mayfield_rpg | Chapter 17 - Mistakes Were Made

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Chapter 17 - Mistakes Were Made

[Action A - Backdated to September 30th - 748 Partridge Drive]

[Not long after beating an angry Barricade senseless, Dakki was struck with guilt for what she had done. So she had hoisted the man upon her back and dragged him to Dr. Aston's place. The hospital might have been a better fit... but the fellow had enough mechanical parts that perhaps a specialist was in order. But walking all that way with a large unconsious man on your back... it's suspicious. It gets the neighbors whispering. It gets the town talking.

When Dakki arrives at 748 Partridge Drive, she rings the doorbell. And then suddenly it hits her. She stiffens, drops Barricade's body in a heap on the front step, and her one remaining eye glazes over. When or if someone answers?]

Well hello! I'd hate to be a bother, but I think poor Mr. Cade is in need of a house call.

[There's a drone with a torn dress and some residual signs of battle standing next to a badly beaten and unconscious man. They might even both be familiar. What do?]

[Action B - From September 30th to October 7th - Anywhere]

[Dakki won't be out on her usual jogging route, or doing her usual sword practice in the park. At home, she'll be making pancakes, baking casseroles, and spouting inanities. The town had decreed it, and she was among the ranks of the droned. Perhaps some small comfort could be taken in that she was still visibly a CAST, and nothing of hers had vanished... but how long would it last?]

[Action C - October 7th, Afternoon, Mayfield Suburbs]

[One week from the time of the incident... that's a nice round bit of punishment, right? Drone!Dakki is just finishing off a friendly Sunday gossip-and-coffee visit to one of the houses that have nothing but other drones living there, and as she steps down the walk, the veil lifts. It's done. She's herself again.]

W... what the...?

[Last she recalled was being on Dr. Aston's doorstep. This is confusing and strange and no small amount wrong. An upset panic is slowly rising within her as she stands there, tugging at the pearls around her neck and stumbles unsteadily towards the sidewalk. Where is she? When is it?]

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[Ruri Peers at Dakki as she rips off the pearls]

Are you all right? You look disoriented and like you just woke up from a droning.

[Dakki whirls about and straightens, only now noticing Ruri. That's just enough force to snap the string of pearls and send them clattering to the sidewalk. She startles herself with that, but only for a moment. Then her focus is right back on the young woman.]

That... must have been what happened. I must have been droned. I must've been...

[She passes a hand over her face, still very distressed looking.]

If you need a place to change before people see you we are only a block or so away from my place. I can probably find something less silly.

Mm? [She blinks and looks down at herself. A green checkered dress? She wrinkles her nose, but shakes her head.]

No, no, it's not so bad. It's comfortable. I'll just will my armor on and...

[And then a look of shock comes to her face, and she's patting at the back of her neck.]

My nano-transer! I don't have my nano-transer! Don't tell me I took it off...

Your drone self could have confused it with jewelry?

Possibly.... do drones do that? Maybe it didn't know what to do with it. Maybe it thought it was weird?

[She looks up and down the street anxiously.]

...I need to get home. I'm unarmed. I need to get home immediately.

Of course. Though I don't think lack of arms is quite that cause for concern.

[Dakki gives the girl an incredulous sort of look.]

...I've been in this town for more than a year. I don't leave the house unarmed. Anything can happen.

[The door creaks open, and with it the head belonging to the daughter of the house pokes inside, along with her carefully moving by it to try and close it without much a sound. She couldn't quite tell if "mom" was around, having returned from school, but Aurica didn't want to be found by her if she could help it.]

[The house seemed quiet, aside for some shuffling about happening in the kitchen. But that's momentary. For "mom" had heard the creak of the door.]

Oh! Aurica, is that you?

[And Dakki emerges from the kitchen, oven mitts still on her hands and an apron tied over a checkered green dress. (One that she had likely never seen Dakki wear before. Ugh, green and purple...)]

Welcome home, dear! Are you hungry? I've just pulled a batch of chocolate chip cookies out of the oven!

[The dress doesn't visibly bother her, mainly because she's already seen it for a few days now. Still, checkered? If critique of bad music is something Aurica could complain about most, others' bad sense of fashion would be a close second ~~except when it came to her own~~.

