/ Monologue with the true narrative enemy. /
I hate generic word exposition, and I badly misrepresented this character doing catch up. Let's have fun being jarring. Characterization! Expect this to happen again. I want to make something interesting. Cool down time from fight to fight.
Late posting, it will happen again. Stuff is happening. This is a slice of cake of an extended pie.
I risked my life for a baguette yesterday. It was worth hitting 40 on a scooter down a large incline. Crispy gluten is something worth dying for.
/
His brain was burnt. Her. Her brain was burnt. It would be so easy just to keep the one she liked and roll with it. Charlotte Dubois's brain was like wood turned charcoal, just a big chunk of dusty black that crumbles apart when touched by any outside stimuli.
The cut stump of wood the ash came from would grow back in a respite of solitude. She respected the attempt at least, infact she, well, not really. How does she put it to herself? The battery metaphor. Her social charge was too low to bear it, and this entire ordeal drained it more with all the showboating. Even if she-, no. This was necessary unskippable self maintenance. The visualization of an engine running for far too long, slowly doing its work with less effort than it used to each time a key turned, not immediately but gradual degradation over time.
This empty hallway was the barest of minimums feeling as mentally habitable as sleeping on carpet. Better than something worse even if it was literally nothing at all. It appealed to her in no way other than the fact it didn't repel her from it's population.
When it was over, the route's destination was the pitstop, the disorienting whirlwind of les tribulations de la vie quotidienne, bitter as they may will at least lessen at night time, Elle would stay at the arena.
(Tribulations of everyday life.)
The rest of the day to fill in now after that. Dropping off Ysser and letting her mind rest from the added strain of neural connection (supposedly?), whatever excuse she could to descend back into words and places between ink and paper-It's a book, she wanted to get back to doing something comfortable and that would be a nice excuse to read a book-
Popping into her head like a balloon. Another blow to the literal and metaphorical side of the head from the past.
"I'm a good person." Paralyzing, what was she expecting? It was like- it was like. She couldn't put it into words. All she knew was that every time she looked back at any time she talked to people it was like remembering grasped haze. Awkward, stupid to look at, and painfully needless. At certain moments of the day she even thought it was silly how she played along.
Was this her brain sort of mentally blocking out her unwanted memories? She is almost always on the lower end of comfortable to a degree in these scenarios, withstanding them. Usually tolerating while expending energy not talking per se but more communicating her stereotype. If she ignored the dubious and ever reliable source of her supplier of information again.
Willful post-ignorance? Sparse blood flow in the hippocampus and amygdala. The amygdala controller of fear and emotions. "It also links your emotions to many other brain abilities, especially memories." An unnecessary reciting from that erudite voice.
Without noticing she glanced down one of the windows connected to the arena in all its hollow glory. It returned, a fluttering of butterflies tickling her stomach, she kept her gaze transfixed on the events going on quietly forcing herself to look on at the entire open space, she was faring better than what she-looking down to the rock bottom of the pit proving herself very wrong quickly. The fluttering turned to agitation, thin wings sharp as knives that hit like blunt hammers.
She was getting better, but not fast enough, all those little techniques would falter eventually like a messy dam bursting open at an proper rainfall. Focusing on the weapon at hand or the task in grasp, it was a system that worked well enough for her to feel passable, convincing.
A whistling. Quieter than a train's with the magnitude of a gun shot. A girl throwing a javelin downwards that seemed to ignite the very air it cut through with static electricity following behind it with the crash of a thunderbolt.
The second the tip hit the Aires the girl struck was pummeled straight to the bottom of the arena, a large slamming of particles jumping into the air reminding her of boiled water turning into snow on a bitterly cold night.
Jutting their arm out they fell to their lance far faster than what gravity allowed, or their thrusters. There was something akin to a magnetic pull activated, just watching both instruments move to reach one another and reconnect.
Another came in with a baton dispelling their captured energy in one large swing to the side hitting them a very unreasonable distance away from Charlotte before being slammed with fire from their once captured target. Tumbling, an increase in speed being slammed into a wall at a speed that would kill her at any other motions.
They would laugh and clap seeing this event occur to her. Those laughter's would be silenced as they noticed her tears and shakings.
Roars of laughter, and applause came out from the endless amount of onlookers actualizing her prescience.
So many angles and altitudes adjusted in mere fractions of times. That was going to be her again in less than a day. Over and over and over tumbling and being tossed around. Like a ragdoll. Slowly focusing away from the actual combat, more on the ever present realization at the pure fear she was injected with. It happened before. It would happen again, she fared well right? No one noticed.
