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 Posted: Fri Jul 31, 2009 10:09 pm
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Posted: Sat Sep 19, 2009 3:22 pm
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Running, running, running...
It seemed running was all Alice ever did. She had spotted a team of Institutes searching the area she was currently staying in. They had probably caught on to her whereabouts and were looking for her at that very moment. She scowled at them as they went into buildings with no luck. She was laying on her stomach on top of a building 2 blocks from where the team was working. Once the entire team entered one of the apartment structures, she made her way to the other side of the building she was on and jumped over to the next building's roof.
She landed painfully, scratching both of her knees and her hands. With no time to treat the wounds, she continued the opposite direction of the Institute members until she was about 2 miles away. Out of breath and exhausted from her get away, she entered an old building and located a basement. The door was still in perfect condition and once inside she realized there was a lock on the door. Wisely, she locked the door and headed into the basement. Inside there was a couch and a small blanket and no other beings. She made sure there were no other ways into the room and was content with the fact the basement had no windows. After listening by the door to see if the Institute was anywhere near and coming up with nothing, she headed over to the couch and laid down.
But even though she was exhausted and wanted to sleep more than anything, she couldn't. Her heartbeat was pounding in her ears and her eyes couldn't look away from the door leading to her hiding place. She tried to close them, but they would pry back open and watch the door, expecting someone to come in and finish her off. And in the dark of the basement, her mind started to travel to places she had tried to forget. Memories of Adalya, Rade and Tripp, Madlax and the others brought tears to her eyes that she prayed wouldn't fall down her eyes. Lance's face appeared and she felt complete hate and care for her older brother. Other strange figures and designs danced across her vision, as Alice allowed her insane mind to take over again and play with her mind.
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Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 11:12 am
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  "********!!" Radé narrowly dodged the bullet that had been fired at her, screaming profanities at the Institute members that were deciding it was a better idea to use firearms that confront the small girl at close quarters. Of course, it had only taken them two others getting cleaved in half to decide that, but at least they were learning. Though, Rade reflected momentarily, if she wanted to survive, they should stop that quickly. There was a pale blue glow that caught her attention as she shifted her sword to a different stance and Radé brought the massive weapon in front of her and suddenly grinned, slamming the weapon into it's binding in her back. The glowing runes were growing brighter as Radé pulled the strap off her back and held it at her arm, her grin intensifying as the glow did.
The institute men did the logical thing to do when the enemy stops attacking and puts their weapon away, especially when they are under 'do-not-kill-unless-necessary' orders, which would be to hold their guns steady and approach with caution. That was, unfortunately, the wrong thing to do in this situation. The men had taken three steps then Radé collapsed to her knees and her body underwent a gruesome, rapid change from a just over five-foot female to a small building-sized white dragon. With a snap of a reptilian hand, Radé knocked the men away and took to the sky, flying for a good long while before landing some place secluded and changing back to continue the journey to safety on foot.
As she walked, a gaunt man passed her on the street and she immediately found her mind wandering to her partner. He couldn't be in good shape after all this time. Well, Radé mused, it actually hadn't been all that long, but knowing Tripp, he would get a lot worse before he got better. In the best scenario, he had managed to stay with someone... if not...~~ Tripp woke in a cold sweat, pain lancing through his body like no other. With shaking hands he pulled a full syringe from one of the many pockets that lined his coat and without as much as a glance at his arm, stabbed himself with it and injected whatever it had contained. A few minutes the shaking had stopped and the pain had dulled, leaving Tripp wondering where exactly he had passed out in the first place. Glancing around, he saw that he was inside some place with windows and it was a few stories up, judging from the view.... it was littered in broken bottles and used needles and plod drops from someone running into said broken bottles and used needles.
Something ticked in the back of his mind and Tripp was flooded with memories of stumbling home last night, just before an attack and collapsing in the corner. So I have enough time to set up the commands to save that memory file and give it a trigger, but not enough to get the ******** drugs... I guess that is the difference between thought and movement...
Tripp stood carefully, teetering dangerously as blood suddenly realized that it could get back to the extremities and attempt to kill him all at once.
A few moments after that little bit of pain was over, Tripp stumbled into the main room, which was a bit cleaner than the rest and collapsed on the couch as the rest of the drugs effects took over his body.
I guess I grabbed the wrong one... |
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Posted: Mon Sep 21, 2009 2:37 pm
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Alice had just started to drift off when she heard what sounded like something crashing. The impact of something large hit the area near the building she was in, and her curiosity took the best of her. She stood up and made her way slowly and carefully up the steps and out the from door.
