deercountry | 11 . clockhouse rebuilding!

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11 . clockhouse rebuilding!

Who: Those who have offered to help rebuild the Clockhouse, and anyone else who'd like to pitch in!
What: An open mingle log to repair after fires and floods.
When: Throughout September, precise dates not specified.
Where: In Gaze, at the forest's edge.

[ When the weather and chaos dies down, work on the Clockhouse picks up. The building was once an old Deerington mansion, luridly green and eccentric; age faded it into half a ruin, and July's fire did the rest. August's flooding came fast and hard, and now there's very little left to salvage.

The first step has been a damage assessment, with volunteers picking through the structurally unstable ruins, finding singed fiction novels, crisped houseplants, and a weird number of melted grandfather clocks. Demolition goes quickly, while Ozpin stands by and does not even try to control the situation.

Volunteers are needed to design the new structure, carry in materials, and build... and then to decorate and enchant what they've created. The few Sleepers with genuine construction experience provide direction, Ozpin sometimes among them, but things are largely chaotic. A few Sleepers provide snacks and cheerleading.

This is a mingle log. Please feel free to make a toplevel, and comment with your character's contributions below! ]

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Lance felt his very cells vibrating with the urge to spark in response to Keith lifting his shirt like that again. Ugh, he only has himself to blame for that, why did he bring up the sweat again?! And yep, there he goes starting to glow a bit with his pent up frustration, but it's faint.

Otherwise he stays quiet, biting the inside of his cheek and trying to not visibly jitter as his cells go nutso (and failing). Then when Keith finishes, he looks down at his bandaged hand and figures that at the very least he should try to thank him.

"Th-thanks." Dammit, he did not expect that stutter and the way his voice distorted with the barely contained jittering.

The whole beam is pretty warped, so maybe they should start at the bottom or something. Lance grips his hands together to try and control the jittering of his cells. What the fuck is up with his stupid powers? It's like they got a shot of adrenaline.

"I uh… almost exploded." Which probably gives some unsettling new context to his unnatural looking jitters, but he rushes to smooth it over, "I'm fine, though! Everything's fine!"

…Is it though?

Welp. Keith certainly didn't have anything to compete with that. He watched in a kind of awe as her glyphs basically did the same thing that Pidge's vine canon from the Green Lion could do.

"That's really cool."

A real wordsmith, this one...

Nah, he's going to start right where he is, attempting to smooth over the warped bits with his hand. It's not going that much good, but it's better than nothing. He stops, though, when Lance starts... jittering.

Like he's had too much caffeine and a shot of adrenaline at the same time.

"You almost exploded. And you're saying it's fine."

The disbelief there is enough to choke a man.

Keith glanced back at him, a confused look on his face, complete with quirked eyebrow.

"You're welcome." Lance acting weird around him was... Keith wasn't sure. It was frustrating. It was old. He was used to it, but it still bothered him. He just didn't know how to feel about it. He snapped the kit shut and put it back where it had been to make sure it could be found quickly again if someone else needed it.

"You should probably take a break until that heals," he said. He moved to get back to what he'd been doing, only for the humidity in the air to shift just enough for him to feel it.

Oh no.

Keith stumbled like someone had just dumped a massive tank of water on his head, and then dropped to his knees, panting. It was like the air was heavy, and he struggled to stay upright and not faceplant into the construction site's dirt.

That's probably for the best. Lance would have started at the bottom like an idiot and probably compromised the integrity of the beam. Starting at the top makes way more sense. Maybe he should do the bottom and meet in the middle? But it's hard to think when he feels like he's about to vibrate out of his skin and turn into a nuclear bomb at any moment. Shiro's response jerks him out of those thoughts.

"Oh. Yeah. It's totally normal." It's said in a distracted tone, but then he pauses and rethinks, "Well actually, it does feel super different this time. I dunno what the deal is."

And Lance knows he's been erratic. It's kind of a thing for him now, just in general and he hates it. Sometimes it feels like he's watching himself react and regress unable to stop himself or only realizing once it's passed. He's making sure to keep his eyes trained on his hand now so that he doesn't keep triggering himself in stupid ways. Keith's advice is annoying but not unreasonable and his mouth twists. He's about to figure out what to say when Keith suddenly stumbles.

"Woah, Keith. Are you okay?" He's immediately getting up to go to his side and support him from falling over with his hands on his shoulders. Everything from before was immediately forgotten and his face is filled with concern.

Keith braced himself on his knees for a bit, panting.

"The damn weather..." His hand clenched a little. "The air... it's heavy."

Standing upright was hard. Standing at all was hard. But he shook his head.

"I'll... I'll be okay... just... when it shifts again."

Who knew? Maybe it would shift enough that the temperature would drop and he'd be forced to bundle back up and hide all that skin that was making Lance crazy.

Luz couldn't help smiling a little at the encouragement. She would never have been called cool back on Earth, so she basked a little in that glow of acknowledgement.

"Heh, thanks! If you know how to cast the glyphs, and what you intend, you can do some really cool stuff with it! For now though, we can just start with demolishing and getting rid of the useless stuff."

Now Luz stepped aside so Keith could take care of his own pile of debris.

Keith nodded. Right. His own pile of stuff.

Welp... had to do this the old fashioned way, he supposed. He didn't have cool plant powers or anything like that. So, he moved in and began to push the debris around in order to make it easier to lift as much as possible. Best to reduce trips.

Luz watched him, not trying to be dismissive in the slightest.

