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 Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 3:45 am
They'd given him a clipboard with a form on it that he'd never had a reason to use yet, and a five-minute rundown on what to do should his presence actually be required. They'd pointed him to a chair bathed in the light of the bank of the monitors and the blue runic glow, which wasn't the best light to read by but was enough, which was all he could ask for. He hated pod duty, the hours of excruciating boredom offset and made more restless by the strange, unsettling surroundings. He would gladly have traded it off for an extra shift scrubbing bathrooms or washing dishes or scraping out cages. Which is why, when the alarms startled him half out of his seat, he felt a half-second wave of relief. It was almost immediately replaced by dread. Taym, as usual, felt very aware of the fact that he had no idea what he was doing. He took a moment to still his expression to one of dry superiority, hoping he could veil his general ineptitude with a world-weary, withering cynicism (his usual tactic), and he gathered up the clipboard under his arm and stuffed his paperback into his pocket and set off down the rows of pods to see if what they'd coughed up this time looked as rough as he had.
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Posted: Fri Jan 17, 2014 6:44 pm
Leslie came out of the inky darkness with a jolt, twisting frantically in the confined space of his coffin. For a moment, or two, or three, he did not remember the decisions he'd made, the battles he'd fought, or the contract he'd signed. There was only panic: deep rooted and insurmountable. Surrounding him on all sides was darkness, and he wasn't dead yet. A low hiss emanated from outside the blackness, accompanied the electronic sounds of technology coming to life. It was in that moment, Leslie remembered exactly what he'd done to get there. "s**t." It wasn't a coffin at all, even if he had died. The details were hazy, like a far off memory, but the death had been very, very real... Or so he'd thought. In a single, graceful move, Leslie tumbled out of the pod and onto the floor into a dishevelled lump of ratty sweatshirt and worn jeans.
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Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2014 5:55 am
astrazilla Every dark cove RP goes differently I am like WHAT DO IDK LETS PRETEND He'd been expecting a curly-haired teenage girl or a metrosexual with an earring or, in general, someone as obnoxiously fresh-faced and self-assured as most of the kids (that was the word in his head; kids) he ran into around here. A second glance affirmed that "kid" was accurate, but the rest wasn't. This was inexplicably satisfying, and he eyed him for a long silent second before consulting the clipboard and attempting an introduction of dry professionalism. "s**t indeed. Name?"
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Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2014 11:28 am
The voice that greeted him sounded like gravel raked over some coals. Bright eyes flicked upwards in a scowl, and he stood, glaring upwards. The whole damn world was taller than him. It was the worst, but it wasn't anything new. Leslie gave him a once over, unimpressed. "Jesus christ, you look kinda like a meth addict. Have you heard of sandwiches?" A pause to shove his hands into the front of his hoodie, scowl intensifying. He raised his chin defiantly, pre-emptively facing a challenge that hadn't been presented. "It's Leslie." It didn't dawn on him that he could have picked a different name, and no one would have been the wiser.
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Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2014 5:44 pm
The expected mockery didn't surface. Taym was personally sensitive to the tribulations of having an unfortunate name, even if Leslie had just called him a meth addict and made the sort of food-related observation Taym expected from every new acquaintance now. He got, instead, a withering look over the top of the clipboard, several seconds long, before Taym flipped through the pages to the relevant one and skimmed his script. "Thompson," he answered briefly. And then, with more dry certainty than he felt--he felt a bit like he'd been made to give a public speech with nothing but a set of someone else's cliff notes--he added: "Welcome to Deus Ex Machina. If you don't remember how you get here you will in a bit. You with us?" It was the kind of "you with us" that was about two seconds from being followed by "how many fingers am I holding up" although unfortunately that part never came. Instead, Taym looked past Leslie's shoulder, bent backwards to peer down the next row of pods, and then in mute sympathy pulled out a box of cigarettes and extended them in the kid's direction, with a flat stare that told him that if he was smart he wouldn't acknowledge what was happening. "Have you heard of a comb?" he added flatly. As if he hadn't looked far, far worse in Leslie's situation.
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Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2014 6:18 pm
The addict looked him, and didn't say s**t. Good. Still disoriented, Leslie looked all around while Thompson talked. It didn't feel real, to be here: Deus ex Machina sounded like the name of a league of supervillains.
"Yeah, yeah. I'm with you, old man," Leslie replied, his gaze dark until Thompson gave him a pack of smokes. Suspicious, he accepted it- the plastic was gone but only a few were gone. Huh.
"Do I look like a woman or a f*****t to you?" Leslie asked, and it was apparent that the words 'thank you' were not in his vocabulary. He rifled in his pockets for his lighter: it was his favourite, a stolen zippo.
