[CLOSED] Nil sa saol seo ach ceo
who: Camille and Raimi
what: Camille and Raimi team up to put an end to black rock.
where: All over the station
when: The tenth, evening.
warning(s): Character death
( Is ni bheimed beo, ach seal beag gearr )
what: Camille and Raimi team up to put an end to black rock.
where: All over the station
when: The tenth, evening.
warning(s): Character death
( Is ni bheimed beo, ach seal beag gearr )
In any case, if he wasn't still alive, then he also probably wouldn't have gotten Camille's message. He probably wouldn't be standing here, outside of a cafe in the middle of the evening, outside the comforts of his own solitude.
Days had gone by. He hadn't slept much. Hadn't eaten much. His stomach was weak. His eyes were tired. His legs barely carried and dragged as he walked. In other words, it was nothing unusual to those who actually met the programmer in person.
The one thing keeping him going was the fact that his brain processed a thousand thoughts a second. Words and numbers calculated in synchronized data forms, and somehow, in all the crystallized chaos that took shape in seemingly harmless deathly onyx -- it all had to make some kind of insane sense.
The stuff had come from Camille's world. If anyone had an idea on how to end this, it had to be her.
Had to be ( ... )
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"Hello, Raimi. Thank you for coming."
She got to her feet. "I have an idea. If you are willing to work with me, I think the two of us might be able to neutralize all of the black rock." She paused and rubbed at her arms. "All you will have to do is go to the air purifying stations for each zone. You won't be in any danger, but I imagine it will be a fair bit of work."
She hadn't realized that she'd been pacing. She forced herself to stop and smile again. Everything was fine. Absolutely fine. Nothing to worry about.
"Are you up for it?"
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Someone was coming to him for help? And it wasn't just something like maintenance on someone's hardware -- but a task that involved saving lives?
He had seen enough death and pain over the network to last an entire lifetime. While Raimi had convinced himself that the wonders of modern media had desensitized him to the subjects of such things, he found that it was different when the pain was real. When these were people that he knew and talked to and seen.
This was not a game. Of that much he was sincere.
"Sure." He breathed, not even hesitating before he spoke. "What do you need me to do?"
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Then again, he wouldn't really need to know all the details, now would he?
"I'm going to turn into something called a purity spirit. Their bodies have the ability to purify corruption. Back home, they partner themselves with people to take on black rock and other forms of Plague. Never mind all the details...but essentially, what it means is that you'll become like them, temporarily. You'll become an exorcist! It'll mean that with my help, you can destroy the black rock entirely!"
She laced her hands together behind her back this time, trying to make it seem as if this was the easiest thing in the world.
"When I become a purity spirit, I'll need to occupy some kind of item. Then, all you need to do is go to the air purifiers and shoot some of my power into them. That should neutralize it all. Before that, though, we should probably practice on some black rock to make sure it works."
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Well, it mattered.
He had to act. Or else he would just be sitting here, waiting to die.
"I'll be an exorcist? Just like that? Guess we are a little short on a young priest and a young priest, but cool." He could definitely see the irony in it, though. Like fate and God was mocking him.
The smile was returned with only every inch of veracity.
"Purity spirit?" Raimi echoed, then told himself not to question it. Just think of it like a video game, or a piece of the programming -- except for the fact that it was not. "Alright, sweet. Practice. At least there's no dearth of black rock to try it on. How long should it take ( ... )
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Curiosity could wait, she supposed.
"I have a map of the station that indicates where the air purifiers are. I'll send it to your wearable." She pulled up her own and hit a few buttons. "It shouldn't be too difficult. But I won't be able to talk much in that form. I never can when I'm an Insubstantial, and, well, purities are known for their reticence. But I'll do my best to give you pointers. I'm afraid my only knowledge of exorcists and how they work comes from watching them in action."
She turned to look at him fully, sizing him up. She had never really talked to him much before now, and she didn't know that much about him. Was he really going to be up to this?
"Are you ready, then?"
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Not like you'd think.
Although they did have plenty of death, darkness, and poverty to go around. But suppose one should save that story for a sunny day.
As Camille pings over the information, Raimi briefly checked his wearable to confirm the transfer.