The greeting is met with a rather deadpan and pointedly polite manner as she decides to walk right on by.] No thank you mother, I'm not hungry.

That's too bad. Oh well, I'm sure your father will enjoy them! You know how he has such a sweet tooth!

[The smile on drone!Dakki's face never falters. Her shoulders give the slightest of shrugs, and she pulls the oven mitts from her hands. And also, takes a few steps after Aurica.]

Do make sure to do your homework, Aurica dear!

[Aurica hears her, but she isn't listening. Her marching through the house and up the stairs are the fastest she's been in awhile, giving no chance for the drone to catch up, until the girl is in her room at least. She locks the door behind her and flops on the bed. There were some things Aurica did, both to pass the time and to try and ignore the problems of her life, such as listening in on the phone to whatever everyone's saying and doing homework, but both seemed in short supply lately.

Sadness, frustration, fear? Aurica felt all of that. Whether or not she knew the tricks to tell whether droned residents were being punished or if their real selves were gone from Mayfield, this was in reality a devastating turn of events for her. Just recently she and Dakki opened up a little more to each other, sharing each others' lives bit by bit. Something she acted falsely about, being a drone, was biting her back with immensely harsh irony.

And the worst part of it is, none of her magic or hymns can help with that. Even if she could go so far as to use Purger on her own mother, the command would only work for the tower. The town teased her with so many things last year, and it was beginning to do so all over again.

♪ BGM: MEMORY

Last year..? That's when she remembers something. She gets up off the bed and moves over to her desk drawer, opening it. Inside, she finds a letter she wrote, scrawled in childish handwriting. It was a custom of hers to write letters to her lost but real parents and leave them in the drawer back in Skuwat Village. This was no different. Well, maybe a little, since she wrote it with both sets of parents in mind. She reads through the letter.]

. . . I was such a crybaby back then, wasn't I?

[Her eyes immediately pick up on the dried spots on the letter, remembering the state she was in. Not that things are much different now, but she did mellow out in the months she was in Ar Ciel. That closure she sought so badly, to meet with Lyner again, clashed so much with her feelings of her parents (all of them) at the time, that she gave in to herself and acted the part of daughter even with the intent to try and find a way back. More acting.

"[...] Your feelings [...] they're valid." It was something Dakki told her a long time ago, and it's one of the things that continued to give her strength since her first day here, besides the will to believe she'd be with Lyner again someday. One of those was gone, the closure gained without his interest in fully sharing in her dream. The other relies on how long Dakki could possibly stay droned. Whatever the case, if her mom does snap out of it, Aurica won't want to let her go again. Fancy that: one'd have thought Lyner cured her of her prior attachment issues; maybe he didn't fix everything about them.

She took another sheet of paper and wrote on it:

Dear Mom, Dad,

I know I don't talk all that much about my own life, but I want you to see this some day.
I never got a chance to show my parents from Skuwat letters like these, so I want to share this with you.

I hope you come back soon, Mom.

Love, Aurica

She puts the pencil down, satisfied enough with her conveying. She begins to move away from the desk, but nearly trips over herself while doing so, catching the top of the chair nearby with her hands. Not much ruckus is made, but it catches her by surprise for her to be off-balance like that.

I need to be more careful... am I getting sick? My head feels light.. Her first instinct is to go to her Tower, but the thought of that reminds her of something else.

... Oh right, I have that to deal with. I always had more of a problem with it than others like me. I really am going to get a fever soon if I don't do something about it. She glances back to the letter, her face grimacing even more than before. Something in her doesn't want to go where she's thinking, if just because of how she was stopped in the past by others, but she can't wait on what she needs for long. What she doesn't realize though is that she won't even be able to administer it by herself, but she'll figure that out soon enough. Hopefully. And maybe she'll actually tell someone how to do it, if she can get over her insecurities and embarrassment.

An unlocking of her door later, she moves out of her room and walks downstairs, back into probable hearing if not sight of Dakki, shouting in as cheery a voice as she could:]

I'll be out for a little bit Mom, I won't be long!

[Whatever Aurica had gotten up to upstairs, Dakki seemed to register it as some homework having happened... cookies were done, a pot of spaghetti sauce was simmering on the stove (Dakki never made spaghetti sauce, not since that one time with the tane tane mushrooms...), and she had retreated to the couch to pick up her knitting. She looked up from her yarn and needles when Aurica came back downstairs.]

