fleetlogs | => PHERES: Abscond.

It's a culling sweep.

Well. Now he's wide awake.

Andrenaline is cutting through the fog of his brain like a knife through a page: one minute, he's still foggy-minded, and the next, his thoughts feel like they're crystal clear and entirely too sharp in their clarity. His bloodpusher feels like it's going to climb out of his throat, and he abandons Marduk in favor of following Hinnom.

The air stinks of fear pheromones, and part of it's coming from him. He's never been in a culling sweep before, and he's not about to start now. He and Sipara have worked too hard to keep him alive to get culled by a bloody drone, of all things - lobotomised soldiers, barely sentient, barely trolls. Better to have been culled by a person than to die like that.

"You two can participate, then," he snaps. "I'm not. Goodbye!"

Edited 2014-12-03 18:34 (UTC)

Oh, fuck that. After they just went through all this bullshit to fetch him, Riccin's not about to let Pheres take off with some kid with a drone phobia.

They stalk forward until they're close enough to grab him, and then they do, one hand wrapping around the top of a horn. thank fuck for gloves, because they can feel the heat of the cuff even through the leather.

"Stop being such a chicken shit," they order. "The fuck you think they're going to do, they see your candy-ass trying to hide out a sweep?"

He's not a blood mutant: his cheeks are ruddy enough, it's clear he's maroon. And his clothes under the sun cloak aren't hiding anything, so there's nothing for him to worry about.

The yellowblood is another story, but Riccin doesn't care about the pipsqueak. They can be Marduk's problem.

Hinnom started moving as soon as Pheres was free, and so he's hurrying after the wriggler when his world goes abruptly off-balance. There's a hand on his horn. There's a hand on his fucking horn.

He hisses at Riccin, showing his teeth, and jerks his head, hard. "Get off of me," he demands, and then again: "Right now!"

He doesn't have the weight to out and out wrest free. But he does have one thing on his side, and that's agitation. Drowsing had reduced the sparks to essentially glitter on the base of his horns, shiny but harmless, but the abrupt spike of aggression starts them up again, and he forces them stronger, pushing at his aura until his head is ringing and the air is crackling.

He can't jump, not with a hand on his horn, but he can burn the hell out of their hand.

Pheres pulls free from her and is stepping after Hinnom before she can even react. "Goodbye!" he calls over his shoulder, waspish, like he thinks they're the ones being foolish.

"You can't outrun a culling sweep," she says, and the fear is rubbing off. She feels sick to her stomach, and grateful when Riccin moves to intercept them: they're going to get themselves culled, trying to escape. That's how you die. "You'll be fine! You'll both be fine, just --"

The world goes bright, bleaching out, and she thinks lightning must've struck, because the air feels heavy with something. Then the colour comes inching back, and she realises it's just Pheres, sparking like when she first saw him.

It's worse now, though, and the sparks are bright enough that it hurts to look at them. The first flare was the worst, and it's already dying down, like he can't quite sustain.. whatever it is that he's trying to do. "Please stop," she hisses, glancing towards the distance. She can hear something buzzing. If the drones arrive and find them all fighting...

She isn't sure what'll happen. But it'll probably be bad.

He'd snapped at them a few times online, but Riccin had figured he was all talk: after all, it's easy to play tough when you don't have to back it up.

But no, he's bearing his teeth at her and hissing like he's going to bite. His teeth are nubby, though, with none of the care or polish that he's obviously put into his horns. Those fuckers wouldn't even break flesh.

It's pathetic as hell, and they have to marvel at the display. He's as threatening as a wet baby meowbeast. Are they supposed to be scared?

He jerks his head to try and get free, and they tighten their grip on the horn. "Get off of me," he demands, his voice frantic, and he must still be drunk as fuck, because he should be grateful. They're keeping his chump-ass from getting culled, and they're tempted to tell him that.

Instead, they just turn, their grip slipping onto the cuff proper, and later, they'll reflect that's what saves them from their hand getting completely fucking scorched.

The build-up of psionic aura is abrupt: Pheres has been sparking away steadily this entire time, a tiny-ass blip on the radar of their attention, and they barely notice when it starts to amp up. But then it keeps going, until the air is suddenly thick with the glowing sparks, the initial surge bright enough that it's hard to see.

The honey's still in his system. They're directionless: whatever his ability is, because by now they're fucking sure it isn't standard telekinesis, he's not using it right now. He's just pumping energy into his aura and putting on a lightshow, because the sparks are rippling across his horns and snapping like bands off into the air, but they're not going anywhere. They get little more than a few inches away from him before fading out entirely.

