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 Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:06 pm
Ah, better. Harve shuddered minutely as Ahneta left, then straightened and moved through the hall with the group. Anyone else might have attempted to examine why they had such negative feelings toward someone they didn't know, but Harve just accepted that the woman was trouble without further thought.
He stopped in front of the door as well and latched on to the first few words of Bran's question. "Do we get to pick?" he asked when the other man had ceased talking. "I don't want to be stuck with some bad seed just because you thought he'd be best for me." Harve nodded for emphasis. He certainly believed the kids were real without question, but he didn't necessarily think they were all sweetness and light.
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Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 8:16 pm
Pausing for a moment, Dacian wondered. He had sort of 'picked' already, but...it's not like the children were born yet.
"I - well, I suppose you can choose...I had imagined each of you as a guardian for a specific one, but I suppose it doesn't really matter."
Nodding towards the door, before opening, he explained, "This room is the one I'd identified as being Mr. Noirenfeldt's - but I suppose you can all pick after seeing them. You can't really tell what they're like yet, of course..."
He opened the door then, ushering them in.
The room was set up in a circular fashion; there was a ring of monitors facing outwards, what apparently were touch-screens. The monitors flashed seemingly incomprehensible charts and rolling numbers. Within it, was circle indentation in the ground, that grew gradually deeper until it reached the bottom.
And in the very center, hovering several feet above the ground, was a ball of energy.
((I figure you guys know what it looks like, heh, so I won't describe the energy ~))
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Posted: Tue Apr 10, 2007 9:21 pm
His child...?
A couple of butterflies soared through his stomach. Here it was: the moment of truth. And he'd been wrong. Well, best to accept the loss gracefully and move on.
"So, guess I'll have a look, then." Milo swallowed, walking toward the console. He couldn't remember feeling so nervous, not since his first day of student teaching. Would the kid like him, would he care this early on? God, was it a boy or a girl? He wasn't good with little girls at all...what if it wanted another person to be its guardian?
Milo had never been really good at handling suspense.
He peered into the space in the center of the console and, on seeing the burning ball of energy, immediately reeled back.
"Oh crap!" He ran around the console room, looking around frantically for a bucket of water, a fire extinguisher, anything! Weren't they supposed to have those things on hand here, just in case something went wrong?!
"It's burning up! Something's gone wrong with your machine-- my kid's on fire! Where's some water?"
Oh, this was just perfect! Less than an hour ago, he'd been knee-deep in water and now, when he really needed it, it was nowhere in sight! He swore silently.
Trust him to get the problem child!
"Don't you have some sort of emergency protocol for this sort of thing?" Milo had no idea what the screens were projecting and had a bad feeling he'd probably make it worse if he tried anything. No sprinkler system was coming on-- that kid couldn't possibly last much longer. Time was running out...
Something inside him just couldn't take it anymore. He turned to Dacian. "How can you be so calm? Do something! I can't--it's just--agh!" Milo hated being this helpless. "C'mon, you've got to save it!"
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 4:47 am
"No, no! This is what it's supposed to look like - it hasn't been born yet!"
Dacian felt a grin slipping onto his face. Well, it looked like this man had already gained a soft spot for the Soul...of course, most people would try to put out a fire. Just most would stop and wonder why there was a ball of flame floating several feet above the ground, first.
"Each Soul looks different when we pull it to here - this one happened to look like this. At some point in the near future, it will gather enough energy to be born - and after some fluctuations - it will become a child."
Best to explain that now, before anyone thought that they'd have to take care of balls of falem.
"When it's born, is when we'll be adopting them out to you; this is just to meet them, right now. Think of it as the equivilant of getting pictures of a baby while it's still in the mother's stomach."
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 5:39 am
Bran had been equally alarmed, though he'd paused after a while to simply stare at the floating ball of energy. It was too small to be a child, wasn't it? And wouldn't anyone be thrashing around or making some sort of noise if they were burning?
He lightly reached out to place a calming hand on Milo's shoulder as Dacian explained just what they were looking at. He turned to gaze through the console once more, watching transfixed at the crackling ball of energy.
"I see..." He let his hand go from Milo's shoulder, peering at the Mage with calm golden eyes. "I think I'd like to see the... ah..." he glanced back toward the hovering ball of fire and then back, "The child you had in mind for myself."
He suddenly glanced toward Harve, this other had been awfully silent and he felt a little guilty for not paying him too much mind.
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 7:19 am
Harve hung back by the door, watching the hysteria with his mouth partially open in awe and anticipation. That kid was... quite something. He wasn't exactly sure if he would have had the same reaction as Milo to a child that, on first meeting, had appeared to be burning, all he knew was that he was now insanely curious to meet his own charge. Still, a little waiting never hurt anybody, unless it was waiting in a tank of acid or on the tracks in front of a moving train.
