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| No Sudden Movements; 05/24-night-(Brian,Veil,Nezh,Kitty,etc) | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Dec 3 2014, 08:15 PM (312 Views) | |
| Gentle | Jan 25 2015, 01:49 PM Post #16 |
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Who doesn't like Black Russians?
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Okay, so he’d just… go over here now, by Terry. Kitty was hanging back, and maybe that was a good thing, especially if Veil and Quentin were still going to be sniping at each other, and he’d try to do what he could to help Terry. And sort his thoughts out, starting from the strangeness that was the idea a girl that his new friend was hearing in his head knew him, Nezhno. Not getting far with that thought though, and his question about whether this kind of thing had ever happened to the pale American before only made Terry look more uncomfortable, so it wasn’t going very well even before Quentin had another outburst. This time, they were all accused of being crazy, and the telepath’s veneer of scorn sounded a little thinner than it usually did, and then there were a flurry of what (presumably) had to be insults following a mention of Scooby Doo. Wasn’t that some kind of very old American children’s cartoon? Nezhno thought he was right about that. What it had to do with corrupting both Veil and Brian’s codenames and talking about lollipops, the Wakandan teenager couldn’t figure out, but at this point he was more than willing to trade a little confusion for the result that Quentin went stalking out of the lab. “I think that makes us Fred and Daphne,” Kitty told him, drawing nearer once again. She was shaking her head, but she sounded… amused? Okay, maybe he’d have to trade a lot of confusion for Quentin being gone from the range of annoying Veil to the point of throwing things, then. Nezhno quirked one corner of his lips upward a little in answer, uncertain of whether that was an appropriate response to being designated as ‘Fred’ (presumably), then looked back at Terry. Who was actually kind of smiling too now, like he’d found what Kitty said amusing. “I feel like I might have accidentally brought in the long lost Lassie crossover episode,” the pale boy said, leaving Nezhno to slowly look from one of them to the other. Maybe it was true after all. Americans really did stop in the middle of tense, worried situations to banter about TV show trivia. While he was still occupied with wondering if this conversation all might start making sense if he just waited, Kitty Pryde was switching gears again, just as effortlessly as she’d seemed to be able to divert in the first place. “I think you're probably not imagining things, or crazy," Kitty added thoughtfully, turning back to Terry, "I'm not sure exactly how your powers work, but around here having people accidentally in your head's pretty common.” Judging by the queasy smile that accompanied Terry’s nod, that might not really have made him feel better, though it definitely seemed like a good thing to Nezhno that at least one of them knew something about how to deal with things like this. How to deal in a way that wasn’t ‘go ask the Maker about it’, which even he was having to admit probably needed to not be the beginning and the end of his list anymore. It wasn’t the Camp anymore. The Dance was beginning to feel not even like the Dance anymore, the way they all kept spreading further and further apart, latching on to different teams and moving on with their lives, with less and less interest in the man who had gathered them together and saved them all back then. And the Maker didn’t seem bothered by that either. At all. It was… well, Nezhno hadn’t worked out what it was yet, but he was starting to realize that things weren’t the same, and that going to the Maker wasn’t the solution it had used to be. “Did she happen to say who she was?” Brian asked Terry, joining his own thoughtful, assured air of questioning to Kitty’s. He didn’t seem to be having any problems adjusting to the idea of doing these things on their own, but then, Brian never seemed to have any problems adjusting to anything - no matter what, he always was calm, and self-assured. “No,” Terry replied, nixing the hopeful idea that they could have solved this with the right question, and got a name. He looked a little like he was trying to be calm and self-assured too. Without quite having Brian’s knack for it, though. “If I knew, I would have led with that,” he added. “I-” didn’t have anything else he could think to say to that apparently, because he cut off before finishing (or even really starting) that final sentence, and Brian smoothly switched into another question. “And… can you talk back to her?” Terry’s negation was surer and quicker in coming this time. He shook his head. “She’s not hearing anything from outside her head. She’s terrified, that’s all there seems to be of her. It swallows everything,” the American boy said, and the fact that he clearly didn’t want to say anything more about that than he had said a lot. Veil had joined them too at some point, she laid a hand quickly on his arm, and Nezhno hoped very much that that would make him feel a little better - Terry had already had a lot of being forced to swallow other people’s terror today, he didn’t need more. “You think that’s why you can hear her? Because she’s frightened?” Nezhno asked, while he was thinking about that. It made sense if he was pulling people’s fears right out of their heads, especially when they were frightened, that he might have some particular attunement to it. “Oh-“ Terry hesitated again, but this time it was with the universal sigh of ‘d’oh’ in his expression (that was from the Simpsons. Nezhno knew a few American television references himself, if he worked at it), and an embarrassed-looking nod followed after, “-yeah. Yeah, that would probably make sense, wouldn’t it.” Then Terry was silent for a second or two, looking like he was thinking. Or maybe trying to catch his breath again. “This is what I know,” he said when he started again, and then went ahead into what was a listing of clues, or maybe