Private Roleplay~ IOD

asi • 10 December 2016 at 6:25 PM

Before peeling her back off the iron door, Raven rubbed hard at one side of her head, willing her echoing headache gone, and unknowingly knocking her bushy-haired ponytail off center with the motion. With the lopsided tail hanging loosely over her left shoulder, she walked over to join the two other girls by Tab's desk, while the boys reentered.
By this time, she felt with relief that her head seemed much clearer, and there was a refreshing sensation like the inside of her head had been dipped in cool water. Now everything seemed to be flowing smoothly- a good thing, since it meant Raven quickly picked up on Tabs' implication, though she never had read the interrogation checklist all the way through.
Raven's face involuntarily took on a pitying expression as soon as her brain made the connection. "Look, in case you haven't noticed, Five's true colors are violent when faced with perceived, even irrational threats," she rolled her eyes around, then copied Tabs' turn towards the two boys, one of whom, Raven guessed, had likely already drawn the dreaded short straw.
Between the two of him, her hazel eyes focused on the one- the thinner one, the one that was not the interrogator. Raven snapped a finger his way. "Didn't he kick you already for just trying to move him? Even if I held Five's hand the entire time and talked him through it like he's in fifth grade, I'm pretty sure we wouldn't be able to prevent a casualty," she deliberated, a hand under her chin for a moment, then it dropped back down to her side.
"I would just let him out if I were you, but since I'm not, I suppose it's your funeral," Raven deposited the papers she'd been given down on the desk, brushing off her hands like she was wiping them free of the work here. "But if it'd make anyone feel better..." She returned a rather wry smile to the group of three. "Just do what you have to so everyone can comfortably go home," Raven entrusted this mission to their fine judgement, wanting no part in anything so redundant herself.
"Anyway," Raven looked a little less at ease when she shifted her focus to the girl she'd largely neglected throughout all these proceedings. "Uh, Mari?" The healer seemed like a pretty safe bet for not being the chosen tribute to getting their head bitten off by Five, in any case. "Could I talk with you a moment," Raven requested a little shiftily, obviously angling to shift some ways away from the rest of the group.

taffy789 • 11 December 2016 at 1:41 PM

Tabs simply nodded, understanding, at Raven’s words. She shuffled through the files on her hands once before straightening them against the desk top and then tucking them under her armpit.
Mari, at Raven’s beckoning, allowed her eyes to widen in surprise before agreeing with a small, “Oh, sure!” She rushed over to the door near Raven, pushing it wide open and opening the observation room up to the quiet, empty morning air blow between the hills outside. Mari then, with a comforting smile, herded Five’s assistant out through the door and closed it tight behind them, for privacy.
With the other two gone, LG and Juarez turned to Tabs, both raising their eyebrows in confusion.
With a sigh, Tabs stood up.
“You heard Five’s assistant,” she said, flashing dark irises back and forth and the two boys, “she’s not keen on the entire “threaten Five’s life to see if his feral rears its ugly head” deal. Which means she’s smarter than whoever wrote out this checklist, for one.”
Juarez crossed his arms over his broad chest. “The impractical, dangerous nature of the last item aside,” he said, an eyebrow cocking upwards, “Does she have the authority to make us skip this item?”
“Technically all standards must be followed verbatim,” Tabs answered back, evenly, “but considering the interrogation I just witnessed? Standards have been thrown out the window already. And it’s not like those who wrote out these standards could have realistically expected a bunch of teenagers to worship rules and procedure, in whatever case.”
“I don’t like it,” LG scoffed, his two cents thought worth adding, “I refuse to believe any human would react like that guy did to me!”
Juarez rolled his eyes. “And then if you’re right, and he is feral? You’d still be so stubborn about going through with the procedure? Are you saying you want to volunteer to be the guy getting that supposed feral in their mad enough to attack and attempt to kill you?”
LG jumped out of his skin. “Heck no! That thing almost killed me already!”
“Then,” Juarez inhaled, “don’t be the one pushing for me to wave a knife at the violent guy.”
“We’re in agreement then,” Tabs interrupted, her hand slowly closing the laptop to her right, “we’re skipping the last item.”
“If he turns out to be a feral,” Juarez pointed out, rolling his shoulders and cracking the bones in them, “letting him go will be on our heads. The higher-ups might investigate.”
“We’ll be fine.” Tabs assured the two. With the arm not pinning the files under her shoulder, she held out her hands towards the camp’s head interrogator and briefly demanded, “Keys, Juarez.” The boy handed them to her.
“Do you need me to stand guard in there?” he questioned as Tabs stepped out from behind the desk and strode towards the door leading to the interrogation room.
“I’ll be fine,” Tabs answered back, shoving the keys into her pockets. She reached out, placing one hand on the doorknob, before pausing and adding, thoughtfully, “If you hear a scuffle, then feel free to come running, though.”
With that, Tabs pushed the door open and made her way inside.

asi • 12 December 2016 at 6:36 PM

"Mario has always been a terrible plumber," Riley replied in all earnesty, "I mean, have you seen the mushroom kingdom?"
After suffering several long moments of Izzy staring at him through a lazy-lidded dead eye, the russet-haired boy seemed to finally realize what he had argued during their serious debriefing, and turned embarrassed, cheeks tinted pink as he scratched at one.
"I, I guess you're right," he scurried to reply to Annabell instead, agreeing with her estimation. "There's no way we'd be able to narrow down where he came from further than Italy or 'someplace that has video games'. Whatever that kid's situation is, there's no way to find out anything more, so we'd best just forget about it for now," Riley concluded with a bit of a rueful smile and a wave of his hand. Although he wanted a little to press Annabell for details, it didn't have to be right now, or even for the report. Otherwise, if he spent all his time dreaming up wild theories, he'd simply never get the report done on time!
So Riley laid back in his seat, stretching his arms a little behind his chair, and nearly fell off when the person he least expected to spoke up and with vehemence.
"Wha's import'nt," Izzy mumbled at first, then, gaining momentum, forced out each word with increasingly clear and precise pronunciation; "'s the fact tha' he took my pesh-kabz..." And he glowered at Riley as if to make it clear whose fault he thought that was.
Riley interlaced his fingers, staring back across the table at the guy finally riled up enough to properly meet his eyes. And Riley's gaze slipped down to glance over the little bit of pancake Izzy still had left. "So now that your mouth's clear, are we going to hear why you ran off?" he asked patiently, directly pushing the stolen knife matter aside by use of his authority.
It didn't seem like Izzy was going to repeat his cowardly move from early. Instead, his thin brows hardened as if to brace for impact. Even a petite little skull like Izzy's could probably do substantial damage in a headbutt... "I said it, d'dn't I," he grumbled, stabbing his pancake through with his fork, without making any move to then eat. "After th' steps, nothing. I followed the ashy and soapy scents then I slipped, when I woke he was wavin' at me- an' then he took it," Izzy seemed to seethe, dropping his fork and clenching both his fists on top of the table.
"Oh," Riley finally realized that what Izzy didn't tell them, was because he couldn't- remember, that is. It made sense, seeing as he'd seemed to be knocked out with a blow to the head, and it was a condition the amnesiac definitely empathized with. "Well, don't worry, I'm sure we can get you a new-"
Judging solely by the way Izzy's warmly baked skin took on a sickly pallor, those had not been the right words to use. A defiant, "No!" was all the guy put together verbally. Visually, he scowled, appearing angered that Four even suggested replacement.
Riley retracted this idea quickly. "If we run into that Italian kid again, I'll get it back for you," he offered graciously, although he knew the odds of such a chance encounter to be low, across all of IOD's expanse. But he had to try and console his volatile teammate somehow, since the knife seemed so important to him...
There was a long moment, after which Izzy only sighed, tugging down on his beanie some more as he sought further coverage, particularly for his damaged eye. "No... Forgeddit, Four," Izzy's gaze shifted oddly off-center, so that he wasn't looking straight ahead anymore but looking past the leader, caramel gold eye clouded and off-focus. "D'sn't matter... S'nothing."
Taken aback by this more-or-less sudden switch, Riley could only watch warily and agree. "Ok..." He wasn't sure what to make of it, but nothing it was most clearly not. The leader made a mental note to, if the opportunity ever did present itself, genuinely attempt to get that strange recurved blade back. Just because Izzy seemed to be so truly upset by its absence. Who would get so worked up about a knife? Without mind-reading, that sort of question was beyond Riley.

taffy789 • 12 December 2016 at 9:11 PM

“Fiver, you look horrible,” was the first thing Tabs remarked as she slipped into the interrogation room and silently shut the door behind her.
The leader stiffened in his seat as the girl approached and took the seat across from him, and he recoiled back as she pulled the folders out from under her arm with a large flourish and plopped them on the desk with a loud “SMACK” sound.
With those wary, untrusting eyes, the leader glanced her over, and then he sneered as he asked, “Was that noise even necessary?”
Tabs raised a singular eyebrow in reply. Zach grimaced.
His wrists strained against the metal cuffs, and he stated, gritting the words out, “Tabs, are you the reason I’m being kept in here?”
Tabs shrugged. “Fiver,” she began leaning forward on her elbows, “I have better things to do than torture you like this. Procedure kept you in here, and procedure is keeping me chained up here as well. I’m here trying to help this entire process along as quickly and painlessly as possible.” She relaxed her back against her chair, staring upwards with a thoughtful smirk. “Actually,” she added, a hand cupping her chin, “it would probably be less work for me to keep you in here, given I have a lot more to add to that status report now…”
Zach fixated on her, his glare near murderous.
“I kid,” Tabs deadpanned, shoulders dropping. Reaching out, her lithe fingers flipped open the files in front of her. “But first,” she said, softly, “there’s a couple more strands of red tape we need to cut loose.”
Zach bristled, “And that what would that be? What other hoops are you going to force me to jump through?”
“Not many,” Tabs replied, and she turned to a particular page in the files. “A few follow-up questions. They’re simple. First off,” she looked up, meeting his eyes, “what were your assigned numbers before becoming Five?”
He gave a roll of his eyes at the perceived simplicity and stupidity of the question, but he answered correctly anyway.
Tabs continued, “Good. Now, what’s my name?”
“I already said it,” Zach scoffed.
“And?” Tabs prompted.
Zach glared. “Tabs,” he spat out as an answer.
Tabs nodded, and her left hand lazily shuffled through the files as she asked, “What’s your assistant’s name?”
A tired sigh. “Raven.”
“Really?” Tabs’ voice rose just shy of incredulity, “What happened to ‘Shadow’?”
“I-” Zach made a face- “I don’t care?” He puffed out an exasperated breath of air, “Do I have to explain everything I do to you?”
“Fair enough,” Tabs conceded, and she tapped her fingers against the desk, hard. Zach winced at the loud, discordant sound, shivering with irritation.
Just as he was about to snap at her to knock it off, Tabs spoke up again. “What was the name of the boy who died on the last mission?”
That one stumped him.
His lack of knowledge was completely evident on his face; Tabs could’ve laughed bitterly at how much of an open book the guy could be, she would have never thought.
She didn’t laugh, however. In all truth, the response made her feel anything but the jovial beginnings of laughter. The bitterness, however? That could be felt acutely.
Tabs closed her eyes. “Answer the question.”
“I don’t know,” Zach admitted, then scoffed, “why would I? What does that matter to me?”
“Of course,” Tabs replied, evenly, “why would it matter?” She then stood up, the metal chair screeching as she pushed it backwards with her knees, and Zach jolted up and began cursing under his breath.
She stretched her entire body, twisting her back side to side and holding her arms high above her head, and popping them slowly.
“I didn’t expect any other answers from you, so I suppose that’s good on my judge of things,” she mused, letting her arms fall back down. She then wrapped her arms around herself, grabbed one shoulder and pulled, and did across-the-chest stretches.
Zach frowned. “Is there any point to this?”
“Just getting a feel of things,” Tabs replied, stretching the other shoulder now.
Zach rolled his eyes and asked, “Are you done now? Can you let me go?” His wrists rubbed impatiently at his bonds, and Tabs noted this silently.
“It’s funny,” she chose to say instead of releasing him. She slid back into the chair, maybe purposefully screeching the metal legs against the concrete floor again. “It’s funny because, having watched your interrogation, there is literally no reason why I should release you-”
Zach’s wrists slammed violently upwards, but they did not go anywhere. “Tabs-” he warned, that wild glaze creasing his face.
“-on the surface of your interrogation,” Tabs continued slowly, purposefully, failing to hide a slight smirk. “But then you actually read through these files, and?” Picking up one said file, she flipped it to a specific page and began reading, “B131 exhibits astounding resignation to most events, yet a difficult stubbornness crops up during interview sessions. Most verbal interview results thus prove inconclusive and, at best, unreliable.” She flipped through the rest of the folder without reading it, remarking, “So, technically, your moody answers and unhelpfulness actually prove your current personality as pretty consistent to your past one. If anything, you answering every question perfectly would’ve been more out of character. So, congrats, you’re-”
She was planning on finishing with “not a feral”, but when she looked up and caught the dark mask that had drenched Zach’s face, she knew to cease talking.
Tabs closed the folder and laid it back down on the table, as if that action could uncross that line.
“In any case, you’ve proved your humanity enough,” she concluded, and pulled the keys from her pocket.
Zach visibly eased as the cuffs fell from his wrists, giving a sigh of relief and immediately drawing his arms to himself.
As a sign of peace, Tabs scooted the files across the table, to the leader, who glared at them as if trying to light them aflame with his mind.
“Feel free to take them, they are yours after all,” Tabs offered, and she was about to add something else when the red marks etched into the fifth leader’s wrists caught her attention.
Now, didn’t seeing that make her feel wonderful about herself?
She tried to amend by saying, “We can get a healer to fix up that raw skin for you,” but Zach apparently wasn’t having any of it.
He snapped out a biting “I’m fine” and turned that ugly grimace back to the folders on the table.
After a quick moment, he cautiously picked one up, as if it could rear up and bite off his fingers.
He began reading, and Tabs watched him, but she grew tired of watching him as it apparently took him ten solid minutes and many struggling, darkening expressions to read through one rather small section of comments…
To pass the time, she chatted, and it felt like mainly to herself.
“There wasn’t a lot of information on you,” she said, conversationally. Tabs propped her head up by one hand and stared absentmindedly towards the ceiling. “Just a lot of general records of health and movement and some comments from the people who seemed to be in some sort of charge or standing? Who knows. Strange there wasn’t more.”
A sudden, violent crinkling of paper made her attention shoot back to the boy sitting across from her. She watched with little emotion as the paper reports were turned into tight, angry paper balls in Zach’s hands.
“There’s more,” the leader gritted out, simply. He dropped the paper balls onto the desk, where they all scattered like frightened grasshoppers, bouncing aimlessly about.
Tabs sat up, mildly interested. “How do you know?”
“Like I always do,” Zach replied, and he stood up so suddenly that his agitation and urge for movement seemed to inspire the paper balls on the desk, and so the paper balls violently rolled themselves off the table top under the guise of a gust of wind.
“But I want nothing to do with those things,” he spat out, “I can’t stomach even trying to chase those stupid letters around on the page, or dare to make any freaking sense of what those comments meant.”
He drew in a sharp intake of breath, and stared Tabs straight in the eyes, “I’m done with this stupidity already. Unlock the door.”
Tabs blinked once, slowly, before relenting. “Fair enough, Fiver,” she sighed, and stood up as well, waving the leader towards the exit.

awesomeness • 18 December 2016 at 2:23 AM

Face full of concern, Quincy watched Izzy fan his own anger to a shaking roar before it all petered out just as fast as it had flared up. Quincy waited until Izzy sighed and sedated himself before moving his hand underneath the table and placing it on his boyfriend’s leg. He gave a comforting squeeze, and decided to leave it at that.
At the other end of the table, Annabell finished chewing the last few bites of her pancake, having made a considerable dent in the breakfast while listening to Riley and Izzy go back and forth.
Grabbing a napkin, she wiped her face clean of any lingering syrup before piping up, asking Riley, “Um, if all that’s over, do we have anything else to talk about?” She crumpled the napkin before dropping it on her plate, and her free hands then folded themselves across the table.
“If there’s anything else you need to put into the report or just want to talk about, that’s fine, but-” Annabell looked pointedly away from Riley- “there was some, um, stuff I’d wanted to do today. Like head back over to the Eighth division…”
“Oh, yeah,” Quincy remembered, and his previous worry melted as he turned his attention to the girl, “you went by yesterday too! Didn’t find what you were looking for?”
“Oh, that um, news about Eight running around missing kind of… dissuaded me from running around there for long,” Annabell explained, a bit sheepish.
“Really? Oh. I didn’t mean to scare you off,” Quincy said with sincerity.
Annabell shook her head. “No, it’s fine. Besides, I’m heading over today anyway, so as long as I actually find what I want to find, it’s all the same result.”
“If what you’re looking for is in a file somewhere, I can help you find it,” Quincy offered.
The girl straightened in her seat. “Could you? If it’s no trouble…”
“None at all,” Quincy assured her, “I mean, Four also wanted the information on that underground bunker pulled up, right?” He glanced over to Riley, as if for confirmation, “So I have to head over to Eighth anyway, yeah.”

