For Honour's Sake

Thu, 31 Jul 2008 03:26:24 GMT

What was Alloy's room is now an office. The bookshelves and desk are meticulously built, if by a rather amateur carpenter, and the bed is neatly made, hospital corners and all. Nothing of Alloy's remains in the house.

The Thames is surer than an ax.

Isn't it?

Wed, 20 Sep 2006 07:38:41 GMT

I'm getting married today.

Thu, 05 Jan 2006 20:04:54 GMT

Nicole, I love you!

Thu, 01 Dec 2005 17:11:52 GMT

Mutant Removal Bill Shot Down in New York City
Is Mutant Civil Rights in the 28th Amendment Next?

After a grueling debate lasting some four months, the mutant removal bill revolving around the unruly mutant community in New York City has been shot down by the House of Representives. When it was first presented, approval ratings shot up, probaly due the heightened murder rates in the real estate around the understreets, the tentative name of the four blocks that now almost two-thirds of all the mutants in the entire city occupied. Most of the remaining third is either in the ASPCA about a block and a half away, or scatted throughout the city. Mutants, looked at with no rights whatsoever, have to struggle for any reasonably acceptable land, obtain food or clothing.

Seris, we need to talk.

Fri, 11 Nov 2005 08:49:46 GMT

Wed, 09 Nov 2005 05:16:04 GMT

Ten hours since my speech. Enough time to let Seris think.

Dressed impecably in a suit and tie, perfectly polished and smooth, Alloy strides through the understreets to Seris's house. He wants to talk to the lizard man. They have a great deal to discuss.

Reaching his door, he knocks.

Tue, 08 Nov 2005 17:01:47 GMT

Since his first speech, life has been a whirlwind of press and questions, conferences with politicians and newsmen, lawyers and laymen. Alloy felt he was at the hub of a wheel, about to roll one way or the other.

And today was the day to give it the final shove in the right direction.

The crowd was three times the size it had been the last time he mounted the UN steps. They were ready for him, his supporters and his opponents. But today, today everything would go perfect.

He stood in the building's shadow and raised his hands for silence. It fell, and again he began to weave with words. They tried to anticipate his tactics, tried to counter them, but his opposition merely found their statements twisted and turned until they found themselves, all unwilling, agreeing with Alloy, and supporting him, and then laughed out of the crowd, humiliated for having dared try to argue.

His eyes roved constantly over the crowd, and it was those who looked clearly undecided that he singled out this time. Without addressing them directly, he probed towards them, using all of humanity's shames again. Nearly everyone would leave this speech feeling that they were the lowest form of scum for having ever considered this xenocide. He did not call for reparations, but he knew, if he desired, he could, and he would get it.

Guilt was his tool and his medium, and he played it masterfully. Just as the sun crested the UN building, illuminating him from above, he turned to the shadows behind him and gestured. Two men, and whether they were vampires or humans was immaterial, brought forward a third; a feline so scarred and beaten that he could not stand. He looked painfully young, a thing gawky creature, made more pitiful by what the butchers had done to him. He lacked feet and hands, and his mouth, when Alloy gently persuaded him to lift his face into the light, was gone. Smooth skin had been grafted over it.

Predictably, the crowd reacted, a murmur of outrage that was sweet to Alloy's ears. "This is Subject 34532, of the late Clarity Labs," he said clearly, his voice ringing out. "He's only very recently been woken from a coma induced by his trauma there. His DNA is cloned from that of a reporter at the Daily Bugle. Is James Richter here?" He turned back to the crowd, his eyes sweeping smoothly over the rank of men with cameras and notebooks, singling out the one he knew would be there. "Would you please come up here?"

James Richter detached himself reluctantly from the crowd, leaving his young cameraman behind, and mounted the empty steps to Alloy and his companions. He met his feline clone face to face, and the entire world could see how similar they were, despite the fur and scars. "Not so different," he said, his tone conversational, but carrying, before he resumed his speech. "34532 is one of thousands like him. We don't deserve this treatment, any more than you do. Imagine James here in the care of the butcher who did this to him." There was suddenly a scalpel in Alloy's hand, catching the light. "His hands and feet slowly vivisected to see the effects of new toxins on his nerves. His mouth grafted over when he dared speak back to his torturers. His entire body infected with a virus designed to make him heal slowly and poorly."

