fleetlogs | => PHERES: Abscond.

=> PHERES: Abscond.

=> PHERES: Abscond.

=> FLEETBOUND POST. [refiningSpacetime - FIN]
=> MARDUK: Call your guide. [FIN]
=> RICCIN: Retrieve the damsel in distress. [FIN]
=> HINNOM: Lead him home. [FIN]
=> FLEETBOUND POST. [activatingAggro- FIN]
=> SIPARA: Fetch your dumb moirail. [FIN]
=> PHERES: Wake up. [FIN]

SUMMARY: Taking drinks from strangers is generally a bad idea. Pheres needs to be picked up from a party, but life is hard when your moirail is out of town and all of your friends are terrible. Luckily, there's always Fleetbound!

WARNINGS: None! Except for Pheres being thoroughly depressing in Lead him home.

THIS HAS BEEN FINALLY EDITED. For like the third time. Due to POV-switching shenanigans, you may occasionally encounter weird shifts / incorrect verb pluralisation at points that I missed in switching from 3rd person to 2nd person POV. Sorry! :c

For the most part, though, typoes should be fixed and continuity is now more accurate!

ALSO: Follow the story through the links above to ensure you're reading the correct, edited threads, please and thank youu

Threaded | Top-Level Comments Only

Castor isn't responding, and Hinnom's starting to worry. Pheres was able to jump both of them, but they're flesh. What if he left Castor?

Ze isn't even sure how far the leash stretches. What if it broke? What if --

The leash tugs back. Castor's too far to hear, too far to see, but he tugged back, and Hinnom can sense the direction. Up.

Oh! He's at the hive already.

The walls are stone, and damp with residue. Somewhere off in the distance, Pheres can hear the sound of water roaring, but it's hard to tell exactly where it's coming from: every surface, save the walkway he is on, is rounded.

He feels like he's walking through some vast, stone creature's intestine. Pheres suspects he's walking in a fucking sewer, but no, no, he's not going to think about that. Sewers are a vestige of disease, and misfortune, and feral trolls who'll slit your throat and wear your skin.

(Don't think about that. He didn't survive drones just to get eaten by some frothing lunatic.)

"Hinnom," he calls out again, rounding the corner, and the sound of his voice echoing back sets his teeth on edge. Everything here is setting off that reaction, to be honest. What he'd thought were lights from above are actually just lightgrubs nestled into the high dome of the ceiling, their flourescent bodies flickering as they feed on whatever is up there.

Algae? Mold?

How fucking far underground are they?

Now that ze's noticed it, Hinnom can feel the gentle tug of the leash even as ze turns away. Ze's still got to go retrieve Pheres, and then they'll go.

How they'll avoid the dead, without Castor there to guide them - and why Castor isn't there, with them - ze's not sure. But they'll figure it out. Pheres got them here, right?

Backstepping is easy as anything. Hinnom knows the sewers like the back of zir hand, and it's not like ze went far: into a wall-niche, across the bridge and down the hall. Not even a five minute walk!

So ze're a little baffled to find Pheres has followed them.

He's walking across the bridge, his hands braced on the railing and his body curled up like he's about to drop down and die. Maybe he is! There's bile all over his face, but there's maroon, too, dripping from his snout and all the way down his shirt front.

It's blood. There's blood on his face and his shirt, and his eyes are white as the dead roaming the sewers around them, and everything in Hinnom's pan screams that being seen by him is a terribad idea.

Ze never did make sure he wasn't dead, did they? Zir lusus can't see anything more than light, but she knows there's only one source of light that bright down in the sewers, and she's chittering her mouthpiece together in a quiet demand.

Hinnom can't refuse it. Ze backs up, quiet as a mouse, and presses zimself tight against the stone wall, until ze's squashed flat up against a pipe.

Maybe he'll look less scary when he's closer. But just in case, they yank the leash again: not a request, like the previous times, but a demand that Castor get down here.

