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 Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:11 pm
HUMAN
Name: Derek Quinn
Gender: Male
Age: 28
Patrol: White Shadow
Rank: Private
Appearance: Reaching just below 5’8, Derek finds himself fairly acceptable in terms of height. Crimson eyes gleam out from a thin shield of midnight blue hair that covers a heart-shaped face. His body is thin from under-nourishment as a child, but not enough to be called skinny. There’s actually a lot of lean muscle beneath the lithe frame.
Personality: Derek does not seek friendship from those around him. In fact, he’d rather if people stayed away most days so he could avoid attachments. Not being completely cold however, he’s cordial to those who approach him, especially when his wolf keeps bringing the damn apprentices around… He normally carries a blank expression so others would think he’s completely spaced out, but he wouldn’t have survived the academy without being keenly observant at all times. That ability lets him pick up anything… or anyone… that interests him... He doesn’t stick around relationships for too long though, he doesn’t want them to like him too much or vice versa. But again, he’s not cold so even though he’s been around, his chosen still like him… most of the time. The only one he’s stuck to is EmeraldWind, not just because of the bond, but somewhere along the way, he grew to... love him like a brother… but admitting that just might kill him. He sometimes wonders about his parents, but realizes that it takes him to a dark place and depression is… not what he wants.
History: At the age of 5, a young boy found wandering the city was taken in by Athera Quinn. She was the owner of an orphanage on the outskirts of the city and was always taking in strays, but he was different somehow. The only thing that he could tell her was that his name was ‘Dewek’, not who his parents were, what they looked like, where he’d lived before or who gave him that name. With time, the dirty, red-eyed boy wormed his way into her heart more than any other child before had.
Derek grew equally as fond of the older woman and of another child, Ethan who was two years younger than him. Life in that orphanage with his ‘mother and brother’ and the other children wasn’t great, but it was good. At age 8, he was playing with Ethan when the younger found an old guitar in a trash pile. Derek fixed it up, and realized that he liked the sounds that came out of it. So he practiced until he was good enough to play it in the streets for money (which he used to buy food for the others) and he was happy for 4 more years until the fire… When it happened, he was on the other side of the city, playing for change, but by the time he returned, the stone orphanage was gone. The foundation had completely collapsed; no one could’ve survived...
Derek applied to the Academy that day, not wanting to make friends but to forget the deaths of those he’d… loved and vowing to never let anyone get that close again. It worked too, Derek and his guitar kept to themselves for the duration of the training. But then, that blasted wolf had to bond with him when he was 20. With his energetic happiness and green eyes that reminded him so much of Ethan… And so EmeraldWind became his bonded and over time… his brother.
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Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:20 pm
WOLF
Name: EmeraldWind
Gender: Male
Age: 8
Pack: White Shadow
Rank: Gamma
Appearance: Standing at 17.3 hh, this gray wolf is a happy about his height as he is at everything else. The green underbelly and socked feet hadn’t matched any of his litter mates, but they were an odd bunch of individuals anyway. What was most peculiar was the trail of white streaking down from his head to his tail, and white flames up his front paws.
Personality: EmeraldWind is happy with a capital ‘H’. He doesn’t seem to realize that as you grow you’re supposed to mature… His carefree puppy nature tends to get him in trouble a few times a week, much to Derek’s dismay, but he really doesn’t care. Rather than sit around and be bored, he’s always looking for things to do and playing with the new pups that come, encouraging his bonded to meet people and not sink into himself. He’s fiercely loyal to Derek, and worries about being the only steadfast thing in his life in this war against the centipedes… The only time he ever seems to calm is when Derek breaks out the guitar. That’s special time…
History: When EmeraldWind came into being, his mother knew the pup was trouble. He would not stay still, always trying to run outside of the cave as soon as his legs were strong enough. That said, when it was time for riders to bond, he eagerly ran out to search for his human. Feeling a connection with the boy at the end of the line, he bounded over, head-butting the poor soul and licking him. The boy… Derek… seemed upset at being knocked over, but once he got a good look at the pup, the expression softened, and he gave him his name, ‘EmeraldWind’… From then on, EmeraldWind made it his mission to get his rider out of the barracks and into the world, although, it’s backfired so far and only made his rider a bit promiscuous…
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Posted: Sun Mar 29, 2009 1:25 pm
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Posted: Sat Apr 11, 2009 4:24 pm
One moment meant to be forgotten...
