goneawayworld | A Monster Joins the Rig Crew

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A Monster Joins the Rig Crew

Who: Anyone and Everyone
What: Ickis getting use to the rig.
Where: The top deck, gardens, and the mysterious yuck puddle currently in front of the showers.
When: After mem-share, before the paintball massacre
Warnings/Notes: The Yuck Puddle, mild gross-out, mild emetophobia in the first option.

1- First Day Jitters

[Standing at the railing surrounding the top deck, it was one thing to hear a bunch of humans claim he wasn't in whatever world he "thought he was from" (he wasn't even willing to touch the claim that he was actually made of "Stuff", one existential breakdown at a time, thank you), but it was something else to look out at the world and see the proof of it.

The idea of multiple worlds or universes was beyond him, it was a thing from comic books, not a real concept he'd ever had to put thought into beyond some minor suspension of disbelief. But looking out at the mix of devastated buildings and alien plant life, well, he sure wasn't in New York anymore, or anywhere else he'd ever heard of. Which made the idea a lot easier to believe, but not any easier to deal with.

All in all, he was handling it fairly well, though. For him. Sure he felt like if he somehow managed to pry his hands off the railing he'd fall off the side into that terrifying landscape and it would just swallow him up, and he couldn't seem to stop mumbling "not happening", kept squeezing his eyes shut and trying to will the world to turn back into the one he knew, and his stomach had half a mind to stress puck over the side of the rig, but hey, at least he wasn't crying….anymore. Actually, he was pretty sure he'd cried himself out already.]

2. Where the Air's too Clean

[The compost has become Ickis' makeshift sleeping quarters of choice for the time being. The room he'd been assigned to was so sterile it was literally hard to breathe after so long. The compost wasn't much better, the air still felt thin, sure didn't compare to the polluted air of good old New York. But something was better than nothing, and it was less open to strange humans. As far as he was aware he really only had the Farmer to deal with most of the time and he wasn't so bad. He was willing to let him stay here so long as he put in work in the gardens, so that was something.

He wasn't big on flora. It felt like every time he was forced to be around large swaths of it the quality of his life went down at least 10%. But it was better than cleaning or 80% of the rest of the work he was forced to do, and he had at least some experience in helping Krumm on his family's mold farm. It couldn’t be that different, right?

Well...yeah it was, but Bob had the good sense to give him easy jobs. So, later in the day it’s not hard to find him doing things like turning new soil or spreading fertilizer around the gardens.]

3. Bones and All

[Trying to figure out the lay of the land he runs into it while exiting a vent into the hall; a grey murky puddle that sat in front of the entrance to the showers, as if purposely placed there to be as inconvenient as possible to anyone trying to get in or out.

It seemed to somehow shift on its own, the bubbles on its surface set in a listless swirl. It was just odd enough and gross enough to catch his curiosity, and pulls him into risking the open area of the hall to check it out. Sitting down close he brings a claw up to one of the larger bubbles to experimentally pop it, but it bursts on its own before he can manage to touch it, a few tiny stray bones burbling up to the surface in its place.

Eyes going wide he quickly pushes himself away from the thing.]

...Was I just threatened by a puddle?

[Quickly switching from alarmed to livid.]

That's it! I have been captured, humiliated and electrocuted, but I am not going to be pushed around by floor sludge!

[He pushes himself off the floor in a puffed up fury.]

I'm gonna-...I'm gonna-...I-I don't know what I'm gonna do but-but-...how do you hurt a puddle?

[Looking down at the lazily swirling muck, it strikes him just how ridiculous this is and the fight drains back out of him.]

Oh...wow, t-this...this is a new low for me…

[The puddle burbles contentedly as if it knows it's already won.]

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Beckett is arrested mid-step, blinking in astonishment, at the sight of the odd maroon creature sulking in the door to the shower. It's sitting dejectedly at the edge of that stomach-churning puddle no one seems able to get rid of.

" - this is a new low for me," it's complaining.

