Private Roleplay~ IOD

demon • 31 December 2015 at 3:20 PM

A whistling sound filled the valley, bouncing off each side's slopes without as much as the tiniest interference from the wind. It was inordinately quiet in the valley, or it would be, without them.
They pressed their lips together for a second, concentrating as they made a little leap from one large rock to another. Most of the area was covered by dry, roughly-packed dirt, but the hill they were beginning to climb was a little bit different; for one thing, it held molten magma inside. But that wasn't what interested this one.
Obstacle cleared, they stuck their free hand back in its pocket, made that little 'o' with their lips again and continued to whistle and climb onward.
Their other arm was cradling something strange. It looked like an old kind of Grecian pot, only out of metal. More fancy than tough, really, though it could probably still take a beating- or deal one out, if the bearer was so inclined.
The small set of feet hopped along to the tune, which was anything but exuberant, really. If there were geeks of classical music about, they'd probably say it sounded a bit like some famous piece of Chopin's. If there were any Star Wars nerds about though, they'd probably call it the Imperial March, aka Darth Vader's Theme.
They couldn't care any less, just continued to belt it out with a smile, because what better tune was there to put one in a good mood? Surely there wasn't such a thing. They were sure of it.
They didn't even need to move one step to the left or right before they found what they were looking for. They came to a stop right in front of it and just right on continued whistling as they whipped a brush out of their pockets and began to sweep it all up. Of course, it was impossible to get it all- but they didn't need to. Just the majority would do.
Carelessly Mael hefted the urn, complete with its new ashy tenant, up against his hip, cast the brush aside (littering, not his problem), and made his way back down the side of the volcano.
Once at the bottom, he looked back up for a moment and considered the sun, rising just behind the volcano in the east, and then turned his attention ahead, westwards- and then swiveled back, south-east.
"Ah, I've got time, don't I?"
So he walked south-east, and whistle-wise, started on his mental collection of Christmas carols.


"So, plans for tonight? Who will you be taking out?" They asked, in an attempt to steer the rickety vessel of conversion back into less troubled and frosty waters. This was after a brief interim, wherein they had, with no small difficulty, persuaded and aided the seventh leader into leaving the bar stool, and furthermore the entire bar scene behind. One relatively quick bathroom stop later and Septa was at least decent enough to walk the Glaeroes corridors looking honestly more dignified than he normally did doing it. Well, it wasn't like there was anything left to save, reputation-wise. And if they were honest with themselves, they kind of did appreciate the whole Captain J. Sparrow thing he had going on with the messed-up eyeliner. Surely no one would dare protest against that.
Still, in that time, there had been very little by way of things said, not since Septa had dropped that 'mysterious visitor' conversation ball on their foot, and they were careful to judge if he was ready before picking anything up again. If Septa didn't want to speak, he wouldn't- and their main goal here was to save themselves from awkwardness.
This ball, however, was not exactly safe to throw, and they already knew it. That question had a history steeped in awkwardness, after all. But it was sort of one that had to be asked and answered, anyway. No better time like the present, right? ... Really they'd just had a burning urge to say SOMETHING, and it had turned out dumb like always.
There was as usual the slow pause afterwards in which the barkeeper never failed to be seized by panic- had he forgotten, or worse, had they-?
"Bree," he answered with a quiet grunt, as if lacking in enthusiasm- but the easy smile that followed whisked such thoughts away.
"..." The personal name used took a few moments to process, but of course barkeep James knew their people better than any priest running a confessional, and nothing escaped them. In fact they never tried to know any of this it was unfortunately just thrust upon them. An occupational hazard. "Ah, right. But... With that group delayed, wouldn't she-"
"They have a week," Septa reminded them, and yes, now the guy was definitely a bit grumpy. "But yes, I'll ask her if she wants to revise our plans. Again. Happy?" he complained with a sulky look, like someone being coerced into getting out of bed in the morning. Exactly like, which they knew, because that was exactly what James had had to do just a half hour prior to the guy, with the bar stool and counter being the leader's bed-equivalent. He had such terrible habits.
They couldn't help but smile affectionately at him, and give a good ol' pat on the shoulder to make his knees buckle. "'Course I am. I'm taking shift tonight, by the way-"
"You don't have to do that," Septa inserted quietly.
"Of course I do," they reprimanded him. "With everyone leaving we're short-staffed- it's not like the queues cut to match- and while Manny might want to work, he also might not, and I want tomorrow free," they finished with a huff.
"You don't need that either," Septa said with a tone of frustration.
The look they gave him was nothing sort of incredulous. "I can't have a date AND work. It's not even that hard of a job, boss, quit being such a baby," James surprised him with a sharp tap on the nose. "And you know, if you ever need help with your girl of tonight, I'll be on hand-"
Septa coughed, also indignant. "We've been together nearly six months! And since when do I need help?" he muttered the last part.
"Right. Brillante," they remembered, slowing down. "Just brilliant..."
Septa smirked. "I know you don't like her-"
"It's not that-"
"And that she's a bit too fancy for your taste-"
"It's definitely not that-"
"She only ever wears green and you only ever wear black-"
"Ok that's just absurd-"
"Oh yeah and what else have you got on, don't tell me your underwear's pink-"
"There is red text RIGHT HERE on my shirt you idiot-"
"Yeah well, prove it!"
"What."
"I'm color-blind," Septa lied most obviously, literally with the most ridiculous smarmy voice anyone had ever heard.
They rolled their eyes, so hard they thought their eyeballs might get jammed looking into their own eyebrows, but this did nothing to impede the small smile tugging at their lips, until they forced it down. "I just don't want you to get hurt."
And Septa grinned, that stupid maniacal grin which like a roller coaster without the safety restraints, was equal parts frightening and horrendously attractive. At least, James assumed that smart people found it resistible. But those people didn't get involved in Septa's world anyway, not much more than dipping in their toes in for the cheapest, most fake of thrills. Now they, lowly barkeep L. R. James, were clearly NOT SMART. "Don't you?" Septa asked with a sly look. "Oh but think of all the fun we could have in ice-cream therapy."
James glanced away. "No, I'd still rather you didn't." They didn't even let a blush color their cheeks, they were serious. They'd rather their boss stayed dating, even a hundred other girls, better than him getting hurt by losing one. It certainly wasn't worth wishing hurt on him.
"If it was you, I mightn't be so nice," the leader warned them for the a hundredth time. His voice was uncharacteristically heavy.
"Yeah," they sighed softly. "I know." This guy was so shameless, he might even throw a party. And wouldn't that be a sight, as always?
Septa smiled big and bright again and grabbed their hand. "C'mere."
"It's not our turn-" they protested, before getting an armful of thin, bony, black-haired (lots of hair) leader, pressed against them in a hug.
"Bree can file a formal complaint," he whispered in their ear.
James snorted in surprise. "You're kidding."
"'Course I am. You mad?" They could feel his smile against their neck.
"No way."
Septa moved back, then tilted their head up to kiss the more than willing barkeep.

asi • 31 December 2015 at 3:22 PM

For just a minute, they circled one another, and then the battle began in earnest.
'Verse jumped forward aggressively, the deep dark blue at her edges striking out, and Zan had taken two steps back before he realized there was no actual force to the move, that it was purely the work of her aura.
How embarrassing. He knew her power to be reversal, which meant all she could do by way of 'super' attacks was use his own expenditure against him.
As she threw punches however, Zan felt in his effort to roll away several blows raining down on his back, and then a slice of pain just nicking along his jawline as he stood and she drew her knife and the two met mid-movement, him then being the one to stumble back in shock. Normally Blaine could at least dodge by himself. Obviously Blaine'd never fought this witch, but still... Zan would've thought he- with the same physical abilities- would be at least able to dodge!
Power stuff was clearly not all this power could do.
His eyes widened as she swung at him, too fast, his legs jerked back but it was far from enough. Her foot slammed into his stomach, knocking the wind out of him and out from under him, it felt like, as his side hit the stone with a sharp thump.
Two eyes blue like the sky at midnight were glaring down as he picked himself up from the ground. And Zan was barely given a breath before she came at him again, another flurry of punches and knife-swipes it was just in his capabilities to dodge and for the most part block.
It was surely the worst, most exhaustive few minutes of Zan's life. He hadn't even known what sweat had tasted like until 'Verse had decided to kill him in the midst of their cult's yoga session. Salty and gross. Like raw rotting meat washed in the sea and strung up to dry. And he was doing badly. Of course he was, when he was so unfit. He knew how to dodge, but his reactions were too slow, his movements questioning, not decisive, and he hadn't found the space to even try launch one offensive back, let alone actually get something through her constant barrage.
If he didn't stand a chance the human way, hand-to-hand-and-blade, Zan had to take her on as a power. It was really the only way he knew how.
He clenched his fists; the realm turned cold, then sweltering.
'Verse cackled.
In a hurry he dropped his part on the temperature- after a minute the centigrade followed, and returned the room to its normal setting. Which, with all these excited animals breathing around, felt really only infinitesimally better. Zan was exactly where he was before, except now he could feel sweat behind his ears, of all places.
No, scratch that, he was even worse off, as 'Verse caught him in distraction and lay a hit to his ribs that happened to be a VERY sore spot from last night and brought instant stinging tears to his eyes. He staggered back until his back fell against the encircling audience, who again mercilessly pushed him back in. Almost right into 'Verse's ready blade, had he not danced to the side in time.
Zan was as powerful as ANY of them, how did it always end up like this? His life. Was so hard. Why did anyone want to live one?
He began dodging for said life, in an unthinking panic as her strikes started coming in as fast as a death adder and as frequent as a machine gun. There wasn't the time to formulate a plan when his opponent was operating on attack, attack, attack! He jumped and twisted and stretched, feeling the whoosh of air as her hand jabbed out over his ear-pressed-to-shoulder tilted head, and he swiftly fell into a crouch and rolled to his right before she could bring the knife down on the side of his neck.
He caught strange flashes of the crowd during, their jubilant faces feeling oddly removed from Zan's situation- of course, he was trapped in a world of horror, they of simple fun. It seemed absurd to him to think of anyone cheering or celebrating, or whatever they were doing looking like that, with teethy grins and arms in the air and spit flying as they shouted things Zan couldn't hear. Ew.
He didn't see Bliss, in fact, he didn't think he saw a single face, none of them seeming to make any sense, until he saw the power of Stella. She was watching, staring without expression. It was so strange, in the midst of chaos, that Zan barely registered the pounding feet and the sight of 'Verse running at him, and only heard the chainsaw-roaring growl like a misplaced, out-of-touch soundtrack, before she was upon him, tackling him to the ground.
Zan struggled to- oh heck, he didn't even know- just move, really, but 'Verse was sitting on his stomach, causing a wave of agony to shoot through him, and punching his face, and judging by the ringing in his ears, this human body of his was going to call lights out pretty darn soon.
"Pay attention!' she shouted at him amidst blows.
Imagine his surprise when he shot a beam of concentrated ice at her, and the presence was gone.
Blinking his wet, bleary, beaten eyes, Zan raised his head off the stone floor and looked to see 'Verse pulling herself up, from where she'd landed a few meters away, having smashed into the crowd and then fell to the ground on the rebound.
The audience didn't even look too displeased, which Zan counted as a plus. 'Verse looked pleased, which he didn't.
"Get up," she instructed threateningly, as soon as she herself had done so.
Breathing roughly, uneven, he did so, wincing as pain stabbed at his foot, seemingly out of nowhere. He hadn't the slightest clue when he'd got hurt there- but then he hadn't had a hope of keeping track of his injuries.


"Where's Spence- where's Mael," Bliss panted out, having ran all the way there.
The guy didn't look up from his book. "Not here." He flicked over a page and continued reading.
"Well- then where?"
He turned another page decisively. "Not anywhere."
"Well- well- WELL," the doctor said, desperately loud, waving his arms around as if that would somehow get the reader's attention. "You're in charge here, right? Can't you do something?"
The guy did look up from his book. "Do what, user?" His eyes glowed his cobalt blue, neon bright like a warning color of a creature naturally venomous. Bliss had seen the blue of poison dart frogs before, and it was uncanny.
"T-they're b-b-beating Za-an up..." Bliss stammered badly.
Rai frowned, seemingly skeptical. "Is she killing him?"
"... Y-yes?" He hoped this was the right answer, meaning: one that would make this guy do something. Something helpful. Bliss was an optimistic thinker, clearly.
What sounded like a mildly irritated grunt. "I was going to go anyway." The leader tosses his book aside, uncaring of how it landed flopped open and with a few pages falling out. "Come on."
Rai led the way down the corridor and Bliss followed close behind with unsure, but hurried steps.

taffy789 • 3 January 2016 at 2:59 AM

The young woman lead Naji through the infirmary, past empty cots with white curtains drawn halfway around them, near sterile smells and syringes, and finally into a small office whose doorway was hidden by a shower curtain decorated with frogs holding lilypad umbrellas. The right eye and leg of one frog was covered by a taped up sign that read "Chief Healer's Office". Struck dumb by the strange decor choice, Naji had a staring contest with the smiling frog's one unhidden eye until the young woman scoffed, said a condenscending, "Kid, aren't you a space case?" and pushed the newest healer inside the office to meet his boss.
The chief healer sat behind a desk, his head bent and his eyes concentrated on the large stack of papers in front of him. Naji froze in the doorway, unsure whether or not he had permission to take another step inside. The chief healer looked busy, with that pen of his furiously scratching against a page, pausing in deliberation, and then furiously attacking the paper again in a different spot. Still frozen, Naji was relieved when the healer flipped the paper he'd been working on into the "outbox" on his desk, but that relief quickly faded into panic when the healer pulled yet another paper from the "inbox" and started the process again without so much of an acknowledging glance in Naji's direction.
 Naji started to seriously worry that his power had developed some random invisibility effect when the young woman pushed both into the room and into him.
 "Kid, don't stand like a mute statue right in the doorway, alright?" she grumbled before walking and taking a seat in one of the bar stool-esque chairs facing the desk.
 Because his new boss had given him no cue to sit down, Naji took that as a sign that he could feel free to.
 When he walked over to the chairs available, he noticed the lack luster quality of the old, shaky things. Most strikingly, how only one chair had butt cushioning- followed quickly by the revelation that the young woman had left him with the one that was nothing but bare metal and sharp edges. Reluctantly, Naji sat in the second seat and squirmed in vain to feel comfortable.
 Despite his two visitors now sitting a foot from his desk, the chief healer stayed silent, reading over and signing every page of paperwork in his inbox at a slower pace than before, if such a speed was even fathomable, yet alone possible. Somehow still, the healer seemed to be achieving it. 
After five minutes of silence and sitting and shifting around on the cold piece of metal poking up his butt, Naji frantically glanced over both of his new workmates, looking for any signs that they found the "odd" about something, anything in this situation. But there was no recognition in either the young woman's bored expression or the man's stoic one- they both simply accepted... whatever the heck was going on presently for what it was.
 After another five minutes passed, Naji began to wonder if, in actuality, he was the crazy one, and the entire, horrible situation was some twisted part of his imagination crafting a personal purgatory starring his worst fear- prolonged, awkward social interactions. He'd just finished resigning himself to his own insanity when the chief healer moved the last piece of paperwork to his "outbox".
 Finally done with his task, the healer lifted his head, gave a smile which somehow was the furtherest, most removed gesture from an actual smile, and pleasantly said in a way that grated against Naji's insides before dumping ice water over his head, "Please, you both, I implore you to please take a seat."
 Naji felt his entire body freeze up, all at once, and he wanted to cry.
 He immediately considered the benefits of prostrating himself at the chief healer's feet, but the young woman sitting at his left simply rolled her eyes and growled "bite me Dylan" rather threateningly. 
"Chief Velaquez," the healer chided the young woman, obviously more for Naji's learning than hers.
 "Bite me Dylan."
 "So," Chief Velaquez began, pulling a file from his desk and lazily leafing through it, "you're the newest healer here, correct? Management sent your file ahead of you, so good for you. Let's see what dirt we can dig up on you, shall we? ....Official job, field medic. Registered name, Naji Bhatti. Oh," he mused, not listening to Naji's quiet affirmation of those facts, "that has a nice ring to it.
 So, Naji Bhatti," Chief Velaquez set the file down on his desk in favor of scanning over the boy with piercing, interested eyes, "as you already know, I am Healer-In-Chief Dylan Velaquez, the most experienced healer at this small, understaffed little outpost. To keep humble, there's really not much I want to say about myself-" the young woman to Naji's left scoffed; Chief Velaquez raised an eyebrow at her before continuing, with greater force- "...and I'm sure you'll learn all about me in due time, from the lauding mouth of my own lovely assistant Paola here, whom you've already been introduced to..."
 Paola, looking bored, stretched in her chair and yawned the words "bite me Dylan" up towards the tent's ceiling. 
 "Now," Chief Velaquez said, glancing Naji over as to make sure he was paying attention, "back to your expected duties.
 Your status as field medic dictates that you must follow your squadron on the occasional mission, but the rest of your time is to be spent helping out us here. Although, you don't need to anticipate much work, as nobody usually arrives with horribly gruesome injuries- the extremely heavily injured are expected to die in combat. Only the lucky ones make it back to us, but those are far and few between. But once missions begin in full force
you can expect nasty knife wounds or burns and simple things along those lines."
 At the thought of dealing with the injured, Naji paled and hoped his loss of color didn't betray his trepidation.
 Chief Velaquez continued, "it isn't that hard of a job, but your exact duties depend on the capabilities of your power, of course. We can't have a healer who can reattach limbs wasting their energy trying to fix a pinched nerve. Resource management is key- the people working in Management stress that about a thousand times a status report to us, so annoying... But I'm straying off topic. So. Naji Bhatti. What are the exact capabilities of your healing power?"
 Somehow, the more truthful words of "I can't do anything; I shouldn't even be here" were replaced with "Oh, just basic wound healing, closing them, and, you know, healing skin damage... stuff".
Chief Velaquez nodded slightly and leafed through Naji's file again, an action which caused Naji's heart to palpitate frantically. Was that file the one the school had on him? If so, was he ever screwed. He'd failed so hard at healer training that his coach had said- well, YELLED-  that he was more likely to kill somebody before he saved anybody. Oh, he prayed that his coach's comment had been left out from the file, he prayed so hard, he prayed to that god his parents put so much stock into but that he himself had begun to doubt (due mostly to the fact that god was the very same who, through cursing him with a power, had gotten him stuck on an island so horrifying that they'd literally named it Despair).
 Apparently his prayers worked, because the chief healer didn't seem concerned after reading over a few paragraphs. Or perhaps, Naji realized glumly, his boss really was so desperate for healers that he couldn't be choosey.
 "Well Naji Bhatti," Chief Velaquez grinned as he rolled the name off his tongue and threw Naji's file into a desk drawer, "you had the proper training, I'm assured. Even a super simple healing power like yours can be useful to us."
 "Um," Naji paused, unsure whether or not he had been insulted, "um? Um, t-thank you, sir?"
 "Sir?" Chief Velaquez's eyebrows quirked, "oh, I like that, I like this. Paola, tell me, why do you never refer to me as sir?"
 Something sparked in Paola's placid eyes when the chief healer's smug expression settled upon her.
 "Well, sir," Paola smiled in a way eerily similar to Velaquez's "there's-no-chance-that's-a-smile" smile during that "please take a seat" comment, "I think, sir, it'll be a shame to call you sir all the time when there are plenty of other, more appropriate things I could be calling you, sir."
 "Oh no, Paola," Chief Velaquez shrugged, now shifting through the paperwork stacked in his outbox "there's no need. I wouldn't want you to strain yourself trying to expand your vocabulary like that."
 Paola showed no signs of anger as she slowly got off the barstool seat and stretched her back. Her spine popped with a satisfying noise, and she looked at the Healer-In-Chief, familiar words forming on her lips but not fully leaving because of Chief Velaquez suddenly snapping, "Oh, and stop saying that already, I'm not a vampire, I'm not going to do that, be quiet."
 Apparently his annoyed tone was enough for her, because Paola smirked and turned to leave, getting to the doorway before her boss stopped her with, "And you have to show the new guy around, so take him with you as you go."
 Naji, who had been wincing in his seat during the whole aggressive display of passive-aggression, jumped when he was mentioned. He looked quickly to Paola, who gave a blank, intimidating stare, before gulping and looking back to Chief Velaquez, who gave an annoyed, equally intimidating hand wave away. Naji, sensitive to that obvious clue of "you've overstayed your welcome", followed Paola through the frog curtain and back into the sterilized hallways of the infirmary tent.

