Private Roleplay~ IOD

asi • 13 March 2016 at 1:50 AM

"Yeah, duh, that's what he's always-" Raven began to answer with a classic eye roll, until she was interrupted.
Without a second thought, she was on her feet and by Zach's side, ready to follow. She barely even registered the alarm bells ringing in the back of her mind at his tone, and words. Of course, Raven wasn't the kind of girl who had ever easily fallen victim to panic. Whatever the threat was, it hadn't revealed itself yet, and she certainly wasn't afraid of the shadows.
It just meant she needed to keep her hands at the ready, hovering around the waistband of her pants where a number of her easy-access knives were hidden, and could be pulled at even a split-second's notice.
"Where?" she asked Zach shortly, in one breath, unconcerned about whether he'd answer with a place to run to, or one to get attacked from- it was all the same to her. She wouldn't get caught unprepared for anything.

taffy789 • 13 March 2016 at 4:09 PM

“Um, good questions,” Annabell conceded, following Izzy’s gaze to the deep darkness of the pit, “But I’m sure Ri- Four um, knows what he’s doing.” She gave the boy a pleasant nod and added with too much forced cheer, “Hopefully it isn’t cold! I didn’t bring my jacket!”
If she had to confess, she too waxed nervous at the lack of solid information provided about the gaping pit she would be lowering herself into. But she didn’t let it show; she knew she needed to put more trust in her friend, who was, after all, qualified enough to be a Falchion leader…
A title that was also held by the likes of the misanthropic, apathetic Zach and the resident crazy, Eight, so! Um.
Annabell did herself a favor and forgot the point she was trying to make to herself.
Instead, she saw Riley was done instructing Quincy, and she called out to her friend, “We all ready to go?”





“They’ll come from-” Zach was cut off as a loud, piercing series of pops, like gun shots, echoed from where the direction Tabs had disappeared off into. Bright crackles of light and heat exploded over the arch of the hill in front of them, as orange as a caution sign and too dangerously close for comfort.
Zach exhaled a deep, tight breath. “They’re over there,” he finished, turned on his heel, and started quickly across the hilltop, away from the fighting.
As he moved, he glanced around his surroundings once more and solidified just how screwed he really was. The hill the group stood on was the lowest in the area, sandwiched in a valley, and so there was no place they could run to fast enough that couldn’t be seen by somebody standing on one of the larger hills. That they would be seen was clearly inevitable, and Zach absolutely loathed the idea of getting into a fight with the three people his power told him were approaching the arch of their hill…
“So,” Gavin said, speeding up so he was just behind Raven and Zach, “these ‘they’ people are..?”
“A group of Glaeroes. Who else?” Zach answered swiftly, preoccupied with the slow tightening of his spine that signaled more inevitabilities just as unpleasant as the sensation felt.
“And Tabs is fighting them alone?” Gavin squawked, twiddling his fingers in an anxious manner.
“She’s fighting one of them,” Zach replied, stopping in his tracks. He swiveled his head and stared at the hilltop that Tab had disappeared over. “The other three assumed there were others in this area, so they went searching for us. And they’re about to find us.”
Zach kept his eyes trained on the Glaeroes as they poured over the hill and into his line of sight. He watched them as they noticed him; as they began racing down the hillside to catch up with the Falchions they no doubt wanted to murder. What little futile fleeing Zach had attempted put some distance between the two groups, but not enough to stop the rushing Glaeroes for long.
Strangely enough, however, two Glaeroes stopped midway down their hill, not moving another inch. Zach focused on them, their sudden halt causing him concern…
“Crap!” Zach exclaimed, stepping backwards and bumping into Raven. On impulse, he grabbed her shoulder, barked out a command of “Get down!” and hit the ground, taking the girl down with him. He landed on loose soil and slid halfway down the hillside, the hill’s arch now loaming protectively in front of him. Seconds later, a flurry of rocks whizzed over Zach’s head, soaring past and violently striking the hill far behind, sending up clouds of dust and dirt and debris with every hard impact.
Gavin, who’d froze in place hearing Zach’s command, watched in amazement as the rocks missed him completely, forgoing him in favor of his two teammates. It was only when he turned his attention back towards the Glaeroes that he realized another- a larger- projectile was racing towards him.
After the rocks stopped trying to put a dent in his skull, Zach glanced back up the hill just in time to see the spear protruding through Gavin’s back. Zach blinked, and he watched as, in the next moment, the spear sloooowly began moving backwards, pulled by some unknown power- ripping, tearing, producing the grating, terrible sounds that came with breaking flesh. Finally, the spear tore free, flying back towards the two Glaeroes standing on the hill, and Gavin’s limp body fell backwards, rolling past Zach and leaving a trail of red against every rock it hit on the way to the hill’s bottom.
With a sharp inhale, Zach removed his eyes from the dead body and glanced at Raven, drawing a sword from his back as he did so.
“Two of us left, three of them. And they have at least two long range powers while we both fight using close combat.” He paused, then added thoughtfully, “We’re screwed, Shadow.”

asi • 16 March 2016 at 2:08 AM

"Oh, thanks," Izzy muttered, sounding sharply sarcastic as he turned away, arms crossed and head lolling back on one shoulder like he'd just fallen asleep standing.
Until Riley strolled over and patted- or rather slapped, hard- him on the back, jolting the poor woozy kid forwards. He'd probably hoped for more attention that way, but Four was going to be disappointed, since Izzy began mumbling incomprehensible things under his breath in response.
After all, the kid was hopeless.
Riley groaned quietly to himself, but still conjured through some sorcery a cheerful smile for everyone else, while he clapped his hands together and asked, "Right, who wants to go first?"
...
Izzy seemed to snore lightly in his sleep, in that cartoonish way which no one else did.


After being taken by surprise, Raven was only then pushing herself onto her elbows and knees, shoving the dirt off her face with a swipe of her sleeve. She'd missed what had happened to Gavin in the kerfuffle, but she wasn't going to waste time thinking silly hopeful thoughts. Definitely not- her eyes stopped, snagged a moment on red, but she tore her gaze away without a second more to waste.
Somewhere in the midst of this mess, a pair of slim blades had fallen into each of Raven's hands, and she was pinching them tightly between thumbs and forefingers... These flimsy things were not something she could fend anything off with, or even stab effectively with, but they were nigh impossible to see and a breeze to throw-
Yeah, they were going to be absolutely useless against enemies with that kind of range. Raven really had nothing going for her here, and Zach's assessment was beginning to sound increasingly accurate. Still-
"Don't you say that," she muttered, her feet scrambling to get a purchase on ground so dry and friable beneath them.
From a crouch, she spared just one look up towards the top of the hill. Since they'd rolled down the opposite side, Zach and Raven weren't looking up at the sharp end of a sword just yet- these distance users couldn't work their magic without seeing them... Or they could, because Raven was watching a couple more rocks come flying over the hill and crashing some ways to their left... But they couldn't set homing devices on it, that was for sure!
"They've got bad aim," Raven lied, considering Zach had saved them the first time and now they were just out of sight- but heck if she was going to hand him any credit. "We just need to keep moving, right?"
If anyone had be saying this stupid optimism to her at any other time, she'd probably hit them.
But the last thing she would ever do- considering that it could be coming soon- would certainly not be agreeing with Zach.

taffy789 • 17 March 2016 at 1:45 PM

Zach looked up at Raven, considering her for a moment.
“… Yeah, let’s keep moving,” he conceded after some deliberation, though not sounding very convinced. However, running was the best option they had other than waiting patiently for death to arrive, so Zach kept low and began moving quickly away from the Glaeroes again.
He jogged near the base of the hill, ducking his head low as the rocks kept whizzing above, striking more accurate with every missed rock.
When a rock whizzed inches past his nose, Zach grimaced. “Their aim is getting better, Shadow. They’re getting closer to us.”
As he continued jogging, he checked the enemies’ movements with his power, and his frown deepened as he added, “No, forget range- they want look at our faces when they kill us. I don’t know if they’re idiots or just bloodthirsty, or both, but they’re catching up to us real fast.”
He stopped moving, signaling for Raven to do so too.
“The third Glaeroe is closer to us than the other two and doesn’t seem to have a range power. I’m sure you can take them out while I distract the Glaeroes throwing that crap at us. After you take that third Glaeroe out, we might have a chance against the other two.” He shifted his sword from his left to his right hand and flexed his left wrist in anticipation.
“Got it?” He moved his sword back to his left hand and said, looking at the hilltop instead of Raven, “I don’t have to tell you how important it is that you don’t get killed; you die and we both die. You’re not dumb, so I know you understand.”
With those kind, assuring words, Zach put the plan into motion, running towards the Glaeroes and up the hill’s incline to attract the enemies’ attention.
But as he reached the hill’s crest, the plan momentarily cracked as he was met with the third Glaeroe who was running up the other side. Saying a few choice words in his head, Zach caught the Glaeroe’s knife on his sword before the knife could leave a nasty slash across his chest. For a moment, they were both locked in place by the unyielding metal. Then, panic struck, and Zach’s eyes flickered to his sword in time to see the Glaeroe’s white hot knife melting through the sword’s metal and cutting the blade right in half. Holding a broken sword, Zach recoiled from the blazing hot, vibrating air which surrounded his attacker. He stepped backwards, and the ground shifted purposefully under him, as if attempting to swallow his foot. Knocked off balance, Zach dropped his sword as he slid down the other side of the hill, trying his best not to break any bones on the hard tumble down.
Picking himself out of the dirt, Zach stood, body aching, and pulled his second sword from his back, taking stock of the situation at hand. The heat-user Glaeroe had disappeared from his sight, gone from the top of the hill and most likely on the other side of it, attacking Raven instead of him. His first sword lay uselessly a few feet in front of him, having followed him down the hill during the landslide. And the final two Glaeroes…
Zach jumped to his left just as a flurry of rocks flew past. Following, the rock’s path backwards, Zach located the Glaeroes yards in front of him, closing in fast.
Sheathing his last good sword, Zach pulled a knife from his belt, gripped it tight, turned, and ran the opposite direction.

asi • 22 March 2016 at 4:49 AM

Rare though it was with her skin tone, Raven paled noticeably when she heard that. To see their faces... That level of barbarism, while certainly not unheard of, or even very uncommon, it was still something one didn't expect to encounter on IOD's battlefield. Most teens here were pragmatists, dead, or insane. Intentional cruelty tended to be an acquired taste, after all. That meant this lot had experienced enough for the cravings to start... This was just their luck.
"Tch," she only scowled and kept on going, that is, until Zach brought them both to a halt.
"I-... Right," she corrected herself with a simple nod, although what went unsaid turned into a single nervous shot of a look directed Zach's way. It wasn't anxiety for herself at all; not since Raven would much prefer her chances one to one than two against one.
For a moment, she even wished she had a way to verbalize the same sentiments that he seemed to wrap his tongue around so deftly there. But her mouth, which she had always considered rather quick (or at least, it was one that ran off easily), felt suddenly leaden in a way she hadn't felt before, or couldn't remember... She couldn't think of something even remotely similar to say, even though her situation was the same. Right? The odds would definitely be against her if they managed to kill Five...
Instead, Raven responded with a short, "Got it," and a blank expression to mask the fact that those two words were about all it seemed she could manage.
But this was more time-efficient anyway, so who cared?
She continued around the side of the hill, but this time with eyes much more careful, on the lookout for the enemy she expected.
Of course, this strategy didn't leave her room to anticipate the enemy she wasn't expecting.


Sure, send the sleeping kid down first, why not? The other ones may have been shaking in their boots, but didn't that just mean they were operating at proper capacity?
This made Izzy wonder if they were working with the 'least loss' theory then...
He squirmed nervously in the harness, which seemed to push and pull at his different muscles in the strangest way, as he hung with the rope and absolutely nothing else in arm's reach- no, in two, three arm-reaches, he wasn't even sure. But when his movement caused him to sway back and forth like a pendulum, Izzy had to cease it immediately, before he got, you know, dizzy.
He started cussing Four out rather loudly while carefully making sure the rope advanced through the climbing mechanism. True, he probably could have opposed the leader's volunteering of him, but it seemed like the guy had already singled Izzy out as, no other way to say it, the one Four didn't like. It was probably inevitable, considering how Four had apparently known the girl already, and Quincy was... Quincy, obviously, who wouldn't like Quincy?
Some people, definitely, but even out of those people, who would prefer Izzy anyway?
So here he was, desperately trying to suck up some precious little favor by being the first to abseil into a deep dark potentially endless dungeon... That was undoubtedly freezing COLD. Hopefully this might help him not get offered up as bait for anything else later- presuming there would be a later.
Assured by this distance they wouldn't be able to hear him up top, Izzy indulged himself in a few louder, more choice profanities-
Before being cut out by a sudden 'oh' as his feet touched the ground in the darkness.
Well, he did have a light, he just hadn't been looking.
"Hey, are you alright?"
And as it turned out, he could hear Four just fine from down here, in fact, the guy sounded awfully close... It took a lot to look up, but when he did, the source of the sunlight seemed like it could only be a couple of meters above at most. When his eyes adjusted to that light, Izzy even thought he could see the friendly way Four was waving his hand down at him...
Humiliated, he didn't say a thing as the rope grew slack around feet that stood on solid ground.


