Private Roleplay~ IOD

demon • 12 February 2017 at 5:35 AM

Izzy looked momentarily frustrated by his boyfriend's lack of response, but was at least somewhat, begrudgingly, mollified by the refreshing promise of mints flying his way... Of course he didn't catch it, but they were easily retrieved from the floor where they smacked into it. Feeling just a little better now, Izzy popped one into his mouth before carelessly handing off the container to whoever was sitting to his left. Sharing is caring, right?
He passed the next few rounds in a fuzzy state of contentment, sucking languidly on a minty-fresh candy while his lovely warm- though admittedly less than fresh scented- boyfriend leaned into him. Playing cards about as peacefully as one can play a round of Cards Against Humanity. It was nice, and when Mikey happened to win a round, even Izzy could concede that he had handily deserved it with that play.
Some of the Eighthers were chatting animatedly to/at Blondie, which kept the conversation flowing, he supposed. For his part Izzy paid little heed to it, except to note that if he ever wanted anyone especially annoying to disappear for at least an extended period of time, the blonde might be the girl for the job... Izzy's lips twitched in amusement, before he realized the group was waiting on him to hand in a card once more.
At that, things started to get more restless, and so did his boyfriend... But also not, because he was possibly really sleeping on Izzy? (To which the curly-headed brunet could empathize, definitely). If it wasn't for the... yeah.
From his complexion, Izzy wasn't really one to blush. But he felt all of a sudden too hot and too crowded in the small office room with his boyfriend pressed so close, and doing that, lips on his neck. So it may not have been with a flush of his skin, but his face definitely did react to his situation... By doing something a lot like uncomfortably cramping up.
He wasn't sure how his expression appeared to everyone else, but it was possible he was conveying a look of disgruntlement, discomfort or even repulsion, he wasn't sure.
In any case, he remained frozen still how he was until Quincy was the first to move away, then he quickly shuffled backwards, putting some chiller air in between the two of their bodies. Izzy immediately missed the warmth and the wonderfully sunny feeling Quincy had given him, but... It did help him actually recover a real grumpy face...
Feeling completely flustered and out of sorts, Izzy blinked his good eye furiously, the other side's tatters fluttering feebly along with the motion, and tried to focus down on reading his cards, though he didn't know the question and the printed words seemed to keep floating away.
Eventually he just surrendered the card the second from the left in, because he knew it was a good one that his honey would surely appreciate... "A bigger, blacker-"
Izzy snapped his eye closed tight and simply waited to see how this would go down.

taffy789 • 12 February 2017 at 9:47 PM

“So,” the girl, whose name Annabell learned was “Tina”, said while flicking in her addition to the growing pile of answers sitting in the middle of the group, “Am I the only one who played this card as if it had said “current” and not “last”?”
“Probably not,” Mikey answered for the group, sliding his card towards the center as well. “Though I like to think mine universal for Quincy honestly.”
Annabell followed that evil grin Mikey had all the way over to its target, who was currently bent over slightly, pressing his hand right above his glasses as if making a roof over them. Quincy seemed to be in the midst of some great, tragic pain, with how downcast he sulked as most of the group continued to grin and joke at his expense.
Honestly, she would’ve almost felt sorry for the guy… if the atmosphere was any less good-natured.
Instead, she watched, slightly amused, as Quincy finally lifted his head up, exclaiming to no one in particular, “Okay. I’ll accept it this time around. But. I need to complain. Why in the world do I always get the crappy relationship cards?”
“God’s will?” Mikey answered back so flippantly that Annabell easily deduced that God certainly had nothing to do with it, that a worldlier answer could be found- found perhaps, sitting on her direct right? Mikey raised two eyebrows at his friend. “Anyway, stop complaining and just accept that the fact that the only reason you’re even invited to these games is the that you’re a CAH comedy goldmine in like, three separate categories.”
As Quincy made a face at that statement, Tina piped up, “Yeah, but Mikey, you’re only invited ‘cause we need to play the “Authentic Mexican Cuisine” card on someone~”
Mikey mimicked Quincy’s frowning pout perfectly.
Quincy grinned at his friend’s comeuppance, but after seeing that everyone had thrown in an answer already, he gave a sigh and sobered up a bit.
“Whelp, show me your worst, I guess,” he shrugged, then flipped over the first card.
The first one made Annabell scrunch up her nose, and Quincy wheezed before he began to even read it.
“Vomiting mid-” he huffed out a large quantity of air, “Nope. Nope! That’s disgusting, I hate it.”
“… Enough to potentially end a relationship you’re in?” Tina prodded, too obviously, while others in the group were stifling giggles at Quincy’s disgust.
“Enough to put down this card and never pick it up again,” Quincy assured the girl, and Tina sulked at that answer.
If Quincy was expecting something more tasteful when he flipped over the next card, he was surely disappointed by the next line of text.
“A bigger-” he choked, and flushed, “Wait, wait! How am I supposed to take this one?”
“I mean,” Mikey quipped, “How would you usually take it?”
Annabell flushed bright red and buried her head in both her hands at that. Across from her, she heard that Lucy girl burst into uncontrollable snorts of laughter.
“In context of the question,” Quincy continued, at a louder volume while his cheeks grew darker with the influx of red, “I mean. I feel like I’m being kinda dumped with this one…”
“It’s best you don’t read that much into them,” Tina recommended.
Quincy made a small noise of agreement before flipping over the next card.
“… Exactly what you’d expect,” he monotoned, blinking in confusion.
Mikey nodded, sagely. “Exactly what you’d expect? Ah, yes. It is was a bigger, blacker-”
“Stop,” Quincy pleaded.
Annabell stopped peeking out from between her fingers and lifted her head up fully as both the guy and girl across from her burst into vicious fits of laughter. She blinked at those two before turning to Mikey, who was wearing such a huge grin that she wasn’t sure it could fit on his face if it got any bigger. She looked over at Tina, who was smirking, which wasn’t new. In fact, Annabell noticed, the girl hadn’t busted into laughter once the entire game. That smirk of amusement was present, yet nothing else seemed funny enough to elicit one giggle from the girl…. Not even Mikey’s “Passive Aggressive Post-It Notes” play, which had even made Annabell cover her mouth to muffle the involuntary giggles. Annabell made a mental note that the girl was a strong bulwark of rock when it came to comedy, impervious to even the most disarming, horrible joke.
Speaking of horrible jokes…
“So, what ruined my last relationship? … A web of lies,” Quincy read out from the card. He stared at it for a second. Then he set it down back in the center. “Ouch,” he commented, snorting a bit, “That one was too real.”
Although Annabell did not say a word, her face said it all. Well, the entire game so far, she had been trying to make her answers make the most cohesive sense! Although the more random, shock-value plays seemed to be winning, and given her lack of a single win yet, perhaps shooting for “dark realism” in this game wasn’t the best proven way to win…
By the way Quincy kind of set her card off to the side and how everyone just kind of snorted in bland recognition of how fitting the card was… she knew she wasn’t going to win this round either, and she accepted that fact fully.
The next card, no matter what it was, certainly had a better chance at winning than hers did…
The card was flipped over, clear as day for whoever wanted to read it,
“Daddy Issues.”
Quincy’s head slammed into his palm at max velocity. Mikey doubled over, wheezing with laughter at his roommate’s reaction.
After everyone had giggled a bit, Quincy finally lifted his head again, and he reached out to flip the card over. “Okay,” he said, and Annabell noticed that slight, uncomfortable shift in movement, “Just going to, uh, repress one of you making me read that with my own two eyes.”
“Can’t repress the truth, buddy,” Mikey joked.
“Yeah, yeah,” Quincy forced a humorless snort and quickly scooted the card off to the side.
When he picked up the next one, Annabell could’ve imagined that the guy was repressing a sigh of relief that the entire ordeal was nearly over as he read out, “… All you can eat shrimp for $4.99..?”
“Okay!” the girl, Lucy, sighed with reluctance following the shared looks of confusion, “I literally had nothing so I burnt a card.”
While most in the group nodded in understanding at this, a fit of giggles began to arise somewhere to Annabell’s right… When she looked, Annabell’s eyes widened to see that unbreakable smirk on Tina’s face cracking into a wide smile.
“You,” Annabell exclaimed despite herself, “found that the funniest?”
“I mean!” Tina gasped between laughter, “That one has the most story potential behind it! It’s like implying, I dunno, that your boyfriend left you for all-you-can-eat shrimp or something like that!”
“Or like it’s saying,” Lucy added thoughtfully, “maybe the couple broke up over the all-you-can-eat shrimp, like there was a huge falling out over something dumb like who would pay.”
Mikey shook his head before commenting sarcastically, “Ah yes, the big three things that ruin any relationship. Money, kids, and your girlfriend dumping your butt after that tragic trip to a $4.99 shrimp buffet.”
Okay, when put in that perspective… Annabell covered her hand with her mouth, blushing and struggling to hold in any loud giggles that threatened to pour out at that last comment.

As the group continued coming up with more and more wild ways somebody could get dumped over all-you-can-eat shrimp, Quincy chose the winning card, though really, it hadn’t been that hard.
“So, who won this round?” he asked, gazing around the group and holding up Izzy’s card.

asi • 13 February 2017 at 8:13 PM

Izzy held a neutral if somewhat scowly expression, sitting back and to the side of Quincy now with his legs crossed in front of him, while the rest of the group made fun. He might of glared at Tina a bit but if he did it was completely warranted. What was she talking about, breaking up his relationship? That wasn't called for, was it?
As it turned out, it sort of was! Izzy shrunk back in on himself as Quincy began to call the cards... his having the misfortune of being second. He twitched, maintaining his foggy-eyed poker face with some formidable difficulty. His own contributions to the merry mess of giggles this whole gathering amounted to, had mostly consisted of soft, spluttered laughter and derisive snorts, so his stillness wasn't too suspicious, as long as he didn't allow himself anything stupid and guilt-ridden like ducking his head. He was probably just being too self-conscious too, because everything continued to move along quickly.
Too quickly for him to even have a chance to ask Mikey if he really wanted an answer to that question, and why.
Izzy started to sweat at the dumping comment. If Quincy was thinking he was the party hypothetically getting dumped, and Izzy had no plans of doing the dumping, then everything was fine, right? Though he didn't want his boyfriend to be thinking that way... It would probably not be great if Quincy found out that was his card... But it didn't matter since he wouldn't, right? In any case...
Izzy stopped glaring at that girl and started smiling faintly at her instead, simply because he was grateful for her recommendation.
He wondered vaguely if he had any kind of charm value. Tugging his beanie back from his forehead, a few more brown curls sprung loose from the hat's cage, framing his still somewhat chubby yet pointed face gently. The natural, sun-dyed quality of his hair, with the way it faded from chocolate brown to a bright sort of blonde at the ends, could be considered nice, he thought. His cream cardigan was in surprisingly good condition, and it didn't make his frame look too small, either. He'd always been weak, but people had looked at the shape of his ears and said he had a kind of elvish or pixie-quality to him. People had said before that the lazy, unfocused look to his eyes could sometimes be called dreamy... He was disfigured now, of course, and had lost one of those eyes, but maybe not all of his past cuteness?
He tried making his smile more angelic, maybe people might like him more!
Only Izzy completely forgot this line of thinking when the next card was revealed. A web of lies. Gone was every attempt at smiles and cuteness, Izzy's expression could now only be described by degrees of frost. Did someone here know about all the lies he told? There was no way... No one could know. But someone still thought that might really tear their relationship apart? Izzy was... angry.
Izzy didn't really hear the other answers given, too busy was he rubbing at his good eye with one hand, and occasionally his nose with the other, trying to make sure no trace of distress was obvious, or at least, not in liquid. Redness just meant an itch, didn't it? That was all..!
He only looked up again when Quincy declared the winner, giving his misbehaving eye one last impatient wipe before meeting the guy's eyes and realizing, what exactly had just won the round. And incidentally, who.
Forcing a tight, dangerous smile onto his lips, Izzy reached over, pressing for a moment his chest daringly close to his boyfriend's, and plucked the black question card from his hand. As Quincy's eyes widened and snickers erupted all around them, Izzy settled coolly back down, adding the new card to his precise and meticulously arranged collection. Every card was a victory and each careful alignment between them a visual achievement deserving of pride.
Izzy cleared away the last of his sniffles with the side of his hand as he admired the sight, and yeah, maybe he did feel a little smug from that aghast look on Quincy's face, as he snatched that dirty win from him. So what.
Even if Izzy wasn't too good at some relationship stuff, like the sweet things (stuffing that syrupy pancake figuratively in Quincy's face sprung to mind), and the honesty thing... At least he was confident he had other aspects in the bag.
Izzy flipped over the next black card and, after a short pause, read aloud, somewhat falteringly; "During-" he sneezed like a kitten, his freshly-dried eye watering all over again. Brushing the annoyance quickly away, Izzy continued; "I like t' think 'bout... blank," he finished, placing it in his lap while he rubbed lightly at his nose, fearing another sneeze.

