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 Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:52 pm
Becoming
Introduction
Right here and now, it is said, mankind is nearing its peak. Too many people have not yet realised that with such a climb, there must also be a time of descent... for here and now, mankind is already being replaced. Here and now, mankind is Becoming.
Here? Planet Earth, the sole home of humanity... where a small city hides a large secret. Now? Almost ten years into a new millenium and an era of development that opens the eyes and blinds all foresight.
Nobody, not even the instigators of evolution, could ever forsee the massive consequences that are on their way. Strange things are happening. Most aren't even aware that the world is sitting on a time bomb. Most who know why say nothing. Those who speak up are silenced. Those directly affected, those pulled into the game by losing the birth lottery... there's no telling what they will do.
But sooner or later, something's going to give way.
And it's going to be big.
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Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:53 pm
Plot Outline
(I never liked writing these...)
Fairhill, US, 1980. A small city of roughly 6,000 inhabitants, its only notable feature a university that specialises in medical and biological sciences, has been chosen to host a private science development facility nearby. Construction begins and goes on for two years.
Fairhill, US, 1982. Construction is completed on the new facility, and personnel begin moving in. The small city is subject to a boosted economy almost immediately, and the population size begins to balloon. Over the course of a the next few years, Fairhill is much expanded and improved.
Fairhill, US, 1991. After only seven years of operation, the facility shuts down suddenly. Many low-level workers are left jobless but compensated, many higher-level workers leave the area. Townspeople are baffled by the sudden change, but many workers are able to find alternate means of employment and remain in the picturesque city.
Fairhill, US, 1992. Strange reports of activity near the base are dismissed by authorities.
Fairhill, US, 1996. Animals begin behaving oddly in the area of the facility. Flocks of birds are found dead, necks broken as if they simply dove into the ground. A lone rhesus monkey was shot wandering the grounds. After a series of strange events, all seems to have gone quiet.
Fairhill, US, 2004. Reports of more strange occurances, this time in humans, begin to surface. The media, at first liberal, quickly becomes silent. Nothing else has been heard since, and any who claim to be affected are silently placed into distant asylums or jails. The second generation of the facility subjects -- the first generation of those Becoming -- has finally awakened.
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Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:54 pm
Setting
The town of Fairhill is located in the US.
(That's about as much geographic info as you're getting).
The climate is warm, with little snowfall in the winter. It is landlocked, so no ports or harbours, but it is split into two sides by a river.
The northside is the residents' district; most people who live in Fairhill live on the northside. The southside is full of stores, malls, and company buildings, plus it contains the downtown area.
The facility is just south of the city, and encapsulates a small city of its own: there is a large, impenetrable domed building at its center, much larger than it appears due to its roots in the underground that spread down and outwards. All around it are generic, white box-like houses, ranging in size for family suitability. They have since been abandoned, and the grounds are dusty and unkempt. It is surrounded by a chain-link fence but has been infiltrated so many times that it's very easy to find passage.
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Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:55 pm
The Becoming
The Becoming are the children of those who have been experimented on at the lab. Whether the facility was abandoned because they didn't think their experiments had worked, or because they, in fact, had been successful and meant to show up only in the offspring has yet to be determined.
Those who are Becoming possess abilities only heard of in fiction, and some even odder than that. Telepathy, pyrokenesis, increased stamina... they are all, in some way, superior to plain old everyday homo sapiens. However, as the gene has yet to perfect itself, there may also be repercussions to this ability.
In most people, the 'talent' begins to show in adolescence: around sixteen in females and seventeen in males. However, it may also be activated sooner by extreme stress, physical or mental.
The only universal sign of a Becoming is their eyes -- they reflect light in the dark, giving them an almost animal-like quality. This does not mean they see better or worse in the dark than humans do, it is simply a means of identification. Some have physical mutations, as well, but most show no other outward signs of being different.
