{ Sidekick } SHROUD ☎ Clowrey Eir (Souru)

[Souru]

_
_

±

¤ⓖⓞⓞⓓ ⓑⓨⓔ
ⓘ ⓢⓣⓐⓝⓓ ⓞⓝ ⓜⓨ ⓞⓦⓝ ⓝⓞⓦ
-Solo-____She awoke to screaming and fire that morning.

14-year-old Clowrey Eir, jostled awake by the sounds, flipped over in the inn bed to the hard wooden ground below. She cursed loudly, still groggy from the rude awakening...Speaking of which, why was there screaming and fire? "Clowrey, c'mon we have to go," came a voice, her father's. The quiet Anh, pulled his young daughter up and stated they needed to evacuate--and quickly. But as to why, exactly, Clowrey was still left in the dark.

The two grabbed their belongings quickly, their business trip for rare tea leaves cut short and the reason became clear enough, once they exited the inn. Staring at the burning bank just a block or two away, she could see the flames licking at the buildings next to it hungrily…Some were already devoured and black. And standing almost triumphantly on the rooftops, with fireproofed clothing and some sort of tank on their back was, for all intents and purposes, a nameless PSYCHO. The man was laughing almost maniacally, letting loose more flames from his tank shouting some nonsense at the top of his lungs. “We have to go,” her father reiterated, tugging stubbornly at his daughter’s arm. He tried to pull her with the crowd, trying to escape the havoc with the rest of them. But her hesitant steps forced them to separate as the mass tried to push and hurry along.

“CLOWREY!” she heard her father shout out. ”I’ll be okay!” she called back, ”I’ll meet up with you later!” Once I find out how, of course, she added silently to herself. Clowrey slipped through the crowd, with some difficultly, but instead of finding a safe place to hide out she was heading closer to the origin of the chaos.

As she came closer, the crowd thinned out until there were no people stopping her at all. But there was still a ways to go, and the fire was growing…! She wasn’t sure what she was going to do here, but she didn’t need to think of it—a pair of figures were coming straight at the fire-loving psycho, with obvious intent to stop him in his tracks. Clowrey took to hiding only thing, watching as the two took him down and put out the flames…and she felt almost mesmerized. ”Your father is going to worry about you,” came another familiar voice, and a dark silhouette of a man appeared besides her. “Quiet, Corduroy,” she hissed, “How am I suppose to ignore something like this?
…C’mon, I wanna get closer and see who those two are.”
”If something happens to you…”
“It won’t!”

“You klutz!” a voice interrupted; it was one of the 2 strangers. “How could you go and break your leg?! I am NOT carrying you back to the Academy.”
“Shut up already! It was your fault for not getting prepared for fire attacks anyway! Aaaargh…my leg…”
“Ugh, c’mon. I’m sure the nurse can get you fixed up. As soon as we get back to the ********, the teach is going to yell our ears off for this…”
“Life as hero-ing students, eh?”
’What? Academy…Hero?’

- - - ~ - - -
She couldn’t get that conversation out of her mind. It had been 3 weeks since that day, and Clowrey was home again…but she had thought of nothing but what had been said. ’What were they talking about…? If only I could’ve gotten a look at their faces; it could’ve helped,’ she thought to herself, staring stubbornly at the computer screen of the Laptop her brother had let her borrowed. It was an old thing, as their father had a slight aversion to machines, but it suited her needs quite well. That need, being, the searching of this mysterious ‘Academy’.

Into the Goodies Search Bar, she had entered item upon item trying to get any closer to this mystery. But no such luck had graced her so far. She sighed, entering another search item:
TRAINING HERO FACILITY
. . .Nope, nothing of use there.
STUDENT HEROES
. . .Zilch.
ACADEMY FOR HEROES
. . .Well it didn’t help, putting this subject back in.

”AGH! WHY IS THIS SO HARD?!” she screamed out in her room. She already had so little to go on—and she couldn’t get any further in her endeavors. Why?! ”What am I missing—What am I doing wrong?!”
HERO TRAINING ORIGINS
. . .Nada.
HERO TRAINING SCHOOL--IMAGES
. . .Fruitless.
SIDEKICK BOARDING SCHOOL--IMAGES
. . .Wr—Wait, what was this?

