Tara Maclay (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
moontothetide) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
towerofanimus2012-06-04 10:13 pm
moontothetide) wrote in towerofanimus2012-06-04 10:13 pm
Entry tags:
2nd Spell
Characters: Tara Maclay and open!
When: July 1st, and then July 3rd
Setting: Listed below
Format: Action or commentspam, I'll copy you
Summary: Today is a day where many things happen. Most of them are awful
Warnings: Death and possibly violence
1. Floor Thirty-Eight
Tara is pacing. She's pacing and wandering around the room, so lost in her own pensive thoughts that this occasionally involves bumping her shin painfully against a table or stumbling against an armchair. But, whenever she does this, it only results in a brief pause in her movement, and she doesn't put the letter down at all, instead simply standing there and reading it again and again and again.
Because she is holding a letter in both hands, and both those hands are shaking, and Tara is reading and rereading it as though each time is the first, and each time makes as little sense as the time before it.
Needless to say, Tara isn't in the right frame of mind to notice people, unless she bumps into them. "Oh! Oh god, I'm, I-I'm so sorry. D-Did I hurt you?"
2. Floor Two
Tara doesn't normally take the elevator in any case, so she doesn't notice that it isn't working to take her down as far as the infirmary. No, the walk down there is peaceful enough, for the tower, which is to say that she only has to strike down a couple of annoying little daytime creatures with a quick spell or two, and manages without having to take very much care to avoid the environmental hazards.
Her first collar check had been an early collar check, on her arrival, a fact she'd been made brutally aware of by some retrieval units dragging her kicking and shouting out of the library. After that, well, Tara had been even less sure of the schedule than she had before and, not being terribly eager to be dragging kicking and screaming from her work, she was taking a walk down to the infirmary just to check whether or not there was a collar check today, and get the indigo liquid in her collar topped up if there was. Ever since learning from Xion that the collars were necessary in more ways than one, she was eager to it topped up.
But, upon arrival, Tara was unpleasantly surprised. The clinic was empty, utterly devoid of the blank eyed, bland workers she'd met there on her last visit. In fact, the place seems completely deserted. Tara fortunately hasn't had to visit this floor more than once, so she has no way of knowing if there are days where it's supposed to be empty. But it still doesn't feel right to her, and so Tara lingers, knife in hand, pacing among the beds and checking the cabinets and rifling through whatever's been left out for her to rifle through.
4. Floor Twenty-Four
Ninety nine percent of the time, this floor is empty.
One percent of the time, it's not.
Tara stumbles as she appears at the far end of the room. The thing makes no sound as it marshals itself, but some hidden, long developed sense of danger makes Tara look up.
Her eyes grow wide with terror. Her mouth opens, but she can't even draw in the breath to scream. Instead, she starts to run, mad, desperate strides bringing her on and on back towards the stairs. If she weren't quite so terrified she would fly instead, but it's been too long without a power boost, and she can't take to the air without pausing for a few scant seconds that she doesn't have.
They're the stairs down, but she doesn't care, she just has to get away.
...and she doesn't.
Tara shrieks in agony as the shadow falls upon her. She prays for help to come or, failing that, for unconsciousness to take her.
No one comes, and it doesn't.
5. Room 2-07, then Dormitory Floor 2
It's two days later that Tara awakes, in agony, in her bed in the room she shares with four other girls. And, for ten minutes, she can't even move to take any action to ease the pain. But any of her roommates that happened to be present will be made aware to Tara's presence, if not by her soft whimpers of pain, then by her voice, faint and exhausted and bewildered.
"It's...i-it's not supposed to...to feel this way. They said..."
But then her words are cut off by a fit of ragged coughs that make her body twitch despite its paralysis, and leaves blood dotting her chin.
It's clear even to Tara that she needs medical attention, with every inch of her skin feeling like it's aflame and her insides feeling as though they were messily chopped to mincemeat before being clumsily reassembled. Who's to say this wasn't the case? But the painless resurrection she's heard so much about has been anything but, so far. So fellow wanderers on the second dormitory level will likely see Tara, limping along, one hand braced against the wall, staring straight ahead with the ragged determination of the exhausted but desperate.
And it's then that she finds that the elevators aren't working. Tara can't help herself, she collapses back against the elevator doors to sob. But she does so standing up. She knows that, as horrible as she's feeling, if she sits down getting back up to haul herself all the way back down to the infirmary will be even more of a hellish effort.
Tara can be found on any floor, after that, making her slow but grimly determined way down the stairs. It's clear that she's in pain, one hand pressed tight over her stomach despite how much pain even wearing her clothes is causing against her brutalized skin. There's blood around her mouth from the cough fits that occasionally seize her body, leaving her doubled over in pain.
