@vietmyke Listened at top volume. But I only have a laptop, so... My eardrums might be broken, though. I should airplay it through my TV and try to get my neighbors back for their drumming practice. Sad when it ended. Jam sesh over. H10 should have a dance party, DJ'd by K-Ton. xD REVENGE DANCE PARTY. lmao
Later: okay listened through TV. I played around with the equalizer which was just enough to let me know what I am missing without a sub woofer. XD I could not get it quite to the top volume on the TV. Almost. Funfun.
@vietmyke That is fucking impossible not to dance to. Despite the chipmunk voices. xD Yeah I didn't take the cone as visual, I just piggybacked your description to help it make sense to me, my character's spacial relation to it, etc.
@Architect Vietmyke makes some good points. I find that anything premonition-y becomes a pain because you have to know more about your surroundings, and it becomes a nightmare if you have to try and anticipate other writers' actions or if you char has metaknowledge you don't have. That said, I definitely see the appeal of the more sensory powers. You probably can't go wrong. They're all fun. ^^
Age: 25 Gender: Male Ethnicity/Nationality: African American, other stuff probably
Physical Description:
Get ready for racist, purple prose skin tone similes. Creamy coffee? Wet sand? Hispanic colored? In any case, Philip is in-between enough to be both discriminated against by everyone but tolerated everywhere.
He’s the type of unathletic lanky that no guy wants to be, torso resembling more of a prepubescent boy's than that of a man. He’s good-looking though, with squinty eyes (does he have some asian blood or does he just need glasses?) and full lips. He’s got a wild mane of hair that would be cooler if his mom wasn’t the one still doing his twists for him. His jerky movements and obsequious fumbling, bumbling lack of self-confidence is usually enough to undo any kind of attraction a girl might initially feel for him when he’s standing still with his mouth shut.
He wears funky, geeky clothes that are sometimes accidentally groovy, but for the most part he just doesn’t know how to hide his freak flag.
Skillset:
- Played basketball for awhile. He wasn’t terrible shockingly, but little evidence of it sticks.
- He studied hard in school. He worked part-time as a tutor. This is the most interaction with cute girls he’s ever had, and he was never brave enough to make a move. But, he IS good at waiting around like a lost puppy and hoping you’ll notice him. It hasn’t worked yet.
- Geeky. He can probably beat that level of Zelda that you are stuck on.
- Philip is smart and observant. Though it doesn’t look like it, while he’s sketching anime chicks, he is also reading the room.
- Despite how painfully awkward he is, Philip is actually pretty great with people once they get used to his strange mannerisms. He’s a good, caring friend. If anything, he takes too much shit and doesn’t stand up for himself, but the plus side of this is that he’s selfless and quick to forgive. He likes and accepts everyone; he is not judgmental.
- There’s a tiny little seed inside him of bravery that longs for adventure and may even believe he’s capable of being the hero. He wants to be.
- Unaware as he is, he’s lived his life with a great amount of dignity and graciousness. He’s been quietly tenacious, but he downplays his struggles and lives with gratitude for what he has.
History:
Warning: very gory video
Philip was raised in a polarized family. His mother was an educated career woman, and his father was a truck driver. Philip found it difficult to navigate both cultures, both circles of people, in a world already divided into white and not white. He receded into eccentricity, and found specifically that video games provided a genre not centered around the color of his skin, not one he ever had to change himself to fit into. Around the black people he knows, he is “not black enough,” either by skin or by personality, and around the white people he knows, he is “the black friend.”
He was raised religious, attending a progressive black church. He became fascinated with theological studies and religious practices, and after graduating from homeschooled high school early, he attended a community college for two years before going on to seminary. He is torn between the desire to major in theology in a studious manner and yet be as close to the crazy natives themselves as possible. Their beliefs make him uncomfortable, but he is fascinated by the wild extremes of behavior to which spiritual people will go. He is also pretty stunned by some of the things he has seen. They change his scientific beliefs not one iota, but he knows that there is some shit he can’t explain in the world, both beautiful and ugly.
