meadowlarklogs | Monthly Catch-all

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Monthly Catch-all

WHO: Kylo Ren and you!
WHERE: New Amsterdam
WHEN: July 1st – July 10th
WHAT: Taking advantage of his newfound freedom, Kylo Ren decides to poke at some tentacle monsters and drink hot chocolate. More or less in that order.
NOTES OR WARNINGS: Disturbing content, primarily: blood, gore, tentacles and the amputation thereof. Violence may come up, depending. Will add warnings as needed.

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( 0 0 1 ) » SAFE-HOUSE

[ It's late – or perhaps it's early, when Kylo Ren slips from his cot and pulls on first his borrowed clothing and then his boots.

He heads directly for the hatch.

Climbing the ladder takes far longer than he'd like; before New Amsterdam, bruised ribs would be a fleeting inconvenience. Fuel to drive him forward, if necessary; easily healed, if not. He had followed Clarke's instructions as best he could but shied from doing more than that.

Above, there's a pack stashed and waiting. He collects it quickly, checking its over its contents and before pulling it onto his shoulder. He has a rough idea of where he's headed. With any luck he won't be gone for a few hours. Hardly long enough to miss. ]

( 0 0 2 ) » SAMPLE GATHERING ( cw: eventual blood, gore )

[ He finds what he's looking for several blocks away: two crab carcasses – the smallest little more than a bloodied pulp, scattered across an alleyway. Even the most desperate scavengers seem to have given them a wide berth.

Good.

He sets down his pack and pulls on a pair of surgical gloves. There's a more than good chance that he'd waited too long, that there's no venom left to risk, but he's not taking any chances. Even without the venom there'll be something to salvage, to use, to trade. And while buying goodwill is still a largely foreign concept he is willing to learn, if necessary. To play along for the moment as long as it gets him answers. ]

( 0 0 3 ) » SKY PARK

[ Later that week, the city begins its mourning in earnest.

Ren slips through the crowds like a scalefish, hood raised and eyes keen. He buys a hot chocolate from one of the many street vendors – lured in by the promise of something not containing insects for a change – and sips at it intermittently as he wanders.

Eventually, he finds himself in one of the city's sky parks: a lush, green place that is untouched by the grief of the city below. He thinks, absurdly, of Chandrila. The home he'd given up alongside his name. He remembers being lead through a park much like this, years ago, his small fingers tucked into his father's calloused palm. He shakes his head, as if to dislodge the memory, then murmurs – perhaps to himself, perhaps to anyone nearby: ] I don't recognize half of these plants.

( 0 0 4 ) » WILDCARD

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I mean — [ he shoots her a look over his shoulder, catching that shiver of emotion that starts in confusion and ends in realization. He feels gratified in having surprised her. ] that the meat is probably toxic.

Not that it will stop others from trying. [ Starvation tended to rob you of the luxury of being squeamish. And after a lifetime diet of insects ㅡ assuming they even had that much ㅡ any meat was bound to look tempting.

It means they must move quickly, though. Against time, against the desperate. Fortunately, they don't have much further to travel. ]

What makes you think that?

[ Toxic is different than rancid. There had been venomous things living on Jakku, too, but they weren't poisonous. If you ate around the parts which held the venom … But it's different, apparently, and she has the good sense to assume he wouldn't leap to that conclusion without reason. ]

One of the crabs caught me on the way back to the safe-house. [ He rolls up a sleeve, exposes, reluctantly, the bracelet of raised skin encircling a wrist. The same wrist she'd caught earlier when she'd reached for him. ]

I spent the night on the supermarket floor.

[ She hadn't seen it then. The abrasion. She reaches towards him again, but stops shy. They're not like that anymore. She doesn't know what they're like, or what they mean to one another like this. It's a haphazard struggle in figuring out the answer to that question which they engage in here.

They are not enemies, surely, for Clarke had put it best in suggesting they are all on the same side, those who were abducted. Kylo has even joined Morningstar. But she cannot rely on him beyond that, and she therefore cannot bring herself to trust him with her feelings, as she had once extended to him. He has expressed no remorse or change of heart. Only a latent and unproductive grudge.

Beyond that, they are without the Force. Their connection to one another had always relied upon it. ]

You didn't tell me.

[ She'd asked after him. He'd left that out. She's not sour, exactly, but — She'd asked. ]

I didn't need your pity.

[ Simple, matter-of-fact; he's already fallen so far, so quickly, but he still has his pride. It's his pride more than it's his anger that kept him from telling her, because he knows what she would have said, how she would have reacted.

With pity.

He pulls in a breath, settling himself as he tugs the sleeve back down. ] And I survived. [ said to the tune of and that's what matters. Because it's the truth, because he had survived and would continue to do so ㅡ with or without the Force. ]

[ It summons up an uncomfortable question: did he call it pity, what he had given her in that hut on Ahch-to that night? No. She'd felt it. He'd needed that connection to. But here they both shy away from touching one another again, risking more of it even though she'd ached for it since the Force was denied her.

