Exile on Main Street

[Dracos]

No kidding...sorry.  Just got this weird shit...today anyhow.  I'll try my best.

Dracos calmed his mind focusing on Huitzil and listening, picturing a calm wind, the sound of Huitzil's thoughts flowing towards him, trying to sense out the veracity or more importantly the feeling of integrity behind what Huitzil was saying.

Dracos

[Brian]

Code Select Expand

Roll telepathy (6d6):
<Setzer> Dracos rolled 28 to read Huitzil's mind and my name is not Chibi-suu!

Your roll allows you to read past the target's surface thoughts and into his memories.

[Huitzil]

What did happen to Gary, anyway? Even if he did move to California, he wouldn't hang out with Dracos and Rez. Maybe it's Ladegard or someone. Shit, who all did we have over the years? Could be a lot of guys. Probably not from IRC at all, they probably know him in real life. Why would he think I was working for someone?

I wonder if they know if there's a comic shop around? I haven't had a good game in a while, and Great Eye should be out about now. They have to still game, Drac wouldn't be able to swear off RPGs after just six months. Rez probably still plays LOTR, unless the last set fucked the game.

Shit, who is that guy? I never saw a picture of him before, if he's from IRC too. Unless he's one of the guys after me and they just got Dracos and Rez along to lull me. Shit. Too big to outfight him, shit. Keep it cool. Act natural. I've shaken off these guys before, and I can do it again. Just got to talk to him, get him talking, and get him to keep talking. Unless they brought backup this time. I can't talk my way through a SWAT team. Is he just wearing a police shirt, or is that actual fucking SWAT armor? Shit. Is that why Dracos is looking at me funny, he trying to warn me? Dammit. He knows. I don't know how but he knows, he's probably working for them, and that guy is probably gonna take me to the doctor in an armored van. Goddamnit, goddamnit, fuck! It's like he can see it on me. No, he smells it, or something. Fuck, keep it together! Stay cool, he's just a friend I haven't seen for a while, he's not a Big Coffin Hunter. Probably. And if he is, how can he know I know? The only sure way to let him know is to panic.

He drinks from the can of ICB again, looking at Bjorn with a vacantly pleasant expression, then puts the can back down. This stuff really does taste like valentine's day hearts. I should have got some orange juice or something.

[Dracos]

"How'd you get here Huitz?  Why'd you vanish six months ago?  What are you running from.  Be on the level with us.  We're not out to get ya.  We're tired, paranoid, and just been through hell.  We want to make sure you aren't here to trap us."

Dracos listens, to both his words and thoughts, calm and focusing.

Dracos

[Huitzil]

"I told you, man. I was walkin'. Self-discovery and all that. Just like in the movies."

Fuck. He knows. They probably hired him to get me. Fuck. Okay, keep denying it, see if the absurdity gets too much for him. Maybe he'll decide whoever it was that's looking for me is just fucking wacko and call off. If they brought cops, that won't help, but if they brought cops I'm fucked anyway.

"So, anyway, who's your pal? He never told me his name."

Keep it casual. Don't bolt unless it's the only thing left. And if he still doesn't buy, say I ran away from home and that it's my parents that want me back. Goddamnt, that's fucking stupid, that doesn't even make sense! I could say... damn it!

[Dracos]

Dracos sits down tiredly, still listening, "Ye ain't a wanderer Huitz.  Not yer nature.  Anyhow, you too into the game to just vanish.  You're afraid, I can see that.  But look at us man.  We really look like we're out to get ya?  You think if this was a trap we'd just be strolling in here to catch you off guard and be all paranoid and shit?  I can see it Huitz.  Around ya.  Whatever it damn is.  We've all been through some fucked up shit.  I mean, just think, did I have green eyes last ya saw my ugly mug?  And surely, ya remember only one damn assexual from the void of existence," Dracos quirks his head over slightly at Bjorn, still droning.  "So why don't ya just come out with it?  Who's after ya?  What happened six months ago?  Why ya running around, hiding in random abandoned houses in Cali?"

Dracos

[Huitzil]

He takes a deep breath, and sits down on the couch again.

"How... did you know what I was thinking about you?"

How did he know what I was thinking about him?

[Dracos]

Dracos closes his eyes tiredly. "I can hear what you're thinking huitz.  Why they are out to get me anyhow.  Something similar with the others."  Dracos says witha sigh, thumbing over at Rez and Bjorn.  
We're different apparently, so they want to lock us up and use us as disposable lab rats."

Dracos
EDIT: Grammar fix minor.  Major fucking should've been there.

[Huitzil]

He stops, looks down. He sighs heavily. When he replies, his tone is wholly different from before; now he just sounds weary and exhausted.

