do that to me one more time (open/catch-all)

[nishizono]

Who: tetora nishizono and various, ideally
When: post-fallout of the VR
Where: all over
What: a clone with a problem with virtual reality faces problems with virtual reality.
Warnings: language at the very least

Comments

for warandpeace

[nishizono]

[ There's a palpable moment of utter panic when Miller reaches over to pat his head - he hadn't been counting on him actually doing it. The action comes and goes and nothing terrible happens, however; he remains intact, Miller doesn't get an aneurysm, nothing jumps from his body to the older man's. He looses a single, shaky breath, counting it as— well it's not a win. It's a dampening of his given skillset. But no one is dying that isn't supposed to be, so it's something. ]

I'm not hungry anyway. [ Tetora ends up staring at the dinosaur, as balefully as one pleases. ] That's not a dog.

Re: for warandpeace

[warandpeace]

I know. It's a dinosaur. There are eggs in the tunnels if you want one.

I didn't know it was a dinosaur, either. Someone had to tell me.

Yes, it is confusing and I am very sorry about it. [When he was with Venom Snake earlier, he saw his ghosts, felt the scents in his memories. As the Savrii cut into him, Kaz made the attempt to talk him through it. But he knows that solution is temporary. For all of them, including this boy.]

I'm planning to get the hell out of here.

You willing to help? [He uses his new crutch to hobble over to the dinosaur, and seeing that it doesn't intend to leave the window, just closes the curtains around it.]

[nishizono]

You're telling me, [ he starts, completely distrustful of the thing by the window, ] that you found eggs and instead of, I don't know, smashing them to pieces for food you hatched one instead.

[ And here he was almost convinced that Miller was a rational person. No. His madness manifests in wanting to take care of every deadly creature he comes across, it turns out. (It explains some things, in Tetora's mind, about why he's allowed to stick around. It's assuring.)

Tetora takes the long way around the room to sit on the bed - before recalling the accusations he leveled Venom Snake's way and hisses, moving to the bedside table instead. Apologies to whatever baubles are left on it; he's knocking them all to the floor with his ass. ]

You're crazy. Who are we killing? Or blowing up?

[warandpeace]

More like a "what".

I'm helping gather the materials for devices. One to open the force-field. One for a low-distance EMP. And he- [he nods towards the animal staring outside] -is being trained to drop the bomb and return. [He doesn't want to hurt it.]

For now the Savrii are supplying us with food. Claiming that they're generous. But we can't count on this lasting so we might as well keep them alive for as long as possible. And if they keep feeding us, then we can train them. They're intelligent enough to hang onto things, about the same as a dog.

[He blinks at the sudden movement though. Was there a tack on the sheets?] Are you alright?

[nishizono]

[ Oh no. Bombs. Tetora gives what is probably the biggest, most wide-eyed grin he's ever shown during his stay here. ]

Fuck me, yes. [ He's been waiting for something this for longer than he'd want to admit. ] So you want to play the long game for the next few weeks? Who else is on board? Building a bomb under surveillance is easy enough if you have enough people causing distractions, but you can't make it too big of a show or they'll figure it out sooner than later. You care about people getting hurt too, right? You have to test your bombs at least once. EMPs shouldn't be too hard with all the tech they leave lying around, but you have to figure out who else on your side is vulnerable to it too, or you could lose your manpower from having some idiot standing too close to the blast point.

[ This is his element. Well, mostly. It's not a maximum-casualty situation, but he'll take it. ]

I'd suggest using some of the more useless guys around to test things out but they could die and you'd feel guilty about it, I bet.

And I'm fine. Just... the bed. [ Ew. ] You probably had sex on it.

[warandpeace]

[What?]

What?

[Somehow that is the funniest thing he's heard since being brought here.] Yeah. We had marathon sex about thirty minutes ago. Since you sat there it's too late. You'll be wanting men in a carnal fashion in no time.

