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 Posted: Tue Jun 16, 2015 10:40 pm
The walk back from Caelius' office was spent, not necessarily in an awkward silence, but in a slightly tense one, because Gale wasn't entirely certain that he even knew what was going on in Ouroboros. But he also desperately needed to talk to Stormy about things, and it had been too long since they had had a quiet moment to talk.
His fingers squeezed hers gently as he led the way back up to their room, Gale reaching into his pocket for the key and unlocking the door, pushing it open. Fortunately, in all the chaos, their room had had little damage done to it; just some superficial messes that needed tidying and maybe a broken vase here and there.
"Home sweet home," he said with a sigh, and made his way to the couch, flopping down onto it and patting the space next to him for Stormy to sit. Gale's expression softened as he looked up at her.
"Caelius is still a big a piece of work as ever, isn't he?" he said with a quiet laugh.
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 8:30 pm
She didn't say anything on the walk home because too much needed to be said, too much had to be thought about and asked and digested. For the first time in a long time, she felt an itch to move that wasn't tied with cagey anxiety too many people gave her these days. Not simply move even, but to do something. Stormy wondered if she was approaching a manic state, or if she had simply forgotten what it felt like to want to be productive.
Failing to see Gale's invitation, she began to pace behind the coffee table. "Yeah," she said distractedly, combing a hand through her short hair, her gaze on the ground as she moved. "Start from the beginning. Review. Take your time." It didn't occur to her that she hadn't really specified what.
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Posted: Wed Jun 17, 2015 10:23 pm
He watched her pace, the lighthearted atmosphere slipping int o something more serious. Gale's fingers shifted absently along the couch cushions, tapping her and there, Jinhai's ring glowing a faint, pleasant gold on his index finger; a reassuring warmth against his skin.
"The beginning, well...I'm not entirely certain where that is, exactly," he said, after a moment's thought.
He considered Stormy, Tink rattling in her cage, a rasping scratching sound emanating from her throat. Gale's eyes flickered briefly towards her before they moved back to his girlfriend, and he settled himself more comfortably onto the couch, lips pressing together in thought.
"Which beginning?" he asked at last. "The Ouroboros, or the legacy? Both are interconnected, but they have different pasts at some point."
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Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 12:34 am
"Both?" Stormy frowned and then shook her head. "One at a time. Then Peter Pan again, if you think he's involved, and anything else you think might have even a small connection."
Absently, upon reaching the cage, she clicked it open and pooled Tink into her arms, stroking along the dragon's spine as she continued to pace. The minipet became the means of her attempts to remember affection, the effort to get over her awkwardness and approach Gale again. "Let's start with Ouroboros. My first encounter was..." She squinted, trying to remember. "The fake trials? I don't remember. Obviously you met them before that, though; you've got their mark."
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Posted: Thu Jun 18, 2015 10:26 am
Tink made a happy grumble in the back of her throat that might have been something akin to a purr, if dragon minipets could actually purr. Gale watched the two of them quietly for a few seconds, his eyes following the way that Stormy's fingers slid across Tink's spine and over her back. It was such a familiar gesture, and something in his heart clenched a little.
"I have the mark from an incident long ago," he said, his brain working sluggishly to try and put together the facts. Normally so attuned with everything to the point of over thinking things, he felt strangely unhelpful when it came to Ouroboros. "A few of us somehow managed to wind up at their camp. I remember Solia, and Lucky both being there, I think one or two others as well, I'd have to go back and look at the mission reports. That's where the brand comes from. They took our weapons from us, tried to tell us there was a better way of life than Deus, and then...something happened, Mark and Charlotte intervened and brought us back."
Gale rubbed at his brow.
"They've just been a thorn in Deus' side for a while now, is the general gist of what I know," he said, after a moment's thought. "The most recent encounter was the one about a week ago, at Opus Labs. A text was sent to my phone with coordinates and nothing else, and when I entered them into the portals, it sent me to a place called Opus Labs."
He shook his head slowly. "I'd never heard of them before, but it was an elaborate dinner party of sorts. Everyone was voting yes or no on something, I couldn't ask, and I had no idea what on earth it was for. There was a countdown to the end of voting, and once it ended, bars came down and everyone started trying to kill each other."
His ribs ached just thinking about. Gale ran a hand absently over them, lost in thought. "I ran into Lucky and Rep there, all three of us were just trying to make it out alive. Some git grabbed me and threw me into the bars, which hurt like bloody hell, but it bent them enough that I could get through. I saw Caelius on the other side, so I left Lucky and Rep to figure things out in the cage and went after Caelius."
