exsiliumlogs | Operation: Roll Out

Entry tags:

Operation: Roll Out

Date & Time: January 31st - February 4th, Present Day Exsilium Time
Location: Neo Las Vegas, in what formerly was called Turkey.
Characters: All Transports!
Summary: Transports have been sent to Neo Las Vegas to gather information on the origin point of the United Earth and the UE AI. Conference sabotage and the rest is expected and invited!
Warnings: Gambling and alcoholic beverages quite likely! Please PM the mod account for anything else.

By day, the landscape isn't desert, precisely, so much as it is dry. Winter's settled in and found in the biting chill of the wind when it finds you standing on the street. Hovercars and taxis thrum down the cobblestone streets, cavorting and honking like a noisy crowd of inelegant, overweight geese. Men walk by on stilts half in make-up, on their way back to their stage for the next night. Walks of shame are taken proudly in this district, one of the few approved and sanctioned vacation zones in the United Earth.

Evidence of law enforcement can be found all around, but they seem altogether too pleased to be there too. Talk with any one of them about crime rates, and they're liable to laugh at the idea. Those who come to gamble know the house is rigged to win. It's not about making or breaking the bank -- people whose funds dip too low are politely escorted back to their rooms and given a set of normal playing cards -- but it is about enjoyment.

Of the flesh too, and it'd be difficult to find anyone working in Neo Las Vegas who suffers from modesty, or anyone visiting who seems unwilling to politely ask visitors and staff if they'd like to keep them company for the night. In fact, Transports may find themselves needing to turn down multiple such requests! The refusal is always taken well. These are people looking to have a good time, and that's all.

No chance taken, nothing gained, right?

At night, the city really comes alive, the lights in all the hotels and casinos turning the Neo Las Vegas Strip into a carnival of sensation. Drinks and recreational drugs are freely passed around, men and women engage in a variety of sexual and other hedonistic excesses without regret, and the beautiful interiors and ostentatious or playful exteriors of the buildings hide and reveal a rich tapestry of events, delectables, and desires waiting to be fulfilled.

Neo Las Vegas is a fun place, and it is a safe place, and it is Where the Conferences For Our Future Are Made. Playtime is on, gang.

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Collette shakes her head, leaning into Kate's touch. She doesn't want to say what will make it real yet again, the inevitability she'd cried about and said she loved him for while he'd still been with them all. "Blue's been sick for a long time," she gets out after swallowing empty air, clearing her throat at the end. "He's gone. They can't -- he died. Yesterday."

The tears keep falling, regardless of how she tries to brush them away. She knows she shouldn't go on like this, that it's never a singular pain -- many people loved Blue -- but she can't quite get them to stop. Collette hurts, and she shows it. It's part of the honesty in her that doesn't often see the light of day.

Sick for a long time.

It's like Charlie all over; sacrificing time and energy to ensure what they started gets finished. She pauses again, eyes widening a fraction before she lets it all sink in.

Her fingers brush along Collette's cheek, reaching up to wipe away her tears.

"Collette, I'm so sorry." She bites back her frustration at Blue not warning her their conversations would be their first and last.

She turns her face in to Kate's fingers, her own fingers curling into a fist that comes to rest over her collar bone, close to the center of her chest. "Why?"

Sorry for what? Kate hasn't done anything. "He's been dying for a long time, Kate. It just... he just got worse in December. And January," she adds, voice shaky, snot dripping from her nose.

"It still hurts, doesn't it?"

From her own experiences, it never stops. It dulls eventually, but it remains there like a phantom pain. A part you can't tear from yourself no matter how hard you try.

"Loss tends to," she admits, sniffling hard. "But it's not all there is. It's just -- it was yesterday --"

She'd said goodbye. It just wasn't enough.

The hand she's been using to wipe her tear away not settles atop of Collette's head, fingers gently weaving through her hair. There are no words that will ease the pain of loss, not one so recent, especially. There's probably nothing more to be said; it is what it is.

She only wonders about the resurrection technology and whether Blue will return at all.

"Did you get to see him before?"

She nods her head, feeling miserable, but aware that it was because of the good things that she felt the bad so keenly. "Not long after I got back. I spent most the day with him. He wasn't doing great then, either, but..."

Going back again and again had been difficult, nigh on impossible to contemplate. Watching a slow decline was like watching her mother all over again, only without the burn of ammonia in her nostrils, or the beeping of the heart monitor watching her pulse.

"We got to talk. It wasn't enough," she adds, feeling Kate will understand. Collette wipes under her nose with the back of her wrist again, grimacing at the wetness and how cold it is in the night air. "I'm a mess," she announces, laughing in a bubbling way, difficult with the snot in her throat and the thickness of her own saliva.

"Just a total mess right now."

She gently nudges Collette's frame in the general direction of the staircase down, to get off this rooftop and somewhere private.

She does understand; one of the last conversations she had had with her own mother was yelling at her over something Gabi couldn't control. It had been the twins' birthday and they locked themselves into a separate room, upset their father would not be around again to celebrate it. She remembers telling her mother she hated her when the movers came, when they were still in America.

"Let's get you inside to warm up," she says quietly. She places her hands on Collette's shoulders, squeezing softly. "It might not have been enough, but I'm sure you provided him some peace of mind.

She nods her head, not wanting to speak past the knot in her throat. Tears threaten fall hot and fast down her cheeks, and she breathes in, shaky and close to letting out another sob in an attempt to calm down again.

