the-ouija-board-sent-me:

shakahnna:

the-ouija-board-sent-me:

Aurelie sat on the shore of the small grey colored beach near her home.  The water churned against the dark sky and she hummed softly to herself.  She picked up rocks throwing them with a strange grace.  Her eyes stayed focused in front of her, though it wasn’t her hands that were doing the throwing. 

Practice makes perfect, her friend had said, and she supposed it wasn’t a good idea to keep being afraid of this power.

Officer Shak Morgan wasn’t exactly sure why she was on babysitting duty. It couldn’t have been because of her charming personality. Actually, on second thought, it was exactly because of her charming personality. Obviously she was her usual wonderful self, but apart from that she was dire at stuff like this. Anything that involved people. She just didn’t have a lot of tolerance for weakness, or for things that involved being weak, like sleeping or taking painkillers or letting Umbrella scum walk. Which she meant literally.

Unfortunately, she was good at survival. She could always stay one step ahead of the company simply by being willing to do anything other than get herself killed. Six months living in a sewer was always better than a lead enema. Which meant she was pretty good at keeping people like her latest assignment safe. Even if they had to live in that sewer with her. Which they invariably did. Her orders specified alive. Happy didn’t come as standard.

She hadn’t known what to expect. The file photo stapled to the profile had been warped. Apparently, it had been the best of a bad bunch, but she hadn’t been able to make out a thing from it. When she’d shown it to one of the boy’s at the station, he’d told her he could see hands and faces and other weird shit. He’d actually seemed kind of freaked out and accused her of playing some kind of sick joke. She’d thought he must have been on the rag or something. Or maybe he’d been smoking those special cigarettes. She decided to find out and borrowed a packet from his desk.

She came around the back of the house to find the girl sitting on the shoreline, just in time to see a stone skimming out to sea.

“You her?” she asked, her cigarette flicking up and down between her lips as she spoke.

She smoked so much she’d perfected the art of keeping the filter on her lower lip without the use of her hand, leaving them free for more important activities like scratching herself and punching things.

“You the Gilbert girl?”

Aurelie turned at the words to see the red haired woman standing there with a cigarette in her mouth.  She nodded her head, the brown curls bouncing slight as she did so.  “Yes…I’m Aurelie.” She looked at her curiously.  “You’re lucky I don’t have attack dogs you know.” She said confused “But who are you?”  She took a few steps forward, crossing over the threshold into the grass.

Shak grinned. One of them was lucky she didn’t have dogs. Unless she’d wanted dog for dinner. Because it was only right to eat an animal if you were going to kill it. Or kick it to death, as the case may be.

She decided not to mention it, in case she had other pets they may need to eat later. Or maybe not even if they needed to. Sometimes food was good recreation.

“Don’t you know about the protection detail?” She groaned inwardly. She didn’t want to have to explain all this. That was someone else’s job. “There’s not another Aurelie Gilbert who lives on this street is there?”

She looked up and down the beach in search of another Aurelie Gilbert, one who already knew what was going on. While she was at it, she decided to look for one who already knew what was going to happen as well. Maybe one from the future. That would make this job a lot easier.

But, no such Aurelie Gilbert seemed to be forthcoming. “I’m Shak. I’m with the police. I’m your babysitter. Well, sort of with the police. Kind of like roadies are “with the band”. I do the police equivalent of carrying the speakers. When there’s no one else, and I mean absolutely no one else, I’m your man. Especially if it involves sewers. So, you either know something, saw something or did something. You probably didn’t do something. Or they wouldn’t have sent me to protect you. It would have been the other one.”

She smiled, eyes glazing with a sudden memory of better times. Her hand checked her trouser pocket for the League Table.

“Oh I like the other one,” she sighed happily.

the-ouija-board-sent-me:

Aurelie sat on the shore of the small grey colored beach near her home.  The water churned against the dark sky and she hummed softly to herself.  She picked up rocks throwing them with a strange grace.  Her eyes stayed focused in front of her, though it wasn’t her hands that were doing the throwing. 

Practice makes perfect, her friend had said, and she supposed it wasn’t a good idea to keep being afraid of this power.

