Posts by Flyers

jacksonwhittmore   Nerdy.   xayah. All you guys are due for RP posts!

Outcastie. Yeah, I know, the IC times are a little confusing. I'm aware that in your last post with Nao you'd mentioned Nikolai's bags were already in the hotel room, implying that this was taking place a little while after his arrival at the hotel. But then I understood the context of Shiko approaching Nikolai to happen as an immediate continuation from the time of my previous post, right after he and Brio parted ways. Therefore, I think the most logical solution would be that Nao and Kaz are a little bit ahead of Nikolai and Shiko in terms of IC time. Like their interaction in Nikolai's hotel room is taking place several hours after Shiko and Nikolai's encounter. Then when I have him return to his hotel room and find the Phantoms waiting for him, it'll be after a brief timeskip from my last post. Lol it's complicated, I know. But does that make sense for the most part?

xayah.   yio Sorry, I'm not trying to rush you guys, but do you think you can post on the RP thread with your Phantom characters in the next few days?

xayah. If you'd like, you can have Shinji meet up with Kaz and Nao in Nikolai's hotel room, since the kidnapping is about to go down shortly.

Sanctuaryforall1 Ermygosh Randi's fear sim was so intense and unique, I loved it! Even though I was getting chills as I read it lol.

Nerdy. If you'd like, have Shiko finish up her conversation with Nikolai and then find some way to excuse herself so she can go back to following him at a distance. Then, timeskip to a few hours later, and she meets up with Kaz and Nao in Nikolai's hotel room, waiting to ambush him upon his return.

Clang Gotcha, boss! I'll keep the Phantoms based in Magnolia for their first few heists, then.

Okay, so once everyone's charries meet up at the hotel room and decide to collaborate, here's how I'm thinking the actual kidnapping will go down: Upon hearing Nikolai at the door, all the Phantoms will hide, and then wait till he comes inside to fan out all around him, cutting off his path to the door and any other escape routes. Seeing that he's hopelessly outnumbered, Nikolai will be cooperative, saying that he'll do as they want so long as they don't hurt him. Since part of the others' instructions was specifically not to harm him, and they still have to exit the hotel with him without causing a scene, the Phantoms agree not to hurt him so long as he doesn't try anything, and they form a circle around him as they escort him out of the hotel. Once outside, they realize that they're going to need transportation to their destination for Nikolai's delivery (a remote cemetery), and as they're squabbling over that, or how they're going to divvy up their reward, Nikolai either sees an opportunity to escape and takes it, or one of the Phantoms grabs him and tries to run off with him to secure the reward entirely for themselves. And then the other Phantoms have to chase down Nikolai (and his potential captor) through the streets of Magnolia City and reclaim him while still making their midnight deadline.

What do you guys think? Does this sound like a good plan, or should we do something different?

Sure thing! I'm thinking that while the others are arguing, Nao pounces onto Nikolai and threatens to shoot or stab him unless everyone else stays where they are, and Nao hauls ass across the city with their prize lol.

Outcastie. HAHAHA that is great.

Skairipa#1899 (discord) Cool name! I'll go ahead and edit the first post.

Nerdy. Sure, that would be fine! I'm so revved for Nao and Shiko to 1v1 ngl.

Nikolai when he realizes the girl he asked out earlier that day is one of his kidnappers:

and Nikolai totally wouldn't try to kick Shinji in the beans if he did that

xayah. Aw, well why didn't Shinji just say so? Nikolai would have been happy to give him a few hundred dollars, no paybacks.

Outcastie. It's all gucci, Nikolai would have trashed his own room himself in a few hours anyway tbh.

yio   xayah. In need of RP replies from both you guys, and Nerdy. one from Chris, please!

