Re: The Vivacious Deadlock: S3G6: Round Two: BJ
01-15-2012, 05:27 PM
Originally posted on MSPA by fluxus.
The walls were lined with computers, the familiar drone of technology thickening the air. A single light burned with a florescent hum from a far corner of the room while the equipment slept, black screened monitors and dormant cameras emitting the occasional whir or blinking light that let Alexis know that, yes, they were all still alive. She sat, knees to her chest, in one of the chewed-up rolling chairs, hundreds of papers stacked in neat piles about her as she worked. Despite the black window shades that permanently censored the outside world, she knew that night had crept into morning.
Rubbing her face with a nail-bitten hand, Alexis turned her attention from the red, palm-sized, and thoroughly battered notebook in which she’d been scribbling. Her own computer had joined its brothers in sleep not long after the last of her coworkers had fled the Cage. That had been at a respectable hour. She sighed, carefully stuffing her night’s work into her pack, and donned her coat. The early hours of the morning guaranteed quiet, that she couldn’t deny, but the desire for sleep was beginning to take its toll.
Smiling wearily into her scarf, Alexis held on to the notebook as she turned out the light.
--
Heaving a sigh of relief, Ivan stared down at the white spires and polished buildings of the city that had to be Santa Nada. He’d been walking for what felt like hours and the soles of his feet, though considerably tougher than they’d once been, were beginning to ache miserably. Once he’d left the company of Braegar, Ivan had set off due east, towards a sun that had still lingered somewhere near the horizon. The morning had left fog along the rocky coast but now, with the sun high overhead, the day was clear, the air thick with humidity.
Perched atop one of the rock formations that littered the moors like the bones of a great beast, Ivan had a fair look at the city in the valley not far below. Though the finer details were lost to him, from this distance he thought Santa Nada stately to behold. The midday sun evened out the stains on its white walls and made them shine like pearl while steel colored waves lapped at a beach of coarse sand. A ring of darker buildings surrounded the city proper and echoed the jagged coastline. It was towards these buildings that Ivan resolved to make his descent.
He followed the skeleton of a well-worn path, weed-grown but marred with the signs of frequent use. He’d told the Vikings that he needed to get to Santa Nada, that he needed to find someone, and it wasn’t far from the truth. Harmon could have appeared anywhere, but Ivan had assumed the city would be a far better place to begin his search for her than the confines of Braegar’s ship.
It was soon that Ivan found himself in the midst of a market crowded with the smells, sounds, and inhabitants of one of Santa Nada’s outlying villages. Each wooden structure he passed was tall and salt-stained, towering high into the air and connected to its neighbors by a network of stairways and ladders above the street. People went about their business on strange airborne trails and Ivan tried his best to not stare openly, squinting in the sun. There were three hundred and fifty two people at the street-bound market, but how many there were above him he couldn’t tell. He ducked into a nearby stall, ignoring the small, toothless merchant, and attempted to peer at the activity above. Figures moved from building to building, the details of their faces and clothing obscured as though through a clouded window. Ivan clenched his jaw; his eyesight was deteriorating rapidly, getting worse with each passing day. The network of ladders this city employed, though intriguing, was too far in the air for him to either map by reading vibrations or to see clearly. It seemed a very long time since he’d last felt so blind.
Brushing past a display of woven rugs, Ivan shrugged his way back into the crowd. A map of the city spread out beneath his feet and at first he thought he was reading it much like he always did. But as he absently, carefully maneuvered himself through the throngs of people he realized that something much different, much deeper was at work. Each individual possessed a unique sort of signature in this universe, a rhythm that varied in strength and tempo from person to person. Many of the shop-keeps and peddlers were but small pulses on a grand scale of sound. He couldn’t call it music, necessarily, but what else to compare it to he didn’t know.
Ivan stopped short as a great, glaring tune punctured the relative calm of what he was reading. The rhythm was larger than anything he’d felt so far and, though rather unstable, it was powerful. He clenched and unclenched his fingers; the sound was familiar, there was no doubt in his mind, but somehow he couldn’t convince himself that Harmon was the source.
Reality drenched Ivan in a Technicolor stupor as he opened his eyes and sidestepped just before a woman could push him out of her way.
