Wayward Minds Project: Khione

[09] Avada - Resistance

If it were probable for the human body to enable the act of vomiting due to the mere glimpse of an individual one scarcely is associated with, then Avada's lips would've opened and belched then and there the second the doors unveiled Detective Gomez, allowing him passage into the room. It wasn't that his visage possessed an unfortunate set of grotesque features that ensued the birth of discomfort within a person, nor was it because he was blanketed in a repulsive, unpleasant scent Avada could not pin point as to what it was, both of these options neither truth as Detective Gomez certainly was not short on looks and undeniably smelled of pungent cologne.

No, the reason for Avada's pinched nose and countenance showcasing disgust was because she simply developed some sort of dislike towards the man. Insufficient for her mind to rehearse a macabre clip of his life being agonizingly taken away, but adequate for her to evade him whenever her eyes would involuntarily fall upon him, most especially during the moments when he would enter Rick's diner.

Rick and Detective Gomez were... somewhat similar to friends, but not entirely, as Gomez was delighted with the service offered and the food cooked in the diner whilst Rick enjoyed his company and had earned himself a loyal customer who, amongst the multiple in the city, aided in the continuation of his business. They were good friends, and Avada often commented that such outcome had only been acquired by Rick due to the diner, food, and his cooking, implying that Gomez would not have chosen to be associated with him if these aforementioned elements were absent. Carlos would then opine of her harshness in regards to her words, overlooking her scowl of contempt, but it seems as though Rick was unaffected, instead responding, "well then, I'm glad I have a diner and some good cooking skills to serve him food."

Avada's intentions were not to express her scorn towards Gomez and Rick's diminutive friendship between a patron and a business owner, but to be rid of Gomez as he frequented the diner. Uncertainty was present whenever she reflected and inquired herself concerning the explanation behind as to why she disliked Gomez to an unnecessary degree, but being the stubborn and prideful individual that she is, refusing to delve deeper into her emotions and seek for the answers she herself had been desiring to discern, Avada voluntarily took the path of saying, "I don't like him because he's annoying and just because I don't."

A petty retort, but bearable enough for her subconscious to accept.

Yet how long will such statement remain tolerable until it shall no longer be adequate for Avada's own self?

I'll worry about that s**t when I get the hell out of here, she thought to herself, gazing with disdain upon the towering man by the entrance. Was Gomez the individual responsible behind the circumstance in which her and the others found themselves to be currently in? Five minors plucked in the midst of their day's peace, delivered to the police station with nothing offered to them but silence, and then thrown into a stifling room as though identical to detainees not worthy of information nor a single glance. Avada had felt the puissant urge to voice out her fury of the unfairness of the situation, wanted to throw Asphodel's plastic bag of snacks - which was an unnecessary form of rebellion and a waste of good food - and watch as the contents collide against the wall in a heap of wrappers and packaging, only to crash and scatter on the dusty floor of the suffocating and dull room.

They were delinquents, that notion was indeed a fact, but what the actual f**k?

"We won't start a fight without the inclusion of you, of course," The newest girl that had arrived, Soul, responded to Gomez with a cackle, to which Avada rolled her eyes to. It cannot be helped that there was a detail of Soul that was astoundingly vexing, and Avada certainly had developed a feeling of irk towards her. Unlike her simmering annoyance towards Detective Gomez which she deemed as an enigma with the absence of an answer she could not properly, comfortably, and fully sought out, Avada's irritation for Soul, however, was in clarity. She was nothing less of a shitty individual whose laugh was never short of venom and implications, her mockery set to dislocate various parts of the foundation of one's self-esteem. Avada was sure of herself that Soul was the type of person who would undermine her friends, if she ever had ones to begin with anyways, but given her nefarious entity, there were no rooms left to doubt her lack of allies.

"Wouldn't want to suffer a bruise without having to deliver a black eye towards you," Soul added casually, as if giving a black eye to one of the city's detectives could not have you a guaranteed cell in the police station for assault.

Gomez closed the door behind him, calmly saying, "we don't need violence right now, Soul."

"What we need are some f*****g answers," Avada quipped, barely able to effectively hide the impatience that clawed at her. "We were brought here against our own will without even knowing what s**t we did now."

"To provide clarity, I pushed that f*****g kid off the goddamn slide because she was being a little b***h," Soul told Gomez, and Avada coughed in a poor attempt to conceal her obvious snigger, only to be taken aback at herself for actually deeming Soul's words to be amusing. Quick to notice of her reaction, a smirk appeared upon Soul's lips, but her eyes continued to be fixed upon Gomez, who sighed in exasperation as though a fed up teacher conversing as to why the troublemakers of the school had woken up today and chose mayhem instead of brief tranquility. In an alternate reality, that was how it probably was, Avada thought. Delinquents turned into school troublemakers. Police station room turned into detention room. Detective turned into teacher.

