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 Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 3:12 pm
 Just some kids playing in a heap of garbage.
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 3:19 pm
This was the right place... Right? Sascha checked the crumpled list of directions against the hand-drawn map. If he'd known he was heading this far out into the boondocks, he would have been more careful in taking notes. At the very least, with the prison being so close by, the roads were in relatively good shape. While living in Chittentown involved plenty of climbing, the last thing Sascha wanted was to follow some goat path up a sheer cliff in this weather.
Sascha rolled his shoulders under his jacket as he remembered the weather. It wasn't as bad as it could have been, being a mountain and all, but it was a hell of a lot nippier than the desert. Hell, there was frost collecting under the shadows of the rocks scattered about.
Not seeing many other options, Sascha continued to follow his map over the nearest slope. He was about as relieved as one could be at the sight of a small hive surrounded by garbage. He practically jumped the rest of the way down the hill. Bagwormother would just have to catch up. She was used to it after all.
"YOOOOOO!" Sascha called towards the hive, immensely pleased with the faint resulting echo.
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 4:13 pm
Adamaz heard a voice from outside, uncommon in this part of Busthind. He grinned and leapt to his feet, knowing it could only be one kid. Shoving his book on recorded psionnics to another part of the floor (a book way beyond his reading level, but one he perused nonetheless), he stomped around the house collecting his jacket, his other jacket, and his fingerless gloves. Finally, he called to the house: " Papa Roach! Where you at?" A few moments later, his lusus skittered up his pantleg, where Adamaz plucked him up and stashed him in his hair. Then he snagged a sack of snacks from his meal vault, ignoring the scent wafting from Papa Roach's edible foliage preservation unit. He nearly kicked down his own door in excitement - one of those rickety screen doors, with the screen halfway torn down, with the plastic door lock that never quite worked right. It was time to hang with the coolest meowbeast he knew. " Hey man, you found it! Enjoyin' the weather?" He called out, as soon as he spotted Sascha. " This stuff's off limits, since it's part of Pop's collection. Let's get to the junkyard!"
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 4:22 pm
Sascha slowed down as the slope of the ground tapered off to a flat plateau. His map hadn't failed him after all! Hopefully he'd be just as lucky finding his way back to the train station, but that was a problem for Future Sascha to deal with.
"How do you put up with this!? It's like being in a thermal hull, but with less air." Despite his complaints, Sascha did consider the benefits of physical training at the higher altitude. He'd have to take advantage of that sometime. If Adamaz was going to grow up to be some kind of super endurance runner, Sascha didn't want to fall too far behind.
He gave Adamaz a skeptical look. "You mean we're not already in the junkyard?" He gave the area around Adamaz's hive another look around. He'd be more judgmental, but it honestly just looked like the inside of his own home. No wonder the two of them got along.
"Well whatever. You lead the way since you're the one who knows where we're going."
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 4:33 pm
Adamaz blushed. He knew his house was messy, but with a trash-collecting lusus, cleaning was quite the losing battle. He'd given up on it a long time ago, except making sure he could physically move through the hive and the main living blocks were maneuverable. But having seen Sascha's hive, he knew his friend understood that. The comment was offhand, and not meant to be offending - Adamaz had come to learn there were a lot of things Sascha said that weren't quite what he meant. The price of being cool.
"I'm used to the weather up here. Papa Roach insisted I be raised somewhere to toughen me up." He said, as he started on the familiar path towards the junkyard. It'd been a while since he'd been there with a companion. Other than Papa Roach, obviously, who was presently preening in preparation of meeting Bagwormother again, and puffing himself up at mention of his lususing. And a jolly good job I've done, I'd say! Old sport.
Adamaz was already brainstorming junk fort architechture. "Was thinkin' we'd go for height this time, something spectacular to watch. I have a pretty good base for a tower already made." His thoughts turned to his yoga-hovel.
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 4:47 pm
Sascha, being a purveyor of trash himself, looked about his surroundings appraisingly. Bagwormother too was perfectly content to hang around the lawnring, snuffling the decor. It was rare that she approved of Sascha's choice in company. While she didn't trust the two of them not to get up to trouble, she at least had faith in Adamaz being reasonable enough to get help should either of them need it.
"Yo, luckyyyyy," Sascha replied, "My lusus had us set up shop in Chittentown 'cos it's safe for lowbloods. Total opposite." He cast a disappointed gaze back at his lusus, who would have rolled her eyes if she was physically capable of doing so. Sascha didn't need toughening up, unless it was literally for all of the brawls he was inevitably going to instigate one day.
Sascha continued on, walking in wide circles as he inspected the ground for a proper foundation. "Yeaaahhh... Yeaaah! That sounds good! I'll get some real good practice in when stuff starts getting too high for me to reach hand-ways." Sascha beamed with a toothy smile. "Where're we setting up camp?"
