08-29-2018, 12:30 AM
Of all dangers he was on the lookout for, a massive reptile with enough spikes to put a porcupine to shame was not one of them. Beck was easily dwarfed in his shadow, a feeble wisp compared to whatever entity this beast was. Dark eyes widened as the giant approached and blurred in his filmy vision, tugging his mangled arms away from the first girl as he prepared to defend himself against a monster. Even with ears pinned to his skull and teeth exposed in a pained snarl, the threat didn't appear fazed by his laughable tactics. Thankfully, he promptly turned on his heel and flapped off, and the poltergeist caught a snippet of his muffled speech. Fetching someone? Suspicion overtook his youthful features, curling his bloodless lip as the dragon faded from his nearsighted glare. Pointedly refusing to hold out his arms for Goldie to fuss over, Beck forced himself into a slumped sit, one crooked hindleg poking out at an awkward angle.
It took a moment for him to register that there was someone else speaking aside from his thoughts, and an unfocused yet curious squint trained on the same talkative girl. Questions. And he needed to answer again. "Dunno," was all he could offer, lifeless eyes shifting from her face to anywhere else as he unraveled Audrey’s tendrils from his next and placed the fly trap back onto the sand. How did he end up here again? Well, maybe it would be best to tackle remembering his identity first -- he chewed on an unscathed lip, searching for any clue as to what exactly his name used to be. It started with what they called a 'b', one of the hardest letters for him to pronounce... Brook? No. "Beck?" the scrawny boy murmured, repeating himself just to make sure it felt correct coming from his mouth, "Beck. Just Beck." Was he supposed to have a surname too? He shrugged the worry away, beginning to ruffle through foggy memories once more to answer the first question. He couldn't find any rhyme or reason to his actions, except for the overwhelming instinct to run. He didn't know what he had been running from, and what it did to him, but he could guess. Someone had pried into places they regretted in the carnage that followed. Which would explain why there was so much blood. Lost in the faint sensation of plunging an improvised blade over and over into a chest, the poltergeist hardly noticed when Rosemary hurried forwards. She looked cool, at least, even if Beck didn't understand what exactly she meant. Telepathy was, like, a comic book thing, right? He remembered skimming through a few scenes in a living child’s precious collection before ripping out the vintage pages, bitterly admiring from the shadows as the child discovered the remnants of his treasured possessions.
His daydreaming was cut off by a voice pulsing throughout his being, rattling through injuries. Each one set off a lightbulb in his brain, a flicker of an incomplete puzzle disjointedly painting together a struggle. A tackle, a returned blow to the face. Stabbing a shard of tile into a padded chest. A dying gasp as he stepped away from his work. But the guard had one final move; wrenching a leg out from under his killer as he stared down at his handiwork, grabbing the entity by the matted hair and smashing his face against a wall. The final puzzle piece was a crack of bone. Yet the cuts torn into his arms and the incision remained barricaded from his memory.
Rosemary’s next words were in no way comforting. Wiring his jaw shut? Were they going to stitch his gums together with a sharpened wire? The boy’s thoughts crumbled into a panicked buzz, jumping from assumption to assumption. Pale lips parted to blurt out his refusal, but all that came out was a strained yelp as yet another set of hands -- or paws, whatever -- were placed on him without warning and jerked his knee into a socket, disregarding any of his painstakingly-recreated tendons. It was a horrid cry, one more of fear than pain, yet still just as broken and shrill as anything one would expect from a child. The next instant, the wiry feline ripped his leg from Rosemary’s grasp, shoving aside her apprentice and teetering on three legs as the set one was held aloft. He would never admit it, but an instinctive film of tears glistened in his eyes, staring back at the medic’s four in disbelief. “Don’t, don’t touch me -- don’t ever touch me!” Nobody was allowed to touch him, and his frenzied snarl, bottom row of clenched teeth askew, delivered his message well enough.
[align=center]»――➤It took a moment for him to register that there was someone else speaking aside from his thoughts, and an unfocused yet curious squint trained on the same talkative girl. Questions. And he needed to answer again. "Dunno," was all he could offer, lifeless eyes shifting from her face to anywhere else as he unraveled Audrey’s tendrils from his next and placed the fly trap back onto the sand. How did he end up here again? Well, maybe it would be best to tackle remembering his identity first -- he chewed on an unscathed lip, searching for any clue as to what exactly his name used to be. It started with what they called a 'b', one of the hardest letters for him to pronounce... Brook? No. "Beck?" the scrawny boy murmured, repeating himself just to make sure it felt correct coming from his mouth, "Beck. Just Beck." Was he supposed to have a surname too? He shrugged the worry away, beginning to ruffle through foggy memories once more to answer the first question. He couldn't find any rhyme or reason to his actions, except for the overwhelming instinct to run. He didn't know what he had been running from, and what it did to him, but he could guess. Someone had pried into places they regretted in the carnage that followed. Which would explain why there was so much blood. Lost in the faint sensation of plunging an improvised blade over and over into a chest, the poltergeist hardly noticed when Rosemary hurried forwards. She looked cool, at least, even if Beck didn't understand what exactly she meant. Telepathy was, like, a comic book thing, right? He remembered skimming through a few scenes in a living child’s precious collection before ripping out the vintage pages, bitterly admiring from the shadows as the child discovered the remnants of his treasured possessions.
His daydreaming was cut off by a voice pulsing throughout his being, rattling through injuries. Each one set off a lightbulb in his brain, a flicker of an incomplete puzzle disjointedly painting together a struggle. A tackle, a returned blow to the face. Stabbing a shard of tile into a padded chest. A dying gasp as he stepped away from his work. But the guard had one final move; wrenching a leg out from under his killer as he stared down at his handiwork, grabbing the entity by the matted hair and smashing his face against a wall. The final puzzle piece was a crack of bone. Yet the cuts torn into his arms and the incision remained barricaded from his memory.
Rosemary’s next words were in no way comforting. Wiring his jaw shut? Were they going to stitch his gums together with a sharpened wire? The boy’s thoughts crumbled into a panicked buzz, jumping from assumption to assumption. Pale lips parted to blurt out his refusal, but all that came out was a strained yelp as yet another set of hands -- or paws, whatever -- were placed on him without warning and jerked his knee into a socket, disregarding any of his painstakingly-recreated tendons. It was a horrid cry, one more of fear than pain, yet still just as broken and shrill as anything one would expect from a child. The next instant, the wiry feline ripped his leg from Rosemary’s grasp, shoving aside her apprentice and teetering on three legs as the set one was held aloft. He would never admit it, but an instinctive film of tears glistened in his eyes, staring back at the medic’s four in disbelief. “Don’t, don’t touch me -- don’t ever touch me!” Nobody was allowed to touch him, and his frenzied snarl, bottom row of clenched teeth askew, delivered his message well enough.