But she cannot help the way her expression hardens to separate herself from the accusation that she would only grant him pity. ]

I don't pity you, Ben.

[ In general. As a rule. He has officially made himself the agent of his own fate with no one else to blame. Whatever else happens is on him. He isn't deserving of pity, for he's done it to himself. ]

No?

[ It's out of his mouth before he can think to stop it, to rein it in and push it down. There's a challenge in it, perhaps. She'd let him live after their fight but had severed the bond, slamming both the literal and the metaphoric door in his face. Now she was asking after his health, sounding indignant that he would keep things from her.

He turns before she can answer, continues walking. ]

[ The flare of irritation is its own answer, and his challenge only serves to force her to double down. No, she does not pity him, and if he is so warped as to view anyone caring about him as mere pity, then no wonder he —

Such resentment is pointless in their present circumstances. She lets go of it with a force exhale and stomps off after him, but she doesn't summon the topic back or address his challenge. It's not worth it. She can't persuade him if he's going to be in a snit.

It's not long before they come upon one of the crabs' carcasses. She cannot rightfully call it a creature anymore, for it does not even twitch with the hints of life. She nudges a tentacle with her foot. ]

One of these almost got me and Mei. [ She'd been pinned under a restaurant kitchen's table, trying to ignite an explosion to blast it away. ] We got trapped in a freezer. [ She crouches next to it, but doesn't poke at it yet. She has nothing to rightfully poke with that won't risk exposing her to the aforementioned poison. ] I didn't know it was poisonous.

[ The pack slides from his shoulders. Mei, he presumes, is the name of one of her strays; he hasn't done the rounds of the safe-house yet, hasn't really got to know anyone beyond the people that have placed themselves in his way. ]

Only the one? [ There's nothing about his tone that suggests that this would in any way diminish the threat ㅡ he would know, after all ㅡ only that he was trying to understand what must have happened, to build a better picture. ]

There were three when I was attacked. [ He bends to inspect the contents of the pack, removing a pair of surgical gloves. ] Two were killed, the third was driven off. [ It had been smaller than the others, thinking about it now. Faster. An adolescent, perhaps? Not fully formed. Or could it have been something new entirely. ]

[ He doesn't mean it to be an insult. It is anyway. She looks up at him, gaze narrow. She'd been unarmed, she wants to say, but there's no point to defending herself against his efforts to discern the creatures' behavior patterns. ]

'Were killed'? [ Rey offers dryly. ] You mean you killed them.

[ She surveys his gloves set-up with some realization that, oh, he's actually prepared for this and now she's just along for the ride. ]

I killed one of them. [ He corrects her, not adding that even then it had been more luck and instinctive reflex that had kept him alive. ] There was a girl ㅡ white hair, green eyes, a ㅡ [ he indicates his face, ] scar on her face. She took care of the second.

[ There's a snap of latex as he pulls on first one glove and then the other. ] She reminded me of you.

[ Something in her chafes against the declaration. As though she needs to scramble to hold onto something which belongs to her. It claws its way up her throat. It's foolish, of course. Jealous and base and needy, but it is in her nature to cling to every connection she makes. ]

How's that?

[ She knows the answer, she thinks. She had noticed it too when she'd met Ciri, knows immediately who she means, felt kindred to her. Still she wants to hear Ben's assessment. And, well, she's at a loss for tools to do anything with this creature, she realizes, so better that she interrogate his observation than draw attention to her uselessness here. ]

Fearless.

[ He says it the same way one might say "foolish". The two are not mutually exclusive. ]

There is a second pair in the pack. [ He hadn't planned for company, of course, had intended to look for another carcass after the first ㅡ one of the snakes, perhaps ㅡ but she's here. She might as well be of use. ]

Edited 2018-09-19 03:13 (UTC)

[ He manages to make a compliment sound like an insult. It doesn't satisfy, as a result. Her jealous remains inky and unsure in her gut, and she is left to accept his offer or stand pointless and idle. She goes for his pack and rifles through for the other pair of gloves, sparing a glance at whatever else he has contained in there before she starts tugging them on. ]

What makes you think these will stave off the poison? [ She decides to poke holes in his strategy instead. ]

[ Knives. The pack holds his assortment of scavenged knives and a number of clear, plastic containers ㅡ some of them far too small to do anything but hold liquid, which is fine as there will be plenty of that once they start ㅡ and strips of fabric that look as if they begun their lives as something else entirely. ]

Would you rather do without even the chance of protection?

[ He might not be a biologist but he is a hunter. He will strip the body bare ㅡ well, as soon as he figures out how precisely to begin. ]

Both of us doing this is stupid.

[ She's just pointing that out. But she pulls one of the knives out and walks over to the body. It's evident that he doesn't quite know where to start, so she cuts away the tentacles and pushes them away from the upper edge of its shell. They'll only get in the way, and they'll need to be cut apart separately. ]

We're risking us both getting poisoned and left lying out here, vulnerable.