Bruised fingers wrapped around the criss-crossed bars of the little window as the small boy pulled himself up. His toes barely held purchase against cold brick as wide crimson eyes scanned the white beyond his cage. Light…Outside… A white mist rose from the eye-level path as shoes crunched by, no one knowing or caring what was happening just below the street. To anyone else, this was just a dank drainage vent. To him, this was… home…
“…Derek? Get down from there!” The urgent hiss of his mother propelled the boy from the wall and back to her side. Even in the darkness, he could see that she wasn’t getting any better. Her skin felt so hot and she was sweating, even though it was freezing outside… “Don’t do that again, okay? If they see you--” He wouldn’t get to hear the rest of the statement as coughs took her breath and wracked her frame.
She wasn’t the only one. Derek could hear the others, children and adults in the round room. He didn’t know who they were but they were all the same. Moaning and crying in pain, coughing until… they couldn’t breathe any more. Sometimes… somebody laughed… laughed and laughed but nothing was ever funny.
When the big metal door would open, and the men in white would come, he’d get scared. His mother said they were ‘doctors’ who were supposed to help people but he didn’t believe that. Sometimes they came with knives to cut an arm and collect the blood in little jars. Sometimes they brought another sick person in… or they took someone away. Sometimes the person came back, sometimes they didn’t… They took his mother already, but she came back…
Warm…Once his mother stopped coughing, he settled into her side, her heat warming him while he cooled her down. He could hear her lungs straining for air through her chest, but that wasn’t his focus. It was her stomach, big and round. It got bigger every day. She’d told him that there was a baby inside, getting ready to come out soon, and that baby would be his little sister or brother. She’d even told him the names she wanted if it was a boy or a girl. Tentatively, he reached up, laying his palm flat against the protruding belly.
“Mama… what’s outside?” He’d asked so many times before. All he’d ever seen were the feet of those people passing by, and a building at the other end of the path. Inside this place… everyone was sitting in their own filth and mess, and when the scent rose in the hot summer days it was almost unbearable. The rain wasn’t nice because the water came in through the vent and ran down the walls. Snow was meanest; it was too icy and took so long to go away. His mother always said she was so cold… This room was the life he knew, not outside.
He’d dreamt of it though; of green trees and wide spaces with grass as far as the eye could see, or blue water, cool to the touch and spreading out in a huge circle just like his mother told him. And the bright yellow sun would shine down and always welcome him… A subtle cough distracted him and his thoughts shifted. Outside, people got medicine when they were sick, and lived in houses with their families, and wore clean clothes that kept them warm and dry an--. A shaking hand covered his, and he looked up to see a sad smile on his mother’s face. “Will we ever go outside?” Instead of an answer, he felt her sigh as she began raking her thin fingers through his hair. That wasn’t fair; she knew that made him sleepy…
Rest was short-lived however, as the door swung open and a stream of light entered along with four men in white. So many of them… that meant they were taking somebody… Derek’s fingers tightened in the light cloth of his mother’s shirt and he barely noticed that she’d done the same thing. The smallest of the men walked around the room, looking at the sick while the others trailed behind him. He was searching for someone specific then. When the man arrived in front of Derek and his mother, he paused, peering into the child’s face over the cotton mask he wore. Under the close scrutiny, Derek felt his entire body tremble.
“Take him.”
“No!” Large hands grabbed for his body as they tried to rip him away from his mother. She was still strong though, screaming and crying for them to let him go as she held onto his legs. “Not him! Not him!” The men’s hand’s tightened on his arms and they pulled harder, dragging the woman that refused to release her son with them. The thought that being pulled in two directions really hurt entered his mind, but he didn’t want his mother to let go and let him be taken… The men let the human tug-of-war continue only for a few moments before the shorter man kicked the mother in the back of the head harshly, silencing her.
