Hex, Alec has just been through 20 years of agonizing mental torture. In that time, he has witnessed thousands, perhaps millions of wartime horrors and betrayals, and has played a role in Serris's "simulations": mental hypothetical situations where the horrors of war are present and his simulated friends, as soon as he starts to trust them, are then sicced upon him. This has happened countless times. Betrayals, screaming, children dying. He's seen it so many times he can no longer remember each one clearly. He's been mentally shattered, so much that he cannot even remember how he escaped. At the time he got out, his mental faculties and capability to feel positive emotion had been shattered by the betrayals of those he had put his trust into, so much that at first, the knights who had found him thought he was at first some strange beast. He never really recovered. He's still, in many ways, a ghost of himself, a shadow of the man he could have been, a mere wisp of smoke in the thundercloud he should have developed into. If you say his mind burns bright now, if he wasn't tortured, it would set the world on fire. But Serris snapped it. Snapped it all. Made each second feel like an eternity of pain, an eternity of depression, grief, and tears. He killed the parents before Alec's very own eyes. Showed him the harsh realities of life before he had finished his fantasies and imaginative state. What kind of man would show a 7-year-old the screams of women and children as they burn and rot and starve and freeze and bleed and die, having finally given in to the great void?!

But yeah, I'm sure having a quick man-to-man talk will snap em out of it :3.

Also, I got the inspiration from that thread, but made up my own lyrics, and I did steal a few (like the hide-n-seek in the mineral gate c:).

I'm waiting on Topo, as Hearth is still grounded. Problem is, though, that Eve is still standing there next to Topo. Don't really know how to continue without powerplaying Eve, even just by having her talk.

Thin, I decided to take some ideas for what is in Alec's bag from your suggestions. As of right now, it contains at least the following (Also, if you think this is OP, tell me. I thought that if in the Clockworks newbie knights camping (scenario rooms) can magically summon huge crates and tents and supplies, Alec can have a portable version, being a tinker person). Everytime he goes back to Haven, he replaces obsolete/damaged items with new ones, like whenever a medicine is developed that his Medikit doesn't have.

- 1 (One) phone-like comlink. Alec can't very well have a headset one because, well, what if he was in a fight? Think about it.

"Alec leapt over Serris, and as he landed, he swung his sword backwards, disarming the maniac who had ripped open his life. Tears splashed down his face as he readied his Combuster to go through Serris's heart. He-

I AM IRON MAN. DUNANU-

Startled, Alec flinched as Serris dashed towards his weapon and ferociously slashed at Alec. Alec rolled and disabled his comlink at the same time, sighing as he did so."

- 1 (One) Multiplex Paxel. It's a pickaxe, hatchet, shovel, power scanner, knife, fire starter, can opener, mirror (to check for face injuries), corkscrew, blowtorch (as if he needs one with his heat abilities), emergency beacon, and identification card. Eat your heart out, Boy/Girl Scouts!

- 200 (Two Hundred) MREs (Meals Ready to Eat). A person who has been working hard all day long only needs two of these. Most of the time, one or two are shared among everyone. They taste rather nice, and are packed with nutrients and energy.

- 1 (One) Insta-Flare Flashlight. At 1200 lumens and a projected 157 hour runtime on full battery, it has a solar panel charger and hand crank.

- 1 (One) gigantic coil of Canval rope. Seriously, he doesn't even know how long it is anymore.

- 1 (One) titanium-covered medical supply kit, filled to the brim with antibiotics, bandages, medicinal herbs, and medical tools, hospital-grade. It also contains coffee and other chemicals to keep people awake.

- 4 (Four) Canval (copyrighted by the Spiral Order) tents. 2 are 6' by 8', while the other 2 are 10' by 12'.

- 1 (One) music player, filled with soothing music to relax the nerves. Alec carries this because of this one time he and a few knights met some Voltails.

"After the battle, the Voltails had fled, leaving only corpses of dead wolvers - and two knights spasming out. Alec whipped out his Medikit and injected 20 cc's of inluase (whatever that was) into both of them. The knights slowly stopped their seizure like reaction, but Alec could tell that the medicine was not nearly as effective as it should have been, and that they were going into shock (har har). Damn it, he needed to get a new kit with new medicines. Alec injected a sleep draught and thought about a way to calm them down. This old out-of-date medicine hadn't worked...