[ The stupidity of it doesn't stop her. Like he'd said: fearless. The most obvious thing to do is to get a look inside the hard outer shell. She prods at it with the knife, looking for soft tissue. The underbelly is softer, but still tough. She settles on gettin in by its mouth, using the knife to start wedging a crack in the shell. Something gurgles out, wet and foul-smelling.

She grimaces and looks away, but then takes the knife between her teeth and grabs the top shell and the bottom of the mouth and starts trying to pry it open. ]

Both of us weren't meant to be here.

[ He fires back, though it lacks any real malice. She's right, of course. His plan has a few glaring flaws in it, not least of which is what he'd have done if he'd found himself caught in the situation she'd just described.

Die, probably. ]

Wait ㅡ [ he tells her, thinking of craw-crabs and scissorfists. Different creatures, perhaps, but the same basic principle should still hold true. ] we need to flip it, go in through the stomach.

Do we? You've gutted one of these creatures before, then?

[ She's only snippy because he'd suggested alone was any better, and she'd been forced to remember that, yes, he'd turned down her utopian future au where he hadn't been a piece of shit on the Supremacy and now they WILL be alone again.

Still, she steps aside and gestures to it. ]

Have at it.

Yes.

[ Scissorfists and caw-crabs, mostly. What they lacked in size they more than made up for in temper and appearance ㅡ an adult scissorfist could easily have put one of these things to shame.

He passes her his knife, then reaches out to find some purchase on the shell. Gold ichor continues to spill from the beast's mouth, spreading across the the floor of the alleyway. Smearing across his boots and his clothing. They should collect some of it, he thinks. It is why they're here. ]

Move the pack and bring one of the containers. [ As he says it the crab tips, landing awkwardly on its back, exposing a chitinous underbelly. The "apron" is large, round, but without a second body to compare it too he could only guess at the gender.

It's irrelevant, anyway. ]

[ The knife's out of her mouth so she can speak clearly, but while he talks, she spits to the side because now her mouth tastes like that brackish gold fluid that it'd been bleeding. Awful. Hopefully not poisonous. She stuffs the knife into the back of her pants then instead and moves to rifle through his pack for a container.

He seems to know what he's doing. It's strange to realize he's so methodical and intellectual about all of it. She'd seen hints of it in how he'd tried to analyze their bond, but this — It's different. Rey hasn't had access to anything like that, so it's fascinating in a way to watch. She drags the pack over and hands him one of the smaller containers, which looks better designed for fluid. ]

I'm gonna grab a piece of the tentacles. [ Divide and conquer, right? ] Do you want the skin or should I look for some kind of ducts? [ Her experience with poisonous creatures is mostly functional, not academic. ]

A solid piece, about the size of your palm. [ He plucks the container from her had, unscrewing the lid and then bending to catch some of the fluid. ]

Best to let Morningstar handle the rest. [ They would have a better idea of what to look for, perhaps. Hopefully. He's more or less running on a hope and a prayer right now. ]

Sure.

[ She feels ... guilty.

Not markedly. But enough. He'd already planned to do this and pass it to Morningstar, and she'd come out here accusing him of betraying them. She has to remind herself that she'd had every reason to, that it was perfectly reasonable, and that she's cut off from the Force too. He might resent her for sneaking up on him 'blind,' but she's just as limited.

So she's quiet while she fetches a container and cuts off a chunk of the tentacle's tip, plopping it wetly into the specimen container. He'd had all this equipment and everything. Morningstar probably already knew what he was doing. She looks at her fingers as if to gauge if the gloves are going to wear through. They're useless gloves, really. Too thin to protect from much of anything, and they feel oddly slimy on her skin. And dry at the same time. ]

All set over here.

Good.

[ The smell is ... well, it's certainly something. Not rotten, per se, but definitely not natural. Best not to linger.

When he pulls back his hand and lifts the container up to the light, he decides that there's more than enough to test ㅡ possibly several times over. He twists on the cap, making sure it's secure, then heads back to her. She's staring at her fingers, clearly troubled. ]

Here, [ he says after a moment, extending it to her, ] I can take care of the rest.

[ She takes the container and looks up at him. He shouldn't be able to surprise her, she thinks. Not anymore. But it does. ]

I'm not leaving.

[ Said bluntly, almost a little offended, as though she thinks he's trying to get rid of her as she takes the sample container from him and starts to stow both back in his pack. ]

[ There's a moment's pause as he considers her, considers pressing her to leave when she is so clearly unsettled, but decides against it. Instead he lifts his chin, an acquiescence to her wishes, and says: ] Pass me a knife, then see if you can collect any of the venom ㅡ [ a gesture toward one of the remaining tentacles, the moisture beaded across the surface of the skin making it shine. ]

Carefully, though. I won't be able to carry you back to the safe-house if you succumb.

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forcevisions - 2018-09-23 04:13 (UTC) - Expand

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