"Got it. Sorry in advance if my exorcism skills aren't quite up to snuff, but I'll give it my best shot." He then nodded. "I'm as ready as any asshole who has no idea what he's doing will ever be."
One had to give his honesty some credit, if nothing else.
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It was a surprise how such a seemingly normal guy managed to survive this long on a space station, surrounded by the strange and surreal, without completely losing his mind. Witness to the sudden shift of Camille's form did cause him to retreat a few steps, but he wasn't screaming at the pitch of his lungs as he had expected himself to. If anything, he was taken by the mild fascination of how different it was to see such a transformation take place in front of him, rather than behind the comfortable confines of smoke and mirrors upon his wearable.
He had no idea what to describe what the hell he just saw, other than the fact that it was just plain fucking weird. Raimi had never seen anything like that before, not even in movies, and if he hadn't known any better, if he hadn't been so prone to all the weirdness that he'd been previously exposed to already, he'd have probably screamed and scrambled and ran ( ... )
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But she heard--sensed, felt?--him coming toward her. He hadn't fled; that was good.
"Yes, it's me!" It was hard to talk like this, harder than she'd expected. "Didn't I say I'd--be in--an item?"
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"Okay, sure. So you're a plate." Tentatively, he reached for the item, lifting Camille and careful enough not to drop and risk breaking her. "No offense, but don't you think you could've chosen to possess something more -- oh, I don't know -- useful to change into?"
While he still had no idea what he was doing as he had never done anything like this before, Raimi couldn't really imagine how he's going to "exorcise" anything with this.
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She hears, sees, senses, feels what Raimi is saying and pouts inwardly.
"Couldn't--choose! Had to--nearby."
Though really, she does wish she'd managed to find something more interesting and less breakable. A blender would have been cool. But oh well. She's solidifying more and more; she's stuck in here for now.
"Just carry--to some black rock--test!" It's getting harder and harder to speak as well. "Point me--say 'release'! Should work. Then air! Can't talk. Go please!"
She sinks further in, wrapping herself more tightly into the plate. Her body knows what to do, at least--wait. Wait for the words.
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It was a good thing Camille hadn't actually taken the form of a blender, unless if they were planning on taking on all the black rock by hurling some mean milkshakes at it. Otherwise, Raimi would have had one hell of an inconvenient time lugging something a little bulkier around. At least he could throw a plate farther.
"That's it?" Not that he was complaining or anything. Better simple than sorry.
The insanity of it all was mind-boggling, though. All of this -- it was fucking insane. Yet here he was, carrying a talking plate out of the cafe and towards the nearest heap of the black rock he could find. Fortunately for them, he didn't have to walk very far to find what they were looking for.
"I swear to God, this better fucking work..."
With that, Raimi pointed... and spoke the magic word:
"Release."
Then he waited for something to happen.
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They were moving then. She could sense the world passing around them, then--there. Nearby, something dark, twisted, corrupted, she needed to fix it, she needed to fix it. She needed to, but patience. Patience she had to rely on her exorcist.
She shook herself out. No, no. Yes, she needed to wait, but no, she wasn't here to fix everything on the station, Powers, there was too much to fix. She needed to be careful. She needed to trust her exorcist--Raimi, she needed to trust Raimi ( ... )
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For some reason, he was remembering being a kid again.
It didn't even immediately occur to Raimi to question it. The fact that this could be dangerous... not for him, but for her. He didn't stop to consider the hazards that this could pose. She told him that he wouldn't be in any danger. Propelled only by the prospect of fixing what was damaged, he acted. In some way, he had hoped that in this futile endeavor, he could somehow fix a piece of himself that had long since been broken.
"Alright. Next stop -- the air purifier." Still carefully wielding Camille's plate form in his other grip, he checked the marked map across his wearable, his feet already heading in the direction of the most adjacent station.
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She can't speak, but she does try to at least send a feeling of "good job, you did it, now keep going!" toward Raimi. It's as misty and insubstantial as the rest of her, wreathed as it is in magic.
They're moving again. Good. To the air purifiers, she hopes. It occurs to her that if Raimi chooses to abandon her and run now, she's essentially done for. And so is the station, unless someone else miraculously manages to come up with a solution. Sollux and Shockwave could do it, probably, but who knows?
No. She chose Raimi. She has to trust him. She has to trust her exorcist.
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