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 Posted: Thu Nov 15, 2012 3:05 pm
The infirmary smelled of antiseptic, chlorine, and, for some odd reason, mint. Gale wasn't about to ask why that was, or when he was even getting out, since every time he did, all he got were cryptic answers of not yet and when your hand heals and sometime later; which were, demonstratively, not very helpful whatsoever. He'd tried sneaking out, but that had gone rather abysmally, since he'd been caught almost immediately, dragged back, and thrown (literally) back into his bed.
"I've already been here a day, I don't NEED to stay another!" he bellowed after the hunter on duty, who waved a hand carelessly, said something about staying at least a week, probably, and it hasn't even been a full day, don't even try that, and disappeared back into the office. Glowering at his back, Gale leaned against his pillows and tried not to sulk.
His hand ached. He still hadn't looked at it, beneath the multiple layers of white bandages that were wrapped around his palm, fingers, and part of his wrist, mostly because he wasn't quite sure he wanted to know what it had become.
No thanks to Caelius.
<< He does love to be dramatic. >>
He's an arse.
<< That too. >>
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Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 12:25 am
A very familiar and slightly dramatic groan came from the bed next to Gale's, seperated only by a thin lair of curtain. There were also, notably, electronic beeping noises from that exact position. A hand from that general direction pulled out, gesturing towards the Hunter examining Gale.
"Excellent timing! I totally asked for a power extension cord, and like, I didn't even get one yet. And where is my remote control, this tv is totally busted, I thought I asked for a sexy nurse too."
Said Hunter on duty took one look at the other side of the curtain, rolled their eyes, and abandoned both patients in the room.
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Posted: Fri Nov 16, 2012 4:09 pm
The voice beside him was literally the last (beside's Caelius's) that Gale wanted to hear right at the current moment. He struggled to sit up, feeling dizzy and disoriented, reached over, and wrenched the hangings back with his good hand.
"Mark," snapped Gale, which was basically the extent of his own strength, since he collapsed back down against his pillows, breathing heavily and feeling utterly pathetic. He rolled over onto his side and glowered at the Division Assistant.
"I hope you realize you almost got me killed."
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Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 1:32 am
The beeping stopped just as one hand grabbed the curtains, parting them to reveal -
-A crumpled, disshelveled mummy monster that was probably just Mark covered in bandages. Probably. "What, no way!" Probably-Mark denied, voice taking on that whining, denying tone. "For the record, it was totally your fault."
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Posted: Sat Nov 17, 2012 11:46 am
The Mark-thing received a glower.
"My fault?" said Gale. "My fault? I defended your sorry arse against His Highness Caelius and got bloody stabbed for it. Next time I'll just let him kill you."
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Posted: Sun Nov 18, 2012 11:56 pm
Mummy-Mark squinted at Gale from behind his bandages. "Yeah well like, if you had already trained an army of killer dolphins, this would have never happened. This was sooooooo avoidable." He groaned, leaning back against his pillow and slight army of salvaged equipment. Mark nervously was fiddling with two absolutely broken pieces of what might have been a quarter of a computer motherboard, fingers shaking erratically. "I," he sniffled, "Could have totally handled it, it's all about technique man, technique, kung-fu, fist of the tiger..."
The rambling drifted off to various butchered phrases from a selection of B-rated martial arts movies before Mark finally gave up on what he was working on, settlig instead to lean back and fold his fingers over his chest, twiddling his thumbs.
Silence. Welcome to the room of socially stunted people.
"So..." Mark finally tried, antsy, "Am I still fired?"
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Posted: Mon Nov 19, 2012 10:33 am
"I would have sicced the killer dolphins on you myself," Gale muttered darkly.
But he trailed off into silence, both of them sitting there (stupidly), Mark playing with...whatever it was that he had in his hands, Gale twisting the sheets around with his good hand.
"...I think we're both fired," he answered gloomily, after a moment.
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Posted: Tue Nov 20, 2012 11:49 pm
"Um, no," Mark countered, "I would have already implanted within each dolphin a special sonar-specific device that would totally mind control them from doing any harm to their benevolent and awesome overlord." Mark was fiddling with possibly the Island's first prototype tablet screen, typing something madly onto the touch screen. He continued to type as he talked, the only thing on the screen a stream of white lines against black. "Besides he can't fire us, because-"
- There was a small blip of confirmation from the screen as Mark angled it over. "- Because I have this juicy bit of blackmail on him."
On the screen played a video of Mark flailing frantically as his lead pretty much grabbed him by the collar and threw him out for the ten-billionth time. "See? With this video, I can prove that our boss used horrifice violence and abuse on his co-workers, and that such acts are very, very wrong."
Insert sage nod.
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Posted: Wed Nov 21, 2012 6:32 pm
He thought about saying something to contradict this ridiculous theory, opened his mouth, and then shut it. Sometimes, Gale decided, things were best left unsaid.
A philosophy clearly not shared by Mark, as he spent the next minute fiddling with the video thing and said something about blackmail and abuse and wrong.
There was a long stare that followed the pronouncement of these words.
"Mark, who exactly would you...send that video to. The Council is dead, isn't Caelius in charge now."
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Posted: Fri Nov 23, 2012 12:12 am
"Oh, huh." Mark scratched his head and then gave Gale a snippy look, "Well, you don't have to be a smartass about it jeez."
He pulled open a second window, a string of endless lines running through it, the once-Death Assistant repeatedly hitting the same few prompts on the keyboard. "I could have sworn there was a loophole I put here, in case of emergency, you know, cuz all my precious babies are in here - aha!"