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Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:56 pm
Profiles and NPCsFor now, submit your characters on this thread using the following form: Character Name: You character's full name. Alias: What your character goes by. Sex: There are five biological sexes, but you had better know what you're talking about if you put anything other than 'male' or 'female'... Age: Real age, not apparent age. Abilities and Limitations: List it in its simplest form in the first sentence and then elaborate. Be creative, but don't go too far. Physical Description: What your character looks like at first glance. Not too long. Personality Description: Duh. Once again, not too long. Delete your profile when it's in this post (or I'll do it, whichever). NPCsProfiles will be "unlocked" as they are encountered; those that might be common knowledge are open to an extent. Mutants:Experiment #001d -- Jayson Reid Experiment #093a -- Isabella Ciccone Experiment #141b -- Patricia Zelazny Experiment #142b -- Graham Norton Experiment #152b -- Marcus Gallant Notable Figures:Ack, to be up soon. >.< Player Characters:Shazzer Character Name: Nicole Steele Alias: Vetch Sex: Female Age: 18 Abilities and Limitations: Telempathy, mind control, and psychic projection. Vetch can read the emotions of others with incredible ease simply by being near them. She can also influence people slightly through their subconscience. However, those previous two abilities are peripheral to her third: Vetch can separate her physical and mental self, taking on the traits of a ghost. While she is in this state, her physical body is comatose, she absorbs heat and light energy to maintain form, she is invisible to those not sensitive to psychic disruptions but may be otherwise sensed, and she cannot affect physical objects (meaning that she can both walk on the floor and go through walls, but she can't move anything). She can also possess the living, although it is very difficult to do to humans as it involves an actual struggle of the mind to gain motor control. Physical Description: Vetch is a tall, athletic young woman with a lean frame. Medium-brown hair, thick and styled in a textured cut, falls only to her shoulders. Her face is youthful, with a sandy complexion lit by hazel eyes. Personality Description: Outgoing, honest, friendly, and a social butterfly, Vetch finds it very easy to talk to people... and she would go on for hours if nobody cared to stop her. She is very competitive physically, and of average intelligence. She's generally optimistic, but also governed by her emotions rather than her head; though she rarely lets any of her less desireable feelings show, she is very sensitive and prone to getting her feelings hurt. The only exception is anger; when she feels she has a reason to be angry, it's like an explosion: loud, but forgotten in a moment. Of course, it remaining that she doesn't tend to think of consequences to her actions, she often wonders why people are still cleaning up rubble afterwards... ValenarrDeMirro Character Name: Isaiah Thomas Richards Alias: Isaiah, though you could call him Izzy. Sex: Male Age: 17 Abilities and Limitations: Isaiah is in possession of Electromagnetokinesis. Simply put, this power allows him to manipulate and create electric and magnetic currents and fields (respectively). However, Isaiah's power has not yet fully matured, and he can only create electrical charges within himself and discharge it by contact. For magnetism, however, he only needs to see the object he wishes to magnetically charge or simply know it is there. However, if Isaiah becomes angered, his powers can sometimes go on the fritz, and he can literally become a walking lightning storm. Also, Isaiah can 'feed' this power by putting an electrical current through himself, such as grabbing a power line, greatly increasing his ability to dole out harm with electrical currents. Due to his power, Isaiah is completely immune to any and all electrical assaults. Physical Description: Isaiah's most note-worthy features include his long, black hair and sparkling blue eyes. He's slender, somewhat short (standing at about five feet and nine inches), and never smiles. Isaiah wears all black, almost always wearing long sleeved shirts. He is quite pale, and pretty much looks like your typical goth, sans makeup. Personality Description: Isaiah is quite depressed for a reason he does not care to disclose. He doesn't talk much at all, and is prone to smart-a** remarks. However, he is mature beyond his years (when he wants to be) and is quite intelligent. ValenarrDeMirro Character Name: Reinhard Volker Alias: N/A Sex: Male Age: 19 Abilities and Limitations: Reinhard has the uncanny ability to manipulate sound waves. Reinhard can not only amplify sound waves, but can also eliminate them entirely, and can also contain and direct them. This power, however, takes focusing to the point of being able to do little else, at best being able to potentially stab someone in the back. However, a huge bonus to this ability is that Reinhard can direct sound waves into a foe's inner ear and seriously off-balance them and potentially cause a sort of instant