 Then Nine quickly changed the subject to tea without even waiting for her fellow leader to reply, and Gale was completely thrown off guard again because ??? Did that subject change mean the Ninth didn't actually want her help? Or-?
 Unsure of what to do and slightly sweating under the hot hoodie, Seven kept her cool, mumbled a quiet, half-committal "sounds fun" right as Nine's attention was directed to a certain assistance's rude comments, and the Seventh sat herself down on the floor, taking care to brush all decorative supplies away from her butt beforehand.

awesomeness • 23 August 2015 at 7:15 PM

Jane half-listened to Ford prattle on, and she found herself wondering where the boy's fixation on relationships stemmed from. She herself couldn't imagine getting into a relationship anytime soon! There was too much work to be done, so much more for her to focus on than the yearnings of the heart. And it wasn't like her heart had yearned yet anyway.
 Her "boyfriend"- if one believed Ford's blather- on the other hand was already in a relationship. Part of the reason Raymond had fought so hard to join the ranks of First Division had been so he could be with his significant other, if Jane remembered what he'd told her correctly. The Eighth assistant had been happy to recommend him for the missions that would catch the attention of leaders, after hearing his about his aspiration. Raymond had been a good field op, and Jane respected those who did their work and did it well. Those people made her life all that easier. 
Nine's assistant, it appeared, did not belong to that aforementioned group.
 Remaining silent on the subjects of relationships and respect as she walked Ford to the Ninth Division, Jane allowed the boy to talk and talk, and she did not reply for fear of actually having to converse with him.
 Perhaps- just perhaps- after all this listening to him gabber, Jane felt a little giddy when they finally arrived at Nine's office door in time for Nine to overhear part of the conversation...
 "Hello, Nine," Jane greeted the leader kindly, attempting to ignore the tight knot of anxiety ballooning in her chest. Why did leaders have to be so frightening? This girl was the new torturer, after all, and this fact was not the least lost on Jane, who decided to put all of her effort into not stepping on any toes.
 "I-I'm," she stuttered slightly, but then caught herself, "I am in need of a discussion with you. And," Jane added, looking at Ford instead of his leader, "Some First Division workers requested I bring him back to Ninth..."


Wither didn't respond to the figure hovering over him because his mind was still trying to grasp knife friend's sudden and unforeseen betrayal. With his fragile belief in the sanctity of friendship when battling harmful foeship now crushed, it was obvious to anyone that it would take years for Wither's emotional state to recover, to normalize once again, to be able to deal with any sort of painful reminder of the day his knife friend turned against him with a stab through the gut...
 No, never mind, Wither was over it already.
  With a frown on his face, he tugged knife ex-friend from his stomach, dropped the Judas to the floor, and then suffered as stoically as a saint.
...Or that quiet, calm air emanating from Wither stemmed from the focus he was putting on his power and not from any actual martyr complex on his part.
 The power concentrated on his healing ability, but he grew annoyed at how he still couldn't retrieve all of his lost energy. He had tried it before, but the blood spilling outside of his body stored much more of his energy, his life essence, himself, than he could ever pull back out of it. Try all he might, he could only pull out a small fraction of the total energy present in blood, but he could at least hasten or slow down the spilling out of energy from the wound... So he did just that; he slowed down his energy leakage and hastened the one of his shouting foe, whose cuts he dully sensed still.
 As he continued to let the energy feed his hungry, healing body, Wither was struck with a sudden chill and wished the energy could go to make him feel warm and powerful instead of to his greedy human skin and torn intestines. He wanted the healing to go faster, but it didn't and that upset him.
And it was at that annoyed, upset moment that Wither realized he didn't like bleeding. 
He really didn't like it at all. 
He could feel himself escaping his human flesh, blossoming red against his black hoodie, spreading out and drying dead under the burning stare of the stadium lights. Useless lost energy pathetically radiating from on top of his stomach. So much more different from all the other energies radiating from all the other wounds in the training room, so much more different and so much more him. Without this energy, what would he be? Wither did not know, nor did he not fully understand these thoughts buzzing around in his head.
 He wanted to heal already so he could stop the annoying thoughts clouding up his ears with unspoken sound, but he wasn't healing fast enough and it was cold, so cold and growing colder, like figurative ice was crawling up his spine along with the literal ice that was forming and turning the clotted blood inside his wound into a deep red slushie. It was so cold that his insides scorched themselves and froze solid with the intensity of a blazing fire.
 Wither shut his eyes and suffered, and when he opened them, he again became aware of the figure looming over him. The shadow outlined against the stadium lights was so familiar and was so close that Wither was able to recognize the dull hum of that particular, plentiful, vibrant energy. He recalled who the source of the energy was and how the source was high on his list of "likes".
 Without saying anything, Wither caught the healer's eyes with his own and stared into them, unblinking, while he waited to be rescued.
 ...
 When a few moments passed without any move bring made, Wither grabbed both of the healer's hands in annoyance and held the hands in his own while not breaking the intense eye contact.
He then wordlessly pressed all four palms against his burning icy cold bleeding wound and waited patiently.
 Anyone bothering to look in on the scene could see what was clearly a tender moment taking place.

asi • 30 August 2015 at 7:25 PM

Izzy's gaze remained firmly transfixed, as if stuck by glue, to the implacable steel; something normally incapable of inspiring such captivation through any merits of its own. The walls were, after all, completely uniform throughout the base. It was no different at all from the one in the cafeteria.
Why was she talking to him? He didn't even care if she was his soon-to-be teammate or not; in fact, he wanted to savor the little time he had left of not needing to talk to anyone. As for the actual question, who cared? Yes or no, Izzy didn't see how it made a difference. They'd find out soon enough, too soon, in his opinion, no matter how late Four decided to join them.
... Speak of the devil. Izzy could sense him coming now. He bowed his head even more, nearly straining his neck to avoid any potential risk of eye contact as the short, broad-shouldered form, painted in Izzy's mind's eye with the faintest blur of cobalt, rounded the corner. Izzy wondered idly how accomplished one had to be to hide one's aura so thoroughly, only the smallest residue shining through. Why, his block almost rivaled Two's in its completeness. But then mental types were always supposed to be better at that.
As the deceptively unintimidating guy approached, Izzy buckled down and concentrated on not showing attention.
Why? He was scared that as soon as he looked, he'd be digging himself even deeper into this situation he wanted no part of.

"Sorry I'm late!" Riley panted, skidding awkwardly to a halt in front of the two people camped outside his door.
The first that his eyes traveled to was a bad-postured adolescent, the moody way he hung his head preventing Riley from seeing any of his face save the little slope of his nose and the nest of sun-bleached brown hair growing on top. Judging from the extremely flat chest and slim hips, it definitely WAS a boy. He remained slumped against the wall and didn't react in the least to Riley's appearance... Weird, because normally people jumped to attention when they realized it was Four- unless they hadn't realized yet, which did happen a lot.
Riley made to remedy this; "Uh, hey, I'm-"
"Four. I know," the scrawny but most definitely male kid managed to nod without raising his head.
"Okay... Great," Riley summoned a smile, and figuring he had just met his first teammate, started to internally acknowledge the pool of worry that had been collecting in his stomach with a steady drip drip ever since that casual text from the First division in which he'd first heard about the mission, and had been pretending didn't exist. It wasn't like he hadn't already been sent out as a leader... But back then things had been happening so fast. Nowadays time at the base seemed to pass so slowly, after the invasion and especially since Two had left, that there was plenty of space to work up fear and anticipation. He was also just now coming to grips with the fact that being a leader here meant a lot more than brawling abilities; a fact that his trainer had rather failed spectacularly to mention. And as his recent conversation with Lily had just shown, he did not have a handle on his new position.
Escaping the base for a mission sounded like a great idea, until he realized he was going to be living and working with three total strangers- probably scary strong and hyper-competent if they were thought of highly enough to be placed with him... Those kinds of people were the ones he found it rather easy to embarrass himself in front of.
And this first teammate? Did not seem friendly. Or social. Or at all like a team player.
Then he looked to his left and his apprehensive expression changed completely.
"Annabell? What are you-" Riley's genuinely welcoming smile froze as he considered the probabilities.
It was sort of jumping the gun to assume she'd been assigned to his mission, right? There was a whole bunch of reasons Annabell might want to see him, not the least being to see him off. Actually, he'd only found out about this mission yesterday, and hadn't had a chance to tell her... So he didn't see how she'd know... But she was still probably here for something else. After all, Riley was expecting a bunch of elites from First, which he didn't at all remember Annabell getting a promotion to- although he rather thought she should.
Now that is was even more appropriate, Riley finished his original question; "What are you doing here?"


Nine's eyes had been resting on Seven again, searching anxiously for signs that the other leader had picked up on her panic-switch, or worse, her entire social anxiety case. But as soon as she caught Ford's voice- the tone, the words, the person he was saying it all to- she was forced to veer her attention away to where it was so desperately needed.
"Harry..." Unknowingly, the tone she used was eerily similar to the one Lily had applied just hours earlier in the First lounge. At this point Karen was so overcome with blazing anger that she half-rose from her seat, not even thinking clearly but with the vague idea in mind of striding over and simply snapping the guy in half like a twig. It didn't even occur to her that she had fifty different cells with uncomfortable strap-in chairs to choose from, which would have been a huge shame, an appalling neglect of ready resources, were she seriously intending to punish him seriously.
But then Nine's eyes snapped back over to Seven and she aborted the mission before the motion of standing up could be completed. She rearranged her legs into an agreeable cross and continued to glare at him, but in a manner that was fifty percent less scary, some thanks to the calming presence of the now more than sufficient oxygen in her lungs.
"Later. We'll talk later," she grunted out, before her dark brows closed in on her narrowed eyes. "Get to work, now."
Ford barely gave himself time to nod twice before whipping around and running as fast as his legs could carry him- kind of impressive actually, not that Nine was in the mood to appreciate it.
Nine sighed under the cover of her hands, feeling absolutely mortified in front of both Seven and Eight's assistant, two of the few people in the upper rungs of this base which she actually respected immensely. Well, she didn't know much about Gale yet, but what she had seen so far, she liked... This was dreadful.
"Could you two-" she glanced appealingly between the two Ninth kids who she had in such a short time begun to consider her saviors- and they immediately nodded.
"We'll make sure he's doing... Well," said the boy, at the same time as the girl jumped up and declared, "We'll be back with the tea!"
"Thanks," Nine managed to pull a half-decent smile of somewhere as they left.
And now she supposed she had to apologize to Eight's assistant for making her put up with all that, on top of everything the poor girl presumably had to deal with on a daily basis, considering her unfortunate leader assignment... Pleasantries were so awful. Nine resisted the growing urge to rub her temple and nurse that newborn headache in residence as she turned to Jane.
"I'm sorry about that," she muttered, unable to keep a little of the budding resentment in her out of her voice- resentment at her own stupid choice of course. Karen should have listened to Lily, shouldn't she? The blonde was always right!
"What's it about?" she then asked warily.
There was pretty much no way it was going to be anything that couldn't be said here in front of Gale- Seven did outrank her after all. However, it could be something excruciatingly long and boring that she wouldn't want to subject Seven to on her break time, and therefore it would make sense to leave...
Nine hadn't the least idea how to deal with all this awkward soicalness and it didn't help that she couldn't stop thinking about how much she wished she could call up Lily and have her rush over and defuse the situation like it was a ticking time bomb. To Nine, it sure felt like one!


Having ticked one little box on their early morning checklist, the dangling mass of dreadlocks was lowered as the pair of beady eyes inside examined the next line of scribbles. They then tucked both the pen and the roll of paper somewhere into their hair, also managing to avoid poking any of their presumably existing facial features, before slipping back through the web of tunnels.
Eyes on the dusty floor, it wasn't long before they picked up on the recent tracks of the size shoes they wanted. It was surprisingly easy to find them- little birdie had such tiny feet, it wasn't even a challenge on the stampede path.

She didn't jump into the air like a flighty frightened rabbit, but the hairs on the back of her neck sure did, complete with a twang like the breaking of guitar strings.
Raven turned to her left and seventeen pounds worth of hair was standing there. "Didn't anyone ever tell you not to sneak up on people before the sun's risen?" Her eyebrows wobbled as she tried to lift them, apparently even her facial muscles were stiff from sleeping in such a hard bed.
"Why before the sun?" Dreadlocks asked casually, scuffing their feet against the dirt as if to kick up more of it- probably their actual intention, ability considered. While she was looking, Raven took note that again they were wearing no shoes. She'd thought maybe it was a Viki-inflicted thing, but maybe it was just a Dreadlocks thing. There was no reason you couldn't shake the vet's hand with good foot support...

demon • 30 August 2015 at 7:31 PM

"Because someone might mistake you for a werewolf," Raven deadpanned, reaching out and flicking a stray, beaded strand.
The head tilted in response. "Shocked? Figured you wouldn't be after greeting Viki."
This caused the dark-haired girl to frown. "Or what about after everything I've been through to get to this position?" First division was supposed to be a little prestigious, right? The elite fighters? And assistants were chosen from them? Surely that meant she had some ability in the eyes of those here.
Or apparently not, because Dreadlocks shook their hair and muttered, "Don't count." Before Raven could open her mouth again, they quickly pushed the topic along. "So you stand here because..." They gave a wobbling noodle-limb gesture to show it was a finish-the-sentence game they were playing.
Raven instantly grew a bit shifty. It occurred to her that she probably was expected to attend to her leader before anything else, whatever her own feelings on the matter. "You... Work here?"
"Yes, that's true. But the offices don't open until the afternoon," Dreadlocks observed, probably looking at the door from the way their hair was angled.
"Oh. Should... I guess I'll go find Five then," Raven tried to state, but she was so unwilling it sounded more like a suggestion.
Underneath their tentacle-hair, Dreadlocks smiled, placing a long-fingered hand carefully on Raven's elbow before she turned away. "No, this is good."
"O... Kay," Raven said awkwardly, shuffling her ready-to-leave feet back into casual position. What was she supposed to do then? Ugh, she really wished this guy would be a little more articulate! As they removed their hand but just continued to stand there quietly, she got impatient and asked; "So what do you do in the mornings?"
"Ah... Hmmm... This and that," they answered vaguely much to the other's frustration. Then Raven realized the hand she'd thought was merely playing with their hair was actually fishing around in it for something, because soon enough they actually pulled out a roll of paper from the stuff! With a practiced eye their finger danced along the list, brain obviously running on fast. "Last thing was putting Five to work. Next is putting the coffee machine to work. The one after is little birdie's." Their dreadlocks bounced up to probably look at her. "Come with for the coffee."
Whether that was an instruction or an offer, Raven had no intention of doing anything other than nodding. She could use a coffee.


