you are a weapon and weapons do not weep

tessa teller ;; 28 ;; metahuman ;; bionic physiology ;; c.a.r.m.a. meta agent girl, with an accent of blood who speaks in foreign tongues whose vowels are the sound of metal clashing.

[psionicmanny-blog]

After the whole Nephilim madness officially ended, C.A.R.M.A was a little more hectic than usual. After he’d been tested and checked out in the infirmary to make sure he was fine and his powers were at a normal level, and the steroid’s after effects faded away, Manny had been sent out to help with damage control out in the city. He was just coming back for a few hours break, ready to chill out in the lounge. Walking down the hall he heard the faint sound of someone playing piano in the Meta Squad lounge, but he was not expecting the sight when he walked in. The blond’s eyes went wide, his face went red, and the only noise he was capable of making for the first few seconds was just a soft inhale as he sucked in a breath. “Holy––fuck, uh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t–––do you want, like, a sweater or something?” 

[bionictessa]

Tessa had hardly expecting to be alone for very long, not when the lounge was open to anyone in the Meta Squad -- and others, if they decided to try and be pushy. But she had no need to be alone, frankly. Though she never allowed herself to consider her own loneliness, she’d spent more than enough time on her own in her life. So the sound of footsteps and the evenness of a nervous inhale were almost comforting in a way, even if the words that followed were just another aspect of humanity that she didn’t understand. “Why are you sorry? You haven’t done anything wrong.” She shook her head, continuing to play. “If I wanted a sweater, don’t you think I’d be wearing one?”

[dr-quinn-parker]

“That seems almost impossible,” Quinn murmured, letting her gaze roam over Tessa with furrowed brows as she examined the bionic girl. Then again, what was impossible these days? She was currently living in a world where humans had superpowers and could accomplish almost anything. She herself had played god and given agents superhuman strengths. 

The redhead nodded, her lips pulling into a frown. She figured that was the case. “Trust me, your data pool is large enough to be reliable.” With the steroid in the water supply, it would be a surprise if only one person was unaffected in town. “Do you know if anyone in C.A.R.M.A figured out the source of this yet?” 

[bionictessa]

"The same has been said about my very existence, even without any enhancements of my inherent powers. This is simply improbable, though with your own work, I’d guess that enhancements of natural born abilities would be your forte.” It wasn’t an accusation, nor was it any kind of attempt to figure out what had happened. It was simply an observation, Tessa’s mind working through all the information at her disposal as she examined her body one last time before turning her attention back to the woman in front of her.

“In this situation, I agree. It is unlikely that one specific group of Metas or humans would be affected differently, barring very unique circumstances.” If whatever was affecting everyone even managed to enhance what little was left of her healing abilities, then it was most likely strong enough to make a difference in everyone. “Not as far as I know, but I haven’t been back since shortly after this began. You should go back to C.A.R.M.A. and begin work on either attempting to reverse this or control it.”

[scarlett-valenti]

Scarlett chuckled at the confusion that was evident on Tessa’s face. “Because it’s fun, duh.” She grinned, bringing a hand up and creating a small, glowing, dark pink heart in front of Tessa before waving it away a moment later. “It feels good.. so good..” Scarlett hummed. “I think you’d enjoy it.”

[bionictessa]

Though curiosity flickered across Tessa’s face at the sight of the glowing heart that appeared, there was a long silence as she considered the answer that Scarlett gave. Other than asking questions and learning, she didn’t tend to do things for fun; it just wasn’t in her nature anymore. But perhaps this was just another form of investigating and so she made up her mind. “Show me.”

[zachacosta]

“People are weird,” he said, offering an apathetic shrug. He’d never been bothered by nudity – not unless it was his own – but he’d never particularly liked it, either. Indifference was about the most he could manage, but then, that could’ve been said about most things. “Personally I don’t give a shit.” That didn’t mean he hadn’t found it odd to walk in and immediately be met with a clothes-less person, but her explanation had taken most of the confusion away from him – that, and he really was more concerned with where he could get his little caffeine fix. “Hey, you never know. If you find out someone’s a spy you’ve got permission to ice them on sight, yeah?” Not that he’d ever done anything about that in particular, but the possibility was there. “Oh– yeah, sure man, that’d be great. Thanks.”

