onemind: (Default)
THE N E S T ([personal profile] onemind) wrote in [community profile] station722016-03-14 01:56 pm

[HATCH LOG] IS ANYONE THERE?

CHARACTERS: All
WHERE: Station 72
WHEN: Day :150
SUMMARY: Today is the day you wake up.
WARNINGS: None; will edit if necessary.






A MOMENT AGO it seemed like you willingly took the hand of someone beckoning to safety.


NOW YOU WAKE UP in one of many chambers of Station 72’s nesting deck. If you had wounds, they’re (mostly) gone; if you had doubts they are - for the split second between dreaming and waking - gently reassured. This is correct. This is right. You’re safe here. The only question is what here is exactly.

The compartment you find yourself in is small, though gently padded for comfort with enough elbow and head -room to not be wholly claustrophobic. Still, it’s difficult to re-orient yourself; the best way to get to the chamber’s built in ladder and down to the smooth, polished white floor of the nesting is to simply roll over onto your belly and go out feet first.

First thing’s first though: get rid of that tube running from the rear wall of the chamber to the base of your skull. The moment you’ve done that, there’s the sensation like a rubber band popping - a string in your hand being jerked. The headache that punches in falls like the heavy end of a hammer - not serious, but surprisingly abrupt - as a of combination confusion, resolve, anxiety, certainty, delight, and fear and expectation finds you. In fades after a moment, churning to a low dull pressure and a faint hum. It’s feels like standing outside the door of a small party, sounds muffled and incomprehensible. Some pieces rise and swell above the others then fall again. Strain your ears and realize you’re hearing nothing at all.

On the plus side, you’re not hooked into the compartment anymore. Slide out and onto the ladder, though not too fast or you’ll miss the small cubicle built into the wall near the mouth of the chamber. In the cubicle are all the things you brought with you, every small piece you own of the home you left behind. There’s a neatly folded pair of something like white pajamas there as well. They’re definitely in your size, though you have the option not to wear them since you’re still in the clothes you left home in. Granted, for some of you that might not exactly be a blessing. Your clothes haven’t exactly been laundered or repaired, so best hope you didn’t bleed or sweat on them too much during your escape.

Sliding free from the chamber pod and stepping out onto the ladder, you’ll find yourself in an open space. The room is broad and pale and clean, its sloping walls featuring dozens and dozens of holes like the one you just wiggled out of. There are more ladders and a few other people climbing down, or stareing, or already down on the nesting deck’s floor but the sixteen - seventeen, including yourself - people present would hardly fill even a sixth of the room’s available accommodations.

The noise is louder when you near any of the others. It’s as if you've entered the party yourself. Identifiable now is the low wash of feelings, a hum of emotions that only serves to make the slight headache worsen. They feel genuine. They feel like they could belong to you. Still, that pressure in your head doesn't worry you --Shouldn't it worry you? Does worrying - about the headache, about the world and people you left behind, or the strange place you’re in now, the odd collection of people you’re with and the fact that you feel strangely drawn to five or six of them - make the headache better? Or worse?

If you manage to push the sound aside and listen with your true ears, you'd notice you can't hear anything besides this small group of fellow hosts: their footsteps, their oddly sharp breathing. There’s no sound of traffic, no wind in the trees, no birds, no hum of a ship. Only circulating air and silence.

You may not know what a brood is, but finding yours is easy. There are minds among these strangers that call to yours, their voices louder than the rest, their feelings sharper. The nearer to you they are, the more comfortable you feel. Is that strange? You don't know them, but you do. There are few answers to be found on the nesting deck.

Eventually you will have no choice but to head out of the room. There’s only one way out that you can see: up through a spiraling hallway that arches overhead. When it opens again the space seems slightly less alien. There are doorways of a kind lining the walls and each one opens to a small, nearly normal room. There are no doors, so it's easy to see all the rooms are vacant. In seventeen of them there are items neatly stacked on the bed. Most are hygiene supplies. Some of them - a toothbrush, comb, razor - may be familiar to you. Others less so. There's a flat horizontal ledge beside the bed with a small light and a single drawer. Another table, apparently built into the wall, sits across the room with a chair. A mirror is on the desk; it’s slightly mundane and not quite to the Station’s style.