They might not be getting far, but they fucking sting. The initial surge hits the metal and bounces, but Riccin can still feel the heat output through their glove: if it'd hit their skin, they might've actually gotten burned. The sparks after that are too weak to do more than sting, brief taps of heat that die off just as the feeling registers, and they tighten their grip as he loses energy. Lucky for him they're wearing gloves, or they'd have claws inch-deep in his horns.

He tried to fucking zap them. Ungrateful bastard.

"You done yet?" they snap. "Because if you're going to keep that shit up, you won't have to worry about the fucking drones."

Their telekinesis only works at a distance, but Pheres is tiny as fuck: they don't need powers to beat some sense into him, if it comes to that.

Edited 2014-12-03 19:12 (UTC)

Once, when he was young and translating a book of old myths, Pheres read about one of the very old creation myths, written back before the Tyrian bloodline gained their stranglehold on the throne and the Empire, back long before the first Cuckoo had crawled from the brooding caverns and marvelled at the colour of the sky.

It had been written by jadebloods, back in the days when each caste lived separate in vast, communal hives, and it had said that when the first eggs were sculpted, out of clay and grass and smoke, all trolls had been hatched with black eyes, the better to see in the gloom of the night.

It was only when a greenblood had cut her hand while sculpting and blood had mixed into the clay that the first jadeblood had hatched: a jadeblood, with jade eyes as pale as her blood, eyes that made her strain at night, but made her the first troll to be able to see, and walk in the light of the day.

(He doesn't remember the rest, much to his regret: it was one of the first books he'd done, staying up all day with a dictionary and a pen, and he hadn't known to make himself a copy.)

(He'd tried to buy it back, sweeps later, when he'd had caegars to spare and was feeling nostalgic, only to find the owner had been culled for owning propaganda.)

As a wriggler, he'd thought it was an excellent tale.

As an adult, all he can think is that it was complete hoofbeastshit. His eyes are as pale as they get, and the light of his psionics feels like a punch to the snout, even behind the tinted gloom of the glasses.

He's not blinded, but his eyes are watering as the sparks die down. He can't keep it up, even if he wanted to: his horns ring like he's struck them against a wall, and Riccin's hand is still curled tight around one.

They have the audacity to ask him if he's done yet.

"You're going to get me killed," he says, distraught. There's a buzzing in the distance: he feels it more like a weight in his bones than a sound, and he needs to flee.

Edited 2014-12-03 19:31 (UTC)

"I should've told you to leave them," Castor says, stricken. He's playing with something around his throat: the curlicue twine of silver metal was his symbol, probably, when he was alive."I'm sorry."

Ze're fucked. He doesn't have to say anything: ze can hear the buzzing of the drones, and ze feels like crying. Ze're fucked, and ze're going to die.

Ze wishes Castor wasn't dead, because ze really wants a hug right now. Zir throat hitches and ze whines, as zir centispidermom stirs from her sleep and starts worriedly twining up zir throat.

Edited 2014-12-03 19:35 (UTC)

Pheres looks like they've hit him, his eyes big and wounded, and the kid behind him looks ready to bawl. Riccin feels like when they were bumping horns: like they've gotten stuck in the middle of some lowblood shit they don't understand.

(They might as well have hatched indigo, for all the sense these two are making.)

"What the fuck is your problem?" they demand, and they let go of the horn, because it's starting to feel weird. They clamp a hand on his shoulder, instead, grip firm so he doesn't take off. If they have to keep an arm on him in front of the drones to keep him from doing something stupid, well -

Myrrha owes them so fucking bad.

"The hell do you two have against drones? They're not out here for population control. It's a fucking health-check."

Edited 2014-12-03 19:39 (UTC)

Hinnom looks like they're going to burst into tears: there's already yellow pinpricks at the corner of their eyes, and Marduk feels like she's been called on in lecture. She doesn't know what to do.

She's certain she's not pale for Hinnom, or any other colour; their friendship is the platonic camaraderie of lonely age-mates in a hostile city. But she doesn't think she can deal with the way they look right now.

"It's okay," she says, and she sounds a little distraught now, too. If Hinnom starts crying, she's going to cry, and then where will they be? They won't have to worry about the drones: judging by the alarmed looks Riccin is giving them, they might cull them just to escape. "It's okay! They're just going to run our symbols and IDs and make sure no one is dying."

Their lusus is climbing out of zir shirt and wrapping around zir neck, the oversized mandibles clicking with what might be distress. She wants to pat them, but the mandibles and each set of legs are coloured with bright, poisonous red, so she bunches her hands on the side of her tunic instead.

