goneawayworld | It's Honestly a Terrible Plan

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It's Honestly a Terrible Plan

Who: Almost everyone
What: Dan uses his stripper powers for good, Stacia teaches everyone a brainhack, just about everyone throws a riot. Operation Honeyplank is a go.
Where: All around the Rig
When: After some network plotting.
Warnings/Notes: Attempted seduction, brain hacking, violence, likelihood of swearing.

The Rig is large and city-like enough that it never truly sleeps, and that is all the more true now that it's disgustingly humid all the time. It's the last dinner shift and even the workaholic execs are starting to call it a night, but the ambient noise keeps everyone aware that there's still life all around them, that the Rig is something of an organism as much as a vehicle.

In the mess hall, people are starting to clear off their plates and the hires on bus duty are wiping down tables. Some are lingering around the tables chit-chatting, mostly speculating about just how cruel and dangerous Planker's new obstacle test, which he boasted about to them at the end of their last session, is going to be tomorrow. Some are on chore duty and doing dishes. Some are starting to head back to their rooms.

And others are setting up to, as Madonna says, start causing a commotion.

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[Stacia doesn't even flinch when Planker takes a swing at her, she just laughs. She almost fires back with another taunt, but then Dan speaks and she bites it back. This isn't about revenge, she reminds herself. She'd promised Dan that much. She puts it all away, becoming who she usually is again.]

He can't do much, no. And clearly he has terrible taste in men.

<I take it you're ready for me.>

[It's a rhetorical statement, he knows he wouldn't be hearing Dan and Stacia talking like this if it wasn't time. Alloran approaches, stalk eyes on scan for new complications, changing the focus of his enormous main eyes from his actual target to ghost-Planker to the door back to the body. He's more focused than usual, more present; it's good to have something to do, and if this whole scheme seems a bit... hastily contrived, he's spent more than twenty years thinking only of the worst plans he can construct, so he doesn't have any more useful contributions.]

<Now, which one is - no, I know. This could put him in a trance for about half a minute after I let go, I don't know what Stacia's key does to that kind of thing.>

[Esplin liked to kiss people with Alloran's palms to acquire them, claiming them like they were dear friends. Alloran is not about that life. He extends his tail in an unhurried arc and presses the flat of his blade to Planker's forearm. It's been over a year since he's done this, but it works as it always has. It feels like almost nothing on his end, just the slightest suggestion of something flowing out of him and then back in, over the course of several seconds. There's no feeling of wrongness.

He exhales just audibly as he pulls back and gets a few steps away.]

<No allergy, just as well. Now, morphing is a remarkably ugly process that you all might prefer not to watch, but it's harmless.>

Go, go. [Dan urges Stacia to gather the others and go through the door so that they can start their part of this. His role now is to just make sure no one discovers Planker and that Alloran goes out and is sufficiently public to establish an alibi.

Like Alloran, Dan uses touch to use his power, in this case to catch people's emotions when he touches them. The physical Planker in front of him doesn't reflect the anger of the illusion taking swings at Stacia. Dan just feels blankness.] You and me, Blue.

[Dan isn't about to blame Alloran's morphing for being unpleasant. You can't hold it against a being that their natural powers are unappetizing any more than you can castigate the whole human species for their bodily functions being being as unappealing as belching. Nature doesn't design for human aesthetic appreciation, with some exceptions; people are just wired to find beauty in places they weren't intended to, sometimes. When natural things are lovely across species and type, it's so often a happy accident of the sapient brain, not that the world was made with being pleasant and alluring to humans as a goal.

Thus, if Dan finds this "remarkably ugly", well, that's on him, not on Alloran.]

If you don't mind me watching, Alloran, I can't say I ain't curious.

<I wish you well. Be swift and sure.>

[He's mostly addressing Stacia, but he lets the others hear it too.

Moving slowly and carefully to minimize the sounds of his hoofsteps, he puts a few more feet between him and the door. Alloran made sure he was seen heading to quarters and slipped away in housecat morph, and he doesn't intend any passersby to recognize the sound of a six hundred plus pound hooved quadruped on these floors. He doesn't think anyone in Jorgumand knows he can just acquire and morph new people this casually but it would be best to avoid that question altogether.

