|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RogueKazimeras Vice Captain
|
 Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 8:43 am
Isaiah shook his head. The birds, again. Strange things, strange things like this were happening all the time, more and more now. He turned away from the incident, shaking his head still. He wouldn't look, but he'd look for someone who was responsible. Someone was behind all this, abusing their powers as if they were toys.
They weren't toys... ...they were...far worse.
In the momentary darkness his bangs cast over his face, his eyes glimmered, and then the light shone in again and caused the glimmer to cease. He continued to walk, past a few other individuals, none of which he actually recognized, and headed towards the arcade. He was bored, and now he was pissed on top of that, since it was beings such as himself that caused those birds to plummet into a mass suicide.
Then again, he couldn't prove it, but he couldn't help but remain angry.
He walked into the arcade and dug out some quarters from the depths of his pocket, popping the silver, round discs into one of the shooting games and playing with a deadpan expression and hardly ever blinking. Nobody wandered up beside him to play the second gun, and nobody watched him play.
It was how it should've been.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jun 27, 2006 8:54 am
Another individual had been wandering the mall, though he was currently seated at the food court with one other individual.
The one individual was a typical blonde-haired, blue-eyed boy, sitting upon an ordinary mall food court chair, sipping on a soda from a MacDonald's paper cup. The other was a darker-haired, dark-eyed, more muscular teenage boy, munching on a slice of pizza.
"So, they have pizza over in Germany?" The blonde asked, slurping on his soda noisily.
"Yep." The dark-haired one responded. "They have pizza everywhere, now. China, Japan, Russia... Hell, I bet Indonesia has pizza by now." He shrugged.
The blonde nodded, and then took a bite out of a fried chicken sandwich. "So, Reinhard...have you even been to Germany?"
Reinhard nodded. "Yeah, a couple times. I was born here, since my family was here, but I went a couple of times during high school. Really neat place. Wish I could live there, pick up the accent... my parents have been here long enough to lose it, too..." He shrugged.
The blonde grinned, and then checked his watch. "Oh, s**t." He said, his eyes going wide. "I was supposed to be home an hour ago." He slapped his forehead. "Parents have probably called the cops already." He said as he hopped up out of his chair and grabbed what food he had left.
"Walking home?" Reinhard asked, raising an eyebrow. "I could drive you."
"No need." The blonde shrugged. "I'll flag down a cab easy enough. You can stay here and chill, after all. Must be great being out of school for good..." The blonde grumbled as he left.
Reinhard chuckled. "See ya." He did a two-finger wave, and then got up, finished his slice of pizza on the way to the garbage, wiped his mouth with a napkin, threw out his trash, and then decided to hit the arcade.
There was that goth kid. He'd seen him around a couple of times. It was strange, seeing him play. It was almost like he was one with that machine, but it wasn't like... no, he wasn't one with it. He was one with the game itself, not the machine. That probably came with practice...
Reinhard shook his head, smirking. He wanted to go up beside the kid and see just how good he was, but the goth probably wouldn't have appreciated that. So, he went into the arcade and popped a couple of spare quarters into a racing game, one of his favorites. He just enjoyed the sounds the cars made, even if they weren't real.
|
|
|
|
|
|
RogueKazimeras Vice Captain
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 9:30 am
Kai's eyes shone darkly beneath her glasses as she looked up at the amassing crows, their raspy calls and black beating wings polluting the once-still air. Her face took on a look of consideration, but the expression was quickly replaced with one of suprise and horror as the catalyst bird slammed itself onto the pavement.
She closed her eyes tightly, but it was already too late. The unwelcome sight was burned into her memory, playing above the bombshell soundtrack of invasive thuds - she could only imagine the bodies hitting the ground.
Why...?
As the noise stopped, Kai slowly opened her eyes and stood on shaking legs, overseeing the fresh cadavers that littered the parking lot. She quickly turned 180 degrees on her heel, took a deep breath, and adjusted her glasses.
... this doesn't make any sense. There's no documentation of animals engaging in self-harm when not in captivity. They would have to be extremely--
As Kai looked up, she needed to adjust to the strange girl. Jillian had recently become herself, but this time, the difference in structure was highly noticeable to someone like Kai. She started a new branch of thought on this while maintaining the last.
There is something obviously strange about this person...
... stressed, or unhappy to do something on this scale. The parking lot is not easily confusable for a...
... could she be...