This room is yours for the moment. It doesn't mean someone won't want to trade - or take. Beyond this life support deck stretches the rest of Station 72. It is quiet and and twisting and perfectly inert.

At its most familiar, the Station is merely a still, empty ship with broad chambers and gently mottled light. At its worst, it’s an Escher painting of strange angles and bizarre platforms that seems grown as much as built. There are many ways to many places and while it seems all doors and passages open to you, there’s an unshakeable feeling that the space doesn’t quite match up - that there’s even more to the Station which you can’t yet see. Don’t get lost!




For now, you reach the floor of the nesting deck. When you do, something blooms in your mind. A voice, disturbingly lacking any identifying traits but warm and comfortable like sweetened milk, says:

( ▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬...There you are...▬▬▬..Welcome to Station 72 ▬▬. )


If you follow the thread of that voice, you’ll eventually find your way either to Cathaway on the bridge or The Prince in the training wing.








((OOC Notes: Welcome to Station 72! Feel free to check out the SETTINGS page for more information about the Station. If you have any questions about the setting itself, feel free to ask them there; otherwise, please direct all questions to either the FAQ or MOD CONTACT pages.

Prince’s top level should be live in the evening! Keep an eye out for it if you want him to give your character the introduction spiel instead of Cathaway.

Happy hatchday, everyone! :) ))




mercenares: (pic#10077190)

iii (because it's totally better with broodmates right...)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-18 07:36 am (UTC)(link)
[They have some common ground, here. Ares might not be used to control over his mind, exactly, but he's used to a measure of control over how people see him. How much they know, which is usually not much. (You're not supposed to show them any potential weakness, not supposed to get close, even if he hasn't always followed that lesson.) He hasn't fully realized the extent to which this connection goes both ways, but the idea is there, and he doesn't like it.

Other things he doesn't like: having this much of someone else's mental state shoved on him when he has no idea how to block it out. One hand's pressed against his head before he realizes it, fingers tangled into his hair and his jaw tensed hard enough it almost aches. His other hand's clenched into a fist, nails biting into the palm of his hand-- it helps, a little. Gives him something to try to center himself.]


Hey, cut it out--!

[The thoughts that go along with that leak right through, just an angry wash of emotion. What he's felt so far, he could handle; this is stronger, though, and he doesn't really know what to do with it besides push back. Lash out at it like his gut reaction says to.]
circumspector: (Default)

what could possibly go wrong....

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-18 04:30 pm (UTC)(link)
[ she doesn't know much of others emotions. Not really. The finesse is lost on Pandora. When people bleed and scream so much, desperately hanging on so desperately, and so literally funnily enough, by their fingernails to claw their way alive, something certainly... got lost. Granted, that's from observation, she wouldn't know the reality of their lives. ( Though, right now, she's beginning to understand how the psychos feel, it might be easier right now to don a mask and bathe in blood, screaming out whatever insanity made sense, than actually deal with this. )

But rage? Rage is one she knows, especially the fast lash out. She expects more, she expects what Jack does when she's not doing what he wants. Not often, he would insist he's better than his own grandmother, but the agony when he'd choke her by the collar. She's expecting - so much worse, that his rage is enough. She knows how this goes, because it only ever goes one way.

In mimicry, or the same need to block him out. Her hand goes up to the metal plates on the exposed part of her head. Looking for the comfort, or maybe control. Pleading with him desperately to stop the rage, she's trying, can't he see she's trying? It's so hard to not just fall back, to flinch and curl around the bite of his wounds, beg like only children can do. Except the connection is there, that tells her, it's as much his hurt as it is hers.

And she's done, done with begging. Even if she can't help the bodily way she puts distance between them. Leaning back and swallowing on quick little breaths in the effort of getting control. Curls her marked hand up, feels that sweet high call of power to feed through them both and tries to see if leaning into it will help.
]

Please, please, just, give me a second -- [ what she doesn't know. she's no closer to figuring out how to keep people out than he is, but she's got to try. It's not better, this power, it just suggests something that normally, is what she hangs onto. Not to make the pain go away, she doesn't know how to do that, she just knows how to work through it. That will have to do. ] Here. [ This tingly drawn together feeling, that turns the discordant notes into a tune, that she can't make the pain go away, but she floods her mind with that instead, and offers it up to him instead. Does it with the subtlety of getting shoved under a riptide, but at least it makes ocean spray taste sweet instead.

