Roland
Elite Warrior
Posts: 95
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Post by Roland on Jun 14, 2009 22:19:56 GMT -6
Roland drained his third drink in one long swig, giving a sigh as he lowered the glass back to the bar. He was feeling warm, and his mind was buzzing with the effects of the drinks he'd had. The bartender asked him yet again how he planned to pay, the fancy-pants credit card he'd flashed wouldn't cut it nowadays, he needed cold hard coin, but Roland waved him off and ordered another drink. After his hellish first experience with the inhabitants of this backwater little world, he deserved far more than three drinks.
Glancing over in the corner, he shook his head. That damned robot stood there, looking completely ridiculous in an old longcoat and a bowler hat. He'd been trying to blend in, Roland had guessed, but the clothes really only had the effect of drawing more attention to him. He had to guess at the robot's goals at this point; the damned thing hadn't said a word to him since they'd left that fortress of a mansion behind. He'd just followed him silently, always watching him, staring at him with those creepy-as-hell unblinking eyes.
After a week of wandering, he'd found the City. He'd been impressed at first by the size and architecture of the place, but as he'd gotten closer and reached the city itself, that changed to a mix of pity and depression. This place was just a downer to be in, really. Most of the inner city was slums, from what he'd learned, run by a patchwork of different gangs, too busy fighting pointless turf wars to try and fix things. A pointless waste of energy and potential talent, really. He remembered the Reclaimers had been much the same way when he'd joined: big dreams, but mostly talk otherwise. By the time he'd finished, however, they'd either taken over or eliminated every other rebel faction; when you were busy reclaiming a world, you had to focus on one enemy at a time. Wars on more than one front were pointless and stupid, and doomed to failure, besides.
Taking a look around the bar, Roland flipped his glasses down from where they'd been perched. A quick scan of the room revealed only one or two Couriers (as he'd first believed them, at least. With time, he'd begun to suspect massive genepool pollution was the source of all the powered beings in this world, which sent an even bigger shiver down his spine), and the rest was simply a drunken crowd. An angry, resentful, depressed drunken crowd. As his fourth drink arrived, he sighed again before draining the glass. So much potential. Such a waste.
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Post by rilkan on Jun 14, 2009 22:22:26 GMT -6
"So, my brother really made that much of an impression on you, huh?" Taka asked, awaiting Nate's answer with a mix of curiousity and anxiety. After Maku had left, he and Nate had begun talking. Now, nearly three weeks later, they'd forged an unlikely friendship, and while Nate still joked about it, Taka never took the threats of bringing him in place of his brother all that seriously.
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Post by gideon on Jun 14, 2009 22:24:41 GMT -6
"Well...I've told you before, my ability only lets me feel emotions. It'd be a different story if your brother had done what he did out of anger, or jealousy, or lust. Instead...I don't know, it's like he was doing it so that he wouldn't need to do it anymore." Nate explained, quickly taking a sip from his glass. He didn't drink often, didn't like the way it seemed to amplify his abilities and make them more difficult to control. However, between catching flak from his partner about Maku's killings, and the workload from his day job, he'd had a rough week.
"I guess part of it was--" Nate stopped, his heightened abilities focusing in on an area towards the bar. Closing his mouth, he looked towards the area, a chill running down his spine. He'd been picking up on general negative emotion all night, but he'd figured it was coming from the crowd. Putting that many people together in one of the only working bars in the City only gave them cause to focus on their troubles, and how their quality of life had generally plummeted since Reyone won the war.
This was different, though. Where the crowd as a whole was depressed with a bit of anger, he'd felt a massive dose of pure, skin-crawling, blood-chilling hatred directed at himself and Taka. It had faded into the background noise almost as soon as it had appeared, but it had put him on edge. He pushed his drink away, shuddering as he tried to move closer to the wall, slouching down to make himself less visible. Part of him, deep down, was very truly scared.
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Post by rilkan on Jun 14, 2009 22:26:36 GMT -6
"What? Part of it was...what's wrong?" Taka watched as Nate stopped in mid-sentence, turned to face the bar, then turned back, shying away from his drink and seemingly shrinking in the booth. He had a bad feeling that something was very wrong, something that Nate's abilities had clued him in to.
Looking in the direction Nate had, Taka saw only a row of people along the bar. There was a young man on the end towards the wall that seemed a bit out of place, but nothing directly threatening. Still...Taka was on his guard, now. Too much had happened while he'd been following Maku for him to ignore the sense of unease he had.