Ze hates Marduk, and ze hates Riccin, and ze hates Pheres, because if ze wasn't with them, ze wouldn't be about to die.

Marduk is at the top of the list, because she's trying to talk to zim, her bottom lip trembling like she's got any right to be upset when it's all her fault.

"You're so dumb," Hinnom accuses Marduk, petting zir lusus. She's bumping her antaennae against zim, mandibles pinching at zir skin as she tries to figure out what has zim so upset. Ze's throat is too tight for the chirps and hums that ze uses to communicate with her, though, and so ze just pets her instead, trying to draw comfort from the smooth press of the keratin. "You're SO dumb."

"You shouldn't -" Castor starts off, worried, but ze hates him, too, because he's already dead. Drones can't hurt him.

(Lowbloods never leave lasting ghosts: there's too many, and they've got no resistance to the other psychic imprints. They rub and rub and rub on each other, until there's nothing left but an imprint with no memories and a dozen names.)

(When ze dies, it'll be permament.)

"I don't have a symbol," ze says, spitting out the words, and now ze's crying, gross, ugly sobs that they try to keep in and can't. "I don't have a symbol or an ID or anything else and they're going to cull me and it's all your fault!"

Edited 2014-12-03 19:55 (UTC)

"Oh," Pheres breathes. Hinnom is sobbing behind him, and Riccin is still holding onto him. They've moved their grip from his horn to his shoulder, and there's an idea fermenting in the back of his pan. He just needs a few seconds to think...

He tears off the glasses and throws them to the ground. They're cheap: they hit the pavement and the thin glass lenses crack, and the sound is satisfying.

(He can't remember where Riccin got them, but he hopes they belonged to them.)

"Look at my eyes," he demands, his words sharp with contempt. Mentally, he can't help but echo the little maroonblood's words: they are stupid, so stupid. "Do these look like they're fucking regulation? Do you think a drone can tell the difference between - between psionics and daywalkers? Because I don't think they care!"

"They're going to take one gander at my stupid bulbs and then they're going to cull me, because it's better safe than sorry, and then Sipara's going to cull you."

His teeth are dull and flat, but his claws, he keeps filed and polished. Riccin is tall, but he already knows that he can reach their face: he steps forward, pulls his hand back and slaps them across the face, hard as he can, claws angled to catch the skin and rip.

Edited 2014-12-03 20:05 (UTC)

One moment, Pheres is all but growling, snapping out each word with a disdain that feels personal. His reasons are all hoofbeastshit - there's no way they're going to look at his warm skin and flushed face and think undead cullbait, flourescent eyes or not - but that's not stopping him from spelling it out in his sharp-ass tone, like he's personally schoolfeeding them on life.

The next moment, he slaps them, a solid thwack that sends Riccin stepping back with surprise, and twists free of their grasp. When they reach up to touch their smarting face, their fingers comes back damp with vivid gold blood.

He hit them. He fucking scratched them.

They should be furious. They should be irate: their meteor hammer is literally a twitch of their fingers away, locked away in their signing modus. There's no reason not to. They've culled people for less.

But instead they just stand there and stare.

Edited 2014-12-04 02:11 (UTC)

He doesn't have a symbol, and he doesn't have an ID, and -

Marduk has heard about feral trolls. They escape from the brooding caverns and they live in the woods: no schoolfeeds and no allowances means no education, and no hive means no socialisation. They're animals. They cull other trolls for fun, and dine on their meat, and culling them is a gift to society.

They do not live in cities, running post for caegars and wearing hand-me-downs and making ghost puns about how they never aspectral a visit, but it sure does lift their spirits, boo -

Hinnom's not feral. Ze can't be.

"How do you not have an ID?" she demands. Hinnom is crying and she shouldn't be yelling at zim, but that's what she's doing: her voice is going higher and higher, because ze's crying and it's terrifying. "Everyone has an ID!"

Hinnom is sobbing, Marduk is yelling, and Riccin is staring, and Pheres is still entirely too drunk to try and decipher the look they're giving him.

His clawtips are gold, brighter than the yellowed keratin of the nail proper. He'll feel bad about it later: right now, he's got to make sure he and Hinnom don't die.

Fear keeps him steady as he darts over to the little maroonblood. He's moving as fast as he can, one foot in front of the other, but it feels like he's going entirely too slow. Pheres isn't sure if the rushing sound in his soundsacks is the buzz of drones approaching, or just the blood pulsing in his veins.

