[The first thing Palamedes is aware of is how many things he isn't aware of; it's a stupid contradiction and it makes him angry, impotently so, which makes him angrier, and so that is how Palamedes Sextus starts his, what, third go at life?: being pissed about it. There's no clear-cut moment that he's aware in the ways that matter: who he is, what's going on, where he is and has been, etc. No, of course not: only a vague sense of coming back to himself at the same time that he isn't himself, and looping around in that state of mind for a while.
The things he knows for certain: he is no longer a squid, being a squid again sucked very much, and the first two things lead to the third, or: he's still here. Or here again? Here. With that pin in place the rest of the memories settle into where they should be within minutes, because of course they do - Palamedes doesn't waste time and the universe has accepted that, cosmically.
He can't find his glasses. This makes him squint, which really solidifies the "pissy nerd" aspect he's got going on, here in his first moments of new-old life.
That he is not on the beach means that someone has moved him before he managed to come back, which is invasive in a fun new way that he doesn't yet have extant words for. He rubs at his entire face with his palms and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment, a whole-body Ugh, and then peers at his surroundings through his fingers.
Oh, he thinks, which is what anyone with sense (double meaning) would think when snapped back into awareness and bombarded with an uncomfortably large assortment of necromantic wards. It's the prickly back-of-the-neck feeling but tenfold, and Palamedes stares at the closest mysteriously warded dead thing like he can pick the ward apart just by glaring at it. (He'll work on it.)
What he notices next is the blanket, and the face he makes at it is legendary and tragically unseen by any sapient eyes. He half-heartedly wraps it around himself, capelike, and whole-heartedly attempts to stand up. There's only one person this study- it is a study, upon cursory couch-bound inspection- could belong to unless things have changed very drastically in his absence (which, well, maybe!), and he'll be damned if he fails his whole House by not taking a good look around.
Instead he fails his whole House by being a necromancer with bird bones who's spent several weeks semi-dead and entirely-squid, and so as soon as he attempts to stand and take a few steps, he wobbles all the way down to the floor. It is here he will remain until The Lord Emperor Actually, For Real returns: on the floor, daringly scooting closer to a notebook that doesn't ping dangerously warded. He looks up, and:]
Lord. [hello.] That figures.
[Which could mean anything from obviously, the Emperor would keep tabs on the local necromancers, to of course this is your study, to UGGGGHHHH, or all three concurrent and consecutive, but Palamedes declines to elaborate further. He shifts to sit cross-legged, squinting still.]
I'm working under the assumption that you found me on the beach, correct me if I'm wrong, and I dimly recall being a sea creature for a completely unnecessary reprise, so — it didn't work. You know, that's arguably more embarrassing than being — what, chewed to death? Is that what happened?
[It is at this point that he attempts to stand again using the arm of the couch as support, much like a toddler wobbling onto their feet, except much taller.]
There's nothing wrong with my work, so it must be that damnable ocean. Is that tea?
[ It was a genuine relief, to find this one on the beach. He had rankled at that as soon as he'd thought it, because of course anything given to him is given; after Augustine, he is exhausted with good fortune. He is buckling under the pointed grace of— impressively!— even pettier gods than he is. He is getting distinctly tired of curveballs.
Still: always nice to be the bearer of good news. So he brings the squid home, and he goes to make tea, and he doesn't even snap the boy awake until he has biscuits ready to offer in recompense. They never made it to tea and biscuits, him and the Sixth. He has a lot of catching up to do. The field has changed.
So God ambles back into his study, a tea tray in his hands, and is unsurprised to find a lanky bird-boned young man poking at his notebooks. This does not worry him: most aren't warded, and the warded ones aren't hard to break. He won't take it as personal affront to come back to a room of unpicked wards. If he hadn't given Harrow run of the place already, he would probably have to watch smoke come out her ears as she waffled between piety and the compulsive need for a challenge.
He sets the tea tray down: on the low coffee table, as a kindness. ]
And biscuits. [ He looks faintly amused as he drops into a chair across the still-damp sofa. ] I would've gone with 'devoured by a gargantuan sea monster.' It sounds suitably dramatic.
[ God pours the tea, stirs two sugars into his. It's all very pleasantly mundane. ]
Catch me up on what should have happened? I'll trade you what you've missed.
[ He looks at Palamedes, then, and it's maybe the first time he's really looked. There is a difference in him now: the absent air has cooled and solidified to a realer attention. The set of his shoulders conveys more weight. He is, by measurable degrees, fucking around distinctly less. ]
I've never been dramatic, [Palamedes says, which is both funny and also, technically, comparatively — true enough. Everyone else in his life is leagues more dramatic, by his estimate, so this is not a lie. He busies himself shifting back over to the low table, folding his legs up to his chest to then unfold them under said table and lean back against the front of the couch, crammed in the space between. He watches God (For Real) put sugar into tea and he thinks, So this is it.
Not in a fatalistic way, nothing like that, but here are the facts he knows: Camilla is not here, or it would be her face that greeted him upon waking and not God's study; his work is pristine, and its failure implies not only a wealth of untapped knowledge existing in the seas and beyond of this place, but also a sort of — attachment, call it. Palamedes doesn't believe in fate, he doesn't for a second consider the possibility that this realm has some kind of larger destiny for him and that he ought to commit wholeheartedly to it, or anything. But.
He's alive in this one. Persistently, and through efforts that are not his own. It cements if nothing else the idea that Trench is more than a way station between his bubble in the River and whatever work he can finish with the help of Harrow's something-that-articulates. Persistence.
So: he takes a biscuit, and wilder, he even takes a bite. Mostly to collect his thoughts, and to stop giving God (Really) the half-focused stare he's been fixing him with this whole time. Hold on.]
I shouldn't have gone back to "sleep," more or less. I assume you're aware of who made it out of Canaan House, [and credit Palamedes this, but he only frowns for a split second saying this, instead of fully boiling over with picked-scab fury. Growth.] and that I wasn't one of them.
[Tea next, and he foregoes sugar just to sip it, to put liquid in his mouth and chase off the foul, sticky dryness of long sleep.]
I tethered myself to my own skull at Canaan House, just in case something went irrevocably wrong, and then I spent eight months waiting around in the River for somebody to notice. Do you not look into what goes on down there? Anyway, it was — a bubble. I only had the one room, but it held just fine.
[He gestures with the rest of his biscuit, like, Obviously, this is the thing that should have happened again. Here is the part that pisses him off, to wit:]
It's not a difficult insurance policy to set up, as I'm sure you can imagine. But I woke up damp on your couch when I should have been fully aware the whole time. That fucking ocean disobeys everything it's told to do.
[Or: Good morning, party people at the Bone House, there's a new guest sitting on the couch. Literally: Palamedes Sextus is Here Now in the living room, sitting there. On the couch. Someone (no points for guessing) has given him a cup of tea, which is half-empty and mostly cold by now, and he is vacillating between holding a cup and not drinking from it (hence why it's gone cold) and flipping pages in his new welcome pack journal. The pages are blank.
This is, perhaps, a compulsive behavior. Honestly, he would like to... leave? To disappear to the Sixth bunker (tm) and maybe scream, or at least stare at a different wall while lamenting how empty the bunker is these days. But.
Well. Everybody he knows (more or less) is apparently here in this house right now, wherever they may have ended up, and so — here's Palamedes, putting his personal thoughts and feelings about his latest death-and-rebirth away somewhere so he can sit on this couch and not finish his tea. If there's any feeling he has about that that he's allowing to continue existing, it's vague irritation. He had to be dead? For weeks? And not in a space where he could have at least gotten some personal work done? Ridiculous! Infuriating!
