Shadows Over Camp Darkness

When the Bough Breaks

The pride and joy of Gideon's first week with the kids surprisingly didn't start or end with a puddle of blood. Considering the fact that Gids was teaching hand to hand and basic violence, it was almost statistically impossible for it to not involve a puddle of blood at some point, but that hadn't been the highlight of the week for the Fury or her kids. Everyone else was getting a day off site but Intake 1 actually. They hadn't earned the right to leave the Camps, so instead they had the entire facilities to themselves, plus some discreet security. Considering the fact that there was still some creepy, unknown something going bump in the night, Gideon was tolerant of having minders watching over them; if nothing else they'd be useful meat shields. Gideon's first real sense of success with her kids came when she set up a slightly illegal Fight Club for their golemi. It would have been a lot more fun to just pit the kids against each other a la Gladiator style, but although that's acceptable for Furies, even the Gidster knew it wasn't allowed for these plebeians.

So instead she had them all line up their golemi and explained the very basic rules to them. "These mudlings aren't alive so I can't make them fight to the death. They can beat each other back into primordial goo, but that wouldn't serve much of a lesson for you all. Instead, I want you to actually try and think your way through this. Your golemi are pretty much as untrained as you all are. This is how you can see for yourselves how they would do, and in reflection of that how you would do."

Of course, things did not go as well or as smoothly as others would have liked, but Gids anticipated tears, snot, blood and a few hissy fits. It was all a part of the catharsis. The first golemi to shamble out was Cala’s; the Elf had a major case of ego still so Gideon wasn’t surprised but glad to see her fear of failure diminishing. It was the most important thing that Cala could take away this week; failure is not the end, it’s really just step one. The world would be a lot more boring if every risk ended in success.

“Virgil, stop standing in the shadows and come be useful.” Gideon called out to her paramour. She could tell by the way he walked that he wasn’t happy at being spotted, but had already figured out why Gideon wanted him. “Cala, I want you to try and take this ribbon off of Virgil, any way you can.” Gideon instructed as she tied a hideous, neon pink ribbon around Virgil’s wrist.

“Really, that’s it?” Cala sounded dismissive, which proved to be an amusing fallacy as Virgil then easily avoided the Elf’s Golemi clone.

Confidence is one thing, hubris is another. The longer Virgil avoided the golemi the angrier Cala got, the more reckless her control of the mud figure became. Virgil was literally dangling the ribbon above the golemi’s reach when Cala finally used instinct to simply make her figure bigger. Its arms suddenly shot upwards but Virgil simply ported away.

“That’s not fair!” Cala screeched, unwittingly using a pitch that actually made Gideon flinch.

“Of course not. What part of adult life strikes you as being fair? As an infant you’re taught to talk and walk, then immediately told to sit down and shut up. Then you’re forced to go to school where it’s demanded that you make complicated decisions that will affect the rest of your life, but never are you treated with respect or trust. The next level of schooling ‘to get you workplace ready’ puts you so far in debt you have to take any job offered, but you need experience in your field to get a good job, which no one is willing to provide because no one trusts a just graduated student. So you work any job to pay off debt, to buy more things society tells you that you must have. Only to also demand that you save for retirement with the nebulous promise that after years of hard work, you’ll finally have the time and money to enjoy the things that make life worthwhile. And then, if you’re mortalish, you die. If not, you live long enough to become the bitter cultural elder who then forces these same standards on the next generation because ‘that’s what I did so that’s what they must do’.” Gideon’s little tirade ended and she could see a slightly astonished look in Virgil’s eyes and a hint of desperation in the kids she’d just exposed to the bitter truth of adulthood. Furies are grateful to die at a relatively young age because then they are free to fill their limited years with meaningful excitement and battle. But it generally wasn’t kosher to flat out admit an enduring death wish to kids she was trying to rehabilitate. “Or would you like to prove me wrong and show me how very special you are?” the taunt was thrown out to try and cover for the moment of painfully unexpected honesty.