[Then, with actual seriousness.] Believe me, we've not been in the mood.

They removed most of the useful technology, but- [He is reluctant to do so, but he pulls up the trouser leg on his left side, showing where his prosthetic ends. The generator that was embedded in it is missing, leaving a curved metal cap over his stump, cutting short his leg at the top of his calf.] -I gave this to a woman who might be able to construct a device strong enough to make at least a small hole in the forcefield. I plan on bringing her other supplies, too. Her name is Mei Ling-Zhou.

You could probably pool resources. Make as much as possible. They really cleaned out the place.

for alterplex

[nishizono]

[ There's a small part of him that's apprehensive in meeting up with Snake - now Venom Snake, no longer Mister Stranger Danger, and the change in name in Tetora's mental directory doesn't go unnoticed - for reasons that have everything to do with their recent interactions happening over a made-up digital space. It's been a while. It's not anything he's missed, or is keen to get back to.

The whole thing leaves a bitter, oily taste in his mouth that he can't swallow around.

He doesn't tell anyone else this: he dry-heaved for the better part of a half-hour, when the realization came around to kick him square on the guts. It's complacency mixing in with that most dangerous thing in existence: affection.

Disgusting. All of it. ]

i'm here [ he shoots off as he perches at the ledge of the hotel building, peering from the rooftop down to the sheer drop below. He's even swinging his legs.

He remembers looking down from a taller height than this. Remembers a simpler, emptier time. (His first recorded kill was a girl not much older than he was meant to look. She crumpled like a sack of potatoes - noisy, annoying, wasteful. Old man Isono was right there waiting to debrief him.) ]

[alterplex]

[ Without anything to do, Venom's mind drifts: he spends a good portion of his time sequestered in odd parts of the prison compound they've found themselves in (because let's be real, that's what this is), away from the frenetic hum of other people's dreams and emotions. They're too much to categorize in the already-fragmented tapestry of his mind, and he has too much space between the cracks of his psyche if he isn't careful.

The roof is a good place to meet. Quiet. There's something comforting about how precarious it is to be up here, overlooking the abandoned husk of someone else's ambitions.

It almost feels like home.

Venom heralds his appearance with a clang of metal on metal, letting the momentum of a door swinging shut announce him where his silent footsteps don't. The wiry, compact outline that comprises the whole of Tetora Nishizono is a familiar twinge of empathy in his gut; there's something about the kid that digs right into the parts of Venom that are ostensibly still human. Is it his loneliness? The fact that he has so little to lose? His lack of apology mixed with his fast-burning contempt?

Whatever it is, it pulls Venom together. As much of a mess as he is (the hallucinations have been constant, unforgiving), Venom approaches Tetora with all the conviction of a man who's determined to feed a particularly stubborn stray cat.

Sorry about it. ]

Careful. [ This isn't Titanic, let's not reenact the 'flying' scene. ]

[nishizono]

[ Cats, above all else, domesticated themselves. With stray cats, and with feral ones - whatever affections they've laid bare to their human companions are shown by choice. The parallels are verge on the painfully cliche, to be sure, but they're fitting enough. Tetora cracks his jaw, grinds left and right and back again before tipping himself back on the rooftop floor to look at Snake upside down.

The older man looks no different than he did in the dream. Cleaner, maybe, and a little more weary-looking around the eye if Tetora had to judge by the wrinkles, but generally the same. Still with that dumb horn.
Still with that eyepatch, and that backstory Tetora's itching to find out about. Tetora squints against the light, at the halo ringing Snake's head from where he's laid out, and with a loosely-formed finger-gun takes aim. Fires.

Bang. ]

I just shot you. [ He wants to, sometimes. Just take a gun out and aim at every nice person he's come across, because if this is what normal life is like, it's really fucking disorienting. It's so easy to let paranoia set in when people like smiling back. ] What happened to the bondage gear?

[alterplex]

[ Bullseye. Even when Tetora's playing, he aims right between the brows. ]

Confiscated.

