Private Roleplay~ IOD

taffy789 • 4 May 2016 at 12:45 AM

As the girl reformed to a humanoid shape, she drew the water from Quincy’s lungs and made the boy gurgle in surprise. Eyes uncrossing, Quincy struggled against his lightheadedness and attempted to focus his thoughts. A bubble of water remained encircling his head, passively suffocating him and making his vision blur. Quincy’s head swam, his ribs ached under a strange, wet pressure, and his lungs threatened to burst from lack of oxygen, so- moving frantically, without thinking- he swiped at the water surrounding his face with a desperate hand and rolled his body over onto his chest.
The humanoid pile of water sitting on Quincy’s chest was about to reply to Riley, was about to vibrate the water molecules in the general area of where her mouth should’ve been when, without warning, her “hand” was smacked off Quincy’s face and sent splattering to the ground- quickly followed by her being thrown off the boy’s rolling body and meeting a similar, splashy fate.
Quincy wheezed, free from drowning, and he coughed out globs of liquid from his lungs as he slowly lifted himself off the ground. He sat up on his knees, drenched to the shivering bone, fighting to breathe, and feeling thoroughly disgusted because, oh god, had that feral girl went up his nose????
All the horrible implications of that particular nasty train of thought derailed when, to Quincy’s mounting terror, a bulb of growing red water began to form right beside him.
Squawking in alarm, Quincy scrambled to his feet, scooped up his dropped flashlight, and hurriedly took up a defensive position beside Four- perhaps an inch- a slight, scared smidge- behind the leader.
“Four,” Quincy breathed, his voice sopping with urgency, “I’m fine with a tactical retreat if you are. Just-” the boy who’d almost drowned stared down the reforming girl with pained, concerned eyes, “whenever you feel ready is good, yeah.”


Although slightly taken aback, Annabell relaxed her shoulders as the kid responded positively to her appearance. On one hand, it was good he wasn’t frightened by her, yet- on the other- he certainly needed a lesson on stranger danger. Generally, meeting people at the bottom of drowning, slimy caverns never boded well for the future.
As the child voiced a greeting, hopped from the table, and started towards her, and Annabell smiled back in welcome, masking all alarm the strong physique of the small boy rose within her. A kid, with that strength, that level of self-containment given the strange situation? There existed no doubt in Annabell’s mind; the kid was trained, definitively. Well-trained at that- Annabell remembered her government training and, at his age, she would’ve been a wild, frightened, blubbering mess by now, had this been her first mission…
Forcing her smile stronger to hide a grimace at that thought, she assured the boy, “Of course I’ll help you. I heard you talking; this is about the drains, right?”
The question of who he worked for and why they would send a young boy to fix an old drainage system remained on Annabell’s mind, but it seemed a moot point, considering the danger of drowning and all. She doubted the boy would know much anyway; if he naïve enough to trust her on the spot, then she would guess the people who brought him to IOD hadn’t bothered to fill him in on many details.
To close the gap between her and the kid, Annabell stepped over Izzy, feeling guilty as months of first aid lessons rushed back to her. One of those first lessons: Head trauma was serious business; somebody breathing one minute could hemorrhage and die the next. While part of her wanted to keep an eye on him, a teleporter would be required to get Izzy safely out of the caves, so she was forced to concede her helplessness. Annabell set her eyes on the small boy instead; she could at least help everyone out by saving them all from drowning.
As she approached the boy, his features grew sharper, clearer, familiar and Annabell blinked in surprise, feeling the oddest sense of déjà vu, like she'd ran into the same boy before. She focused her gaze on him, thinking through the sensation, and when his eyes turned wide and lost and dependent and young, oh, who the boy reminded her of hit her.
The slightest draft of melancholy aired around Annabell as her smiled grew all the more natural, as she squatted to allow her tall form to become even with the kid’s small one. She held out a hand, greeting with an “I’m Annabell, by the way.” Her curiosity raged, pushing to pry right away, but her inner nurturer kicked that cat-killer to the curb. She instead spoke, warmly, “You don’t have to worry, I’ll help you out the best that I can, okay?” Then, she faltered, and curiosity took what little leeway it could grab, “And, now, what would your name be?”



“Management?” Zach snorted, “They suck.”
Then, after listening to Raven go into deeper detail, he realized she’d been speaking about a specific management worker. Zach paused before elaborating, relying on his intuition to fill in the gaps for him, but nothing came and a sour, pungent taste filled his mouth when he remembered that his power was gone.
Zach’s breathing quickened, and, struggling, he hurriedly croaked out, “Don’t know who you’re talking about. But they probably suck too.”
Hasty air continued to push out of his lungs, and Zach rolled onto his side, squeezing his eyes shut to avoid staring at the confined, pressing concrete walls of the bunker. He quickly discovered that the darkness behind his eyelids wasn’t the more benevolent option, and he snapped his eyes wide open, choosing instead to bring his knees to his chest and stayed balled up on his side. His spine ached from the bend and the position wasn’t the least bit comfortable, but it felt safer than sprawling his entire body out on the floor- so he remained in a tight, locked ball.
He wrestled control of his breathing slowly, but even as he calmed again he could still sense the domineering futility the walls around him emanated; the hopelessness of the situation at hand. A chord of desperation struck him as suddenly as lightning, and Zach broke fetal position to sit-up, his chest and head blaring with pain at the impulsive movement.
“There’s no way out of here, is there,” Zach breathed, stating the fact more than asking a question. He then faltered and threw a hesitant glance towards Raven, staring at her as if unsure himself, as if she was the only one who could confirm or deny his suspicions.

asi • 7 May 2016 at 11:10 PM

"Nice job not drowning," Riley flashed the other guy a quick smile as he scurried over, looking thoroughly disgusted and still snorting the occasional H2O. Actually, in conjunction with his earlier talk with Annabell, the sight stirred up quite a few unpleasant memories of his family's vacation to a water park one year- but the reminiscing could wait.
In a bit of a trance, he watched the water pulsate and condense into limb-like shapes, until a pair of equally red lips bubbled up and a tongue that said; "Now you're just too annoying! I don't have the patience for this!" And then something that looked an awful lot like claws was being pulled together, exceptionally long and threatening-like. Kind of resembling something out of the Nightmare Before Christmas, actually, only made of what looked like wine, instead...
"Okay, as absolutely fascinating as this may be," Riley contemplated as the girl began to rise up off the floor again, one water-clawed hand raking down the side of the wall as if to help her up, but leaving large gashes in the stone; he made the conclusion, "Running is sounding like a pretty solid plan right now, yes."
He turned heel and began to move, hoping to get a head start before the wild water power fully reformed and gave chase.
There was just one little problem with that little scheme, but one that was getting bigger with each falling step. At some point during the skirmish, the girl had got around behind them, so that now she was sending them hurriedly back, in the direction opposite to Izzy and Annabell. She- and her great big rock-shredding claws- was now standing in their way. Riley glanced back. Correction: she was in their way, on her way, surging forward exactly like a tidal wave armed with great big rock-shredding claws... Riley had to give a big leap as he ran when her extended nails nearly gored the back of his leg.
He felt a bit bad to ask, considering what the guy had just went through, but it couldn't be helped; "Uh, Quincy? You know revolving doors? We're gonna need you to spin us around somehow... I hope you're up to it!" he shouted over his shoulder at the other guy, before thoughtlessly adding; "If it's any comfort, I hear CPR is a lot less pleasant on your end, so be thankful you only had to deal with her down your throat!" he joked with a fear-thrilled laugh as he evaded yet another sweep of the witch's water aimed his way.
Then a claw he'd missed snagged on the heel of his shoe and tore it off his foot, causing the leader to stumble forward most ungracefully. He caught himself on all fours but this left him stalled with his back wide open-


"You know, the... Guy with the dreadlocks," Raven fumbled, not knowing the guy's name, and hating herself for it. The fact that only Zach was stuck down her judge her hardly made her feel better. Even though he had no reserves about condemning an entire workforce to "suck" without any further thought... That made her snort. It was just so Zach.
She continued fiddling with the flashlight in the following lull. Trailing its yellow touch all over the dusty walls in squiggly paths, like if she tried hard enough, it might find a way out of the maze... Too bad it had four walls, a floor and a ceiling to boot.
As if to echo her own thoughts, then came Zach's next words, and they summoned a horror-style shudder. Her knee-jerk reaction was to pull out all stops and reject, reject, deny. "S-sure there is!" she exclaimed with a stutter, her false positivity barely holding together. "If there's a way in, there's a way out, r-right? Besides, it's only a matter of time before they find us..."
Then Raven remembered what the power of the guy she was talking to was, and promptly stopped. Whatever the case was, Zach knew already, for sure. Her eyes widened in shock and then pressed closed. "So we must be royally screwed then, huh," she slumped back in defeat.


"It's," his words and his smile paused, then his face turned away like he had something in that instant to conceal. And he changed his mind. "Spence. Spence Evangel, at your service...
"Although I'm afraid I won't be of much, since it is I who needs help from you," he sighed regretfully, waving again a hand towards the controls.
"Really, short of any instruction manual, it's all we can do to flip our way through the switches and hope we hit something lucky before something stuffy," he- 'Spence'- explained, recovering his composure as he did so. Apparently steeling himself, he reached one wavering finger out towards a switch labelled, 'L01', and pressed it down. As soon as he'd done so, he drew his hand back lightning fast, as if fearful that out of the console, a snake would strike. Of course nothing remarkable happened to the panels, so he looked around what he could see: the room.
Sure enough, the drain by the steps made a snapping sound as a grate snapped shut over it. The water began to flow over it, speedily coating the flat floor in its slick.
"Oh no," Mael groaned, and quickly undid his work, and returned to staring at the flashing lights and multitude of buttons.
He exhaled shakily, as if just that had filled him with panic, and looked to Annabell. "I'm hopeless, really. Would you just give it a try?"
Staring at the little bit of water still soaking into the stone, he looked distinctly ill. "I can feel that swamp water through the soles of my shoes, yuck, just yuck..."

taffy789 • 8 May 2016 at 1:15 AM

"Nice to meet you, Spence," Annabell smiled, both bemused and amused by the boy's funny, adult-like manner of speaking. She considered rethinking his age until she stood and watched his incompetence with the controls. The reaction to the water soaking into his shoes, especially, was rather cute...
She dropped the thought and hovered her hands over the control panel, hesitating.
"...If this is all guesswork, an extra pair of hands won't help much," Annabell carefully pointed out, as if to not frighten the boy with this obvious information. "I... can try, however."
... Actually, no, Annabell realized as she stared at the army of buttons and levers, messing with a creepy control panel in an abandoned government bunker? Never a good idea. Not wanting to admit a lack of care for the boy's situation, however, Annabell pushed a large, red button near the left of the panel with a faded "____gency Al__m" underneath it.
As she hoped, a crackling siren began blaring static and horror throughout the entire compound, echoing within the room and giving the girl a massive headache. Quickly, she slammed the button again, which luckily shut off the ear-splitting noise.
Sighing with relief, Annabell turned back to the boy and gave a "oh well I tried" sort of helpless shrug.
"Spence," she then explained, sweetening her voice, "If you tell me what you're trying to do here, exactly, I could certainly help you out a lot better. Is it like, a drain you are supposed to fix or did you, need to, get something safely out of this place, or something?" She probed tenderly, and added, as to not frighten the child, "Because I do want to help you, but I need to know more about what you're doing, um, here before I can help you to the best of my ability, alright?"
Annabell paused, then probed again, softly, "Um, do you... even know where you are, exactly, Spence?"