Well, no use putting this off. He sighs. Without vocal chords or a humanlike upper respiratory system it's a barely audible exhalation, much more a visual gesture - his big tripartate nostrils slit and gape, his furry sides expand and contract.]

<You and me, then. Go ahead, if that's what you want. My wife can make this beautiful. I can only make it quick.>

[Dan has a lovely sentiment. As Stacia might point out, though, there's nothing natural about morphing - it's not anything to do with what he is, but something that was done to him. The process of funneling his mass away as new mass is projected and knit is arbitrary and unpleasant.

The first change is his fur going flat and melting back into his skin. It's blue, paler on most of his body than on his nose and the insides of his hands, and it gets paler still as its texture changes, keeping the cool undertones of his blood. After that it gets more liquid and erratic as great lumps of his body mass rapidly vanish and leave skin-covered divots. At one point, when the bones in his forelegs dissolve and he has no tail to help compensate, he reels awkwardly on his hind legs and falls, grunting with the impact. It looks like it should be agonizing. Sounds like it, too, with soft but distinct sloshes and dragging and the crunch and pop of bones adjusting, and as his airway changes more audible uneven, effortful breathing. It looks a bit like a better-lit, not always as gooey babadont in action.

The last change is that blue tinge flickering in a wave into red as short hair sprouts. Then he's Planker, mostly. The texture of his skin isn't quite correct, though it's only really evident to Dan, who's this close and saw the real deal this recently. This morph is more specifically Planker, if he moisturized at all, sitting butt-naked on the floor.]

[There are others who are set to be the "muscle", making sure nothing happens to Planker while the heist team is in Planker's mind and Dan and Alloran are establishing the alibi. Which means time to get Alloran dressed and parade him around so that he cannot be missed.

Dan realizes pretty immediately that he regrets his impulse to watch Alloran transform, but really, it isn't the visuals that upset him, and it's not that it's "gross". It's the sounds of organs rearranging and disappearing and appearing, bones cracking and contorting, that Dan remembers as if it were yesterday, as if it were five minutes ago, happening to each of his siblings as they perished. For a moment, he feels a cold sweat come over his body, and as if his extremities have all gone numb, his ears ringing, and he reminds himself that he's here, on a mission, here on the Rig. Trauma is a fact, a thing that happened. It's not the present.

He spaces out enough that he doesn't move fast enough to help keep Alloran from falling over when his forelegs dissolve, but the grunt snaps him out of it and Dan rushes over to Alloran's side as the last of the changes settle in.] Sorry, sorry, should have been paying more attention. You alright?

[There are few people Dan wants two of on this world as little as Planker, but he knows that a form is just a form. A vessel. He's spent decades kicking it with werewolves and is in a longterm committed relationship with a form-changing Easter Bunny. Any weirdness is dispelled within half a second in his mind, and a task at hand is well-appreciated instead of letting himself get sucked back into terrible memories.

He holds a hand to help Alloran up, a hand ready to catch Alloran if, as Dan suspects, the shift from quadrupedal to bipedal is a little rocky. When Alloran's on his feet, Dan holds a large workout towel out to him for modesty until they can find a large enough spare uniform.]

This ain't your first time posing as a human being, is it?

Edited 2021-04-30 00:13 (UTC)

<Don't worry about it.>

[He can use thought-speech regardless of morph or morph progression, which may be useful. Alloran looks at the offered hand with incomprehension for a second, then he grimaces and takes it without trying to be fiddly and avoid palm contact, allowing himself to be pulled upright. The callus patterns are almost completely accurate, and there's no feeling of pain or distress, just resolve and distaste. He does stagger a step or two when he's upright, but that's all.]

I've been mangling myself into your tiny bipedal bodies for a year, even if I haven't actively been trying to pass. Before that the slug controlling my body felt the need to do it now and then. I was there, I remember.

[The voice? Is right. The tone? Is almost right, maybe a little too sardonic and insufficiently aggressive. The way he forms the words? Too imprecise, and that's an urban Cali accent right there.

He's seen enough by now to know to tie the towel around his waist, fumbling a bit with clumsy human fingers and a task he's not personally familiar with.]

