Rockette

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Hope In Hell #2.004: void.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s):&&}

Previously: vore.

The first injections come when she is ten years old— too many to count, too many to place. On the third night, Amma Cahors realized she wasn't going home, she wasn't going anywhere but spiraling into a sterile hell, her trappings came in silver and steel and polished linoleum. Suspended in a place over open waters, calm surfaces, and salt-tinged winds that banked over the underbelly of her waking nightmares - down within the confines of the ocean, no one can hear you scream. The Alexandria Foundation possesses their new weapon, their beast, and their creation and they gild her in black and silver and red, don her in darling phrases and whispers and promises of redemption. They collar her betwixt the void of heart and soul, the reasonings of self utterly stripped bare from her very bones. The creature contained within the frame of a child, the eyes of her mother, the subtle structures of her father, and the pale skin of pearlescent innocence soon bathed in blood and hate and taint. They had the prize, and it was time to make it theirs.

They even took her name.

The second injections come when she is ten years old- too many to count, too many to place.

But she remembers them all.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

It was a scene sundered straight from her nightmares; the blood, the fog, the banked darkness edging into the distance; the buzzing drone of static, down to the very color of the straps she could feel pulled taught over her flesh. The liquid pooled into a hated glass, the empty syringes that she had felt many times over, again and again and again, the bright lights awash over her prone figure as she screamed and begged and pleaded. As she bartered for an end, as she dugs nails into her bleeding palms and reached for the heavens whose gates were closed to even she. If there was a God, He had long forsaken Amma, and instead, the Devil whispered in her ear and held her close to the pits of Hell. But there were no rumored flames or shambling dead, there had been naught but emptiness that welcomed her in coils of dread. In her waking world, he showed her the too-white halls and the sterile embellishments, the cold steel that bit in her skin many times over, the darkness that loomed and whispered and screamed.

She wished for someone, anyone, but above all, she wished for her mother.

Slow tremors still worked down her arms as she walked, her pace deliberate, seeking, and searching eyes peeled wide in manic sweeps as she looked left and right. Each classroom was much the same, desks aligned perfectly and facing forward, walls bare, the broken screens flashing every few seconds to an image she thought lost in memorium. It was her in various stages of her youth, from the child she had been, to the ascending monster that they longed for, the glowing reflection that stood before her one drenched in black and blood that was not her own. The voices still pinged away at her lobe, her heart hammering away betwixt her ribs aching with every harsh pull of breath that shakily swept from her lips. From the images, others flickered across the static, their faces smudged and blackened, disappearing as soon as they came and flickering back to her likeness, her eyes hollowed and cheeks flayed open wide in smiles lined with scarlet-drenched bone.

She walked past one room where a gurney lay in the middle, surrounded by four walls, a singular bulb shone over the pristine condition of the stretcher, wherein the floor beneath was riddled with black and red; the edges still pooling outward and spreading far and wide. Amma entered with glassy eyes lost to the torments of her past, not seeing or hearing if others followed her, not caring if they did. This was her home, where she belonged, yes. This was her reality, her meant-to-be beginning and her soon-to-be end, she reached forward, palmed over the manacles lax and open, fitted her grasp to the thick restraints, and tacked her nails against the cold steel.

Whispers of her name enveloped her, shrouding and eclipsing her, her entire self suspended upon the threads of this very room taken from her fears and regret.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

The third injections come when she is ten years old- too many to count, too many to place.
They uttered of temperance, they uttered things of blocking and shaping and enhancing. They uttered of potential and intention and held palms over her trembling arms as they flayed apart the skin at her back, along the ridges of her spine, and witnessed those coils of red that rose and struck like vipers, the black that oozed and billowed forth and ate away at masks and coats of white and metal. The screams --

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

Amma suddenly screeched, she pitched the gurney forward, nails against the bars meant to cage and withhold, she wailed her fury and hate and pain and launched herself upon the walls, clawing at the suppression containing her power in minuscule sparks of red that flew away at her arched and bleeding fists.

You wanted to be powerful. You wanted the power to find your mother. You wanted the power to find your father. You wanted the power to destroy them all.

And they gave it to you.

Her name blooms and roars over the symphony of rage in her head, over and over -- Tiamat, Tiamat, Tiamat.

"SHUT UP!"

Amma claws away at the name on her neck, hands bloodied, hands that still bore Katja's blood too. She was sure it was there still, she was sure her power continued to thrum and pulse with the essence of her pain and anguish and the broken heart that fed her malice.

She had left the tent last night without looking back at all, not hearing the words uttered there after, caring naught for it but felt the tremors of what was said all the same. She had walked to the edges of the cliffs, looked yonder to the storm that was approaching the campsite, picked her way down the rock, clung to the sediment, and worked her way down and down and down, piece by piece Amma climbed and descended to the frothing waves below that called and sung and tempted her to their darkness.

That morning was a haze of sleeplessness, she ate little, said nothing, dressed quickly and efficiently, and fitted the neural uplink to her temple as instructed. The Trials were new to her, but she cared little for them, cared for nothing as the dregs of her thoughts bled into incoherency.

Now she felt confined and trapped, her name still whispered over and over, welcoming her home, welcoming her back to this hell.

"I wanted it," Amma whispered, knelt before a wall marked by her pain, marked by the fury that still flitted away down to her mutilated core. "I wanted the power. I wanted it all." The soft breaths of her admission slip away into nothing, the creature that was she slowly rising up and up, hands on the wall with her head bowed.

"But I didn't know," she gasps. "I didn't know the price. I still don't know. I don't know what -- why --" She carves her fingers back, sliding through her mass of hair, black taint smudged over her temples and blood ran through the curls of her dark hair.

"They experimented on us, all of us. Some never came back. Those like," she paused, the name on her tongue. "Haven, Robert. Maybe they took Mei and Pallyx too."

"They take whatever they want, make you what you fear the most. All the power in the world and they use you for it until it turns to ash and death in your hands."

Amma moves back out into the hall, words lost upon herself, uncaring if they hear her, uncaring if she was the only one there. Eyes wild and lost, she continues down the corridor, penetrating gaze aglow in the haze of fog that reaches out to her, coiling over her arms and legs, spiraling away at where her scars lay and burn.

"There are many things I cannot remember, things I probably forced to be forgotten. Maybe they forced me to forget it. Or maybe... I don't know. I'm the monster they made, the dragon, the beast of Hell. Of the End. That's what they said."

She stops, left and right, the corridor splitting off into the unknown in either direction. The sterile wall at this juncture though is different than the rest, a line of black marring the otherwise pristine surface. She pauses, studies it, and reaches forward, but a lance of pain down her spine stops her, a wet gasp splintering from her mouth and coiling into a wince. Her name continues to sound in a chorus of whispers and wails, soft sounds that are barely there and then not, a droning resonation slowly working its way up her spine in ticking increments of pain liken to needles in her flesh.

Amma can feel them and coils her arms around herself, turns right, and continues forward.

She'll do it alone if she has to, she got away once before -

- right?

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Dundas Island, Pacific Ocean}

Welcome Home #1.107: vore.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): Katja - @Zoldyck.}

Previously: in-between.

Katja beheld Amma’s awesome display of her powers with both a sense of trepidation and genuine awe. To her the dancing coils of raw power were a mesmerizingly terrifying thing to behold. The thought of going toe-to-toe with Amma crossed her mind for a fraction of a second, and while the tall blonde was confident in her fighting skills, she was uncertain what the outcome would be if she tried to face this foe.

As Amma’s powers ebbed back, the arcs diminishing slowly in their intensity, Katja locked her gaze back on those special eyes brimming with power. She took a deep breath to regain some form of composure, though there was still a trace amount of anger that could be heard, lessened though it was.

“This is the first time I’m even hearing of this, but why should I care what you do with Lorcán? Or with whoever else you feel like?” In her impassioned state Katja didn’t think before she spoke. In fact, she might not have even fully realized what she was saying. She was just spilling her heart out at this point, unleashing the emotions that had been clawing at her mind for the entire day. “Would I have liked it to be me instead of him? Yes, of course I would! But that choice isn’t up to me, and whatever choice you make is the only thing that should matter to you!”

