you only wanna come up - Printable Version +- 'Souls IPB Archive (November 2007–October 2012) (https://soulsrpg.com/ipb) +-- Forum: Dead IC (https://soulsrpg.com/ipb/forumdisplay.php?fid=110) +--- Forum: Dead Topics (https://soulsrpg.com/ipb/forumdisplay.php?fid=21) +--- Thread: you only wanna come up (/showthread.php?tid=864) |
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- Andrezej Lykoi - 01-24-2008 [html]
- Legacy Kali - 01-24-2008 [html] Why this forbidding place attracted the cinnamon girl might have been a mystery, but you could even say it was simple. Death, the loneliness of grief among the grieving, and the confusion of change had her running wild as if the blood in her veins was over-charged with emotion and could not be restrained. Having slept hardly at all, she was charged with insomniac energy and had paced the beach for a while. Seeing her own two-footed tracks behind her had given her shivers - it wasn't just home that was different now, she was intrinsically altered and there was no going back.
The youngster's steady gait altered then, becoming uneven as she hurried and lingered in turn past the various sights of the debilitated facility. Maybe it would be more sensible to turn back, for the dusty and stark chambers and halls were too repulsive to consider staying there for any time. Unless - perhaps nearer the roof would be fresher. Heading upwards at a fast walk, she did her best to avoid looking into the decaying, sterile chambers. Why would anyone live here? was her foremost thought, and she was just considering turning around before she got lost when she started violently, heart immediately somersaulting and her jaded eyes flew wide open. It was the movement of something or someone, just passing out of sight down a hallway and possibly into a room. What kind of person would there be in a place like this? She had so little expected to find anything living here that her reaction was reflexive: she darted sideways into a room that might have been a kind of office or security centre - it had two rectangular head-sized window-holes in the door where glass had been. She yanked the door shut behind her but over-eager, she pulled it too hard, and it slammed into its rusty hinges with a grating clang. The sharp sound seemed as if it would carry for miles, and the girl winced. There was a worse realisation to come: though she was perhaps hidden, she had no idea how to work the doorhandle to re-open it. Nerves that were already highly strung jolted her further and she momentarily buried her face in her hands, her short wavy hair tumbling about her face, then collecting herself Legacy side-stepped so as not to be so easily visible from outside and then stood stock-still beside the door, one hand gripping the handle as if for support. - Andrezej Lykoi - 01-24-2008 [html]
- Legacy Kali - 01-24-2008 [html] In the few seconds of silence she had time to sweep her eyes over the room, this trap in which she found herself skulking like a prey animal. Something inside rebelled against this, but her sense was stronger than pride for now. There was a table, which she saw as a flat hollow object, and chairs, all liberally coated in dust and grime. The rest of the human paraphernalia lying around was unintelligible to her. Her breathing slowed to a deep tremble rather than the quick panting of fright, and then caught in her windpipe as the first footsteps were heard. She pressed herself to the wall. Would it be her protection? Or her prison?
Then, as the first of his scent filtered through the stiflingly still air and the sound of canine claws upon solid surface drummed into her ears, Legacy realised the horrifying truth: she knew who this was, and how could she be surprised? A twisted creature like that deserved a place like this. Unpleasant, unfeeling, built in the basest of violent instinct. She could not believe that he would have changed for the better since their last encounter - and if he'd grown as much and shifted as she had, then she really was in trouble. No one would find her here. Not in time.
