14 Tria 81381. There was a sense of lethargic stillness in the cafe, a sleepy sort of stagnance despite the amounts of supposedly-energy-enhancing drinks being doled out throughout the room. Nobody moved much; the lone cashier barely moved his arm to tally up sales, and barista seemed to be making a lot of beverage with very little effort. The customers lulled about in oversized plush furniture with steaming drinks, hardly caring enough to breath or blink. Even the colors seemed drained, sleepy, nearly dead: the furniture was all a dusty shade of maroon, ribbed like corduroy and accented by greyish-green trim; the walls were something like dehydrated strawberries, pale dull pink and pockmarked to boot; and the floor was tiled in some places, carpeted in others -- the former was sludge-colored, the latter stained beyond any recognizable hue. Needless to say, there was no reaction from these zombie-like cafe patrons or from the two groggy employees when a frantic dash of colored fur burst through the door as if chased by something really, really scary. The 'dragon, gulping air as she pace-pace-paced up to the counter, seemed flushed, shaky, angry, barely-controlled, on edge. She swallowed twice, quieted her wild limbs, and sucked in one last deep breath before saying in a hopeful voice, "A coffee, please. Just a coffee." She placed some money on the counter and turned away before the cashier had a chance to snap out of his reverie and ask, "What kind?" Gratefully, she sank into the edge seat of a wide sofa near the front window and pulled a small sketchbook from one of the large pockets of her simple, dark coat. A pencil was procured from another deep pocket, and she curled her legs up under her to serve as a makeshift table as she began to sketch -- pale lines at first, so pale they were hardly there, but as the moments passed and the barista creaked along with the coffee machines behind the counter, a face began to take shape on the page. An angry face. She scowled at her drawing, features subconciously mirroring the subject of her latest sketch, and her pencil scratches grew darker, harsher, less tentative. "Um.. Your coffee's ready," the cashier drawled, squinting at the odd customer who'd ordered 'just a coffee.' The feline girl fairly popped out of her seat, depositing the sketchbook on the sofa next to her and rushing to the counter to accept the green-brown mug on the counter. "And here's the change, if you want it," the cashier continued, pointing to a small pile of coins next to the mug. The girl just nodded, pocketed the change, and picked up the mug with both hands gingerly. By the time she sat back down, the mug was already half-empty, so she set it down on the little table in front of her and picked her sketchbook up once more. But something was bothering her; something seemed off. She'd come here to escape an awkward situation involving a dead goldfish, but... Here... She scanned the room with her eyes narrowed, pausing on each sunken customer suspiciously, staring around, until -- Dead flies on the window sill. With a defeated sigh and one last furtive glance around, she pulled her coat tighter around her and resumed her sketching. If any of them were to notice a fly suddenly buzzing around in a closed room that had previously held no live flies, I doubt they'd do anything about it, she reasoned, willing herself to avoid thinking of it too much. After all, this necromancy stuff wasn't really under her control -- yet -- and all she could do was hope nothing happened.
[ooc.] What can I say? My muse has withered in the past weeks. [ic.] Jude Ahara, lesbian-scientist-slightly-off-kilter extrodinare, hadn't had her breakfast. Yet. That wasn't good. Without the carbs that she needed for her work - along with some caffiene - she'd been reduced to her normal, sleepy-morning mode. Work took a large toll on her metabolism, blowing bullet holes in her stanima and leaving her a shell of what she usually was. Zombie-like, as though she ws something out of that movie with the reanimated dead people eating the 'dragons. Or something like that, at least. She was caught in his own matrix as the rest of the world fast-forwarded in sound and color around her. And it tugged at her. The amber-colored thill approached the counter as she pulled her long, black hair into a rather mess bun with hair spraying out from beneath the rolled night-thread. "Vanilla chai latte," she murmured sleepily. It took a few sips before the caffiene started kicking in - her kohl-lined eyes widened, suddenly alert, and her posture improved as though some godly thing from up above had tugged on the puppet strings that controlled her. Jude wasn't in her lab coat yet, of course. Rather, she was dressed in a pale gray hoodie printed with "PARALLAX" in big black lowercase letters, along with a white shirt underneath and navy-blue sweatpants, accompanied by blue and black flip-flops. She payed for the coffee before settling down in a chair, folding her long, strange brown limbs into a lotus position and taking long sips of the sweetly-flavored drink. The black-haired thill eyed another girl a table away from her - she seemed to have more feline blood in her than anything - and sighed contentedly. t
T.K. barely noticed the new thill a table away; she was too busy focusing every iota of her energy on sketching sketching sketching -- NOT reanimating dead flies, not not not. Her hand movements became jerky and erratic, creating an odd off-kilter rhythm as line after line slashed the page. Her drawing was hardly a face anymore; now it was a tangle of black like a web, overlaying the vague contours of an angry 'dragon. No reanimating, no reanimating, she chanted against her will in her head, but it felt painfully inevitable, unavoidable. Why? she groaned inwardly. It's wrong; it's illegal; I don't want to do it, but I do. I have no choice. But even I am repulsed by it. Everyone else would be, too; I know it. I just know it. Finally, she threw her sketchbook and pencil aside (they landed with a dull whump next to her on the sofa) and lunged for her drink. Her soothing, calming (and energy-boosting) drink. With shaky hands, she lifted the mug to her lips, carefully tipping back the hot liquid, slowly and gingerly, trying to not scald her tongue -- but there was some short circuit somewhere, some wire crossed, and a minute twitch jolted her arms. She promptly and involuntarily tossed back the rest of her drink, swallowing more than she should have at one time. Whatever didn't fit in her esophagus found a secondary tube to swim down. She managed to keep the burning coffee in her mouth, but silent coughs shook her, threatening a very embarrassing situation to come. Desperately, she fought to control herself, to contain the coffee that was trying to work its way out her nostrils, to force the liquid back out of her respiratory tract without dislodging any vital organs. It was in this distracted state, while cramping with effort to not spit her mouthful out across the little table, that a faint buzzing began. Not again, she inwardly moaned, nearly spluttering the table with beverage. She threw a worried look toward the new thill, the one most likely to notice the little fly. Please.
