deercountry | May 2022: Augustine the First catch-all

Entry tags:

May 2022: Augustine the First catch-all

Who: Augustine the First and ____________ (This could be you!)
What: A little bit of everything, including Event threads, and who knows what else
When: Throughout May
Where: Specific locations listed in TLs.

Content warnings for this character: Explicit gore/body horror as a baseline, probably omnipresent (high-level necromancer); callous and amoral outlook on life (jaded AF); very high likelihood of mentions of death/suicide/weaponized-sexuality in basically any and all interactions.

Specific warning for this post: A profoundly offensive number of conversational lyric-drops in the thread with Anna. ~~It's fantastic.~~

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Well, it also makes the girls in the bars think that I'm cool as hell, but I'm not exactly advertising, that, Gus." She gives him a casual smirk and tilts her head towards a nearby alleyway.

"Come on, dude. We don't even have to go that far in, if you're still worried about me killing you and trying to steal the world's oldest lighter for myself." If nothing else, that lighter probably has Uno, which is a benefit. She takes a couple steps in between two nearby buildings and leans against the wall, then pierces her finger again and flicks up another flame. "Though if you're trying to hide bloodstains, maybe I'm the one who should be worried, huh?"

With one hand, she pulls out a cigarette, lights it, and puts it between her lips. He can come over whether he wants to or not, but she needs the smoke.

"One might think I should have reason to be concerned about having your blood, in particular, staining my clothing," 'Gus' points out, even as he trails after her, even as he keeps his eyes peeled (... as best he can, in hood and mask) and Lyctoral radar sweeping for signs of anyone he knows, who might recognize his voice — if not his new face — and might wander close to say hello. "Given a distinct lack of wanting to catch fire, on the average day, as it were."

And, well. Here he is, tucked away in an alleyway that's really just more of a crevice between buildings where trash goes to hide from the wind~~; isn't that what smokers are, anyway, at least to nonsmokers?~~ — fuck it, he thinks, somewhere between miserable furious and coldly resigned.

The mask doesn't come off — he isn't stupid, thanks — but given that he's also not particularly keen on even a stranger in a Fall Out Boy shirt staring at his, mmmm, very receding chin, he's also popping a wall squat even while he's unhooking the mask just enough to get a cigarette to his mouth. First the Zippo, then his hand, cupped around his chin, cigarette in between two fingers — sure, this is all perfectly normal smoking behavior. Right?

(Slightly more of his jaw is exposed than he realizes, but MAYBE she won't actually be at the right angle to notice. Unless she drops something, but why would she want to do that, somewhere the cobblestones are so sticky?)

All Anna notices through this whole process is how fuckin' weird Gus is being about his smokes, but, like. That's fine. Some people take it particular. For one reason or another, he doesn't wanna be looked at while he smokes, or at least that's the vibe Anna's getting—so she doesn't. Her eye stays focused on either the wall in front of them or the parts of his body that are still covered when it does deign to wander.

"Relax, dude, I can control it. It'll only ignite if I want it to, and I only use fire for smoking these days anyway." She looks down at a puddle that she's edging a foot into and pulls her sneaker out of it. "I use lightning when I wanna fuck something up, and I left my sword at home."

But okay. She can't let it sit for too much longer, because if Gus is doing a bit he sure isn't letting it up anytime soon, and she's... well, Anna is no stranger to being rude to new people. (It's how she bonds.) "Seriously, though, are you worried I'm gonna, like, judge you for smoking wrong? You're handling that thing about as well as I did when I was 18."

She probably isn't expecting him to laugh, at that; even if she was, it's the odds-on favorite she wouldn't expect a laugh like this — the sort of laugh that exists when it's not socially acceptable to sob, or scream, or shout; the sort of laugh that says there's nothing actually funny going on, here, just the sort of actual irony that nobody has ever written a song about.

"Oh heavens, chick, I'm not worried about the smokes," he says, after most of a very unsettling minute, and then — tugs the mask down again, first, before switching his cigarette to his offhand, holding out his right, stretching it out, flexing back and forth, demonstrating all the ways it's a fine and functional right hand in a black leather glove, and then —

Peels off the glove, revealing nothing at all.

When he switches the cig back to his right hand, resting neatly between index and middle fingers, it hovers in the air a few inches away from the hollowed-out cuff of an apparently-empty sleeve.

"Let's just say it's been a hell of a weird month, hmmm?"

They could leave it at that.

(They could leave it at that, but... that would depend on neither of them being the sort of person who'd rather indulge their curiosity than leave well enough alone... and Augustine, at least, is going to fail that test.)

