The Great Flock

"Erasers," Ann said, playing with the word. "I know... Erasers just seems too tame of a title for those meatish brutes." She shrugged. "Besides, Subject 94 isn't much of a name. Most escaped experiments name themselves," she said. "I didn't, but then again, I wasn't raised in a lab, I was raised in NJ." She yawned.

Subject 94/Nepenthe
sweet cordial of oblivion

The child was unsure what his older companion was speaking of; he sunk back into reminiscence, and then felt confused - where was he again? Who was this girl beside him? What was her name?

He asked nothing - he was sure he had been told before. The doctors had told him many things, just to see whether he would remember them. He knew he should not ask, or it was the electric prod again.

So he stood, and stared vacantly for a good while.

Jynx

Jynx stared up through the trees, watching the sun disappear beyond the hills in the distance. Streaks of pink and orange shot through the clouds, making them glow, and a slight ghostly outline was visible of the moon above the opposite horizon.

Rogue

Rogue punched the wall that her cage was set against with her metal-studded gloves. She waited for the whitecoat that usually ran over when she did something like that, and her patience was rewarded when the man rushed over. He opened the cage with a sedative needle in his claw-like fingers, and thrust his upper half into the cage. Rogue smacked him behind the head, hard enough that he was knocked out, but in the process of hitting him, as soon as she touched him, the information to the lock's combination code was hers.

[size=25pt]MILES.[/size]
[size=6pt] time to lay claim to the evidence
fingerprints sold me out
but our footprints washed away
from the docks downtown[/size]

He turned to watch the episode unfolding beside him, observed the girl knock the white-coat unconscious and then stand over him, a triumphant look entering her eyes. He wanted to call out to her, to shout at her for being so foolish, but his vain words would have been drowned by the stamp of combat boots as both of the guards that had been attending his cage left him for this new excitement. Just like him, they were bored out of their wits.

One of them drew out a taser from his pants pocket, and the other a tranquilizer gun much like the one Dr. Drake had been flailing around earlier. As they came closer to Rogue's cage, their steps became quiet, cautious, and they inched forward in a defensive crouch, their knees bent, their shoulders squared, and their feet planted firmly on the ground. They slid more than stalked towards her, too experienced to remove their feet from the tiles that meant life or death in a full-out brawl, which they were expecting, after all, since it was an experiment. And experiments were thoughtless monsters.

Rogue

She stood up. A twisted smile curled across her face, her white hair thrown across one of her shoulders. She crouched low like a wild animal, watching the men step closer. Then, everything froze. None of the whitecoats knew what to do next, because their victim wasn't showing any sign of moving. Rogue crouched, the muscles in her leg beginning to burn. Without warning, she let out a snarling hiss.

The noise was so sudden and so vicious that one of the men jumped, and, in his lowered and unstable position, lost his balance. His electric prod flew out to the side, still in his hand, catching another man square in the throat. He fell, unconscious, altering a domino effect of men tranquilizing and electrocuting themselves. Rogue laughed at the chaos she had created, because in a moment, all the guards had tranquilized or shocked themselves into either unconsciousness or a completely inanimate state in which they could only move their eyes.

[size=25pt]MILES.[/size]
[size=6pt] time to lay claim to the evidence
fingerprints sold me out
but our footprints washed away
from the docks downtown[/size]

Unbelievable. Miles wasn't sure how she did it, but he knew that they were free. But the small window of hope was rapidly shrinking.

"Hey," he whispered softly, his lips pressed against the bars of his cage. "My key. It's a card. In the left vest pocket of the bald one."

Rogue

Rogue jumped at the sound of his voice, but nodded and let herself out before kicking the bald man unceremoniously onto his back. She tore through his vest, pulling the card out of a protected little pocket on the inside. She slunk over to the other boy's cage and studied the lock for a moment, then slid the card key into the little electronic slot. The light blinked red, then green, and a little beep emanated from the lock. The cage door clicked several times, then popped out a few centimeters from its frame. Rogue pulled it the rest of the way open.

Ann frowned, looking at the small boy. "Hey... you okay? You're kind of blanking out on me..."

Jynx
[size=7pt]Don't run.
I'm faster.[/size]

Jynx waved her hand in front of the boy's face. "Helloooo? You alive there?" she asked, then pulled back. She shrugged. "Weird thing happen to experiments, I guess this is no surprise."

