Me, Myself and I [Bendtime after Visitation Day is Over] [OPEN]

[thewunderkind]

Compared to yesterday where the sensoriums had gotten so much use, Lash was glad that it was mostly quiet as she slipped into a free one. The day had passed relatively quickly thanks to running mazes, but even that hadn't gotten her as joyful as she should be, as strange and exciting as it had been.

The world around her changed as she stood atop a giant mountain overseeing the forest below her. Her army stood closer, as her opponent in the horizon began to prepare to attack her. A typical scenario she liked to play out at least once a week, each time using it to test out new invention ideas and fixes she should make to her existing ones.

But she wasn't there. The spark, the thing that made Lash excited about anything war-related and gave her an almost-worrying macabre yet positive outlook on nearly anything appeared to be extinguished. She'd been thinking a lot. Even now, she didn't raise her arms dramatically as she usually did to get the battle started, but merely an uninterested movement of her fingers as she dismissed it all and sat down, dangling her legs over the edge.

"Good evening Mistress Lash! We await your orders!"

She said nothing.

Lash watched the soldiers below her slowly get destroyed, unable to find herself engrossed enough to bother or want to give out commands. Those damn emotions Black Hole hated so much were going to be the death of her, weren't they? She'd seen a lot of her friends reunited with people they cared about and then felt the pangs of jealousy that followed as she waited, mostly by herself, to see if miraculously someone else would step out. She couldn't complain to Stacy about it either, as much as she wanted too, due to the AI falling silent in what she assumed was exhaustion. But that wasn't the biggest thing on her mind, eating away at her as time marched forward.

It was the cold reality of knowing that perhaps, this proved she was the only person rescued from her world.

She never had thought of it as such before, figuring out that everyone simply wasn't ready yet. All the time she'd been here, Lash had never given up hope at meeting one of her old comrades-in-arms. Gone to every poddrop too. Hell, who wouldn't want Commanding Officers from her world with army boosting powers in a war like this? She was a perfect example! The others were just a little more dumb and need more time to be properly awoken, that's all! And yet, yesterday seemed to hit the final nail in the coffin. Even without being completely ready, someone should have come out. Heck seeing Olaf's big ugly angry face would have made her feel better. Was Stacy mad at her? She'd been helping repair her weapons! There was no way she'd just ignore people who actually cared about fixing her up compared to those who cursed her name wherever they walked, right? There had to be a fairness in this! Thinking about fairness now, it was almost bizarre.

...Or maybe Stacy had been fair, and there was no one to be brought out, even for a day.

"Mistress Lash? We await your orders! Please respond!"

Alone from her world. Strangely enough, it frightened her. The very idea that she'd be fighting the war, sure with her friends, but without someone who she knew from before. Her homesickness had disappeared after a few months on the ship, but now it came back with full force.

"Mistress Lash! They've got megatanks! Please respond!" The macabre spectacle played out below her as her own units fought on, still standing where she had placed them against an enemy that had been upgrading and building all the time she was simply leaning in and doing nothing. Lash didn't care. You'd almost think she was a statue in the way she was lost in her thoughts. Eventually she issued a single command that was almost dismissive to everything.

"Whatever. Just blow them up for all I care." The soldiers below yelled out commands and eventually large rockets were launched at the sky, shining in the star-filled night sky. The nuclear-like weapons exploded in the middle of the enemies' troops, giving her a good view of the entire carnage and clouds lighting up the atmosphere. Yet she got no joy from it, even as the normally deadly breeze passed by her. In fact, it only made her sigh as she idly pinched away a tiny rock stuck in her hair. The Wunderkind wasn't sure why she was like this. This was so dumb to care about it so much! Dumb dumb dumb! She'd loved doing this so much before but right now...

It felt really pointless.

For the first time in her life, Lash was completely unamused by an explosion.

Comments

[morphitudinous]

That day had gone well. Billy had enjoyed the catching up with Tommy and meeting of Ellistree, and though he was sad to see them go he was grateful for the experience. Stacy had been kind for once. For the most part.

As he reflected on all the work he now had to catch up on, Billy poked his head into a nearby Sensorium. A battlefield was laid out, with a certain familiar woman observing it from above. This must be Lash in her natural habitat, giving orders and coordinating. But why didn't she seem...excited about it?