The crowd seemed to be holding its breath. Alloy closed his eyes for a moment, almost intoxicated by their reactions. He had always loved this. He opened them again, and with a flash, twirled the knife in his fingers before it disappeared back into his inner pocket. "34532 is undergoing treatment, but it's slow. We have one surgeon, one general practitioner, and three veterinarians on staff at the ASPCA, which is still the only group willing to give us any substantial aid. The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I ask you, ladies and gentlemen, am I an animal? Is he?" His gesture subtly included both James and his nameless clone. They couldn't consign one to inhumanity and not the other. The crowd's reaction was an immediate, gratifying roar of "NO!" Success. Alloy drank it in, and wound them up further, his concluding words almost lost in their perfect response. So perfect. He stood in the sun on the top step and waited for them to come to him. There were always questions.

Mon, 31 Oct 2005 10:28:57 GMT

A few days have passed since Alloy's speech. He's spent them answering questions, shooting down arguments, speaking for his people. But they aren't his people. They're Seris's. And even though he's doing this for Nicole, it's tearing him apart.

All of the smiles and
Pretty lies make me so tired.
I want to go home.

So easy to speak his heart in cultured poetry. But they only want his mind, his logic and lawyer's ways.

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 06:50:06 GMT

So.

I've just had a very interesting conversation with Dr. Russell. She apparently found her way into the Nexus, and ran into Novak. Perhaps literally, as she came home with a crushed hand and four broken ribs and won't tell us who did it. Trevor is furious.

She says I'm not to tell Seris, but he will find out. Apparently, Novak is in California, with the dark Azinth. And he's 'off his rocker' to use Russell's words.

Timing, Novak, timing.

For her.

Wed, 26 Oct 2005 00:40:34 GMT

I wasn't going to do this. I wanted them wiped out. All of them. Seris's barbaric subjects. His friends. Anyone remotely like him. But... But they won't stop there. I met Nicole in the Nexus, a Nicole from my future... only a few days in my future and she's dead and I'm dead and it was all for nothing....

I won't let it happen.

It won't happen.

Alloy made arrangements without discussing them with anybody. Four phone calls. Two to London, one to the UN, and a final one to the Daily Bugle. His name still held power. He dressed like himself once more, sharp in a pressed suit and with his hair plaited back tightly. He kissed a distracted Nicole on the temple, and left. A limosine took him to the UN building, and a crowd of people and flashing lights met him there. Smiling and greeting, his teeth hidden and his eyes subtle behind dark glasses, he mounted the steps and took an orator's position at the top of them, turning to the crowd.

He spoke for over an hour. For a speech unrehearsed and unplanned, it went smoothly, making point after point. He manipulated the emotions of his crowd, zeroing in on one reporter after another. He reduced one to tears, a man in his seventies who had seen the concentration camps of the Holocaust. He reminded them all of the real atrocities: Not the gangs of mutants, but the Butchers, the Mengeles and Moreaus. He reminded them that they created the mutants, and that once you play God, you are beholden to live with your creation and not destroy it. He spoke glowing of Nicole and the ASPCA and their unaided efforts to help the mutants who were tortured daily and left to die. He spoke of mutant society in London, unrecognized but unhated. He touched on slavery and the Civil war, on genocide and Vietnam and brought to the fore all the things that people were ashamed off. If they continued on this trek to xenocide - and that was the word he used: xenocide, the extinction of species, not merely genocide, the murder of people - then they deserved that shame in their hearts. Personally, each and every one of them.

When he came to a finish, the crowd had swelled. The street was blocked for a mile, and it was silent. And then the questions came. He answered them all, smiling and passionate, and then came the one he had been waiting for.

"Why do you care?"

And he grinned, and the sun came out to catch his fangs, and his grey vampire eyes were wide. It was perfect.

"Because I don't deserve to die for my species. None of us do."

Sun, 21 Aug 2005 19:41:33 GMT

Alloy limps in humming, his good mood severely inconsistant with his apparent condition. He's been beaten, his back covered in whip marks, both eyes blackened, and he carries himself with the care of several broken ribs. Yes, he's still shirtless, wearing only a pair of tight (and torn) jeans. Despite all this, he appears very pleased with something. When he speaks, there's a slight lisp. Most of the teeth on the upper left side of his mouth are missing, including one sharp fang.

"My friends, I come to you today with another question of honour. One of my worst enemies lies in a coma, put in that state by enemies of his own. His death would be a rather brutal blow to his partner." His lip twists a bit in hate, before returning to its former contented expression. "Ordinarily, however, my honour would compell me to wait until he can fight back. But this is a man virtually unbeatable by virtue of his physiognomy. I've fought him before and lost and won and lost more. But if I take advantage of his indisposition, am I condemning myself to an honourless existence? I know he or his cohort would not hesitate, but to lower myself to their level would mean destroying who I have always held myself to be."

Tue, 28 Jun 2005 06:29:51 GMT

Order of the moment: Follow Novak. Lovely. I've been doing that for three days now, and he's cut my throat, silencing me. But to go back, I would face worse.

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