Don't be long, dear! Supper will be ready soon!

[Of course she trusted her dear daughter. Aurica was such a well-behaved girl.]

-He had taken note of her droning, but also that she was still... herself. In a sense. Knowing it would be useless to try any conversation with her at this point... he would wait it out.

So when he passes her by that afternoon... it's not a surprise that he outright ignores her at first.-

[Herself in hardware if not in software. She had been nothing but empty-eyed smiles when she had last encountered him. And she had insisted on calling him "Mr. Reploid".

But there's no smile on her face this time around, as she's hastily making her way home after Ruri's efforts to get her calmed down. She's facing forward and going at as brisk a jog as she can manage with ill-fitting heels on, when she sees Dynamo pass her.]

...Dynamo!

[She stops. She turns. She stares after him. And hey, she's using his real name. Was he alright? Was everything okay? Maybe he knew something? And... and alright, she was happy to see him, even at a time like this. (Especially at a time like this...?)]

-He stopped. She just called him...-

Dakki?

-He had not been paying attention to her as they crossed paths. He was just waiting. Not that he'd admit to it. Turning to her, his face was suspicious.-

Dynamo!

[High quality dialogue, here. But y'know, sometimes lots of words aren't needed. She dashes on over to him, almost as though she was about to throw her arms around him... but she stops just short, eyes wide and questioning.]

I'm... it's over, I'm back to normal. I'm back! It's me! I... er... I was droned. Did I do anything... strange?

-He blinked and was almost expecting a hug. Almost. So he's not that disappointed when it doesn't happen.-

Anything strange? Well... besides going and getting yourself droned? What happened?

Edited 2012-10-24 17:27 (UTC)

What happened?

[She blinks. Oh. Yes. Something had happened, hadn't it? She had been so fixated on they droned me, those assholes, that was terrible, etc etc that she had sort of... not... thought too much about that.]

I had just...

[She leans very subtly backwards, and quickly averts her gaze.]

...I did something I probably shouldn't have.

-He watched her and then shook his head with a chuckle.-

Hey, I've been there. The whole droning thing. Pretty sure it was the same thing that happened to me. So why are you acting guilty?

Edited 2012-10-25 00:59 (UTC)

It's happened to a lot of people. Though I usually haven't seen a reason for it, but I've heard that if you... um... if you act up in public...

[She grimaces, then rubs at her forearm self-consciously.]

...I beat someone up. Pretty badly.

[Her voice is very, very small when she confesses it.]

-Dynamo blinked once before he sighed and shook his head.-

... Were you defending yourself?

-He was already worried on finding out the answer.-

[There is a long and awkward pause. And still no eye contact with Dy.]

...yes and no.

Dakki. What were you doing?

-Dynamo wasn't fond of pointless fighting... Unless the fighting came with a reward of some what. That was most likely not the case...-

[It was no fun having to face your flaws and errors. Still. It didn't speak well of her that she couldn't even look at Dynamo and explain what had happened. So reluctantly, awkwardly, she turns her good eye up to him.]

I was in a hurry to go help a friend. Along the way I ran into this... this man I had run into before. We hadn't gotten along. We didn't get along. He tripped me as I turned to go. I struck back at him, and he struck back at me, and... well, I wasn't about to let him beat me! I couldn't!

[Justified pride can sometimes win out over proper guilt.]

-Dynamo thought it over, a mental smirk at the thought of tripping others just because he could. Though, that's something different entirely. He looked down at the ground as he tried to find a solution to this.-

Was it worth it?

Edited 2012-10-25 04:10 (UTC)

[It doesn't take long for her self-righteousness to fade. That was the right question to ask. She hangs her head in shame.]

No. It wasn't.

-Dynamo knew of a Hunter back home who was far too quick to anger and always ready to go into a fight. Dakki's actions reminded him too much of him that the taller reploid seemed almost disgusted at first.-

Good. Now then... are you alright?

[What... was that look that Dynamo was giving her? She couldn't read it. Did he think she was terrible? He'd be right to. He ought to. But... he's worried?]

