I really can't blame them either. The shrinking is far worse than we've ever experienced, but the truth is that we've been having problems for months, and every time new people come on board it's just more confusion. Especially when they start having the hallucinations hit them.
[She nodded at the description, recognizing quickly that this was some sort of 'thing' Retrospec was doing to her friend. It was... annoying, but at the very least it wasn't as unpleasant as, say, growing horns or something equally outlandish. Regardless, it was distressing her, so she wanted that to ease.]
I see. Perhaps try to relax. They won't go away, so maybe find a way to accent them or simply style the rest of your look to go with? As I said, they're not unattractive, if you have to be stuck with them.
[Chloe's hand came back once the knife was taken smoothly enough and slipped behind her back, pulling another out and causing it to spin in her fingers relatively easily. She smiled and motioned for the two of them to continue.]
I appreciate it. We can have each other's backs while we walk, can we not? It is a bit dangerous to go alone these days, after all.
[She opted not to simply volunteer just how good she was with these knives, or how much she'd been picking up. If they fought a bug, she'd see first hand. However, she had a feeling the revelation might be a bit much for Lucy.]
I have five on my person, and the one you have. I've found eight in my house so far, and I find more and more as time goes. They think it is funny at this point, I am reasonably sure.
[Knives throwing knives? Heresy! But she wasn't done finding them all, so who knew what was coming yet.]
They ... feel like they belong to me, and I find it very difficult to get rid of anything that Retrospec has sent me, whether I can prove it was them or not.
[It was a slightly more thoughtful mumble than usual, honest.
Lucy tightened her grip on the knife only to make sure she wouldn't drop it, and started to walk forwards before her knee decided to stiffen up on her.
...she still wasn't over the knives thing. But that admission did make her think. The only thing Lucy could think of right now that she had that kind of attachment to was that beat up old suitcase, and—that stupid clock.]
...were any of them in places they're not supposed to be?
[Well, that malfunctioning clock probably belonged in the trash, but.]
"They didn't whisper to me of answers," she said when they had gotten a little away. The whispers were still there, but she was willing to risk taking a single ear bud out so that she could hear Eleanor properly. She looked at her for a long moment, color heating her cheeks. "All that they whispered to me was that I could be with the one that I wanted, and kept whispering different names, playing off of my turmoil."
She relaxed her grip and looked back. Part of her wanted to go back, to escort Eleanor. "I... if you want to go back, we can, but I will not let you go alone." Her voice said she didn't think anything good would come of it, but she was willing.
All of the knives, and my cloak. I didn't own either, and yet I found them in my home, in places they should have been, had I owned them. But I had only seen them in visions.
Others, they mailed to me. [She shrugged and shook her head, looking back at Lucy. Idly, she wondered if the girl had experienced the same.]
Everything but the pocketwatch they gave me feels the same... and that still feels, I don't know, important somehow.
[She blinked and then paused in her walk, looking back at Lucy for a long moment. There was a little bit of shock there in her eyes, because 'gun that can't be loaded' was really distinctive, and she'd had a bad experience with that gun.]
[Lucy didn't notice Chloe had stopped right away, and had to backpedal a bit to avoid crashing into her or otherwise getting too close for Lucy's paranoid personal space bubble.]
You just... took me by surprise. I have never been to her home, so I didn't know that you two knew each other actually. [She shrugged.] I have... seen that gun before.
[Which was to say that that gun had involved a memory regain for both girls.]
[Chloe seemed unnerved by something, or at least a bit off-balance now. Lucy resisted the automatic impulse to immediately dig her fingers into that weakness, tightening her grip on the knife instead.
It was a stress response, nothing to worry about.]
[She didn't show any sign of reacting to those fingers tightening, though she was starting to develop an awareness and the shift didn't go completely unnoticed.]
It... triggered a hallucination for both of us while we were at a firing range. Not a very pleasant one, though it still doesn't shoot bullets. As harmless as a water gun.
Actually, water guns are more dangerous. [She frowned and then shrugged.] But it apparently reminded both of us something unpleasant. You'd have to ask her about what she saw. I don't like talking about what I saw.
[Mostly because pointing a gun at someone and firing to make them remember their traumatic past wasn't exactly a pleasant memory.]
No, not at all. Neither of us were hurt. We just had ... very disturbing hallucinations. [She shook her head.] I think hers involved what the gun was for. She called it an evoker.
[She frowned, shrugging.] I don't think she likes carrying it around right now. I last saw her with a spear.
Chloe physically froze when she was asked that. It was a simple question, and her friend had every reason to be worried about her, especially considering some of her past hallucinations. She looked away and murmured, "Kirika and my girlfriend..." But, the fact that she said it the way that she did, biting her lip and her fingers gripping more, it was painfully obvious she wasn't saying everything.
She heard, even at a distance, the whispers again and clenched her eyes. Breathing out, she whispered 'shut up' a few times in French. The last time she'd admitted any attraction to someone that was here in town had gone horribly, and she did not need this stress right now.
[Hey, Minako was her friend too. She wouldn't have blamed her too bad if she'd honestly thought Chloe had hurt her. 'Course, not stabbing each other was usually a good thing.]
You have a point there, especially a gun that doesn't actually shoot. A spear is strange enough, is it not? [She managed a smile.] Have you seen it yet? The spear, I mean.
Page 1 of 4