rachel: Rachel made her way to the kitchen after getting back from the rink with Josh. She figured she'd get something to eat, and then stay up all night packing. She pulled her hoodie off and tossed it on the counter before going to dig through the fridge.
Alex: He didn't want to admit it, but ever since the talk with Meggan Alex felt...better....And hungrier. Being depressed made quite hungry.
Alex: I wonder how Rae can keep her figure with that...
Alex: When he entered the kitchen he was welcomned by a butt pointing at him out of the fridge.
Alex: "Heya Rae.," he told the ass.
rachel: She frowned at the selection in the fridge. Should've got something while I was out...with Josh. Rachel glanced at Alex, "Hey." Okay, be nice. Amara's the one who broke them up...though he was stupid enough to believe her...
Alex: "Anything good in there?" He took a glance over her shoulder.
rachel: "Not that I can find," she moved, so he could see into the fridge for himself, "So...what's up with you and Meggan?"
Alex: "Buh?..." That was a pretty direct question. From the girl that he always had to look out for and ask about the things she does. Feels weird...
Alex: His eyes still searching the interior of the fridge, he finally talked. "Not much...it's kind of hard right now..."
rachel: Rachel pulled herself onto the counter, "Okay, and? I've talked to Meggan already, and..." Well, talked wasn't the word she'd use for Amara, but it worked, "Amara."
Alex: "Oh?" He rose an eyebrow. "And...what did you talk with her about?"
rachel: "I'm taking her as Amara. Just stuff. Speaking of her, why the hell did you believe any of the shit she was saying?"
Alex: He stepped back. "Sorry, but I think that's my problem." And then he finally decided for cereals and took a bottle of milk out of the fridge.
rachel: She gave him a look, frowning but dropped it, "Whatever, but I got my ass kicked by Amara. So there really wasn't much talking," Rachel got up an decided to try her luck with the pantry.
Alex: He slammed the bottle on the table, not caring whether it would break or not. "WHAT?!...What did she do?"
rachel: "Oh, I thought you didn't want to talk about it?" Rachel raised an eyebrow, checking to see if there was more than crumbs left in the chips bag.
Alex: He grabbed her shoulder and turned her around. "Don't be a smartass, what did she do?"
rachel: She shrugged his hand off, "Well, I took her arm off with my teke, she got pissy and burned me, but Josh healed it. Now, I'm just peachy."
Alex: His frown became deeper and deeper. Then he walked over to the door. "Guess someone is in for some ass-whopping!"
rachel: "It's all worked out. Amara and I are on civil terms," she followed him towards the door. Hmmm...what would distract him from Amara? Oh! "I went out with Josh."
Alex: He stopped short before the door. Then came a slow look over the shoulder. "That yellow guy?"
rachel: "He's gold, but yeah."
Alex: "...A bit much of a thank you, isn't it?"
rachel: "Thank you?" Rachel figured she could've brought up the tattoo she was going to get, but that could wait. "He took me ice skating for my birthday."
Alex: "...So it was a date?" Well, a golden boy was definitely a step up from Vic, but still...not like she could just go out on a date or walk around in the open with that much of an obvious mutant...
Alex: "Do you think that is a good idea?"
rachel: "Well, I guess. He asked me out. Yeah, why wouldn't it be?"
Alex: "You don't really know him, for once."
rachel: "So you think," she remarked, taking on her seat on the counter again.
Alex: "Whoah! Waitaminit!...How well do you know him yet?" He leaned forward and gave her the most suspicious look he could manage.
rachel: Rachel just shrugged and gave him an innocent look.
Alex: "You two had sex!" His finger pointed forward like a bolt of lightning, accusing and shocked at the same time.
rachel: "No, Alex, we haven't," Messing with him shouldn't be this much fun.
Alex: He sighed a big sigh of relief. "Good, I wouldn't want to involve Annie in this..."
rachel: "Yeah, I try to avoid her." She smirked, "Nothing's happened except for when Remy locked us in the closet."
Alex: "...why?!"
rachel: "Truth or dare."
Alex: "You shouldn't play that game at this school. Too many sex-crazed people." He folded his arms in front of his chest.
rachel: "Probably," Rachel actually agreed with him, "That game was way better than the one earlier. I was the only straight girl, and I had to kiss Amara!"
Alex: "I don't want you to play these games...and I don't want you to see this Josh again. The second he saw a chance he made a move on you!" Those words were accompanied by aangry nods.
rachel: She raised an eyebrow, "Games may be avoidable, but you can't forbid me to see Josh. That's like me telling you that you can't see Meggan."
Alex: "Which I don't at the moment, as you might recall."
rachel: "Sadly, and I think you should go be happy with Meggan again."
Alex: "Which I am..." He unfolded his arms agan and rubbed his neck in a resignating gesture.
Alex: "It's just...I don't know if it's really me. You should well know that I am in no way an example of psychological sanity."
rachel: "No one that lives here is, but I highly doubt Meggan is brainwashing you like Mara seems to think."
Alex: "I don't care what she thinks...You know, I'm not the smartest guy ever if it comes to humans, but I do know that she tried to get to me out of spite. It's just..." Him wildly moving his hands through his hair was a good sign of how hard he took the problem.
Alex: "I'm just wondering all the time: What if she is right?...I'd be glad to live in constant telepathic control for the rest of my life, it's way better than what my life used to be anyways..." Then he rose his head and looked her into the eyes.
Alex: "I am afraid of how it might end, Rae."
rachel: "I doubt she's right. Mainly because she thinks Meggan killed Pietro and is controlling all of us. You can't focus on the what ifs, Alex. It doesn't help anything," Rachel pushed herself off the counter and gave him a hug.
Alex: He hugged her back. "Life's too complicated for me..."
rachel: "Life's a bitch like that, but you just have to deal with it and keep going even if it's hard," Wow. This was weird. She was giving Alex advice for once.
Alex: "But I kept going all my life, and it never gets better...and if it does, it's not for long. Hell, I even lost the only family I ever had..."
rachel: "Yeah, I know how that feels, but it'll get better eventually."
Alex: "Do you know what would make me feel better?"
rachel: "What? But, I'm not dying my hair blonde again."
Alex: "Don't have ever sex again or date boys..."
Alex: "Would you promise to never have sex or date boys again?"
rachel: Rachel gave him a look and smiled, shaking her head, "No."
Alex: "Cripes..."
Christmas 2008: Alex
Christmas 2008: Alex
They're fighting!
-
tears~fall~like~glass
- Dread Pirate
- Posts: 2673
- Joined: Sat Jan 06, 2007 8:16 pm
- Title: Timelord
- Nightscrawlearth Character:
- Location: Indiana
Christmas 2008: Alex
Headgames
Alex was pretty sure that he was still sleeping. He couldn’t teleport, so him appearing in the danger-room program that Bobby had created for him (the labyrinth of the Minotaur) was a strong indication of a dream. However…the little skeleton sitting on his shoulders and playing bongo on his head felt far too real, nonetheless weird beyond his ability to describe it.
Everything had developed out of a nice evening with a great roast beef and an at least interesting British movie on TV. Meggan’s family was just great; there was no doubt about it. Just wouldn’t there have been this awkwardness in the background, deriving from the kind of complicated relationship (or non-relationship) he had found himself in regarding their daughter. Or maybe it was just in-built paranoia.
Whatever, at around eleven pm he finally went to sleep, after an evening filled with things that wouldn’t allow him to ‘wake up’ to a dream of a tiny skeleton grinning into his face while sitting on his chest.
He had shot up like a rocket and thrown the little guy away, and right there he had suspected something wasn’t right, because a shock like this should have been enough to wake him up if he was really dreaming.
“Oy hombre! You don’t do this to your amigo, si?” The little skeleton arose from the ground and un-dusted its…well, the dress seemed like a black poncho with a few weird patterns on it…slowly moving patterns!
“Pero I don’t take it bad. I mean, you don’t remember me, right? Have wiped your memory quite muy after all.” Again this smile…well, at least it seemed like one. Guess a skeleton can’t really help the grinning…
But really, grinning or not, this little guy walking up to him, talking with the worst Latin-gangster accent he had ever heard, in a…he looked over his shoulder…corridor that only ended in darkness on both sides and had a dust layer on the ground thick enough to drown a Chihuahua (Damn, the accent got in my head!)…all of this seemed so unreal. On the other side: He could smell the dust, see the skeleton, and feel the stony and roughly carved floor. With his bare feet. Which went over into his bare legs. Which ended in his far-too-bare-to-feel-comfortable butt!
I am NUDE!!!
