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Dash:

“My … mind can’t make from in to out. Trip over my own mind on way to mouth.”

She paused, almost as if trying to construct a sentence from scattered word-legos.

“My brain … crooked. Bent. Not in order. H … what way fix it. M’ broken.”

Taps head.

“Eric says ‘m very bright, and need to get me s-s-s … “

She closes her eyes again.

“Moving not ahead of my thoughts. Says ‘not broken, misaligned, ‘just ‘cause you break doesn’t make you broken.’ Don’t know ‘bout that, feel broken. If things don’t function what YOU call it?”

She twitches and glitches.

“You … can you? Fix,I mean?”




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Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

[Linked Image]

Cadence sat quietly for several slow breaths after Hadasha asked if she could fix the 'glitching' girl.

It wasn't what Cadence had offered, but maybe it was what Dash had heard. Maybe it was what Dash wanted to hear.

"I don't know Dash," she replied quietly. "I think I can help you. I don't know if I can fix you."

There was another pause as Cadence drew her knees up to her chest and she wrapped her arms around them, huddling in the chair. Looking at the other girl from behind her knees she continued, "" Nine months ago I didn't know I had any abilities or powers or whatever... I was just a girl in Texas, going to school and being a captain on my school's cheer squad. I was starting to think about college. I was... thinking about Prom... and I was thinking about my boyfriend... "

She shrugged, "Then everything changed. Nine months... that's all it took to turn me into a monster... to turn me into Forsaken. Breaking me down and stripping away the limits of what I am willing to do. I would have done anything she wanted... anything both of them wanted to make it stop... Everything I knew about my abilities had been beaten into me so that I could destroy things and kill people. But I learned things... self taught... I taught myself more than they wanted me to know... I read science stuff online whenever they weren't watching me, training me, breaking me, and I practiced and practiced. I started to understand what I was reading. I hated science in school, but I needed it now. I needed to learn it and understand it if there was any hope that I might not become just a weapon. Any hope that I might be able to find just a sliver of control over my own life. But, I was just a weapon to them, and... even to myself. No matter how much I learned I was created for one purpose to them..."

"I am Forsaken... Grey and Mariel and Carver keep trying to tell me I can be something different. But I can't. I need forsaken to stay sane. BUT... maybe I can change what it means to be Forsaken. Maybe that's the control I can find. The path I can walk to be better and do better... and help someone else."

Cadence uncurled herself.

"I don't know why I work and you don't... But this Inky-do guy built me with an incredible amount of power. Maybe he didn't realize it. I can only see it from being me, from inside me... Maybe he experiments and doesn't fully understand what will happen, but he learns more each time he changes one of us. He's been doing it a long time. OR, maybe he knows exactly what he did to me and why. I fear that becoming the truth and so I need to take control."

"I don't want to ever use my powers again. I caused so much pain. I knew I was doing it when I did it. I made the choice knowing innocent people would die. I don't see how that's forgivable. I wanted them, Carver and Grey and Kemp and Mariel... and yes, especially Sanderson... I wanted them to Kill me. I wanted to die. I still struggle with that. Maybe I always will.... Maybe I have to for the rest of my life... for as long as I am alive. Maybe I can't kill myself because I want to be punished."

She moved from her chair to sit on a corner of the chair that Dash occupied.

"But maybe I can try to change what it means to be Forsaken. Maybe I can start with a single step with someone who deserves not to feel pain all the time... I can see it. Every time you... glitch... I can almost feel it too... because I can see what's happening to you. I can't NOT see it. My powers are always on at some level and I have to work to ignore them and hide them... I see you, all of you. I think I can help you. I don't know if I can fix you."

Cadence opened her arms to offer a hug. Her hands were shaking. It would be the first time she reached out for human contact in nine months. It was the first time she wanted to be a part of someone else's life. It was the bridge from her own fears to a place were were vulnerability wouldn't be used against her, at least she hoped so. The fear that no one would ever trust her again was strong. The sense of isolation that she imposed upon herself was a punsihment but it was also a sanctuary of self preservation. that fear was called rejection.

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Dash:

“Can never make dif’rent yesterday, only today. Run one place looking other place, run into wall. Bonk. Ouch.”

She does lean in with a hug, putting her head on Cadence’s shoulder. She is surprisingly warm, and to Cadence she almost gives a bit of the feeling you get when you touch a battery to your tongue. A sour feel and tingle, like citrus and a nine volt battery.

