[ROOM 207] Jordan Miller

[prolixity]

// ___prologue: the island

This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man’s hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
- from The Hollow Men, T.S. Eliot

Alpha Squad Home Base
Alpha Scouts Fire Ze Missiles!
Beach Boss Fight
Regroup and Recover
Beach Traveling...
Coming In For A Landing
Closer Than You Can Imagine...
Last Man Standing
Death Lounge  

[prolixity]

// ___prologue: death

The memory throws up high and dry
A crowd of twisted things;
A twisted branch upon the beach
Eaten smooth, and polished
As if the world gave up
The secret of its skeleton,
Stiff and white.
A broken spring in a factory yard,
Rust that clings to the form that the strength has left
Hard and curled and ready to snap.
- from Rhapsody on a Windy Night, T. S. Eliot

[Solo] A1 - Hail and Farewell
The Dark Cove - Awakening  

[prolixity]

// ___I: psychological evaluation

I am the mist, the impalpable mist,
Back of the thing you seek.
My arms are long,
Long as the reach of time and space.

Some toil and toil, believing,
Looking now and again on my face,
Catching a vital, olden glory.

But no one passes me,
I tangle and snare them all.
I am the cause of the Sphinx,
The voiceless, baffled, patient Sphinx.

I was at the first of things,
I will be at the last.
I am the primal mist
And no man passes me;
My long impalpable arms
Bar them all.
- The Mist, Carl Sandburg

[ORP] Orientation - We Are Legion
[ORP] Mission 1 - You Are Not Prepared  

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// ___I.I: fallout

A soldier on my own, I don’t know the way
I’m riding up the heights of shame
I’m waiting for the call, the hand on the chest
I’m ready for the fight, and fate
- from Iron, Woodkid

Jordan would never afterwards quite remember how he'd gotten back to his room. 113. Another number by which to identify himself. He couldn't decide if that was comforting or unsettling. His fingers didn't want to release the bat he still held; it wasn't right, but after - after everything, he found himself reluctant to let go of it. Theoretically, apparently, it was safe here, inside the facility, at least. He made himself set it aside, leaning it against the side of the bare, simple desk that stood in the room. The pack followed it; he pulled the handbook out of that, set it on top of the desk. He'd have to get something to make the room feel less impersonal, he thought distantly. This, from now on, was home.

The thought struck him like a fist to the stomach, like the monstrous plant thing that had attacked them, or not attacked them. Illusions, again. He swayed on his feet, sank slowly to his knees in the middle of the room. Home? This was home? No, it wasn't. He was never going home again. What remained of his family, his aunt, his cousins - they'd believe him dead. He was dead to the rest of the world. He had died here, been resurrected, impossibly and improbably.

It was hard to believe that he'd spent barely a day awake here. Already it felt like forever. He was exhausted, physically, mentally, emotionally. He needed a shower, but that would mean going back out into the hall, down to the bathroom. Encountering people. He wasn't ready to talk to anyone yet. He wasn't in any kind of shape to meet anyone. The grief sprang from nowhere to attack him; he missed Mom and Dad and Andy with a sharp intolerable ache. He curled over his knees and buried his face in his hands, trying not to be sick.

What he'd seen, what he'd experienced, flashed in a rapid jumble of images behind his eyelids. The world tinted vaguely in red by the eyepieces of a gas mask. Impossible things looming in the fog. The bright spill of blood and the silent shock of pain as he was cut apart. The drooling fanged mouth gaping open in the chest of a thing that shouldn't exist. Acid spattering into the dust, over the arms and legs of his allies. Flesh smoking and curling and blackening, clothing melting right into skin. The thin, bitter bite of bile rose in the back of his throat, and he swallowed it grimly back. How long had it been since he'd eaten? How long had they hung there in those pods, dreaming that they lived a nightmare?

His side no longer ached. When the toothy, horrible tentacle had smacked into him, he'd known without doubt that a bruise was blossoming there, black and ugly. He felt oddly cheated now. He should have some kind of mark, something to show that the pain had been real. Except that it hadn't been.

He didn't doubt that the exercise had been designed to prove to them that they were still weak, still ignorant, unready for the challenges that lay ahead. If it had been meant to bend them to submission, though, it hadn't worked quite the way it was planned. As the nausea subsided, a tight sharp ball of anger took its place in Jordan's gut. He wasn't going to just lie down and take this. No. He was going to get better, study, practice, train himself. He was going to push himself, and he was going to push his team.

He hadn't even doubted that his Phoenixes would still listen to him, he realized. He wasn't in charge, wasn't expected formally to lead anything. Technically, he could step back, let someone take charge. Hard on the heels of that realization came another one - that he wasn't going to do that. If the people who'd known him as A-One and listened to him even though they'd never seen his face still wanted to listen to him, he wasn't about to let them down.

A-Seven had come close to falling through the door into oblivion, and A-One had understood suddenly that he had to go first. That if he was going to call himself a leader, it was his job to start things, to be the guy who stood up and said something, who broke the path so nobody else had to. So they wouldn't have to make the decision first and alone. He'd stepped up and taken that without knowing who he was, and if he threw it away now, he'd never be able to respect himself again.

