[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]Cyg didn’t have entanglements. She was lucky. Isaac Merlo and Elisabeth Fiorelli were both decidedly capable of taking care of themselves. She didn’t really have ‘League friends’-- or, at the very least, no one she wouldn’t murk for the cause.

Isaac’s voice in her ear seemed to be trying to aim at something passe and conversational, but there was a low note to it, like the silence that falls after an echo.

“Yeah, I think that’s the Interdream stuff… dream juice. What the fuck ever.” She ducked around a corner and stared down a pit to nothing and a dead end. The twisting, turning map of her path in her head was all convoluted and interwoven like intestines slid back in on one another. It was beginning to make her nauseous.

“Holding up okay? I’m about to find Elisabeth Fiorelli and check on her, but I’m sure I can find you if you need anything…” It was a question with no good answer. Holding up was relative.

tl;dr

+ 'is isaac still alive' counts as 'pivotal information' to me
+ wearing

[attr="class","samknoxt"]Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉

[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]cyg wondered what her nightmares would look like. sharks, probably. and bears. bears were a lot scarier than anyone gave them credit for.

disappointing isaac could be crossed squarely off the list, as it was a reality she was living in, at present. it hurt less than she imagined it would: like an inevitability, a punch you saw coming. she didn't know if that made it better or worse.

maybe he deserves someone softer.

"right," she said, on an incredulous snort that dulled the pain of that remark. he didn't do it on purpose. another inevitability. so many of those.

"well, when you put it that way," she said, drawing out the vowels and laying hard into the sarcasm, so he could really hear it. she was trying to be funny (it was a blessing and a curse) but her brain was screaming: then why are you even here. if you hate it so much why are you here. if it's all so crazy to you, why are you doing this. constantly getting tied up in knots for no fucking reason. i told you you should go. i told you i'd take care of it. you should go and if anyone tries to come after you, i'll kill them. we don't even have to be together for that. like bullet seed exploding in her mind, rat-a-tat-tat rat-a-tat-tat, one after the other in an increasingly downward spiral until she almost walked face first into a wall.

like waking from a dream, she realized she'd let the silence drag on for longer than was normal.

"no, you're not," she said, a bit louder than intended, "it is completely bullshit. but i think everything in hoenn is bullshit. you either swim with it or you get dragged under it."

she hadn't been there for the ending the multiverse adventure, either.

"i know if you can't beat 'em, join 'em is a piss poor argument but the alternative is doing nothing and i'm fucking sick of that."

it wasn't about her and it didn't make it better.

tl;dr

+ mp for paranoia
+ wearing

[attr="class","samknoxt"]Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉

[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]cyg had joined rocket because she was tired of surviving. one day after another staring down the barrel of her own mortality, a gun of mediocrity jammed in her mouth.

it was boredom but it was deeper than that. it was a despiration for something more. it was a kind of boredom, a kin of it, if a lifelong desperation coming to a potentially brutal and violent head could be called boredrom.

"fat lot of good it did you."

she appreciated the sentiment. but she could hold her contributions to life in the palm of her hand and not even see it. what good was everything, anything, if she couldn't take care of the people she loved?

"i don't know any more, isaac."

it's so blasé, the way she says it, like reading a weather report or something else mundane.

"the last thing we need right now is unnecessary drama. i'll be fine."

tl;dr

+ mp for paranoia
+ wearing

[attr="class","samknoxt"]Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉

[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]Cyg felt like screaming.

Why was he like this.

Always so warm. So insufferably sweet. The kind of person that nothing bad would ever happen to if life were fair and good.

Isaac was so good. And so, so soft. Not in a bad way, really, just… an antithetical way. The way that made Cygne ashamed of how she was. Never intentionally, and that was the hard part.

“With all due respect, sweetheart,” she said, voice gone a little bit hoarse, “I have no idea what that means.”

She was passing through a small forest of what looked like dead coral, bone-pale smokestack shapes jutting up through the formless dark.

“Hold on I-- gotta do a thing. BRB.”

She cut her comms and pulled the earpiece away from her head, folding it in her fist and stowing it in her jacket. Then, in a series of jagged motions, she lifted her boot and kicked forcibly down on the coral, over and over and over again, busting it loose and crushing it to powder to drift away in the expanse of weak gravity.

“I can’t do good for you if you don’t let me!”

She ground the fragments beneath the ball of her foot, relishing the way it crackled like tiny pieces of glass. The frustration and rage slowly ebbed into something… else. Still raw, but not quite as active. A low fire, a soft burn.

She let her heel fall and rocked backward with a huff, refitting her earpiece and clicking the link active again.

“Hey, sorry. ‘Sall good, man. Um. But, as a sidenote, have you ever seen the movie The Abyss?”

tl;dr

+ mp for paranoia
+ wearing

[attr="class","samknoxt"]Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉

[attr="class","samknox2"]

[attr="class","samknoxw"]”Oh.

It’s a soft breath of air, something tender, almost sensual.

“Fuck, that’s such a good movie.”

And maybe even more on theme. She thinks of Gina Rodriguez’ character and her slow spiral into madness, the way it eventually caused her to turn on her friends. The mutated bear, ripping her face off.

“We should watch it. When this is done.”

She laughs a little because Isaac has absolutely no idea what she’s talking about, probably.

“And, sort of. So The Abyss is about a team of researches and, like, military people that go down into a deep trench to investigate signs of alien life. And one of the military guys starts to go fucking insane from the-- the pressure. Of the ocean, right. And he starts to do dumb, dangerous shit.”

There’s a flashbang of light and the sound of fighting as Cyg crests a small ridge, boots crunching on the slipping stones that fall a bit and then lift off in the sway of gravity. Her mouth drops open, then snaps shut, a suppressed giggle whining between her lips.

“And that’s-- that’s kinda how I feel, right now. It’s hard to explain.” Her voice breaks a bit-- out of excitement, really, thick with emotion. “I don’t know if its this place or the-- the Arceus thing or, just, Rocket and Life as a whole but.”

Like she’s been slowly coming unspooled for-- for weeks or months, she couldn’t tell.

“I love you. Please don’t die.”

And she pinches the earpiece between her fingers and crushes it, the burst of feedback blending in smoothly with the static burning in her brain.

tl;dr

MP
+ 100 MP for comms mission
+ 50 MP for mission participation
+ 10 MP for paranoia
+ 50 MP for IC posts
+ 210 MP total

[attr="class","samknoxt"]Isaac Merlo

[attr="class","samknoxc"]☉