Alex tried to cover certain parts of his anatomy, but when his hands arrived there, he suddenly was covered on all ‘bases’: He was wearing a sweater, jeans and (he rubbed his thighs together a bit)…yep, underwear was also part of the package.
“Heh, don’t worry Alejandro, you’re covered with things like that in here. You see…” His stumpy little legs had finally carried him (Alex just suspected the skeleton was a ‘he’ because of the manly voice) over and he looked up into Alex’s face. “Your mind always takes care of them little details.” He tapped on his head and it made a hollow sound, a bit like wood.
“My…my mind?” The furrows on his forehead had nigh-tectonic character by now. “Who the hell are you?”
“Ah, right, wiped memory and all.” The little guy made an almost cute bow and introduced himself. “The nombre is Juanes, Alex, and this…” He spread his arms. “…is your mind.”
He mustered the area around them once again.
“My mind is a dark dusty hole…shit, I knew those pills would have some bad results!” Then he flunked to the ground and started the sulking routine.
“Oy, hombre!” Juanes came closer and whacked his head. “You’re one of the slower guys, aincha?”
Alex looked up. “What?...And stop that please!”
He received another slap for good measurement and then his new…maybe-friend continued.
“You show up in your own head and you don’t ask why? Burro!”
He let that last slap go unmentioned since the point his attacker had made was a good one.
“Sooo…Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why am I in my own mind?!”
“Ah, right.” Juanes stepped back and folded his hands behind his back. Then he started to walk in little circles while explaining Alex the whole story.
Basically it came down to this: Juanes was some kind of…good faerie. For a second there Alex had considered to ask for tiny wings and a wand as prove, but that would have been stretching the metaphor too far. Anyways, Juanes was here because of Meggan. That’s what it was. To say it easy: Alex’s emotional landscape came quite close to Chernobyl-level right now, with him not having the slightest idea whether he was being controlled, had been controlled, or whatever. So the little skeleton was here to show him what was the case.
So, after explaining that (With quite a lot unnecessary uses of Spanish words) Juanes finished:
“Comprende? You’re gonna see with your own eyes what has happened, and then you’ll finally stop the bitching and moaning, chica!”
Okay, obviously this ‘faerie’ likes to insult the people it helps…
“And how exactly are you planning to help me?”
The skeleton lifted a fleshless index finger. “Ah, good question. Hmmm…” He shortly rubbed his chin while he formed a thought.
“Well, you see: This is your mind, right?”
The boy just nodded as an answer.
“So, you can basically do anything in here, like seeing if someone has done something to your mind. Comprende?”
Another nod.
“Normally a non-telepath can’t do that, but I can help you with that. And I can help you with finding out what to look for. Porque…You might be able to do everything, but your mind protects itself on its own too. So I gonna show you where to poke it so that it shows you what you want, si?”
This time Alex thought for a bit.
“I can do, like, everything in here?”
“Si.”
“Okay…”
The young man concentrated for a bit, and from one moment to the other a bowl of petunias appeared on the ground in front of him.
“I did it! Yeah!”
“Si, told you so. You can do everything in your mind, hombre. It’s rule numero two.”
While he tried to form another thing (Douglas Adams eat your heart out!), a part of his mind stumbled over that ‘rule’ bit.
“And what’s rule number one?” Here it comes...
A giant sperm-whale appeared in front of them…only that it was far to big for the small corridor, resulting in the walls bursting, Alex and his wanna-be-faerie being sent flying, and the bowl being flattened.
When the dust cleared and after Alex had wished the whale away again, he found himself with the skeleton on his shoulders, poking his head repeatedly.
“Numero one: Physics still count. Walls can break, flower can die under a whale’s booty, people can die, si.”
“A warning would have been nice…”
“You’ll learn better that way, amigo. And now: Let’s leave through the convenient shortcut you’ve opened for us.”
With those words Juanes rammed his heels into Alex’s sides like with a horse.
“HEY!...Wait a second!!!”
He had noticed a sudden light from above his head, and a short peek told him that the skeleton had set its head on fire. Well, why not, it cleared up the darkness a bit at least. However…
“No smoking in my head!”
“Awww, come on mi amigo!” A fine line of smoke travelled through his hollow skull up from the cigar (God knows from where he had got it…) in his mouth and out of one of his eye-holes.
“No! It’s unhealthy and disgusting!”
“Mierda…”
The now.
After quite a long walk and a few dead-ends (Alex couldn’t remember the right way through the labyrinth too well) the question had come up how it happened that they were walking through an exact copy (including the traps) of the program Bobby had programmed for him.
Quite simply: The labyrinth had been there first. Alex had subconsciously let Bobby design the program after this one, which was nothing less than his mind’s defence mechanism against his consciousness fidgeting too much with his subcounsciousness. Which also meant there would be a Minotaur at the end.
This little information had caused Alex to become quite silent. If rule one was true and he could die in here a monster created by his own mind that would try to do so seemed a bit paradox. The philosophical implications sent him on a quite slippery road.
Too bad for him that Juanes didn’t care much for those considerations and was mainly bored by the silence they caused. Which unfortunately had lead him to discover his musical ‘talent’ regarding getting quite a groovy beat out of Alex’s head.
When he reached another fast passage, Alex finally snapped.
“WOULD YOU MIND CUTTING THAT SHIT OUT?”
The skeleton nearly fell off. “Aye!...Amigo, stop scaring me like that, I might get a fit, oy!”
“Then stop using my head as some variation of a jungle drum! Jeeesus, you really…”
But their quarrel was interrupted by a sudden breaking noise, when out of a cloud of debris the Minotaur came breaking through the wall.
“Ohshi-…” Alex barely managed to change into something that could survive the brutal assault. It came out as his troll form, which he hadn’t used for quite a while. Still he managed to stop the attack, after creating quite the long line on the ground, and finally their giant paws interlocked while they tried to force the significant other down on his knees.
Too bad for the Minotaur that Alex could grow muscle mass as he pleased. To bad for Alex that the Minotaur head-butted him, though…
So he went down with a groan, but still managed to slip aside before a hove the size of a plate could stomp on him by turning into his wolf form and leaping away. When his feet hit the ground again he extended his claws and managed to do an instant turn, growing a horn and an enforced spine mid-air and impaling his adversary when he hit him.
But that wasn’t the end yet. Two enormous paws came crushing down on his back and pressed the air out of his lungs, sending him down on his knees. And to add bad to worse he then was grabbed and thrown against another wall, which nearly took the last remaining fighting spirit out of him.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the monster, heavily bleeding but the wound already closing, accelerating towards him, the horns pointing concerningly accurate at his chest. And he hadn’t got enough air back into his body to move fast enough.
I am SO dead…I won’t see Meggan and the others ever again…sorry Rae, please don’t be sad…rule number one sucks…waaaaiiiit a second…
When the Minotaur finally charged in for his last jump towards his soon-to-be-victim, a giant chain fell out of nothing, binding him towards the ground and soon followed by a few other chains, each of them big enough to hold a ship, until he finally looked like a giant salami.
“Eh, nice style chefe.” Juanes reappeared next to Alex, who had changed back into his human form by now.
“Wow, thank you so much…where have you been anyways? A nice faerie you are…”
“Ah, I’m a lover, not a fighter, si?”
That made Alex blink after all. “A lover?...But you don’t have a…”
Yet, before he could finish his sentence, the walls of the labyrinth started to descend into the ground, followed by the floor and even the Minotaur.
“What the hell?...What’s this supposed to mean?”
“This, my brother, is rule number three…”
[Edited on 3/11/07 by Freak]
Alex was pretty sure that he was still sleeping. He couldn’t teleport, so him appearing in the danger-room program that Bobby had created for him (the labyrinth of the Minotaur) was a strong indication of a dream. However…the little skeleton sitting on his shoulders and playing bongo on his head felt far too real, nonetheless weird beyond his ability to describe it.
Everything had developed out of a nice evening with a great roast beef and an at least interesting British movie on TV. Meggan’s family was just great; there was no doubt about it. Just wouldn’t there have been this awkwardness in the background, deriving from the kind of complicated relationship (or non-relationship) he had found himself in regarding their daughter. Or maybe it was just in-built paranoia.
Whatever, at around eleven pm he finally went to sleep, after an evening filled with things that wouldn’t allow him to ‘wake up’ to a dream of a tiny skeleton grinning into his face while sitting on his chest.
He had shot up like a rocket and thrown the little guy away, and right there he had suspected something wasn’t right, because a shock like this should have been enough to wake him up if he was really dreaming.
