[/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY underground tunnels | quantum tunneling, quantum immortality xxxxx xxxxxHis scar was the bite-mark of the fires of despair around him. Carnage, destruction, humiliation, all set to the rat-a-tat-tat of the nuclear blitz on the surface. Bang. Every day, every minute, like the pulse of his heart or the breaths of dirty, cavernous air. Bang. With it went a life, or two, or fifty, or fifty hundred. Like a spark, like a candle, violently snuffed out before it could gently fade away. And with it came the cracks and the rocks. These tunnels were a death sentence in wait, but they were also the one cord tying them to living their desperate, emaciated existence. Bang. The gods of fate fired their guns at the people below, all looking for these children who would run and fight another day. Cherno shone his flashlight upon the jagged wall to his right. Bright beads of putrid-smelling blackwater left cloudy trails upon the stone. Eeeeeeeeeeugh. The surface, filled with creases and melancholic wrinkles, was otherwise completely bare -- not even a single root penetrated this far through the rock. Right. It was one of the unmarked walls. Huh, his stuff didn't get wet in the puddle, did it? Cherno placed the flashlight down by his sore feet, shining the fan of light towards the tunnel's low ceiling, and retrieved a slab of dusty gypsum from his coat. This was one of the outlier tunnels, not yet explored by the others. Harley's party would be here soon, so it'd be dandy stankerin' if he finished his business quickly. Cherno slid closer to the wall, and with a snakelike hand, marked a large, white cross on the gnarled stone. This entire trip had left him a nervous wreck. Fucking germs must be everywhere. But-- shit, he had to get damn right used to everything if he wanted to live. And more than anything, really, Cherno desperately clung to this meager, dirty existence, trapped with these fellow targets that were still struck with mounds of infighting and mistrust. Cherno stepped back from the wall, and let out a deep sigh. With his chalky hand, he rubbed his eyepatch and gazed down at his wet boots. How long could they live like this? He'd been damn well trying his best to keep all of his emotions to himself. Logic, Cherno. Logic. But the faces, all of them, came back to haunt him. The time travel failed to save some of those good folks. They all dropped dead down, dirt-eating, like their actions were just useless nudges in the wrong direction. Except for a few, who still lived. Like John, and Temperance. They were okay. John was with him. Sort of. He wasn't the same. Fuck. Cherno fell to the ground like a slumping ragdoll. He had this-- this obsession with the girl M. It seemed to take over his life, and-- even if he didn't remember much, yeah, his heart still bore the cold lacerations of abandonment and loneliness. But Cherno would chuckle to himself. He deserved it. He deserved it all, of course, for leaving such a close friend like that. And Temperance. Where was she? She was okay, yeah? Please, please, be okay. Please be safe. Cherno would stay up in hours of sleep, deep in melancholy and pensive thought as he gazed at the others, but out of those not here, his thoughts would flow to the sister Temperance. She wasn't with him. They were separated, again, and he had little idea how to contact her. Cherno crawled towards the wall and rested his back on its fluffy bumps, breathing gently. He spread his legs out forward, and reached into one of his coat pockets. There-- there-- right, there it was. The cold metal between his fingers. Like an orange of blackened steel. He popped the metal sphere out of his pocket, and unconsciously traced his thumb around the engraved "ORPHEUS". It wasn't much to say about the dreams he had. How could he sleep when thousands were suffering above? Damn, he didn't even have a mirror to see how large the bags under his eyes had grown. It had really been worse, time travel and all. The burns weren't helping, but then we had all that nonsense about the bag-wearing lady. Were they one of the demoness' dolls? Did the gameboard really include the genocide of a million innocents? Disgusting. What a ratchet drag-swaggin' monster. That was, of course, assuming that that batty witch had her hands in all of this. Cherno took out a notepad from one of his pockets, and sliding out the pen that rested within its coil, traced out more absentminded lines of thought interspersed with poetic verse. They had to escape, but they didn't all escape. Did Ben make it? Was he okay? He-- he couldn't have died again, right? And the others! The others, on the surface. That weirdo silver-haired girl who still hadn't revealed her name. What the fuck was up with her? She disappeared after she was saved, and Cherno had no idea if she was able to return to her body. But-- but what was with her? He knew so little about her, and yet, she seemed like such a big part of his past life. Ugh. Cherno