Light of May ::: an original roleplay

Who: Drina and Troy
Where: shooting range in Ann Arbor
When: just before 4pm

( I can't see that I got red hands )

Who: Isaiah and OPEN
Where: The grocery store
When: Late afternoon


( But right now I'll take what I can get out of my life. )

Who: Trent and Venus
Where: Venus' apartment
When: Evening

Venus had tried scrying last night, but had no luck. She'd been too tired, her head too fuzzy. Her eyes had felt like they were lined with sandpaper, and every time they started to shift out of focus they'd snapped shut on her. She'd finally caved and crawled into bed with Trent. During the day she went back to the school, but she got Trent and left before she started to feel too tired. She was determined. She changed out of her clothes of the day and into an old shirt of Trent's, and grabbed what she needed from the bedside table. A small, mirrored bowl she used for reading. She filled it with water from the bathroom sink, and went back to her bed. She grabbed a large, flat photography book from the shelf, and set it in the middle of the bed. She put the bowl on top of that. She took a deep breath, crawled onto the bed, and went about the slow process of making herself comfortable. She sat indian style in the center of the bed, crouching over the bowl. She forced every muscle she didn't need to relax. She stared into the waters until her eyes shifted out of focus and she saw not the water but through the water. And then in time rather than her own reflection in the mirrored surface, everything started to fade in together.

She concentrated on the school. She needed a focus, and she couldn't choose between Kyle or Lotti, so she kept her terms broader. The gym. She hadn't gone to that school but she'd been inside it for games before. The gym. She needed to see the gym. The gym. The gym. ( The gym. )

WHO | Harper & Kahlan
WHERE | Outside of the high school
WHEN | Before lunchtime

( So, are you the one making the wall or are you trying to bust in? )

WHO | Katia & Nikita
WHERE | Nikita's house --> Heme
WHEN | Night
NOTES | Dialogue in italics is spoken in Russian.
WARNINGS | Minimal violence, sexual themes.

( Besides, Katia didn't show up in Scarlet Oak to watch her childe squander herself on another vampire. )

Who: Aiden and James (and Lee the familiar)
Where: SOHS, Ballard House grounds later
When: Mid-morning

Aiden couldn't remember the last time things had just been normal. Ever since this Light of May thing it was just shit after shit after supernatural shit, and Aiden didn't know just how much more of this he could take. For a long while things had been bad - way, way worse than before he'd found James again, if he was honest. Back then he didn't have to worry about anyone but his familiar; it was easy going from hunt to hunt with the lads, living one day to the next with a backpack to his name. After James, though, and no matter how hard he'd tried to avoid that outcome, he had latched onto her even more than the first time around. He cared, now, he imagined future scenarios, he was open and raw and he was, first and foremost, completely useless. After the bridge things he could only imagine would come rushing back into James' psyche every so often, leaving her a mess and him a useless little blob of a man. At some point, however senseless he knew it was, Aiden had begun resenting James for their deteriorating relationship. And that was the worst, because obviously he knew it wasn't her fault at all. Quite the opposite. But Aiden wasn't good at blaming the invisible, the abstract. He had nothing and no one to lash out on over James' trauma. No one, that was, but her.

( But now I feel your stress )

Who: Sam and Jo.
Where: SOHS.
When: Early evening, after this.

The house had been empty by the time he’d made his way back there and he’d made sure to change back to human form before heading inside the house again. Someone had left a blanket on the back porch for him and he’d used it to make his way up to his room to get dressed, wasting as little time as possible. It wasn’t until he was about to leave the house that he realised something. People used keys to lock houses, didn’t they? Sam didn’t have keys to the Summers house. If he left then the house would be empty and unlocked and that didn’t seem secure. That didn’t seem right.