“Oy hombre! You don’t do this to your amigo, si?” The little skeleton arose from the ground and un-dusted its…well, the dress seemed like a black poncho with a few weird patterns on it…slowly moving patterns!
“Pero I don’t take it bad. I mean, you don’t remember me, right? Have wiped your memory quite muy after all.” Again this smile…well, at least it seemed like one. Guess a skeleton can’t really help the grinning…
But really, grinning or not, this little guy walking up to him, talking with the worst Latin-gangster accent he had ever heard, in a…he looked over his shoulder…corridor that only ended in darkness on both sides and had a dust layer on the ground thick enough to drown a Chihuahua (Damn, the accent got in my head!)…all of this seemed so unreal. On the other side: He could smell the dust, see the skeleton, and feel the stony and roughly carved floor. With his bare feet. Which went over into his bare legs. Which ended in his far-too-bare-to-feel-comfortable butt!
I am NUDE!!!
Alex tried to cover certain parts of his anatomy, but when his hands arrived there, he suddenly was covered on all ‘bases’: He was wearing a sweater, jeans and (he rubbed his thighs together a bit)…yep, underwear was also part of the package.
“Heh, don’t worry Alejandro, you’re covered with things like that in here. You see…” His stumpy little legs had finally carried him (Alex just suspected the skeleton was a ‘he’ because of the manly voice) over and he looked up into Alex’s face. “Your mind always takes care of them little details.” He tapped on his head and it made a hollow sound, a bit like wood.
“My…my mind?” The furrows on his forehead had nigh-tectonic character by now. “Who the hell are you?”
“Ah, right, wiped memory and all.” The little guy made an almost cute bow and introduced himself. “The nombre is Juanes, Alex, and this…” He spread his arms. “…is your mind.”
He mustered the area around them once again.
“My mind is a dark dusty hole…shit, I knew those pills would have some bad results!” Then he flunked to the ground and started the sulking routine.
“Oy, hombre!” Juanes came closer and whacked his head. “You’re one of the slower guys, aincha?”
Alex looked up. “What?...And stop that please!”
He received another slap for good measurement and then his new…maybe-friend continued.
“You show up in your own head and you don’t ask why? Burro!”
He let that last slap go unmentioned since the point his attacker had made was a good one.
“Sooo…Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why am I in my own mind?!”
“Ah, right.” Juanes stepped back and folded his hands behind his back. Then he started to walk in little circles while explaining Alex the whole story.
Basically it came down to this: Juanes was some kind of…good faerie. For a second there Alex had considered to ask for tiny wings and a wand as prove, but that would have been stretching the metaphor too far. Anyways, Juanes was here because of Meggan. That’s what it was. To say it easy: Alex’s emotional landscape came quite close to Chernobyl-level right now, with him not having the slightest idea whether he was being controlled, had been controlled, or whatever. So the little skeleton was here to show him what was the case.
So, after explaining that (With quite a lot unnecessary uses of Spanish words) Juanes finished:
“Comprende? You’re gonna see with your own eyes what has happened, and then you’ll finally stop the bitching and moaning, chica!”
Okay, obviously this ‘faerie’ likes to insult the people it helps…
“And how exactly are you planning to help me?”
The skeleton lifted a fleshless index finger. “Ah, good question. Hmmm…” He shortly rubbed his chin while he formed a thought.
“Well, you see: This is your mind, right?”
The boy just nodded as an answer.
“So, you can basically do anything in here, like seeing if someone has done something to your mind. Comprende?”
Another nod.
“Normally a non-telepath can’t do that, but I can help you with that. And I can help you with finding out what to look for. Porque…You might be able to do everything, but your mind protects itself on its own too. So I gonna show you where to poke it so that it shows you what you want, si?”
This time Alex thought for a bit.
“I can do, like, everything in here?”
“Si.”
“Okay…”
The young man concentrated for a bit, and from one moment to the other a bowl of petunias appeared on the ground in front of him.
“I did it! Yeah!”
“Si, told you so. You can do everything in your mind, hombre. It’s rule numero two.”
While he tried to form another thing (Douglas Adams eat your heart out!), a part of his mind stumbled over that ‘rule’ bit.
“And what’s rule number one?” Here it comes...
A giant sperm-whale appeared in front of them…only that it was far to big for the small corridor, resulting in the walls bursting, Alex and his wanna-be-faerie being sent flying, and the bowl being flattened.
When the dust cleared and after Alex had wished the whale away again, he found himself with the skeleton on his shoulders, poking his head repeatedly.
“Numero one: Physics still count. Walls can break, flower can die under a whale’s booty, people can die, si.”
“A warning would have been nice…”
“You’ll learn better that way, amigo. And now: Let’s leave through the convenient shortcut you’ve opened for us.”
With those words Juanes rammed his heels into Alex’s sides like with a horse.
“HEY!...Wait a second!!!”
He had noticed a sudden light from above his head, and a short peek told him that the skeleton had set its head on fire. Well, why not, it cleared up the darkness a bit at least. However…
“No smoking in my head!”
“Awww, come on mi amigo!” A fine line of smoke travelled through his hollow skull up from the cigar (God knows from where he had got it…) in his mouth and out of one of his eye-holes.
“No! It’s unhealthy and disgusting!”
“Mierda…”
The now.
After quite a long walk and a few dead-ends (Alex couldn’t remember the right way through the labyrinth too well) the question had come up how it happened that they were walking through an exact copy (including the traps) of the program Bobby had programmed for him.
Quite simply: The labyrinth had been there first. Alex had subconsciously let Bobby design the program after this one, which was nothing less than his mind’s defence mechanism against his consciousness fidgeting too much with his subcounsciousness. Which also meant there would be a Minotaur at the end.
This little information had caused Alex to become quite silent. If rule one was true and he could die in here a monster created by his own mind that would try to do so seemed a bit paradox. The philosophical implications sent him on a quite slippery road.
Too bad for him that Juanes didn’t care much for those considerations and was mainly bored by the silence they caused. Which unfortunately had lead him to discover his musical ‘talent’ regarding getting quite a groovy beat out of Alex’s head.
When he reached another fast passage, Alex finally snapped.
“WOULD YOU MIND CUTTING THAT SHIT OUT?”
The skeleton nearly fell off. “Aye!...Amigo, stop scaring me like that, I might get a fit, oy!”
“Then stop using my head as some variation of a jungle drum! Jeeesus, you really…”
But their quarrel was interrupted by a sudden breaking noise, when out of a cloud of debris the Minotaur came breaking through the wall.
“Ohshi-…” Alex barely managed to change into something that could survive the brutal assault. It came out as his troll form, which he hadn’t used for quite a while. Still he managed to stop the attack, after creating quite the long line on the ground, and finally their giant paws interlocked while they tried to force the significant other down on his knees.
Too bad for the Minotaur that Alex could grow muscle mass as he pleased. To bad for Alex that the Minotaur head-butted him, though…
So he went down with a groan, but still managed to slip aside before a hove the size of a plate could stomp on him by turning into his wolf form and leaping away. When his feet hit the ground again he extended his claws and managed to do an instant turn, growing a horn and an enforced spine mid-air and impaling his adversary when he hit him.
But that wasn’t the end yet. Two enormous paws came crushing down on his back and pressed the air out of his lungs, sending him down on his knees. And to add bad to worse he then was grabbed and thrown against another wall, which nearly took the last remaining fighting spirit out of him.
When he opened his eyes again, he saw the monster, heavily bleeding but the wound already closing, accelerating towards him, the horns pointing concerningly accurate at his chest. And he hadn’t got enough air back into his body to move fast enough.
I am SO dead…I won’t see Meggan and the others ever again…sorry Rae, please don’t be sad…rule number one sucks…waaaaiiiit a second…
When the Minotaur finally charged in for his last jump towards his soon-to-be-victim, a giant chain fell out of nothing, binding him towards the ground and soon followed by a few other chains, each of them big enough to hold a ship, until he finally looked like a giant salami.
“Eh, nice style chefe.” Juanes reappeared next to Alex, who had changed back into his human form by now.
“Wow, thank you so much…where have you been anyways? A nice faerie you are…”
“Ah, I’m a lover, not a fighter, si?”
That made Alex blink after all. “A lover?...But you don’t have a…”
Yet, before he could finish his sentence, the walls of the labyrinth started to descend into the ground, followed by the floor and even the Minotaur.
“What the hell?...What’s this supposed to mean?”
“This, my brother, is rule number three…”
[Edited on 3/11/07 by Freak]
They're fighting!-
tears~fall~like~glass
- Dread Pirate
- Posts: 2673
- Joined: Sat Jan 06, 2007 8:16 pm
- Title: Timelord
- Nightscrawlearth Character:
- Location: Indiana
Christmas 2008: Alex
“…Huh?...”
