OUTOFCHARACTER: [blockquote]Tessera 34, 81383 I was inspired, so I figured I'd start. I hope this makes some sense to you! s: Also, if you listen to "Black Flowers" by Yo La Tengo while reading this post, it is great. There should be music with EVERY POST DAMMIT XD -- Okay, I am done editing this post.[/blockquote] INCHARACTER: [blockquote]Their fingers mingled. Interlaced like that, her bright hello-spring yellow seemed the perfect complement to his royal violet. He led her off into a field of tall grass, one that was still hazy and muted with the arrival of morning. What a beautiful, serene sight. Despite it all, she held her smile weakly, lips quivering like a cup of orange Jello. How could she not? Feeling a mixture of stupor and trust, she just put foot after foot, letting him take her where he so desired. Vulnerable. That is how she would describe her dream later on that day: vulnerable. You can take what you can get I forgive but I forget You can never sleep enough And your alarm is going off You wake up and you can't pretend A dream was just a dream again Won't you dry your eyes? But it doesn't matter anymore You did just what you did before Until you realize the words Go la la la la la… Gasping sharply, Lamaria awoke with a start. Again? She had dreamt that same thing again? “Vaak.” It wasn’t even time to wake up yet. The clock, with its aqueous digits, quietly testified. Still, she got up from her bed, and strode across to the cool tiled floor of the bathroom. The morning proceeded. She brushed her teeth, she washed her face, she meditated some verses, and then dressed. With the mornings still chilly, she overlaid her white tank with a sleek purple pullover. No rings or bracelets today, just one necklace: a pendant of Lainekh to hold her through the day… You can dip your brain in joy When you find the real McCoy When some pretty boys with skinny ties With black flowers and Valentines Try to take you home Do you recognize that I Have stopped before you get too high On your own supplies Singing la la la la… The chopper lifted off the earth smoothly. Still, Lamaria suppressed a knot of nausea in her gut. Ascent in the air was not quite as solacing as ascent under water. Her comrade, noting the knit in her brow, gently nudged Lamaria with an elbow and said, “You doing alright?” She responded with a subdued, but grateful smile, just enough to reassure him for the time being. Soon they would be landed (more as if dropped) onto Ajita to meet with Grader authorities. The real “fun” had yet to begin… Singing la la la la…[/blockquote]
Vythe had thought that he’d known pain. He thought that he had known agony. He had been a fool. As a trained USR soldier, in particular one who had worked with special operations, Vythe had been well versed in injuries of all kinds. He knew how to tease words out of his victims through the use of force and manipulation. He knew how to cause injury without killing. Part of his training had even been to prepare oneself to withstand interrogations. Despite this, no amount of training could have prepared him for the situation that he now found himself in. It had been days, maybe even weeks since destruction had ripped apart the lands of Ajita. Vythe had lost his concept of time while trapped in the darkness. Even his tail flame, which had flickered for a while, had fizzled out. Time had lost all meaning to him as he slipped in and out of consciousness. At first Vythe had been hopeful and determined. With his limited ability to move and wriggle he had evaluated his injuries and treated what he could reach. However it was with his initial evaluation that the beginnings of depression had settled in. He had never been this badly injured. Not only that, but he was unable to get free. Some sort of heavy steel girder had landed on him, crushing his chest. Broken ribs? Most certainly. He was broken all over. His left shoulder had been dislocated and most likely the bones there were in a horrible state as well. It hurt to breathe. It hurt to think. What had happened to Fronima? Why couldn’t he feel it? If he could have harnessed that energy, he would have been able to use his magicka-shield to push the girder up and off of him. Instead whenever Vythe reached out for that familiar power, he was met with frigid emptiness. His mind closed in on nothing and he was out again. Life was a turbulent sea of waking and feverish sleeping. He thought a lot, at least whenever he could pull his mind together. If it hadn’t been for the steady stream of water from a busted pipeline, Vythe probably would have perished long ago. It dripped in the distance. Dripped and the sound of it bore into his head like hot nails. I lost my gun, he thought absently at one point. He could feel the weight of one of his guns sitting heavily against his right side. His other gun though - the left - was gone. It had flown somewhere when his shoulder had been dislocated. He couldn’t sit up to look for it. He couldn’t do much of anything. He was a useless wreck.
