orderfromchaos | 19. the luminous pink jello affair

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19. the luminous pink jello affair

[Spam for Steve + eventual takedown team + open]

[It's harder to catch people alone. You can't just lurk in a hallway or a stairwell without a maintenance crew noticing you. He can only extract one person from their bodies at a time, and although the obvious target would be the warden watching each group, there's no guarantee that any given batch of inmates would be 100% sympathetic and fail to take advantage of his diverted attention. People aren't nearly as afraid, so there's usually at least a few people loitering on deck. Places like the greenhouse and the art room are watched.

He waits in the laundry room. Sits on top of the dryer, in which his clothes are actually taking a second unnecessary spin, idly tossing a baseball up and down, like he doesn't have anything better to do but wait. He doesn't, of course, not really. He's just waiting for the right target.]

[OOC: this is the takedown/catch-all post for THIS plot, in which Dillon is eating some souls. If you are interested in joining in for some last minute spiritual trauma, feel free to tag in and get attacked prior to Dillon getting caught. Initial takedown is going to be Bianca and Blight and possibly Arthas, and others might be pulled in as things progress.]

[Private to Gretel, backdated to late Wednesday]

Hey, you have time for another game?

[He's bored, okay. Very bored. And he has a cheeky smile.]

[Spam for Bush, backdated to Monday]

[When he's done with his infirmary shift and his construction shift, he comes to Bush's cabin, a few paint drips (six identical drips, equidistant from a centerpoint on his shoulder) still on his inside-out shirt. He knocks, tries to strain the hunger in his head into something like nervousness.]

Captain? Can I, uh, talk to you?

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[Bush never expects new folk to be play-actors. Once he understands the nature of a whimsical person, then he can predict it, but absent some telltale sign he blithely assumes that everyone is as frank as he is. He has been pleased by Dillon's willingness to work, encouraged that the boy is not all bad.]

Of course, lad. Come in, won't you?

[He sidles in, then scoots around the cabin, not quite prowling, not quite drifting, fidgety, picking things up and putting them down again.]

You know Sylvanas? The one here now.

I do not know her very well, but certainly we have met.

Those arrows. They're - hurting her. Really badly. They have shards of the lich king's broken sword forged into them, and every time she kills someone with them, they steal a little piece of her soul.

Good lord. [He looks shaken. He may not be fast friends with the mirror Sylvanas, but he cannot help but see his friend in her.] Doesn't she know-?

She knows. She didn't care about herself, only about hurting the admiral.

[A selective truth, but true enough.]

I could help her.

[He turns to face Bush squarely now, defiant, like he expects to be told no, that he can't, that he shouldn't, sets his jaw angrily, and it's real greivance that comes out, bitter and bubbling and stark.]

I don't know what your precious warden did or didn't do that makes him so much better than me, but I have always tried to help, what she's doing is horrible, it's worst that the worst things happening in my world, destroying a soul a shred at a time instead of all at once, but if I weren't so damn helpless I could actually save her, unlike them, the pieces are still trapped in the weapons, they're not gone, I could - I could -

But how-?

What could you do, with something like that?

I can put anything back together. If I have all the pieces. I heal things. I just can't reach her right now-

[Quietly, now, sturdy, gaze down. This is not bragging. This is not even the fierceness of conviction. It's almost - almost - weary. He knows himself, he knows what he can do.]

You said you'd be my warden. So. Can you ask? For that, for my powers to work on souls again. The other stuff can wait.

[Bush blows out a breath through his lips.] That ain't a small think you're asking, lad. The power to meddle with souls-

[He doesn't know this Dylan well enough, has no file to tip him one way or another. He looks seriously at the young man.]

I'd have your word not to misuse it, if you had your power back-?

[He thinks about Okoya, all delicate observations and poisonous slant. He thinks about how badly he genuinely wants to undo the abomination Sylvanas has wrought on herself, all the ways he could mince it, that healing is what he wants to do. In the stories, the devil tells the truth exactly the way he wants you to hear it. But God -

for the day you eat of it you shall surely die

- God lies.]

You have my word, sir.

[He does solemn very well, when he chooses to. Gravity, gravitas. He has something infinite in his eyes.]