(Ze should've kept more ghosts leashed, and not just him. Stupid. So stupid.)

Where is he?

Dying down here is starting to look like an actual possibility. His snout won't stop drizzling blood, and walking is starting to get difficult: the fear of being lost here drove him at first, but exhaustion is starting to set in past that.

He keeps a tight grip on the rail. If he's going to collapse, it won't be in the river he's sure must be running far below. It's flat determination that carries him to the end of the walkway, and back to the safety of the concrete.

He's one foot off of the walkway when the room lurches as his walking struts decide to fold under him. Pheres hits the concrete knees first, his palms only just managing to hit the ground before his face does. It takes all of his concentration to stay like that, face inches above the ground: it should be so easy to just push back up and keep walking, but he can't muster the energy.

From here, he can't see anything but the rough texture of the stone under his palm, and the steady drip of blood from his snout as each rosewood drop hits the ground and splatters.

Pheres makes it as far as the end of the walkway before he staggers, and falls. The room is silent save for the rushing of the river and the sound of his ragged breathes, high and desperate in the empty air.

Hinnom's pityglands are working overtime now, and there's an unfamiliar crawling feeling deep in their gut as they listen to Pheres gasp, but breathing doesn't mean anything: even Castor does it, when he's not thinking. Habit is a hard thing to break, even after you're dead.

It's horrible to listen to, though!

Maybe instead of waiting for Castor, they'll just... go?

Here's the thing about ghosts:

They can move as quickly as a thought, in theory. There's no flesh weighing them down, no breath to make them slow, and while it takes them awhile to forget the rules and just do it, older ghosts can pour through physical matter like walls and dirt and stone like water through a crack.

In reality, most ghosts simply can't. There's no gizzards left to stop them, but they remember there should be, and forgetting is an art that takes practice. Even Castor drags his feet, sometimes, when he's feeling especially corporeal, and on days like that, Hinnom has to dawdle, zir steps until they match a blueblood's heavy stride.

Perhaps the fear has made him remember he's dead, though. The walk from the hive to the sewers is a fifteen minute walk, but it only must be five minutes before the room lights with Castor's familiar off-blue as he slips and slides down through the ceiling, heels first.

He's barely corporeal: somewhere between an imprint and a real troll, his features worn away to the impression of eyes, a nasal hole, the gaping mouth. But ze can't doubt it's Castor, not when the leash is tied around his waist so firmly, the doubled strand of zir maroon psionic aura stretching from him to zim.

And ze'd recognise Castor's voice anywhere.

"Putain - enfin fini!" he growls. "Vous disparutes! Et j'retourne chez moi, et -" He flings up his hands. "Vous absentâtes! Que? Tu es un gosse à la con: à cause de ça, vous devez être prudent, tu dois rester près de moi!"

Even when he goes off on his crazy gibberish.

"I don't understand you," ze snaps, keeping zir voice low. Ze knows a few words, enough pidgin to keep track when Castor goes off in one of his fits - but not when he's spitting words like acid, one after another until the pronunciation is slurred. "J.. j'ne parle! Shhh."

It'd be so much easier if ze didn't have to speak aloud.

"Merde," he snaps. "Vous parlez français, pourquoi tu mens?

"Shhh!"

"Que? Qu’est-ce qu’il y a -- ahh."

Castor follows zir gaze to Pheres: at the sound of zir piping voice, he's started to stir, and pressing zimself flat against the pipe, Hinnom tries not to breathe.

Edited 2014-12-05 17:25 (UTC)

Each passing moment leaves Pheres more and more tired. He thought that if he stayed still long enough, perhaps the world would stop spinning: but it hasn't, and worse yet, there's just black draping the edges of his vision, the familiar precursor of a collapse.

There's a reason he doesn't use his psionics for recreation. Even the effects of small jumps are annoying: a nosebleed and the resulting nausea are easily managed, but they're only worth it if it saves him a long walk with heavy books, or if they keep a customer from culling him.