But she keeps going. For an emergency like this...and she's sure she counts, even in this place...there has to be a way to get a doctor. There must still be doctors somewhere in the tower. Aren't there?
Back on the second floor for the second time in three days, she finds that there isn't. And then, defeated and in pain, Tara collapses onto a bed and just lays there.
When: July 1st, and then July 3rd
Setting: Listed below
Format: Action or commentspam, I'll copy you
Summary: Today is a day where many things happen. Most of them are awful
Warnings: Death and possibly violence
1. Floor Thirty-Eight
Tara is pacing. She's pacing and wandering around the room, so lost in her own pensive thoughts that this occasionally involves bumping her shin painfully against a table or stumbling against an armchair. But, whenever she does this, it only results in a brief pause in her movement, and she doesn't put the letter down at all, instead simply standing there and reading it again and again and again.
Because she is holding a letter in both hands, and both those hands are shaking, and Tara is reading and rereading it as though each time is the first, and each time makes as little sense as the time before it.
Needless to say, Tara isn't in the right frame of mind to notice people, unless she bumps into them. "Oh! Oh god, I'm, I-I'm so sorry. D-Did I hurt you?"
2. Floor Two
Tara doesn't normally take the elevator in any case, so she doesn't notice that it isn't working to take her down as far as the infirmary. No, the walk down there is peaceful enough, for the tower, which is to say that she only has to strike down a couple of annoying little daytime creatures with a quick spell or two, and manages without having to take very much care to avoid the environmental hazards.
Her first collar check had been an early collar check, on her arrival, a fact she'd been made brutally aware of by some retrieval units dragging her kicking and shouting out of the library. After that, well, Tara had been even less sure of the schedule than she had before and, not being terribly eager to be dragging kicking and screaming from her work, she was taking a walk down to the infirmary just to check whether or not there was a collar check today, and get the indigo liquid in her collar topped up if there was. Ever since learning from Xion that the collars were necessary in more ways than one, she was eager to it topped up.
But, upon arrival, Tara was unpleasantly surprised. The clinic was empty, utterly devoid of the blank eyed, bland workers she'd met there on her last visit. In fact, the place seems completely deserted. Tara fortunately hasn't had to visit this floor more than once, so she has no way of knowing if there are days where it's supposed to be empty. But it still doesn't feel right to her, and so Tara lingers, knife in hand, pacing among the beds and checking the cabinets and rifling through whatever's been left out for her to rifle through.
4. Floor Twenty-Four
Ninety nine percent of the time, this floor is empty.
One percent of the time, it's not.
Tara stumbles as she appears at the far end of the room. The thing makes no sound as it marshals itself, but some hidden, long developed sense of danger makes Tara look up.
Her eyes grow wide with terror. Her mouth opens, but she can't even draw in the breath to scream. Instead, she starts to run, mad, desperate strides bringing her on and on back towards the stairs. If she weren't quite so terrified she would fly instead, but it's been too long without a power boost, and she can't take to the air without pausing for a few scant seconds that she doesn't have.
They're the stairs down, but she doesn't care, she just has to get away.
...and she doesn't.
Tara shrieks in agony as the shadow falls upon her. She prays for help to come or, failing that, for unconsciousness to take her.
No one comes, and it doesn't.
5. Room 2-07, then Dormitory Floor 2
It's two days later that Tara awakes, in agony, in her bed in the room she shares with four other girls. And, for ten minutes, she can't even move to take any action to ease the pain. But any of her roommates that happened to be present will be made aware to Tara's presence, if not by her soft whimpers of pain, then by her voice, faint and exhausted and bewildered.
"It's...i-it's not supposed to...to feel this way. They said..."
But then her words are cut off by a fit of ragged coughs that make her body twitch despite its paralysis, and leaves blood dotting her chin.
It's clear even to Tara that she needs medical attention, with every inch of her skin feeling like it's aflame and her insides feeling as though they were messily chopped to mincemeat before being clumsily reassembled. Who's to say this wasn't the case? But the painless resurrection she's heard so much about has been anything but, so far. So fellow wanderers on the second dormitory level will likely see Tara, limping along, one hand braced against the wall, staring straight ahead with the ragged determination of the exhausted but desperate.
And it's then that she finds that the elevators aren't working. Tara can't help herself, she collapses back against the elevator doors to sob. But she does so standing up. She knows that, as horrible as she's feeling, if she sits down getting back up to haul herself all the way back down to the infirmary will be even more of a hellish effort.
Tara can be found on any floor, after that, making her slow but grimly determined way down the stairs. It's clear that she's in pain, one hand pressed tight over her stomach despite how much pain even wearing her clothes is causing against her brutalized skin. There's blood around her mouth from the cough fits that occasionally seize her body, leaving her doubled over in pain.
