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[ru5t]

@lcfthaunted //> Exhaustion...

“You look like you haven’t slept in days.” carefully dry, to make it sound like light teasing instead of genuine worry, but there's no hiding the concern in her eyes.

  “Footprints at the corners of your eyes,” Tech mumbles. Her little corner of the Haven is in even more disarray than usual, less Magpie's nest and more hazardous dumping ground. All her odd ends out, like she's been looking for something and not having much success. Still, she moves through it like a secret in an empty hallway. Touching nothing but air. Careful, oh so cautious of being overhead, steady on. She plucks something up off of the shelf in the back corner and whispers. Completely unintelligible. She freezes there, her little face upturned slightly to look at the empty space in front of her. Her eyes dart, her lips move. There's no sound, but it's clear: counting. Sums on an invisible scratchpad. Whatever the equation, she clucks her tongue. “Wings.” Insultory.

  Tech skips forward, meeting Mazie in the doorway to her unit. (Perpetually propped open. Never ever, never closed. Not allowed.) She's only just arrived —-zipped right past the office and the others and even her brother-— still sandy and a bit sun-touched, her shoulders and cheeks peachy, but: “Gotta run.” She handles the thing she pulled off of her shelf forward. It's around eight-tenths of functional transmitter. No case as yet, but the signal hosts and the storage and the screen are all there. Even the wiring is nicely bundled and arrayed, held in by proper brackets and steady lines of strong, neat solder. Tech pulls on Mazie's hands with quick, insistent fingers to place the device in them directly. She closes her own hands over it like a protective shell. The case it doesn't have, “Yet.”

  She blinks.

  Shakes her head lightly. The shadows around her eyes stay, of course, but for the moment her eyes are a little clearer. “You gotta trust it, if y'wanna keep it. Tell Jack...” She has to think about it. Biting her lips for a long second as her eyes skip aside, thinking. Oh. Of course. “Myth's end.”

  Then she flits away. Back out the way she came in, a little streak of orange and white fur on her heels.

[ru5t]

  The compliment sends her head into a sharp tilt. Not quite sure what to do with the shape of it or the weird feeling it gives her. When she's holing on to what sounded like more than what most people would give on purpose, and.

  Oof. New kids. Always a shakeup of some kind, one way or the other.

  "..Isle?" Weasel asks.

  “Like island,” Tech clarifies.

  "The flats?"

  She shrugs. Not sure. But her expression twists, mulling over it. “Don't think so?” Yati's looking-for didn't sound not like a dustkid, but.... if she'd been there, before, and come here after, then it couldn't be. So it didn't make sense. What a puzzle.

  It's nice to know they're not making small talk with someone planning a murder, though. No revenge mission interrupted, or scheme to get tangled in. Just. Looking. And whatever it is 'portal' means. Well- she knows what it means, it's just...why would anyone say it like that? Weasel comments something quick and sharp and not quite a real language – Tech gasps, turning to hiss something back in the same shape of not-words and shove his shoulder.

  “Can't go back th'way y'came, little mouse?” he asks, undeterred by the way Tech is still frowning at him.

Y'wanna try that again?

Not if there isn't a guarantee that her name will be safe - in it's entirety - in their mouths. So she doesn't say anything. Tech introduces herself, and then introduces The Weasel.

"Tech," Udyati repeats softly, nodding her head. Trying to get a feel for the name in her mouth. "Sincerely, that's the coolest name I have heard in my entire life, and I've been around the block."

Not that it matters much.

"Yeah, well, he's friendly to a select amount of people. Me included." Udyati nods her head. "I mean, I sort of got stuck on his isle home. Good times were had by all. In the end, he pushed me through a portal. Been trying to find my way back ever since. I kind of left my heart with him, so---"

[ru5t]

@lcfthaunted //> Willow Prompts

listen. be careful.

  Tech scoffs with enough force and sarcasm to startle birds and melt concern. “What am I, an amateur?”

  In many ways, yes. For the love of the challenge, the love of the sheer sense in a line of code or beauty in a well engineered rig. For the love of mischief. She'd had her classes and programs in the city, well advanced for a nine year old, but never quite gotten to the part where it'd stopped being encouraged -competitive- play. At least not while her mind was hers. While she uses her teeth to strip the casing from the end of the cord, though, she glances up, and finally realizes it's some kind of legitimate concern, from Mazie. And not just onlooking eyes that don't know anything, or general what-to-do. Hm. She spits the casing into her palm, pockets it, then brings wire to wire to begin the extra-fiddly process of wrapping them.