awesomeness • 4 January 2016 at 5:00 PM

Quincy frowned unhappily at Izzy's response, or lack thereof. However, Four's throat clearing distracted him from replying, and he turned away from Izzy to listen to the leader.

On the other side of the room, Annabell also listened attentively as Riley briefed the group on their mission.
That is, until he mentioned the part about dumb mission acronyms. She almost wistfully sighed; it was times like these that she remembered how acutely she missed Leon. He would've been the first to shout out a stupid acronym that made no sense, something like...
...
... Her mind went blank.
This annoyed her, so she spent much of Riley's explanation staring, focused, at her friend but in actuality spending all her mental energy trying to come up with a properly dumb acronym.
She was trying to figure out what the "X" in P.H.O.E.N.I.X. could stand for when Riley sent a meaningful glance her way.
Her back immediately straightened itself, and Annabell worked to decode Riley's expression. He looked... frustrated. And staring right at her. So, frustrated... frustrated at her?
Annabell panicked, her heart speeding up a little. It was rather rude of her to drift off like that, wasn't it? Of course it was. She bit her bottom lip and watched Riley as he too watched her, looking expectant.
Um, did he want her to talk, to apologize? No, public admonishment didn't sound like something Riley would do. ...Right?
Maybe he was giving her the benefit of the doubt, like he wanted her to prove she'd been listening?
"Um," Annabell didn't know what she should say, so she decided o wing it.
"Personally, Ril-Four! I think... um, that our mission acronym should be C.O.L. You know, for "Collect Our Leader"."
Oh, gosh.
Realizing how stupid she sounded, Annabell covered her mouth with a hand and blushed a deep, telling pink. She adverted her eyes from her friend, growing too hot in the face to bear meeting his gaze any further.
Staring at one of the empty display cases in the room, Annabell remained a pink color and began to regret every decision she had ever made.

Although Annabell had missed the crucial, annoyed glances the fourth leader had sent Izzy, Quincy hadn't.
Whispering a soft, barely audible "hey", he nudged Izzy slightly with his elbow- a reminder to look alive.
Quincy figured that it didn't matter much if Izzy wasn't actually paying attention; he just had to seem like he was. Besides, Quincy knew that he could always fill him in later.
The Eighth division worker- with the most challenging thing he'd done lately being finding misfiled paperwork- was so excited about his first real, important mission in ages that he could listen enough for the both of them.

asi • 4 January 2016 at 7:06 PM

Riley's hand also moved towards his face, twitching, but in his case it was with the clear intention of slapping his forehead. Through force of will he managed to lower it, face now twitching all the while.
He must have seemed so pitiful, mentioning acronyms, that Annabell had felt sorry enough to try and humor him, even when it was obvious she had absolutely no feel for mission acronyms. He hadn't just embarrassed himself, he'd brought Annabell down with him too. God. He really wanted to hit himself. "Great, Annabell," he forced himself to smile falsely. "We'll- we'll keep that in mind."
They weren't going to keep that in mind. It was just really bad. What were they, some charity group? It was really bad.

As for the other two in the room, Izzy was surprise-jolted by Quincy's elbowing- he stared confusedly at the ceiling, as if expecting to find the culprit there, before lazily his gaze floated downwards to roundabouts where Four was, at least, more or less. The appropriate direction, sort of.
At the same time, his hand snaked out to grasp at the foreign offending (no matter how lightly) limb. At first it may seem like he grabbed the elbow out of annoyance, but as he continued to hold it, gently as if for balance, it should be evident to anyone who knew him that Izzy had other motives going for him.
The sun-soaked youth blinked, really trying to bring the leader into focus for a moment, before his eyes slid back out of clarity, hazing over again to their normal, glazed look.
His fingers tightened just a bit around Quincy's elbow.

Giving his team a once-over, Riley could tell that exactly one person had listened and understood the very simple mission he was trying to tell them about. That person was Annabell, because he didn't know the other two and he certainly didn't trust them- at least not with listening, that is. Okay, the bad-timed but somewhat socially-adept one looked like he was, but how was Riley to know for sure? He wasn't even convinced Annabell listening was better than no-one listening, considering the fact that she'd had to chose to comment on the absolute worst and most embarrassing thing he'd said!
... Now also blushing, Riley quickly turned his head towards the the projector, trying to wrangle his mind back in the same direction.
"Well, good, so uh, the places we'll be visiting, they were decided by Kitty- I-I mean, someone very knowledgeable and important, whom we should definitely listen to-" he stopped his babbling just before he went and added something incredibly stupid, like, 'and pretty'.
Riley stared at the picture of the grimy, khaki-green swamp of A-L and wished somehow a teleporter would just magically show and instantaneously transport them there... Wait, he could actually have that done, right? With that relief in mind, he hurriedly typed off a message to the teleporter in reserve. Just a short note saying could they please go right away.
To the group, whether he had their attention or not, he explained; "Our first destination is a spot just within our territory, on the outskirts. The border there hasn't been contested for some time, so patrols are scarce, and since the spot is an old ruin, a deep one, in the swamp area A-L and half-swamped itself, they naturally don't have the time or inclination to explore it. Still, this kind of thing is dangerous to leave unchecked, so that's our task now. And we'll see if we can pick up on Three's scent while we're in the area," Riley finished sounding almost brisk and businesslike for once in the briefing.
And when the teleporter came almost promptly, he nodded and hefted his pack onto his back, the twin daos Two had given him already sheathed together and buckled handily around his waist.

taffy789 • 5 January 2016 at 1:42 AM

Recovering from embarrassment, Annabell worked up enough courage to look at Riley, and she had to swallow a groan when she noticed the pack hanging off the leader's shoulders.
"Um, Riley?" Annabell coughed nervously, "um, how long are we going to be gone on this mission again because, um, no matter how long this takes-" Annabell pulled her sheathed knife from the clip on her belt and held it out lamely towards her friend- "I bet I'm going to need a lot more than this?
 And," she defended herself, moving her body in a flustered and frustrated manner, "and yeah, I should've brought some stuff at least, I know that! But like," here her pink blush grew even darker, "I was really concentrated on not getting my memories wiped by Eight to bother with that to be honest, and, yeah, not getting my memories jacked by Eight is actually something that really concerns me right now, please don't ask?" Taking a deep breath, she concluded, her entire body glowing hot with embarrassment.
 From his spot on the wall, Quincy watched Annabell and, slightly amused, decide to help her out. 
 "Yeah, she's telling the truth, I was there, and frankly getting memory wiped by Eight is something we should all be fearful of?" Quincy offered this sincerely before quietening, then adding, "Also I didn't bring anything either."
 Quincy felt the urge to twiddle his fingers against his thigh, but given Izzy's hold on his right elbow, he settled for swaying his left arm back and forth.
  The grateful glance Annabell sent him relieved him somewhat- if he was going down for forgetting his supplies then at least he would have company. 
 Calming some, Quincy relaxed and slightly leaned into Izzy's grip on his arm.



Zach didn't flinch at the hardness in Raven's words; he instead swished the coffee in his cup around once, twice, no, for three rotations and watched what little he had spilt slide slowly over the cartoonish bacon picture.
 "Shadow," he said after the lukewarm coffee drops had dripped onto his hand, "I have no idea what kind of sorry job they stuck YOU with, but guess what? Mine's a load of bull crap. A load of complete, utter bull crap that has been created to waste my time and test my patience."
 His hand weaved through his hair, and he frowned, throughly annoyed, at the metal ceiling above. 
 "Thinking about it," he confessed, still sounding very much frustrated, "I get the feeling the veteran is trying to keep me busy, and my "feelings" are hardly ever wrong. Well, if they don't want to deal with me, then I have no problem with that, but they have a lot to learn if they're going to keep pushing stupid tasks on me and expect me to do them without question.
 And that, Shadow, is how MY job has gone. I'm sure," Zach said, sarcastic, "that whatever job you have was also chosen by "management" with the same respect given to your rank and skill level, and that's the reason it involves bringing me coffee."
  Huffing and seething, Zach finished with his... no, it hadn't been angry ranting, it had been reasonable complaints voiced a bit loudly to... no one in particular. Raven had just so happened to be in listening distance, so naturally he had directed his words towards her to avoid looking like a madman who talk to walls.
 ... Somewhere, somehow, Zach heard a scoff aimed at him echo into his brain. He pressed his free hand against his forehead and held it, the entire situation doing nothing to help with that constant, pounding headache burning at the back of his skull...
"Excuse me, Five?" a voice sounded, and Zach flipped around quickly to meet the messenger's even gaze.
 "What?" Five snapped, and the messenger recoiled slightly out of surprise before composing themselves again. "It's about those three you ordered on supply duty. They have patrol duty in about fifteen minutes but need you to relieve them from the other job first."
 Blinking at the messenger, Zach struggled to comprehend the words being spoke to him. Something about him having to get rid of those three he put on box moving duty? He didn't know; it was hard to hear over the sound of his blood pulsing through his brain.
 "Those three can stay where they are," the fifth leader grumbled to the messenger, "and you can tell them that yourself."
 The messenger, frowning, reminded the leader that SOMEBODY had to go on patrol duty if not those three, and that there were hardly any replacements available.
"Well, I'm not doing anything important," Five snapped back, "I'll go. It's just patrol duty, so that many people aren't even necessary. Nothing ever happens during patrol duty. So I'll be enough; a leader for three... regular... people."
 The messenger blinked at the word choice, and Zach wanted to break his own skull against the wall in revenge for his brain's faltering state.
"...I'll go tell Tabs to expect you at the send-off station in fifteen minutes, then," the messenger said, quietly, before shuffling off down the hallway.
 As soon as the messenger was out of sight, both of Zach's hands flew up and clawed into his hair as if trying to pull it all out. They traveled across his scalp in an agitated, erratic manner before finally coming to a rest at the back of his neck. They were still in this position when Zach turned to face Raven, his hair now standing on its ends. Staring straight at her, he challenged her more than asked, "Well, Shadow, are you going to let management make you serve coffee to everyone or are you coming on patrol duty?" 

asi • 7 January 2016 at 5:43 PM

"Really?" Riley looked curiously between the two not-sleeping members of his team. "Eight?" he frowned. It had never even crossed his mind to worry about her, despite the fact that he had heard very well how prone she was to, er, erratic behavior. Then again; "But she gave me my memories back."
In his experience, Eight really hadn't been anything like the menace these two described... Then Riley remembered; "Oh yeah, Two was also there." The second leader had loomed over them the entire encounter like a cloud, one that brought shade to the ground for miles all around.
With that reassuring thought in mind, he smiled easily, thoughts of slight delays no longer a bother for him, and turned to the last teammate. "Did you forget anything too?" Because he may as well cover all his bases. And there was a positive too; Riley no longer had any fear at all of seeming incompetent among this lot.
When the subject in question seemed to fall asleep on their bodyguard's shoulder, Riley could only assume the small but bulging gym bag at his feet meant he was prepared as he'd ever be... Hey, wasn't that weird? Riley scrutinized the two strangers for a moment. The first had seemed almost hostile when the Quincy guy first arrived, yet now they were...
Bemused, Riley just shook his head and turned to the teleporter. "Okay, we need to make a detour or two before we go on our way. Can you two," he pointed to Annabell and Quincy. "Explain to them where your rooms are? Then we can pick up your things and go."


For a while Raven really did seem to be struggling with something. Perhaps an invisible set of ropes binding her limbs together, judging by the way she squirmed in particular as Zach talked about, 'people who didn't want to deal with him'.
However, when the messenger showed she looked around to watch the interaction, and when Five declared his intention to go on patrol, Raven finally seemed settled, resigned even, with her decision. What he did afterwards with his hair didn't even manage to raise one of her eyebrows.
She tilted her head back and drank her coffee with the sole objective of making the cup empty, before casting it aside.
"Okay, fine. I'll come, though I don't see how patrol duty is any more 'respectful' to me," she muttered as she walked, frowning doubtfully at the term, seeing as the entire concept of respect seemed to be in question at this place. Still Raven followed Zach's lead in the direction of the send-off station. She only glanced back behind her once, as they rounded a corner that would hide that corridor from sight, but saw nothing.

It was only after the pair were well and truly gone that they emerged from the tunnel crevice wherein they had squirreled themselves away. After all, their tentacle hair needed careful extraction, and that took a certain amount of time.
Dreadlocks drifted up to where the girl had stood and stooped slowly down to pick up the discarded cup, and even if their face could have been seen behind all that hair, there probably wouldn't have been very interesting to see anyway.
They walked back the way they had come, swaying all the way to keep the cup from falling from where they had it balanced on the tip of their nose.

taffy789 • 8 January 2016 at 5:28 PM

"Okay Bhatti," were Paola's first words as the two stepped into the hallway, "first lesson learned by now? Write this down, under rule number one in some little notebook somewhere, and feel free to underline it a few times too, for emphasis- Dylan's a pile of crap. A jerk. A persona muy muy mal, however you need to hear it to understand, capiche?"
 Naji did understand- even that Spanish part, because his French classes, though relatively useless, did teach him enough to understand that she basically called Chief Velazquez a "bad person", which Naji didn't consider much of an insult but whatever- yet he didn't dare give her a vocal confirmation of his understanding. They weren't even out of earshot of the chief healer's office yet, having just stepped out of it-!
When Paola glared at him expectantly, he did nod, however.
 "Good," she grunted and started down the hallway, "now let me go show you around this horrible place."