"Oh no, go ahead," he said in answer to Bran's glance. He was decidedly more comfortable getting the full lay of the land rather than jumping in the middle anyway.
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:31 pm
"Oh. That's good."
Well, now that we've just royally made an a** of ourselves...
Okay, so he'd gone a little off the deep end for a moment then. It sort of came with the territory of working with kids. He wasn't overly protective at all. No, not him. Of course not.
He shrugged off the touch from Bran. Yeah, so he'd been an idiot back there, alright? He got it. He understood. No need to rub it in.
Milo nodded at the suggestion of seeing the next child, or almost child, and resolved to keep himself reserved at all costs. He'd already embarassed himself twice today and he wasn't looking for a third instance. Best to leave the room as quickly as possible and hope that one of the other two liked the fire thing instead.
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 1:42 pm
Directing a sympathetic grin towards the seemingly embaressed Milo, Dacian nodded his consent to Bran. "Ah, yes! We can do that one next."
Then he led the men out of this room, and down the hall a bit. Really, it was just a few doors down and on the opposite side; and when they entered, it looked much the same as the other had. Except of course, this one didn't hae a ball of burning energy.
This one looked like...earth?
How strange.
Dacian had to admit, these kids seemed a bit stranger then the ones they'd had before - up until now, it had been vague impressions and faces in the energy...now the form itself seemed different.
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2007 8:11 pm
Bran stepped forward, eyes widening at the small floating ball of... had he called it energy? He was facinated immediatly, it looked to be a clod of earth. He watched the ball floating for a moment, turning with a sort of dreamy expression.
"It's happy."
He felt oddly distant as he made this observation - indeed, the small ball had a decidedly cheerful expression as it floated. Had the other one had a facial expression? He hadn't noticed, the flames had attracted all of his attention.
He couldn't help but smile back at it, his lips curving upward in delight at it's apparently simpleminded cheer.
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 3:34 pm
Milo looked at this next soul with less worry than he had the first. Well, these things certainly were different. At least he'd had the sense not to freak out over this one.
The energies they'd seen before all appeared so happy. Once Milo had stopped trying to put out the fire one, he'd been struck by it's joyful expression. Even if though they hadn't been born, they were carefree. He hid a smile by looking at a wall. Kids...
"Looks like a very nice... child." Milo said amicably to Bran, pasuing slightly as he wasn't sure exactly whether he ought to refer to the floating sphere as energy or a kid. He opted for the latter.
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 4:05 pm
"Cute," Harve chimed in. Weird too, but Bran seemed enthralled by the little dirtball, so it wasn't Harve's place to say so. Kind of like when your best friend had a really unfortunate looking baby, but you were obligated to tell him it was adorable. Not that he and Bran were friends, at least not yet, but keeping his mouth shut seemed like the right thing to do.
He shifted his weight to his other foot and his gaze from the hovering bit of earth to Dacian. "All right," he prompted. He certainly hoped Milo had warmed to the firey one, because if his intended kid was any less weird and the other man took a liking to it, there was going to be a fight. Or at least a fierce game of Rock, Paper, Scissors.
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 4:55 pm
After feeling again proud that this guardian seemed to like the Soul, Dacian clapped his hands together: off to see the last one! And it seemed like such a cutie, too.
"Alright, onto the third!"
With that, he led the three men out of the room, and into the room directly across from it. Upon entry, it was much the same...the monitors, the indentations, and so forth.
This little ball of energy was green, and seemed almost- double.
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:19 pm
Harve smirked and put his hands behind his back as he followed Dacian to the next room. The smirk turned into a puzzled pursing of his lips when he first saw what would soon be his child.
"What is it?" he asked, walking up to the floating ball of energy and reaching out a hand toward it before thinking better of his actions. It too was smiling, but somehow it carried an aura of cynicism as well. Harve's smirk returned. "Forget it. I'll take it."
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Posted: Thu Apr 12, 2007 6:41 pm
"Guess that means I'll stick with the first one." Milo confirmed.
He hoped the whirling-soul-fire-energy-mass-not quite-child thing would forgive him for almost extinguishing it. Then again, with any luck it wouldn't probably remember a thing.
A part of him was also relieved that Harve had taken the green thing. At least he could make out that the first one had something to do with fire, whatever that might foreshadow for the child's furture. This one, though...no idea. Things were certainly going to get interesting from here on out, no doubt about that.
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Posted: Sat Apr 14, 2007 3:09 pm
"Well, we won't actually know what their 'blends' are, until birth...Hadrian does DNA testing."
Of course, that only told them the base substance, not the actual item; there were animal blends as well though, and it let them know when the kids were those.
Smiling at the men, Dacian began to lead them out of the labs, talking as he did so.
"So, any questions?"
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