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Have you ever had a dream that you um you had your you could you’ll do you wants you you could do so you’ll do you could you you want you want them to do you so much you could do anything?
2 mos ago
Current
Have you ever had a dream that you um you had your you could you’ll do you wants you you could do so you’ll do you could you you want you want them to do you so much you could do anything?
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4 mos ago
I've just come out of an existential eldritch hysteria induced nap and running on 6,000 years of sleep
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10 mos ago
I tap refresh and wait and see, a flashing note, a reply for me. No new posts, just the same old screen, yet still I hope for what might've been.
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11 mos ago
"He who has felt the deepest grief is best able to experience supreme happiness."
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11 mos ago
Looking for a few people to help create a shared sci-fi universe. If that sounds fun, drop me a PM!
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Bio
Hadn't updated this in a WHILE so I deleted it. I'm Ducksworth, or Duck, or Duckie. PM if you wanna know more, yeah?
Wu Shufen’s eruption went off at point-blank, and Griff was the closest body in its path. For an instant, there was no separation between himself and the detonation, only obliterating force. His world shattered in fire and shockwave, the deck torn out from under him as he was hurled upward like a ragdoll caught in the fist of some furious god. His chest collapsed in on itself, his lungs emptied in a single ragged soundless gasp, his back arched as every nerve lit up at once.
Then there was only air.
The Mirage Space crumbled away, yet Griff’s trajectory continued unbroken, a violent arc into the open sky. Below, the carrier was a splintering carcass in flames; above, there was only void, the wind clawing at him, peeling him apart one frantic second at a time.
His ears rang with shrill static, drowning out the chaos below. His vision fractured into red tunnels and black sparks. His body, whipped by rushing wind, felt suddenly alien, too heavy, too fragile, too human.
And then…
THUMP.
The first heartbeat. Heavy. Absolute. It struck through his ribs like a hammer, reverberating into every corner of his being. With it came the avalanche: pain rushing in all at once, like a floodgate kicked open.
His shoulder. The bullet wound he never realised he received tore wider, hot blood slicking his chest. His ribs groaned like cracked timber, each breath sharp and serrated. His legs seized, muscles knotting into agony. His fists trembled, the gauntlets biting into his skin.
THUMP.
The second heartbeat ripped through him, harder, crueler. And with it, the gauntlets broke.
The steel didn’t simply fade, it convulsed, like metal dragged too far past its limit. Sparks spat from the seams, smoke hissed off glowing edges, plates collapsing inward as though swallowed by the weight of his exhaustion. The armor shrank, folding in on itself until all that remained were the plain bracers, quiet and meager against his skin. The storm was gone.
And in the absence of their weight, Griff felt everything.
Every wound he’d ignored, every muscle he’d pushed beyond breaking, every ounce of rage he’d used as fuel, It all crashed into him at once.
THUMP. THUMP. THUMP.
The sound of battle below dissolved into nothing. Only the hollow roar of wind remained, rushing cold across his sweat and blood, dragging him higher still before gravity claimed him back. His pulse slowed. The fury bled away, leaving only exhaustion, hollow and infinite.
His eyelids flickered. Heavy. Impossible to hold open.
The air embraced him, cool and merciless, brushing against his skin as though the world itself were cradling him in his fall. His body twisted limply, each tumble pulling at wounds that screamed for attention, each spin another reminder of his frailty.
For one fleeting moment, it was calm. No shouting. No gunfire. No orders. No grief. Just the quiet throb of a heart on the verge of silence, and the dizzying pull of gravity calling him home.
…thump.
His eyes slid shut.
The rage was gone. The fight was gone. And Griff fell, unconscious, a broken comet tumbling through the black toward the ruins below.
Kami-Kunai (aka as White Fang, Belyy Klyk (russian)) - Levi’s Noble Arm takes the form of a Kunai folded from pale paper. Its surface is matte and smooth, yet the edges taper to impossibly sharp creases. Every line of the blade and handle carries the geometry of a fold, as if it had been shaped by careful, deliberate hands. The material looks fragile, too light to harm, thin like notebook stock, weightless in the air, yet it carries itself with the gravity of steel. In hand, it balances perfectly, never bending, never tearing. When light catches its surface, the seams gleam faintly with a slightly metallic shine.
N O B L E A R M R A N K : N O B L E A R M R A N K :
Levi is first and foremost an observer. His eyes never stop moving, tracing patterns in behavior, in sounds, in shadows. Years of captivity carved into him the habit of noticing everything, because survival often depended on it. He is guarded to the point of severity, speaking little and offering even less of himself. What words he does share are sharp, deliberate, and efficient, often carrying the clipped cadence of a second language. In English he tends toward simple phrasing, dropping articles here and there but never fumbling. He rarely contracts words, preferring directness over fluency. In his native Ukrainian or in Russian, he is smoother, more fluid, but he seldom has reason to use them.