After being shown where the basic first aid supplies and tightly locked away anesthetics were, Naji double checked to make sure that they both were FAR away from Chief Velazquez's office before venturing to his guide, "Um, Paola? What is, um, why do you, um, why do you think that Chief- Dylan- is a bad person?"
 "I have an entire list," Paola snorted, pausing to straighten the covers on a cot they passed, "it's a good ten pages long, all in the smallest font. You sure you wanna hear it?"
 When she put it like that, no, but before Naji could reply she had already begun.
 "First off, he's pretentious and full of himself. There's a smug air to him that nobody can wipe away, he's never humble, he treats every accomplishment he achieves like it's some huge deal, like he deserves a gold medal for just doing his job. And he barely does his job! No, he's too busy with "paperwork" and "micromanagement" and apparently that means he can't get off his butt to heal people once in a while, despite him being a healer? And I'm stuck tending to the wounded and scrubbing off the sick who've thrown up on themselves, and he can't be bothered with that because he needs to "keep up his energy". Yeah, right, because of "resource management" or whatever. Your healing power is so strong that once you saved a guy from becoming another absentee amputee? Wow, good for you, it's not like six months later that same guy you "saved" came pleading to play ill to skip a lethal mission and you did nothing while that guy died anyway! How great of a person are you, huh?"
 Agitated and worked up to a violent passion, Paola angrily swiped at the creases in the cot's covers while Naji could only reply to all those words with a small gulp and an intelligent "ummm".
 "And," Paola continued harshly, "I'm pretty sure he's been smuggling supplies. There's always less than we ordered when I open the crates, but the "paperwork" he has says that we got the correct amount. Management vertifies, but it's a lot of baloney. Missing numbers are easily to fill in, Bhatti."
 Paola chewed on the side of her cheek, examined the room they were in, and then left, Naji having to jog to catch up to her fast walking speed.
"But the worst sin of all," Paola spat out as she lead Naji to the next area of interest, "is that he's a god forsaken bureaucratic type."
 She paused. Naji expected her to continue and was confused when she didn't, as if that explanation was enough on it's own.
 So, in order to figure out what "a god forsaken bureaucratic type" was so he could definitely avoid being that around Paola, he prompted, "What does that mean?"
 "Oh, you know," Paola said, "lots of things. Like so by the book that there's no heart left for anyone. More concerned with moving up in the world than you are with morality, and willing to step on people get to the top to boot. But people I know mainly use it as you would use heartless, but, yeah, it's more heartless because you're so powerful in the system that you're safe, so you can afford to be heartless when it shouldn't..." Paola stopped walking, causing Naji to almost bump into her back. She crossed her arms as if hugging herself.
 "It shouldn't be like that, you get it? And it sucks too, because from what I've heard about our most powerful, they hardly care a smidge about us. Well, some of our leaders sound okay. Deca for example, I heard has good intentions, but bad beliefs, the poor kid. And I heard Tetra cares for us smaller people but he's also the head of the torture department, so, what's the truth? Then a majority keep to their friend circles and don't do much. Then lastly you have leaders like Septa, who's reputation makes you wonder if he even remembers that he's supposed to be leading an army, and then there's Dia, who's probably the most "bureaucratic" of them all."
" 'Bureaucratic' here meaning... Heartless?" Naji asked, wincing as if expecting rebuke for the question. One didn't come.
 "Yeah," Paola replied, "Making matters worse, the old Dia before the current was nothing like this. I wasn't around to know him, but I heard that Dia was really trying to help out, well, everybody. He tried to uproot the clear cruelty of most Glaeroe tactics- things like those useless reconnaissance missions going on today. With the current Dia, though, those types missions seem to have only increased. If that keeps going, then I wouldn't be surprised if those lethal reconnaissance missions started being handed out to everyone like free pamphlets from a guy on a street corner who you'd tried not to make eye contact with."
 A strangled "oh" was all Naji had to say to that, and, upon hearing that pitiful noise, Paola looked upon the boy with a gruff, hard sort of sympathy.
 "So, you understand, Bhatti? All these people way more powerful than you? Don't think that they give a care about you. The government doesn't care, the leaders don't care, Dylan doesn't care. They don't know you personally, they'll never know you personally, and so you're nothing more to a number to them, not even a name." To emphasize, Paola lifted her arm to flash the ID number tattooed across it.
 "Stay far away from the heartless, bureaucratic types like Dylan, Bhatti. That's my advice. People like those will use your body to stop a bus if it meant something was in it for them, get it?"
 "Yeah," Naji blanched, "I understand."
 "Great," Paola said, seeming satisfied. She took a quick inventory of her surroundings before deciding, "Come on, I'll show you where that bell in the receptionist office that annoys Dylan is." 
With that, she then lead Naji down another hallway. 

awesomeness • 13 January 2016 at 6:47 PM

Gale struggled to fill her lungs with oxygen; every breath seemed to get caught in her throat and coughed out again before it could even hope to reach her gasping chest.
As soon as she'd taken two steps away from Nine's office, she had lost hold of herself, bursting into thousands of rushing, blowing molecules, creating a cool draft as she breezed down the halls of the interrogation wing. She regained human form quickly enough, far from Nine's office, and she slumped against the wall as she rematerialized, her limbs somehow forgetting her to support her weight.
 Gravity won, and Gale found herself sliding to the floor. 
She wasn't crying. Her cheeks flushed red due to rage, embarrassment- a lack of air, perhaps. No, the burning in her throat hadn't come from her holding back her fearful sobs. And certainly, the Ninth worker who stumbled upon Seven in the hallway wasn't reverting her gaze because of the tell-tale watery film around the leader's eyes.
 "Ahem. Seven," the Ninth worker started, feeling very much like she was defusing an active, beeping bomb, "I managed to unlock the observation room for you, if that was something that still held your interest."
 Ashamed, Seven struggled to maintain composure as she stared at the boots of the same Ninth worker she'd ran into before. "...Yes." Her voice was hallow. "That is something that interests me, thank you."
With a tight, awkward nod, the Ninth worker left the leader alone in the hallway.
 As she watched the worker shuffle away, Gale prayed that the interrogation workers weren't a gossipy bunch.
 

Jane didn't like to be a snoop, she really didn't, so she blamed Claire for her actions. Seven had swept out the door, shocking everyone in the room and leaving her untouched tea cup sitting on the floor. She had left the door- normally power proof- open on her way out as well.
 Claire, it seemed, was more awake after being mentioned, and a force in Jane's mind urged her to follow the seventh leader. It was shady and untruthful, perhaps, but Jane unfocused herself from Nine's frustrated mannerisms for a bit and instead let Clairvoyance work her magic.
 She didn't see much. Mostly due to how, right after Seven had stepped out of view of the opened door, the leader had vanished into thin air- literally. Curious- as by nature Claire was, being a power who's purpose was to spy on everyone- Jane followed her power's urgings to continue the search. Empty hallways upon empty hallways zoomed through Jane's mind, and she saw nothing, no sign of the leader who was surely nothing more than a gust of wind by now.
 Disappointed, Claire's presence quieted in Jane's mind, and Jane refocused on Nine, who was inhaling a large amount of caffeine.
 "I apologize," was her curt, ashamed reply to Nine's rebuke. Truthfully, Jane herself favored hearing the most important news last, as if heard first then she couldn't properly pay attention to what was said next. But, she supposed, considering Seven's reaction...
 Seven's... unusually strong reaction.
 Something clicked, but not in Jane's mind. Claire stirred up again, and Jane fought to also understand the realization that was on the tip of her tongue...
After a minute of not getting closer to the answer, she decided to use her energy to answer Nine instead of fixating on the riddle.
 "Oh, there's no telling how many powers will awaken, I'm afraid. I would expect a few, but most active powers take control only when their user is either fighting an enemy power or when their user is under great physical or emotional distress. This is why we so many users go feral on missions and rarely here, at base. We'll see a spike in users turning feral on missions, yes, but I can't say for sure how many powers might be induced to go rouge while on base." 
Well, there was one power going rouge while at the base, for sure.
"I would say the best thing to do is to pull random Falchions in for interrogation."
 Now, Jane's mind shifted to her run-in with that rouge power. Wasn't there something almost familiar about that meeting? If the frantic sensation pulling at Jane's brain meant anything, then Claire seemed to think so.
 "Although it may be best not to tell everyone why they are being pulled in. Worrying about your power taking over is a good way to enact that whole "emotional distress"  clause..."
 Distress. It all suddenly clicked, as if somebody hit a light switch inside her head. Seven dematerializes into air the same way that rouge power had escaped Jane in the archive room. Even then, she had felt a cold wind blow past her; had it been the cold AC of the archives or had it been something else?
 Jane visibly paled in her seat, but mentioned nothing to the Ninth leader in front of her. 
 She mentally reviewed the rest of the evidence. 
 Seven had definitely been present during the rebel invasion, Jane's small search-and-rescue party had been the first to find her. Seven had been unconscious upon being found; other dead had been present, but at the time it had been assumed that the leader must've killed them out of self-defense. Seven, just now, had shown serious distress when the nature of powers had been discussed, as if she was almost personally offended by the idea her power could be, well, her. Claire, in the back of Jane's mind, buzzed with happy approval- the assistant was sure her own power had some other reason to believe this theory.
 In review: The theory only made sense. It made so much sense; it had evidence; it had merit; it... was still awfully presumptuous, wasn't it?
 Telling others this theory would be her saying that Seven, a leader, couldn't control her own power- or in worst case scenario was already a rouge power who was too good at faking humanity. Imagine that- her claiming such a thing while perhaps the real rouge power was a teleporter, and Seven was merely distressed by the events of the rebel invasion. It was all a good theory, but she knew it was really only that, a theory.
Looking pallid and uncomfortable, Jane shifted in her seat for a few seconds before coming to the conclusion of not saying anything until asked. In the meantime, had the security cameras around base been functional during the rebel invasion? What were the clearance on those things anyway, she bet she could bypass them...
 For good measure, Jane looked uneasily to Nine, found she couldn't meet the interrogator's eyes, all before saying, quietly, "And leaders, I believe, should not be exempt from these checks. They are just as human as everyone else, after all."
 Until they're proved not to be human, Jane wanted to add, but didn't. Smiling and hoping color was coming back to her face, Jane asked, "Why do you believe we need to go to IOS?"



After making a quick detour to grab some supplies- because really, what kind of idiot would forget to grab their supplies before going on any kind of mission?- Zach arrived at the send-off station looking as grumpy and tired as ever.
 Three pairs of eyes all flickered over to stare at the leader as he and his assistant entered. Only one person made a movement towards them, to meet them in the middle.
 "Five, I guess?" the person said, her bushels of waving, black curly hair swaying behind her as she approached. She stopped in front of the leader and stuck out her hand.
"I'm Tabitha, call me Tabs. I help take care of the assignments around here sometimes."
 Zach didn't shake her hand right away; he examined her appendage as if it would rear up and bite his fingers off. Tabs frowned at this and was still frowning as Zach took her hand and gave it a fleeting, uncommitted shake.
 "I'm Five," he confirmed, saying nothing more.
 Tabs gave him a displeased look and turned to Raven.
"And you managed to find another replacement..?" She asked, holding out her hand for Raven to shake while keeping a searching gaze held on the leader.
 "She's my assistant," Zach answered with an edge to his voice, irritated by the way Tabs kept... examining him like that. He could see the wheels in her head turning, drawing some unspoken conclusion, and it was uncanny to Zach in a way that rubbed him wrong and sent shocks like needles jabbing down his exhausted nerves. So his next words spat themselves out aggressively, defensively,  "Where are we even going to patrol?"
 Tabs pulled her hand back from Raven, arching her eyebrows before settling her mouth into a thin, defiant sign of resolve.
 "And here I was," Tabs began, "thinkin' that you were too dead on your feet for me to possibly allow you on patrol duty. But with that attitude, I'm sure there's plenty 'a life in you yet."
 "Of course," Zach replied, "I'm not dead yet." As if proving just how alive he was, he then walked to the other two members of the group and received awkward glances from both the nervous acting guy and the teleporter.
 Now more cautious, Tabs looked once over Raven, as if trying to discern her character.
 "...Did he drag you into this?" she asked the assistant. "If so, you don't need to go on this mission. Yeah, sure, I would appreciate the extra muscle but if you got dragged into something ya don't wanna do, then you can leave now. I could always just make zombie leader over there do twice the work if I really have to." Tabs jabbed an insubordinate thumb over her shoulder at Zach, shrugged, and then walked back towards the teleporter herself.

taffy789 • 1 February 2016 at 1:24 AM

Catching the look Four gave him and Izzy, Quincy replied by putting on a completely stoic, if slightly flushed, face. This obviously meant, as anyone who had been around him for long enough would know, that Quincy felt seriously flustered.
 Quincy detached Izzy from his arm, making sure the other boy was sufficiently awake before removing all support, and then he bent down, picked up the gym bag, and pushed it towards Izzy all in a swift, somewhat flustered motion.
That done, he quickly jogged over to the teleporter, muted pink coloring his cheeks while he explained to the teleporter which hallway his room was in.

 The awkwardness of the bag picking up moved past fast enough, with only one minor hitch. This hitch being how Quincy's roommate was exiting their room right when the entire group materialized right outside the door. The poor guy gave a shout of surprise and stumbled backwards, nearly falling over.
 A few "oh god Mikey are you okay"s and "but you got to admit that was pretty funny"s later, and Quincy disappeared inside his room to pack while his roommate stayed outside and attempted small talk.
 In the span of time it took Quincy to get ready and return, Mikey had wished the group luck on their mission, awkwardly avoided direct eye contact with Four while still trying to get a good look at the new leader, clumsily flirted with Annabell in an indirect way that flew completely under her radar, and finally told the group a cryptic message of "have fun but try not to get too distracted" that, though stated to the group in general, he seemed to shoot mostly in Izzy and Quincy's direction.

 After this small hiccup, however, the next bag packing detour went much smoother.
"Yeah," was Annabell's explanation for her packing speed as she exited her room, "I don't have a roommate, for um-". She tried to recall this bit of information herself. It took one, no two seconds and suddenly it hit her, and her brain froze in panic as she remembered exactly who her first roommate was, and just whose twin her first roommate was.
 "Um, I don't have a roommate for, some odd reason..." she finished, not daring to meet Riley's eyes.
 That "reason" for the absence, of course, was the same reason Riley was currently sisterless, and why Alex most likely a feral roaming the wastelands of IOD... 
 Annabell drew in a sharp, guilty intake of breath, then asked, "We ready to go?"
 "Please," the teleporter scoffed noisily, impatiently tapping their foot. Not realizing that they'd said that louder than they meant, the teleporter looked expectantly at Riley for the next order.

asi • 17 February 2016 at 6:14 AM

Karen lowered her cup and nodded, somewhat placated by the assessment of most powers activating while out of base. That made the prospect somewhat more manageable-seeming, for now. The lone rogue they had now? Could be handled, with relative ease. Fifteen, thirty more like it? Things would get complicated. For now she'd just hope it didn't get that bad- while of course making the sensible preparations.
At the assistant's recommendation though, Karen balked. "Hauling them in without giving any kind of rhyme or reason? That sounds like terror tactics. It could send the base into a panic. They'll think there's been an infiltration breach." The truth of which was way worse.
Until she had something better, Nine wouldn't rule it out.
As Jane seemed to sink into troubled thoughts, Karen also distracted herself... But in her case, the thoughts were suddenly not of the altered, contorted faces of friends and coworkers turned strangers, but instead, something a bit more pleasant- a complete review of all that had passed between herself and Seven, complete with analysis of all that her superior's words could have ever possibly implied, and Nine berating herself over anything she ever said that could have possibly been disrespectfully or unprofessionally misconstrued... Until she satisfied herself that really very little fell into that category. Then she tried, with slim success, to catalog all of Seven's varied expressions while pretending to examine the last of her "tea" as it swished around in her cup.
This was actually her standard practice when it came to dealing with higher-ups, so don't get the wrong idea. Although Seven wasn't actually her boss, but technically her colleague...
And the assistant was talking again.
Oh, Nine wished she had that kind of authority. "As for that, I agree, but unfortunately I can't exactly force my peers to do anything. I suppose with this news that's come to light, I could apply to One for sponsorship," she looked morosely down at the bottom of her now-empty teacup, before dutifully setting it down on the table and leaning back out of reach of tinging fingers. "But I won't get my hopes up, as last time she said... Ask," Karen grimaced.
That was not Karen's favorite memory, and, in a similar vein, neither was the next bit, since she was forced to think fondly of better days starring better assistants. Yes, it stung.
"My former assistant, Tyler, was rather passionate about Silent technological progress. Something he was interested in our guys picking to there was a device that could tell us apart from our powers. Something to do with energy signals, which I won't pretend to have understood. But whatever the method, if the thing gets consistent results it's definitely something we could use right now."
"Well, is that all now?" Not to be rude, but time efficient. She wanted to go see what she could do about that new assistant of hers.
In any case, she wanted to end on a positive note, so when Nine reached the door, she turned back to assure Jane; "What we will do is keep an ear out for gossip of strange behavior. After all, if their friends don't notice something's different, our chances aren't that great."
That... Was not such a positive note after all.


