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 Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2006 7:42 pm
"No, you're not a flower," he answered firmly, carefully winding around duplex buildings now that they had reached that area of the island. "And wit' any luck, you won't be."
He squinted into the dark, looking for her duplex amongst the the masses.
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Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2006 7:47 pm
"Sweet~," she said drowsily, suddenly feeling very tired. But she had only just woken up hours ago. That didn't matter right now though, only sleep.
Antony wasn't thinking enough to remember that it isn't a bright idea to go to sleep after getting conked in the head.
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Posted: Sun Jan 01, 2006 7:54 pm
With a bit more walking and a bit more searching, he finally found her duplex looming in the night. Thank god...
He managed to get the door open with some more shuffling of Antony's body so he could get the handle, then stumbled inside the dark duplex, looking for the nearest chair or couch.
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Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 9:26 pm
Moaning, Julian rolled over, his arm flopping below him at an awkward angle.
Strange...he could feel a draft whistling past his fingers.
Not a draft.
The wind.
He rolled over further, eyes opening....
Just in time for him to feel his head loll back on his neck, getting a lovely birdseye view of the area upside-down from the cafeteria roof.
He locked up.
"...Oh...Oh...OH...OH GOD...."
Panicing, his breathing came a mite too fast.
"...HELP! SOMEONE! HELP ME...!" With his arm and head hanging off the side of the building, he had a sickening sense of vertigo - even though the brunt of his weight was holding him on the building. The hyperventilation wasn't helping - he was getting dizzy, and the ground below him seemed to shift and wobble.
"HELP ME!"
'JULIAN. CALM DOWN.' Cheshire. The voice of reason, strangely. 'Let me help you.'
"I CAN'T!" Julian was screaming uncontrollably, tears running down his face and stinging the cuts upon his pale, sallow skin. "I'LL FALL!"
'TRUST ME, Julian. PLEASE, trust me! Breath slowly....' He payed close attention to the heaving of the boy's chest as it slowed and calmed.
'Good...now...let go.'
At first, Julian got ready to panic again - but when he felt the familiar burning buzz in the back of his head, he smiled and welcomed oblivion.
The Cat...would save him.
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Posted: Mon Jan 02, 2006 9:56 pm
Cheshire slowly came to, his usual manic grin spreading on his face as his eyes snapped open.
Carefully, he eased his head up and to the side, placing it on the safe surface. He then swung his arm up, tucking it in and rolling away from the edge of the building.
"...There...now...how did we get up here?"
Springing to his bare feet, he surveyed the area. No service ladders. No way down. And what's more - not a soul around!
"...Mm...interesting...."
Thinking to himself briefly, the Cat pulled his shirt up over his head, exposing the silvery fur and long claw marks to the breeze. Deft, quick movements - then the shirt was tied securely around his (and with his shirt off, it was FAR too easy to see this) scarily thin waist.
He then paused...a thought crossing his mind.
"...It wouldn't do...for the pocketwatch to get hurt. Now...would it?"
He slipped the precious thing up over his head, placing it safely in his pocket.
"Now...."
Slinking to the edge of the building, he crouched, tail flicking behind him and his claws clicking over the edge.
"...How to get to the Tulgey Wood from here...."
((**Pausing for the night**))
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:35 am
Anjali had been poking angrily around her duplex. She couldn't get a shower, which she very much wanted at this point... or anything else. The whole Village was bizzarely silent, with no mechanical or man-made noises whatsoever - no hum of various AC units, even. "What on earth has happened?" she murmured, then frowned sourly. Whatever it was clearly wasn't important enough to halt the injection process. Her skin kept prickling, and she wasn't sure if it was the start of a real change or something psychosomatic...
She jumped as a series of screams suddenly echoed through the Village - screams of fright, not of pain, thank goodness. "Hey! Hello?" Anjali called back, making sure the trowel was still in her back pocket before she set off at a trot. She looked around, trying to zero in on the source of the yelling before it abruptly cut off - and then she spotted movement on the cafeteria roof.
There was someone up there.
"HEY!" Anjali bounced on her tiptoes, waving one arm. "Hey, are you okay?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:43 am
Cheshire's eyes flicked down at the woman, his grin broadening.
"Oh, I'm quite all right," he shouted down to her. "Though I'm afraid Julian isn't. If you'll give me a moment or two...."
