Yvonne looks around, and then spots her mother. Relief floods her like the waves across the shore, and she runs to hug her.
"Oh, mom, you're here! I missed you...."
Mary was initially surprised when Yvonne ran and hugged her, but then decides to continue hugging her.
You share an embrace, the sun shining brightly on this beautiful day. No words are required, as the very essence of happiness begins to congeal around you two, enveloping you in a bright and hopeful mist. You ride out the emotional peak until it gives way to a deep feeling of peace, unity and contentment that appears to spread to a lot of onlookers, generating many spontaneous displays of affection and appreciation for the mere fact that another person is alive and well this fine day.
That would be the end of that day's stressful events, you would assume. Home would be the obvious destination from here, the walk through the winding, half-organic streets of the city presumably doing much to restore much-needed normality (as far as the spheres permit you to have such a thing, anyway) to your overall troubled state of mind.
Alex would shrug and watch his dad, to make sure he didn't burn himself.
Guessing that transferring boiling water from a pot to a water gun ought to be a very dangerous proposition indeed, you watch your dad for impending safety risks. Fortunately for him, though, bringing a stockpot's worth of water to a boil seems to take a bit of time. Enough time, at least, that your mother has the time to ask the obvious question as soon as she's done processing the situation.
"What the hell are you doing, George?" she asks slowly, having made no progress on deciphering the man's train of thought.
"Making espresso!" your dad replies enthusiastically. "It just takes a little ingenuity! Like I told Alex here, it takes water, coffee and pressure, so I'm going to fill this water gun with hot water and then shoot it at some coffee, probably in a sieve if I can find one, which reminds me-" he continues to explain frantically, opening up a cupboard and retrieving a strainer. "This ought to do, don't you think?"
Your mother is dumbfounded by this as she examines the strainer, it seems. "... why not use the-" she begins to ask.
"That espresso maker is awful and you know it!" your dad retorts defensively. "My way's better, so that's the way I'm doing it. Now, the water should be boiling right about..." he says, taking a look at the stockpot. It's still not boiling. "Dang! This is taking too much time!" he says, then tries to nudge the heat a little more, groaning as it refuses to budge. "Come on, go faster. I haven't got all night!" he says with exasperation, then turns to you. "Say, son, you sure you want an espresso? I don't think the stove's working, so it might be a little hard boiling the water."
You expect him to try and touch the stove top to make sure it's hot, but it doesn't seem to occur to him.
"Go to bed, George, you've got work in the morning," your mother sternly tells him.
"So do you!" your dad says. "And Alex too, I think. Do you still work from home, Alex? What day is it? And what was it I'm supposed to be doing this morning? Eh, doesn't matter. In any case, we're all here. And I'm seizing the night. It's an underused time period. Think of all the things we could do instead of sleeping, like making coffee, spending quality time with one another and..." he trails off, looking at your mom thoughtfully or a moment, then smiles. "You look very lovely by the way. The disheveled look suits you. Looks a bit wild, just like back in... heh," he laughs to himself.
"What's the matter with him?" your mother asks you quietly, looking genuinely concerned now.
"Sure, the sooner we get this over with the sooner i can grab another donut." replies steven calmly as he pulls on the heavy steel handle.
Descending into the cellar Steven takes a quick mental inventory of the number of bodies he agreed to reduce to paste, but also keeps what Z is doing firmly lodged in the forefront of his peripheral senses.
The two of you walk down to the door and Z carefully tugs the handle, methodically opening the door outward. As it opens, the first thing you notice is the smell. Something of a mix of rotten meat, mold and feces, carrying with it the unmistakable ja-ne-sais-quoi of death, the combination of all three proving remarkably heady and far more unpleasant than you would think. It collects in your nostrils and starts to make its way to the back of your throat.
You teeter on the edge of nearly starting to retch as you notice a bit of tan, shiny residue in the open doorway - quite a bit on the inside surface of the door, too. You regard it for a moment before you notice a vaguely tendril-shaped little bit of it slide deeper into the room of its own accord, leaving a vague clean print of its former location in the bit of doorway as it disappears into darkness.
