deercountry | Chrollo Catch All

Entry tags:

Chrollo Catch All | February [Open]

Who: Chrollo, & others
What: Various February happenings
When: All month
Where: Around Trench
Warnings: None in main post; Will be added to comments as needed

Wait For Me; backdated to the end of January

A month since Chrollo washed up from the sea, it was time for more Sleepers to come ashore. He had no interest in helping any wayward soul who happened to need a hand, so he lingered further back and let those with an interest in such things greet new arrivals.

The only people Chrollo cared to see were his own. If one of the Troupe washed ashore, he didn't want to miss their arrival. There was also a chance that a squid could take on a less than friendly face. Being unable to permanently kill them was a hindrance, but knowing sooner rather than later would still be better.

Wrapped up to wait out the cold, Chrollo watched, and waited. The sudden feeling of stiffness was a surprise, there was no obvious source of it. Soon, he couldn't move at all. There was no apparent source of danger, as the twelve legged spider omen on his shoulder remained small but visibly agitated. It looked like he'd be waiting longer than expected.

You Take My Breath Away

After the past month, Chrollo was becoming accustomed to the sudden onset of effects with no obvious source. Suddenly being unable to breathe was still surprising enough that Chrollo reached up to his throat to reassure himself there was nothing around his neck. Even though he hadn't anticipated holding his breath, he still had at least a few minutes before the situation was going to become desperate.

A nearby commotion made it obvious he wasn't the only one struggling, and as soon as he caught sight of someone else visibly struggling to breathe he was hit with a sudden need to reach that person.

As far as coercive abilities went, Chrollo didn't have much experience with being on the receiving end of them. But he didn't have many options, and the only risk was to himself. Without giving it more thought than that, Chrollo made his way over and reached out.

Speed Dating

Chrollo Lucilfer, emotionally unavailable and married to his work. He enjoys reading, acquiring antiques (especially books), spending time with his friends, and exploring the darkness in other people's souls.

Chrollo has never done regular dating, much less the 'fast' variety where you're given only a few moments to get to know someone. As far as ordeals go, he's had a much milder time with this month than the previous one even with his odd run of bad luck.

He knows the motions to go through well enough, he's met people and 'hit it off' to get close to them when a situation required it and he's stolen more than one priceless artifact or ability that way.

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Pyrrha half expects a corpse's fingers around her throat or perhaps living ones if she'd seen brilliant red hair. Another fraction of a second lets her know no one is choking John in that moment, for pain or pleasure. Then she turns toward the person approaching her. One hand reaches for her spear, currently nothing more than a baton, but she recognizes that face and, in the same instant, reaches for his hand. A gut feeling. An induced feeling. The natural solution.

Air rushes back into her lungs, and Pyrrha almost laughs. She sinks a couple inches, looks down, and actually laughs. A tentacle slips out between her trousers and her boots, while others remain within them. With a few moments of effort, she straights back up and solidifies her legs back into human shape.

"Not full squid this time," Pyrrha says. "I'd appreciate help to a bathtub if that happens."

True to Peter's own information blurb, he looks very much like he wants to run away. However, he's learned how this goes by now, and he's resigned himself to just... try and get through it. Eventually, they'll all be allowed to leave, right? They just have to keep playing this game first.

So he's sitting down across from someone new, managing an awkward little "Hey" to begin with... eyes falling downwards to go ahead and read the information on his Omni about the other man.

...Immediately, his heart skips an odd beat in his chest. Lucilfer....? That word is... familiar, even with its slight variation in spelling. And Peter's feeling a sweep of nausea that he's certain is the demon inside of him, its attention instantly grabbed. Peter sways a little, eyelids fluttering, tries to ground himself to keep reading — "enjoys exploring the darkness in other people's souls", oh this sounds great! He's definitely not in danger, here!

"Um... Sorry. Not feeling too great." Peter apologises, pressing one hand against his forehead, clammy and chilled. His heart's fluttering with anxiety, and he's not quite meeting the other person's eyes, visibly nervous of him.

"Fancy meeting you here," she says as she drops into the chair opposite him. She's in her hunting leathers, weapons, and pouches around her waist, and she's spattered with dark beast blood, some of it in her hair, clearly pulled from the middle of something. There's some tension to her, frustration rolling off of her, but it ebbs some the moment she sits, his familiar face offering her a tiny bit of ease in a ridiculous situation.

Her omni pings with his blurb and, by now, she knows how this works. His own will give a buzz as hers is sent his way. She lifts the crystal, skims the blurb, and snorts under her breath.

