Maiden

Twisted Redux

Thanks guys! I'm on 12 hour shifts the rest of this week, and it's crushing me. My brain is so fried right now it's a miracle I can write this! But Sunday it will all be over and I'll be starting my new work schedule. I just gotta survive the rest of this week lol!

Twisted Redux

Okay, guys, sorry I've been a little distant OOC. I've been keeping up with everything, and all the posts are great!! I can think of a bunch of things I want to do, but which will I choose? Hmm....

I'm okay with waiting a couple more days for Syblyx and Oblivion to post, so long as no one else objects. I am going to do my level best to have a post done by Thursday afternoon before I go to work. (I'm not 100% sure I can do this: next week I'll be working part time at my new job for training, and part time at my old job for the last few days of my 2 week notice.) I anticipate being exhausted, and I hope you all will forgive me if I'm not able to hammer out a post for those days I'm going to work two places... but I'm sure as heck gonna try!

Now, off to bed! Early morning tomorrow! :D

Twisted Redux

@ Elsa: I'd say 3/4 full. Waxing. That help?

Also, glad you're caught up on your homework, lol! That's a good feeling, isn't it?

Thanks everyone else for checking in!! I was going to write today, but since you're all still working on posts I'll hold off a few more days. :)

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Well done, Kally! Poor Nell is so scared all the time! Sorry I doubted you, I think you mentioned you were moving house but I guess I kind of spaced it. My bad!

Twisted Redux

Okay, guys, it's awfully quiet around here! I need some status updates!!

Tigre: you're good. ^_^ I'll probably send Buck to retrieve Dante in my next post, so sit tight.

Pumirya: you're good, too. I know you're waiting on someone to engage Simone, so if no one else is up to the task I'll edit Cadie's post and send her your way. I'm sure you don't mind waiting a few more days to post, you'll sip tea and nod and be all Zen about it. ;)

Kally: I'll need to free up Buck to send him after Dante, so I will assume Aniella follows Buck to a table and then has some internal struggles about her breakfast. Someone will fetch the Italian-speaking Regianne for her. I'm sure you can roll with that, right? And please do check in at least, let us know you're alive and well. Don't make me send ninjas after you. :D

Oblivion & Vampiric: Since your characters are actually sitting together, with Rak, you're not holding anyone up IC. But please do check in to let us know that you're still alive and wanting to play, please and thanks!

Syblyx: I know you're grounded, but since Rak's with Alice and Anya, you're good where you're at. Just please let me know when we can expect you back!

Elsa: Since Dante ran off, you're not holding anyone up either. I know you're working on papers, and studies must come first, so I don't mind if you need a few extra days, but again, need ya to let me know.

I know that I've been guilty of going dark on RP's in the past, but I've made a personal vow to myself that it's not going to happen again here. So I'm not gonna let any of you do it, either!! I had a bad patch but I'm better now and I managed to slog through it and put that post up last week. Now I want to write something really good, and I want to read what you guys have to write!

Right here, I wanted to post a gif of Leeloo from the Fifth Element looking all sad and struggling to say please... but apparently such a thing doesn't exist. I even checked tumblr. :(

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I know I haven't been chatting up the OOC as much as usual, but I've been lurking!

Nice post, Tigre! I didn't expect patients to start leaving already lol! Dante's nurse is gonna follow him of course... But the magical cigarette is totally neat! I would save SO much money if I could do that! Lol.

So, tomorrow is a week since my last post! Let's get 'em written up and posted, please and thanks!

Glad your new 'puter is on its way, Pum!

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@ Tigre: LMFAO I'm a moron sometimes. I knew what I meant so my brain didn't see my typo... even when you pointed it out. :)

@ Syblyx: Yeah, that's a little late. But you were exercising... I have a 13 y/o nephew, and I'd let him jog till 1 AM if he ever wanted to go jogging lol.

@ Elsa: I feel for you. So glad I never have to go back to school!!

