( 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. ]

Comments

[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. ]