Okay, maybe this wasn’t the most brilliant reaction towards an Indian looking guy who suddenly shows up in your mind, wearing a crown of feathers and a poncho with variously coloured Mayan symbols, and calls you his brother…But Alex just couldn’t manage to come up with something better. So instead he chose to ogle the poncho and the face of the man, which was absolutely dominated by a huge nose, that seemed as sharp and edgy as the pecker of an eagle. It nearly took all the attention one could give the guy’s face, but if Alex concentrated, he could see the wrinkles and tiny scars all over the latter, telling him that he was at least twice as old as him and had lived through a great part of hard work out in the open (because, really, all that tan just couldn’t be inborn, the face had a nigh-leathery quality!)
“Ah, I see my appearance leaves you a bit speechless.” The man looked down on his getup an up again. “I’m sorry, but, you see, we nearly always choose our telepathic avatar to wear what we’re most comfortable with, so each time this comes up…” Then he let his eyes wander over Alex. “Although this is the first time I have seen an avatar being clothed in clothes that outrageously boring…”
“Hey! Those are the clothes I also wear, like, outside of my head!”
The Indian just made a short, sarcastic laugh and then continued.
“And this is exactly the reason why I am here, my brother. You just can’t manage to live up to your own potential on your own. It’s really a shame.”
“Erm…” Alex rose a hand. “Sorry, but…why do you call me ‘brother’? It’s not exactly like we resemble each other, you know?”
“…This is true…How should I explain this the best way?...”
The man thought about it for a second, then he spoke up again.
“Take a seat please.”
And right behind Alex a chair popped out of the ground, forcing him to either sit down or fall over and hit his face right into the table that also had suddenly appeared right in front of him. So he sat down.
The other man obviously had caused this, because he didn’t have a Victorian England metal chair nearly popping out his kneecaps. He walked over to the table and just normally sat down on a second chair, which also had appeared out of thin air.
“Tea?,” a voice as dry as parchment and with a Spanish accent as thick as Antonio Banderas’ asked him.
He pried his eyes away from the weird guy and saw…not Juanes. It was another skeleton, recognizable by the lack of a flaming skull and, only now he realized it, a slightly female voice. Which was good, after all she was wearing a French maid costume.
And…’she’ was exactly as tall as Juanes. Which was weird, since she offered him a tray with a cup and a can, from which a slightly bitter smell of green tea came, on the height of the table. So he looked down and realized she was standing on the shoulders of yet another skeleton. With shades, seemingly stapled to its head, and in some kind of Italian suit. And waving at him.
“Oy, hombre! I ain’t got all day, comprende?...And you look better back down, Enrique! You won’t get a glance up my skirt, and if I have to kick your head off!”
“Shakira!” The man made a deep frown and scolded the female skeleton. “I thought I had highlighted how important it is to treat this boy with courtesy. No quarrels please!”
“Si si chefe…” Shakira just put the tray down in front of Alex and then got down on the ground again…only to be instantly replaced by another skeleton. This one was fat…well, as fat as you could be with only bones around. Maybe in this case one could really talk of heavy bones? But maybe it also only seemed that way because the poncho this small guy was wearing more spanned a width than a height? Even the skull seemed wider than high…
“Cookies?”
“You should take them, Sérgio Mendes is an excellent cook.”
“…Okay…” Alex took one of the cookies and bit into it. And really, it tasted brilliant! However…
“Considering that his is my mind, I guess I could also make a dog pile taste good, though…”
As he heard this, Sérgio Mendes just dropped his head and jumped down to the ground, being obviously emotionally hurt in the act.
“Uhm…sorry…”
“Don’t be.” The man leaned back and sipped out of his own mug. “You don’t apologize to demons. Oh, I am Paco, by the way. Although you will probably prefer calling me your ‘highest priest’ in the near future.
“Erm…how about no?” Alex also took a sip, careful to not let the crazy out of his eyes.
“Heh, very well then, let me tell you a story…”
It came all down to this: Paco had grown up in one small little town in Mexico, as the son of Indian farmers who had lost all of their land by the time he had reached the age of three to crime lords. So, to support his family he very early started to work…well, not really work, as he was ‘working’ for the crime lords who had taken over and separated the steadily growing nearby city among themselves.
What he did were mainly drug runs, carrying coke or mescaline through the streets from one seller to the other. It was unavoidable that he would try this too one day, and so he rapidly got addicted. Which however wasn’t bad in this case, since in the states of his higher perception he was able to finally see! The gods, the demons, all of those old Mayan stories his mother had told him at night, all of this existed! He cold see them, feel them, hear them telling their stories and acting them out in front of him…
By now Alex was convinced that the man was nuts down to the core of his drug-mushed brain. And what came next only made it more certain.
One day, when Paco was about sixteen and was living through one of the worst trips in his life so far, suddenly a huge migraine had hit him, and five little calavera dolls had jumped out of his head, crawling out of each of its ‘holes’. This hadn’t made him the least bit concerned, since the migraine instantly had ended. He had been sure that those were the demons some greater force had pulled out of his body and given to his service out of grace.
His parents obviously had had a different idea of that, so they had brought him to a scientist on the biggest university in the country (which had cost nearly one month worth of drug money, so he was naturally pissed). The guy had talked about something like ‘telekinetic telepath’ and that he had read the works of some doctor in the USA of this and that he’d like to examine Paco a bit more.
One day later he had jumped out of the tenth story of an office building. Paco didn’t want people to poke him, so one of the demons had entered the mind of the professor and made him jump. From that one his parents had been happy that he was able to do the will of the gods. (Or absolutely terrified…, was what Alex thought about this.)
So, while using his little helpers, he managed to quickly rise to power within the criminal world of Mexico, but that was only a side effect. He was searching, searching for people like him, that served the gods, but didn’t know about it yet. Which is how he found Xavier’s. And even better: A godly incarnation!
Okay, I’m sitting here and drinking tea with some complete nut job…in my mind! But I have to admit, I’m interested…
“The ‘dogly incarnation’ being...?”
“You, my boy. I saw you via the eyes of my demon! A scaled body and the wings of an eagle. In this little body there sleeps the conscience of the Quetzalcoatl!”
“…You don’t might incidentally know a certain doctor Johann Schmidt?”
“No.”
“Just wondering. Well anyways…” Alex got up from his chair. “It was….well, it wasn’t really nice talking with you, so pardon me, I have to find a way to get out…of…Why is this here?”
While talking he had turned around, which lead to him noticing the giant blocks of stone five little skeletons were forming directly forming out of the ground and building onto each other, all in silence and with only their hands (although one of them he hadn’t seen yet seemed to be busy spraying a tag on one of the forming walls).
“You might not be aware yet, but I will make sure you will be a worthy god on this plane of existence. I will awake you, oh mighty Quetzal!”
“Dude, you are rebuilding my mind?!”
“I would prefer the term ‘recreating’, but yes, that’s basically it…”
Paco arose too now, with a content smile that nearly seemed unearthly happy.
Alex chose to change into his troll form to impress the other guy. After all this was his mind, the Indian only was a guest.
“What makes you think that I will allow this?,” he asked with his deepest voice, that sounded as if he was gargling boulders.
“It’s rule numero three, companhero.” Juanes had sneaked up to him and then jumped on his head, where he sat down and lit another cigar.
“If someone with a stronger mind comes by, he owns you, si?”
And when Alex felt the chains shooting out of the ground and tying him up without him wanting to, he realized that rule number three sucked…
Okay, maybe this wasn’t the most brilliant reaction towards an Indian looking guy who suddenly shows up in your mind, wearing a crown of feathers and a poncho with variously coloured Mayan symbols, and calls you his brother…But Alex just couldn’t manage to come up with something better. So instead he chose to ogle the poncho and the face of the man, which was absolutely dominated by a huge nose, that seemed as sharp and edgy as the pecker of an eagle. It nearly took all the attention one could give the guy’s face, but if Alex concentrated, he could see the wrinkles and tiny scars all over the latter, telling him that he was at least twice as old as him and had lived through a great part of hard work out in the open (because, really, all that tan just couldn’t be inborn, the face had a nigh-leathery quality!)
“Ah, I see my appearance leaves you a bit speechless.” The man looked down on his getup an up again. “I’m sorry, but, you see, we nearly always choose our telepathic avatar to wear what we’re most comfortable with, so each time this comes up…” Then he let his eyes wander over Alex. “Although this is the first time I have seen an avatar being clothed in clothes that outrageously boring…”
“Hey! Those are the clothes I also wear, like, outside of my head!”
