thearena | (no subject)

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(no subject)

Who| The Psiioniic + Signless, with bonus Psiioniic and YOU! action
What| The Psiioniic arrives in a less then spectacular fashion, runs into someone he hasn't seen in a really long time, and then ollies out for some private time where he's free to run into some other poor soul.
Where| The Cornucopia, and then slowly shuffling towards the Haunted Mansion.
When| Week six!
Warnings/Notes| References to to body horror, as far as warnings go. Also, I'm starting in prose but action is just as good with me!

He doesn't remember a lot of what happened to him before he wound up at this weird, golden thing. The last thing he could remember clearly before some strange almost-troll stuffed him into clothing and rambled something about honor and death before jabbing him and shoving him into a tube was the battleship. He had been running a mandatory check on system efficiency before he was just...empty. Empty and cold and then the world went dark.

He didn't know what had happened to him. He didn't know who had separated him from the system, and he wasn't sure if he should thank them or despise them. It was strange without the wires under his skin, without the pulse and hum of the ship. He felt like he had lost a part of himself, even though now he was free. Free, and extremely scared. It was too wrong, too wrong to be able to move and to be out of the system.

That, and he really didn't know how his body worked anymore. After so long of using nothing but his mind... Let's just say this isn't going to be pretty. He's already wobbling back and forth, trying to figure out this whole "balance" thing, and then he's tipping forward and yep that is his face smashing into the ground.

Ow.

People are not fun. It's been a thousand sweeps since he's actually talked to a person. All of the communication he did on the ship wasn't through the typical means - every word, spoken or typed, was filtered straight into his brain. Being wired into a system and then being thrust into a world and having to relearn everything over wasn't...easy. It was going to be a long, long while before he would be able to just get out and actual be able to interact. He could walk (even if it had taken him a while to get the mechanics down, and it was really something more akin to hobbling or shuffling), but what he couldn't do just yet is handle all of these new and long-forgotten sensations.

So he shuffles his way away to Signless, shuffles down a deserted street. He has no clear goal in mind, but he does notice something as he follows the street - he's starting to feel just a little bit less empty.

He's still horrendously slow, and he's not even bothering to stay hidden or to the shadows. He doesn't really care about staying alive at this moment. Plus it's too much of a hassle when he can barely stand up straight, and he just knows that if he tried to run he'd just trip on whatever's hiding in the shadows, or over his own two feet. The way he sees it, he has a better chance of surviving if someone can see him being completely pitiful and being overcome with mercy because he's horribly pathetic.

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The Signless is heading back from Tomorrowland -- must keep moving, don't make yourself an easy target -- with his cloak off and fashioned into a makeshift bag over his shoulder. In it is his bottle of water along with several oranges picked from the Tomorrowland trees.

He stops when he sees the other figure fall, but it's the horns more than the falling that make him nearly drop his bag of oranges all over the ground. Horns mean troll. That particular set of horns means one of the trolls he most didn't want to see here.

"Mituna?" he breathes, and then he's running, makeshift bag bouncing against his back until he can drop it to the ground in favor of sort of awkwardly hovering over his best friend.

"Are you alright?" he asks, even though he knows in this context the answer is most definitely 'no'.

He's dead. He must be, because he's sure he knows that voice. It's a voice that's replayed in his mind whenever he had those few, precious moments where the ship was doing alright and the network was just a distant murmur in the back of his mind. He knows that voice, even if over the sweeps the significance of it has been pushed back and back and then forgotten entirely. He forgot why he knew that voice, but he could never forget it himself.

He doesn't know how to move. All he can do is scrabble at the ground in his attempts to push himself upright. Blood drips from his nose, and it hurts. He wants to cry, because he can feel. He hasn't felt anything like it in so long, and it's somewhere between a relief and a terror.

He coughs, shaking his head as he gives up and slumps against the dirt. He makes a few incoherent noises, that are attempts to say 'no' and 'go away', but he doesn't know what to do to make noises become words.