taffy789 • 15 February 2017 at 10:49 PM

Annabell only blushed harder, squirmed more awkwardly as the rest of the group went insane at the next card. Really, she began to question why she’d agreed to play sure a raunchy game, and she had been sure the last round had been bad enough…
At least, she thought glancing over all the others and setting her sights on one particular person, despite all the barbed jokes constantly be thrown his way, Quincy seemed to be taking the game well enough…
The guy was shrugging and grinning off all the continued jokes at his expense even now, sometimes flushing with embarrassment and sometimes twitching that good-natured smile into a quick frown, but mostly appearing unconcerned with all jabs.
Instead of getting upset (which, admittedly, is what Annabell would’ve done herself by this point), Quincy made a joke about not having anything good in his hand to get Izzy back with before slapping down a white card, standing up and- after taking a moment to fondly pat down Izzy’s beanie- momentarily wandered off away from the circle.
Meanwhile, the Lucy girl was screaming about how the $4.99 shrimp buffet card would’ve been perfect for this round…
Annabell shifted through her own cards, not really that excited but her choices, which were all varying degrees of lewd and nothing she really felt comfortable playing, especially around all these people she barely knew! Even if they were a rather friendly bunch… As she sighed, Mikey frowned as the now empty tin of Icebreaker mints was passed over to him from Tina. He then mimicked the girl’s forlorn sigh in a perfect pitch.
A little later, Quincy returned and sat back down, muttering something about allergies as he pushed a fist full of tissues at Izzy. Annabell was one of the only people not focused on fighting about the game and glanced over Izzy out of the corner of her eye after hearing this. … Although the boy had certainly sneezed earlier, she certainly woudn’t have claimed allergies were the reason he seemed so… upset?
Then again, the boy struck her as always looking mildly upset about something, and Quincy did seem to, er, know the other guy much better than she did, so she forced the nosy thoughts out of her mind and let allergies be reason enough for all that subtle red…
… And then that’s when the answers to Izzy’s black card began to be flipped over, and Annabell immediately forgot everything, instead getting lost in the cacophonous swirling of lewd laughter.


~~~~~~~~~


A good hour later, after a few circles around the group had been made, Annabell finally decided she had enough of the card game for one day. A winner had been declared, Lucy of all people, and as the decks were being reshuffled, Annabell saw her chance to leave without looking like the admitted faint-hearted prude she actually very much felt like.
Perhaps with just a little too much of a self-conscious blush coloring her cheeks, she quickly stood up, declaring, “Um! It’s been um, really fun and all! And I loved meeting you all, but I really need to get back to what I’d originally had come here for.”
“Oh, yeah,” Mikey said, craning his neck up in a rather uncomfortable position so he could meet the tall blonde’s eyes, “if you came here for something important, well, don’t let our silly game hold you back any! Yeah, of course…”
… Was she just imagining things, or did he not sound so peppy as he tried to make his words out to be…?
The thought was lost on her when Quincy’s voice piped up. “Mikey, hey, we came here to pull you out of this place.”
“What?” Mikey blinked, his head whiplashing around to his roommate, “What for?”
Sometime between the endless jokes thrown his way and the general uproar of the game, Quincy had worked his head into Izzy’s lap, with the rest of his body angled oddly and seemingly uncomfortably pointed away from the circle of people. Despite this, he still seemed relaxed. His mellowness was only emphasized by the squinty, almost smiley form his eyes took on since his glasses were currently folded and tucked into the collar of his shirt. “Archive room,” Quincy explained, simply, “Kind of need the keys for the computer and cabinets and all that junk.”
“Oh,” Mikey said, “Oh, ‘course.” He passed the cards he was shuffling to Tina, who took them in her good hand and muttered something grumpy about how the game was harder to play with less people.
Nevertheless, Mikey still reached behind him, snatched up his cane, and then struggled to stand up and leave. Not wanting him to fight against gravity too much, Annabell helped the guy up.
After thanking her twice, Mikey turned to the other two guys to make sure they were standing up too, which they were- Quincy in particular seeming a bit reluctant as he pulled his head off of its resting place on Izzy’s thigh. Eventually, when everyone stood and looked ready to go, Mikey patted the pockets of his jeans, assured everyone he had the keys on him, and then led the group out of the file management room and back into the endless hallways of the Eighth Information wing.

asi • 16 February 2017 at 9:51 PM

Septa looked at the two of them, both James and Cindy having turned pale and clammy in appearance, possibly even resembling corpses, and doubled over, cracking up. "Ah, ha, hah," he wheezed breathlessly. "You lot sure are a mess today! Aren't you supposed to be the semi-competent ones 'round here?" he snickered as he drew himself back up to his full height.
James had their arms crossed and their shoulder leaned against one of the stall walls as they critiqued him, "You were out of her range, in a toilet talking on a phone for upwards of an hour... I'm not surprised Molly thought you'd got away somehow, you don't usually have such a long attention span," they reminded the leader lightly. One of their eyebrows was raised to a quirky height. Xela rather thought the bartender might have been one to count the feat as impossible for the leader as well.
Septa waved his phone around dismissively in response. "Ha, guess I lost track of the time! Oh, is Molly still waiting outside?"
He seemed perfectly delighted by the idea he could cause so much confusion whilst remaining, for once, perfectly confined and stationary. Xela twisted her face in distaste, didn't he have a conscience? What a terrible boss, Xela was sure she wouldn't work for him for all the world. She wondered why these teens were doing it in the first place...
"You empty-headed idiot, that girl had James and me running all over the place looking for you!" Cindy seethed, scolding him strictly, criticizing him for his 'inconvenience' to her, while James added in a smaller voice;
"Actually, just me..." They smiled amiably, gently trying to hold the up-in-arms blonde back without a touch of contact, just the soothing sincerity of their voice working as a sedative.
Cindy exhaled, but couldn't argue much with that. She stuck up her nose and made a snooty sound but said no more.
"Anyway, before you lot interrupted, my phone call wasn't quite done, so if you all don't mind, I'm going to finish it," Septa was pouting, and seemed to be scolding them playfully, but... there was something else to him, something cold, like he really was irritated that they'd come and disturbed him. It seemed to emanate from him. Where normally he was all light and warmth... Now he was notably less so.
And James seemed to feel it too, smoothly stepping to the side, positioning themself towards the exit. "Ok! We'll head out then..."
Septa nodded, and his fingers moved across the screen of his phone in order to dial.
That's when Guithe stepped back from the guy and raised her hand as if in signal. "Big Brother?" she called out, prompting him to look up distractedly.
"Huh?" The second he did so, his fate was sealed. The young man was shot directly in the chest, the rapid fire then moving upwards to blast at his face, quickly transforming the leader into a mess of wet, soggy, emotionally-wounded leader.
"What on earth?" Septa bemoaned, shaking the water out of his long frilly sleeves and wiping it off his phone's screen.
Cindy stood strong and defiant, feet braced firmly apart, determined to hold her ground as she pointed her gun at the leader and yelled. "Don't tell me you've forgotten, Septa! Today's Waterfight Royale day!"
A shadow passed over his blank face briefly, before it suddenly cleared again. A slightly condescending smile lifted his lips. "You kids are still doing that? Oh my god," the guy laughed and shook his long black hair, loose and wild as it was, like a great big hairy dog, so that it sprayed the whole group with water from Cindy's water rifle. Everyone but James recoiled in response.
They were smiling too, as always, in their easy-going way. Xela was also starting to notice they had a habit of perpetual leaning. "It's our training, right?"
Septa coughed loudly and in a bad imitation of actually coughing. "Yes, that's definitely why that became a thing!" His smile was definitely very unconvincing.
The other three teens in the room all sighed, simultaneously.
"Why did you even think I soaked you this morning..." James was musing, voice buzzing lowly with stifled laughter.
"A-anyway, can I make this call now?" Septa was beginning to sound rather put upon. "I was in the middle of getting some invaluable advice on how to woo the ladies when you interrupted, I'll have you know!" He shook his finger at them jokingly. That said, there was a tic to his foot, Xela noticed, that hinted everything was not patience inside his head.
She was starting to wonder, after all James and Cindy had said on top of his shifty behavior, if the young leader wasn't actually paranoid, or... had something serious to hide.
"It depends," said a sly child's voice from just to his right, the dead end of the bathroom's length. "Doesn't it?" A coin was spinning on the tip of one of their fingers. "About the man who ran out and blocked the door when we arrived..."
A chill swept down the still deserted bathroom, its pale, worn and grimy tiles glowing faintly in the poor light.


Izzy kept pretty quiet for the rest of the game, in part from his own feelings- of embarrassment and stupidity for his involuntary overreaction, even though no one other than Quincy had seemed to notice, luckily. (His fist clenched the tissues he'd been given gratefully, though the feeling went unexpressed). But also because Quincy seemed perfectly content to rest on him for as long as they were there, and in no way did Izzy want to do anything to disturb that.
He stroked his hair while they played, while his other hand held onto his cards, and admired how tranquil and relaxed his high-energy boyfriend looked like this. Izzy silently drunk in the sight of skin normally blocked by his frames, he noticed the little dark marks left on the bridge of his nose by the glasses' weight... and the slow, leisurely way Quincy's eyes seemed to labor just to reach Izzy's face when he looked up without correctional lenses in the way.
It was very cute, and Izzy was very sorry to leave the moment behind.
Still, duty called, and when the warmth of Quincy's head left its comfortable place on his lap, Izzy had nothing keeping him there anymore.
"... We actu'lly had a reason for bein' here? Why'd you not say so earlier?" Izzy grumbled, also standing. He followed Mikey behind everyone else, but kept always the closest to Quincy.

demon • 16 February 2017 at 9:52 PM

"Should we call the guy you paid to keep watch back?" Guithe offered innocently, in her chirpy child's voice, and everyone froze, Septa's smile twitching. The little girl held up two coins between her splayed out fingers- one that James had given her and she'd refused to give back... and another that looked newer, shinier, and was dark orange instead of hot pink. "It's funny, the coins he had looked different to the one from earlier," she hummed curiously, rolling the sinero in her fingers so that their slick outer coat caught the light, the orange shining more lustrously than the other's tarnished pink.
Septa glanced at them briefly. "Well, that's a retro mold you got there, kid! They haven't been pink since the first lot we issued, all the guys were happier with orange," he sighed, looking regretful. It seemed convincing everyone to keep pink coins in their pockets was a bit beyond Septa's powers of persuasion.
"Oh, that explains it! So it's a precious keepsake of Mista James', then," Guithe giggled cutely, turning the pink chip around in her little child's fingers.
"Yes that's right so may I please have it back now?" James smiled just about the only fake smile Xela had ever noticed on them, mouth and eyes pulled wide and shut tight, and how fake it was...
Guithe shook her head, grinning, and continued to make a spectacle of the chip, until James knelt down to the kid's height, and brokered an exchange, promising; " "If you do, I'll maybe think," they whispered insistently, "think about letting Cindy dress me up later..." Then Guithe added a stipulation about playing with their hair whenever she wanted.
"Must be an important coin," Xela joked weakly, seeing the gritty Cosa Nostra-type severity with which the deal went down, eyes sharp as knives and hard as bullets, hands clenched taunt like the mechanisms of a revolver as the little sinero dramatically changed hands.
Cindy's eyes suddenly went round. "Is that the one... from the first night you..." she trailed off, then put a hand over her mouth like she'd said something she shouldn't have.
Causing Septa's tender brown pair to trace curiously back to the heptagon of hot pink as it quickly slipped inside James' pocket and disappeared. "What?" he questioned, to which both teens merely responded back with a false, "Nothing!"
Cindy seemed to be oddly angered, or perhaps disappointed about something, but Xela hadn't a chance of guessing what.
All of this had distracted completely from the whole event of Septa's phone call, which they were all only reminded of when the thing started ringing again, that same sugar-pumped bassy affair that had given away the silly guy hiding in a toilet stall earlier. "I'm taking this," Septa informed them impatiently, and picked up the call, placing the phone against his ear.
"No. Stop," Xela said suddenly, and he did, lowering the phone, eyebrows turned in and tilted upwards in rare concern.
Because in his eyes, she had that glare that burned with the threat to ignite... Her usual cool green was boiling hot, turning deep, cooked blue at the edges, and it shimmered and stretched, flexing under the stress all the coursing energy brought with it. Her aura wasn't usually a violent thing, it didn't seem lash out or thrash around without good reason if at all. But now, the way it was tensed and alight with fire, it seemed coiled and ready to spring.
Maybe the seventh leader of the Glaeroes didn't have quite enough confidence to be sure that the fiery, ruthlessly determined power before him, who'd gone rogue from one side of the war and was only cooperating with his own due to his artful trickery... really wouldn't just vaporize him on the spot. Given enough provocation, the consequences clearly might slip her mind.
Or maybe he wasn't worried, and the decision to not escalate the situation was only one of his fanciful whims.
Whatever the case, Septa didn't answer answer the phone even as the person on the other end could be faintly heard calling out to him. His attention was thoroughly otherwise engaged.
Flaming eyes that could kill the leader with a look... Their fearless gaze was fixed on him. They blazed only fiercer in answer to his passing moment's pause and appraisal.
Septa flicked wet strands of hair out of his eyes, and looked evenly back at her.

taffy789 • 16 February 2017 at 10:39 PM

The sun was fully up by now, shining hot and bright and drenching Naji in a slick layer of sweat, like a second, grosser skin.
He tugged his large sun hat further down over his head, as if that little extra shade could ward off the insurmountable heat.
It didn’t.
Glumly, tiredly, painstakingly, Naji trudged forward over sandy dune after sandy dune instead, trying not to pay much attention to all the arguing ahead of him.
There was a lot of arguing.
Since all the said arguing had grinded the march to a screeching halt, Naji stopped to catch his breath. With some mild sense of relief, he sucked in a deep whiff of hot, dry desert air, and then he immediately proceeded to snort painful sand grains from his nostrils. All the while, Samuel ahead was still ranting on about the path they were taking, much to the vexation of well, everyone who wasn’t arguably sane.
In hindsight, Naji thought to himself while staring at the scene unfolding just a few meters in front of him, this wasn’t at all how he’d originally thought the desert mission would go.
He’d expected suicide.
He’d expected death, had expected terror, had expected Falchions with knives jumping out from behind every sand dune yelling “Oogie boogie!” and taking a swipe at him while laughing maniacally- or something equally comically horrific because, what other way could he possibly die if not in a way others would only later laugh about?
What he hadn’t expected, however, was this:
A lot of wandering.
A lot of petty squabbling.
All of Queen’s greatest hits being sung off key by two guys who had no business singing, let alone dueting so passionately.
Being dragged into singing a song called “Bicycle Race” which he’d never even knew existed until this day and was probably the strangest singular song he’d ever heard.
And finally,
Not running into a single Falchion, feral, or murderous entity of any sort (yet).
Naji didn’t know whether to feel blessed or to shrink under the terror that, oh dear, if something hadn’t gone horribly wrong as of YET, it certainly must go wrong eventually…
Then the arguing grew louder, and Naji retreated further back, forgetting the gloomy future and focusing on the new past instead.
Most of the mission had gone surprisingly well up until this point. Although he’d stayed trudging silently at the back of the pack for most of it, everyone else seemed to be… getting along well enough.
The soldaditos had avoided Samuel and had kept mainly amongst themselves, and Samuel and Jorge had done the same. Those two had only sometimes popped back to make sure their tentmate Naji was still kicking, and also sometimes to drag him into singing backup for songs he’d never heard once before…
Besides that, everyone had stayed in their own lanes. Naji had watched as Gabriel and Amy lead the soldaditos and the rest forward through the swelter desert with enthused confidence. Every sand dune trekked over was celebrated with overjoyed grins and hoots of “doing good, everybody?” They were genuinely so excited about the mission, their apparent goal, that it was almost infectious.
Almost.
Naji, despite how his other team members rushed forward over each large dune, found that old enemy, that fear of the unknown filling his lungs and stopping them from expanding every time he approached the peak of a new dune. Only when he could peer over the top and see no monstrous feral or bloodthirsty Falchion lying in wait did his lungs remember how to breathe again.
Likewise, Samuel and Jorge did not share in the soldadito’s excitement about the mission. They talked, laughed, and joked about sand getting into places where sand definitely didn’t feel pleasant getting into. All the seriousness and gravity the soldaditos placed on the mission seemed to fade away into levity and laughter where those two guys were concerned, and Naji winced at this, able to see the displeasure in Gabriel’s expression at every light-hearted joke from even all the way at the back of the group.
Obviously- Naji thought glumly, now back in current reality and listening to the fighting while sitting near his backpack- the squabbling was inevitable from the moment Samuel decided to join in on the mission fun.
“We should turn back!” came Samuel’s voice itself, reaching a vicious high as the boy argued with Gabriel. “We should’ve turned back an hour ago! We’re too far in Falchion territory!”
“Look,” Gabriel replied, having been biting down on his lip as if to hold back louder, more severe words, “We were told to find the border and travel along it, committing reconnaissance. And by my map, we haven’t even reached the assumed border yet.”
“Haven’t reached the border yet?” Samuel scoffed. “Well, by MY map, YOUR map is dead wrong! Which is what you’re trying to make us!” He pointed a finger at the leaders of the soldaditos “Dead!”
“Hey, Sammy,” Jorge, standing next to his friend, cautioned with a mumble.
“Your map?” Esperanza piped up louder than Jorge’s warning, and her eyes narrowed with a burning intensity. “Do you even have a map?”
“No!” Samuel shot back, and then said, defensively, “But if I had one, it would should how you guys are wrong!”
“If you had one,” Geraldo echoed sarcastically, his hands gripping the straps of his backpack.
Tired of listening to all the arguing, Naji unzipped his backpack and began rummaging through it, wishing the action would be enough to distract him. It barely did anything, and he had resigned to a fate of hearing endless arguing when another warm body plopped suddenly next to him, making him jump up, startled. He looked to his left. Raquel smiled and raised a hand in greeting. Frozen in place with both hands at the bottom of his backpack, Naji could only make a distraught expression that made a confused one flash on the girl’s face. Shrugging her shoulders, her short hair bobbed as she began digging into her backpack for something as well.
Once the initial fear and surprise had passed, Naji turned beat red while the girl’s own look of- what was it, confusion, or maybe even disgust?- seared itself into his darkest, most socially awkward memories. He wanted to die. But since his anxiety also told him that, nope, he also did definitely not want to die, Naji pulled his sunscreen bottle from his bag and began reapplying that instead.
After facing away from the girl and refusing to look back at her for a solid two minutes, Naji’s body began drifting away, twisting back around so he could look at her from the corner of his eye… Raquel had dug an apple from her bag, along with a clean hunting knife. With some amount of difficulty, she was attempting to slice through the smaller apple with the large blade, gripping the apple tight with her right hand and attempting to carefully push the knife through with the other... Then, the pressure she applied with the knife suddenly became too much and she yelped and dropped the apple as the sharp blade cut to the apple’s core too quickly, too unexpectedly, barely missing her thumb at the bottom-!
Flipping around to fully face the girl, Naji quickly blurted out, “Are you okay?!?”, fearing that the girl had really lost the finger trying to cut the apple. Raquel blinked, not understanding, but she seemed to comprehend the situation just enough to smile slightly and wiggle her right handed fingers in front of the boy’s nose, as if saying, “Yep! All digits still present!”
Sighing with relief, Naji picked up the apple for the girl, brushing the sand off of it. He was about to reach out and hand it back to Raquel when he noticed the already hefty slice through the apple’s side and a thought overcame him.
“Um, don’t worry about using that dangerous knife anymore,” Naji said, staring at the red apple’s skin instead of meeting the girl’s intense eyes, “I can half it for you.”
He claimed this, despite all usual lack of self-confidence because, for whatever reason, he really wanted the girl to… like him. After all, he reasoned pessimistically, Raquel already probably already didn’t like him, or thought him weird, or lame, or- or some negative, completely justifiable, and probably true thought. So maybe the act of him halfing her apple for her would somehow… improve her thoughts towards him? Somehow, in some magical way, as if small acts like that actually meant anything? Naji could dream. He could also wish, hope, pray, beg any higher power that would listen, and maybe cry a little on the inside, and Naji did all those things, sequentially.
Lifting his eyes up a tiny bit, seeing Raquel’s deep, magnetizing irises, and quickly lowering his head again, Naji gripped the apple in his hands and chided himself for overthinking this simple action. It wasn’t even that big a deal, he tried telling himself. It wasn’t even that hard. Even he wasn’t wimpy enough to not be able to pull apart an already cut apple, right?

awesomeness • 16 February 2017 at 10:42 PM

Wrong.
Wrong, wrong, wrong, he was so wrong.
As it so happened, the knife hadn’t cut through the core, but had grazed around it, leaving the apple’s strong core completely intact. Naji wheezed pathetically, trying to dig his thumbs against the apple skin as much as he could without bruising the soft fruit. Despite all his efforts, however, the fruit wouldn’t budge an inch further apart.
Naji began sweating.
His mouth turned dry, drier than the sand he was sitting on. The heat of the sun hit his already burning red cheeks, and he felt a particularly strong hot flash overtaking him. Was this the end? Could he see the light ahead? Then a new fear struck him as he worried about not being religious enough, if he truly was meeting his end. Would it look more or less bad if he just started praying right here and now?
To avoid answering onto these difficult, lofty questions of theology, Naji clung onto life and kept his soul from leaving his body, despite how much it wished to flee this current moment in time. Aware of Raquel’s horrible, horrible mesmerizingly horrible eyes on him, Naji began to panic. His fingers clenched the apple tighter, pulling harder, every muscle in his body seemed to be trying to will this apple to come apart-!
But then a thought came into his head, a sickening, dark thought that bled a fleshy, red and burned him to think about, but what choice did he even have, really?
Sucking in a breath, Naji concentrated on that clean slice through the apple, the one already so conveniently made. The red apple’s white inner flesh glowed a color that almost matched its skin for a few moments, and Naji focused more while applying a tad bit of pressure to the apple, and-
Snap!
“Here you go!” Naji yelped, shoving the two, clean apple halves towards Raquel, as if they were on fire and his hands were made of ice.
The girl took them, smiling and seemingly oblivious to the entire tiring, stressing mental journey Naji was on during the entire apple-breaking ordeal.
“Gracias,” she said to him, and- still smiling a wide, pleased smile, at him- offered him an apple half.
A dumb smile of Naji’s own crossing his face, he accepted the gift and clutched it in a tight fist, only able to mutter a stuttering, stupid “Gra-icy-as back at you” to the girl. At this, Raquel snorted with a tinkling, amused laughter, and Naji couldn’t wipe that grin off his face if he wanted to.
“YO NAJI!”
But that could.
Being shocked out of his happy haze and almost dropping his apple half, Naji scrambled to his feet, exclaiming a fearful, “Huh? What?!!?”
“Naji!” Samuel shouted again, waving both arms furiously at the boy from a few meters away, “Hurry up! Bring your bag, it’s important!”
“O-Okay!” Naji answered back, grabbing his bag with his free hand and rushing over to Samuel and the rest of the group. Raquel followed quietly behind him, being the last person not in the apparent group meeting. When her and Naji came to the circle of angry-faced people (plus one exhausted looking Jorge), her twin brother immediately pulled her aside and began whispering to her in furious Spanish tones, waving his arms about as if venting on some particularly sore subject…
Naji watched, gulping as Raquel’s usually thoughtful and curious expression twisted into an unpleasant, annoyed one, but he couldn’t watch the girl for much longer due to Samuel suddenly bringing a strong hand onto his shoulders.
“Naji!” Samuel exclaimed, “You have a map and a pen in that over-prepared bag of yours there, right? These guys won’t let me anywhere near there’s and I need to prove a point to some jerkwads.”
Behind Samuel, Jorge brought up a deliberate hand and slapped himself on the forehead before slowly, languidly dragging it down his entire face, pulling at every ounce of loose skin as he did so.
That gesture didn’t make Naji feel good about complying, but Samuel’s intense agitation over the maps made him comply anyway.

~~~

“So,” Mikey began, conversationally, tossing his head halfway over his shoulder, not really looking at those walking behind him be at least making an honest effort, “how did the mission go?”
The group was walking slowly, mainly due to the fact Mikey was the one leading them down the hallway. Annabell shuffled next to the guy at the slow pace, while the other two boys followed behind, strolling leisurely.
Mikey’s head snapped back forward. “Or, is it all some sort of fancy secret mission, that I can’t know anything about..?”
“That’s actually exactly it,” Quincy joked back. He was currently walking on Izzy’s left, so naturally he answered his friend’s question while half preoccupied with intertwining Izzy’s fingers with his own and swinging their both their arms slightly as they walked forward.
Mikey rolled his eyes, and continued to talk to the two behind him, “So, not touching on the oh-so “Secret Squirrel” stuff then, how’d you enjoy the day out? Exciting as you’d hoped?” He shoved the hand not walking forward with the cane in his jean pocket and snorted, “Company as fun as you’d hoped?”
At these questions, Quincy seemed to perk up, a gleam alighting in his eyes. “Actually, yeah, it had all been pretty exciting!” His grip on Izzy’s hand tightened as he recalled yesterday’s mission. “Better than pushing pencils all day, for sure. And company-wise? I, uh-”
Recalling something, he lost his steam.
Although quickly, his corneas flashed quickly to the right, taking a peek at Izzy before straightening themselves out again.
“Uh,” he continued, with a slight clear of his throat, “I’d… thought it had been nice, yeah.”
He cleared his throat again, and rubbed a thumb absentmindedly, almost anxiously, along the ridges of Izzy’s knuckles.
Mikey didn’t have much to say after that.
However, instead of letting the conversation pathetically peter out, Quincy decided to interject, with a sly smile, “Though if you want a real play-by-play of the mission, Mikey, Annabell here could tell you all about it~”
Quincy then watched as his friend’s back seized up, stiffening suddenly, and he couldn’t help but grin at that reaction.
“Um,” the girl was quick to reply, “there isn’t much to say about it, honestly! Nothing that interesting, I couldn’t make a real good story about it if I tried, honest…”
“Oh, come on,” Quincy continued to pressure, unable to hide his wide grin if he tried, “Mikey would be totally impressed by how you handled yourself on that mission! Like, with the water witch? So cool, right, Mikey?”
Mikey choked, obviously not grateful for the less-than-subtle attempted wingmanning. “You know, I might agree, Quincy,” his friend began slow enough, but then hissed out the rest, “if I actually knew what had happened, so I could know what I was agreeing to!”
Quincy couldn’t resist the urge to lift an eyebrow at his friend’s back. With this action, he asked a silent question: “Do you, Mikey, or do you not, want a hot date?” Although Mikey did not see this nonverbal chiding of his failure to go along with Quincy’s clever set-ups, Quincy liked to believe his friend felt the question burrowing into his back, creeping somewhere up his spinal cord and then properly nagging him.
Meanwhile, Annabell just sounded mildly confused as she assured Mikey, “Er, I didn’t do anything amazing, don’t worry about it…”
“No, no!” Mikey immediately responded, blush bleeding down his neck, “I’m sure it was very cool, it’s only, uh, ugh- oh look!” He shouted, and then hurriedly hobbled further ahead of the group, “The Archive Room! Look at that! Let’s all go in now.”
“Yeah,” Quincy agreed with a nod as his friend unlocked the door. “You can take Annabell to go check for whatever she needed, while Izzy and I can go find information about underground swamp bunkers. Sounds like a plan?” He grinned, and lightly tugged his boyfriend along after him as he entered slight chill of the Archive Room. Giving a quick wink towards Mikey, he concluded, resolutely, “ ‘Cause it sounds good to me. So, see you in a bit.” Then, ignoring his friend’s pleas of “wait a minute you bas-”, Quincy pulled Izzy into the verifiable maze that consisted of the Eighth Archive Room.

taffy789 • 17 February 2017 at 10:35 PM

“Cool,” Samuel said as he was handed the supplies. Dramatically uncapping the pen, he sat down, placing the map on his knee as he began to circle areas and draw thick, bold lines.
“So, here’s our camp, around here,” Samuel explained as starred the spot in A-A their camp was most likely located. As he wrote “Camp” over the star, Amy, leaning over him with the rest of the group, frowned.
“Information like that isn’t supposed to be on personal maps,” she reminded him, nose scrunching up in displeasure. “It’s unsafe to tell the entire island where our camp is.”
Samuel rolled his eyes at the nitpicking. “Whatever. We’ll burn it later.”
“My map?” Naji said, horrified, but he protested this so quietly that no one heard him. He took everyone’s silence at his comment as a sign that his map was doomed to a fiery death that he could do nothing to stop. He dropped the protesting.
“And,” Samuel continued, drawing a frantic, zig-zagging line through the middle of the area A and slicing it into halves, “you said you were attacked somewhere around here, right?”
“Correct,” Gabriel said, warily glancing down at Samuel’s drawing, as if the map was being used to plot mutiny against him.
“And now we were told to walk here,” Samuel elaborated, adding an arrow moving left across A-A, underneath the zig-zagged line. “Which is, of course, past the place you got attacked at.”
“Yes,” Esperanza suddenly spoke up with a hiss, “this is all true. But you are not making a clear point with all of this.”
Samuel grimaced and stood up, once again eye level with the group. “This point is that, considering where you got attacked last time, we’re not simply performing recon on the front lines anymore. Most likely, we’re already in established Falchion territory.”
Although Naji wanted to faint with this revelation, the information did not seem to affect the soldaditos much.
Gabriel simply squeezed the bridge of his nose in exasperation.
“Look, you weren’t at the briefing this morning. And that’s fine!” He raised his hands, palms held up in a show of gracious resignation, “I’m okay with you all being late. I don’t mind if you’re late every day. But,” Gabriel sighed now, and it was clear how much stark annoyance he was holding back in that tired expression, “you didn’t receive the same information as we did. And it was told to us that Falchion territory is actually-” he pointed even more left of the arrow than Samuel had drawn- “here.”
“Yeah,” Samuel scoffed, “Ideally.”
At this point, Gabriel seemed to age a hundred years. Naji almost felt pity for the guy, if Samuel had been hammering this hard, he knew he would’ve definitely been reduced to tears by now. He also would’ve handed Samuel the reigns on this mission long ago. Gabriel, on the other hand, clung onto them as tight as ever.
Naji skimmed his eyes over the rest of the soldaditos and saw similar irritation present in their eyes. Even, surprisingly, in the eyes of Raquel, who was talking in whispered Spanish with her translator-brother and glaring at Samuel as if she wanted to slice him in half like she’d done that apple…. Naji shivered and moved further away from Samuel and Jorge, not wanting to be caught in the cross-fire of hatred.
Samuel wasn’t done making the others put his name at the top of their hit list yet, however. Holding the map up like he was a crazed man on a New York street corner who was waving around signs saying that aliens were real, he told Gabriel, point blank, “While the Glaeroes strategy assumes no territory is pre-claimed, the reality is that the Falchions probably consider this entire area theirs, because of the last place they attacked you all. Front lines cut across an entire region, according to the status quo at least. Since the first skirmish was HERE-” he jabbed a finger the zig-zagged line- “that’s where the Front Lines should be. We’re across it. If we were told to go to the edge of Falchion territory, we should’ve gone THERE.”
“But WE were told-” Gabriel began, but didn’t get very far before Samuel snapped with a,
“You were told wrong! And it was on purpose! Those briefings sugar coat everything, god dang it! Don’t you get it, you can’t trust-”
“Dude, hey.” It was Jorge’s turn to interrupt now, and he reached forward, face stoic as he put one hand on Samuel’s shoulder. “Stop it. It’s not worth it, okay? If they don’t get it, they don’t get it. Didn’t we talk about this? They aren’t your responsibility, right?”
Flipping around, Samuel tore his shoulder out from under Jorge’s hand. “I know they aren’t!” he practically shouted at his friend, fists clenched tight. Naji winced at this. If those fists weren’t held so close to Samuel’s hips, then Naji would’ve assumed Jorge was about to get punched.
“But like, this is so obvious!” Samuel argued, the map again flailing wildly in his hand. “They can at least understand this! They have to! They aren’t that stupid!”
“Stupid?” Esperanza and Geraldo both repeated out in a hiss, at the same time. Flipping around to his sister, Geraldo began ranting to his sister, angry hand motions aimed right in Samuel’s direction. Those intense eyes widening, Raquel focused on Samuel, her own hands now clenched into tight fists as well.
“Hey! Since when is it stupid to listen to the mission briefings?” Amy shot out towards Samuel, her large hands sitting on her hips and her blonde ponytail swinging behind her in agitation. “To like, carry out the mission like it’s supposed to be done?”
“Uh, it’s been stupid ever since it’s been getting people KILLED!” Samuel shouted back, flipping around to face Amy. “Which is what’s going to happen to us if we stay on this path!”
“Hey, hey,” Gabriel spoke up, glancing back and forth between Samuel and the soldaditos, who both looked ready to throw down. “Maybe this is a misunderstanding.” He turned to Samuel, putting on a thin mask of pleasantness even Naji could tell he was forcing. “You seem to think we have a death wish, or something like that. And that we’re, what, dragging you all into it somehow? But that couldn’t be further from the truth.” In a show of complete, honest sincerity, Gabriel put a hand over his heart and stated, loudly, proudly, “As the current leader of this operation, I will do my best to assure nobody dies needlessly. Needless dying is certainly a thing I want to avoid.” His eyes shone, and they were filled with such a bright clarity, so assured and set in their purpose, “I swear, the only ones falling like dominos while I’m in charge will be the Falchions! Nobody else will die needlessly! The only deaths allowed are those which serve the mission’s greater purpose!”
The soldaditos seemed to like that speech. They all grinned and nodded, all smug and pleased with Gabriel’s show of commitment to both leadership and the mission at hand. Raquel, Naji noted, even dropped the ugly looks towards Samuel after Gabriel’s speech was translated to her. Instead of glaring at Samuel, she set those captivating eyes on Gabriel. She smiled at him.
But Samuel was less pleased than the rest with Gabriel’s declaration.
“Look pal, don’t you get it?!” Samuel exploded, staring directly into the eyes of the group’s leader, “On IOD, EVERY death is unnecessary!”
Gabriel’s pleasantry fell away. “How could you say that?” he grimaced, offended. “Especially when there have been so many more people who’ve died before us?”
“Yeah, there have. People who’ve died unnecessarily on this horrible island.” Samuel huffed out, impassioned. “And if you all weren’t complete idiots then you would be trying your hardest not to end up like those dead people too.”
Silence overtook the group after that statement. The soldaditos glared at Samuel, and Samuel glared back. Fists remained clenched, eyes remained wild and furious. Samuel was huffing with a greater intensity now, moved to a complete ardent passion. Everyone looked ready to murder each other. Scooted far away from the emitting waves of rage, Naji huddled closer to himself, wanting to cry and preparing for the worst.