Never mind it. He straightens up just slightly when someone enters the room, picking up his teacup very coolly and casually to have something to do with his hands. He mustn't be, hm, flippant, but he must also start talking before anyone else can, so—]
Hi. [nice.] I can't really explain myself at all, which believe me is maddening for all of us, so — what's new?
[that's kind of flippant but also just brand, huh]
This fact has been set down with the facts of everyone else who is gone, that brutal excising euphemism. Palamedes is gone, and there is nothing anyone can do about that except to say it fucking sucks and roll forth the rock over him.
Palamedes is gone, and he has to live with that, like everything else.
Paul stands very still in the doorway, except for the tremble at the tips of his fingers that resonates improbably in the back of his throat, except for the bleached paper crumple of the corners of his eyes. He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again, with a breath that catches.]
Wait. [He swallows, once, twice.] Just - wait.
[He turns on his shocked heel and disappears to the left of the doorframe, his footsteps not falling far. He presses his forehead against cool, worn wallpaper and closes his eyes, digs shivering fingers into the soft giving curve of his inner occipital arches until light burns under his eyelids.
He stays there until he has his resolve. It takes almost five seconds, a near eternity, and he's no closer to inner resolution about what he's doing to do (how he's going to feel) when he steps back into view, except for this: he cannot keep fucking up.]
I had my ears pierced. Harrow did it.
[A shade too brightly tense, vulnerability like the still red, wounded edges around the two small bone studs in each ear, but it's better. It's closer to right, as he stands in the doorway a second time and still doesn't know if he believes this yet.]
Anything new with you? [He attempts a smile; it doesn't go well.] Besides the four limbs?
[Paul is entitled to his five-second eternity. He says wait and Palamedes holds up a hand gently, acquiescing, turning his gaze to look out the window while Paul has his brief, infinite moment. A hasty eternity is something Palamedes needs all at once, he finds: so many white-knuckled assertions that they-will-be-fine, they-will-not-die, Paul's dreams of Palamedes' fate are not definite — and, well. The irony is thick and heavy with guilt, so, yes: Palamedes would like to stare out this window for five very long seconds. The murky greenness outside, dark even as midmorning rolls inexorably into daytime, is only another reminder that time has passed here, in his absence. Not a few days. Longer.
When Palamedes spent eight months in the River he was mildly horrified to learn just how long it had been. This is not eight months, he knows that already, but the circumstances are... worse? And yet piercing through the muddy guilt is relief: to see Paul (for a couple seconds, shattered in the doorway, even then) whole and perfectly reasonably addled by something like Palamedes on the couch. In the town that existed here without Palamedes, the rest of his friends — weren't gone.
It helps. He still wants to scream, but he can do that later. When Paul comes back Palamedes looks away from the window with his own brand of lopsided quasi-smile.]
I think these are the old ones, [he says, lifting the arm not holding the tea to observe it. Ha ha, jokes.] Due diligence is rolling; I didn't check.
[(But he will, later, and he will find the scarring left from when Paul helped pull bloody gems out of him, and he will wonder for the thousand-and-first time how genuine this body is.)
He is still wearing God's hideous goth blanket like a cape, and tugs an errant corner of it further over his lap as he makes room on the couch. Gesturing,]
Let's see those earrings. Harrow's a genius and the Sixth are not a decorative people, maybe I'll learn something.
[Or: Sit, observe the tangible weight of him (barely) on this couch, absorb that he is indeed a real thing. They don't have to say it.]
Everybody Palamedes knows, more or less, may be in the Bone House; that does not mean that everybody in the Bone House, right now, is somebody Palamedes knows. Oops!
Which is to say, the equally-tall-and-thin man who is, however, quite a lot older than Palamedes, who has just entered the room, is absolutely a stranger to him. Also, if Palamedes were to try to necromantically ping him, as it were, he would discover a narrative truth well in advance of most of the people meeting him: if judged solely by the amount of ambient thanergy or thalergy he puts off, he is made entirely of plex.
"Well, there's the wet spot on that couch from earlier this morning," he drawls pleasantly, eyebrows raised in quizzical amusement. "But perhaps you managed not to sit in it?"
Palamedes isn't expecting to speak to anyone he doesn't know in this house this morning, which is silly of him, because he knows that, say, Paul has other friends; Gideon has other friends. Even the Lord himself must have someone who tolerates Him and isn't, like, a sad teenager — still, to look up from his automatic prattling explanation and see a stranger surprises him, in the moment.
And call it a mixture of a handful of things - waking up to being bombarded with the prickling of God's warded study, the rubbed raw feeling of being alive again, his learned-his-lesson-the-first-time kneejerk reaction upon seeing an adult he doesn't recognize in God's own living room! — but Palamedes does not so much "ping" necromantically as briefly flail necromantically, like maybe a little ward being ready will help him in a pinch, if this grown adult in God's fucking house is indeed what he assumes.
He knows better now, after all. He assumes the worst. His moment of necro-flailing appears physically as Palamedes adjusting his glasses and clearing his throat, but if his assumption is correct, he's probably given himself away a few times over already. He thinks, Fuckshit, and then says:
"I'm quite good at not sitting in wet spots, thank you," and then, "If you encountered the one in the other room, sorry, that was me. I had no spatial awareness when I got here." Here as in the house, of course: if someone doesn't like the squidly wet spot on God's study sofa, well, that's how these things go.
He considers. Why not; "I'm the Sixth. You're one of them, aren't you? Which House?"
[Kaworu doesn't know Palamedes like the other members of the house. He only met the man once on the beach. A place that feels so far away in time and yet so near. He doesn't like to think about and yet it still creeps at the edges of his thoughts like dust in dark corners.
So when he comes down the stairs, hair still tousled from the sleep and still in his pajamas and sees this familiar, yet strange, person on his couch. He can only blink.]
It's Palamedes, but yes — hi. You made it through alright, huh?
[Because they may have met once on a beach and this bedhead-ridden, pajama'd young man may have alleged himself a non-human powerhouse, but that's enough for Palamedes to put him on the list of people to ask after. Convenient that they are mostly here, in pajamas...
Which,] I like your pajamas. I'd offer you some tea, but it's cold now. Do you want me to make more?
[Will Palamedes get off this couch for one reason: to use God's kitchen without permission? Maybe.]
[ Gideon intended to make her way over to the couch so she could continue to nurse her wicked headache. It sucks, really, to be God's divine daughter and still get hangovers. Surely she'd be tougher than this?
But it looks like the couch is occupied by a skinny guy under a blanket, which is nothing new. It takes Gideon around half a second to parse which skinny guy, maybe longer because for a moment there, it feels like she's back on the spice. In fact, there's only one way to find out whether or not she's still high out of her mind: pick up her spindly friend, tea and all, and maybe spin him around for good measure. ]
Palamedes!
[ He's real, and he's solid, and that's one of the best things in the world - better than any drug, definitely. Gideon laughs, squeezing a little tighter before setting him back down on the couch again. Any more squeezing and she might break his bones! ]
Took you long enough. I've got roommates now, and they're even under eighty, which is crazy stuff.
[In the split second between Gideon just staring at him and, you know, being spun around in the air, Palamedes thinks maybe he should ask her again? What's new, how are things, he's been here for several hours and it's very normal and ordinary, ha ha?
But no, she's much faster than he has any mental preparation for, and so his response time allows him only one thing: to put his half-drunk tea down before it slops everywhere. Pros: no tea slopped everywhere, cons: his arms are just flopping everywhere instead, while she spins him around. He laughs, mostly out of sheer surprise, but credit him this: he manages to get one skinny arm around her shoulders and return her buff squeeze with a paltry necromancer squeeze of his own, before he's set back down. Good god.