squeezed his eyes shut and gently tapped the back of his head to the cold stone wall-- FUCK HE-- HE DIDN'T TOUCH ANY GERMS DID HE-- NO-- no. No, Cherno, Cherno Plume. Calm. Calm yourself. Okay. Breathe. ... There. ... The tunnels were quiet. Well, most of the time. It made living here terrible. You heard two types of sounds in these tunnels. It was either the soft dripping of water -- drip, drip drip -- that haunted your dreams and nightmares and stuck in your head till they drove you damn up the second derivative of these walls. Or, it was the explosions. The haunting cracks, like ripping apart metal with gloves of thunder and fingers flinging gunshots. The explosions that meant someone, somewhere, lost their precious life. ... Fuck. Cherno didn't-- he didn't want to think about it. He didn't have time. He absentmindedly turned his head towards the flashlight. The darkness was chilling. Ugh. He-- he never liked the darkness. It was all ... shadowy. Black. Pitch black. Fuck black. He-- It was only recently, anyway, that he felt so averse to that damn colour. And it was everywhere. Cherno was trapped in a landscape of his fears, and he had no choice but to live and survive among them. He closed his eyes and turned his head towards the right side of the tunnel. The tunnel's dreariness was almost poetic in its despair. How long had it been since Cherno felt like writing up some of his poetry ... ? Hm. There was the boy who found him, Threnody. His sickness was the start of all of these problems. Sudden, like the explosions. Bang. He was ill, and only syringe knew what to deal because it was some kind of special case. Then things began to fall apart. They entered the tunnels and from the get-go things hadn't been as planned as they should've been. Losing schedule, getting lost, almost falling and losing more people. Fighting over food and shelter, and trying to fix up sleeping times. Not to mention all of the lingering animosity that filled the air with a bitter bile. But ... but, it was improving. Thankfully. Thankfully ... ? Off in the distance, Cherno heard-- No, he saw. He saw the shadows and lights of an approaching party, and it was a voice. German. German! Was this that German student from Brookridge? The party had reached this far. ... Yeah. Yeah, decisions like these, working together for this collective good, was probably the only thing that kept the flame of hope burning alive in Cherno's heart these days. But ... he didn't have the motivation to call out.
Only whenever it is not tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow ...
It certainly works if you have an academic justification for video games or other entertainment. I had to write an intense socio-economic quasi-conflict theory analysis of five different cheesy anime romantic comedies. And it certainly worked.
Excuse me sir. She is not partially mentally unsound, nor does she hallucinate. Nor am I whipped.
I attempted to look outside my window today and all I saw was a T. S. Eliot poem.
Keep going onward, sir. Let the engine of your soul drive your feelings and you shall woo the ladies with your charm and artistic sense! I am scared as to whether or not this is a terrifying etymology pun.
This happened with my dad and myself. We were fighting in the play Macbeth. I was the titular character, and he was Macduff. Needless to say, his Macduff portrayal made me lose my head in numbness.
16 Cherno had been out for a while, but these explosions brought him back to life. Realizing the situation, he ran off and waited for one of the elevators. Oh he needed a passcode. Okay. Time to wait. Shame he couldn't text anyone right now. BUT WAIT. He bumped into that cynical kid with the blushy cheeks and the green eyes. What was his name again? Threnody? He bumped into Threnody who was apparently related to this Antlium place and decided to go down with him. He tried calling out to Ben but he just ... wouldn't wake up. Shoot. Shoot. They would have to come back for him. He didn't want to lose the guy again ... On his way, Cherno took out his phone and was finally able to reply to Temperance. He apologized for the delay, as he had been in a deep coma and had a dream similar to the one all those days ago, when he had come after her at her father's home. He is much better now, but his eye is still patched. He said they were underground in the labs and asked Temperance if she could make it, while uproariously commenting on making sure she was safe and alright. Olivia realized the problem and noted that she couldn't stay here for long. Kicking open Elliot's loose window, she, now a bird again due to all of the ridiculous events that had still occurred in time, spread her wings and flew far, far off. Off by the side, a few components of Elliot's phone lay pecked loose on the table. With Viola's robotics still intact in this timeline - at the expense of other things - she was thankful that she could access Elliot's phone through a microphone from an enormous distance.
