Utopia

"Ask away," Heidi said, waving dismissively at what she assumed was a bug. There was no point in withholding information, after all, there were plenty of other contestants still around that he could ask, and she was being offered freedom.

"How united were the Acer contestants, both back in the tournament and in the starting days of Utopia? In one sense, you were in it together, but you were also pitted against each other, right?" Russell asked curiously, setting a small recorder on the table and leaning back. He looked at her curiously, dark eyes studying her to see if the mention of the tournament affected her.

-----

"Any idea what made your Flow activate if you can't control it? I'm assuming you didn't mean to turn it on there," Luke asked curiously, stopping a good few meters away. He didn't like getting too close to people on the street, an old paranoia persisting through much of his adult life.

"Huh? No..." Charmaine muttered when she saw Luke. "You look familiar." She didn't know where she knew him from, or if it was her who knew him or if it was Ade. She glanced briefly at her watch. Probably someone Ade knows, she thought. She smiled, enjoying his presence. It seemed to get a little warmer, and it felt nice.

Paul took to wandering the streets absentminded, pulling a cowl over his head and a bandanna over her mouth. He decided to check out more of the inner city today. After all, it had been months since he'd even had an official approach him, let alone been recognized. He definitely had change out in the harsh wilderness, for better or worse.

---

Steppie, formerly known as Mitsu, walked up to an apartment building. Quite the place, her sources said. Well it was about to get the Steppie the Great's makeover once she was done with it.

"I don't recall having a Flow..."

Clue ran her hand sheepishly though her hair, eyes turning back to the concrete which was swallowing her ankles; part of her was simply amazed and the other was ashamed, like it was her fault she'd never had one and she deserved to be punished for it. Now that he mentioned it though...Flow. Flow seemed like the only fucking way she'd end up stuck in a sidewalk. Was it realy possible? Could she get a flow this late in life, after it was supposed to have already matured? Her eyes shone at the thought, warm like the colors of fall leaves. For a moment Clue seemed to forget that she'd somehow ended up in a block of cement, the usual goofy grin she sported playing upon her lips. She had a wandering mind; even with people around her mind wandered. Obby was constantly fussing at her for it. But...a Flow! How could she not wander?

Clue turned back to the man, eyes passing from him to Charmaine and back. With another blush and running through of the hair she went on, tugging restlessly at her legs, most likely for no reason but to busy herself.

"At least...I didn't have a Flow as a child, and not when I was eighteen either".
Her voice was laden with shame. "Er...is this kid yours, by the way? She was wandering around...I thought she might get into trouble..."

But who's the one stuck in a sidewalk?

Heidi shrugged, picking up a book and flipping through it, not really looking at its contents. "There were alliances between certain teams, certain teammates. For example...you know Luke Evans? His team was pretty disliked, while I would say my team got along with a fair amount of people," she explained, vaguely remembering that Luke had done something important around the time of Tom's accident.

Joy raced through Steppie's veins as she defied gravity to allow herself to reach high up the building. She paid no mind the the shouts and screams below as she danced and twirled her fingers along the smooth surface, creating intricate patterns and shapes in the building's exterior. Sadly, like many things, it had to end. She knew someone would call the police immediately, so she had to cheese it outta there ASAP.

Creating a small portal through the wall, Steppie stepped into the building, closing the portal behind her, and walked through the entire thing the same way, ignoring anyone who saw her. The police would think she was hiding in the building, but instead, Steppie walked out the other side and began refracting the light around her, making her body almost invisible as the light never touched her to reflect to those below. She'd make a clean escape as she descended and changed her body's appearance to look completely different. She'd hide in a back alley until things cooled down, formulating an alibi.

Looking up at her work from the side she had changed, Steppie smirked. There was now near permanent floral designs sculptured into the concrete of the building's walls. It would be a very difficult thing for them to change. She liked using this more extreme measure to make a point to the government on how little they could control some people. Hell, all they knew of her name was "Steppie the Great," a name she was proud of and others groaned at when they heard it, for they knew she was near impossible to catch.

Obby strode on through the city with a slightly annoyed look on his face. His brows were furrowed into a potent focus, lips turned down into a serious scowl. Despite the outward appearance, he wasn’t truly any sort of mad. No, rather, he was having a rather hard time exercising self-control; he was having a hard time, and he was trying to focus so that the little he did have didn’t snap. God what a burn it was! The boy stopped abruptly, hand twitching in an urge to itch or rub. His eyes…god his eyes.