[ Says the dead man with an imaginary bullet in his skull. Here's Venom, playing a modified version of rock-paper-scissors with someone decades his junior: Tetora offers 'gun', and Venom offers 'paper' to pull Tetora up by the wrist if he'll let him. ]

Took my music, too. [ The bigger tragedy. ] Anything missing on your end?

[nishizono]

[ He hesitates just long enough for the proffered hand to hang in the air awkwardly, what with the surprise from Miller's earlier skin-to-skin contact still buzzing noisily under his skin. Touching is a big no-no, especially after the integration; it wasn't a problem before when he was as imperfect as the rest of them, but the better he got, the more fine-tuned his skills became. Touch-based hijacking became a reflex instead of just a parlour trick.

Tetora flicks his sleeve up to cover most of his palm - there's no real discreet way to do it, fuck it - and grips on Snake's own clothed wrist too. All the while he's thinking, at least I didn't merge with Miwa.

They didn't bridge that gap; couldn't, not really, not when he recoiled from her and she wanted nothing to do with him if she could help it. (Being able to tell people to kill themselves with just one's voice, even through recordings, is the kind of useful he doesn't trust himself with.) ]

Just my stabilizers, nothing to worry about. [ The slightly pinched frown he's making is more expressive than he'd like, but he's been too on edge since waking up that he's starting not to care. ] I won't die, I'll just be a pliant vegetable.

[ It's bound to come up sooner than later. Might as well bring it up now. ]

They're giving all our shit back, right? They have to, what with the whole benevolent bullshit and all.

[alterplex]

[ Right— the aversion to tactility. Venom has a good few seconds to reflect on Tetora's circumstances before he's pulling the kid up by his covered forearm, feet braced on cracked concrete for the one-sided seesaw.

Memory lineup: let's play the recall game. It heartens Venom to know that he can still remember a conversation he'd had with Tetora in text before, that he can pull up Tetora's genuine concern when he'd posed the idea of possession. All things considered (his strained relationship with the past and present comes to mind), the ability to conjure relevant information at the relevant time is a small victory.

He opens his mouth to comment on the absolutely relevant concern of becoming a pliant vegetable, but Tetora's moving right along.

He sighs. ]

...Not sure. This isn't exactly what you'd call benevolent. [ Literally no part of being sequestered like a plague infestation is benevolent, but that speaks for itself. He lets go, takes a step back to give the both of them some thinking room. ] Might want to devise a way to get your stabilizers back.

for bloodbathing

[nishizono]

[ It's a lot of fucking wire. Motherfucker.

Tetora has his sleeves pushed up his arms, as far as they'd go, darkened bruises littering his forearms. His face is pretty banged up, too, with a cut lip and a blooming bruise high on his cheek. He doesn't look good, is the thing - and Maine's hulking figure makes him reel back just a bit, in spite of himself.

Guy's bigger than the one who fuckin' suplexed him earlier. ]

What the fuck, you're huge. [ He's the equivalent of a displeased cat currently. ] What happened to you?

lost this

[bloodbathing]

[ Well. That's one way to greet someone.

[ Maine tilts his head and raises an eyebrow at the beat-up wire seeker. The fuck kind of question is that? Nothing happened to him except puberty. ]

for alterplex (2)

[nishizono]

[ blood. iron. copper. gunpowder. the taste of red on the mouth, slick, sticking, wet. starburst wounds to the head, starburst wounds everywhere. sparks fly as metal hits metal. tetora's pulse is loud in his ears, a raging drum beat, a growling thrum, a feral rumble.

he's in his element.

he's in a haze, choking on air, swallowing around his own tongue as sentry after sentry after sentry falls to the ground, crumpled up, dead. he has his gun back. his wakizashi. his stabilizers -- he hasn't taken them yet, but the comforting weight of the pillbox in his jacket's inner pocket grounds him.