Edited 2022-06-06 07:09 (UTC)

They could, but they absolutely won't. Anna watches the display expressionlessly for a long moment, sharing at least part of the discomfort as she tries piecing together a few different things about Gus just from the way he's holding himself and talking. She doesn't get very far before he reveals—or rather doesn't reveal himself to her, and that's when her expression changes. Her eyebrows go up, though her one is hidden behind the eyepatch, and she tugs at the collar of her tee.

Not out of discomfort, though. She just wants to make sure that the thin black seam running along her neck is visible. "Dude, I'm a robot," she says as plainly as she can. "Everything from the neck down is wires and metal. I definitely get weird body shit." She won't say, or at least not yet, whether the robot transformation is temporary or permanent.

"And turning invisible ain't even the worst one I've, uh, not seen this month. Met a dude at a friend's fireworks party who was straight up a devil, plus one of my other friends was a centaur and his boyfriend was a giant bird." And also Alexander the Great, but things are weird enough as is. She lets her hand fall back to her side. "If it works like the rest of this stuff, you'll be fixed by the turn of the month." And if he's not? Well, he can figure that out later, probably.

"That help the anxiety at all?" she asks genuinely despite her choice of words.

"A robot who smokes and bleeds fire," he says dryly, and — well, again: fuck it, she apparently doesn't give a flying shit that he's invisible, or care about how fucking weird and unsettling it looks, not the way he does — not the way John is going to, because he just knows, deeply and depressingly, that John is going to take this as a personal affront to him from the Pthumerians, that they would fuck with His First Saint.

Not that it's an affront to Augustine, no. To John.

But no. Focusing on the fuck-it, not on John; focusing on the fact that cigarettes burn down whether or not they're actively being smoked, and the only thing worse than not smoking one is using it like a goddamn incense stick when craving the momentary relief and peace it brings instead; he tugs the mask up over his chin and mouth once more, and brings the cigarette up (in his invisible hand), and takes a drag (with his invisible mouth), as the cherry at the end glows and the smoke plumes and honestly he's quite glad that there isn't a mirror, here, because he doesn't even want to know what it looks like.

"I think I might have been at that party, briefly," he says absently, finally exhaling. He hadn't really talked to people, so much as wandered around with a bunch of alcohol to let people test their own tolerances, but whatever. "Definitely saw a centaur, anyway. They're a bit... large." He shrugs, nicely visible thanks to all the clothing.

"Anxiety is... one way to put it," he settles on, after another drag. "Another would be, well, not really wanting to deal with the fallout."

Damn. Wild to think that she might have run into this guy already and she wouldn't have known because she has no idea what he looks like. The display she's watching is definitely something special, seeing someone smoke without actually having a face to smoke from. But she's not... wildly bothered by it, or at least she's got the grace not to show it if she is.

"Smokes, bleeds fire. Drinks, plays live music, engages in a little casual counter-piracy on the side," she says with a sidelong look and a smirk. "I'm vast. I contain multitudes." Quotes Walt Whitman, too. She's kind of a lot, as other people have described her, and from the way she's grinning right before it falls from her face, she seems to take a lot of pride in it.

"What about fallout?" she asks, dropping another casual little music reference that she doesn't expect him to get. This one isn't written right on her chest, after all. "Seems like a dick move to act like it's your fault you got turned invisible. Not like any of us can control what the gods do or anything."

"Doesn't that depends on your relationship with —" God "— the gods?" Gus counters, fast and playful, the hesitation so subtle that someone would have to be able to record what he said, when he said it, and play it back with a bunch of audio-processing software in order to be certain — and in order to do that during the middle of a conversation, you'd have to be a robot or something, wouldn't you...? ~~Shit.~~

"Not," he as with a little more care, "that I've heard of anyone entering into kinky relationships with any of the Pthumerians, as such. No idea at all if anyone humanoid," which, once upon a time — a few months ago, before spending a few centuries as an elf over the course of forty-eight hours — would have just been human, "would properly even recognize if they were kinky — nev— let's just forget that," with an abrupt second cover, as saying nevermind might, in fact, not be what he's wanting to do, here. His still-gloved hand makes a gesture of ball-it-up-and-throw-it-away, for emphasis.