Katja stood up from her cot, rising to as much as her full height as she could without damaging the tent. Even in this hunched state she still towered over Amma. But it was not meant to intimidate. Her eyes had lost the sharpness from mere moments before. The dominant emotion within them wasn’t fury or indignation, but sadness. A sadness that could also be heard in her voice, as it cracked when she first continued speaking.

“From the moment we first met I desperately, desperately wanted to be your friend. It’s why I’ve never treated you any differently from any of the others of Blackjack.” She paused for a moment, clicking her tongue as a thought crossed her mind. “And no, I don’t mean that in the sense that I intentionally didn’t treat you differently despite you being some sort of monster. Yes, you have a power that inspires both dread and awe at the sight of it. That doesn't make you a monster, not here, not to me!” A dry, humorless chuckle escaped her lips. “I can rip a man in two by just jabbing my fingers in their chest and pulling them apart. If anything, that would make me more of a monster than you.

Katja slowly shook her head. “You are not a monster, Am. Mysterious? yes! Powerful? Certainly! And can you be a little creepy sometimes? Absolutely! But you are not an evil, soulless creature." For the first time since the start of their argument a soft smile tugged at the big South African’s lips. “You are Am, and you are my friend. Whether you like it or not, that’s how I will always see you.”

Katja leaned forward, bringing her face so close to Amma’s that their noses practically touched. She then attempted to lock her gaze with that of the raven-haired girl before she spoke next, her voice much softer than before, making her next phrase sound more like a plea than a demand.

“Look me in the eyes and tell me I’m lying.”

"Yes," Amma seethed, "We are monsters. Need I remind you," her pitch wavers, her penetrating gaze unflinching and without reserve as she locks onto the frigid determination drawn so close to her. Every sliver of color lain before her, like chips of a fragile heart desperately yearning and reaching out to her, a beseeching and pleading chasm that yawned before them. Whatever bridge had been seeded within the depths of her soul earlier in the forest slowly crumbled away to naught but fractured remains, instead an odious figure loomed, situated deep within and pierced talons deep and true, refusing to budge. A cage there was, one of bone and blood with weighted cracks and splinters, and there it churned and wrought -- biding its time.

"The world outside is dark and it is afraid." Amma reached out, fingers splayed, the red coils of her power sinking into the scarred flesh at her palm. "Afraid of you." She leaned forth, lashes fanned low on her cheeks and breathed. "Afraid of me."

And then she struck.

Her hands lanced against Katja's shoulders, crimson arcs lancing through the tent, scouring over the interior walls before sinking deep into the ground at her feet. She aimed to push her back wherein Amma stood from her cot, fingers arched and cracking, bones struggling against the confines of her skin as the ambient HZEs that toiled within and without bid themselves to her in shimmering capes of crimson lamplight. They wreathed through her hair, eclipsing the black strands as she hissed:

"You're not only lying, you're wrong."

Katja’s instincts rang all the alarm bells as the inevitable became obvious. Her hairs on the back of her neck rose as she saw Amma raise her hands towards her, coiled in that otherwise so mesmerizing scarlet energy. She only had a split second to react, which was all the time she needed to trigger her own HZEs reserve and fortify herself against the coming onslaught.

The shoulders of her shirt instantly disintegrated, exposing her hardened skin to the arcs of red energy conjured by the girl she loved so dearly. The pain was excruciating, as if she was being flayed and burned at the same time. Her skin slowly blackened as it began to form small splits. Yet she did not budge, she did not even make a sound. For the physical pain paled in comparison to the emotional torment Katja felt. It was as though Amma had not targeted her shoulders with her attack, but her heart. That was the thing that truly disintegrated at the moment of impact. And it was that feeling, that agony which left Katja stunned.

And thus, she did not budge.

She could feel Amma up the intensity of her attack. The splits became cracks, blood spilling forth from them, which itself was almost immediately consumed by the destructive power of the raven-haired one. She wanted to say something. Her instincts screamed at her to defend herself. But she couldn’t. Her spirit, so high mere seconds ago as she thought she’d finally break through Amma’s layers, was utterly broken. And to signify this, something happened to Katja that had not occurred since that fateful day in Bloemfontein.

Katja had kept staring into the eyes of Amma. Eyes filled with anger and hatred. Hatred towards her. Slowly the blonde girl’s vision became blurry. At first she thought it was the pain that caused it. That her brain had finally caught on to what her nerves were screaming at it. It had been so long ago that she had actually forgotten the sensation of what was truly happening.

For the first time in twelve years, tears welled up in the blue eyes of Katja Kruger.

A voice in the back of her mind told her to stand defiant. To not give in. But that voice grew ever softer the more she weathered Amma’s assault. Her heart had been crushed, and so had her will to fight. So she bowed her head in front of the girl to whom she had offered her unconditional love.

You are Am, and you are my friend. Whether you like it or not, that’s how I will always see you.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered meekly before finally stepping aside.

With the cruel red lightning no longer targeting her shoulders, the damage became evident for both to see. The hardened skin had completely disintegrated, exposing the muscle fibers to the open air for a mere second before blood started flowing through the nasty black wounds.

Katja stumbled backwards, disorientated by the whole ordeal. Bumping against her cot, she immediately proceeded to sit down on it. The poor camp bed didn’t stand a chance against the large girl’s increased weight and so it immediately snapped under the pressure. Though the fall was less than two feet, Katja’s impact still quaked the very ground they had been standing on.

But Katja didn’t notice. Head cast down, she ran her fingers deep through her long blonde locks of hair before gripping them tightly. Her flexing muscles showed that she was pulling at the strands of hair with incredible force. She sat like that for a few seconds before finally her muscles relaxed. And with that relaxation came a soft sob.

Letting go of her hair, she lowered her hands on her lap. Delicate streams of crimson ichor trickled down the contours of her powerful arms. But Katja did not heed them at all. It did not matter. None of it mattered.

Finally she looked up at Amma, the one who had hurt her so much.

The one she had wanted to love so much.

Tears flowed down Katja’s cheeks as she beheld the face of the girl who had been in her mind all day. The girl she had enjoyed spending time with. The girl she had wanted to love with all her heart.

The girl who had crushed her soul.

There was only one thought that crossed her mind. One that she spoke out in a soft, quivering voice.

“All I wanted was to be your friend.”

That meek voice imbedded itself betwixt her ribs where that harbinger of destruction reigned, where the ashen crown and the ivory manacles weighted themselves increasingly so. Heavy is the head that wears the crown, heavy is the heart that beholds the scepter, and heavy is the hand that reaps, pillages, and destroys.

Fissures liken to the voids in the sea quaked and peeled wide, pupils dilating to a sliver of recognition that is beholden to what she has done.

Again.

"I --"

But you did.
Just like you did then, just as you do now. Just like before and always will be. You did it. You did it.

You --

Cords of hate snap and pull and drag, posturing over her arms and slithering against the mural of skulls and painted moths, the gaping eyes that turned accusatory, the mouths cleaved wide in pleading wails and droning cries. Exoteric resonation splints through her entire being, whips of silver down the planes of her back and thighs that impaled deep to the cluster of scars that suddenly burn.

Destroy --

Nails slid against her palms in tandem to a tempo of renunciation pounding down to her core, a mutilated affair to the maelstrom that slid against her veins and pores, oozing forth as an obsidian wraith that spiraled over lithesome shoulders.

Everything.

She laughs.

It's a manic squeal that resonates with the encroaching storm, the Howling Cliffs wailing as a demented conductor to the siren heralding the reins of chaos. Who knew the formidable Katja would be so stricken! Who knew she would weep? Who knew that such power sluiced down into the thrumming underbelly of her fury and pain? The advocate for the deranged and the depraved. Those lost within and without. That harbinger that bore the mantle of she, the scion of death, the one they all feared.

Just as they had feared too, the name that she had inked into her neck, the letters unique, almost disfigured. The name that bespoke of irony and the cruelty of fate. I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'msorryI'msorrysorry.