just a little more, he tells himself as he cuts a swathe across the cramped hallway, taking hit after hit but still making it through. just a little more death, get the most out of this. the blade comes down on another. he reloads, reloads, empties a magazine— his hands aren't shaking anymore. there's no death rattle in his breathing, no sharp ringing in his ears. he's losing track of time, getting lost in the running, but he knows—

he knows he's in the middle of an abandoned platform leading underground. there's dirt everywhere. there's blood all over him; he can feel it getting tacky on his scalp, behind his ears, under his nails. there's soot in his nose, he's sure; his sleeve's been singed beyond recognition and he can't remember how that happened. are those train tracks in front of him? he can't tell. there's a bright square of light coming down from above him, slatting the stairs in stark black and white.

something rattles. what...? ah, he's dropped his pillbox. which number is he on? four? five? he has to get to zero. he starts over, counts again.

(this is a bad idea, says a little voice in his head. this isn't how you do this.)

he thinks his ears are ringing again. no, no, that's not ringing -- barking? is he hallucinating? those are definitely footsteps he hears; heavy, from the sound of it. where's his sword? he can't find it. he just put it down by his side, where did it go—

why did he put the wakizashi so far away? ]

[alterplex]

[ The sewers connecting into the train tunnels smell like death. Motor oil and gasoline, fried wires and burning plastic— actual shit, too, if we're going to be crass here. It's a cocktail of nose-numbing garbage, made more pungent by the underground mood lighting that turns everything a sickly shade of pale blood-orange.

The air seems caustic. Touch it, and it feels like burning; between Venom's teeth, it tastes like battery acid.

He happens upon Tetora as he banks a smooth curve that connects to an abandoned station in R5, and it's less that he actually happens upon the kid and more that his dog fucking bolts towards him, maws open and throat vibrating with half-formed barks. Venom sees the red before he puts a name to the outline, and he has to stop the music pouring in through his one-eared headphones before he can make an assessment, before he can open his mouth.

("And you really don't remember, was it something that he said? / All the voices in your head, calling—") ]

—Tetora.

[ Somewhere along the line, Tetora probably tripped the wire that took the situation from "bad" to "huge clusterfuck", but the whats-wheres-and-whys can come later. Venom's scuffed boots cut across cracked concrete and his landing is indelicate, a crash-fall of his bulk next to Tetora's prone figure. ]

Hey. Stay with me.

[ It's a slasher film's dream: Venom's not sure where to fucking start. His gloved palm skims over an angry wound on the kid's forearm, flies up to where he peels back bits of shirt from scabbing into semi-healed cuts. ]

me neither

[nishizono]

[ ah.

ah, he vocalizes again. he knows who this is. the man and the dog both are familiar to him - snakes, something about snakes. two Ds. d-dog. tetora reaches for the dog's maw and a velvet-soft tongue wraps around three fingers in one go, as do teeth - it's not a very gentle bite, but it's a solid, reassuring sensation.

he's distantly aware that he shouldn't be doing that while bloody - it's getting a little hard to distinguish what's happening and what isn't. ]

Don't touch the dog, why are you touching the dog, Tetora, it could bite you... [ his other hand swings out, hits something. leather? it feels like a shoe. tetora slaps it again just to be sure; there's a loud, comical squelch when he does it. ] Never mind that, where's the pillbox... Did you see my pillbox...

Who gives a shit about the pillbox, get the fuck up.

[ he's rambling. the cadence of his voice and speech is slipping, splitting between two or three distinct patterns - a slow descent to triggered dissociation. it's just apt that gravity shifts from under him again. somehow he's gotten both of his hands back - two hands that he can see, both bloodied and cut up from gun-slide cuts and holding a sword handle too tightly.

that's good. having hands is good.

is he seeing through a haze, or has blood gotten in his eyes? the latter would be unfortunate, wouldn't it? does it matter. it doesn't matter. is he on his back? there's a face looking down on him, talking to him, calling him by a name. a pronounced black horn juts out from the man's forehead—

snake.

poisoned snake.

no. venom?

he's thinking about whales. large blue whales, flying high above the sea, with clouds forming great technicolor waves under them. tetora reaches for the face, touches it, traces the shape of it with freshly healed fingertips. most of his nails are still split apart. ]

Hey, it's you.