@ Kally: Let it burn is a really good one for McKenzie. But I, also, fell into the Frozen Parody vids after watching the movie. My favorite is Will You Help Me Hide A Body? I laughed so hard I cried the first time I watched it.

See Also

Now Elsa's a meme in my head. ^_^

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@ Tigre: Don't give me that tone of face. XD I'm always struggling to make my posts shorter, less full of irrelevant details and/or internal thought processes, so I have to pat myself on the back when I manage to achieve my objectives for a character's post in a thousand words or less. It's not that I have anything against quantity, I just like to remind myself that a long post isn't always necessarily a good post. Don't hate. ^_^

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@ Syblyx: I'd say it's awfully late to be out running, but I have no idea where you live so I can't say for sure, haha! You've got plenty of time on the post, just let me know if it's gonna be an issue. Glad my story gave you warm fuzzies. <3

Post is up, sorry again for holding up the game!! >.< As I read it, Rak, Alice and Anya are all at Table One, Dante and Sasha at Table Two, Cadie and Jax at Table Three. Buck, Aniella, and Simone are at the steam lines. Yesyes?

So, in case you guys are baffled as to why Cadie is blind: it's the conversion disorder. She saw something she liked, and consequently went blind to keep from coveting. No telling how long it will last: maybe only hours, maybe weeks. (Though for the RP's sake, probably just hours.) It is admittedly a very severe and short-cycling instance of the disorder, but it's so much fun to play. As I said before, I was going to have her engage Rak, but since you've all grouped yourselves up nicely, there's no need.

I tried to write for Jax but... he's really difficult. He's more animal than I'd anticipated, and though I can handle Buck and Cadie, I'm just not up to the challenge of Jax's first post right now. But SOON.

Buck's part is one of my favorite self-written examples of how quantity does not equal quantity. While Cadie's part of the post is longer, the only thing it accomplishes is to give a few of Cadie and Jax's reactions to the new arrivals. Buck's part is shorter, but I've included more patients and synchronized some things: I have no idea if poor Nell will be horrified or amazed to see a nurse and a fellow patient drinking blood, or if she'll toss her cookies at the sight of that big raw hunk of meat.

Tigre, I believe you had expressed an intent to show us Dante's inner cannibal? Yesyes? I think between Buck, Simone and Dante we can probably make Nell run screaming from the room. Poor dear... but no worries, Buck's got a syringe with her name on it. :) (Sorry Kally, lol! If you need to PM me about it, feel free!)

Twisted Redux

» Cadence «

I'm just painting that's still wet:
If you touch me I'll be smeared,
You'll be stained.
Stained for the rest of your life!

---»«---

For a few minutes, Cadie and Jax ate in companionable silence. A couple of the other patients trickled in, but they didn’t pay any more attention to the mutant than she did to them. Her focus was fluffy eggs and crunchy bacon, hot coffee and cool, crisp melon. Whatever else you said about the Institute, you had to admit that the food was first-rate. It was almost peaceful just then: the only sounds were from a quiet conversation three tables over, distant and metallic din echoing from the kitchen, and the rustle of Darlene’s Cosmo magazine as she periodically turned a page.

The young telekinetic wanted to enjoy her moment of numb contentment… but as was usually the case at Osmond’s Institute, somebody happened. One of the Terrible Triplets (Creepy Goatee, to be exact.) brought in a guy Cadie had never seen before, and deposited him roughly at a table near the center of the room. The guy didn’t do anything exceptional. In fact, he just stared at the table. She almost dismissed his presence, almost let her one good eye fall back to her plate, but she realized something. His hair… his hair was moving.

It wasn’t moving as if he’d sat under an air vent, either. It was moving as if the young man was underwater, in a perfectly still pool. It just sort of floated. The girl blinked sleepily, and then it occurred to her that maybe this was just a side effect from the drugs they’d given her not-so-long ago. She ate a spoonful of the honeyed oatmeal, then turned to Jax.

“Is it just me,” she murmured, and licked her lips, “or is that guy’s hair moving?”

