station72 | [open] it'll stick to you

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[open] it'll stick to you

CHARACTERS: Annie & You
WHERE: Hyrypia - Caravan outskirts
WHEN: When everyone else is doing hunting training....
SUMMARY: Symbiote training
WARNINGS: Annie's awful mouth.

There are strange sensations coming from where Annie has snuck off to practice with her symbiote on her own. It's a kind of pulling sensation, like the tacky pull of unset sugar candy, stretching but not without resistance, crackling and crunching as it cools.

Coming to find her, she's crouched behind a cluster of rocks, peering with death ray intensity at five baseball sized orbs of bright green goo.

She has each one moving in a different pattern, but she knows she can do better. She has the capacity for it-- she knows it.

That sensation is something entirely different: her mind opening up to allow herself to juggle more controls at once, as if each orb is a new limb she needs to grow used to. It's an uncomfortable sensation, the great dark cavern that is her consciousness breathing in, hungrily taking more.

The monster is learning.

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Kaji thought himself above stupefaction, but he owed that mostly to a long career bearing witness to eldritch abominations and, sometimes, their viscous, gooey discharge. He was, however, beginning to experience the foggiest approximation of concern over who he'd followed into the Caravan outskirts.

He couldn't watch her all day - or rather, he probably could, but it wouldn't be healthy or productive - but the alternative was to come out of his slinking and engender the risk of her embarrassment and/or indignant fury. She'd hid for a reason, after all. And, well, he'd never before caught someone in a 'compromising position', and didn't want his first to be with a girl and her five quivering blobs of - something.

An unassuming cough from behind her should - hopefully - break Annie from her meditative state.

"Nice pair," Tolerate tone, hands pocketed; this is the manner of someone who endeavored to be seen as nonthreatening as possible. "Er, pairs. Sorry about that. You'll have to blame habit."

Edited 2017-09-09 21:10 (UTC)

"You can't even see my tits from there."

An idle, exasperated response, and for a moment he hasn't broken her concentration, like she's just as habitual in her nasty responses. But then, slowly, she makes the decision to stop. The orbs of goo turn into puddles, no longer held together by her attention, and she turns around.

Her attention on him is like being breathed on by an eldritch abomination, fetid and horrifying, tasted in the air, observed with monstrous, burning eyes.

She can make an effort to detract from that sensation. She's not going to right now though.

"You got any cigarettes?" Her first and foremost interest in anyone she hasn't already harried with this never ending quest.

He wrinkles his nose at the stench of brimstone and burning sulphur, even as sweat runs down his forehead, even as he stands his ground seemingly unfazed and unbothered.

Scooping Matarael's eye acid from the bottom of an air duct had felt something like this, he reminisces. Substance placed in a labeled plastic baggie. The sensation of interacting with the remains of something much bigger than yourself, however indirect.

"As a matter of fact..." Kaji replies evenly, refusing to further dignify her quick insights into things he could or could not see. Out from the pouch of his trousers he reveals a box of cigarettes, of which he gives a little shake. He could make an effort to throw up a mental wall or two, to detract from the sensation. But that would require straining, straining in the face of something whose breath felt like it could register on the energy magnitude scale.

"I don't give these away to just anyone. Or, anything, for that matter."

"Th'fuck's that supposed to mean? Am I being honored by your sacrifice or do I have to suck your dick now?"

She's mostly being facetious, it's been a long time since she traded sex for drugs. She has slightly too much dignity for that now that she's sober, but only slightly. She'd fuck him for fun, but not for nicotine. She tilts her head into the palm of her hand, eyes looking him up and down lazily for another moment, but then the force of her attention fades. She's taken him in, and she's no longer burning into him like a terrible searching star.

But she still holds out a hand, "Gimme."

Fork one over, and by the smokers' sacred code, she'll make sure he gets one back in his turn.