In essence: holy shit, girl.]
I know, I've seen— [at least, this is what he assumes Paul and Kaworu are doing, wandering around God's Own House in pajamas and various states of half-asleep: living here.] Are you teaching them to raise hell?
[As she well should, of course, and while her excitement is infectious, it's gentler that he adds:] Sorry. I wasn't expecting to take so long.
[Really, it's Palamedes' glasses having a smudge that saves him from staring at too many giant butterflies. Like, they're big and vaguely horrifying if one takes a moment to look past how the wings are kind of pretty, so he wasn't inclined to look too closely at any of them, or even approach — but it's the way he accidentally thumbs a lens and has to take the glasses off to clean them that makes him realize, huh!
Looking at that thing felt... bad! Cool (not)!
So he makes an effort to not do that anymore, as he makes his way around town. The cloak he was recently convinced to buy has a hood, and so it's like a great, hooded moth that he drifts around a corner, only to find — ah. Another butterfly (nemesis!), this time with an unwitting victim. He takes half a step towards the stranger, hesitates, then strides the rest of the way forward pointedly, heedless of whatever corruption may have already erupted that he can't see from a distance. There's no merit in only looking out for number one when it comes to corruption, so: here goes.]
Pardon me— Hello? Can you hear me?
[Hm... He comes to a stop between stranger and butterfly with his back to the great adorable beast, standing slightly on tiptoe to sort of... just use his cloak here to hide as much giant wing as he can... it's goofy.]
Are you still in there? Your eyes are doing something they shouldn't, you know.
[ New to this world but not exactly new to worlds other than his own, V's experience moving around from before he discovered the multiverse should leave him semi-graceful in adapting. Being a nomad's all about riding from place to place, making the most of whatever's around to survive. It's not a choice, but he wouldn't have it any other way, and there's always excitement deep in his bones at the chance to discover somewhere completely new.
He's just not used to giant butterflies - or, really, butterflies in general given the state of Night City - and why wouldn't he want to stare bordering on trance-like at them? They're beautiful and take his optical implants on a journey around the edges of those giant, green-glowing wings.
So when his line of sight is filled very suddenly with the face of a man, it's jarring in a way that knocks his focus until it's teetering and he feels momentarily like he's floating independently from all things. Disconnected. Sorry, choom, it's not your face that's jarring, just the situation.
And then he blinks, optics refocusing and expression revived from blankness to abject confusion with a hint of melancholy. One hand - purely organic - reaches out to anchor itself instinctively to the figure in front of him. ]
I-- huh? ...who're y-- Wait. I can't look at the..?
[ His optics are drifting upward again, gaze drawn like a magnet because he really wants to see those wings again. ]
[It feels silly to do, is the thing. Collecting orbs. Hope orbs, or whatever the locals are insisting, but once Palamedes realizes the little globs of light are indeed tangible enough, he figures — why not, right. He goes home, he gathers up some jars (he dumps the pens he stole from various businesses out of the jars), he hits the streets again. He's never caught fireflies before (what, actually, is one), but there's an eerie kind of serenity to it: following these bits of light around in the mostly-darkness and the silence, alone with his thoughts.
They almost start to feel alive as he scoops them into his jars, and so much more pleasant to look at than the great terrible butterflies, which Palamedes thinks are only nice to look at with his glasses off, when he doesn't have to see the whole... thing. Giant insect parts. No thank you. It still makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end to see one's massive wing drift past as it makes its way to sit on a different lamppost, and he turns pointedly away to avoid looking at it directly.
With new insistence he reaches out to scoop another orb into a fresh jar, very nearly cuffing a stranger in the process. It's dark, alright; the orb lights illuminate only so much, and he's only concentrating on those.
So then, arm stopped at an awkward angle, watching the orb drift higher than his reach... hey, stranger.]
Hi. Sorry — can hardly see past my own elbows, let alone keep track of them. [He. Puts his arm down. As an afterthought.] Was that magic orb one of yours?
[this would be easier for viktor if his omen was out, but rio already proved she wanted to try and eat the orbs rather than help. he's still nearly certain omens don't need to eat at all, a little less certain if eating would hurt them should she manage it- even less certain eating these orbs won't hurt in some way. all matters he plans on studying further at some point but now? no thank you.
so he's on his own, leaning heavily on his crutch when he moves to capture the glowing orbs in one of the jars he's brought with him. he's finally made himself a new brace for his knee, a little clunky given the materials but worlds better than without. it makes a long day- night?- of gathering what is essentially light and hope in a jar a little easier.
he's a little distracted himself, glimpses of the butterflies fueling the hopelessness of his current situation if he doesn't look away quickly enough (even here he's still decaying, what happens when he dies? does he come back to die the same way again? does it get closer, until the loop is just perpetual death?) mixed with when the little orbs hit his skin and give him a burst of strength (there's so much possibility here, a real chance to be able to not only survive but leave something worthwhile behind when it is his time to go, he hasn't even started down every possible avenue he could take.)
needless to say a bit whiplash at points. he's already exhausted of this month and it's only been a few days.
so he isn't paying much attention either when someone skirts it a little too close, stopping short with a grind of his crutch against the pavement and blinking to the man- oh, collecting as well. he eases a little at that, a soft snort as he holds up his half full jar.]
Eh, if it comes back down it might be yet. Though really, if I have to wave this around much longer my arm will fall off. [a touch dry there and with a czech accent, and he offers a crooked quirk of the lips to show yes, no hard feelings when it's this dark out.]
I see we are of the same mind that these are worth the trouble regardless.
[It's pure coincidence that Palamedes ventures out to Lumenwood at all. He's been spending more time in Willful Machine lately thanks to Viktor and his shared workshop laboratory, which puts him somewhat in the area, and the concerns of the locals that puts him onto the trail of, well. Some kind of mysterious blood happenings? He's fully into the mode of research and solving all the puzzles at once, and so following the imprint of blood pollution only makes logical sense.
He's never really been... into Lumenwood before, not past the Lumenarium, and so orienting himself among the mist and overbearing scent of flowers chews up most of the actual search for the source of this blood problem.
But not for long; call that necromantic advantage, but he manages to source the pollution to a source, which he arrives at with his glasses off and squinting, because the blood mist has ruined his lenses repeatedly already and he's sick of cleaning them. He doesn't know what he's expecting — beasts, maybe? Something he's not equipped to handle all by his lonesome, despite wandering this way all by his lonesome on purpose.
Not, though... another lab, which he loiters around outside of until someone comes out of it, at which point he clears his throat and speaks up:]
Your business is making the locals squirm. [Which sounds initially like a disapproval, and it almost is, but not in the context one might assume. To wit:] Do you need a hand?
[Sayo wasn't confident enough in her DIY'ing skills to build a shack in the woods and brew toil and trouble in a cauldron there. Fortunately(?) for her and definitely unfortunately for whatever poor sod had previously occupied this building, there was a Beast attack on a clinic recently, and nobody had bothered to move back in or repair it.
Sayo may have deliberately spread a few rumors about a ghost story to make her plot easier.
Though apparently, ghosts don't scare necromancers. She had just been about to walk outside to head back to the warehouse when Palamedes is just right there. Letting out a very undignified,] Eep! [Sayo stumbles back, nearly tripping over herself before catching her balance.]
Could you have at least- um, wait, if you knew to knock that'd take away the whole point of the... atmosphere I'm trying to cultivate. N- Nevermind. [She shakes her head.] Listen, I know that the blood pollution is a problem, but I'm taking every precaution I can, and once I get a few more steps it'll... Huh?
