Welcome to Gaia! ::

And on a totally unrelated subject.

Roland had been relaxing since his fight with Crawley, figuring that his wailing on was overworking himself. After all, working and training six days a week for seventeen hours a day will tend to work someone into a hole.

So he wanted to relax himself and take some time to be a normal teenager for a change. After all, he was only nineteen. What business did he have, dropping out of high school to be a fighter. He needed to get himself some work. Take some time off.

Firstly, Roland would spend a couple weeks back at home in good old Barton. He just wanted to spend some time wandering round and having a good night for himself. He spent a couple hours in a movie, a thoroughly boring one. No explosions or nudity. Tear.

Anyhow, so Roland was walking around afterwards, and it was dark out. Prolly ten or so at night. At that point, he would hear a scream. "The ******** went busting around a corner to see a woman standing against a wall, a man in a ski-mask holding a gun to her head. "Sonuva..."

The man heard him and several shots rang out in his direction. Luckily for him, the thief was a bad shot, cause only one got him and that was on the shoulder. The gunner could only turn and run for it, making a full break, trying to haul a** away from the scene. Roland took quick persuit, bursting into a full blown run.

The chase went down several streets before the gunner tried to escape via running across a road where the thief tripped over his own feet. And, to make things worse, a full sized MAC Truck came barreling down the road, right at him. And Roland wasn't about to let him get off that easily. With a dive, Roland tackled the man as he was standing up. The thief was in the clear, and Roland almost followed. His legs were smacked, and he began a full body spin, smashing his head into the passager side door where he would simply get thrown off near the sidewalk, landing with a crack.

wahmbulance

~Six Hours Later~

Roland had been stablized at Barton First. His legs were just short of destroyed, and it would take a great deal of work to reconstruct them to their former glory. His left arm was broken and his right was severely dislocated. Several ribs were smashed, along with other bruised ones. He was on several I.V.s, and was hooked up to a breathing machine. At the time being, he was out cold.

Doctors were not hopeful.

Odd to be out. A small in, somewhere inside the Barton, he didn't even bother to read the name. He was almost surprised that the inkeeper had no suspicions or reservations about giving a room to some random minor to wander in off the street late at night. Or, early in the morning, rather. Too damn early.

He did give an awfully odd look when the boy dragged the motorcycle in the door and took it along, up two stories of stairs, into his room.

He knew he'd be able to sleep through the sunlight come it's rise though, so the time hardly mattered. The boy needed some rest, and then he had to hunt down a place to get some more gas. For now though, he dug through a cord drawn bag, leaving his spare clothes inside, tugging out a toothbrush and some deoderant instead. Not bothering to undress, he let the water he washed his face in the sink with drip down over the undershirt, and soak his hair against his face, staring at himself in the mirror for a long moment. He splashed more water on his face, and then brushed his teeth and rinsed his mouth, spitting.

All of the thing tossed carelessly on top of his bag, with his shoes, the young man laid down on his bed otherwise still fully dressed. Splayed out over top the covers, his shirt pulling out of the pants and exposing a sliver of muscular belly. He dug a small cell phone out of a pant pocket with one hand, flicking it open. Couple of new voice mails left. he put it to his ear and started playing them.

"...Rayner, this is Aunt Mallery, please, you have to come home. We've been worried sick about you, those men your uncle knows keep stopping by and-" it cut off with a beep as he deleted the message and proceeded with a blank expression on to the next one.

"Rayner, this is you're Aunt, please, if you could just call and let us know you're-" it cut off with a beep.

"Hello, you've been selected to-" it cut off with a beep.

"Rayner... you have to come home. Please-" it cut off. He grimaced only slightly, and sighed as it went on to the next.

"Good evening Kalis." He sat up straight, though his face stayed stony. "It's interesting to see you recovered from the process, though I still wonder if it was on your own or through outside interference. Either way, I applaud you." he glared at nothing as he heard quiet clapping faintly picked up by the reciever. "Your reconditioning and treatment are not complete yet though. You're still unstable. I know you won't come back, but remember my offer before you go and run yourself to death. They'll keep looking, and sooner or later, you won't be able to run any-" it cut off with a beep.

The boy sighed, listening to the phone inform him that he had no other new messages, before stuffing it back away, and falling backward onto his pillow. One arm drapped across his eyes, he sat until sleep came.

"MOTHER ********!" Griff slammed his fist into the wall, his knuckles starting to bleed as a dent in the hard brick started to show. "...damn..."

You see, much to Griff's distress, it had almost been a month since his 'investment' and friend Roland Burrne had gone into a coma by a car accident. And after a month, a coma victim in Barton First is taken from the ICU to a single room, where they are generally considered to be in a persistant coma. If, after six months, no response comes through, those in charge of a patient may choose to remove life support.

So, at this point, Griff was ready to go back to more occult forms of medicine. After all, in Gaia, a world of mixed technology and magery, one can only depend on either so far.

Five rolled around, and Griff -sporting a new bandage over his fist- walked into Roland's room, looking over him. He had been hooked up to everything they had. "...Damn, man... you gotta get out of this."

Vega walked into the small town of Barton, and sighed.

"It's been forever since I've been on these lands."
He said, walking down the quiet streets.

JAF really did want to make a huge special post about Griff's studies. Instead.

Griff sat at his desk, skimming over his new piece of reading material. Or, more accurately, the foot notes by Halycanos' own pen. The actual text was now gibberish to the modern Griff.

Now, Griff had decided to walk over to the phone, wrapping his hands, putting the speaker to his ear. "...ring...ring...ring...ring...Dammit, Sabine, where the ******** are you?! ...Urgh... Fine. Listen, I have been busy, but I'm writing you an e-mail. You need to come to my house as soon as you get this. And no, there is no option."

Click.

Griff sat in his back yard with a cigarette in his fingers. It was the same pack he'd bought some six years previous. It was a whole case. But the idea of it was all for stress relief. In six years, he'd smoked seven cigarettes. The day he bought them was three.

Why was mister Morivan smoking after about two years? Simple. Stress. His life suddenly felt trivialized in the scale opposed. This scale was one of his past mortalities. By this, naturally, he was considering the discovery of documents dating a previous life. All of this, naturally, resulted in a great deal of self doubt.

Everyone else, all these famous people have lives for so long, that it just didn't seem to matter if they lived over, or period. And most normal people don't know and don't care. But him? He wasn't famous, but he was well known, to an effect. And, as such, he now knew his life was an entire redub of an old existance. Rediculous, he wanted to say. But what was worst is that it all felt like reading a journal from years ago.

So now, he had finished smoking most of his cigarette and blotted it out on a stone table. "Now..." Griff began, turning to Sabine, who was sitting, most uncomfortably in a chair infront of Griff at that very moment. He looked pissed. And for the first time in years, he was in civilian soil with all of his weapons on. He looked pissed.

"What the ******** is this journal?" He pointed to a document about two feet tall and as logically long and wide. Inside were years of footnotes, tons of notes and enough information to compile an encyclopedia. Several notable names were tabbed. Furthermore, next to the book was a laptop. a G6000. What's worse than that is this. It was brand new and full with Halycanos' disks of information. "Type in a few names for me. You might recognize some. Vidunder, Halycanos, Lionel O'Connor might find your interest. Maybe Donovan Keane?"

Griff turned, pulling out another Cigarette. "When you disappeared and showed up married to someone named DeLaffe, I was concerned, but said nothing. You and Dorak. Both of your names are there. At adult ages. As with a portait I downloaded to the document. You'll notice three specific faces that looked damned familiar?"

"You, Dorak..." Griff took a hard drag, the smoked out. "...and me."