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 5:24 pm
"Right this way! Adamaz tromped along the road to the junkyard. He took Sascha through the gap in the fence and walked to his yoga hovel practically by instinct. "Here it is. Made this fort sweeps ago." He gestured at the hole in the pile of junk, big enough for a small kid to get through. "I use this place to - uh - meditate and exercise. Old troll practice. It's kinda stinky, but makes it more challenging to focus.." Adamaz flushed again, his nose cheeks already browned by the cold. This was the second troll he had introduced to the hovel. He'd had lots of experience letting people into private places in his life, and only about half had ended well. But Adamaz was unafraid. Having friends meant that little parts of yourself got to belong to someone else.
"We should use this for the base. That way we're partway done already. Besides, it'll survive the collapse - built tough. C'mon!" He started looking for some building materials, and sent Papa Roach to do the same.
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 6:30 pm
Sascha had crawled through a lot of fences in his day, so he thought nothing of trespassing into the junkyard. Besides, he figured Adamaz had spent enough time there he probably had more claim to it than the people that ran it.
He made a humming noise of acknowledgment at the sight of Adamaz's yoga hovel. It looked a surprising amount like his lusus's shell, so he had no doubt towards the structure's integrity.
"So you're lookin' to turn your meditation pile into a meditation castle? I can get behind that," Sascha nodded. He was already glancing about for large pieces of debris to place near the bottom of the heap.
"Whattya need meditation for, anyway? I wouldn't think you could get much--ugh--chiller!" Sascha was already meandering about the immediate vicinity and trying to pull the remains of an office chair out from under a stack of plywood and aluminum siding.
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 6:41 pm
"Chill is a skill. Gotta use it or you lose it." He said. A leather lounge chair, half-way eaten away by water damage and not a little stinky, caught his eye. He started moving it one push at a time, before Papa Roach took over and he went in search of another piece. "I dunno. You learn to level your head, keeps you level headed when things get rough, right?" He found a rotted palette that could be anchored in by wedging the arms of Sascha's armchair into it. Perfect. "There was a party I went to where things got crazy and I helped a buncha people get out safe. Might not've if I hadn't kept my cool." He turned to Sascha. "I told you about that, right? What with the culling and the other psionic guy?"
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 6:59 pm
Sascha supposed he understood Adamaz's reasoning on an intellectual level. It wasn't like Sascha had ever put that mindset into practice personally, but then again he'd never been in real danger before. He visibly perked up at the mention of the party. "Dude. You can't be talking about the Queen's party." He was glaring, less at Adamaz and more at the information. He knew from the papers that the Empress had invited a smattering of regular trolls to her coronation party or whatever, in addition to a number of celebrities. He also knew that it ended terribly, though the information released to the public was vague at best.
"You can NOT be telling me you got to go to the Queen's party and I didn't." Sascha's thinkpan was already working overtime to provide reasons for him to be sour grapes about the whole event, but everything horrific that happened that night just served to make the event sound all the more awesome.
Powered by frustration and disbelief, Sascha succeeded in yanking the chair from underneath the pile with a mighty crash. He pointed a gloved hand at Adamaz's face. "Tell me everything."
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 8:46 pm
Adamaz had basically forgotten that the party he had attended had been in the news, and was generally pretty sensational. Again, he felt embarrassed. But, a new opportunity presented itself. Time to impress Sascha. He paused his building as he wracked his brain for as many details as he could, his tongue sticking absently out the side of his mouth in thought, his right eye shut in concentration. He took in a breath.
'Okay, so I got a letter inviting me to go to this party from the queen because I had served in the military briefly. I went in some clothes I found in this very trash heap – that I washed thoroughly. Also, since it was a masquerade and I forgot to make a mask, I used two paper bags instead. So, there I was at this big ol’ house. Owned by a T.V star. Surrounded by a lot of people. Some of those people were important adults, but I didn’t talk to any of them because they didn’t like children mostly. Except Tigwyn, he was the best. He was a spaceship pilot – you know the psionic kind. More on him later.
But yeah then we went to dinner and all the lights went out in the middle of a speech and when the lights came back on there was a dead body. There was a lot of shouting, Tamiya (a frightening juggalo that I know) spotted a few mutantbloods and captured them. Then the queen told everyone to shut up and start solving the mystery. Also a guy named Kursha.
But, I hadn’t actually gotten dinner yet. So I got some veggies from the thermal hull in the mealblock. Then I talked to a few kids, including Chiara, who is the worst so I left. Looked in a few more rooms, found some weird cameras and documents that showed that the host might have been a rebel. Which they were.
There was a big trial in the living room where everyone talked about nothing? Lots of ‘this guy did this’ and ‘she probably did this’ and ‘no she didn’t’s.’ There weren’t ANY gasps of surprise. I think they talked about two different people who were murdered, but I was never sure where or how. I think the clown died.