"Just — have you ever wanted to disappear?" he asks, pressing back on the bruise of the subject. "Not just take off, missing-persons style, run away —" and maybe join a monastery, why not, "but vanish, get swallowed up by the floor right then and there, turn invisible so no one will ever find you again if you don't want them to?" Another invisible drag on a visible cigarette; as he begins talking again, the smoke curls back into existence, clearly far enough away from his nose and mouth that they can't press their shape into it and be defined that way. Weird. "In my experience, that's not a permanent desire, see — it's a dream of escaping, still. Getting away from the problem, in a way where it can't catch you and forced to to deal with its consequences. But you'll still end up wanting control — to be able to decide when you're playing with your new superpower, and when you're going to be as bland and boring as any old Midwestern newspaper reporter."

As a completely random example.

"It's what it all boils down to, anyway, isn't it? Control? For yourself, for the people you know — whether it's you wanting to control what they go through, or them getting furious when it's you..." The cigarette floats away from his head, sleeve following, as he taps ash out onto the pavement. "This fellow I know, my..." Shit, how can he even describe that relationship? "We've known each other forever, anyway. Longer and more thoroughly than anyone else ever has, ever could — and he's been here, what, half a year? It's like nothing ever happened in between us — even though the last time we saw each other, out there," vague gloved-hand wave in the direction of Mariana's ocean, not Trench, "things had gotten to the point of very earnestly trying to kill each other." He pulls out another cigarette as he talks, and chain-lights it. "He succeeded a bit better than I did," dryly, as if discussing nothing of greater weight than, say, signing a record deal, "then fished me up on the shore and brought me home with him, and acts like anything that happens to me is a personal affront to him," and seriously why is he just opening up and spilling all these beans to her?

(Presumably because it's been an incredibly stressful year-slash-myriad, and if Trench has any psychiatrists of sufficiently high skill levels to cope with him, well, they're probably fully booked and not taking new patients at this time.)

He is picking up and returning a suspiciously high amount of what she's putting down, and Anna is not going to make that mistake a second time. Not when she thinks she might know the man he's warring with, no matter how... complicated their relationship seems to be with each other. See, she may not have the presence of mind to pore over every word like that, especially when she's being given so many, but she doesn't need to speculate quite so much when she's got the firsthand experience.

Instead, while he has a realtime breakdown of his history with a man who would be god, she leans there looking at her own hand. Watching the way her fingers fold around the cigarette while she listens very carefully as a human would. Here she is, doing everything she can, holding on to what she has, and he's talking about Superman. Astounding.

"I know life never makes it easy," she says casually. "It's easier to disappear. But I don't know, dude, I've lived like that before. Never gets much better, hiding yourself away like that from everyone and everything." Not the point, though. Barely the point in the first place. She takes a slow drag and blows the smoke out away from them.

"Sure, you got the control of deciding when you do it, but you gotta decide who you're disappearing for anyway, right? Like that guy, I don't know, let's call him John," she says with the exact wafer-thin weight that it shouldn't have, "Let's say John picked you up and saved your life or whatever. Let's ignore that he killed you in the first place. So John's got what he thinks is a claim to you now, yeah? Just 'cause he's like 'oh, I brought you into this world, I can take you out of it' or whatever doesn't make him right."

Maybe she's drawing bad comparisons here. Maybe it's been on her mind lately. Hard to tell. She rolls her shoulders, looks up towards the sky and just gets an eyeful of brick. "So are you disappearing because you want to do it, or are you doing it because he made you feel like it's the only choice you've got, is the question, yeah? So even the whole... idea that you're choosing to do something is still dripping in his control." She looks back over, turning more of her head this time.

"He sounds like a shitty dad who can't handle that his kids aren't following him like toy soldiers anymore." And that statement weighs like lead in her gut, beyond the heavy metal that's already in there. She blinks (or maybe it's a wink) once or twice, then turns her head back and touches the end of the cigarette to her lips. "But if you take all your serious relationship opinions from dykes you've known for five minutes then you've got more problems than I can solve."

If anyone had asked, a minute or two ago, with interstitial camera-interview footage cut into their conversation, Augustine would have absolutely laughed his ass off at the idea that he was talking about himself, describing someone who wanted the power to disappear.

By the time she hits him with that carefully-featherweighted John, the injury barely registers. His mouth has already fallen open, his cigarette only held steady (and not dropped into his lap) because of the padding and friction of the leather gloves; he would, in fact, look a gape-mouthed idiot, staring at her, if anyone could actually see his expression. Maybe — maybe — she merely means the universal You; maybe she thinks, well, HE kept saying 'you', why shouldn't I? —

But it sounds like she's flipping it around and pinning it on him — and he isn't the one who chose this for himself! ~~Was he...?~~

Are you disappearing because you want to do it, or are you doing it because he made you feel like it's the only choice you've got?