The sight of a girl running took her by surprise and she stepped into the shadows and watched. She could only assume this was another Altered trying to escape the clutches of the Institute. She felt empathy for this girl. She saw herself trying to get away.
She saw Rade.
This thought took her a while to process. She had seen Rade. Rade...
In an instant after, she realized who she had just witnessed running by and almost shouted after her. But when she opened her mouth, no sound came out. She was too scared to call out, afraid of the Institute finding them, afraid of what her voice would sound like after all of these months.
Instead, she attempted to reach Rade with her mind. She reached out, trying to latch onto Rade's mind and hoped it would work. Although her former friend was far, Alice was still able to latch on, as long as she could see her. So before Rade started to get out of sight, Alice sprinted after her, needing to hang on to Rade's mind.
She used her powers to speak inside Rade's mind. "Rade?" She hadn't done so in a while and once she had it felt wonderful. She wanted to say so much, but she couldn't think of anything else to add. She waited to see if Rade would react.
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Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 7:17 am
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Rade blinked, hearing a voice...but not really? "Ehhhh........" She hesitated, turning to look behind her, hoping to at least see someone that would explain the noise she had heard. She was pretty sure that there was a girl following her, so Radé slowed her pace incredibly and took a deep breath. There was something familiar in the air, slightly forgotten, but familiar. She had known it a well a while ago, it was that sort of familiar...
As she was trying to place the scent, a whole bunch of people flasher across her mind. Some that she had only known for a little while, then hovering on her partner and a person that had been a recent aquisi-Alice!
"Alice, izzat you?" Radé half-whispered to the alley behind her hoping that she hadn't just stopped to allow more institute men to shoot at her. That would suck, in short. |
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Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:13 pm
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Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:32 pm
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"How about a little of both?" Radé grinned, shifting her sword back to her arm as the runes began to glow intensely and the change took place almost immediately. Mentally she was cringing, rapid changes like that kind of hurt, the whole bone and body size changing bit. But once it was over she was fine.
Radé tugged carefully on the leather straps that held the sword to her front leg/arm with the other clawed hand, then grabbed Alice carefully and took to the sky. Bullets whizzed around her in the air, a few hitting, but not the wings, thankfully enough. As long as they hit her scales, nothing too bad would happen. 'I hope you can deal with this, Alice...' Radé reflected a bit too late, 'I kinda forgot to tell you what was happening.'
Rade flew quickly away from the guns, getting far enough away that they wouldn't be able to see her land. That didn't mean another set of eyes wouldn't, but they had a better chance now. Once back on the ground, Rade changed back, a little slower this time, and put her sword back where it belonged, "How about we find a place to hide now?" |
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Posted: Wed Sep 23, 2009 2:54 pm
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Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 3:45 pm
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"Yeah, sounds good to me." Rade nodded quickly and followed Alice down into the safety of below-ground. It had been a while since Radé had been in a basement, actually, she had taken to hiding on rooftops pretty much immediately after her escape for a few reasons; one, easier to fly out of a roof than a basement, two, when the change had originally started, there had been no control and small rooms were dangerous to become trapped in.
Once there, Radé settled herself contentedly against a wall, stabbing the sword into the ground enough that it didn't fall over, then grinned at Alice. "So, I'll go first, since I flaunted my powers first. I'll answer what I think you want to know, then you can ask anything I leave out, yeah?
"Starting at the beginning, I guess, the raid got us all off-guard and I was re-captured. Tripp managed to get away, but I don't know what happened to him from there. You're actually the first one I've seen in about a year now, right?" Radé paused, trying to remember how long it had been and not doing very well, "Well, anyways, they got me again and did some more tests and experiments, one that didn't seem to work at all and another that gave me that shift." She shrugged, "Not too bad a trade, I feel."
Radé flashed another pointy-toothed smile, "And I've been looking for anyone I know since then. Congratulations, Alice, you are the winner."
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Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 4:34 pm
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Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2009 5:12 pm
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"Well, he got away, I made damn sure of that." Radé nodded sagely, "I wouldn't have left the institute without him, and I would have known if he were there." She tapped her nose, "Even before all this, he smelt like blood to me. Lots and lots of blood. It's how I knew he was there without actually seeing him." She shrugged, "Now, I can tell almost all of you by scent, even if the original's just from memory."
"So, no, I don't know where Tripp is." She sighed deeply, feeling a pull to actually go back outside and keep looking for him. Her partner was the closest thing to family she had any more and she sure wanted him back. Even a psycho like him was better than being completely alone. "I told him to hide, and that was the last I saw of him. You would think that a psychotic killer like him would be a bit hard to hide after a year, but he's done a damn good job."