Bliss was looking around, wondering what had happened to Zan as the screaming chill tapered away and a rough female voice called the court into order. The last time a room had warmed so quickly sprung to mind- but his automatic sweep for pale, faint Mael-traces took barely a thought and came up empty. The guy was nowhere to be found... Like, absent as in not on this mountain absent. Something Bliss had only noticed when he'd woken up- been woken up- that morning.
At that moment his hands were grabbed and he looked back down, startled. What was he doing, gazing around like a disorientated dingbat, when he had a patient patiently waiting to be attended to? And this one actually had the basic decency and sense to stay still, too.
It would be a lie to say the intense stare didn't nearly scare the pants right off of the doctor, but it wasn't like it was something new to him in these kinds of situations. Though admittedly it had been a while.
"Er, o-of course, my apologies..." Bliss stammered, while at the same time his hands didn't hesitate or falter one bit but immediately began to emit a soft glow from the sheer amount of energy he was easing into the injured power. Personally, Bliss had always thought of the healing process as sort of akin to pouring water onto a raging forest fire. Too much too fast and you risked doing more harm than good, shocking the system, healing it incompletely and wrong so that parts could never grow back. Too little was of course just ineffective. Naturally slow and steady did it best. It was all about holding the pressure and directing it carefully and -precisely. Another good metaphor- blowing a wind instrument. Bliss rather thought he'd do better as a musician than a firefighter. Less physically demanding and all that. But it was really no time to start considering a change in profession now.
Besides, he was very, very good at this. Bliss stepped back to admire his handiwork- but there was really nothing to see, since the stomach now looked exceptionally normal and unstabbed. Actually, Bliss pondered, it had felt surprisingly less draining than it should have been, for a wound as complex as a stomach one. The digestive tract was normally such a toughie, particularly with those pesky intestines. Strange, but Bliss wasn't complaining.
"How are you feeling now?" he tried to ask the power as clearly as possible, hoping the guy could understand through his apparently difficult British accent.


He just lay there in a crumpled heap, where 'Verse had thrown him down. Zan had absolutely no motivation to get up. What, so the other powers could rope him into their insane training regime? So they could further go to the extraneous effort of erasing all users from planet? No way, Zan was already done. He was just going to lie there forever, until the world froze over, until-
A hefty power planted their boot onto the small of his back and ground it in, like he actually wanted to gauge out a small hole in Zan's back and plant a real tree there- sniggering all the while.
The ice-power let out an embarrassing screech in pain, but didn't even care because that REALLY hurt. Naturally when he tried to get up, he couldn't because the darned guy was standing on him and resisting just made the pain worse, so his back slumped back down into the dirt while he made a sort of gurgling choked whine- involuntarily of course. So as it was, Zan figured he had two options: death by compression from some random jerkface's heel, or- yeah he was gonna chose the other option already.
He twisted his arm behind his back so he could grab the offending foot and give it a gift- a brand new shoe in the form of ICE. He hoped to god the jerk got frostbite from it, but knew he didn't have the kind of energy at the moment to make it happen. Later maybe.
Anyway, the guy squealed like a pig, much to Zan's satisfaction- it wasn't half as bad as the noise he'd made earlier, but it still stroked his bruised ego just a little, as more importantly the jerk stumbled back, leaving Zan free to groan in whatever way he liked, totally voluntarily and without any particular pain involvement... Then force himself to sit up and present less of a glaring target.
Meanwhile, he saw 'Verse seemed to be stalking through the ranks, untangling any who seemed to be burning to start a fight- again. That was weird. What was she up to?
"In this exercise," 'Verse articulated loud and clear, that nobody could stand through then feign deafness and disobey 'by accident', "You will not touch one another." She chose this time to push a rebel by their shoulders hard and sudden enough that even that sturdy guy went sprawling. Apparently this was a demonstration and not just self-indulgence, because she went on to explain; "This means no pushing. No prodding. And definitely NO FIGHTING."
She glared around at everyone, and answered by grinning when they glared back. That grin which had quickly became so infamous for its blood thirst, that all the rebels actually shrunk back when they saw it. Satisfied, she continued, slowly and stealthily walking and talking. "No part of your body or your power will interfere with another's in this room. Anyone who fails this rule will get one choice. Either sit on the stands like an iddy-widdy baby," she sneered in the most demeaning, patronizing tone, which caused many to automatically bristle, but none jumped her... Except one, which she instantly tossed over her shoulder and that was that- she went on unscathed, "-while the rest of us have fun tearing each other to shreds in the free-for-all brawl at the end... Or, see if they can survive getting the crap beaten out of them by me," she offered generously.
As usual for the girl, there was no mistaking her eagerness for anything else as she pummeled her first into her palm. She was just begging for someone to break the rules. And as the many, many skirmishes that had occurred over the base in just the past night alone had shown, she was very, very definitely capable of living up to her promises. How the power gap could be so wide between her and the others seemed strange to Zan... But he wasn't going to ask her now was he.
"What are we doing? Good question!" she exclaimed, even while the hall remained dead silent as a graveyard. And her smile widened impossibly further. "We're going to be playing a little something our dear users would have liked to call... Yoga."
And this was yet another reason why Zan hated his fellow powers. He slapped his palm to his forehead. They were just, so, very, stupid...
Wait, one minute. Did she just give them an entirely non-contact, con-combative exercise? Zan could barely hear any of it over her aggressive posturing and intense promises of violence, but... She did, didn't she? No, Zan must have got it wrong somehow.
Then the music started to play. Soft music. Calming like the sea. With a voice-over of a tender woman's voice telling them most politely to stand straight, imagine they were a young tree straining its fingers to grasp at the sun, breathe deeply and exhale as if to blow wind into the sails of a quaint little yacht, bobbing gently through the waves and calming their spirits...
It was hard of course to be calmed when the whole time 'Verse was staring into said souls with pain beyond pain for them showing in her eyes if they didn't start obeying the nice yoga lady.
After a few fumbling moments, everyone obeyed.

taffy789 • 4 September 2015 at 5:45 PM

Had the aloof boy just... snubbed her?
 Annabell frowned but was distracted from dissecting the clear answer as she noticed Riley approaching.
 Considering who his attention directed to first, she had noticed him before he noticed her, but Annabell didn't let that bother her.
  Eventually Riley did turn to her, and when he did, she returned the smile on his face and prepared for the friendly greetings. But when the Fourth's smile faltered and his confused question hit the girl's ears, Annabell couldn't help but release an exasperated sigh at what felt like three snubs in a row.
 "Good morning to you too, Riley," Annabell greeted him, her large sunglasses obscuring the sourness present in her expression but not in her tone. 
 She pursued her lips slightly before the edge faded and was quickly forgotten.
 "Well," she began, softness reappearing as if to make-up for its earlier absence, "This index-type red card slid itself under my door and, well, it said to come here. I was kind of hoping you knew what was going on, and could explain it better."


After scarfing down the fourth Peep, Zach managed to remove himself from the marshmallow treats and get down to business. He walked through the base with a mission in his mind and a goal leading his intuition.
 When he reached the door his intuition told him was the mess hall, he pulled it open and entered the large room. The fifth leader scanned over every person sitting at every table until his intuition pointed out the unfortunate group he should select.
 He walked over to them.
 "You guys are off duty, correct?" Five asked with eyes narrowed, scrutinizing.
 "Uh," faltered a boy in the group, unsure what response to give.
 "Don't bother saying yes. I can tell if you're lying," Five answered for them, "I'm the new Falchions Five, and the veteran needs a job done. The job requires more than one person, and since you three are all on break, you are doing nothing important at the moment and can help. Right?"
 The group exchanged hesitant glances and came to the collectively conclusion that they weren't allowed to refuse the authority.
 Clearing his throat, the first boy turned back to leader and managed a stuttering "Okay, um, sure. What is the job..?"
 Impressed by the easy compliance, Zach smirked, and he finally began to appreciate his high rank.


 "Well," Jane began, voice quietening as she recgonized Karen's stress, "it's about a few things. Namely, a certain missing leader who is not Three, and a... concern. A concern having to do with the frightening possibility of a power with a repressed user running around on base." Jane chewed on her bottom lip for a second before peering inside Nine's office and venturing, "May I step in and make myself comfortable? Tea sounds lovely, by the way."
 
 Knowing fully well what the Eighth assistant was going to talk about, Gale fought off the sickening, light headed feeling calling her to turn into a gust of wind and escape the office as fast as the breeze could carry her. Instead of fleeing, she solidified herself into the disinterestedly concerned leader she was always supposed to be.
 Seven pretended to be preoccupied with pairing the color palettes as she planned her method of survival. Would it draw more attention to herself if she stayed put in the office or if she excused herself to leave? Just how much did Jane know, anyway? What exactly would she tell Nine?
 In the end, Gale swallowed her apprehension and put her faith in her ability to keep a poker face. If she could stay calm, be passive, and feign surprise, then maybe, just maybe, she could slip out of Nine's office with nobody ever suspecting a thing.


With his wound healed, Wither could devote more of his energy to warming up, and this he was very grateful for. And because he was so grateful, his own hands remained clamped around the healer's for much longer than necessary.
 The power laid there for quite awhile, not bothering to answer the healer's question in favor of simply enjoying the excess energy flowing through him. Only after a good five minutes had passed did Wither finally care to release the healer's hands from his own. Then, he sat up and focused intently on Bliss, as if the doctor would poof into air at a moments notice.
 Finally, seeing as Bliss did not run off on him, Wither decided to speak up.
 "Your energy is nice," Wither commented with earnest, and he scooted across the bleacher seat to get closer to the healer with the nice energy that was high on his list of likes. 

asi • 8 September 2015 at 5:20 PM

"Not..." Karen's brain stalled for a moment in the switch between the modes of social nervousness and professional seriousness, and she couldn't for the life of her work out who the girl could be talking about. The leaders were a mess ever since the Truce matches and it practically gave Nine a headache to go through them. Two, on the front lines; Three, gone like the wind, but the key word was 'not' for him; Four was still around on base as far as she knew; Five she rather thought had been sent off recently- yes, she'd heard that; Six? The one who'd been on camera being taken in the rebel's invasion? Could that be who the assistant was talking about? He wasn't missing, exactly, but it obviously couldn't be Seven or Nine, unless the boss had finally drove Jane crazy, and Eight was- huh?
Then she remembered Jane was Eight's assistant, and there had been chatter about the capricious, brightly-haired leader not being seen around in a while, and Nine figured that a far safer bet. "You mean Eight? Are you very worried?"
The people she'd heard talking about it hadn't sounded it. Of course now was certainly not a very appropriate time to go disappearing, but Karen knew the Eighth leader's reputation as rather a tricky one who did not care much for propriety.
As far as she could tell, no one really expected much at all from Eight. But whatever degree of usefulness aside, Nine would of course consider her better found than lost... She still wasn't going to be hitting the alarm over this though.
"Yes, yes," she murmured quickly in response to Jane's question, standing up and quickly arranging the chairs around her thankfully well-ordered desk- as opposed to the floor. She wasn't going to make anyone here for business sit on that.
Speaking of... She glanced back at Gale. "You, uh, don't have to listen to this," she felt out of line telling her superior that, but Karen wasn't sure what else she could say or do, other than stand awkwardly beside the third chair she'd pulled up. On one hand, it seemed rude to ditch her and the designing they'd just barely started for Jane- but on the other, she did feel proud to show herself as ready to embrace her work with full dedication the moment it called. It was very important to Nine that she was perceived that way, more so than any potential friends she might otherwise make... "I'm sure I'll be able to get back to our design project soon," she managed to smile at the thought, and in that minute didn't care one bit what Jane might think.
But in the next she was taking her place at the desk and her facial lines were hardening, for the second issue raised could in no way be taken lightly.
"Is this something left over from the rebels?" she automatically found herself examining Jane with an interrogator's eye. "What kind of level are we talking about here?"
All the ferals still caged and spitting in her dungeons sprung to mind- no doubt laughing at how in vain her recent efforts to keep them from the surface, distract herself and not think of them had proved. But no, Karen still wouldn't be considering the question of their death; she thought about their life. Although all were dangerous, most were not of a great threat level. To a number of individuals, deadly, but to the base at large, what could they do? It had only taken a few hours work of what had been mostly her division to sweep them up- under the leadership of its former leader, of course. The stronger ones, which Nine would certainly hesitate to face herself- including Dani- had been his own personal captures. Yes, Two was naturally strong, but to clear the entire base in that amount of time...
"I thought Two himself pronounced the base clean afterwards," she voiced with a rather bitter twinge to it. Karen hated the way everyone seemed to place their faith in the guy, when he in such a clear, unashamed way sought none of it. Wasn't it pathetic, to be loyal to someone who had no intent of being so back? Like a hopeless, wanna-be girlfriend... "Aren't we not supposed to question anything he says?" she added, quietly dark in tone.
"Speaking of," Nine turned back to Jane. "He just left for the front lines. Isn't Eight friends, or work partners or something, with him? Are you sure she hasn't just gone over to make sure he gets settled?"
Okay, that actually sounded far too reasonable for the Eighth leader- but from Karen's point of view, it would be a dreadful neglect to run off on a warzone like IOD without telling people where you were going... She couldn't imagine doing something like that to Lily, so of course she considered it crazy enough. Then, so too did she think a color palette of green and pink.
So Nine was perhaps not the best to ask for help about crazy.
It just so occurred to her then that as the new torturer, she was Eight's new work partner. And she heard Eighth workers were dead terrified of Two just because he could SURVIVE so much of their leader's presence.
Well, on the plus side if she lived, it would do wonders for her reputation.


