logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: HUNGER AND THIRST

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: HUNGER AND THIRST

characters: everyone.
location: around beacon.
date/time: september 19-30.
content: some new friends - or enemies? - seek offerings, and offer something in return
warnings: memories may involve violence, death, grotesque body horror. please cw as appropriate.

pining for the things i could have been.

Recently, the forest spirits have been agitated. The crooners, those that remain, chatter noisily and strut with purpose. The lunch lady hunches over their station and holds claws to their face, miming peering through dense brush. The skunk judge murmurs about the ones from the countryside. Word has passed beyond the reaches of Beacon's light - there are people in town, and they are mostly good this time. These lantern-bearers have lasted longer than most. They may even want to help.

Seems these spirits will have to see these people with their own eyes, and test those rumors themselves.

For the first two prompts below, please feel free to NPC spirits yourselves. However, if you prefer, you may post your toplevel under the MOD-CONTROLLED SPIRITS header and we will do our best to drop in and out with interactions as time permits. These are not intended to be one-on-one threads with spirits written by the mods, and you will likely not always want to wait for a mod reply at every step and may find yourself doing some minor NPCing all the same, but we will do our best to keep up with you and your thread partners who tag in!

In that header, please specify whether you want a friendly or antagonistic spirit, or if you want a surprise, you can always say "surprise me!"

ALL MY JOYS.

You come home to find spirits in your wardrobe, with socks on their hands and pants tied in daisy chains from wall to wall. Abruptly they squeak and dive for cover, or crash through windows in their attempts to escape. They steal things that are yours, only for you to find them days later, floating in the lake or buried in the greenhouse. Can you chase them down alone? Maybe you need some help.

Not all spirits are so troublesome. Maybe you turn up at The Landmark kitchen to find that one spirit has already gotten the coffee pot started - well, except it has poured instant cheese powder from a box of easy mac into the pot. But at least it's trying to help! Maybe you can show it how the machine works. Others wind up at Solis's labs where they thumb rapidly through books and peck at computer keys, and more than one takes samples from the shelves and shoves them in your face. Did you need this alien foot in a jar? No?

A pack of roving... branches? crawls around town. They have no mouths with which to speak, but instead vibrate and clack their many tangled limbs together. They grow in number and size, making a thicket of live wood that bars you from a doorway, completely fills up a section of the tunnels under the town - or makes an impromptu and convenient bridge, if you think that climbing on someone's limbs is appropriate. Is it?

Largely these spirits seem neutral, even benign. Confused. They might ask for your help, or try their best but they struggle to communicate even more than the usual forest spirits do. They have no sense of what your personal space is, though, and more than one will reach for a lantern to bring it closer and investigate. Awfully uncomfortable, so what are you going to do about it?

ALL MY GRIEF.

At any moment, the above interactions can go south fast if you meet the wrong spirit. The one who took your lantern? Decides to run off with it, leaving you gasping for air and with very few options if you are to survive. The branches constrict and crush you, or drop you suddenly in the river. Are they here to harm you, or just to test your limits?

Others will be malevolent no matter what. The scrapyard dog snarls and pulls at its chain as it watches the thing that stalks and hunts. A small herd of soft, wooly spirits crouch low to the ground, whimper and pant as if sick or starving, only to turn on you with vicious teeth once you seem invested in assisting. Better hope you have someone nearby who can help you fend them off. Or is it better to try to distract them and make an escape? Will they be convinced to stand down, or will they wear your face as a new mask?

ALL MY BONES.

You are directed by the local spirits to the dense curtain of trees where torchlight fades to darkness. The ones you are familiar with hang back, but nod for you to continue ahead alone, or with a friend or two if you prefer. The more people who go together, the stronger the connection - as indicated by the spirits grabbing at your hands and linking them together, and giving a very serious nod. Bring your offerings whether they be food, stories, gifts, or memories of your own, and hope they are sufficient. Place them on the forest floor, or hold them out to the air. The new spirits will find you, they promise; this is not a trick. Make yourselves comfortable on the damp, mossy ground and wait for the sound of footsteps in the leaf litter.

For this prompt, you are welcome to describe your arrival to the site if you like, but all that is required is a comment with the names of the people involved, and the offerings you bring. Characters can make multiple offerings and visit multiple spirits as many times as they wish.

Afterward, a spirit will lead you back to Bonfire Square and encourage you to tell others what you've learned from your new guests. No fair keeping the goods to yourself alone!

LEFT IN THE LONG NIGHT.