Raven, in contrast, gave a good solid shake, remembering how often people had said to her how they hated weak hands. Not that she'd been in such a formal position as to shake hands often in the past, but well she might as well live it up now.
They were in the army after all, SORT OF, some kind of militaristic operation at least, a fact that seemed forgotten frequently by those in charge.
And yeah, handshaking didn't really make or break for army standards... But Raven was allowed some imagination, alright?
Anyway, this Tabs didn't seem such a bad sort.
This kind of frank attitude, it seemed to be a front line thing, or at least for this base. Dreadlocks wasn't exactly straight-forward... But in their own weird way, it also felt like they were being more honest about themself than anyone else. They were very comfortable with their own strangeness, to put it one way.
"It's fine. I'm sure we'll make him do enough work between us," Raven replied as she walked with, and joined up the teleport circle.


After the little detour, which Riley would remember as an eternity spent slowly shaking his head (Annabell's shiftiness went completely over it), and Izzy, a few stolen moments of shut eye, the leader could finally met everyones' eyes (except Izzy's) and say with some confidence;
"Let's go."

Izzy saw a haze of green fluttering just past his lashes. How funny, how the world turned on its heels like that as if on a whim, sometimes it was funny how life felt like a dream. The same as a bipolar woman he knew, one moment it was drawing back on itself, hiding behind curtains of grey and the next, it threw sharp color in his face.
He tried to close his eye tight against it, but the shards of natural light that had gotten through already just sunk in deeper.
Next, he tested blinking furiously, one tattered eyelid flapping uselessly, the other working his remaining eye into adjustment slowly but surely.
From what he saw, though situated in A-L, this particular area was not swamped with water, simply soaking damp and infested with entanglements of weeds and moss. The ground below was firm enough for a number of tall trees to grow, plus rock could be seen about and around the opening.
It was a pretty strange place, but there were plenty such sites around the island if one had their eye open.
Izzy closed his again.

Riley thanked god he'd took a well-balanced stance in the last few seconds before they teleported, for if he'd recoiled say even two feet back, he would have found himself tripping backwards into the pit. Talk about cutting it close. In the tales teleporters were notorious for being cheapskates and forcing their passengers to walk for miles before reaching the actual destination. This time apparently he was lucky- or privileged.
"Whoa." As soon as his head stopped swaying, he gave the teleporter a nod of thanks and dismissal- they whisked themself away before even a word could be said- and dropped his bag with a loud thump on the ground to start immediately extracting the long line of rope from within. Followed by the harnesses.
"I trust we're all okay for a bit of abseiling, right?" he said carelessly while strapping on his own safety and checking that it didn't interfere with his sword access, then he remembered to look up at the group. Riley's eyes passed trustingly over his fellow Super School graduate, but then lingered with some doubt over the bodyguard's arm and lack thereof, and then the supposed tracker's eyes that seemed to struggle with holding onto the waking world, let alone a lone rope dangling into an abyss...
Riley turned a beseeching look on Annabell, hoping for a little help there, while he busied himself with securing the rope to the rings, slightly rusted but still trusty, bolted into the rock as anchors for precisely this purpose. This place wasn't a complete unknown- in the past, it had been explored enthusiastically enough to warrant this- it just hadn't been revisited in a decade or two.
They'd fix that now, naturally.

demon • 18 February 2016 at 3:38 AM

A figure stood at the knee of the mountain, looking just as distorted as the great rock crest bulging in places out of the cloud spun about it. His shoulders were hunched together from the cold, the rest of his joints stiff and bent against the wind, same as an old towel hung out to dry now stuck hard.
Darn it, he wasn't old enough himself- nor tried and tired enough- to think that way. He just needed to dress warmer, that's all! That fleece hung far too loosely around his frame, but begging proper thermal under-wear from those guys in charge, wouldn't that just be too embarrassing to think about?
So he only frowned and stretched his muscles, tendons on show as he craned his neck back. It was impossible to take in the full enormity that was the mountain, but he tried anyway. He was an ambitious guy like that. Meanwhile, his partner watched him with an expression that said, she wanted no part in the blame if his neck was going to hurt by the end of this!
She was bothering his shin with urgent nudges, snow practically melting 'neath her quick-moving feet and heated insistence.
"What, do you mean here?" he looked down at her with that same skeptic frown.
Slowing down, she cast a less than excited look back up and padded forward, turning to meet his eyes once more before directing his gaze up towards the mountaintop.
"On the mountain?" trying to shield his eyes from the white glare, he squinted upwards, trying to spot anything on the side of the mountain, amongst the shifting cloud and the snow. It sure beat him how those large kitten eyes could spot anything he couldn't. True, she always won I-Spy between them, but that was only because he couldn't get competitive for a childish game like that...
Amber eyes looked at him meaningfully, while busy feet kneaded into the snow beneath her.
"Oh, in the mountain," he raised his eyebrows, then drew them back in fast. "So what now?" the man asked, crouching down to his companion's level.
When she started to walk away though, he reached out and instinctively grabbed- her tail. Naturally she spun around and hissed like a jug brought to boil until he backed off slowly, rolling his eyes at the mistake.
"We're not going closer- the last lot died, remember?"
Hearing this, his partner nodded- giving him a bored, kind of you spoil-sport you look which he ignored- and sheathed the claws drawn reflexively. She circled herself a few times before settling into the snow to wait, much to her partner's clear distaste.
"Aren't you cold?"
The girl just stared at him, stomach pressed against the cold, damp snow, with this patiently disgruntled look until his skin crawled all over.
That was an unequivocal yes, so what are you complaining about. Considering that he did in fact actually have a winter jacket, not just a thin coat of fluff hiding his skin, he had to admit she had a point. He definitely didn't have the short end of the stick- though neither were really very long at all. This mission.... Well, work was work, and she still wasn't complaining.
"Well if you're so cold, maybe get a bigger body mass," he sighed at her, pulling his coat tight, shuffling his feet before reluctance gave up on him and he took a seat, scowled, shifted, and ended up laying on his side. He touched the least snow this way, he supposed.
When the cat shrugged and moved over to curl against his stomach, he could only really bring himself to blame himself.
The snow fell fast, in flurries, but before it could give the pair another kind of coat, the two were already blended into the snow...
Regardless, the man's eyes still watched the mountain.

taffy789 • 25 February 2016 at 8:01 PM

After everyone joined hands in a circle and the teleporter zapped them away with a flash of white, Zach creaked his eyelids open to take in the looming, shadowed hills rising up above the group on either side of them.
 A slight, breezy chill rolled over his shoulders and nipped at his ears, and Zach grimaced while shivering, his hatred for the cold setting aflame an exhausted nerve. 
 The teleporter disappeared while Tabs began giving quick and clear orders.
 "Alright, we're approximately due south of base, so if you get left behind use the sun as your compass, move north, and pray to god that a patrol finds ya before the ferals do. Now, with the worse case scenario stuff outta the way- today is a simple patrol.  We're moving northwards along the border of A-E and A-C, and we're gunna stay in a group for the most part with very few moments of breaking up and searching around in-between. Nobody should go out of shouting distance to another person during this time- keeping one person visible is most preferred. And the patrol's done when we get to our designated stopping spot but we're not going to rush this."
 Tabs swept her eyes over the group, lingering noticeably on Five, "Any questions or do ya guys got it?"
Zach said nothing, but he did match the girl's stare and decided to analyze her like she was doing to him. For example, Tabs' strange speech was not lost on him;  Zach noticed how her voice dipped and rose from formal and crisp to casual and lax, as if she was constantly having to remember to brush all informality under the rug as she addressed those she was leading. Out of spite rather than a real opinion, Zach decide that trait annoyed him.
 Seeing as there were no questions, Tabs shrugged and started to lead the group north.

As they all trudged forward, lines were quickly drawn in the group. Tabs walked ahead of everyone else while the other three lingered about a  couple of feet behind her at all times. The fourth member of the group, a newbie to IOD, acted as a buffer between Zach and Raven, and he of course shied away from the moody leader and sought company in Raven instead.
 For much of the beginning of the trip, Zach listened to the boy's cringeworthy and awkward attempts at small talk to Raven (Hey, what's your name? I'm Gavin. It's funny, on long trips I used to play ISpy a lot as a kid but I guess it would be pretty boring right now, huh? Haha. ... ...Okay that idea was pretty dumb I'm sorry. ... ...Uh, any other subjects, uh, favorite kind of music? I actually like screamo and that surprises a lot of people, I'm not sure if it did you, uh, yeah...)
 Eventually Zach hearing the boy blather on- while all he wanted to do was trudge forward in peace- grew exhausting. 
Leaving the other two behind, Zach picked up the pace and caught up to Tabs.
 They walked side by side for a quiet minute before Zach finally spoke.
 "I've been thinking. Why are we patrolling down south instead of in the western front lines. More realistically the enemy would appear there. So then why are we here? Zach scruntized Tabs with an accusing glare, "Is this another form of useless busywork you front lines bosses like to handout?"
 Tabs rolled her eyes so hard that they almost flew from her skull.
 "Listen here, Fiver," she spoke, terse yet controlled, while staring the leader down, "you're obviously the new one here. There's a lot you don't understand. And maybe you could begin to understand it if you learned to phrase your questions a heckuva lot more nicely."
 "I think my number is enough for me to deserve to know what I'm being dragged into," Five replied easily.
 Tabs snorted. "And I think you just now up brought your rank to avoid playing nice. Considering you haven't yet tried to be all leader-y and all."
A short pause. 
"So," Zach grudgingly conceded, "Why are we in the south when even a blind idiot could see we should be patrolling the western territory?"
It took Tabs a second to figure out if that was the guy's attempt at acting "nice" or not. Honestly, the second way he phrased the question was more offensive than the first.  But the slight submissive, hanging posturing that came with the second statement made Tabs wonder if maybe, just maybe, the leader had in some way relented...
 Deciding not to push the "niceness" thing, Tabs gave the leader the benefit of the doubt and answered him.
 "As we already have twenty-four hour patrols going on in the western front, we're hardly needed there. It's why we're so empty handed with the scouts." Tabs paused to scratch at her hair. "But we need more patrols going around in every direction. We're about a week into these front line games and the Glaeroe haven't attacked yet."
 "They attacked first last year," Zach recalled, his exhausted brain struggling to make the proper leaps to discover what that could possibly signify. His brain managed; "They attack first... every year."
 "Bingo," Tabs nodded, "Every year, at every base. The Glaeroes end up rushing at our bases first, so we play defensively; we patrol in every direction to make sure they aren't sneaking up on us."
 "And you stop the sneaking by sending out a patrol to go get murdered first," Zach finished for the girl, gaze boring into her, "and this year we're that patrol?" 
"There's always that chance," Tabs responded with a shrug, "but it would take a little bad luck on our part. I don't worry about it much."
 "Luck," Zach said, too oddly serious for Tabs' taste, "is nothing but the situation you're in plus chance and odds. Considering we're already in a bad situation, our odds aren't much better than anybody else's."
 They both fell silent after that, mainly due to Zach ending his questioning. A strange sensation had settling in his chest, a feeling reminiscent to his power that he couldn't place, couldn't begin to try to interpret.
 After some deliberating and a lot of annoyance at the added stress put upon his already exhausted body, Zach decided that the feeling in his chest was his power acting up again. Usually there was a direct reason behind the gut-wrenching pains of his intuition; now all his power seemed to want to say was that he could expect a little bad luck.
 

 Zach's bad luck arrived when he tripped over a prairie dog hole and landed face first in the dirt.
Before that, though, things had been going decently.
 At the first stop and split, Zach was sent further left than everyone else- the only person from the group in visible distance was Tabs, who stood on one of the taller hills to get a good view of the surrounding area.
Zach didn't care that he had been practically sentenced to isolation. In fact, it was nice to not hear that Gavin guy incessantly chatter on. He wondered if Raven, somewhere far off to the right, was suffering under the guy's constant, stressed blather as much as he had been...
 Then, Zach had to switch his concentrate to not slipping down one of the stepper hillsides he was traveling down.
 Near A-C, the slight hills and grassy plains of the savannah had transformed completely; the landscape had formed into all loose, jutting rock and weak dirt covered with a thin blanket of browning, malnourished grass.
 The terrain made it especially difficult to follow gravity downwards without ending up sliding and cutting open every bit of exposed skin on the knives that some called pebbles.
 Zach couldn't see how anything could possibly navigate through this area on a daily basis, but judging from all the prairie holes dotting the land, things not only routinely walked on the loose dirt but made their homes in it.
 Seeing the prairie dog holes filled Zach with disdain, and so he kicked chunks of earth into every hole he passed. Like basically every animal living on IOD, there existed some rumor about the rodents having a malicious, territorial side. According to one rumor the leader had heard repeated multiple, multiple times, if a group of Falchions camped in the savannah they ran the risk of being surround by packs of killer prairie dogs during the night. Apparently, the prairie dogs favored rushing to claw out the eyes of their sleeping prey.
 As he reached the bottom of the hill he was walking down, Zach saw another prairie dog hole, reflected on this rumor for a brief second, and then collapsed the hole with the heel of his boot before moving on.
 The hills rising up on either side of him, Zach noted, were sloped enough to trudge back up but tall enough to dwarf him seven times over. In this position, he was horribly trapped, and he felt it too, the dirt towering over him like walls in a shrinking room. The comparison made his head throb and didn't do much for his already agitated mood either.
 Becoming more annoyed with his situation, Zach refocused on the task at hand.
 Oh, yes. He was supposed to be "patrolling" for something. Glaeroes eager for a fight, perhaps, or maybe killer ground rats?A nice, murderous feral even.
Weren't the possibilities endless.
 Not really expecting to find anything, Zach exerted his power to check if there was anything interesting near him, or at least something not very interesting but still planning to jump out and stick a knife through his neck.