awesomeness • 17 February 2017 at 10:39 PM

It didn’t come.
Instead, Jorge breached the two groups, walking directly between them. Naji watched, amazed by his lack of fear. Naji himself was too afraid of getting caught in the surely ensuing fistfight to do anything but remain frozen in place-!
“Guys, I think we all need to take a breather,” Jorge said, softly, glancing back and forth between his friend and the soldaditos. He stopped his glancing to focus more completely on Samuel, and he added, forcefully, “Especially you. Hey, calm, okay?”
Samuel let out an exaggerated breath of air between his lips before finally relenting with a moody “Whatever dude.”
Satisfied with that answer, Jorge turned back to Gabriel. “I think some apologizing is needed, huh? What Sammy- no, what I even said was all out of line. You guys are just trying to do your job how you were told to do it. I getcha, and Sammy does too, even if he’s being all stubborn and doesn’t want to admit it.” Behind him, Samuel glared daggers at the back of his friend’s head.
Jorge continued, unconcerned by the heat surely blaring at the back of his skull. “We have some different ideas of how to go about things, but I think it’s best just to, uh, ya know, go along with the mission however you see is best. You’re the mission leader right now, after all, right?”
“Yeah.” Gabriel agreed, shaking his head. The previous annoyance seemed to slowly drain from his flushed cheeks. “Yeah, I am the mission leader. Thanks for recognizing that, at least.”
At this, the others in the group seemed to drop their tensed shoulders and general irritation as well, calmed at least somewhat. Raquel still looked rather angry with Samuel, but after Geraldo whispered more Spanish to her, she relaxed as well. Seeing that nobody was in danger of getting murdered anymore, Naji breathed a sigh of relief.
“And,” Jorge spoke up after seeing the lessening of tensions as well, “Sammy understands this too, right?”
Samuel flinched back as Jorge spun around, looking at his friend with his arms folding resolutely across his chest.
“Ugh,” Samuel groaned, and then peered behind Jorge, looking towards Gabriel. “Yeah. Yeah. I understand all that. Sorry.”
Although Samuel’s apology wasn’t very convincing, Gabriel still must’ve understood it was the best he was going to get, because he immediately sighed and said, “All accepted. Hopefully we can put this issue behind us for the later missions and the rest of this one, okay?” He held up his hands in a sign of peace, and then he turned to his group of friends. “Guys, come one. We’ve wasted enough time here. We can all grab some snacks and water for a few minutes, but we’re heading out soon again, got it?”
Naji watched as the group nodded before mulling off. He focused particularly on Raquel, who immediately bounced up to Gabriel and, smiling, broke her apple slice into half and handed it to the mission leader. Gabriel took it, and Naji blinked in surprise as he overheard the subtle tones of Spanish drifting out from their conversation… Did all the soldaditos know Spanish, or..? It made Naji wonder just how out of the loop and unprepared for IOD he really was, if knowledge of a second language really was a common thing to have… Although Jorge didn’t know it, at least. And speaking of Jorge…
To his left, Samuel continued to fold his arms across his chest and was emitting furious fumes that Naji swore he could physically feel ebbing off of the guy… Jorge relaxed his own stubborn stance, dropped his hands to his side, and he shook his head. Smirking good-naturedly, he brought up his hand and playfully squeezed Samuel’s nose, saying a soft “Chill” while he did this.
Blinking and quickly pulling away, Samuel rubbed at his nose and rolled his eyes, saying with a slight edge of humor to his voice, “I’ve never been chiller in my life, dude.”
“Not even when you’re on a mission to A-C?” Jorge shot back, grinning dumbly.
Samuel snorted out a laugh. “Pfft. Idiot.”
“Come on,” Jorge nudged his friend, “at least we’re in this desert and not up on Mount Arrowpeak freezing our butts off right?”
“I’d rather be there than here if it meant I didn’t have to deal with these friggin’ soldaditos, man,” Samuel replied with another eye roll. “I couldn’t be able to stand another day of this. One more mission with them and next thing you know, you’ll find me losing a battle to a Falchion mind reader!” He winked with this, and Jorge wheezed, hitting his friend in the arm. “Dude! Don’t say that, ya jerkhole!”
“What?” Samuel laughed, “It’s true! I totally would! I’m desperate Jorge, I freakin’ swear it!”
“Hopefully you won’t be pushed to such extremes,” Jorge replied, flicking his friend in the arm one last time. “After all, this should be the last recon mission we go on!”
“Um,” an interrupting voice began to say, and Samuel, Jorge, and Naji all turned to face the person. Amy blinked back at the group, holding an energy bar while a little too much hope shone present on her face, “Did you guys just say this is, um, like, the last mission you’re going on with us?”
Samuel grinned, triumphantly. “Yep! It’s actually the last recon this week that mission any of us are going on!”
Amy frowned at this. “What?”
“You see,” Samuel’s grin grew wider, more victorious, “Dia’s Spec-Ops are coming to take control of these missions for us!”
The girl’s eyes widened in shock. “Spec-Ops? Dia’s? Coming… here?”
“Yep,” Samuel said, letting his own words soak in to himself, “The admin briefing us told us about it before we left his tent this morning.”
“Oh… my…” Amy’s eyes exploded into a bright firework display, color and light and excitement everywhere, “GOD! Oh my god oh my god!” By this time her screeches had attracted the others over to her, most likely because they were afraid a cat was dying or at least, that would’ve been what Naji had assumed.
“Guys! Naji’s group was told that Dia’s Spec-Ops are coming to our camp! To help with our mission!” she exclaimed to the others as they approached, and everyone else quickly caught the hype. Gabriel reached out and grabbed Amy’s hands, excitedly rejoicing with her, “Oh my god! That is amazing!”
“Wow,” Geraldo agreed, nodding his head. “This is a great opportunity.”
“I just wish they were Mona’s Spec-Ops,” Esperanza said, a small smirk on her cheeks nonetheless. “If I had a shot to get on any Spec-Op team, it would be Mona’s. A place is open for them, too…”
“But like,” Amy exclaimed, looking over at the girl, “Espe, there’s twice the open space on Dia’s Spec-Op team! And Dia may not be as powerful and close to the government as Mona, but she’s still a powerful leader! You can respect that!”
“Of course they’d respect that,” Samuel muttered under his breath, only loud enough for Naji and Jorge standing close to him to hear. Jorge elbowed him for that comment, wearing a frown.
“What?” Samuel protested, rubbing his side, “It’s better they don’t work under Dia anyway. And,” he added quietly, “it’s not as if the leaders are dumb enough to ever put a soldadito on their team…”
“Oh, you know who I would just love to work for?” Amy piped up, loudly, excitedly. Her eyes sparkled. “Deca!”
“… Except that dummy,” Samuel snorted, but yelped as Jorge elbowed him harder in the side this time around.
“Dude, hush up with the negative leader comments before the soldaditos flay you alive for unpatriotism or some crap,” Jorge whispered, jabbing a finger into Samuel’s gut.
“I have a few freedoms allotted to me,” Samuel argued, “and one of them is the right to talk crap about our sucky leadership. It’s a god given right, dang it.” He flashed a glance over to Naji. “Right?” He whispered. “Back me up here dude.”
“Well, uh,” Naji stuttered out, so quiet he might as well have been mute. “I, uh, don’t know much… about the sucky leadership, really? I’ve heard some things but, uh-”
“Oh yeah!” Samuel exclaimed loudly, forgetting all previous whispering in his excitement, “You’re new, right? You’ve never even seen a leader yet, have you?”
“Naji’s never seen a leader yet?” Amy echoed, catching that and interrupting her own conversation to rush over and grabbed Naji’s hands, squeezing them so tightly that the boy wheezed in pain. “Oh Naji! You aren’t the only one here, but you must at least know about them! Right?”
“Uh,” Naji couldn’t think, his hands were turning white, cut off from all blood circulation by Amy’s grip. “No! No, I know nothing, uh…”
“Nothing?” In shock, Amy dropped his hands, and for that, Naji was grateful. As he rubbed his fingers against his khaki shorts in an attempt to regain lost circulation, Amy continued, gasping, “Do you even know about MONA?”
“Uh, Mona runs the base?” Naji answered, wincing and hoping he wasn’t wrong.
“Yep!” Amy grinned, jumping up and down. “But do you know about how they’re super cool and powerful and could probably kill all of us without raising one finger?!?!”
Naji paled. “They- they can?”
“Perhaps,” Jorge interrupted, sliding next to Naji with grace and skill, “perhaps we shouldn’t be spreading all these rumors around, especially when it’s literally all just stuff that gets passed person to person…”
“Or,” Samuel offered, sliding next to Naji’s other side, “we could stop spreading around the FAKE rumors, and stick to the true, factual, TRUE rumors.”
“True rumors,” Jorge wrinkled his nose at the clear oxymoron.
“True rumors,” Samuel repeated, grinning. “Come on, George-y, you know exactly what I’m talking about.”
… Naji, who currently had no idea what anyone was talking about, didn’t really like the direction this conversation had turned. However, he supposed, it was better than everyone trying to kill each other, which was… definitely a nice change of pace.

taffy789 • 26 February 2017 at 4:13 PM

~~~

Annabell watched, puzzled, as Mikey shook fists and flung curses after Quincy as the guy raced out of sight. With the slightest tingle of amusement, she then watched as this fit continued for a few minutes, Mikey hobbling forward while drumming the end of his cane on the ground, calling for his roommate to “get his butt back here”…
Although for all remaining parties, it soon became even more obvious such fervor was wasted on a long lost cause. Once he was all shouted out, Mikey stood still, only his shoulders rising and falling, with his back to Annabell. Then his agitated movements completely stopped and, slowly, as if suddenly remembering the second person behind him, he turned back around to face the girl.
His face was flushed from what Annabell suspected was vexation, but the sheepish way the guy sort of raised a hand to wave at her immediately made her rethink the reason for all that present pink. Wondering what the guy could be soon embarrassed about, Annabell absentmindedly smiled back and raised her own kind hand back in greeting.
That was all it seemed to take to unfreeze Mikey. The red still splattering across his cheeks, he walked over to Annabell, muttered a soft, “Uh, okay, well, let’s start off,” and then continued to walk past her, leading her in the opposite direction Quincy and Izzy had gone.


~~~


“So,” Samuel began, eyes shining as he walked alongside Naji, “The TRUE rumors!”
The group was moving again, Gabriel having pressed for the gossip to be mobile since the last argumentative pit-stop had apparently hurt their mission schedule. Though it was tough, Naji trudged across the desert, lifting one heavy boot at a time and praying his own feet wouldn’t sink too far under the sand dunes. At least his backpack was light, and for that Naji was grateful. It wasn’t as if protein bars or the map Samuel had scribbled all over was weighing him down much, anyway. Because of this, it was easier to listen to the group’s gossip without the worry of some heavy weight sinking him under the sand and letting the earth swallow him whole, which, Naji shuddered, would be a very very very nasty way to go.
“I honestly can’t believe you don’t know like, anything about the leaders! Even Mona!” Amy gasped from the other side of him. From his right, Naji could feel Samuel frown at the girl. Obviously the guy only wanted one gossiper in this conversation, but the girl clung resolutely to Naji’s side- often literally, as she had a habit of randomly grabbing his arm and shaking his whole body with a wild fervor.
Samuel just had to be upset with the surplus of gossips waiting in the wings, Naji noted, because the entire group seemed focused intently on the prospect of leader discussion. Even Gabriel, who had claimed everyone should “focus” and “watch out for those evil Falchions”, constantly swiveled his head backwards in interest at the group conglomerated around Naji. Only Raquel, who walked near the front beside Gabriel, was completely deaf to the conversation, but Naji knew that was likely because it was a conversation occurring in a language she could not understand.
Aware of all the people crowded around him and speaking eagerly about a topic he could add no input to, Naji rather wished he didn’t know English as well, for then he could escape this circle of gossip…
“Mona is like, sooooooo deadly and cool! Could kill you in a heartbeat!” Amy exclaimed, loudly, and Naji knew, in that moment, that he could wish for the erasure of his English tongue on a billion stars, and he still wouldn’t be allowed reprieve from this discussion.
“Mona,” Amy jabbered on, “is the leader of all the leaders! Mona answers directly to the government and carries out their orders!” Her eyes sparkled, “Mona is basically in charge of everyone here!”
“Yeah,” Samuel interrupted, “If she actually exists.”
“What?” Naji blinked, and Amy frowned before arguing back, “What do you mean, if Mona exists? Of course Mona exists!”
“I’ve never seen her,” Samuel replied, shrugging. “Nor have I at least heard about anyone else seeing her…”
“Mona’s Spec-Ops must’ve have seen Mona!” Amy rebutted, “The other leaders must’ve too! Dia-”
“If I trusted everything I’ve ever heard from other people,” Samuel interrupted, coldly, “I’d be dead. I’ll only accept Mona is a hundred percent bonafide if she like. Herself personally punched me.”
Jorge, trailing next to Samuel, reached over and tapped Naji on the shoulder, to grab his attention.
“Basically,” he told Naji once the boy swiveled his head around to ogle at him, “Mona is a rather mysterious person. He-”
“She,” Samuel corrected.
“They!” Amy exclaimed.
Jorge sighed. “They aren’t even technically supposed to have a confirmed gender.”
“They don’t.” Amy insisted.
“Look,” Samuel rolled his eyes, “It’s no secret that those government reports written in Spanish use feminine endings for “Mona” and masculine endings for “Uni”.” He looked at Naji, then elaborated, “ ‘Uni’ being the other possible name for our top leader, Mona. But since all those government reports refer to Mona as “Mona”…” He shrugged, as if it were simple, “This current Mona is a definite girl.”
Jorge didn’t smile in reply to that. Instead, he opened his mouth and argued, “I’ve heard “He” being used before by-”
“But!” Amy butted in before he could finish, “The government wants to keep everything about Mona a secret! So you should refer to Mona as “they”!!!”
Naji blinked, lost in all the needless arguing about pronouns. He didn’t see the point in trying to pin a label on someone no one in the group had ever even met. Honestly, what had Naji the most worked up was what had been said earlier, about Mona apparently having the power to kill everyone without raising a single finger… Really, what kind of labels mattered other than the one of “the last thing you’d see before you die”????
“Either way,” Jorge said loudly, hushing the continued bickering on the subject once and for all, “The OFFICIAL story on Mona is that. One. They’re the official head of the leaders and directly represent the government. Two. They’re mysterious and are not supposed to fraternize with anyone else, ‘cause they’re here to work for the government, not us. Three. We’re not supposed to know anything personal about them. And four. Well. Mona could, uh, kill us all.”
“If Mona actually existed,” Samuel said, tacking his two cents onto that solemn ending.
Walking in front of the rest of the group, Esperanza snorted softly. “And I will show you who doesn’t exist, when I become a Mona Spec-Op and meet them for myself.”
“Good luck,” Samuel scoffed back, “You’ll have better luck with the revolving door of death that is Deca’s Spec-Op team.”
“Are you,” Geraldo snapped back from his spot walking beside Esperanza, “making fun of Deca?”
“No,” Jorge answered loudly for Samuel at the same time his friend muttered a quiet, “It isn’t hard.”
As Jorge glared at Samuel for fanning the flames, Esperanza turned to Naji, eyes blazing which such an intense fury that the boy automatically shrank back, making himself small. “Don’t believe what those fools tell you about Deca,” she snapped his way, and Naji quickly nodded along with whatever she said to him, “Deca is a good guy. And a good leader.”
On his left, Amy sniffled like a ship’s foghorn frantically calling out through thick mist. “Of course Deca is a good guy!” The sniveling grew only more thunderous, “He works the hardest out of all the leaders! He tries his best! He does what he’s supposed to do! He’s! Been! Through! SO MUCH!” Amy had wrapped her hands around Naji’s arm, and with every exclaimed word she’d shaken him wildly, and now he gasped and tried to right his vision again.
“Young. Brave.” Esperanza elaborated, nodding with a stern surety, “An example to Glaeroes everywhere. I want to work with Mona, but it would be an honor to work to work with Deca as well.”
To Naji’s right, Samuel’s persistent frown twitched unhappily, as if his lips were holding back a gallon of bile waiting to spew out from his mouth. From Samuel’s other side, Jorge met Naji’s eyes and shook his head, almost sadly. “Poor kid,” was all he said, quietly, on the topic of Deca, “Poor, dumb kid.”
“Deca is like,” Amy was sniffing still, “one of the best leaders!”
Unable to hold in his salt any longer, Samuel laughed, bitterly. “One of the best? Okay, that’s where your standard is set, then who do you also consider the best, huh? Sep-”
“Let’s work up the chain of command instead of skipping around,” Jorge said, hastily, obviously more concerned about Samuel finishing up that sentence and starting another argument. “Ennea.” He threw out the name as if tossing a distracting piece of steak out at a pack of hungry wolves. “She’s the next highest after Deca. Uh. Discuss.”

awesomeness • 26 February 2017 at 4:23 PM

Amy frowned at this. “I don’t know what to say about her, really!”
Esperanza made a face as well. “I do not mean to be rude. But. I have heard many things about Ennea. Not good things. Not very inspiring things.”
“Like,” Amy scrunched up her face, “does she even do anything?”
The two fell into a silence, and after a few quiet moments had passed, Geraldo of all people pipped up, suddenly. “I heard that she was a who-”
“Geraldo!” Amy gasped, scandalized, but the rest of the group certainly heard him finish his vulgarity despite the girl’s booming voice.
Samuel snorted with laughter.
Jorge shrugged. “Yeah, all I’ve heard about her really was, uh, that thing, and also something about her being lazy…”
Samuel snorted again, “Yeah, but I heard she isn’t lazy when she’s busying working her way through every male leader above her~”
Jorge smirked. ‘Well, that’s a different kind of being active, dude.”
Naji, flushing, somehow managed to stutter out in confusion, “But, um, if she doesn’t do anything as a leader besides, um… um, why is she a leader then?”
“Hey!” Amy quickly replied, “The government has a way of doing things so the people who deserve it get the job! You can’t question the leaders or say they don’t do important work, because-”
Samuel interrupted her. “Ennea got the job because at the last Truce we had two years ago, she dropped the old Octa from the ceiling, broke the guy’s spine, and managed to paralyze him from the waist down. Yeah. You can bet no one dared to challenge her after that happened. According to the rumors I heard, people were afraid to cross her path for months. Some who’ve actually survived the past two years still ARE.”
Naji paled.
Jorge scanned over the boy’s ghastly white face once before asking, “You know what the Truce is, right Naji?”
Remembering his first week here, Naji weakly nodded. “Something people kept talking about… A way to pick new leaders or something? Gladiator style or… something?”
“Or something, yeah,” Jorge agreed. “Either way we haven’t had a proper Truce since like. Two years ago. Some say it had something to do with the newest Mona. Some say it has something to do with what happened to the Old Dia. And some even say-”
Samuel rolled his eyes. “Okay, no. That last theory is DUMB.”
Jorge snorted, apparently forgetting to finish his own words. “True, true. But before we get into all the rumors about that guy, let’s not forget about the guy before him.”
Samuel frowned. “There’s not much to say about old Morgue, really.”
Amy blinked. “You guys mean Octa?”
“Yeah, yeah,” Samuel nodded, “That pretty depressing guy, yep.”
“If we’re talking rumors still,” Jorge offered, “I know a guy who knows a girl who works in a cafeteria who knows another guy that also works in the cafeteria but also knows Octa? And according to my guy, that girl heard Octa’s guy call him a, and I quote, “sad hermit library goblin” to his face once and all Octa did was apparently say “I'm claiming the right to be unhappy” before throwing a copy of Brave New World on the counter and walking away?”
Samuel shook his head. “Weird guy.”
“A true crazy bibliophile,” Jorge nodded. “I think that’s the word, at least. From what I understand, it’s the librarian equivalent of like, crazy cat lady?”
“I heard,” Esperanza spoke up, surprising everyone with a tensed, uncharacteristic softness, “I heard that he… can talk to ghosts.”
Jorge whistled. “That’s some rumor.”
“But it might not be!” Esperanza yelped, “What if that’s his power? Talking with the… spirits?” She shuddered, cold despite the blazing desert air engulfing her body. “What if he talks to the angry ones?”
“Well, he’d be pretty busy on IOD then,” Jorge pointed out, “if he’s been taking calls from everyone who’s died and would smartly be pretty pissy about it.”
“I’m sure that rumor just started ‘cause that air around him,” Samuel countered after seeing Esperanza’s unconvinced expression, “I’ve heard that guy can chill a room just by sweeping into it. That’s why they call him Morgue, not ‘cause he can talk to ghosts. That’s not his power anyway.”
“…What is his power?” Naji ventured to ask, his words cautious.
Samuel grinned, almost evilly. “Gettin’ hard.”
Naji choked.
“Like, making metal fists and stuff, or something!” Samuel amended with a quick hand wave. “Geez, come on, what did you THINK I meant?”
“Yeah, Naji,” Jorge added, grinning ear-to-ear, “get your mind outta the gutter dude.”
Flushing, Naji’s hands flailed wildly in front of him, as if trying to dispel the accusations from the air. “No! No no no! Let’s just,” the boy gasped, “please get back to the leaders! The next one! No more talking about gutters!”
“Pretty difficult not to talk about gutters when you’re mentioning trash,” Samuel quipped.
Jorge rolled his eyes. “Come on, Septa’s not that bad.”
Samuel’s eyes bulged out at his friend. “Have we heard the same rumors?”
“… Got me there, dude.”
Amy began rubbing at her arms, wearing a large frown across her face. “The rumors I even heard…” Her eyes shifted side-to-side, as if she were afraid of speaking the words out loud, “…Were not very… leader-y.”
This, Naji realized with a start, coming from the same girl who’d just preached about not questioning authority? Naji’s eyes widened, and he stared at Jorge for a proper explanation for that utter madness Amy had just spoken.
Jorge only shrugged in reply. “What can I say? Stories of that dude get around.”
“Dude gets around,” Samuel chimed in, helpfully.
As Jorge elbowed his friend for that lame play on words, Esperanza mulled to herself, saying slowly, “…I heard he owns a club of sinning.”
“A what?” Naji exclaimed, incredulous.
“I heard he hasn’t worked a day as a leader,” Geraldo snorted from next to Esperanza.
“I heard he’s almost been murdered by like, the other leaders on at least three separate occasions,” Jorge offered, “but his massive cult following rioted and stopped his beheading.”
“What?” was what Naji was about to repeat, but was stopped by Samuel saying, almost too loudly, “I heard he has like, an impressive amount of luck with all these chicks-”
“I’ve heard!” Amy blurted out, suddenly, apparently unable to hold her words in any longer. The sudden exclamation made everyone else’s musing dim and their attention all turned to the girl. “I’ve heard,” Amy said again, softer, “that Septa… Deals in substances highly illegal on the Glaeroes side.”
Samuel ruffled his hair with one hand. “I mean, yeah, that’s pretty obviously known, it’s not something that super hidden-”
“BUT IT’S WRONG!”
Amy’s loud outburst of passion made Naji jump, and he scrambled backwards, towards Samuel to find safety from the girl’s overwhelming fervor.
“Stuff like that shouldn’t be on base!” Amy exclaimed, “Why doesn’t anyone stop it if they know it’s not allowed?”
Unmoved by the argument, Samuel rolled his eyes at the girl’s words. “Look. The seedy underbelly of partying trash known as the “sinners” is just something that exists, okay? Let people ruin their own lives however they wish. You can shake your head at them all you want but it’s not actually your place to police them.”
“Policing,” Amy refuted, “tends to mean that people are doing things they aren’t supposed to.”
“No, it means you’re caring too much about what people are doing.” Samuel snapped back. “Let the people party every night away if they want. Heck, they’ll sober up fast enough when forced to fight off ferals anyway.”
“Aw, dude,” Jorge winced, “you don’t need to put it like that.”
“Well, how else I’m supposed to say it? Any ideas?” Samuel asked, before turning to Naji and raising an eyebrow. “Naji? What about you? Ideas?”
Naji sucked in a deep breath.
“I barely understand what anyone meant by half of that,” he admitted.
Jorge snorted, tension leaving his shoulders with this release of air. “Basically the take away from that is. Don’t anything illegal, kids. Especially anything illegal offered by a crazy partying cult leader slash club owner with like. Limited power over a small army of superpowered teenagers.”
“Um,” Naji blinked, “Noted?”
Still soured by her moral debate with Samuel, Amy folded her arms across her chest and huffed out, “At least the other leaders are better than that one…”
“Which leaders are you talking about, specifically?” Samuel shot back. “Which one are we on now? Hexa? Why is he so better, exactly?”
Amy flushed with pink rage. “Maybe because he doesn’t deal in illegal things like Septa?”
“Oh?” Samuel asked, bushy eyebrows raising upwards, “so what do you make of Penta then? Those rumors about her, about her brain being fried by all those ‘illegal things’.”
“That’s just as bad as Septa!” Amy shouted, and immediately turned her back to Samuel. “Oh, I don’t even know why I’m talking anymore! You guys can explain the rest of the leaders to Naji, I’m so done!” To emphasis her point, Amy mimed zipping her lips together and throwing the key far into the endless sand dunes of the desert around them.
While Jorge looked mildly exasperated by the drama, Samuel appeared unbothered by the new development. He instead turned to Naji, saying with a renewed pep in his voice, “So like, Hexa is this bird-selective-part-transforming guy or something, and personally I think that means he could easily selectively transform his-”
“DEAR LORD,” Jorge interrupted loudly. He set wide, pleading eyes on his friend. “I beg you. Please don’t bring this topic up again.”
“It is a completely valid thing for me to ponder.” Samuel countered.
“Think of the children.”
“Think of the mystery. The intrigue.”
“Think of Naji’s innocence.”
“Think of… the possibilities.”
“… God dang it Sammy.”
“Wouldn’t you do it,” Samuel said, seriously, “if you had the option? Ask yourself, Jorge. Look deep. Deep. DEEEEEP inside yourself and. Ask. If I could selectively turn parts of my body into a bird. Would I. Or would I not. Attempt to turn my-”
This was the moment in time Samuel took a half-emptied water bottle to the exact middle of his face.