On the recommendation of a dear friend, Midoriya meets with the person called Palamedes at the Lamp Location in Willful Machine. Even plunged into eternal night, the district has adapted by setting up more lights. Shoppers and canals glitter under them. If the wind blows wrong, the smell of trash in the water reaches their noses, but that never stopped anyone from getting their errands done.
It's just an idea for now: a few notes about a private training space scribbled in his ever-present notebook. His old habit of keeping notes has served him well here, filling up the journal he found in his bag when he first washed up on the Farther Shores. Fixing up an old apartment is one thing, an entire building another. Whether it's an old warehouse or a cave or something else entirely, he's in over his head.
Then there's the matter of the all-important security system. (Paul's eyes lit up at the prospect of arranging traps.) This private space is also a secret hideout in case his enemies (specific or hypothetical) decide to make trouble. There's also the matter of more intelligent Beasts to consider. In the varied world of Deer Country and its denizens, security should be in layers. Midoriya knows nothing of electronics or magic, but--Paul knows a guy.
"Palamedes-san?" His accent forms his name carefully. "It's me, Midoriya. Sorry if it's crowded, but I figure no one will pay attention to us around here. I brought my notes."
Midoriya is in civvies, a plain hoodie jacket and jeans. He pulls down a simple black mask that hid his face from his freckles to his neck. It's a common enough fashion statement in Trench, especially if blood pollution is high, or if one is a Hunter. In the shopping district, he'd look like he was about to rob a store, if he didn't stand so straight and attentive.
He's a relatively short young man around Paul's age, with a polite but not stuffy demeanor. He has a riot of dark green hair under his hood. His eyes are the same forest color. They are open and inviting, but purposeful. He carries a backpack and a canvas bag with today's shopping.
Willful Machine's Lamp Location is seeing more of Palamedes in the past few weeks than it did in the past several months, which he credits to the thrilling rush of productivity. It feels good to not be idling (or, hm, dead), and so if Palamedes is agreeing to look into the needs of anyone who asks at this point, well - so be it.
Still, this person is Paul's friend, and so he's on board on that basis alone. He heads for the lamp and loiters the only way he knows how: with a notebook, scribbling away. He's found a low stone wall to lean against, knee bent and notebook balanced on it, and that's where he remains until Midoriya arrives. He's not difficult to spot only because he's tall, being otherwise dressed head to toe in plain gray and black, muddling the silhouette of him even further in this persistent dark.
He glances up (and then down, huh) from scribbling when addressed, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
"Hi. D'you want to sit?" Here on this wall, specifically. If they're going for uninteresting, nothing is more out of the way than sitting in this spot specifically chosen to wait undisturbed for his meeting, frankly. He puts his thumb down on his notebook page and flips the whole thing shut in a smooth motion, nodding. "Well, this is your business; tell me about it. What can I do for you?"
[It's embarrassing how long it takes Palamedes to think to check the docks.
The first day- well, evening really, the first evening Palamedes looks up from his reading to realize how late it is (according only to the omni, still) and that Viktor hasn't returned yet to the bunker, he thinks nothing of it; he chuckles to himself and shakes his head, assuming Viktor has fallen asleep hunched over a notebook back in Willful Machine. Rio will have to nudge him over to that little cot of his, he'll probably complain half-awake that he still has work to do. Palamedes continues his reading.
The second day he wanders by the lab himself, sometime around what might pass as lunchtime, to see how things are going. He's got a page or two of angles to consider about the bloodstones, and Viktor's second opinion is infinitely valuable.
Viktor isn't there; out looking for more parts to make into machines, perhaps? Palamedes loiters for a while, until he figures he'll catch him at home. He continues not to worry, but only just.
The second evening, with no Viktor to speak of yet again, is when Palamedes begins to worry in earnest. The butterflies sapping hope still haven't left, and it's still dark, and it's not as if the journey between Gaze and Willful Machine is the safest possible path in Trench; any number of terrible things could have happened upon Viktor just on his way to do some work. Palamedes refuses to think of the possibility that Viktor has abruptly gone back into the ocean, like Camilla—
Like a reasonable individual, he turns to the omni, but after one curt message to reassure him that Viktor is still here and then no other replies, he's back to wallowing in it. First of all, very rude to leave him on read, second of all— any number of terrible things!
He gives Viktor only one more day, at which point he sets out in earnest to find him, come hell or highwater. The lab: empty. Around Willful Machine: not empty, but sorely lacking in the man he wants to see. So—
It's embarrassing, then, how long it takes him to remember the docks. He heads there as quickly as his necromancer stamina will allow him, heedless of how careless he himself is being, wandering around alone and off the streets, a prime target for beasts and butterflies. Surely, his heart is hammering loud enough for every creature in a mile radius to hear, save for the moment he catches sight of a silvery glint and his heart stops completely, instead.
He's already watched one person nearly metallicize in front of him, he can't— Surely that's not Viktor up ahead, that's someone else's shimmering silhouette, except it isn't, is it—? Despite himself, Palamedes feels a flash of anger, that someone as smart as Viktor would let this happen to himself.
When he appears at Viktor's elbow, looking out at the few boats docked for the night, he's managed to school most of the fear and hapless frustration from his expression. Hi.]
So. What are you thinking about? It must be a big one, to take three days.
[when it first starts viktor doesn't even ignore it. he sees the creature and immediately takes to the omni, scouring for information as rio watched on in concern at their unfortunate new guest. he doesn't find much on the network, so he does the next best thing and ignores it. focuses on work, clears his head as best he can to hope it will go away.
it does not. it does nothing to him beside mimic with irritating accuracy. looking at it does nothing (good, no more butterflies please,) tossing one of the orbs does nothing. he loses his patience at one point and gives it a little whack with his crutch only to get a bruise on his own arm for his trouble. the whole stupid episode makes him laugh and he considers messaging pal about it, because he thinks pal might get a kick out of it. he even gets as far as opening up to pal's inbox before he falters.
he doesn't know what this is, and until he does he doesn't want to have it anywhere near pal. he doesn't want it haunting the bunker, a place that has become warm in a way his old apartment back home never managed. he doesn't want to turn to find it latching onto pal, or feeding from pal, or any number of possibilities. he needs more information and that he'll get, so he closes the inbox and focus that first night on figuring out exactly what's happening. he makes notes.
mimics <- working title until the name of these creatures is revealed
characteristics: faceless, an oddly metallic sheen? fluid movement regardless of it. solid, water simply drips off them without and absorption from the mimic.
note: physical violence against the mimic reflects on the one it is mimicking!
mostly like that, feverish through that first evening. by morning he can't stop glancing over his shoulder, grimacing at how the creature simply grimaces back. still no obvious method of feeding, and when he goes outside people seem to recognize the mimic is there, can see it. he's avoided and he's grateful, though he's struck with the thought that the moment allen or pal walk into the lab they'll make this their problem too.
for a dying man, it's a thought that slides across his head too naturally to be ignored. for what very well could be a lost cause, all that attention and effort that could so easily be doomed to be just another scar bleeding corruption.
he goes to the docks shortly after, always the place best to think and try and clear his head of that sort of nonsense. the problem is it feels less and less like nonsense the longer he stands there, even rio fading to smoke from where she tried to stay resolutely pressed to his side.
he thinks of pal's words at the bar, the picture of some sickly friend from the seventh he lost. he thinks about how his own steady decaying must feel to watch, wonders if it's similar enough to whatever tragedy pal faced that it eats at him. thinks about it when pal messages him and he offers a clumsy message back, head clearing for a blessed moment with the concern shown.
it doesn't last. maybe later he could untangle the time that follows and the many tangles but mostly he sinks into the silence of it all. he was always here once, that sickly kid who couldn't climb up with the other children so he watched the boats instead. the tether feels like it's breathing down his neck by the time pal comes around, silver seeping up his jaw like prominent veins.
when pal speaks there's a delay before he looks over, the mimic looking in unison, its eyeless gaze somehow more focused.]