  “S'just a panel. Couldn't kill me f'it wanted to.” And it didn't. They generally weren't smart enough to think that way. “Well— not unless the threshold boosted a' the sun started really kickin' somethin' fierce like... five times? Six what it does already? An' then I think we'd have bigger problems then..” she gestures at the set of old solar panels that gave the Haven its sleepy-charging power, and herself. “Yeah?”

[ru5t]

@hvndredzones ( Omens ) //> Exhaustion... + Nightmare

(doze) : one muse falls asleep on the other’s shoulder

  She rocks up to the club in the latter half of the afternoon. There’s a sparse count of cars parked around it — just the crew she thinks. If she’s timed it right, anyway. She skipped the party on purpose, this time. (Not always true - sometimes she simply missed, got the timing wrong and put on her cutest clothes for nothing!! But-) She’s not after the noise noise noise or the crowd to hide in. No, she’s after the sleepier version of the Starlight. The one that exists just after one of Omens’ big blowouts, when all the stragglers have wandered back out into the sand, and the lights need checking and the speakers need tuning, and Omens in bouncy and bright, armed with a dozen new stories. It's a form of combat. Against the static.

  Tech stows her bike close around the back corner. More of a habit - the kind of thing that keeps it from drawing immediate attention and potentially getting nicked. Except that it’s the middle of the flats and there’s nobody unfamiliar around for the moment. But better safe than sorry, probably. A quick ritual of dusting herself off to shake the worst of the journey out, fluffing her hair out after it’s been trapped under her helmet. She grabs up her things, double checking that her surprise is still there, at the top of her bag, before she circles around to the front again and lets herself in, announcing as she goes with a little tap-tap-tap on the door.

  "Hey Birdie!" Louder than anything the moment she’s over the threshold. Omens rushes to meet her like it’s been a lifetime since they saw each other last, glitter dusted over just about every inch of him. There’s a new range of purples splashed through his hair, and Tech can’t tell if the flush high in his cheeks is alcohol, makeup, or just excitement.

  They spend most of the afternoon making a valiant effort at tidying things whilst being, both, the kind not at all inclined to tidy. Sprucing up the setup. Mostly it’s a lot of goofing off, making things harder (or at least sillier) for the other employees. Throwing things at each other, and a heaping helping of good natured squabbling. They spend at least an hour at one discussion in particular: Omens insists that ‘louder is better’ and Tech’s expertise, being more in the make of a speaker than the music pumped through it, still argues that surely clear is better than window-shattering. They never reach an actual agreement.

  By nightfall the club is back in order. Everything ship-shape shiny. Omens and Tech settle behind the bar, sitting shoulder to shoulder, their arms looped one through the other. Too stubborn to admit defeat and aim for one of the more sleep friendly corners — still chattering away like children putting off a curfew. Five more minutes! Turns to ten. Twenty-five, thirty. Hours into the dark. Eventually, they slow. The rapid back and forth degenerates into half articulated mumbles, half-answered questions. Sleepy giggle fits. Leaning into each other, head on shoulder on cheek on head. Their words turning to mumbles. To mush. Melting.

  No, really.

  It’s hard to say where or when it starts, or how she even knows that it’s happening. But they are. Melting, that is. Only a little at first, sweating colors. Orange and purple and blue and green trailing down their linked arms, rainbow rivulets running together into streams shot through with the sparkles dusted all over the both of them and every inch of the club. It picks up. Smiles lose shape and faces follow suit. Arms and legs, heads and hearts. It doesn’t hurt. In fact it’s a kind of relief, almost. A strange game with so many ways to win! Depending on how they wanted to play and measure the results: who melts faster, or who holds out the longest, or who makes the prettier puddle. It reminds her of oil. Chromatic and crude. It’s not until her shoulders drop away entirely that she realizes she won’t be able to get out.

  Faster and faster, now. The struggling makes it worse. The rainbows fade to muddy shades of watered down brown and uninspired greenish-gray. Dread bubbles up as she boils down, down, in running reds of viscera and swirling silky slips of sclera. She’s sinking and she can’t get out. She can’t unlink their arms - there’s nothing to unlink. No shoulder to lean away from, no legs to lift to. No arms to crawl away with - no body to drag, even if there was. Sinking, sunk. Stuck. Then it hurts.

