November Seven (D-7) - Sea Cucumber Tango
Taking it easy today and tomorrow by just going a little over the minimum becuase I'm rather swamped with work. x_x
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The Best of the Day: Fists clenched, squish, teeth gritted, squish, eyebrows quirked, squish. “…this is fun?”
Sugar/Caffeine had: Lots of chocolate, since I need the caffeine to stay awake. DX
Sanity: awe;lkfma;lwkem? awekfma. aema;wefaw;elkfma;wle.
Word Count (Daily): 1,745
Word Count (Total): 14,909
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Two chapters, since they're already done. :p
Two - All Around Attack • Slipslide
The colors were still as muted as ever, really. Waking up from his doze, Alexias sat up, leaning against a drooping willow tree, rubbing his eyes and ruffling his hair back into some semblance of the “artfully mussed” style that he usually wore it in (though it was more of a “just slipped out of bed and ran a handful of gel through it randomly” style, to be honest). Thirteen years since he’d first entered the world at the other side of the door, and it had changed so little. The weather was just as pleasant, the environment just as peaceful, and the atmosphere just as dead.
It wasn’t something wrong with the colors, exactly. He knew that now; he’d spent hours slaving over design palettes and color coordination lessons with his designer mother, learning to recognize true colors and secondary colors and different hues and computer-coded tones at sight. No, it wasn’t the colors. The grass was a perfect #00CC00, the sky a pleasant #CCFFFF.
It wasn’t the chemistry of the place either, though he had to work more on instinct for that assumption, though, as he hadn’t quite been taught to recognize the chemical makeup of different objects. Yet. His father would probably make him eventually, he figured. But everything looked right in general, and there weren’t any disturbing powders or chemicals or liquids that he was wary of. And yet…
Sighing, he glanced at his watch (a sleek, metallic G-shock he’d been given for his thirteenth birthday; it was hardy, he had to give it that, if a bit bulky, and it had lasted through thick and thin for a good half-decade and more y then). One hour was up. Work awaited him. More specifically, a paper on the relationship between the apolipoprotein E gene’s fourth allele and the onset of senile dementia awaited his attention.
Dusting off his pants, he got up with a small groan, stretching out his cramped limbs as he looked around the place. A slight breeze was blowing, making the grass at his feet sway in waves of green, but the scene still seemed the same. Same old pretty look, same old subtle deadness. Grasping the doorknob, he gave it a smooth turn and pulled the door open a crack, to peek outside and make sure no one was around.
Or, at least he tried to. He’d been so used to the Door opening smoothly at the slightest pull that he jerked himself forward when he gave the doorknob a tug, only to have it silently refuse to budge.
“…I must be exhausted if I can’t even open a door properly,” he muttered under his breath, before giving the doorknob another swift turn, this time a little harder. The brass remained cold and still and stationary. It would not wiggle even the slightest in any direction. “…you’ve got to be kidding me.”
This…was something new. For the first time in a long time, a slight cold sweat broke out on Alexias’ forehead, tiny drops of perspiration beginning to gather at his brow, just below his hairline. In any normal situation, he could have simply pounded the door for help, or pulled the doorknob out, or something, as doors tended to get stuck quite often in the dorm he stayed at, but this was something new. Never before had he had trouble in opening a Door; even the old, rusty ones would slide open when he wanted them to, ignoring the logic that rusted hinges should make for a rough opening.
Snapping open the Swiss army knife he kept chained to his belt loop (a birthday present when he’d turned nine, and carried around out of habit; a strange present for a young boy, he’d thought even then), flicking through the various functions before locating the screwdriver and pulling it out. He’d simply unscrew the doorknob. It would be a simple enough procedure, and he’d return to his dorm, and do his work. Simple.
Or at least, it was in theory. A bead of sweat went sliding down back his jawline as he searched in vain for a screw in which to insert this tool, only to find none. Come to think of it, none of the Doors had had visible screws or bolts, the hinges appearing to be glued on, the doorknobs attached as if by magic.
