Donatello "the air bud of war crimes" Hamato (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
othellovonryan) wrote2023-02-13 04:09 pm
othellovonryan) wrote2023-02-13 04:09 pm
(no subject)
Noise.
It starts as just irritation. A metaphorical crawling under your skin. Things are too noisy, too bright, there is too much happening all the time and you can't take it all in-
It sounds so inviting, a freedom from the noise, but its wrong, its wrong, its wrong and the noise is getting louder, mechanical and foreboding as it sees you, it knows you are there, and it wants to make you apart of it.
For a moment, there is quiet.
You breathe.
And fall through water.
It starts as just irritation. A metaphorical crawling under your skin. Things are too noisy, too bright, there is too much happening all the time and you can't take it all in-
Then silence it, make it yours, make it you, take control and destroy what will not submit
It sounds so inviting, a freedom from the noise, but its wrong, its wrong, its wrong and the noise is getting louder, mechanical and foreboding as it sees you, it knows you are there, and it wants to make you apart of it.
Anatawa hitorijanai
For a moment, there is quiet.
You breathe.
And fall through water.
Re: The Lab
What chain?
[Leo gestures at Donnie. See what he's dealing with?] Make a doorway and put some selfishness in it. We're in Donnie's head, so emotions, memories, information are totally up for grabs for crafting doorways. He responds pretty readily to understanding, you know.
Re: The Lab
[she sighs. then goes over to Circuits!Donnie and picks him up, spinning him around and pulling him taut to the chain, quite possibly.]
I'm getting extremely tired of talking and not getting anywhere. Show me where the bad decisions get made so I can go make some bad decisions of my own, all right?
Re: The Lab
[Touch isn't so bad.]
[There is no sensory issues when you're in his soul.]
I don't make bad decisions! If I did, I'd tell you, but I don't.
Part of the room is confidence and trust. Make a door, you can get supplies here. Oh, I'd also grab some herbicide.
Re: The Lab
Yeah, you do, because guess what, Donnie - we all make mistakes. But you know how to fix them when you do, anyway, don't you?
Show me the place where things get fixed. Not the place where the plans get made. The place where I can find the part of you that'll help me make it work. If you can't get me there, tell me where it is, and I'll figure it out. I'm smart. You can count on me to manage that.
Herbicide, huh?
[well, she'll look for something that passes for it, then - not that she's ever used such a thing before. and while she's at it - hm.]
Hey, Donnie. Do you know one of the first lessons I learned, growing up?
Re: The Lab
[Sorry, Leo is going to laugh. He's got a more realistic view.]
And this IS where things get fixed. This is where I make the machines and inventions. Sure, Protectiveness specializes in security plans, a little better at judging how people will react, but I'm still the one who makes things and fixes them. Its what I bring to people.
But if you're trying to get somewhere, I already gave you the means to get there. You've had them since the very start, that's the whole point of meeting people halfway. You're supposed to do your part to, but I'm sure you'll figure it out. Some people struggle and that's fine.
Herbicide. [He gestures to where there's some experiments with flora. Plenty of nasty chemicals for herbicide and some plans to refer to.]
What is it? [He moves closer to the table, rubbing at his neck.]
Re: The Lab
[she grins.]
Something I learned from a woman who ate a god.
[she grabs a table, like she was contemplating doing already, and affixes a knob to it via Crafting Table, as she props it up against the nearest wall.]
[ta-da. it's a "door".]
"A wall's just a door that doesn't know it's a door yet."
[Gods, I'm going to look so fucking stupid if this doesn't work, Catherine says to herself immediately after.]
[and then she runs at the wall, that has the "door" she just made attached to it, and prays.]
Re: The Lab
[She goes through the door!!!]
[And]
[Appears right back in this room.]
[That door is glowing blue anyway.]
...I think you misunderstood the mechanics.
Feeling clever is how you got here, Cat.
Re: The Lab
Suppose I deserved that, [she says, as she shuts the door, with a wry grimace.]
[well, if feeling clever isn't her at her most selfish, what -]
[ah. (she thinks of Akua. "Bleeding yourself again, darling? There'll be no more of that. I won't allow it.")]
[selfishness isn't cleverness, for her. not really. selfishness is deciding the weight of fixing it's all on her and she can't let anyone else take the weight of the blow. which, yeah, maybe that's Sacrifice, for Donnie - but Sacrifice is a throne of corpses, for her. not the slow carving-up of her life for her life's work that is her deepest, most selfish act, always and forever.]
Right, then, [she sighs, and straightens.] Let's try that again. [and this time, she cuts into her hand, drawing blood, and draws the sigil of Sve Noc - her goddesses - on the door.]
Then let's try another lesson I learned. Cho Sve Noc - "the mighty take."
Re: The Lab
[A good time face. More Highly Traumatized Face at that last bit.]
[There was, for a moment, a flickering of grey.]
[Before it settles on a very distinct pink color.]
Re: The Lab
I skipped ahead a few steps, didn't I? This is what I get for trying to game the pivot.
Fine. [she gives Leo a grin.] Do what you can to keep him safe, will you? Won't be the last time I had to fix things the hard way, you know.
[and then she's squaring her shoulders - mind the limp - and going through the door anyway.]
Re: The Lab
[Except then she's going and he reaches out, but]
[Well]
[Whoops]
[There is one last thing]
[Feelings are good]
[But the picture has to be Clear to complete the journey]
[What is the outcome of Sacrifice]
Re: The Lab
[but saving Donnie - yeah, she's not leaving without it. and so a memory rises in answer, half-called, half-unbidden.]