awesomeness • 25 February 2016 at 8:11 PM

He was surprised when his power responded to his inquiry by tugging him to the sloping hillside a few meters behind him. Concerned, Zach examined the area as he approached it. Not dangerous, just as his power was saying. Then again, there was also nothing notable about the hillside, and his power was definitely saying that there was something there.
 It felt... odd for him to hesitate following his intuition's urgings. Though with his power being as difficult as it was lately, he half expected to be led to the hillside and find it full of spiders, or something stupid like that.
 When he got to the area his power was leading him, Zach pressed his hand against the rough rocks and dirt of the hill, finding nothing else interesting. It was just plain, boring ground and dying weeds.
As he cautioned a few steps up the hill, however, his foot falls were met with a sudden, sharp creaking.
 Zach quickly stepped down from the hillside.
This time, he pressed both hands to the earth and applied pressure. Nothing, then a quiet creaking, then louder creaking and- Zach pulled his hands away right before a gaping hole the size of himself tore into the hillside. He frowned at the new, dark opening which seemed to lead deep into the hill. A broken metal door- the thing he'd stepped on and pushed open- hung lamely to his left and reminded him of the Falchion's savannah camp. The similarities were striking, but the endless darkness of this hole in the earth didn't comfort him like the camp did- or at least like the camp tried to do.
 Zach lingered about the entrance before deciding that going inside would be an idiot move. Instead of stepping through the doorway to scope the place out, he checked with his power instead. 
What was in there..?
 ... Apprehension suddenly shot up his neck, cold and frantic. Zach jumped back from the hole, his mind racing to assess what made his power call out that frightened warning of- god dang it, it was a spider.
 Zach didn't have time to bang his head on the rusty door in frustration because of the presence he felt looming behind.
 He flipped around, annoyed, "What?" 
 The presence, Tabs, shrugged, then lifted an arm over Zach's shoulder and shone a flashlight into the dark room behind him.
 Upon turning back around, Zach noticed the walls of the room were a crude, crumbling concrete and that the space wasn't as big as he previously thought.
 "If you're planning on going spelunking, you're gunna need one of these," Tabs said, grinning to herself as she pressed the small flashlight into the leader's hand.
 Unamused, Zach clicked the light off, pocketed it, and then pointedly began walking away from Tabs.
 In no rush, Tabs leisurely followed, but- being more adept at climbing the monstrous hills- she quickly caught up to him as they started up the incline.
 "As you haven't sent me to walk even farther left," Zach began, gritting his teeth against the gravity pulling him back down, "I'm assuming it's time to move on."
 "Ding ding ding, Fiver," Tabs said, "the group's meeting up next hill over. I came to get you, mostly 'cause I saw you found an old Falchion structure, and I haven't seen one of those in a while."
 Zach almost slipped- he quickly recovered footing and acted like nothing happened. He responded breezily, now stepping with even more care, "That was a Falchion base then."
 Tabs flickered her eyes over the leader again, as if having to reexamine him over to believe what she was seeing. Zach noticed that she looked as if holding back a laugh, and the possibility irritated him.
 "Yes- and no," Tabs replied, smirking but not stopping at the leader's scoff of "Helpful.", "When the front lines were pushed back farther into Falchion territory than they are now, the underground shelters used to be located in this area. They were singular, simple things- not like the huge complex tunnel system we're staying in now. They are also really old, and weren't made to last. So I wouldn't push my luck- oh, sorry, situational odds- crawling into one of those crumbly concrete deathtraps."
 "I already knew that," Zach answered, "Did you really think I would be the dead idiot who tried walking into that thing?" They had reached the top of the hill now, and Raven and the Gavin guy were visible standing midway up the next incline. Zach steeled himself and began to battle his way down the loose dirt all over again.
 For the second time in one conversation, Tabs swept her eyes over the leader.
 "... Being honest," Tabs said slowly, letting out a small whistle before continuing, "I don't exactly know what to make of you, Fiver."
  Zach didn't understand what she meant by that, but he did know that he couldn't care less about what she thought of him, even if he tried to.
 What he didn't know, however, was that a prairie dog hole currently occupied the space where he placed his right foot.
 By the time Zach tripped, he and Tabs were almost at the bottom of the hill, but he still tumbled a couple of feet down.
 In a heap of hurting arms and legs at the bottom of the hill, Zach groaned, more ticked off at himself and his power for neglecting to see that coming than embarrassed.
 "Oh my god," Tabs exclaimed when she reached the spot where Zach was starting to pick himself up, "That was a bad fall, anything broken?"
 She crouched down, grabbing one of his arms and bracing another hand against his shoulder, ready to help him up. "Anything sprained, can you walk?"
 Feeling Tabs' hand coil around his arm made Zach immediately flinch away, pulling from her grasp.
 "I can stand up on my own," he snapped, and stood up on shaky legs.
 Now standing up as well, Tabs' mouth had fixed itself into a grim line. She shook her head; "God, aren't you a hard one to feel sorry for," she said, as if almost surprised. She patted her right cheek, deadpanned, "You have a little something there", and then started up the incline to meet the other two members of the group.
 Zach's hand traveled along his face until it found the sticky patch of blood Tabs had alluded to. A small gash sitting above his jawline was the source of the blood; Zach rubbed around the gash with the collar of his shirt in a half-hearted attempt to get the bleeding to stop. When the blood refused to cease spilling, Zach decided to let it be for now and started- carefully- up the incline to catch up to the rest of the group.

asi • 26 February 2016 at 5:27 AM

Meanwhile, Raven was certainly having the time of her life. Look, the kid was friendly 'n all, but that was it. He was just too friendly. Raven didn't know what to do with exuberant people. She was used to doom and gloom all the time! Even Riley's quiet brand of optimism she found trying, sometimes.
She still tried though, in between glares downwards at the terrain straining endlessly to try and trip her. He liked screamo, true, but at least it was still better than folk. That stuff made her skin crawl, while screaming just bored her.
So in a very Raven-esque way, she made her olive-branch offering with an abrupt announcement of; "I like gothic rock. And alternative. I'm Raven."
In reply, the boy fumbled his clumsy way through about three sentences all along the lines of and identical in meaning to; "Oh, that's cool, though I uh haven't listened to a lot of that myself, you know, but I hear it is! As far as I've heard."
Raven supposed it was nice, that as much as he talked she only needed to tune in and pay attention every few minutes and never fear for what she might have missed.
Unfortunately, every moment spared went into the glutinous and needy fund for not getting eaten alive by the evil landscape, so... Internally, she passed most of the time cursing every stone of IOD while scrambling up the hillside on almost all fours, just to make balance.
There was of course, absolutely no time saved then wasted glancing back to where Zach, now joined by team leader Tabs, lingered. Every time she thought of it, Raven tried harder to focus on what the boy- Garrett or something, she'd forgotten already- was pushing out of his lips. It didn't help though, that sometime along the way, despite her utter agreement on the topic of the lame and dumbness of I-Spy... She still got conned into playing it, somehow.
Probably because of said lack of attention given, along with units of crap. But uh oh, now he was looking at her expectantly, like she was supposed to say-
"Erm, green?" she hazarded, not at all mindful of how wrong she knew she was about to be- it was all about giving an answer to distract him with, rather than an answer that was right- and much more intent on pushing back tufts that the restless breeze kept teasing against her forehead and sides of her face, what couldn't be caught by a pony tail. Trying to tuck strands in behind her ear was like trying to herd into a pen without a working latch, they just blew on back out again, naturally.
"Uh, no... It's not your turn, and you were looking for something starting with s," the boy reminded her apologetically.
It occurred to her then that this place, verging on the desert- in the desert for the most part- it was a lot drier back home on base. And her hair... It was going puffy. Frizzy, puffy, and curly.
"God dang it!" Raven said out loud suddenly, making the boy start.
"Uh- what?"
"Nothing!" she snapped like it was somehow his fault. Like his superpower was cursing her to getting stationed in the desert.
Then seeing her mistake in those nervous little eyes, Raven had to force herself to quickly try to fix it by guessing lame s words. "Um, sunbeam."
"... No."
"Sand." There wasn't all that much sand around this part though, it was more like dirt.
He shook his head.
"Shadow?"
He didn't get the joke. "No."
She stared at the many little stones. They looked razor-sharp. They looked like they wanted to cut her up. "Shards?"
"Nope?"
"Stones, then!"
"No."
"Darn it, what then?"
"The sun," he pointed upwards.
Aw whaaaat, now that was dumb. Her eyebrows climbed in disbelief, even as her own climbing seemed to finally fall into an easy pattern she didn't need to concentrate upon. Everything seemed much lighter. "I said that!"
"You said sunbeam," he pointed out gently, both hands in the air to quell her protest.
"Close enough! You can't do that," she defended herself righteously.
This was how the other two found them, arguing but comfortably, not heatedly, like good-natured squabbles among siblings.

taffy789 • 26 February 2016 at 8:51 AM

Tabs was the first to rejoined the squabbling group.
When she arrived, she approached Raven, placing a hand on the assistant's shoulder, and told her candidly, "Your boss is a real strange piece of work. I pity you."
Then, while keeping the hand braced on Raven but speaking in a louder, more official way that addressed both of the group members present, "We are leaving this area, it is time to go."
With that, Tabs removed her hand from Raven and began to lead the group members onward.
Zach caught up to them about five minute later, looking more zombie than ever given the bleeding mark on his face and the tired, heaving, barely audible breathing that sounded from him as he walked up the hills.
Gavin, serving again as a buffer between Raven and Zach, glanced at the leader and saw the noticeable bloodied gash flaunting itself on his cheek.
By way of good natured fun, Gavin turned to Raven and joked, "Hey, ISpy something red."
Zach however, heard this.
Feeling an ever-mood dampening stare of death burning into his back, Gavin squeaked, then quickly amended by saying, to Raven, "Uhhh!!! Never mind, it's your turn, you can go, uh, alright?"

~~~

Standing in the receptionist's office, Naji found it increasingly difficult to absorb the barrage of information Paola kept throwing his way.
Outboxes and inboxes and files and procedure- it all sent the boy's head spinning in a thousand different directions. Making matters even more unbearable, Paola would pause her monotone instruction every so often and fiercely bash the bell she swore took an hour off Dylan's life every time it rang out.
While Naji wasn't sold on that truth, he knew the bell's powers included deafening him and summoning a ringing earache to toll against his skull, so he quickly came to respect the bell's insurmountable strength.
To distract himself from the deafening rings and to keep awake during Paola's bored, lazy explanations, Naji took inventory of the receptionist office, taking note of all it had to offer.
There wasn't much. The only real object of interest was some kind of large mobile generator that sat pushed under the desk, humming quietly. A thick, large cord trailed from the battery and disappeared out of the receptionist's window and into the waiting room.
As Naji stared at the cord, wondering where it escaped off to, Paola caught the boy's inattention and remarked on it.
"Hey, Bhatti! What, is something other than my blather more important to you, huh?"
Paola waved away Naji's quick, fearful "no!" with an amused "It's fine, Bhatti. Be honest, what did you want to ask about?"
"Um," Naji hesitated, then jabbed a finger towards the machine, "that."
"That?" Paola raised an eyebrow, "That's a generator. You know, the thing that was powering your lover fan in the waiting room?"
Paola scoffed when she saw Naji's incredulous expression. "What else did you think was powering it? Magic?"
"No! I-" Naji faltered, "I'm just, um, surprised you're allowed to use a generator like that only to power a fan? With, um, that entire deal about resource management... and everything..."
Paola shrugged and muttered, too bitterly, "It's not like we're paying big bucks for our batteries..."
Glancing back at Naji, Paola watched the confusion blossom on Naji's face, and her own eyes alit when she realized what opportunity presented itself.
"Bhatti," Paola smiled, showing too many teeth, "Have you heard about those people who don't make it to IOD? Those stories you hear, told to scare you by some coach or training officer, about some vague fate you'd be subjected to if you were deemed unqualified for IOD, too weak or too useless?"
Under Paola's frightening grin, Naji sweated, remembering those threat laced stories all too clearly. Of course he had heard them, but he hadn't know it was a common thing to hear amongst the Glaeroes. He didn't know if that solidarity should make him feel relieved or apprehensive.
More worrying was how Paola continued, "Ever hear about those who lost limbs being sent off to the off-island hospitable and not ever returning? Wonder why those really screwed up, scrawny, mentally unstable lab rats never show their sad little faces at our base?"
Paola hummed in good humor, obvious enjoying the terrified look pasted onto Naji’s face. She enjoyed teasing him, and thus was still grinning as she moved towards the generator, turned it off, inputted a quick key code and then removed a glowing cylinder from the small panel that subsequently slid open.
"Why aren't they here, Bhatti?" she asked with renewed vigor, flipping around and approaching the boy, fast and furious and grinning evilly.
"Why, Bhatti? Because they're too busy making this!"
Brandishing the cylinder as a murder does a knife, Paola shoved the glass vial tube under Naji's nose and patiently waited, looking smug and anticipatory.
Naji stared at the glowing glass, not understanding what he was supposed to be doing or thinking. Paola had played the entire thing up like a horror story, like she had just announced to him that Soylent Green is people and he should be running for the hills, or something... But despite his best and sincere efforts Naji could find nothing frightening about the tube shoved in his face.
Awkwardly, he looked to Paola for a cue to his proper reaction but only found the familiar look of disappointment in him stark in her expression.
“Bhatti, what the heck,” Paola monotoned, questioning eyes boring into the boy, “do you not know what this is?”
She shook the tube, and Naji tried to focus on the strange, thick liquid that seemed to be slowly swishing inside. The gooey substance glowed a faint green, and moved with viscosity. A lone air bubble swayed to one end of the tube to the other when the girl flipped it, lethargically, as if it were a bubble in a lava lamp.
“…No,” Naji admitted, sheepish.
Paola moved from the disappointed stage into one of full on confusion.
“You’re telling me you have NO idea what this is? At all?” She pulled the tube away from Naji’s face, and reiterated, “Nothing seems off about this liquid? You’re not sensing anything?”
“It’s… weird that it’s green?” Naji offered, shrinking under Paola’s increasingly intense gaze.
All confusion left Paola, being replaced with a sudden, red realization that flushed her cheeks and left her grip strangling the glass tube.
“Bhatti,” she began, softly, tightly, “you can tell a lot about a person by what they’re not scared of. And I can tell three things about you, right now.
First- you’re new here. That’s obvious even if I didn’t already know you got here recently. You don’t know jack squat about how IOD works, and clearly haven’t heard any of our wonderful stories.
Second- you went to a school and not even for very long, huh? You never got proper training, not like most get.”
Here Paola stepped forward, closer to Naji and making the boy squeak and step backwards, his heart palpitating to a vicious drum beat in his chest.
“And third, the final, most inexcusable thing-!” Paola glared down the boy, as if she could extract the truth with her eyes alone. Gone was all previous good humor and playfulness she’d shown the boy; now Paola looked downright furious as she demanded, “You are a really, REALLY crappy healer, aren’t you?”
Naji choked, not expecting to have been caught, not so soon, not like this.
“I- I,” he stuttered out, and then he did the only thing he felt could shield him in that moment, offer any kind of protection. He lied. “I’m- I’m a healer! I- I’m a good healer!”
“Screw you Bhatti!” Paola hissed, “Don’t you dare lie to me! You don’t know crap! You couldn’t even pick out an aura that was literally right under your nose!”
Paola waved the tube in the air, and she began ranting aloud, to the sky, “I can’t believe it! I have do-nothing Dylan to deal with and now I’m supposed to babysit a healer whose power is so weak he didn’t know a POWER FREQUENCY from a TUBE OF WATER!”
Raging, she flipped on Naji again, “Listen Bhatti, if I have to deal with another useless co-worker whose slack I’m in charge of picking up, I’m going to go run into the Falchion’s territory and find a nice little mind reader to surrender my life to, capiche?” She jabbed a finger at Naji’s chest, and the boy winced, frozen solid yet wanting to break down. She ranted on, “I don’t care how useless your healing power is, but don’t you dare think you can just WALTZ in here and slack off and have a job where you can kick back and not worry about dying, because I will not, I REFUSE to put up with that pure crap you’re trying to drag in here. I get your game. It’s nothing I’ve dealt with before, but I am at my last straw and will not put up with a useless little healer who won’t pull their own weight!”
Huffing, Paola finished with a final, definite click of her tongue and waited for Naji to reply.
A reply didn’t come from the boy, who stood so still and whose face had paled so white that he looked as if Paola had scared all the color out of him.
For a second, a slight second, Paola felt pity. Then, past experience reminded her how things usually worked out, and she scoffed and turned her back on the boy. After sliding the tube back into the panel and locking it up tight, she left the receptionist office, done with the short lived tour.
Now alone in the office, Naji breathed out a deep, shaky breath, wanting to cry and laugh but not doing either.
Instead, he sighed with- what was that? Relief?
While he didn't know if relief should be the appropriate emotion to feel after that rant, he ashamedly felt it anyway.

asi • 26 February 2016 at 4:37 PM

Her eyes followed Tabs around, but she didn't say anything to the assessment given. Actually, when it came to Zach, that was kind of a Captain Obvious statement, really, and didn't warrant anything further.
Raven wasn't a fan of being touched though, at least not by relative strangers, and she didn't move in the slightest until the hand had been safely removed from her shoulder without incident. Then she rolled said shoulder, eyes still on Tabs as she urged her legs onward. She didn't look up when Zach approached, that is, until the boy she was with spied his latest target.
Glancing up and seeing the cut, she did a double-take, genuine- well, not concern, but surprise- flitting across her features. "Why, how did you manage that?" It was rare to see Five with any kind of ill marking like that, save those self-inflicted dark rings under the eyes.
Raven shook her head, not really expecting her leader to honor her with a fair answer. That wasn't what she'd do either, because while she'd meant her question with the utmost neutrality, she still knew how much of an accusation it could turn into for the other person, to admit any kind of injury or presumed weakness, no matter how small. After all, god knew she'd done that with her arm, refusing to acknowledge how it hadn't healed quite right...
She'd been ruffling around through her pockets, and looked quite frustrated when she turned up bare-handed. "Darn it, I thought for sure I'd had some disinfectant stuff on me," she cursed, looking less worried about Zach and more about her lack of preparedness.

taffy789 • 26 February 2016 at 6:14 PM

Pulling his death glare off Gavin, Zach looked at Raven.
 He unfocused for a second and he, without thinking, brushed his fingers over the wound.
 Only when his hand removed itself from his cheek did he realize there was sticky red blood now smeared on his fingertips. Zach frowned at this.
 "Take a guess Shadow, it isn't hard," Zach told his assistant, nonchalantly wiping his hand against his pants, "And I'll give you a hint- it's the same reason I had a misstep during our walk to the base." He went silent for a minute, then elaborated, "I blame my power's current stupidity."
 Really, Zach reflected, his power should have prevented him from tripping. While he would admit some fault in not watching where he was going, he was too used to his power being the one constantly looking around, the one searching for threats. The one that, generally, assured him that death wasn't about to strike him down in the next second. 
 Unsettled, Zach watched as Raven dug around in her pockets and recalled that his assistant was currently without a power. Given her power had been a complete monster by the sounds of it, she was probably happy to have ditched it.
After he gave an uncaring shrug at Raven's disinfectant comment, however, Zach imagined himself in her shoes, losing his power.
 ...
 No, he couldn't even begin to imagine it; just thinking of that possibility for too long got him agitated, so he banished the thought from his head.
 Instead, he distracted himself by aiming a question towards his assistant, "Shadow, are you happy to have gotten rid of your power?"