Amma snaps her lips shut, jaw flexed, grinding bone against bone, and says: "I don't need friends, Katja. That is not a part of my role to play here."

Even a few stolen moments in a forest, a sensation she had mourned the loss over, the warmth had faded away to naught. Though she longed for it, Amma knew she did not deserve it. Even if there was nothing that could stop her, even if there wasn't anything that could stand in her way. She was cold, lanced through with darkness, and tunneled into the frigid void.

And it was okay. She told herself, kneeling before Katja, something not quite there in her eyes, something that tilted her head and grinned.

"'Am' is not my name. My name is - " She pauses, words clipped in finality, she stirs, gaze fixated onto the damage she wrought.

And just as soon as she was there, she was then gone. Grabbing her jacket and fitting it over her shoulders, her sneakers next and laced tight. Simplistic and unhurried were her gestures as she fitted her ebony hair into a twist, looping it through her trembling fingers and sparing Katja one final glance. With a flicked wrist she gestured towards her cot, a silent offering as she stood within the entrance of their now-marred tent.

"Sleep. There's a storm coming."

And then she left.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Dundas Island, Pacific Ocean}

Welcome Home #1.106: vore.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): Katja - @Zoldyck.}

Previously: in-between.

She had almost forgotten that she had agreed to share a tent for the night, the day's events replaying over and over, a jumbled mess of words, actions, power coiling betwixt her ears and siring a wealth of sensation that pricked her skin and inflated her ribs with every draw of breath — lost in the swath of fire that still sluiced through her body and writhed against the red that floated endlessly along her limbs. Amma noted the towels outside and allowed the symphony of the cliffs to still her thoughts before she found Katja already there, lost to music just as she had been, and oblivious to everything else around her. She said nothing to announce her arrival, rather she noted the belongings she had dropped off earlier that day -- it seemed so far away now -- and shed the outer layers of her clothing carefully, jacket discarded first, and worked her inked fingers through her mass of hair, disentangling the ebony pieces bit by bit, refusing to the break the silence that cast over them both. Soft hums slid through her throat, a similar melody she had conjured earlier, a haunting lyric heightened by the winds yonder that spiraled over water and rock.

Katja looked like she was in an oasis of peace and quiet. The only noise coming from her were her fingers, softly tapping in sync with the drum against her shins. Focussing on the high energy music that was blasting from her earphones helped her forget - or at least ignore - those tumultuous thoughts which had been brought up earlier by her peers. As the song built towards its crescendo, her head bobbing grew more vigorous, culminating in a satisfied smirk that graced her lips as the final notes of her favorite segment played out. But where there should’ve been silence, there was instead noise. There had been the cliffs in the background of course, only able to pierce through her earpieces on rare occasions. But this noise was different. Softer, yet in tune with the howling winds.

Curiosity of this strange new sound got Katja to finally open her eyes. When she did, she was greeted by the sight of someone she honestly should have expected, and the presence of Amma still surprised her. Taken aback by the sight of the tattooed girl, Katja let out a soft curse in Afrikaans under her breath as she tore out her earphones. “God se Jesus, Am! The least you could’ve done is tap me on the shoulder to let me know you were here!”

With the initial shock quickly wearing off, Katja realized how she must’ve looked, prompting her to release her legs before shifting into a more conventional seating position. Casting her eyes down on the ground, she let out a soft sigh before addressing the other girl. “Afterall, now I missed out on most of your performance.” Katja said with playful disappointment, that familiar grin spreading across her face.

Amma stilled in her ministrations after working a particular knot free from those chaotic strands of hair, her eyes sliding over her shoulder capped in mostly black ink of an abstract series of lines that formed an intricate knot. Those lilting notes tapered off quietly, followed by a wealth of silence as she gazed on, a series of flickering hues shimmering within her stare and a weighted depth igniting the impact to a singular thing: detachment. It sloped along every limb and cumbersome lift as she seemed lost within the toils of her mind, a previous conversation, a previous occurrence, another time looming yonder into the night.

"Performance..." She whispers, "Right." A panning glance down to her palms then, fingers arched and flexed, tremors coursing through flesh and bone, her rings painful against the scars lined through her gestures as she slowly plucked them off - one by one. Coils of red slid and sluggishly warped around her, muted flashes of silver through the strands of hair and lash.

"Performance," Amma mutters once more, a vicious smile reigning over her lax features. “If one could call it that.”

Katja directed her eyes up at the black haired woman as she silently took her rings off. She saw how the tiny red arcs seemed to project from her hand towards the rings, as if her body did not want to part with the metallic bands. But while she saw Amma, she did not truly register her. Not the details that should’ve been obvious to an observer. Instead, as the silence seemed deafening, Katja’s mind was racing. She could've sworn that Amma was ignoring her, if not for the richly decorated girl's soft echoing the last word Katja uttered. To the South African this implied that it wasn't out of malice or even annoyance that the former Foundation scion hadn't addressed her initially. Still hadn't directly addressed her, in fact. No, it seemed worse to her.

It signified indifference.

The tall blonde's smile faltered slightly as that stinging realization hit. Her mind immediately flashed back to the beach the day before and how she thought she had finally made a breakthrough with the French girl. To earlier in the day, when she accepted her offer to share a tent for the night. What had changed since then? Had she messed up somehow, like with Rory earlier?

With doubt creeping into her thoughts, Katja looked up at a pale face and beheld a wicked smirk. Any other time, any other day, she’d chalk that grin up to Amma being Amma. But somehow, it felt different this time.

Katja next spoke uncharacteristically softly to Amma, almost meekly so. Her icy blue eyes staring up in confusion at that flickering gaze. “Did I say something wrong?”

"What?" Amma snaps back suddenly, a vibrating timbre annunciated with her usual measure, eyes slicing through the cape of her lashes bidden down low, a slow, churning coil of scarlet rising up and up, flush and pulsating till it corded tight around her throat.

"Wrong? Hah, is that what it is? Wrong?" A laugh snakes like a whip snapped forth, short and quick. The sort of bite and breadth of sound that hissed over the pout of her lip as she turned, gave her back to her and began digging through her belongings. Black and yellow accents, mocking ochre tones that seemed hideous against the pallor of her skin, her ink-emblazoned canvas of scars entirely too loud and too much. "No, Katja." Amma finally acknowledges her, arms crossed, nails scraping over her ribs as she lifts her blouse up and over, scars aligned on the lower half of her spine rippling silver. Liken to skeletal figments sired over her flesh, digging ivory claws into every link of bone and nerve.

"Though, if you do have something to say, then speak. Everyone else has. What's one more speculated whisper for the night."

Amma fits a loose tee-shirt over her body and finally feels those dregs of exhaustion pulling away at her limbs, peculiar still the low resonation of HZEs compounded through her entire being. Almost as if banked, scalding coals lie just there, wreathed in red and silver. She turns, arms crossed, and settles down onto her cot, gaze cutting and finally landing on Katja completely.

Katja blinked at Amma’s unexpected snap. Her mind instantly came back to focus on the here and now. Her eyes slowly widened as she endured a sudden tirade against her. It wasn’t due to fear, mind you. No, it was a genuine case of disorientation on Katja’s part as to why Amma suddenly exploded at her like this.

And if that wasn’t enough to send Katja’s mind into a state of turmoil, then Amma exposing her back to her most certainly would. The blonde’s eyes slowly gazed up the spine of the other girl. Where she had initially expected to be greeted by more tattoos she was instead met by a plethora of scars and mutilations. So many that she didn’t even begin to count the marks on her back. And even if she wanted to, she didn’t get the chance as Amma put a shirt over her body before – finally – turning to face her, clearly expecting a reply from her.

“Speculated whisper…?” She repeated in an incredulous muttering. The meekness from mere moments ago had completely faded away. Instead, there was legitimate confusion spread on her features, with a slight hint of indignation starting to burn in those icy eyes of hers.

“What are you even talking about, Am?” There was a genuine look of bewilderment on her face as she spoke, her speech regaining more strength with every syllable she uttered. “I have no idea what you are talking about!”