Despite focusing on listening to the leader, running forward without slipping, and dodging the water witch’s attacks, Quincy managed to grasp what Four was hinting at with the revolving door analogy.
“Yeah, I got it,” he called back in reassurance, “No problem!”
Then Four said the other thing, and Quincy choked, but not because of the water left stuck his throat.
“Uh, what?” he exclaimed, the tips of his ears heating up and evaporating any water unlucky enough to have remained on them, “I- uh, okay? I, I mean, uh-”
When the leader then tripped and fell, Quincy felt a surge of admitted relief, because he’d honestly hadn’t known how to reply to that statement. Anxiety flooded back into him in the next second, however, as the water witch’s claws ripped through the air towards Four’s unprotected back-
Quincy slid to a stop and threw up a quick force field dome around the leader; the claws splattered against the shield with an unsatisfying splash and the watery, humanoid shape reared its head to glare daggers at Quincy…
Not wanting to experience another drowning session, Quincy waited for the girl to charge him and then, dropping the shield around Four, he rose another to completely encircle his attacker. The rosy water viciously swirled within the confines of its dome, creating a maelstrom and sending wave after wave pummeling the sides of the force field.
“Four? You okay?” Quincy called out to the open air, not removing his concentration from the glowing green cage, “I got what you meant with the revolving door thing! Like, how you can get trapped between the glass and-” Blinking, a realization hit Quincy, and he quickly amended, “Never mind, my logic is stupid when I’m saying it out loud. My brain’s still waterlogged, alright?”
He shifted uncomfortably where he stood, arm extended out towards the imprisoned watery demon, not removing his eyes off it at all. “We need to go,” Quincy said, staring warily at the raging, clawing barrage of attacks hitting the inside of the force field. Hesitantly, he began circling around the dome, moving around it to position himself on the other side of it, “I can’t keep this up for long, and there’s a distance to it, so we wouldn’t have much of a head-”
A blaring alarm suddenly sounded off, ripping though Quincy’s eardrums right as a powerful swing of claws slashed at the force field. With Quincy’s concentration broken, the claws tore its cage into delicate, lofty pieces of floating green ribbon and then quickly realigned themselves towards a new target. While the alarm quickly ceased its mission to drive anything with hearing to suicide, its aftereffects left Quincy dazed and unprepared to deal with the claws which came swinging straight towards him-


"Them finding us?" Zach intoned, his voice falling on a bitter note, "That depends." He calmed at the opportunity to rationalize their odds, his arms loosing at his sides.
"Scenario one. Tabs is dead, and management bothers looking for me because I'm a leader. But if they don't bother to move a huge canyon of dirt, they won't find us, and then we're screwed. Scenario two," he continued, idly twisting a hand in front of the flashlight's beams and casting blurry, lethargic shadows along the walls, "Tabs somehow survives. She gets back to the base, and she either tells management that she believes we are alive or she says don't bother, those are pre-buried corpses and so there's no use in digging us up again."
Grimacing, Zach's formless shadow puppets grew twitchy and agitated, their dark dance frantic against the stark white of the concrete.
"I..." something audibly caught in his throat, and he cleared in with a large intake of scratchy air before admitting, "Don't ask me if Tabs is alive or if she knows we're alive or- anything. I don't know. I just- don't know, I-" He struggled, his breathing hastening as he fought, floundering for the right words, but he failed and so gave up.
He choose to instead stare blankly at a dark, unilluminated space in front of him.
Unconsciously, his hand lifted it's middle and index finger in front of the flashlight, casting a twitching bunny's head on the lit up wall.
Silence, then, "I suppose I'll say it, because if my power turns out to be a prick, then you're the one I'll need to deal with it. So, after I hit my head, my power stopped responding to me. I'm in the dark right now- I'm blind."
He stopped and lingered on that that, but, after a second of consideration, he added for good cheer, "If I had to guess, though, I'm positive Tabs is dead."

asi • 8 May 2016 at 2:50 AM

The kid looked rather disappointed when she only dared go for the obvious alarm of the lot. He looked like a child whose parent was refusing to play along with his favorite game... But he cheered up at her consoling words.
"Really?" Above his wide, child's eyes, one thin dark eyebrow made a perfect skeptic's arch. "You think that would help? Well, I don't see how."
He rested his elbows on the slant of a panel and leaned back casually, with the same kind of style a particularly extravagant actor might have when draping themselves over a couch, only brought down to scale. Although his clothes were extraordinarily ordinary, a plain shirt and pale jeans, there was something strangely regal, princely, about him, and it could not only be explained by his flawless poise. Though just a kid, maybe it was how his classically handsome, sleek Italian features outshone any child's chub his face might still have. Or perhaps the fact that he and said clothes both appeared painfully clean. There was not the slightest trace of dirt or grime on him anywhere, nor even signs of being at one point damp, other than on the soles of his shoes, which happened just now. Of course, it was all of those things, and more.
He still blinked as innocently as ever. What were those dark eyelashes for, if not to be batted...
"But sure, sure, I don't mind telling you, Annie." Mael smiled at her with apparent fondness. "I was on my way to see my brother when I found I had time to spare. Then I remembered this place, and what a bad cleaning it must need. And, how right I was. It's a sad sight!" He shook his head in apparent disbelief. "Unfortunately, while I was going through the switches, I must have hit one triggering that flow of water you see there," he pointed to the drain and stream that ran into it from the steps. "But I've switched all that I hit before a second time, and no dice, so something must be blocking it," nothing seemed to tear this kid up like drainage gone wrong. He wiped his eyes with the back of his hand and kept going. "Of course, there'll be the master floodgates, so if I can find that one, it'll be problem solved- and no one will have to die," his smile, which had long faded, resurfaced. It looked frightened. "But some of these switches have, ah, less desirable effects. And they may be jammed once used, too..."
He met her eyes with a determined look. "So, Annie. Are you," he hesitated, but only for a split second, before his mouth hardened into a straight line, "game?"


The water collided with the other side of the force field, and Riley, having flipped around to face the danger in the last second, held himself down in a crouch and watched its own velocity tear the water claws apart. The red waves seen through the green lens sure created a strange vision. It blended into a yellowy brown, calling to mind a river of cream soda. Riley had to wonder if he wasn't dreaming after all, on seeing a scene straight out of his dreams- but of course, the water tasted like swamp. Gross.
He allowed himself a slow exhale, and a short wince as he adjusted to the fact that one of his feet now had to suffer the cold and abominably wet terrain in only a thin cotton sock. Needless to say, all hopes of regaining his lost shoe were quickly washed away.
But he didn't have much time to fuss over such things as Quincy had just trapped the water-power in an orb, which was not exactly what Riley had meant, but he wasn't about to complain now. Kicking off his other shoe for the sake of balance, he joined the other guy in edging past the caged girl. Since Riley didn't need to maintain a psychic sphere getting barraged from the inside, he achieved this much more swiftly than Quincy, and could have made several more meters had he not hesitated, turning back to wait for the guy.
As it was, when the unexpected cacophony of sound flooded their world, and the safe green of the barrier was shredded apart, he was the one best placed to take action. The dull pain of his numb toes hitting the stone barely computed as Riley rushed forward, knocking Quincy aside and out of the way.
The very same danger he'd been spared just moment earlier now descended on him. Like knives, her water cut into the very same place that had been snatched from her claws before. The cloth covering his back was reduced to tatters, and when the red water drew back, they remained stained with red, while more of the color dripped down his back...
But he didn't seem to feel it. He just grabbed Quincy's arm and started running, down the corridor, towards Izzy and Annabell and the steps they'd taken.


Dozing over his paperwork, he had just enough time to wrench himself upright then scramble through the wide open door to the sink before the first wave struck. The nausea reached deep into his stomach and pulled, stretching the organ until all it contained was forced up. There was the short, horrific instant where it spilled into his mouth, where he had the first shock of tasting it, and then it was simply a disgusting mess in the basin.
He spluttered, still spitting out remnants of his most recent food that had caught on his teeth but able to breathe-
The second motion caused his entire being to seize up, shoulder blades pulling tight like a bow strung to kill, the bones pushing up from under his paper-thin, fat-free skin, his body turning rigid as it tried to fight its own overpowering reflex. To no avail. He choked, more indecipherable gunk pouring out his throat and splattering into the sink.
Again. He clenched his fingers around the rim of the basin, until his knuckles turned as startling a white as the ceramic.
Again.
Nothing was coming out anymore, just dripping clusters of little saliva bubbles, but his system kept on being wracked by the aftershocks, an onslaught of tremors that only seemed to escalate the pain.
Or maybe it was just his growing awareness, as he finally felt the cool touch on his back, heard the voice that had been calling his name so softly. He opened his eyes slowly, blinking at the clumps his eyelashes had formed with the tears squeezed out of him.
He saw the sea of sick filling his vision slowly being washed away, with a blast of clean, clear water. With it went the putrid stink of half-digestion, and he gasped in air through both channels, almost making himself ill again with desperate relief. Still he sucked it in greedily, like he'd never tasted anything so good in his life. The last few minutes had taken so much out of him, from him, but he was still alive, still alive-
"Luca..."
His panting slowed, and he twisted his neck for a sight of the other, standing over him as they were with such a poignant look of concern. He felt the liquid track down his face and knew how he must look. "Sorry," he mumbled, as soon as the gagging and shaking subsided, and used his grip on the sink to force himself up off his thin bony knees.
"Don't-!" they started, looking positively appalled, but he batted them aside, climbing with the careful help of both hands into the shower before closing the transparent door sharply behind him.
Resting his head against the smooth white tiles, his burning skin leeching away its chill, he sighed, hands fumbling with the dial. "Go back to bed, RJ."
When they protested, trying to pry the door open and help him, he slammed his left hand up against the glass with a show of strength disconsonant to his state. It trembled underneath the force and he pulled his hand away to see a splintered crack like a spiderweb left behind. Of course, the thick glove he was still wearing would have protected him from splinters anyway...
James stared so worriedly, but when he turned away, letting the water flow over his bare back and down to completely soak his boxers, there was little they could do. Especially when he looked back and told them, "please," in such a small, urgent voice.
They struggled, but in the end, had to give in to their boss's earnest wishes. "OK, OK..." They turned to leave the bathroom. "Do you need anything?"
"... Frosted Flakes, Fruit Loops, Lucky Charms, Dr Pepper and Coke," Septa recited, sticking his head under the shower and feeling his wild hair flatten into straight long strings under the weight.
Once they'd shaken their head to their heart's content and left, Septa lifted his face up towards the torrent and began gargling the water.