Raven cocked her head sharply when her ears picked up on that curious sound. Luckily she had the utmost familiarity with airborne weapons, or she may have been skewered exactly like that poor boy whose name had already been wiped from her mind.
Or maybe not exactly like that, she realized from her place on the ground, razor-edged rocks pinching at her palms. Since the spot where the spear was hovering now was definitely a bit shy of proper impalement. They really weren't trying to kill her... Right away.
Staring at the gleaming, bloody, and most certainly sharp end of the spear, Raven couldn't possibly miss the fact that the weapon was now being pulled directly backwards, as if by a string, following an arc that looked, if her estimate was right, to be exactly identical to the flight path it must have taken from the Glaeroes' hand...
Also, if her eyes also followed it, Raven could spot the scary-looking dude whose hand it flew into, who immediately threw back that same hand to ready another throw-
Okay, she was moving now.

taffy789 • 23 March 2016 at 1:11 AM

As Riley good-naturedly waved down to Izzy, Annabell was resisting the urge to front flip into the pit out of sheer hatred for herself and her apparently meaningless anxiety.
 She continued to angst while the tsunami of silent embarrassment washed over her, and so consumed by herself she was that she almost didn't notice Quincy passing his harness' rope to her.
 Their eyes met as she took the rope, and Annabell saw a reflection of her own inner shame in his gaze; mutual sympathy was traded between them without the need for any words being said.
 Wordlessly, Annabell mimicked what Riley had done and helped Quincy safely down into the pit.
 She glanced over at Riley periodically as she worked the rope, and a few quiet minutes passed before she finally found words to say.
 "So, um, the pit was, um, not as deep as it could've been, huh?"


As soon as his boots hit the ground, Quincy tugged lightly on the rope to signal he was safely down. Then, he turned his attention to unbuckling himself from the harness while frowning. Despite the surprisingly short trip, the abseiling still had felt awkward and shaky and unbalanced- his glasses had almost slipped off his nose twice and he hadn't enjoyed it in the slightest. 
Relief filled him when the harness fell to his ankles and he was able to step out from it. As if to celebrate, Quincy strolled up to Izzy, pressing against his side and throwing a lazy arm around his boyfriend's shoulders.
 "Hey babe, you okay?" he asked, sincere but not expecting an especially important reply.  He glanced upwards to double-check that the other two weren't peering over the edge before continuing on.
"I would say I'm happy the ride down was short but honestly I'm trying to pretend the last ten minutes never happened," Quincy joked and, smiling, moved his hand upwards to ruffle through Izzy's hair.

asi • 23 March 2016 at 6:06 AM

Maybe they were all first-timers here, but Riley had never really expected anyone to make such a big deal about this. He was definitely a bit taken aback by Izzy's, er, reaction, even after he had obediently allowed himself to be lowered into the pit without so much as an anxious word.
The swearing didn't bother him in the least, since his friendship with Raven had survived even through her worst moods, meaning he definitely had experience with that kind of thing. The blow was also softened by how little he could understand, not because the strange kid wasn't loud enough, but because he seemed to have taken to an incomprehensible language for the most part... Considering his somewhat exotic appearance, it wasn't too surprising, except how this other tongue began flowing even smoother and more readily than his English. (Which was admittedly slow, often slurred and full of inflections, but in a manner that was comfortable, surely not one lacking familiarity. This just proved there really was no way to get passionate quite the same as one could in their native speech.)
He'd always had a lot of respect for bilingualism, because, despite his parents' support, he'd never managed to put the effort in and learn one. He supposed it came down to the fact that when he was younger, he'd never really met foreign first language speaker and seen into their mind. If he had, he probably would have been more curious, but as it was, he could always read the English that first sprung to mind in those who spoke a foreign language for their second.
Even if he still had the power to see into other people's heads with him now, this was a kid he naturally wouldn't be able to understand. Out of reach not because of deliberate, carefully crafted walls to keep him out... Just the way he'd been taught to think.
It was a really strange thought for Riley.
He shook himself out of this distracting chain of thought to reply to Annabell. "Nah, I never said it was very deep, did I? But of course we can't jump or anything, it's a bit too far and the bottom is very likely uneven, slippery and dangerous. This is just the safest way," he concluded with a final shrug.
He'd never thought anyone would find it hard, after all.


"M'fine," Izzy answered uncharacteristically quick, finally tearing his eye away from its unfocused absorption in the way the slick stone gleamed back at the dim artificial lights they carried. That gaze traveled briefly over Quincy's face in a zig-zag fashion before settling down at a point just off to the left. There didn't sound to be much flavor to his tone, instead it was more subdued like normal, perhaps tinged with some strange nerves.
Although his first reaction was to lean into the touch, his second, as soon as he felt the way his shoulders simply couldn't seem to stop quivering, was to pull back and push away.
Izzy didn't care what Quincy was saying, it was too embarrassing, to get so worked up about something, and now they all surely thought he was terrified by the abseiling, even though that had really been the last thing to affect him, of all the things that had happened since the group had met.
He hated that thought. "Not now," he told Quincy shortly.
Instead, he tired to keep his eye on the girl's descent, as steadily as he could.

taffy789 • 25 March 2016 at 1:54 PM

"Mm, yeah," was what Annabell tried to reply, but a noise which made it sound like she swallowed her tongue struggled out instead.
She wondered if ones face could permanently turn red after blushing so much, but she dropped the thought as Riley began preparing for her descent.
“Welp, hope I don’t slip out of this thing,” Annabell joked awkwardly, tugging at her harness right before she started lowering herself into the pit.

Back below, Quincy lowered his arm at Izzy’s sift in movement.
“Okay,” he replied, frowning and taking note of the weird tension in his boyfriend’s movements.
In an attempt to provide some sort of comfort, he squeezed Izzy’s arm before detaching himself completely from the other guy. Then, he retrieved his own flashlight and shined it on Annabell as she descended, giving her light to see as she reached the ground and began to remove her harness.
“Okay Riley, I’m good down here!” Annabell shouted up to the leader, unbuckling the safety strap around her waist.



Zach barely ran three meters before something in the plan went horribly wrong.
More specifically, he noticed the large hill to his left starting to melt.
Skidding to a stop, he gritted his teeth as tons of dirt and rock careened to an abrupt halt a foot in front of him, effectively cutting off his path of escape. He cursed his situation; of course the rock user would be talented enough to know how to cause landslides of all things. 
A flare of intuition alerted Zach to a presence to his right, and he jumped backwards, feeling a blast of uncomfortable heat swing by his shoulder. Immediately realizing which Glaeroe was attacking him, Zach felt a rush of panic that quickly turned into annoyance at Raven before transfiguring into a bitter acceptance of his untimely end. The two long distance users at once he could handle- his intuition just focused on what flying projectiles to avoid. Dealing with swipes of the knife and flying death simultaneously, however...
He stopped thinking about his doom for long enough to dodge another one of the aforementioned, blazing hot knife swipes- this one swinging inches from his chest. Retaliating with his own knife, Zach aimed for the Glaeroe’s blade, caught it, and disarmed his attacker in one fell swoop. The Glaeroe stumbled backwards and Zach moved in, slashing a gash into the Glaeroe’s left arm. Yelping, the Glaeroe threw a blind punch with the unharmed arm, which Zach easily stepped back from and into the pathway of three particularly large, fast flying rocks. Intuition acted quickly enough for him to duck two rocks, but the third hit it's mark, slamming violently into Zach's collarbone, right below his neck.
 Pain shot through the right side of his body, hot electric shocks traveling down his arm and up his throat. Staggering backwards, he gagged, wanting to throw up but screaming instead when a searing fist made contact with his chest.
 The burn throbbed, all angry red and fresh hurt, as he fell backwards and landed on a bed of hard, unforgiving rocks.
 At this point, the exhausted part of Zach wanted to continue laying there and wait for death, but the more frantic, instinctual part forced his body to roll out of the way of the next punch. Sheathing his first knife, Zach drew a specific knife from the back of his belt, desperate enough to resort to a poisoned blade. As the Glaeroe threw another punch, Zach shifted his body to avoid it, but remained close enough to reach out and- ignoring the scorching heat burning his palm- grab the Glaeroe's wrist. Striking as suddenly as a snake, Zach carved a second gash into the Glaeroe's remaining good arm, released the wrist just as quickly, and then began crawling up the large hill to try to put as much distance between him and the heat user as possible. The poison worked slowly and simply was a strong muscle relaxer; it would be minutes until any of the effects began to kick in.
 Knowing very well that he may not last another minute in his injured, exhausted state, Zach frantically climbed higher up the hill to try and buy himself more time.

asi • 29 March 2016 at 1:13 AM

Despite the lack of assistance, it seemed like Riley was down in a flash, hopping down onto the stone and unclipping himself in the next. Seeing the looks on everyone's faces as they realized they'd all made it down with incident... They shouldn't look so surprised!
Not seeing the sense in using all the flashlights at once, Riley er, redistributed Quincy's into his own hand, and proceeded to examine their surroundings in a methodical manner, running it around the space clockwise. At first, it seemed to be simply a mess of rock, and Riley had to clamber- very carefully, as his shoes made squeaky noises on the stone- over a few of the larger ones for a better view. Even then, with lights shining brightly, it was hard to make any distinguishing features out due to every inch of the place being washed in mud. Everything was wet, slippery and reflective. But, this was not chaos. Peering over at the nearest wall, despite being rent with scissions, it seemed extraordinarily regular and flat. While well-worn, this was clearly man-made.
There was a fairly large open space around them, smaller than a hall, bigger than a conference room such as Katrix had used post-invasion. It was more or less square- Riley supposed it could be best described as a sort of chamber. He looked for a door and came up empty on three of the walls. The fourth was partially torn away. The sound of flowing water was coming from that direction, too. Directing the torch down, it was just as he'd said. The floor was grossly uneven here, to the point where water gathered at the bottom in a steady trickle, flowing out of the chamber.
Looked like they'd have to follow.
He tried to look at his fellow spelunkers without blinding them in the process.
"All right," Riley said quietly, glancing between dimly lit, yellowed faces as he kept the light aimed on their chests. "There seems to be only one way as this point, so everyone just stick together... Watch your feet," he warned unnecessarily.
"And hey, you." He targeted the dizzy kid in particular here, but for a different reason than before. In fact, he looked more aware than usual in the darkness, frame shaking slightly with shivers, but not swaying with sleep. No, now Riley had found some little confidence in Izzy's ability to do his job, if only that he swore like someone who knew what they were doing. "Are you picking up on anything?"
Izzy tilted his curly-haired head back and took several loud sniffs. "Nuthin' but damp, moss, salt 'n' fish, an'... An'..." His eyebrows drew in close, and he breathed in heavily again through that tiny, upturned button nose of his; "Faint'st smella ash..." he mumbled, now rubbing his nose into the edge of his sleeve as if he'd accidentally inhaled it.
Riley did a double-take. "What- seriously? Ash-ash? Like-"
"S'what I said, ain't it?" Izzy grumbled loudly over the top of Riley's surprise.
Despite having asked, he really hadn't expected to hear anything remotely relevant back so soon! He had to ask again. "Like... A power's kind of ash-y?"
"Yeah, think so, I 'unno," a helpful shrug. "Gotta get closer."
"All right then," Riley turned his wide, incredulous eyes towards the path deeper into the dungeon. Could they really find Col here...? He found that hard to believe, it had seemed to him like Katrix just dug this place up out of an old dust-coated to-do-list. To find the mission objective here already sounded just too lucky...
"W-wait!" Izzy called out, reaching forwards, perhaps as if to snatch Four's wrist as he turned away, only to stumble forwards without making contact at all.
He stopped immediately, of course, turning back with a face the picture of concern. "Yes..?"
The kid's one good eye seemed to be struggling against something, blinking open and shut but to no avail. "I can't," he said slowly, frustration bleeding clearly into his tone, "see anything... Anything, only the light," he scowled furiously, the meanest expression he'd shown yet, and Riley didn't get it.
"Well yeah, none of us can see in the dark, that's why we have the lights," Riley replied dumbly, before he saw the way the other boy's hand was hovering unsurely around in front, searching like it expected to encounter something... Even though Riley was a pace out of reach, and more to Izzy's right. That was where he was shining the light, though.
What Izzy meant was, he could only see the light... And nothing it illuminated. It seemed like his good eye, while still in one piece, was not entirely 'good'.
He looked first at Quincy... Wait no, that guy only had one hand. Annabell then. "Could you? Hold his hand or something," he suggested sheepishly, fiddling with the torch. "Unless you want to lead," Riley offered, since that was the only other option.


