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Mr Allen J said
Not too sure about hypnotic suggestions, deadbeat.I mean, the power is pretty much useless since everyone will most likely have their characters resist it..


I don't know about that. Hypnotizing Harmon is as easy as shaking a ziploc bag of batteries in front of his face and then telling him to do stuff for it.

It's more about instance preparation than instance recuperation.
GingerBoi123 said
I don't know what you mean by this.


Yòu̡ do̸n't͝ ͝h̛av̡e ́ţo̸.
What fresh hell are you people gyrating into existence.
Jazzy said
Lets bang.




EDIT: That coffee shop suddenly became really fucking popular.
Harmon Rottlage
Let’s begin at the beginning

Let us revisit the past

Like when the house lights start dimming

Like silver screen photographs

It makes a beautiful sound when nobody else is around

It has a wonderful way of eating up entire days

The Joslyn House Motel.

Harmon has a home here. He does, doesn’t he? No… no, he definitely doesn’t. It’s such a nice home, to him. To others it looks absolutely terrible. Then again, everything looked terrible, wonderfully so. Sometimes it has… grey walls, sometimes they’re a very, very pale blue. There are other colors too but he can never make them out too well. Sometimes they tell him to go away, sometimes they yell nonsense at him. Sometimes they don’t pay him any attention at all. And sometimes, they back away from him with frightened and hateful looks on their faces. It’s because of his eyes. They’re not there. They never have been. They never will be.

He trudges through the snow, past the rusty, half-hinged gates, into the parking lot. There’s only a few cars, most of them covered in snow, not having been used in some time. But why are there cars? No one drives here. Harmon never saw them drive, at least. They drove elsewhere, away from this place. The Motel is two stories tall, rooms dotting the exterior. Harmon lives inside one of them, he’s not sure which at the moment. Does he live here? Is he living at all? He has to be. He can still see. He passes by an old, bearded man huddling against the wall in his two coats and makes his way up the stairs. He almost slips on a step but, thankfully, he doesn’t trip and fall. He walks along the upper floor walkway and passes by a few doors. He stops at one and… stares at it for a moment. He presses his forehead against it, the metals in his crown scraping the surface of the wooden door ever so slightly.

This isn’t his room.

Harmon detaches himself from the door and continues walking. He lifts up his camera and looks at the painted numbers as they pass by. 8B… 9B… 10, the B had been weathered away over the years… 11B… is it 11B? Yes, yes, it is. He stares at the door for a moment before he reaches down and opens one of the large pockets in his cargo shorts. He sifts through the multitude of half and quarter-empty batteries, most of which are probably already depleted, and searches for his key. He has a key. Everyone has a key, to… someplace. He feels the jagged metal end and takes the key out of his pocket. He points his camera at it to make sure it’s the right key to the right room. It reads… 9B. He was wrong, his room is 9B. 9B. He takes a few steps back and finds himself in front of room 10B. He takes a few more steps back and he’s at his rightful doorstep. He slowly places his key in the lock and turns it, pushing the door inward.

The room is the palest of blues this time. He forgets if that’s good or bad. He forgets why it matters seconds later. Harmon shuts the door behind him and locks it again, putting the key back in his pocket. He could have put it in one of the smaller pockets with less batteries in it so he doesn’t have to search around for them all the time. But he always forgets he can do that. Forgets. Forgets…

The room is old. Older than Harmon. Much older. The floorboards are splintered and there are gaps everywhere. There used to be a carpet but it just disappeared one day. The walls are cracked and peeling and the wood and plaster behind them is visible in three different spots. There are maddened scrawls of gibberish and cryptic pictures everywhere, etched into the various surfaces over the years. There’s a fan up above missing two of its blades. The switch is broken so it doesn’t matter. The light bulb in it is still good, though. Sometimes. He pulls the beaded switch. A few seconds pass and nothing happens, but then the bulb slowly flickers to life. It’s dim but it’s serviceable. Harmon doesn’t know when he’ll have to change it again but he has… some, spares, lying around. There’s a bed with a spring mattress and no sheets, which he promptly tosses his blanket upon. There’s a nightstand with one of its drawers missing nearby. He sits on the mattress and opens the drawer. It’s full of batteries. He takes a moment to deposit the ones he has in his pocket into the drawer, coming closer and closer to filling it up again for the first time in a while. He’s been going through them so rapidly lately, it’s… worrying. He pays the thought no more of his mind and closes the drawer.

Harmon stands up and walks towards the closet doors. There’s a tall cabinet drawer in the corner of the room that he doesn’t use much. There’s just a lot of random junk in it, mostly old papers, hypodermic needles, some books with weathered covers… Useless, all of it. Useless. He opens the closet doors and lays his handheld vision on things that are not so useless. It’s stacked with boxes of electronic equipment – wires, cameras, phones, portable radios, a video game console he never uses, some computer monitors and keyboards… there’s so much more but he doesn’t want to look at all of it. He’s only making sure it’s all still there. And it is. All of it. Making a low hum in his presence.

He shuts the closet doors and turns toward the television sitting across from the room, on a small table. He stares at it for a moment before it flickers to life. Or, to a static screen. He walks over to the mattress and seats himself on the end, directly across from the television. With one hand he holds his camera so he can see. With the other he holds against his head, feeling the metals in his skull. He taps one with his index finger lightly, and the static turns to a random cooking broadcast. He doesn’t have a remote, but, he doesn’t need one. He taps his head a few more times, flipping through channels. He stops on a local news broadcast.