Nikolai Thorne // Silvertongue // Male // Age 16 // Confidence Trickster

Several hours after he and Shiko had parted ways, Nikolai stepped out of the elevator onto the seventh floor of the Drovers Hotel, a bag of groceries tucked under each arm. Shiko had said that she was willing to take him up on his offer of dinner, but the fact that she’d abruptly excused herself without exchanging contact information or so much as a time and location for their date belied her words. Besides, Nikolai knew better by now than to take people at their word alone. He and Bridget took advantage of other people’s trusting natures on a daily basis by telling them what they wanted to hear. Shiko really had been interested in just his money, after all. He tried to ignore the dull ache beneath his ribs that might have been disappointment, which was totally illogical, given that Nikolai had a dinner to make, a sister to spring from jail, and a meddling detective to get even with. So what if one girlie had turned him down? If Nikolai set his mind to it and unleashed the full intoxicating extent of his charm, no girlie—or boy—was immune.

For a city with a famed vivacity, the hallway was strangely quiet as he padded down it, as if the walls were holding their breath. The effect was almost unsettling, and Nikolai found himself whistling, jovial and off-key, just to break the thick silence. Having grown up without a cell phone on the farm of his youth, Nikolai had never been overly attached to the thing now that he owned one, but all day he’d been fingering his phone like a lifeline, half-expecting it to ring any second with a call from Bridget, wherever she was being held. But his phone had remained just as silent as this ghost town of a hotel. The message was clear: Bridget didn’t want to risk giving Nikolai up and incriminating him through contact. The implication of that conclusion made dread coil in his belly like a snake. If it were just pickpocketing in the TaVern that Bridget had to answer for, she’d have little to fear by reaching out to him. Every hour of gut-wrenching silence that elapsed only confirmed Nikolai’s worst terrors.

Now he was drifting aimlessly, biding his time, waiting for a feasible rescue plan to come to him in a flash of brilliance. It helped that he and Bridget had been to Magnolia City once before, about a year and a half ago, under different names and faces, of course. While Nikolai was a far cry from being an expert on the city, he supposed he wasn’t entirely without connections, due to the girlie he’d been hooking up with at the time. At first glance, Hama had been cute as a porcelain doll with her pretty face framed by honey-colored locks, but beneath that she was a pistol, with an unapologetic love for the adrenaline rush that came with pushing both people and racecars to their limits. Nikolai’s whistling hitched as he thought of her, and a thistle of guilt pricked him. She hadn’t deserved the way he’d up-and-left her without explanation one day when Bridget decided it was time to move to a new city, but then again, he and Bridget hadn’t deserved their mother doing the exact same to them one day ten years ago, disappearing without a note or trace. Not that it excused his betrayal of Hama any.

He arrived at Room 712 and broke off whistling. Setting his grocery bags on the floor, he rummaged in his pocket for his room key, shifting the toothpick wedged between his lips from one corner of his mouth to the other. From his days on the farm, Nikolai would have preferred a thin straw of wheat, but chewing on a toothpick worked in a pinch. It was better than chewing his lip to shreds, which he had a proclivity for whenever nerves got the better of him. He had been looking over his shoulder all day, and so far, he hadn’t seen any sign of that towering blond boy who’d approached him when he’d initially been taking his luggage up to his room. Which was a good thing. At first glance, the way his devastating smile lit up his face and the intensity of his gaze had been flattering, almost seductive. But then on second and third, when Nikolai would feel the pressure of those sea-glass orbs and turn around to find the taller boy studying him as one would a complicated, layered painting, it’d grown plain creepy.

Pushing open the door, he sidled inside with his groceries in hand, crossed the room, and hefted them onto the countertop beside the fridge, beginning the task of unpacking everything. Jambalaya was on tonight’s menu—a traditional Trisdan rice dish mixed with sausage, shrimp, peppers, onions, and a variety of zesty spices. As savvy as Bridget was with urban life, she was an abysmal chef. For the past three years, whenever they’d been running low on cash or simply didn’t feel like dining out, Nikolai had taken care of culinary duties, because he knew disaster would ensue otherwise. Bridget had always claimed that their mother had adamantly refused to teach her how to cook, declaring that no daughter of hers would while her life away in a kitchen at a man's beck and call. Maybe that’s why she took off, Nikolai thought, trying to curb his bitterness and failing. He always tried to see the best in people, but it was hard to fathom his mother’s motivation for abandoning her husband and kids like roadside garbage. Because she got tired of putting up with her family’s endless bullshit.