  It hurts familiar ways, like too-rough needles and the dig of restraints. It hurts like burns and tearing, skin pulled back, tools and fingers digging digging digging. Hands around her neck and pawing. It hurts in new ways too, thumbing into her eyes until everything is squished black, and biting through her throat. Slicing away away, piece by piece, strip by strip. Who knew melting could feel so much like a knife digging through all things vital? What was it looking for? No answers. Only the melting, the mixing. Slopping down into an endless puddle that… seems familiar.

  Empty nothing, by virtue of being nothing, can’t be familiar. And yet. A ground that is not ground. Emptiness that Is. Full. Instead of running over it, wetness sticking and dragging, she is the cloistered splash now. And she isn’t. She is Nothing. And he is too. They all are, melted together, nothing but everything, nowhere but everywhere. So many that circles around back into one. One and done. Done and doing. Trying to pull apart nothing, because of the memory of something, and the end of the world. Whatever the world is.

  When summoned, they speak. Its one voice that is all voices. The words don’t make sense, climbing over each other, and neither do the feelings. Too many to name, too foreign in shape and twist. Too connected to be distinct, to widespread to be singular. All, that is, except the anger the anger oh the anger, the malice. The hate. Like poison. Like blood. Like madness. Nowhere, everywhere, forever and never again. That's why finding the hands, the space to pile into, is so easy. To slip and slosh, spilling into unfamiliar hands. Standing on brand new legs. Arms and legs and ribs and guts. Teeth and tongue. Wits and the world. What to do? Crack open the teeth and tell.

𝚁͔̬̓𝙸̳̲̎𝙿̣̝͈̚ͅ ̖̊𝙸̖̬ͩ𝚃͕̝͉̅̓ ̜̝̗͈ͫ 𝙰̩͉͚ͨ𝙿̲̖̔ 𝙰͈̜̳͌ͭ𝚁͉̰͈̳͚ͯ-̟̖̅̌𝚃̬̺́ ͎̈́ ̺͚͙͎ͨ̂𝙱̖͇̱̔ ̫̫̥̟̖̌𝚄͖̭̣͔̋͊𝚁̱ͯͦ 𝙽̼ͮͩ̅ ̪̭̱͉̘͑𝙸̻͋̾𝚃̱͈͌̓ͭ ̰͓̝ͨ̾𝙳̬͌̈́ 𝙾̫̮̹̽𝚆͇̑ ̮͉̞̼̆𝙽��̪̲̤̝̚ ͈̜̙͌̌͗𝙵̋̈��̻͎̗𝙾̯̰ͤ͆̿𝚁͍̱̈ͭ 𝚄̣̖ͤ𝚂̮̘̰̺͗ ̟̫̹̤̃ͪͤ𝙳̞̂̒-̱̲̗̾̆̎̒𝙰̺̬̥́̄𝚁̻̱͖͂̉̾͗𝙻̼̖̾͛ 𝙸͍̟̝̆̓𝙽̯̯ͯͨ͂ ͍̗̿͌͌̚𝙶̮͛ ̘͎͋ͅ𝙲̖̈́̑̑𝙰̲̂̃𝙽̻̒ ͕̞̚𝚈̮̋𝙾̣͐̿́ͯ𝚄̝̘ͥ͐̈́ͮ ̼ͭ̚𝙷̻̞͚̽̄̇ 𝙴̰̰̳̓ͨ͛̾-̘͈́̆𝙰̫͈̐𝚁̘̯̒ ̖̚𝙷͈͛ͩ͒̒͐ |̪ͪ̌͌𝙼͇ͧ?̖ͭͧ͌—͚̃ͬͣͫ̚ ̪̭̒̎ ͕̫͌͗ͤ̆̀ 𝙶̝ͬ͌ͫ̈́̋ ̳̄͂͐͒̇𝙾̗͐ ̯͙ͨͥ𝙷̰͙ͪ̅̒̓̓𝙾͙̀͂͗͛͊𝙼͈͛͐͑ͪ͊ ͔͑̈ͨͯ͑𝙴̠̓ͮ̋ͨ̽ Ļ̸̷͕̹̗̜͙̏̉ͯ̎̒͠͝ Ȉ̛ͣ̿̇ͨ҉̵͠͏͇̮̙̤̩T̷̢̧̗̤͎̻̒̿̒̆̀T̨̨̡̛̩̟͙͓̂͑ͭ̉L̟̟̞͋͛̒̏̕̕͡͞ͅ E̗̣̫̓ͥ̇̀͟͞ O̢̟̥̍̓͞N̠̜ͥ̀́͘ E͇̾͠ S̨̻̒

