death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
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AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
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Post by Nikki on Aug 30, 2017 23:19:04 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"]  [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]SLEEPWALKING TO THE GALLOWS [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]I MISS THE WARM EMBRACE I FELT THE FIRST TIME YOU TOUCHED ME [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]SECURE & SAFE IN OPEN ARMS, SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU'D CRUSH ME [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
Tomodachi Island was notorious for its enigmatic ways. No one knew how it drew people in, and no one know how it kept people there. No one knew it's mechanisms for picking and choosing from what had been to be revealed to be a near endless multi-verse, and no one would ever know the extent of just how far that multi-verse reached out. What were some of the creatures that it spat out onto its shores? How could beings from places that existed under such drastically different laws exist in the same place? From Nikki's perspective, ignorant of the true nature of the dreams that had been plaguing them, the island had given life to a figment of his imagination, one that was birthed shortly after his own arrival on the sandy beaches. How that was possible at all was beyond him entirely. Comparable to seeing the monster that hunted you down at night in a place where you could not flee coming into form right before your very eyes; a start contrast to the nightmares of his waking world plaguing him, too, even in his rest. And she knew him – she had to, what with that look etched on her face and the way she'd said his name without any form of prompting. How must this have looked from her end? Did her memory extend only so far as what he had dreamed? That, unfortunately, would have left her with very little. Fortunately for her, in some twisted way, he knew all about getting on without memories. So long as she was willing to answer his questions, he'd be willing to return the favor. When she spoke to him, however, voice just an inch above a whisper, she didn't seem to care much for his confusion over how a nightly image had become tangible bones, blood, and flesh. Instead, her concern laid elsewhere entirely:[break][break]
“You don't remember me?”[break][break]
There was something heartbreaking in those words, and Nikki cursed his bleeding heart and every beat it pounded out for aching over them. Should he have? He remembered her from the only medium from which he could, and he'd already communicated that to her, but from the way she spoke of it now with such incredulity and sullenness, he couldn't help but wonder if he was meant to know her beyond that. Had she existed out there, somewhere, outside his dream scape? Where had she really come from, then, he wondered, and why had she plagued his thoughts when sleep finally, finally overcame him? “... No,” he said, swallowing, uncharacteristically nervous to admit the fact. This was so far out of his element that he didn't even have it in him to keep up his bark. “... Should I?” (He thought back to the man who had tried to kill him outside the coffee shop and the words he had spoken them. Emilio had known him well enough to wish him dead for his “betrayal” despite his own failure to recall the other existing at all in his Seattle, Washington. But Emilio had never expected him to know him back – or, at least, had never made any indication. It had been because Nikki had not known him that he'd managed to lure him away from watching eyes in the first place. What made these two different, then?) He'd thought that he'd regained all of his memories before, even, he had left the psychiatric ward nearly a year prior. Now, he was beginning to wonder if that was truly the case.[break][break]
“Come in. Siddown in the living room, I'll get you a water,” she said, and twice in the last month, he willingly entered the domain of a person he was unfamiliar with. Three years ago, he would have thought himself insane. One year ago, he'd know himself to be insane, and would've pegged himself a dead man. Robin had not killed him in his moment of weakness, though, and every instinct that would usually call for weariness beyond warrant had been rightfully silenced. The expressions she had donned could not be faked – not to that level, anyway. For all of the looks the heinous Doctor had shot his way, he'd never even attempted anything like that. His dreams, as well, told him that this was a woman that he could trust. This was a woman he – he'd almost even liked, odd as that was to think of. When she told him to sit, he sat. For once in his life, no inner voice condemned him for his obedience. “Is there any reason for this,” she said, returning to the living room with an unopened bottle of water in her near white-knuckled grip, “that ain't bullshit?”[break][break]
“Knowing my luck, no.” If he was being entirely honest, though, he wasn't even sure what “this” was even supposed to be. Tomodachi Island worked in enigmatic ways, but it seemed that even here, fate liked playing him cruel and bewildering hands. But they both knew their side of the story, even if it didn't necessarily overlap; even if they didn't, he would take her tale of some alternate, far off dimension over the uncertainty, and the only way to get that was to ask for it. “So, I'm... supposed to know you... and I don't. But you know me? How the hell is that? Definitely wasn't anyone like you back where I was from.” Had there been, for better or worse, he had the feeling he would have a hard time forgetting her.
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bgpwn9ilzsj2h11/05%20Poison%20Was%20the%20Cure.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
922 WORDS
| [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
@agnespollock
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] story time, story time! |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
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AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
|
Post by Nikki on Aug 30, 2017 22:05:34 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"]  [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]SURGICAL[break]STRIKE [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]IT'S LONELY IN THE FIELD THAT WE SEND OUR FIGHTERS TO WANDER [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]THEY LEAVE WITH MINDS OF STEEL - IT'S THEIR TRAINING SOLUTION [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
To say he had fallen “asleep” might not have been his preferred choice of phrasing. Real sleep, as most around him knew it, was a seen as a luxury in his eyes, something that was only afforded to him on very special, if not completely random occasion. When he had fallen to the floor of his shared apartment earlier than afternoon, it had not been because he'd willingly curled up for a quick catnap on hardwood. Even if it was just a step or two down from an old mattress he'd digged up out of someone's trash, it still wasn't his ideal place of rest. No, rather, he'd fallen unconscious, the light of his eyes dropping out like a fly from the air and the ground rushing up to meet the body no longer supported on legs turned to jello. It wasn't necessarily an uncommon thing to happen; at least, it'd happened enough in his time outside of the hospital that he'd almost grown used to it in a sense. That didn't make it any more frustrating, however, when it happened. Worse, still, was when it happened at an inopportune time, like when he was expected to be fleeing the scene of a hit, when he was in the middle of a large crowd of people in the shopping district, or when he was receiving emergency summons from the council in regards to his hitman work. You know: like right then.[break][break]
It was only fifteen minutes after the initial message was sent that the waking world greeted Nikki with blinding lights in unaccustomed eyes, but fifteen minutes was already too late in the case of most of his missions. Evil men and women had to be dealt with as soon as humanly possible. The less time they spent alive, the fewer people they could hurt with their selfish, fiendish actions. The moment he saw those words lit up on the screen of his (weirdly small and flat, if he might add) cellular device, he was up and on his feet, panic driving his every frenzied action. Fortune had its way in that he hadn't yet taken off his typical outing attire before he'd passed out on the floor, a cosmic kindness that afforded him a minute or so extra in the long run. Now all that was left to do was make a mad dash for the location specified no the screen and pray that his target had not already finished their crime and made off into the sunset. (Didn't most criminals work in the dark, anyway?)[break][break]
Confusion was the first thing that waved its hand at him when he found himself at the address in question. A restaurant? What, were illegal drug deals going on in the back room? What else could have been happening in a clearly open eating establishment located on one of the busiest streets in town? A triple check of his screen versus the letters and numbers carved into the building before him, though, confirmed that they were, in fact, one in the same, and he found himself with no choice to push his way through the entrance, hoping silently that he didn't do so only to find an army of guns pointed his way. Guns were a no. Blatant crime, however, was also a no. In the low lighting of the room stretched out before him – “romantic,” some would claim, although the hitman would sooner choose the word “inconvenient” – it was impossible to recognize any remotely familiar faces, whether they be acquaintances or would-be criminals from the watch list. Had it not been for the slightly amused woman to his right, undoubtedly chuckling at his red face and heaving lungs, he wouldn't have had the slightest clue as to what was happen. “You're Nikki, correct? Please take a seat.” Oh. A meeting? That was it? No one appeared to be talking yet, though, despite his supposed tardiness. Why hold a meeting in the middle of nowhere, anyway? When the stranger had instructed him to get out of the doorway, she'd made a vague gesture toward the tables further in – one, specifically, in the back. Taking it as a hint that that was the table to be, he made a beeline for it; tried not to be too disappointed when he still failed to recognize any of the people partaking of the complementary bread at it.[break][break]
“Yo, uh... Either of you know what this is about?” Nikki asked through his residual panting. The chairs lined around the table certainly could have looked tempting, but if this wasn't mandatory, he could think of a million other places he'd rather be than a fancy restaurant fulled to the brim with people he didn't know. (How many of them were dangerous in their own right, motivated to aid the cause only by self interest? How many would stick their knife in his back the moment it became convenient for them? The girl in pink looked innocent enough – but then again, so had the one man who'd single-handedly ruined his life.[break][break]
(Best not to take the risk.)
