[CLOSED] LA's, Truth to Tell, Not Much Different--

[tearmeanewone]

Who: The Legs and The Eyepatch
When: May 11th
Where: Kauto
What: One of Elizabeth's storytime regulars has gone missing, she enlists one of the few people she still knows, Badou, to help track the kid down. As with most kidnapping incidents, things go south.
Warnings: Badou. And violence. Definitely some blood.


It'd been some time between Elizabeth's bar fight, but not much longer since Thane had left. Vaguely, she's been aware of things going on around Thisavrou, but has she had any desire to engage with any kind of activity or person on both planets? Not exactly.

She has to eat, so she goes through the motions of work. That's easy enough. Shelve this here, catalog this there, straighten up the inevitable disaster the children left in the kids' section. That-- she didn't mind so much. She smiled at one of the girls who was hugging one of the beanbag chairs and pouting, and crouched down.

"Viola it's time to go home, where's your brother?" The two of them usually walked home together, but now that she thought about it, she hadn't seen Frankie in a few days. Viola gripped the beanbag tighter and Elizabeth's smile flickered.

"Dad said he's coming back soon?" The little girl didn't sound convinced, so neither was Elizabeth. As she closed up the desk, Elizabeth casually abused her librarian privileges and found some full names. Sure enough, Frankie had been abducted a week ago, and his parents were getting desperate if all of their network activity could be trusted.

"...well, what the hell else am I doing?" she muttered, gathering up her coat and walking with purpose to the door. It's the first time she's actually decided to do something after work in a long, long time.



It's your favorite psych patient. What have you got on at the moment? Anything exciting?

Comments

[brokeassgoing]

God, she's fought so hard. To do the right thing, to keep going, to not give up. His heart tears just like this tear is a fucking tear in the ass-- but at the same time, he's angry about it. Angry she feels she has nothing left.

"THAT'S NOT FUCKING TRUE! None of that is true! And when you live through this, I'll show you! So don't just give up! You ain't a pussy! You're stronger than steel."

But there's no more he can do for her. No more he can physically do, spiritually, anything. All he can do is grab Frankie, throw him over his shoulder, and take off-- biting his lip until it bleeds because he doesn't want to leave her.

(how many more times will he be forced to leave someone behind because he isn't strong enough?)

[tearmeanewone]

Finally, finally Badou takes Frankie and runs. Who knows what's happened to his kidnapper-- Elizabeth is fairly certain she doesn't care. All she cares about right now is that Badou and Frankie are out of the warehouse before the tear inevitably won't close all the way and lets this tidal wave in. She's putting everything she can into it, but the more energy she feeds into it, it feels like the Ingress energy just meets her mark for mark.

She closes her eyes and exhales. She can let go of it now, she can just let it come in and it would seal itself once she's gone.

'He's right, you know.'

Elizabeth doesn't open her eyes. She knows what-- who-- she'd see, and it would only serve to make her more unstable and less willing to let go. "You're not real," she says to herself, to the hallucination in the shape of Booker DeWitt. "You're not real, you're not real, don't say anything to me, don't talk to me--"

'None of it is true. You just don't want to get back up again. You figure you've fallen down enough, time to stay down.'

"I'm tired Booker--" She swears under her breath when she realizes she's talking to herself again, and she won't get out of this trap until she's finished the conversation. "--I've lost everyone I loved, I tried to have a normal life with a job and a home, but Comstock ruined me. Those few months where I wasn't in my tower, those few years I spent trying to feel satisfied, it was too much, it changed me too much.

"Please, just let me go. Let me end this, I want to rest."

'No you don't.' God, she can almost feel Booker's hands on her shoulders. 'I'm in your head. If you wanted to die, I wouldn't be here.' The realization is like a jolt through her spine, and Elizabeth opens her eyes. The wave is finally cresting, it must be twenty or thirty feet tall. 'Your friends, even the ones who are gone, would say the same thing Badou did-- you don't get to ignore them because they're not here! Badou is speaking for them now, and you have to goddamn listen Elizabeth!'

The wave's about to break, but she can't see how fast it's coming-- her eyes are full of tears she's tried not to cry for months. "I miss them, I miss you."

