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 Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 11:00 am
Clerise didn't often dream of her alternate self. Truth be told, they were few and far between, and she considered herself lucky because of it.
But today was not a lucky day. She jolted awake with a hiss, nails biting into her palms, and a quick glance at the bedside clock revealed to her that it was too damn early to be awake. most Life techs hadn't even started brewing their coffee for ******** sake. She closed her eyes, but the memory of the dream turned her stomach worse than any monster she'd faced thus far. It had been her face, her features, her eyes-- and they had looked upon her and judged her unworthy.
Disentangling herself from Clarice and kissing her shoulder, Clerise quietly dressed and left for the labs. Once she was out of the dorm area, she broke into a run. Adrenaline buzzed beneath her skin, ideas flying through her mind-- she wanted to think about anything outside of self-reflection. Introspection was a dangerous place to be, these days, and the solitude of Antarctica hadn't helped. Balthazar curled around her psyche, filling in the delicate gaps with his warmth.
It wasn't perfect, but it was good enough for her. Her weapon thrummed with approval, his pocketwatch form thrumming at her breastbone.
She decided that it was time to experiment, while the thoughts were fresh in her mind. And so, Clerise did the only logical thing.
She kicked open the door to the nearest lab, feral excitement on her face and--
"Who the ******** are you, scruffles?"
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 11:13 am
He was a ******** Death spy ninja. Well, technically a Jedi Death ninja spy, but why on earth were they even called Death spies, wouldn't that be like, that he was spying on the Death division (which maybe he was, and just didn't know he had been programmed to be a traitor or something), and not that he was spying for the Death division?
Technically, Mark wasn't doing either of the above, but those were technicalities, like the current two Runic incubation systems he was borrowing permanently from the Life labs since his last two had gone up in smoke and flames thanks to a small mishap. Small. When one strove to achieve greatness, setbacks sometimes happened.
So here he was, in one of the auxiliary unlocked Life labs Death spying it up, two Runic incubation systems (used to activate Runes and make sure the patterns actually worked in the proper given sequences) in both arms when-
- To be fair he had no clue who she was. She was an entirely unfamiliar face which meant she had joined Life prior to his exile - entirely unfair by the way, people just didn't respect pure genius these days - which meant he might be technically out of the danger zone. Mark was onto you Clarice and your button to alert the Life labs of his awesomeness, he was onto you.
"Uh," the Death assistant began, intelligently, "hi." It was a sort of long, drawn out hi sort of in a way that suggested that he had no clue what he was supposed to be doing in this situation or if he was in trouble quite yet. Mark licked his lips. "Yes, don't mind me I'm just like uh, inspecting the lab equipment. Routine stuff, you know." It was to be noted as part of his Death spy setup that he was wearing a nondescript Life lab tech coat.
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 11:28 am
Clerise and Mark were, fortunately for their circumstances, completely oblivious to how their fates were tied. Well, that's dramatic. More like Clerise didn't realise that THIS was the troubling guy, and Mark didn't understand that Clarice had a girlfriend. A not girlfriend. A girlfriend like figure, without the title. Either way, it meant that this encounter was completely and utterly uncomplicated. "Hi," the redhead replied, blinking slowly at him, one eyebrow slowly raising as Scruffles slowly struggled to find words. "You been in here all night or some s**t?" She walked towards his equipment, tapping one of the devices with a red nail. "You realise it's, like, four AM, right?" She poked the device again, scrambling back a bit when a cylinder almost tipped over and started glowing ominously. "Huh. This isn't the equipment I was expecting. For one, it like. ...Actually works." Unbeknownst to her, perhaps works was not the best descriptor. "There's no way this is routine stuff, I've been in here before." She glanced down at the hems of his coat, gauging his seniority. Which. Huh. Was missing. Well, better safe than sorry. Maybe his main coat was destroyed by a lab experiment-- this s**t seemed precarious enough. "I don't know you, so either you're a hermit who's stayed in here for months-- which I'd believe given the size of that five o clock shadow, or I'm really ******** oblivious. Huh. Well, I'm Clerise, and what happens if I do this--" She reacheddd over to change a dial--
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 12:18 pm
Wait? How did she know? "To be fair, I wasn't here all night. I spent most of it doing those stupid gm applications for the uh- ah- the research, the Runic research. Research of the Runic type yes, always developing those Runic things."
And speaking of Runic things-
-"No touchie!" Mark quickly took a step back from Clerise, holding them at arms length away. "This is- this is important stuff going on there. Important stuff. I might have found the secret to solving the greatest problem on Deus and your grubby hands will ruin everything. Everything. There is- there is greatness at work here, if you even know what that like, means and stuff."
The Death assistant sort of looked rabid.
