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 Posted: Sun Mar 04, 2007 7:47 pm
There is no such thing in life is perfection, but it said the Austeräuchian inhabitants believe their rendition to be the 'closest'. Their fighters are hearty, and their assassins stealthy. All of them are supposedly beautiful, and none useless. Hard to tell when they conceal themselves in the very core of their home planet, or when they blend themselves into the surface.
From even as young as a few months, the yearly offspring are sent off to the Academy, where they are strictly instructed first in memorization. Memorization and observation is key to survival- Thespian scientists discovered that, while their Austeräuchian subject did indeed kill and devour their roommate in a bout of insanity, he could recall how many bites it took to consume their organs and just how many blue teeth there would be for him to construct into jewelry.
There are many tunnels beneath the ground to navigate, and most of them either dead ends or rigged with traps or pass-codes. Examinations such as leaving the younglings on the surface to find their way back have been performed. And of course, this main race isn't the only thing living on their planet, the rest of these deadly inhabitants still on the surface. Memorization is key, though it is basic.
Ixzekisith could clearly recall the day he had been sentenced to death, down to very last detail in the cold, slate floor.
-----
The Academy students whispered heatedly amongst themselves in broken lines just outside the examination room, crowding in the center like the herd of cattle they were. On the outer edges of the waiting hall, the adults stood- proctors staring stoney-faced ahead, or allowing only their glowing eyes to watch the children. There was excitement in the air amongst the younglings, they knew, but they also knew that now was a trial for themselves. They would find out the results of their teachings today, and whether or not their contribution would win them profit from the council.
The naming.
Rosien was a big male even for youth, wide and heavy-set. His natural black lacquered skin won him many a battle in stealth training, and his strength advanced enough that he could clear a broken tunnel faster than his fellows. He was deaf, and he was the closest to a friend that Ixzekisith had at that time. Side by side, mingled in the crowd of classmates, they moved their fingers just as rapidly as the flapping tongues around them, exchanging their thoughts by use of the extensive vocabulary of hand signs. Sometimes it became necessary to talk without words in a raid, or simply when one did not want a conversation to be heard. In Rosien's case, it was a small mercy.
'Don't look so nervous,' Signed the young Ixxy, flicking back his short purple hair as he did, 'Stand taller. There's nothing wrong with you.'
'Nor you. Why have you stuffed your tunic today?' Came the snappy reply, and question. Rosien's dark eyes wandered over his friend with a casual shamelessness, a chuckle rumbling briefly forth as those dark green scales shifted into a pallid pink that nearly matched his markings.
'Look around, fool. All the other girls have begun to develop.' With a hiss of annoyance, he smacked the curious hands upon his artificial breasts.
'You're lop-sided, soldier.' Joked the larger male. There was a pause as the examination doors slid open, accepting a jumble of students closest to them. With a sigh, and a blip of warning, the doors again slid shut after its set number. Chatter slowly began again.
[Construction]
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:41 pm
Take Me Home With You?
How often do you find a stray baby? The night air in the park was cool and crisp- an atmosphere Lucas had not allowed the child to go out in without a jacket. Really, it was past the aforementioned kid's bed-time, but tonight an exception had been made. Flicking on a flashlight, and handing it to one of the boy's four arms, the brunette was reluctantly satisfied enough to allow him to proceed. "And you're sure you dropped it here, Canti?" He asked for the upteenth time, soft and worried tone creating small tendrils of steam under the lamplight of the gates.
The ant child, bundled up to his mouth in cumbersome sweaters and scarfs, gave a nod. "I was playing here, you remember? It is the only place I have not been look all today," was the muffled response, "You are knowing what Varoom is looking like, yes?"
"I wish you would have told me sooner," the brunette sighed, reaching forward to adjust Canti's scarf and tuck a small can of mace into it, "Yes, I 'am knowing' what Varoom looks like. It's a red... hand-vacuum, right? What was it doing out, anyway?"
"I was collecting samples of park-dirt."
Right. Again, Lucas sighed, but lead the boy along into the dark-wooded park that practically screamed rapists and kidnappers at him. He knew where Canti would have been all that evening that they had been there, for he had been watching whenever he wasn't taking quick snapshots of the park itself. It was something about the place, overgrown with ivy and clover despite the woods' obvious ancient age, that gave it a sort of artistic grandeur. At least, in his humble opinion. Trying to keep calm, he took in the creative value of the place at night, gray but somehow still thriving. It was a shot that would need a fogless lense and... "Canti?" Panic. Where had that boy run off to? Worse- had someone run off with him? Oooh, and here he was thinking about pictures...