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/q0bnrxglk3hccso/06%20Surgical%20Strike.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
852 WORDS
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] hope you don't mind an extra face. =w=b |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
|
AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
|
Post by Nikki on Aug 30, 2017 20:37:53 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"]  [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]YOU KNOW MY NAME [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]AND IF YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, YOU NEVER SAW ME CHANGE [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]ARM YOURSELF, BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE HERE WILL SAVE YOU [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
He wanted to stay, truly. He wanted to talk until his lips cracked, his tongue numbed, blood leaked out of a throat screamed raw, whatever it took to hammer in some level of acceptance in the mind of his misguided man. He didn't even know his name. But he'd fired when he'd been told he couldn't; he'd betrayed expectations, and while it had likely saved his life, it had also stripped him of his chance at communicating, assuming he'd even had it to begin with. If he wasn't going to listen to him before, than he certainly wasn't after having a bullet shot clear through his chest, and there wasn't enough time to put on a show and give the “inspiration speech” that was begging to be screamed loud from the back of his mind now that he'd pulled the trigger. Loud noises brought along crowds: Moths to flames, fools to a gunshot. Someone would come retrieve the not-quite-corpse, and Nikki would have to be long gone by then, least he be detained for the crime and be “eradicated” from the Omega Five unit. A more frightening thought, truly, than dying to a deranged revolutionist, although one marginally less sad. (Was there something he could have done differently? Anyway he could have saved this lost soul?)[break][break]
So Nikki ran. A culprit from his crime. A murderer from his victim. A savior preaching to a deaf choir of one.[break][break]
Words flooded the air as he went, sneakers hard on pavement, blood still dribbling dark down his nose: “You are my enemy. I hate you, and so you are my enemy. I hate you, and I will kill you if you don't kill me first.” How hurtful. There was no reason for them to fight. Their enemy was the state – it always had been, it always would be – and the commonplace people who used each other like stepping stones. What would it take to make him realize that he was only playing into the enemy's hands? Only doing just what the real enemy wanted him to? Kill Nikki wouldn't accomplish anything; it could not right past wrongs, and it could not bring lost lives back from the grave. (If it could have, he would have gladly laid himself down beneath a sea of water and let it take him to his final resting place.) Trying to kill him was a waste of energy and the loss of a fighter against the world's hidden evil. But it was useless to say. His words couldn't reach his ears any longer. Maybe in some alternate past, they had, back when they'd both been slaves to the underworld, running themselves raw on the Doctor's cleverly disguised treadmill, but Nikkis never change, even in the multi-verse. Really, it should have come to his with no surprise.[break][break]
(In the meanwhile, he could hear the lecture now. Would the council call him, he wondered, or wait for him to show up of his own accord? Either way, there she would stand, white-eyed, blue-eyed, a whole five foot, four inches of raw smugness. She'd stare him down unnervingly with that ever-knowing smile of her's for too long before finally asking if he needed a resupply of bullets – never mind the fact that he already had more hidden away in his apartment than he'd ever know what to do with. He knew it. She most certainly did, too. “He tried to kill me,” the hitman would say to her, but he wouldn't be able to make eye contact. There had always been something off about this woman. He wondered, should he put the barrel of his gun against her head, instead, if it would phase her in the slightest. Something told him it wouldn't.[break][break]
(“You're not the sort to miss.”[break][break]
(“No.” How was he going to explain his... conundrum to her, he fretted? To say that he knew his attacker would be a lie. Yes, yes, he could list off appearances, and it was a safe assumption to say that the man hated him and wanted him dead, likely as a result of still being a loyal member of a 'revolution' that no longer existed, but there'd never been anyone like him in Nikki's own world. No one who posed that much of a thread, anyway. He got the feeling that if he told her the truth – that he sympathized with this person, bizarrely enough, and didn't think he had it in him to shoot him for falling victim to the same trap that he had managed to break himself out of... almost – that she would be satisfied with it. Not at all. No, he'd have to tell her something else. Misdirect, spit out a half lie. The more he thought of it himself, the more he wanted to know himself: If his assailant was so dedicated to the Doctor and avenging him, was there some chance of the Doctor himself being present on the island? And surely, if he was, wouldn't he be the bigger threat to the island's safety? He hadn't killed as many people himself, surely, but it wasn't his weapons that made him dangerous. It had always been and always would be his tongue, sharpened more than any blade to ever exist on the planet. If he was here, Nikki would see him dead. If the man could lead him there, then he was better left alive than in a shallow grave. “But I was thinking...”)[break][break]
He never did get Homura a coffee.
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1gk2ju5gy1vka6g/Chris%20Cornell-%20Casino%20Royale%20Theme-%20You%20Know%20My%20Name.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
922 WORDS
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] boop, boop, make way for the worst post ever written. ANYWAY, WE'RE DONE, CLOSE THIS SUCKER UP. |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
|
AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
|
Post by Nikki on Aug 29, 2017 0:31:25 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]YOU KNOW MY NAME [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]AND IF YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, YOU NEVER SAW ME CHANGE [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]ARM YOURSELF, BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE HERE WILL SAVE YOU [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
“Man, sometimes I think I'm fucking stupid, but you? You take idiocy to an entirely new level. You can't see the bigger picture of anything, now can you?”[break][break]
Another knife twisted through his gut – a statement that was certainly not wrong, but one that was used in a context that he'd never wished it to be. Because, at the end of the day, even he had to admit that he was not a smart man. He made silly errors, couldn't think of words, dropped out of high school as much because he hated it as he just couldn't understand the material they were attempting and failing to force feed to him. Basic emotions were lost on him at times. People could play him right into their hands with minimal effort. The moment something was told to him, he'd believe it without proof and without doubt. To have that rubbed in now, however, implied that he was too much of a fool to see things for what they were even when he'd sat by as a man stepped on his face and rubbed the heel of his mud-covered boot in as far as it would go, that he'd somehow doomed all of these people simply because he wasn't smart enough to understand otherwise. But this he knew with certainty was not the case. No, he wasn't a smart man by any means, nor would he likely ever be. But there were some things that he understood quite clearly, and he wouldn't allow this stranger from a strange land to pepper doubts on the one thing he knew, and knew firmly: Mindcrime had been a lie, and he would sooner die than let himself be played for a puppet to it any longer. What “bigger picture”? The idea that sacrifices had to be made, no question? That utopia couldn't be achieved without stepping all over the people it was built to protect in the first place? It was idealistic to think that only wrong doers would ever be punished – but a perfect, corruption-free America was built on idealistic principals in the first place! If they were aiming for perfection from the start, why would they ever aim for anything less?[break][break]
“You can't see a 'bigger picture' if it ain't there in the first place,” Nikki growled, hands balled into fists so tight he could feel his fingernails through the fabric of his gloves, “and I ain't killing innocent people for anyone.”[break][break]
(He understood in that moment, as best as he could 'know' something that may or may not have even been true, the real difference between them and the reason why his words would never get through. It wasn't a difference of Doctors, nor was it a difference of goals. It was because Emilio had never stared down at the blood on his hands, the blood he had put there, and thought to himself that he'd just been made to slaughter the lives of the people he would have given his life for repeatedly to protect. Maybe he'd never known. Maybe he'd never had to. Maybe he'd lost the ability to care. There was no greater loss than that of his own righteousness. Even the death of Sister Mary had not struck him to the same extent. It was not her death that he lost his mind to, but the fact that it had been, in some way shape or form, but in his hands. A messiah strayed from his purpose, fallen from his grace. That was his real shame.)[break][break]
Most people paled in the face of a barrel aimed at their head, terrified by the idea of the death a single bullet from its chamber could bring. Past experience had led Nikki to expect a similar result. Looking at the expression on his enemy's face now, he was horrified to realize that he'd been as wrong as he could have been. Worst of all was that he understood why: He, himself, had been trained to deal with situations where a gun was pressed up flush against his skin, to stare death in its face and spit, but more than that, this person knew him, knew how he thought, recognized that he couldn't shoot a fly through the head even if he wanted to. “Oh, look at you, yelling at me, trying to scare me, but still offering to do me such a nice favor,” the revolutionist taunted with acid spraying from his tongue. “Can you even do it? Shoot a poor man manipulated and deluded by the evil Doctor X? Would I count as an innocent then, or do you think I'm too far gone?” That was – ah. There was no doubt that this person had killed people, many, if he had taken Nikki's place as the revolution's focal hitman, but the dilemma he spoke of so sickly of now was more real and weighty than he must have thought even while bringing it to light. Did those murders he had committed in the Doctor's name really mean that he should have been condemned to death? Remorse didn't seem to factor into the equation remotely, too dedicated to the cause, too blinded by faith in a lie packaged to look like a walking, talking man, but there had been a time, too, when he, himself, would have thrown himself off a cliff if the Doctor had made any mention of it. The guilt for those crimes had not sunk in until it was too late. If Emilio was guilty and to be charged with death, than so, too, was Nikki, wasn't he?[break][break]
(He didn't know, he didn't know, he didn't he didn't he didn't he didn't want to die there was too much left to do but those people he had killed the ones who hadn't deserved it they needed justice and wasn't that on him to bring?)[break][break]
The man charged, and Nikki fired.[break][break]