Beckett has never seen anything like it, but it is speaking clearly. Doesn't appear to be merely parroting... or, frankly, that dangerous. He takes a step closer.

"Hello?" he says.

The sudden voice gives him a startled jolt. Not as bad as he would have reacted when he first got here, but well, he'd always been jumpy, that was never going away. Looking back over his shoulder he relaxes a bit when he recognizes the 'New Hires' jump suit.

"Hello..." Realizing he might have been overheard during his argument with a puddle his ears droop. That's all he needed, one of the humans thinking he was crazy. "H-How much of that did you hear?"

"Not much," he admits, careful to stay out of range as he looks the creature over. It's about two, three feet tall, with long ears drooping down its back. Two yellow eyes perch on an elongated head, and the body is simple to the point of parody - just a smooth cylinder with sticklike limbs attached. It looks like nothing so much a fledgling's attempt at a szlachta - except it's not gibberingly insane or attacking him on sight, so it's clearly something else.

"I don't think we've been introduced? My name is Beckett."

Well, that was good...maybe. Even a little of that probably didn't sound great. No part of it wasn't embarrassing. But if Beckett was willing to let it go, Ickis was happy to pretend it didn't happen.

"Heh, yeah", There's a nervous crack in his voice that he can't swallow. "I haven't really introduced myself to much of anyone. Kinda spent most of my time hiding from the suit humans. I'm Ickis." There was something odd about Becket. Then again, most humans were odd, especially here, and if asked what he thought was off about him he probably wouldn't be able to say what it was. His eyes maybe? They looked normal to him, but were they normal for a human? Maybe? It's not like he looked a lot of humans in the eye.

"Are you human? Or are you one of the not-humans that look human?" The idea that this question might be rude doesn't even cross this mind, but he's still trying to choose his words carefully, and failing miserably at it.

Beckett has to stop and think about how to answer that one, for moment. Four hundred years of instinct tell him to evade the question; the practical reality of his circumstances inform him otherwise.

"My kind call themselves the Kindred," is where he settles. "Humans in our world call us vampires. And what are your people, if I may ask?"

Whatever it is, something about it - maybe its forthrightness - strikes him as being very young. So he tries to keep his voice gentle, the better to keep the creature from running off.

"What's your name, if I may ask?"

"My name's Ickis."

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard of a Kinderd before...I-I-I think I've heard something about vampires." It was a name for some kind of made up human thing, he was pretty sure. There wasn't much that he knew about them beyond humans conflating them with monsters though. And hey, maybe there was a monster out there somewhere that fit the bill of 'vampire'. After all, he'd thought Big Foot was just made up, but Elban proved to be very real.

"I think they call some of us that, too. But I don't know if any of us actually are whatever that is." He adds with a shrug. Unlike Becket, he had no instinct to hide what his species was. There were certainly rules about this kind of thing, one's that emphasized hiding their existence, but he'd barely had the good sense to pay attention to them to begin with, and under these circumstances he'd completely given up on trying to lie about what he was. "We're monsters."

"...well, then, we have that much in common." Beckett hides his own confusion with a quip. "It's a pleasure to meet you, Ickis."

Judging it entirely safe, he crouches down, eye to eye with the little creature. It seems to be furred, up close, though very finely, and its digits end in pointed nails. Much like Beckett's own.

"Where are you from?"

As Becket crouches he takes a half step back, more out of instinct than any discomfort. You don't let humans get too close. And even if Beckett wasn't human, he still resembled one enough that it was hard not to react on automatic as if he was.

"Erm, well, New York?" He wasn't entirely sure that was what Beckett meant, and had a faint idea that it might not be the kind of question he should be answering in this place with all its cameras. Even if this was another world, he still didn't like the idea of possibly giving away where the others were. But then, New York was a big place, that alone had to be a vague enough answer right? It's not like he gave away the name of the dump where the school entrance was.

"What about you? Where are you from?"

"England, originally. But I don't settle much, these days." Beckett keeps himself still, noting the creature - Ickis' - hesitance. Testing a theory, he lets his fangs slide out, just visible when he speaks. A little more of the monstrous might settle him?

