Lemons

Breaking the Sun

Sorry for the radio silence, been really busy. I'll have a post up within the next couple days.

Iquenos: In Nomine Domini

<Snipped quote by Lemons>
Whatever magical mechanics that are essential for it to work (magitek gears, etc) would not be functioning, I imagine.

@Inkarnate

Gotcha. I'll edit that into my posts.

Iquenos: In Nomine Domini

Etoile

---

Etoile let out a heavy whoosh of relief as the bird that was diving towards her was clocked in the face by the red girl's sword sheath. Despite the circumstances, she was once again struck by familiarity—didn't that sword look familiar to her? Something about the designs on the sheath sparked something in her memory, but she couldn't place it for the life of her. It was endlessly frustrating.

She shook her head. No time for that now. Muttering a quick "thanks," she kept pressure on the wound as best she could as she sheathed the sword and then limped her way back towards the car. And then, of course, just to make her day that much worse, there came a pretty decent-sized group of Inquisitors holding guns and popping them off at the birds with a deafening drumbeat staccato. One one hand, she thought, I think I'll live through the birds now. On the other there are Inquisitors to worry about, and they're usually a lot harder to fight than birds are, especially if I'm injured, crippled, and can't use magic. She was a competent swordswoman, of course; but she wasn't nearly competent enough to hold her own against a group of Inquisitors with guns even if she had full access to her dominant arm, and with her injury, running away was going to be much harder.

What was worse is that she actually recognized one of the Inquisitors, one who had stepped forth and was talking to the redheaded girl. She ground her teeth in frustration. Of COURSE it would have to be Anníbas, because why not make life harder. While his father Solvinius had been an effective and competent Inquisitor—personality traits that she valued quite highly—his son, while powerful, was a smarmy joker, nowhere near as serious as his father had been. And because of that, Etoile had been totally unable to stand him while they had been sharing ranks. She wasn't sure—it was impossible to be sure, really—but she had her suspicions as to who had found out about her digging and divulged it to the high Ecclesiae, and Anníbas was definitely up there. She had quite the vendetta against him, and he was the last person she wanted to deal with right now.

Also, to make things even worse, he would absolutely recognize her. Even without the uniform, her arm was a dead giveaway. If luck goes my way, she gritted her teeth, he's too busy dealing with demon birds to kill me right now.

Luck never went Etoile's way.

Iquenos: In Nomine Domini

Somewhat important question: given that Etoile's arm is magitech, would it be dead in an antimagic zone?

Iquenos: In Nomine Domini

@Inkarnate I mean, if the shoe fits...

Breaking the Sun

Tori really, really, vehemently hated Alex. It wasn't just that he had a perfect gift for getting under her skin, though that was most definitely a problem. It wasn't just the immensely flippant way he talked, or the fact that his sense of humor couldn't squeeze a laugh from the fucking Joker despite what everybody else ever seemed to think. If anything, it was the fact that despite both of those factors, he was annoyingly competent at skirting just on the line of what she could take, so she never felt quite angry enough to try actually hurting him. Not to mention he looked older than she was, and could probably take her in a fight as long as she couldn't use either her Paladin abilities or a knife.

There was Fay, of course. Tori had...mixed feelings about Fay. On one hand, she felt just a hair bad every time she snapped at the slightly older woman; she was just so...so...infuriatingly nice to everybody. On the OTHER hand, though, that niceness, that selfless kindness (and especially the kindness directed at Paragon) drove her up the goddamned wall. And so, she reacted to Fay the way she always had, and as far as she was concerned, always would: ignoring her completely and trying to pretend that nice people didn't exist so she didn't feel bad when she yelled at them.

Sage barely even registered on her radar. As far as she was concerned, he was an asshole like the rest, and she would just as rather he never speak in her presence ever again.

Ivory and Kennedy were the only even slightly tolerable people out of the whole bunch. Kennedy was mostly there by virtue of seniority; she'd learned a bit of his life by eavesdropping on conversations, and he'd been pretty much exactly what she'd wanted to be: a college teacher. He also wasn't nearly as much of an asshole as Alex, or as snide as Sage. And Ivory? She was pretty much the closest thing Tori could come to actually liking a person. Someone who didn't beat around the bush like it was a dead horse, who got right to the heart of the matter, but wasn't a condescending jackass when she did. While she didn't go out of her way to socialize with her—in fact, as far as she knew, they'd never actually spoken—she was one of the few people that she didn't go out of her way to avoid.

Tori's ears were caught by some old guy's outburst, and she groaned as he ranted. Can't they just shut up and leave me in peace?

Then, a beat later: Wait...that was Roger, wasn't it?

She only caught the last part, and the "we will be freed soon!" certainly got her attention. Her breath caught, and she could feel her hands clenching the arms of the chair. Free. It was a nice word, wasn't it?

After Kennedy was silenced by an orderly and returned to the chair, she turned around and spoke to the group at large. Most of them had probably never heard her voice. With one exception, she thought acidly as she glared at Alex again. She still didn't regret that threat.

"So, are we going to talk about what just happened?"

Then, lowering her voice, she turned to Alex in particular.

"Ordinarily, I would go off on you, Alex," she bit out, "But there's nothing I can say to you that would be as cruel as just being you."

Breaking the Sun

Surly, angry, and—well, normal, Tori sat in a frustration-laden chair in the common room. Her bicep stung; she didn't know what she'd been injected with, she never did, and that made her even angrier than she usually was. Her hair was quite matted and unkempt; she'd spent the entirety of the night before clawing at bedsheets, restrained with leather straps as chemical-induced hallucinations ripped through her psyche. She had been just conscious enough when it ended to swear at the doctors before she passed out.

