august catch-all (open + closed prompts in comments)

[grice]

Who: falco grice, 2B & friends!
What: a log with closed prompts and open prompts soon to come for the duration of august !feel free to reach out on my plotting comments, liberos or owlie#3609 if you'd like to plot something specific! i will definitely do personalized tls!
When: august!
Where: corners of trench!

Content Warnings: mentions of gore, body horror, will add as they come

Comments

SEMI-OPEN: tbd

[grice]

SEMI-OPEN: a resting place for birds

[grice]

[ for those who would like to visit falco after quite the turkey carving, he'll be stationed at the lumenarium with a room, bed, and proper monitoring during the first few days of august. visitations during day one won't have much to work with: falco sleeps the entire day, with bouts of heavy, hot steam rising from his wounds and lack of limbs. many and all fabrics need to be changed constantly due to dampness, but the next day—

day two and three are better times to give proper hellos! he'll be awake and fully healed, going through the omni and the network for messages he's missed. you may catch him napping, as he does feel quite exhausted despite being clean and scar-free, but the oval, feathery creature nestled next to him seems to be calling you over. the omni loose in his hand is playing a movie, perhaps you'd like to come watch with them!

you may be even lucky enough to catch him awake in one of the visits, actively jotting pages down in his notebook, pressed against his lap and hunched down over it— oh, but the second he realizes there's someone in the room, he is slapping the notebook closed and jolting up straight. ]

—H-Hi!

[ he is getting quite green around the cheeks, but he tries his best to smile and bring the attention to him, and not the book, but— that'll probably bring attention to the book anyway. ]

I was just— writing, things down.

[ ]

[foulhussy]

[ Kainé doesn't know Falco, and that used to be enough to keep her from getting involved with somebody. But he'd been hurt, killed even, during Anna's beast transformation, a calamity that had had no small impact on her own life. Since coming here it seems like she's done nothing but poking her nose into other people's business, and this was as good a reason as any.

Kainé gives a terse greeting to the nurses as she shuffles into the room, carrying a small box. The smell of some sort of baked sweet emanates from it. It had been a trial not to devour the contents for herself. Raising an eyebrow at how he claps the book shut, she clears her throat. ]

Uh. This a bad time?

wheres my fuckin son part iii: the fuckin aftermath

[dirtdevil]

[ they visit Falco on day one, naturally. what kind of "parents" would they be if they didn't?

it's not to chat, of course; Falco needs all the rest he can get, so it's a relief to find him asleep. that first day, peace of mind finally achieved, they leave just as quietly as they came. sleep well, bird son.

it's hard to say how long Falco will be asleep, so he gives it a couple of days before coming back. when he does, Falco seems much better: all his limbs are accounted for, and he doesn't look like he just spent several weeks trapped inside a giant rotisserie chicken anymore. in fact, he's wide awake, sitting up in bed, and... writing? drawing?

actually, Levi wouldn't even have asked, but then Falco reacts like that, and he has to raise an eyebrow. ]

—Okay? Calm down, no one's gonna read your diary.

[ he's just teasing. probably. it's hard to tell sometimes. ]

CLOSED: @faceblocks

[grice]

[ excuse me— have you seen a sleeper named vi, with pink hair? the repeated question asked of trenchies mostly situated in crenshaw funnel down to a few sightings finally pointing to the sanctuary (the rookery and ursula's come in close second and third). it's quite a walk when he's gripping a crutch beneath his arm to help him stand, but it's not exhausting or impossible. he's already slept for days and was itching to walk around again— to see people again. this one, in particular, deserves his attention for the absurd amount of food brought to him while taking shelter in the rocks off the farthest shore.

the courtyard was like no other: peaceful and empowered by a tree of sweet pink blooms, falco has a hard time leaving the guardian sapling's vicinity to continue into the main hall. he asks left and right, told that he could probably catch her at any moment now— in the meantime, he wanders around the hallways, sneaks through the dining hall (he thinks abigail didn't see him; she totally did), until finally, he's pulled to a halt by quaint recovery rooms that hold the swift in and outs of healers and resting patients.

