Listen Not At Keyholes, Lest Ye Be Vexed.
Posted: Sun Aug 13, 2006 12:56 am
((This is a cross-forums thread for both BVA and SJS. Open to those involved. The story that goes on, both sides, shall be given equal time and input. Students at SJS should PM me here for posts to go on the BVA forums. I'll forward posts from BVA to here. Also, caveat: posting on the SJS forum is not something I'm in the habit of doing. This is a rare exception, a cross-forums story, and both sides have their parts to tell.))
J. Elias Meriwether was learning a thing or two about so-called 'heroes.'
Longbow was bad news. You didn't need a flashlight and both hands to discover that. Working out of the Rogue Isles, without the careful oversight of their directors, the Peppermints were more than eager to act out their own base impulses. They would shoot first and ask questions later, even if you were doing nothing more villainous than going to 7-11 for some ice cream.
Dakota Sinclair's story of life before the relative safety of Bloodvine Academy was case in point. The girl had just been minding her own business, ditty-bopping about with her machines, and Longbow'd tried to pinch her. Like most of the strikes the Peppermints called, there was no evidence of a writ of habeus corpus.
He'd tried to give her space at the dance, not crowd too closely. Though it tore him up inside to see all the boys flocking to her, flirting with her, wanting to be around her. He was unused to jealousy, and found himself actually attempting to avoid her throughout the night, flirting with other girls, doing the tango with that Renn Haven chick ... but when they ran into each other two hours later, he realized he'd been making a mistake. She'd wanted to talk to him. And badly.
"It's Wyvern," she said, fear in her face. "They've put me on their hit list."
"What the hell is Wyvern and what do they want to do to who now?" He'd sat there, calmly drinking iced tea while her life fell apart around her. He'd hate himself later for it, but at the moment he was both bored and disinterested.
"Longbow," she said. "They're going to try to kill me."
He felt a sudden cold sensation stab through his entrails. God, let this be some paranoid stroke of her menstrual cycle. This did not sound shiny. "Why don't you sit over here," he said, leading her to a quiet nook in the balcony, "and tell me all about it."
The news was not good. He felt disgusted and angry. What business did these people have, trying to kill little girls for no crime other than not wanting to be drafted into Miss Liberty's personal army of kill-zombies? Those pussbags had shot him, twice on two occasions, and he was less than fond. And why the holy hell was Dakota telling him this? He was seventeen! What was he supposed to do about it? He felt bitter, frustrated, impotent. But he hugged her, kept his arm around her, and tried to think.
What had she said to him, that day down in the dark? "Every problem has a solution. We were bound to find it sooner or later." And how had they gotten out? They'd played to their strengths.
He sat there, tasting the acrid tea on his teeth, and considered the problem.
He could go out and kill every single Longbow operative. His stomach turned over at the thought. That was a lot of killing. No. He'd never killed anyone, not ever. Even if he set himself up for such a herculean task, he couldn't do it. He wouldn't become a murderer. There were limits to the amount of dirt you could wash off your hands. Life was too much. It was too dramatic ... too final.
He looked down at Dakota, snuggled safely under his wing. His mind flashed, gave him a sudden vision of that blonde hair matted with blood, face obliterated by inarguable bullets. He gritted his teeth. Not going to happen. She was a teammate. She was a friend. More than a friend. But how to stop it?
His eyes scanned the crowd, on alert to unseen dangers. Pocket D. was neutral ground. In the Isles, she'd need an escort at all times. He thought about her sturdy set of fighting robots and smiled through the anxiety. With her 'bots by her side, Dakota was capable of taking care of herself.
He distanced himself from the situation for a moment, tried to divorce his personal feelings from his rational mind. Her 'bots.
"Dakota, couldn't you use something like Nifty to patch into their records, erase your data from their files? Make yourself a nonperson to them. Bureaucracies are easy to flummox that way."
"I don't know," she said, her voice heavy, as if drugged. "Nifty's too little. We'd have to hack into their mainframe, get close. ... but ... maybe. It could work. But it would mean breaking into a Longbow base."
"Mind if I try to get some other people involved in this?" he asked. "I can hit hard, but not thirty guards at once."
"Yes," she said. "Whoever you think is best. I trust you, Jay. I always have." She turned her face up to be kissed. He did, feeling that odd combination of tenderness and detachment.
"Okay," he said. "I'll get something together."
He heard a cold unfamiliar voice, thick with derision, say "Yes? Who else could you use?" They looked up, startled, to see the face of Winged Siren peering down at them from behind a corner. She'd been eavesdropping. It looked like she was not amused by what she had overheard.