Psychological Profile:
Philip is driven to understand people, and even more so, to understand what they believe and why they believe it. He is an anthropologist, without much desire to fit in himself. Nevertheless, he wants people to be comfortable, but as he is rarely comfortable himself, he has only the vaguest idea how to make that happen. Don’t even get him started about girls, around whom he has no idea how to act.
Though he does not realize it, the fact that he is an oddball by anyone’s standards is what makes him both normalize and study weird behavior.
(Some inspiration for this character: Vardy from Kraken, the career occult expert. It's also not an accident that Philip's name is H.P. (Howard Philip) Lovecraft's, reversed.)
Is this racist enough? I think I hit everyone in it, some way shape or form. xD
@vietmyke Ah, nice, thanks. Also I was curious, did you have something in mind for K-Ton's song that he played? I love his superpower by the way. Even if Lana/Lana's tiger happened to hate it. >.<
So would anyone be interested in having access/contributing to this playlist thingy? I'd still have to do it song-by-song as I can't figure out how to make a real YouTube playlist.
And "done some shit." Especially K-Ton. xD @vietmyke
BTW does anyone want to make a playlist for this RP? Like on YouTube or something? I have tried but am Youtube challenged. But there's been some great music integration already (I'm looking at you, Reign, and no I can't spell your UN. @R31GN). And I've got a queue of songs myself, I'm sure others do as well. I could keep an up-to-date running list under the characters tab or something (if ppl want to send me their song suggestions) but it'd be better if it was an actually listen-able playlist. Let me know your thoughts.
What I listened to while writing (especially the second half of) this:
Lights (Bassnectar remix) by Ellie Goulding
And hmm this is a really long post, I'll try to keep it a bit more concise next time.
The tiger drew more power from Lana than the dog had. It was the difference between walking on a treadmill or jogging on one. The latter took more effort, but it was also more effective. It fractured her focus even more strongly, but it also pulled her into a type of a zone where, for the space of only a few minutes, it almost didn't matter. Like it was natural and easy to be two things at once. She was awake and on, accelerating through turns instead of hanging back and dragging gravity. Riding the crest of a wave.
She could feel the ground through the massive paws of the tiger, pads sensitive on the grit. Sharp claws still partially extended, like nails on glass. Tension through liquid-sly muscles, heightened awareness of noise. Round ears flicked toward a new sound - music. The tiger growled low in irritation, disliking the thrumming base hijacking its vocal chords with its transferring vibration, buzzing in its ears like an annoying insect. Then K-Ton pushed his powers, sending a cone-shaped wall of soundwave at the building, and though Lana was outside of the target area, her tiger's sound sensitivity made them both suffer.
The tiger roared and flinched away from the sound like it was a physical attacker, ears flattening and hair bristling. Lana, too, cried out in pain, pointlessly clapping her hands over her ears. She was feeling it through her externalized ferocity, not herself. The vibrations sent through the ground were so much stronger to that animal, and it flattened itself nearly to the ground, snarling quietly now in distaste.
Lana was distracted from the emotion of ferocity which had manifested the beast in the first place, and she no longer had enough anger to hold onto it. It was slipping, she was losing her connection to it, the creature was becoming less strong. The Neon itself was also weakening in her veins. She could feel it leeching out with the pain of poison, leaving her colorless and ill, like she'd barely survived the flu.
It's too soon, she thought. But what she thought didn't matter. It was leaving her. The tiger evaporated, and Lana leaned forward and caught herself on her hands, so that she was on all fours, unintentionally mimicking the lost tiger's posture. Her head hung, and she focused on not retching. It was this feeling of sickness that drove her to slump over onto her side and work her second pill from her pocket, swallowing it down. She just wanted to feel not this.
Her ears were already better before that sick ice cube feeling of swallowing the pill, the vibration in the ground back to normal human reaction as soon as the tiger was gone. She could feel the ferocity back inside of her, but she felt alone, bereft and defenseless. Too much like herself. Human sensation was not enough, like nakedness, like losing a temporarily experienced sixth sense.