Maybe it's both.

"Shh, sh, it's alright," he croons, kneeling down. Hinnom's lusus is twining around his neck, and.. Pheres doesn't know anything about insects. He hopes the way it's looking at him is friendly. "I've got it, it's okay, shh. You're psychic, aren't you? Can you think of a place in the city?"

"Somewhere that's - haah - safe?"

Edited 2014-12-04 02:50 (UTC)

Castor is talking to himself, his lips moving silently as he holds onto the symbol. Hinnom keens at him, demanding attention, but he doesn't notice.

Ze hates him the most.

Marduk is yelling at zim. Ze hunches zir shoulders, defensive, and wraps zir arms around zimself. This isn't fair. This isn't --

Pheres is kneeling in front of zim, and his voice is just the right pitch that it catches Hinnom's attention. It's soft and nice and sympathetic, and maybe it catches Castor's attention, too, because he actually looks up from his pendant.

"Yes," Hinnom says, hesitantly, canting their eyes towards the ghost. He's staring at Pheres like he might actually have a plan, but.. even if they got into the sewers, the drones are too close to escape. "My - my hive. But it's too far to run."

Edited 2014-12-04 03:00 (UTC)

"That's okay!"

He shouldn't be thinking of Hinnom as a maroonblood: the tears streaking through his make-up are yellow as the blood on his hands. But habit is hard to break. "We're not running," Pheres says. "My psionics will handle it. Just, ahh.. think of it, okay? Think it at me very hard."

The words make his mouth dry. He doesn't know the slightest thing about psychics, other than that they're terrifying: if it weren't for the definite whine of drones in the air, he'd never do this.

But at least if someone is going to be rooting through his pan, it's a wriggler. They can't do too much damage, can they?

He can only hope.

Pheres takes hold of Hinnom's hand, and this is all getting very uncomfortably pale, but he ignores the way his stomach is twisting and forces a smile. "Tell me when you're ready?"

Pheres's voice is shaking, and his hand is clammy. His face looks wet, this close up, and ze feels a little better about crying, because his eyes are a rheumy, bloodshot red.

"Make eye contact," Castor says. He's clutching his pendant, and he doesn't let go when Hinnom looks at him, just jerks a hand dismissively. "Not with me," he snaps, "with him! That might help."

Talking with ghosts is one thing, but Hinnom's never tried it with proper people. But it's the same thing, isn't it? Just one's got meat on their bones and the other doesn't.

Ze really, really hopes it's the same thing.

Pheres is kneeling, right at eye-level. Ze takes in a deep breath, and leans forward, until zir forehead is pressed against his, and ze can count the veins in his eyes.

And then Hinnom thinks of zir hive.

The air is heady with the sound of drone wings, and above that, Riccin can hear the heavy stomp of grounded movement. They must be at the next street over, for all that they haven't heard any culling screams. Any minute, they'll be pressing into this street.

That thought stirs them out of their stupor, and to movement.

"This is a fucking awful idea," they snap, stepping forward, directing their words at Pheres. If the kid is feral, then they're going to get culled, but there's no point in him throwing his lot in with them, no matter his stupid delusions about his Messiah damned eyes. "They've got battery sensors - if they catch you trying to bail, they'll gut you like a goddamned fish."

No one's listening. Her voice falters, then cracks, and she clamps a hand over her mouth to cover the way her breath is hitching.

Riccin isn't even looking at Hinnom. As far as they're concerned, ze's already dead, and that's what makes Marduk realise ze wasn't joking.

Hinnom's feral. Ferals are culled. Ze's going to get culled, and it's all her fault: ze told her, and oh.

Oh, Empress, what is she going to do?

Hinnom is too close, close enough that he can smell the cluckbeast they ate for breakfast, and he is entirely unhappy with this chain of events. The only thing that keeps him from recoiling is the fact their eyes are baby gray and harmless, and the fact that this contact might be the difference between living and dying.

It's still terrible, though.

"Don't listen to her," he hisses at Hinnom. If he wasn't holding their hand, he'd clamp his fronds over their sponges, just in case. It's got to work, and if Riccin fucks this up, he'll bash in their stupid head before the drones take off his.

He doesn't feel any difference, yet, but maybe Hinnom isn't thinking hard enough - or maybe that's how psychics work. He didn't have a warning with Rmeros, either, and with that thoroughly unsettling thought in mind, he starts pushing on his powers.