'Close it, Elizabeth!' She pulls her hands together, slowly, as the wave rushes to them. 'CLOSE IT!!'

The wind is deafening as the tear snaps closed, Elizabeth screaming over it from the effort. The Ingress energy tries to hold the line, but what opened this disaster-- Elizabeth's will-- is more than a match for the phenomena. It collects in an angry ball, condensing as the tear closes, and disbands outwards in a blinding flash that consumes Elizabeth and sends her flying backwards. For a second, as the energy passes through her, she disappears.

But only for a second. She hits the ground and rolls a ways before she stops. There's no blood down her nose and mouth, it's all on her forehead now, and down one side of her face.

It's almost deafening how quiet it is now. Frankie's self-appointed uncle is audibly shaking against the cubicle door, but Elizabeth is close enough that he can start crawling towards her. She looks hurt, she might need help.

[brokeassgoing]

(Badou, on the other side 'see you on the other side', has his hands full with a beyond frightened kid, or else he'd rush in there, guns blazing.

How he so wants to)

All is quiet. Too quiet. Even alarms have stopped blaring, perhaps they never did, couldn't compensate for the chaos that had just happened. Either way, Frankie's shitty uncle probably pissed himself, and hardly dares to approach Elizabeth for a few moments.

Though eventually he does, cautiously, crawl forward, a shaking hand reaching for her wrist at the very least. He doesn't want to go near her, he really doesn't, but...to get out of here, he's going to have to pass her. Might as well see if she lived through...whatever that was.

The scum that he is.

[tearmeanewone]

The sound is what she hears first-- the scrape of knees over concrete. Elizabeth can't imagine what that sound is, why she's hearing it when everything had been fading and she'd started to feel no pain at all. Sally there, watching her slip away, Elizabeth wishing she had the strength to tell her what new life awaited her once Jack arrived.

Instead, the floor is hard and she can feel her limbs. Her head doesn't even hurt. All at once she thinks: Atlas.

Her eyes snap open and she grabs the wrist of the hand reaching for her. The man shrieks and cowers, Elizabeth searching his face while her eyebrows come together.

"Who the hell are you?"

[brokeassgoing]

For a moment, the piece of scummy shit can't form words, so unexpectedly was her revival that he lets out a second shriek to follow the first.

Oh god, he's got to think quick-- he's good at that! Got to think fast because she doesn't seem to remember his face and this is the best news possible! Even more than not actually shitting himself after seeing all that.

"I-I'M THE JANITOR! I'm just the janitor-- I saw something-- something weird happen, some...stuff floating? So I came to see what was going on and found you! Are you alright, miss?"

[tearmeanewone]

"The janitor?" Elizabeth arches an eyebrow and looks around. The first thing that's immediately apparent is that the floor seems dry. The air seems dry. And there's night sky outside those high-up windows if she can believe her eyes. Somehow, she's not in Rapture anymore.

But she is in a warehouse, and apparently this warehouse has a janitor?

"Yes. Somehow," Elizabeth says, wiping her face and examining the blood that comes away on her hand. She should be dead from head trauma right now, but she can hear and see clearly and she's fairly certain she can stand. Which she does, after letting go of the janitor's arm. She looks around again, and pauses when she spots a gun-- her gun-- on the floor.

"Where am I?"

[brokeassgoing]

Thank fuck, she believes him! She believes him and won't kill him! Thank god...just have to keep in control and NOT PUT HIMSELF IN THE LINE OF FIRE. Literally and figuratively.

"You're on Kauto, currently. One hell of a place...lots of business...no idea what you're doing here-- maybe you got lost in town?"

[tearmeanewone]

"Kauto?" She's never heard of it. But apparently 'businesses' equals warehouses she carries guns in. Elizabeth goes over to her handgun and picks it up, tucking it into the holster. More is going on here than she knows, she's been here before-- waking up confused and unsure of where she is and what's going on.

"Can you show me the way back into town?"

[brokeassgoing]

A little more nervous now-- she's got enough sense to retrieve the gun, great-- he sweats profusely, but can't refuse. A normal guy would help a girl out! Even if he had stuff to do, like get the hell outta dodge.

"Sure can! No problem. Let's get out of here, for starters."