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 Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 3:18 pm
Harrison's safety was the only thing that Rep cared about above all else and he was either stupid or trusting enough to completely miss the more subtle nuance of her response. He simply heard that he'd be fine and that was the thing that he'd wanted to know.
As she left, he gave her a respectful nod, turning his attention to the cage. He hated cages, he hated confinement in any form and remembered still and quite vividly that white cage that he'd seen, a cage that promised to never ever let its captive go. He'd managed to avoid that particular cage.
"I'll deal with the cost." he said to the bird. "And I'm sorry if this isn't what you want, I never ******** know anything, I just guess. So here's a guess."
And taking the golden key, he opened the cage.
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 3:30 pm
The bird didn't move at first, watching Rep for a long moment before taking flight and leaving the cage.
"You shouldn't have done that," Carl said, and it was Carl, not her, and he looked quite sad. "She'll be back and I'll have to forget a second time."
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 3:35 pm
Rep tensed up as Carl immediately answered with his worst fears. "I'm sorry." he said. "If it wasn't what you wanted. I just. It wasn't ******** fair, it's not asking much, I mean."
He flopped down to sit on the couch next to Carl. "I like having you around." he said. "I don't mind paying whatever price it is, even if it is just for as long as I have."
Hanging his head he added. "I always do the wrong thing."
Another moment. "Thanks for saving me." he said
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 3:40 pm
"Well, he was going to kill you," he bristled, "you shouldn't hang around with him. Those kind of people do drugs and bad stuff later."
He suddenly sagged, leaning next to the couch for support, clearly exhausted. "Do you have anything to write with - I need to tell you everything."
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 3:44 pm
"He probably wouldn't kill me. He doesn't like wasting things, even me, he probably just would have hurt me. But I guess like, he's a kid, he might not even have stopped at all, Tracey - my weapon - was pretty mad about it." He nodded, conceding the point.
"Something to write with? Yeah, sure, one second." He got up to hurriedly go and nab a notebook and a pen, bringing both back over. "This all right?"
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:01 pm
Since he was pretty much only familiar with things like pencils and pens and notebooks, that was more than enough, and Carl nodded, just once. "First, there's - there's this ring and this girl has it, Mark knows her. She looks like the other British person you hang out with." That was Gale. "It's really, really bad and he said he'll kill her."
He paused a bit, thinking. "Then there's that person the one that dropped the other cage. The red butterflies make people crazy."
"And- and then Lucky - he's sick like us but not like us. You have to make sure he doesn't open the jar, if he does- that lady lied to him but I don't think he knows."
And then, he went to staring at Rep again. Memories, false ones or not, the gaze always remained. "Alice said you talked to the person who could fix this. She says the longer it stays here, the worse it will get, now that you took his mask?"
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:18 pm
Rep listened attentively and was very grim to hear about the girl who had run foul of a ring and who hadn't even crossed his radar yet. He needed to find her and help her, and to do that he'd need Mark.
The butterflies were another dire problem given what red eyes could do and what had happened the last time that got anywhere near a base.
He'd stressed to Lucky that he shouldn't open the jar and he'd said he wouldn't, but who even knew?
"I spoke to him a few times, if its the person you mean, but he's so crazy. He's so mad. He was supposed to go back to sleep? But he wouldn't."
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:26 pm
"You have the mask already, you just need the sword." He twisted around briefly, as if trying to see if someone else was around listening to them. "We tried earlier, but she said she needed more time."
He waited a bit for Rep to finish jotting the rest down. "I think that's it, I- I need to use the washroom."
Carl didn't wait for Rep's permission before practically stumbling towards it and then sliding the door closed. There was a bit of fumbling noise of someone trying to lock the door and then water running for quite a while and the sound of someone trying very hard to cry quietly.
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:41 pm
Rep - wearing his reading glasses - carefully wrote down every single detail as best he could, adding his own context in the margins in the hope that someone else could help him solve what they needed to do, he was more and more doubtful by the day that he'd be able to do it without a lot of help, there was so much, everything was so far out of control and getting worse day by day.