Pheres doesn't know Capitol City, and his spatial awareness is entirely fucked: he can feel Riccin stepping forward behind him, and the empty space of the sewers below, but the buildings might as well be pencil thin for all the impression they're leaving. They'll likely end up in the river, or in front of a cart, or vivisected by an unexpected wall, but it'll still be better than just waiting to die.

Hinnom can't help the way zir eyes keep flitting towards Riccin. They're stepping forward, ominous as a thundercloud, and the scratches on their face are bleeding a steady streak of gold.

There's no weapon in their mitts, but they're big enough they don't need a weapon.

"You need to focus." Ze can feel the tingle of zir psionics on the back of zir head as Castor pushes it down, gently. "Don't worry about them. Just think of hive."

"I can't focus," Hinnom whines.

"Think of the thing you were making," he insists. "With the bones, and the hair, and the shells. And your collection. And your shelf. And.."

Ze spends so much time at zir little table, working on zir toys. They're not the sort of things ze sees in the shop, but ze's proud of them: of little figurines, with their joints and pinions, of the tools ze made to make them, of the shelf cobbled together to hold them... it's always in the back of zir mind, and it's easy now to pull it to the forefront.

Hinnom sees, rather than feels, the moment that the picture clicks. Pheres's eyes widen, his eyebrows shoot up and he beams at them, hard enough that his eyes go all squinty. "You did it," he says, marvelling, and then: "Hold on tight."

The world goes white.

He's fucking ignoring them.

The sound comes from deep in their thoracic cage, and rips free of their throat with a vengeance. Pheres is all horns and bones: all it would take to get his attention is one good swing, and right now, it seems like a great idea. They're not here to be fucking ignored.

He's sparking up a storm, but Riccin ignores it. He can scorch them all he fucking wants: embers and lights didn't fucking work the first time, so they don't know what shit he's trying, and they do not fucking care.

Maybe they'll clout him in his fool head. Maybe they'll cull him, and save the drones the trouble. They're not sure yet, but there's only a few steps left: they'll figure out when they get there.

Riccin doesn't notice when the sparks start increasing, but the flash of light, bright as lightning and the sun above, doesn't even make them falter: they've played that hoofbeastshit once already. When they reach out to snatch hold of a horn, or a limb, or a face, and find nothing, that's when they pause.

It takes a moment to clear away the white spots crowding their vision, and.. holy shit. They're gone.

Riccin whirls on Marduk. She's the only person left, and so she's the unfortunate target of their shitfit: they stalk forward, looming over her like a scarecrow, resisting the twitching urge in their fingers to call up their hammer.

They can't be found with a weapon in their hand when the drones arrive, but right now, they really want to kill something.

"Where the fuck did they go?"

Marduk has her hands over her mouth and a buzzing in her ears. Looming over her, rumbling so hard they sound like an engine, Riccin still can't compare to the drones finally visible in the air behind them.

She removes her hands, clears her throat and makes a questioning sound, just to test the strength of her soundcords. The noise is strong enough: shaky, but audible.

(If children got culled for emotion, the entire cohort would be dead! But not actively crying always helps.)

"I don't know," she whispers, forcing out each word, "but I buh-believe we have other things to worry about, right now."

The drones don't cull them.

(Of course they fucking don't: and if Pheres had listened, then they wouldn't cull him, either.)

The thing about drones is that they're fucking unreadable. Were they trolls once? Sure, in the same way that batteries once were. But one of the first things they learned in the Education Program was that, once you'd stripped the pan from a troll and stuck it in a jar, it wasn't a troll any longer - and the same thing still applied, after you stuck a computer in someone's pan and made them more biotech than shell.

So maybe they notice the way the air is still crackling with psionic aura, heavy enough that it makes Riccin's horns ache. Maybe they notice their sweaty palms, or the way Marduk is trying not to cry, and maybe they wonder - or maybe they don't. Underneath the masks and screens, their faces are lax and unreadable. Their big, blank red eyes move, but not their faces.

Whatever. Some shitblood gets culled for a blood abnormality, but if there's even an inkling that Hinnom and Pheres just absconded, they don't show it. When the culling is over, the drone wipes the blood off with something that might've been distaste in a real person, and they leave without saying a fucking word.

Smell comes back before zir vision does.

=> PHERES: Abscond.

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[this is why OA has no quadrants] [how much of a douchebag can you even BE]

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[=> EVERYONE: FREAK THE FUCK OUT.]

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[this is why OA has no friends] [except for PC and HH] [the Terrible Trio]

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[OA has no idea what the fuck drones are in reality][they're running off academy rumours here]

=> THREAD SHIFT