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There Are No Heroes [Revamp]

There y'are.

There Are No Heroes [Revamp]

Henry was on his way to the table too quickly to really care for any of Moe’s excuses, much more focused on the young woman from the corner of the bar who he knew would be joining them. He sat down to lay a claim and set down his beer. In a relatively sober fashion, he shifted his gaze to match the person who was already the focus of his concentration as she approached them, flipped a chair around, sat down in it, and not-exactly-politely asked to join them. Feigning surprise, he turned to George with a smirk and a raised eyebrow. George just smirked back at him with a shrug and sipped his beer.

Henry turned to the girl and took a gulp of beer, half-listening to her question about the theremin. He almost wondered why she’d come over and sat at this table, but he already knew. There was an astoundingly weird vibe around this table: he perceived something frightening in both Mercer and Michelle, but for whatever reason it felt like where he was supposed to be. Like a moth to a flame, he thought to himself, and chuckled as he swallowed.

He let the question remain unanswered while he glanced at Mercer, who was sitting down and putting his phone away. He answered her question and sounded both a little absent and a little irritated.

And then that guy with the sparkling water spoke, who Henry hadn’t actually noticed actually follow them. He put it down to the alcohol and the two more interesting presences in front of him. He’d been putting a lot down to alcohol, he realized, and noted this should be his last drink.

He wasn’t really listening to what Moe said; instead, he was just a little astounded by how awkward the guy seemed to be. He seemed decidedly nervous, to the point that Henry was suspicious of some sort of social anxiety. Moreover, Henry didn’t give a damn about why he was here, but he was still sober enough not to just say that out loud. He decided to change the topic of conversation.

Henry set down his beer with an unintentionally but not unreasonably loud thump, but managed to play it off as if he’d wanted to attract attention. “Anyway, I’m Henry. Nice to meet you all.”

There Are No Heroes [Revamp]

I'm still alive. I'm not sure I'll be able to post tomorrow, but I think I should be able to Thursday.

There Are No Heroes [Revamp]

Sorry that took so long, and is so long. Things have been a little crazy.

There Are No Heroes [Revamp]

The sound check ended, and Henry noted a wave of relief in the audience. There were a few nods between the guy mixing in the back of the bar and the band, and they took a few a minute or so to sip drinks and chat before the vocalist announced that they were indeed Amish Tech Support and introduced himself and his companions. No one cared.

But that all took a few minutes. Henry returned from his thoughts and looked at George, who had a pensive expression on his face. At first, Henry thought he was watching the band, but on closer examination he was just spacing out. Henry decided to restart conversation, and put on a friendly smirk on his face. “What’s on your mind?” he asked.

He blinked slowly. “I was just connecting some dots, I guess.”

“What?” Henry’s confusion was genuine.

“Well, so I was hanging out at my sister’s last weekend, and her son was watching Spongebob while we were just shooting the shit with my brother-in-law. Anyway, we get quiet for a little bit, and a new episode starts or something. It’s Spongebob sitting at home, really intently watching a sea anemone” — he botched the pronunciation, Henry noticed, but he wasn’t sure if it was the booze — “swinging around on its little stalk, like in an ocean current, on TV. Then the snail, Gary — I think I’m over there too often — comes in and Spongebob changes the channel really quick and looks all guilty.”

George was leaning back against the bar, facing toward the band, mostly talking to Henry but also to the new guy. Henry was sort of hunched over, facing out and in George’s direction, making eye contact as he listened. Henry glanced occasionally at the new guy, who was paying special attention to some girl in the corner of the bar. He let the thought go and decided he wanted more to drink, so he held a finger up to pause George’s tipsy philosophizing, turned to the bartender and asked for two of whatever was cheap and on tap. He signaled for George to continue.

“So of course after that we adults were cracking up. I mean, it’s a joke about porn in a kids’ show, right? But then my nephew was just staring at us, asking over and over what was so funny, which only made us laugh harder.” He looked at Henry, clearly about to make a point. “But the thing is, I watched that same show as a kid, and I was probably just like my nephew back then, and all that stuff went miles above my head.”

George said that with the intonation of finality, but Henry didn’t see the point. The beers came though, and both of them took a sip. “But what does that connect to?” Henry asked, not wanting to overtly tell George to stop rambling.

“Well, long story short, I’ve been learning Spanish, right, and I’m getting pretty good, talking with relatives and stuff. But there’s still all kinds of stuff I miss, from subtext to massive chunks of sentences.” He took a few sips, then continued. “And I’ve just been wondering if I missed as much as I did when I was a kid, except I never noticed it because it was just outside of what I could comprehend.”

He finished his beer in one final swig. Henry didn’t interrupt him. “I guess the question is: what am I missing just because I can’t even process it? There are things I know I don’t get, like fine art and jazz and morse code and that sort of thing, but what about the things I don’t even know of?” He stared intently at Henry, who stared back but saw much more. George had, over the past thirty seconds or so, gone from excitedly rambling to deeply serious, perhaps with a tinge of suspicion.

Henry had tested that out plenty of times, though. George couldn’t know of Henry’s little abilities, but he was more than able to discern that Henry was letting himself behave a little weird. Shit. “Are you high?” he asked calmly, with a bit of judgement on his face for good measure. He didn’t know whether he was at that in-the-zone level of buzz or he just thought he was.

