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 Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 3:22 pm
Thompson had sung praise about Moon, enough to make Leslie curious about what their work entailed. He'd avoided most duties for it before, since it seemed like work, which was his anathema. In retrospect, Leslie wished he'd stuck to his guns on this. He stared at what used to be some sort of convenience store, which used to be a house of some sort. This s**t had layers of dilapidated written all over it. At least they didn't have to make too much progress today. It just said to clear the external lot, which meant hauling. With gloves on, Leslie gritted his teeth and started dragging a log towards the road, muttering under his breath the whole time.
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Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 3:35 pm
"Do you want help with that?" Noah pulled his gloves on as he headed toward the lot. This wasn't on his usual duty list, but he didn't mind it much; in fact, he was kind of glad to get out of the labs building today, as two of the more senior techs in his section were apparently having some kind of a fight, and the atmosphere had been icy cold and deeply uncomfortable. Getting out into the sun and away from the awkwardness was kind of nice.
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Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 3:47 pm
Leslie looked up at the guy, squinting in suspicion. Firstly, he was too tall, and Leslie didn't trust any ******** that towered over him. Which was most people. Secondly, he looked friendly, and that was the worse part. "Go ******** yourself," Leslie said, and jerked his head in the direct of lot 958. "Go grab some s**t I don't already have under control, if you're gonna. You my duty partner today or what?"
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Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 3:52 pm
Noah's hopeful smile wilted and slid off entirely. "Okay. I, yeah, I got assigned ..." He trailed off and scooted over toward the lot, his head tucked down, his entire posture suggesting a puppy that had just been kicked. "I'm Noah," he offered tentatively.
There was a lot of junk. He picked something that looked like it had once been a chair of some sort, wrestled it up and out of the nest of weeds it had been resting in, and started lugging it toward the road. "Where, um, do you know where they want us to put the stuff?"
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Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 8:59 pm
Good. If everyone could be half as miserable as he was, it'd be a good ******** day. (Too bad for Noah that Leslie had experience when it came to kicking puppies.) "Whatever," he said, rolling his eyes with an intensity that rivalled the sun's. "There's a scrapyard a bit away, but I'm just clearing the lot first before I drag it all the ******** way to timbuk <******** tu." Leslie dropped the log, rolling his neck to crack it before storming past Noah to the next bit of debris, a fallen crossbeam. The name didn't even get an acknowledgement.
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Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 8:24 am
"Just to the road first, okay," Noah half-asked, and then fell into a meek, subdued silence. He didn't know what he'd done to piss the other boy off. Had he said something wrong? He started pulling a tangled curtain of vines off a pile of debris, only half paying attention to the feeling of tendrils and aerial roots ripping away, which would have been satisfying at any other time. He reviewed his part of the truncated conversation in his head. Had it been the offer of help that offended the shorter boy? It must have been. Maybe he should apologize, except the guy was already mad, so maybe that would make it worse. He could just help. That wouldn't make the guy any madder, Noah hoped. He cleared away the clinging vine, tossing the mats of vegetation into a corner of the lot that just had weeds in it, and started picking up the fallen jumble of boards, bricks, and unidentified other construction materials. From time to time he shot a nervous, half-guilty glance at his duty partner. He wasn't sure if he could ask for a name. Maybe if he didn't find out he could look at the schedule later so he'd know next time he ran into him.
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Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 11:35 pm
"Isn't that what I ******** said? Jesus." It wasn't, but that was besides the point, to him. Leslie existed in a furious ball of self-hatred and undeserved self-pity, and a sniveling little b***h didn't make him feel any better unless that b***h was as miserable as he was. (A week under someone else's thumb in a way he couldn't escape, a hand skating up his side with a heat unforgettable, a heavy Southern drawl in his ear, not at all comforting--) "You look like this dog I had," Leslie said, finally, hacking away ineffectively at a vine with a scowl. " I kicked it." Half truths. They were all he had.
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Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 4:31 am
It had only sort of been what he said, but Noah ducked his head meekly and accepted the rebuke. He wrestled what looked like it had once been an appliance out of a snarl of grass, thought about asking for a hand, reconsidered. He could drag it. He couldn't pick it up or anything, but he'd noticed over time that he'd been getting stronger than he should be able to, even with the regular workout regimen he'd put himself on. IT'S ME, Laz said, satisfied. I'M DOING THAT. I'M HELPING.Thanks. It wasn't even sarcastic. Noah dragged the wrecked appliance over to the slowly growing pile of junk in the road, then jumped as the other boy spoke again. He turned to give the smaller guy an incredulous, wounded look. "Why would you do that?" he asked, puzzled and shocked.
