Post by oliverboult on Aug 13, 2011 22:47:56 GMT
OLIVER MILTON BOULT !?
'the battle's only halfway done, i may look young, but i'm no less defeated.'
'the battle's only halfway done, i may look young, but i'm no less defeated.'
hey there! so, tell us all about you... let's start off with the basics. what do we need to know?
"Hi, umm.. well.. My name's Olver Milton Blount. I was born in 1919, so I'm technically ninety-two, but i only look like I'm in my early twenties. Around twenty-two or twenty-three, if I'm remembering right. It's been a long time since I died.. Oh! About that, in case that didn't give it away, I'm a ghost. And unless I dropped my form again (I hope I didn't! It's such a pain to get it back) you should be able to see that I'm a guy. I've had enough of war to know better than to get involved in this one. So, I've declared myself neutral. And nobody's talking me either way. Stubborn, I guess. I'm not sure if I've ever been referred to as stubborn before. But I guess I am. I've got this tendency to always fall for the wrong girl, the one who ends up being the worst for me. But I'm too damn stubborn to see it till it's too late. Ah! Sorry, I didn't mean to ramble."
so, a little birdy told me that you're pretty gorgeous... describe yourself.
"Gorgeous? Really? Someone said that? Wow! I wouldn't say gorgeous. I mean, I'm not ugly, but- Ah, I don't know. I'm about 5'10", and... well, I haven't really weighed anything for some time... But I think I used to be in the mid-hundred sort of range. I was never the big, muscular type. Anyway, I have dark blonde-ish, light brown-ish hair, and it was longer than it should have been when I died.. But, it turns out the whole military buzz-cut doesn't make for a very attractive ghost, so I'm alright with how it is- which, now that I'm done rambling, is pretty average. My eyes are kind of blue-gray, and I'm on the pale side. I've been told I look like some Patrick Stump guy.. But frankly, I don't even know who he is. Anyway, what else did you want to know? My style? Well, I'm not solid all that often- it's kinda hard for me, I'm not sure why- but when I am, I like to look nice. Button-downs, nice pants- I'm not saying not jeans, but you know.. not nasty falling apart jeans- decent shoes.. Yeah.."
i'm sure that your personality is something else completely, tell me all about your self, can't wait to hear it!
"Well, I don't know. I think you're making me out to be more than I am! Well... Let's see. I think the word most people would use to describe me is 'quiet.' I suppose I'm kind of shy. I mean... It's not that I don't like people, cause I do! I just get really nervous.. And I never really know what to say.. And that usually ends in me vanishing. It's... It's a pain really. Anyway, I really like reading, and I've always liked movies. It's kind of amazing to see how far they've come since I was a kid. Let's see.. Well, sometimes I play piano, if I can stay solid long enough to play a whole song. I like to sing, but not when people can hear me. I love reading, I actually spend a lot of time in the library, at night, after it's closed. But during the day, I kinda just like to watch people, you know? It's still so weird to see how much times have changed. And I try to keep up with this stuff, so, people-watching is something of a hobby of mine. It's kind of amusing to see all the petty things that people make such a huge deal of. I mean, fights start over the stupidest things. I detest fighting, really. You'll understand all that in a bit, I know I keep saying how much I hate this war, and how fighting bothers me. But trust me, you'll get it. Aside from fighting, I really don't like waking up early- well, I'm not sure if 'waking up' is the right term. Can ghosts even sleep? I mean, sure there's that time of sort of unconsciousness, but is it sleep?- nor am I fond of pointless slasher films. As much as I love movies, I just don't get those. Anyway, slobs irk me, and I can't stand small spaces. I never could. People tell me- told me- I'm a nice person, and I never really thought of myself otherwise, though I don't always do so well with people. I have this tendency to just stumble over myself when I meet new people. Now that I'm a ghost, it's even worse, because when I get nervous, I just disappear. It's frustrating. So, that being said, I don't really make a whole lot of friends. Just because I don't really get the chance to. People have told me I'm a hopeless romantic, which, again, I suppose is true. I've got this awful tendency to fall for the completely wrong girl. I mean, somehow, I always pick the kind who I'm "just a friend" to, or who doesn't even know I exist. Or who I'm "too nice" for. It's rough. And the thing is, I never realize till it's too late. I guess I just fall in love too easily. And I'm too willing to see the good in people. It'll be the downfall of me, I'm sure of it. You'd think after all these years, I'd figure it out. Oh well, I've gotten good at moving on. I suppose that's one of my strengths. Another might be.. Well, I'm actually quite good at playing the piano by ear. And I've got a really great memory. Not quite photographic, but it's good. I have to say, my biggest fear is sort of my biggest secret at the same time- I'm terrified that I'll finally get close to someone, and they'll die and I'll still be stuck here. I don't know if I could take that."
i would love to hear about your past, i'm sure it's oh so interesting...