She couldn't even care about the mauled-apart body inches from her, or the insane things going on around them all. When H10 had arrived, they had taken the Breakers off guard with considerable destructive force, but the Breakers had long since had time to react. Those that had Neon stashes were in full swing, and those that didn't could still handle a fight well enough. By the looks of it, Lana thought that the Breakers might know how to use Neon a little better than many of H10 did. Certainly better than she could, at least. With her head on the ground, Lana could see a girl sending out flashes of silent pale blue light that knocked down her opponents. Lana closed her eyes and hoped she wouldn't be attacked.
Then the second wave of Neon hit.
Again, it swept through her body like cold fire: instant rejuvenation. She forced herself to sit back upright in the throes of it, inexplicably shaking. She didn't think of the gun that had been disarmed from her hand, or the faint pain in her wrist. The blood and gore in front of her was too clear; she looked away from it uncomfortably. She'd seen a dead body before, but not like that. Certainly not something she'd been responsible for. She half wanted to vomit, and she half wanted to murder again. In either case, she didn't want to think about it. The Neon made not thinking about it easy.
She could feel nascent ability, waiting and ready. What did she want? What did she feel? The tattoos on her arms itched. She watched H10 members getting put down around her, and when she looked at the Breakers, she didn't see a crew defending their turf, though it could have been argued that's all they were doing. She saw enemies, bastards, killing and torturing her family. Maybe not people she was close to, but people she'd grown up around.
Mine, you motherfuckers, she thought. The expression on her face twisted into one that felt unfamiliar and ugly. She wanted to cause pain, for the joy of hurting.
Cruelty.
This time it was almost a choice, and she doubled, sliding out of herself like a yolk from an uncooked egg white. Immediately, she was aware of fractured vision. A million of everything, so that she almost couldn't see at all. She felt dizzy, like she was looking out from inside a glass golf ball. Everything was almost painfully sensitive, the air on her skin, how stillness was a vibration, how movement and distance was a taste. With the part of herself that was still normal, her, she forced herself to focus, to look with with her regular eyes. A...hornet? She couldn't be sure, it was so huge. It was the size of a small scorpion. It was two inches long with a three inch wingspan, its body black and pumpkin-orange. Her brain supplied her with the information, some untraceable recall: the Asian Giant Hornet.
Flying was not something she had experienced before, but the hornet knew what to do. It was like being a helicopter and being seasick at the same time, because she wasn't moving but she felt like she was. Lana pushed back into the corner and closed her eyes, focusing on the the hornet and not the strong vertigo. It lofted into the air, an upward-drifting penny. She felt the weightlessness of its legs, hanging long beneath it. She felt the heaviness of its body, dripping toward the back into a stinger pulsing with intent.
Yes, she agreed. Let's hurt them.
She sent it towards the blue-light wielding woman, but whatever the blue light was pushed the hornet back, harmlessly as a butterfly in the wind current of an oncoming car. After several approach attempts, she gave up as the hornet was repetitively cast aside without even being intentionally targeted.
That's when she noticed Dante getting thrown into a car, which was a hard thing to miss, even when sharing split vision with discoball eyes. Dante was probably not in a lot of danger. It was more likely that whoever hitting him was going to get hurt. Even wearing a set of brass knuckles. (She didn't realize that Knuckle-fratboy might be the one who killed David King, and therefore if so, when on Neon, had chest-collapsing-punching-powers.) But no one got to throw fucking Dante around. It was a bit too much like watching one's dad get beaten up. The psyche's understanding of power can only take so much insult.
As she tried to come to his aid, Lana found that it was difficult to direct the hornet to the specific person she wanted. It was like moving a hand in the double reflection of two mirrors. Several course corrections and a careful landing later, (Brass) Knuckles had a giant hornet on the top of his head. Lana could feel the man's hair tickling the hornet's belly. It didn't matter, it didn't stand in the way. She drove the hornet's stinger down into Knuckle's head, simultaneously injecting venom as she did so. She felt his pain through intelligent, twiggy legs. It was a slow gunshot, or a hot nail piercing deep into flesh. Knuckles hollered and reacted, and she alighted into the air. It was easier now, the hornet's focus on this specific victim as if he wore a bull's eye. The hornet landed again, on bare skin this time, and stung him once more. His palm struck the hornet off too late, and she spun off into the air, unharmed.