Offers it to him to take, with an upturned hand for him to grasp onto, the strange blue markings that curl around fingers and up the left side of her body, snaking under the white loose clothes. There's a crackle to them, like static off carpet. Is this supposed to help? She knows the words, but not the action. But...

... She doesn't think she could ever forgive herself if she caused him pain, worse than any others. The sorry is more than platitudes, it's the desperate need to make it up to him.
]
mercenares: (does that make it a bat?)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-20 08:56 am (UTC)(link)
[What she's doing bleeds across easily enough, forces some of the intensity to subside, but he still can't help fighting it-- it's not his. Not supposed to be there. Except there's also the feeling that it is, that this is right, that everything should be fine; it makes things better, but he pushes back too hard for it to truly settle in. He'd rather it just stop.

Still, it does take the edge off.]


What're you--

[The offered hand gets a wary look, and he doesn't reach out to take it. He's eyeing the strange markings instead, the odd crackling energy keeping him from moving any closer.]

What is that?
circumspector: (x » maddened by the stars)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-21 01:17 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Her fingers curl up, and her insecurity grows as he withdraws -- giving way to worry, that ever-present pang of guilt that was so carefully nurtured. Looking from between it and then up at him. Something faltering, the sheer rush from behind her eyes, fading.

Little by little, it dies, the light dimming off her fingertips.
]

Just something I've always done. [ It's not even an answer, but saying something that I can kill with seems even worse. ] I didn't mean to scare you, I just thought it might be nicer... [ a shrug, small, backing off somewhat. The hand dropping back slowly to her side at the least. ] ... or take the edge off?

[ Pause. Watching him cautiously, over again. ] How's your head?
mercenares: (pic#10077095)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-21 01:39 pm (UTC)(link)
[He's less tense when it fades, still keeping an eye on her hand until it drops back to her side. Whatever that was, it's not something people are supposed to be able to do-- but her backing away somehow doesn't make him any more comfortable. If anything, it just- makes him feel a little guilty for it.

Or maybe that's just the pang of guilt that came from her.

He shakes his head, hand combing through his hair; despite the gesture, though, he's not bothering to brush it back, leaving it hanging over one side of his face.]


I've had worse! It doesn't hurt that bad.

[It's fine. He's fine. The strange, tenuous connection between them? Also fine. Whatever.

(It's not fine. He looks calm now, outwardly, but he's practically radiating uncertainty. Is all of that going to happen again?)]


Don't have to worry about scaring me, either. [And that's almost huffy.] People just don't do whatever that is where I'm from. Is it a trick or something?
circumspector: (xxii »  its safe in cages)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-21 01:56 pm (UTC)(link)
[ Something fades with it, and that's a relief, she still doesn't feel right. Her skin and bones and hair are still heavy. The metal plates on her forehead are hurting with the temperature difference compared to her core. But ... it's easier next to him. Everything seems like it will be if she just stays there with him. ]

You're better at handling it than I am then. I feel like it won't end. [ It comes with a smile, encouraging, particularly so. All placating words.

She shakes her head to his question, a brief little jerk that she, like him, has her hair in her face.
] It's not that normal where I come from either, I guess. But people know it can happen. [ Lilith was famous now, and everyone had heard of sirens, even if it was half fairy stories. Steele had led the Crimson Lance, of all things. Did Maya get the answer she wanted? She would never know now. Stops the rambling chain of thought, the flash of the other women's face, they look different, but the markings are all the blue flat lines that take over one side in a lacing spider's web. Getting distracted, Angel.

Draws her eyes up to him again, debating briefly on what to say, how to say it.
] But it's not a trick. I'm just something that can exist sometimes, that can do these sorts of things. But we're not all the same, we can do all sorts of crazy things. Well, sometimes. [ Deep breath. Even. Don't think about it, keep it abstract from herself. It's how they stay sane. ] What about you? Any secret powers I should know about?
Edited 2016-03-21 14:10 (UTC)
mercenares: (because i know you love apples)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-21 02:27 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, well, I get hit a lot. You get used to it!