After connecting with spirits, you are led back to the bonfire, to recover and recuperate from the joining of hearts, minds, and memories. You will find yourself weary, in a way the flames seem to help. The glow of the campfire is comforting, tempting. It might be difficult not to fall asleep or try to draw others into enjoying the comforting lull of crackling firewood along with you.

The weariness does fade, after some time around the fire. You're not the only one resting from the experience in the glow of firelight — and there's likely things you've seen to share. Ideas and memories and pieces and figments of past to fit into place like puzzle pieces. Now is a good a place as any to share it, isn't it?

Lastly, those that approach a spirit in tandem will find an unseen consequence. A link between them that isn't so easily shaken by a short stay at the fireside. Characters will find that feelings and sensations seem to move from one to the other without warning. Fear, anger, mourning, resentment, joy, love. Touching makes the link stronger, but even distance isn't enough to stop it. Did you want to share night terrors, even a mile apart? Or to taste coffee, even though you're in the middle of brushing your teeth? Well, too bad. The effects will last for two weeks, whether you like it or not.

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Pudding's lips pinch into her mouth a little as she tries not to laugh at Soldat's cursing. It's so comical coming out of him when he's usually so... even.

She starts, though, at the rest of it. "What a vote of confidence," she deadpans. "How are they teaching? I'm no good at that ocarina language in the network." It's frustratingly simplistic for all the pomp and posture she usually communicates with.

"Then you should come to my classes and learn how to sing or whistle it, from me," Soldat suggests, and has to... suppress the urge to reach over and poke her. What the fuck where did that come from.

... probably Misty. Or maybe Merwen. Christ. (No.)

They focus on her actual question. Much easier to deal with than flashes of feeling from other people. Their head still hurts. "They're teaching by dumping their memories straight into our heads. And then answering questions. But we have to bring them something first, a trade. Which is what this is for." They pat the half-finished cloak.

This time, Pudding's startle comes full with wide eyes and her mouth dropping open.

Wh.

Pudding has full-on dropped one person's memories into another's head before. Did so as recently as with Reiju, for that matter, less than a day before her death. But she usually tries to make them seamless, use them to stitch up gaps where she's removed something... ungraceful. The idea of just having someone else's memories dropped full-on into another person's film reel... her own, for that matter...

It takes her a moment to realize she's staring, though she's more looking through Soldat than at him.

"...Oh," she responds, finally, lamely. Oh, what the fuck.

Thinking she might be worried about how they might handle that, given their extreme terror of losing their own memories, they assure her, "Not that bad. Have experience with it now. Was a thing in February where we all found each other's memories, stored in little rocks. I got eighteen new memories from that." It was great, and also awful. "And these are memories they choose to share. To help us. Not just ones found on the ground without choice."

Pudding can't help but literally splutter at have experience with it now.

Oh. Okay. Sure. Little rocks. Mhm. Makes sense.

What.

She gives her head a good shake. "I'm - fuck." What the fuck. "I'm. Sorry. It's - " This doesn't make a damn lick of sense and her head is turning inside-out a little. She casts around for anything that could possibly be as confusing.

"It's. It's like if I just told you your metal arm is run on a generator of peanut butter and feathers. It doesn't work like that."

Except apparently it does, because Beacon will never stop being completely befuddling and nonsensical.

Oh no. Peanut butter and feathers. That's making them smile despite everything. Poor Pudding. They put down their needle and thread. "Hold on. I'll show you." They retreat to their bedroom for a minute, and come back with one of the memory opals from that very event, and set it on the table. It's a sparkling white opal with lots of red in it, and it's half-covered in sedimentary rock.

"I kept sixteen of them. Just in case I lost my own again someday, I would still have these." They sound a little sad at the prospect, but pick up their needle again. "Pick that up, curl your hand around it, and you'll see." If she does so, she will experience this memory of Soldat's. It's a pleasant one, and one that should be very clear who it belongs to (unlike all of the other pleasant ones in their collection).

Edited 2020-09-24 05:29 (UTC)

Oh no. Pudding's blood runs cold when Soldat gets up, but she doesn't stop him. It's - she should - no, she should be aware of all the things Beacon can do, so she can guard against them. Know how to handle them. That's the practical, pragmatic answer.

The real truth is she's fucking terrified because memories don't work that way and it's like she's being told to drive a knife through the back of her hand, it'll be fine.

She tries hard to breathe normally.

It's only when Soldat says that he kept sixteen of them, even though he'd gotten eighteen, that she realizes with a jerk that he means his own, not other people's.