INCHARACTER: [blockquote]Fronima-less mechina. The chopper pulled away into the distance, expelling in its wake a froth of water vapour and smoke. How much longer could things last? Since the advent of Fronima-based energy, few other sources of fuel had continued developing. So while Ajita puttered on, hanging by a thread on its reserves, the future and fate of everyone’s livelihoods were held up in question, put on hold by a capricious world energy. And how were the dead holding up with all the tumultuous weather? One had to wonder. Despite all the reconnaissance and briefing Lamaria went through in the following hours, that one question remained constant in her mind. How were they holding up, those dead? Since the spasms of Fronima had become routine, the thill’s mind had begun to wander and to friends she had become distant, a bit more absent-minded. Her connection with reality had faded somewhat… Without strong Fronima, Lamaria was forced to rely solely on her physical, life-born senses. Unfortunately, she was accommodating poorly. By late morning, they were on field: Lamaria, hired for her Inner Sight and ability to heal; Sellun, Lamaria’s work comrade, one of Ramath’s most skilled field medics; Charipan, a hard-faced Yki who was in command of the land search and rescue team; and Alloot, a small Feydragon who oversaw the technical details. The rest, mostly trained working bodies for the search and rescue team, were identity-less to Lamaria. Mostly young arden and thill who were either on the military side of things, or volunteering, likely because they had felt personal loss. In total, the number was not greater than 15. A good team, it felt like. The morning’s finds were not promising, however: five civilians had been unearthed, all dead, from the rubble of a small pub, the Huggi Paup. When mid-afternoon set in, and only rocks and rubble had been recovered, the team’s energy began to wane. A break from the ruins of Ajita’s up-and-coming Alabuseym Flats was just about to be called when an alarm whistle pierced the sound of moving stone. Lamaria rubbed the sweat off her brow and glanced up to see Charipan, a young thill, and Alloot all speaking animatedly a few metres away. Noting that they were preoccupied and didn’t seem in need of her, she just went back on searching for any psychic tremors – whispers of a life’s aura. The complex seemed barren of life to her and it wasn’t from a lack of Fronima. It had been fairly consistent so far, just weaker than average. Harder work for her. All of sudden, she felt a sharp pinch on her arm. She turned to see who or what it was, and found Alloot was grasping her arm tightly with one of his small hands. “What is it?” “We have found Vythe Vidallyn’s gun.” Lamaria couldn’t help but suck in a gasp. Missing, but presumed dead like so many others. She rose and walked toward the find, feeling a little more light-headed than before. [/blockquote]
Vythe was in a strange place, or at least his head was. The mental barrier that he kept up to divide himself from his work had long since fallen apart and drifted wayside. Although Vythe liked to think of himself as an overall “good” and just pendragon, he had done many things in the line of duty that he regretted. The familiar heavy scent of flowers on a hot summer’s day tugged at his senses. His broken body willed him to fall into this illusion, but he knew better. It was a trap. Exceedingly hot days on Ajita were a rarity, and Vythe had relived this particular day countless times. Vythe attempted to stay outside of the dream, to watch it as an onlooker, but at some point his guard dropped and he fell in. It started off nicely enough, with warm sun-baked earth and manicured grass underneath his feet. The chorus of wild birds, the echoes of laughter, some kind of rumbling machinery in the distance… He was in the vast gardens at the Grader Manor. Trees and planted flowers stretched on for as far as he could see. “You’ve gotten yourself into a bit of trouble,” said a rumbling voice to the left of him. Vythe started, but then relaxed - slightly - when he recognized the speaker. It was Zamfir Grader. “That’s not what you said before.” Vythe stammered. The dream wasn’t supposed to unfold this way. Zamfir wasn’t even supposed to be there yet. Vythe had been going to meet him in his study. “No?” “No.” Vythe repeated firmly. “You… you asked me how I liked the garden first. Small talk stuff. Then we talked about my Mother, and then, ah…” Zamfir smiled slowly, the expression looking strange and foreign on his chiseled features. “Tell me about yourself,” he said, and the tone of Zamfir’s voice made Vythe shiver despite the warmth. “We’ll, I’m dying,” Vythe said blankly, as if the notion had only recently occurred to him. “Dying alone. I was tailing someone down in the warehouse district. They’re dead now. I saw them get crushed. I tried to call out, to warn them but… At least when you died you had Koani with you.” “Koani? Who’s that?” Zamfir asked, his brow furrowing thoughtfully. Zamfir’s words froze Vythe’s blood solid. How could he not know who his eldest daughter was? “Your… she’s the one who… her… um. You didn’t… I drove her to…” Vythe sputtered, having lost his train of thought. It was right then that the sound that Vythe had been dreading occurred. A blood curdling scream ripped through the humid air and all at once Vythe was back in his own body, trapped underneath the rubble. His heart was beating furiously and he was once again made fully aware of his pain. “Vaak,” he gasped and clutched at his face. His tail-flame had come back alight again. It was glowing faintly, which didn’t instill much confidence in him, but the soft ambient light was better no light at all.
