Scarlet Rose Taggert's Story

BABBLE

Life is like falling.

At first there was a feeling of absolute weightlessness. A sense of wonder and possibility as for that briefest margin of a second everything seemed to float, their directions not yet set in stone. Then reality started to set it. He could feel the tugging sensation of gravity starting to pull him down as the darker side of the descent quickly consumed the innocence of it all. With the knowledge of just what was happening around him setting in he slowly started to fear the end. He struggled, he flailed, he babbled and made sound. Nothing worked, the inevitability of it started to set in.

So he went into denial. I'll be just fine! I'm not going to break every bone in my body. It'll just be a close shave, no need to be so scared. Heck, I believe there's probably a pillow right where I'm landing. That's it, it's all going to be a soft landing, no need to be afraid. I know I'm going to a better place He lied to himself. When the fear of the unknown was so terrifying who could blame him for seeking comfort even when he knew he didn't know? When whatever lied below was shrouded completely in darkness there was bliss in ignorance. But even that momentary diversion turned sour quick.

Seconds turned into years as he plummeted, who knows how far. His sound waves grew shorter but his mind didn't even have time to remind him what his own name was. The longer he fell the faster he descended. The farther he fell the harder the landing would be. There was nothing he could do by this point. He did not want to go quietly into the yawning abyss below him but considering how close he was to the floor not even sound would of been fast enough to slow him to a sufficient landing speed. There were many regrets in his mind, things he never got to try or do.

Much like death, the landing was sudden.

Crunch!

And then silence...



His eyes opened. He was alive despite the odds. In the time he had passed out his mind ran back over those last few second, the roller coaster ride of sensations he endured leaving a lasting impression on him. He had now become more philosophically inclined and possibly scared of heights.

He looked around to see most of the others had done well enough in one way or another. When he tried to reach up to try and join them his muscles tensed up, his whole body feeling a sensation of numbness washed over him. The pain started to set in. Within moments his whole body was wracked in agony. Nothing specifically unusual for him but this pain was of a more physical nature. He could see the dim red glow of the chemical lights filling the plastic tubes above, illuminating the rooms in a dingy red light.

Because of the light the fluid running down his face was simply a darkish black substance, it's true crimson hue masked by the glow. His head hurt with a splitting throbbing sensation as the liquid dribbled down from his forehead in front of his eyes along the side of his nose. He tried once more to raise his arms. He felt extremely weak, his strength mostly gone. This wasn't normal for him to be so weak. It wasn't as though his power required any real effort on his behalf when he wasn't focusing it internally. This rebellion he triggered once again should of been a piece of cake. Just why was he so drained?

He struggled with the pain, overcoming his agony enough to look up to see the source of his current conundrum. A long sharp metal extrusion which must of been sheared loose from the machines when the roof broke had impaled him straight through the torso, poking out through the front all the way to the back of him.


Upon giving it a second look he estimated that it must of gone straight through his stomach, probably not hitting much else as it was on the wrong side of his body for puncturing the liver. While it was positively minimal the slight note of good news was all he really wanted as pretty much everything else was bad news. Between the pain, the injuries sustained, the security guards looking to contain them and the fact he was stuck in a group full of bloody psychopaths he accepted whatever positive aspects of his situation he could claim.

It seemed a little odd that guards responded as quick as they did. Perhaps he was out for longer than he first assumed? Regardless of that it looked like they would have a problem on their hands. Just how were they going to resolve this conundrum? The only effective way that came to mind was if Hector tased them all with his electricity powers, rendering them immobile for long enough to disarm them.

Or maybe little miss Freddy Krueger was going to kill everyone. Is she freaking out? She's gotta be freaking out He tried to see what was going on from his prone position on the ground, struggling to think through the pain. This hypothesis of his was quickly disproved as two more guards arrived only for Ember to brutally murder them in cold blood. It took a moment but he knew well enough just what was going on.

Crud. I'm stuck with THOSE kinds of mutants. At this point he realized what he needed to do. Despite the throbbing waves of pain as the dark stuff he knew as blood ran down the lower end of the metal object stuck through him he pushed with what strength he could summon and started to crawl his way between the fallen chunks of stone and metal. He emitted the golden sound in a small radius, cancelling out a small bubble of sound around him so that he couldn't be heard rummaging below them.