Big jumps like this.. well. He was lucky he was awake when he landed. He's lucky he's awake right now, because the ringing in his pan and the darkness crowding his vision are hinting it won't be the cause for long.

Fuck.

There's a sound nearby, and Pheres can't tell the source. It might be the river, it might be voices.. or it might be the feet of some hideous sewer-beast, come to eat him alive.

Or it might be Hinnom. They have to be around here somewhere, don't they?

"Over here," he rasps, dragging his head up to peer into the gloom. The light off of his psionics is more a hindrance than it is a help: it illuminates a few feet ahead of him, like a cone, and the light only makes the gloom of the room seem deeper.

He can't see what made the noise. If it's something come to kill him, well.. fine. He'd prefer to die when he was still awake.

"Hinnom?"

Edited 2014-12-05 17:50 (UTC)

Castor stares.

The way that Pheres's eyes are lit up was less noticeable up above, where the light of the day and the glare of the sun had washed it out to the point of near invisibility. Down here, with only the dimmergrubs high above, it's glaring. He looks like a ghoul.

He sounds like one, too.

"He's not dead," Castor says, slowly, like he's questioning it. He's lapsed back into standard, thank fuck. "So..."

Hinnom waits. Sometimes it takes him a moment to think up a plan. But he always comes up with good ones.

"We have to take him back to the hive."

He usually comes up with good ones. Ze shakes zir head furiously, and hisses, as low as they can: "No!"

"If he's not dead already," ze continues, all in a rush, "then he's gonna die, and then he'll turn, and it'll be awful, 'cause not like shit we can do 'gainst a revenant --"

"My god. You're a little angel." Hinnom doesn't know jack about religion, though Castor's tried to teach them, but ze knows that isn't a compliment just by the way he says it. "He saved you from the drones. We can't just leave him to die."

Ze doesn't see why not. Their mom clacks her mandibles, unsure: she can't see Castor, ze doesn't think, but she really doesn't like when they argue, so ze zips it.

(And.. okay, because he does have a point. When someone does something for you, you gotta pay it back: good or bad, that's just a rule!)

(No one ever said it had to be a good pay-back. Leaving someone to be eaten by ghouls is still a reward, 'cause they're more likely to end up as a ghost that way, instead of just fading. But. It's a pretty shitty one.)

When ze doesn't say anything else, just huffs, Castor takes it as agreement, and pulls himself together. As he spoke, he materialised more: rattlereeds and a speechwaddle for sound and lips to form them, but now he forces the rest, until he's less of a blur and more of a person, with clothes and horn-stubs and a body all between them.

And, wrapping zir telekinesis around him like a shroud, he approaches Pheres.

Edited 2014-12-05 18:12 (UTC)

That's it, he's decided: he's going to die down here. The thought should be more depressing, but when he turns it over in his head, there's only a sense of grudging acceptance.

This is what he deserves, probably.

Pheres lives like all the feeds say that redbloods should: he keeps himself in his cart, with his books and his taxidermy, and he works. When he deals with others, he's well-dressed, docile, and helpful to the higher castes: in short, he's respectable.

In short, he acts as he ought to, and for the most part, it works out. When things go wrong - when a customer tries to cull him, or a deal goes badly - well, it's because he slipped, made a comment he shouldn't have. Wore the wrong clothes. When he behaves properly, it works.

It doesn't earn him much respect, no matter how polite he is. It doesn't get him many friends. But he's never died, and it's only when he decides to go out, live a little, and act like everyone else - immoral, disrespectful, churlish - that he ever seems to come close.

(Even now, he knows that's not precisely right. Most of the time, he's gone out and come hive the next evening or by midnight at the latest: embarrassed, maybe, but perfectly fine.)

(But he's bleeding on a sewer floor, in the one place that his moirail would never think to look to retrieve him, and that means he's going to die here alone, where his body will be eaten by squeakbeasts and grubs. Right now, the gloomy thoughts feel right, and that's all that matters.)