“-have confronted and apprehended the notorious bank robber known as Frost Beast…”

Something happening nearby. Harmon ceases tapping his head and remains still, watching the broadcast intently.

”Erik Wall, also known as Frost Beast, was known for attacking banks all over the East Coast.”

Is today Tuesday?

No… no, it’s Saturday. Harmon always gets those two mixed up. And all the others as well.

He keeps watching.
Harmon Rottlage
It’s reticent.

It lies in the sun and moon and stars.

It watches us and pretends to be a god or gods.

It’s always there.

Do we l͜ov̡e̸ it?

Or do ̷we̷ f͘e͡a̢r ͞ít̡?

Cold.

It is all cold. Far too so.

Cold, enveloping a mass. A great and powerful mass covered in vestigial tendrils, becoming dark and withering, their stems crumbling and falling into an unseen abyss that emanates from below. But is the cold that causes the withering? Or something else? Something greater, something… something that watches. Constricts.

Kills.

Harmon hears the sounds. Through the people. Through their devices. Friends calling friends to talk about the withering. Children calling their parents, begging them to come back home. They all talk about menial things, with the bids for safety and comfort peppered in between the chatter. He doesn’t understand half of it, the other half he pictures so vividly in his head that it spits fire on his nonexistent eyes. The burn teaches him – how far he can walk in the scape of connectivity before he must away from that beautiful, wretched place. He is thankful for the burn, and his fear of it lulls him to sleep every night, fending off the twin colds outside. But the burn is not a twofold cloak. For the tangible realm, the walkabout place… he carries a wool blanket. Wraps it around himself.

It’s snowing today. On the ground. In his head. The two stark visages are separated by a line of static, metal, and flesh.

Passersby do not see the scared, frail thing underneath the torn shroud. They see a hapless, destitute runaway scrounging through trash bins and abandoned buildings. They don’t see him, but he sees them. All of them, through the most inconspicuous little device tucked between the fabrics, in his spindly fingers. It is not always the same device – a regular camera, an old phone, it changes every day. He notices, but at the same time, he really doesn’t.

Every now and then, he walks by a closed-off establishment, and he can see through the security cameras inside with what little energy they still possess. Often, he sees nothing. Other times, he sees dead folks, in varying states of decay.

Harmon’s walking along the sidewalk by The Devil’s Advocate now. He doesn’t turn his handheld vision towards the patrons inside, those string-less shadow puppets and ne’er-do-wells. One of them looks out the window, half-paying attention to him, eyeing a woman across the street instead. Harmon sees the monochromatic spectrum humming silently in his tucked away phone. Messages to and from friends and acquaintances, all very fetid with ill will.

Darrows is gone. NEST got to him. I’m out.


All the words and sentences and paragraphs mean so many things but Harmon can never put them all together. He just forgets them two or three steps later. He just forgot who Darrows is, but that other word. NEST. NEST. NEST…

“Nestnestnestnestnestnest-“

Harmon mutters the word over and over under his breath for a moment. He stops the moment he passes by a trash can, filled to the brim. It looks freshly packed, not much snow on the lid. He walks over to it, gently takes off the lid and tosses it aside, tears open the bag and picks through it, bits and pieces of discarded food filling up the space between his hands. He brings them to his cracked, bloody lips and grates the nourishing filth into his mouth with his rotten teeth. It was sickening, but not to him. Did he get sick? He forgot, didn’t he? He forgets how to cough and his lungs vibrate as he makes a low, retching sound. He stops, and then he continues to eat. Moments pass before he finds nothing else on the top the pile. He attempts to dig through the trash but it tips over, and he has no idea. The noise it makes upon impact frightens him, and he runs back to the sidewalk. He brushes past a man holding his phone, texting someone. Harmon sees the words and he’s yards away from him.

Are we gonna do this festival thing?

r u kidding? No fucking way with all the metas gonna be there

It’s not really that dangerous, is it?

It fucking is and im not going. I hope nest goes in and wrecks the whole thing before some meta starts shit

Maybe you’re right. Should we do something else around then?

Being out when the thing is happening is bad news just stay home

Will you come over?

No im locking myself in when it starts. You should to


Harmon stops for a moment. Was there a festival? There was a festival, wasn’t there? There was… will be? He… The words danced around in his head, fumbling, falling over the edges, tripping on the metal. Is there going to be a festival? He never went to it before. It was always in another place. It could have been in another universe as far as he was concerned. He would never go. Was there ever a festival? Festivals are always so full of people. A festival in Black Fall would be full of meta-humans. So many meta-humans meant NEST would be keeping a tight hold on them. NEST would be at the festival. NEST would…

Is there a festival happening later?

Harmon is still standing there, thinking about the festival, about NEST. The loop runs around and around in his head until he hears a crash in the distance, followed by screams and gunfire. Is it NEST? Is it a gang? Is it... is it NEST? He doesn't ask the questions. He runs, his feet kicking up snow, more and more words pouring in and out of his head. It shifts back and forth from deadly, hate-filled whispers to loving shrieks and shouts.

He runs for home.

It’s so cold.
IT BEGINS.
I can hear the pillars of the Guild shattering as an infantile monkey cradles an unlit candle in its arms.

I give you a hamburger.
Mr Allen J said
... I hate you.


I know, Dad. I know.
The great migration isn't at hand! Don't pack your shit!
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