"E-er... Thank you?" Bliss returned with an edgy smile as he considered inching away but dared not in case it caused a further slide closer. The courtesy embedded deeply in his skin since childhood prompted him to instead return the compliment, so while he examined the other's aura for any lingering injury-related irregularities, he commented on the first thing that came to mind; "And your aura's flow is very..."
He trailed off, noticing only now the exact color and energy signature that this guy emanated. An aura he recognized: his since-this-morning stalker's! This had been the guy lurking around and giving him all kinds of creepy jitters and nervous urges in the cafeteria! Good lord, he'd thought the guy had to be something the grand rebel leader had set on him or something- still could be, actually. Bliss's hands were now dangerously shaky as an alcoholic surgeon's, and extremely glad that the power had let go off them.
And the yoga in the background was NOT HELPING.
"... Nice," he finished unoriginally, now his nervous fidgeting from before was suddenly making a comeback with a vengeance. Now Bliss was very anxious about scanning the crowds, but not out of fear for Zan's safety anymore- it was his own he was worried about! ... Okay, he didn't expect to get attacked directly- but he sure wanted to get away!
"What are you doing?" the girl's eyes flitted suspiciously between the two males as she reached the group with a few small steps.
Bliss looked at her in surprise, if his eyes could get any wider that they were before. "Why are you back?"
"... Why are you asking?" she gave him a surly look like the question offended her, and Bliss immediately regretted his words. Looks like the ice-power's chilly attitude could be catching if one wasn't careful.
"I-I'm sorry! No need to answer a-anything," he waved his hands in front of him as if to ward off evil... Or scrub a window. It's just the way she left before, it kind of seemed like she had somewhere to be? That was confusing.
The long silvery-haired power folded her arms over her chest, gave a short, "Hmph," noise, and looked over the mass of rebels like she was busy, but without any clear aim.
Bliss shifted awkwardly and just stared at her. So why was she standing with them now? ... Powers were awful at communication.
Finally, she said; "That guy should have got what's coming for him by now."
Bliss started, confused. Did she mean Zan, what-
"If you're not dead or dying, you better be moving!" A discordant voice overrode the sweet yoga instructor's tones and the gentle swishing of the sea in the recording, and Bliss looked up to be near electrocuted by the look in 'Verse's eyes directed right at their little group.
"Er... Right," Bliss hurried to make his own little space and falteringly attempt to join in, copying the 'downwards facing dog' pose with all the energy and precision of someone who would never, ever, ever make it to the stage. Or gain the approval of anyone with a respect for the physical disciplines.
When he glanced across to see how the other two were doing the position, he noticed with shock how pained the girl power's expression was, all twisted and eyes gasping at the floor. A small kind of wretched hum even issued from her mouth as she tried to push her arms to hold half her weight.
"You- you're hurt! Let me-" he scrambled onto his knees, reaching out towards her.
Before he could even get close, she yanked herself back. "Get away from me! Don't you dare!" she shouted in a sudden panic.
He slowly retracted his hand. "O... Kay," he said unsurely.
"Good!" she said hotly, and hurriedly returned to the exercise, pigheadedly refusing to answer the pain that so obviously plagued her.
Bliss just scratched his head in confusion. He REALLY hoped Zan was okay, because he didn't see how else he could possibly get this explained to him!

demon • 8 September 2015 at 5:25 PM

A strange expression crossed his face at the sight of 'Verse leading the stretches. She knew what she was doing- really knew it. This firebrand punk was more flexible than one of those cheap bendy rules one could never get back into shape. Heck, she was more flexible than Alex, and that girl had been an honest-to-god circus act! So it seemed like if Zan was tallying this right, 'Verse could not have been some idle schoolgirl as a user- no love for the performing arts would lead a kid to these kinds of extremes... This was someone who'd had some serious formal training. With that and being a breed of power like hers, it was no wonder she was able to lay waste to most rebel challengers she'd faced so far. He wondered how he hadn't spotted it in her earlier. But then, on meeting, all powers seemed near equally vicious and wild in attitude. You really had to work to get to know their capabilities.
He didn't want to. Really, really did not want to.
"Gonna get your butt off the floor?"
Zan forced himself to crane his neck back and look up at the person behind him... Of course it was the terror of the dance floor herself, made complete with the cracking of her bloodthirsty grin. "Or are you auditioning for our new doormat?"
He squinted at her with his pale blue irises, feeling the stretch and sores around his eyes of bruises coming-soon. To the face of an ice-guy near you.
None of this really made the vision he was confronted with any more attractive. Idly, he wondered if her presumably better-tempered user could make it look any better, or if she was just plain unlucky in the facial feature lottery. That had to suck. He almost bothered to feel sorry for the girl.
Then her smile turned sour with a disappointed pursing of the lips. "Get up," 'Verse demanded, one foot hovering in threat, poised to kick.
"Fine!" Zan cast a resentful look at the stone that wouldn't support his backside anymore, before making himself stand.
She looked at least a little appeased by this, but only said, "Now follow the exercise," before walking away. Back to scaring the pants off all the rest of those big bad rebels.
He watched her go looking singularly dismayed. Blaine or Zan, it didn't matter; neither of them had done a day of P.E. in their life, nor had they ever wanted to.
Heck if he was going to start now!
... He sighed, and sloppily copied the guys next to him before the devil-woman came back and landed that kick she had ready for him.


"Really?" he exclaimed, actually snatching up her hands in his uncharacteristic excitement. "Then you are on my team! That's so cool," Riley continued to beam at her for a moment, offhandedly apologizing for her hands- "Oh, sorry about that-" while still forgetting to let go. "It seems like we never really do anything together, right? It'll be nice to finally hang out with you," he commented with a kind of youthful sincerity in his bright green eyes one would be hard-pressed to find anywhere else on base. Especially, not, for instance, in the lethargic, lackluster spirit at hand which seemed barely able to remain upright without the support of a wall.
Actually, it seemed the boy had for now at least broken his vow of inattention, because he was eyeing the two with a faintly appraising look on his thin face. His lips moved to mouth something as if in prayer when Riley turned his head to observe. And while his ears could hear nothing no matter how they twitched, a small chill washed over the leader as he followed the deeply tanned, or possibly fried, kid's gaze to where his hands were. This was a mind-reader, currently disabled perhaps, but nonetheless, even if he didn't really get the idea... He got enough.
Riley smiled again and politely (and apologetically) gave Annabell her hands back. That's when it struck him. What Lily had said. "Oh course!" he smacked his hands together for an appropriate audio accompaniment to his sudden realization. "She was the one to arrange the group. I guess I have Kitty to thank," he still smiled nicely... It was a bit different though.
In a much more typically Riley fashion, he glanced back towards the once more dedicatedly disinterested wallflower before sheepishly confessing to his friend; "I was really worried that they'd all be scary elites from First. But with her choosing, it figures... Unless I had some kind of fear for Hello Kitty collectors, I really didn't have anything to worry about!" he sighed in relief.
Apparently Riley completely failed to notice the gaping hole in his logic that was the fact that the person on the top of the girl's favorites list, whom she certainly wouldn't hesitate to recommend for any mission was none other than Two, and there wasn't a thing about that guy that couldn't be called 'scary and elite'... Then again, it wasn't like Riley really treated Two as such, not after his sponsorship of him as Four.
As for Annabell's want of an explanation, Four fully intended to give it, however, it seemed kind of improper to do so from out in the public corridor. So he counted heads.
Normal squads consisted of four members. Recently, with all his paperwork, Riley had learnt that squads on the front lines normally served in groups of six, with one team leader appointed among them. This just made it easier to organize the large populations at these camps, and also helped the units to stay functioning when the inevitable losses occurred. Though this did give him pause as he worried about Raven, these were not the kinds of conditions Riley had to worry about himself. This was a scouting kind of mission, not a fighting sort, and they'd cover more ground with less people. But with just himself, the boy and Annabell here, they only had three. It seemed they were still missing a teammate.
Knowing he had already came late, this vexed Riley a bit- not a great first impression for the fourth kid- but he quickly decided they should just go on in anyway.
Sun-soaked was leaning close to the door, so automatically Riley nodded at him to open it.
When the kid gave him a look, opened his mouth and said slowly, "It reads hands," Riley felt exceptionally dumb. What kind of person gets how their own front door works explained to them by a stranger? That had to be a whole new record on lame.
"Oh, yeah..." Embarrassed, he quickly stepped forward, pressed his palm to the door and had it open. "Come on in then."
It sure felt strange, he thought, leading them inside, to invite people into this place that did not feel his own. Sure, he lived and worked here now, but the office remained the extensive display of swords, daggers and various weapons from the previous owner. Riley of course wouldn't have a clue on redecoration, even if he were to relocate the entire collection (and keeping it had been his arrangement with Three, after all). Anyway, he liked it enough- it just felt sometimes like he was living in someone else's house. Something that was of course true, but whether or not he thought the old Three was coming back really changed Riley's perception of the whole place. Logically, of course he went with no, but sometimes...
Shaking his head, Riley made his way over to his desk before turning back to the other two. "Wait a moment while I turn on the computer, okay?" he pressed the button and waited, awkwardly whistling a few random notes to himself.
In any case, it looked like the brunet had made himself at home, quickly locating a prime spot for loitering and taking up slouching position there.

taffy789 • 12 September 2015 at 11:11 PM

"Yes," Jane confirmed, slipping into the seat Karen had so graciously pulled out for her, "Eight is work partners with Two, but I've contacted the location tracers who are in charge of keeping tabs on all the leaders, and they have confirmed that she hasn't left base... When she disappears like this, she never leaves base so I doubt her visiting Two as a likely possibility. But I'm not so concerned as to where she is now as much as I'm wondering when and where she will finally appear."
 Pausing to get comfortable, Jane shuffled in her seat and crossed her legs before continuing, "It is highly plausible that Eight will resurface around places she feels are familiar. The Eighth division and her office are a given. It is near impossible to keep eyes open in the cafeteria, but we are trying... In any case, your new ninth division wing is a likely candidate for Eight to reappear at. Since she did have a... in her own words, a "friendship" with Two, she frequented the torture wing in the past and probably is unaware of the obvious reason to change her habits now."
 Here, the Eighth assistant paused again, but this time a sheepish, apologetic expression bloomed on her face. "I feel as if I was vague in that last sentence. More concisely put, Eight may return to this division expecting to see Two here and things unchanged. The girl works like that, she doesn't pick up on changes well. If you see her come here, I would advise you to detain her if possible. She won't be adverse to invading memories to slip away, so please inform your workers to exhibit caution. As a precaution, I would suggest having a few workers wear sunglasses at all times, to avoid memory wipes. The Eighth division always has extra sunglasses at the ready, so you can send someone to pick them up if you feel as if they are necessary..."
Moving in her chair once more, Jane uncrossed her legs and moved both her feet to the floor, as if steadying herself for a more burdensome topic.
 "That was all the warning I had concerning Eight. Before we move on from the topic of my boss, is there anything else you would like to know about her? I understand that you both may be working together in the future, and I will be happy to help you in your dealings with her. Although, I cannot promise she will be much help to your information retrieval duties. It's not that I doubt her ability to retrieve information as much as I doubt her ability to accurately relay said information... You may need a lie detector for her, not for the informant. It is certainly... saddening, but my boss isn't the most... reliable leader around."
 Jane gave a small, tight smile here that wasn't happy as much as it was forcefully innocuous. There existed thousands of adjectives for the assistant to describe her boss, yet every word she chose was so perfect in its inoffensive facade. Jane didn't simply speak; she tried her best to skillfully dance around what was better left unsaid. In the professional setting, she left the more disparaging comments simmering on the surface of her conscious, and what description spoken instead was nothing short of her sincerest flattery.


After herding the three unlucky grunts into the storage closet, Zach stood back and watched as the group's high hopes for easy work were destroyed before their very eyes. This destruction was inevitable- not even the most optimistic person could resist despair after seeing so many boxes piled higher than their hopes could ever possibly be.
 "These boxes need to be moved to Station C. Preferably by the end of today," the Fifth leader mentioned casually, appearing to the group unfazed by the daunting task at hand.
 "That's-that's-" one of the girls choked, "Station C is completely on the other end of the base!"
 "Which is why this was clearly never meant to be a one person job," Five responded easily. "Which is also why you three have been picked to help me move them."
 The other girl in the group glanced from her friends to the boxes and back to her friends and finally back to the boxes. She let out a wistful, defeated sigh and then began to roll up her sleeves. "Alright," she said, determination settling itself in her features, "we can do this. Eddy and I can carry one box, and Jamie and... um, Five can get the other?" Her voice faltered, and she gave Five a side glance, as if checking if that plan of attack was okay."
 Zach raised an eyebrow at this hesitance, and it slowly dawned upon him that his title alone could accomplish more for him than just recruiting grunts to help him with his work. He could easily command these three to do the task alone, and they wouldn't even question it, would they? This wouldn't have come as such a pleasant surprise to him if he had given a crap about the whole ranking system before becoming a leader himself. But that was survival. If something wasn't beneficial to Zach, he ignored it until it either disappeared or became useful. The ranking system, with its hierarchy of submission, just so happened to be one of those things Zach confirmed his belief in only when he was on top to reap the benefits.
 The Fifth leader did not answer the girl's hesitant side glance for a while, as he was contemplating the pros and cons of commanding the three to move the boxes on their own.
 ...
 After a tense, silent moment, the girl could breath easily again because the Fifth nodded and said, "I'm okay with that set-up."
 Yes, Zach was okay with moving boxes all day because in his head, it was either that or paperwork. When compared to paperwork, menial physical labor really was the lesser of two evils.