"It doesn't like light," Z says matter-of-factly as he holds the door open for you to enter through. "So keep it dark. The room can take a lot of abuse. And don't linger."
Kyle is quite disturbed with his choices.
While I very much respect the beard, I'm not going to turn myself into a neo-nazi today. Clown me seems... really silly and probably second hardest to make look normal... So that leaves me with Bear suit me. Hm, I think that the trauma of dying and nearly seeing my dad die has pretty much made this whole situation seem less weird than it is.
Having made his choice, Kyle decides to switch with his bear suited self.
You swap bodies with bear suit Kyle, and suddenly feel an incredible rush of adrenaline that makes you want to run - fortunately, it subsides momentarily. Hopefully the formerly bear-suited Kyle can make good use of the free power armor. Maybe he'll appreciate it enough to not mind the gunshot wounds.
Your family, for what it's worth, appears significantly perplexed by your sudden outbreak of bear-suitedness. Should you even bother trying to explain? Might just want to take them home and pretend this never happened, though the ride may be a bit awkward as a result.
Lacie froze for a moment as she heard the knock, she rose quietly to her feet and crept towards the door trying not to alert the person that she was in. The thief pressed her eye against the peep-hole she had had installed, trying to spot who exactly the person was.
You sneak up to the peephole and regard whoever's knocking carefully - not a simple matter, of course, given that your entire body has the acoustic properties of a pair of clogs. By the time you've creeped over, there have been four knocks in total, each more urgent than the last. As you look into the peephole, you see a good-looking young man on the other side wearing a somewhat cheap suit and playing around with a Bowie knife while glancing at your door impatiently.
This man is your landlord, Mr. Dewey. You've always had a bad feeling about him, to be honest, and not just because he insists on always bringing a knife to negotiate with his tenants (in fact, he brings a knife or two just about everywhere). Then again, the man asks no questions about your income and doesn't gouge you on the rent much. In fact, you've never even talked to him beyond the time you got your apartment keys. He lets you just leave the money in a marked parcel in a collection box.
"I saw that peephole darken," he says as you consider how exactly to sneak back without making any sounds. "If it's no trouble, I'd like you to let me in," he says politely, though the spirit of the thing is somewhat betrayed by the way he's got a shit-eating grin plastered on his face.
Vel focuses inward. Where did the Kernel first originate? Can it be followed? Did it leave a thread? What was it curious about?
From the content of the thoughts it generated you would assume it came from your mother, and what little you can sense of its path after it left your mind would indicate that it didn't go very far. As for following it, you would say that going up the stairs again would be a good first step.
The kernel itself, though, you wouldn't say it was curious, exactly. It was a small fraction of a greater whole, generating responses that were almost canned - well-established little parcels of thought, expressed as a matter of habit. Genuine emotions, you would think, were a bit beyond its capacity. However, to know any of this for sure, you'd probably need to catch another kernel. You're not quite sure how you did it the first time, but if you could do it inadvertently, surely a deliberate attempt would work even better.
Serra looks up from her pain, at Lucian still standing there, and gets to her feet shakily. That's right. Lucian...Lucian still needed to be cared for, too. Not just Dominic. She wraps the boy in an embrace, whispering softly. "Shh...y-you're safe now...I've got you...I won't ever let you go again, okay? Shhh....I've got you..."
She ignores the horrifying sensation of her brother's brain matter dripping onto her shirt, and tries to figure out what just happened, and how she can use whatever it was to save her brother. She could tell he wouldn't last forever. It just...felt true. Like he was slipping away. She wondered...maybe if...the body was just chemicals and cells, right?
And his muscles had contorted oddly before, during the attack, when he was- when he was-
It didn't matter now. What mattered was sealing the hole in his head, and seeing if she could get his heart pumping again.
"L-Lucian, I'm gonna tie up y-your head wound now, okay? Can you breathe for me? On purpose? Take deep breaths, in and out, like I showed you a couple months back, alright?"