taffy789 • 26 February 2017 at 4:53 PM

Wiping his hands together while looking rather pleased with his aim, Jorge turned to Naji, and continued, “Hexa is just like, some ill-tempered dude, I’ve heard. Don’t want to get on his bad side? He can snap your head off.”
“Or,” Samuel added, rubbing the sore spot where the water bottle made direct contact with his nose, “He’ll turn into a bird and take a crap on your head.”
“Yeah, something like that,” Jorge shrugged. “I’ve heard Penta’s even worse though, in her own way, which sucks because Penta and Hexa apparently are paired up for their work a lot? So when you hear people talkin’ trash about one, you usually hear trash being talked about the other too.”
“Though in my opinion it’s pretty obvious who’s trashier,” Samuel chimed in, and then claimed, as if it were obvious, “Penta. Have you heard what people say about her? That girl’s a Barbie. Doesn’t even look real, they say. Totally fake. Like plastic.”
Jorge made a face. “Haven’t heard that one, exactly. But I’ve heard something about a… hair salon?”
“Wouldn’t be surprised if she was getting her kicks inhaling those hair spray fumes, honestly. That and by hanging around all her little Ken dolls. Like, Jesus Christ, the girl’s plain nasty.”
Absorbing all this information slowly, Naji looked from Samuel to Jorge, unsure what to think. From all the rumors he heard so far…. The Glaeroes leaders sounded like a very…. Strange group of people. He found himself hardly inspired by his leadership above, really, and the expression of concern he was wearing must’ve been rather obvious, because Jorge caught his eye and quickly added, “Honestly though Naji, Sammy might be talking all this trash, but most of the leaders can be functional! I mean. Things get done around base, at least.”
“Yeah,” Samuel relented, “I mean, Tetra apparently is functional.”
“…Really?” Naji exclaimed, “That’s good…”
“Which would be cool if he wasn’t, ya know, the base torturer.”
Naji’s face dropped.
“In his defense,” Jorge tapped his hand against his pant leg, “I haven’t heard that many bad rumors about the guy. He seems pretty popular among the people who know him at least. I heard he can be a cool boss to work under sometimes…”
Samuel rolled his eyes. “Yeah, that totally makes up for the fact he, like, slowly kills people.”
Jorge winced. “I mean. It’s not like anyone particularly enjoys that job. It’s more something people are forced into. You’d have to be like, a psycho to actually want the job.”
“Eh,” Samuel replied, rubbing a hand on the back of his neck, “I guess you got a point there. I mean. I’ve heard Tetra is more privy to skipping out on the dirty work himself so? That might mean he doesn’t particularly enjoy it, I dunno.”
“Either way, he’s popular enough to not have that many nasty rumors circling around him,” Jorge pointed out, “Except for those that say he has that heartbreaker reputation or whatever.”
Moving to rub his hand under his chin, Jorge further mused, “Kinda funny how we go from Penta who has nothing but bad surrounding her, to Tetra who doesn’t have much but good, to next in line, Tria, who has-”
“Nothing,” Samuel finished.
“Nothing?” Naji echoed in bewilderment.
Samuel shook his head. “Zip. Nada. Less than Mona too! It’s almost like he doesn’t exist.. We can’t even be sure he’s a guy. Everyone just calls him one so I roll with it. Personally though, I don’t think he’s real.”
“Maybe he’s a ghost,” Jorge offered, adding slyly, “One of those pissy ghosts Octa talks with?”
Whipping around, Esperanza hissed at the boy, “Oh! Be quiet! You know nothing of what you talk about!”
“You literally,” Naji said, trying to wrap his head around the idea, “have a person in charge that…. NOBODY knows about?”
“If the other leaders know, pal,” Samuel laughed, “they haven’t told anybody else anything, that’s for sure.”
Staring at a large sand dune off to his right, Naji blinked dry eyes against a harsh beam of sunlight and soaked in all this news, every tidbit he’d heard so far about every leader. Thinking too hard on it all left a bad taste in his mouth, so he instead shook his head as if trying to douse from his mind the holes burning bright and viciously in the Glaeroe power structure. He failed, and was overcome with a sucking fear, a truth alighting in his throat and trying to burn its way out of his mouth.
Tearing his eyes away from the searing gleam of sun hitting the sand, Naji looked downwards, at his sand-coated boots, and he let that burning truth fall from his mouth, slowly, softly, almost defeated in how it reluctantly escaped, “… So the Glaeroe side is pretty screwed due to leadership, huh?”
“Yeah,” Samuel answered at the same time Jorge hummed out a quiet, “I wouldn’t say that…”
As Samuel whipped his head around to lift a questioning eyebrow at his friend, Jorge sighed and explained, “Dude. Love her or hate her, Dia kinda keeps the entire wobbly Jenga tower of leadership from crashing over.”
Samuel’s bushy eyebrows furrowed bitterly, and he opened his mouth to reply, but Amy’s loud voice boomed out instead of his, shouting, “Omgee! Wait, forget what I said about being quiet, you guys are talking about Dia rumors now? I love Dia!”
“OF COURSE you would,” came a dark mutter from Samuel, but he was drowned out by the renewed sparks of interest flying through the soldadito group.
“Other than Mona,” Amy explained, her arms flailing wildly about, “Dia is like, the strongest leader on the Glaeroes side! She’s uber deadly and so cool!”
Joining in on the conversation again, Esperanza nodded. “If you are going to respect any leader other than Mona, it must be Dia. I have heard she’s been trained well for IOD, and knows much. Perhaps more than we were trained for at our own facilities.” Her face tightened wistfully, and she stared off into the sand-coated horizon, “Like Amy said. Even if I want to be on Mona’s spec-op team, being on Dia’s team would be an opportunity you would be sorry to miss. There is no understanding what you could learn under her.”
Even Geraldo added in his two cents of agreement.
“She is very strong,” he told Naji, simply.
Naji nodded along with this information, trying to reconcile with the sparse rumors he’d already heard about this leader named Dia. Er, well, what he’d heard from Paola, who’d singled out Dia specifically during that “god forsaken bureaucratic type” rant of hers. Something about the leader being…. Heartless? Listening to the soldaditos speak, however, Naji couldn’t decide who was the more biased, unreliable narrator when it came to hot-headed opinions on the leaders, and he was left feeling conflicted over this leader, yet terrified of her apparent power all the same…
As Naji stared at his boots and shivered, Samuel was again muttering bile-filled words under his breath.
“Sure,” the guy huffed out, anger lacing every word, “Sure the current Dia is powerful all right, but she’s the furthest thing from the last Dia…”
“… Did I just hear you mention the last Dia?”

awesomeness • 26 February 2017 at 9:44 PM

~~~
“So, um,” Annabell began conversationally, unsure where exactly to begin.
The walking so far had been oddly tensed and strained, with the only real question Mikey having asked being what kind of information she was searching for. After having told him, “I’m looking for old records on a person”, he’d nodded, said something about leading her to the computer archives, and hadn’t said a single word since.
She nearly began to fret the silence had stemmed from something she did, but she remembered Mikey’s odd embarrassment and quickly chided herself for worrying about something most likely untrue.
In any case, the air was too clogged and nervous for Annabell’s tastes, so she decided to do everything in her power to rectify the situation and lift the mood a little.
“So, um,” she repeated, ever the bastion of intelligent and eloquent conversation starters. She searched for an angle, a topic, and came up fruitless. She didn’t know anything about the guy, or well, anything other than the fact they had a mutual acquaintance. To avoid pulling her hair out trying to think of something better, she decided the most low-hanging fruit would taste just as sweet. Clearing her throat, she said, with all the conversational ease she could muster, “You and Quincy seem like pretty good friends. Um, how long have you guys known each other?”
Mikey, walking a pace or two ahead of her, mused over this sudden topic for a second. After deciding the question wasn’t a hard one to answer at all, he merely shrugged and replied. “About four, maybe three and a half months? After I healed up in Coreka anyway. When I got back to the island, that’s when I started to room with him.”
“Oh,” Annabell blinked, and she felt an admitted twang of surprise at this answer. “Only four months?”
“Yep,” Mikey confirmed, then slowed down for a moment, so he could get more side-by-side with her own steps. As he was now shoulder to shoulder with her, he glanced over to his right and asked, “Why do you ask?”
Annabell shrugged. “You both just seemed like you’ve known each other for longer.”
“I guess I can see why you’d think that. We’re pretty good friends.” With his free right hand, Mikey tapped his fingers against the sides of his hip. “But that’s mainly ‘cause we’re both pretty friendly people. Like, we clicked pretty fast ‘cause, well, I don’t dislike a lot of people, and, uh Quincy, well…” He trailed off, laughed a bit, and gave an exaggerated shrug, “Quincy’s weird, right? I don’t know how much you’ve talked to him yet, but there it is.”
Upon being asked by Annabell to elaborate what he meant by weird, Mikey struggled out, “Uh, I don’t know. Like. Hm. Uh, for one, he’s weirdly positive and it’s hard to get in a real argument with the guy. Like, it’s real chill, but I think he can stand to be a bit more judgmental. And also sometimes, I start to doubt that he has a mean bone in his body.” Mikey paused here, considered something, then added, “Well, never mind. Thinking about it, there might be like, one guy I know Quincy can’t stand, but other than that, there’s really not anyone else.”
Annabell lifted a quizzical eyebrow at that piece of information. Thinking back on the one day she’d knew the guy, Mikey’s summary of the guy’s character seemed pretty spot-on. Quincy had jumped to help her when she’d briefly met him in the Eighth division, had kept Riley safer than she could’ve while stuck in that cage during the mission, and he’d weathered nearly dying down in that cave without a compliant. It had already been clear to Annabell that Quincy seemed to be, generally, a good enough guy. What was news to Annabell, however, was the information that Quincy apparently disliked someone enough for that dislike to be common, vocalized knowledge. Hesitant to heavily-handily pry into this gossip, Annabell said a few “Oh, hmm”s, and “really?”s and lifted a few more questioning eyebrows in hopes Mikey would catch all the nonverbal cues of interest and elaborate more on the gossip.
Mikey didn’t.
Instead, Annabell felt the tiniest bit miffed as the guy continued on.
“Yeah, really, but besides that Quincy is kinda a sucker, like the type of guy who’d helpfully point out his valuables to the robbers in his house and make small talk with them.” He shook his head, as if his roommate was in front of him and he was scolding him for something. “It’s dumb. He can be dumb, and, if I’m being honest?” Here he did a quick glance around, as if wanting to make sure they were completely alone. He glanced over Annabell once as well, as if determining her trustworthiness with one singular look, “He can be so dumb and upbeat that it can be hard to deal with sometimes.” He tapped his fingers against his cane. “The guy’s great, but, uh. Yeah. There’s that.” After that, it was quiet for a bite before he chuckled a bit and added, “Well, hey, it’s not like living with the guy is bad at all. It hardly ever gets to be hard to deal with, actually, especially ‘cause Quincy usually is out of the room, hanging out at the gym or with Izz or something.”
Hearing this, Annabell twiddled her thumbs as she walked, her hands clasped together closer to her chest. “And, um,” she said, choosing her next words carefully, “Just making sure, but those two are, like, together, right?”
This made Mikey stop in his tracks. When Annabell halted with him, he turned to her and put a bold hand on her shoulder, having to look slightly upwards to stare at her directly in the eyes.
With great gravity, he asked her, voice low, “… Annabell. You did see them like. Very literally sitting in each other’s laps during the card game, right?”
“Hey!” She yelped and brushed his hand from her shoulder, before saying, a bit defensively, “Of course I did! I just, you know,” a pink flush colored her cheeks, “wanted to clarify before I made any assumptions and maybe offended somebody?”
“Honestly,” Mikey laughed back, “I think the more offensive thing to them would’ve been assuming they were straight.”
Annabell could only agree with this point made, but it didn’t stop the embarrassment felt at it having been pointed out in the first place.
She made Mikey lead her to the computer archive a bit faster after that, as if trying to outpace the deep regret lingering around that entire conversation.

~~~

taffy789 • 26 February 2017 at 9:49 PM

Caught off guard by the sudden voice, Naji lifted his head from staring, frightened, at the sand shifting under his feet and saw the pouting face of Gabriel concentrating completely on Samuel.
“Yeah?” Samuel lifted his chin as if in challenging defiance, “Am I not allowed to talk about the guy?”
Since Gabriel, who has previously been walking further ahead and leading the group, stopped, the rest of the march came to a grinding halt as well. Behind Gabriel, Raquel stood, intense eyes trained on Samuel, as if wary of his next action. Perhaps it was because of that serious, cold expression sharpening her gaunt cheeks, but Naji began to sweat more, and his heart began to race with anxiety, and he pictured the girl literally beating up Samuel which seemed very incredibly possible at that moment in time and-
“Look,” Gabriel’s even and level tone interrupted Naji’s violent-growing imagination, “I’ve heard you say… a lot of things about the leaders so far. I’m not deaf, and although I don’t think you should’ve been so critical-” here Samuel rolled his eyes in a loud, exaggerated motion- “I didn’t say anything, because everyone’s entitled to their own opinion. But I heard you bring up the old Dia, and I decided I had to draw the line somewhere. Listen. The old Dia is a real hero, and I speak for a lot of people when they say they look to the example he set. I don’t want to hear whatever bad mouthing you were about to give him, because I feel you should respect him, and if not him, at least respect the dead, and-”
Although Gabriel seemed like he had another five pages to his speech to give, Samuel frowned and cut him off.
“Dude, I wasn’t about to start bad mouthing the old Dia. Of course I respect the guy. Who doesn’t?”
Gabriel looked taken aback.
“Really?” He sounded almost disbelieving. His eyes flickered over Samuel once, twice, three times before his posture relaxed and he accepted Samuel’s words as candid. Behind him, Raquel relaxed after him, and when Naji noticed this he let go of all the air his lungs had been refusing to breathe out.
“I’m… actually glad you have similar opinions about the old Dia as I do.” Gabriel said this and smiled a relieved, pleasant grin towards the more antagonistic Samuel, who stood ramrod straight with his arms folded across his chest. As if oblivious to the off-putting body language, Gabriel continued, cheerful, “There’s just so many amazing legends about all the heroics of the old Dia! All the battles he won, the missions he commanded, the lives he saved, and all the Falchions he killed-” Samuel’s eye twitched at that one- “and of course, all the things he did for the people under him! You’ve never heard of a more popular leader, right? All the best stories people retell about the guy always start with him taking on somebody else’s mission for them, or volunteering for rescue missions, or rushing in to save somebody while on a mission! And then there’s even all those sillier ones people retell about the guy shuffling around downing coffee at three A.M. because he stayed up working so hard or helping someone train or doing somebody else’s work for them..!” Eyes glimmering with what Naji could only deduce was a bad case of hero worship, Gabriel continued in that awestruck voice, “Yeah! The old Dia, he was a real Glaeroe hero, through and through, huh! I think he was a perfect product of his training environment!”
To Naji’s right, Samuel stiffened, and Naji also caught Jorge’s worried eyes quickly flickering over to gauge his friend’s reaction, and Gabriel continuing to speak did nothing to ease the sudden tension.
“He and the current Dia both came from the same facility, right? With all that fancy training? I mean, a real government sponsored place like that? I mean, geez, it’s no wonder why both Dias were such heroic leaders!”
And that was all it took for the bubble of tension to pop.
“How freakin’ dare you!” Samuel exploded at the guy, “The current Dia is not a hero, not like the old one is! Don’t you and you’re effed up sense of right and wrong try to say they’re the same!”
“Dude,” Jorge said, sounding incredibly tired as he tried to reign in his friend once more.
As proved time and time again, Jorge’s mediating was a lost cause. Samuel ignored his friend, flipping over to the soldaditos, and he stared Gabriel straight in the eye as he exclaimed, “You can’t say you respect the old Dia while spewing out crap like that comparison. You wanna get your heroes in line? Well, get your facts right, because, first of all, unlike the last Dia, the current Dia barely deserves her title. She only got it because the old one died. And before that, she didn’t even deserve her Tria title, because, guess what, backstabbing murderers like that don’t exactly deserve respect…”
“Backstabbing,” Naji yelped out despite himself, “murder- wait!” His face grew fearful, “What is Dia, now?”
“Nothing,” Amy said, snapping to the leader’s defense, “I think I know what he’s getting on about! I’ve heard this story around! Well, listen! The Truce is about people battling to become the next leader, so it’s not like Dia did anything wrong!”
“Please,” Samuel scoffed, “If you think she didn’t do anything wrong, then did you even understand the story you heard?”
Off somewhere, lost in the sea of anger and rage and shouting, Naji heard a loud sigh. Looking over his shoulder, he caught a glimpse of Jorge plopping down into a comfortable place in the sand, looking exhausted and resigned to waiting out the entire mess. Slowly, very slowly, Naji watched as Jorge reclined further and further back into the sand, until he was completely spread-eagle against the hot sand dune. Naji fretted over the guy getting stung by a scorpion when Samuel calling his name snapped his back to the fighting going on right in front of him.
“Listen Naji,” Samuel repeated, snapping his fingers together, “I’m going to tell you this story before one of these soldaditos tells you the wrong way and makes it seem like what happened was somehow remotely right, okay? Listen. Okay. Here’s the facts.”
Every pair of eyes sans Jorge’s were concentrated on him. The soldaditos had their eyes narrowed in barely contained rage, and Naji’s were watery and fearful blinking against the harsh glare of sunlight bouncing off the golden sand all around him. With this audience all staring at him, waiting to attack and respond with their own judgements, their own opinions, Samuel sucked in a deep breath of air, and then began retelling the story.
“Our current Dia joined the ranks of the Glaeroe leaders two Truces ago. Before that, both her and the last Dia had been part of the spec-op team of the old Tria. Now, at this point in time, the old Dia had left the spec-op team the truce before this one, and was the sitting Dia at the time of this match. But the girl we know as Dia today, well, she was still on this old Tria’s spec-op team.”
His eyes shifted once over the listening group, before he continued, “According to all the stories I’d heard about this old Tria, he was a nice enough guy. Lots of people liked him, he was good to the people under him and cracked a lotta jokes. He was just a good dude. Came Truce time, everyone expected him to be safe. I mean, the spec-ops serve dual purposes for the leaders, after all.”
Samuel glanced at Naji, “Like, dude, since you’re new I know you don’t know much about how the Truces apparently used to work. Spec-ops may be just a leader’s special team today, but back when the Truce was still going on… Well, their second purpose was that, come Truce time, they’re who you fight before a leader if you’re vying for that position. And while lowly leaders like Ennea and Octa aren’t allowed to use any spec-ops to defend their positions… well, leaders like Tria and Dia get to use three of theirs, if their spec-ops agree to fight for them, of course.” Samuel hesitated, drawing out a long pause in his story. When Naji blinked and nodded a slight, awkward nod of understanding, Samuel shrugged and finally continued on.
“So yeah, ‘course, like, everyone knew this old Tria dude was sure to survive. He had three spec-ops to go through before anyone could even think about touching him. It would’ve been suicide to even attempt it. His spec-op team was full of some plain mean people, scary and powerful and super loyal to him on top of that, right? Well,” Samuel’s eyes glinted, dark, “not all were that loyal. ‘Cause when the Truce started, and the competitors all lined up, guess who was the first in line to choose her kill?”