he's peeking inside from one of the doorframes like a cautious, curious little mouse, getting distracted by watching them work, the instruments or abilities used, the bedside manner, but also feels the bubbling impulse in his chest to approach a resting, shaggy gentleman on one of the beds, gazing out the closest window with longing.

he's starting to look not-so-subtle. just this growing, skinny teenage boy with an arm crutch spying on the infirmary wing— ]

[faceblocks]

[that question has likely been asked by other lately, too, but not with any real benevolence behind it. oh, some of the anger has faded - the roiling, near murderous bits (and the straight up murderous bits) that were amplified by reckoning's rule - but that doesn't mean there aren't still angry people. people that want their possessions back. or maybe people that want to be rid of a black eye that they didn't quite deserve.

she's not proud of it. not at all. it's an anger she can't even really own up to - but mostly she does anyway, because it feels less like an excuse. less like a coward's way out. yeah, even if the moon and the heat had made her act ...not herself, she's harder on herself than she is on anyone else, but what's one more person believing barely above the low-line? undercity riff-raff washed up on a foreign shore. sansa hadn't punched anyone - hadn't let the anger get the best of her enough to hurt people, and vi knows there's some deep anger buried there - roots hidden like those trees she'd told her about. (she'd called them weird-woods at first, but she knows their name now.) plenty of sleepers hadn't resorted to violence.

so when she finds one person she'd hurt in the infirmary (broken ribs, broken nose) she's resolute in doing something. even if it's messy business. bedpan duty? sure. meal tray? fine. it's not like she can really help beyond changing a bandage, here - and she has about zero chance of getting close enough to do that. she'll also take all the glares, all the words hurled at her - but what she hadn't expected was the recoil of horror, the look of fear in the man's eyes when he saw her the first time. it had made her feel low.

lower than the low-line.

but it can't feel as bad as broken ribs, she's sure of that.

and so it's from another, far different delivery of food that falco finds her, exiting the trenchie's room to see the an unfamiliar sleeper peering into another. taking in the crutch - guesstimating his age.

...hoping she doesn't see recognition in his eyes when he turns.]

[grice]

[ falco refrains from entering the rooms for being an unexpected guest here, but he does go from one doorframe to the next, to the next, keeping a certain distance from the opposite hallway and being sure to redirect when one of the nurse figures as him if he's lost. no, no, just . . . taking a walk (in which he fits in for). but from his periphery, he catches pink and immediately follows eyes first. a room, a startled man, and the woman he's looking for.

violet receives exactly the gaze she didn't want: a stare that sticks, a quick widen, and then an expectant follow that serves to show her, visibly, that he wanted to talk. it's not enough, he thinks, and turns after her with a beckoning call, but a slow-moving trek. one leg first, then the other supported one. ]

Miss Vi? Wait—

[ he's not exactly fast, but he's caught her—! right in front of the room she happens to be leaving. ]

CLOSED: @givetheslip

[robussy]

[ it was strange to see so much peculiar gathering of things among the sleepers. 2B knew better than to swallow water, much less find herself in it— it's just unnatural for her, especially when she hadn't the habit of eating or drinking. higher ground has always seemed like the best place to roost, even though she hasn't found herself an actual "home" to go to and from her hunts. a trenchie has offered her a survival pack: a knitted wool blanket, a carved-out wooden cup, and a neatly folded paper containing an assortment of mushrooms and berries. she declines immediately to say: ]

No. You should save your resources.

[ oh, nonsense, please, the citizen retorts, clasping her hands around the tied package and holding it forth. in the split second it took to doubletake, the woman holds it away from incoming grabby hands, right against her chest in a protective shield. oh, not you again! she scowls, prepared to give the greedy, survival-hoarding sleeper maria thorpe a piece of her mind. 2B herself doesn't understand this concept. offering food and fabric to an android is okay, but another person who has (apparently) been seen before but . . . not given a package—? is not okay?