Jordan uncurled stiffly from the folded-over ball he'd collapsed into, made himself get up and take the five more steps necessary to fall onto the bed in the corner. It was a nicer bed than he'd expected, but he guessed that made sense; if they couldn't rest well, they'd be at a disadvantage for their work. He still needed a shower, but his heart and mind felt raw from the tests he'd endured and the series of conclusions he'd just come to. He couldn't face the others yet, not till he'd gotten himself back under control. He needed to be strong, and if he wasn't strong yet, he could fake it.

For now, he was going to scrabble the knots on his sneakers loose, kick them off, and crawl tiredly under the covers. He'd get a shower when he woke up, maybe find something to eat. There'd better be coffee here. Coffee and aspirin. The thought ended there, dropping off abruptly over the sharp precipice of unconsciousness.

Jordan slept.  

[prolixity]

Out of the Ashes  

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Weapons Initiation: Fall to Rust  

[prolixity]

ORP: Let's get down to business  

[prolixity]

Floresctival (linksplz)
Class/ORP: After the Adventure  

[prolixity]

haunted house incident

links go here  

[prolixity]

// ____x.x: aftermath

Though the road turn at last
to death’s ordinary door,
and we knock there, ready
to enter and it opens
easily for us,
yet
all the long journey
we shall have gone in chains,
fed on knowledge-apples
acrid and riddled with grubs.
-- from Prisoners, Denise Levertov

Triage

The quiet of his room seemed surreal after the constant noise of the battlefield and then the triage tent. Jordan shut the door behind him and leaned back against it, closing his eyes. He was so tired. He just wanted to fall onto his bed and sleep; but he knew that if he didn't make some kind of effort at cleaning up, he'd regret it in the morning. He leaned his head back against the door a moment longer, then stood up and moved slowly across the room, shrugging off his uniform coat and scarf. The uniform was a wreck; he held the coat up, studying it. Torn, burnt, slashed through - when had that happened? Oh, the snake-thing, that was right - it was a mess. He doubted that it could be salvaged. He threw it into the corner and tossed the scarf after it. The rest of his clothes were a disaster, too. Nothing was unburnt. The boots could be repaired, he thought, but everything else would have to be replaced.

As he toed his boots off and kicked them under the desk, his phone beeped, and he automatically picked it up, opening it. Additional duties, assignments ... he snapped the thing closed with more force than he'd meant to. It took an effort to set it down on the desk instead of throwing it across the room. Now? Now was when that came through? Really?

He pulled his jacket and shirt off and tossed them after the coat and scarf, then paused. Something felt strange. He flipped his ponytail over his shoulder to unwrap it, and discovered that the wrap had come undone entirely; a scrap of it hung from a tail of hair considerably shorter than he was used to. The ends were singed, blackened, curled strangely. He hadn't realized, with everything else that was going on. He flattened his palms on the desk and leaned on them, his head hanging down. Funny what could be the last straw, he reflected. "Sorry, Dad," he said aloud. "Guess something finally made me cut it, after all."

This was what his life was now. This was what it meant to be a Hunter. It meant watching your friends and allies get hurt and die in front of you, while you couldn't do a damn thing about it. It meant coming home to a bare room, knowing that the people you fought for were ignorant of your existence, or thought you were dead. He'd go to sleep and wake up to train for the next mission, fully aware that this might be the one he didn't come back from. "Guess there's a reason that's not in the brochure," he muttered.

He could feel Ferros listening to his thoughts, though the dragon said nothing. "Sorry," Jordan said quietly.

You should be, Ferros grumbled.

Jordan shut his eyes again. "If I woke up from - " being dead " - getting knocked out, and you weren't anywhere in reach, I'd be freaking out pretty hard." This, too; never a moment alone, his weapon his constant companion and protector, but unreasonable, sometimes, irritable and bristly.

... I guess so. Complex overtones accompanied the thought, understanding warring with a ferocious, possessive jealousy that ran bone-deep and unshakable.

"That's why I brought Kouki back - " It was the wrong thing to say. Ferros snarled and withdrew, pointedly and loudly ignoring his wielder.

Jordan gritted his teeth, fighting back the urge to punch the desk, or the wall, or something. Anything to blow off some of the feeling that he'd failed, that everything he'd done over the course of the night had been ultimately pointless. He straightened up and yanked the desk drawer out, pulling out a pair of scissors and taking hold of what remained of his ponytail. It wasn't practical, anyway. A liability in a fight. And he'd be fighting for the rest of his life.

The bite of the scissors still felt something like disrespect; funny, when the whole business had come from his half-joking defiance of his dad's aesthetics. The thick rope of hair came away in his hand, and loose hair brushed his neck and ears as it hadn't done for years. He tossed the scissors back into the drawer and slammed it shut, hearing its contents rattle into the back. The remains of the ponytail went into the trash can beside the desk. He couldn't regret what was done and decided, couldn't undo what couldn't be undone.

He picked his towel and soap out of the wardrobe, grabbed the shirt and sweatpants he slept in. No point in putting regular clothes back on after his shower. He wasn't going anywhere other than his bed after he'd cleaned up. He hoped Madison and Ennea wouldn't be too miffed when he didn't join them, but his appetite had gone away completely. He'd apologize tomorrow.

Tomorrow. There was so much to do tomorrow. Tonight he just wanted to sleep.  

[prolixity]

PRP: Who Needs Sleep?  

[prolixity]

meeting  

[prolixity]

PRP/training course: A little friendly competition  

[prolixity]

ORP, meta wrapup: Welcome Back