No, he wants to say; no, that's, that's not it —

No, he wants to say, and Alfred, take her down —

"John is such a terrible name to try to take seriously," is what actually comes out of his mouth, once words are willing again to be found inside it. "You could have picked nearly anything else — calling him John makes it sound like you think we met while he was soliciting prostitutes," he adds reasonably, because it isn't like he, Alfred, Ulysses, Gideon and Pyrrha, at least, hadn't all aired that little issue more than once, when discussing which pre-Resurrection literature artifacts ought to be actively preserved, right? "I know it's the world's oldest profession, but that is not how we met, dear madam!" He gives it a beat, to let it be playful — it has to be playful — and adds, "I am a professional, of course, but it isn't that one — I've always been more of a slut than a whore."

He's never been ashamed to be a slut, either, and had never seen shame as a corequisite for sex work, for that matter — but let's just keep on deflecting, shall we?

"Can't help but wonder what it says about you, though," he adds more quietly — which is not, at all, the same as saying it's softer — "that you went after some of those conclusions so hard, you weren't jumping to them so much as you were... oh, constructing elaborate structures to help you reach them more effectively." At least one of those two cigs survived the shock of Anna's darts; he takes another very-much-needed drag, watching her with a great deal of care.

(Somewhere, in the wall of piled-up bricks above her head, a long, dark ribbon of death coils, silent and alert, echoing his brother's attention.)

"Other than, of course, that the mere fact of dykehood is hardly a good explanation for immediately assuming quite an abusive relationship out of a single brief, frustrated complaint."

(However accurate she might or might not be, with that particular assumption, in this particular myriadic case.)

Whether she's right or not, there's a hint of a chill running through her. It's not the deflection that gets her, leading her to a path that might otherwise be the definition of protesting too much. (Testing, testing, he's just protesting that this talk might not be the best thing.) No, the chill comes from the unbearable ordeal of being seen. It's astounding what invisible eyes can notice when she's—let's say accidentally laid herself so bare before them. She lets the chill pass through her as she takes a long-awaited drag.

"Sorry," she says instead. It's simple, but sincere. She doesn't turn her head upward to blow the smoke in that direction, up towards the bricks blocking her view of the sky. "We got this holiday back home for our dads, and it's coming up again. Couple weeks, probably, even if this place doesn't give a shit about Earth holidays. But, like, me and my dad, we got in the shit with each other constantly," and she's glossing over a handful of years of altercations that are now entering their second decade living rent free in Anna's head.

"I guess I get a little weird about stuff like this every year around this time. 's been on my mind lately, is all." And while yes, she's trying to deflect herself, because she's still not sure how far into the heart of danger she's walked or if she's accidentally ended up on a different expedition entirely, that leaden weight inside her comes out on every word. "But you grow up trained to be your daddy's perfect little lockstep toy soldier and tell me if that shit leaves you easy, yeah?"

She's made all of this about herself, her own misery. Taken control of the conversation after taking too many assumptions as truth. Or maybe Gus is the one who can still guide it however he wants, or maybe they can both just walk away once they're done smoking. "Anyway, sorry, dude. I really did just kind of rub my ass on all of that for no reason. And not in a slutty way, either. There's probably nicer ways to find out my tragic backstory." That's something else that has to be a joke.

Earth holidays, she says, casually dropping that into the conversation, just the cherry on top of her shirt, and the same game ~~fucking~~ John ~~fucking Gaius~~ is always so prone to playing, that he's automatically fallen into, too — and after ten thousand years, does he remember how not to keep it going?

(He's so tired of John's endless bullshit.)

His voice is as hollow as his sleeve and mask as he says, smoke forming the shape of his words, "The sort of shit that piles up into a tragic backstory will never leave anyone easily."

(— well, it isn't forming the shape of his words literally, to be fair, even if that would be pretty sweet, wouldn't it?)

He adds, deadpan: "Of course, that's probably why you're finding yourself rubbing your ass on things — to relieve the discomfort." Because of course bathroom humor is a great way of defusing the situation, right? Implications of butt-scooching? A careful, practiced flick of invisible fingers leaves all the loose ash floating away from his still-floating cigarette; between the earlier intonation, the smoke-effects, and the ash-scattering, it's all just terribly oracular — which, he supposes, might be a decent side hustle, if this clear-skin situation doesn't clear up soon, itself.

Butt also — idly questioning, because of course it doesn't matter what her answer might be — "Was that him, then? Your old man? The brought-you-into-this-world/taking-you-out-of-it part? Seems like a predictable threat, for someone pissed off that his kids are stealing his toy soldiers, even if that's his kids themselves — yourself — one of those if-he-can't-have-you,-no-one-can situations, maybe?"