symptoms. Scared. Cold. Paralyzed? Trapped? Nezhno’s brows had settled into a worried frown even before the next hesitating pause. All of that was bad. Really bad. And it sounded like there might be worse to come. What did she think? Terry seemed to be having trouble finding his words for it to begin with. “… that someone’s going to cut into her. She said she’d seen them do it to you.” He nodded at Nezhno. “In a room full of dead people.” Nezhno felt the world go stiller, quieter and colder around him. Even now, it only took one breath to be hovering on the edge of remembering that lab room. “I wasn’t-“ in a roomful of dead people, he wanted to protest, but only the first two words came out, and then he caught himself, clamping down on that thought, and the memories that were stirring. That was pretty much the definition of the last thing Terry would need right now - someone else’s fears bubbling right up to the surface when he was already having a tough enough time. So he’d look at the floor for a moment, counting, making his face still, and he’d catch his breath, and make sure he wasn’t thinking about that. “Does any of this make any sense at all?” Terry was asking them, but Nezhno didn’t want to risk looking up yet. He heard Veil answer, or at least echo that thing about the room full of dead people as a question. Sounding like it was hitting her too. “Okay, need to find whoever it is like now," she said aloud, taking charge of that uneasiness she’d had a lot more quickly than he had, and channeling it toward action. She had that way of doing things too. “Your tattoos, maybe?" the redhead hit on, giving Nezhno the impetus he needed to get his eyes back up again. “When they took them out?” He gave a tight nod, but kept his lips tight closed. Everyone here, including Terry after last night and this morning, knew enough about that not to need any more information from him, the Wakandan thought, and Veil continued. “Except, well, it kinda sounds like an autopsy or something. With, you know, the dead people? Zombies?" she ventured. Zombies? In spite of the tension he was still working on trying to deny, Nezhno felt his eyebrows raise. After everything that had happened already today, Veil thought they could get zombies too? Then certain facts about the laws of probability and amount of things that had happened already caught up with him, and on second thought, he turned to look at Kitty. Was that a possible thing? If any one of them might know, it would be her. But… then there was another thought that crept up more slowly, from Veil’s words, turning the expression a little more worried. He’d seen quite a lot of Terry’s powers today, between the Sentinel attack and what had happened in the Ops room. And now, with Quentin. But in all of those… he’d never seen the other boy tapping into the fears of anyone who wasn’t close by. How much range did he have? And if it wasn’t very far, then… who would be doing a live autopsy on someone here? On the Helicarrier? He wasn’t the only one looking more worried than five seconds ago, either. Veil was turning wide eyes on all of them, like she’d been thinking along the same lines. ”…I think we might need to really check on Wicked, guys. Like right now.” Or different ones? “They wouldn’t, would they?” Nezhno asked anyone who could reassure him on that. Not wanting to say that possibility out loud though, as though it could somehow make it real if he spelled it out. Wicked had been upset today, after that mission. Or angry, which was her version of upset, but she… she wouldn’t… and no one in the Resistance would… and anyway, it was hard to imagine Wicked being scared of dead people, wasn’t it? Maybe? So… who else? Who might be in a situation where they were stuck and getting cold, and talking about dead people? “….what about Molly?” Nezhno asked a moment later, when those pieces fell together in a different way that seemed a little too much like it fitted. He looked across the group, over at Brian, who usually knew (or maybe understood) Molly better than he did. “She’s been playing her games all over the Helicarrier the last few days, right?” And insisting she could hear Angelo… “What if she got stuck somewhere she didn’t mean to be? Somewhere cold, that she couldn’t get out of…” he trailed off, finding it somehow all to easy to imagine. Oh gods. Had they really got that far away from Rule One in just a few days? |
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| Kitty Pryde | Jan 26 2015, 07:48 PM Post #17 |
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Unphased
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Right, okay, she'd confused Nezh some more (Wakanda didn't do a lot of Scooby Doo reruns) and Kitty was pretty sure telling Terry that having people randomly in your head around here wasn't all that uncommon wasn't as reassuring as she'd meant it to hopefully be. Okay. Moving on now, At least Quentin was out, so that gave them some breathing room to actually try to figure out what was going on with Terry, instead of listening to more snark and insults. It wasn't that she didn't feel bad for him, kinda. She did. He'd been through way too much crap not to at least a little. But the pink haired boy was making it harder than it should've been. He was doing that like it was his job. Still, Terry was smiling like he definitely wasn't all that reassured, even if he was nodding, too. And Brian was jumping in, at least calm and confident, to ask more questions that might seem like the information would've been obvious to lead with, but then it was sometimes hard to see the obvious when you were in the middle of it. It didn't hurt to double check. "Did she happen to say who she was?” Brian asked Terry bringing his own expression of consideration into the mix. That got him a, “No,” from the dark haired (still really, really pale) boy, and a confirmation that, if she had, he'd have started with that part. And then the start of something else that he cut off after, “I-”. Maybe he just didn't know where he'd been going with it. “And… can you talk back to her?” From the almost immediate shake of Terry's head at Brian's follow up question, that was going to be a no, too. “She’s not