John Doe (
thetatters) wrote in
route666rp2025-03-12 05:45 pm
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
01. crowned eagle (open)
Who: John and you!
What: Local octopus acts suspicious, becomes a bird, hides from rain, and touches corpses.
When: Throughout March.
Where: The grasslands.
Warnings: Event standard warnings. Minor self-inflicted injury (feather plucking) in one prompt if requested.
[ Feel free to claim one of John's note options when tagging any prompt! ]
1. theft
What: Local octopus acts suspicious, becomes a bird, hides from rain, and touches corpses.
When: Throughout March.
Where: The grasslands.
Warnings: Event standard warnings. Minor self-inflicted injury (feather plucking) in one prompt if requested.
[ Feel free to claim one of John's note options when tagging any prompt! ]
1. theft
When John draws down the first crumpled balloon, he freezes at the sight of its burden. That creased sheet of notebook paper is familiar, and when he unfolds it, so too are the words:2. feathers
song of my soul my voice is dead
die thou unsung as tears unshed
In his mind, dark stars wheel over the city. He can smell damp island caverns and the streets of Carcosa.
John crumples the note in his fist, and pretends that his hand does not shake.
For the rest of the month, he is alert as a hunting dog. Each time he spots one of those pages, whether sitting on a convoy table or peeking out of someone's bag, he waits for an opening. For any distraction. Then he tries to palm the note and slip away, intent on destroying the evidence at first opportunity.
But these sleights of hand were more Arthur's domain than his own. He is less subtle than he thinks.
The storm builds. John can feel it in limbs he does not possess, in the urge to twist and coil. It is like the moonlight madness, so he suspects this is a cycle, reliable as the movement of alien suns across the sky. There is some comfort in that: a cycle need not be measured in Earth-hours to be comprehensible to him. Like the blue dawn in the Dreamlands, it will come when it comes.3. corpse lore
Nor does the prospect of sprouting teeth and tentacles frighten him. Privately, it's the opposite. When madness takes the Convoy, he would like to wear a more powerful form, so long as Arthur's body emerges unharmed by moonset.
But he resents the half-steps, the lingering corruption. He resents the glossy black feathers that speckle Arthur's skin, the grand eagle wings edged in iridescent gold. He often stops to glare at his own black-scaled hands, the curved talons which adorn each finger.
He is not clumsy with these. The wings, the talons, he moves more gracefully than Arthur's human legs. But the changes have forced him to go shirtless, and thus put too much on display: Arthur's skinny ribs, the slash and toothy bite mark at his belly, the gunshot scars over his stomach and chest. John has scavenged lengths of yellow fabric in half a dozen shades, and wears these as cloak and cowl, always hooded over his face.
Some days, these threadbare robes are clean. Others, they are speckled with blood from where he's plucked at feathers and picked at scales, furious at such corruption of Arthur's body. Only his left arm is always glossy-feathered and untouched.
John has learned what happens when he gets caught in the rain. So he waits nervously for the gaps between squalls, hunched in the safety of his truck or taking shelter in a crumbling ruin. Anything to stay dry.
Each time the rain stops, he picks his way through the field of Husks. He crouches, grim and harried as a graverobber, to lay his left hand upon a silver corpse. Always he hisses a gasp as though burned, recoils, and stalks away again.
Should he spot anyone else scavenging nearby, he tries to act casual. He waits out the rain in an abandoned building, stalling for privacy, acting as though nothing has happened at all.
no subject
Triangulating the source of the sound takes a few moments longer, enough time for the pelting rain to have mottled it a grey-blue that sends its performance reliability dropping three percent, which - fuck. Better find whoever fired that shot and get this over with quick. It rounds the corner of a building, and -
SecUnits have higher processing power and reaction time than the average human, so when it slams around the corner it doesn't stop to process the scene (client ID: Levi, tags for combat experience, reserved personality. Other presence marked Target 1: Yellow cloth, black, curling tentacles [???], clearly reaching for Levi's throat) but throws itself forward.
