Day 255 - Yeah no

[polariity]

When: Day 255, midday
Who: The Helmsman and anyone who trips over his prone body
Open/Close: Open
Where: The middle of the Bastion, facedown
What: You know what's nice? Grass is nice.
Format: I'll match
Warning: Blood warning/minor self harm in Aoi and Disciple threads

Ever since he'd been brought to the hospital in the middle of the night by Aradia and the Disciple, the Helmsman has been quiet. His throat has been in no condition to really speak, which had been one thing, but besides that... Any attempts to speak with him have just earned a narrow eyed look and thinned lips, although he'd gone along with attempts to feed him and put him into some cleaner clothes.

Apparently, today's the day that changes because anyone going about their business in the Bastion is liable to notice the gray-skinned and horned alien laying facedown in the middle of the little settlement. The clothes he's wearing are far too big for his food-deprived skinny body but despite what it looks like, he is breathing and is alive.

Don't mind him, he's just gonna be here for a while. If you trip, well, that's your problem. Suck it up.

Comments

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

She'd watched him from afar, lips pursed, as she had come across him collapsed in the middle of the town. Space, she'd told herself. Space. As much as she wanted to wrap her arms around him, space was what he needed. She was still his hallucination to him. Still his mind coming up with unlikely scenarios of rescue. Rescue she could have provided before now. Rescue from eternal life.

This lasts ten minutes before she walks over and crouches beside him.

"22. You alright?"

[polariity]

Oh. Oh it's her again, or, well, not really her but what his mind has crafted from old memories and expectations and "I wonder"s that he had stored over so many centuries. From the familiar olive eyes and the roughness living solely in the wild would bring... It's a pretty good hallucination. He'd tip his hat off to his own broken mind, if he had a hat to tip.

And hands that could functionally work.

He shrinks a little bit when he hears her voice, even as much as he marvels at it a little bit. Usually his hallucinations of her are so much more judging, so much more upset and betrayed. It's nice to hear her all soft and concerned for him again, like it's 'before' and he's just suffering from another migraine that would normally have her sweeping her fingers across his face.

There's a muffled sort of noise but even with the grass in his mouth it wouldn't make sense.

[disciplewhomsignlessloves]

"Well. You made a noise so I'm counting that as alive, if not okay. I suppose neither of us are okay, you least of all."

She shifts on her heels, eyes running over the healing scabs, the lines that will scar. It's an odd position to talk to him in. Odder still to contemplate how he will heal. If he will heal. The mental part seems to be going just swimmingly.

"You don't have to talk to me. Or look at me or whatever is going on where you think I'm still fake. I thought a half dozen nights would convince you I'm not going anywhere but who knows how long your hallucinations lasted."

Her voice feels rough around the edges, hesitant in a way it never was 'before'.

[polariity]

And that tone hurts to hear. He hates it when his mind gets creative and finds new ways to hurt him. You'd think after so long, it would just give up... but nope. A shame, because every new trick still manages to hurt.

He nudges his head to the side, still staring with tired mismatched eyes and those goggles attached to his face. Hazy and thin, psi forms in the air to spell out words in Alternian. 1'm t1r3d 0f th12 2h1t d11

[freedom_engineer]

"You know, a bed would probably be more comfortable," Colin says, staring down at the prone body before him.

He's carrying a cup of juice, and he was making his way back to his workshop when this lump of Helmsman decided this was a good spot to rest.

[polariity]

Yeah, it's a great place to be, thank you very much. Colin's response just has red-blue energy crackling around his hands until the Helmsman can move his hands to give Colin the 12th Perigee's Eve gift of double middle fingers.

He knows what he's about, son.

After a bit of fidgeting, he finally moves his head so his chin is resting on the grass and can squint suspiciously at him. The energy shifts from his hands- which then flop down uselessly on the ground- to form words in Alternian in the air. Of course, since no one but trolls knows Alternian, it's a moot point.

Oh well.

[freedom_engineer]

Colin smirks at his reaction, and he responds with a casual scratch of his cheek with one middle finger. Then the hand holding his glass extends the other. Colin looks with dismay at his juice-holding hand, and crossing the two middle fingers, he seems to attempt to pull it down.

But nope, it's just going to spring right back up in regal display of its opinion.

"Sorry about that," he says, looking at him with an apologetic expression. "Seems to have a mind of its own. I can't do anything with it."

He has yet to lower either of the offending digits.

[polariity]

Oh thank the horrorterror gods, an asshole. The rest of his hallucinations have just been sad and affectionate. It's about TIME his mind started being a shithead to him. He perks up a little, not quite smiling but at least interested.

The same energy which had formed the Alternian words crackles around Colin's wrists, trying to turn his hands around so that the engineer is flipping himself off. It's not the strongest effort, so Colin can probably fight against it easy if he wants.

Alas, the bio-goggles attached to his face act as effective psionic blockers beyond a range of his own body. He can't pump out his usual strength. It's a tragedy, really, that he can't force other people to make rude gestures at themselves.

[amphibian]

[Guess who's too caught up in her jog to notice the asshole lying around on the ground? Yeah.

Aoi steps on him, yelps, and, her balance lost, tumbles to the ground.

+1 prone body hanging out in the grass!! She's kinda dazed; give her a minute.]

[polariity]

[Asshole and PROUD, thank you.]

[Also, rude as hell. While Aoi is still on the ground and confused, Psii is just going to smack her foot with psionics. It feels really like any regular smack, only not as... physical. Which might be weird for someone not used to them but oh well.]

