We'll have to try again after the silence has retruned

[carnagecarnival]

Who| Initiate and open! Multiple prompts!
What| House raiding, Shion's death + Dog hunting, Walkers + amusement parks, Hell + Nightmare/Fear power (message passing?)
Where| Abandoned building, out around, amusement park
When| Starting from the first day to hell time
WARNINGS| Gore, violence, death, desecration of corpses, language, so on

a)

When he'd found Mituna's corpse, still at the cornucopia-- the damn fog making him loop back even after making his way off-- he'd found it torn asunder by beasts. Even after the last time of him having gotten so far, all the training done, he fell so quick this time. But all the same, he'd found the neck still in one piece, the necklace he'd given him still there, his token. He'd reached down and pulled it off, taking the gold skull off the chain before returning the latter. Then he lid the skull onto his own necklace token, the container of makeup and the linked loops of three hung together on it. He'd given grace unto his moirail to meet him back in Capitol, and then he turned away, back into the fog.

Now he has the tiny skull in his fingers. He's been thinking of prophecy. He's been thinking of shit destined. The undoing of what may be undone... and what may not. He's a killer and a killer he shall be for all time. But he has to make all a difference on what is done now. It's a difficult balance what all to strike.

Even now, as he searches the empty hive and hears that creak of noise, his first instinct is to grip his weapon and let loose a warning growl. He watches the door frame, weapon ready and ears flicking.

b)

His first cull is one what all he could recognize. He'd met him in the first arena. The boy had been a daywalker then and the Initiate had spared his life and R's, for the robbing of them, thinking they'd be more useful taking out other tributes. And then in capitol, there had been expose done with his mention. Shion they called him.

But he doesn't know the boy, not really, and he doesn't know that anyone he knows is close to him. Fair game. And a good warm up.

He lunges out from the fog and tears the boy apart. Faster than the motherfucker could feel a thing, messy enough to impress and disgust the capitol in turn. He'd secure his place. He'd show them his value. Oh, a motherfucking monster is he. He laughs.  

He takes the head off as always, but leaves it there. It's only when the barkbeast comes that he realises the value more in the spread of blood. It's no bigger than the average lusus. He can take it down. Maybe make a motherfucking meal of it. And so, as Shion's corpse is brought away, he readies for another strife.

c)

Despite his running into Shion, whom he really remembered only as he'd been that one arena long ago, he hadn't expected daywalkers. Yes, there was the one, R. No, these daywalkers looked nothing like trolls. But these were different and the same all the motherfucking same. These are daywalkers turned beastly. But they were still daywalkers looking to motherfucking eat. When he finds the first, opening it's neck to teeth, everything he's learned in his youth comes through. Take the head.

He moves quick. So does the daywalker-- damn, he ain't used to that-- but it's no matter. He sinks his pickaxe into it's back, removes it and continues his dance about it, dodging claws and teeth where they are. He pulls off an arm and comes off just as easy as any corpse, then he sinks an the axe in the back of its neck and pulls, tearing. The daywalker stumbles and the Initiate reaches and rips the head off the rest of the way. Breathing hard, he turns to assess his surroundings, if there's any more of them too near, wherever he is now after the scuffle in the fog.

And then the first blessing comes to him. Like a sign from above, he finds himself walking into abandoned Shangri-La. His eyes go wide as he finds first coaster, great and looming and not a beast as first thought. His lips pull up at the corners. Games. A Ferris wheel. Attractions and mirth of all sort. It ain't a carnival but by Messiahs it's good enough.

He doesn't even mind the threats about him or the way it all wants for coming apart at the hinges. The Initiate starts to run through it all, a laugh building and bursting from his lips, just as hinged as everything else in the amusement park. He spins in his delight. It would seem the last of his fucks have been lost to the fog.

d)

The noise nearly forces him to bring his hands up to his ears. The sound of siren's startle him into looking skyward, searching the sky for ships, the around him for some other disaster. And there is indeed, it up and surrounds. The world melts away. Literally motherfucking melts. He watches numb and wide-eyed as everything hollows.

And in its place, he feels it. His chucklevoodoo come him. The holy fear. It stretches out inside him and the outside curls up within, both uniting. The second blessing. The Messiahs were pleased.

Well, ain't that just attest to pleasing them more? When all he had his power last time, he'd taunted and toyed yes, he'd kept up a motherfucking cover built. But he'd spared the lives of them all. Of every single one of these motherfuckers he'd gone to the sparing. Not this time.

His eyes color and flash. He lets his voodoo, the fear, the motherfucking gris-gris gruesome spread over the amusement park.