Ow... Ow... He wished he could say. There was no sound for those words to form however as he crawled through the obscuring wreckage. It seemed as though it worked well enough since practically no one paid any mind to whatever happened to him. Once he made it around the corner he was well out of sight from them. They had all decided to go down to the torture chambers, an oddly fitting place for a bunch of sadists to head down to first, but he had a different destination in mind. He hoped his destination would leave a lot less bodies. He hated the sound of death.

As a sound it was perhaps one of the worst sounds he's had the misfortune of listening to, right below the white sound. There was nothing pleasant about listening to a man die, let alone listening to men die. The others might not of been able to hear it but he could hear it all the way through. If only they could of heard what he heard when they did such awful things. But you're not so good yourself. You killed someone too, remember? His mind was quick to remind his emotions. He was right too. Just how could he look down upon them when he was no better? A murderer befitting this gathering of murderers. Was it really so hypocritical for him to judge them so?


Before he had time to further twist his mind around this moral quandary the surge of pain from his oversized piercing dragged him back into the real world. He had someone to see first and with any luck they might theoretically be both conscious enough and willing to help him.

Pressing his side up against the wall he started to push himself up onto his shaky legs. The struggle of the century was him trying to keep his balance for long enough to walk him over to the door just down the hall. Step by agonizing step he eventually found himself standing before the door. On it was written on a tag to the side 'Subject: Scarlet Rose Taggert'. This was it, the door he was looking for.

He recalled overhearing the guards a while ago down this particular area of the facility. From their babble he managed to pick up on the fact she had some sort of ability to do with rearranging flesh. Whether it was something positive was still unknown. Still, it was a better chance than no chance.

He ran his sounds through the door, the hefty metal barrier starting to shake gently. He fought to maintain focus as he narrowed down the range of the sound to just the lock. Luckily for him it was one of those manual locks, not the silly magnetic lock that his door had. The tumblers within the lock shook around in every sort of direction, eventually all falling into place. With the last tumbler freed the door swung open. It was time for him to go see this Scarlet lady.


Inside he saw the woman herself laying upon a table, secured with restraints and being fed some sort of chemical through an Intravenous drip. Just my luck He wasted no time, staggering over to the side of the table. Using sound he shook each of the individual components of the restraints until the screws and bolts came loose, the straps dangling from her limps now. He turned his focus over to the drip. He could of used sound to tamper with it but since it was feeding liquids directly into her he didn't want to shake it incase it accidentally flooded her system. He'd need to be more delicate for this.

As he swayed on his feet as though a gentle breeze could blow him down he lurched forward and bit down on the line connecting the IV to her. Grinding his teeth he eventually managed to cut the line, getting a bit of the drug in his mouth as a result. It tasted awful.

With both the restraints loose and the drug no longer being fed into her there was not much else for him to do. He leaned against one of the side walls and slumped down to the ground leaving a streak of blood along the wall he was against. Down the hall he could hear five guards coming down to secure the dangerous mutants in this sector. Just his luck. With the amount of blood he's lost getting here and freeing Scarlet he was barely holding on to consciousness. He didn't know if he could stop them if he tried right then. The woman was still resting on the table.

"H-hello... Hell... o." He didn't recognize which voice he was using to speak to her. It was a woman's voice, someone he must of heard at some point in the past. The voice was not centered on him but near Scarlet's ears. As faint as the fading voice was the only way he could have had her hear it was to put it right next to her ears, a faint whisper of some woman he couldn't even remember.


"Hel... lo."

BABBLE

For a period of time his perceptions grew blurry. First was his sight, every image swimming in his eyes without clear distinction. Second came the sounds, every sound meshing together into a general noise that grew quieter and quieter. Perhaps his gamble didn't pay off, a pity really.

That was until he felt a hand grip the solid metal scrap currently occupying the same space as his stomach. With a yank the protrusion was free from his body, his hole now free to bleed as much as it wanted. But that did not last as her hand delved deep inside him, shuffling him about from the inside out.

It was a strange experience, painful without a doubt. Having someone's hand inside him while he was semi-conscious was something that would of driven most people mad. Between the alien sensation of something foreign moving around within him and the pain of it all a saner fellow wouldn't come out alright. Then again, was he truly alright to begin with?


Nonetheless it all came to a close as the flesh knit together like a soft fabric. He was no stranger to unanesthetized surgery and on a scale of one to ten with one being least painful and ten being most he'd rate this operation a two. With his blood stream now flowing properly his wits returned to him, his senses clearing up to see Scarlet right over him.