??? ]

[givetheslip]

[Maria ignores the girl and scowls at the woman, focused more on the unreleased package. This is perhaps the third time Maria has crossed paths with the citizen today, and she does not see a problem with that; if they're meant to do whatever it takes to survive here, then why should she not take what she needs to survive?]

You are here, you are offering aid, I require aid; precisely what is the problem here?

[Seriously. It's obvious. This woman is strangely selfish in her benevolence.]

[robussy]

[ the trenchie pulls a longer grimace and retorts, sharply: "i am attempting to reach the needy, and you are certainly no longer needy, miss!" when 2B does absolutely nothing, the older woman seeks her support in a more invasive manner: "will you say nothing? she is wrong!"

2B is firm and immediate with her answer: ]

Your internal conflicts with one another aren't my own.

[ . . . that's how she'd like it to stay, at least. any more interference and taking select sides would mean even more conflict and confusion, especially on a psychological and emotional level. she is a soldier, so unless it is a direct threat, she will remain neutral.

"at least say something about it!" the woman plees. and, well, since she asked, the android replies, bluntly: ]

You are offering aid, I do not need it and she requires it. I don't see a problem.

[ maybe the problem here was greed, but who was to say from which side it was coming from? the trenchie, offended, huffs and flips her hand at the two young ladies. she does, of course, have her hand over the package, loose and beginning to shove it in maria's direction. ]

CLOSED: @manyone (cw: brief mention of needles)

[robussy]

[ an android's anatomy was advanced (as well as a bit of a mystery), but not to 2B, and not for her time. it is certainly different from what a human may be accustomed to, though— which is why she starts and overlooks her own transfusion. a bag of vileblood is prepared from the banks collected fresh from lumenwood. to be sure that viktor can get a consistent look at her infected flesh cracking through her palm and down her wrist, wrapped in bandages to detain wandering eyes, she remains at the sanctuary's infirmary wing.

there was nowhere else to go, and anna had told her to try; she sits up in her bed, inserting the needle by her own hand, and watching the intravenous drip pump an ugly green fluid within one of her "veins", once filled with colored oil. she's quiet and doesn't seem like she'll openly speak to the others in the room with her— but she does observe, her eyes at one point falling on a woman laying in the bed next to her. ]

[manyone]

[ Beatrice's own transfusion had taken place already--elsewhere, beneath the waves of the sea. It had been a fraught thing, too, and now here she was. Laying in a bed in Sanctuary trying to get some rest. It was strange, after days and days of not sleeping, only now with the curse flushed from her body did she finally begin to feel tired.

There's a face she doesn't know in the next bed over with pale hair and Beatrice turns her head a little to meet that curious gaze. ]

Curses are such awful things, don't you agree?

[robussy]

[ thankfully, she's managed to get a bit of . . . reinforcement in the bed she sits in. 2B weighs tremendously, and despite her nimble frame, it makes the bed creak and bends unnaturally beneath her. she sinks into her mattress. the few things holding everything up are the cases under the bed at strategic points to distribute the pressure.

2B flexes her infected fingers in her lap, both to help the intake of transfusion as much as remind her of what it was. ]

They're ailments, [ as if to correct and make sense of the word "curse" in her thoughts. something superstitious, intangible, much like souls were. she doesn't tend to ask many questions if an explanation is too far away, but there's a better one that fits this. she remembers the android gasping in her arms, the boy whose heart stopped when her blade ran through it, and thrummed right along with its fibrillations. something grows within her, the same feeling she felt for 9S: guilt. ] and it's . . . an awful end.

