October Catch-all!
WHO: Midnight (
unreserving) & open!
WHAT: October catch-all
WHERE: Where isn't he, honestly
WHEN: Catching all of October, will update after the plot details drop!
WARNINGS: ~*Midnight*~. But also probably alcohol and disordered eating mentions generally, will update as necessary. UPDATE: there is some MENTAL HEALTH going on in Hiyori's thread. mind the warnings, there are cults in there.
a. various places (day)
b. swimming pool (afternoon)
c. garden prompt
d. wildcard
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
WHAT: October catch-all
WHERE: Where isn't he, honestly
WHEN: Catching all of October, will update after the plot details drop!
WARNINGS: ~*Midnight*~. But also probably alcohol and disordered eating mentions generally, will update as necessary. UPDATE: there is some MENTAL HEALTH going on in Hiyori's thread. mind the warnings, there are cults in there.
a. various places (day)
How was that?
[ Midnight flagged your character down for a practice session! Fortunately, it's not his usual jock routine: he spent the last 20 minutes explaining the ins and outs of the City as though his partner has just arrived here. It was a very serious roleplay, Midnight answered all questions with great thought and care. ]
I think it may be best to also mention some basic safety precautions... To proceed with great care to any new locations, to consider supplies and other survival items before risking a new encounter. But other than that... Do you remember any other questions you had in mind when you first arrived here?
b. swimming pool (afternoon)
Did you want one?
[ Why were you staring at this teen in the relaxation pool? Probably because he's sitting on a pool noodle, floating near the edge, snacking on a large carton of chicken nuggets. Said carton is... probably somewhat moist, but he's doing a pretty good job of keeping it from becoming overly waterlogged, and he certainly doesn't seem to be up to any specific mischief. Nope. Just vibing in the pool with chicky nugs.
The kid himself has short, ragged black hair with a few pink streaks, pink eyes, pointed ears, pale skin... Basically, if anyone's met Midnight, one might wonder if he had a little brother or a son who's just arrived. The similarities are quite uncanny. However, his question isn't particularly... Midnight-y. It's just a question. The most obvious reason why one would be staring at someone else's food in the first place. ]
c. garden prompt
[ Midnight will be avoiding the more grabby plants — he doesn't want to test if their thirst for his blood will lead to their demise via Originium — so the grabbiness here? Why, that's your hand he's grabbing. Because he's spotted someone he may or may not know among these very rude plants and, after listening to some of the gossiping circulating, has made an executive decision to leave the venue with his new partner in tow. (He... did get an earful about your characters issues on the way, but his main concern at the moment is getting his new partner out.) ]
Nasty lot, aren't they? Manners are free. Come along, love. Let's get a drink.
d. wildcard
if you'd like a custom starter please dm me (i don't have plurk sorry)
closed to @kampfgeist; haunted house hours
Still, it's going to be close. He intends to kill. He doesn't mind hurting himself in the process. The sorts of decisions he wouldn't make, were he lucid. The sorts of decisions a pacifist abhors. ]
cannonballs into your inbox and makes you write a fight scene
all this, when heine didn't even mean to be here. it's enough to piss a guy off, and on top of that heine's pretty sure if he dies tonight badou will resurrect him early just to kill him again.
so he fights, although not with everything he has. heine's still not clear on exactly what midnight means when he says durable, and he doesn't want tonight to be the night he finds out. but he fights, twisting the strap of his overalls free of midnight's grasping hand and then flinging himself through the space between midnight's legs, along the floor until he pops up on the other side in search of a weapon of some kind. something like a club—a chair leg, maybe, something he could use to knock midnight out without doing lethal damage.
in his head, the dog: you always try so fucking hard not to use the strength you were given. live a little, won't you? master. ]
Fuck off fuck off fuck—off.
spikes you like a volleyball!!!!
He growls again, clawing into the wall in his whip-snap turn to throw himself headlong after Heine, ungainly and wobbly and fast. He's twisted something in his foot in his haste; he doesn't care. Anything to get at his prey.
He breathes hard through his nose, scenting the other man. His blood is still spattered down his front, pink-red lining pointed teeth. A Sarkaz loves and fears death. Death is god. Death is immaculate, eternal. This is where and how Midnight was always meant to be.