"So," and while she tried for a deadpan, it came out wearied and weak, "we've what, a week, then death by desiccation?"
She hadn't even tried throwing her weight against the door, then again, she didn't really need to to tell that it wasn't going to work. The weight above was heavy enough to leave dents in the metal, it seemed to be straining and sweating under the resting landslide. If they tried anything on it, Raven wouldn't be surprised if it collapsed and drowned them all in rock.
Besides, her aches, her bruises and potential twist in her ankle, all of these were very much appeased by her remaining seated exactly where she was.
Laying her tired head down on one shoulder, Raven watched Zach play with the shadows she cast without expression. Although he might have been delighted by his dexterity, the whole use of the light only seemed to serve as a grim reminder that while their stomachs might last a week, the batteries would not survive half that. Clenching her spare hand around useless loose rocks, dirt and dust, she found she didn't want to be plunged back into the dark...
"... How do you feel?" she asked, as quietly as the chamber allowed, eyes still on the dancing silhouettes.

taffy789 • 10 May 2016 at 12:10 AM

While the way the kid explained his troubling situation was certainly cute, the explanation itself rose more questions than gave answers.
"Oh? Is your brother down here?" Annabell pried, unashamed, "Should we go try to find him?"
She continued, putting on her best 'reasonable adult voice', "I mean, nobody has to die. If you're worried about your brother, we can go get him and get us all out of this cavern, alright? And I have other friends upstairs who can come help my injured friend over there out, so we really don't have to worry about dying!"
As if to calm him, Annabell gave the kid a fond smile, reached over, and attempted to ruffle his hair.
"I'm sorry, but you have to understand, I don't think flipping random switches and hoping for the best is a good idea! I would hate to hit the one lever that releases the crocodiles..." she joked, musing on this scenario before a bright realization flashed in her blue eyes, and she quickly amended for the boy, "Not that there are any crocodiles in danger of eating us, okay?"
She fretted, "You don't have to be scared of that!"


Quincy was flinching, raising his hand to summon a desperate shield when Riley pushed him aside. What came next was a horrible sound, one Quincy had imagined hearing countless times when recalling the moment half his left arm blew from the bone and scattered like red flecks of snow across the muddy permafrost of A-C. The sound of ripping flesh couldn’t have been more distinctive, more obvious.
When the blood sprayed and splattered red against Quincy’s glasses, he cringed, aware of the droplets cascading down his arm and thinking immediately, oh god, I’ve been hit.
That outcome only seemed more likely as Four grabbed and pulled him along with no trouble; Quincy was about to open his mouth to call out his assumed injury when his eyes landed on the leader’s sparsely illuminated back.
Quincy stared at the long, raw gashes peeking out from the tatters of the leader’s shirt. A flag of torn flesh winked at Quincy as it disappeared and reappeared under the red cloth with every jogging footstep forward the leader took.
Four had been hit.
Four had taken a blow meant for him.
A strange wave tasting like a mixture of guilt, worry and nausea seeped down Quincy’s throat, somehow more unpleasant than the feeling of the water witch attempting to drown him.
He watched, transfixed, as the injured leader moved forward without cessation, amazed at his resilience.
Then it occurred to Quincy that, due to adrenaline, the leader may not even be aware of his injuries- as he certainly moved as if not feeling them- and without thinking he began to mention it, breathing out a tiny, simple, “Four.”
Quincy said this and immediately regretted speaking up, fearing that if he brought the wound to the leader’s attention then the effects would hit Four all at once, almost humorously belated, like gravity on suspended coyotes in those old Looney Tunes cartoons.
Despite his fear, Quincy continued, “Four, stop-no, wait, I’m mean, your back, hey-” but suddenly those concerns didn’t matter anymore because a freezing wave of rosy water rolled over his shoes, drenching his socks and nearly making him slip. The waves ebbed to a stop three meters in front of the stairwell’s entrance and began building, forming, growing-
Hit with a sense of déjà vu, Quincy acted fast, breaking from Four’s grip and forming a tight, small bubble around the mass of water. He stood his ground, concentrating his power on keeping the water witch trapped in her liquid form, lacking the necessary space to take her human shape.
“Four, go down without me!” he called out to the leader, “I’ll keep her up here, just- just go find Annabell!”
Quincy hated to leave the very person he was in charge of keeping safe alone, but considering Four had already gotten injured while protecting him, he assumed it was safe to say he was an absolutely sucky bodyguard. Besides, he wasn’t able to help the leader avoid the claws then, and he couldn’t do anything to heal those wounds now, not with the water witch chasing after them. Annabell was better suited for the tending to the wounds- as she certainly had that nurse-like, motherly vibe about her- and so Quincy decided it was in everyone’s best interest for him to… just not drop the force field like a useless idiot this time.
Quincy glanced at the glowing green bubble as the raging water sloshed uselessly against the sides of it, and he decided that it wasn’t the worst job to be stuck with, not really.



"If we're going to die, then we die," Zach stated, as if it were the simplest thing in the world, "it's not like we can crawl out of this hole with all the rock on top of us."
He dropped his hand from the light- too preoccupied with thoughts of death even for mindless shadow puppetry- and the bunny blinked out of existence like a candle being abruptly snuffed out.
Dying of lack of food, of water? Zach considered it a horrible way to go, really. Yet, there was at least the comfort present that, when death by drying out like a raisin came, he would be completely aware the end was near. While he wasn’t too happy about facing the highly probable prospect of slow, painful death, the dread was familiar and gave him something concrete to direct his anxiety towards.
“How do I… feel?” Zach echoed incredulously, his lifted eyebrows invisible in the darkness. Zach’s throat croaked and scratched with every syllable; the shallow burns the heat user had left on his wrist and chest throbbed red; the airtight hole they were trapped in was becoming uncomfortably hot and making him sweat through his shirt. The walls of the bunker still pressed too close; the dusty air breezed too stagnant, too trapped; vulnerability consumed everything; all of this, and more, and yet-
“Tired.” Zach muttered with little flair, and began unbuttoning his shirt. He shed the article, revealing a black undershirt, and formed the unwanted button-up into a ball, tossing it on the ground behind him.
“Like crap,” he elaborated with bland earnest, and then laid back, using his own shirt as a head rest.
“Already dead,” he added for good measure, closing his eyes as if accepting whatever dehydration or starvation fate would grace him with.

asi • 10 May 2016 at 8:54 PM

Mael laughed quietly. Barely louder than his breathing, the act was still evident in the way his shoulders shook, sending tremors all down his form. "Aw, aren't you sweet?" he sighed and leaned into the touch of her hand. His contented smile brought to mind that of a cat being pet in just the right place. He was only short of a purr.
The next thing he did was to surprise her. He enveloped what he could reach of Annie in a warm hug, resting his head on her stomach, squeezing her softly like she were the largest most huggable plush that ever graced the shelves of Toys "R" Us. "Don't worry," he spoke softly into her shirt. "This body of mine isn't going to get eaten, not by crocodiles or anything else," he looked up and gave her a glowing smile, before tilting his head and adding; "At least, not while I'm in it. But after that, it's open season, right?"
Mael pulled away on hearing a quiet groan from across the room. When he looked over, a single golden brown eye was blinking blearily back at him from down on the floor.
"Ah, I see your friend's coming round," Mael observed, wrapping his hands up in his pockets again. "That's good! They say if one's out for more than five minutes, there's likely permanent damage. Three minutes more or less, was it? He'll be right as rain, I think!" he clapped his hands together and smiled happily.
That expression faded when a wave sloshed down the steps, riding over the still flat-lying Izzy, and drenching everyone's shoes once more before heading down the drain.
While the poor boy coughed and spluttered, Mael turned back to the control panels with a foreboding look on his pretty face.


"I was talking about your power," Raven muttered, now looking at her dirt-coated hand and how her nails were hopelessly filled with the stuff. But she didn't have the energy to clean them, either. Who cared if they died with clean nails?
There were so many things to be uncomfortable about in the stuffy underground box, she was trying not to concentrate on how she felt like that...
Seeing Zach shedding a layer caused Raven to frown. Sure, it was warm enough, and would probably get hotter eventually as the sun rose higher to heat the earth, not to mention their warm bodies breathing, but... It felt cool enough now, even after her recent exercise. Raven was worried about him; he'd sustained a head injury, had a kind of panic attack, and now was possibly running a fever, for all she knew... He'd felt too hot earlier, as well...
But if they were going to die in a few days anyway, what did it matter? She didn't know how to help, and didn't want to either! He would probably just get mad at her for trying too much.

taffy789 • 14 May 2016 at 2:44 AM

Although Annabell’s heart was initially melted by the unexpected hug, the words spoken next by the young boy made her choke on her own sentiment.
“Um, what was that...?” she coughed, that last, all-too-peppy remark about the crocodiles eating his dead body striking a discordant chord within her, as unexpectedly jarring as her hearing a low note being hit during a helium addict’s rendition of “Silent Night”. His attitude evoked an unpleasant memory within Annabell, one that involved a certain leader with colorful hair who often spoke in a similar worrying manner. The comparison to this young boy to Eight threw Annabell for a loop, but before she could recover herself the kid mentioned Izzy stirring and, wow, there the boy went again with those innocent, smiling comments about the possibly of permanent brain damage.
The psychological whiplash was too much; the idea of the small boy being something akin to that crazy, admittedly frightening leader now cemented itself into Annabell’s mind and refused to let go. If she had any less control, then she would’ve gripped her skull and complained of a headache due to how much the observation dizzied her.
She had wonderful self-control, however, so she instead patted the boy a tad bit awkwardly on the shoulder before excusing herself with an, “Okay, well, I’m going to go check up on my friend, all right?”
Although she was reluctant to admit it, putting space between her and the ever-mysterious boy felt good, felt right… She quickly reminded herself, however, that whatever social deficiencies the boy may have had certainly weren’t his fault, and could most likely be traced back to the agency that trained him… you know, probably...
...
Annabell tore her mind away from the boy and decided to focus her energy on gauging Izzy’s condition instead.
She jogged back over to the spot where Izzy lay, and knelt down near the boy’s head. After a moment’s hesitation, she pressed a concerned palm to his forehead, then carded her fingers through his hair, moving them along the sides of his head in search for the offending bump. As she did this, she parted her thin, worried lips in an attempt to ease Izzy back into consciousness, softly saying, “Hey, come on, you can hear me, right?”