asi • 18 December 2016 at 7:17 PM

"So? What is it?" Mari inquired with what Raven could only describe as an encouraging smile, a single beat after the door closed, leaving them alone in the empty dead-end corridor.
It occurred to Raven that even though she, as Five's assistant, was an authority to the girl, she didn't seem worried in the least- a testament to Mari's confidence in her work. Of course, by now Raven knew how rightfully placed it was: first off, Mari had been sent here ahead of the other healers to fill a position of seniority. Last night, Raven had witnessed her competency first hand in tidying up her and Five, fixing up her previously broken toe until it was good as new. Finally, Tabs had credited her with finding Raven and Zach when they'd been buried by rubble, and that can't have been an easy sensing task.
So in actuality, the one who was a little intimidated here was actually Raven.
She twisted a hand around her wrist- a wrist which had been giving her ghost-pains not so long ago- in a nervous movement, before then meeting Mari's eyes. "It's about... Health stuff."
The corners of Mari's eyes crinkled as she smiled. "Good, then you came to the right person."
"Right," Raven coughed, rocked a little on the balls of her feet before plowing onward, or more like blurting out; "How much of your job do you have to report on?" When Mari just tilted her head questioningly, she continued, "Serious injuries are recorded on personal files, right? Are their bosses always notified at the time, do you do that..?"
Mari's expression seemed to soften in understanding, causing Raven to cease in her questions, to give her space to answer. "Is this about Five and his feralism or... you?"
Raven answered with a thin, rather guilty smile, "Uh... Both," although she'd had only one in mind.
"Well, we submit all medical records to Eighth Division, of course," Mari gave her explanation without judgement, "And yes, bosses should be properly told about serious injuries so they can assign suitable work. Though when we were on the mainland," she reminded Raven thoughtfully, "All we had to do was send the patient off with a copy of their medical report."
Raven nodded, the last fact having just slipped her mind.
"Five technically is on par with the other leaders, and from what I gather One's assistant has wrestled back administrative control from Two, so that's who will get told, I think," Mari mused, and Raven was surprised slightly by this tidbit of gossip she hadn't heard herself... Then again, it only made sense, since Two had moved off base.
Though she knew nothing of One's assistant, this information didn't really bother her, since she'd no reason to think they would immediately freak and pull Five out or anything.
Seeing that Raven gave no particular reaction to this, Mari turned to the other issue. "As for you, how bad is it really..? Could you raise your arm?"
After a shooting a look over her shoulder to ensure no one was coming down this dusty way, Raven obeyed, keeping her arm straight as indicated, and raising it slowly and steadily towards the ceiling.
Until she couldn't, her arm shuddering involuntarily, muscles rebelling and ultimately refusing to budge. Halfway above her shoulder, a tingling numbness spread right down to her fingertips and her arm seized up. Gritting her teeth against the strain, Raven lowered it by a few degrees back into the zone which she could comfortably bear.
Mari didn't look... perturbed, exactly, but Raven could tell it wasn't quite what she'd expected either, that it was worse. "Do you have a knife with you?"
When Raven repeated the experiment again with the hilt in hand, she found she struggled to stop her fingers from twitching and loosening her grip. Earlier than before, just when she'd reached the height of her own head, a hot pulse ran down her arm and hit her hand with a sudden jolt.
The knife fell from her fingers and hit the ground with a clatter. Mari, with an inscrutable expression on her face, bent down to pick it up... By the time she handed it back to Raven, she was managing to smile supportively, and though it did not put the girl at ease, it did forestall her panic.
"Is that your dominant arm?" Mari asked her, and Raven shook her head.
"No, no, I'm left-handed."
Mari nodded slowly. "Well, you should drop by my workplace later sometime so we can talk about this more. It's to do with your muscles and nerves- I might have misjudged it before, since I didn't think it would be so-" she paused, pursing her lips lightly. "Um, it's complex. Not really my strong point," Mari murmured almost in apology to the other girl.
Raven tugged down on her t-shirt sleeve with her good left hand, ensuring the worst of scarring marks were covered- although it apparently was a lot more serious than it looked, since the original healers had done a good job on the outside. "Yeah? What is your specialty? The sensing thing, like how you found Five and me," Raven clarified in a quiet mutter. She was a little shaken by the results of the quick experiment, as she hadn't expected she'd even drop the knife, and so Raven kept her head lowered as she tucked the weapon away, back into its hiding place.
"Oh, well my mentor always used to say I was very sensitive to people's physiological conditions, like how they were feeling," Mari admitted, ducking her head and blushing a bit.
Seeing how embarrassed and humble the healer was about her work, Raven couldn't help but feel more at ease, giving a relaxed and even somewhat indulgent smile. At the same time, she was also very interested. "Is that like psychology?"
"No, no," Mari hurriedly corrected the assistant with a small laugh, "You'd want a mind-reader for that."
Seeing how Raven's face fell, however, she went on; "Healers can't know what's going on in people's minds or anything, but they might be able to get a good reading on the physical aspects of a person's state. Like, I noticed how you seemed a bit... off, in the interrogation earlier."
Raven stiffened, and Mari definitely noticed, though she continued as if she did not. "Like even now, your pulse is abnormally fast, your temperature high, yet you've got goosebumps. You're just a little bit sweaty, and look, you're still... shaking," she ended her assessment, looking back at Raven and watching carefully for her reaction.
"Oh, that's just my arm," Raven was a bit startled, but she quickly attributed it to how her bad arm was still trembling after the brief but taxing tests.
Mari shook her head. "Look at your other hand."
Indeed, as Raven raised her left hand up to her eyes, she could see it had a distinct quiver to it, much less obvious than that of her strained arm, in fact it was for the most part barely perceptible, but... She gradually became aware that this was actually happening to her system-wide. Like a sailor no longer registering how the boat is rocking, she wasn't able to perceive it precisely because the shivering was all over. She was... trembling.
"It's been settling down and should be gone soon, but, that interrogation definitely affected you. It's almost like you were the one interrogated." Mari looked at her in open concern now. "Are you okay?"
The assistant stared down at her unsteady self for a few moments longer, trying to quell the infinitesimal shaking that afflicted her all over, to little effect. Then she dropped her hand, straightening regardless of that tiny, insignificant complication that meant she couldn't be firmly composed like she wanted.
"I'm fine. I've never been interrogated in my life, so it's not like that," Raven told her, stuffing her hands in her pockets for the moment. She didn't want to think any further about how her body had betrayed her. "Let's go back in now, Tabs has probably let Five go already."
"Okay... Just, make sure you do come by me later so I can take a better look at that arm," Mari told her, obtaining an affirmative nod before pushing the door back open for them both.
It turned out that Tabs was still not back with Five yet, although the two guys hanging around chatting there assured them both that they'd been listening and there had been no scream for help, yet.
During the wait, Raven remembered the other thing she'd wanted to find out about. In a small-talkish way, she mentioned to Mari, "Oh hey, you're still pretty new here, right?"
The girl bobbed her head, "Yes, so we wouldn't be able to show you around, sorry," she gestured between herself and LG.
"But he'd know a bit about this place," Raven quietly indicated the bigger, tattooed interrogator as he conversed with the more spirited, male healer(?) type.
"Juarez? He's been here a while I think, yeah," Mari confirmed to her, and Raven forced herself to continue looking evenly towards the man, trying not to feel any trepidation at the thought of talking a little with him, for the higher purpose of discovering what she could...

demon • 19 December 2016 at 2:39 AM

"Alright, well we have been given a new location to investigate, but uh," but noticing the way Izzy- no, everyone- seemed to grow cold and discontent at those words, Riley quickly amended them; "That can wait till tomorrow, after everyone's had time to recover from the first mission's... extraordinary circumstances," he concluded, working on cutting his second small piece of pancake.
When Annabell and Quincy began discussing leaving for the Eighth Division, Riley took the opportunity to check the time- and consequently nearly jumped out of his seat. "Crap, is that the time? I completely forgot, I have an appointment soon, and I'm going to be late!"
This time the leader really did leap up, grabbing his bag off the floor so he could begin to shove the documents he'd laid out back inside. Riley still talked while he packed, going on about how, "It's with the First assistant you know, and though I've only meet her twice, I get this really unfriendly impression from her, like she sincerely does not like me," he spoke fast, mouth moving just as speedily as his hands, though both managed to work with more efficiency than clumsiness.
"Not just coincidentally, either!" Riley specified before anyone could try to excuse it or explain it away on bad moods. "It feels a lot like she's actually holding a grudge against me or something? When I first met her, I thought her glare had somehow filled my veins with ice..."
He was caused to shiver purely from the memory, holding his final paper in hand; the unwritten mission report.
"Wait, Four," Izzy interjected suddenly, seemingly awake again as he shoved a big folded square of paper into Riley's bag, to joining the rest of its kind.
Riley only nodded vaguely in acknowledgement before zipping up the messenger bag and slinging it over his shoulder. "... I'd better run."
And he did just that, practically flying from the cafeteria like a bat out of the underworld.
Resting with his hand on his cheek, head propped up by his elbow, Izzy watched the leader go with a subtle air of satisfaction... until he looked back down at the table and observed how little of his pancake Riley had actually eaten. Then he frowned deeply in resentment. Florie was definitely the type to consider it a personal insult if her plates weren't wiped entirely clean. What was he supposed to do with this?


"Xela, I had not the chance to ask yet, last night how did you like the club?"
She stiffened as Cindy leaned forward and spoke to her, realizing fast that just because she had an idea of how she'd like things to work out, did not mean her companions would cooperate or reality would obey. By peaking over her shoulder, Xela could see the attentive and overtly curious gleam to Guithe's little blue eyes. And to her left, James was simply smiling the same stupidly polite smile that she was quickly growing overly familiar with.
The fancy blonde continued as they walked, her steps lighter than anyone else. Xela wondered if audibly, without heels, they might be undetectable. It sounded implausible to her mind, but entirely plausible to her ears.
"Don't be shy if you didn't," Cindy told her in the thick accent that made Xela slow to follow. "It's loud. They use too much scent. Too flashy. People act stupid," she ticked off her fingers, taking two for the last one. "It can be unlikable," she concluded with a flourish of the hand. Cindy had clearly perceived her hesitation as discomfort.
"It's fine," Xela retaliated before she even thought about it. "I liked it. I like it! I do," she declared, and glared around the group as if daring anyone to question or think otherwise.
James just smiled some more. "I'm glad to hear that..."
"No," Cindy shook her head, looking exasperated- correctly interpreting Xela's defensiveness. "You misunderstand. I did not mean to... speak for you, that was my own opinion."
"You don't like it, Miss Cindy?" Guithe sounded like she'd just had the let down of the century. If Cinderella had come home to tell her fairy godmother the royal ball had a poor venue and service, and that the prince failed to meet even her lowest standards, also letting it slip that she believed magic wasn't real... That was the kind of disappointment the young girl seemed to be suffering from. And its toll was clear in how the hop and skip to Guithe's steps faded into a sedated shuffle, and the shine to her deep blue eyes drained away, leaving a shallow, despondent sheen. It seemed all her hopes had dried up and without them, she just might keel over and die.
Cindy patted the disheartened girl's shoulder with her free hand. "It is not my scene, sweetie. They could not pay me sufficiently." Rather than assuaging Guithe's disappointment, she dismissed it without a second thought.
"But we do pay you," James pointed out after a beat. "You work there." Another pause. "You covered my shift last week." They looked back at Cindy over their shoulder as the four of them walked.
"But I will not squander my free time there, J," she grimaced, looking a bit cross that her friend made her spell it all out. "I was glad to hang out with Guithe last night. A much better time was had," she claimed, causing the little girl enough delight to entirely restore her good temper. Guithe hugged onto Cindy's pinched waist and the older girl returned affections with a simple pat on the back.
Meanwhile, James looked contemplative, perhaps dangerously so. "Actually, weren't you supposed to work yesterday too? Was it really alright to skip out?"
"Really, J!" Cindy argued with some annoyance, just stopping short of flicking the long hair she absolutely didn't have, since it was a blonde, curled comb-over that didn't even reach the nape of her neck. "You say it all like you've never skipped out on work in your life!"
"Sorry..." James responded, although not sounding very. They had been giving Xela a short series of 'inside looks' all the while, quick upturned smiles and the like that the others were not privy to. Although she did not know the particulars of this discussion, Xela inadvertently felt some kindred spirit to their side of the story... And it made her feel strangely warm inside.
Befuddled by this, Xela hadn't noticed when Guithe had breathed in enough of the primadonna's silky shirt to peel away from Cindy's side and smile in that impish way of hers, magnifying her dimples. That always spelled trouble. "Mista, I know what you are!" she announced suddenly, stabbing a finger James' way as she skipped along.
James looked surprised, even momentarily nervous. "O-oh?" A glance in Xela's direction told them only of the big sister's own cluelessness. "And what's that?"
"A teacher's pet," Guithe replied, the cheeky grin rapidly spreading all over her face.
"You little punk!" James exclaimed, looking astonished by the accusation. Actually, they were blushing a bit too. "I am not," they denied with a distinctly laughing tone.
Cindy's own laughter was muffled and gigglish. "She got you down good, J! Ah, but sweetheart," she looked down at the girl at her side, then seized the arm of the guy in front of them to show her it. "How could a teacher's pet have tattoos and like metal? It makes no sense, ze would definitely be expelled!" Cindy waved her fingers and made a noise like a ghost's 'boo!' as if to teasingly frighten.
Guithe snickered in response. "Oh nooo!" she cried with childlike theater. "But maybe it's a teacher who likes those things too?" was her savvy reply.
"Does he?" James sounded more amused than anything.
"Who exactly are you talking about now?! Not a teacher!" On the other hand, Cindy sounded appalled.
"Heheheh," James was smirking just a little. "Why, isn't a boss the closest thing we have?"
This caused the blonde to put her foot down with as much strength as she could muster. "No, no way. I will call him boss when the sun dies, the world freezes, and he pays me more than minimum wage!" she announced, tossing her head back like she couldn't stand the smell of James anymore.
"How do you pay for things here anyway?" Xela asked, now thoroughly distracted. It had been something that occurred to her upon reflection of the events of last night, realizing that she'd never noticed how others had obtained their drinks, having only accepted hers free of charge from Septa himself and James.
The other two teens exchanged a look, then James explained. "Well, you can trade in items, do extra chores or owe favors for 'sinero'," they reached into a pocket and dug out a strange, colorful kind of coin, handing it over to Xela after holding it up to the light for just a moment.
Xela inspected it with some little curiosity, rubbing it between her fingers and feeling it to be of slickly painted compressed clay. It strongly resembled a poker chip, albeit heptagonal, black and hot pink in color, and predictably emblazoned with the number 7 in white. Knowing the club, it probably was used in actual poker games too.
With a roll of her eyes, Xela passed it back to Guithe, who examined it with much greater enthusiasm and delight.
"Ohhh, so pretty! Mista, can I keep it? Pleaseee?" Guithe clapped it between her hands, eyes as blue and sparkling as the ocean.
Judging by James' expression, they definitely felt two forces pushing them on either side, with the resultant expression looking like they were slowly being squeezed to death.
"Wait, how many of those do you need to buy a drink?" Xela asked warily.
"Your usual sinero buys seven," Cindy answered dryly, and that was all Xela needed to hear.
She fixed Guithe with an uncompromising glare and uttered a firm, "Absolutely not," holding out her hand for the chip.
Which Guithe refused to hand back, clutching it resolutely to her warrior-tunic-clad chest...
James sighed, apparently resigned to their loss. "We'll get it back later. We're here anyway."
The four of them stood in an absolutely ordinary corridor, in front of an absolutely ordinary men's bathroom, with absolutely no one else around.

taffy789 • 19 December 2016 at 9:54 PM

Annabell let go of her held breath once Riley assured the group that, yes, their next mission could wait for tomorrow. The fearful throbbing of her shoulder muscles sure did subside hearing that, after all…
Then, suddenly, Riley was up and frantically pushing papers into his bag and blabbering on about an important meeting of some sort, and Annabell frowned upon remembering how disheveled and tired her friend had looked this morning…
She wanted to tell him to calm down and breath, but no, there he was, running off, already gone.
Lips pressing into an unhappy line, the girl made a note to check up on her friend later, to assure herself that the boy was getting plenty of rest and actually remembering meals.
Speaking of meals…
Glancing at Riley’s barely touched breakfast, Annabell let loose a frustrated sigh and ran her fingers through her blonde hair in one, unconscious motion.
“Well,” she said, looking over at the two boys sitting across from her, “I guess that’s the end of the mission summarizing talk?”
She began organizing the dishes and trash, putting her and Riley’s barely touched lunch trays on one tray, and she stacked her empty pancake plate on top of all of that.
“Seems like it,” Quincy replied, hand rising up and reaching over the table to push his untouched pancake plate closer to Annabell’s pile of dirty trays. “Did you want to head over to the Eighth division now?”
Annabell nodded, saying, “That sounds good”, and she grabbed Riley’s unfinished plate, intending to add it to the growing pile of dishes.