(His father was right.)
He reaches out to pull down Heine, but he's overambitious; he'll glance off him and fall away, losing his grip and crashing into the wall opposite, eyes still wide and searching for Heine. He's dazed himself, but not for long. ]
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Just gonna borrow this real quick. [ not that the ghost cares.
heine grabs the chair and uses all his strength to break it over one knee, snapping off one of the legs and testing its heft. it'll make a good defensive weapon—but fuck, heine can't kill him. he's never had to split this difference before, needing to fight like he means it but not use lethal force. he's not sure he knows how.
he's not going to learn right here in this dorm room, though. heine needs more space to be effective. he shoves himself back out into the dorm hallway, teeth bared in an animal grimace as he considers midnight dazed against the wall. ]
cw: nomming (vampire edition)
He charges while only partially ready, moving like a puppet, ignoring the pain of whatever glances off his arms, his body, his head, whatever might leave scrapes or splinters. He charges, mouth open, grabs Heine under the chin and keeps pushing, aiming nowhere but going fast, until they hit a wall, stunning himself again with the force of their combined collision.
He lets go because even he can't bear multiple hits from a wooden club with perfect grace, but he swipes blindly, grabbing at hair, clothing, trying to find purchase, before giving a frustrated snarl, snapping forward, and sinking his fangs into Heine's shoulder, jaw clamping hard. Blood fills his mouth, salty and hot and metallic. ]
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but this isn't really midnight. heine knows that. he's intimately familiar with the kind of madness that sends you on a rampage, looking to tear down anything that stands in your way. he doesn't know what triggered it in midnight tonight, but heine can hardly fault him for it. ]
Midnight— [ is what heine manages to get out, struggling against those grasping hands before midnight jolts forward again to sink his teeth into heine's trapezius muscle. ] —Fuck!
[ the pain is so bright and sudden that heine cries out with it, but it also helps, in a way. it helps because pain is a wonderful motivator for a creature like heine, who was raised not to fear it. he pushes off the wall, midnight's jaw still tight on his shoulder, and he turns them so it's midnight being slammed up against the oddly unforgiving wall of the hallway. he brings his free hand up and grabs midnight by the throat, forces him away—tears midnight's teeth out of his shoulder—and uses the chair leg he's still clutching to get midnight right in the temple. ]
Go to sleep, [ heine grits out, putting all his extraordinary strength into the second swing. ]
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Midnight drops.
When he comes to, he doesn't know where he is. It's one of those unconscious states where one doesn't know up from down, left from right. He could be hanging from his foot, for all he knows.
He blinks. He blinks hard again. He tries to feel his limbs, fails on the first go at it. He tries again. ]
Nmmnah?
[ Great. The words got smacked right out of his head. And the crowd goes wild!
(Did he attack another person? He remembers blood in his mouth again. He listens for the ambience of that godawful haunted house and prays he's wrong.) ]
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midnight drops, and then so does heine. first the chair leg hits the floor, and then heine does too, sliding down the wall until he's sitting with his back against it, panting softly with exertion and residual adrenaline. the other ghosts don't seem to be interested in either of them right now, and heine takes advantage of the momentary stillness to catalogue his wounds: a mild concussion, courtesy of his skull against the wall; the torn flesh of his shoulder where he ripped midnight's fangs free; miscellaneous scrapes and bruises, consequence of fighting in an enclosed space. all of them, healing already.
as much as heine would like to just sit where he is to let himself recover, though, he knows it's not safe. he allows himself one minute, sixty seconds exactly, before he gets on his knees so he can leverage midnight over his shoulder. (it's not safe for midnight here, either, and if what happened to him is anything like what happens—what has happened—to heine, he's going to come out of it disoriented and in need of a familiar face.)
midnight is fucking heavy, so it's slow going, but heine manages to lift his unconscious form like a sack of potatoes and makes his way, stumbling toward the exit up to the third floor and dripping blood down his arm and side the entire way. it's like a trail of breadcrumbs for anyone who comes looking for them. on the third floor, he deposits midnight in the corner, then goes looking for some alcohol—comes back with a bottle of vodka and two pairs of jack-o-lantern sunglasses, one of which he puts on midnight's nose and the other of which goes on heine's.
whatever, right? it's whatever. another shitty place with another shitty way of fucking with them.
and that brings us to the current moment, where midnight's incoherent mumble of almost-consciousness catches heine's attention and drags his gaze from where he'd been staring at one of the walls. ]
Don't try to move too much. You're probably a little concussed. [ heine shifts from sitting against the wall, moving into a crouch instead so he can lean over midnight and check the size of his pupils. ] ...Yeah. Go slow. Is that you in there this time?