Following close behind the healer, Wither walked over to the yoga group and began to partake in the stretches. He had to ignore the numbing feeling of recently healed flesh in his gut to do most of the stretches, but with a little perseverance Wither managed to follow the annoying radio lady's instructions without keeling over and dying even once!
Although, it was the steady flow of energy he was consuming that did the most to numb the pain. ...Shouting foe was not looking so well though.
 While everyone else was listening to the lady and pretending to be a chair, the sound manipulation power that had stabbed Wither staggered forward, clearly unbalanced and moving very unchair-like. He took one, no two, three... and half steps before tripping over another power's  foot and falling to the floor. Wither stopped wondering about what being a chair was supposed to feel like and turned his attention to watching the writhing and weakened sound manipulator with muted interest.
 Wither had told the guy that he would win against him in a fight. He shook his head sadly as the dying power's energy flowed into him. Sheesh, why hadn't the guy listened and accepted losing before putting knife ex-friend through Wither's belly? All the pain and energy loss could've been avoided!
 ... On Wither's part, at least.
It went without saying that the sound manipulator power still would've felt a lot of pain and lost a lot of energy. But that was necessary. Because if the sound power never experienced those things, then Wither couldn't win, could he?
 And Wither really did want to win the fight.


 A wave of surprise washed over Annabell after Riley had grabbed her hands so enthusiastically. She hadn't expected him to be so excited at the prospect of them working together, but she couldn't blame him because she too would feel relief seeing a familiar face after expecting callous strangers.
 Making sure to give a sweet "I think it's nice to be working with you too" in reply to Riley's excitement, Annabell waited for the Fourth to open his office door and frowned slightly at his struggling. Hopefully his lapse in memory came from a simple dumb moment and not from something like exhaustion or stress from overwork... Or even worse, an Eight-induced memory wipe...
 As the office opened up and the group entered, Annabell hesitated in the door frame while she glanced around. The entire room was big- too big. Downright huge, even. The living space not decorated with a multitude of weapons or impersonal furniture remained cold and empty.
 Nothing about the decor said "Riley" in the slightest. If anything, the only adjective that could be used to describe the vacant air and the sad, untouched weapons on display was this: "dead".
 Glancing back towards Riley, who was focusing on his computer, Annabell grew somber as she watched the Fourth touch a button and give the hum of life to his computer.
 Still leaning against the door frame, Annabell wiped any trace of mourning from her demeanor before clearing her throat.
 "Um, sooo," Annabell coughed awkwardly and waved an arm towards the stiff display cases. "While we're waiting on the computer and all, Riley, I'm guessing you haven't gotten around to redecorating the place yet, or um, did you just want to keep the look?"

asi • 1 October 2015 at 6:14 PM

"I see." Karen's thoughts were measured by slow, deliberate blinks. Some of the things Jane was saying clearly called for revisitation later on her part. For instance, location tracers? She made a mental note to ask Lily about this later- that is, if she wasn't too busy, with whatever the blonde chose to do with her time.
Meanwhile, the more pressing prospect of the Eighth leader popping up in her district and messing up the filing cabinets in her workers' brains certainly set Nine's teeth on edge.
"Thank you," she supposed the free sunglasses were the least the Eighth division could do to make up for the inconvenience, so she had no hesitation in accepting the offer. While not sure if it was necessary, the assistant clearly felt compelled enough to talk about it, and Nine wasn't a fan of skipping precautions. "I'll do that."
It was good that Jane had given that extra explanation though, Karen had found her a little hard to follow at some points... Now that she was in the higher circles, she ran into a lot more people with more circuitous patterns of speaking. Lily seemed to have a lot less trouble understanding these people than Karen... Perhaps because she was likewise hardly straight-forward in her thoughts either. Needless to say, Karen did not enjoy her head spinning, but suffered through it.
As Jane described her boss, she listened silently and seriously, with no change in her perceivable posture nor her more hidden emotions.
After all, most of what was said, and how it was said, seemed to fall in line with the judgments Karen had already made about the leader and the assistant.
Finally, tucking a few dark, loose strands of hair behind her ears- she would not tolerate any rebel activity here- Karen answered, "I have heard of Eight's reputation," though I'm not sure I believe much of it, was the part that went unspoken, "and I never expected her to be able to make my job an easy one."
Well, that went without saying, but coldness, the hardness of the tone which verged almost on aggressive said a lot more than the words themselves.
She appreciated Jane's respectful, yet unembellished way of putting it. Nine wasn't so skilled with speech. So with tone being a more suitable weapon for the the girl, she used it to say basically the same thing as Jane had said. Hopefully her conviction would ease the poor assistant's misgivings about the partnership just a little.
"I don't know if I have any questions, you'd be a better judge of what would be useful to know than me," Nine said bluntly. "But I won't hesitate to come to you if any do occur to me."
At this point, Karen shifted in her chair, switching from the default sitting pose to one leg crossed over the other. With her hands, she clasped the cap of her raised knee and looked concerned but nonetheless determined about her next few words to the assistant.
"You... You are aware that I am planning on conducting a thorough investigation on Two's activities and motives in this war, particularly any connections he may have to these power rebels... And the fact that this will extend to his, hm, close acquaintances."
Going by how Jane had phrased Karen's description earlier, did Eight's assistant not even know what to call those two? More than that, Two didn't really have any other close anythings, did he? The only person she'd been thinking about when she spoke it had been Eight. All this messy talk had Karen talking confusingly, too.
The door swung open again as the punishment workers were appallingly quick with the tea. It wasn't Karen's favorites who brought it, probably too busy handling her wretched assistant, but they'd clearly sent it on- evident by the care put into the little arrangement. Three sets of teacups and little plates with the cream and the sugar-cubes and the sugary little biscuits too. Karen took a sip from her tea. It was mint, not really her ideal sort, but of course she was content enough.
Those two really were a wonder, with everything from creative breaks to getting Ford out of her hair to organizing her work ever so tidily, to bringing her guests tea and saving her butt in a pinch. She supposed she had Two to thank.


"No, uh, I haven't..." The look Riley gave the room around him was almost a bit apprehensive, in a kind of fake-smiling way. Then the computer belted out a few familiar notes and the guy bent down over it to smoothly waltz his way in with a few choice steps across the keyboard dance-floor. "I wouldn't know what to do with all this space anyway. It's really too much- honestly," he shook his head in apparent bemusement, like he found the plain, open room with barely anything more than the display cabinets lining the walls somehow difficult to mentally navigate- let alone fill.
"Or, do you find it distasteful?" he paused, looking embarrassed and checking Annabell's face for cues. Although he didn't know what he wanted out of the room, he certainly didn't want it to be a space people hated existing in.
The world of IOD was already a ball of suck enough, he didn't need to add to that.
Riley stared at the walls, forgetting his job and the waiting computer for a few moments as he wished he could somehow conjure up the ability to care strongly about their state of decoration. The weirdest thing is that it worked.
"Guess I could stick up a few hard rock, heavy metal posters up there, get the furniture made entirely out of Holstein leather... Nick Two's fish tank while he's out, you know, the works," he mused, cool, casual, and maybe just a little mischievously. "What do you think?"


After a good half hour or so, the yoga tape clicked over to silence, whisking away the sounds of the sea, and once again the troop was trapped inside the cold, hard hull of a mountain.
Drawing himself back up to his full height, Zan looked over to where he'd left Bliss and found him quick with his eyes. It wasn't tough, the dude was tall.
Well, they'd both survived the first exercise, in spite of their less then ideal physical states... And by power standards, all the other ones too, probably. Bliss looked about as surprised as Zan felt about how easy it had been.
"Shove aside the drop-outs and let's move along people!" commanded 'Verse, and with a small drop in his stomach, Zan watched the powers obey, tossing against the walls the inert forms of two bodies which had stopped moving over the course of the tape.
That sort of thing was inevitable one way or another when powers met. It didn't stop it from feeling wrong to the cold one. This was not what he wanted. He knew Blaine would not have been okay with this.
The doctor looked like his stomach had been pulled out of his torso. Probably hadn't noticed at all that lives had been slipping away. Probably thought he somehow would be able to notice that, in a room like this, filled as it was with the presence of powers sizzling and writhing and begging for excuses to really break loose and go haywire. Even if the lot had managed to settle down a little on the surface, following the yoga session, their true natures were always there.
That crazy guy really thought he could- and should- go around healing them all. There was probably something wrong with his brain. They should hire another doctor, for a second opinion.
But smart-a comments aside, they only had one Bliss. Zan looked away before the guy had a chance to catch him looking. He needed to work out what he was going to do about that.
'Verse was gathering up the powers again. "Now, time for something a little different," she crowed with apparent glee, as she went ahead and pressed a button on the little machine thing she had on her. Oh, Zan wasn't an expert when it came to any of that technology stuff. He was pretty sure he'd be able to work a tv, but beyond that... Shrug.
Clearly there were a lot of things Zan's new life status (namely, living, unfortunately) was going to introduce him to, because the strange sound that burst out of the speakers almost felt like it was physically assaulting him. Was that actually a type of music? Holy crap.
The powers all looked around, shocked, confused, and looking as always for an excuse to attack something, but it seemed to only be the intro, because it calmed down soon enough. Then another fitness instructor took over, a male this time, and while the subject matter was vastly different, it did surprise Zan what was the same. Namely, the weird kind and sensitive voice the speaker had. He sounded like he'd forgive you the very same moment you ran over his cat.
In Zan's mind, this was just exhibit B: powers are mental.
The low but infectious beat in the background of the workout recording quickly crawled underneath the skin of the rabble gathering, and in no time they were obediently being beguiled into answering the gentle request to drop to the floor and give ten push-ups.
Huh. Only ten push-ups? Why was it being so NICE?
Wait. Zan considered this problem with the flat line his lips were pressed into growing increasingly wobbly and uncertain by the second. Was he even capable of one?
Bliss sure didn't look it. He was bent over and sweating like a pig, and still not getting any closer to the floor.
Just as Zan was considering the possible consequences of simply walking to the side and refusing to do more in protest for his poor weak limbs, he was suddenly grabbed from behind by the hair and yanked backwards.
"Ow ow ow," he gasped, leaning back both to try and ease the pull on his poor scalp and also look over and see the face of the guy that dared bother him now. Probably not a difficult thing to do for a power, considering, but heck if Zan wouldn't at least intend to try make it harder.
Yeah, this guy was gonna get it.

demon • 1 October 2015 at 6:18 PM

It was about an hour later, an hour filled with Dreadlocks crouching and crawling under counters and banging noises issuing from within, starring what had to be the strangest coffee machine system Raven had seen... An hour during which the conversation primarily consisted of brief requests for, "Hammer," "Bolts," "Pliers," "That spinny thing, y'know, with the claw." And where she had way too much time to stare at the unusually unconcealed by super long hair backside of the guy and wonder if she really was right about him being a he. Yes, that was basically an hour.
After all of that fun, Raven felt a poignant sense of satisfaction when finally the straggly mess of braids stood cradling a steaming cup in its tentacles, purring contentedly from the presumed sip it had taken. That sense of satisfaction? Almost as if she had a cup of her own! Funny how these things go. She fumed almost as much as the coffee over the fact that the weirdo had completely overlooked like, offering her one.
"So," the dreadlocks mused, now straddling a seat in the slowly waking cafeteria scene, stirring their coffee thoughtfully with one long... Finger. "How is our little place pleasing you so far?"
This question certainly gave Raven pause from staring mutinously at the paper mug. A quiet, rather defensive, "It's too soon to tell," was the neutrally disguised 'f you all' which she was really feeling.
"But not to think, surely," Dreadlocks countered, their spiderlike hand not in the drink peeling open one of the rare and prized cafe sugar sticks, which Raven had watched them pull earlier out of an I-kid-you-not safe. Apparently on the Front Lines, where everything was at risk, sugar was Serious Business.
"I am thinking," Raven told them with a roll of her eyes. She was fairly sure that similar to a shark and swimming, you'd either be sleeping or pretty dead to be human and not thinking about something. At least that was how her head worked. As evidenced by the coffee maker, some machines really were different.
"And too much of it. I'm safe, you can speak it out," Dreadlocks said in what was apparently supposed to be their reassuring voice.
They slurped at their coffee. It was appallingly loud.
"Right, right," Raven just rolled her eyes and remained non-committal, having no intentions of saying anything. It wasn't like she was back in high school and this guy with the hair was asking if she had a silly high-school crush on anyone. This mattered even less to her, yet she still didn't want to talk. Dreadlocks was management too, whatever that meant over here- if she said she hated it, they'd rightfully take offence. She wasn't going to intentionally screw things up for herself. Raven wasn't stupid.
It was hard to tell anything at all about how Dreadlocks reacted, given the obstacle in the way of Raven's vision, but when they just gave yet another strange sneeze and said; "Fine, don't tell," and went ahead with drinking their coffee, she really didn't know what to think.