  Tech jolts awake — knocking heads with Omens as he does the same. The static screech still echoes in her ears, driving her heart into a gallop, the rolling fire of adrenaline and fury. She slips her palm over the left side of her chest, pressing down for steadiness. Hard as you can, don’t let up, you’ll get through this. She looks up to find Omens staring back at her in abject horror. Fingers resting on the height of his cheekbone, the shine of tears pooling.

  If not for that, the look he’s giving her, she might have been fine. Unpleasant, sure, but far from her worst dream. But he’s looking at her in a hollow way she doesn’t think she’s ever seen before. Sick. Exactly like he’s had a weird fucking nightmare about melting into a puddle that -best Tech can figure- represents some kind of fucked up vacuous purgatory that defied all other description. But that can’t be true. Because that would mean they had identical dreams. Nightmares- whatever.

  And that would mean… What? A vision? A warning? They did sort of melt together for a second there, in a less literal way?? No good guesses. No good answers, none at all. She folds her knees close and wraps her arms around them. Containing all of herself, arms and legs. Oranges and greens. Head and heart and thoughts and feelings.

  A low growl of thunder sounds, far off to the east. They both flinch.

  “… … Candles?” she suggests in a raw whisper. Tech doesn’t pray, really. Not the way he does, anyway. But they’ve always seemed to help.

[ru5t]

@hvndredbattles //> continued.

  Maddy's eyes narrow a fraction of a millimeter. It's a sharp little squint, easy to miss, as she eyes his braced arm (which frankly looks as though he could flip her whole body over the table, never mind her arm. Jesus Christ indeed.) When her eyes flick back to his face, the squint becomes a glint. She lifts her chin.

  He wants what she's got? Okay then.

  She hasn't got the long sleeves to roll, so it's just a matter of putting her elbow to the table. Her palm in his hand, delicate as anyone would be trying to put the guts of a wristwatch back together, until without even the courtesy of countdown her fingers turn to claws. She pulls at the same time she leans and, CHOMP! She bites down on the base of his thumb. Hard. Not enough to draw blood, but enough to raise the question of it, and probably leave a temporary mark. Plenty to prove something, super swift and oh-so-pointy.

  Maddy draws back neatly. Perfectly in place, upright and blinking big eyes at him like oh no what happened?

[ru5t]

  Maddy shrugs. She’s not even sure where she pulled them from, those notes. Maybe something her brother preached to her, just as hypocritical for the pack he kept on the top of his fridge as she was now with one balanced between her fingers.

  Postmortem- she look him dead in the face while he says it, and mumbles something vaguely shaped like ‘jesus christ’ after the fact. Another breath-easing pull keeps thing from getting properly grim.

  “Little late for that one.” Not just for this latest bit of madness, either. She hasn’t been anywhere where a cigarette’s the greatest threat to her since before she was ten. As things are they rank somewhere behind Maddy herself. She sniffs. “That’s probably why they don’t put it up to you though, huh?”

Huh. "That's quite the set of statistics from the girl sharing a fag." It hadn't looked like she'd had any hesitation in taking a cigarette from him either. It doesn't matter to him any, in any case. Even if he did think he'd manage to retire... well, he hadn't heard any odds from her about just getting lung cancer. He wouldn't much care if it were a high number, in truth.

He doesn't answer her not-question directly, but Richie does turn to her to raise an eyebrow some. It brings the scar 'round to where she can see it, though that isn't his intention. It's dangerous work. To think the future is promised would be delusional, in his eyes.

Richie lifts one shoulder in a casual shrug. "Most of us have postmortem arrangements in place." Implied in that is that he's content with that to be it. "Fact of the job."

