( closed ) the only ones who need love are the ones who don't receive enough

[gradenine]

WHO: roland and certain people
WHAT: roland came back after disappearing mysterious and realized some really bad things. plotting comment for reference.
WHERE: the garden
WHEN: around the middle of the month, before the event
WARNINGS: body horror, violence, talks about murder and other nihilistic shit. also major project moon spoilers. see his opt-out for more info.


[ roland emerged out of the darkness like a dream.

or rather, he stumbles into the relatively new location as if he woke up from a horrible nightmare, clutching at his head as he makes his way towards the tea-party setup. this was the last place he'd remembered before vanishing, but the details were foggy. he wasn't even aware how long it's been. all he knew was that he met someone terrible who gave him equally terrible news, but he's used to disappointments -- even more so in this desolate imitation of a city.

someone had left green tea on the table, still hot. binah had told him that green tea is good for him, so he may as well take the load off and hope that the drink will clear his mind, and make him forget the bad news he'd received from argalia.

ah, yes. argalia is here, angelica's own flesh and blood. angelica had come back wrong, he gleefully. right. totally normal.

...

luckily, this isn't the first time this abnormality has taken over roland. he's used to the way the muscular sinews bloom across his body like a second skin (or even a flesh wound), the multitude of eyes blinking themselves open and roving their pupils around to scan the area. a gnarled leg of a bird sprouts from the top of his head, flexing its digits. his own left arm, meanwhile, has morphed into a bulbous club made of muscle and claw, which he is using to thrash at a nearby flowerbed for speaking out of line. ]

Why is he here... Why. Why. Tell me...

[ "i know why he's here," the half-dead flowers insist. "nothing ever goes my way. this city is out to get me, too."

but just because he's too engrossed in destroying the flowers within reach, it doesn't mean that the bulging eyes won't notice whoever comes into the garden, their unblinking gazes boring into anyone's eyes should anyone stumbles this sorry sight. he is making quite the ruckus, after all. ]

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asiyah action

[wordchain]

[ In all likelihood, this city takes issue with any direct interference, and Yesod doubts that his and Midnight's joint signage creation efforts have remained intact — even murals painstakingly painted have vanished without a trace, after all. Moreover, the gardens in the park are filled with unpleasant interactive features. They certainly stimulate further interaction with others again as well...

Picking at recent memories stirred up here is of no help to anyone, either, but at least concentrating on confirming the presence or absence of those signs acts as a temporary distraction. And then, familiar for several reasons, another rather conspicuous sight becomes much more urgent a matter to address.

It's a patchwork of elements of what they know from the past, across lives, and now Angela's transformation in the greenhouse as newer context. But why would Roland, suddenly reappearing without any announcement, take on this particular form? Compared to the encounter with Angela, Yesod and Netzach may be better prepared this time; still, it's no less of a troubling surprise, and the flowers are as irritating as they were last time.

Roland's lucidity already seems lost to the whispers and the Abnormality's warped shape. All the same, as its multiple eyes fix their stare upon what Roland might perceive as something to attack, Yesod makes an attempt to appeal to any reason left before casting a glance around for a sense of the surrounding space, should they need more of it. ]

...What do you mean, Roland? We'll reverse your transformation.

[ Whatever the easy access to the remedy implies, the process of using those seeds is straightforward — if the affected person cooperates. It's painless, unlike drawn-out battles. And it isn't what the employees of Lobotomy Corporation faced, back then. ]

[abstractart]

Not again-

[but this isn't-- that's not angela, or anyone else. it's... roland? how did this happen to him? angela's the one who resonated with the library (at least, as far as he knows), but this is definitely the same type of transformation. another abnormality reflected, one of the worst of them to deal with.]

...Roland? Roland, man, what happened to you?

[where has he been? he's been gone, and now he reappears like this-- he hasn't been somehow afflicted the whole time, has he? left alone somewhere in this form? surely he hasn't. he couldn't. someone would have noticed.

his hand lingers near the wooden sword that now sits at his side, a new addition thanks to kaveh's help, but he doesn't grip and draw it yet. not before he knows if roland will respond to them-- if he isn't entirely lost to the abnormality.]

[gradenine]

He is... here.

[ did they not see him? maybe it was all his imagination, like how this place has been making him hallucinate about angelica for months now. no, maybe that's just him too. he doesn't know anymore.