He talked to the only other knight who had escaped unscathed, a Guardian who seemed to be blaming herself for not protecting the others. Her face lit up at his suggestion. She probably felt terrible for not fulfilling her Guardian Oath, but who could blame her? Voltails had been burrowing everywhere, and not even a Guardian could have stopped them from going past her to the much less armored meatbags behind her. Alec and the Guardian, he thought her name was Melinda or something, stood up. When he, as a kid, fell into an ice cold river and went into shock at 6, his parents had sung to him. He had slowly come out of shock, at least enough to make it to the hospital. If they couldn't get the injured out of shock, they would die before medical e-vacs could get there. Melinda took a deep breath. Since Alec's singing sucked more than a Chroma Whelp attacking Vanguards, Melinda would have to go on alone. She took a deep breath, and began:

("Bring Him Home" from "Les Miserables")

"God on high,
Hear my prayer.
In my need,
You have always been there.

He is young.
He's afraid.
Let him rest,
Heaven blessed.
Bring him home,
Bring him home,
Bring him home.

He's like the son I might have known,
If God had granted me a son.
The summers die,
One by one,
How soon they fly.
On and on,
And I am old,
And will be gone.

Bring him peace.
Bring him joy.
He is young.
He is only a boy.

You can take,
You can give,
Let him be,
Let him live.
If I die, let me die.
Let him live.
Bring him home,
Bring him home,
Bring him home."

Incredibly, it worked. The unconscious knights stirred, muttering in their sleep. Alec nodded. They would at least survive until the next day, when paramedics would come."

- 1 (One) Ignite Flame, an electronic reading device (see what I did there?). In case he had to pull an all-nighter, he would read while his keen ears searched for even the slightest wisp of a sound.

- 1 (One) package of sweetmeats. It contained lollipops, cookies, several flavors of pie, cake, and ice cream. If it had been a hard day in the Clockworks or in the labs, everyone would get some small amount of candy. Though unable to love, Alec could at least show kindness towards his companions.

- 1 (One) Absit Cylindrici Aspicientis (Cylinder Far Observer in Latin), nicknamed the RIM (Ridiculously Intense Magnifier). It's so powerful it can view images around the world; in order to accomplish that, one would have to direct the RIM at nearby celestial objects to act as mirrors.

Whoo, that was some long post.

Sincerely,

S-P

Yes, yes, I know. That was one aspect of Alec I wanted to define. I hate making characters that have some vague part about them that could turn into a Deus Ex Machina at the last moment. In this case, it was Alec's knapsack like bag that he always stays within sight of, unless something important happens, like when Ozlo called Alec to his office.

Also, get better soon! That's an AXEtual wish!

Sincerely,

S-P

Hooray for non-OP bag of stuff! I also realized I have to describe the bag. So here we go:

A Canval (copyrighted by the Spiral Order) bag. With ultra-strong ropes, it's a dusky green. Its fabric feels like thin air and is satin-smooth. No one knows how Alec got it, but he never lets it out of his sight. Ever. Due to the ah, sensitive personality of its owner, Spiral HQ decided to not push for answers on its source.

Is there a bounty on Serris? It seems to me that he and the Spiral Order aren't on the best of terms, what with attempting to slaughter the Order's finest soldiers. Maybe, if the bounty on Serris jumps or is created, Daud could see it and grab the fatter paycheck? c:

And Daud, how does that whole "prove innocence" mean? Are they guilty until proven innocent? (o.0)

*Has a sudden urge to throw a Roman spear at Section 37*

*Whistles while waiting for Hearth to be ungrounded and post so Topo and I can post*

*Suddenly realizes I am quite bored to death*

*Decides to describe Alec's weapons more thoroughly. I wanna give each weapon a good story!*

The Combuster: Unlike other Combusters, this specific one has an axe etched into it's hilt, along with all the other weapons. This was Alec's first acquired weapon (In the 20 years of torture, he had to fight since Serris wanted to turn em into a hand). Ozlo felt oddly generous that day and bestowed one upon the heroic young midget, who promptly went to a deconstruction zone and killed the gremlins with it while shouting loudly, "Ha! Elemental Damage Resistance? Yeah right!"

They say he cleared the zone faster than a party of 4 with Acherons and Gran Fausts did. Later on, he went to the Firestorm Citadel, beat up Vanaduke, and recreated his Combuster with the Shadow Fire that was there.

The Glacius: Alec acquired his Glacius after stomping Maulos and taking over his tower of everfrost (as well as some Perma-Frostifurs). Since he decided he was a "poor knight in need of money", he claimed the entire damn tower and sold it for billions, buying a Glacius immediately. He promptly threw it away and crafted his own using 200 lbs. of everfrost he had saved from the tower, muttering something about "inferior quality" and "you gotta do it yourself".

The Voltedge: 2 days after crafting the Glacius, Alec experienced his first vision attack. It sucked. Badly. In his visions, he was disarmed, beaten up, and killed repeatedly by his computer simulation companions which Serris then sicced upon him. Waking up, he vowed to never be defenseless and promptly went to the Ironclaw Munitions Factory while wielding a Boltbrand. After beating the jaheebuz out of the Twins, he took the factory's generator and hooked it up to his Alchemy Machine, creating a high-intensity electric sword.

