The Last Bastion: Bunker Chicago (Recruiting Area) The Children of Eve - Awakening

Nilum

The Wanderer Returned
Benefactor
((Read This First.))

The Children of Eve – Awakening

The listeners of the colony hear sweet whispers, feelings, drawing them toward certain places. Those who follow these feelings far enough, who go on faith, would find themselves drawn to a dark alleyway—a place for vagrants, drug addicts, and other undesirables. Some had been here before, knowing to simply travel on faith. Others were coming here for the first time, and though tepid, moved forward nonetheless.

After a few twists and turns, across what felt like a greater distance than should be possible, some would find themselves at a dead end alleyway. At the end, a single person stood, cloaked in shadow. The figure appeared feminine, though one look at her would give those seeing her a genuine sense that what was standing before them was far beyond that. Far more than a simple woman. Finally, for any brave enough to step into the alleyway with her, they would hear a voice within their mind. Feminine, but, with a difficult to describe intensity. “If you wish to embrace your true potential, come closer.” She steps aside, and motions to a door leading into a small, abandoned structure. “Enter, but know that once you do, you cannot leave.”
 
Fritz saw a huge wall come into view.

It was the largest wall he has ever seen.

He could hear voices inside the bunker, calling to him. Whispering to him.

Fritz stopped his War-machine a ways out side of the wall and activated its phalanx function, folding the wheels allowing it protection from the wastes. Fritz packed up all of his supplies (which were really just frozen peas and his 6 drones) and holstered his Compact Smg onto his SST. After donning his Dark gray cloak he activated the vehicles idle function and journeyed to the bunker.

Fritz walked into the city and saw the immense amount of people inside the bunker. Fritz was amazed with how many people there were. He wanted to meet everyone! but the whispering still called him, luring him. Fritz maneuvered through the crowd being careful not to bump into anyone, luckily being small has its benefits and he eventually exited the crowd into a dark alleyway. The whispering was much more intense now. This is the right path. After a few more twists and turns Fritz found himself at a dead end. Did he take a wrong turn? Impossible. The whispering was hammering him at this point. He then notices a dark figure in the shadow, beckoning him.

The whispering then suddenly stopped and it was replaced by an intense voice of authority. “If you wish to embrace your true potential, come closer.” She steps aside, and motions to a door leading into a small, abandoned structure.
“Enter, but know that once you do, you cannot leave.”

Fritz begins to contemplate his choices, Follow this person and go into the shady building or turn back. Fritz decides the best decision is to think about it. Fritz then takes out his bag, now wet from the thawing peas, sits down with his back against the wall and begins shoveling peas into his mouth. The figure is still holding the door open and seems to be watching Fritz now, studying him. Fritz then realizes his rudeness. "Oh geez i'm so sorry" and shoves his hand into the bag and pulls out a handful of the semi-frozen peas. "Sorry that was rude of me, I didn't even think that you would want some as well, standing there all day must be so boring and would make anyone hungry. Here have some peas." Fritz then offers the figure some peas. They look really gross.
 
First they called to him in the night, in their dreadful wails. He could still pick out their voices, where they were sitting even, and his old headset wouldn't drown them out. The damn things were probably too worn down anyway. Letting a defeated sigh escape his lips, Theodore pulled off the worn ear defenders and. Yet, when the pilot caved and acknowledged them, they only asked a question.

Do you hear its call?

He looked around inside the vehicle and gave a gruff, monosyllabic response, "What?"

Listen closely.

As Dupond complied, he began to notice new whispers, otherwise foreign from what normally plagued his mind. This new voice, content with keeping its voice low at the very least, beckoned him. For some reason, he felt almost obligated to follow the directions they were giving. He opened the hatch to the armored vehicle, one visibly scarred on the exterior, and gathered only an easily concealable handgun from the crew compartments before climbing out. He turned back and called a command to the machine, "Wait," and the hatch closed and locked itself as Ted turned to follow this new guidance.

Sideways glances from passersby was nothing new, given his completely covered form when others would at least show their face or hands.Whether it was out of courtesy for others or some sort of shame, he couldn't necessarily tell. Possibly both. Eventually, the whispers seemed excited enough when he passed by a rather nondescript alley, notably one that was once frequently passed when Ted still lived inside the bunker. He turned down into the alley and noticed two figures, though the voices fixated on the female, that is until their own voices melded into and became hers. Odd.

He didn't immediately pay mind to Fritz, and instead directed his statement towards the woman.

"You probably know why I'm here."
 