[amphibian]

[Deciding not to dwell too much on the fact that whatever just smacked her foot is really bad at smacking things, she reflexively kicks back at it. Only then does she roll herself back over and start to pick herself up only to realize that oh, that's kind of a person lying around on the ground??]

Oh! Hey, are you all right?!

[polariity]

[That should probably hurt more than it does, but he stopped giving a shit about pain a while ago. At the question, he finally looks up and squints at her from behind a pair of pink goggles literally attached to him.]

[He shrugs. Doin' pretty good beyond all the way nothing is good.]

[daughterofursa]

Is it her, or has the Bastion been getting even stranger lately? She met one of these horned people before, and that was a weird enough conversation that she actually has to wonder if lying face-down in the grass is normal for them.

"That's not the best place to rest. You might get trampled." Unless... he did already. They do have a lot of large birds around.

[polariity]

No birds yet, just a very energetic sports girl. There's a kind of muffled sigh at the advice before he moves his head so his chin is on the ground and he can look up at Zuko. Flashing red-blue energy suddenly crackles into existence, forming a pair of small stick figures in the air. One is laying on the ground, the other is running... Whups, tripped.

Hopefully she gets that. He's already figured that Alternian isn't going to work for anyone but two other people in the Bastion.

[daughterofursa]

Zuko actually starts back a step at that, sorry if she's not the most comfortable with sudden crackly energy. She relaxes halfway when it forms into a picture, though she still clearly doesn't understand how that's happening.

"That... could probably happen, too." Your image has no past-tense markers.

[polariity]

Yeah, that's the problem with pictionary... No tenses. Either way, he shrugs and then paps at the ground. Zuko. Zuko. C'mere. It's important.

[doctor_dragoon]

... Huh. Well, that's not something you see every day.

So Yukio was heading for the Distillery, but the sight of a random person collapsed in the middle of the Bastion stops him pretty quickly. Such a sight would normally mean that said person requires medical attention, and being the resident "doctor", that's exactly what Yuki's going to assume is happening.

Sorry, Helmsman, hope you don't mind a human crouching down in your space to get a look at you. He's got one of those Pokemon things that seem so popular around here with him, a little otter-like creature that Yukio picks up and smoothly deposits onto his own head before he kneels beside his potential patient.

Yes, he looks incredibly silly with a Pokemon on his head, but it's better than letting Oshawott poke a possibly injured person. Because Oshawott will totally poke a possibly injured person. He's kind of a jerk like that sometimes.

"Excuse me, sir? Can you hear me?"

[polariity]

Man, you people are just all about ruining his very intimate time with the grass today.

There's no verbal answer. However, hopefully Yukio won't be too alarmed as flashing red-blue energy darts up along from his head down to one of his emaciated arms. Settling down there as a glow, it seems to move his arm and fingers to give a thumbs up to the concerned doctor. Not the... pretties thumbs up, mind you. Along with being alarmingly thin, is hands are also covered in a multitude of scars. There are still tiny scabby pinpricks, scabbed over with a dirty yellow kind of color.

[doctor_dragoon]

Yukio's not too alarmed, but that... that is not normal. He frowns as he watches the energy travel and the thumbs up form, not at all convinced by the gesture. The Bastion isn't the most well supplied place when it comes to certain things, but there's definitely no food shortage at the moment, nor is there a lack of basic medical care.

This guy needs both of those things. Stubborn potential patient, meet stubborn doctor.

"You're incredibly thin and you look to be in need of a medical exam. Neither of those things can be remedied while you're lying in the grass."

[blackblooded]

Crona crouches down by the troll's head, and pokes him in one horn with a smallish stick. The meister is vaguely curious, but not overly concerned.

"Did you die?"

[polariity]

Um, skinny teenager, excuse him, you are not helping. Red-blue energy smacks at the stick- not particularly hard but certainly enough to get across the message of quit that. The Helmsman doesn't move beyond that mental exertion.

...That's more because he's just being stubborn at this point, of course.

[blackblooded]

Crona pokes at another horn. Maybe that will produce different colors.

[emissaries]

The Emissary, meanwhile, was in a bit of a tizzy. See, she'd just dropped in at the hospital only to find a certain somebody not there. Had he escaped? Could he escape on his own? Maybe the Disciple had taken him somewhere. She really hoped the Disciple had taken him somewhere. If he'd gone and tossed himself off the edge or something, she would kick his ass six ways from Sunday. Heck, she might anyway. (She probably wouldn't.)

Finally, though, she spotted a flash of bright yellow lying in the grass, and the troll wearing it. The sigh of relief she let out was long enough to turn into exasperation by the end, and she picked up her skirts and walked briskly to his side... but rather than crouching, she just stood by him with a scowl on her face and her hands on her hips. (Possibly important addendum: there are enough ruffles under that skirt that he ain't getting a glimpse of nothin'.)

"There you are," she huffed. "You'd better have got a damned good reason to be out of bed, mister."

[polariity]

Aawwww shit, it's the police.

The Helmsman shows his complete interest in her situation by absolutely not moving at all from his facedown position. However, he does respond to her in one way. Psionics crackle to life in the air, forming words.

1m491n4ry 9r422 12 4m4z1n9

[emissaries]

Considering that those were the first words she'd seen out of him since the ship, that actually did a lot to mollify her. She sighed and sat down beside him, settling her skirts about her.

"That is actually a damned good reason, and I will accept it," she said. "This is the first you've properly gotten outside in a long time, huh?"