Frowning, he strode up to get a view of the carnage for himself. "Hey. Did your unit just lose?" he had to ask.

[thewunderkind]

"Uh, I dunno." She looked below at the figures that laid there burned to a near crisp.

"Probably?"

[morphitudinous]

"Ouch," Billy sympathized, wincing at the disaster scene below him. That was definitely not what Lash would've preferred.

"Maybe this is a bad time of day for you to concentrate? It's not like you not to know." Or maybe it was her lunchtime. Food was often good for brains, he believed.

[badluckbabe.livejournal.com]

It happened to be unfortunate luck that Jinx would wander into the Sensorium at just the wrong moment. A scream and she was knocked into the air by the explosion. Instinct kicked in and she adjusted her flight path in the air hoping to land on her feet.

"What the hell is this treachery?" She shouted and blasted back with a wave of pink hex magic at the offending grunts.

[thewunderkind]

Wither it was good luck or just something else, Jinx landed close to where Lash was standing, and she gave the other girl a half-hearted wave even as the pink hex killed some of her soldiers.

"Hey."

[badluckbabe.livejournal.com]

"Ugh...war games." Jinx remarked catching on and brushing some dirt from her sleeve. "Having fun are we?" She glanced at Lash and read her body language easy enough, "...no, no we're not."

[carrieswar.livejournal.com]

Sensoriums full of war simulations? That didn't do much in ways of narrowing the list of who the technology was responding to. More often than not it was some battle or training session when Jr. popped into them. Not that it was a really surprising thing - everyone needed to keep sharp after all.

So making his way through the chaos was clearly the best way to try and find a familiar face. Ducking behind trees and jumping out of the way of flying debris (damn some of those pieces looked sharp and painful was how Jr. spent most of his time moving through that and to the mountain. He wondered briefly if he should conjure up his unit to get a faster and probably safer view of the scene before he spotted Lash.

"Oh. You've got all that stuff going down below?" he asked after he sucked in a breath, glad to be. Well. Out of it.

[thewunderkind]

She greeted him with a tiny wave, before looking more at the carnage again.

"Pretty much," she answered in a voice that didn't seem sure at all. "Although I guess it's not really going that well for me right now."

"AHHHH! WE'RE ALL DYING!" a soldier radioed in from below. Idly, she closed communication and shrugged. "Usually it's more fun...just not today."

[carrieswar.livejournal.com]

Jr. winced at the radio call. "Glad these things aren't real," he muttered.

Tilting his head, he rested a hand on his hip as he gave Lash a quick once-over, then moved his gaze back out over the forest he had just stomped through. "Not today?" he repeated curiously. "Accidentally thought up a boring scenario, or is somethin' up?" Last time he saw Lash was when she was going to save Zetta ... he hoped there weren't more lost books happening.

[hit-girl-mindy.livejournal.com]

Now someone SHOULD have been happy. Hit Girl had, after all, met her dad, talked with him, showed him her friends, and it had been the greatest feeling ever. For once, falling into Mindy Macready had been easy again: she could call her dad lame, laugh at his stupid jokes, get scolded by him again, tell him anything she wanted and feel no shame.

For a day.

And the day, like any other day, came to an end, and she forced herself to move on. There was something to look forward to after the war, right? He would be back, they would be together.

Right.

She believed that bullshit as much as she thought she could be a normal girl. The truth was simple: Stacy didn't bring her here because she was biding her time until she could be a girl. It brought her here because she knew she could NOT be that, that Hit Girl was a part of her, a real part that you didn't put away on a shelf.

All those times with comics and dad made her realize something: Bruce Wayne never got to stop being Batman because he decided it was over. Evil came, he fought it. With her, the fate of the universes were more important than her obsessing over some cheap life where she could be normal. That was a joke.

She would never BE normal, and she was fine with that. Now.

So popping into the Sensorium and seeing what Lash was doing, she saw beyond just war games and concentration: something was eating at her.

"Yo," she greeted her friend. "Wanna talk about it, Wunderkid?"

[thewunderkind]

"Sure," she said, as the battle continued below them, Lash's army loosing more and more soldiers by the minute. There was a bit of silence before she spoke again.

"So how was your day with your father yesterday? he seemed...nice when I met him." Well-adjusted, actually. She was surprised, but she'd never tell her that.