[“I thought it could be fixed,” I said. “I thought a lot of things could be fixed, back in those days.”
“Some still can be.”
I leaned back into my seat, sipping at the last of my drink.
“I can’t answer unless you ask, Pickler,” I said.
She shook with something that might have been laughter, had there been amusement in it.
“I don’t have anything to offer you, Catherine,” she said. “I am not a High Lady or the Council of Matrons. The gold I have you have paid me, and my allies are your allies. I couldn’t threaten to leave if refused even if I wanted to – where I would I go? The Army of Callow is my home.”
“It doesn’t always have to be hard coin and favours, Pickler,” I quietly told her. “We can talk.”
“Talk doesn’t move the needle with you,” Pickler said, and before I could reply raised her hand. “It’s not scorn I speak. You are a queen, Catherine. You cannot act like other women.”
“And yet,” I said, “I’d like to hear you out anyway.”
She drank of her cup, squared her shoulders.
“They’re plagues,” Pickler of the High Ride tribe said. “Both of them. The Matrons just want a hidden kingdom in the mountains with Foramen as a trade city and no imperial leash. The shit they’ll get up to in the Eyries, Catherine, would make a devil shiver.”
“The way I hear it, it’s already no handful of roses,” I said.
“You don’t get let in on the real secrets unless you’re a Matron,” Pickler said, “but I… know things. The Tribes hold back on projects out of fear the Empire will notice and intervene. Wipe them out, even. Even now there’s a lot of Matrons who think munitions should never have been revealed. And the Council is made up of monsters, but my mother’s worse.”
“She likes knives and backs,” I conceded.
“She’s a Matron,” Pickler shrugged, as if that settled it. “But she thinks differently, Catherine. She wants to be the queen of our kind or ensure one of her daughters will be. It’s why she wants Foramen: it’s the lifeline of the Tribes. The ways my people are rich, ore and goods, they’re not worth anything if they can’t be sold to someone. So long as she has Foramen, she has them in the palm of her hand. And to get her way she wouldn’t mind starving half our people to death from behind the walls of her city.”
“I deal with terrible people all the time,” I admitted. “I even backed Helike to prominence in the Free Cities because it’d put down Malicia’s allies.”
“They are tyrants, Catherine,” Pickler said. “Leeches who drink the lifeblood of goblinkind to maintain their power and influence. And I know it is not like me to speak of them, of all they do, but I…”
She swallowed.
“I owe it,” she said. “To him. Because he was right, when you spoke to us in Marchford. When I balked at your banner rising against the Tower.”
Pickler met my eyes, the pale yellow unblinking.
“They kill us for sport.”
She bared her teeth.
“Robber spoke true when he said they’ve gotten soft,” Pickler said. “Look at them, darkening your doorsteps with deals they would have once sneered at. They’ve spent so many of us they can’t even get their own dirty work done anymore. They ate each other’s tails until there was nothing left but open maws and anger.”
“I can’t topple them, Pickler,” I said. “Not without a war I can’t afford to fight.”
“You don’t need to,” my Sapper-General said. “They did it to themselves. Do you think my people are happy they’re being used like this? The Matrons, my mother, they only own us so long as there’s nowhere else to go. And that’s something you can change.”
I blinked at her in surprise.
“You allowed the Snake Eater tribe into Callow,” Pickler said. “Let more in. Let us build without Matrons to hollow us out, without Preservers to open our throats the moment we reveal of ourselves. And they will come, I promise you that. Already the Legions and the Army are a home to flee to, but if you open Callow? Entire tribes will leave their tyrant behind.”
“If I grant lands to tribes, I’ll have a rebellion on my hand,” I frankly told her.
“Don’t,” Pickler fervently said. “Don’t let us forge another closed kingdom within the kingdom. Let us into your cities, your countryside, your wilderness. Let us be part of something that does not want to eat us.”
I flinched away from the intensity of her gaze.
“They’ll hate you for it, the Matrons,” she said. “For showing them they don’t own what it means to be a goblin, that just buried every other way and called it guidance. And I know it’s not what you want, not what Vivienne wants, that you have to think in kingdoms and favours and hard coin.”
She finished her drink, set it down.
“But we’ve stood behind you, Catherine,” Pickler said. “Not them, us. From the start, we’ve been with you. Sappers and soldiers and scouts, we’ve bled for you. And I won’t say it’s owed, because my people don’t believe in debt, but I need you to understand that I loved Robber – more than I thought, more than I knew – but there are fifty thousand like him the Eyries that never managed to flee. That are stuck and lost and will never see the light of day, know what the sun and the stars look like or even feel the wind on their face. Not unless you offer your hand to them.”
She left her chair, stood before me.
“I don’t have anything to offer you,” she said. “Nothing to bargain with. All I can say is please-”
I pushed back my chair, half-risen even as my leg ached, but I was not quick enough to stop her getting on her knees.
“- help us,” Pickler said. “Save us from ourselves, from each other.”
“I-” I choked out, at a loss for words.
“I think you might just be the only powerful person in the world who cares, Catherine,” she quietly said. “And I know you’re a queen, that you can’t afford to bend, but still I ask.”
She smiled, heartbreakingly.
“Please,” Pickler asked. “If not you, then who?”
I closed my eyes, almost short of breath. The stars were there, out in the black, but they felt… distant. Fading.
I had goblin troubles.]
[and Catherine Foundling bares her teeth at the door and dares it to tell her she can't pass.]
Re: The Lab