It occurred to Raven while busting a lung in her haste to get away that, in a one-on-one fight, the person who fights well in close range shouldn't be the one widening the distance.
But she was expecting the short-ranger to be coming after her any minute.
She slid hard to the side, not sparing a thought for the way the ground scraped against her shins, even as a sharp chunk of rock seemed to tear through her pant leg. Since it didn't seem to slow her down physically, she didn't allow it to weaken her mind with thoughts of pain, either. The spear that once again flew overhead served as a good distraction as well.
Considering the way her enemy was coming after her between throws, it was clear that the guy was getting frustrated- the kind of sadistic crazy who only liked the game when it was over and they'd won. They really were the worst kind!
Fortunately, Raven did not have his vice of impatience, at least not in battle. At the very least, not in this battle! This time, she was content to wait, wait until he got tired of her ducking under his every blow and aimed low.
Then she ran up the hill, staving off gravity itself for those few desperate seconds she had to get far enough out of the way.
Like every other time, the instrument seemed to loiter about confusedly in the air, this time just a few feet above the ground, and at a complete loss when its target was not where it ought to be. The next step would naturally be for the spear to be withdrawn, ready for a rinse and repeat, knowing that its prey must soon tire.
Except Raven had decided to... Tackle it. Her arms thrust it down, pinning it against the ground where her hands could wrap tightly around the sleek but weighted shaft. She had it.
She really hadn't thought the Glaeroe would have the raw psychic power to pull her along with it.
Even in her surprise, Raven took control of her flight and tried to use it her advantage, turning the spear's pull into added momentum for a flying kick.
The Glaeroe caught his weapon easily with one hand, his mental power evidently dwarfing whatever physical strength he may have, as it still carried Raven's hardly insubstantial weight. As for her kick, he threw her off easily with a well-placed sweep of his other arm. It smashed into her lower leg with just enough force to send her crashing to the ground, spiraling like an insect with its wings ripped off.
She was winded and disorientated, and he was going to kill her, or at least start that sadistic process, when she got him right through the leg, almost the exact place he'd hit her just then.
Red sunk down over his ankle in streaks, more when she tore it out, saving her most sturdy knife for another stab. When he howled out in pain, his movements became predictable. He tried to strike downwards- she leapt past his spear with ease, its length, once such an asset from afar, now a liability so close.
Raven held him down, the same way she'd caught his weapon before, and she knew he knew, when she looked into his eyes, exactly how to throw her off. It was obvious from the way his muscles beneath her were straining to obey. But they didn't make it past the pain. He'd been trained well, but not thoroughly enough. They'd missed a spot.
She drew a hard line across his throat and a few horrible gasps later, it was done.
Raven forced herself to stand, rolling her aching muscles and trying to ignore the way she was definitely gripping her knife too tight, sparks of pain shooting through her joints as she pushed her way up the hill.

demon • 29 March 2016 at 6:53 AM

The courtyard is overflowing these days. Leaves pour over the walls of their boxes, strangle their restraints. That's the fantastic thing about this place. The will it breeds to fight, struggle and survive.
There are even dandelions springing up now. Although vibrant, those hardly little plants are actually classified as weeds, that's a bad thing, you know.
Since we've been letting the plants run rampant for a while now, the place isn't so popular, but it's still my favorite spot to sit and think, perhaps more so now. I found him there like I expected to. Little explanation is needed, since his usual place has been so much more hectic than usual, it makes perfect sense that would seek a little respite there. Even though the garden is only a little mockery of freedom, it isn't as though mockery had never raised anyone's spirits before. He just needed that little nudge to see it.
"Watching the clouds roll by?" was what I asked him.
He put his head in his hands. "It's pointless."
I sat down beside him, but stared straight ahead. "Strength is useless without direction."
"I don't have such a duty," he told me coldly. "They made their own choices."
"And you made yours," I agreed. "Why?"
He froze up. "Isn't it obvious?" he parted his face slowly from his hands, revealing an almost fearful expression. "I'm not going to get myself killed."
It makes sense that he'd value his life so highly, after all, he put all that effort into fixing it. But you know, humans are driven by the same things as plants, including nutrients, but also light and warmth... "And is it enough?"
When he didn't answer, I sighed. "Your reasoning is flawed. If you want to rethink it, I have a mission for you."
He stared at me, and I smiled. "In any case, you have to leave. You'll kill the plants with that kind of cold..."
He nodded swiftly, stood, and left, taking the frost with him.
Now that he's gone, maybe she'll stop her worrying about having to find a new roommate, and I can get a moment's peace back in my own space.
But until that had time to come to pass, I sat back and stared up at that flaky blue, those immobile clouds. It was fake, but that was fine. The painted sky only meant that there was a real sky out there to chase, after all...

Lily sat up with a start as she heard someone call her name. Quickly discarding the book upon her desk, she hurried away after the sound.



"This wasn't quite what I was lead to expect," Rai pulled up an eyebrow, and reached back behind him to snag the fellow by the collar as he began to slowly creep away.
The doctor gave a short bout of stupid worried laughter, then started struggling.
"Now where do you think you're going, just a moment ago you were showing such kind concern for your friend," simply snorting at Bliss's poor escape efforts, Rai seemed to haul him back and push him against the wall without the use of a single one of his muscles.
"Well now my fears for him have now been thoroughly assuaged!" Bliss replied back rather hastily, with a tight-lipped smile. "I'm back to being rather more preoccupied about myself again. Thanks," he attempted to wriggle his way free again, and very nearly would have managed it, had the other not warily caught him by the neck and shoved him back.
The power leered at him, even from his lower vantage, with a strange expression that made Bliss think that while he tried to look somber on the outside, internally, Rai was definitely laughing at him. "That's good. You can use that when you fight. Let's see, how about the loser of this one?"
Unwillingly Bliss felt his eyes drift back over to the battle still underway. Quick shots of ice flashed and shattered with a sound like breaking glass, too quick for almost any opponent to answer. Bliss forced himself to turn away, then. Although Zan was doing good now, with this power's proposal, he'd have to bet against his friend... After all, he'd much rather fight a beaten-down Zan than that monster, angry and humiliated no less.
Overall, "Er, I'd really rather not..." He scratched in a troubled way at the itch just below his eye, knowing that believing he might still somehow get out of this was a bit too strong a dose optimism even for him.
"Too bad," Rai replied with a dangerously low edge, before dropping the doctor and moving away, closer to the action, to drop down in a good seat.
As Bliss didn't dare run off now, remaining exactly where he was, he thought he heard that leader mutter something like, "I wonder why Mael is set on keeping him here, of all places..."
That line of thinking would at least distract the doctor for a little while he awaited his impending doom. "Now what did he mean by that...?" Bliss asked the rocks.
Now he was definitely curious as to where Spence had gone off to, at this time.

taffy789 • 30 March 2016 at 6:45 PM

"Um?" Annabell hesitated, glancing back at Izzy.
To her, the boy didn't seem like the type who was into hand holding, despite the passive way he got others to do things for him...
"...Sure." she decided after some consideration, moving towards the back of the group to help lead Izzy. Instead of grabbing his hand, she offered her arm to him, not wanting to awkwardly drag him along if that wasn't what he wanted...

asi • 31 March 2016 at 6:05 AM

Although it was true that the boy looked none too pleased, there was a certain air of poignant relief that hung around him while Izzy clung tightly onto the blonde girl's arm. Although he hated wearing his pride down to the threadbare state where he could bear to ask for help, he had less fear for that than being lost, alone and blind in a cold damp hole in the middle of nowhere...
Besides, if he hadn't said anything, he would have definitely ended up hurting the person who only tried to help- again.
He could hear Four taking the lead, the clicking of small loose stones rolling away underfoot as he worked his way across the room. Then there was some little splashing and a loud cry of "Eep!" as Four had apparently managed to stick his foot in the water. It sounded like he scrambled rapidly up the other side of the bank after that.
Izzy flinched at the exclamation- in this kind of darkness, the water had to be ice cold... He forced himself to breathe steadily, and try to trust this girl, who he had no choice but to rely upon to guide him.

taffy789 • 5 April 2016 at 6:42 PM

Quincy felt relieved to see Annabell guiding Izzy so carefully over the rocks and bypassing all the puddles; it helped him rest easier knowing his boyfriend was being taken care of.
Not being taken care of, though, was Four, who had basically slipped right into a puddle of cold water.
Remembering his official assignment of body guarding a certain leader, Quincy rushed to Four- making sure to maneuver over the slippery water- and took the lead.
"Four?" Quincy interjected as he breezed into the lead, "My power involves creating protective shields, so I'm probably best suited for the front."
He shone his flashlight down the cave's passage, blinking at the inky darkness, and stated confidently, "I got this."



Scrambling up the steep hill in a frantic, bent-over way that was almost on all fours, Zach clawed at the rocks, his palms cutting against sharp stones. He nearly made it to the hill’s crest before a searing hot hand wrapped around his ankle and tugged him downwards, making him fall flat on his stomach.
Reflexively, Zach kicked downwards with his free foot, landing a blow on the Glaeroe’s shoulder and momentarily slowing down the swift approach of death. He climbed upwards another foot before the ground started swallowing his hands. Cursing the rock user’s power, Zach attempted to pull his hands out of the sinking ground, but the blazing Glaeroe below caught up to him just as he managed to struggle free. Zach flinched as a hand burned into his shoulder, and he gritted his teeth together when, in one rough motion, he was flipped onto his back.
The drum of pounding blood filled Zach’s ears as his power screamed warnings of death down his spine. Gripping his knife, Zach slashed desperately at his attacker- a messy move that was easily deflected by the Glaeroe grabbing Zach’s offending wrist and squeezing until the knife fell harmlessly from his grip.
Dropping Zach’s hand, the Glaeroe struck Zach’s chest, pushing the Falchion further into the ground and making his back grate against the sharp rocks. The throbbing red pain around his wrist and on his chest made a hurricane of black spots flare up in Zach’s vision; he focused again just in time to see the Glaeroe looming above him, glaring down with murderous intent.
Sensing the imminent danger, his power helpfully spoke up again.
It informed him that he was going to get beat to death if he couldn’t escape.
Great.
Preparing for another desperate measure, Zach sucked in a breath, but instead a sharp pain rocketed up his windpipe, and a wheezing fit sentenced him to lethal inaction.
The Glaeroe reared back to throw the first punch, Zach threw up his arms to protect his body while struggling to breathe, and a sudden streak of orange sailed over Zach’s head to explode in a series of furious pops right in front of the Glaeroe’s face.
As the surprised Glaeroe staggered backwards, another popping flurry of orange explosions crashed into their chest, sending them tumbling down the hillside in a fashion anyone but the exhausted and humorless Zach would’ve found hilarious.
Instead of feeling joy at his attacker’s plight, Zach simply sighed, relieved, and allowed his body to sink further into the ground, for his power informed him that he was no longer in danger of dying in the next second.
A shadow cast over him as his savior approached.
A simple “Tabs” was how he was going to greet the girl, but the two hands pulling him up by his tender shoulders sucked the name right out of his mouth, replacing it with a pained groan.
Now forced to stand up by Tabs, Zach could see her more clearly; he could see the soot on her hands, the open puncture wound staining her shirt’s right armpit with blood, the alien crossbow strung behind her back, and, most notably, the grim expression she was giving him haunting her cheeks.
Before he could voice a “what?”, the girl spoke, “You have a purple welt the size of grapefruit under your neck. Can you even breathe?”
Even given the current dire circumstances, Zach found the time to consider that a dumb, obvious question to ask. The eye roll he then gave would’ve been more effective had a strained, pathetic croak of “of course” hadn’t immediately followed it.
Scowling, Zach poked at his neck bruise with a newfound concern as Tabs just sighed and shook her head. “You looked like death before but now you’re more akin to roadkill that’s been hit by seven semis but is somehow still kicking. There’s no doubt in my mind that you should be dead right now, you lucky bas- behind you.” Wincing as she moved, Tabs pulled the crossbow off her back, pushed Zach to the side, and fired the weapon at the enraged heat-user Glaeroe who’d been making their way back up the hill. The arrow flew and struck the Glaeroe in the shoulder, hitting with enough force to blow them backwards down the hill again.
“Can you believe this thing?” Tabs snorted, motioning to the weapon, “It’s too automated; I doubt it’s even legal. Well, if the Glaeroes think they can go after me with one of these things they can expect me to pry it from their friend’s cold, dead hands to exact my retribution.” Wincing again, she reloaded the crossbow with her free right hand, muttering, “I don’t see how that Glaeroe down there is still alive, after taking my fireworks to the face…”
“Heat user,” Zach explained for her, his voice rasping as he spoke. He motioned to the second Glaeroe who was also approaching fast from their right, “Rock user.”
“Nice to know,” Tabs said, shifting the crossbow to more a comfortable position in her arms, “Here’s some info for you too, Fiver- you’re not in any shape to take on either of them.” She pointed to their left, “Go regroup with Raven. I see her on the other hill; I’ll hold off these two and she can probably cover your sorry butt better than I can.”
Zach, not one to fight in his exhausted state, gave an affirming blink and hustled back down the hill and towards Raven.

asi • 8 April 2016 at 5:24 AM

Riley felt a bit abashed, having assumed that having only one arm, the other guy wouldn't be as fit to lead. But he'd forgotten powers made all the difference- easily done, as his was missing, and it would have never helped in this kind of situation, either. The only maze it could navigate had been the human mind.
"Right, yeah," Riley just gave a nod and went with the flow, and the four of them trooped through the underground in a more or less orderly fashion.
Once they'd clambered their way out of the entry cavern, they found themselves in a tunnel, one that curiously seemed to have a mass of doors cut out every few meters, with astounding regularity. With that many doors, surely most of the rooms could be not much bigger than cupboards, right? The size of minimum bedrooms at most, right? Shining a light into one, Riley found the walls to have partially collapsed inwards, leaving a space full of rubble and nothing else to see. It sure was a strange place.
He had Izzy point them in the direction of the ashen scent. The kid was shivering up a storm, to the point where Four had to stop walking and just stare and worry for a moment. He hadn't thought to bring a jacket for anyone else, or anything like that. He could only hope that their tracker was not so sensitive to be killed by a little cold... And that no one had neglected to tell him about a medical condition.
Dark, gritty and wet. More than the abseiling, Riley knew this to be a venture with a serious degree of risk. Although with things like flashlights, friends and solid rock at one's feet, it didn't feel particularly dangerous, this could happen in caves. If people got separated, lost, if it rained or they went too deep and high-tide came in, if anyone so much an twisted their ankle... Things could get sticky.
Still, he paid attention to the little things. The way the water had eaten away at the ceiling, in some places massively crumbled away, but in others, it was still straight-cut, but strange smooth patterns had been left behind, formed over many, many years... It was strange what nature could do, like that. Though hard to make out in the dark, sometimes the walls seemed to be darker and shinier in places, that was not simply water leaking through, but some thick coating of some kind. Riley tried to ask their resident sniffer about it, but he just shook his head more than usual, not only from the cold- a resolute 'no'. He guessed it was some kind of natural phenomena that Izzy couldn't explain either- who knew.
There were many such mysteries in IOD, after all.
Soon enough, they came to a very large room. He couldn't believe something of this size lay sprawling under that swampy ground... It was certainly something one could get lost in, as easily as breathing.