Only very dimly lit, the space emitted a kind of rusty glow, none of which was natural. The furnishings were dark and appeared almost to be made of shadows themselves, including the lump that clung to one of the high stools at the counter, except there was something different there. It would give the slightest of sways every now and then, rhythmically, as if being carried along by the most serene of waves. Nothing else moved in the slightest.
That is, until a figure wandered in, steps brisk but one arm up and rubbing at their eyes. When it did lower and they caught sight of the strange growth that extended from the stool silhouette, they blinked for a few moments (dispelling thoughts of the horror film they'd digested late last night/criminally early this morning), then flicked on the lights. In an instant the room jumped to an autumn sunset burning.
"Ahhh no god," pleaded the seventh leader, all twenty of his fingers and toes pressing into the red plush on the stool cushion and he still struggled to stay afloat- particularly when he raised his head, smashing it against the side of the counter in the process. An answering wail occurred, after a few beats.
Seeing that Septa had still managed to stay on his stool, the other saw no immediate danger and slipped behind the counter. "Ain't this a bit early, even for you boss?" they asked, not really remanding or concerned, just curious.
Mumbling something incomprehensible, Septa hit his head on the counter again, but this time not so hard and a bit more on purpose. The collusion brought a shower of glitter sprinkling down from his crazy lion's mane of black hair.
The barkeep looked on with amusement that seemed to be strangling them.
Septa looked up suddenly with big eyes, smutty as they were round the edges with smudged eyeliner. He grabbed the other's hands and made eye contact with such resolution that the victim was physically startled. Then he slurred out something like, "Eevolyo, rrishiammino..."
Whatever the leader was trying to say, he certainly did not speak Spanish or Portuguese. The other one did both, including drunken versions, and they knew that!
Naturally there was nothing the barkeep could do for a hopelessly speech-impaired superior, so they just shrugged and said, "Sorry?", thinking hopefully the boss would forgive them for their inability to read minds. Hopefully he would also be sober enough for a logical chain of reasoning soon.
Yet apparently the guy was less wrecked than they thought, because in the next moment he narrowed his eyes and muttered clearly enough; "Hair of the dog."
After taking this in for a few seconds, the barkeep could only agree to the request. This kind of was their employer after all. "... Alright then." They poured the leader a weak one and watched the kid relocate it down his throat.
For a while, they felt weird about calling the leader that. A kid. True, it was well-enough known around the base that Septa turned sixteen only last year. Less well-believed, sure, because while on the slightly small, only a little tall and hecka skinny side, he made up for it in personality... And the reputation, for, ahem, mature activities.
Septa may only be the seventh when it came to the leader rankings, but it terms of reputation... Well, in terms of infamy, surely the only person who could come anywhere close would be the other side's Two, and Septa didn't torture anyone for a living- heck, as far as anyone could tell, he didn't really DO anything. Except, of course, run his club. Though weird as that was, it was really just the tip of the iceberg-
They were interrupted out of their synopsizing by the subject himself breaking away from his stare-down with the floor. "What's with the glitter," he stated, not bothering to raise his tone for the question mark.
Glancing down at the mess Septa's movements had left on the floor, the barkeeper decided against checking to see if the guy remembered the glitter bombs last night, and skip straight to; "The guys'll clean it up in a moment, no worries."
"They're a bit late," Septa observed, tipping back down the very last drops from his glass and pushing it back across the counter, and it was impossible to tell if he was angry or disappointed or just making conversation.
The next line wasn't thought through as well as it could've been. "Well they hadn't taken into account the extra hour in the showers trying to scrub it out of their skin-"
"C'mmonnn," he moaned, in his special 'tired sick of your voice' breed of impatience usually reserved for his assistant. "Refill already! And it's my poison, you'd think you could give me the good stuff?"
Well they hadn't thought he'd be able to tell the difference, but it was Septa. Some days nothing would get past him, others would have him getting smashed off water as a placebo, so... "Coming right up," they replied, and did just that.
"Where's that meatslab at anyway?" he muttered while he waited. "Shouldn't he be at work already?"
"Got his card already, remember?" They certainly did not expect an affirmative to that question, that was just the way they said it. "He's packing."
"He doesn't have to go for a week," Septa waved this away dismissively before making the hands behave again so he could accept the drink. "I delayed it."
"Y-you don't say...?" They looked back at their boss in barely guarded surprise. "Now who is it that got you to do that?"
That made the leader look a little peeved. "Why does it have to be anyone?"
They wiped down the thoroughly clean table casually. "When did you last get anything done for yourself? Other than crazy as crack parties."
This was merely shrugged aside. Cradling his cold, renewed glass his uncovered hand, Septa told the worker; "Everything's gotta be right right now. I'm having an important visitor. It's important."
That sounded... Significant. The barkeep's brows drew in as they looked serious, over the usual professional friendliness and informality. "What do you need done? Don't tell me another serenade..." they deadpanned.
Septa stared moodily into his empty glass. "No. No. Forget it, they won't care after all. Just make sure my private meeting room's set for the end of the week."
That did rather unsettle the simple bartender a moment. "... Is it a good visitor, or?" they phrased with tentative curiosity.
However, the guy just drank on in silence.

taffy789 • 10 October 2015 at 2:11 PM

"Oh. Yes. I know about your want of investigation." Nodding slightly, Jane chewed at her bottom lip, then spoke, "I had received a report detailing what occurred at the leader meeting following the rebel attack."
She stopped talking for a moment to take the tea cup that the Ninth worker was offer her, then continued, "In actuality, your declaration to research Two wasn't mentioned in the report, but I found out about it upon carrying out some follow-up information gathering. In fact, Seven was particularly helpful to me."
Gale, startled at her title being mentioned, almost dropped the teacup that was being handed to her by a worker. She quickly recovered her demeanor and set the drink down before reluctantly entering the very conversation that she so much wanted to never be mentioned in.
"I was happy to help," the Seven said seriously, "and it was no problem. Really, I'm just glad I remembered anything that was said at that meeting, after the rebel attack and- yeah." She stopped herself there, choosing to return her gaze to the color palettes than continuing the thought. As she examined a shade of light green, Gale gave a sort of hidden smile and added a slow, offhand comment of, "But I don't think I could forget how upset "Kitty" got when Nine so much as suggested Two's guilt."
At this comment, however playful, Jane made a judging "hrmm" sound and shifted in her seat again.
"The reactions of our probable but not-yet-openly-revealed absolute superior aside," the Eighth assistant squirmed, "I can see no harm stemming from an investigation into Two's character and motives. I offer all of the Eighth's divisions files to your research, but in doing this I recognize that there is not much to offer you. I can't even say that a logical and informative interview with Eight will be enough to chip the enigma built around the second leader. Nor can I even promise that Eight knows much at all."
With a sigh, Jane ran her chewed and jagged fingernails once through her hair and set down her unsipped teacup on Nine's nearby desk.
"You see, although I did mention Eight's perceived friendship with the second leader, the status isn't exactly all that clear or accurate. All I know is what I've heard from Eight herself, and from the accounts of a few second- now, ninth, I suppose- a few ninth division workers. The primary source herself is unreliable to say the least, and becomes downright untruthful at the most extremes. But Eight has dubbed Two her "bestest friend" in listening distance of my very own ears. Although admittedly this term isn't one Eight uses conservatively. You see, the first time I heard her utter it was shortly after I became her assistant, back when she was a new leader. Eight used the term in conjunction with Six, the old Six, Thomas of all people! Then a month or two passed and whatever "friendship" she had apparently felt towards him had transformed into what I can only describe as a saccharine loathing. Of course when shortly after she began applying the term to Two instead I thought that "friendship" would run the same course. To my surprise, and probably to the surprise of a few others, it never did.
Although, every so often Eight seems to become transfixed with a new "bestest friend", but those all seem to come and go, sprinkled between her long stints of Two. For example, her newest "friend" appears to be a girl called Annie- Eight just won't leave the poor girl alone. She may be even calling on her more than Two as of late- though her fixation won't last long. It never does. The longest time one of these new friends has ever competed with Two was about a month, give or take a few weeks. But given as they all were not leaders it's not as if any of the "friends" lasted long on IOD, sadly for them. But less sadly for Eight, who seems as unaware of the loss as she is to the lack of... more amiable feelings towards her from these chosen friends.
Two, however, appears to be the only true constant in this ever-shifting group of "bestest friends", and from how he appears to accommodate Eight's... lively personality, I would even venture to guess that, to some degree, their relationship may even be called... positive, if not just contently neutral."
Jane picked up her cup of tea and took a long sip. She savored the cool, refreshing taste of mint on her tongue and felt relaxed for a total of .2 seconds before becoming strangled by anxious realization.
"Oh, I'm so sorry!" the assistant blurted out, "I realize that all that information was quite unnecessary and in all probability boring to you... I do apologize, sometimes my-" she composed herself with a deep breath- "sometimes I get carried away when I start talking about Eight. But I digress. When Eight is found I can direct her to you for an interview, yes. She will make it difficult, but she will at least be there..."
Although Jane did not notice her expression, Gale sulked slightly at this change of topic. The assistant's ranting- calm, sophisticated ranting, but ranting none-the-less- was endlessly amusing to Gale for whatever reason. Perhaps because Jane did not seem the type capable of trash talk, yet... Well, all considered Gale would be fine with Jane getting carried away about Eight's craziness. All considered, Gale would be okay with Jane giving a mind numbing ten hour lecture about toothpaste, as long as Jane wasn't talking about-
"However," Jane said, clearing her throat as to distract from her flushed face, "perhaps I should move away from the topic of Eight and onto a more concerning matter? The potential feral on base currently..."
- as long as Jane wasn't talking about just that.

Gale quickly cleared her throat, and Jane's attention swiveled to the seventh leader.
"Hey, before moving on just yet," Seven spoke up softly, calmly while mentality stressing over trying to stall the feral discussion for as long as humanly possible, "is Eight working with Nine even necessary? Really," Gale put the color palettes she was holding down and looked towards Nine, "it looks to me like Nine is pretty... Um, competent with her duties." Suddenly feeling self-conscious, Gale ran her fingers through her hair once and switched her gaze back over to the color palettes. "Not to ridicule your boss here Jane, but she seems more likely to give Nine more trouble than help. Not that," Gale added quickly, "I'm saying that Nine couldn't handle her. Because she probably could do that, handle her." Her eyes flickered briefly to Nine, and Gale's hand flew through her pixie cut yet again. "But what I'm trying to say I see no point to Eight "helping" Nine by gathering information."
Jane nodded, surprising no one with that agreement. "Yes, good points. And it is important for me to say this, but Nine, you do not need to request or accept Eight's help if you do not want to. That's up to you, but nevertheless, Eight will likely still appear in this division and loiter around. You see, after a couple of, um, "incidents" resulting from One requiring her to test out her abilities for "information gathering" purposes, it was agreed upon that Eight would only be allowed in a second division interrogation room under the strict guidance of the head interrogator. And despite Two hardly ever needing her, Eight seemed to insist on coming to the interrogation wing whatever the case! So, no, I do not believe there is much a point in Eight "helping" Nine either, but I would suggest Nine here keep an eye out for Eight nevertheless."
Jane smiled, took a sip of her tea, and then said, "But that's enough off topic now, we really should move onto the feral problem..."
Since it was obvious Gale couldn't stall the inevitable, she instead sulked again.

awesomeness • 10 October 2015 at 2:14 PM

"Well, I wouldn't say it is distasteful, no," Annabell said, frowning at the walls. If she had to describe the room at all, she would other words- none of them positive to say the least.
But she dropped the subject to laugh at Riley's suggestions of leather and band posters, and she kept on laughing before realizing that she didn't know him well enough to tell if he was serious or not. Sure, it seemed like a joke, but...
Annabell's ears then caught the sound of heavy, approaching footsteps running down the hallway, and it dawned on her that she was still leaning against the door frame, thus preventing the automatic door from sliding shut.
As she took two steps inside the large room, she smiled at Riley and joked- oh please let him be joking please- back with him.
"The fish tank might be a bit much," Annabell remarked with a mischievous smile of her own, "but you know what would be perfect? A shark tank. You can't get more warm and inviting than that, honestly."
The door behind her made a beeping noise, a sliding shut noise, and finally a small "oof" noise that sounded like the door had somehow gotten the wind knocked out of it despite being made of nonliving metal.
Flipping around, Annabell caught sight of a wedged shoe keeping the closing door open and a long arm waving frantically from the squeezing gap.
Acting fast, Annabell took two quick steps back to the door to rescue the stuck person, but the door released it victim before she could help and the disheveled boy staggered into Four's office.
He corrected his posture in expert timing and used his right hand to fix the awkward angle of the glasses on his face. Secretly, he was relieved that the closing door hadn't removed his last fully functional arm, but since that was such a stupid, unreasonable fear in the first place he made sure to not mention he'd had it.
"I'm so sorry for being late," he apologized, looking toward Four, "I have no excuse to give. But in any case, it's nice to meet you, I'm Quincy."
He nodded as if affirming his own name to himself and stood at attention in an efficient, professional manner, but whatever tight composure he'd held himself to fell away after Annabell blinked and stated more than asked, "We've met before, haven't we?"
Turning to look at the girl, the quizzical look on Quincy's face broke into a bright smile upon recognition.
"Oh yeah! I gave you those sunglasses! Hey, small base, am I right?"
Annabell nodded in agreement and, remembering she was still wearing those dorky anti-Eight sunglasses, she pulled the shades off her face in favor of hanging it on her shirt collar.
That interaction over, Quincy's gaze started to move around the office, scanning every empty corner and plain wall until he caught sight of what he'd been apparently looking for. When he locked eyes with Izzy, his grin grew three times wider, and one of his eyebrows cocked upwards as if he was asking "Surprised?"




