Silver Carrot

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Natalie Ellis

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"Keaton hasn't texted you back?" Nat replied to Eli, puzzled. "Do you have her number? I got a message from here just before I met you. I know where we've to meet. It's-"

Right then, Eli's phone pinged again, and Nat stopped talking while she checked it. And Cara confirmed it. Not that Natalie felt Eli would have needed confirmation after what happened at the picnic.

She looked over to Nic, and...was he crying? She listened to Eli indirectly send him on his way, and felt a little bit bad, but the truth was, she wasn't sure he should be there either. He still felt like a stranger to the group. The rest of them had been through some serious stuff together. Sure, Nice was there for the last two, but it wasn't the same. This is the first time she'd ever talked to him. Did he really belong in this group meetup? Nat got the impression that important things were going to be said, if Lynn of all people organised this.

Natalie then heard the sound of somebody approaching from behind them and turned on her heel very quickly. She didn't have her guard up or any hint of aggression but she clearly moved in order to face the approaching person as fast as possible. The moment she saw it was Archie, her last breath got stuck in her chest and her cheeks flushed slightly yet noticeably. She thought she had the rest of the journey to the meeting place to prepare mentally for this, but guess she was being thrown into the deep end. She still couldn't forget their last conversation, that had to get cut short doe to them both having to go to the Ceremony. So much more needed to be said there. The way it was left made her heart hurt every time she thought about it. The rejection. The knowledge that her actions had hurt Archie's feelings and hadn't even helped her out anyway. She had nothing to show for shutting herself out. She should have just leaned on her friends and even if she'd have been a gibbering wreck, that would have still been better than shutting them all out. But it was too late to change the past. She had to fix their relationship in the present.

She eventually caught her breath and smiled shyly. "He-hey, Archie."

Nat heard the pop shortly after Archie say Nic, and saw him grow considerably in height. He stopped, though. And his monitor hadn't gone off. So Natalie figured it was fine. The Beast had stirred, but wasn't awake yet. Even so, her smile had vanished and she was watching him very carefully now.

"Yeah, we're heading to the meet point. The picnic spot," she finished for Archie. She looked over at Eli out of curiosity, and saw she was very obviously petrified right now. Nat gave her a very brief reassuring smile, and a gesture of her hand as if to say 'it's okay. I got this'.

Lynn then arrived, and asked the group where Keaton was. Amelia was also there, but hadn't reached the group yet. Natalie was shocked at the state Lynn was in. What happened to her eye? Was it injured? Scarred? Or was it gone? Natalie had known that several of them had been injured, but that knowledge hadn't sunken in until seeing Lynn's bandages right now. She composed herself, and pointed in the direction they were walking. "You know, Keaton might be waiting for us at the meet point as we speak."

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Natalie Ellis

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Natalie picked up on Nic's nervous energy immediately. What he was saying didn't quite make sense. He clearly didn't know or recognize her but he'd told her how wonderful it was to see her. She had spent most of her time on this station being similarly as guarded and nervous, and had made these kinds of errors, so she knew that it was just the anxiety-driven desire to speak regardless of what words were being spoken.

"I'm not really sure what happened in the forest either. I've...repressed that memory and don't really want to bring it back right now, if that's okay."

She'd then watch him, and more specifically his face and eyes, over the next minute. Something was going on in his head. He was being bothered by it, and he was putting his finger to his ear. A tic? He was ignoring the both of them now. Whatever was happening in his head was taking up his attention. Nat met Eli's eyes, and looked concerned. The corner of Nat's mouth pulled taut and she wondered if they should really just wait for him to come back to them. But before she could make any moves on this, he snapped out of his stupor and made up an excuse, which Nat made no reply to but it was clear in her face she wasn't buying.

The moment he mentioned the loading bay, she saw his eyes dart to her a lot, and even settle on her once or twice. She was now convinced that he did in fact recognize her from the footage. He might even be scared of her, but he was so nervous anyway right now that she couldn't tell. What she could tell was there was a wariness with the way he looked at her, and even though the judgement of strangers no longer bothered Nat, this was somebody Eli knew. He wasn't a stranger. His fear did bother her a little bit.

She listened to his story. She vaguely remembered being knocked down by an explosion whilst trying to keep Archie away from Eli. Hearing that he was responsible, that he had tried to kill Archie, made her whole body tense. She understood his reasoning, and she'd have done the same with his lack of knowledge, but the thought that he could have hurt Archie could not escape her mind. She clenched her fists and looked away as she listened to the rest of his recapping of events. At least he was sorry and had regret. She shouldn't be angry at him for making a mistake. She knew this. But the anger wasn't going away.