Whenever Bridget had complained about life on the farm without their mother serving as a buffer between Harrison and them, Nikolai privately envied that she’d at least gotten the chance to know their mother. Bridget was ten years older than him. She’d been sixteen when Nikolai had been six at the time of their mother’s departure. All his memories of her were vague, muddled messes of color and light, like the cluttered palette of an inexperienced painter. Some fragile, tremulous emotion the color of a ballet slipper welled up inside him. Nikolai swiped at his eyes, bit down on his toothpick until it all but shattered between his teeth, and the pink darkened to a vermilion flame of annoyance. First his mother and now his sister. He’d never felt so alone in his life. Even for those two painful years that Bridget had been away at university, he’d at least had Harrison’s—Nikolai refused to acknowledge that monster of a man as his father—abuse as a warped semblance of company. But even then someone had been paying him attention. Unlike now.

Nikolai left off unpacking the groceries, abruptly recoiling from the countertop as if he’d burnt himself on the stove. Breathing hard, he wrapped his arms around himself. He felt foolish, just standing there in the middle of his hotel room, weeping like a widow in solitary silence, trying to casually cook himself dinner as if everything were normal. “Don’t break down,” he murmured aloud to himself, since no one was around to hear him. “Don’t lose your shit, Thorne.” In their first few days in a new city, he and Bridget would always go out of their way to insert each other’s new alias at the end of every sentence when they conversed, trying to accustom themselves to the change of name so that they would master a knee-jerk response to it in public. Nikolai’s already quick and shallow breathing accelerated. It felt like a fist had knotted itself in his throat and was twisting. Suddenly feeling uncomfortably warm, he scurried out of the kitchen and took a few dashing steps toward the sliding glass door that led onto the balcony, with the intention of plunging himself into the chilly, penetrating northern night air to cool off.

And then his eyes fell on the bed, where the contents of one of his suitcases were carelessly scattered across the satin sheets in a multicolored heap of fabric. Nikolai skidded to a stop. He hadn’t unpacked since arriving at his new hotel room. He’d just tossed his bags down in a corner before his stomach growled and he’d made up his mind to go food shopping. Ice-blue trepidation shivered down his spine. So. Someone had been in here. Nikolai gingerly turned the ominous implications of that thought over in his mind as he chewed his toothpick. But as he heard the metallic hiss of a blade sliding free of its scabbard behind him, he mentally corrected himself. Someone was still here, and they’d cornered their quarry.

As for the encounter in Nikolai's hotel room, I was thinking that as Kaz and Nao close in on him, he starts talking to them and uses encanto to try to persuade them to let him go and leave peaceably. Nikolai is able to confidently convince one person to do his bidding, but when he has two to split his attention between, his success is a gamble, like 50/50. But three people exceeds the limit of his influence. So maybe as Kaz and Nao hesitate to obey his persuasion, either Shiko, Brio, or Shinji bursts into the room and interrupts, breaking the spell? Does this sound good to you guys? Or we can come up with an alternative, if you'd like.

Outcastie. Nao... this is all so sudden... XD

Haha yeah, sure thing!

Aw, all you guys are so sweet! My heart is warmed just reading this. <3 I adore every one of our charries and I'm so glad y'all decided to join!

I'm fine either way. That's entirely up to The_Regalia and you.

