Byte

๑ ❝ 𝕮 𝔥 𝔞 𝔯 𝔪 𝔢 𝔡 , 𝕴‘𝔪 𝖘𝔲𝔯𝔢 ❞ ๑ { A Witch’s Tale - RP }

⫘⫘⫘

⫘⫘⫘

---

The new environment turned from unsettling to… Not rather alarmingly fast, and Trish decided she’d compensate for that at a later time. Her left foot decided that time was now and anxiously tapped a rhythm anyway, she pretended it was a choice she meant to make. Arms crossed with the feigned confidence of someone who had pretended for a while. “I get that a lot.” The punk gal didn’t even bother covering it as anything but a jab at herself. “The combustion.” Her lips did something she hadn’t consented to, probably June’s zen-like state. Probably a reflex smile.

Fig meanwhile had sniffed the air and straightened, tufts of Trish’s hair parted where the ferret’s face peaked through to eye the raven curiously. Equally curious, and matching the click of the bird’s beak with a small yip as if to communicate. Trish shifted to accommodate her companion’s weight on her shoulder when she felt small paws digging for balance. Her hand shot out awkwardly when she reached for one of the cups, careful not to disturb the ferret’s posture. She lifted it in a mock salute, then tasted.

Not terrible, not extraordinarily inclined for a second serving either. Trish was picky about anything that wasn’t plain Early Grey tea or coffee in the largest possible mug. “Thanks.” She plucked at a pastry near her elbow, Fig’s attention instantly turned and tiny paws crawled and tucked to climb down and perch at Trish’s wrist while her tiny mouth nipped at a small chunk that now sat in the woman’s palm. Trish smiled at the ferret’s composed eagerness before guiding her back to her neck where the creature curled eagerly while cradling the treat as if it was a valuable offering. She followed the others toward the conservatory, a room that matched with everything else in the mansion. Old, extravagant and most definitely daring building inspectors try to say anything about the potential hazards.

… Note to self, don’t set fire to this place.

Trish approached the sand-lined circle with a wry smirk and an intrusive thought she had to fight. The smirk landed at her brother for a moment, then a shrug as she stepped over and into the marked spot like she was expecting things to go haywire. They didn’t, but not for any control on her part. The first to introduce himself was the shy boy she’d clocked earlier like a sore thumb, soft tone and all. She nodded more out of habit than actually registering the name. Not unkind, just assuming she’d be reminded of the names when it mattered.

She supposed she may as well introduce herself at that, then.

“Trish.” For it was only ever Trish, and definitely not inviting any other interpretation. “I set fire to things.” A flame licked briefly at the edge of her thumb as if it heard the admission like a command. She smirked wider at that with plain amusement.

Intriguingly's

Can I just brew something then? I feel that's a lot simpler. :P

Intriguingly's

Oh, this does sound like a fun premise. Not sure what I'd play or contribute off-hand, but is there room for one more?

Digimon: Recompilation

---

Vigilemon

(And Shiv not immune to support flame)
Location: Gateway
Skills/items used: None

---

The little wisp stilled.

Newborn.

The word caught somewhere strange, in a place too new to name and yet old enough to sting. Her flame flashed pale for a heartbeat, blue deepening at the edges like it offended her. Which it did. Small she was. New, perhaps. But something in her spark bristled all the same, a quiet flare of dignity gathering beneath the surface of her soft-burning shape. The helmet tipped forward on her head, less lopsided now by sheer force of intent.

Beady eyes fixed on Dominimon, flickering with something that may have said “I beg your pardon?”

Then she felt it. Some shift beside her. A tension. Faint, but enough.

Vigilemon drifted at once toward Shogo’s side, close to his shoulder and the hand that bore the silver watch. This time she did not orbit aimlessly. She held her place there, warmth pressing gently outward, tiny body angled toward Dominimon in a stance that was almost absurdly small and yet plainly defensive. The flame around her burned cooler, more focused. Watchful.

Only when movement stirred at Vemmon’s side did that hard little instinct loosen.

Her gaze turned toward the crouched human beside the damaged Digimon, one knee to the ground, sharp voice edged thin by strain as strange light spat across the device in her hand. Vigilemon watched the woman’s mouth move, watched the clipped frustration in every line of her body, the way tension held itself together through sheer spite and refusal to break.

The wisp hovered there for a beat. Then she floated nearer. Not close enough to intrude, but enough for her natural warmth to reach; soft and hearth-like against the cold bite of panic trying to pass itself off as irritation. A silent and gentle offering.

“Help.”