Comments

[futilecycle]

The Initiate's reaction is of no consequence to Sigma. The possibility that the Initiate might attack him had never crossed his mind, and meets the Initiate calmly all the same, the stress of his fear still bearing down on him. He arrives stable, however, and stands upright without trembling - he wants to maintain the link.

Sigma nods to him, he hesitates to speak what will be the first words he's said so far in the Arena. Sound won't come out easily and for a moment Sigma wonders if he has lost his voice- some sort of psychological reaction to this Arena, and the panic he'd suddenly felt- but eventually he is able to form words. "...Initiate Fraysong." His voice is raspy and strained from underuse. "I was hoping I'd be able to see you under such conditions..." Where Sigma's expression should be warm, he steels, and looks at the Initiate with concern.

The message is clear: We need to talk. He does not know if the Initiate's ability will go two ways, he did not try before. But perhaps he can at least communicate his intentions...

[carnagecarnival]

Some of the mania seeps from him, leaving something colder in its wake and his eyes go a little rounder with surprise. Business. He can turn to subjugglator easy as breathing and so he does, straightening, hardening down. He's a soldier of the empire still and always.

(He doesn't think how much the way Sigma's mouth moved with no sound put a sick churn in him.)

Under such conditions. He frowns for a moment, thinking he understands. Then he closes his eyes and breathes back out careful fear, eyes lighting again.

WORDS UNSPILLED FROM THE MAW OF HE, BUT MESSIAHS GAVE NOT STRONG HEAR CARTILAGE IN THE PLANE OF THIS FOR THE LISTENING OF INNERS. He gives that simple warning with the layered voice of voodoo. Then; LET HIM PARSE FROM THE WATERS OF YOUR FEAR, BROTHER. PICTURE AND FEELING TO SCRY AND I MAY SO THEN INFER TO WHAT WORDS A MOTHERFUCKER DOST SPEAK. It will be tricky, he thinks, but he shall try nonetheless. A small part wishes there was any way to do this without hurting him, but he can only make the touch light as he can.

He reaches out with his hands, to cradle Sigma's head that way. Bring it all clearer. Not an excuse for the contact.

[futilecycle]

Sigma nods almost imperceptibly and closes his eyes, appearing to anyone watching as no more than an exhausted, narcoleptic old man. He prepares himself for the Initiate's grip on him, for fear he won't be able to escape once it begins. Knowing well it may break him in this state, the Doctor has no choice: this may be their only chance. Sigma takes a deep breath and plunges headlong into a waking nightmare.

It isn't difficult to summon every last one of his anxieties - they wait for him barely suppressed beneath the surface of his consciousness. There is unavoidable risk in his plan, and what Initiate would find first is not necessarily the fear of death but the overwhelming fear of failure that Sigma always carried with him to some degree, stronger now than ever before. To have died and to have accomplished nothing - that is what Sigma focuses on first. He hopes the Initiate will come to understand the rest, parsed through that frame.

He transitions to a secret that Sigma kept even from the Initiate, and while it may be too late to tell him now, he is acutely aware that all will be revealed in time. Terrified of the shame and the stigma, he summons up the darkest of his memories: what it was like to kill, though he hates every moment of it - the long nights spent making weapons and contraptions that would be used to spill blood. The fear of loss, knowing that to carry out his plans is to send good people to their death. He pulls that thought to the forefront, continuing to recall his past... the despair to have actively sent his own son to the grave so that others might live. That what he is about to do might do the same to the Initiate, and how he does not do it out of hate but so that their mutual goals might be realized.

Then he stops, pulling away from their connection (though it is less to seek relief and more like thrashing while drowning) for a moment. The fear is so overwhelming that Sigma trembles and has to steel himself. He does not know if he can handle another person cut out of his life.

Forcing that thought down, he focuses instead on the fact that he is seeking the truth. He is terrified of what he might find, and hands this vulnerability over to the Initiate. When the other had come to his room that day, he'd sworn to himself that he would find out what had happened to their families, and if he discovered the worst, that he would get them back. But the only way to seek the truth without sacrificing himself(and he had promised the Initiate he would not be lost) was to live a facade, to plant himself in the den of the enemy willingly... Sigma remembers when he returned to his garden, revealed as a "gamemaker", how every person that had once called themselves his friend turned their back on him. He knows that fate awaits him once more, and the Doctor feels ill with regret.

He ends the stream of consciousness with the fear of being caught by an omnipotent authority... of being under careful watch every single day, found over a single mistake, and then tortured and executed as a traitor, endangering the lives of other rebels in the wake of his death. He hopes desperately that even if the Initiate understood little of what had come before, that this particular fear is visceral enough for him catch an impression. Over time, Sigma would join forces with the Capitol. He would claim his allegiance. And, if he must, he would fight for them... all to leak their secrets to the Rebellion, and for the promise of finding Diana. Of finding Initiate's lusus, his alter, Gamzee, and keeping them safe or returning them once peace had been won...