Ghost // Male // Age 18 // Training Instructor // Erudite to Dauntless

Up until then, Ghost had displayed the face of a cardsharp—distant, detached, all but unreadable—throughout his deadly dance with Blair Avalon. Now, upon her mention of the word hickey, he felt a flicker of surprise pass through him like a jolt of electricity, a momentary crack in the facade. “What?” he sputtered, startled into raw honesty as he scrabbled to regain a foothold in the conversation. He looked up at where Blair stood in the open doorway, haloed by the white-gold light of the corridor beyond as she reported this so nonchalantly, and he felt his cheeks flaming. Did she really believe that had been what he’d been about to ask? The thought made him feel dirty and lecherous, that he’d been suspected of inquiring into the love life of one of his initiates, especially one who was such a stranger to him. As if he was interested in what Blair did between the sheets. An ember of indignation sparked inside him. It almost seemed like Blair was giving him a mild suggestion, making a discreet offer disguised as a sentence filler, setting a trap of candy-coated poison. She wore a mask of innocence, but Ghost was used to reading faces to see what lay underneath. Was she trying to turn his strategy on its head and now bait him?

He’d never been one for gossip, and Blair was flattering herself if she thought she could seduce him into keeping the secret of her possible Divergence under wraps. Throwing blondes at the Holy Ghost was like throwing lettuce at sharks. Among all of Jiao-Long Young’s many probable spies, Ghost was the one who’d been entrusted to ferret out a million-dollar mystery. Blair Avalon would have to bring a counteroffer better than a harlot’s kiss to the table if she hoped to keep his lips sealed. But her change of tack had caught him off guard. His fused mortification and anger melted into something wry and sour and sly. The least he could do was humor her by going along. It was time to ante up or fold the hand, and when Ghost played, it was to win. Rubbing the back of his neck, he sheepishly blinked up at Blair before averting his gaze, like a schoolboy chagrined to have been caught looking at lewd pictures in class. It took him a long, awkward moment of throat-clearing before he pried apart his lips, pressed in something between a grimace and a rueful smirk, to speak. “I’m so sorry! I didn’t mean to, ah, pry—because I know that’s none of my business, how you got those, um—please excuse my mind for wandering where it shouldn’t have been. How… er… embarrassing. For me.”

Despite having transferred to Dauntless, Ghost had tested Erudite, and as such, playing the part of the bumbling fool wasn’t a role he relished. The sleek, honed wit that had allowed him to outfox his many enemies up to this point in his life was a source of pride for him. But in this instance, he realized the necessity of playing dumb. He was convinced on an intrinsic level that Blair Avalon was hiding something, and he was so close to proving it. He needed Blair to keep her guard down for just a little while longer, and this was the best way to do it. To let her think her ploy to ensnare him had succeeded, that the threat was neutralized and she held the ace in her hand. Besides, Ghost wasn’t naive. If he openly taunted her with what he thought he knew, and his suspicions turned out to be right, Blair might panic. If she was as well connected as her pampered-ass boyfriend, Ghost could easily disappear before the end of Phase Two, never to be seen again. Desperate people tend to do desperate things. After all, he had been born into high society. He knew how the wealthy got things done, and just like within Baneberry, surviving among the elite required a certain connivery.

With a smile as tight as stitches, Blair gave him a curt nod, acknowledging and forgiving his concern, and ducked out of the testing room. Ghost cocked his head, gazing at the space in the doorway she’d vacated. Was it possible that he had underestimated Blair Avalon? Well, if his hunch was right and she really was Divergent, she obviously had more virtues going for her than just obnoxious Dauntless pigheadedness. Perhaps she was more clever and resilient than he ever gave her credit for. He’d have to play it safe around her. One wrong move, and the whole of his job—and quite possibly his life—could come crashing down, a tower of cards burned to cinders. Fine, then, he thought. But instead of being put off, he felt amused, almost delighted. Challenge accepted. Let the games begin. Ghost ran a finger over the savage smile that tugged at his mouth. He didn’t want to get ahead of himself, but he thought he was beginning to understand why Young had never disclosed to him how, exactly, to suss out a Divergent. It’d been a test, of course. That much was plain now, and Ghost intuited that he was passing with flying colors. He was someone who always knew when he had the upper hand. It was a wonderful reprieve, to be the hunter rather than the hunted, for once.