Luckily for all parties involved, Eli mentioning she wasn't doing great, out loud, disarmed Natalie, and she felt her anger leave as it was replaced with concern for Eli. She put her hand on Eli's shoulder and smiled encouragingly at her.

"Well, that's what you have your friends for, and this meeting will probably help with that. Trust me, I know from experience that right now you need your friends the most. I shut you all out and I still regret it."

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Natalie Ellis

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After helping the others get to the hospital, Natalie, as a key witness, spent the next several hours talking to Gennedy, filling him in on her version of events. After that, she went straight to her dorms and went to bed. For the first noght in a very, very long time, she got a good night-s sleep. She never once woke up screaming in a cold sweat, with her knuckles bleeding. She woke up at 10am, and she felt calm. Better than she had felt in a long time. And she knew why. She'd been pushed over the event horizon. So long of being scared of herself and paranoid and anxious until she could take anymore, and then...pop. It was all gone. Even when she thought about what she'd done. The people she killed. Not in self defense. She vividly remembered hunting down the gunmen, just like she hunted down the scientists of Project Lion. And now, in neither cases did she feel guilt, or shame, or fear of herself. She knew she was a monster, but now she'd let go of her fears and was....happy that she'd killed those people. This is what Project Lion made her when they broke her mind with two years of torture. She didn't need to be afraid of who she was. Didn't need to be afraid of losing control. Was she always in control now? Or never in control? It didn't matter. She now had mental consistency and didn't think she'd be flipping from one to the other extreme again.

Everything was going well until the broadcasts. They included footage of her callously hunting down and killing the gunmen in what clearly wasn't self-defense. It looked more like vengeance. And Natalie felt nothing watching it. And that worried her. She should watch this and feel sick. Just a little bit. But she didn't. And that wasn't normal.

And that's when she started to notice.

For the rest of the day, she was given a wide berth. Staff members watched her carefully. Other kids her age tried not to be within fifteen feet of her if they could help it. Everyone who saw the broadcast knew that there were people still in the Promise's prisons who weren't crazy or murderous enough to be able to do what Natalie did, the way she had done it. Natalie wondered if they all thought she should be in the prison too. Maybe she should be.

By the second day, the distance and the stares, and the mutterings were starting to grind on her. She started to get increasingly irritable and at several points snapped at people demanding that if they had something to say, say it. They would always flee. She sighed. Later that day her therapist had a guard standing behind her and explained that he was a nullified. Natalie didn't listen to another word, and walked out of the room.

The next days followed a similar pattern. By the fourth day Natalie was starting to get used to it. She still went out every day, went shopping, started putting more care into her appearance, dressing better. Screw trying to fit in. She was free of fear for the first time she could remember. She was determined to have fun to spite this atmosphere.

Then, Natalie got a text out of the blue one day;

Archie Anderson: Hey, Lynn and I need everyone to meet up. Where Keaton said they should spill flour on the floor. Ask Keaton if you don't know where that is and don't see any of us on the way.

She grinned. Finally, her friends were meeting up! She was looking forward to having a social life again. To take advantage of her newfound mental peace to truly enjoy other's company. And she did want to see Archie again, but she wouldn't know how to broach the subject of how badly she'd fucked up their relationship before it started. Meeting in a group was preferable to her right now. But what did this Keaton clue mean? Natalie then texted Keaton.

Natalie: Hey, so I just read Archie's text. Any idea where he's talking about?

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Natalie Ellis

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Natalie, as she was pulled along, and fell onto her back, realized she hadn't thought this through very well. She had just been trying to stop Archie from hurting anyone. Now, she was in danger. She felt the weight of the foot and the 9 foot lizard attached to it press against her chest and felt the wind escape her lungs. She gasped, and grabbed the foot just as she felt her ribcage almost creaking. Luckily, she was strong enough to push against the foot and not just relieve the pressure, but slowly raise the foot.That's when she felt it start to move away voluntarily, and she let go, before rolling away and getting back to her feet. She didn't know whether any of what just happened was deliberate or accidental, so she watched Archie cautiously from where she was standing. She looked over to Eli and Keaton. They both seemed to be unharmed. She looked back to Archie, slightly scared. In full control of her mind this time, she understood the threat he posed.