Radé looked Alice over for a moment, half-smiling that the other seemed to have gotten away mostly unscathed, at least externally. Then again, so had Radé herself. There was a moment of silence before Radé burst out laughing, "I-I'm sorry, I was just thinking. I never really knew you. The only reason we had an encounter past my trying to capture Lorielle was because Tripp was so determined to get you back."
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Posted: Sun Oct 04, 2009 1:34 pm
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The memories of before crashed over Alice like a title wave. She remembered Lorielle and everything about her. The thoughts made her shiver; perhaps Lorielle was dead. How was she to know? Everyone had split up and the chances of them seeing anyone else ever again was very slim. She felt like the luckiest person on earth to have found Rade. But Rade was right, the two of them really never knew each other. Previously, Alice had been terrified of Rade. Her and Tripp had made a scary pair, but she had gotten to know Tripp much more than she had gotten to know Rade. She had always scared Alice more than Tripp for some reason, but Alice wasn't about to let Rade know that.
She was quiet a while after Rade had spoken, and she listened and tried to hear any noises signaling that the Institute was on to them. When she didn't hear anything, she swallowed hard and looked to Rade. She felt nervous for even trying, but once her mind was set on it, she did it. "I'm....sss-sorry." She stuttered a bit, but to find out that she could actually communicate verbally was a gift in itself. But she really did feel awful for getting herself and everyone else into every mess she got herself into. Rade and Tripp had been pulled into every bad situation that Alice had come across and she had always felt terrible for making their lives miserable.
After straining herself, Alice reverted back to her habit and spoke with her mind. Maybe we can go looking for them, once the Institute gets off of out backs. I'm running from Lance right now, and I don't know when or if he'll ever give up, but I'l like to try and help you find Tripp.
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Posted: Tue Oct 06, 2009 4:30 pm
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"Sorry? What for?" Radé blinked once and tilted her head slightly, giving Alice an odd look for a moment, "If anything, I should be apologising to you. Your base probably would have survived if I hadn't given them a damn map, you know?" She grinned wryly, "Or a lot of the things I did before all this happened. Working for the highest bidder has some drawbacks if you decide to pick a side afterwards. But none of that's really important now, is it?"
Radé shook her head once, then nodded to Alice, "Finding Tripp might be a good idea, yeah, the idiot's probably a worse mess than before all this. It took a long time to get him functional when we first met, this will probably be along the same levels. I just have to hope that he doesn't think I abandoned him or anything..." She sighed, tapping her nails against the ground, "And I thought that Lance was fixed, for lack of a better word. At least he didn't seem like too big a threat at my place... Something happened, I guess."
Shifting slightly, Radé looked at the door they had come down from. She didn't hear anything that would indicate they had been discovered, but then again, she hadn't on the day her flat was raided either.
Another, longer, pause ensued as she looked away from the door. Radé closed her eyes and let her chin fall against her chest, much like she was asleep. She wasn't, obviously, instead trying to sort out thoughts of where her partner could be. A lot of the places that they had frequented were no longer safe and she had no idea what the status of her flat was. If they hadn't blown it from the face of the world, she would be surprised. This mental exercise was also a decent way to keep herself from flashing back to the others from before. Randomly she found her mind wandering to the tunnels of Retribution and exploring them with Tripp, then to the girl that had allowed the Institute member into the base. Suddenly Radé was reliving the torture routine that she and Tripp had run on that girl, the sound of breaking bones echoing perfectly in her mind.
Radé's eyes snapped open, killing that train of thought instantly. "I haven't gone home yet, if it's still even there," She muttered, not looking up, "He might have gone back. Tripp's always been pretty reliable like that."~~ Tripp struggled into a sitting position as the last of the trip died away. He wasn't violently shaky yet, so he hadn't been out for that long. Luckily. He held up a hand; listening as the machine whirred, trying to correct the nearly continuous tremors that shook his hands. It always made him wonder when the machine that had taken over his body would just give up and he wouldn't be able to move any more.
He moved, swinging his legs over the side of the couch and put his elbows on his knees. Without thinking, he tried to use his Ki powers to create claws around his hands, just out of habit. Instead of the odd glow that used to encircle his hands and form a solid object, he pitched forward and screamed. Cruel-looking metal razors slid from under his fingernails like cat-claws. The sound of metal clicking into place was drowned by Tripp's agonised moans. Somehow he had forgotten that his Ki powers were gone, replaced with metal and intense pain if he tried to access his old power. Tripp stared at the claws, trying to remember how he had ended up even more of a freak than before, but there was nothing. He had never broken past his old amnesia, and now there was more. With a sigh, he let his hand relax slowly, the blades slipping back into their hidden sheaths and the pain fading slowly away.