Lost to his despair, Sigma has grown pale; his knees buckle and he sways in the Initiate's grasp.

[carnagecarnival]

It's a whole new experience, really. He's felt fears before, but they were always things he touched or dug up in malice... or self protection. He's supplanted fears into the minds of others. He's drawn from people for inquisition. But this is new. He's never dug in with someone willing. He's never been the one to want to pull back.

And part of him doesn't. The fear is so sweet, so right and belonging, there's always a want there. Then to be let in, allowed to be within too. Pulling something (something, something) he knows he can use to see this whole place come down.

But this is Sigma. And voodoo can break a person, this he knows well. So as he searches, as the fear paints pictures in his mind, he prays for the control to let him do this all.

Sigma does well for him. Everything is painted in the overlying veil of a fear of failure. Fears he shares-- dying wasn't scary, but losing-- and that helps it clear ever more.

And then there are the fears he does not share.

His eyes go wider as the fear of the cull; the cull of others washes him, foreign and unfamiliar. His mind wars between thinking it right, fitting-- he's older, stronger, of course he's culled it's a natural thing-- and reeling back from it, connecting such a thing with the man who praised him for his lack of cull last arena, instead of disregarding him for it.

The fear of loss, the loss of Sigma's son, is breathtaking. It pulls him back, for a split second, to when he crushed his moirail in his arms (it pulls him back to when he was young and stupid and prayed to the Messiahs he'd not see or have to make his best friend hurt when he knew). It presses odd on the wound of Gamzee and his alter. It presses on the fear of betrayal, that any one of his closest, even Sigma, could turn him. But it does so in a way he can't fault and he's not sure how to take that, except that he can't take it as traitorous like all he maybe should.

Gamemaker goes through him, like some sick joke of a title. It stiffens his form and tries all to send a twitch through in moments simultaneous. He keeps his claws still. Sure enough, in the vision of it all, everyone leaves. They see blood on his hands more all than their own and they turn tail. The fear is drenching in its chill.

But it's the last thing, that nearly makes him sink claws in, just from automatic reaction. Sigma caught. Sigma dragged along. Sigma executed. If Sigma wanted to hit the visceral, he succeeded. He makes a noise, just the faint sound of pain, barely audible. The Initiate nearly pulls back, withdraws from it all to try and block himself against the image. But he hangs on, keeps going through it all until the end.

The plan is brilliant. It works well. And Sigma could do it, he could pull it off, he could go deeper into it all than even the Initiate could, he who had shown scorn too many times to even pass as peacekeeper here. Sigma could get to the root of it all. Sigma could even get their power, maybe. He could get Gamzee, his alter, his lusus. He can't say no. There's not a chance he could pass this up and truly, Sigma's already made up his mind.

It's so much good and so much bad. There's a soft dizzying ache in his skull like all he's near concussed. By the end, even he has to catch his breath. But first, he catches Sigma. His arms wrap around the man, just to keep him up and standing. For a long time, he can't say a word. It's all so motherfucking much what to take in it feels of a mad motherfucking scramble to do so. All what he knew of Sigma takes on a new tint.

But he can't push the man away for it. There's something in him instead, something not-quite pity.

He knows he needs to continue on with business, but Sigma can't take more voodoo just yet. So he closes his eyes, holding Sigma, and decides to speak a small story while the man collects himself.

"Did he ever tell you, what all he was to become?" He asks, mouth dry. But he's not expecting an answer and not looking for one. "HE LIVES. A full motherfucking lifespan he up and lives. TO THE END OF TIMES DOES HE PERSIST. He became everything he'd ever dreamed of. HE BECAME THE GRAND MOTHERFUCKING HIGHBLOOD. High priest. KING. I did whatever my empress asked of me. I RULED OVER ALL BUT HER." Like the president here. But he was so much better and so much worse. His eyes open, but he's far away. "And I hurt the only one what ever mattered to me. I LED HIM TO TORTURE FOR A THOUSAND SWEEPS. By my own motherfucking hands, my beloved suffered. EVERYONE ELSE, I CULLED FOR HERESY AND THE LIKE. I would've culled every single person here, every single fucking one, if I had been brought then instead of where all I was, brother Sigma." Even his loves. Even his friends.

He breathes. That should be enough. Just to offer a light whispering. And so he does, eyes lighting up again.