Let me think on it tonight. I'll tell you what I decide in the morning.

[And this will mean that in twelve hours, Bush will have put in the request. Dylan may even feel it before he's told.]

Is there anything else I can do-? For you, for her?

[He nods. Now isn't the time to push; he just has to hope Bush comes to it.][After a few more seconds, with a soft wry huff -]

No, I can't think of anything else. It's a very...sufficient prison.

[Steve actually has some free time, relatively speaking - Mindy's managed to keep herself out of trouble and so has Bucky, so he figures now as good a time as any to try to get some laundry done. After all, he doesn't have a lot of spare clothes, given that he's staying in Bucky's room.

He's a little distracted, and a little more tired than he'd like to let on. He has a book balanced on top of the small pile of clothes in the basket under one arm but he's not even sure if he isn't more inclined to just nap until his clothes are done. He shuffles into the laundry room; he heard the dryer going from down the hall, and he gives Dillon a friendly, unassuming smile - he doesn't know much about Dillon's mirror counterpart, but he's seemed reasonable enough over the network.] Hey, Dillon.

Hey, Kap. I mean, Steve.

[He doesn't sound awkward or embarrassed, just genial - this one is different, maybe prefers something different. He wishes he could see Steve the way he's seen his counterpart, because so much of who that man was is erased so thoroughly even he has trouble teasing out the old threads of it, and that galls his pride. But it doesn't matter if that section of his powers wasn't part of his recent reprieve, because this Steve isn't going to be a person at all much longer. A native, a warden, a damn pillar of the community - exactly the kind of person he's been waiting for. He sets the ball down next to him, leans a little toward the side the washer is on, but only in the kind of way that reads like unconscious body language, tuning into conversation.]

Washer's empty, no one's added theirs since I got mine out.

[This is tricky stuff, and he's only done it a handful of times, but he's gotten used to working within the boundaries he still has on him. He needs Steve unspooked, close enough to touch.]

[Steve's used to being called Cap just as often as by his name, so either way is fine with him. He hasn't gotten to talk to Dillon - either Dillon - all that much, but that doesn't mean he's going to be unfriendly. Especially given the update about the washer; his smile turns a little more grateful, as he sets the basket down and sets the book aside so he can start working on getting the dirty clothes into the washer.] Thanks. Slow day, huh? I guess it beats a line.

[He does glance over for a second, before turning his attention back to the clothes.] You doing okay? On this, uh, side of things, I mean.

[He hunches a little, laughs, small and miserable. He grabs Steve's arm, and the gesture seems natural, feels natural, part of the conversation, part of his bitterness. He can't have the shell going around honest as apple pie telling people what a weird thing just happened.]

I hate it. I'm in a cage.

[But he's getting a little of his own back. The right pressure, the right push, prying, and Steve shucks his body like a morsel of oyster, warm and humming and shivering in his other hand, a tremulous cascading helpless thing of frantic song and shimmering pink light, exposed to the raw physical world in a way it was never meant to be. His mouth goes dry in anticipation, and he forces himself to stay in control, not to bolt it down. He sighs, lets go of the body's arm, and leans back, pours Steve back and forth between his hands like a luminous gelatinous distressed slinky, like it's any unremarkable magic bauble. The body won't know any better, will react to the cues he leaves it.]

Whatever. Could be worse, I guess.

[Steve glances over again at the touch to his arm - well, he can't blame Dillon for hating the circumstances, and he starts to look sympathetic. Starts to say something, even, except - something happens, something that's never happened before, and he doesn't even know how to describe it. In a way, the closest he can come is the procedure gone horribly wrong - there's almost the same kind of ripping, twisting, changing sensation, but it's not physical and that's confusing, disorienting in and of itself enough that it takes another second for the utter, utter feeling of wrongness to really settle in. He's not where he needs to be and the world is so far from what it's supposed to be, suddenly, that he barely knows how to react.