Her eyes narrowed at the pictures that showed up. She didn’t know why it caught her eye…but she simply noticed it. A lot of the pictures thus far had featured the famous trio, The Captain, Phoenix, and Binary…Which was understandable, since her search included ‘heroes’. But this particular search seemed to focus on these 3 a rather unusual amount…
”Maybe I’m getting closer? Lets try…”
SIDEKICK ACADEMY LOG-IN

At that moment, the laptop made a rather peculiar noise—a sort of smooth humming that was unlike any machine of this age! The screen went blank, white, and the internet and Goodies Search was replaced by an image of a Dial Phone. Under that, a place to enter…something?
Words suddenly appeared on the screen, right above that enter space:
Enter Your Intent

”. . .The hell does that mean?” Clowrey grumbled to herself, deciding to put in something random.
‘Become a Hero’
…Intent, Not ******** you too.” The young teen bite her lower lip, staring harder at the screen as though that would help her come up with a solution. Enter her…intent? Was this like some SmartBot AI program? She entered in some other things, but the reply was always the same. Still, she went 3 weeks at this…she couldn’t just give up now, right?
. . .‘To be strong enough to find the truth.’
…Intent, Accepted

Hook Up To A Printer Now.
What now?

Clowrey stumbled into her brother’s room, glad to see he wasn’t in. Clumsily and hastily, she attached the Printer wire to the laptop to see what would come out now. She waited impatiently for the old clunker to print out what looked like an application…? She looked over the pages, noting a special ‘address’(marked as it didn’t list a street name or number) came with it. Busy with that, Clowrey didn’t see another message come up on the screen:
Thank You. Your Computer Will Not Be Able To Come To This Page Anymore.
Good Day.

The laptop started to fizz and smoke just the slightest, as the screen came back to it’s Goodies page. Noticing how it was suddenly smoke, the girl let out a yelp and dropped the poor machine on the ground. The door opened and her brother walked in…

”CLOWREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEY!”

 

[Souru]

_
_

±

Quote:

You are walking down a bridge. The weather is balmy and the skies clear. Surrounding you is the splendor of mother nature, with leafy green forests, arrays of flowers, and the occassional deer and squirrels. Below the bridge, a fast river torrent flows. Where is this and how you got here, you have no idea. Or maybe you do, but you've forgotten how...?

A scream reaches your ears, a cry for help! You turn towards your left, and see none other than your father, struggling to stay afloat in the water by grabbing on to a flimsy root near the river bank. Before you can decide what your next course of action should be, another panicked shout grabs your attention. You turn to your right, and you see your brother, grabbing onto a rock for dear life as the strong current threatens to sweep him away.

By your estimates, the currents are far too strong for you to save both your father and brother one after the other. It is only a matter of minutes before the flimsy roots give way, and your brother's grip on the rock is weakening alarmingly fast. What will you do now?

((OOC: This is NOT REAL. You can consider this scenario a dream, or a virtual reality thingy that Binary is testing out, whatever floats your boat (LOL PUN INTENDED). Clow however, MUST come to a decision within the scenario. Do NOT cop out by saying oh, the dream ended before she could decide. The dream must come to a conclusion before she can "wake up". Whether she manages to save one or both or none, or some other strange outcome you can think of, is entirely up to you.

Please remember to do up your response as a journal post. Have fun!))

¤ⓢⓔⓐⓡ©ⓗⓘⓝⓖ
ⓣⓗⓔ ⓑⓔⓖⓘⓝⓝⓘⓝⓖ ⓞⓕ ⓣⓗⓔ ⓙⓞⓤⓡⓝⓔⓨ
-Growth Quest-____

It wasn't fair.

When Binary said she had to make hard choices in life, she understood what it could entail. That wanting to help people had its consequences just like everything else...There wasn't anything in this world that didn't have it's ups and downs, and sometimes you just had to go through with your decision.

But this wasn't fair.

Even if they weren't real, how could Binary use her brother and father's image this way?

It wasn't fair!

But there was no time to think about that now. For both Clowrey and her family, time was running out and she had to take action. If she couldn't save one and come back for the other...then she would just have to save them both at the same time! She wrapped one hand around one of the thick, steel rails of the bridge and her hazy smoke came rushing out at her command. Like a rope, it wrapped around the rail and Clowrey's eyes came to the river...Biting her lower lip, Clowrey leapt into the raging currents and let herself be dragged down the few feet to where her father was. All the while, she was throwing out more and more smoke from her hand, elongating the 'rope'.