"Right," Jamie directed, "Go right."
Since he was walking backwards while holding onto one side of a large box, Zach stepped to his left without turning around to check where he was going. Much to his surprise, his left elbow smacked against the corner of the wall- a direct hit to his funny bone. He cursed- loudly- and then glared at an incredulous Jamie from over the top of the box.
"Don't glare at me like that was my fault! I said right! You went the complete opposite of right!" Jamie exclaimed this without fear, having had carted four too many boxes with the leader to be further intimidated by his unceasing grumpiness.
Zach reconsidered the past events and quickly realized that the girl was left- no, right, crap. He'd gone in the wrong direction. But it wasn't like it had been his fault- right and left were naturally confusing concepts. Anyone could get them wrong.
Although, Zach supposed it took a special kind of idiot to scramble them up after insisting to be the one walking backwards through the maze of hallways. Sure, Jamie had been moving too slow for Zach's tastes. But then again, she did claim that she had only been moving at a snail's pace because he sucked at giving directions.
It was then Zach decided that the entire situation he was in was a load of bull. Of course it was all bull, and he could put up with most of it. He could deal with how the "important supplies" he had to move were sugary sweets. He could deal with moving boxes of boxes of these sweets across the entirety of base camp. But he had to draw the line somewhere, and he drew it at the absurdity of the Station C storage area being dug deep, deep into the hillside and only made accessible by a series of claustrophobic, twisting and turning tunnels.
It was more than one person could take, especially when operating under so little sleep and an oncoming, pounding, swelling migraine.
"...That's it," Zach said decidedly and removed his hands from the box. The oh-so-precious cargo slipped from Jamie's grip and dented itself on the ground. Shocked, Jamie looked from the floor to the leader with a mouth wide open. "The supplies!" she gasped, no words forming but the most obvious ones, "Why did you... They're important!"
"They're marshmallows," Zach snapped back while stepping over the box. He pushed past Jamie, which was difficult to do in such a skinny hallway. Somehow Zach managed, and he started for the exit.
"I'm done. I'm tired and I'm done for today," he called back to the girl without glancing back at her, "feel free to continue carting the boxes back and forth, or burn them or eat all the yellow sugar birds, see if I even give a crap."
With that, the leader was gone.
Jamie stared at the dented cardboard box at her feet and wondered if it was something she had said that’d made the seemingly stoic guy get so upset.

taffy789 • 14 October 2015 at 8:03 PM

To make a good impression on his new boss, Naji arrived to the healing tent an hour before midmorning.
 Then, struck with the worry that arriving so early would make him a suck up in the eyes of his co-workers, Naji lingered outside the infirmary tent and stood sweating under the sun for a good thirty minutes. First impressions were everything, and Naji felt a certain unsaid obligation to get this one exactly right.
 So, when the clock struck and it was the perfect time to enter and be seen as neither a slacker or suck up, Naji slipped through the tent door flaps and into the expansive infirmary.
 A loud, whirling fan greeted him as he entered the tent. Naturally, he gravitated towards it, drawn to the semblance of luxury it emitted; the whispered, breezy promise of comfort. As he moved closer, he noticed the fan was hooked up to one of those big, rechargeable portable batteries, and he grew a bit envious. The only electronic thing in his tent was a small battery powered lantern which barely produced enough light to read the serial code stamped under its on-off switch. Sure, it made more sense for an infirmary tent to be the most luxurious, but reasoning didn't matter squat to Naji when all he wanted was a cool fan, running water, and maybe an indoor toilet.
 Closing his eyes, Naji gently pressed his forehead against the fan's protective cage. The fan's wind blew through his sweat glazed hair, cooling his skin and stealing away any heat that the blazing sun had sunk under his skin. He shivered, pleased in the change of temperature, and he remained lost in that blissful position for a couple of minutes before being jolted back to reality by a loud "AHEM". Eyes snapping open, Naji spun around to face the young woman sitting in a chair near the other side of the tent.
 "...Sorry to spook you," came her languid reply to the "scared stiff" manner Naji's posture was fixed in.
 She scratched at the side of her cheek and continued, "But in all honesty, I was worried that if I let you go on like that for another second, then you would start making out with the fan."
 The dismissive, "but don't dwell on that" hand wave following her statement did nothing to dissuade a creeping dark pink blush from settling onto Naji's cheeks.
 "So," she flicked her gaze up and down Naji's body, examining him like a jockey checking over their horse pre-race, "you're the new healer."
 It didn't sound like a question, but Naji nodded along anyway.
 "Very well." The young woman gave a shrug, stood up from her seat, and began to walk towards the inner rooms of the large tent. She paused at a white curtain covered doorway and threw her head back over her shoulder when she noticed Naji hadn't dared to move, yet alone attempt to follow. "Hey," she said, a hint of amusement tingeing that colorless voice, "feel free to come with, unless you do want to stay and get some privacy with that fan."
 Although he could still feel the cool breeze of the fan drying his sweaty hair, Naji's head overheated with embarrassment. He quickly discovered it difficult to form a sentence. Instead of opening his mouth in defense, he meekly lowered his gaze and rushed forward to follow the young woman through the white curtain.

asi • 22 November 2015 at 3:32 PM

Good. It always pleased Karen to hear of others doing their thing to keep themselves well-informed. Not much bothered her more than those who couldn't keep up.
Nine nibbled delicately on one of the little biscuits overrun by sugar crystals while she listened. Honestly she greatly appreciated that Seven spoke up to take a short shift on the back-and-forth. It was nice not having to say anything for the moment while the conversation bounded onward, and it didn't seem to be just for Nine's benefit either, because she thought she even saw Seven smile the tiniest bit. So the intrusion of Nine's work on their break time couldn't be completely and utterly horrible, right? She hoped not. She hoped it wouldn't chase the other girl away.
It was also nice to see a little of their reactions to Kitty's antics. Good to know everyone of importance around her wasn't an oblivious tool; good to know she wasn't a complete anomaly around here for not losing her head when it came to tall, dark, pretty Italian boys.
As things were shaping up now, it looked very much like these two had the kind of level-headed judgement she could trust- something she now found herself in dire need of, as Karen's own was brought in for questioning.
She had inclined her head to the assistant's promise of what, well, assistance she could give, gratitude perhaps not showing on her face but it was there in the gesture. Karen would have never asked for more, not unless there was reason enough to demand it. Having accepted this, she was surprised when Jane burst into story.
While Karen couldn't speak for the necessity of the info, she certainly did listen with interest. There was really not a lot she knew for sure about Eight, and supposed the time to start learning was now.
She wondered, hearing how desperately it seemed Eight was searching for- and pursuing, apparently- friends, if it hadn't occurred to Jane that Two might be using it. However, this was not something she decided to ask, not just yet.
"Thanks," she expressed briefly. "I'll take that interview, as soon we find her. I would need to talk to her sometime anyway." ... If only to be polite.
As they seemed to be bringing this line of inquiry to an end, Karen glanced over to Seven to.. See how she was reacting? Funny, this new leader seemed to strike her as particularly quiet, and when she did speak, it was always soft-spoken. A bit like the wind was stealing away at her voice, perhaps. Would Karen have even noticed her had Gale not made it into the high ranks?
She couldn't say.
But she rather thought that no matter what, as long as things had allowed enough to stay the same that the girl was here and spoke those words, Karen wouldn't have been able to stop herself from staring.
This she had not been expecting. Not so soon.
Not to seem starved or deprived of praise, Karen knew there were sweeter compliments out there than, "pretty competent". It sure wasn't a line to send most girls swooning. But Karen wasn't most girls, and with her practical mind, there wasn't much she aspired more to than being exceedingly competent. Which to hear aloud would just seem like excessive flattery, and render the speaker instantly in her mind as untrustworthy.
And as someone who'd been readying to fight tooth and well, tongue, mostly, for respect among the other leaders, all of which were measured as greater than her, it was naturally a shock to hear it was already one-eighth done. A really nice one.
Honestly Karen didn't feel all that competent though, as she simply nodded along to Jane's explanation, and it took a rampant beast loose on a campus of kids to get her back in gear.
"As for the feral," Nine cleared her throat and assumed her most carefully constructed eyebrow furrow. The one that Lily told her looked really smart. She just hoped it didn't look stupid.
"The last thing we want to do is, erm, aggravate it by blinding waving our sticks around. These things are like vipers, and they'll lash out at the first sign of danger. If it's not on a rampage, we don't want to put it on one.
"So," she gave a short, wry smile, and offered; "unless you'd be a fan of me calling up Two to tell him he 'missed a spot'... I can't see what I can do other than put my best pair of detectives on the case."
Well, she said that but, as it happened, she rather wanted to keep her best to herself. Maybe she could even still fix this, promote one to her assistant as she'd first thought or even both as co-assistants! Then she could send Ford out after the beast as punishment... No, while not incompetent, he was too unreliable for the job, and her mouth twisted unpleasantly at the thought.
It really looked like she'd misjudged.
Nine didn't plan on making that mistake again. "Unless you think this feral is really something dangerous, and I need to go after it myself..." Her eyes grew darker as she considered the hunt.
As the department of Punishment and Interrogation, it was rather a strange choice of the Eighth girl to come here about it. Perhaps as a new leader, Nine was expected to take care of such threats to prove herself? Some kind of test, ritual, hazing? Nine didn't know, she didn't know anything about being a leader: other than her own determination to not back down from anything that could be thrown at her.
She kept steadily drinking her tea, however. There was no use in letting it grow cold. Though she noticed Seven didn't seem to be taking any, she said nothing.


He saw the look she gave and nodded, slowly. Like he got what she meant, which he didn't really, but you couldn't win them all.
If he was going to go through with redecorating the place, maybe Riley ought to get a second opinion to his slapdashedly-hatched devil-may-care approach. Of course he hadn't been serious with his rock'n'cowboy aquarium scheme... But he also didn't have any better ideas. That was troubling.
Still, hearing Annabell joke with him like that put any worries he had about his own lack of taste aside, as he just couldn't help but smile back.
"Watch it, Annie. You might have just won yourself an interior design gig- and you know how crazy those leaders are," he ended up muttering the last part more than anything else, as he glanced back to the screen clamoring for his attention, despite it being rather too late now. Honestly, Riley wished he were a kind of crazy that wasn't just occasionally mismanaging time and ending up having to improvise an important work presentation. About a military operation. In oftentimes enemy-occupied areas. Which he himself was leading in person.
'Just wonderful,' said a rather sarcastic voice in his head, while Riley stared blankly at the mind-boggling arrangement of all those tiny little lights that made up a picture on his monitor. It sounded just a little bit like Two, which was faintly disturbing to say the least.
The door opened, pulling Riley out of his reverie, and he obediently looked over to the door on cue.
To say that he wasn't caught a little off guard by the new guy's appearance would be to lie. Then again, to Riley's credit, he hefted his attention to the face near instantaneously after what was 'off' here registered in his brain, and then quickly to the actual verbal content.
Riley always found it puzzling how people in charge would refuse to hear excuses. Sometimes excuses were also reasons. Did they not think there would ever be reasons for being late? Riley just preferred it when people were honest. It was supposed to be the best policy after all... He wasn't exactly impressed by this, naturally, but he was a good deal less intimidated.
All in all he seemed nice enough. Not too unprofessional, and not too professional. Also a heap more friendly than the other one.
"Right, well, as we're all here, I guess we can get started-" Riley began.
Now, he had sort of been warily noticing the entire time how the first stranger in the room seemed to be undergoing a severe facial transformation, with their face going through about four other varying expressions and colors before settling on alarmed and pale. But he was still taken aback to be interrupted like this:
"You- you- how are you here?" the boy demanded, attempting to whisper-shout across the room, which was big and very quiet and only filled with three other people, basically ensuring no chance of privacy in the exchange.
Riley studied the two of them for a moment, gaze sliding between the two who definitely knew one another, but the why and how of which was anyone's guess, before fixing on the neutral Annabell with an awkward, 'what's going on here I wonder' expression.

demon • 22 November 2015 at 3:44 PM

All in all, it had been a bad breakfast date. Really, the only reason she wasn't calling it a downright awful breakfast date was the rather miserable fact that Raven didn't want to small talk with anyone, and she achieved that.
But feeling guilty for being pretty much as satisfactory a conversational partner as a twelve liter tub of butter. Butter being measured in grams, and twelve liters being cholesterol-wise a truly horrific amount... How was that not miserably awkward?
Raven spent most of the time between eyeing up the goofy cartoon dog on Dreadlocks' coffee cup, and in her head, cursing her careless superiors for not even thinking of putting into place any kind of training system or thing to just sort of tell assistants what their job actually was.
Raven wasn't exactly employment-world savvy, but she was pretty sure normally these things came with like a job description. And then a contract. As far as she knew, her job was literally just doing what Five told her to do. Which honestly sounded like about the crappiest job on the planet, put simply. She was kind of hoping that wasn't it.
When Dreadlocks finally finished fishing up the last dregs at the bottom of their mug and licking their fingers clean, relatively, they stood without seeming to gain any height and slid over to the coffee machine once more.
Raven was prepared to strangle them if they tried drink a second dose in front of her, but that soon seemed to not be the case as they slipped the cup across to her.
This ceremony seemed extremely senseless to Raven, but she thanked them nonetheless, supposing they were in fact, not a huge jerk.
"What? It's for Five," they said like it was an obvious fact anyone could see, although Raven immediately checked, and found any such signifying number or letters to be absent from the cheesy mug's mug. Which, she now noticed with an intense frown, read, 'Don't go bacon my heart,' above a cartoonish doodle of the aforementioned breakfast item.
She probably wouldn't have hated the thing on sight if it had been a little less inappropriate. Okay, it was actually kind of adorable, and she wanted to know where they got it from, but seriously, for her boss. What.
Trying pretend like this wasn't something she noticed and/or cared about, Raven squared her shoulders and focused on what was actually important in her life, like finding out what gymnastics she had to do to also get herself a sweet cup of coffee.
Because failing that, she was definitely going to down this one at the first opportunity, and that was dangerous. She'd seen how seriously these people took their sugar. Under lock and key, literally.
So she asked frankly; "So who do I have to bribe to get coffee privileges here."
Either Dreadlocks was staring at her, or just sitting very still and doing nothing for a stupid length of time. Finally, they said; "Use tap. You're the assistant aren't you?"
... God confound it.
Blinking wildly as if to have her eyelashes sweep away the sudden realization of how overwhelmingly silly this whole breakfast deal had been, Raven trooped over to the cupboards and looked through the mug collection.
This caused her to immediately resort back to the weirdo with the dreads and the communication issues. "What about some other mugs?" she called as the other seemed to be leaving already.
"Wake earlier," came the reply before they slithered out through the door and away.
This left Raven to toss up between the 'Yo yo yo what's up?', the 'I (heart) mummy' and the sweet but horribly matching mug to the established Zach mug. Needless to say, it was a long and painful process.