Feeling the eyes of Raven resting upon him, Jaurez turned his head away from LG’s conspiracy “Five is a feral” nonsense and gazed back in the assistant’s direction. Momentarily, he pondered what about him had caught her attention, and he self-consciously tugged the collar of his issued brown button-up closer to his neck, to hide the peeking, red-scaled tail of his dragon sleeve tattoo.
Then the door opened and his head snapped right back to Tabs, whose face was as grim and unreadable as ever as she held the door open for the Fifth leader.
Five exited the interrogation room, looking tired and battered and exhausted and positively dead, like a dead zombie shuffling around, oblivious to its own decay. He made it two steps into the observation room, his eyes moving slowly over each of the space’s occupants before settling firmly on one particular target. His shoulders then untwisted themselves in a way that, while not relaxed, certainly no longer made it seem like he was about to claw and bite his way to the second exit. Jaurez himself untensed at this, the knife readied against his pocket no longer humming with a burning, urgent paranoia.
Pulling his steady gaze off of his assistant, the Fifth leader twisted his body around to blink at Tabs, once, with lethargy, as if his eyelids were considering closing tight and sending him into another coma. What felt like an unnecessarily long amount of time passed, and Juarez was about to nervously crack his knuckles when the leader finally spoke up.
“I can leave now,” the Fifth leader said, blandly, and with no change to his dull monotone to signify any sort of question was asked. “I’m done with all the stupid questions and prodding.”
“True,” Tabs confirmed, and she gave an uncaring, “do-whatever-you-want” kind of shrug that made Juarez both respect her casual composure around even the rudest of people but worry over her future career as running administration...
Five seemed to find nothing wrong with the manner with Tabs replied, and he instead went mute before turning back around to his assistant.
“Looks like you managed to get me out after all,” he told the girl, point-blank. Though his tired, flat tone still reflected no change, he accompanied these words by the slightest, smallest nod of his head before falling once again silent.
Standing next to the assistant, Mari fixated on the leader. The look she gave him…. Jaurez recognized it, or at least, had seen the expression’s cousin before. Standing on guard duty for the healers’ following the rebel attack had been the first time he’d (unofficially) met LG and Mari, after all. He remembered Mari best out of all the other healers because of that same particular expression that had crossed her face so often. The one that gave away her bleeding heart nature so easily, the one filled with so much… Dang empathy for people, as if she could feel their own injuries coursing through her body.
It had left such a deep impression on Juarez because when he’d first saw the healer’s smile twist into that look of such concern and pity, he’d thought two very striking things:
First- Mari would never survive working in the Second Division’s wing.
Second- she reminded him so much of his girlfriend.
Juarez relented to bad habits and cracked his knuckles this time, softly, as he shifted his weight from foot to foot.
By this time Mari’s concern had propelled her forward, and she reached out towards the leader, speaking in a soothing, quiet tone, “Let me heal that injury for you, Fi-”
She didn’t get any further than that syllable, as the leader’s hand shot out, furiously gripping the girl’s wrist before she could brush her fingers against the reddened skin on his hands.
“Don’t touch me,” Five hissed out which such a venom that LG cried out with fear from his hiding place cowering behind Tabs.
Mari, however, stayed completely composed, and only her eyes widened in mild surprise.
Juarez was less kept together. A fear sent a shock running down his spine and, jumping into action, his hand flew towards the knife on his belt, and he pulled it out with a flourish, and-
Suddenly the claws were aimed at him, and before he even knew what was going on, a hand was gripped tight around his wrist instead, squeezing hard with the intent to stop the knife from going anywhere.
“Don’t even think about it,” the voice hissed to him instead, and Jaurez’s mind raced, and he was creating a plan of escape, of fight in his head when a large, warm body pushed its way between him and the leader.
“Nobody’s stabbing anyone today,” Tabs said, somehow remaining poised and perfectly calm, “It’s more for me to write in that report, so, no, we are not. Stabbing. Anyone."
… Though Jaurez did not feel comforted at all by this statement, the hand on his wrist soon let go, and the Fifth leader stepped backwards, his face a grave, dark mask but his eyes glaring, as if telling him “try that again and I’ll claw your face off”….
Frowning, Jaurez rubbed at his own wrist, which now hurt as well.

asi • 23 December 2016 at 1:22 AM

Izzy merely nodded listlessly in response to Annie's ever-so redundant attempt at a conclusion to the meeting. Even his slow brain had managed to catch up to the fact that the leader had already left, and for him that meant work was immediately over. Surely there wasn't anything else he had to do...
He slumped forward, vision blurring as he sat idly, vaguely aware of motions around him. Then his eye focused suddenly on a pile of plates. Izzy sat up, urgency now coursing through his veins.
He snatched the plates and trays away from Annabell's control and repossessed them, adding his own emptied plate and Riley's full one above... and balancing everything handily on one arm. Izzy also spared Quincy's plate one very dissatisfied look before taking that too- the plate that is, and only the plate. With his spare hand, he plucked the pancake off its top and dropped it straight into Quincy's hand, leaving no opportunity for him to resist.
"Eat it or I'll feed you it," Izzy threatened with his own hard-to-tell brand of grumpy humor before stalking off for the kitchenzone.
If he could just dispose of this one pancake without Florie noticing... That would be ideal.


The first thing that Raven noticed when Zach came into the room was how nothing was out of the ordinary, and it felt as though her shoulders nearly sunk into the packed-earth floor from relief. No disembodied voices, phantom pains, strange feelings of disorientation; she was fine. At least, it had nothing to do with him.
After that, everything else seemed secondary, right up until the point where Zach got really touchy about the healer just trying to be helpful and do some healing, and then Juarez pulled a knife.
Luckily for her, Raven never had to intervene, as Tabs had immediately stepped in to defuse the situation, completely beating the assistant to the punch. The knife she too had ever so subtly drawn could be returned in the same manner back into its hiding place, blade never even catching the light of the room but remaining drenched in the shadows. That was good, because it was the same knife which Raven had so struggled to keep in her hand a moment ago, that was still ever so slightly shaking... Her right, weakened hand she chose to shove into the tight, shallow space of her jeans pocket; out of sight, out of mind.
And she slapped the other across her forehead, groaning a long and frustrated, "Oh my godd," for everyone to hear. They needed to know exactly how fed up and done she was with this situation, of course. Communication was key, as they say.
With her good, left hand she took one of Zach's. There was nothing but confidence in the motion, since Raven had no fear of him lashing out at her like he just had to Mari. He had never done so before, with better reasons and in worse situations, so she had no reason to think he would now.
Raven said simply yet persuasively; "Come on, time out everyone. Let me get the half-dead leader to bed, since he clearly needs it." She indicated towards the door, adding wearily; "You all can go too. Good work team and everything."
There was an implicit 'go on, get out' included in that too.


"Septa?" James thumped loudly on the door with the back of their fist, surprising the three girls with the sharp force behind it. Xela was confident that from all of Septa's friends she'd met, including the leader himself, the only one who could hit harder than her was Manny. However, though not as powerful, James clearly didn't hold back what they had, so Xela felt secure in that even if Septa was now down in the underworld among the dead, he had no excuse for not hearing so loud a bang!
Standing to the side with her arms crossed, Cindy was fully armed with an admonishment; "Did you not do this last time you were here?" she sounded annoyed, and if this was indeed all it would take to recover Septa again, Xela sure she would be too.
"I did, there wasn't any response, but I thought I'd knock in warning before entering anyway," James answered, just a teensy bit abashed, drawing back from the door.
"Then he isn't answering quick enough, come on-" Cindy reached for the door handle, impatient to march on in...
She was interrupted by the door falling inwards from the other side, a new figure abruptly marching out, and swinging the door shut behind him.
It wasn't Septa. From the scruffy blond beginnings of a beard to the remarkably short stature, it definitely wasn't Septa. The stranger's eyes darted over the strange gathering, directly outside the men's bathroom door as it was and distinctly lacking in testosterone and obvious Y chromosomes.
Though Cindy was the closest, the man steered clear of her pristine appearance and untouchable air, and instead grabbed Xela's shoulder to stare at her intensely.
Xela met him with smoldering eyes, each on the verge of bursting into flame until her spoke urgently to her; "Is he here, is Septa in the area? If you know he's going to do something tell me now!" he was standing between them and the door, looking flurried and clasping her deltoids in a pair of surprising big and solid hands. "...You speak English, right?"
When Xela, who'd never had such a shocking encounter outside of a life-or-death duel, failed to respond (for fear of accidentally decomposing the man into a short pile of ash), her hero and repeated social situation savior James stepped in.
"We're not sure, have you seen him? We thought he'd be in there..." James trailed off on seeing how adamantly the male was shaking his head.
There was then a single loud, resounding bang issuing from within the bathroom, as if to answer James' earlier knocks, pulling all attention toward the door. And at almost the same time, there was a sharp tug on the arm of Xela's white Henley. This caused her to look down at Guithe, then follow her gaze to the short blond male... whose face was for a moment awash with poignant relief before being quickly covered by pale fear. He let go of Xela's shoulders suddenly and took off down the corridor at a run.
Xela watched him go, hearing the rush of his flight accompanied by a light, intermittent and near musical clink, and mused to herself that he hadn't the faintest idea how narrow his escape from death had really been, with her eyes on him.
In contrast, James and Cindy had paid the man's exit no heed and instead drew their weapons. With their backs to the wall on either side of the bathroom door, they were readying to burst in...! Nodding seriously to her charge, the two of them moved behind the armed Glaeroes, Xela bringing up James' rear and Guithe Cindy's, just like in those police procedurals, prepared to follow them in... Until Xela glanced again at their 'weapons' and did a double take.
"Not the water guns!" she hissed at them, incredulous.
In perfect sync, James and Cindy exchanged a look, and James answered with a shrug; "It's all we got, we don't carry."
True enough, Xela and Guithe weren't carrying any weapons on them either, but... That was because they were both exceptionally strong in powers! Xela could incinerate people on the spot with simply a look, so naturally she hardly needed to! Guithe, too, could sing- or screech- people straight to sleep, without any need for violence. But these people...
"Powers? What've you got there?" she insisted on knowing just what her new... friends intended to recklessly charge in there with.
Another look was swapped, and both James and Cindy were seeming rather jittery now. Hands shaking, they were even visibly sweating a little, temples taking on a glossy sheen in the artificial light.
"Xela, we-" James stopped, and took another look from Cindy before speaking again, almost simultaneously with her; "We don't have any useful powers for combat."
"Zero combat ability," Cindy confirmed barely a beat behind.
Xela's mind floundered in the wake of this news. True, there were powers less than ideal for fighting, but nearly all of them had combat potential. Everyone she'd met at super school had been a valuable asset, able to grow plants to twist around enemy ankles, or cling to the ceiling to rain attacks down from above, erect a force-field to protect themselves from blows, read minds to predict and dodge enemy movements before they were executed, turn invisible to incapacitate an enemy without being seen, or to immobilize another human with a mere touch. All had powers that were invaluable in a fight, save perhaps the guy whose power worked as a lie-detector, but, that was rare. She'd also met Bree here, who'd claimed her power to be as plain as making things grow green, but Xela had been talking down her own power too, surely Bree had also left something out...! Xela couldn't imagine meeting a power whose only purpose was something as useless as making things glow green! If that was the case, then why bother to exist at all!! Something like that, it shouldn't be...
But those two weren't waiting. "Please back us up," James entreated her with sodden, peppermint eyes before they and Cindy dove inside, before Xela could stop them, passing just out of the reach of her too-slow hand; too little, too late.

taffy789 • 23 December 2016 at 2:26 PM

When Raven gripped Zach's hand, he jumped, startled in an honest, confused surprise.
He fixated on the offending hand, frowning grumpily at it, before raising his eyes to meet Raven's and give her the same look. Although he squirmed uncomfortably, he made no furious move to detach himself, which confused the likes of Juarez and (the still cowering) LG but made Tabs have to suppress a bitter snort.
Mari, sliding away from near the leader and his assistant, procceeded to heed the girl's unsaid words and began to clear the folders and such from the desk. Glancing warily at the Fifth leader, Juarez began helping Mari clean up as well.
Meanwhile, Tabs disappeared momentarily into the interrogation room, and when she reappeared, she immediately approached the leader with something held out in the palm of her hand.
"And I'm guessing, Fiver, that you want me to get rid of these?"
Though most would assume it was impossible, Zach somehow looked more exhausted and irrate as he was forced to acknowledge the existence of those horrible paper balls again.
"..." Despite the headache he receieved just from remembering those buzzing, aggravating words flying about on the page, he snatched the paper balls from Tabs with his free hand and shoved them deep into his pockets.
"I'll burn them later," he muttered, and Tabs assumed this was a face-saving lie only because she was completely ignorant of the leader's slight pyromaniac tendencies.
Shrugging, Tabs let the leader be, grabbed the laptop and necessary report files off of the desk, and then proceeded to herd the rest of her small group out of the room. That being quickly accomplished, she only paused a moment before closing the door to call a "See you later" to Raven, and then the door shut and the group was gone.

asi • 23 December 2016 at 3:58 PM

"Well, that was a complete trainwreck nightmare that we barely escaped," Raven commented in the eerie still after the group was gone.
She gave Zach a wary side-glance or two, not worried exactly, but definitely gauging how he was going to react to, well, her. They'd already been alone again since the whole 'trapped in a bunker' episode, but that had been in the interrogation room, and Raven had almost gone stir-fry crazy in there, although she felt like she'd pulled through.
Now that there was no one else here for him to attack, Raven did release his hand. It would definitely be weird to keep clinging onto it for now reason, right? She'd only hold someone's hot sweaty hand for extended periods if they were dating, and she and Five were definitely not.
Still, she was nosy enough for a girlfriend, wondering about those crumpled papers Tabs had shown. "Did anything happen with Tabs, you were in there quite a while..." Long enough for Raven to have another disastrous health check and still get back in time.
Speaking of health... There was a case much more urgent than hers. Zach really didn't look so good. Like he was even too tired to dig his own grave, prepared instead to keel over and die on the spot.
"... You don't have to talk right now though. Let me help you get to bed, seriously. Can you walk or do you need me to carry?" she joked rather humorlessly.

taffy789 • 23 December 2016 at 4:43 PM

Quincy gave a comical, slack-jawed expression as Izzy plopped the pancake into his empty hand.
Bewildered, his body twisted around to keep Izzy in his line of sight as he shouted a few words of protest after the boy.
“Hey, what’s this about? Hey! Wait, I’m not in the mood to eat this, wait- wait!”
But his boyfriend was gone.
Defeated, Quincy pinched the pancake in its middle, folding it in an unhappy, drooping “U” shape, and he stared at it, as if trying to make it disappear with sheer wishing alone.
Annabell watched, sympathetic but mostly very confused, and she leaned forward over the table some, her arm holding her up.
Her eyes on the pancake, she asked, frowning, “Um, he was joking about that, right?”
“Uh,” Quincy hesitated, “…Probably? Yeah.” He turned the pancake side to side in his hand, as if inspecting it for the best angle to start eating it from. “But,” he added, smiling slightly, as if amused, “Izz can be surprisingly stubborn!”
“… Yeah,” was all Annabell had to say to that, and, sympathy bursting, she decided to help out Quincy by reaching over and carefully tearing half of the pancake off for herself. She took the piece and got rid of it, bite by bite.
Grateful, Quincy thanked the girl before swallowing all reluctancy and downing the rest of the pancake, for love-! Or, he supposed, because Izzy certainly did seem rather serious about the pancake disappearing, for whatever reason…
Once the all evidence on an uneaten pancake was properly destroyed, Quincy flexed his now syrup-stained hand, seeming rather grossed out by it. He pulled a napkin from the dispenser on the table and began rolling it in his palm as Annabell blinked and asked him another question, “How long have you guys known each other?”
“’Round six months, ish,” Quincy answered happily. “It was a bit after, well, my hand got blown off.” He gave a sheepish shrug, as if losing a limb was a normal, everyday occurrence for him. “As it turns out,” he added, more gleefully candid, “you can meet a lot of interesting people while stuck in Coreka! And some people still think nothing good can ever come out of a bad situation, huh?”
… Despite the topic, Annabell matched the boy’s smile. Although she wasn’t sure what exactly to make of him as of yet, one thing was certain… that good will had a pleasant, infectious quality that proved a nice change of pace to the gloomy nature of IOD…
It was a lot different than how many others who've been on the island for a long time acted, that's for sure.