“Oh, my power,” Zach amended blandly, without much effort, “I feel fine. I would tell you if I felt my power in my head, trying to take me over, but I can’t feel anything but a painful crack in my skull and the headache that stupid flashlight gave me.” He squeezed his eyes shut tighter and aimed a blind scowl at the ceiling.
“I’m not worried about my power taking me over. It’s never been psycho, not like your power, or your friend’s crazy electric power. My power is… sane, I’m sure.” He faltered after saying this, musing wordlessly on the subject further.
“If my power does take me over, though,” Zach added nonchalantly, “It would be great if you didn’t kill my feral, and didn’t allow the people back at base to put it down either, on the slim chance we get rescued.”
He requested this from Raven easily, seemingly ignoring every complication his proposed plan of action brought up.

asi • 15 May 2016 at 1:13 AM

Riley was reluctant to leave the other guy, until tattered bits of his shirt shifted against his back again and reminded him which one of them had been hit. He winced at the acute pain, and while curious as to the state of his injuries, knew it had to look like some nasty awful scratch. But it could only be derma-deep at most, right?
"OK, I- I'll bring help!" he called out to Quincy as he ran ahead. Though he wasn't sure how much help a tracker and invisibility user could be against this enemy, three powers were surely better than one.
His poor sodden socks, miserable though they were on his clammy and increasingly numb feet, served him well on the slippery stone. Riley reached the steps faster than even he anticipated. It didn't seem right, and he wanted to hesitate a minute longer, but he looked back to see Quincy braced against the onslaught from inside his sphere. Each time the waters crashed against the force-field, the guy had to push back, harder than ever.
Steeling himself now, Riley looked down into the pit of stairs. turned as they were into one bumpy ride of a water slide. Although he could see Alex grabbing a board while her eyes lit up in anticipation, he was hardly jumping to take the fastest route down there. With one hand pressed firmly against the wall and the other stretched out to catch him should he fall, he proceeded with one careful, cotton-covered step per stair.
He saw the drain first, sucking in the water like a hungry maw. It made him wonder quickly if the space was finite, or if it perhaps led out to the ocean... In any case, he could only deem it unlikely that it would spill over any time So the room below had to be dry. It also, almost certainly, had to have a purpose that required it as such, he figured.
The room was lit, he soon realized on edging further. It seemed absurd that everything electricity needed could be intact down here, but the cold artificial glow was unmistakable. At this point, Riley crouched, expanding his field of vision while not giving his feet away.
Then he caught sight of Izzy, right at the foot of the stairs, lying crumpled on his back and with Annabell at his side. Riley hurried down to meet them, stopping on the last step and hovering in the doorway.
Annabell looked worried, her hands in the boy's hair, and she was talking quietly to him. As Riley watched, Izzy's eyelid fluttered (a more elegant version of the floundering his broken lid did) lazily up halfway before giving up on vision. He did manage to mutter, however, in an extra slurry fashion; "Yeah yeah Annali-za, j' gimme ano'er twen'y..."
Twenty what? Minutes, hours? Riley had to wonder.
Anyway, he was about to walk forward into the room and greet Annabell, when-
There was another person in the room, he saw, and froze. He ended up introducing himself to everyone's attention with the phrase; "Annie, who's the kid, and why does he look like-"
The back muscles of the boy stiffened at the sound of the voice, and as he turned, Riley's words- something referencing an implausible estimate of age- caught in his throat. He saw the face, and in that moment, several things happened.
While Mael was turning, his elbow stuck out and knocked something on the machine. The urn fell, and hit something that went snap.
And a set of bars like those found in medieval jail cells descended from the ceiling in front of Riley, hitting the ground with a resounding clang.
"... Wuh-oh," Mael punctuated this with a silly shrug of his shoulders, like he expected anyone to believe he hadn't executed that seemingly accidental perfect division of Riley from the rest of the group and almost dissection of his body. Luckily the entirety of Riley's material form remained on one side of the bars- unfortunately, it was the other side, the outside, and he was stuck on it. "I do hope that's not jammed," finished Mael with a grin.
Now that the kid was fully facing him, Riley drank in the sight of all those oh so familiar features with building sense of dread.
"So sorry, you were saying, Riley dear, I look like... What, exactly? Do tell," he gave a horrible smirk that made onlookers feel dirty all over.
Gripping the steel bars tightly in his hands, Riley answered; "Two-" and Mael's smile widened- "years old."
His face fell, quickly turning sour. "Oh ha ha, all right, you shut up now," the child bent over to retrieve the fallen urn from the floor, then hefting its substantial iron weight in his little hands. The way he glared at his opponents so suddenly, switching from one smug but somewhat amicable sneer to a mean leer akin to that a mafia boss might naturally wield, caused everyone to shrink back a little in response. It was... Unsettling, undeniably so, to see such a degree of intent for cruelty in so young a face. "Or do you want to test the consequences on them..." Mael looked haughtily over at the two trapped in the room with him. "That one on the floor doesn't look like he's got too many more brain cells to spare," he leaned back in an unnecessary show of conceit. "Darling Annie though," he appealed to their imagination for the rest.
"Now how will you play?" Mael smiled daringly at her, stepping briefly away from the control panel.
The water rose up and swept over Riley's ankles, around his lower calves, and he would've lost his balance if the bars hadn't been there to net him. It went on to sweep down the drain, no longer a background whisper, but a very audible rush.


With equal intensity in her expression, Raven glowered into the dust-laden darkness that tried to close in on their precious circle of light.
Everything he said brought up every fear that had haunted her, stalked and hunted her so ruthlessly in the recent past. But none of that bothered her any longer.
"I thought I only had those things to worry about, too," Raven agreed flatly. "Until I lost her, that is."
Her idle hand played with a fraying little string, pulled loose from the torn ends of her clothing.

taffy789 • 15 May 2016 at 4:21 AM

Whatever relief that washed over Annabell when she heard Izzy's words were crushed, dissected completely with the falling "clang! of the metal bars.
A cold, wet hand clutched Annabell's heart at the young boy's blasé, deliberate "wuh-oh", and a crawling dread tingled up her back with the painful realization of her own stupidity. Hindsight hit her, and it all seemed so obvious; of course the assumed harmless child sneaking around abandoned government facilities was actually a psychopath, gosh dang it! Really, those movies Leon made her marathon should’ve better prepared her for clear traps such as these…
The boy had been young, so young however, and he’d sounded… so lost… Annabell flinched as she remembered who the boy had first reminded her of, when he'd evoked to mind her fears of small children being forced into government work. How could’ve she have not sympathized with his situation, when his innocent wide eyes had glowed so bright, so keenly similar to those of the grinning, golden-haired little girl Annabell used to read books to before bedtime...
A conditioned, well-trained brain muscle tightened, letting any and all nostalgia she had for her family be shut out of her mind, locked behind abruptly dropping steely metal bars. She couldn't be immobilized, staring fondly at the past, not now, not ever. The here and now were immediate, important- choked with urgency; the past and every "what if" decision were moot points, intangible, unreal, and unimportant. If she slowed down to hit her head against the bricks in frustration at her own stupid choices, then she would be caught up in a dizzying wave of melancholy and drown- er, drown literally, because if the greater flow of water pouring down the stairs was of any indication of anything, drowning was an honest-to-god possibility.
She gave Izzy's head a small pat- to comfort herself more than to assure him- shot a hesitantly hopeful look of "oh well, here I go" to Riley, and finally turned around at the boy's summons.
“If I had to pick a game, I prefer rock-paper-scissors,” Annabell said quietly following an awkward pause, “but I guess you’re not giving me much of a choice here, huh?”
Before she moved towards the control panel, she reached her hand back, gripped the metal bars as if to steady herself, and allowed her fingers to briefly squeeze Riley’s, as if drawing strength from him through that action. Then, she approached the control panel, keeping the small boy in the corner of her eye the entire time.
Most of the labels for the buttons and levers had unhelpfully faded, leaving her blind and with very few clues to her disposal. Despite the increased flow of water, she remained on the safe route for now. The first lever she went for was the snapped one the urn has broken, and she pulled at it in vain (all the while wondering why the boy had the urn in the first place, if all his previous actions could be assumed to be lies? Maybe he was full on psycho and kept his victims in there, or had a power to do with using funeral décor as weapons? Whatever it was, Annabell quickly decided it unimportant.)
After the broken lever failed to budge, Annabell stepped backwards, observed the situation, and when she finally moved again, she side eyed the boy as her hand slipped towards her belt. She pulled out her knife, slowly, keeping him in her peripheral, and when the knife was unsheathed, she raised it, ready to use it-
Annabell stepped back towards the control panel and, using her knife as leverage, tried to get the broken lever to budge back forward, to no avail. As soon as that plan failed to work, Annabell stopped stabbing her knife into the machinery of the panel, too aware of the shocking results her accidentally slicing through wiring would bring… She wasn’t Leon, after all, and her power allowed her no resistance to jolts of electricity. …Speaking of Leon, through…
She felt the boy’s eyes burning into her back, watching every floundering attempt at getting the lever back up, so she felt it necessary to alleviate her surmounting stress by directing a small joke towards Riley, “Ha, I feel like if Leon was here, he’d been yelling at me to cut the red wire….”
While the words did very little to direct her to a solution, they provided some mental relief as she remembered the absent friend she needed to be alive to save. She couldn’t drown here, not when there was a goofball with a crappy power who she had to rescue-!
With a renewed determination to stay kicking blossoming within her, Annabell stepped away from the control panel and turned to face the boy.
“Spence,” she began, her left hand lingering on the control panel, loosely gripping her knife, “This game is unwinnable, for the both of us. We’re both stuck behind these bars, after all, so what are you getting out of keeping us trapped in here?” She pointed this out with a mask of reasonable confidence, while having been tricked one too many times by the boy to actually expect a reply that was in her favor. So, anticipating an unhelpful answer, she darted her eyes between the control panel and the boy, trying to decipher the washed away labels while not letting the kid leave her sight…



When Raven mentioned her power's absence, Zach's shoulders tightened.
"Look," he began with a slight, evened bristle, his eyes cracking open again, "my power isn't yours, it isn't-" He stopped talking and sucked in a breath after realizing he couldn't finish with a decisive "it isn't lost forever" because he currently lacked a power to tell him when it would be back and operational.
With this reminder, the vast, empty black hole began swirling in Zach's stomach again, the sour taste of bile rose to his throat, and he sat up, rubbing at his forehead with both palms as if receiving the blunt force of an aching headache.
He wheezed out a deep, shaky puff of air to calm himself, breathing out at the same time a stiff, "Stop."
He gasped, "It's useless for me to think about my power never coming back. I might as well be freaking out over whether or not we'll be rescued, because they're practically the same thing. If we don't get rescued, then I'll die; if my power doesn't come back, then I'll die."
His voice, already bruised and rough due his damaged throat, cracked further under the defensive hardness he added to his next words, "I don't need you to remind me what I should to be worried about. Especially when it comes to my power... not working; do you honestly feel the need to remind me to be concerned about a death sentence?"

