cablebelly
well poised
✃
VIOLENT UPBRINGING
October 24th, 2079
When they were open, Mrs. Lyet’s eyes were kind. She held a sort of lackadaisical nonchalance in her posture, as if the throes of age had softened her steel will into a more pliable silver. For a school run so tightly, Lyet seemed to float on by, and the irony of this, when she was lucid, did not seem lost on her. Yet something put Mrs. Lyet high enough to remain untouched by the suffocating rigidity of Vochertepp.
Perhaps it was her ability. A woman with super strength was sure to feel more comfortable in a dangerous world, and a woman old enough to have practiced her ability all her life was sure to be a master. Or, maybe it was what she had done with her power. Her career as The Strongwoman, a lifetime of thwarting evil, embarking on treacherous missions, cultivating the positive metahuman image. Maybe it was just her age, her decaying body, her years at Vochertepp granting her a reverence that no one attempted to disturb since they figured it’d be easier to wait her out.
But while Lyet had all the tell-tale signs of an old body, thin white hair, sun spotted skin, stretched hands and cheeks, her mind was sharp, and the brightness in her blue-grey eyes was impossible to miss.
She was thumbing through the stack of letters, none the wiser to the way they had flown around the room minutes before. In her right hand was a finely crafted stamp dipped in red, branded with the Vochertepp insignia, and to her left, half the stack of letters marked as approved. Beside her, a steaming mug of coffee as she lounged comfortably in her chair behind the desk. Mrs. Lyet looked up to the two star students entering her room, and a small smile stretched her lips.
“Germaine, Delano. Nice to see you.” She gestured to one of the many seats in front of her, putting down the stamp and letter she held in her hand. “I know I can always rely on you two to keep my classroom in order. What can I do for you?” Taking a sip of her drink, she turned her full attention to the two. Her brow raised at Germaine’s tentative words, and almost before the girl finished speaking, looked to Delano to fill the blanks.
The change in her eyes was easy to miss. At first, her warm welcoming smile was unwavering. Delano spoke, and she did not flinch away from his gaze, not once. He continued speaking, and her jaw moved. He finished speaking, and she sat back in her chair. Through it all, the only gesture that ever gave away any of her true emotions had flashed just for a moment across those blue-gray eyes. The elderly, wisened, tired kindness, had been disturbed by a dark thunder.
Lyet leaned forward in her seat, lips pressed together. She took her time before she spoke, enough to make Delano wonder if he’d angered her, or if it was just the situation itself that had changed her demeanor. Delano could try to pass the blame onto his classmates, their transgressions, or even call it Lyet’s own guilt, but he would feel that the blade of her intensity was directed at him. Her gaze was so striking it was poised to cut, the sharpened edge pressing dangerously against his iris, threatening to pop it and let it bleed into the murky depths of his glow. In this moment, Mrs. Lyet did not think anyone guilty except those sitting before her.
“Delano,” Lyet said, and her voice was like lightning across a roiling sky. “You seem to have allowed the class to stumble onto matters of school record keeping. Nothing more.” Her jaw was tight. “You know better than to question the way we run things at this establishment.”
The storm clouds parted. She glanced back at Germaine, trying to gage her role in this mess. Then, her wiry fingers shuffled over the stack of unstamped letters. At this point, she already knew it lacked a document addressed to her. The corner of her lip curled in disdain, before she smothered it down. Mrs. Lyet looked between the two of them pointedly, and cleared her throat. “If you could please retrieve that letter for me, I’d appreciate it.” Though her words gave the illusion of choice, her tone left no room to argue.
If they did not rise fast enough, she would speak only one more word. “Now.”
boo.
fin
As Louis skittered away, he began to thumb through the files that he clutched to his chest. He was holding onto them like life support, and peeled through them with shaky hands, processing nothing but searching for something, a memory that had been stolen, a feeling that lay just on the tip of his tongue. He felt hot and feverish, as if all the explosion he’d tried to shove down was bubbling, blooming, preparing to blow. Stasia’s words were chasing him, and he always wanted to run. The letter? If Sylvie had it, he wanted it so desperately that to hold it in his hands that it might have made him vomit.
Something hit him square in the chest. A little paper airplane, and instantly he felt that bile rise. His gaze jerked in the direction it had come from, a flash of red frizz ducking behind the unbothered form of what he assumed was Tiffany Markham. He knew Clover very little, just in the glimpses of the days before his escape when she was sat behind Edith in their room crafting the most delicate little paper things. He had always appreciated the way she used her powers. Gentle, like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Something he’d never have.
Trembling, Louis unfolded the envelope, and found first the document that listed their demise, and secondly, a letter from the only piece of humanity on the outside world he had left. His father.
Louis didn’t get much farther than that before a hand gripped him. Edith.
His eyes softened. Louis revelled in the touch, the hold of a friend grasping on to stop him from falling off the deep end, a comfort he had deprived himself of until it was already far too late. Her hold was light, but it was the intention behind it that felt stronger than ever, and for a moment, it looked like Edith had managed to grab onto a piece of Louis that was about to disappear.