[ and they were lucky not to get so far. she wonders why. was it really luck? a lack of time and understanding? if she knew, maybe . . . she would've tried another way. ]

CLOSED: @foulhussy

[robussy]

[ prufrock was 2B's designated bunker, now. she had no "home", only a bed to rest in when it was necessary to recharge, and compromised protection that needed to be solved. those were her missions. this was closest thing she could find to continue doing and being who she was manufactured to be. well, that's false. she doesn't want her buried designation. she is 2B, and to 2B it would be: a combat android that fights for not the lost, but now living humanity.

there have been rumors turning into facts of a curse affecting only sleepers, drawing them to hunger until they erupt into a monstrous squid form— and consume the closest sleeper they could get their suckers on. the trenchie that stops 2B to tell her is devastated and anxious. the thing appeared and turned, right at her doorstep, it didn't attack her, but she fears what could happen to the sleeper that finds it unprepared. she'd like to be in favor of the sleepers, you see. anything less, and they were bound to bring more trouble.

2B wasn't one for gossip, though. she has her destination, and she's going. a-alone? squeaks the trenchie. oh, won't you consider a partner? please— she's had a partner. she doesn't think she wants to get attached to another one. plus, most of them were humans— she'd have one more thing to fiercely protect out there. ]

I'll work better alone.

[ says the mysterious, sexy goth girl. ]

[foulhussy]

[ Kainé had lived like that when she'd first washed up on these shores. She took up residence in a shack on the edge of town, avoided most interaction with trenchies and sleepers alike, and devoted most of her time to the hunt. As things stand, after that ruinous voyage in July and her beloved's mad rampage, she'd come closer to that initial state, spending more of her time on the hunt (and not noticing much return in successful hunts, but that wasn't all she was doing it for, after all). She has come to acknowledge, reluctantly, the value of pragmatic cooperation, but ever since things fell apart with Anna, those hunts were more often than not solitary.

This curse sounds like nasty business, so naturally Kainé finds herself drawn to these rumors. Another threat to ward against, more people to protect. Another distraction for her ambivalent heart. Overhearing the information relayed to 2B, Kainé approaches the distraught local, heedless of the other woman's presence. ]

Is it still there?

[ Kainé is dressed for the hunt; which in the summer means scandalously short shorts and a cropped tank top, with her serrated sword by her side. She gives 2B an appraising, wary glance, but turns back to the civilian. ]

[robussy]

[ birds of a feather, you know? what kind of hunter wears high riding dresses and thigh highs with heels? hunters of the yoko taro variation, clearly.

the trenchi places a hand on her chest and seems to sigh with exasperated relief. oh, good, you have a partner now. yes, yes it’s still lumbering about in the same district, she explains to kainé, all while 2B exchanges a brief glance of her own. before she turns heel: ]

I’ve got this one, [ she professionally states her reassurance to the other female hunter, and begins on her way. ]

CLOSED: @icanhearscreams (cw: psychological changes, obsessive behavior)

[grice]

[ the boys had an excellent idea aligning with each other's current, shall we say, interests: and that was visiting the archives for books. jun wanted books. falco wanted specific books, but neither had actually specified other than agreeing to go to this massive library filled with records and the smell of old paper and ink. falco finds something to add to his pile of must-read-take homes: romantically decrypted: the science of love and attraction by mehmet glogule. ]

There's a science to it—!

[ a scholar hushes him, sharply to stay quiet and mind his enthusiasm. he holds the book close and begins to flip through the first few pages and he finds his pile nearby jun's awfully larger pile. ]

[icanhearscreams]

[He looks over at the book and his eyes widen. There's a science to that stuff? He thought it was just stupid feelings?]

Wait, let me see -

[He reaches over to try to take it to look at it.]

[grice]

[ for the first time in possibly ever, falco reacts; he deliberately keeps the book close to his chest and attempts a swing sideways to avoid jun’s grabbing hands. ]

—What are you doing?

CLOSED: @offinventory

[robussy]

This room isn’t that flashy a room. some may not even consider it much of a room to a home at all. 2B doesn’t make these quarters feel any more comfortable than offered. The mattress is directly on the floor, for one— the wooden bed frame couldn’t take the android’s weight the first time she laid on it and caused it to splinter into halves.