She stared at it as she walked. Warm orange. Surrounded by a relative sea of white. Fenced up by a squiggly black line. The text overhead. Reading; "I couldn't if I fried.'
Raven then concentrated on imagining an alternate universe where she didn't feel totally dumb.
Unfortunately, this was the one where she bumped into the guy almost immediately. Not literally, thankfully. No, not a drop of precious sugary liquid was spilled, and this was of course no thanks to Zach, who had been thundering down the corridor like the very earth he trod on did something to offend him. As usual, if you ask his poor, suffering assistant.
Raven had to quickly change her forwards movement into a pirouette so she could hold the drinks away from the danger zone- not because he was particularly fast-moving, but because typically in his transparent effort to ignore and avoid her, he hadn't been looking and giving the courtesy of making an actual effort to physically avoid her and she had been looking, only at the mugs and not at impending collisions.
She stopped and completed the turn to face him. It was hard to know how to talk to him these days, with the stupid promotion of his. She couldn't just go off at him when she got mad, as most of their exchanges had been like before, and she didn't want to give him constant attitude either, not when she knew how it would hurt their work. And maybe that shouldn't seem that important- she wasn't sure at all how to feel about her apparent responsibility to the Falchions, literally an army she'd been conscripted into. Everything was all very confusing right now.
But what Raven did know was that whatever she did, she wanted to do it well. It wouldn't be worth doing otherwise.
So: "I...'ve got you your coffee. Five."

asi • 22 November 2015 at 3:45 PM

Guithe was still sulking. She'd hung the back of her neck off the side of the bed and had spent at least the last half hour staring resolutely at her new toppsy-turvey world. Her short, straight, sharp-cut hairdo reached just far enough for the tips to sweep cross the floor if she turned her head. It had been an honest-to-gods birdnest before, but after arriving Xela had took a giant pair of scissors into her hands and made it her business to tame the thing, manner as serious as for any task Xela undertook. Naturally, under her ruthless attention, each strand soon fell into orderly line. It was a lot easier for the young girl to command now, that was for sure, and it never bothered at her eyes or mouth any more.
She was not going to recommend the procedure to her big brother. His head seemed to suffer from a similar phenomena, but in his case it wasn't her affliction, and therefore she was sufficiently removed from the problem to say it looked absolutely fantastic and she wanted no part in changing that.
She glared again at the upside-down table lamp. As if she expected the place to right itself given just the right amount of amonosity from a look.
At least she thought Lich-y was wonderful. She couldn't understand why he wouldn't invite her to his party!
It really sucked.

Watching her look so wretched- she had to suppose this was absolutely miserable for Guiffs, in all her bad moments prior she would at least jump on the bed and get better- Xela couldn't help but sigh. What was she supposed to do with this kid? Certainly not take her to Septa's club, that was out of the question. But it sure rubbed the power the wrong way that she had to go, when she very much did not want to- and here Guithe was protesting because she couldn't!
Honestly, if Xela didn't know humans and their stupidity so well, she would send the girl in her place and everyone would be happy... Except Septa, but what would she care?
She definitely didn't care about what he thought, that much was evident in her every action.
"Guithe..." Xela knelt down by her head to swamp the kid's view. "Please?" she reluctantly resorted to cajoling. It chaffed at her pride a little to do it, but in front of Guiffs she could hardly be embarrassed. "I need your advice on this."
Much to her consternation, Guithe's pupils stayed fixed to the corners of her eyes, staring out at a point to one side.
And normally it was the child clamoring for her attention! It really threw the power off to be on the other end. What was she to do?
As she held up the raccoon- no, ferret was it?- Xela knew this had to be what desperation felt like. "Rambo would really, really like it!" she gave a horribly, horribly forced smile, that made Guithe's nose automatically crinkle when she saw it.
Aha! She looked! However, in the very next instant, Guithe's gaze darted away back to its fixed point just like a startled rabbit would to its hole. Xela felt victory slip away and sighed.
"Well, do you like it or no?" The door opened and the redhead froze as if now she was the prey, just catching her predator's scent. The newcomer certainly stalked into the room, strides long and purposefully smooth.
"You maybe have all the time of the world, but I have only midday and make-up is still to have done," the woman raised one very shapely eyebrow before adding with a sigh; "When he said 'challenge' I did not think this."
There was a special kind of snoot in the way she said this that made Xela turn her head in pure amazement and veneration. She'd always been sure the rich, old money, pageant queen moms had to practice in the mirror at least fifteen years to have their mannerisms so far removed from the rest of society. She never understood why her parents put up with, even tried to make nice with them..!
At least, Alex thought that. They were Alex's parents.
Without thinking it through, Xela attempted to shake her head clear, which had the side effect of triggering a crystal tinkling, wine glass clinking laugh as the predator read it as an adamant 'no'. It did not sound entirely in good humor.
"All right then," she said, advancing on Xela, wrapping an arm around the girl's slight shoulders and bringing them around to face the luxury full length mirror the room offered. "What are you looking for?" She did however, sound genuinely fascinated by what else Xela could possibly want.
It was true that staring at her image, it was hard for the power to see what could possibly need improving aesthetics-wise, other than a little more distance between herself and the dame who could've been right out of the 1960s, if it weren't for the daringly cut black silk slip of a shirt she was wearing, along with the stark pinstripe pants that just made the onlooker feel really confused. Was the lady about business or fun? If Xela had to answer that stumper from current experience, she'd have to go for both or neither. It was really hard to say.
Oh, and also the tattoos peeking out from each end of her half-sleeves. They also helped derail the time-travel train.
The other's pants caught Xela's eye again. Pants. Pants were really very practical, so she said this. "Do I have to wear a dress?"
The ends of the woman's most certainly artificially white bob-cut hair pricked annoyingly at Xela's cheek as the lady leaned forward to drink in more of that handsome scene in the mirror. She then instantly whipped a powder compact out of seemingly nowhere and started sending out this big cloud of the stuff to slowly settle down onto the floor.
Honestly Xela hadn't a clue what to make of such a blatant display of plain and simple vanity. She was pretty sure there was nothing very wrong with this woman's actual face, so why she was doing all this stuff to hide it was completely beyond the power.
She didn't get to ask though, because her fashion coach was finally placated enough to not be driven entirely to distraction by the sight of her make-up mask. "Honey, you can do a kilt and I'll still have it made fabulous. But is that what you want, when you have this?" she announced while gesturing grandly to their reflection.
Xela looked grudgingly at the dress. It was a nice dress. She had to say that. It was also a flattering dress, for her in particular, the deep sapphire violet shade brought out the reclusive and rarely seen purple in her eyes, and contrasted her light skin tone and the bright fiery red of her hair. It wasn't even uncomfortable. Instead of being made from that stretchy silky plastic stuff most fancy (and cheap) things were nowadays, like the stylist's shirt, it was was soft, warm, cottony and not too scary thin at all. In fact, there wasn't anything to complain about even in the cut; it was modest enough, length reaching down to the knee, little shoulder sleeves and a shallow v-neck that didn't show a thing, plus a collar. Nothing for Xela to be self-conscious about. And it hugged her curves in all the right places.
She looked pretty. She felt stunning. She'd never really considered her physical appearance as a power, dismissing it as trivial, but like this... She felt good. Really good.
And no she didn't want pants. Not when she could wear this, and feel this good, but...
"And I have to say, you have to take something. We do allow most clothes, but we do not allow no clothes," the woman told her, snide in impatience.
"... Got it." Xela answered humorlessly, while an equally boring and uncreative option occurred to her. "Does that mean I could wear the uniform?"
The other downright grimaced at her. "No."
"No?" No in the name of fashion, or no as in, 'we will actually leave you standing outside in the cold.' Because Xela had absolutely no respect for anything as meaningless as fashion, nuh uh, no she didn't.
But the 60's Cinderella was dead serious. "They will think... Police."
All Xela could think was; oh dear. What was that awful leader getting her into?
"Honey, let me have your hair," the woman directed, having apparently forcefully passed the dress through to the next stage, without Xela's spoken admission. She clearly didn't need it though; the reluctance for another alternative in Xela's voice gave it all very much away. The beauty pageant smiled, small, secretive, cocksure. She knew what she was doing, when concocting the guises the people cat-walked to the world.
"You're pretty, Big Sister Xe-Xe," Guithe said, finally unable resist as her eyes overflowed with admiration. This would have almost made Xela jump for joy, had the woman beside her not then turned around and focused her eyes on Guithe for the first time.

demon • 22 November 2015 at 3:50 PM

Thrashing around without strategy worked about as well for Zan as it did for the fish hooked, reeled and out of its element. Naturally both had been caught by surprise, but at least by brain size you should have higher expectations for one than the other.
Zan disappointed. On the other hand, the guy he was up against was really quite large. Like seriously the size disparity was nearing that of the fish and the fisherman- the other guy was BIG, capital letters. Like the shoulder muscles he was sporting looked each about the same size and mass as Zan's head. If he was wearing a football helmet.
Finding it clearly ineffective, Zan immediately ceased his struggling and hung limply in the balance, trying to transfer as much of his weight as possible onto the balls of his feet while stumbling backwards, wrenched along by the roots of his hair which the power was pulling on tightly. Why did girls ever have long hair when it was such a painful weakness! Oh god. He also had to relax his expression from scrunched up in pain to raising his eyebrows because yowch.
Now that he was closer, Zan could sort of twist his head around a little without getting his hair entirely ripped out, so he got a partial eyeful on what the guy's face looked like- that was, ridiculously heavy brows, square nose, square everything, muscle everything.
This was unpleasant.
What did he want, to have Zan get his participation certificate? The iron grip, hair tugging away on his sensitive (read: living) scalp kind of made that difficult! Not that Zan expected this hulk to be loaded in the brains department, he just also didn't expect him to read Zan's mind about his opinion on Popsicle stands. That is, ditch them.
Not that Zan forgot about mind-readers existing either, but he also had barriers in place, obviously.
He stared as far out to his side as he could, trying to get another glimpse, brain working fast to try and get what was going on. By initiating this, wasn't this beefcake the one breaking Verse's rules? Which did not seem like a sane thing to do?
Whatever it was, it all seemed quite ominous as the rebel's number one woman approached with a teeth-barring grin.
When his black hair turned almost white with frost, the muscle man dropped him in surprise. and Zan quickly stumbled away from him, but of course it wasn't enough, now Verse was standing over him. She was of course shorter than him when both were standing upright, but with the energy flaring up in her like a very congested geyser, she did get the towering part down pat.
"Well lookie here at who's been breaking them rules," she sounded far, far too delighted at the idea to be associated with an authority figure. She latched her fingers onto her hips and leaned over just to leer at him. "Not that I even thought you'd last this long," Verse hissed a little at the end, seething over something, but it wasn't Zan she was angry at, he could tell. No, it was the earlier sadistic pleasure that had been directed at him, so what then...
"Sit down!" she barked so sharply at the beef that it sounded like space between the two words had been violently murdered and dragged off, likely to be never seen again. "With that performance, you don't get to play," she spited him.
Mr Ninety-percent muscle threw down his arms in a huff and stomped off to the stands, definitely not happy, while Zan would've turned green in envy if he physiologically could.
But he simply turned his eyes on Verse, because he knew where this was going. He certainly didn't have the acting skills or the energy to pretend otherwise.
The tape had already been shut down, leaving the room to be filled with the noise of powers shuffling to form the ring as Verse called for it. Zan was standing on the edge, but they pushed him in soon enough.
Zan rolled his eyes to stare up at the ceiling and wish this really wasn't happening right now. Just really wasn't. And he tried to ignore the way his blood began to throb with adrenaline.
Unfortunately that just wasn't how reality worked. "We're finished with stretches. Ready to fight, Zan?" How Verse smiled.

taffy789 • 26 November 2015 at 9:18 PM

"Oh," Jane said after a hurried, frantic swallow of her tea, "I in no way am suggesting that Two- or you either Nine, of course- have done anything not up to your job's standards or your own ability." Mouth smacking dry, Jane rushed to amend, "What I saw in the archive room was simply something telling of a greater problem which nobody is at fault for- except, I suppose, the rebels."
  Having corrected herself without any rebuke, she calmed herself, and slowed her speech down to a normal,  not frantic pacing.
 "I believe the user suppressor which laced our water may have, yes, caused some powers to awaken straight away, but also had the secondary effect of making less active powers more conscious than before. So, no, I do not believe Two missed anything during his preliminary sweep of the base, but this feral is most likely a newcomer, a strong power that has awakened by riding the aftershocks of the entire "user suppressor in the water" incident. I suppose we can't call this rouge power a real "feral" then- in fact, I'd originally used that term out of convenience rather than accuracy, so I apologize if I confused anyone."
"Jane." Seven spoke up suddenly, her stare firmly fixed on her untouched teacup, "I hate to sound like the most ignorant person in this room, but I don't understand what you mean by that. You don't think this..."- she quickly killed that slight shake in her voice- "this thing you saw is a feral? I didn't even know there was a difference between ferals and... these rouge powers?"
"No, don't feel bad for not knowing," Jane quickly assured the Seventh leader, "it's a difference many people don't know! The Falchions side is... very lacking in information about power matters, for whatever reason. These things aren't widespread knowledge- you leaders just recently learned about some of the basics of powers from Katrix, for example. Even I only know what I pieced together from filed away lab reports and things I've heard from other, illegally-trained-for-IOD type people. ...And...." Jane faltered and chewed on her lip before confessing, "...And a frightening amount of my knowledge came from reading a few ancient, declassified captured Glaeroe interrogation logs."
 She stopped talking and glanced back and forth between the two leaders, as if making sure the implications of her words hit home.
"...In any case," Jane continued after clearing her throat, "ferals differ than rouge powers because ferals have no control over themselves or their actions. On the other hand, rouge powers occur when the "power" side of our brains are consciously in control of the user's body instead of the user. You see, a "feral" is not a power in control of the user, but ferals are both the user and power being subjugated by this innate, overwhelming desire for the power to eliminate threats to its existence, I.e, other powers. As it turns out, most powers, surprisingly, are not like the animalistic ferals we're sent out to kill during patrol duty but are instead these... split personalities from ourselves. Totally normal, though some may have more human qualities than others. 
But when under the influence of this overwhelming desire to target other powers, the more human, conscious side of our powers disappear and the rabid, overly aggressive subconscious takes control. Thus, one can tell a "feral" apart from a rouge power because it cannot be reasoned with while a rouge power has these more humanistic and rational qualities that-"
 "Wait," Gale interrupted, and she knew she sounded too desperate but couldn't bring herself to put any ease into her words, "I can't begin to believe that. You're trying to say that powers are actually... normal? Human, even? After... what they did to the base, to so many people? To their users? How can that be human; how could that ever be considered human?"
 Jane's expression softened, and Gale realized with a start that the sympathy was aimed at her. 
She felt her mouth go dry.
"I-" she wetted her mouth and tried to think of something to say, a reason to give for the sudden emotion, but she could think of nothing except the shaking, pulsing feeling of her blood flowing through all of her limbs and circling back again, and circling back, and circling back- flowing and pulsing with every heartbeat.
 "Seven," Jane said with a calm Gale couldn't even imagine herself having at the moment, "I understand that it's a hard idea to grasp but-um, it's just true. We are our powers and they are us, and we do share a brain after all. I believe we are, at heart, more alike than different in some cases, and I don't believe it's ever been an "us verus them" thing as much as its been a race against time, against the threat of these two personalities of ours losing all lucidity and succumbing to feraldom-"
 "I think," Gale said, a sharp edge rising in her voice, "the rebels and the feral outbreak both proved that it is very much an "us verus them" thing."
"Yes, I suppose but," Jane frowned, then sighed. "No, no, actually. I think I'll pull a more personal example in, then."
 Setting down her teacup on the nearby desk, Jane tapped her skull with her free hand.
 "So, I am not aware how familiar you two are with your powers, but mine just so happens to be one of the more awake ones, and, luckily for me, a pleasant one as well. I've met her a few times while sleeping, and I can attest to her relative amiability, despite her being a power. Her ambitious attitude can be a bit... morally dubious at times, but I have no doubt that Claire- which is the name she has chosen for herself- would ever have a reason for turning against me. We both understand that us fighting would simply be us turning against ourselves.
 ...Although, as Seven did bring up, maybe the appearance of the rebels prove that I'm just one of the more lucky ones."
 Jane gave a sad smile here and then, remembering her original train of thought, quickly added, "In all honesty, I believe that Claire could even pass for a user if she ever took me over. That in itself is a rather scary thought, but if that would occur, then, um, Claire would not be a feral but would in actuality be a rouge power- a conscious, in control power and not some mindless, too-far-gone rabid feral. And this type of rouge power is the very thing I fear is loose on the base now. With the user suppressor potentially having awakened hundreds of powers, so many powers could be taking control of their users and pretending to be their users, or the more aggressive ones could even awake and wreck more havoc on the base..."
 Jane solemnly faced Karen, "And this is what I came to warn you about, Nine. I... I can give you- or your detectives- um, the details from what I recall from my encounter with the rouge power in the archive room, but I can't help but be concerned for the other users with powers awakened by the user suppressor. I especially am concerned about those who may have been recently released from the examination rooms, and this is why I had decided to approach you about this issue."