"I noticed you speaking with the, ah, puddle. Were you communicating with it, or just ruminating aloud? It's a bit hard to tell if something's an intelligence or not, around here."

There's a damn centaur, for god's sake. If soapscum puddles started talking, he'd have to take it in stride.

Edited 2020-10-10 05:47 (UTC)

The reaction is equally unconscious but the hint of fangs when Beckett speaks do seems to settle him more. Until he asks about the puddle that is.

So he did hear that far into it. That's just...great.

"...A bit of both." He mutters reluctantly. "I-I-I tried to touch it, and it spat bones at me. I don't know if it's intelligent but where I come from that's a threat...probably..." His nerves get him rattling that off a mile a minute until he drifts off at the end.

"You know...Saying that out load it really sounds about as bad as it probably looked."

"Hmph, well, I had a colleague once who claimed that talking to yourself was the sign of an ascended mind," Beckett says, with a wry smile. "His reasoning was that he was the only person capable of keeping up with him, so he was the only person really worth talking to. Of course, he was also a Malkavian, and congenitally insane. Still, he generally came to the right conclusion."

It is a joke - but a warm one, not intended to bully.

"Did the puddle have anything useful to say?"

[Dan's heading topside himself, because he never realized he had claustrophobia until he ended up in this corporate hellhole. He grew up in a bunker, you know? He's used to tight spaces and no sense of whether it's night or day. That's plenty normal to him. But the uniforms, the bizarre codes of conduct, the unspoken rules of business-professional - he can follow them, but they straight-up vampirically suck the life out of him, and he feels like he's on the verge of developing some type of psychosomatic asthma by the time he gets up to the top of the rig.

He's got a pack of cigarettes, which he's absolutely not supposed to have, but he's in good with the woman at the commissary. He has a way of talking to people, especially to people who don't usually get talked to and bear a great wound from it. She gave him a little cough syrupy-looking bottle too, which is absolutely full of grain alcohol, because he's just so charming and just so polite and, for the first time in a long time, she felt like someone bothered to remember her name and preferences. And Dan did; he earnestly did, and the tangible benefits were just a nice side-perk. At no point was he aiming for them.

The medicine bottle's in hand and there's a cigarette between his lips already when he reaches the top and runs across this poor stuffed animal-looking thing shaking like a leaf and looking like the hypothetical of "what if purple turned green?". Dan's an empathetic person. It's his best quality, possibly his only unequivocally good quality. His heart can't help but go out to...whatever this thing is.]

Hey, buddy. You okay?

[Even hearing Dan coming he still flinches a bit at the unfamiliar voice, turning to see that it’s at least not one of the humans in the suits, but not recognizing the new hire garb well enough to completely relax. Instead he starts laughing after he processes that question. And it’s not a healthy laugh. It sounds like if stress and anxiety were given a voice and put on the brink of a break down. It doesn’t last long though, in a tonal shift so sharp it’s enough to give a person whiplash, he cuts himself off with a deep shaky breath, and responds with a flat voice and a thousand yard stare vaguely aimed in Dan’s direction.]

I’m fantastic. How you doin’?

[Oh, no, whoever this purple guy is, he's emotionally holding himself together with paperclips and duct tape. That's the kind of laugh that's really just a veiled scream.

Dan opts for honesty.]

Profoundly mediocre. Bad, even. This place is awful and I hate it.

[He taps his cigarette carton against his palm.] Do you mind company?

['Emotionally holding himself together with paper clips and duct tape' is a pretty good description of his everyday life but it's particularly true here. Dan’s honest answer is enough to break that paper thin mask of neutrality and he takes another emotional swing around the bend that proved he did apparently have some tears left in him.]

It is awful.

[Letting his legs go out from under him, he sits on the ground, one of his hands still clinging to the railing above him. At the question of whether or not he would mind some company he nods in what was probably meant to be acceptance.]

Glad we agree.