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 1:45 pm
"I love runic s**t. You know, Dwight is always talking about some stuff, even if a/v is his, you know, his thing, right?" Thing was accompanied by air quotes. "But he has some runic things he's shown me, I've wanted to do weapon wo-" Clerise blinked again as Mark flash stepped away, looking like a mad scientist in his prime. Or some sort of rabies-infested badger. Or both. Scratch that: definitely both. "Oh don't be such a p***y. Runic s**t is delicate no matter what, me poking at it a little isn't going to, you know, make it explode." She brushed off various papers to make some space, not watching as they fluttered to the floor, and hopped up onto the counter. "I hope, anyway. Right?" Well if they exploded, she would at least know why. "What IS the greatest problem on Deus? Is it Caelius? Is it whiny children? Is it horsemen? Is it minipets? Is it rations? Is it insanity?" This continued for a few more minutes. Clerise also looked sort of rabid: but mostly just insanely curious. She tapped her fingers against the counter, resisting the urge to touch more buttons and dials. "Come on! Spit it out! I wanna know what it does. I promise I won't tell anyone. Scout's honour!"
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 2:12 pm
Mark, still holding his objects far far away, gave Clerise a slightly less dubious look. Saying Dwight's name had somehow slightly placated him. Slightly.
"The greatest problem," he finally relinquished, "is boredom. It's that Hunters had to spend all their hard earn time doing nothing, it is that we have all these like, boobies, and babes and like, unjustifiably angry people, and they have nothing to do other than wail on people like me." He sniffled. "This here, this is entertainment. I'm like making magic happen here okay."
Mark secretly took another step back. "Pink promise swear to me, your Jedi master if you want to be a part of this greatness, okay. Once you step into the fellowship of like, the secret Jedi Avengers force, you can't go back. Classified information. Secrets. Danger and like spies and stuff."
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Posted: Wed May 29, 2013 4:34 pm
"I hear that," Clerise acknowledged. "There's so much ******** infighting here, it's ridiculous. More like a preschool instead of a military organisation." She made a face, folding her arms and hunching her shoulders. "Honestly, it's like there's nothing better to do that be-" He said the word entertainment. He said the word magic. Hunching forward with a conspiratorial grin, Clerise simply raised her left hand and extended the pinky. She didn't know what a Jedi was, but she knew what a pinky swear meant. What was the worst that could happen? For all she knew, this guy was just some crazy ******** born and raised in the labs. For all she knew, this guy was working on an experimental drug. Who knew? It held the potential to be existing, and in a probably non-lethal way. "I swear to the Jed-Eye Master that I desire greatness. Special agent Clerise Wilson, reporting for duty. Seriously. I'll shake on it." Clerise held up her right hand, to prove she wasn't crossing her fingers with her other hand.
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Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 1:35 am
After some extremely hefty examination, Mark finally lowered his goodies, unsealing the device to reveal inside the metallic container a series of runes etched onto flat metal coin-like objects. "Metal conducts better than rock," he explained, pulling each one out. Each coin had a different rune. "So now that you are sworn to secrecy, you can't like, back out and stuff. You swore and that's totally a vow. Bro code."
He held in one open palm a small scattering of coins. "These are for you to test out, you are like, a Life hunter right so I don't need to give you the stupid lab safety demonstration, the like, in case of fire, exit in a safe and orderly fashion, and don't mix these with other runes because explosions will like happen and they will be super explodey and your head will fall off or something."
A pause. Mark was possibly considering what else it meant to be 'super explodey'. "So, it only takes one per person, you just need to slip it into their pocket or have them holding it, make sure you peel off the sticker seal preventing the rune from you know, affecting you, and observe results! Record on this notepad here and don't forget to say which rune and stuff."
Clarice was handed a (lab borrowed) notepad clipboard and pen.
Mark paused, suddenly all suspicion. "And no telling Dwight alright, last time we did this he totally told on me and that's like way not cool."
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Posted: Thu May 30, 2013 6:45 pm
Clerise grinned wide, like a shark in sight of fresh chum.
"Listen, Jed." She'd forgotten the second syllable in "Jedi" in her excitement-- could you blame her? "I don't know what these do, or what they could do, or anything about them. But he'd basically given her full permissions to drug her fellow hunters for entertainment purposes.
Her arm itched where the cuff had been.
"I don't know, I'm not the stealthiest b***h. That seems like a Death thing, doesn't it?" Clerise winked at the lab tech, unaware of the irony. "I think we need to dump everything together, into a lot of liquid, to avoid any possibility of this 'super explodey' business. Everybody in this joint drinks coffee. We should put it in that.
She held out her pinky finger with one hand, taking the clipboard with the other. "Fine, I won't tell Dwight."
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