There were some uses to the disguise. His face, and the amused un-amusement on it, could be shrouded behind a thick hood, though Kaji doubts the inspired feeling could be totally concealed. And beneath the exasperation, the sensation of a sigh of relief. Apparently there was someone else who could be so... diplomatic... when occasion demanded the exact opposite. That's comforting. Almost.

"Maybe I'm speaking out of line, but you'd be surprised how far subtlety can get you," Acquiescing with only minimal reluctance, he steps closer to drop a lone stick in her open palm. Dive goes the hand to fish for his lighter, next. "I was going to ask you to tone it down a little, but you've beaten me to the punch."

Now that he's nearby, the impulse to toe the puddle of goo, test its properties, escalates proper. "You're not going to mention that?"

She snorts with derision. She has her own lighter, and it's out of her pocket and at her mouth immediately. She's a chain smoking monster, and every moment she goes without only makes her tenser, crankier. Having to play subtle and demure in these costumes kills her slowly every day until she's sloshing out of her boundaries and her brood has to clean her back up again, somehow getting her to hush and sleep and conform. They're lucky she loves them.

"I'm so fucking subtle," she mutters to herself. "The most subtle bitch you'll ever fucking meet."

She is not. She is a festering tangle of too much, at all times. A vortex of chaos and noise and suffering. Which everyone knows within in a few minutes of being in her presence. She could be tired and worn on the outside, but on the inside she is as she has always been: not quite sane, not quite human, all stuffed into this human body.

Her eyes follow his curiosity to her puddled goo. It's almost funny to her, she's been oozing that crap for two missions now, it's almost unremarkable except for everyone fucking remarking on it. Either the slime itself, or the craggy mountain of a scar in her chest it comes out of. It's almost more self-explanatory when you can see the seared shut wound in her chest, dripping green.

"It's mine," she shrugs. "I'm getting better at it."

"Ah - right."

And he was a paragon of fury and fever, something resembling the outline of her, of which he is quickly becoming adept in ignoring. By now Kaji is a practiced avoider of other people's minds, and the steaming refuse that tends to leak out of them. Some people could be read like an open book, sure, some people radiated their passions like a star, but there were limits. Limits the symbiote was geared to violate, against each one of his scruples.

He never liked when people aired their dirty laundry, especially when they couldn't help it. He's dedicated his life to the chase; the answers were afterthought, meaningful insofar as they benefited someone else. He gives a waning sigh, gingerly beaning down forward until he is sitting on his haunches, hovering over the puddle with interest.

"Does it have a name?" No questions as to her convenient lighter. Kaji suspends a meddling hand over the ooze, and then says to hell with it and dips a gloved finger in. "Better yet, a purpose? No offense meant, of course."

Her eyes narrow, watching him. That coiled sensation of being observed returns, crocodile eyes glimmering in slimy water. She's not so sure she likes his attitude, but has yet to decide if it's worth putting up a fuss about -- might be fun, to see if she could start a ruckus -- or just ignore it in the name of mooching more cigarettes.

Though, at his indelicate questions, a sarcastic, bitter smile crosses her lips, distracted from her cruel considerations of him to crueler considerations of herself.

"I couldn't figure it out at first either," she says. One of her fingertips stirs and one of her goo puddles forms a perfect little cyclone. She doesn't have to gesture to move them, she'd gotten rid of that habit quickly. It telegraphed her intentions too well, she knows better. "But I think I'm getting the idea. It's just medium, and I can make whatever I want, as long as I'm up to the task of managing it, in here."

Her finger stops swirling to tap her temple, and the goo continues to spin without her conductor's wand.

"And that's already something I knew how to do."

There's a woman here, face to face with him. There's a planet that bears her consciousness somewhere out in the dark of space, with its own indefinable medium for creation, its own process for production and decay, its own creatures come up out of the muck which will twist and turn at her beckoning... Her mind was already bigger than herself, long before the symbiote added her to its collection.

"So, it predates the symbiote."

