NAMELESS BODIES, IN UNREMEMBERED ROOMS — open

[MYERS]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]tw blood/some violence

There are days, Ahab knows, where clearly he has woken up on the wrong side of the bed.

He'd spent weeks keeping these things locked up, quite literally; that mother and her newborn babies could not be near a creature such as himself, not when he was prone to lashing out and frightening anything that came too close. And then it had occurred to him that the leader was expecting cubs of her own, and it all became far too much to bear. He'd closed himself off, lingering in the depths of the jungle when he wasn't locked up in what little square footage his home had to offer. It was safer this way, to avoid the things that caused him fear. (If fear, that was, stood as the emotion that overcame him when he saw red and drew his claws like a wild thing. Anger didn't quite seem to cut it.)

He figures, in these wanderings, that it would not hurt to stop by the beach. It wasn't uncommon to see the bear resting on the dunes when he wasn't hidden in the jungle, expression stony and distant as he rolled a paper in his paws and smoked the herbal mixture within. Wormwood, cloves, only a pinch of tobacco for flavor. It was soothing, maybe, to feel the smoke fill his lungs. It kept him in one place just as much as it allowed him to wander elsewhere within his mind. A tether as much as it was the drifting boat, sailing out to sea.

For the most part, hallucinations tended to be a welcome thing.

And he drifts, out of body, out of mind. His thoughts walk elsewhere, out onto the water. He visits old bloodied halls and drags his long claws through the deep red puddles. He sinks to the knee in it. The shoulders. He drowns in the warm embrace of blood and only surfaces when another paw takes him by the wrist and drags him up, up for air. He was dead, maybe, but now he is born again with claws in his fur and a face all too like his own staring down upon his body, where it was laid out on the floor.

Through the windows, a searchlight dances, or perhaps it is the sun, a comet, hurtling towards the earth. He knows this: if they were running from a comet it would strike the Earth and kill them no matter where they ran. The ground would turn to ash before its body struck the dirt. Wherever they went, it would find them. Helicopter blades overhead remind him of summer storms, the winds harsh and wet. Warm rain, like blood on his skin. He blinks, floats away just a little.

"Does it hurt? We need to fix this now."

His shoulder is dislocated, he realizes with uncertainty. When had it come unhinged? The hallway is on fire and he cannot remember who set the place ablaze. It could have been him. The air smells of ethanol and smoke and the other animal grabs him by the shoulder, slams it against the wall until it lets out an unsettling click. Ahab does not remember screaming. He does, however, remember the hurt.

He swims in the pain, feels distant crashes and the rumble of a building coming down on itself through his paws. The other bear moves with precision. He wanders off towards a blazing sunset and waits for nightfall with a tranquilizer in his neck. They're in the woods and the other bear is dead, maybe, facedown in the dirt with a smear of red across his face that doesn't look promising. He's gone when Ahab blinks, and even ankle-deep in mud, if he wriggles his toes there's a grainy memory of sand deep underfoot. If he presses his ears flat against his head, he hears ocean waves roaring like tinnitus in the muscles of his eardrums. The forest is on fire and he will let it burn just to return to that beach, to the roar of the tide under the crackle of a hospital on fire.

His name had been Ishmael and he was a guardian, if the devil could keep watch over his demons.

Ahab wakes up, scorched by the sun and heaving for air that would never quite fill his lungs. Dry sand under his tongue makes him sputter, choke.

That guardian angel, that devil on his knees, was still alive.

The fear he felt could never compare to the shudder upon waking from a bad dream. That fear - the paralysis, the fading presence of a nightmare - was a temporary thing, a falsehood of another dream. A sour sleep could be shaken off. This terror, though, this world within a world, was a reality all his own.

[Grimm]

[align=center][div style="font-family: arial; font-size: 11px; width: 60%; text-align: justify; line-height:120%"]Unwelcome parasite, bloated and foul, denizen of fettered depths belching wrecking sulfur.

Of minimal substance the manner he beat against unyielding stone, chipped away at holy streaked facet of crowing world aching with a delicate weave of agonised strands, a prison within which a crevice his own he sought with fervor. Integral the quiet understanding parsed within the depths of ebon hued twilight, lingering where mind may latch with a tentative conviction. Worsened the razor edges of tightly grasped illusion, clutched to chest until the terming beat of his heart was a parting bloom, crimson petals crying out in a silenced voice.

Unnecessary had grown the recall of passage, how the seconds coalesced into a ceaseless beat pressing into the aching backs of shuttered eyes, exhaustion a toll ringing through atrophied muscle all he listened to. All he needed, at least, until the gruelling hum of preservation arose among the din, a pitiful, garbled moan escaping between the churning mess of striped vegetation. Never still, never silent. Be it the quiet lull of song produced from ambling momentum beating a soft drum against thawing earth or that of dormant body uttering a lowering cry seeking what mind is unwilling to graze, unwelcome such absence.