"What the fuck!?" Knuckles shouted, several pitches too high. The psychic got distracted by his friend's plight, reacting the way anyone would when a hornet is flying around another person. "Look out! Get--move here--" he coached, getting too close, hands up, possibly to use telekinesis. She stung him, too, in the palm. He didn't bother to form words, he just screamed while the hornet withdrew its too-long stinger and floated backwards to look for another spot. Lana laughed from across the lot, a perverse rush of delight wracking her. This maniacal cackle was cut off when Knuckles punched the hornet, which was a surprisingly effective move. The small body was sent spinning back, and Lana threw up in her mouth.
Welts were rising, large and disfiguring, where she had stung her victims, but apart from some unpleasant side effects, they would be fine as long as they didn't have an allergic reaction. The welts would collapse into deep-sunk craters, severe nausea and suffering would plague them for awhile. Knuckles was already pushing through the blinding pain and turning back to deal with Dante, for whom time had merely been bought.
Psychic hipster boy was working one-handed, but working nonetheless. While Lana's hornet was dazed, he managed to pin her location and freeze her movement, similar to how he had jammed bullets. Lana was a sitting duck, and she knew it.
Fucking no!
She pulled her awareness back from the hornet, who was useless to her now. Cruelty was a bitter, addictive foam in her mouth. Could she somehow move herself to the psychic and get him to stop? If she could just distract him for a second-- then she noticed small black dots swarming through the air. Regular wasps, but a lot of them, pouring out of a nearby nest that had never been sprayed. They were drawn, she suddenly knew, by the venom her hornet had deposited in her victims. They would cluster to the stings and repeatedly attack these marked individuals for as long as they could. Again, it might not kill them (especially since she hadn't been smart enough to target their mucus glands), but killing wasn't even what she wanted most. She wanted them to hurt. A bonus side effect was that it would basically incapacitate them.
Lana had gone back to laughing, and a moment later, her hornet's body was unfrozen thanks to the distraction help of the wasps. She could feel her power waning, though. It was the Neon, it couldn't keep up, but she wasn't ready to let go of her vitriol. Her hornet landed on the crushed car, body throbbing as it rested, and Lana watched with two pairs of eyes and an infinite number of fractals while Knuckles and Psychic were mercilessly attacked by wasps. She swallowed down her last pill, a bite in her throat.
She focused back on the hornet, channeled her desire to inflict pain, and forced its lethargic body back into the air. It was much harder to control for a moment, before the Neon kicked in and she was surging once again. The hornet went from listlessly zigzagging, to slicing through the air at twenty-five miles per hour, dodging Blue Light's projected corona, and then giving her a brutal kiss on the cheek. Blue Light sent out defenses, but the hornet was too close, and then lifting off and flying away, knowing that the incoming wasps would give her plenty of trouble now.
The hornet entered the building, looking with initial difficulty for the Breakers. There was chaos everywhere. Gore splattering the walls, humans that barely looked like humans anymore. But when Lana focused on the hornet, time seemed to slow. Those earlier-sensed vibrations of stillness were capable of guiding her. Lana closed her eyes and gave up as many as her physical senses as she could so that she could better see and feel through the hornet, since it was inside a building she was still far away from. Maybe it was a flying insect's sped up receiving and processing power, but everything felt molasses speed, like a slow-motion scene in an action movie. It was almost too easy to weave through danger, wait until she was sure she was circling a Breaker, and then sting them. Flares of heat singed her too-fragile wings, legs broke as she received slaps. Bullets couldn't find her, and most of her victims weren't aware she was there until she'd stung them. The hornet could hear-feel-sense-whatever some wasps finding their way into the building, looking for the beacon-targets. They were drawn only to the marking venom of her hornet, so the H10 crew were probably safe as long as they didn't swat at one or something.
