exsilium | 10 △ VIDEO; looking fine and augmented

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10 △ VIDEO; looking fine and augmented

[ Considering Adam spent the last two weeks as his old self, that is, the person he was before this and that incident, he takes it remarkably well. The memory of actual, feeling hands is still fresh in his mind, although he hadn't even been able to appreciate it much due to it having been nothing special at the time. It's easier to compare now, however—flesh to metal, feeling to unfeeling, weak to powerful. And for once, the lingering emotion of something having been taken from him against his will doesn't flare up again.

It's different. Much like a disabled person revisits the memory and place where everything happened and changed to maybe, finally, find some closure.

Things happen.

You don't always get a say in it. All you can do is deal, adapt and progress, because ultimately, that's what life has always been about. ]

***

I see everyone's quick to mope or make apologies. Excuse me if I refrain from joining your ranks this time, seeing as I came out of this with a few cute girls, free meals and a videogame—all things I didn't ask for, but I'm still not sharing. The game, maybe, if you ask nicely, but it's somewhat dated. So unless you can appreciate classics, don't even bother.

[ HI everyone did you miss this butt he's sure you did. ]

Oh, and here's your general PSA, directed at no one in particular, especially not the guys around the precinct: get into the habits of locking your tablets if you're just gonna leave 'em lying around. The next time I find one I'm gonna post the entirety of its porn folder to the network tagged with your name. And before you go, oh, that silly Adam Jensen, of course my porn folder is locked and hidden slash I'm an innocent virgin who doesn't even have a porn folder, honest--

Don't make the mistake of thinking that's gonna stop me.

[ Private to Samus ]

You free tonight?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

( She laughs, relenting. )

I'm not in a rush. I promise.

... Well in the end, you can do what you want. I really just can't stand seeing cute girls end up disappointed or in trouble.

It happens off and on, but it's okay! You live and you learn and you look for the next opportunity to present itself and stuff.

[ NO COLLETTE YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND

IT'S LIKE you know how for women they can feel their biological clock ticking and they develop MOMFEELINGS and its like that for adam only with DADFEELINGS

augh

sigh !! ]

Yeah, yeah. Just be careful and stop trusting every stranger offering you cookies or something.

Is this a PSA on Jesse being a meth dealer? Miles already gave me that one, though he was less straightforward about it.

Thanks for confirming that for me.

[ ugh. meth of all possible drugs. ]

Do you know how dangerous that stuff is?

Mom was a nurse. Think I haven't heard the worst of what every drug on market in the 90's does to you?

Stop being dismissive like it's not a big deal. If your mom's told you all about that crap, apparently she hasn't done a very good job of it. Either that, or you're just being thick.

( And she pointedly looks away from the camera. )

I'm not being dismissive.

( Her smile drops off, and she does look serious... to the left. Her tone is mild, getting a bit angry right toward the end. )

Don't say that about my mom. You have no idea. Okay? You don't know.

( But it's calm again as she points out: )

What needs to stop is the Initiative allowing him to do what he's doing.

[ --She's right. ]

...Okay, that was a cheap shot, I'm sorry.

[ But she also needs to stop with the devil-may-care attitude. He likes that about her usually but sometimes it's really not appropriate. ]

They're allowing it? [ What. WHAT. ] Have you been taking any?

Who do you think gave him his lab and --

( But she stops abruptly when he asks a question she never thought needed to be ask. Collette's not good at hiding her emotions. She looks back to the camera abruptly, shock written all over her face. Hurt, too.

Like he could think that about her for a moment. )

I --

( But her voice cracks, somewhere between anger and sadness, and she doesn't say anything else. She just ends the feed.

She's not gratifying him with a response to that. )

Collette!

[ ... being a Dad is hard.

He's going to call back, repeatedly. Now he's just angry, too, not sure what to think and what that response even implied. ]

( Not answering, and soon after having tossed her tablet on the coffee table, she's not going to be home at all. She wants to scream, wants to do something proactive, because it hurts and she doesn't know who she's supposed to talk to about it. If Isaac were here, he'd -- he'd say she could talk to him about anything.

