<span style='width:100%;font-weight:bold; font-size:10px'>Out of Character</span> <table class=ooc><tr><td>When. Tria 2 81378 Midday Who. Fester Lovcat Shatz 16oo Space Ops. Kesti Ohana 22oo Poet Rating PG-15 or so for language. <span style='color:red'>NOTE: This thread is private for Poison Paradise, no exceptions. kthx. NOTEx2: Please disgregard this thread, mods, and don't delete it please? Everybody will probably be a while in responding. Thanks.</span></td></tr></table> Eyes flew to her as she walked, but Fester's frosty demeanor and skeptical twist to her lips sent their gazes away almost as soon as they hit her frame. She was a garage-rocker who walked like a dangerous runway model; her shoulders swung seductively and at the same she was all clipped power. Indeed, she seemed to greatly exceed her age of 16oo. She wore an impossibly tight pair of ripped jeans; they had not been bought that way. Adorning her top was a white tank top with a plaid patch along the stomach; that was topped by a leather bomber jacket. Destroyed leather army boots, laced with raver-pleasing colours, clunked on the floor. At this particular moment Festy was in a bitchy mood. Today marked her transition to a new dorm from her old one, number 8773. She'd lived there with Lithium, Vee, and Damien, enjoying the lofty view of the academy and watching and laughing and discussing their fellow students. Unfortunately for the 16-year-old femme, all three of the aforementioned 'dragons had graduated at the tail end of Dyo. That left her alone in the upper dorms, where the only population was now a scattered handful of teachers. It smarted, looking down upon the students without having her three mates there to make cynical comments or mental notes. She nearly missed the cloud of pot smoke which almost always enwreathed Damien's visage (miraculously he was never caught), and certainly missed Lithium's constant alternative music-speak. But worst of all to lose was Vee, the only other female in the quartet's dorm's, the one who was always prepared to offer a witty snippet of advice during some difficult time. They'd all promised to visit, though, and even if it was surprising for 23-year-old alumni to come back to the Academy, Fester knew they would. But she couldn't go on living in an empty dorm room, with nothing but nail-holes, abandoned Machina sockets and scrawls on the wall to remind her of her three older companions. As Festy walked, lost in thought, dragging her impossibly large suitcase behind her, a duo of femme's her own age walked by, gabbling excitedly about some new male professor. Fester held her coyote-crafted head high and cocked slightly to the side, her dark and velvety eyes rolling promptly to the celing. She knew she probably looked like a bitch, but why should she give a shit about some airheaded clones tottering by? She'd probably never see them again in any case. She gritted small, sharp teeth together and pulled out the battered key with its attached tag. The key's metal was carved in with the numbers 834. The dark-hued femme resented that; she hated the ground floor. But perhaps, even for Festy, the upper floors would remind her too much of Vee and Damien and Lithium. If her new dorm was equally lofty, she might expect her roommate to be just as quirky-scene as Vee & co.; I'd probably expect too much and end up killing the roomie in the middle of the night, she mused ruthlessly. Checking the tag and making sure it read FLOOR ONE, she pulled her bag onward. On an impulse, she turned the leathery paper tag over, and was surprised to see more hand-scrawled script across it. Kestri (Kesti) Ohana, aged 22, prime trade poetry, female. "Kesti," said Fester out loud, and ran long, blunt-nailed digets through her dyed, deep-green mane. Her fringe parted to the sides when raked through with her fingers, and she hissed slightly, smoothing it back down. "Nearly translates out to "city," mmmkay. If that's what makes you hot." And she kept walking, now focusing on the right side. 812... She grimaced as she dragged the suitcase on; its rubber "feet" trailed long black marks on the stone floor. A few moment's more walking, and she had reached her dorm. She extended a clipped nail and tapped smartly on the centre of the door. There was no peephole, but a little hole drilled above the battered metal doorknob. "Fabulous," she said, cynically, and proceeded to try to look through it. She saw nothing, but assumed from the lack of an answer that her (very unfortunately) new roommate had not arrived yet. So she jammed the lock into the hole and turned it, kicking the door open while hauling her suitcase in with two hands. The dorm was clean, at least; the smell of bleach lay over it, comforting somehow to Fester, who liked the smell. There were three metal bedframes inside, with mattresses upon all of them. One Festy made quick work of, pushing the mattress into the closet, followed by the bedframe. Panting, she surveyed the room with more attention. From the door, there was one bed straight ahead, partway beneath the eaves. The closet was on the other side, making one end of that particular sleeping space rather cozy and small. She looked to the right; there was a clear pathway to the closet and bathroom. Between the former and the latter there was a chest of drawers. Then there was the next bed, shoved up against the wall. Past it next to where the third bed had been