Officer Shak Morgan wasn’t exactly sure why she was on babysitting duty. It couldn’t have been because of her charming personality. Actually, on second thought, it was exactly because of her charming personality. Obviously she was her usual wonderful self, but apart from that she was dire at stuff like this. Anything that involved people. She just didn’t have a lot of tolerance for weakness, or for things that involved being weak, like sleeping or taking painkillers or letting Umbrella scum walk. Which she meant literally.

Unfortunately, she was good at survival. She could always stay one step ahead of the company simply by being willing to do anything other than get herself killed. Six months living in a sewer was always better than a lead enema. Which meant she was pretty good at keeping people like her latest assignment safe. Even if they had to live in that sewer with her. Which they invariably did. Her orders specified alive. Happy didn’t come as standard.

She hadn’t known what to expect. The file photo stapled to the profile had been warped. Apparently, it had been the best of a bad bunch, but she hadn’t been able to make out a thing from it. When she’d shown it to one of the boy’s at the station, he’d told her he could see hands and faces and other weird shit. He’d actually seemed kind of freaked out and accused her of playing some kind of sick joke. She’d thought he must have been on the rag or something. Or maybe he’d been smoking those special cigarettes. She decided to find out and borrowed a packet from his desk.

She came around the back of the house to find the girl sitting on the shoreline, just in time to see a stone skimming out to sea.

“You her?” she asked, her cigarette flicking up and down between her lips as she spoke.

She smoked so much she’d perfected the art of keeping the filter on her lower lip without the use of her hand, leaving them free for more important activities like scratching herself and punching things.

“You the Gilbert girl?”

sonofwhitefang:

shakahnna:

“What the fuck is it this time?”

‘Such strange red hair’ the thought was fleeting, his observation gone from him as his lone gray eye took faint glimpses of the strange woman’s person:

Her attire was practical, indicative of a soldier or some sort, though not any he had ever come across in his time. Her limbs were thick and worn from obvious battle, and the sneer afforded in the wake of her words spoke volumes of her ill manner. The Jounin’s approach was cautious, and the shadows of the surrounding woods played ominously across his moon colored hair and receded as he emerged into the illuminated clearing.

“You’re not native to the land of fire. Who are you?”

It looked like she’d gotten lost again. She’d been finding more and more lately that when she got lost, strange things had a tendency to happen. It had been a long couple of days and she was a feeling a bit grouchy. Obviously, still sunshine and smiles in comparison to most of the people she knew - or would have been if she could find any of them - but certainly not her usual cheerful self. Probably because she was sober. She hadn’t been sober in a while. It brought on the shakes. Not that it managed to kill her smile. It was hers and nothing could have it.

This one was an odd one. She wasn’t used to people who started with questions. She’d already seen one arsehole dressed like this, with the same metal plate on their forehead. In her book, that kind of thing was cheating, not least because she’d wound up with the eye-symbol imprinted on her own forehead when she’d headbutted him. Still, at least it was pretty obvious that this one was on the same team, whichever team that was.

He hadn’t even had any cigarettes for her to steal. In fact, he’d had nothing worth stealing at all. Nothing he’d had had been in any way edible. So she was hungry, sober and running out of fags. And not a happy Shak at all.

The newcomer had white hair and blue Jesus sandals. Maybe he had bunions or something. To be fair, before she’d met John, she hadn’t even known who Jesus was. She’d thought he’d sounded like some kind of Mexican superhero. Although, she’d heard people talk about God a lot. Well, they’d said things like “oh God, my nuts” and “oh God, make the pain stop”, and “why, God, why are we stuck with her on our team?” 

He kept his hair messy and his bandana covering one eye, which didn’t seem like a good strategy. How could you see a nutshot coming with no depth perception. Which was why, when he spoke to her, she didn’t just shoot him. Besides, it had been weeks since she’d had a wash. If she wanted to quickly incapacitate him, all she’d have to do is lift her arm. If that didn’t knock the hair off his balls then he was made of sterner stuff than he looked.