What portions of her life would've changed, too?

"You're not here because of that," Gomez explained, monotone. Layers of vexation settled themselves upon his perturbed visage, now conspicuous than it was ever as he expressed the graveness of his words and the situation. "This isn't some sort of game."

"Just get to the f*****g point," Lucan or, as he would prefer to be called nowadays, Quixote snapped, the degree of his eagerness leveling with that of Avada's alongside the other minors in the room. "I got chased in the woods by the police and fell into a damn hole. There better be a good reason."

"The mayor's daughter, Beatrice Marriyon..." Gomez trailed off, as if the words that he wished to articulate for them were the cause for pain and despondency to wrap around his entirety, his voice failing to continue with where he left off with his incomplete sentence concerning the mayor's daughter. Avada wondered what occurrences could've possibly been brought into reality to transpire for it to leave a potent impact upon an almost always nonchalant-looking individual such as Detective Gomez himself. It was an irrefutable detail that melancholy was in his eyes, swirling in a dilatory manner as though akin to agitated wisps of souls that could not discover remnants of tranquility after the death of its owners, the fall of their lifeless bodies. But Avada had espied something as well; fury, disbelief. These were incorporated into his sadness, too, but why? Was Gomez... empathetic of the mayor, not to mention at the state he was currently in where he has lost a daughter?

Avada was incredulous of such proposition; empathy was never Gomez's forte.

The detective finally managed to proceed with what he did not finish earlier. "She was murdered last night."

Shock crashed into Avada.

Empathy was never Gomez's forte, as it was never hers as well. But it did not imply of its absence.

"Murdered?" Quentin echoed breathily. The suddenness of the news surprised him, but he wasn't the only individual in the room who had expressed such a reaction. Quixote and her; the two of them were no less astonished at the gravity of what Detective Gomez had just delivered upon them. "What do you mean?"

"It's exactly as it means, Quentin," Soul deadpanned with a roll of her eyes as though to display her apparent reprehension. "She's dead. Someone killed her. Probably with a gun or a knife. Heck, they could've been a bit more creative and drowned her in a pool of dishwashing soap."

"Don't be an insensitive b***h," Quentin barked, expression darkening, the presence of lividity so evident and visible upon his figure that Avada instantaneously took notice of her wave of discomfort and fear. Soul, on the other hand, was nonchalant, no trace of trepidation or disquiet; it was as if she was a girl empty of emotions, save for the ones that shape her into a being of obduracy and vile, childish mischief. "This isn't something to take lightly, Soul. Someone just got murdered."

"And so?" Soul raised an eyebrow, unyielding. "What are you so f*****g pissed off about? She's a no one to me, and to you too, probably. Why do we have to display ingenuine sadness as if we care?"

"Well, excuse me for trying to be human and compassionate."

"She has the entire city's compassion already. Yours won't matter if she doesn't even know you."

"Why are you like this, Soul?" Beneath Quentin's rational anger at the girl, the questioning in his dark brown eyes could not be dismissed, yearning for a response from Soul, an explanation for her complex entity, which she herself could not provide. "You're better than this."

And Avada could not neglect, could not help but be cognizant of the tenderness in Quentin, in his voice as he uttered the words.

A big man with a big heart, lost in a world of crooks, injustice, and poverty, watching over a girl who chooses to deliberately wander that same, aforementioned world with a grin for unmistakable knavery.

Could it be that Quentin cares for Soul?

"Uhm, hey," a reluctant voice arose from the chaos of Quentin and Soul's bickering ones, gentle with a stain of innocence in its hesitance, and Avada visibly flinched, partly due to the fact at how antsy she felt towards Quentin and Soul's heated argument, but mostly because she had honestly forgotten of his presence in the room, so his unanticipated contribution to the conversation startled her. "Can I go home already? I was allowed to go out, but I need to get back early. My parents will return soon."

"As am I," Soul announced. "I lack of parents, but I do have a far more significant location to be at. I am a woman with errands and appointments. I must not dillydally."

Just as Soul was about to take a step, Detective Gomez loudly declared, "no one's going anywhere!" The man displayed no sign of exerting effort into veiling his dismay, aggravation, and regret, which were far too conspicuous to even attempt to conceal, before he said, "I don't want any of you to be in this mess, more than you five. I don't need your bullshit making this harder than it already is. But I'm stuck with all of you and your s**t, whether I or you like it or not. This isn't my decision, so shut all of your f*****g mouths or I'll sew them myself."

"The hell do you mean you're stuck with us?" Quixote demanded. "I'm not getting into this s**t. I understand Beatrice is dead and was murdered, but no way in hell am I going to involve myself. I've got better things to do. I'm not a police."

