[Event 2] Unrest in Paradise || Abel

[Deleted]

"Alright, goodbye! See you all later!"

Four figures disappeared into the elevator at the end of the apartment hall, three of those were laughing merrily - drunk. They were all her coworkers from her office: Maria, Anya, Carlos and Nina. This last week had been hard for business, with the news about mutants escaping Underground and Archadians being advised to stay at home. No one could go to work, so when the police stated that it was safe to leave the houses, they had two weeks job needed to be done. Their latest design finally finished this afternoon, so Mutumanikam could release it in time for spring/summer collection. The five of them were planning to celebrate it by going to a nearby mall, but apparently business hadn't restored yet over there. Most shops were still closed and people who were there seemed to be in a rush, as in being seen shopping made them feel guilty.

"Strange, y'know..." Maria had commented when they left the mall. "It's as if they were afraid being mistaken as mutants."

"That's silly, honey. Police know which ones are humans and which ones are mutants. If we're unsafe on the streets, we wouldn't be allowed to leave house, right?"

Carlos was right. As they rode the taxi back to Nesia's apartment - which was the closest from said mall - the streets looked safe, albeit a tad emptier than usual. Not many police was seen either. Even the apartment's manager decided not to lock the doors to the fire escape.

They all momentarily forgot about the whole escape of the mutants. Carlos brought drinks for them; except Nesia and Nina who didn't drink. Maria lent a DVD of some American chick-flick about step siblings having a dangerous bet that gone wrong. But before the movie reached halfway, Carlos was already snoring on her couch while Maria made remarks about the male protagonist in the movie. Nesia never watched this movie before, so when her coworkers decided to leave, Maria left it in the DVD player. The Indonesian escorted her guests until the elevator, then she jogged back to her room.

Her apartment on the 17th floor was made to accommodate a family of four plus one or two servants, so it was too big for her. The tower of shoe boxes had been pushed to one of the empty bedrooms built for a kid, while the other bedroom was full of unused room decorations: paintings, statues and whatnot that Nesia acquired during her shopping trip at home. She was reluctant to give them away, in case she wanted to re-decorate her apartment.

Nesia threw the empty cans and snack boxes away, then opened one of the windows to let the autumn crisp wind enter her place. Then she went to have a shower, spending more time than usual because she brought her phone with her. Singing in the bathroom was better accompanied with her trusted music player, after all. And she was alone in her place, so no one would comment about her voice.

The woman left the bathroom in a bathrobe, hair wrapped in a towel that matched the maroon bathrobe. Feeling that she began to nod off, Nesia switched the TV to one of the classical music channel, applied beauty mask on her face and cold sliced cucumbers on her eyes, then relaxed herself on the couch. Some beauty sleep plus a little treatment equals beautiful appearance.

Alas, her beauty sleep was disturbed by a sudden noise. Nesia jerked up, letting the cucumber fell on her lap and looked at the source of the disturbance.

[[ tags: @rarirurero ]]

[Deleted]

It probably sounded a bit strange, but the first thing that caught Abel's attention as he shed his figurative shackles to join the world above wasn't the sun blessing his skin, nor was it the fresh air filling his dusty lungs with new found hope. No, it was the wind that blew through the thin layer of clothing he wore, brushing through his hair like an invisible comb in a futile attempt to straighten out the unkempt mess it was. Abel never had forgotten the sun, nor had he forgotten what it had felt like to breathe proper air while trapped in his cell - he'd remembered them every single day, and he'd yearned for them every waking second. But he had forgotten what it felt like to feel the wind whip against his face as he ran. It was such a small, almost insignificant detail when weighed against everything else he'd been denied for so long - but for whatever reason, it was important to him.

After all, it had been windy back home, too.

And on that note, wind wasn't the only thing that had been stripped from his memories over the years of captivity; he'd also forgotten what it felt like to truly run, he noticed. Sure, he'd dodged attacks in the arena and he'd ran after some of his fellow mutants when they'd dared to try and steal something of his, but proper, uninhibited running hadn't been possible in the cramped space they had been kept in, and there had been no need for it in the hallways. Running inside was pointless, anyway; there would always be a wall to block his advance.