A golden lamplight flickers on the edge of a simple Victorian console table against the wall, upholding tools and materials 2B has gathered to upkeep her own maintenance. She seems to be doing that now, in fact, kneeled upon her single-sized bed and cleaning her artificial skin with cloths and handling her black-lined joints with a thin needle-head pick. Pod is conversing with her as she works, explaining how a squid should be taken care of. She simply listens.

On the floor and underneath the console table is a chamber pot full of water, and in that should be a Sleeper Squid.

CW: typical post-death confusion/difficulties

[offinventory]

Restart.

Audio systems online. Faint noises.

It waits. It's uncomfortable, lying atop something that isn't flat. It's wet. It doesn't like that it's wet. It stumbles upward and hits something. Instinctively, it flails against this unseen somewhat flimsy barrier. Objects clunk and spill to the ground. This space has use, and it isn't for... whatever it is doing. Standing up.

It struggles to figure out which way is out. It cannot see, only hear and feel. It is naked. It isn't sure exactly what the significance is, only that it doesn' like it. It chances on the right way and makes heavy vibrating steps into a larger space, leaving the half-collapsed table behind it.

"I'm not a squid," it says, 75% certain.

[robussy]

2B does not startle before it hits her table; she is aware something is amiss when the squid sloshes oddly in a way it hasn't done for hours, setting down her picks and tools with piqued curiosity. She watches it reform before her, with no reason to operate on her weaponry— the sounds are sharp to her ears, but she swallows how each one clangs her heart and tempts it to spike. She keeps composed, rises to her pointed heels, and determines a space between them that is both safe as it was comfortable.

The table and her gathered belongings are not important for the moment. 2B's eyes do not go anywhere but to the second android's face, and its wandering, assessing eyes.

"No," she replies and picks her next words through lips that suddenly feel dry. Her vitals rise. She strictly strangles the paleblood empathy that shows her discomfiture. "Do you remember who you are?"

Has she executed this one and wiped its memories, too? Is it no longer who it used to be because of her? (It is no longer a monster; she can't forget a fate that is worse.)

CLOSED: @spincycle (cw: anything found at a blood drive)

[robussy]

[ the sanctuary is holding a much-needed blood drive with the curse among sleepers spreading left and right. levi will be led to the medical wing and into a bed next to another young woman— with silver hair in a shortened pixie cut, sitting up in her bed with a perfectly erect posture.

if this was her donor, then— she owes at least a greeting. 2B gives an incline of her head, and tools offered to her in a tray aren't exactly conventional for getting a vein. she's a special case, but . . . well, they'll see to that soon. the nurse guides him to sit tight as she prepares everything and asks for his arm to be ready. ]

Thank you.

[dirtdevil]

[ as someone who lives with two vilebloods—his not-husband and his not-son, in fact—Levi counts himself extremely lucky that he wasn't reborn here with that or any of the other weird-ass blood types people end up with. blood in general is not his favorite thing; it would seem like a cruel joke to be stuck in a place like this where blood is everything, but having the most important person in his life back eclipses anything this place could throw at him, no matter how bloody.

he still hates blood, though. ugh.

but even though he knows it will be an unpleasant experience, he can't just sit around with his thumb up his ass while people are suffering from a horrific illness that a donation of warmblood could cure. he's neurotic, sure, but he's not heartless.

so here he is.

he shrugs off 2B's thanks, wasting no time taking a seat on his assigned bed and beginning to roll up one sleeve. he will not be getting blood on his shirt. ]

Don't worry about it. It's the least I can do. You can thank me if it works.

[robussy]

[ the blood ministers and nurses who help prep him up are at least clean in their procedure. he'll feel the tourniquet tightening, a prick, then nothing more but its slow release from his arm at the draw. ]

I'm not worried. [ she seems to have taken it literally. "if", though— ] You're uncertain?