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Cadence Marie Weathers
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Maybe the sensations meant something important, but for right now Cadence just wanted to experience the connection of two people as though she were a normal human being again. It had been a long nine months and she still felt like an outsider to the world around her. She was a freak, someone who could channel energy and matter and dark energy and... whatever... freak was faster.

"I will try to help. I hope I don't make it worse and hurt you."

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Dash

‘No bad feelings for me. You w… w…”

A long pause, then she spoke very slowly and deliberately with heavy concentration to get her words right and not stutter, which she manages.

“I’m not concerned about that happening.”

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Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken


The anger and self-loathing fought against a deeper, broken and beaten, sense of self. Cadence was once a happy, cheerful teeenager living a happy and cheerful life. Literally, she was a cheerleader. She was a beacon of school spirit, even beyond, what her peers would consider normal. She was like some kind of super hero of friendly and happy. Ever the optimist as well. She dragged the pop kids clique along with her to include others whose backgrounds lent them to being ostracized. She tried to befriend anyone and everyone, finding ways to include people in her circle.

Not anymore. That changed and the person she had been was submerged and drowning for so long that she wasn't sure that those memories were even real, or her own. Anger and distrust was the central theme of her personality now. Or, at the least, it was the costume she felt most comfortable inas it helped protect the vestiges of the person she could only remember as if she were watching her own memories through a dusty pane of glass.

Cadence nodded. She turned her attention to the TV now. She said what needed to be said. She even offered a hug that felt awkward for her now, but was once an important thing for her when she was a different person. Another weird memory that came to her in a moment that it was needed. "What are we watching?"

She hadn't seen any TV in nine months and even before the abduction by Alchemy, she seldom watched it at home.

But, in her own head, she was trying to build the courage to take the next steps and that was bringing her idea to Mariel and maybe gray. She didn't know the older guy and he hadn't taken any time to really talk to her except for the initial interview that decided whether or not she came to this place or to prison place. But Mariel and... or.. Grey were just the stepping stones to approaching Sanderson with her idea to help Hadasha. She needed allies, maybe even voices of reason to help her think it through. She had so much power and the ability to use it without moral ambiguity that maybe she was not seeing something in the idea that could be dangerous. She didn';t want to use her power, she really didn't want to ever touch it again. But it was always touching her. Without focus, she could always see the blending of the two dimensions of normal matter and dark matter. That was a secret she kept close to her heart. Although she pretty much gave carver enough information to figure that bit out on his own.

For now, she just wanted to think of mindless nothings on TV.

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Dash looked over at her, long.

“You know. H-h … You aren’t alone yourself.”

She smiles a bit.

“Narnia it’s called. Never saw television, didn’t read. Anything I look at, it’s new …”

(Have you played out what you wish in this and move on, or is the more to add?)

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OOC: we can move on

Cadence

She settled back into the seat. She breathed in deeply and exhaled slowly, and then a few more times, slower each time. Just something she had learned from fighting the jitters and anxiety before cheerleading competitions. Relax. Calm....

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Dash is, of course, in her usual place flicking from channel to channel on the tv.

At the moment there is only one other - although she doesn’t recognize her. A rather mousy looking girl - with it must be said rather intense eyes.

[Linked Image from i.imgur.com]

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Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence entered the room, eyes shifting to locate dash. Of course the obvious place to find Her would be in front of the TV. Maybe it was something about the flickering images that held her attention. But Cadence then saw a girl she had not met before. As she walked toward the sofa and Hadasha, she met the new girl's inquisitive look with her own and allowed for a small smile.

"Hey there," she said to the girl, quietly, just before dropping heavily into the sofa next to Dash.

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The girl looked blankly past her, as if her eyes weren’t focusing, and doesn’t move her mouth, nonetheless she hears a voice coming from the air.

“Hi”

Dash looks over

“Girl name Ki. Come from ‘Kidu too. Not big talk.”

She pauses and puts a hand on Cadences arm.

“You good?”

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Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence's eyes widened a little as she tried to place the origin of the voice, and the implications of Ki's power. Was it something that she actually heard of was it in her head? But Hadasha's touch brought Cadence back to reality. She let the book rest in her lap, and nodded to Dash. "Yeah, I'm good."

"I gave them what they wanted. And let them know I'm not going to try to cut and run..."

While still speaking to Dash, she made a gesture for Ki to sit with them or in one of the nearby chairs. Trying to be welcoming.

Cadence tapped the book. "Mariel let me borrow this... Maybe it will help me get better control... learn something about my powers besides how to destroy things... Maybe let me find a way to help you."