—Fuck, I hope it's you.
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Oh, hey, that's Heine. Midnight stares at him for a moment — mildly dilated, frankly, it's a work in progress — then remembers taking a rather sizeable chunk of flesh from his shoulder, then he says: ]
I'm here. What.
[ He closes his eyes, then squeezes them shut. What happened? There was flesh in his mouth. A wall. Bared teeth. ]
Can't remember. Everything's. Mixed up. [ ... ] I bit you.
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at the first coherent speech, heine sighs his relief and sits back down on the ground. at midnight's side this time, at least, as he takes another long pull from the liquor bottle that's been sitting next to them both. ]
I carried you up. You weigh a ton. [ heine's tone is very even. ] And you sure did bite me.
[ the wound is mostly closed, at this point. beneath the skin, muscle fibers knit back together. the skin itself is raw and angry, fresh scar tissue, but that too will fade in a few more minutes. ]
I don't know... what happened. I came down the hallway and you attacked me on sight. We fought. —Sorry about the concussion.
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[ ... Why can't getting knocked out humble Midnight. He smiles weakly, chuckling, eyes flicking over to check Heine over. Fine. He's immortal. (Can't be harmed. It's just the pain. Small comfort, but still.) ]
Thank you for said concussion, I think. I remember a lot, but I don't think I was the one... driving, per se. It's like a dream that I remember perfectly. One of those ones... where you keep doing things because you're supposed to, not because you know why. D'you ever get those?
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[ the quip, the light humor in midnight's voice, makes the tension bleed out of heine's shoulders. what he'd worried about, bringing midnight up here, was the possibility that he might be dooming all the people in the common room with them to watching heine knock midnight out again and again until whatever compulsion this is has run its course. or worse, dooming them to be the victims. heine can handle it—heine, as they've established, is immortal.
but it's fine, because midnight is fine. or at least he will be. heine offers midnight the liquor bottle, holding it out to him by the neck if he wants it. it's... just vodka, heine thinks, although it may well be gin. he isn't a connoisseur and hadn't bothered reading. ]
I'm just glad it worked. I'd say "anytime," but I really can't say I want a repeat of this. [ now that it's clear midnight's no worse for the wear, heine doesn't mind a little levity.
the question gives him a split second of pause, but heine recovers in a shrug. ] Yeah, sure. Sometimes. The kind where I'm doing something horrible, or something horrible is happening, and I just have to stick it out because that's the dream.
[ he has night terrors, heine does. almost every night. he knows a thing or two about shitty dreams. ]
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Midnight accepts the bottle, puts it to his mouth, drinks, clocks the flavor as alcohol, continues drinking as it burns. He is not coordinated enough to avoid lines of vodka and/or whiskey dribbling out of the corners of his mouth. He doesn't care. Alcohol, right now, immediately. ]
Now that I know you can knock me out, I might have to give you the responsibility in the future. No need to fret, I'll to my best to be a right thorn in your side to facilitate the process.
[ An open mouthed, fangy laugh. Har har. He hands the bottle back, then pushes the glasses back up his nose. This, honestly, is peak getting hammered vibes. ]
Had a couple of those myself. Nasty thing. See, what one must do is sleep less. Gives the troublemakers less time to make trouble, you see.
[ He taps his temple. He is a genius. ]
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How many times do you expect you're going to need this service? [ heine takes the bottle back and takes another long drink himself. he's tipsy already, but then again he got started well before midnight. unfortunately, a quirk of his accelerated physiology is that his liver processes the liquor much more quickly than he wishes it would, which means being tipsy won't last all that long. ] And how fast do you think you're gonna recover from the concussion?
[ from experience heine can say that it takes him about half a day, depending on the severity. he figures for midnight it'll be a couple of days at most.
heine nods as if midnight has said something extremely sage, then shakes his head. ] I have to sleep more here than I did at home. I think it has something to do with the [ he wiggles his fingers ] powers thing.