~~~~~~


Following the disastrous ending to his short-lived tour, Naji loitered around the waiting room, unsure of what his next course of action should be.
He considered trying to make-up to Paola for… being useless …by working in the infirmary, but since his guide had stormed off before giving him proper instruction to what his job entailed, he was had no clue as to what he should’ve been doing. With that idea falling through, Naji also considered simply leaving and heading back to his tent to nap, but the notion of having to explain his early return to Samuel and Jorge was too embarrassing for him to possibly bear. In the end, Naji settled on pulling up a chair and plopping in front of the cool, breezing fan while trying not to think too hard about what eldritch horror could possibly be powering it.
After thirty inactive minutes passed by without incident, a cold chill began to creep up his spine, and Naji was standing, about to move from his spot, when the tent’s door flap gusted open and a searing midday desert wind sent his body temperature rocketing from a freezing seventy to a sweltering hundred. Whatever shock the temperature inversion gave him was nothing compared to the terror he felt as a bleeding boy staggered into the infirmary, clutching at his dripping red side.
“Aha,” the bleeding kid breathed, his laugh blowing out through his nostrils in a way that conveyed anything but humor, “Uh, doc? A little help here?” A tight, distorted grin plastered itself against the boy’s cheeks, and he stumbled further into the tent, the pain obviously screwing up his balance.
Too startled to move, Naji watched with wide eyes as the boy tripped over his own two feet and hit the ground.
A sole thought popped into Naji’s head: “This guy needs a healer.” which of course was soon trailed by that all too late realization, “Wait… I’m the healer!
Naji swallowed a gulp of air, his throat too dry to produce any moisture. The epiphany concerning his title as healer hit him hard; he suddenly understood that he had a responsibility to help this guy, didn’t he? The boy was counting on him to help, to alieve the hurt, to save him! With this weighing on his mind, Naji did the most responsible thing he could think to do in that crucial moment.
Snatching the bell off the receptionist’s desk, Naji ran through the halls of the infirmary tent, ringing the bell like an ambulance blaring its sirens.
“Dylan! Paola! There’s a dying kid! Help!”

asi • 27 February 2016 at 12:33 AM

Raven frowned- his power was being stupid? She hadn't a clue what could be going on there- but didn't say anything until he posed his question.
With urgency her eyes darted over to the momentarily forgotten Garrett, Gavin or whatever, as if somehow fooling herself into hoping that perhaps he hadn't heard. Despite the incredibly unlikelihood of that outcome, considering his extreme proximity, actually walking between the assistant and her leader. So...
"What are you talking about," Raven answered with a low solemnity, after just a moment's pause. Her frown lines deepened as she stared straight ahead and out towards the distant horizon, where the sun still hung so low in the sky. "If," she said pointedly, "if I was to lose her..."
She soldiered on, all her attention seemingly needed for the march. "I'd be happy, of course."
Her scowl didn't fade at all as she mumbled under her breath, "Of course."

taffy789 • 27 February 2016 at 2:46 AM

"Sure. If," Zach lazily amended, not taking Gavin's presence seriously. He then considered the obviousness of Raven's reply before dropping the subject completely.
As she had said herself, of course she was happy. It wasn't as if her power had been doing her any favors hanging around, after all.
 Continuing to trudge forward, Zach ignored the quiet, shy resumption of Gavin's chatter.
 It begin as he turned to Raven, looking at her as if seeing her in a new light. He asked, innocently, dumbly, "So, uh, your real name is Shadow?"
 "Obviously," Zach replied for Raven, and, despite the crappy day he'd been dragged through so far, he almost smirked at his quick lie. 


Annabell, eyes bulging, glanced from the malicious, sheer drop-off to Riley nonchalantly preparing the safety harnesses to Quincy, who was standing near the sheer drop-off, looking downwards, and paling, to back to Riley who still was acting like everything was completely normal to then Izzy, who was... asleep?- to back to the giant pit of death in the ground before she finally settled on Riley as the most important thing to focus on first.
"When you say 'abseiling', you mean," Annabell gasped, gesturing to the dark bottomless pit a few feet away from her, "going into that thing? With like, rope and gravity and the danger of falling???"
 A little more than frantic, Annabell's fingers ripped through her hair. She watched as Riley's own fingers tied fancy loops of rope through the harnesses, and she said, almost despondently, "How do you even know how to do that?"
 


~~~~

“Where does it hurt?” Dylan asked the patient, probing the bloodied flesh around the wound with light touches of his gloved fingertips.
“Where do you think? Where the knife went in, ow, God!” the uncomfortable, shirtless boy replied, wincing as Dylan’s fingers pressed too firmly near the open wound, “Ow, that hurt!”
“You’re still conscious after a stab through the side. The pain is nothing compared to what you felt earlier.” Dylan hummed, ignoring the patient’s continued complaints.
Paola stalked around the operating table, slowly circling Dylan and the patient while sending Naji nasty looks at evenly spaced intervals. Naji- who had squished himself in a corner, trying to avoid Dylan and Paola and the blood- squirmed uncomfortably under Paola’s heated glares.
“Was this knife coated in any sort of poison or chemical?” Dylan questioned while picking up a large cotton swab, his eyes trained on his tools, not his patient. Naji sensed a chill emanating from the Chief Healer and shivered; the man was as automatic and impersonal as one of those robotic telemarketer machines. Still not looking up from his metal tray of sterilized cloth, Dylan called out “antiseptic” and wordlessly grabbed the bottle when it was handed to him by Paola.
The patient, laying on the metal operating table, screwed his face up tight and stared at the bright lights hanging from the tent’s ceiling, thinking on the healer’s question. “…No? I don’t… think so.” The boy gasped, exasperated, “This is stupid! I just cut myself while training! I don’t know what was on the knife! Just heal me already, please!”
A sharp glint shone in Dylan’s eyes, accentuated by how the doctor’s mask he wore concealed every feature but those piercing brown irises.
“If you were training,” Dylan breathed, air cutting through the pores in the mask, “you certainly should know what was on your own knife or not, right?”
“Dylan,” Paola snapped, stopping her circling stride around the table, “shut your stinkin’ mouth and do your job already, will you?”
“I am doing my job,” the Chief Healer replied evenly, “there are procedures to follow and a thorough questioning is necessary.”
“Oh, and putting on those gloves and mask was ‘necessary’ for a simple heal too?” Paola snorted, rolling her shoulders in an agitated oval.
“I’ve waded through enough blood during my years on and off IOD to come to loathe it.” Humming again, Dylan grabbed a large cotton swab and doused it in antiseptic. As he touched it to the patient’s wound, making the boy wince, he explained easily, “Blood is unclean and is a cesspool for all kinds of diseases to proliferate in. As I plan on living forever, I must avoid contracting a disease from another person’s blood, as that is obviously beneficial to my goal.”
“Ugh, you’re so full of crap,” Paola groaned, running irritated hands through her curly hair. She turned her back to her superior and her aggravation transferred to the next breathing body she saw in the room- Naji.
“While I don’t get why you insist on tearing up the bleeding patient with your unreasonable questions,” Paola growled, “I cannot fathom why you haven’t asked Mr. Bhatti over there why he needed to chase us down for this easy heal.”
Upon being mentioned, Naji tried to shrink further into his corner, wishing he could be completely invisible.
“Paola,” Dylan warned, and his reprimand set the girl off, with her snapping, “Sure! If you won’t ask, then I can tell you why he came to us! Listen- the kid’s as useless as a mind reader charging the front lines. He couldn’t heal a simple knife wound if he wanted to.”
Paling, Naji now longed for the power to create black holes, so he could suck himself up in one and disappear forever…
“Paola,” Dylan said firmer, his clear voice cutting through Paola’s surging anger, “Didn’t our patient leave a trail of blood in our waiting room? I think you should go clean it up.”
“Anything to get out of your slimy presence, sure,” Paola muttered, swiveling on her heel and stomping out of the operation room.
The room fell silent and motionless without the girl’s anger agitating it. Naji watched as Dylan cleaned the patient’s wound, as the piles of red cloth began piling up on a second metal tray.
Naji’s adam apple bobbed as he swallowed nervously. “Chief Velazquez-” he began by way of explanation, of a lame, apologetic defense for himself. Dylan cut off his words, though, waving him towards the table. Hesitantly, Naji approached and took a standing position near the Chief Healer. Not acknowledging Naji, Dylan placed down the antiseptic and cotton swabs and, leaning down, said to the patient in a calloused voice, “Before I heal you, tell me the truth. How did you receive this injury?”
“What?” the patient exclaimed, bristling, “I already told you what happened! I cut myself while training!”
“Bullcrap. That wound isn’t an accidental cut. It was made purposefully.” No emotion showed on the healer’s face as he leaned closer to the patient and probed again, colder, harder, “Tell me how you injured yourself. Be truthful. I won’t heal you until I get the answer I want.”
“That’s crazy!” the patient exclaimed, struggling to sit-up, “You have to heal me! What kind of doctor are-” With a pained yelp, the patient cut himself off, wincing as Dylan’s fingertips pushed venomously against his wound.
“Come on. Do you I look like your old pediatrician to you? Do you believe I took the Hippocratic Oath?” Dylan hissed, a rage swallowing his stoic demeanor so fast that it gave the patient a flinching whiplash and sent Naji stepping backwards in fear. An ugly sneer tightened against Dylan’s cheeks, and he dug his fingers deeper into the boy’s wound as he growled, “The agency that trained me knew what I would have to do and the definition of a moral hang-up wasn’t on the test I took to make it out of there. I’m a healer- not a doctor. I call the shots when it comes to using my power and I’m not going to use it unless I know where. That. Wound. Came. From. So start talking.”
The patient’s eyes were wide with fear and pain and his mouth began running before he even realized what he was saying. “It was my girlfriend!” he blabbered almost incoherently loud, “Ex-girlfriend now- she found out I cheated on her and she- she- she went freakin’ psycho!”
“Oh.” Dylan said, a dull surprise reflecting on his face. He removed his fingers from the patient’s side and chided, “Well, what do you expect when you’re dating people who are lethally trained? It’s bound to be a reaction somebody has. Think of it as a… learning experience.” Slumping against the operating table in embarrassed defeat, the patient nodded shakily and resolved to stay small and agreeable for the rest of the visit. Humming pleasantly at this, Dylan turned to Naji, who had backed up to the wall, far away from the operating table and the furious healer, “Naji Bhatti? Come back here. You have work to do, after all.”

asi • 27 February 2016 at 4:41 AM

"No," Raven's anger flared suddenly in her tone, despite the fact that she didn't mean to direct it, as she directed her words, towards the innocent boy at all.
But she couldn't help it; she was embittered by the careless way Five seemed to dismiss her answer- one she hadn't wanted to have to give at all, hadn't wanted to be reminded of, let alone have a stranger overhear, and snap-speed with which Zach had taken control of her name... It riled her temper, which to be honest was a beast easily provoked at the best of times.
So she responded... Impolitely.
"No, that's just something stupid only he," she jerked her head towards Five for meaning, "calls me, just to parade his complete and utter lack of creativity."
That... Yeah... Burn. Just, burn.
She pulled ahead to try and join Tabs at the front because, yeah, super mature, Raven.
But she just ignored that annoying, smart little voice in her head, like any self-assessed sane person does when their brain starts to show signs for the opposite.


Riley put down his knots for a moment and gazed evenly back up at Annabell, the sort of calming, patient look that gave the receiver the illusion that they had all the time in the world before plummeting down into a deep dark pit of evil with pointy rocks at the bottom.
"I mean," he said slowly with a try-for-reassuring smile, "going down into that thing with yes, rope and gravity and also zero danger of failing unless you somehow manage to climb out of your harness, unbuckle it from the rope, or cut the rope on the rocks." He seemed to think deeply about this for a while. "That would take quite a bit of sawing, I suppose."
Now finished with his knots, Riley stood and addressed the whole group entreatingly. "Look, as long as all the preparations are done correctly and the equipment is all in order, and nobody panics," he smiled at Annabell again, "freezes," he stared at Quincy for a few quietly measured moments, "or falls asleep..." He frowned at Izzy for what felt like a long time, but since the curly little blond was rubbing at his eyes, as if at least attempting to stay awake and plausibly keeping, to some extent, up with the jist of the conversation... That was as good as he could hope to get there.
He nodded semi-confidently at the whole group. "As long as none of that happens, there's about as much danger of you falling here to your death as there is of you cutting your finger on your lunch and dying from a so caused infection," as he declared this, he rolled his shoulders just to brush it off as laughable.
"I mean," he grinned somewhat nervously, as he always was when daring to attempt... A joke. The ultimate risk; "If that happened, I'd have to ask what you were eating for lunch."
Izzy stopped blinking blearily at him, just to pause, give a wide-eyed incredulous frown, and back off to unseeingly grope a tree as if to make sure that it was real.
... And now Riley might be the first to die by falling down that pit onto the flat and completely blunt rocks below, and he wouldn't even need faulty setup or gear to do it.

taffy789 • 27 February 2016 at 11:40 AM

Any rare good humor that had lightened Zach's face now disappeared, darkening his expression once again.
 He refused to say he was disappointed, but he had been expecting Raven to go along with it, to help him mock the other guy for the stupid question he'd dared to ask.
 He'd expected wrong, however, and now he had to let Raven's anger roll over him as she left the two boys for the company of Tabs. He watched her go, only mildly annoyed by her reaction.
Zach, not for the first time, wondered how much easier his life would be if his intuition could predict hypothetical events and not just those events grounded in fact, fate, or in the process of happening.

Tabs welcomed Raven's arrival with a nod, a "hey", and a curious glance over at Raven as if to silently question what was wrong.


Feeling Four's stare keenly, Quincy backed away from the pit and attempted to loosen up.
 When Riley was finished giving his speech, Quincy looked towards the leader as if he was about to say something, then closed his mouth and didn't open it again.
 There was stress visible in his movements as he retreated over to the tree to stand by Izzy. Quincy frowned at nothing in particular as he leaned back on the tree, seemingly conflicted about something.

Less frantic but still unconvinced, Annabell stopped pulling her hair and instead squatted next to Riley's harnesses and ropes.
 "Well, not to doubt you or anything," Annabell said in a tone that would sound doubting to anyone, "but you, um, have, um, practice in this I'm guessing?" Her voice rose on the words "I'm guessing"; they sounded off like one would say "I hope". 
She then stared at the ropes and harnesses as if they had just threatened her life.