Gus eyes her, speculatively; she looks... shaken, more than stirred up; close enough. He reaches into his vest, pulling out a small leather-bound flask of mostly-vodka, and tosses it at her — perfect aim, less because of Alfred's skills and more because of being able to direct the leather's path through the air. (And, well, everything attached to it, as a result.)

"It doesn't matter, you know," which actually is a little softer, not just quieter. He looks down at his hands — one black glove, one empty cuff and floating cigarette; the entire situation is just so fucking absurd, and he hates it, and he hates how much he hates it — how he can't just laugh it off. "Whoever they are, whatever they've done, it's the past, and it can't be changed — doesn't mean it's good, doesn't mean it doesn't still have an effect," he interrupts himself, before she can. "But you don't really need me to sit here in an alleyway sharpening my claws on all your old pain, any more than I particularly want you to on mine. Have a drink, if you'd like," which is also sort of a peace offering, if it's necessary.

"Some nights..." One last drag, on that second cigarette, before he flicks it off toward the dead-end wall (and it flies so fast, without him even really noticing, that it's already extinguished by the time it leaves a divot in one of the bricks thirty-forty feet away). "I wish that this all would end," as he flicks his (gloved, visible) fingers toward himself. Unclear antecedent alert: invisibility? presence in Trench? absence from Hell? relative state of life? tendency to define himself through the lens of John's attention?

"But." He shakes his head, and pulls his mask back down, and pulls his other glove on, fidgeting it into place with all the finickiness necessary to give her plenty of time to drink, or decide not to drink, and put the cap back on and offer him back his flask. "I suppose, in the meantime, I could use some friends, for a change. Who the fuck wants to die alone, in a place as madcap as this? Even if you are just as likely to make a squidward return to the Farthest Shores."  And Gus holds out his hand to her — maybe for the flask; maybe for her own hand, and an actual offer of friendship. He's not always the clearest person to read, even if his current motives are entirely transparent.

Lots of things to notice, to listen to here. She's picking up on a few things, one of which is absolutely something she's noticed a few times before, and, well. Holding off on that for the immediate moment. The second is that he really does seem to like the sound of his own voice, but it's in a way that doesn't really strike her as... pompous or anything. More like he has a lot of thoughts that are all colliding all at once and if he doesn't get them all out then he may explode.

She's familiar with the sensation.

Instead of commenting on it, though, she makes little more than "mm" every so often until he offers her the flask. She grabs it out of the air with reflexes that seem just as unnatural as the throw, but she's already revealed her own little secret so that's less of a big deal. Before opening it, she frees up her own hand by flicking her cigarette across the alley with a little less strength behind it and watches the red extinguish into a tiny trail of smoke as it hits the damp ground.

There's a moment there like she's debating whether she wants to drink something that someone else's lips have been on, but that's more a learned response from the past couple years at home than anything else. Deciding it can't be a bigger risk than anything else here, she opens the flask and takes a respectable drink from it. She handles it like a pro, frankly, not that that's something to be particularly proud of. Vodka has never been her poison of choice, but she supposes that asking someone who's offering free alcohol if he can turn it into Jack is a little presumptuous.

She finishes, caps the flask, and hands it back, then finally speaks up. "Thanks. And you know, there's something on my mind that I think I can ask you. Now that we're friends and all." She doesn't wait for a reply, but, like, why would she. She pushes off the wall only long enough to rotate her body so her arm is pressing against the brick instead. "So my big question is this—and it's, like, more of a question to me, I guess. But it's the kind of question that has its own answer."

From this position, it might be easier to see a few silver lines etched along the metal of her arm, but if he recognized it as the melody to a heart-crushing A Day to Remember song by the piano roll alone, she'd be shocked. "Just how much of the Fueled by Ramen discography are you planning on quoting to me before I stop letting you get away with it, Gus?"

Gus is supposed to laugh here, of course; a hah! you got me! moment, chuckle and shake his head and admire the ink on her arm, and then she'll know that he's from an Earth not that far away from hers, and a point in time not so very far away from something like the 21st Century's beginning —

There's nothing to show that his expression is blankly shocked, befuddled, baffled, bewildered — the mask, after all, isn't a second skin, or it would be just as invisible as the first, just like the stolen greasepaint was — she can't even see the way his mouth has fallen open in sheer overwhelmed confusion, as the flask wilts in his hand until it's fully at risk of being dropped, and all he can think to say is:

"... who?"

(To be fair to the flask, as concerns its contents: this vodka is both cheap and strong enough to cope with the metabolism of a Lyctor with night terrors, which may mean it's only vodka by technicality.)

