Dancing Alone

[Talau the Ever-Lurking]

She had left the transport behind a while ago, though she wasn't sure how long ago it was now. Several days she supposed. Now she was slinking about in the shadows of this city with no where to go, and no one she knew, and not a clue as to what to do next with her life. Tango felt, for the first time in her life (at least that she could remember), absolutely lost. Victor was gone, shot down at the Green Meadows, her partner...the one she'd been working with for all these years apparently. Since they had both been alive before all this happened, they'd obviously kept each other out of trouble, and the memories of the only mission she could recall proved that well enough.

A strange new liquidy warmth crept down her face from her eyes, and if she'd not known what tears were, the young woman might have been frightened that something was wrong with her. Tango wiped some of the tears away from her slightly dirty face and looked at them as they glistened on her finger under the moonlight. Why was it people cried? Happiness, sadness, sometimes fear...she didn't think she was happy, and she wasn't afraid (she KNEW that emotion)...that left sadness.

Tango walked for what felt like hours along the dirty roads until she was just past the edges of the small city. She had just about passed by a secluded grove of trees on the outskirts when she paused and headed into the small grove. It had just about started raining again and she sighed heavily as she scrambled up one of the trees and curled into herself, settling her ruck sack into the branches beside her and burying her face in her hands and knees. No, she hadn't been directly responsible for the fate of Victor, but she felt it acutely. It nearly caused her physical pain the knowledge hurt so badly. The deep rumble of thunder above her head made the lavender eyed young woman jump and nearly topple out of the tree she had perched herself in.

Barely catching herself, another flash of light streaked across the sky, illuminating her almost wild looking features as wide eyes gazed about her. Startled by the next roll of thunder directly over head, she scrambled down from the tree, grabbing her duffel along the way and scampered swiftly toward the near by cliffs in search of some kind of shelter from the storm. There wasn't much to be had except for a small outcropping of rock that would keep whatever rain there might be that night from falling directly on her...it would do for the night, however. Pulling out her worn old canvas serape rain slick, she curled up and cried.

Needless to say the jumpy young lady didn't get much sleep that night between the storm and her own thoughts, but morning would come soon enough and she would once more be on her way, feeling just as aimless as ever.

[Val - Warning:Contains Sarcasm]

Buildings. Endless, stretching as far as her eyes could see, and that was an impressive feat to be sure. She could easily focus in onto something miles away, and was doing so at the moment, following the linear paths of the other airspeeders from her perch atop one of the commercial district's buildings. So high, but even looking down over the edge of the building she felt nothing. The plummeting abyss below offered her little in the way of fear. No reason to be scared, no reason to be concerned about falling. The light from the Sun glinted off each and every window on the way down, marking a terrific descent, but not the route she intended to take. She turned, brushing her hair back a little and trying to force some order into the anarchical disarray the blonde strands were twisting into in the breath of the wind. Her eyes drifted from the ground, no longer interested in the dull, monotonous buildings and bringing her view into the sky. A soft sunset, golden by the looks of it, and night soon to follow. This she knew. The way satellites orbited one another on set patterns, causing an expected result almost flawlessly.

That was what she liked of course. Not orbiting satellites, but expected results. The discovery that what she was expecting had indeed came to pass. If it was unexpected it made her nervous. Made her anxious. Nervous. Anxious. Two words she'd known the definitions of for as long as she could remember, and yet the experience was nothing like how it had been described. Nervous was a sick feeling in her stomach halfway on the border between making her vomit and keeping it suppressed, legs and hands were shaky and unsteady, thoughts would become disarrayed and her respiration would often increase. A change in heart rate, paling of the skin and tightening of muscles, the traditional fight or flight reaction. Anxiety, well, that was very similar. Prolonged, certainly, but similar. She couldn't determine a particular difference between the two in her own experience, only knew that they were emotions which caused much fear in her. That was another one - fear. But the question was not 'How do you define fear?'. It was, of course, 'Why are these things happening?'.

She had been doing something, and then she had slept, and then she had woken up. This had been the beginning of what she could remember. Her entire life. Same hair back then, same clothing, heck it had been a few days and nothing of particular note had happened since then. She'd gotten up and followed a sort of schedule she could remember by heart, but could not remember why. Whatever it was it had followed her. She still woke up many of these days expecting to do martial arts or firing practice, as she had been doing that day. Nothing felt out of the ordinary that day, but then that itself could be the strange thing. She couldn't tell whether she had been strange that morning, or was being strange now, though she assumed the latter. Strange indeed, as suddenly her mind and body was overwhelmed by feelings after feelings. Mental processes contorting her body into a writhing mass of useless muscle, crying and whimpering. She still didn't know what had went on that first morning. Not nervous feelings, and not anxiety, she knew that much. What other emotions were there? How could she tell what each one meant?

