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aeons_crackshotIt's been a hell of a few days, that's for sure. The FreakAngels weren't sure what would happen when they tried to punch a hole in the world, but ending up in another universe entirely wasn't it.
Their...hosts, for lack of a better term, seem entirely nonplussed at their slowly recovering psychic abilities.
They considered trying to escape, of course, but where are they going to go when they're stuck in the middle of the freaking Amazon?
That, and there are monsters lurking in the jungle that their hosts are still cleaning up. They saw the girl their age, Annabelle, kill three of them just yesterday.
Their...hosts, for lack of a better term, seem entirely nonplussed at their slowly recovering psychic abilities.
They considered trying to escape, of course, but where are they going to go when they're stuck in the middle of the freaking Amazon?
That, and there are monsters lurking in the jungle that their hosts are still cleaning up. They saw the girl their age, Annabelle, kill three of them just yesterday.
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Date: 2010-03-09 08:26 pm (UTC)Some like the fact they are not being hunted and that the hosts are not freaked out by the Package.
Connor takes a seat on a dry spot, and tries to relax his mind and body: as the juice started gathering again, it was hard to keep the sensations and emotions out, but he is managing, rebuilding his mental defenses.
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Date: 2010-03-09 08:31 pm (UTC)His rebuilding mental defenses may pick up on Annabelle coming back from yet another trip out to kill things with way too many teeth and claws.
She's beginning to hope that the stupid son of a bitch who opened the inter-dimensional portal got eaten, slowly. How many of the damn things are there.
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Date: 2010-03-09 08:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 08:40 pm (UTC)"Yet another day of pest control," she says with a shake of her head. "I think we've got another species of nasty on our hands too, as if the ones we had weren't trouble enough."
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Date: 2010-03-09 08:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 08:58 pm (UTC)"How are you doing?" She's not that scary....most of the time. If you ignore the scary weapons skill and monster killing.
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:05 pm (UTC)You just need to feel a death happening once to not want to repeat the experience at all, ever. "I am fine." To certain levels of 'fine', of course: he is 80 years in the past, in an alternate universe, stuck in the middle of the amazon near a monster invasion.
At least he can keep the bugs away.
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:11 pm (UTC)Annabelle would point out that sometimes you have to kill to stop more deaths from happening. That's why she kills, not for revenge or a desire to inflict pain.
"All of you are doing better than I'd expect," she says with a small smile. "You've been through a hell of a lot in the last few days, and that's just the bits I know about."
She's not going to pry about before, but she can guess.
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:22 pm (UTC)Does not mean he has to like it.
Connor looks more casual now: the fishnet shirt was ditched soon, as very impractical, and any goth make-up is a thing of the past as well.
But he is out of his element.
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:30 pm (UTC)The general level of unease when they came to, for starters.
He's not the only one out of his element.
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:30 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-09 09:32 pm (UTC)Annabelle is armed all the time, after all.
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:34 pm (UTC)You see, part of his mind still expects something to happen, like Annabelle drawing a gun and firing at him.
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:41 pm (UTC)"I tend to scare people even when I don't mean to," she adds sadly. For once, she looks her age instead of the self-confident heroine she tries to be.
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:43 pm (UTC)It is not like he is the most social of the Freakangels. "Hm. sorry. It's just..." Being hunted teaches paranoia.
If her team decided to kill them all, who would know? They are in the middle of nowhere, bodies could just be fed to the monsters...
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:49 pm (UTC)"Would it be easier if I wasn't carrying the guns?" Coming from Annabelle, this is a big sacrifice. Whether Connor will realize that or not...
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Date: 2010-03-09 09:52 pm (UTC)Because nobody else seemed to care.
...
"No. You would be uncomfortable without them." And Connor would be uncomfortable himself, feeling her uneasiness radiating.
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Date: 2010-03-09 10:00 pm (UTC)"I wish I could convince you that all of you are safe here, that no one's going to hunt you anymore," she says quietly.
"You're not alone anymore, you know. We may not have quite the same abilities that you do, but we know what it is to be different."
