Stitches

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

Abigail was fine - insofar as one could be after witnessing the death of a stranger six feet away from your face. She didn't say or do much until they returned to Goodnight. Then she was walking back from the toilets and stopped, turned to the nearest wall and crouched down. A few seconds of silence and she started lightly whacking her head with her fists, gently at first but with a fast increasing and feverish frequency.

“Hey!” Brooks bellowed. Trying to snap her out whatever reverie she was slipping into. A quiet, keening whine pushed past her clenched jaw as she grabbed fistfuls of her hair and held on for dear life. When Brooks approached, she was shaking. He squatted before her, grabbing her wrists and pulling them aside. "I said- hey! Snap out of it!”

Now getting a good look at Abigail's expression, Brooks could see that she wasn't breaking down - she was utterly consumed with anger. The muscles on her neck bulged with her clenched jaw and she was shaking with fury, not fear. Whatever had happened here had built up for a while. He sighed and sat down from his kneeling position. He clicked his tongue and looked around. Goodnight was always busy no matter where you went but little attention was paid to the girl sat in the corridor struggling with her own issues. Unfortunately, it was a common sight in the mouldering ruin of a mall.

Brooks stood up, dusting off his pants and planting his palms on his hips after. He waved a hand in an airy manner. “Come on then.” he said, exasperated. “Let’s take a hike.”

With herculean effort, Abigail pushed her anger back from whatever dark hole it had spilt out of. Her expression thunderous, her hands still shaking, she sloped after Brooks as he lead her further out of the mall. She didn't even look at the door guard nor register the brief exchange of words between him and the bootlegger. They crossed the cracking tarmac and into muddy woodland where clods of dirt and wet leaves stuck to her tattered trainers. The sharp chill in the air and the open sky had offset her temper for now - this was a rare luxury for the denizens of Goodnight, and not often handed out to strangers or new kids - but this was a temporary fix to a deep seated issue. She looked up at Brooks' back in silence after a good half hour of wandering.

“I can practically feel you staring.”

"I ain't tryna be subtle," Abigail retorted. "So what is this. You brought me out here to whoop me? That it?"

“The hell is wrong with you? No, I brought you out here because you looked like you were about to start screamin’ back in there. Can’t have that.”

"And why the hell not?" She skirted forward so they were walking side by side. "What's the worst that'll happen, I ruin the mood?"

“You’ll be seen as unstable. Crying and screamin’ about. You haven’t earned that yet.”

"So it's a privilege to get worked up now?" They went down a hill and within the bottom of the pit was an ancient fly tip, a junkyard of old furniture, broken vehicles and debris. "What is this?"

“A place for you to vent. Free of charge.”

Abigail looked down at the wreck, back up at Brooks and down at the wreck again.

It took her forty five minutes to get it all out of her system, which was an admittedly impressive time given the magic flung all over. By the time she was through the chassis of a car had been annealed and battered to within an inch of its life and the door of an old refrigerator had been torn off its hinges. Her screams had died down into hoarse little whimpers and she was soaked in sweat when Brooks carefully plodded into the junkyard to see her. She was shivering still but this time from the cold.

“All out?” he asked, standing besides her and looking over the wreck. Abigail croaked, nodded, then half turned and pressed her forehead against his stomach. A few wet sniffles escaped her nose, which she wiped with her grotty bandaged palm.

He knelt down beside her, gently placing a patting hand on her back. "Fuck mages," Abigail muttered thickly. "Terrorists n' foreigners. Threats to society. This…. insurgency shouldn't even fuckin' exist."

“Yeah.” he kept patting her back. “Well you’re one too now.”

"Gee, I sure didn't notice!" Abigail waved a hand at the scorch marks. "I just...I was meant to be better than this! I'm a goddamn American, I worked hard! I worked really, really fuckin' hard!" There were cracks in her voice. "It ain't easy out in the desert but that's okay, having to skip through like five schools on the road but I tried, didn't I? Ain't got no fuckin' friends or fancy smart phone or new sneakers but it ain't never about that, it's about, about trustin' the Lord and His judgement!" She looked up at Brooks with ruddy cheeks and fresh tears pooling in her eyes. "I skipped dinner on Fridays so Meemaw could have fun on Bingo night, I was the one who fixed the water filter 'stead of doing my homework. I was humble! I LOOKED AFTER MY OWN! So why did God do this to me?! Why does everyone hate me! Why is it so GOD DAMN HARD all the GOD DAMN TIME?!" Abigail shrieked with all the irrationality that her young mind could muster, face screwed up and smeared with tears and snot.