There was a spark of arrogant anger in Cala’s eyes and Gideon nearly smirked in response to it, knowing that whatever came next was going to be flashy. High Elf, human, it didn’t matter what this girl’s heritage was at the moment because Gideon had wounded her teenaged pride. Cala spun around with a girlish snarl and snatched at the ribbon on Virgil’s wrist with her own hands and with a wink Virgil just ported out of the way again. Cala stomped her foot against the ground in frustration and her golemi charged at the Loki in reflected frustration. Which is when the moment of pride really struck Gideon because her Intake really listened to Rule #1, they were all standing and watching it happen because it was entertaining, but the rule of the ring had been to get the ribbon by any means necessary and Dilhil had figured out how to help Cala do just that. When Virgil teleported away from Cala’s golemi the vampire simply plucked the ribbon off of the Loki with an easy snag of the fingers because Virgil wasn’t watching for it.

As everyone gaped at the vampire with the ribbon Gideon laughed, feeling a surge of pride for the little darklings. They were starting to really learn. “Congratulations fangs, you grasped the point of the exercise.”

All eyes of the Intake turned to look at the vampire and he had a moment to preen under the attention and for a split second Gideon thought she saw a dark pulse inside him but no one else reacted. This was the second time she’d seen that in one of her kids and it was unsettling, the sense that some of what made her a Fury was somehow infecting them. But nothing happened after she saw it, other than the fact that Dilhil was into the full swing of his withdrawals so the attention made his hands shake. The Dragon had already put a patch on the boy, so that he felt a lot of what going cold turkey caused, but his healthy was never at risk. Some people need to feel the burn before they learn that the fire is hot. I think I’m having hellucinations. Gideon tried to shake the moment of concern off, wondering if it was the constant dissonance from inside causing it. She was torn between needing to protect this children and the genetic desire to be the thing that they feared most. Even as she started to convince herself that it was just a side effect of her being vigilantly paranoid, Gideon saw the same dark pulse under Virgil’s skin. That had never happened, even after a year of them being romantically involved. It is not a good sign when I start hallucinating, these instincts of mine are already volatile enough as it is.

She would have to tell the Dragon; if there was even a slight chance that Gideon had given in to the madness her own kind caused then she was a major risk to every living thing around her, whether they were lover, friend or foe. It only added to that sense that there was a wall between her and those around her; with no other creature on site strong enough to down her for the rest of the day she would just have to watch herself, and let absolutely no indication of this escape. Her boyfriend was a Trickster god descendant with Empathy and there was a nightmare just waiting for her to lose control and go on a murder spree, and that was just within spitting distance. Gideon would have started to question some of the details of the attacker except that she hadn’t been the only one to see the gift sacrifice it had laid out for her. That had happened. And the attack on Jasper’s Intake had occurred too. If Omen hadn’t of commented on the strange smell in the lounge, Gideon would question her own attack at this point, not willing to take it on faith that she wasn’t already that far gone down the path to messy insanity.

“Alright various shades of sentient beings, let’s see how you do against a slightly tougher opponent.” Gideon wanted to jump into the middle of all of this herself but that was a terrible plan, so instead she spat on her fingers and called up her own little golemi for them to play with. If they were going to work together against her at some point, she might as well train them up for the job. Just to make it interesting.  There was just something about being a Fury, whether absolutely insane or not, that reveled in the idea of pitting herself against a crowd of enemies that might have a chance to bring her down. There was a glory in a Fury death that Gideon had briefly experienced after facing the Maelstrom, and even though she didn’t actually want to come that close to death again for a long time, it had its own seductive lure to it. The Power that the strange attacker had given to Gideon quivered inside, a small trace of it imbuing in the golemi Gids had called up and Gideon wondered for a brief moment if it would make her mudling act irregularly. And then she wondered if she wanted it to or not.