For Want of Another - RP Story culminating in Player Event

4 posts · 2005-11-14 13:46:00 to 2005-11-15 21:08:00

#23900000458 11/14/2005 13:46 For Want of Another - RP Story culminating in Player Event

For Want of Another, Part 1

(Note: The forum will censor most of my language, but a full version will be available on www.devilsadvocates.net in the Archives section for those who want to read the full version.)

Two loves lost.Not one, but two.Return was striking out perfectly this week. She
had lost Gothique to a crazy stunt she had pulled against Pltchaos, the
little whore who wanted to be loved by a vampire. And then she lost
Kshana to Pltchaos, all because Kshana wanted someone who understood
her and she could protect.

Bull**bleep**.

Tears ran down her face, black and purple makeup running lines down her cheeks.She
had sat in the elevator of that residential apartment for hours,
switching off between crying and kissing her rag doll, Sarah.

“I’m not wanted anymore.Nobody wants an old hag for a lover. Nobody wants Return,” she whimpered to her doll.“I’m just someone who everyone can walk on.Forget about the has-been. Forget about the Lady In Mourning. Power is in people who can kill, not in people who can command. And no one wants to be with someone as barren as I am; someone who can never have sex ever again. Who wants that Sarah!WHO WANTS THAT?”

She shook the doll with vigor before starting to calm down. Quietly, she put Sarah down the front of her dress, keeping the doll stuck in the front of her bra. She looked a mess as she began to load the twin submachine guns she had brought with her. The usually formal purple dress was in tatters, ripped to shreds from hours of anger and frustration. Her hair was out of shape from running her hands constantly though it during her bouts of crying. The only thing that was still pristine in the small elevator was the glistening guns she was loading.

She released the elevator from stop and opened the door on the 14th floor. Calmly and quietly, she walked down the green hallway to the fire stairs. After disabling the opening mechanism on it, a cruel smile crossed her purple lips.It was 3:00 AM; everyone was sleeping calmly in their apartments.It was such a perfect time to relieve stress.

Walking
back to the elevator shaft at the other end of the hallway, she
haphazardly pulled the fire alarm and stood in the front of the
elevator, guns behind her back.

The alarm blared, and the shuffling of the families inside of the apartments was soon heard. And as the careless bluepills ran out into the hallway to escape the building, she stood and watched them.

In the usual panic of the fire alarm, people began to crowd at the end of the hall, where the fire steps were. An elderly man was the first to reach it, his room right next to the steps. But when his hands pushed the door, it jammed shut.There was no way out of the hallway… except the elevator.

The hallway was quite full now and Return took the safeties off of the guns. Raising them up, a look of happiness fell across her twisted face.

The sound of lead filled the air, screams providing an appropriate chorus to the violence. “I am God… I AM GOD!!!” Return shouted, watching the red paint the walls of green.“IF I CAN’T DIE, THEN ALL OF YOU WILL DIE IN MY NAME!!!”

The carnage was spectacular.Bodies were totally ripped apart by her overuse of force. Some people were hardly recognizable after she stopped firing into the fray. And
after all of that, somehow, a scared little boy and his father
survived. The boy clutched his Father, crying, covered in the blood of
others. The father stared in front of him at the swiftly approaching Return, a look of horror across his face.

“Please… please… kill me, but don’t kill my son,” he pleaded with the woman in purple as she reached him.

She raised her dual guns to the man’s head and asked him a simple question. “Why do you want to save your son?”

“Because… I love him…”

“LOVE DOES NOT EXIST!!!” she shouted, firing into his head and neck. His
head literally exploded and the rest of his body dropped to the ground,
the child gasping and wailing, unable to breathe and unable to totally
comprehend what just happened.

She pointed her guns at the boy and was about to fire when another thought crossed her mind.She pulled her guns away and looked at the child through her purple sunglasses with a cold, blank stare. “You, child, will live.You
will have to live through the horror of remembering this moment, day
after day, year after year, just as I will endure the pain of having my
love stolen from me, day after day, year after year.”