[hit-girl-mindy.livejournal.com]

She laughed. "Well, he was dead once. Finding out he's alive and his daughter is safe grounded him. He would have been stabbing people otherwise: don't underestimate him."

Hit Girl stared at her army getting slaughtered. "Dude...you're better off. You think you aren't, but you are, trust me."

[potentialmonkey.livejournal.com]

Ron, though he was generally in an agreeable mood, was even more peppy thanks to Kim's visit. So much so that the teenage boy was whistling as he walked to the Sensoriums, up until he entered them and witnessed the carnage.

"HURK!" he uttered, clasping his hands over his mouth, and quickly turned to evacuate the contents of his stomach all over the hallway.

[thewunderkind]

Fortunately, Lash was used to soldiers and bodily fluids everywhere. You weren't a CO without hearing and seeing things.

What was strange, however, was the fact she didn't scream at him to get out or kick him but rather wave him a half-wave and silently turned back to watching her soldiers getting slaughtered.

[potentialmonkey.livejournal.com]

"Lash, what the hell?!" Ron yelled?

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"Where the hell have you been?!"

Zetta landed lightly next to her -- no, he hadn't been flying, he just jumped up the mountain -- then crossed his arms, looking down at her. "I've been looking for since yesterday!"

Beneath the bluster and anger he might have sounded just a little bit petulant.

[thewunderkind]

She turned around to look at him...well more like look at the ground where he was standing, slowly as she moved her feet by inches until she had pushed herself properly around.

"I ran mazes yesterday," she replied, thinking oh green the grass looked today. Then a little more softly, she added, "Sorry."

[badassfreakingoverlord]

"The hell's eating you?" Zetta said, dropping down to sit next to her.

[fattynoparents]

Chell was not very good at paying attention to which Sensoriums were occupied and which were not, mostly because social graces still kind of escaped her. After the little Enrichment Center reunion, she, too, had wanted to do some thinking. Just imagine up that sunny wheat field with the blue sky and--

Well those sure were some dead bodies.

WHAT KIND OF CRAZY PERSON CAME TO THE SENSORIUMS TO IMAGINE UP DEAD BODIES?!

[thewunderkind]

HER NAME...WAS LASH. And those were roasted, crispy dead bodies. Mmm roasted flesh, Chell.

If she looked at top of the mountain, there was a girl with a large afro there.

[fattynoparents]

Yeah, there she was. Manic afro lady.

The smart thing to do would be turning tail right then and there, but Chell did not always do the smart thing. She was curious about this be-afroed lady, and even more curious as to why she was apparently imagining up a battle with all these dead bodies lying around.

It looked to be a treacherous walk to Lash's vantage point, but treacherous tended to be Chell's middle name, so off she went, up the mountain to see what all the fuss was about.

[zouichi.livejournal.com]

Heavy was the head that commanded the losing side, apparently. Zouichi wandered on in, ignoring the explosions and bloodshed as he made his way over to Lash. "Hey. Seems like practically the entire ship is down today. I didn't expect you to be joining them, though."

You are just that perkygoth, Lash.

[thewunderkind]

Today she was just goth. Or uh...down. She gave him a tiny idle wave as a greeting.

"Yeah yeah, I know. Lots of people have said that. You have one downer day and everyone thinks you've gone nuts."

[bonnypiperlad]

Yesterday, after it had become apparent that no-one was going to be there for Jamie, he had spent the day working on the house down in the city, giving Victoria a chance to catch up with her father. It seemed most other places on the ship were full of people doing the same thing, and the Sensoriums had been full all day. So he worked, just to get the time to pass.

Today, he's tired, and sore, and looking forward to a soak. Rather than use the bathhouse, however, he's decided to come down to imagine up some hot springs - and maybe a bit of Scotland while he's at it. As usual, however, he finds himself having wandered into someone else's scenario, and is about to go when he spots Lash far above.

Unfortunately for her, he's used to climbing mountains, and is soon able to see that...well, things are a bit off. "Was that supposed to happen?"

[thewunderkind]

This is no Scotland alright, but rather a typical forest and area from War's World, with the afrokind on top of the mountain. She gives Jamie a little wave as she sees get up, althought curiosity gets her at first.

"Wait. Did you just climb up the mountain?"