Camp Darkness

Dawn of a New Day

"I remember taking the kids out for their day off, and then I woke up this morning wondering where the hell my day off went. Isn't it only Sunday?" Gideon whined, resting her head on Lisa's shoulder.

The witch tapped her friend on the forehead, as if checking to see if a melon was ripe enough. "You little miss heat pig, spent your day off curled up into a ball sleeping." she reminded.

Gideon grinned up at her friend, glad that no one had figured out how close to losing it she was. Everyone believed that she'd spent the day asleep and silent. They were partially right. After having to unleash a little of her wild side on the kids, she'd needed a day off to reseal it back down. Gideon was a Fury, a construct designed to pack a very big punch as often as possible, with very little down time. It was actually a lot harder for her to simply make everyone drop to the floor in quivering numbness than it was for her to simply freeze their hearts in abject terror. Her nature meant that the only aspects she could manipulate were anger and fear, which was the irony of her current job as Portentum trouble shooter.

Having learned a degree of control never believed possible, Gideon was able to stop the worst of any gift, as long as she was aware of it. But that control cost Gideon and her days off all inevitably went the same. WIth Gideon spending several hours simply sitting in one place, chasing down each and every stray tendril to tuck it neatly back in place. Leaving her room only after she had locked her inner gift under layers of restricting mental discipline. Like always it felt like she'd been drinking nyquil, her world feeling fuzzy and packed in too tight, as if her mind wasn't big enough to hold in all of her own nature anymore. But she managed to lock it all tight and had spent the evening of her day off eating enough food to make a Grizzly hibernate, and then she'd passed out and slept until Monday morning.

"So what are you teaching your kids this week again?" Xavier asked, sitting back to back with Gideon and Lisa, acting as a chair back for the ladies.

Gideon groaned again and rubbed her face, clearly trying to wake herself up more. "Rule #2: Don't get caught." she grumbled, making golem and witch laugh at her apparently grogginess.

"No... I meant survival wise." Xavier teased, pushing her shoulder to wake her up a little.

"Mghmmmm." Gideon mumbled incoherently and settled against her friends, pretending to fall asleep while they teased her over her dozing head. "Snares and traps, detection and deletion. Basic recon jazz like that." Gideon finally mumbled out, stopping the loving abuse. "We all know what week this is." she pointed out before they could question her choice in survival skills.

"Capture the flag." Lisa groaned, an annoyed, disgruntled tone to her voice. Every week 2 there's a new aspect added to the Camp. A reward flag. Announced to the intakes this morning, they were all likely being told at this very moment that one Wednesday, the leading intake will be awarded the flag. If they can hang onto that flag until their day off at the end of the week, they got to pick the next off Camp location to visit. The intakes are not told what will collect them credit for the flag, but they are warned that the other intakes are allowed to take the flag from them under two circumstances. One- a new intake is seen excelling and rewarded in turn or Two- the intake with the flag leaves it unguarded.

Which meant that for the next five weeks, they'd have idiot teenagers fighting over who had proper ownership of one ugly ass, vomit green flag that had seen better days. The edges were torn, frazzled and singed, the fabric worn thin and shiney with age and dozens of hands pawing at it and Gideon distinctly remembered seeing one kid stuff it down the front of his pants one intake. It was the proverbial ring dangled to make the kids strive and reach, pushing passed the false limitations placed on them by themselves or their families. The was the thing about Camp Darkness, it was designed to help the kids themselves, not simply turn them into whatever version of acceptible their families sometimes expected. Doctor Cyr liked helping make people better than they were when they first walked in the gates.