[alterplex]

[ He's seen this before— where has he seen this before? He remembers a benign voice (his own voice?), shoulders hunched and looking into blown-wide pupils. "What did you eat? Amanita muscaria? We've had heavy rainfall recently, yes, you could've mistaken it for edible mushrooms— no, stay with me, I'll talk you through it."

Or maybe it's something else, something else that sits right at the periphery of Venom's knowledge. The chatter of teeth that comes with excessive bloodloss, the disappointment in a dying man's eyes as he tries to talk over a thick tongue. Medbay gurneys and empty IVs.

It doesn't matter. It's not important. What's important is this, the feel of cracked nails over the fissures of his face. Tetora's pain, his discomfort, his incoherence. His 'hey'. ]

Sight for sore eyes, huh.

[ Calmly and quietly, with nothing to indicate the sorry state the kid's in. His concern seethes right below the surface, where his jaw clenches just enough to indicate his anxiety. ]

Stay still. Breathe.

[ He slings Tetora along his torso, rests his forehead where neck meets shoulder. Open wide, and Tetora could rip Venom's jugular right out from under tan skin with his teeth. ] Tell me what you need.

[ Tetora heals fast, he knows that. What did he just say about losing something? A pillbox? ]

[nishizono]

[ he whines like a child against snake's neck, curling towards him - shoulders get drawn in, face gets buried against his shirt collar, nausea rising high in his belly. his heartbeat is a screaming line - or is it him, screaming? sounds pan left and right, shifting from stereo to mono, ear to ear.

good thing he's immobile. good thing gravity exists. his throat is dry but his mouth feels too soft, and he feels like he's falling endlessly.

he's vocalizing. he's not forming the words correctly, the sounds coming out of him in the wrong order, in the wrong language, patched-together english, cantonese, filipino, and japanese warbling out in random construction. tetora doesn't understand what he's trying to say; he can't hear what he's trying to say.

he has enough awareness left to him to recognize that his arms have come up, wrapped themselves around a solid body, and there are pieces of metal digging into the soft, newly-formed skin exposed by ruined clothing. are those his fingers clawing at snake's back? they don't feel like they're his. this body doesn't feel like it belongs to him. maybe it's the other way around; maybe he doesn't belong in this body. but where are the others?

they're gone now. remember? ]

I'm not alone.

[ he's the loneliest boy in the world. miwa stands in the periphery of his vision, just out of reach - the shape of her in soft focus against the light. ]

I killed you. You can't leave me now.

[ she takes a step forward. there's a pitying look in her eyes. (you're overdosed, you dumb boy. get it out.) in snake's arms, tetora clings to him even harder. his heart rate keeps hiking up.

his body temp's starting to drop. ]

[alterplex]

[ Tetora whines like a child, because he is a child. Speaking in complex and compound noises of discomfort, denoting ideas using four different languages because sometimes even three isn't enough. All of this, even the nonsense, is communication.

He's so small— was he always this small? Even when they were on that roof, playing at violence and picking each other apart, Tetora hadn't seemed so minuscule. When Tetora sat up on concrete and glared daggers at Venom's casual use of brutality, he'd seemed twice, three times his size; but maybe the mind sees what it wants to see, justifies the maturity in an adolescent's frame to rationalize all the things about it that makes the mind uncomfortable.

Tetora should never have been built to withstand this. Not the pain, not his anger, not the breadth of his despair.

