|
|
Post by lilywilde on Dec 30, 2016 13:48:37 GMT -6
----- Never stop Running ----- tag: --- // words: --- // notes: --- Celia
Lily could sense the trepidation in Celia's clone as Celia placed her hand atop it's head. She gave the clone a concerned look, but was far too focused on what Celia was saying to interrupt her. She listened intently, searching for meaning in the words. Trying to use what she was saying to better understand her friend's pain. She listened, and even after her friend was done talking she remained silent for a time. Her exterior, stoic and stolid, belied the turmoil that raged within her mind. When she finally spoke, it came out in a whisper.
"Strength is the least of the things you have." She said solemnly.
"I don't know much about what it is to have a family legacy. In my mind, my family doesn't stretch any further than my mother and my father. They never talked about their lineage, so I don't really know where I come from. I always got the impression that they weren't like the other tribesmen though. So I can't really relate to a family history of zealotry or any expectation to be a warrior just because of what my semblance turned out to be. The truth is, I don't see why you're doomed to a warrior's life just 'caus of what your semblance is. It might be because I don't understand what it's like to live in a family like that, but it seems to me like you could do anything with that power."
She paused for a few moments, trying to figure out exactly where she was going with all of this. She wanted to ensure that her words made sense, and that her point was concise.
"I can't ask you to let go of your heritage, even though your history scares me. I don't want you to mutilate yourself, to use some augmented limb running off of void dust. I don't want you to seek out your strength so fervently that you are forced to kill your clones time and time again. I... I don't think it's right. It's like you said, they're not you. They are their own entities. They shouldn't be created just to be slaughtered. That cannot be good for you, or for them." She wanted to hug Celia again, wanted to tell her that everything was okay, and would be okay.
"You should fight me. I mean, as training, not for real. Not every opponent is you, so it's good to get practice in against people who fight different ways... And, I also think you shouldn't kill your clones when you beat them." She paused for a moment, before letting a weak smile enter her face "Afterall, they'll learn their lesson from defeat, and give a better fight the next time around right? They should be fully capable of learning too."
She was grasping at straws here. She knew that she wouldn't fix her friend just by talking the problems away. She knew that there was a good chance her interference would only make things worse, but still she persisted.
"Strength is far from all that you have. You've got friends. You've got me, and you've got Raven. You've got this school, and all sorts of people here want you to succeed. I'll do everything I can to help you succeed as painlessly as possible, so please don't put yourself through hell unless it's an absolute necessity, okay?" She was maintaining her composure, but only just. It was difficult, and she wasn't exactly in any proper mental state herself to be consoling a friend, but she was doing her best in spite of herself.
"I just... I don't see why you can't choose your fate. How do you know it isn't possible? Can't you try to go your own way?" She could feel that she was about to start crying again, but she continued to vomit words all over the place.
"I don't care where you come from, forget all of that for just a minute and tell me. Do you want to be something different? If you want to, then I swear we can figure something out together. I promise you we can. If it comes down to the name, then you're in luck!" As she said that, she sniffled. "I dunno what my parents family name was, but the one given to me is 'Wilde'. Wild means unrestrained, free, unbound, uncontrolled..." With each word, more tears streamed down her face. "So... So I can do whatever I want, and I wanna make sure you're not stuck doing anything you don't wanna be doing. Got it?"
----------
Aegle
Lily nodded weakly at Aegle's insistence that she focus on her own recovery. She squeezed again, and then released her grip on Aegle, only to lean back a bit so that she could stare the avatar of orange in the emerald eyes.
"I will get to feeling better. I think. I'm not there yet, and I won't be for a while. Mentally, physically, this is so much to deal with. BUT. That doesn't mean I'm not going to worry about you. You're my best friend. You're my sparring partner. You stood by my side when this happened, you tried to save me." She paused. she had the sense that she should pick her next words very carefully. In the end though, she realized the best way to say it, was to just say it.