"Hello."

At last, her voice. He held on to the tone, the sound, the intonation of her voice. It was now him, he was her voice now too. It was good, he looked forward to communicating with her. She helped him so he was keen to return the favor. Nothing little would do either, his life was hanging by a thread. No doubt, there would be communication ahead.

She collapsed in a pool of his blood, still evidently weary from the rude awakening that she must be having. Poor girl He thought as he watched her struggle back onto her hands so that she may crawl towards the doorway. The first day waking up in a facility is never pleasant.


“Get up, We need to get out.”

He hadn't thought about it but standing was somewhat difficult for himself as well. Having just recovered he had yet to really stretch out, get back into the new feel of things. With his back against the wall he pushed himself up, slipping a couple times in the puddle of blood underneath him. standing shakily on his feet he took a few seconds to recover his balance, his whole body still sore from the experience. The tell-tale sound of nearing footsteps brought his mind back into the present, the evident rattle of military grade equipment giving away their unwanted visitors presences.

Firstly he needed to calm his new friend down. She was unsure of what was going on and he needed her to be less jumpy for the things she was about to hear would likely sound traumatic.

"Do not be afraid, he isn't here to hurt you." Scarlet's own voice spoke to her, the source being nowhere and yet everywhere. She and only she would hear the words for the sound did not travel beyond her ears. The sound was created inside her ears, without direction as to simulate the effect of her hearing her own voice. By all means it was as though she were talking with herself, only the words were not born from her mind but from his.


With that said he cast his mind to the men in the hallway. Several men armed with tranquilizer guns, all well aware of the fact that a cell that shouldn't be open was ajar. Just as they surrounded the door and were about to move in to subdue Scarlet a pressure suddenly built within their heads. He had created several wells of sonic pressure within each of their heads, exerting a literal force directly upon their brains. Within moments the hardened men were collapsed upon the ground, all screaming as they felt as though their heads were about to explode.

The circuit breakers inside their minds flipped, metaphorically speaking. Built into every mind is a limit at which the brain shuts it's conscious functions down in order to protect itself from sensations of pain that are too severe. In a simultaneous moment every guard that was standing just outside her door collapsed. Five men lay unconscious, unmoving but still breathing. This was what true power meant to Babble. True power was not the power to take another person's life, It was the power to spare them.

He could of easily scrambled each of their brains or crushed them like origami birds but he didn't need to, thus he chose not to. What fun was there in ending life, to cut the power to someone else's game so they may never enjoy anything ever again? That brought no joy to him, only sorrow to others. What benefit other people got from killing people they didn't need to kill he'd never understand.


He peeked out of the doorway, looking down at his work. Five men all sleeping slightly less than peacefully. Fair enough given the misery they've dealt and enforced. He stepped forward before stopping as a voice intruded. It wasn't a real voice, it didn't have a real sound but he heard it all the same.

“Are you the ones who freed me?”

Looking down he sighed and frowned. In his idea for an escape he'd imagined he'd of had at least another two hundred feet between him and the nearest psychic. He knew most mentalists were benign but some were awful, going where they aren't welcome and doing things without permission. They were violators of the most intrusive nature.


Leaving the non-voice alone would prove most troublesome, he needed a way to temper the outsider. He had to think, something which seemed to leave him vulnerable so it had to be quick. Quickly! He urged himself, his eyes darting about until they fell upon something of a realization for him. These guards were wearing the helmets the guards down around the mentalist wards would wear to protect themselves when handling brain stowaways.

Quite a piece of pseudoscience those helmets were. Even listening to one of the scientists explaining them to the guard staff made his eyes all cross-wards. He didn't need to understand them either, he just needed to wear one.

Stepping a few paces he fell to his knees with a painful thud. He crawled up upon the man, confident that the battle hardened military man wouldn't spring right up from under him. Tenuously he rubbed his cheek up against the helmet, sending sound waves into the helm, isolated strictly to the helm. The chin strap which secured the brain can for the man shook and wobbled until it sprang from it's clasp. Now that the helm was loose he fixed his teeth around one of the free straps of the helmet and carefully pulled the head adornment until it was free of the square jawed fellow's head.