He gives up on staying upright, and curls up on the ground, his horn scraping against the concrete. His eyes are so heavy, and all he wants to do is sleep, and Hinnom is gone, and he can't walk any further.

So he closes them, and he lets the darkness settle in.

Edited 2014-12-05 18:32 (UTC)

Pheres has curled into a ball, like a grub ready to die. By the time Castor gets to him, his breathing has slowed, but he's not dead. Just asleep, on the concrete floor splattered with his fluids.

Ze tries not to gag as Castor bends down next to him and picks him up, careful as he sometimes carries Hinnom. Ze can feel the rasp and slide of Pheres's weight against his telekinesis as Castor returns, but thankfully, not too well: it's Castor controlling it with the ease of sweeps of practice, and the sensation is like touching bone through flesh.

"You'll have to play look-out today," Castor warns zim. "But we won't go deep, just to the pipe."

Hinnom bobs their head in a nod, but they can't help the dubious look they shoot towards Pheres's horns. He might be able to fit, even with his dumbo shoulders, but his rack is kinda huge.

Oh, well. If they won't fit, Castor can always snap one off.

Edited 2014-12-05 18:40 (UTC)

In the end, Pheres gets to keep his horns. Going up the pipe takes the velvet off the sides of his bottom set, leaving maroon streaks on the metal behind, but Hinnom goes up first, and between zir pulling and Castor's pushing, they manage to get him into the hive proper.

Hinnom's hive is the old catacomb where they first found Castor, back when ze'd been nameless and small and fresh from the caverns. They'd thought it safe, because his presence had kept away ghost and the walking dead alike, and ze'd never expected to find the source.

His presence still keeps the dead away, and sweeps and sweeps of work have replaced doors, set locks, and made it thoroughly impenetrable to the living, as well. The walls are padded with fabric, and anything and everything ze's salvaged from the catacombs over the years: a few things from the culling pits, where the bodies used to be dumped and burned, but mostly gifts left behind for the ghosts in the sweeps after.

Recently, ze's set up a ruperacoon that Castor found above-ground, and helped zim haul down. Hinnom doesn't like to use it, after sweeps of sleeping dry, but the slime helps when ze's injured or sick, and so it only makes sense to dump Pheres in.

Ze curls up around the outside. Castor's use of zir telekinesis always makes zim tired, and now that ze's in the safety of zir hive, it's turned into outright exhaustion.

"Gonna sleep," Hinnom tells Castor, and ze doesn't even have to ask: he drapes them with one of the shrouds off of the wall, a nice, thick one they stole from a seadweller's bonerest, and that tiny use of telekinesis uses what feels like zir last drop of energy.

Ze sleeps.

> PHERES: WAKE UP.

Edited 2015-03-31 01:43 (UTC)

Smell comes back before zir vision does.

-> 11:00PM, SATURDAY
Pheres is drunk and gets on Fleetbound. [POST 1]

-> 2:00PM, SATURDAY
Riccin comes to retrieve Pheres.

-> 3:00PM, SATURDAY
Riccin and Pheres leave the hivestem and are intercepted by Hinnom and Marduk. They argue for ~20 minutes before agreeing to go as a group, and Hinnom and Pheres abscond the scene by 3:30PM.

->3:40PM, SATURDAY
Hinnom and Pheres end up in the sewers, and Hinnom and Castor haul him back to their hive, where both of them promptly go to sleep.

->5:00PM, SATURDAY
Sipara starts the six hour drive back to Capitol City.

->12:00AM, SUNDAY
Sipara arrives in Capitol City, and after tracking down Pheres's mobile hive and finding it unoccupied, posts on FB.

->1:00AM, SUNDAY
Sipara and Marduk head into the sewers to travel to Hinnom's house. [THREAD]

->1:00AM, SUNDAY
After nine hours of sleep, Pheres wakes up in Hinnom's hive, the pill out of his system and completely confused as to wtf happened.