Brooks waited until she was tuckered out before holding down her hands and hugging her.

They stood there in the dirt and the chill, listening to the pops and groans as the metal on the car started to cool. It took a long time for Abigail to stop standing there and slump into the hug. She shut her eyes and exhaled. "I'm tired," she whispered.

There was another long moment of the wind whistling around them.

"I may be dumb but I ain't stupid," Abigail inhaled sharply. "What do those spell-flingin' maniacs wanna see from me. What do I... what've I gotta do to keep 'em from tossing me in a hut off in the middle of nowhere."

“Don’t start fights. Show you’re reliable. Show you’re trustworthy. You’re going to need a serious attitude adjustment. Most of you do.”

"Fine. Fine." Abigail rubbed her face clean on her jumper.

"Now I'm gonna take you back in. We're gonna head to that office, get our debrief and whatever trouble you're in for cussing someone out on the job you're gonna take without complaint. Understand?" Brooks let Abigail go long enough to watch her expression. The girl nodded but couldn't meet his gaze. "No, you look at me and say 'I understand'. This ain't middle school. You answer someone politely when you're asked a question, 'cause we ain't fucking around. Do you understand?" Brooks jabbed a finger into her shoulder, scowling.

Abigail squared her shoulders and stood up straight. "I understand," she responded.

Brooks stared at her for a long moment, nodded, and brought her back into the mall.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

Abigail was getting used to the wretched, clunking monstrosity that was their only form of transportation. The stench of stale cigarettes, body odour, food and Christ knows what else had become a background irritation that she'd gotten used to. She also claimed her seats - plural. The back left corner of the bus was her domain and she had bled all over it, which was a handy deterrent for any potential seat-stealers. She strode to the back of the bus and settled into her spot with anxious laziness, both trying to relax and straining for the gunshots.

Angeline had returned to the van once the plan was in motion, opting not to watch whatever may happen. She had spent much more of her energy steeling herself for the worst, she glanced over at the greasy kid, somehow looking relaxed sprawled out across the litany of blood-stained seats. “Um… How’s the hand?” She proposed. It wasn’t exactly a good atmosphere for chit-chat but she’d rather that than to listen to the fight going on outside.

"Itchy," Abigail muttered. She twitched her fingers. "I'm gonna have to get somebody who knows what they're doing to take these bandages off, I dunno what happened last time but I stuck to 'em."

“Um, you mean like the blood or something stuck to the bandages?” Angie was no professional so she wasn’t about to offer her services, whatever what weeping out of that ugly wound would eventually dry up and stick to the bandages regardless. “Well let’s hope you’re the only person here I have to patch up, I suppose…” she eyed the girl, she was hardly the most easiest person to get along with in the group… “Oh, I heard about what happened, with the girl? I mean… Putting a random group of people together will always result in some unsavoury clashes I suppose.”

Abigail sighed through her nostrils in a big wheeze. "I melted those things into my hand, she grabbed my wrist, I told her to get off me n' she didn't like that I called her a gyppo." She scratched her wrist just under the bandages, where the skin was irritated and flakey from the heat. "Then I went to...get help for my hand, get out of the shed, whatever, n' she cornered me, and threatened the shit outta me in the back of the bus."

Angie flinched a bit “Oh yikes that wasn’t very nice.” she paused “From both of you.” she then added. “It’s not very polite to call people names like that, though I don’t suppose she handled being insulted very well either.” she sort of danced around the topic, she didn’t want to set the kid off but it wasn’t exactly acceptable. From either parties. And it didn’t seem like anyone else wanted to take on the role of disciplining her.

Abigail lifted her head a little to take a good look at Angie's face. "Lady," she started slowly, "we're in the middle of buttfuck nowhere. In a couple minutes, about five people are getting shot to death - for gunnin' down people just like us earlier today." She paused for a moment, looking confused. "I ain't sure any of us are havin' the best of days...weeks...but Jesus Christ. If I had t'pick between snappin' at a stranger who was blockin' the only exit and grabbin' me or sticking around t'see what crazy shit she was gonna do to my hand, I'd have called her something way worse n' given a good kick to the shin to boot!" She flopped back onto the seats. "I'll apologize when I'm fuckin' positive she ain't gonna stalk to my sleeping bag n' smother me to death," she decided.