[Dan doesn't so much politely look away as take on the impersonal and disinterested air of a medical professional or anyone else for whom nude bodies aren't a source of shame or titillation so much as just another thing that exists in plenty in the world. If he made a big deal of it, that'd be much more uncomfortable for everyone.]

If you don't mind me saying, your accent's a little off. [Dan switches into an uncanny imitation of Planker, which would be perfect except for the fact that Dan can't mask that distinct airy rasp his voice has that always makes it sound as if he's on day two of a nasty case of strep throat.] Can you imitate this accent or might would you rather I could do all the talking? I might could pretend I have to be your assistant all night because I couldn't do ten pullups during training.

[Nudity taboos don't come naturally to Alloran, who thinks having to pause here to improvise a garment on the way to finding the 'right' one is ridiculous. He might have refused, but he knows humans enough to pick up that they're very insistent on this kind of thing.]

Sonic-talk. You're right.

[He scowls and it is very much a Planker scowl, with that tension in his lower eyelids, the way his shoulders draw and hands tighten. There's a second when that glare is aimed over Dan's shoulder - gaze is important to Andalites, Alloran usually only makes brief main eye contact unless the matter is important enough, and even if he looks people in the eye longer while in human morph it doesn't come naturally - before he adjusts. This isn't quite the same body, and the inbuilt personality Alloran is working through and around is distinct. All the same, facial and body language aren't difficult to fake in morph.]

I can talk, but I will slip if I have to make a fucking speech. It's your lucky day, you get to do more of the jawing off.

[A split second of hesitation on the profanity there, but it's not like he hasn't heard enough of it.]

[Dan, like a good con artist, knows that whatever discrepancies he's seeing between Alloran and Planker now are likely not as pronounced to anyone else as they are to him, because people have a high threshold before they question things they take for granted, and "Planker is Planker" is something people take for granted. He gives an approving little nod.

Without drawing attention to it, Dan goes through a transformation of his own, having been watching observing Alloran doing all this, the areas that come naturally versus those that are clearly against Alloran's nature. He doesn't know Alloran's culture, but when he breaks eye contact with Alloran it's in an attempt to respect it.

He gets down on his knees and puts his ear to the floor, listens for footsteps or noises outside in the hallway and decides there are none. The people to protect Planker's body should be here soon - they had to stagger the arrivals so there wasn't just a bunch of hires wandering around in a cluster the night Planker died.

Christ. You just teed me up with that "jawing off" line, and I want it noted that I'm way too much of a gentleman to take a swing at dirty jokes. [He grins.] Alright, what do I need to know to help you blend?

[Alloran was military. Even if his people do a lot of things differently there were dirty jokes there, too. He rolls his eyes in a credible imitation of that sudden petulance that comes around sometimes, and manages not more than a split second disorientation because it's a weird thing to do for the first time.]

Yeah, yeah, you mouth-people put them on everything.

Specify. I'm not going to try and mingle with his close contacts here, assuming there's anyone who tolerates him that much. In and out.

[...that one's intentional.]

Yeah, it does seem we got some sort of species-wide affliction of pica, don't it?

[That's fair. Dan rephrases.] What's the one thing you're struggling with most right now? Balance, facial expressions, verbal...?

[Most of Alloran's imitations of the body language, at least, seem pretty normal.]

[Alloran folds his heavy arms over his chest, one of those gestures that an Andalite can do after a fashion, but it feels much different and better with brachiator anatomy going on, and especially satisfying here. He's still got no length and is small and ungrounded but it's a little illusion of solidity.]

I can walk or run, but I am not going to be able to get physical like this and be the least bit convincing. And I'll admit to being anxious. [With this extremely out-of-character admission he flashes a bared-tooth grin with no warmth in it. Alloran may be overdoing it at this point. In his favored human morph his tendency is to underemote.] It's been twenty-five years since I tried something like this, and that went to shit in a tin minute.

[is that really a phrase planker or anyone else has ever used?]

[It's absolutely a phrase Planker would use, and Dan lights up into a big grin at how well it matches with the cold smile and folded arms. Alloran's doing great.]