asi • 15 May 2016 at 6:38 PM

Mael only smirked while he watched her struggle with the broken switch. Riley, who had been looking all surprised down at his fingers, glanced over and decided to ask him something. Taking the chance that the kid wouldn't deem it a breach of the 'shut up or I'll bash up your pals' deal; "Uh, what exactly are you trying to get her to do, here? I missed the start..." Riley admitted.
The boy rolled his set of smooth, gleaming obsidian eyes. "To save you all from drowning, what else?"
Hair shining almost orange in the sharp electrical light, Riley scratched at it on hearing this answer, puzzled. True, the water swishing around his feet was a little fiercer than before, and now stretched over his ankles, but... The drain was still sucking in water. As long as it did so, the room would surely remain a long time largely full of air. There would have to be a serious increase in the flood of swamp before they had anything to worry about... The worst immediate scenario that Riley could think of was the water growing strong enough to stop him climbing the stairs, pushing him down and battering him against the bars.
That was pretty bad as scenarios go, but not horribly plausible at the moment!
No one should be drowning for hours (except maybe Izzy if they left him on the floor), and even then, Riley looked down at the water with doubt in his eyes.
Vaguely, he heard Annabell saying something in a tone he thought she meant to be funny, so he smiled distractedly before turning back to Mael. "How are we supposed to do that?" he brought up an eyebrow.
This was just before Annabell called out to him, so the kid ignored the question in favor of returning to her side, while Riley frowned over the name, 'Spence'.
"Oh yes," Mael said, like she'd reminded him of something that had straight slipped his mind, dark eyes lighting right up. "Well first off, I would dearly enjoy it if you went along and freed us all. Then we could all go home, in our various states of wet, and you, Annie, could perhaps fulfill your promise of reuniting my lovely brother and I." He smiled sweetly. "But as it is-"
Mael looked back over his shoulder at the criminal-looking guy behind bars. "Do tell, what's the time, Mr. Wolf?"
A snappy water-proof watch was one of those lucky little leader privileges Riley enjoyed, so he had no problem reciting it back to the others.
The kid nodded knowingly. "I see." He turned back to the girl. "Well, you have about a whole ten minutes, so questioning me sounds like a stellar use of that time, considering I'll only stick around until my feet start getting wet. I mean, yuck!" he made a face and shook little droplets off the tips of his shoes, leftovers from the last wave.
"One piece of advice, on the house," he offered suddenly, looking solemn. "If I were you, sweet Annie," he did a sarcastic little curtsy, "I'd close the drain hatch soon- you do remember which one that is, I hope," he stuck his tongue out at the lot of them, then vanished into thin air.


"Right," Raven said slowly, in the same tone as before. "Your power wasn't forcefully removed from your body. It will come back, probably."
The little piece of thread fell past her fingertips, quickly lost in the sea of dust that became the ground beneath them. Instead, her hand picked up a small pointy stone to take its place and drew it against the surface, chipping noiselessly away at the layers of dirt. Maybe it had the goal in mind of reaching the metal somewhere below them. It didn't matter to Raven, but it occupied her hands, kept them busy, and that in turn helped her concentrate.
"I never heard of powers disappearing like that. Although Blaine would say," she continued, all the while somewhat bemused by her own calm in the face of Zach's vehemency, "that his would 'take leave'. But that guy was a real character. Complete lazybones, from what I heard. I figured he was just sleeping, or doing whatever it is powers do when they're not paying any attention to us."
When Raven's stone dissolved, ground down to nothing, she dropped the dust and raised her hand to try it against the light. Limited as her options were with only one hand, she went for the profile of a butterfly, but it didn't come out too well. It was only to be expected, since she was used to a much finer tool than crude hands when it came to the craft. In the meantime, she settled for a simpler camel? Alpaca? Wild dog? Something like that. It hardly made her content.
"You're right, our power's aren't alike. I was relieved to be rid of her- at first. Peace and quiet in my own head-space, no more fear of what was inside of me, what I couldn't control. Freedom, right? But I'm still here."
It was too quiet. She wished it wasn't so quiet, down here. She wanted to make her wild dog abomination bark, but it would be too loud for the room.
"Ordinary people just suck, you know? They always treated me like crap. It wouldn't change if I went back as I am now. I'd just be weaker, and delivered straight to a lab with a bow 'round my midriff, no doubt." It wasn't pessimism, she knew all too well it was common sense that they'd want to find out how Mael and the rebels had extracted her power from her. As it was here, One was probably protecting her, at least as far as she reasonably could. Massive landslides being outside her sphere of influence, unfortunately.
Her shadow puppet hand slumped out of the light, falling to rest heavy on her knee instead.
"On the subject of survival out here, I'd be equally dead if it wasn't for your power. But you know what? I wouldn't even be trapped here if I had my own cursed power. With this much darkness, I'd be strong enough to tear my way out of this trap."
The side of her fist slammed into the dusty wall of their cage, but without any real force. She was too disheartened for that. "So, yeah, I know about death sentences. But we're- I'm still alive now, right...?" she lost her voice at the end, as much as she tried to avoid contemplating their impending doom.
It was kind of hard to avoid.

taffy789 • 16 May 2016 at 1:35 AM

"Right, my power'll come back," Zach muttered through gritted teeth, a pain blooming behind his eyes at any thoughts to the contrary.
He fell silent as Raven monologued, half listening but mostly concentrated on not slipping into a panic again. The girl mentioning her probable fate as a science experiment, though, did nothing to ease his mind, and Zach's fingers started tap dancing anxiously on the dirt floor, as if they could drill out of the underground bunker if they hit the ground hard enough...
"All people suck, Shadow" Zach told Raven candidly, "Not just the people without powers, though, yeah-" his voice hitched a bit here, but then he continued without trouble, "those powerless scientists are the worst people on this planet."
He continued, adding bluntly, with no hint of exaggeration present in his tone, "I'd rather slowly starve to death here than be sent back to a lab."
The tapping of his fingers hastened against the dirt, vibrating the quiet of the bunker with a quick, thudding sound.
"Our powers are different, Shadow," Zach stated while not looking at Raven, his attention turned to watching his own hands moving in the darkness, "I get it. Your power was powerful and it made you powerful, until you couldn't control it. So you hated having it, but now it's gone and you're powerless again, and can't get out of crappy situations like this one, so now you hate not having it. I get it."
His ever-blunt tone smacked against the stoic concrete walls, not laced with purposeful venom but still able to cut into the walls with its sharpness, "But you should understand that my power taught me that it's impossible to have control over anything. Everyone is powerless; you're bound to get stuck in a crappy situation where you can't do anything to prevent the pain coming for you, and when that happens all you can do is lay back and hope it doesn't hurt half as much this time around." His fingers tapped faster, moving with increased agitation, "Like this giant coffin we're in? If I had my power, I could live with it telling me that I had no way of getting out, that I was going to die. I could accept that just fine, if I knew what to expect. But I don't know-" here, Zach's agitation leaked into his words, and he growled with gritted frustration, "-and I've spent too long sitting in cramped rooms wondering what the heck was going to happen to me to have to deal with this again."

asi • 16 May 2016 at 2:53 AM

"Glad to hear you support my decision." She wasn't sure everyone would. But someone like Blaine would have much better odds at surviving with the scientists like someone like her... Or Zach. Although she'd barely had a lab rat experience- none with an extended sentence- she still thought she could imagine, a little, of how it would be... For him...
Those three little dismissive words, 'I get it', stung more when he uttered them than she cared to let on. They didn't seep into her skin and burn like other weapons would, but they still cut enough to hold her tongue. She didn't acknowledge those words, but concentrated on the strong rhythm of his fingers to tide her over until other thoughts could serve to distract her.
Sure enough, they did.
"I don't think so." Raven snorted. "There are certainly greater and lesser degrees of power and control. Have you even met Two?" she shook her head. "Now there's an arrogant guy who thinks he could make his will law, I bet." There was definitely something ugly in her tone, but she kept going. "And there aren't many who'd be surprised if he proved that right."
That strange feeling in her stomach slowly drained away after she said that, and she heaved out a sigh, leaning hard against her wall and staring dully across the space at Zach. "Altogether the two of us do way too much thinking. Maybe we should just take advantage of being stuck indefinitely in a tiny dark box and make out already," she snarked out, sans the thinking.

taffy789 • 16 May 2016 at 5:43 PM

Zach snorted at Raven's comment.
"Yeah, sure, we do that and then what? Strip poker afterwards, and prove all those annoying rumors right?"
He rolled his eyes and- being hit with an abrupt wave of lethargy- lied back down. Blinking his eyes, he struggling against the lull of tiredness for a minute before shrugging and succumbing to it instead. He rolled onto his side, fluffing his shirt under his head to make a more comfortable pillow.
"Everyone is cornered eventually," he stated with eyes closed, touching back on his previous ideas of powerlessness, "Even people like Two. And if they aren't powerless now, they were once. Especially when they were children. Children can't do crap about what happens to them, no matter how terrible."
Pausing, Zach rolled again, flipping to his other side with a frown, "And..." he trailed off, as if struggling to piece together his thoughts, "...And you don't think that... that everyone has been in a situation where something crappy happened that they wanted to stop but couldn't?" His words became slower, more muttered as he continued, "People get sent to IOD, get hurt... And people die, Shadow, and nobody can't stop any of that... it happens to..."
He slurred the last part then went quiet, burrowing his head deeper into his shirt and finally relaxing his entire body.

asi • 17 May 2016 at 6:21 AM

"I wouldn't mind doing it all before I kick it... If only I wasn't stuck in here with you," she muttered, concentrating on cleaning her nails, before glancing back over to see him transforming his shirt into a pillow. This struck a wrong chord in Raven, sending a spike of worry through her brain, but as he spoke, she couldn't seem to find the reason for it.
He was right, wasn't he? Hard as it was to imagine someone like Two as a child, it had to have happened, right? There also had to have been a time when he was small, and ignorant, and weak, and no one cared.
But it was hard to imagine.
Speaking of people of IOD, getting hurt, dying, and people trying to stop that... "Oi!" Raven said with a low fury, directed really at herself for almost letting him slip past her guard. "You can't fall asleep on my watch, you idiot, you've got a concussion don't you?"