Angeline allowed the kid to go off on her, taking it relatively calm. Her instructors have said worse things about her ten times over. “My name’s Angeline.” She corrected, firstly. “I support you’re right in some sense.” She adjusted her sitting position and smoothed down her hair, noting the blood still under her fingernails grimly. “It’s a… Unique situation we find ourselves in. But we’re all in the same situation and I don’t know about you, but I’d rather find myself surrounded with friends than enemies.” she eyed the kid slowly, she looked tense and uncomfortable. “Even if that lady made you uncomfortable your choice of words was gyppo, specifically. You understand? You didn’t decide to call her...” she snorted a laugh “I dunno… A creep or a pervert or whatever for ‘trapping’ a young girl in a shed, so I wonder why your mind went to ‘gyppo’ first. I don’t want to sound condescending but do you know what that means?”

"Yeah it's like…" Abi wafted a hand. "The brown fellas who don't have a home and go 'round taking all your copper, right?"

Angie takes a good, hot second to let that sink in, both for Abigail and for Angeline. “Um, not-... Quite accurate, the ‘brown fellas’ are Romanian, which I suppose are the people you’re referring to, there’s also Irish Travellers, who are also subject to being called ‘gypsies’ but they’re white, like you. Oh, and they do have homes… What kind of house did you live in? If that’s not too prying a question, I suppose? I can go first and say that I lived in a flat?” She offered.

"What kinda weird ass question…" Abigail trailed off, looking away from Angeline and at a crusty stain in one of the seat cushions. "Ain't never had a house," she mumbled.

“Oh, okay, where did you stay then? Because travellers often live in caravan parks and trailer parks, so they have homes, and they don’t like to be called gypsies because it’s synonymous with the stereotype you brought up. The wrong doings of the few should not represent the many, right?” Angeline had no idea if she was getting anywhere as Abi entertained herself with a crusty seat. “Otherwise… Every white American teen is a school shooter, and every underprivileged youth is a drug dealer, or swept up in gang activities. I can’t imagine either of those things represent you, right? So calling someone a ‘gyppo’ would be just as insulting as me calling you like… A drug addled school shooter or something.”

"Is it worth threatening to kill someone over?" Abi asked, pulling a face as she gingerly rolled onto her belly to peer up at Angie. "How bad can it really be, huh? I been called worse before. Ain't so sure what's got everyone all riled up - in the middle of a mission, no less."

“Well, no it’s not worth threatening to kill someone over. That’s why I said that both you and her had handled the situation poorly. It is, I suppose, accentuated by the fact that she was an ethnic minority and probably has to deal with insults and harassment and stereotypes just like what you’d said for all her life. Consider, perhaps, if it were merely the ‘straw that broke the camel’s back’ instead of it just being related to your one insult.” She leaned back in her seat, exhaling as she did so, trying to get somewhat comfortable. “Plus I would imagine a mission is where it’s most likely to get people riled up. Everyone’s tense, we’re being relied on by many people right now and it’s lot’s of pressure. All it takes is one crack for it all to blow up so I can see why it got such a reaction.” Angeline looked out the window past Abigail. “I can’t understand how, in this kind of situation that we’re in, surrounded by confusion and negativity, it would be beneficial to anyone to bring up more negativity like discrimination on top of everything we’ve got to deal with…” She sat up and looked at Abigail again “After all, what’s a “gyppo” to a white person when we’re all mages now?” She eyed Abigail carefully “Aren’t we all going to be discriminated against now? May as well try and get along with the one’s on ‘our side’ right?”

Angeline watched as Abigail went blank, then nervous, then angry in the scope of her speech. “Don’t think that using fancy words makes you right,” she muttered. Humiliation crept into her voice. She immediately went on the defensive, starting to push herself up onto her elbows. “You sound like the goddamn counsellors. I don’t need my life picked apart by some-”

Then the gunshots rang out.

They were much louder and more jarring at close range, punching through the conversation and letting the light and air in. Abigail’s initial reaction was a flinch so hard it looked like a spasm - she fell off the bench in the process, losing all her bravado in an instant as she covered her head with the back of her hands and huddled on the floor.