But not this time.

Abel rounded a corner, his steps echoing off the outer walls of the buildings around him. Large buildings, tall ones, reaching towards the sky that seemed endless in its vastness, to the point that the mutant had to consciously tear his gaze away each time his eyes happened to gaze up at the brilliant blue of it, lest he be caught staring at it forever. Every sight and sound around him was loud and bright, almost flagrant, like the world he'd always seen in monochrome had suddenly been painted and laid out in front of him in every colour of the spectrum. It was like waking up from a deep sleep into the midst of a carnival of sensations; no walls dulled the sounds, no sewage blocked the smells. Abel's senses were overloaded with it all, and so keeping up his escape and focusing only on the road ahead was a surprisingly difficult task. He didn't want to keep his eyes low on the road when he finally could look up. And yet he couldn't, not yet, not as long as the pursuers were hot on his tail.

That was, if they were on his tail at all; Abel didn't know how long he'd been running, and in all honesty, he wasn't even sure if there was anyone chasing him anymore. There were angry shouts reaching his ears from somewhere and he could swear he felt someone's presence behind him, constantly following, constantly lurking, but he couldn't tell how much of it was paranoia and how much of it an actual threat he had to flee from. The bustling streets only half a block's distance from him carried so many sounds and voices to him, that his ears couldn't make sense out of which ones were friendly and which ones were not - and so his mind decided that all of them were a danger. He was in danger, and the adrenaline pulsating through him was affecting his vision more and more which each step taken. Everything he was directly looking at, he could see in minute detail; everything else, he could hardly make sense out of - which was why he had to keep his gaze directly in front of him. If he strayed to look at the sky, he would die looking at it. If he stayed to listen to the birds, he'd be deafened by the shot of a gun.

The world outside was beautiful - but it was not friendly. Everything was out to get him.

He turned sharply again, hoping to take as many turns as he humanly could to confuse anyone pursuing him - even if he did end up lost, himself. But that, he supposed, was what freedom meant as well; being able to make your own decisions, being able to get lost and find your way, all on your own. Really, years upon years, freedom had felt like such a foreign concept to Abel, and undoubtedly to most other mutants in the Underground. The distant memories of his childhood had been effectively beaten out of him during school, and the years that had passed since had taken care of the rest, chipping away at the already blurry recollections of a better life until he could no longer tell apart dream and recollection. He wasn't sure if his fellow mutants shared a similar story, as he'd asked questions just as rarely as he'd answered them, but he imagined there were both those who'd lived as humans before the world had caught up to them, as well as those who were born to slavery from the start - and he wasn't sure which fate was crueler; to know of freedom and have it stripped away, or to never be able to experience it in the first place?

Guess he'd never find out. Not that he really cared.

It was then, just as he was immersed in his little philosophical debate, that whatever fate or god watched over him decided it was high time for irony; right when Abel's thoughts were occupied by aphorisms of freedom the most, the next turn he took ended in a dead end in the form of a wall, standing tall and impenetrable in front of him. It was as if the wind rushing past had momentarily grown colder, chilly enough to make the mutant freeze on the spot. And once his feet stopped moving and the momentum that had kept him going for so long was gone, he could finally truly feel how much in pain his feet were - and how vehemently his heart beat against his throat. Shit. Shit, he wasn't going to get caught here, not when he'd had a second taste of freedom after so damn long.

Every sense sharp and mind rushing to come up with a solution, Abel's gaze bounced off the walls that bound him, until something barely visible caught his eyes; an open window so high up that had panic not made his attention to detail flawless, he would've likely missed it completely.