Feeling nervousness being to settle into his limbs, deadening his nerves and quickening his pace, he stored the knife away, habitually tucking it away on his belt loop in its proper place (after the dorm key, but just before his car key, making sure to use the metal loop), before turning back to the door. Solid and silent as ever, it gleamed slightly in the sunlight, as if teasing him.
“…open, you!” In a moment of mixed anxiety and stupidity, he dealt it a solid kick just below the doorknob, only to wince at the dull pain that went racing up his thigh and settled heavily in his hips. The Door remained just as stolid, resting, unbudging, in its frame, propped up against thin air and seemingly leading to nowhere. Making his way to the other side of the Door, he went through the same procedure involving his knife and the kick, but nothing changed. Both sides of the Door, even the side he usually did not use, were shut solid, as if superglued into the frame.
“You’re not supposed to be giving me so much trouble, you know,” he snapped at the door, glaring at it in mixed frustration and irritation, sorely tempted to give it a football-style tackle, and most likely would have done so if it weren’t for the fact that it would most likely dislocate his shoulder or send him into a minute of writhing agony. “Now open up.”
“Quite the smooth talker, aren’t you?” He jumped, naturally, when a voice spoke back. For a brief moment, he thought that the door had spoken back to him, though the notion quickly disappeared when he realized that the voice had come from somewhere behind him. Besides, it was too smooth to be that of a door. A door would have a stolid, deep, baritone voice, while this one was more silky, lilting, sing-song and teasing.
Turning around to glare at his surroundings, he scanned the area. The deadened grass remained just as irritatingly pleasant, and the slight breeze from before had stopped, leaving everything absolutely still.
“Who was that?” he called out, still casting around nervously.
“I’m right here, you know,” the voice responded, and this time, he as able to locate its source. Somewhere to his left, draped on the limbs of a slender willow, shaded by the drooping branches, was a slender figure. The leaves of the tree sent dappled shadows dancing across the person’s features, lean arms and body slipping in and out of visibility, the face hidden in a mottled blotch of shade.
Giving a low laugh, it shifted slightly, resting its had on its arms, narrow eyes, yellow and cat-like, blinking slowly before crinkling into an unseen smile, its voice lilting again.
“Hello, Alexias.”
II - Belladonna Smile • Self-Introductory Weapons of Love
It was called Belland Academy. The full name was something along the lines of Belland Academy for the Gifted, but everyone just called it Belland.
It was a hell of a nice school, a huge white building atop a grassy green hill, smack in the middle of a wide expanse of emerald, a bit like a golf course, but nicer. It should have been; I don’t know the details, but it supposedly cost a fortune to attend that school. Kids from ages six all the way to eighteen attended the place, twelve grades worth of “gifted” kids. Ha, “gifted.” It’s such a funny way to classify kids.
My first grade teacher was name Ms. Dilworth, and she looked like something out of a movie. Round, portly, curly hair in a short bob cut around her chin, all smiles and winks and trying too hard to be friendly with the kids, she turned out more terrifying than kindly.
“All right, children!” she’d say all the time. “All right, children! It’s time for introductions!”
We started the first day with traditional ice-breakers. I only remember this because I’d rarely had many chances to associate with other kids before, so I was hoping to meet some fun youngsters, some people whom I could hang out with without worries of Doors or getting called crazy.
The first kid said that his name was Tom, short for Thomason, he liked robots and cars and didn’t like girls and cooties, and that he was born in Ireland (which explained his strange accent), and that he like playing soccer. He was about to sit down, when the teacher cleared her throat, that sickeningly sweet (like a cookie left too long in a cup of sugar water, all crumbly and disgusting, yet tempting in a twisted way) smile on her face.
“Don’t you want to tell us what your mommy and daddy do, Tom?”