Lucky for you I ain't been anxious a day in my life. Just stick with me. [That's a lie, since Dan's typically about two seconds from crawling out of his own skin, but Dan's quite good at covering up for that with a "whatever goes" ambient sunniness.] I'll let the next shift some in to watch the body.

Oh, you're arrogant for a little man.

[This is kind of meant as a compliment? Alloran's usually been suppressing his own belligerent side because things are exhausting so much of the time and it's not worth it.]

You do that. I think I know where the right clothes are. But you might have to help me if we're going to do this quickly, I've only ever put on the shit the company has us wear.

[Esplin morphed human many times and usually wore more clothing than could come with the morph, but he had various assistants for that part. Alloran knows what elements go where but knowing and doing are different things, and while he's mastered walking, the standing-on-one-leg part of the process is gonna be tricky and something might be inside out.]

Ain't nothing wrong with confidence, even when it ain't earned.

[Whether it's a compliment or a criticism, Dan beams in response, checks in with the people who'll guard the static, frozen Planker, and brings back a Rig uniform that looks the right size.]

Hot tip, put your clothes on while you're set down and I'll help you out. [Dan sits down and pats the floor, undoing the zipper and buckle for the coverall; he's noticed that Andalite hands have more fingers and that dealing with human hands probably feels, at best, like trying to do your fine motor skills while wearing bulky oversized gloves with some of your fingers stuck together.]

[He laughs, and it's not right at all - apparently the genuine, startled-amusement laugh that comes with the factory model of Planker's body is a good twenty degrees more cute and personable than anything the real thing's been expressing. Alloran definitely catches this and turns it into throat-clearing, and does not say what he was going to say, which was Son, I'm an Andalite, I knew unearned confidence before your parents were born.]

Don't be funny with me.

[When Dan's ducked back in Alloran has actually found one of those aluminum benches that isn't bolted down quite right and sat on it to struggle into socks and an undershirt, which is backwards.]

It's gonna have to come off quickly too. There's a time limit on this tech and I'm not getting stuck as this hairless ass. But if I demorph in this much clothing it's getting shredded and needs to get tossed if we don't want it being incredibly suspicious.

I can't help being funny. That's just my face. [He gives Alloran a quick nod. He roots in his pockets for something.] Take the shirt off, you got it backwards and I'm going to do something to it.

[He gets the shirt and the pants before Alloran can put them on, then uses the staple remover he's been carrying in his pocket to start ripping out some of the seams. Not obvious seams. Just slicing away the ones that absorb most of the tension.

Dan grew up tailoring his own clothing, hand-me-downs and give-me-backs milling around between him and his many siblings, then grandfathered that skill into his drifter life living out of a car, stretching his attire to last for years of rough use, and, of course, using it for professional purposes. The boy knows how to quickly alter clothing to a tearaway.]

Alright, let me get these pants on you. Be gentle with them, all you'll need to rip them to shreds is a good yank. How much time do you got?

You're the human, I suppose.

[He's really not sure what this editing is supposed to accomplish. Won't clothing without its structural elements, if it's found, be at least as suspicious as clothes that have been torn apart? Do humans not notice?

Maybe he should have acquired a dog, which could pick up clothes and carry them away, but it was much easier to get access to a Rig cat. Every now and then they escape the areas where they're supposed to be and go exploring and resisting being caught. If someone sees a cat slinking around, that doesn't leave the same impression as seeing a wandering dog with a mouthful of cloth and no interest in socializing.]

Stay too long in any morph and you're stuck like that. It happened to one of my men. I have a hundred minutes now. [He's got a little more than that, it hasn't been twenty yet.] I can always demorph and remorph to refresh the timer, but that means this pile of nonsense again. Let's get this over with in one shot.

Oh, so like when you make a goofy face. [To his communicator:] Alexa, ninety five minutes from now...remind me I need to set my alarm for chores tomorrow morning.

[Dan suspects Alloran has a way to tell time, but as he's just a normal human who's gotten much too reliant on voice-technology to manage his life. He starts getting Alloran put together, getting Alloran's socked feet into the legs of the pants.]

Okay, if you need to shift, pull these off and they'll look like just a pile of regular laundry. Ain't no one going to look close enough at something pulled apart at the seams. Trust me, I done quick changes plenty. [It'll be easy enough to, if Alloran needs to shift, have Dan pick up the clothing and pretend he's on laundry duty again today.]