It was as he was worrying about this, turning a little on the spot as he tried to puzzle out a solution, that he saw the bowl and inside it a scrap of paper serving as a note. On top of the note was a metal key and a plastic keyring attached with the house’s address upon it. The note read: To lock the house, in case you feel like taking a walk. Sam wasn’t sure whose handwriting it was or the paper carried the scent of so many members of the Summers family that it was impossible to pin it down that way. Someone had had enough foresight to leave a key for him though, and after only a few moments of hesitation he scooped it out of the bowl and put it to use, tucking it deep, deep down into the very bottom of his pocket afterwards so that he wouldn’t lose it. Several times as he made his way from the house to the school where the Summers pack had congregated he checked it was still there, settling his hand against the small bulge in his pocket or digging his hand inside to feel the shape of the key, the slightest bite of its metal teeth, the smoothness of the plastic of the labelled keyring.

Sam was a little short of breath when he reached the school and for a moment when he got there he lost it altogether. There were so many people and as he stood there taking it all in he doubted himself, doubted the urgency with which he had come here. Was it really so important to tell someone he’d seen another wolf? That other wolf hadn’t attacked, hadn’t crossed the invisible line into Summers territory. Maybe he shouldn’t have come.

There were just so many people, more than Sam had had to deal with in a while. Standing there with one hand pushed deep into his pocket and his other nervously wringing around the length of scarf hanging from around his neck Sam strongly considered turning around on the spot and heading back to the house.

Who: Teddy and Slevin (and Boo, NPC).
Where: Teddy’s room at the motel/hotel Omega are staying at.
When: Early evening, around the same time as this.

They were getting low on painkillers. That was all Teddy kept thinking as he reached for the bottle he’d set beside his workstation in his room. It had been a simple desk with complimentary stationary at one point before their arrival but he had made short work of converting it and now it looked like every techie hacker’s dream. Wiring tucked out of the way, monitors and harddrives and keyboards, everyone someone in his position could ever want or need. Right now though it wasn’t bringing him nearly as much simple joy as it usually did, not when he was taxing himself the way he had been since that stupid bubble had popped up around that stupid school. The bottle in his hand rattled distinctly and when he popped the lid off he saw that there were, in fact, only a small amount of pills left inside. Teddy sighed and checked his watch. It had been long enough since his last dose that he could take more.

He would have to get up from the desk in order to get a glass of water. No one else was allowed to have food or drink close to his gear and Teddy was anything but a hypocrite on that front, not when a lot of the equipment was worth more than the manager of the motel made in a year. Maybe that was an exaggeration but he was past the point of caring. Looking down at the pills in his palm he decided he didn’t need water. He hadn’t for the last dose either. Popping them in his mouth he swallowed them dry and then pushed his glasses up from his face with his fingers which he went on to use to rub his eyes with. They were aching enough that he’d had to dig the glasses out of the drawer where he’d tucked them and it was with a sigh that he had done so. All the electronics at the school had sent his powers into overdrive to the point where a migraine had settled in and wasn’t showing any signs of letting up any time soon, especially not since he was using them to try and come up with some kind of explanation. Fae, witches, elementals, demons, angels, there were so many branches of the supernatural to investigate, so many possible explanations, that Teddy had barely gotten any sleep since this whole thing had started in favour of continuing the search.

Time was getting away from him, which he only realised when he felt a distinctly familiar tug on the hem of his pants leg. When he looked down his glasses fell forward and he had to fumble to catch them before they tumbled right off his head altogether. A small leonine face looked up at him, the material of his pants still hooked on sharp little teeth. “Hey,” Teddy complained, reaching down with one hand to prize his clothing back from the cub. “How many times, huh? No chewing or tugging or gnawing of any kind.” He paused then, brow furrowed and eyes narrowed. “When did you get here? No, scratch that. How did you get here?” Last he’d checked the door had been well and truly sealed shut.

Who: Savvy and Kiley.
Where: SOHS.
When: Early evening.

