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 Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 5:11 pm
The buzzing was getting louder, almost a prelude to the ominous. It felt like everyone was talking over static.
"No," replied the new kid, with a lot more sarcasm than intended thanks to the age of the voice, "who the ******** else would it be?"
"Oh!" interrupted Allan suddenly, placing a fist on his other balled fist in sudden re-realization, just as the whites beneath them began to fragment into thicker edges, "I suddenly remembered! We weren't supposed to touch the flowers!"
"You think-", began what might have been the Death lead, when the surface beneath them shattered, and all three of them fell.
Rep would land far, far away from the other two not-quite leads, out of pure unbiased luck. His fall was cushioned by a water at all sides, and almost immediately, the illusion of him being six, or six and however many years, was shattered, as he sank into the surprisingly deep pool of water. Everything felt oddly visceral, too realistic, the water oddly stifling and cold. At the base of the pool were statues of exotic animals most of them crumbling and broken. Despite any attempts, Rep would sink, deeper, further still until it felt like he had lost his sense of self, limbs as heavy as the statues around him. It felt cold again, but in a way so vastly different from the vines, which had attempted to lull him into sleep. This time, it felt like something had simply pried every single piece that made himself him and left just a hollow statue in its wake. He would join those at the bottom of the pool and be forgotten. He would-
- A hand grabbed at him roughly, and pulled him out, a strange sensation that was met with an incredible amount of resistance. It felt like he simply did not belong anywhere else, and the memories, the pieces of himself that he had shed no longer fit into what was once him-
- There was a painful moment where it simply felt like he would shatter altogether-
- Then he was on the surface again, lying on what seemed like cold marble, drenched but not drowning. Everything was spinning, it was hard to focus, reality was blurring away, pulling him away from himself- a sharp pain blossomed on his chest and a moment's realization that someone had kicked him hard and was shouting something- it sounded like get up- it sounded like a strange hunger he could not comprehend, it sounded like something else reaching out for him, like thousands of statued hands and claws bursting out of the water to grab him and shove him back in-
- And then it was over. Darkness.
Rep would wake up still stranded between thousands of coiled vines.
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 5:35 pm
Rep was confused, but by now that was a simple fact of his life, feeling as though his sanity was lagging behind his simple animal thoughts by quite a margin and just dealing with it. Allan got a concerned look and he was about to ask what flowers he actually meant when once again they plummeted and this time, to his now-adult surprise it was into water.
His first thoughts went to cliff diving, the one hobby he managed to faithfully maintain on the island even when everything else (like the power supply) failed and he thought fondly of the memory of that moment when he hit the water and lost himself in the swirling roar of heavy blackness and churned bubbles, for a moment suspended in that place where death was just a single mistake and a lungful of air away. He expected it to be like that, to be able to seek out the surface and strike out with confidence to safety but this wasn't his cliffs or the ocean around Deus, this was something else, colder and too deep, pulling him down and down and down.
He had read about how there was some kinds of water - usually around weirs - that had an upswell of current and that if you fell into it you would be guaranteed to drown, it was impossible to swim. This was like that, and though he kicked and thrashed and tried with all his energy to fight it, he sunk further and further and the cold sapped his energy right out of him until he couldn't even fight, surrendering much more than the physical whether he wanted to or not until he became the cold himself.
When he was pulled out he almost didn't want to be released, it didn't feel like a rescue, it felt like a burden, and that he didn't want the person he was or had been, that for a moment in the depths he had been truly free.
It was too much, too much to bear and no person should have to. He didn't know if he could.
Everything was a wild blur of confusion and he wanted to curl up in a ball of self pity at the fading sensations he had experienced, so much hunger and so ******** much pain. Part of him even wanted to mourn the simple and permanent freedom which had almost been within his grasp.
He opened his eyes and stirred with a groan, dreading what new horror awaited him and trusting nothing to be as it seemed.
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 5:47 pm
<Hello Rep,> echoed a female voice distinctly not Tracey in his mind, replacing all presence of his actual weapon and smothering it with her, <Would you like to use me?>
Even as she spoke the physical pain had already kicked of being compressed.