J. Elias made a face. "Ugh, not you, that's for damn sure. Bug off. Don't you have a sister to kill or something?" The green girl had had a few violent choice words to say regarding Wicked Siren earlier in the evening, and J. Elias had taken offense at the casual threats offered to his crew teammate. He was more annoyed with Winged Siren than threatened. He eyed her with barely concealed contempt.
"Not easy work, breaking into a Longbow base," she said, not bothering to hide what she thought of him. "And if you go, that's one less criminal I have to worry about."
He felt angry, suddenly. Just who did this little speck think she was, throwing around that word so easily, teasing him and the other Bloodvine students at the dance, when everyone had only offered her courtesy? "Run along, little fratricide," he said, dismissing her. Out of the three of them there, the hero was the one with the behavior problem.
Wicked Siren preened under the attention. Seeing herself taken seriously, she floated in midair and announced, "I will not allow you to break into a base belonging to Longbow!"
"Like you could stop it," J. Elias said.
"They're trying to kill me because I won't join them," Dakota said in a nervous rush. "They tried to kidnap me before in my hometown!"
Winged Siren turned on Dakota with something like glee. "You're lying!" she hissed. Dakota made a protest, but Winged Siren advanaced, her fingertips rubbing together ominously. She stretched forth her hands, reaching for the sides of Dakota's face. "Then let me see ... I will see if you are lying or not."
His anger reached the snapping point. Moving himself between Dakota and Winged Siren, he set up a crackling field of kinetic energy, pushing their antagonist back. "Don't you dare touch her!" he said.
She smiled the smile of the fanatic, raised her hands. "I will find out what I must know!"
He pushed harder, moving those delicate fingers away, straining to keep her back. His fists and face were bathed in the fluorescent pinkish light. "You're just another bully, another crook hiding behind the hero name!" he said, voice gone shrill with anger. "I wouldn't let someone like you touch my dry cleaning, much less stick your dirty fingers into the mind of my friend!"
"If someone here is dirty, it is you. Running around the Rogue Isles when you could be doing something worthy with your life."
Well, biscuits and gravy, he thought. The very thing I didn't want to see tonight, a fight, and here I am in the middle of it! He brought his shielding up hard, bubbling both himself and Dakota, and moved forward, fists burning. Keep her attention on you, he thought. Keep her focused right on you. And she may forget about Dakota. He bared his teeth. "Actions speak louder than words. Your sister helped save my life. Your sister is more hero than you'll ever be!"
Winged Siren was successfully baited. She advanced upon him, drawing a fiery sword. Somewhere behind him, he heard Dakota calling for help. A press of people crowded around them, all of them wearing the St. Joseph School uniform. Not a familiar Bloodvine face in sight. "Call off your dog, St. Joes," he said to the assembled throng.
"Break it up!" someone said. A group of people tried to interject themselves between the two, but Winged Siren still held that sword. J. Elias would be damned if he backed off before she did.
"Criminal!" she shouted, restrained by the arms of her classmates. "Thief! They are talking about breaking and entering! I will not let them!"
J. Elias backed up a few steps. He'd run up so much energy that he was having a hard time standing down. Every nerve fiber was jittery. Slowly, very slowly, he pushed himself back to normalcy, looked over at Dakota. "Like it matters," he said, voice back to normal pitch. "Like you could stop it."
"We can't arrest them here," said Eshva Dybbuk, eyes glinting. "You know that, Siren. What did they say?"
J. Elias stood tall, scowling at the St. Joe's students. They looked at him. Some murmured agreements about getting answers. He sighed. "I have no bone to pick with anyone here. But Winged Siren wanted to put herself inside Dakota's mind. We're not on trial here. We don't answer to you."
Somewhere in the background, Renn Haven muttered, "What are these schools doing to us?"
Winged Siren, looking almost hysterical, was screeching imprecations and accusations at them.
"What happened?"
J. Elias looked over at Dakota. She gave a slight nod. "She overheard us talking, sure. Longbow has put Dakota up for assasination. She's committed no crime. But she's apparently dangerous to them. We're trying to find a way, a nonviolent way, of stopping them. Are you listening to me? This isn't playtime. They want to kill her." He stepped back a few more paces, wrapped an arm around Dakota's waist. "That's all I need to say. If I thought you were going to help, it'd be a different story. But things are rough on the Isles. And Longbow isn't all it's cracked up to be."
I told him if he could get me into a Longbow facility, I could remove myself from their database," Dakota added softly. "Siren... Walk the streets of the Rogue Isles one day, and you'll see they indiscriminantly attack anyone. They ain't nice guys."
J. Elias ran a free hand through his hair. "I just came here to have a nice time at the dance. I didn't come looking for a fight." He watched Siren's face as her friends tried to comfort her, growing paler. She was just a little girl, after all ... and she looked very lost. She's an innocent. She doesn't really understand how things can be complicated ... not black and white. He didn't want to feel bad for the girl. Screw that. He looked at Dakota, clutched at her arm with a shaking hand. "We were ... dancing a while ago, weren't we? Can we get back to that?"