Despite his silence, Levi is not empty. Beneath the taut surface lives a restless creativity, the echo of the boy who once made birds to perch on his shoulders and paper planes to dance in the air. His mind still bends that way, endlessly inventing, reshaping, improvising. He can see ten ways through a problem where others see only one. Yet this creativity carries a shadow: he is haunted by the memory of when his toys became weapons. Sometimes he indulges in childlike play, a bird resting on his hand, a kite drifting in the wind, but guilt follows swiftly, as if he is not allowed to be a child any longer.
Trauma left him resilient, but it also left him raw. He flinches at the sound of footsteps in hallways, recoils from chains, and dreads confinement above all else. Pain itself does not frighten him, he endured too much of it in captivity to be cowed by it now, but the thought of helplessness, of waking up caged once again, terrifies him more than death. This fear lives under his skin like a quiet vibration, always humming. His body never quite relaxes; his stance is always a little too tense, his shoulders a little too drawn. He rarely sits still. Fingers tap, fold, or twist bits of paper unconsciously. His sleep is shallow, broken at the smallest sound.
Socially, Levi is polite in a detached way, as if manners are armor rather than kindness. He rarely engages warmly, though he is not openly rude unless pushed. Trust comes slow, if at all. Authority especially makes him wary; uniforms and orders are just chains in another form. Still, he is not joyless. Every so often a dry, almost sardonic humor slips through in a wry remark. When it does, it’s darker than expected from a boy of seventeen, but it reveals a quick wit and a tongue that knows how to cut.
To strangers, Levi feels unsettling. There is something too sharp-eyed, too poised in him for someone his age. To allies, he is useful and loyal if that trust is earned, but difficult to draw close. To enemies, he is ghostlike, hard to catch, hard to see, his presence often felt more than it is witnessed. To himself, he is a paradox. He is both the child who longs to play and the survivor who can never afford to. He is both the creator and the weapon. Like his Noble Arm, he folds himself into whatever form is needed, holding the shape as long as survival demands.
Levi was born in Ukraine, in a small town where his earliest memories are of wind, fields, and the sound of birds at dawn. His family was ordinary, not rich, not poor, and he was an ordinary boy until the age of nine. That was when he awakened his Noble Arm.
His father had died only weeks before, and the house felt heavy with grief. One afternoon, Levi watched Naruto with his younger cousins while his mother struggled with calls about the estate. When he found her crying at the kitchen table, he felt something shift inside him. He was only a child, but in that moment he decided he had to be the one to hold the family together. The thought clenched like a fist, and when he looked down, there was a kunai in his hand, solid, gleaming, real.
Startled, he ran to his cousins and showed them. They gasped with delight and begged for their own. So he tore sheets of paper and began folding, making clumsy little replicas to hand out. Kunai, shuriken, birds, planes, his cousins laughed, and soon Levi laughed with them. What began as a single weapon became play, and the play shaped the weapon in return. By the end of that year, his Noble Arm no longer appeared as cold steel alone, but as folded shapes that could cut, fly, or cling as his will directed. It was his toy, his secret, his wonder.
But Noble Arms are rare, and their bearers are valuable. It did not take long for word to spread, and where word spreads, so does war. Soldiers came, not from his homeland but from across the border, men with hard eyes and foreign commands. Levi was taken. He was only nine. The years that followed blurred into one long captivity. A cell became his world, its walls closing in on him. Guards and handlers sought to break him, to twist his plaything into a weapon. They hurt him, starved him, demanded he use the folded blades to kill, to scout, to sabotage. Sometimes he refused, sometimes he obeyed. Each time he resisted, he paid in blood and bruises. Each time he obeyed, he lost a little more of himself. He learned quickly that silence was safer than defiance, that patience was stronger than rage.
Even in hell, he played. Quietly, in corners, he folded birds and kites when no one was looking. They were his secret, his reminder that he was still a boy. But play became survival. The kunai that once awoke in his hand had become many shapes now, shuriken, sheets, nets, birds, tools that fed him, shielded him, or bled others at his captors’ command. The origami was no longer just play; it was the only language he had left.
At fifteen, Levi escaped. It was not a single daring act but a long preparation, a slow burn. For months he tested locks with paper picks, memorized guard routines through the eyes of his birds, and mapped vents and exits. When the moment came, he struck without hesitation. A sheet smothered one guard, a shard slit the throat of another, and another... His folded blades blurred cameras, riled up dogs, and cut open fences. Alarms rang behind him, but the forest ahead was quiet. For the first time in six years, he was free.