No time to alert either. SecUnit is just there suddenly, sleeves pushed up and dark clothes and helmet turning it into halfway a shadow itself in the rainy weather. It sprints forward, tearing one now-clawed hand through the appendage at Levi's throat, throwing the momentum of the motion into a backspin kick into the center mass of the whirl of shadow and yellow cloth as it braces an arm around Levi, to keep the human from falling down.
no subject
no subject
"Jesus fuck," snarls the monster, in John's own deep and resonant voice. He retreats in a migraine-inducing scramble of yellow light and limbs. Even alien as he's become, he coils in on himself like a wounded octopus. The redoubling weight of his voice gutters out as though he speaks through gritted teeth. "Who—? Stop, stop—"
With a growl, he splays his clawed hands in the utterly human gesture of wait, don't shoot. One yellow eye cracks open, and around it flares John's own sigil. The other still weeps iridescent ichor, gone oily in the rain.
no subject
Not shooting, though - mostly because it recognizes that voice, and it's staring incredulously in John's direction.
"What the fuck," it says, voice stern and authoritative, "is going on here." To Levi, it adds, "Are you hurt?"
no subject
"He--" His voice is harsh, cracked, from the bruising on his neck. That's all he manages to get out before wincing and coughing. He's well aware that the pause gives John time to fill in things with lies but that doesn't help him get anything out.
no subject
And... this person helped him. Saved him, when he was trapped and wounded. It is one thing to strike down an immediate threat, and surely anyone who can look upon him and speak the King's name is a threat— to the life he has built here, to his odds of ever getting Arthur back. To everything. But to raise a hand against his rescuer, merely for getting in the way?
As his old self, John would not have hesitated an instant. For that reason, he keeps his hands splayed in surrender.
"I..." The mask betrays no emotion, but there is agitation in his voice and the hunch of his shoulders. He grits an apology through unseen teeth. "I'm sorry. Alright? Don't fucking shoot, it's... it's passing."
He has been on the receiving end of two rampages, now. Surely he's earned the excuse.
"Just give me a fucking second to think straight."
no subject
The last thing it wants right now is to get the three of them into a building during a storm where it might have to get in between them again. It starts a background search of its media, the techniques it's seen the colony solicitor use on two disagreeing parties.
... While it's at it, there's footage of Doctor Mensah settling an argument between two of her kids, and it pulls that too, doing its best to mimic her 'I'm not fucking around' planetary leader tone.
"Right. You," it says, gesturing with its still-extended arm towards John, "Explain. You," this for Levi, "One tap if you think it's accurate, two if it's not. I don't have a lot of fucking patience right now."
no subject
He gives SecUnit a nod.
no subject
"I don't fucking know! I just— I stepped into the storm, and..." He was a masterful liar, once. And he remembers the look on Blake's face when she awoke to what she'd done, the look on Jack's face when he'd turned back to himself. John curls further in on himself to hide his weeping eyes, his voice gone genuinely brittle with pain and— and whatever else. Christ, what would Jack think of him now?
"I felt myself changing. The power, the anger. I, I grabbed him. I'm not going to fucking do it again, can we all put our goddamn guns away!" He coils tighter, growls a thin miserable rumble of sound, and peers out at them with ichor still streaming from the gaps in his pale mask. His eyes are a vivid too-bright gold that leave sunspots in their wake. "He got something in my eyes, I can't fucking see!"
no subject
It keeps its posture tense, the only sign of the shifting probabilities of its calculation of the situation here being the lack of increased pitch from the gun in its arm. "Great. If either of you try this again I'm snapping whatever you used to do it into little pieces. Even if it's still attached to your body." Not the best threat it's ever heard, but it's working under pressure here, okay.
"You're saying you just stepped into the rain and got so mad you attacked someone for no reason." It sounds... skeptical. "Not just for a stupid reason, but for no reason."
It doesn't look directly towards Levi, but the angle of its helmet indicates it's waiting for him to give his input as best he can, at the moment.
no subject
Glowering, he removes one hand from his gun so he can tap SecUnit's arm twice.
no subject
"... I have problems with my memory." There is something genuinely brittle, defensive, to his tone. That is real, and it's the sort of weakness he doesn't care to put on display. He has spent so much of his existence not knowing who he is or what he's done. "There are parts of my mind I prefer not to examine. Violence... comes as a reflex. It is not something I'm proud of."