"Over here, Lu!" Called the cheerful voice not too far away, under the shelter of a great metal jungle-gym. The photographer frowned somewhat, thinking it no time for playing. In his hand, a beam of light flickered to life in the flashlight he carried, and he proceeded towards the other attachment to the playground. Canti would scream if a stranger touched him, right?
"Lu! Lu LU LU LU!" Incessant, excited cries from the aforementioned child drew the photographer's eye quick enough. Maybe he had found that infernal hand-vacuum (not that it was really bad- it had just brought him outside in unfavorable times) and they could leave? But Canti wasn't waving the instrument he was familiar with, but rather staring into the sand under the jungle gym not far from him. And... talking? He had to get almost right up behind the ant to see it, but when he did he quivered like a leaf in as strong wind.
Two round, blue-green eyes stared up at them from beneath the skin, surrounded by hints of light blue skin. Everything else was buried beneath the surface of the sand, though there was a clear enough outline to determine the small body. Lucas was almost to the point of hyperventilating looking at the corpse of the baby, his stomach churning sickly when Canti proceeded to coo at it. His hand shot out and quickly snagged the back of his son's sweater, ready to pull him away from the horror and all the way back home.
Ixxy stared up at the two males silently, fully ready for whatever impending death awaited him. His military (more like survival) instinct kicked in, even though he was now in the form of some unknown body incapable of the usual venom he'd been capable of. In this instance, those Austeräuchian caught in their camouflage (he didn't feel that feature either) were annihilated by the enemy. Idly, he wondered if he was to be tortured first. Come whatever may, he didn't want to be around any more. He felt betrayed, and very distant. Let them do as they liked...
The sudden movement of the taller creature made him flinch, trying to bury himself further beneath the sand like his instincts had told him to do in the first place. Lucas seemed to have caught the blink, and pausing in his babbling of telling Canti to leave the thing alone. So... it wasn't a dead baby in the sandbox? Some sicko hadn't just dumped it there?
Wait. Baby?
"What're you doing, Lu? Look, it is all being dirty!" Canti gave a disapproving sound with his tongue, reaching down to brush away all the sand with his multiple arms. Ixxy only curled farther into himself, feeling cold and vulnerable in the night air. With his old, reptilian skin, he assumed he would have bee worse off. Suddenly, there was some warmth, presented by the black thing with antennae. He felt himself being lifted from the ground, and the sand -that damn sand- pouring off of his new skin with a dissatisfying scratching feeling.
"Canti, you don't pick it--"
"He's nekkers!"
"Y-yes," The brunette gulped, staring down at the sand-dweller. It was a pale blue in color, through and through. It looked emaciated, with ribs jutting up to almost overlap Canti's hands. The poor thing... Cautiously, he reached out, taking the babe gingerly from the ant. "He's... he's..."
Fingers covered over in latex wandered over the thing's gray, fluff-covered cranium when he tucked it into the crook of his arm. God, it was so ugly and thin... but those eyes. They weren't the eyes of anything half-dead. They stared up at him silently with an intent that unnerved him. Too steady and at peace to be a child's. It had to be a child, though. And so docile...
"Lu? Can we be taking it home so I am able to be cleaning it?" Canti pressed, peering at the child. "Hello, Bluelette! I am Canti and I am to be washing your dirtyness."
The photographer was at an obvious loss for words, trying to sort out was happening. And then it hit him. They needed to leave before someone saw them. A man carrying a naked baby and leading a little boy by the hand around a park at night? And surely this thing was cold. Lucas thought over bringing it home... and how angry it'd likely make Keiran. Alright. It was settled.
"We're going now, Canti."
"What about Varoom?"
"Tomorrow. We can come back tomorrow and look for it, okay, buddy? I'm sure it'll be safe." No one wanted a vacuum, after all. Not any other kid, anyway. Getting to his feet, Lucas turned his attention back to the baby. "Hey... we're gonna take you home and find who you belong to, alright? Please stop looking at me like that..."
Ixxy obviously didn't understand his mouth-words, though he did have the oddest urge to stick his fist into his mouth. That tone... it seemed too warm for torture. Maybe it was for some type of forced labor? Maybe it... was putting him to sleep... rocking...
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Posted: Sat Jun 09, 2007 1:59 am
No Way in Hell
This house is not an orphanage. It was a nearly simultaneous action. Almost as soon as the camera light flashed, a loud screech of horror ripped through the living room. Lowering his camera and clasping his hands sharply over his ears, Lucas resisted the urge to wail along with the little noisemaker. How could a thing so tiny make noises so shrill and deafening?