[bionictessa]

"That is very true. I’m constantly attempting to understand all of you and I feel as though I never make any progress.” Trying to understand people with normal minds was like trying to decipher a constantly changing code; there was an answer somewhere, but the question changed so much that she couldn’t keep up. Perhaps it was for the better. It did keep things interesting. “Unfortunately, there are not nearly enough spies revealed to satisfy my instincts. I don’t think that C.A.R.M.A. holds enough appreciation for how many people I don’t kill.” She was created to kill without mercy, after all, and she thought she was doing quite well keeping her body count down. At his confirmation, she stood up and made her way over to the cabinet, reaching up and pulling the coffee down with ease. “You’re short,” she teased as she handed it over, lips curling up into a smile.

[jimxirons-blog]

…Who was Oli to disagree with the walking internet? He shrugged, but nodded. Not that he kept in touch much, but the couples he had went to school with didn’t last very long. Maybe one, but they were on the plain side. Maybe that’s the point…keep life simple and boring and no problems could crop up. “…Thanks.” He added, because in weird way she’d be kinda nice there, telling him he wasn’t a freak for being twenty-five and not halfway on his way to marriage. Like…way too many people his age.

“Well then…what about going to a club? Real life people there doing real life things.”

[bionictessa]

"There is no reason to thank me. I just provided information,” Tessa said with a small shrug, not entirely great with emotions. As if that wasn’t blatantly obvious from the outset. “Doing something kind or sympathetic would be saying that I have never felt love of any kind, but I doubt that would be any comfort. I am an unusual case and I doubt we should be considered comparable in terms of emotional capacity. But I do suspect I am older than you, if you do take this to be comfort.” It was an awkward statement and perhaps one that could have been considered rude, but she meant it well.

“The last time I went to a club, I killed someone. C.A.R.M.A. prefers it if I don’t put myself in situations that are likely to aggravate me.”

[joshkovak]

The only argument – response, rather – for anything she’d stated was that he didn’t want to live another eighty years. He didn’t want to live another ten years! Hell, given the chance he would’ve died tomorrow, later that evening, any time provided it’d put an end both to his pain and that of those around him. But he couldn’t admit that to anyone, especially not someone who worked with C.A.R.M.A, and so instead of snapping back and revealing just how bad his suicidal ideation had gotten, he offered a one-shouldered shrug and a soft, “Maybe.” The reality was that he didn’t believe all the patience, all the time, in the world would make a difference in reducing his distress – it’d been eight long years since he’d last even done so much as looked at his parents and yet their influence was still seared into his mind. As far as he was concerned, that was exactly how it’d stay. “They– they might be warped but they’re still there,” he answered, doing his best to reign himself and stop working himself into a frenzy – not was not the time. “They’re not– they’re not fading. Ever.”

He paused, an expression caught between confusion and distress written into his features – divergent brain chemistry? What the hell did that mean? Did it have something to do with the fact that he was a metahuman? He couldn’t imagine what might’ve tipped her off, or why she wouldn’t have dragged him back to C.A.R.M.A’s headquarters, but he didn’t have many other guesses. “My– my what?” he asked, hoping for an elaboration that wouldn’t end in him sprinting off and (probably) ending up back in some cage. He deserved the torture, of course, but that didn’t mean he was eager for a fight that would more than likely end with innocent casualties. “Some things are impossible…”

[bionictessa]

"It is not a matter of debate or opinion. Your rebuttals and thoughts on the subject are well meaning, but utterly irrelevant. Unless you have inhuman mental capabilities, you will forget to some great extent. That is a simple fact of the brain and of the way that memories work. Whether or not you can accept it, it’s still the truth.” Frankly, Tessa doubted he would believe her. It wasn’t his fault as far as she could tell, simply the side effect of not understanding the world the way that she did. He was governed by emotions, controlled by his impulses and trauma. She was able to look at things logically by detaching herself from the situation and only taking the facts into account.