Lana rocked, knuckles on asphalt, dumb, absent smile on her face. She felt the silkiness of her long hair hair against her neck, a sensuous waterfall that mimicked her sense of the air sliding around the hornet's body.
Then, the flare. Even with her eyes closed, Lana's human body, linked to the hornet's sensitivity, felt the heat of it sear her skin, the light of it trace through her eyelids. She opened them and watched the flare disappear into the sky. She looked at KillRoy, unsure what to do. As a last minute interloper, she wasn't exactly solid on the plan.
Lana was still riding Neon, but her awareness of Cruelty blinked out. Instead her mind was occupied with, fuck, what now? and what am I supposed to do? How do we get out? She felt herself narrow, squeeze inward, and she knew her hornet was gone. Her only remaining vision was her normal sight, and the hypersensitivity on her skin as gone. The air no longer seemed to tremble or speak to her. She was still high though, still strong and sharp. Still a little compromised. And the hornet, being gone...she felt like she'd just undergone siamese twin separation surgery.
She got to her feet, moving slowly and carefully to make sure that she wasn't going to fall over. She spat out the taste of vomit, blood, hatred. Blue Light was being attacked by natural wasps now, and her smaller, erratic flashes of light were rendered ineffectual against H10. She was still up, though, swinging like a crazy person. Lana looked around, recognizing felled H10. Some were definitely dead, some were injured, and some she couldn't tell - especially a few that Blue Light had taken down just looked like they might be asleep. She went over to a nearby one. It was Jackie. Blonde, feminist Jackie, who had babysat and indoctrinated her more than once. She prodded Jackie's limp weight, tried to feel for her pulse. Lana couldn't find it with inexperienced fingers and heightened adrenaline. She grabbed Jackie's wrists and tried to pull her back, further away from the fray. Even on Neon, Lana wasn't strong enough.
She stopped and stood up straight, glancing around for help. Shit. What now? And panic, about death, was dropping on her. Don't manifest that - don't manifest that. She could feel it trembling in her chest, trying to break out of her. She wished now that she hadn't taken another Neon pill so close to the end.
This is sweet, y'all. Excited to be writing with you guys.
I didn't realize 'til after my post that the third van would be empty save for Trigger. I hope I left it open enough for anyone who wants to have been on that second van with Lana.
Anyone who wants to interact with my character, feel free. Anyone's ass need saving and I've got a pill left (and it's close enough to my turn to write?), I'll save it. Feel free to interfere as well with whatever Lana is doing.
I love Howler's idea to vote for someone to get a second dose of Neon. It rewards responsible Neon use. xD I also vote that we can't vote for ourselves. ^^
She had pretty much snuck onto a van. And she had avoided the one bearing the leaders, because she didn't want to get pulled off and sent home. Some idiot had given her a gun, which she didn't know how to use. She watched the other members of the van, some of them nervous, more of them not (or at least hiding it well). There was a lot of talk of avenging David and hating on the Breakers. Some popped pills, some didn't. Some started to manifest powers, which Lana tried not to get distracted by. Many checked their weapons, used to relying on those during a fight. Lana mimicked them, trying to chamber a round with shaky hands. Her palms were too small and too slick to grip and pull the hammer of the gun. She hadn't expected the resistance to be so strong; it looked easy when other people did it.
She was the last one off this second van, and she only got out because the driver was going to pull away with her if she didn't. She fished one of the pills from the pocket of her tight jeans and put it on her tongue, wincing while she swallowed it. It was cold as metal going down.
She edged to the side; no way was she going in there with a gun she couldn't fire and no sign of powers yet. Just as she was crouching down beside a wall, it hit her, splintering her world and making her sway with vertigo. It curled pleasurably in the pit of her stomach and rocketed through her veins, amping her, making her feel inexplicably invincible. The dizziness that accompanied it was unpleasant and disorienting - the way she seemed to be able to see and feel two different things, like she'd doubled. The power, however, was undeniable, and she palmed the top of her gun with her left hand again and successfully slid the rack back. It probably had more to do with confidence than actual physical strength. Which, speaking of, where were her abilities?