The blue infant squirmed in the hold of the four-armed child, his sharp little toes scraping at the ant child's semi-delicate exoskeleton. Even though it looked like the aforementioned older kid's first response was to set the smaller aside, he turned the babe into his chest and cooed softly. With some petting to the soft gray downy on his head, the little one hiccuped and began to settle.
"I don't think we've had one good picture yet," Sighed the brunette man, turning the camera obsessively in his gloved hands.
"He's scared, Lu. Ohh, Bluebird, it is being alright now. Canti is to be protecting you..." Black, shining eyes lifted to his adoptive father, his features scrunching to a pleading face. "Can't we just keep him? I am liking him!"
"Canti, have you been listening to me?"
"Not really..."
Comically, Lucas threw his hands up in exasperation, his face falling to a deep frown of disapproval. What had happened to the sweet little boy that hung on his every word? Since when did his attention span become so short? “We can’t keep him.”
“Why not?”
One blue eye ringed in green peered over at the man, glowering with intensity that didn’t belong to anyone so young. How dare that man try and attack him with devices that were not much better than flash grenades! With that little memory, Ixxy burried his head back into his assigned potector’s chest. He was safe here and against this dark skin he was distinctly reminded... of Rosien. Shivering and with a sob, the boy propelled more silent hate and loathing at the man with the nasty contraption. He didn’t understand what else was going on. He didn’t care.
“Because someone might just be looking for him. Someone might have lost him.”
“And WE found him. Finders keepers.”
“Canti!” Lucas was a little incredulous now, shaking his head slowly. “Someone is missing him right now, and he’s probably missing them. Besides, we can’t keep him! There are three of you here already, and then there’s Keiran and I! Daddy doesn’t have the money to feed you all, and he still has to go to school. He can’t take care of another baby!”
“But the twins LIKE him too! We are all to be expecting him to be our brother.”
“He’s only been her a few days!” Grasping now, the photographer turned his hazel eyes about the room. “Keiran! What do you think? Should we have another child?”
The redhead perked from his lounging position, not expecting to be called. Those light green eyes glittered wickedly for a moment- Lucas must really be desperate now to win. Lucky for him, without a smoke in his mouth, there was no way he was going to agree to another kid when he couldn’t stand the ones he had to keep and eye on. “No ******** way in Hell. Put up posters to get the little b*****d’s parents to come running. He’s their ******** problem. Shut up, Canti. Shut UP Blue Brat!”
At the harsh voice, Ixxy had burst into loud tears while Canti went fish-mouthed at Keiran. As he rocked and tried to calm his self-assigned ward, he looked at Lucas, who was trying to hide the fact that he was relieved.
“I’m sorry, Canti, you heard Keiran. We’re not keeping him. I suggest you play with him as much as you can. Maybe his parents will let you be friends?”
But Canti was not at all pleased.
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Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 5:27 am
Journal
I'll never win... Why do these sort of things always happen to me? Why am I always bearing the bad luck?
Well, in the end Canti got what he wanted- our new little blue boy is sticking around for now. Oh! Not that I didn't try to give him to another good home, because I assure you, journal, that I did. I didn't get a picture of him because he seems to really hate cameras, but I did make a lot of fliers to put up around the park and in town about a found child.
You wouldn't believe how many people are missing their babies. It's frightening.
I had kept the description of him off because, as you may guess, I didn't want just anyone coming by and making off with a free baby. Why, oh why did I ever think of that brilliant idea? Really, sometimes I wish I could just care less like Keiran does, and I wish I was horrible enough a person to hand a clearly abandoned child to a perfect stranger. For all I know, some of these people could have been planning to eat him.
Four days of people coming in and out to tell me about their baby. Today I went to take down all the signs and Canti helped. The boy is really more clever than I give him credit for, I think. I may just be a little scared. In those days, he has successfully sold the new boy to the twins until they practically scratch their way out of the playpen when he's in the room. And if I were to believe the source, my little boy has been standing guard outside until the end trying to interrogate the potential parents. Of course, I cut off this sort of bullying the first day, but he's been finding ways to get himself back out.
He dropped a flower-pot (with flower) on top of someone's head, then had to go outside to 'clean' the porch for five hours. I never knew the boy to be so determined... No. Yes I did. When Canti sets his mind on something, it usually gets done. Schoolwork, cleaning, and now... this baby boy.
I figured that if it's that important to him, I'll keep him and do my best to raise him.
But oh, Lord, the diapers.
And I need to go get some new clothes for the baby.
We can't call him Bluelette or Bluebird forever...
I'm going to go wash my hands.
-Lucas Fasane
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Posted: Sun Jun 10, 2007 5:29 am
The solo in which Dyre reviews his relationships to the people in the new household, makes some realizations, and gets his Gaian name.
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