Hearing a clunking series of footfalls in the hall, he jolted out of his reverie. He’d almost forgotten that Christian Parks was on his way. Ghost leapt out of his chair, seized with a sudden urge to prepare. Knocking his discarded array of creamers into the trash, he snatched up his teacup and tucked it into a tidy corner of the room, out of harm’s way beside an untouched box of chocolates. Most of his china collection extended to coffee mugs, so he’d rather not see one of his precious few teacups get smashed to bits. Then he batted at his jacket, checking for the n-teenth time that the package he’d planted was in place, and that he wasn’t accidentally carrying a firearm on his person out of habit. Ghost was loath to part with his Wicked Sisters, his twin Beretta pistols with pearl handles, but he didn’t want to give Parks any ideas. It was bad enough that he was wearing his usual cache of knives, yet walking around the Dauntless compound unarmed posed its own risks. Simmering with nervous excitement, he went to twist the rings on his left hand, before remembering that he’d returned them to his mother at her tombstone last night. Old habits, and all that.

There were a thousand ways this plan could go wrong, but he knew this confrontation had to come sooner or later, and it was best if he was ready when it did. A shadow fell through the open doorway, and in the split second before Parks entered, Ghost’s features were schooled into a careful glaze of boredom, and he leaned against the far wall, legs crossed at the ankles, idly twirling a knife in a way that might have cost a less experienced thug a finger. He was one to usually dismiss superstition as nonsense rules that people adhered to in an absence of confidence, but for some reason, as Ghost peered up at the boy in the door frame who was in so many ways his antithesis, he couldn’t help feeling as though this meeting had been fated. For a hair-raising moment, neither spoke, and instructor and initiate, Erudite and Dauntless, dark and light, small and tall faced each other. With a final flourish, Ghost slid his knife back into the sheath at his belt, carefully obscured from sight beneath the hem of his jacket. “Welcome, Parks,” he said in his smooth baritone. “Sit, please.” Ghost wasn’t in the habit of squandering many words on his enemies, if he could help it.

Parks did as he was told. Ghost dosed him with fear serum and perched on the countertop opposite the computer screen without any words of encouragement, as was his wont. Next came the waiting, which would—hopefully—be the hardest part of the exchange to come. Ghost tried to devote Parks’s simulation the same riveted attention that he’d given all the preceding initiates, but Ghost couldn’t focus, his mind boiling over in anticipation. It was just as well, because from what he glimpsed of it, Christian’s simulation looked as conventionally Dauntless as anyone else’s, all the typical signs of terror and the instinct to overcome one’s fears present. Finally, after dispatching the last bird, he jerked awake with a sharp gasp. Ghost watched coolly and quietly, still as a coiled snake as he leaned back on his hands and allowed Parks time to catch his breath, waiting for the blond boy to make his move. If he made one. White moves first, Ghost thought, in the long-standing tradition of chess. Then happened to glance down at himself and remember that he was clad in a powder-white suit. Oh shit, never mind. Nah, white is gonna move second this time. Oops.

Parks did not disappoint. Without so much as a query as to his performance or even a simple greeting, he brusquely opened negotiations—if the short command he issued could be called that. Ghost’s head snapped up, and he returned the Dauntless-born initiate’s gaze evenly. “Good afternoon to you, too,” he huffed dryly. He’d never been a fan of small talk, but still. This boy had just experienced one of the most deep-seated fears of his subconsciousness, and his impending drug deal was the first thing that popped into his mind upon awakening. Zut alors. Ghost had to applaud such streamlined single-mindedness. “Parks. Ever heard the phrase ‘you can catch more bees with honey’?” he crooned with a mild tilt of his head. “What I’m saying is, perhaps your chances of getting what you want would improve somewhat if you asked nicely, rather than demand this and that of me.” Ghost craned his neck back and looked up at the ceiling, as if marginally interested in the topic at hand. He waited as Parks ground his teeth in annoyance, like Ghost was selling for an astronomical price.