She was rubbing his blood into her hand where it had splattered, trying to get it to disappear. But it just thinned out, tinting her skin its strange red and making her cringe in disgust. In the sun, it would quickly dry and flake off of her, but Raven wanted it gone now.
Fortunately her frustration carried her up the hill, aches and scrapes effectively gagged. She reached the summit and surveyed the dry, wind-sucked terrain. Nothing seemed to grab her eye- for a minute, Raven wondered if, in that time filled with pounding adrenaline, she could have gone too far. She couldn't see anything- anyone. How could this be? She blinked and squinted, scrubbed at her eyes with her dirtied hands, forgetting about the red smear they left in their wake. She scanned the rocks furiously, head whipping from side to side as she failed to pick up on anything not the color of dirt... Only to finally turn and see Zach stumbling right up the hill towards her.
Seeing as he was so kindly making all that effort to come and see her, she should just wait patiently... No, no. Simply standing there while what looked like the victim of a truck collusion slaved his way up the steep slope, the guilt from it was insufferable!
Head bent low so as to make sure her feet wouldn't slip or trip, Raven wandered down the hill towards him, not saying a word even when they stood in front of each other.
Her knife was still clenched in one hand so tightly, it had frozen like that, and she didn't think she could move one finger if she tried.


"Lily! Lily," her name was being called by a familiar voice. At the same time, she was shocked, jolted out of her seat, standing and jogging down the corridor towards the sound.
The moment Lily saw her, she knew something had gone horribly wrong.
"Lily." Karen spoke quietly now, all sense of urgency off like a switch had been flicked. "Let's... Let's go have our break now, all right?"
The blonde stared up at her friend, taking in the way her eyelids seemed to be shuddering over the faint proof of nights a bit too sleepless and days a bit too stretched by coffee. It was the only evidence on the painfully stoic face that fell through Karen's composure.
Even though Lily knew she didn't have much time left after the time reading had taken her, she nodded and went along, if only for the moment.