hearing anything from outside her head. She’s terrified, that’s all there seems to be of her. It swallows everything,” which, god, had to suck for him and for whoever this girl was, where ever she was. Kitty threw a concerned look toward Nezh, brows bunching together a little more. Veil was taking the more direct route to express concern, moving in to give Terry's arm a brief squeeze. He definitely looked like he could use it. Especially after what she'd heard about the OPs room. More people in his head uninvited had to be the last thing he wanted to deal with. “You think that’s why you can hear her? Because she’s frightened?” Nezhno asked, and that was definitely a good question. One that had something like a lightbulb going off over Terry's head. It really did seem make sense, from what little she knew about his powers at least. Then the other boy laid out what he did know so far. Cold. Terrified. A female. Couldn't move, trapped somewhere. Kitty was trying to piece that all together somehow and come up with...something that made sense, even if she didn't know what, when Terry added, “… that someone’s going to cut into her. She said she’d seen them do it to you.” He nodded at Nezhno. “In a room full of dead people.” Oh...oh man. Nezh just kinda...froze in place as he took a breath. “I wasn’t-“ he started, then stopped and, teeth worrying at her lower lip, Kitty slipped her hand into his, giving it a very light squeeze. Was...did it happen that way, in the Bronx Camp, when they'd stripped out his tattoos? Had they done it in a room full've dead people? God. Yeah, of course they could've. They wouldn't have given a damn, they'd have probably expected him to die, too, so why dump him somewhere else just to have to drag him back? Terry was asking if any of it made any sense, but she wasn't sure Nezh heard so the brunette kinda nodded a little for him. Just to confirm that, yeah, it would as Veil asserted the need to find whoever it was now (which Kitty couldn't help agreeing with), then asking aloud if it was that thing whoever this was probably meant. When his tattoos had been gouged out by the damned Camp guards, because the Vibranium was worth a lot more than the life of one more mutant. Nezh looked up again, then, at the hesitant younger girl and nodded. Yeah, this was a completely sucky, awful thing for him to have to talk about. Except- “Except, well, it kinda sounds like an autopsy or something. With, you know, the dead people? Zombies?" Veil ventured and Kitty had been right with her until...well, zombies? "Erm.." Kitty started, glancing over at Nezh, whose eyebrows were doing the same thing hers were trying to do, then to Brian and back to Terry. "I don't-" Shadowcat started, then remembered she'd met Dracula personally while he was trying to turn Storm into a vampire and had been possessed by his daughter herself, and all the other demon/ghost/supernatural crap they'd seen over the years and reassessed her next words, "think zombies are all that likely." Crap, that was the last thing they needed today of all days, considering, well who the zombies would be. Then, Veil was looking even more worried, and so was Nezh, ”…I think we might need to really check on Wicked, guys. Like right now.” Wait, they thought...Wicked was a zombie? No, that didn't make any sense. Did they think...someone was about to do some sort of surgery on her while she was alive? Had she been hurt and they didn't know? “They wouldn’t, would they?” Nezhno asked and Kitty quickly shook her head. "No, I can't imagine anything like that happening. No one would do that." Well, maybe Chimera, but...no. Okay, no, not thinking that. Maybe Wicked was hurt, though, and scared and misinterpreting some of the healer's powers, like Faiza? Except she really couldn't imagine Wicked freaking out that way, especially with her powers, even if she'd barely met the other girl. “….what about Molly?” Nezhno asked a moment later looking around the group while Kitty was still trying to work the Wicked thing out. “She’s been playing her games all over the Helicarrier the last few days, right?” Her games with dead people? Now that he mentioned it, hadn't somebody said something about the younger girl talking to a ghost or something? “What if she got stuck somewhere she didn’t mean to be? Somewhere cold, that she couldn’t get out of…” he trailed off and the brunette nodded slowly. It made more sense than zombies and...Wicked freaking out (yeah, still not buying that). "Okay," she spoke up again, looking up to Nezh and, erm, yeah. Maybe should let go his hand now. Gah! Why did she keep forgetting stuff like that? Anyway! "I can at least check with somebody to see if they know where she is. And Wicked, too. Maybe that'll narrow it down." Candy and Pepper and, well, everybody was busy, but she knew Candy well enough, and figured this was serious enough, that she thought a quick call would be okay. So Kitty dialed her earpiece over, and tried to keep it brief as she got hold of Candy, kinda very quickly explained and waited for her to see what she could do. It took them almost no time to do what they could. "Candy says Wicked's definitely still with John Wraith and his people," she told the others when she was done, that having taken probably a minute or less, settling her attention on Nezh again. "She called him to make sure." Because she could do that and not get reamed out like the rest of them would right now, probably. And if there was a problem with her, Wraith would've already told somebody. "She's ninety percent sure Angel's hanging out with Jessica Drew and not stuck anywhere." After...yeah. Peter. God. "Molly she's less sure about, since all the healers are still really busy and she doesn't want to interrupt them unless she has to, but Candy says she's definitely on the helicarrier." So, maybe at least a little more than they knew a minute ago. Also maybe a place to start. Hopefully one that didn't lead to zombies. God, they so didn't need to have to deal with zombies today. |
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| Tag | Jan 30 2015, 01:35 AM Post #18 |
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Infected with Boy.