... body of water, and crows aren't fowl in any case. Their logic about this is chilling; they chose a large, hard surface. It's... premeditated?
... as strange as I am?
((It's hard to try and get across that she's thinking about two things simultainiously. >_<))
Kai didn't even realise that she was staring.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jun 28, 2006 10:43 am
Jill blinked. What the hell just happened? Those...those birds! So many of them, all at once and... She remembered reading something about it in the paper, once. Well...it wasn't like she read it often. Something about people finding these birds all...dead...just like what happened!
But...but why?
The young girl broke her attention away for a moment and turned to scan the mall again. She was slightly startled when she met eyes with the other girl, previously sitting near the stairs. Why...was she staring at her? It was a little creepy, actually. She had strange eyes. Jill blinked and scanned the mall again, but the girl kept staring. Weird.
"...hello?" she asked, raising an eyebrow and waving, "Do I...know you?" Jill paused and thought back...no, she couldn't remember. Then again, there were a lot of things she couldn't remember. She didn't have many that she CARED to remember either. Short term memory...she remembered what she WANTED to, but not much else.
"Would you like something?" she questioned her, trying to ignore the dead birds all over the parking lot outside. Then it hit her. What if...what if the girl saw her change? Well...it wasn't a massive change, of course, but it was noticible when someone's facial features started shifting around. Not someting that happened regularly. But, she was sure that she had her back turned... It was probably something else.
Definately...hopefully...something else.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 1:47 am
The mall bathroom was dirty.
Actually, it was rather clean, but contrasted to Adam's pale skin and hair, it was as if every blemish on every tile was magnified to stark crystal clarity. The room was completely empty, save for Adam who was using a urinal. He wore a collared white shirt made of some thin material and gray denim pants. Around his neck was a cheap, thin set of headphones playing music from some obscure band in a different country with an unassuming name that probably didn't even use capital letters. The wire from his headphones trailed under his arm, slacking slightly, and into his backpack, where it connected to a CD player stuffed amongst books and a few pieces of fruit, bruised from being jostled around with the books. The backpack was almost as light as his hair, but not as dark as his pants. Still, the amount of white on his person was such that it seemed as though he radiated light.
Adam had just reached for the flush lever when an unusual sensation overtook him. It felt like a cold grip on his chest combined with an inner pressure from origins unknown. In truth, this had not been the first occasion that this had happened, but every time it would subside after a few seconds. It was extremely painful, so much so that his eternal smile almost left his face. It seemed for some time that he was actually laughing from a particularly funny joke he had recalled, as he smiled while clutching at his sides. The boy stumbled over to a sink and stared into the mirror, deep into the reflection of his eyes.
The pain subsided. His CD player cycled to an orchestral version of Hallelujah. Jokes could have been made later about the lucky timing of these things, but Adam's mind failed to make the connection.
"It's late..." spoke Adam in a perfectly monotone voice, addressing his reflection. With that brief pause, he gathered his things and left the bathroom, his smile as benign as before. His sky blue sneakers took him to a brick pillar, where he leaned as he dialed his mother's pager.
555-7667, 555-1985 beeped his cell phone. Its chirping tones were drowned only by Vetch's sobbing. Completely ignoring the conventions of civil inattention, Adam had chosen to stand mere inches away from a complete stranger, as opposed to a decent distance. He registered no concern or acknowledgement of her state of mental breakdown, but clearly knew she was there.
The young teenager looked down to her and spoke in his underdeveloped half-lisped voice: "Hi. My name is Adam. What's yours?" Even without the smile, his face appeared expectant, as if he expected a casual response from a person in her state.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Thu Jun 29, 2006 7:05 am
It hurt.
Pain lanced her head as the fair young girl, donning an emerald green dress laced in black, weaved through the mall corridors, the comely features of her face buried in a thin, downy hand. As she slowly roved onward, spindly fingers slid down her cheeks, unearthing the unwonted shade of her eyes, a frightful scarlet. Arrhythmic blinks followed the yawning of her lips as her respiration quickened, and her gaze quavered feverishly as her sight waned and blurred. Her mind silently cried out for help as the discordant chattering grew only more intense, overlapping with the flitting words that were dangerously cluttering her brain. The worst thing about it, though, was that she had expected this to happen.