At his reaction, her eyes narrowed. It was clear that he had misunderstood, but she wasn’t entirely sure what his assumption had been. Whatever it was, it was clear that it wasn’t pleasant. “Divergent brain chemistry. I’m not a psychologist, but it’s clear that you’re depressed and likely suffering from PTSD. I suspect there is more to it as well, but as I said, I’m not a psychologist.” It was fair to say that she had some variation of PTSD, but it was far more complicated than that, given her unusual mind. “You are talking to someone who is nearly entirely bionic, someone who could be considered a cyborg. I should be impossible, but I exist. Nothing is impossible.”

[joshkovak]

As he continued to slink towards her, he paused every so often to make sure he’d evaluated the situation properly – he was certainly curious about the strange cyborg, but not to the point he’d risk too much of his safety. Normally, the only curiosity he would’ve humored was in how quickly he could rip her limb from limb, but she’d beaten him thoroughly and in doing so, had managed to call forth a bit more of his less-violent mindset. He was far from human in that moment, of course, and lived and breathed as wild, feral thing, but his mind wasn’t ruled by the same bloodlust. Now he was in limbo between being feral and controlled and was able to act in more gentle ways.

Of course, his injuries aided in choosing to do so – it was highly likely that in the case she hadn’t used the amount of voltage she did, that he would’ve stayed in fight mode. At the very least, he would’ve fled the scene and bolted off to seek out more viable prey, but being that he was too weak to do much more than inch towards her, neither his flight or fight responses were particularly useful to him. He paused again, flinching back slightly as she held a hand out towards him – more electricity? – but the gentleness in her tone (and in her actions) slid his thoughts away from a potential threat. His tail swished along the warehouse floor as he approached her, still careful and very obviously nervous, and after a long moment of hesitation, he gently butted his head up against her palm.

[bionictessa]

Tessa could be patient and she could be gentle, despite outward appearances. It was the part of her that was still her, not tainted by experiments and training. It was a soft and rare part, like a piece of hay in the middle of a stack of needles, but it was still there. And at the moment, it found its way to the surface as she watched the man make his way towards her with such stuttering nervousness. He was so scared, so nervous despite all that he was capable of. She almost felt bad for hurting him as much as she had, but she also knew that he would have killed her if she had done anything less.

For a second, she thought of a moment she avoided passionately; the moment of her rescue. There had been bright lights, the echoing clatter of gunfire and screams. Blood was seeping across the floor and it smelled like death. She was curled up in the back of her cell, shattering her cot with her foot so that she could have a weapon when the attackers came for her. But they never did. They just stood there asking her questions, looking through blood soaked files they had no right to hold. She’d wanted to kill them, but they saved her anyway.

When his head pressed against her palm, she was drawn away from her thoughts and a small smile found its way onto her tired face. Slowly, she moved to run her fingers through his hair, touch careful as she acclimated him to her presence.

[bionictessa]

A E S T H E T I C ;; YOUNG TESSA TELLER

i am the sea and nobody owns me

[zachacosta]

Zach couldn’t say he cared too much about what people wore – or a lackthereof, in her case – and in that moment he was much more focused on his own problems. Namely in that he hadn’t satisfied his caffeine addiction in a few days and definitely needed to get back on track in fostering it – it was like he had a double headache! “Yeah, I don’t know, someone else might care,” he said, offering a halfhearted shrug. “I sure don’t, though; you can do whatever you want. I wouldn’t care if you killed someone in front of me again, like, literally.” Especially not right then. “Do you know where they’re keeping the coffee? I need to wake up.”

[bionictessa]

"There is a strong possibility of that. People are not always comfortable with exposed bodies. It varies by culture and decade,” she remarked idly, careful fingers still sliding across the keys. She’d never learned piano like a typical person, but it was easy enough for her to download the information and perform it with untouchable skill. “I don’t believe there will be any need to kill anyone here. C.A.R.M.A. gets more angry when it kill in the base.” Not that she feared their anger in the slightest. “In the cabinet above the coffee maker. Would you like me to reach it for you?”

