9:00 in the Morning

There were a couple of things RamJak hated about the early hours. One of them just happened to be how nine o’ clock in the morning looked for any flaws in the architecture of a building that it could exploit to find the eyes of those who would much rather be sleeping. He hooked his elbow over his face and groaned as if it would warn away the sunbeam… No such luck; he rolled over and  was glad for once that he didn’t have eyes in the back of his head.

The next thing he hated about mornings were his partner’s wakeup calls.

“Kid. Get up. We gotta’ scout the town today. Make sure it’s safe.”

As if it were that easy. No. It was never as simple as straightforward intent in a simple sentence.

He felt a pillow slam into his head and he flailed about in his ratty sheets in case he had to defend from another hit. “Up n’ at ‘em, kid. We got scouting to do.”

“NGHF. Not even a ‘good morning’ are you serious…?” He backed himself against the wall by his futon and rubbed his eyes so he could properly glare at Jaeden. In actuality, Jaeden saying “good morning” would have been a sign that something was very, very wrong. Hell freezing over is a good example of just how wrong.

“’Course I’m serious, I’m always serious.” He was already leaving, halfway between Jack’s bed and the Safehouse door.

The redhead stood to follow his partner and was rewarded by a flash of nine o’ clock in the morning right in his eyes.



-Somewhere between broken and on fire, there's a boy...

...The only things keeping him alive are instinct and spite. It seems that way at least; with his back up against the wall and his shoulders slumped, one knee tucked against his chest and the other leg sprawled carelessly in the direct path of the alleyway, he is the picture of a young man in pieces. Woe befall anyone who doesn't take notice of him enough to avoid tripping or pissing him off somehow, it would be like stepping on a rattlesnake.

He looks listless until you see his eyes, until you see that he is always almost painfully aware. He'd look like a part of the scenery right up until the mortally dangerous strike.

Who can say what he is waiting for? Another job as a hit-man maybe, or maybe just any damn job he can find. Something to make ends meet...


In the Beginning...

Two Hunters had found the red-head kid out in an alleyway not far from the Bunker while tracking down some criminals... This wasn't as unusual as it seemed, Leon Bennet and Drake Thomas had seen and even gone looking for boys with genefreak heritage; even so, there was a problem.

The kid was facing down the mobsters they had been looking for. Long story short, they killed the men and carried a very injured little boy back to the bunker.

His hair betrayed his type, two-toned red and black marked him as an Iron, which luckily meant he healed quickly of his abrasions from the skirmish. Adversely and unluckily it meant he recovered fast enough to leave some marks of his own on the two men who had saved him.

It took a lot of calming down and explaining things before he would finally except the Bunker as his new home.

When it came down to it, there was no denying that the boy was almost entirely nocturnal, most likely by a forced habit. By the time night rolled around, the newest member of the Bunker was bound to be wandering the concrete paths of the warehouse building where the shed-dorms were with a nervous distrust in his eyes. It was assumed as natural, the boy was half-wild when they found him and had admitted to close encounters with people of less-than-savory natures, so his behavior was excused for a time, so long as he didn't run off or cause trouble. When he did sleep, he folded himself up in odd spaces that seemed far too small for even a lanky thirteen-year-old like the Iron boy.

The trouble eventually came though, when other boys in the Bunker began to mirror his distrust. It wasn't long before natures clashed and fights were picked. Leon had taken notice that the other boys didn't take kindly to the strange actions and tried to warn him away from it before at the very least... Not like that worked too well...


Cinnabar

Beautiful, beautiful red paint. It was glossy and smooth and bright, not that dark held by rust or blood, no no no. It was festive, a living color, and he knew from the books he had found on minerals that it came from a crystal. Crystals are special, the Earth puts so very much work into crystals... so to grind them up and paint something with their color must be special.

The workshop of the man was filled with “special” things... things he had found, things he had made... all lacquered over with his red, red cinnabar paint. He even went as far as to sometimes cover his nails with it, so that he too could be close to his beloved cinnabar paint. Just like the statues he made.


Outside his workshop, people called him the Vermilion and stayed well away from his home, well away from him. At first he supposed it was because he had been violent and wayward during past acquisitions of his mineral, but the memory of those events faded easily every time. Before long he began to believe he was causing fear for grander reasons. His reputation preceded him, people knew him well, treated him carefully.

There came a day he caught his arm on the sharp corner of one of his unpainted sculptures. In a fit of pained rage he slammed the stonework to the ground, stomping on the fragments and screeching out his displeasure in unintelligible syllables. He saw a pool of silvery red and looked to his torn arm...

He did not know how long he watched the blood drip down his bicep, trickling from his elbow and painted fingers, but from that moment on he no longer doubted his suspicions.

He was a god.
The Cinnabar had made him into a God.
Only a God could bleed Cinnabar.



Coffee Grinder

The day started like just about every day started at the Bunker, with Leon knocking on every shed door with a broom to wake the boys up for breakfast. Unfortunately this month had been a hard month; the older boys hadn't had a good hunt and laying low for a while meant little funding from the Hunters' usual suppliers. They made sure the boys had enough to eat, though, even if it meant that what was available was as simple as oatmeal or rice.

Besides that, the morning ritual proceeded as usual, with Leon and Drake talking to the kids, with the usual morning wrestling matches between some of the older boys... And with Luke Alvarez, late as usual.

When the older man came in, he had an interesting burlap sack in one hand, a mortar and pestle in the other, and one of the younger Bunker kids tagging along behind him. The kid was picking up the little things that fell out of the sack and shoving them in his mouth, crunching away...

“Leon, Drake, y' best get me a pot f' water goin'. I think it's about high time I taught these boys some important things.”

Leon looked a bit doubtful of the “useful things” but after some prodding from his Copper partner, he gave in and helped haul in the water.

Sure enough, Luke was true to his promise. He taught the younger boys how to build a fire under the pot, taught them how boiling the water would make it clean and how they could make anything from soup to the oatmeal they were eating with it. When that lesson was done, he set the bag on one of the large tables. Dark little beans poured over one corner of the burlap, skittering across the table and some onto the floor. He took a hand full and deposited them in the mortar.

“Alright boys. Now I'm gonna' teach ya' how to make cowboy coffee.”

Leon groaned. Fifteen caffeinated little boys was just what he needed to deal with.