[He waves it off, shifting to flop down at the base of the nearest wall, sitting with one leg pulled up and an arm draped over his knee. Her answer's taken in bit by bit while he watches her face (a little curiosity might sneak in, there); it still sounds strange, and he's drawing the only parallels he really can.]

Wait, so are you some kinda god or something?

[Just something that can exist-- and she looks kind of weird, he might be able to believe it.]

They're the only ones who might have powers or anything... [So in other words, no, no secret abilities-- that he knows of, anyway. Someone's going to be surprised when he finds out that he sure does have one now.]
circumspector: (( sitting ) » are you insane like me)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-21 02:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[ It's the response she can't help but be fond on. Too much like the only friends she'd ever had.

Carefully she takes her cues from him, and when he sits on one side of the corridor, she takes the other. Adjusting the white clothes, and the markings seem to go all the way down her left side, curling over the toes of her left foot, wrapping around her ankle. Gone as quickly when she tucks her feet under her to sit. Arm propping up her weight as she tries to find somewhere comfortable.

There's a bit of alarm when he asks her if she's a God.
] What? No. No, I'm not the one in my family with a God-complex, trust me. [ Even if just under anything, there's that sense of being a little bit above reality.

But she supposes it's normal. Maya was raised by monks to be a saviour goddess, up until she'd killed all the monks. Lilith's had inspired a cult, which... granted, burned people alive in adoring worship of her ( and there might be that all too Pandoran second of trying to work out from looking at him if he was the type to do that ) But she knew they were all too human. Gods after all, couldn't die.
] Why don't we start over? I'm Angel.
mercenares: (a bird in the hand what?)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-21 02:58 pm (UTC)(link)
-ohh. Okay.

[That explains it. He's heard of those, and it's close enough to being a god, right? His head tilts as he peers over at her, looking at her a little differently.

It makes it easier to just... not have to deal with things. She's clearly not a regular human, so he doesn't have to try to make anything make sense or worry about explanations for it.]


My name's Ares. [And then abruptly, like he's just been holding the question in long enough to answer her--] Aren't you supposed to have wings?
circumspector: (xxi » have you decided)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-21 10:49 pm (UTC)(link)
[ She looks back, and it's an odd feeling of being inspected by him. Whatever he sees, it doesn't seem to bother him. Her fingers catch on the hem of her shirt, rolling it between fingers. Absently fidgetting as she talks to him, caught up in the feel of the material.

Which listening to him, she laughs. There's a pang there, all warmed and abashed that he thought she was an actual angel.
] If you're Ares, shouldn't you have a spear and helmet?

[ It's lightly teasing, batting the question away until she can think of a good answer to... explain what she is. Hard without reference, between knew about sirens, even if she knows from the stories that apart from the wings and being women... they didn't resemble them much. No beautiful songs, just power, raw and largely not understood. ] ... I do have wings, but Angel is just my name, I promise. I'm just like you, for the most part.
mercenares: (crouch to hide from the booty bombin)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-22 12:15 am (UTC)(link)
[That answer just pulls things right back into 'not making sense' territory. For the most part could mean a lot of things, and if she has wings, then where are they? No way they'd be that easy to hide, right?

There's a distinct sense of confusion; curiosity's still there, he's still trying to work it out, but she's not really making it as easy as he'd like.]


You don't look like you're the same. [Matter of fact, just a statement and not an accusation; he leans forward a bit, chin resting on top of his arm.] If it's just a secret or something, that's fine! I'm not gonna say anything about it.

[He lets that sit for just a second before adding:] And I do too have a helmet, it just wasn't on me when I left. No spear though.
circumspector: (vi » never taking wing)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-22 12:51 am (UTC)(link)
[ The things she's saying are deliberately disjointed, she knows that. It's habit, as long as it's mattered, she had words put in her mouth, a particular way she was dictated to speak to others. Being vague, being cryptic, playing the role... he quite probably expects her to be.