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My sleep has always been like that. Short. [ Midnight shakes his head, makes a grabby gesture for the bottle. Him next. ] No, it's my balance that's off. Been feeling a lot more clumsy since I've been here, let me tell you. If I had to go to see Daan every time I've banged a shin or hit an elbow against a table since I've been here...
[ A shake of the head. This place really does do the most to take their powers away... And for what? It's not as though they can leave, or have any enemies but each other. So what's the worst they can do? Kill each other? They already do that, and it doesn't even stick. ]
Anyhow, I'll only need it as much as I'm determined to cause problems. And if I recover from a concussion at all, well, more's the pity, depending on who you ask. I do promise that I won't go around causing the kind of crimes that will get me clapped in cuffs, though. I'd like to choose my partners for that, thank you.
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[ it sounds stupid to say it out loud, so hopefully midnight is picking up heine's meaning. is he especially nible, or gifted with some kind of foresight that helps him avoid running unfortunately into doorknobs. something like that. the mention of daan makes heine shake his head and lift an invisible glass as if toasting to the extremely put-upon doctor himself. ]
Well, if you don't want to recover from the head injury, I'm not the guy to ask. I'm tired of killing people. [ midnight can take that however he wants, heine's not really thinking his sentences through all the way. he squints a little, trying to parse that—i'd like to choose my own partners for that—and only after a second realizes that midnight is probably talking about— ] Oh, like. Kinky handcuffs.
[ probably? ]
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[ At the kinky handcuffs realization. Midnight aims two fingerguns at him, then leans forward and steals the bottle from Heine's fingers. Him next.
He takes another swig, wipes his mouth, then swings it onto the floor gently next to his knee, sighing. It's helping. Everything feels... softer. ]
Killing people isn't my favorite pastime, personally. Glad to see you catch on.
[ He shrugs, closing his eyes. He is feeling a bit nauseous, but he's willing to believe it'll pass. He's pretty sure he's taken worse hits. (Perhaps not this many in a row, though? Over a week? With no healing? Perhaps he'll have to go see Daan... Just get all of this taken care of in one fell swoop. Poor thing.) ]
Vampires have a good inner ear. We have a reputation for, er... what's the word.
[ He snaps his fingers for a second. ]
Re. Re... Resilience, that's it. Social chameleons, tacticians. Very good at picking up new skills, athletically gifted. We adapt better than any other Sarkaz race... We're the face of our species, really.
[ He shrugs again, eyes still closed. ]
Other side of the coin is that most of the old guard are quite mad. God complexes to a man. Old, more or less invincible, manipulative, accustomed to talking their way into anything they want... Anything they don't care to just take, anyhow. Inevitable, really, even outside the culture of territorialism.
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focusing on the alcohol and the midnight lore drop is, comparatively, much more familiar territory. heine grabs the bottle when midnight sets it down and takes a couple of long swallows himself, grateful for how it warms him up when it hits his stomach. the tipsiness might not last long, but it's nice while he has it, a sort of overall softness to the world that heine doesn't normally feel. ]
Makes sense. [ it's not that the god complexes themselves make sense, just that heine has enough of an understanding of the way power corrupts to see how someone that gifted would end up with one. ] Even people with just a little taste of what it's like to be better than can let it get to their heads. Bet it's even easier when everything about you seems superior.
[ he thinks of angelika. of giovanni, of campanella frühling, of magato. mad with their own superiority, callously dismissive of anything they saw as less-than. that could have been heine, too, under different circumstances. if he hated himself a little less. ]
But you're different?
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Anyway, Midnight just wiggles his eyebrows and leaves it at that. He is aware of his horny crimes. ]
Am I? I don't know.
[ Midnight begins wiggling his extremities, checking for damage. Ooh, that's achy. ]
I think I might just be young? I'm almost 40, but one must be around 100 to be considered a proper adult among vampires...
[ He shakes his head. ]
Probably helps that I didn't grow up around the culture, either. I'm Higashinese, you know; most of the diaspora ended up around Leithanien, Sargon, Ursus. Much farther west. I knew some things about what proper vampires should be — my parents would talk about it all the time — but it didn't properly hit me until I started to meet other Sarkaz and vampires at Rhodes Island how different I'd grown up.