It was like broken glass in the night, a bomb set off in an isolation chamber, a pin dropped in a silent room. The streets had been quiet, save for the scuffle and the screaming they had been putting up, hardly enough noise to startle off the cluster of birds up ahead or the squirrels clinging to trees nearby. They all fled now, though, terrified by the sudden bang of a bullet shot through the air. For half a second, the hitman himself couldn't believe he'd done it – aimed his weapon at a person who didn't deserve to die, spelled his doom – but the smell of gunpowder tickled at his nose, and he coughed against it as deadly nothingness curled up into the world in its wake. He'd hit his mark. Of course he did. He'd never missed a shot in his life. Not since X had taken him under his black, inky wings. Some sick form of satisfaction bubbled up deep within his being as he watched it happen, watched his opponent crumpled onto the pavement. How could he not with an injury as severe as that? For a moment, he considered firing again for good measure, just to make sure he didn't get back up again, but the deed was done, the mission accomplished. Homura would have a fit trying to cover up one gunshot, much less two, and the inevitable blood splatters, if not the body itself would definitely have to be picked up later. Maybe he'd be able to walk off with a bullet through the gut, but chances were, someone else would have to find him, instead. (Fortunately, they weren't that far away from civilization. The gunshot plus a couple of faked screams on his way home would get someone else to do the job of pickup for him just fine.)[break][break]
“You're not my enemy,” Nikki spoke from his safe distance, certain that he was safe for now. As for when that wound had healed – well, he didn't want to think of how he'd probably only spat gasoline on the fire. “And I shouldn't be yours. We both wanted the same thing. Hell, we still do. But you're not gonna get it if you're stuck working with him.”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1gk2ju5gy1vka6g/Chris%20Cornell-%20Casino%20Royale%20Theme-%20You%20Know%20My%20Name.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
1362 WORDS
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] there was gonna be more, but i gave up, have this trash. |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
|
AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
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Post by Nikki on Aug 28, 2017 23:19:32 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]SLEEPWALKING TO THE GALLOWS [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]I MISS THE WARM EMBRACE I FELT THE FIRST TIME YOU TOUCHED ME [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]SECURE & SAFE IN OPEN ARMS, SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU'D CRUSH ME [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
Unbelievable. Unbelievable! The culprit of it all, a woman, by the sound of her voice, had a lot of nerve thinking that she could respond to his anger, completely justified, with sarcasm and snark. Next, she'd start telling him that the one being a bother to the general populace here was him and not herself, complaining loud and proud about his knocking and cursing like she hadn't done a single thing wrong in these last twenty some minutes. Insufferable, the whole lot of them. He'd be lucky if he could count the number of people that didn't make him want to tear out his hand on this island on a single hand. “You sure this is the best way to make a good first impression, neighbor? I would have gone with a muffin basket. Hell, even a casserole would would have been nice.” Oh, yes, ha ha, how witty and charming. Her words were infuriating in part because they communicated a lack of caring, but mostly because he never had a proper response to these kinds of words, this kind of person. He never had, thinking about it now, not since he'd let X run circles around him with his tongue and his lips. The best he'd ever been able to muster was a quick, sharp shut up, but its effectiveness varied between person with some taking the hint and others only proceeding to laugh in his face. Very, truly insufferable. He was all prepped and ready to tell her just that, however, (albeit with a great deal less of eloquence) when she opened the door even wider, revealing her form to him even when her own eyes were trained quite firmly on her feet. Immediate impressions made him think of Mary, a jolt of shock that caught him off guard at the sight of someone of the same similar build and the same curly blonde hair, but it couldn't have actually been her, considering her voice and her mannerisms. If that Emilio fellow had taught him anything, it was to expect familiar people or faces with stark differences between them, but even he supposed a line had to be drawn in the sand to determine where one person ended and another began in the multi-verse. And this woman? She didn't even stand close.[break][break]
What did manage to catch him off guard and could not be proven false was that, vague visual similarities to Mary or no, she really did look familiar. While his default assumption then should have been that she, too, would attack him with the intent of getting his blood on her hands like the last person to instill in him a sense of deja vu had done, something in his gut was telling him differently. He knew her from... somewhere, that much was for certain, but fatigue and the remnants of his not-yet-abated anger were making it hard to place exactly where or when that could have been. All that was left to do was hope that some sort of (non-violent) recognition hit her, as well, and the confusion could be cleared up for him without all of the difficult thinking – but, as usual, even that small wonder was too much to ask for. Instead, she stared, she stepped back, and she spoke with incredulity seasoning her voice like pepper: “You're fuckin' with me, aren't ya'?” Well, that certainly answered quite a number of questions. (If only.) There was no doubt now, though, that the look of him alone was familiar to her as well, and while he was grateful for the fact that she didn't immediately make for his throat, he'd be lying if he said the way she was staring at him was necessarily ideal. Worse, still, she made a show of poking her head out past him to look up and down the empty hallway, muttered something about getting pranked, told him to “piss off”, and oh so politely slammed the door in his face. He would have focused more on the pain had it not been for the obscurity of it all – and then, he would have focused more on that had he not suddenly come to the realization of where, exactly, he knew her from.[break][break]
The dreams.[break][break]
As a man who did not sleep with any semblance of frequency, the hitman's dreams had always been far and few. During his stay at the hospital, he'd slept more, hence he had dreamt more, but they'd always been memories of various distortion looped over and over again, serving only to remind him of his past failures and of the guilt that ate at his core to this very day. When he's arrived on the island, the images of a dead nun, the rancid stench of gun fire in his nose, and the chorus of accusatory screaming had all vanished into a puff of smoke, replaced, instead, by nightmares of a different kind. It was always the same city, cornered on all side by massive walls and stuffed full of people and creatures of all kind, not unlike Tomodachi Island itself, all fearful of creatures he'd never seen lurking outside of the city limits, but knew enough of to know he should have been very afraid of them. Another staple had always been the girl at his side, in his home, in nearly all of his conversation. She was the only one who had managed to pull a smile out of him, lopsided and rare as they still were. In some alternate universe, he may have even called her his friend.[break][break]
And yet here she was, by some twisted miracle, tangible and real, and behind the door she'd slammed in his face.[break][break]
He'd have knocked again had she not opened it before he had the chance, but when he looked at her now, it was in a new light, decorated with less confusion, but confusion of a different kind all the same. “Nikki?” she said this time, quieter, almost hesitant, and she knew his name. How did she know his name? “Is that really you?”[break][break]
“Yeah,” he said dumbstruck, unsure of what else he possibly could. “It's me. And you're – ” Fuck. He couldn't recall her name. Had he ever even heard it? “ – you're from those dreams I've been having. Hey, what – what the hell is up with that? Who even are you, anyway?”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bgpwn9ilzsj2h11/05%20Poison%20Was%20the%20Cure.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
1066 WORDS
| [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
@agnespollock
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] i'm ready for pain. ouo *dons construction cap* |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
|
AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
|
Post by Nikki on Aug 28, 2017 13:48:18 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]YOU KNOW MY NAME [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]AND IF YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, YOU NEVER SAW ME CHANGE [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]ARM YOURSELF, BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE HERE WILL SAVE YOU [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
It work, miraculously, the plan to down his unnamed assailant and put a halt to the onslaught of painful strikes, if only for a moment. Down the two went, knees scraped against gravel, heads slammed into concrete, and for one half second, the street may have even had the reprieve of a moment's silence had Nikki not been shouting to high oblivion over it. There was rage blossomed angrily in heart, that was for certain – the buds were always there, waiting to be watered by any thought or mention of the man he'd once looked to as a father, and to hear not only of him, but to hear someone singing his praise was enough to nearly choke him from the inside, flowers of hate spinning and curling and clawing at the inside of his lungs – but there was something else he hadn't expected hidden beneath that suffocating mass of foliage that had panic welling in him as well at the sudden stillness of a man struck too hard in the head. This person was deluded, clearly, and sought him dead based on misconceptions from an alternate reality, but there had been a time, too, when he, himself, would have gone on a witch hunt for any and all who might have ever spoken of opposing the Doctor. He could recall quite vividly, in fact, a time he'd punched a man out in the street for shaming the Mindcrime name despite the fact that he hadn't even really known “what a Mindcrime even was!” It had taken a tragedy to pry his eyes open, a painful reveal of a loved one's real nature to make him see the “revolution” for what it really was, though. If someone was walking down that same tunnel as he had, blinded on all sides by X's close-minded lies and misdirections, he had to help them see the light. It didn't matter of this person was truly intent on killing him. (He wouldn't wish that mental hospital on anyone short of the man who had put him there in the first place.)[break][break]
But his attacker was fine, blow or otherwise, and set about striking out first blindly, then with the precision expected of a trained killer the moment he'd seemed to have regained his senses. Because Nikki, himself, was a trained killer, he managed to swerved out of the way of a few, even parry those he could, but given the sheer number of them, getting by unscathed wasn't an option. His nose screamed at its repeated assault, his eye would probably end up swollen shut come the evening or the following morning, and he didn't even want to imagine the ache he'd be feeling going back to the apartment... empty handed. Shit. As if rubbing salt in the wounds that he'd opened, the stranger had also knocked his second coffee of the day into the street and all over the pavement. (There were more important things to worry about, though, in the face of a man who currently sought him dead.) “He was fixing everything. I saw it, Nikki, because I replaced you,” he was carrying on through his wild barrage, and if the hitman hadn't been so focused on coming out with as little pain on his end as possible, he might have had the moment to react. “The people I killed valued their own money over the humanity of others, over the humanity of people like me. My people, that's who I was fighting for, and Doctor X was carving a place where we didn't have to wonder if we were going to fucking eat that night. I saw it, Nikki. I helped fucking make it. You left everyone to die when you left! Too much of a fucking coward to cut out the cancer killing the country.”[break][break]
