daybreakacademy | Rex's late catch all for the month.

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rex arany: original

Rex's late catch all for the month.

🐺Insert your own dog burying bones joke.🐕 Early in the Month, Ekkehardt

Rex had honestly never intended to ever return to this little crack in the ground, hidden deep in a mountain pass. The past could stay buried and forgotten as far as he cared. What difference would it make? Ironically considering his company, he thought that corpses didn't care what happened to them. He'd almost voiced that and a hundred more reasons as an excuse to back out of the trip, but... he was trying harder not to make excuses these days.

Bulgaria is a place of odd climes, being borderline tropical on the Mediterranean coast but freezing cold further north, which is Rex and Ekkehardt have had to travel. Rex’s wardrobe doesn’t need much changing to deal with the first dusting of snow. Just gloves and wearing the coat zipped up to his nose, which he occasionally does anyway. At least out of the sight of the average man, he can levitate rather than hike. Arms crossed, floating upright.

But he stops when he sees it, the long splinter in the ground with a ridge above it. Inside it’s like it’s own world, a forbidden entrance to a place nothing good ever happened. Could ever happen. His teeth chatter and his arms pull tight around him, which has nothing to do with the cold. He can feel sweat on his forehead, despite the chill.

“That’s it,” he says, trying everything he can to do to keep emotion out of his voice. He does a good job, as might be imagined from Rex. But there’s a quiet strain to it. “You can see how no one found us. And I never told anyone.”

In retrospect, if he had, and endangered the veil, he might have been picked up by some mystical society better equipped to handle him. Rather than been a weird kid who turned up in a small town covered in blood and dirt, shortly after a bunch of people went missing.

🦄 Indrik Time, Indrik Time, everybody’s feeling fine ‘cos it’s Indrik Time 🦌

You know what time it is.

Indrik has a deep connection to Rex, but being the world’s chunkiest baby deer, cow, lizard, lion and probably more hybrid has much less understanding of the various complex reasons why he feels sad, mad, confused and afraid all the time. One of the reasons Indrik is such a lazy lump is because he also shares Rex’s fatigue. When his master sleeps only every four days, he has to try and make up for it.

Now? Both Rex and Indrik are bursting with energy. Which is being put to positive use for once! It was meant just to be a little walk as usual, but now... it has become a very spirited game of tag, and neither of them are paying much attention to where would be appropriate to do so.

That’s why Rex just vaulted over someone and Indrik, his lil’ hooves thundering screeches to a halt to avoid barreling into them. But, after a moment, gives them a gentle headbutt and a cheerful mixture of cow and cat noises. Rex calls back- “That means ‘tag, you’re it!’”

Which would explain why both Rex and Indrik skedaddle in opposite directions. Rex is laughing and Indrik is mooing.

⚙️ Day to Day 📚 Any old time

Class or not, Rex keeps up with his studies and more. He's always moving between the library, the anvil and the gym doing something or several somethings at once. It's kinda weird usually.

(( If you've got anything you wanna do with Rex just in general, hit me up! I'm on discord DoctorChimera#5514 ))

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"It certainly is a gloomy-looking place. I can see why you wouldn't want to speak of it."

He keeps his comments short and simple, always keeping one eye on Rex - something that's noticeable for someone as perceptive as him. He's gauging his companion's reactions, avoiding anything that might be too delicate.

This is a place that only holds bad memories for Rex, after all.

Though he doesn't really need to be, he, too, is dressed for the more frigid weather. It would attract attention if he wasn't, and if there's anything he's been trained for, it's not to attract attention. As far as anyone knows, they're two travelers going hiking in the wilderness.

He holds up an old-fashioned lantern, burning with a white-hot flame inside. It casts light more brightly than most modern torches would, washing away the darkness.

He doesn't wait for Rex; he simply steps in. He figures that dallying around near the entrance won't help matters.