->2:00AM, SUNDAY
The two threads intersect! Sipara and Marduk finally come across Hinnom's hive, sleep-deprived and harried by the zombies. THIS HELLISHLY LONG POST FINALLY WRAPS UP. \o/

Edited 2014-12-08 15:53 (UTC)

Whoa, wait, fuck, that sounds weird. REPHRASE.

=> SIPARA: Find your stupid moirail.
That's more like it.

Edited 2014-12-07 01:49 (UTC)

It's the slime tickling at your nose that finally does it.

You always sleep dry. It's easier to just take a sopor pill and slip onto your couch for the day than face the hassle of getting inside your old, outdated recuperacoon. It's smarter, too! When you sleep in a 'coon, you have to wash the sopor off your skin afterwards, and when you're in a van, sometimes miles from the nearest source of water and with only a ten gallon tank to your name..

Well. Peeling sopor skim off of your skin takes entirely too much time, dry.

The only time you use your recuperacoon is when you're ill, and right now, you feel perfectly fine. Maybe your mouth is a little dry from too much sopor, but your pan is clear, and you feel like you've had an entire days worth of sleep.

The only other time is when you're in someone else's 'coon, and the only time that happens is when --

You weren't that drunk, yesterday. Were you?

You're relieved to find you're alone in the recuperacoon when you open your eyes, but the room around you is dim and unfamiliar. Everything is stone: the short ceiling above you, only ten or eight feet, the walls around you, and when you lean forward and peek - yes, even the floors underneath. Worse yet, it's all damp, the light of your eyes catching on the shiny streaks of what you hope is water residue on every surface.

When you move to climb out, you relaise you're damp, and sticky. Whoever dumped you into the recuperacoon didn't strip you, and the temporary relief that inspires is overset by the surge of disgust as you try to move, and the clothing clings like a shroud to your skin in response.

Your shirt is green. Your pants are green, and not even a good shade: it's the same neon green as the sopor, just diluted. There's guides online for removing food, and dirt, and blood from fabric, but you've never seen one on removing sopor. How are you even going to get that out?

Still, you remind yourself, peeling carefully out of the cocoon, it's better than the alternative. There's only been one or two times that you've overestimated your metabolism, and drank enough that even your psionics couldn't compensate. Waking up in some strangers hive, undressed and sore and with no idea where you were - you haven't done that since you were seven, but you still remember how terrifyingly unpleasant the entire experience was.

You're in a strange hive, certainly, but you're dressed, and you feel fine. When you take a careful step, stretching out your legs, there's no worrisome aches or pains, and the tension in your thoracic cage unwinds. Maybe you did over-drink, but there's obviously nothing sinister going on here: you just made a new friend. Probably.

Right?

Edited 2014-12-07 12:29 (UTC)

Man, you are so fucking tired.

Staying up all day isn't new shit to you. Kids don't want surgeries during the night: lately, it seems like whenever you're trying to excise a lightshow gland or picking up a corpse, they always want to creep in during the middle of the day, like that makes their shit less suspicious.

And how many times has Boopis gotten pissed with you, and set up matches back to back on opposite coasts? She likes to give you just enough time to leave the ring and get on the road, so by the time you arrive, daystruck and exhausted, it's time to get right back in the ring.

(It's a good thing she's a great lay, or she'd be so fired. Fucking teals, man.)

But just because you're used to it doesn't make sleep deprivation any easier. You're yawning and scrubbing at your eyes as you pull up to the sidewalk, a foot tapping impatiently on the pedals. People are looking at you, and you resist the urge to flip them the bird.

You're a rust in highblood territory, right now. You're not going to give them a reason to pull out the rope.

Capitol City hasn't been the Empire's capitol since adults left the planet, and for the most part, it's a decent place to hang out. The outskirts are all new builds, formed by carpenter drones and industrious kids over the last few centuries, and they're mostly lowbloods. The scene can be kind of wild, but it's fun, and it's safe: stick to the suburbs and you can walk for miles without encountering a single shade above saffron.

