Fire Opal: Scene 2
D Major Con Disinvoltura
I'm free! There is no one out right now, and I'm walking through the enclosed streets of Iaonin. I was going to call up my access and see where Mai Garden was, but I happened to be standing directly across from the entrance. Steal the hybridizer? I heard someone was walking. I moved back into the shadow between the two buildings on the opposite side of the street.
He approached the Garden, and the gates slithered away from a portal to let him in. I ran silently across the street and tried to make it through the portal before it closed. He was dressed in street clothes: a dark jacket and a pair of dark pants. I wasn't used to seeing individuals not in academy clothing or political businesswear.
I barely slipped through the portal. Good thing it was not programmed for maximum security, it would have cut my leg off instead of re-opening quickly to let me through. I heard him open another portal. He was down at the end of the hall. He had to be opening the Garden entrance. They must let anyone into these Gardens, because both Drendyn and this individual have just entered without any troubles.
I ran down to the end of the hall to follow him through the portal. I slid through the opening just to be grabbed on the other side and thrown down.
"Are you trying to get us killed?" He whispered in my ear as he had me pinned down on the ground.
"No, I was just trying to get in without you seeing me."
"Oh but screw the security system, as long as I didn't see you?"
Security system? I pulled down info from the mesh-x about Garden security. Ah hellfire. Infrared sensors with the portal openings tied to hyper-injectors.
"What the hellfire are you doing here - and why are you dressed like that? I could have you killed!" He whispered to me as he let me up.
Intris?
"Why are you dressed like that? What are *YOU* doing here?"
"Don't you belong to this Garden? Why are you sneaking in? Are you from a different Garden?"
Uhhhh. He didn't recognize me? Was it Intris? No, I was sure of his voice. Well hellfire, I snapped open my interface and opened a sound analyzer.
"What are you staring at?"
heh. Your voiceprint. It was Intris. Ok, being engaged in the mesh-x at all times was pretty useful. It was just like having a full scanset on and scanned in to a controller.
"Nothing. I'm looking for something." I spotted the same strange domed object near the side of the portal that I had seen in Ikebana. I placed my hand upon the top and the dome opened. The living metal was inside, glowing. I reached down to pick it up, and it slid up my arm and wrapped around my neck. I couldn't breathe. It was strangling me. I tried to pry it off. I was choking. No, it wasn't choking me. My head. My head was going to explode. OH KRIETSIT. IT'S PUSHING INTO MY BRAIN THROUGH MY NECK.
GRRRRRHAAAAAAANNNNN.
I dropped down to the ground, rolling around, clutching my head. My nose started bleeding. TOO MUCH TOO MUCH TOO MUCH. I felt it climb down my spinal cord. I squinted my eyes. Oh holy hellfire. I was going to die.
FLASH. My eyes opened. I could see him standing above me, shaking me or hitting me, I couldn't tell. There was so much light. I was breathing light. My hands. My hands were engulfed in light. I heard a loud noise but it sounded so far away...
An ALARM!
"GET UP GET UP GET UP! WE'RE GOING TO BE KILLED!"
He was screaming at me. The portal had fused solid. I got up on my feet. He was ripping at the portal wall. That thing wouldn't open from the inside now. The alarm was screeching over head. I put my hands over my ears to kill the noise.
A giant boom and sparks flying. The alarm system fell out of the ceiling, the cables spitting energy and sparks.
The alarm was gone.
He whipped around. "How did you do that?"
Before I could say anything, I could hear transports.
"Grab the cable. We have to set the Garden on fire!"
We both knew right then that the only way to open the wet-tech infused walls would be to put it's existence at stake. We grabbed the cables and pulled them down, setting fire to as much as we could within the cables' reach. We snapped some burning branches off of a bush and started taking them around to more plants.
Soon, we were standing in a giant ball of hot flames.
The sprinkler system kicked on, showering down on us. He took the blasted metal pieces from the exploded alarm system and started hitting the main water controlling cables. I grabbed some metal and stabbed repeatedly into the cables. I was thrown back from the shock when I cut one of the main lines, but the water stopped. Intris took the sparking cable and lit another branch on fire, re-setting fire to the Garden. He took the branch over to the walls and set them on fire. The walls pulled in and vines started untwisting.