Now was the tricky part. Saddling his back up against the wall just across from the door he grasped the helmet in between his feet. He was very flexible as was demonstrated as he brought the helmet up to his head and set it right on using his feet. In a feat of foot mastery while he couldn't really do up the clasp like it was done he instead wrapped the two straps around each other, intertwining them with his toes until they were snugly secure to his head. It was a rather flimsy solution but for now it kept the helmet on his head which was all he really needed of it. He made a mental note not to fall or get thrown around too much given how easy the strap wrap would come undone if he were to throttle his head around too much.


Now that his mind was snug and safe from the spooky brain jumpers he could turn his attention back to the situation. Looking through the thin veil of glass over his eyes he looked over to Scarlet.

"I should follow him. I might not know this but he knows this building well. The path to freedom is just through this hallway of... Broken... Glassssss."

Her voice spoke to herself, the words stretching out towards the end with a mild tone of distress. It wasn't her that the fear of glass was born from though, it was the father of the disembodied voice that was her own voice; Babble.

He looked down the hall and his heart rate jumped up at the sound of it all. Millions upon millions of tiny glass shards, all singing sharp tunes in response to the vibes he was sending. Just how am I going to escape now? I'll be cut apart if I try to go down these halls! He shivered as he huddled against the wall. He did not want to lose his feet. He already lost his hands to glass, his feet was all that he had left. Speaking of feet...


His attention drifted down to the boots on the guard's feet. Big heavy boots, something to put in between feet and the rotten glass below. It wasn't perfect but it was something which was more than he had. Flopping forward his head lay next to the feet of the man who's helmet he had already taken. With a chomp he clamped one of the ends of his boot laces in between his teeth and pulled. it came undone, freeing the boots grip on the man's foot. He did the same with the other boot, both boots now free to him to take.

Biting down on the sole of the man's boot he pulled at it like a dog with a particularly tough hunk of meat, hoping the article he desired would come free without too much effort. It was kind of gross too, the boot tasted like mud, blood and other assorted muck.

During this scene of animalistic resourcefulness Scarlet's disembodied voice piped up inside her head once more.


"He doesn't seem to like the broken glass. It could cut my feet if I'm not careful. I should find some footwear too."

BABBLE

Babble looked down when she touched his arm. Her hand brushed the absence where his should be. That was not good. He did not feel good.

There is a name for what he felt then. Phantom Limb Syndrome. In that instant he felt a terrible sensation at the end of his forearm. He could still feel the hands at the end of his arms but every movement elicited an aching pain in the remains of his arms. The nerves that remained caused the arm a feeling of soreness as well as a sort of itching sensation. An itch he couldn't scratch.

“GET OUT OF MY HEAD.”

Her scream caused him to bite down hard upon the boot he was struggling with. His teeth hurt afterwords, as did his mind. His only guess was that the spooky voice had spoken to her too. He did frown. To attack his mind was one thing, to attack the mind of the woman who he still owed his life to was a line not to be crossed.


How kind it was of her to help him with his boots. Now his feet were safe from the glass, the ultra wicked glass. His arms did not leave his mind any peace. It was unbearable now. He had spent so long ignoring them that the very idea welled up and exploded, the pain and itchiness returning one hundred fold. In desperate need to relieve the pain he attempted to scratch the ends of his arms with his canines. When he couldn't get at his arm through his sleeve he used his teeth to pull them back, revealing the arms underneath.

The bandages that they used to keep him from bleeding out were still wrapped around the ends, the dry blood caking the medical fabrics. Now exposed he bit down on an arm's end, harder this time. With his teeth clamped down he worked them across, trying to scratch as deep as he could with the edges and points. It was almost inevitable that his teeth worked under the bandages and started to scratch at the closed cap of skin, drawing blood.

“Here,”

He looked over to see his new red friend offering him a jacket. While he didn't really need it it might come in useful in the future, slanting his decision towards ultimately accepting the jacket. He did not fit his arms through the sleeves of the jacket however. He simply let the shoulder of the jacket rest over his shoulders while the rest hung like a poorly tethered cape. He continued to chew at his arms, beginning to straight up gnaw at the ends by this point.

"And... don't use my voice. Please, It... hurts."

He stopped. She doesn't like her voice? I...


"I-i understand." He spoke in a different. This voice unlike her voice which he had been using before originated from him, reaching her ears in the same way regular speech traveled. This voice was not her voice but it was not his voice either. It was the voice of a girl he knew back from the other facility.

