[hr][hr][center][h2][color=00ffbb]Lawrence B. Ellison[/color][/h2]
[img]http://i67.tinypic.com/zkl46a.png[/img]
On a bright battlefield at night where everything is going to shit.[/center][hr][hr]

Lawrence had no time to feel relief at the lack of impact on his back as he moved away from the Eyepion to relative safety. Trusting that he had bought himself a few seconds, he finally had time to catch up on what had been happening around the battlefield since his power had been disabled, and what he found quite frankly pissed him off. Kusari, clearly recovering from being injured and sporting some kind of new hardware on her body. Emma, wasting her time trying to help the member of the group who was "basically immortal" as she had put it during the truck ride over. Christmas on the ground, alive but clearly injured, Sander charging in without restraint, and Hazel still choosing to prioritize his safety over that of their healer.

A faint glow around his body signaled the witch's spell fading, and Lawrence severed his connection with Christmas in response. It was pointless to calm the boy in his current state.

In a perfect world Lawrence would have magic that would actually be of use for turning the battle to his advantage. [i]Their[/i] advantage. As it was though, remaining calm was no longer an asset. No, now emotion would be their strength. A stoic did not simply feel nothing, rather he controlled what he allowed himself to feel. Anger, self doubt, fear, all of the emotions that were considered more harmful than good could be countered with reason, and logic, and practiced indifference. Now though, could they be considered more harmful? Here in a place where his life was in danger? No. 

Aiming his shotgun once more, he took note of the magic that his two opponents were readying. Fear pricked at him, an emotion that was easily battered aside by logic. However, this time he made no attempts to do so, no efforts to reassure himself that fearing the uncertainty ahead of him would do more harm than good. Instead, he felt the beating of his heart speed up, and his gut begin to tie itself into knots, and fired. Aiming for the first time directly at the witch, but closing his eyes as his finger squeezed the trigger. 

He didn't expect the attack to kill the witch. Monsters, as it turned out, were very good at not dying to conventional weaponry. It wasn't an attempt to end the threat in front of him so much as to deafen himself to the world around him. For a brief moment on the battlefield, with his eyes closed and his ears deafened, Lawrence was alone with his thoughts.

These people he was fighting with, these incompetent children who had no real grasp of their powers were certainly doing a much better job than he had upon first arriving at the Institution. Self loathing began to flow through him at the memory, but he welcomed it. Loathing was something he deserved, being so weak and yet afraid of what he was capable of, what he was.

A power to control people's emotions. It was a simple thing on paper, and certainly limited in application. However, it was something that made him a pariah among his peers. When he had first arrived as USARILN East Lawrence could not turn his power off and on at will. Could not [i]choose[/i] whether he was going to start making the people around him start falling in line with his mental state. There was no consent involved, and there was no [i]Meditations[/i] to help him control how he felt. Some had even called him a mental [i]rapist[/i], and he could hardly argue with that. Had he not just done something similar to Christmas earlier? Was it not even worse when he actually had control of his ability? The prickling fear from earlier began to intensify, joined with even more self loathing.

He was a weak man, that is why he needed the crutch of his philosophy to find any strength whatsoever. A cardboard cutout encased in steel, cut off from the rest of the world. Still, beneath that outer shell there were names scrawled across that cardboard. Some tiny, and barely noticeable. Names like Emma and Hazel. Others still were larger, and as the names grew in size more and more of them were scratched out. 

[s]Cynthia[/s]. 

[s][i]Thomas[/i][/s]. 

[b][s]Richard[/s][/b].

[h1][b][i][s]ELIZABETH[/s][/i][/b][/h1]

Lawrence's breathing turned ragged as crushing loneliness joined the ever escalating sense of fear and loathing. He was trembling as the reality of his existence crashed on him like a tidal wave.

He was afraid.

He was worthless.

He was [i]alone[/i].

He could not say, though, that nobody could ever understand how he felt. With tears beginning to fall down his face unabated, Lawrence opened his eyes once more and engulfed his opponents in a glowing white light.