DAY :33

[wille]

[ Fatigue is the clearest sense that bleeds through when she opens the link, but it's not dwelled upon, just an old bedfellow grown familiar. In contrast, Misato tries her darndest to seem nothing but determined, confident, enthused. It's not a lie if she also believes it. ]

( Hey everyone. We've found a few things we can use to our advantage.

First, if you want to pander to the judges' preferences, you should go colorful, electric, violent, sexy and loud. It's no time to be shy. Miss Mystery hates forest green and wears shoes dipped in liquid metal. Saldo Saldo likes soft vore, shiny and over-the-top body modifs and, uhm, transformations, like ugly duckling turning into a swan stuff. Now Talius Rex loves exotic pets, the more human-like the better, exploit that, he also likes cute things and dressing them and himself up. You may have seen his pets around . . .

Sam has also found that the chips the competitors wear are tracking their vitals, location and they act as credit cards. We may be able to use this. I know we've got a few tech-savvy people out there.

Lastly, I've got some experience choreographing giant weapons, so talk to me if you want help with that.

We can win this! I know it! Let's do our best!! )
 

Comments

[somnifacient]

[Noctis can't even imagine what that must have been like.]

(That's inconvenient.)

[Understatement.]

(Did you... have to "use" it very often? How did that even work?)

[sistershoggoth]

( That's what they thought my power was.' Cryptopath', a way with cryptids. So nasty shit used to come out of there. )

[ The image is clear, muscular green tentacles, dripping with slime and madness. Exactly the same sensation that comes from being connected to Annie, just now put into a picture. ]

( Used to fight with them, paint with them, yanno. Like having extra sets of hands around. )

[ And now here she is, missing all those limbs. ]

[somnifacient]

[Noctis frowns inwardly at that imagery. It reminds him a bit of the tentacles of a malboro (a wide gnashing maw, tentacles sprouting from every angle), and he can't help but let the imagery slip through.

Still, this was different. This was equally disconcerting and morbidly fascinating. Even worse, Noctis feels a tinge of sympathy.]

(And now they're shut away, right.)

[He remembers her showing him the scar. Saying that it used to be open, now it's like this.]

[sistershoggoth]

( From here, anyway. Can still talk to them. )

[ Which means Noctis has heard them too. The subtle snickering laughter that sometimes echoes in the vastness that is she. Eyes and teeth, creeping, crawling, invading. His association isn't that terribly off. ]

( Woke up like this after the whole transcendence thing. )

[ Yanno, that bit where she just about exploded his brain. ]

[somnifacient]

[Yes, he's heard them. It's the part of her that bothers him the most, coupled hand-in-hand with the feeling of her just... encroaching, all the time. At least he puts up a brave face when he can, because what choice does he have?]

(Transcendence.) [Yeah, the brain exploding part was difficult to forget.] (A pretty elegant word for what I saw.)

(Maybe it's for the best, though?) [He wonders, briefly, if he's assuming too much.]

[sistershoggoth]

( Does it feel like it was for the best. )

[ Her loneliness, her brokenness, her constant longing to be what she truly is, but instead she is confined to skin and bones, veins and scars. Struggling through this living with a hole in her heart, reaching after vibrant memory of exultation. She aches, hollow in the center, desperate to fill up the endless cavern of herself with something, anything. A wild lusty hunger for her vices: for the sex, the drugs, the drink, the unconstrained jubilation that he had already seen in her when she had found a crush of alien bodies to flail around in, head full of screaming and noise. ]

[somnifacient]

[Noctis feels as if he's grasping at straws to find a silver lining. It should be easy, shouldn't it? How can one not see the bright side to no longer having a gaping hole in one's chest, filled with abominations reaching out from within?

But he can't bring himself to say it. He can feel that vast expanse of nothingness every time his mind brushes against hers, a void of loneliness unlike anything he's felt before. Even his most wretched experiences (lost and tormented within Zegnautus keep) were but a fraction of this desolation.]

(No. It doesn't.)

[If he were more eloquent, if he were better at this sort of thing, he'd offer his condolences. He'd keep digging for that silver lining until his fingers bled.

But he's not. He never was. And so all Annie gets is the ghost of solicitude from him. Little else.]

[sistershoggoth]

[ She can feel it, his desire to offer some consolation, to make it sting less. As much for himself as it is for her, because now they are one and the same. Of brood. There's something to that, something alike to what she has lost. That sense of being more than just this singular creature. The brood was small compared to a world, but it was an organism of many hands and minds. It's a jolt of emotion that she finds dizzying. That as much as it is not his to know, he knows, and that she is not so alone in her misery. Her affection for him in that moment is painful, wrenching against everything she understands about herself. ]

( I'm gonna get some coffee. )

[ This might be a euphemism, at this point, some unspoken code that she's starting to pull apart on the inside. ]

[somnifacient]

(...All right.)

[Leaving it at that feels beyond unsatisfactory. Even though words fail him, and his mind offers nothing more, he reaches out-- uselessly, maybe. A pathetic sliver of reassurance in the vein of an almost-completed request:]

(I'll show you the different colors of paint I've found later.)

[Nothing more to add. He'll let her go for now.]