The vines pulled open a hole in the ceiling. We both ran over under the hole. Neither of us could reach it without helping each other.
"Lift me up."
"No way! You'll leave me here!"
"No I won't. I'm light. Lift me up."
He hesitated for a moment. He grabbed me at the waist and threw me up to the ceiling. I grabbed one of the vines and struggling, pulled myself up above the hole. I ripped a vine away from the hole and threw one end down.
"Grab it and climb! NOW!"
I wrapped the vine around my arms and dug my feet into the vines beside the hole. He was freaking heavy! The vines started to wither. He better move his fat ass.
"Move it! The vines are going to die on us!"
"HOLD IT STEADY!"
Holy krietsit, he should just be glad I was holding it at all! I could feel the vine giving me a friction burn. HELLFIRE THIS HURT!
Flames licked through other parts of the ceiling. The vines pulled away. I was going to have to pull him up... he wasn't going to make it. I shifted all my weight to my right leg and slowly pulled my left leg back just enough to keep my leverage. Now, I just gotta pull. I pulled and pushed my leg straight. It burned. I pulled my right leg back up and pushed with my right leg against the vine. I was pulling him up too slowly. I grunted and pulled my leg back to push again. I could see his hands. I sucked in and pushed my leg to pull him up as hard as I could. He came up over the hole as the vines of the ceiling erupted in flames. I fell back and started sliding down the dome. Intris came diving after me, trying not to get burned as the dome collapsed. We ended up on the roof of the Mai Garden building. He grabbed my arm and pulled me up, running across the top of the roof to the edge. He jumped down off the roof and landed on his hands and knees.
"Jump. I'll catch you."
Krietsit.
I jumped.
He caught me, but I knocked him over. We were sprawled out in the alled behind the Garden. I heard more transports and saw the search lights. I jumped up and grabbed him. I pulled him through the alley and we stopped at the other side. He peeked around the wall and looked back to me. He took off across the street and I followed him.
We ran through the alleys, behind buildings, avoiding the main streets. We stopped behind a building when we heard the transport and saw search lights in the street ahead of us. I saw the search lights get close to the alley corner. Then I was pulled down... into? I heard the transports pass by. He was covering over me.
"Who are you?" He whispered.
I'm not going to tell him my name.
"Raen." He still held my body under his. He had long fingers.
"Not Flower something?" His long bangs had poked into his eyes, and he had tilted his head to keep them out of his face. The rest of his hair was very short - nearly shaved on the sides, with just a fraction longer on top and in back.
"No, just Raen."
"What were you doing? What did you do with the flower unit?"
"I can't tell you."
"Who the hell am I going to tell?" I had to move. It was awkward talking to him while he was on top of me. Whis this liquidy material, it was like I was naked under him - I could feel every seam of his clothing pressed down onto me with his weight.
I started shaking. Krietsit. I needed another injection. How could I possibly need another injection? I've just absorbed the living metal from the Garden! Holy hellfire! I knew I needed another injection.
"I have to get to my shoes."
"Oh, yeah." He sounded disappointed and resigned. He moved to the side of me - but lightly ran his hand over my stomach as he did so.
I put the needle sheath in my mouth to hold it while I sucked the living metal into the syringe. Uhhh. I'd better just inject through my clothes. I'm going to have to do it in my arm. I put the vial back into my shoe.
"You shoot up?"
I thumped my inner elbow and made a fist. I felt for the vein. Found it. I popped the needle in and pushed the plunger. Cold. Oh yeah here it came. I felt the crawling. I started banging my head against the wall. It felt like icy cold hands were squeezing the inside of my head... I knew my brain would come running out of my ears any second. GNNNNH. And then, the light. I could taste the light, and then I could smell it. It burned my eyes from the inside. Ohhh yeah. Now I was feeling the light.
"What the hell did you just inject? I've never seen any of the tarcanes have that effect..."
