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 Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:13 pm
Otto wasn't actually sick. He felt sick, though. It was probably stress, anxiety, constant lack of sleep. But the main reason? He'd somehow managed to suspect every trainer and hunter he knew as a link to a mass murder. And he was also somehow certain Jerry was going to smother him in his sleep t keep him from talking.
He knew it was dumb. Rationally, he knew it wasn't true. He was over thinking this. Taking the assignment he'd gotten to seriously and overloaded himself.
But it still made him sick. Mind sick. Mind sick enough to make his body think it was sick. Tummy ache, nausea.
He tried not to lean on Ami too much, just wanting to get to his room and hide in his blanket cocoon for a few hours to chill.
"Well, that was a stupid idea.."
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Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:28 pm
Ami tugged Otto along, not particularly saying anything. He clearly needed some space to breath, so being a support was good enough for her. She was never a very talkative type anyways.
When they finally arrived at his door, she pushed it open with the toe of her boot, and then pulled him into the room. It was a little difficult to maneuver a teenage boy around the tiny room, but she eventually found her way to his bed, where she gently put him down.
"Do you want some water? I have tums in my room ..." she asked. She wasn't extremely worried, wasn't about to cry over Otto's sickliness, but there was a dose of worry in her voice, a dab of concern as she fussed over his blankets.
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Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:41 pm
Otto sat down, immediately slouching and resting his arms over his knees, his head nestled on top. "Mmhmm.." He murmured. Maybe the stress induced tummy ache would be cured by Tums. Maybe.
What had he been thinking? A real Death Hunter would have done some sleuthing, gone behind backs. He went and did something he was naturally bad at: networking with a large group. Like some damn pow wow. It would have been okay if hed gotten good information, but all he got out of it was paranoia.
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Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 5:48 pm
Ami pulled the blanket over Otto, a reached a hand out to brush the hunter's hair out of his face. A moment of hesitation, but then she continued with the motion anyways, simply taking a leap of faith that Otto wouldn't be too upset at the doting.
"Just take it easy. I'll be back, don't go anywhere," she urged. As she walked out the door, she looked at him one last time out of worry, and then skipped out to her room.
She arrived back in the room moments later, arms filled with a small bottle of tums, a tea mug filled with water (Ami hardly drank anything other than tea, it was just about all she had), and a cool rag for his forehead, just in case. As a lifer, Ami could recognize the simple symptoms of panic and nausea. She saw it all the time in the psychiatric wards, it was a common sight among hunters.
She set the tums next to his bed, not entirely sure if this was actual nausea or just shock. However, she did hand him the tea mug, but didn't force it on him. The rag she witheld, giving Otto a moment or two to adjust to the water. "What happened back there?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 6:09 pm
The blonde didn't flinch from the gesture, or pull away. Although he tended to be retractive normally to such things, the boy was not feeling well enough to pretend he disliked it. As she left, he even missed it.
Otto lifted his head, having had a moment to sort of calm down. He reached for the mug, taking a slow drink of water. "Panicked.. overreacted. I dunno what I was expecting out of that, but what I got was..." He breathed out, rubbing his temple with a free hand.
"H.. said to look into the council's... and I guess I thought it was my chance to really prove myself as a Death hunter but.." He turned red, completely embarrassed to be devulging personal information. "I got hasty. It was dumb to ask so many people at once. I got overwhelmed and ended up pointing the finger at everyone. A murder like that.. weren't done by trainees, or dweebs like Jerry."
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Posted: Mon Nov 26, 2012 7:06 pm
"Oh Otto," Ami said, now moving closer to put the cloth on his head gently. She watched his actions carefully, making sure he didn't refuse it as she brushed the hair out of his forehead. She didn't want to risk upsetting him even more than he already was. "You're a good death, you don't need to prove it to anyone."
Ami ignored his bright red blush. When she started blushing, her entire face when red and there was no stopping it, so she wasn't about to poke fun at Otto for it.
H that b*****d. Ami thought quite highly of the Doctor, admired him even, but pushing a trainee to find the council's murderer was too much, even for a full-fledged hunter. "You didn't mess up. It'd take a whole team of hunters to find the villain who killed the council."
She nodded, sighing. She didn't want to baby Otto too much though. He couldn't be coddled. "You did panic. Badly." A hand began stroking Otto's hair, like Ami always did. "But I would have done the same."
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 2:30 am
The coddling was dealt with. It was Ami. There were a small handful of people who were allowed to get away with it. Most others would have been barked at by now. Funny enough, her words helped a little bit. He'd put a lot of pressure on himself to be a one man army, and that was just impossible. Impractical. As much as he preferred working by himself, it just didn't work that way.
Otto breathed out like he'd been holding his breath after a moment or two. "Yeah.." He couldn't exactly say he'd learn for next time. Crowds and interacting with said crowds was always going to be a hard spot. He'd just need to think of better ways of handling them.
Now he felt really silly.
"Ya know.. H didn't sound surprised when me n' Sherry told him the council was dead. He'd sent us there to deliver a message, and when we told him we couldn't, he said the message was sent just fine."
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:35 pm
Ami had crawled onto the bed, tired of standing, but still kept a considerable distance from the blonde hunter. She was at least close enough to see the annoyance in his eyes, though whether it was at himself or H, Ami couldn't tell.
