Member
FourtyTwo
rocketrobie2Alexander Polawski
Location: Camp Mexico Beach: Quarantine (Conference Room)
Skills: N/A
Skills: N/A
Breath. Yes, breath, that's it. Such a simple word that could be anything from a kind suggestion, to a blod-spitting order. It was a word Alexander the Vet had heard many times over in his long life; his buddy George telling Alexander to breath after having been told a joke way too stupid to be funny in highschool; their medic Connor comforting a dying soldier with both his legs blown off by a stray shell in the middle of Vietnamese nowhere; Judith his wife holding her hands on his cheeks and telling him everything was going to be fine. "Breath. Just breath." And so he would.
Alexander's vision slowly came back to the same room he'd been in a few moments ago, though it felt like days wandering blindly in darkness. Ol' Mugsy blinked tightly as he began looking around in a daze, wondering what just had happened. His mind was still clouded, heavy from the screaming that had thrown him back into one of his more flashbacks, so he couldn't entirely understand what was going on. To his side stood Beatrice, arms crossed and eyes ready to murder anyone coming to close to her. Or...to him? Was she protecting him? Had something happened? Alexander didn't know, his mind refused to resume its proper mode of function.
The old man's troubles weren't helped by the young soldier resuming the shouting. So much...noise.
It was that noise, not the words spoken by the young man, that got to him. Hunter? Was that his name? It didn't matter, for it was not him that Alexander saw before his eyes. Same height, same build, same tone of voice of some young soldier who just about had had enough. In the fogged view that was what Alexander could see, the presence of a never-ending jungle incapsulating everyone and everything inside it grappled with the old vet's mind, even if he didn't actually see a jungle. What he saw was Hunter doing his screaming, but in the form of a young private pacing around with nervous steps, yelling off into the jungle. He didn't want to be there, why were they there? How come they hadn't found Charlie, were they even out there? Alexander turned his head to his nearest guy in the squad, in reality towards Thalia, quietly talking as if he was both in 'Nam and the quarantine.
"If he doesn't shut up soon, something bad is going to happen to him...him and us. Charlie's out there, watching, or 'Sarge will kill him." Alexander said in a hushed voice, still rooted to the spot he'd dropped his cup of coffee. With those words spoken, his vision of the real world was piece by piece returning to normal, causing him to look around in confusion. With THalia at his side, he looked at her very much unsure of what was going on, a look in his eyes of fear. Fear of not knowing what had happened, what he'd done. What he'd said. "What...what did I say?" He asked her, just as he saw Tatiana's back, which only fueled his shaken demeanour.
It was bad, real bad. The kind of bad that normal folks only witnessed once or twice in their average lifes. Alexander and his kind though, they saw this daily. People's bodies twisted and turned, burned and scorched in ways man was not meant to be harmed, but were. Alexander closed his eyes tight shut, turning to face Thaia instead of staring at the horrid sight as she asked how he was doing. "I'm fine…I'm fine. Yeah, sitting down sounds good." He really needed to sit down, his head was hurting like Hell. Which was when Beatrice decked Hunter harder than a bombing run. Alexander didn't know what to do, swallowing hard down as he staggered forward to somewhere he could sit, quietly talking again. "I hate this fucking jungle…"
Nigel "Hadrian" Cooper
Location: Camp Mexico Beach: Quarantine (Conference Room)
Skills:
Skills:
Oh great, he had over-estimated the fucks that the crazy-grumpy duo actually gave. They weren't only giving zero fucks about the emotionally scarred Tatiana, they managed to go below into negative fucks given. Like Rome sacking the city of Carthage, burning it to the ground and salting the earth just to send a message, they didn't care for those living there and having to deal with the immense pain it caused. Or perhaps it was exactly because of the horror that they refused to take it serious? Nigel could only speculate, though Wayne's suggestion to sing was another piece of empiric observation that supported the theory. At this point Nigel "Hadrian" didn't take concern with him talking to the glitter-tooth thingy he swatted at. Nigel only sighed heavily and shook his head. "Someone…give me strength…"
The shouting had stopped for now, but the situation had far from improved the way Nigel had desperately hoped it would. One of the older guys, after dropping a cup on the ground, had continued to stand still this whole ordeal, but why? In a sea of screaming people, he was one that remained surprisingly quiet. Nigel didn't pay much attention to him however, not when one of the women decided to stand guard with daggers for eyes. No, his focus was on his own people and Tatiana. Erica had come up behind him and tried to calm him down. When she put her hand on his shoulder, Nigel turned his head and looked at her, tiredness filling his face and eyes at his point. He was tired, tired of everything that was going wrong these past years. Nigel wanted to tell Erica that he was okay, that he would calm down, that it wasn't him that this was about. He wanted to give Hank a piece of his mind, all that tension built up since they first met. But it was not meant to be.