Pulling her hair into a rubber band at the base of her neck, Juju twirled her pale fingers betwixt the dark tresses mindlessly, her electric-lue eyes moving faster than her hands. Biting her lip, Jude's mind automatically retraced her steps — images flashing, downloading. Pixels. Colors. Distorted. Pain. Father... Sari? Overload. Cannot compute. She made no sound and her eyes made no move to the table. Breathing shakily and lifting her face so that her chin rested on her knuckles, Jude stared out upon the darkening sea with a pensive gaze that seemed to go for miles and miles and miles, her dark eyes reflecting the infinity of the ocean — an equilibrium of apathy and concern. The scientist leaned backwards and buried one hand in cushions while the other lifted her flask to her lips and dumped almost half of its contents into her waiting mouth. It burned like fire, but the path it left was ice. Ice was good. Ice was unfeeling. She wondered if she bathed in the stuff it would turn her entire being to glass. A living glacier. The thought was pleasing and she let her strange blue eyes close slightly as she took another sip, the drink making her looser, bolder. She turned to the thill who’d flung her a desperate stare, and smiled sheepishly. “You okay?" she said softly. Now she was feeling sort of reckless — now she wanted to push some buttons. That big red one that screamed DO NO PUSH. Yeah. She wanted that one.
EDIT: This thread is now null and void, as T.K. (the character) has been deleted. ): Mourn the loss of a flat & uninteresting girl. T.K. nodded helplessly to the thill's question while yet coughing mutedly and clamping a hand over her mouth. She stood abruptly, like a spring that had suddenly snapped, and turned toward the front counter with a little wavery pivot. Still choking, she paced over to the counter as quickly as possible, her eyes meanwhile searching out that small black box, that precious little -- there. She wrenched several napkins out of the napkin dispensor roughly and put the handful to her mouth, finally calming the desperate choke-heaves that her body had been involuntarily contracting in. As she continued blotting her mouth and hand with the crumpled wad of napkin, her breathing remained ragged and hesitant, as if she feared reawakening the cough. But it was gone, and she wasn't dead, and that was good, and... And... A faint buzzing looped and whirled around the front window, where her couch and her empty mug and her sketchbook lay waiting for her. A reanimated fly. T.K. swore inwardly, her face darkening in a half-frightened, half-infuriated scowl, and she flung her napkin into a trash bin harshly as she made her way back to the couch. As she sat back down, she sought out the sight of the fly in the air, that accursed reanimated fly that should have just stayed where it was on the sill. She tucked herself back into the corner seat of the sofa cautiously, keeping her eyes on the lazily-looping fly, and picked up her sketchbook slowly. Sometimes, she was able to take life away from accidentally-reanimated creatures, but it took a lot of effort and it always left her indescribably drained. It would be so much simpler to just smash it with the sketchbook, and yet.. that would attract far too much attention. With a resigned sigh, she narrowed her eyes to slits, focusing her entire conscious will on ending that fly's looping. Zzzzz... A second buzzing joined the first, and then a third, and T.K. was surrounded by the whirr of half-decayed flies. Her mouth opened in shock and fear, and she turned her wide-eyed gaze on the nearby thill quickly. "They.. they must've been asleep before," she managed to squeak by way of excuse, but the hollowness of it rang in her ears. T.K. Jaun Pavi, prepare to be kicked out once again.