Unfortunately, that's just the outskirts. The city proper is still built the same as it was back when the Empress lived here, all canals and high streets and buildings that stretch as high as the eye can go, and this is where all the highbloods live. Kids, mostly, but once you get into the core..

Well. Not all the adults were banned from Alternia.

The amount you know about the Imperial Education Programs could fill a shotglass. You're a rustblood, and you're not a psionic: trying to even sign up for one of their entrance exams would just mean the ink they'd use would be red. They've got a helmsman division that you know Pheres's been eyeing, where they install wetware and shit early so the kids are all revved up and ready come conscription, and you know that the entire thing is run by elderly finfaces - but that's about it.

There's never been a reason to learn anything about it, and you've always had more important shit to focus on. You're not regretting it, precisely, as you idle here on your motorbike, and avoid eye contact with the curious bluebloods.. but you kind of wish you knew more. There's a set of tall, white hivestem clusters off in the distance, separated from you by a gate, and the sign on it says LEGISLACERATOR DIVISION, #8.

Hopefully this is the spot Marduk meant, because - welp. You're not about to go in there to retrieve her.

Edited 2014-12-07 12:49 (UTC)

"You're doing what?"

Sappho is not sympathetic to your plight. You don't even know why you told her.

(Because she asked, and you thought maybe it was a sort of starter, an invitation for the two of you to become hate-friends. You've lived together for six perigees, after all. It'd be about time.)

"This is absurd, even by your ususal standards," she says, propping herself up on the lip of her coon. Her hair is dripping sopor all over the side, and her face is streaked with green. Sappho takes a special pride in the fact she can sleep submerged. "When I said you need to stop being such a drab little wallflower, I didn't mean you should go trouncing through the sewers."

Some students have quadrants outside of the academy, where Proctor Sungazer can't enforce the three caste rule. But you're hlad of the fact that both you and Sappho are students, because you don't have to fret about any coloured undertones with her. You can just take the easy contempt at face value.

Lucky you.

"Catacombs," you correct her quietly, finishing your make-up. Cosmetic facepaint like this is highblood frippery, but you like the way the undereye concealer hides the black smudges under your eyes. With the rest of your paint on, it doesn't look like you've spent the day guarding your phone and vomitting from anxiety. You just look tired.

"Whatever. Who are you even meeting?" Her neckfrills lift, and she glubs out a wet pop of a laugh. Your lusus perks a scaled ear, but otherwise, he pays her no mind: he's used to looking the other way with highbloods. "Have you finally catch yourself some fronds?"

She keeps up her commentary while you get dressed in your shabbiest clothes, the ones that you won't mind getting ruined, and then when you leave the room, she follows, throwing on her robe as an afterthought. You want to tell her to go away, but she's indigo: the only thing you can do is try to control the spikes of anxiety brewing in your digestion sack, and hope that she gets bored.

She's still trailing you when you reach the gate, and spot Sipara idling at the other side. The light is too dim for you to see well outside of the grub-lit halls of the academy, and you're mostly being led by your leached lusus, but even in the gloom, it's impossible to mistake the red and white streaked figure amongst the purple and blue crowds.

"Oh, no," Sappho says, delighted, and you can't help the way you tuck your chin in as you open up the gate.

Edited 2014-12-07 14:39 (UTC)

People are looking at you, and you count the fucking seconds until Marduk appears.

The little comments are easy enough to ignore, and you can deal with the looks, although it makes you want to put your thumb through someone's eye. But the boredom is what's getting to you, more than anything else. You've been over in this side of town before, running the occasional pick-up for one of your moirail's bullshit orders. So long as people assume you're someone's pick-up, shit's fine: it's when you start acting like you're here for anything other than business by breaking out your phone or fucking with your bike that the highbloods get shitty.

Case in point. You're not even doing shit, but there's a finhead peering at you, her painted lips pulled into a careful frown. Judging by the set of her horns, you'll give it twenty, thirty seconds before she flounces over to see why the hell you're idling here.