seasickness, if the person is vulnerable to such things. Physical Description: Reinhard is tall, somewhat muscular but also very lean. He has dark hair, trimmed short, and a triangular patch of facial hair, pointing up to his lower lip and then dropping off his chin, dangling about an inch. Personality Description: Reinhard isn't much of a talker, but that's simply because he won't talk until he has something to say. He's a bit cold, but can warm up to people. Yo_Landa Character Name: Jillian Thomas Alias: Jill, to most. Sex: Female Age: 19 Abilities and Limitations: Simple shapeshifting and body colour manipulation. Jill main capability is being able to blend in with her surroundings. She can do simple shapeshifting, though it mostly only consists of changing facial and body structure slightly. It's not very advanced. For example, she wouldn't be able to shapeshift into a cat, but she could make herself look deceptively male. She is also able to change the colour of her body parts such as skin and hair. This change is intantaneous, once she decides what to do. Unfortunately, her inability to change the colour of her clothes makes it somewhat difficult for her. As well, she can only hold a changed state for a certain amount of time, depending on her body's condition. At best, she could hold a different shape for half an hour and a different colour for an hour. She also has excellent acrobatic ability, making her the perfect Physical Description: She has a small build, topping height at only 5"4'. She has short, spiky hair which was originally dirty blonde, but changes often. She has green eyes, though that is also prone to change at times. Jill prefers to wear comfortable clothes, rather than fashionable ones and is usually seen in a pair of jeans and a hoodie. Personality Description: Quite 'happy-go-lucky' most of the time. Jill finds that she has trouble concentrating even during the most dire of moments and can usually be heard cracking jokes at inappropriate moments. She's generally the type who makes enemies as fast as friends and is a stubborn and somewhat narrow-minded individual. noose_habit Character Name: Kaitlyn Shea Alias: Kai Sex: Female Age: 16 Abilities and Limitations: Kai is a cyberpath, a living computer. She has an incredible mind -- she can store anything that's happened to her and is able to recall it at a later time without the typical human pause for thought ('kinetic memory' and 'total recall'). The sheer speed gives her an amazing analytical ability, such that she can make quick decisions and piece together complex probablities about her surroundings within fractions of a second. She can also multitask, but more in the sense that she is able to mentally replay a movie she'd seen the previous night, win a game of chess over the internet, and talk on the phone at the same time without any one activity detracting from the other. Kai is also able to manipulate any data-controlled machinery within proximity using only her thoughts. Physical Description: This redhead is a slight individual, standing at 5'1" with a physicality rivalled only by crude stick-figures. Her sleek hair, a deep, dark shade of auburn that looks synthetic, falls down straight to her mid-back; her angular face is bespectacled. Behind those half-moon glasses glares a pair of guarded, bright blue eyes. Personality Description: Kai is a cynical introvert whose near-obsessive fascination with machinery, along with the sheer genius that put her leagues ahead of her former classmates, has granted her a life of solitude. She prefers to think that she would rather not be surrounded by people only to repress the ache for contact, and often perpetuates this shell through her haughty, apathetic behaviour. Lykus Character Name: Adam Tenser
Alias: N/A
Sex: Male
Age: 14
Abilities and Limitations: Space Compression/Expansion/Manipulation. Adam can stretch an inch of space to cover miles, allowing himself or objects to travel long distances nearly instantly; he can compress large distances into an apparent thickness of near nanometers, effectively preventing objects from passing through for the sheer amount of "distance" that they must travel through; and, he can bend space, effectively altering the trajectory of objects passing through the affected area. Usually his ability is invisible, save for the change in apparent velocity of various bodies being affected by it, but if he exerts himself in an attempt to strengthen his power then it can visibly warp light. Adam's ability is theoretically infinite, going so far that it is plausible that he could create a pocket dimension, but extensive use of his power is extremely exhausting.
Physical Description: Adam's most noticeable trait is that he appears albino. He has pallid white skin, messy, medium length, white hair that almost appears to be pale gray, and red irises so bright that they starkly contrast the rest of his body. Curiously, he is unaffected by ultraviolet radiation. His body is thin and frail, but he shows no apparent signs of abnormal weakness. His face is round and boyish (He is only 14, after all) and he has yet to grow facial hair. Adam stands just over five feet tall. He is always smiling slightly.