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Kitty's assurance may not have put Terry at ease, but it was good enough for Brian. Until they had reason to think it's wasn't someone in Terry's head, the safest thing to assume was that the girl he was hearing was real and not just the pale homme's imagination. He'd seen enough by now to get the idea that just about anything was possible around here. It might help if they knew who 'she' was, as long as there was a name to give. That seemed like a good place to start. Sometimes when you needed to get past a door, it paid off to check the knob before resorting to breaking the door down, even when there was every reason to expect it to be locked. “No,” sounding more a little calm and deliberate than before. Not much, but Brian thought he detected a bit of effort going into it, which was a definite step in the right direction. “If I knew, I would have led with that,” he added, pretty much confirming exactly what Brian had expected. It had been worth a try, but there were still other things to consider. Like could Terry talk back to whoever she was? That would also make this a lot simpler. A quicker and more certain shake of the dark-haired boy's head banished that hope to the same purgatory as the first. Maybe a little too quick, actually. “She’s not hearing anything from outside her head,” he said. “She’s terrified, that’s all there seems to be of her. It swallows everything.” Okay, this was definitely sounding a lot more serious. For her and for Terry. Veil had moved over to him and gave his hand a little squeeze. Maybe that would give him a little more to put him at ease. For the moment, Brian stayed right where he'd been. Crowding Terry right now seemed like a pretty bad idea. His answer had Nezh back to looking thoughtful. “You think that’s why you can hear her? Because she’s frightened?” he asked. The way Terry's powers worked, that would ring out as clear as a dog whistle, wouldn't it? Or maybe that wasn't the best way to put it, after all the talk of Lassie and Scooby Doo. Terry looked like he was thinking he should have known that, although Brian imagined he had more on his mind than anyone should have to handle as it was. “This is what I know,” he said, after composing himself. “She’s scared. Cold, Really cold. She can’t move. She thinks…” There was a moment of hesitation, which didn't bode well for whatever he had to say next. What he'd already said was bad enough. Brian looked to the others as he tried to put together what all that could mean. “… that someone’s going to cut into her. She said she’d seen them do it to you.” [Terry] nodded at Nezhno. “In a room full of dead people.” Worse. That was definitely worse. He saw Veil look back at Nezhno with wide green eyes while the Wakandan started to say something. A denial? Correction? But he stopped short, Kitty taking his hand, while Terry finished his thought with, “Does any of this make any sense at all?” It sounded like an autopsy, to Brian. Like one of those stories about people awake and unable to move during surgery, but still feeling everything. That was almost enough to give Brian the chills. He hoped Nezh's composure was keeping as steady as it looked, too. Those weren't memories he needed coming back, especially right now. Veil started up first, asking for confirmation about the room with the dead people and insisting they needed to find the person Terry had unintentionally dialed into. They were probably all in agreement there, but how were they going to start looking for her, especially since they didn't know who she was? She looked around, meeting all of their eyes, still looking pretty confused. Nezh was also looking to Kitty, who gave a very uncertain sounding guess that zombies weren't likely. Well okay, then. "...I think we might need to really check on Wicked, guys. Like right now." Wicked? With her powers, it would almost make sense to think of her first, wouldn't it? And she'd barely spoken to anyone after the mission yesterday. It had been a while since Brian had seen her that upset. Except, for it to be her... “They wouldn’t, would they?” Nezhno said, almost as if completing Brian's thought. Kitty quickly shook her head. "No, I can't imagine anything like that happening. No one would do that." “….what about Molly?” Nezhno suggested next, and Brian felt his blood turn to ice. Dios Mio. And now Nezh was looking Brian's way. “She’s been playing her games all over the Helicarrier the last few days, right?” he asked, and Brian decided it was rhetorical, since it looked like he had more to say. “What if she got stuck somewhere she didn’t mean to be? Somewhere cold, that she couldn’t get out of…” Brian shook his head, even as he noticed Kitty nodding thoughtfully. It was easy to picture something like that happening, and that was twisting Brian's guts into all kinds of uncomfortable shapes, but Nezh was forgetting something about Molls that (Brian hoped) ruled her out. "She'd have said who she is," he explained to his fellow Dancer. "Even if she didn't think anyone could hear her. She'd narrate the whole thing like she was in some kind of radio play or something." That didn't make it any easier to imagine. Or not to imagine. Or be worried, so Brian looked from him to Veil and Kitty. "We should still check, though," he said. "Just to be sure." "Okay," Kitty said, looking up at Nezh and appearing to only just now notice that she'd still been holding his hand. She released it, perhaps a little more abruptly than someone acting natural might. "I can at least check with somebody to see if they know where she is. And Wicked, too. Maybe that'll narrow it down." Brian waited while Kitty dialed into her earpiece, taking the few steps toward the rest to join them properly. Things seemed to have calmed enough, at least with Terry, that he didn't think his proximity would add too much additional stess. "Candy says Wicked's definitely still with John Wraith and his people," she finally reported. "She called him to make sure." That took care of one, then. "She's ninety percent sure Angel's hanging out with Jessica Drew and not stuck anywhere. Molly she's less sure about, since