Tarcanes? I searched for tarcanes from the mesh-x controller. Crap! Oh wow... I could have used that the night I died.
"No, this is something different."
"So you're not a Flower but you're female, you destroy flower units, and you shoot up something harder than tarcanes?"
"You could say that."
"My name's Intris. Are you owned?"
"WHAT?! NO!"
He was looking straight into my eyes. His eyes were pure dark red now, instead of the bright yellow from before.
"What about you? heh. Are you owned?"
He smiled. There was something about the look in his eyes as he was smiling at me. I could have used a bottle of Nirvaise right then.
"So do you shoot up?"
"Yeah. I did. I do tabs now. Did you really mean to take down the entire Mai Garden?"
"Kind of. I wanted to put them out of business, but not necessarily burn them down... although I feel that was more satisfying."
"So how do you live outside the Flower world? I always meet these females that are just so into it- I thought all females were, which is great for show but not for anything else."
"I probably hate it more than any female you'll ever know."
"You could be a weed."
"I could be, but I'm not."
"Have you been tagged?"
"Yeah. I'm not a weed."
"Let me see!"
"You think I'm going to go out banded?!" Ok that was a small lie... I totally forgot about the bands, but there was no way I was going to give away my true identity just to show him I wasn't a weed!
"You're smarter than I thought you were at first. I thought you were just sneaking into the Garden to claim your flower falsely or something."
"What in the hell would I do that for?"
"Some females just want better status, so they try breaking into the Garden to force-merge with a rare or valuable flower."
"Uh huh. Ok that's stupid. What were *you* doing there?"
"Oh yeah... I, well, Mai Garden has this one flower that I collect pods from, so I can get more of the quake tabs made. I'm totally into quakes. I get scanned in when I'm on quakes so that I can see all of the stuff you can never see normally. Scanning in on quakes gives me access to all these other files that I never get access to!"
Uhhhh. Scanning in when you're hyped gives you access to files you normally can't have access to?
"What do the files look like to you?"
"Like shimmering gossamer wings. Hey! What do you look like?"
Shimmering files. Like the file I opened when I got the internal access. Where there more of those locked-access files?
"I look like a female."
"Well, I met a female today that didn't look like a normal female."
"Oh?" Oh hellfire, I knew I had screwed up today.
"Yeah, she was white. I've never seen a white female before."
"White?" Is that all he noticed?
"Yeah, she had pure white skin with red-copper hair. I've never seen a female look like that. So see you can't just say, 'like a female' because you could be a white female like the one I met today."
"You're right, I could."
"Why don't you show me your face?"
"Why?"
"Because I've never met a female like you."
"When I trust you, I'll show you my face. Until then, I'd like to stay alive." He was uncomfortably close again, and I could smell the cologne and sweat rubbed into his jacket. He seemed to be fighting himself on the inside - because his eyes rapidly flashed from yellow to reddish-orange to red - and then back to yellow.
"You want me to walk you back to wherever it is you come from?"
"No. I can make it myself." I was flushed from head to toe.
"Ok. I gotta get back before anyone notices I'm gone. Will I see you again Raen?"
"You might Intris. You might even see me and not recognize me, but I will recognize you." Ok, have to tell Itxata that her idea to pack the dark pewter non-reflective cosmetics was the best freaking idea ever. Ah hell. He was going back to the same place I was going. This time when I follow him, I'm going to make sure that he doesn't know I'm there.
"I'd hate the idea that I was looking straight at you but wouldn't know it was you."
"Well you're just going to have to get used to the idea."
"Krietsit you're a cold female."
"Yeah. I am." Huh. He hadn't tried anything with me.
He got up. I hopped up after him. I watched him leave and when he couldn't see me anymore, I snuck around the other side of the building to follow him without him seeing. Krietsit! My rope was gone! Oh right, I went down the fire escape.
I got back to the building without being seen by anyone, and quickly scaled the fire escape back to my room. I packed my body suit and peripherals back into the pod and cleaned off my face and hands. I felt like a beaten up sack of vegetables. I crashed, butt naked onto the bed and fell asleep.