Legacy, I think. What that actually means. [he answers after another beat] In a way it's really just our excuse for why we existed in the first place, is it not?
[Palamedes' problem is that he can't ignore a challenge. No, worse than that; his problem is that any problem he hears about he considers a challenge, and considers himself the person who will crack the shutters and let in the light of a new day onto its face, and so— well, call it the opposite of self-preservation, maybe. He hears just enough locals warn each other, and a few him, about mirrors, and he has to know. It's a mirror, after all; something so easily broken surely can't be a real threat.
And yet he does wonder, just how many versions of reflection can the Trench come up with? The twisted kind back in winter, the tethers, and now quite literally Beware of Mirrors. There's a pattern there worth studying; something to pick apart when he has enough data for it, to attempt to predict an outcome if nothing else. That the Trench is forcing them to confront themselves is fairly overt, he thinks.
So it's foolish for Palamedes to hear so many warnings about Mirrors and immediately head home to stare at the mirror in the bunker bathroom. It's just a mirror; nothing in his reflection melts or distorts, or leaps out at him in anger— it's a mirror.
But the art of the mirrors' curse is distortion, and so it's the warped, tiny reflection of himself Palamedes catches in the chrome of the sink faucet that does it. He sees it, knows it in an instant to be the thing the locals had whispered about, and the reflection of him stares back with a dull-eyed intensity that he does not want to deal with. He has time only to take off his glasses and drop them, like that will help, and—
And the desires stuck in him by the mirror want to be seen, despite how mortifying that will be, and so he sends Viktor's omni an innocuous enough message:]
Viktor, are you busy? Can I see you? At home.
[Not that he is immediately visible At Home, having used what little self control he has left to him now to... to sit on the floor in the bathroom, head in his hands. His glasses are in the sink, which for some reason is still on.
He doesn't look up to the sound of the bathroom door opening; he thinks he could say something like, Could you hand me my glasses? or maybe even, Never mind, I'm handling it, but instead he says, to the floor:]
You were right. About my bad habit; the stalwart one. Do you remember that?
[viktor is in the lab when he gets the message, a mostly pleasant day working between the taser project and the laser project, lost in the pleasant daze of formula and metal. he doesn't notice the omni but rio trills at him until he glances over, pushing his goggles up his forehead and finally noticing.
his brow immediately furrows.] I am on my way now.
[he resists the urge to pester for more information- if that is what pal is giving him he can wait to get home to learn more. he worries of course, leaning heavily against rio to make the trip a little faster, worries this is an injury or a time sensitive matter. maybe he's overthinking it, maybe the tone is just confusing in text.
when he reaches the bunker and finds pal in the bathroom he scraps that possibility right out.]
I do. It is one of those eh... those double edged swords, is the term. [he answers as he walks over, grasps the edge of the sink so he can lower himself to sit at pal's side, eying him in open concern.] Good for others, not always so good for you.
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o lord, heal this warden
The things he knows for certain: he is no longer a squid, being a squid again sucked very much, and the first two things lead to the third, or: he's still here. Or here again? Here. With that pin in place the rest of the memories settle into where they should be within minutes, because of course they do - Palamedes doesn't waste time and the universe has accepted that, cosmically.
He can't find his glasses. This makes him squint, which really solidifies the "pissy nerd" aspect he's got going on, here in his first moments of new-old life.
That he is not on the beach means that someone has moved him before he managed to come back, which is invasive in a fun new way that he doesn't yet have extant words for. He rubs at his entire face with his palms and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes for a moment, a whole-body Ugh, and then peers at his surroundings through his fingers.
Oh, he thinks, which is what anyone with sense (double meaning) would think when snapped back into awareness and bombarded with an uncomfortably large assortment of necromantic wards. It's the prickly back-of-the-neck feeling but tenfold, and Palamedes stares at the closest mysteriously warded dead thing like he can pick the ward apart just by glaring at it. (He'll work on it.)
What he notices next is the blanket, and the face he makes at it is legendary and tragically unseen by any sapient eyes. He half-heartedly wraps it around himself, capelike, and whole-heartedly attempts to stand up. There's only one person this study- it is a study, upon cursory couch-bound inspection- could belong to unless things have changed very drastically in his absence (which, well, maybe!), and he'll be damned if he fails his whole House by not taking a good look around.
Instead he fails his whole House by being a necromancer with bird bones who's spent several weeks semi-dead and entirely-squid, and so as soon as he attempts to stand and take a few steps, he wobbles all the way down to the floor. It is here he will remain until The Lord Emperor Actually, For Real returns: on the floor, daringly scooting closer to a notebook that doesn't ping dangerously warded. He looks up, and:]
Lord. [hello.] That figures.
[Which could mean anything from obviously, the Emperor would keep tabs on the local necromancers, to of course this is your study, to UGGGGHHHH, or all three concurrent and consecutive, but Palamedes declines to elaborate further. He shifts to sit cross-legged, squinting still.]
I'm working under the assumption that you found me on the beach, correct me if I'm wrong, and I dimly recall being a sea creature for a completely unnecessary reprise, so — it didn't work. You know, that's arguably more embarrassing than being — what, chewed to death? Is that what happened?
[It is at this point that he attempts to stand again using the arm of the couch as support, much like a toddler wobbling onto their feet, except much taller.]
There's nothing wrong with my work, so it must be that damnable ocean. Is that tea?
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Still: always nice to be the bearer of good news. So he brings the squid home, and he goes to make tea, and he doesn't even snap the boy awake until he has biscuits ready to offer in recompense. They never made it to tea and biscuits, him and the Sixth. He has a lot of catching up to do. The field has changed.
So God ambles back into his study, a tea tray in his hands, and is unsurprised to find a lanky bird-boned young man poking at his notebooks. This does not worry him: most aren't warded, and the warded ones aren't hard to break. He won't take it as personal affront to come back to a room of unpicked wards. If he hadn't given Harrow run of the place already, he would probably have to watch smoke come out her ears as she waffled between piety and the compulsive need for a challenge.
He sets the tea tray down: on the low coffee table, as a kindness. ]
And biscuits. [ He looks faintly amused as he drops into a chair across the still-damp sofa. ] I would've gone with 'devoured by a gargantuan sea monster.' It sounds suitably dramatic.
[ God pours the tea, stirs two sugars into his. It's all very pleasantly mundane. ]
Catch me up on what should have happened? I'll trade you what you've missed.
[ He looks at Palamedes, then, and it's maybe the first time he's really looked. There is a difference in him now: the absent air has cooled and solidified to a realer attention. The set of his shoulders conveys more weight. He is, by measurable degrees, fucking around distinctly less. ]
Welcome back, Warden.
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Not in a fatalistic way, nothing like that, but here are the facts he knows: Camilla is not here, or it would be her face that greeted him upon waking and not God's study; his work is pristine, and its failure implies not only a wealth of untapped knowledge existing in the seas and beyond of this place, but also a sort of — attachment, call it. Palamedes doesn't believe in fate, he doesn't for a second consider the possibility that this realm has some kind of larger destiny for him and that he ought to commit wholeheartedly to it, or anything. But.
He's alive in this one. Persistently, and through efforts that are not his own. It cements if nothing else the idea that Trench is more than a way station between his bubble in the River and whatever work he can finish with the help of Harrow's something-that-articulates. Persistence.
So: he takes a biscuit, and wilder, he even takes a bite. Mostly to collect his thoughts, and to stop giving God (Really) the half-focused stare he's been fixing him with this whole time. Hold on.]