His hand now free, Zach allowed it to fulfill its urges and move to squeeze all deep-seated aggravation out of the bridge of his nose.
He tried not to think too hard about the strange ghost of a feeling lingering on his hand, because no, that experience had been foreign and strange and had left him unnerved, so, no, he wasn't going to think about it.
Instead, he shrugged his shoulders to Raven's question about Tabs, and said simply, "She asked me more useless questions, threw those horrible files in my face, and then finally stopped the torture and let me go."
He sighed, exhausted, before grumbling, "Yeah, I feel like crap after all of that stupidity, Raven. I'd rather be asleep than thinking about it anymore. Let's get out of here already."
With that curt statement, he started for the door that would, hopefully soon, lead to his room and bed.

asi • 23 December 2016 at 7:52 PM

She thought about what he said and was reassured about her decision not to pry, prod and ply him with questions, especially since she and him both knew she knew he was himself without any further need for interrogation. There was still the feeling that Raven had missed out on something in his and Tabs' exchange, but... that didn't matter so much, at least, she hoped not.
"... Yeah," Raven agreed, choosing to do more than just follow the leader out; she moved ahead to open the door before he reached it, and held it in order to close it without too much of a bang behind them.
There was just a little problem as she walked the tunnels with her tired leader in tow- that being, she'd no idea how to return to an even vaguely more familiar part of the labyrinth base, let alone navigate to Zach's bedroom. Actually, Raven hadn't ever a clue where that was in the first place. Maybe she shouldn't have dismissed everyone in a hurry. They were, of course, already far out of sight. She supposed they'd earned their speedy ticket to rest... But now she was a little bit lost.
As fate would have it, that was when a familiar walking talking mass of hair decided to show its... face.
"There you are, birdie. Here I was starting to think my hair might fall out looking for you," Dreadlocks called from the corridor's distant other end, and Raven could only shake her head, waiting while she and Dreadlocks walked until they were at a more conversational distance.
"Why, didn't you know where to find me?" she asked, vaguely remembering their strange power- 'impressionism', they'd called it. Theoretically, she should've been easy to track down.
Dreadlocks seemed to realize that she'd caught on, nodding and possibly smiling- it was impossible to tell past all that hair, after all.
She continued to question them; "What is it?"
"We have to see the veteran," they told her, twisting a knotted lock of hair around one long gangly finger.
"Can it wait? I need to deliver this one to his bed," she gestured at Five. Stranding him in his current volatile state definitely boded ill.
"Why not," was said with a rolling shrug. "She's already going to be mad..." Dreadlocks intoned ominously, joining the troop.

taffy789 • 24 December 2016 at 2:21 AM

“See!” LG exclaimed triumphantly, “you thought so too! You totally did!”
“Shut,” Juarez emphasized, “Up.”
“No, you thought Five was a feral! After all that telling me I was stupid, look who really believes what, huh?” LG put his hands on his hips, grinning rather smugly, and Juarez resisted the urge to knock him in those gleaming white teeth.
“Nobody likes a braggart, Laughing,” Mari muttered under her breath, shifting the files in her arms.
“I’m not bragging!” LG lied, turning now to the girl, “I’m just saying that Five acted so violent, so much like a feral that he even convinced Juarez, who’s trained for this sort of thing, that he could totally be a feral!”
“Maybe,” Juarez countered, grumpily, “maybe your paranoid, conspiracist rantings got the better of me, huh?”
“It’s not a conspiracy theory if it’s true!” LG complained.
“What, all your stupid conspiracy theories are suddenly true now?” Juarez snorted. “It’s true that IOD’s real purpose is for some soylent-green like death factory but for powers? That the real reason the government keeps us here is that our powers emit some sort of energy wave that causes cancer? That the reason Two is so strong because he’s secretly a clone of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee that’s been injected with some Captain American super-serum?”
“Hey,” LG frowned, “that last one is. Completely the truth. My dad loved those movies. He excitedly showed me all of them, and those guys are so OP it’s not even funny.”
“Two’s not even Asian!” Juarez gasped in disbelief.
“But I am,” LG said, seriously, “and by god, if the clone of Jackie Chan and Bruce Lee isn’t Asian, then I dub him an honorary Asian.”
Juarez double-face palmed.
Taking this as a win, LG nodded, self-importantly, before adding, “It’s like I said, Mari, what kind of normal human attacks somebody who literally was trying to heal him? Twice???”
Mari stared at the floor as she walked, scowling to herself, “Look, you didn’t feel what I did, LG. I knew Five had seemed off during the interrogation, but in person, it was like- I’d never expected-” Her face twisted up into a pained sort of empathy, “Look, I thought that guy’s heart was about to explode! And I’d just wanted to help, but then I ended up making it worse, and I guess he doesn’t like to be touched, but I’d just wanted to heal him and-” Frustrated with herself, the girl sucked in a big, deep breath.
Matching the girl’s own expression of sympathy, but directing it at her, not the rather rude Fifth leader, Juarez looked at the defeated healer girl and pondered her words.
“I wouldn’t say it’s your fault for not catching the touching thing, Mari,” Juarez tried to comfort, though felt awkward and clunky as he spoke, “I mean, I actually don’t think it was that at all? He let his assistant pull him back without snapping at her, after all, so I would assume he just has a thing against healers… and people who pull knives out around him,” he added after a second of thought.
A fourth person snorted, and the group stopped, realizing once again they were having a rather stupid-in-hindsight conversation around their supervisor…
“Juarez,” Tabs, the said supervisor, said, kindly, “Your train of thought is interesting but. It’s incorrect.”
“…What do you mean?” Juarez blinked.
“Why Fiver nearly bit some hands off and not others. It’s not because of the healer thing, from how I see it.”
“Then,” LG piped up, his eyebrows raised with curiosity, “how do you see it?”
Tabs, saw it all, bitterly, and all too clearly. The leader’s actions just moments ago had cemented the hypothesis in her mind, had put the final nail in the coffin filled with evidence she’d been collecting, stacking up against the leader. From a managerial standpoint, from a leadership position, the reason behind the variety of Five’s reactions was a horrible, horrible thing to deal with.
From a realistic look at events, the reason behind the variety was why Tabs currently had MIA paperwork to fill out concerning a scout’s dead, missing body, currently buried under tons and tons of rock debris somewhere in A-E.
“I see it as easily answered as this,” Tabs sighed, and she felt annoyed that, out of every character flaw the leader could possibly have, he had this one, “Fiver has preferences.”


Thankfully, though Raven felt completely lost, Zach knew exactly where he was going.
After losing his power in the bunker and having those power-repressing bracelets cuffed to his wrists, he did have to admit that it felt… normal to have his power so easily navigating him left and right, and- oh, not that way, there’s a gross spider making a web down that corridor, take this longer way, yesss, thank you.
…
Just as Zach had paused mid-stride to bang his head against the wall, with hope crushing his head in on-impact and killing himself (and Egos) efficiently and painlessly, Management showed up with news about the veteran.
Scowling as the talking mass of hanging hair ominously warned about the veteran’s anger, Zach immediately snorted back a too-exhausted-to-sound-properly-snarky, “What could that stampeding herd of moose for a veteran possibly be angry about? Somebody isn’t doing some useless, menial task for her?”
Walking forward despite all the cries of “no no no you’ll die nooooooo” echoing around in his already throbbing skull, Zach hugged the side of the corridor, effectively scooting around the barely visible spider web hanging away to the left.
“Let the veteran stay angry,” he said after this, eyebrows raising, “as far as I’m concerned, there isn’t anything she’s done for me yet.”
That being said, he continued to lead the group onwards, towards his room.

asi • 26 December 2016 at 8:09 AM

The comic comparison brought a small smile to Raven's lips, and she couldn't help but notice that Zach wasn't by any measure inaccurate. Just something like an hour ago she and Dreadlocks had been hustling over something as ridiculous as a full stock spot check to an arbitrary and impossible time schedule. It seemed clear that Zach had been correct in his first evaluation of the veteran- she really did want to keep them busy.
But why? Just so they wouldn't be a nuisance? Did Viki even need a reason..?
On the other hand, Raven personally admired how casual and unflappable the dreadlocked individual seemed in regards to just about everything. Even if it did include personal hygiene standards.
They began responding with a small neutral sound. "Personally, I like those little jobs over the big ones that might kill me. But I'm just sane and not suicidal... or a leader."
Raven noticed how they seemed subtly angled towards her, and felt her face faintly color. They were making out it like he'd dragged them along! That wasn't... She'd already told Dreadlocks that she'd wanted to go!
And it was true that she could've died on that patrol mission- but she also couldn't have, because Zach had been with her, so it was a moot point!
Before she could put in any kind of word, however, Dreadlocks continued, a glum aspect returning to their tune. "Yes, why worry about inciting her anger? She's only in charge of this whole place... Let her take it out on your direct subordinate. You're a leader, so you obviously know best. Though..." They pushed some of their curtain of hair aside, showing just a slither of nose as they seemed to look Zach up and down, nodding their head as if to rhythym of a slow song. "You've only been a leader for a handful of days, have maybe managed a single team in your entire career, and don't know the first thing about leading..."
They trailed off when Raven, whose expression had been growing progressively more exasperated throughout, actually shoved them enough to force a stumble on one side.
"Oi, lay off him for a minute would you?" She made an impatient noise as Dreadlocks pulled her back, only to realize she'd been marching straight ahead when they needed to make a turn at the corner.
They shuffled their feet, keeping them low near the ground as they walked. "I'm only making sure he sleeps well, knowing how she'll lay into you," they told her flatly.
She threw up her hand- her good hand- in irritation. "Whatever! I'll sort this out," Raven muttered. She wanted to assure Zach, but she wasn't sure she had it in her. She'd no idea what they had in store for her.
"That's the spirit," Dreadlocks seemed more cheerful as they arrived outside of Zach's assigned room. "Atta birdie, I'm rootin' for you."
They and their hair turned towards Zach. "As for you, as soon as you're well rested, why not come and talk to Viks about what she should be doin' for you, eh princess?"
They gave a deep, sweeping bow that dragged the little beaded ends of their hair over the ground.
Raven had to cover her mouth and nose to hold in a great big snort.
"If you wake in the next oh, ten hours, you may even catch the tail end of Birdie here's punishment," they whistled.
"There's no way she has anything in store for me that'll last ten hours," Raven rebuffed them immediately, disbelief in her scoffing tone, though her face had grown maybe a shade paler.
Dreadlocks considered it. "She's already mad, so let's stop by your room on the way over, too. You can pick up anything ya need for the next ten hours," they said, ready to herd the dark, bushy-haired girl off and away down yet another dusty, winding tunnel.


Izzy returned looking slightly flustered, beanie askew and some additional color to his Egyptian complexion. He seemed to have gotten a buzz from that like other, more daring types might have from something highly illegal.
He also looked somewhat disappointed about something on seeing, with his one hard-working eye, the other two idly waiting for him. "Y'did fin'sh it? Y'not hiding it 'nywhere," Izzy crossed his arms, apparently deeming the present evidence satisfactory, following a tough but speedy inspection.
"Well then we can go," he grunted, rubbing his arms discomfortedly. "Let's not wait for Florie. Think one dishhand saw me," Izzy mumbled. He chucked one look back over his shoulder- about as paranoid as he could ever work up the energy to be.
"Dun't wanna 'rgue an' get the lunch menu reshuffled," he finished darkly, gathering up his art supplies.

taffy789 • 26 December 2016 at 12:49 PM

At Dreadlock’s comment at Zach’s leadership experience, Zach had snorted, and admitted, as easy as ever, “You’re absolutely correct. I have no leadership experience whatsoever.” He’d continued walking, elaborating all the while, “I’d never wanted this job. I got promoted one day, was in the Truce the next, and now? I’m here.”
Arriving at his door, Zach had slowed to a stop and stood in front of it, his back to the other two. There, he concluded, as brutally matter-of-fact as ever, “I’d never planned to be here. Being a leader wasn’t… my desire. Honestly, it was an opportunity I saw and took and half expected to kill me, but by some dumb… probability, it didn’t. A true.” Zach rolled his eyes, “Miracle. So, yes,” his voice dropped to a dull yet scathing octave, “I know nothing about leading. So what? Did anyone above me actually expect me to?”
Done on the topic, Zach opened the door to the room, relief washing over him as he saw his bed peeking out from those shadows…
And then Dreadlocks kept on about the veteran’s unending sea of anger, and whatever, and Zach’s (most likely Egos-induced) headache intensified tenfold.
He flipped around, bristling like a feral cat as he aimed all his venom towards Dreadlocks.
“Look,” Zach hissed out, exasperated, “I don’t know much about leading, but I’m well aware of the chain of command. Aware enough to know who should be reporting into who, and who. Ranks. Higher.”
A pause, for the implied (it’s me).
He continued, “If the veteran wants to get all pissy and take some petty revenge out on a leader’s direct subordinates, then maybe I’ll have to start pulling rank and taking charge around this base more often, because that sure as heck doesn’t seem very leadershippy to me.”
It was a threat. A very Zach-like threat, all sharply blunt, honest promises.
Bristles flattening, Zach’s form straightened into something less angular and irritated. He said, simply, “My subordinates are under me. They only have to do what I want. The veteran should know this. And you,” he glared daggers at Dreadlocks, “can tell her that. And, you,” he turned to Raven. He hesitated.
“… Can do whatever you want.” He gave a slight, barely noticeable shrug, and turned away, muttering to himself, “Until the paperwork gets too high, that is…”



"It's totally gone," Quincy promised, crossing his heart in a show of complete sincerity. He then stood, the napkin still clutched tightly in his hand.
"Speaking of arguing," he began, waiting for Izzy to finish picking up his sketchbook papers, "I have a, uh, formal complaint."
Now the group was gravitating towards the door, and as they passed a trash can, Quincy threw the napkin in. With his now free hand, he then immediately reached over to tap Izzy's arm, making a disgusted face all the while.
"Feel that?" He accused, "You made my hand all sticky."
The disgust deepened on his cheeks as he pushed the cafeteria's door open and herded the group into the hallway, and he said, half-seriously, "Come on, next time you force me to eat something covered in syrup, at least leave my plate when you toss it at me..."
Following behind the two boys, Annabell's lips upquirked in muted amusement.

asi • 27 December 2016 at 7:58 AM

"No need t'get it on my cardie," Izzy drew back as if repelled by the sticky gold syrup.
Then he leaned in closer. "If it's so bad, why don't we make a pit stop at the bathroom on the way...? T'wash it off," he added unnecessarily, wearing a sly little smile.
"I mean, they wouldn't want him handlin' all the import'nt documents with that hand, right?" Izzy nodded back at the blonde following behind them, seeking her support. "S'unacceptable." He didn't sound particularly offended, but Quincy had been the one filing a formal complaint...


"Zach-?" To say Raven was surprised was, well, accurate. Not by his perspective, the doomy and gloomy 'resigned to fate' yet jumping at 'probabilities' shtick was more than familiar to her by now. It wasn't the threat, either, for that was certainly in proper Zach form. Or even his more-or-less adamant declaration that she could do what she wanted. He'd always had that stance, more or less, and it wasn't like he was sticking up for her... As much as his own authority, which was what this was all about really.
But there was something there, unless she really was going delusional, not localized to that one room... Had he always been that... fervent?
The gap left by her disquieted quiet was soon enough filled by the husky tone of a possibly habitual smoker in management.
"... Good," Dreadlocks said neutrally at the end of Five's little rant. "You seem to get most of your position. You should then see how it suits you to leave the daily running to those who know what they are doing, not interfere, and especially not almost get yourself killed, again. You can at least manage that while you sleep, eh Five?"
They took hold of the door, swinging it back towards themself and its closure. "If you wake and want to find us, we'll be in Station C. You should know how to get there now..."
As the door groaned on its hinges and scrapped against the grainy floor, Raven called out one last thing to him; "Sleep alright, okay Zach?"
It snapped shut with a final tug plus a jarring vibration that had Raven gritting her teeth against it. Then Dreadlocks dropped their long spindly arm and looked (she presumed) at her.
"So, will you come?" they asked, causing Raven to wonder if this was actually a product of Dreadlocks acknowledging Zach's assertions, and agreeing... or if it was more like a question of 'do you want that original punishment on offer, or an even worse one'?
In any case, Raven supposed she would describe better relations between Five and the Veteran as something she 'wanted', so... She sighed. "Yeah, yeah I will."
Maybe this was all some kind of misunderstanding she could sort out. A nice little knot she could neatly tie off all the ends to. A girl could dream.
"Good," Dreadlocks... chirped? She was sure she could hear some kind of smile in their voice. They even began whistling some old-fashioned song as they showed her the way.
It was quite different to how they'd acted this morning, when they had seemed just a bit bothered by Viki's demanding antics, even though now they were going to be told off for failing said demands. She couldn't help but ask; "Do you know exactly what this is about, then?"
There was even a skip to their step as they walked! "Indeed I do, Birdie," they hummed. "When you stepped out to play knight-in-shinin'-armor... I gave up on inventory and chatted to a few different lines. Think I've a good idea on what's going on, now," Dreadlocks told her enigmatically.
"... Great. Will I at least look the part for whatever godawful nightmare this is gonna be?" Raven deadpanned, gazing down at her ratty, torn jeans and slightly faded 'Reptilians- they walk among us' (with said Reptilian individual pictured hooded and scaly in the center) t-shirt. The thick, unruly ponytail she'd pushed askew floating like a big black cloud all off kilter behind her head. Overall, her face was clear and she looked lively enough.
Dreadlocks paused in their stride and turned in order to give her an ostentatious pair of thumbs up. "Ten outta ten."