Earlier that morning he’d lost a few of his pets in his apartment. Lord knows he couldn’t have them running out and about like that. People would give him hell if they found mice scrambling around their rooms. Solution? Tinker, of course! The whole event had been rather inspiring. Contacts; layered remote-control contacts. Obby went on down the road and smiled to himself at the memory of the moment of inspiration that had led to this invention, strawberry blonde hair falling warmly in curls around his ears. There were a few glitches, obviously; the itching for one, and then the fact that he still couldn’t see without his glasses. However, this was nothing he couldn’t fix. And the benefits were amazing; amazing. With one layer he could see electric pulses, and with another he could see heat signatures; those were how he’d found his mice, by the way. His mice and thirty others in the walls. A small shiver ran down his back, and he stopped to adjust his glasses. Anywho…electricity, heat…with another layer he could see tiny quick movements, and then he could see dark shit. The last layer hadn’t been programmed yet; he was trying to come up with a way to see Flow, but that would take a while, and he’d have to keep it hidden from the government at all costs. That wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted in their hands.

Obby rounded the corner, still half-frowning half-smiling and still trying not to itch. After he’d found his mice he’d figured he’d come out and see what other things he could look at. This toy deserved a special little test drive. The boy wiped a tear from his aggravated eyes, blinking the rest out, and then wiping them away. Shit, this was annoying. How was he supposed to see anything when his eyes kept watering and wetting up his glasses? With a frustrated sigh he stopped, turned his face up to the sun, roughly wiped off the lenses and adjusted them back on his-

Wait? What was that?

Obby squinted at a seemingly empty space above; or at least, he didn’t see anybody there. The boy squinted harder. Another glitch? Possibly. He really doubted there was an invisible fucker floating up in the sky. Then again, he was looking at what seemed like one. He was looking at a body-less heat and electric signature shimmering up in the sky, a nearly transparent undulation of yellow and red, all done up like it was coming off of a person. In fact, he could see the space where the person would be; there was nobody there. The clear, colorless contacts let shine the appearance of his real eyes, cobalt and narrowed in something akin to confusion. For a moment he looked away, scared that maybe the invisible floating fucker had seen him as it descended. But…silly him. He shouldn’t be scared. It was only a glitch right? He’d just go over and try to deactivate it. And, you know…

The boy smiled slightly, inconspicuously changing his route to follow the shimmering signals. It would be cool to see if there actually was an invisible floating fucker in the sky…

Elena sighed, standing up and walking back into the kitchen, leaving her untouched food on the counter. She peered through the doorway, brushing her unruly hair out of her eyes, and trying to remember who was standing in the doorway with Percival. Then again, did it really matter?

"Simon," she called out, daring to raise her voice a little. "I'm going to go out for a walk in a bit. I might not be here for lunch, I dunno, I'll just take some money with me..." she trailed off, yawning, and retreating back to her room to actually get out of her pajamas.

OOC: Wow Chris. xD

---

Steppie frowned at the approaching figure. Well that was odd, she thought to herself. She could have swore she had his herself in light. Shaking her head, she walked through another wall into a nearby storage building, hopping the man didn't follow her. IT was highly unlikely that he even knew her, so she was probably safe.

OOC: Thaz me ;3
______

Obby adjusted his glasses as he walked, looking "inconspicuously" at the sky, and then "inconspicuously" at his feet. When he was was through he glanced inconspicuously at a tree, soon followed by peering inconspicuously at nothing in general. Unfortunately he wasn't being very inconspicuous. He'd never exactly had to follow anybody before, and as a result he just ended up looking like a newbish spy from a mystery comedy.

Obby picked up the pace, thinking impossibly fast. This was worth investigating, surely. As unlikely as a floating invincible fucker was, this thing was seeming more and more unlike a simple glitch. The young man, young in appearance, strode into a jaunty jog, hugging his peacoat around his body. The signature passed through a wall.

With much confusion and a bit of fear he persisted, finding the nearest door,and scampering in hurriedly after. What was it? A ghost? He was nearing quicker and quicker, but the building was still void of anything aside from boxes and floating fucker.

"I don't I think I've ever seen her around before," Luke replied idly, rolling around what Clue had told him while he was talking. He hadn't met anyone who didn't have a Flow, obviously not since the Storm, but he had definitely felt Flow for a minute there. He had to admit he was curious as to what happened to the matter that had been there before her feet were. He turned to the kid herself as he thought. "I don't know you, right? Something about you does seem kinda familiar..."