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 5:56 pm
Rep blinked in slow and baffled disorientation, and it was unfortunate that his logic lagged so damn far behind everything else when he was like this. He was not a person who said no to free things, to any free things. And when it came to women - and he could only assume the voice was a woman - well they existed to be used. That made sense. It all made sense, and nothing /hurt/.
"Yes." he said. "Why the ******** not?"
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 6:07 pm
And then in his hands was Circe, in its unmistakeable shape and form. The second she was summoned, Rep was no longer in control, the stumbling dance partner to someone who stepped easily ahead of them and continued to lead. Without even realizing he was moving, the weapon arced once, twice, it hummed, and the vines recoiled, retracing itself.
< You just started,> she whispered, <Why stop here? > The voice distorted, it mingled and sounded like Rep himself as a veil was lifted and showed everything he could accomplish. It was so simple, just a straightforward path of destruction without any resistance, it arced and laced at his fingertips without any effort - why indeed stop?
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 6:17 pm
Rep eyed the scythe with a wide eyed look of awe which was not - all things considered - all that different from the look six year old him had given the uncapped fire hydrant. But more than awe there was a need, a deep rooted and insidious desire for power that he had carried with him like the chip on his shoulder. When you were powerless there was nothing you wanted more. He did not even resent being led, being controlled in order to attain the ends, Tracey was much the same at times, though his crushing force was nothing to the raw and nimble destruction which played out before him.
He didn't have an argument on why he should stop, there were no reasons at all he could consider worthy of letting go of what he presently had. He longed for destruction more than anything else, the power to control his life, the power to be strong enough to look at himself and not hate the weakness he saw. This was power, this was what he wanted.
When he sought frantic for a reason why he shouldn't decimate these goddamn ******** vines and everything else that got in his way, there were no answers. He had been unable to turn away Destruction and after admiring her for so long, he couldn't say no to the scythe, if he was deemed good enough for even a second of her time it was more than he could have hoped.
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Posted: Sun Nov 29, 2015 6:41 pm
Even if he could say no, he could not turn away. It was always the fleeting illusion of choice, as power laid in front of Rep and the sword of Damocles in the form of her dangled above. Destroy or be destroyed.
The green tugged and pulled and finally gave away, thorns shattering, as grey light filtered around them. Slowly the thorns themselves retreated, leaving Rep-
- right in the warpath of both division leads. It was difficult to tell if Rep truly awake or not in the surreal grey landscape, and even more difficult how mismatched both leads looked. First was Allan with Tracey summoned, the Sun lead true to his title, having already perfected hold of the weapon. Even odder though was Caelius, who didn't seem to be quite impressed by what could only be the Sun lead's weapon, bracing it edge downwards, as he would a lighter weapon.
"Rep-kun!" Allan called out, and his voice seemed hollow, tinny, as if talking through a vast expanse. "Don't touch the vines for a minute! Just a minute!"
<You don't have to listen to him> she whispered pleasantly, but it sounded just like Rep cajoling himself, <Go ahead and take what is yours.> His reasoning was beginning to fade again, replaced with a incessant buzzing, and along with it memories of why he shouldn't.
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Baneful rolled 2 12-sided dice:
2, 5
Total: 7 (2-24)
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 6:07 am
Rep leaned into the power the way he'd leaned into the hand of the mother he had never truly had. It did not matter what the asking price is or what he stood to lose, all the mattered was that he had the numbing calming direction of the hand steering him and that in losing his right to choice, he was fundamentally set free. He did not trust himself or love himself and never had, resenting every bad choice he made, having no one else to blame. He had taken to Deus because it was easy to just follow orders and to be given worth by extension of someone else's choices. If it all went wrong, in the end it had not really been his fault and in that he was absolved.