I shouldn't have gone back to "sleep," more or less. I assume you're aware of who made it out of Canaan House, [and credit Palamedes this, but he only frowns for a split second saying this, instead of fully boiling over with picked-scab fury. Growth.] and that I wasn't one of them.
[Tea next, and he foregoes sugar just to sip it, to put liquid in his mouth and chase off the foul, sticky dryness of long sleep.]
I tethered myself to my own skull at Canaan House, just in case something went irrevocably wrong, and then I spent eight months waiting around in the River for somebody to notice. Do you not look into what goes on down there? Anyway, it was — a bubble. I only had the one room, but it held just fine.
[He gestures with the rest of his biscuit, like, Obviously, this is the thing that should have happened again. Here is the part that pisses him off, to wit:]
It's not a difficult insurance policy to set up, as I'm sure you can imagine. But I woke up damp on your couch when I should have been fully aware the whole time. That fucking ocean disobeys everything it's told to do.
[Or: UGGGGGHH.]
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return of the megadweeb
This is, perhaps, a compulsive behavior. Honestly, he would like to... leave? To disappear to the Sixth bunker (tm) and maybe scream, or at least stare at a different wall while lamenting how empty the bunker is these days. But.
Well. Everybody he knows (more or less) is apparently here in this house right now, wherever they may have ended up, and so — here's Palamedes, putting his personal thoughts and feelings about his latest death-and-rebirth away somewhere so he can sit on this couch and not finish his tea. If there's any feeling he has about that that he's allowing to continue existing, it's vague irritation. He had to be dead? For weeks? And not in a space where he could have at least gotten some personal work done? Ridiculous! Infuriating!
Never mind it. He straightens up just slightly when someone enters the room, picking up his teacup very coolly and casually to have something to do with his hands. He mustn't be, hm, flippant, but he must also start talking before anyone else can, so—]
Hi. [nice.] I can't really explain myself at all, which believe me is maddening for all of us, so — what's new?
[that's kind of flippant but also just brand, huh]
Genuinely. I'm asking.
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This fact has been set down with the facts of everyone else who is gone, that brutal excising euphemism. Palamedes is gone, and there is nothing anyone can do about that except to say it fucking sucks and roll forth the rock over him.
Palamedes is gone, and he has to live with that, like everything else.
Paul stands very still in the doorway, except for the tremble at the tips of his fingers that resonates improbably in the back of his throat, except for the bleached paper crumple of the corners of his eyes. He opens his mouth, closes it. Opens it again, with a breath that catches.]
Wait. [He swallows, once, twice.] Just - wait.
[He turns on his shocked heel and disappears to the left of the doorframe, his footsteps not falling far. He presses his forehead against cool, worn wallpaper and closes his eyes, digs shivering fingers into the soft giving curve of his inner occipital arches until light burns under his eyelids.
He stays there until he has his resolve. It takes almost five seconds, a near eternity, and he's no closer to inner resolution about what he's doing to do (how he's going to feel) when he steps back into view, except for this: he cannot keep fucking up.]
I had my ears pierced. Harrow did it.
[A shade too brightly tense, vulnerability like the still red, wounded edges around the two small bone studs in each ear, but it's better. It's closer to right, as he stands in the doorway a second time and still doesn't know if he believes this yet.]
Anything new with you? [He attempts a smile; it doesn't go well.] Besides the four limbs?
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When Palamedes spent eight months in the River he was mildly horrified to learn just how long it had been. This is not eight months, he knows that already, but the circumstances are... worse? And yet piercing through the muddy guilt is relief: to see Paul (for a couple seconds, shattered in the doorway, even then) whole and perfectly reasonably addled by something like Palamedes on the couch. In the town that existed here without Palamedes, the rest of his friends — weren't gone.
It helps. He still wants to scream, but he can do that later. When Paul comes back Palamedes looks away from the window with his own brand of lopsided quasi-smile.]
I think these are the old ones, [he says, lifting the arm not holding the tea to observe it. Ha ha, jokes.] Due diligence is rolling; I didn't check.
[(But he will, later, and he will find the scarring left from when Paul helped pull bloody gems out of him, and he will wonder for the thousand-and-first time how genuine this body is.)
He is still wearing God's hideous goth blanket like a cape, and tugs an errant corner of it further over his lap as he makes room on the couch. Gesturing,]
Let's see those earrings. Harrow's a genius and the Sixth are not a decorative people, maybe I'll learn something.
[Or: Sit, observe the tangible weight of him (barely) on this couch, absorb that he is indeed a real thing. They don't have to say it.]
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Which is to say, the equally-tall-and-thin man who is, however, quite a lot older than Palamedes, who has just entered the room, is absolutely a stranger to him. Also, if Palamedes were to try to necromantically ping him, as it were, he would discover a narrative truth well in advance of most of the people meeting him: if judged solely by the amount of ambient thanergy or thalergy he puts off, he is made entirely of plex.
"Well, there's the wet spot on that couch from earlier this morning," he drawls pleasantly, eyebrows raised in quizzical amusement. "But perhaps you managed not to sit in it?"
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And call it a mixture of a handful of things - waking up to being bombarded with the prickling of God's warded study, the rubbed raw feeling of being alive again, his learned-his-lesson-the-first-time kneejerk reaction upon seeing an adult he doesn't recognize in God's own living room! — but Palamedes does not so much "ping" necromantically as briefly flail necromantically, like maybe a little ward being ready will help him in a pinch, if this grown adult in God's fucking house is indeed what he assumes.
He knows better now, after all. He assumes the worst. His moment of necro-flailing appears physically as Palamedes adjusting his glasses and clearing his throat, but if his assumption is correct, he's probably given himself away a few times over already. He thinks, Fuckshit, and then says:
"I'm quite good at not sitting in wet spots, thank you," and then, "If you encountered the one in the other room, sorry, that was me. I had no spatial awareness when I got here." Here as in the house, of course: if someone doesn't like the squidly wet spot on God's study sofa, well, that's how these things go.
He considers. Why not; "I'm the Sixth. You're one of them, aren't you? Which House?"
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So when he comes down the stairs, hair still tousled from the sleep and still in his pajamas and sees this familiar, yet strange, person on his couch. He can only blink.]
Blood ward guy?
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It's Palamedes, but yes — hi. You made it through alright, huh?
[Because they may have met once on a beach and this bedhead-ridden, pajama'd young man may have alleged himself a non-human powerhouse, but that's enough for Palamedes to put him on the list of people to ask after. Convenient that they are mostly here, in pajamas...
Which,] I like your pajamas. I'd offer you some tea, but it's cold now. Do you want me to make more?
[Will Palamedes get off this couch for one reason: to use God's kitchen without permission? Maybe.]
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homie time
But it looks like the couch is occupied by a skinny guy under a blanket, which is nothing new. It takes Gideon around half a second to parse which skinny guy, maybe longer because for a moment there, it feels like she's back on the spice. In fact, there's only one way to find out whether or not she's still high out of her mind: pick up her spindly friend, tea and all, and maybe spin him around for good measure. ]
Palamedes!
[ He's real, and he's solid, and that's one of the best things in the world - better than any drug, definitely. Gideon laughs, squeezing a little tighter before setting him back down on the couch again. Any more squeezing and she might break his bones! ]
Took you long enough. I've got roommates now, and they're even under eighty, which is crazy stuff.
runs in
But no, she's much faster than he has any mental preparation for, and so his response time allows him only one thing: to put his half-drunk tea down before it slops everywhere. Pros: no tea slopped everywhere, cons: his arms are just flopping everywhere instead, while she spins him around. He laughs, mostly out of sheer surprise, but credit him this: he manages to get one skinny arm around her shoulders and return her buff squeeze with a paltry necromancer squeeze of his own, before he's set back down. Good god.