taffy789 • 17 May 2016 at 7:05 PM

Zach didn't reply to Raven, not at first.
He remained deathly still, completely unmoving and unaffected by her snapping wake-up call.
A minute pass before his body abruptly seized, finally responding to her words with a strange, delayed shiver of his shoulders.
Another brief silence, as if he was deliberating something, then he spoke.
"Well, I couldn't fall asleep if I tried-" he forced a tone similar to an audible eye roll, but he sounded much too exhausted and mellowed for it to really work- "because that light of yours is so bright."
Rolling over on his back, Zach's hands tugged his t-shirt over his face, as if trying to smother himself.
"It's making my head hurt worse, please turn it off."
Three seconds of motionlessness followed, which were broken with a groan of complaint, "Actually, a lot of things hurt- this sucks, I feel more tired than I think is healthy, and I want that light to be off already."

asi • 17 May 2016 at 8:17 PM

He seemed determined. What was she supposed to do?
Raven's fingertips trembled under the weight of her own glare. "Fine, sleep, die, see if I care," gruffly so saying, she cupped one hand around the light of the torch, warming her palm and casting a red glow outline of her hand.
Although she knew, efficiency-wise, that she should, Raven couldn't bear to turn it off. It was bad enough that she was going to be alone. Extinguishing her last bit of light was a prospect too awful to even contemplate, at least until her eyelids grew heavy and exhausted sleep began to steal her away.
Eventually, she'd click it off.

taffy789 • 17 May 2016 at 9:44 PM

"You'd care," echoed back Zach's voice automatically, completely didactic, as if it were a serious attempt at correcting her mistake. "Trust me on that one."
Then, a bit smug, "I know a lot more than you, you know."
Abruptly remembering something, he shut his mouth and allowed a lack of words to ebb back over them both.
After Raven responded to his request for no light by cupping her hand over the flashlight, Zach's limbs shuffled nervously against the concrete, and, with a bit of a struggle, he managed to sit himself up.
Another deliberative hesitation, then he began scooting over towards Raven. As he got close enough to her- so close that the light's dimmed glow made visible the shirt still draped over his head like a veil- he reached out for the flashlight, grabbing it and weakly, almost apologetically, trying to tug it from Raven's grasp.
"Yeah, I don't like you with this," he stated blandly, "you might... try to... wave it back towards my direction and blind me. Can't have that happening, not seeing would be bad..."
He leaned closer towards Raven while saying this, the funny shirt hanging over his head both obscuring the frown he wore and invading Raven's personal space, a crumpled sleeve hovering right in front of her nose...

asi • 17 May 2016 at 10:27 PM

After pointedly refusing to acknowledge his dumb, self-assured words, Raven spaced out for a time, only to be jolted back to awareness just a few minutes later.
"Ugh!" she sort of exclaimed, on opening her eyes again to find his shirt sleeve less than an inch away from her face, and jumping because this had been just about the last thing she'd come to expect. Pulling on the piece of clothing, it fell into her hands and she threw it back into his chest, as ineffectual as it could possibly be. "C-can't you even trust me with a torch?"
Discovering that she'd inadvertently given up the object in question on being startled, Raven just huffed and murmured, "You are such a jerk."

taffy789 • 17 May 2016 at 10:55 PM

When the shirt plopped from his head and into his lap, he jumped as if startled, and the light, uncovered, rushed to hit his neck, illuminating up his jawline...
Before the light could freely drench it's chosen target, Zach's head escaped the racing beam by throwing itself forward, effectively headbutting Raven in her right shoulder.
"Ah ha, oops, I slipped," he said as an apology, despite the fact that heads could not, in fact, "slip" in the way his apparently had, "It uh, sucks, you know. Not having a power to tell me when accidents like that are about to happen. Really should've... appreciated it more. When I had the chance, you know...? ...Anyway,"
In one swift motion, Zach's fingers slammed the flashlight's buttons off, soaking the room in complete darkness, and in the next second, the distinct, obvious sound of a small metal flashlight being thrown against a concrete wall sounded off from a distance to their right...
"Oops. Slipped again," he said, sounding unconvinced himself. He continued to rest his forhead on Raven's shoulder, muttering into it, "Oh well, I guess it's gone forever now, no use in ever looking for that again, believe me, it's long gone..."

asi • 18 May 2016 at 2:14 AM

She stared, eyes groping dumbly at the total blackness for one long moment before her brain caught up with her ears.
That faraway yet unmistakable clang. That had been the torch just now, hadn't it?
It didn't help that his words couldn't be more transparent. Had he just thrown their torch? He had, hadn't he!
Now Raven was utterly flummoxed. Despite having never claimed to be a zachavioural expert, she had a certain set of expectations based on observation for how he would act in varying circumstances. She had previously noted the guy to be rather preoccupied with survival, and that he was practical to the point of pocketing small flashlights and rations when he could get them. So, this was... What?
Not moving even an inch, she furrowed her unseeable brow and said in a strange and somewhat strangled sounding tone; "Zach. Why exactly did you throw the flashlight away?"

taffy789 • 18 May 2016 at 9:08 AM

“What are you talking about?” sounded the immediate, slightly offended response, “That totally slipped from my hands, how dare you not believe-” A sudden realization, then, chiding himself quietly, “Wait, no, you’re not going to believe that.”
A frustrated sigh, as if in complaint about how everything was much more difficult than he’d expected it to be.
“So, yes, that is A Good Question, Raven- it’s A Good Question that I have A Good Answer to,” came the exhausted amendment echoing off of Raven’s collarbone.
Then, although his words had implied some sort of quick answer, there followed an immense, vapid silence.
Then, a change in the quiet from one of deep pondering and calculation to a silence of hesitation.
Then, another sigh, one that wasn’t as much resigned as it was a vocal expression of his hesitancy, as if, though he knew he probably shouldn’t be doing this, he was totally going to anyway.
Zach’s head pulled slightly away from Raven as he spoke up again, “In… all honesty?” A gruff terseness characteristic to Zach was forced into the words- only try-too-hard if you squint- “I wanted us to do that- that making out thing.” While that clearly wasn’t the most romantic way to phrase that offer, he ghosted his right hand up Raven’s left arm, and continued, his face positioned inches away from hers, “It’s better to have complete darkness for this, uh, stuff, trust me.”

asi • 18 May 2016 at 6:17 PM

'Well," she said after a beat, "it sure makes it a lot harder to- oh." Her voice died out when her hands found his shoulders, and Raven realized exactly how close he was. She still couldn't see a thing, but in the abruptly stuffy air, she could feel plenty. From the faintest way his touch seemed to trace her arm, to how the warmth of his breath fanned out in the air in front of her, she knew she didn't need eyes for this. She couldn't be more aware of Zach.
"Okay," said Raven lightly, but also with a ring of challenge to it, as she tilted her head ever so slightly for the right angle, "fine." And she leaned forward to close the distance between their lips.
There was a certain degree of uncertainty, she'd never had any experience in this before. But Raven acted with a kind of throwaway carelessly that led to a determined enough press as she tested for a response.
She kissed him.

taffy789 • 18 May 2016 at 10:13 PM

Since the act of “making-out” was instinct based and not complicated in the slightest- seriously, it was just lips pressing against one another and moving, how weird!- he allowed every limb to fall prey to automatic, reciprocal movement. With his body preoccupied, his mind could freely wander, and his mind decided to first feel relieved for the time to itself without having to worry about Raven, now that she was… busy.
Really, what a weird thing to be assuredly distracted by! He mused on this idea further, recalling the frustration felt after he discovered she would see through his well-crafted “it accidentally slipped” lies. When he’d thought upon other ways to distract her from the flashlight issue, it had even been more annoying that “stab her” or “murder” and the like where the only routes of action that assured Raven would focus on something other than the flashlight…
…Considering all he’d been doing to protect the girl, though, resorting to murder to assure his safety and her sedation would’ve been a bad idea, admittedly.
Thankfully, the making-out had popped into his mind as a bloodless, effective option, so he'd took it, however strange of a distraction it was.
He hummed at his good fortune, sliding his hand from Raven’s arm to up behind her head, opening his mouth slightly against hers as he did this.
Really, Raven being distracted was a huge weight from his mind, for it gave him one less thing to worry about. Now, instead of her shining that light on Zach’s pretty brown head and revealing the truth and freaking out, all he had to worry about was… …a cave-in? Pneumonia? Infection?
…
Now concerned about the possibility of all those things, he checked and double-checked to reassure himself that, no, there was nothing deadly about his current situation. Well, infection pinged as a possible danger, but it was one of those slow-to-set dangers that he could really do nothing about, which was an annoying reality. Speaking of, an equally annoying but more present reality was the pain Zach’s injuries shot through his body with every movement and shift- ow, having nerves to register hurt was really Not Fun and frankly how did anyone deal with it? How did Zach deal with it?
Then, remembering something, he would’ve twitched his facial muscles into a grimace had they not have been occupied with pushing against Raven’s mouth.
Well, Zach wasn’t the one currently bearing the pain of living, and Zach had so selfishly thrown him into the world in his place which, coma or no coma, was a really jerk move! If he'd possessed any deep feelings to be hurt, they would’ve definitely had received the most grievous of wounds…
An afterthought of a hand tangled itself in Raven’s hair as he despaired about the obviously horrible situation he’d been forced into…
Seriously, his newfound body ached with pains he’d played no part in receiving, the bunker was cold, dirty, and miserable, and he could sense something horrible, something terrifying- a monster, a beast crawling unseen above him on the ceiling…
Then, as if able to hunger for his fear, the monster dropped down.
Pulling away from Raven to give the loudest, most undignified, most of unholy screeches of terror, he threw himself backwards, rudely ripping his hand out of Raven’s hair as he put a large amount of distance between them in a comically short amount of time.
More screeching followed as boots could be heard scrambling against concrete flooring, fleeing towards the safety of a wall, all accompanied by screaming shouts of “IT’S IN THE CENTER OF THE ROOM, KILL IT, KILL IT!”- and other words said at too loud of a volume to possibly be distinguished by human ears.