"So. After you too. I guessed I probably wasn't the only one with this X-Men shit, but I never figured that my old IRC pals would be the others.

"Someone is after me. I'm running from them. I don't know who they are, or how they found me in the first place, but I do know that they are coming for me. And I know that I don't want to go with them. So... I left home. They knew where I lived, and I couldn't let them catch me. I just started walkin', since I couldn't drive, and since they could track me by plates anyway. I hitch-hiked when I could, but usually I was afraid I'd hitch a ride with... whoever was after me. I mostly walked. Got jobs when I ran low on money, but never stayed in one place for too long.

"I didn't have any place in mind other than "away". I followed roads most of the time, and changed paths at random. Couldn't be predictable. Just had to wander. If I stopped wandering, they would catch me. And I wandered up here, and I was telling the truth, the place did seem right. It seemed safe. Then you guys came along, and I guess we came full circle."

[Bjorn]

The air of relaxation about Bjorn changes.  Before, it was a loose readiness, a lack of tension that spoke of an ability to move in any direction without warning; now it's the limpness that comes with an exhaustion more than purely physical.

"That's fair enough," he sighs, rolling his head from side to side to loosen his neck.  "Do you know who's after you, and why?  And for that matter," Bjorn frowns, "how did you find out they were coming after you before they actually caught you?  I didn't get much of a chance to bolt."

[Huitzil]

"Who are they? I don't know. I've really only seen two of them. I guess I'd better explain the whole thing, then you can ask questions."

He sighs wearily again,then speaks, long and with shallow breath, as if he was reciting a treasured Bible verse from memory.

"I left in July, but really, it all started in June. And it started in the back yard of the house. And it started for what seemed like no reason at all -- I suppose that everything does when you deal with stuff like this. In the backyard, there's a tree-fort without a tree, that my dad built for me when I was ten. It was still there, even though we'd stopped playing in it; we kept various stuff in ther that wouldn't fit in the garage. I was mowing the lawn, humming 'Honky Tonk Woman' to myself. The air smelled like grass and gasoline, and the sun was shining in spatters through the leaves. I hit a tree root, not uncommon in my backyard. We have a lot of trees.

"What was uncommon was the fact that I passed out -- I suppose I did, anyway, it's not like you remember passing out -- and when I woke up, the mower was on its side, Mom was slapping me in the face with the most worried look I had ever seen, and the top of the old fort had been obliterated. Gone. The blue tarp we kept in there and used to gather up the leaves had blown out of it, and it hung crossways on the phonelines that ran behind the house. The leaves of the trees behind it were covered in sawdust; below it were splinters like a small mulch pile. The most vivid image I remember now is that. Cheap blue canvas and light tan sawdust.

"None of us knew what happened, it was like it had spontaneously exploded. We went to the emergency room, even though I wasn't hurt at all, because it felt like we just had to do SOMETHING. They looked me over and said I was fine, but that if we wanted I could go to the normal inpatient rooms for a longer non-emergency analysis. We did, still kind of in shock, still worried, and kind of afraid of going back, to be honest. They took me up in a stretcher cart even though I could walk just fine. Room 203 at the St. Vincent's inpatient center. They sent a man in to talk to me in detail about what had happened, even though there wasn't much to say. I hit a tree root, next thing I knew the damn thing was evaporated, gone for the blue and the tan. Mom was inside; she heard a crushing, splintering noise and ran out to see me unconscious with my hand still clutching the bar on the lawnmower, its blades still spinning near my right foot.  Dad was at work at the time, and had rushed to the hospital as soon as he heard, interrupting an important experiment. They asked him what happened anyway. Then they started asking about family history, both him and my mother.

"The doctor left, and another came in, this one not in a white gown. He asked a lot of the same questions. Asked if this had happened before, if it was anything similar. If we had any schizophrenics in the family. That kind of stuff. Then he ushered Mom and Dad out of the room and asked me, again, if that had happened in the past but I had not told anyone. If I'd been afraid of telling someone because they would think I was crazy, or because I had destroyed something valuable. I didn't know what he was talking about, told him so, and he backed off. He asked a few more questions, mundane ones, and left. They kept me overnight and released me in the morning, said there was nothing wrong with me.

"We went back home. My brother was at Ball State, working there during the summer; he was doing better at college than I had. He found out three days after it happened, when he called me over something comparatively meaningless. We didn't really think to call him about it. We didn't really think it had happened, it was so damn surreal. And then, for two weeks, nothing odd happened at all. Every weekday I would bike down to the Movie Gallery and spend my day selling DVDs to people who had no idea what they wanted but were mad at me for not knowing it. The usual. It was like the whole incident had been a bad, but short, dream.