“You saw it? You saw it?” he hissed in retaliation, taking whatever blows he needed to spit the words out. “You idiot – you only saw what he wanted you to see! Because you wanna know what I saw? An innocent woman with a bullet in her head, a big ol' report on normal people he told me had to be killed, and the way he laughed in my face when I told him I wasn't some weapon for him to shoot who he wanted, when he wanted, with no reason at all! Don't fucking talk to me about what you saw, you prick!”[break][break]
Just like that, though, he found that he'd lost his high ground, lost his position pinning his opponent to the dirty ground. Shoved off with a force his scrawny frame couldn't handle, the raven-haired man went toppling backward, nearly being knocked his own feet from a mixture of the force that had moved him and his own lack of balance. It was becoming increasingly clear to him that nothing he was saying now was making much difference. To this... guy, it didn't matter if he wasn't the Nikki that had “betrayed” them. (Why would he have left Mindcrime for Mary if he hadn't been told to kill her, anyway?) He deserved blood on his hands, the blood of a person he'd been tricked into hated, and even if it was only that of a look alike, it would sate the blood lust that had been taught to him by the Doctor. How like a member of the Operation: only satisfied when someone, it didn't matter who, was dead. Not him, though, not today, and certainly not at the hands of someone stilling rolling over to show their belly to X. He hadn't wanted to use his gun, but if it was the only way out, he supposed he had not option left. Sunlight glinted off the barrel of his M9, a familiar and comforting weight in the palm of his hands despite all of the nasty things he'd had to do with it, and he lined it up just nicely to put the bowl-cutted man's head right in his sights.[break][break]
“I don't wanna have to use this,” he warned, “but if you don't calm fuck the down, I swear to God I will.”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1gk2ju5gy1vka6g/Chris%20Cornell-%20Casino%20Royale%20Theme-%20You%20Know%20My%20Name.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
1025 WORDS
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] please stop beating on his broken nose, it's very sore. :c |
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death machine
|
there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
|
AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
|
Post by Nikki on Aug 28, 2017 4:17:57 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","songfor"] [attr="class","songforleft"] [attr="class","songforleft1"] | [attr="class","songforright"] [attr="class","songforright2"] [attr="class","songforright3"] [attr="class","songforsong1"]
4:43
01 REVOLUTION CALLING[attr="class","songforsong3"]
5:08
02 EYES OF A STRANGER[attr="class","songforsong1"]
4:37
03 THE EVIL THAT MEN DO[attr="class","songforsong2"]
4:20
04 EAT THE RICH[attr="class","songforsong1"]
5:11
05 LONDON[attr="class","songforsong2"]
6:03
06 POISONOUS SHADOWS[attr="class","songforsong1"]
3:47
07 A JUNKIE'S BLUES[attr="class","songforsong2"]
2:55
08 WASTED GENERATION[attr="class","songforsong1"]
3:31
09 TAKE NO PRISONERS[attr="class","songforsong2"]
4:28
10 OPERATION: MINDCRIME |
[attr="class","songforbot"] [attr="class","songforbot1"][attr="class","ion-skip-backward"]
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03:24 [attr="class","songforbot5"] [attr="class","songforbot6"] [attr="class","songforbot7"]
05:08 [attr="class","songforbot8"][attr="class","ion-volume-medium"] [newclass=.songfor]width:600px;border-radius:10px;overflow:hidden;[/newclass] [newclass=.songfor a]color:#ffffff;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforleft]height:300px;width:300px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforleft img]height:300px;width:300px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforleft1]background-color:rgba(71,71,71,.4);position:relative;z-index:1;padding:20px 30px;height:30px;width:240px;color:#cccccc;font-size:30px;line-height:30px;margin-top:-70px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforleft2, .songforleft21]padding:0px!important;text-align:center;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforleft2 a]color:#dddddd;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforright]height:300px;width:300px;overflow:hidden;background-color:#5f5f5f;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforright2]height:300px;width:400px;overflow:auto;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforright3]width:300px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforsong1]padding:20px;font:bold 15px Roboto;text-transform:uppercase;color:#ffffff;line-height:15px;text-shadow:1px 1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,.1);[/newclass] [newclass=.songforsong2]padding:20px;font:bold 15px Roboto;text-transform:uppercase;color:#ffffff;line-height:15px;background-color:rgba(255,255,255,.1);text-shadow:1px 1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,.1);[/newclass] [newclass=.songforsong3]padding:20px;font:bold 15px Roboto;text-transform:uppercase;color:#ffffff;line-height:15px;background-color:#dddddd;text-shadow:1px 1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,.1);[/newclass] [newclass=.songforsong1 b, .songforsong2 b, .songforsong3 b]padding-left:15px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot]padding:35px;background-color:#494949;color:#bbbbbb;font:bold 15px Roboto;line-height:15px;text-shadow:1px 1px 0px rgba(0,0,0,.1);height:80px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot1]height:60px;width:60px;border-radius:100%;font-size:25px;text-align:center;line-height:60px;background-color:#bbbbbb;float:left;margin:10px 0px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot2]height:80px;width:80px;border-radius:100%;font-size:35px;text-align:center;line-height:80px;background-color:#dddddd;float:left;margin-left:10px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot3]height:60px;width:60px;border-radius:100%;font-size:25px;text-align:center;line-height:60px;background-color:#bbbbbb;float:left;margin:10px 0px 10px 10px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot4]float:left;margin:32px 10px 32px 30px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot5]float:left;border-radius:15px;background-color:#5f5f5f;overflow:hidden;height:15px;width:120px;margin:32px 0px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot6]float:left;height:15px;border-radius:0px 15px 15px 0px;width:70%;background-color:#dddddd;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot7]float:left;margin:32px 20px 32px 10px;[/newclass] [newclass=.songforbot8]float:right;font-size:40px;line-height:80px;padding-right:10px;[/newclass] |
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death machine
|
there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
|
AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
|
Post by Nikki on Aug 28, 2017 2:51:04 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]SLEEPWALKING TO THE GALLOWS [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]I MISS THE WARM EMBRACE I FELT THE FIRST TIME YOU TOUCHED ME [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]SECURE & SAFE IN OPEN ARMS, SHOULD'VE KNOWN YOU'D CRUSH ME [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
Sleep had always been his enemy, much in the way that corrupt, evil-doers, and the infamous Doctor X were. Many nights, it would allude him altogether, leaving weight to pull down at his eyes, at his limbs, but never dropping in to give him the rest he truly desired. Always fatigued, but never tired. Always groggy, but never able to fall to slumber. How long had it been since he'd stopped trying altogether? Five years, perhaps? Shorter, longer – he'd never been one to keep track. All he knew was that his only chance of rest was working until he could no longer, running until his feet gave out beneath him and his mind was flooded with inky darkness. It'd happened once before in his line of work, thankfully only during a stakeout and not a hit, and he'd been fortunate enough to have another Omega Five member at his side to drag him back to safety before his unconsciousness compromised his (and, by extension, the rest of the team's) safety. The aftermath, though, had been worse than the actually loss of consciousness; he wasn't use to having to explain his usefulness to those who wanted other people, namely ne'er-do-wells dead running around like free birds, and repeating himself over and over about how he wasn't going to become a hazard to future missions was about the only time that he'd found himself seriously considering punching a known island official right out of their chair. It would have been worth it, had there not been a good chance they would have blown his brains out immediately afterward for it.[break][break]
Tonight, however, Nikki's listlessness was of a different breed, a different nature. Homura was either in bed already or off running her own late night missions (he had his own qualms about them running her around like that, seeing as how young she still was, but he was coming to realize that he complained more about it than she did) by the time he sauntered through the door, and for the first time in what was maybe months, he told himself that tonight was the night. Tonight, he would lay down voluntarily on his ratty old mattress, and tonight, he would finally get some true, genuine sleep. First to come off was his gloves, blood-stained, then his shoes, also blood-stained, and his coat, all articles tossed carelessly into the nearest corner and landing anywhere they pleased. A mess that could be cleaned up in the morning. For now, his mind was only on making it to the one place in this darned apartment where he wouldn't kill his neck from sleeping on overnight. His room was as empty as ever, populated only by that aforementioned mattress on the floor, the chair by his window, and a few odd pieces of trash he'd never gone back to clean up, but his presence in this room, this apartment, this island was hardly necessary, and he refused to put anymore effort into something borrowed than necessary. He didn't go in here nearly enough to warrant a remodel, anyway. “Comfortable” wasn't exactly the word that came to mind when he threw himself at the white mass in the back corner, but it was better than the floor beneath it. Already, tendrils of shadows were creeping in on his vision, gravity was tugging just a little more on his eyelids, and if he laid like still like this just long enough, maybe, just maybe -[break][break]
Oh no.[break][break]
Buried under the scuffle of his own haphazard undressing and the screech of old springs perishing beneath his weight had been a noise clawing its way through the walls, tapping at his walls without mercy and seeming to shake the very foundation of his home. It must have existed the whole time, perhaps even longer than when he'd walked through his front door, but he hadn't noticed it until now, not until he needed peace and quiet so badly. For a moment, the hitman tried to fool himself into thinking that he could still manage to catch those elusive “z”s even though the pollutant, but five, ten, twenty minutes passed, and his ability to sleep fled further and further away from him with each minute that the clock in the living room ticked off. Something primal tickled at the back of his mind with the realization that his once in a lifetime opportunity had been missed. No, no, wait, not missed. Stolen. Ripped raw out of his hands by someone playing their music too loudly at what had to have been three in the morning. On another day, maybe he would have groaned through it and gone to clean his arsenal of guns in frustration, hoping the whole time that the menial activity could distract him from the aggravation brought on by the careless around him. Right then, though, the only thing his mind called for was retribution. Justice. Whoever the culprit of this heinous crime was would pay dearly for it, and he would make sure that it was seen to personally.[break][break]