In this throng of intemperate squanderers, as in all other masses of people, she was unnerved, pushed to the brink of delirium. Crowds had that effect on her, and the symptoms were worse than that of common agoraphobia: with every passing gent or gamboling child, her mind would instantaneously analyze their physical condition, reporting every single illness, the number of suffered traumas and what vitamins their bodily systems were dangerously lacking. That, teamed with the endless coming-and-going of shopping center denizens, created such a slew of superfluous information in her mind that it nigh on incapacitated her numerous times in the past. Because of this, she had to drop out a week upon the start of the school year at the age of five, and has been home-schooled ever since. Before the moment when she walked past those sliding doors, she could count three years, seven months and eighteen days since her last encounter with a human being, save for her father and her personal tutor.
Why then, did she willingly expose herself to tremendous dolor? One must substitute lack of human presence with an overabundance of another kind of contact. This innocent girl had chosen the inhabitants of her garden. She had tended to them for years, saw them grow from the state of seedlings to iridescent flowers, and mourned them with the coming of winter. Perhaps a sorrowful life from the eyes of a stranger, but this young girl could not have bloomed into the fine woman that she was by lamenting herself: she was beyond petty happiness, and had grown in such innocence that an air of purity always floated aloft where she stood. Alas, that day, misfortune had stricken her diminutive family. Animals had encroached upon her precious domain and had trampled her garden, uprooting the most colorful of her companions and left half-chewed stems and stolons behind. She needed to protect what was left, and so, with the help of her father, began the construction of a small greenhouse. However, this day, she required impermeable covers to buffer the incomplete greenhouse and its occupants from the weather and those dratted wild rodents, but her father would be absent until late at night, and was therefore unable to run the errand in her stead.
The crowd had thinned down, and her migraine slowly shied away. It seemed that in Fairhill, the number of citizens concerned with the wellbeing of their garden could be counted on one hand, from what she observed in the mall’s gardening section. The shy girl glanced around aimless, in search of woven sheets that could serve to build an improvised tent. As she browsed the aisles, she inadvertently bumped into a young woman in her early twenties. As the fair girl looked up, she saw frightened brown eyes, staring directly into hers. She had not understood that her blood-hued optics were the source of her fearful amazement, and wholly dismissed it when her mind twittered fleetingly. The innocent young woman beamed with genuine mirth, taking the other woman by the hands.
“Congratulations!” she had cheerfully said in her sweet singing voice, before picking up a set of large plastic sheets beside her. With a gracious curtsey, she left the store and the baffled, soon-to-be mother.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
RogueKazimeras Vice Captain
|
Posted: Tue Jul 04, 2006 5:02 am
After Reinhard finished up his little racing game, he stood up, and turned to see the goth kid still playing that shooting game. Obviously he was good; he hadn't heard the word "CONTINUE?" spoken in a rather loud and obnoxious voice from the game ever since he started playing.
In Reinhard's mind, that was a gauntlet being thrown down. Despite the fact that Reinhard, unlike some individuals, did not live only for video games, he was quite skilled at just about everything you threw in front of him.
So, daring to perhaps make the worst move of his life, Reinhard approached the machine and picked up the other gun hanging on the rack built into the machine, popping a pair of quarters into the front and hitting his own start button, and going to work, though he was almost certainly behind the goth kid due to the kid's five-minute head start.
------------------
Isaiah didn't dare look over to the person who dared to pick up the gun beside him. Nobody was supposed to be playing alongside him! It just wasn't right! Who'd do that, with a complete stranger at the helm originally? He didn't know this person! It was just...bizarre.
And yet, it made him wonder just who exactly this person was, and why he looked somewhat familiar. Maybe he had seen him around, or maybe even at this very machine.
------------------
After ten to fifteen more minutes, the game was over, and they had both gone on from their respective starting points without using any more quarters. When they cleared, they were both awarded a high score posistion, which made no sense because the machines were reset every night. They'd do so in an hour, possibly.
Despite this, Reinhard popped in the initials "R.V," which Isaiah chuckled at. Reinhard raised an eyebrow. That was the first time he'd heard a goth laugh.
"What's so funny?" Reinhard asked, turning to face the pale-faced, black-haired kid.
"Aren't RVs a kind of camper? Man, your parents must be evil..." Isaiah chuckled, shaking his head.
"It stands for Reinhard Volker, thanks." Reinhard rolled his eyes.
"Whatever, man." Isaiah said, shaking his head still and walking off.