With
that, she turned, and kicked out the door off of its hinges. She left
the blood of others all over her, and calmly walked to the roof. There, underneath the stars, she leapt from the 20 story building and made her escape into the night.

The headline was everywhere the next day:

RESIDENTIAL MASSACRE: 57 DEAD AFTER TERRORIST ATTACKS CITY APARTMENT

#23900000465 11/14/2005 23:54 Re: For Want of Another - RP Story culminating in Player Event

Those finely crafted shoes were removed from that desk for just an instant, as black-gloved fingers picked up the day's paper, which had formerly resided between the two surfaces. Thumbing through the pages, he caught the continuation of a story from the front page... Something about a mass-killing of bluepills. Void flipped back to the headline which, as it turned out, was today's big story.

"... Hm."

So it seemed that some terrorist went berserk on an apartment complex full of innocents, with no apparent motivation. Void knew, as any awakened individual did, that one simply needed to take out the word "terrorist" and replace it with "redpill" to get the real story in a case such as this one. The report said that the killer was a female, wielding a pair of submachine guns and wearing a purple dress.

... A purple dress...

Void smiled, but just a little.

"So good you've decided to remember who it is you are... Lady Return."

Picking his coat up on the way out of the room, his newspaper was deposited into the wastebasket in the hallway, before he took the corridor to the elevator, to the parking garage, to his bike. Then, all black leather and steel, he sped off into the slightly green haze of the morning's encoded fog...

... Thirty minutes after that, he was in front of Club Sphynx, in Dannah Heights.

"Sooner or later, the temptation to go back becomes too strong... For me, for Plt... For all of us who can go back..."

Sliding up to the bar, ever in the dark corner of the same, he sat and waited, one hand on a drink, the other hanging by his side, looking absent, but keeping close to one of his paired handguns...

He was here for Return, but not to kill her.
No, there were many who would arrive to do that.
... He was here, rather, to stop them from doing that.

Void took another drink, motioning to the bartender to refill his glass. Truthfully, he still hadn't gone back to drinking as much as he had in more-peaceful times, and so he was tempted just to let that second glass sit unfinished, while he waited.

Ten minutes later, he drank from it as well...
But just a little.

- Void

Recursion: n - See Recursion.

#23900000505 11/15/2005 16:36 Re: For Want of Another - RP Story culminating in Player Event

(Reposted from "The Good News", 'cause I think it fits here. SMILEY

)

Void snapped his cellphone closed and put it back into his pocket. He was continuing to wish that he had not given the number to as many people as now had it... Come to think of it, he hadn't given the number to as many people as now had it.

Plt had called to tell him she might be a sister. He had said he didn't care. She then informed him that she had located her bluepill parents - at least until they had sold their house and moved away. Again, Void had said that he didn't care... That time, however, he had been lying.

Void did care, but definitely not in the way that Plt did. So she had some bluepill parents living in Mannesdale... He still hadn't quite gotten over how she had used him recently, even though he understood it had been largely beyond her control... Still, what was it Anubis had told him?

"Sometimes, it takes an uncaring soul..."

Void decided that Plt cared far too much about far too little... And he also felt like it was starting to affect other operatives, especially himself and his work. In the very core of his being, Void cared for only two things, and those two things happened to be himself, and his work.

Opening up a new browser window on his laptop, he navigated to the page of the Cobra Lounge that held the information Plt had talked about, a few quick clicks downloaded the phone number into his cellphone, which he had connected for that purpose, and now quickly disconnected as that purpose was fulfilled. The phone was slipped, efficiently, back into his pocket.

Sliding out from behind that desk, he picked up his coat from the rack on the way out the door, the smooth black leather sliding over his body to cover his various weapons. He nodded silently to the Exiles who always seemed to be standing there at all hours of the day, not telling them, as usual, where he was headed. He stepped into the elevator, being greeted by the faint strain of some depressingly bland music... His ears were gladdened substantially when the elevator doors opened into the cavernous silence of the building's subterranean garage.