"Archie, can you hear me? It's Natalie. I'm here. Because we made a promise to each other to never let each other go too far. Remember that?"

♦ A New Era ♦ - A My Hero Academia RP

Kasuke Mina

Location
Training Ground Alpha
@Melpaws@pkken@Conscripts@Ryonara@Lucius Cypher

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Mina listened to Ruby's plan, and nodded. It made sense. Together, they'd be able to take out a single prefect at a time, or at least incapacitate them. She looked to hear teammates for this exercise. Besides Ruby there was also Roy, Acion, Yukari, and Mamoru. Besides Roy, Mina didn't know all too much about them. She knew the basics of their quirks and that was it. Acion had a Hero family. Mamoru had a little bit of a reputation as a kamikaze. Yukari had been part of the group that got attacked by villains.

Once Ruby's speech was finished, Mina stood beside her. "Listen," she said, "We should stick together. If I can blind them, that should give you a window to get close and freeze them."

Now all that was left was to wait for the Prefects to start.

---

Maeda Hitomi

Location
Training Ground Alpha
@Norschtalen@pkken@Riegal@liferusher@Lucius Cypher

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Hitomi listened to Dulga's plan. So, she'd be one of the few who'd be tasked with finishing the prefects off, and restraining them. This did seem well suited to the sheep girl's talents, and she now had complete confidence that she'd been cast in the right role. This would give her an opportunity to test out her wool bombs in a practical environment. She looked at the teammates who would be joining her, as three of them would be splitting off to block the exits and box the prefects in. So Hitomi would be fighting with Dulga and Tomoe. Of course she knew her roommate and best friend quite well, but Dulga, she'd never really spoken to before. She seemed intense and scary. Perhaps she'd get to know the tall six-armed girl better during, or after this exercise. No. Right now she had to focus. And steel herself for an exercise against mutants, when not even half a year ago she was a Support student.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Natalie Ellis

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Natalie turned and watched when she heard the noises. It was just like the first day. Archie was transforming. Natalie grinned, and turned back to the gunman who was shooting at her. Rushing him and then throwing her bullet-ridden shield at him. By the time he had freed himself from his dead fellow's embrace, Natalie was upon him. With one hand, she grabbed his gun and wrenched it from his grasp. With her other, she grabbed his face. And squeezed.

Drenched head to toe in blood, none her own, Natalie was ready to kill more. She looked around the room for any gunmen still standing. She looked just in time to see the bomb go off in Archie's face. There were few, if any, gunmen still standing that she could see, so she wasn't directly in danger of being shot right at this moment. Her adrenaline was receding, and with it, her bloodlust. Now all she could think of was that Archie was hurt. She started to run to him.

She briefly slowed, and felt a wave of relief come over her, when the lizard got up, but that turned to panic when she saw him start to advance on Eli and Keaton. Natalie started sprinting as fast as she could. Worse than letting Archie die, she knew, was letting him succumb to the beast. They'd made promises to protect each other. He'd snapped her out of her frenzy the day of the jailbreak. It was time to return the favor.

Any other attempts to slow Archie down, Natalie didn't notice, but she eventually reached the giant lizard, and took a hold of it's leg, pulling it backwards and away from Eli. She gritted her teeth and resisted any attempt by Archie to continue in the direction it had been going.

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Y2K

Jamin Redman

Mentions: @Duoya

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Jamin didn't seem fazed by Rich's long pauses. He was at a loss for any way to liven this trip up either. And he was a patient guy. He just stood there and looked around as Rich unfroze herself. Then she laughed it off with such an air of misplaced confidence that Jamin found it kind of endearing. Still, he felt like he was humoring her more than anything else. Not that he didn't want to hang out. She did have a point. Anything was better than looking at museum pieces all day.

The two suggestions she gave were either pranking people, which ain't cool in Jamin's book. He preferred to let people be. He'd make fun, talk smack sometimes. But that was different. The wrong prank at the wrong time could start a fight. The most making fun would do it make the target surly.

"I'd rather get something to eat, if that's all the same to you. Anyone else coming, or what?"

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Natalie Ellis

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The doors opened, and the gunfire immediately started. Natalie wasn't scared at first. At first this didn't seem real. Then though around her started to get hit and her body took over. She got to the floor and looked towards Archie. He'd be hit. He was bleeding. Natalie's eyes went wide, her hands formed tense fists and without realizing it, she was shaking. She looked back at the pod. Gunmen were streaming from it and the crowds were being mowed down. It was a massacre.

