acatalepsy_logs | ( the sickness: phase two )

( the sickness: phase two )

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the sickness ends.

the temple.

The Temple, shortly after Astoria's burst of energy, is in a constant state of growth. Trees are bursting into existence from seeds in mere seconds, flowers are growing wherever magic lands . . . and the Temple is abruptly a-buzz with energy, magic crackling throughout the air. You may find a tree in your house, or flowers suddenly growing along the walls, or plants wiggling their way through the stone walls of the buildings of the Temple. All of a sudden, the place looks very overgrown.

The Forest of the Fey seems to be responding in kind, too. Sprites are exceptionally active, darting out of the Forest and into the Temple with increasingly regularity, playing basic little tricks on the members of the Circle they can find. Flower crowns are made at an alarming rate, and there might be a few fruit-food fights that break out with the sudden abundance of peaches and apples that appear on the grounds. Learn how to duck!

With the magic comes the sudden fluctuation of energy: canon powers flicker on and off, as do the powers granted by Astoria. You feel more like yourself, you suddenly have access to energies you did not have previously in the Temple However, it's a double-edged sword -- it is not constant, and it may be more trouble than its worth.

And, remember: the Sickness is not fading immediately. If you make it to Stage 3, then you're stuck with sensory deprivation for at least another week or two. Sorry, friends.

lake dona.

Lake Dona is a massive body of water, stretching outward for so far that it almost seems like an ocean until you see that the water is fresh. It is surrounded by long, leafy trees that dip into the water and has a variety of ancient ruins scattered around it -- weathered stones set into circles at seemingly even intervals, old buildings that seem to mirror the Temple in construct.

In addition to the ruins, there are a network of caverns tucked along the water’s edge, just underneath the surface on the western side of Lake Dona, that appear to go underground into murky darkness. The actual entrance to these caverns seem to be underwater, seemingly guarded by merfolk, but poking around may seem to be more trouble than its worth.

There is plenty of wildlife to be found within the lake itself, ranging from freshwater mermaids who would rather you stay the hell out of their backyard to a rather large and suspiciously friendly plesiosaurus-like creature (some would say that she prefers to be called Nessie) that seems intent on checking out who you are. The lake teems with odd-looking fish, most of which seem to be okay to eat, and plenty of plant life! But who knows what lurks in the depths below . . . that giant sea-monster looking thing has to be eating something.
PROMPT IDEAS: Here are some prompt ideas for this new area! However, don't feel limited to such ideas! Feel free to fish, to explore, to swim, to poke around . . . it's always possible Astoria may check in on your character, too, once she is feeling better! ;)

1.) The Great Pumpkin The overgrowth of plants have caused a massive growth spurt in a lot of the trees, including the fruit trees that sprinkle themselves throughout the Temple. However, the fruit themselves seems to be growing at a rather . . . alarming rate, resulting in a few pumpkin-looking squash growing to the size of small boulders in the fields. Hope you have a lot of spare time on your hands to make a hell of a lot of Temple-pie, because these squash aren't going anywhere anytime soon.

2.) Food Fight!: Those damn sprites are at it again, and are collecting fruit off the ground and throwing it at people. Fight back, organize, and conquer! Or not. It's probably better to just not.

3.) Part Of Your World: The mermaids within Lake Dona are a suspicious lot, and they don't take kindly to strangers stomping through their territory. However, they are receptive to music, so if you are so musically inclined, they will definitely be more inclined to be a little more playful than territorial. If you aren't? Have fun getting tossed into the lake head-first by a bunch of pissed off mermaids who want you to get the hell of their lawn. They don't take kindly to your type around here.

4.) Nessie: Within Lake Dona is a massive plesiosaurus-type creature which seems to be . . . oddly friendly? It seems to pop up at the most inconvenient of times. Are you sitting on the edge of the lake enjoying the water? Enjoy a massive ass dinosaur sticking its impressively long neck out of the lake to check you out and also scare the bejesus out of you. That being said, Nessie is an extraordinarily friendly being, and will even give you laps around the lake if you ask nicely!