Rex has indeed taken note that Ekke is keeping a close eye on his reactions. Part of him still thinks it's searching for weakness and fearful that maybe going back into that pit will end with him being buried too. But at least Rex sees how ludicrous it is much faster now, putting it at a mere third place of probability.

It does make him want to hide his reactions all the more though, which is why he just 'hmms' in agreement at that statement. He's glad Ekke takes the lead, Rex letting his feet touch the ground to walk in. He hates himself for how he gets closer the deeper they go down the steep incline. He can't handle being in here, in the dark. They only got a few hours of sunlight and that was as close a reprieve as they ever got.

They're both too observant to have the dramatic moment of stepping on a bone, but they're there. A small number of human skeletons amongst many inhuman, gangly long-limbed things with tails. All of them, human and monster, are missing appendages or have shattered skulls. Rex feels bad about how little he cares for the people who died in here instead of him. He, and more importantly, Helen, wouldn't have had it any other way.

Right as he thinks that, it's when he sees her. There's no mistaking her for anyone else, even dead 13 years. Not just because her skeleton is still standing, if you can call precariously draped over a massive golden sword standing. Not just because the sword is through the chest of a creature four times the size of the rest of them. Or because that one is surrounded by bifurcated smaller ones too. It's because half of her bones are burnt pitch black, exactly in keeping with the burns on where her skin once was. Rex can't use words. His hands go to his face and it's a mournful wail that slips out.

This was a horrible mistake. The past should stay that way. He can't look back. He can't handle this. He steps back, but can't turn around.

They're both too observant to step on any of the remains, but Ekkehardt takes note of every one anyway. Whatever he might have thought of their actions in life - what little he saw of it, through Rex's memory - they're long dead by now.

He stops at the sound Rex makes. He could be practical, and simply decide what's to be done with the remains, but there's plenty of time to be practical later.

So, instead, he steps back. He holds the lantern high with one hand, banishing away the creeping darkness, leaving no shadow but the ones they cast. His other hand and arm goes around Rex's shoulders in a one-armed hug that is tight enough to feel, but still loose enough to get away from if he doesn't want it.

He doesn't say anything. He just stands there, to support him, making it clear that Rex isn't alone.

It's pure instinct that has a knife in Rex's hand before he can think at being touched when in such a state. Thankfully, he doesn't attempt to use it- he doesn't even put it away, he just drops the thing in case his stupid reactions leads to another mistake like that. He just stands there, panting and shaking until his knees give way and he has to clasp onto Ekkehardt to stop him hitting the ground. It's just too much- those millions of thoughts that normally swirl around in his head have been completely silenced. He can't think at all. He's even forgetting to breathe.

He lets go of the lantern, still holding it high with several bandages to ensure the light doesn't waver. He needs both arms for a more important purpose now, which is holding Rex up and making sure he doesn't just collapse.

It's not as if he hasn't seen this sort of thing before. But he'll never get used to it; it's not exactly a pleasant thing, witnessing someone else's raw grief.

"Steady. Just breathe," he says, and his voice is steady and clear. He has his own feelings on the subject, certainly, but that can wait. "In and out. Follow my voice, if you need it."

He counts, quiet and clear. Rise and fall. He'll keep doing it until Rex remembers to breathe properly once more.

It doesn’t take too long for Rex to gain control of himself. He has, after all, been through an awful lot since he was last here. It’s strange, how something he knew he’d see could still shock him. The suddenness of it had practically stopped his heart.

He rights himself, wiping his face with the face of sleeve, cheeks rosy and shining with tears. It feels like it’ll start the whole process again, but he looks again. Amazingly it doesn’t bring any more misery. Because looking over the scene he can only logically conclude one thing-

“Just look at that...” Pride is in his voice now, though he still has to lean on his once and present baby sitter. “I never knew it was that bad...”

Referring of course, to the burns that reached her bones. She roamed the world seemingly invincible like that? And that’s his mother.