His face twists into a grimace, suddenly recalling the knowledge that unlike the rest of them, she isn't here by choice. "If it were up to me, I'd keep you where the lung cancer's a bigger threat."

[ru5t]

@champagneprobllems ( Gem ) //> Exhaustion...

“With everything you’ve been through lately, of course you’re tired.”

  She snorts. “Lately. Like it ever lets up,” Tech dismisses, “b'sides— 'm not tired enough t'let this slide.” She says it like it's spite that makes equipment loses integrity over time. Only the most personal of slights! the decline or failure of something she cobbled together to begin with. Her big patchwork net. Scraps and junk made into wonder. Sometimes she still can't believe how much of it she's responsible for, like a day dream branching off around her. Something completely imaginable but just too idealized to actually be real...

  Tech gasps as she catches a raw edge to the seat of her thumb. “Sonofa—!” Daydreaming. There's that slight pause. The one where she's trying to figure out if it just surprised her, or what. And then it starts bleeding.

[ru5t]

@hvndredbattles ( Richie + ) //> Blood, Blood

"What the hell happened?"

  She can't explain. He- she can't even look at him. Twelve steps backward. It'd been going so well! But she can't even look into his face. It doesn't look like a face it looks like –

  She swallows the sound trying to flee past the tightness in her throat, clamping her teeth down so hard they feel as though they'll all crumble. With her gaze fixed down she starts counting shoes. Trying to ignore the heartbeat pounding in her ears and her head. Instead she just finds her attention sweeping back and forth, back and forth, at the shoes. Standing in a loose, still-shuffling ring. Still arranging themselves, deciding how interesting this is. Far enough back that someone must have said something (when? who? she didn't hear, how didn't she hear-) but still, a front. A wall. Made of looks attention eyes that feel like hands. All over.

  “Genius here trapped her in the closet.” That's Singh with the absolutely lethal levels of sarcasm. She catches a snatch of breath after he says it.

  “It's-” Fine. Aimed...in Richie's general direction, if not at him, exactly. Can't even look. Not even at the shoes anymore, she squeezes her eyes shut, too afraid to keep counting. “I'll... I can-” The catch in her voice is desperate. Begging - who she's trying to bargain with entirely unclear. I can do this. I've been working - we've been working. It had to be for something. “F-fuck,” she spits, like the anger might save her. If this is the thing that ruins everything then they'll really lock— the twist is so sharp, a pinch. She -aahh- yelps softly. Losing. “–It's not fair.”

[ru5t]

@desertpoison //> The End of the World

"how the hell should I know?"

  Time with Kobra has taught her to wash the worst of her hero-worship out of her gaze when looking Poison's way. That's the way things trend with this whatever-it-is: her closeness to one of their number gradually supplanting distant awe with new nearness. Replacing broad sweeps with better views of frayed edges and painted over cracks, tools with which to remind herself they're still a regular old flesh and blood person, however influential. However much she owes her life to what he and the others have shaped the desert into. Still, she manages to view him with some kind of rose-tinted visor so much of the time.

  Though... not just now. Now she scrunches her face up and sends over a look that's half disgruntled half baffled and just outright surprised a little bit, too, even though that made for more than a whole. Like how she might look if her cat stared her in the eyes and asked 'how do I meow?' and she's not sure if she should be losing her shit about her cat talking or questioning his intelligence levels for speaking up just to ask her that.

  “That's not funny,” she scolds, crossing her wiry arms over her middle. Surely it's just a bad joke. “You were just there how couldja not know f'it's still standing?”

[ru5t]

  Tech watches with eyes made for clockwork and components, fast flicking, as they loop her out. Fluttering fingers, she realizes, are excellent tools for hiding something. Something about her? Impossible to know. She digs her chin into her knee. Assumptions haven't exactly been serving her very well at all, but it does feel like the standard, lately. Whispers wherever she goes. All those looks, pulling on her like she owes them something. Sharp stares from sharp faces with achingly familiar eyes. Hmm.

  “Long time,” she comments. Then she has to bite bite bite her tongue, points of her canines digging, because she knows the thing that leapt up isn't a thing she should let go running. Nuh-uh. Not in someone else's shop. “Ain't shit that's fair.” A safer echo - a familiar enough sentiment.

“Concussion?” Ven signs.

“Or something,” Rev agrees. “Should we ask Summer?”

Ven grimaces. “Would rather give her a little time first.”