So, if anything, Tori was even angrier than usual.

She jabbed at the food in front of her, scowl briefly giving way to a look of concern and confusion: she had absolutely no idea what this was supposed to be. Usually the food was recognizable, if unpleasant looking, but this was some sort of (maybe) meat-based brown mush. Her lip curled up. God, this is disgusting. Guess I'm not eating. She shoved it away, slurping aggressively at a strawed cup. At least the water tasted like water.

From off to the side, she heard a woman's voice: "Now sit down and shut up."

Shifting her focus to the side, she saw a much older man—thirty? Forty? Something like that—being led in by another of the endless orderlies, muttering something she couldn't quite hear. She rolled her eyes. Sit down and shut up indeed. She closed her eyes. Might as well get some kind of sleep before she was called in for the next in the cavalcade of bullshit that they called Paragon.

---

Tori sighed as she fell back on her ratty junkyard couch, rubbing her aching hands slowly together. "Stupid fucking customers," she grunted, ill-tempered. Her voice jumped up into a ridiculous register, pretty much her approximation of a falsetto, and she pinched her fingers together in the mocking "stop talking" gesture. "Oh, hello, I'd like an iced cascara coconut milk latte with chocolate and caramel, but not too much chocolate and an extra pump of caramel, oh, and make sure it's decaf, but not too decaf, and..." Her voice trailed off, punctuated with a grunted "Fucking teenagers."

She popped a flask from out of her back pocket, near-yanking the top off and taking a long pull. And do it all again tomorrow, she thought, punching the couch irritably.

Thunk

Her ears perked up, and she hastily recapped the flask, getting herself into some semblance of decency and, moreover, getting herself ready to fight if she needed to. After all, her neighborhood, to put it lightly, was not the best. She fished into the pocket of her jeans, pulling out a folding knife. Moving carefully over to the door, she put her eye to the peephole, peering through cautiously.

There was a flash of brilliant light through it and she fell back, clutching at her face. The door blasted inwards, revealing four black-clad people who went straight for the disoriented Tori.

The grungy apartment was filled with the sound of a struggle, but it didn't last for long. "What the fuck are you doing?" she managed to choke out, feeling a collar clasping around her neck.

There was no response, and a hypodermic needle passed into her half-blinded line of sight. She desperately bucked, trying to escape, but she was firmly held, offering no real resistance to the syringe. A few seconds later, she blinked blearily, swore with a deeply slurred voice, then crumpled to the ground.

---

Choking with panic, Tori bolted upright, barely stopping herself from screaming. She was covered in cold sweat, and her back ached from the uncomfortable chair she'd been sleeping in. Dropping her head into one hand, she grit her teeth together.

"I swear to God, I'm going to fucking murder them all," she hissed. After a few moments to recover from her nightmare, she looked around, seeing the older man from before sitting a little ways away. The ubiquitous collar was clasped around his neck, and she fingered her own. If anything, she was even worse-tempered now that she'd woken up than she was before.

Breaking the Sun

Tori will yell at him until he realizes he's being an ass.

Breaking the Sun

@Days I think her optimism and general good-heartedness will play nicely off of Tori's "fuck you" nature.

Breaking the Sun

PERSONNEL FILE

{ VICTORIA ESKRIDGE }

{ 309468 }

---

General Information

name:// Victoria Alina Eskridge
age:// 23
birth date:// April 17th
gender:// Female
occupation:// Unemployed

---

Biology

height:// 5' 5"
weight:// 127 pounds
hair color:// Medium-blonde
eye color:// Gray
tattoos, scars, piercings:// She has a piercing in her right ear, but otherwise none

---

Psychology

ability:// Paladin

personality:// Tori was...pissed. Nearly all of the time. She's always been exceedingly irritable, and she's seemingly-always had a hair trigger that goes off if you so much as look at her wrong. Of course, being locked up underground against her will certainly hasn't helped that; now she's even more pissed. She's quite violent, and won't hesitate to deck you if you so much as look at her wrong. She's always been rather callous, and has never put a lot of stock into being emotional; those that do are often laid to waste with her whiplike, scorning tongue.

Despite that, she's brutally honest, and at the very least, she can be expected to tell the truth. With the whole 'imprisoned-against-her-will' thing, she's also become exceedingly cynical. She finds it very difficult to plan for the future, since she doesn't believe she'll have one, and is mostly just living her life day to day, hoping that something is going to go right for her eventually but not believing it. She's not particularly cooperative with her captors, which has led to a bit more that her fair share of bruises and other such 'war wounds,' as she calls them. In the end, most of her angry, callous personality boils down to the fact that she doesn't feel she's able to trust anybody, and so she's forged a very spiky armored shell. Not the irritability, though; that's always been her style.

The last real cardinal point in her personality, and pretty much her only redeeming quality, is her unbreakable tenacity. Those expecting her to give up once she's set her mind to something will find themselves disappointed. While it can certainly lead to her breaking instead of bending, it can also keep her going when somebody else might've quit a long time ago.

---

family history://

• Mina Eskridge, mother; deceased at 48; Paladin; buried in a graveyard near Philadelphia, her hometown
• Robin Eskridge, father; deceased at 47; No abilities; buried next to Mina
• Jack Eskridge, brother; estranged; 25; No abilities; currently living in Prague, Czech Republic

---

Miscellaneous Information

She vehemently despises vanilla, and much rather prefers Tori to Victoria. She really hates it when people call her Vicky, because when she was little, she was bullied by people who liked to call her 'Icky Vicky.'

She went to Susquehanna College and majored in Creative Writing, realizing only afterwards that now she has a hard time in the job market.