I'm free! There is no one out right now, and I'm walking through the enclosed streets of Iaonin. I was going to call up my access and see where Mai Garden was, but I happened to be standing directly across from the entrance. Steal the hybridizer? I heard someone was walking. I moved back into the shadow between the two buildings on the opposite side of the street.
He approached the Garden, and the gates slithered away from a portal to let him in. I ran silently across the street and tried to make it through the portal before it closed. He was dressed in street clothes: a dark jacket and a pair of dark pants. I wasn't used to seeing individuals not in academy clothing or political businesswear.
I barely slipped through the portal. Good thing it was not programmed for maximum security, it would have cut my leg off instead of re-opening quickly to let me through. I heard him open another portal. He was down at the end of the hall. He had to be opening the Garden entrance. They must let anyone into these Gardens, because both Drendyn and this individual have just entered without any troubles.
I ran down to the end of the hall to follow him through the portal. I slid through the opening just to be grabbed on the other side and thrown down.
"Are you trying to get us killed?" He whispered in my ear as he had me pinned down on the ground.
"No, I was just trying to get in without you seeing me."
"Oh but screw the security system, as long as I didn't see you?"
Security system? I pulled down info from the mesh-x about Garden security. Ah hellfire. Infrared sensors with the portal openings tied to hyper-injectors.
"What the hellfire are you doing here - and why are you dressed like that? I could have you killed!" He whispered to me as he let me up.
Intris?
"Why are you dressed like that? What are *YOU* doing here?"
"Don't you belong to this Garden? Why are you sneaking in? Are you from a different Garden?"
Uhhhh. He didn't recognize me? Was it Intris? No, I was sure of his voice. Well hellfire, I snapped open my interface and opened a sound analyzer.
"What are you staring at?"
heh. Your voiceprint. It was Intris. Ok, being engaged in the mesh-x at all times was pretty useful. It was just like having a full scanset on and scanned in to a controller.
"Nothing. I'm looking for something." I spotted the same strange domed object near the side of the portal that I had seen in Ikebana. I placed my hand upon the top and the dome opened. The living metal was inside, glowing. I reached down to pick it up, and it slid up my arm and wrapped around my neck. I couldn't breathe. It was strangling me. I tried to pry it off. I was choking. No, it wasn't choking me. My head. My head was going to explode. OH KRIETSIT. IT'S PUSHING INTO MY BRAIN THROUGH MY NECK.
GRRRRRHAAAAAAANNNNN.
I dropped down to the ground, rolling around, clutching my head. My nose started bleeding. TOO MUCH TOO MUCH TOO MUCH. I felt it climb down my spinal cord. I squinted my eyes. Oh holy hellfire. I was going to die.
FLASH. My eyes opened. I could see him standing above me, shaking me or hitting me, I couldn't tell. There was so much light. I was breathing light. My hands. My hands were engulfed in light. I heard a loud noise but it sounded so far away...
An ALARM!
"GET UP GET UP GET UP! WE'RE GOING TO BE KILLED!"
He was screaming at me. The portal had fused solid. I got up on my feet. He was ripping at the portal wall. That thing wouldn't open from the inside now. The alarm was screeching over head. I put my hands over my ears to kill the noise.
A giant boom and sparks flying. The alarm system fell out of the ceiling, the cables spitting energy and sparks.
The alarm was gone.
He whipped around. "How did you do that?"
Before I could say anything, I could hear transports.
"Grab the cable. We have to set the Garden on fire!"
We both knew right then that the only way to open the wet-tech infused walls would be to put it's existence at stake. We grabbed the cables and pulled them down, setting fire to as much as we could within the cables' reach. We snapped some burning branches off of a bush and started taking them around to more plants.
Soon, we were standing in a giant ball of hot flames.
The sprinkler system kicked on, showering down on us. He took the blasted metal pieces from the exploded alarm system and started hitting the main water controlling cables. I grabbed some metal and stabbed repeatedly into the cables. I was thrown back from the shock when I cut one of the main lines, but the water stopped. Intris took the sparking cable and lit another branch on fire, re-setting fire to the Garden. He took the branch over to the walls and set them on fire. The walls pulled in and vines started untwisting.