Signless reaches out before he quite realizes what he's doing and pulls the Psiioniic into his arms, helping him sit up and giving him something to lean against.

"Shoosh, shooooosh," he murmurs, wiping Psii's bleeding nose with his sleeve. "I know, I know. But I'm here." He's still operating on the assumption that his friend's inability to even form a coherent word is just from sheer anger and despair over their current predicament, after all.

Really, he feels about the same. Part of him is so overwhelmingly happy to see a familiar face, and part of him is horrified that anyone he cares so deeply about could be here. The thought crosses his mind that Psii falls firmly into the category of people he's fully expected to murder, and he grimaces.

Fortunately for Psiionic, Punchy's superhero mettle really can't resist completely pitiful and pathetic figures in dire need of rescuing. It's what he lives for. Despite the fact that Punchy is dehydrated, missing an eye, and hasn't eaten anything but rotten oranges in three days, the siren's call of heroism perks him up like the most potent of energy drinks, or perhaps cocaine.

"Yo!" He waves an arm at Psiionic as the latter stumbles through the street. "You breezy, dawg? You look like you been jacked up in the metal."

This isn't right. He knows it's not right, and he can't help but feel terrified. They shouldn't be able to touch him like that. To hold him, because the helm was isolated. The only one who ever visited was the Condescension, and those visits were thankfully few and far between. (She was far too irritating and self-absorbed to be worthwhile company, not to mention the anger he held against her.)

He pushes at the Signless weakly, hoping that this hallucination will get the message and give him some space. He does appreciate wiping the blood from his face, though. What a helpful, if needlessly close, hallucination.

"Who...?" Okay. He is getting better at words. That's good. And strange.

He has never been more confused in his life. Well, okay, that's a lie - he's gone through lots of confusing things! But strange, pink aliens kind of take the cake. Mostly because the Psiioniic has absolutely no idea what Punchy is trying to say. He can understand highblood slang, but this? This was something completely different.

"I don't...Uh. What?" He purses his lips, raising his hand back and waving slowly. What was wrong with this place?

"Yo, hold up easy, I got you." Punchy approaches the strange grey kid - the third he's seen in this place, maybe it's some kind of new goth trend? - and holds his arm out to catch Psiionic. "It's frosty. You need grub?

The idea that walking up to random strangers and trying to help them out still hasn't really sunk in for Punchy.

Why do people keep touching him? It's strange. He stares at Punchy's arms, tongue prodding at one of his larger fangs as he debates whether or not to shove him away. He's not sure if he's got his balance under control yet, so he decides to let Punchy help him - until he brings up grubs. Oh, dear.

He splutters, cheeks going a definite shade of yellow and he's both flustered and offended. "I'm not interethted in one with you." Oh, and he has a pretty horrible lisp.

"In one what? A lunch date? Naw, homie, don't be like that, I ain't up in that homo shizz or nothing." He holds his arms out to help but doesn't continue approaching Psiionic. "You just look like you be flarin' up some S.O.S."

"A grub." What kind of moron didn't know what a grub was? Especially one offering one. Sheesh. "I don't think you could hatch one, anywayth." He sighs heavily, and he can feel a migraine coming on. (But that might be more from the topple he took earlier. Regardless, he doesn't understand Punchy at all.) "Were you hatched wrong? Thtart making thenthe."

"Something up with your mouth, homie? Your spit's all kinds of jank." Punchy lowers his hands in a pacifying gesture and hooks his thumbs into his belt loops. "Grub's food. Chow. Dinin' without the winin'."

He has no idea he's suggesting cannibalism. Really.

"It's me, Mituna," he says, very gently, his eyebrows drawing down a bit. Something is seriously wrong if his moirail doesn't recognize him, is pushing him away. "It's Kankri."

He loosens his hold on the yellowblood a little, but is loath to actually let him go -- what if he falls again? Hurts himself worse? He seems so disorientated, undernourished, and now that the Signless is looking closer, he's covered in scars that weren't there when they were bedding down for the night right before he found himself here instead.