He sounds so certain of it, even as her explanations could be just as easily interpreted to mean otherwise. While he could not see her eyes, the feeling of it held far too much calculation for her to be insane. Even then, shaking his hand free of the ooze so soon would probably be a bad idea, he decides, inwardly allowing himself a brief moment of appreciation for the demonstration and her execution speed. People tended to be exceptionally sensitive about their powers, here. Wouldn't want to accidentally strike a nerve.

But the crocodile-eyes-qualia and gelled-waste-insides returned, and he had reservations about that.

"Can it hurt?" He jokes, apparently reading something less-than-welcome about her. "Before you get any ideas, remember there's not much left where that came from. And I'm picky with who I choose as friends."

"The slime's replacing something I lost."

Calling it lost wasn't entirely correct. She is what she always has been. What has changed is the physical canal from this world to the world that is Annie. That world predates this body she wears, it predates every single member of their current crew. Time is a funny thing that way. Sometimes she is the wilting twenty-seven year old, and sometimes she is stony and ancient and never ending.

"And it hasn't hurt anybody yet, but I'll figure it out."

She's not a subtle creature. She's not made for sneaking and negotiations. She hits people, she hurts things. She's a front line soldier.

"Just looking out for myself, is all." And with that, he smears - not shakes - the ooze against the ground in one quick, fluid motion. So much for his experiment in respect and courtesy. "Wouldn't want to wake up with a hole in my glove, or worse."

It's not something you hear every day. It's interesting, not to mention hard to visualize, even abstractly, which explains the moment's confusion as he mentally tries the idea on for size. The idea of slime replacing something she'd lost. The idea of something lost that could be conceivably replaced by mere slime, magical properties or no.

It makes more sense if he were to assume she wasn't totally human, something resembling an Angel occupying a human sack container. But that's a bold assumption to cling to, all things considered. Then again, Kaji doesn't think any of them could qualify as fully human, not anymore.

"Ryohji Kaji." The brume that drifts off the end of her smoke reminds him that he, too, was an unrepentant addict, and like any good addict he could not abide someone smoking without him. Still kneeling, he pulls the box out again, quietly mourning the space that Annie's smoke had left.

She hadn't asked, and it makes an eyebrow go up, mirthless behind an exhale of smoke.

"Hurting each other is a stupid idea when we're all fuckin' tied together at the nuts," she observes dryly. Like that's all that's stopping her from doing it. It's not, she's a better person than that these days, with a better appreciation for the concept of allies, if not friends.

Although once upon a time she'd been a cruel junkie school girl who didn't give a fuck who she hurt, who stood back and watched others crack under the pressure and break down entirely. She'd even been known to give them a nudge. She'd once been fine with the idea of taking over the Earth on behalf of her alien headmistress.

That was before the world came crumbling down and her dreams filled with corpses and regret. Before she got sober and actually had to feel her emotions: her sorrow, anxiety, and her inhuman isolation from the lives others lived.

"What do you think about the brain bug, Ryohji Kaji?" Her tone is a drawl of disinterest.

Colorful. Kaji's recent dealings with loose-talkers suggested that they either wanted him to feel very friendly, or they wanted him to lower his guard for whatever reason. Only time and familiarity could tell for certain, but he is beginning to suspect this was just her nature, no puzzle or catch to it.

For whatever reason, people from other worlds tended to be an exceptionally strange and lively group. Or maybe, the Second Impact had made squares of his world, and this was the normal he used to associate with his childhood, bruises and all.

"Just Kaji suits me fine." Sparing a moment to direct a pointed look towards Annie and her equally-pointed failure to reciprocate the introduction, Kaji slowly draws himself up. Talk about a loaded question. What did he think? To say he hated the symbiote would be to understate his feelings to a disingenuous level. He doubts he could find a suitable adjective to describe exactly what he thinks about the symbiote. That's not even getting into the logical quandaries inherent in the question. How to ask his thoughts on something that was likely altering his thoughts as they speak?