But she's out of that life now, and she didn't have to be what Jack made her.
]

Sorry, I don't mean to be so vague, I've just never been allowed to talk about it. [ She presses her back into the wall and looks at him squarely, honestly. Be straight with him, she has the choice to do that now. ] What I meant to say is that I am just as fallible as anyone else, there's definitely nothing divine about me like they are in stories. What people usually call us is 'siren'. My parents were human, they didn't do anything special to have me. Just that when one siren dies, another one is born, and I guess... that's what fate decided for me when I came into the world.

[ There's bitterness in her words, it's a fathomless thing, twisting around her words, her fingers as they curl sharply into the material of her clothes. She didn't ask for this, she didn't ask to be born a siren. No more than she asked to have Jack as a father. ]
mercenares: (pic#10077173)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-22 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
[He recognizes that kind of bitterness.

He's felt it before, with lessons he didn't want to listen to proving to be right after all, proving that he really couldn't be anything different-- but he accepted a long time ago that his path wasn't something he had a say in. It's just something that is. There's a hint of a memory there in the front of his mind, an older man's voice: there are two types of people in this world- those who are blessed, and those who are not.

Which one she is, Ares couldn't really say. Even people who were blessed could be unhappy with their lives, right? (But there's still a flicker of something bitter under the surface, an echo of hers and maybe harder to pick up on. It could always be worse, people who don't get that they have it better don't think about what they're complaining about.)

It leaves him silent for a few moments before he finally responds.]


It's like that for everyone though, you know? [Another shrug, a small smile slipping back into place.] So there's no point to being upset over it! I bet a lot of people would want to do... whatever you did earlier, so just quit being vague about it.
circumspector: (viv » how can you remain)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-22 02:15 am (UTC)(link)
[ She doesn't express, not really, there's no good way to say I got mercenaries to kill me. Because he's talking about one thing, and not realising he's touching on another. Besides, he's still... comforting, even if in return, his words are hit and miss.

But at least there's no pretending what he's picking up from her, feeling it echoed back, different maybe, but she sorts it as something residual. No point getting upset, how as he to know? No more than she could how what she says might relate to him. ( though there's that bending feeling, that says if she opens her mind, she could know so many things about him. There wouldn't be this stiltedness. )
]

Sorry. You're right, they do. [ Leaves that hang, eyes down again. ] It's a little more complicated than that. [ Vague, again, not for secret keeping this time, but she gives the feeling she doesn't want to talk about it. Because there's that second, where she breaths in the sound of purple. That she swallows to force herself to taste only the filtered clean air of the space station here. Here, not the control core. ] They had very interesting lives. The other sirens, I mean. They're all famous, not just for being... gifted. They lead armies, destroy monsters, and are considered some of the best fighters and mercenaries in the galaxy.
mercenares: (hoedown in didgeridoo coming to ppv)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-22 02:40 am (UTC)(link)
[It's easy enough to let the subject go-- he doesn't often get any deeper than that, prefers not to have actual talks about this kind of thing. If she ever listens to that feeling and tries to find anything out, she'll probably learn a thing or two about him, but it won't go over well.

There are far worse topics she could've picked to change the subject, and that definitely catches his interest; he shifts to sit up a bit more instead of slouching forward, head cocked slightly.]


So the weird powers are something you can fight with, too?... Do you?

[She doesn't strike him as the type, but if being a siren means she could be that skilled... look, there's no way he can't ask. (He almost looks too interested, really. Maybe not even 'almost'.) ]
circumspector: (network » this is not a dream)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-22 06:43 am (UTC)(link)
You can fight with anything if you think about it enough. [ She doesn't have their training, their experience. But she had still killed, with what she was, and to that end, she nods, firmly the once. ] But yes, yes we can.

[ She might just start calling him vault hunter anyway, regardless of where he came from, give how much attention he paid her for just that little bit. ] I've never fought anyone though. Again, we're all very different, so what I can do, they can't. Other things, I can't do at all. Lilith -- she's... they call her the Firehawk? She's very gifted with fire as you probably guess. She.... liquefied a guy once? Just... melted him she burned so hot, I guess you could say.