Cadie tilted her chin in the direction of the fellow she was referring to.

Jax twisted his head in that odd, avian way of his, peering at the stranger for a long moment. Then he looked at the table, shook himself a little, and turned back to Cadie.

“Moving.”

The girl nodded, and though Jax always spoke too loudly for her tastes, the trippy-haired guy in question didn’t seem to notice. He was still just staring at the table. Cadie concluded that he probably wasn’t the human he’d appeared to be at first glance. She tucked in to the oatmeal again, diverting periodically to the eggs, sausage and bacon. Thanks to her extra drugs, she bit her fingers twice.

This is what makes you a monster, Cadence, she thought rather too cheerfully to herself.

Jax nudged her slipper under the table with one of his sharp, black claws. She jumped a little; although it was more like flinching from the unexpected contact, Cadie rationalized it into surprise. She looked up, and he just blinked at her. Her only functioning eye slid sideways, her head following, as she scanned the room for whatever it was her companion was trying to show her. It must have been the girl with Nurse Buck, who had her hair pulled forward instead of backward and ponytailed over her nose. Whatever facial features she was hiding with her mahogany hair, Cadie figured it must have been pretty gross… because her arms were crisscrossed with fresh-looking wounds, roughly stitched together and still a little bloody. The mutant frowned. She was willing to bet that hurt… a lot. And there was something about the other young woman that made Cadence feel better immediately: she was almost as skinny as the mutant herself.

Almost.

Cadence tried again to return to her meal. Oatmeal, gone. Eggs, gone. Bacon, gone. Sausage, gone. Bagel, gone. Coffee, gone. Milk, gone. Slowly, the mutant became aware that Jax had stopped eating and was sitting with his shoulders hunched forward, head moving back and forth. She set her fork down and took a few deep breaths, steeling herself for what came next.

The girl gingerly placed her slender fingers across the back of Jax’s hand, where it lay splayed on the table. The warmth of his skin under her digits was almost enough to make her draw back instantly. It was like holding her hand in a fire. Even though Jax wasn’t human, it felt an awful lot like human contact. She took another deep breath as his dark head stopped moving, one black eye fixed on her.

“What is it, Jax?” she asked very quietly, trying not to sound as if she was asking Lassie if Timmy fell into the well. Of course, she licked her lips.

“Watching. Me,” the raven croaked in reply. He tried to be quiet about it, which made his voice even stranger and more raspy.

“It’s okay,” Cadie soothed, forcing herself to rub the back of his hand gently, even though it kind of made her feel nauseous. The physical contact helped him keep a connection with reality, she knew from experience, so she tried not to think about it and focused on what she was saying.

“They’re new,” she said in hushed tones. “And they’ve never seen anyone like you before. I stared at you too, remember?” She licked her lips several times, feverishly. The prolonged physical contact was starting to stress her out.

Jax looked at her for a long moment, and she could clearly see in her own mind exactly what he was remembering. She smiled, thinly, and nodded.

“So, relax. They’re just jealous of your wings,” the girl whispered.

Then Jax did something Cadie didn’t expect. He turned his hand over, clutched her fingers in his, and squeezed them gently. The feathers at the base of his neck puffed out a little again in the Corvinian equivalent of a smile.

Such a simple gesture, such a small connection that normal people were able to have on an everyday basis. It said thank you for being here, thank you for pulling me back from the edge. Someone else could have shrugged it off, squeezed back, and smiled in return. Cadence was not that someone. Her stomach dropped and every muscle in her body tensed. She couldn’t force herself to draw in a breath. And then she heard a sound… a horrible, despicable sound…

…the sound of her coffee cup starting to rattle against its saucer.

Thankfully, blessedly, Jax seemed to sense that this was too much for Cadie, and let her go. As soon as he did, the weight on her chest lifted. She inhaled deeply through her nose and exhaled through her mouth several times. The coffee cup had stopped shaking, but now her hands were doing it instead. Her appetite was completely gone, which was really bad. She’d been down to eighty-eight pounds when they’d weighed her two days ago, and the nutritional nurse had said (in a rather threatening manner) that if Cadie got down to eighty-five she’d have to have a feeding tube put directly in her stomach so they could pump nutrition into her overnight while she slept.