Oh, that would be lovely! Do you have any preference for serifs (e.g. times new roman pointed ends) or sans-serif (e.g. Arial's lack of any extra...
On the double, sir. What do you require?
[/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxx And as the words left his lips, the fire was gone. Just like this. Poof. White foam dripped in bundles from his hear. Oh- oh dear. But the apology worked. They were saved. Was that all that was needed? An apology for messing up? Crestatia was more human than Cherno had thought she was ... He looked around, sighing. His body was wa-- Wait. Wait. Was that masked girl okay? Cherno ran over to her, trying to endure the stinging in his joints. He knelt by her side, and gently lifted her. "Sister? You okay?" His voice was quiet. All around him, the others were coming to. This was a terrible idea, but he was surprised Crestatia let them off for such a simple reason. He turned to the others. "... We need to be more careful. Nobody's burnt, right? Carring a dazed Vanille, he walked over to the boy named Elliot. He had been on fire with him too. Ugh ... "... You especially, scalpel. You`re okay, right? Damn." "... Man, scalpel. First Olivia, now this. It really does look as if our fates are intertwinin' themselves."
Cherno apologized to crestatia for having messing up on behalf of the others and going back in time and summoning annalyne and having the audacity to strike such a deal despite annoying her prior so it is certainly understandable and also he tries to rub his back against the wall to rid of the flames while apologizing
3 [/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxx Cherno tackles Vanille and tells her to stop and rolls around on the floor more to get rid of the fire and tells crestatia "we will make a deal with you to stop the fire" and also takes off more of his clothes to get rid of the fire and asks someone go go grab a damn fire extinguisher and asks the others for help to stop the fire
7 [/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxx Cherno went off to the side of the room and turned on the fan that was there and started blowing it on himself and the fire in a direction away from the others and out the window or something
14 [/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxx Dammit dammit dammit dammit Cherno went and covered himself in people's coats to smother the fire
15 [/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxx And then he was all like "no wait maybe I'm imagining the fire" and then instead he started taking his coat off to perhaps get rid of the fire and also tried curling into a ball to see if it would suffocate the fire
16 [/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxxCherno was all like "DAMMIT CRESTATIA WILL I MAKE A DEAL IF YOU'LL GET ME OUT OF THIS FIRE MAYBE"
20 [/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxx Dammit dammit dammit Cherno was on fire oh goddammit. He stopped, dropped to the floor, and tried rolling (???)
[/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxxCherno stood up. "Hold it." He tried holding his voice steady. "I want to see your goods first, you ratchet demoness. Lay your cards on the table in this deal. If we were to trade the no-romance rule for something, what would we be getting in return?"
[/url] TUMBLRxxx LOGICxxx VECTOR TIMExxx INTERACTIONxxx MENTAL HEALTH MEMORY xxxxx xxxxxHe-- Wait. Wait, what was that? It sounded like noise-- no, wailing? At this hour? Cherno moved his head away from the attention of the others for a moment, and peered outside the window. It was-- fuck. It was ... pretty dark, wasn't it? Ah ... There was-- there was-- what was that? It looked like a great, lumbering beast, almost like a bear? Much larger than any being. But it was shrouded in darkness, save for its-- its-- blinding red eyes ... ? And it emitted this ghastly wailing. Like a banshee. Faint, but Cherno could hear it beneath his breath. It gave the entire conversation happening here an eerie, unsettling air. ... Cherno turned his head away, looking down at his hands. ✖