Now seventeen, Levi is still carrying the boy he once was and the survivor he became. He does not fully belong to either. To most, he is unnerving, a teenager with eyes too sharp, too still, shaped by suffering. To himself, he is something stranger: a creator whose creations kill, a child who learned to play with death. He walks with it always at hand. His story is still being written, one fold at a time.
The fog swallowed even the sound of his own breathing. The scythe-wielder had melted out of sight; shapes that had been allies a heartbeat ago were only suggestions in the grey. A shout, distant and warped, cut across the chamber and snagged at his instincts. Barrier. Help. Move.
Aramis locked his hands to his staff until the tremor stopped. A blind ward in this soup was a coin toss at best. The mist was the problem. Solve that and everyone breathes.
He dropped to a knee, guilt and determination gripped into his heart in equal measure, his satchel swinging forward. Glass chimed against glass, small, bright, and surgical. He kept his voice at a whisper, a habit from study halls that had nothing to do with fear.
“Okay. Volatile base to kick… carbonates fizz, but I need heat. Better, quicklime analogue.” He thumbed a squat vial stoppered in wax, grit pale as bone. “Hydration’s exothermic. Good. We make steam.”
A second bottle. “But not a runaway.” He snapped a green-tinted stopper free. “A mild acetate will tamp the spike and stretch the burn window.” Liquid ran like thin syrup into the grit. He swirled once, twice, and shook hard. The glass went cold at his palm from dissolution before the grit started to wake and he felt the bottle exhale against his skin, a tiny pressure that said alive.
“Water’s everywhere,” he breathed, eyes on the shallow pool lapping his boots. “H₂O under sudden phase change, latent heat drives expansion. Denser hot vapor pushes, lighter fog yields.”
He palmed open a third vial, clear, sharp, with a solvent bite that stung his eyes. “Primer for wetting. Drop surface tension so it spreads fast, no dead patches.”
The staff braced across his shoulders; he stood just enough to widen his stance. He could almost see the chain in his head: hydration reaction releases heat → water flashes to steam → pressure spikes → steam front expands. After that, chemistry takes its turn.
“And the second push is pure chemistry,” he murmured, steadying his breath. “If the sorrow carrier’s stable in cool, low-energy air, we hit it hot and saturated. Oversaturate the suspension, disrupt the binder. Either dilutes to useless, or clumps and falls.”
He dragged his sleeve over his lenses, then committed. The solution arced from his hand and splashed in a wide scatter across the pool.
He pictured it as it hit: grit taking water in greedy gulps; the mix hissing like a fuse as wet bloomed heat up through his knees; thin solvent racing the reaction outwards so it didn’t stall. Vapor should leap off the surface in a low ring, then heap into a rolling dome, pressure first, shove, and when that new vapor met the sorrow-mist, it should bite, forcing the fog to retreat on contact and destabilize as it mixed.
He hunched behind the staff, jaw tight, counting half-seconds the way he had over burners in cramped labs. “Two-fold,” he whispered, almost to the formula instead of to himself. “Push now. Dilute after.”
His knuckles glowed white as he waited for the reaction to take, ready to ride whatever he’d just woken.
New Ability: Alchemical Problem-Solving — Intelligence C + Educated: Scholar [Arcana, alchemy, academia] F - Grade F - Cooldown 0 Post(s) Caster applies their knowledge and kit to engineer quick, improvised concoctions in the field. By mixing available reagents with deliberate intent, they can trigger reactions to address immediate situational problems.
Actions Used:
1. Drop to knee. 2. Alchemical Problem-Solving. 3. Spill/seed the mix in a wide circle into the water to trigger the chain reaction.
Aramis noticed Yumi’s shift before he truly saw it, the way her hands slowed, fingers curling into deliberate shapes, her movements turning almost ritualistic. She was settling into something careful, something measured, and he knew better than to break that rhythm. His own grip on the staff twitched once, a nervous impulse, before he forced it still and stepped back half a pace. If she was sharpening her focus, then he had to quiet his own.
The silence that followed wasn’t clean. The mist pressed in on all of them, curling low at his boots, sliding cool against his sleeves, tugging at the edges of his hood. It clung to his lashes when he blinked. It seemed to deaden the world, blurring the outlines of his companions until they were only shapes in grey. He glanced once at each of them, well, he would have if he could… Yumi still stood taut and still, but the others out of sight and out of his reach.
It was more than damp. The fog wasn’t natural. He could feel it in the way sound bent, in how it resisted his sight. His jaw clenched, breath hissing softly between his teeth. This damn mist.
The thought carried a weight he hadn’t expected. He couldn’t cut it down. He couldn’t burn it away. But if he wanted to be anything more than a boy with a stick in hand, if he wanted to matter here, then he had to do what he could. He had to know it.