Fritz had been sitting there waiting from a response from the figure for a while now and he had started to become uncomfortable as the figure just stared at him. He kept trying to get a response out of this person but they just didn't seem to budge. Fritz was preparing to force feed them when a new friend turned down the alley. Fritz began to wave a bit towards Theodore but stopped when he ignored Fritz and started to talk to the person in black. Dejected, Fritz stuffs his face with peas and watches the conversation unfold.
 
Florence Morgenstern


As Florence made her way through the streets of the colony, once more heading towards the alleyway where her life had been changed, she silently fumed. It had been two weeks since they had failed to rescue Ezekiel from the clutches of the sinners, and Eve had not once sent word for her in that time. She had proven her loyalty during the mission, having successfully retrieved the suitcase Ezekiel had with him, yet she was only now being summoned by the Holy Mother, along with any other listener who heard the call. Moving past the vagrants and undesirables who called the alleys home, Florence stopped as she reached the end, her eyes scanning back and forth between the figures already there. Two of them were men unknown to her, and thus mattered little, but the third figure was all too familiar, even when she hid herself in the shadows.


Stepping towards the woman she knew to be Eve, Florence resisted the urge to demand answers from her and knelt obsequiously before her. “Mother. You called?” If the newcomers had captured her attention in any way with their presence, she didn’t show it.
 
Finally, when Florence arrived, the figure from the shadows stepped forward and revealed a rather alarming set of orange hued eyes. Her skin was also notably free of skin imperfections--like someone had stretched it. She speaks, though her lips do not move, thus one could only conclude that she was speaking to them telepathically. She seems to look over them with predatory eyes, toying with who to address first, before finally settling on Florence. "Lillian, child. Eve is inside." Her attention turns to Dupond. "You are here to be enlightened, are you not? These Children of Sodom, they fear you more by the day, and for what? Because you can do what they cannot. You are something beyond them, and they seek to bind your potential. We can awaken it, and give you a home... You need merely step inside."

Finally, she turns a piece of her attention toward Fritz. A scowl reaches her face as she snatches a few of the peas out of his hands. She holds them in her left hand, and her flesh--in a momentarily liquid-like state--wraps around the peas and devours them. "This is not a child's game. Understand the gravity of the situation around you."
 
Fritz, unsurprised by her tone calmly puts on his backpack again
"So i am in the right place"
Fritz then goes to the door of the building, but before he enters he smiles and says to the guard
"i look forward to working with you"
Fritz walks into the building with a skip in his step. He found a new friend.
 
It was in the midst of a nap that the voices started. At first, they presented themselves as Mia's bickering mother, which soured her expression like an old cabbage. She jolted awake, forehead hitting her knees in a painful collision. Her hands came up to her head, pressing on a lump that was sure to reveal itself in a few hours.

She rubbed her eyes awake but found that the voices had not stopped. Mia perked her head up, looking around swiftly for the source of the voices. Rocking forward, she rose swiftly to her feet and began to walk. "What in the hell-" she muttered, finding her way to the alley, her footfalls all but nonexistent. The grunt gazed at the shadowy stranger with a wrinkled brow and narrowed eyes. Hesitantly, she moved forward but caught sight of the other strangers before her. She hadn't noticed them for the figure who's lips didn't move, but who's voice was undeniably her own.

"Am I in time for the party?" she replied, raising a brow. "Or is three a crowd?"
 
Theodore would have recoiled some years ago, really any time before that damned fog came to him, but not now. He had seen enough for ten lifetimes in a single day. Yet, this woman was completely right. She sounded more and more like an ideologue for one of those zealous terrorist groups, but even if so she was damn convincing. Living as a pariah didn't suit him, even as a former bandit. He needed a home. Yet, something enticed him further. What sort of 'potential' was she talking about?

Ted simply offered a grunt of approval, and moved past the woman into the door. His new future lie ahead, or so he assumed.
 
Lillian glances at the newcomer, and smiles as two more children enter the building. Her attention turns to a third who entered the alley and asked her a question, and a smile creeps across her face. She speaks, telepathically, to Mia. "It is never too late to learn, child. Just realize that once you pass through this door, you cannot leave... Your course will be set." After Theodore and Fritz enter, the door closes behind them.

The door behind them had vanished, and all that was left was a brick wall. Something crunched underneath their feet, and one look down would show a floor of dead leaves. Brushing it aside reveals a bleached white floor, without any distinctive markings. It looked to be made of a material that neither of them were familiar with. The walls around them were perhaps made out of the same material, but they couldn't see them, as the walls and ceiling were were covered in leaves--from thick branches that had grown out of the walls. The branches themselves were covered in a thin layer of skin--human like in appearance and texture, stretched sufficiently that one could see through to the bark underneath it. The occasional drop of blood rolled down from the tips of the branches, giving the leaves beneath their feet a distinctively red hue, where they might have originally thought that it was simply the result of it being the autumn months.