"I never would've guessed you were into antiques," already, she's imagining him in some dusty antique shop, hunched over some phonograph that is coated in a thin layer of dust or searching for an old first edition of The Great Gatsby. Given what she knows about him, it's a pleasant sort of surprise.

Sharon looks like she was in the middle of a fight, and Chrollo just regards her with mild curiosity as if she wasn't covered in blood that's clearly not her own. He glances at his omni, but it contains little he didn't already know.

"I find their value interesting. Set two ceramic plates side by side, one is worth more than most people will earn in their whole lives, and the other is probably destined to be thrown away as garbage before it's even broken. The only difference between the two is centuries of age. One is worth stealing and selling again, the other only has value while it's being used. There are plenty of other things of value, of course, but priceless antiques attract big fish, and some of them need to be gutted."

There's no need to hide it as a harmless interest with Sharon, although he does appreciate the beauty and craftsmanship in many of the things they steal. All of it is sold off sooner or later, money is more useful by far. But he does read and occasionally hold onto books for longer periods of time.

"Hello," Chrollo says as he reads the little bit of information provided to him, skimming over it with barely a glance. He looks back up in time to see the visible reaction to his own information. This already promises to be more interesting than a forced conversation between strangers would be on average.

It's not the nervous fear or greed he receives when people learn he's one of the Phantom Troupe, but it's definitely a stronger reaction than his information warrants. "Peter isn't a name I hear very often, it's fallen out of style in my world. Is it a religious thing where you're from, or does it not have the same associations there?"

He appreciates the stage set by Peter and his outdated biblical name while Chrollo wears St. Peter's Cross, its original meaning often forgotten, on the back of his coat. It's a safe enough topic, and one Chrollo is genuinely curious about. Whatever is making Peter nervous seems less immediately interesting with only a few obvious options.

"Having trouble?" Chrollo asks for a moment after the odd sound of movement drew his attention down quickly enough to see the tentacle.

"I can't make any promises about a bath tub being able to hold water. Containers holding liquid don't seem to like me very much this month," Chrollo says. It's not limited to assorted bottles, cups, mugs, and even bowls of soup, but those are the most common points of failure in his presence.

If he spent more time around trees he suspects branches attempting to fall on him might take the lead, but he's had quick enough reflexes to avoid getting hurt by anything suddenly breaking near him.

"Only when it's inconvenient," Pyrrha says. She laughs a little. Never when she's relaxed sitting down or asleep (at least it's never woken her up, and her bedding shows no sign of it). Work hasn't had anything bad happen since Duty switched his duties to reduce the risk of dropping something heavy.

"Sometimes my head and my ass switch places." That being the design of a squid. Legs, head, torso.

She hmmms, thinking over Chrollo's own bad luck. Unless she has particularly bad trouble getting her shape back, water isn't what she had in mind. While she's skilled at many things, talking as a squid isn't one of them. Just in case the blood magic holds in squid form, Pyrrha unlocks her energy. That way, someone with telepathic abilities may more easily communicate with her. She says, "If you get me in the general vicinity, I can cross the finish line solo."

"Were you doing anything urgent right now?" Pyrrha asks. "I don't mind tagging along."

Some of them need to be gutted, he says, and, though it initially takes Sharon aback, brow-raising, she soon lets out a chesty pop of a laugh, her grin lopsided. She should have guessed it wasn't some innocent little hobby and it puts his whole blurb in a new light for her.

"Is that how you go about protecting your city?" Sharon knows what she's doing asking questions like this here: he can't lie, though she's sure he can omit things. She might as well take advantage of this moment with him.

Peter swallows, willing his eyes to move back up to meet the other's. A young-looking man, maybe a little bit older than himself. At least in appearance; Peter knows too-well that there might be more beneath the surface.

"I think it's religious, yeah." His voice betrays his nerves, but he answers truthfully. "Think it means... rock, or something like that. I'm not, uh. Much of a religious person, though."

He doesn't have much feeling for his name one way or another. Or he never used to. These days he hangs on a little more, because these days he can feel it slipping away. More and more he wakes up and has to remember the shape of it.

...The subject is on names, and he doesn't want to ask. He knows he has to. Paimon is a second pulse up under his skin, taut and so alive.

"Yours is.. Chrollo? Chrollo Lucilfer? Does it.. have a meaning?"

"That's the same meaning, more or less, but usually associated with the apostle who was given that name," Chrollo comments, still a little amused at the coincidence.

