Omar Diggs [Bounty Log for Attleton][Open for Action afterwards]

[youfool]

 "I didn't do it, man! Back off or I swear I'm gonna blow her brains out!" 

Mr. Diggs, a disheveled, middle-aged man, threatened a terrified young redhead at gunpoint. He held her neck in his arms as he pressed the barrel into her temple. 

Ted had gotten pretty good at tracking down wanted criminals, either through persistence or dumb luck. He remembers bits of gossip in his travels, and when he tread enough pavement, it was only a matter of time before he found his man. 

It was a far more difficult matter when his man found a hostage, however. Ordinarily these everyday thugs wouldn't give him much hassle, but the threatening of innocents made things much trickier. He usually doesn't have to resort to diplomacy, and in his life-fiber suit, Ted isn't exactly the picture of peace.

"Just...calm down, sir. You're only wanted for questioning; if you're innocent, then...well, I must say your innocence is looking very questionable at the moment. I would think one's image might be some import-"

"Shut up!" Omar pressed the hammer of the revolver as the woman was hitched up an inch higher, shrieking. Okay, bad choice of words.  Still, what could he do? He had chased his quarry into an alley. There didn't seem to be a good way to get the drop of him. It was them three with brown brick wall on either side. A chill wind rustled through the tension.

"All right, just...take it easy. Calm down."

"I am calm!" 

Ted grit his teeth out of nerves. He just needed time. Silently, he willed one of his threads to creep along the left wall, using the shadow of nearby cover to obscure it. With luck, Omar's peripheral vision wouldn't see that dark tendril inching ever closer to his position. Ted just needed his attention for some moments longer.

"Listen, I-"

"No YOU listen! On the count of three, you're gonna back off. If you move a single muscle, she's dead, got it! By the time I say 'one', if you're not out of my sight, you're gonna see a real murder." He shot Ted a steeled look of grim determination. 

"One!" The woman peeped a small shriek. Come on, life fibers, go closer! Ted couldn't budge.

"Two!" It looked to be in position. But if Ted gets this wrong, then-

"Three!" No time. With a silent prayer, Ted bid the thread lance its way across the alley, striking Omar clean in the head. A whipping snap resounded along the walls, and the assailant was neutralized. Ted let out gasping breaths of relief.

"Sorry, Ma'am. Are you all right? My apologies for-"

"Aaaaaah!" With a scream, the woman whose name Ted never knew ran off in terror. 

"...ah. Suppose I can't blame her; as costumes go, mine isn't the friendliest..."


***

Ted needed to get his mind off murderers for a while. And what better way to do that than recite poetry to the confused looks of pedestrians everywhere? Colorful verse rolled off a colorfully dressed man.

"There is a gentle thought that often springs
to life in me, because it speaks of you.
Its reasoning about love’s so sweet and true,
the heart is conquered, and accepts these things.
‘Who is this’ the mind enquires of the heart,
‘who comes here to seduce our intellect?
Is his power so great we must reject
every other intellectual art?
The heart replies ‘O, meditative mind
this is love’s messenger and newly sent
to bring me all Love’s words and desires.
His life, and all the strength that he can find,
from her sweet eyes are mercifully lent,
who feels compassion for our inner fires."

Comments

Re: [Action]

[youfool]

Sync certainly was an efficient job-doer. Was this where his no-nonsense attitude about work came from? His labors didn't seem to give him much pleasure.

So Van wanted to clone an entire planet. Ambitious, to say the least. Still, he can't see why that would be any freer than anything else. If fatalism's the order of the day, why would it cover one world any more or less than another? It was like they conceded the deadly truth of the matter before they'd even begun to fight.

And now, Sync speaks of vanity, a subject Ted knows painfully well. Believing that you're of no use; that you can't make a difference. An anomaly of existence that can't seem to change a stubborn world, however much he'd like to.

For now, all he can do is move along. Sync's misgiving's over help that seemed too pat prompted him to keep affection close at hand. "'They'?"

[Action]

[rejected_trash]

This was indeed why he tended to be very professional; when all you had to your existence was work, you tended to do that one thing well. Taking joy from his work might be impossible as his work wasn't joyous in nature even now, it was merely another way to exist.

For cloning Auldrant, there were inherent flaws...but Sync hadn't told Ted everything yet, though it might be inferred; he was made to replace Ion, but being told what he was made for did hint that he didn't have Ion's memories. That step had thwarted Jade to the point the man had almost killed himself for answers. Van felt it was best Replicas existed without memories.

There was a silence from the boy. "Luke fon Fabre was Van's student, and he traveled with Jade Curtiss and Anise Tatlin. There were more, but those three wound up here. They opposed Van at every step they would, even if they were always three steps behind in their reasoning."

So, his roommates, in effect. People here tended to cling to what was familiar, and perhaps he was no different.

Re: [Action]

[youfool]

Ted was quiet as he recollected the other network broadcasts he's seen. All three of those he knew, Jade most of all, though not the hand he'd played in fomicry from the beginning.

"I see. So you were enemies, then, albeit reluctant ones by the sound of it."