But she keeps going. For an emergency like this...and she's sure she counts, even in this place...there has to be a way to get a doctor. There must still be doctors somewhere in the tower. Aren't there?
Back on the second floor for the second time in three days, she finds that there isn't. And then, defeated and in pain, Tara collapses onto a bed and just lays there.
no subject
She likes Kohaku. She does. Tara likes to think of them as friends, even. She's pleasant company and a polite, sweet girl who's leaps and bounds better than any college roommate Tara ever had, Willow possibly included.
It's good that Kohaku isn't hurt.
"...so. Blackouts. There's, um, still no food, then?" She's in no state to summon anything. Tara wouldn't even trust herself to properly identify an edible plant. "O-Or people?" Medicine. She needs medicine, while she has no power, and Tara really doesn't trust herself to dose herself properly.
no subject
Gotta stay cheery like the real Hisui-chan, though! Kohaku addends her grim tidings with a chipper note, "But I'm sure it won't be so for long."
no subject
God, Tara hopes not. She's never been in a situation quite this dire before. Vampires are one thing. Starvation is quite another.
"But...I, I-I need to go." She makes to swing her legs off the bed, and act that coincidentally puts her more or less face to face with Kohaku. "There, um, there might still be some medicine, d-down on the second floor. I, I-I have to get some..."
no subject
"Well, maybe - it hasn't been that long since things got like this, and there were supplies there when I last went... Ah. Tara-san. You're a little close."
no subject
"Great," she says, her voice sounding very far away. "Th-That's good. Thank you, Kohaku. And...a-and I'm sorry. About this."
It's a wild shot in the dark. Kohaku had only told her about the families that shared the blood of demons, she'd never admitted to being one of them. But if she lived in that sort of world, shared it with those sorts of creatures...there was a chance.
And so Tara's grip tightens on Kohaku's wrist. Her other hand begins to glow, covered with a murky purple miasma. And the irises of her eyes turn an inky black, a black that lets in no light at all.
Quick as a cat that has finally cornered its prey, Tara plunges her hand into Kohaku's chest. But, unlike the thing that killed her, she's not interested in the petty workings of the meatsuit. No, it's the aspects of the soul and spirit she wants, and Tara actually smiles in triumph as she feels what she's looking for, and begins to draw it out of the girl and into herself.
here have some pretentious fun with html
'That's strange,' Kohaku thinks, looking down at the hand lodged in her chest, and it feels like an actual rip into her, even if there's no blood -No, that's not how it is at all. Get it right, she informs herself.
'That's funny,' Kohaku thinks, looking down through the eyes of some doll that she's borrowing the sight of. There's a hand in its chest and it looks like it should bleed, but it doesn't. Most dolls don't bleed, but this one usually did, which was what was so puzzling.
To Tara, Kohaku's eyes grow far away and glassy - she doesn't make a sound of speech, but breathes like a rattle. She's as paralyzed as she should be.
The fact that you managed this without editing impresses me.
But, all good things. Like a vampire finding out that its prey has run out of blood, the realization eventually steals over Tara that Kohaku has nothing left to give her.
Slowly, she withdraws her hand, the miasma dissipating. Neither of them bear any visible mark from the encounter, but Tara sees the glassy look in Kohaku's eyes, and feels an unfamiliar pang of guilt. This wasn't some magic pusher or addict. This was...
...but, she forces the feeling aside. She needed this. Kohaku would be safe, up here. She'd have her powers back, soon, and Tara...Tara would make it up to her. Somehow.
Until then, she stands - blessedly, for the moment, painless - andm akes to lift Kohaku onto her bed to rest.
i love overusing italics and strikes and subtext so much
The power of a Synchronizer was never anything Kohaku had actively felt - it's operation had always been more like a sudden absence, a lingering dizziness that trained her into being clumsy in movement long ago.
The absence of the power felt nigh identical to the use of it, so Kohaku didn't pick up on it being her power that was gone - this was simply a normal exchange, wasn't it, but done a bit strangely. She wondered how Tara had found out. Did that black haired boy from the other night let her secret get loose...?
I'd say it's appropriate. This entire thing is kind of trippy
"I'm sorry, Kohaku-chan," she murmurs. "I'm sorry that it had to be this way."
But then, she smiles. It makes her face hurt to do so, but she smiles. Best to keep up a happy face in the light of this fresh hell. What else could you do?
"You'll be okay. It's, it's not like it's permanent, and nothing bad's come up here, and...and I'll just take the elevators down. I'll be right back. Promise."
She takes one of the girl's hands in hers', and presses a soft kiss to it. Then, laying her arm down again like a slightly fussy mother, Tara turns and moves out of the room, into the hallway, towards the elevators. She should be able to keep the pain away that far, at least...not much further but, she won't have to, she can just take the elevators down and come right back up to check on the girl...
Sleep tight, Kohaku.