[ With someone else, she might temper it. Pandora is violent, unforgiving, and from the few others she had spoken too, they hadn't been used to that kind of existence, that bred such casual discussion. But his eagerness is fed to easily. She hadn't ever fought, but she was as much made by Pandora as they were. ]
mercenares: (i'm a tough guy)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-22 08:41 am (UTC)(link)
Shit.

[His eye widens a bit, and it's hard to say whether he's awed by the thought of it or a little fearful. A mix of both, maybe; to him, something like that just confirms the fact that these 'sirens' are something completely different. Having a specific example of that power makes it even more clear-- it shouldn't be possible for anyone to melt people, no matter what.

If he hadn't seen her a few minutes ago, he'd be totally writing it off, and he's still not sure he believes it completely. (How much of an army could you destroy with the ability to just burn them up, though?)]


Bet they run everything where you're from, huh? If they're really that strong.
circumspector: (xxiii » singing when you're told)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-22 09:05 am (UTC)(link)
[ She brings her fingers up to her mouth, laughing quietly behind it at his reaction. Those too bright eyes turned down a minute, carefully covering up. Yeah, shit was usually what most people said when they realised they were fighting a siren. ]

Not like you'rethinking. [ that she knows his thought is - odd, still, or at least, knows the impression of. ] There's only six of us. There can only ever be six of us. Another one isn't born until one of us dies. And people live on hundreds of planets, across half a dozen galaxies. No one can really run all that.

[ She shrugs, the universe is so big, she knows that out there were another two more sirens beyond what she had already met. Plus one born to replace Steele after she'd become a shish kebab courtesy of the destroyer.

She hoped the one that replaced her would be happy. Let her body burn, she never used it anyway. Not like the others had. Let the next one get to truly live, for whatever that was worth.

Turns her thoughts sharply from it, she has no interest in dwelling on her own death now she truly got to live. Blinks quickly to dismiss it and then continues a similar vein without stopping to consider it too much.
] I never got to develop my abilities for that kind of combat though. But I can do something else, do you want to see?
Edited 2016-03-22 09:05 (UTC)
mercenares: (does that make it a bat?)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-23 11:20 pm (UTC)(link)
[It's hard to imagine civilizations that huge-- he tries to picture how many countries there would have to be for six people with that kind of power to be unable to rule all of them, and quickly gives up.

Whatever she has to shove aside, he quietly ignores-- he's not going to pry in anyone's head or invite anything too serious-- and turns his attention towards her question. It's hard to miss the initial fascination or the wariness that creeps in right on its heels, and while Ares leans forward a little, there's the distinct sense that he's fully prepared to move back.]


Yeah, sure. What else can you do?
circumspector: (ii » nightingale blackbird)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-24 12:01 am (UTC)(link)
None of this is real, okay, just remember that. You're still here in this corridor.

[ This is about showing him something different, because she so truly wanted to make others happy, to be wanted because of it. But there's also the test of her own abilities in a safe way. A fairly mild use, to what she's used to. Suspects without the eridium, she couldn't do what she used to anyway. Didn't particularly lament that loss, anyway.

Crosses her legs under her, straightens her shoulders. Takes a deep breath, and faintly, the marks change, as she closes her eyes. They begin to glow white, showing a map up under the clothes that weren't thick enough to smother the light where it builds. Down from her chest, across the skin of her stomach, tops of her thighs, down to fingertips and toes. Once she has it built, she opens her eyes, and they're spilling out with the same light, burning, burning burning.
]

Just a second.

[ Almost, almost unaffected, but the calm of her body is at odds with the feelings that roll of her. That burning is euphoric, to her, the world is not solid, it is not real, it's shifting, churning. Here, it is water, here it is the seasons ever in transient, here, one strange other realm bleeds into another, and here, she feels truly alive. The faint taste of purple as there's a crackle that is building under her skin, a real sense of power she so willing shares. She is this, siren, and in the words of another woman they should all be running. Betrayed more in the curl of her mouth when she looks back at him, that any other reaction. She has wrangled this a long time down to manageable. ]

Do you like forests?