Her nostrils flared as the implications and accusations finally started to register to her. She had genuinely no idea what Amma was going on about, but she could not tolerate being treated like this. Especially not from someone she considered a friend.

“I would never, ever, talk behind your back, Am. The volume of her voice increased as she became more aggravated by the implications laid out against her. “I swear, if I ever had a problem with you, I’d tell it straight to your face.”

“Only cowards whisper about someone when they think they’re outside of earshot.” Katja’s pupils narrowed as she looked directly into Amma’s eyes, a look of ferocity within them that only genuine outrage could produce. With her fists balled on her lap, she exhaled sharply through her nose before she spoke again in a low rumbling growl of barely concealed anger. “Tell me, Amma,” tilting her head slightly, Katja uttered the girl’s full name, something she had not done since after the first week they had met, “do I strike you as a coward?”

“Do you really think so little of me?”

"Does it matter? You're in Blackjack, they're all in Blackjack. Even Firebird whispers about it. Everyone spoke about it like a great sin, even he looked so distraught about it." Black nails spindle webs of hated carmine and silver, coiling betwixt the air rife with her words, her name -- it's not her name though, it never was -- brandished like a weapon to strike against her, poised to maim. Fury and rage simultaneously reach deep, it punctures and bleeds through; it is sopping wet pleas against a frigid wall of obsidian; it is the christening of a long, forsaken entity that dons a crown laden with ash. A burden of the monarch both wretched and cruel.

"Was it so wrong that Lorcán and I went into the forest together, is it so wrong that even for one second, I was a normal woman? I know they want the monster, the beast, this creature."

Amma Cahors pitched open that gate of her soul once more, the quake of her power bidden on high, a wave of tumultuous crimson cresting over each shoulder like a great offender of old. She is a symphony of nihilism that accompanies the pitched cries that roll away from the Howling Cliffs, her waking world defiled by nightmares that galloped through her embodiment, the flames she had entwined with prior caressing over the mane of black hair and down her splayed arms, hands clenched and bleeding slick smiles of malice.

"It's funny, he spoke like we were friends too. But we are not friends."

That admission reigns in the vortex of power slowly, carefully, sluggish gestures carving one hand through her hair to fasten her leagues of control. Amma draws in a shuddering breath, sparks and fissures lancing down her body and up across her expression, puncturing through her skin like rabid vipers.

&& a brief check.

^&

I want to write something with so much dread and angst that I need to seek therapy.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Welcome Home #1.090: in-between.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): gil. - @Roman lorcán. - @Lord Wraith}

Previously: shameless.

Once more, Amma Cahors is confronted with the mundane: it is simplicity compounded by tradition and the methods of heritage she does not know, something bleak and foreign to her all the same. She has always been considered an outsider, the unknown, the enemy - if she were to submit herself to the crude observations of her peers, they'd herald her as the devil and be done with it. The whispered speculations cloaked her in refinement, the tacking stares crowning her the sinner - Amma would be that creature of infamy if they so wished it - the one who bedeviled the man who looked at her even now with those eyes. Oh, but he was hardly innocent, her gaze of intensity foretold such an acclaim: a christening of what she now knew lurked within the depths of those vermillion glares narrowed in her direction. Potential. He was aware of her now, and she of him — the mouth of the wolf and the eyes of the lamb.

She recalls once, many years ago, the tale of a lord's favored creation that plummeted from on high, suspended in woe and hate and misunderstood inclinations. The one that was illuminated as a paragon of blasphemy and a netherworld of darkness and hate and death. Amma was the champion of such a narrative, sympathetic to a forsaken subject that sought only to love and to be loved in return. Rejected by fate and the corruption of destiny that compiled rage and depravity, the dregs of longing spent on desires unknown and unsought. She knows she is selfish, she knows she is vain and stricken with sins of wrath and greed and lust.

She knows and does not care.
So, why did she care that Lorcán looked like a crushed dog?

Eyes averted, head downcast, lashes fanned over those molten depths; everything about him projected a shameful boy. The man who had spirited her away into the forest was traded for this guilt-laden character who hid behind the mortification of his actions. And what, she brooded over, did it matter that he had done what he wanted rather than what was expected? A year was maybe all Amma had to glean from his impression, but she was an intellectual creature, and beneath the exterior of charm and ignorance was something far more compelling yet completely contained.

She wonders if she can get him to break.

When Jim O'Neil makes his appearance, Amma is peculiarly quiet, and observant, hearing all that he isn't saying in securing the remnants of a future for those gathered. She can't help but think, what did he barter with The Foundation, what was the currency demanded and who would be forced to pay that ultimate price? She knows what happens to those who cannot fulfill the demands of Nakamura Yoshi and all those beneath him. The many faces she has seen and all the faces that still canter through her nightmares unbound and unchecked. Her gaze finds another in the distance, familiarity alighted there, but little else. Yes, she thinks, you see it too.

Amma performs, as is often her want when the eyes of her peers and enemies fall upon her at the announcement. When they look and study and try to decipher her exploits all the while she ponders: I am the monster you all want, the answer to all the wrongs and all the things lost, I am the creature you fear and the one you envy - I am me. I am The Foundation. Amma knows, deep within, that freedom was an illusion when graced with power and the most powerful were the ones often wrapped in eternal chains lain thick and cumbersome. When one was bound by such restraint it created something of little qualms and reflection, yes, it bred and sired selfish indulgence and an insatiable want of life. Amma was such a being who wanted to live and did so unforgivingly.

If there had been a line before, a fissure now embedded itself with jagged edges and pockets shadowed with mistrust. While loneliness did not paint her world in a monochromatic blight, Amma still felt the leagues of avoidance from the entirety of Blackjack. It was a profound chasm with such fragile constructs that threaded her to the unknown rejoinder of why she was here, and why them. Was such a placement randomized when compared to other teams, much like the group that joined their ranks for the evening. Oh, if only they knew, she thinks. But they'd never ask, Lorcán came close. But even his inquires had fallen short.

Amma's thoughts crest and fall as she mindlessly cycles through the motions: piling her plate with food and fetching herself a beverage. She hesitates, briefly, for the last time she had joined her teammates around a fire she had spoken the truth and heralded their faults and fear carelessly. What's more, Lorcán refused to look at her again and within the pit of her belly previously toiling with warmth and need, something else began to fester.

Was it misplaced anger? Was it something far seedier and more manipulative? Was it her tumultuous power turning traitor in her blood and causing her eyes to gleam like floes in a frozen sea?

Who knew a simple foray into the forest could sire such disdain?

Amma reclines to her seat nearby, close yet far, refusing to flit to the edges, and dines with a sense of graceful detachment. Her eyes spear through the flame, watching the sparks and ribbons of scarlet through half-lidded measures as she considers the night to come. Sleep seems like a far-fetched concept, even with the use of her powers in such quantities, she does not feel fatigued in the slightest. She was tempted to retreat to the forest where everything had been far simpler, more primal and raw, but so distant and so far from the world, she knew she could destroy that clearing and feel more at peace for it. Chaos could take reign and swallow the world for all that it lacked.

Alas, Amma picks away at her meal, her appetite deserving of something far more filling.

With a scoff that eventually whispered into a sigh, she finished what she could before disposing of the remains where proper and downing the Hyper-Aid nearly in one go, her fingers grazing over the pout of her lip to wipe away any excess. Amma reaches into the pocket of her jacket next to pluck the clove smokes tucked away for such an occasion, wrapped in black and vaguely sweet, with an attractive incense that feathers away from her lips with every exhale. She balances one on her lower lip and finds her lighter easily enough, however --

She notices him chatting away, seemingly mollified by the validation of his peers. Amma smooths black tresses behind her pierced ears, raking through the mass, and intercepts Lorcán at that moment. A small breadth of her shoulder against his and a fanning lash that shadows over the frigid glance she spares him. A delicate smirk curls over the fullness of her mouth, parting just so, and she said:

"Do you feel better now?"

She doesn't wait for an answer there, she tells herself she doesn't care.
She tells herself that over and over and walks away.