He stayed silent for a second, looking down at the ground and stroking his stubbled chin. He didn't make a sound for about a minute, before suddenly snapping his head up to face Clue suddenly and shouting 'BOO!' as loud as he could.

-----

"Luke Evans? Yeah, I looked at his case after he said Tom O'Connor used his Flow in his incident. Who else was on his team? Was there a Kira Ryneheart, he lived with her, right? More pertinently, were any of the dead notable haters of that team?" Russell asked, looking a bit more interested than his bored self now that he had new information.

Steppie didn't wait for the strange man to follow her. Instead, she kept going straight through the building and out the opposite wall. She was not one to foolishly be followed by some stranger. However, she let down her invisibility, letting her self step out of an alley way and walk down the street. No one would recognize her now that she had changed from a red head in a tank top to a brunette in a sweatshirt.

"Depends on who's dead, I guess. But most people didn't have a problem with Luke or Kira, it was Nathan that was the dick head," Heidi stated, absentmindedly rubbing the scar on her face. "But I doubt he would wait ten years, and then start killing people. Seems a bit of a stupid move, and Nathan may have been an ass, but he wasn't stupid."

"Oh, you don't know? Well I wasn't allowed on the case for the first few, but the last three have been Wade Solomon, Chris Jones, and Delmer Skinner. I have here that Delmer was on Paul Jackson's team, and he's gone missing and is likely a criminal, and Joey Hadden, who is apparently dead. The other two's team mates were useless. I don't suppose you know any of those names, do you?"

"Wade and Chris are a na-da on my part, and I guess I knew Delmer, but I...knew his teammates a lot better. Me 'nd Paul, we got into a scuffle during one the challenges. He shot me in the shoulder, and I cut him and made his blood go everywhere. And then somehow we became friends," Heidi reminisced, chuckling at the memories. She sat there for a few extra seconds, laughing to herself, before quieting. "Joey was my teammate's boyfriend and eventually husband. We didn't get along. We fought on more than one occasion..."

She trailed off, looking a bit lost for a second, before shaking her head. "But I don't see how Nathan could have a significant problem with any of those people. I mean, they didn't get along, but I didn't get along with Nathan, either."

Clue was debating whether or not she should make a comment about her name. It was the thing she ought to do, right, so that he knew her name and she knew his? Even the kid knew that better than she. But there was the chance that the man just really didn't care, and she wasn't keen on annoy-

"BOO!!!"

Clue yelped, anxiety instantly thrown into turmoil as sound exploded near her ears, a face close, eyes, and breath and hair-
A flock of pigeons took off at once to the skies, squawking in terror at the sudden commotion. Clue squeezed her eyes shut, as if bracing herself for a pounding of some sort-

When she opened them she was laying on the ground, flat on her tush and shaking with anxiety. Her hair seemed more ruffled, if that was even possible. The big, off-shoulder sweater that she sported had sloped rather low across her torso from her flutter, cold air seeping across her shivering body. Clue gulped softly to get herself under control and blushed hard, mouthing an apology to nobody in particular and pulling, blushing again, her sweater back up to sit somewhere near her shoulders.

Flow. That was the only way it could be explained. The thought fluttered in and out of her racing mind, drowned by social anxiety that the girl struggled to keep under control, before she had a panic attack or something. Though she hadn't seen it her ankles had fazed right back out of the cement, like air. And now, as she lay slightly shaken up, her very image flickered multiple times, all halo-gram like. You could see the buildings behind her through her body.

Clue shuffled her feet to calm herself. The action called attention to her freedom. The girl looked at her bare-feet, wiggling her toes in the frigid air, a small smile creeping across her face. Her image stopped flickering, stopped being see-through. Clue offered a happy smile up at the man, then at the kid because she felt she'd be rude otherwise, and then at the man again.

"Thanks...I..."
Awkward as usual she ended her sentence in a tiny shy squeak, figuring she'd said enough as it was.

Charmaine smiled and stared in awe. She sort of envied Clue for simply having a Flow, even though her's seemed to be quite inconvenient. "A Flow? That's so cool~!" she said cheerfully. "Nanay said that I didn't have a Flow. She said I lost mine when I was still a baby." Ideas flowed into her mind, thinking of all the cool powers she would have had if she hadn't lost her Flow.

