Nala Clark's Story

(Posting May begin! Tagged everyone who currently has a character to signal this! :D)

It was quiet in the armory, something Nala had always taken peace in. The housing area always seemed loud and crowded, but she almost never left her room anymore. She slowly moved throughout the room as if in a dream, her hand grazing across certain objects. She picked up her rifle, testing the weight and gingerly touching the sight before placing it on the bench in front of her. She took a deep breath and began to gather her protective gear. She found a soundproof headset that fit comfortably and kept it around her neck then grabbed a pair of safety glasses and pushed them up above her hairline.

She picked up a belt and suddenly felt sick to her stomach. She tried to ignore it, putting the belt on and attaching a small knife in its sheath. The feeling kept nagging at her, though, and she had to shake her head to try and refocus herself. She moved to pick out an ammo vest and the sickening feeling finally overtook her. She ran to the trashcan and dry heaved a few times before shakily pulling back. She hadn't eaten dinner last night or breakfast this morning; she hadn't felt like it and now she was glad she hadn't. She slowly and shakily walked back to the ammo vest she'd chosen and pulled it on, fingering the fabric gently and swallowing hard as she began to fill it with the correct ammunition.

Why had she even allowed herself to be pulled into this mission...?

Alex was fighting a headache, sitting in his room while he paged through his PDA, files dancing before his eyes. Granted, this didn't help with his headache much at all, but he had no plans to let that stop him from doing what he wanted. There wasn't even anything specific he was looking for at the moment, he was just passing time until his headache faded and he could stand going out of his room and grabbing some gear before moving out. It was all part of his normal routine, or as normal as he could manage to establish on a daily basis in his life these days. Granted, this did make things less stressful which did help on his mental capacity and avoidance of the migraines and such that plagued him, usually. Not today, it seemed, as he kept ignoring the headache toth e level best of his ability. He hadn't had the sheer illness a lot of other people seemed to get hit with frequently for almost a week, just fluctuating headaches and a few migraines, coupled with the odd outbreak of bleeding, but otherwise it wasn't too bad. He was probably overdue, but he took it for what it was right now.

The immediate headache had faded to where he felt confident enough to go out and about the compound without descending immediately into a borderline debilitating migraine, so he closed the browsing session he had been going through, dumping it into one of his coat pockets as he stood up slowly, stretching and pulling his coat tight around him before leaving his room, locking it behind him as he left. No need to openly invite people to sift through his already meager belongings, no need to have them disappear on him. Walking the open throughways, he ignored the chatting psychics and other foot traffic between him and the armory. He didn't even really have any idea what the mission involved, only that he had to grab his gear and get ready for trouble, to use quaint terms. Walking into the armory, it was blessedly quiet, the only other person of note was a female that was already geared up. He couldn't place a name to a face, but that rarely meant much. He was terrible with names on most cases, but he could be polite without a name.

"Good afternoon, evening, whatever it may be right now." Being polite seemed to get him by in this place more often than not, so he tried to make a conscious effort and not silently stone wall everyone. He had made a beeline for the weapons locker while offering his greeting, where his .22 pistol was stowed away, grabbing it alongside several magazines which were all dumped into his pockets, barring the pistol. That he did some rudimentary checks on to make sure that it wasn't completely screwed up. He wasn't a gun nut, not by any sense of the imagination, so his knowledge boiled down to point, shoot, and hope to hit something. It worked, sometimes. Dumping that into one of his pockets as well, he sat down on a bench, producing his PDA again and surfing the news networks for possible ideas about what this unknown mission would entail today.

John had quickly received the call. He went over to the tech department and had them trace the call. By the time John teleported over there, he could see the cruiser leaving. Now, he just had to get Jacob out without hurting any humans. It was the one thing John couldn't do, kill or even hurt humans. He knew they had to defend themselves from the Government, but still. His humanity wouldn't let him.

He figured out a good course of action. He telekineticly made a stop sign fling itself in front of the cop czar. They stopped to get out, and as they did this John teleported into the car, pulled Jacob's weapon toward him with telekinesis, then teleported them both out and back into the middle of headquarters. "Jacob, mind telling me how you managed to get arrested?"