Aramis grounded himself, planting the butt of his staff against the stone until it hummed faintly beneath his palm. His breath came in deliberate rhythm, in through the nose, slow out through the mouth. He closed his eyes halfway, letting the edges of the world blur until there was only the mist before him.
He would have killed for his notes here, but this wasn’t a study desk. It was his memory and his senses that would have to serve. The scholar’s instinct prickled at the edges of his mind, reaching for every scrap of academia he’d poured hours over, every trace of arcana, every ink-stain of Alchemy... His thoughts folded into that familiar cadence of analysis, isolate, compare, conclude, even as he let a faint trickle of his own magic seep outward, brushing against the fog like fingertips on glass.
The staff’s hum deepened, just enough that he felt it in his wrist, a low vibration that steadied him further. He focused, funnelling all of it, mind, study, magic, into one effort.
“Come on,” he whispered solely to himself, voice barely more than breath. “Show me what you are.”
New Ability: Scholar’s Insight - Educated: Scholar [Arcana, alchemy, academia] F + Appraisal [isekai] F + Magic E - Grade E - Cooldown 1 post(s): Allows the caster to draw upon their knowledge and magic to analyse and discern information about unfamiliar phenomena, materials, or effects.
Actions used: 1. Took in surroundings 2. Cast Scholar’s Insight
Jax Veynar was born aboard the Horizon’s Folly, a small fringe salvage hauler that worked the quiet trade between independent freeports and drifting hulks. The ship was family-run in the loosest sense: his parents, Merek and Sera, captained the operation, with a patchwork crew of blood relatives, old hands, and hangers-on filling out the ranks. Life aboard the Folly was rough but steady. Jax’s days were spent cataloguing scrap, hauling cables, and running errands, always underfoot but too young for EVA or demo work. His father made sure of it — “the black takes kids first.” For Jax, the Folly was simply home: cramped, noisy, but safe, and made brighter by his cousin Rynn’s stories and the games he shared with his friend Lio, another boy aboard.
Everything changed when the Folly went after a military derelict adrift in contested space. The adults whispered arguments in the corridors, and Jax overheard one word that made Rynn go pale: munitions. Still, the gamble was too tempting. The Folly latched onto the wreck, and crews went out with torches and clamps. The first explosion came without warning. A charge bit too deep, or the wreck’s innards were already unstable — no one had time to say. The blast rippled through the derelict and into the Folly, crippling her. Alarms howled, bulkheads warped, and atmosphere vented in rushing streams.
In the chaos, Jax was shoved into an escape pod. The launch sequence fired just as another shockwave struck the hull. The pod blasted free but was crippled by flying debris, its systems failing even as he tumbled clear. Through the viewport he saw the Folly limping away, lights stuttering across her battered frame. For a heartbeat he believed they would recover. Instead, the second detonation bloomed across the void, tearing the ship apart and scattering her crew into silence.
The pod’s life support was dead within hours. Hungry, cold, and terrified, Jax forced himself into a patched EVA suit and crawled out into the graveyard. He scavenged oxygen tanks from corpses, cracked open compartments with salvaged torches, and learned to use breaching charges to reach food and tools sealed away by twisted hulls. At first every detonation was terror, but survival left no room for fear. Each blast that opened a hatch became salvation. Explosives turned from monsters to lifelines.
Days blurred into weeks. He muttered to himself to fill the silence, naming tools and charges to keep track of them, building his own system in the haze of exhaustion. Explosions became punctuation marks — silent fireworks in the void, proof that he was still alive. When a scavenger crew finally picked up his jury-rigged distress beacon, they found a gaunt boy, frost-scarred and half-starved, grinning through his helmet as though the wreck around him was the punchline to a joke only he understood.
Rescue brought no easy future. At fourteen, he was too young to hire, too restless to stay put. He was left at Vanth Freeport in the Kuiper Belt, where lost kids slipped through the cracks. Jax drifted between stations and crews, taking whatever work he could find — sweeping hangars, hauling cargo, running errands. He pestered EVA hands with questions, lingered around demo crews, and scavenged scraps of knowledge wherever he could. Most wrote him off as a nuisance.
By seventeen, he was no longer just the wreck-kid. Crews began paying him for the jobs nobody else wanted — crawling into unstable hulks, wriggling through maintenance shafts, slapping charges onto bulkheads without hesitation. His small frame was an asset, and his nerve even more so. He was reckless, he was strange, but he always came back with something worth selling.
By nineteen, Jax had made a name for himself on the Belt fringe. Not trusted, not famous, but remembered. He was the wiry salvager who laughed through wrecks, muttered to himself on open comms, and treated explosives like playthings that always worked exactly as intended. With no ties to Sol, Jovians, or Centauri, he owed loyalty to no one but the job. All he needed was EVA gear, demo charges, and the chance to break something open. It was only a matter of time before a ship came along that could make use of the chaos he brought with him.