[zachacosta]

Over the course of the days following the rise of the Nephilim, Zach had felt progressively worse. At first he’d chalked it up to an energy drain from the overuse of his abilities, but as his powers had returned to normal and nothing had changed, he’d been forced to change his opinion. He’d suspected illness first, but as healing himself of anything minor hadn’t improved, he moved onto other topics, finding that his eventual conclusion of a bad reaction to the steroid was probably his best bet. Of course, that didn’t exempt him from working with C.A.R.M.A – calling in sick wasn’t exactly an option ever, but especially not when there was a mess to clean up. So, instead of curled up back at home, he found himself making his way to the lounge to see if he could scrounge up some caffeine – and was immediately greeted with a naked woman. What a weird world he lived in. “Wow,” he started, stifling a yawn, “they’re really relaxing the dress codes around here, aren’t they?”

[bionictessa]

Tessa wasn’t oblivious. She knew that other people had an issue with nudity, though she found it more than a little strange that they were so terribly offended by their own bodies. It was natural, the human form, but some people were even offended by breasts. If they were on women. If they could tell they were on women? And only if the nipples were showing? It was an absolute mystery to the computer minded woman. “I don’t believe there would be any issue with my lack of clothing. I am running a diagnostic and I may need to access my body.”

[bionictessa]

Due to her synthetic nature, Tessa was experiencing little to no side effects from the Meta steroid. She saw some were less lucky than her, some agents left temporarily bed ridden as they waited for the symptoms to pass, but there was nothing she could do to help them. Instead, she simply decided to run a self diagnostic on herself, making sure that her powers had allowed her to heal completely and that she would have no lasting effects from the events of the weekend. While it ran, she needed something to entertain herself with, so she made her way down to the agent lounge with little regard to her lack of clothing. Nudity certainly didn’t bother her, not in the slightest, so she just sat down at the piano, considering what song to play for a brief moment before playing with expert precision.

[jim-irons-blog]

Clever girl. Her unique brain made reading her thoughts also extremely difficult. Surrounded by meat, Jim was untouchable, but as darkness blanketed them Jim realised her plan. He hated how he respected her ingenuity.  “Be careful! She could easily kill us,” He said, throwing out a wave of dark fear and dread, turning every angry mobster into a poised animal waiting to lash out at a threat. Or each other. One simple move by the unique, annoying robot could set the crowd into a frenzy that would kill more than a few of them. Jim stayed in the epicenter, tracking her by her dimmed soul, sliding back through the crowd to keep the majority of hyper-vigilant and anger men, women and children between them.

Her move. Would she risk their lives in attacking him? He could feel exactly where she was, her position triangulated.

[bionictessa]

He was a piece of shit, as the youth so eloquently put it. She did like their taste for bluntness sometimes, even if she tended not to swear too much herself. Even without abilities like his, she could practically feel the tenseness that filled the crowd, every single unfortunate human’s senses filled with fear that they had no chance of fighting against. If she moved wrong, it would be like tossing a piece of meat into a school of piranhas -- piranhas that were just as likely to tear each other apart as they were to hurt her.

But she had one last trick up her sleeves. This one was not quite as flashy as the rest of them, but it was undeniably a side effect of being more machine than person. As she stepped away from the crowd just a bit, she fell still. It wasn’t a normal human stillness. There was no gentle movement of breath, no predictable fidgeting, no shifting of weight from foot to foot. She was more like a statue than anything else and she could remain in that position for years, if she needed to. Unlikely, however, as she doubted he had any form of self-sustenance. 

Or patience.

[jimxirons-blog]

That wasn’t a bad way of describing it. Oli nodded, also shrugging. It sounded like the perfect description of both kinds of love but he was only halfway through the race, he didn’t know what the other half entailed. “Maybe. Pro’ly, never been in love, so…” He shrugged again, dragging his eyes back to Tessa. Admitting out loud that he’d never been in love felt like a social setback, like he’d not done something everyone did, someone out of the norm. Tapping his fingers on the table, more comfortable - ish - with the robotic woman now, Oli shifted to face her a bit more, since he could handle the conversation better.  “Maybe watchin’ ol’ movies’d help understand emotion ‘n’ behaviour…?” He guessed. Some nights they worked for him…other nights they, blissfully, sent him off to sleep.