John then looked over at the ops. "Hope you didn't have too much fun. We have three possible ghosts this morning, and you are joining me for the third. He then sent a text message to Dani, informing her about the op with Dylan and Nala. Finally, he sent a message to everyone to assemble in the ops room. He would teleport everyone to their mission sites, and then his own team to his.

Dylan meanwhile met up with Nala and Alex in the armory. "You guys hear yet? Three ghosts this morning already, so I guess this will be a busy day. Nala, you are with me on the subway one with Dani". He then added something. "Managed to nearly get down the whole mountain before John found me. I am getting faster". At this point, everyone would receive the notification from John.

Dani stood up from the dining room table. She couldn't take sitting there anymore. I need to find something to do. Her eyes scanned the hall as she walked through it. It was almost as if she expected the home decor to spark an idea in her. She smiled to herself. Silly, as usual.

A light vibration in Dani's pocket informed her that she had received a text. She sighed and reached into her pocket to grab her basic flip phone. The text was from John. Apparently she was needed to work with Dylan and Nala. How nice of them to find a way to make me useful. I guess it's better than nothing. She readjusted the sword on her back, checked her throwing knives, and headed toward the door.

It didn't take Dani long to drive to the headquarters. She stepped inside the building and stopped to text her mom. "Hey. I was called out to do a mission. Just letting you know in case you get home before I do." Then she continued to the armory where she found Dylan, Nala, and Alex. "Hey guys," she said, announcing her arrival.

"Morning. It's morning right now," Nala mumbled to Alex, fumbling to fill in the correct ammo and almost dropping some as her phone buzzed in her pocket. She finished sorting the ammo and readjusted the vest before fishing the phone out of her pocket as Dylan came in. Just a text from John. A text about the mission. She swallowed hard, trying to fight the emotions bubbling up inside her like a storm. She didn't even hear Dylan until he said her name, to which she gave a slight nod of response. She took a few steadying breaths and finally turned to look at Dylan, forcing a thin smile. "You'll be scaling whole ranges before he finds you soon enough..." she replied softly.

Inwardly, Nala hated how distant her voice had sounded from both of them. She hated how she was keeping a wall up between herself and everyone else in the complex. She'd had good friends once, close friends who had tried to help her through things...Now everyone was practically a stranger. She kept everyone at arms' length. She sighed softly and moved to pick up her rifle. "Hi," she replied to Dani without a glance. She didn't really want to linger here with them...but she definitely didn't want to go to the Ops room without them, either. She decided on just standing with her rifle until they made the first move, even though she felt a little awkward about it.

"Ahh, apologies. Good morning then." Unsurprising, the one option he had failed to mention would, in fact, prove to be the very one that he should have chosen to use. He didn't pay close enough attention to the time of day, it seemed, if he was that drastically off. The message on the mission interrupted his searching, which prompted a slight, brief frown on his face. Brief, because it did prove relevant to what he had been doing after all. Dylan walked in, making comments about scaling all over mountains and such. To each his own, Alex supposed, he wouldn't consider going out much even if he had the ability to just warp everywhere. But three ghosts, and apparently teams were already organized. Interesting, to put it mildly. He responded calmly, returning his visual attention to the PDA, resuming his search for background before the brief. "Morning, and the message was received. Work is work, regardless of numbers."

Another girl walked in, making a general greeting as well. Seemed everyone was waltzing in at the same time, then. Closing out the search on his PDA and pocketing it, in a different pocket than his pistol, he nodded towards the most recent arrival, not really feeling like repeating a morning greeting again. They were to report to the Ops room, and he was geared up already, so no need to waste time waiting around. He started towards the door, hands finding their places in his coat pockets, making an offhand comment as he left. "No sense waiting around, I imagine. Ghosts won't hunt themselves." An inevitable requirement of their lot in life, there seemed to be a never ending stream of ghosts, products of needless deaths that sometimes, caused by ghosts, spawned more of their kind. It reminded him of the problem that zombie flicks posed to humans. Zombies kill and grow in numbers, humans kill and all they get is a corpse. Hopefully, like many of the zombie flicks, the psychics would prevail and survive. Shaking the morbid thoughts, he left the armory door open for the others to leave of their own volition, whether immediately after him or following him in due time, and he would make a beeline for the ops room, to await the brief.