Her reactions in the moment of her strongest emotions are always hardest to control when they come around to grief. She knows she needs to stop before she starts. She'll get worn out otherwise.

"Mmmkay," she agrees, turning toward the stairs she'd stumbled up to get here. It's only a flight and a half, and then it's the normal halls, with the luxury of elevators on the inside of the hotel. ""You really think so?"

Kate slows them down as she approaches the stairs, moving Collette as close as she can to the rail. It would be easier to carry her down on her own, but it feels like it would be rubbing salt in a different wound.

"I do," she remembers Renee's grief as Charlie withered away in bed, unable to recognize the people who cared about him. She remembers Renee's doubt and guilt and how she had to remind her she had done all she could. "I'm sure you did everything you could, Collette."

It's a good move on Kate's part: Collette's hand seeks the rail after her hip finds it, grunting and gripping the cool metal. She pauses to collect her thoughts, much as she can, and organize herself for the effort of climbing down.

"Wasn't enough." It's usually not, and that's outside her control. She knows that. Still hurts like heck.

She keeps a steady hand on Collette's shoulder.

"You've had too much to drink. I'll order some food when you're back in a room."

Grief and anger, coupled with one too many drinks, is a recipe for a wreaking havoc on an already vulnerable heart and mind.

"I don't think I like drinking," she confesses as they move downward, grateful for Kat's steadying presence. It's simpler to focus on what she says than the emotions that are still too raw, without something more immediate to press her into service.

"What kind of food?" A pause. "Which room is mine?"

"It's not for everyone."

She pauses herself and sighs, not up for walking her from door to door to figure out where and who she's staying with. She mainly wants to get her to lay down and eat something and have a hangover remedy ready by morning.

"I'll take you to my room."

The offer makes Collette giggle, an altogether absurd reaction. "Ros won't mind?" is all she asks, continuing her steady walk down the stairs. If she alternates between leaning into Kate and leaning into the wall, it's only to maintain her balance overall. She promises.

She almost asks in return, "Is she supposed to?" but opts against it quite quickly and instead: "No, you're not well."

Whatever happened between them, it's not important to Kate right now and she knows Roslyn wouldn't turn down someone in need of a place to lay down.

Kate keeps by Collette's side, the cold that had been biting the back of her neck finally fading, letting out an involuntary shudder.

Collette shudders sympathetically. She doesn't feel the cold yet, and hopefully won't, as they round corners and find themselves in front of another door. This one leads inside, to the carpeted halls and the broken safety glass over the Fire Pull.

"I'm not unwell," she says, an argument delivered too late to really count as an argument. "Just sad. And tired. And used to it."

Kate glances around the floor carefully for bits of glass they might step on if they aren't cautious enough. With the elevator down the hall, she starts to lead Collette toward it.

She lets silence linger, puzzling over what to say at first.

Finally: "It won't help. Drinking." She states with no anger or dismay this time, just factually. "It makes you forget for the night, but it all comes back by the morning."

"With a headache," Collette said, sighing. She leaned into Kate again as her feet stumbled, forgetting to pick them up far enough to clear the carpet. "It was just everywhere. It seemed easy. Wow, is that our floor?"

Eyes open again, she stared up at the floor number above the elevator.

"I'll get a remedy for the morning." Kate was quick to secure her arms around Collette again when she stumbled, holding on a second longer than she should have. She swallowed and continued leading them until they were before the elevator and she hit the down button, being too many floors above her own.

It didn't take long; the steel doors slid open with very little noise and a maintenance worker stepped out, eyeing the two ladies oddly, but he left them to their own devices.

Once inside, she hit the button for her floor and the descent began.

"We have to focus, Collette."

Collette followed Kate's lead, leaning against the more experienced woman without much apparent concern. She frowned, expression clearing after a moment at Kate's statement. "Yes, okay. I can focus. I'm a little cold," she said, rubbing at one exposed arm. "Stopped being warm like earlier. What are we focusing on?"

"The mission," she answered calmly.

The general objective: to stop the UE.

The elevator slowed, finally coming to a halt at the floor Kate was roomed on. As the doors slid open, she gently nudged Collette to take the first few steps out with her following close behind.

"Oh! Oh, yeah. Caesar has a plan. Lots of listening. Makes my head feel stuffy, but I do it," she says, unmoving until Kate nudges her forward. Then she lurches into action with another 'oh!'.

"Making progress? In your um. Reports? I said I was HR to somebody. Said Caesar was a really... anti-social... guy! She wanted to sleep with him," she says, nodding after her own statement.

Her face falls. She wants to tell Blue about all of this, how it's silly and not as hurting as she thought it'd all would be. But he's not here. He's gone, dead and gone.

Her arm shoots out to support Collette, getting her toward her room and shoving her hand into a pocket to extract her card key and swipe it into the doorknob. The door clicks open, the scent of a freshly cleaned and prepared room rushing out, a touch of something tropical in it.

"You need to lay down." Maybe this is better left until Collette's sobered up. She points out the bed in the other room while pushing the door shut. It's cool in here and so she searches the side wall for the heat controls to warm up the place.

Collette focused her attention on the bed, moving toward it with a resolute purpose that leaned toward the left. "Waah!"

She turned herself over, her arms supporting most of her weight as she looked back Kate's way.

"What are your plans?"

She pulled herself into a ball, fighting with the urge to close her eyes and listen to someone she trusted move about the room.

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gevurah - 2014-03-03 09:30 (UTC) - Expand

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crocodilesmiles - 2014-03-04 05:37 (UTC) - Expand

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