Tom (we all called him Tommy) nodded and said proudly that his daddy taught ma-fe-ma-tix at Ha-verd University, and that his mother wrote big thick books. Sally’s father was the President of some famous computer part company, with her mother as the CEO of an equally successful business. Yeh-ha and Yeh-Min, a pair of Korean twins, had parents who were working together on the human genome project together.
I don’t want to remember all of these, I don’t know why I do, but my memory is good, disgustingly good, and these useless facts swirled around my head then and stayed there for the next decade and a half to come. I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. All those kids, they - no, we - didn’t know then, but we were all the same.
When my turn, I got up, saying that I liked reading and playing with magnets, that I didn’t like tomatoes and centipedes, and that I was a fast runner. Then, of course, the bit about parents.
My father was a chemistry professor at Cambridge University. Normally, that wouldn’t be so glorious, but he’d discovered some chemical or the other (a particular arrangement of the carbon atom, I know now, that allows for an extremely durable and cheap type of substance, now commonly used to make gun shells), and gotten a huge prize for that. Reporters came and asked him how he’d done it, men in suits asked him how he’d done it, poor college kids came and asked him how he’d done it. He just smiled and said that that secret was something that he’d pass only down the family line.
My mother, now she was different. Avari Skye, the world-famous designer. Faux-leather, feathers, glitter, Swarovski crystals, tortoise shells, leopard fangs, she used all of that to decorate the bizarre pieces of clothing that she designed. Animal rights activists hated it, of course, but everyone else loved it. She used me as a model quite a bit, even when I was little; said something about how my blonde hair set off the color of the seal-skin well, and my eyes matched the crystals she’d used.
Combined, they raked in millions of dollars, pounds, Euros, loads of cash.
And that was why I was at Belland.
It was never stated explicitly, but I know now that Belland wasn’t a school, it was more of a breeding ground. Bring in the best of the best, the kids of all the successful adults of England, and shove them together in a snow-white building atop a pristine landscape, and they were bound to come out just as, if not more, successful as their parents. It was simple, in concept.
Ha….”gifted,” they called us. I don’t know about that.
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The Best of the Day: Fists clenched, squish, teeth gritted, squish, eyebrows quirked, squish. “…this is fun?”
Sugar/Caffeine had: Lots of chocolate, since I need the caffeine to stay awake. DX
Sanity: awe;lkfma;lwkem? awekfma. aema;wefaw;elkfma;wle.
Word Count (Daily): 1,745
Word Count (Total): 14,909
-----
Two chapters, since they're already done. :p
Two - All Around Attack • Slipslide
The colors were still as muted as ever, really. Waking up from his doze, Alexias sat up, leaning against a drooping willow tree, rubbing his eyes and ruffling his hair back into some semblance of the “artfully mussed” style that he usually wore it in (though it was more of a “just slipped out of bed and ran a handful of gel through it randomly” style, to be honest). Thirteen years since he’d first entered the world at the other side of the door, and it had changed so little. The weather was just as pleasant, the environment just as peaceful, and the atmosphere just as dead.
It wasn’t something wrong with the colors, exactly. He knew that now; he’d spent hours slaving over design palettes and color coordination lessons with his designer mother, learning to recognize true colors and secondary colors and different hues and computer-coded tones at sight. No, it wasn’t the colors. The grass was a perfect #00CC00, the sky a pleasant #CCFFFF.
It wasn’t the chemistry of the place either, though he had to work more on instinct for that assumption, though, as he hadn’t quite been taught to recognize the chemical makeup of different objects. Yet. His father would probably make him eventually, he figured. But everything looked right in general, and there weren’t any disturbing powders or chemicals or liquids that he was wary of. And yet…
Sighing, he glanced at his watch (a sleek, metallic G-shock he’d been given for his thirteenth birthday; it was hardy, he had to give it that, if a bit bulky, and it had lasted through thick and thin for a good half-decade and more y then). One hour was up. Work awaited him. More specifically, a paper on the relationship between the apolipoprotein E gene’s fourth allele and the onset of senile dementia awaited his attention.