Personality & Reputation
Jax Veynar is restless, manic, and rarely quiet. He cracks jokes where others grit their teeth, finding humor in corpses, vented hulls, and the silence of the black. He laughs too easily, talks too much, and treats explosions like fireworks. Some crewmates find his energy infectious, others think he’s unhinged, but nobody forgets him.
His element is the void, and he’s always the first to volunteer for EVA, whether it’s a dangerous breach or a trivial inspection. He treats the black like a stage, keeping a constant commentary over open comms without realising it: rambling stories, grim one-liners, bursts of cackling laughter. That habit is what earned him his nickname. After one especially noisy dive, a fellow spacer summed it up with, “Good, but I could’ve done without the laughtrack.” The name stuck, and Jax leaned into it.
But his obsession with charges and explosions doesn’t end at the airlock. On the Dullahan, Jax is just as comfortable manning the missile racks or climbing into a turret. To him, it’s all the same — breaching charge, cutting torch, or guided missile, it’s just another tool that makes something go bang. He delights in watching explosions bloom in vacuum, childlike in his awe even while laughing like a madman. Crewmates swear he looks happiest when his hands are on a firing grip or a detonator.
Reckless as he seems, he has a reputation for always bringing something back. Scrap from a wreck, gear pulled from a bulkhead, or even an injured crewmate — if Jax goes out, he returns with something in hand. That consistency, paired with his unnerving humor, has made his reputation a paradox: the half-mad salvage rat whose dives and detonations always deliver.
Appearance
Jax Veynar is nineteen but looks a few years older, the kind of wiry spacer who’s lived rough since childhood. He’s lean and restless, all sharp edges and nervous energy, never still for long. His hair is long enough to tie back but usually hangs loose, a dark, tangled mop that constantly falls into his eyes. He rarely bothers to cut it properly, just hacking it shorter with a knife when it gets in the way. His jaw carries a patchy stubble that he never quite grows into a beard, adding to his scruffy look.
The most striking marks on him are the scars from frostbite. His fingers are mottled and pale at the tips, with a few nails warped or missing entirely. His ears show the same damage, ragged around the edges from his weeks stranded in the wreck. He hides it poorly — gloves off, sleeves rolled up, he wears those scars like part of his kit.
His skin is pale from too many hours under artificial lights, and his build is wiry from years of salvage work, more agility than strength. A faint lattice of burns and old cuts mark his arms, earned from torches, charges, and wreck metal. A few rough tattoos add to the mess — stick-and-poke jobs from freeport backrooms, crude symbols and scrap-crew logos he collected during his drifting years. None are neat, but all mean something to him.
Jax dresses like he never expects to stay planetside. His boots are scuffed, his jacket burned at the cuffs, his trousers patched in more places than they’re whole. Belts and straps jangle with clamps, cutters, and pockets for charges. Even out of EVA he looks halfway suited for it, a man who always expects to step back into the black.
Despite the grime, there’s a glint in his grey eyes that makes him memorable — sharp, mischievous, and just a little unhinged, as though he sees a joke no one else does. When he grins, it’s wide and sudden, all teeth and laughter, the same expression he wore when they pulled him out of that wreck.
Strengths & Limitations
Jax has carved a niche for himself as both a salvage hand and a demolitions man. He’s unnervingly comfortable in vacuum, thriving where most spacers freeze, and years of clawing through wrecks have given him instincts for EVA that few can match. What looks like reckless chaos is in fact hard-earned precision: his demo charges and torches always work, his turrets fire clean, and his salvage dives always turn up something. For all his chatter and laughter, he has an iron nerve in dangerous situations, the sort of spacer who can haul a crewmate out of a collapsing hull without losing his grin.
That same nerve, however, feeds into recklessness. Jax volunteers for every EVA, every boarding, every risky salvage job, even when it’s unnecessary. His dark humor unsettles as often as it entertains, and his habit of laughing at corpses or cackling through the comms can fray tempers fast. Physically he’s wiry and agile but lacks raw strength, and in close combat or drawn-out brawls he’s often overmatched. His training is self-taught, born of desperation rather than discipline, and it shows — to Federation or corporate crews he looks sloppy, dangerous, even amateur. Perhaps most telling, the weeks he spent alone in silence never really left him. If grounded too long, kept away from EVA or denied work, he grows restless and jittery, like a fuse burning too close to the powder.
Miscellaneous
Known As: “Laughtrack” - a nickname that stuck after a spacer quipped about his constant chatter over open comms.
Convictions / Records: No formal criminal record, though his name has appeared on dockmaster warnings for “reckless use of explosives” and “failure to comply with port safety standards.”