Personality Description: Adam is oddly callous, but by no intent on his part. He is apparently devoid of any human emotion except contentment and affection and is ignorant of various social taboos with regard to any excess of these. He is also remarkably unaware of others' discomfort when he breaks said taboos so nonchalantly. Because of his unusual perspective, he sometimes has difficulty communicating with others because they misinterpret the meaning of his words. Maph Necathys Character Name: Lilith Anne-Mary Wernecke Alias: Lily, though some call her Lillian. Sex: Female Age: 17 Abilities and Limitations: Lily is a psionic biokineticist, otherwise known as a psychometabolicist. Simply put, she can mentally interact with any type of living organism and directly affect its bio-energy. Basically, she can soothe pain by accessing a living creature’s endocrine system and favor the secretion of a certain hormone, heal wounds by accelerating cellular division, enhance a person's physical attributes or minimally modify her own body with basic DNA restructuring, allowing her to secrete various substances through her fingers. Also, one should know that if Lily is capable of beneficial alterations, she can also inflict an equivalent amount of ailments. Regrettably, the complexity of all biokinetic processes and the mental strain that they exert on Lily substantially reduces the overall efficiency and duration of her abilities. She must also steer away from crowds, because her undomesticated powers automatically register the physical status of those in her direct vicinity, putting her through a great deal of mental pain. Physical Description: Lily is of average stature, standing at the unexceptional height of 5’5”, yet her lissome figure and comely features are more than enough compensation. An inkfall of darkness tumbles down onto her shoulders, framing her delicate visage, stark white save for florid hues upon her cheeks and the rosy lushness of her lips. She habitually dons either a tourmaline dress, laced below her décolletage with thin strands of black velvet, or an immaculate gown, its hems adorned with soft frills. However, what clash most with her debonair aspect are the twin pools of coruscant blood that compose her unsettling gaze. Personality Description: Though naturally jovial, Lily can be seen as a voluntary recluse, withdrawing herself from society on an unseen level. She prefers the company of flora, tending daily to a personal garden of flowers and even vegetables in her backyard. She does not loathe human presence, but deeply abhors any spontaneous physical contact. The Story of The Century Character Name: Jack Benson Alias: N/A Sex: Male Age: 19 Abilities and Limitations: Jack is, in a word, a predator. His bone structure is more complicated and heavily reinforced beyond that of an ordinary human, as are his reflexes as sense of smell, sight, and his strength. He is a tracker, a hunter, and a consumate killer. Unfortunately, he has no projected powers, and against an ordinary player character he is in a word useless unless he can close melee range. His main strength is his tracking ability. Physical Description: Jack sports medium-length black hair, and stands at an easy 5'8. He would be called handsome, were it not for the permanent lines of anger that stand out around his eyes and mouth. His eyes are quite the trip, colored a dark purple that can be passed off as black in passing. Personality Description: Animalistic. Jack lives in the moment, every moment. His lusts are sated immediately, and he lives with the urge to kill, eat, and do all that other animaly stuff. Interesting chap, really. Quote: Character Name: Nikatia Friesen
Alias: Nika/Freeze
Sex: Female
Age: 19
Abilities and Limitations: She is essentially, a Biokinetic, a shifter of her own shape as well as well as anything living. Humans though, she can only change to a certain degree, and not very much, doing so drains her physically and mentally, so Nika usually sticks to animals and plants and such. She can morph her own body into any shape/form she wants, though she is NOT the same as a shape-shifter, since she can only change her body, not make it into another animal or being altogether. The only drawback to this is that once her abilities became active in her, she cannot survive without either regular blood transfusions, or from a willing donor. In simplicity, she is similar to a vampire, being able to morph her teeth to make them available for the job when a willing donor makes themselves apparent. If she does not get fresh blood at least once every two days, she'll become extremely weak and eventually die of blood-loss.
Physical Description: Nika has long, waist length, very light-brown hair (almost blonde), her eyes are a deep blue/green color, and she stands at about five foot, six inches tall. Since she can change her form, she has made herself the her she is comfortable and happy with, in other words, she's athletic looking, and weights about 165lbs. Her skin is usually quite pale in color, and has a bit of a blue-ish tinge to it.
Personality Description: The nick-name 'Freeze' is pretty much just her last name without the 'n' on it. It has absolutely nothing to do with her personality, which is quite warm and bubbly. Nika has a great love and respect for nature and everything in it. She's a passionate girl and has quite the temper when things don't go right, or someone pushes her too far. She hates her 'disorder' and despises what she has to do in order to live, and takes absolutely no pleasure out of it, even can't stand the taste of it. Which has kept her from killing any of her willing 'donors' as of yet.
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Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:57 pm
Developments
(Dates are in the context of the setting.)
June 20th - At Fairhill's largest mall on the southside, a flock of between 75-100 crows have commited what appears to be a mass suicide by diving into the parking lot.
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Posted: Fri Jun 09, 2006 12:58 pm
Fairhill died a little at 10 PM, as it always did. Every now and then, a car would pass by; every now and then, the distant laughs of a few teens still celebrating the end of the school year would carry through the warm night air. Otherwise, it was silent.
The city seemed... normal. For once. Although some of the inhabitants were certainly very extrodinary.
Your average mallrat, a little tall. Dressed in beige capris, black-and-white striped armbands, and a faded orange tee with a small, cartoonish depiction of a fish-bone on the front. Brown hair, brown eyes, nice smile. She looked normal enough -- in fact, most people believed the weirdest thing about her was her common callsign: Vetch.