Back on went the gloves, the shoes, the coat, blood stains covered to look like oil, holes patched to look like they hadn't been dug out of someone else's trash. Not that it mattered much to him now. He stalked the hallway with all the fiery rage of an inferno, and he made sure his pounding on his neighbor's door was louder than the infernal music they'd stolen his chance for sleep with. “Hey, fucker! Wanna tell me why you're keeping everyone in the goddamned building up at three in the fucking morning?”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/bgpwn9ilzsj2h11/05%20Poison%20Was%20the%20Cure.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
937 WORDS
| [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
@agnespollock
|
[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] doth have incurred the wrath of sleepy boi, please pardon his swearing. IT'S TIME, THOUGH, LET'S GET THIS SHOW ON THE ROAD! |
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death machine
|
there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
|
AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
|
Post by Nikki on Aug 27, 2017 4:52:20 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"]  [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]IF I COULD JUST SLEEP [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]CALL OFF THE ATTACK, AND IF YOU LOOK, DREAMS ARE NOTHING I LACK [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]AND ALL I SEEK: A FINAL CHANCE TO SPEAK, IF I COULD JUST SLEEP [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
It was a little surreal being in the abode of someone he had never met before once he took the time to pause and really take it all in. The time it took to brew the coffee, its smell crisp and more desirable than he could ever think of it being in his life, gave him the silent moment he needed to to do just that. It wasn't odd because it was owned by a stranger, however. Well, no, it was, but that wasn't what had his sluggish mind in muted awe. His own apartment, despite only being so many floors above this one, seemed like a different world entirely, adored in only the bare minimum, especially bleak in places where his slightly-more-caring roommate never went. His bedroom consisted only of a mattress on the floor that often times went neglected and a chair by the window, similarly rarely used, mostly placed there for old time's sake. It lacked personality. It didn't feel like a home. This, however, this apartment filled with the smell of a cafe's humble morning did. How incredible that one person could do what two had failed to as a unit. On the one hand, it was a comfort; serial killers didn't live in places that looked so homely, did they? Of course not. No one was ever robbed or skinned alive in a place that was decorated with mason jars, of all things. On the other, though, expectation was no reason to let down his guard... well, anymore than he had already, he supposed. The reality of the situation was that she could return from the kitchen with a coffee in one hand and a gun in the other, and he probably wouldn't even be able to peel himself from the flood he'd claimed residency over before the bullet made impact with his brain. What a way to go.[break][break]
When she returned, however, it was not with a weapon in tow, nor with the coffee he'd been expecting. She sat comfortably on the couch he had opted out of – too comfortably, in his opinion, for someone hosting a person they didn't even know the first name of – and it only dawned on him now how tired she, herself, looked. How early in the morning was it, anyway? From his vantage point, limited as it was, there wasn't a clock in sight, and he certainly hadn't been keeping track when he'd attempted, and failed, to return to his own “humble, lively home”. “If it keeps you tired all the time,” she was asking him while he searched in vain for some method with which to guess the time, “is it something you enjoy, at least?” The look for a clock or misplaced watched, though, could wait. The question was something so simple, perhaps something that would come to mind quickly for most anyone on or off the island, but all the same, it was something he had never heard before. Consequence for secluding himself from others, biproduct of keeping his life's work a secret for any and all with the inevitability of them turning on him for his unappreciated heroism. Just as he had never been asked, however, he'd never even considered the question himself. The fatigue he felt now was unwelcome, certainly, but was the job that had brought it on – how did he feel about it, necessarily? It was a necessity, of course. It had been since the day that he learned of Operation: Mindcrime on the rainy streets of Seattle. Good people were dying at the expense of those infected with money and the greed and self interested it brought along with it, and if the government would only play into the hands of the wicked, it was up to people like him to protect those innocent lives. He could remember a time, however, when the pain of taking a life had gotten to be too much (nights spent with Mary, bathed in candle light, false memoirs of people who had not looked evil in their dying moments), almost threatened to overwhelm him. It hadn't been until later that he'd found out that those had been innocent lives, too, and he'd been tricked into taking them under the guise of their deaths being a necessary step in moving along the Operation. Guilt, guilt, so much guilt. He didn't feel it now. He had no need to.[break][break]
“Sorry. If that's prying, you don't have to answer.” The sound of the white-haired woman's voice snapped him out of memories painful enough to tighten his hands into fists, and he hadn't even realized he'd lapsed into blanked eyed silence until she'd apologized for a question she'd come to the conclusion was unwanted. “No, I... I've just never been asked that before.” He blinked into the floor (into the past), wondering what the answer could be. It was a simple yes or no, wasn't it? And yet there was no real gratification in pulling the trigger and seeing another human being dead – there was in the past, high on heroin and his Death Angel parade – but he'd been younger, then, more foolish. (Still, though, he thought of the smiles of children on the street, the way couples held their hands, old men and women sat on rocking chairs on their porch. Small moments, yes, insignificant. These were moments he lived to save. Moments he maybe already had. There was meaning to his job – the joy that others sought in their work came not in the work itself, but in the aftermath of it.) “It just looks like you could use a mental health day, that's all. Sleep only does so much for recovering exhaustion.” She went on to speak of baths and books, luxuries he probably hadn't indulged in since before his father ran him right out the front door, although he didn't think either sounded like a go-to for a “mental health day”. Whatever that was. “A... what day? Some awareness thing... or somethin'...?” Mental health. Ha. She didn't even know it, but her simple questions and suggestions stirred up so much with so little effort.[break][break]
“Unit zero-zero-one's single occupant slash temporary barista, Robin, at your service.”[break][break]
Robin, huh? He'd known males to go by that name, had never heard of a female taking it on – but then again, “Nikki” didn't exactly sound the most masculine itself, so who was he to play judge? She, Robin, extended her arm to shake, and while his body protested the movement, he thought it only fair to move to accept. “Nikki,” he said slowly, taking her hand with hesitation, but finding himself pleasantly surprised to find no knife strapped to it in secret. “I, uh... live upstairs. Somewhere. … Probably.”[break][break]
Despite the lack of any extra bit of sleep or any droplet of caffeine in his veins, the mental stimuli and being off his feet for even a few minutes were enough to have some level of awareness returning to him. That, paired with the better vantage point of sitting up rather than being face planted down and into the floor allowed the raven-haired man to take in an even better view of the apartment (which he attempted to do without drawing attention to his wandering eyes) than he had before. Books, pillows, a decent couch; definitely better looking than he was used to. It almost looked as though this was a place that Robin was intending to stay for much longer than most believed they'd have to. He spoke to little, but understood much. Most were looking for a way off this island. Was she? “Looks pretty cozy here, uh... You thinking you're going to be stuck here that long?”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hp5uluhdws0wqng/%E6%9D%B1%E6%96%B9%20%5BPiano%5D%20Faint%20Dream%20-%20Inanimate%20Dream%20%E3%80%8E3%E3%80%8F%20-%20Copy.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
1289 WORDS
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@robin
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] i, myself, was tired enough to quote your post instead of mine for the template, rip. but thank you, though, that means a lot. ;o; they hardly compare to yours, though, hot darn. robin's too good for this world. |
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death machine
|
there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
|
AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
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Post by Nikki on Aug 27, 2017 3:49:30 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"]  [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]FINISH WHAT'S TO BE DONE [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]WHEN IT COMES TO THE TIME, ARE WE PARTNERS IN CRIME? [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]WHEN IT COMES TO THE TIME, WE'LL BE READY TO DIE [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
“Fine, but I'm making coffee first. If you want any, come and make your own.”[break][break]
The quick reply caught him off guard for more than a single reason. For one thing, he hadn't been expecting her to comply, and not so readily. She spoke with the dignity of a senator most times (like she'd said some of these lines a thousand times, rehearsed and repeated until they lost any of what made them real and meaningful in the first place), sometimes even tossing around words that he'd never understand the meaning of, but at her core, Homura was still a kid, seventeen years old and pissy like she should be. He might have had it in him to hold it against her if he couldn't relate. For another, coffee didn't strike him as the go to drink at this time of night – or ever, when it came to his case and caffeine's lost cause on his brain – but a second thought did instruct that he'd just requested of her a time-consuming project as so late an hour of the night. He, himself, was tired, yes, but the workload of the day had been significantly less than usual, and while “awake” wasn't the word he'd used, he definitely had more spare energy to do extra tasks with than he had at all in the week prior. Perhaps he should have paid closer attention to his partner to make sure she wasn't falling over from exhaustion, herself. Then again, she was pretty good at communicating her limits. At least, when it came to the menial things. In the field, the girl was somewhat of a nightmare in a way that... well, again only reminded him of himself. The last thing, though, that had him taking a double glance was the outfit that she'd changed in. Not because it was fancy. Not because it looked good on her. Because it was, quite frankly, disgusting, dyed with what only good have been the vomit of a man who ate three dozen boxes of Gushers in less than half an hour's time. Christmas wasn't even for another four months, what the hell?[break][break]