all the healers are still really busy and she doesn't want to interrupt them unless she has to, but Candy says she's definitely on the helicarrier." Okay, that was a little more reassuring. She had been spending a lot more time with the healers than Brian had expected after they'd taken her on. "Thanks, Kitty," he said, glad she'd been able to take that weight off their shoulders. Then, looking to the others he said, "Does anybody know where G is?" He doubted it was her, for a lot of reasons, but she was the only one not accounted for, so they may as well rule her out. "A room full of dead people sounds like the morgue," he added, back to speaking in carefully as he methodically went through his thoughts. "But the healers would have caught someone who wasn't actually dead, right? So where does that leave us?" Could Gloria have gone there to pay her respects to Melody without anybody knowing? Maybe something happened and she got trapped in there? How that could have happened, especially with her powers, still sounded really unlikely, though. |
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| Trauma | Feb 2 2015, 10:30 PM Post #19 |
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No, he couldn’t speak to her. She wasn’t speaking to him - maybe he hadn’t been clear about that, Terry thought vaguely, but didn’t know what to do about it. Nothing about the feeling of being swallowed inside her mind (and that was what it had felt like, when he’d tried to concentrate on her voice) had given the slightest sense that she was aware that there was anyone sharing her thoughts. Maybe it would have helped her to know that, but… he couldn’t. He couldn’t face the idea of drowning like that again, just to see if it would be different this time. He was still feeling like he should probably be feeling guilty about that when something touched his arm. No - someone. It was a hand. Veil’s. Veil was touching his arm. Not afraid, or even wary (of him, anyway). Brian was still hanging back, keeping the kind of sensible distance that would befit the kind of psychic leper Terry was pretty much willing to concede to being, but the little redhead… wasn’t scared, even this close, the same way she hadn’t been in the Ops room, after everything. That was… nice, he supposed. In the sense that nice was intellectually the right word, but nothing in his head really felt like ‘nice’ at the moment. Still, he was pretty sure he appreciated it, even with that fuzz in his head. It was a little easier to think after that, even if it took Nezhno asking something that was probably rhetorical to remember how his own powers worked. Yeah… it probably would make sense that he could hear the girl in the ice because she was terrified. He should have got that himself. He should be able to do something for himself, right? Take control? Pushing the slight feeling of being an idiot back away, along with the girls’ feelings, which piled up in his head whenever he tried to think, Terry stopped for a second, and tried to focus on being like a therapist. Boring. Calm. Taking emotion and turning it into a dull, pinned down catalogue of components to be analyzed and sifted for information. Like the brief hand on his arm, it made things a little easier, and slowly, he managed to assemble his list. Scared. Cold. Immobile. Scared of being cut into - the way… the way she’d seen them done to Nezhno. In a room full of dead people. “I wasn’t-“ the tattooed African protested. Just that - then he kind of looked away, doing something that felt to Terry a whole lot like someone trying to put themselves into lockdown. He should probably feel kinda guilty about making his new friend go through that, shouldn’t he? Well, he’d have to pencil it in for later, once he was done being relieved, and grateful, that Nezhno would try to do that -whether it was to spare him, or just himself, Terry appreciated it - because his head was really kind of starting to pound, and only leaving so much room per unit of time for his own thoughts and feelings. More arm squeezing seemed to be going about. Kitty to Nezhno this time. Hopefully that would help him too, but right now… okay, he kind of needed to keep going here, didn’t he. Did any of this make any sense at all? Anything he’d said? “A room full've dead people?" Veil sorta asked, in about the only tone you could relaly ever ask that kind of question. Terry nodded weakly. Yeah, that had been part of it. How… why… what the girl had even meant by that, he didn’t really know. But she’d felt sure of that, he was pretty certain. “Okay, need to find whoever it is like now," she said aloud which, yeah. Yeah, that’d be good. And she had other ideas, asking Nezhno about his tattoos, and that… thing he was probably trying not to relive right now. Yeah, he’d nodded. So they were all pretty much on the same page here. The same, mostly bare, scrawled page with all the blotches of failure to make any kind of useful sense. Great. He was probably the worst psychic feedback Lassie substitute ever - and why was this not even surprising? “Except, well, it kinda sounds like an autopsy or something. With, you know, the dead people? Zombies?” Already squeezing his eyes shut against a particularly vicious throbbing behind his temples, Terry started in surprise, then winced when that made it worse. Zombies. Now there was a possibility of zombies? Why had he not actually protested out loud last night, when Suzie had volunteered them all to stay here on the Helicarrier? Even Genosha might have been better than zombies that… “Erm..” That was an uncertain noise from Kitty. Wasn’t she supposed to be the one who’d seen it all before and knew better than to be worried? Terry forced himself to lever his eyes open again, finding a multi-way exchange of glances in various shades of ‘uh-oh’. Fuck. “I don't-" Shadowcat started, then semi-obviously reassessed her next words, “think zombies are all that likely.” God, his head hurt. “…I think we might need to really check on Wicked, guys. Like right now.” The short girl with all the hair? Terry paused, turning to look at Veil, since she’d said that. “You know I’m not actually related to