demon • 27 December 2016 at 10:31 PM

Guithe barely seemed to spare the alarm in Xela's face a second glance before skipping after the blonde. She disappeared through the door emblazoned with the manly stick figure with just a flick of her little crop of silky brown hair.
Her partner's lack of concern did work to steady Xela's nerves. Even if she wasn't very good at saving anyone, Guithe was more than competent. But if they were heading head-first into the arms of an enemy who had taken down a leader... albeit Septa... Then she might need Xela's help.
Taking a deep breath, Xela placed her hands on the door, pushed, and joined her companions in those deepest darkest depths of enemy territory... known as the boys' bathrooms. She expected the very worst.
And it really was as bad as they said.
Almost immediately Xela trod on a strewn strip of toilet paper, near invisible as it was from being soaked into the tiled floor. With what liquid, she didn't pause to question. Instead, she hurried over to Guithe and pulled her away from her curious inspection of the urinals. It went without saying that Xela was in no hurry to explain how that worked.
Apart from James and Cindy, the bathroom appeared entirely empty, though all the twenty-so cubicles were closed- a problem that James was setting about amending. The same could not be said for Cindy, she'd taken to standing back by the sinks with a nauseated expression on her face, not daring to so much as touch anything.
As the officially-designated back-up of the party, Xela felt totally justified in taking her place beside the blonde.
"J," Cindy interrupted when they were about halfway through the stalls, testing the handle before opening each one- presumably because the vacant/engaged sign never displayed properly. "He's not here. The place is empty. Can we go?"
She seemed much less than a hundred percent comfortable in her new environment. In fact, if Xela had to put a number on it, she'd guess something closer to ten, with single digits reserved for life-threatening situations. There was a mirror right behind her, but Cindy couldn't even seem to manage to adjust her makeup...
"Are you okay?" Xela asked seriously, troubled by this egregious change in character.
James gave up on the doors, coming over to lean one side of their waist against the sink counter, stringing a hand through their wavy dark locks. "If not here, where are we supposed to look?" they were starting to look a bit hopeless.
"Maybe something really happened to him. Maybe he had a reason for having us watch him all this time," Cindy considered aloud. Judging by the way her polished nails kept fluttering, and her eyes twitching about, she was much more nervous than she cared to admit.
"..." Xela and James traded glances- hers highly skeptical and theirs, more dismayed.
"This is ridiculous. I'm actually pretty sure the walking, talking, dancing human disaster will turn up just fine," Xela stated positively, pushing herself away from the sinks and back towards the door- then she saw Guithe, still playing with the taps, and remembered something. That being, why she'd actually came along.
She looked accusingly at James. "You wanted to talk to me about something?"
"Oh! Oh, yeah," they appeared relieved she'd reminded them. "A gross bathroom none of us are supposed to be in is the perfect set, too."
"... What?" Xela frowned at them. Was that sarcasm? Because it had sounded a tad too genuine for the words.
"I'm serious," they chuckled as Cindy stuck her tongue out in disgust before quickly sticking it back in, probably for fear of air-borne disease particles. "Don't worry, this area is residential so it's super quiet during main working hours."
"Okay," Xela wasn't sure why she was agreeing to this. Probably something to do with the way that James' soft greeny peppermint eyes blinked at her. It did something weird to her pulse.
"I need to ask you what you saw last night. I believe there was some drama-"
"Ooh, drama!" Cindy interjected with a sporting tease to it, and Xela rolled her eyes.
James continued with an accommodating smile, propping up an elbow on the bench and leaning in for the right intimate, confidential atmosphere; "-some drama I may have missed while busy at the bar. You see, you weren't the first place I checked after Molly came to me..."
Simply put, their story was that they'd first knocked on Antonia- Cindy's door- to no answer. A mystery now solved, since the blonde had stayed over with Xela and Guithe last night, but from James' point of view, she'd been missing all day as they hadn't seen her in that long. The second stop had been at Bree's, and the roommate had opened to door to explain how the girl hadn't come back last night. Which wasn't too strange, but James knew personally that Septa hadn't spent the night with her as planned. And then they went to René's room to no avail, and by that time James, having spent a fair portion of the night watching horror movies instead of sleeping... Xela gathered they had been starting to mildly freak out when they came around to her.
"Did you check Septa's own bedroom?" Xela raised an eyebrow at this strange list of likely places, apparently including everywhere but the man's own quarters.
James nodded a little impatiently. "Yeah, that was the last place I said I checked."
Meanwhile, Cindy was pursing her lips together over something else entirely. "Why did he stay with you, again?"
"I guess he and Brillante had some kind of fight?" There was a pale pink tint to the bartender's cheeks. Their voice remained perfectly even though, and they turned to Xela. "You didn't happen to witness that, did you?"
"Sorry, I left when Septa started shouting obscenities from on top of the bar," Xela said finally, watching for a moment as Guithe, who had long since lost interest in the conversation, began drifting over to the first of the remaining closed stalls and trying its door.
Guithe glanced back at Xela, who nodded, figuring Guithe wanted to use the appliance for its intended purpose. Guithe walked inside... and walked back out. Most likely she wanted to find herself a clean one. Internally Xela wished her luck and turned back to the two teens who kept bothering her so.
"That was pretty early," James sounded discouraged. "So you've no clue on what happened to Brillante or Renata at all?"
"Last I saw René she was drinking with Beck in that flashy gold Spanish room..." Xela recollected. "And Bree was with Septa. On the counter. And seemed pretty happy about it," she commented with dryness comparable only to the Gobi desert.
From the lack of reaction from the other two, Xela wondered if she was being too subtle, or if they really were so conditioned to this.
Xela remembered something else. "Oh, and Manny came in as I left looking pretty worked up about something."
"What?" She had James' attention. "I thought I sent him home before then..."
"I think he was wearing different clothes?" Xela's memory was hazy on the subject, she'd been paying attention to different things, like-
James wondered; "Did he say anything to you?"
"I asked if he was going to kill someone!" Xela blurted out. It echoed with such enormous power throughout the ghostly still and silent bathroom, it was practically deafening. Like a clap of thunder in a valley shaped as a natural amphitheater, she couldn't help but wince at its volume.
Cindy, James, even Guithe at almost the far end of the bathroom turned and looked at her for a moment.
"... He asked after Septa and Bree," she added, remorsefully quiet after the loudness of her exclamation, unprovoked as it was. Though she could obstinately argue that the ugly expression Manny had been wearing had fairly invoked it...
"That explains that," Cindy clapped her hands together with an air of finality. "Manny grew some-" she glanced Guithe's way. The girl clearly wasn't listening anymore, but Cindy still corrected herself, "a pair, and took that silly girl away."
"Oh, good. That's what happened to Brillante. I don't know her very well personally, and she moves quite a bit outside Sin circles, but I'd be worried if she went home from there with someone we don't know," James exhaled, a weight lifted off their shoulders.
Xela wasn't listening anymore. One last little point had come back to her. "René. And Beck. They were together."
"Yeah, you did say that," James reminded her kindly.
"No, I mean- I saw them together later... Really together. You know," she said uncomfortably. "Making out." She pressed her two index fingers together like she thought she'd seen others doing when under similar duress.
"Oh. Oh. Oh," Cindy took in a heavy breath, having forgotten completely about the smelly air of the bathroom they loitered in. She made an unpleasant face and resumed breathing shallowly through her nose. "Well, René's not seeing anyone, is she?" Cindy consulted James.
This needed but a moment's thought before the barkeep shook their head. "No. And Rebeca-"
"She's dating Septa," said Cindy plainly.
"What?!!" Xela burst out with from the left. This time, she wasn't holding back any of the thunder and lightning.

taffy789 • 28 December 2016 at 12:55 AM

The slam of the door reverberated through the entire space, and Zach jumped ten feet back from the entryway, his hypersensitive nerves frying with the noise.
He recovered from the sound after much cursing and running his hands through his hair, and he when his agitation calmed, Zach was left with silence in a dark room.
It was too quiet.
Zach almost expected another volley of questions about his past to be suddenly lobbed his way, or at least Egos barging into his headspace to make a useless, inane comment.
But nothing like that happened.
The silence stretched on, and for that, Zach was grateful.
Relaxing, he allowed his hands to drop to his sides, but his palms brushing up something familiar made him tense up at the memory.
Grimacing, Zach pulled the paper balls out of his pockets and tossed them into a dark corner of the room- no, he was not dealing with those now, and hopefully after a quick match strike, he would never see them again.
Instead, Zach quickly set his sights on his cot, forgetting everything else, the interrogation, the management worker’s oddly passive-aggressive comments, the disastrous mission- all of it, gone.
Without even first trying to remove his boots, Zach laid down on the cot, curled slightly into himself, and attempted to effectively become dead to the world.


Oblivious to all the pink circulating up to Quincy’s cheeks, Annabell mused over Izzy’s suggestion.
“I mean, if it’s that big of an issue?” she shrugged, unsure as to why Izzy had even sought out her opinion in the first place. “Sure, I guess? But it’s not like there isn’t those little hand sanitizer dispensers everywhere we go around here?” She mimed waving her hand under one of those machines and receiving hand sanitizer, to further explain her thinking. She then added, “The closest one is right back at the cafeteria if you want to backtrack, I mean, that’s no big deal…”
“N-No!” Quincy exclaimed, turning away from Annabell. The girl blinked, confused by how visibly flustered he appeared, and she wondered momentarily if it was something she’d said.
“I’m fine, okay?” Quincy asserted, and he began walking forward at a hastened pace, “All formal complaints taken back. Let’s go straight to the Eighth division!”
… Annabell had no idea what that was about, but she walked forward nevertheless.

All previous signs of pink embarrassment had faded from Quincy as the small group entered the Eighth division wing.
“I’m not working today, so I don’t have the keys to the computer database on me,” he explained to Annabell as he led her past all the different Eighth division offices. She read the plaques above each door as she past them: “Supply Request Processing”, “Orders Center”, “Leader Management Offices”, “Archive Room”, “Eight’s Office”- no, wait, there was a paper taped under that plaque, and it had an arrow pointing to the space between those two words. Under the arrow, the word “Assistant’s” was added underneath, making the entire thing read, “Eight’s Assistant’s Office” ….
She’d noticed when she’d walked through these hallways before, but since she now had a proper guide in the form of Quincy, she brought it to his attention.
“That?” he said, gesturing to the door, “Oh. When I asked about this I was told this, uh, a pages long story about the history of the Eighth division. And back then I kind of only half listened because it had been a long day. But what I got from it is that, in the past, the Eighth leader has always been a workaholic figure, and so their room functions as a second office space. But uh, the current Eighth leader isn’t really… that, so the room office is just… a room, honestly?” He reached over and tapped the wall near the door, “And so this place is the real Eight’s office as far as anyone who works here is concerned. It’s where everything gets done.”
Annabell stared up at the modified plaque. “It’s… that girl… Jane’s office?” She clarified, “Eight’s assistant?”
“Oh, yeah!” Quincy said excitedly, “I mean, the paper makes that kind of obvious, doesn’t it? It’s a funny thing because Miss Jane gets all paranoid about us putting that paper up for her, something about her taking over an office space meant for a leader looking bad. But it’s not like the real Eight even cares, and everyone knows she doesn’t really… do any work here anyway? So even when Miss Jane takes the paper down every so often, someone else puts it back up. I like to think she secretly likes the gesture, though.”
Annabell noted the admiration which with Quincy seemed to dote on the assistant, and she reflected on her own brief interaction with the workaholic, stressed assistant… She briefly recalled the lingering scent of cigarette fumes, the feel of bitten down nails, and the sound of many danced-around adjectives and words left unsaid. Unable to dredge up the same memories which invoked respect, Annabell felt deep pity for Jane instead.
Moving on further down the hallway, Quincy eventually stopped the group in front of a door that sported a plaque reading, “File Management Offices”.
“Where I work,” he explained to Annabell, briefly. “Also where the person I’m stealing the keys from is currently working.” He considered the door, for a moment, before deciding, out loud, “They’re probably doing something stupid.” Nodding to himself, he knocked two steady beats on the door followed by two quick, rapid ones. From the other side of the door, sounds of muffled scuffling could be heard, and Quincy snorted, pleased, at this.
He counted to five in his head, and then pushed open the door.
Four bodies were immediately visible to the group, scattered around at various points in the large office. One diligently flipped through packets of paper on her desk, marking through some odd lines here and there with a pencil, totally absorbed in the action. Another squatted near one of the many filing cabinets in the room, tabbing through folders, as if looking for something. A more familiar face sat behind the desk closest to the door, his prosthetic leg reclined on the desk top as his nose was pressed into a file.
And then there was the guy laying on the floor in the middle of the main walkway through the office space, with a random file opened over his head, as if he was trying (and failing horribly) to hide.
Upon raising his eyes from the file in his hands, Mikey let out an angry groan upon seeing who was all standing in the doorway.
“False alarm, everybody,” he called out to the others, who all immediately began grumbling in protest.
“Quincy,” the girl sitting at the desk across from Mikey’s said, closing the packets of paper, “screw you.”
“What?” Quincy replied, too innocently, “did I interrupt all your hard work?”
“More like my hard-earned winning streak,” Mikey said, and shook out the file he was holding above his desk. Five white cards with black text spilled out of it, surprising Annabell, and she squinted to read what they had to say, and then immediately regretted the decision. But the confusing, lewd text made more sense when the girl at the desk pulled out her own hidden stack of cards from an drawer, and Annabell could clearly see the label of “Cards Against Humanity” printed on those.
Like bad guys popping out of barrels in some awful spaghetti western, more and more cards were produced out of creative and interesting locations- except for the guy on the floor, who only had to roll over to reveal that his version of hiding the cards had been to LAY on them…
“You cleaned up in five seconds,” Quincy helpfully pointed out to Mikey as the guy stood and- bracing one hand against the desk for support- approached the group. “I would say that’s a new record,” Quincy continued, “but the guy on the floor definitely would have given everything away if Miss Jane had actually been here…”
“He’s new to these games, and to the protocol,” Mikey said, waving away the critique. He then ushered the group fully into the room, saying, “And what, I’m guessing all of you came to interrupt and play too, or..?”
He joked, but when his gaze fell on Annabell, he quickly added, “’Cause you guys can totally stay and play a game, if you want.” Instinctively, he reached out a hand towards the girl for her to shake, saying, “It’s always a lot more fun with more people.”
Although she was caught a bit off guard by the unexpected offer, Annabell shook Mikey’s hand and said while glancing towards Izzy and Quincy, “Well, if everyone else wants to, I’m okay with a game or two.”
“Cool,” Mikey grinned, withdrawing from Annabell, and he was about to turn away but stopped when he saw the goofy look Quincy was sending his way…
Grumbling self-consciously, Mikey played down all obvious shows of favoritism by reaching out a gripping Izzy’s hand by way of similar greeting, and when he shook Quincy’s hand after that, Quincy was still smiling that stupid, wide, knowing grin at his roommate.
Mikey’s expression, however, was one of mild disgust as he dropped the handshake.
“Dude,” he said, blandly, “Do I even want to know what’s all over your hand?”
“Syrup,” Quincy answered, quickly, “From pancakes.”
Mikey’s perpetually neutral expression peaked with mild excitement. “They actually have pancakes for breakfast today?”
“Er, no,” Quincy replied unhelpfully.
Mikey tossed him a strange look before giving up and turning away from his roommate while shaking his head. He squirted a dollop of hand sanitizer from a bottle on his desk into his hands, then threw the bottle Quincy’s direction.
Quincy tried to catch the bottle but failed, and the thing ended up hitting him in the left shoulder before bouncing halfway across the room. With a sigh, Quincy did a walk of shame to go retrieve it while the rest of the warm bodies in the room settled with their cards into a circle on the floor, near where the one guy had been laying before.

asi • 4 January 2017 at 6:02 AM

James and Cindy looked at her.
"Beck? The snippy one??" (The other two nodded, like 'yes'.) "She's the last person I thought Septa was dating..!" Xela vented, pacing back and forth between the hand dryers and the soap dispensers.
"Oh?" James' lips quirked upwards at the corners. "Who did you think he was dating first?"
"Well, nobody, since he was coming on so much to me," Xela grumbled, feeling suddenly hot as resentment bubbled over, making itself burningly clear in her face and voice. She steamrolled her way onward, however, intent on making it clear that it was his fault, not hers for these assumptions! How was she to know he was in a committed relationship when he acted like that!
"He spewed some weird sappy stuff at you," she gestured at Cindy, "when you were both over, and that was... weird, but I guess he's just an overly friendly platonic friend," Xela surmised, pausing to regain her footing when the other two butted in.
Responding to James' questioning glance, Cindy cried out most theatrically, effect only slightly dampened by her low-pitched giggles; "Light of my life, Cinderella!" She added in aside, "Like out of some old English Shakespeare script."
James was overcome by a serious case of the snickers. "Did he really?" There was even some kind of childlike glee sparkling in their eyes as they cupped a side of their face with one hand.
"Yep," Cindy smirked, popping her lips around the syllable. "That idiot, he doesn't care one bit how stupid he looks, no matter what..." She shook her head slowly, a dearly fond expression on her face.
Xela wasn't finished. Bitterness still blazing, she stuck a finger sharply against James' flat chest, refusing to let herself weaken at the slightest against their most innocent smile. "Then I thought he might be with you, because you were more touchy that anyone else he introduced me to!"
James shrugged when Cindy looked at them. "He hugged me."
"He didn't hug anyone else!" 'And you put your hands on his hips...' Xela thought but didn't say.
"Everyone else was busy weren't they? Anyway, you gotta tell me all the rest! Well, come on, how about Manuel?"
"What about Manny?" Xela stared at them suspiciously, recovering in composure although her face remained just as flushed under hot indignation. "Septa did harass him for attention more than his girlfriend, that's for sure..." she muttered.
James was laughing as they said as an aside, mostly to Cindy; "Manuel made a joke about Septa... stripping... for him." They tacked on an innocent wink.
"This is why I don't hang out with you fools," Cindy groaned, though she was also smiling.
Xela had definitely missed that. "What? When on earth..." She stuck her hands in her pinned-up hair so that the arrangement looked about as disturbed as she felt.
"Oh, it was in Italian, that's what Manny speaks... He's not very good at English yet, I'm afraid. Or um, anything else..." James trailed off, obviously not one to enjoy offering even the least criticism. In that moment it was likely anyone listening gained a bigger boost in sympathy points for the one forced to admit another's struggles, rather than the actual struggler.
Xela remembered the dark, sturdy, taciturn young man, who had spoken such a slow, faltering little... Although there had been a time or two he'd said something rapid and entirely incomprehensible. Italian made sense.
"You speak Italian too?" When James seemed casually poised to answer, she stopped them short with a palm shoved in front of their face, pushing them further back over the sink counter. "No, stop, stop," Xela ordered, shaking her head with its wet, tangled-up hair forcibly. "You lot keep distracting me! Can't you take this seriously for one second?"
She dropped her hand and stared at Cindy and James while the both of them blinked back curiously.
"How can it be Beck? How can he can he show more, I don't know-" Xela fumbled for a moment with the scalding heat of her frustration- "attention and affection, to just about everyone else in the room than his girlfriend? How does that make sense??" Her voice grew louder and louder, as she forced her point across more with every new word. Xela had plenty more to say, but it all jammed in her throat when a light clap from down the furthermost end of the bathroom sounded out.
For one moment, Xela peered along the long row of cubicles towards the southern wall. There, Guithe sat cross-legged facing the stall door, hands... flat on the floor. She sort of... smacked her hands against the tiles a few more times, looking Xela's way. Xela, with her eyebrows practically turning in on themselves in bemusement, lifted up a hand in the universal sign shape of 'ok'- meant as a question. In answer, he little girl's princely bob of hair was shook around in a rapid-fire nod.
"..." Xela whipped back around to the patiently onlooking pair of teen, and asked in a much lower tone, closer to what she'd started with, though perhaps with increased confusion and anger; "If she's special to him, why didn't he treat her like it at all??"
The two exchanged a look, and subsequently glanced both away from her and in opposite directions- Cindy looking up towards the ceiling, James down to the floor. Xela was almost ready to leave it at that when to her dismay- outrage- no, horror, she saw that it wasn't just due to the tilt of the latter's face. James was, once again, wearing a small, gentle and graceful smile.
Xela took a step towards them, squinting her eyes as if to make sure. "Is this a joke to you somehow?"
Raising their head, James flinched when they met her molten steel gaze, leaning far enough back that their head pressed against the bathroom mirror. Then-
"Primadona girl, yeah. All I ever wanted was-" The sound cut off suddenly with a fumble.