"I want you to be my partner. I meant it when I said that you and I can do great things together. You're strong, and I'm strong. That's not why it matters though. If you'd asked me on my first day when I came to Vytal, I would have said strength is the only thing that mattered. I came to the school to grow as strong as I could. I wanted to crush the grimm. I may have deluded myself into thinking that I wanted to defend the world of man, but that's not even remotely true. I just wanted to make the grimm die. I still do, it's a burning need inside of me. I... I never thought of anyone else. Not really. You were the one who made me realize that it's not all about me. Because of you, I understand that I'm... Well, I'm not alone." She paused there for a moment. Letting that sentiment sink in. It was true, she had so many friends now, and Aegle had been the one that made it all possible. She would probably still be building fires on school property and cooking up wild animals. Technically she still did so, but out in the woods, away from the students and faculty. There were certain things about her life up until now that she'd never let go of. And birds were super delicious, she didn't care what anyone said.
Aegle had been her first friend. The first person to make Lily realize that the other people around her were each struggling with their own problems, and each had a story unique to themselves. If not for that, where might Lily be today? She had been willing to sacrifice everything on the altar of strength.
She still was, almost. However, she wouldn't ever sacrifice her friends. She had been broken well before the corruption that now spread through her, but Aegle had shown Lily that broken things could still work. She had a long way to go, but with friends like Aegle by her side, she would eventually make it through.
"I can't think of any person that I want to be my partner more than you. I... I would like for you to please consider me, if you don't have someone else in mind already."
She hugged her arm against her side self consciously. In that moment, everything other than Aegle's next few words was distant. The throbbing pain in her arm, the corruptive forces inside of her, the fact that they were both in a hospital. All of it faded into the background as Lily held Aegle's gaze intently.
template by eliza @ TB & THQ |
|
|
|
Post by Solomon Moon on Jan 18, 2017 23:52:11 GMT -6
 eneath a bloodshot sky, alive with the silhouettes of falling mortars and the misshapen tumors of cluster munition detonation, Solomon Moon writhed in a singular agony. Drawn taught to the four corners of the earth, his flesh stretched from horizon to horizon, snagged on the wicked teeth of an indifferent and cruel landscape. His lifeblood flowed in rivers, pouring into the sea of gore that gathered in the lowest elevations, even as churning funnels of smoke choked the heavens. All across his form waged an ceaseless storm-surge of battle. Countless boots charged, clashing upon his seams in an endless tide of shattered humanity, dashing itself upon the slings and arrows of the indiscernible masses of nemesis. Boots ground against his skin, and as the bodies failed and fell, their meat was pulped and stomped and blasted, blended into the horrified suffering singularity trapped silent and recumbent beneath the writhing mass. Weapons of horror and destruction were carved from his flanks in great mines that stretched deep into his being, shaving at his bones to make all manner of things from bomb casings to armor plating. Great assembly lines of his tortured, twisted flesh churned like oceans, giving birth to legions of war machines, the rolled and crawled, and stomped and soared towards the howling lines of slaughter. Automatic weapons fire stitched his skin, while bombs and shells fell, tearing away his body in craters of gore that momentarily were filled with the frothing tide of the dead. Sol screamed in silent, helpless agony, trapped in a rotting carcass in a prison of eternal conflict and war. Passing into antiquity beyond history, and into the future beyond human perception, each moment dragged on, bringing with it new, and unique torments and suffering that wracked the totality of his being. The stench, the screams, the pain, and the helpless futility, combining in a single nightmarish hue that consumed his intellect and infused his every vast cell. Fear, despair, confusion, hatred, anger, a mad orchestra to punctuate the insane performance with the percussion of grenades and the brass of rattling shell casings. ---------------------------- Lost to the deepest realms of sleep, and invariably nightmare, that Sol could know without chemical assistance, he did not perceive, much less suspect the first that would so soon evict him from the hellish realm of slumber. Aegle's aim, honed to a razor's precision by a single minded devotion the the pugilistic arts, risked absolute zero chance of failure against a target who was not only fast asleep, but positioned in such a way as to leave his entire abdomen without even accidental forms of defense. Her calloused knuckles rammed like a hydraulic piston into Sol's solar-plexus, driving all but a collection of ragged ribbons of breath from him even as the very force of the blow elevated his heels from where they had been planted on the tile. Immediately twisting to guard his guts in a motion that was entirely a response of blind reflex that came of an order from his central nervous system instead of his brain, Sol doubled forward. His right arm continued to dangle stupidly at his side, being that without the waking mind and Sol's aura for fuel, it was little more than a dull ornament. Meanwhile his left hand clutched his bruise diaphragm, and found Aegle's bony little fist buried up the the first knuckle of her thumb in his midsection. Sol, who still hadn't opened his eye, was just beginning