Natalie's biggest fear was always herself. She was a monster. There was a side to her that killed people and it terrified her. She wanted rid of it, to live a normal life. Even after what Project Lion did to her, she couldn't believe she'd killed them. She'd created this 'other Natalie' to scapegoat. But the truth was that when she was scared, she wasn't changing into a new person. Being perfectly honest, it was more like every other time, she was trying to become a new person. Trying to find fragments of a personality from her old life and assemble them into a new life. And she had some success in that. But after two years of being experimented on, enduring that kind of pain and suffering, insanity barely described it. She was a shell. Pain, fear and hatred were all she knew. But now she wasn't scared of herself. Archie had been hurt. People were dying. All of her, even the parts that wanted a normal life, wished death upon everyone was attacking her. No excuses. She wanted them to die, and she was going to kill them.

Almost immediately, she felt like a great tension had been lifted from her head, and her body stopped shaking. First, she had to not die, and they had very heavy duty guns. The type that might even go through her skull at close range. She had to be careful, and she had to find cover. She looked for the largest gunman she could find that didn't require running past all the others. She saw one, quite close by. He was much larger than her. Without taking the risk of waiting for any longer, she made a beeline for him, staying low and zig-zagging her movements to make herself harder to shoot. As soon as she reached him, she grabbed his gun, squeezed it so that it no longer fired, and with a single punch, caved in the man's head. she grabbed him and looked past his shoulder. Now she had a shield. She started slowly advancing towards the rest, taking care not to run lest she trip over a body.

The Promise - Second Star to the Right, and Straight on 'til Morning.

Natalie Ellis

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Natalie was glad that she'd finally got it all off her chest for a about a second, before the regret seeped in. She wasn't used to talking to people anymore. And even when she was somewhat used to it, she had been awful at it. She just said everything she felt. Everything she hoped. Tact, or the ability to dress something that you wanted to say up, where no longer skills Natalie possessed.

He had gone to help somebody with a dropped plate of food. She was thankful for this. She'd have a little time to try to calm down. All this time baming her inability to live a normal life on Arianna, or Project Lion. Maybe it was her. Maybe everything would have been fine if she had let Archie see the ugly sides of her, and relied upon him to carry her through this all by himself. Maybe it was her choices and decisions that were stopping her from living the life she wanted. Was it even the life she wanted? Yes. That's one thing she was sure of. But at the same time it scared her. She wasn't ready for it. And she definitely didn't think she deserved it.

She was resting her head in her hand, staring down at the table when she came back, and looked up at him. From this close, with this comparatively little makeup, and in this mood, it was actually properly noticeable for the first time how deep the bags under her eyes were, and how tired she looked. This wasn't fatigue. It was something deeper. You don't get those eyes from a few nights of poor sleep. Those eyes take years to get.

She listened to him silently. Looking away more often than not. Those weren't words she was surprised or shocked to hear., but neither were they what she was hoping for. But after he finished, she smiled, and her eyes brightened a little, which surprised even herself. The hard part of the reunion that she had literally made herself suck worrying about was over and it hadn't upset her enough that she'd cried in public though it had come close. Result.

"Thanks, Archie. I just had to get that out, and I'm glad it didn't mess things up too much....I'm not good at this. And I'm sick of being scared. After this assembly thing, I promise I'll tell you about myself. I owe it to you and maybe just telling somebody might help me. Yeah, we should be friends first. I'm not used to having them, either, so I should at least try and get that right first. Thanks for being patient with me."

Jojo's Bizarre Adventure: Y2K

Jamin Redman

Mentions: @Duoya

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Jamin was going to put his music in, wonder round for a bit, and then hopefully pick up as much as he could in the last twenty minutes so he could hopefully answer one or two of the questions. That was the plan as she slid his headphones over his ears, pressed play, and turned away from the toy cart display with Wu-Tang blaring in his ears.

That's when he noticed one of the girls from his class. The short one with pigtails who shouted a lot and dressed like a soldier sometimes. Jamin didn't have the best memory for the names or nicknames for pupils who weren't his friends but when the rich girl's called 'Rich', that kinda sticks in your head. She gestured for him to remove his headphones, which he did, and then asked him if he'd help her find something cool to do. Jamic shrugged nonchalantly and turned his walkman off.

"Sure. Ain't like I got nothing better to do. What did you have in mind?"