It was then something in Naji’s heart clenched and speed up, fast, faster than Samuel could spin his story out. It outran the dread the cliffhanger invoked, and it raced to the very conclusion Samuel’s words revealed before he even spoke them. In his beating heart, Naji knew, the person who had been first in line had to be, without a doubt-
“Our lovely current Dia, who was the first one up to murder the very leader she worked under,” Samuel spat out, blandly.

awesomeness • 26 February 2017 at 9:51 PM

“Which,” Gabriel interrupted, loudly, matter-of-factly, “Dia had every right to do, there’s nothing that ever said a spec-op couldn’t fight in the Truce! In fact, according to the stories, the OLD DIA had done the same thing the year before, leave Tria’s team to become a leader! And,”
“AND,” Samuel snapped, “he didn’t freakin’ fight his own teammates to get that positon, did he?”
Gabriel’s face dropped. “Uh, no? If I remember the stories correctly, the Dia before him wasn’t exactly well liked at all, so he didn’t fight anyone’s spec-ops that time, since that Dia’s spec-ops had all conveniently resigned before the Truce match…”
“Not really my point,” Samuel muttered, sounding frustrated. He shook his head, and continued, “The old Tria was a kind enough guy to tell his spec-ops that they didn’t need to fight for him. They didn’t need to fight their old teammate just to defend him. But because they actually had an ounce of loyalty in their bodies, they decided to fight anyway. Apparently they tried to talk current Dia out of the Truce match, too, to get her to like, let bygones be bygones and step back, cool down, maybe fight the Tetra if she wanted to be a leader so badly. But. Yeah. She didn’t listen.”
Samuel snorted to himself, muttering, “I mean, obviously…”
He then closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, he said, simply, “So. Tria’s spec-ops stood against her. And she cut her teammates down one by one. And you know what the best part is? It wasn’t in the rules that you had to kill a spec-op to win the battle, get it? But our Dia? She killed one of them. According to the stories you’ll hear around, the third and final one was laying on the ground in tears, bleeding and begging Dia to stop by the time Tria jumped in and forced the match to halt. He probably saved that spec-ops life. He sent that spec-op to get patched up while she was still screaming and struggling to stay and fight for her leader’s life. But instead.”
Samuel’s tone dropped to something deathly dark. Naji shivered, his heart still pounding like a drum as Samuel ended his story, as he spoke those last, finalizing words,
“Dia fought her Tria. The guy who’d given her a cushy job for the past year. And. She murdered him. And she took his place.”
Naji’s heart wanted to explode.
Next to him, Gabriel looked red in the face, like he wanted to explode, but for other reasons than debilitating fear of a person who’d only heard horrible, terrifying rumors of.
Noticing the look Gabriel was giving him, Samuel decided he was done yet.
Stretching his back and popping his shoulder muscles, Samuel forced himself to relax, to smile, and he said, after an exaggerated yawn, “Yeah. So that’s that. There’s my two pieces why perhaps people should read up on their Glaeroe bed-time stories a bit more before picking out their heroes, okay?”
He grinned right at Gabriel, and he made sure to add, almost pleasantly, “Ya know, like, when the old Dia died a year and a half ago… it’s kinda funny to consider who took his place huh? Pretty funny, huh? Especially considering the way the old Dia died was, uh, pretty shady to say the least, considering how like, powerful he was and all.”
Realizing what he was getting at, Gabriel’s eyes widened, and his hands clenched into tight fists.
“Enough,” the young man spat out, and Naji immediately leaped backwards, sensing the waves of violence emanating.
Naji almost tripped over Jorge as he moved away, and, roused by nearly getting a boot to his stomach, Jorge sat straight up, sand coating every inch of his hair and back. Jorge’s attention immediately shot to his malicious friend, and the guy let out a pathetic groan of displeasure. His face fell into his hands, and he nearly shouted into his palms, “Dude! Sammy, knock it off!”
Samuel ignored Jorge.
He continued to stoke the flames of rage flying off of the soldadito in front of him, blind to even the threat of the other soldaditos, all looking ready to pull a Dia and commit cold blooded murder.
“What?” Samuel goaded on, “If one of your heroes is the type of person to murder her boss to grab some power, how do you think she would treat her so-called friend?”
Being ignored at the back of the group, Jorge’s expression, previously contorted into an unhappy frown, suddenly shifted, becoming more confused, and when he spoke next, his tone was hesitant, and cautious. “Sammy…”
“You’re lying!” Gabriel snapped, “That’s not part of the story, that’s a lying rumor! Everyone knows the old Dia died during a feral attack! The current Dia had nothing to do with that!”
Jorge had stood up completely now. The movement drew Naji’s attention away from the argument and to the guy, and Naji’s own eyes widened when he saw the mask of fear plastered against Jorge’s face. “Dude!” he hissed out, urgent yet hushed, “Sammy!”
“Oh yeah?” Samuel replied to Gabriel, “It’s just a rumor? Well, tell that to everyone who freakin’ DIED following that, and, oh, on who’s orders again, that’s right-”
He didn’t get to finish that sentence.
Pushing right past the angry soldaditos, ready to fight, right past Raquel, poised to knife Samuel’s throat, and right past Gabriel, seconds away from socking Samuel’s cheek, Jorge moved through them all, fearlessly, stubbornly, and near instantaneously.
He was at Samuel’s side in less than a second. Without wasting a moment, Jorge quickly snapped, “Samuel, shut the heck up for a second” before grabbing his friend’s head in both hands and turning it in a sudden 180.
“Dude,” Samuel hissed back in resistance, his hands immediately reacting to the attack by pulling at his friend’s own face in retaliation.
Despite the fingers pressing his nose upwards and tugging an ear back, Jorge managed to fight his friend’s stubborn head until Samuel was staring directly in the direction Jorge had needed him to look.
Staring directly at the thing Jorge had wanted him to see.
Naji, having followed the direction Jorge had pointed his friend’s head, looked up, into the distance as well. Into the sky, where, above a far off sand dune, there hung a singular, oh-so-obvious, low hanging cloud.
Naji watched with a mouth hung open as the small cloud dripped down water. It looked…. Unnatural. Yet. Nice. Like. Like a small reprieve from the overwhelming heat for an unseeable someone- or somebodies, a group, perhaps?- who may have stood under it.
In front of him, Samuel dropped his fingers from attacking his friend’s head.
“…Oh,” came a soft, barely audible noise from the boy who’d been so loud, so furious merely moments ago.
That deep, sickening feeling washed over Naji again.
His heart, which hadn’t had a moment’s rest since everyone started arguing again and telling terrifying stories, only hastened in pace. Naji thought he was going to have a heart attack, he could feel himself on the brink of one, and he had all the symptoms. He was feeling faint, weak, there was a pain in his left arm- or was it supposed to be his right one, or did it even matter?
He supposed it didn’t, it didn’t matter, nothing mattered, not when he heard Gabriel say, so clearly, so easily next to him, that it made Naji sick to hear the words,
“… Well. I believe we just found some Falchions.”

asi • 7 March 2017 at 6:47 AM

"Did you hear our conversation when you were lurking in that stall?" she wanted to know.
Septa showed Xela his mostly empty palms, one gloved, the other bare save the held phone. "I was mainly preoccupied with trying to catch Guithe cheating at Go-Fish at the time-" he told her insolently, head lifted high while his chin was forward, pale throat exposed. Xela was pretty sure the only possible purpose of that gesture was to look like a highly flammable jerkface.
Though, his long, messy black hair did frame his neck nicely, as well as it did his face... And if her eyes trailed down, they could dine on how very see-through white cotton shirts were when wet- she did have eyes, and they told her the guy was disastrously attractive, dang it! She tried and struggled to look away.
Meanwhile, Septa's show of attitude was interrupted when Guithe trod on his toes, inciting a pained yelp. Something passed between the two of them in a look, and afterward Septa merely nodded, looking at Xela carefully... Waiting for Xela to lift her gaze up to his eyes, actually. He wore a very faint smile, while his eyes remained uncharacteristically serious. "So, what is it?"
"Rebeca?" she prompted somewhat unsure, searching him. Then, so as to ensure no possible misunderstandings, forced herself to say, "You and her are dating?"
"Oh..." Septa scrunched up his face as he considered the question. Like a math problem, only he'd obviously have more trouble with that. "Yeah? Sort of."
Xela paused. "SORT OF? What does SORT OF mean here?" she demanded, loud enough to cause Cindy and James to jerk their fingers up to their ears, and for Guithe to look shocked out of shedding tears from large, shining and watery eyes over Septa's sort of affirmative answer. In the silence directly after her outburst, a slightly distorted giggle could be heard coming out of Septa's handheld phone.
"Well-" Looking less confident now, Septa began talking rather fast. "See we only started dating recently at the behest of our dear mutual friend Renata and honestly I've no idea how much she actually likes me but her English is improving in vast leaps and bounds, isn't it R.J.?" he chattered, appearing gratified when the barkeeper did respond quickly to him with a nod of backup.
"Oh, yes," James was still looking curiously between Septa and Xela, as if trying to figure out what exactly was going on, what could have possibly resulted in a Mexican standoff with no obvious threat, water-gun or otherwise. "Vastly improved, yes..."
"If she's your girlfriend, then you're treating her all wrong! If you're treating a girl who somehow really likes you like, like crap, then I really will kill you!" While the threat was perhaps trumped up, Xela meant every note of outrage. Her eyes were almost literally spitting fire.
"What did I just say?" Septa used his fancy, ruffled, soggy sleeves to muffle his giggles- from the sharp look in his eyes, clearly at her expense.
Mechanically, with cogs grinding and grating around in her brain, Xela dropped her arm. "... Oh. Oh?" she frowned.
"Wait..." Septa had said their friend had arranged it, right? And he didn't even know if Beck actually liked him, so... "Do you actually like her?" When Septa began preparing an answer, lips parted and words on his tongue, Xela wasn't sure she wasn't interested in hearing it. So she steamrolled him over with more she had for him to answer to. "No matter what your relationship's like, if you're in one, it's not okay to cheat! That's what you were doing last night with Bree, wasn't it? Cheating?" her accusation was yelled loud enough to make Septa shut his eyes, looking like he'd just had a hairdryer blasted in his face.
He peeped open one eye as if to check if the scene was safe- it clearly wasn't. He stalled nervously, tugging on his ridiculous shirt collar. "Umm..."
Xela gave a slow exhale as she approached him. It let out just enough steam to ensure nothing combusted when she took a tight hold on that silly collar of his, utterly securing his attention along with his shirt. "Are you serious about anything?" she started quietly, voice building again. "Because all I've seen you do is dance around in your underwear, mess with girls' feelings and eat ice-cream for breakfast, and it isn't exactly inspiring confidence since, if you haven't noticed, we're kind of on an isle of death!" She was nose-to-nose with the leader now, and even though he was physically nearly a head taller, it seemed more like he'd shrunk until it was the other way around.
But while everyone else in the room looked immensely uncomfortable at her last words, he just smiled up at her. "Aren't you just jealous you have to share my attention?"
Xela dropped her hold on his soggy shirt in frustration, drawing back so it didn't look like she was about to kiss him from any angle. "And what's with these mafia-esque moments, huh," she glowered at him, arms crossed over her chest. "Could you even try be more shifty if you tried?"
"Well, ha, it's Molly, so..." James tried to gently intervene, defuse the situation with a little humor, but one raised arm from Xela prevented them from getting any closer, and caused them to quiet.
Septa began laughing. Suppressed cackling, that quickly escalated into the full-blown, stock maniacal laughter common to the worst of B-movie reels. The way his wild dark hair shadowed his face might have succeeded in making him look ominous if his laughter wasn't so very fake evil. He straightened against the wall, and pretended to wipe a non-existent tear away from his eye. "Oh, Xela, Xela," he smirked, tone of mocking consolation. "Nothing's changed. You still got nada on me. Guithe's just smart enough to admit it." The traitorous kid bobbed her head along in agreement, giving Xela a 'what-can-you-do' sort of shrug; palms up, mimicking Septa from earlier. Xela looked at her blankly, until the ham in the room called the spotlight back to him and his stupid big hair as he swept some of it over his shoulder like this was his audition for an awful Pantene ad. Less of his face was cast in darkness now though, so he looked brighter.
"All you see here is a guy in a bathroom, on a private call to his precious girlfriend..." Septa looked down on Xela as if he pitied her. "But you, you'd make it out to be the conspirings for a grand plot to blow the island to bits... Or maybe just you," he suggested with a sorry-eyed smirk, snapping a finger out at her. The leader then shook his head slowly, one hand stuck into the depths of his hair, over his forehead. "You really think it's always all about you..."
However Xela may have responded to that performance was interrupted by a faint wail from the phone in his hand- both looked over with wide eyes, having forgotten completely; "Seppyyy, c'mooon, I've been waaaaiting!" a bubbly, high-pitched voice could be heard calling through the device, scrambled by static but certainly solvable.
He'd called her his girlfriend... "Is that Beck, or Bree?" Xela questioned, hands on her hips. When Septa didn't immediately reply, looking between her and the phone, she said; "It's neither, isn't it." Xela pinched the bridge of her nose and exhaled more noisily than ever, on purpose.
"You're the worst," she told him at last.
"It's not like you think- it's more complicated-" he started, with real feeling and distress, then stopped when he saw the exasperated but no longer mad look on her face. "... Sorry," he sighed as well, smile twitching all the while with amusement.
Her expression almost matched his for a moment, before lapsing back into something serious and pensive as Xela turned her head away. "How am I supposed to trust you?"
Septa stared at her, eyes like a toasty hot chocolate drink, being stirred thoughtfully. "Trusting isn't about knowing things. You can't know you can trust someone," he said finally. "At some point, you have to open your heart and take a leap of faith for that person... Or not," he ended wryly, with an audible grin as he saw how stunned they all were at him saying something even a little profound. "Hey, it would defeat the whole purpose of this if I wasn't myself- oh."
His phone clicked, then started ringing again, and he clapped his hands together to keep a hold on the thing as it vibrated like crazy.
"At least entrust me with this phone call, won't you?" Septa's expression was more than strained, apparently wearied by the constant series of delays. At this point, Xela couldn't blame him. They were really verging on comedy with these ridiculous obstructions now.
"I still want a simple explanation of your stupid, beyond complicated relationship status, Septa!" she warned, not for a moment letting him off the hook.
And he smiled like he'd the perfect solution- for him. "Why don't you two explain while I finally answer this? Thank you muy muy mucho!" Septa beamed, jumping back into his stall and shutting the door behind him. Just listening to his tone, Xela could only think about what a thankless piece of work he really was... Again, who would willingly be employed by him?
She would never have guessed Cindy, as she railed against the door, raging, "How dare you dump that on us-!"
James patted her shoulder to placate her. "Septa is bad at explaining these things anyway. Are you sure you want to touch that?" they added, causing Cindy to freeze, her delicate, exquisitely manicured hand just hovering over the bathroom door.
She hurried quickly over to the bathroom sink and began washing her hands and arms while the others craned their heads around to watch.

demon • 7 March 2017 at 7:35 AM

"Anyway," James leaned back, speaking demurely. "Septa is... Well, he's polyamorous. So that means he's in multiple, open relationships at the same time. He has his calendar arranged in advance so he has different days set aside for different people, and is never dating multiple people on the same day, or anything like that. The relationships themselves are... not very romantic in nature, they're more heavily platonic, but with benefits sometimes? Oh, that doesn't make sense," they wove a hand through their short dark squiggly hair, frowning over their apparent mistake. "Platonic only means non-sexual, doesn't it, and what I wanted to exclude was romance... Ah, sorry," they apologized quietly, slicking back their mussed-over hair from their forehead. "But everyone's free to see other people on the days they're not already engaged with someone, and it can be a relaxed, casual way to spend personal time with someone, I think..."
Xela glanced over at Guithe, who appeared to be digesting the information thoughtfully- she didn't really like the look, but, as long as the girl didn't start to follow in her big brother's strange footsteps- fine.
"So, it's like... legalized cheating," Xela said slowly, working her head around the concept herself. That Septa had invented such a complicated term for being a huge slu-
"I... don't think it's cheating if both parties know and consent to it, with no expectations of exclusivity," James critiqued her delicately, looking very kind and understanding about it. They seemed to be searching for the right words, taking their time to try and get it right for Xela.
In the meantime, they could hear some of Septa's conversation through the door, but it mostly seemed to consist of whining and the phrase, "But I told you...!" Xela quickly decided to tune it out again, least her ears get sick from it.
Cindy returned, a fresh coat of fair powder atop her hollowed-out cheeks, and apparently a fresh idea, too. "Xela, know of those boys they have in some of Asia, that work at being nice and attentive to girls? Septa is like one of these hosts!"
That was not received well. "So girls pay to date him?!" Knowing what she did about teenage human girls, Xela found this unfortunately believable. There were definitely girls who'd do anything to get close to a guy with a pretty face, no matter the personality with the package... She cringed, remembering the way they would sickeningly pander to Blaine, even though the boy had been nice enough that she'd wanted to date him, instead of the selfish kind of jerk who'd treat them like they probably deserved. She couldn't stand humanslike that, so wasteful and so very, very superficial!
"No..." James sounded very much dismayed. "It's definitely not anything like that, Tonia..." They held their face in their hands, continuing with their voice slightly muffled; "It's not a predatory scheme to bankrupt or enslave anyone, so please forget that comparison and never mention it again, okay?" James forced a smile, looking up from their hands now.
Since James seemed much more sure about the host concept, Cindy could only gracefully shrug and return to generously powdering her face in her compact mirror.
Eventually, James just looked Xela steadily, sympathetically in the eyes and told her; "You don't have to like it, that he's um, chosen to see multiple people. Just, know he's not trying to hurt anyone... it's the opposite. He's trying to be as open as he can about his feelings, this way." It was very hard to disagree with eyes of liquid peppermint that practically dripped honesty.
"Maybe... it doesn't sound too awful, I suppose," Xela relented. "At least he's not wasting all his time on anyone who won't appreciate it... I guess," she muttered mulishly. At least cheaters did have guts. She had no respect for people too cowardly to end a relationship either, toiling away for the rest of their lives just pretending at being happy, instead of going after what they want.
James nodded, relieved, then turned to look down at the younger girl. "Does it bother you, Guithe?" they asked, winning what had to be their hundredth award for 'most considerate person in the room'.
"Of course not! Big Brother Lich-y's very clever, isn't he? This way, he's most likely to find what he's looking for, right?" Guithe argued, much to Xela's surprise... but maybe she shouldn't have been. The little brat had seemed chill with the idea of threesomes, to Xela's great concern. She was shaping up to be more cheeky than Xela could've ever imagined, and Septa was already a bad influence.
James smiled. "That could be it, kid. I hope you're right."
"Who's he dating today, then?" Xela asked, hardly out of interest. More to show that she was chill with it, too. Honestly.
"Uh... Me," James admitted, sticking their hands deep into the pockets of their baggy sweatpants. They smiled a little, until Xela's jaw dropped. Then they rubbed at the tatts on one arm, other hand remaining in the pocket- possibly turning over the keepsake sinero she now knew occupied it.
Guithe was frowning. "So Big Brother likes boys as well as mul-tuh-ple girls then?"
"I'm not..." James ducked their head, making themself look small. "I'm not a boy," they confessed, a wavy lock of hair dislodging itself from where it had been slicked back atop their head, straying over their pale forehead all alone.
"What! I've been calling you 'Mista' this whole time," Guithe pouted, as if cross at them for not correcting her, "when you're really a 'Miss'?"
A hand brushed that dark, squiggly lock aside, behind one ear. "Oh. I'm not a girl, either. I'm an NB- non-binary- person... neither female or male... Androgynous," they tried to explain. Of course all it resulted in was blank stares. It was going straight over the two girls' heads.
James tried their best to keep it simple for them. "You can just think of me as a 'they'. It's gender-neutral, just the singular variant of English's plural form..." Pronouns? Plurals? Adverbs? Xela had never been very good at grammar theory...
But Cindy cut in, taking a moment from powdering up a cloud to dab at the corner of her eye with a handkerchief. "J prefers to be called ze/hir/hem." If her makeup was supposed to be smudged anywhere in the area, Xela couldn't for the life of her tell.
".... How do you use those?" Xela prompted. She found this strange, but gender neutrality also made some sense to her- she was a power, gender hardly felt inherent- and she was determined to be supportive and get it right on this point, even if she was unsure about the polyamory deal.
"Like this. 'Ze goes to the club', 'it's hir drink', 'the drink is hirs'... 'It belongs to hem'," James talked both Xela and Guithe through the quirks of their gender or lack thereof, going over each phrase until the girls felt confident using the new pronouns, Guithe having plenty of fun with her sentences ("Hir hair is hairy!" "The hair is hirs!" "Ze is a zebra!" "James lost hemself on the Thames!" with James commenting in good humor, "Well, that sentence could've gone worse..."). It felt good. It would take some getting used to, but... She was sure she'd never seen James so happy or relaxed in their company, and it looked good on- on hem.
But as ze grew more at ease, Xela felt less so, with the new information that'd just come to light about hem... and their dear awful leader, specifically.
"Why... would you... date him? It's not all about looks, you know," Xela quietly brought back up, while Guithe was having fun using a make-up stick of Cindy's to, well, scribble on the grimy and cracked bathroom mirror, under the blonde's elegantly written ze/hir/hem examples. Xela could only look disbelievingly at the androgyne who'd befriended her so quickly, and yet...
"Oh, I know," James answered smoothly. "It's very little about looks at all..." There was a strange look in hir eyes that Xela couldn't even begin to respond to, when Cindy interrupted them.
"You missed something important," the blonde prom queen started ominously, causing them to swivel and find the lady up against the door that had nearly given her a germ-induced panic-attack- having clearly been listening. She looked back at James with eyes dark and blown wide, spooked. "The person he's talking to, it's Morphine isn't it," she whispered, a strange, frantic energy taking over. "We're doomed..." she groaned lowly, as if in physical pain. "Septa's getting advice from Morphine...!"
A shiver passed rapidly through James' spine, ze looked like ze'd been shocked, hir hairs standing on end. "What? We don't know he's getting advice," ze tried to remind her, but hir voice was high-strung with trepidation just from the thought. "He was joking... he was joking, right?"
"Some things, he means, others, he don't. When you know Septa as long as I have, you learn to pick the trash from the truth," Cindy uttered dreadfully, as in full of dread. "Septa doesn't need to ask her how to pick up chicks," she scoffed. "He is getting advice, or he would not so anxiously want to talk to Morphine," she reasoned with horrific certainty.
"Oh no..." James' head was in hir hands.
The panic was infectious, but Xela took it with a grain of salt; after all, everyone around Septa clearly had some penchant for dramatics. "So... How bad is that?"
"Septa has terrible ideas on his own," Cindy said slowly, in her thick accent. "But when Penta's involved, that's the only time when it's worse-"
"Wait- Penta?!"
Just then, the clunk of the lock being freed could be heard, and Cindy had to step aside as the door opened inwards.
"I love you too, honey," Septa cooed into the phone, just as he stepped out of the stall to find everyone looking apprehensively at him. After disappearing the device into his pocket, he smiled cheerfully at them, clapping his hands together and giving them an excited rub.
"So! What do you all want to do today?"

asi • 7 March 2017 at 8:03 AM

"Oh, you really want to go through with the water fight thing today, huh..." Septa looked down at his drying but still obviously damp shirt, the lacy, soaked sleeves he'd used to protect himself now rolled up around his elbows just to bear with it.
"Of course! Remember Boss, you promised the winner would get whatever they wanted..." James reminded him with one dark eyebrow raised. Cindy wore a matching expression. They both knew what was coming.
"... I did?" Beat. "So I did!" Septa laughed idiotically. "You'd better look sharp and load up then, if you want to win... what do you want to win again?" he inquired of James sheepishly.
"I'll tell you when I've won it," was all James would tell them, clipping the last of hir hair back in the mirror, with the colorful pastel clips ze'd worn the second time Xela had met hem.
The hair clips were adorable, and Xela felt entirely embarrassed about thinking it right before Guithe exclaimed the exact same. Did that mean she thought like a twelve-year old in regards to the bartender...? Or just that hir secret cuteness was undeniable by any party... Whatever the case, that embarrassment? Definitely Xela's primary emotion, and she averted her gaze just to try and wish it away.
The look on James' face, however, was something else; determined, and when she saw it, Cindy bit her lip. There was something the blonde didn't quite like about this...