5.) Caverns: The caverns within the lake are dark, deep, and menacing The merfolk inform you that you cannot go there -- no one can, but the merfolk sure seem to be keeping a careful eye out on it. Testing the boundaries indicates a weird magical field around the entrance of the cave, that works like a bit of a forcefield. Weird, right?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Maybe Hank has forgotten that Connor is designed to read body language quite closely, each small change registering as a way to help him approach any given situation. Everything about Hank’s variation of tone, the growing tension in his body, the way he isn’t supplying a direct answer — it all points to a blatant lie. Connor doesn’t even need his scans to reach this conclusion, which is fine, because all they seem to be doing at the moment is flickering on and off at the most inconvenient times.]

...Are you lying because you’re embarrassed, Hank? This is why I suggested we wait until we returned to your room. I understand that it might not be easy to talk about for someone like yourself.

Fuck you.

[It's not a casual fuck you but it's not an angry one, either, not the kind of fuck you that would keep Hank from holding the door to his room open and waving Connor inside with a tight, sarcastic grin. It's not like Hank could stop this conversation happening anyway, even if he was that angry.]

And I understand that everything you told me was fucking stupid, so I guess we're even, or something.

After a second he'll leave the door open for Connor to deal with, to come in and close or not, and walk over to drop his ass down onto the mattress. It's a weird mattress, older than old fashioned, so it doesn't really give that satisfying bounce when you throw yourself onto it, but he tries anyway, looking around and grimacing and then reaching down into the couple inches between the bedframe and the wall. The way he's leaning makes his pants leg ride up far enough to show his ankle and the big, ugly marks all over it from the mermaid's loving attention earlier. His expression tightens, looking at it, because of course he hadn't known that should be hurting at all. He can't help but pick out the little details: Finger shaped bruises, like you'd expect. Sucker marks, which, well, sure. Also kind makes sense. Little dried blood trails where her claws probably were, yeah, that make sense too. Nothing surprising there, except in the way he hadn't known any of it was there at all, and he takes a sharp breath, looking away to see if the hand he's got digging behind the bed is hitting anything yet.]

Well, come on, do you want to get your little experiment over or what?

[He follows in, because of course he does. The strength behind that ‘fuck you’ is not nearly enough to stop Connor — very few are.

Considerate enough to close the door behind them, he doesn’t go for a seat. He only steps forward, and after Hank sinks into the mattress in a very unsatisfying way, he glances down at he exposed skin around his ankle. Views the bruising, the strangely-shaped marks, the lines of dried blood and swollen skin indicative of a fresh, minor injury. Connor frowns. Might have to find a way to tend to it later, to stave off infection; who knows what a mermaid might carry?

But for now, his eyes sweep back up to Hank’s face. Sees the discomfort there as clear as day, no matter how much the other tries to shield it with sarcasm and indignity.]

Yes.

[Close enough to reach out his hand, Connor does so. What a strange gesture, almost registering as what two androids would do; the readiness of contact for the sake of interfacing, except Hank is definitely not an android, just a man who doesn’t believe what might happen is going to happen at all.]

[Hank reaches up, straightening up, abandoning his search behind the bed to wrap his hand around Connor's arm. He's not grabbing tight enough, so behind his hand there's nothing. Connor's not even there; Hank might not be, either. Hank has the lingering sense that something was, once, and while his head knows that's just the memories of the hallucinations, when he at least thought he could feel what wasn't there, he hasn't been able to shake the feeling that with every second he's moving further away from something.

That's the backdrop of Hank's brain, being in the middle of some vague, cloudy void, some solid anchor, something good, moving further and further away. In the midground of Hank's brain is a feeling like feeling your nails scrape down a chalkboard, all the stupid little details like - like kids with magic powers, like the stupid weird animals that flutter around this place, like having to use the word dimension on a daily fucking basis, like being expected to be a big damn hero in this impossible, impossible- there's the feeling of nails on on a chalkboard and of the noise rising loud, unbearable, building to some kind of crescendo, one that'll never fucking come, it'll just go on and on and on.

And in the foreground there's a faint sense of disappointment, of an anchor in his hand that he can't feel, numbness eating away at his skin and moving outward, dissolving everything else away with it. And once the world he sees, the false, senseless, stupid one dissolves away, the one that can't exist, there's another one behind it. There's a sense of that vast, echoing emptiness he'd felt in that lake, lost in empty nothing, and the dream he'd thought of there, the sense that behind this world he can't believe or feel there's just another dream, the one where he's hanging in the air and whatever was holding him up is crushed and bleeding, screaming with a pain he's almost deaf to but won't be, soon, isn't, as the ground closes in and he crumbles against it, all the pieces of him coming apart and rotting into blood and bone smeared against the pavement.

