Cliff Fittir (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aerialassault) wrote2014-08-25 09:09 pm
aerialassault) wrote2014-08-25 09:09 pm
Entry tags:
007 [Action/Audio]
[...It had started off small. A flash here or there in middle of the night, an awareness that made his heart dance and his blood run cold. Sleep always evaded him after that, leaving him to fiddle away with his hands on his small robotic vacuum until the golden rays of dawn peeked through the apartment windows. His mind would settle down after the sun arose, and he could always go about his day like nothing was wrong at all.
But, like all things, it grew. The sporadic flashes in the night grew into haunting images that stuck in his craw and nagged him to a point of annoyed frustration. They were sometimes grim recollections of the chaos that was the battleground in Zompania. Othertimes he was in that run down building with Fayt again, injured and outnumbered-- that spear still left him reeling with a white-hot rage--
--And then there was that eerie sense again. An instinctive, almost animalistic awareness of a threat that at once unnerved him and pissed him off. It was that thing that existed in a space he couldn't reach, something that could hurt him and everything he loved....and something that he couldn't even touch.
Sleep never returned on those nights, but his engineering projects just weren't enough to soothe his boiling temper.]
[Action]
[The Battle Dome had become his friend. It was the most high-tech spot in Luceti, and it was always open. He could slip out of his apartment and work out his frustrations in the hours before dawn without disturbing anyone else...and, that was just fine by him.
He had work to do anyway. The battle at Zompania had forced him to pay a price and, while he knew there were worse fates, this one was still damn annoying.
The program that he used in the simulation chambers was deceptively simple to the inexperienced observer. It was a series of targets that he had set up around the stark room, at randomized intervals along the walls and ceilings. It looked almost like a firing range in many respects, except it was clear that they weren't used for any ordinary firearm.
...or anything ordinary for that matter.
Anyone who happened to be wandering through early that morning would find a ragged, sweating Cliff in one of these simulations-- clearly, he had been in there for a while. The broad grin and wild look of glee in his eyes made it doubly clear tht he had accomplished something.
Surely, it had nothing to do with all of the noise that had been coming from that simulation room during that time. The ricochets of energy bouncing off the metallic walls and his own cries of frustration or whoop of glee had nothing to do with any of this.
Nope. Not at all.]
[Audio: Private to Vegeta]
Yo. It's me. Can ya meet me at the Dome....say, sometime before noon? It's been a while since we beat eachother up.
[Audio: Open to All]
...back where I'm from, the quiet was always sort of a bad thing to hear in the middle of the night. It meant that you were having mechanical trouble, and that was usually a Big Deal if ya understand that sorta thing. Sleeping planetside was never a problem though-- there's always something outside making some kinda sound, and normally you just...I dunno. Sleep.
All you guys who've been doing this thing for a while....well. How do ya handle it? I've been working on a few projects myself, but those are gonna run dry pretty soon at this rate.
[Then, softer and mostly to himself:] --can't keep sittin' around like this--
[The feed clicked off as abruptly as it began, as if the whole question were an afterthought, meant to be forgotten.
Cliff doesn't do talking well.
Other early risers can find him hanging around the plaza that morning, nursing a cup of coffee as he made plans for the rest of his day. Time waits for no one, after all, even if the progress hear could amount to nothing at the end.]
But, like all things, it grew. The sporadic flashes in the night grew into haunting images that stuck in his craw and nagged him to a point of annoyed frustration. They were sometimes grim recollections of the chaos that was the battleground in Zompania. Othertimes he was in that run down building with Fayt again, injured and outnumbered-- that spear still left him reeling with a white-hot rage--
--And then there was that eerie sense again. An instinctive, almost animalistic awareness of a threat that at once unnerved him and pissed him off. It was that thing that existed in a space he couldn't reach, something that could hurt him and everything he loved....and something that he couldn't even touch.
Sleep never returned on those nights, but his engineering projects just weren't enough to soothe his boiling temper.]
[Action]
[The Battle Dome had become his friend. It was the most high-tech spot in Luceti, and it was always open. He could slip out of his apartment and work out his frustrations in the hours before dawn without disturbing anyone else...and, that was just fine by him.
He had work to do anyway. The battle at Zompania had forced him to pay a price and, while he knew there were worse fates, this one was still damn annoying.
The program that he used in the simulation chambers was deceptively simple to the inexperienced observer. It was a series of targets that he had set up around the stark room, at randomized intervals along the walls and ceilings. It looked almost like a firing range in many respects, except it was clear that they weren't used for any ordinary firearm.
...or anything ordinary for that matter.
Anyone who happened to be wandering through early that morning would find a ragged, sweating Cliff in one of these simulations-- clearly, he had been in there for a while. The broad grin and wild look of glee in his eyes made it doubly clear tht he had accomplished something.
Surely, it had nothing to do with all of the noise that had been coming from that simulation room during that time. The ricochets of energy bouncing off the metallic walls and his own cries of frustration or whoop of glee had nothing to do with any of this.
Nope. Not at all.]
[Audio: Private to Vegeta]
Yo. It's me. Can ya meet me at the Dome....say, sometime before noon? It's been a while since we beat eachother up.
[Audio: Open to All]
...back where I'm from, the quiet was always sort of a bad thing to hear in the middle of the night. It meant that you were having mechanical trouble, and that was usually a Big Deal if ya understand that sorta thing. Sleeping planetside was never a problem though-- there's always something outside making some kinda sound, and normally you just...I dunno. Sleep.
All you guys who've been doing this thing for a while....well. How do ya handle it? I've been working on a few projects myself, but those are gonna run dry pretty soon at this rate.
[Then, softer and mostly to himself:] --can't keep sittin' around like this--
[The feed clicked off as abruptly as it began, as if the whole question were an afterthought, meant to be forgotten.
Cliff doesn't do talking well.
Other early risers can find him hanging around the plaza that morning, nursing a cup of coffee as he made plans for the rest of his day. Time waits for no one, after all, even if the progress hear could amount to nothing at the end.]
voice;
[He remembered when Shinpachi had insomnia and troubles staying asleep even when he did manage to get past his exhaustion. There's a long pause as Souji thinks, not wanting to turn off the microphone yet.]
I've heard sleeping in several short to long naps throughout the day can help ease the exhaustion. [Never mind that it's what he did even before the nightmares and the draft.] Otherwise, it could help talking to someone about it.
voice;
You know what I mean, right?
voice;
Unless Cliff was talking about dealing with his death. Or even the sight of what had happened there. Souji had never been very good at discussing his own feelings, not when they were unusual for everyone else.]
Can you not talk to one of us then? We're always nearby, Cliff-san.
voic-e-- filtered: unhackable
Ya see, that's the thing. I, uh...
[He trailed off, awkwardly. Talking about his personal feelings wasn't a specialty of his, as his own feelings on any matter were rarely anything of importance. They couldn't be, not when people looked to him for guidance as often as they did.]
voice-- filtered: unhackable
Don't want to put the burden on us? Or is it that you don't know what to say.