taffy789 • 8 April 2016 at 8:08 PM

In awe of the massive subterranean complex, Quincy's mouth hung wide open as he swung his flashlight from the ceiling above to the each wall, trying to comprehend exactly how big the room was.
"Do the Falchions have any clue to why this place is here, what it was used for?" he asked, aiming the question towards Four as he continued to scope out the room.
Soon enough, his flashlight turned in Izzy's direction, and he made sure to keep the beam clear from blinding the boy. Seeing Izzy's shivering form, however, did remind Quincy of how he had lost a certain person's hoodie recently...
...
Quincy must've been more emotive than he anticipated, because he was caught off guard when Annabell blinked and sent him a curious look in reply to the grim, guilt-ridden one he had been directing her and Izzy's way.
Embarrassed, Quincy quickly turned away, guiltily glad that his boyfriend couldn't have seen that awkward, silent exchange.
"...It sure is chilly in here." Quincy stated dumbly, unsure how to transition his brain from the idea that he played a part in giving Izzy pneumonia.
"Yeah," Annabell spoke up in reply, "damp, too. If anything important was ever in here when it was originally made, I feel like it's been washed away by now, or is at least is covered in a layer of mold." She crinkled her nose at this thought, as if imagining finding the mold pile already.


~~~


Because his voice squeaked out raspy and pitiful, Zach decided to forgo the comment in mind concerning how Raven had somehow managed to run up the hill leading away from the battle.
He stared at his assistant instead, noting the tightness in her form, as if she was preparing to stab him in the throat. Putting that possibility aside, Zach focused on her lack of injuries to assure himself that she could withstand another fight.
Not that it seemed their help was needed, anyway.
Turning from Raven, Zach watched as Tabs worked her way down the hill he’d just escaped from; as the girl masterfully kept the heat user at bay with a few well-aimed, exploding fireworks. The rock user, it seemed, was not giving her any trouble either…
Because, as Zach’s power frantically informed him, that Glaeroe wasn’t trying to kill Tabs. Grimacing, Zach grabbed Raven’s shoulder and pushed her roughly to the side before jumping to the left himself. Large, sharp rocks burst into shards at his feet, and Zach, unbalanced by his own dodge, toppled again into the dirt, rocks, and dust. He picked himself up lethargically, tired muscles unable to move any faster. As he raised his head to see if any large boulders were being flung his way, he caught sight of a flying streak of orange moving fast and exploding into the back of the rock-user, who had stood on the top of a nearby hill but was now soaring in the air, literally blown away by the firework display.
A hard “thud” echoed dully a couple of meters away from where Zach lay.
One down, one to go.
… Or… two to go?
Listening to his power’s curious urgings, Zach set his eyes on a far-off hill in the distance. A figure, a Glaeroe if his power was to be believed, stood, not moving, but watching the fight as it went on. The person was… holding something…
Then Zach blinked, and the figure was gone.
Frowning, Zach wondered what the heck that had been about, but yet another warning from his power caused his head to swivel around again, to the spot where the Glaeroe had landed. The Glaeroe- a girl now sporting searing scars on her shoulder blades- was picking herself up, thick, inky black waves like smoke rising from not only her burnt shirt, but from her bleeding hands, her clenched fingers, her browning hair…
It didn’t take a genius to understand that the dark, menacing wisps definitely weren’t caused by Tab’s fireworks.
As a surprised, “oh, crap” resonated in Zach’s head, the now feral Glaeroe raised one smoky hand above her head and sent the surrounding hillsides into a crazed, spazzing seizure.
“Raven,” Zach rasped out, rising onto unsteady feet as the very rocks he balanced on rolled and shook, threatening to capsize him, “We need to run. Now.”

asi • 11 April 2016 at 5:37 AM

"Um, yeah," Riley answered, just as soon as Quincy had spoken and he was able to snap out of the trace that had him fixated on the guy's gaping mouth. He was almost overcome with the the urge to warn about the creepy cave crawlers that could jump meters at a time. Luckily, Quincy moved before that happened.
"I looked into that when I was getting ready, a little..." he trailed off, scrubbing at the side of his head with his free hand as if somehow that would shake his head back on topic. Also somewhat distracting was that strange chill sliding down his spine. For a second he thought the cave had dripped down the back of his collar, but it wasn't wet. It was-
Riley whipped around and stared at the dopey little kid with the one doe eye, who wasn't looking anywhere at all. His half-lidded eye was staring into nowhere, seeing nothing. But if Riley had to place a bet...
Times like these he really wished he had all his mind-reading powers back. Sure, the intuition it had developed in him over the years was grand, but so often it seemed he was missing that vital piece of evidence without it.
He guessed, with growing bemusement, that this was what normal humans felt like all the time.
His attention snapped back to Annabell when she piped up, and he sure was grateful for the distraction. "The-" he was about to reply, before he was interrupted.
"Don't look for th'mold," Izzy mumbled, seemingly quite absorbed in squeaking his shoes loudly against the rock, and they waited several very prolonged moments for him to continue, before they realized he wasn't going to. Meanwhile, Riley definitely felt cold again, though this time the sensation was quite a different kind.
"Right, well," Riley coughed as though he'd suddenly caught a cold. He hadn't though, he was the one wearing a jacket. "As far as we know, this place isn't an old Glaeroes hideout, and it certainly isn't one of ours. It's considered more likely to have been created by a third party, back in the IODian so-called 'Dark Ages', when scientific experimentation was running wild even here on the island," he couldn't help but make a face at some of the gruesome things he'd heard before, in the old horror stories of those times. They'd said things had happened in places like these that made Two's torture chambers look indistinguishable from an orderly, professional dentist... Though to be fair, Two's operations had always had that sort of dentist-y feel. Very sterile. Much white.
As he talked, Riley picked his way through the dark space, trying to steer them as straight as possible, weaving in between large boulders sometimes. "They'd steal kids from both sides and perform all sorts of tests on them here. I asked Raven about it, you know, and she said some of the old tales that still linger around the base feature apparent victims of such places, appearing on the surface and wreaking havoc on both sides... Whether they were escapees or set loose-" he gave a big ol' shrug as if to as, 'who knows'.
His flashlight snagged on a sharp glitter out of the darkness, something other than the dull shine of slick limestone. When he focused his attention on it, the subject soon became clear. "Broken glass," Riley whistled nervously. There was a lot of it, too. "Seriously... Watch your step."


At this point, Raven rather thought she was getting used to being pushed around by Zach. Seeing herself dotted by bruises was almost comforting, since every one reminded her of what potentially much worse danger she'd been spared... She still hated him for an instant every time, though. Maybe even a bit longer than an instant, but whatever.
She was still alive, wasn't she, so she had to be doing all right.
Having just found her feet again, Raven was watching Zach sweeping his head around, trying to read him reading it, and for once the hopeless effort actually paid off just a little, since she was able to follow his gaze and see what he saw just a moment behind.
She was just declaring, "I can still fight-" when the tremors, coursing like waves through the ground, turning the earth into an ocean- caught up to her.
And she thought, maybe he's right... But she couldn't see how running in this was any more of a viable option than fighting. With legs like jelly, Raven surpassed her expectations in just managing to flounder her way over to close the gap between herself and him, grabbing an arm right before everything went CRASH.

taffy789 • 13 April 2016 at 6:41 PM

"Sooo, long story short?" Annabell summed up for Riley as she stepped over a large rock and dutifully helped Izzy do the same, "We're in another creepy government facility, aren't we?"
She gave a small, bitterly amused sort of shake of her head and concluded, "It's just like the good ole' Super School days again. All we're missing is the group bickering, infighting, and all the general confusion that comes with throwing a bunch of fifteen-year-olds in a stressful situation together..." Trailing off, she tried not to think of how she rather missed... everyone from the Super School. So many old friends had either disappeared or died- it was just all too disheartening to mull over.

In the front of the group, Quincy was also trying not to think too hard about something...
He failed, and voiced his fears soon after Annabell had trailed off.
"What I understand from that is," Quincy began, eyebrows furrowing as he treaded carefully over the broken glass, "there might be ferals down here, at least according to IOD lore?"


~~


As soon as Raven’s hand gripped tight around his arm, Zach was off, running away from the landslide that had crashed down right behind them. The rest of the hills melted in a similar way, shedding layers of rock and dirt that shook down towards the fleeing figures of Raven and Zach.
Intuition told him when to sidestep the bigger chunks of falling rock and informed him that, if he fell or stopped moving for more than a minute, he surely was going to be buried alive. Which was, of course, the most obvious and least helpful information his power could give him in the moment.
As he ran, he glanced to the shortest hill, to his left, and sucked in a deep breath when he saw the furious, insurmountable waterfall of dirt was rushing down it. He couldn’t climb out of this valley, not without being pulled under a suffocating amount of topsoil.
The dust rolling down from the hills began settling around them, turning Zach’s vision a dark, dull brown and making him rely completely on his intuition’s guidance. He moved without thinking where he was going, but he found very little reason to worry where his power was taking him. The end result would be the same- he and Raven were trapped in the valley with no way to get out fast enough.
They were screwed.
A sudden, excited shiver jolted him out of his thoughts. Zach, blinking through the dust, struggled to make sense of his power’s urgings…
As he dodged another projectile, the realization of what his power was pointing him to hit him as hard as the rock he avoided could’ve. Zach took a sharp left, barreling straight towards the hillside while dragging Raven behind him.
He didn’t slow down as the hill grew closer, as the landslide threatened to race down and consume them in any second. Zach only ran faster, and when he reached the hillside he threw his entire body against the shaking wall of dirt. The ground under him gave with that one crash- ancient, rusted metal door hinges creaking and snapping and giving up- and Zach and Raven were thrown into an old Falchion’s shelter, the dirt swallowing the light behind them.
Zach’s head cracked on the concrete as he rolled into safety, and he shouted angrily, clutching at his skull and feeling a warm, wet liquid oozing onto his hands. He cursed and blinked, trying to adjust his fuzzy vision, but he grew silent as he realized that there was nothing TO see, that tons upon tons of dirt had blocked off the exit and all visibility coming with it. That he and Raven were sealed underground, in the dark.
… The situation not doing anything to help the newfound pain blooming on the back of Zach’s skull, he stayed silent and tried his hardest not to black-out.

asi • 14 April 2016 at 9:04 PM

Raven couldn't believe it. She really couldn't. They'd made it through.
He really was something extraordinary.
Apart from innumerous aches and pains and possibly a twisted ankle from a slip on the fissuring earth, she was fine. Potentially a small broken toe? But she was fine.
"Zach," she coughed at the dust that they'd brought in with them in a great cascading cloud, and crawled over to where she thought he lay. She could hear him breathing, loudly it seemed, and he'd cursed just a moment ago, so he had to be there, though it had sounded so much closer than the distance actually was.
Utterly blind, Raven had to feel her way through the darkness, her own breath shaking as every movement, each bump against hard dirt, rock or dirty rusted metal reminded her of her injuries, insignificant though they were. Her hands kept reaching for a hint of warmth, soft skin, something else alive-
She found fabric and stopped. She stopped everything, and it took a few moments to remember to start breathing again. When she did, Raven called his name once more, somehow making the sound both soft and sharp simultaneously, while giving what she could only guess to be his chest a cautious press, then force her hands to drift further up, seeking his head.

taffy789 • 18 April 2016 at 9:00 PM

Zach was shocked out of his fuzzy stupor when a pair of hands jutted from the darkness to grope at his bruised and aching ribcage. Alarmed, he almost threw a punch, but the sound of his name echoing in the quiet blackness came from a familiar, recognizable voice, and Zach remembered who’d been launched into the room with him. Raven.
He tried to relax his body, but the continued probing of Raven’s hands unnerved him- especially when they reached the back of his head, travelling to the warm, bloody spot where his own hands were still clenched tight and tangled in his hair. His breathing heavy, Zach shifted uncomfortably under Raven’s fingers, but found it impossible to protest or slap her touch away when his brain was too preoccupied with staying conscious. He shut his eyes instead and resigned to the foreign, awkward weight of somebody else’s hands cradling his wounds.
After a minute of blinking and focusing on the inky dark had passed, Zach felt his brain relaxing and settling down to the point where he no longer feared passing out. That issue resolved, he allowed his mind to move on to the more pressing matter at hand- how he was to escape from being buried alive in an underground bunker. As he relaxed his body again, he exhaled and dully commanded his power to search for a way out, if one even existed…
…When Zach received a strange, silent static in reply, he was at first confused.
He tried again, searching for any hope of escape his power could provide him with.
In reply he received a gaping absence of anything, not even a “yes” or “no” from his power. Not even an attempt from his power to search for him.
Not even a feeling, a sensation of his power being there.
A sucking black hole began swirling, forming deep in Zach’s gut, making him feel like his chest was collapsing in on itself and shaking every nerve with a spreading, racing, empty dread.
Desperately, he reached out again in his mind, blindly groping in the dark for something physical to grip onto, a mere sensation of his power’s presence to cling to before the horrifying disconnection proved all too real and drowned him.
He found nothing.
Zach’s deep, heavying breathing quickly turned light, shallow, and frantic.
The darkness killing his vision suddenly seemed so much more threatening, so much more debilitating and unbearable. He wondered how small the room he was trapped in was; if it looked as claustrophobic as it was quickly beginning to feel. Instinctively, he reached out to his power to provide him with a definite answer to the room’s size, but of course all that accomplished was reminding him of the emptiness burning in his gut where his power’s reliable direction should’ve been.
Slowly, painfully, like the process of drawing blood, it dawned upon Zach that, with his power seemingly absent, he couldn’t predict even the simplest things, like if the entire concrete bunker would collapse on him in the next second, or if his head wound was a concussion that would trap him in a coma if he fell asleep. He couldn’t even see the most obvious threat being lobbed his way, and this realization sent his chest heaving, his breathing speeding up to an almost agonizing pace. Fear gripped him, pressing his body against the dusty concrete, making every limb heavy, and holding him down like the restraints of a doctor’s operation table.
He squeezed his eyes shut, somehow breathing so much yet still gasping for oxygen, and his hands tangled themselves deeper against his head, clenching so tight that they threatened to rip out every strand of hair. With each breath he sucked in, Zach felt the dust of the landslide scratching its way down his throat. He didn’t even realize he was having a panic attack until he became aware of a grating, wheezing sound echoing around the bunker and recognized the sound of himself hyperventilating.
Now conscious of what the problem was, Zach grimaced and fought to fix it.
He started by forcing his arms to relax, his hands to detach themselves from his hair. He lowered them, stiffly, to his side and then focused on slowing his lungs, choking down deep, measured, shaky gulps of air. His body- tense and rigid and aching with anxiety- was his next target; he tried to relax it, to calm his panicking nerves by telling himself that he was alright, that he wasn’t in any danger of dying…
It worked for a whole second before a traitorous part of his brain reminded him that he had no way of being sure he wouldn’t keel over anytime soon.
And with that, Zach’s calmer breathing cracked, and his heart raced ahead of him again, as if trying to outrun a hungry, pursuing cheetah.
As the tension tied up his limbs, clenched very muscle, Zach couldn’t help but feel wearied, drain of all energy despite the tidal wave of adrenaline pumping through his bloodstream. The stress was exhausting, he was exhausted, and more maddening was how it had been going on for what felt like ages already, how there appeared to be no end in sight to the sweat and stress and shallowed breathing. Annoyed with himself, Zach gritted his teeth together to the point of them breaking and- his hands having reached out and found something to squeeze- almost tore Raven’s clothing with how tightly he gripped at the fabric.