Reinhard looked at Isaiah as he walked off, tilting his head to the side, as if doing so would give him an easier time of examining the gothic punk as he drifted off.
"What's his problem?" Reinhard thought, slightly confused.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Jul 11, 2006 10:40 am
The aftershock of the emotional wave had dimished subtantially, and Vetch, when approached, took a moment to regain the natural rhythm of breathing. She wiped her eyes on the back of her sleeves, and looked up at the strange boy. The teen was hardly one to mind physical contact, but even she found him a little too close for comfort.
"I'm Vetch," she answered, before pausing to search for an intent. She found nothing other than an innocent greeting, and she stood, taking a subtle step backwards and looking the absinthe-white stranger over. She lightly suspected that he had some sort of mental issue, with his clear disregard for social mores, and the contrast between his pale appearance and the night made him stand out even more.
~~~
Jayson Reid, tall man in his early twenties, was parked in the lot when the birds came down and showed little reaction when they did. Arms like pythons were crossed over his broad chest, and his square jaw shifted a little with each one that pummelled the ground, hoping only that they wouldn't hit the black SUV. Although this strange behaviour did concern him, it did not surprise him; and he was still more concerned with the eyes of the Becoming.
He had seen them driving in; a quick flash caught in his headlights that indicated that they, too, were like him. It was odd and unlikely to see so many gathered in the same place, although he had once been told that even if they don't know it, the Becoming recognise one another.
He located his cell phone and and punched in a number, waiting impatiently for the person on the other end to answer. He turned on the radio, tuned into the city's own radio station and his favourite hostess; she was a cool, smooth-voiced woman, unlike most of the annoyingly pitchy and perky female radio personalities.
"... right everyone, coming up is a couple of requests you're sure to recognise -- a little Nirvana followed by Queen."
The first chords of the music began and Jayson turned the radio off just as the person on the other line picked up. The voice that was just on the radio was now sighing, annoyed, in his ear.
"I picked out Bohemian Rhapsody and Aneurysm, you've got eleven minutes."
Jayson chuckled. "Weird choices. There a theme tonight?"
"'Night of the living dead'. You don't sound to hurried, and I told you only to call this number if there's a big deal. You're wasking my time."
"I just thought you'd be interested to know I've located more of the Becoming, is all. Probably four or five of them I've never seen before, all at the mall entrance."
Silence. Then: "If you're lying, I swear to God..."
"I'm not. They don't look together or anything, so there's no danger of a faction."
"... Jesus Christ, you had me scared. Names, numbers, anything?"
"Nope. But if we can get some security tapes, we can probably track 'em down."
"Shouldn't be too hard. The chief's an insider, eh? He's a little paranoid if I remember right."
"We've got enough dirt on him to get a little favour like that out of the way. Just gotta get to them before Hunter does."
"Yeah, well, watch it. She's got people everywhere."
"Hey, I'm gonna get out of here."
"Yeah, I've gotta do some live plug for an auto-parts shop. Call me back later."
"Seeya."
Jayson hung up the phone and replaced it in the cupholder of the SUV. If only he could get close to them sooner... and then it struck him. Why wait for the chief of police?
He started the car with a proud smirk.
((Gah... I'll have to finish later. crying
Just to let you know, we're going to have to jump to the next day in a bit.))
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Tue Sep 12, 2006 10:41 pm
((Hee hee! Necath! I'm gonna play on something you forgot to mention in your post if you don't mind ^^ ))
Arranging a new shipment of plants to come in, the stock girl of the garden supply store was humming softly to herself, her hands covered in dirt from working with the warm peat fertilizer that kept the plants healthy and happy. She wasn't very old, and looked like she was just out of highschool. Her auburn hair was tied back in a very untidy, but clean bun, out of her face, and her deep azure eyes watched lovingly over the tiny plants and fragile flowers. The only oddity was her abnormaly pale skin, even for that of a 'goth', it was almost transluscent, bluish in tint. Yet she did not look unhealthy at all, being very well built and bouncy of step.
All of this changed when she saw the young woman begin to walk out of the store with something in her hand, a frown setting on her face as she called out in a low, alto voice...
"Hey! Arn't you going to pay for that?" Her pencil-thin eyebrows were drawn down sharply, and the young woman hoped she wouldn't have to chase the girl down. She was an odd looking girl, wearing a gorgeous dress and very odd eyes. Instantly she could feel blood pumping, could feel the flesh as her mind caressed over it, feeling the sudden urge to do something, to change it, feel the sweet rush of adrenaline as she manipulated the bone and structure of another being.