was a desk. There was also an armchair in the corner next to it, as well as a normal wooden chair pushed up against said workspace. Fester shrugged; she'd seen worse. Her old friend Framboise had practically had to live in a walk-in closet, a little dorm in the corner of one of the middle floors which the custodians always forgot to clean. She chuckled in spite of herself, but still felt the pang of bitterness that Framboise had graduated along with her favoured trio. Pushing aside the thought that her friends weren't here to hang up their unique wallart and light inscense and candles, she opened her suitcase and proceeded to unpack. She first took out her bedclothes, which consisted of light silk sheets in black, a feather comforter in black, and a normal blanket in dark green. It was total coincidence that her things matched her colouration; they were simply what she could trade for when shopping for her new sleeping accomodations. Lastly, she plunked down two pillows on the far end of the bed, so her head would be furthest away from the door and her new roomie; indeed, it would face into the wall and would have the eaves on one side. But she loved how the light from the lamp illumined the bed from behind, making it feel like her little grotto. This was not how she slept back with her friends in top-floor dorm; far from it: her friends had shunned normal room layouts, and, in a fond gesture to each other, made a diamond with their beds and faced their heads into the centre. Sure, it was a touch difficult to move about the rooms, but that was how Festy had liked it, loved it even. Thinking of their bed formations brought back memories of her friends once more, especially of Lithium. Of course, there were nights that they all spent together, but half the time Vee was out in her lover Ferdinand's dorm and Damien was getting high or in the corner repairing Machina. So Lithium and herself had that alone time; they often stayed up late talking about all manners of things. Fester listened to Damien's plans to join Shadowlack, an organization he'd somehow discovered bent on destroying the government. Damien in turn listened to Fester's dreams of becoming a Master pilot and aerial combatant. Festy downturned her eyes at these memories, forcing them from her mind and continuing with the monotonous task of setting out her sleeping quarters. Once her bed was in place, she set to turning on the lights and putting down a small throw carpet (white). After setting up her lamp and tacking her few photos of Vee, Lith, and Damien up on the wall, she put up her mandatory MSI poster. After a satisfyed stare at it, she tacked up one more photo: this one of Vullyos. She smiled then, knowing that the ship was safe in a garage outside Tsupeon, ready for her to drive outside and fly. Tearing her eyes away from Vullyos's gleaming surfaces, she retreated to her suitcase and removed a few pairs of jeans and tees, as well as a pair of flip-flops. The clothes went into the top two drawers of the aforementioned four-drawer dresser. There didn't seem much more to do, so she sat down on the bed with her studio-style headphones and leaned against the wall, listening to music but not truely hearing it. After remembering it, she leapt up and retrieved the key from the lock and closed the door. She stared at the name on the tag for another moment, shaking her head and knowing she'd be a total asshole. Then she settled in to wait for the certain doom that was her new roommate.
OOC: Hell yes, Emu, hell yes. All I have to say to you, child. Besides, remember, this is like my third post ever nd the first post in like a year. So be gentle/patient/understanding/humor me. IC: What a pain in the ass. The lowest level. Of all the frickin’ levels in the Jordin Acadamy dorms, she had to get the lowest one. Kesti always had trouble with lowest levels, she was a bit more of a top floor person, living with air and heat and smells like perfume and garbage mixing together in a sort of loveable scent. It was an acquired taste, she knew, and it wasn’t like Jardin would be hosting such a smell—after all, this was an acadamy. Not a city. With a sudden pang in her stomach for food (not just any food, preferably something exotic she had never tried before- she tired quickly of familiar tastes), Kesti roamed the dank halls of Floor One. Spiffy, she thought acidly. Several students walked by just as they erupted into giggles. The annoying kind, too. Kesti had nothing against laughter, or people laughing, but she couldn’t stand that particular breed of giggle. The one that was usually accompanied by darting eyes concealing thoughts much more insecure than that oh-so-confident giggle. Okay, so she wasn’t in the best of moods. She knew that if she was any normal, corteous ‘dragon, she would snap out of it- or at least pretend to- and prepare to meet her new roomate. But Kesti had never been one to fake it. When that happened, she started hating herself, and would go out and drink herself gone, which of course was always accompanied by the morning after, which would eventually lead to the admittance of what a low display of self-respect that was, which made her hate herself all the more...