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Post by Spinister on Feb 26, 2012 21:01:00 GMT -5
"Thanks, Det. Maza. If you ever need me to cover a shift for you, just ask," Esprit replies gratefully, and she looks to the ambulance, "I hope he'll be okay."
She looks at the bouquet with a cool, appraising glance, and then she snaps a photo of it with her phone. Looks like Ned is getting a supermarket bouquet tonight.
Then Esprit starts to walk away.
OOC: Timeskip?
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Flame
Rookie
Causam ago dementia
Posts: 198
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Post by Flame on Feb 28, 2012 23:19:57 GMT -5
"I'll hold you to that," Maza says with a smirk before hopping into a cruiser. She adds before her partner drives off after the ambulance, "And I'll keep you posted."
Some days later…
"I need you to tell me about the screams." Aidan shudders and fusses with the hem of his shirt, unwilling to look up from his lap. He shakes his head, unaware that this session, like all the others, is being recorded.
"I – I don't know," he says. "I can't."
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Post by Spinister on Feb 29, 2012 15:55:32 GMT -5
Esprit repays her debts. Det. Maza need not worry... for that particular reason.
Later...
Getting into places is pretty easy for Esprit, for a number of reasons. She has a supermarket bouquet of pink, purple, and blue flowers, just dyed carnations. When she gets a chance, she'll talk to that troubled florist, but for now, Esprit is content to wait quietly.
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Flame
Rookie
Causam ago dementia
Posts: 198
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Post by Flame on Mar 9, 2012 12:05:46 GMT -5
As far as therapy sessions go, it isn't a good one for Aidan. They keep asking him to describe things he isn't sure he remembers. Everything he can recall is hazy and fragmented, bits and pieces of wrack drifting in a fog of terror so powerful that just the thought of it makes him feel faint. All the talking doesn't go much of anywhere, but he still has to sit through the whole miserable affair before he can go back to the safety and quiet of his room.
This place is frightening and sterile, and he wants to go home. He wants to see Leanne. But they want him to talk through his psychotic break, and they want him to work on his control so he doesn't accidentally set anything else on fire. This often goes hand in hand, as his powers only seem to manifest under intense stress. He's tired. He wants to eat his lunch and take a nap.
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Post by Spinister on Mar 11, 2012 1:34:21 GMT -5
Esprit does not think that these humans will ever be successful in putting Flame's head back together, but they sure are making a game try, aren't they?
Oh, but they don't even have the vocabulary to deal with a patient whose derangements have led him to illicit spark transplants and morphcore harvesting and circuitboarding and rust injections...
They're probably going to make him forget all that, which is a shame. Esprit needs him to be useful.
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Flame
Rookie
Causam ago dementia
Posts: 198
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Post by Flame on Mar 19, 2012 19:08:27 GMT -5
He doesn't set anything on fire, but he doesn't make any real progress either; Aidan doesn't care, because at least they take him back to his room so he can eat his bland food. He never thought he'd look forward to such a sorry meal.
Nevertheless, he settles into his lunch with a tired sigh that seems to echo in his quiet little room.
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Post by Spinister on Mar 19, 2012 19:37:51 GMT -5
Oh, but he has a visitor for lunch! And she's brought tacky supermarket flowers. Esprit gives Aidan a very deliberate smile and greets quietly, "Hello, Mr. Flynn."
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Flame
Rookie
Causam ago dementia
Posts: 198
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Post by Flame on Mar 25, 2012 9:00:21 GMT -5
The staff have had to make some concessions regarding safety when it comes to Aidan. They decided there's already more than enough easily flammable material in his room by default; and while they don't ordinarily give patients anything but paper cups or plastic flatware, he's well-behaved and more of a fire hazard than a violent risk, so he has been awarded the privilege of using more normal dishes and utensils (under observation of a nurse).
Naturally, as soon as Esprit makes her entrance, he startles and knocks over his glass of orange juice. The spillage is thankfully confined to the lunch tray.
"H-hello," he stammers while trying to mop up the mess with his napkin. He doesn't look up and register the bouquet in her hands until after he realises the paper napkin really is inadequate to this task. And he stares at the flowers very briefly before his eyes narrow and his lip curls with disdain; he turns back to his lunch as if she has just directly insulted him.
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Post by Spinister on Apr 1, 2012 17:01:03 GMT -5
"Don't like these, do you," Esprit observes, looking at the supermarket bouquet, "If you get well soon, you can do better."
She lightly tosses the bouquet onto the table.
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Flame
Rookie
Causam ago dementia
Posts: 198
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Post by Flame on Apr 10, 2012 22:30:43 GMT -5
"I can do much better," Aidan mutters, side-eyeing the carnations. There's no thought to the arrangement, no message behind it, no meaning. It's gibberish. It's an offence to the senses. "How can I help you, officer?" he asks, looking away from the flowers and seeking a different topic. What he wants to ask is why she's here, but that seems rude.