I'm alright. My shoes are a little tight and I don't have my nano-transformer on me... but I'm alright. I'll be even better once I get home and change.

Yeah? Hm... Alright. Co-ordinates for your house again?

-Without another word, the fellow simply bent over and hauled her off her feet.-

Co-ordinates? [She blinks.] I'm at 458 Stone Street, but those aren't exactly... aah!

[And AGAIN with the carting her around like a particularly purple sack of potatoes! She thumps him lightly on the shoulder, frowning and protesting and kicking her legs a little for good measure.]

Dynamo! I'm not an invalid! I'm not broken! Why do you keep picking me up?!

Should a gentleman not take a lady to her home when she is... Alright. Fine.

-He set her down and shook his head.-

I'm sorry. I won't do it again.

-There was a frown that didn't seem to go away. He had some thinking to do...-

If you need anything, let me know, alright? I'm just glad you're... better.

[There, she was back on her town two feet... so why did it make her feel so disappointed, all of a sudden?]

It's... It makes me feel like I'm helpless when you do it! I'm not helpless!

[Dakki hands have balled into fists, and both were drawn closer to her chest. Again, she was sure that she was doing this entirely wrong. She was disappointing him, somehow.

...and why was she so concerned with that?

Maybe...]

Just...

[She reached out to take his hand, looking up at him imploringly.]

...just walk home with me? For now?

By all means, lead the way.

[Saying nothing in immediate reply, Dakki nodded and started down the sidewalk. Her hand had really just... closed over his. If he'll allow it, she'll try to lace her fingers with his instead.

...it was worth a try. Not all apologies had to be made with words, right?]

...always when I'm in the middle of something...

[Knock Out set down the blood-stained clamps on the workbench, running his hands under some water before wiping them on his apron and discarding it. Quickly, he ascended the stairs, slicking his hair back and straightening his button-up before opening the door.

And staring at the mess before him.]

Ms. Dakki, how... what happened to Mr. Cade? [He knelt down next to his fellow Decepticon's prone body, checking for vitals and injuries. He seemed alive, but beyond that he couldn't discern much from here. He looked back to Dakki, noticing the strangeness in her good eye.]

...what happened here? Mr. Cade doesn't seem like the only one with... problems.

[Barricade was indeed alive, and his pulse seemed strong... the reason for his unconsciousness would be fairly obvious the moment he gets a good look at his face. It seems as though it was repeatedly driven against the pavement. There are certainly bits of gravel embedded in his forehead, along with the clotted blood.

Dakki, for her part, seems nowhere near appropriately unsettled by this.]

Mr. Cade and I were having a chat, when he tripped on the curb and fell! It does look quite painful... I don't suppose you'd be able to help him?

[She blinks, and gives her head a little quirk, when his attentions go to her.]

Oh, don't worry about me, Doctor Aston. I'm alright. Oh, but I should be getting home. I'll need to start dinner soon.

[Now that earns a good, long stare, as KO sizes up the situation. Aside from the horribly injured man at his feet, Dakki appeared to be suffering... well, he could only identify it as some sort of head trauma, judging from her distant gaze, toneless voice, and lack of emotional response to the situation.]

Of course I can help him... I am his primary physician, after all.

But Ms. Dakki, are you certain you're all right? You seem a bit out of sorts, from where I'm standing.

[He had read about the droning, but wasn't certain what to make of it; as such it didn't even enter his mind, at first.]

[There was no sign of knocks to the head, not on Dakki's part. Her hair was a bit mussed and there was a set of scratches on her arm that seemed congruent with Barricade's claws, but no head trauma.

But plenty of dissonant Mayfield pleasantness.]

Oh... well, I suppose I did make a bit of a mess of my dress, helping Mr. Cade here... gosh, I hope the other ladies in the knitting circle don't see me like this! Think of the gossip, oh dear...

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Chapter 17 - Mistakes Were Made

C

C

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B (458 Stone Street)

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Incoming TL;DR @_@ Sorry!

It was lovely TL;DR. T_T

Action C

Action C

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Oh yeah... icons

/patpat

SUBJECT LINE NOOOOO

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Dwaaah they are SO CLOSE to realizing something yet SO FAR

Action A - WAHOOOOOOO SO LATE

YAAAAAAY~

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