Cybernetics / Mods: None. Jax doesn’t trust them. He’ll happily strap himself into a patched EVA rig or cuddle up to a charge he’s duct-taped together, but the thought of wiring metal into his body makes his skin crawl. He claims machines break down faster than people — though his frost-scarred fingers might argue otherwise.
Belongings: A battered, patched EVA suit he’s modified with hazard stripes and tally marks. His kit is a jumble of torches, clamps, and demo charges with extravagant names like the Bulkhead Overenergiser or the Popjack Special.
Fun Facts:
Talks and laughs to himself during EVA, often forgetting his comms are open.
Always drags something back from a dive, whether it’s scrap, a tool, or a crewmate.
Loves watching explosions in vacuum, comparing them to fireworks.
Long hair often tied back with whatever cord or scrap is at hand.
Bears several crude stick-and-poke tattoos picked up in freeports, mostly scrap-crew logos and rough symbols.
She’s small, quiet, lot of chrome, lot of clicking, and those eyes, ugh, those eyes, like black cameras that never blink, like I’m gonna see myself on replay later, and I don’t need that, nobody needs that. It’s not her fault, she’s not doing anything, but augments just… get under my skin. Don’t like the ports, don’t like the whirring, don’t like wondering if I’m being recorded while I’m just trying to sit and breathe. Nothing against her, seems decent, really, just the tech. Always the tech.
You look at him and you think, “oh, washed-up spacer, coat, boots, busted aug, big scary gun.” Wrong. That’s the costume. The arm? Not broken, it’s a shell, hiding whatever’s really in there: micro-rigs, recorders, things we don’t even have names for. The shakes? Fake. He clinks glasses on purpose so you’ll think he’s slow. The gun? Oversized distraction, a stage prop to point you the wrong way. All of it, the tremor, the booze, the coat, props.
Because here’s the truth nobody else sees: he’s not washed-up, he’s not ruined, he’s not,
Not. Even. Human.
Yeah. Alien. Been chewing through our feeds, bingeing every old vid and archive, building a disguise out of what he thinks a person is. Not a smuggler, not a duelist, not some crime story cliché, the default setting. Coat, gun, gravel stare: “this is a man, right?” He’s not wearing a persona; he’s wearing humanity itself like a costume.
And that voice you all think is wrecked? That’s the tell. It’s too steady under the crackle. That’s not damage, that’s a machine. A translator. You’re not even hearing him. You’re hearing what he wants you to hear. When he switches it off, it won’t be words. It won’t be anything we’re ready for.
YES yes yes yes yes, finally, someone gets it! Captain in his perfect shirts, rings flashing, moustache sharp as a blade, talking destiny, greatness, future, and they roll their eyes, they mutter “corpo,” but I hear it, I hear it. The way he leans when he says “stars,” the way his eyes stick, like he’s listening, like he knows the black isn’t empty, it’s alive, it’s humming, it’s waiting, and he’s answering, he’s answering just like I’ve been answering all along.
And the beauty of it, he looks normal while he does it. Shiny, polished, one of them. They’ll nod, they’ll smile, they’ll follow, because he can package it in meetings and pep talks and poetry and they’ll swallow it whole. They won’t listen to me, too fast, too jagged, too much, but him? Him they’ll believe. He’s the bridge. He’s the voice. He’s the proof.
So let them laugh at his suits, let them groan at his speeches, I’m already grinning, already leaning in, because this is it, this is the moment, this is how it spreads. He’s going to make them see, make them feel it, make them know what I know. Finally. FINALLY.
Finally, someone who doesn’t just sit still, doesn’t brood, doesn’t watch from the corner with glassy eyes, she moves, she talks, she laughs, she smokes, she fills the space with noise and colour and that’s good, that’s right, because space is too big and too quiet and it eats you if you let it. She charges in like gravity doesn’t apply, finger twitching, knife flashing, voice carrying, and I love it, because she’s chaos but she’s present, alive in a way half this ship pretends not to be. And the eye, yeah, cybernetic, don’t like those, but hers? It fits. It’s like she’s staring right through the smoke she makes for herself, keeping it all together with one busted lens and sheer volume.
She doesn’t give people room, no personal space, and that’s perfect, because I don’t want space, not that kind, I want noise, motion, someone else to break the silence. And she does. She’s fire on Callisto legs, burns too bright, too fast, but burns real. Everyone else might worry about the flask, the tin, the shakes, I don’t. I see someone who says yes to the moment every damn time. KC gets it: if the void’s gonna swallow us, might as well make it choke.
