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 Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:12 pm
"Oh yes because this is such a fantastic thing for me! Look at me, do I look like I'm having fun? This little b*****d has been following me for the last 3 hours! No matter what I do I can't get him to beat it!"
"Hey ******** you man, you're the only one that can teach me how to become stronger, and that's exactly what you're gonna do."
"His arrogance is astonishing, isn't it? I've threatened to kill him at least fourteen times already, and I came damned close to it at least half of those times and yet I still turn around and BLAM! There he is, as cynical and uncaring as ever." He paused, a thought racing around inside his head. "Wait a second, where's Ophiuchus? His little personal realities would be rather useful right about now." He turned to his son. "Hear that kid? Better get your a** outta here, we're going to throw you into a pocket dimension, a tailored alternate reality where you'll do nothing but sit and exist for eons, while comparatively no time passes here. You'll be gone forever and never missed."
"Get on with it then! Sounds perfect, I could sit and train myself for an eternity until I was strong enough to break myself out. Who knows, maybe I'll be even older and more powerful than you by that point."
"God dammit! Do you see what I've been through today? I mean come on, he would have to be smart on top of being a complete a*****e!"
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:18 pm
Ialo slowly tilted his head, still in complete and utter shock at this news.
"... Oh my GOD, you sound like my mom."
The back and forth between Riser and Alexander was amazing. If Ialo still weren't so damned weary (or if there weren't a funeral 40 feet away) he'd probably be laughing hysterically.
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:23 pm
At his breaking point, Riser threw his hands to his face in rage, and soon the dark pressure began to close in all around them. Alexander fell to his knees, coughing and hacking while trying not to laugh. Riser spun around and backhanded him viciously, sending his body flying and tumbling across the field.
And that was it. Riser's last bit of reserve energy had been depleted for the moment, and he collapsed to the ground in complete and utter unconsciousness.
Meanwhile, Alexander stood himself up and walked shakily back towards Ialo; his gait was stilted considerably, that blow to the head had made him rather dizzy.
He stood over his newly discovered father, and after a long moment of contemplation, pointed at him and addressed Ialo.
"What the ******** was that?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:34 pm
"Sweet ******** revenge," Ialo said solemnly, full control over his own mind once more. A strange thing had happened, Riser's dark pressure hadn't affected Ialo much at all. Yes, there was a burning, pins and needles sensation in his arm, but... Ialo pulled back his sleeve to look at his lower arm. Nothing was visible. He had no headache from the influx of magic. It almost felt like an electrical ground, where the dark magic was flowing through him, but not actually doing anything.
"So, hi. I'm Ialo. Riser's guinea pig. You might have heard him complain about me. A lot."
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 7:38 pm
Lin groaned softly and gripped her chest in pain as she felt a surge of dark energy around her. Not again. When was enough enough? Didn't this school protect itself from such dark energy? Bai Ching did. No such dark magic would ever be allowed near the school.
Luckily, this black energy didn't last for long. It hit her quickly, and then it disipitated just as quickly. It was just cut off. It didn't taper off slowly. It was weird, but Lin was thankful for it. Without her spring water on her, a lot of dark energy could put her into a coma.
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Posted: Mon Feb 08, 2010 8:43 pm
Kai had taken a break from the funeral and found himself watching The action in the woods, Leaning against a tree's thick trunk. A clear smirk graced his face as he resisted the urge to die laughing. He sighed watching as Riser stuck his son and passed out, not exactly what he was expecting to happen, but from what he could tell that boy was annoying enough to piss off a god.
"Hey maybe we should bring him along when we hunt for Danni, the ancients will be so ticked off they won't notice us waltzing away with her." He final said after everything had died down.
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Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2010 6:22 pm
"Yeh, I've heard of you. He never shuts up about you, it's just Ialo this and Ialo that." He stared at Ialo for a moment, as if trying to understand what was so special about him. "He calls you the savior of our species, whatever the hell he means by that. He said that if you follow him, he'll give you what you need to lead all humans to paradise."
He turned and spat on the back of Riser's unconscious head.