asi • 22 April 2016 at 7:30 AM

He wasn't sure that it wasn't the government's long fingers meddling again, or worse, so Riley was forced to stay silent on the subject. Noting Annabell's grim train of thought, he focused his efforts on happier memories.
"And all that awkward romantic tension," he chuckled lightly, trying to bring the blonde around. "I mean, do you remember how Raven and Mickey would dance around each other? I thought for sure they'd be the first couple! Did they really not date even once?" he wondered, knowing that there was still a whole lot of missing memory still unaccounted for in his head.
He was also busy dearly wishing his friend was back hanging around that guy, instead of spending it chained up to the disagreeable fifth leader here...
Then, of course, he had to address Quincy's concerns.
"Of course not," Riley stated, his own eyebrows drawing in. "At least, there shouldn't be more than anywhere else. A feral that falls down here would just as likely as a user die of starvation, so unless that happened in the past week, everything down here should be long dead," he hummed faintly, sweeping carefully aside by the toes some of the jagged shards of glass that lay in the poor blind kid's path... If he really was all that blind. The way his feet didn't falter as Izzy trotted after Annabell, he had some doubts, but as long as it didn't seem to be a problem... He shrugged to himself.
It was all so quiet. Other than their footsteps, accompanied sometimes by the brittle snapping of glass, the only sound in the chamber was Izzy's sniffling and the tinkling of a distant drip.
"Well, not that I'm disappointed, but this could be a little more interesting," Riley mused, pausing to lower his flashlight and examine a collection of moss that squished underfoot with a displeased expression. "Anything new?" he prodded Izzy.
"M'work'n on it," the kid grumbled, and it was a long few moments of the cold and damp slowly permeating the soles of their shoes, and their socks, before he pointed them onward again.
After exiting the hall, Izzy stopped them, breathing shallowly now. "Here," he mumbled, then stuffed his face into the cloth of his shirt as if to muffle the smell.
But there was nothing there. Nothing, Riley observed, other than a sharp blackness to the walls. He touched it, and found it curiously dry and flaky. "It's ash," he said in surprise.
It was weird, but it didn't seem like it could be related to Three at all. There was far too much for just one human body's worth, it coated the entire corridor... If that was all, Riley was in favor of going home.
"Wait," Izzy said suddenly, shoving his and Annabell's joint hands forward as if to push the leader on, and Riley had to bite back a groan. "There's more."
And before Riley could even properly compute what was happening, there was the strangest gargling roar, and the next instant that curly-haired kid took off at a run, pushing past Riley and Quincy, almost causing the former to slip and fall over, if he hadn't grabbed onto the latter.
Water started streaming down the walls, pulling the inky coat of ash with it, and coalescing about their feet.


She'd been worried from the get-go, when he'd failed to respond. When her searching fingers touched upon something hot, and wet, Raven was maybe freaking out, just a little.
His breathing seemed to accelerate then and there was nothing she could do, she strained her eyes but she still wasn't making out a thing in the blackness, not even the frazzled strands of hair she could feel hanging over her face.
He could be going into some brain injury-caused seizure, for all she knew, and Raven was useless.
She forced out herself through another intake of breath and tried to withdraw, turning away- again for all she knew, he could be having an anxiety attack induced by her weird feeling up of him. Honestly, she'd just been trying to establish his condition, but she'd felt about as comfortable doing so as... Well, she thought sardonically- while alarm continued to rise up in her chest to a throbbing crescendo, perhaps trying to make a match with that of Zach's- perhaps there would be a more appropriate time for humorous comparisons later.
Shuffling her feet so she had some leverage, Raven tried to back away, give him some space, but instead she straight-up bumped her head into a wall. Which left her head reeling a few moments and her feet cramped in an uncomfortable crouch.
Shaking her pained little head at the silly mistake, she realized suddenly with some relief that the sound of Zach's breathing had slowed down into something steady, something that was perhaps all right-
Then all of a sudden it hadn't again, and what was she supposed to do--?
He grabbed her.
"Hey..." she uttered quietly, not at all knowing what to do with his hands curled into fists around her shirt. Seeing as she couldn't go anywhere, she opted to just stay still, and wait hopefully until Zach calmed down.
She may or may not have thought aloud, in a whisper; "Please, be okay..."

taffy789 • 24 April 2016 at 4:50 PM

If Quincy was surprised when Izzy took off at a run, he was completely caught off guard when Riley slipped and fell right onto his left shoulder.
Trying to accommodate the unexpected weight clinging to his bicep, Quincy grunted and shifted into a more balanced, even stance- a difficult feat since the water underneath his boots threatened to make him fall splashing down to the floor.
Once feeling steady, Quincy noted the water gushing forth from the walls and immediately stepped forward on his right foot, extended out the same side's hand, and threw a large, round, green forcefield up in front of the group.
Grimacing and aware of Riley still at his side, he began moving slowly backwards, eyes intently searching the surrounding walls, tensed and ready to stop anything malicious that attempted to pour out.
"Let's... not drown today," Quincy offered up, focused on not slipping as he stepped backwards. The forcefield inched backwards with him as he moved, humming in agreement.

When Izzy had took off running after one glance at the ash, Annabell had immediately followed, allowing herself to be dragged by the arm. It seemed the only sensible thing to do, since Izzy was the one leading the group, and she had been in charge of leading him...
Then, her shoes squeaked under her feet and, hydroplaning slightly, she slid forward too fast and lost Izzy's arm completely-!
Annabell recovered from her slide with a graceful, controlled ease, and she glanced about to find the blind boy, worried that he would faceplant into a rock wall, fall unconscious on the floor, and then possibly drown...
...These irrational fears soon proved useless as she sighted the boy running despite her guidance, remembered that she had been the one being dragged along for a good few meters there, and wondered how a blind kid could be maneuvering himself so well...
Leaving the thought be, Annabell's attention turned to the water pooling at her feet, and the strangest nostalgia washed over her. Suddenly, she was sucked into a memory of a night back at the super school when Leon was feeling particularly insomniac and forced her to stay up marathoning every Indiana Jones movie with him. Wasn't there a water trap like this at one point in those long nine hours or was her memory faulty and blurring all the dumb action movie clichés together?
Plagued by thoughts of the walls closing in on her and the water rising as she searched for some innovative and convoluted way of escape, Annabell decided to follow Izzy, to make sure the kid was okay, and totally not because she didn't feel up to drowning in some type of death trap anytime soon.




The minutes dragged on as Zach struggled to calm himself down. He drew in heavy breath after breath, often slowing down only to begin hyperventilating again. The barrage of panic was relentless in how it overtook him, washing over in smothering waves and drowning him. Eventually the tidal wave of fear receded, and it did so at its own leisurely pace, indifferent to the young man still choking on it, still unable to properly breathe.
By the time his lungs stopped violently inflating themselves against his ribcage, a dull pain rang out in Zach’s chest; he was excruciatingly exhausted. Steadier and steadier gasps were drawn into his mouth until a final, slow puff of air blew from his nostrils, and Zach, more limp than relieved, slumped against the cold concrete ground.
His brain whirling back to life, he began to notice sensations that had previously escaped him, such as how the dust had settled in the room, how the sightless darkness of the room still surrounding him, and how his hands were clenched tight around some strange fabric that could only constitute Raven’s shirt…
Releasing his hands from Raven, he dropped the needy fingers to his sides and exhaled in a sharp, displeased manner. The displeasure was self-directed, and that sigh had encapsulated the aftershocks of regret and frustration that always followed him… losing his grip like that. Raven being present only magnified these feelings tenfold, and Zach moved uncomfortably at the thought of his assistant sitting quietly near, waiting patiently, as he uselessly panicked in front of her. The last time this had happened, him freaking out around other people, had been… how long ago? Six months or so- of course it had to be around that time.
But that time had been different, in a nearly empty cafeteria around two in the morning, and the nameless few there had tactfully averted their eyes when his breathing became too obvious. None of them had been sitting next to him, and he sure hadn’t moronically clung to anyone’s shirt for an empty sense of security that time either.
Well aware of Raven’s presence looming directly over him, Zach fought down an odd resurgence of anxiety and jammed his hands into his pockets in an attempt to leave the entire occurrence behind him. He quickly discovered that hands weren’t alone in his pockets, and, frowning, he pulled out all the items that he had squirrelled away. Mostly rocks and dirt flew out of his pockets- courtesy of the now feral Glaeroe- but Zach also found things such as three crumbled Special-K bars and a roll of bandages. Recognizing one item in particular as helpful, Zach located and gripped the small flashlight he’d failed to give back to Tabs and clicked the button on its end. A beam of light cut through the darkness, making visible a dusty wall across the room. After going so long without seeing, the reflective, faded white of the concrete nearly blinded Zach. Not caring to look around and strain his eyes even more, he passed the flashlight to Raven for her to take, breaking the silence by croaking out, “Here you go, Raven, you can wave your hand in front of this and finally live up to your name.”
A pause, because even Zach, as dead tired as he was, realized that didn’t sound right…
“… I meant Shadow,” he amended after a solid half minute of thinking on it.
“Crap,” he added and, giving up, dropped the flashlight into Raven’s lap and then slumped on the ground in defeat.

asi • 25 April 2016 at 7:49 PM

Once freed, she stumbled backwards to press herself against the wall, giving them both some precious little space to try to come to grips with what had just happened.
In comparison, Raven's breathing was as even as could be, that did not make her calm, exactly. The dark didn't scare her- not anymore- nor did the oppressing walls that seemed to push back, even trying to shove her towards Zach, though she gritted her teeth and resisted. No, it was her companion's frantic gasping, the stickiness she'd encountered to touch, and the flat unknown of his condition that... Frightened her.
But as her fingernails dug into the dry dirt and rust that caked the walls, filling them with the gritty substance, she grounded herself quickly and remastered the art of composure. A little. Not really.
She blinked owlishly at the bright beam of the torch. Although her eyes hadn't been able to adjust to anything in the total darkness, they sure hadn't been ready for the sharp, sudden stab of light.
She snorted a small, shaky laugh at his words. "Who cares about that now," she mumbled, while warily eyeing the flashlight she didn't realize he meant to hand to her. What he called her had to be the last thing of importance in her head right now...
As the torch was dumped on her lap, she took it without thought and directed it away from herself, illuminating the equally boring wall opposite her. It hovered around there, quivering like an agitated bee, until the power in her tiny little hands slowly dawned on her, and Raven found it was destined for greater things. She directed the light over and upwards, revealing the steel trap of a door jammed shut. The metal was dented, dull impressions of the rocks on the other side showing through. A little more investigation showed the shelter to be on a slight lean, hence the slight pressure on Raven to fall forwards, although she fought it just fine. The rest of the space was small and, save for the dust, very, very desperately bare.
She brought the glow back down to Zach- his leg, so as not to blind him. "You're injured," she reminded them both quietly, hand clenching nervously around the neck of the torch.
It made her wonder where the knife she'd been gripping so hard earlier had gone, but she wasn't about to search for it.


After righting himself, all the while muttering thanks to the guy who'd caught him, Riley examined the leaking water with a calm, critical eye. Although it was coming down at a slighting alarming rate- not quite making waterfalls, but enough that the liquid formed a thin layer between the air and the rock- it only bubbled at their feet for a few moments before draining away. That is to say, the volume of water on the floor was not noticeably increasing, only remaining more or less a couple of inches up on their shoes, after the initial deluge. Wherever it was that the water was going, it would be a long while before it filled up these caverns.
They... Probably weren't in any danger of drowning, at least not for a few days, unless of course they wanted to go deeper and find out what space the water was filling. Though that might just end up being explained by billions of minuscule crannies in porous rock.
"We'd better follow Annabell and- uh-" Riley didn't know the other guy's name. "The dizzy kid," he described him thoughtlessly.
He admired the strange and interestingly responsive force-field as they moved. Although it probably wasn't necessary at the moment, it was nice to know they had something like that up their team's sleeves.

Izzy stopped, taking just enough time to establish that Annabell was following and not knocked flat on the ground and drowning, before turning at the next corner and taking off again. His one good eye clenched tight against the horrifyingly cold spit of the swamp water pouring down, he jogged blindly through the tunnel. Each slap of his feet landing in the water made his heart clench with terror, but he didn't slip.
He had to follow his nose before the putrid swamp slipping inside stole all scent away. He'd caught wind of something important, and it wasn't going to get away.
Besides, as long as he followed it... He should be okay. His boots were falling in the footsteps of someone else, after all. Although he wasn't a good runner at all, this was what granted him advantage over the others.
Izzy skidded to halt beside the steps, grabbing onto the icy-cold stone of the wall in order to brace himself and not slide further. Luckily, the rock was not smooth but rough and even his tiny little hands could catch hold. He gave himself a moment then, to catch his breath, jab at the stitches cramping up his sides, and sniff gingerly at the stagnant subterranean air.
He'd been sure before, but now- it seemed to be going down. Very carefully, he tracked around to the start of the stairs, and lowered a foot...
Naturally, with the water rushing down the steps, this part was nigh impossible to walk steadily. Izzy slipped and fell.

taffy789 • 26 April 2016 at 12:14 AM

“His name is Izzy,” Quincy corrected the leader automatically, “And I wouldn’t call him dizzy.”
Discerning the relative safety of the flooding wall, he dropped both the force field and the subject of Izzy’s name, now instead turning around to peer down the passageway from which they’d came.
“Yeah… I would say finding the others is pretty important,” Quincy agreed, inwardly worried more about one of the “others” in particular. “’Specially since this area seems a bit dangerous, if the ash-coated walls and random dam bursts say anything about the rest of it. All pretty bad signs, if you ask me.” He gave a small shrug as if concluding with an unspoken, “but oh well, what can you really do about it?” and began trudging through the pool of accumulated water, following Riley’s effort to catch up with their lost teammates.

Truly, the speed of the half-blind half-asleep guy was remarkable, Annabell was quick to realize. She’d lost sight of him quickly, for she had chosen to not run full speed down a slippery passageway after him. Thankfully, the route Izzy had taken was a straight one, so she was able to follow him with little effort.
After Annabell managed to jog her careful way to the end of the hall, she caught sight of the boy hesitating at the stairs… just in time to watch in aghast horror as he tumbled down them.
Racing to the stairwell, Annabell paused at the top, unsure how to proceed without suffering the same fate as the boy. A pang of guilt reverberated through Annabell; she should’ve called out for him to stop- she should’ve warned him about the stairs. If she could’ve stopped him with a warning, she could’ve kept it from happening.

asi • 26 April 2016 at 3:33 AM

"Oh- right, sorry," Riley murmured, frowning as he tried to remember if the kid, Izzy, had even introduced himself properly. True, the leader ought to have read the team files, but still- still... This Izzy had bad manners.
While annoyance curled around his shoulders like a particularly smug feline, Riley just nodded at Quincy's assessment and walked as quickly as he could while still treading carefully through the water swirling around their feet. Apart from the fear of slipping, there was no great difficulty to it, since the stream was shallow and lacked a strong sense of direction. If anything, it seemed sloped against them, so any current would be pushing, not pulling their feet out from under them. In that case, maybe Izzy was simply running to where he thought the exit might be. The thought didn't exactly fill Riley with admiration for the guy, although he was secretly relieved at the prospect. The only real mystery of this place was why it was suddenly filling with water, and he wasn't sure they wanted to stick around and find out.