God, she missed Isaac fiercely right then, propping open her window with the length of wood she uses when she's going out in eagle morph. Stop watch employed to shave thirty-five seconds off morph time, it's not long before a vacant chair and carelessly tossed extraneous clothing litters her bedroom floor.

She very rarely is messy like this. It's careless, and it's emotional, for her to leave her personal room as something difficult to navigate, but it hurts in a way she doesn't want to put entirely to words to have someone think she's that stupid -- she's that desperate to escape -- that the reason she spends time with Jesse is...

An eagle flaps wings madly to gain altitude coming out of a fourth floor window. She struggles to find a thermal, exhaling when she does, feeling her metaphysical chest still tight with the frustration and other emotions.

When she screams, it's an eagle's cry across a dreary, gray city. Sharp and misplaced, lost among the city sounds and the bustle of day to day life, she's at least glad enough to pull out of that space trapped down with everyone else and pretend, for a while, that this could be all she needs. )

[ Unfortunately, like most adults, Adam is completely unaware of those complicated teenagers feelings and he's not at all sure if he said something wrong. As far as he's concerned, Collette might as well be running away because he was right in his assumption. It's not at all a matter of trust, but a matter of kids sometimes doing stupid shit because he's been there. And his parents had given him just as much trouble sometimes, because they cared.

After having been in her room, Adam's made his way on top of the roof. He's internally marked and tracked the eagle circling above.

Yeah he's gonna be remaining right here, for you to see. You gotta come down sometime missy, either here or somewhere else, because he images flying to be getting quite exhausting after a while. ]

( Adam was the lucky trigger on a lot of what had been weighing Collette down. She sees him, sooner or later, circling in a spiral that goes ever higher until she glides along, waiting for the next one.

It's more or less why she's up here. Adam's accusation should be laughable, and usually she would laugh it off. It's been a long last few months, and a tiring last few weeks, topped off by three hours leading to an inevitable bombing that they had no way of really helping the people they were sent back in time to rob escape.

Fighting in Russia had been much the same. What made any of this right? She doesn't know, and thinking on it gets confusing, and it doesn't fit into easy boxes where she can shelve what's unimportant and focus on what she prefers to focus on in life.

This whole war, even that makes no sense. She feels like the belief she has in what the Initiative says -- it's not complete, but does she need to see more? See these worlds the UE is supposed to be stealing from, if it's still suffering under the effects of what the Initiative has wrought in the past? Yeah. Maybe that's it. Her eyes rift toward the UE, and she feels that may be part of the answer.

Losing herself to those thoughts, the things really bugging her below the passing affront of being accused of something ludicrous, calms her down. James would have better answers, but she has to accept the fact James isn't there. She's got different people here. Caesar, who she wants to talk to, she finds, considering these thoughts in her head. People like Miles an Barnaby, and people like Adam.

She climbs higher, looking off toward the coast line, and the expanse that would be the continent beyond it. Is it what Adam said that bugs her, or is it just the thing that finally got everything else to collapse in her house of cards?

She told herself before she'd be more responsible. She owned up to what she egged Sollux on to do, she knew even if the Initiative dismissed her that Caesar was saying what felt more right. There were consequences for the things she did, just like anyone else, and she had to think about those. It was serious. She didn't have to turn into James in order to be responsible for how she conducted her life. She didn't have to laugh less just to convince people she didn't live as carefree as she wanted to seem.

Folding her wings in, she made a long pass over the apartment complex, turning wide at the far end and figuring eighting as she came lower and lower. She can run if running is what she really needs. Or she can talk, she figures, and at least correct one stupid assumption that she'd overreacted to.

Fault, she thinks, is something everyone has to have. It doesn't feel nice, but it does feel right.