the delicate process of decoding this discovery into something resembling reason, a process notably hampered by being fast asleep moments prior, when Aegle derailed his train of thought right at the platform by unleashing a savage follow up strike. Knuckles pounded and tempered by whatever unfortunate targets had been former focuses of the miniature boxer's slow ire, until they were as swollen and solid as beads of shocked iron, crashed into Sol's jaw at sufficient enough speed to completely unhinged the left most corner of his mandible. Stars sparkled before Sol's eye, and the impact shook his head hard enough to make his back and shoulders ache, not to mention almost certainly giving him a concussion. Conscious thought rolled back into a place that was somewhere dark and damp at the very rear of his mind, as self-preservation barged forward and assumed control of all vital processes. Sol's aura did not flare into being, so much as it was not the one moment, and then exploded into reality with enough force to leave every window in that ward of the hospital rattling as the very force of the disruption caved in the drywall nearest to where he lay half kneeling in the hallway. With blurred vision he fixed the form of his assailant, able to make out enough detail in the silhouette to find her throat exposed in recoil from the bone-shattering one-two combination she had just unleashed. The figure had clearly given no thought to protecting herself following the assault, likely confident that the work would be done with change to spare after the first two blows. At least this is what Sol would have assumed, were his mind operating at any level of congruence above killer instinct and preservation of self. IF he had any thought at all it was simply, "KILL", but even that was likely far too complex by at least a whole syllable for his cold-blooded mind to manage. Like a viper of arcane metals and high-technology, Sol's right arm sprung to unnatural, spasmodic life. Carried upon jets of super-heated atmosphere that trailed from elbow, palm, and shoulder, Roar lashed out at the girl's neck, effortlessly snatching the puny figure from her feet and encircling her fragile neck in a literal iron grip. In the same motion, Sol lunged to his feet, rising to his full height and leaving the tiny creature dangling helplessly from his mighty mechanical fist. Or so he thought. He uttered a sound, as he tried to shake the blur from his concussed mind, squinting at the girl in a manner that would have seemed confused if not for the feral wrath that infused every line of his expression. The sound he made was simultaneously enraged and curious of this minuscule sucker-punching culprit. This sound was also unexpectedly brief. His brain unable to perform tasks that were not well rehearsed to the point of being muscle memory, Sol lacked the perception to see the tiny human in his grasp, swinging both of her legs up towards him. He lacked the reasoning to understand what this development would mean, and he lacked the reflexes to react in any case. A pair of heavy steal toed combat boots met the staggered lord's vaguely confused, entirely concussed, countenance, sole first, and once more the sum total of the force that Aegle's apparently fragile form could deliver was summarily deposited directly into the bone of Sol's already lopsided jaw. There was the clear, clean popping sound of dislocated bone, as well as a painful cracking sound. Sol roared in mindless agony and rage, and confusion, as he recoiled from the blow. He staggered back until his back met the wall, and just as he saw the girl loading up to drop kick his head a second time, he wound up with his right arm as if a pitcher preparing to throw a wicked curve ball. Then he stepped forward and slammed the girl bodily into the tiled floor, hard enough the crack the ceramic, and convince patients on the above and below floors that someone had just fired a howitzer in the hallway. Sol spat, or at least the nearest approximation of which he could achieve with his jaw dangling at a painfully unnatural angle, attempting to soil his victim with saliva and the blood that he could now taste clearly. As a bonus, perhaps for Aegle, what came out was mostly the majority of one of Sol's lower eye-teeth. If he had been capable of coercing his mouth into a shape that could produce speech, Sol would have called the orange ruffian by the worst curses in his lexicon. In the absence of the ability to form words, the one eyed man simple howled in fury as he grabbed the recumbent form by the ankle and swung her laterally, against the door-frame to Lilie's room tag(s): @someone ━ words: 000 ━ notes: please keep it short made by ira of stf and ww |
|
|
|
Post by Aegle Vitus on Jan 20, 2017 4:06:30 GMT -6
Unsurprisingly, it took Aegle several long moments to formulate her reply to everything that Lily had said. There was the usual warm up for whenever her verbose friend chose to eschew brevity in favor of complete disclosure, but even that characteristic pause could not wholly account for the smaller girl's hesitance to reply. Numerous expressions flashed across Aegle's face in a successive parade of emotion as Lily spoke, and each was clear and distinct as if they had come with a flashcard. There was misgiving as Lily talked about getting better, reproach at Lily saying she'd continue to worry about her, understated pleasure at being called Lily's best friend, and something like guilty modesty when Lily talked about Aegle's actions following the cult's arrival at the funeral. Then surprise and perhaps a bit of confusion as Lily talked about partnering up, accompanied in some small part by what almost looked like reluctance. At last, as Lily spoke about her first days at Vytal, an openly consternation look had settled on Aegle's face, and it sat there till long after the faunus was done speaking.