"Man. You are STRONG! Can I help you with that? On my own, I mean?"

Lance's brows draw together, "Uh, it feels the same to me, man."

But this is already established as a blood thing like his loss of senses, so he lets out a breath, "Right, blood stuff."

Still, to feel that overheated… there must be something that can help. He rubs at the back of his neck and looks to the side, thinking.

"Would ice help?"

"... Normal."

Repeated back with every ounce of skepticism the dorito-shaped man can muster in the moment. Which is a lot.

"Maybe... we should get you checked out. Or calmer."

"Yeah... blood stuff." He took a deep breath to try and stop panting. Ice? He wasn't sure... Ugh. For the moment, it seemed that having the air suddenly feel insanely heavy took a lot of energy, and Keith just couldn't summon enough to make his own. "I don't know... maybe?" If Lance could find some...

In the meantime, Keith was starting to feel hotter, and he couldn't bear it anymore. He finally just gave up and pulled off the tanktop.

"Uh… yeah. Normal."

He is starting to realize that would definitely sound weird to Shiro because he's mostly kept his power struggles from him. Shit, now he feels bad about that and doesn't really fully understand why he's done that.

"I'm calm! There's just some weird thing going on in the air."

Well, couldn't hurt to try. Lance summons Valor with a puff of black smoke from his chest when Keith doesn't immediately just make his own ice. Maybe he can't for some reason, but whatever, Lance has an ice pokemon, so it's fine.

"Go home and get Aurora," he tells his omen and then Valor just sort of looks at him and then over at the now shirtless Keith. Which gets Lance looking at shirtless Keith and his face flares bright and hot… and so does other parts of his body, igniting the wood beneath them again.

"Sh-shit!" He rushes to pat it out with his own jacket. While he's doing that, his omen runs off to go get the pokemon as requested now that he's enjoyed that moment.

[Now that he's not being shaken around, he is able to actually look down at where Paimon is pointing. They're warped and a few of them definitely are unrecognizable but he is able to make out what they are regardless. Slowly, it all starts to fall into place. But he's still kind of floored that this demon dude is freaking out over googly eyes.

His glow starts to die down as the absurdity of it kind of takes some of the terror away. Now he's just trying to process the twilight zone situation he's found himself in.]

Wow, uh. Okay, that's a lot to unpack. But uh s-sorry, man. I didn't mean to. I uh, lose control of my powers when I'm stressed out. Maybe I can… get you more?

"Yeah, if you want..." Keith shrugged a bit. He was used to doing heavy lifting. Granted, he wasn't as strong as Shiro or Hunk, but he wasn't exactly weak, either. "It would save us some trips." Since there was still some smaller stuff left that he hadn't be able to pull into the stack he'd grabbed. But he wasn't going to turn down any additional help, that was for sure.

"What the-?! Fuck!" Keith jumped back, falling first on to his ass, and then completely on to his back. "I hope you can get that out!" he yelled suddenly because, frankly, it was too damn hard to get up now.

"Sure!" Luz was already taking small breaths and sat a moment to start writing out her glyphs. She figured she was going to have to make several of these if they wanted to actually make a small job of this.

"I think we can burn up some of that stuff we don't need, but I'll save that glyph to the end. We don't want to make it too big, right?"

"I-I got this!" Lance practically squeaks as he continues to use his jacket to put out the flames. It's enchanted to not catch fire, which really helps with the whole process, but it is taking longer than he'd like.

"Dammit Valor, he better get here fast."

"I feel fine..."

But on the other hand, he is a powerless lump in this world. No fancy abilities. So maybe it's something to do with that.

"If you need a break, I can finish up here."

[ She doesn't know, no. Not yet at any rate. In time, Peter will come clean to her about what happened, and Ange's part in it all. But all she does know is that Peter made a swift exit to K's for a few days following their argument. ]

Well, I know it's true he doesn't want to be here sometimes. I don't just mean... in Trench. I mean: he doesn't want to be alive. That it'd be better for him if he were dead.

[ That isn't something that's new to her. She's know that for a long time, known since they were all in Deerington. That that's how he feels about himself sometimes. ]

I know I have my part in keeping Peter alive. If I hadn't made my deal with Paimon, Peter's soul would be long gone by now. [ Either by the demon's own doing of pushing the boy out, or Peter would have long slipped into the abyss. ] I made sure Paimon left Peter alone, almost a bit like I... took ownership of his soul, in a way.

[ Peter's soul was hers. That was the part she loved. That was the part she wanted to keep. She made sure Paimon couldn't touch it, couldn't force it out of Peter's body. She inhales softly, her eyes remain lowered onto Peter for a long moment, her fingers still toying with his hair. ]

I told him that maybe he should just go into the ocean, go back home. At least that way he could be happy and have what he wanted and not resent me for loving him.

... It was a horrible thing to say.

Edited 2022-12-11 00:43 (UTC)

"No, no, I messed it up, I should fix it."

Lance insists and walks over to the bottom part of the post beam thing. He brings his jittery hand up to his chin as he tilts his head and looks at the warping.

"…is it just me, or does this look like a pair of boobs?"

"Or, I can do it, and you can just owe me one later."

Which is fine with him. Not like he'd ask Lance for something absurd, anyway.

And then he stops. Staring straight ahead before answering in the most deadpan tone he possibly can:

"... I don't know. I wouldn't know."

Shiro you do too.

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11 . clockhouse rebuilding!

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cw: mentions of suicide ideation

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