Is that how you work? No wonder this one's even uglier than usual.

[Alloran cooperates awkwardly. He remembers how this goes, and how when Esplin just forced a subordinate to pick up his limbs and stuff them into the appropriate tubes it made everything take longer and be worse. Which the Yeerk hadn't been averse to, but sometimes even Esplin chose expedience.]

This would be easier if you people didn't hate your own bodies so much. Godforsaken foot clothes. How do you manage these at all?

[Esplin's human-dressing experts had rapidly figured out that it was best to go with shoes that could just be slipped on and off, quite different from the extensively laced combats he pulled out of a locker. In Aria morph, on the Rig, Alloran just hasn't worn them at all. It's not like it matters if his feet are injured.]

[That gets a stifled laugh out of Dan, who's starting to slip into character, just so no one walks in on Planker and a new hire being pals and jovial together. They have Planker's terrible reputation to uphold, after all.]

Hand me those. [He helps get them onto Alloran's feet, arranges the laces, then puts in a slipknot that'll give if anyone gives even the slightest yank, something he picked up...oh, somewhere between fishing for food and sailing boats around Lake Tahoe for fat tips from rich folks. Perfect for a quick escape. Not so much for lasting that long without getting undone and tangled, but Dan hopes that they won't need more than half an hour to give "Planker" a credible time and place.]

Look, I ain't arguing with you. We’re all entirely too clothed and ain't none of this practical. I mean, it ain't like Planker's going rock climbing, I don't see why he's got to wear combat boots all day when a damn pair of sandals would do fine for work here.

[This is, for the record, the only "office" job Dan's ever had, and while he understands that one should wear closed-toed shoes at work, he also thinks that's a weapons-grade stupid rule.]

Alright, I figure we go through the cafeteria so everyone on the night shift sees you, then you come yell at me in the hallway so everyone hears you, then we hopefully get headed back here.

[There's essentially no smell to these new-formed feet, which haven't existed for long enough to get sweaty. The socks are clean. Maybe "there was no smell" and "the socks were clean" is a better way to put it. Let's not dwell on the odor of the spare boots Alloran pulled out of the locker. He grimaces as they're bound around his feet.]

Right.

[These are also new ears, completely free of the cumulative damage of having gunfire and explosives and a whole lot of yelling happening in close proximity for however many years. Alloran hears shoes on the floor and a muffled voice with a few seconds to spare. His borrowed eyes widen and he shoves upright - almost falls, Dan might need to catch him - and arranges his features into unhinged outrage, ramping his voice up from a low growl into a spittle-flecked scream.]

- pus-faced milk-fed maggot, you call that a polish, this boot'd be cleaner if I broke it off in your ass! I WANNA SEE MY FACE IN IT, SAGGY-TARIUS!

[He's not nearly red in the face enough, but it's probably not a detail a pair of interns who wanted to work out together at a quiet hour are going to notice.]

I don't know, Sarge, my colon's pretty clean, [Dan mutters as the interns pass, hoping to prompt another round of screaming for good measure and resisting the urge to smile at how well Alloran's sinking into this impression. He hopes Alloran's having fun with it.

The interns gawk for a solid two seconds, then decide to split before Planker's foul attitude potentially gets turned on to onlookers as well. He looks up at Alloran.]

Perfect. Couldn't have done it better myself.

[Alloran responds by going full bawl, riffing on abuse Planker's hurled before. He's been here a year, he knows the common themes and the limits of the man's creativity. When the interns have found somewhere better to be, instead of winding down once more to plausibly-couldn't-hear-this-through-walls levels he does that sudden silence that has never meant anything good.

Then he turns enough to spit on the floor. Saliva's been escaping his mouth for basically the whole diatribe because human mouths are always secreting digestive fluids and Planker doesn't ever pause to swallow it back, not when he could use it to emphasize his contempt. At some point in this Dan may have noticed, Alloran's breath has no sourness to it either.]

I'm so glad you approve. [That would be much more in character with a more childish, petty sarcasm than this dry tone.] Let's get this done already.

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It's Honestly a Terrible Plan

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