Slipping a keyring from his pocket, his fingers worked absentmindedly until they found an object shaped in the manner of a particular key - in this case, for a car. Void generally took his motorcycle, or moved by hardline, as most did... But this time, he simply felt like a proper drive... Slipping into the black vehicle, he closed the door, soundproofing the space. He hit a button, autodialing the number he had placed into the phone earlier, as his right hand turned that key in the car's ignition, starting the vehicle.

"Yes, can I speak to David or Krista Dost, please? It's about the house..."

Sometimes, it took an uncaring soul, Anubis had said... Void was indeed capable of caring...

... But just a little.

- Void

Recursion: n - See Recursion.

#23900000511 11/15/2005 21:08 Re: For Want of Another - RP Story culminating in Player Event

"... I see." was all he bothered to say, before hanging up the phone. Apparently someone had decided to kill Plt's family. Someone who had taken it upon themselves to step on his work. Someone who he had specifically told not to do so, if they valued their continued existence. Void was not pleased.

He was not pleased in the slightest.

Normally, he and the Lady Return got along just fine. They both understood eachother's ambitions, and it had brought them together, in an odd sort of way... Of course, such a relationship as they had was based on a mutual agreement not to interfere with one another's business... He had looked out for Return, had fought a losing battle with Vanon just the day before so she could have but a few moments alone with Gothique...

And she had chosen to do that one thing he had warned her against.

Normally, Void was not in the habit of threatening anyone he respected as much as Lady Return... But it seemed, more and more, that the woman he had come to respect in such a way was not, in fact, the woman who was committing these random acts of violence. The incidents lacked a certain... composure to them. They were too... Void thought about a word to put on it...

"Human."

That was it. Void had always respected Return because of an otherworldly power he had always felt around her... It was an aura of command, of composure, of one step closer to the perfection of... godhood? That wasn't the right word, but it was the first one that came to his mind. Now, it seemed, Return was breaking down... Showing her fragile - human - nature. Void reviled humanity. His whole life had been spent trying to isolate and destroy his own weaknesses in that way. Return knew about that. He had thought she understood, and had entrusted her with that knowledge... He had believed that she was uniquely able to comprehend his situation.

Obviously, he thought, he had been mistaken.

Perhaps Return's lashing out was borne of a lack of identification with her own kind, as his was... But she certainly had chosen a bad time to go insane, hadn't she?... Or had it, in fact, been a choice? Void had witnessed Vanon's attempts to manipulate the woman. He had to admit that while Vanon lacked man essential qualities of a proper villain (including any sort of fashion sense), he was not entirely stupid. The Exile had known about Return's weakness, and had been praying upon it.

Normally, Void would have sought to help that woman who was, admittedly, a dear friend and personal rolemodel of his... But she had gone and interfered with his business regarding Pltchaos. All she had to do was just sit back, let him do what he did best, and enjoy victory over the girl vicariously. Perhaps she would have even appreciated the manner with which he would have done it... Efficiently, but by no means quickly. It would have been with a certain delicious suffering, so that Plt would be able to tell by looking at the aftermath precisely what had occurred, in precisely what order.

Void sighed heavily... Return had stolen that from him, and he had rather been looking forward to it - to his revenge on Plt's consistant nagging and intrusions into his life. He assumed that she would call him to complain, amidst much tearfulness and general boo-hooing when she heard the news about her family...

Or maybe, just maybe, the experience would harden her, as he kept hoping the experiences in her life would. He did care about Pltchaos, in a way. He wanted her to be able to stand on her own within the Matrix. He wanted her to be a little bit more like the operatives who could take care of themselves... Liliane, Kabell, himself... Lady Return.

And so, his thoughts had come full-circle, as he sat there in the car, still thinking about what to do about her. Following the Pltchaos path, he might have called a meeting with Kshana or Gothique, only to off them in a particularly garish manner... But that would do nothing put push her further over the edge. No, Return needed to reclaim her many titles, to regain her supreme deific self-confidense - to once again be queen-**bleep**, and love it, and live it.

Void would do what he could to help her regain that position.
... If only just a little.

- Void

Recursion: n - See Recursion.