Angeline sighed a little to herself as Abigail reverted to defensiveness. As the gunshots came she paled and instinctively covered her ears, a large wave of nausea hitting her like a greasy, smelly, combi-bus thing. They were over before she knew it with a final, single shot and when she opened her eyes she saw the kid curled up on the floor. A weird mix of sympathy and discomfort hit her. “You can get up now, I think it’s over. You alright?” She tried to pretend she wasn’t as affected as she was, for the sake of the girl.

Abigail looked up and saw Angie largely unaffected by the gunshots. She went red with embarrassment, making her even more ashamed as she miserably picked herself up off the floor. "It's uh. Louder up close, ain't it?" She huffed, trying to save face. The facade was pointless; she was frightened, and angry with herself for getting frightened.

Angeline nodded “Yeah. I don’t like guns. I thought with you being American you’d be a little more accustomed?” She tried to draw away the subject so Abi would feel less embarrassed “Never been to a shooting range or something with your family?” She got up and dusted her butt down of whatever grossness had stuck to it and opened the door and stepped out. Eventually, she would have to face the facts and see if there were any injuries to take care of.

About a second after she stepped out, Angie heard footsteps, rushing at her from behind.

“Who the fuck do you work for?!” screamed a man as he barreled into her and brought her to the ground on the last word, hands scrambling for her throat.

Angeline coughed as her back hit the floor too winded to say much except a wheezed “Help…”

“You fucking bitch! Who the fuck do you work for? Who’s fuckin’ payin’ you!?”

After a moment's hesitation that went on for what felt like an eternity, something hot and bright and tinged purple shot out of the open bus door, aiming indiscriminately above Angie and the final bandit in a searing burst of magic.

The bandit jerked backwards and off of Angie, jumping reflexively away from the burning heat as it struck him in the space of the joint between his neck and shoulder.

“Fuck!” he yelped, before realising in more conscious detail what had happened, and where the fire had come from, as he reached to start patting the fire out and it just disappeared. He gave a low, tense scream through his clenched teeth, and looked up at Abi.

“What the fuck?” the man, tall and slim, thought aloud, as he reached behind himself for something in the waist of his jeans.

Angeline coughed roughly as the crispy man got off her, though as she saw him reach for the gun she instinctively ran at him and hunkered low, jumping with her shoulder and arm extended for his chest to try and knock him down.

As her body - smaller than his, but strong from years of ballet, and graced with deceptively powerful control of her balance - made its impact, he budged, and his shoes left a little streak behind in the sand as he slid for a bit before adjusting his own balance to counter Angie’s, leaving them in a deadly stalemate - as he produced the pistol.

It wasn’t a small thing, but not as big in his hand as Abi imagined it would have been in hers, as the top slide of the weapon gave a dull glint, catching the warmth and light of the sun as the criminal in front of her adjusted his footing once again - and delivered a swift, brutal kick straight to Angie’s chest, knocking her back to the floor, winded.

The bandit backed up from them both as he released the safety and pulled the slide on the pistol, a faint click inside the weapon registering the chambering of a round, like a long-dreaded knock on the door. He glanced between the two of them - ballerina and teenager - his eyes alive with an unpleasant mixture of fury, triumph, and intelligence, even as the flesh on his shoulder still smouldered and the patchwork of his jacket began to fell away in ashes around it.

“I won’t fuckin’ ask again.” He held the pistol up, taking his time to line up a shot. “Who, the fuck, do you fuckin’ bastards, fuckin’ work f-”

Just as he began to bring the gun down, while it was still aimed up and above them both, a shot rang out. He jerked like a puppet being struck abruptly with a stick, tiny dots of blood suddenly colouring the air behind him, and the gun went off in his hand as his fist clenched reflexively.

Another shot. Identifiably from just at the top of the little gully they’d left the van in. Again, the man jerked, his eyes widening as the pain hit him properly and he realised what was happening. His own gun didn’t go off again - it had been too fast for him to have released the trigger, and both shots had hit him in the center of his chest.
Probably right in the heart.

A pause, just long enough for him to groan, and start the long lurch backwards into the dirt, when the third and final gunshot rang out like a clarion bell, and every sin he’d ever committed was blown clean out of the right side of his temple.