Siobhan’s shoulders eased by a fraction before she caught herself at it. The spreading warmth felt as though someone had put a comforting hand on her, and for once she couldn’t hate it. Her eyes flicked briefly toward the little flame, then back to Vemmon.

“Right. Cheers.” The words didn’t come easy, but snapping at something that looked like it was about to cuddle any argument into resolution felt petty.

Vigilemon dipped once in the air, helmet flopping crooked again.

Then her eyes settled on Vemmon.

The stillness in her flame changed shape. The defensive curl in it softened into something quieter as she took in his ruined form, the way something had survived and yet had not escaped untouched. Her small body lowered in the air, warmth now turned toward the wounded shape on the ground and the human trying stubbornly to hold the pieces together beside him.

“Hurt. Save.”

For a moment she simply hovered there, between tension and injury, between the living and the almost-lost. Her flame flickered with that instinctive feeling of duty.

๑ ❝ 𝕮 𝔥 𝔞 𝔯 𝔪 𝔢 𝔡 , 𝕴‘𝔪 𝖘𝔲𝔯𝔢 ❞ ๑ { A Witch’s Tale - RP }

@JFK It can be next to Fig's future garden play pen, obviously. :P

@themaybreeze I did briefly mention the idea I had for Trish potentially being a trigger for hunters catching a whiff about the coven, since her powers seem inconveniently... visible, even with some future control on it.

How high can we count before a mod gets involved?

179

Word association Game!

Mark

Digimon: Recompilation

---

Siobhan O’Riley

Location: Gateway
Skills/items used: None
Mentioned:
^{Yuki@Forsythe Vemmon@Psyker Landshark}

---

Well.

That was one way to make a first impression.

Siobhan remained crouched by the Vemmon, one hand hovering uselessly in the air where she’d apparently expected either a user interface or divine intervention to pop up and solve the issue for her. Neither seemed especially forthcoming. Instead, she got an angel with the bedside manner of a tax audit, a collapsing lizard, and a stranger spontaneously turning into what looked like a pink stuffed toy with a medical certification.

“Jaysus, Mary,” she muttered under her breath. Siobhan stared at the Digivice like it had personally insulted her family line.

The buzz in her hand came sharp and sudden, the screen spasming out of useless static just long enough to present what looked, insultingly enough, like an actual diagnostic readout. Her eyes skimmed over it once, then again, brow knitting harder with every line.

BIOLINK ESTABLISHED. LOADING…LOADING…

VEM.MON STATUS:
AUTOREPAIR INCOMPLETE. DEFRAGMENTATION REQUIRED.
ERROR: REPAIR TOOL INACCESSIBLE. SEEK EXTERNAL REPAIR.

Her thumb hovered over the side of the device as though she might find a hidden button labeled fix lad immediately. Naturally, there wasn’t one. Just the ugly little truth of it: whatever bond had apparently been forced online between her and the poor reptilian wreck at her knees, it came with diagnostics but no solution. Of course it fucking didn’t. “Biolink established,” she read under her breath, accent curling around the words with deep suspicion. “Christ, I’ve been bluetooth-paired to a dyin’ lizard.”

Her green eyes tracked Yuki’s transformation with the kind of fixed, brittle concentration usually reserved for system failures moments before something caught fire. The healing itself was enough to make the skepticism in her fold up a little and go sit in the corner. Not enough, clearly, but enough that the thing on the ground still existed afterward.

Which, at this point, counted as a win.

“Easy, love,” she said, the sharpness in her voice sanded down just a notch. “Ye did more than the feathery management team over there seemed able t’do in the last five bloody minutes.”

That said, her gaze slid upward toward Dominimon with open, unimpressed irritation. “An’ fer future reference, ‘find the connection’ is a shite set o’ instructions. Very inspirational, real mystical, absolutely useless under pressure.”

Her fingers tightened around her Digivice. The thing had gone from annoying prop to active participant so quickly she wasn’t sure whether to chuck it off the nearest ledge or ask it politely not to let her weird purple gremlin die. The screen still glitched in uneven static, symbols jumping like a busted terminal trying to render a language pack it didn’t have installed.

“Right,” she said quietly, more to ground herself than anything else. She shifted down properly onto one knee beside him, glasses sliding a little down her nose as she leaned in. One hand still held the Digivice. The other hovered, then settled gingerly against his shoulder once she was reasonably sure he wasn’t going to spontaneously combust under the pressure.

“Vemmon, then,” she glanced once at the screen as though to confirm the machine hadn’t invented him. “I’m Siobhan.” A beat. “Apparently.” There was a faint edge of incredulous laughter in it, but only faint.