The wind blew its touch across her skin again and she felt the touch of an icy crawl spread down her spine. Her hand reached around to grasp her back, finding nothing. It was the second time that had happened to her, and it was disturbing. Her hand met nothing once more, and she squeezed her shirt a little, confused but accepting she'd need to learn about this whole new life now. This suffering she would be put through. A Hell, where emotions lead life. Her eyes drifted very slightly to the red object to her side, parked on the rooftop with her. It wasn't hers, but considering the getaway she'd performed in getting away from the facility... organisation... home... whatever it was, she'd been quick and hotwired something from their garage. No one had been sent to retrieve it, so she assumed either they hadn't noticed or couldn't find her. She hopped inside, starting up the engine after adjusting herself into the comfort of the seat. Her only companions lay sleeping in the passenger seat. Twin slugthrower pistols. She needed more ammunition at some point though. Twenty three bullets only take you so far in the real world.

The red airspeeder now hovered a good two feet off the roof of the building, dust being kicked aside by the repulsor turbines at the base. A question now appeared in her mind - where? Where was she? She had no idea. A city, but that was the extent of her knowledge. That, and there were grassy fields and canyons not far from her now. Where did she come from? Again, she knew nothing about it other than how it looked when you drove away from it. Where was she going? Well, the grassy plains did sound inviting. As much as they had several days ago when she had first heard about the edge of the city. The reason she'd been traveling out from the centre towards the edges, but not moving particularly fast. She had neither the will nor the control to manage long journeys at the moment, and she wasn't going to complain as long as she was alive. Exhaling softly, she glanced to the side, watching the small gusts being pushed around by the airspeeder. Taking pity on the roof she slowly began to drift away, allowing the vehicle to silently begin moving towards the edge of the roof.

Now actually moving, her mind became less concerned with the finer workings of her life. Driving relaxed her, in an odd, soothing sort of manner. She did not feel the same level of heavy atmosphere when she was driving in these high speed vehicles. She reminded herself, however, that she was flying at a higher altitude, which could hypothetically account for the lower atmospheric pressure. Her eyes remained ahead, softened and watching hopefully until at last the first hints of green began presenting themselves to the young woman. Her mouth contorted almost instinctually, and it faded once she realised into a puzzled look as she considered what had just happened, becoming so lost in her own musings over the facial expression as to barely notice the clouds ahead of her until the roll of thunder pried her from her thoughts. Her breathing became shallow suddenly, and she didn't care about what she was feeling, just knowing her thoughts were right. She shouldn't be flying in this thing.

Bringing the airspeeder into a 74 degree dive, she quickly covered the distance to the ground from her previous height, making constant checks with the altitude level to ensure she could maintain speed and pull up to offer enough time for the repulsors to regain their strength against the horizontal plane. She knew, somehow, that if she didn't pull up early enough she could come out with a trajectory that would be find for a thruster-supported vehicle, but since the airspeeder would need to regain its 'legs' she'd still fall a little. And she knew this without even thinking. Carried out the perfect descent and pulled up enough to give her an ideal straightening. The lightning was streaking through the sky, chasing her, and she decided to pull into the next cave she could see, though when it was clearly too small to fit in the airspeeder she continued moving into the gorge until a larger one appeared. Making sure to deactivate all instruments, the last thing she did before curling up in the back seat was to grab her guns, laying the slugthrowers beneath her body as she slept. They offered more comfort for her than discomfort.

[Talau the Ever-Lurking]

Morning didn’t come a moment too soon for the young woman huddled beneath her old canvas serape and an overhanging of rock. The night had been full of nightmares and bright flashes of light followed by loud booming rolls of thunder. As tired as she was, Tango had found little sleep, and when morning came with cold winds and the promise of sun, she was more than ready for it. Pulling her pack out from behind her, she rummaged through it as her stomach growled loudly. With a furrow of her forehead, she sighed….then wondered just what she’d done…and why. She didn’t think she needed more air, so why the big breath? And what was this feeling that went with it? She knew hungry…that was the gnawing feeling inside her gut, but this other thing that had her feeling odd and taking the big loud breath…what was THAT feeling? Why did she have it? What had caused it?