Thus, for several long moments, Aegle stared solemnly at her friend, and it was clear she was trying very hard to find the right words to answer with.
"I mean..." She said finally, emerald eyes unwaveringly staring into Lily's, "S'not like anyone else has ever asked t'be my partner..."
Though the comment held every impression of Aegle's usual irreverence, there was nothing particularly amused or sardonic in her tone. Rather, she almost sounded uncomfortable. Her eyebrows crossed in the parody of deep thought she so often affected when not entirely sure what she was feeling, and Aegle slowly averted her eyes, though less as though to escape Lily's gaze and more as though to find the answers she was lacking. She shrugged, and the motion looked both uncomfortable and difficult without her brace, and her attention strayed even further from Lily's eyes.
"I think ya'd make an awesome partner, ya know?" Aegle said, though without meeting Lily's eyes, "And it ain't even like I got people linin' up to be mine..."
Trailing off, Aegle's emerald eyes found one of her own bandaged hands, and she slowly curled it into a fist. She seemed on the very cusp of reaching her conclusion, and as though whatever she saw in her hand would be the deciding factor. Then she gave a small nod, mind made up, and returned her eyes to Lily's.
"D'ya reckon we could have a duo name?"
For all the apparent levity in her question, none of which was feigned, the discontent and discomfort Aegle had shown before persisted, even through the smile that promptly spread across her face.
"Whattabout Thunderin' Lightning?"
Aegle liked fighting. She reveled in it. Nowhere else did she feel completely at home, nor one hundred percent herself, than when she was pitted in a direct, physical contest with something or someone else. Yet, despite this fact, Aegle had also rarely, if ever, pulled a fist in anger. For as much as she loved fighting, she took no especial joy in hurting others, no more than she enjoyed being hurt herself. She made a personal, instinctive exception for Soloman Moon. Her anger, her rage, at seeing him here, of all the places he could be, outside of Lily's room, was absolute and complete. Aegle had rarely, if ever, drawn a fist in anger, yet she suddenly realized just how great her capacity to cause pain was. Hot fire burned in her chest, while her arms and legs grew cold as burial earth, and all sense of reason, compassion and restraint abandoned her, like they had never been there to begin with. She gritted her teeth, savagely satisfied as her tempered knuckles dug deeply into Sol's stomach, right where there was the least bone or muscle to get in the way. Her exultation redoubled as he bowed forward, just the way her instincts told her he would, and presented his jaw to her waiting fist. She could not hit hard, not as she was, and that handicap had made certain necessities clear to her. First and foremost was that she be able to land blows on the vital parts of her opponents, in spots that would hurt even with aura to insulate the impacts. She had trained and practiced in this very way, knowing how to pick her moment and take her shot, and was used to her opponents resisting or even completely ignoring her blows. Sol did neither. When her fist found the fragile joint between jaw and skull, there was nothing but a thin layer of skin and a muscle of inadequate strength and situation to resist her blow. She felt it pop like an egg, felt the joint shift beneath her knuckles, and understood intrinsically that she had dislocated Sol's jaw.