"Interesting. Well, that it is. I was born on June 23rd, 1919, and my parents' names were John and Helen Boult. My little sister, Samantha was born in 1927. We were always pretty well off, so the depression didn’t hit us as hard as most. I’ve always felt bad about that. I know it wasn’t my fault or anything, but I always had this sort of guilt that there were people living in cardboard boxes and standing in breadlines while we just had to sell one of the cars and cut back on side-dishes and pairs of shoes we bought. It still eats away at me if I think about it for too long. Anyway, our life was pretty average. Nothing huge happened for a really long time. We were, as far as I can tell, your average upper-middle-class family. Until that day. December 7th, 1941. Everything changed for us. Everything changed for everyone, but for me… That was the turning point of my entire existence. (I was going to say life, but this isn’t living.) I never wanted to fight. It’s not like I was unpatriotic, or that I didn’t support the cause. I was just never the soldier type. I never liked the idea of killing, no matter what the reason. But I was drafted within the first couple months. I did okay. I mean, for someone who never fit the bill, I made an alright soldier. I learned fast, and I stayed alive. For a while anyway. I spent about a year over there before I got shot. I don’t even remember how it happened. I remember hitting the ground, and I remember shouting, and someone trying to patch me up real quick… But, obviously, it didn’t work. I remember waking up, I think it was a week later, and I just wasn’t there. I could think, but I didn’t have a body. I was just this floating consciousness. I tried to stick close to my troop, but ‘floating consciousness’ is kinda hard to steer. I managed to keep an eye on them though, and I got startled into materializing a couple times. That’s actually how I figured out I could; a gunshot went through my- er, whatever I was at the moment- and I just sort of flickered for a second, and I felt the ground, and I was me again. And then I was gone. It just kept happening now and then, and eventually I learned how to do it. It took a ton of practice before I could do more than just flicker. Even now, I’m not so great at it. Anyway, I stuck by them the whole time, through D-Day, through it all. I came home when they did- when those who were left did. It was hard to watch my family find out I’d died, especially Samantha. But they eventually got on with their lives. And I learned to let go of them too. My life’s been pretty uneventful since I died. Well that was an odd sentence. Anyway, I keep track of Sam’s kids and grandkids, and I try to carry on as normal an existence as I can. I don’t know how it’ll end, but maybe, someday, I’ll finally move on."
who is the amazing mastermind behind the likes of you?
"hey everybody! it's Julia, back for Nightmare, round two. yeahh... i used to play Gwen. i just couldn't get into her head though! oh well. newGwen looks great, and i see Oliver going muuuuuch better. anyway, pardon my ramble. (i feel as though i'm abusing the word ramble in this application.) i'm sixteen, anndd... let's see... what's a fun fact about moi... er.. theatre is kinda my life? haha i don't know if that counts, but that's what we'll go with for now. i promise to have better self-trivia on any future apps :)"Abbie stared blankly at her gym locker for a moment, hearing the footsteps of the last straggling members of her squad receding down the hallway. She shook herself from her reverie, picking up her towel from the bench in front of her and heading to the showers. One of the very few benefits of staying so late was that one could shower alone, if they needed to shower in the locker rooms. Furthermore, they could use the stalls, rather than the disgusting shower-room. She sighed, hanging her towel on a hook and turning back to retrieve her her toiletries. As much as she hated locker room showers, she didn't have time today to go back home and shower.
She fidgeted with the dial for a minute before sliding out of her blue-and-white cheer uniform and stepping into the lukewarm water, her thoughts turning to the events of that morning.
"Abbie, Abbie!" her brother ran into the room, half dressed and looking thoroughly pleased with himself. She set down the carton of milk next to the bowl of lucky charms intended for him, and smilingly turned to put his arm into the other sleeve of his shirt, which, in his excitement, lay abandoned at his side. "Abbie!" He continued impatiently, entirely unable to contain his pride at doing so well, "Abbie, I found the bad man! The one yo told me to look for! I did it! Abbie, I found him for you!" All thoughts of breakfast cereal were immediately lost as she turned incredulous eyes to his. "Are you sure?" she asked slowly, barely believing her good fortune if it was true. "Of course I'm sure! I was running through the security footage from around the city, just like I do every morning, all the stuff that might have matches-" Here he paused to explain that he'd managed to run the image she'd shown him through some government software, so he wouldn't have to watch ALL the footage from the ENTIRE city- "and I saw him! He got in a taxi. I picked up cell transmissions and some other stuff from the same time and area, and I put together the audio background noise- well, I had to fidget with some of the recordings and amp up the-" "Ly..." Abbie gently interrupted, wanting him to get to the point. "Oh! Right. Sorry. From the sound I got and the video-from what I could tell, anyway- it sounded like he's headed for the country." He looked up at her, his eyes shining with pride as he eagerly waited her praise. "Lyle," She started, beaming, "You are the greatest brother a girl could ask for." She stooped to hug him tightly. "As soon as I take the bad man in and Alticor can deal with him, I'm taking you out for ice cream, okay?" "Really?" "Of course really," she laughed, "Now go get ready for school or you'll miss the bus." As he scampered off to his room, she turned back to his cereal, remembering her first months of training.