Even with the dim thought that he might have something to pay back later for this, some cost on him or his body, he did not care. Consequences later had no gravity or reality in the present moment. Rep had turned to drugs and drink with all the readiness of an addict for a reason, steering clear of the strongest opiates only by virtue of having contorted that figure of his mother so significantly that those things became the domain of the forbidden feminine. Women were weak was the lie he told himself while deeply and intrinsically believing they were the strongest and the ones whose approval he wanted most. His mind was a mess, a twisted corkscrew of abused memories and contradictory assertions and Circe's cold and greying hand for a moment set him free in the numbing of those feelings normally so immediate and close at hand to something manageable and far away.
Seeing Tracey in the hands of someone else was so strange, so utterly utterly foreign to him that it made him feel that he had to be in a dream, still trapped in a cycle of memories. Tracey would be happier with someone who was not him he found himself bitterly thinking. Allan had that inexhaustible optimism and motion that Tracey wanted and probably did not get trapped in mires of self loathing and introversion.
Don't touch the vines, he thought. Why not?
And then there was the voice. He didn't need to listen to him, and Rep took this to mean he only needed to listen to her and that was so easy, so easy to fall back and let that deep longing for something undefinable take over. Inside his head it didn't matter it was a woman, no one could see, and inside his head was where his true longings lay. Power could fix everything, maybe it could even fix what was broken in him.
Reverently he trailed a hand along the crystalline handle and let Circe swing.
HP: ?
DMG: 3
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Zoobey rolled 2 12-sided dice:
3, 10
Total: 13 (2-24)
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 11:07 am
- The attack was almost immediately parried by Allan. The familiar blade of the axe swung up, and there was a moment of resistance as both weapons were pushed back by the resounding impact.
"Rep!" Allan swung Tracey slowly, intentionally slow, defending by creating an offensive siege, "Stop! The vines-"
- <are real>, she interrupted, drowning out anything else Allan was saying. <You opened your memories. You accepted me into them. You chose me. This is your reality.>
"Let her," the Death lead snapped, making no intention of attacking, just watching the entire exchange with an unreadable expression. "I don't make a ******** habit of saving people twice."
"He'll die!" countered Allan, staring at Rep with as much eye contact as possible. "Stop attacking Rep. Let go of the weapon!"
<It is true,> she responded earnestly, comfortably seated in her throne made of his memories, <you will die. But it will be of your own choosing. Is that not what you wanted all this time?>
For a moment perhaps, there was a brief lapse of clarity. For a moment the vines changed in appearance, they were something else - something much more familiar - as underneath Rep trailed thousands of skeletal hands, a warning, a message, something that was trying to pierce his clouded mind. Someone called out to him, and it was more familiar than either leads, someone close to him, who valued Prote-
- But she remained and would not let go of him.
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 12:18 pm
Rep reeled back from the strike and found frustration spiking immediately at how he'd been so easily foiled, the hunger for power twisting and snarling up in one another as he bitterly stared at Allan, Allan who was impossibly strong and impossibly good in comparison to him and everything he couldn't hope to live up to. He hadn't been able to stand the brightness of Sun division and even here with Circe in his hands he wasn't good enough to get through the other man's attacks, clearly his own weakness weighing down the nimble scythe.
He blinked at the vines but wasn't sure who to believe, wanting to believe Allan's words but once again recoiling to that bitterness where goodness was something to be feared and recoiled from. Circe seemed more direct, more clear, more simple. It was Cael however who made him waver even in this, the fact he'd helped him even once something which distracted him, though he still clenched his hands around the handle as if letting go of it would kill him as surely as holding on.
There was a moment, and he couldn't deny it, where he felt that maybe death was fine, maybe it was all right to die and choose the easy option. Lately he had found just living so much harder than it had been for a long time, trapped in solitude and looking at the shattered remnants of friendships and long smouldering bridges he'd burned. Maybe it was all right to just give up, he was so so ******** tired of people telling him he was broken and wrong and that their own happiness was completely and immovably blocked by him. Maybe he could go out in a blaze of glory and to hell with everything, Circe could have what meagre humanity he had ever possessed.
And he might have, he might have just let the water close around him, not sought the surface at all if it wasn't for the voice, the voice that meant so much, the voice that reminded him it wasn't just his own life on the line, there were others, irrecoverably twisted around him, their own memories built around his. His choices weren't his own and the thread of devotion and loyalty - startlingly strong in such a pathetic human being - pulled him onwards.