He came to a stop at a corner, where the path split, and glanced at Quincy with a worried look. "Which way?"
There was no way of knowing. Even if they shouted for the others, they wouldn't hear anything over the rush of the water. Maybe they should just wait there for the other two to return... Or they could split up.

He hit the bottom with a dull thud, landing on his backside, and he just cowered there for a few moments, trying to cope with the growing aches all over his leg and back, the sharp agony sparking up his tailbone, and the tears springing to his one good eye... He could also taste blood from where he'd bit the inside of his cheek too hard instead of crying out.
He couldn't do anything about his newly-acquired bruises or the accompanying pain, but the tears- Izzy swiped them away rigorously.
"Why, what do we have here?" a voice wondered, and the light tap of steps sounded, leading over to where Izzy sat, curled up on himself. It occurred to him that it lacked the slick slap of water pooled over the stone. When he felt the ground he lay on now, it was dry to the touch, and as his hand crawled backwards for a good angle of support with which to push himself up and to his feet, he discovered the drain, right beside the steps.
"Did you fall?" It sounded tickled by amusement, as well as concern. "Aw. Here, let me help you up." The voice had to very close now, just a handful of centimeters from his face, causing Izzy to jolt back. Still, at that point he still assumed it to belong to one of the members of his expedition- presumably Annabell, though it was strangely lower and lilting. So he reached forward for the hand-
Then made a move to abort the action, as he breathed in the air heavy with one specific scent.
Too late, however, as the other snatched his wrist with one small hand and pulled Izzy to his feet with surprising strength.
And let go just as quickly. "Yuck, you're all wet," the voice sounded childishly put off, and Izzy could hear the sound of them wiping their hand off on their clothes.
"S-s'rry," he mumbled, just a knee-jerk reaction.
"Hey now," the other person was leaning close again curiously, inspecting Izzy's face. "You can open your eyes."
Izzy did so- well, half did, his tattered eyelid hanging slack as always, his opaque, useless eye peeping out just beneath- and found the room to be lit.
It was in fact, not filled with technology, but lined by it, including screens and control panels, all things that seemed built into the walls. It was dusty, but dry, and judging by all the flashing little lights, most of it was still in working order. There were also a few things bolted to the floor- a few strange devices, and two wheelless gurneys, or were they operating tables?
A cute boy was smiling up at him, at least a couple of years and several inches shorter than him, with cheer unaffected by the sight of Izzy's disfigured face. "You look so disorientated, you're not hurt are you?" Dark eyes grew wide with sympathy, and the kid ran a hand through his black, wild mess of hair. "That drain system really is a safety hazard," he snickered lightly.
"Um, yeah," Izzy agreed cautiously, still looking around himself in puzzlement. Where was he? And: he sniffed the air again, and then crinkled his nose. "Why d'you smell s'funny?"
The kid started, and then a delighted expression swam over his face, exactly like Christmas had come early. He was in the right age group for it, after all. "Oh? Do tell, what do I smell like?"
That was a strange reaction though, it wasn't like Izzy was complimenting him. Children were weird. "Cobwebs an' seashells 'n' soap," he grunted, and promptly stopped breathing through his nose, since the kid was so close it had become intense.
The boy laughed again. "That's funny!" Then he stopped abruptly, switching to just a broad smile. "So, what's your name?"
"Izzy," the tracker answered, distracted by the aches and pains still plaguing his system from the fall.
"That's a sweet name." The boy patted Izzy's arm in a friendly fashion, causing him to jerk back again and stare in response. "And what are you doing down here?"
Izzy... Wasn't sure on how to answer that question, so he just stared on.

taffy789 • 26 April 2016 at 11:13 PM

Quincy craned his neck and stared down both passages, to no avail.
“Let me try something,” he said, and, lifting his flashlight, he shined the beam down one tunnel, clicked the button on and off a few times, and then did the same to the other branching path.
Then, he lowered his light and waited.

Annabell ran her palms along the side of the stone walls of the stairwell- they seemed rough enough to brace herself on without falling, if she placed each foot on the next step with extra, cautious care…
Staring at the stairs Izzy had tumbled down, Annabell wavered, not overjoyed at her prospects of joining the boy in a crumpled heap at the end of the bumpy, vertical waterslide that the stairwell had transformed into.
Sucking in a gulp of confident air, she flicked on her flashlight, shone it at her feet, and propped her elbows against the confined stairwell walls. Just as her hesitant foot hit the first slippery step, a glint of light hit the corner of her eye, and, after stepping back up, Annabell turned around to see where the light had come from.
Peering into the dark of the corridor, Annabell blinked in surprise when the light flashed again, and then again, and then once more before stopping. Since it was highly unlikely that anyone else would be lurking in a swampy, underground cavern, she assumed the light came from Riley or Quincy, and she blinked her flashlight back in reply.

Eyes fixed on the opaque darkness of both pathways, Quincy’s face broke into a wide grin when a small flash of light blinked back.
“Oh, cool,” he breathed, relieved, “For a ‘sec there, I honestly didn’t think that would work.”
He started in the direction of the signaling light, noting that they were heading away from the cavern's entrance. Izzy, it seemed, had responded to water pouring from the ceiling by running deeper into the caves… Crinkling his nose, he silently fussed over his boyfriend’s apparently crappy self-preservation tactics.

Feeling better knowing her other, non-mostly-likely-passed-out-and-drowning-in-a-shallow-pool-of-water teammates knew how to find her, Annabell rebraced her arms against the stairwell’s walls and started slowly down the steps. When she felt she was about halfway down or so, she began calling out “Hey! You okay?” down below her. She would’ve called out the boy’s name as well, but it had suddenly, irrevocably slipped her mind….





“Really. Hadn’t noticed,” Zach croaked in reply, unable to muster up the proper cutting sarcasm to give his words any edge. They fell bluntly, monotonously, and without direction, echoing to both Raven and the surrounding walls without favoring one over the other.
The girl’s reminder of his injury made him more aware of the sticky feeling coating his hands, and, tiredly, he maneuvered his palms to where Raven was shining the light. When his palms were revealed to be stained with red smears, he was not surprised in the slightest.
Wordlessly, he grabbed Raven’s hand- the one gripping the flashlight- and guided it to the space behind his head, blinking aggressively as the light passed to close to his eyes on the way over. He craned his head to the left as the beam made it to the dusty ground, and Zach groaned when he saw the grimy lines of blood smudged into the dirt. The trail, as wild and streaked as it was, implied that he had hit his head and then slid, though Zach had no memory of him moving or rolling around after that initial crack against the concrete. The thought of having partially blacked out without realizing it concerned him and recalled feelings of anxiety, so he tried to forget about the exact details of his injury. Instead, touching Raven’s hands again, he directed the light to the back of his head, lifting his neck off the ground for a better angle.
“… Does it look bad.” He questioned Raven flatly- although, what he’d really had wanted to ask her was, “Does it look like I’ll be dead anytime soon?”, but he didn’t ask that, for she wasn’t his power and couldn’t provide him with an accurate answer in whatever case.
To avoid thinking further about himself dying, Zach grabbed the roll of bandages which had fallen out of his pocket, unrolled them, and began tentatively pressing at his head wound. A sharp pain rang out with every touch of his own fingers, and even after too much probing he couldn’t tell if he was bleeding because of the skin splitting on impact or due grating against concrete during that unremembered slide. Clenching the bandages, Zach’s hands hovered about the top of his skull, unsure, before they hesitantly roused themselves to action, blindly wrapping messy, unhelpful bandages around his skull.

asi • 27 April 2016 at 6:52 AM

"Smart," Riley praised the bodyguard, nodding again in acknowledgement, and trying to pretend to himself he wasn't just the slightest part peeved he hadn't thought of that himself. True, the whole ploy had relied on someone- and he was going to safely assume that person to be Annabell- being smart and alert enough to flash a signal back. But even if it hadn't worked, the idea had still been better than nothing... "You should have more confidence then," he tried to give the other guy an encouraging smile, although no doubt it was lost in the darkness.
He followed Quincy through the dark, watery tunnel, but with every step his haste ebbed, and soon Riley was very much trailing behind. Although he didn't have any kind of sense for these things-
The back of his neck would not stop prickling. It wasn't his hair ticking him. He reached back and found that the russet-hued locks simply didn't reach that far, yet. Though he did probably need a good cut...
"Hey, uh, Quincy," he called out eventually, when his steps had inevitably ground down into nothing. The water lapped over his shoes where he stood, the next wave flooding his shoes full and drenching his socks, which seemed to puff up like a sponge. Riley cringed at the wholly unpleasant sensation. It wasn't even properly cold, but contained a sickly kind of swamp-bred warmth. Normally he wouldn't be so sensitive to these things, but at that moment, well- "I don't have much mind-reading ability any more," he confessed to the darkness, although for his teammates, that should have been obvious by now, unless they really assumed he respected their privacy that much... Which, although he tried, could never manage. "But if I did," Riley continued, apprehension heavy in his words and on his tongue, "I bet I'd be sensing a presence right behind me about now, wouldn't I?"
He stared at Quincy for his cue, not looking to check his own back, but just listening to the quiet swish of the water in the otherwise empty stone passageway.

Mael Evangel grinned at the sound of the voice. "Is that your friend?" he asked, and when the other continued to look yet say nothing, tilted his head inquisitively to one side. "Aren't you going to respond?"
The poor tired-looking teenager seemed to struggle with an answer to even that, hesitating and taking a few wary steps back before his next big breath. As he seemed about to shout out, Mael took the chance to pull out the large metal urn he'd been holding with one hand behind his back, and with one wicked swing, he knocked Izzy's lights right out.
There was a dull crack on impact, but otherwise nothing. The chubby teen crumpled soundlessly into a heap beside the stairs, looking for all the world like he'd been taken out by the fall. The stairs were framed, while the true culprit (the urn) was allowed to roll away to a darkened corner of the room, where the dim light did not reach it.
Mael, meanwhile, crouched down beside the unconscious Izzy, cradling his curly-haired head in his hands and inspecting the wound with care... As he waited for the next visitor to descend.


"Um." She hesitated at first, but after the first waves of horror at the sight of all the dull red subsided, grim optimism returned and she found that while bloody, the wound wasn't very deep. It could have been much worse. "You'll live," Raven assured him finally, while batting his hands away and snatching up the bandages herself. With the torch in between her teeth and lighting up another wall, her vision wasn't too good for it, but at least it was better than Zach blindly throwing the stuff over his head.
"Honestly," the girl sighed, rolling her eyes at his hopeless handiwork. Her thin, quick-fingered hands made quick work of straightening of straightening out the wrap and fixing it securely in place. "You think I'd let someone as messed up as you," her words were hard but her careful touch showed her best efforts at preventing any additional pain, "do that by yourself?"
Eyes still very much on the unfinished bandage job, Raven paused, letting it unfurl a little while her hands stopped to turn out her pockets. Since she'd had so many spots for knives sewn in, it was hard to keep track of them all as her clothes varied from day to day. So it was no surprise to her when the disinfectant gone unaccounted for before turned up now.
"Alright," she said, tearing open the packet and freeing the wipes that seemed to glow all by themselves in the darkness. "This is really going to sting..."
She applied the stuff under the bandages, brushing away grit and committing genocide on whatever bacteria were festering over the injury.
Once that was done and the bandage neatly tightened and tied, Raven pushed herself away to drop down in the nearby corner, extracting the now slightly gross torch from her weary jaws. After a minute spent worrying about batteries and being shut back in that impossible blackness, she remembered something she needed to do.
"Hey." She folded back her pinky and ring fingers and showed the hand to Zach... "How many fingers am I holding up?"

taffy789 • 29 April 2016 at 9:56 PM

Having outpaced Four's slow walking and talking, Quincy froze three meters ahead of his superior when the leader spoke those chilling words. He shed the creeping ice off his neck with a resolved shiver, and, flipping around fast, Quincy shot his right hand out towards Four. Instantaneously, a glowing force field sprang up to life inches away from the leader's back.
Peering into the darkness, Quincy shifted his flashlight in his extended hand, swiveling it back and forth in Four's direction without accidentally blinding the leader. Quincy frowned uncomfortably, trying to concentrate on keeping the force field up as he also moved his hand around; the dual action made it all the more difficult to keep his shield glowing strong.
He thoroughly scanned the area behind Four with his eyes and the flashlight before awkwardly clearing his throat to say, "Hey, Four? Hate to disappoint, but I don't see anything there."
Dropping his arm to his side- and thus allowing the force field behind the leader to fizzle out- he continued, "I can't tell if there's an invisibility user behind you, though, but I doubt anyone with that power is down here."
Shrugging, Quincy started walking back towards the leader, closing the gap between them.
"If it's a weight off your mind," he offered candidly, "I'll take up the rear."
He paused, as if expecting something to be said immediately after this- an interjected joke perhaps- but, receiving nothing, he simply rejoined Four, now buzzing with an energy that was anxious to get moving again.


The stairwell slanted forward at an uncomfortable angle, making it impossible for Annabell to see more than a few steps down from her.
Shining the light her feet, she focused on carefully moving down each step, her elbows pressing against the wall and keeping her held up through sheer determination.
She kept inching this way, cautious step by cautious step, until she noticed the stairwell's end and saw something that made her stop dead in her tracks.
The appearance of light had surprised her, but the unexpected person kneeling by the slumped over body of Izzy had taken all the wind out of her lungs. She stepped backwards up the stairs, paling in shock and knowing there was no doubt the person had seen her, for the stairwell's odd slope meant the bottom view had the better range of sight.
Having been seen but not wanting to be followed, Annabell disappeared in a flash, clicking off her flashlight and backing up two more steps to cower, invisible, at a safer distance.
At her new vantage point, she could see the cavern's light glowing below and the edges of Izzy's torso, but everything else was obscured. Helplessly, she stared at Izzy's limp body, wondering if he were dead. The stairs could've very well have snapped his neck with that fall, or the lurking person- a feral, most likely, or perhaps a lost Glaeroe?- could've easily have finished the poor kid off...
...In whatever case, she would have to get through that person to read Izzy's pulse, and the chances were high that they weren't a friendly.
... Slipping her flashlight onto one the hook's of her belt, Annabell unsheathed her dagger, sucked in a breath, pressed against the side of the wall, watched, and waited.



Zach hadn’t thought anything about what Raven would or wouldn’t let him do, so he was taken aback when she grabbed the bandages and began tending his wound.
It was the second time she’d touched his head in the last couple of minutes, and he tensed again as Raven’s stubborn fingers skittered about his tender head. Tiredly, he adjusted his head for her, allowing her to fix the bandages while hyperaware of every unfamiliar touch grazing against the wound. His shoulders and neck stayed tight and ridged as her fingers brushed and groped and prodded, but his expectations for a callous disregard to his pain were crushed by Raven’s cautious and consideration touches. He had anticipated cold hands, an abrasive latex glove rushing to hurry through a necessary procedure, mechanical and unconcerned and tired; no previous experience had prepared him for the relative warmth bleeding out from Raven’s fingers. Her aid was painless, measured, and almost comforting- and so foreign that it made Zach’s back squeeze anxious knots between his spine.
As the warmth leeched from her hands to Zach’s head and then oozed down between the clenched muscles of his neck, Zach untensed some, his body relaxing just as Raven called out a warning of pain.
All trends reversed and Zach wound up again, begrudgingly lying motionless as Raven applied to disinfectant. The sterile smell filled his nostrils without warning, like an old acquaintance suddenly bursting through the doors of one’s house, assuming they were invited over or were actually ever wanted. He hated the smell and the stinging death of bacteria burning the back of his head, but he bore the onslaught of his senses with only a displeased crinkle of his nose.