Anna blinks.

This time she's sure of it. She can feel her other eye closing. If there's anything like shock, surprise, anything like that on Gus' face, she's certain she's reflecting it let's fucking say sevenfold, sure! If she still had her cigarette it would have fallen out of her mouth by now. Instead, she pushes back off the wall and stares at him. Well, best she can, at least.

"You're fucking with me, right?" she asks, since that's the only option she has. "That was just, like, the entire chorus of 'Some Nights' by fun. We traded like six different Marianas Trench songs back and forth." She's not, like, sputtering in her incredulity, but she doesn't really know how else to react to what she's hearing. She grabs the collar of her own shirt and tugs it forward far enough to expose the matte black metal below her collarbone, where the skin looks like it's coming away in cleanly divided patches. Like it was laid on top of a chassis, which would make an enormous amount of sense.

"We started with fucking Fall Out Boy? One of the biggest pop punk bands Earth's ever seen?" She lets go of her shirt with the frustration a little more evident on her face and in the way she almost throws her hand back down to her side. "Unbelievable. You're telling me it was a coincidence? All of this? Bullshit."

It would be very easy, here, just to say, Letting people down is my thing — but maybe it's for the best that that impulse is buried under another.

"What? No, I know all that," Gus says, impatient and bewildered in equal measure, dismissive hand gestures and everything.

"Those names all entered the liturgy — I documented them myself, we played all the albums until they distorted to make certain we all agreed on the lyrics the few times there wasn't a divine mandate — what are you talking about?"

He's... incredulous, maybe, that could be the tone — except there's also a sort of sick/grief layer to it. (Maybe it's just as well that he's invisible, that he's masked — the weight of every year he's ever slipped out from under is all just sitting there, in his eyes, where she can't see it.)

There's a quiet hissing sound, just above her head, that's been growing louder and louder as he speaks, even as his own voice has raised — but it's definitely audible when he stops speaking, and a very fast-moving dark smoke-brown string of lethality falls from the sky —

— falls? Swims? Behaves in a fashion a mortal snake definitely can't? That last part is certain; despite the gravity-assisted speed in launching from above, the snake in question never actually touches the ground — he hovers between the two of them in midair, head raised high and swaying, mouth open, fangs on display — and while a coastal taipan doesn't have a hood to spread, unlike some of its cousins, this one does end up with Gus's spread hand framing his head, like a hood or a halo.

"Stop, Alfred," he says, very softly — as one would, to a younger brother, rather than as one would command an attack dog to stand down.

(The snake lets more of its — his — body down, to whatever invisible surface is supporting the rest of his weight; his mouth closes... halfway. The look he gives Anna says a very clear I've still got my eyes on you, though.)

Hearing the hissing, realizing that something is coming for her, sends her hand to her hip. She's going for a blade that isn't there, but barely reflects the fear on her face when she realizes that no, she has no way to defend herself. And then the snake does something decidedly unsnakely, until the silhouette it cuts in Gus' hands reminds her very strongly of something else that she knows is dangerous. Of course, she's still got a neutral face on; it's never good to let your enemy know your fear, even if your enemy isn't ready to attack anymore.

"Your omen's got soul," she mutters. It's not appropriate right now, not after she'd almost been attacked by it—after she'd done something to almost get attacked by it. But it's all she can think to say, because if everything else hasn't made it completely clear just who and what she's dealing with, then this has definitely said outright what the previous 77 musical references were only implying.

"I'm not gonna fight anyone. Don't shake, 'cause I've never even rattled." She needs to stop. Her eye moves up, quite suddenly, to the mask, and to where she's expecting his eyes to be underneath it. It's time for her to make a choice, and she doesn't know if she likes where it's going to land her. She only has to say a handful of things, a simple sentence that she's learned the context of from someone else. She knows how important the words are, and hopes very, very desperately, once again, that this will not mean war.

"Let's try this again, Gus." Her tone is firm, insistent, but still brimming with the disbelief that caused her to push herself into danger in the first place. Her back straightens; in fact, she almost leans a little further away, hooking a thumb into the pocket of her jeans so she doesn't seem quite as threatening. She's not sure it's working. "My name's Anna Amarande." Former teenage dirtbag. Freak of the week for months running. Forever the sickest kid. "And I'm from before the Resurrection."

There's a queer sort of look on his face — on the snake's face, given that Gus's face is twice unreadable; perhaps it's the same expression either way: relief, mixed with guilt, mixed with that remnant disbelief.