"What did they do you?" he asks, and there's an edge of anger in his voice.

It's okay, trolls eat all sort of stuff out of grubs, but somehow they haven't gotten to the level of it being a catchall for food.

He bares his teeth at Punchy, and yep his teeth are sharp and four of them are pretty prominent. "Why do you talk like a moron?"

"...The Thufferer. You're the Thufferer."

He recognizes him now, he knows the troll. He's seen the execution so many times, accessed the files that he knows so well. Files that should have been locked away because the Empress didn't want the crews to know about his preaching, but it's hard to hide anything from the Helmsman. He grows more frantic in his attempts to get away, because he knows. He knowsknowsknows that the Sufferer means suffering and hasn't he been tormented enough by just simply existing?

"You thhould be dead. You were eckthecuted, I've theen the footage tho many timeth." Please let him go. He just wants to be happy.

"No... no." He frowns, worrying his lower lip with his teeth. "The Signless. Very much not dead. Right here, living and breathing, next to you."

Still, he carefully sets the other troll down on the ground so that he doesn't hurt himself struggling. It's hard to break that contact when it seems to him that his moirail needs him now more than ever, but he doesn't want him. That's terrifying. That's wrong.

"Please. Tell me what happened."

"I thaw your eckthecution!" He sounds frightened, his eyes going wide and he points a thin, thin finger at Signless. "I've theen the footage tho...tho many timeth!"

He tries to push himself away, but he's uncoordinated and just ends up scooting about an inch across the dirt before he gives up. He's doomed. He's been taken by Death and his mistress and now he's to spend the rest of his days with a heretic. A traitor. A distant memory, a painful wound that doesn't need salt rubbed into it to be crippling. His eyes sting and water, and it's so unusual and alien to him he doesn't know if he should rub at them or if it would be better to just let the tears flow.

"You were eckthecuted for your heretical ideath. What elthe could have happened?"

"To you, not to me!"

He doesn't want to think about dying. He doesn't want to think about all the Kankris that weren't on the alpha timeline in their session and who were sacrificed for the cause. He doesn't want to think that maybe this Psiioniic is from a place where something bad enough happened to split their timelines even after the scratch.

"You weren't like this when I last saw you. You didn't have those scars."

You remembered me properly.

You weren't broken and backwards and frightening.

"I'm not dead. You can feel my bloodpusher if you want, or my breath. Let me help, Tuna."

He used to say this in fond exasperation whenever his friend was being his usual curmudgeonly self. Now, he's honestly just scared.

"Ain't shit to diss about the way I spit, bitch," Punchy says, cheeks flushing bright red (impressive, given that he's rocking a sunburn). "You looked wack and I thought I could give you a boost. Why you gotta be fronting?"

Edited 2013-05-07 05:36 (UTC)

He barks a laugh, claws digging into the dirt and he's just. He's scared and he's angry, his mind is tearing itself apart and he just doesn't understand. He shouldn't be here, he should be back on the ship with the wires in his brain. He shouldn't be with the Sufferer who...who...

Who's fault it is that he was plugged into the ship in the first place.

Who had talked of a world so beautiful, had made him believed that maybe he was worth more as a troll then as a slave or a battery.

Who had saved him and then left him behind.

"You thhould be dead. We thhould both be dead now." He sobs helplessly, hands moving to clutch at his face. He doesn't care about the dirt he smears against his face and in his hair, or that his claws are digging into his temples. That's actually a helpful distraction for him, because he doesn't want to be here right now.

"What?" The red color is interesting to him. He's not sure if it's just because he's an alien, and that's what aliens are like, or if he's some sort of mutant. "I don't...I don't know what you're trying to thay, wiggler."

"Don't cry," he says, reaching out but not touching, his hands hovering with indecision inches from the Psiioniic's body.

He doesn't want to be touched, but he needs comfort, but he doesn't want it from you, Signless, he thinks you're dead, he thinks he's dead, he probably thinks you're both in some sort of purgatory and you're here to torture him personally.