[bionictessa]

"That is not unusual,” she said bluntly. “You’re young, mid to late twenties at most, I would guess. Many people don’t find a real love until later on in their lives, if marriage rates are to be believed. I have heard that many people experience young love, but I have also heard that young love is a falsehood.” She’d also heard that love in its entirety was a falsehood, but she’d also heard that it was the greatest thing in life. It seemed to be a subject that divided people. “Movies are scripted. Even good writing cannot perfectly imitate real behavior.”

[joshkovak]

Though he was too feral to comprehend it, her stunt with electrocution hadn’t just injured him into killing his prey drive – it’d worked as something of a reset button and while he wasn’t human again, he wasn’t the aggressive beast that’d first made itself known. Normally, he relied completely and totally upon the first instincts that presented themselves, but having been shocked to hell and too weakened to fight effectively (or hunt, for that matter), the only thing that’d made itself known was a dull flight response and the thought that Tessa still counted as a threat – sort of. 

She hadn’t attacked him again, not as he’d perceived her to beforehand, and the less animalistic instincts that’d surfaced in light of his partial reset weren’t those that focused on attacking – or hunger. They were directly related to his newfound sense of nervous curiosity about the watcher sitting upon a nearby crate. A threat that wasn’t a threat, a being that evoked a strange sort of ambivlance within him. There was fear, certainly – he remembered that she’d been the one to electrocute him, and by his perception, responsible for the explosion – but she’d been nothing but merciful since that point and in his weakness his aggression had been curbed, considerably so.

If he hadn’t been running solely on impulse, he might’ve been frustrated with himself.

But he wasn’t, so instead of throwing an internal – or external, for that matter – hissy fit, he continued to inch closer to the cyborg, tense and ready to (weakly) scramble away at the first sign of a threat. He was already well aware that fighting her was an impossibility, but he also didn’t get the impression that she was intending to be harmful, at that point in time. In fact, while he couldn’t begin to piece anything coherent together out of the language she spoke, he could recognize that her tone had softened and quieted – it was careful, but not threateningly so. 

[bionictessa]

It seemed that whatever effect his mutation had on his mind, it was either not strictly a violent impulse as she had originally believed, or the electrocution had calmed him down. Or some combination of both. As she observed him, glowing electronic eyes following his slow movements as he approached her, it seemed that his actions were certainly feral. He was animalistic, acting based on instinct rather than any intentional plan. Another similarity between them, even if her instinct came from her training and his came from natural thoughts. 

Thinking back on the beginning of their altercation, Tessa supposed it was perfectly reasonable to think that he could have misinterpreted what had happened. Without a mind that could process information to any great and detailed degree and controlled by survival behavior that hinged on quick action, she doubted Josh would have taken the time to consider where the threat came from. All he had known was that there had been a threat coming from her direction, even if the reality was that she had defended him from it rather than caused it.

“You’re scared,” she murmured. He wasn’t a weak sort of fearful, but instead, as far as she could tell, he was falling back on fight or flight even though he could do little of either at the moment. “I am not going to hurt you without cause.” With that, she slowly held her hand out towards him, a gesture of good will and an offer for him to come closer.

[joshkovak]

“No I can’t,” he said, his intention (whether he was aware of it or otherwise) to snap at her, though his voice broke too much to sound even remotely angry. “I can’t heal. I’ve tried, and– and it doesn’t work.” He nearly scoffed as she continued – as if he didn’t relive them, over and over and over again, each time something even vaguely related to the subject was exposed to him. As if they weren’t crystal clear, perfectly vivid – as if they weren’t exactly as threatening in his mind as they’d been during the actual event. “You don’t– you don’t know anything about humans if you think that’s how it works.” He took a shaky breath, trying to keep his distress, his misery, out of his voice – it didn’t work, though if he were going to be honest, it rarely did. “They won’t fade. If they– if they were going to, they would’ve by now. It’s been– it’s been years.”