"On July 4th, we went down to the White River Canal in downtown to watch the fireworks. I sold glowsticks and flashing pins to people there for the fireworks, usually for their kids; I was always looking for a way to get some money. The show hadn't started yet, but it was close,and I was walking back to the car with three un-snapped glowsticks in my left hand and a messy wad of ones, fives, and tens in my right pocket when two people stopped me. 'Hey, Paul!' one of them says.

" 'Three dollars for the glowsticks, and I'm out of the pins right now,' I responded, an instinctual reaction to the "Hey!". Then I stopped, realising I had never seen these people before in my life and certainly wasn't wearing a name tag. The girl -- Her hair was red, or maybe brown, I couldn't tell in the twilight -- gave me five bucks for a glowstick and told me to keep the change. I took it, and walked off as fast as I could. I wasn't back in the bad-dream world, but it was close. Like I was slipping out. Like halfway between being awake and asleep.

"July 7th, back at the desk at the video store. Slow day. A girl walks in and asks if I have 'Six String Samurai' on DVD, I look it up and point her toward the back. She takes it back up front and pays the $40 without demur. Then she makes small talk. How I am, how's the family, how was my holiday. How much I like my job. If I'm satisfied with my life. If I think that my talents aren't being fully used. She leans on the counter, puts her elbow on the DVD she just bought. 'Special talents,' she whispers, even though nobody else is in the store. I shrug. She smiles at me, and her teeth are as white as a commercial. She takes the disc and walks out. She gets into a red Corolla with New York license plates in the parking lot, in the passenger's seat. I watch the car turn out onto Michigan Road, and in the driver's seat I see someone I know I have seen before. It doesn't hit me right away, though.

"I'm ringing up a fortysomething man's purchase of "Star Trek III: The Search For Spock" when it does hit me who the driver was: I saw him in the hospital. He was the doctor wearing the ironed slacks and polo shirt instead of a white gown, asking me questions that he never planned to put on my patient record. I smile at the customer and hand him his disc. I bike home normally, sit on the couch and watch some TV, eat dinner in silence. I don't sleep that night. Mom comes into my room twice to tell me to go to bed and stop 'tippy-typing on the computer'. She says it will be ther tomorrow, but I have a lot of stuff to say now. I don't tell you guys what happened, just that I'm going to be gone for a while. I post what I have of Decay 6 to the FFML, even though it ends in midsentence. I say 'G'night, everyone', and log off.

"I go into the kitchen and look for a sheet of paper to write a note. There isn't any, so I use an envelope Mom got in the mail from a quilter in Missouri. I just write 'I love you' on it and leave it on the kitchen table. When I walk out, the clock on the microwave reads 3:18 AM. The car came from new York, so I figure I'll head in the opposite direction. I walk west on 79th Street until it runs out, and then, I'm a wanderer.

"I think I was lucky. I think I managed to leave before they decided to just grab me, and I've been good enough about not leaving a trail that they haven't caught me yet. They've been close a few times, but I manage to get away or to shake them. But now that I'm on the run, they won't try to be diplomatic. They will just take me. I can fool them once or twice, but they're going to wise up eventually. And then they will catch me. And then they're going to take my brain apart, or worse. Because that's what they do, and that's why they knew I was... why I was special, even before I did."

[Ginrai]

Ginrai pulls into the driveway, pleased with how everything's turned out so far.

Walking into the house, he shouts out, "Great news, guys!  I was able to get a minivan, so we should easily be able to fit all of our stuff in it!  Sure, maroon ain't the best of colors and it's not much to look at, and it is a bit beat up, but considering that I was able to rent it without a credit check and that it came with a full tank of gas, thought it was a rather sweet deal.

"And, even better, some schmuck actually stole the sedan while I was looking for a car to rent!  Would love to see the look on his face when the Pax Arcana, or whatever they were called, catches him."

It was at that point that Ginrai noticed that there was someone else along with his friends.  "Oh, who's the new guy?"

[Dracos]

"It's huitz.  I'm tired.  And I'm going to fucking bed."

Dracos stumbles off, still grasping his sheathed blade, and heading into the room he slept in before.

Dracos

[Rezantis]

Rez is setting up the uplink and his laptop on the lounge room table, and he's not looking the least happy.  But he's at least he doesn't look exhausted, but while his face is pretty much blank his hands are shaking as he does so.

[Ginrai]

"I see... hey, Uns!"

Noticing that everyone's drinking ICB rootbear, Ginrai heads over to the fridge to get himself a can.  After opening it and taking a long swig from it, he says, "You know, before we all go to sleep, there were a few things I'd like some explanation of.  We can start off with why one of Rez's hands is gold.  I take it Uns was explaning how he got caught up in all this shit while I was away and so one of you guys can give me a shortened version of that later on."