“Uh... Where did you even get that?” he asked, dumbstruck, as she settled down near him in the face of their mountain of guns. Either way, it didn't really matter to the task at hand. Leave it to her to start coming up with a detailed game plan of how to sort out this whole mess when he was the one to have suggested that it be sorted out in the first place. In truth, despite being the one to bring it up, he hadn't had the foggiest idea of how to start going about it; he'd always been a “do or say first, think later” sort of man, and while that worked fine in his field of work, it certainly made downtime and its chores like this a nightmare by itself. “I think we should organize them based on who owns which weapon. We can put all of yours in one box and mine in another.” Sort them by owner? Oh dear. While the hitman had always figured that he had a wide arsenal of weapons to his name – enough, at least, to ensure that he was never caught without one, even after being disarmed a number of times repeatedly – he'd found that his still paled in comparison to her's. And sure, most of them were locked up in their secret little pocket space, but he still had the feeling that most of these wouldn't end up belonging to him (even if he was probably the last one to use them). “Only if we're only sortin' the ones that belong to us.” He shrugged out of his coat and forced a smile (faked, an attempt at humor that couldn't tug at his lips right; nothing could, and nothing had for years now), hoping it'd get the message across that he was only teasing. He'd been the one to suggest this whole endeavor. Might as well pull his weight in it.[break][break]
The magical girl pressed on with her plan, making a show of that same gun he'd noticed earlier that had taken a bad hit a few days prior, before accusing: “At least, mine are all working, unless you've used any of them lately. I happen to take proper care of my weapons.” The line was enough to get him to scoff, not out of disbelief that she could take care of her own, but out of offense that she'd think he didn't baby his. “Hey, kid, shut it, I take good fucking care of my stuff. The other guys, though, they couldn't care less.” From the corner of his eyes, he watched her haphazardly unload the ammunition of her nearest gun onto the floor, and couldn't help but think to himself, What a hypocrite. Well, not like she didn't have the right idea. Better to make sure the clips were empty before cleaning the guns they were attached to, and best to check which ones were empty and needed to be reloaded now than when in the middle of combat. Still, part of him ached just thinking about having to resort these all later. He took the warped fire arm from the very top of the pile only to find it empty and useless. What a pain.[break][break]
“Ya' don't think the council'd pay for somethin' like that, do you?” Nikki asked, mind on her suggestion of a gun rack while his hands busied themselves with the sorting she'd proposed just minutes earlier. “I mean, they expect us to pack our own guns, but they haven't done shit when it comes to helping us hide 'em. You'd think that'd be pretty high pri... pre... Fuck. High on their list of things to do.”[break][break]
There was a lapse of silence, tainted only by the clatter of hard plastic against similar material and ammunition hitting flesh and the floor, and Nikki tried to lose himself in his work. Unfortunately for him, however, his mind was as runaway as ever. It hadn't exactly been a long time since he and the teenager at his side had been roomed together (something he had protested almost immediately, convinced that people, the girl included, would get the wrong idea about a minor being stuck with an adult stranger), but it hadn't exactly been that short of a time either. Even so, he felt like he didn't know much about her beyond the surface. Well enough to trust her during work, but not well enough to know what to talk about during times like these. Heck, he hadn't even known she was the type to own a Christmas sweater until she walked out in one tonight. The image still seemed so surreal, even if he could twist his head a bit and see it in the periphery of his vision. He could ask her to spill some life story, though, and knew he wouldn't get it. His own was locked up tight, words only meant to be heard by those who had earned it, and the only one who had in his lifetime was buried six feet under in a world he'd long lost. People didn't end up in Omega Five for leading normal, healthy lives. If she'd been offered the job, especially at such a young age, something had to have happened.[break][break]
“... Where'd you get all these guns, anyway?” he tried to ask nonchalantly (failing horribly at it), pulling another gun from off the mound like it was an infant in his arms. He couldn't ask for the whole thing, no, but maybe if he kept his questions small, they could sate a fraction of his curiosity. “Most teenagers from where I am wouldn't be caught runnin' around with one, but you've been runnin' around with... what, hundreds?”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/tuljhetg0j75c9x/Afraid%20To%20Shoot%20Strangers.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
1314 WORDS
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] This post was boring when I wrote it ( not your fault at all, your post was great, all my replies were just 0/10), so I'm like, "LET'S DO SOMETHING I NEVER DO AND ACTUALLY ADD INTERESTING CONTENT TO THE POST!" |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
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AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
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Post by Nikki on Aug 27, 2017 2:52:03 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]YOU KNOW MY NAME [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]AND IF YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, YOU NEVER SAW ME CHANGE [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]ARM YOURSELF, BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE HERE WILL SAVE YOU [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
There had always been a difference between physical pain and mental pain. They both had their sting, of course – he was no stranger to getting smacked around, what with bad reaction times of the past and his general inability to take a blow that persisted even after weeks or rigorous training – but after facing head on what had to be the worst of both, he definitely knew which one he would take over the other. Split lips and broken bones mended with time, often before a season had passed. There may be a scare, an insignificant patch of distorted flesh to remind one of the old injury, but scars could be covered, could be forgotten. It had been three fucking years since his would-be “father” left him crying in a puddle of rainwater mixed with his own heartbroken tears, though, and the knife in his gut never stopped turning at the mention of him. Even the thought of him now had bile rising up high in the back of his throat, and telling someone who should know better exactly why he deserved to be rolling in a shallow grave right about then was about the only thing that had helped to alleviate the feeling of illness at all. The problem was that Nikki was an idealist, always had been, cursed by fanatical mental images and goals beyond what any singular person could ever hope to accomplish. His worst crime was thinking he ever had what it took to single-handedly change the world (a goal that he couldn't bring himself to lose, driven partly by fantasy, partly by guilt over the lives he had unknowingly stole). His lowest was thinking that a passionate speech from the heart could change the mind of any he'd ever speak to. It had worked for him once that he could think of, perhaps more in the dank and dreary halls of Seattle's one and only headquarters for the Operation, but those had only ever been exceptions. His words hadn't reached his assailant. (Would they ever?)[break][break]
And just like that, there came the rebuttal, each new word a fresh dagger through his flesh, each idea a fracture in his bones. The broken nose had hurt plenty, sure, was still throbbing even as they spoke, but nothing hurt him more than being faced with someone who honestly believed that that fiend had wanted to save anything but his own bank account. “Maybe yours was different, but the Doctor X I know? Didn't need to brainwash anyone. Why the fuck would he? The country's falling apart and he's the only one who's trying to fix it!” Didn't need to brainwash anyone – of course he didn't. He never had to. He wrapped them all up like Christmas presents, packaged pretty with big red bow ties, only to throw them down into the incinerator once he got sick of them. A true child, giddy with excitement at the prospect of a new toy only to throw them to oblivion the moment they lost their shine. “Tell yourself that. Fine. But take one long look at all those people he had us kill and it becomes pretty fucking obvious that they weren't for some 'greater good', just to off the competition. Maybe get some revenge without having to get any of the blood on his perfect little hands. I mean, why the hell else would William get to live and not – not – ” Mary. Sweet, innocent Mary. She wasn't an information leak no matter how one looked at it, and the Doctor... he knew that. It was a test: His loyalty against his willingness to do evil. The man had already made it clear that they had come from vastly different universes, but just as he'd been told that the other couldn't imagine a Nikki who didn't defect from X and his false revolution, Nikki, himself, couldn't imagine a Doctor who cared for anything other than himself.[break][break]
“We got so far, even without you, or rather our Nikki, I suppose. Got the entire west half of the U.S. we were so close, so fucking close and I'm suddenly stuck here with a fuck like you. I'm gonna make the most of it, though.”[break][break]
What a horrifying concept: half the country in the hands of that man. He'd say it aloud if he had the time, but just like last time, his attacker wasted no time to get a breath in before going in for the strike. This time, though, he saw it coming before it had even begun. The attack came from the same angle as before – high, an aim for the face, the neck, the arms – so Nikki moved down, folded his legs and sprang for what was beneath. Taking out the legs could knock the man over, maybe land him hard enough on his head to put him in a daze. If worse came to worse, there was always the gun in his coat, but even if there was a lack of visual company, that didn't stop the sound of gunfire from spreading up and far away from the scene of the crime. Besides, he needed to make sure this person listened, really listened to what it was he had to say, and getting the message across with a bullet through the shoulder really wasn't the right way to go about doing that.[break][break]
“Would you open your eyes?” he grunted as he sprang, the entirety of his weight behind his action. “I know – I know what all his pretty words sound like, an' I know it's shit tryin' to accept that he didn't care about you. About... About us. But he was using us! We were just weapons to him, people to blame all of his crimes on! You know it, I know you do! Just look at the facts!”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1gk2ju5gy1vka6g/Chris%20Cornell-%20Casino%20Royale%20Theme-%20You%20Know%20My%20Name.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
979 WORDS
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] Emmy just wants to fight, Nikki just wants to keep PASSIONATE SPEECHing. |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
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AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
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Post by Nikki on Aug 24, 2017 22:09:05 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]IF I COULD JUST SLEEP [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]CALL OFF THE ATTACK, AND IF YOU LOOK, DREAMS ARE NOTHING I LACK [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]AND ALL I SEEK: A FINAL CHANCE TO SPEAK, IF I COULD JUST SLEEP [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