Dusting off his pants, he got up with a small groan, stretching out his cramped limbs as he looked around the place. A slight breeze was blowing, making the grass at his feet sway in waves of green, but the scene still seemed the same. Same old pretty look, same old subtle deadness. Grasping the doorknob, he gave it a smooth turn and pulled the door open a crack, to peek outside and make sure no one was around.
Or, at least he tried to. He’d been so used to the Door opening smoothly at the slightest pull that he jerked himself forward when he gave the doorknob a tug, only to have it silently refuse to budge.
“…I must be exhausted if I can’t even open a door properly,” he muttered under his breath, before giving the doorknob another swift turn, this time a little harder. The brass remained cold and still and stationary. It would not wiggle even the slightest in any direction. “…you’ve got to be kidding me.”
This…was something new. For the first time in a long time, a slight cold sweat broke out on Alexias’ forehead, tiny drops of perspiration beginning to gather at his brow, just below his hairline. In any normal situation, he could have simply pounded the door for help, or pulled the doorknob out, or something, as doors tended to get stuck quite often in the dorm he stayed at, but this was something new. Never before had he had trouble in opening a Door; even the old, rusty ones would slide open when he wanted them to, ignoring the logic that rusted hinges should make for a rough opening.
Snapping open the Swiss army knife he kept chained to his belt loop (a birthday present when he’d turned nine, and carried around out of habit; a strange present for a young boy, he’d thought even then), flicking through the various functions before locating the screwdriver and pulling it out. He’d simply unscrew the doorknob. It would be a simple enough procedure, and he’d return to his dorm, and do his work. Simple.
Or at least, it was in theory. A bead of sweat went sliding down back his jawline as he searched in vain for a screw in which to insert this tool, only to find none. Come to think of it, none of the Doors had had visible screws or bolts, the hinges appearing to be glued on, the doorknobs attached as if by magic.
Feeling nervousness being to settle into his limbs, deadening his nerves and quickening his pace, he stored the knife away, habitually tucking it away on his belt loop in its proper place (after the dorm key, but just before his car key, making sure to use the metal loop), before turning back to the door. Solid and silent as ever, it gleamed slightly in the sunlight, as if teasing him.
“…open, you!” In a moment of mixed anxiety and stupidity, he dealt it a solid kick just below the doorknob, only to wince at the dull pain that went racing up his thigh and settled heavily in his hips. The Door remained just as stolid, resting, unbudging, in its frame, propped up against thin air and seemingly leading to nowhere. Making his way to the other side of the Door, he went through the same procedure involving his knife and the kick, but nothing changed. Both sides of the Door, even the side he usually did not use, were shut solid, as if superglued into the frame.
“You’re not supposed to be giving me so much trouble, you know,” he snapped at the door, glaring at it in mixed frustration and irritation, sorely tempted to give it a football-style tackle, and most likely would have done so if it weren’t for the fact that it would most likely dislocate his shoulder or send him into a minute of writhing agony. “Now open up.”
“Quite the smooth talker, aren’t you?” He jumped, naturally, when a voice spoke back. For a brief moment, he thought that the door had spoken back to him, though the notion quickly disappeared when he realized that the voice had come from somewhere behind him. Besides, it was too smooth to be that of a door. A door would have a stolid, deep, baritone voice, while this one was more silky, lilting, sing-song and teasing.
Turning around to glare at his surroundings, he scanned the area. The deadened grass remained just as irritatingly pleasant, and the slight breeze from before had stopped, leaving everything absolutely still.
“Who was that?” he called out, still casting around nervously.
“I’m right here, you know,” the voice responded, and this time, he as able to locate its source. Somewhere to his left, draped on the limbs of a slender willow, shaded by the drooping branches, was a slender figure. The leaves of the tree sent dappled shadows dancing across the person’s features, lean arms and body slipping in and out of visibility, the face hidden in a mottled blotch of shade.