"Sounds like a pretty fucking crazy place to me. In a way I'm glad I wasn't there, but food, water and a bed would have been very much appreciated back then," Russell mused, thinking to himself. "Sorry if I'm opening up a sensitive topic, but who was Hadden's wife? And also... Wait, Joey Hadden, right? Is he anything to Percival Hadden?"

-------

Luke chuckled to himself as she freaked, unable to stop himself from laughing at her situation. He was interested to know that she did indeed have a Flow, though he was still surprised it hadn't manifested itself before. He realised when her jumper slipped that she must have been freezing, so he exuded a bit more heat than usual, warming up his immediate vicinity for both the girl and the kid.

"I'm Luke, by the way," he introduced himself politely, looking at both the kid and the girl in the floor. It took him a second to remember he'd almost just scared her silly. "And sorry if I frightened you, I figured that since it was when you tripped that it activated, that fear was a key trigger in your Flow. Obviously, I couldn't warn you first."

Clue laughed shyly despite herself being one of those people that seemed automatically happy when somebody else was laughing. The ground was cold and her feet were freezing, but she didn't care. She was happy. She was simple like that.

Clue blinked, absentmindedly rubbing her belly before picking herself off of the ground. A bit of dirt clung to the low back of her sweater, but she didn't at all care. A small blush lit her cheeks, smile turning sheepish.

"Honestly, I- I think I would've been scared if you warned me or not".

The last word quivered modestly on her lips, as if it wanted to jump back into her mouth and squish itself. She seemed a lot less nervous now; maybe it was the shock of having been scared that did away with her anxiety? But she still sounded like somebody'd come along and beat her brains out if she said too much. And when she spoke next, it was like she was putting herself out on a limb by doing so.

"Luke; nice to meet you. You don't always get to say you met a friend because he helped you remove yourself from the sidewalk, yeah?"
Clue smiled warmly, eyes seeming almost to glow with the colors of fall. She was truly innocent, and rather trustful. That and quick to call somebody a friend; a true friend. By now you'd think she'd learned her lesson.

"I'm Clue. I...thanks again".

The air turned warm suddenly, as if there was some heater outside and somebody's finally decided to turn it on. It felt really nice after the cold. The source was unknown, but she figured they'd just come under a patch of sun or something.

"Maybe you'll get one later, like me".

Clue's rather kind gaze turned to the girl, Charmaine, now. Part of her felt sort of sorry for the girl; she knew what it was like. Another part of her felt shamed now, like she should be punished for gaining a flow when there was this little girl who'd so like one.

"Not having a flow isn't so bad though".
Her voice was honest.

"There's a lot you can do without one, and oft people get into trouble with their's. And then they aren't always good, right? What would you do differently if you had one?"

She blinked, nervous all of a sudden, and then spoke out again.

"There's a lot I'd never of done if I'd had a flow when I was younger. Not all of that is good, but it made me my own person".

Then again...maybe that wasn't entirely good either....

"Hm... I still want a Flow," Charmaine said, giggling. "Nanay's Flow lets her summon spirits, and they would always tell me stories about the first two years after the Storm." She smiled as the air got warmer. She had a feeling it was Luke's Flow, since there was no one else was around. "I wanna be able to control sound like that one guy...I think his name was Neo?"

Heidi looked around the room, before nodding in agreement. "Yeah, you wouldn't have liked it. You're too much like Tombo to have liked it. The whole death part might not have been too great, but the adrenaline rush was fantastic," she smiled, leaning back on the couch, her green eyes almost gleeful at the memories.

"Percival was Joey's imaginary friend. It was fucking weird. Like you know how when there are two people in one head? It was like that, except Percy was more like a tumor in Joey's mind than them sharing it. Somewhere along the way, Percival managed to get his own body-- don't ask me how, 'cuz I have no fuckin' idea how that load of bull happened," she continued to talk, rolling her eyes.

The scowl that she had worn on her face while she was talking about Percival and Joey seemed to fade slightly, her expression turning to one of annoyance to sadness. "Um, Erika. Erika Knight. She i- was Joey's wife." Unlike the other topics, which Heidi had needlessly rambled on about, she was rather short and to the point about Erika.

Simon frowned as he looked down at the untouched plate Elena had left on the counter. She has to eat something before she goes out...

Elena came back out several minutes later, properly dressed, along with her hair being a little less all over the place. She had picked up a small bag, shoving her wallet and phone inside. "If you want me to pick something up for dinner or something, just call, Simon," she said, glancing briefly at Percival and his friend and waving in greeting.

Simon reached out and touched Elena's shoulder. "I think you should try to eat something before you go out."