A soft, dry snort escaped him, a bitter sound. "They weren't too happy about that. I doubt they'll ever forgive me. But it was the lesser of two evils. Either all three of us fought to the death, or I could try and figure out how to stop it."
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Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2015 2:00 am
Stormy frowned thoughtfully at the ground as she paced and stroked, pursing her lips occasionally. Tink would get less and less attention as the action became mechanical, a means of grounding her.
(What did they mean, a better way of life than Deus? Taking away weapons...She remembered the runics from the hallucination and wondered if that too had only been an illusion, or foreshadowing. Something to replace their forged weapons.)
"Anything else happen there?" And then, after that: "Tell me what you know about Charlotte again," she prompted him as she digested the rest. "Sam too, if she's connected." Their names kept popping up, at least, from what she remembered.
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Posted: Sat Jun 20, 2015 3:05 pm
"At the Ouroboros facility, you mean?" Gale asked, and shook his head slowly. "Not that I can recall, I'd have to look at the reports again since it was so long ago, my memories are a little fuzzy. As for what I know about Charlotte and Sam..."
He blew out a breath and tried to think.
"Sam was one of the Death assistants, I believe," said Gale, after a moment's pause. "She was there when we were all in the nightmare pods, forced into that Battle Royale. But she was killed there, Otto was with me, and that one other hunter, Lawrence I believe his name is? She died, and Otto took her weapon tablet, so there's no doubt that someone was killed that day."
His brow furrowed, his mind feeling sluggish still.
"But Charlotte was the Moon division leader, and she defected to Ouroboros, I think. She was there at Opus Labs, watching the whole thing. Someone else referred to her as Sam, which makes little sense, unless somehow she's connected, and it was Charlotte that died that day and Sam that survived, but it's all just..."
Gale made a noise of frustration. "It's all just a big confusing mess to untangle with those two."
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Posted: Mon Jun 22, 2015 7:19 pm
"Opus," she clarified for the first question. Interesting name at that. But Stormy paused her pacing and finally looked at Gale with a curious frown when she mentioned someone had called Charlotte Sam. And then her gaze narrowed. "What nightmare pods?"
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Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2015 11:52 am
He screwed up his face, trying to remember.
"During the Battle Royale trials, for lack of a better term for it," said Gale slowly, carefully. "There was a time when Otto and I were taken aside, away from everyone else. We were caught by the leader of Ouroboros, or at least, someone who called themselves 'the Judge.' He told Otto and me that we were both saved from death because we'd followed the rules. Charlotte tried to kill him; she had her weapon, but they dragged her out and took her to a different room and shot her in the head."
He winced at the memory, rubbing his temple. "They threatened to put her in what they called 'the nightmare chambers' again, but then killed her instead, or at least, I thought they had killed her. It was a little grotesque, like a movie, rather than an actual execution."
Gale shook his head slowly. "After that, Otto and I were taken to different room where they showed us all these pods, they looked like just regular pods, you know, the ones we wake up from when we come to the island. But they were called nightmare chambers, or nightmare pods, and they told it us it was where they stuck people to relive their fears over and over again. That's where everyone was, during those trials, in those pods. That was when Sam came and tried to bail us out, but I knew she was a traitor already. She was shot in the stomach and killed."
He exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding.
"There was a tablet, when Sam died. One of them died, but now I'm not sure if it was Charlotte or Sam."
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Posted: Tue Jun 23, 2015 10:11 pm
Maybe she lost a shade of color in her face. Maybe Stormy had always looked that ashen these days, and there was a hollow sorrow around her eyes sleep couldn't cure. Her gaze zeroed in on Gale's for a long moment; she wondered how much more was left, now, then, in the future. How much more before there was a breath of air. (Or a final gasp.)
As if in a spell, she glided around the table and finally sat next to him on the couch, still delegated to her own space, still minding Tink. "Tell me about Peter Pan again," she said quietly.
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Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 11:03 am
Her presence beside him was supposed to have been reassuring, but all he felt now was anxiety, because she was still separated from him, still keeping her space. His hand ached to reach out to hers, to feel the warmth of her fingers tangled in his, but Gale kept it to himself, his throat feeling dry.
(Her face was pale, too pale, worryingly ashen.)
He'd never lied to her. Sometimes his thoughts got mixed up inside of his head, his own pride and tendency towards overthinking leading him towards a chaotic mind, rather than the organized one he liked to portray. Stormy knew of Peter Pan, but it had been so long since that mission; over a year and a half since he'd been dragged unintentionally along with Otto. They both needed the memory to be refreshed.