She thought back a moment to what she had just been doing…looking for something to eat. That was what she had been doing. She hadn’t found anything…that was the one thing she’d forgotten to pack…food. Another heavy breath like the one before and she blinked. So that was what had caused the big breath? Why? Giving up on trying to puzzle out the meaning of the action for the moment she sighed again…paused…realized she would likely be performing this action many times, and sighed…yet again. Giving her pack a forlorn, “how could you fail me,” look because of its lack of food items, Tango closed the pack once more.

Why did I forget food? Why didn’t I think about it? I should know better after Dxun…

With a shake of her head, the ex-assassin crawled from under her little ledge ‘shelter’ and out into the patchy sunlight. Standing, she brushed herself off as best she could and looked around, wondering just where she should go now. She didn’t have anywhere to go, or anyone to see, or even anything to do…Echo and Delta were long gone and in who knew what direction, Alpha was likely dead, Victor WAS dead….and who knew where Uniform or Oscar were. With that in mind, her life felt…well it wasn’t a good feeling, whatever it was. With a shrug of her shoulders, Tango hitched her pack over her shoulder under her serape and started walking again. There really was nothing else for her to do…so she settled herself with simply keeping moving. Maybe she would find some food along the way.

As she continued through the canyon, lavender eyes noticed an odd glint of metal in the shadows of a cave as the sun filtered in through some crack the rocks above it must have had in them. Wondering just what it was in the cave, Tango adjusted her daggers, loosening them slightly as she approached cautiously.

H-hello? Is there a-anyone here?....Hello?

Tango lowered herself into a slight crouch as she crept further into the cave toward…what looked like a speeder.

[Val - Warning:Contains Sarcasm]

She awoke. Something was moving. Her ears had picked up the light slaps of water being trod upon by feet, and she would not let herself fall asleep again until they had been attended to. She would not sleep because not knowing what the sound was scared her. Her eyes pierced the darkness only to be confronted with the side of the vehicle. The airspeeder had no roof, but there were high sides. Kept the wind out, but stopped her seeing outside from her prone position. Her hand slipped under her stomach, shaking a little as she took hold of her weapon. She could feel the fear now. Hear her heart pounding in her chest, sense the chemicals thrashing around her blood in their bids to reach her muscles. Her mind was once drowsy, but was now perfectly awake, ready to observe and kill. It all happened almost immediately and Uniform had to pause and register eac individual state. Each change from her normal self to the self with higher perception. Pushing up slightly, she forced herself up onto her knee. The pistol flew out in front of her, angling over towards where she had detected sound. Her eyes focused down onto a tiny figure - a rat. She exhaled, feeling something run through her, making her shiver as though cold, but she wasn't. She gripped her arm, hugging it towards her body, even though she didn't need the heat, letting her body fall roughly back down to the seat to try sleeping again. It was still dark outside, and she was not finding this pleasant at all.

The second time she was woken up, it was a very similar situation. The cautious plodding of feet in the cave, rocks echoing and amplifying the sound. The echoes remained the same, however it was the approaching steps that drew closer as the impending clangs of doom that stirred Uniform this time, and her head shot up in the darkness, once more feeling scared. The steps were not animalistic, and were coming from the cave mouth - two signs that it was something sentient. Sentient, in that she couldn't think of any particularly large native beasts off the top of her head. Peeking her head slightly over the edge of the airspeeder, she scooped the hair from her eyes and found the light to be blocked by a human figure, very close to the vehicle already. Cursing her slow reactions, she half wondered why she couldn't be as fast as the bullets she fired. Her hands reached for the weapons quickly and pulled them into her hands, disengaging the safety catches. Pausing for a second, she waited until the other person was a few feet away before kicking her foot into the controls, flicking the high beams on with the toe of her foot. The engine kicked in, and a blinding light flooded the front of the vehicle.

The sounds she heard from the person sounded familiar. Sounded like the voice of someone she knew from before. It jarred her a little, giving her a momentarily lapse in movement, where she froze and just let the voice reverberate around her head a little before snapping herself out of it. Jumping down to the side of the speeder, she moved herself next to the source of the lighting, crouching with a knee to the ground and held her hands out, barrels pointed at the figure, hands clenching and unclenching with her breaths as she fought for the words to say.
"Who?" The words were shakily spoken and the sentence was far from complete, not to mention quiet. She tried a second time, forcing more air through her windpipes. "Who are you? What... what do you want with me?" Her paranoia was present and bordering on excessive, assuming this random stranger was stalking her or something. If it had not been for the strangely nostalgic sounds she would have shot the intruder, yet that voice was the reason the figure was still standing before her. Ironically, it was also a reason Uniform desperately wanted to kill.