The woman moved faster than his tired eyes could follow with the intent to close the distance between them, but something, call it survivor's instinct, drove him to sluggishly fall back, still leaning on what he supposed was her door for support. The only reason she could be moving in closer would be to strike him, right? Dish out swift and painful judgment for what could only look like an attempted break in? Fine, fine, let it come. At best, it'd wake him up, and at worst, it'd leave him sore in the morning, the latter of which he... probably deserved for making as stupid an error as this. He flinched, then, expecting some sort of blow, but was surprised to feel nothing at all; surprised even more so to find her only glancing him up in down, malice undetectable. (Not that he hadn't met someone just earlier this week who'd flipped the switched from amiable to violent in no more than five seconds. The bruises were only just turning that awful yellow that meant they'd finally be going away. Another reason to be suspicious of any and all if there ever was one.) “Hold on just a moment,” she said, and he was all too glad to have her eyes off of him, but the moment his own landed on the act of her reaching down into her purse, the dread came back full force. Alright, so she wasn't going to hit him, but she was definitely going to call the police on him. The council had warned him and, apparently, all other Omega Five members that unlawful conduct was means for termination – whatever that meant, but the word, despite having no solid definition in his mind, was said darkly enough to figure that the ramifications for stepping out of line weren't gonna be pretty. Would this count? Would they believe him if he tried to explain that it was just a case of mixed up numbers? He doubt it. History had only worked to show him that police officers didn't believe a word out of his mouth. Did repeating “I didn't do it” over and over like a mantra not get through their heads?[break][break]
As it turned out, however, the object she was grabbing was not, in fact, a cellular device with which to call the police – unsurprising, in hindsight, considering his idea of a mobile phone was much too large to fit comfortably in that – but the keys to the apartment that he'd been foolishly trying to enter. Well, that definitely confirmed it. Odd, though, that she hadn't tried to run him off. She didn't even say a word, either, as she moved past him, his own sloppy footwork carrying him out of her way, in order to unlock the handle and open the wooden slab wide. He noticed the humor spilled across her face, suppressed laughter pushing at the lips of her mouth, but the invitation to enter was not made clear until well after she'd already disappeared further into the residence, door left wide open. His first thought was that the island may have been safe, but leaving the apartment door ajar that far still couldn't have been a good idea. Only a moment before she started speaking to him did it finally dawn on him what he was supposed to do here. Later, he'd blame it on the fatigue. Realistically, it was just because he was slow. No slower than the steps he took under the frame and into the stranger's home, though, mind whirling with how this could all go terribly, horribly wrong. Again, people didn't just do nice things for him, particularly when he'd looked to be acting out a crime at their expense just seconds earlier, and it was only a matter of time before this whole thing came back to nip him in the rear end – hard. If his work had left him any more energy, any more fight, he might have argued and fled for the horizon (or his own apartment), but the unfortunate reality was that, in his current state, he had no choice but to accept.[break][break]
“I've become an expert at brewing coffee since I moved here. My skills at the art of tea are a bit lacking in comparison, but if you prefer that, I'll give it an attempt.” Since she moved here? Come to think of it, her clothing didn't look all that similar to what he was used to – but the same could be said about near everyone else on the island. It still struck the hitman was bizarre that things that were so common place in his world were abstract in the eyes of those who came from places far away. Not that he was an avid drinker of either. “It'd be rude of me to turn down a request from the person who is exhausted enough to forget where he lives.” Exhausted enough to deem the floor a comfortable place to fall face down into, as well. There was a level of snark in that comment that struck him as familiar, but he had neither the desire to think of why that was or come up with some prickly comment to combat it. Instead, he spoke into the floor loud enough to be heard: “Mm – coffee.”[break][break]
It was obvious this lady was making fun of him with every word she spoke. If there was ill will behind it, he couldn't tell, but if she expected some sort of witty banter to come back at her, now certainly wasn't the time for it. He'd feel bad; but then again, when was he ever the sort to be called “witty”? “Does this happen a lot,” she was asking, “or am I just lucky?” Lucky. Ha. Not the word he'd personally use to describe this mess, but to each their own. “'M... always tired. Not like this, though. Not... usually.” Nikki rotated his neck, searching futilely for the one angle that didn't kill it and wondering idly if that was too cryptic to be a valid answer. She'd invited him here, offered him a drink. The least he could do was try to answer her questions, joking as they were or otherwise, as best he could. (A shame he'd be as good as a dead man if he spilled all the details.) “Work is hell.” A pause. “S... Sorry about this.”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hp5uluhdws0wqng/%E6%9D%B1%E6%96%B9%20%5BPiano%5D%20Faint%20Dream%20-%20Inanimate%20Dream%20%E3%80%8E3%E3%80%8F%20-%20Copy.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
1072 WORDS
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@robin
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] you deserve more than a rushed ending, bUT I GOTTA GET TO CLASS, SO. *SWEATS* I AM ALSO SORRY. |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
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AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
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Post by Nikki on Aug 24, 2017 21:27:57 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]YOU KNOW MY NAME [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]AND IF YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, YOU NEVER SAW ME CHANGE [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]ARM YOURSELF, BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE HERE WILL SAVE YOU [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
He saw the shift in expression even through his lovesick haze, watched as that cheer, that awe-struck expression melted away to reveal raw maliciousness at its core. It was enough to strike him out of his previous train of thought, important as the safety of Mary (in another universe or no) was and how easily it consumed all other thought. It was enough because it was familiar. This was what it looked like to see friend become foe in the span of a single second. This was what intent looked like, and if Nikki knew one thing about the human race and their intents, it was that those reasons were never good – at least, never good for Nikki himself. “It would be nice for you if that was true, right?” he was saying, and no sooner than the final words had dropped from those lips did he find himself recoiling as though burned, scorched by steam that radiated off of his less-than-pleasant conversation partner. (He hadn't even made physical contact.) “And maybe in some backwater reality, it is.” And then there came the laugh – cold, dead, a forced thing of broken amusement – and that was the precise tipping point. Intuition had to be right, didn't it? No one did him an act of kindness without some ulterior motive stashed up their sleeve, and this was the revelation of that very motive. He hadn't been dragged out here to be preached as some kind of hero. The story had been a farce, something to drag him out to... here, wherever here was, an empty street in the middle of the island where there wasn't a soul around to witness whatever was about to happen. Was he getting mugged? Kidnapped? Shot?[break][break]
So be it if he was. He knew a thing or two about getting his revenge, the Omega Five would probably track him down if he disappeared off the radar, and death... Death didn't hold the same fear as it used to.[break][break]
He was prepared for those, any of them, the inevitability of a knife to his throat or a gun to his head, that he didn't expect an extended monologue. Those options also didn't answer how this guy knew his name or had some understanding of what had happened with the Operation, either, nor did the explain how he knew anything about what he sneered next: “I still can't imagine any Nikki doing anything other than betraying the only man who ever loved his worthless addict self. Don't get me wrong, though. I know that you're not the Nikki I know. But I can't just walk away from this. This is personal.” A “worthless addict”; maybe that would have been an appropriate title three years ago, but not anymore. How did this person know him? And what was with all of that talk about betrayal? It had only just started to dawn on him that the aforementioned man was likely the one man in his life who couldn't have loved him any less from his perspective, though, when it struck him out of the blue. Not a knife or a gun. Not a thought, either. A fist, out of the blue, colliding with his unguarded face with all of the force of a man fighting for this life. “This was personal” really weren't the dang words. In an instant, the hitman was knocked on his rear, nose exploding with pain, but before the unintelligent noise of pain escaping his throat could be correctly morphed into real English words, the blow was followed by another. And another.[break][break]
“He loved you, Nikki -” the mad man was shouting through his barrage of anger driven punches, fists knuckle white first, then stained red with the blood that dribbled down through an injured nose. “- you were like a son to him, and you – you threw it all away for a fucking girl? Do you know how broken he was after you hurt him like that? How could you do that to him?” Crimson was staining his vision and a sound not unlike static from a television with no signal was settling into the place where those horrendous voices usually liked to kick in, but through the haze of his shocked mind and the pain of a crushing attack followed by another crushing attack, the pieces finally fit together in his mind: There was still no clear indication of who this person was, no name to assign to his face, but the fact that he knew Doctor X and held him up to some sort of regard, higher than that man would ever deserve was clearer than the sun swimming in the sky. This was dedication that rivaled perhaps only his own in his early days of working with the revolution, the outburst of someone getting revenge for the supposed “breaking” of the man caused by his leaving. And if these were the facts, cold and hard, perhaps he would have let himself take this beating, sat down like a ragdoll as he willingly let a stranger from a parallel universe to his own rip him apart at the seems; but the fact of the matter was that those weren' the facts. The only person who had betrayed anyone here was X himself, and the only victims of that past crime were the revolutionist, bloodied and beaten on the ground, and the other supposed revolutionist, the bringer of that blood and that beating. He didn't leave the man who viewed him as a son for “fucking girl”; he left a twisted, greedy liar for a woman who was long overdue for a bit of kindness. (He wasn't going to be that man's pawn any longer.)[break][break]
Memory stirred up images of training long finished, maneuvers that could just have easily gotten him killed as they could have pulled him out of a sticky situation that had been drilled into his mind more than three years prior, and he mimicked it to the best of his ability to wretch himself free of the nameless assailant and his machine gun blows. In seconds, he was a free man, stumbling to his feet and spitting blood out of his mouth that belonged to no one but himself. Odd. Usually it was the other way around. “What – the – hell?” Nikki fought to say. His attempts at wiping the blood from his nose only succeeded in smearing them across his face and over the flesh of his wrist; an irritation that only spat gasoline on the fires that this... freak had set ablaze. No one idolized the Doctor with him around to hear it. Not if they had a brain in that skull. “You're talking about X, right? Doctor fucking X? I dunno where you got this whole 'like a son' thing from, but you're sounding about as brainwashed as everyone else in that goddamned 'revolution'. If you knew anything at all, you would be callin' me a hero. At least I'm not still playing dog for that fucking hypocrite!”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1gk2ju5gy1vka6g/Chris%20Cornell-%20Casino%20Royale%20Theme-%20You%20Know%20My%20Name.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] nikki due for a passionate swear word-filled rant in less than *looks at watch* three posts. |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