Maybe you'll just tell her to fuck off. You're still amped up from dealing with OA and PC's bullshit, and right now, the idea of getting to sink your claws in someone's throat sounds great.

But you know the fight wouldn't go like that: bubbleblowers don't believe in playing fair, and bluebloods are always willing to play family when it comes to beating down the lower castes. You'd get culled, painfully and publicly, and the thought makes you force a thin, toothless smile at the seadweller until she looks away.

Thank god that Marduk appears at that point, because you feel like you're about to start biting yourself, in lieu of shit else to do.

She's being led by her lusus, all set up on a little leash-rig, and.. for some reason, there's a lanky-ass seadweller tailing her, a fuzzy black robe trailing her like a cape. She's got to be one of those in-betweenies: girl looks purple as a churchmouse, all legs and frizzy curls, but those are definite fronds on her neck. Shame: she'd be almost cute, for a blueblood.

"Sup, kid," you call out. You're glad you cleared out the sidecar: Marduk's barely seven, but she's not exactly tiny, and neither is her lusus. Even empty, it might make for a tight fit. "You ready?"

Edited 2014-12-07 18:21 (UTC)

Sappho is laughing: real brays of amusement, not the whistle-pop of her glubbed pastiches. "Oh my glubbing cod. I mean, I knew you were slumming, but.. with a redblood?"

You ignore her, stepping forward: Sipara's asking if you're ready, and you give a brisk nod, easier than chancing any irritation in your voice right now. Your roommate is an incorrigible irritation, but it's not your place to respond to it.

But ignoring her evidently isn't an option, either, because she claps a hand on your shoulder, her grip feather-light like she never even thinks you would shrug her off.

You'd like to say you considered it, but sweeps spent in the Academy have taught you that only one response is allowed. You freeze, your lusus stopping mid-step beside you, and she laughs.

"You minnow, I thought you were crazy, but now I get it."

"Um."

"Warmbloods are fun," she says appreciatively, showing her teeth. "You know what they say about a red sky at night?"

Sappho never seemed the sort to like lowbloods: certainly, she doesn't like you. You squint at her, but it's too dark to really see her expression, or much beside the amused press of her eyes and the sharp, white daggers of her teeth. "No? Well, you'll learn."

"I'll cover for you," she adds, "if get me her number."

You're. not entirely sure what just happened. "Okay," you say carefully. Agreeing is usually the best route. "Well. Goodbye."

Sappho is laughing as you open the gate, walk over to the bike, and climb into the sidecar. Your lusus hops in after you, doing a quick spin and then settling in your lap with ease.

"I'm ready," you tell Sipara. Your roommate is still watching you, a blur of pale gray against the muddy backdrop of your home. "Oh - and, um, Sappho wanted me to let you know that she said hello."

Edited 2014-12-07 19:24 (UTC)

You underestimated your sidecar: Marduk fits in there neat as a hivecell, with room enough for her knees and her lusus to sit nice and comfy. Or maybe you just overestimated Marduk's size. You forget that she's a tiny fucker, barely bigger than Pheres.

Olives tend to be bigger.. or, at least the ones that you've fought. Maybe she's a perfectly normal size for jades, though. Who the fuck knows? There's only like, what, a hundred of 'em.

Sappho must be the leggy seadweller in the robe. She gives a wave when you look at her, flashing fangs that look sharp enough to shred stone. You grin back.

"Haha, really? Sweet. Give her my number." That's the only good thing about being nookdeep in highblood territory: most of them prefer the hassle of floatation devices in the canals over paying a psirunner, and so the roads are mostly clear when you pull off.

Something about the off-hand comment hits you, though, and you wrinkle your nose, resisting the urge to bluh. "Wait, fuck. You're seven. Is she seven?"

"'cause if so, don't give her my number, gross. I don't fuck pupas."