"Same here," Asphodel told Gomez, troubled. Avada was certain he was far more worried regarding the time and the arrival of his parents at his home, only to find their set of children incomplete and missing of one. "I am not a part of the police department. Also, I really, really have to get home. My older brother might get worried of me."

At the mention of Asphodel's brother, as well as the concern that was currently growing within him due to Asphodel not being able to come home at the expected hour, Avada's mind and attention was transferred to her stepfather, Rick. Whilst the police unanticipatedly appeared a few feet away from the very doors of Rick's own diner, he had witnessed, yet again, the captivity of his stepdaughter, beheld the disquiet that pierced her eyes and morphed her features to unveil the trepidation, even the disquietude, that ran throughout her entirety. Had his ears managed to pluck Avada's words as the disarray of the events unfolded afore his eyes, as his blood rushed in a speed of apprehension and nervousness? Did Rick even espy Avada's augmenting terror and dread, failing to control its rampant movements to the point of defeat where she has to turn away and seek for help from the only known individual who would not hesitate to shield her with protection, the person she deems to be her father?

Avada was left to ponder what thoughts had crossed Rick's mind during her arrest. Was he disappointed that she had committed a crime again in spite of his evident attempts to mold her into becoming a better person? Did he think of himself as a failure of a parent for being unable to correctly guide Avada towards a path of kindness and compassion? During the moments when Rick would feel as though he was a disappointment of a parent, Avada wanted nothing more but to assure him that the fault never lied upon his shoulders, that no one else was to be blamed but herself, for she allowed herself to stray into the darkness of the world, voluntarily learned the ways of deceit, manipulation, and thievery. But rather than articulating these thoughts and uttering the right words, Avada frequently chose silence, pettiness, and pride.

Mayhap it was time for an alteration in the flow of her personality.

"I need to get back, too," Avada spoke up, arms crossed, adamant. "I've got some explaining to do. My stepdad saw me get arrested, so naturally, he thinks I did s**t again, even though I didn't."

Detective Gomez's countenance revealed no sort of emotion, as though their words, actions, and how they perceived the situation in which Beatrice's murderer remained unknown, shrouded in mystery, was something that he had long anticipated, thus leaving no room for agitation and dismay. Avada was incredulous at her assumption that a sense of helplessness surged through Gomez at that specific moment after their declaration of leave, for she was more than certain that the detective felt relief rather than the loss of hope for this case. As he had mentioned earlier, he was coerced into involving the five of them with this conundrum and their resistance in regards to being connected with it must've delivered some sort of relief towards Gomez, further supporting his previous statement that he would much rather work with their absence than their presence.

Avada cared little for this mystery, a pococurante individual. What stirred the tranquil state of her mind, other than peculiar occurrences that had transpired only within today, as well as the sudden and tragic death of such a kind, significant girl, was that the police department, mainly Gomez, did not, or chose not to, voice out that they were in search for the help of the city's juveniles and troublemakers. The unanticipated act would've marred their integrity, reputation, and, not to mention, their pride, which aided in the clarification of Gomez's reluctance. Avada had thought he just despised the five of them, alongside the many delinquents of the city, but if ever such proposition would prove to be truth, then all those small smiles, little jokes, and substantial tips Gomez frequently threw towards her whenever she would be assigned to serve him at the diner would all be labeled as nothing but null.

Perhaps Gomez did not dislike them, but rather simply eluded the choice of having them enwrapped in the midst of this disarray as he already was.

Beyond the closed doors of the bland room, disorder erupted, striking each one of them with perplexity, silence, and curiosity as the volume of footsteps and mingled voices arose in a crescendo of incomprehensible audio. Avada theorized that it could be yet another juvenile picked out from the normalcy of their day to be spiraled into the bewilderment that is the case of Beatrice Marriyon's death. She almost scowled at the possibility at how facilely it came towards the police department to bring minors to the station, despite the conspicuous display of rejection, as though their will not to oblige was perceived to be a naught if it were to came to the wishes of the authorities.

"Another troublemaker?" Avada could not suppress herself from inquiring, could not even go against her subconscious to eradicate the bitterness and sarcasm that dripped in her words, the tone so evident to Gomez that she wondered, for a second, if that would be the reason as to why Rick would lose one of his most loyal patrons. No more small smiles, little jokes, and big tips, the last always bringing delight to Avada, albeit concealing it in front of him unless she stood behind the diner, the smile upon her lips wide as she pushed the trash bag into the dumpster.

"Its not that," he replied, before transferring his gaze to the door. Gomez must be pondering whether or not he should head outside to be aware of what events were taking place beyond the room.

"Then who is it?" Avada pressed.

"I'm going outside," Soul challenged, feet taking a step towards the direction of the door.

"Stay where you are, Soullianne," the detective ordered brusquely. "None of you better pull any sort of bullshit, because the mayor is here."