Savvy didn’t know why she hadn’t thought of it sooner. It was dangerous, certainly, but there was always an inherent danger to using her powers to any degree, regardless of whether or not there was a gigantic barrier of some sort of magic in her way. She’d been in the middle of finishing off a particular intricate -- in her opinion, at least -- design on one of the restaurant’s accent walls when it had occurred to her and she’d almost had a genuine Eureka! moment to accompany it. It was all she’d been able to do to keep hold of the paintbrush in her grasp when it had hit her, practically with the force of a freight train, and as it was she’d made a rather embarrassing squeak of a sound that had had one of the other people in the room look her way as though she’d was either insane or had spotted a spider or some sort of errant rodent. Savvy had smiled at them in a manner she’d intended to be disarming but if the way they’d hurriedly shuffled out of the area was any indication it had probably come across more psychotic than anything else. Oops? Oh well.

By the time she was done with her work for the day she’d been beside herself with what she could only call excitement and she’d practically bolted all the way to the school as fast as her legs could carry her in order to find the one person who would be interested in the idea. Okay, the rest of pack around said person might be interested in the outcome, if it worked, but it was one person in particular that Savvy wanted to pitch it to.

“Kiley!” she’d exclaimed when she’d gotten close enough to spot her friend and that distinctive head of red hair, raising one hand in the air to wave it to help get the other young woman’s attention. God, she probably looked like an idiot. Hey, nothing new there, right?

WHO: Lorenzo & Castel
WHEN: Mid-day
WHERE: Some cafe in Scarlet Oak

( Please, you'll be the last to see me rot. )

WHO | Lida & Jackson + NPCs
WHERE | Scarlet Oak Community Park
WHEN | Early evening
WARNINGS | Violence

( The desire to snap the neck of every person gathered around the high school was still boiling just beneath the surface. )

WHO: Daphne & Gabriel
WHERE: Hotel di Sei Ali
WHEN: Morning

( The better to...something, something...who are you? )

Who: Charles & Fiona
Where: Grocery store
When: Afternoon

( 'I'll be real quick, I swear.' )

Who: Zeke and Brodie
Where: Outside of SOHS
When: Afternoon


(  'Cause we will lose and we wanna stay the way are, the way we've been for far too long. )

Who: Brendan and Fable (and Fable's familiar Yoko, NPC'd)
Where: Fable's greenhouse
When: Afternoon


( I found a tidal wave begging to tear down the dawn. )

Who: Logan, Maya, & Maxine
Where: Scarlet Oak High School -- the Barrier
When: dusk, around 6:30pm

Though he'd stayed behind when Omega had originally gone to scout out the happenings at the high school, Logan could honestly say his curiosity had gotten the better of him. He wasn't even sure if his skills would even be useful, but either way, he had gone out with a few of the others to study the site. There were several groups milling about where they were able, with the National Guard keeping up a loose cordon to restrict access to the barrier itself. Which, if Logan had any say in it, would not be the case if he felt he needed to get closer. How in the world would he be able to reach the barrier if those uniforms stood in his way? He scanned the area, taking in the way the military was switching out their people every so often. It wasn't like he could just sneak up on them, but there must be a way to get closer. Pulling that train of thought up short, Logan squinted in the direction of the barrier, brow furrowed and gaze intense. Turning his head to the side, at the same time that he kept his eyes fixed on the object of fascination, Logan bit down on his lower lip before forming the question he wanted to ask.

"When you came here initially, were the authorities blocking the entrance this way?" He addressed those members of Omega who had actually gone on the reconnaissance mission. Because a thought had just occurred to Logan, and he was damned if he was about to let the idea of someone barring him access dissuade him. He watched as a member of one of the other groups milling about was stopped and turned away when they got too close. Damn it. Anyone in his group could see how alight with purpose Logan was with the idea that he might be able to read something by touching the barrier. He was usually much more withdrawn and reserved, but he was very nearly trembling with his thoughts. Could he use his Finding abilities? He didn't know anyone inside, so that would be a bit of a drawback. That, and he didn't happen to have anything he might use as a focus, nor did he think that any of the other people about would lend something from one of their children. That would just be an odd question to ask aloud. It wasn't that Logan was shy or ashamed of his skills, but he knew that Omega as a whole needed to keep a low profile. In case the others with him didn't already know what he was planning, Logan turned fully towards those who had come along with him. Intensity in his eyes, Logan felt a wry smile find his lips. "Any objections to me trying to touch the barrier?" Really, it would be up to the people who were much more capable than him at protecting the group to decide, should his idea prove to be less than ideal.