asi • 19 May 2016 at 2:04 AM

She hadn't expected- well, she hadn't thought that he had been serious, no matter how he'd sounded. Zach pushing her back last minute and yelling something like, 'jinx!' seemed a far more likely outcome. At least then she'd be able to stick her tongue out and call him 'chicken'. But since in the next instant he proved her wrong by responding, natural as anything, Raven could only conclude they were honest-to-gods kissing.
It was... It felt... Ridiculously good.
Not at all like how she'd imagined. His mouth wasn't at all firm or demanding, though nor was he overly soft. Instead, the way he touched her was relaxed and, to her mounting disbelief, incredible comfortable. Why- why was it so nice? She felt him hum against her and the next thing she knew, Raven was completely lost in the act of kissing him.
That is, until her hand, moving up the back of his neck to his head, touched on something that was soft and... Cotton? Something she remembered fixing around his skull just a few long minutes ago. That's right, the dumb fool was concussed.
Though she had to admit, for someone suffering a supposed serious head injury, the coordination of his tongue was suspiciously impressive, in spite of his earlier 'slips'. And, Raven thought, leaning into it with much more enthusiasm than before- she didn't want to stop...
But she did want the pulling of the hair to stop. Between wincing at the sudden pain, and having her ears bombarded by strange shrieks, she didn't even have time to compute the loss of warmth. Raven reacted to the terror broadcasted in the other's tone and fell instantaneously into battle-mode.
A series of knives flew out of her clothes, shooting in a checkerboard pattern until they hit the opposing wall with a ringing metal-on-metal clatter.
Then her brain caught up to her hands and the girl was forced to wonder, however could there ever be an enemy, squished with them in such a tiny place, and they had never noticed? But then Zach and Raven lived in a world populated by people who could walk through walls, turn invisible or into animals, stones, water, air... Her hand was wrapped around the hilt of her second dagger, braced protectively before her face in the hope of staving off whatever incoming attack-
-When she realized that no, there was nothing attacking, and absolutely no one else there.
Raven directed her face to where she thought, in all the clamor, she had heard him run off to, raised one eyebrow (though he wouldn't see it) sky high and yelled back at him, in a voice still trying to recover its breath; "Zach! What the actual HECK is wrong with you, you almost scared the living crap outta me!!"
Then cursing some more, she shuffled up onto her all fours so she could go carefully searching for all those knives, because leaving them around was one seriously deranged game to be playing in the utter dark.

taffy789 • 19 May 2016 at 7:55 PM

Cowering near a wall, he'd barely had time to adjust to the monster's presence on the floor when pings of danger echoed throughout his being. He froze, aware of the knives about to fly in the small room but unsure what the proper course of action to take was. Run right, run left? Would one direction hold more potential future dangers than the other; where would Raven throw the knives next; where would the monster run to...?
A knife clanging against the wall beside him sent a shutter throughout his body and reminded him that, oh, right, being the one in charge of the body he resided in, he had to avoid the danger himself. He frowned, thinking that extra work horribly inconvenient and, admittedly, a bit stressful...
Another knife soared near, and a quick sidestep barely saved him from getting a blade caught in his hip. Dodging all hastily thrown sharp metal projectiles, he scuttled away from the wall, pushing himself into a corner to hide instead.
There he remained until Raven stopped having totally sucky aim- she completely missed the monster, wow!- and when she got on all fours to search around, he was about to stand up and run to her for a second round of distracting, because her groping, blind fingers were hovering dangerously close to where the flashlight had fallen...
A sudden burst of enlightenment stopped him, and he choked out a cry of fear-
"IT'S RIGHT IN FRONT OF ME!!!!"
This exclamation was soon followed by the frantic sound of boot heels scuffing the concrete, distinctively different than the fleeing footsteps made earlier as, this time, the scuffling ended with an entire boot being removed, thrown, and hitting the floor with a hallow "thud" in an attempt to smash the monster.

asi • 20 May 2016 at 12:57 AM

As luck would have it, her inquiring hand chanced upon a small metal cylinder that was definitely neither end of any of her knives. Wrapping her fingers around it, the switch was triggered, and her vision filled with a painfully sharp dose of light.
Raven quickly flipped the torch to point it away from her eyes, blinking frantically. While the burnt-out fuzz was still overpowering her sight, she heard more screeching and kerfuffle from Zach, followed by a final loud thump.
Warily, she lifted her eyelids and looked around the room, swiveling the beam of light until she had confirmed, far beyond reasonable doubt, that it was clear. That was, save for the guy crammed into one corner who had just lost a shoe...
He seemed to be seizing up with fright, and Raven was nearly driven to frustration in her complete confusion, until the slightest flicker of movement drew her eye.
A tiny, spindly little leg disappearing over his castaway shoe, trying to take cover from her vicious blast of light.
That could not be what she thought it was.
She approached, holding the flashlight with the utmost care so as not to disturb it further. Raven reached the shoe and lowered herself into a crouch, her eyebrows drawing tightly in as she squinted into the shoe's shadow.
It was.
She reached back and put the flashlight down, pointing it up at the ceiling, so she could still grip her dagger with the other. Then she cupped her hand around the thing on the floor, and picked it up.
The little critter crept cautiously over her knuckles, and she turned the hand habitually to keep track of it, but all the while she had no problem also staring up the guy who had been practically shaking in his boots, until he only had one.
While there was unquestionably no one else in the room, the person in front of her was all wrong. His hair was a dozen shades too light, for one, and his expression... It didn't belong.
"You're not Zach." It was obvious now, but she said it anyway, eyes very, very grim as Raven rose to her full height and lifted her dagger up between them.

taffy789 • 21 May 2016 at 4:21 PM

The light flashing on and shining onto him did scare him, but more frightening was Raven’s next movement, how her hands reached out towards the monster and allowed it to crawl upon her.
He watched, mouth wide open, before he shuttered, horrified by this action. Certainly Raven had to have nerves of steel to come close to one of those terrifying, gangly creatures- with their multitude of staring eyes, their strange climbing patterns, and all those legs…
The girl obviously did not understand what danger she was putting herself into, so he checked to make sure that the monster wasn’t venomous, or plotting some nefarious plan of revenge that involved biting the person holding it.
So enraptured was he by making sure the monster served no threat that he completely forgot about the shining light in Raven’s hands racing upwards to illuminate his face-!
Too late, he couldn’t run from it, and he stared back at Raven as she spoke those words of realization: “You’re not Zach.”
He wasn’t. He really wasn’t, and he was happy he wasn’t because dealing with spiders and flying knives in real time was much more difficult than Zach made it seem, seriously.
Not wanting Raven to know just how much of not-Zach he was, however, he considered methods of proving his Zach-ness. His expression tried to pull itself into a grumpy parody of itself, but those furrowed brows came off less stoic and more confused. He thought of ways to refute Raven’s statement, everything from flat out denial- “What do you mean I’m not Zach, there isn’t anyone else here”- to reasonable logic that she would be hard-pressed to beat- “I may not be Zach but you aren’t either so what’s your point?”
Intuition ultimately revealed, however, that all those attempts were moot in the face of what Raven already had seen, already had decided she knew. There wasn’t a trick or a distraction to get out of this, not one he could think of in the amount of time he needed.
The flashlight shone brilliantly on him, revealing the brown that bathed his entire person- his natural skin tone being matched by the foreign hue of his hair and the irises of his soft, concerned eyes; not having anything else to say, a bizarre, pouting grimace of an expression that didn’t belong crossed Zach’s face, and after a sad, wistful sort of sigh, his mouth opened-
“Well,” Zach’s power spoke up, the unnatural brown tint his presence exerted on his user’s body glimmering in the flashlight’s enlightening ways, “Well,”

“Crud,”
Annabell said empathetically, voicing the thought she assumed was both on her and Riley’s minds.
She’d been staring at the empty spot the boy had occupied for a few seconds, but the time elapsed between him disappearing and her exclamation felt like longer to her, like six, maybe seven days.
Now wasn’t the time to be slowpoking around, though, not when the threat of drowning- or at least being stuck in a cage for an extended period of time- loomed so close over her and Izzy’s heads…
Heeding the boy’s warning, Annabell glanced over the control panel and paused to remember what action closed the drain hatch. After calling to memory a small hand pulling a lever and the general area that lever had been in, she decided that she would be able to find the drain hatch controls if she needed and dropped the thought from her mind for the time being.
That being done, she gave an exhale of the breath she’d been holding and turned to face Riley, her hands moving in a bit of a shaky, frustrated pattern as she spoke.
“Okay- okay,” she began, swallowing to help herself better enunciate the words that threatened to spill out, “To catch you up? Izzy tripped down the stairs, I went after him, found this cute little boy at the bottom of them, and then like an idiot I failed to realize what an obvious trap it was until the bars had shut behind me.” Annabell’s left hand nervously wrung her right as she continued, “Honestly I don’t mind if you like, call me an idiot because frankly I guess I deserve it, but if you do? Can you like, save that for later because right now all I want to do is get out of here.”
She sucked in a calming breath and, turning to glance over at the control panel, she gave a conflicted frown. “That boy- Spence- he kept wanting me to mess with this thing but kept alluding to some terrible consequences that would occur if I messed with it? I didn’t want to touch the thing when I thought he was just a scared little kid, but I definitely don’t want to even look at those buttons now that it’s clear he was some kind of… trained child soldier psychopath?” She crossed her arms at her waist, hugging herself as if to provide comfort, and added, “I don’t want to play this twisted little “game” of his. I’ve never seen Saw, but I’ve heard enough about those movies to know that one of these levers will probably turn the water into acid or something…”
Trailing off, Annabell gave Riley a curious glance, “Do you have any leader base contacting device on you? From what I’ve heard about the leaders, they have a tendency to be able to summon teleporters out of thin air…” Saying this, she stared at him as if he’d been hiding some secret ability from her…
“Or maybe send Quincy to wait at the meet-up area for us...? Then when it’s time to get picked up, he can- wait, where is he?” She stepped closer, her eyes skirting around Riley as she did, as if the other boy was hiding behind him. While she didn’t find Riley’s bodyguard, she did notice the torn, open flaps hanging from the sides of Riley’s shirt, and the slight red tinge that mixed in with the water as it rushed past Riley’s… socked feet.
She rushed to the bars, stepping over Izzy and forgetting the direness of her current situation to interrogate her friend instead, “Something happened. Are you okay?” A pause of hesitation, then, “Is… Quincy…?”