“Excuse me, friend,” she said as she barreled past him, her smile charming. Ivan unconsciously made a face at her retreating form as a noise that sounded eerily like a marching band began to grow louder behind him. Ivan turned as he realized what he was listening to but was too slow to avoid the mob of guardsmen that pushed him out of their way, cries of “Stop! Thief!” lingering in their wake.
Pushed to his knees on the side of the cobbled road, Ivan ground his teeth and spat out a slew of unintelligible curses as he realized he’d bloodied his hand. The ugliest goat he’d ever seen, cock-eyed and in possession of only one horn, eyed him with suspicion.
“All right there?” An aproned man of about thirty, round-faced and kindly, pulled Ivan to his feet.
“Fine, I think,” Ivan replied, smiling his thanks. “Though I’ve managed to thoroughly scare your goats.” All but the ugly one were prancing and crying out in dismay in their pen. The man laughed.
“They could use a good scare. And that hand doesn’t look fine to me. If you’d like to clean up, there’s a washroom just inside.” He gestured over his shoulder at a darkened doorway. It was then that Ivan realized he’d stumbled, quite literally, onto a shabby cantina.
Ivan shrugged the keyboard from his back and searched it, one-handed, for any damage. Thankfully, he found nothing but a small scuff. “That’d be great; thanks.”
“I thought as much.” The man turned and, with one foot inside, said, “And be sure to grab a drink on your way out, eh?” Ivan smiled grimly and nodded, not about to share his allergies with a barman who’d just offered to help him. He hesitated before following.
A white horse of considerable size and regal demeanor caught his eye and scoffed at him from beneath its lashes. Hitched to a post near the pen of goats, it snorted and pawed at the ground, raising its head high in protest of the constraints. Brow furrowed, Ivan approached him, thinking his grand regalia and proud white coat somehow familiar.
“Hello there,” Ivan murmured, head cocked in recognition as Horsegark snapped his teeth.
--
A thick fog settled on rooftops and obscured the moon, softening the edges of a sleeping city. Wisps of moisture gave the air a sharp, cold smell as Alexis unlocked the door. She took a moment to breathe- it was far too late for her to be doing this- and stepped inside her apartment, eyes bleary and nose reddened. The warm glow of light that greeted her was a pleasant surprise but not wholly unexpected.
“Jenny,” Alexis said, genuinely glad to see her roommate. “You’re awake.”
The walls were lined with computers, the familiar drone of technology thickening the air. A single light burned with a florescent hum from a far corner of the room while the equipment slept, black screened monitors and dormant cameras emitting the occasional whir or blinking light that let Alexis know that, yes, they were all still alive. She sat, knees to her chest, in one of the chewed-up rolling chairs, hundreds of papers stacked in neat piles about her as she worked. Despite the black window shades that permanently censored the outside world, she knew that night had crept into morning.
Rubbing her face with a nail-bitten hand, Alexis turned her attention from the red, palm-sized, and thoroughly battered notebook in which she’d been scribbling. Her own computer had joined its brothers in sleep not long after the last of her coworkers had fled the Cage. That had been at a respectable hour. She sighed, carefully stuffing her night’s work into her pack, and donned her coat. The early hours of the morning guaranteed quiet, that she couldn’t deny, but the desire for sleep was beginning to take its toll.
Smiling wearily into her scarf, Alexis held on to the notebook as she turned out the light.
--
Heaving a sigh of relief, Ivan stared down at the white spires and polished buildings of the city that had to be Santa Nada. He’d been walking for what felt like hours and the soles of his feet, though considerably tougher than they’d once been, were beginning to ache miserably. Once he’d left the company of Braegar, Ivan had set off due east, towards a sun that had still lingered somewhere near the horizon. The morning had left fog along the rocky coast but now, with the sun high overhead, the day was clear, the air thick with humidity.
Perched atop one of the rock formations that littered the moors like the bones of a great beast, Ivan had a fair look at the city in the valley not far below. Though the finer details were lost to him, from this distance he thought Santa Nada stately to behold. The midday sun evened out the stains on its white walls and made them shine like pearl while steel colored waves lapped at a beach of coarse sand. A ring of darker buildings surrounded the city proper and echoed the jagged coastline. It was towards these buildings that Ivan resolved to make his descent.
He followed the skeleton of a well-worn path, weed-grown but marred with the signs of frequent use. He’d told the Vikings that he needed to get to Santa Nada, that he needed to find someone, and it wasn’t far from the truth. Harmon could have appeared anywhere, but Ivan had assumed the city would be a far better place to begin his search for her than the confines of Braegar’s ship.