Raw fingers dance around the back of Venom's shirt, scrabbles at his spine as if he's fine-tuning an instrument. There's no button on the back or a switch that could turn Venom on and off (if only it were that simple), but spurred by his charge's desperation, Venom curls inwards. Feels the chill on Tetora's skin and tries to warm it by virtue of the furnace that keeps his muscles moving.

His bionic drums a steady one-two of an even pulse along Tetora's knee. First aid 101: 'keep the target safe and comfortable.' ]

It's alright. I've got you.

for shashka

[nishizono]

[ waiting. tetora's used to waiting. he's bruised and banged up and this is probably not that good of an idea so soon after a spar with ahab, who suplexed him twice, but to hell with that. he's angry. for ahab, at ahab, at every person who's going to tell him that ahab's just second tier compared to some stranger.

he's not even sure why he's so mad about it. he just knows he is.

and that's why he's on the rooftop, waiting for another guy to fight, fists and teeth ready to go. ]

[shashka]

[ here was the thing. Ocelot could admit there were some things that Venom was better than John at. understanding basic social interaction, for one. but when it came to fighting...

no one compared to him. it wasn't an insult to Venom, it was just a fact. and so, of course, he has to defend his friend's reputation, even if it is against a kid.

when he shows up, he takes confident strides, lightly shrugging. ]

Do you even know why you're doing this, kid?

[ seriously... ]

[nishizono]

Because you're an asshole.

[ he's not recovered from his fight with venom snake at all; he's still blue-green in places, yellow in most, but considering it's only been a day, he's doing better than expected. it's not his best form or showing, but physical limits have never deterred him from taking on a fight.

like now, for example. tetora's not in the business of interrogating his feelings too much, seeing no point in the navel-gazing required for the activity. he's always externalizing, even for things that he probably shouldn't - but why fix something that isn't broken? he hasn't had any problems with the way he's lived thus far. he's not going to change it now.

which is why he's not waiting for an answering retort and lunging in, knife slipping out from a sleeve and sliding easily into his grip. he swipes low first, not expecting for it to connect, but testing the man's reach if he goes on offensive. ]

[shashka]

[ Ocelot gives a light chuckle at that. ]

Now, I didn't say anything that wasn't true.

[ and that was the thing. people looked at Venom and saw what they wanted to see. but then again, if anyone had asked him what he'd wanted, he wouldn't have been in that situation in the first place.

when Tetora takes a swipe at him, he can't help but be slightly amused. a knife. what is it with kids and always pulling out knives? why not something a little more creative? he supposes that he could go in for the kill immediately, but that would take all the fun out of this, now wouldn't it? besides, he's interested to see what this kid can do.

so instead, he adapts a more defensive stance, carefully circling him. ]

[nishizono]

[ knives are portable, and easy to hide. it's the best weapon for someone who's roughly five feet and ten inches and weighs a hundred and seventy pounds on the average. and the best thing about knives? you can never have too many. ]

Good we're on the same page—!

[ he matches ocelot step for step, never keeping the distance between them longer than his maximum reach. it puts him well within ocelot's range, certainly, but it's better than the trade-off of being on the defensive and still being nicked because of the difference in length between their arms. if he gets close enough, he could make it unwieldy for the man to swing at him - right?

tetora's fighting style is a frankenstein of a thing - patched together from what he's been taught and what he's learned on his own from constantly being on the run. his hold on the knife and the way he swings it has the bearings of formal training - an inherited trait. but order of his swings, and the way he flicks the knife from one hand to another, is entirely unorthodox. it's clear that he fights by instincts, and his instincts are solid.

he'd be dead by now if they weren't.

still, it doesn't mean that it's a perfect stance; he fights well for his size, but that's the thing. tetora aims for the soft parts of ocelot's body from the perspective of a smaller fighter - quick jabs, sharp feints, flick-of-a-finger style hits. he's sure they're both aware of who's in a disadvantage in this fight. not that tetora cares. it's the principle of thing.

he takes a risk and aims high though, aiming for ocelot's collarbone with the tip of the knife on the upswing. ]