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Posted: Sat Jan 18, 2014 6:38 pm
He hadn't expected a thank you. He wasn't very good at them himself. "Two things," said Taym tiredly, holding out a lighter just in case Leslie came up empty--and it was a Zippo but it hadn't been stolen, not this time, anyway--and glancing at the clipboard again for want of anywhere better to put his eyes. "One, basic ******** hygiene isn't limited to queers and women. Two, you don't wanna ask rhetorical ********' questions like that around here unless you're ready for some smartass to answer 'yes,' because I ******** you that will be the next reply you get regardless of the actual reality of the situation. You're about to go that way," he added, pointing at the crude arrow scrawled on the floor (what, did they used to skip this part?). "That's where you'll get armed, soldier." Soldier. The word he'd wanted to hear, over and over again, because it had some respectability about it. He gave to Leslie what he hadn't got, skeptical every second that it would be received with the gratitude it would have gotten out of Taym.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 2:50 am
The zippo was tucked away in his back left pocket, and upon finding it, he waved off Thompson's offering. He lit up the first cigarette without asking if it was fine to do so, not even thinking that it might not be allowed: why would someone who had just given him cigarettes would actually enforce any rules against it. His body had missed the the cool rush of nicotine, and it was a pleasant surge of life into his hazy mind. Thompson lectured him, and it was fine: Leslie smiled lazily, surely. He smiled like he was the winner, because no one had hit him yet (yet, always a yet), and that meant he was coming out ahead. He smiled like he wasn't the ignorant one between the two of them, because Leslie knew how to turn a lecture into an unfulfilling endeavour. "Aw, don't be an ********, I totally have 'basic ******** hygiene', s**t," Leslie insisted, bemused. He didn't reek like s**t. He took a shower every now and again. He just didn't really feel like combing his hair the day he got recruited, was that such a god-damned crime? There were plenty of other real crimes that he was actually guilty of committing. For good measure, he added: "I also just crawled out of a coffin-thing, so quit being a c**t." Expletive laden as they were, Leslie's words weren't actually malicious in intention: the expletives were easy come, easy go. Like punctuation, or something like it. In his case, perhaps, it was a mask for poor diction. "Anyway. Thanks for the warning, Tommy Boy. It'll be a nice way to decide who to punch in the d**k." Easy words. Too confident-- more confident than he felt-- but he recited them, like small children did their times tables. Craning his head in the direction the other man pointed, Leslie exhaled smoke in a puff of irritation, not bothering to look back at the man. "I'm sure you're just doing your job n s**t, cos you sound like a substitute teacher reading offa sheet of paper, but I didn't sign up to be GI ******** Joe, right. Don't call me a ******** soldier, just. Jesus. Don't do that." He looked at Thompson, then, with the kind of look that said: I sure ******** hope that I'm not gonna get old and turn into you. rejam /sobs into hands i hate this stupid baby so much
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 7:38 am
astrazilla BITE ME I will hold him tenderly while he gnaws frantically on my hands trying to escape like the tiny yappy dog he is Rather forebodingly for Leslie's concerns, the look he got in return was: I can't believe I used to be you, you little s**t. He hadn't, of course--Leslie put him immediately and inevitably in mind of a small scrappy yapping dog with a lifetime of feral self-sufficiency and teenage Taym had been a smug and insufferable tomcat with a faux veneer of the streets, but there was enough familiarity there that he couldn't deny the vague sense of looking into a time-traveling mirror. He knew that lazy smile, that lounging apathy in response to anything even approaching authority. He let him smoke, anyway, occasionally leaning back to again, with paranoia, check the rows for sudden visitors. Let him punch people in the d**k. It would be a good lesson for later about the natural Deus hierarchy and where people like Leslie fitted into it. He didn't bother to warn him again. "A mercenary then, if you like. The point is--" he had pocketed the lighter and was filling out the things he was supposed to fill out, ticking the boxes that needed to be ticked "--you'll be fighting, when you aren't scrubbing floors and washing soup pots. Hopefully you have good survival instincts, or you won't be fighting for long." This was a bit withering. "Once you go in there you'll pick a weapon--or it'll pick you--and then things get a little weird. Come out the other side, we've got information for you and you'll get a uniform." A uniform, soldier. Deal with it. "I'd ration those," he added tonelessly, indicating the cigarette. "You'll have to bribe someone to bring them to you until you can get off-base, and trust that I speak from ******** experience when I say that neither of those things is necessarily easy." He had three cartons and some change squirreled away in his room. "And I've only got about one favor in me for anyone."