"I mean, we always knew Molly was a clown, but she really thought she missed hearing me leaving," Septa was snickering as they walked, having left the men's bathroom for the halls again.
"I think she was busy beating your high score in Candy Crush," James replied casually to the leader.
"Oh crud!" Septa exclaimed, eyes flying wide. "You think she did it?" he clutched at the slim bartender's arm, looking desperate for hir answer.
James side-eyed the guy, head tilted slightly downwards for once as the taller Septa hung off of hem. "Oh, definitely. You're downright awful at that game, I don't know why you even try." James pet down some of Septa's hair with the back of hir hand, even though it wouldn't stay and ze knew it.
Septa made a noise in the back of his throat like his pride being trod on, then gave a self-deprecating laugh that made Xela wonder too why he bothered acting hurt if he already understood the answer. Then detaching himself from the bartender's inky arm, Septa left hir side, skipping on ahead to Cindy.
James looked a bit forlorn about being deserted like that, peppermint eyes lingering for a time on the leader's back and its working parts as he moved. Though when ze turned hir head and saw Xela watching, ze conjured an instant smile... Thin-eyed and thin-lipped as it was.
In front of them, Cindy was saying to the leader; "Oh, Septa, what are you wearing? A poet shirt? From my nineteen-hundred year costume rack?" She was somewhere been outrage and amusement. For Cindy, both worked well simultaneously.
"Wow, you knew exactly!" Septa sounded very impressed.
Xela's ears, that had only been listening for lack of other interest, would've stood to attention if they could, on hearing Cindy's next question. "What did you speak to her about..?" she said quietly, glancing over at the leader warily. Xela had already come to learn this expression was an understatement far from the real concern the lady felt for this topic. Prom queen Cindy was of course a master of the artificial debutante smile, Xela supposed, quite unlike herself... who yelled out anything she thought at a moment's notice.
"Maureen's terrible at giving advice! You know, she took about every stance imaginable when I asked her!" Even Septa sounded a bit disillusioned about this girl's advice-giving skills, so they could all probably relax about that. "... in the end, she told me: 'Just tell her the whole truth, or nothing at all!' Apparently half-truths only serve to make me more suspicious," Septa was saying, pouting, walking in step with Cindy. Then there was a moment, one Xela just barely caught where his irises slid left, into the corners of his eyes to meet hers as she followed behind. In that second the young man had a nearly perfectly blank face, but it was thanks to that Xela just knew.
It was ironic, because just a few minutes had passed since Septa had told her it wasn't always about her. Then he'd apparently gone on to talk on the phone to talk exactly about her. Xela conceded to him the 'always', but the rest was absolute crap. This was definitely about her.
Or maybe Guithe, come to think about it, but to Xela's motherly instincts, that was pretty much the same thing.
It was definitely... all about her.
"Xela, are you alright?" James was asking, while Guithe was tugging on the leg of her trackpants, causing her to stop.
She looked around, disorientated, for she hadn't been paying attention to her surroundings as she walked. "What?"
James smiled. "We're here..."
"Where?" Xela glanced over, at the door Cindy and Septa had clearly halted in front of.
"Manny's place, of course," James told her matter-of-factly, causing Xela to idly nod- then freeze.
Were they- were they really sure... opening that door... would be a good idea...?! Especially since, with the way Septa was fiddling rather surreptitiously with the door's lock, it seemed they were about to rudely bust in? But--!

demon • 7 March 2017 at 8:36 AM

Considering what Cindy and James had said or implied about Bree and Manny's relationship, Xela was one of extreme reluctance to participate in busting down either of their doors to gain entry, especially with Guithe the Child in tow. She kept the girl very much at the back of the crowd as the others managed to muscle their way in, door bursting inwards. Both occupants looked up when, to be exact, a flailing mess of limbs tried to enter but got soundly stuck in the doorway. Xela peered past all of the ruckus, noting with relief the perfect normalcy of the scene, until it had been interrupted in the weirdest way...
They appeared to have been doing quiet, separate little things when the group butted in. Manny had been sitting on the floor, browsing through a foliobook full of CDs. Bree was on the bed and had her nose in an actual paperback book, what appeared to be about... dancing and the French Revolution, when Xela squinted.
It was pretty amusing to see the three of them, Septa, James and Cindy, all pretending to greet those in the room like this was a totally normal occurrence, nothing going on, apart from the way they were all sweating. Mostly Septa, although in fairness he could have still been wet from Cindy's hit on him earlier; in any case, and by any estimation, they all looked pretty darn dodgy.
Xela was pretty sure she narrowed down on the exact second Bree's eyes caught upon the sogginess of Septa's sleeves, and the way the tips of his hair were still dripping. Without tearing her eyes away, Bree placed her book down carefully to the side. It was the same moment that James began whipping out hir pistols from wherever ze'd managed to conceal them on hemself, beneath hir oversized band shirt perhaps.
That's when the world descended into violent, watery gunfire again, and Xela was once more glad she'd positioned herself at the back, out of the line of fire. She held firmly onto Guithe's collar as the girl wriggled and squirmed, trying to get through and into the action. But when Xela bent her head and told her how unhappy Cindy would be if she got the special warrior tunic soaked, the child begrudgingly complied, no doubt lamenting that she hadn't had time to change as before them, teens quickly fell casualty to the furious spray of water from all around.
As for who was getting hit, Bree was just barely managing to keep herself sheltered by the corner of the bed, since the rest was pressed against the wall and affording no opportunity for safety. Cindy mostly kept herself covered by the doorway but had got doused all down her arm by Bree right off the bat. Manny remained where he was on the floor, unarmed, getting hit in the crossfire of both sides, and looking rather peeved about it all- though his expression came nothing close to what Xela had seen last night. Finally, James turned out to have a rather creative solution; ze had chosen to repurpose the seventh leader of the Glaeroes... as a human shield. It worked surprisingly well, as Septa was taller and James only a bit less skinny.
Whether the guy actually appreciated being treated like a wall of sponge for all the water being blasted James' way, it was hard to tell, for his long dark hair had flopped over his face and, saturated with water, stuck that way. Xela had to count herself impressed by how obediently he was allowing his previously almost dry clothes to become more than soaked through now. He looked like he'd jumped- or been pushed- into the ocean, but he still held still where he stood, without protest... Xela thought, maybe he wasn't such a terrible boyfriend to have then, if just for one day.
With a flurry of agile dancer's steps carrying her the scant meter she required, Bree decided to put her own partner to the test, ducking behind Manny's big, strong, burly and able back, pulling him to his feet. He only managed to grimace in realization before he found himself the new focus of the deluge from both the blonde prom queen and the tattooed bartender. For Bree though, the new proximity and position afforded her much greater precision; right away she managed to blow one of James' pistols right out of hir hand with her blaster. Ze pulled hir slippery hand back fast and, tightening hir grip on the remaining weapon, redoubled hir efforts. The war waged primarily between the two with human shields, Cindy only trying to sneak in a snipe from the sidelines, though Bree was largely careful to keep out of her line of sight, within Manny's breadth of protection.
"Is this why people have lovers?" Cindy murmured as a thickly accented aside to Xela, though the one to giggle in response was definitely Guithe.
When Bree stopped aiming for his face, Septa took the moment to twist his head around and grin at James, joking something about payback later and wriggling his fingers with the threat of a wet embrace. James leaned away to the extent that ze could, playing up hir fear with a protracted, "Nooo!" On the other hand, Manny was starting to resemble more a drowned rat than a person, and he looked less than thrilled about being used in such a fashion by the little mouse that hid behind him.
"Dolcezza," he rumbled lowly, tightly to her, a clear complaint, even if one didn't know what the word meant. By the dark glint in her glass-green eyes, the girl knew she had to end this. With a hand on Manny's shoulder, Bree guided her partner into a favorable position, blasting at James' now-exposed side- only for the other pair to mirror the movement, giggling (the both of them). It turned into a war of side-stepping, the couples dancing around each other, getting progressively, daringly closer... James and Manny appeared less than confident, but Xela had already seen what Septa and Bree could do on the dance floor. With this balance of skills and coordination, both combatants were getting glancing hits but no blow had been deemed fatally wet, yet, until...
They'd gotten close enough that when Bree pushed Manny forward, he toppled right onto Septa's chest and, like human dominoes, they all went down... Only, considering mass, it was more like a mountain of bricks collapsing on a very small tree and a pool noodle. James and Septa were both fully pinned under Manny, and it looked and sounded physically like-
"Looks like so much fun!" Guithe said brightly, causing Xela to blink bemusedly at her as pained groans abounded.
Septa, having took the bulk of Manny's thick torso, appeared winded and possibly unable to breathe; James was just stuck and squirming under a tangle of the boys' limbs, arms both pinned as Bree stalked around to face hem, water blaster ready in hand, aimed down to deliver the finishing blow.
Only to get intensively doused for forgetting Cindy still in it on the side, her football-field green t-shirt turning steadily darker as water saturated the cotton right down her center.
Bree muttered a curse and still set about thoroughly showering the trapped James, but with much less gusto than perhaps she would have if Cindy wasn't loudly saying, "Yes! How do you like that? Ha, take it!", high-fiving and spinning Guithe elegantly around in the background.
The twisted, soaked and twitching heap on the floor slowly separated, every part of it audibly sore and aching, but despite their bruises- and James' getting washed obviously not being the win ze'd been hoping for- their good humor remained. Septa was wiping the sopping hair out of his face, joking about "some dream just like that," as James smiled and helped him up. Well, except for...
Manny pushed himself up with his own two, sturdy arms, and turned on Brillante, something snappy and Italian quickly passing through his lips.
Xela expected for Bree to reply in kind, since the girl did have a slightly exotic twist to her English-speaking tongue- as did everyone she'd met here, save Septa (North American) and James (totally nondescript)- but instead, Bree looked... blank. "What?"
"Don't-" Manny made a frustrated noise, and repeated his Italian, slower.
And Bree echoed herself again, but this time looked across at the other pair, who were still holding hands, when she asked her question.
Septa paused, then folded his arms, eyeing Manny with a... somewhat apologetic look. James saw this and sighed, now empty-handed. "Ah, I think he's just mad," James tried, adjusting a pink clip that had been teased out of place in hir hair. Never mind that hir band tee and heavy sweatpants were utterly laden with water. Hir hair was what ze cared to fuss with.
At this, Manny did a somewhat rude-looking gesture aimed at one or both of them, something with all the fingers on each hand pinched together, jerking briefly up and down. Then he sighed, reaching down to grab up the CD collection again, sweeping off the water that had coated the plastic sleeves, and shaking it. It hadn't been harmed (less certain was the fate of Bree's copy of 'Dancing to the Precipice'), sure, but he really wasn't happy either.
"Um, lo siento," Septa giggled foolishly, to which Manny looked up and gave a sign Xela did know the meaning of, while James raised a hand to hir forehead in dismay.
Bree's eyebrows had turned concave and depressed, and she tried to appease her beau- sort of. "Manuel, c'mon, it's just a game, and I wanted to win!"
He gave her a look and did a wide arm gesture like 'away'. "Play out, go," he managed, and even that much seemed a struggle.
"Please? Man-" Septa actually had a sympathetic look on his face for once, as Manny ignored Bree for his CDs and the girl's hands dropped down to hit her legs uselessly.
Bree attended to the rest of the group. "It doesn't matter, René actually came by earlier and wiped me out, so it's not like I stand a chance now," she said carelessly, looking and sounding bored again, with lids hanging low over eyes that looked so much smaller without the bold, eye-popping makeup of yesterday night. "I did get Molly though," she added, much more satisfied.

asi • 7 March 2017 at 8:46 AM

"Then... I'm still in the game!" Cindy realized, arching her back and preening herself on her victory here in Manuel's room.
"If either of you can take down René," Bree reminded her, examining her brightly painted toxic-green nails, "You might just win."
James smiled back at Cindy, from the eyes. "May the best one win," they encouraged, looking only happy for her.
"Yay! Goooo Miss Cindy!" Guithe cheered, holding the blonde's gracefully slender hands in her own tiny little ones.
Bree looked at the child just outside her door with wide, bug-like eyes, nearly dropping the jumbo-sized water-blaster she held in one hand. Although it had seemed to have a bottomless supply of water in battle, Xela could hear now it had been mostly emptied on James at the end. "O-oh, she just.. looks like that, right?" Her voice was anxious, and she was pointing towards Guithe.
Guithe, Xela and Septa all paused, minds hard at work.
"Yeah, that's it, she acts like a good twelve-year old, but she's much too clever. Right, kid?" James glanced over at the young make-believe warrior with hir usual, almost perpetual smile.
"That's amazing," Bree said for a moment, then really did drop that blaster of hers, with a hollow sloshing sound as it clunked against the ground. "Hey, Manuel! Isn't that cool? She really looks twelve!" she exclaimed, waving a hand at Guithe, who didn't seem to know what to make of this.
Manny looked up, looked at Guithe, looked shocked, then muttered something that sounded insulting- in Italian of course, causing Bree's face to fall.
James cringed, hands over hir eyes, and Septa laughed what was a very sarcastic, "Ha ha ha," before actually flipping the guy the bird. And when he caught sight of Guithe immediately mimicking the action, and Xela's subsequent intensely disapproving expression, he responded with a rather guilty sounding, "Oh come on, she's old enough for that! Er-" he was aware of everyone listening. "She's of age..!"
Xela shared a look with Guithe- the lie had to be her decision, not Xela's. This understanding passed smoothly between them, the little girl's royal blue eyes easily swallowing the meaning behind the trusting depths visible in her big sister's. She nodded, solemn, a determined look drawing her dark little eyebrows together, new hard lines on an otherwise soft and childish face.
Guithe had never sounded less mature than when she gleefully squealed out, with the same words as her big brother had; "I'm of age!" In fact, so triumphant did Guithe sound that, Xela was then convinced, that she must have stupendously unconvinced everyone else.
But Bree just said, "Wow, that's so cool," again, and then, "So you're sixteen like Septa, or eighteen like me?"
Guithe nodded ever so proudly. "Yup! I'm..." she paused to count on her fingers. Then; "Seventeen! Like Big Sister Xe-Xe," she grinned wide, revealing her big white set of adult teeth to the redhead, whose body was beginning to frost over, knowing that with the power she'd given that child, there was now nothing Guithe couldn't do...
Septa then interrupted Xela's unnaturally-induced ice-age by making the small-voiced comment; "But everyone here knows that she's not- that I like older people, right...?"
"She should be calling you, 'Little Brother Lich-y', shouldn't she?" James pointed out, and it was clear from the way hir face crinkled and shook that ze was wrestling to keep the laughter cooped up inside hemself.
As Septa's own face crumpled and collapsed, slack with horror, Xela just put a hand to her temple, nose then cheeks and swore from then on to think twice about trusting her little devil of a partner here with anything. Ever again.
And Cindy looked the same as she had for this entire conversation, eyes only on Guithe, and entirely unsure...

demon • 7 March 2017 at 9:07 AM

Eventually, Xela and Septa's personal nightmare had lapsed into something more like a strategic water war council, although for one of them it felt just about as fantastic and improbable and surreal, and she spent much of it staring at the plain steely wall and wondering how she'd got here. On this planet, and in this body.
"We need to draw their attention!" Guithe was in the center of their planning, having possibly been awarded some ridiculous title like United Water-Forces Commander-in-chief, and also wearing a sparkly green Robin Hood hat (or, as Cindy called it, a 'bycocket', causing everyone else to grin like an immature preschooler which was, in fact, almost closer to Guithe's actual age!).
The rest of the group had taken advantage of Manny's closet in order to change out of their wet clothes- or rather, Bree's closet, since it turned out to be filled with mostly green clothes of the very feminine cut ("I wouldn't stay over if I didn't have a practical clothes range to change into!" Bree said as she offhandedly presented the closet that really looked to have suffered a green alien takeover. Manny appeared unamused).
Feminine, which is to say, Septa had very nearly put on a flouncy layered skirt before Manny thrust some of his own boring black pants at him with a force that the leader didn't dare oppose.
"And I have the perfect way to do that," Septa smirked. He was now wearing said pants, the admittedly huge size on him tied tightly by the drawstrings, and a green soccer tank of Bree's, emblazoned- of course- with the number seven.
"We don't actually need an elaborate plan. After all, it's only Renata and I, Renata and Antonia, and Tonia and Molly that need to fight," James pointed out reasonably. Ze had also managed to secure non-green items, in a much more amiable way, though Manny's dark standard-issue clothes hung even worse off hir small frame than hir original clothes; ze was basically swamped. "We could just, you know, find René and it would basically be over."
"I do not want to let my other opponent the chance to hit me distracted," Cindy retorted, turning up her nose. She was wearing a green summer dress now, one that looked entirely too positive for the woman's cold, prestigious exterior, in addition to too long and too loose on every front, for the shorter and much skinnier girl. Still, it wasn't so awful a fit as James'.
"As you defeated me in battle, I'm now honor-bound to root for you," Bree told a rather pleased-looking Cindy, "so I'll support Antonia!" She was also much happier ever since a calmer Manny had taken a seat next to her, placing a hand on her knee and watching as the group talked strategy.
Septa looked up from the phone he'd taken to playing with again. "Oh, right! If you win, what'd you like, Miss Cenerentola?" he leaned towards her, fluttering eyelashes still glistening with water.
"More clothes," the blonde answered without thought or hesitation. "More costumes. We could have undersea, or superhero, or maybe even food vendor theme for a night," she brainstormed, a hand on her chin and an enthralling gleam in her eyes.
Xela had finally thought she'd come to grips with this new reality, when her babysitter somehow forced her to imagine everyone in the room in stupid hot dog suits... She rubbed at her eyes and got herself to ask; "What's this about..?"
The ever-helpful James explained. "The prize for winning the waterfight is whatever the winner wants to ask of Septa. He's able to get almost anything you can ask for shipped in, without questions... It's a privilege that even higher leaders don't have, even Penta has to go to him for- some things." It would be a lie to say ze didn't sound just a little proud of hir leader.
"I negotiate with the transporters for things. Mona just doesn't mind," Septa confirmed with some actual modesty, shockingly.
"But you can't smuggle things out?" Xela groused, even though she already knew the answer, and it was confirmed instantly as he shook his head.
Figures. Of course Septa would be useless everywhere that it actually mattered. The group stewed in silence for a few minutes, and Xela realized by the strain in Cindy's pose, the clench of Manny's jaw, and the hardness around Bree's eyes that everyone... really did want to get off this island, more than anything. There were no illusions about that.
They were just stuck. Simply put, they were like rats in a maze, jumping through all the hoops they were given to get the reward at the end, but with no actual hope, no real possibility of ever escaping the true prison they were in. They-
Forgot about it promptly, as soon as Guithe piped up again with a little; "So who's gonna defeat the wrongful Miss Rena and claim their prize from the beautiful princess?" she taunted them glibly with her words, while still maintaining with her tone the outward image of innocence beyond reproach.
"It shall be me!" Cindy rose rather inelegantly out of her seat, shooting up before she could even help herself, so strong was her conviction.
"We'll see about that..." James just smiled, following suit, until ze suddenly turned a rather delicate shade of pink when Septa, who'd taken hold of hir hand, kissed hem on the knuckle just fleetingly.
"For luck," he said lightly.
Cindy just sniffed and held her nose high again. "You had better not show favorites, just because you're dating today," she instructed Septa strictly, with the implication that he'd be in trouble later if he defied her.
"Of course not. Cenerentola, how could I be so unfair to one so fair as you?" Septa teased her softly, standing as well. "And I think it would be most fair if we go along with my plan! Don't you think so?" slyly he prompted them.
Both parties shrugged, exchanging looks. "I guess..." they agreed warily.
Xela's outcry of protest, "Do you two even know what you're agreeing to?!", was ignored and faded instantly into the background. These fools were beyond help.
"Excellent, because I already invited Molly. She's on her way over here, in fact, she should be knocking any minute~!" Septa sang to them smugly, waving his phone once before stowing it away again.
"What?!" Cindy ran over to the door to prepare, with an urgency she could apparently only muster if a new array of costumes for her collection was on the line.
Septa watched her get flustered, Guithe also hurrying to help, with a rather satisfied look on his face, and it was obvious to Xela now if it wasn't before, how he and Bree, and to some extent Cindy too, got along so well. They were conceited, self-contented cats, the lot of them, always grooming themselves beyond vanity...
Septa had turned back to James now, a more ponderous look passing over him again. "Say, what was that about a princess anyway? Since when am I-"
"Since you grew out your hair so beautifully long, all those years ago," James answered sweetly, running hir fingers through it despite the dampness, wearing hir appreciation for how soft and fluffy it felt to hem openly on hir sleeve.
Septa shivered at the touch. "... I'm not cutting it no matter what you say," he still said, and at least, Xela thought, his loyalty to his hair, if nothing else, knew no bounds...

asi • 7 March 2017 at 9:24 AM

Molly was a young, perhaps nineteen year-old, all-American lady, with shoulder-length strawberry blonde hair, thin spectacles, who wore a skirt and a blouse and, well... she was rather... wide.
That is to say, Molly was fat. Most of Septa's inner circle was very much on the skinny side- most kids on IOD, in fact, could only be referred to as thin, regardless of whether they had good figures, or malnourished and neglected ones. To be absolutely honest, Molly was probably one of the biggest people Xela had seen on the island, and that was comparing her to some of the most muscly teens in existence. Which wasn't fair, because while Molly and Manny were about the same in shoulder-width, his mass weighed more on the side of muscle than fat, his shoulders were the biggest part of his body and for Molly, hers just weren't. She was fat, there was just no other way to say it. She probably took up as much room on a seat as any three of Cindy, René, Beck, James and even Septa, so long as he didn't sit with his legs far apart as males were apt to do. Heck, Guithe could probably even scoot onto the end of that bench too, and it would still be more comfortable that its opposite twin. Just...
Forget the other features, as soon as she saw it, the only thing Xela could notice about this person was her bulk.
Well, she was also sopping wet in the face and had one of Manny's shirts squeezed around her torso (he was looked increasing disgruntled about the raiding of what little clothes were his in his closet), as Cindy's ambush (which had involved a polite albeit sweaty greeting, a beat, then Guithe playing distraction with a hug around the legs) had gone without a hitch. This time, Bree joined in Cindy and Guithe in celebratory dancing...
"Hnnurghhhhh," the newcomer groaned, bending over uncomfortably in order to retrieve the shotgun she'd been disarmed of by a little gypsy trickster ("Who's kid is this?" Molly had asked, looming over Guithe, to which Xela had cluelessly raised her hand, while Septa had protested; "NOT mine! You're crazy! She's my little sister! LITTLE SISTER...").
Xela felt just as uncomfortable watching the human struggle, until Septa hopped his way over to greet her. "Molly~! Thanks so much for coming! It's so nice to see you again," he smiled... only to get his face soaked over yet again as soon as Molly lifted her water gun from the floor.
"This is sooo funny, guys," Septa said with impressive dryness, considering... how wet he was. Well, it wasn't that bad this time though, and instead of changing clothes, he simply elected to wring out his football tank and put it back on. He probably wasn't expecting to stay dry anyway, and no one cared about his water fight ranking. He'd been wiped out by everyone but the missing René at this point.
"Yeah, it's pretty funny!" Bree cackled, and most everyone else joined in, including Manny and even Xela couldn't help but chuckle. Septa quickly broke out into a smile when he heard that, too.
"I had to, if I lost to you, I'd resign for shame," Molly blew out in a sigh, and Xela started, doing a double take when she realized... this girl had a very, very cute voice; high-pitched and anxious, but also smooth and sweet like syrup and honey. Despite the less-than-endearing appearance, she sounded like a total sweetheart! Thanks to that, Xela no longer found her so distasteful, and watched without a scowl.
Septa put a hand to his forehead, looking faint. "So meeeeaaaan!"
"S-sorry, about earlier, misplacing you- oh!" Head bowed downwards, Molly had been pulling things out of her pockets, including a notebook, phone and pen, and it was only a moment before she fumbled and dropped all of them from her hands.
Xela thought she was beginning to see why James had seemed rather tired of her when ze spoke of her.
Septa dove down and picked the things up for her. "It's fine, fine! It was funny," he smiled, patting her shoulder kindly. "Now, did you bring what I asked for..?" Septa winked.
Molly's whole, portly body jumped for a moment, every bit of her mass wobbling long after she landed heavily. "Um! Yes, yes," she trotted back over to the door, and grabbed something from just outside... and pulled it into the room.

