mental link | morning of day :039

[perroquet]

[ The ever present mental music that plays from the bard's end of the connection grows invasively louder sometime after breakfast, and it is rather anxious. The morning has been heavy enough already with packing getting underway, but this is due to something different. While the music in him is clear as ever, his thoughts stumble across the connection sloppily and desperately. ]

( I require a detective... I think. Oh dear, this is quite dire… )

[ He knows of several, but with the situation being as dire as he claims, well... he may need as much help as possible. All hands on deck. ]

( I believe someone has discovered that I am not Carbauschian, and... has poisoned me. )

[ The pauses between coherent thought are more than a bit dramatic, but he's being quite serious. ]

Comments

[iuno]

( Okay, but then why would they poison you? You would have just handed them the perfect opportunity to expose all of us and take us out of the whole political squabble. If they just kill you— ) [ his train of thought switches tracks and he pauses, reconsiders: ] ( Hm. Actually, that wouldn't be a bad plan. Kill one of us and call for an autopsy so they have evidence... )

[ ... and that's maybe not helpful to hear. this is why this part shouldn't be a detective's job; he gives people answers, not reassurance. ]

( Look, never mind — the point is, it doesn't sound like poison. Either you're just coming down with something, or someone did try to poison you and they didn't do it right. Happens all the time back in Hyperion. )

[redheadcarrier]

( Well, you're talking about being poisoned. How am I supposed to know? )

[incinerates]

[ +1 annoyed-but-too-tired-to-make-something-of-it: ] Hey, uh. Off-Broadway?

You're a dramatic moron, and you're fine.

[perroquet]

( I was hoping to reach someone with more expertise on the matter. )

[ The struggle when the healer needs healing, and reaching out to the entire Nest means includes teens who didn't ask for this drama. ]

[perroquet]

[ If he had the first clue as to what "off-broadway" means, you'd be in for a lecture boy. Instead he gets a rather deflated: ]

( What a cruel thing to say to someone in pain, Bakugo. Unbecoming of a hero. )

[perroquet]

( Pleasure. ) [ Automatic response. ] ( Gildor Helyanwë. ) [ A name to remember him by should he survive the morning. ]

( And if you're not a detective, then what do you do Mr. Bright? )

[perroquet]

[ If Gildor was expecting validation for his paranoia, he wasn't expecting it in the form of more, wilder paranoia. It actually makes the orchestra in his head fall quiet for a moment as he examines the back and forth theories Juno presents. ]

( ...are you certain you're detective and not an assassin? )

[whereabout]

( Bakugo and Seth both mentioned you. )

[ He's pretty sure the context of "you both play music so you'd probably get along" wasn't taking into account that his answer for the next question tends to be a big off-putter and all -

But being hooked into everyone's head via alien brainslug makes lying pretty pointless, so he's adopted a much more straightforward policy than he did back home. If people are going to decide they want nothing to do with him (which is, he expects, the sensible response that any normal person ought to have), then it's better to just get it over with and not waste their time. ]

( ...I used to be an assassin. )

[ Used to! He is not so big on the killing people thing these days.

Not that he thinks it makes him any less of a garbage excuse for a human being who can never atone for his sins, but look, he's not going to try and kill anybody here right now, for what that's worth? ]

[iuno]

( I'm a private eye from a city where crime is a career choice and "upward mobility" usually means killing your way up the ladder. )

[ there are impressions of Hyperion in Juno's mind, the shape of its absence in him a terrible gap like someone has torn it out of him — glaring neon lights and the long, dark shadows they cast; towering buildings that scrape the top of the dome encasing their picture-perfect snowglobe city and the alleyways in between. a place where only the richest will ever convince themselves that they're safe. ]

( Trust me, it's just experience. Attempted murder might as well be a Hyperion hello. )

[incinerates]

[ wow!! you're not his teacher!! ]

If the truth hurts worse than you're feeling, isn't that a good thing.

Don't we have someone able to give you, like, a patch job? It can't really be the end of the world, even if you are poisoned.

[aluminumandash]

[ When the anger comes he's there to meet it—to cling to it, find consolation in it, this evidence that at least one of their number can experience outrage that isn't collective. Know wrong for what it is. ]

( Yeah. ) [ He doesn't know in what sense the elf means it. Regardless: yeah. A precarious feeling, nerves and magnetic repulsion. Rust grimly reviewing his every brush with another mind, as though expecting bloody handprints.

Better. Yellow air, a book with a broken spine. Light writhing in front of his eyes. ] ( Doesn't mean she deserved this. ) [ The link between them goes abruptly slack. His next words are mechanical: ]

( Get some rest. )

[perroquet]

( Yes - I am a healer.

I've patched myself up best I can, but my spells can only delay poison. There are limits. )

[ So he's going to dramatically suffer for as long as possible, basically. Gildor has been within the Nest long enough to know how to keep pain from leaking across the connection and he's holding it back now for Bakugo's sake, but he's certainly not holding back the woe. ]

[perroquet]

( You're one to speak of rest. ) [ A reactionary thought that may have never been uttered if not for the connection. A snide whisper under the breath. Between that and all his other thoughts there's a tinge of regret, an unspoken apology that would just taste like more bile coming up.