Oh.

Oh...

She presses her fingers over her mouth for a moment, feeling like the worst person in the world all over again, then reaches out to pick the little opal up off the wood, her heart thundering in her throat.

It doesn't slow.

Neither do the tears suddenly rushing down her cheeks, and she finds herself laughing, some mix of hysterical, fond, sorrowful and somehow overjoyed.

This is who he was? Who he had to be? And he was still so...

One of the little girls had hair just the same almost-pink brown as hers. She can almost see it up in pigtails.

She's still laughing when she sets the opal down, gently, and wipes at one eye with the heel of her hand.

"Thank you."

That's not a reaction they've had to that particular one. Sora and Namine both saw that one, and neither one laughed. They're not sure if that's a good reaction or a bad one, honestly. "That's the only happy thing I know of from when I was the Asset. The Soldier. Before I died." And even that was kind of sad, especially with the second memory of those girls.

More on point, though: "But that's what it's like with the spirits, here. Except they pick important things to share, not random. And. There's side-effects. Worth it, there's good intel, but. Side-effects." They reach over to retrieve the stone, and tuck it safely into a pocket with a fond pat.

Pudding hears those titles exactly how Soldat says them. Titles. Things. Just Existences without any person behind them. She shakes her head a little, still smiling, as her laughter slows. "I'm so glad you have that one. It's... it's really you, isn't it? You cared so much about them even if you weren't supposed to."

That's him. That's Soldat.

She pulls out the handkerchief she's finally started having the sense to carry around - whether it's Beacon making her cry so often or whether it's that Sanji made her heart a little more open is a debate she's skipped over entirely to come to the practical conclusion - to dry her eyes a little better as Soldat continues.

"It's - it's so strange. That it's just... there now." She can't reach inside her own head - and oh, she's tried a dozen times - but she'd be so curious to know what her memory spool looks like now, where the new one would have settled.

God, what she'd give to look at Soldat's. But she won't. Not ever. Not without his permission. She made him that promise.

"What kind of..." She rubs her temple a little. As seamlessly as the memory dropped into her head, it's giving her a headache all the same just trying to think about it like that. "What kind of side-effects?"

"Whoever we go with. They, uh, get kind of connected. I keep getting flashes of whatever Misty and Javert are doing, or Merwen or Reiju." They swap the needle to the metal hand so they can use the flesh one to rub their forehead. "Worse for them, though. They have to deal with what's in my head. Might be worth it for me, not sure if it is for them."

(No. Shut up, Asset.) Sarge has mostly been trying to keep his voice down, saying less than usual, since they worked out everyone else was hearing him, but the Asset has no setting other than loud, and the Bottomless Pit has absolutely no manners or consideration at all.

Pudding just. Kind of stares at Soldat for a long moment, mouth slack, handkerchief held loosely in her hands. When she starts to laugh this time, it's far less wistful, far closer to... is it... yes, it is in fact kind of a cackle.

Oh, this sounds so much like what she can do with her Flashback Filaments that it's downright comical. There's so much here that's utter bullshit and so much that makes perfect sense at the same damn time. Sure. Afterlife. Portals. Magic. Why not?

To make it even funnier:

"Oh, you're far from the worst person for somebody else to get their head connected to."

Edited (don't mind me i've been back and forth on whether to use this icon like ten times) 2020-09-24 08:14 (UTC)

They sigh a bit, decide not to deal with the person comment, and debate a moment how much to explain. Ignoring the cackle, because she's just weird sometimes, they're used to that. In the end, though, they suppose at least Pudding can keep a secret. "Maybe I'm not the worst, sure, I can think of plenty of handlers I'd never want my brain connected to. But I'm the most noisy. Crowded, maybe."

Soldat looks back down at the patchwork cloak, makes a stitch, then stops again. "I've been collecting. Voices. Since I died. Pieces of me, broken out and given personalities-- or the result of dying, one of them. There's four of us in here."

This whole thing is just - so much. But despite how much this is making Pudding question the entirety of reality right now - or as much of reality as Beacon is to start with - still, this has to be some absolutely fucking absurd dream, doesn't it?

...Then again, there was that time her dreams drew her back to that weird past-Beacon, and that was as real as any of this.

- Anyway. Despite all that. Despite all of everything. She does manage to sober herself up, wipe at her face a little more while Soldat explains. She still shakes her head a little, smile playing at the corners of her lips, though she's certainly, absolutely not laughing at him.