She was pretty sure he wasn’t old. Maybe he’d just gone grey prematurely from the stress of having no peripheral vision. She thought he had old eyes though. One old eye, at least. Maybe he had a freaky baby’s eye under the bandana and that was why he kept it covered.

The way he was assessing the situation, he wasn’t just studying her, but her surroundings as well. There was a dark bag under his eye, suggesting he didn’t sleep so well. And he was relaxed, but too relaxed, like he’d rehearsed the stance. She didn’t trust him one bit.

“Who the fuck are you?” she asked, in her “making friends” voice, “and what the fuck is the land of fire, asshole?”

But she knew he probably wasn’t going to volunteer any information without getting some in return, so…

“I’m hunting a monster. Only it doesn’t look like a monster. It looks like people, a guy with blond hair, but you can tell what it is by its eyes.” Her smile faltered somewhat. Only for a second. “And I’ve lost my friend.”

bluhbluhhugedork:

• COUPLES CAN BE INTIMATE WITHOUT BEING SEXUAL
• COUPLES CAN BE INTIMATE WITHOUT BEING SEXUAL
• COUPLES CAN BE INTIMATE WITHOUT BEING SEXUAL

Two people can be intimate without being sexual.

the-crestfallen-one:

shakahnna:

the-crestfallen-one:

shakahnna:

Shak clasped her hands under her chin and did her very best “little bitch” noise. It was the one she normally reserved for when He was throwing a blob strop, but she broke it out of mothballs just for Raz, since he seemed to be feeling particularly tetchy just now. Still, if he was getting that bent out of shape, it was safe to say that something was definitely wrong. And she had to assume that it had something to do with him not having eaten.

“What’s the point in living a life where all you do is look out for yourself? That’d be a pretty fucking wasted life.”

It was an ideal that she felt particularly strongly about. That was probably why she was wagging her finger at him. She’d seen plenty of “soldiers” and “police officers” turning tail and fleeing while there were still people in need of saving. They thought that it was enough to rescue themselves, but it wasn’t. When your duty was to get people out alive, how could you leave without having accomplished that? Umbrella had been founded on selfishness like that, the kind of mindset that if something might get you killed then it wasn’t worth doing, unless you could live like a king in the meantime.

“I mean, what use are people like us when we can’t protect the people around us? What’s the point in having all that strength and power when all we want to do with it is look out for ourselves?”

They were no use at all, was the answer. And she knew that first hand, because she’d never felt more useless than when she’d failed. She looked away, pretending to scan the high grass for something, an animal to kill to feed him, and herself. She didn’t want to risk that he could see how she was feeling in her expression.

“So what are those then? Like some kind of pointy Mount Rushmore? They look a bit … shit. Have they always been broken?”

‘Strange that such sentiments would come from a human,’ Raziel mused silently, as he halted his tongue and allowed her to speak without interruption. There had been a trend most popular amongst the human masses that had not changed in thousands of years—the notion of self-preservation. The idea of leaving someone behind to feed a monster gaining on their heels was a concept heavily practiced among mortals; what was one more life used to extend their own? The wraith did not answer her for a long while as the horrible sight of what once the Pillars of Nosgoth, the scales of balance that tethered the world and held it together, sinking into the diseased land at his feet.

The wraith withheld a sigh, soaking in the sight in silent, reserved horror, and replied in a tone devoid of his earlier hostility, “No such belief resides in the hearts of men here, woman.” His gaze turned from the hollow void of broken pillars and gathering storms to the woman lingering at his side, “it is a fleeting belief that rode along your shoulders into a world that no longer holds virtues such as those in such high regard. You have your own skin, miss,” Raziel paused, his eyes reflecting a pang of something painful he would not vocalize before he continued in an empty tone,

“you are alone.”

With that, the wraith turned back and began his approach to the gaping mouth in the nearby hillside that led to the decaying edifice beyond. He strained his sight and hearing, catching wind of what sounded to be faint, muffled sobs carrying like disjointed howls on the departing winds.

No, Ariel would not show herself now—not after their confrontation at the pillars not a few days prior. Raziel tensed at the mournful sound, his eyes shaping into a familiar look of determination as he allowed himself to absorb the entirety of the cataclysm crumbling into ruin around him.