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AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
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Post by Nikki on Aug 23, 2017 3:07:18 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]IF I COULD JUST SLEEP [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]CALL OFF THE ATTACK, AND IF YOU LOOK, DREAMS ARE NOTHING I LACK [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]AND ALL I SEEK: A FINAL CHANCE TO SPEAK, IF I COULD JUST SLEEP [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
It was the exhaustion of a day's worth of work, twenty-four hours and then some, that had his mind tumbling in a blur by one o'clock in the morning and not a thing else. He was used to the listlessness that came with sleeping habits that could barely be called that (never sleeping until his body forced him to shut down didn't really have a name of its own, so “sleeping habits”, inaccurate is the term was, was the one he'd have to settle with), used to the fatigue of spending most of his active life up and about in the earliest hours of the morning. This, though, this was different. Work had only ever been a gun pointed in the direction of the Doctor's extended finger, one pull of the trigger, and bam, done, gone. He'd killed thirteen people in one night once – murderers themselves, all of them, horrible people who deserved the bullet – and had gone home complacent, just a touch more slow and bleary than the usual. The difference was that Doctor X never had him running around all across this city whenever he so “needed” it, keeping a hawk's eye out for any and all that may pose a threat. No, no, the Doctor had spies for that, multiple ones, and information to go off of before he sent out even them. Now, Nikki was the spies. All of them. And the prior information. And still the bullet to the brain. The workload that he was put under had been essentially quadrupled, and while he didn't have to worry about his bosses pulling the rug out from under him and telling him to turn his barrel in the direction of those he most loved, he worked harder for every penny he earn than he ever had in his entire left. It left him disoriented to say the least. Disoriented enough to stumble somewhere entirely different in the hot pursuit of the bed he had so long ignored and only now wished to use for its intended purpose. Sad was the day that Nicklaus Strauss deigned to sleep of his own accord. Sad was that very day.[break][break]
Perhaps it was months, maybe even years of ignoring the slab of springs and coated cotton that formed his mattress that cursed him to keep away, or maybe it was just the fact that his key was never meant to fit in to this particular door, but to a hazy mind, the first explanation for why his key moved into the hole but could not managed to turn the hole was easy. User error. Some of these locks were worn, probably, (most of them were actually new, but what state was he in to notice now?) and just needed an ounce more pressure. This time, he applied forward force, hoping that would do the trick. Nope. Maybe turning it the other way would do it? It was entirely possible he was simply forgetting which way a door unlocke- oh, no, that wasn't it, either. An intelligent man would take this moment to pause and assess the situation, let himself calm from the confusion of a seemingly defective lock-opener and tilt his upward to see that the room number read “001” and not “104”. For heaven's sake, they weren't even on the same spot on different floors. The raven-haired man himself, however, was not an intelligent man, and his inability to get through the door so he could get some goodness darned rest was only a cause for frustration. Loud frustration. Fruitlessly, he twisted and turned that lock (or didn't, rather) in an angry huff, thinking over and over that just one of these times it would finally work. So absorbed in this task was he that he never stopped to think of the people around who might be awoken by his fuss – nor did he notice the arrival of another person until the words were already stumbling out of her mouth.[break][break]
“Need a hand?” the voice said, calmly, quietly, almost enough to to be drown out by his racket. He'd heard, though, and his response was immediate.[break][break]
“Yeah. This fucking key doesn't work anymore. Worked fine just yesterday! It's almost like this isn't the right -” Apartment. Realization struck him like a train, and when he turned to see the stranger who had spoken to him, dressed as though she were out, standing as though she was patiently waiting for him to step out of her way, he knew that he'd been caught doing something very stupid. Something that could have been interpreted as something very bad. “Oh, God, is this...? I swear, it isn't what it looks like. I wasn't trying to break in or anything! Shit. I'm just -” The world wobbled, and he stumbled against the door almost as if on cue. Goodness, would he even be able to manage the walk upstairs? “ – tired. V...very tired.”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/hp5uluhdws0wqng/%E6%9D%B1%E6%96%B9%20%5BPiano%5D%20Faint%20Dream%20-%20Inanimate%20Dream%20%E3%80%8E3%E3%80%8F%20-%20Copy.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
825 WORDS
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@robin
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] rip, i don't have the mp3 for this song, take a substitute song (it's called inanimate dream, mweheh) and a tired boi instead. |
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death machine
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there's no sleep today. i can't pretend. when all my dreams are crimes, i can't stand facing them.
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AGE 23, PRONOUNS he/him, JOB hitman
CLASSIFICATION human, SOURCE Operation: Mindcrime
38
POSTS
RECENT
FUNDS
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Post by Nikki on Aug 21, 2017 16:22:08 GMT
[nospaces] [attr="class","nikkipost"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop"] [attr="class","nikkipostimg"] [attr="class","nikkiposttop2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]YOU KNOW MY NAME [attr="class","nikkipostlyric2"] [attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]AND IF YOU THINK YOU'VE WON, YOU NEVER SAW ME CHANGE [attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]ARM YOURSELF, BECAUSE NO ONE ELSE HERE WILL SAVE YOU [attr="class","nikkipostmid"]
Nikki held very little interest for what this man had to say before he'd even started to speak his mind. The question he'd posed was formality, his acceptance of the terms in the first place an easier escape route than saying “no” and being hounded as to why he'd refused. His original intent had been to half pay attention; nod his head like a good listener every so often, but ultimately keep his mind on what was actually important. His Beretta was running low on ammunition, for example, the likes of which could only be resupplied by the council legally, and he had to make sure the kid he was grabbing this coffee for wasn't out trying to get herself killed. No matter how capable she appeared to be (was), she was still just a kid. Call it a talk from experience, but the idea of sending teenagers out to do bloodied work like theirs rubbed him the wrong way. Once he started thinking about this kind of stuff, it was hard to pull him back out of it, and he was all too ready to think of ways to check up on her without making it too obvious when the stranger started to speak. It shouldn't have been a problem. Really. Of course, he hadn't been expecting to hear what he did. Maybe they'd been neighbors in some mundane alternate reality, or maybe one of them was a florist the other one visited with frequency; that's what he'd thought. From what this man said, though, Nikki had been neither. What he had been was - “Well, you look like Nikki, and where I'm from, Nikki's a hero.”[break][break]
A hero. Someone called him a hero. His step faltered, flickered – a reaction that he stifled and forced himself to ignore in favor of continuing walking. There was no possible way that this alternate version of himself had received praise for what he wanted. No one knew of Mindcrime outside of its members, and there was no possible way that he could have taken them out by his lonesome. It was also impossible that he'd gone to some higher form of organization for help; the police wouldn't have rather driven him through with a stake than believe a world out of his mouth. (His word versus that of Doctor X. Of course no one would believe him.) Fuck. The last thing he needed to be thinking about now was his former occupation, and definitely his former employer. Whatever this other Nikki had done, he didn't care. If anything, he only hated him all the more for it, that “hero” title of his. Probably sucked up to the corrupt rather than worked to strike them down. But the person following him wasn't don't talking yet, instead proceeding to go on a mini rant about what, exactly, Other Nikki had done to earn himself such a grandiose title, words sprinkled prettily with admiration he didn't realize was false. The revelation... come as a shock, at the very least. “He stopped a rebellion, an entire civil war. In the beginning, he was part of the rebellion. He admitted to assassinating several of the group's enemies, but he was forced to do it by the group's leader. Eventually he was able to break free and take them down.”[break][break]
The Operation. Other Nikki had been part of the Operation.[break][break]
More importantly, though, he'd stopped it.[break][break]
It took a great deal of effort to keep his stride going (although, the observant might notice that it had slowed to a regular pace, a sign that this coffee wielder had earned his attention in full), but he succeeded through a mind swirling with thoughts. Was this... supposed to make him happy? To an extent, it did. It only proved that he'd done the right thing by leaving the Doctor and his evil money scheme behind, and that he could have had his revenge had the hospital not swallowed him whole first. But then – was it really better to defeat the revolution? Its leader was as sick as the men he ordered killed, but the media probably had a hay day pointing out why attempts to upheave the government were wrong, and the people like this guy probably didn't understand the real nature of why it was good that they were gone. Armed with that knowledge, it was almost... sad. He, himself, would have never gotten the chance to find out himself. His reality was a world of hate; in the game he played, X had won. “That's... good for him, the hitman spoke through gritted teeth. “No revolution got beat out where I came from.” But the story still wasn't over – and of everything told to him so far, nothing struck quite like the ending.[break][break]
“There was a big award ceremony and everything all over the television. His girlfriend was there, too. Mary I think?”[break][break]
In an instant, Nikki was turned on his heels, arms reached out to grab for the other's shoulders – a lifeline, a support, proof that he and his words were real. “Mary?” he repeated in disbelief, words loud and sharp and enough to scare off the birds that loitered overhead. “Mary was there? She was – she was okay? The Doc didn't get to her first?”
[attr="class","nikkipostbot"] [attr="class","nikkipostbotright"]
[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/1gk2ju5gy1vka6g/Chris%20Cornell-%20Casino%20Royale%20Theme-%20You%20Know%20My%20Name.mp3?dl=0[/music] [attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES | [attr="class","nikkipostbot3"]
884 WORDS
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[attr="class","nikkipostbot4"] [attr="class","nikkipostbot5"] hopefully this proof will suffice, emmy. ;o |
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