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Post by Spinister on Apr 11, 2012 13:40:50 GMT -5
Esprit shakes her head and corrects, "I'm here to help you." They want him to have another break where he firestarts. Only then can his exact condition be diagnosed.
Aside from the terrible flowers, she opens up her bag and pulls out a two-pack of Flame and Pee-Dee at the State Fair toys. Then she pulls out an Onslaught and Rodimus Prime at the State Fair pack and, finally, a Slugslinger and Emirate Xaaron at the State Fair. Jadedly, Esprit opines, "These are for you, since you expressed an interest in that... Emir robot, and I figured you'd want him to have some... friends, but I doubt they'll actually let you play with any of them right now. Too dangerous."
Esprit snorts.
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Flame
Rookie
Causam ago dementia
Posts: 198
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Post by Flame on Apr 13, 2012 20:55:41 GMT -5
Aidan doesn't exactly recognise the little toys. He peers at them, bemused; his gaze lingers longest on the Flame figure, because he has no idea who this is, but the shapes and colours seem familiar somehow. The longer he looks, the more his head hurts, ears ringing. Bits and pieces of images come to mind – darkness, a flash of silver, boiling hot rain and his hands melting off the bone, lurid teal and fuchsia, a knife, catlike violet eyes. He grimaces and covers his ears as if that will shut out the keening noise in his skull.
"I don't want them," he gasps. "Take them away. Nurse?" He looks up, but she is gone.
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Post by Spinister on Apr 13, 2012 21:03:36 GMT -5
Esprit leaves the toys on the table. If Aidan wants them back in her bag, he can put them back in her bag himself He could even set them on fire. That would work.
She pulls out a tabloid newspaper from the bag and show him the front cover, which reads, 'Rodimus Prime's Secret Shame: Lovechild Exclusive Shocker'. There is a completely out of context photograph of Rodimus Prime looking away Photoshopped into a picture of Flame looking upset about something.
Esprit continues, "Depending on who you read, you'd have the whole family..." She lowers her voice and leans in, so that Aidan alone can hear, because what she's speaking isn't English anymore, "Rodimus Prime, Flame, and... Emirate Xaaron?"
She flips the tabloid open to the putative family tree. Esprit knows that if someone tried to tell her that Emirate Xaaron was her mom, she'd set things on fire.
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Flame
Rookie
Causam ago dementia
Posts: 198
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Post by Flame on Apr 18, 2012 23:43:35 GMT -5
"I – I don't understand," Aidan says, swallowing convulsively, expression somewhere between horror and rage as he can't tear his eyes from the paper. A tic begins under his right eye. Why would they say that?! "What does this have to do with me?" I, related to a Prime? To that gilded degenerate?! He can't breathe. His chest feels tight and drawing breath is a painful struggle, worsening the oncoming hyperventilation. His skull feels ready to split open.
Everything is one great, tangled, confusing knot – terror, outrage, disgust, fury all balled up in the pit of his stomach, heating the air in the room. It's unnaturally warm, dangerously warm, like a furnace gone out of control. The anger and the fear are the same white-hot pinpoint in his brain, a spark that should be in Garrus-9, a searing, terrible burst of flame pouring from twin flamethrower cannons.
Flame.
"I am not an Autobot!" Aidan screams, so hard the capillaries in his eyes rupture, and he tucks in on himself. "I'm not!"
Fire explodes in the empty air to Aidan's left, arrows to the tabloid paper, angles toward the action figures.
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Post by Spinister on Apr 20, 2012 13:32:31 GMT -5
There is no fear in Esprit when she stands and backs away. She leaves the tabloid and the action figures to burn. Esprit wants to see if he can melt plastic - if he can melt the little metal screws and hinges in the figures. His gift is much different than hers, she sees. He can call up fire in a point of space and move it in arcs like chain lightning. She watches his eyes - does the fire follow his eyes, or does his positioning have no bearing on the fire at all?
There, Esprit has forced Aidan into another break. Are the medical professional who care for him pleased, now that they have seen what he can do?
She has her own agenda, however, and she steps closer to him and tries to grab him by the chin to force him to look at her. Esprit is not gentle. She tries to whisper in his ear, "You're going to calm down and go along with whatever treatment they give you. When you get a bit of lucidity, you are going to demand behavioural therapy and wean yourself off the drugs they give you. You don't want those chemicals burning through your veins, clotting your capillaries like glue. The drugs won't always be there for you. The fire is a part of you. You wouldn't drug your hands into oblivion. You will master your fire as you have mastered your hands."
This may well get Esprit set on fire.
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