Coming to an awkward landing on the edge of the roof, she bird hops and flaps her wings to coordinate and keep from tumbling forward and landing on the roof itself. Secured of her position, she pulled her head up, checked for Adam, and then settled in. )

< Hey. >

[ Adam can be patient, occasionally, if only because he has no other choice. But he hates waiting. Hates remaining idle, in fact; right now he'd just like to yell at her to come down right the fuck now and explain herself. But when he stops to think for a minute, he knows that's not gonna make things better, just worse.

So, he waits, wondering, still having not a single clue. He really hopes its just an overreaction and NOT what he's dreading it to be, that he was right in his assumption and she felt caught.

After a while, his eyes start to hurt, oddly enough, but he's not leaving. Adam Jensen is known to be persistent and stubborn if nothing else, more so then a sixteen year old hormonal teenager. He can outlast her.

And apparently, he does. When the eagle lands, he wastes no time just picking it up to tuck it under an arm. Because she can hardly morph back into her human self up here without clothes, so he's gonna move them both back inside into her room.

Rude, yeah, but that's how he is. ]

Don't do that again. It's not very fair.

( Collette protests to the being picked up, mostly because now she feels like some sort of weird birdy luggage. )

< Woah! Hey now, that's just handsy! >

( She makes herself laugh, not struggling against him because she knows his augmentations and it'd feel strangely worse to have him try to cart her off as a girl. )

< No, it wasn't. It's also not that fair to make crazy assumptions about people! So I'm sorry, and you totally owe me an apology too. >

( She cranes her head enough to eye him with one impassive raptor eye. It's always a fierce regard, because that's inherently part of the bird. )

< I don't take drugs. Except when I need to, and those are prescribed by medical doctors after extremely bothersome procedures like spinal taps. Oh man, those things can hurt! >

( She doesn't have to force the lightness in tone that comes after her serious tone for her announcement of what she doesn't do. She does reach out with her beak to pull at whatever of his is in reach. Tug tug. Is he paying attention and not just hearing what he thinks he's afraid to hear? )

[ Well, she kind of is weird birdy luggage right now. And he's listening (and feeling relief), although he's not looking at the bird; he would really prefer to wait with the conversation until they're inside.

Well, he can hold off on an answer, at least. Back in her room, he places the bird package on the bed, and closes the window. ]

I'm gonna leave the room for a bit. Call me when you're done.

[ Yeeep and he does as he says. ]

( She's on the bed. Collette glances around her room, shakes her head, then waddles to the edge and hop-glides to the floor. Let her see... she probably needs shorts to be decent, and her sweatshirt back to fight off a chill. She wonders if Adam thinks she's seriously naked when she morphs.

It makes her giggle, such an absurdity. Nonetheless, once she's dragged the appropriate clothing back by her chair, she demorphs. Past that, it's a few minutes until she calls out: )

I'm more decent than I was!

( She supposes that was what Adam wanted to hear, though in entering, he'd be witnessing her climbing back into her chair. )

[ Well what's a guy supposed to think?

He waits, patiently, until she calls and considers that his cue that it's safe to enter now, so he does. If he was angry before, it's mostly dissipated by now. ]

Why did you do that? Just to scare me?

( Quizzical, then clamping a hand over her mouth to stifle involuntary laughter. )

Huh? No way! Sorry, but that's not how I roll.

( She lets her hands fall away from her face, still smiling a little. )

I needed to get out and clear my head. The timing just sucked.

... You could say that.

[ Because honestly... that really scared him for a number of reasons, and it led to a dumb argument with Samus on top of it, though he knows that was also bad timing on his part because he has other issues and problems when it comes to her.

He moves to sit on the bed with a sigh. ]

And did you manage to clear it?

( Watching him with curiosity, Collette opts to answer indirectly: )

Is what we're doing here right?

[ Wow. What brought that on? The drugs? How should he know she's thinking about stuff like that lately; she doesn't seem the type. ]

I don't know.

[ At least he's honest. ]

Guess it's something that everyone has to decide for themselves.

( She really isn't. That she is now is an indication of things piling up on her mind. )

However it is we need to decide? Like, with whatever we need to know to make those decisions? Or whatever we need to believe?

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