Her face blanked for a few moments before she remembered to regain her control, just staring expectantly now, a smile on her face as she stood up from her dirty, but quite fullfilling work.
She would need to feed tonight... hopefully her parents contacts would be working at the hospital when she got off from work.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Sat Sep 16, 2006 6:51 pm
Her heart skipped a beat; she spun awkwardly, prodding with her blooded regard back at the verdant-brimmed store for the low, suave voice that admonished her. She settled her look on the stock girl that had hitherto gone unnoticed, for she was squatted behind a beautiful show of flora, comprised of a plethora of bright lilacs, beds of violets that reminded the young girl of purplish stars and, atop the display, a magnificent blue orchid like she had never seen before, certainly an import from India or Thailand. In her excitement, she had almost forgotten about the felony that had just transpired. She froze where she stood, her lips yawning and then pursing, unable to put words to her thoughts. She had only been out one day, one measly day in a triad of years, and she had already committed a crime! She had never bought anything by herself, and, now on her own, didn’t remember to follow the basics of transactions.
“I’m sorry!” she finally cried out, her scarlet gaze now a pearly sheen. “I’m not used to these things and my mind was elsewhere and I’m so sorry! Please don’t arrest me! I don’t know what I would do in prison and the things I’ve heard about places like that scare me so terribly! Please don’t tell my father, I beg of you! He would be ashamed of me, and I don’t know what I would do then…” Her supplication rambled on until it all became a jumble of apologies, begging and both reasonable and farfetched conceptions of penitentiary facilities.
Not granting the fair haired woman enough time to respond, she dashed for the counter, slammed the plastic sheets on the hard blue surface in a gracious frenzy and began pawing at herself industriously in search of money, which made the old, respectable man at the counter blush guiltily. In a surge of pure exuberance, she tore two crumpled twenty dollar bills from her pocket, which she had remembered to take before leaving her humble abode, stretched them taut on the counter, smoothed them down and handed them to the shy, elderly cashier in scared huffs and puffs, her unearthly eyes flickering with unconcealed hope and terror, unsure if it was enough. Needless to say, she could buy quite a few more with the amount she held at arms length.
“Child, this is far too much. It is quite alright, really!” The cashier sputtered abashedly in his old, grandfatherly voice, his spotted, wrinkled hand resting nervously on the innocent girl’s, a wordy gesture to calm her down. “You could buy quality sheets of greater size with this. One will be enough, and you will also be given back some change. Here.” The old man had gently taken a bill, opened the register and produced coinage and a receipt with speedy professionalism. “If you need ever to purchase other items next time, just remember to walk by the counter and say hello!” He chuckled brightly, and this cheered her up, washing away every bit of worry she had felt moments before. Then, her mind clicked, emptying her eyes momentarily as her mind processed information.
“Thank you, mister! I will certainly come back here. You have such wonderful flowers and gardening supplies here!” She leaned over the counter, hands wrapped around her back, a concerned look across her face. “If you don’t mind me saying, though, you should make an appointment with the doctor as soon as possible. Your insulin levels are getting low.”
With a slight curtsey, she picked up the sheets, which the cashier had carefully thrown into a plastic bag with a confused yet thankful countenance. He nodded blankly at her words, and didn’t think it right to ask her how she knew of his ailment. The youth looked back at the stock girl, who was now standing, and beaming. From afar, she couldn’t make much of the woman’s eye color, but it seemed as variegated as the bluish petals and greenish sepals of the flower shipment she had been tending to previously. Adamant on apologizing, the maiden padded forward until she registered very peculiar information at a ten feet distance from the woman. She could only describe her as anaemic, but knew this to be false, or only partially true. “I am very sorry for this. Please, believe when I say I had no malignity in mind when I walked out.” She bowed deeply, her otherworldly mane sliding off her shoulders, almost touching the ground.
Then, her gaze wandered to flowers she hadn’t seen in the blue abundance on the crown end display. They were livelier in hues, red and orange, and were tropical milkweeds. She straightened up and unknowingly mouthed an odd word, almost a whisper. “Blood…”
She snapped back to attention. An expression of mirth and utter amazement danced across her eyes and lips. “Asclepias curassavica: Blood flowers. I didn’t know they could be found anywhere in Fairhill!”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Reply