Point one:

«Of course I've got soul. It was mine to begin with, long before I ever gave it to him — why wouldn't I just take it back, when I finally needed it again?» says the ... snake? Right into her head, too.

Point two:

"I'm dreadfully sorry, then," Gus says, sounding quite thoroughly somber about it, if maybe not quite all the way to funereal. "I mean, not that we aren't, too, but I suspect your phrasing is meant to indicate that you did not, personally, experience the Resurrection — did you? I hope you didn't try to sleep through the end of the world, either way."

(That might be a lie, if taken on its face — but then again, does he even know if he did?)

Point three:

Now that the apology part is out of the way, that featherweighted John is coming back to nag at the edges of his mind. "Of course," Augustine continues a bit more... slowly, a bit more cautiously, tasting his words as he goes (maybe checking them for poison? hard to say if he's for or against its presence, here), "I am left to wonder, a bit, how you would know you're from before something like that — along with wondering how you ended up a robot."

«If she slept for days, well... I don't know. I wouldn't make the same mistake.»

"Oh don't you start, or we'll be stuck like that for the rest of the day!" Gus snaps at his Omen(—beloved—brother—martyr), one hand coming up to — brush against his mask, at the bridge between those two glittering, mirrored lenses, where he can't pinch the bridge of his nose in irritation.

«Pleased to meet you, anyway, Anna, now that you're not freaking him out,» adds Alfred, quite cheerfully, even though he's a little disappointed that his brother has already ruined his chance to add Can you guess my name? at the end.

Well, she certainly doesn't have that sort of connection with Vier, she knows that much. So hearing an Omen speak directly inside her head is a bit of a surprise, but then again, all of this has been a little surprising, hasn't it? It's an assault on two fronts, then, but it's a reasonable enough one that she ends up—not comforted, exactly, but definitely less on edge for a moment near the end of it.

Then he asks a barb of a question and it's always a guessing game with these sorts of things. Is it safer to leave it inside her or tear it out? She may have thought the latter before, but there's already too much blood on this metaphorical dance floor and she'd rather not spill any more if she can get away with it. Because she knows it will only be hers. She answers, then, in just as careful a tone, no flowers for her armor but steel and fiberglass.

"You," she starts, and her eye moves, "And Alfred aren't the first representatives of the Nine Houses I've met. You're not gonna be the last, either, at this rate. And given what you're actually picking up from all the bullshit I'm putting down... you'd be from the First." It's almost a question, but she has the strangest feeling that she's exactly correct.

"All you need to know about the robot thing is that I didn't start off this way." That, she thinks, is more than enough to share while she's still feeling things out. "I've always been a bit of a special case when it comes to The House That Would Be First, or whatever a cool, mysterious way of talking about it is." She has so much more that she could tell, right now, but there's no way she plans on tipping her hand. Not now, and not to Gus until she's damn sure.

"It still hasn't happened when I'm from. Lots of things that are building to an apocalypse," she adds just ever-so-cheerfully, "But nothing that's tipped the scales yet. Imagine my surprise when I found out about what my own future holds."

The invisible snarl on his face — and, maybe, in his tone — would seem to indicate that the next thing Gus says starts with the inaudible word bitch.

"— I am the First," he spits out at her, but it's an undertone, a mutter, and lip-reading isn't going to help anyone realize he's talking, right now.

Besides: you're not gonna be the last — somewhere out to sea, above or below the surface, the least Joyous saint imaginable is undoubtedly waiting to make (or more likely ruin) Anna's day — well. Better not to spoil that surprise yet, surely?

There's... a lot, here, to chew on; a lot more than he expected when deciding to risk the cigarette —

"Expensive mistakes indeed," he sighs, letting go of the tension coiling through his shoulders as powerfully as a second snake, stretching his neck just a little, side to side, and then he's just... lounging there, against the wall, as utterly relaxed and balanced (and apparently unconcerned) as someone kicking back in his own bed, secure in his knowledge of his own safety.

He knows the history of the past ten thousand years far too well to think she came out of the Nine Houses; if she remembers Earth, well, that means she left it by other means — and there are terribly few of those to choose from, which means now he knows who might have taken the mind (brain? soul? both?) of a girl from Earth and plonked her into a robotic body —

And this isn't the first time he's worked with them, after all, nor the last he was expecting to; he just was hardly expecting... this.

"How much time did you lose, in-between?" Gus asks, with a calm and academic curiosity. "Did you ever learn? And more to the point, then — why try to figure out if I meant the person you thought I might, with such a leap as you took?"

