scar tissue that i wish you saw

[honededge]

Who: Talon (honededge) and OPEN!
What: Making good on the promise to leave his gun behind, Talon tries to keep himself busy without stabbing anyone.
When: IC dates April 22nd-30th
Where: All around the station and annex!
Warnings: Talon is a walking ball of paranoia and ptsd so like. He might make things weird. Potential cw for gender dysphoria in the second prompt.



22nd-24th: Station
[Talon made a promise to leave his gun behind when he felt safe. He doesn't really feel safe yet. He never feels "safe". But he's starting to catch on that this world is just plain old not as violent as his, and the gun may just not be necessary. So he leaves it in his room, along with that freaky mask of his, and tests out a week or so without it.]

[You can find him most of the time on the viewing deck, trying to relax and enjoy the fresh air. Reclining in one of the chairs, hyper tense and twitching at every little sound and movement. Sometimes he gets up and paces the edge of the deck. Sometimes that pacing leads him up the ramp, to the roof, where he leans against the rails and wishes he had a vice like smoking or drinking to calm his nerves.]

[Once in a while, he makes his way down to the common room where he buries his nose in a book he copped from the annex library. Don't worry, he intends to return it when he's done. The cover reads "Spellbuilding for Idiots".]

[In the mornings and evenings, you can find him in the kitchen, desperately trying to get a handle on the concept of cooking. It's not something he's very familiar with and the choices are overwhelming. So far he's mastered scrambled eggs, so that's what he makes. Eggs. A lot of eggs. For breakfast and dinner. Talon tends to skip lunch.]

[And if he's in none of those places and you happen to need him, knock on the door of room 25.]

25th: Annex (Potential cw for gender dysphoria)
[Eventually the station gets stale. That's when he makes his way to the annex, poking around the library for a new book, having finished "Spellbuilding for Idiots". He's gained some knowledge from it and intends to use it at some point, but he's nowhere near the practicing stage of spellbuilding, he's barely past the ideas phase. You can find him browsing the fiction section mostly.]

[Or, later in the day, you might find him in the hot tub. He wears a t-shirt and swim trunks, but if you've been under the assumption that he was born male, the two faint bumps on his chest and the neatly folded binder on top of his clothing might blow his cover today. The heat feels wonderful on his tense muscles and he seems totally blissed out, but he's not specifically against company.]

26th-30th: Anywhere, Everywhere Wildcard
[And after that, having discovered that the gun is in fact unnecessary, he can be found nearly anywhere, even the beach or forest. Just specify the date and the place you found him, or hit me up privately/on plurk (azazelbunny) for a prompt!]

Comments

[honededge]

What's it like?

[Talon leans back, settling into a more relaxed state now that the conversation is moving steadily.]

It sounds pretty spectacular just on principle, but I'm curious what the day to day is like.

[theosophomoric]

Mushroom wine's more palatable than you might expect. The University offers dramatically more interesting coursework now. Hell's Brass Embassy throws the very best parties, though you must keep your wits about you or risk someone talking you out of your soul. The cheapest labor is made of Clay and the best engineers are the Rattus faber, which puts some folks out of joint.

London itself's still very Londony, though, you know? People have adapted. [And while she's been cheerful and matter of fact about the previous, her voice gets faintly dreamy now.] It's when you get beyond the city that you find the truly odd - down to the amber caverns of the Rubbery Men, or up to the Flit where there's strange echoes on the wind, or out to 'Zee where there's great monsters in the peligin depths and none of the charts line up quite right, and in some places everything has a life and a voice.

[honededge]

[Man, it's just a totally different world from his. Wildly different.]

Damn. Sounds like something straight out of a fantasy trid. Or a chip dream. I don't think I'll ever be able to understand it all. Not without having lived there, anyway. I think my world is simpler, but a bit less...whimsical isn't the right word. More like...covered in dirt.

[theosophomoric]

And I haven't the vaguest idea what "trid" means, or "chip" in this context, so you've got the advantage of me there.

[honededge]

Oh, uh. You don't have trids there? They're like. Movies or shows that play out on these holographic screens. And "chips" are just little computer thingies you stick in your brain to experience someone else's life while hoping your brain doesn't melt out of your skull.

It can be some pretty dark stuff, I've heard. Never done one myself.

[theosophomoric]

[Sonja considers for a moment, frowns, and shakes her head.] The cinema's still an excitingly new thing in London, and I'd not seen a computer until I came here. Well, some of the analytical engines might be similar, I suppose. But the only one I've seen much of up close is the Truthbreaker Engine at Benthic College and it's more than what's left of my skin is worth to try and mess around with that without the Professor Emerita of Infernal Rarefactions present.

Chips sound a bit like gaoler's honey in effect, though, if not in execution. Risky stuff, and horribly inhumane.

[honededge]

Yeah...chips can be pretty brutal, too, if things go wrong. The problem with overriding your entire brain with someone else's experiences and memories is that sometimes you also overload it with the electrical charge and wind up braindead.

[He's seen chip burnout. It's disgusting and terrifying. He'll spare her the messy details.]

You never saw a computer before this place, though, huh?

[theosophomoric]

[She's not entirely sure what that means, but she's got enough of an idea to be vaguely thankful she doesn't understand more. And she, in turn, will spare him the messy details of honey-trafficking.

Computers are a much nicer line of conversation.]

With the pages that respond to touch, and the instant transmission of messages? No, never.

[honededge]

I'm starting to get the impression that my world was real high tech. We had holograms for most stuff, lots of cybernetics - I mean we could plug our brains into these computers.

[Talon brushes his hair back to reveal a hard plastic sheathe in his skull.]

Datajack. This little puppy projects a crosshair onto my eye, connected to my gun, so I can shoot straight. If I was a little more tech savvy and a little less magical, I could use it to dive into the digital world, too.

[theosophomoric]

Oh, goodness, that sound dead useful. You're a sharpshooter, then?

[honededge]

More or less. Support sniper, shaman, medic - whatever the team needs me to be at the moment. But I started out pretty much exclusively providing cover fire for the rest of my team when I worked for security, so I'd call "sharpshooter" the primary profession, yeah.

[theosophomoric]

Well rounded, then. [She says it with clear approval. She's not certain what "shaman" entails, here - the word makes her think of something Elder, or possibly of the Khanate, but there's no reason to assume his world falls along the same lines as hers.]

I'm handy enough in a fight to not worry overmuch about taking the wrong turning in most parts of the city, but I'm mostly a scholar by profession. And something of a diplomat, in a round-about kind of way.

[honededge]

[Shaman, in this case, might be closer to the honor-bound living in the Chelonate, sort of like the practices of oracles of the Gant Pole, or of the underwater port of Scrimshander - very stuck in it's ways and rooted in tradition.]

Nice. Good to be able to handle yourself, especially if you're studying something dangerous. Whatcha study?

[theosophomoric]

Theosophy. Souls, and vitality, and thought, and the interplay between them.

[honededge]

[It's a bird, it's a plane, it's...flying right over his head and out of his league.]

[But he whistles anyway, nodding slowly.]

Sounds like a hell of a thing to get your head around.