He'd been curious as to how her Yoga classes worked, and she'd spent a few hours showing him. He'd tried to do it with her for a few weeks before getting bored, but that was alright. He was just a kid still, after all. Serra shook her head, tears exhausted, and looked at Dominic pleadingly. He looked sad, but fear was in his eyes when he looked at his brother. But...it was still his brother, right? At least, that's what Serra hoped he thought. He swallowed and looked around on the floor until he found some clothing; it was old, but it wasn't visibly filthy, so it would have to do. Serra took it, and tied it like a Bandage around Lucian's head, after tearing it to strips. She tied it tightly to prevent anything else from leaking out. Oh god she wished she'd taken more biology classes now...she had Lucian try to take a breath, and tried to order his heart to beat, mentally. She wasn't sure if it would work. But...maybe?
Lucian starts to breathe slowly and deliberately at your bidding, looking slightly better after you've embraced him of your own volition. As he breathes, you wrap a bit of clothing around his head, at the very least hiding the large hole on the left side of his head if perhaps not helping with the underlying issue.
After a moment you try something else, willing his heart to start beating again, and the child's heart springs in response to your thoughts, a single resonant beat ringing in your skull as you force your thoughts upon his body, then no more, the sudden motion within his chest causing Lucian to move, his expression becoming startled. You force another beat out of it, then another one, and start working up a rhythm, activating simultaneous muscle contractions all over. Lucian moves his hand over his chest, his eyes widening. Strange feelings bubble up in his mind, that sense of wrongness intensifying, emotions bleeding into your consciousness as you try to keep pace.
It is difficult at first, but you think you can keep this up. The counting of seconds slowly becomes ingrained in your mind, the beating of the heart not difficult to manage now, though you notice that the boy has by this point forgotten to breathe - this, too, you start to do concurrently, to the point where he starts to resemble a living child after a fashion.
Shrugging, Rachel attempts to slide through the house, starting with her arm. She will also try to make sure that the gown comes with her this time. She'd hate to be running around naked, after all.
You move effortlessly through the hole, pulling the gown after you with one arm as the rest of you easily slides through, only your eyes feeling a vague pressure as you emerge on the other side and quickly put the gown back on again.
Looking around, you see that these rooms have the distinct appearance of a cell block, the concrete walls and automatic steel doors not abating, your room being one of four - Room F3, to be exact, with another door at the end of the hallway presumably leading out of the area you'd tentatively dub "containment". That door leading out, though, looks to be a pretty heavy-duty one. Reminds you of a blast door, actually. Standard protocol for powers testing, you'd imagine. Other than that, the hallway looks appropriately bare.
"... Rachel?" goes the voice of your father, tinged heavily with confusion as it emanates from an uncertain location. Probably a deliberate feature, keeping the loudspeakers hidden. Though... you think you hear something in the background as well. "Rachel, is that you?... my god..."
Name: Wallace Major
Age: 38
Description: Wallace is a thin, pale and sharp featured man with light sandy-colored hair, deep-set eyes, a light beard, and prominent cheekbones. He has a MD, and has previously applied to by an army doctor. The experience of seeing so many of his fellow man, partially blown up, or riddled with bullets., or otherwise maimed... It broke the already fragile doctor's spirit. He began seeing schizophrenic visions; every night, with rare failure, persons unknown would take him to a strange cell, in a strange place, and torture him from dusk until dawn with all manner of strange machines.
Upon the war's end, he bought a small, out-of-the-way apartment and got a job as a librarian in, you guessed it, Edawrdstown. He thought maybe the cheery town would make him cheery again, as well.
Occupation: Surgeon(Formerly), Librarian(Formerly)
Power Origin: Experiment
Setup:Apparently he was wrong, as only few months the move to Edwardstown he shot an innocent man dead, thinking he broke into his house. However, upon hearing his story by a friend from the army, the jury decided him not guilty, by reason of insanity.
He was supposed to be taken to some strange mental asylum, where he would live out his days in a padded cell, or a straitjacket. Likely both.
But something went wrong. For some reason, he was taken to a strange cell, in a strange place, where persons unknown would forcefully inject him with strange liquids. Just like his nightly visions. Some might call this sad turn of events poetic.
Identifier: Blackmail
That definitely works, yeah. Will add to waitlist momentarily. Can always use more crazy people!
Author
Topic: Come On Down To Edwardstown: A Worm-Inspired RP (9/9) (Read 16489 times)