She was a young girl, about roughly fourteen years of age. She had a soft, sweet and soothing voice. Her tones were like soft petals, delicate throughout. Her voice possessed a strong element of sadness behind each word she spoke. It was understandable given where she was. She was also shy which had something to do with it. Perhaps her shyness had something to do with the fact that she had a stutter. It might of also been the fact that she had wasps living inside enlarged pores in her body which leaked honey on a constant basis.


"I-i hope that this voice i-is more to your l-liking." His lips did not move but her peaceful yet awkward voice spoke from him. It wasn't just a duplication of her voice either. Every single aspect of her sound was more than identical to the original source. The speed, accent, volume, basically everything about her voice was one and the same as hers back when she was alive.

It's truly tragic, the way she died...

But her voiced lived on through him. All voices lived through him. He was sound and what else was voice if not sound? He embodied all sound everywhere and as such took it upon himself to preserve the sounds. From the most angelic of hymns down to the most infernal howls of the abyss itself, each and every sound heard became part of him and would continue to become part of him. All except for the dreaded White Noise of course. The unnatural sound, the sound of sound itself being captured, tortured and transformed into what he so affectionately called 'False Sound' by metal boxes built by men. Oh the hubris, how they dreamed of controlling sound.


“I owe you Babble a grand of gratitude, and I will assist you in your endeavors. You do not have to wear that contraption around me, it barely protected the guards from me,”

He could hear it's words from down several halls. Barely is just enough. Not ideal but it will suffice for now. He took comfort in the fact his thoughts were his own, unadulterated by outside hands. His worry turned to Scarlet and her bare mind. He couldn't let it hurt her now could he?

"You may want to wear one of those helmets. They will p-protect you from the spooky voices." He warned her. It wasn't a perfect countermeasure but anything to keep their minds intact was necessary for what was to come. It didn't hurt that it would protect their heads physically too.


He watched as it cleared their path of glass for some unfathomable reason. Now arose a quandary. He knew that the elevator that would take the two of them to the top floor where he needed to be but that would mean accepting it's help. On the other stump he could take the other path in the turn back in the opposite direction of the path laid for them. He'd of normally chosen to forge his own path and refuse such favor to avoid obligations for reciprocation but he needed to know where she wanted to go. Wherever she went he'd follow. Until he repaid what was due he had to ensure her safety lest he lose the opportunity to clear his conscience to the cold clutches of death itself.

"Well..." He looked up to her for guidance. "I-it's your call..."

Oh for all that was good in the world, just why won't my arms stop hurting me so. My hands they... I don't have them anymore.

BABBLE

Her touch was soft, caring even. It was odd how unusual this sort of feeling was for him. To be touched without being hurt. His whole life as far as he clearly remembered the only times he was touched was to be roughly grabbed and dragged down halls or beaten for crying too loud. No one ever took mercy on him, even as a child in the old facility. Still, the pain he suffered at the hands of the men who worked there was magnitudes smaller than the pain he suffered listening to pained sounds wailing through the electronic prison they called the radio.

Of course that changed for a slight moment as she placed her hands over the ends where his hands should be. His eyes nearly bugged out of his head as unpleasant neuroses flooded his mind before they were closed out by a calming yet all too familiar sensation. She was using her powers to dull the pain and itching brought about by the frayed neuron endings relaying erroneous signals to his brain. What resulted was a numbing of the ends to his limbs as the nerves were suppressed. It was as though his arms were anesthetized.

He was comfortably numb.


“Don't scratch, please,”

She spoke in a soft tone. Even though her face didn't reflect the nature of her voice it mattered little to him. The sound was comforting. Not the most comforting sound he's heard but it wasn't bad for a human.

“That voice is fine,”

But that voice didn't sound fine. She sounded busy, like someone with a lot on their mind. Makes sense to me he supposed. Almost anyone would have a lot to mull over if they were dropped into a situation as grim and unfancy as this. Almost anyone.

Babble was far from just anyone.


Almost unnecessarily Scarlet had further dulled the feeling in his arm, the numbness spreading up past his elbows now. Her thanks was not necessary but there was little time to quibble over such insignificant matters at the moment. She fastened a helmet to the head and now they could both rest assured that the spooky voice would stop bothering them now. How pleasantly pleasant. He warmly thought about how nice it was to not have others hear his thoughts. Not that any of them could follow the train of logic he was riding on but they were his thoughts, no sense in them rolling all over the place when he needs them in his skull where they belong.