The water shuddered, startling Abbie ou of her thoughts for long enough for her to remember to finish rinsing her coconut shampoo out of her long red hair. With a little shiver of anticipation, she was amazed all over again at her luck. She'd been waiting for this day since she was fifteen.
Two and a half months at Alticor, and she could fire three kinds of guns, had learned the proper way to tail somebody, knew the most efficient way to slit a throat, and was fairly well acquainted with the ins and outs of her ability. They decided it was time to start teaching her about the sorts of people she'd be dealing with. Big people, small people, old people, young people, people who looked perfectly normal, and people who looked about as far from it as they could- everyone made the list. It had been a long day of learning, both combat training, and the slideshow on all the different people Alticor had brought in for testing, and who they intended to bring in. It was five that night, nearly time for her to go home, when that day's instructor said it was time to finish the slideshow. Now they were going to cover the people that Abbie wasn't allowed to interact with, as far as Gifteds went. After a few slides of your everyday shady looking people, and a brief explanation of why she was not allowed to engage known mind controllers or amneopaths in combat, they clicked to the next slide. The image of a pale boy with black hair and blue eyes filled the screen. She could tell from the picture that he was far from the type acceptable for a cheer-captain-to-be, but there was something captivating about him. Some sort of stubborn courage in his eyes, a sharp cleverness about the almost-smile he wore. Against all her Queen Bee instincts, she couldn't held but admit he was gorgeous. And then they clicked on. The next image, though undeniably the same person, was so startlingly different as to shake away nearly all of the initial attraction. The light was gone from his eyes, his mouth was stuck in a scowl, and his hair was far too long and bedraggled. "Callen Jones," The instructor said by way of explanation, "The first, most important thing you need to know about Mr. Jones is that if you see him, you are to call in his location immediately, then get as far away as possible, as quickly as possible." Abbie stared at the picture. He didn't look any worse than any of the other people in the slideshow. Why should he be any more dangerous than anybody else? "Two years ago," The instructor went on, "Mr. Jones' mother called us to offer her daughter to us for testing. We went to collect the girl and brought her back to one of our facilities for some standard testing. However, Ms. Jones was a frail creature, and during the course of our initial analysis of her abilities, her left lung collapsed, and, as we realized too late, even our best efforts couldn't save her. Mr. Jones, after learning that we had his sister, broke in to our facility, and, upon seeing his sister's autopsy being performed, caused quite a fuss here." She clicked o the next slide, where the image was beyond gruesome. It reminded Abbie of when she'd seen the movie "Watchmen" with her dad. She hadn't been able to shake the images from the movie since she was thirteen- the people ceasing to look like people and they blew out from the inside, splatters of blood covering everything around where they'd stood, the only things identifying them as once having been human the fragments of bone here, the wedding band there, a stray tendon dangling from the ceiling... And now she was seeing it, something that had really actually happened, though she was surprised to find that se looked at it with the same detachment as if it were a movie. Three pools of blood were on the floor, more splattered around each, and dripping from the ceiling above. In the center of the image was an operating table, a spotless white sheet nearly completely hiding the outline of a small body underneath it. "His ability," continued the woman, "As you can see, is nitrokinesis. We believe nitrokinetics cause explosions by rearranging existig elements in a way to make them combustible. In rooms void of combustible elements, the nitrokinetics we've studied are powerless." She clicked onto the next slide, the image similar in gore content to the prior. "Mr. Jones is highly dangerous, and is known to kill Alticor agents on sight. These three," she pointed to the three stains of red, "Were highly trained agents, and took all possible precautions. You are to avoid him at all costs, and let our trained teams handle him." the slide changed again, and the instructor droned on. Abbie could handle him. Her ability had to be just as dangerous as his. She could take him, and on top of that, if she managed to capture such a huge threat... Maybe she could bargain for her brother's permanent safety.