When he hit the dirt the gun went off again, sending his last mistake flying off well away from his two hostages, far out into the outback.

At the top of the hill, still aiming his own weapon down at the recently neutralised hostile as he made his way down towards the van, calm as ever, was Brooks.

After that, it really was all over.

Modern Fantasy With Lots of Explosions

This looks interesting! Also, it's a lovely layout.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

Abigail trailed after Brooks and shuffled into the back of the bus. The arrival of Hans and Mark meant little to her; they were nameless gunmen sent to make their lives a little easier. She avoided the pointed looks at her return. Her hand throbbed and itched. She was tired. As everyone else filed into the bus and hunkered down for a long ride, Abigail shut her eyes and lay down across multiple seats to-

Don't sleep.

Abigail opened her eyes, grimacing. You don't know what happens if you're woken up in the middle of one of those weird dreams, her hindbrain muttered. Don't know what'll happen if you die while dreaming either. Don't risk it. She wearily sat up and stared out of the window instead as the engine sputtered to life and sent the bus trundling down the road and then out into the brush.

Boredom and hunger quickly settled in. A five hour trip wasn't alien to the kid, but she usually had her whole bedroom travelling with her. All she had to entertain herself with were strangers twice her age, most of whom had split into their own conversations and didn't give the injured brat in the back much acknowledgement - save for the glances. The whispering. A ripple of indignation flowed through her but it was softened by a thick blanket of shame, alienation, awkwardness. Again, Abigail was painfully aware that she didn't belong here. She was too young and out of place. She flitted between having something to prove and wanting to be left alone. The excess of attention to a kid who never received enough in her early years, was nauseating. It eventually congealed into resentment of these strange heathens and their disgusting magic, hiding like rats in a sewer drain; this quickly turned into self loathing. The unavoidable truth that she was also an affront to God, riding a greasy bus to find and kill the fuckers that crossed these degenerates, lingered in her mind like a bad stench.

And yet...the heat of the day was starting to swell. By god, Abigail was hungry. This wasn't peckishness - it was full blown 'Meemaw lost her EBT card after one too many cans of Busch and now we have to drive around churches and food banks and hope for the best' hungry. Gut-pinching, back-hunching, hand-shaking hunger. For many, these sensations of discomfort would have only exacerbated the wretched mood they were in but Abigail was hit with a wave of nostalgia. With it came the optimism and self-assurances. How many of these fancy-pants 'tenants' and 'homeowners' could teeter on the border of famished with a fucked up hand in sweltering ninety-something degree heat and feel like they were back home? This was her element. This was why she was here.

During those five hours - particularly when they all had to shuffle off the bus in order to let it roll up a hill - Abigail had to stand out in the baking hot sun. One hand pointed back the way they came, the other (injured) hand stabilising it at the wrist, a quick check to make sure nobody was in the way then a searing burst of purple fire, high enough to avoid skirting the brush, low enough to avoid giving away their position. Like clockwork. The kid made it look as mundane as brushing one's teeth. It was easy to deduce what her magic entailed from her practical demonstrations. Consequentially when Ellen concocted a plan, she seemed a little thrown off by her role in all of it. "You mean...I get to cover you and run back to tell the others when you find the coolbox?" She asked. "Then it's just, stay in the bus, right?" Abigail blinked, nodded to herself, the brief flit of a smile twitching on her lips as she agreed with a gentle "Cool. Ready when you are."

Empire of the Dead

Since I've been struggling to find an 'in' for this RP, a friend of mine will be making a sheet in the upcoming weeks to be a Revenant Major. We both don't have the post length that you guys have but I'm looking forward to getting started!

Empire of the Dead

Glad to see you're safe, and I hope you recover well! My other RP that I'm on in here has been going on for almost a year now with month-long breaks at one point so I'm more than happy to stick around for the ride. When you've got a moment, DM me and we can discuss how to get Silver out there into the world - until then just relax, sounds like you deserve it.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

"DontouchmeDon't touch ME-!" Abigail whipped her hand out of Siobhan's grip and with it a shelf of forgotten screws and lugnuts in little divider boxes came crashing and pattering down like rain - from the other end of the shed. She registered her need to see Angeline but didn't notice the telekinesis over the searing, bubbling pain - so sharp it felt like the sting of ice, shooting up her elbow and through her shoulder and clutching tighter and tighter over her chest. "Sunnuvabitchin' gyppo, I ain't needing the god-damn pity from someone like-" she cut off into a hiss of pain and frustration. It hurt so much. It wasn't brief and bad because the plastic was still in there, bubbling away at her skin. "Just get on out to the house!" Abigail sputtered. She stumbled past Siobhan without so much as an apology and out into the 'yard' of the site.