Rev nods. “Tell her whatever,” she offers, before returning her attention to the bike.

Ven doesn't bother signing while Rev works; her wife knows the answer, anyway. “Rev an’ I go way back,” she explains. “She started losing her hearing real young, so we found a way to keep communicating. Got our hands on some old-world guides to sign language, made edits or additions as we needed ‘em. Been at it, now…” Ven glances to her wife, grimacing as she tries to do the math. “Close t’fifteen years? We’ve taught a few of our crew, t’make things easier.”

Bike fully disassembled, Rev heads off to the storage room for the parts she still needs, or the closest approximations she has on hand. Ven watches her go fondly before shifting her attention back. “’S not fair—I mean, ain’t shit that’s fair, but no reason to accept it, y’know? Why should she be cut outta things for something she’s got no control over? Why should anyone?” It's something she feels strongly about, obviously. It was part of their driving force to leave the City, after all.

[ru5t]

@hvndredzones //> continued.

  Truths told she's never known what to make of the Ghoul. Party is who he is (goodbadprettyugly) and Jet takes her calls and calls her sweet like she's little and Kobra- well. Kobra. But Ghoul? Dark hair and that grim smile at the opposite end of a long counter is about all she's got. Nothing else ever seems to stick. (Barring, of course, the grey-gritty fragments that rattle around in her head sometimes, like someone else's kicked-in teeth. Everyone knows those don't count.) So it's hard to say what the fuck possesses her to do it, but an impish smile coils at the corners of her mouth, sharp little teeth flashing, and she swings her bar stool side to side as she says, “Soooo I'm immune in the meantime?”

[ru5t]

@peranarkia //> Open Waves.

"Incoming broadcast to line K03... If any generous 'joys are out there..." A voice whispers through the static across a radio line that they pray reaches zones four and five. "The robotics field in zone 2... I'm hiding... Too many to fight alone. If anyone, anyone, can come and lend help, I'll make a fair trade when we both make it out alive... Please..."

  The dusty crackle almost passes right on by her, sprinting through signals as she is. It's a broad scan. The kind she sets up to combat the empty silence of the open desert, never really stopping on anything in particular but weaving through one frequency to the next, generating a stream of babble. So much idle noise that, funnily enough, what stands out is a quiet whisper.

  Tech sets her book aside to grab for the transmitter, hastily shuffling back to live line. At first it seems empty, some stretch of quiet static. Then it kicks up again. The call brings a tilt to her head the new voice on the end of he line can't see, of course. It's not often than an SOS goes down a locked line — then up come the words robotics field and suddenly it all makes sense. She locks in to transmit back.

  “You gotta be the luckiest unlucky bastard I ever ran across,” she opens, bypassing hello's and oh no's entirely. She knows the bot dump like an old pair of boots knew who broke 'em in. Including the part where if they catch you there they absolutely swarm. No fighting that, short of being bulletproof or going out with a bang and just so many bullet holes. “If you're already pinned there's no way I could get there fast enough, but here's the lucky part— I'm more use t'you all the way out here anyhow.” Multi-taking ahoy; while running it down, she drags her bag close and hauls out the rest of her gear, the transmitter pinned between he shoulder and cheek so she use both hands. “Now. Next time it won't get you ghosted straight off you poke your head outta whatever hidey-hole you're in an' tell me how close you are to that reeeeaaal tall stack, the one with the long yellow beam stuck out of it. ..Looks like it's givin' you the finger?”

[ru5t]

@methanesk15s ( Sunshine Revolver ) //> Angry & Irritated

"No one is entitled to know things about me that I don't want them to know!"

  “¡OYE!” she barks back, a hand held up, warning to keep distance. Flashing eyes to flashing eyes; double indignation all the way down. “Then stop yellin' at me an' focus on the ones spillin' yer guts for ya, yeah?”

[ru5t]

  No thanks. The board spawning fuzzy little nightmare blobs is a pass. She puts it back where it came from, still making an ew ew ew face at it. Dust she can deal with. Critters? Kid stuff. A fight or even a collapse she can handle. When things start turning to mystery substances that just might be alive, though....