"Well. I don't think you're the first like that. Maybe here, you are. Maybe just this reset, or... maybe not even then." She shrugs lightly, eyes on her handkerchief. "I've heard of people like that, back home. And then, there's a Devil Fruit that's supposed to give you all the memories of everybody who's ever eaten it. There's some rumors that it's supposed to put all their voices in your head, too." She tries not to bite her lip. "Mama's - " She stops. She doesn't talk about Mama anymore. But... with Soldat... it's probably okay. "Mama's Devil Fruit. She puts little pieces of other people's souls into... well. Anything. They come to life and have their own personalities and lives, but, I can make them remember the people their souls used to belong to, if I want." Her next shrug is... a little less light. "And even then, that's just... it's all voices in your head, right?" She always does her best not to make too much eye contact with Soldat, but right now, she's not even glancing up. "I mean. I don't... I guess I can't really say I have more than one at once. But it's not like I have a lot of control over what goes on in there sometimes, either." The handkerchief twists a little in her hands. "So... I don't. I don't think you're necessarily right that being connected to you is automatically worse for anybody."

That is actually really sweet of her to act like it's not that weird of a thing, that she's not even a little bit rattled. Soldat listens (and tries not to look too shocked and appalled at the thing with her mother, holy shit how does that even work, and who does that anyway?), nods a little. "Just voices. They do come out sometimes, talk to people outside, but not often. And they can't do anything I couldn't do. The Bottomless Pit just wants me to eat everything. The Asset... I don't know what it wants, but it's been a while since it tried to hurt anyone. Sarge is annoying but he means well." (Shut up, Soldat. You should be used to me saying that, by now. Doesn't mean I'm not gonna give you a hard time about it, pal.)

They finally get back to working on the cloak. Part of their mind is still kind of horrified by the story of Pudding's mother, but they're pretty good at keeping that kind of reaction private and not showing on their face. Also good at emotional multi-tasking. "I do know most people aren't used to having multiple voices in their head that bicker and comment on things. I think I am, now. I'd get. Lonely without them. But having other people hear them is. Weird."

They're probably going to ask Pudding about the mother thing. Just... not yet.

Pudding knows very well how awful Mama's power is. Mama might not think of it that way - most of the time. She knows well enough to use her powers as punishments, but, Mama is so... childish. She doubts Mama thinks she's as terrible as she really is.

But Pudding is also well used to it.

"I won't say I understand what it's like, having someone else in there with you. But I get you about being lonely. It's..." She fidgets. "My two best friends at home were two of Mama's Homies." Homunculi. It doesn't sound like the American slang coming out of her mouth, even if it's the same word. "They haven't left my side for more than, I don't know, ten minutes at a time? Since I was about nine or ten. Being alone here is very different from being alone at home. I know it's not the same, you'd still have your - companions? - even all by yourself. But I feel like it's the same kind of... you get used to conversation."

Her eyes drift to the cloak, no longer totally pinned on her handkerchief, and eventually to Soldat's hands as he works.

"They know all about me. Every different voice I put on, all my acting~" She flourishes a hand. Nothing like the gesture for her memory powers, just a little bit of all the scenery-chewing she loves to do when she gets the chance. She hasn't had much chance here. "All my secrets. And when I..." How. How do you put words to this? "...When I... started acting differently. At home. Around the first person who ever saw my eye and didn't think it was ugly..." Her smile is wistful. "They went right along with it. They didn't make fun or ask why or chide. They just stayed with me and acted like they always had."

All at once, she startles, turning red. "Th-that is - I'm sorry, I don't mean to sound like I know all about you and then go off about myself - " Why is she so bad at people? She's usually so good at people!

Why is being so much harder than acting?

She hides her face in her handkerchief and makes a sharp, if quiet, noise. I hate this! Why am I so bad at this!

Soldat's been listening calmly, relaxing after the horror of this poor girl's mother taking pieces of people's souls (he has no idea what a Homie is, in her world or in modern American slang, or it might be less relaxing). They were enjoying the story, to be honest, glad to hear she hadn't been entirely alone and unloved wherever she came from, and hearing her talk about her "acting" like she completely trusts them now is... a kindness, they think.

So her sudden about-face has them looking up and blinking a few times at her in baffled concern. "Pudding. What?" What the hell is she apologizing for...? "Maybe. You don't need to start apologizing until somebody tells you you've done somethin' wrong, kiddo. I'm not upset."

