mehanizovati: (43)
Viktor ([personal profile] mehanizovati) wrote in [community profile] deercountry2022-05-27 01:20 pm

june catch-all

Who: viktor and others, open to all with some closed prompts in comments
What: june catch-all, some tdm prompts
When: june
Where: various

content warning; terminal illness, arcane season 1 spoilers



misc lab stuff and various fruits.

[viktor's lab in the willful machine is usually left unlocked when he's working inside. friends or acquaintances have likely been told they're welcome to stop by if they like, either to say hello or to get help with whatever a vaguely sketchy lab could handle. of course someone he doesn't know can just walk in too or knock. maybe there's a sudden downpour and that ajar door is tempting? go for it.

the lab has been slowly filling with all sorts of nonsense on the various tables- lasers! tasers! some weird machine hooked up to a blood gem? it is not unlikely to be walking by and hear some minor booming noise and either a curse in czech or a satisfied 'a-ha!' feel free to investigate.

this month there's something else too, a bowl full of fruit. all the fruits mentioned in the tdm in fact, there to be tested on though it looks more like they're just for guests if people are unaware there's some weird shit going on.]


Just a moment, make yourself at home. [he might say to guest. that would include eating some fruit, right? enjoy. probably not the raw lemon though, that's weird.]

[ooc; if you want to memshare i am game, my only hard limit on memories is no suicide stuff please. self sacrifice is fine! feel free to ask to make sure one is okay. if you'd like a viktor memory let me know any hard limits and what sort of memory you might prefer!]



gaze and time loops.

[having lungs mostly working for the moment is pretty great, in viktor's humble opinion. it means walking around the trench doesn't come with the risk of coughing up blood and attracting beasts and generally having a bad time, along with added perks like not getting so easily winded and going for longer. it also means he finds himself out longer than he usually would, which maybe isn't the best, as it turns out.

for example, making his way home through gaze and hearing the chilling cry of a beast, sighing and trying to make his way around what turns out to be the wrong corner. maybe that's where he sees your character before the snarling of a too close beast starts in earnest.

and then snap! they're both back about an hour, where they passed on the street. the look viktor gives is somewhere between resigned and 'fuck this, actually.']
There is a term for this. 'One of those days,' I think.



[ooc; if you'd like to wildcard or do something else you can pm me here or find me at [plurk.com profile] dichotomy]
stoicsilhouette: (09)

Time Loop

[personal profile] stoicsilhouette 2022-05-27 07:42 pm (UTC)(link)
[The gaze always feels like a complex school zone. That maybe his age talking, but it's the way he always perceived it. It's a place Megumi frequents and has a lot of respect for. It's unusual for a monster or beast to penetrate its walls, but not unheard of. The Trench is in a constant state of change after all.

Megumi has been following the growing cursed energy trail all afternoon. It seems to have been traveling along with what he suspects to be someone on the verge of beasthood. The winding streets paved in cobblestone are a labyrinth of doorways and exits that lead to nothing. Most are marked with carved eyes while others appear to be guarded by statues.

Close to the clock tower, he notices a grand stained glass window of a raven perched on a stack of books. Behind the bird is a large illuminated moon. He stops, as if in a trance, but is snapped out of it when he senses someone approaching. Two small children run past him, waving tiny bells that chime as they run by. It's unusual for children to be in the Gaze, but again not unheard of.

Now this place can be very elusiv,e especially because of its puzzle-like streets. One wrong turn and --great another dead end.

-Wait someone is behind- turning his head he sees Viktor but only for a moment, while hearing the unmistakable cries of a beast. Abruptly he turns back towards the wall, where he believes the sound is coming from. Out of nowhere, he is ripped back into the streets. In front of him the daunting window stands tall, as the same two children rush by.

There is a term for this. 'One of those days,' I think.

The voice belongs to the stranger that was in the ally way. ]


Yeah [ His expression annoyed but his tone neutral and dry. ] What just happened? [The question is blunt and a bit accusatory, despite the look Viktor has just given him.]
Edited 2022-05-27 19:45 (UTC)
stoicsilhouette: (14)

Sorry! I posted the first one to the wrong spot!

[personal profile] stoicsilhouette 2022-05-28 12:17 am (UTC)(link)
[Tckk rude. The words on the wall reak of a mocking high and mighty tone. He's probably right, this seems very much like a pthumerian tactic or trial.

Or else we end up back here, til we get it right? [He's assuming, and that would be tedious and inefficient. Especially since there is something about to break loose in the city. Turning his attention to Viktor. Let's go back to where this all went awry. His mind begins to calculate.