But yeah, the trial was in a big living room, and the host was a rebel and they escaped through a secret door. Then there was poison gas. I gathered up a few people and told them to hold their breath and stay put. Then Tigwyn – he’s awesome – blew a big ol’ hole through the door with like a giant PSYCHIC SPEAR and said ‘Hey scooter, you gonna lead these troops out of here? Y’all can head down that path if y’aint too busy feelin’ up the wall. Let’s go, kiddos.’ (oh, people were trying to find where the gas was coming from the walls). So I was like ‘count on it, Mr. Ioyana. I got this. E’rrybody grab a buddy and let’s get outta here!’
Then I started waking up some of those people who were already succumbing to the gas (not me, I was tough) and led them to the stairs, where there was a secret trap. The stairs turned into a slide and everyone on it fell into a hole filled with water and sharp spikes and bones! No one got hurt though, and a friend from the kitchen pulled on a ladder to help us out. Then me and another kid named Hazmas, who I helped from drowning, make a little medal for Tigwyn for being so awesome. Couldn’t find him though, so we went home."
Adamaz screwed up his face, trying to think of anything he might have forgotten. Nope. That was 100% the entire party.
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 10:18 pm
Sascha had completely forgotten about the chair he'd been wrestling with. Hell, he'd forgotten about the fort, the dump, and even the dump's smell. Adamaz was taking him on a ******** ride with this story. Each word out of his mouth increased the pressure Sascha was putting on the cracked plastic and torn upholstery. There was too much going on, what was even more overwhelming was the fact that Adamaz of all people had been the one to live it.
Adamaz meanwhile was only halfway through his story and Sascha was already irate with envy. He'd tried to steal an invitation for himself from one of his neighbors and he couldn't even do that right. And here dull little Adamaz was getting personally invited because he had served in the military. If it wasn't Adamaz himself telling him this, Sascha would have most certainly called bullshit. He was standing before simultaneously the most transparent and most baffling troll on the face of Alternia.
Sascha ended up having to take a few deep breaths to make it through Adamaz's epic without screaming. He was starting to see the benefits of meditation. By the time Adamaz finished ("Are you sure you didn't WIN A FISTFIGHT WITH A HORRORTERROR OR SOMETHING?!") Sascha had managed to wrangle his thoughts into one or two coherent points.
He inhaled, ready for a rant of epic proportions when his train of thought suddenly jumped tracks. "Wait a second. You know Chiara?" That was hardly the most important point. Still Sascha couldn't help but get hung up on yet another "friend" of his getting invited to this same royal party/war zone.
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 10:40 pm
Adamaz could see the tension in his friends face. He was very interested in his story, he could tell. Despite this, Sascha seemed to pluck out the one thing that he least wanted to elaborate on. He continued building the junk tower. Papa Roach had gathered a good base of large furniture to put up, and Adamaz started directing their placement.
"Uh.. yeah. I know her. I met her while I was breaking in to the Fluid Redistribution Center one time. I showed her around a little before she got really mean. Adamaz scrunched his nose in disgust. I. DO not like her much. We were in a squad together, too. She was a jerk then as well." Adamaz started, and turned back to Sascha slapping his forhead. "I forgot to tell you! I got invited in the first place because I got drafted to attack the Phoenix HQ. I mostly just helped out the military drones get back on their feet. They were doing their best."
Adamaz furrowed his brow. "Geez. When I lay it all out like that, I sure have done a lot of things. Never feels like it though."
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Posted: Wed May 18, 2016 11:03 pm
Sascha felt like he was about to have a psychic aneurysm. This was incredible. ******** style="color: #BDB70B"> "And yet here you are: hanging out at the dump with lil ole me," Sascha responded with a dryness that surprised even himself with the flatness of his intonation. "I'd think you and Chiara would get along pretty well considering you guys have so much in common."Oh yeah. Sascha was bitter. His scalp felt hot and prickly like it always did when he was using his telekinesis. Unfortunately nothing was floating at the moment, despite how much he wanted to hurl his office chair into the half-built fort.
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2016 8:41 pm
Adamaz looked over at his friend, stunned. He could see that Sascha was angry at him - he was practically boiling, the way the air flickered around his head. Psychically, probably, but full of outrage nonetheless. Words from a good friend comparing him to Chiara sliced Adamaz deep. The worst? At that moment, Adamaz deflated, his eagerness fading. The cracked recooperacoon he was jimmying out from underneath an ablution trap lazily came to a halt. " Aw man.. don't lump me in with her. You don't mean it, right?" Cutting words from someone he looked up to were not something he knew how to endure gracefully. His voice was low and rough. " Sorry. Didn't want to sound like I was bragging. All of it was pretty rough, honestly."
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