(etc), until she finally cut the cycle short with a rare burst of sensibility. And this excruciating experience (which didn’t happen often) was never any fun. She wasn’t going to lie about it. So this—this—“Fester Lovcat Scorpium Shatz"—(the reading of this was entered immedeatley by a mental, What the hell, and slowly followed by a more appreciative study of this name) was going to have to deal with it herself. If she wasn’t enough to handle it, Kesti would most likely end up slitting her throat by morning light in that remarkable temper of hers that only reared its ugly head for a selective few. If Fester turned out to be one of those, then... Yeah. It would be bad. And what if Fester was a druggie? Or someone who got drunk every night, stumbling late into the dorm with unruly drunken laughter and knocking over lamps? Mind you, Kesti had nothing against a bit of good partying now and again, it was just the abominable display of self-deprication, the drugs, the drinking, the painfully obvious disregard for one’s health. She could hardly stand it. And if she was the type, Kesti wasn’t going to waste her time trying to convert her. Fester would have to learn herself, or Kesti didn’t know what she would do. She wandered down the halls, cursing to herself in outrage upon stubbing her toe, lugging a tattered suitcase covered in duct tape. She knew she was being as negative and pessimistic as possible, and as of right now, she didn’t give a shit. There was an explination for all this. Her parents. Kesti didn’t know who they were, and up until about a year ago had no desire whatsoever to know, but the time had come when she realized she was maturing, intellectually. She found herself wanting to know more, she desired to see and smell and touch, in living flesh, the femme who had given her those deep violet eyes, the male who had passed on his livid, secret rage to his daughter. She wanted to know who had created her. It was as simple as that. Kesti had tired of living with thinking that she had been created out of nowhere, a mysterious gift, in order to justify this gap in her life. Kesti was now worn thin of attempting to fill this gap by creating things herself; poems. There were always words, always a paper, a pen, a scratch of the two joining in the wee hours of the morning. She no longer wanted to create until she knew who created her. All the art she devised passed from her; it inherited her emotions, and now she knew she could not create any more until she knew where she came from. As a result, for the past year, Kesti had wandered rather vaguely from idea to idea and experience to experience while deprived of her very soul. She could not create. Kesti was a true artist, and how the hell could she possibly feel even remotely whole if she couldn’t express. It was as simple as that. Her head was now constantly crowded with petty thoughts, thoughts that irritated her because she knew they didn’t belong there. Kesti should be thinking about things that stimulated her. Though she had devoted what little energy and large amount of free time she had to the search for her parents, the results were fruitless. Just today another negative result had been returned from the agency she was working with. Kesti would have rather done the search on her own; rambling across lands and lands in search of her father, but this romantic adventure was virtually impossible. She had nothing to start from. So it was in this situation that she finally arrived at the dingy door, in plain straight legged jeans, a bulky neon orange vest adorned with zippers, and her electric blue hair done up in spikes. Her jewlery was full-out today, with the exception of her eyebrow piercing (done only in the past year). A small, fading beam of light shone through a small hole drilled above the knob (…?! She could only imagine), and Kesti assumed her roomate was already there. Lovely. She took a deep breathe, turned the knob, and entered the room, expectations lower than this basement room she now called home.
<span style='width:100%;font-weight:bold; font-size:10px'>Out of Character</span> <table class=ooc><tr><td>Sorry for writing all this random shit, but there wasn't anything else to do : D And don't you love how very mean she is?</td></tr></table> Fester had cuddled up with a small leather pouch by a few minutes later, the name tag forgotten. MSI's Clarissa was booming away in her ears, but she payed it little mind, though the electronica/punk/metal rant was energetic and the volume was loud. She rested her head on her pillow, opening the worn pouch with deft fingers. A sheaf of photographs rested there. Most were Polaroid-style, but some were in the larger, more traditional form. She riffled through them. They were of a dorm party from earlier in the year. There was one of Framboise, her pinkish-red fur glowing, made beautifully shiny by the Gylujyep camera's flash. Another of Lith and Framboise kissing. Another of Ferdinand and Vee together, Vee's head dodging into the frame beside Fer's, them both laughing. Then there was one of her, 'Boise, Vee, and two more femmes dancing. The lights were low; a single glowstick traced a ghostly neon scrape through the air. Then there was one of Fester. She wore an oversized tee shirt bearing the word VKOC and a tiny pair of mesh shorts. She was locking lips sloppily with an adorable boy with floppy, long black hair. Fester sighed. He was still here, but she didn't even know his room number. She thought his name might have been Marc. And then there was Damien. He was behind Festy, his arms wrapped possessively about her shoulders, smiling, nuzzling her ear