demon • 4 January 2017 at 6:04 AM

The heat seemed to wash out of the room, replaced with a chilly stillness. Xela, Cindy and James looked along the bathroom at Guithe, who was growing more flustered by the second, waving her hands in a suspiciously enthusiastic 'nothing to see here' motion.
Xela began to walk down the bathroom towards her. "What was that?"
"Nothing, Xe!" Guithe shouted back in a panic, appearing to... shove something under the toilet door, before scrambling up onto her feet, moving to face the approaching Xela with herself between the woman and the stall.
Xela stopped, frowning. Although she dearly wanted to say she trusted and respected Guithe, and had no problem abiding by her wishes when no serious danger seemed to be imminent... Wasn't this asking a bit too much!? "Guithe-"
"Primadona girl, yeah. All I-"
Guithe backhanded the door behind her with a loud bang, trying to ward Xela off by forcing all her willpower into a smile- that was wobbly at best.
"-wanted was the world. I can't help that I need-"
... It was still going. Xela raised an eyebrow, and Guithe realized this and turned to lunge for the stall door at the same time as it clicked and swung inwards, causing her to charge straight into the stomach of the person who stepped out.
"-primadonna life, the rise and fall..."
Septa looked down, one hand on Guithe's shoulder to steady her, the other on the frame behind him. Luckily, he'd managed to brace himself against being barreled right over, and potentially incurring a serious injury against the toilet bowl. Actually, if he'd slipped on the playing cards splayed out across the stall's threshold, Xela could see clearly the path to a skull fracture and brain hemorrhages that had been avoided by the work of just a split second. In a years time, they almost could have been celebrating the anniversary of a leader's death... Xela also noticed from the card layout that someone had definitely been cheating at Go Fish.
"Ah, sorry Guithe!" he chirped, mussing her hair briefly before using the same hand to wave at everyone further along in the bathroom. "Hi everyone, goood morning!" Septa called out, looking as cheerful and lively as ever.
"But right now I really need to pick up the-" his hand came up and around from his back jean pocket, empty. "Huh?"
Septa looked past his hand to see Guithe with a phone in hand, quickly tapping a red button, so that with a last bass-pumped, "Primadonnna girl!" the music ceased.
"... Huh," Septa paused then said again, looking equal parts amused and bemused. He proceeded to ruffle her hair with both hands until she looked more like a wild barbarian than a princely knight. "You've learned well, young grasshopper."
Guithe grinned at him and held the phone behind her and out of his reach, so that the leader even had to look to the skies for guidance.
As this touching exchange took place, Xela's arms were crossed and while she tried to pass it off as stern, it was really protective. All the while, her eyes switched from the childish couple playing the cat-string-swiping game at the southern end, to the more teenaged pair coming in from the north. Eyes wide, she whispered to herself; "Could this have been... a conspiracy?!"
However, her fears seemed unfounded as the older two joined Xela at her side, and also in staring in bafflement, which seemed to be quickly becoming a competitive sport among this group of friends.
"Was he in there the whole time?" James sensibly chose this to question, looking suitably confounded at the idea. "For more than an hour..." But Cindy was more troubled than anyone else.
"Did he just leave without flushing?" Cindy's tone was threateningly low, so that even Xela, who had the heat of laser beams that could disintegrate almost anything in seconds inside her, couldn't help but shiver.
Septa turned to her with a frightfully blank expression. "Huh? What are you talking about..."
The blonde practically jumped into James' arms, goosebumps rising everywhere, even through the thickness of her makeup. "How could you?!" she looked at Septa like he'd just murdered her wardrobe.
James stepped in with a knowing look in their soft greeny eyes, and Xela thought with relief that they were saved- until she heard the words that left their mouth. "Septa, what were you doing in there?" they asked, and Xela nearly gave herself heart palpitations trying to yell before the deranged leader could answer;
"Don't ask him that!" she thundered at James, who, looking shocked, quickly held up their palms in surrender, also restrained by a traumatized Cindy clinging tightly to their middle for support.
Septa started laughing. "Wow, everyone's so energetic today! It's such a nice interruption! But Xela, you know I won't be able to finish my phone call if you keep yelling like that," he chided her lightly, making another grab for the device Guithe had captured, this time his spooky long arms leading him to victory.
"So you came here to take a phone call," James took the opportunity to establish this, shooting Xela a fair 'I wanted to tell you there was a perfectly ordinary explanation for this...' which she reluctantly conceded to with a hand over the forehead, as Septa nodded easily and without delay.
"Of course! It's much more private, Molly can't hear me at all from back here!" he explained easily, with a flourish of his wrist, bringing his phone up to a comfortable height to start to examine it.
"... What else would I be doing in this bathroom..." Septa wondered in perfect poker deadpan form as he thumbed through his options.
"Using the bathroom...?" Cindy, though still sounding slightly hysterical, was recovering fast, now standing on her own two feet having let poor James go. The implication that the hygiene here was too low for even Septa's standards was apparently doing wonders for her mental health, but she had to be sure.
"Why would I walk out here for that, my office has its own bathroom..." Septa looked up and from his expression, he seemed to be mildly judging his friends' intelligence levels on this.
Both sweated visibly. "Oh."

asi • 11 January 2017 at 7:49 AM

"I don't believe it," Raven said faintly, tipping her head back as if she suspected some kind of 2D illusion had been slipped over her eyes, that it might fall away at the slightest jostle.
"I didn't either, and I confirmed it down five lines," her companion commented, dreadlocks swaying as they stepped to the side, letting her properly inside the room. "Don't think Viks' ever thrown a party in her life..." Their hand slipped behind their curtain of hair, touching somewhere near their chin as they took in the room. They said lowly; "It really is hard to believe!"
But Raven really wasn't looking at any of that at all. Instead of a relaxed and sociable gathering, she could've been surrounded by a scene out of a burlesque bar, with all the flashy lights, pounding music and toxic drinks that entailed... And she still wouldn't have paid any notice. Whatever was happening in the background, it was definitely the least interesting aspect on set.
Mouth slightly agape, Raven gazed into the center of the room, where a slim figure stood, back turned, but with two distinctive silvery, blonde pigtails curling out from either side of her head.
"Telly?" Raven exclaimed, eyes growing wide.
She heard a quiet, incredulous, "Huh?" from Dreadlocks, but her eyes were fixed on the sight in front of her as the girl began to turn around, face curious, eyes searching. They landed on Raven and her expression broke out into a smile.
"Raven!!" The platinum blonde returned, twice as loud, as she shot forward, standing directly before Raven in but an instant. "Shads, what are you doing all the way out here?" she barely got those words out before enveloping the darker girl in a fierce and powerful bear-hug.
"Hey!" Raven banged her fist hard on the other girl's slender frame. This measure was important, to ensure that the teleporter was truly real, and that Telly would have to let go of Raven before her back was bruised over (as opposed to after Raven's ribs were crushed out of existence, though Telly didn't have the muscle for that... right?).
Pulling back, Telly laughed out her surprise. "Man, I can't believe you're here!"
"This is my assignment," Raven pointed out, eyebrows pushed up by her amazement. "You're the surprise..."
"Telly, seeing you again, it's good," Dreadlocks said, drifting in. "But for me, the party is still the surprise..."
Telly looked to her side and jumped, her pigtails springing high into the air with her. "Tracy!" she grabbed an armful of braids in her hands and stared in wonder. "You've grown so much!" She marveled at it, running it through her hands, before looking up with a seriously troublemaking expression.
"If it gets any longer, won't you cross species boundaries to join squids and octopuses?" she said, flicking a strand towards the taller teen's hair-cloaked face.
"You know each other?" Raven put in, intrigued.
"Girl, you know each other?" Telly echoed, with a gesture between Raven and Dreadlocks- or Tracy, as their name may be.
Receiving both girls' stares, the mass of dark hair simply shrugged in return. "Don't keep us waiting Tells, what's all this about?"
"Yeah, what's the occasion?" Raven asked, blinking. She was finding it ever so hard to believe that the blonde teleporter had the time and energy to come and party, she always had more than plenty of work to do, especially since...
"Viki's throwing me a party! It's all to celebrate my promotion to second assistant, you know!" Telly spread her arms out wide, beaming as if she could hear everyone around her bursting into applause. "I'm Two's right-hand man now!" A few did clap then, and someone hooted. More importantly, most were smiling for her.
There was a soft, "Oh, congrats," murmured from the living tangle of dreadlocks, but Raven's attention was now thoroughly diverted, with only one thing running through her mind.
How happy and well Telly seemed. The loose, grunge-black sleeve of her skull-emblazoned sweatshirt hung off the inside of her elbow as she gave a big wave to the rest of the room, grinning back. It wasn't a big gathering, just twenty odd people, with the doors left wide open so that people could come and go as they pleased. More sparse was the furnishings and decorations, with only a smattering of large wooden crates that some sat on- and two big, somewhat faded banners, one reading, 'Welcome back', and the other... 'Happy Birthday'. They did, however, add a little color to the otherwise bare room. It was all very casual, but Telly kind of owned it. She looked so comfortable in her... definitely special-issue pink-and-black striped leggings, worn underneath the massive sweatshirt and a big pair of sports shorts- god knew where she'd gotten them from (Raven had no inclination to ask).
Anyway. Telly, she looked so- so- so well-adjusted. Raven didn't feel like that at all. Standing in the near-center of the room now, she felt anything but at ease. The attention felt like thick lead had been baked over her skin, heavy and still piping hot. And Raven's whole arm burned like it had been branded, clenched tight from the shoulder joint, along the length pressed tightly to her side, to the fist searing a hole in her pants pocket. It wouldn't loosen or cool no matter how hard Raven tried to relax it.
It had only been a few days ago that Telly's condition had looked so much more dire than hers. Deep blue bruises had been just beginning to bloom under most of her exposed skin. From the way she'd stumbled after teleporting in, and had needed her help to even hobble, Raven figured something in her leg had to have been twisted, but worse, her hunched torso suggested broken ribs. Raven had really thought the poor girl had been run over by a truck, until she'd seen the ugly marks on her neck and the blonde had told her, Two had given her a promotion...
Now, a few days later, her skin was clear and Telly moved with the same kind of vigorous energy as she used to, and indeed that Raven hadn't seen displayed in quite the while.
Like it never happened. It was as astounding to see as it was troubling.

Through the gaps between locks of their hair, Tracy watched the assistant at their side darken, the shadows in her eyes growing more formidable the more Raven watched Telly smile and use her punkish kind of charm on the party.
Whistling faintly, Tracy turned away, interested in looking anywhere else, and not trying to sail in that storm, when the blunt sounds of heavy wood lurching towards them caught their attention. They looked up at the large, looming dark shape as it approached. Taking note of the ominous form's clear trajectory, Tracy nodded and stepped aside, allowing it to join the otherwise preoccupied assistant in their place.
Beads of their braids clinking lightly, Tracy drifted away into the background, low-key mingling with some of the more familiar workers on their break, though they kept a watchful eye on the exchange by the entrance... in case their assistance proved needed.


Izzy wandered along with the talkative two in something of a daze, paying little heed to the small chatter or the vaguely familiar sights around him. He had after all, frequented the area semi-regularly over the past couple months while on break... In fact, he liked it enough that sometimes he pretended to get lost and would doze off in some cushy office corner, because compared to the other divisions, or even that infernal kitchen, Eighth's giant filing cabinet was nice. Hardly anyone disturbed him here.
And if that spot was more often than not Quincy's office chair, well, he never complained. Not seriously.
Izzy's good eyelid, which had been growing rather heavy as he journeyed down that line of thought, despite today being one of his good days, batted itself slowly as they seemed to have come to a stop.
It wasn't even worth working out why, since they moved again soon enough. Only to stop again almost immediately after. Izzy was grumbling under his breath in his own language about why he even bothered paying attention when he belatedly, from all the loud noises around him, realized that this was their destination- or something, at least for now.
There was a strong presence in the room- strong enough to cause Izzy to wrinkle his nose. These clowns had been at it (the game, or just holed up here) for a while, and the room obviously lacked adequate air conditioning for Izz's sensitive sense of smell. But with the individual scents all being meek, Izzy managed to settle in just a few breaths, slowly relaxing into the mild atmosphere.
Izzy's hand, which he had not offered in response to anything (he appeared thoroughly unaware of the proceedings around him), flopped like a dead and boneless fish in Mikey's grasp. But it was thanks to this stimulus that he finally appeared to really see his surrounding again... Specifically, Izzy blinked wearily at the dude like he'd just been rudely awakened, and let his hand drop heavily back to his side as soon as it was released.
But those dark caramel eye that had staring so flatly at Mikey, instantly softened on Quincy, then sharpened during their exchange.
"Wonder what you could've thought it was," Izzy said quietly, once he'd shuffled over and plopped down in the remaining space left in the circle. All of it. With his knees bent out in front of him, he seemed to make no provision for Quincy's addition. Instead, Izzy proceeded to pick up a couple of answer cards and read them out. Some of the more family-friendly suggestions included, "chunks of dead hitchhiker" and "a salty surprise".
He then shot an eyebrow-raised look at Annabell like, 'are you sure you're prepared to get into this', before pushing the cards in to be shuffled.
And when Quincy approached the full circle with bottle of hand sanitizer in hand, Izzy made brief eye contact and patted the ground in front of him, between his legs, with teasing subtlety.

taffy789 • 15 January 2017 at 2:51 PM

Picking up some of the cards and reading over them herself, Annabell pulled a face and quickly added the cards back to the pile to be shuffled in. Then, as she lifted her head, she caught the up quirked eyebrow Izzy shot at her, masterfully translated the expression, and her cheeks grew pink as she hastily broke eye contact with the boy.
Gosh! Was she such an open book? While Annabell liked to believe the crash course in spying she was forced to take had made her much more hard to read and not so sensitive to these sorts of things, apparently that was not the case in the slightest! Instead, she admitted to herself, sighing, all the government training had done was teach her basic first aid and how to stab someone without bursting into tears first. No course on keeping a straight face when faced with an embarrassingly lewd card game, no way!
Although since the others seemed fine with the game, she tried her best to maintain her composure.
To her right, Mikey sat down, carefully, slowly, as if maneuvering around on his prosthetic leg was something still rather new to him. Once seated, he began shuffling the cards and dealing them out. He handed Annabell’s her cards directly, which she thought kind, if a bit unnecessary. He threw the other cards out to the girl to his direct right, and he worked his way around the circle, dealing the cards to two other vaguely familiar people- a guy and a girl, who were squabbling- and to Izzy, who looked appropriately spaced out until Quincy approached again.
Unsurprisingly to even Annabell by this point, Quincy plopped right down where Izzy had been patting, then leaned backwards and rested his head against the other guy’s shoulder.
As Mikey tossed Quincy his cards, he reminded him, “Don’t let anyone else see your cards.”
“It’s not like you can really cheat at this game.” Quincy reminded his friend.
“Yeah, you can,” Mikey countered, “’cause you’re not supposed to know who put down what, and if you do-”
“Are you,” Quincy interrupted in mock-offense, “accusing me of partaking in favoritism?”
Mikey, who was now shuffling the deck of black cards, merely shrugged. As he flipped some cards around in his hands, reading them before adding them to the deck, Mikey muttered, just low enough for the girls sitting at either side of him to hear, “I don’t see you sitting in anyone else’s lap…”
The girl to Mikey’s right, the one who had so eloquently earlier told Quincy “screw you” snorted with laughter at this comment. Annabell only flushed slightly after hearing it, and she turned to glance at the two boys to her left, only to see Quincy preoccupied with rubbing his hand up and down Izzy’s leg. This made her flush more, so she turned back to look at Mikey, and saw him furtively slipping a black card near the top of the draw deck. Nobody called him out for it, and when he looked up and found Annabell staring at him, he pressed a finger to his lips and gave her a conspiring wink.
… Unsure what she got herself into, Annabell picked up her own hand of cards, read what they had to say, and pulled yet another telling face.