Possibly it is for such the soft toll of suspended silver cups ring forth, among the dark fibres of twined strands held the twinkling voices of tiny bells. Almost, in the depths of mind grown dull beneath ceaseless wanderings, he can feel her hands, how they tug with a quiet seething anger, faux beneath the affection lacing sharpened tongue.

"By now I would have thought you knew not to let him do this."

Warmth suffused the rumble of laugh arising forth within air painted beneath the orange hues of departing dusk, fretful the flickering gaze of child perched where wandering hand may not find him. Yet aloft still held the calloused cup of palm, loose the curl of fingers where another settles, holds with a tentative graze barely connecting them. Peaceful that which played out within the enclosed space of living area brimming with knick knacks of varying uselessness, time bringing the boy forth, a pleasant weight curled against his chest. So too has the actions of fingers threading through the entanglement of dark strands halted, all too thin the arms that encircle within loose grasp about his neck, leaned into the manner fingertips trail along his arm.

"Bin ich gleich weit von dir, bin doch im Traum bei dir." Familiar the curl of bloodied tongue, of an age well past, documented better within the yellowed framework of ill begotten history than that of failing recollection. There had they been, spectres flickering and twisting before the uneasy flutter of lead laced lids, poor replicas painted across the soft rise of pale dunes. He is but another, a fragmented construct stitched together by hands grown shakey, the deep divets pressed into the accumulated grains all that remained of lumbering progression. Premature the conclusion of such, confusion a dour shroud encasing the stilled tumble of unconscious thought.

Thin stream of curling smoke, a pale plume of cotton fuzz. Prone lay that of originating point, low burnt a mixture of own construction, old and nagging the budding growth of want tickling at the back of his throat. Had he been of a different mind staged approach when the early scenes arose among the scenes of gathering heat, prevailing a quiet dread, a darkly hued beast born of dejected indifference and the humming pulse of slumbering instinct. Had been he of a sound mind not encased beneath the echoing tingle of parting static bisecting the slowly accelerating train of tempered thought, turned from he scene may he have been.

"Benötigen Sie Hilfe," sullen slur of barely formed syllables, clumsy grown the tongue that had bore minimal use within recently passed weeks. Closer did he lumber forth upon legs that shook with a faint tremor, base the pool of dwindling strength upon which he drew, half lidded the ebon depths settled against prone ursidae.

[michael t.]

Truth be told, Michael knew very little about Ahab. He didn't know where the bear came from, how long he had been there, or how long he intended to stay within the Typhoon. Hell, he didn't even really know if the other actually intended to stay in the group of pirates, or if he had been somewhat roped into it, like the bobcat himself had – not that was in any way a complaint, he had an actual home here. Still, he knew the important stuff. Like how Ahab could be kind of scary and abrasive at times, and letting him be the first one to a joiner probably wasn't the smartest idea. Or how Roxie seemed so incredibly fond of him, to the point where he was essentially an extended part of the family as well – a family that, if the traffic in and out of Roxie's house was anything to go by, was rapidly approaching cult status. He had also noticed that Ahab a tendency to... disappear. Or at least, show up a lot and then seemingly pop off the face of the earth. It was an unnerving habit, but not one that Michael couldn't relate to. After all, he had spent a major portion of his life just traveling from place to place, showing his face and then running off with Trevor. He could understand the temptation to get off the grid – or the need to, in certain cases. He could really only hope that Ahab wasn't a fugitive, like him.

The bobcat had felt a faint sense of confusion when Ahab had once again vanished into thin air, but he hadn't thought much of it. He had grown used to only looking out for himself over his several years of living, and going out to look for a menacing beast he didn't even truly know wasn't exactly an appealing concept. He was sure that Roxie must've been worried on some level as well, or at least, would've been more significantly worried, if it weren't for the fact that she was a little preoccupied with her children coming and going. The Typhoon honestly was in a constant period of shifting as of late, and it wasn't hard to see how things could slip through the cracks. When the thief himself had taken note of it, he had just silently hoped that Ahab would return at some point, if only so that Roxie wouldn't be given yet another source of grief. Despite the hard exterior he put on, his sister had definitely managed to worm her way into his list of primary concerns, right next to his own life, Trevor's life, and greed, something that was extremely impressive. Ultimately, her happiness impacted his happiness.