"b*****d..." Quickly Alexander removed a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and had pressed one to his lips, lighting it by unknown means. "I'm his son. His own flesh and blood. And he chose you. What the ******** makes you so much better than me? Just by looking at you, I know who you are. You're a coward. You don't know where you're headed. You're mentally unstable as a result of the enormous loads of stress and remorse placed on you. You've lost almost everyone close to you because of him, and the rest will soon follow. And yet you still follow him? What the ******** is wrong with you? At least I have nothing to lose."
He let loose a lungful of smoke; as it dispersed, it seemed to flash throughout the color spectrum.
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:44 pm
Ialo sighed. He was so damn tired. Because of Lin's potion, not physically tired (although his little breakdown at Danni's grave did leave him with a headache) but he was just so close to end of his string. Every other emotion was a facade right now.
"You're absolutely right, Alexander. I wish your father would see that. I want nothing to do with him, but he insists on me being his apprentice. For what, I don't even know. It can't possibly be anything good, no matter he says. I don't trust him at all."
He watched the young man smoke. He almost continued to say something, but just shook his head and walked away. It had nothing to do with the smoke. It had to do with the fact that Ialo had defenses left.
Ialo Enlil had been defeated by his own doing.
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:48 pm
He looked up as Ialo began to walk away. "Hey, you got anywhere I can sleep 'round here? I got cash."
Quite casually he removed a stack of Euros from his pocket, flashing them back and forth in the air.
It was impossible to conclude where he could have gotten the money, from what his father had said, the kid had been wandering around Europe for at least a year or two.
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 5:55 pm
He made a little waving gesture over his shoulder. "Couple of empty dorms, I don't care if you crash here for a few days. Just don't make a commotion. And don't leave without paying."
Ialo was a little curious that he had money at all - from what Ialo figured, most deities didn't have jobs because they didn't need them. Well, that was Ophiuchus's case. Which meant it was probably wrong.
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 6:16 pm
Adolf was starting to feel very much awkward just lurking in the shadows like some peeping tom (oh, what a horrible comparison) while the funeral continued. It felt like he was doing something he shouldn't be, as he'd often done when he was young. He used to go and lurk around the human villages quite often. Not so much now, quite especially since he was rarely in human settlements for long periods of time--and when he was, he was very careful to apply a glamour so that he would not attract attention. (Attention was a fickle thing that was best left alone, by his opinion.)
Instead, he focused on who he assumed to be in charge of the school--he would admit that he hadn't been listening too closely, mostly out of respect for privacy, but he thought he heard something about that young man just a ways over from the funeral, walking away from an unconscious person and some smoker. Perhaps he should talk to that man, especially if he was considering visiting Athena for more than just a few hours as had been originally intended. (After all, his goddaughter was mourning. He would not leave her in such a vulnerable state, especially so close to the full moon.)
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Posted: Wed Feb 10, 2010 8:13 pm
((At this point, I think it's time the funeral wrapped up. Mistuki, next time you're online, feel free to end it however you wish.))
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Eloquent Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 12:59 pm
((Aye aye, Captain...))
As Ambrose was the last speaker, soon the soft, slow music of mourning drifted across the grounds, and Ambrose, Cook, and Sly hefted the casket that carried Danni, lowered it into the ground with a careful precision. Faces carefully blank, they each tossed a handful of dirt into the dark hole, and from his pocket, Sly drew out a small gerber daisy, letting it flutter down onto the coffin. They'd been her favorite as a child, and he had nothing else.
In short order, the coffin was buried, and as people scattered off, anxious to be away from the smell and sights of death and mourning, the chairs and lights were gathered up, the music stopped. Soon it was though the funeral had never happened, so cleared had the area become. If not for the mound of dirt and the gravestone by the old tree, no one would've ever thought something had happened.
While the two fathers who'd buried a daughter trudged wearily back to the shack, hearts and bodies heavy, Ambrose stayed behind, standing in front of the grave, the orb he'd given her leaning against the stone, a pile of wildflowers scattered over her grave. His baby sister, he thought.
He'd heard the Ancients had her soul, keeping it hostage in a way. They had her, when she should be here. Well, that would never do. With quiet, deliberate movements, he turned his back on the grave, made the trek back to the school, to his dorm, where his suitcase lay, still full, on the bed. He took only the time to place an old family picture atop the pile of clothes before he slammed it shut again, hefted it up.