The Indian just made a short, sarcastic laugh and then continued.
“And this is exactly the reason why I am here, my brother. You just can’t manage to live up to your own potential on your own. It’s really a shame.”
“Erm…” Alex rose a hand. “Sorry, but…why do you call me ‘brother’? It’s not exactly like we resemble each other, you know?”
“…This is true…How should I explain this the best way?...”
The man thought about it for a second, then he spoke up again.
“Take a seat please.”
And right behind Alex a chair popped out of the ground, forcing him to either sit down or fall over and hit his face right into the table that also had suddenly appeared right in front of him. So he sat down.
The other man obviously had caused this, because he didn’t have a Victorian England metal chair nearly popping out his kneecaps. He walked over to the table and just normally sat down on a second chair, which also had appeared out of thin air.
“Tea?,” a voice as dry as parchment and with a Spanish accent as thick as Antonio Banderas’ asked him.
He pried his eyes away from the weird guy and saw…not Juanes. It was another skeleton, recognizable by the lack of a flaming skull and, only now he realized it, a slightly female voice. Which was good, after all she was wearing a French maid costume.
And…’she’ was exactly as tall as Juanes. Which was weird, since she offered him a tray with a cup and a can, from which a slightly bitter smell of green tea came, on the height of the table. So he looked down and realized she was standing on the shoulders of yet another skeleton. With shades, seemingly stapled to its head, and in some kind of Italian suit. And waving at him.
“Oy, hombre! I ain’t got all day, comprende?...And you look better back down, Enrique! You won’t get a glance up my skirt, and if I have to kick your head off!”
“Shakira!” The man made a deep frown and scolded the female skeleton. “I thought I had highlighted how important it is to treat this boy with courtesy. No quarrels please!”
“Si si chefe…” Shakira just put the tray down in front of Alex and then got down on the ground again…only to be instantly replaced by another skeleton. This one was fat…well, as fat as you could be with only bones around. Maybe in this case one could really talk of heavy bones? But maybe it also only seemed that way because the poncho this small guy was wearing more spanned a width than a height? Even the skull seemed wider than high…
“Cookies?”
“You should take them, Sérgio Mendes is an excellent cook.”
“…Okay…” Alex took one of the cookies and bit into it. And really, it tasted brilliant! However…
“Considering that his is my mind, I guess I could also make a dog pile taste good, though…”
As he heard this, Sérgio Mendes just dropped his head and jumped down to the ground, being obviously emotionally hurt in the act.
“Uhm…sorry…”
“Don’t be.” The man leaned back and sipped out of his own mug. “You don’t apologize to demons. Oh, I am Paco, by the way. Although you will probably prefer calling me your ‘highest priest’ in the near future.
“Erm…how about no?” Alex also took a sip, careful to not let the crazy out of his eyes.
“Heh, very well then, let me tell you a story…”
It came all down to this: Paco had grown up in one small little town in Mexico, as the son of Indian farmers who had lost all of their land by the time he had reached the age of three to crime lords. So, to support his family he very early started to work…well, not really work, as he was ‘working’ for the crime lords who had taken over and separated the steadily growing nearby city among themselves.
What he did were mainly drug runs, carrying coke or mescaline through the streets from one seller to the other. It was unavoidable that he would try this too one day, and so he rapidly got addicted. Which however wasn’t bad in this case, since in the states of his higher perception he was able to finally see! The gods, the demons, all of those old Mayan stories his mother had told him at night, all of this existed! He cold see them, feel them, hear them telling their stories and acting them out in front of him…
By now Alex was convinced that the man was nuts down to the core of his drug-mushed brain. And what came next only made it more certain.
One day, when Paco was about sixteen and was living through one of the worst trips in his life so far, suddenly a huge migraine had hit him, and five little calavera dolls had jumped out of his head, crawling out of each of its ‘holes’. This hadn’t made him the least bit concerned, since the migraine instantly had ended. He had been sure that those were the demons some greater force had pulled out of his body and given to his service out of grace.
His parents obviously had had a different idea of that, so they had brought him to a scientist on the biggest university in the country (which had cost nearly one month worth of drug money, so he was naturally pissed). The guy had talked about something like ‘telekinetic telepath’ and that he had read the works of some doctor in the USA of this and that he’d like to examine Paco a bit more.
One day later he had jumped out of the tenth story of an office building. Paco didn’t want people to poke him, so one of the demons had entered the mind of the professor and made him jump. From that one his parents had been happy that he was able to do the will of the gods. (Or absolutely terrified…, was what Alex thought about this.)
So, while using his little helpers, he managed to quickly rise to power within the criminal world of Mexico, but that was only a side effect. He was searching, searching for people like him, that served the gods, but didn’t know about it yet. Which is how he found Xavier’s. And even better: A godly incarnation!
Okay, I’m sitting here and drinking tea with some complete nut job…in my mind! But I have to admit, I’m interested…
“The ‘dogly incarnation’ being...?”
“You, my boy. I saw you via the eyes of my demon! A scaled body and the wings of an eagle. In this little body there sleeps the conscience of the Quetzalcoatl!”
“…You don’t might incidentally know a certain doctor Johann Schmidt?”
“No.”
“Just wondering. Well anyways…” Alex got up from his chair. “It was….well, it wasn’t really nice talking with you, so pardon me, I have to find a way to get out…of…Why is this here?”
While talking he had turned around, which lead to him noticing the giant blocks of stone five little skeletons were forming directly forming out of the ground and building onto each other, all in silence and with only their hands (although one of them he hadn’t seen yet seemed to be busy spraying a tag on one of the forming walls).
“You might not be aware yet, but I will make sure you will be a worthy god on this plane of existence. I will awake you, oh mighty Quetzal!”
“Dude, you are rebuilding my mind?!”
“I would prefer the term ‘recreating’, but yes, that’s basically it…”
Paco arose too now, with a content smile that nearly seemed unearthly happy.
Alex chose to change into his troll form to impress the other guy. After all this was his mind, the Indian only was a guest.
“What makes you think that I will allow this?,” he asked with his deepest voice, that sounded as if he was gargling boulders.
“It’s rule numero three, companhero.” Juanes had sneaked up to him and then jumped on his head, where he sat down and lit another cigar.
“If someone with a stronger mind comes by, he owns you, si?”
And when Alex felt the chains shooting out of the ground and tying him up without him wanting to, he realized that rule number three sucked…
They're fighting!-
tears~fall~like~glass
- Dread Pirate
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- Location: Indiana
Christmas 2008: Alex
“You know, I woul really appreciate if you would stop doing this.”
The skeleton with the spraying cans, Santana, as he had found out by now, had gotten bored of placing blocks to giant pyramids with stairs on the sides. So he had started to spray tags on them. Which had gotten him a major scolding from Paco, who came from time to time through a door that just stood out in the open and seemingly lead to his own mind.
So the spraying little guy had searched for another thing to put his weird tags on. And he had found the only “removable” part of the growing city of temples and palaces around them: Alex, chained to a block of the biggest pyramid they were building.
Now, he really didn’t have a problem with stuff being drawn on his shirts, after all he had maybe three of them without smilies on them, but Santana just didn’t have any talent at all. Right now he was “decorating” his shirt with something that seemed like frog copulating on a shoe…
But what really concerned the boy: ever since he had been put in chains he couldn’t change anything in his own mind, while the skeletons and Paco didn’t seem to have the slightest problem cutting blocks and even complete statues of creatures, that had an unsettling similarity to him changing into his form with wings and a tail, out of the landscape.
Guess those things present some kind of mind blocker, they’re suppressing my control…I’m so screwed…
“Eh, why? Is good, one of my best works!” He climbed down on Alex’s clothes again and stepped back to observe his tag.
“Si, is muy artistical, neo-dada…”
“Well...” He looked down once again to check it. “Can’t really argue about art, right?” Then he cast a look around to change the subject to something that he really wanted to know for a while now.
“Say, what is this all about anyways?”
The skeleton followed his look. “Eh, what?” Obviously several thousand tons of concrete block-ness and a few fugly statues weren’t something special in his book.
“I mean the buildings and all that. Does your boss want some kind of holiday residence inside my head, or what?”
“Ah, isso?” He pointed at the steeply reaching up walls. “No, no, the Paco just thinks you don’t behave the right way for a reborn god. Too little human sacrifices and stuff, si? First he wanted to gently push you towards it, is why Juanes sacrificed butterflies to you, see?”
Ah, those!...I already wondered…Yeah, makes sense now…well, apart from being crazy as a pink nut, that is.
