Roleplay A Week - October 2024

"Cloud Vincetti, son of Apollo," Athena's calm voice boomed over the audience, ushering in silence from the thinning crowd of teenagers, and Julio's attention broke.

Cloud strode forward, flashing a wide smile as he waved to his fellow demigods.

Julio caught himself somewhere between a happy scoff and rolling his eyes. He couldn't imagine being that forward in front of someone like Athena and Persephone! He still didn't know how he was going to present himself in front of Gods like that. Perhaps he should take some notes from Cloud?

"A son of Apollo, then?" Persephone said with a soft smile.

"What gave it away?" Cloud retorted. He was about to continue when Athena raised her hand slightly.

"Please, if you will."

"Yes, share with us an example of your powers," Persephone said. Oh, to be corrected by Athena... if Julio were in that position he probably would have melted away.

Cloud shrugged and chuckled. "Well, I guess my main thing, or, kinda my only thing, is that I can maniuplate light into something solid."

Cloud cupped his hands and it was if the sunlight had darkened to setting, only around him. He gingerly revealed an open palm, and there it was: a little ball of light. Julio found himself staring at it, only for a moment before his eyes started to hurt and he lowered his gaze, blinking away the impression of that ball of light.

The light settled and dissipated, spreading back out to the way it was. To describe what had just happened... it was so odd that his mind had troubles even remembering it.

Cloud cleared his throat, and Julio's eyes were back on him. "I can't do much with it, not like... y'know, my dad, or Helios... But I've been able to create a bow and arrows for a long time. I guess that's also thans to my dad."

Julio couldn't make out anything else from Cloud's presentation, as the people in front of him began to move and cause commotion. He wanted to find Cloud, ask him how it felt being up there, but the man was no longer in front of Athena and Persephone, and he was nowhere to be found.

Darien's eyes jerked open as something jolted him awake. He blinked but nothing happened. It was still pitch black, like he was asleep. Everything felt sluggish, like his limbs had severe input lag. Why a video game reference was the first somewhat sensible thing that came to his mind, he didn't know. He was both in intense pain every time he tried even so much as lift a finger, and mind boggling numb, like the movements weren't r his own body. Like he was an alien, trying to figure out the foreign controls.

Another jolt, and he heard a symphony of groans around him. He wasn't alone! Well, he din't know whether or not he should be relieved or scared. Mainly, he felt more confused than anything.

Once the groaning subsided -- had he also groaned? -- Darien heard a constant rumbling. He was in a vehicle.

...And just like that, what happened right before he lost consiousness flooded back into his memories. He was working his day job -- well, evening job -- and then something happened. He had been injected with something by the military? Were they military? Was this some kind of rebellion or like... an insurrection or something?

He was kidnapped. Where were they taking him? And apparently there were people with him, in this vehicle. But, before he could try to say anything, the vechicle lurched to a halt. Darien rammed into a wall, and he felt someone else ram into him.

Then, light flooded into Darien's vision, burning his eyes and stinging the back of his head. He blinked away the initial pang and his vision cleared. There were three other people in the truck with him, and the two at the entrance of the truck were pulled out by armed soldiers wordlessly. Darien tried to raise his arms in some feeble form of protest buthe couldn't do much else besides numbly oblige as a soldier stepped up and into the vehicle, and interlocked an arm with Darien's. Together they stumbled out of the vehicle and floodlights angrily burned Darien's eyes as he tried to look around. His skin tingled, and it took him a moment to figure out that it was water tickling his skin as it pelted him and soaked through his shirt.

Darien was passed from one soldier to another

and he stumbled out of the truck's bench and down onto squishy, wet mud. The solider yanked him up by his shoulder and marched him forward. He blinked past the lights and the sting of the rain on his skin and down his eyes. The water was both refreshing and irritating, but he couldn't do anything about it. His hands had been bound behind his back sometime when he was knocked unconscious.

The soldier pushed Darien forward and he groaned, feeling the strain on his muscles from the exertion. He wasn't tired or sore before he was rudely abducted from his little flower store. This was worse than even the hardest workout days, like leg day. What did they do to him?

But his train of thought got ruined as they made their way past the horribly bright lights and Darien could finally actually see what he was moving towards. The lights were stadium lights, and he was by what looked like a huge parking lot that was muddied from the storm that had rolled in. The lights glared down on a cacophony of vehicles, flashing emergency lights, and frenzied commotion as soldiers and official looking people ushered others in handcuffs in the same direction as Darien.

He passed under the scrutiny of blazing white light from a towering pole, with the top adorned by rows of piercing bulbs. Immediately, Darien's eyes relaxed and he saw, finally, what he was being marched towards.

It was a sports stadium. The outside of the stadium stuck out from the land in sharp triangles of glass and maybe concrete? Lights pilfered through the slight fog and rain that pelted its roof, showing that the inside was presumably just as active as the outside. This stadium was new to Atlanta... or well, new-ish, new enough for Darien to have never entered it. That didn't really mean all that much, since he stopped going to sports events by the time he became a teenager. Well, this was going to be a hell of a first time to see it.

His senses returned back to him, piece by piece. He could hear the sirens, distant in the background as more and more emergency vehicles of some kind or probably of many kinds pulled into the parking lot and the area surrounding the parking lot. Why were they taking people like Darien? Better yet, why were they taking people at all?

Darien stumbled as a thick root of what might have been what used to be a bush or perhaps some thick vines, and he fell face first into the mushy ground, tasting wet earth, a little bit of blood, and feeling a whole lot of embarrassment. He couldn't move his hands to try and pick himself back up, but he did manage to not suffocate himself by continuing to sniff the muck. He rolled his head to the side and saw the culprit of his fall: a tightly coiled strand of vine. It appeared to mock him and he could imagine it calling him a fool.

His delusions were rudely interrupted as the soldier heaved his limp body up with a gruff "C'mon" to accompany it. The soldier, ironically did not wait for him to actually land on his feet enough to be stable before they continued walking along. Before Darien could slip once more, the soldier basically dragged him back up and continued to drag him along until they reached double doors. Two soldiers armed with weapons so large and heavy it made Darien feel a horrible pit in his stomach, like he had already been shot for a split second. What could even justify the need for those type of weapons? He didn't even know what it was called but he could only imagine the amount of devastation that weapon could cause to a person. How quickly would it kill? Would they even need to blink before Darien's body was erased from existence?

Before Darien could become any more consumed by that unending spiral of despair, the two soldiers guarding the door stepped aside, opening the double doors to let the two of them through. The soldier escorting Darien then loosened their grip on him to step forward, leading the way through the door for the first time since Darien was yanked out of the vehicle earlier.

The reassuring embrace of warmth tingled his skin and brushed against his wet cheeks, tickling them with hints and whispers of comfort. He was expecting something more open like the wide halls of the lobbies he was used to, but barricades were put up on either side of the doors, corralling them into a fixed direction. And, just like that, the comfort, the warmth, the reassurance dissipated and Darien was reminded of the absolute depths of despair that haunted his insides. Or, maybe he was hungry.