"Did the brain bug ask you to say that?" That should summarize it. To her distinterest, Kaji offers his best un-passion, quiet aplomb. "Maybe the better question is, how long before it starts thinking for me."

Colorful is the best way to describe her. Language is more color and pattern than literal meaning to her, she slots words together based upon whether they actively clash or not, over their most literal meanings. It is, in its own way, just how she is. Although to say she had no desire to put people off balance would not be totally true, that motive was just secondary.

"Just Kaji, I'm just Annie," she knows he was waiting for it, and also knows there's no point in hiding who she is. He could pluck it right out of her head, if he were so inclined. That and anyone who knows her will match any description of her behavior with 'oh, you mean Annie' without a moment's hesitation. She smiles at him, sly and toothy.

"And that sounds pretty paranoid to me."

Edited (clarity) 2017-09-12 05:18 (UTC)

"There's nothing wrong with a little healthy paranoia, Annie."

He says it as though it were the most indubitable fact of the universe. He says her name as though he never needed to ask for it in the first place. (And technically, he didn't.) There were limits to one's paranoia, maybe, if one wasn't inclined to conceive of limits like open borders, cat flaps installed through a door.

"You wouldn't have asked if you didn't wonder it yourself, deep down." Huff, puff. Kaji brights, sounding for all the world as though he were commenting on the weather. It took a special kind of crazy person to accept involuntary brain surgery at face value. It took a special kind of crazy person not to shoot themselves in the face at the realization they've had drastic, life-changing surgery done while they unawares, captured at the hands of a vague, interplanetary combatant organization. The fact that he is still alive was testament to the symbiote's effectiveness, and is all the evidence he needs. "So you can save the accusations for someone else."

She tilts her head at him. What a shitty, presumptuous thing to say, defensive at the end there too. What's up this guy's dickhole? Just feeling sorry for himself and projecting it right back at her face?

"Don't put words in my mouth," she answers, mild. She was a special kind of crazy, the symbiote didn't frighten or disgust her so much as she just found it inconvenient. She was already enough of a science experiment fuck up freak show without it.

She stubs out her cigarette in the rocky earth.

"We got a common situation and I asked how you felt about it, pretty basic ass conversation," she gives him a look, unimpressed, eyebrows raised. "But don't worry, Kaji, I forgive you. You're not the only one in this 'host' who fuckin' sucks at basic ass conversation."

Her smile is empty, devoid of mirth or anger.

"You can say that again."

The hood conceals their expressions from each other, but Kaji doesn't need to see pure emptiness to feel it. And that's not something he needed the symbiote to do. That emptiness is familiar in a wonted, habitual sort of way: and that familiarity, to a woman like this no less, he dismisses promptly as an unwanted side effect of the symbiote. As she so clearly articulated, they were all tied together at the nuts. You can't help some impressions, but you can't trust them either.

For his part, Kaji remains remarkably self-contained over the current situation, dropping his gaze to watch somewhat forlornly as stray ropes of smoke dissipate from her (his) spent cigarette. What a waste.

"Nothing about this conversation counts as basic," This and that about demanding cigarettes, this and that about sucking dicks. No, he's certain he's not alone in that regard. "Not where I come from, at least."

"Nah," dismissive of the abnormality of it all. Functionally, not much of her life has changed at all. She should even be grateful, she had support and structure all over again: missions and lives at stake to keep her focused through the maelstrom of herself.

"I practically asked about the weather, but if it's a touchy subject for you, don't worry about. I get the gist, you're all bent out of shape over being conscripted into this shitty war and literally having your individuality infected, forcing you to hang out with cunt-suckers like me."

She rests her temple in her hand, still crouched lazily over the earth. The slime he had wiped off his hand regroups into a sphere, as do the others, wobbling there in place like weighted little children's toys.

"Yada, yada, the nature of yourself is brought into question, yada, yada."

He resists the urge to laugh and loses the battle with himself.