Abbie sighed as the water sputtered again. Why the school couldn't just fix their damn plumbing was beyond her. She propped her foot against the wall to shave her legs, and the resumed constancy of the water, however short-lived it might be, allowed her to return to her previous meditations.
That same night, after she was dismissed for the evening, she waited patiently for the instructor to leave. Making sure she was quite alone, she ran back to the file room, one of the very few rooms her Alticor keycard had allowed her access to back then. It took some digging , but before too terribly long, she unearthed the file from a filing cabinet that took some- ah- ingenuity to open. She skimmed over it, frustrated at how much of it was blacked out, to be read only by the head honcho and his cronies. Enough was, however, left to make her lock-picking worthwhile. Reassuring herself in her isolation, she turned to the copy machine, hurriedly scanning and printing the papers, and stuffing the warm copies in her bag. She tucked the file back in its place, locking it away again, and from there, her night went off without a hitch. All that was left was to see if Lyle could find him somehow.
"Ow!" Abbie cried out. Rolling her eyes at how distracted she was, she examined the little cut from her razor, quickly cutting off the blood flow until there were enough platelets to form a scab. Banishing her thoughts of the past, she tried to concentrate on not injuring herself any further for the rest of her shower.
She stepped out and dried off, wringing her hair out contemplatively. This was it. Two years of training, of waiting- and it all came down to tonight.
She couldn't lose.
She slipped on her change of clothes- pinstriped black shorts and a black tank top- and stepped out of the shower stall. A glance in the mirror had her rushing for her makeup bag, and after a few minutes, she deemed herself acceptable, and set to work on her hair. After the usual struggle, she pulled it up into a high ponytail and went back to her locker. Throwing her uniform into it and yanking out her duffel bag, she slammed the door shut, and, slipping on her well-worn Doc Martens, headed out of the locker room.
After a moment of rummaging, she pulled out her orange Coach wallet and a key ring, then continued on to the front of the school. She hailed a cab, and, directing the driver to a privately owned storage unit in the middle of town, pulled out the credit card that Alticor kept well stocked for such ventures. She fidgeted anxiously with the key for the entire twenty minute ride, her knee bouncing impatiently until she stepped out of the cab.
She walked quickly to the unit Alticor had stocked specifically for her, just like all the other units were for other agents. She unlocked it and punched in the code, tucking the key back into her bag as she watched the garage door roll up and reveal a probably illegal stash of weapons. With a little grin, she walked in, rummaging around for a few minutes. She deemed the rifle too big for her bag, and explosives just silly for the case at hand, and finally settled on a nice, compact hand gun and an appropraitely boot-sized knife. Casting aside a bulletproof vest as pointless, she toyed for a moment with the idea of bringing the wicked bright LED light her most recent instructor had assured her would blind anyone for at least thirty seconds, but decided againts it in the end. She could win without cheap tricks.
Grabbing the aerosol can of knock-out gas that she'd need if she brought him in alive (as she hoped to) a roll of duct tape, and a bag of zip ties, and a towelm she crammed everything into her duffel and locked up the storage unit, headed back to the road, and caught another cab, this time, to Carysville.
The sun was sinking quickly by the time she got to the little town, which was as close to the Woodley River State Park as the cab could get her. Paying the driver quickly, she stepped out, throwing away the remnants of her dinner- the bottle from her coconut water, the wrappers from her protein bars, the peel of her banana, and the foil the handful of iron supplements had come in- and pulling out her iPhone to get directions.
Her brother, fantastic as he was, had texted her halfway through the day to inform her that, by hacking some government satellite or another, had found that he was in the state park- only three miles from Carysville. And so she set off.
She reached the entrance of the park as the sun was sinking past the horizon, jittery as adrenaline flooded, unbidden, through her veins. She stepped onto the path, but, feeling too exposed, quickly moved into the forest, sticking to areas where the trees were large and the undergrowth sparse. She crept along for some time, until she came to a huge white birch tree. Deciding she'd find it again, she set her duffel down, pulling the gun from it and tucking the knife into her boot. It had been weighing her down for too long.
She'd barely taken five steps from the spot when movement in her peripheral vision caught her attention. It was past the treeline, and in the dim light, she almost missed it. Stepping closer to the edge of the forest, she made out a lithe figure making its way through the tall grasses, a mop of black hair appearing silvery in the moonlight.
"Jones..." She whispered, raising her gun. With a satisfying click, she proceded to level the gun with his head. Three... she counted down in her head, checking her aim, Two... His back was still to her, she realized with a smug smirk, One. And she pulled the trigger.