No Angeline. A body but not a healer in sight. "Fuuuuck," she groaned miserably and slid down the front-facing wall of the shed, clutching her glistening palm as she inspected the damage. Two misshapen beads of plastic had eaten a quarter of an inch into her palm, which was bubbly and shiny and wet-looking with speckles of red and white in a wonky circle of meat. A choked sob of pain managed to escape from her incredibly tight ribcage as she reviewed her options.

When she looked up for a moment, through her tears, her vision was lit up by the golden glow of the broken sunlit facade of the outback bungalow. The sun had, in that way that the sun sometimes does in books and novels and movies, just crested the hill behind her, and for a tiny fraction of a second the entire world was alive with the dust and hardship of the outback - even the house, for just that little moment, looked new and lived in again.

With the adjustment of her eyes to the brightness of the dawning day, Abi could see properly again - and she saw that Billy had just rounded the corner from whence he’d parked up the van, rifle in hand. When he saw her however, his eyes went wide.

“Hey, hey hey, what’s the matter? You alright over here, Abi?” He exclaimed softly, voice laden with concern as he saw her holding her arm, rushing over.

"I fucked up," Abigail croaked bitterly. "N' I've got...ssshit in my hand," she added on in the hopes that there was someone who could help her with her predicament. With the coming dawn the wound was placed into sharp relief and the clouds of dust stung against her palm.

“Aw, shit. Angeline’s got the first aid kit just now, but let’s take a look.” He ushered her over to the van and had her sit down in one of the seats, taking a knee to get a better look at the wound. “Christ above, that’s real nasty. Can you move it at all?”

"Never really crossed my damn mind to start wriggling it around," Abigail seethed, collapsing into one of the chairs. "What if it gets….stuck." Open sobbing wasn't an option. The kid was literally shaking with pain but in the past two weeks, the familiar pierce of a burn had become a bitter and steadfast reoccurrence. "Just...pair'a tweezers, gnh...a teaspoon, anything." She hiccoughed and held both hands to the light, wrists touching.

“Aw hell, Abigail, I ain’t no doctor or anythin. Alright, aright, just uh, just gimme a second to think here.” He scratched his head anxiously, looking around the van for something that might have been passably useful. After a moment, his eyes lit up with realisation, and he practically leapt to his feet and ran to the back of the van. It took him about six seconds to return with his toolkit in hand, which he plonked down in the dust next to them, and threw open. “We’ll get you some painkillers in a bit, from the doctor bag in the house, but for now this’ll do in a pinch.” He half-mumbled as he retrieved a thin pair of electrician’s pliers and a small bottle simply labelled ‘spirit’. He doused the pliers in spirit, and then looked up at Abi.

“This is really gonna hurt.”

Abigail snorted a wad of mucus up her nose, wiping her eyes with the base of her good hand. "Do I look like the kinda' gal who grew up with health insurance?" She quipped, thrusting her glistening wound in Billy's face as she stuffed the collar of her jumper into her mouth. She couldn't look.

“Yeah, yeah I get you, I just… I mean, I don’t like hurtin’ folk. Awful sorry ‘bout this. Put your other hand on my shoulder or somethin’, you can squeeze as hard as you have to, ok? And just let me know when you’ve had too much, we can take a break whenever alright?” He mumbled, as he pressed the pliers into the blistering flesh until they got a grip on the first ex-ziptie, and then started to pull it out.

Abigail let out a muffled shriek of surprise. Initially she had her hand on his shoulder but the way she lurched made the globule shift in an agonising new direction so she began kicking the seat in front of her like a mule, dirt and dust flying from it as the plastic backing shuddered with each blow. Her watery, bloodshot gaze flipped to Billy in an instant, full of anger and desperation all at once as her face went bright pink and her neck muscles turned to thick cords from the sheer strain of it.