She nodded at him, solemnly, and they moved back out onto the dance floor.
J. Elias Meriwether was learning a thing or two about so-called 'heroes.'
Longbow was bad news. You didn't need a flashlight and both hands to discover that. Working out of the Rogue Isles, without the careful oversight of their directors, the Peppermints were more than eager to act out their own base impulses. They would shoot first and ask questions later, even if you were doing nothing more villainous than going to 7-11 for some ice cream.
Dakota Sinclair's story of life before the relative safety of Bloodvine Academy was case in point. The girl had just been minding her own business, ditty-bopping about with her machines, and Longbow'd tried to pinch her. Like most of the strikes the Peppermints called, there was no evidence of a writ of habeus corpus.
He'd tried to give her space at the dance, not crowd too closely. Though it tore him up inside to see all the boys flocking to her, flirting with her, wanting to be around her. He was unused to jealousy, and found himself actually attempting to avoid her throughout the night, flirting with other girls, doing the tango with that Renn Haven chick ... but when they ran into each other two hours later, he realized he'd been making a mistake. She'd wanted to talk to him. And badly.
"It's Wyvern," she said, fear in her face. "They've put me on their hit list."
"What the hell is Wyvern and what do they want to do to who now?" He'd sat there, calmly drinking iced tea while her life fell apart around her. He'd hate himself later for it, but at the moment he was both bored and disinterested.
"Longbow," she said. "They're going to try to kill me."
He felt a sudden cold sensation stab through his entrails. God, let this be some paranoid stroke of her menstrual cycle. This did not sound shiny. "Why don't you sit over here," he said, leading her to a quiet nook in the balcony, "and tell me all about it."
The news was not good. He felt disgusted and angry. What business did these people have, trying to kill little girls for no crime other than not wanting to be drafted into Miss Liberty's personal army of kill-zombies? Those pussbags had shot him, twice on two occasions, and he was less than fond. And why the holy hell was Dakota telling him this? He was seventeen! What was he supposed to do about it? He felt bitter, frustrated, impotent. But he hugged her, kept his arm around her, and tried to think.
What had she said to him, that day down in the dark? "Every problem has a solution. We were bound to find it sooner or later." And how had they gotten out? They'd played to their strengths.
He sat there, tasting the acrid tea on his teeth, and considered the problem.
He could go out and kill every single Longbow operative. His stomach turned over at the thought. That was a lot of killing. No. He'd never killed anyone, not ever. Even if he set himself up for such a herculean task, he couldn't do it. He wouldn't become a murderer. There were limits to the amount of dirt you could wash off your hands. Life was too much. It was too dramatic ... too final.
He looked down at Dakota, snuggled safely under his wing. His mind flashed, gave him a sudden vision of that blonde hair matted with blood, face obliterated by inarguable bullets. He gritted his teeth. Not going to happen. She was a teammate. She was a friend. More than a friend. But how to stop it?
His eyes scanned the crowd, on alert to unseen dangers. Pocket D. was neutral ground. In the Isles, she'd need an escort at all times. He thought about her sturdy set of fighting robots and smiled through the anxiety. With her 'bots by her side, Dakota was capable of taking care of herself.
He distanced himself from the situation for a moment, tried to divorce his personal feelings from his rational mind. Her 'bots.
"Dakota, couldn't you use something like Nifty to patch into their records, erase your data from their files? Make yourself a nonperson to them. Bureaucracies are easy to flummox that way."
"I don't know," she said, her voice heavy, as if drugged. "Nifty's too little. We'd have to hack into their mainframe, get close. ... but ... maybe. It could work. But it would mean breaking into a Longbow base."
"Mind if I try to get some other people involved in this?" he asked. "I can hit hard, but not thirty guards at once."
"Yes," she said. "Whoever you think is best. I trust you, Jay. I always have." She turned her face up to be kissed. He did, feeling that odd combination of tenderness and detachment.
"Okay," he said. "I'll get something together."
He heard a cold unfamiliar voice, thick with derision, say "Yes? Who else could you use?" They looked up, startled, to see the face of Winged Siren peering down at them from behind a corner. She'd been eavesdropping. It looked like she was not amused by what she had overheard.
J. Elias made a face. "Ugh, not you, that's for damn sure. Bug off. Don't you have a sister to kill or something?" The green girl had had a few violent choice words to say regarding Wicked Siren earlier in the evening, and J. Elias had taken offense at the casual threats offered to his crew teammate. He was more annoyed with Winged Siren than threatened. He eyed her with barely concealed contempt.