It was... something like a large armored shopping trolley. Well, if white wooden boards (possibly part of a dissembled desk?), nailed around the metal frame, could be considered 'armor'. Chair parts had also been used to form a battering ram at the front and spikes on its sides. Xela really wasn't sure what to make of it, but considering its size- it couldn't even fit through the door- she wondered if they shouldn't need a permit to drive that around the base... But of course, with a leader like Septa around, nothing so sensible need apply.
Oh yeah, it was also filled to the brim with... water balloons. Of course.
"Ta-da!" Bone-thin arms spread wide, Septa grinned at them as they took in his monstrous creation, a siege-engine of 'epic' proportions that no doubt had the power to plunge all those who beheld it into the depths of despair and watery demise. "With this, we shall have the power to conquer the cafeteria..." his pitch descended into a eerily deep baritone, quite unlike his usual sing-songy voice, as he shook his gloved fist in an excellent imitation of cartoon villainy. "Mon amis, I present to you... the DOOMSBRINGER!!"
"Septa, you're mad..." All Xela had left in her was a shake of her head. "We're not actually going to-"
Xela had been absolutely sure none of them would be willing to go through with it- Septa's madcap, nonsensical scheme- until she actually turned, looked, and saw the excited looks on their faces, every one of them grinning, faces lit up with the joy of trouble-making; except for James, whose eyes simply shone, liquid peppermint adoration.
It was clear they couldn't wait to follow Septa and bring chaos to the cafeteria, and there was little short of zapping them that Xela could do to stop them... It was becoming increasingly plain that the best thing Xela could do with this group is keep Guithe from getting to the front of the crowd. The girl obviously felt safe and secure when Septa was around, but allowing Guithe to be dragged back into that nightmare... That look of immense suffering reborn on the small human child's face again... It was one of the few things Xela could never bear to let happen. She wouldn't.

demon • 7 March 2017 at 9:47 AM

That was how Xela found herself following along behind the crazy troop dressed largely in green, trying with some small, pitiful effort to keep her distance from the insane, inane primitive vehicle Molly was pushing- Septa was just pretending to help by resting one hand casually on its frame, the poser. Now in the more populated areas, Glaeroes were stunned to see the terrible contraption eating its way through the space of the corridor, teens literally jumping and diving out of its path before its tiny rubber wheels somehow devoured them, too. Xela didn't even want to be seen by the audience and associated with this event, or most of these people, but she hardly had a choice as Guithe was skipping along cheerfully at Septa's side.
Xela's eyes narrowed balefully, on the look out for any tell-tale indication of hostility from the bystanders- at the first sign of danger, she'd attack...
One thing was bugging her. Septa's gang were stupidly targeting the cafeteria, true, but with the only real goal of bringing the 'elusive' Renata out of hiding. But, they knew other people than just her, right? The sinners' inner circle seemed more compact than she thought.
"So how come we're only after René, what about, you know, her friend," she glanced at Septa out of the corner of her eye as she spoke, remembering exactly what his tie to her was supposed to be- sort of- "Beck? Doesn't she um, compete?" Come to think of it, Manny hadn't tried to take part, and wasn't considered in the rankings.
Cindy sniffed, walking nearby. "Rebeca is no member," was all she said, still examining her pale eye-shadow in her trusty compact mirror.
"A member of what?" Xela arched an eyebrow, confused. "The inner circle?" Didn't Beck work at the club, wasn't she even dating the boss? How much more inducted and enthralled into this group did one have to get, before you earned your water gun??
"No." James was much more thorough in hir answer. "She's a member of that. That refers typically to the club's most devoted attendants; that is, the staff." Ze dropped back to join Xela's side in the procession. "She's not a member of Septa's spec-ops. That's special operations team," ze elucidated helpfully. "They are a group under a leader's command alone and exempt from most general missions and assignments, so Septa's only granted five tops."
"So he could prevent Guithe and I from being sent to the front lines, indefinitely," Xela thought aloud, gaze directed at the wild hair covering the back of the leader's head, though her focus was entirely inwards, the green-blue hue of her eyes obscured by busy thoughts.
"Er, yes, but-" James was interrupted by a loud call of their names, and some noisy bustling amid a lingering crowd at the corner until someone managed to push her way through.
Beck had found them, shoving some loitering bystanders aside to jump- figuratively- on the bandwagon. Xela half-expected, whole-heartedly hoped for René to simply disturb the parade, so that they never made it to their destination... but that didn't happen.
Instead, she just had to listen to Cindy fishing for gossip as they marched towards their dreaded doom. Xela was pretty convinced that if the so-called Doomsbringer was going to dish it out to anyone, it would have to be them. Perhaps she didn't have premonitions like she used to, of the authentically prophetic kind, but Xela could very well read a recipe for disaster if ever she saw one!
But Cindy was just interested in gossip, the power's grim wisdom going very much ignored.
"So? Are you two together now?" the bottle blonde asked with candid audacity; no matter how outspoken the lady was, she still had an inherent elegance that made her almost unreproachable.
When the brunette just cocked her head to one side, smiling unknowingly, Cindy waved for James' attention in case there were still some communications barriers they needed to overcome. "You and René? Together? Xela says she saw you- unless perhaps she was too high up to see anything," Cindy elaborated, with a little bit of a dig towards the redhead, who was thoroughly offended by the implication that her narrative couldn't be trusted. "You know- making out," Cindy illustrated the action with hand movements.
Then Beck understood. "No! No way," she laughed, saying something much longer in her Portuguese, then; "Women, too boring to me. Men, I like. Septa at least," she continued to break off into her first language, whilst fanning herself in a silly fashion. She conducted herself like the most airheaded girl Xela- or Alex- had ever had the displeasure to meet at high school. Giggled just like it too.
"They're not... together now. Last night was just a drunken... fling." James averted hir eyes, looking to the ceiling- apparently the information ze got made hem um, less than entirely comfortable. "She says Septa's more than girly enough for her. She doesn't get any gayer than that, apparently," James translated, looking perhaps a little disappointed.
"Ask about you," Cindy suggested slyly, and James shook hir head, but apparently ze had the guts for it because the next thing Xela saw was the Brazilian appraising hem!
Beck pursed her lips, looking curious as she considered the androgyne. Then she responded, laugh tinkling like bells again as she talked.
James sighed when she finished. "I think she means it just matters what you've got down there," ze said, making a face as ze pointed out a particular spot down below.
Looking delighted at the somewhat crude gesture, Beck slung an arm around hir shoulders and leaned in, still laughing to herself quietly. "Yes, Jemmy, yes!" she spoke in a breathy, strong kind of accent that didn't pronounce individual sounds very clearly, but rushed them out in a fluid string like a fast-flowing stream. "You gotta uh, know how to have fun, yeah!"
Cindy looked much less than happy at the information she was receiving. In fact, if Xela had to guess what the debutante was thinking about, her money was on getting out of this conversation, or better yet, away from Rebeca. Her facial expression was actually bordering on nauseated.
Xela elected to distract from this by questioning the morality of their mission. "Won't it be just be like dropping bombs on unsuspecting civillians, who just want to eat their lunches- I mean, live their lives in peace...? It's one thing for you guys, who are armed, but-"
"What, we're doing that?" Beck looked predictably ecstatic. Xela thought all these humans were crazy.
"Oh, they'll be armed..." James commented knowingly. "They're in a cafeteria after all."
"Don't forget who the real victim is here! I was drenched four times and it's not like I was ever armed," Septa intruded on them suddenly, eyes watery and trembling, mouth wobbling like he really was threatening to cry.
James blinked, then poked him sheepishly on his left arm, covered to the shoulder in long black glove. "You are armed, you have two of them," ze offered some coy banter to hir date.
Septa appeared jolted by the prod, looking down... "Yeah well, that's not what I meant," he mumbled, looking oddly put out or something.
"How come you didn't fight back? Where is your toy gun? You have one, I assume," Xela deadpanned. Septa not joining in on childish games? Noooooo waaaaayy.
"Oh... Actually, I don't have it with me. I think I've... misplaced it? Someone might have taken it, earlier. From my desk," the leader admitted ponderously, scratching at the side of his cheek.
"You're saying someone other than us could be wandering around base with a loaded gun? Why didn't you tell us!" Cindy and Bree looked very much disturbed by the revelation.
"It's only a water gun," Septa snickered, hand over his mouth as the girls glared at him, appalled like he'd put their lives at risk rather than just their chances for remaining dry for the rest of the day.
Xela noticed that Beck was wearing a foxy smile...

asi • 7 March 2017 at 10:53 PM

Xela would have liked to have known what, exactly, happened in those crucial few seconds before everything fell apart. Alas, from her place at the back of the group, she wasn't able to hear the words Septa shouted into the cafeteria hall the moment he thrust open the doors, hitting the door stoppers with a bang so loud that it didn't seem it could come possibly from the strength of that leader's noodle limbs. In any case, he yelled something and the inside of the hall began to fill with a low, dull roar, the noise of activity, frenzy, a panic within.
Then the team charged into the room, behind the shielding bulk of the doomsday contraption and everything was chaos. The armored trolley had been filled to the brim with water balloons and while physically it had to be exhaustible, the cart was huge and even seven teens and an exuberant child throwing them as rapidly as possible was far from depleting it fast.
Some of the unfortunate lunchers had used the warning to jump under their tables, holding up their lunchtrays in a feeble attempt at making shelter. But others had leaped up to make their own preparations for war. And now Xela knew exactly what James had meant about them being armed. Because now food was flying, and splattering, everywhere.
The result was far from pretty.
Of course, it was foolish to forget powers, in a cafeteria full of user kids! By Xela's estimation, there ought to be at least twenty kids in the room who could stop it all in a moment's notice. A telekinetic could make the water balloons freeze midair, a force fielder could trap the crew and their bombs in a bubble, a water manipulator could steal all the bang from their weapons with ease, and so on and so forth... and probably handily leave the seven attackers wiped out on the floor if they couldn't retaliate with their own powers.
But apart from some small instances, little tricks to gain advantage, dodge or block or strike fast enough to make a dodge impossible... there was nothing, no conclusive, insurmountable opposition that left Septa's crew incontestably outmatched.
Okay, there was a lightning-fast kid who raced over to dump a whole pot of yellow rice on Cindy's head. She looked super miffed, but didn't even need to try and exact revenge, because the cafeteria staff were much more outraged and went after the speed user with all they had. Er, literally leaving the dangerous weaponry of a kitchen wide open, but as more in the hall turned on each other, at least now it wasn't seven against nearly a hundred.
It was more like old-fashioned anarchy. Everyone fighting everyone. A free-for-all throw-fest, with mainly just food and water, thankfully, but Xela was very happy to continue to watch from just outside the door, peering into a world of madness. She was only here for Guithe, to make sure nothing happened to her, so there was no reason for Xela to get her own feet or any part of her dirty or wetter than she slightly still was. But joining Manny and Bree in raining down water bombs on the scattered throng of teens, if it meant getting chicken nuggets thrown in her face in return? Xela rather thought she might lash out and put lasers to whoever threw greasy chicken parts at her, frying them... by accident, of course! It was better that she stayed her distance and watched, for everyone's sake, since she couldn't promise to be as good a sport as Cindy.
Speaking of, the blonde wasn't left stewing in her rice-coated misery for long. A thick, powerful stream of water soon came and washed all the yellow grain away, just a few sticking resolutely to her pinned-up hair. Looking up, it took scarcely a second to locate her; beaming and waving her double-barrel water-launcher broadly was René. She didn't risk a moment longer than necessary however, ducking back behind the large wheelie bin she was hauling around with her, vigilant for any sign of her remaining opponents.
So standing there, stock still, dress soaked through yet washed clean of icky foodstuff; all Cindy managed to say on the matter was, "I wish I could be more angry about this, and less grateful..."
Although she was forced to give up on her bid for the water fight throne, and her dream of a new costume party theme, well... There were still plenty of people waiting to get a taste of cold, wet, and invigorating defeat by her dainty hands.
And where was James in all this havoc, missing hir chance at that perfect potshot when René revealed herself? Well...

If the air filled with soaring water balloons and cafeteria food could be considered akin to the turmoil of a hurricane, then the quiet eye of it all would have to be slightly off-center, behind the safety of the Doomsbringer's great armored bulk. While the others fought and defended the cart from the front, Xela's view meant that she could hardly miss two teens taking refuge from the utter bloodbath behind it; crouching on the kitschy cafeteria tiles, and sharing a private moment. Both James and Septa had clothes that were soaked right through with water and in some places splattered with food items, but they still had smiles on their faces as they kissed tenderly...
Xela chose that moment to go in and immediately shove the entire cart towards the center of the cafeteria and the water v. food kerfuffle, with enough force that it almost upended when it hit the table, the air cracked with the explosive sound of a thousand balloons popping, and it fully drenched everyone within a five-meter radius and many others more besides.
The effect could have only been more dramatic if the water had been so cold as to freeze everyone solid, literally. Figuratively, it did manage, bringing the whole battle to a soggy, dripping stop. In one devastating move, Xela had effectively cleared the room of active combatants save for James and Septa, who had disentangled to find their cover completely blown, and René whose trashcan of protection was at entirely the wrong angle, and both hands too wrapped around her water launcher to change it now, as James' hands were down now, grabbing for hir pistols, fast, but too slow...
Except René's gun was empty. It emitted only a paltry squirt before spluttering and giving up entirely. "Ah- ¡coño- no mames... a la verga!" she exclaimed in, whatever exactly it was she spoke. One of those Latin languages.
"Here!" Septa called out, and with a kindly expression he tossed over to her the last of the few surviving water balloons he'd put down by his feet.
Reflexively René dropped her water-gun in order to catch the refill she'd been so generously sent... only to have it immediately burst in her hands, over her chest. Because, of course, it was a water balloon.
Septa burst out laughing, his wet, black, tangled hair flopping all around his face. "Oh my god, you actually fell for that..!" And he fell backwards onto the floor, still giggling madly.
For that moment, everyone present was blown out of the water, no matter how drenched they'd got, when they slowly realized that Septa had actually won a match... No way....
"Now we're on even ground," James pointed out affably, stepping around the convulsing mess that was the leader hopelessly overcome by laughter. "I mean, I got beat by Bree earlier, and these," ze held up hir water-pistols, "are empty as well."
A sweet-voiced murmur drifted over from the background; "Actually, I'd die of shame for losing to Septa..." There was also distant mutters of agreement.
"Whatever, Molly!" René cried out, flourishing her water launcher in the air. "I am strong, I'll live on... and defeat you, Jems, if it's the last thing I do...!"
They both then glanced down at their dry, useless weapons then up, exchanging an awkward look.
So a temporary truce was called while the two had to share the kitchen sink to reload, allowing for a short recess where Septa continued to flounder weakly on the floor, still entrapped by the final spasms of his laughter, and the rest of the group stared into the abyss of nothingness, blank-eyed, questioning how this could have ever come to pass...

demon • 7 March 2017 at 11:47 PM

A tumbleweed rolled by, something Xela would have doubtlessly questioned had she more knowledge of botany and time to be so distracted. But as it was, the final, ultimate duel, the culmination of an entire morning spent playing at war... It was at hand, right here and right now. This was what it all came down to, where one shot would tip the balance between the eternal glory of victory, and the everlasting shame of defeat. This was the critical moment, where James and René stood on the precipice of life, and death. Or something.
Guithe peeked out from her genius hiding place- within the water balloon cart, to which Xela could only think, at least Miss Cindy would be relieved to find the costume she wore only wet, and not dirty. And Xela wouldn't have to insist on the girl showering later... That was nice.
Wait, had Guithe been in the Doomsbringer all this time? The same thing that had almost capsized? Hadn't it connected violently with a cafeteria table? And wasn't all of that Xela's fault? ... Thank god the little girl seemed perfectly unharmed, or Xela would have probably had a mental shutdown, blue screen of death over what she'd done.
Oh, and those two clowns were speaking.
Standing ten paces apart, facing one another head on, each standing with their legs apart and arms hovering at their sides like cowboys from the wild wild west, ready to draw and fire... though they'd already done the first part.
"I love you, Jems," Renata said mournfully to James as she raised her blaster, aiming it with finality towards hir chest. Her finger had only two inches to travel before it would reach the trigger. "As a translator... you solved many problems for me. You'll always have my thanks for the good things you've done... Jems..." Her hands shook slightly, finger creeping upwards.
James looked dearly touched, even as ze lifted hir own pistols, pulling the sliders back then forward, smoothly cocking both guns. "Really? I had no idea you felt that way... I'm so happy I've been of help..."
"Stop with the sobbing and just kill each other already!" Cindy called out with a both pleading and demanding tone. She had colorful bits of plastic from the balloons all over her and appeared very well done with this, as had every survivor of the Doomsbringer's final hydrogen blast- all those with no reason to stay having long fled by now to clean themselves up. The look Cindy on was at least an improvement on yellow rice, though.
René nodded, completely somber, like she thought she'd landed a part in a blockbuster spy-thriller rather than the hopeless spaghetti western of Xela's actual current reality. "I'm sorry Jems. But now, it will be the time... where you must die."
Septa hiccuped between giggles- Xela only stared- Cindy held her face in her hands- Manny paid no attention at all as he helped Bree dry up with a hand towel he'd presumably lifted from the kitchen. Bree was watching over her shoulder, eyes wide- Guithe bounced up and down excitedly from in the Doomsbringer- Molly gasped, hands empty as the notepad she'd been scribbling in lay dumped at her feet.
That accent René had used, it was supposed to be a joke, right?

James got doused from hir head to hir toes, and missed René completely. It looked like a resounding victory, as one contender quickly had a puddle forming around their feet, while the other's front appeared entirely untouched, save from where she'd been splashed by Septa's water bomb earlier.
René blinked in bewilderment, looking down at her dry hands. "Jems? Why did you-" She hadn't for a second expected the bartender to miss. Then suddenly, she shivered, feeling the wet stick of her shirt against her back. When she turned, all of the audience saw how her back had been soaked through...
"She's got Septa's gun," was what James said, causing everyone to follow René, spinning around to look, eyes zeroing in on the crappy, colorful, kids' pump-action water-gun in Rebeca's hands. Soaked hands, mind you. The girl cursed as she shook herself, droplets falling off with every movement.
That's where James had, at the final moment, aimed.
"Beck?" René asked hesitantly. "What's going on..? You're not supposed to have a gun..."

asi • 8 March 2017 at 12:24 AM

"Why not? As a new member of Septa's spec-ops team, this should be my god-given right, to hold arms, isn't that right?" Rebeca had no qualms about speaking in her native tongue to Renata and Bree, since they clearly understood it. Meanwhile, the rest of them managed to get by relying on the talents of James, who quickly and competently translated it into English for everyone else as she spoke.
"But... you're not... the members are Bree, L.R.J., Antonia and I, with Molly as assistant. You know that..." René responded in kind, and James did the same treatment for her, too.
"I know what Septa and Molly had done this morning! 'Actually doing work'..." Rebeca laughed, her fingers, held in the shape of bunny ears, bounced to form quotation marks around the words she said. "They transferred Bree onto active duty after she broke up with him," she gestured to the naturally pale but quickly paling still Septa, standing on the sidelines closer to James, "last night. That's what you get for forfeiting your place on the spec-ops, right?! She's going off into the warzone now! So there's a free space, don't you know? And obviously, I'm next in line, the next person on the team should be me!"
"Beca..." René had an unreadable expression as James echoed right after her. "You're being too selfish..."
"I'm not! If he has an empty slot, then he has to fill it right away! Or don't you care that I might go and die on my very next mission?!" Beck seethed, looking downright venomously at Renata, her so-called friend. "I'm sure you're very comfortable, playing games-"
Bree spoke up then, staring between the two girls, responding in the same kind of language they used. She looked deathly faint, in fact, her skin had even appeared to turn a sheen of green, but not bright and glowing like her power was... but sickly and unsightly. "Is that true? Just because I left him-"
"That's not how it is at all! I would never send you away against your will," Septa interrupted her, speaking directly to Bree, horrified by Rebeca's words and intent on disavowing them. "You're my friend, whether we're more or nothing else, but... I, I did make preparations for that to be an option, only because Manny said you decided to go with him!"
"Well, I didn't!" Bree yelled back, angry and scared.
Horrible, echoing silence. At least the cafeteria had been populated by strangers of the good sense to have long since cleared out, before things had taken a tone for the more serious. They'd presumably gone to their rooms to grab their towels and dry themselves down. Probably still laughing about Septa's squad's antics and the fun they'd had, no doubt. Not knowing they'd taken the best of the mood here with them...
"Then that's fine, you don't have to go anywhere..." Septa said quietly, looking carefully only at Bree and not her big, dark, hulking boyfriend who was glaring at the leader like he might choke the life out of him on the spot, murderously, and without regret.
James stepped in between the two males, smoothly defusing the tension in but an instant. "... So, who won the water fight?" ze asked lightly, hands stuck deep inside what had to be clammy and damp pockets.
Hearing this, Manny turned and stormed out of the room, but not one person in the cafeteria dared react to that. Not even Bree watched him go, but just stared down at the floor, expression torn beyond troubled.
Septa combed a hand through the wilds of his hair, looking far too distracted to handle something like that right now. "Um... Let's have lunch first, then I'll announce the winner," he ended on a smile.
They were all gross and wet, but, too tired and hungry to change first, just decided to lunch as is. The cafeteria itself was a horrendous mess, but, might as well make use of how quiet and empty they'd made it, for once...
So that's what they did, and the water fight ended with the shocking result of Septa being one of the driest and cleanest of them all, save Xela herself.