Edited 2014-12-07 19:32 (UTC)

"She's almost eight," you say, dubious. The specifics of Sappho's hatchdate is one of the many details you are unclear on, like her symbolhight, or her precise height, or if her gills are functional in liquid less oxygenated than sopor. "I think."

"I don't see why you'd care, though. Seven is hardly a pupa, and several of my compatriots have already contributed pails for older quadrantmates," you say primly. Some people are embarrassed about this sort of thing, but you're too old for that: drone season is just a fact of life. "You're eight and a half, aren't you? That's only seventeen perigees in difference."

Edited 2014-12-07 19:46 (UTC)

Almost eight.. hm. Is that close enough?

No, no, it is not, you decide, as Marduk takes hold of the conversation and steers it in a frankly alarming direction. Thank god for the fact she's about as subtle as a boulder, and Pheres is missing, or you'd chuck her to the side of the road and take your chances.

Lowbloods age early: your eyes were filled in at six, and you've seen maroons flashing red early as five before. Seven and eight isn't that bad, when you're both warmbloods. But with olives, it starts slowing down. Marduk's seven, but she looks like she could still be six: she's built like a baby cholerbear, all pupafat and eyes that're only just now starting to darken with colour.

Highbloods take literally forever. Raphae's an indigo, and pupation hit him hard: he looks like he's twelve now, but you were there a sweep ago, when his eyes were still pale and his cheeks round. The idea of someone pailing him at seven..

You gag.

"Fuck you and fuck this goddamn conversation," you snap. "'cause this is gross and I'm like, two seconds from spewing my fast all over you, and this night's been shitty enough without having to add time for scrubbing acid off my paint, too."

"Where the hell is this sewer at, anyway?" You've been driving along, letting the road carry you, but the canal's ten feet ahead and you haven't seen a sewer drain yet.

Sipara is so dramatic. Your lusus rumbles from your lap, unhappy with her tone, and you scratch his head, claws rasping at the softer scales behind his ear.

"Turn left," you tell her. "And then go straight for another three blocks, and we'll go in there. I'm afraid it'll be around an hour's walk before we reach the catacombs.. but it's a short trip from there."

"I brought some supplies, in my sylladex.. but did you bring the antifungals?"

Bennue's been real pissy ever since you cut it: used to be that he could hide his entire body in your curls, but now he just tucks himself in the space between your horn and your ear and sulks. When he hears the rumble, though, he sticks his beak out and hisses back.

"Yeah, 'course," you say idly, turning the corner, "and I've brought something even better. Pops here is gonna be our torch. Shits hands-free."

There's no one on the street, so you gun it, and you let the bike skid to a shrieking halt when you reach the sewer grate. The way the curtains rustle all around you makes it well worth it, even if you can't see anyone through the pitch-black windows. Stupid bubbleblowers; hope you woke them all up.

You park the bike on the side of the road, pull out the antifungal case from your pocket, and swallow two pills dry. It won't do much if something maims you, but it'll keep the spores from settling in your lungs, at least. "Here," you say, climbing off of the bike, and toss it at Marduk's head.

Your lusus is unhappy, and by the time the bike comes screaming to a stop, so are you. The little xiezhi hops out of the sidecar as soon as he can, and then waits pointedly as you fumble with the door.

The pill bottle hits your horn and the pain draws an involuntary hiss out. "Thank you," you say through clenched teeth, taking the bottle. You remove a waterbottle from your sylladex, take two pills, and then place both back into your inventory, filing them back under Food & Drink. It'll be easy to find.

That done, you head over to the sewer grate. It's a swampy slot of gray in the black of the street, easy to see, but you fumble for a moment before finding the handle.

It's far too heavy for you to lift.

"Maybe if you take the other side..?"

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=> PHERES: Abscond.

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[pheres is drunk and sad and full of issues] [but he's still got energy to judge] [:(]

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=> THREAD SHIFT

=> OOC TIMELINE REFERENCE

=> SIPARA: PICK UP THE KID.

=> PHERES: Wake up.

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