Though her heart fluttered, the wolf retained her clarity of mind; the door opened inwards. He must not be allowed in. As his deranged voice resonated from every wall, only just recognisable, Legacy moved across the room in a few quick paces, seized a chair, hefted it awkwardly back and jammed the metal frame against the door. She'd just meant to build a flimsy block - but by chance the chair-back lodged beneath the handle and held firmly, braced at an angle against the floor. She stepped back a few paces, breathing quickly, nervously, and surveyed this. It looked secure, at least. Time would tell if once again her strength and resolve would be tested. She'd tasted mortality, now. Legacy would fight him, if she had to. He must know where she was now. He would be at the right door at any moment. Keeping her keen eyes fixed upon the empty window panels, Legacy called out, trying not to let her voice waver. "Get out of here. Leave me alone." - Andrezej Lykoi - 01-24-2008 [html]
- Legacy Kali - 01-24-2008 [html] The sound of his laughter was all that could be expected of a madman, almost nauseating Legacy as she tried to ignore it. She could not drag her eyes away from the hand that next appeared, though. Optime. She'd suspected as much. As his figure choked the window his scent filled the room: overpowering. She hated how afraid he made her, utterly terrified even more than was proportional to the situation, despite her best efforts. The girl jerked backwards as the force of attempted entry hit the door. She gritted her teeth: at least he wasn't inside. Silent as if mesmerised, she simply stared back at him. That insane, ash-furred face framed neatly by the window, smiling widely with evil intent. She was stiff, still - a deer frozen in his headlights. In this alien, hostile place the most she could do while looking at him was to twist her features into a sullen scowl, her head lowering defiantly with those green eyes still inextricably boring into his own of fittingly violent yellow. It was no equal reply to his silken phrases, but she couldn't manage a single word.
He removed himself, though not very far, and in the seconds where she was nearly back in solitude - how sweet the solitude had been, though she'd thought differently at the time - her fingers clenched, a gesture new to the girl but as natural as any other. Slowly the adrenaline, the grief and most of all the outrage were drifting back. The silence between them was absolute and electric, then Legacy with a sob of frustration hurled herself at the door, crashing her fists brutally against it. It and the chair rattled but held: the frame was solid, as it had had reason to be. Shoving her face next to the window and turning a blazing expression down upon him, she hissed, words intense with anger. "You can't do that! You can't keep me here!" Some part of her knew it was pointless to even say this; it was stupid to show him how emotional she was - perhaps even giving him even more psychological advantage than he already had - but Legacy was still barely more than a child and the strain was profound. "Who do you think you are?" She was almost spitting out each word, but her rage was already calming and she was already regretting the outburst. - Andrezej Lykoi - 01-24-2008 [html]
- Legacy Kali - 01-24-2008 [html] Legacy stood solidly, trying to muster up an unaffected expression. She hadn't been trying to get out: the attack on the door had merely been an expression of her fury, an involuntary outpouring of rage. It had been pointless, and so it had obviously seemed to him. His finishing words confirmed this. There was a flash of defensive scorn in her eyes. He knew she feared his attack, he must smell the terror upon her - he must understand that she would not open the door while he sat there, waiting. It wasn't so much that she couldn't get it back open, she wasn't sure of that yet, but that she didn't even dare to try. To succeed would mean facing him. Did he really think her that stupid? He had her effectively if not literally caged within. Although, to speak this aloud would give him yet more reason to smirk, so she did not even answer his sneer of a question, although if she had it would have been nothing more cutting than I know. The two children had no respect whatsoever for one another, and it was quite the odd situation. Already her temper was cooler, though, and she did think that perhaps as the only sane being present, she stood a chance of waiting him out, of boring him into leaving - anything, anything to get that scent and that voice away from her. She was still carefully watching him, ready to duck away if he stood up. "You should be the one locked away, and every other ignorant brat like you." Could she possibly provoke a reaction? She doubted he cared what she said. He didn't seem to think of her as more than an amusing diversion. But then, why was he waiting? Maybe she could throw rubble out of the window at him: or maybe just speaking to him would be more a more effective incentive for him to go. He hadn't been much of a talker before, though now he seemed admittedly different. "You know, you can't wait there forever, unless you want us both to die..." For all she knew, he didn't care. - Andrezej Lykoi - 01-24-2008 [html]
- Legacy Kali - 01-24-2008 [html] He spoke as if logically, and yet there was a faint lack of logic to his sentences that just unnerved her even more as she listened. Though the thought did frighten her - she had an imagination, after all - she was certain there was no way he could enter through the solid, jammed door, and so she was able to keep the fear at bay. Though she trembled as she spoke, there was a confident lift to her voice. "That's not going to happen, because you can't possibly get in." She hit the door again with a palm, as if to demonstrate its strength - although part of her was hoping he would manage to break through the door so she could somehow get past him as he advanced and run, which was a plan that would not work if he noticed her trying the handle and was ready. There was a chance she could just walk away untouched, but she suspected his insanity made it a slim one. She would never relax in his presence, but her expression was more thoughtful than horrified now. Like a stalked prey animal, her senses were heightened, her train of thought swift and exacting. "So why don't you just give up? Surely I'm not worth your time." Softly spoken, not wheedling, but suggestive. "Or maybe you're enjoying having me around?" She had an idea this would rile him. - Andrezej Lykoi - 01-25-2008 [html]
- Legacy Kali - 01-25-2008 [html] It was difficult not to rail at him for his selfishness, for his folly in believing he was better than everyone, for his enjoyment of cruelty. She just wanted out; up here was so disconnected from everything that made up her life, so achingly far away from home where Legacy felt she was needed. She had lost a relative, but the pack had lost a Beta, and her mother Fatin was grieving as if for a child.