Why Vetch?
It was her middle name, of course.
The young adult, who chatted casually with a few companions just outside the sheltered entrance to the mall's movie theatre, already knew how different she was. She was afraid, alone... and smiling, assuring her concerned friends that yes, she did have a drive home, and yes, she was expecting him soon. She leaned back against a brick column, silently glancing at the remaining stragglers.
Changing the world was the last thing on her mind.
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Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 7:16 am
It was not a pleasant day.
Then again, no day was pleasant from these eyes, to this mind, to the person who was alone in the mall even when surrounded by people. That would be the case, though, were he actually surrounded by people. His expression was that of a dull and bored individual, since he had no business here. He had no business anywhere. There was no point.
He stood alone, this five-foot-nine teenager of slender build and clad in all black. He was truly alone even in the company of potential friends. He had no real friends anyway. He didn't trust them. He didn't trust anyone, and expected none to trust him. Nobody would trust a murderer anyways...
His depressed, dark blue eyes gazed down at the white tile of the mall floor. Why was he even here? Oh, that's right. His parents had pretty much forced him to. A 'social experience,' they had said. That had been an agonizing half hour ago. He had been standing here, alone, almost ever since, only having moved every now and again to keep the mall cops from yelling at him for loitering.
What was there to do at a mall besides buy things? He had no money... Well, very little. But there was nothing he wished to buy. Except possibly food. But he could get food for free at home.
He fidgeted slightly, tugging at his long sleeves, yanking them down, even though it was summer. He wasn't even wearing shorts, either, just long, black, baggy pants. He wasn't sweating, however, since the mall was cooled through the miracles of air conditioning. Just to think, a little tweaking, and he could make it hot as hell in here...
He'd have to find the controls, though, and he didn't really have the motivation to show off his abilities. He had only used them on one other person before, and they hadn't done any good for either of them.
"I'm sorry..." He thought with a shake of his head. He closed his eyes, and then opened them again.
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RogueKazimeras Vice Captain
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Posted: Mon Jun 12, 2006 4:39 pm
"Five hundred."
Jill blinked, as if she was still waiting as the bills were placed, one by one, onto the wooden table. Light cast an ominous shadow around the suffocatingly small room and onto her overweight and unshaven employer. He stared up at her from under bushy eyebrows and slid the money forward.
"Five hundred? The deal was for eight." She raised an eyebrow. Clad in a pair of dirty jeans and an orange t-shirt with sneakers that had seem more than their share of wear, she stared at the man.
"Five," he muttered out, his voice heavy with a thick southern accent, "Take it or leave it." He moved to take the money back when Jill slapped her hand down on the meagre pile of bills. She forced a grin which quickly left her face once she turned and left the room. She forced open the metal door with a loud screeching sound and let it fall back on its own, the slam echoing down the long, empty hallway.
She hated this business. As she jogged up the stairs, the thoughts of getting out of it raced through her mind. But what other skills did she have? A door at the top of the stairs opened at her weight and she moved into the air-conditioned bliss of the mall above. It was late, but not too late. A few people still hung around.
Who else needed her skills? She wasn't extrordinarily smart...or strong...but she had skills that no one else did.
Those skills were the only things keeping her alive.
"Cheap b*****d," she muttered under her breath. Her only income was this job. Without it, she'd be thrown out onto the street. She counted the bills again, then pocketed them. Finding a nearby bench, she sat herself down and leaned back, closing her eyes for a moment. Oh well.
Tomorrow would be another day, right?
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Posted: Wed Jun 14, 2006 8:52 pm
Tucked in a nearly fetal ball with marine eyes focused stubbournly ahead was none other than cyberpath extrodinaire, Kaitlyn "Kai" Shea. Reedy arms wrapped tightly around her legs, pulled up severely under her pointed chin, she tried her damndest to release a forboding aura.
Don't talk to me. Don't look at me. I'm not here.
The wispy girl shifted slightly, glancing quickly upwards at the remaining stragglers... she had seen them, before. Some, in high school, just walking the halls; some today, even, wandering the noisy mall. Of course, Kai didn't know any of them personally - there were very few people she did - but she'd never forgetten a face.
She never forgot anything; no matter how hard she tried.
Vetch Steele. Or, Nicole... Kai didn't like her, from impressions, and that was partly because a lot of people did. Sporty, personable, pretty, popular: what wasn't there to love... or envy? Perhaps it was simply the stereotype assigned to socially successful individuals, but Kai had her pegged as an airhead.