And it felt good...
It felt amazing!
Suddenly, madly, Aegle found that she wanted to cheer. That, in and of itself, was not too terribly strange; She often cheered during a fight. Except she usually didn't think about it; The shouts and whoops just sort of happened. They didn't so much as form themselves as they escaped, the way shrieks might when going down a rollercoaster, wholly without the consent of the one making them. It was less a conscious action than a physical imperative. This time however, she wanted to cheer. She wanted to shout at Sol where he knelt, driven to the floor, and let him know how happy she was that she'd hurt him. Hurt him when he'd been completely defenseless...
When he hadn't even known they were having a fight.
Almost at once, Aegle's exultation curdled, and something very unexpected swept through her, made all the worse for how unfamiliar it was. Something that felt an awful lot like remorse. She stared at Sol, down on one knee, his jaw hanging at an odd angle and one side of his face pale and bloodless, while the other side seethed with color. She stared at him, her hands still up but with no further punches forthcoming, and felt the anger evaporate just as suddenly as it had manifested. Anger, let alone outright rage, was not something she often felt, and it left her feeling drawn and strange, like the whole world had turned a different color. The brilliant fire and drive to act, along with the thoughtless and unreasonable passion, had all abandoned her. And they had left her staring at man whom she'd attacked unprovoked, and whom she had deliberately and maliciously injured. She suddenly wanted to take it back; Not just the punch, but all the anger and rage and all the joy at hitting him. She wanted to take back how good it had felt, to hurt him when there was nothing he could do about it.
For a moment, between her limited comprehension of her own regret and Sol's counter attack, Aegle ludicrously wondered if it was too late to say she was sorry. Then, as inevitable as the sunrise, the one eyed man's robotic arm struck out for Aegle. It did so far faster than she would have expected, but not so fast that she couldn't do anything about it. Instinctively, she dropped her leading arm down across it, intending to deflect what she'd fallaciously perceived as a punch. Her efforts were in vain, however, and not simply because she'd misunderstood the nature of her opponents attack. She made a clean connection, and even twisted competently to evade the blow, but she had miscalculated just how strong that robotic appendage was. Strong enough, as it turned out, to completely ignore Aegle's efforts at a parry. A sudden hiss of surprise escaped Aegle's lips, right before a ironclad pressure around her throat precluded any further sounds. With a feeling a lot like falling out of a tree, Aegle felt the ground fall away from her feet, and found herself painfully suspended by her neck. At last she understood her error, as she wrapped her fingers futilely around the metal wrist that dangled her a full foot and a half off the ground. And, just like that, all thoughts of regret, remorse, and possible reconciliation flew out the window. There were times for saying you were sorry, and being dangled by your neck was most assuredly not one of them. So Aegle tensed her arms and pulled her weight from her strained neck, and did what she did best; Fought back against overwhelming odds.
Something strange happened, as Aegle swung her feet back and prepared to kick Sol right in the very same spot she'd punch a few moments earlier. She realized how incredibly relieved she was that he'd started fighting back, and even that he was clearly an order of magnitude stronger than she was. It simplified things greatly. What had been a very confusing and horrible moment, filled with unfamiliar emotions and unpleasant misgivings, had suddenly become a much more succinct experience, wherein she was required to defend herself, lest something potentially irreparable befall her vulnerable body. Immediate and aggressive action was called for, with minimal thought required. Just the way Aegle liked it. Cracking her body like a whip, Aegle swung both of her feet into Sol's jaw and made a solid connection with each of her heavy boots. Whether he was still stunned from the punch to the head, or had simply presumed he'd rendered her out of reach, Aegle neither knew nor cared. What she did know was that she'd made something crack with her first kick, and that there remained enough oxygen in her blood to fuel a second. Perhaps suspecting this too, or simply having seen her wind up a second time, Sol responded by immediately and succinctly by choke-slamming Aegle into the tiled floor.