Then realizes he can't react - he can't do anything, but he can't be where he is, how he is, he hates it, it's horrible and it's terrifying in a way he's never quite been before, something is so wrong and the only thing he can do is scream-]

It could always be worse, [Steve's body says in a wry tone, because things could always be worse; he turns back to doing laundry, because he should feel a lot worse for Dillon, want to see if there's something he can do to fix it, but doesn't quite feel that need so he instead just tries to keep up the conversation.] What's that? You didn't have it a second ago, did you? [He didn't see the pink light in here before, but it's replaced the baseball in Dillon's hands. Dillon's got magic, or something like it, he recalls. Maybe it's just a way to amuse himself, even if something about it looks pretty strange. And almost important.]

Oh, this? It's just a toy.

[It's funny because it's true.]

You could think of it like a very tiny star.

[Or he could if he could think, instead of just generating sentences. It's almost a backhanded compliment, in a way. He strokes the quivering thing in his palm as though it were a nervous hamster, knowing perfectly well it is no comfort at all, savors the tiny, high tinnitus of Steve's terror, like the agonized cousin of a mosquito whine, and his own anticipation.]

Edited 2014-10-28 16:18 (UTC)

[He's been stalking the halls of the ship, not trying to be subtle, not trying to be quiet; no holowatch today, he's more than glad to intimidate in all his poisonous glowing glory. Every person that hasn't run the other way has been accosted, demanded if they've seen Dillon Cole. Enough nervous and bewildered finger-pointing has ensued that they've ended up on the right track.

Bianca, he presumes, will follow along in his wake. Her cloak and dagger subtlety all the easier to maintain when he's drawing all the attention to himself, being so loud and bright and distracting. It might be a stretch to say 'Dillon won't even know what hit him', but damn if they're not going to try.

He still isn't even sure what happened. The specifics don't matter. Whatever the Mirror passenger did, it was detrimental to one of Derek's friends, his people. And you don't touch his things without there being a reprisal.]

Cole! Just the one I've been looking for.

[Growling slightly, voice strident, he throws the laundry room door open and then stands there, one hand grasping either side of the doorframe, taking up the entire space. The green light from his glow pours in, casting the figures inside in sickly illumination, making any shadows creep sideways in different directions, distorted. He's brighter than he usually is: he's angry. And incongruous as it may seem, he has one of his fencing swords strapped to his belt. It was the only weapon he had on hand that he trusted Dillon's powers not to potentially mess with. He has no idea what Dillon's currently capable of.]

What did you do to Jack Napier, you pathetic little -- and what is that? [He cuts short, feeling a creeping mild unease at the sight of whatever that pink glowing thing is.] What have you got in your hands?

[Bianca has taken the time to change, partly because it occurred to her that Jack's shirt might spark an unwelcome connection - Dillon has never been stupid - and partly because she means to keep it.

Instead, she wears a cocktail dress of Iris', sleek and scaled in enormous holographic sequins that make her feel armoured. It's too short for her, and she's accentuated that fact with five-inch scarlet heels and whisper-fine black silk stockings.

She takes in the scene and makes a decision; she barges past Derek with an expression intended to convey her utter contempt for those who would engage in brawls in the laundry room, and she makes for a dryer at the far end of the rppm with every appearance of wanting to get clothes out of it.

When she has the dryer door open she turns and, as soon as Dillon isn't looking at her, fires the grapple gun she was holding behind her at his back.]

[Dillon is, to put it mildly, surprised. But not really scared or even concerned - he was allowed to keep his physical healing abilities to assist in the infirmary, which he's fairly confident will at least cripple Blight if unravels the radiation poisoning right. He tosses Steve in the air and catches him, a capricious spirit with a desperate little will-o-the-wisp. And - well, whatever Blight knows, there's nothing for it staying under the radar anymore, really. Which pisses him off, but also means he gets to gloat. He doesn't pay much attention to Bianca at all - with his pattern-sense muffled, it's easy for him to believe in her impatient and disaffected disdain, something he associates with her already and even feels some kindred with.]

It's a soul. Pretty, right? They taste even better than they look.

[This is when he gets hit in the back with a grappling gun, and topples over, falling off perch and dropping Steve's soul on the floor somewhere before scrambling to his feet, squawking in an supremely undignified manner.]

[Steve - his body, anyway - isn't quite sure what's going on. He hasn't seen Derek before in person looking quite so angry and glowing, but he's not frightened or put off. Honestly, he probably wouldn't have been, in any case, but there's really nothing in him that quite registers surprise as a real feeling, even if his face does a good impression of looking confused - and a little more so when Bianca's grappling gun slams Dillon in the back, making him drop the curious pink thing that some part of him still feels like is important.