“Bueno, now, he’s not the most patient hombre…and a bit loco. But hey, he is the chefe! So he says ‘Go and restore his mind to its former glory vermin!’ and we do it and get him some vermin…didn’t like the rats though, dunno why.” He scratched his head, which created a sound as pleasant as fingernails on a board.
Alex winced and continued then: “So you’re basically screwing with my mind until I am as crazy as he is?”
“Si.”
“Seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?”
Santana shrugged, which created a clatter. “Is rule number three amigo, can’t do anything against it. And the boss is our boss, so when the boss wants to boss you around we help with the…uhm…bossing.”
“OI, Sanatana, you stupid piece of tagger trash!” Shakira appeared and seemed a bit upset about her chatting buddy that didn’t help with the work.
“Ya voy!” He jumped around and ran over to her, not without telling Alex a friendly “See you!” over his shoulder.
The latter dropped his head now.
Great, I am SO screwed…wonder what Meggan will think if I wake up and behave weird again…’Is ruler number three amigo’, HA!...those rules suck…can’t even scratch my nose…
His nose performed the well-known dance of noses that are part of people that can’t scratch them all over the world, wiggling around like wild and wrinkling and relaxing all the time. But, which is also well-known, it had no use, and the itching got worse and worse.
“Gah!” His nose found a dancing partner in his mouth, which couldn’t help either though, until…
A long and hairy thing came into his view, only to scratch his nose. Alex’s eyes widened and he followed the thing, which he swiftly recognized as a tail. It ended in the remote are of his behind.
Damn, did it again. I should really learn to not change parts of me unconsciously, creeps people out…wait a second… He changed his hand into a paw.
Ah, right, rule number one…hmm… Maybe those rules didn’t suck as much as he had thought? Because…a nice little idea went through his mind right now…
“I hope…no, I’m pretty sure you will soon thank me for this Quetzal. And forgive me this unworthy treatment.” Paco had shown up, again in his Mayan getup to supervise the last stages of the construction.
“And what would ‘soon’ be, if I may ask? Really, all this building has lasted forever now, I’m surprised I didn’t grow a beard.” He was indeed impatient, but not because of the waiting. He had developed an escaping plan by now, but for that he needed the man close by, otherwise Paco could maybe escape. And he needed to make sure there was no way for him to get inside of his mind anymore before he could allow for this to happen.
“Oh, don’t worry great one. It’s still the same night of the same day for your mortal body. Only a mere hours have passed in real time. Other than here.” He spread his arms in a gesture that included all of the giant pyramids, temples, statues and places that spread beyond the horizon of this plane of mind.
“My slaves have been very active, haven’t they?”
The “slaves” were sitting a good distance away around a plate of cookies and arguing over them. Also good, they wouldn’t be able to stop him for a few seconds, and then it would be too late.
“Say, Paco, would you mind answering me a question, before I get…you know, changed?”
He got rewarded with a friendly smile. “Sure, just ask away.”
“Those rules, are there any besides the first three? Like, one that cancels the first ones out?”
“Heh, no, they are ultimate…What are you doing there?”
The Indian man now had to watch Alex suddenly growing wings, giant paws fangs, the parts switching over into each other, but steadily increasing in size. The fluid movements of skin and bones under it nearly made him sick, but Paco still was alerted enough to call for his little helpers.
“Come forth, my demons!” The calavera skeletons looked up, but they didn’t need to come over anymore, as Alex had ripped off the chains by now and made a big jump over the gasping spectators right between them and the door.
It was pretty easy, if you were lucky enough to get the idea: Alex increased his size by absorbing the energy around him. He had learned to widen this to include his clothes, so that they wouldn’t rip, but the intake was still mainly uncontrolled. And Paco had established a connection between his mind and Alex’s…his mind that operated on electronic currents! Ruler number one.
He could feel the energy switching over from between the doorframe into him, growing bit by bit over only a few moments. And Paco already showed a reaction, he was holding his head and shouting out for the skeletons to help him, but what it was couldn’t Alex hear anymore. A giant thunderstorm started all around him, and he was hit with flashes of pure energy. Bad choice, he could made giant leaps of growth now. Ruler number three wasn’t applicable anymore.
After a while his head shoot out from under the clouds and he only could see a wide blue sky anymore. He didn’t care for Paco and his little friends anymore, he just knew it would be okay, his mind would be a much nicer place from now on, maybe he should finally try to get his relationship with Meggan back in order?...
And with those words he finally woke up, having changed into his bulky dragon-form during sleep due to the absorbed energy. It was only good that his guest room was on the ground floor, otherwise the bed wouldn’t have been the only thing he would have had flattened.
He hastily morphed back into a human, increasing the room’s temperature quite a bit through it. For a second there, while he was lying on the debris that used to be his bed, he wondered whether it had been just a bad dream. But hell, even if it was, it had helped him a lot. He only would have to explain the bed tomorrow, but besides of that everything felt okay, no desire to rip someone’s heart out and eat it. Other than that a nice calm had come over him and he fell asleep again.
The skeleton with the spraying cans, Santana, as he had found out by now, had gotten bored of placing blocks to giant pyramids with stairs on the sides. So he had started to spray tags on them. Which had gotten him a major scolding from Paco, who came from time to time through a door that just stood out in the open and seemingly lead to his own mind.
So the spraying little guy had searched for another thing to put his weird tags on. And he had found the only “removable” part of the growing city of temples and palaces around them: Alex, chained to a block of the biggest pyramid they were building.
Now, he really didn’t have a problem with stuff being drawn on his shirts, after all he had maybe three of them without smilies on them, but Santana just didn’t have any talent at all. Right now he was “decorating” his shirt with something that seemed like frog copulating on a shoe…
But what really concerned the boy: ever since he had been put in chains he couldn’t change anything in his own mind, while the skeletons and Paco didn’t seem to have the slightest problem cutting blocks and even complete statues of creatures, that had an unsettling similarity to him changing into his form with wings and a tail, out of the landscape.
Guess those things present some kind of mind blocker, they’re suppressing my control…I’m so screwed…
“Eh, why? Is good, one of my best works!” He climbed down on Alex’s clothes again and stepped back to observe his tag.
“Si, is muy artistical, neo-dada…”
“Well...” He looked down once again to check it. “Can’t really argue about art, right?” Then he cast a look around to change the subject to something that he really wanted to know for a while now.
“Say, what is this all about anyways?”
The skeleton followed his look. “Eh, what?” Obviously several thousand tons of concrete block-ness and a few fugly statues weren’t something special in his book.
“I mean the buildings and all that. Does your boss want some kind of holiday residence inside my head, or what?”
“Ah, isso?” He pointed at the steeply reaching up walls. “No, no, the Paco just thinks you don’t behave the right way for a reborn god. Too little human sacrifices and stuff, si? First he wanted to gently push you towards it, is why Juanes sacrificed butterflies to you, see?”
Ah, those!...I already wondered…Yeah, makes sense now…well, apart from being crazy as a pink nut, that is.
“Bueno, now, he’s not the most patient hombre…and a bit loco. But hey, he is the chefe! So he says ‘Go and restore his mind to its former glory vermin!’ and we do it and get him some vermin…didn’t like the rats though, dunno why.” He scratched his head, which created a sound as pleasant as fingernails on a board.
Alex winced and continued then: “So you’re basically screwing with my mind until I am as crazy as he is?”
“Si.”
“Seems a bit unfair, doesn’t it?”
Santana shrugged, which created a clatter. “Is rule number three amigo, can’t do anything against it. And the boss is our boss, so when the boss wants to boss you around we help with the…uhm…bossing.”
“OI, Sanatana, you stupid piece of tagger trash!” Shakira appeared and seemed a bit upset about her chatting buddy that didn’t help with the work.
“Ya voy!” He jumped around and ran over to her, not without telling Alex a friendly “See you!” over his shoulder.
The latter dropped his head now.
Great, I am SO screwed…wonder what Meggan will think if I wake up and behave weird again…’Is ruler number three amigo’, HA!...those rules suck…can’t even scratch my nose…
His nose performed the well-known dance of noses that are part of people that can’t scratch them all over the world, wiggling around like wild and wrinkling and relaxing all the time. But, which is also well-known, it had no use, and the itching got worse and worse.
“Gah!” His nose found a dancing partner in his mouth, which couldn’t help either though, until…
A long and hairy thing came into his view, only to scratch his nose. Alex’s eyes widened and he followed the thing, which he swiftly recognized as a tail. It ended in the remote are of his behind.
Damn, did it again. I should really learn to not change parts of me unconsciously, creeps people out…wait a second… He changed his hand into a paw.