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The girl smiles, and the voice comes again, from somewhere in the air in front of her. Her mouth, again, never moves.

“Thank you. Usually I just creep people out.”

If she listens she can almost hear a faint hum in the background.

Dash blinks.

“What is it?”

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Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

AS Ki came closer, Cadence shifted a bit to make room.

"It's all good. I'm Alchemy's daughter so, I guess creeping people out is probably my lot in life too... Besides, I just spent... Actually I don't know how long it was... But I had Grey in my head, talking to me... so, You don't freak me out. We're all, whatever we are. Freaks? If we own it, then the word can hurt us."

Cadence heard the hum and immediately shifted her senses to take in all 4 states at once, just like slipping on a glove. "I don't know, I'm looking."

(Cadence will try to determine if there was energy or matter in motion, same with the dark side of things. Sound waves to make a hum had to be generated from somewhere, and that created ripples.)

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She definitely seems to be making something move, the air around her vibrates with energy, and if she had to make a wild guess, it seems like she is tuning it somehow. There are gauge purplish motes flicking in and out when she does it, not extreme but there.


Dash leans her head on cadence’s shoulder and loops her arms over her neck, somewhat unconsciously.

Ki ‘speaks’.

“Well, Enkidu made sure I was one. Made sure I couldn’t talk normally so I’d have to use my stuff. Still. Won. Didn’t know I can do more than ventriloquism tricks. If he did, he’d have made me do it. Can’t complain. Had it easier than some.”

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Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence hadn't been comfortable with physical contact in months. Nyx had a cruel defintion of what 'physical' contact should feel like. She resisted the urge to withdraw from Dash's overture, but there was a moment where she shivered a little and took a deep breath. It's okay! she thought to herself hoping it would actually become real.

"Whatcha got Ki? Show me a little something."

Having them work their talents or curses might help Cadence help them. For some reason, their powers were troublesome, and glitchy in Dash's case. These girls were considered failed experiments. But Cadence was not a failed project, at least not that she could tell. Her powers were frighteningly steady and used as she had been taught, were also devastating. But Cadence wanted them to be less of that and more of something useful and helpful. Taking control of her situation and owning her reality was the only way to make something of this crapshow her life had become.

What Alchemy had 'Inky-doo' turn Cadence into happened when when she was a baby. Was there a timeline here? Was there some master plan to create something, someone? Was Cadence a success after so many failures or just another step on a Madman's path to a greater monstrosity?

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The girl paused a long moment' looked over at a plastic cup sitting on an end table, there was a high pitched whine … and it puffed into dust. An odd thrumming in the air, and she floated off the ground before setting back down.

At each of the above she distorts slightly, like she was blurring and going just a bit out of focus, before finally forming up, like she was briefly a vibrating creature of sparkly vaguely purple sand before reforming.

“I don’t want to do other things, as they hurt. Hurt other people. But …”

She squints and violin music starts playing from thin air.

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Cadence Marie Weathers
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Cadence's eyes widened as she saw the effect of the power when focused on a particular effect.

After a short in take of breather she muttered. "Yikes..."

She had watching as she normally did, as was normal for her, to see what was exactly happening with Ki.

"That's like some kind of phased molecular manipulation," she stated in a mild betrayal of her actual intelligence. "Wow."

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Ki:

“If you say so. I know if I do it too much I feel fuzzy. Talking is good. Got to be careful with other stuff. But see? Told you I creep people out. I escaped from one of Enkidu’s stockyards. I guess he thought there was something in me that could be used later.”

She shrugs.

“Fine balance being interesting but not too interesting.”

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Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Cadence was considering her next question to Ki about what she had witnessed and how Ki explained it but she stopped short, almost choking on the breath she took in,

"What?" Her tone was incredulous "Stockyard... what does that mean... No, I know what a stockyard is, I'm from Texas. Like, he just..." Cadence had no way to put the image she was thinking into words. That visualization was appalling, horrifying, and made her feel a sudden wave of nausea.

"He just experimented on children, just to... to see if he could get some effect and... if you weren't what he wanted he just threw you away or kept you prisoner to dissect later?" Her words were rhetorical, as though she needed to hear her thoughts out loud because she couldn't keep them in her head. There was already too much darkness in there. And, then the gag reflex that followed was almost impossible to avoid.

