Colin's posts

Leo just smiled.

"That's good, at least." he said.

"Then yeah, let's scram." he told her.

"I hear another argument brewing, and if I were to wager a guess, this will continue to spread." he went on, before they kept hearing the word 'nightmare' over and over again.

"....ok, I'm hearing that word a LOT more than normal." he commented.

Leo just nodded in response.

"Okay." he said.

"Let's get out of here." he agreed.

"To where?" he asked.

"Just anywhere that's not here in the Order?" he asked further.

"...hm." he then mumbled, thinking a little.

"Well, spending more time with Nakia is never a bad thing." he admitted.

"But where will YOU go? Just go to being Serenity more... full-time?" he asked her.

Leo was silent again for a moment, and shook his head.

"I wish MY presence carried some weight." he said.

"ANY weight..." he mumbled.

"But I'm still mostly seen as just some junior, unless YOU enter the picture." he admitted, biting his lip slightly, but quickly snapping himself back to reality.

"And something's going on?" he asked.

"Would this be tied into why everyone seems so angry and stressed?" he asked further.

Immediately, the two of them froze where they were, fear in their eyes.

Almost instantly the one called Stan let go of Leo, and gulped audibly.

"Y-y-y-yes Ma'am." he stammered.

"We were... we were just on our way!" the second one quickly said.

"Yes, yes, that's right!" Stan agreed, before they started to back away from the newcomer, as well as Leo, who was fixing his shirt from having been grabbed.

"...." he was silent for a moment, and sighed quietly.

Leo just sighed as he made his way through the halls of the Order. It seemed that, recently, a lot of the people he'd talked to were tense, or things were finally coming to a head for them.

He didn't think TOO much of it, considering they were in the middle of a stressful time of the year, as far as dreams were concerned. Politics were shifting in the world, as such, stress ran high, and it meant that they had to put more effort into making sure all their charges had a good amount of restful sleep.

Which was harder than it sounded.

However, for ALL the people he knew to suddenly be so tense? It DID strike him as a little odd.

Just as he turned a corner, he heard what sounded to be a heated argument just down the hallway, so he quickened his pace and went to see what was happening. The pair that he found having the discussion was a pair of more senior members of the Order, held in relatively high regards by others.

But they were really going at each other, it seemed.

"You IDIOT!" one declared. "A nightmare is the LAST thing his campaign manager needs right now!" he growled.

"YOU'RE one to talk!" the other shot back. "What about that recovering addict under YOUR care!? Because of that nightmare you were supposed to cut off, but ended up making worse, he'll probably hit the stuff harder than ever, which could KILL him!" they countered.

"That was unexpected, and not my fault!" the first one shot back. "I specifically used the sand to bring peace and serenity to him!" he insisted.

"And I did the same!" the other one countered.

"Stop trying to cover your sorry ass by hiding behind MY reasons!" the first one then snarled... which, at that point, made it look like things were going to get physical.

"Please, please..." Leo said as calmly as he could, deciding he needed to interject. "Fighting and arguing isn't going to help anyone." he told them as he slowly approached, trying to diffuse the situation.

The pair of them looked sharply at Leo, before they both spoke up in unison.

"Butt out, junior!" they barked.

"This isn't something for YOU to get involved in!" one of them said, reaching out and grabbing Leo by the collar. "I suggest you learn to let those higher ranked than you work out their OWN problems." he then snarled.

"All right." Azazel replied.

"I'm going to go tell Sharp we dealt with the statues." he told her.

"See you later, Aedan." he then said to the zombie.

As he left, he pondered something.

Aedan had been through a LOT this past while... he wondered if there was something he could do for her.

Meanwhile, a male with shadowy dark skin made his way through the hallways of a secret building in a hidden area, some papers in his hands. He walked over towards a door, knocking on it. When a female voice beckoned him in, he stepped into the room.

"I've received intel from our spy network." he told her.

"It seems that all of our 'Stalker' units have been taken out." he reported.

The female was now visibly agitated.

"However, I don't think we can call this a complete failure." the male quickly said. "After all, it can we said that we created entities that straddled the line between life and death. It can be argued that they were alive. It can be argued that they were dead. It can be argued they were both, yet neither." he listed off.

"We essentially made the Schrödinger's cat thought experiment a physical being, with tangible proof for either side." he went on.

"And that sort of info... that state of quasi-being... it could very well be the key to you finally being able to tap into the resources that The Order of The Sand hold." he told her further.

The female still looked agitated, but her expression softened. She had to agree that the man had a point, and if there was still some value out of this, she couldn't remain completely angry.

However, unbeknownst to the two of them, another figure had been walking down the hallway, and had heard the tail end of their conversation. When they did, they smirked to themselves. It was a proud smirk. It was a confident smirk.

'I know what to do!' he exclaimed mentally, before hurrying down the hall to set his plan into motion.

Azazel nodded, and got Aedan to one of the cots.

"We were dealing with the statues." he told Angela.

"Sadly, the best way to do it was to bait them out using Aedan." he said.

"They show up, break her neck, I show up, break the statue, snap her neck back into place, rinse and repeat."

"Yeah." Azazel replied.

With that, the two of them went back to the Unit and Aedan went to the medical wing.

"She needs her neck looked at." Azazel said to Angela.

"It's been broken too many times."

"We're both hard to kill." Azazel replied.

"But... for different reasons." he said.

"Technically speaking, I'm easier to kill, but that knowledge is so rare it's practically lost." he reasoned. "And the chances of someone accidentally doing it are slim." he reasoned.

"So... yeah, different reasons." he shrugged.

"Regardless, you need to get readjusted in the med wing. I may have broken some bones snapping your neck back into place so many times..." he admitted.

"I try not to think about that." Azazel replied.

"Might drive me mad." he reasoned with a shrug.

"For now, we need to report back to Sharp, and get YOU to the med wing." he told her.

"After all that's happened to you, in such a short amount of time, I'm amazed your head's even still attached to your body." he admitted bluntly.

"And I really don't want to lose you..." he then added quietly.

Azazel just heaved a sigh of relief, as he dropped the sledgehammer beside the pile of rubble and red liquid.

"My arms are a little on the sore side, too." he said.

"...but that's hardly anything to complain about, given YOUR situation." he mumbled.

"Regardless, yeah, I think we got them all." he told her.

"The neck snapping should finally stop." he muttered. "Well... from the statues, anyway." he clarified.

"These things can really travel, too." he went on.

"We're lucky our info network spreads out all across the world."

"Very well." Zeke replied.

He then turned around and walked out of the room.

As soon as he was out of sight, there was a blinding flash of light, indicating he was gone.

All that Aedan was left with was the info they'd gathered, and the man's ominous warning.

But she had little time to dwell on that, there was a more immediate threat to deal with.

"You do that, then." Zeke responded.

"I need to do some digging for information." he said.

"...because his warning is NOT sitting well with me." he admitted.

"I wish he could have been more clear, but... well, seems we can't have things made easy for us." he sighed.

"Want me to find Azazel and send him your way?" he then asked.

"Hm." Zeke muttered.

"You sound... SO confident." he told her.

"But if you think you and your boyfriend are the best team for the job, then tell Sharp so." he said.

"There anything else you need to do here?" he asked her.

"Anything to document or gather, or anything?" he asked further.