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Post by Prof. Rainer Freundschaft on Mar 30, 2006 23:50:15 GMT
Algernon looks pale against the thin burgandy quilt. Rainer stands over him, unsure of what to do with him now that he is here. Casting a weak charm for warmth on him with his free hand, he pulls his small collection of potions from the pockets of his robes. Seven bottles of varying sizes stand upright on his desk, the only ones from his office he was able to salvage. Leaning forward on to his desk, hands outspread on the dark wood, he looks over at Algernon's sleeping form. "What am I going to do with you?"
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Post by Prof. Algernon Moncrieff on Mar 31, 2006 1:11:18 GMT
Algernon dreams.
There is too much in his head now, and there are flashes of a blonde boy cringing other his father's hand, a child with huge eyes sitting in the grass playing with a ferret, a girl crouching in a stairwell, tears drying on her face as she watches her father drag her sister away, and a man who is water, then nothing, then something else entirely.
The boundries are breaking down, and Algernon can feel them all. He reaches out to touch each of them lightly, synapses flaring up. He's in their eyes. Trees and fear, snow and tears, moonlight, and--
He is thrown back by the anger, crashing back into his own mind. His momentum shatters the barrier.
Rainer is on top of him and Algernon does not understand because a second ago they were fighting and he is used to Kieron's hesitant mouth on his rather than Rainer's lips which are everywhere, and he cannot move.
His eyes open against the white light to Rainer's words.
"...What have you already done?"
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Post by Prof. Rainer Freundschaft on Apr 18, 2006 2:25:28 GMT
"So you're awake.." Rainer replies cooly, looking over his shoulder. Algernon props himself up on an elbow, staring him down accusatorily. There is nothing to say and Rainer turns back to his hands and examines the scratches on the surface of the desk the school had provided him with. Smiling to himself, his left hand finds its way to the middle vial and he recalls dumbly that he had meant to refinish the wood.
"You will blame me of course. But understand that we all do what we must." Rainer's hands fall from the edges of the desk and he turns to stand over Algernon, holding the tube out of sight. "You can understand that much can't you?" He licks his lips and lets the light pool in his mouth waiting for the words to find it; Erich laughs from the corner.
"Annuliert."
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Post by Prof. Algernon Moncrieff on Apr 18, 2006 2:52:11 GMT
Algernon grits his teeth against the magic, shrinking against the wall as it touches him, black against his sensitive eyes. He is aware of laughter and twin pressures on his skull and before he knows it he is flying on the whispered spell and wrapping himself around Rainer's conciousness. There is little resistance, though Algy senses there should be. This mind has been visited before.
Something follows him, along for the ride, and he pulls up memories for Algernon and Rainer to watch with practiced ease.
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Post by Erich Aubry on Jun 4, 2006 5:37:07 GMT
My big blank heart. There are three men in one black room. Then they are not there. You do not know, Algernon. Someone says so without a voice. I say so without a voice. You do not know. Then they are on a high bridge; the surrounding plant life roots itself between the stones and the sound of water. There is no water. Algernon is watching and not moving. I have something to show you. Erich says. I say. The narrator. I cannot promise you the correct sequence of events.
Then Rainer falls off the bridge.
Do you want to see? Erich's mouth does not move although he implies the question, the sounds of having asked. He isn't moving. Algernon does not need to admit that he wants badly to see. They both know and the bridge--- the stage darkens.
***
The Midwest is a Vampire.
Rainer lies down on the windshield and lets him take as much as he needs. After he's finished and it's late enough to need the headlights, he gets down on his knees in the dust and sucks hard enough to return the favor. In the morning, Valentine will sleep in the trunk and Rainer will drive their Cadillac wherever he thinks to. The air is dry and the days are long but they're still working on it.
Fact.
The focused power of a single group of trained magicians might level a country in a mere matter of days. The authorities are extremely interested and talk back and forth over the comm. You know, smaller communities out there, it could be--- they have some proof and a good idea of what's going on.
It rains too much. Rainer does his best to explain to soldiers he meets on their way back from the front that the cold shudder they sometimes experience in the trenches is something trying to get in. They nod solemnly because most have at least felt what they couldn't see in the cloud cover of the smoke grenades. Some relay stories of people, the already bulleted and dead, seen walking in those brief moments of clarity when the tertiary rounds explode overhead in sudden and terrible daylight. Hungry ghosts collecting body wounds and bodies. Rainer is particularly concerned with one story about a boy who turns to water every time he is shot.
