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fleetlogs2014-11-25 01:55 pm
refiningspacetime) wrote in fleetlogs2014-11-25 01:55 pm
=> PHERES: Abscond.
=> PHERES: Abscond.
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
=> 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]
=> 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]
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
no subject
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.
[=> EVERYONE: FREAK THE FUCK OUT.]
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!"
no subject
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?"
no subject
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."
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
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 subject
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?
no subject
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.
no subject
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.
[this is why OA has no friends] [except for PC and HH] [the Terrible Trio]
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?"
no subject
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."
[OA has no idea what the fuck drones are in reality][they're running off academy rumours here]
(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.
=> THREAD SHIFT