She shuddered involuntarily, and reached for the double-chocolate muffin. Three bites in, the sound of a food tray slamming down made her look up again.

The source of the sound was a man, a man she hadn’t noticed walking in. How she’d missed him, she didn’t know: a combination of the painkillers and hunger, she supposed. He was tall, well-built but a little thin, with blonde hair long enough to brush his shoulders and a rough shadow of stubble on his square jaw.

Oh no! Why today of all the-

Cadence didn’t have time to finish the thought before the vision in her one good eye dimmed… and then abandoned her completely.

“Son of a bitch!” she cursed, loudly enough to startle Jax, and slammed her hand down on the table.

“What. RRRAAAnn?” the raven man squawked in alarm.

“Blind. You see the big blonde guy at my…” she had to think for a moment, “at my two o’clock?”

Cadie was pretty sure Jax nodded, but she couldn’t see. “Knock once for no, twice for yes.”

Immediately, he rapped twice on the table.

“Good. Tell me when he leaves.”

Again, two taps.

“And… could you help me find my muffin?” she asked, in her usual whisper, licking her lips again.

---»«---

» Nurse Buck «

Welcome to the jungle,
It gets worse here every day!
You learn to live like an animal
In the jungle where we play!

---»«---

“Th-... Thank you very much, Nurse Buck,” She said in a voice so small she wasn't sure he had heard her, “This is all much more than I deserve... I think if it is okay with you, I could possibly have some toast? And perhaps a small drink of plain water?”

The patchwork young lady had come along rather quietly and willingly, despite her obvious terror. She’d almost balked at the sight of the males in the cafeteria: you didn’t have to be a genius to read her eyes and her body language. Buck genuinely felt a little bad for the girl: maybe he’d missed it in the file, but he didn’t realize she had a compulsion to cover her face. Of course, it made sense, considering.

But when she asked for food, Buck couldn’t help wondering how she would eat with her hair fixed like that. The stitches on her bare arms were oozing blood that didn’t even smell like blood, and peeking out from behind her hair she was saying that she didn’t deserve even water and bread. Where had she been before this? The vampire wished he’d had more time to read the files.

“If you would like people food, Aniella,” he replied calmly, “I would suggest a blueberry scone and some hot coffee or tea. But if you would prefer something else…”

The vampire stepped away from the young woman and picked a coffee mug up off the steam line. Then he moved to the punch bowl he knew would be there. It was always there on New Patient days, even when there were no new vampires. By now, Buck was certain that the punch bowl was just for him sometimes. He was also certain that it was completely clean, completely real, somehow warm, actual human blood. The blood was ladled into his cup without a single drop being spilled.

“…I suggest you go ahead and get it. You’re not the only one here who eats from the carnivore line.”

Then he paused, and his lips twitched in what might have been a ghost of a smile. Of course, Aniella probably wouldn’t see this because she didn’t seem to be able to look any higher than his chest. He raised the glass to his lips, and drained it halfway. He really didn’t care how Morgan came by all that human blood. It was good. Buck swallowed, repressing the natural shiver, licked his lips clean -which gave a little flash of fang, if she was looking- and then moved to get a tray for the girl.

“Tell you what, I’ll fix you a tray with a few different choices, and you can eat what you want.”

As if on cue, to illustrate his point, a girl Buck assumed to be Simone sauntered over to the inhuman selection, picked up a bag of lycan blood, and bit straight down into it.

Buck would prepare Aniella a tray containing her water and toast, the offered blueberry scone and coffee with sugar and creamer packets… and a second coffee cup of warm blood, and what looked to be a completely raw ham steak.

If nothing else happened, he’d lead her to a table near a corner of the room, and seat her where she could see the door.

---»«---

If you got a hunger for what you see,
…You'll take it eventually.

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