her, right?” he mumbled quietly, then felt like a douchebag pretty much the second he’d said it, remembering something about ‘dead people powers’. And that Veil - all of them - were trying to help. And looking concerned. Veil was looking concerned. Kitty was looking confused, but Nezhno was looking concerned too. “They wouldn’t, would they?” Wouldn’t… what? Hold someone down in a cold room and try to flay them alive? God… he wished he hadn’t just thought that. Or remembered some of what that one healer had been doing last night in the Infirmary. “No, I can't imagine anything like that happening. No one would do that,” Kitty Pryde said firmly, which Terry couldn’t help but think might have sounded better if she hadn’t looked like she was still thinking about it afterward. The Girl in the Ice had been certain that someone would, though. “So she’s just crazy?” Terry asked, even more quietly this time, feeling tired. Maybe that would also be okay, as long as they could find her. Or they could prove he was the crazy one, and then someone could figure out a way to make that stop too. Nezhno broke in with another theory though. This time about Molly, who was… wait, which one was she? Right, the little one, who’d been around this morning. Brian shook that one down pretty quickly though. “She’d have said who she is," he explained with an air of authority that might have been real, not just trying to convince himself. “Even if she didn't think anyone could hear her. She'd narrate the whole thing like she was in some kind of radio play or something.” Terry carefully eased himself back against a bench, trying to rub the knot out of one temple. Okay, so… she was someone who referred to herself in third person constantly, even when terrified out of her mind? Well, these guys knew her as more than a little kid in a hat, for all he knew they had good reason to think that. “We should still check, though," [Brian] said. "Just to be sure.” Check what? He really needed his brain to stop pounding. “So we should… what?” Terry asked, grimacing, and not doing a good job at sounding enthusiastic because of it. “Go knocking on all the meat lockers and refrigerators on this thing?” This thing being the giant, army-sized, multi-kitchened/store-roomed Helicarrier? “Stroll down to the morgue and ask to be let in?” Cold place, dead bodies, but that wasn’t the kind of place official, capable people let anyone just wander in on, was it? Even in a group of ‘freedom fighters’ who sang popsongs while clearing camps and apparently spent their nights drinking and singing karaoke and let teenagers alone to bicker in labs that were probably full of weapons. Okay, revise that back to a maybe. At best. “Okay,” [Kitty] spoke up again, letting go of Nezhno’s hand, but sounding like she was onto some idea, “I can at least check with somebody to see if they know where she is. And Wicked, too. Maybe that'll narrow it down.” Okay, yeah, that. That actually sounded like checking. He was just going to lean here now, and hope that his skull only felt like it was going to crack open. Actually… now that he thought about it, tuning out the soft sound of Kitty talking into her earpiece, the pressure was actually a little less inside his head now, the effort of holding his thoughts away from the Frozen Girl’s was getting a little easier. Thank God. Right? She was… duller. Quieter than she’d been. Was he doing that? He hadn’t figured it out before Kitty had come back, to say that Candy (and whatever Suzie might have said, he was pretty sure that wasn’t a codename) had found and confirmed Wicked. And maybe someone called Angel - was the the one with wings, or the one with the perpetual glare? - but… no confirmation on Molly, except that she was on the Helicarrier. Well… that wasn’t really reassuring. Whoever the frozen girl was, he was pretty sure she was on the Helicarrier too. But- okay, Brian looked reassured. He’d just go ahead and not say that part out loud then, Terry decided hastily, since the dreadlocked boy was thanking Kitty and looking relieved, before asking “Does anybody know where G is?” “Who’s G?” Terry asked, finding the pressure in his head had subsided enough that it was almost easy to follow the conversation again. If not the references. “Gloria,” Nezhno supplied, getting that slow, thoughtful look again as he considered his friend’s question. “The way she looked when she got back from her mission, I would have thought she’d still be fast asleep in her bed…” he trailed off to nowhere, but then was abruptly looking to Terry. “Is she angry?” he asked. Terry blinked. “The girl in your head. Is she angry, as well as terrified?” Official confirmation. They were all crazy. All of these people from the Bronx Camp were crazy in one way or another, and he was suddenly feeling eerily sane. Terry shook his head, though. No. There wasn’t anything angry about the Girl in the Ice. “Then it’s probably not Gloria,” Nezhno concluded, like he’d solved some kind of problem in logic. Terry closed his eyes again. Did it matter who it was? Or just that she was definitely getting slower, and quieter now? “A room full of dead people sounds like the morgue,” Brian added, switching back to that other train of thought, which was probably a good thing, since clearly wondering who it might be hadn’t actually got any of them anywhere except ‘definitely not Wicked’. Maybe wondering out loud about ‘where’ it was was going to get them further? “But the healers would have caught someone who wasn't actually dead, right? So where does that leave us?” “Standing around while she’s freezing to death?” Terry heard himself asking sharply, then winced as another round of the chill of hearing yourself sound like a snide douchebag hit him. “Sorry,” he apologized. Half-apologized, because he was tired, and his head was still ringing a little, and he was kind of kicking himself for the utterly non-genius idea of not going straight to Patsy with this, and none of that was really conducive to owning up to knowing you were acting like a dickhead. “But I think maybe whatever we do, we should do something soon. She’s getting quieter in my head.” And he was starting to pretty sure that that actually wasn’t a good thing. |