Now, the trouble was that it... was the 17th floor, if he'd counted right - and he was down here on street level, his neck hurting from simply looking up at that lingering light of salvation. His legs hurt, and he had no idea how much time he had until his pursuers caught up with him. But then, did he really have a choice? Sure, he... could always go and break in through a closed window as well, but that, if anything, would attract attention - even more so than a lone man rushing up the the fire escape or scaling the wall. He couldn't very well turn around and try to find another route either, not when he risked the chance of running right into the waiting lap of the assholes after him.

So, wiping his scarf from his face and letting out a displeased grunt, Abel cracked his knuckles.

And a moment of excruciating physical labor later, a certain tall mutant finally pushed inside a quiet apartment on the 17tth floor, his heavy feet making an inevitable thudding noise as he landed onto solid floor - followed by a light clang as he pulled the window closed behind him, in order to hide his route of escape. There, he was inside, the smell of a human residence penetrating his nose. It smelled clean, and eerily pleasant. Foreign. It was a stark contrast to the stench of the Underground, and he didn't have to think twice to decide which one he preferred.

Abel didn't allow himself a sigh or any such show of relief quite yet, however. The fact that the window was open likely meant that someone was home - and that someone was liable to turn him in the second they spotted him. Even if they weren't aware that he was a mutant - which alone was likely, considering he was fairly sure that all of their faces were already all over both the news channels and papers at this point - he was still a stranger invading someone's personal residence. The homeowner likely wouldn't be pleased, and for a reason - but that didn't mean that he'd let them ruin his only chance of escape.

So, as the mutant inched deeper into the apartment, tall form hunched and feet endeavoring to make as little noise as possible, the look in Abel's eyes hardened to match his resolve. His fingers moved silently to his left, yanking a part of a nearby plant into his hand to be used as a prospective weapon should the need arise. He wasn't going to go back. He would do anything in his power not to be caught and brought back to that shit hole, and although he did prefer to stay hidden and hide out in the apartment for a while without conflict to a full-blown brawl, if that wasn't possible, he would fight for his life.

Because, although he might not have known whether it was crueler to never know freedom or be stripped of it, he did know that being stripped of it twice was the worst fate of all.

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ooc: hahahahaha this is so rambly i'm sorry also this is late orz

[Deleted]

Nesia propped herself up, placing the cucumbers on a tissue. The only noise in her apartment came from her TV, and its volume was low. Keeping a sharp watch around her living space, Nesia reached for the TV remote and turned it off. With a slow motion, the woman put her feet on the floor one by one gently. It was not in her dream, the clang did happen here. Her front door was closed still, with the chain attached intact. Nothing seemed to just fallen to the wooden floor; her small statues still standing atop of her shelves, and gemstones lined on the dining table had not moved from their last position. She rubbed her arms, shivering in her bathrobe. The heater was working in its lowest power, but even then it should not be this chilly. Right, she did open a window to change the indoor air. Maybe the wind had closed it shut. The wind was quite strong up here. Her bare feet tiptoed towards the bathroom, until Nesia passed a glass cabinet storing her cloth and fabric collection. The cabinet's door reflected the hallway towards her bathroom and opened window. It's not too dark outside, so there should be a white rectangle shown on its surface -- which would be the window itself and the last traces of sunlight entering the apartment.

Instead, there was a dark form blocking the light. In the shape of a man. There was a stranger in her apartment, someone who somehow managed to enter a room in the 17th floor without using the front door. Was it a ghost? Yet the longer she stared, Nesia could obtain more details. Tattered clothes. Sharp features. Muscled body. An entity too solid to be classified as a spectral being.

Surprise froze Nesia in her place, hands holding her towel-wrapped hair and mouth agape. The intruder stretched his long arm, followed by a soft thud she knew rather well. The sound of her ceramic pot hitting the polished table near the window. It bounced her back to reality like a siren screaming in her head, screaming a coherent sentence:

Call the cops.

Her heel skidded as the designer turned and fled. There was a landline phone right beside the exit door. She leaped past the short staircase, her towel flew releasing the wet black hair into the air, and landed on the tiled floor. Nesia wasted no time to check if she was chased; the woman stretched out her right arm as far as she could, and grabbed the phone handle from the wall.