He didn't take those three to be especially zealous followers of the Score or anything like that; presumably Van's plan would have dire consequences if his opposition was so fierce.

"I recall Anise said she was lucky to have people she knew around. You included."

[Action]

[rejected_trash]

"Hm." Sync was mostly indifferent in the end. He had done his job because it was what Van wanted, but he would be lying if he had attempted to claim that at one time he didn't hate them. Mostly because he felt so embittered by his circumstance.

He was turning this over in his brain when Ted's comment made him perk up. "Did she?" It was unexpected. He felt she was just caring for him because he looked like Ion sometimes. He also wondered if she interested him just because he coveted anything Ion had.

Ultimately though, he did miss her since she had made the effort, a bit more sincerely than Jade. Looking back over to Ted, he shrugged his shoulders after a moment. "That is my story." Which unless Ted had questions, seemed like the end. He reclined back against the bench and stretched out a bit to relax, just remembering all that put a lot of tension on him.

Re: [Action]

[youfool]

Ted mentally summed up the story, and Sync along with it. Cloned to replace a terminally ill, child-leader of The Order. He was then left to die after things didn't go as planned, only to be rescued by one with designs to thwart the cruel system that produced him. Sync agreed, presumably because it was better to be useful than nothing at all. He must have held the question all victims of the Score did: "What choice do I have?"

Yet it went awry. Sync said even then, after devoting his life exclusively to dismantling the presiding system, he wasn't useful after all. He couldn't do the one thing he'd set his mind to. His resistance was futile. But he resisted anyway; resisted the one way out his enemies might give him. Why? Because he couldn't trust. Because betrayal had been scarred into him from the very beginning. And even when that fate had been averted, it was replaced by one of mere subservience and destruction. He must have had no inkling of what Luke, Anise, and Jade offered.

Ted didn't know what time span this all happened in, but he guessed no more than a few years, despite the adolescence. Good Lord, one could measure how far away Sync was from a normal life in light-years. What an awful tragedy. Ted spoke in a quivering, doleful way, close to tears.

"I'm sorry, Sync. That must've been an excruciating life to live."

Granted, Sync played his part in his own misery too, but Ted could hardly blame him for that. The circumstances were mitigating, to say the least. Besides, in his own youth, Ted had nursed similar desires born from similar wounds.

And yet, he wondered why Sync told him all this. Ted did have an uncanny ability to extract the past from relative strangers, but that couldn't explain all. Perhaps this had been burdening him a long time; so long that he didn't much care who he told, so long as he got it off his chest. And Sync had vouchsafed all of this to Ted, someone whom he lightly knew at work? As Ted continued, the sorrow in his voice was gradually eclipsed by hope.

"But for all that...I can see how you've grown. You're doing so much better. I can't tell you how honored I am that you'd confide in me. It's not in vain. I swear to secrecy, of course. In exchange, will you please me and promise to put me at your disposal? I wouldn't mind, you know, helping you keep to this upward path you're on."

He was smiling warmly, looking at the eyes of Sync's mask, before laughing a little at himself.

"If that's not too forward."

[Action]

[rejected_trash]

Crossing his arms as he listened to Ted attempt to empathize. He wondered if it was even possible, but he kept the possibility open in his mind.

What he hadn't expected were compliments. He took them, regarding Ted now more seriously. It seemed that perhaps yes, he was being serious. Almost far too serious, but that's how Ted came off to Sync in the end. Serious and perhaps foolish. There was a sigh and the teen reached to slip his mask off his face. There wasn't much to Sync's face that was remarkable, he just looked older in the eyes, like he had seen more than he should have. Given his story; this might not be surprising.

"Alright Ted. I don't know where I'm heading, but fine; help me get there." Wherever it was, he did not entertain noble thoughts of suddenly being a hero. However if he could find something more to life than what he had on Auldrant, he would take that. Anise had already reminded him that like it or not; this was home now. He had used up that second chance as eagerly as it had been offered to him.

He replaced the mask onto his face again, looking forward. "Did you have anything you wanted to talk about?"

Re: [Action]

[youfool]

Ted stifled a laugh at the--surely--symbolic unmasking. He wondered if Sync did that often; take it off in tender moments. He's very encouraged that Sync, with the origin he had, can now trust so well that sharing his miseries didn't seem to tax him very much.

"Oh, I do. Heaven--the beatific vision, and all that. I don't see why you couldn't get there any more than I could." But even Ted knew this might not be the time to start witnessing. Has to pace himself. Something he wanted to talk about? For a moment ,Ted thought he might want some turnabout; an offer to share a dark past of his own. He has a little of that, but...well, it seemed like such a nice day. Too nice to darken it with his own unresolved woes. It could wait. He had something else in mind anyway.

"But nicely; yes, you may rely on me always." Now he'll get physical and try to rope an arm around Sync's shoulder, drawing him in for some close and personal, brotherly feeling. He'd always wanted siblings.

"Want to get something to eat? On the way you can tell me all about how you catch criminals, like that, ah, killer I've seen you dispatch on the Beacon Boards. Been trying for that one a while; I'd love to know your methods. I've a few of my own, of course."