[ Because the corridor they're sitting on them, is now lined with grass. Above them, is the ceiling is a sky. What he leaned against is now a tree, huge and hanging heavy and low with leaves that protect from a morning sun. It's just one more lie in a life full of them, but these, she hopes are forgiveable one. It's not real, and the details are wrong. She doesn't know what grass feels like, or how sun warms the skin, so she can't give the details of how they feel to him. But she had taken hours to perfect the way leaves mottled it, how the branches would sway in a breeze that's lightly cooling. ]
mercenares: (pic#10077198)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-25 03:15 am (UTC)(link)
["None of this is real"? What's that supposed to mean?

It has him wary even before her marks start lighting up, and when she opens her eyes-- god, that's unsettling. He presses himself back against the wall, tense, and the sense of something like adrenaline that creeps in doesn't help. Whatever she's doing, he's more on edge the longer he watches.

Then it's finished, and everything is suddenly different. His eye widens as it flicks between the sky and the grass and he's on his feet in a flash, glancing quickly over his shoulder, pressing the palm of his hand to the tree-- but she's right. It doesn't feel real.]


What the hell-?

[He has no idea what to think of this. It's a stranger display than he'd ever think to expect, and even knowing he must still be in the same place doesn't put him at ease.]

Did you mess with my head?
circumspector: (network » this is not a dream)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-25 03:51 am (UTC)(link)
[ She doesn't get up to follow him when he darts around to look at the false reality. When he touches it, it doesn't ripple, but it's not what bark feels like at all, just the smooth of the corridor wall. ]

Sort of. Think of it like... wallpaper? Everything is still there, I just made you think it looks like something else.

[ She's still glowing, the marks gone completely white as she shifted, but she could feel the mistake of it already. Without the Eridium, this was hard to hold, keep steady and little by little, it began to fade away again. Peeling away just like old paint even as he looked at it. Wore on her too, her breathing picking up, prickle of exhaustion on her skin. Quite obviously straining with the pressure of keeping it up. ]
Edited 2016-03-25 03:52 (UTC)
mercenares: (pic#10077192)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-03-28 06:54 am (UTC)(link)
[Having an answer doesn't ease his tension-- instead it increases, posture shifting just enough to be noticeable and one hand instinctively lingering near the hilt of his sword.]

-don't.

[It comes out strained, fingers curling in and nails biting into his palms. This connection between all of them is enough to deal with on its own, but someone messing with his head, his thoughts? Making him think things look different? That's on a different level.

There's a feeling bleeding through their connection that's too raw to really be thought, an instinctive sort of fear blended with adrenaline that borders on anger-- the fight half of the 'fight-or-flight' response, though he's managing not to act on it. The fact that she can't fight and the strange link that makes him drawn to her both hold him back, but it's very much there.]
circumspector: (( shock ) » to swallow up the flame)

[personal profile] circumspector 2016-03-29 12:58 am (UTC)(link)
[ His fear, his violent, angry recoil hits her like a slap in the face. She hadn't meant for this - she thought - it wasn't as bad as half the things she had done, could do, lies maybe, but beautiful ones, the only ones she'd ever had. She hadn't meant to scare him, and something feels ill with his reaction.

Maybe a good thing that she couldn't hold it too much longer it felt like. The world drops, sharp and quickly. No more grass, no more sky, just him standing there alarmed, ready to fight things that weren't real, and her sitting there, the same as before, like none of it ever was. She herself turning away from that violence he seems so ready to perpetrate, never had it directed towards her.
]

I'm sorry. I didn't think it would... [ scare him like that. make him react like that. People were harder, when she wasn't a satellite away. ]
mercenares: (mikael i swear to god)

[personal profile] mercenares 2016-04-04 06:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Yeah, well, just-- just don't do it!

[Don't put things in his head that aren't supposed to be there, don't make him see things that aren't actually in front of him-- there's the briefest flicker of an image that slips across their connection, there and suppressed again so fast that all that's visible are indistinct bodies reaching out with desperate hands. An image that he can't say for sure wasn't real.

Ares' eye fixes on the wall for a good few moments, as if making sure it stays the way it's supposed to be, and even when he's satisfied that it's normal again he can't relax. The practiced ease is hard to pull back into place, after that.]


Stay out of my head.

[Muttered without looking at her, his voice low. It's not quite a threat despite the tone, despite how he wants it to be, and with that out of the way-- he's getting the fuck out of here before anything else can happen.]