He wipes the ichor from his eyes with one coiling tendril, and though one continues streaming, the other peers out at Levi. Hunched over himself, his head hung low before the seething mass of his body, John makes eye contact.
"I... I am trying not to be that way anymore."
Shame. That's what tightens his voice alongside pain. Add this to the long tally of things he would rather Arthur never know, things unworthy of their time together.
"Levi was only defending himself against a monster," he says to SecUnit, voice steadier now, "and you need not hold him accountable."
no subject
The helmet is turned directly towards John, now. It's not a comfortable situation, with the shifting of John's form when he moves. It's the opposite effect from what it's experienced before, where its scanning capabilities were trying to tell it that there was nothing in the space its organic eyes could percieve - this time its data processing insists there must be something there, but its organics are determined to percieve it as a visual mess of shadows-feathers-something else that makes its organic neural tissue start screaming.
Maybe that's why it feels the need to be just as imposing as it can manage, at the moment, but something about that isn't adding up, for SecUnit. Maybe it's just that in its experience, people fight about something. Even when it's something stupid like who left the cracker wrapper in the sink, it's something, even if that something is a stand-in for something else more impossible to fight.
"A reflex to what," it asks, impatiently.
no subject
no subject
"Fucking— fine! To being seen as a fucking monster!" He splays his clawed hands, flares those broad black wings. Worse, the tendrils lick up around him like flame or like curling silk, dizzying to watch. "I have kept this hidden. This nightmare that I am. I—" His voice goes ragged and deep with frustration. "I've been trying so fucking hard to... to stay human."
The best he can pretend to be, in this world, is like Jack: someone who has always been corrupted, and now only fights against the draw to let it show.
"Now can we get out of this goddamn storm?"
no subject
Said as a point of order - it says that because it's both true and because it needs time to process that, unexpectedly more time than usual, because it has to deal with a sudden performance reliability wobble as both organic and technological components throw out errors at whatever John's doing, and it has to focus past that in case this turns into John trying a last-ditch attempt at getting out of being cornered. Or at fleeing. Still, the howling of the wind and the oncoming rain are making its risk assessment spike, and the pattern of scales that have grown in along its arms are itching in a sharply uncomfortable way.
'Staying human', what the fuck. Gross.
It doesn't tilt its head, but it can hear Levi's still-rasping breathing, and he isn't talking still - that definitely requires medical attention, which can't be administered out here.
"I don't care who you are, but if you threaten or kill anyone in this Convoy, I will turn you inside out." Not great, as far as threats go, but - the important part is the deadly serious tone it uses for it, not so much the content of the threat itself. To Levi, it says, "Keep the gun."
cw: kids sent to war
Levi hadn't trusted John before (really, he didn't trust much of anyone here) and now he definitely wouldn't. Though he's not sure if the association with the Kaiser or the attack was acting stronger on that. Probably the Kaiser, if that asshole hadn't tried to take over he'd never have to go to war. He, and so many others, would still have childhoods. That was on the Eastern Union more than the Kaiser, but he was the one who started it all.
He doesn't give two shits about the tentacles or the weird face (even if looking at John was giving him a headache). It was different than he'd seen here before, but he really stopped caring if people looked weird. During Termina some of the moonscorched had remained...well, not sane but not hostile. And here? Here it seemed like almost everyone was going through changes. At least John still had thumbs.
He grunts. Of course he's going to keep the gun.
cw: gore mention
So he glares balefully back, silent, still streaming ichorous tears. And grits, "I understand."
Arthur gave him so much shit, their final day together, about giving orders. John's not giving fucking orders. No one here knows the goddamn meaning of giving orders. But he— he was hasty, yes. Reckless.
Cruel. And it didn't even solve his problem.
"It won't happen again." He levels one last parting look at Levi, shoulders bowed, tendrils still seething at his feet. "I'm going back to the Convoy." And unless anyone puts a gun back in his face, he pulls himself forward through the rain like an octopus across the sea floor, and slinks away.