Reluctantly, Christian complied and rephrased his demand as a question, chewing each word and spitting it out like gravel. Ghost pretended to consider his request. Then said in a conversational tone, “You know… you really should have considered our arrangement before you made an attempt on my life. During capture the flag, when you were all for sending me plummeting to a sticky end. Because you need me a lot more than I need you, Parks.” Ghost gave a sour smile. He raised a hand to interrupt Parks’s onslaught of whiny protests. “No, I said asking nicely would perhaps improve your chances of getting what you want. You ought to learn to listen. It’s a valuable skill. Anyway. You’re just the type of Dauntless that I hate most. Do you realize that, CP? You’re arrogant and careless and stupid, thinking your money and questionable charm will remedy any mistakes made from your conspicuous lack of common sense. You think you’re one step ahead of everyone else when really you’re seven steps behind.” He said this all in a very calm, matter-of-fact voice, as if he were discussing the weather. Ghost scoffed softly to himself, as if at some private joke. “You wouldn’t last two days on the streets that I grew up on.”

Parks slowly rose from his chair and unfolded to his feet, glaring daggers at Ghost, who glared thunderclouds back. He stood his ground, chin tipped up in defiance as if issuing a silent challenge. For so long he’d been so tired of mincing his words and sucking up to men like Young and Daniels and Parks Senior because they held more money or power or status, and somewhere in the back of his seething mind, Ghost wondered whether a matriarchal institution would have been just as corrupt. At any other time, in any other case, his current show of bravado might have been suicide. But right now, he held all the cards, so he let fly the final arrow in his quiver, because who knew when he’d get another opportunity. “Now, on the topic of your girlfriend…” Ghost tapped one finger against his chin, eyes fixed in the distance somewhere past Parks, as if deep in thought. “Let’s see. You want me to leave her alone, yet simultaneously have me at your perpetual beck and call? When you’re glued to her side like a lost puppy? Well. That does seem like a bit of a contradiction.” He refocused on Christian, who stood rigid, fists clenched, like an embattled bull deciding which way to charge. Ghost laughed bitterly. Expecting an Erudite not to dissemble logical fallacies was like telling a cat not to hunt.

So much for not squandering words on his enemies. But he simply couldn’t resist. Enjoying himself thoroughly, Ghost continued, as if temporarily forgetting that he was the instructor and Parks the initiate, “Now, if you would please help me understand these new parameters surrounding your girlfriend. When you say leave her alone, does that apply solely to instances in which I encounter her in the Pit and other public areas, or during hours of instruction, too? What if I see her struggling with her training? Should I intervene and offer my constructive criticism, or allow her to suffer in si—?” With that, the dam of malice broke, as Ghost knew it eventually would. He saw it coming, but when the explosion finally came, he felt ambushed, regardless. If he’d thought being the provocateur in control of the situation would placate the sudden maelstrom of fear that swept him up, he was mistaken. Christian Parks could move quickly for someone so beefy. Ghost’s heart throttled, and it was all he could do not to sidestep the oncoming attack, but give Parks enough rope to hang himself. With a roar, he bulled into Ghost, gripping him by the lapels and slamming him flat against the wall at his back.

Skyrockets ignited behind his eyes as the back of his head connected, aggravating the preexisting lump that Bastian Hunter had bestowed upon him last night. The familiar terror kindled in his gut, and memory washed over him like dark waters closing over his head. Ghost was back in his Baneberry days, before transferring to Dauntless, when Drex and his cronies would waylay him on his walks home from school, two of them pinioning his arms to his sides while their ringleader took swings. Or after Ghost had cheated a few teenage gangsters at cards and they’d decided to teach him a lesson. He almost lost his nerve. “Parks,” he gasped, “you don’t want to do—” Parks clamped a hamlike hand over Ghost’s mouth, as if interpreting Ghost’s warning as a threat and meaning to prevent him from crying for help. Although a scream probably wouldn’t be met with too much concern, given today’s training, and likely attributed to a hallucinating initiate. Parks’s hand was big and squarish enough to obscure the entire lower half of Ghost’s face, making breathing all but impossible. Black shadows swarmed before his eyes as Parks frantically rummaged through Ghost’s suit with his other hand, which Ghost belatedly noticed was trembling, as if in dire need of a next fix.