While the Howling Cliffs serenade her name, and to them she will answer, Amma glances around and pauses, her head canted to one side, and hums thoughtfully away into her throat before approaching Gil next. She thinks they are similar: just flitting shadows in the gloom, there and then not and muttered as once-upon-a-times. He had joined Blackjack the year prior, just as she had, and rarely have they spoken but small exchanges in passing. However, as everyone else was engaged in their conversations, Amma offered little more than a dignified sigh and took the empty seat beside their reigning celebrity who was cloaked as an enigma just as she was. Everyone else could skirt the edges of her impression, sure, it was fine -- didn't mean she always had to either.

"Hey there. Got a light?"

Does anyone have any tips for an aspiring (small group) GM?

I will always preach communication and intention.

You can have the best narrative, the most thought-out cast, the most detailed setting and lore and characters.
It'll fall flat if you don't keep in touch with your players. People like to talk, people want to get to know their GM. If you're not engaged in the telling, then why should they be?

The hardest part of running a game, from my personal experience, is the intent of your setting and the plot. When do you drive it forward and when do you allow player influences? Too often will you intend for a linear story and it becomes lost to sandbox elements; suddenly you're stuck writing the same day and it drags on for far too long and now you ask - what else is there?

Players will be incredibly engaging in the beginning, they'll make the CS, they'll build relationships with other characters, and they'll hype it up endlessly.

Then they disappear. The first month is the most telling of who is in for the long haul and who is just there for the process of creating the character. Often all inspiration and thought goes into the CS and fizzles out too quickly.

Have the objective of your narrative already plotted out -- chapters, episodes, etc. It doesn't have to be written out from beginning to end, but I suggest having little blurbs or concepts written to yourself for reference.

You don't need the fanciest interest check or ooc, but players like looking at aesthetically pleasing things. Details matter.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Welcome Home #1.079: shameless.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): lorcán roth. - @Lord Wraith & rory tyler. - @webboysurf}

Previously: in your heart.

He bid that she go first, and it had taken nearly a full minute to realize exactly why, and within her eyes aglow in spectral remnants of blue, Amma could not deny the telltale flush of her cheeks as she looked down. The parting of her lips, the heat that bloomed in her belly that was not entirely the fault of the flux of power that pricked her skin, the hesitation she felt in leaving Lorcán to his whims.

What would happen if she stayed? What would happen if their powers had merged for just a second longer? What would happen if she had been the creature that once took all and gave everything with breathless sighs and moans and cries of lust and greed?

But --

Amma had risen, so slowly and had left, just like that.

Taking the scenic route back seemed wise.

Her powers had only been intended and meant for one purpose: destruction. The type that rendered reality to ash, the type that had marred her dreams and waking world in tides of crimson and black, tainted was a word that had once been leashed around her throat. Power was a raw, primal force that corded her bones and blood and was illustrated in the whips of red and silver and plumes of obsidian that arose around her, swept through the air, and forced her chest to rise with the taste of death on her tongue. With Lorcán though, it had been different, it had been something powerful but there had been warmth and life that wove through the fringes of her chaos and amplified it to something - well, more. She shuddered at the loss, looked down at her hands, and could see the sluggish crawl of her power that refused to sink beneath her flesh or dissipate. Such was a common thing, as Amma was so deeply entwined with the HZEs within herself and her outer world that it was constantly in a degree of inundation like a rushing river that could not be tamed. Like the ocean that possessed endless depths and endless darkness.

Amma's breath came in a harsh gasp. To contain herself was a struggle, and it reminded her of a time she had been lain to a slab of metal and shot through endlessly with something that turned her power to one of cruelty and damnation, something that had ended --

NO.

Her arms curled around her middle as she shuttered her mind from those memories, the roar and whispers betwixt her ears going silent, for a just moment, as her teeth sliced into the pout of her lip and held. She tasted blood, but within the coppery taste: she also tasted temperance and life and the illusion of peace that held her fast and fastened her to reality.

That euphoric feeling that bloomed from her heart was addicting all in its own and Amma decided then and there that she wanted to feel it again. And again.
But would he want the same?

She remembers around the fire, as she sat across from them, the pretty redhead nestled against his shoulder. The picture of home, of peace, the couple of innocence. The two that framed this illusion of serenity now shot through with a vicious strike of scarlet.

Did she feel bad? No.
However, it did not mean that Lorcán wasn't marked with shame or guilt, but if such had been true, would he have taken her in his arms then and swept them away to a place to call their own?

Amma glanced over her shoulder, some feet away -- but he was already gone.

Her walk back to the field had been a slow meander marked by the strikes of red that fizzled away from her shoulders, time was irrelevant at this moment as others continued to work, seemingly picking up the slack they had left behind. Multiple pairs of eyes flocked to her immediately, distrust simmered there, banked behind distaste and some fringed in hate. Amma held herself high, gaze critical and fanned by her lashes as she dipped her chin, a silent challenge emanating from her posture as she flicked her wrist and allowed the manifest of red to curl within her palm. Some relinquished their glares immediately, others tensed, dropped their work, and faced her completely, but it lasted for only a few seconds as they realized she had returned after a certain Blackjack member.

Everything was slowly returning to normal - if there could ever be such a thing.

Amma released the tension that seized her muscles in a vice and made to return to her work, only for Lorcán and Rory to be surrounded by their own sphere of emotional strain. She caught some of the words exchanged and the efforts made to ease the sting of their sudden departure. Her eyes collided with the blue stare of one Rory Tyler and within those windows often alighted in exuberance, Amma saw the suspicion that manipulated that glare into one of warning. Carefully, she slid her eyes towards Lorcán, and through every plane of muscle, and flesh, she marked him with each sweep of her lashes before she slid that gaze back toward Rory. In much the same flourish, she tacked the steady glow of her regard down his figure and back up, a slow smile slid to punctuate each cheek, spread wide and marking where her teeth had previously bit into her lower lip. Familiar. Possessive.

She said nothing, for no words were needed before Amma made to grab the jacket she left behind and slid it on in deliberate slowness, making little effort to allow them privacy before she hefted a respectful amount of metal bars into her arms and moved some distance away, making sure to grab her own copy of blueprints along the way.

In no time at all, without much thought, she measured only once and sliced through nearly every single one with a drone of power that even scoured the very ground like the claw marks of a beast.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Dundas Island, Pacific Ocean}

Welcome Home #1.076: in your heart.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): @Lord Wraith - Lorcán Roth}

Previously: I Want to Reconcile the Violence

It’s not something she wants to talk about, not while she watches him work with a sort of ease she envies and admires. Amma looks down at her own hands, tracing over scars muddied under lines of black and grey, the most delicate of work she commissioned, to smother those reminders. The harmonizing quality with which he works is something of a marvel all on its own, almost natural with minuscule concentration to harness those HZEs that were constantly abuzz around her, bending to her whims and spewing esoteric whips of power even without her consent.

"Destroy... Right."

Her fingers curl inward, nails scraping, bones cracking with plumes of red billowing forth like a crimson miasma. The air that is rife with manipulated heat beckons to her own, the acceleration of temperature reminiscent of the explosions she is capable of. Amma peels her jacket from her shoulders, finding it suddenly stifling, and carelessly tosses it aside to be retrieved later. She inhaled softly, so it wasn't a nickname, but an appellation befitting to all dames, somehow that made her feel lesser, but the admission was lost amongst the roars abound through her ears as she performed a series of stretches -- almost stalling.

"They're not wrong," Amma begins, slowly, mimicking his preparations and reaching for a piece of metal. "It's all grey, black and white." She measures once, twice, three times before she concentrates on the piece in her hand, laying it flat to caress her palm against the cold surface. "The dressings didn't so much as matter, as much as what was within those sterile halls." Crackling whips of energy spiral down, the HZEs surrounding her gestures alive in licks of scarlet and silver, fissuring into a line that Amma directs with a slight wince over her features.

"Torres values power, individuality, and the willingness to use that power." The metal snaps suddenly at her mention, the blue of her eyes lightened to almost silver, like the frothing waves of the ocean spiraling to and fro as she sets her pieces aside and reaches for another. She checks the plans next and says: "At least to their benefit. And that of the Foundation Force."