George rolled his eyes and looked back out at the band, who’d started playing something surprisingly unobtrusive but undoubtedly on the experimental side. George’s eyes narrowed once the vocalist came in. “This is a Wilco song. I saw them live a couple years ago. The instrumentation is just really weird.” He declared, and he was right, thought Henry. “I think they’re holding off with the theremin until the bridge at the end of the song. Good thing, too.”

A large group stood up and left. Maybe it was a little too noisy for them, thought Henry, but they might also just have gone anyway. “Let’s grab that table,” George said, pointing. “This is no way to have a conversation and make friends.” He nodded in the direction of the New Guy. Then, with a gregarious, not-entirely-sober smile, he looked over at the guy sipping sparkling water. “You look like you need to relax. Get yourself a beer and meet us over there.” He motioned with his empty glass, put it down on the bar, and walked over to the table. Henry gestured to the bartender and followed.

The Galactic Ocean

Suno was not exactly pleased by these developments. They were walking into a situation of sure military inferiority without any guarantee from the ESA that they were still being backed. For all they knew, the planet's defense forces could be planning to destroy the Vigilance as it came down, maybe as a favor to the ESA. And then, think of all the fuel that was about to be wasted in this de-orbiting maneuver. Whatever, Suno wasn't paying, but still.

As for starting a war, Suno was pretty sure they wouldn't be much of an issue, for him at least. He rarely was the first one to start things. And even if something did go badly, Suno was pretty sure he'd be dead. The consequences really didn't matter to him at all.

Accordingly, Suno's line of thinking was not exactly positive as he walked down to his room and then the hangar. He inspected all of his weapons and equipped himself as best he could, ran a diagnostic test on his ship, and checked the results over manually. He walked back up to the ship's exit near the bridge, nervously tapping his fingers on his pistol. He stared at the airlock door, occasionally checking the readings of the altimeter in his hud.

"I have a bad feeling about this," he announced to no one in particular.

There Are No Heroes [Revamp]

Stepping onto that bus was the first time Henry had been with more than three other souls in a good six months. For the most part, he liked what being around others did to him and what it let him experience. He could peek into others’ psyches and know them in a way no one else could know strangers. The rush of sensations started in his head and poured through him, collecting in his gut, where it gathered into a painful mass. He’d spent countless hours trying to figure out what that awful sensation was — perhaps something to do with what people had hidden in their subconscious. In the end, it didn’t really matter. He’d handle anguish for a few days and strike off on his own again. The bar was even more interesting, from his point of view. He was swimming in perceptions. The room was alive and beating. His ability to sense the states of other people’s minds didn’t really have anything to do with being in his sight, so as he talked with George he wandered around the room in his mind’s eye, riding the highs and lows of every conversation around him and making note of everyone in the bar. After a few minutes of that, though, that little cancer inside of him grew to be too much. By the time the beers came, he’d focused on his breathing and pushed as much as he could out. And so he enjoyed his beer — another first in many months. He was certainly happy to treat himself to something half-decent, but he’d have to switch to something cheaper later, when taste mattered less than alcohol content. He’d been watching the band and wondering what exactly they would play since before George even mentioned anything. He also didn’t really have a clue, but he was pretty down for anything. Live bands weren’t something he was used to. The theremin was a convenient excuse to down his beer as quickly as possible. Henry had mostly gone into this night expecting to be drinking a lot — he found that there were more of the good parts of his special abilities and less of the bad parts, as long as he stayed in a good mood. It was a significant enough effect that Henry was pretty sure he’d develop some kind of alcohol dependence if he had more access to alcohol. In any case, another half-bottle of beer and ten minutes later, Henry was affected pretty strongly. Barely drinking at all made him quite a lightweight, but he metabolized it quickly, so he didn’t worry. Henry felt the guy sit down next to George and already got an extremely strange feeling from him. George, a pretty outgoing guy, and almost certainly not a psychic, responded, unaware of any weird vibes. “I haven’t heard of them either.” He turned around to face the same direction the newcomer was. “I kinda doubt they’re locals, unless it’s a brand new group. I’m just as curious to figure out what this is gonna be as you are. It looks like they’re starting the sound check now.” Maybe it was the beer that made the feeling so strong. Henry had no idea, and he hadn’t even seen the guy yet, but there it was. This guy felt like something new to him. He let curiosity get the better of him and turned around like George had, leaning forward so he could see around George. For a few seconds, he lost his usual control, and stared straight through the guy. It was like he was zoning out in another person’s head, a look of total concentration and at least some hint of suspicion on his face. He snapped out of it, but surely a little too long not to have been noticed. He leaned back in his seat to put George's body back in between his and the newcomer's, wondering to himself, what is that guy?

There Are No Heroes [Revamp]

I went out last night, still pretty tired. I'll post within the next few hours (though I figure everyone else is asleep anyway).

How about a Interplanetary, Sol based Sci-fi RP?

I'm new to this kind of roleplaying, but I'm very interested in joining.

The Galactic Ocean

I'd say you should just post, heat. The more people can respond to, the better. Hopefully.