- Andrezej Lykoi - 01-25-2008 [html]
- Legacy Kali - 01-25-2008 [html] Standing there so small and slight amongst the litter and dust Legacy might have looked beaten, but she didn't feel it. All her attention was concentrated at her tormentor, trying to sense his motives, his levers. The fact that he was laughing at her didn't make her ridiculous, for there was nothing amusing she could see; it just made him look crazier than ever. He seemed to think that his madness was inherent, and so perhaps it was although she didn't want to believe there were more like him, the odds were that they did exist. The names he recited made her think of Empusa, that coyote friend of her brother's - her surname had been Lykoi, too. She'd had a degree of sanity, though, unlike this one. Unless there was something in there that just didn't surface often. She could see reason in his eyes, even during the most unreasonable moments. There was some intelligence, some sense of identity there. Was that even more frightening, or did it give her a certain amount of hope?
Again the door found itself suffering a beating, but Legacy was finding her feet in this wretched situation and even as she felt the jolt of fright on hearing his first movement had yanked herself away, swiftly evading those menacing jaws. Of course, she had been expecting that. Backing away still further, slowly now, she narrowed her eyes at him as if considering the boy carefully. "True. And I am. Wouldn't you be too?" It was hardly worth denying it. She could feel the terror creeping in her flesh. Would it ever be gone? But even so she was confident in the secure room, and she raised her voice as passionate anger coursed in every vein. "You may be a killer. Or do you just talk about it? But even if every ancestor you've ever had had murdered every day of their lives, it wouldn't make you more special than anyone else. It makes you part of an entire family that would have been better off never born at all. Worse than the humans." She hardly knew the best way to speak, to show how disgusted she was by the glorification of loss of life, how futile and empty the claims of related prestige seemed to her. Like the vaguely remembered stories of the people who would kill one another on a mass scale for hollow, incomprehensible purposes. "And I hope your arrogance gets you killed, before you get a chance to continue the whole rotten line yourself!" she added hoarsely. Her eyes glinted in the halflight; tears were brimming, but exactly why she wasn't sure. - Andrezej Lykoi - 01-26-2008 [html] His ears flickered up in mild interest at the anger that suddenly permeated her voice, shaking into the chords and making the words, though strong and oddly supported, more powerful. He didn't care how passionate she was about the subject, and where a normal boy might have leapt to defend his family about their bloodlust, he merely grinned his wild little smile and continued to watch her, brimming eyes and all. It was not altogether simple to deal with issues where tears were concerned, but his heartstrings only responded to the negative emotions; hatred, bloodthirst, contempt, and the oh-so lovely gong of jealousy.
- Legacy Kali - 01-28-2008 [html] This (coyote? wolf?) creature was in so much trouble, maybe even as much as she. There seemed no limit to his violent tendency. She wasn't to know that even his birthpack had rejected him, but she knew as sure as a death-knell of her own that he would doom himself if he carried on like this. Despite knowing that this perceived eventuality would be right, and leave the world a better place, Legacy was not a self-righteous dealer of justice, a meter of punishment. Here, unreachable, she still did not feel undeserved compassion for him. She did however feel the sense of loss. This imagination, this passion was geared towards all the wrong things. What could he have been like? What, perhaps, could he be like? Blindly, she would always cling to hope. Maybe it made her vulnerable, even more so than as a child she already was. Perhaps it would make her even more vulnerable than this, in later days.