‘No one man’s ambition could cause such a thing..’ Raziel mused to himself softly, turning along his heels to see if Shak followed him before he continued his thoughts, ‘there is something darker at work here…’

“No…Not always.”

“Oi, don’t say that. Don’t make excuses for them like its normal for people to behave that way. We’ve got selfish cunts back home too. They’re always talking about how it’s a “dog-eat-dog world” and all that bullshit. Like that makes it okay to act like a dick. Because it’s not.”

She remembered a bit of advice her mother had given her a long time. Well, less advice, and more a clip around the ear.

“Didn’t anyone ever ask you, if they jumped off a cliff, would you do it too?”

She stared at him for a moment, remembering his plunge into the Abyss. She gave a dismissive wave of her hand.

“And before you say anything, that doesn’t count. You were pushed.”

She gave him a smack on the coccyx as he started to walk ahead of her, an affectionate tap where his arse would have been if he wasn’t all skin and bones. Personally, she didn’t like physical contact, and her bubble was sacred. But she also understood the ancient universal law that the only time it was appropriate to touch someone was when they had made it abundantly clear that they didn’t want to be touched. That was how she in turn ensured her own personal space remained undisturbed.

“Besides, I’m not alone. You’re here, aren’t you?”

The walked through a cave to get to the Pillars. It was roughhewn, probably natural, only it had been widened by mining and hung with lamps to light the way. It looked like even now, with them crumbling, people still went there for whatever reason.

“I’m definitely not alone,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the sobbing echoing from up ahead, “can’t you hear that? Someone’s not having a good day.”

It made her wonder if He was around. Or if maybe Raz’s husband was knocking around. He’d definitely made Kain sound like His equivalent. She grabbed a torch from the wall and drew the sword she’d pilfered, letting her spear rest on a rope on her back. Although, in all honesty, she didn’t know how useful she expected either to be.

Raziel recoiled at the intruding touch, his body seizing in a flinch he had not thought possible at this stage in his existence. He froze in spot for an instant, almost as though unsure of what had actually occurred, before he finally wrung around and fixated his gaze upon the grinning woman. He had every intention initially of returning her smack with one of his own, but as he’d turned and took in the smile that encompassed her face, he felt his will to do so draining from him. There had been something profound about the way she spoke and smiled that stayed his hand, and tempered his bubbling anger.  For the first time since their initial meeting—she had succeeded in disarming him. Raziel scoffed softly as he turned away from her, and started along his path to the ruined edifice before him, finally shaking the tension from his limbs.

“You are a foolish woman,” Raziel replied, his voice having finally regained the stern edge he’d all but lost moments before.

He could feel her presence as she followed him across the threshold and into the expansive apex of chaos that corrupted the very soil beneath their feet. It carried a silent horror with their decay, heralding an age of suffering and deception that would infect the inhabitants of his world to their very core. Raziel ceased his pace and held out a firm claw, lowering the larger woman’s sword-bearing arm with a light touch, “There is no need,” he cast his gaze about the area in search for any other strange life that might seek to engage them in a fight;

They were alone—for the most part, anyway.

The wraith turned to catch her questioning gaze before she had time to speak and steadied her a moment longer as he studied her features. The air about them sang with the moisture of the morning—promising another thundering day wrought with rainfall; her green eyes seemed sharp in the faint morning light—quickly striking thoughts and memories within the ancient that he’d tried in vain to forget.

“Hold fast,” He spoke lightly, watching her face before continuing, “She can do us no harm.”

She waited for the reaction to the spanking she’d given him, but it didn’t come. She started to wonder if maybe he was onto her, if perhaps he’d already become immune to her current level of obnoxiousness. If that was the case, then there was really only one thing for it. She was going to have to up the ante. Although, considering that he was a skeleton, she wasn’t really sure how.

Thinking about finally getting the chance to play the bizzum again caused her a pang of sadness. The last person she’d played around with like that had been John. She missed her weenie. It was dangerous to pretend, but she liked to think that when she finally got home from wherever it was she was now, he would be waiting there for her.