"I hated every second." The admission is sudden and illustrated in the vortex of red in her grasp, coiling wisps reaching forward, infecting the ground at their feet until they prod and dig and snap around another piece of metal and shatter it into various pieces intended for their purpose. "And while that may be so, I also know I wouldn't... be what I am now. I guess I owe them that much." The words are harsh and biting, curling around her teeth and lips that drop into a frown.

“Sounds like a total bumm-” Lorcán started, pausing, “No, it actually just sucks. I hate that. I’m sorry.” He muttered, kicking the dirt at his feet while haphazardly tossing his current piece of steel aside.

“You’ve never gotten to just use your powers for fun have you?” He asked, knowing the answer without her answering.

“I wish they weren't here.” The plasma blade surrounding his hand flickered to a blue flame before crackles of lightning were snuffed out by a closed hand.

“Slag.” He snapped, “This Foundation stuff already had me whelmed, but knowing this is the kind of stuff they do.”

He looked around before smiling at Amma.

“First lesson in fun, never be afraid to seize an opportunity for it. They have Hypes who can shape this stuff with their mind. Why don't we blow this off? I’m not getting a degree anyways,”

A piece of cold steel breaks apart in her hand, unbidden sparks flying away from her gestures.
"I'm -" the words fail to fly from her lips, a soft look of confusion crossing over her face. In what situation did one require or desire an apology? Would it prove anything beyond the hopeless situation and circumstance; the very occurrences she had warned them about carelessly and harshly the night before? To speculate the future and then to be proven right still sired breadths of rage through her body which she struggled to dispel even now.

She wasn't the only one affected.

"Fun," Amma tests the word on her tongue. "With, or without a degree. You'd still be stuck here, you know." She saw little point in feigning to his emotional state. "Might as well make it worthwhile, make a point. A mark." Amma shakes out her hands, silver and red sinking beneath her inked flesh and briefly highlighting the coils of snakes along her forearms. "Seize the opportunity. And make them regret it."

"In the end, that degree would've been a piece of paper." She supposed then, that it mattered not if they completed this current task or no. Amma stepped closer then, arms crossed over the other with her nails poised against the crook of either arm.

"Everything hinges on your actions and what you decide to make of them."

In hindsight, later perhaps, Amma will wonder what and why she was receptive to his words, every feature and display of power, every flicker of his molten eyes that she can’t help but capture with the depths of her own. She’ll wonder why she encroached that yawning chasm she kept around herself, why that distance shrunk just so then and there, as if a bridge had been laid to cross the void of her very soul.

“They can try and keep me on this rock.” Lorcán smiled, his hand dipped into his pocket. The warm pulse of Jonas's ‘charm’ vibrated against his palm.

“But I think I’ll find a way to make it out.”

Suddenly Lorcán scooped Amma up in his arms. It was only after he was already holding her that he realized he would never have had the courage to spontaneously do this to Aurora. Focusing on the ambient HZEs around them, Lorcán pushed off the ground, an explosion of flame beneath then, his own shield of energy extending to Amma in his arms as they launched into the air.

Clearing both the construction site and Blackjack’s campsite, they begin their descent on a pillow of hot air before Lorcán’s feet touched firm ground again. With a smile, he took a few running steps forward before jumping again with a rocket thrust of boost.

Three more jumps and Lorcán had successfully cleared the plateau and carried his new friend to the forest that separated the plateau from the campus. Setting Amma back on her own feet, Lorcán motioned for her to follow him as he entered the thick bush.

“So what have you always wanted to try, brah? You want to like cut down a tree? We can basically do whatever we want in here. No one can see us from the plateau or the campus. Couple of years ago, bunch of groms totally got busted in here for a dueling club.” He shook his head while continuing to speak.

“Kooks were just blasting each other till they were wiped out and pulled under.”

He was not what she expected and with her arms cinched around his neck as they suddenly were, Amma could only marvel at the rush of wind and flame that propelled them up - and up. Being at such a height elicited a gasp that rushed away from her as Lorcán ran on, the strength of his body cradled around her figure not going unnoticed and neither was the soft breath of a laugh that came after their second leap. It was a sort of rush that simmered away betwixt her ribs as she found her footing thereafter, her exhale swift and near breathless as she followed through the browse.

"More secrets," she mused aloud, taking the initiative to explore their surroundings, separated from the world, a hidden expanse of endless forest without the eyes of those who still saw fit to chain her. Contain and use. Where none can see. She tilts her head slowly, a grin curving against her lips at his words, she glances back towards Lorcán and keeps her stare pinned there.

That well and void pitched within, a baying call that rose from the depths of her power and sounded out in a low drone that vibrated the very ground beneath her feet. Amma slowly stretched out every piece of herself, as if her heart suddenly yawned open along with the fractured remains of her soul that glimmered black and red and smudged grey at the edges. Allowing that eternal containment and barrier to fall away, for just a moment, as the HZEs within a thirty-three-foot radius came alive in whipping lines of scarlet and silver, almost serpentine in grace until they dug themselves into the earth, and burrowed true and deep.

What did she always want to try?

Amma felt the quakes from below, fighting to control the hissing chords of her power demanding subjugation, and slowly expanded those throes of dominance until threads of crimson lit up every follicle of grass and dirt and rock - until a tree only a few feet away from him suddenly too was lit from within. It took only a thought, maybe a breath before it slowly began to fall apart, bark and leaves and branches and all. Fissures through the earth spread out towards where Lorcán stood as well, a soft challenge in the form of a singular strike.

“Did you bite your thumb at me?” Lorcán replied amused by Amma’s choice. He was anticipating perhaps carving a tree stump into a bear or the Venus de Milo.

“Sure, brah, we can throw down.” He replied before cracking his neck while bouncing on the balls of his feet.

“Just give me a second.”

Taking his shirt off, Lorcán folded it and placed it aside and quickly slid out of his shoes before spinning around on his heel. A boosted jump led to a kick that launched a small ball of fire from his foot towards Amma’s direction.

She waited until the last moment, the sphere of fire coming closer and closer until Amma simply stepped aside, allowing chunks of wood she had severed to receive the blow instead. She cannot help the laughter then, something true that punches straight from her belly, something she curls in on and attempts to smother beneath her fingers. Her eyes dance at the revealed expanse of bronze skin, tracing over every displayed inch of muscle.

"Couldn't help myself. Decent reflexes, though." She confesses and drops to her knees on the grass, concentration furrowing her brow as the tendrils of her power spiral up and out, until she curls her palms around them, cradling the energy within her grasp with a sort of reverence. It hums and spits like a rabid sort of creature barely contained by her touch.

"Here, try and aim your heat at it. I want to see something." Something she felt last night in the core of a flickering flame. "Unless you'd rather go blow for blow, to which I'll say - you will lose." The sphere struggling against her fingers seemed to wail in response, a haunting note of the arcane that was heralded as something otherworldly.

Lorcán hesitated for a moment, he had nothing to gain by going toe to toe with Amma and honestly sparring was probably the furthest from his personal idea of fun.

Matching her posture, Lorcán knelt in front of her and reached out. Igniting the air within the sphere as he felt the feedback of Amma’s own abilities begin to crawl over his skin, the vibrations reaching through and traveling his body. Silver and red alternatively glowed orange and blue as their abilities meshed.

It was an electric feeling. The power of two Hyperhumans coursing like an active current through his body was elevating. They of course had taught students in the wake of Hyperion how to bend HZEs against one another, essentially blocking the abilities of another. But they had also taught the students that when two or more Hyperhumans were in sync they could lend or boost the abilities of another.

This was still different.

Lorcán closed his eyes, reaching out through his abilities, he could feel Amma. He could feel all of her and he was sure she could feel him. Tendrils weaved their way through him, weaving along the nervous system and neural pathways. Exploding fireworks of endorphins and serotonin.