They found themselves in what appeared to be a small, circular chamber--an entryway, perhaps? Ahead of them was a small and short hallway, that would make it difficult to navigate without incidentally touching the branches. It seemed that the place they were in would reshape itself to move them where they needed to be. Down this hallway was a moderately sized room, about fifty square feet in size. There were a few beds, made out of leaves, though they were vacant of people. Standing in the middle of the room, with her back turned on them, was a tall woman. She was silent, her long hair was black, and her skin as pale as snow. She wore a white lab coat, and a pair of simple shoes. Her pants and shirt were well cut, and fit her perfectly. All of her clothes did, as though made specifically for her.

The woman gave off a rather soothing aura, immediately unnatural, but not in any way malevolent or covertly manipulative. Rather, it merely seemed like she wished for them to be comfortable. It was immediately and readily clear that she was a listener on a level of power beyond that which either of them had ever seen before. She turns to face them, her eyes had an orange hue to them as a soft smile graces their presence. A voice enters their minds, telepathically. "Lost Children... I am Evelyn Tenebris, you may call me Eve if you wish. Worry not about what is around you, for you are now in my domain, and I will keep you safe. Now, come here, and learn of your true birth rights... Learn of what has been taken from you, by those terrified of progress."
 
"Oh"
Fritz, walking into the chamber was less curious about the door disappearing and the girl who called out to them before he entered the building as he was entranced by the skin around the trees. Fritz touched and caressed the tress, even going as far to reveal his 4 arms from under the cloak to get everything he could from the trees. He had never touched skin other than James' and his own. Fritz knew that if he made more friends then he could touch more skin.
If joining this woman meant more skin then this is the place to be.
Fritz, after a good session of touching tree skin, Fritz proceeded to plop onto the floor into the crisscross position in front of the tall woman, Fritz knows that she just spoke to them but he was distracted by the trees and as a result didn't fully "get" everything she said.
Fritz knows she said something about birthright though.
That seemed interesting.
 
Theodore first grunted noncommittally when leaves appeared beneath his boots, though the oh-so-quickly shifting aberrations of flesh and flora began to sink in. Behind the mask his scarred face twisted into a scowl as the jungle of skin before him decided it had finished its forming. A notable part of him, at this point, hoped such things were real, that this Listener had not violated the one place Dupond could be alone: his own mind. He reviled even the thought of someone desecrating the temple that is the mind. How dare they.

How dare she intrude his thoughts, he already had to hear them so often.

"What do you want?" Ted took several steps towards Eve, pointedly less than aloof in his tone, though still largely reserved. He could answer for so many things that were taken, though he refrained from commenting, at least for now.
 
Normally, Mia would have found herself hesitating for a moment. Never before did she just allow herself to walk forward without any forethought, but this didn't look like something she wanted to skip out on. No, she was one hundred percent sure this was what she had been looking for since she began to inquire about the Children of Eve.

Moving forward, Mia entered the door and walked down the hallway filled with the twisted, macabre trees that stretched out before her. It didn't feel real and for good reasons. Everything twisted and changed as it would in a dream. It took a hell of a lot of mental fortitude to tell herself otherwise.

Letting her gaze drop from the leaves around her, Mia found Eve. She paused behind the others as the voice spoke within her mind. Now, that was uncomfortable, but not unexpected after the meeting at the entrance. Still, it was at this moment that Mia truly realized that she was vulnerable inside of this room. Though she was relaxed, a small part of her stayed wary of the figure before her. One step out of line and she was sure the warning at the door was correct: once you pass through this door, you cannot leave.

Yeah, no kidding,
thought the demolitionist. She glanced at Theodore, who was having a harder time grasping the situation. The other man hardly seemed disturbed. With her lips pursed, Mia mulled over her words.

"How do we do that?" she asked the woman before them.
 
Florence Morgenstern

Upon hearing Lillian’s voice within her head, Florence got up from her kneeling position and quickly glanced around. The others, it had seemed, had gone inside to meet Eve, leaving her alone with Lillian. Rather than stick around to talk with the woman, Florence hurriedly moved past her and entered the building, intent on seeing Eve once again. Making her way through the veritable forest that was the hallway, she couldn’t help but reach out towards the branches as she did so, only narrowly managing to stop herself from getting lost in wonder at the sight of the occasional drop of blood. As she stepped out from the hallway and into the room with the rest of the newcomers, Florence took in a sharp breath upon catching sight of Eve.

There she was, as perfect as the day that she’d first graced Florence with her divine presence, and for the first time in two weeks, Florence felt at ease. Stepping forward, Florence spoke up, with a slight tremble in her voice as she did so. “Mother, why didn’t you call for me?”
 
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