[At this display of feeling rawly overwhelmed, Dan wouldn't ditch Ickis for the world. Maybe watch from a distance, if it seemed like Ickis really wanted to be alone with his thoughts, but Dan's not getting that impression at all anymore.

He leans over the railing, not sitting down with Ickis yet but settling in.]

You don't mind if I smoke, do you? This whole thing has me so wound up and stressed out. Usually I'd go for a drive or something but obviously- [he gestures at the waste around them, the altitude, the empty space and them on this giant vehicle] -that's not on the table.

[It's mostly just an invitation that it's okay to be unhappy right now. A little "I bare my pain, you can bare yours, our secret".]

I'm Dan, by the way.

[As Dan leans on the railing he gives no sign of being uncomfortable with it, mostly focusing on taking breaths to calm himself and swiping at his tears to try and regain some thin semblance of composure. The question of whether he's okay with Dan smoking gets a mutter of "S'fine", and he gets a laugh out of him with the comment about driving being off the table. It’s dry and tired but it’s not teetering on the edge of a breakdown, so that’s already a marked improvement.]

Yeah, it’s probably not. Unless you want to take the whole rig for the slowest joy ride imaginable.

[ He made no move to look back out at the scenery as Dan gestured to it. Not looking at it or focusing on it was better, instead he kept his attention on the human.]

I'm Ickis...Is that what those are for? [As he asks that he mimes holding a cigarette.] Helping with stress? Like...some kind of medicine or something?

[That might explain why they seemed so popular with humans. Who wouldn't want an easy means to elevate stress?]

[Dan actually laughs at that.] You know, this thing goes two miles an hour. I thought someone was pulling my leg when they told me. I can't think of a single speed more useless than two miles an hour. That's the kind of speed that gets you nowhere, but if you hop off to run an errand or something you can't dawdle because it'll be hard to catch up on foot.

[Dan, as a lover of the open road, is offended by this speed. He's offended by this whole thing. He's offended that they brought in some scared monster kid who probably doesn't have anyone on this board who comes from his culture and certainly doesn't seem to want to go in playing hero guns blazing. It's more than cosmically-unfair; it's planned, intelligently unfair. Someone could have chosen them better than this and didn't.

He takes a drag and thinks about how to answer that. The truth is, Dan loves smoking. He loves the feeling of actively engaging with his own breath, with an exhale where you can just see the pain of your day come out in a sweet menthol plume. But he's not going to tell a kid that.]

Kind of the opposite, really. You start them thinking they'll help with stress, but then you get hooked on them and you end up just stressed out if you don't have them. So really all you're doing is solving the problem you're making as you solve it.

[He taps the filter end of the cigarette against his lower lip as he thinks.] In fact, I wish I'd had some better ways to blow off steam when I was younger, and I never would have started this one. You got any advice for me?

[Farmer Bob, being a man of few words, neglected to introduce the new farmhand to the . . . far older farmhand who also sleeps in the gardens.

Not near the compost, of course. Bunny sleeps (very lightly, and not often enough) in the gnarled roots of an oak it took him days to grow, which supplies abundant acorn flour for the kitchens whether it gets fertilized or not.

Bunny likes that Farmer Bob is a man of few words, but maybe they should have, oh, four or five words about introducing new hands.

Especially when those new hands aren't run-of-the-mill humans. Bunny can't even identify what species the new little guy is, and given his familiarity with the supernatural community, thats odd to say the least.

He's stealthy as he creeps up on Ickis, watching him work for a while before tapping his foot sharply on the ground. The row of soil Ickis has just turned suddenly sprouts up thickly with blueberry bushes, which flower and then fruit in accelerated time at Bunny's magical command.]

[As much as he might complain about them, having sensitive ears could occasionally be something of a blessing. Even with Bunny sneaking he can just barely hear the footsteps coming up on him, an ear twitching a little toward his direction. But he figures it’s the farmer who will either speak up in his own time, or is just checking his work and will leave if he’s satisfied. At worst, he expects it to be one of the suit-humans that he would be better off ignoring until it went away or until it forced him to interact with it.