Or maybe that was just what being dead was for. Reunions. That and getting what you deserved, whatever that might have been. Although, it hadn’t worked out so well for Raz.

Still, that was one less pop in the face she’d gotten today. That had to be some kind of victory, she supposed.

“She?” she asked, not quite ready to lower her weapons just yet. Even knowing that Wesker was bulletproof hadn’t stopped her from always having something on hand to fuck him up with.

And she still couldn’t see anyone around. If she was going to disarm herself, she at least wanted to know what it was she was supposed to be trusting. Although, the weeping she could hear definitely didn’t seem to indicate someone who posed a threat. It was difficult to put up much of a fight when you were greetin’ like that.

The fact that she couldn’t see anyone was starting to unnerve her.

“Hey, can you see things that aren’t there? I mean, not like you’re a whackjob or anything, but do you see things like ghosts?”

It was probably a safe bet that ghosts existed, if souls did.

Raziel met the large woman’s gaze and held her steady for a moment longer before finally choosing to let her go. He straightened his stance and quickly scanned the area for any sight of the bound spirit of Ariel—only to find the ruins of what remained of her charge before him. Her sobs came and went, fading and growing in their intensity with the passage of time until they finally quieted into hushed sighs of sadness drifting on the chilly thermals.

There was no doubt that she resided somewhere in the spectral plane, and there was no doubt that he could find her should he so choose to seek her. Raziel spared his companion a glance, and found her eyes still boring into his own, her hands still clasping her weapons as though she feared they would vanish from her the moment she allowed them to fall.

“I merely see what the living cannot,” he answered her in a tone of voice more akin to a teacher correcting a misguided student, “just because you cannot discern their presence with your own eyes, does not mean they do not exist.” The wraith pulled away from her, his gaze lingering upon the string of scarlet beads that adorned her neck for a moment before he found the surrounding destruction far more intriguing.

“’She’ is called Ariel, she is a spirit that haunts these ruins. In her current state she cannot harm anyone,” Raziel spoke loud enough for his companion to hear him as he advanced forward, sparing her only a fleeting glance, “Much less you.”

The Pillars were fairly impressive, for something that was broken. Phallic metaphor aside, she could see why people had considered them important. Of course, impressive as they were, she wouldn’t have worshipped giant cock statues anymore than she’d have worshipped a group of cunts.

Even all fucked up as they were, they still stretched high enough to be seen from a considerable distance, rising out of the caldera where they’d been placed. She had to wonder how tall they’d been when they’d been intact. Maybe they’d touched the clouds, and that was why people had thought they were magic. Like a stairway to heaven.

But something was wrong with this place, and something was wrong with them. She wondered which way the connection ran. Had Nosgoth - as he’d called it - gone to shit, and the Pillars with them, or…? Were the Pillars actually the lifeblood Raziel had made them out to be?

In essence, were they Yggdrasil, or the fucking Liberty Bell? The life tree or just another broken monument?

“I didn’t say they weren’t fucking real just because I can’t see them, did I dick-breath?” She flourished her remark with an easy, perhaps even affectionate smile. “I mean I can’t see air but I fucking well know when there isn’t none. Because I turn blue.”

Turning blue seemed to be something that he could relate to, and if there was one thing Shak understood it was giving relatable examples. That why it was always their mum she’d been fucking.

“Is she sad because she’s dead?”

Raziel’s insistence that “Ariel” couldn’t hurt her helped her feel a little more secure. Thus far, he’d been pretty right about what was and wasn’t a threat. At this point, it did seem like most things were, whether it was the head-eating monstrosities they’d fought in the woods, or the garden variety mercenary arseholes by the river.

Those at least made her feel a bit better. Not that it was better to kill humans than monsters, but killing mercenaries was one of her favourite hobbies. It reminded her of home.

“So if she’s not trying to hurt anyone, is there anything we can do to help?”

She sounded so fucking sad. And quiet sobbing wasn’t really a pleasant ambience. If there was something she could do, she would like to do it.

What the fuck is it this time?