[size=25pt]MILES.[/size]
[size=6pt] time to lay claim to the evidence
fingerprints sold me out
but our footprints washed away
from the docks downtown[/size]

Miles threw the door open wide and leaped out, landing nimbly on the balls of his feet at the other side. From outside, he looked in, at the rambling walls, the sloping ceiling, and the floor upon which he had rested. Slowly he turned his back on it.

"Let's get the others out. Did you find any other keys?"

Rogue

Rogue shook her head. "No. But I did get combinations, codes, and other numbers. The guy won't remember any of them. Do you know any of the other experiments? Are there others, like not in this room? If there are, we gotta go. Fast. More whitecoats are gonna wake up and see the servailance screens for once."

OOC: does anyone mind clicking the link on my signature?? I need people to join

[size=25pt]MILES.[/size]
[size=6pt] time to lay claim to the evidence
fingerprints sold me out
but our footprints washed away
from the docks downtown[/size]

"Graceful, Aria, Angel," he pointed at each of their cages as he said their names, ticking them off on his fingers. "And this other girl." He gestured with his hand towards Ariel. "You've just arrived, so you might as well know: Graceful, empathy; Aria, foresight; Angel, memories."

He started looting around the bodies of the unconscious, flipping them over with the toe of his shoes. He took a worn black jacket with a faux fur hood from a rather skinny-looking guard; it was a tight fit, but seemed to fall around his figure like a tailored suit. He also snagged a pair of shiny combat boots from the man laying beside him, and pried the tranquilizer gun from his fisted hand.

Without hesitation, Miles shot him point blank in the neck.

Rogue
[size=7pt]Don't run.
I'm faster.[/size]

Rogue matched up the codes and let the others out. Kicking over a guard, she took a pistol from his belt and a hand-knife from his vest. Dragging him to a corner, she sent a bullet into his upper leg without a second glance. She slid the pistol into one of two leather cross-belts she took from another guard, and strapped them over her chest and in between her wings. The hand-knife she put in the other belt, lower, saving room for another gun if she could find one. Kicking over another guard, she took his leather jacket. With the knife she slit two holes in the back and fitted the jacket over her glass-like wings. The transparent feathers shifted to adapt to the jacket, then folded again inside it. With the belts and jacket, sleeves rolled up, Rogue looked dangerous and wild. She checked the pistol before re-sheathing it in the belt, and strolled out of the room.

She didn't look back.

[justify]
OoC | It seems matters have gotten out of hand. :P

Subject 94/Nepenthe
sweet cordial of oblivion

A swirling, boiling, indecipherable mass of thoughts, of meaningless sounds and shapeless sights - that was what the child had been staring at. He had never been able to form memories as well as he should have.

So it was a rude shock when the voices came again - familiar, and yet he could not place them: Hey, you okay? Hello? You alive there? and he nearly recoiled, muttering and mumbling to himself whatever he could retain of the reverie he had engrossed himself in: "Respite, respite and nepenthe. Respite, kind nepenthe."

The image of the girls' faces seemed to hover disembodied before his eyes. He ought to be able to place them, but he could not - where was he? He had come this way before. When had that been? He could not recall. "I do not know," he whispered frantically, "I cannot know, I cannot recall. Tell me, please - I cannot recall."

[/justify]

Ann grimaced as the boy mumbled under his breath, then let out a quick string of words proclaiming his confusion. "I think he's got some sort of memory loss," she murmured to Jynx. "He seems confused... Hey, uh, you don't have a name yet s'far as I know... I'm Ann, this is Jynx. We're offering to help you, remember?"

[justify]

Subject 94/Nepenthe
sweet cordial of oblivion

"Ann, Jynx." Words spoken - a mouth, moving. The two were connected. A finger pointing to faces. They were connected. "Ann, Jynx. Who are you? Ann, Jynx." A finger, pointing to faces.

"Help. I must be helped - I must recall, or else -" the words danced out of his reach, and played in the shadows where he could not see them. How could he remember? How could he forget? It was the doctors who remembered: it was he who forgot. "Quaff this kind nepenthe, and forget."

The same lines that they had told him to remember cycled over and over again through his mind, blurring and distorting. He could not make them out. It would be the electric prod, next. "Forget, forget, forget - forget!" and at this last cry, the sound fled the forest again.

"Help me to remember," he said, staring at things he did not know.

[/justify]

"I'm Ann. That's Jynx," Ann explained, gesturing to herself and Jynx in turn. "We're experiments- we escaped from the School," she said, spreading her wings a little. "We've offered to help you. You, I'm guessing, escaped from the School- or one of them- and now you're here, I guess." She gestured to the chips bag. "There's food in there, right? You're free to eat it."