In the aftermath of the flood of biblical proportions, the group rather more calmly lunched together, both harassed and pandered to by the cafeteria staff (depending on whether the individual would be stuck cleaning up the mess and dealing with greater hungry hordes later, no doubt) when they gathered at the now non-existent line by the counter.
Some of them used their squad status, or maybe it was just Septa's magic, to get special meals, different to those of the masses. There was a small disturbance at one point, like there'd been a mix-up, and lunch lady didn't have anything for Cindy? It was an awkward moment, until Septa stepped in with his careless smile and claimed he'd ordered too much, so those two ended up sharing a plate of spaghetti carbonara... Xela was just relieved to see it was human food, and not ice cream.
They sat down at one of the less ravaged tables and ignored the mess around them- something Septa's group seemed very skilled at, and given how lively they all were, Xela didn't find it hard to be distracted as well.
The mood was surprisingly peaceful after all the war they'd had that morning. There didn't seem to be any arguments left. Nor were there any sickly displays of PDA at the table, either. Septa didn't do anything weird like try to romantically feed Cindy- or James. He just chatted enthusiastically between bites, mowing through most of the plate with little regard for Cindy's refined nibbling pace. She didn't complain, preferring to make snooty comments about whatever the topic was at hand. James dipped savory items into hir uncommon soup that no one else seemed eager to try, mostly listening, though when ze did speak hir comments were high-quality, smarter and savvier than most. Molly had some very good-looking sandwiches and spoke rarely, but it was lovely when she did. Bree alternated between joining in when the topic interested her, and looking very bored when it didn't, picking away at her supremely green salad plus burger just for something to do... While René and Beck sat opposite each other, both very engaged in the conversation, just not with each other. When Beck spoke, Renata was committed to her cheese-topped seafood dish instead, forcing James to help again with English again since her usual aide wouldn't. And Beck didn't eat much, mostly ignoring her standard-issue slop. The mood was good though, contented, and glancing to her side, Xela saw that Guithe very much appreciated it. The kid was a little shyer in the company of such a large group, but she really enjoyed trying foods from all the other dishes offered to her... Ah, it had probably been a long since Guithe had had anything like this... It felt warm and fuzzy, like a big misfit family, something the child had once had...
"Big Sister Xe-Xe, aren't you eating?" the child's deep blue eyes looked back at her in concern.
"Ah, don't like the food?" Septa asked sympathetically, leaning forward. "I didn't think to order you anything special."
"Chaos is the only thing you plan, this is why you're a terrible leader," Cindy said snidely, chin propped up on one hand, to James who gave a huff of laughter in return.
"Is that really necessary..." Molly looked a little upset, but no one paid her any heed.
Septa just continued to smile at Xela, waiting.
"No, it's fine, I was just distracted," she started to work on her plate, and he nodded and took up the mantle of conversation once more. He seemed as animated as always, even as he talked and ate with only the one hand. Back to the subject of PDA... It was hardly overt, but his other hand was under the table, holding James' the entire time, right up until everyone was done and he stood, stretching with a yawn.
"Well, I must say, today has been outstanding! I went missing without going anywhere, nearly met with death in a public bathroom, died by water four times, led a military assault on a cafeteria, defeated the last enemy warrior in single combat-" Septa recounted his apparent 'accomplishments', much to the amusement/outrage of those present.
"That's not how it happened, you..." James placed a hand on hir head.
"Anyway!" Septa's recovery was instantaneous. "You all want to know who the winner of the water-fight was today, right?" his excitement was very nearly infectious, only to get brought down in the next moment.
"Not really," Beck cut in, using her thickly accented English for once, "I want to know, when you have a squad space for me," she looked up at the leader with starry baby-kitten eyes, lit by the hope of getting her way. "Please?"
"I- I can't do that, no one's leaving unless it's their choice," Septa answered, just looked distressed, mostly about how quietly angry Renata was looking, rather than any effect of the beseeching, cuteness-weaponized eyes turned on him.
"Then, we can change the Spanish club room to the Brazilian one?" Rebeca tried, with a winning smile. Her English really wasn't bad at all and Xela felt a bit annoyed at how often the girl had resorted to her own language- but having only one herself, realized she probably shouldn't judge.
"Ummmm," Septa's eyes were definitely only on René now.
And she replied for him in the next instant. "Beck, you're not entitled to anything like that, just because you've been out with him once or twice!"
"Fine! Whatever, continue," Beck sulked, and set about straightening her hair and picking bits of food out of it rather than listening to the rest.
"Yeah, hurry up, I wanna know who wonnn," Guithe pleaded- much more cutely than that fox Rebeca could ever hope to achieve- and seemingly uninterested in all the relationship drama around her (although Xela knew better).

demon • 8 March 2017 at 12:54 AM

Septa cleared his throat, disgustingly cheerful again after seeing his dear little sister's face. "Well, Cindy got hit twice, R.J. got hit twice, Bree got hit twice, René got hit... twice! And Molly and I- were amazing-" Septa paused suddenly, frowning like something had came out wrong, just as Xela started in puzzlement, because that didn't look right... when his lips moved. "We were!" he whined, then appeared to give up as everyone began snickering? "Well, whatever! Our excellent performance-" he broke off coughing and wearing an irritated look, before seeming to pick up his stride again; "aside! There was a clear winner to this fight, I think everyone can agree! Not only did they not get hit by any one of you, they also struck the decisive blow that took out the whole cafeteria," Septa grinned widely, showing off his rows of straight white teeth. Then he leaned forward, looking Xela right in the eye, to her surprise. "So, Xela? What is it you wish for?"
"Oooh," James started clapping, looking pleased at the decision, which filled Xela with a warm rush of appreciation after Septa's praise had not, her reaction stalling.
Cindy, Bree, René and Molly applauded nicely too, all giving her elegant, warm, kind and sweet smiles and not being one bit like sore losers (Beck was slumping in her seat). Xela was trying to think of even one answer she could give to Septa's question, when she realized- Guithe. Guithe didn't clap, and wasn't happy, either.
"Who says that wasn't me?" Guithe contested the result, pulling out all the cuteness stops, pouting up at her big brother.
"I think I can tell the two of you apart..." Septa replied with a slowly climbing smile, definitely only amused by her claim.
Guithe stamped her foot, insisting; "Weren't you just a bit too busy to tell it was me who pushed the trolley?!" she paused, then again for emphasis; "Too busy..."
"Yes," Septa admitted with a laugh, "but even then I can tell a scary grown woman from a tiny trickster kid like you! You're hardly strong enough to push the DOOMSBRINGER like that all by yourself," he scrubbed at her soaked mop of hair affectionately, and a little condescendingly.
"I grew!" Guithe argued, stretching her arms up and waving them as if in representation. The girl was very quick to try and take advantage of her newfound 'power', Xela noted with dread.
"Oh? Then why don't you grow for me now?" Septa taunted her, his tall frame towering over her short and stubby one. No matter how she reached, she could hardly do more than slap at his collarbone and chin when he bent slightly to look down on her, smirking.
"Don't want to! Did it once and I'm tired now," Guithe glowered at him, and he laughed, backing off.
"How scary! You look just like..." he trailed off. The whole group was paused, waiting for him to continue, but he never did. Instead, Septa conceded to Guithe; "I know you helped a great deal, so I think it can be a prize for both of you! Let's see..." he considered it.
"Septa, but, they are not in the squad as well!" Beck pointed out, sitting up straight now, having taken the time to form the sentence in English.
"No, but they're both leaving sooner than you, so I think they deserve something," Septa responded, "like a farewell party! Ooh!" he clamped a hand over his mouth in excitement, as if to trap some physical manifestation of joy inside. "I know exactly what Xela wants! Guithe, you'll love it too!" he promised, dark eyes glittering with unbridled delight. "And Manuel will hate it..." he grinned, and was unable to contain his beloved idea to just himself any longer. "Of course, it's a karaoke night sleepover party! Let's do it as a going-away celebration for our new favorite team!" Septa declared with the utmost exuberance.
Xela was ready to support the group in denying that they'd ever wish to suffer through a whole night of anything like that- only to be disappointed, of course, when she looked back and saw how very gleefully on board the rest of the group was with Septa's cursed scheme. All of his schemes. She was surrounded by sinners, so she didn't know why she'd ever expected anything different from them...
"The team of only willing people," Septa was amending his statement, looking gently at Bree- then he did a double take when he caught Xela's expression in the corner of his eye. "Er, mostly willing people?" he tried again nervously, rubbing the side of his neck with the whole of his palm. "Oh, nobody gets a choice about it but Bree, that's just how it is, guys," Septa looked put out- by their lack of enthusiasm, or their flat, deadpan faces. "In any case, I'm sure the team will do really well!" he assured them.
Bree turned her head away, looking out the door that Manny had vanished through, then down at the floor, brown hair falling in front of her face like a curtain, but the furrow to her brows was still obvious for anyone with eyes. She nodded with her chin nearly to her chest, just enough to acknowledge Septa.
The gaping hole left by Manny's departure could still be felt by the group. Even though James had said, right when ze'd introduced him, that Manny didn't get along with Septa all that well, the dark, taciturn Italian still felt significant. He added a steady element to the mix that couldn't be so easily upset by Septa's disruptive energy, that swayed so easily most of the girls...
Not Xela of course, even if she was just a little fascinated by the leader's lure. Though she wasn't willing to give Septa any form of approval, the petite, fiery-spirited redhead didn't shake her head to deny the leader's will either. She just hardened the line of her eyebrows and looked down at the child by her side.
Guithe, the excitable child, sleek head of near blue-black hair bobbing up and down with her bounces as she rocked back and forth on the balls of her feet, was the exception. Her eyes, deep and ever-moving like the ocean, sparkled brightly like the sun had just risen against the beach's horizon. "I'm looking forward to it! The carry-okie sleepover, and the going out adventuring! I can't wait!" she professed all this Septa, looking every bit as eager as she said.
"That's my little sister!" Septa responded back, smiling wide to his cheeks, though his eyes didn't dance happily like hers.
"Big sister," Guithe corrected him, with a conductor's wave of her finger, leaving behind a severely unnerved-looking leader in Septa's place...
"Ah, but Boss, you have already something planned for the Sunday, don't you? Remember?" James tilted hir head curiously. "The guest."
Septa snapped his fingers together in realization. "Oh! You're right! Ah!" he gasped excessively, like from the sound reel of an old, bad horror film. "Then when could it be, Friday and Saturday, aren't those our busiest nights? We can't kick everyone out then..." he looked tragically downcast.
"It'll have to be Thursday?" James prompted, ever the sense in the room.
"I think you're right?" Septa was still puzzled. "Ah, what's today again?"
"..." The whole room sweatdropped, Xela especially wondering how anything got planned with Septa in charge.
"I'll pencil it down for Thursday..." Molly murmured, scribbling in her notebook as she spoke. "And today's Tuesday, I um, think..." she said shyly, face retreating further into the book, it seemed.
Bree stood with a sigh then. "If that's sorted, I'll go talk to Manny now. Jaime, can you come with?" Bree looked unhappy about having to ask this of hem, but; "I really don't want any misunderstandings..."
Ze smiled softly. "Yeah, sure." Ze then looked back at Septa. "Did you get everything for tonight though?"
"Yeah!" Septa answered back happily, then fished out his phone. It still seemed to work after today, impressively. "I got pictures too! The facepaint looks so fun~!"
"You better be letting me apply it," Cindy put in threateningly, "You don't want any members of KISS turning in their graves... or rising out to murder you," she muttered like the latter would somehow be much more likely.
Septa grinned as if to an inside joke, while James looked mildly concerned, saying, "You know very few of them are dead, right..?"
Cindy and James squabbled lightheartedly as they and Bree left (Cindy assured Bree that she was going to prepare club things, and absolutely not to be the awkward fourth wheel to her relationship troubles).
Beck was in a hurry to leave right after that, evidently wanting to clean herself up after the mess they'd made her into. Crumbs were still clinging to her hair and her clothes really looked ruined, so Xela really didn't blame her. However, considering the sidelong look she'd given René... there was probably another motive in her wanting to get away, too.
Septa watched her leave then said to Renata, sounding worried; "You'll talk to her though, won't you?"
René nodded, looking just a little despondent, and Septa's eyes turned sympathetic but he didn't say anymore, just patted her on the shoulder and turned back to Xela and Guithe.
"Do you want to come to the-" he started, only to be cut off by Guithe's loud and sudden yawn.
The kid looked like she wanted to hit herself for letting it escape, but Septa just smiled. "Yeah, you should probably get your rest, kid."
"We'll have a quiet night in, I think," Xela agreed firmly. She'd just been remembering how James apparently was very into hard rock, heavy metal and possibly even more tough and weighty things, and couldn't begin to imagine herself joining in on that 'fun'. She'd rather just wish Septa all the luck with it... knowing with some little cruel satisfaction that his tastes aligned much more closely with hers. His ears were guaranteed to be done in tonight.
Blissfully unaware of her thoughts, Septa simply offered to walk them to their room- at Guithe's insistence, they agreed- Molly following her leader, and all of them leaving René alone for some time to... sort out her thoughts, and her feelings.

asi • 8 March 2017 at 1:23 AM

Septa's spirits were way over the roof and probably in fact stuck in some level of the atmosphere by the time they got back to the girls' room, really, he was acting more extra than ever when they finally arrived at the 'goodbyes'.
"So, when are we gonna go on a date, darling?" Septa flung himself into Xela's... well, not arms. It was more like he swooned with his back to her chest until his head rested on her shoulder, so that he looked up at the much shorter girl for once, and gave her a good view of the excessive way he batted those ridiculously nice eyelashes of his. "You said you'd come back to the club. Tomorrow works, right? Great, so it's a date! Just come along, I'll see you there!" he agreed with himself, having the cheek to pretend to not even give her the time to argue with it.
She went along with it anyway. Now that she knew what he expected out of a 'date', it didn't seem so scary or serious now. If all they had to do was have fun and get to know each other better, well, they were already doing that together, so it hardly mattered what he fancied calling it. Or what extra things he indulged in when he was seeing someone else.
"Xela... date... Wednesday," Molly recited aloud as she scribbled it into her book, and Xela could do absolutely nothing to suppress the overwhelming blush that then heated her cheeks. In fact, she barely managed to hold within her a scream and some very deadly lasers, just out of pure embarrassment as Septa and Guithe both giggled at her like children. Well, one of them was one, but-!
"It's hardly like that," Xela fumed, trying to channel all the flustered heat out her ears, somehow.
"I know, I know," Septa waved the white steam away before it could fog up the room, "It's not a date-date, I'm just calling it that! But we'll have fun, and hopefully, it'll be educational..." Then suddenly he looked at Guithe, with an expression like he'd just had a horrible premonition- Xela thought she faintly recalled what those felt like. "But it might not be such a good night for Guithe-"
"Boo!" the girl protested, eyes immediately filling with water, "You wouldn't let me come last time, either! And I'm seventeen now, so I should!"
Septa and Xela exchanged a serious look. "Uh, Guithe, didn't you have some wonderful weasel thing to look after, or something?" he distracted her ever so pleasantly.
"Oh! Rambo!" Guithe squeed in elation, hearts practically blooming in her eyes as she recalled her one true love. Once that name was said, Guithe almost couldn't wait to have her big brother gone. She gave Septa a hug in parting then began pawing at the door, like she'd somehow become part ferret herself just from the thought of him.
"Bye now~!" Septa returned the hug, waved goodbye and left, Molly toddling along behind him, spurring her large, heavy mass to greater speeds until she matched his pace and caught up. They walked side by side then before, in Xela's point of view, the pair finally vanished around the corner, and that was that.
The power opened the door, let Guithe in, then closed it behind them. And then the two girls did have a quiet, peaceful night in... you know, apart from the ferret running everywhere, bouncing off the walls to express excitement that matched Guithe's at their heart-warming, tear-jerking, long-awaited reunion. Xela... yeah, she survived.

Septa had given her a lot of things to think about. Mostly, Xela still didn't think about them. Didn't want to.
But they had taken root at the back of her mind.
Humans were essentially inherently flawed beings, but these humans, they were, each in their own ways... charming... and for the most part, didn't seem to really wish others harm, even when they encountered conflict they couldn't simply overcome. Maybe she could dare to trust some, just a little.
And maybe Septa wasn't telling her everything, would never decide to tell her everything, but, everyone had secrets, and knowing that Septa had been unsure how much to tell her of his did make Xela feel oddly more secure about him. That he'd at least really considered telling her 'everything'... How much of a big deal could it really, be? Surely nothing very big at all.
Right?

taffy789 • 8 March 2017 at 11:29 PM

~~~

Quincy doubled over, busting out in a fit of laughter as soon as he and Izzy moved out of earshot and eyeshot of his roommate.
He leaned his lower back against a cold filing cabinet behind him, his hand pressed over his mouth as if trying and failing to mute the sound.
After a few seconds of going on like this, Quincy finally stood back up, huffing and smiling and with his glasses slightly askew and all out of breath.
“Babe,” he wheezed, that stretching grin taking up all the space on his face, “Did you see the look on Mikey’s face when we left him alone with Annabell?” The grin was impossibly vast now, “’Swear he was glaring at me like he was about to choke me, or something! I, I- I think maybe I should fear for my life tonight, at least a tiny bit? Else I might be smothered with a pillow.” He joked, and the smile died down a bit as he paused and mused, “Though I seriously was just trying to help him not like, blow his chance at love. And I thought I did a good job wingmanning!”
Quincy stared off sideways, making a face at a distant filing cabinet for a moment before sighing and turning back to Izzy, remarking, “Giving them alone time was the best thing I could do for him. If he doesn’t appreciate it, he could at least, I dunno, take the time to work his way to a straight-forward tackling of the issue, maybe ask the girl on a date all up front?” He nodded to himself, “Being honest is seriously the best way to handle matters of, like, the heart, right?”
Grinning again, though this time with an edge of slyness, Quincy pushed off the filing cabinet behind him with his good elbow and, closing the gap between him and Izzy in once step, he wrapped his hand around to his boyfriend’s back.
“I mean babe,” he hummed, smiling all bright and wide and loving at his boyfriend, “Being all forward ‘n honest…. That’s how it happened for us, right?”



“So,” Mikey was the one to first start the conversation with Annabell, this time, “The mission you went on yesterday, huh?”
The ice between the two had been broken by this point, unsurprisingly through candid small talk and jokes and without the help of any aptly named mint candies.
“It sucked,” Annabell replied back, giving a tight smile. However negative the comment was, it still felt to her like the understatement of the century. Or, perhaps, that sentiment ebbed more from her bruised, sore shoulders like all the pain she still felt did.
Mikey nodded, tapping his cane twice against the ground. “Yeah. Kinda figured it didn’t go well, especially considering two healers had to drag my roommate to his bed last night.”
Annabell winced a bit at this information, and she turned her head away from the conversation, choosing to stare moreso at the area around them. After she’d told the guy what exactly it was she was trying to look for, Mikey had faithfully lead them to the computerized section of the archive room. It was a small rectangular area surrounded by rows of filing cabinets and in the center sporting tables lined with ancient, bulky, off-white computer monitors. Under the tables was a long series of intimidating cages each trapping a computer server, and when Mikey had used his key to unlock a cage and push the server’s power button “on”, Annabell had watched the computer boot-up with interest. Very quickly, however, the interest turned to disgust when she saw these computers were still running Windows ‘95.
As the computer coughed and spluttered and creaked its way to life, Mikey had attempted to replace the sounds of a cranky computer with talk of the mission. Though, now that Annabell had turned her attention away from that topic, Mikey quickly amended with, “But if it sucked so bad you don’t wanna talk about it, I get that. I mean, geez, I wouldn’t want to go on any sort of mission either.”
Annabell turned her head back to Mikey, who was reclining in a chair near the computer table. Her arms were folded against she chest, and she tapped one set of fingers against a forearm, looking towards Mikey with some piqued curiosity. “No?”
“Well, ‘course not,” Mikey replied back, giving a shrug. “I don’t know what your power is, but mine isn’t… great for fighting. I’d much rather hang out in the Eighth division all day than be sent out to the field again. So. If I’m being perfectly honest?” It was Mikey’s turn to look away now, and he choose to look at the computer screen, which had paused to think and was currently a shiny, pixelated black that reflected the guy’s face back at him.
“It’s pretty effed up, but sometimes I think my leg getting frozen to the bone was, like, the best thing that could’ve happened to me here.”
Annabell’s fingers stopped tapping against her arm at that. Her blond hair swung behind her as her head turned, trying to get a better look at Mikey, to better understand the grim solemnity now enveloping his expression. She wanted to say something, but couldn’t think of any words good enough to speak, so instead her own expression twisted up into a sympathetically pained, struggling one. When Mikey finally tore his eyes away from the mirror of a computer monitor, he looked back at Annabell, saw the strange look present on her face, and his head immediately slammed into his hands.
“Ah, shiiii- ugh, sorry,” he groaned out, sort of pathetically pained, “I like, barely know you, you don’t need to hear all this crap, sorry if that was too weird, ugh.”
Annabell jolted up from her more relaxed standing position. “No! No, it’s fine, I don’t mind at all!” She spoke truthfully, having been privy to random oversharing enough in her lifetime for the strangeness to barely have fazed her. “I mean! It’s how you feel, and you shouldn’t ever feel bad about your, um, feelings.”
At these kind words, Mikey slowly took his head out of his hands… and then he immediately scrunched up his nose. “That’s… so sappy.”
Now it was Annabell’s turn to get all flustered.
“Well, it’s true! How else am I supposed to say it now..?”
“For one? Not so sappy.”
Although she wouldn’t have admitted it, Annabell sulked a little bit at that remark, the tiniest bit, and her arms tightened even more across her chest.
“… But,” Mikey added after a pause, “I get what you’re saying though. So uh. Thanks.”
All that minor sulk was suddenly gone from the girl.
“But I gotta let you know,” Mikey said, his eyes turning back to the computer screen as it finally decided to come alive again, “Working in Eight isn’t all roses and chocolate! I mean. It’s a pretty sweet gig, but you have to deal with remembering all this paperwork stuff, the threat of an insane leader wiping your memory, a lack of respect from the other divisions… Oh, and,” he added, grimacing, “the worst thing? Being cooped up can get boring.”
“I haven’t been on IOD that long,” Annabell admitted, “but I can already imagine.”
“Try not to think about it too hard,” Mikey joked, “ ‘cause then the despair might sink in a little faster, and you want to keep that crap away from yourself for as long as you can.” He leaned back in the chair, continuing, “Honestly I often think I wouldn’t feel half as bored if I had a different roommate. Quincy suffers from all that extra energy stuff way more than I do, and I think there’s so much of it floating around that it starts to rub off on me? And I start getting an itch to do something but heck if the thing I wanna do is something crazy like go almost get killed on some secret leader assassination mission, or whatever you guys are off doing?” His voice rose and so did one eyebrow in Annabell’s direction. The girl laughed, a bit surprised by that strange guess at the purpose of their mission, before assuring the guy that, no, no leaders were being assassinated by anyone.
Mikey almost didn’t look like he believed that, but he seemed to let it slide in favor of continued complaining. “Anyway, Annabell, uh, all I’m saying is that you should definitely feel extremely sorry for me, ‘cause it’s terrible, Quincy gets us both stressed out, but he goes and hangs out with Izz and mellows out some, while I’m left with like. Nobody to see and nothing to do.” He put one hand over his heart in the most candid form of fake sincerity. “Isn’t that tragic?”
Refreshingly amused by both Mikey’s exaggerated antics and that joking tone he was using that was just drowning in pathos, Annabell gave an honest smile and patted the guy’s shoulder, being sure to exaggerate the sympathy right back at him with every heavy pat.
Though, if she had to admit it to herself, she was being perfectly honest when she then told the guy, “I hope you’re able to find a fun hobby to do, or maybe a fun person to hang out with.”
From Mikey came a sharp intake of breath, and though Annabell couldn’t see it, a flush of color reappeared on the guy’s cheeks.
“Uh. I hope so too. Thanks.” He cleared his throat, once. “So uh.” The computer was now running as smoothly as Windows ’95 could possibly run, so Mikey clicked open an application and waited the five years for it properly load. As it did, he glanced up at Annabell, asking, “This person you’re looking for, what’s their name?”