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| Veil | Feb 3 2015, 04:10 PM Post #20 |
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Floppy-Haired White Boy Whisperer
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Tattoo badness, she didn't like reminding Nezh of all that, but...that kinda sounded like what that might be, didn't it? Nezh looked up again and nodded like he didn't really want to. Yeah, it sounded like that except it kinda sounded like an autopsy or something, too and... Zombies! Were they gonna have to do zombies now? Gah! Okay, maybe no zombies. Kitty Pryde didn't...well, sorta didn't seem to think there'd be zombies. Wasn't she sure? Being more sure about zombies one way or another would be better. Then again... God, where was Wicked? She wouldn't...no. Nope. Not thinking that, but maybe it'd be good if they found her? Like now? As in now, now? “You know I’m not actually related to her, right?” Terry was kinda mumbling in a not happy way and the redhead turned to frown at him a little. A little worriedly, a little more confused-ly. Huh? "Yes?" she tried, since no clue why that was a thing right now that needed asking, but confusion. They had it everywhere. Everyone had caught it, with Nezh asking whether people would do something and Kitty being all confident with the 'No'-ing, at least. Even if she wasn't sure what they wouldn't be doing? Freezing people? Autopsy-ing people? Making Zombies? What? Also, again with the everyone Not Moving when she was kinda sure they probably should be. Where, no clue, but moving! It had to be better than standing! “So she’s just crazy?” Terry asked, quiet and sounding tired and there was a whole other reason for moving. Crying girl in his head, crazy or not. Not a thing anyone would want. Nezh mentioned Molly and all her games she'd claimed to be playing with Ghost of Angelo (still all the creepy, all of it), but Bri thought Mol would've like...identified herself in her head talking or something and Veil was starting to kinda feel like a ping pong ball. Yes, checking! Checking was a thing they should do. Bri was totally right. “So we should… what?” Terry asked, grimacing, and not doing a good job at sounding enthusiastic because of it. “Go knocking on all the meat lockers and refrigerators on this thing?” Okay, maybe not all those, but there had to be some starting places, right? Like maybe the big ones? “Stroll down to the morgue and ask to be let in?” Yes! Or, well, no. But checking there, they needed to do that. "I can totally get into the morgue," Veil..assured?..him. If you could actually assure people about the amazing ability to mist yourself into a room full've dead people. Ewww. But do it, yes she could. Mist in through a crack or something. At least to check. "Misty Veil, go." Except now Kitty was...yeah, okay, maybe a quick check for people if somebody could actually know if they were stuck somewhere or not would be good. And there was actual checking happening that didn't take long. Then they knew that it wasn't Wicked doing...yeah, still not thinking about that and her 'kill all the flatscan' things. Angel was ninety percent or something with Spider-Woman, so probably wasn't ten percent stuck somewhere crying about dead people. And Molly was...somewhere on the helicarrier. Yep. Time to go, possible identifying Molly head monologuing or not. “Does anybody know where G is?” That was Bri and Veil frowned toward him again. All the frowning if it was Gloria. “Who’s G?” Terry asked, looking...man, was he even more pale than normal? Was that even a thing anyone could do ever when he was already amazingly, Wicked-type pale? “Gloria,” Nezhno supplied, getting that slow, thoughtful look again as he considered his friend’s question. “The way she looked when she got back from her mission, I would have thought she’d still be fast asleep in her bed…” he trailed off to nowhere looking at Terry as Veil jumped in. "If Jimmy let her fall asleep in the freezer, he is in so much trouble. So much." He had instructions and stuff! He was not supposed to let Risque faceplant in the food section! “Is she angry?” he asked. Terry blinked. “The girl in your head. Is she angry, as well as terrified?” Yeah, G would be really, totally, completely angry about that. And things would be...imploding. A lot. Terry was kinda looking like he thought they'd all lost it, but he was shaking his head. Okay, not Gloria, then. Which is what Nezh said next and then Brian was voting morgue, except not. Because healers who weren't supposed to leave live people in with the dead people. “Standing around while she’s freezing to death?” Terry heard himself asking sharply, then winced as another round of the chill of hearing yourself sound like a snide douchebag hit him. “Sorry,” he apologized and Veil gave his arm another little squeeze. It'd be okay, but they did totally need to start doing something. Something was totally better than standing. “But I think maybe whatever we do, we should do something soon. She’s getting quieter in my head.” "Yes!" Veil agreed. She agreed urgently, because she could totally do that. "Doing something, let's start, please. We can discuss while we do something." Time saving, yes, they could do that. Right now. Really. "Right." Kitty agreed with a nod and a thoughtful look. "You're right," she told Terry. "We need to stop thinking who and start thinking where." Another kinda thoughtful look, her head turning toward Nezh, and the older girl added, "Cold, dead people, something that's like surgery. Sounds like the morgue should be our first stop. Grab hold." Reaching over for Nezh's hand, she held out her other one to Terry. "Everybody grab hold, I'll get us down." Phasing? Oh man, that was gonna be kinda freaky and cool and weird and stuff and Veil reached for Terry's other hand, holding her free one out to Bri or Nezh. Were they supposed to...hold their breath or close their eyes or anything? |
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| Gentle | Feb 5 2015, 11:18 PM Post #21 |
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Who doesn't like Black Russians?