She needed to get her guns fixed and Yssen loaded as soon as possible. She couldn't afford to let them close, to even get near enough for them to hit her.
Freaking out in front of so many watching spying surveying eyes. That could happen to her. It was probable it would happen. Her gut was falling in on itself from the unarguable logic of what will happen. The noose on her head gets tighter with her hanging from the gallows as the rotten wood serving as her only stability is swept under her feet. One blistering ultrarapid strike and her entirety goes crooked and anyone who even gives a second glance will be able to pick it up instantly.
She'd been trained before on this explicit thing. It's ever present, underneath her skin written into her muscles with a fine cursive that explicitly made her react in a way that was pre planned.
"The big brain in your head becomes hyper alert, pupils dilate. Isn't it neat how they expand when they know they're under pressure? You can do the same can't you?" Nonexistent smiles forced herself to cram them back in her head. "The bronchi dilates and breathing accelerates. Heart rate and blood pressure rise. Blood flow and stream of glucose to the skeletal muscles increase." It was always in his voice. That singular voice that should only be reserved for kindly grandparental figures to tell of children for simple misdeeds. Exhaling and inhaling came in and out from her breath unwilling.
"Fight or flight. Even you know that. Don't you? Universal even if phrased too forced for a certain type, how do you say it? Tu as été bercé trop près du mur!" Spoken expertly with a heavy distaste. Like it was edible acid. "Bitter tongue." He acted like they were too close. That familial relationship of talking down through a thinly veiled sheet of compassion.
(You've been cradled too close to the wall!) Slang for being raised brain damaged. Affectionate. Used often between friends.
"And you know of course know what is needed-" She reached into her pocket and grabbed the closest thing she had to a medication for her aliment.
"Pas de peurs, pas de soucis, pas de mal." No one could know this weakness. She could go back one day, this was a small trip back in the mind. Breathe in and breathe out, count to 5 whatever psychology tricks she investigated that could even tip her back to functionality. She dipped into her real voice, just trying to reminisce deeper.
(No fears. No worries. No Harm.)
Another smash to a nearby section above her with cheers crying out from it as if celebrating her failures. It made her fumble the vial from her twitching hands onto the floor giving her an all too large gasp, she needed to get out of here, but first off was the one thing she couldn't afford being seen with. It was too embarrassing, all the looks of the girls at the thought of him not being emotionally callous yet with debonair. He went to a nearby wall where the slim chance of a fighter looking inward for a small second peeking the truth would be eliminated.
There it was. Such an undying pain trying to- she just needed to- it was so finicky. She yanked out the cork with the ever satisfying pop that foretold the coming effect. Please, she needed this.
An attempt at a dignified look was made but promptly ignored. She raised it to her nose in a desperate attempt at releasing serotonin from her very eagerly withdrawing brain; it worked to an amount which was always better than the next to nothing.
Just a big whiff, she was addicted to this escapism. It was something that she wanted to flow in her veins and be part of her blood past its mere containment in hidden glass.
Cloves and Lavender. Spicy, sweet, combining together with floral and earthy. This was stupidly risky here and now or at any time but she needed this. And in a snap she was back there for the smallest of seconds as her brain associated this smell with this self imposed nostalgia in that field of flowers on a sunny day for memory that only had the possibility of existing.
It was slipping from her, so she used it wisely. A millisecond shorter from that small second. She'd get it back. But for now she was taking her time just trying enjoying the smell and change of air it brought whenever she revealed it ignoring all the tendrils of disagreeing opinions that were trying to make their way into her mind telling her not to.
There was an empty moment of acknowledging the fact that she'd have to put it away. She padded out the time until she absolutely had to with the knowledge that things would be better once she got to her room so long that she wondered if she even liked doing this for a time before ignoring the thought for it's silliness.
La fleur fade est de courtoisie.
La fleur de France s'est remise.
(The flower of courage had faded by courtesy,
But now this flower of France has recovered.)
That lyric sung in her head every time she went back to his normality from these episodes. The engine starts again moving to it's destination over the bumpy roads and unwelcoming terrain.
Count her footsteps three at a time every step taken, a step forward, the next foot goes over to match it. Then it repeats. 3 is the perfect number, superstition over science. Silent defiance's that led to revolutions. Or at the very most revolutions of clocks.
Back to maintaining the masquerade.
Back into the more populated areas and maintain the masquerade.