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Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 2:04 pm
"Because it looked pitiful as ******** was, in its entirety, not the whole truth. He had kicked a few dogs in his way that wouldn't ******** off, but they'd been mangy and hungry strays, and he'd been hungrier. But the dog that he'd smacked for its own good was something else, sent off to leave in hopes that the abused thing wouldn't return for much worse at the hands of his family, much more than Leslie could dole out himself. Leslie, glove on, yanked a large shard of glass out of a rotted trunk, holding it up to the sun to inspect it. In an other world, he would have kept it to hone it, to tie a shirt around its handle and hide it under his bed. But that world was a long, long way away from this one. Instead, he chucked it into a black plastic bag at his feet, moving on. The lot didn't have as much overgrowth as some others, which he was pretty thankful for. A metal shelving unit was next, light enough for him to carry, but a bit too long to balance. Not that he was about to admit it. Instead, he slowly wobbled to the road, shelf in arms. So slowly.
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Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 2:45 pm
"But -- " Noah caught himself, shut his mouth, but the scowl didn't quite go away. He resumed picking things up. The cringing edge to every move he made had blunted considerably. He straightened from prying a bent piece of metal debris out of the dirt a minute later and spotted the other boy's wobbling, slow course. He could help, he thought. The guy wouldn't appreciate it. The guy didn't deserve it. He was an a*****e, and Noah didn't know why he cared about that guy's opinion anyway, and it was going to take him forever to carry that shelf to the road alone. Noah caught up with a few long steps and supported the other end of the shelf without a word.
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Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 2:52 pm
"I had it," Leslie said, lamely, but made no move to shove away. He guessed that this guy could help, even if he was an a*****e on principle for being so <******** tall. Without any thanks or warning, he dumped his weight of the debris on the road, abrupt. He gave a critical once over to the kid-- and he seemed like a kid, even more than himself-- and snorted. "They put a meek b***h like you in the experiment division? You gonna be the guinea pig for the tests?"
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Posted: Mon Aug 18, 2014 3:01 pm
"Sure," Noah agreed, and dumped his end of the shelf when the shorter guy did. The critical eyeball seemed to give him enough courage to return the searching look, and he crossed his arms defensively at the questions. "I'm learning to carve runes," he said huffily, "and doing tests on the effects of Fear on plant life." He was also frequently an errand or message boy or the poor sucker scrubbing and sanitizing messes, but he didn't feel a need to share that information.
The other guy wasn't wearing his coat, so Noah couldn't throw back a similar easy dig, but ... "You can't be Sun or Moon, and I know you're not a Lifer, so what, Mist? Because I can't see you doing the secrets and spy stuff thing."
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2014 7:09 pm
Leslie had no desire to share that he was just some running boy, too. "Great," Leslie snipped, "******** rocks you can find at the bottom of the ocean." Clearly he didn't understand the extent that runic technology powered the island. He'd fished up a dozen runes from the ocean and that had been the end of it. "Oh ******** youuu, I could be anything i ******** wanted, c**t. But uhhh, yeah. Mist is the ******** thing I'm in. ******** if I know why."
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Posted: Wed Aug 20, 2014 9:55 am
"Rocks that run everything that needs power," Noah snapped back, offended. "And do lots of other things." Not that he could carve more than Uruz right now, but that also wasn't something he was admitting.
He'd been right about Mist, hah. "Maybe because you're not good at anything," he suggested, then stopped, because that had come out wrong but he didn't know how to phrase it any better.
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Posted: Sat Aug 23, 2014 4:28 pm
Leslie had a talent for making nice people mean then pitying himself for it later, weighed down by resentment and bitterness that people learn to strike back when bitten. "Whatever, ********, I'm sure you're just ******** with me. Rocks are just...rocks." Noah's words struck a little too close for home, and the urge to summon his weapon and bludgeon Noah in the face with Aleria, crystal end first, was nearly overwhelming. He wasn't clever enough to do much else, save for a glare, a snarl, and a: "Oh, <******** you."
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