route666rp | 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

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:

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.

2. feathers

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.

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.

3. corpse lore

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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Being seen as a monster? Not exactly, since the thing he called Jack was still human...or appeared human, at least. Was the Kaiser a monster? Probably. There were weird stories about him and he definitely used some sort of magic when the fought. Not to mention just shrugging off the gunshot from Pav.

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.

It's a perfectly good threat. It's the sort John has used on people— it's something John has done to people, when he wasn't calling himself John. He can clearly picture what Arthur's skin would look like if it were peeled away.

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.

01. crowned eagle (open)

cw: kids sent to war

cw: gore mention