[PRP] Indulgences - Jack + Ripley

[Enoh Love]

"Yes." Ripley decided after a moment's thought. An attempted insult was still an insult; the only difference was, he wasn't about to react to it, or lose sleep over it, or even think about it any further than he had to.

He listened to Jack lament his time away from the island, but since he had no frame of reference he could only take his word for it. But as he heard the word clone, he paused his drinking, and focused more fully on him. Clones; he knew them. He had run into one. It killed an innocent girl.

"Famine is behind it?" He inquired, almost surprised. Interested, yes; but he should have known the Horsemen were behind it. "Why?"

medigel

 

[medigel]

He shrugged. "I could think of a few reasons: experimentation and research, mass produced personal army, psychological warfare." Most especially experimentation; the cuts in his limbs and torso, now thin scars, were the most visible evidence to that.

"Have you run into one before now?" Jack asked.

Enoh Love

 

[Enoh Love]

"Interesting." Ripley mused at the implications of clones - well, more clones than he had already been privy to which, to date, consisted of one. Perhaps two. They were, as far as he was aware, a horrifying prospect. Aside from the lack of weapon summoning and nasty habit of leaving holes in people, they were practically indistinguishable from the real thing.

"I have." He confirmed, dragging his attention from his thoughts to the man in front of him. "On my promotion mission, I ran into a clone of Taym." Who proceeded to run through me, he added mentally.

"They are...incredibly strong. Fast. And they regenerate."

medigel

 

[medigel]

Fast and strong, he'd seen up close, but regeneration as well? s**t.

("You're impossibly fast, and strong. Your skin is pale white and ice cold." He probably picked a bad time to start reading Twilight for shits and giggles.)

Jack nodded grimly. "May I ask what happened?"

Enoh Love

 

[Enoh Love]

(If Ripley had ever read Twilight - or even managed to hear about it in that much depth - he would have groan in pain.)

Ripley nodded - yes, he may ask - but thankfully, he didn't make Jack actually ask. Instead, he supplied the information he could:

"I was investigating illnesses and disappearances, and my search lead me to suspect someone was giving FEAR candies to teenagers. I followed the trail, and it lead me to whom I believed was Taym. I cornered him, he lashed out, and nearly killed me. Instead he killed a teenage civilian, and disappeared." It was a synopsis, but he felt it touched on all the important points of that horrible mission. "I didn't know it was a clone until I cornered the real Taym." And beat the s**t out of him, he added silently.

"But, interestingly, Taym knows his clones are out there."

medigel

 

[medigel]

Jack frowned in thought. "Clones among civilians? Why? Can they gather Fear?" He posed them as if he was directly asking Ripley for more answers, but they were more just him thinking aloud. "Then why bother exposing them to it..." And then he paused, his brows seesawing first up and then back down at the second piece of news.

"Does he now?" Jack leaned forward, clearly interested for more.

Enoh Love

 

[Enoh Love]

"I'm not sure." Ripley shook his head, regretfully. "I only assumed he was getting his kicks." He had no idea it had been a clone until he got back, and confronted the real Taym with some nasty punches. Though as he thought about the idea of it being used to gather fear, he gave a small, affirming nod. "The kids who ate them were terrified." So that made a lot of sense, at least. They were gathering FEAR by giving candies to teenagers.

"Yes. He alluded to there being more." This sort of information he felt was important; he was going to share it. "The one I ran into was far more advanced than the ones he interacted with."

medigel

 

[medigel]

"Create Fear by making them ingest it. Crude but effective..." Like planting a seed and then harvesting the result later. Great, they had been downgraded from cattle to crops.

Jack's brow furrowed further. More of them? He wasn't sure whether to be grudgingly admirable of the enemy or increasingly uncomfortable with each piece of news. "Next you'll be telling me they can talk and are self-aware," he joked, grim and wry and already accepting the probability that they were because life just ******** sucked like that.

Enoh Love

 

[Enoh Love]

"Whatever gets the job done." He nodded, finishing off his whiskey and not quite yet feeling its affect.

"It seems like a natural progression, don't you think?" They could walk, fight and regenerate...it's only logical that they may try to civilize them in an attempt to make them harder to point out in a crowd. "How are they getting the material needed to replicate? Surely they'd need to have interacted with the original in some way." He was musing, mostly to himself; but if Jack wasn't already privy to this information, well, at least he seemed like a good person to brainstorm with. He could appreciate that, at least.

medigel

 

[medigel]

"No idea," he lied. "But that makes the most sense. If not that, obtain some sort of genetic material. My experience tells me they have no trouble acquiring bodies, though."

He looked like he might drift into one of those memories--and then he sipped his whiskey with a sigh.

"God, this is depressing. Change of topic?" Jack suggested, making a motion for Ripley to top himself off if he wanted more. "How about a toast to being alive so far?"

Enoh Love

i keep wanting to type enoh ripley in the quote box...........

 

[Enoh Love]

"Greatly encouraged." Ripley replied with a nod to the idea of a topic change. No more Horsemen, or Clones, or Zombies, or anything that wasn't drinking. Oh, good - he didn't even have to ask. Ripley offered the ghost of a grateful smile before he stood, about to head to the original bottle. Instead he stopped, and gestured towards the drink in Jack's hand. "Refill?"

If Jack wanted one, he'd take his current glass and refill them both; if not, it was just his own. Eventually he returned to his seat, though he rolled a little closer to the blonde man on the edge of the bed.

"To not being dead?" He suggested with a sad, twisted little smile, holding his glass out in cheers.

medigel

Well ur not...wrong...entirely.... /patpatpat

 

[medigel]

He gave Ripley a grateful nod and passed his glass over to get a refill.

"To not being dead," Jack echoed once he got it back, clinking it to Ripley's and, with a wry smile of his own, tipping it back. Yet, he added mentally.

"So what have you been up to, Crowell?" he asked. "Zombies and clones aside." It struck him as funny and a sign of his character that he hadn't asked this first.

Enoh Love

 

[Enoh Love]

His toast was complete with a sip of his drink, and for a moment after, he let the silence stretch on. He had, and always would be, comfortable with odd silences. The need to fill the air with conversation was not something he typically possessed. As it were, Jack broke the silence, and the Intermediate raised his gaze to him once more, mulling over the question.

"Nothing too terribly exciting." He decided, regretfully, that this was the truth. "Reading. Researching. Work. Infirmary stays." He was pretty sure he spent most of his island time in recovery, as unfortunate as that was. At least that usually gave him some amusement in the way of Oliver, who was still as skittish as ever.

Though, a moment later, he paused.

"Ah. I've been harnessing a cliff face for rock climbing in my spare time." That was something fairly interesting, he supposed.

"And yourself? Zombies, Clones and off-island posts aside."

medigel

 

[medigel]

"The infirmary is getting a little too popular," Jack observed with an annoyed sigh. "But not much. Drinking when off duty, studying specimens from the Haunted House, keeping an ear out for anything more about the virus, more drinking." Housing drama in his head.

"What about that rock climbing now?" Jack asked with mild surprise. Ripley hadn't struck him as that kind of person.

Enoh Love

 

[Enoh Love]

"Sounds like a party." Ripley replied dryly. Alas, that sounded an awful lot like his days, minus the studying and the virus deals.

"What about it?" He seemed somewhat surprised by Jack's surprise, which was a fun little cycle.

medigel