"Yes. Chrollo has a number of possible interpretations but I've never cared to pick one. Lucilfer..." Chrollo pauses when his desire to evade the question results in a mild shock. It's not enough to bother him, but it is enough to notice. It eases up when he decides to go with an honest answer. Nothing he says here will hurt anything that matters after all. "Even if you're not much of a religious person surely you recognize it? The meaning is what it sounds like."

"That's some of it. It also provides funding for infrastructure as well as medical supplies and resources my home would otherwise have to rely on the very people I steal from to receive," Chrollo explains. He has no reason to hide it from Sharon, she already knows the most important secret and there's no way for him to take it back right now.

"'Show you the truth of all things' is an interesting phrase, I feel like I've read it or something similar somewhere before. What does that mean for you? Is it part of your ability?" A lot of the text on Sharon's ability was unusually obtuse while it was in Bandit's Secret, but different realities had different rules for abilities. It made sense that hers wasn't as easy to decipher.

Edited 2023-02-16 03:53 (UTC)

This is not Asriel's first experience being dropped into this situation, but he's no less irritated about being suddenly pulled away from his work now than he was the first time it happened.

"Roped you into this too, have they?"

The Omni helpfully supplies his own blurb, and Asriel takes a moment to glance over Chrollo's when the alert goes off. Usually, it's a lot of nonsense and embarrassing facts he doesn't care about, but something piques his interest every so often.

"What's this? 'Exploring the darkness in other people's souls'. How so?" he asks plainly; no point in beating around the bush.

"Yes," Chrollo says easily in response, not sure if it's better or worse that this is someone he has met before.

It's a question Chrollo doesn't mind talking about as much, he's sure that the phrase makes it sound worse than it is. Or perhaps it's his perspective that's warped after so long living as a villain of his own design.

"The way magic works in my world is heavily based on the perception of the person using it," Chrollo explains. "For example, consider an ability that animates inanimate objects. It might work on a doll made of wool, or a puppet carved from wood, or even something made from leather, or an animal corpse, but not human corpse. Someone else with a similar ability might only be able to animate the wooden puppet because plants are the only formerly living things they view as acceptable targets, or they could use it on all of them because to them, a corpse of any variety is just another inanimate mass."

Learning the unwritten limits of an ability while finding better ways to use it than the original owner is possibly the thing Chrollo enjoys the most these days. Even seemingly useless abilities had their uses in the right hands and the right situation.

"Which isn't to say that reality has no part in it. Someone with an ability that excludes living things can't accidentally make it work on something alive no matter how much they are convinced their target is dead."

"I'll try not to make any childish jokes about it," Chrollo says to the comment about ass and head switching place. His first thought wasn't the structure of a squid but more interesting changes to the body, but he jumps to the right conclusion after a moment of pondering how unpleasant having one's body rearranged would be.

They're already touching, so Pyrrha's aura flowing doesn't give him much more than he would get from contact, but it's infinitely more comfortable to be around.

"I'm just limiting how much of my home falls victim to my presence. Making the place more comfortable has become hazardous to myself and anything I want to stay in one piece," Chrollo explains. He can scavenge well enough for himself that he hasn't needed to look into the building materials the outpost keeps in stock, but if he needs to shore up the walls that might change.

"I don't know much about it. Him." Peter admits. His family were never religious — his father, a psychiatrist and a man of science; his mother, whose side of the family had their own... odd beliefs, rituals. She always seemed afraid of them. Peter never had much interest in looking to anything spiritual.

The name was his mother's choice, and he's wondered before why it was that one.

He's listening with a strange bated breath, afraid to hear the words but needing to all the same. When that shock comes — and Peter blinks, startled no matter how many times he's seen it or felt it happen to himself. Brow knit, he swallows, disturbed by the concept. Visibly disturbed further by the response that finally comes.

".....The Devil," he says after an odd pause, voice barely above a whisper. There are things he could ask, and the man would have to respond honestly — are you the Devil? He's afraid to, doesn't want to. He shudders against Paimon, an ancient ghost that presses its cold fingers up under him, yearning to be closer, to learn more.

Peter's fingers curl into his palms, and he lowers his hands down into his lap. He won't ask if this man is Him, but he at least confirms—

"That's what it means?"

Chrollo said he wanted to grow up to be a villain, to be feared, and she has no doubt that he is, but then he says something like that and she's reminded of that kid. He may be that villain to most people, especially those he targets, but he reminds her of a fucked up version of Robin Hood (though that could be a leftover from Alessa).

"How villain of you." A villain to one is a hero to another, even he must know that.