“There it is,” she breathed, almost as an afterthought, eyes suspended in a crystalline glow that speared through her lashes even as her eyes drifted shut. "I thought," Amma continued, her voice dropping to a near whisper as pure sensation ignited through the entirety of her being. Through skin and pores and every follicle of nerve, down to the very marrow of her bones that ticks up every notch of her spine. Within and without. "I felt something in the fire last night, a small piece of flame; a small little flicker even after I left."

She felt the sphere within her grasp beginning to pulsate in tandem with her beating heart, the sphere of influence that surrounded them also becoming lost within a quivering tempo. Amma felt Lorcán; felt every facet of his power, felt the coiling ambiance of HZEs that flocked to them and immediately heated in response. She felt her power curl and sweep through his own, conjoining as a singular construct of pure and raw origin that immediately swelled and grew and grew until she could barely contain it. It was a revelation that Amma discovered in the merging of their differing strengths: it was a sort of intimacy that she had never known. Not like this. Never like this.

And within that divulgence, she couldn't help the abundance of 'Whys' that speared through her lobe then and there. For everyone else was scared of her, some terrified, some wary, and some that barely acknowledged her. She was the unknown. She was the void. So why did he not balk or run or scorn her? Why? Was it displaced chivalry; or was he the knight and she the dragon? Amma wants to ask, but a small part of her wonders if she is ready for those answers.

Why did she even care?

With a gasp, their power pistoled from the cage of her palms and twined up both of her arms, eliciting a sort of euphoric expression that curled her lips and fluttered her lashes.

And just as quickly as the sensation came, it suddenly went, and it dissipated in glittering showers of red and silver and black sparks as grass and rock too disintegrated as if it had never been. The forest was a secret, a place he had brought her for fun, but she knew Lorcán was a man many were fond of, people flocked to him easily as many flocked to fires for warmth and comfort. The world outside, in this moment, is only so far away.

"I imagine," she almost struggled to say - breathless. "They will come looking for you soon."

“Uh yeah, probably.” Lorcán managed to reply between catching his breath. His entire being was numb, like his essence had been drained and returned.

“Brah, I’m just going to need a sec here.” He added after looking down and realizing that the athletic shorts perhaps could benefit from a compression layer under the outer fabric.

“You’re like free to go on ahead, I’ll catch up.”

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: Southern Plateau - Pacific Royal Campus}

Welcome Home #1.067: purgatory.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): &&}

Previously: immortal.

She does the only thing she knows how to do when everything just becomes too much. When the voices in her head ping and scream and wail and the cries of a banshee shatter betwixt her waking world -- within and without. When everything crests over the veneer she has locked in place [the lie, the mask, the glare and bite and blood of anger washing over her teeth] the fissures of a girl lost and toiling beneath the exteriors of a vain creature that lashes out at the sky. The world. Everything.

She destroys.

From stadium to dorm room, she walks a path alone and forsaken, marked and marred by coils of red and silver and plumes of black that rots the air feathered through her lungs. It is woven deep into blood and bone and disfigures her pale skin in lines of black and gray. The scars laden beneath every flightless bird and coiled snake, those bright and striking moths, the abstract profiles and the skulls gaped wide in silent screams. Each a tale. Each a story. Each a reminder and each a sin.

And when she finally makes it back there to her room, it all stops.

Within her grasp, the box is nothing but ashes and within it --

-- her old uniform.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

Everything is new to her: these trials and ceremonies, and despite the introduction of the Alexandria Foundation onto their proverbial doorstep, this united front was nothing if not steeped into tradition. It's admirable, she supposes, or perhaps sheer stubbornness which drapes the entirety of the island in sheer abundance. Amma plucks at all the black and Gulo yellow on her person; her hooded jacket gaped at her front where her inked and exposed midriff flexes with every shuddering breath; shorts clinging to her inked thighs and sneaker clad feet in black kicking up rock and dirt when she exits the Minotaur carrier. In her detached musings, she claws through her ebony hair, half up and half down whilst wisps and curls frame her critical gaze distant and lost. Amma is silent, as is her eternal renown, for there are little words to be spared and said and what mindless conversation was there that she could offer was bartered for contemplation. In hindsight, she knew the moment she left those pyramids within the sea, she would never be truly bereft of those chains and whips and the muzzling of her powers to condition her self to be all withstanding to hardship.

She knew in her nightmares, just as she knew in her dreams, of every damning lance and every peeling of flesh and manipulation of bone. Every stitch and every time someone held her close and held her down. From the screaming faces lost in shadow as she lost control -- to the hand offered to a little girl barely thirteen.

"Hey, what's your name?"

Her eyes drift, half-lidded, melancholic delicacy laced across her expression before she slips her scarred fingers into the pockets of her jacket, back heavy with supplies and aimlessly chooses a tent for her belongings. This one situated closest to the cliffs, something of a preference drawing her near. The plateau, if anything, is a secondary favorite next to the beach where she often wonders. Those sloped edges bleached by sun and salt, craggy faces eroded by time and pocketed in shadowy recesses where flora and fauna remain. Amma is tempted to the edge, the roar of the surf that crests over the spires of rock below in tandem with the roaring lodged into the deepest edges of her mind.

Somewhere at her back, others whisper of potential bunkmates and she glances to the cot lain there, cares little for it [she doesn't sleep much these days] and shrugs around the unlikelihood that any member of Blackjack is going to inquire about sharing quarters with her. Katja, maybe, but if the utterances of co-ed arrangements was an actual chance rather than speculation. Well, maybe not.

She had proven her unwillingness to befriend anyone aside of knowing their names, their powers -- their dreams, she remembers -- and has left it as such. Never mind Katja's many attempts to coax Amma from yonder the chasm she has built around herself.

She is nothing but the void and she will keep it that way.

Amma vaguely catches the information provided about their directive and aimlessly changes direction to the field. The idea of building anything is a foreign concept, the idea of being trusted with such a task even more so. But, it is a part she is to play in the inevitability of failure as they cling to their traditions, for Amma cannot forget or forgive the gift she has been given by those threatening to unravel this heritage at its core. She thinks, was it irony that saw the the material indestructible? For she had sunk nail deep and true and could not pry apart the chain and latex and lace, even the delicate gossamer had mocked her with the fragility of its make.

So, Torres wanted Tiamat.
And Amma was going to give it to her.

Her arched brows plummet low in thought, lashes framed around an ethereal glow that emphasizes the planes of her countenance drawn into a frown. They made and conditioned that beast within, all the destruction she bore and wrought, all of the endless nights gushing in red. The welcoming bliss of nihilism every time she sunk into that epitaph that sired a creature of cruelty.

She wasn't always this way. But how does one even cleanse that much taint and ruin? Where does one even begin. Where is the line drawn in the sand of both human and monster, the concept of the soul and heart, she thinks, but did she even have one anymore?

Amma Cahors closes her eyes. Soft and swift, she bows her head and palms away the ache settled at her crown, nails raked against her temples to dispel the doubt she has nurtured and when she opens her eyes once more, a beauty of deadly intent - purpose - glares back.

She is at the field soon enough and approaches perhaps the first person that had genuinely welcomed her to the island. The first name she had learned and the one who saw her as a student rather than what she was: Thaddeus. In that, he is perhaps the only one Amma has ever acknowledged with a slight cant of her head, one that remains tilted just so with her eyes panning down the gargantuan man beside him. Somewhere in those depths of blue, femme appreciation flickers.

"Tad, and..." Amma pauses, deliberate, an inquiry hovering there. "Not sure what I'm doing here, honestly." With a breath she crosses both arms, weight rolled to one heel whilst she sighs.

"But, none the less. I am. So - instructions?"

"Oh Amma, right," Tad replied rubbing the back of his head. "I forgot you joined after the Trials last year. This is a bit of an annual tradition to welcome students back and induct the new students in a House. Teams like Blackjack compete for the best time in the Trial and then individual performance and contributions are used to send students invitations to at least two school houses." He explained before gesturing to the looming man beside him.

"This is Robert Arkwright, he's this year's coordinator and architect for the Trial."

"Au chanté, mademoiselle." Robert replied bowing his head towards Amma.