It didn't really bring a smile to his face when she indicated she wanted to head down the hall he came. I just came from there? What sense is there in going backwards? Oh, right she hasn't been there herself yet. I better tell her it's all terrible. His thoughts race like a five legged race horse, four legs on one side and only one on the other. Just as he was about to speak she continued talking.

“I have no idea what's going on and I honestly have no idea who you are but... You are... A capable companion. If there's anyone here you trust... Take me to them."


Well if that's what she wanted to find they wouldn't be going anywhere soon. Looking straight dead in her eyes with a seriousness that was completely uncharacteristic for him, a look which was almost foreign to his face, the voice he had now picked for her spoke.

"T-trust no one."

He looked down at his feet with a two thousand yard stare, reminiscing on the blood that's been spilt as her voice continued to speak.

"He only wants to h-help you. All t-the other nice ones are... Are dead. Everyone else alive only wants to k-kill you. C-cut your... Throat. T-they will lie... A-and they will hurt you."


Thus the meek meager voice had spoken.

He had heard their voices in the torture chambers, a far too appropriate place for their lot to gather. He hadn't been paying much mind to what they were saying before but now he wished he had as all of a sudden invisible hands picked him and his friend up and started dragging them towards the torture room.

He kicked, he flailed, he thrashed and he squirmed. The sound that was being made by him was one of pure disharmony, a noise which reflected the dissonance he was experiencing emotionally. Metal grinding, rust scraping, the rubber of car wheels screeching on pavement, the sound of bones breaking, of glass and ceramic dinnerware shattering and of finger nails upon a chalk board. Every sound that brings about unpleasant emotions rang out through the halls all the way into the torture chamber signifying Babble's disturbance. It was a disquieting orchestra of discord and it only grew louder as he was forcefully dragged away from his safe place. What was his safe place? Any place far, far away from the murderous mutants he knew for the lesser half of an hour.


"No! I don't wanna go back! I don't wanna go Baaaaaaaack!

As he was carried into the room the shape that resembled Babble was unsettling to say the least. The sound of utmost unpleasantness had vanished since he turned all that sound inward. Now all of his limbs and head were vibration so fast that everything except his torso was a mere blur. The only sound that could be heard coming from him was a loud shuffling noise accompanied by a faint buzzing. His face was unrecognizable at the speed it was shaking and his hair resembled a circular black shadow framing the moving blur that was his head, faint black strands washing across the image every so often. The ends of his legs were nearly invisible as were the ends of his arms. It was like looking at a gingerbread man behind a pane of frosted glass.

Even as fast as he was moving he could still hear the live execution of guards. Ember was hard at work being a true monster, spilling blood like the serial killer she was. What a scene it must be for her. His shielded thoughts turned but for the briefest moments in their panic towards worry for Scarlet. He imagined how it must be, someone waking up before having their brain invaded and then being dragged down a corridor into a torture chamber where some woman was violently executing men like some sort of warlord from the Congo. This was a living hell and despite all other intentions at this point he just wanted out. Not to escape from the guards in the halls but to put as much distance between him and these people immediately around him, Scarlet excluded, as possible for a being of purest sound.


The moment he touched the ground he rocketed immediately back down the hall he was just taken from, back behind the space they were planning on putting a new wall. Despite the fact that there were several guards congesting the hallway he just barreled down he was able to navigate around them quite expertly. Such was the nature of shuffling.

The ability to take thousands of steps per second allowed him to travel at ridiculously high speeds while still being able to make ninety and even one hundred and eighty degree turns without a hitch. The downsides to this ability however was the friction and the fact that at high enough speeds he would be unable to complete a thought and respond before running into an obstacle. Luckily for him he had the positions of all the guards mapped out with sonar so he could avoid running into any of them.


As he made it past the first group all the way to the stairwell up he suddenly remembered something or more correctly someone. Great scott! I've forgotten Scarlet! He just realized he had left her behind. Now that would not do. Would a nice young lad like himself leave behind the lady who fixed him up nice and proper to get gruesomely beheaded or bled to death by the variety of despicable characters back in the middle of some dungeon? Of course not! Despite his absolute protest towards taking even a single step towards the deranged unit commandeered by the spooky voice itself who happened to also be a real mister grabby hands he silently crept back, peeking around the corner of the hall until he could see his good surgeon in sufficient view.

"Quickly! C-come this way! Hurry!"