  “Oh?” That tone, that little flicker. She catches on. It's almost...well. Maybe. She wants to wait to call it the thing she's thinking, it can be hard to tell. She turns the next switchboard over in her hands, testing the motions. Running her fingers over a crack in the outer casing. “What'd he do to you mm? Pawn your shoes off your feet or somethin'?” She makes herself giggle with that one. Chimes in the dust and dark.

That's not a name, that's a letter, he wisely doesn't say. It's an ever-changing landscape, the new generations and their chosen monikers.

Midnight watches Tech pick through the equipment, a magpie and her pile of new potential-treasures. He's got just enough knowledge to manage his own radio, maybe repair some basic trouble. Whatever system she's working by to pick out her treasures... he's got no clue.

His own gaze follows the mass down, and back up to her just in time to catch the face. He snorts. He only doesn't toe it to get a better idea of what it had been because he's not keen on wandering around with said biohazard stuck to his boot.

"He'll be thrilled." Said with the driest sarcasm. Privately, he thinks it'd serve Cherri right. Pain in his ass. (Part of the thought crosses his face.)

[ru5t]

@reapxrs [ Rose ] //> That Was Way Too Close

“who's not dead? sound off!” -- feel free to drag in as few or as many reapers as you'd like

  Doubled over with a hand mashed against the stitch in her side, Maddy's heart beat so hard and high she thought she was distinctly at risk of coughing it up. It had been a long time since she'd poured so much into an all-out sprint like that. So safe all the way in the city, behind her firewalls and trapnets and the distance of a screen itself. She hadn't had to run, really really run, in... years. She'd forgotten how to breathe through it. Now her legs and her side and her head were all twisted up and pounding, driving her to squeeze her eyes shut and gulp at the air like a half drowned cat. She could really only manage to think thank god Jack didn't come. Well, that and some mangled half-notion about taking her neighbor's next offer to let her tag along for a gym day under much stronger consideration.

  A sharp whistle startled her up, ready to go again— – but it was only a call to attention. The only one of this group to give a name so far, Rose, demanded sound off. Answers bloomed back in an ordered bouquet, like a per-arranged roster. One directly ahead and one behind, a few more –she'd go for an exact count when the alley stopped spinning– nearby. One by one they rallied. An empty pause stretched and Maddy caught an elbow in the side: “Fuckin'-! ow!!” she complained, swatting at empty air in the direction of her assailant.

  'New girl's not dead!' someone complimented.

  Maddy fired a glare at the one he thought responsible: a tall, frankly annoyingly gorgeous young woman with long, red-tinted hair, who smiled back. All teeth. That seemed to be enough. The stillness cracked apart. Someone laughed, and the others began chattering away, checking in on each other and comparing bruises. Maddy took that as her cue to lean back against the brick and sigh sharply.

  “So,” she panted, focusing in on Rose for no other reason that everyone else seemed to do the same. Look to her. “I take it... my friends... have friends?” The only reason she could conjure for her sudden absorption into this pack. Running from a handful of uniformed police who honestly looked like maybe justice wasn't their goal today.

[ru5t]

@loetise //> That Was Way Too Close

“I like your hiding spot.” -- i don't know where to put her in the tech sandbox yet but this could be funny just for like. modern or desc. she's just talkin like :D even tho the meme context is supposed to be scarey

  Maddy never planned this far ahead. She'd mostly just wanted to get this girl out of that club. Get them both out of that club. Because she was a little more together, but not a lot. And definitely still, also kind of drunk. Drunk, though, was much better condition than the way this girl did not seem to know where she was, or where her friends were -or if she even had any who were out with her? Maddy honestly was unclear on the whole situation other than that they'd both started getting harassed by the same pack of creeps. All she'd been able to think to do about it was this.

  And now, a short train ride away, she had a strange girl in her apartment and... no idea what to do next. She laughed a little, self-conscious. “Uh, thanks. It's like..” Scattered with books she hadn't bothered to put away, and clothes draped over various surfaces. Shoes in the middle of the living room and little bits of hardware laying out just... everywhere. After closing the door behind them, Maddy hastily cleared approximately 45-thousand mugs off the sparse kitchen counter into the sink, wincing at the noise. “A mess. Sorry.”

  There was a fairly cozy little apartment somewhere underneath it all, with plenty of brightly colored cushions and fuzzy blankets, but she imagine it was hard to see under the clutter and cat toys.

  “Can I- do you, like. .. Are you hungry? I'm hungry.”