HE WON'T LET YOU FALL. I AIN'T LETTING YOU GO. AIN'T GONNA LEAVE A MOTHERFUCKER TO LONESOMES CEASELESS, PAINS HEEDLESS. WHAT HE SAID BEFORE STILL BE TRUE. THERE AIN'T NOTHING WHAT BE DONE TO HE WHAT HE AIN'T ALREADY GONE AND DONE. YOU CAN HURT ME, IF YOU NEED TO. IF ALL EVERYONE BE SAFE, YOU CAN HURT ME. WE'RE GONNA GET IT ALL MOTHERFUCKING RIGHT THIS TIME, BROTHER.

[futilecycle]

Sigma tries to catch his breath with gulps of air to keep himself from crying. There were places Sigma hated to go, and exploring the possibility of utter failure was one of them. The loss of his son was still so close to his heart that he had lost himself even in front of Howard - combined with the Initiate's voodoo, Sigma threatens to tear apart at the seams, something he does not want on camera at all but can barely control.

But then the Initiate's story begins, and Sigma opens his eye slightly and listens, focusing only on him. Slowly, his strength returns, his breath calms. He remains in such a catatonic state until the Initiate's powers fills his mind again, when he finally relaxes completely. He's so sorry, from the bottom of his heart. But once more, he must do must be done...

To think of the Initiate as a warlord who stretched a legacy of death and torture across all of time is a difficult idea to swallow, but it is, unfortunately, a logical progression, a place he could imagine him landing without guidance. "I'm sorry," he answers, more a cover for the program than anything. He nods twice, in contrast to what he has just said. I understand, the feeling is mutual... and you may do the same. And oh, he is so very thankful he got to know the Initiate at just the right time, for right now, he cannot imagine himself managing without their relationship. He wipes his brow and finds his feet, fidgeting around awkwardly as if he were recovering from a panic attack. It's only mostly an act. "You and I, we truly are birds of a feather..." Those in the Capitol could make of that what they willed. "You will know what I mean soon enough." He already does.

[carnagecarnival]

He chokes on a terrible sort of laugh, one what doesn't like a laugh at all. I'm sorry. What a strange, funny sort of thing to hear. Sorry for a future he himself had made. But from Sigma it's alright. From him it's okay.

However strange it is to think it like he is in his future self, and not his future, like a festering sore, a tumor, a curse within him. When he imagines it, he can't imagine himself living in that husk, though he knows he is. Stranger still though is that he ain't cursed for it nor mocked or anything. Believed, and forgiven almost.

He doesn't say what's on his mind. (You ain't like me. You're still better than me.) He doesn't even let it slip as voodoo. He'll accept the understanding, but he ain't gonna let Sigma be hurt by this and he knows he won't-- or else he won't let Sigma become like him. No matter what happened, there would be a difference.

As he nods, he lets his voice sound knowing, "SURENESS OF HIM PROPER." Let Capitol assume he planted a violence in this brother's head through voodoo. It would be believable. It could save Sigma, later, if not from capitol, then from the other tributes.

"Flight beasts feather twinned. CALAMUS COHORT. Famifowl." He gives a wry, tired smile.

[futilecycle]

Sigma laughs darkly. "Indeed," he replies. The Initiate always had such colourful ways of turning their human expressions.

Now Sigma draws away, and keeps away, unless there is something else the Initiate wishes to share with him. "I apologize for my weariness. Now," he begins, "about that matter I wished to speak with you about." It's a front, of course, but important to share nonetheless. The Capitol will suspect him if he doesn't continue with his reason for meeting up.

He acts as if he were observing the weather. "I propose we fight to win this Arena." A small, malicious smile passes over his face, forced there. "I've grown rather tired of not playing along."

[carnagecarnival]

The grin that spreads over Initiate's face is far, far less forced. It is thrilled, excited, feral. "YOU MOTHERFUCKING KNOW IT? Was thinking the same thing. GOT TO PONDERING WHOLESOME THE IDEA OF IT ALL. Got a want up in me what's been lasting and lasting and motherfucking lasting brother." He laughs. His hands twitch. An addict being told, there's more just around the corner.

He gives a bow. "WOULD LOVE DEARLY TO FIGHT ALONGSIDE A BROTHER TRUE."

As he raises up, before, meeting his eye, he speaks through voodoo; YOU'RE CERTAIN?

"Shall we rain judgement upon the unrighteous unworthies?"

[futilecycle]

Sigma nods respectfully before meeting the Initiate's voodoo head-on. His fear- anticipation- could not be missed. He was perfectly serious, though not particularly enthused. As was all that he had done, it was a necessary evil.

Sigma stands tall, rolls his sleeves up to his elbows. His cybernetic muscles pulse, his gentle expression vanishes, and for the first time since Sigma entered the Arenas, he looks genuinely threatening. "Lead the way," he answers with equal hostility.