In essence: holy shit, girl.]
I know, I've seen— [at least, this is what he assumes Paul and Kaworu are doing, wandering around God's Own House in pajamas and various states of half-asleep: living here.] Are you teaching them to raise hell?
[As she well should, of course, and while her excitement is infectious, it's gentler that he adds:] Sorry. I wasn't expecting to take so long.
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april event starters
hot chocolate (game)
Looking at that thing felt... bad! Cool (not)!
So he makes an effort to not do that anymore, as he makes his way around town. The cloak he was recently convinced to buy has a hood, and so it's like a great, hooded moth that he drifts around a corner, only to find — ah. Another butterfly (nemesis!), this time with an unwitting victim. He takes half a step towards the stranger, hesitates, then strides the rest of the way forward pointedly, heedless of whatever corruption may have already erupted that he can't see from a distance. There's no merit in only looking out for number one when it comes to corruption, so: here goes.]
Pardon me— Hello? Can you hear me?
[Hm... He comes to a stop between stranger and butterfly with his back to the great adorable beast, standing slightly on tiptoe to sort of... just use his cloak here to hide as much giant wing as he can... it's goofy.]
Are you still in there? Your eyes are doing something they shouldn't, you know.
[hello! bud!]
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He's just not used to giant butterflies - or, really, butterflies in general given the state of Night City - and why wouldn't he want to stare bordering on trance-like at them? They're beautiful and take his optical implants on a journey around the edges of those giant, green-glowing wings.
So when his line of sight is filled very suddenly with the face of a man, it's jarring in a way that knocks his focus until it's teetering and he feels momentarily like he's floating independently from all things. Disconnected. Sorry, choom, it's not your face that's jarring, just the situation.
And then he blinks, optics refocusing and expression revived from blankness to abject confusion with a hint of melancholy. One hand - purely organic - reaches out to anchor itself instinctively to the figure in front of him. ]
I-- huh? ...who're y-- Wait. I can't look at the..?
[ His optics are drifting upward again, gaze drawn like a magnet because he really wants to see those wings again. ]
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the bar is set at "i've seen worse"
They almost start to feel alive as he scoops them into his jars, and so much more pleasant to look at than the great terrible butterflies, which Palamedes thinks are only nice to look at with his glasses off, when he doesn't have to see the whole... thing. Giant insect parts. No thank you. It still makes the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end to see one's massive wing drift past as it makes its way to sit on a different lamppost, and he turns pointedly away to avoid looking at it directly.
With new insistence he reaches out to scoop another orb into a fresh jar, very nearly cuffing a stranger in the process. It's dark, alright; the orb lights illuminate only so much, and he's only concentrating on those.
So then, arm stopped at an awkward angle, watching the orb drift higher than his reach... hey, stranger.]
Hi. Sorry — can hardly see past my own elbows, let alone keep track of them. [He. Puts his arm down. As an afterthought.] Was that magic orb one of yours?
[haha.....]
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so he's on his own, leaning heavily on his crutch when he moves to capture the glowing orbs in one of the jars he's brought with him. he's finally made himself a new brace for his knee, a little clunky given the materials but worlds better than without. it makes a long day- night?- of gathering what is essentially light and hope in a jar a little easier.
he's a little distracted himself, glimpses of the butterflies fueling the hopelessness of his current situation if he doesn't look away quickly enough (even here he's still decaying, what happens when he dies? does he come back to die the same way again? does it get closer, until the loop is just perpetual death?) mixed with when the little orbs hit his skin and give him a burst of strength (there's so much possibility here, a real chance to be able to not only survive but leave something worthwhile behind when it is his time to go, he hasn't even started down every possible avenue he could take.)
needless to say a bit whiplash at points. he's already exhausted of this month and it's only been a few days.
so he isn't paying much attention either when someone skirts it a little too close, stopping short with a grind of his crutch against the pavement and blinking to the man- oh, collecting as well. he eases a little at that, a soft snort as he holds up his half full jar.]
Eh, if it comes back down it might be yet. Though really, if I have to wave this around much longer my arm will fall off. [a touch dry there and with a czech accent, and he offers a crooked quirk of the lips to show yes, no hard feelings when it's this dark out.]
I see we are of the same mind that these are worth the trouble regardless.
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smoothie meme.txt
He's never really been... into Lumenwood before, not past the Lumenarium, and so orienting himself among the mist and overbearing scent of flowers chews up most of the actual search for the source of this blood problem.
But not for long; call that necromantic advantage, but he manages to source the pollution to a source, which he arrives at with his glasses off and squinting, because the blood mist has ruined his lenses repeatedly already and he's sick of cleaning them. He doesn't know what he's expecting — beasts, maybe? Something he's not equipped to handle all by his lonesome, despite wandering this way all by his lonesome on purpose.
Not, though... another lab, which he loiters around outside of until someone comes out of it, at which point he clears his throat and speaks up:]
Your business is making the locals squirm. [Which sounds initially like a disapproval, and it almost is, but not in the context one might assume. To wit:] Do you need a hand?
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Sayo may have deliberately spread a few rumors about a ghost story to make her plot easier.
Though apparently, ghosts don't scare necromancers. She had just been about to walk outside to head back to the warehouse when Palamedes is just right there. Letting out a very undignified,] Eep! [Sayo stumbles back, nearly tripping over herself before catching her balance.]
Could you have at least- um, wait, if you knew to knock that'd take away the whole point of the... atmosphere I'm trying to cultivate. N- Nevermind. [She shakes her head.] Listen, I know that the blood pollution is a problem, but I'm taking every precaution I can, and once I get a few more steps it'll... Huh?
[She blinks owlishly.] I, er. Yes? Wait, wait, no. First. Why?
[Some days Sayo could put on an imperious, playful persona. Others, she's too surprised by events like this to be remotely put-together.]
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i know a guy...
It's just an idea for now: a few notes about a private training space scribbled in his ever-present notebook. His old habit of keeping notes has served him well here, filling up the journal he found in his bag when he first washed up on the Farther Shores. Fixing up an old apartment is one thing, an entire building another. Whether it's an old warehouse or a cave or something else entirely, he's in over his head.
Then there's the matter of the all-important security system. (Paul's eyes lit up at the prospect of arranging traps.) This private space is also a secret hideout in case his enemies (specific or hypothetical) decide to make trouble. There's also the matter of more intelligent Beasts to consider. In the varied world of Deer Country and its denizens, security should be in layers. Midoriya knows nothing of electronics or magic, but--Paul knows a guy.
"Palamedes-san?" His accent forms his name carefully. "It's me, Midoriya. Sorry if it's crowded, but I figure no one will pay attention to us around here. I brought my notes."
Midoriya is in civvies, a plain hoodie jacket and jeans. He pulls down a simple black mask that hid his face from his freckles to his neck. It's a common enough fashion statement in Trench, especially if blood pollution is high, or if one is a Hunter. In the shopping district, he'd look like he was about to rob a store, if he didn't stand so straight and attentive.
He's a relatively short young man around Paul's age, with a polite but not stuffy demeanor. He has a riot of dark green hair under his hood. His eyes are the same forest color. They are open and inviting, but purposeful. He carries a backpack and a canvas bag with today's shopping.
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Still, this person is Paul's friend, and so he's on board on that basis alone. He heads for the lamp and loiters the only way he knows how: with a notebook, scribbling away. He's found a low stone wall to lean against, knee bent and notebook balanced on it, and that's where he remains until Midoriya arrives. He's not difficult to spot only because he's tall, being otherwise dressed head to toe in plain gray and black, muddling the silhouette of him even further in this persistent dark.