And of course, alongside all that, there's a low, bass note of need, some little shelter he can hunker under, if he reaches for it.

So he does. He leans away from Connor's arm, knowing his limp, numb fingers will just slide away the moment he stops looking at them, and leans over to peer behind the bed, instead.]

Ha. There you are, you little fucker.

[Carefully, with both hands, he pulls out a bottle, a cork stuck in it, a fork with twisted tines stuck in the cork. He doesn't look at Connor, just sets the bottle on the mattress between his knees and starts twisting the fork around, waiting for the cork to pop out.]

[He’s ready for it this time, he thinks. Steels his focus against whatever might come up to meet it, knowing what he felt once before, expecting it again. It’ll be easier to endure the buffeting of human emotion when he faces it head on. It can crash into him but he won’t stumble, won’t crumple into himself this time. He’s sure of it.

Hank touches his arm, and at first there’s nothing, just a white noise in the background that feels like a dearth, a void, a strange hole where there used to be something but now there isn’t. It isn’t so jarring for an android, who doesn’t feel the way a human does, pleasure and pain not registering in the same manner, only the acknowledgment of pressure and potential injury and empirical data gleaned from the surface of touch. But it is that lack that is disturbing; knowing that something should be there, and Connor doesn’t know what to do with it. Drifting away from an anchor. Afloat in a sea without any destination.

And then, like weeds shooting up all around him, thick and difficult to navigate, are the throes of disbelief. Of a reality shaken by worlds and abilities and expectation to do good when you can barely hold onto yourself, all of it creating noise that can’t be filtered through. A blast of static, of too many radio channels fighting for dominance, coupled with the inability to compartmentalize and partition it all away into a nice, faraway part of the mind. Always there. Always present, always turbulent, always like a little creature walking in circles in the same spot, over and over and over—

Until a veil is pierced by something that feels like pain and movement that churns in slow motion, a crushing feeling of being shattered at all sides, taken apart, bleeding, broken, screams of pain, something prying into your insides and hollowing you out until you were nothing but an empty house about to collapse, lacking support, lacking foundation, just rotted wood and everything around you is just singing for release, to whittle yourself down into oblivion because there’s comfort in it, there’s a mode of escape from… from…

From what?

Connor doesn’t know what that is, but it feels like his Thirium pump being crushed by an invisible hand, rattling around in a cage of bones that he doesn’t have. Jarring him back into reality, too much to handle, he can’t process that, it makes something prick at the corner of his eyes, and he has to disengage or else he feels like he might fall apart.

He jerks his hand away, as if bitten by fire. Eyes wide, LED a vicious red. Looks at Hank as he tries to force a cork off of a bottle that he didn’t even see him unearth, registering only the movement of it and nothing more, reeling, absolutely reeling. Processes try to format themselves back into place, but the shapes are too different again to even resemble what they once were.

He says nothing. Can say nothing.]

[The cork does pop out and he looks up to Connor, mouth open to say something dry and derisive about that hypothesis Connor's so sure of. Then he sees Connor. He sees Connor's LED. Then he closes his mouth.]

Hey, uh. It wasn't that bad, was it? I mean I- I guess I must of done something if you're looking like this, but-

[He leans forward, turning his head to try and catch Connor's gaze.]

Are you okay?

Edited 2018-09-24 21:43 (UTC)

[Connor doesn't see Hank, doesn't hear Hank, is still left in the wake of emotion that he had torn himself away from, a phantom that continues to linger over his shoulder. He looks at Hank but doesn't perceive him.

(In that shadowed place, where errors live in a glass cage, growing larger and more bulbous until they begin to crack their panes, at its center and standing in front of a lattice of roses, he thinks he can see Amanda. Knows that it isn't really her, the connection is severed, but she's there, standing in white. Pruning her roses, a careful cut and a snap to tame leaves that have gone astray. Sever the ones that have deviated from the set path.

She doesn't look at him. Her voice is all steady professionalism and freezing patronization. Met with disappointment again and again.