Instead he tries to calm, to make their shared nausea ease. Meanwhile, rage sharpens to resolve. Whether it's all his isn't clear. The image of her still so profoundly imprinted in his mind, fixated. ]

( Find the knife and bring it to me. )

[aluminumandash]

[ That's more of a tonic than any apology could be; a reminder to focus. Leave his own shit out of this. ] ( Be sober when I do. )

[incinerates]

You don't think this has to do with how much you drank the other night?

[ it's been a few days but like

HE'S never been so drunk that he puked in the barracks before, so who knows how long it takes to work past a bad hangover on alien booze?? ]

[redheadcarrier]

( Yeah, sorry, I'm not really a doctor. I'm more into theoretical physics... )

[incinerates]

[ Distantly, he hears his name. Joshua - referring to him, in a conversation with someone Bakugo also knows, also has spoken to and... grown closer to ( ew, there's no way to say that without it sounding sappy as hell ). When his mind ghosts along -- crossed arms, feigned disinterest accompanying the sense of a constantly attentive mind -- it freezes.

Assassin, he hears. Used to be. At least he waits, that fraction of a second, before he makes himself known. ]

What made you stop?

[ The only reason the blurring of revulsion and distaste within him doesn't burst forth is because he's wrung out, and because he's had a row or two with Asuka -- child-pilot and killer -- long before this one came up. ]

[whereabout]

[ Ah. Well, if not for the fact that they've both been generally avoidant since they woke up, he figures this would've come up long ago anyway, because if anyone stops to take more than a passing glance at his mind, it's...pretty hard to miss the clues, really.

An ocean of blood, a crushing sense of guilt, underscored by a heavy weariness that he's never going to be anything more than a crime against existence. ]

( I failed a mission, five years ago. Worse than failed - I was seen. )

[ In a world where going undetected is everything, that made him a liability. A loose end, in need of tying up before anyone was able to track him back to Ouroboros. Only one thing happened to those who made that mistake. ]

( ...my target saved my life. His name was Cassius Bright. )

[ And, thus easily inferred, had clearly done far more than that, for Joshua to now be using the Bright name himself. ]

[incinerates]

[ Things like that aren't clue enough to draw a line between "hero" and "assassin", in the end. Bakugo's own inner eye focuses on a city skyline gone to ruins ( his fault; all his fault -- ), and hiding a deep, shameful guilt of his own. He's shed enough blood, seen blood shed in exchange. They're close because of a symbiote, but not close enough for him to be prying into Joshua's mind too much. ]

More than your life, it seems.

[ "Your soul", is definitely what he infers from that. He's loud, rude. Not a fool. ]

Don't go letting him down, then.

[whereabout]

( The only reason I'd go back to Ouroboros is to burn it to the ground. )

[ That, to him, would be worth getting his hands dirty - not out of any sense of revenge for what they did to him, though. Revenge wouldn't be worth it.

It's just about stopping them. Not that he'll have the chance now. ]

[incinerates]

[ A weighted pause. ]

That's not what I meant. Don't go back down that road, not for any reason.

That'd be an insult, to the one who saved you from that sort of life.

[whereabout]

[ And a pause on this end, too.

Because it makes sense, yes. He can absolutely get the reasoning of that, it's just that - ]

( And if it would stop anyone else from starting on that road? )

[incinerates]

There's always another way to protect someone.

[ This is both a matter of morality and creative, flexible thinking. His own mind is strict and hyperfocused, but he's been taught to approach a problem in multiple directions at once. Observing on the fly, adapting as he goes. ]

-- I'll make sure you don't have to kill to do it. You, and that other kid. [ Asuka. ]

1/2, brief skating past some triggery shit

[whereabout]

[ For a long moment, he's not sure what to think, let alone what to say. Not that he's exactly the expert on protecting people here, he'd be the first to admit - he didn't know how to protect the Brights beyond getting away from them before they got dragged into something, and that still didn't work because he should've realized that Estelle was just going to chase him down.

So, okay. Bakugo probably knows more about that particular topic.

Even so. Despite the many moral and philosophical things that Joshua's wholeheartedly rejected since he left Ouroboros (the practical skills, not so much), there's one very cold-blooded truth that he can't picture himself ever changing his mind on: some people are so evil, and cause so much suffering, that killing them is the only way to deal with them. Weissmann. The people who'd run the brothel where he found Renne (the sheer nerve of calling it Paradise, with what they put her through). Whichever Erebonian noble had been willing to order the rape and massacre of one of their own villages, for no better reason than giving them an excuse to declare war.

He'd trust nothing less than death to keep any of them from a repeat performance (and honestly, he's not sure Weissmann would stay dead even then).

So despite his own lack of expertise on the matter of protection - ]

( That's the most naive thing I've heard in weeks. )

2/2

[whereabout]

[ ...and yet. ]

( But I think I'd be glad to be proven wrong. )