Ah, right, rule number one…hmm… Maybe those rules didn’t suck as much as he had thought? Because…a nice little idea went through his mind right now…
“I hope…no, I’m pretty sure you will soon thank me for this Quetzal. And forgive me this unworthy treatment.” Paco had shown up, again in his Mayan getup to supervise the last stages of the construction.
“And what would ‘soon’ be, if I may ask? Really, all this building has lasted forever now, I’m surprised I didn’t grow a beard.” He was indeed impatient, but not because of the waiting. He had developed an escaping plan by now, but for that he needed the man close by, otherwise Paco could maybe escape. And he needed to make sure there was no way for him to get inside of his mind anymore before he could allow for this to happen.
“Oh, don’t worry great one. It’s still the same night of the same day for your mortal body. Only a mere hours have passed in real time. Other than here.” He spread his arms in a gesture that included all of the giant pyramids, temples, statues and places that spread beyond the horizon of this plane of mind.
“My slaves have been very active, haven’t they?”
The “slaves” were sitting a good distance away around a plate of cookies and arguing over them. Also good, they wouldn’t be able to stop him for a few seconds, and then it would be too late.
“Say, Paco, would you mind answering me a question, before I get…you know, changed?”
He got rewarded with a friendly smile. “Sure, just ask away.”
“Those rules, are there any besides the first three? Like, one that cancels the first ones out?”
“Heh, no, they are ultimate…What are you doing there?”
The Indian man now had to watch Alex suddenly growing wings, giant paws fangs, the parts switching over into each other, but steadily increasing in size. The fluid movements of skin and bones under it nearly made him sick, but Paco still was alerted enough to call for his little helpers.
“Come forth, my demons!” The calavera skeletons looked up, but they didn’t need to come over anymore, as Alex had ripped off the chains by now and made a big jump over the gasping spectators right between them and the door.
It was pretty easy, if you were lucky enough to get the idea: Alex increased his size by absorbing the energy around him. He had learned to widen this to include his clothes, so that they wouldn’t rip, but the intake was still mainly uncontrolled. And Paco had established a connection between his mind and Alex’s…his mind that operated on electronic currents! Ruler number one.
He could feel the energy switching over from between the doorframe into him, growing bit by bit over only a few moments. And Paco already showed a reaction, he was holding his head and shouting out for the skeletons to help him, but what it was couldn’t Alex hear anymore. A giant thunderstorm started all around him, and he was hit with flashes of pure energy. Bad choice, he could made giant leaps of growth now. Ruler number three wasn’t applicable anymore.
After a while his head shoot out from under the clouds and he only could see a wide blue sky anymore. He didn’t care for Paco and his little friends anymore, he just knew it would be okay, his mind would be a much nicer place from now on, maybe he should finally try to get his relationship with Meggan back in order?...
And with those words he finally woke up, having changed into his bulky dragon-form during sleep due to the absorbed energy. It was only good that his guest room was on the ground floor, otherwise the bed wouldn’t have been the only thing he would have had flattened.
He hastily morphed back into a human, increasing the room’s temperature quite a bit through it. For a second there, while he was lying on the debris that used to be his bed, he wondered whether it had been just a bad dream. But hell, even if it was, it had helped him a lot. He only would have to explain the bed tomorrow, but besides of that everything felt okay, no desire to rip someone’s heart out and eat it. Other than that a nice calm had come over him and he fell asleep again.
They're fighting!Christmas 2008: Alex
Meggan: Meggan sighed and picked Dylan up again. He'd been crying almost non-stop since Sian and Mark had gone out with Alex. She tried everything to calm him down. Offered him food, changed him, paid him attention, played with him, bounced him on her knee. Nothing was working.
Meggan: She held him up and looked at him, "Why do you keep crying?" she chewed her lip, pulling him close to her and giving him cuddles, ""I wish I knew what was wrong with you.... I miss my empathy..." She looked at the clock on the wall. "Don't worry Mommy and Daddy will be back soon...." she hoped.
Alex: Alex came through the entrance which Mark held open for him, since he was loaded like a mule. Shopping with Meggie's parents was hard work, but he had enjoyed it.
Alex: He hadn't told them, especially Meggan, about...well, that thing, but ever since it was over he had been a bit more confident, a bit more self-assured, and so also a lot more able to enjoy the normalness that was going on around him. He nearly didn't want to go back to the school.
Meggan: Meggan heard the door and sighed with relief. She went to the top of the stairs with Dylan and called down to the others, "Yay you're back! He's been crying since you left..." Sian smiled at her and came up the stairs after removing her coat. She relieved Meggan of the baby and headed back to the nursery.
Meggan: Meggan bounced down the stairs and gave Mark a hug then helped Alex with the bags. "So did you have fun?"
Alex: "Weirdly enough, yeah!" He smiled his little-boy-smile at her, something he hadn't done in quite a while.
Alex: "I even got you something...wait, I'll get it for you..." He rustled through the stuff they had bought and finally got out a plain red scarf. With a simple "Here, I thought it would look good on you." he held it out to her.
Meggan: Meggan squeaked, "Aww that's so sweet!" She stuck her tongue out at Mark who had just rolled his eyes before wandering into the kitchen. She put the scarf on, "Oooh it's soft!" she stroked the material gently. "Thank you." she kissed him on the cheek.
Alex: "Oh, I just had a bit of money left over, so I thought I'd try and make you happy." I'm so happy, happy, happy, happy day...Wait, you shouldn't sing in your head, it's weird...
Meggan: Meggan smiled at him, then took him by the hand and dragged him upstairs, "Ok, real living room or my room? Bear in mind screaming baby will be heard in living room." she grinned.
Alex: "Heh, okay." He acted as if he had to think hard on that. "Uhm...your room?"
Meggan: Meggan giggled and opened the door to her room, shifting into her cat form she bounded across the room and onto her bed where she curled up on her quilt. "I'm glad you all came back when you did... I was going nuts..."
Alex: "Aww, I'm sorry." He changed into his puppy form, which in his case was as big as a lion and laid down next to the bed, resting his head with its big flabby ears next to her.
Alex: "Job as the big sister is harder than it seemed?"
Meggan: "It's not that..." she didn't want to say it but she had already promised not to keep secrets. "It's just..." she sighed, "I miss my empathy... I hadn't got a clue what was wrong with him... It was so horrible, I don't know how normal people cope..." she lay her head on the bed and coved it with her paws.
Alex: He wanted to sigh, but due to his actual form it turned into heavily flabbing flews. "You know, maybe that's good?"
Meggan: She lifted a paw and peered at him, "How?"
Alex: "Maybe, you know..." He shrugged. "When you're a mom one day, you don't have to do what your child feels like, you'll have to do what you feel is the best for the baby..." He lifted an eyebrow to be able to get a closer look at her reaction.
Meggan: "But they cry when they need something... And I didn't know what it was..." she sighed and buried her nose in the quilt, "I'm hopeless...."
Alex: "Now now..." He lifted a paw bigger than her whole actual body and patted her carefully. "You're the best big sis I have ever seen...well, also the only one...but if I'd have seen more, you'd still be the best!"
Meggan: Meggan lifted her head, "You really mean it?"
Alex: "Always. You're great." He brought his head closer to her. "Always have been. Sorry for giving you a hard time all the time..."
Meggan: Meggan shifted back to her human form and gave him a hug resting his huge head in her lap, "You're allowed to give me hard time. I've done worse..." she sighed, "But lets not talk about that.... How have you liked this holiday with no interfering empathy? I know I haven't liked it but what about you?"
Alex: "I'm feeling bad about it." He snuggled deeper into her lap. "No, actually I'm feeling good about it, which is why I'm feeling bad about it...uhm...you know?"
Meggan: Meggan shook her head, "No.... care to elaborate?" she was confused now
Alex: "I'm, like 'So, she doesn't have her mind-controlling stuff anymore, and I still care about what she thinks and says, about how she is. Plus, she comes with the sweetest family I ever had the luck of meeting.' And then I'm like 'And she doesn't like it at all how it is right now, and you made her doing it!'. And then I'm feeling bad."
Meggan: "You didn't make me do anything." Meggan reminded him, "I wanted to. I wanted to prove to you that I wasn't influencing you... and to myself too..." she petted him, "I have to admit Amara got me worrying about it too..."
Alex: "Don't. She isn't worth it." He rubbed his giant head a bit more into her hand. "You're a far too good person to care for what she says."
Meggan: Meggan smiled and scritched him behind the ears, "I'm glad you think so..." she patted the bed beside her, "Come and sit up here."