You look like a scholar, [ and you're in the gaze] so why did you come into the alley? [Dropping his irritated tone as emotion will not help him to think logically.]
noniad: (09)

[personal profile] noniad 2022-05-28 02:29 am (UTC)(link)
[How long has it been since Ortus had anyone to pass the hours lightly with in this way? A span of time he knows well, but finds he does not dwell on overmuch in Viktor's company. He finds he is still a good listener; he finds, more to his surprise, that he has not entirely lost the art of simple conversation.

Perhaps that occasions the subsequent event, he thinks, as he meets Viktor's apple-seed pupils and is swallowed in the blossoming of memory within them.

It is a memory that has an odd pang of familiarity unlike his sojourn in the last he shared with another, down to the faint chemical bitterness of air. He does not resist it. He is too much a poet for that, his appetite for experience too keenly whet, and what good would it do? So he bears unstruggling witness to it all, from the isolation to the fretful triumph and loss of the (his) little watercraft, all the way into the revelation and unexpected welcome in the cave. It is an experience that gleams like black stone worn to a polish by passing hands, something he grasps at once as pivotal, a moment in which Viktor's life traced one branching future and no other.

When it is done, he finds his hand pressed over his own heart, a great bellow of breath in his lungs as he surfaces, but it does not cloud him as the River did. He is himself, and certain of where he is, the mnemonic devices Lady Pent encouraged him to compose for that purpose intact and complete.]


Ah. [He says, frowzily.] Viktor, I-

[Later, he will come to understand the thin sliver of cooled pie to be his downfall. In the now, he has never tasted pie, nor has he ever seen an apple in its flesh.

Where would such a thing grow in the cold grey enclosure of these hewn walls? It certainly could not flourish here, in the dusty forgotten crevice of a long disused store room stacked with emptied supply crates, where he is balled up tightly in a secret space he has built of them. He holds a slim plex-lensed torch in one hand, a slender chapbook of poetry in the other, and he is reading with an avaricious speed that barely catches the words as he tears them from the page.

His stomach hurts, a tender, uncomfortable ache. His stomach nearly always hurt, haunted by a nagging roil he could not shift no matter what tonics and unguents his mother plied him with.

There is a scuffle at the front of his tunnel as a concealing crate is shifted, another as a small figure crawls through it, emerging with dark hair dusted in whitish powder and dark eyes set in the simple sacramental paint reserved for unordained children, a sketch of skull confined to the upper half of the boy's sharpish face.

The boy says nothing, at first. He tucks himself next to Ortus' side and peers over his shoulder, chin digging in lightly as he rests there.]


No pictures? [The boy says, in the hush of a child who knows how to truly be quiet.] What's it about?

An old battle. [Ortus tells him, in a matched furtiveness.] A black chaplain against a horde of heretics.

It's better if there's pictures. [Delivered dubiously, followed by a rustling shift as he produces a rolled up, much abused sheaf of stapled flimsy.] I got this for you.

['This' is a garishly printed comic, the cover emblazoned in four color tones, depicting a huddled young person with a bleeding nose and clinging yellow robes shielded by a stalwart gold-armored cavalier brandishing a rapier at a seething rabble of indistinctly sketched human faces distorted by wild eyes and bared teeth. THRILLING TALES OF THE FRONT, the title blares, underscored with the barely smaller THEY TOOK HER NECRO - SHE TOOK THEIR LIVES! It's faintly clammy when slipped into his hand, his chapbook whisked away as if by magic.

The boy adds, as if in afterthought, but far too delicately said to be anything but considered:]
Your mother said not to come back yet. After seventh bell.

[Ortus' guts weave into a complicated knot, sour and stretched and stewed to frayed weakness. He blinks his eyes very hard, swallowing the bile that rises from the clench. He flips the cover of the comic open and clears his throat, a tiny, unformed noise miles from the ponderous depth he will one day he able to summon.]

'Augusta Trice cared for three things in her life. Her Emperor, her necromancer, and her sword. When the heretics of Hephaetus IV kidnapped her necromancer, they had no idea of the wrath they would bring on their heads...'

[He has read this one before. He knows it nearly by heart, well enough to season it with pause and emphasis, the voices of each speaking character (the noble Augusta, her swooning necromancer Hannibal, and the crude heretic leader) distinct and true. The boy at his side knows it just as well, tensing before each fight and adding brief commentary between panels.

By the time the comic is finished, necromancer saved and heretics thoroughly and gruesomely slain by blade and flesh magic, Ortus has forgotten his sensitive and troubled constitution. He closes the book, turning towards the other boy -

- and he is seated in his chair, still, blinking like the cave dwelling creature he is drawn unwilling to the light.]
stoicsilhouette: (42)

[personal profile] stoicsilhouette 2022-05-28 02:49 am (UTC)(link)
[ Yes this time loop business can have almost infinite possibilities of what needs to be fixed, and he is actively ignoring that fact!