Then again, Dillon said it was like a small star. Now he says it's a soul. That seems important, doesn't it?

He reacts by looking between Bianca and Derek, taking a step forward almost out of reflex, but doesn't feel morally obligated to actually interfere. He just wants to know,] Did he do something? We were just talking.

[Steve, on the other hand, is disoriented and terrified and it's hard to think straight - is he even thinking at all? - because all he can feel is how absolutely wrong this is and he wants to be back where he belongs, in the body that doesn't seem to need him, strangely enough, but it's where he needs to be, and he's not sure if the floor is better or worse than being in Dillon's hands.

He also has no way to tell anyone what to do, where to put him (put him back!), even if it doesn't stop him from making the only sound he can make, desperately.

He feels like it should be a lot louder than it actually is.]

[He doesn't move his threatening glare away from Dillon when Bianca enters, keeping his attention fixed on target, not doing anything to give the alliance away. Which means he's still watching riveted as Dillon tosses that - whatever it is - up and down, like a toy. When even not believing in the actual existence of souls as he does, after having seen what Jack was like inside without whatever Dillon took away, he can certainly believe in the pink orb as something somehow vital. To the existence of a person as themselves.

There's outrage in him, a creeping crawling sense of horror that would be a lot stronger if he were willing to give into it.]

Nice shot.

[That remark was a cold, flat aside to Bianca. He ignores Steve, even when he speaks. He didn't see where the thing landed when it went to the floor, but it's probably still intact since he can hear it making...tiny screams?

Not important. Focus on Dillon. He releases the doorframe and stalks forward, keeping about two feet's distance between them and nothing more, towering over him in the space he takes to rise again.]

I'm not going to ask you again, boy. So you had better start talking. And fast.

[She only inclines her head to acknowledge Derek's compliment. She'll tell him later - if Dillon doesn't reduce them both to small piles of their component molecules, at least - how glad she is to be working with him. How much she appreciates his clever, bullish directness.

Or maybe not. For now, she steps smartly forwards and aims a squirt of her perfume atomiser into Dillon's face. It's loaded with the most virulently dangerous, fastest-acting Smilex she could find; she very much hopes it will work.]

[He makes a face, not at all unlike a cat who's been spritzed with water, scrunched and disgruntled. And then grins, toothy and mean, and it's impossible to tell whether it's an effect of the toxin or just his natural, horrible expression as he darts a hand out, touches, twists, and it's not a lot of pressure, but it's in just the right place, cracking her radius and fracturing her tibia in three places. He feels dizzy, hungry, shoves at Bianca artlessly this time but it's easy to bat at the arm he broke, stumble to his feet away from her and closer to Blight, hands spread, as if in welcome.]

I told you. He was sweet and brittle. Like meringue.

[He lifted his chin up when Bianca used her atomiser - he might deny it until his next dying day, but after having been brutally murdered by the Joker once he still gets pretty antsy around Smilex. No matter who's doing the wielding.

And then everything starts to move a little faster, because of course -- you know, in some sense, he would have been a bit disappointed if this all went down too easy? Anticlimactic, if nothing else. Surprise is visible across his distorted features as he watches Dillon's hand go to Bianca. He's familiar enough with the starchild godling's power to not have to keep an eye on it anymore to know whatever just happened, it was probably bad. Mentally he curses.

Out loud he says nothing. Just keeps his eyes on Dillon and swiftly draws his epee - one fluid, well-practiced motion - and he has it out the full extension of his arm, dull but solid point pressing down against the center of Dillon's sternum. Trying to ward him off, keep him and those dangerous powered hands of his at bay.]

You miserable, twisted ingrate. [Despite his best efforts he hisses a bit, bristling at that 'answer'.] How dare you. Why him? Because he was convenient? Or something more? More importantly...how are you going to fix it?