"i want to know, but no matter where i look, there's just nothing there." "maybe that's why i'm like this."

but luckily, he only has to face these two bozos. gebura and yesod know how to fight, but they're no match for a color. it'd be easier to just shuffle up to yesod and bonk him on his nerd head, so roland is going to do just that, charging up to the purple man to attack him with his arm. ]

[wordchain]

Roland—

[ Nothing there is all too fitting a phrase, but Roland's innermost thoughts are still opaque. There are questions to ask, from his remark to his whereabouts while he was missing — later, if they succeed in subduing him and administering the seeds. Right now, Yesod is forced to keep his questions to himself, to concentrate on evading the incoming blow, unless he'd like to be bludgeoned to death today. While that might rid him of his own thoughts for however long, honestly a mercy, and silence the flowers as well, the mess would be considerable. Think of the stains to remove, Roland... And Netzach would have to witness his colleague's nerd head being smashed to pieces.

Unlike Netzach, who has that training weapon gifted to him by Kaveh, at least, Yesod is unarmed. With the power of yoga agility and a relatively compact frame on his side, he can duck and dodge before the Abnormality's club-shaped arm reaches him instead of the flowers this time, but the space around them is a finite area.

He catches himself against one of the raised flowerbeds, snatches up an empty flower pot to throw, and aims for Roland's head. ]

[abstractart]

[--damnit, it doesn't look like he's interested in talking. roland moves, and netzach draws his sword; it may only be wood, but at least it's something, something that he can use to try to keep roland away from yesod.

'in the end, the hope that anyone will be saved thanks to me...'

netzach ignores the flowers. that was a different netzach, one who was wrong about what he could at least try to do. this netzach follows up the flower pot yesod throws with a sweeping swing at roland's legs, trying to throw him off-balance even slightly.]

Yesod, the seeds-

[gradenine]

[ oh, the two bozos can actually fight back after all. well, it's more like they're on the defensive, until netzach brings out his own sword. roland bemoans his lack of an actual weapon, the feel of a weapon in his fingers, and he lets out a roar intermingled with random screaming from the people nothing there had absorbed into itself.

he cleanly smashes the pot that was coming for his head, swinging his club-arm down to parry netzach's attack by his legs. ]

Where... is Angela? Don't you already know what happened to us...?

[ "it's frustrating. nothing matters here. nothing here or there or anywhere." "it doesn't matter where i go. it'll just leand to nowhere." ]

[wordchain]

[ Netzach has a point. They need those seeds at the ready, and handling that task would be a better use of Yesod's time than pointlessly resorting to making projectiles of any nearby object in order to create a short-lived diversion. And the futility of it is clear, once again — the flower pot barely occupies Roland's attention before it shatters. Roland blocks Netzach's sword within seconds, too.

It keeps Yesod where he is too long, unwilling to leave Netzach to face Roland alone, Roland and the threat of Nothing There, even a potentially weakened version of it. It's unwise to make himself a distraction, he knows, but his fingers close around the handle of a metal watering can next. A moment later, that hurtles through the air towards Roland in an arc, just as the flower pot did.

"All that talk of maintaining discretion, but look at what lies behind it. It's as if nothing has changed." ]

...We know. Even so, you must come to your senses, Roland!

[ "Yet he has a point as well..."

Whatever the case, if Roland is able to express something coherent aloud, perhaps that will buy them some time. The wooden shelf and its seed packets are only a short distance away. ]

[abstractart]

[we know, yesod says-- it's a good thing he can answer, because the reminder still makes something clench in netzach's chest.]

Dunno where she is. That doesn't matter right now, man-- Yesod's right, you gotta snap out of it. You're alive here.

[and still, yesod is here. netzach keeps himself placed firmly between him and roland, and the flowers whisper-

'why are you desperate to protect something you know you can't keep?']

[gradenine]

Doesn't really feel like it. Doesn't matter when she... already killed us.

[ "what's the point of going home, then." "no, i never had a home to begin with. not anymore." "can you really call this place a home? it's more like a prison."

the watering can does land on roland's head, temporarily distracting him from netzach's parrying. he lets out an inhuman roar, echoing with the humans that nothing there had once swallowed, and tries t sidestep around netzach to go after yesod again. ]

[wordchain]

[ Netzach seems determined to make a shield of himself even as the flowers have more to say yet again, but now that Yesod has Roland's attention — ideally longer than the flower pot or the watering can, and with fewer broken pieces by the end — he hopes to hold it to give Netzach an opening to temporarily incapacitate Roland safely as soon as possible, as well as allow himself enough time to make for the seed packets. For the moment, the insistent ripple of whispers is nothing but grating background noise. ]

The fact that we are alive somewhere matters. And here, we've learned of a future that only Angela has experienced, one which she regrets herself. We may be able to change the outcome of those events.

[ Will any of this reach Roland in his current state? Yesod readies himself for minimal success. ]