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:16 pm
Mercenary had a much nicer ring to it than soldier ever would. Leslie King, mercenary. He could live with that, and it fit with what he'd signed up for. The crippled guy had been smart enough not to bandy about the word. Leslie put the pack of cigarettes into his front pocket, almost gingerly. He was good to possessions, he just wasn't good to people. At the word uniform, Leslie's lip instinctively curled with distaste. "Better not be any ******** ties involved," he muttered, already plotting how often he could get away without wearing whatever uniform they wanted to try and force onto him. He hated ties, but that statement could be fitted with any sort of subject. He hated the sun. He hated the cold. He hated vegetables. He hated people. He hated everything, by default. (As most teenagers did.) Upon receiving Thompson's advice, he drew his shoulders up higher, hunching in misery. Great. He'd known that he'd be trapped, but not that the damn place lacked basic ******** amenities. Cigarettes might as well have been an inalienable right to Leslie, and alcohol too. What a bunch of penny pinching jews. "Guessing that if I want anything decent to drink, same s**t applies?" he asked, not an iota of hope in his voice. rejam the tiniest, yappiest dog
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:26 pm
"And then some," was the faux-pleasant reply, as Taym finished whatever mysterious thing it was that pod duty Hunters did with clipboards, presumably so that the pages, in triplicate, could be shoved down a memory hole later. He tucked it back under his arm. "Finish your cigarette and if you throw the butt--or any butts--on the ground, so help me God, I will break your ******** fingers. You ready?" For step two. Not for having his fingers broken. "Take a minute if you need it," he added, with grudging sympathy. "It's the last ******** break you get for a while." Or ever, he thought, Fiona's reaction a ripple of hurt feelings quickly concealed.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:42 pm
He let out a low, wordless groan of frustration, sucking in another drag. Great. This super-villain s**t better be worth the price of not being able to numb his mind the way he liked. Then again, coming to this place was supposed to mean that Leslie wouldn't want to numb his mind so much. Things could be different, here. Narrowly squinting at Thompson, Leslie exhaled, and quietly took a minute to smoke in piece. "Is it really that ******** bad?" he asked, begrudgingly curious. "Being a badass with superhuman powers, and s**t."
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:19 pm
Yes, he thought miserably. "No," he lied. "You just... You're sacrificing s**t for those superpowers, and you're working, it's not a ******** sinecure." He said this like it was a challenge; like he expected Leslie to slack. Thompson didn't look like the kind of person who slacked, if the restless sleeplessness of his movements and callused, rough hands and the sunken circles around his eyes were any indication. He thought about heroin and women and food and Tuesday, and watching Leslie smoke wished he'd thought to light one for himself. "If you want my off-the-record advice," he added, more conversationally, "don't trust anyone, don't b***h where anyone can hear you, and stay busy." He had only managed one out of the three.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 7:45 pm
"A sigh-nuh- what?" Leslie asked, scowl intensifying. His vocabulary wasn't big enough to get that word, and he had a feeling that both of them knew that. The urge to kick this meth head right in the balls was steadily growing stronger. Even he realised that it would be best to wait on that urge until after he got his weapon: a powerless super-villain was just an a*****e hooligan asking for trouble. Thompson's advice didn't make much sense. He didn't trust anyone anyway, but there was no way in hell he'd pay follow the second two guidelines until life forced him into it. Leslie didn't sign his life away to follow rules. In an act of petty revenge, he stubbed the cigarette out on the floor and left it there. "Guess my break's over." He slunk towards the exit.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 8:38 pm
He didn't make it. Taym's fingers closed hard on his hood to yank him back, to spin him around with the open-palmed smack on the shoulder that universally said "turn around and face me even though you don't deserve the honor." Taym's normal reaction would have been to pick the cigarette up with a flat and defiant stare, but that was only because Taym was smaller and weaker than almost everyone who pissed him off. Leslie wasn't just unarmed, he was weak, or at least he looked weak, and he looked like the kind of kids Taym had run with in high school but that didn't mean he wasn't also the kind of kid Taym would have slammed a locker door on. Taym's voice was always quieter than his face suggested it would be, and thinner, and softer. Now was no exception, while he loomed with his fist tangled in Leslie's collar. "Here's a fourth ******** piece of advice. You go ahead, piss off the people who are going to piss on you no matter what you do, s**t all over authority until Caelius makes you a head shorter than you already ******** are, that's your prerogative. But the number of people who are going to treat you decently--" he jabbed a finger at the discarded cigarette "--is already incredibly small. I would highly recommend you reconsider shitting on them too. Pick up the ******** cigarette."
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