The screen suddenly shifted to a simple grey that read: user access granted. A clearance security initiated.
Mark gave Gale the gloat, half-muttering to himself, half to his tablet computer. "So, like, welcome to the slums, the information network slums I mean. I programmed this baby and half the refurbished database, so I could even blackmail people with sensitive information or I could do this."
Mark scrolled through several files: archives of deceased, 1999 project, existing logs, breeding project, until he got to one that said 'List of current Hunters as of 11/11/2012', hovered over Caelius's name and changed it to CAELIUS SUXX.
"Bet you're pretty impressed now," he prompted. Smug face.
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Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 7:05 pm
Gale resisted the very strong urge to roll his eyes, merely gave a sigh of frustration, and watched over Mark's shoulder as a series of numbers and letters moving rapidfire across the screen. He didn't understand a word of it, but apparently Mark did, because a second later he was typing nonsensical things in place of Caelius's name.
Gale was not about to ask how much trouble Mark would get in once Caelius found out who exactly was sullying the Caelius name.
"Yeah, yeah, totally impressed," said Gale, and this time he really did roll his eyes, grinding his teeth together. But somehow the fight had gone out of him; he had lost most of his energy to fight with Mark over silly things.
After a moment, he said, half out of curiosity, half out of a desire to end the awkward silence, "So what else is in that little computer thing of yours?"
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Posted: Sat Nov 24, 2012 9:18 pm
"Games up the wazoo man, games I'm telling you. FPS, RPG, Real Time RPG, Strategy, those new Social Games sort of click and farm games that people like so much which I don't really understand I mean it has a sort of passive appeal but I'm not the type of person who wants to check my phone every single fifteen minutes just to see how much virtual money I dropped..."
And Mark kept on going. And going. He was potentially the worst roommate ever.
.."I also keep all my high scores on here, because like, noone can actually beat them, I've done some pretty badass achievements too, I programmed myself this virtual treasure cache so when I open up voice commands and say like all official and stuff 'Hello I am Mark the Awesome' it'll totally display all my achievements in tiers, time it took me, and point amount, I mean I figure for these games if I farm 50K gold a day, then at least I'll be able to...."
And kept on going.
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Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 4:55 pm
Gale had lost most of the conversation already as it had clearly devolved into Markspeak.
"Mark," he said patiently - or maybe not, as there was a vein ticking in his temple that clearly indicated his impatience.
"So there's just games on it," said Gale flatly, and sighed. "Right."
And then, more to himself: "I asked. I knew I shouldn't have, but I asked."
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Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 5:20 pm
"... downloadable content is.. wait a second wait wait wait." Mark did his best to shuffle close to Gale, but considering both of them were lying on the bed (or kind of lying), and going nowhere anytime soon, he really did not have to worry too much, "Just games? Did you just say just games. Dude kid, I am the godfather of the information highway on this Island, do you know who you're talking to?"
Apparently, since Mark just gave away who apparently he was, then yes, in theory Gale knew who he was talking to.
To make a point the former assistant closed his ten-thousand game applications and redirected his computer back at the other. "Okay, look here. I'll explain this in terms even peons like you can understand," He sniffled, turning his head up just a bit in disdain, "You see this big shiny icon? That says 'logs'. Almost all Hunter activity, chronicled logs, mission reports, yada yada goes into the information database, which I am the godfather of once it has been filtered correctly. Reports of current events, of deceased Hunters, of past missions, you name it. Right now it's a little ahem under construction because a Certain Somebody smashed one of my servers, but you see this other big shiny icon? That's all the immediately recovered backup reports. Reports of all incidents, of insanity, past mission, bits and pieces of current events, whatever I could recover, all in here. In fact..."
Mark gave Gale a sly look as he double-clicked said folder. A stream of lines began running again, and this time, he narrated as it processed. "Backup access man, didn't have time for interface stuff so you'll have to deal, password is 'Mark is Awesome.' Once you get in, ignore the jumble, again, still working. Click on 'dir', backclick twice, and then 'Mission archive'. Scroll down." While most of the folders had mostly uninterersting names, including names of current trainees on board, the former Death assistant did hover over one specific file. Benjamin Summers.
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Posted: Sun Nov 25, 2012 6:07 pm
"The - what - excuse me - "
Gale's indignant spluttering obviously was not enough to convey just how exasperated he was with Mark at the current moment - or, as Mark called himself, the godfather of the information highway.
Whatever that meant.
<< You have to admit, he's kind of - >>
Irritating? Obnoxious? Ridiculous?
<< I was going to say amusing. >>
Not helping.
Though as Gale peered over Mark's shoulder, he could not help but be just a tad curious. If this thing held all of the logs of every hunter, as Mark had said, then that meant his own files were in there. He might be able to con him into revealing someth -
A name flashed in front of Gale's eyes.
"Stop!"
Heart beating against his chest, and realizing he'd accidentally said that out loud, Gale cleared his throat and tried to compose himself. Jinhai made a soft noise of understanding in his mind.
"Er," he said. "That, um...file. Benjamin Summers. Does it still...have anything in it?"
He didn't know why he was asking. He'd already (finally) come to accept Ben's death, and had moved on. But something about seeing the name again itched at his conscious, nagging at his thoughts.
"I mean," Gale attempted to clarify without sounding idiotic. "A great...ah...godfather of the information highway such as yourself would be able to, er, keep track of what's in even deceased files?"
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