"She was an extraordinary woman," he agrees, readily. There's a sense of awe to his tone, mixed with a strong fondness; he'd occasionally offered to check her over, for something or other, and she'd generally preferred to wear her newest wounds as proud scars than have them completely healed.

It had exasperated him at the time, of course. Leaving wounds untreated to any degree had never sat very well with him. But she'd always insisted, and he'd always conceded, because Helen Arany was indomitable in everything she put her mind to; an argument he knew he wouldn't be able to win.

"She never did let me treat her injuries too much," he says, after a moment, and some of that fond exasperation leaks into his voice. "She wanted the scars. Impossible to argue with, no matter how deep it was, or how much it must have hurt."

Even in the darkness, dead 13 years, she's still standing. Her sword still shines like the sun. It's a veritable monument to her refusal to bend or break to anything, even death, even time.

It's pleasant, event nostalgiac, to hear someone else speak of his mother in those tones. It gives Rex a certain calmness he hasn't had in a very long time indeed. It almost feels like the world is right again, instead of a tilted nightmare. That's the problem with building your entire life in orbit around something- when it's gone, you're just flung into the void. He thinks of his own scars- he probably has as many now as she did at death, spread further over a wider canvas. Should he be proud of any of them? Who knows. If nothing else, he's still standing tot.

Rex takes a deep sniff and stands on his own feet, not needing Ekkehardt's support for now. "She used to let me stitch them, sometimes."

Helen refused to let anyone else help her for the most part, but she'd always had trouble saying no to Rex. They were both as stubborn as the other and he was probably the only person in the world who had no reason to fear her wrath under any circumstances. Even her friends occasionally got the wild-eyed (and one-eyed) death stare and the way her teeth rattled with barely contained violent impulses. So from five years or so onward, he'd been allowed to do some basic first-aid. It probably didn't actually help much.

"Alright." He clears his throat, sniffing again. Trying to get back to business. "How should we...?"

The movement of bodies he's familiar with is more the fresh kind. He examines the situation carefully, noticing that around the blade there are small flowers growing, but nowhere else in the sunless chasm they're in. Curious.

"I'm not surprised." From his limited experience, Helen was closer to Rex than she'd ever been to possibly anyone else in her life. It only makes sense that she'd let him do such things (if only to reassure him; he has a suspicion that it wouldn't do much regardless).

He stops to consider the question for a moment. He doesn't touch the sword - it's Helen's, after all, he probably wouldn't be able to lift it regardless - but he does consider the bones.

"Burying her in the sunlight would probably be a start." When he thinks of her, he can only think of the sun, an unstoppable light. It feels wrong for her to be in the darkness.

He gives it some further pondering. "You said you had a home around here?" It seems like a completely different angle, but. "If there's anything of particular sentimental value she had there, burying it with her would probably be a start."

The dead can't take anything with them, but if nothing else it prevents it from being picked over by potential scavengers.

Ekkehardt is right. Her way of life tended to keep people at a distance, not necessarily purposefully. She just didn’t need anyone. In her youth she hadn’t realised others might need her, but even Helen wasn’t immune to change.

“That’s a good idea.” They have a similar mental image of her, radiating light real and symbolic. “We can achieve both simultaneously- our house was at a peak. It gets sun all year round.”

Rex glances over at the remains of various vehicles knocked down into the dark. All rusted messes now of course, even the motor home Helen and Rex used to roam the world in is just a shell. But the equally enormous scabbard for Eternal Sunlight is surely there. He thinks carefully on if there was anything his mother would appreciate being buried with. “She valued memories more than possessions. But that means anything she kept was something she surely held dear to her heart. We’ll find something, I’m sure.”

That sort of logic would be a bit tenuous for most people, but that sort of eccentric thinking made perfect sense for Helen.

"That sounds just like her." He can follow the logic, odd though it is. Helen was never a conventional person, and it seems that applies to all areas of her life.

Never doing anything by halves, either.