"More or less." Waiving any suggestion of offense aside, "I appreciate your tender understanding, but it's unnecessary. Wouldn't want you to strain yourself."

This is what he'd meant when he'd spoken to Queen Lakshmi about creeping normality. About the frog in the slow-to-boiling pot. He often spoke of serious matters flippantly, but there was a difference between insincere irreverence, which said nothing and revealed nothing, from sincere irreverence, which said nothing but revealed everything. If he were working undercover, assigned to investigate the symbiote, the Station, and its Hosts, he would be recording this conversation for documentation, and would have to put a premium on the recorded data, least his colleagues have him committed to an asylum.

Speaking of.

"How long have you been here?" See, he can perform regular human talk, too.

He can laugh, interesting, and the sound of it makes her dislike him somewhat less. Although dislike is a strong word, more like ambivalence, and she wasn't one to focus too hard on things she felt nothing for. She either felt nothing, or she felt everything, so painfully, and there was very very little in between. Void or chaos. Whatever alien thing she was beneath the layers of her humanity, she blended those things into some kind of sprawling, haphazard function. A juggling act between two extremes, both trying their best to drive her insane.

"I got to this dump like, I don't know, maybe a week late? You guys were packing up to hit the road when they brought me down here with Gildor and Shinji."

Keeping track of time is not her strong suit, it could be much less or much more than that.

Still, "I missed the first shuttle because I was passed out in the Nesting Deck, but I've been part of this fuck fest a couple missions now. Hoping this one doesn't turn into such a fucking shit show this time."

There's a hard, bitter note in her voice. People are taking this mission more seriously, she's glad for that, but she's still not convinced that everyone understands how tenuous their situation is, and always was.

There's a lot to unpack here. Several missions, most, if not all of them, devolving into catastrophes on the order of shitshows. That demonstrates structural inefficacy, with respect to the Station or the Hosts. Likely a fair mix of both. If isn't clear if her passing was related to past missions, and the miscarriage of successes they promised.

He latches onto neither. If she's surprised at his capacity to laugh, she'll be happy to know that his emotional gamit contains 'surprise', too.

"Shinji?" He doesn't bother with clarifying questions. Ikari Shinji, is who she means, of which there was only one, in all his unassuming and unpretentious glory. Kaji finds himself bristling not so much at the boy's name, but the boy's name coming out of this woman's mouth. Shinji's life was a neverending conga line of certain hell, fire and brimstone, but this was excessive, even by his standards.

He should of known. If only he hadn't been... Kaji finishes up smoke and drops it into the ground, snuffing it under his shoe promptly, and with too much terseness. "Are you two broodmates?"

"Fuck no," a sneer.

She cares too much about the brood she has to let it be infringed upon, let alone by the milquetoast. Her interaction with him is meager, she was standing there when he asked the Prince: If we... die out there. Are you the one who'll be held responsible? And Annie's eyes had almost rolled out of her head.

She had been so much more focused on getting back where she belonged.

"Nyx and Noctis are mine."

It is a statement of fiery, possessive surety that neither of those men would take even the slightest offense at her statement. They were denizens of her, creatures that had adapted to her poisonous atmosphere rather than try to escape her influence. They are what drive her in the face of chaos and void and madness: the knowledge that she wants to be here to love and protect them.

She doesn't care who Shinji's broodmates are, or Kaji's. It doesn't matter. All that matters is what's hers.

Deliverance has never felt so sweet, and has never been delivered so curtly. A better man would have attempted to curtail it, for fear of offending her sensibilities. Kaji doesn't bother. He exhales deep of a relieved sigh; it's loud, emphatic, and self-pleased.

"I sense some fondness, there." Fondness that doesn't exactly correspond to the impression he's gathered from his, admittedly brief, conversations with Noctis. He'd seemed like an amazingly composed man. He was regal and honest, almost to a fault for someone who enjoyed so much power back home. To borrow an old phrase, he seemed like the kind of man who called a spade a spade. The name Nyx doesn't register, and Kaji's seen his fair share of unlikely couples, but still... "But still, that's a strong word. Mine. Have you three agreed to that beforehand?"