Giving a low laugh, it shifted slightly, resting its had on its arms, narrow eyes, yellow and cat-like, blinking slowly before crinkling into an unseen smile, its voice lilting again.
“Hello, Alexias.”
II - Belladonna Smile • Self-Introductory Weapons of Love
It was called Belland Academy. The full name was something along the lines of Belland Academy for the Gifted, but everyone just called it Belland.
It was a hell of a nice school, a huge white building atop a grassy green hill, smack in the middle of a wide expanse of emerald, a bit like a golf course, but nicer. It should have been; I don’t know the details, but it supposedly cost a fortune to attend that school. Kids from ages six all the way to eighteen attended the place, twelve grades worth of “gifted” kids. Ha, “gifted.” It’s such a funny way to classify kids.
My first grade teacher was name Ms. Dilworth, and she looked like something out of a movie. Round, portly, curly hair in a short bob cut around her chin, all smiles and winks and trying too hard to be friendly with the kids, she turned out more terrifying than kindly.
“All right, children!” she’d say all the time. “All right, children! It’s time for introductions!”
We started the first day with traditional ice-breakers. I only remember this because I’d rarely had many chances to associate with other kids before, so I was hoping to meet some fun youngsters, some people whom I could hang out with without worries of Doors or getting called crazy.
The first kid said that his name was Tom, short for Thomason, he liked robots and cars and didn’t like girls and cooties, and that he was born in Ireland (which explained his strange accent), and that he like playing soccer. He was about to sit down, when the teacher cleared her throat, that sickeningly sweet (like a cookie left too long in a cup of sugar water, all crumbly and disgusting, yet tempting in a twisted way) smile on her face.
“Don’t you want to tell us what your mommy and daddy do, Tom?”
Tom (we all called him Tommy) nodded and said proudly that his daddy taught ma-fe-ma-tix at Ha-verd University, and that his mother wrote big thick books. Sally’s father was the President of some famous computer part company, with her mother as the CEO of an equally successful business. Yeh-ha and Yeh-Min, a pair of Korean twins, had parents who were working together on the human genome project together.
I don’t want to remember all of these, I don’t know why I do, but my memory is good, disgustingly good, and these useless facts swirled around my head then and stayed there for the next decade and a half to come. I hate it. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it. All those kids, they - no, we - didn’t know then, but we were all the same.
When my turn, I got up, saying that I liked reading and playing with magnets, that I didn’t like tomatoes and centipedes, and that I was a fast runner. Then, of course, the bit about parents.
My father was a chemistry professor at Cambridge University. Normally, that wouldn’t be so glorious, but he’d discovered some chemical or the other (a particular arrangement of the carbon atom, I know now, that allows for an extremely durable and cheap type of substance, now commonly used to make gun shells), and gotten a huge prize for that. Reporters came and asked him how he’d done it, men in suits asked him how he’d done it, poor college kids came and asked him how he’d done it. He just smiled and said that that secret was something that he’d pass only down the family line.
My mother, now she was different. Avari Skye, the world-famous designer. Faux-leather, feathers, glitter, Swarovski crystals, tortoise shells, leopard fangs, she used all of that to decorate the bizarre pieces of clothing that she designed. Animal rights activists hated it, of course, but everyone else loved it. She used me as a model quite a bit, even when I was little; said something about how my blonde hair set off the color of the seal-skin well, and my eyes matched the crystals she’d used.
Combined, they raked in millions of dollars, pounds, Euros, loads of cash.
And that was why I was at Belland.
It was never stated explicitly, but I know now that Belland wasn’t a school, it was more of a breeding ground. Bring in the best of the best, the kids of all the successful adults of England, and shove them together in a snow-white building atop a pristine landscape, and they were bound to come out just as, if not more, successful as their parents. It was simple, in concept.
Ha….”gifted,” they called us. I don’t know about that.