His lips parted. No sound came out. In the early days of life after escape, his mind had been too fogged to tell them anything of what happened. They had asked, because they were kind souls, good friends, but he couldn’t say anything. Not without endangering them, not without dooming them, and not without reliving what he’d done. Once he’d discovered the gravity of his actions, there could be no one to come with him. He’d swore it to himself. But Louis was unraveling, and Vochertepp’s plans were accelerating, and even Louis’ silence would not be enough to keep them from their fates.
That softness disappeared as a wave of wild fear crushed the wounded look in his gaze, and he jerked away from her, dreading what might happen if her fingers grazed unclothed skin. Papers dropped from his hands, Lyet’s letter, his father’s, Jefferson’s files sputtered about, but Louis could look at nothing except the small girl with the heart of gold before him. Tumultuous emotions meant that the beast trickled out, and if anything ever happened to Edith by his hand, Louis didn’t know what he’d do.
It should have been simple. Push out a lame excuse. Put the pieces together on his lonesome. Try to stay ahead of them, so that they wouldn’t fall victim like he did. Except, Louis was already out of time. Today’s extraction date loomed over him menacingly, and he’d already tried to run. Louis attempted to speak. To explain it away, to make it make sense, to beg them to leave it be. Instead, something much stranger occured.
Louis pulled away, and his hand did not come with him.
There was a beat of heavy silence as Louis raised his stump up to his eyes. Instead of gushing red, it swirled black, the dark blood viscous and gelatinous. It seemed almost protective, as his wrist wasn’t exploding into a firework of death by blood loss, and his severed hand dripped the same sort of goo from Edith’s end, one splotch landing on the document he’d dropped below, hand still frozen in the position it had been when she grabbed Louis’ forearm. Warmth and all.
There was surprise in Louis’ posture, in the way that he tensed and stiffened, but a certain slowness marred his movements in a way that made it seem like he had almost expected to fall apart all this time, and now that it was real, it wasn’t all that shocking. Most couldn’t quite put into words how Louis’ ability worked, but all those sitting at the willow tree could be sure that nothing about a detached hand was in his powerset. In Edith’s hands, his fingers twitched, and it took a while for Louis to even realize that it hurt. He looked at his stump, he looked at his hand, and he looked at all those at the willow tree.
“You want to know what they’re doing?” Louis whispered, eyes dim and lifeless, less of a person truly dying and more of a person newly and fully defeated, “They’re killing us.”
Maverick.
mikaluvkitties
stellamaris
ravensunset
blue-jay
listener
When they were open, Mrs. Lyet’s eyes were kind. She held a sort of lackadaisical nonchalance in her posture, as if the throes of age had softened her steel will into a more pliable silver. For a school run so tightly, Lyet seemed to float on by, and the irony of this, when she was lucid, did not seem lost on her. Yet something put Mrs. Lyet high enough to remain untouched by the suffocating rigidity of Vochertepp.
Perhaps it was her ability. A woman with super strength was sure to feel more comfortable in a dangerous world, and a woman old enough to have practiced her ability all her life was sure to be a master. Or, maybe it was what she had done with her power. Her career as The Strongwoman, a lifetime of thwarting evil, embarking on treacherous missions, cultivating the positive metahuman image. Maybe it was just her age, her decaying body, her years at Vochertepp granting her a reverence that no one attempted to disturb since they figured it’d be easier to wait her out.
But while Lyet had all the tell-tale signs of an old body, thin white hair, sun spotted skin, stretched hands and cheeks, her mind was sharp, and the brightness in her blue-grey eyes was impossible to miss.
She was thumbing through the stack of letters, none the wiser to the way they had flown around the room minutes before. In her right hand was a finely crafted stamp dipped in red, branded with the Vochertepp insignia, and to her left, half the stack of letters marked as approved. Beside her, a steaming mug of coffee as she lounged comfortably in her chair behind the desk. Mrs. Lyet looked up to the two star students entering her room, and a small smile stretched her lips.
“Germaine, Delano. Nice to see you.” She gestured to one of the many seats in front of her, putting down the stamp and letter she held in her hand. “I know I can always rely on you two to keep my classroom in order. What can I do for you?” Taking a sip of her drink, she turned her full attention to the two. Her brow raised at Germaine’s tentative words, and almost before the girl finished speaking, looked to Delano to fill the blanks.
The change in her eyes was easy to miss. At first, her warm welcoming smile was unwavering. Delano spoke, and she did not flinch away from his gaze, not once. He continued speaking, and her jaw moved. He finished speaking, and she sat back in her chair. Through it all, the only gesture that ever gave away any of her true emotions had flashed just for a moment across those blue-gray eyes. The elderly, wisened, tired kindness, had been disturbed by a dark thunder.