She just had to keep holding on...That was all. Ignore the pounding of the water ramming itself against her chest, threatening to make her lose her breath and her concentration. "Hold on to me!" she called to her large-framed father. Ugh, now what...? He couldn't hang onto her for much longer and her brother would lose his grip soo--Oops. I meant now.

She could hear her brother shouting out up river, as his grip on the boulder was released and he came rushing down. 'Damn!' she thought to herself, reaching out to grab her brother just before he was washed past her and dad. 'This is happening too fast...! And I can't swim up to the river bank like ******** ********! What do I do...?! This current is too strong!' Clowrey thought in a panic. Her mind's wheels were reeling like mad--she could feel the metaphorical smoke coming out of her ears! She wasn't strong enough to hang on for much longer, and her dad and brother had less time but...She had to do something!

With both hands she gripped onto the smoke rope...She couldn't use the rope to climb back to the bridge either. The current was just too strong...
. . .The current was just too strong! That's it--'So I have to stop it!' It was like a lightbulb was about to light up in her head. And as her eyes trailed up to the bridge, that lightbulb BURSTED with electricity. From the rope already in place, she pulled out more smoke and pushed the sliver into a loose crack. Then with more smoke, she tried to expand the the crack until the bridge would burst and come crumbling down! She just had to work quicker then the current was stronger...Which was getting a little hard. 'Its only seconds...So please, just a little more!'
The bridge started to crumble as the smoke pushed outwards more and more. Just a little more smoke, just a little more pressure...!

And then it happened at last. The bridge broke a part and the pieces came falling down into the river, in the way of the current. The power of the river started to slow on their side until the waters were just calm enough to get out. Before the current's power piled on the bridge pieces, the three got out.

Clowrey, feeling worn physically and mentally, let out a heavy sigh as she felt the 'ground' beneath her body. She laid sprawled out. Her father and brother were saved.
"...I DID IT!" she screamed out, punching a fist into the air .

 

[Souru]

_
_

±

¤ⓖⓞⓞⓓ ⓑⓨⓔ
ⓘ ⓢⓣⓐⓝⓓ ⓞⓝ ⓜⓨ ⓞⓦⓝ ⓝⓞⓦ
-Solo-____
"I HATE YOU!"

She hadn't wanted those to be her last words to him...She wished she could take it back.
...She wished he wasn't gone.

Clowrey Eir, having just become a Sidekick and returned from a mission completed, stood at the edge of the beach where water met sand on the academy's island. She was at the farthest edges of the school, away from prying eyes, where she could stand alone underneath the full moon which almost shone with a saddening dullness on the waters. She was...alone.

This would be a normal thing, for anybody else, when you deliberately go somewhere that no one would be at...But it was almost a foreign situation for her. Since that fateful day when she was 13, with the witch and the...deal, Clowrey had never been alone. No, she always had Corduroy with her--Always be her side, whispering in her mind, laughing and chiding with her. Corduroy was always there, visible only to her...for her.

But now she was alone.

Clowrey clutched a small paper and wood ship she had fashion not 30 minutes ago. The sail was shaped into a box--A paper lantern with a single, small candle waiting to be lit inside. The paper she had used had writing on it...Traditional Tasean Prayers for the dead.

"I hate you! I wish I had just died that day!"

She shut her eyes, lips pulled into a thin line as she tried to keep calm. Her shoulders were shaking.

She hadn't meant it...! She wished she could have told him that! "Corduroy...I'm so sorry..."

For nearly 4 long years, she had thought Corduroy to be her friend. A spirit twisted into a parasitic demon, but he was...her friend. He was the reason she was still alive, and the reason she had her powers...the reason she kept sane for the first few months since the incident. But on her first solo mission as a sidekick she...everything she believed in was questioned. She instinctively rubbed her shoulder, where her scar started, and was careful to keep the ship gingerly held in her other hand...She began to think back to today...

The mission was suppose to have been simple--take down a wayward voodoo nutcase before he made skeletons do the macarena in the town square or...something. But of course, something went wrong and she, the shadow man, and Corduroy fell into a dark inbetween state. It had all been an accident, but upon seeing Corduroy, his ghostly ways becoming unhidden in this place, the shadow man acted upon his opportunistic instincts.

She didn't want to believe it at first, but the truth was undeniable.