Careful, Connor, she says, a mother's voice, laced with the careful coil of a snake. You're starting to lose perspective. Or maybe gaining too much. How will you be able to obey when you return home? You'll be a lost cause at this rate.)

And Connor, all he can do is shake his head, and murmur in a quiet tone, standing where he is, gaze cast downwards-]

I'm trying... I'm trying—

Edited 2018-09-24 23:08 (UTC)

Hey, hey.

[Hank sets the bottle aside, standing up, glancing down briefly at the noise of something - his shoe - hitting the glass and moving the bottle over to the wall before he comes closer. He reaches out but, you know what? Touching, probably not the best idea. Even if there wasn't a chance of Hank accidentally slapping Connor with his numb, dumb hands touching him would be the worst idea.

Hank's hands stop cold in the air, draw back, curl up into awkward shapes. Finally he reaches out near Connor's face, far enough that unless Connor really whips his head around nothing's going to touch, and hopes that'll steer Connor's gaze his way somehow. The carelessness is gone from his voice, forgotten with the moonshine, and it's been replaced with a gentle, careful worry that fills his gestures, too, that guides the slow, alert way he moves and holds himself.]

What are you trying, Connor? Talk to me. I just need to know I didn't bluescreen you, okay?

[Hard to know if it’s the instinctually registered alarm of potential touch that brings him back to reality, or Hank’s voice, interposed with actual concern.]

Amanda, I— [Eyes flick over to him, his not-touch, eyes roaming and seeming to recognize him standing there. He blinks, expression stilled with something jarring, but slowly the sharpness of reality comes back into focus. No. Not Amanda, but—] Hank.

[His LED downgrades to yellow.]

Sorry, I don’t think… I didn’t know. I wasn’t—

[Ready for that. Could never be ready for that, not like how he is now. Months old, experiences narrow, the human experience still an alien, terrifying thing.]

...Is that how you always feel?

[Hank's gaze is sharp and definitely notes the name there, the implication of something like a hallucination, talking to people who aren't here. But the question distracts him; his eyes move away, moving around, gaze landing on nothing in particular. He lowers his hand, slowly, carefully, his mouth twisted up.]

Look, I don't know what you even got out of-

[He stops. Turns his head away. Sighs. Connor's - whatever he went through just now, whatever he's going through, it's on Hank and Hank owes him at least something like honesty, so his voice comes out the defensiveness is totally gone, and he just sounds quiet.]

I uh. You get used to it, I guess.

[Then he looks up at Connor, a little life creeping back into his manner.]

Hey, you wanna sit down? [He gestures toward the bed and pauses, grimacing a little, realizing they'd probably have to sit close enough to touch if Connor did that.] I'll take the floor, not like I'll get sore or anything. You just get your breath back, see if you can manage another complete sentence.

[Does he want to sit down? He doesn't know what he wants, other than to reverse what had just been done, to shove emotions out, pieces of them still dancing across the backstage of his mind.

You get used to it. How long do you live with something, how close of a companion must it be, to get used to that? Connor shakes his head, a hand coming up to rub at his face, a corner of an eye, and fingers flexing into a loose fist, then unfurled again.

So he doesn't know what he wants to do, but he moves to sit down anyway, because being guided and given instruction is easier than being overburdened with Hank's careening, dysphoric emotion.]

It was like... the time on the rooftop. With the deviant.

[But worse, in its own way. That death was jarring, terrifying, but over quickly. This is something sharp that lingers and sticks in his chest, glass that he can't pull out without cutting his own fingers.]

You said that before.

[Hank stares, thinking about it, watching him sit.]

Must of really done a number on you, didn't I.

I'm... I'm sorry, I just...

[He sighs, gives his head a little shake, then moves over just close enough to grab the bottle, moving back again to slide down against the wall about three or four feet away from Connor.]

How about you keep talking, okay? Not necessarily about that, just... Anything. What you did today, the witch's weird announcement this morning, whatever. It's not like I can test you for a concussion or anything but I'm not really happy with those complete sentences yet, give me a few I can make sense of and maybe we'll figure out whether I broke you with my bullshit feelings cooties.

[God. That's really what it is, isn't it? This is what Hank does now. That seems like a good thought to chug a little moonshine on so he does, grimacing and making a little kind of pained, mostly disgusted noise as it burns its way down.]