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that... also makes sense, to heine. that being removed from most of the people most similar to midnight would have an impact on his attitudes, his beliefs as he grew up. heine supposes that in some ways they're similar, products of their circumstances.
of course, most of the names midnight drops may as well be greek to heine with how little he understands. sarkaz he gets, that's midnight's species(?), and he does seem to recall something about higashinese from a previous post where they talked about languages, plus ursus from their conversation about bears. leithanien and sargon must therefore be locations. ]
I think I like you better how you are. [ without the god complex, or the casual cruelty of power. heine has had enough of that to last a lifetime.
heine draws his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, lets his pumpkin sunglasses slide down his nose a little as he looks over at midnight. ] What's Rhodes Island?
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Me too.
[ Midnight grins. He's fought for the freedom to do what he wants all his life. He'll continue to do so for the rest of it!
Midnight nods in answer to that last question, decides the world doesn't spin enough when he does, and snatches up that liquor for another pull. ]
Name of where I work... Or worked, at this point. How time flies.
[ Midnight shakes his head. Three entire months already... ]
Pharmeceuticals company. I'm with the paramilitary outfit attached to their security division, but it's the reserve corps, not active duty.
[ Midnight grins, waves the bottle again before settling it back down. ]
... Which may bring up several questions. "Why in the world does a pharmeceuticals company need a paramilitary unit?" would be at the forefront of my mind, were I you.
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I'm guessing it's for some reason other than the bog-standard "drug companies like power and power is easier to keep when you have an army"?
[ if that gives a way a little of how jaded heine's own world has made him over time, so be it. if this were back home, the security forces would be almost exclusively for protecting the assets of the company and probably disappearing the people who would become the unwilling test subjects for new developments.
heine knows that because he lived it. ]
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[ Midnight shakes his head, watches Orange Heine sip the Orange Drink. He's already had it rough without also understanding the reality of the world around him. (But honestly, who is Midnight to talk about one's mental health? Glass houses and stones.) ]
Anyhow... That's what I thought too. The drug company was treating the source of my blood smoke, if you will, so I was living in their medical department. I got curious about their little private army, did some poking around...
[ He shifts into a crosslegged position, resting heavily on the wall. ]
It was the first time I'd ever encountered a philanthropic ethos followed by a painfully honest list of crimes committed by the department in the name of protecting their own. In short... my world lives in a constant state of epidemic, and it's difficult to convince certain parties to accept help, no matter how charitable or benevolent. Centuries of discrimination has made radicals out of those worst hit by the effects of Catastrophes, lots of broken trust from war and various injustices. Thus the need to protect one's own while trying to help others... It's that sort of thing.
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he is, however, just very slightly too drunk to parse the entire explanation exactly as it's given, so heine spends a second squinting at midnight as he puts the sentences together in his brain. ]
Okay. So you were... in their hospital, and got curious about the army, but when you went snooping you found out that... [ philanthropic ethos who the fuck says that when intoxicated. come on. ] The drug company is super committed to helping people who have your blood smoke thing, but for a bunch of reasons, it's not always easy to help people and also not die in the process, so they have an army that helps keep them safe while they're doing their helping thing?
[ ????? ]
Is that right?
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Mm. There are terrorist organizations advocating for Infected rights, you know. Re-un-ion. The goal is to help them get healthcare too, but they're a bit beyond wanting to be helped. It's a difficult task to reach individual members who want to be stable more than their rights... for good reason too.
[ Midnight laughs. ]
Ethan was Reunion... He was someone I worked with at home. RI rescued him from a botched operation in... Ursus, I think? Might've been during Chernobog, come to think of it. Anyhow, he's a lovely fellow. Just a bit disillusioned with the whole...
[ Midnight waves a hand expressively. Disillusioned with everything, more or less. ]
Trying to... make people see Infected as people, and not political tools, or subhuman. Miss Amiya — our CEO — she'd like that too, but she has a few tricks up her sleeve to make things like that happen. Lots of powerful people looking out for her.
[ He huffs. He's rambling, honestly. What he wouldn't give to get away from the politics of his world. He's as far away as he can get, honestly, but... ]
Willing to get their hands dirty for her, really.
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