Christian loomed over him like the devil on the Day of Judgement, and it took everything in Ghost to not resist as the larger boy turned out his various pockets. Resisting had not been part of Ghost’s plan, and he really didn’t want to get walloped over the head for his efforts. He dangled limp in his captor’s grip as the unceremonious search continued, Parks turning up a pair of vintage aviator sunglasses and a knife tucked up Ghost’s sleeve before frowning and discarding them. Parks was so embroiled in this endeavor that he failed to notice the slender hand sifting through his own pocket. And then his cornflower eyes brightened with victory, and he emerged with his prize. Clutched in his eager grasp was a small baggie almost full to bursting with an ethereal-looking silver powder like pixie dust. He released Ghost, who slid down the wall a short distance before his legs remembered to hold his weight and he caught himself. He stood panting and smoothing his suit down, impassively watching as Parks held the baggie up to the light for examination, as if afraid that if he blinked, it might vanish. Then, before Ghost’s eyes, Christian raised the plastic container to his lips, tipped his head back, and downed its brimming, dusty contents, all at once.

Ghost cringed but didn’t question. He knew from experience that taking that stuff orally and unadulterated was a nasty business, but Parks didn’t seem to mind in the least. Personally, Ghost found it more bearable to mix in coffee or tea, preferably over several cups, but to each his own. He waited for what seemed like a brief eternity as Parks imprudently consumed the whole bag, which was far too much for any one person to be taking in a single sitting, and practically signed his own obituary. If it didn’t kill Parks, it’d cripple him. Like Ghost. Just when he was beginning to think that the initiate had been in the testing room for a conspicuous amount of time, Christian shifted his gaze to Ghost, as if to gauge the level of threat the instructor whose rights he’d just violated posed to him. When Ghost said nothing, Parks stooped, grabbing up the new walking stick Ghost had hoped would assist him on days like these, when his battered body cried out in misery between reckless scuffles from the previous night and the usual toll his addiction took. Gripping it with both hands, Parks brought his knee up and splintered the walking stick in two with an ear-splitting crack! like the snap of a femur. He glared at Ghost, who had his sharp’s face back on, for a reaction, and all Parks got was a lift of a midnight brow.

The silence was tense and electric, like the tenuous calm after a summer thunderstorm. With a final warning look at Ghost, as if wordlessly threatening him of the consequences of telling, Christian Parks threw down the two mangled halves of wood and peeled off, shouldering through the door. “Ah, well. That’s okay,” Ghost mused quietly to himself when he was alone, the corners of his lips honing into a knife-sharp smile. He fingered the wallet he’d lifted off Parks’s person and flipped it open, leafing through the satisfying wad of bills arrayed before him. A dead man wouldn't be needing money, and it'd be a shame to let it go to waste. “You can buy me a new one.” With another adversary crossed off his list and a new spring in his step, Ghost decided that he would take Charlie out for lunch today as he padded across the room to where the box of chocolates he’d bought her as a gift waited. An apology gift, for having inadvertently stood her up last night when they’d meant to go out together. Now, to go find her. Straightening his tie and running a hand through his chronically disheveled hair, Ghost strode from the testing room, thinking, Parks, you ignorant bastard. Don't you know? Choose sides against a Jacobi, and you pay a price.

Skairipa#1899 (discord) Please try to reply to the RP thread in the next few days!

xayah.   yio Hey, do you guys think you can post on the RP thread soon? I don't want to get too far ahead of you.