He set the book aside and glanced at the bathroom, frowning slightly. He wanted to help, but you never knew when someone was like Harrison who needed someone to barge into his space and ask what was wrong or like Jordan who genuinely needed the space. As it was, he decided that Carl had been through a lot already and held off, treating things as if he was closer to a Jordan sort of person.
But he felt anxious and tense the whole time, not able to write more while he felt so helpless to do anything to help, just fidgeting with the pen instead.
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 4:56 pm
A little later, the water had finally stopped running, and there was the sound of shuffling, and then quite a long period of time of silence.
The door was unlatched and Carl stepped out, with the added improvement of the sink looking excessively shinier. "Your sink was a bit dirty," he said, voice quavering before getting it under control. He had taken off his glasses to hang them on his shirt neckline. "Where's your um, your butler by the way?"
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:02 pm
Rep gave Carl a genuine and sympathetic look when he came out of the bathroom. "Aye, it gets that way sometimes." he said.
He wasn't sure what Carl meant by butler. "And Er. I don't have a butler." he said. "Do you mean Ace? The blonde guy with the carrots? That's my husband. Neither of us clean very well m'afraid. He's a kid right now, like everyone else. He's at the bar. He doesn't remember me much."
He tilted his head to one side. "You sure you are all right?" he asked. "I don't judge, I'm a ******** mess."
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Posted: Wed Feb 08, 2017 5:15 pm
"Oh," and then a little quieter, "I'm sorry."
A moment of fidgeting. He wasn't very good with the small talk fumbled with his glasses a bit before putting them back on to fill in the gap of silence.
"I don't think you're a mess." He looked up, a little expectantly, "I know Mark said you had to but you helped me a lot. I appreciate it." It seemed that was about as awkward for him as it would have been for anyone else and he immediately followed up with, "Let's go help your butl- your husband. Do you have the mask?"
Secretly he was wondering if Rep was just a really muscular woman because he didn't quite live in a day and age where gay marriage was legalized.
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Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 1:05 am
Rep gave Carl a big smile for his comment. "I'd have looked after you no matter what Mark said. You are a good guy, especially on this island where no one else is." But truth be told it didn't matter if he was an a*****e either.
"And sure, lets." At the mention of the mask again he raised a brow. "You mean that weird book? Aye." He retrieved it from inside a very heavy looking locked chest where he'd put it when he was home, unlocking it with a bristling ring of keys.
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Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 2:14 am
As Rep took the book, he backed about ten extra steps as far as humanly possible. "I- I can't touch that. You have to make sure nobody else touches that too."
Walking a ridiculously large berth, Carl picked up the Pikachu blanket and feebly tossed it at Rep. "Put something over it, they'll see. You can't let them see until the last minute."
"And - next we need something from that place." Apparently she had told him something because there was a very specific order to things he was trying to communicate without trying to make it sound too difficult. "There should be one here." He took out the key card to theoretically his room, still wrapped around his neck and waited patiently for Rep to wrap up before heading upstairs.
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Posted: Thu Feb 09, 2017 6:09 am
Rep looked down at the book with absolute confusion before it shifted into alarm. He hadn't thought about it being dangerous. In spite of the fact that Creation had wanted it, in spite of the fact that it had been referred to as its mask he'd continued to think of it as simply a harmless book which couldn't do anything. Realising that he could have given it to someone without thinking or that Harrison could have just picked it up and had something horrible happen to him.
"s**t." he said "I didnae even think, it didn't hurt me so I assumed it was fine."
He wrapped it up in the blanket carefully covering all of it. He put on his pocket harness and tucked the book into it, keeping it close.
"What's the key card for?" he asked, following along, there wasn't much up on the dorm leads floor other than the leads. As he considered this, he remembered the bleedingly obvious. "Oh, right."
He had no idea what Cael's room was like and he couldn't imagine it, whenever he tried falling somewhere between a marbled shrine to Circe's vanity to something blank and white.
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