Even now, when the cat is so far out of the bag that the bag is ready to be picked up from the dry cleaners', long-ingrained habit keeps John's name-as-His-Name from Augustine's lips in range of unsainted ears.

Thoughtfully, he adds, "It can't all have been for the lyrical references, no matter how well you play that game — and even granted what you said about your own father, that was still just such a lot of leaping."

Probably for the best she can't hear him too clearly, or pick up on that inaudible "bitch", because she would have quite a bit to say to him. After all, she's the one who actually remembers things directly. Which is a fun little tidbit that Anna was not aware of.

"Losing time?" She leans back, stretches one arm up above her head, raps her knuckles on the wall behind her. It's as casual as she can make something look when inside, she's feeling extremely smug. Or, okay, no, the smugness isn't overwhelming, but she's pretty sure it's going to bleed out into her words in a second. And she's equally pretty sure that she can use it to avoid answering the question at hand, too.

"'Fraid I don't know what you mean, Gus. I left home in September 2021, and I got here in September 2021. No lag at all." She does have two missing months back in summer 2018, but if she were to answer the questions he's asking about that, she does know what happened—in broad strokes. Broad, lesbian flag-colored strokes. That can be a story for later, she decides. Her arms drop to her sides and she stops pretending to stretch.

"Now who's the one making an awful lot of leaps? See, my Earth's still alive and kicking, at least for another couple generations." She recognizes, as the sentence forms itself in her head, that she is about to say what could only be described as some fuck shit, given who she is and how little she actually comprehends. But she's got the pieces and she's gonna keep putting them together into sentences until she finds out what happens. "We ain't all gotta dip our toes in the River and face down its horrible beast to end up here."

Augustine's expression goes on a journey of epic proportions that no man, woman, child, or Omen will ever truly appreciate or comprehend, here, and in the end he does something that Anna is proooooobably not expecting:

A golf clap.

"Charming," he says, as if he means the word as an approving compliment; he... doesn't, mostly. "And quite clever, too, I grant you. Congratulations on not getting iced in the process of being quite a few generations too early for what I meant, as well — and I am just terribly sorry for you that you missed out on all the rest of Mister Stump's music, at least so far as hearing it live is concerned."

(The phrase he wants, here, is "attending concerts", but it's not as if he has any memory of attending an Earth-based punk-pop-rock concert to draw from; alas.)

"The next time you'd like to show off your cleverness, however, I'd advise you to do a bit more research into the confluence of rivers and beasts, capitalized or otherwise — although I will grant you that I've always felt quite lucky that I never had to deal with being attacked by a hippopotamus."

Are they done here? They might be done. He's straightened up, standing ready to turn and walk away from her, at any rate — but he's stopping to adjust his gloves, keeping a wary eye on her; something about that stretch, and the way she was knocking on the brick wall, just isn't sitting right with him.

(Alfred coils around his shoulders, both comfortable and alert to any possible danger sneaking up from behind — terribly useful trait, in a place like Trench.)

Anna has no desire to threaten Gus, though she recognizes that her penchant for throwing words together like a great gnostic mad lib may have ended this conversation prematurely. Still, she got out of it without having to talk about Teacher quite so readily, and specifically her relationship with him, and she will—for the moment, at least—count that as a win.

"I'd clap with you, but only one of us has a ticket to the end of the world," she says, her body turned so her arm is pressing up against the wall again. She's not making any moves one way or another, but inside, she idly wonders if maybe he's trying to threaten her. Of course, she could always just go back to her own source on the beast in the River, provided that she can track him down again. Hopefully, Ortus made it off that boat after all.

"Look me up," she offers instead. "If you have any questions about what it was like. Since you're missing time and all." Another thing to add to her litany of suspicion, she guesses. "Glad we got to have this talk, Gus. Hope the next one you have goes well." And, again, though her voice is calm, there is a godawful, shitty feeling of dread in her fission bomb heart. Because she's not the only one who talks with God, and she has a lot more to lose if a talk goes bad.

"I'm going to choose to believe that we're equally likely to encounter the end of the world from here," Gus observes, still mild as yellow cake — a little bit sweet, a little bit deadly, as it were. "Besides — I never said I was missing time, either, even if I made a mistake in thinking you might have been, had you been from a point in time as late as it seemed."

Technically speaking, one has to assume he was just as dead as everyone else, when the world ended, whether or not he got the chance to beat the rush, right? Now it's just him and his brotherly plus-one in this very strange afterlife.

"I'll keep an eye out for you," he concludes — a promise, a warning, a threat, all of the above no doubt — and then he steps out of the alleyway.

And, well.

Disappears.

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May 2022: Augustine the First catch-all

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