"I don't think I'm strong enough to lift that," he says, eyeing Eternal Sunlight. Considering his nature, it seems like it might scorch him for daring to try. "If you take charge of the sword, I can do the rest."

It's easy work (and that alone feels wrong) to start wrapping the bones in bandages, preparing to lift them so they retain their general shape and none are lost in transit. It's something he's done many times before; the number of cadavers he's had to move in his cover work as a medic is a number that is better off left alone.

Rex feels a flood of relief that Ekkehardt is the one to suggest doing it that way- he wasn't sure he'd be able to handle moving his mother's bones but didn't want to be the one to say it. Taking the weight off him has him relax a little, as much as Rex ever does.

"And you think I can?" He sounds a shade doubtful, apparently unaware of the fact he's developed from the borderline emaciated figure he was when he first arrived at Daybreak. He already thinks he'll need magic. But Rex is willing to give it a shot with muscle first.

Both hands on the hilt, Rex plants his feet and pulls. Helen was 4'11, meaning the half-buried sword was just right for her to perch on for 13 years. For Rex, on the other hand, it's at his hips. Sunlight doesn't rust into place, but the earth is packed tightly around it. There's a moment of slow tension as it starts to rise before it bursts out all at once. Rex does a good job maintaining his balance at the sudden lack of resistance, the sword whirling up to be held dramatically above his head. Naturally, what little light reaches down to the depths catches the blade flawlessly. It's a moving score away from being perfect.

Rex holds the pose for a moment as he catches his balance, turning Eternal Sunlight, so the blade rests on the ground and Rex doesn't quite have to hold it up, just stop it falling over.

"...That," he pants while wiping sweat from his brow, "...is really rather heavy."

But all the same, he looks satisfied. It's a rare look on him. Even the fact he can feel the stitches in his shirt have burst in his coat doesn't take that away.

"You're your mother's son," he replies, continuing his delicate work. Though he doubts the bones will crumble if they hadn't already, being careless won't do here. "If anyone is going to, it would surely be you."

He suspects it's not so much a matter of strength as it is eligibility, though strength probably has plenty to do with it. To that end, he simply nods as Rex pulls the sword out and holds it up. It's his moment, after all.

"There we go," he says at last, wrapping up the bones and lifting them. It looks like he's carrying a mummy, with the amount of bandages he's using, but he's learned that you can never be too careful with things like this. "You'll have to lead the way, since you know where your house was."

He'll follow wherever Rex leads, without complaint.

"I don't think that confers any degree of muscle." Though he certainly looks like Helen's kid when he hefts the huge sword up to rest across his shoulder, a sharp smile on his face from a sense of achievement. Ekke isn't entirely wrong- Sunlight might have put up a fight if someone else tried to take her away from her beloved master but for the most part, it was brute force. Holding his other arm out at full length, Rex flexes his fingers in the direction of the motor home that saw the world and half the outlands. The scabbard for Eternal Sunlight flies out from the torn open vehicle, smacking into Rex's palm. It's an odd thing, more like a set of clips on a bandolier. Sunlight doesn't need protection after all, so the main concern was making it possible to actually draw a weapon of that size.

"It seems it's a day for going home," he says as he snaps the sword in and straps it onto himself. While Ekkehardt takes care of Helen's remains, Rex keeps himself busy (and looking away) by finding how best to wear it, drawing and resheathing the colossal weapon repeatedly. He nearly loses an ear on one attempt, but he's got enough of a handle on it for now. "I'm not sure I'm quite ready to take the scenic route whilst carrying this- can you fly or do you want me to carry you?"

Gravity is not his friend with Eternal Sunlight on his back.

"I don't require flight to get out of here," Ekkehardt answers, with a slight shrug. He makes the bandages snug, pulls them tight but not too much so. Little details, little adjustments he's used to making. Well-practiced.

Those things say quite a bit about him, and his experiences with carrying the dead.

"Lead the way, and I'll follow."