Killing the Bad Guys
"He is a killer. Justice is anything we choose it to be," Erich replies flatly. Rainer's pupils narrow to points as his hand closes around the man's throat and, the pulse rushing full under his grip, lifts him up off the ground. Easy. Very easy. So he laughs and will throw this man high in to the air above the meadow or crush his vertebrae in to river clay. This is the newest charm.
Erich, though impressed by this enhancement, reminds him that a spirit of great strength is a more lasting asset. So when the man goes rigid in terror, wets himself and twitches like the last fall leaves in the trees to the west, they lay him out on the bowed grasses and watch him scramble flat against the earth as if in fear of the sky. Walking home Erich, by way of explanation for what Rainer just saw, lets him know that their victim had been terrified since childhood of being buried alive. There are easier ways, he says and winks. The man in the meadow is still screaming or maybe the wind.
Then in October.
Erich straddles Rainer's knees on a beach of gravel. The sky is a slate and harder than the rock or the sea. Rainer is fifteen and too thin, he sputters salt water and tries to slap Erich's hands away half heartedly. "Fahr zur Holle! You jerk off, you got sand in my eye!" Erich places his palm on Rainer's wet stomach and smiles when he freezes. They kiss with their eyes open. I always knew what you wanted, he remarks in telepathy. Surround sound. The sea.
My Candles.
Rainer is pulling the rafters down as if they were matchsticks and holds the occupants to the floors with a spell he is particularly fond of. What crashes: Bones and wood limbs and treetops. Then a village is burning, and again, Algernon is unsure of what he is seeing. He reels after the silhouette of Rainer who merely turns his back to the pyre. No one, not even the victims, make a sound. Sparks dart upward in lieu of the soundtrack, the accompanying music. The eighth attack. This is probably his doing as well.
Killing the Bad Guy.
Faster and faster. Erich is sputtering on the floor as if he were choking. Clutching with his pianist hands at his throat, his broad chest. His heels drag across the floor, waiting for traction and already sinking in to water. More appropriate words for choking are drowning. His hair in his eyes. Algernon find his body here in this dream though he does not understand and watches Rainer's mouth move in shapes. Rainer does not remember the dialogue to this event. Erich, as he is now, appears beside Algernon, closes a hand on his shoulder and devours the scene. He watches with painful intensity the sight of Rainer crouching beside him and cupping the young Erich's chin before snatching his jaw off just before the transfiguration completes its slow path through the body. Yes. Yes, he says, that's how he did it. Langley! As if hearing them and perhaps he does, Rainer turns and brings a single finger to his lips to bid them silent. The eyes that are completely empty stare through and through and through. Erich and Algernon watch rapt as the water sinks through the school's cracked marble floor.
Electricity. A miserable Germany of parts and pieces. A lifetime of wandering. You are accountable for these things. A whistle and worse. You.
Once We Wake.
When Rainer's body has regenerated enough for him to move, he crawls and then limps towards the ashes and useless soot that was Valentine. From this pile he recovers a dented, blackened belt buckle, the individual, amputated links of a necklace and maybe enough for bus fare if he counted right. It will be night soon and in a matter of hours Rainer will be healed enough to find the men that did this. Settling himself against the stripped, burned out ruin of the car, he decides that he is too tired for revenge. Motels and bars are lighting up and down the road alongside highways everywhere. The signs read miles and mileage in the dark and Rainer has had enough of America at last. So he waits for his skull to close up again and lets the next breeze dwindle whatever remains.
***
I want you to see. Though, by then, Algernon is not sure whose voice has spoken at last.
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Post by Prof. Algernon Moncrieff on Jun 5, 2006 0:21:27 GMT
Algernon has his wand at Rainer's throat before he knows anything.
Rainer sits crumbled at the foot of his desk where he has fallen, eyes half-closed and dazed, and Algernon's wand is pressed so forcefully against his windpipe that he can feel his pulse through the wood.
He is not yet fully aware of what he has seen, only that Rainer was kissing the man in the forest and that is enough.
In a low voice, teeth gritted together with the force of it:
"What was that, Langley?"
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Post by Erich Aubry on Jun 5, 2006 1:10:08 GMT
Erich stares up at Algernon from where Rainer has collapsed and materializes there as the illusion of his death eighty years earlier. His fresh throat exposed and slick under the point of the wand. Beneath the glamour, Rainer is opening his eyes and trying to see through the smog, the suffocation of Erich's apparition. No sounds escape and Erich smiles icily from the floor. His hand finds the wand and travels up its length, cool fingertips on Algernon's hand and wrist. He is stunned and not firing off any of the curses he had thought of in the seconds it took to advance on Rainer or maybe this is just Erich's will holding him in place or perhaps nothing at all is happening--- an illusion still? Erich's hand, Rainer's hand, is traveling up his arm. Then he is standing and Algernon's arm is still extended and shaking and useless. Useless. You don't want to be useless to me, do you? Rainer is whispering silkily in to his ear or Erich dreaming the words in and through him.