The vines pulled open a hole in the ceiling. We both ran over under the hole. Neither of us could reach it without helping each other.
"Lift me up."
"No way! You'll leave me here!"
"No I won't. I'm light. Lift me up."
He hesitated for a moment. He grabbed me at the waist and threw me up to the ceiling. I grabbed one of the vines and struggling, pulled myself up above the hole. I ripped a vine away from the hole and threw one end down.
"Grab it and climb! NOW!"
I wrapped the vine around my arms and dug my feet into the vines beside the hole. He was freaking heavy! The vines started to wither. He better move his fat ass.
"Move it! The vines are going to die on us!"
"HOLD IT STEADY!"
Holy krietsit, he should just be glad I was holding it at all! I could feel the vine giving me a friction burn. HELLFIRE THIS HURT!
Flames licked through other parts of the ceiling. The vines pulled away. I was going to have to pull him up... he wasn't going to make it. I shifted all my weight to my right leg and slowly pulled my left leg back just enough to keep my leverage. Now, I just gotta pull. I pulled and pushed my leg straight. It burned. I pulled my right leg back up and pushed with my right leg against the vine. I was pulling him up too slowly. I grunted and pulled my leg back to push again. I could see his hands. I sucked in and pushed my leg to pull him up as hard as I could. He came up over the hole as the vines of the ceiling erupted in flames. I fell back and started sliding down the dome. Intris came diving after me, trying not to get burned as the dome collapsed. We ended up on the roof of the Mai Garden building. He grabbed my arm and pulled me up, running across the top of the roof to the edge. He jumped down off the roof and landed on his hands and knees.
"Jump. I'll catch you."
Krietsit.
I jumped.
He caught me, but I knocked him over. We were sprawled out in the alled behind the Garden. I heard more transports and saw the search lights. I jumped up and grabbed him. I pulled him through the alley and we stopped at the other side. He peeked around the wall and looked back to me. He took off across the street and I followed him.
We ran through the alleys, behind buildings, avoiding the main streets. We stopped behind a building when we heard the transport and saw search lights in the street ahead of us. I saw the search lights get close to the alley corner. Then I was pulled down... into? I heard the transports pass by. He was covering over me.
"Who are you?" He whispered.
I'm not going to tell him my name.
"Raen." He still held my body under his. He had long fingers.
"Not Flower something?" His long bangs had poked into his eyes, and he had tilted his head to keep them out of his face. The rest of his hair was very short - nearly shaved on the sides, with just a fraction longer on top and in back.
"No, just Raen."
"What were you doing? What did you do with the flower unit?"
"I can't tell you."
"Who the hell am I going to tell?" I had to move. It was awkward talking to him while he was on top of me. Whis this liquidy material, it was like I was naked under him - I could feel every seam of his clothing pressed down onto me with his weight.
I started shaking. Krietsit. I needed another injection. How could I possibly need another injection? I've just absorbed the living metal from the Garden! Holy hellfire! I knew I needed another injection.
"I have to get to my shoes."
"Oh, yeah." He sounded disappointed and resigned. He moved to the side of me - but lightly ran his hand over my stomach as he did so.
I put the needle sheath in my mouth to hold it while I sucked the living metal into the syringe. Uhhh. I'd better just inject through my clothes. I'm going to have to do it in my arm. I put the vial back into my shoe.
"You shoot up?"
I thumped my inner elbow and made a fist. I felt for the vein. Found it. I popped the needle in and pushed the plunger. Cold. Oh yeah here it came. I felt the crawling. I started banging my head against the wall. It felt like icy cold hands were squeezing the inside of my head... I knew my brain would come running out of my ears any second. GNNNNH. And then, the light. I could taste the light, and then I could smell it. It burned my eyes from the inside. Ohhh yeah. Now I was feeling the light.
"What the hell did you just inject? I've never seen any of the tarcanes have that effect..."
Tarcanes? I searched for tarcanes from the mesh-x controller. Crap! Oh wow... I could have used that the night I died.