It was soon that Ivan found himself in the midst of a market crowded with the smells, sounds, and inhabitants of one of Santa Nada’s outlying villages. Each wooden structure he passed was tall and salt-stained, towering high into the air and connected to its neighbors by a network of stairways and ladders above the street. People went about their business on strange airborne trails and Ivan tried his best to not stare openly, squinting in the sun. There were three hundred and fifty two people at the street-bound market, but how many there were above him he couldn’t tell. He ducked into a nearby stall, ignoring the small, toothless merchant, and attempted to peer at the activity above. Figures moved from building to building, the details of their faces and clothing obscured as though through a clouded window. Ivan clenched his jaw; his eyesight was deteriorating rapidly, getting worse with each passing day. The network of ladders this city employed, though intriguing, was too far in the air for him to either map by reading vibrations or to see clearly. It seemed a very long time since he’d last felt so blind.
Brushing past a display of woven rugs, Ivan shrugged his way back into the crowd. A map of the city spread out beneath his feet and at first he thought he was reading it much like he always did. But as he absently, carefully maneuvered himself through the throngs of people he realized that something much different, much deeper was at work. Each individual possessed a unique sort of signature in this universe, a rhythm that varied in strength and tempo from person to person. Many of the shop-keeps and peddlers were but small pulses on a grand scale of sound. He couldn’t call it music, necessarily, but what else to compare it to he didn’t know.
Ivan stopped short as a great, glaring tune punctured the relative calm of what he was reading. The rhythm was larger than anything he’d felt so far and, though rather unstable, it was powerful. He clenched and unclenched his fingers; the sound was familiar, there was no doubt in his mind, but somehow he couldn’t convince himself that Harmon was the source.
Reality drenched Ivan in a Technicolor stupor as he opened his eyes and sidestepped just before a woman could push him out of her way.
“Excuse me, friend,” she said as she barreled past him, her smile charming. Ivan unconsciously made a face at her retreating form as a noise that sounded eerily like a marching band began to grow louder behind him. Ivan turned as he realized what he was listening to but was too slow to avoid the mob of guardsmen that pushed him out of their way, cries of “Stop! Thief!” lingering in their wake.
Pushed to his knees on the side of the cobbled road, Ivan ground his teeth and spat out a slew of unintelligible curses as he realized he’d bloodied his hand. The ugliest goat he’d ever seen, cock-eyed and in possession of only one horn, eyed him with suspicion.
“All right there?” An aproned man of about thirty, round-faced and kindly, pulled Ivan to his feet.
“Fine, I think,” Ivan replied, smiling his thanks. “Though I’ve managed to thoroughly scare your goats.” All but the ugly one were prancing and crying out in dismay in their pen. The man laughed.
“They could use a good scare. And that hand doesn’t look fine to me. If you’d like to clean up, there’s a washroom just inside.” He gestured over his shoulder at a darkened doorway. It was then that Ivan realized he’d stumbled, quite literally, onto a shabby cantina.
Ivan shrugged the keyboard from his back and searched it, one-handed, for any damage. Thankfully, he found nothing but a small scuff. “That’d be great; thanks.”
“I thought as much.” The man turned and, with one foot inside, said, “And be sure to grab a drink on your way out, eh?” Ivan smiled grimly and nodded, not about to share his allergies with a barman who’d just offered to help him. He hesitated before following.
A white horse of considerable size and regal demeanor caught his eye and scoffed at him from beneath its lashes. Hitched to a post near the pen of goats, it snorted and pawed at the ground, raising its head high in protest of the constraints. Brow furrowed, Ivan approached him, thinking his grand regalia and proud white coat somehow familiar.
“Hello there,” Ivan murmured, head cocked in recognition as Horsegark snapped his teeth.
--
A thick fog settled on rooftops and obscured the moon, softening the edges of a sleeping city. Wisps of moisture gave the air a sharp, cold smell as Alexis unlocked the door. She took a moment to breathe- it was far too late for her to be doing this- and stepped inside her apartment, eyes bleary and nose reddened. The warm glow of light that greeted her was a pleasant surprise but not wholly unexpected.
“Jenny,” Alexis said, genuinely glad to see her roommate. “You’re awake.”