"Maybe he had a hand in it," Ami suggested. It wasn't unfeasible. Life wasn't like the other divisions- hunters in Life clawed their way up the ladder by using those below them like a stepping stone, and H? H was at the top. Maybe he'd grown power hungry and taken out the council himself, but Ami couldn't see that. He was much more subtle. He wouldn't outright kill the most powerful hunters.
She looked back at Otto and said, "What reason would he have to kill them?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 12:58 pm
"That's the thing. I don't get H just as much as I don't get Caelius. I can't make any accusations cause I don't got anythin' on either of them. And I don't know how to. neither. I could see either of them wanting to, or even doin it, but since I know them about as well as I know Russian... which is none, by the way. You get my point." Otto huffed lightly, not quite as aggravated and panicked as he had been earlier.
"Not like a whole lot has changed since the council died."
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 3:35 pm
"Then ... don't worry about it." Ami spent a moment judging his huffs, worried for a split second that he was going to go into another fit. It was just Otto being grumpy though, and that was something she was much more accustomed to.
She leaned back, putting her head on the wall next to Otto's bed. "Hey, hey," she cooed, "H said to look into the council, not solve the mystery and save the day. Bravado is not one of your traits, Otto." Having to deal with the inner politics of the division leaders was not something Ami cared to do.
Ami sighed, thinking to how much had "changed." It was true, work continued on as usual, even with the council gone. It was a wonder the division leaders could keep the hunters calm, ticking timebomb that they were. "I don't know ... things are certainly busier. Hunters are getting more responsibility- I heard some hunters are being given special roles."
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 3:52 pm
"I guess... I just didn't know what else to do." Bravado certainly wasn't something Otto was good at or cared to be good at. He liked background tasks. Things he could do without drawing attention to himself. Still, he had no idea how to gather information. Asking a higher up was out of the question. They never gave a trainee anything straight up.
So what were his traits anyway?
He.. didn't want to think about that.
"Special roles? Are the Division leads pawning off all the work on us now?" That meant glory for some, he supposed. A lot of people wanted that. Wanted the responsibilities. Otto wasn't sure what he wanted, other than to keep busy. Was that aiming low? Did he give up his life to be in a state of constant goal ambiguity?
He asked himself way too many questions, and never had the answers. No wonder he was always grumpy.
"Oh well. Guess that makes a few people happy. Climbin' the Deus ladder, n' all. Is that what you lookin' to do, too?"
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Posted: Tue Nov 27, 2012 4:04 pm
Ami smiled. Logic was one of her strong suits. She put a hand on her chin. "I might start with people close to the scene of the crime at the time. It's illogical and inefficient to interview everyone, which you know from experience." Ami gave Otto an affectionate smile, trying to poke fun at his failure to help the scar scab over.
"Try to find the security camera records, people that were there around that time? Do we even have cameras posted around the council room ...?" Ami had no clue. She was a lifer- she came up with the ideas, the other divisions carried them out.
She looked over at him. "Pawning" the work to them wasn't quite the right word. It was more like they were being played as pawns. "I'm not sure. I suppose I'll have to- it seems that quite a few are being called to cover the work lost to us by the council." She leaned back. "To be honest, I'm not sure what I would do, either. All I'm good at is writing and recording." She gave Otto a smirk and said, "Quite frankly, there's not a reward on this Earth that could make me H's secretary."
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Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 5:29 pm
Otto shot a stubborn look back at Ami. Yes he did know from experience. A mistake he likely wouldn't repeat. So embarrassing. He wasn't even sure who was around when they died, or when they died at all. He knew next to nothing other than they were very dead, it was very messy, and it smelled really bad.
"I dunno.. maybe. But I don't got that sort of clearance.. I mean I could try but.." What right did a trainee have to such things? "If theres something as obvious as video evidence, it'd be locked up tight."
"I guess that's an okay skill. I sure don't write or record s**t too well. I barely remember last week enough to document it." He almost gagged at the idea of someone being H's secretary. Poor Clarice got it bad enough, as far as he could tell. "That dude creeps me the Hell out."
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Posted: Wed Nov 28, 2012 6:26 pm
Ami nodded, seeing the potential mistakes in her plan. If the killer was caught on tape it would have been over and dealt with by now. "Mmm, point taken," she said. It seemed as though she was out of ideas for now.
She frowned when Otto said H creeped him out. She rather liked him, even though he had an apparently bad reputation. "I can't say the same. He ... I owe him a great debt. I suppose that is what you would call it. A debt." Rather, H held her life in the palm of his hands. It might have seemed cruel from a glance, but the fact that H was holding her life at all was a blessing. Being weaponless she should have been killed where she stood. "I think he's rather clever with his words too. Then again, perhaps the ... common vernacular of most hunters has numbed me."
Ami shook her head, as though she was shaking the haughtiness out of her voice. It wasn't her time to brag, it was time to console Otto. "Besides, he let me keep this," Ami said, pulling the tiny whiteish grey orb, dangling from her pendant. In the center of the orb, images of lava hung, while tiny orange glowing runes orbited the sphere on a ring of metal.
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Posted: Thu Nov 29, 2012 2:24 pm
Well, maybe Life hunters were under H's spell or something. Chics seemed to dig the dude. Kind of gross, if you asked him.
Otto nodded and pretended to know what vernacular meant.
Smooth.
His eyes squinted at the object Ami held up, leaning in to get a better look. "What is it?" He asked curiously.
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