"C'est pour moi un plaisir, Robert." A grin blooms across her cheeks, teeth and all, paired with a subtle bite colored in mild surprise.

"Robert has asked me to pair you with Rory and Lorcán. You three will be helping with the structural component of the build."

At the mention of both Rory and Lorcán though, her smile falters, softly edging away into a peculiar grimace.
"I... see." A panning look over her shoulder, she sees the former and not the latter and it is that realization that makes Amma suddenly hyperaware of her surroundings. Scarlet flame and crimson power coil and collide within her mind, those molten eyes haunting and memorizing in their wake.

"What does that mean... structural." She mutters, witnessing the incident of feminine energies colliding in the distance, the not so subtle displays projected by Mei and Haven; Rory as the epicenter of their combating desires. It would appear that the theory of competition had begun here already and she can't help but reflect on contests she had competed in. If those moments of contention could even be called such a thing. Amma would refer to them as executions for all the madness that compounded them.

Best to leave that alone, she thinks and sways back on her heels.

"All right then. Thank you, Tad." Amma winds a lock of black around her finger, and says: "Au revoir, Robert." Her goodbye purred around his name before bell-like laughter drips off her tongue, her figure waltzing away further into the field.

Commencement: A Foundation Institute RP

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Location: The Chimera's Lair - Pacific Royal Campus}

Welcome Home #1.050: immortal.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

_{Interaction(s): &&}

Previously: descension & malcontent.

In the dark hours meant entirely for lovers, she drifts atop slick rocks and deadened braids of reeds. Delicate perches of her feet betwixt one step and the next, silver cloaking her like lamplight that defined every feature of pale skin and blue eyes aglow in direct challenge of the stars above.

Cliff faces loom ahead in the night, sighing with the waves against their rigid peaks and caverns, the sapphire depths below churning with froth. She stands as a specter until the dawn approaches, the world awash in grays and pale blues and when a certain figure dots the horizon, only then does she leave her vigil. The ground where she had been is blackened, rotted, but beneath the coating of ash a flower possessed of a fiery red core stands tall.

^{_____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________}

Amma didn't have a roommate, and such was a luxury as she dressed languidly and donned the fitted blazer she paid little heed to. A skirt settled over her hips, belt secured and black stockings rolled carefully up to her thighs before she balances on the balls of her feet to slide into the loafers she opted for this day. The heels beside them beckon, but she recalls being scolded more often not and combs arachnid gestures through her tumble of ebony hair before exiting the dorms.

At the mess hall she is quiet. The night prior has her flitting to the outer edges of the team, the tense atmosphere is subtle, but later broken by a performance of antics. Amma looks on carefully and doesn't shy away from the moment Lorcán adjusts himself into something proper. Heat flushes her neck, but she simply pans her gaze south and then away with arms crossed delicately. Brazen, sure, but just a smidge tactless.

Still, a small smile forms there.

The proceedings into the stadium is met with the same silence where she finds her seat somewhere on the edges of Blackjack and it is there a coiled ball of spires shoots into her spine. Blue eyes snap to the stage, and there they stay - unwavering .

Something isn't right.

The speeches are pretty, the anthem is darling, and still her eyes never leave the dais. So, when the announcement sounds and a familiar pair is introduced, Amma's entire being stills. What follows thereafter is a haze, a film, muffled voices plucking away at her ears that she cannot hear. In the distance she looks to Winter Caspian -- what was the fucking point? Why take her, why fight so hard to transfer her here. If only to allow them beyond these walls she once thought, maybe, could be something more.

Amma's rage is not personified in explosive breadths of power, nor is it explicit words coated in hate and confusion; it is not contained emotions that wallow in the pit of imprisonment or the despair of the unobtainable.

Her rage is a silent quake: a shaky breath before the storm whilst the world suddenly stills, appetence rots away at her core and with it the void arises liken to a beast slumbering away in the depths of the deepest recesses of forgotten shadow and legend. Her poise remains refined and elegant, but within the bank of her darkening eyes rimmed in crystalline hues, Amma is positively incensed. Beneath the perch of her body, the ground shudders in fearful reproach and the chair is lost in hopeless bedlam as red and silver fissure through the metal and groan in protest. A pitched drone sunders the silence, hidden beneath the outrage and declarations to a future suddenly forsaken.

Amma stands with a flourish, and the world takes a breath.
Holds it.

And she laughs.

It punches through her throat in a sudden gasp of air and it's all Amma can do to contain the mania abound through her blood and bones, crackling whips of red and black snaked down her thighs and imbedded deep through the sphere of destructive power that answers to her roar.

She had been traded from one prison to another, only this one was gilded in bars of tarnished gold.

Her laughter suddenly ceases, abruptly shortened by the puncture of breath whistling through her lungs as the world trembled at her feet. Control, she commanded. Control. It was a singular mantra betwixt both heart and mind, forming a construct of stability as vicious lines of scarlet snapped away from her palms and corded themselves tight around her throat whilst she whispered a sullen lullaby. Amma regains her composure swiftly and much like a queen is to her court, she primly folded her fingers at her front and regarded Torres from afar with a cool detachment that betrayed the symphony of nihilism that still sang through her body.

It is no surprise then that she approaches her, assistant at her flank as they descend from the stage, eyes of both wariness and superiority. Amma ascends to the baited challenge there, meets them halfway by closing that distance with an empowering swagger.

"We don't have long, seems ten minutes is all we can spare." Almassian informs, halting just before her, whilst Torres performs a show of taking one more step forward.

"I won't go back." It is not a denial or a plea; it is Truth, it is her Will and it is Conviction.

"It seems your world really did get smaller if you think this is all about you, Tiamat." She does not bother to correct her, for this was a game: a chess board of muddied ebony and ivory pieces, only she knows not what side she stands upon or what pieces she is to play. It is with a restrained laugh that Amma says:

"A whole year goes by, and not a word. Why now?"

"That is not your concern, interesting uniform, by the way. I recall you much better suited to chains and void-black. The yellow does nothing for your complexion my dear." Amma clutches at the wolverine crested over her breast, the muted ochre against her inked and embellished skin suddenly stark in contrast. She doesn't realize she opted for the tailored alteration that advertised her assorted house and team, the spade woven there on her sleeve suddenly weighing akin to a stone.

"You really thought you could do it, didn't you? Think you could be a normal girl, in this school, attend classes, graduate. The Foundation Force is still cross, you know. Such potential - wasted. And for what? All purpose of individuality lost, traded for a limitation on your very nature." A harsh whisper, almost in sheer disbelief.

"My nature -"

"Is what we made it. Do not forget, Tiamat, that you are who you are, because we made it so." Torres beckons yonder, to where a warped chair is left in display. Almassian silently then procures a colorless box with her name scrawled atop in penmanship eerily familiar. The name branded to her throat suddenly flares alive in memoriam. "Consider this a reminder, or a present rather. Welcome home, Ammar-"

"Don't." It is the closest she has ever come to supplication, a crack in her usual cadence. Fists clenched at her sides where ruby smiles bloomed into her palms, she hardly notices the pain. All she can see is the void where a child weeps to the shadows - maman where did you go?

"Take it. Remember, for chaos is not done with the likes of you, and neither are we."

Her nails prick against the ivory in her hands, she knows what lays within, her name emblazoned there, her name --

Amma Cahors can feel their eyes on her, the rest of Blackjack, awaiting her next move, wary for the coils of her manifest to spiral to and fro. She wants to lay waste to the land.

She knows she can't.
But fuck, did she want to.

Instead she lifts her chin, glare defiant and framed by lashes spiked by unshed emotions she is too proud to spare. She is the solitary creature suspended between friend and foe. Between the known and the unknown. Amma pirouettes on her heel, exciting the stadium with all the command of a goddess compounded by the wealth power oozing off of her in tangible waves.

It continues all the way to her dorm; she passes her teammates unseeing and unhearing, passing by them all from those still seated to those that had ran away to escape outdoors.

There, a beast suddenly becomes a little girl, her scars emblazoned all anew.
She had been right all along.
For once, she wishes that she wasn't.

Checkmate.