~~~

When a pale color ghosted over Naji, Dylan sighed. “Don’t be so dramatic. You must understand- I can’t have people lying to me about their injuries. First of all, it’s in bad taste to lie to any type of healer, certified or otherwise. Secondly, I’ve seen too many people come in here with desperate, self-caused injuries to be fooled by such an obvious lie. And these ‘patients’ are either in it for the pain medication or are trying to skip a dangerous mission. As much as I loathe playing moral guardian to an army of scared teenagers, these are things we as healers must frown upon. Let one person get away with it and then ten other people will be hurting themselves to reap the rewards. Why let negligence cause more work? I expect you to scrutinize every future patient you have with the same intensity I just showed, Naji Bhatti.”
Naji highly doubted he could do that, but promised his future compliance anyway. Reapproaching the table, he asked Dylan, shaking nervously, “What do you, um, want me to do?”
“Heal him of course.” Dylan replied while pulling off his bloodied gloves and placing them on the metal tray.
“Oh! Yeah, I can, um, do that? I can totally do that. I can heal him. I-” Naji stuttered out rapidly, but Dylan’s hand being placed on his shoulder made his voice stop mid-sentence.
“Look,” Dylan began seriously, “Paola claimed you couldn’t heal for squat, but I read your file. You’ve healed wounds before. This one is no different. Just concentrate, and you’ll be fine.” After patting Naji’s shoulder one more time, Dylan stepped backwards to observe the new healer work.
Sweating nervously, Naji glanced from the calm Dylan near the wall to his equally unnerved, uncomfortable patient wiggling on the operating table. Naji hovered his moist palms over the red wound, not confident in his ability in the slightest. He froze in this position, unable to move until the sound of Dylan loudly clearing his throat shocked him into reanimation. Steeling himself, Naji stared at the torn flesh, flexed his fingers, and concentrated his power to form and spread throughout the wound.
Nothing happened.
“I knew it,” a smug voice spoke up from the doorway. Naji turned, concentration lost, to see Paola standing there, holding a mop and with anger burning in her eyes. “He can’t do it, Dylan. Don’t even bother.”
“Isn’t there a pool of blood with your name on it somewhere?” Dylan shot back, to which Paola growled, “Yeah. The pool was a trail and guess where that trail led? Here! Fancy that.”
Apparently not having a reply to that, Dylan addressed Naji, “please, continue with what you were doing. Pretend whatever mild inconveniences which are present aren’t, if you will.”
“Sure,” Naji squeaked, his throat suddenly a desert. Now feeling the gaze of both Dylan and Paola searing his neck, Naji clenched his fists and tried to concentrated harder.
And harder.
And harder…
Harder still…
…Soon, wisps of energy began swimming over the wound, entwining the injured skin with long, blazing strands the color of a bright, bloody salmon.
“Wow,” Paola muttered, unimpressed but still a bit surprised as she stared at the manifested energy, “his aura is pink.”
Naji’s didn’t hear the comment, as he his blood pounded his ears and his breath hitched when he saw his power pulsating against the patient’s flesh, and he almost panicked because, no, what if he made everything fall apart again? What if he messed up like he always seemed to do and the poor guy ended up in worse shape than he was walking into the infirmary tent?
He worried about this to the point that he felt light headed and nauseous, but Dylan was watching him with those horrible, piercing eyes, and Paola was standing their waiting for him to fail so she could yell useless at him, and all of the stress made his heart want to explode but at least helped him by forcing him to remain conscious and finish the job. Imagining the strands of energy joining together, connecting back, tangling up into one, solid mass, Naji breathed out a deep puff of air and watched as, miraculously, his power did just as he had imagined. The energy led the flesh back together, seamlessly solidifying the skin and leaving no trace- not even a tiny scar- to show a wound had even existed in the first place.
Amazed, Naji’s mouth fell open, and for the first time in a long time, he felt a sense of welling, surging… pride?
It was… certainly a nice feeling.

asi • 27 February 2016 at 4:04 PM

By way of explanation, Raven simply gave a great big ol' shrug of agreement. "You're right," she said shortly. "A real strange piece of work."
She seemed intent on marching onward without any further words. It was a bit like the track itself had offended her and she planned fully to stomp the cursed earth into submission. And then, with any luck, this lame-as scouting mission might just end a little faster.

Resting his forehead against the knotted trunk- it looked a bit like Four's rope, to his blurry, unfocused eye- Izzy seemed to be mumbling something low to himself. "Strange, strange... So strange...! He..."
But, for once, perhaps in a rare moment of clarity, he appeared to react as Quincy drew in close. Maybe he hadn't noticed him coming, but Izzy doubtless felt it when the other rested his weight against the tree, eye flitting over to the appropriate corners of his eyes and watching with some solidity.
"You o.k.?" he whispered against the bark, cautiously with just enough volume to make sure that he heard. Despite whatever failings Izzy had with inattentiveness, he couldn't help but be aware of the tenseness in Quincy's frame.

"Yeah, of course," Riley waved off her worried without any thought, while casually handing her a harness to step into. Like it was the most ordinary thing in the world. Which, surprisingly enough, it really did appear to be for him, because between blinks he seemed to have secured his own straps comfortably around his hips and thighs.
"My family did this all the time! Why, what did yours do in the holidays?" he wondered, in a way kind of similar to the manner in which doctors and dentists would inquire after trivial details right before they did something... Painful.
But of course, they were only abseiling, nothing to be afraid of there. At least, not as far as Riley seemed to be aware.

taffy789 • 27 February 2016 at 9:34 PM

"Uh," came Quincy's eloquent ad informative response to Izzy's question.
 He shifted uncomfortably before deciding,  "Yeah, I think I'll be fine. It's just- I hate explaining it, you know? Always having to be the one to point out my missing hand even though it should be obvious already."
 He sighed with the confession, but his shoulders relaxed some.
  "But it's really all fine, I'll be fine, I can do this."
 And without Izzy saying anything, Quincy had that quickly restrengthened his resolve.
 "Yeah, I can do this, even the rock climbing part," he said, looking at Izzy with a determined, self-assured sparkle in his eyes, "I can do it, all of it, because I'm willing to get through it, and so I know I can..."
 He gave a wide grin and nudged at Izzy with his left elbow before prompting a confirmation, "Uh, you think so too, right?"



 "What were my holidays like?" Annabell echoed with emphasis, unbelieving. She took the harness and answered him while trying to correctly put it on herself. "Well, I helped my dad cook food, played Scrabble with some relatives, would make sure my sister didn't ruin her appetite with cookies before the actual dinner, oh, and," she added, "sometimes one of my uncles would get drink too much of the "adult's only" eggnog and start a fist fight with another one of my uncles over some stolen girlfriend in high school! So, my holidays were filled with normal, holiday activities!"
 She thought about it for a moment, then rushed to amend, "Okay so maybe that last thing wasn't that normal but I assure you that it is a lot more normal than going rock climbing for Christmas!"
 She worked to secure the straps on her harness, but got nervous and failed to tighten them enough.
 "... But I guess it was normal for your family then, though?" she asked between anxious glances at the harness and it's many safety straps, "Did your family um, own a timeshare at some exotic ski resort mountain area, or something?"
 Fidgeting with her harness, she added, "And, um, did I put this on right?"