Harrison needed him. That was it, that was the singular reason he couldn't give up, and yet it was a reason like an iron bar, impossible to negotiate or change. He was tired but there wasn't an option to stop.
<> he said <>
And with a weary and grim determination he set the fragility of his very self against her and tried to release the scythe.
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 12:26 pm
Immediately everything changed, the weapon dissolving almost instantly, along with everyone else. As Protection was called, the barrier stirred, the warmth and familiarity of the blue kingdom in the form of shelter, in the form of walls away from that reality.
A door began to peel into one of the impenetrable walls, a simple door with no handle. There was a light scratching at the other side of the door.
<Won't you let me in?>
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 12:45 pm
Rep retreated because he had to and once again he felt as if he was six years old again, hiding from a reprimand and hiding from what was best for him. He doubted himself every moment like a collapsing star and fought against everything in his nature that wanted power and freedom. Blue kingdom was a place where there had been a version of himself who had both and despite the jealousy he felt towards someone so different from the real and broken version of himself he'd kept him and his world alive. It felt wrong to be here on the rich and elaborate carpeting and LED lit walls.
When he heard the scratching he flinched away at first, before with a heavy dread he turned back to the door.
"No. <******** off. This isn't my door to open. It's his."
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 12:53 pm
Slowly, a very simple, gold handle began to form against the doorway, forming an equally simple lock below. The handle began to turn.
< It was a common courtesy. This may belong to someone else, but they have invited you.> A loud click and the door began to slowly open. <As long as you desire this power, you cannot refuse me.>
From the small opening in the doorway, white cracks began to form.
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:05 pm
Whatever fleeting bravado Rep had managed to muster turned to dust and blew away as the handle started to turn, his heart hammering in his chest. He couldn't refuse his own innate desire for power, as hard-written into him as the code in a program. All his life he had found himself helpless and powerless in the face of those stronger than him and in positions of authority and the primary lesson it had taught him was that the only way to avoid being hurt with any certainty was to be so big and strong that no one dared.
"I.. I don't want to die." he said. "Ace needs me, he's so dumb. He's so TRUSTING. He'd just go to pieces he...he.. I just. Leave blue kingdom out of this, it's mine, it's his, it's one of the good ******** things I have.."
He narrowed his eyes and the tangled mess of neuroses he carried around with him lifted him up again and he shoved back against the door as if trying to hold it shut. "You ******** bitches are all the ******** SAME. It'll be good, it'll be nice, it'll be fixed and then its just ALL ******** LIES and you LEAVE or DIE or WANT TO KILL ME." And he found himself missing Tracey, proud in a way he hadn't even realised in the heat of the moment of the way the axe had managed somehow - though in the hands of someone competent - to parry Circe. Maybe Allan's stuff he said all the time had some merit, maybe it was possible for a weapon to become more than it was, maybe that was all Circe and Marie were, maybe he needed to stop looking for power everywhere else.
"So just ******** OFF." and then in a much smaller voice. "Please."
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 1:28 pm
<Then isn't the solution simple?> The door began to dissolve, crumble into white space, like the expanse behind it <I can remove all of them from you. Every single person that hurt you, that made you feel unloved and unwanted. I'll take it all from you and you can just have this.>
And in that moment, as the words closed, so did everything else except the Blue Kingdom. He could feel them being torn away, he could palpably sense all that he resented being plucked from his very being and discarded. First it was the memories of her and she, those he resented the most, until even the puppet controlling the strings became just an abstract presence without name or identity. Next were the names of Hunters, those that didn't quite matter, followed by everything else that had made him so. The deaths of those who had passed, the lives of those still struggling. Lastly, and always lastly, was the childhood memories, those that carried through decades and would last the longest still. The last thing he saw was himself, six years old, still looking for that one fish by the fire hydrant and then even the concept of it seemed abstract entirely.
It was just Rep now, the outcast in a kingdom that was not fully his. It was just him now-
- and the voice of his own weapon, who had been calling to him this entire time, finally breaking the humming buzz of the background.
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