Suddenly the younger soldier, Hunter, began his own verbal assault aimed at Tatiana. His speech, if it could be called that, was filled with intense pathos from a man that had a whole lot of steam to went. And Nigel wasn't impressed, digging his fingers into the bridge of his nose as, trying not to shout back. What the hell was this world going to? The dogs of Hades, apparently. For someone preaching the virtue of a cool head, his behaviour was more fit a Germanic berserker going all-in on a Roman legion. He might not have been wrong in what he meant, but his 'speech' was all pathos and no logos or ethos. Worst of all, this was another prime examply of what Nigel knew wouldn't improve the situation.
Nigel "Hadrian" turned around to watch whatever reaction would come from Tatiana after Hunter's outburst, at this point ignoring Hank if he so wished to give Nigel his opinion. It was Tatiana he was most focused on, she he tried to figure out what was the matter with. What had caused her to lash out like that. What triggered her. If he found out, perhaps he could help? Again it was the teacher that spoke for Nigel, the cool-headed adult who wanted the best for his students. So far he was taken back by the whole thing. The punching, screaming, arguing, the fact that it didn't seem people cared or would help her. Nigel watched as Tatiana simply brushed off Hunter's cold words, going to the other side of the room to change, not to sit with her husband. He would have averted his eyes as she changed, looking at her wouldn't be approriate in the post-apocalypse even, but the scars on her back kept his eyes from moving away.
Like everything that had happened inside the Conference Room, it was not a pretty sight to behold. It was enough for Nigel to not pay attention to either Hank, Erica or Wayne, he was forced to look in morbid curiosity. What Nigel was looking at were not merely scars from injuries or wounds one normally got in this world, nor was this a simple flogging. Of all the things Nigel had learned about Roman antiquity from his highschool years and later when he'd poured over books on Rome, all with such enjoyment and excitement, he'd wished he didn't know what those scars could have been caused by. Nigel swallowed hard down the words he were about to say, finally breaking his look from Tatiana's back and looking at Erica, then down at his feet as he tried to breath calmly. It was starting to fit together now, the puzzle pieces of what possibly could have happened to her. Her behavior was making more sense.
Nigel almost didn't register Hank's response, it being as anti-climatic as it were, drowned out by the magnitude of everything else that happened in that room. He wasn't surprised by Hank's answer, and he didn't have the energy to follow up the pursuit with any stern word fitting his teaching past. "Forget it. Trying to talk sense into you two is like throwing pebbles at Aurelian Wall." Nigel muttered, though he was surprised when Hank actually spoke some sense in a hushed voice. Did…did Hank actually care? "But we can try." was Nigel's equally hushed response, just as he registered Ashton's apology to Tatiana. Perhaps things were going to turn out okay in the end?
Not when another fight broke out, this time between Hunter and Beatrice. "Oh for the love of God!" Nigel exclaimed in the shock of it, looking baffled at the woman having excellently pinned the soldier to the ground, then to Erica. Why did this always happen, people not listening to "Hadrian" and then shit hitting the fan? Students, friends and survivors, it was an never-ending cycle. "Will someone stop this madness?" Nigel started moving towards the brawl, ready to intervene if it didnt end. If nobody else was going to have the good sense of stopping it, then he would.