"Please, Tuna, don't cry." Seeing his moirail like this, reduced to this state, is making him tear up, and he wipes the corners of his eyes a little aggressively to head it off. It's a reflex from sweeps of being terrified of tearing up in public and being exposed for what he was in one of the most visible ways that didn't involve outright being stabbed. "You're safe, with me."

It's not really true. They're in an enclosed arena where people are being forced to cull each other. No one is really safe here. But he wants so desperately for it to be true, still. He's starting to think there's nothing he can do or say to help, and that feeling of failure and powerlessness is not one he likes.

"There has to be some way I can help. Something I can do."

"Did you just call me a wigger?"

This conversation is getting better and better.

"Wiggler. Ler." He huffs, getting more and more annoyed. "I don't know what a wigger ith!"

Start making sense before he smacks you.

"Don't- Don't touch me." He hiccups, pressing his palms into his eyes as his fingertips keep digging into his temples. Maybe if he can't see the Sufferer he'll just disappear. Maybe this is a hallucination.

He hopes it's a hallucination.

"How can I be...be thafe with you?" The words are bitter and heavy on his tongue, but he can't help himself. "It'th your fault! Everything that happened to me!"

He hiccups again, and he feels like his bloodpusher is going to rip out of his chest, that his airsacks are collapsing and that he's going to suffocate in these feelings. He feels like he's drowning in these emotions and memories he can't completely place, and he knows that without the Sufferer he wouldn't be in so much pain. "You did thith to me!"

That stops him cold. He feels like the ground under him is collapsing. He wasn't exactly happy to see the Psiioniic here, not when it meant him being trapped in a deathmatch, but it had been comforting to think he might not have to survive here alone.

But he's not wanted. He's hated. His moirail doesn't feel safe with him, blames him for... for whatever he went through that did this to him. It's like seeing the Beforan Mituna's horrible decline all over again, except so much worse because he cares so deeply for this Mituna and there's absolutely nothing he can do that won't make it worse, and he doesn't even know why it's happening.

"Do you want me to leave?" he asks, very softly. He's no longer trying to stop himself from crying.

A deep, shuddering breath. He doesn't know how to answer that. His gut wants to say no, but that's insane. This is the troll who had so many promises for him, and his mind whispered that it was his fault. This traitor and his promises had earned him a one way ticket to the helm on the Empress' ship and sweeps upon sweeps upon sweeps of pain and torment as he was forced to stay alive as the wires pushed deeper and deeper into him seeking the energy to keep the ship moving.

He should scream yes, demand that the Sufferer never speaks to him again, to demand that the hallucination stops. But he can't. Some small, absolutely insane part of him believes that this traitor can help, and he doesn't know why. Everything is jumbled and wrong and he just.

"I don't know. I don't...I don't know what I want."

"The shit's a wiggler?"

Inquiring minds want to know. Punchy seems slightly placated that you didn't call him a wigger, though.

"It'th..." He waves his hands in the air. How can you not know? "You know, the young? They're wigglerth. I gueth it'th not tho accurate from you becauthe you look fully pupated, but you're definitely a youth."

What do you mean humans don't go through molts?

Punchy holds his hands out as if he's carrying a giant invisible sack of 'huh?'. And then he asks something usually directed at him.

"...Homie, what the fuck you sayin'?"

The Psiioniic makes a noise of extreme frustration. It's an odd sound somewhere between a yell and a chirp, and clearly not very human.

"I'm thaying thingth you apparently can't underthtand! Ugh!"

"Why's your talking all like...busted and shit?" Punchy points to his own tongue. "Look, homie, we need to get you on the DL, you're an open target out here."

The Psiioniic throws up his hands in exasperation. He is pretty done with you, Punchy. "I'm not the one that'th buthted here! You're the one not making any thenthe!"

"Oh, this?" Punchy gestures to his missing eye. "That's some bitch shit."

"That..." Punchy, you're making this conversation harder on the Psiioniic then it needs to be. "That'th not even anything I athked!"

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