Isiah Richards. A mysterious, quiet kind of guy. It struck Kai that he appeared as discontent with his situation as she was, and the coincidence in similarity would have been notable had she known his. But she didn't, so it wasn't.
The other girl -- Kai had never heard a name. It was odd, how something didn't quite line up. The face was different, perhaps? Kai recalled a mental image of the teen, like looking through a photo album, but couldn't pin the difference. A shift of light, a strange angle -- all of those could account for the mild discrepency.
Silently finished with her thinking, Kai continued to drown her eyes in the night.
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 4:35 pm
((Noose, you totally predicted my next post xD Great minds think alike!))
With somewhat of a jolt, Jillian looked down at her hands and watched as her fingers shifted inwards, a bit. EEP! With her absent minded-ness, she had forgotten to change herself back. Standing and walking 'subtly' (or at least, she tried) around, she turned her back and let her concentration relax, her normal facial features shifting back into place. Her nose narrowed lengthened slightly and her eyes became darker, her forehead shrinking the tiniest bit.
She had learned over the years what features she could use to trick people's minds. Eyes, nose and forehead seemed to be the main ones. Normally, though, she wouldn't be walking around the mall without her normal face, but...
Well, to her 'boss', she'd only worked for him twice. This was the seventh payment she'd recieved.
In his mind, there were four girls and one very feminine man who had been doing business for him. Unknown to him, neither of them were real people. Hannah, Ricky, Michelle... They were all names that she used to hide her real identity.
She couldn't get caught, now, could she? Jillian had heard the stories of what happened to those who had admitted to their...changes. Many were thrown in jail and most were thought of as insane.
No way she was risking that.
Confident that no one had seen her face shift, she turned around again and sat down on the bench again. No one seemed to be paying attention to her, anyway. Some small changes in facial features wouldn't alarm any normal passerby.
Speaking of which, she recognized some of them. There was that goth kid...the weird, quiet one. He was strange. Always dressing in black. Doesn't he get hot in that? She pondered it for a moment before turning her attention to the girl nearby. She seemed the polar opposite of the anti-social boy. Dressed in a similar orange t-shirt to her own, too.
Then there was that girl on the stairs... Strange kid. Weird eyes. She shook her head and leaned back on the bench, stretching out her legs and sliding nearly off the bench, her back on the seat and her neck bent uncomfortably.
Well...this was boring.
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Posted: Thu Jun 15, 2006 8:08 pm
As the crowd thinned and the sky darkened, Vetch was becoming more and more aware of the negative miasma that suffocated the area. Strong emotions from everyone left her noticeably uncomfortable.
The redhead... Vetch sensed a hostility of some sort, a perpetual confused anger. Goth kid: isolation, and something else she couldn't quite pinpoint. And the other girl, the fidgety one... seemed nervous? Well, it didn't take extrasensory ability to figure those out, with the defensive postures and movement, but it certainly helped.
Jeez... I wonder what's with these guys...?
Interrupting her though was the wingbeats of a bird and a single caw. It was unnotable on its own, and soon a strange silence settled once more... until another followed. Then another. And another...
Soon, there was a murder of crows, fifty or more, circling intensely above. Nothing more than a thick black against the navy sky, they formed a great mournful cloud over the nearly-empty parking lot. Raspy cries filled the air.
"Oh my God..."
Vetch took a few steps forwards, but immediately pushed her back against the pillar again as if hit by some strange force. The misery, the hopelessness, the sense of futility... it was overwhelming. It became an ache in her chest, a lump in her throat, a physical pain. It was so focussed, so many creatures, all with the same thought, the same emotions... she was feeling with them, and tears began to force themselves from her eyes as she choked back sobs that weren't her own.
Then it happened. One bird dove downwards from the flock, headfirst. There was no effort to stop on its part, and so it hit the concrete with a dull thud and a sharp snap -- it was dead on impact, its neck broken.
Like rain, slowly, more crows followed suit. What started as a patter soon became a downpour of black feathers and bodies, a jackhammer sound of crows hitting the pavement and sparse cars. And as it started, it stopped... by that time, the suicidal flock had nearly doubled and not one miserable bird remained.
Vetch cried. She couldn't help the moment of vulnerability, though the bulk of the sudden feeling had thinned and gone with the crows. She slid down the red brick pillar, arms crossed tightly over her head, shaking with quiet sobs.
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