"No, this is something different."
"So you're not a Flower but you're female, you destroy flower units, and you shoot up something harder than tarcanes?"
"You could say that."
"My name's Intris. Are you owned?"
"WHAT?! NO!"
He was looking straight into my eyes. His eyes were pure dark red now, instead of the bright yellow from before.
"What about you? heh. Are you owned?"
He smiled. There was something about the look in his eyes as he was smiling at me. I could have used a bottle of Nirvaise right then.
"So do you shoot up?"
"Yeah. I did. I do tabs now. Did you really mean to take down the entire Mai Garden?"
"Kind of. I wanted to put them out of business, but not necessarily burn them down... although I feel that was more satisfying."
"So how do you live outside the Flower world? I always meet these females that are just so into it- I thought all females were, which is great for show but not for anything else."
"I probably hate it more than any female you'll ever know."
"You could be a weed."
"I could be, but I'm not."
"Have you been tagged?"
"Yeah. I'm not a weed."
"Let me see!"
"You think I'm going to go out banded?!" Ok that was a small lie... I totally forgot about the bands, but there was no way I was going to give away my true identity just to show him I wasn't a weed!
"You're smarter than I thought you were at first. I thought you were just sneaking into the Garden to claim your flower falsely or something."
"What in the hell would I do that for?"
"Some females just want better status, so they try breaking into the Garden to force-merge with a rare or valuable flower."
"Uh huh. Ok that's stupid. What were *you* doing there?"
"Oh yeah... I, well, Mai Garden has this one flower that I collect pods from, so I can get more of the quake tabs made. I'm totally into quakes. I get scanned in when I'm on quakes so that I can see all of the stuff you can never see normally. Scanning in on quakes gives me access to all these other files that I never get access to!"
Uhhhh. Scanning in when you're hyped gives you access to files you normally can't have access to?
"What do the files look like to you?"
"Like shimmering gossamer wings. Hey! What do you look like?"
Shimmering files. Like the file I opened when I got the internal access. Where there more of those locked-access files?
"I look like a female."
"Well, I met a female today that didn't look like a normal female."
"Oh?" Oh hellfire, I knew I had screwed up today.
"Yeah, she was white. I've never seen a white female before."
"White?" Is that all he noticed?
"Yeah, she had pure white skin with red-copper hair. I've never seen a female look like that. So see you can't just say, 'like a female' because you could be a white female like the one I met today."
"You're right, I could."
"Why don't you show me your face?"
"Why?"
"Because I've never met a female like you."
"When I trust you, I'll show you my face. Until then, I'd like to stay alive." He was uncomfortably close again, and I could smell the cologne and sweat rubbed into his jacket. He seemed to be fighting himself on the inside - because his eyes rapidly flashed from yellow to reddish-orange to red - and then back to yellow.
"You want me to walk you back to wherever it is you come from?"
"No. I can make it myself." I was flushed from head to toe.
"Ok. I gotta get back before anyone notices I'm gone. Will I see you again Raen?"
"You might Intris. You might even see me and not recognize me, but I will recognize you." Ok, have to tell Itxata that her idea to pack the dark pewter non-reflective cosmetics was the best freaking idea ever. Ah hell. He was going back to the same place I was going. This time when I follow him, I'm going to make sure that he doesn't know I'm there.
"I'd hate the idea that I was looking straight at you but wouldn't know it was you."
"Well you're just going to have to get used to the idea."
"Krietsit you're a cold female."
"Yeah. I am." Huh. He hadn't tried anything with me.
He got up. I hopped up after him. I watched him leave and when he couldn't see me anymore, I snuck around the other side of the building to follow him without him seeing. Krietsit! My rope was gone! Oh right, I went down the fire escape.
I got back to the building without being seen by anyone, and quickly scaled the fire escape back to my room. I packed my body suit and peripherals back into the pod and cleaned off my face and hands. I felt like a beaten up sack of vegetables. I crashed, butt naked onto the bed and fell asleep.
posted by Peach @ 8:21 PM
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