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 Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:25 pm
Malodore flung open the door to Barth's room, closing it behind it rather more restrained than it felt. It noted that Riley... actually hadn't closed the door to her room, despite having slammed Barth's door shut.
It was difficult to get Malodore angry. It really was. But Riley had managed it. After all the damage that had been done to Christof, after everything they'd had to do just to get her thinking again... the plague doctor shook its head sharply.
And followed Riley into her room. Through the front room (delivering a savage kick to a box of Icky Stix on the way) and into the bedroom, though it didn't actually enter. Instead, it waited in the doorway.
"Storming out of the room isn't an appropriate response to someone cleaning up your mess for you," it said, acerbically.
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Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:32 pm
Riley swiveled around when she heard it's voice, her red eyes widening in shock. MY mess? She retorted, looking absolutely stunned. Did I tell Christof to put himself in a position of danger? Did I tell him to be in here, throwing away my Icky Stix, behind my back? How, exactly, is any of this MY mess?
She very honestly had not found an inkling of fault in herself for the entire situation, as of yet. Instead, she had come to realize that two of the people she cared about most in the world were doing things behind her back.
I trusted you. She growled. I trusted you both. And you were in my bedroom, throwing away my things? Don't you realize you could have just asked me to get rid of them? What could you possibly think of me, if your only recourse was subterfuge?!
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Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:40 pm
"I could think that your judgment was severely impaired!" Malodore raised its voice, and claws clenched into fists at its side. "How many times have I come to your aid after you've done yourself damage? Vediamo..." It unclenched one fist and fanned its fingers out. "There was the 'Cider Fairy' incident. There was the gnome-at-an-exotic-dance-club incident. And now there's this. For someone so determined to have control, you often display an absolutely astonishing lack of it. Did you see Sin's face through your sugar haze? Because I did. What she saw was the decline of a previously precious ally. You are damaging yourself both physically and socially, and if you can't see that then I can't help you! Because that is all, tutti, that I was trying to do, and Christof as well. Dannazione all inferno-" It cut off with a disgusted headshake.
... That was.. possibly the most words Malodore had ever said at one time. It probably couldn't have managed it in such a constant stream if it had needed to breathe.
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Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:45 pm
There it was. A reminder of every one of her failures, laid out for her one, after the other, after the other. She responded to them just as they felt, as if it had slapped her one, twice, a third time. She stood stunned as her inadequacies were laid out before her, all in a row, nicely prepared for her to focus on and come to a single conclusion.
She had been disgraced.
She hadn't realized that she had been backing up into a wall, until she hit it. When it jarred her back to life, her eyes had turned back to white, but the film remained. She swiveled around, folded her hands up around herself tightly, and tried to hold back the shaking she could feel her body submitting to.
Two words were whispered, with coarse, ragged emotion.
Get out.
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Posted: Sun Feb 13, 2011 11:51 pm
"I am going to go tend to Christof. Who fell to bits, mind, because he was trying to help you. Remember that the next time you have the urge to act like a child," Malodore said, its voice cold as ice.
"Se non puoi controllare, non sarai mai il controllo del mondo."
It pivoted on one hoof and walked back into the outside room. Every time its feet happened to hit a discarded Icky Stix, it put a little extra oomph into its step, tearing open the relatively fragile tubes and grinding the sugar underneath it. It felt bizarrely satisfying.
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Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 12:10 am
Riley felt the sharpness of those words like a knife in her heart, and she heard them - not in Italian, and not in Malodore's voice, but in her own father's voice. Unbenownst to Malodore, it was not the first time she had heard them. And if she didn't take precautions, she was suddenly sure it would not be the last.
She waited until she was sure it was out of the bedroom, before closing the door. She turned, and looked at the room with a lifeless gaze.
There were a few knicknacks sitting on her dresser. Happy reminders of friends and loved ones. Things she was never meant to have. She reached over, and slowly knocked them one by one off of the dresser. She heard the tinkle of glass shattering on the floor. The sight of the dresser itself hazed out, unfocusing.
Then she picked up the entire dresser, and hurled it across the room. It smashed against the bed posts, breaking them apart like twigs, before tumbling against the floor in a heap of broken wood.
She didn't stop there. The canopy of the bed hovered dangerously, and she reached up and pulled it down. The crackle of the backboard left a pleasant sound in the air.
She picked up one of the broken bedposts, and with a mean swing, she slammed a mirror that hung on the wall beside her closet. It shattered into a million pieces, and she bent down to glare into the broken shards. There, she saw her eyes, red as the blood moon, and that smooth, featureless face.
With a careless tug, she ripped her skull pin right off of her belt. The crackling of bone and sinew filled the air, as her tentacles wiggled helplessly while her entire face rearranged itself. When she opened her eyes and looked down into the mirror once more, she saw something much more familiar than that featureless face she'd come to know in this school.
She saw a mindflayer once more.
"This is what I am." She growled, out loud - her pointed teeth gnashing in the rounded hole hidden beneath her tentacles. "I should have never thought, for one second, that I deserved anything more."
Her clawed hands, which had lengthened and turned deadly, curled into fists as she pushed herself up. Those glowing red eyes took one look at the window, before bounding ferally towards it, and jumping off. With a terrifying scree, she leapt out of the dorm and charged towards the forests alone, leaving her pin discarded on her destroyed bedroom floor.
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Posted: Mon Feb 14, 2011 12:24 am
Malodore, in fact, did not go check on Christof - it was sure the patchwork was fine, surrounded by friends, though it lingered briefly outside Barth's door to be sure.
Which was why it heard the crashing begin. It flinched forward, then stood unmoving in the hallway as the crashing and smashing continued. The source of the sound was unmistakable - Riley's dorm. Riley.
It was too far away to hear her words, but not to hear the screeling cry. That, finally, spurred it into motion - it turned and sprinted back into Riley's room, coming up against the closed door. Throwing it open...
... to devastation it was expecting, based on the noise. What it had not been expecting was the skull pin shattered on the floor. Or the shape hurtling towards the forests.
Malodore's stomach flipped over - quite a feat for the undead - as it dug its claws into the windowsill hard enough to scratch ridges into the wood. The anger that had been sizzling through its mind abruptly dropped away, leaving behind only an accusing clarity.
... It was right. Had been right.
But it could have been more clear that it was helping because it cared.
The plague doctor watched Riley's form until it was indistinguishable from the shadows of the trees. Then it turned on one hoof, picked its way silently through the wreckage, and closed the door behind it with a deliberate click.
It would be a long walk back to the undead dormitories.
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