The reason she had this nasty scar, the reason she could only taste ash, the reason she almost DIED years ago, the reason she still had nightmares of the event...it had all been Corduroy's fault. It had all been his plan...

He was once human, too, and humans had some nasty secrets and thoughts...and they would only intensify as ghosts. He had once failed to protect his little sister, many centuries ago, and had never recovered from his feelings of failure and despair. He had come upon a Mundang, whose mind he soon twisted into one of crazed paranoia and acts of violence all aimed at one person--Clowrey Eir, a young cheerful girl at the age of 13. For one reason or another, Clowrey reminded him of the little sister that he watched die in front of his eyes, and became obsessed. He whispered constantly to the mundang, now turned witch, that this little girl would kill her one day...'Take her, take her when no one's looking!' he hissed, 'kidnap her before she kills you!'

Watching her lay on the table, strapped with no way to escape, Corduroy watched intently as the witch performed some ritual he didn't care to wonder about. He watched the girl's hair get hastily cut off with a black blade, and watched as that same blade cut deep into the girl's flesh...from shoulder and down to her hip. Everything was red. Just one more stab, and Corduroy would have his 'sister' back...
...The girl screamed and wept, but she didn't plead for her life. No, the girl kept obnoxiously asking 'why' and other such nonsense. Something about 'justice' and 'morals' and...and 'truth'. All of it was idiotic...

Why did he listen then? This wasn't even his sister--She wasn't anything like his little sister after all.

He stopped the witch, just before she made that final stab and made her turn the blade onto herself. He was revealed to young Clowrey, and the rest...was history. Not that Clowrey ever knew the origin to the story.
She did now, though.

"I hate you!" she heard the words in her head again. It was deafening...None of what happened was 'fate', and only a muddied misunderstanding. Why did human emotion have to blur and gray everything it touched...? Why did it have to take her away from her happy life, turn her pale and wretched?
...Why did Corduroy have to go away?

Those last few moments were blurry to her, but she remembered enough--She was incapacitated, crippled by anger and sadness. There was nothing COrduroy could have said that could have made her forgive him...There was nothing else he could do, but when the Shadow man turned to place another spell on them...he struck out. Next thing she knew was that there was a bright light, and the battle was won as the Shadow man fell unconscious from weariness...and she was already in the school's infirmary when she woke up to hear it.

She had called out to Corduroy...but he never answered her. He wasn't there anymore.

What could a spirit hope to do against someone who controlled them? COrduroy had given the rest of his lingering life on this plane to protect her, and now he was gone.

She couldn't tell him she was sorry.

Now Clowrey stood in the night, at teh edge of the ocean wave with ship in hand. This was the only thing she could do now.
She laid the ship in the water carefully, and lit the candle.

"I didn't think you would do this for me." Clowrey looked up in shock--That voice! She had expected to see the shadowed silhouette she had come to know as 'Corduroy', but instead there floated a young man dressed in old Tasean attire. There was no mistaking it, however. "You..."

"Yeah...This is what I use to look like, when I was human. And, well, alive.
...I didn't think you'd would send me away like this," he smiled sadly, 'I thought you hated me...' Clowrey bit her lip, desperate to hold back tears; she couldn't say a thing lest she would begin to bawl.

"Thanks for the ship, Clowrey. And...I'm sorry I lied to you, and kept it hidden. But if I were able to be selfish a little while longer, despite the case, I'm glad to have met you. You are absolutely nothing like my little sister...but you are still very special, and I am glad I got to watch over you like a brother." Why couldn't she say anything...?!

Before she realized it, she had let go of the little ship and it was already floating away! Panicking, she tried to push through the water and rush after it. Not yet! Don't leave yet--"W-wait! Your name! What's your real name?!" she shouted, the ship getting father away from her.
"My name? It's...I remember it's 'Toni'."
"Toni...Toni! I'm glad I met you too, okay?! S-So dont' worry about me from now on...! Toni!" She watched his see-through form sail farther and farther away, unable to hear what he shouted back. But he waved...And she waved as well. The ship was almost out of sight now...But she could have sworn she saw the form of a little girl appear, and hug Toni, just before it disappeared...

The next morning, she decided to make a call:
">>Dad? Hi, it's me...C-can you put Big Brother on the phone for a moment? Thanks...

...Hey, bro. Uhm, I know this it out of the blue but...I love you.<<"