"Not that it's any of your business."

It was, in its way, an annoyingly intimate question. She didn't like having those kinds of boundaries, she didn't like having things she wanted to keep secret and safe because there's no such thing. Even before the symbiote, she'd really had no such thing. The truth always came out, and everything sacred had a way of being tarnished. No wonder filth and fire are easier to her, to tarnish her own things so that she didn't have to tolerate hurt from anyone other than herself. Very obvious and unsurprising behavior to anyone who's ever hated themselves.

"Do I get to ask how deep you've sucked your broodmates dicks now?" an aggressive little tilt of her head, the sarcasm thick in her mouth. "Or is that too personal?"

Easy to be crude, but she'd easily sacrifice anything for her own. They'd let her into their heads without hesitation, quick to give and to take like they'd always known her, always loved her. It was no small thing after losing everything and everyone she loved to her own failings.

Far from offending, Kaji finds her response fascinating, the kind normally directed towards the young or the deliberately obtuse. Through the fabric, his eyes latch onto hers, unperturbed and unimpressed. He's past surprise. He's in a pure, pale place of curiosity untouched by her capers of emotional incoherence, her bait and switch.

"Too personal?" What she's doing, is setting a ball down a hill and blaming it for rolling. Dangling an iridescent ball in front a fish and blaming it for taking the bait. "So claiming your broodmates as 'yours' is your way of keeping things light, I guess."

The accusation is clear as crystal: You started it. She is free to deny or concede, though it wouldn't do much to change his initial impressions.

She usually does; start it, that is.

She has a big mouth from which a lot of thoughtless noise spills, and then she gets upset when people pry into what she so freely gave. She's clockwork like that: says too much, immediately twisting herself into defensive mode to protect her vulnerable girl heart. She only wishes she were as laissez-faire as she pretends to be. The facade was easier to maintain when she was a sloppy drugged up mess, dripping liquor as easily as she dripped her intimacies. Being sober, in her opinion, is a long string of self perpetuated disappointments.

Annie grits her teeth for a moment, focusing through her swathe of emotive disturbance.

"Pretty sure I get to decide what I find too personal or not," like this has anything to do with control; boundaries. "It's only our first date, Kaji, I dunno if I wanna tell you the nitty gritty about how my brood and I have made our fuckin' peace."

She stands up finally, stretching out her stressed knees, rolling her foot along the ball to loosen her ankles. Arms up over her head and leaning back to stretch out her spine.

"Unless you wanna go first, tits for tat, blah blah blah."

Chances of indulging her (lack of) curiosity continue to drop. His makes a slow, curling retreat. They are on the same page, despite appearances.

"Forget I ever asked." Among other things. "Which would eliminates the need for tit for tat, I hope."

What he's doing here, is communicating a truth many have yet to realize: some people are better off knowing less about each other. Knowing more about a person doesn't necessarily lead to understanding. Understanding doesn't necessarily lead to acceptance or friendship, nor does it increase likability. Kaji has already concluded that Annie is one such person with whom such maxims apply. There's no helping it. Some chemicals, perfectly safe when separate, become unpalatable when interacting.

"You can forget about the cigarette, too," She doesn't seem like someone who would go out of her way to recompense small acts of kindness, but there was no harm in making sure. His voice carries no accusation, it's as if he's had this conversation before. "You don't have to worry about returning the favor."

"I'd forgotten about it already."

An airy, thoughtless tone, but the pressure of her observance certainly would be hard not to notice. Eyes narrowed, contemplating how she feels about him sliding like an eel away from her aggressions. She doesn't get the sense that he's merely that easy going, that personable, so much as slippery. She dislikes it, the taste of his prevarications, thin and bitter in her mouth.

"It's been great, Kaji," bitter and thin in her mouth.

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[open] it'll stick to you

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