ZZzzzZZ.......

~~~~~~~

You feel like you’re dying.
You feel like you’re sick, like your head is about to explode, like your entire body is on fire, burning, aching, being invaded, about to give out.
Like something is killing you it’s trying to.
It hurts.
But you won’t die.
The pain is familiar, but still awful, so awful that you can barely stay awake to feel how awful it is. You try to think past the throbbing in your skull and fail, nothing, there’s only pain.
There’s something here.
Your mouth is dry. You try to reach out and find something to grip onto, but your wrists can’t move from their spot “safely” tied down to the long, cold metal table. Your fingernails curl inwards and bite into the palms of your hands instead, drawing blood.
If there are tears of hurt streaming down your face, you cannot feel them, and your skin feels so hot that they must have turned into steam by now anyway. Though the haze of overwhelming nausea, you make out the foggy movements of large, white blobs around you, and you feel-
Aggression. Wrongness. Violent. And even-
fear. An intense, scary fear. One of the white blobs approaches you, and your heart beats like a drum, very fast, in your chest. You want to cry. Or scream. Or bite, and you remind a piece of bad advice given to you by your sister and you try just that, the biting.
The white blobs do not appreciate the biting, and two more barrel your way, filling your vision with that foggy whiteness, like snow, and you hate the snow, and you hate the labcoats, and you hate the sweating, piercing pain running through your entire body but screaming in your head the most, and you hate how it won’t stop, how you can’t stop it, how you couldn’t stop the hands from stabbing that needle in your arm even though you’d /known/ what it would do to you, just like it did before, and-
Zach.
The white blobs change, into a fuzzy, off-white fog, like greying TV static. There’s a humming, almost angrily.
Zaaaaacccchhhhhh~
A brown haze smothers all visions, all memories.
There was nothing now but the brown and white-grey haze, floating, suspended. The brown coiled tighter in the space, choking out the grey static. A reverberation of pain echoed and,


Zach dropped to his knees, clutching at his head.
The dried, dying savannah grass surrounding him signified to him a bitter realization- that he once again got pulled from sleep by Egos- but the continuing feeling of someone violently hitting against the inner walls of his skull with a hammer replaced all thoughts of murderous anger with ones of tight pain. His head hitting the ground and drawing inwards to his knees, he curled into himself, as if the fetal position could do anything to shield against the immense hurt.
It didn’t.
A guttural hissing vibrated through the mind space, and it grew louder, more aggressive, more venomous- until Zach could feel the sound moving all around him. There was suddenly a spark of uncertainty, and he found himself dully wondering if Egos had lied after all about not wanting to take him over-
Then this hissing stopped, and the pain immediately subsided.
Groaning, Zach raised his head off of the ground.
A few feet in front of him, the brown head of a cobra turned in his direction, black, beady eyes fixated on him as it clasped a surprisingly solid mass of grey haze between its glinting fangs.
“Ah, Zach, welcome back~,” Ego’s voice hummed pleasantly in the mind space, and the cobra’s jaws then snapped shut on the grey haze. The smoky wisps immediately dissolved after that, the subtle brown glow surrounding the snake calming as the rest of the grey static disappeared for good.
“Egos,” Zach hissed out in a manner not dissimilar to the snake’s own warnings of violence. “Why did you feel the need this time to pull me back here?”
Egos flicked his tongue out in annoyance. “ Again, with the accusing me right away, AND the ungratefulness! You’re ssssoooo rude, I do hope you know that!”
“All I know,” Zach growled, “is that I’m not fully unconscious right now, and I would like an answer as to why before I kick you out of my brain.”
“Sssure,” Egos complained, “say that to the snake that just saved you from those horrible memories that were keeping you awake in the first place!”

awesomeness • 15 January 2017 at 2:54 PM

Zach blinked. “What?”
“You heard me,” the cobra replied, smugly curling into himself. “I got rid of those nightmares- memories- oh, nightmarmories-!” He looked pleased by this pun, but sulked, disappointed, when Zach didn’t react to it. He continued, grumbling, “Anyway, you’re not going to be woken up to those horrible memories anymore. You’re welcome.”
Staring at the snake, Zach ventured, almost cautiously, “That… grey smoke, then, was..?”
“Yes, it was a power still affecting you, what did you think?” Egos answered back simply. “It seemed stuck on your memories of the lab in particular,” he mused, “And not only your memories, but-” He trailed off, thinking for a second. His tongue flickered out of his mouth, once, before he concluded the thought. “Now I am fully conscious myself, I believe the power was able to affect me as well~ It went after what little consciousness I had back during our days in the lab. Just now, I was remembering memories with you- sensations I didn’t even remember I remembered!”
His tongue stopped flickering in and out for a moment, favoring to lick over his beady eyeballs. “The other power was trying to not only affect your version of those lab memories, but mine as well~ Which is what alerted me to its presence, after all~" The snake appeared to glower darkly at the ground, his tail lashing side to side in irritation, “Though, after I realized it was invading our memories, it didn’t have a presence here for long…"
“So, Eight’s power does linger,” Zach summarized to himself, grimacing. He cursed the other leader’s name, and he snapped his head up to shoot a question at Egos, “So, she purposefully made her power affect my memories of the lab? Is she trying to torture me?”
Egos considered this question for a moment.
“No,” he concluded.
That was unexpected. Recovering from the news, Zach frowned and clarified, “She didn’t do it on purpose, or-?”
“No, no,” Egos sounded almost amused as he pondered this, “As my ability allows me to understand it, what happened with the power latching onto those specific memories and continuously dredging them up was… accidental to say the best. Which,” the snake added, his head bobbing up and down as he explained, “is concerning information, considering the clinging aura of power I just destroyed was… rather powerful for an accidental application of itself~"
He hissed out, “Had you not had asked all paranoid about Eight’s malicious intent towards you, I would’ve assumed the power had been intended to be there!"
Sighing, exhausted, and rubbing at the back of his head with one hand, Zach digested all this information slowly. When he had enough as he could stomach, he managed another question for Egos.
“Are you saying that Eight doesn’t have full control of her power?”
The cobra’s brown head held itself straight and steady.
“Yes.”
“… Makes sense,” was all Zach said after a short consideration of this new revelation. He went quiet again, but soon spoke up again to tiredly ask, “Is this going to cause any more stupid problems I have to deal with?”
Egos pouted, his head lowering completely to the ground, and he stretched his entire noodle-like body against the savannah grass. “Hey~ You know as well as I do that I can’t answer a question like that…”
“Is Eight’s inability to control her own dang power going to hurt me anytime soon?” Zach corrected with a frustrated glare.
“Nope,” Egos replied, slithering forward now, approaching the sitting Zach, “Not after I strangled that foreign wasp of energy like the unwanted pest it was…”
The venom lacing the snake’s tone was unexpected, and Zach shot Egos a questioning stare to which the snake explained, easily, “I don’t like it when other powers threaten me, Zach. I feel as if it’s something that has happened too often, and I really don’t like that. Who would even like for their wellbeing to be threatened like that? Especially,” his words became darker, lower in pitch, “in your own mind, where there is supposed to be safety and only enough room for one power, thank you very much~”
“Well,” Zach sighed, and stood up, “Eight’s influence is gone now. You can exist quietly in my mind without being annoyed by someone else bothering you. Now,” he stated, glaring at the snake, “return the favor by not bothering me and letting me finally get some sleep.”
“Wait,” Egos called out to his user as Zach turned on his heel, “since you’re here, we might as well talk about some other important things, don’t you think..?”
“No,” Zach answered without turning around.
“… You don’t actually have much of a choice,” the snake confessed, softly, almost sheepishly.
…
Exasperated, Zach threw his hands up in the air.

asi • 27 January 2017 at 10:25 AM

Izzy looked down, returning to tracking, or rather lagging behind, with his eye the movements of the roommate's hands as he shuffled. His gaze quickly slipped out of focus, but he'd seen enough to feel dimly convinced that Mikey was riffling through the deck properly enough. There weren't many other sounds as satisfying as sleek, supple cards sliding together, clicking on impact and snapping back when bent. This set was worn, of course, not new, but they hadn't yet become ugly with creases and entirely fluffy on the corners and edges. There was still some youth to them. Izzy loved card games, almost as much as he loved sleep. It was really too bad that most days, he was often too sleepy to enjoy playing.
This was hardly the regular kind of card game, it required stringing together English words and working through a whole load of references he didn't really get, but he could certainly manage that much on a good day like today. As for the blonde, he didn't know. He didn't know her at all, so maybe she'd prove herself a whizz at appalling people so that their faces paled in horror, at wielding humor like a weapon that caused painful stitches in everyone's sides. Izzy really had no idea... But he hadn't high expectations, either. No offence intended, but the blonde looked kind of boring. In a totally fine, normal way, but apart from the couple of cool fighting tricks she'd demonstrated back in that subterranean pinch Four had dragged them into... No, he wasn't expecting much.
He awoke to the cards coming flying his way as soon as the second slapped the ground near his ankle, and dutifully swabbed all of his together from across the floor, creating a tidy little pile for himself, which he forgot to pick up until everyone else was reading through their hands.
When Quincy took the seat just as he suggested, even Izzy's suntanned, hard-to-color cheeks attained a pink shine to them. He felt himself immediately grow a little hot, and not just from second-hand heat that came hand-in-hand with another body's close proximity.
Izzy ignored the conversation, as well as the scarcely-read cards he'd placed back onto the floor behind him, in favor of concentrating on the soothing touch traveling up and down his clothed leg.
With a light sigh, he nestled his face into Quincy's warm, soft, good shoulder and breathed in softly. Then he shifted and muttered into his boyfriend's shirt, a grumble without any real complaint, even a faint smile to his tone; "Honey... Y'smell."

taffy789 • 27 January 2017 at 10:38 AM

“Since we’re both here,” the cobra began, his hood eagerly stretching out, excited that now his user sat (im)patiently in front of him, a captive audience.
Zach tiredly toned out the next minute and a half of Egos’ self-important blather, only catching bits and pieces of how the reason he couldn’t go to sleep yet was Incredibly Very Important and how Egos himself was happy that he’d even stumbled upon this Incredibly Very Important thing that he elaborated whole-heartedly on without actually ever saying what it was.
His exhausted state of mind catching up with him even in his own unconscious, Zach let his thoughts go blank and began staring at the surrounding area instead.
It hadn’t changed from the morning, of course.
The dreary clouds overheard still swallowed the entire sky. Underneath this canopy of unseen sky, the user and his power had chosen to converse under the same tree from before, the dying one bordering the dark savannah and the brown jungle trees. Egos had taken a seat half coiled around a low-hanging tree branch, which annoyed Zach for he had to constantly crane his head upwards to look at the snake. Though considering the snake’s mouth never actually… moved during their conversations, for the words simply echoed around him, he did suppose there was no reason to actually look at the reptile as the words rang out…
“Are you paying attention?” the said words rang out, but unhappily ruffled.
“No,” Zach said, rolling his eyes, “so get me interested. Move on with whatever point you wanted to make already so I can go sleep.”
The power sighed. “You difficult human and your bodily needs. This is exactly why I couldn’t stand taking you over, your body was so tired!”
“Guess what?” Zach shot back, “It still is. So get on with it.”
The snake hissed. “Fine.” He long, scaly body tightened around the tree branch. “It’s concerning those files from early which you made me check with my ability. ”
The image of crumbled paper balls lying somewhere in a dark corner of his room immediately came to Zach’s mind.
“… What about them?”
“You asked me if they were important.”
“Yeah?”
“Well,” the snake squirmed, “They’re important.”
“… Yes,” Zach said, after a disbelieving pause, “You’d already answered that question back during Tabs’ redundant interrogation of me. It was why I bothered to look over them in the first place.” Slowly, one hand rose and, exasperated, covered his entire face. “They weren’t even that important. I didn’t need to read those useless comments, and I don’t plan on doing it again.”
Uncomfortably, Egos’ squirming against the tree branch only increased. Hesitantly, he added, “You also asked me if there were other files on you.”
Zach didn’t bother removing the hand from his face for this one.
“And?”
“There’s more,” the snake said, helpfully.
Before Zach could think of an appropriate reply to that oh-so-informative supplement to their discussion of facts Zach already knew, Egos quickly added, “And when I confirmed there was more, didn’t you notice the tug of intuition warning that those were important as well? Because,” Egos said, darkly, “I sense that they are.”
Zach couldn’t deny that he had felt that, the slight, directional tug of his intuition, the sensation that something about the missing files was off, was important.
But he also couldn’t deny that he wanted nothing to do with them.
So, he didn’t deny the second thing.
“I want nothing to do with them,” he told Egos candidly, his arms folding across his chest. “How would more pages upon pages of those scientists making comments about me be important anyway?” He stared up at the snake, his neck straight and stubbornly held up, “They have nothing for me.”
“Not true!” Egos rebutted, his jaw opening in protest, “As your silly non-answers during Raven’s interrogation of you proved, you don’t know what happened to you in those labs. And, even worse,” the snake bitterly conceded, “I don’t know what happened to you in those labs! And you and I both wouldn’t know where to begin to figure out what they did to…” The snake closed his jaw, and looked silently, morosely down at his user. “Us.”
“Us,” Zach repeated, blandly.
“Yes, us!” Egos barked with a furious venom. “During that nightmarmory, hadn’t you sensed what I’d sensed back then? What I’d felt? The burning???” The snake was actually angry, all blunted hissing tones and sub-audible, animal-like warning growls. Despite himself, Zach’s eyes momentarily widened in an honest surprise.
Egos continued, all spitting, harsh vocals “I won’t allow you to keep discounting my own suffering, as if I wasn’t there with you the entire time! Because, Zach, despite me not having a proper conscious until now, I. Was. There. As. Well. In- in that lab.” He hissed, tone rising unpleasantly, “Being tortured.”
Zach had. Nothing to say to that.
His arms remained folded across his chest, and he lapsed into a quiet as the dead silence crept across the savannah.
Not even a chilly wind rippled the grass, but Egos, from his position coiled and tense against the tree branch, took that as a good sign, or at least, the best sign he would get.
Once the silence had dragged on to the point of becoming near unbearable, Egos spoke up again, his coils relaxing around the branch. “If you don’t want to look over those files to find out what happened to us,” he began, voice echoing softly, “then would you read them if they also could tell you what had happened to Michelle..?”
That woke Zach up.
“I already know what happened to her,” Zach snapped, quickly, “she died.”
From the savannah to Zach’s right, a cold, dark wind began to blow from it.
As if roused by the wind, Egos’ beady eyes glinted, almost maliciously.
“Yes, her death was very… unfortunate indeed…”
While the snake snorted out some grating, discordant giggles at the pun, the clouds above Zach began swirling with irritation.
As if blinking in confusion, Egos’ deft tongue darted out to quickly lick over both eyeballs.
“Or maybe, instead,” the snake amended, “very, er, unprobilitible? Is that a word?”
Zach glared at the cobra. The clouds only swirled with increased speed and ferocity.
“You are not allowed to pun anymore.”
“What? Oh,” the snake said in honest surprise, then suddenly sighed, downcast. “That’s unlucky…”
With a flash of movement, Zach lashed out, standing up and grabbing the tree branch Egos was wrapped around. Violently, before the snake could even react, he began to shake the limb furiously up and down.
Within a few seconds, the cobra fell, screaming, to the harsh cold ground.

awesomeness • 27 January 2017 at 10:42 AM

“Stop it. Stop bringing up Michelle to throw me off,” Zach snarled at his power, glaring down at the snake who squirmed pathetically on its back, its lighter underbelly wiggling up at him.
Egos groaned, rolling over so he was right side up again, and he said, almost offended, “I’m doing no such thing! I’m bringing her up because I know she was important and that you’d be more moved to action with her in mind than yourself…”
“There’s no need for me to do anything for her,” Zach spat, “she’s dead.”
“And you accuse me of pointing out the obvious,” Egos huffed. “Michelle’s current non-existence is a non-issue. Of course it means nothing for her now, discovering what happened to her or even… her power. Although you and I both know she’d certainly be kinder to curiosity if she was in your shoes...” He trailed off, before adding, begrudgingly, “And I’d bet she would have been kinder to the curiosity of her power as well! Hmmpf!”
Ignoring Egos’ complaining, Zach folded his arms, tight and tense against his chest, as if trying to protect his body from any oncoming injury. “Look,” he said, hastily, as if the conversation was a band-aid he felt better ripping off all at once, “you may be somewhat correct. Michelle would’ve jumped at the chance to read over these files. But if you never bothered to notice, we were two very different people.”
“Yes,”Egos agreed, “for one, you’re alive and she’s dead.”
Feeling a flash of oncoming frostbite from the surrounding environment, Egos amended, “And yet she shouldn’t’ve died, right, Zach?”
Zach froze.
“… You never told me- sensed that- before.” Zach said this icily, staring at the snake and trying to determine what angle his power was throwing this new curveball from.
“I didn’t sense it,” Egos explained, the snake’s eyes beady and wide and staring ceaselessly. “But you did~ You’ve always thought that something had gone wrong, horribly off with that ill-fated fight on A-C, right? Of course you have, because I can kinda sorta remember all those questions you’ve asked yourself over the years~ And, Zach,” the cobra’s tongue flickered out, once, “while I never sensed something amiss myself, I can tell you that you are not wrong with what you had… felt.”
Refusing to meet the snake’s unblinking eyes, Zach stared past the reptile, at the dying tree looming behind it. And past that, the savannah laid, dark and black and cold and desolate, yet haunting still.