Lyet leaned forward in her seat, lips pressed together. She took her time before she spoke, enough to make Delano wonder if he’d angered her, or if it was just the situation itself that had changed her demeanor. Delano could try to pass the blame onto his classmates, their transgressions, or even call it Lyet’s own guilt, but he would feel that the blade of her intensity was directed at him. Her gaze was so striking it was poised to cut, the sharpened edge pressing dangerously against his iris, threatening to pop it and let it bleed into the murky depths of his glow. In this moment, Mrs. Lyet did not think anyone guilty except those sitting before her.
“Delano,” Lyet said, and her voice was like lightning across a roiling sky. “You seem to have allowed the class to stumble onto matters of school record keeping. Nothing more.” Her jaw was tight. “You know better than to question the way we run things at this establishment.”
The storm clouds parted. She glanced back at Germaine, trying to gage her role in this mess. Then, her wiry fingers shuffled over the stack of unstamped letters. At this point, she already knew it lacked a document addressed to her. The corner of her lip curled in disdain, before she smothered it down. Mrs. Lyet looked between the two of them pointedly, and cleared her throat. “If you could please retrieve that letter for me, I’d appreciate it.” Though her words gave the illusion of choice, her tone left no room to argue.
If they did not rise fast enough, she would speak only one more word. “Now.”
boo.
fin
✃
As Louis skittered away, he began to thumb through the files that he clutched to his chest. He was holding onto them like life support, and peeled through them with shaky hands, processing nothing but searching for something, a memory that had been stolen, a feeling that lay just on the tip of his tongue. He felt hot and feverish, as if all the explosion he’d tried to shove down was bubbling, blooming, preparing to blow. Stasia’s words were chasing him, and he always wanted to run. The letter? If Sylvie had it, he wanted it so desperately that to hold it in his hands that it might have made him vomit.
Something hit him square in the chest. A little paper airplane, and instantly he felt that bile rise. His gaze jerked in the direction it had come from, a flash of red frizz ducking behind the unbothered form of what he assumed was Tiffany Markham. He knew Clover very little, just in the glimpses of the days before his escape when she was sat behind Edith in their room crafting the most delicate little paper things. He had always appreciated the way she used her powers. Gentle, like the flutter of a butterfly’s wings. Something he’d never have.
Trembling, Louis unfolded the envelope, and found first the document that listed their demise, and secondly, a letter from the only piece of humanity on the outside world he had left. His father.
Louis didn’t get much farther than that before a hand gripped him. Edith.
His eyes softened. Louis revelled in the touch, the hold of a friend grasping on to stop him from falling off the deep end, a comfort he had deprived himself of until it was already far too late. Her hold was light, but it was the intention behind it that felt stronger than ever, and for a moment, it looked like Edith had managed to grab onto a piece of Louis that was about to disappear.
His lips parted. No sound came out. In the early days of life after escape, his mind had been too fogged to tell them anything of what happened. They had asked, because they were kind souls, good friends, but he couldn’t say anything. Not without endangering them, not without dooming them, and not without reliving what he’d done. Once he’d discovered the gravity of his actions, there could be no one to come with him. He’d swore it to himself. But Louis was unraveling, and Vochertepp’s plans were accelerating, and even Louis’ silence would not be enough to keep them from their fates.
That softness disappeared as a wave of wild fear crushed the wounded look in his gaze, and he jerked away from her, dreading what might happen if her fingers grazed unclothed skin. Papers dropped from his hands, Lyet’s letter, his father’s, Jefferson’s files sputtered about, but Louis could look at nothing except the small girl with the heart of gold before him. Tumultuous emotions meant that the beast trickled out, and if anything ever happened to Edith by his hand, Louis didn’t know what he’d do.
It should have been simple. Push out a lame excuse. Put the pieces together on his lonesome. Try to stay ahead of them, so that they wouldn’t fall victim like he did. Except, Louis was already out of time. Today’s extraction date loomed over him menacingly, and he’d already tried to run. Louis attempted to speak. To explain it away, to make it make sense, to beg them to leave it be. Instead, something much stranger occured.
Louis pulled away, and his hand did not come with him.
There was a beat of heavy silence as Louis raised his stump up to his eyes. Instead of gushing red, it swirled black, the dark blood viscous and gelatinous. It seemed almost protective, as his wrist wasn’t exploding into a firework of death by blood loss, and his severed hand dripped the same sort of goo from Edith’s end, one splotch landing on the document he’d dropped below, hand still frozen in the position it had been when she grabbed Louis’ forearm. Warmth and all.
There was surprise in Louis’ posture, in the way that he tensed and stiffened, but a certain slowness marred his movements in a way that made it seem like he had almost expected to fall apart all this time, and now that it was real, it wasn’t all that shocking. Most couldn’t quite put into words how Louis’ ability worked, but all those sitting at the willow tree could be sure that nothing about a detached hand was in his powerset. In Edith’s hands, his fingers twitched, and it took a while for Louis to even realize that it hurt. He looked at his stump, he looked at his hand, and he looked at all those at the willow tree.
“You want to know what they’re doing?” Louis whispered, eyes dim and lifeless, less of a person truly dying and more of a person newly and fully defeated, “They’re killing us.”
Maverick.
mikaluvkitties
stellamaris
ravensunset
blue-jay
listener
∴