Alex: He noticed that his tail was wagging because of her scratching, so he was only too glad to change back into his (slightly embarrassed) human form and sit down next to Meggan.
Alex: "I'm being honest, Meggie. Visiting you and your family over here was like...like a cure for a disease I didn't even know I had. I feel so much more alive lately..." Especially since I've kicked that stupid weirdo's ass who tried to take over my mind!
Alex: With a happy little smile he continued. "I even took a liking of Dylan's screaming, I think."
Meggan: Meggan smiled and tucked her legs under her, leaning against him slightly, "Well I'm glad," she said, "I like having you around. I feel safe with you..." she put her arms around him and nuzzled his shoulder.
Alex: "You know what I find kind of funny?" He wrapped one arm around her shoulder.
Meggan: "What?" she moved her head to look up at him slightly,
Alex: "We, like nothing ever happened and bit by bit, slipped right back to how we where during the break." He gave her head a gentle pat.
Alex: "I like it."
Meggan: Meggan smiled and kissed him on the cheek, "So you believe me now?" she grinned, she already knew the answer.
Alex: "Well, depends..." He kissed her back, on the mouth this time. "Have you found a better one by now?"
Meggan: "A better what?" Meggan was confused again, maybe she was sleepy....
Alex: "A better boyfriend, silly..." He leaned over her, slowly, enjoying the moment, supporting her back while he slightly pushed her backwards...
Meggan: Meggan giggled, "Don't be daft, when would I have time?" she grinned and put her arms loosely around him, "Anyway, I wouldn't want anyone else." She kissed him on the tip of his nose.
Alex: He had her finally lying on the bed under him and kissed her back. "Neither would I...I love you Meggan, and it's true."
Meggan: Meggan smiled warmly at him, "Good. Because I love you too, Alex. Very much." She pulled him into a hug, "Please don't ever leave me."
Alex: "No way."
Meggan: She held him up and looked at him, "Why do you keep crying?" she chewed her lip, pulling him close to her and giving him cuddles, ""I wish I knew what was wrong with you.... I miss my empathy..." She looked at the clock on the wall. "Don't worry Mommy and Daddy will be back soon...." she hoped.
Alex: Alex came through the entrance which Mark held open for him, since he was loaded like a mule. Shopping with Meggie's parents was hard work, but he had enjoyed it.
Alex: He hadn't told them, especially Meggan, about...well, that thing, but ever since it was over he had been a bit more confident, a bit more self-assured, and so also a lot more able to enjoy the normalness that was going on around him. He nearly didn't want to go back to the school.
Meggan: Meggan heard the door and sighed with relief. She went to the top of the stairs with Dylan and called down to the others, "Yay you're back! He's been crying since you left..." Sian smiled at her and came up the stairs after removing her coat. She relieved Meggan of the baby and headed back to the nursery.
Meggan: Meggan bounced down the stairs and gave Mark a hug then helped Alex with the bags. "So did you have fun?"
Alex: "Weirdly enough, yeah!" He smiled his little-boy-smile at her, something he hadn't done in quite a while.
Alex: "I even got you something...wait, I'll get it for you..." He rustled through the stuff they had bought and finally got out a plain red scarf. With a simple "Here, I thought it would look good on you." he held it out to her.
Meggan: Meggan squeaked, "Aww that's so sweet!" She stuck her tongue out at Mark who had just rolled his eyes before wandering into the kitchen. She put the scarf on, "Oooh it's soft!" she stroked the material gently. "Thank you." she kissed him on the cheek.
Alex: "Oh, I just had a bit of money left over, so I thought I'd try and make you happy." I'm so happy, happy, happy, happy day...Wait, you shouldn't sing in your head, it's weird...
Meggan: Meggan smiled at him, then took him by the hand and dragged him upstairs, "Ok, real living room or my room? Bear in mind screaming baby will be heard in living room." she grinned.
Alex: "Heh, okay." He acted as if he had to think hard on that. "Uhm...your room?"
Meggan: Meggan giggled and opened the door to her room, shifting into her cat form she bounded across the room and onto her bed where she curled up on her quilt. "I'm glad you all came back when you did... I was going nuts..."
Alex: "Aww, I'm sorry." He changed into his puppy form, which in his case was as big as a lion and laid down next to the bed, resting his head with its big flabby ears next to her.
Alex: "Job as the big sister is harder than it seemed?"
Meggan: "It's not that..." she didn't want to say it but she had already promised not to keep secrets. "It's just..." she sighed, "I miss my empathy... I hadn't got a clue what was wrong with him... It was so horrible, I don't know how normal people cope..." she lay her head on the bed and coved it with her paws.
Alex: He wanted to sigh, but due to his actual form it turned into heavily flabbing flews. "You know, maybe that's good?"
Meggan: She lifted a paw and peered at him, "How?"
Alex: "Maybe, you know..." He shrugged. "When you're a mom one day, you don't have to do what your child feels like, you'll have to do what you feel is the best for the baby..." He lifted an eyebrow to be able to get a closer look at her reaction.
Meggan: "But they cry when they need something... And I didn't know what it was..." she sighed and buried her nose in the quilt, "I'm hopeless...."
Alex: "Now now..." He lifted a paw bigger than her whole actual body and patted her carefully. "You're the best big sis I have ever seen...well, also the only one...but if I'd have seen more, you'd still be the best!"
Meggan: Meggan lifted her head, "You really mean it?"
Alex: "Always. You're great." He brought his head closer to her. "Always have been. Sorry for giving you a hard time all the time..."
Meggan: Meggan shifted back to her human form and gave him a hug resting his huge head in her lap, "You're allowed to give me hard time. I've done worse..." she sighed, "But lets not talk about that.... How have you liked this holiday with no interfering empathy? I know I haven't liked it but what about you?"
Alex: "I'm feeling bad about it." He snuggled deeper into her lap. "No, actually I'm feeling good about it, which is why I'm feeling bad about it...uhm...you know?"
Meggan: Meggan shook her head, "No.... care to elaborate?" she was confused now
Alex: "I'm, like 'So, she doesn't have her mind-controlling stuff anymore, and I still care about what she thinks and says, about how she is. Plus, she comes with the sweetest family I ever had the luck of meeting.' And then I'm like 'And she doesn't like it at all how it is right now, and you made her doing it!'. And then I'm feeling bad."
Meggan: "You didn't make me do anything." Meggan reminded him, "I wanted to. I wanted to prove to you that I wasn't influencing you... and to myself too..." she petted him, "I have to admit Amara got me worrying about it too..."
Alex: "Don't. She isn't worth it." He rubbed his giant head a bit more into her hand. "You're a far too good person to care for what she says."
Meggan: Meggan smiled and scritched him behind the ears, "I'm glad you think so..." she patted the bed beside her, "Come and sit up here."
Alex: He noticed that his tail was wagging because of her scratching, so he was only too glad to change back into his (slightly embarrassed) human form and sit down next to Meggan.
Alex: "I'm being honest, Meggie. Visiting you and your family over here was like...like a cure for a disease I didn't even know I had. I feel so much more alive lately..." Especially since I've kicked that stupid weirdo's ass who tried to take over my mind!
Alex: With a happy little smile he continued. "I even took a liking of Dylan's screaming, I think."
Meggan: Meggan smiled and tucked her legs under her, leaning against him slightly, "Well I'm glad," she said, "I like having you around. I feel safe with you..." she put her arms around him and nuzzled his shoulder.
Alex: "You know what I find kind of funny?" He wrapped one arm around her shoulder.
Meggan: "What?" she moved her head to look up at him slightly,
Alex: "We, like nothing ever happened and bit by bit, slipped right back to how we where during the break." He gave her head a gentle pat.
Alex: "I like it."
Meggan: Meggan smiled and kissed him on the cheek, "So you believe me now?" she grinned, she already knew the answer.
Alex: "Well, depends..." He kissed her back, on the mouth this time. "Have you found a better one by now?"
Meggan: "A better what?" Meggan was confused again, maybe she was sleepy....
Alex: "A better boyfriend, silly..." He leaned over her, slowly, enjoying the moment, supporting her back while he slightly pushed her backwards...
Meggan: Meggan giggled, "Don't be daft, when would I have time?" she grinned and put her arms loosely around him, "Anyway, I wouldn't want anyone else." She kissed him on the tip of his nose.
Alex: He had her finally lying on the bed under him and kissed her back. "Neither would I...I love you Meggan, and it's true."
Meggan: Meggan smiled warmly at him, "Good. Because I love you too, Alex. Very much." She pulled him into a hug, "Please don't ever leave me."
Alex: "No way."
They're fighting!