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Date: 2010-03-09 10:06 pm (UTC)To someone outside, the only visible thing is the way Connor's eyes light up; for Annabelle, they are standing on the eye of a hurricane of memories.
His memories.
The package; growing up as a freak, always outside, always knowing when people are lying or hiding things, trying to sleep but feeling the dark emotions people let loose in their dreams, near-madness until he learned to block it out.
Until he met the others.
The short few days until the government came after them. Deciding they were dangerous, and had to be controlled or eliminated.
The flight, always restless, always worried, trying to formulate a plan, resentment and anger growing up until the fateful night when Mark made the call, but just because of his temperament: they wanted to do it, to fight and to warn off those trying to kill or enslave them.
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Date: 2010-03-09 10:37 pm (UTC)Once she realized he's not actually trying to hurt her, she relaxes a bit.
She can't quite throw him off, but she can maintain her "self" in the flood of memories.
Well, shit. All of you had one hell of a row to hoe. Sympathy and sorrow and righteous wrath.
There is no judgment, no condemnation, no fear in her.
This is also a chance to, perhaps, earn a bit of trust. Annabelle allows her own memories to come forward.
Knowing that her skill with weapons is too good, too much. Nervous whispers, mentions of witchcraft, feeling more and more isolated from the rest of humanity.
The terrible relief of finding people who understood, who were like her.
Rescuing a young boy who'd been put in a sanitarium because he heard voices that turned out to be thoughts.
Standing in front of a mob protecting a frightened girl who'd accidentally called fire to protect herself from bullies.
What happened to you will not happen here, not while any of us draw breath. I swear it.
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Date: 2010-03-10 12:30 am (UTC)But Connor knows everything about the looks and whispers and the people who think you are crazy or dangerous because you are different.
Everything.
Then, without warning, the 'storm' fades, and the once-again-drained young man falls unceremoniously flat on his face.
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Date: 2010-03-10 12:32 am (UTC)She's going to carefully haul Connor off the ground and off his face.
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Date: 2010-03-10 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 01:07 am (UTC)"Did you run into any of the ones that spit acid? Nasty little beasts."
"He's pushed himself too hard, I think," Annabelle replies with a shake of her head. "He was explaining things and then he just fell over." Admittedly, he was explaining things using his psychic abilities, but whatever.
Annabelle has an entire lexicon of cranky faces. The one she's wearing now is Cranky Face There are People Who Desperately Deserve a Knee Somewhere Painful and There is No Chance of Me Getting to Deliver It.
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Date: 2010-03-10 01:17 am (UTC)"What was he explaining? More about how they came to be here? It can't have been particularly good, judging by the expression on your face."
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Date: 2010-03-10 01:20 am (UTC)She sighs. "No wonder they were so nervous when they first saw us."
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Date: 2010-03-10 02:11 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-03-10 02:18 am (UTC)Her lips quirk in something that's almost a grin. "He didn't take my profession that we understood what it's like to be different terribly well," she admits. "Although that may have been merely the straw that broke the camel's back."
That much stress and anger is going to find a way out, eventually.
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Date: 2010-03-11 02:15 am (UTC)At the back of his mind, he's turning over the implications of the visitors having been born Inspired. Even some who've attained Inspiration as adults are, as Max delicately phrased it, "not exactly responsible examples of humanity". Sometimes, in order to tolerate the failings of the un-Inspired, Primoris himself has to draw on his memories off what being an ordinary human was like. What must it be like to have been born with powers? The prospect frightens him. And at the same time fascinates him, though he'd never admit it except possibly to himself.
* The actual mesmerists (cryo- and electro-kinetic, respectively) whom Warren Ellis referred to by the pseudonyms "Elijah Snow" and "Jenny Sparks" ("Gené" being short for Geneviève and pronounced rather like "Jenny").
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Date: 2010-03-11 02:29 am (UTC)She pats him on the shoulder. "You're not working from the same playbook as most humans, you know. Or have you forgotten the time you knocked a steam engine over with your fist in Boise?" she teases.
" 'Course, I'm not either. But since all of my tricks involve weapons of one kind or another...."
He's more right to worry than he knows, if what might have been in their original world holds true in this one.