The voice he was using for her spoke from just over her shoulder. It was quiet whisper no louder than a mouse but still audible enough to be understood. There was a definite element of urgency and fear to her voice and with good reason. Not that much farther away from her Ember was slowly slicing into a man's neck while screaming like a lunatic. It wasn't that much longer before she'd be next, he felt certain of that.

BABBLE

The Pardoner

"Ember stop! Don't be the monster they think you are!"

He could hear Neptune's voice even from where he was. While every other sound droned unpleasantly in his mind her words caught a fair amount of his attention. Very little called for him to actually pay attention but hearing something he didn't expect certainly warranted the dedicated focus he so rarely maintained.

"If you kill him-" He listened well as she drew a tight breath into those soft squishy lungs of hers "-then you're no better then them!"

Quite true. Her words were quite impactive to him. It was no Shakespeare but her heart was still in the right place which was what mattered most. Thus far he had yet to see anything resembling a redeeming quality amongst the lot of them. The only one he even cared to be in the company of had been lost amongst the wreckage, his location unknown despite Babble's wide reaching array of sonic methods with which to search for him. The one referred to as Druggie was gone now and the rest were either still unknown to him in temperament or proven murderers. Neptune's heart shone out to him like polished gold floating in the masses of ichorous black moss that served as their hearts.

He was not likely to forget this. Though her naivety was quite strong there was a purity to her that he found quite darling. Perhaps should they meet again he'd be pleased to chat so long as her most undesirable company is not present.


The Savior

Scarlet was scared. Her heartbeat had risen and her breath was quick. Her expression was not one that was unfamiliar to him. The anomalies around him back at the previous facility saw things that were just as horrible. Occasionally he'd see their expressions in the occasions he was let out. He was nowhere near as dangerous back then.

And then of course was that time he was a ghost. His spooky sound scared many out of their wits. He was no wraith but he made sure that there were none who chose to stay after he was done. Hollow voices mocking from unseen corners while doors swung wildly upon their hinges, evanescent shapes and a deathly chill that penetrated all layers, a song that evoked the rawest sensation of fear. He was quite familiar with the looks he saw upon their faces after toying with them for some time, singing his strange songs while dancing about the halls.


Scarlet wasn't scared of him though. She was scared of them. Rightfully so he believed as they killed without remorse, murdering simply because they could. As she was running his direction however the ground started to shake.

Oh grand. What new hell do we now know?

Her boot caught on a dead body left behind by the maniacal sadists.

"Help me."


Babble didn't typically take well to the whole hero business. He did things and often times those actions benefited others. He pretty much never directly helped someone, nonetheless a lady who was in imminent peril. He liked to be alone and that conflicted with the very nature of cooperation, especially in regards to rescue. Today would have to be an exception for him as he did the opposite of what he'd of done under regular circumstances. He wanted to repay his debt to her, this would be a start.

Coming forward he quickly gleamed the source of what snagged on Scarlet's boot. The lace of the boot had come undone and snagged on one of the items clipped to the belt of a dead guard. He came over and stepped upon the body, guiding a sound through it to the location of the snag. As both the item and the lace began to vibrate they separated from each other, now loose from the grip it had on her footwear earlier. Coming in close he slung her outstretched arm over his shoulders and helped her over the bodies and down the hall. He noted the sticky black print his boot had left on the body that he stepped on, a result of the rubber at the bottom of his new boots melting slightly from the heat built from his shuffling.


The Survivor

Just as they proceeded down the hall however the earthquake intensified. The roof above their heads was starting to fracture apart. In an instant the hall they were just exiting collapsed, crushing all the men who were frozen in place to death. The sounds were terrible as the stone broke flesh and bone. Babble was not happy.

He knew that the voice of one of them belonged to an earth manipulator. Most of what the scientists spoke about in the facility were no secrets to him. He had little doubt that it was him who was responsible for this chaotic act of violence. He understood the urge to just tear everything apart and be free of it all. After all that is exactly what he did earlier. Despite the urge however he had realized that actions had consequences. Letting the rest of these people out was the consequence of his actions and now he was suffering for it.


Scarlet, she needed to be free. There were many people who deserved a chance to go free. He had planned to give them that chance like before but given how much destruction and bloodshed the ones he had already set free were causing he was starting to doubt that even he'd survive this cataclysm. They needed to move quickly.