He's light, after all, and he has plenty of magic to spare. Launching himself and landing safely, even with what he's now carrying, is a trivial matter.

Kohaku stops for a second to double check what she just saw, because she THOUGHT it was Rex looking happy, which obviously is not the case.

Except...it IS the case! Clearly someone has replaced Rex with a doppelganger, which is a problem even if she can't stand the guy.

Clearly, the only option is to remain in hiding and watch from a distance until she can figure out what this imposter's sinister plan is.

The target of Indrik's tagging seems to have decided that Rex is the easier of two targets and for whatever reason has decided to play along. Maybe deep inside everyone is a kid, waiting for an excuse to play. Maybe it's just an instinct that when you're tagged, you're it.

Rex has long legs and knows how to use them, making it difficult for his pursuer to keep up. But Kohaku gets to witness how he deals with being cornered. Running halfway up a wall and kicking off to flip over 'it's' head. If he were a doppelganger, he'd be an awful one- his laughter is barely sinister at all and he's full of beans. He even has proper posture!

And there's the fact after his flip he holds the pose as if he's about to fall, letting himself get tagged, telling the chaser 'well played.' Most people would miss his balance was never in question. Kohaku's senses may well pick up that he's giving someone a break because not everyone is a titan with too much energy.

Kohaku kept her distance. She could keep track of someone from further away than most people could, and didn't want her target to realize he had been noticed. She didn't even want to think about what would happen if she got caught. He looked FAST. Much faster than Rex.

"Come on you bastard what are you up to?"

It was the speaking to herself that did it- Rex’s situational awareness remained as active as ever, but with sharper senses and less paranoia. He doesn’t catch what she said, but the voice was familiar.

Rex turns himself towards Kohaku. His eyes are as dark as ever, but much livelier, and all those years of keeping an eye out for actual stalking enemies helps him pick out his target. In his present state of mind, the fact Kohaku would be fun as heck to play tag against jumps to the head of his thoughts.

It’s not quite a flash step but he zooms right in.

“No need to be shy. Anyone can play.” Which is when he aims a poke. “Tag.”

Kohaku shouted, "OH FUCK" and immediately threw a punch at his center of mass. Even with her reflexes she didn't have time to do anything more well thought out. She could throw a pretty decent punch, too.

Under ordinary circumstances, Rex would absolutely get punched right in the dick thanks to the height difference. Right now, firing on all cylinders and being downright hyperactive, he reacts pretty well. He'd been expecting an attempted tag back, after all! He's already jumping back when she throws it, lowering his centre of gravity so it instead smacks him in the (secretly washboard) abs as he's rolling with the punch.

He ends up staying standing but sounds a little winded when he chuckles, a hand on his stomach.

"That's somewhat rougher than necessary, you know. And it doesn't count unless you say 'tag', if I recall the rules correctly."

"The hell are you talking about?"

She shook her head. "Nevermind that. Who are you and what have you done with Rex?"

Rex stares at her for a bit.

"I'm an archaeopteryx, a bird-like dinosaur that is transitional between non-avian feathered dinosaurs and modern birds that was active in the Jurassic period," he says completely flatly. See, this is actually a joke Rex uses fairly routinely whenever someone asks him a question about himself he doesn't want to answer or thinks is obvious. The difference is, this time, instead of staring blankly or walking away after saying it, he gives a little 'heh.' "I know I'm somewhat more energetic than usual, but I'm not that different am I?"

He probably wouldn't be this jazzed if he had say, 8 hours sleep. 24 hours though? He's a beast. He'll be awake for three weeks shaking this off.

"...And if you're not going to join in, I have to go find my pet. I'm still 'it'."

"You are INCREDIBLY different. You look like an entirely different person who actually gets sleep some...times..."

Oh.

“...I sleep!”

Though that he has to say that does make his pale cheeks go a full blazing, beautiful red. It’s like the freshest of tomatoes.

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Rex's late catch all for the month.

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Indrik

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