Aha - there was a thick metallic pipe protruding from the side of the building, snaking a little ways up and ending a few feet higher. Granted, it didn't quite reach the rooftop - nor did it reach the ground. But there was a tree just below it, some feet away.
Grinning to himself, the Cat bent further over the building's edge, surveying the situation with a twinkle in his bright green eyes. He swished his tail.
"...All right, then. Here goes everything."
Turning around, he grabbed the edge of the building, hanging from the side. Then...he let go, grabbing on a couple of moments later as the pipe rushed up to meet him.
It was an awkward position - arms wrapped around the pipe, knees clenched around it as well. Still too far down to be safe if he fell.
Bracing himself....
He shoved off from the pipe, using his meager weight to spin himself around in the air and catch his claws into a tree branch. Just like a cat might do.
He clawed his way down the trunk towards a lower branch, settling himself upon it with his tail hanging down.
"Now then," he purred, blinking his bright eyes and tilting his head to one side. "...What were we saying?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:47 am
"Be careful!" Anjali cried out, then gasped as the man swung around as though he were Tarzan himself. She watched wide-eyed at the acrobatics, noticing blankly that the man seemed to have an animal tail and ears as well. At last, he came to rest in a nearby tree... and Anjali slowly walked towards him. "Are... are you okay?" she managed, cautiously. "That was some stunt! I could never have done that... are you a gymnast, perhaps?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 10:59 am
Chesh quirked a brow.
"Hardly. I'm a Cat. A Cheshire Cat." He bobbed his head in a sort of bow, the grin never leaving his face. Was he simply insane? Or was he serious?
"...The question is...what...or whom...are you?"
Another swish of his tail. "...And what brings you here? You're the only life Julian or I have seen in a short while."
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:03 am
"A Cheshire cat?" Anjali raised one eyebrow, then shrugged. For all she knew, the scientists could have created a serum to mimic a storybook character. Why not? They certainly hadn't stopped at any other boundary of sense. "I'm sure Lewis Carroll would be pleased," she said. "I'm Anjali, I'm the groundskeeper... and a subject too," she added with a frown. "I was just checking to see if I could get into any buildings - I can't - when I heard someone yelling for help... was that you? Who's Julian?" She looked up on the roof as if expecting to see someone else up there.
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:15 am
"No, actually...that was Julian. Poor thing is afraid of heights."
He paused, thinking. Explaining who Julian was would be a tricky business. Perhaps it would be easier to just....
"...Would you like to talk to him? I could wake him, if you want. Granted, he may be a bit rattled."
He blinked calmly.
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:18 am
"Uh... if he's hurt and worried... maybe he should sleep, to feel better... I've never met him anyway," Anjali said quickly, waving her hands in a negative gesture, voice concerned. "Listen, what's your name? Do you know anything about what's been going on here?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:28 am
"Very well."
He hung his head over the side of the branch, leaning closer to Anjali.
"...My name is Cheshire. And if you mean the White Rabbit's games, yes. If you mean the sudden silence, I'm afraid not. One moment, Julian and I were resting in our room, the next...he was screaming all the way up there. The poor thing is deathly afraid of heights, you know."
Hugging his arms and legs around the branch, he swung so he was hanging from the underside, looking at the woman upside-down. His face was rather cut and bruised, too.
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:32 am
"Cheshire... that's an odd name. Easy to see why they chose a cat for you, then." Anjali sighed. "I bet they thought they were being terribly clever..."
She paused and looked around, thoughtfully. The village was still silent. "Maybe everyone got moved... I ran into Chubbs in the jungle, don't know if you know him... he told me this place was locked up tight as a drum but I had to come see for myself." Anjali frowned and tilted back to look at the sky. "Are we on our own, do you suppose, or is this another one of their experiments?"
After Cheshire finished speaking, Anjali turned to stare up at the cafeteria roof again. "If he's scared of heights, shouldn't we get him down? Julian?" she called, raising her voice a bit, calling towards the roof.
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Posted: Tue Jan 03, 2006 11:49 am
"...Hard to say...."
Cheshire actually laughed a bit - a strange, awkward sound. "...Oh, no, no. He's down here already, my dear."
He was still upside-down - the grin looked strained, and the blood was rushing into his pale face, making the silvery fur along the edges easier to see.
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