Who: Nathaniel & Cels
Where: Outside SOHS
When: Mid-morning

( Nathaniel had been aware something was very wrong for a while. )

Who: Sam and Cat.
Where: The edge of Summers territory, in the woods.
When: Late afternoon.

Weather had never been an issue for Sam. Rain, snow, hail, the pack in Montana had gone out in all conditions and they had forced him along with them. As Omega he was to do as he was told by anyone and everyone and he had done so, in later years too cowed and blinded by fear to do anything else. Omegas obeyed. It was as simple as that.

It was so different here, almost as if the Summers didn’t know what Omega meant. Or maybe it wasn’t that, maybe it was something else entirely. Sam was still struggling to even begin to wrap his mind around it, it filled him with a strange kind of anxiety to try and so he didn’t allow himself to do that. In the end that only perpetuated the vicious cycle, Sam’s confusion reared up in full force all over again when any one of them did something even remotely kind or generous. Mrs. Summers had set his breakfast in front of him that morning and thrown his world into a kind of bewildered turmoil all over again despite the fact that she had done that exact same thing every morning since August had brought him back to the house. None of it made any sense to Sam. Not a bit.

Being a wolf always made sense though. It was simple, clear-cut, everything was black and white and there were rules and boundaries. It was easy. Back in Montana Sam had spent a fair amount of his time as a wolf, it had felt safer to him than his human form, and though his white pelt bore subtle signs of skin-deep scars that would never truly fade it had always been that way. Though it was against his nature, his very existence as an Omega, to defend himself, knowing that he could was reassuring. Only once had he made the mistake of turning those teeth of his on a more dominant member of the pack back in Montana. Every time they had gone back up to that site in the mountains Sam had been able to scent the place where he had made that mistake, where they had left him bleeding in the snow to wake half-frozen and alone, forced to limp and stumble his way back to the house. He had been sick for more than a week after that, coughing and aching and feverish, struggling to breathe, shaking so hard that he thought he would shake himself to pieces. Not once had he asked any of them for help. Sam had known better than that by then.

Sam didn’t think the Summers were like that and somewhere deep down he knew that his confusion surrounding that fact was wrong somehow, backwards in a way that should have made him sad. They let him go out on his own, didn’t make him ask for permission even though he had done so out of habit and would probably continue to do so for a long time to come. When he had felt the grass beneath his paws all those confusions and troubles had been left behind with his clothes on the porch, abandoned like his human form for something so much simpler and purer. As he had reached the trees he had paused and glanced back. Mrs. Summers had been on the porch, picking up the clothes he had left there, folding them as she did so, lifting her gaze towards him with a smile before turning to go back into the house.

That had been almost an hour ago. Sam’s exploration had taken him at a slow and curious pace through the trees, sniffing here and snuffling there, investigating the mouths of warrens and holes nestled in the roots of trees where small animals had made their homes. His investigations would have continued in that vein well into the evening if a scent that didn’t belong hadn’t reached him, accompanied by an ice cold flash of fear through his belly.

Sam’s head lifted from the base of the tree he had been sniffing around and his ears rocked fully forward, twitching like his nose as he tried to pinpoint the direction in which the other wolf would appear from. Without even realising he had reached the edge of Summers territory. He didn’t recognise the scent of the other wolf but that didn’t mean anything. The Montana pack could have grown since he left. That fear twisted and knotted in his stomach, tightening uncomfortably, lowering him warily to the ground with his bright eyes fixed on the point where he was certain the other wolf would appear any moment now.

Who: August and Trent
When: Early Morning
Where: SOHS grounds

( he was still keeping at least one promise: he hadn’t left the school grounds since he arrived )

Who: Jackson and Tessa (and her familiar Inaki too, NPC'd)
When: Early afternoon
Where: Tessa's apartment


( Elevator ladies in the parking lot. )