As the psychic walked through the hallways, Damion received a text message to get to the briefing room of the headquarters. Well, at least fate has my hands moving again... Damion thought as he turned around a few corners of the hallways. Having memorized the layout of the HQ already, it was pretty easy as to finding his way to the briefing room. Of course, this didn't mean that it would take some time in order to get to the destination that he needed. While fate allowed him to get his hands moving in work, it also got his feet moving all across the entire HQ to get to his desired destination.

Grabbing the knob and turning it, Damion pushed the door open as he entered the HQ briefing (or ops, as some call it) room. "Morning." Damion said as he shut the door behind him. "We have either a large-scale mission, or a few smaller-scale missions to be briefed on, assuming the number of people in this room currently?" Psychics usually didn't work in high numbers when it comes to missions. The people in this place usually used up to a maximum of 3, which is a good number for a small mission as most humans, save for those in the government, are not aware of ghosts. After all, the presence of ghost are needed to be kept a secret. The sudden appearance of one in the public media is sure to have everyone asking questions and theorizing the absolute worst. Hell, Damion could imagine religions all trying to convert all the people with the spirits as proof, the conspiracy theorists... well, you know, theorizing all kinds of hypotheses including secret government experiences, but the worst would've been everyone blaming it all on the psychics.

Either way, the situation would've been horrible, to say the least. A large-scale mission of 5 psychics is highly improbably, but still possible. You just needed a large group of ghosts gathered in one place, one that's too much for the normal number to be dispatched into. "Though, I take it to be multiple smaller missions?" Damion asked, looking around the room to see who had arrived before him.

"Hopefully" Dylan noted, grabbing his own weapons. He then grabbed some high caliber bullets to go for it instinctively, before turning around. "Hopefully this will go smoothly. Il see you all in ops".

When everyone got to Ops, John started explaining the situation. "Dylan, Nala, and Dani, your on the subway mission. Find the hostages if they are still alive, keep everything calm, deal with the ghosts, then clean the site. And be careful, there are still plenty about ghosts we don't know. Damion and Alex, you going after a ghost terrorizing a law firm. Unknown if there are any casualties left, but a chair got flung out a window and made it to the other side of the street, so it sounds like ghost telekinesis. Remember to make sure the site is cleaned when done. Jacob will be going with me to deal with a Haunted House. Looks like we missed one because according to records we have no official cleaning yet. I have people on all three sites keeping humans away, we just need to go in and deal with it. Now unless you have any questions, let's move".

(Weird how the site was down for so long, right?)

Nala trailed after the others, occasionally swallowing hard or closing her eyes and taking deep breaths. She felt like a wreck, and when John went over the mission details she grew lightheaded. This was the moment...the last moment she would have to rethink everything and go back on her word. The other two were capable; she wasn't. If she just backed out now, they could find a replacement. Someone else good with hostage protection.

Nala sighed softly, moving towards Dylan and Dani. Of course, she'd been asked for reason. Apparently, they needed her skill set on this particular mission and she couldn't let her doubts and fears stop her...Not when a psychic's life could be on the line. A little psychic trying to survive the horrors around her...Nala hugged her rifle closer to her chest and mentally prepared herself for transport. "Ready." She didn't want to give herself time to change her mind.

Alex was silent, not having a real chance to answer any of the commentary put forth before the briefing began in proper. When it came down to him, he looked at the older man who was leading the pair into fighting this renegade ghost. Damion looked well over ten years his superior, which meant nothing in the boy's mind other than he would be put in technical charge of the mission. So be it, then, he could play the willing soldier. The others were given their marching orders, a subway hostage situation and some unknown mess with some haunted house. Quite the mixture of things to deal with today, it seemed. Approaching the older man, he looked upwards, being shorter than the man, and raised an eyebrow, hands jammed into his pockets. "Several smaller missions it seems. Whenever your ready, Mr. Damion."

Alex left his voice neutral polite, as it was probably the best way to deal with the older man, not even considering anything else. He stood by, turning from Damion and looking over the rest of the psychics as they grouped up and got ready to go. Should prove to be a fairly uneventful set of missions, considering how each group looked prepared for whatever they were getting thrown into. Plus that phasing ability that the Dictator John decided to use to solve many and sundry problems, thus far, could pull in reinforcements in, so that could solve problems too. All in all, he was confident in that things would work out fine for each group and their mission. His was simple, go off an angry ghost and call it a day, and he liked it that way.