She glanced around and was surprised to see a stray dog cowering in the space between her and the wall. How had she not seen it before? It was mangy and tan, the color of "don't notice me please." A frightened canine should have avoided eye contact, but it locked glossy black eyes with her, as if begging her to understand something. She assumed that it was as frightened as her, but that it understood what was happening less well. In a fragmented way, she could appreciate the animal's perspective: loud noises, aggression, people trying to hurt each other. Domestic animals were usually the first to get injured when people got angry.
Lana shifted to her knees on the gritty asphalt, further away from this terrified creature. She was shaking to match it, but she tried to rally herself. She held her gun out away from her body and looked at the sieged building, the people pouring into and out of it. She recognized everyone from H10, but she wasn't confident that she could hit someone who wasn't, not from here. Especially not without accidentally hitting one of her own. Not with her vision as wonky as it was.
A smell alerted her, startling her with its clarity and suddenness. Whoever was approaching was not one of them. She pulled toward the intruder, firing automatically. It was a Breaker who hadn't even been intentionally approaching her, just backing towards her as he tried to get a good vantage point to fire on the arrival gang. A shell hit the ground near his feet, drawing his attention. As he turned around and targeted her, Lana made a terrible decision. Instead of shooting back, she cowered and threw her arm over her head. Not because this would protect her - it wouldn't - but out of some primal reaction to too much stimuli, and the half-baked hope that by looking defenseless, she would be left alone.
Pain ripped through her side. Gasping, Lana immediately looked down at her white tee shirt. She expected to see it stained with blood. It wasn't. She pawed over herself: completely unharmed. Her ribs hurt like she'd taken a pointed kick to them, though, and her breathing hitched.
A labored whine from beside her reminded her of the stray dog she'd hidden with. It had taken a hit. She put her hand out to its side, pulled it away awash in red. She could feel the film of dirt and dander in its fur. It lay its head against the ground, eyes going dim. Yet it continued to breath, heart pumping blood out of the hole in its side, soaking her black-denim knees.
Lana's fear felt less. While part of her senses were starting to close down myopically, the fear was going with it. Which didn't make sense, because the shooter was approaching her, and this dog was dying a death she would soon share.
What happened next was completely impossible: the dog faded out.
Lana's eyes grew round as saucers, she felt for where it had been, finding nothing but air. Her body still hummed with Neon, but the vertigo was gone, the heightened smell, the doubled vision, the duality of self.
What is happening? The blood was still there and very real, she hadn't imagined it.
"Aww, did I kill your best friend?" asked the man, and she felt the barrel of his gun pushing through her hair at the back of her neck. Lana still felt fear, but it was smaller, weaker, shrunken and pushed aside.
She reacted foolishly, hopped up on whatever the hell this crazy drug was, and she twisted around to glare at the Breaker. She tried to lift her gun, he kicked it out of her hand. She felt pain in her wrist as a result and scrambled back from the cold metal now at her throat.
"You cunts are really fuckin' pathetic. You gonna' bring a thirteen year old bitch into my hood? You're all as soft as David. Bet his chest was like jello. What's yours like, whore?"
This time, Lana felt it happen. The moment of its manifestation was a wash of white-hot rage that swept through her, palpable from her prickling scalp to her curling toes.
A white bengal tiger exploded out of her, pushing the guy back as its long body appeared. Its growl was modulated by the man's sudden little-girl screaming, the ineffectual pops of his gun, the sound of teeth tearing through viscera and crunching bone.
Ferocity.
Lana could taste the man's blood on her tongue, even though her back was against the wall, staring half in wonder, half in elation as she watched it happen, felt it happen, made it happen.
The cat shredded its claws on the man's body a couple times merely for the fun of it (he was already dead) and then looked back at Lana. Its blue eyes were bright as sapphires, blood like rubies on its fangs as it snarled at her, and Lana smiled back.