 From across the room, Gale couldn't stop herself from hating Jane. 
 Wasn't the assistant just lucky? She apparently had a "nice" power; the other her in her head was "amiable"; her apparent split personality hadn't done anything crazy and terrible; it hadn't stabbed, suffocated, broken, or gutted anyone, had it?
 No.
 It hadn't.
 Gale's eyes began to water, and she fought down the urge to throw up.
 It was almost silly how everything just clicked together, made such stupid, obvious sense after her hearing Jane's explanation. For example, why had she recovered from her so-called "feraldom" so quickly? Because she hadn't been a feral- the universe couldn't even let her cling to that excuse, could it? 
She hadn't been a feral, and she remembered herself not being a feral all so clearly too. 
Her power hadn't been a mindless, crazy monster when it killed all those people, no; her power had been laughing.
 It was getting really hard not to throw up and, oh god, there was a part of her brain that consciously wanted to murder people and wow, why was it that the only reaction that nice little fyi there evoked was her thinking "it's just not fair".
 But- what if it was fair?
 Was... was her power's murderous attitude a reflection on herself?
Why else would Jane get a perfectly behaved power while she was stuck with some kind of hyper-aggressive murder queen? Just luck of the draw, or-
 "Um, Seven..?"
Speak of the devil- 
Gale bit her bottom lip when Jane glanced over with that sympathetic mug of hers, and the assistant twiddled her fingers awkwardly as she tried to figure out what was wrong with the leader.
 "Do you, um," Jane asked, and Gale found herself loathing that too-concerned little falter, "do need to step outside, or-"
 "Yes." The Seventh was already standing by the time her answer hit the other's ears. Without another word, she flew out of the room, breezing over the scattered paint palettes as she exited.
 
Now alone with Karen, Jane looked towards the Ninth and cleared her throat, unsure how to proceed from there.

awesomeness • 26 November 2015 at 9:32 PM

Annabell caught Riley's quizzical "I wonder what this is about" glance and gave him a "don't worry, we'll find out given time" shrug in reply. That done, her attention went back to watching the newcomer, who appeared a little thrown off himself by the other guy's interruption.
"Uh," Annabell saw Quincy quickly gauge her and Riley's expressions before continuing to the other guy, "How am I here? Uh, I walked." He gave a lopsided grin at his own joke, "Ran a bit towards the end there, too. But, uh-" now his smile fell- "really though I got assigned here."
 To make his point he pulled a red card from his pocket and held it up for all to see. "Officially, I've been assigned to Four as a sort of bodyguard for these next few missions, so, yeah." Quincy turned and gave a nod in Riley's direction, "Hello Four. You don't need to worry, I used to be in the First Division, so I'm competent at what I do."
 Done saying what he needed to, he quieted and gravitated to the wall, about two feet away from where the other guy was still leaning.
Quincy awkwardly rubbed at his neck for a moment, and the restless movement made Annabell wonder if something was nagging at the guy's mind. Finally, after a silent second passed, a strange expression crossed Quincy's face and he whispered- though in that large, empty room he might've well have shouted- to the other guy, "Did you, uh, not want me to be here, or something?"
Picking up how- disappointed? hurt?- Quincy seemed to sound, Annabell flashed an urgent "drama's about to happen you're in charge do something" look towards Riley and hoped her silent plea got through to him.



Upon Raven addressing him, Zach stopped his war path, turned to face his assistant, and then returned the acknowledgement.
 "Coffee." He echoed, eying the mug Raven held out to him. Reaching out, he wrapped his own fingers around the mug and brought the cartoonish drawing of bacon to eye level for further scrutinization.
 Don't do bacon my heart? What?
 He decided to ignore the nonsensical sentence in favor of sipping the offering Raven had presented him. The sharp bitter taste of unsweetened coffee made his expression twist up slightly, but the promise of a more awake feeling did offset his earlier murderous mood by admittedly a little.
 After taking two more sips of coffee, Zach glanced back at his assistant, who looked... Surprisingly non-confrontational. 
 It made sense, Zach supposed, as they had been avoiding one another up until yesterday and even before that his assistant had been making herself small and useful and often somewhat agreeable. Even Zach could tell something was off, and Raven's lack of aggression might've concerned him had he actually cared.
Whatever reason for the girl's new attitude, Zach didn't know, and he didn't particularly care to know.
All he knew was that, after the aggravating morning he'd had, he was almost disappointed that Raven hadn't shown up just to make everything all the more difficult for him.
His eyes fell again to the words on his coffee mug, and his tired brain picked through the uncooperative letters to attempt to piece together a meaning.
Zach squinted at the words for a good thirty seconds before the letters righting themselves caused the truth to be revealed and his ever permanent frown to deepen.
 "Really Shadow," he sighed, finally addressing his assistant in a tired, barely committed sort of way, "if you're going to play waitress and hand me coffee, can you at least not give me the cup referencing the horrible seventies song on it? I had enough of this music when I was younger, and it's not as if I need it now either."

asi • 31 December 2015 at 2:54 PM

Having ogled in equal turn both the sitting Jane and the door out which Gale had swept, both with an equally flat, Two-esque stare, Karen wasn't left with any doubt on how best to proceed from here.
She leaned her chair backwards so she could reach into her desk draw and pull out a tiny can of pure caffeine. She then proceeded to dump the poison into her tea. It was official, her patience was past the line where it was able to direct her care along to the area in her brain called, 'what other people thought of her'. Not that chemical dependence would even be that bad of a smear to one's rep here, but it was still something that the impeccable Nine would be utterly embarrassed to have bouncing round base. Like literally she would almost rather die, and it wasn't even true- not, not really...
Whatever the case, Karen held her head back and took a great big swig. She dang well needed it.
"Next time," she started with slowly, and if she sounded a little bit- or, well, as dry as the Cabernet Sauvignon her mother had loved to drink so much, which, despite it being a liquid, was very, very- dry, well, that wasn't her intent; "Next time, please do me the favor of starting me off with the disastrous, soul-crushing news, and not the- the rest? Yeah."
Nine stood swiftly and began pacing the floor. There was of course, no reason to get all worked up about this before it had even began properly, but- it had began, hadn't it? This first 'rogue power' was the start. Of the drug's secondary effect. Heck, it was almost like a nuclear bomb- after the initial destruction, they all find they're been contaminated by the cursed thing. So maybe a little freaking out was in order?
And she had thought she finally had a firm handle on the thing, with the effected behind bars and those that could making their way slowly through the control vetting process. This was so inconvenient.
"So you're saying... How big is this gonna be?" she asked with a blunt kind of stupid simplicity that made her cringe as soon as it left her mouth. She recovered. "How many powers can we expect to waken? How quickly? Even if they're reasonable, even if they're willing to reason with us users... No, no," she growled to herself, grappling with the implications of the new problem as she spoke.
Maybe... Maybe they ought to call Two back for this, really. Or- it struck her then.
She spun to look back at Eight's assistant, eyes suddenly wide in complete earnest as she announced, "We need to go to IOS." Then Karen slumped back down in her chair, musing over all the obstacles standing in their way.


"Yeah? I-" her mouth quivered around the derogatory words that threatened to spill out. She ended up with her lips drawn up and her cheeks hollowed out like she was being forced to suck on a lemon or something even more sour and unpleasant, when she muttered, "Whatever,' and turned away.
Vaguely this made her recall that whole 'voice projecting' thing theater-geek Alex had been so gone on, giving other people involuntary lessons. Figures Raven would find that kind of thing useful in the end. When she spoke, she made sure it would be loud enough to be heard by Zach even if the tunnel pulled it in the opposite direction. "Dread-" Whoops. "The management here told me to. They seem to think my job and your job generally don't have anything to do with one another."
She said that, but her eyebrows quirked as she realized Dreadlocks had just sent her to him, for a reason as trivial as coffee, right? Not that coffee (with sugar!) seemed to be considered trivial here, but still... Who knew what was going through the minds of the management here, to be honest. When the organizer held more physical resemblance to a jellyfish than a human being, 'normal' was clearly being reinvented here. Not to mention the boss here was hardly more comforting.
"And I'm just fine with that. So next time you're free to chose your own coffee cup," she added with mocking sarcasm that only rang hollow in the corridor.


With eyes blown wide in a single but telling sign for his fit of panic, "No, no uh, I mean yes? What?" Izzy's face began to scrunch up in confusion, not having even the first idea how one could answer that question, least of how he wanted to do it. The kid just squeezed his fluttering eyelids shut and with his face lax and as pale as it could possibly be under such a heavy tan, succeeded in looking completely incapable of forming an intelligible answer to just about anything. Let alone a question with a double negative. Especially one with such an unappealing answer.
Thankfully the leader picked up on Annabell's cue and subsequently coughed very obviously on purpose. "Erm, yes, like I was saying..." It took Riley a moment to remember what he had been saying, "Getting started, heh." Wow he was bad at this, Riley cringed inwardly in his head as he walked over to the projector and switched it on. Luckily, it warmed up in just a moment, unlike several others he once knew. That was nice.
The first slide just had the mission number, plus a few codes such as the discreteness level and area allowance (both high), which would really tell no one anything at all unless they were excruciatingly familiar with the Falchion world of numbers and figures. Which Riley wasn't. He only knew what these ones were, for this one case, because he was supposed to be involved with organizing it. And that was about as far as he'd gotten with research, as it happened. Hiding another cringe.
To the audience, he said apologetically, "We didn't get to coming up with some kind of snappy acronym for the job... I guess if anyone gets inspired, we could adopt their idea, you know, if we want."
Now that Riley thought about it, mission code names at IOD, and everywhere else actually, always seemed to be historically bad. That was such a terrible idea and why did he suggest it? After looking at his audience and catching the dead stare of the chubby kid- whom Riley assumed to be the tracker, unless Quincy had a double job or Annabell had somehow developed some new powers he was unaware of- he forced himself to move on.
"I'm Four- as you all know- which means I'm in charge of the Fourth Division, also known as," Girl Guides, but Riley shouldn't say that, "known to specialize in scouting. Tracking Glaeroes movements, ferals, and so forth- which you probably also knew," he added in sheepishly. Heck, wouldn't the tracker logically have to be part of his own division? "In any case, this mission's a bit of a weird one, because it's in Five's department too. The main chunk of it, actually," he frowned, unable to help from wondering, why exactly One had given this to him. Riley guessed he was supposed to be more powerful. But Zach was the one who actually HAD a power at this point.
Riley sighed, wringing his hands with a small amount of frustration, his brown-red hair flopping over his eyes while he was clicking over to the next slide.
It showed a hole in metal, singed and melted around the edges, blue sky on the other side. "You may have seen that already, I don't know exactly where it is- but it was found in our base following the rebel attack here. Recorded evidence has shown it to be the work of a powerful rebel, who managed to redirect a significant portion of Three's blast upwards, punching this hole through the ceiling." Yes that was scary.
"The current theory is that Three, who kind of burns himself down to ashes in the process of exploding, got swept out with the blast, which is why we haven't been able to find him. Which is what we've got to do," he clarified, looking in turn at each of the others, "Find him."
The dizzy kid seemed to be nodding off.
Now feeling harried, Riley shortened the remaining explanation: "And they want us to investigate a bunch of suspicious places while we're at it."
He couldn't stop staring at that kid now, who was narrowing his eyes in such a tired way, he couldn't possibly be following. And it was completely disconcerting.
Riley looked to Annabell for an indication if one; this was making sense to normal members of the human race, and two; if she was willing to punch the kid or some other appropriate measure to wake him up, because sound didn't seem to be working thus far and Riley wasn't a fan of screeching.