The balance was obvious in its change now, even as he sneered his words he was gazing through at her as she had been, as if knowing how sick to her stomach his words made her. As if he fed off her own fury. The girl had little more than her youthful, simple logic, but it was undercurrented by feelings and instincts of an adult: and it made her uncertain, and more frustrated than ever. Oh, the growing pains of the mind. Not yet tired of the bitter quarreling, she radiated scorn in equal measure to his contempt. Holding herself with fiery, spirited poise even as those wide shining eyes showed her fear. After all, a caged flame will soon go out. "No, there isn't." She contradicted him as he had her: what were they but inherently contradictions? "You're just twisted, crazy. There is nothing exhilarating about pain, or murder. Do you even know what it's like to have someone you love die?" Did he even know what love meant? The love for your family - friends - no, of course not. The question seemed foolish already, but she was impulsive as ever. - Andrezej Lykoi - 01-28-2008 [html] No,he responded immediately, because there's no one I'll ever love.It wasn't something he was able to do, and while in the coming months there would be inexorable realizations and changes in him, nothing would ever make his cruel, sadistic ways any better. Nothing but brute respect, which had to be earned. There were only a few ways one could do that; to take him down, assuming he admitted to it, or by being the malicious presence he needed. As of that moment, Hybrid was the sole holder of the latter position, and nobody else he had ever met was tough enough to get his acknowledgment in having defeated him.
- Legacy Kali - 01-28-2008 [html]
He was a one-track record, a spinning disc of razor-sharp vinyl; flawed, doomed to repeat itself. She knew it, but the child could not let herself believe that there were some places there was just no coming back from. Legacy clung to this as mulishly as he spat it back at her. She wanted to tell him, you can't know that. But who was she to know? There was no one else to say it, but what could she claim to know about him? So little. It was beginning to matter to her, but she could not matter to him. No appeal to his nature was going to save her, and she had to still the tumult within, because she had to get out. Get home before she was missed, before she added to the pain her pack was already going through. Perhaps, given time, she would have been capable of earning his respect, capable of the intent to bring him down - but not yet.
So she dulled the edge of her rage with sympathy, and took a brave step towards him, looking into that demonic face and broke the pattern that so far, their retorts had been following; she was too worn out to harangue him further. She spoke softly, in a voice that was suddenly older than her age. "I see..." And further, more daring so that a icy tingle of fear ran down her spine, "You poor boy..." It was sincere where it could under other circumstances have been mocking: she was compassionate, even though it was likely not at all what either of them wanted. She almost wished she didn't care, that there was no fellow-feeling in her heart, but she would never manage to be dispassionate. Though she couldn't feel it through the misery it was quite a privilege, really, to be able to speak to him (or anyone) so honestly, with the knowledge it couldn't possibly make anything worse - and to have him her captive audience here, even while she was the captive. - Andrezej Lykoi - 01-29-2008 [html] It was only at this point, where sympathy came through, that he realized how much he'd been drawn into it; enough to drop the cruelty and give the small insight into his own lack of capability to love. That had never been meant to be said, and he'd fucked up and said it. His lips curled back even as she stepped forward, and his body was shoved against the door once more as a snarling whirl of teeth snapped through the empty window pane. He was not laughing anymore; Andrezej Lykoi could not say he was amused by this game, this mere girl who had managed to preoccupy his mind enough to get even that small amount of sincerity, no matter how twisted, out of him.
- Legacy Kali - 01-29-2008 [html] The tentative, honest words were met by nothing less than what looked like a jolt of fury, of course, and it was so vicious that although he could not reach her she cowered back, almost colliding with the hard table-edge. Holding onto it with both hands, she wondered in a detached way why it seemed like the world was spinning. His parting words were not much more than a jumble of antagonism to her, and as he removed himself it took a few moments to realise, listening to the footfalls receding into the distance, that he was really gone. Wiping her eyes with now-dusty fingers, she waited for a moment, then crossed the room, tense and light. There was no sound, no smell outside. She should get out - now, before he thought to come back. If he was waiting around the corner, so be it. It took just seconds to knock the chair-frame away from the handle, although it was wedged tightly by his repeated assaults upon the door. Then the minutes began to crawl by as she tugged on the door, forwards, backwards, trying both sides, and finally jiggling the doorhandle - when finally, gloriously the catch came free and the whole thing swung open. With only a small sense of freedom, for the corridor seemed as treacherous as her trap, she stepped outside, and without wasting a moment took to her heels and fled down the dusty halls, not to stop running until the perceived safety of home closed around her. |