[She lets out a sound somewhere between a yelp and a growl - her teeth are bared as though she means to tear Dillon's throat out with them - and she lets the shove and the cracked bone in her leg take her down. Hopefully Dillon will see her as less of a threat that way; hopefully he'll swallow the signals she gives him, that she's out of the fight. Part of her means them: she feels horribly outclassed, and if it had only been Steve and not Jack, she'd call this the moment to give it up. Iris is the one who flings herself foolishly into unwinnable battles; Bianca has always been too smart and cautious for that.

She's lost her grip on the atomiser, and it clatters to the floor ahead of her; but she still has two of Jack's throwing knives and one good arm. Again, she waits: she doesn't expect to have many chances and she has to make every one count. Star he may be, but Dillon's also still young, arrogant and confident.

She waits for her best moment, and when she finds it, she hurls the knife, hard, at his neck.]

[A raw scream, the kind of fury that rips apart his grin on the way out. Some part of the back of his mind is laughing, because it's absurd, it's all absurd, it was from the beginning, but for now his anger is too strong for it to surface.]

I should be grateful for being in a cage?

[He grabs the blade with his bare hand, reckless, careless, doesn't even search for microscopic flaws so much as shove his raw anger into the metal, artless and endless, staggeringa step back when it shatters with the force of his temper. But the scatter of the pieces is random, looks truly random, and his hand bleeds, keeps bleeding, the kind of steady metronomic drip to the floor induced by a heartbeat, rather than some cosmic clock. He's using himself up, impossibly but obviously, using up some limited human store of effort hauling up buckets from the deep well of his power over the walls the Admiral has erected around it. He pants, blinks, sneers.]

Didn't he teach you anything? Can't fix something without the pieces.

[And that's funny, truly funny, and he starts to laugh and laugh and laugh. He hadn't ignored Bianca - of the two of them, she'd actually managed to attack him with, with something, and he could unmake her with one touch, knew better than to think she was incapacitated, but now his eyes squeeze shut and his head tips back, and it seems like truly coincidental bad luck that his shoulders start shaking when then do, that the knife hits low muscle instead of artery. A soft noise of surprise and pain, like a grace note out of time with his gracelerating cackles, and his eyes fly open again as his grasps the knife in his bloody hand - hilt first, this time - pulls it out, spins it between his fingers, flings it precisely at her gut.]

[Blight makes a low sound of shock and what could be pain, even though what Dillon did didn't actually hurt him. But the experience of holding an object that suddenly comes apart in your hands is a unique one, and even the grip isn't spared. He lets go and what has become two twisted separate pieces drops. His gaze bounces down to his palm, which is tingling. Possibly he was scraped by a metal shard after all. Or possibly it's something else.

The manic, graceless laughter that Dillon can't stop, that anyone who's ever seen Smilex has learned to recognize, he takes in with numb and disgusted satisfaction. If he's still human enough to bleed then he's human enough to suffocate. But it's not working near fast enough for his satisfaction - and when Dillon pulls the knife out, spins it, aims low, Derek dives in front of that direction, covering Bianca. She's his ally and damn if he's getting stuck fighting this particular freak alone.

Given the difference in their respective sizes and the way he's positioned he ends up taking the blade in the side, between his ribs. Not nothing, but not the gut wound she was going to get otherwise. He lets his momentum carry so he ends up on the floor next to Bianca; sitting up and moving back then so he's directly beside her. A very quiet, very low growl - a more controlled version of what his Mirror counterpart does - builds in his throat as with left hand he presses over his injury, with right he draws the knife out of his own side and hands it back to her, now bearing a thin coat of glowing green.]

I don't know about you, but this is getting old. [Back to Dillon:] And that blade was sentimental to me, you watered-down firecracker! If I can't get it replaced this time, I'm taking it out of your hide.

[Of all the things Bianca might have been expecting, Derek Powers taking a blade for her was nowhere on the list. There isn't time to thank him, isn't time for more than an astonished, passionately grateful glance; neither of them can afford to take their attention off Dillon for long.

She doesn't waste her own breath talking to Dillon; she simply throws the knife again, as hard as she can, aimed at his midriff for the most chance of wounding something crippling. Her first throw reminded her this isn't a time for luck to be in their favour.

...but they do have numbers. An inspiration strikes her.]

Captain! Please help - hit him, stop him!

[Jack still managed to fight without his soul - perhaps not as intelligently as he's normally capable of, she isn't sure. But he did, and one more could make all the difference.]