What he does not expect is the sharp tap of a giant rabbit's foot to cause berry bushes to spontaneously explode to life across the row of turned soil. As soon as they start bursting up he drops his hand-tiller, yanking his hands away from the dirt with an urgent yelp, as if the plants might spread across them if given the chance, briefly flashing back to being consumed by creeping roots, vines and branches sprouting out of his own body.

Shaken, he protectively clutches his hands close to his chest.]

Y-y-you...Di-did y-you…oh...[Turning to look up at the creature attached to that foot he freezes for a moment before panic get’s it’s claws back in him again and he’s scrambling to his feet to try and back away from him.] GIANT RABBIT!

[Well jeeze, now Bunny feels a little bad. But he's also a little surprised. Usually the little gremlin types know him on sight - this multiple worlds thing got old a long time ago.

He holds his ground, shifting and letting the little guy make space.] Calm down mate. I didn't mean to startle you that much.

Edited 2020-09-23 09:54 (UTC)

[ Oh good, the rabbit could talk. That’s just so great. His time here just keeps getting better.

He does give calming down a shot, but that’s a hard ask at the best of times. And when he at least manages to calm enough to process the whole of what Bunny said, he immediately switches tracks, from panic, over to incredulous suspicion.]

W-Wait. You didn't mean to startle me that much? But you did mean to startle me?

[On the one hand this sounds like a younger variety of . . . whatever this thing is, which continues the trend of making Bunny feel guilty. Which isn't a feeling he likes, so he bristles just a little. But one eyebrow is still skeptically raised as he crouches a little closer to get a better sniff, see if he can identify if this is a bump in the night as he suspects, or some other species he's yet to encounter.] Is that something people avoid doing, where you're from?

[Ickis bristles a little in kind, hugging himself and taking another step back when Bunny crouches closer, instinctually giving him a rumbling warning growl. There are no fangs to go with it yet but the deep animalistic noise and underlying threat briefly veer him away from any resemblance to a scared kid.

He doesn't smell great. Even with Jorgmund forcing him to bathe with soap, the cheap company approved cleaners do little to mask the smell of the compost he slept in or the chemical scent of the flea collar he was forced to wear on the rig. And undercutting that was the sour pungent smell of fear, too pervasive to be the result of just being startled. It was a scent that set most animals on edge, particularly dogs.

At the question, he gives Bunny a quizzical look, still laced with suspicion. Monsters didn't refer to themselves as 'people', humans were people. And while he could infer what someone meant when they said something more direct like 'your people', this was just vague enough to throw him. So his confusion and frustration sounds sincere when he asks-]

What's that supposed to mean?... And what's it matter? Does everyone threaten each other with plants where you come from?

[Scaring each other was common among monsters. But when it wasn't playful practice, it was establishing a pecking order, and those that didn't stand up to it were marking themselves as an easy target at best, as an easy meal at worst.]

[It's like finding he's backed a cat into a corner. The same sort of posturing and smell of fight-defensive fear, where flight isn't an option. Just because he didn't mean to back the figurative cat into this corner doesn't mean he didn't do it.

A blueberry bush to any one of his dead relatives ... that wound is too recently ripped open all over again to really look closely at, even to think of one of the little one's startle turning to delight at a surprise snack -

How can a wound so old feel so fresh just by this brief a time of not remembering it? The moment of pain passes as a too-long pause, while Bunny breathes in, out, considers. Obviously a blueberry bush isn't a snack to the little red guy. Obviously it means something else, worse than what he'd intended.]

Plants aren't that threatening where I'm from.

Right mate, you don't know who I am, and I don't know what or who you are, so let's meet proper. I'm the Easter Bunny.

[Maybe that'll click things in to place for the little guy. Maybe he'll hear that and know to clarify he doesn't attack children, not even to startle them, has a harmless little trash life serving his purpose in recycling.

Or maybe it'll just confirm he's from a world where the Guardian of Hope isn't well recognized among the sort of little people a kid would be terrified to spot grinning with too many teeth in the corner of their closet.]

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A Monster Joins the Rig Crew

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