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Had he really been thinking that the what the Dance had had changed? Because suddenly, this felt all too familiar, like any of fifty different times in the Camp with everyone talking over each other, shifting from point to point without the time to really think through any of them. The possibilities came and went one after another. Or, more accurately, they came and had doubts cast on them, one after another. Kitty put down the idea that anyone here would be doing some kind of autopsy, on Wicked or anyone else. That reassured Nezhno in a way he wished he didn’t need to be, although it didn’t seem to make Terry feel any better. Brian nixed the possibility that it could be Molly. Mostly. Even he thought that maybe they should check, though Terry bluntly (and not particularly helpfully, admittedly) pointed out at least a couple of issues that made that sound anything but simple. He was scowling to go with that negativity, and it… didn’t really seem like him. If you could know how someone was after only a day, but Nezhno thought in this case that he did. It was probably the situation, and the stress that was making him sound like Gloria when she’d got frustrated with Angelo. Or Julian. Or really anyone. “I can totally get into the morgue," Veil assured him accounting for one of those objections, and the same almost certainly went for Kitty too, Nezhno had to think. Access was probably the least of their problems, though how they could possibly search efficiently was still unfortunately an issue. How many different places could Molly - if it was Molly, or whoever else it might be, if it wasn’t - possibly have got to? This Helicarrier was huge, and… “Okay,” [Kitty] spoke up again, looking at Nezhno while he was trying to catch up his thinking on that, and gently easing her hand out of his. He hadn’t properly noticed how much warmer and less ominous the room had seemed during that contact until she let it go. But she did, and… well, that was probably a good thing. It was easier now to find calm for himself, anyway; he could keep from thinking about those memories on his own. “I can at least check with somebody to see if they know where she is. And Wicked, too. Maybe that'll narrow it down.” That was smart. The communicator, and the people who could track those locations, that would be quicker than trying to search physically. Nezhno nodded, not that she needed to, and then waited while she stepped aside to make the call that she needed. When she came back, that brief conversation had eliminated Wicked from needing to be considered once and for all. Angel was only 90% accounted for though, and while that was promising, it wasn’t definite. Still less what she had to say about Molly being on the Helicarrier, but unable to be put definitively with the Healers. Definitely on the Helicarrier wasn’t the same thing as ‘definitely not anywhere that could be exactly the kind of danger Terry was feeling’. Elementary introduction to probability made this kind of point over and over… gods, he wished he hadn’t started thinking about that class right now. Brian though, was smoother (and possibly less obsessively concerned with the fact that likely wasn’t the same as certain), like he always was. He thanked Kitty for her idea (it was progress, even if it wasn’t the slam dunk eliminator of impossibilities they all probably wished it was), but then came up with another possibility of his own. Gods. Gloria too? “Who’s G?” Terry asked. “Gloria,” Nezhno supplied, glad of having at least one question in all of this he could answer with complete certainty. Brian’s, though, was harder, and deserved thinking carefully. “The way she looked when she got back from her mission, I would have thought she’d still be fast asleep in her bed…” he thought out loud. “If Jimmy let her fall asleep in the freezer, he is in so much trouble. So much,” Veil interjected, bringing the trailing end of Nezhno’s train of thought to an abrupt halt. He glanced her way briefly, eyebrows raising. Did that really sound like anything Warpath would ever do? Did she know something he didn’t? Was he, Nezhno, second-guessing himself to a point that was completely ridiculous? It couldn’t be Gloria, could it? Not likely no, but that wasn’t the same as not definite… though come to think of it, he could think of a way to eliminate Gloria from this equation beyond a pretty satisfying level of reasonable doubt. “Is she angry?” he asked. Terry blinked, that wasn’t promising - but then Terry hadn’t actually got to meet Gloria yet, had he? “The girl in your head. Is she angry, as well as terrified?” The pale American boy looked a little confused, but he shook his head, and if you knew Gloria, that was enough. “Then it’s probably not Gloria,” Nezhno concluded, reasonably confident of that at least. And if Kitty’s comm call hadn’t already eliminated Wicked, that one probably could have done that too. Now if they could only figure out questions that would work equally well for the rest of this, they might get somewhere. Though… maybe not really in good time for the girl, whoever she might be, or for Terry, who wasn’t grimacing quite as much as he’d been just a minute ago, but still didn’t look very steady on his feet right now. “A room full of dead people sounds like the morgue," [Brian] added, back to speaking in carefully as he methodically went through his thoughts. "But the healers would have caught someone who wasn't actually dead, right? So where does that leave us?” With Terry reaching some kind of boiling point in his frustration, apparently. He snapped, sounding just a little like Quentin for a moment, except that he apologized in his next breath (something you could easily suffocate waiting for from the former Nate), then went on to explain why he’d got that far on edge. “But I think maybe whatever we do, we should do something soon. She’s getting quieter in my head.” Oh gods. And he’d been standing here, worrying about what the most ideal way of solving this problem was, and not even getting near to the point of thinking of doing anything. Thankfully Veil had more idea about how to switch gears toward something more useful. “Yes!” she declared purposefully. ”Doing something, let's start, please. We can discuss while we do something.” So… not an actual plan of doing something, but definitely a push to go that way. Better than he’d managed, anyway. “Right.” Kitty agreed with a nod and a thoughtful look that Nezhno guessed - or hoped? No, guessed - might be leading toward some more tangible suggestion. “You’re right," she told Terry. "We need to stop thinking who and start thinking where.” Where? So they needed to go back to that other problem, the problem of efficient search with limited information in an environment that, while finite, was definitely vast. So… why did he get the feeling when Kitty looked at him that he was making this more complicated than it needed to be? “Cold, dead people, something that's like surgery. Sounds like the morgue should be our first stop. Grab hold.” Oh… yeah. That would be why. It was actually simple really, when you looked at it from that angle. Should he… someone… go tell someone what they were planning to do? Or was he over-thinking and worrying about things that would only waste the time that Terry’s last words had indicated was precious? He- would trust Kitty, Nezhno deciding, and nodded as took the hand she’d offered him again, then watched Terry eyeing the one she’d offered him before shrugging like he’d resigned himself to not understanding. “Everybody grab hold, I'll get us down.” And that was all it took. No fussing with doors, or elevators or stairs. Practically no more than the second or so it took to link hands, and Nezhno felt them sinking through the floor, and had to remind himself that there was no rational reason why he should be imagining that phasing would tickle. [To be continued in the morgue, in a thread called: It was not Death, for I stood up] |
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7:19 PM Jul 10