Contrary to what any observers might have been thinking, this development didn't surprise Aegle in the slightest. Just as she was not unfamiliar with being hoisted off her feet by her neck, she was equally familiar its inevitable conclusion. There was only two possible reactions when you kicked the person holding you, and since Sol hadn't immediately dropped her, Aegle had been pretty sure what would follow. Nor was she unprepared for the savage force of impact, which rang through her crooked body like fifty foot drop. When someone was strong enough to both lift her bodily with one hand and maintain their grip despite a dropkick to the face, that someone was definitely strong enough to break bones when they inevitably slammed her into the ground. And Sol did break something; Aegle couldn't be certain what, but there was no mistaking that familiar crack and stabbing pain that immediately followed her ungracious impact with the floor. Before she could even begin to find out, however, Aegle found she was being lifted again, and her familiarity with this particular situation took on some rather dire resemblances. In Aegle's experience, there were three kinds of people. All of them were stronger than she was, but in varying degrees. The first group could lift her up with some effort, and toss her about if needed, but generally stuck to hitting her because it was less difficult. The second, more dangerous, group could lift and throw her more easily, but not so easily that it could serve as the entirety of their strategy. The third and final group, however, possessed more than enough strength to manipulate her comparatively light body in whatever fashion they so desired. Aegle never would have guessed, from looking at him, that Sol fell into the third group.
Before she could really understand what was happening, Aegle was slammed into something hard and narrow, and something less hard in her arm gave a painful snap. Wheezing in air, she twisted as she fell, and briefly caught sight of Sol's hand around her ankle, and understood the slight twisting pain she felt in her leg. Without thinking, and right before gravity rendered her efforts moot, she forced herself away from the wall, pulled herself in by her captured foot, and sent a ringing haymaker into the wounded side of Sols face. If he had expected being manhandled to stun her, she was keen to disappoint him.
|
|
|
|
Post by Celia Abbott on Jan 24, 2017 20:31:12 GMT -6
Celia was silent, for a long while. This wasn't what she had been expecting when she'd come here. This was meant to be a time to be happy, at least a little bit, a time to console Lily and spend some time with her while she was closed off from the rest of the world. This would be the time where she could've given some kind of advice or a few words of wisdom, or even brought a gift - one more substantial than a pot of soup, anyhow. But she'd failed completely. She'd done what she always had, and only made things worse by intervening.
'I told you that coming here was a bad idea. You never listen.'
The conversation had been steered away from her friend and onto herself, and now she was the one being consoled. She didn't need it. She knew she was broken. She knew she was making stupid mistakes. But she saw no other path she could walk, without hurting other people. The mistakes, the pain...she learned from them, they made her stronger, better. That's what she truly believed. It had served her well up until now. But there was...there was more. "This is the way things have to be for me." Her fists clenched and her head hung low. Something within her stirred, something she hadn't felt in a long, long time. It burned away at the inside of her mind, pulsed throughout her body like the strike of metal against metal.
Hatred.
"I didn't take this path because of where I came from, or because of what I can do." The crystal thrummed against her forehead again, but it only fueled her further. This hate, this rage...it was not without merit or direction. It wouldn't be easy to fault her for even feeling it in the first place. "At first, that's what I told myself. I wanted to be like my dad. Like Minette. Like the stories my mother used to tell me." She tilted her head to the side, her eyes closed. She couldn't even cry anymore. "I wanted to be a hero. A protector of the weak." Her stature deflated suddenly, and she slumped in her chair. Her voice was soft, subdued.
"But it's a lie. Do you know why I want to be a hunter, Lily?" She waited a few moments, for a response, for anything. She didn't even register if one had come. "It's because there is someone that I need to kill. I need to be strong enough, and smart enough, to track this person down - and kill them. I can call it justice or righteousness all I want, but I know that's only an excuse to justify a vengeful murder."
"I'm a killer. Not because of my lineage or my history - but because of who I am as a person. I'm a fighter, I always have been, and that shows. My semblance is hereditary, but it's still...it's still a part of me. It shows what I'm really like." She let out a little chuckle, dim and void of joy. "I don't value life. I don't have any kind of plan. I don't care what else life has in store for me. All I care about is killing."
...met before? |
|