"Not easy work, breaking into a Longbow base," she said, not bothering to hide what she thought of him. "And if you go, that's one less criminal I have to worry about."
He felt angry, suddenly. Just who did this little speck think she was, throwing around that word so easily, teasing him and the other Bloodvine students at the dance, when everyone had only offered her courtesy? "Run along, little fratricide," he said, dismissing her. Out of the three of them there, the hero was the one with the behavior problem.
Wicked Siren preened under the attention. Seeing herself taken seriously, she floated in midair and announced, "I will not allow you to break into a base belonging to Longbow!"
"Like you could stop it," J. Elias said.
"They're trying to kill me because I won't join them," Dakota said in a nervous rush. "They tried to kidnap me before in my hometown!"
Winged Siren turned on Dakota with something like glee. "You're lying!" she hissed. Dakota made a protest, but Winged Siren advanaced, her fingertips rubbing together ominously. She stretched forth her hands, reaching for the sides of Dakota's face. "Then let me see ... I will see if you are lying or not."
His anger reached the snapping point. Moving himself between Dakota and Winged Siren, he set up a crackling field of kinetic energy, pushing their antagonist back. "Don't you dare touch her!" he said.
She smiled the smile of the fanatic, raised her hands. "I will find out what I must know!"
He pushed harder, moving those delicate fingers away, straining to keep her back. His fists and face were bathed in the fluorescent pinkish light. "You're just another bully, another crook hiding behind the hero name!" he said, voice gone shrill with anger. "I wouldn't let someone like you touch my dry cleaning, much less stick your dirty fingers into the mind of my friend!"
"If someone here is dirty, it is you. Running around the Rogue Isles when you could be doing something worthy with your life."
Well, biscuits and gravy, he thought. The very thing I didn't want to see tonight, a fight, and here I am in the middle of it! He brought his shielding up hard, bubbling both himself and Dakota, and moved forward, fists burning. Keep her attention on you, he thought. Keep her focused right on you. And she may forget about Dakota. He bared his teeth. "Actions speak louder than words. Your sister helped save my life. Your sister is more hero than you'll ever be!"
Winged Siren was successfully baited. She advanced upon him, drawing a fiery sword. Somewhere behind him, he heard Dakota calling for help. A press of people crowded around them, all of them wearing the St. Joseph School uniform. Not a familiar Bloodvine face in sight. "Call off your dog, St. Joes," he said to the assembled throng.
"Break it up!" someone said. A group of people tried to interject themselves between the two, but Winged Siren still held that sword. J. Elias would be damned if he backed off before she did.
"Criminal!" she shouted, restrained by the arms of her classmates. "Thief! They are talking about breaking and entering! I will not let them!"
J. Elias backed up a few steps. He'd run up so much energy that he was having a hard time standing down. Every nerve fiber was jittery. Slowly, very slowly, he pushed himself back to normalcy, looked over at Dakota. "Like it matters," he said, voice back to normal pitch. "Like you could stop it."
"We can't arrest them here," said Eshva Dybbuk, eyes glinting. "You know that, Siren. What did they say?"
J. Elias stood tall, scowling at the St. Joe's students. They looked at him. Some murmured agreements about getting answers. He sighed. "I have no bone to pick with anyone here. But Winged Siren wanted to put herself inside Dakota's mind. We're not on trial here. We don't answer to you."
Somewhere in the background, Renn Haven muttered, "What are these schools doing to us?"
Winged Siren, looking almost hysterical, was screeching imprecations and accusations at them.
"What happened?"
J. Elias looked over at Dakota. She gave a slight nod. "She overheard us talking, sure. Longbow has put Dakota up for assasination. She's committed no crime. But she's apparently dangerous to them. We're trying to find a way, a nonviolent way, of stopping them. Are you listening to me? This isn't playtime. They want to kill her." He stepped back a few more paces, wrapped an arm around Dakota's waist. "That's all I need to say. If I thought you were going to help, it'd be a different story. But things are rough on the Isles. And Longbow isn't all it's cracked up to be."
I told him if he could get me into a Longbow facility, I could remove myself from their database," Dakota added softly. "Siren... Walk the streets of the Rogue Isles one day, and you'll see they indiscriminantly attack anyone. They ain't nice guys."
J. Elias ran a free hand through his hair. "I just came here to have a nice time at the dance. I didn't come looking for a fight." He watched Siren's face as her friends tried to comfort her, growing paler. She was just a little girl, after all ... and she looked very lost. She's an innocent. She doesn't really understand how things can be complicated ... not black and white. He didn't want to feel bad for the girl. Screw that. He looked at Dakota, clutched at her arm with a shaking hand. "We were ... dancing a while ago, weren't we? Can we get back to that?"
She nodded at him, solemnly, and they moved back out onto the dance floor.