When Raven finished and moved away, Zach stayed silently supine where he already lay, not caring to move much or even look around. Raven’s return and subsequent question did move him to motion, and he lifted his head and squinted to get a better look at the girl’s upheld fingers.
“…Three.” Zach said, following a long period of silence and focusing.

asi • 29 April 2016 at 11:44 PM

After sparing a quick chuckle for the invisibility remark, Riley could only try to swallow his confusion and heavy sense of foreboding, and push onward...
To find he couldn't.
No matter how he pulled and struggled, his feet wouldn't be lifted out of the water. It was almost like the stuff had grabbed onto his shoes with no intention of letting go... Oh.
Two ropes of water rose up off the floor under Riley at the same time that a strange bump of a wave slipped under the newly-erected force field to join them. The watery chains, now increased in volume, wound rapidly around Riley's legs, arms and torso, until all but his head was pinned in place.
He used this opportunity to articulate, with green eyes stretched very wide; "Ah. Crap."
The water then proceeded to lift his arm, wave it, and use his body to perform a funny k-pop kind of dance... The next thing Riley knew, the water binding him had shifted, with one sudden shiver, to a human with its arms wrapped tightly around his stomach, as if in an enveloping hug. And from the long brown curls that dripped down over his shirt as the person rested their head on his shoulder, and the softness pressed into his back- it was probably a she.
"Hi!" the girl chirped at them, while squeezing Riley even tighter, until he gasped for breath. "How would you like to die?"
Though Riley could see nothing of her face, the water running sluggishly across the floor reflected the glare of her rosy red eyes.
In one smooth movement, his arms which were pinned to his sides forced their way up, hands wrapping around her wrists and then, bending at the waist, he threw her right over his back, so that she flew towards a wall in front of them and broke against its surface with a splash.
It was rather too soon to celebrate, of course, as after pouring down that wall a mass of liquid coalesced at the bottom, all of it rising up together in one big rose-tinted wave, ready to crash down on them.
Riley pulled his twin swords out from his belt and looked to Quincy for some teamwork cues.

After a few more moments still seemingly absorbed in his medical examination, Mael clucked his tongue sympathetically and placed the boy's head gently back down on the stone. Then he straightened his back so he could whip his jacket off then fold it neatly, and this was maneuvered underneath the head so it didn't have to lie on the hard and icy cold surface anymore.
He sighed and stood. "Oh no. I hope if he has any friends down here, they'll come for him. Hypothermia is an awful way to die, but I just don't know what I can do for him..." Having spoken this aloud to his lonesomeness, he let this thought linger in the air before leaving Izzy be, and moving away.
Mael returned to the controls he'd been fussing over prior to the interruption. After flicking a few switches, some back and forth with no apparent effect, he grew frustrated, biting at his lower lip and dark eyes filling up with unshed tears. "I just don't know what to do. Why isn't it working? If I can't get the drainage system up and running again, I really don't know what I'll do..."
He paced back and forth, looking increasingly distraught, although his hands remained peacefully in his pockets the whole time. "Something must be blocking it, and if it isn't fixed, anyone else down here will drown a horrific death. But I haven't for the life of me any idea how to clear it. And they say Italians are supposed to be good plumbers."
At this thought, he stopped walking and despaired. "Mamma, Papa, Mario, I've let you all down...!"
Then, spotting something lying haphazardly in one corner, where earlier it had been discarded. Mael reached over and picked up the urn. Carrying it lovingly in his arms, he took it over to one of the operating tables and jumped to perch on top, kicking his legs back and forth while he stared into the flat, embellished front of the urn. "You would know what to do," he told the jar mournfully, staring as though he could still see the face of his dear departed one just beyond the metal. "You'd take care of it, if only you could be here..."
He bowed his head. Hands shook slightly around the handles of the urn.


Raven snorted softly. "Idiot. As I thought, something's seriously wrong with you..." She waggled her thumb at him. "I asked about fingers, didn't I? Well this ain't one of them," she joked dryly.
That said, about all of her spare energy had been used up, so she just sat there for a time, watching the shadows cast by the rough odd-surfaced walls and pondered about things. Like if anyone would ever find them down here. If anyone would even send a search party after them. They were replacing so many leaders at the moment, it seemed, perhaps another gone missing wouldn't even reach One's radar. That was... Particularly depressing, as thoughts ago.
She rolled her head over to stare at Zach again, wondering if he was going to drop off to sleep, and if she was supposed to let him. Wasn't that a thing? Were you allowed to let concussion victims go unconscious, or would that maybe be beneficial? Raven had no way of knowing, let alone getting him to the head doctor he almost certainly needed to inspect him. No way of getting anywhere, in fact. They were trapped.
It was a lot less pleasant than the last time, with the stupid bets and poker. Even if she never did win any of it, this was worse in pretty much every way, yeah.

taffy789 • 30 April 2016 at 10:12 PM

Facing a giant red wave of feral about to drown them, Quincy darted to Riley’s side and raised his right arm above his head. A green force field shimmered to life around them- a protective dome that stuck tight and waterproof to the cave’s floor- as the wave consumed everything, pressing against the force field with all the pressure it could apply. Breathing sharply through gritted teeth, Quincy concentrated on not letting the feral win; his power was stronger than her brute force, he knew it.
The water hammered the force field, and Quincy grunted, the stump of his left arm extending outwards as every muscle focused on keeping the dome up. After a few unrelenting crashes, the force subsided, and Quincy was relieved for all of .2 seconds before he heard a frustrated bark of anger and turned his head to the left, where the noise had come from…
Quincy then yelped audibly, jolting where he stood for, there, floating upside-down behind the shield but an inch away from Quincy’s nose, the feral was, with the green glow of the force field accentuating the long, suspended curls of hair, tinging her rosy red eyes a strange color, and illuminating the girl’s disgusting, half-formed torso as it bobbed, lacking everything below the exposed naval and missing an arm. Making deliberate eye contact with Quincy, the feral braced her right hand against the shield, slowly formed her left arm, and brought the newly-formed fist crashing into the force field, jolting Quincy again.
Unnerved but steadying himself, Quincy watched as the feral aimed another punch his way and, for a split second, entertained the thought that she was mocking him. Another blow land against the shield and Quincy discarded the thought; ferals usually weren’t that capable of higher thinking, right? Even if this one did appear to have a crappy sense of humor, if her limb forming habits and dabbling in puppetry via Four was anything to go by.
After a third blow landed Quincy prepped himself for the fourth, and when the feral’s fist landed on the shield Quincy brought his right hand down to meet her, dropping his own force field as he did so. The flashlight he still gripped tight functioned as a bludgeon as it made contact with the feral’s head, and, howling in pain, the feral unformed completely and splattered to the floor in a crash of red water.
Since the force field was gone, the water once held above the two boys surrender to gravity as well, dumping itself over them both and drenching them completely.
“Okay, wow,” Quincy gasped, feeling like he’d found out he was sitting in the splash zone at Seaworld in the most jarring way possible, “Didn’t think that one through.”
A sensation like bugs crawling on him ran up his neck, and he instinctively rubbed at the spot with the back of his hand. When the sensation transferred from his neck to his hand, he brought the hand back in front of his face and stood transfixed as he watched a large droplet of red water slide purposefully from his knuckles to his wrist. Turning his hand, Quincy’s eyes widened when the droplet moved against gravity, over the hill of his wrist, back down to his veins, before sliding off his hand completely and landing with a plop in the growing, amalgamating bump of shimmering red water engulfing his feet…
“Uh-oh,” Quincy breathed, and was pulled down in that same breath, his feet flying forward against his will and causing him to catch the ground ribcage first.
Before he could even groan in pain, the water lapped over him, surrounding his head and forcing its way into his nostrils; Quincy flailed, kicked and fought, dropping the flashlight in favor of slapping blindly at the water holding onto his face, as if that alone could stop him from drowning.


Annabell sucked in a deep breath while listening to that monologue; that didn’t sound like a Glaeroe and it certainly wasn’t a feral- it had sounded like a kid.
A scared, frightened kid.
…A scared, frightened Italian kid who was apparently breaking stereotypes at incredibly inopportune times.
Having heard everything she needed to, Annabell sheathed her knife and walked down the stairs, staying invisible as she stepped onto the draining grate. The cavern’s dry, open space and odd choice of sparse décor struck her curiosity, but the feeling faded as she turned to the only shaking warm body in the room and saw that the person from before was, in fact, a kid.
She stared, not sure what to think.
Aside from his stated reasons of being the resident plumber, Annabell wondered what the kid was doing on IOD. He was a middle-schooler at best; she knew he had no place in a deadly warzone. Yet here he was, despite every government assurance that the murder on IOD was solely reserved for those sixteen and up.
She couldn’t stop it, her hands shook as her head swam with buzzing, indignant thoughts. She recalled herself being pulled away from her family and felt her body grow hotter. The sector of the government that had taken her had done so seven months after her thirteen birthday, and they wouldn’t have thrown her into a mission right after that, no, they wouldn’t have killed her like that… So, according to traditional observance of the “no child soldiers” clause the governments were supposed to follow, the boy shouldn’t be here; there was no reason for him to be.
Annabell watched the boy’s bowed head bob and his hands shake, and her heart drowned in aching sympathy.
Tearing her gaze from the boy’s helpless form, she remembered Izzy, and reached down to check his pulse.
…Yep, there was a heartbeat. Although, him being unconscious meant it was likely that there was serious head trauma; Izzy needed a doctor, and quick. She needed to get him out of the caverns and back to the base, but a problem persisted: how would she get him back up the stairs?
… The solution lost on her, she decided to handle the other situation at hand.
“Hey,” she called out, quietly, turning visible as the boy’s head was still down, as to not spook him, “I’m one of his friends.” She gave a motion towards Izzy and smiled at the kid with compassion, questioning softly, “Are you okay?”




Zach rolled his eyes at Raven's joke and wordlessly shuffled on his back, as if trying to obtain any sort of comfort. Not feeling up to doing anything, he blinked exhausted eyes and tried not to think too hard about the small room or dire circumstances he was currently in.
Instead, he closed his eyes, as if about to sleep, and said to Raven, his hoarse voice grating against the concrete walls, "Well, I don't care about your dumb... not a finger thing." He blinked, confused, then added, sounding rather agitated, "And also, it was annoying how you were waving your hand back and forth while making me count them."
Having said what he wanted to say, Zach settled his body on the ground and stared at the dark blur of the ceiling above him.

asi • 3 May 2016 at 2:02 AM

Feeling a new wave of thankfulness sweep over him that Quincy was by his side, Riley flinched only a little behind the force field as it received a watery battering. He had to be strong to hold out against a feral like that; if they got back to base in one piece, he'd have Katrix to thank for at least one of her picks for the team.
There was not much he could do with a barrier in between him and the enemy though. For a while, Riley just watched the girl attack and Quincy defend. It was an invaluable opportunity to evaluate strengths and areas needing work, and if he was getting a lack of action himself, he wasn't about to complain...
This was nice until the guy decided to bring the field down to punch the girl. Then Riley couldn't avoid becoming utterly soaked. Exchanging a look of total agreement with Quincy, he sighed and flicked the water off his blades with a few swift swipes. He didn't want them growing rusty, of course.
Then Quincy was being yanked down by the red-tinted liquid and oh shoot- that wasn't goood...
For a moment he hesitated, but then Riley had to acknowledge what was already obvious: there was no possible way he physically save the guy from drowning. Except for possibly for cardiopulmonary resuscitation, but as long as the self-liquidifying girl was covering Quincy's face and trying to push her fluid down his airways, it was still not an option!
So sheathing his dripping swords, Riley walked over and crouched down by the boy and water monsters' sides. It was worth a shot, after all, since because she was speaking, she must have been thinking, and if she was thinking, she wasn't a true feral, not exactly, now was she. "Excuse me," he said politely. "Would you mind talking for a bit before killing us?"
He waited, until he saw the watery mass had also paused, apparently curious.
"It's just, I'm a bit bemused. You can talk, you seem intelligent, which is not typical feral behavior, so I'd like to know why you're set on killing us," he smiled genially, even as his heart was running on fast. Of course, it was Riley and he had more than his fair share of experience bluffing a calm. He wouldn't say it was easy as pie, but he would admit to it having certain similarities to a slice of a sweet baked food item with a resemblance in shape to the aforementioned pie.
The water drew itself up into a more humanoid form, although it retained most of its liquid properties, as well as the grasp on Quincy's face, although it did seem less set on killing the boy, immediately. Then it- she- replied with an indignant, "I can talk because I'm not feral! But I'm still going to kill you for trying to drain all my prized water into this awful hole."
There were lots of things that could be said about those statements, such as her derogation of the caves while comparing them to an actual swamp. Luckily, Riley was one with his priorities sorted.
He stared. "But that's hardly our fault..."
"What, am I supposed to believe there's someone else down here?" though partially made of water, the girl seemed to be completely competent in her conveyance of sarcasm through expression. She also seemed to be reasonably distracted at this point, too.
Riley threw his arms wide, as if to embrace all the world's possibilities. "I don't know. Maybe?"

He looked up. "Oh, I, I didn't see you there..."
With a quick brush of his sleeve, the child wiped away the water flooding over his eyes so they could meet the young woman's. The first thing he saw was the kindness in her expression. Automatically he smiled back, in a big way that lifted his cheeks and reached his dark eyes, replacing the tears with shining warmth.
"Yes, I'm well myself," he answered with a pause for thought. "Although possibly somewhat traumatized from seeing your friend use the steps incorrectly, it's his health you should be worried about," he told her with earnest worry and a sweeping gesture to Izzy. When he tried to frown, that childish face of his barely brought his eyebrows closer together, and no lines formed on his forehead, so he rather just looked cute and slightly troubled as he said; "You will have to get him out. But first..."
In a sleek, catlike leap, he got down from the operating table and strode over to the noisy-looking panels. There was something in the way he walked that could not be hid. He wore only a long-sleeved but thin shirt at this point and as he moved, small but powerful muscles worked beneath the fabric, making themselves known in a way that almost looked unnatural for a kid of his age. The urn swung rather casually from one hand, making it appear to be made from the thinnest of tin, although that was not the case.
He placed it to the side, on one of those slanted parts, so as to not get in his way while he concentrated on the task at hand. Then looked back at Annabell like a lost kitten. "Can you help me? Please."


She blinked. "Ok?" All of a sudden, the idea of letting Zach count sheep was a LOT less appealing. After all... She hadn't been waving her hand back and forth. Not even a bit.
"Soo," Raven laughed just a little nervously and said the first thing that came into her head. "Hey, remember that time we got stuck in the First's Lounge during the breach? This kind of reminds me of that, though, we don't have playing cards or anything, huh."
Wait, that had been like two weeks ago, and heck if she wanted to talk about that.
"Speaking of which, how do you like the management here, he seems pretty... Interesting..."
Yes, interesting was definitely a word one could use to describe Dreadlocks.
"His power's to do with reading impressions on the surfaces, isn't that weird? It seems pretty useless but I bet loads of people come to him with strange requests. Like who left their grubby prints all over the cookie jar!" Her eyebrows trembled as she tried to keep them up, excited and incredulous. Because how was anyone supposed to find her words engaging unless she sold them as such?
"Or something..."
Raven was so bad at purposely trying to distract people, she made herself cringe.