With that over for the moment, Tripp reached into his pockets and pulled out all the vials of whatever he had with him. Apparently he had ended up with some sort of hallucinogenic drug at his last buy and he didn't need that. A quick search through of the vials produced the one he was looking for and Tripp tossed it into a box at the foot of the couch. The glass bottle clinked against the many other bottles that resided there and Tripp returned the rest of his possessions to his pockets before sliding a hand down the back of his neck. His fingers halted over another new feature to his body: a small, built-in, device that could inject drugs directly into his blood-stream without the use of needles. All he needed to do was run a small vial to the receptor and it would hype him faster than ever before. Tripp hadn't used it. He didn't really like it, for some reason... the track-marks on his arms looked bad, but... he just didn't like the other way.
Tripp shook his head and stood, making his way slowly to what could loosely be called a computer in the opposite corner of the room. He settled on the floor and pulled a thin bit of wire from a pocket, clicking one end of it into the jack behind his left ear and the other into what had once been the computer's processor unit before it was Frankensteined together with a bunch of other bits from other computers. His body suddenly slumped forward and Tripp's conscious was transported into the computer, where a small image that bore little resemblance to the anorexic druggie looked around in silence before taking off into the glowing world that was inside the computers. |
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Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 5:24 pm
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The idea of finding Tripp lifted Alice's spirits and she couldn't' help but smile. It would feel like eternity while she sat in silence after Rade spoke and listened to try and hear if the Institute was nearby. After only hearing her heartbeat for a few minutes, Alice stood and stretched, trying to relax her strained muscles. She turned to where Rade was.
We should head towards your place then.She didn't want to waste any more time waiting underground, she had spent way too much time in tunnels and basements. And the least she could do to make up for all the trouble she had caused would be to reunited Tripp and Rade.
She moved cautiously towards the steps and made her way up without making a sound, hoping Rade would be close behind. She pushed the door open slowly and to her luck it didn't squeak. But when she put her foot forward the floorboards shifted with her move and made a sound that seemed to echo throughout the entire house, but in reality it would simply sound as if the house was settling. Alice winced and froze in her place. Her eyes studied the room and took in every little detail including the front door that appeared to be out of place in her mind. Rade and her had ran into the house and headed into the basement, but neither of them had shut the front door.
But it was shut now.
Alice was still inside Rade's mind and she spoke carefully.
They're in here.
She was prepared for any attacks that were about to happen, but she was terrified with not knowing when or where they would come from. Not being able to stand the tension, Alice stepped out into the living room and looked around. But no one jumped out or attacked. She didn't know what to think and wondered if they were somewhere else.
Getting ready to turn another corner, Alice still moved across the cluttered floor swiftly but surely. She reached the wall and put her back to it, trying to slow her breathing. She was still in Rade's mind and this was proving to make things difficult with her concentration. But she didn't want to risk getting caught off guard so she let her grip go on Rade's mind and focused her full attention on what she was doing at hand. She listened to the silent house and heard a very faint sound coming from the room beyond the wall she stood in. It was the sound of paper being moved and shuffled. Then there were voices.
"I thought I heard something." ]A man said, and his voice was getting closer, but he didn't look out through the door. Alice let out a short and silent breath.
"It was nothing." A deeper voice responded and the paper sound was made again. "Help me fill out these damn forms. This place is empty."
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Posted: Fri Oct 09, 2009 5:41 pm
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Radé poked her head around the door from the basement and sighed quietly. They hadn't been discovered, but that could be quickly remedied if the pair weren't careful. She stepped carefully onto the main floor and stood there awkwardly, her hand playing with the points of her ears as she looked at the floor cautiously. Alice had made noise as she was walking across the floor, and she didn't weigh too much. Radé was smaller, probably weighed less too, but the sword more than made up for it.
She suddenly felt the true weight of her weapon against her back and sagged slightly under the imagined increase in it's weight. Nonono, none of that. If I lose it here, I can't get home, and then what'll the druggie do? Probably forget to eat for a few weeks and die. Moron. Radé shook her head and glowered at the floor-boards, taking a cautious step forward. Luck seemed to be on her side and she got a silent few boards. Enough to get her away from the stairs and standing awkwardly between the doors. She gave Alice a "What the hell do we do now?!" look and gestured vaguely with her hands. It looked a little bit more like a helpless flail, honestly.
If it were just me, I'd take them down and then leave... She muttered mentally, unsure if Alice could hear her or not, But I really don't want to put Alice in more danger than necessary... Arg.
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