"Come on," Taka said, sliding out of the booth and grabbing his jacket. "Let's get out of here." He'd try and get Nate to talk about it later, but under the circumstances, his main concern was getting someplace he felt safe. For him, that meant Old Sara's Boarding House. It meant home. Hoping Nate would follow, Taka headed for the door, and stepped out into the cool night air.
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Post by gideon on Jun 14, 2009 22:29:39 GMT -6
Nate nodded as Taka stood, following suit as quickly as he could without drawing attention to himself. He was right behind the younger man as they left, and struggled to keep pace with the young man as they headed home that night.
He'd felt hatred like that before, but not often, and it always raised one hell of a red flag. Hatred like that...it only ever led to one thing: Bloodshed, and not a small amount, either.
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Roland
Elite Warrior
Posts: 95
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Post by Roland on Jun 14, 2009 22:31:05 GMT -6
A breeze of cool air swept over Roland, distracting him from his fifth glass. By now, he was half interested in seeing just how many drinks he could get out of this bartender before he'd honestly demand payment. However, as he glanced back towards the door and realized just who had been leaving, his mind leaped onto an entirely different track.
"Damnit!" he yelled, slamming the half-empty glass down on the bar. A hush fell over the crowd as everyone in the room turned their attention towards him. The bartender moved to calm him down and cut him off, but Roland stood, taking his glass with him as he walked from the bar towards the center of the room.
"What?!" he asked, glaring at anyone he could make eye contact with. "You can't honestly tell me that I'm the only one pissed off in this room, let alone this organized junkyard you call a city! I've overheard half the people here talk about how much better life used to be. From what I've heard, you've got every right to be pissed!"
The bartender took a step towards Roland, wanting to shut the idiot kid up before he started something that would end with property damage. It was bad enough he'd probably wind up giving the kid a night of free drinks; he didn't need to shut down for a week to piece the place back together.
As soon as he placed a hand on Roland's shoulder, however, he found himself on his back, staring up at the ceiling as the young man placed a booted heel on his hand.
"See, people like this bartender here? They want you to grumble, to keep you down and quietly pissed. Why? Because it'll drive you to drink, keep him in business, put a little extra coin in his pocket. Him, and people like him, are profiting from your anger. Meanwhile, your life gets worse, and you get poorer and poorer."
Roland ground his heel into the man's hand, sending a cringe through the crowd as the sound of crunching bone filled the air. However, he kept the crowd's attention, and this made him smile. Thinking about the Reclaimers again had given him an idea, and if this crowd was any indication, it seemed that someone might finally find a use for all that wasted potential.
Glancing at Scrap, he saw the robot was still watching. His grin grew, along with his confidence. He'd give the robot something worth watching, alright. Hell, he'd give this whole damned world a show, if he got the chance.
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Post by scrap on Jun 15, 2009 23:43:50 GMT -6
Scrap observed Roland's behavior, noting the effects that the alcohol had been having on his system. At least, the young man seemed to believe it to be alcohol. A brief chemical analysis revealed most drinks in the establishment to contain little more than 5% alcohol, with the remainder being composed of mostly water, with various sugars and spices added, presumably, for taste. It seemed that Roland and the other humans in the vicinity were under what his memory banks referred to as a 'placebo effect'.
Chemical reasoning aside, the young man's behavior was quite intriguing. He spoke in rapidly shifting tempo and volume and tone, a technique which served to keep his audience's attention. The crushing of the bartender's hand seemed to draw the attention of those few who had ignored him thus far, while also silencing those who had been arguing against him. Referencing his historical logs, Scrap found that all of these were techniques which had served powerful rulers well in the past. Granted, their rules had been brief and violent, but during those times, their political influence seemed to be unmatched.
As the night continued, the crowd in the bar seemed to grow more agreeable to Roland's words, until, when the group finally split for the majority of the humans to return to their homes, a few younger males remained, offering food and shelter for Roland, as well as himself (referred to by the young men as 'tall dark and creepy', apparently some sort of inside joke, judging from the laughter which followed the comment). He noted they all wore their clothing in a similar style, and all of them wore dark purple bandanas tied loosely around their necks.
Referencing his historical logs, he found that such instances of similar or themed attire often indicated membership of some sort. In urban settings, this most likely indicated membership in a gang. A brief scan of available data referencing gangs and gang activity revealed a large list of entries. Unknowingly, the nanites that composed his face shifted his expression into something disturbingly similar to a smirk. It seemed he now had a golden opportunity to observe human emotion firsthand, and what little he had already witnessed indicated that he should be pleased. And so he was.
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