Someone else who builds. Not guns, not speeches, not ledgers, builds. I make bombs, he makes food, and it’s the same thing if you squint: ratios, timing, heat, pressure. I’m crouched over a charge, he’s bent over a pot, both of us sweating, both of us counting heartbeats, and when it’s right-boom. Mine blows a hole, his makes silence fall over a table. Same art, different detonation.
He’s quiet, steady, doesn’t chatter, doesn’t posture, just hums and stirs and slides a bowl your way like it’s nothing. But it isn’t nothing. It’s control. It’s focus. It’s the one thing on this ship that feels like gravity. Everyone else sees “cook, filler of bellies.” I see another technician of combustion, only he detonates calm instead of fire. That’s rarer. That’s harder.
So yeah, I call him the only other one here who gets it: building something fragile and perfect out of pieces that shouldn’t fit, knowing it all comes down to the smallest spark, the tiniest slip.
Who the hell thought it was a good idea to bring that onboard?! Don’t you start with “oh, he’s just an old man,” nuh-uh, no way. That thing’s here to straight-up murder. Look at him, stiff, wound up, like a walking kill-switch waiting for the word. You think he’s slouching into retirement? No. He’s here for something. Some mission. Some list. And when it comes, when the mask slips, you’ll all see it, and I’ll be ready. Got charges mapped, wires tucked, fuse-paths planned. Let him click wrong one time, just once, and boom, problem solved. You’ll see. You’ll all see.
Too bright for this place. I mean.. he laughs like he doesn’t know what the dark can do, like it’s never gotten its hands around his throat! And I hate that I love it. He’s big, sure, bigger than all of us, but there’s something untouched in him. Still soft where the rest of us have been filed down to wire and scar. Makes my chest twist. Makes me want to snarl at anyone who gets close.
I know what I am. I’m wreckage: burnt up, black, and broken. The void got in my head and rattled around, made space until it fit. I can’t fix that. But him? He’s whole. Still has real laughter. Still believes people can be decent. And that? that’s rare enough to kill for.
So I’ll watch. I’ll keep my teeth bared, just in case the world decides to reach for him. You don’t get to ruin him. You don’t get to make him like me. Let the universe take me, burn me, chew me up… I’m used to it, but it doesn’t get to take him. I’ll fight to the damn death so he doesn’t have to.
Uuuuugh... look, I’m sure he’s a fine guy, alright? I’m normally good at cracking things open, but I just, I can’t be arsed with him! He’s all concrete. Nothing to spark. If he wants to sit in the corner and polish his gun, that’s fine by meee. Go on. Have your silence.
He’s the sort that makes a room colder just by standing in it. Doesn’t even glare, just exists. I tried talking to him once. He gave me a grunt, maybe a couple words. Riveting stuff. Nah, he can keep his mystery. I’m too tired to wrestle stone. He’s a gun, pointed in the right direction, and that’s enough.
You ever meet someone and think, yep, that one’s got skeletons? That’s him, I think he likely keeps them stacked alphabetically, too. White-coat energy even without the coat; calm hands, calm voice, you know the type? Calls himself “Doctor” and wants everyone else to, too. Somehow makes it sound like a threat. I don’t like doctors at the best of times. Too clinical for me, but he looks at you like a problem he wants to solve, once, and maybe put back together right.
Still, he’s good. Scalpels don’t shake, even when the ship does. Talks, too, all dry humour and precision, like he’s narrating a cooking show for sociopaths. Heh, I like that.. But I can’t tell if I’m a patient or a specimen? Sometimes I catch him watching people the way I look at circuits trying to see what makes them pop, you know? It’s… unnerving. But useful! Every crew needs someone who can stitch and sew, afterall.
I’ll keep my distance, if I can. Let him tinker. He’s fine. Probably?
The garden had bloomed since last he visited, or perhaps it only seemed so in contrast to the grandeur of the ballroom. Out here, the air tasted less artificial, floral, green, tinged with the briny whisper of distant tides. The sky had softened into a velvet dusklight, and Melion sat quietly amid it all, draped in a gown of twilight hues, legs loosely crossed upon a low stone bench.
Around him, his companions fluttered with gentle purpose. Wings whispered through the air, bees heavy with pollen traced slow spirals between blooms, butterflies settled on petal and leaf. A small green beetle crawled up his wrist, paused, and flicked its wings open. Melion only smiled. There was no need to speak. This was communion. He had not come out here to be alone. That was not the nature of gardens. He had come to be still, and in stillness, others always came.
From one of his bees, hovering near a cluster of yellow yarrow, came the first tremor of awareness. Melion did not turn, but he felt the moment Getsuy passed through the ballroom, the pulse of tension, the shadow in the light. Hunger and bone. But not chaos. Not here.