“It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s gonna be ok Abi, you’re doing so well, just… just a bit more.” He continued, as the head of the melted string of plastic came free of her palm, leaving a little trench of flesh in its wake, which filled with blood as the polymer came free. After another ten seconds, the first of the little cords came loose, and he dropped it onto the ground in front of him. “Ok. Ok, one down, like two or three more to go. How you doing?”

"GHHHHHHH." Abigail pawed at and then found purchase on the windowsill of the Kombi, white knuckled and shaking. She looked away and braced herself for the next wave of pain, screwing her eyes shut and pushing out two fat tears along with it.

Billy grimaced, and nodded, reminding himself not to ask stupid questions.

The next band of plastic removed was a slightly quicker affair, but it bled worse when it came out. Compared to the searing pain of the first one, it was almost a relief, and given the sheer extent of the trauma to her hand at this point, Abi actually barely felt it.

But the last of the zipties had melted straight into the crease of her palm, and worse still, it had split in two when it got burned.

“Ok, alright kiddo, this is gon’ be the worst one yet. You ready?”

"Mmfn." Abigail sunk back into the chair. She had stopped shaking but the blood was oozing down her palm and onto Billy's hand. Her gaze was pinned to the grimy window and the changing colours of the sky, her breathing laboured and ragged, a sheen of sweat starting to form on her face and neck.

The first, shorter bit of the plastic tie came out reasonably easily, but Billy had to pull it out along the groove it had left in her hand rather than peel it away from the palm. The second piece was slightly longer, and significantly thinner - like it had been stretched as it melted.

Billy shook his head grimly, and took a firmer hold of Abi’s wrist with his supporting hand.

“Jeez, I’m so sorry Abi.”

Again, he dug the pliers into her hand, again, he peeled the plastic out of her palm, and again, it hurt like a bitch on speed. When eventually the little plastic string came away, it took some flesh with it, and even Billy’s hand was shaking a little.

“Ok, alright, we’re done. You’re uh, you’re in a lot of pain, I’m uh, I’ll go get some painkillers.” He stuttered, dropping the pliers entirely and pushing himself to his feet.

Abigail let her arm drop to the seat, palm facing upward, as she disentangled her clenched jaw from the wad of stale nylon jumper that she'd stuffed in there. An uneven dark patch of saliva followed the dark rings of sweat around her collar and armpits and the shivering started again, as if her body was giving her a rough shake to try and spur it into movement. She stared at the roof of the Kombi as her blood soaked into the cushions, barely registering Billy as her gaze flickers to various spots on the mottled and badly stained ceiling.

Her lips begin to twitch in voiceless syllables as she scrunches her eyes shut tight.

“Alright, ok Abi, I’ve uh, I’ve got you some, uh…” He paused, looking at the packet he had returned with, quite possibly only just reading what it says now. “Aloe vera liddocaine. Acetaminnophen. And aspirin.” He looked up at her, as if for a approval, before remembering that he was the adult here.

“Aight, ok, shit, uh, here have some water, take these pills, I’m uh, I’m gonna try and rinse the burn and put this painkiller stuff on it.”

Abigail nodded sluggishly and grunted again. She sat up a bit more, fumbling for the water first, then shoving the pills behind her lips one by one with her remaining good hand. As she tilted her neck back to swallow the painkillers, she shuffled her wound onto her lap - the edges of the burn were already starting to seal into shiny flesh whilst the deep, dark red holes had stopped bleeding as profusely as they did before.

“Ok.” Billy said, mostly to himself, as he squeezed too much aloe vera out of the little plastic tube it came in, and started applying it to the wound. “Hey, lookie here, you’re already lookin’ so much better.” He said hopefully.

“What happened to you, anyway?”

"Nuffin." Abigail grunted, then her eyes snapped open and a frown formed. "As in, I did nothing. I fucked up. My stupid... magic went off even though I had it covered. Gawh. Ughmh. When is this going to kick in?" She was determinedly not looking at the wound but, in the process, stared at the warped sticks of plastic all red and streaky and somewhat covered in meat and felt the bile rise in the back of her throat. "Couldn't even look through a fuckin' shed without getting it wrong," she grumbled with palpable disgust.