Couching near his green sphere, resting his extended right arm on his knee, Quincy watched with weary eyes as the water continued to angrily slosh around in its prison.
He blinked and yawned as the water swirled in a particularly vicious circle.
Lost in thought, wondering when the others were going to come back upstairs, Quincy barely noticed the water's rage abating, slowing down, ceasing motion...
He remained blind to the change, but not deaf, as his attention was redirected by a unexpected, loud, "Hey."
Stiffening, Quincy craned his neck behind him, checking to see who was coming back up the stairs.
"No! In the sphere!"
Flipping back around, Quincy was startled to see liquid lips formed and floating on top of water's rosy surface.
When he was too surprised to reply, the lips spoke for him, "So, you aren't going to let me out of here, are you?"
"Uh," Quincy stalled, unsure how to respond to that. He coughed, awkwardly, "No? I mean, why would I let you out, you're a feral who's tried to kill me..."
If water could roll its eyes, it would've. "I already told the other guy! I'm not a feral, idiot!"
"Really?" Quincy exclaimed, honestly surprised by the revelation, "You could've fooled me..."
"So will you let me out now?" the lips moved, in a tired, exasperated kind of way, "Since I'm not a feral, there's no need to keep me in here!"
"No???" Quincy replied, and he would've scratched his head in confusion had his arm been free from having to focus his force field, "You may not be a feral, but you still tried to drown me, and you hurt Four, so... no, of course I'm not letting you out?"
The lips pouted, vibrating unhappily on the surface; they gave a small grunt of disappointment, remarking, "I'll never make the Olympics at this rate..."
... Quincy didn't know how to respond to that, so he didn't try to.

asi • 21 May 2016 at 7:15 PM

After eyeing him until she had that particular shade of brown good and memorized, Raven reluctantly lowered her dagger, hiding it once more in the folds of her shirt. "That explains why you were acting so funny," she grumbled, shaking her clothing a little to make sure nothing would fall out.
Once thus satisfied, she realized the spider had begun crawling up her wrist in her negligence, and promptly swept it off onto the bunker's walls, the motion careless but not causing harm. Raven was a girl with a LOT of experience handling spiders. She entirely blamed her upbringing. In that orphanage, they had more often than not been the only thing to play with. It was possible she still had some bites on her arms and ankles from the nastier ones, but even as a child, that sort of thing had never bothered her, even when they crept into her bed at night for payback.
Now liberated, the spider did not scurry off into the protection of darkness, but sat very still, watching with its many eyes. Well, 'suit yourself,' Raven thought, knowing what she would do with the opportunity.
She turned back to the real pest of the room, displeasure casting a heavy shadow on her hazel eyes. Every second inch of her ached, but she still had to put up with this. Zach was a real piece of work! "So why did you say your power was gone...? Ah, I see," Raven worked it out without any need for input. "That must have been Zach then, and you bothered me about the light," she mused, only short the fedora and a big fat cigar for the classic detective look. For her empty fingers, a knife would have done the trick, but she'd put it away and honestly she didn't feel much need to intimidate the sorry-looking guy further.
"So he must be out of it, and that's why you're here... He did say his power was more active ever since the rebels did their thing," although still regarding him with watchful eyes, Raven began more muttering to herself than anything else, until she realized her digression.
"... I guess he was right and you're one of the 'nice' ones," she reached her grudging conclusion, though her gaze hardly seemed more trusting than before.


"Right." Riley wasn't at all fussed about spooning the blame on anyone for their current situation, and was just glad to be caught up. "But you're saying he called himself Spence? It's just, uh," he scratched his head again, worrying a little that he might be the only one seeing it. "Doesn't he look a little familiar to you...?" he trailed off, remembering they had more urgent things to worry about.
Like the water around his feet that seemed to be steadily building, now. He gave a small grimace as the cold embraced a stretch of skin on his calf previously untouched. "We're fine," he chuckled uncomfortably, waving off her questions and the embarrassingly worried way she stared at his socked feet. "Quincy's just back keeping the Mistress of the Marsh occupied. But he's very proficient with those barriers of his, so I wouldn't be concerned, okay?"
That said, he began fishing through his pockets for his cellphone, wondering if it was in any way wet, although he figured the guys back at base would have thought of waterproofing and more, surely. "Sure, I'll just let them know we want to be picked up," Riley hummed, before pausing as his hands came up empty. "Huh?" He turned his pockets inside out.
"Looking for this?" Mael snickered, waggling the phone at them pinched between his tiny thumb and forefinger. "Ooh, too bad," he tossed it up in the air and caught it tightly in his little fist. Then he stood up from his place on the operation table, dropped the handset, then proceeded to stomp on it whilst laughing maniacally. He quickly grew bored and stopped, but not before little electronic pieces had flown everywhere, and the plastic casing beneath his foot looked as squashed and crumpled as a big stick of chewing gum might be. Now annoyed by the wreck's presence, Mael kicked the broken and certainly dysfunctional debris off the table so he could comfortably lie on it. "Nice try," he told the two over by the bars. "Of course, if you can put the pieces back together now, you will certainly deserve a prize!" he smiled at them.
Riley frowned unhappily in return.

taffy789 • 22 May 2016 at 4:43 AM

“That’s right!” Glad she wasn’t about to attempt murder out of fear, Zach’s power perked up at Raven’s words, and a foreign upturn of the cheek muscles blazed across Zach’s face- a rare smile that had no place there. “I would say I’m a lot nicer than some of those other crazy powers who, for some stupid reason, become preoccupied with fighting with their users, as if that will do anything but assure mutual destruction…”
He mused on this thought aloud, continuing in a self-important way, “Of course, if I could be in control and do a better job at staying alive than Zach? I could and would fight him if that were the case.” A smug grin, then a more serious frown, “But frankly, being in control is tiring, there’s too much going on, and I’d rather have Zach deal with all the… stressful living stuff.” He waved his hands dismissively, as if shooing that thought away.
Seeing as Raven wasn’t planning on running a knife through him anytime soon, Zach’s power shuffled into a more comfortable sitting position, making sure to scoot away from the wall the spider had crawled to as he did. He settled down, sticking his legs out in front of him and tapping his one socked heel against the ground.
“And yes,” he added, “I’ve always been… present, but the rebels water poisoning pulled me to the surface of things- made me feel more…” A blink of confusion. “Conscious?” He looked towards the abandoned boot on the floor to his left, as if it could supply him with a better description. It didn’t, so he tried himself, “Alive?”
The word still didn’t seem good enough, but he dropped the issue, giving up as futile. Instead he said simply, “I was the opposite of whatever Zach feels right now, which is nothing, because he’s currently in a coma and even I can’t reach him.” He hummed, a bit annoyed, “It’s pretty messed up actually~ When he hit his head, I had been the one to disappear for a while there, but as soon as I came back, who decided to get tired and pass out forever, leaving me in charge of things? That’s right- Zach.”
He scowled at this, crossing his arms in a show of defiance at his user’s life choices, and continued, “I can’t tell when he’s going to be back, but I know it won’t be anytime soon, which is a problem for the both of us, because what am I supposed to do when the others come to pull me out of this hole? Let them kill us because they don’t want a power on their base? I know Zach, and I know that both he and I agree that existing is a thing we want to keep doing, so it was dumb of him to pass out and then throw the dealing-with-things-trying-to-kill-us job at me. I don’t care how tired he felt, he should’ve taken better care of himself in the first place! But he doesn’t because he’s an idiot, and now I’m the one suffering and occupying the body that’s functioning on no sleep…”
Pausing, the power stopped complaining about his user for a moment, sensing something amiss…
A fearful look blanched Zach’s face, and the power began scooting back while staring at the wall to his left, “The spider… is coming back towards me.” He stated in a whispered, quiet tone of voice.



Annabell frowned when Riley mentioned how the boy had looked familiar. Of course, she’d noticed it as well, the sense of déjà vu that carved a pit in her stomach when she’d first saw the boy’s face. If she thought hard on the issue, then her head started to hurt; the hair, eyes, and facial structure sure were oddly similar to another person she’s seen before, but… who?
Then, the sudden reappearance of the boy in question behind her made Annabell flip back around so fast that she almost gave herself whiplash, and her face mimicked Riley’s displeased expression almost perfectly- though hers with an ounce more of shock. Flickering her eyes back and forth from the crushed cell phone and the boy’s expressive gloating, her head swam again at the sight of the boy’s uncanny appearance. Recollection tugged at her mind, pushing her towards an answer, but something pulled in the opposite direction, screaming about how those lively eyes, smug grin, and teasing vocal tones just didn’t quite fit…
To avoid giving herself vertigo, Annabell refocused on the issue at hand.
“Nice to see that you’re back, Spence,” she stated, flat and unwelcoming.
She momentarily pondered what his power could be, teleportation, even invisibility maybe. She reminded herself to be more careful, given his omnipotence over the room- that ability to poof into air and steal phones on a whim…
Stepping over Izzy again, she moved from the wet rush of water coming from the bars to the drier floor on the other side of the drain hatch.
Except when her shoes hit the floor, they squeaked and slipped forward.
She didn’t fall, by the unexpected slipperiness made her glance down, her eyes widening as she watched water gurgle up from the hatch instead of flowing down, lapping the once dry, safe concrete of the room with cold waves.
“That was…” Annabell blinked unhappily, “a lot less than ten minutes.”
Thinking it a good time to get desperate, she rushed towards the control panel.

asi • 22 May 2016 at 7:41 PM

She blinked back surprise at the smile, which confirmed her own words much more than a response to the affirmative ever could. "Well, fair enough," she agreed fervently, nodding her head. "Existing is much better than not but if I could skip the strenuous part- well, who wouldn't?" This was a given. Except, perhaps, for someone like that twin of Riley's, Alex, who seemed to even enjoy suffering as long as she could put a dramatic, tragic spin on things. Made Raven wonder how that girl ever got on with Karen, who always appeared a staunch believer in stoicism.
Philosophy aside, seeing her new companion calm enough to take a seat, Raven also felt much more at ease. Standing was too awkward, so she padded her way over on hands and knees to a place not exactly next to him, but a comfortable arm's room apart. It was taking some getting used to; even the sound coming out of Zach's mouth seemed different. Warmer and more emotive, when her ears were accustomed to the most draining monotone. As to which she preferred, there wasn't much competition there. She also had no problem sympathizing with many of the power's sentiments, especially concurring that; "Zach is definitely to blame."
However, unlike her complacent surrender to the current state of affairs, the power seemed to grow increasingly worked up...
Raven sighed just under her breath, she couldn't believe she was going to try comforting this thing. Despite herself, the consolatory drivel poured right out; "I wouldn't worry about it, knowing our people, even on the front lines they wouldn't be able to tell unless you light up like a Christmas tree and start giving gifts in the form of maulings. Your hair's only a lighter brown- ain't no stranger gonna notice that. And if you're acting all exhausted, you have every right to be after this crapstorm, and they can't get anything funny out of that. Besides, my head's not empty, I won't let them go and kill you," she rolled his eyes at his stupid omission, as if these imaginary rescuers could just bypass her to get to him.
This time, she let out a greater, long-suffering sigh, before commanding her tired, achy body to move to the guy's other side, the one he was beating a hasty retreat from. Raven placed herself between him and the pitiful snail-paced spider, feeling like just about the most superfluous shield ever. "And I'll save you from the horrible spider," she gave a reflexive smirk, although internally her brain was still spitting up a fit about Zach- or his power, whatever- having such a silly, irrational fear. Spiders, for god's sake! Wasn't this guy supposed to have abilities to do with sensing actual danger, or along those lines?
... Suddenly, that odd feeling like she'd forgotten her toothpaste mutated into something much more coherent. She asked the slow and skeptical question; "Wait, you can make predictions, right? Shouldn't you know if anyone will rescue us?"
Her mind caught up to the things he had almost literally just said, and made the addition of what she literally had just said. She jumped, then scrambled up on her knees to face him. "So... People ARE coming?" her eyes lit up, almost luminescent like a cat's in the dark as traces of green shone through. "You really think so?"