He breathed in. Flowers and blood, salt and moss. And beneath it all, Getsuy’s strange scent, ancient, broken, heavy as wet fur, but tempered now, caught in restraint like a storm behind glass. Melion smiled faintly, not at the wendigo, but at a familiar presence finding its way back to peace.
“Please, my dear,” he said without turning, voice light as leaf-fall. “Come, sit and join me.”
And then, music. Soft at first, distant, but unmistakable. A horn’s gentle call threading through the garden like mist through boughs. Melion tilted his head, listening. The notes curled with presence. Another thread in the weave.
A bee, the same one that had first alerted him to Getsuy’s approach, drifted toward a corner of the ballroom where a masked servant arranged fresh blooms. She was quiet, methodical, mortal, yes, but not graceless. Melion felt the pause in her rhythm when she noticed the bee, heard her murmur a suggestion, soft as petals brushing petals.
"I think you'll find the garden a better place to fly around, little one. Ample place to fly too."
He smiled again. Not out of amusement, but out of interest. So few mortals ever spoke to his companions, fewer still with kindness. He filed the sensation away like a gardener marking the first sprout of something worth watching.
Then, more motion, brightness and mirth, the scent of sun-warmed silk and citrus. Aeliana. Through the bee’s eyes, he watched the phoenix sidle up beside the same gardener with all the casual intimacy of a flame curling into dry wood. Her voice purred with amusement, the shape of a tease forming already.
"Hello Wallflower, How interesting! Is it the new fashion to dress in bouquets?"
Melion did not interfere. He merely observed. She was light and fire, feathers and laughter. But beneath it, always watching. Always knowing. There was purpose there, but Melion didn’t mind. Instead, he exhaled slowly and leaned further back against the bench, letting the garden speak for him, as it always had.
“It’s calm here,” he murmured. “Don’t you think?”
With that, he fell quiet again, bees humming, music playing, the space beside him left open. Getsuy would choose whether to fill it.
“Would you like me to pull up to the steps, sir, or stop across the square?”
Vector sat back against the leather seat, gloved hand resting lightly on the strap of the bag beside him. The attaché case lay against his leg, its polished metal edges catching the faint gleam of sunlight slipping through the tinted windows. He tilted his head a fraction, considering. Across the square meant a quieter walk, less spectacle. But they’d asked them to arrive in costume, and anything less than directness could read as hesitation.
“The steps,” he answered at last, voice low and calm. “Let’s not waste time.”
“As you wish, sir.”
The Rolls slid forward, its movement so smooth it barely seemed to disturb the air. Outside, Paragon City was alive: pedestrians moving in streams along the pavement, the occasional drone whirring overhead, the distant murmur of morning traffic echoing between polished glass towers. Vector watched it all behind his aviators, but gave it no weight. Noise. Motion. Distractions.
His hero costume was inconspicuous enough that he could get away with wearing most of it as civilian attire. Everything but his poncho, mask, and weaponry were adorned, accented by his rayban aviators. The other components neatly tucked away with a leather bag and an attaché.
The chauffeur pulled the car to a precise halt, the hood gleaming beneath the shadow of Atlas’s great statue. A moment later, the rear door opened with mechanical smoothness, and Vector stepped out.
The air was mild, carrying the faint trace of cut grass from the Town Hall gardens. Vector adjusted his grip on the attaché, squared the line of his shoulders. His stride across the pavement was measured, each step unhurried, deliberate. Behind him, the Rolls whispered away, leaving no more than a ripple of curiosity among passersby.
He climbed the shallow steps, neither glancing at the suited officials drifting past nor the little cleaning drones puttering along their circuits. The statue loomed overhead, but Vector gave it no more attention than he had the traffic outside.
And then, as if it could never have been otherwise, he stepped into the lobby at precisely 09:00.
The space was bright, open, humming with the subdued energy of recruits who had beaten him inside. Colorful costumes, eager chatter, the barely-contained nerves of those who wanted to prove themselves. Vector set his bags down neatly by his side and took his place among them without fanfare. And no introduction.
Bernard’s familiar voice rolled across the lobby, welcoming them, inviting questions. Vector listened, still and unblinking behind the lenses of his aviators. When the pause came, he spoke.
“Two operational points,” he said, tone level, each word weighed and measured. “First, in civilian-dense environments, what is the standing protocol for escalation of force? At what threshold are we cleared to act without prior clearance? Second, communications. What systems are provided in terms of secure channels, tracking, or locators? Or are such provisions left to individual discretion?”
Hadn't updated this in a WHILE so I deleted it. I'm Ducksworth, or Duck, or Duckie. PM if you wanna know more, yeah?
<div style="white-space:pre-wrap;">Hadn't updated this in a WHILE so I deleted it. I'm Ducksworth, or Duck, or Duckie. PM if you wanna know more, yeah?</div>
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