“I uh, I don’t know. Next half hour probably. But hey, look, ain’t no point in kickin’ yerself for trippin’ over. I don’t know a whole lot about magic or nothin’, but all this crap is still new to you, you know what I mean?” Billy said softly, retrieving his pliers and washing them off with ‘spirit’, before kicking dirt over the recovered pieces of plastic. “Now don’t get me wrong, I sure wish you weren’t hurtin’ right now, but it’s all a learnin’ experience, and you ain’t put nobody in danger or anythin’. You’re still learnin’, and there’s just gon’ be some hiccups on the way to bein’ learned, that’s just how the world works. Alright? I don’t blame you for… well, shit, for anythin’. Least of all this.”

"I sure hope everyone else takes the same kinda' mindset as you, buddy," Abigail squirmed in her seat, the pain still throbbing up her arm, "'cause the way I see it, I ain't made the best first impression."

Billy paused, face turned down in contemplation.

“You’re right. You ain’t made the best first impression.” He sighed. “But you can’t change a first impression after it’s made, you can’t time travel. So what are you gonna do about it?”

"Unless you know a feller that can time travel, I'm gonna...sit in this here bus until I look like I ain't been cryin' and tryin' not to hurl for the past couple of minutes. " Despite sweating and shaking like a leaf, Abigail was able to articulate herself enough through the pain to lift one tremulous finger. "May have lost a lotta blood and dignity, but doggone it, I'll keep my pride." She flashed Billy a nauseating toothsome grin as she wiped her brow and swung her legs up onto the bench to have a brief but well deserved lie down.

“You don’t gotta time travel, Abi. You just gotta learn. An’ you will learn, ‘cos you’re smart, even if you can’t see just how you’re smart, yet.” Billy added, softly, as he turned and went to get some more crap from the medical kit, to properly dress the wound.

As properly as he knew how, at least. He was better at talking, and not amazing at that either.

Paradigm Shift: Agents of Fate

A ripple of indignance crossed through Abigail's chest and made it tighten. "Ain't afraid of no tetanus," she muttered under her breath - baseless posturing, trying to make herself out to be unfettered by this strange she-witch and her odd accent. It was the ordering that did it - the gesturing, the expectance. It rubbed Abi the wrong way and made her more acerbic and stubborn. She tossed the chunk of plywood aside and wriggled past the water butts, getting elbow-deep in the assorted old tools in an effort to find something that made their trip into this derelict shed worthwhile. "Relax," she drawled, "ain't like the house is going somewhere."

Some clattering and thumping and a lot of dust later, Abigail had found herself a battered toolbox and began rummaging through its contents. Her eyes lit upon an old box cutter and flickered to her left. The box was just behind a water butt, the gypsy couldn't have seen it yet but...how could she surreptitiously pocket the weapon without drawing attention? As she continued to aimlessly rummage, she found herself a roll of zip-ties. Perfect! She could use this as a distraction.

"Aw, sweet! Look what I found!" Abigail chirped with enthusiasm that definitely wasn't befitting of a bunch of dusty zip-ties. She triumphantly thrust her arm into the air, stuffing the box cutter into the pocket of her jeans as she stood...and had a very, very short time to react to what was coming. After holding in her magic for an extended amount of time, the upwards jab was strenuous enough to elicit a response through a familiar shooting feeling rushing up her elbow - Abigail quickly and hastily quelled the impulse - the flame hardly reached more than five inches height, thank goodness there were a roll of zip-ties in the way of her palm - a roll that bubbled and turned gluey as parts of it sank into her skin...

"Shit shit SHIT SHIT-" Abigail doubled over, grabbing her wrist, dropping the bubbling mess as she stamped on it. The smell of plastic fumes filled the shed. There was no smoke, thankfully, from such a small fire, but it was more than enough of a slip-up to bring a deep, horrible wave of humiliation thumping through her body. Whether it was the pain, the plastic or the sheer misery of it all that made tears smart behind her eyes, Abigail swore up and down the walls and willed herself not to cry. Not in front of the ethnic chick. Not on a mission.

Good Ol' Boys

We could do a slight time-skip and restart scenarios amongst ourselves. I'm banking on @MST3K 4ever still being invested, as my character's going to be helping out the Sheriff a fair bit.

Good Ol' Boys

I'm on the fence - I wouldn't mind proceeding but I'd like to know if someone is going to step up and GM it before I invest myself too much into this. It's a promising concept with good characters but without direction I doubt it'll get far.