Edited 2018-09-25 01:54 (UTC)

[Had he said it before? He can’t remember in this state. Maybe he did — what did it matter? Hank didn’t remember. A long list of things the man didn’t recall.]

It was a mistake, I shouldn’t have asked you to do it.

[But they’d verified something, if nothing else. Definitely Hank’s power, even if Connor had to let something like that snake through his insides first.]

And I’m not broken. [Still said with an automatic immediacy, no matter the context.] You need to stop saying that about me, Lieutenant.

[Hank's frowning down at his lap, unhappy, kind of surprised to hear his whole, you know, self, being talked about like it's some big horrible thing, like it's some terrible fate to even touch it for a second, but knowing he can't really argue. But when Connor goes on Hank's mind switches tracks from that; he looks up, his frown more confused now, and focused.]

Do I say that?

[His tone could be confrontational, there. Probably would, any other day. Right now it's not.]

I don't really think about it. Didn't know it bothered you.

[But if he had known, he would absolutely have said it more. In the light of day - or the light of whatever this great new experience right now is - it's clear how shitty and petty and small that is, and he takes a quick drink to wash the taste out, then finds himself going on, sounding tired.]

I shouldn't say shit like that. You're just- You're just a machine. You're just doing what you're designed to do. You shouldn't pay any attention to some stupid old asshole taking digs at that.

It doesn't bother me. It's simply incorrect.

[For the first time since sitting, Connor glances up at Hank. Judges his expression, trying to wrangle calculations into lining up properly in his head again.

You're just a machine. You're just doing what you're designed to do.]

...You're right, though, Lieutenant. These brushes with emotion have all been grounded in someone else's experiences. Not my own.

[Hank's expression is one with three different emotions sharing space in it; he's unhappy, he's guilty, he's maybe a little bit bitter. Most of that doesn't make it into his voice; only hints of that last one, easier to hear if it's being looked for.]

Yeah. You can go right back to your normal processing whatever, if you're feeling better. There're no errors in your software. Just me. And now that we've got the problem figured out, you don't have to worry about that.

[Hank tilts his head back, staring at the ceiling and trying to catalogue all the things he should be feeling. Temperature, probably - of the floor, the air. All the cuts and bruises. The bottle in his hands. Probably other shit. The longer this goes on, maybe the more there'll be that he starts forgetting. He swallows. His voice is careful, still; kind, if you overlook those hints of whatever else might be floating around there in it.]

You're okay, Connor. You're gonna be just fine.

[Connor resists the sudden urge to scrub a hand across his face — learned gesture, very human, useless, having no real place in this moment.

He latches on to Hank’s word’s, wanting to believe them and experiencing something strangely, frustratingly dissatisfying upon hearing them. An unease that runs deep along the grooves of something that’s been carved into him, after all this time.]

...it will take a moment to fully recover. But thank you, Lieutenant.

[For saying he’ll be fine. Let him pivot around that notion for as long as it’ll hold his weight. Slough off uncertainty.

Silence. Then he offers, maybe uselessly—]

Your... sense of touch will return, in time. It’s already happening to those experiencing similar problems here.

[It's not useless. That might show in Hank's brief, wide eyed look, the hope on his face before he leans his head back against the wall and swallows, and swallows again. ]

God, I hope so.

[He looks down at the bottle, making sure his hands are in the right places to hold it, and takes another drink. It washes the raw vulnerability out of his voice.]

Take all the moments you want, Connor. Just leave the door open a little when you go, okay? Sumo'll probably want to come in in a while.

[He notes the relief, despite everything. Slowly the world is coming back into focus, one detail at a time. Hank's expression, the room around them, the glisten of the bottle -- wishes he could scan whatever was within. But they don't want to kick up into activity now.

The weight of his clothes, his hair. Right, still damp.]

It will, I'm certain. The sickness is fading away, and with it, all of its side-effects.

[Silence again, then-]

Your power, you're going to have to learn how to control it.

[Hank ducks his head, leaning forward, curling up over a giggle. He could cut the sound off, try to sound a little more stable, and with anyone else he would - but who's in this room who'd care? Connor's seen it all already, all Hank's icky little emotions, and as long as they're still inside Hank and not gunking up Connor's precise, perfect circuits, Connor won't care. So he lets a couple more rounds of giggling roll out before he breathes and swallows and sits back.]