Reality Check: Algernon's eyes have rolled back in to his head and a smile is forming. Rainer is coughing on the floor, shaking in hard, throat burning fits. Siphoning his magic for a simple levitation, the remaining acid potions circle Algernon's head as a crown. Erich smirks. Easy. Rainer locks eyes with the phantom. Very Easy.
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Post by Prof. Algernon Moncrieff on Jul 7, 2006 23:28:42 GMT
Algernon will not be fooled by illusions and he will not be afraid.
But Rainer all around him just as he is held down by the point of his wand, and Algernon holds his breath for fear of inhaling him as much as breathing too hard, or in short, shallow gasps, because Rainer is touching him and the other man is touching him and his heart beats faster despite himself, but he will tell himself it is out of fear even though he is not afraid, or at least not any more afraid than he has ever been of Rainer, because there has always been something which he might have mistaken for attraction or been distracted from by the real attraction and the illusion is so real that Algernon can feel Rainer's breath on his neck and he wants to turn and kiss him but the thought is lost in the jumble of sensation and he almost suspects it was planted there while everything blend stogether and all he knows is real is the feel of the true Rainer's pulse through the wood of his wand.
He pulls his hand away, dropping wand to his side, and closes his eyes.
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Post by Prof. Rainer Freundschaft on Jul 12, 2006 5:50:28 GMT
Lessons:
But telepathy is like fighting with metaphors. Applying association after association: an equation that converts man to a short haired dog, a soft, hollow shell, a gust of salt.
So the mind lives what it feels?
You are what you feel.
***
Rainer's eyes feel as if they're boiling inside his head, the blood in flush and thin with speed. Suffocation has a way of manipulating the circulatory systems, making irregular traffic and oxygen flow backward and up. Disorientation in is an accepted symptom and Rainer's body is already working against the intrusion.
Transfiguration: that boy is made out of iron. Get out.
Steel starts in his eyes, the rings of irises and then outward as if in waves. Closing your mind is like dragging a heavy door shut in winter. Fingers burn on the object of their affections; the difficulty is in the wind. But more than that, it's the closing of many doors, of sealing yourself off against the air again and again. Really you only squeeze your eyes shut and hope everything else follows. But the metal isn't moving so much as it's spreading, cells turning over into alloy, electromagnetic bonds that mute the aura and disguise thought. That walls will be there when you need them. Because you do need them. I need you.
Rainer remains crouched on the floor until the shaking has stopped and he is as dense and hard as any paper weight, any empty suit of armor. There are no thoughts and no magic and he is an artifact that might only suffer from rust. "I haven't had to do that in a long time, you know." He glances coolly at Algernon, whose eyes are closed and arms are slack, and dusts himself off as he stands. "But you were always a good teacher, nicht?"
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Post by Erich Aubry on Jul 12, 2006 7:01:52 GMT
and Lessons:
You get used to seeing with your telepathy, though.
That seems very inconvenient. What sort of magician are you? It seems tragically overspecialized.
I am the best there will ever be.
Hund. Schwien. Horrible, peeping, sub-race deviant. Actually, thinking of it now, it's intrusive and sick. I bet all you do is flutter through people's secrets, all the time. It is very perverse. You egotistical little frog.
Well, magic relies on a lot of violations to work. You should not be able to punch through walls nor should I be able to tell you in excruciating detail what it is you want from me but will not say. We all have our specialties.
I don't want anything from you. You are over-sexed and probably a pervert with no real magical talent at all. The fact that this is your only power speaks depths to this. Arschlos.
I should not know that you're lying. But I do. {Erich is smiling now.}
Be quiet little toad. They are beginning it now.
***
Without Rainer's magic to siphon, Erich's body destabilizes and for a moment he is only the impression of color against the stone wall. A fog of thoughts in all directions before he adjusts again, drinking from Algernon and the levitation he had just performed. I like to think so, Langley. The potions inch towards the floor in a drowsy collapse of the charm as Erich begins to build a mouth when he realizes Rainer, warded as he is, can no longer hear him from the inside out.
"It was a worthwhile innovation. What, might I ask, are we going to do with your friend here?"
Rainer scowls, dropping to his knees to collect his vials. "We are not going to be doing anything. I, however, am going to wait until my strength returns when I will promptly finish what I started." Rainer stares up at Erich from the floor, "Not that you need to told."