"Oh, but Nine," Jane said, perhaps a little too pushy, "I would really like for you to consider my ideas, even with the jumping through loops asking One would take."
 Because after all, Jane thought, there was one leader that really, really could use an interrogation...
 "But that is up to your judgement!" Jane made sure to add, not wanting to overstep her place, "Naturally, it is."
 As Nine got ready to leave, Jane brushed off her skirt and stood up, trying replace all the worry in her expression with official poise and respectability.
 She followed Nine to the door and shook the leader's hand.
 "I knew Tyler," she began solemnly, "and I'm sorry for the loss, he was a good person and a fine worker. And I wish you luck with IOS; I agree, a trip there is most likely a necessity at this point."
  That being said, Jane added before going, "Also, I implore you to remember what I said about Eight as well, please, but I understand that some priorities take rank over others. When I eventually find her, I'll be sure to schedule her in here to discuss Two, so you can rely on me for that."
 With all she wanted to say have been said, Jane left, her mind swimming with thoughts of missing leaders, paperwork, and security camera clearance.


~~~


“Good job, Naji Bhatti,” Dylan remarked with a smile, coming up behind Naji to pat the boy on his back, “You got some blood on your hands. Go wash up.”
Head held higher than normal- so at a mild medium incline- Naji walked out the door and to the sink just outside the operating room, passing a gapping-mouthed Paola as he did so. The girl, standing with her arms folded across her chest, paused to consider a moment before sighing and following Naji. She stood behind him as he washed his hands clean.
“Bhatti, you did better than I expected,” she admitted reluctantly to the boy, “I wasn’t expecting anything at all, but still. Maybe there’s hope for you yet. Just try not to be utterly useless and, yeah, maybe there’s hope.”
Naji wasn’t sure how to reply to that, but he didn’t need to, for Paola was already gone after saying her piece, a mop in hand- presumably off to go finishing cleaning up the patient’s blood trail.
Blinking and feeling oddly… better?, Naji watched her leave, lost in a world of shallow thought until a hard voice suddenly shook him out of it.
“I need to talk to you.”
Cringing, Naji flipped around to face Dylan.
Hands stuck in his pocket, the Chief Healer said casually, “I checked over the patient. The heal was amazing. The wound was sealed and closed completely with no signs of damage left to talk about. It appeared to be perfect. Well, appeared being the keyword here.” A dangerous glint sharpened Dylan’s stare, and Naji flinched, fear of what he knew was coming next blooming in his chest.
“During a regular healing,” Dylan explained, “the flesh that has undergone trauma and is dying is healed and is made to regrow and scar over faster than normal. Upon closer inspection of the patient in that operating room, a practiced healer could sense that dead skin was still present in the patient’s body. In fact, I looked over the area where the wound had been and was surprised to find that the skin hadn’t been healed and regrown- it was simply attached back together.” Here, Dylan took a step closer to Naji, forcing the boy to back up into the sink. The healer continued, “Sure, the wound could heal on its own but that’s not exactly the point now, is it? The issue is that the heal done was actually anything but, and I personally am racking my brain, trying to figure out if the mistake was caused by stress or is a more… personal problem on part of the healer who’d performed the heal.”
Every muscle in Naji’s body tightened in preparation of Dylan’s next question; “Naji Bhatti. Tell me, what are the exact capabilities of your power?”
There it was.
Squeezing his eyes shut, Naji took a deep breath, relaxed his tongue, and snapped his eyes open again and practically shouted his prepared, rushed response, “Closing wounds. Just… closing wounds. Nothing else. I haven’t learned… how to do anything else. I don’t even know if I’m able to… do anything else.”
He spoke this as candidly as possible, and Naji felt as if a fisherman had just tied his body around a hook and cast it towards a swarm of swimming sharks…
A second passed, and then Dylan chuckled.
“That’s… pathetic,” the Chief Healer mused, more candid than Naji could ever hope of being. He tried not to feel stepped on as Dylan continued, “No, really, that’s the worst power I have ever heard about. And I once knew a guy who, for whatever reason, could only use his telekinesis on green objects. Completely green objects. And there’s hardly any useful completely green objects in the world, so half the time he ended up fighting with leaves and blades of grass. He died, by the way.”
Dylan hummed, and glanced over Naji before saying, “Like that man, your inability to properly heal is most likely due to a mental block within yourself that is preventing the full capabilities of your power from unleashing. Your fear and worry is holding you back. So, stop that. Or don’t, because you’ll annoy Paola more if you keep being useless, so I don’t really mind either way, actually.” Dylan grinned an unkind grin, then mused further, “There’s also the chance that closing wounds IS the full capability of your power, I suppose. I doubt it, but the possibility exists. If that chance proves true, I guess you’ll just have to live with a totally useless power. Luckily for you, a power that insignificant has little chance of taking your over. …Unless it happens to be super malicious, of course. Now, wouldn’t that be some feral!”
Enjoying the idea of a vicious feral with a complete, powerful dominion over the tiny niche of wound closing, Dylan began walking away from Naji. As he left, he offered nothing more than “stick with being a field medic and don’t you dare heal anyone in my infirmary until you get over yourself” to Naji as instruction.
… Standing alone with his back still pressed up against the sink, Naji was hit with a familiar sensation of being stepped on while, at the same time, feeling rather relieved at the turn of events.

asi • 28 February 2016 at 2:08 AM

"They just don't wann t'say anything," Izzy muttered a little bitterly, stare falling only a little short of boring a large hole into the twisted old tree.
While Quincy worked on his own personal cheerleading routine and reestablished his confidence, Izzy's attention wandered from toeing down several very springy blades of grass to sniffing up at the sky with a frown and a bad squint.
But when the cue was given, he knew exactly what answer to give- even when he wasn't too hot on the precise question posed. He glanced over at Quincy with his one working, heavily-lidded eye and replied, "'Course I do."
Then he shot a quick, shifty look over at the other two teammates, confirming that they weren't at all paying attention, before quickly leaning in (and up) to give a tiny, tiny, peck of a kiss on the other boy's cheek.
Next thing Izzy was strolling back past the rest of the group to clamber awkwardly down to a seat on the ground beside the gaping hole, apparently completely oblivious to the danger a foot to his left. He then reached far over, picked up a harness, dropped it in his lap and simply gazed at it, one hand idly tweaking a strap back and forth without a clue.


"Oh!" Riley's own tone was colored with surprise, too. He gave Annabell an odd look, like he was completely reevaluating what he knew of her in that moment. "I had no idea you had such a... Large... Family," he blinked, before bending down a little to examine her handiwork.
"Hmm," he frowned, and tugged on the top straps to show her how loose it was. "Allow me, but do tell if it gets too tight. It shouldn't be constricting, but there shouldn't be leeway for it to curl up or twist at any point, because that would be uncomfortable. The pressure needs to be evenly distributed along every strap, so you should be able to feel it equally all over," he explained fluently, just like he'd heard instructors say it so many times.
While he adjusted the harness, Riley tried to answer the question about his own family. "Hmm, no... My family tended to try somewhere new every holiday. Usually somewhere that required a very small plane. Sometimes we'd visit family friends, but never extended family. I only heard about my mother's side sometimes. I don't think they were on very good terms," he pondered without any particular concern for the matter. After all, it had been a long time since he'd last been home, and his dad was already resting in peace...
"You're all good to go!" he finally announced, letting go after a final tug and standing back. "I guess I'll go sort out him," Riley stuck a thumb back out over his shoulder towards where Izzy now sat, fiddling with his harness and looking utterly lost. Riley gave a rueful look, like he just couldn't imagine how he'd ever gotten himself in this position.


"Right, right..." In so saying, Karen allowed the Jane to sweep on past her, and leave the room first.
For a few moments, she just looked unseeingly around the room, mulling over everything that Eight's assistant had said in there today, feeling heavy and weighed down by all that had come to pass.
Then, as if suddenly remembering her own eagerness to leave, Karen strode on out into the corridor, feet pointed in the direction of Ford's own tiny office, little more, she knew, than a glorified cupboard with a floor drowning in desk. Maybe if, in her remodeling, she could manage a small upgrade for him... Maybe Ford would respond well to rewards and positive reinforcement? Who knew, but she'd give it her best shot... After just a spot of tongue-lashing, that is.

taffy789 • 29 February 2016 at 9:48 PM

Flushing deeply, Quincy shifted foot to foot in an agitated, embarrassed fashion. After a minute of trying (and failing) to lean calm and stoically against the tree, Quincy pushed off of it and went to rejoin the others, hovering around the edges of the small group.


"Oh, I wouldn't say it was that large," Annabell said, taking note of the instructions Riley gave, "I lived with my mom, dad, and sister, and we only really saw the others on holidays... I'd say I have more of a normal sized family, and I didn't even have cousins my age, considering my parents were both the oldest children... and," she mused, "considering the my mom's only sibling was a lesbian. So, yeah, I'd say my extended family wasn't even as big as it could've been.
And, actually, sometimes I wished it could've been bigger." She admitted this with a casual shrug, then added, beaming with a smile at the mere thought, "I always thought it would be fun to care for a bunch of little cousins."
 The smile lingered for a full minute before gradually disappearing and taking her brightness with it. 
Suddenly feeling a bit washed out by the conversation, she focused on Riley's strap adjustments to distract her brain from the creeping, quiet return of her anxiety.  
 But anxiety found other outlets to plague her through. When she realized that Riley's hands were practically on her waist, she quickly became self-conscious and fought down a surge of flustered emotion.
"A vacation every holiday? Seems expensive," Annabell stated conversationally, now focusing on anything but the strap adjustments.
 After she made the expensive comment, she recalled Leon once, long ago, complaining about his girlfriend's wealth as compared to his own bank account of zero dollars. The issue had been over Leon being unable to pay for dates, or something- Annabell only accurately recalled Leon mentioning that Alex was "really freakin' loaded it's insane" and then going on to say that he was stuck forever being a trophy husband.
 ... Leon's tendency to exaggerate aside, Annabell also remembered Alex mentioning money before, so, logically, Riley would have to come from the same affluent background... 
Riley was... rich?
 She stared at her friend, reevaluating him as he had done her.



Absorbing Raven's answer, Tabs nodded and didn't push the issue further.

 She led everyone north for another hour before calling the group to a halt as they reached the top of a large hill.
 "Ok-ay," Tabs began, stretching the syllables as she threw down her backpack, "break time."
 She knelt down, unzipped the bag, and pulled apart the fabric to reveal to all present the treasure trove of goods she'd been carrying on her back.
 "Special K-Bars, jerky, and little warm water bottles," she announced to the group, pointing out each item, "there's a lot, so take whatever, but go easy on the water." Upon considering her words, Tabs added, "Reminds me- if you need a bathroom break, I recommend taking one now."
 With that said, Tabs snatched a water bottle and jerky stick from the bag and stood up again to address the group.
 "On an unrelated note, I'm going to go "scout the area" a bit. Scream if ya need anything."
  As Tabs started walking off, Zach easily figured out the reason why the girl chose to set down camp on a hill that was lower than the others around it. The hill, while not suited for viewing or scouting the surrounding area, was perfect for privacy.
Blinking, Zach was the first to step forward and grab his food.
 He sat down on the ground, stripping his own bag and sword sheaths from his back, and devoured a Special K-Bar in a manner of a few big, slow bites.

asi • 3 March 2016 at 3:37 AM

After the other two had settled down and made their claims on the snacks, Raven grudgingly joined them on the ground and went for the water, although without enthusiasm, Tabs' cautions in mind. So in the interests of water conservation, she took just a mouthful of water in, swirling it around, trying to wash that gritty, parched feeling out. The warmth and subtle yet distracting plastic tang made her cringe and swallow as soon as her mouth felt alive again. She took a few more small, unenjoyable sips, more out of a vague sense of responsibility to her body and keeping it hydrated than any immediate want, and then contented herself with chewing on a particularly tough piece of jerky.
All in all, it wasn't too bad, really.
Raven kept herself focused on her very stubborn piece of meat and licking the salt delicately off her fingers, rather than meeting eyes and risking interaction with either of the boys. She didn't want to start anything new, so she stayed quiet and still, now.


"Well, the thing with my family is," Riley considered quietly. "They always seemed very big. Of course, they were very surprised to find they had a kid who'd prefer silently reading to, say," he waved a hand at the impending hole in one quick motion, "spelunking ," he smiled back, rather shyly, and with a touch of melancholy so atypical of the leader.
On the topic of money, Riley answered distractedly, while taking the harness from Izzy and holding it out, helping the boy step into it and buckling it up for him just like he would for a child. "I suppose so. My parents never seemed to think about that sort of thing, though," he said, frowning as he tried to get the right amount of tightness without constricting too much. It was hard to tell with Izzy, because the boy was just so squishy, with absolutely no muscle or bone apparent around the stomach, that Riley was scared the first sign he'd get of 'too far' would be the poor boy's internal organs getting squeezed to death.
There was one definite good about this whole process though, and that was that while Riley worked, the sleepy boy looked so spaced out that there was absolutely zero chance he could be paying attention to either what Riley was doing with his waist (he stood as still as a doll, in fact) nor what he was saying to Annabell. In all likelihood, it seemed the poor kid's head was in another universe entirely. Though this, of course, did not bode well for the descent ahead, but Riley wasn't thinking about that too much.
"When they weren't using it to help others, my parents only saw money as a means with which to help live out their passions. Unfortunately, these things don't last forever," he remarked, standing and brushing off the dirt from his knees, finally appearing to be satisfied with Izzy's harness.


When Karen opened the door she was in for a shock.
The lights were out in the room, so of course her first thought was that Ford had gone somewhere else. Her hand even slipped back to the door handle in advance of pulling back and closing it behind her. But before she did that, her eyes adjusted and she saw a silhouette, a person standing in the corner, apparently bent over something.
Clearly they were preoccupied with something, as they gave no sign of having heard her open the door and come in. Karen was alerted to what, exactly, that something was when flash of motion caught her eye, sudden and violent, followed by a cry... And whimpers of pain.
Karen's hand leaped over to hit the lights, at the same time as she shouted, enraged; "Ford!" She'd have never sent those two after him had she known he might react like this...!
But although her eyes made easy sense of the now-lit scene before her, her brain did not. It tried and failed to grapple with the numbers coming in, the result conflicting with everything she'd believed up til this point.
"H-huh...?" Karen couldn't help that small, scared, wavering sound that released on her exhale. It sounded just like she had when she was a child, just as weak and clueless and out of control. Her eyes kept shaking back and forth over the scene, trying to see it in any other way, find what she was missing, the clue to make it all make sense, but no matter how she willed it, none of the facts would change.
The person standing over the body was not Ford, but the other boy. Behind the body, kneeling and holding it up, keeping the head and upper back lifted a few feet off the floor, was the girl. There were also restraints, green bonds made out of energy, wrapped around the arms and legs. These Karen had seen before, they belonged to the girl...
And while the boy turned around to stare at Nine, she did not, although she must have noticed the light change, not to mention heard Karen's yell.
"I'm flippin' tired of holding him down," she complained thoughtlessly, rolling shoulders and flexing her back muscles to show it. "Let me have a turn, alright? See how he likes getting hit by a girl," she scoffed, looking down at the body.
Having frozen mid-punch, her accomplice lowered his fist and drew back, quickly shooting the binder-girl a panicked, warning glance before addressing his leader. "Hey, Nine..." For the next part, he seemed at a loss on what to say. Clearly this situation was a new one for him, too.
The girl followed his lead, standing up properly as well. "Don't worry Nine, we've got this covered," she said, tossing her hair impatiently. "Or we will... As soon as this guy stops abusing my power," she accused.
"Hey now, this way's just more efficient!" he countered automatically, before faltering again, remembering their company.
"What is this?" Nine demanded to know, deadly quiet. Since the girl seemed completely taken aback by this reaction, she pointed instead to the other one. "Tell me."
Again, the boy hesitated, trying to find the words. A slight, nervous blush colored his cheeks as he looked at his leader uncertainly, trying to gauge her anger. "He- Ford- seriously misbehaved, I mean, talking like that to Eight's assistant... You looked like you wanted-"
The girl interrupted, her expression quivering in her indignation, which couldn't be reined in. "He was talking smack about her! Right to her face, too! Unbelievable..."
So help her, Karen was seriously struggling to keep up. "And so that..." she said slowly, gears grinding painfully in her head, "warrants this?" She pointed at Ford, lying there bruised and bloodied and battered. The brown and green majority of his face was turning a purple to match his cheeks, which apparently were attempting the lap the rest by reaching an ugly black. He looked to be on the cusp of unconscious.
The male bodyguard just frowned, in no way comprehending the magnitude of the situation as seen by Karen, and expressed in her tone. "You told us," he replied carefully, "to continue carrying out our tasks as we had done before."
"Yeah!" The girl chimed in, missing, willfully or otherwise, the hand the other threw up to halt her. "We're just policing ourselves, as always, just as Two instructed-"
With that, a little something in Karen snapped. "Leave, now," she ordered, unable to stand even another second of looking at their faces or hearing their guiltless voices. "Go."
The female left, looking about as peeved as Karen would be had anyone gone into her office during her absence and messed up all her (design) files... Right put out.
The boy lingered anxiously for a few moments, "Nine, this is not... We weren't going to, you know, damage anything. Not permanently, just rough him up a li-"
She drew in her eyebrows sharply. "GO."
He went.

taffy789 • 3 March 2016 at 10:50 PM

After downing his cereal bar and water bottle, Zach used the extra break time to inspect the supplies he'd deemed crucial to bring along.
 There wasn't much to inspect.
 Other than the small, nearly empty pack he'd been lugging around, Zach carried only his swords and a few knives in his belt. So, he silently examined his weapons.
 The swords were sharp, ready to cut, every knife was in it's proper sheath, and those small, furtive daggers of his that were coated in a fast acting nerve number remained in their special place at the back of of his belt.
 Seeing that he was well prepared relaxed him somewhat, and so he dubbed it safe to go grab seconds from the backpack.
Zach snatched three Special-K bars and shoved them into his pocket for later, and he unwrapped a fourth to devour right then and there.
 As he took a bite out of the artificial strawberry cereal bar, he rooted through the other pockets of Tab's bag, not caring how the Gavin kid was frowning nervously while watching him, as if wanting to say something but being too afraid to.
 Soon enough, Zach found what he was searching for.
 Taking another bottle of water, Zach returned to his seat with the roll of gauze in hand and began using the water and gauze to clean up his bleeding wound.
 
 Warily eying the leader, Gavin scooted stealthily closer to Raven- but not too close, as he made sure to keep a respectful two feet away from him and the obviously grumpy girl.
  "So," he said, towards the sky as he spoke, nervously not meeting Raven's eyes, "Do you, uh, know any other boredness-breaking games? Because I feel that right now- bored. Not unless you don't feel bored, 'cause that's cool, then there's no need to break the boredness when it doesn't exist, right? Right? .... Right."
 Looking defeated, as if he currently hated his own voice, Gavin shushed himself by taking the longest drink of water one possibly could from a pitifully tiny, eight ounce bottle.
 

"Your parents sound like good people," Annabell remarked, smiling. "They seem outgoing too... I see where Alex got it from..." She trailed off, not elaborating on what that carefully emphasized "it" exactly entailed.
 
 Finally rejoining the group, Quincy picked up the last harness and stepped into it. He bent down, grabbed the straps, and hiked the loose harness far up on his waist. Then, after trapping the harness between his left arm and his waist, he tightened the straps until they comfortably but securely hugged his hips.
 With that done, Quincy mentally prepared himself for the actually challenging part.
"Uh, Four," he began, turning to the leader, "I know it's not the most obvious thing in the world but- I'm kinda missing a hand." He spoke lightly, as if telling a joke, but his shoulders rolled in a quick, anxious motion.
 "I'm positive I can do this... rock climbing thing," Quincy lied, "but I need to know... what exactly l need to do?"
He kept his eyes trained on Four, resisting the urge to glance worriedly at the yawning pit off to his side.

asi • 12 March 2016 at 12:50 AM

Raven swallowed back a groan that went down almost as unpleasantly as that water. "Look, kid," she grumbled, trying her honest-to-gods hardest to keep her tone as pleasant as possible, although not a technique she was particularly good or practiced at. "I'm just not in the mood for your games."
Yup, that was her trying to break it gently.
She tore a few more bites out of her jerky stick before finally remembering how to be a somewhat more empathetic human being. And coercing herself into committing energy into the act.
Raven sighed. "I get where you're coming from though. This brown rocky bullcrap-" and she could win so many awards with that description, but god she didn't think she'd ever had the capacity to work up enough feeling to care- "has got me about one step away from plotting a one-way ticket to the canyons." Which, as an area well-known as a Glaeroes stronghold, which pretty much like saying she wanted to walk off a cliff. Melodramatic, yes- but Raven used to self-identify as an emo, after all.


"Yeah," Riley laughed, so quickly that anyone who could read moods might get whiplash just from hearing his tone. Now, he sounded light-hearted, like nothing anyone could say would bother him in the least, and only good memories were in his head. "All that energy! She can be really hard to keep up with, don't you think?"
While he said this, he happened to give Izzy's harness a last, absent-minded pull, which apparently went a bit too far because the kid gave a surprised kind of squawk, and his eyes actually focused enough to glare at the leader- or at least, an approximation of where the guy should be. Even now he wasn't meeting any facial features, and forget eyes. Still...
Riley just hurried to loosen it to the right amount, apologizing profusely as he did so, until the other's look, filled momentarily with unexpected venom, faded back to a nondescript, mildly disgruntled look that was more or less the norm for Izzy.
With three out of four ready, Riley could finally give his attention to the bodyguard who'd been waiting so patiently.
He nodded, feeling a bit guilty about how Quincy seemed to need to point out his handicap (definitely no pun intended) himself. But in general, for a teen who'd never actually done any training or work as an instructor, he seemed almost too serene to be leading the descent of three total novices into the unknown. Whether this zen-level calm could be seen as soothing and confidence-inspiring, or lacking in understanding of the situation's gravity and the complete opposite, it was hard to say, but regardless, Riley was unperturbed.
"Oh, there's no actual rock climbing involved," he explained. "It's a fully vertical descent. That means you won't have to worry about the walls, they won't be within reach, unless of course you start swinging- and please don't," Riley smiled casually. "All you have to do is..." he explained it all carefully to the other guy, walking him slowly through the process and trying to make sure Quincy followed every word, at least as best as Riley could. This was the sort of thing that it would be hard to install confidence into others about, especially near complete strangers.
Well, on the bright side, they'd have a lot of trust in him afterwards- assuming nothing horrible did happen.

Meanwhile, Izzy apparently had no interest in even trying to pay attention to what Riley was teaching Quincy, because he sidled up to Annabell, his single eye flicking her shifty, suspicious looks, kind of like he expected her to turn around, rear up, turn into the swamp monster and attack... Or something. Although Izzy wasn't grounded enough in reality to be nervous or self-conscious, he still hated having to approach and, god forbid, interact with humans, so it was clear on his expression that he was only doing this out of a sense of duty... Or something like that. It seemed like, in his mind, he was only willing to do the bare minimum.
Especially when his question went like this: "Does Four even know how big that place down'ere is? He know how long we have'ta stay down'ere?"
He looked unhappily up at the distant sun, whose arms he knew to be too short to reach into that dark, nasty pit. "It looks s'cold," Izzy glared, squintingly, at that too-powerless sun.


"Ford," she said softly, walking forward with only small steps and approaching him like one would a wounded animal. Which, really, he was. Karen was just hoping he wouldn't choose to lash out at any moment, since the last thing she wanted would be to hurt him further.
But no, the response the body gave was to curl in on itself, into a ball in the fashion of an armadillo. As she saw this, Karen's stiff, frightened and angry face collapsed into both relief and concern. He wouldn't aggress now... Even when not distressed, this guy's brain was probably too straight-laced and simply wired for the subtleties a sneak attack required! Karen just had to walk over and find out what kind of damage had been done already.
She knelt down by his side in the darkened corner, and hesitantly placed a touch on his trembling shoulder.
"Ford... Are you..." Even at the volume with which she spoke, the level that could almost be drowned out purely by the buzz of silence when nothing else was left to fill the void- even speaking so low, she couldn't bring herself to voice that word.
He was most definitely not "okay", that much was evident.
It was a long moment before anything happened, but when it did, the big, bulky mass before her that yet looked so oddly small- it shifted, groaned, fell out of the curl to lie straight on its side, pushing the chest up and down in big heaving movements. It looked a bit like he might throw up, but Karen didn't retreat, simply hoping it wouldn't come to that.
If nothing else she'd always had faith in his strength. Nine had been thinking straight when she'd promoted him, after all. She just hadn't had enough faith in that.
At the same time as she thought that, a quiet, "I will be," finally fell from her wrecked assistant's lips. "I will..." he sighed, closing his eyes tight as pain sharply scrambled his features.
A small gladdened smile even dared cross her looks as she stood, meaning to call for medical aid the minute she stepped outside.
Then the victim gasped out; "Don't... Don't let them see me, l-like this..." He was lying there, looking ever so beaten and desperate, and that was the thing he asked for.
Something in Karen jumped- perhaps a bone, a heartstring, tendon, nerve, who knew? Whatever it was, it sure knew its cues, just as she knew, in that instant, how Ford felt exactly.
Someone immovable should never be seen moved. Someone who left others paralyzed should never be seen so themself.
Karen shook the brimming empathy out of her eyes and marched on out the door, pulling the very next passer-by aside without space for a second thought.
It happened to them all, whether they would wanted to admit to it or not.

taffy789 • 12 March 2016 at 1:55 PM

"Oh, okay," was all Gavin had to reply to that.
 He shrunk backwards from Raven another foot, too embarrassed to meet her eyes as he did.
With that, the entire group lapsed into a long, stretching period of silence which lasted for a good ten minutes.
 At the end of those odd ten minutes, Gavin piped up yet again, this time asking no one in particular, "Man, I wonder when Tabs is coming back?"

 Upon hearing this, Zach couldn't help but acknowledge that it was an important question.
 Tabs had been gone for long enough; she should be almost back by now.
 His wound now patched up, Zach slipped the gauze in his pocket and focused on the question of the missing girl.
 He asked his power "Is Tabs heading back already?" and was satisfied when he was answered with a resolute "yes". He kept on being satisfied until his power shifted right under him and sent a rolling shiver of dread racing down his back.
 Grimacing, Zach probed further, not feeling secure with the quick turn of events.
 And the deeper he searched the surrounding area with his power, the less comforted he felt.

 Gavin watched the strange leader out of the corner of his eye, not sensing the waves of dread emitting off of Five but catching the mood enough to feel unnerved by how deathly still the leader had froze.
 "Uh, hey," Gavin ventured at Raven again, if only because she was the least frightening warm body present, "is that guy-" he gestured towards Five with a tick of his head- "always so...." Frozen? Possessed? Constipated? He faltered, trying to find a good adjective to describe the tight stillness that the leader had embraced. 
 "... tense?" Gavin concluded, rubbing at the back of his neck as if just looking at the leader gave him painful knots of anxiety.
 Suddenly, Five stood.
 "We have to leave," he declared, tense being the correct word to describe the manner in which he gathered his belongings.
 "But, Tabs," Gavin interjected, and Five snapped back, as if it were the most obvious thing, "Is dead meat- they've seen her already. But they haven't seen us and I prefer to keep it that way."
 Warily, Gavin stood up, not fully trusting or even understanding the leader's judgment. He glanced at Raven for guidance.