Zach closed his eyes.
“Her power-” when he spoke up, his words were tense and near muted- “should’ve prevented any sort of outcome like that.”
“Strange that it didn’t,” Egos hummed in agreement.
Zach’s eyes snapped open.
“Do I want to know what’s in those files?” he asked cuttingly, and he stared at Egos as if the answer to that could be physically squeezed out of the cobra’s long brown body, like how one would strangle the last bit of toothpaste from an almost empty tube.
Egos seemed deaf, blind, and mute on all implied threats of violence to himself.
“I can’t answer that for you, Zach,” the snake said instead, still humming pleasantly. “But you can ask yourself that one~ Do you want to know?”
Silence.
Then,
“If those other files aren’t available to any old interrogator,” Zach said resolutely, his gaze firmly settling on the cobra, “then I can guess they can only be accessed by means other than simply asking around the Eighth division.”
“Correct,” Egos affirmed, pleased by the question.
“That’s annoying,” he grumbled, already giving up the endeavor as too much effort.
“You may not be as smart and genius as me,” Egos assured his user, “but I know you’re at least intelligent enough to think of some way to access the files. Some rest will help you figure out a plan, I’m sure~”
Zach scowled at the insult, and was about to reply with a caustic, “Somehow I don’t feel very assured by you being so sure about everything”, but the snake had already hissed out a quick goodnight, and then, without warning, the whole surrounding environment was replaced with a dark, encompassing silence.



“Hey,” Quincy complained, playfully flicking Izzy’s kneecap, “I can’t do anything about the gym smell right now, so you’re gunna have to suffer, sorry.”
“Gym smell?” Mikey accused from across the circle, “What happened to taking “just a walk”?”
Quincy stiffened.
“I… walked,” he said, faltering. “… To the gym…”
Exasperated, Mikey laid his hand of cards face down on the floor to better shoot a judging stare his roommate’s way.
As if seeking protection from the judgement, Quincy snuggled himself further back against Izzy.

Meanwhile, Mikey waved for the girl on his right to start the game, and she tugged a black card off the pile and began to read it out loud. Annabell found herself staring at the other girl as she pinched the card between three fingers- the only three present on her left hand- before setting it carefully back down in the middle of the circle for everyone else to see. Annabell managed to divert her eyes back to her own cards when everyone else began searching their hands for the perfect answer to “What’s fun until it gets weird?”
She considered the people sitting around her at the same time she considered placing her “Puberty” card in the middle of circle. Eight’s division was certainly filled with some colorful characters, but at the same time, it was painfully obvious why some people had been banished to the endless filing cabinet mazes to work. Quincy had said it himself, he used to work in the First Division before whatever…
As she reached out to place her chosen white card face-down in the middle of the circle with the rest of the answers, her eyes drifted back to the forcefield-creating boy.
Quincy’s gym clothes showed off a lot of skin, or well, at least enough for Annabell to see those blotchy, ragged scars peeking out on the side of his left thigh. More visible were they on his left arm and shoulder, those burn-like marking fading out just before reaching his neck. There was a story behind them, obviously, and despite all morbid curiosity Annabell knew it would probably never be her place to ask. In fact, she felt horribly out of place in the circle, unused to the environment and awkward. The game being played wasn’t helping much either, especially considering the answers being read out loud by the other girl, who snorted loudly with each and every one.
Annabell continued to shift uncomfortably, and maybe she did it too noticeably because soon enough a hand reached over to tap on her knee. Raising her eyes to the owner of the hand, Mikey blinked back at her, lips pouting in slight concern.
“Hey, you okay?” he asked, to which Annabell nodded and chirped back with a quick “I’m fine!”
“Oh, cool.” Mikey replied, dropping the subject. Annabell returned to staring at her white cards without really reading them over, but she didn’t get to brood for long, as the hand tapped her knee again, followed by a curt statement of, “What I think will get this card game really rolling for you is a good icebreaker.”
Turning back to Mikey, Annabell blinked blankly as the guy shook a container of Icebreaker mints towards her as an offering.
When she continued to stare silently at the mints, if only a bit confused, Mikey’s face flushed slightly before he turned his head away, quickly, and shoved the mints back into his jean pockets.
“Lame joke, never mind.”
“But,” Annabell amended once she understood the joke. Her face scrunched up a bit, “It was pretty funny. And I would like a mint.”
“Man, you don’t have to humor me,” Mikey said, his red face still turned pointedly away from the girl.
When he pulled the Icebreakers out and offered them again, Annabell this time took one.

asi • 10 February 2017 at 7:11 AM

As retribution for his crimes, Izzy weakly swatted his boyfriend on the back of his head before reaching behind himself to pick up his cards again. With his delicate, pointed chin weighing down Quincy's shoulder, and an arm reaching around the guy's throat resembling more of a chokehold than a loving embrace, Izzy was in a prime position to comfortably sort through his cards without risking Quincy seeing them.
He was a very slow reader so it was only when he was nudged and reminded to keep up did he hastily thumb through the lot and put forward a card, dropping it into the center with the rest. It was done knowing it was probably not the best answer he could've made with his hand, but at least he was sure "my XXX life" was a solid answer that made sense. For him that was a relief.
Duty accomplished, Izzy took some reward time to lean back and admire the great view of pretty neck he had in front of him. It was definitely nice, and he only stopped his one-eyed staring as quickly as he did because he could feel another eye, or set of them, doing the same.
He switched to staring strangely at the blonde until she too looked away.
Honestly, this was why he didn't like hanging out with 'friends' and his boyfriend. They always made things weird.
Grumbling a bit under his breath, Izzy stretched over to grab a replacement card from the deck. He scanned it with only a brief huff before flopping the collection back down on the floor behind him, wearing a face that was disgruntled, and disinterested.
Annabell and Mikey had a very awful exchange which Izzy, in his listlessness, observed. He said to Quincy in a lowered voice, but not very; "Why's your roommate so lame?"
He also stretched out a hand towards the guy, palm up, looking expectant. If the dude was going to offer a kind of candy to one person in the group, he'd best be prepared to fork them out for everyone. Or else something.

taffy789 • 11 February 2017 at 3:56 AM

Quincy, who had been sending his roommate pitying glances during that entire painfully awkward conversation, frowned at Izzy’s comment. Undoubtedly, Mikey was acting incredibly lame, but the guy was obviously just very shy about being around the blonde girl he had a crush on, so the comment about the lameness was unnecessary… or, at least, just unnecessarily loud. In all honesty Quincy would’ve found it perfectly funny and would’ve snickered had his roommate not been sitting two feet away from him. Instead, he just awkwardly stared at the next black card that was thrown out to the center for everyone to answer, ignoring the irritated, flushing with embarrassment look Mikey threw his and Izzy’s way as he also sourly tossed the half-empty container of Icebreakers at Izzy. As his boyfriend’s arm rested heavily over his shoulders, Quincy relaxed under the comforting weight while wondering to himself how he would later make it up to Mikey for that one.
He focused on the game instead of musing over that guaranteed minefield.
The next two cards passed without much incident. When the guy after Tina- the new girl to Quincy’s office who’d come from down from the Fourth division following that post-Truce mess- began reading out his cards, the only interesting development came after he announced Mikey’s “Passive-aggressive Post-it notes” card the winner of the round. As the guy, who was some random face Quincy had seen around the Eighth division maybe once or twice, tossed the black card to Mikey, the guy caught a glimpse of Annabell, blinked, and exclaimed, “Oh man! I recognize you!”
Annabell only blinked in reply to this, the expression on her face obviously conveying that the recognition was not mutual.
“Yeah, oh, yeah!” the guy tapped the girl next to him, who jumped, startled. “Lucy! Remember when we were sent by Eight to pick up this girl from the hospital?”
“Oh, yeah,” Lucy agreed, tapping the sides of her glasses as if proud of recalling the memory, “I do remember being asked by Eight to go find the ‘Annie girl’! Man, was that terrifying!”
Apparently not terrifying to only those two messengers, Quincy noted, as Annabell herself shifted uncomfortably at the memory.
As Annabell said, softly and curtly, “Yes, I remember you now…”, Quincy briefly pitied the girl for apparently having been so acquainted with his boss. Annabell wasn’t even part of the Eighth division, yet she had enough sense to be scared of the leader like the rest of his Eighth co-workers and, to a certain extent, himself. Quincy wondered why Eight would take such a vested interest in the blonde girl, out of all people, before giving up and deciding that, since he hadn’t even met the leader for as far as his memory told him, trying to figure out the leader’s… quirks was simply beyond him.
Despite Annabell’s lack of interest in the conversation, the two Eighth message runners continued to chat with the girl about the leader’s crazy ways and mysterious absence following her calling Annabell to her room, almost to the extreme point where it sounded like they almost believed Annabell to have something to do with the extended length of time Eight had been gone this time around…
Mikey looked somewhat concerned by all this on Annabell’s behalf while the girl simply sighed, seeming tired herself.
Despite the intrigue of the initial conversation, the group was soon talking in loud circles and only half paying attention to the still on-going game, so Quincy decided to lean back and relax further against his boyfriend. Having already played a card for the latest round, he set his cards down in favor of pressing his hand against Izzy’s thigh, which he used for leverage as he twisted out of the loving chokehold. Shifting his head against Izzy’s shoulder, he turned so he could bury his face against his boyfriend’s neck, and since he was already in such a perfect position for it, Quincy thought nothing of it to press a few quick kisses into Izzy’s neck. So, he did. After that, he remained nestled comfortably in place, eyes closed and perfectly deaf to the world all the way up until that awkward clearing of throat followed by a “Hey, you’re Card Czar this round.”
Flushing, Quincy pulled away from his boyfriend, returning to Earth with a sudden jolt. Kicking himself for honestly forgetting other people were actually present for a few minutes there, Quincy drew the next black card for everyone, quickly, as if to make up for both the delay and not-so-subtle PDA.
The card he drew didn’t quite do him any help.
“… What ended my last relationship,” Quincy read out, blandly.
Out of the ensuing grins and snickers emerging from the group that was hastily searching for that perfect card for this one, Quincy didn’t notice Mikey grinning perhaps the hardest out of everyone present, and neither did he notice a return of that conspiring wink, once again sent in Annabell’s direction.

asi • 11 February 2017 at 4:58 PM

"Will it work?"
Hearing a deep, whiskery voice sound from just barely a respectable distance to her left, Raven shuddered like a leaf shriveling under a sudden chill. Her slow turn to look was lagging and stunted, as if her hesitance to meet the hulking form's stare was a physical restraint as well.
When they did meet, it came as something of a relief. The eye was hard and cold and formed of granite, but it wasn't blazing with anger as she feared. Relieved, Raven gave a long rattled exhale, dropping her braced good arm back to her side before saying, with a reproachful side-eye; "Jeez, don't scare me like that. I didn't see you there..."
"You didn't hear, either," the large woman observed, her slow, rich, throaty baritone audibly reverberating in the room with every word, expanding like a balloon as they left her mouth. No matter how lowly she spoke, Raven wouldn't be surprised if every person in the room could hear and understand. "Something on the mind?"
There was a thud as the woman moved her stick forward, stabilizing her balance, then she straightened, the darkly feathered rim of her mammoth winter coat puffing outward. Her own thick, voluminous hair seemed to blend in with the feathers where they touched, in some places indistinguishable despite the difference in black and brown. All of this only served to make her look more enormous and imposing than she already did. "Tell me," her steely eye remained fixed on Raven while her eyelid lowered, narrowing. "Five and myself. You think that we will be able to work?"
Raven cleared her throat, frowning very uneasily at the question put to her. "Work together, you mean?" She would have flattened her collar only she found herself to be wearing just a t-shirt.
The fierce woman before her nodded steadily, large calloused hands flexing around both grips supporting her.
"Well..." Raven stalled, glancing away to where the giveaway length of hair hiding Tracy now stood, mingling in the background. She thought she caught sight of a gleam looking her way, amongst the tangle of dreadlocks.
But her lack of attention was not doing her any favors.
"Now," the veteran said firmly, with a kind of iron to her that made the softer, sandy stone around them seem to give way. In fact, the ground actually shook and trembled beneath them, accompanied by several sharp jolts. The whole room seemed to stumble, save Viki. "I want your judgement."
Thankful she was with flats on her feet this time, Raven pushed herself up from the crate she'd grabbed ahold of in the tremor. She wanted badly to glare and snark sarcastically at the woman, but knew that would go down well.
Instead, Raven blew some poofy hair out of her face and said, steady after one hesitation; "I- I think so. But you have to stop testing him."
Standing firm after telling the towering fortress of a veteran she had to do something seemed harder by the second as Viki looked at her, mouth twisted, eyebrows knit, clearly dissatisfied.
She was really lucky Tracy decided a localized earthquake warranted their hair gliding back over. Even though it was to say, "Viki has to test him. As part of his training. If Five cannot be tested, she can't know what she has to teach him. And if she can't teach 'em, it'd be better if we arranged with One ta send ya two elsewhere, Birdie. This is a tight ship Viks runnin' and if he's gonna interfere or risk things like that again there could be serious trouble."
Dreadlocks sure could chatter. During which a pinched frown grew on her face, the physical manifestation of Raven's vexation. "I don't know. Maybe try talking to him about it, like an equal? Don't get me wrong, he'll drive you to frustration both ways but one might make you seem like less of a jerk... No offence," she tacked on the end, remembering who she was talking to. When their eyes connected, it felt like a lightning strike to the black and now frizzly-haired assistant.
Viki was just staring at her seriously, eye a cold, stormy grey that unsettled Raven much more than the black eyepatch covering the other side of her nose.
Swallowing noisily, Raven dropped her gaze onto the floor to recover her scrambled nerves. Or maybe they'd been fried? Zapped by lightning? Definitely cooked.
Tracy turned back to Raven having taken this in. "I guess we won't send ya back already, but she really ain't happy about the other day," they warned, spindly limbs crossing over their chest defensively. "Was a disaster."
That was all well and good, but it wasn't very constructive either. It was hard for Raven to see what she was supposed to have done, and it was even harder for her to guess that about her maddening leader. She pressed them, mirroring management's pose. "What are you mad about exactly?"
Viki tilted her head back and to the side, looking down at Raven like she was a strange insect specimen or something even more alien, thick bushy eyebrows raised. "Missing peeps for everyone," she growled, then swung away with her cane-crutches, the tough wood of her primitive peg leg making a thunderous stomp with every step she took. The long, sweeping, tremendously thick coat she wore flowed around her as she moved, nearly but not succeeding in concealing the complete absence of any leg at all, prosthetic or otherwise, on her left side.
Raven's right arm had never felt so simultaneously far-removed yet burningly painful as when she stared after the veteran's awful, hobbling gait.
"What on earth was she talking about? There's no way I have to be punished for whatever that is, right?" Raven said rather blankly to Tracy without glancing their way. She was still petrified in place in the aftermath of the veteran.
From under their clumpy beaded hair, they loosely shrugged their gangly octopus shoulders and replied, "Uh yeah, not for that, but for the other stuff? The whole unnecessary disaster scout? Yeah, Viki wants you to stay here to help keep the party running. See because this kinda event is so rare," they began striding over to one of the big nearby boxes, working around the edge to prise the thing open, "it would be pretty lousy if any of the guys had to miss out because it's at the same time as their shifts, ya know. So it's simply gonna run all day! And we gotta keep it alive for everyone throughout," they concluded with a whistle. "It's gunna be hard, grueling work, Birds, hope you're feelin' up to it."
Raven had both her hands stuffed deep into her jean pockets as she eyed the box, not in the least bit diverted. What in the world could be inside that was so earth-shattering, it made a veteran who could literally shatter the earth so stupidly infuriated. "All day?" Raven deadpanned, waiting and watching Tracy work the lid without much patience.
"All day," Tracy confirmed, then abruptly pulled up the lid.
She stared into the crate's depths with a look of intense unamusement, as the cogs in her brain slowly turned and pieced together what she saw and what it meant in her head.
A crateful of sugary Easter treats, the packaging of some cruelly and savagely torn into, confectionery nests left barren and empty as occupants had been snatched and torn from their homes. It was a scene of tragic devastation, no two ways about it.
Raven had half a mind to slam the lid back down on this farce, but, whatever. She supposed for some, candy was Serious Business.
"Five was supposed to get these delivered, but unfortunately, not all of them arrived," explained Tracy dryly. They actually seemed rather put out by the loss. Their tone had turned pouty, and there was something the assistant found strangely cute about the sound.
Speaking of 'cute'. "So he's got a sweet tooth..." Raven wanted to both sigh and groan at once, but didn't care enough to perform either.
"So he's completely unreliable," Tracy countered, audibly very much scowling, and that brought her own scowl in return. Raven opened her mouth to retaliate-
But they were interrupted when Telly bounced up from out of nowhere, quite literally. "Hey guys, it's a party! Why don't we have a little fun?" she prodded them rowdily, and the two dark-haired individuals exchanged an equally dull, sober look while the silvery-blonde stuck her arms over both of their shoulders, smiling with determined enthusiasm.
They were definitely going to have fun.