"Do you really think I will allow you to continue tampering with his mind? Here I thought you hated psychics. Perhaps it was only for me that you've harbored so much hatred? Though, for the good five minutes I was in there," gesturing lazily towards Rainerfs head, Erich continues, "let me say that you seem awfully stressed for a professor who has taught exactly one class." After a moment, "I canft blame you for that though, your salary is an insult."
Rainer stands, fists closed around the bottles, eyes on the floor as Erich presses himself against his side, leaving droplets of river water on the smooth exterior of Rainer's temple and neck. A statue in the rain. After it becomes clear that Rainer will not be speaking, Erich snakes an arm around his shoulder and wonders aloud, "I still have no idea why in the world you would want to come back to this place."
Come back to? Rainer bristles underneath him, the spell fluctuating for a minute and then settling in place again. Erich closes his eyes, his thoughts still with Algernon, replaying again the sequence of his only and forgotten kiss with Rainer and unaware of any disturbance. He continues to ramble, "We could be anywhere, be anyone to anyone. While you were gone I found these very impressive sea serpents off the Mediterranean and this immortal creature with a charming accent. Did you know muggles are living in my mother's house? Well, they are and they were very rude to me when I manifested. So I mind-wiped them and forced them in to costly renovations to restore it to its proper state and then---" And Erich can't hear him, whatever his reply might have been, but takes the potion that eats through his corporeal form as an answer of sorts.
He considers replying for a moment before vanishig, before allowing that body to fall apart. He will raise Algernon from his sleep, sweating and disoriented. He will return him to the living to see Rainer, stone cold and his skin returning to skin with enough time to see Rainer's hand burned by the acids and his palms cut by the bottles he had shattered and buried in Erich's earnest ghost. He knows, even without his telepathy, that it is easy to get ahead of oneself.
All this in time.
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Post by Prof. Rainer Freundschaft on Jul 12, 2006 7:36:59 GMT
Education:
What does it mean that I don't know how to be close to anyone?
That answer is fear. Anxiety? You are threatened by me.
Oh of course I am! I like to think I have no self deceptions but you'll only see through me. If I'm transparent- then I am. You'll only see through me. You don't see me at all.
How is something found that doesn't want to be?
You always ask questions.
You always resist. Why?
Resignation is the enemy of the living. I don't want insight or peace. I pity you.
I know you think so.
***
He's already healing. Rainer is helpless this way, the body is forced with life and already preparing for the next threat. You could just keep running and somehow nothing would ever stop.
Sometimes he gets afraid that he'll see the end of the world and will have to deal with that when it comes.
Fact: I don't need food or oxygen or sleep.
Not you, either.
Maybe some other planet, someday. A new kind of exhaustion. Whatever the heart invents to keep itself. Maybe.
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Post by Prof. Algernon Moncrieff on Jul 17, 2006 0:59:45 GMT
The few words that are spoken aloud do not make sense and although Algernon knows there is more happening, his eyes are still closed and no one is touching him.
So he can think now, and when he opens his eyes there is only Rainer, but he can still feel the pressure of their one kiss and he very much does not want to be here.
"Erich... Aubry." He says finally, flatly. "I've read about him."
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Post by Prof. Rainer Freundschaft on Jul 17, 2006 5:48:40 GMT
Rainer looks toward Algernon and opens his hand, lets the skin clear itself of flecks of glass. He does not flinch and they chime against the floor one by one as they fall. "So, then you understand perfectly with whom and with what I am dealing, do you not?" Rainer dusts his palms off and levitates the fragments, gathering them in the air between the two of them. Looking to Algernon now, he asks, "What would you have me say?"
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Post by Prof. Algernon Moncrieff on Jul 17, 2006 22:24:47 GMT
Algernon watches the shards of glass float in the air, watches the light glinting off of them, and wonders off hand if Rainer plans to send them flying toward him. No. That wouldn't be his style, would it?
"I don't think I understand anything anymore, Rainer." Algernon confesses. "I fail to see why the boy hero of the post-war era would have suddenly manifested in our woods bent on driving myself and half the student body out of our minds."
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Post by Prof. Rainer Freundschaft on Aug 1, 2006 5:24:00 GMT
"Erich has always had a way with people," Rainer replies flatly, settling himself on the corner of his desk. The glass follows him. "I first spoke to Germany's child hero when I was ten. That was over ninety years ago. It would seem that he too is still alive and still interested in continuing that first conversation." Rainer crosses his arms and waits for the questions this will surely bring.
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