"I can't even... Oh my (bleep)ing God. How many had to suffer so he could make me? And others who might actually be stable?" Anger was increasing and with anger came the rise in her energy states, power folding in on her, building, blending, enveloping her in the sparkling purple miasma.If her anklet was truly able to inhibit her, then it would activate very soon, but she wasn't even thinking about that right now.

"How many died so he could build a weapon for Alchemy?"

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Ki:

“Well. It’s what we call it anyway. See, you’ve got some different ones, you’ve got the discards, like Dash here, Blake, that sort. Ones that just sort of hang around on the edges trying to get scraps. Of course, Dash there kept getting scooped back up and tinkered with. Some do. Ones that are messed with lots are the lab rats. Then you’ve got the commissions, the ones that are paid for by someone else. Then you’ve got the minions, ones who voluntarily work for him, do what he wants and get privileges. You got the independents, the people who are strong enough that there is no controlling them. Make their own way. I think some of those are pretty old. Then the stockyards. People who aren’t useful but are interesting enough that something might be squeezed out of them. I honestly think that the dead ones are often luckier. As for how many, no idea.”

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Cadence Marie Weathers
Forsaken

Ki kept speaking as though it was all so matter-of-fact. As though there was an acceptance of the ruination of their lives and bodies. As though the person that each of them was didn't matter to them any more, never realizing that the acceptance was for the person that they had been made into, and thus become. Cadence's own self hatred for what she had become, and what her once idyllic and peaceful cheerleader life had been turned into because of sociopaths who viewed people as cattle to be held in 'stockyards' in order to perfect stable powers and inhuman abilities at the whims of other sociopaths, was like a crushing weight upon her soul and heart. In order for her to have been turned into this weapon for Alchemy, Inky-do had to hurt a lot of people. Her pulse was racing, pounding in her ears. Her breaths were short and shallow.

"I'm so sorry," she said in a raspy voice as she had to stand and walk around the sofas to keep from freaking out.

Cadence couldn't hope to understand the pain and anguish any of these girls had to endure. Broken over and over, experimented on, tortured, some left to die, others having their essence reused as though the people themselves didn't matter at all. Her own circumstances seemed to pale in comparison save for the fact that she was built with the ability to channel and harness power, converting from one state to another, to exist in any state or all of them AND the emotional restraint of a teenager. She felt like her heart would explode and she felt light-headed.

"I'm so sorry, she repeated as she started to feel like she would hyperventilate. She put her hands behind her head, trying to slow things down. It wasn't working. All she could think aboput were faces of children she had never really met, trapped in cages, wires and tubes, some being dissected while still awake, feeling the pain and projecting her own emotions upon these mental images and feeling them all over again.

Her emotions continued to roil within her, making the the energy begin to cavitate. She could feel the vibrations building within her but didn't understand what was happening. She didn't know how to get control of the power or her emotions. Breathe. Breathe. Just breathe.

"I'm so sorry."

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Dash just makes herself more comfortable.
Ki tilts her head before speaking.

“Sorry? Sorry for what? People should only be sorry for the things they do. I’m pretty sure you weren’t there. I’d remember you. I blame Enkidu for the things he does. Everybody has enough to be sorry about for things they have done without being sorry for things other people did. Whatever you think you did if you’re this sorry about it you aren’t guilty of it.”

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Cadence Marie Weathers
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Cadence lifted her hands, as though she were gesturing to the whole of herself, and continued," What I did with ... whatever this is, whatever I am... It was terrible. I am sorry for letting my anger and rage blind me, I'm sorry that I made a choice and...." I am sorry for letting my anger and rage blind me, I'm sorry that I made a choice and...."

"I can't undo it. But I was never angry all the time. It's More than just how Alchemy and Nyx... I don't know... trained me... manipulated me... whatever.... It's like this power in me is something I have to fight as well. It surges with my emotions and it feels like it fuels them and they fuel the power too. No excuses. I did it. I made the choice. I knew it was wrong... I did it anyway and I failed... Now I need to figure out if I can be something more than a weapon."

She shrugged and sighed, "But, I AM also sorry that so much harm was done to so many of you by Inky-doo. Sorry in the way that it hurts my heart to know people suffered at his hands. I am saddened and sorry that so many were hurt and abused in the past so that F***** could make me into something Alchemy could use to..."

Cadence shook her head.

"It's my burden to carry..."

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Ki:

“Eh. He did what he did and was doing it before you even existed. You are as much a victim as any of us are. If he did what he does to you. Get mad at him, not yourself.”

A lightbulb flickers, there is slight pop and smell of ozone, then a glint in a mirror. And a face.

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