Watching her eyes roll back and her body go limp snapped something in the little boy. Struggling with renewed vigour, Derek kicked and twisted like a wild animal, calling to his mother and biting anyone who tried to cover his mouth. How could they do that to her! Mama needed him! Even after they successfully got him out of room and closed the door so he couldn’t see her anyone, he still wouldn’t make it easy, thrashing and screaming.
More people, men and women, descended on them. One man came up to him with a napkin and covered his nose and mouth. It was wet. What were they doing? Try as he might he couldn’t make them take it off, and he realized that he couldn’t fight as much as he wanted to. His head felt so strange, like he’d been spinning around, and his body was so heavy... He wanted to move, but it was so hard, especially when it started getting darker…Tired…Sleepy… Mama…
“…virus was not present in its blood wo-…” Cold… Wet…
“… not in the mother, it showed immunity to all strains…” What? Voices kept drifting in and out; his head hurt too much to focus. Why did his mouth taste like he ate a shirt? Someone was rubbing something soft over his face as they held him up. Was he sitting in water? He tried to move an arm as the softness travelled to his chest, but it was held down by someone…
“Sir, I think he’s waking up…” Were they talking about him? Opening his eyes, Derek found it hard to see, blinking to clear the fog around his sight. What did they do to him? He was lifted out of the water roughly and placed onto his feet. Legs weak from the drug, they shook worse as the air hit his bare body. It woke him up though, and his vision cleared.
Several candles flickered along the walls and in the corners of the room, making it considerably bright while a lone metal table stood in the middle of it. Adding to the candles was a hole in the wall furthest away, where a large fire was roaring and crackling under a black pot. Many long metal poles were lying on the floor with their ends in the flame. It looked very strange…
One of the three new ‘doctors’ knelt in front of him, his eyes scanning the boy’s body in a calculating manner. “Well, its skin looks good, no visible sores…” Pale fingers reached out for Derek, but he didn’t want the man to touch him. Trying to back away, he found out that wasn’t an option as another stood behind him and placed hands on his shoulders.
The pale doctor continued on his mission, fingers running over Derek’s face gently. “Hair is full, eyes are clear… gums are clean…” The hands trailed lower, over his ribs and stomach, the man sniffing him as well and tickling his skin. He even put an ear to his chest and listened to him breathe like he did with his mother.
It didn’t seem like they wanted to hurt him...“It’s thin, but a very good specimen…” When the hands went even lower, he became a bit uncomfortable, squirming as the man’s breath went there too. It felt too weird, but he didn’t want to make him angry. Still, when the man stayed there for a while just breathing, Derek’s leg reflexively kicked out, pushing him off.
That apparently wasn’t a bad thing, as the older man just started laughing. “There’s fight yet. I like it.” Standing up, he patted the boy’s head. “Mark it and clothe it. I believe this is the best one so far.” He turned to leave as other men he’d seen before entered the room. The ones that took him… When one grabbed his arm, he bit him, fighting as he had before and gaining the doctor’s attention once more.
“Wonderful spirit… I’ll need fresh samples of everything; blood, hair, skin tissue, bone…” As he spoke excitedly, the men were hoisting his flailing body up and onto the table. Cold… One man on each arm and leg, it took all their strength to keep him down on the metal. “Specimen Zero Seven Five, if you please. We’ll produce much from it, I can tell…” The man did leave after that, talking amongst the others with him. A smaller man brought three of the metal rods from the fire over after he dipped them in the pot of water. There were different shapes on the ends of each, a small circle and squiggly lines.
Wait… He remembered that short one; he was the one that hurt his mother! Snarling, he bared his teeth and kept trying to get at him. Hurt... He could see the smile through the mask, but he was no way prepared for the searing pain that came when the man pressed the rod with the circle to his left hip. He screamed as hard as he could as loud as he could. Make it stop, make it stop! Tears sprang to his eyes immediately, and it only hurt worse when he took the metal away. It hurt… it hurt so much… He could smell the burnt flesh, permanently marked into his skin was a perfect circle.
And then he did it again… and again…
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