When the bobcat had left his home that morning, he had been expecting yet another somewhat chaotic day, perhaps with another person leaving and another one returning. Or maybe things had finally begun to calm down for them, up until the next wave started... his thoughts were interrupted, however, when he heard a voice, deep and gruff. He recognized it, but the knowledge of who it was didn't serve to put him any more at ease. Emil had frightened the fugitive from the very day that he had first shown up, and that had not changed in the slightest, even after the other had lost the title of "newcomer." Not only that, but he was speaking in another language, one that Michael had no knowledge of himself. He thought it was German, but he easily could've been wrong, considering he only had the willpower to learn English and a little bit of Gaelic. Either way, the tone of Emil's voice frightened him, whether his words were meant to be threatening or not. Because of this, Michael gave him a wide berth as he moved onto the sand, dark paws sinking slightly as the beach welcomed him back from the tavern. His gaze lingered upon Emil for a moment, before he allowed himself to look around the rest of the area, his mismatched blue eyes widening as he spotted Ahab, looking... worse for wear.

Taking a deep breath to soothe his frazzled nerves, the bobcat moved past Emil, coming up a few paces near Ahab before lowering himself down. Jewelry glinting in the sunlight, Michael looked Ahab over, searching for any signs of wounds before he spoke, "Ahab... hey. Are you okay? Cause you're looking a little... sick." He wasn't really sure how to describe the expression that was written not only on the other's face, but in the entirety of his body language. It might've been categorized as tired in some universe, but the bear seemed to be such a grand knotted up yarn ball of emotions right now that Michael honestly felt a little twitchy just remaining near him. He felt the urge to back away, or maybe go and get Roxie. Surely his little sister would be better at handling this odd exchange than he.

[glow=#75603C,1,000]" oh, it's a setup, no, no, we won't fall. "[/glow]

[MYERS]

[align=center][div style="text-align:justify;width:55%;font-family:verdana;"]With the bomb detonated, Ahab was ground zero all on his own, laying there in silence and staring at the ocean waves with an open, empty eye. Dead, he looked. Half-open maw, claws twitching in place like a beetle on its back would wave its limbs, chest rising and falling with each gasping breath.

There was no bomb. But there was, of course, the fallout.

He felt it all the time. The ache in his arm, the swell and drip of pus from his empty orbital socket, it left a hollow ghost that lingered in whatever scars and remains of his missing pieces he had left. Even where the shrapnel dug into the residual fibers of his optic nerve, he often saw colors swirl in and out of contrast, void faces drift in the peripherals of his missing vision where images ought to be.

But there were no faces.

If you put the two together, maybe crossed your eyes or tilted your head, they were one and the same. The differences were negligible, things you could attribute to a trick of the eye. Ishmael had been a foot shorter and maybe slimmer at the right angle. These were features a human couldn’t quite pick out when looking at two near-identical animals, not like one could tell two breeds of felidae or canid apart. His eye had turned to gelatin when a bullet struck him in the face, where Ahab took scalpels and slept while his skin was pulled and sewn to make an eerily perfect copy.

Ishmael was meant to be a singular entity, the whole story all on his own; take a bear and set it loose in a hospital full of sleeper cells just to say it was a terrible accident, though, and suddenly two parts are needed to tell the lie correctly. One of them is supposed to be dead, the other isn’t meant to be real. One is a ragdoll stitched of parts taught to move from Point A to Point B, the other a secret weapon of the unexpectedly biological kind. Yet both were very, very real.

The sly Ocelot had found that terribly funny. “We’re just extra arms on an elaborate machine. They’ll find us when they need us,” he’d hummed from his usual perch, and it stood as one of those things Ahab had learned to ignore when he wished to spare himself the headache. “And then they’ll discard us like old toys, all except for you.”

But that had been a lie, too, hadn’t it?

Voices hardly register as real or fake, these days. He senses but the words are only sounds, a ringing in the ear like the same bang of the bomb. Presence registers as threat, sounds as the distant crack of gunfire and echoes of death in the halls. Someone says he looks ill. A nurse, maybe, one of the veterinarians that were hired to tear him apart and lace him back together. Or - no, the voice is more familiar than that. A clanmate, a fragment of this family he was trying desperately to reassemble around himself.

Emil is singing, a soft-voiced lullaby but rasping like the sand on his tongue. He sings while the world decays, and Ahab wants to kill him for it.

His arm whirs, clicks. The metal built down to the bone gives an uneasy flex. He swings, hard, for any facial feature he can register first. Michael, Emil, whoever lingered in the hallucinated halls that were crumbling on all sides - they were the enemy and he was the last body standing, an animal let loose to destroy. He was not meant for this world - he was a machine built of organic pieces, made to make ruin of the peace. And he would.

He would.

On the beach below, a wave crashes onto the shore. The world continues to turn. The ocelot laughs, gives a twist of the paw to curl a claw inwards. Come hither, it says, and I will show you how to suffer.