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by Renisca on Thu Jul 23, 2009 11:09 pm
OOC: (I'm new here and at roleplaying in general, so feel free to tell me if I'm doin' it wrong. xD)
Please sign up and get all the details on the plot here: http://www.roleplaygateway.com/act-remembrance-sign-ups-and-ooc-t26199.html
Feel free to look at my character, currently the only one on my profile.
Leander dashed inside holographic scaffolds for some new Acotional buildings, almost smacked into a real one - not the only instance where he was unable to differentiate illusion from reality - and ran undernearth a scarcely renovated, 250-year-old clay bridge. The lady running after him, for what reason he didn't know, hadn't yet lost him, but seemed to be losing momentum as he activated his speed shoes (OOC: Speed shoes...xD I can't think of anything that sounds less dorky!). However, it might be noted that she was chasing him for his jacket, which only hinted at misdeed, but the woman didn't seem to be considering that.
Wearing the jacket came at a terrible price. It was a matter of dignity, the members of the Remembrance Mission were told, but Leander felt branded by it. A moving picture, still playing in infinite loops as he ran - his shoes making him do so in a more streamlined way, his pursuer finding it harder to catch him because of this - displayed light erupting from under a rock and sending a bystander flying. Apart from being a rather dumb-looking image, it symbolized the preeminence of past lives over present, which was the mainstay of the Remembrance Mission.
Leander's reason for hating the jacket was that he disagreed with that part of the Mission, the most radical part. He was wearing and risking his neck against opposition, then, something that he didn't believe in, but the jacket designs were not going to change anytime soon. He curtly decided that anyone who believed it was living under a rock as the light under the rock might imply; however, he did ardently feel that keeping the past alive was...almost as important as the present moment.
He dedicated himself to illuminating the lives of those already dead, yes, and to him that was akin to the eternal philosophy, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." He wanted nothing more than to reach significance that extended beyond death himself, but he was stuck doing it for others. The idea of someone, whoever they were, being skipped haunted him. They would be lost forever, he thought, never getting the oppurtunity for fame and remembrance that the Mission's members assumed that everyone had striven for and weren't about to deprive them of. Therefore, the woman that was chasing him now, he thought, was threatening legacies, threatening for people to be truly dead if their lives could not live on.
And no matter how much he hated how the jacket and hoped that the mission itself was not filled with people who carried this philosophy, he kept being bait for the ignorant, or whom he considered the ignorant. In all reality, he didn't know any of the members of the Mission nor all the violence that they were stirring up, and so he certainly didn't understand the motives of the woman chasing him.
His thought bank had apparently run dry when he decided to skid to a stop and humor her. He'd admittedly grown a rather big head over the past few months in the Mission, even as a lowly Recruiter. She quickly reached him and seemed dumbfounded about his sudden stop, and glanced around at the modest, assuaging clay around her as if to make sure that this wasn't some sort of trap. But she stunted these feelings and recharged her anger by seeing the jacket again, and soon she threw herself at him fervently without a word. She flailed about in a way that made it evident that karma was behind her, that she was supposed to win here, and soon Leander was sent to the ground with a bleeding nose.
"Wait!" He guarded himself with one arm and used the other to hold a somewhat effective HealPack - integrated into his shirt sleeve - against his nose. His voice, then, was comically nasal, but neither of them found it a laughing matter. "Please, just...explain to me what's going on here!"
"You killed my brother, that's what's going on!" she spat, then involuntarily let out a yowl that sounded like a cougar cub that had failed on the hunt and began to sob. "You killed him!"
"Calm down!" Leader demanded, fearing such a strong and unfounded accusation. "I didn't kill anyone! I've...never killed anyone!"
"That's...not what that says," she countered coldly, lunging at his jacket and pulling at it with all her might before she had to let go. She probably sprained her wrist in the process, as she wrenched her sleeve over it and winced through her tears.
Leander stood up tentatively, his nose still red. "I'm very sorry. I really, really am...but I don't know what you mean. Okay, so I'm in the Remembrance Mission. What does that have to do with anything?"
"Yes! Not you, no, not you. But some people in the Mission killed my brother for no reason! They killed him for - for no reason!" she screamed, and debated uttering something else before she started to swing at him again.
He tried to block her and at least remained standing, if bruised. His response sounded as if he were totally battered. "Wha - They...I didn't know they did, but I can't...Are you really...Okay, I honestly don't have any clue about any of this. I'm relatively new to the Mission," he managed.
She wiped her tear-stained face, almost in disbelief. An awkward silence - well, what constituted as silence with the bustle of transportation all around, sounds that the clay muffled a bit - followed and the girl continued to hold her head in her hands.
"I don't understand." she muttered underneath them.
"I don't, either." Leander said, a little ticked but mostly just puzzled. "But, okay...The Mission is all about making past lives signifi -"
"I know...damn well what it's about," she said, her jaw clenched yet shaking as she rose her head slowly, her eyes glowly with a celestial fierceness as she tore them away from the jacket. "But...I have a question for you, all of you: What about...the significance...of everybody who's alive now? Everybody here who's getting killed. Everybody in the country...They might as well not be alive. They don't have anything we have! You forgot about them! You just care about some random...moron from 300 years ago who maybe doesn't even...want to be remembered at all!" She seemingly kept trying to stop herself from jumping at him again, her sentences and actions in little fragmented bursts, as if it would be dangerous if she just let out everything at once.
"That's not how I see it," Leander's voice was in a trembling whisper as he faced the person who seemed to be his antithesis, the one against everything he believed in, and he couldn't help but be intrigued by all of the new information. "But...I didn't know people got killed. I really didn't know. I...haven't met many people from the Mission, yet."
"Well, don't," she said, and even though she'd been too blocked by anger for sureness throughout her speech, this statement was resolute.
The awkwardness from before magnified by 1000, the two parted ways, Leander concentrating on just walking halfway straight. He felt mentally fried and torn to shreds, the word "lie" repeating itself in his head, and he wasn't what exactly he felt was a lie; it was just to prevent him from not thinking. In fact, he felt some oxygen being supplied mechanically to his brain by some route, which supported clear thought again. He decided not to inform anyone about this as he reactivated his shoes to arrive at the meeting on time.
Leander entered the garishly adorned restaurant, which was filled to the brim with people and barely managed to hold them all without that crowdedness being a stifling distraction. He peered around to find jackets like his and found a few in a more sparse area. He walked over to them quickly with a newfound energy to get things started. He slid into a comfortable chair, still too distracted to care who he was sitting by.
OOC: Needless to say, nobody else's has to be that long...I'm just really enthusiastic about this, I guess! xD
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