Pudding takes a moment to blink against her handkerchief. Cautiously, she peeks over the edge with her third eye first, through her bangs. While Soldat is harder to read than most, measures his expressions, she's picked up on his microexpressions enough, she thinks, to actually believe his confusion.

Which is confusing.

She lowers the handkerchief enough to peer over with all three eyes for a moment before lowering it, though she's still very red.

So, which part is she bad at? Doing it? Recognizing it? Both? (Neither??)

"S- I mean. I don't know!" She huffs, a little of that nasal sharpness touching her tone. Is defensive better than profusely apologetic? "You were talking about your own companions, and about how you're worried about the other people who are hearing them now and if they got the short end, and I just go off - ugh!" She flips her bangs back and puffs out a breath. "Anyway!!! What I was getting at is everyone's weird and everyone's got little things they're used to, I guess. I don't feel like hearing your conversations inside your head with other whole people is gonna be that different from hearing somebody who maybe talks to themselves out loud, or has mean thoughts about themselves they can't turn off, or says a lot of stuff in their head they don't say out loud." Like her, for instance. "And. I get it about wanting the conversation once you're used to it. It's weird not having it. Even if my other-voices were two of Mama's Devil Fruit creations and not inside my own brain."

A beat. "And you keep calling me kiddo!! How old are you, anyway!?"

Despite their fear of her power, apparently they have come far enough that her defensiveness no longer scares them, possibly from living with her now for so long. Soldat looks maybe a trace amused at her tone, in fact. It's a good cover for suddenly feeling sad, realizing what the "Homies" were-- parts of people stuck into objects, her mother's power. That's... hell, maybe that's why she's so comfortable with Soldat themselves, if her closest friends for so long were like Soldat. Not quite people. Not whole.

They're grateful for her question and change of subject, which makes the amusement a little more prominent. "Don't know for sure, but somewhere between ninety and a hundred. Definitely older than you. You're, what, seventeen?"

Pudding would tear into Soldat if she heard him thinking like that. Not only insulting himself, but her friends. They may have been what they were... but they cared about her. Liked her. Still liked her when she couldn't keep up her Above Everything act anymore, when she changed. That's more than enough like People for her.

But instead, there's this sharp diversion into a splutter.

Give her a second...

"...No fucking way, you're not! Don't lie! You wanna startle somebody with that shit you gotta go for like. I don't know, look at you! 40 tops! I'm not buyin'!"

One doesn't have to be a whole person to like people, Pudding. Case in point, Soldat. ~~Except no, because they're a whole person too, they just won't admit it.~~

Soldat actually laughs, not at her, but like they're both part of a good joke, here. Making pleasant, if curse-laden, banter. "I'm serious! I belonged to HYDRA for about seventy years, and I had to be at least twenty when they captured me. I spent a lot of that time in cryofreeze. Cold storage, frozen. But going from my birthday. Whenever that is. I'm at least ninety-one, counting my year in Beacon, probably older."

~~Meet her and her bat out back, Soldat's anti-personhood demons.~~

Something in Pudding's heart flutters clumsily and falls over on itself when Soldat laughs like that. Oh. Oh! Oh and she can't help grinning right back, that's so good, he should laugh more often! He deserves to laugh like that, dammit!

Frozen though!? "Like frogs!? What the fuck. Can you do that to people? Shouldn't that have killed you??"

And what the fuck he doesn't even know his birthday. That's not okay. She'll have to figure out how to do something about that.

"Probably. But this should have killed me, too." They hold up the metal hand, wiggle the fingers with some mechanical whirs, without looking up from their sewing. "There's metal supports for it all down my left side, under the skin. I have increased metabolism that makes me heal from things other people wouldn't. I was actually very surprised to be here instead of revived under the techs, when I actually died." Also terrified, though they sound fairly laid back about it now. It has been a year, after all, and being here is basically the best thing that's happened to them since the war.

"...That's actually less weird than being frozen, where I'm from." The differences between their worlds are vast and deep and each one still surprises her. "Not usual. But the Government has cyborgs, and there are a few others besides, and then - "

Wait. Catches herself. There is a Vinsmoke here, now, and she probably shouldn't be giving away Reiju's secrets, even to Soldat.

"W-well. I don't know all the details of metal this that or the other. But on the other hand, even the man with the icy Devil Fruit is the only one I've heard of freezing anyone back home, and as far as I'm aware that usually kills them. You're a weird case, y'know?" Said totally casually: conversational, not mean. Just, you know, teenager.

EVENT LOG: HUNGER AND THIRST

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