Ah, an engineer, now that's new to him. He's not used to adults actually behaving like adults, much less an engineer. Megumi wants to ask him many questions about what he does but the issue at hand takes priority.


Fushiguro Megumi. [A quick small head bow out of habit] I was in the archives today, when I picked up the trail of someone on the verge of beasthood. I tracked them to that alley not realizing it was a dead end. They were behind that wall.

[He pauses.]

We should try to correct the turn first then. Were you alone last time this happened? [He dared not ask how long or how many tries it took the first time this happened.]
cuddlery: (sing it)

[personal profile] cuddlery 2022-05-28 04:56 am (UTC)(link)
[It was about time for one of Scorpia's daytime performances! She stood there along the sidewalk, performing for a small crowd. The song she sang was one filled with themes that should sound familiar to inhabitants of Trench, with many of the lyrics referring to squids and rebirth. It was a contemplative ballad, but with an optimistic heart. All about second chances.

And she has a small container open as her equivalent of a tip jar, where onlookers leave behind various goods for her to thank her for her singing.

As the song comes to close, she smiles and waves to the applauding onlookers.]


Thank you, thank you! I'll be here all week! ...And for the forseeable future beyond that! [As she looks around at her audience, she does end up locking eyes with one guy who seemed to be listening on his own.]
hearuthinking: (Default)

lab visit

[personal profile] hearuthinking 2022-05-28 09:40 am (UTC)(link)
[By now Jason is pretty familiar with Viktor's lab. He makes himself home as invited. He looks around with interest at all the things Viktor is working on. The guy's always busy. Jason doesn't want to interrupt so he waits until Viktor turns to him]

Hey. If you ain't too busy, I remembered I owe you a song.

[He lifts up a harmonica meaningfully. Let's say one fell out of the many portals that were opening a while back]
hacktivated: + ᴘᴏsɪᴛɪᴠᴇ (ᴡɪᴛʜ a heart of gold)

[personal profile] hacktivated 2022-05-28 06:06 pm (UTC)(link)
[ The lessons have been genuinely interesting and helpful to Penny. To an extent she already knows a great deal about her own system, but more in the way that a car's operating manual knows a lot about a car. She's lacking in experience and, more critically, the creative thinking necessary to solve issues not neatly laid out by manuals and guides.

Penny does not drink, and she'll gently reject the tea with that explanation. The question about how she's been handling the events of May earns Viktor a reassuring smile, however.
]

I have had no problems this month! It seems as though it isn't unusual to sometimes avoid all the strange events in a given month.

What about you?
cuddlery: (pose)

[personal profile] cuddlery 2022-05-28 06:48 pm (UTC)(link)
[Those are some pretty gems! They definitely catch Scorpia's eyes as she checks her earnings.

She meets him with a friendly smile and nods as she answers his question.]


It is! It took a while to make, too. You can consider that an official Scorpia original! Like it?
cuddlery: (understanding with tea)

[personal profile] cuddlery 2022-05-28 08:17 pm (UTC)(link)
Exactly! [She points her pincers towards him.]

I do have my share of sadder songs... but mostly I like to help people feel good with my music. It's a break from all the doom and gloom. And a reminder that there's good things about this world too. It's not hopeless! If I can brighten people's with my singing, then mission accomplished.
stoicsilhouette: (113)

[personal profile] stoicsilhouette 2022-05-28 08:50 pm (UTC)(link)
My first but I prefer Fushiguro. [ Not a fan of his first name. Viktor is the first person here to ask or clarify. He's been here eight months, so he appreciates that.]

And bringing them somewhere isn't necessary. I can exorcise or purify them on the spot.
[Mitigating any damage before it happens would be the best scenario. He's not hopeful though. That cry they heard definitely indicated a turn for the worst.]


Staying together seems logical considering we both were brought back here. [He looks up to see which way the ravens are headed. Some appear to go in the direction he initially went while others diverge into a few separate paths.] I was told if you follow the ravens, they lead you to functioning passageways.
[It's quite possible while tracking this beast he relied too heavily on his own sight, while the answer may have been above him.]
Edited 2022-05-28 20:50 (UTC)
hearuthinking: (Default)

[personal profile] hearuthinking 2022-05-28 09:57 pm (UTC)(link)
I figured. First, I'm gonna play a real song, just to warm up.

[And with that, he starts playing "My Darling Clementine". It's a simple tune and he stops after two rounds]

What do you think?

Page 1 of 30