[Steve's body has been standing idly by - while he's been watching what's going on, and certainly confused by it, the actual cause still isn't processing (not that he can process much, anyway) and there seems to be no reason, no motivation for him to step in, past the initial move he made and the question he asked. The fact that he got no answer, however, seemed to mean it wasn't a matter for him.

Although honestly, underneath all the confusion and the way the world is still horribly not as it should be, it's killing Steve, the real Steve, to have some idea of what's going on and not be able to do anything about it. He's not sure if it's comforting or disturbing that his body is still standing there, watching with this weird detached interest. But his body seems to be able to react without him in it - isn't that wrong? - but he can't do anything about what it (he?) does.

Bianca's plea, though, finally gives Steve's body something to react to. He glances over at her, as if to confirm the direction, and even though he doesn't understand the nature of the fight or whether he should be on a particular side without an actual moral compass to tell him what to do, the prompting is enough to make him simply step up and, without ceremony or remark, reel back and aim a punch at Dillon's face.]

[The shape of a hero, without his heart, but it knows the steps, and Dillon sprawls as the punch connects solidly, then tries to scramble for Derek, suddenly vicious and intent on ruining him cell by cell, finishing the horrid work he's done to himself with the part of his power that still comes easiest. All he needs is one touch.

But Steve grabs him in a secure hold, arms pinned no matter how furiously he wriggles, and Steve is - Steve's body is literally and unnaturally flawless on a cellular level. He can be hurt, his bones can be shattered, but only with proper amount of force. There are no shortcuts, no fault lines, no miniscule weak points he can tap just right, and trying to find them is only throwing fire on the fuel of his headache.

He's laughing, he's still laughing, because it's the worst sort of hilarious, doubly trapped by the automated shell of a man he's already stripped of all personhood, he can't even express how funny it is.]

You...are...an action figure.

[Peels of laughter, raw shrieking cackles punctuating with hancking coughs, dying off as the paralysis starts to set in.]

Edited 2014-10-29 18:51 (UTC)

[When Dillon started coming for him, he panicked a bit -- trying to shy further back out of reach, his overly warm to the touch skin pressing into Bianca as he leaned back, keeping space between potential doom and decimation and his body as long as he possibly could. Steve grabs Dillon just in the nick of time, and his shoulders go slack with relief.

He breathes in and out heavily for a couple seconds, too tired to even attempt concealing how he needs to regain his composure. The choked laughter and commentary from Dillon gets a sparing, annoyed gaze.]

Hilarious, yes. Very good. [Beat. He still doesn't bother trying to get up, not just yet.] Well let's never do that again. Now what?

Now we take him down to Zero. I can probably walk if you help me.

[She doesn't thank Derek, not out loud; but it's there in the way she leans into him, the warm emotion under her cool skin.]

Dillon. Did you mean what I think you meant, about putting Jack right?

Sure, why not. [Anything to kill some time, right?] Meet you at the same place?

I'll be there.

Great, then. See you soon.

[She knows Dillon is a Mirror passenger - but she doesn't know anyone else here well enough to have picked up on the vibe, that she has any reason to be afraid of him. She's heard reference to his 'powers' before, but she's assuming that here he must be capped if he'd do anything hurtful with them. After all, isn't that how it's supposed to work.

So she shows up armed with nothing but her usual level of wariness, not on her guard at all. She doesn't even have her crossbow; she's taken the sight off and has it tucked in one of her pockets in case she needs it.]

[He doesn't rush. He wants to, appetite whetted by Jack's soul, vibrant and splendid and breathlessly addictive, but that's why he doesn't. He's been a slave to addition before, and it's important to him to keep control, even if it's just measured by the space of a pool game. He's immortal. He has time.]

You want to break, or shall I?

Why don't I give it a try? See if I've learned anything from last time.

[Gretel believes inmates and wardens are here for different reasons, but many of the inmates she's talked to have been...pretty reasonable. She sees no reason if they want to that things can't be friendly.

She'll probably regret having let her guard down around Dillon though. For now she picks up a pool cue, dusts it, and then leans forward to try and take her shot.]

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19. the luminous pink jello affair

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