“There’s– there’s not,” he practically whined, afterwards taking another deep breath and trying to calm himself down. It was true, she didn’t seem to understand exactly how permanent his suffering was, but he would admit that he hadn’t explained things perfectly. Or at all. More than that, she was part of C.A.R.M.A and he couldn’t afford to display weakness in front of them – when he got upset, his disguise failed, and afterwards… people were injured. “Fighting… only goes so far.” In his case, it was completely and totally out of the equation; whether it was meant to be literal or figurative was inconsequential. “You can’t help, nobody can. It’s… not possible.”

[bionictessa]

"You are young,” she argued, distress evident on her face. “You’re still only in your twenties. With good health, you could survive another eighty years. That is time to heal and time to forget. You need patience.” Her brows furrowed and her teeth ground together, frustration getting the better of her. Emotions were a difficult thing for her. While she had them, they processed differently than a typical person and when they got out of control, she had no release. She couldn’t cry, couldn’t meditate or get angry in the same way that other people could. Instead she just felt like she was drowning. “They do fade. They’ve already begun to, even if you don’t realize it. The human brain is incapable of perfect recall over even a short period of time, let alone over the long term. Your perception of events is already warped and already fading.” That was facts, simple knowledge of how a non-computer brain worked. 

“There is. There must be. I believe...I believe your divergent brain chemistry is resulting in false conclusions.” And there she went again, falling back into the most scientific way she could phrase it. His brain was faulty. Depression, perhaps PTSD, perhaps something else entirely, but it was there. That was something she could understand. Hopelessness was inconceivable. “And you have far to go.” A battle couldn’t be won by a person who walked into it waving a white flag. “Nothing is impossible.”

[bionictessa]

and open up the sky, now meet me by the mountainside where there is a fire in my belly and beast in my mind that keeps trying to tell me to strengthen my spine all through this life, there comes a time to move a mountainside

[joshkovak]

For better or for worse (most would’ve gone for the former), Josh’s prey drive had been smashed to bits. It was difficult to focus on anything that might involve conflict when he’d been so severely weakened, and while he still felt the dull ache of hunger inside of him, telling it apart from the electrocution-induced aching was something of an impossibility. He knew that his life wasn’t in any immediate danger (at least, not from his previous injuries) and that was as much self-assessment as he felt able to do. Anything else just caused the pain to trickle up to his head, breaking his train of mostly-incoherent thought and bringing him back to his exhaustion.

And to his watcher, which for the moment was what kept him from sleeping.

His lifted his head slightly and stared over at her as she moved, but found himself too weakened from the prior fighting he’d done to drag himself back further into the warehouse. Instinct might’ve made self-preservation his priority but it didn’t mean fighting was always his strategy – it didn’t even mean that fleeing was his backup. Sometimes surrendering seemed like the better path to take, and in that moment, on the verge of passing out and not wanting to test her mercy, surrender was exactly what he did. His choice of action, however, didn’t change his confusion surrounding the situation – why had she spared his life? A ghost of his (now more influential) human self wanted answers, but his animalistic mindset made them difficult to ask for and impossible to understand.

So, instead, he watched her intently, inching a bit closer to where she sat and chirping softly.

[bionictessa]

Tessa wished she could understand him. For all her knowledge, he spoke a language she didn’t know -- perhaps the only language she didn’t know, truth be told. It was a natural language, a wild one not meant for people. But he wasn’t a person and neither was she. They were both something else entirely, unlike anything else and unlikely to find another who truly understood their situations. It was a strange and lonely place to be, right at the crossroads between human and other.

He was wild. She was mechanical. He was impulsive. She was calculating. He was born as he was. She was changed as she grew. They were opposites, but there were similarities too. They were both creatures of violence. They both had little choice when it came to their actions, as far as she could tell. They both learned to bear the weight of something the world had no right to place on their shoulders. They were both trapped fighting for a world that they would never be a part of, no matter how desperately they wanted it.

It hurt, even if she couldn’t quite understand why.

“I don’t think you can understand me,” she mumbled, voice quiet and nowhere near as forceful as it had been before. She was talking for her own benefit as much as his, filling the air with thoughts instead of silence. “I don’t know if you’ll remember this later. I hope you don’t. That would be easier. You must be in so much pain right now.” If he hadn’t been what he was, she doubted he would have even survived. “I hope you’ll be okay. You seem...like me.”