"Damion and Alex, you going after a ghost terrorizing a law firm. Unknown if there are any casualties left, but a chair got flung out a window and made it to the other side of the street, so it sounds like ghost telekinesis. Remember to make sure the site is cleaned when done." The man, John, said as he told everyone of their missions.

"Several smaller missions it seems. Whenever your ready, Mr. Damion." Damion's partner, Alex, said as he looked up at the man and placed his hands in his pockets.

"Indeed. Well, let's go then." Damion nodded, his arms going to his sides in order to have his hands near his weapons. His knife and his gun were always at ready and at his side. Some may call his paranoid, but in reality, it is better safe than sorry. During Damion's 10+ years as a psychic, Damion knows that he must always have some kind of protection other than his own powers, as even they may not be able to help him in some scenario.

The psychic turned around in order to walk to the door, stopping only to turn and check to see if his partner is following. He stayed silent, as there really was nothing to say. Some would say that he is another person, someone different from the man who showed up in the classroom just 45 minutes earlier. Damion didn't mind. It is a perfectly logical reason, after all. He switched right from a smirking, casual young man into a silent soldier made and ready to kill.. well, kill something that should be dead, anyway.

Dani was given a brief greeting before the female left the room. She looked around the room as if she was looking for something, but then left for the briefing room. I can't wait to see what they've got for me. It was true. Dani was not sure of her abilities and how they could be useful until she had been called on for missions and given instructions. She was the only empath and she originally thought that was a useless ability. It turned out that it could come in handy.

With a smile on her face, she entered the briefing room just before instructions were given. She cast a glance at Nala and Dylan. No doubt their abilities are better than mine when it comes to getting rid of ghosts. All I can do is communicate on levels that others can't. I've got my throwing knives and my sword though, not that I'm skilled enough to do any hardcore fighting with my sword yet. I've got a lot of learning left to do. My throwing knives on the other hand.... those, I've perfected. They're not particularly useful in situations like these though. I'm just on this mission to do what I like doing best. Talking to people.

Dani waited until after the instructions were given to move toward Nala and Dylan. "I really hope the hostages are still alive. I'm useless otherwise. We'll need to get going right away to lessen the chances of them being dead," she said and walked out the door. There wasn't time to wait around. She was worried about the people stuck there with those ghosts, terrified. Being an empath, she knew what the terror felt like.

Dani was outside in her car within a minute. She would wait for Nala and Dylan before she drove off to the subway station. Alright, Dani. Remember to keep calm and focus on the people. That's your job and the best way you can be useful.

(After away too long, I am finally posting now that my head stopped pounding.)

Within seconds, John did several long range teleportation in a matter of seconds and got everyone to their destinations. "Nothing is ever right". However, something was rather odd. Maybe it was the fact five bodies were hanging from the windows of the house, one couldn't have been older then ten years old. "Well, I guess this really is serious" John noted, taking out his gun.

"Jacob, I don't suppose you have something else to tell me". He noted. Every window flung itself open as John stepped closer. "Because I think we have a fighter".

Meanwhile...

Dylan couldn't help but notice how morbidly bad this seemed. There were over 50 bodies hanging around the subway station by electrical wire that seemed to jump out of the ceiling and pull them up. What only made it worse is that there didn't seem to be any exits, probably a ghost barrier lockdown. However, that didn't mean everyone was dead. There was someone crying in the station, and Dylan could hear someone breathing heavily.

"I don't see her, and there are at least two survivors. Stay aware, the ghost is still around".

Nala breathed in deep, her eyes closed. This place...It was a nightmare, fueled by all her bad experiences with ghosts. That's all it was. She took another steadying breath before pulling the rifle scope up and peering down it to get a full grasp of the situation. So many dead bodies...mangled and tied up like meet in a walk-in freezer. The thought made her sick and she swallowed hard, panning around the area in search of the two voices she could hear. Unfortunately, the echo was making it difficult to pinpoint exact locations. "I don't see any movement, Dylan...Which way?" She continued scanning, keeping an eye out. She was prepared to launch a barrier at any moment. She didn't want anymore death...as long as she could help it.