The Silent Nightblade: Alec could really have turned this into an Acheron ages ago, but wanted to keep the trend of making his weapons with "the purest of the pure elements". He decided that The Swarm was appropriate for a Dark Theme, so he became a Biotech and did extensive research on it. He had nearly succeeded when Ozlo told him to go to Desna's.

The Dark Thorn Blade: This one's really Alec's fault. He got a DTB, went to the Rabid Snarbolax Shadow Lair, and attacked. Unfortunately, during the battle, Alec had a vision attack. This one had the not very good effect of enraging Alec instead of plaguing him with horror. He channeled that rage into a blind fire blast, incinerating the Snarbys before he could take their fangs. [Scrap]. He decided to focus on the Silent Nightblade first.

The Silversix: Alec couldn't think of a good "pure element" to infusr the Silversix with. Finally, he decided to turn it into an Argent Peacemaker and fuse that with a Sentenza. Sadly, his pride stopped him from buying them at the Auction Hall, so he went off to manually collect the materials. He made a Sentenza, which he still has locked away in his house, as he prefers elemental to shadow. He's still looking for an Eternal Orb of Alchemy.

Poor Alec. Now Serris blew up the material banks, so he'll have an even harder time finding orbs now :D.

No, Serris blew up the most material filled banks (which happened to contain Warp Dust AND orbs).

You envy my boredom? :3 What, you like having nothing to do? XD

Yeah, title says enough.

I don't really want Nevo to have Backfire Barrier anymore. It doesn't really suit him, so could I swap it out for shield aura?

I had to go and see what Backfire Barrier was, and I noticed that strong curse "prevents usage of battle sprites". Does that mean that the people without strong curse have access to battle sprites? :D. Of course, if one could use sprites, there would be the trouble of sprite levels, perks, yadda-yadda, etc., and so on.

He hasn't used it. I had put it in one of my parts, but I took it out.

Derpy double post!

Lucario is having a problem logging into his account. Something about SteamGuard messing up or something about that. Lucario sent me a e-mail to tell me to write down his posts as a whole different thing and this will be temporary until this issue gets fixed.

and nova got a derpy double post

*Whistling because I'm still waiting for Hearth (Is xe still grounded?) and Topo*

*Finding out that Hearth has been posting on the forums but not on this one*

*Getting slightly cheesed off to find out xe's been on the forums for days and still no story post*

*Wondering where Topo is*

*Falling asleep*

I couldn't really think of any other way to wake Herston up besides with overly-caffeinated deliciously intoxicating beverages, considering how Herston just fell on the bed, not even bothering to grab a pillow or such.

What? Coffee's perfectly fine! Don't look at me like that!

I originally posted Alec about to jab Herston in the pressure point to wake him up, but Topo took over and posted right before I did. So I had to edit it.

Curse you Topo! MY COFFEE!!!

EDIT: Topo, there were 3 cups. One had 2 packets, meant to give Herston a sugar rush :P.

EDIT 2: Man, I really should have Alec ask about the "mysterious game" thing going on, but he's just so feisty. I don't suppose either Hearth or Topo could do something like "One wall of text later..." and assume Alec's caught up to speed?

Ooh. We can use sprites. Hmmm... *evil grin*

Well, There have been to many posts, School has been ruining my schedules like crazy, And My alarm clock has failed to wake me up this entire year.
Minus yesterday.

It's really serious, I can't draw good women anymore... D;

Well, good women are about 75% of my portfolio and best men are about 25% of it. AND most of those women...are my favorites and...the fact I draw them with... /restrains giving out his style.

Oh, sorry... I probably should've made it a little clearer that Eve wanted to make sure Alec was okay that she'll interrogate Alec with a teensy-weensy question. :P

I'm waiting on thin, but I don't want to rush you. Also, I don't really like my writing lately. The stuff I type up are short and quite bad, so if I don't post a lot, there's my reason.

I'm still a little murky about the particulars about Claire, which could influence Alec's knowledge of her. So I've compiled a nice list.

1. When did "Commander" Claire disappear?
2. Did Serris break her like he tried to break Alec?
3. Did Desna mention the absence of such a skilled fighter often (such as when the Recon Ranger and Alec prepared against Perma-Frostifurs)?
4. Is she a potato (I jest)?
5. How was she even captured (if it was a dramatic battle where the rescuers were one second late, everyone in Haven would be talking about it)?
6. Why does Claire say that "Commander Claire is dead. Was many years ago." to Desna, her former companion?