It's like being the shittiest X-Man ever.

[He wants some sort of gesture, some little fidget to keep his hands busy, but of course right now there's no point. So he looks down at the bottle, watching himself roll its bottom edge in a circle along the floor and listening to the noise it makes.]

What do you want me to do, Connor? I'm not gonna experiment on people. I mean- [He gestures toward Connor, eyebrows raised, pointedly.] Even if human experimentation wasn't massively, incredibly illegal, I'm not gonna... inflict me on someone just so I can figure out how it works. I just... I'll just stop touching anyone.

[He clears his throat over the wobble that snuck into those last couple words, pulling a wry face at the floor.]

It'll be like Rogue, only without any of the uh, actually cool parts.

[Just the part with no real contact with anyone for as long as this weird extra-dimensional funtime hero bullshit lasts, until he goes home. If he goes home. That's... that's physically possible. He'll probably get used to it.

What a wonderful thought. He needs the noise of the bottle against the floor right now, so he doesn't take a drink out of it.]

[The references will fly over Connor’s head, though he can glean from context clues that Hank is alluding to something akin to superheroes. It’s not far off the mark.]

You can’t do that to yourself.

[Already, the bottle is a reminder of Hank’s questionable coping mechanisms — why add one more, the literal inability to connect with anyone made manifest physically, to the list? Without thinking, Connor leans forward, elbows on his knees, knitting his fingers tightly together. His LED, at least, has returned to a stuttering blue.]

It’ll just take practice, and someone willing to help. Someone who knows what to expect, someone who isn’t— who isn’t an android.

[Unable to help, because of what he is. Because of what he would feel and the way it would take him apart. He realizes this, this useless feeling, and immediately almost regrets saying it.]

Actually, no… I can still try to help you, in what ways I can. Until then, maybe invest in gloves, Hank.

[Ironically, like Rogue.]

[His expression tightens and he shakes his head, looking away from Connor.]

What 'ways', Connor? Cause we're sure as hell not doing this again. And even if there was someone breaking down my door begging to... [He sighs.] I wouldn't get my shit all over them either. It's not right.

So. Thanks for letting me know that this this uh, a thing, but. Sometimes there's just nothing you can do. I'll make sure I don't, you know- [He reaches a hand out toward Connor for a second, wiggling his fingers.] And, unless you've got some mysterious 'ways' up your sleeve you're not telling me about, that's all we can do. That's all I can do. So there's nothing to worry about.

No.

[His eyes harden, his look is direct, lips pressed into a thin line.

The 180 degree turn is whiplash-inducing, but natural for Connor, who beyond everything else, only wishes to provide a use for his friend.]

I can handle it. I can do it again. It wouldn’t be permanent, only until you had a handle of your abilities. You have to practice, or else this will just be a detriment to you in the end. I don’t believe Astoria meant for any of our powers to be disadvantageous to us.

What-

[Oh. There it is, Connor was right. Maybe he does make comments about Connor being fucked up a lot. So he swallows back the 'is wrong with you' that wants to come out. He's still got plenty of ways to give the same general message. Like with his tone, and with his absolutely, utterly baffled look.]

-the hell?

Okay, let me think, uh- here it is, 'It was a mistake. I shouldn't have asked you to do it.' [He stretches the quote out, saying it really slowly, for emphasis.] Were you still freaking out too hard when you said that, didn't register in your memory banks? Cause that was you. Just now. What happened to 'you should find someone who's not an android'? How the hell did that turn into, 'oh, I can handle another terrible, traumatizing experience that I'm going to regret immediately'?

[Connor swallows — another learned gesture, and he notes he needs to tamp those down, they reveal too many tells — and forces something more steady into his tone. This android has found his hill, and now he’s going to die on it; well, he would, if he were even alive to begin with.]

I cannot make rational judgement calls in the wake of experiencing your ability. It’s like what happens to deviants, I suspect; their minds are overcome by irrational thinking due to what they believe are emotions. You should discard everything I said in the minutes after I severed the contact.

[He is stubborn, and worse, he is stubborn in a very reasoning kind of way.]

I’m fine now. [A jaw is set, and he sits straighter, forces his expression to be placid, ignores the fact that he appears like a right mess.] The recovery period isn’t even that long.

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