"I found a map on the beach one day," said Gale softly. "I brought it to Caelius, hoping he'd be able to help me, but instead he took Otto and me to a mental institution, dropped us off. We were pulled into this...alternate world, for lack of a better word."
His thumb smoothed over Jinhai's ring, the dragon making soft sounds of reassurance inside of his head. "There was a giant hand that kept trying to kill us, we wound up with this group of children. They helped us out, I think they were called the Lost Boys. The hand, I think, was Peter Pan, trying to crush us."
He gave a little laugh, more out of habit than anything else.
"I remember waking up in the infirmary afterwards and the nurse on duty told us that we'd been in comas for six months, when really we'd just been unconscious for two days. You came and jailbroke me out of the infirmary."
It was where he'd gotten his teddy bear. Esperanza, Stormy had said to call her.
(" 'Esperanza's her name. Hope,' she added as she offered her back. 'It's always good to have some.' ")medigel added links for help because I had to do a bit of backreading to remember ksdlfsdlfjksdf WHAT IS MEMORY
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Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 3:51 pm
She nodded vaguely and gazed ahead, now touching Tink's spines. It didn't come back to her wholly (she didn't know if it was from faded memories or an unconscious effort to suppress anything too emotional, which she had been in the past), but the refresher was enough for the mission's sake. Hopefully. "And you didn't have any other encounter with the Lost Boys or Pan before now?" Stormy asked, seemingly too enclosed in her own world to notice Gale's silent anxiety. "What happened back there with the vines?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 4:08 pm
Gale's eyes had fallen towards Tink, who made a soft rumbling sound in the back of her throat, flicking her tail back and forth. Stormy was still staring ahead, lost in either thoughts or memories or silent contemplations, or a mixture of all three, he wasn't sure.
"No," he said, and shook his head. "I haven't heard or seen anything in between the incident with the mental institution and the recent outbreak."
Jinhai stirred softly in his thoughts. "The vines...Otto and I - " Why was it always the two of them? " - we were dragged onto the beach. There was a child, dressed in green. He told us that we could have the island back under one condition, and that was to give up one of our wishes."
He turned his arm over, pulling his sleeve up. The black hourglass was painted across Gale's forearm, small and innocuous at first glance.
"Otto gave his wish up before I could say anything," said Gale. "And the child took it, and the vines disappeared, and so did the child. We looked around and tried to figure out where to go and found another child, this one blonde, a girl. We woke her up, and she told us that in order to stop everyone from drowning themselves out of madness, we had to imagine a net. And we did, and...well, Otto being Otto meant that it was a net of pies," added Gale, with a slight exasperation to his voice. "And after that, we saw doors come out of her shadow, two doors, one for me, one for Otto, both in the shape of our weapons. When I went through, it gave me Jinhai back, and Otto got Tenya, and then the girl disappeared again."
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Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 4:51 pm
Stormy stilled not far into his narrative. Distantly she could absorb everything, not quickly but as fast as she had digested the rest of it, but one word had struck her. With the most clarify shown yet since the conversation began, she took his arm and examined the hourglass closely. (And as always there was that sinking feeling when she saw the accruement of marks: black streaks, scars, symbols. Others that had marked him long before she'd arrived. Reminders that they were never really their own anymore.) "What wishes?" she asked in a hushed voice, eying the black mark like it was the new most interesting thing in the room.
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Posted: Wed Jun 24, 2015 5:45 pm
He started a little at Stormy's touch on his arm, Tink giving a little protesting rattle that neither one of them accommodated.
"A while back, Oz gathered myself, Otto, Lucky, Shiloh, and Quinn to Mark's office. They asked us if anyone had touched anything recently, and I'm relatively certain that Otto had, but he didn't want to admit to it. We went through a portal and wound up in this...I don't even know what it was, really."
He leaned back against the couch, exhaling a breath.
"We had to...to solve this puzzle, look around to try and figure out where we were. Mark was no help, of course. Otto I think wound up being the one to figure things out, and once he did, we were separated, and we each went into a room and found ourselves with Death."
Gale's face screwed up as he tried to remember.
"He said that...that we would each get a wish, granted whenever we pleased, because he was the Legacy of Death, and therefore it had to revolve around it in some way. None of us used our wishes right then and there, so we were all marked."
He turned his head to look at Stormy now, his eyes taking in every feature of her ashen face.
"Otto gave his up to save the island. I haven't known what to use mine for, if I even should."medigel MORE LINKS wow I didn't even have that one logged GO ME sdlfk;s;f
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