He glances up (and then down, huh) from scribbling when addressed, pushing his glasses back up his nose.
"Hi. D'you want to sit?" Here on this wall, specifically. If they're going for uninteresting, nothing is more out of the way than sitting in this spot specifically chosen to wait undisturbed for his meeting, frankly. He puts his thumb down on his notebook page and flips the whole thing shut in a smooth motion, nodding. "Well, this is your business; tell me about it. What can I do for you?"
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end of april, a Moment
The first day- well, evening really, the first evening Palamedes looks up from his reading to realize how late it is (according only to the omni, still) and that Viktor hasn't returned yet to the bunker, he thinks nothing of it; he chuckles to himself and shakes his head, assuming Viktor has fallen asleep hunched over a notebook back in Willful Machine. Rio will have to nudge him over to that little cot of his, he'll probably complain half-awake that he still has work to do. Palamedes continues his reading.
The second day he wanders by the lab himself, sometime around what might pass as lunchtime, to see how things are going. He's got a page or two of angles to consider about the bloodstones, and Viktor's second opinion is infinitely valuable.
Viktor isn't there; out looking for more parts to make into machines, perhaps? Palamedes loiters for a while, until he figures he'll catch him at home. He continues not to worry, but only just.
The second evening, with no Viktor to speak of yet again, is when Palamedes begins to worry in earnest. The butterflies sapping hope still haven't left, and it's still dark, and it's not as if the journey between Gaze and Willful Machine is the safest possible path in Trench; any number of terrible things could have happened upon Viktor just on his way to do some work. Palamedes refuses to think of the possibility that Viktor has abruptly gone back into the ocean, like Camilla—
Like a reasonable individual, he turns to the omni, but after one curt message to reassure him that Viktor is still here and then no other replies, he's back to wallowing in it. First of all, very rude to leave him on read, second of all— any number of terrible things!
He gives Viktor only one more day, at which point he sets out in earnest to find him, come hell or highwater. The lab: empty. Around Willful Machine: not empty, but sorely lacking in the man he wants to see. So—
It's embarrassing, then, how long it takes him to remember the docks. He heads there as quickly as his necromancer stamina will allow him, heedless of how careless he himself is being, wandering around alone and off the streets, a prime target for beasts and butterflies. Surely, his heart is hammering loud enough for every creature in a mile radius to hear, save for the moment he catches sight of a silvery glint and his heart stops completely, instead.
He's already watched one person nearly metallicize in front of him, he can't— Surely that's not Viktor up ahead, that's someone else's shimmering silhouette, except it isn't, is it—? Despite himself, Palamedes feels a flash of anger, that someone as smart as Viktor would let this happen to himself.
When he appears at Viktor's elbow, looking out at the few boats docked for the night, he's managed to school most of the fear and hapless frustration from his expression. Hi.]
So. What are you thinking about? It must be a big one, to take three days.
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it does not. it does nothing to him beside mimic with irritating accuracy. looking at it does nothing (good, no more butterflies please,) tossing one of the orbs does nothing. he loses his patience at one point and gives it a little whack with his crutch only to get a bruise on his own arm for his trouble. the whole stupid episode makes him laugh and he considers messaging pal about it, because he thinks pal might get a kick out of it. he even gets as far as opening up to pal's inbox before he falters.
he doesn't know what this is, and until he does he doesn't want to have it anywhere near pal. he doesn't want it haunting the bunker, a place that has become warm in a way his old apartment back home never managed. he doesn't want to turn to find it latching onto pal, or feeding from pal, or any number of possibilities. he needs more information and that he'll get, so he closes the inbox and focus that first night on figuring out exactly what's happening. he makes notes.
mimics <- working title until the name of these creatures is revealed
characteristics: faceless, an oddly metallic sheen? fluid movement regardless of it. solid, water simply drips off them without and absorption from the mimic.
note: physical violence against the mimic reflects on the one it is mimicking!
mostly like that, feverish through that first evening. by morning he can't stop glancing over his shoulder, grimacing at how the creature simply grimaces back. still no obvious method of feeding, and when he goes outside people seem to recognize the mimic is there, can see it. he's avoided and he's grateful, though he's struck with the thought that the moment allen or pal walk into the lab they'll make this their problem too.
for a dying man, it's a thought that slides across his head too naturally to be ignored. for what very well could be a lost cause, all that attention and effort that could so easily be doomed to be just another scar bleeding corruption.
he goes to the docks shortly after, always the place best to think and try and clear his head of that sort of nonsense. the problem is it feels less and less like nonsense the longer he stands there, even rio fading to smoke from where she tried to stay resolutely pressed to his side.
he thinks of pal's words at the bar, the picture of some sickly friend from the seventh he lost. he thinks about how his own steady decaying must feel to watch, wonders if it's similar enough to whatever tragedy pal faced that it eats at him. thinks about it when pal messages him and he offers a clumsy message back, head clearing for a blessed moment with the concern shown.
it doesn't last. maybe later he could untangle the time that follows and the many tangles but mostly he sinks into the silence of it all. he was always here once, that sickly kid who couldn't climb up with the other children so he watched the boats instead. the tether feels like it's breathing down his neck by the time pal comes around, silver seeping up his jaw like prominent veins.
when pal speaks there's a delay before he looks over, the mimic looking in unison, its eyeless gaze somehow more focused.]
Legacy, I think. What that actually means. [he answers after another beat] In a way it's really just our excuse for why we existed in the first place, is it not?
[being a fucking downer, man. ]
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a Weird Day
And yet he does wonder, just how many versions of reflection can the Trench come up with? The twisted kind back in winter, the tethers, and now quite literally Beware of Mirrors. There's a pattern there worth studying; something to pick apart when he has enough data for it, to attempt to predict an outcome if nothing else. That the Trench is forcing them to confront themselves is fairly overt, he thinks.
So it's foolish for Palamedes to hear so many warnings about Mirrors and immediately head home to stare at the mirror in the bunker bathroom. It's just a mirror; nothing in his reflection melts or distorts, or leaps out at him in anger— it's a mirror.
But the art of the mirrors' curse is distortion, and so it's the warped, tiny reflection of himself Palamedes catches in the chrome of the sink faucet that does it. He sees it, knows it in an instant to be the thing the locals had whispered about, and the reflection of him stares back with a dull-eyed intensity that he does not want to deal with. He has time only to take off his glasses and drop them, like that will help, and—
And the desires stuck in him by the mirror want to be seen, despite how mortifying that will be, and so he sends Viktor's omni an innocuous enough message:]
Viktor, are you busy? Can I see you? At home.
[Not that he is immediately visible At Home, having used what little self control he has left to him now to... to sit on the floor in the bathroom, head in his hands. His glasses are in the sink, which for some reason is still on.
He doesn't look up to the sound of the bathroom door opening; he thinks he could say something like, Could you hand me my glasses? or maybe even, Never mind, I'm handling it, but instead he says, to the floor:]
You were right. About my bad habit; the stalwart one. Do you remember that?
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his brow immediately furrows.] I am on my way now.
[he resists the urge to pester for more information- if that is what pal is giving him he can wait to get home to learn more. he worries of course, leaning heavily against rio to make the trip a little faster, worries this is an injury or a time sensitive matter. maybe he's overthinking it, maybe the tone is just confusing in text.
when he reaches the bunker and finds pal in the bathroom he scraps that possibility right out.]
I do. It is one of those eh... those double edged swords, is the term. [he answers as he walks over, grasps the edge of the sink so he can lower himself to sit at pal's side, eying him in open concern.] Good for others, not always so good for you.
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