as a brother would have. And that made Festy want to shriek and rip up her fucking bedspread. He was gone, fucking gone, her confidante, her friend, her brother, her childish crush. With angrily darting fingers she pushed the pictures back together and shoved them into the little pouch. A steady, but sweaty hand hurled it onto the floor. Festy then growled slighty, making a depression that could only be described as a nest in her thick comforter. Settling down into it, she lashed her soft, lupine tail angrily and curled into a ball, stomach muscles flexed so that she was curved like a kidney bean. The dark coloured femme grabbed her knees, staring at her hands. Absentmindedly, she snaked out her dark tongue, catching the bead at the end of her glow-in-the-dark barbell with her teeth. It clicked quietly. For once, Festy wished that she wasn't so young. She had never minded before; the older students had gravitated to her anyway. But now she was seriously considering dropping out. Pessimism boiled in her throat and she purred angrily, crossing her legs neatly beneath her. For ONCE, there was nobody calling at her door, no party to get ready for. Shit, there weren't even a class to cut-- class. She had AP Space-ops later that afternoon (the only class she really gave half a shit about) and she hadn't done any work for it. Her backpack was inside the huge bag she'd been dragging about. She hardly wanted to bother, but flopped off the bed anyway, tearing her luggage open once again and immersing herself shoulders-deep in her clothes and books. Muttering typical bitchy, elitist comments in a nearly-inaudible tone, she hauled a large pack from the bag. It was like a whale, dead, belly-up on the floor of the dorm. Fester was reminded of a biology class she'd had to endure that year. A poster on the wall detailed the incisions, organs, tools, and chemicals that made for a perfectly glorious dissection. The model, in that poster, had been a gigantic cruork. As if cruorken weren't unpleasent enough to be faced with in the morning, this one was slit-bellied and turned inside-out, its internal organs sprawled out beside its pale underside. Her bag was like that: dead, depressing, spilling over with things that reminded one of old times which could indeed NEVER be revisited. Shaking her head, the mossy-maned female turned back to her shoulder-pack, pulling out a thick tome decidedly less exciting than the subject it detailed. It was a dark shade of gray leather, and its only decoration was two lines of gold type. B A S I C S O F A E R O - C O S M I C B A T T L E F O R M A T I O N S. by neiman saroyan, esq. "It's four-fucking-hundred years old," Festy said darkly, opening the book and skimming the contents for the right chapter. Chapter the thirty-third. Triangle Tactic. p. 895 Subsection: A. Triangle Tactic with two neo- magdeline fighters, one deviante. p. 915 Subsection: B. Triangle Tactic with three neo-magdeline fighters, battle ants flanking. p. 927 And so forth. Fester chose subsection D, which was: Triangle Tactic Trifold: neo-magdeline, deviante, and kanji-needlenose. She flicked to page 959, and began to read the miniscule type. The diagrams were sparse, but Fester had long ago mastered the art of drawing her own in her mind's eye. She could just picture how Vullyos, a magdeline-deviante hybrid not mentioned in the chapter, would fit in. She imagined the trifold formation, revisited for this age, with Vullyos in the front. She imagined the rush as she nosed her beloved ship forward masterfully, sending a perfectly aimed missle launching towards the enemy infantry... Her thoughts trailed off as the door squealed open. Immediately her dreams stopped rushing in, replaced by sharp thoughts of bitter acid. Time to meet Kesti Ohana. She closed the book. Though she did so quietly, the heaviness of the pages still made it snap a bit as it slammed together. The female whirled about, her army boots slamming on the floor as she swung her legs over the side of her alcove bed. Before her was a pendragon who could only be Kesti. She was female, and looked to be in her late teens or early twenties. Age 22. F had to admit that her looks weren't particularly conductive to the kind of people she hated. Indeed, it seemed that those vapid assholes that Fester so detested would not approve of Kesti's chunky vest and boyishly short, vividly coloured hair. And it was cool hair. But on the other side of the fence, her expression was one of a pretentious writer: annoyed, holier-than-thou, distasteful, artistic. It mirrored Festy's expression almost exactly, but of course she refused to admit that. Wishing a thousandfold that she could just turn away and continue listening to music, the dark-furred femme pulled the heavy headphones off her ears and launched off on her 'I'm meeting a new person who seems to be an asshole' speech. "Hi, I guess you're Kesti. I'm Fester Shatz. I like my music loud and my parties louder, I'm in Space Operations, and I'd rather suck mold than be here on the lower floors. I stay up and get up late and I'm a bit of a bitch. You're six years older than I am and a poet, so I'm sure you're just as thrilled as I that we're here." After this mini-tirade, she stood up and offered Kesti a lean, short-nailed handshake. Then she settled back down upon the bed, waiting for her new roomie's inevitably, equally pretentious introduction and unpacking ritual.