She looked back to the diagnostic text and read the lines again, lips thinning. Autorepair incomplete. Defragmentation required. Repair tool inaccessible. Seek external repair. “Brilliant,” she said. “So ye can tell me he’s knackered in five different fonts, but not where t’bring him.”

Still, annoyed as she was, the pieces were beginning to line up in a way she didn’t appreciate. Yuki’s little magical triage stunt had done something. Not enough to cure whatever corruption had chewed through him, but enough to keep him from tipping over the edge. And now her own device was confirming the obvious: he wasn’t fixing himself, and whatever internal tool was meant to do the job either didn’t work or couldn’t be reached from here.

External repair.

Meaning not here. Not now. Not by her.

“Feathers,” she called without looking away from Vemmon, her irritation returning with renewed structure now that it had something useful to cling to. “Since yer mysterious bullshit box ‘ere can at least diagnose him, maybe start speakin’ in actionable nouns.” Shiv’s deflated sigh sounded suspiciously tired of the posturing and grandstanding “External repair where?”

Then she squared her shoulders slightly, hand still on Vemmon, and looked toward Dominimon again with the expression of someone prepared to be very difficult until she got something useful. “Because if this lad’s with me, I’m not sittin’ here waitin’ fer him to blue-screen.”

๑ ❝ 𝕮 𝔥 𝔞 𝔯 𝔪 𝔢 𝔡 , 𝕴‘𝔪 𝖘𝔲𝔯𝔢 ❞ ๑ { A Witch’s Tale - RP }

@IAmTheIsland Yeah, @blackdragon seems to have been inactive for almost a week on the site. So you and Fabricant should be good, considering it's them we're all waiting on.

Shadow's Vigil (SporkoBug x Byte)

Ophelia did not answer straight away.

Her fingers kept worrying at the edge of the envelope, nail catching lightly against the hardened wax before slipping off again. She looked at Naomi’s letter, then her face, then down to her own breakfast as though the eggs might offer some miracle excuse not to continue. The silence stretched just a little too long to be natural.

“A few,” she said at last, voice small. Barely a whisper. “Dreams.”

Even then, the word seemed insufficient. Her mouth pressed thin. She adjusted her glasses though they did not need adjusting, buying herself another heartbeat or two. “Or not dreams, maybe. I do not know.” A weak, fleeting huff of breath left her nose. “That sounds ridiculous.”

Her shoulders drew in slightly, the instinctive shape of someone protecting something fragile before she was even sure she wanted it touched.

“It was only… strange.” Ophelia’s thumb flattened over the seal. “Too vivid.” She swallowed. “I was somewhere underground, I think. Stone walls. Candles. It smelled wrong.”

Her brow pinched, gaze unfocusing briefly as she tried to catch hold of details that seemed to wriggle the moment she reached for them. “There were people there. Waiting for something.” She paused, then corrected herself in a quieter voice. “No. Not something.”

That alone seemed to unsettle her enough that she glanced aside, toward the hall, toward safer and duller things. The scrape of benches. Murmured prayer. The clink of utensils against bowls.

“They called it a blessing,” she muttered, though her expression suggested she thought the word vile. “Or a gift. I do not know. They were going to…” Her voice caught. She looked down hard at the table. “There was a child.”

Her hand stilled.

For a moment, all the nervous little motions stopped entirely, and what remained beneath them was plain: not just fear, but revulsion.

“And then there was this… creature. Beast. I never saw it properly, not all of it, only enough to know I did not want to.” Another pause. “It was angry.”

Her brows knit, uncertain, as though she still did not trust her own memory of it. “I could feel it, I think. The anger. Like it was mine for a moment, or I was standing too close to it.” She rubbed at her wrist with her free hand.

“I woke up shaking.”

Her gaze flicked toward the envelope again.

“And then this.” The words were barely above a murmur. “With that ridiculous feeling that I had already seen it happen before it did.” Ophelia tried for a smile and failed halfway through, the expression turning thin and embarrassed. “I know how that sounds.”

She hesitated again, clearly resisting the urge to retreat from the subject entirely now that she had said this much. Naomi’s presence kept her there. Not because Ophelia was fully at ease, but because some part of her wanted to be.

“I did not want to say anything if it was only a foolish nightmare,” she admitted. “And I still do not know that it is not.” Her fingers tightened around the letter. “But it does not feel like nothing.”

She glanced up through her lashes, wary and uncertain in that particular way that invited comfort without ever asking for it outright.

“Have you ever had that?” she asked softly. “A dream that did not feel entirely like your own?”