INCHARACTER: [blockquote]Not my best! ERR, feel free to move around my NPCs in this RP. (:[/blockquote] INCHARACTER: [blockquote]Not far from the pile of lifeless rock and metal they’d been wading through stood the trio, Alloot, Sellun, and Lamaria, devising a general game plan. They’d been going over minute details, the ones that seemed to clutter headspace rather than clear it, when the sick came. It washed over her like two tonnes of water and dealt her such weak knees that she just collapsed on the hard dirt without any sort of warning. What the vaak was that? “Oh Fronna, what the vaak is that?” she groaned, grasping her bald head with both hands. Alloot stood overhead with one brow raised while Sellun had, by then, fallen on one knee alongside his friend. “What pui is it?” he anxiously asked. Lamaria shot Sellun a dirty look, managing amidst her agonizing, and answered curtly, “Fidpui, ya fool. I’m fine, just I think Fronima is working up, is all… I could be wrong. Where was Vythe Vidallyn last seen, Alloot?” The small feydragon knit his brow and withdrew a small contraption upon which he laid his dexterous fingers. After making a few slight motions with his claws, he came up with an answer, although his voice hardly sounded certain. “In this area, but that is all public speculation. There are few survivors from this area, what with all the warehouses, and therefore few witnesses… I don’t think Charipan’s supervisors have been able to get in contact with Koani either to confirm anything.” “Maybe we should call her now.” Lamaria rose slowly, keeping one hand on the ground to steady herself. A soft ebbing pain was beginning to arise from her left shoulder. While staying closer to the ground kept her from collapsing higher distances, the earth was suddenly wrought with knits of turbulent Fronima. A daily flux? Amidst all the magicka conversation, however, something felt amiss. She needed to walk, she needed to clear her head. But instead Lamaria staggered overtop a thin layer of rubble to get closer to Vythe’s ominous gun. It was like they’d found a limb of his, so strong the aura was on that machine… It was eerie. She didn’t dare think of touching it, worried that it would collapse her all over again. It was there where she’d pause, breathe deeply, and close her eyes. She’d still her shaken nerves and slip into a light trance. It was there where she’d begin to re-envision that small space in Ajita, threading together an astral understanding of the area, drawing those entities whose auras were the strongest first. And it would be there where she’d stumble across Vythe Vidallyn’s faltering tailflame. He was alive. [/blockquote]
OOC: Pfft, what are you talking about? It's not bad at all. :) IC: “We put another call into the proper authorities. They said they'd let us know when they got a hold of Koani. Hopefully they'll get through this time.” Alloot said after a moment of conversing over an ancient radio. “Charipan is bringing in an excavation team. He said he'd be a few mosas. They're a little worried about the structural integrity of this area.” As he spoke, the excavation team was already putting themselves into action. A few of them had simple shovels, while others had more complicated contraptions that seemed to be for cutting through rock and metal. It was then, under the direction of Lamaria, that the team started to work. ~ The white (well, at some point it had been white) pelted arden shut his eyes. He was all too aware of his situation again. These moments, while fleeting, he jeeringly thought, had to be the last remnants of his sanity. The pain, while intense, had become an integral part of him. Vythe clenched his teeth and tried to wipe some of the grime away from his eyes. It wasn't very effective. Opening his eyes he peered out into the flickering darkness – peered out and into nothing. Maybe with Fronima acting up so badly... well maybe all those who had died... maybe they had been enveloped by the Nothing. Vythe licked his lips and tasted his own blood. At least he'd stopped coughing it up for the time being. There weren't many things worse than suffering from a gut wrenching cough when the majority of said gut was being squashed. The idea of internal bleeding had crossed his mind multiple times now. He should have been dead already. The injuries were too severe. Maybe he was dead already though, and perhaps this was the torturous afterlife. Well, shit. It was then that Vythe heard a faint scuffling. At first he was struck with sudden fear. Was it some sort of underground vermin coming to slowly gnaw him to pieces? He'd already had to scare off a few creatures of a similar nature and he didn't think he had the energy left in him to do it again. Then the noise happened again. “H-hey!” he shouted out at the noise before he fell into a violent fit of uncontrollable coughing. “Sonnava gaukh!”