Not sparing much time he proceeded to the stairwell which was becoming more and more unsteady the harder the building shook with her in tow. Even though parts of the stairs were already breaking off he led her up with minimal trouble given the circumstances. Once at ground level he guided her to a back door where the security was not so rigid. All that barred them from the exit was a simple metal door. Sure, it was quite thick and had a rather complicated locking mechanism but this door was designed to keep humans out, not mutants in.

"Hold on a m-moment. This will be quick."


Moving away from Scarlet he gently rested his forehead against the cool metal surface of the door. A number of possible methods to go about this entered his head. At this range his power was potent enough that he could literally shear the door into pieces. Ultimately he figured he'd take the gentler approach to this obstacle. It was the brute force that got him into this mess in the first place after all, might as well try a more delicate touch and see if it all gets better from here on out.

The door started to audibly rattle as he sang to it. His song was not one to be heard by human ears but by the door alone, the song of opening. The locking mechanism began to shake apart, the individual components wiggling out of place. Even the screws holding the locks in place started to come free, the lock starting to shake more visibly as it loosened. Even the bars holding the hinges in place were vibrating free from the hinges themselves.

As his song reached it's coda the lock and handle had fallen out from the door as did the bars holding the hinges together. There was nothing left to hold the door place now, it just stood there waiting to fall. When he pulled his head back from the door he finally gave a small smile, admiring his work for a brief moment before the urgency of their situation pressed on him once more. With a light tap from his foot the door fell back, landing with a loud clang as the top of it connected with ground just a few feet past the two steps connecting the outer lot with the entrance, forming a ramp down into the outdoors.

With a gesture he urged Scarlet to follow as he stepped into the outdoors, looking about and surveying the scene in front of him. He wanted to make sure there were no people with nasty rifles or other such things waiting to blow them down the moment they stepped out.

BABBLE

Take two

It started with a click.

Click.

There it was. That tell-tale sound of locks unlocking. He turned to face the facility as he heard the doors spring loose. The doors to all the cells had been sprung open. Was the spooky voice inside trying to do what he was just about to do, only worse?

His thoughts met a brief pause. There were sounds of many footfalls as other anomalies began to filter out of the building. This was good, this was what he had planned to do all along. Only difference was that he'd be on the inside as the cleared out. Right now he was on the wrong side of the building and he knew it.


Looking over to Scarlet he watched her laugh as she lay resting upon the soft earth. He understood well why she laughed. He could remember the very moment he passed that very same line himself. She was coming along quite quickly in her psychological metamorphosis. It took him eight years to finally learn to laugh at it all. He had to suffer long before he learned to let go. He didn't know how long she's suffered but perhaps it wasn't the time spent suffering that mattered. He realized that suffering was not something to be measured in quantity but in quality. In all those years his doctor did try and eventually succeeded but he could only wonder what she might of seen to bring her this far along so soon. Perhaps another possibility he considered was that her tolerance for suffering was lesser. It was quite possible as he recalled others from his facility who lost their minds long before him.

Babble looked back only to meet her eyes directly with his own. As he looked into her eyes and hers into his he understood why he was still with her. Whether they liked it or not they needed each other right now. They also needed to leave right now. Out of all the people he met there was only one that he actually remembered fondly and he may or may not have killed him in the fall. The last thing he wanted was to meet another anomaly as he was certain he would end up worse off than he already was.


Without any real discussion he sat on the ground and crossed his legs. His eyes gently closed and he entered what could only be interpreted as meditation. What he was doing was trying to become in tune with sound itself. He could feel the landscape stretching out before him. Without stone and metal walls to block his transmissions he could reach vast distances, wider than many could even imagine. Far far off, like a faint whisper on the breeze, he heard the distant sound of a town. Hundreds of voices could be heard all speaking at different rhythms. Buses, cars, voices all the tell-tale sounds of a typical small town were in place.

In an instant his eyes shot open. He knew where they needed to go for now. Unwrapping his legs he stood hastily to standing and started to forge their way into the grasslands into the forest beyond and passed that there lied the city. Without speaking a word he looked back to Scarlet and gestured for her to follow him with a nod before continuing forward, towards the grass but in a direction opposite of where the other anomalies were. With any luck they'd avoid detection, after all he was limiting their sound so that no one else but themselves could hear them leaving. He still even had that weird helmet on, securing his mind as well as it could. It worked so far as he hadn't heard a single voice inside his head since he put it on.