Without a word, without real plan, he opened a portal, stepped through it. And began his personal crusade to find his sister.
Unlike his father, he was much better at tracker, able to pick up even the slightest of magic trails. Not to mention he had a connection with each of his family members that had been forged in the womb. If he tried hard enough, he could reach out, just a bit, connect with her, just a bit, just enough. It was something he'd rarely had to do, but he called it a blessing now.
Nothing else he'd ever felt was as important as what was going on now. Loving Lin even took second to this. Life, he realized abruptly, could be so short, so unfair, so unjust. Because the thought hit him abruptly, he drew a scrap piece of paper out of his coat pocket, scribbled a note on it, then sent it off. To hell with pretenses, he decided, to hell with hesitation.
The note was sent right to Lin, and said simply, 'I love you. I've run out of ways to say it any other way. I'll be home eventually. Ambrose.' He'd placed everything he had on that one slip of paper, and he found he didn't care. So when the teleport brought him to Hawaii, on the coast, he merely stood there, his face blank, his hair windblown. If there had been people around, they'd have seen only a young man with tortured eyes and a set jaw.
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Posted: Thu Feb 11, 2010 1:30 pm
With a deep breath, Ambrose sat on the sand, letting his mind clear as he sent his spirit off into the realm. It was a dangerous bit of magic that could go horribly wrong, but he needed to do this. As he expected, as his spirit floated through the realm, he felt the faint tuge of Ancient influence in the area. Following that, he let his spirit drift some more, until it seemed to hit almost a solid wall, and he looked up, met the irritated face that was left in shadow.
"What business do you have here, when your heart still beats, young Ambrose?" Though he'd never been a child of the dark arts, he instinctively recognized the being who stood before him now, and he raised his chin, his eyes blank as he said,
"I know who you are. You are Eldest, the one who took my sister. I...I want you to let me see her, let me see for myself that she's all right." He said, and the Ancient scoffed, wondering why all these mortals insisted on interfering.
"And why, little boy, would I want to do that?" He demanded, and Ambrose kept his voice calm. Everything was riding on the whims of a mystic being at the moment, and he only had so many cards up his sleeve.
"She needs her happy memories to heal, doesn't she? You would know I've never given her any bad memories, not me. She loved me, her blood brother. I can help you. If there is no way for her to be free but for her to fight, then so be it, but I'll not stand by clueless while it happens. Let me see her, let me be near her. It's nothing but beneficial to you, and to her. Please." He added as an afterthought, and for a long while Eldest studied him before, with a long suffering sigh, he flicked a wrist, and Ambrose suddenly felt his soul being pulled back to his body, and then his body was flying through a portal he hadn't made. When he could finally get his bearings, he found himself just outside a house in the middle of what looked like a desert.
Before he could move, the door opened, and the human form Eldest had taken on stepped out, gesturing for him. "Don't make a mess of this, boy." He warned softly, but Ambrose said nothing as he was led through a hall, his suitcase in hand, and he was brought into what looked like the living area.
At first all he saw a woman, obviously not Danni, a dog, and several young men. The Ancients, he thought, but then he saw her, curled up on the couch, while one of the boys read her a book as though she were a child.
His heart skipped a beat, and he stopped abruptly, his suitcase bumping against his leg. A large lump came to her throat, and he felt the tears come to his eyes. They were right, he thought. She wasn't dead, not at all. She was right here, right here...
But when she looked up, finally noticing him, her eyes were blank without any recognition, and she merely smiled softly, used to unfamiliar faces by now. She did have a slightly uncomfortable feeling in her chest when she looked at him, though. Rubbing absently at the ache, she felt the teasing brushes of memory come and go, but dismissed them quickly enough when her father began to speak.
"Addie, this is my good friend, Ambrose. He'll be staying with us for a while. I hope you two will come to be great friends." At this introduction, Addie got to her feet, her grin coming easily as she held out a hand, looked up at Ambrose with guileless eyes. "Hi, Ambrose! I'm Addie Harper." She said, with genuine affection in her tone.
For a moment Ambrose's eyes stung, but he bit back the threatening tears of emotion, and held out his hand, took hers. His voice was just a bit hoarse when he said, "It's nice to meet you."
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