Sharon tenses the moment he says that phrase, face pinching, an immediate negative reaction to it. She can hear Leonard Wolf's voice in her head, his accusations, and then the twisted, haunting sound of his body contorting and shifting as he transformed into a hulking beast of a man. She considers best how to answer without going into details and then she says, "It's something a madman said to me once when he used a powerful artifact on himself. It turned him into a monster because that's what he was under the surface: a monster. Most people can be and, yes, it's a part of my abilities."

"I can sometimes see what kind of a monster a person is." Alessa had been so betrayed and so hurt, everyone became a monster in her eyes. In a way, it's not the real truth of all things but it's her perception of the truth and being what she is means it's a truth she can bring to life.

Pyrrha snorts, but she knows what the joke is doing. It's not a surprise, and the mental image is a funny one. "I won't hold it against you if you fail," she says, "At my age, if you can make a new joke, that's a feat."

Not to mention the too complicated to get into situation of having serious reasons for making butt jokes. Hilarious too in its own way. Even after she figured Nona out because there hasn't been a good moment to share. Life on New Rho was hard, untenable in the long term even and worse day by day, but Pyrrha misses those terrible times with her terribly small and jumbled together family. It was never going to last. Such is the case with so many situations. Sad but in a familiar way.

"Problematic," Pyrrha muses, "You can have my help if you'd like to risk it. It could double up instead of cancel out. On the other hand, I'd be squishy, so I might provide a cushion."

Asriel is silent briefly after Chrollo finishes while he considers it.

"So what an ability can do is determined by its own limitations, but more importantly, the limits one set upon themselves, is that it?"

There isn't any point in his going on before he ensures he has the concepts well in hand.

"It sounds like a system that would reward creativity if things can be left somewhat open to interpretation, but could just as easily be used in dangerous ways."

Which makes it especially interesting, as far as Asriel is concerned.

"Wow, you sound edgy." Taro is draped across his chair, his own blurb visible. He's... stopped caring about it at this point. He looks at Chrollo in half-boredom and huffs.

"So are you actually related to a demon or did you just get the edgy name just because?"

"I don't have any idea who or what I'm related to, I'd assumed everyone in my family tree was human but I can't say that I've ever looked into it," Chrollo says as he reads over the blurb. Not a human judging by the age and reference to a spirit, so Chrollo assumes some kind of magical beast.

"Thievery and mayhem sounds like some friends of mine, is there anything in particular you like to steal or do you just have a dislike of buying things?"

"I'm not in any hurry," Chrollo says with a shrug. "I can live with what I have, and it's more a project to pass the time than anything else."

And with bad luck stalking him, it's not even a very enjoyable way to pass the time.

"I think if a version of you I'd prefer to fall on or have something fall on I would pick Pyralis and not a small squid."

But he'd prefer not to let either into his home. There's no real security to be had here, but even an illusion of personal space is better than none at all.

"Yes, that's exactly what it means." Belief has never offered much to Chrollo, the only part of it he held onto is believing in the existence of souls. That part is comforting when little else is, and now he has more or less confirmed that souls exist, so that's not really a belief anymore but a fact.

"Is that why you're afraid?"

"Yes, that is the point of it," Chrollo says with an amused smile. Heroes face attack from every angle when they wade into places full of criminals, but walking among them as one of them is different. Some criminal organizations will pick a fight with the Troupe even if they haven't started one, but being a famous band of thieves means that people sometimes think they can offer them something. An exchange of favors, bribes to leave them alone.

When it's not someone they're after, they can make a deal, but it's rare.

"I think anyone can be a monster if you push them far enough. That sounds like an ability I might enjoy, I've met a few truly monstrous individuals. I wonder what they would've looked like." The original owner of Indoor Fish was a particularly terrible individual and it was written very clearly in the nature of his ability.

"In most instances, the inherent limitations of an ability come from an individual. When they add further limits, it's to enhance what they want to do with it or reduce how demanding it is to use," Chrollo answers, and then smiles at the comment about using it in dangerous ways.

"Most of it is used in dangerous ways. Armies fight with guns and tanks, but a strong enough individual could stand up to either without trouble. Most people focus on fighting, but not everyone. And sometimes the other kind are more dangerous."

"You know what, that's fair." He frowns at the immediate calling out of his thievery, but... well. He's got no idea what's in his blurb.

"... Eh. In my home world i've mostly broken into the houses of rich people to either steal back shit that doesn't belong to them or steal things to fence for things like food and shelter. Gems, paintings, awards... as long as it's light enough for me to carry out I can probably do it."

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Chrollo Catch All | February [Open]

You Take My Breath Away [& Bad Luck for the Early Worm]

speed dating

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speed dating!

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Speed Dating

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