things and stuff and i might think of a better title later... but probably not

[tenuefarfalla]

WHO: Cho and you
WHAT: truth gas, running without anything chasing you, spa time, holiday snow fun, and anything else you want (plus one single participant prompt)
WHEN: November/December-ish. What is time?

NOTES: Cho has been keeping up with the communal breakfasts and dinners, though she's been less interactive with them. Rather than chatting with people as they come to get fed, she's been putting out large dishes for people to serve themselves from, and then waiting until the end of the meal to bring them back to the kitchen for cleaning. She's also been spending a lot more time in the lab, and anyone who's gotten used to her super chipper personality has probably noticed that she's very jumpy and quieter lately.

I don't like writing actionspam, so I won't match style, but I don't mind if our styles don't match. I'm currently on holiday with spotty wi-fi on a tablet. It will be a few days before I'm back at a real computer, but I will do my best to stay on top of tags in the mean time. I'm also dropping my prompt for the current welcome log in here, because that page is already giving me trouble when i try to load it.

A - TRUTH GAS (a million years late)

Cho isn't anywhere near the lab when it explodes, but the sound of the explosion, the tremor in the floor, it sends her running to investigate. Not that she thinks she'll be much help, realistically, if something has exploded or is on fire of some of the robots are malfunctioning in catastrophic ways again. Peter might have gotten caught up in it, though, and he's a nice kid, and she's worried. Also curious. Worried and curious.

So she goes to investigate, and hopes for the best.

[[OOC: So the start is really vague, but if you want to have something more specific set up for any point while the gas is active, hit me up on plurk or discord and we can figure something out. This is more of a "Hey, remember that thing that I totally dropped the ball with? Cho was around, you can do stuff!" than anything else. ]]

---

B - Running - assorted hallways/walkways

Ben has been an amazing friend lately. Not that he isn't normally, but even more so lately. He's been patient and indulgent, and when Cho can't sleep in the middle of the night, or just feels too shaken to walk someplace on her own, he's there for her. No judgement, not even the slightest implication that she's a burden, just support. Cole has been just as accommodating. It seems like every time her terror spikes, no matter how stupid the cause, Cole is there.

It spikes a lot. Which is why she's back to going running in the mornings and the evenings, keeping mostly to the more heavily used hallways. It's calming, burns off tension, and it makes her feel a little better. She's not frozen, she's a body in motion. The faster she runs, the better she feels. Which probably also explains why she's running further and more often, a speedy little blur of bright colours booking it through the city.

---

C - Pampering and Relaxation - the spa

The spa is staying in pretty heavy rotation when she can't get to sleep. She doesn't actually expect the place to calm her enough to make that elusive rest any more likely, but it scratches a very particular itch of homesickness. She's been talking more and more about her life with Ben. She likes it, but it's also bringing a lot of things that she's been ignoring bubbling up to the surface. She knows why she's stayed away from Japan for so long, she knows what will happen when she goes back, but she still misses it.

The replication onsen soothes some of that. Floating on her back with her eyes closed, the sound of water trickling down the stacked rocks, the scent of geothermal heated water that they've managed to almost perfectly recreate, she can pretend for a little while. It might not be a perfect solution, but it's comforting. And when she feels up for a little more interaction, she's happy to take advantage of the bots and their wonderful massages and pampering treatments and their only occasional malfunctions that leave her with lime green nail-polish or an unasked for surprise mud mask. She tries to not think about where they get the mud and why it smells like sulfur, and just does her best to outrun them in those cases.

---

D - Holiday Snow Stuff - the park

There's something special about the first snow of the season, and even in a place that doesn't seem to really have seasons, and even wen the snow if definitely not actually part of the weather, it still makes her smile. More so when a bot presses a mug of hot chocolate and a gingerbread man into her hands. tastes like Christmas. Well, Christmas in New York, which has been the kind of Christmas that feels like home for a long time now.

The sledding doesn't interest her much, but the skating looks wonderful, and the incredibly lethal looking ones the chef bot is handing out are actually precise enough to allow for some fancy footwork. It feels childish and silly in a fantastic way, and it makes her smile.

As do the snow cones, their rainbow of mystery flavours. When a dragon with beautiful swirls of blue and white along its body, veins of shimmering silver making it look like a living geode, rears up on its haunches and paws imploringly at her leg with its front paws, she immediately surrenders every shred of remaining dignity and the rest of her snow cone, bending down to feed it and coo over how precious it is. Has it found itself an easy mark? Absolutely. Is she now almost completely invested in feeding it flavoured ices and earning permission to stroke along the shimmering scales of its neck? You bet she is! These dragons are amazing, and she's taken enough with it to set aside most of her own issues in order to get as much time observing them as she can before they retreat back to wherever they appeared from.

---

D2 - sub-option open to the first taker (and technically before the option above, but who's keeping track?)

Cho wakes slowly, unwillingly. Her sleep was fitful, her dreams unpleasant, and it's so cold, all she wants to do is burrow down further into her blankets and get just a few more minutes before she has to emerge and figure out why it's so freezing cold in her room. That lasts for about a second and a half, before she's sitting up so quickly that she'd probably have knocked herself unconscious on the bottom of the bunk above her if she were a few inches taller. If she's this cold...

Her breath is fogging the air in front of her as she shoves her feet into her fleece boots and begins quickly rushing around her room, checking the containers with the glowing animals she's been studying. Marmalade immediately claims the warm spot she's vacated, only to be unceremoniously shoved aside as she begins stacking up the small acrylic cages in that space, doubling up animals that she knows will not harm each other. When she's made her stack, she throws her blanket over them all, trying to keep the heat in, and her cat just glares at her and shoves his way back into the warmth.

Something is wrong, but things go wrong all the time, and maybe they haven't gone wrong everywhere? If she can find a place that still has heat, and get them there quickly enough, they should be all right. Peter gave her that generator the last time the power went out, for her lab, to keep the work she was doing there from being compromised. That includes climate control. It's the first time in quite a while that she hasn't felt any hesitation being out on her own, concern overshadowing fear. She runs all the way up to the agricultural area with the bio-lab and hatchery, bursting through the door and into one of the labs. Not warm, no, but warm enough, it'll do. So she immediately turns around and starts running back, ignoring the shivering and feeling pretty dumb for not taking thirty seconds to grab her coat on the way out.

---


! - WILDCARD

Want to start something else? Go nuts! I'm sure there are things that I talked about wanting to do with people that I've forgotten. As always, feel free to hit me up on discord or plurk if you want to plan something out.

Comments

D2

[nockturnal]

Since encountering his brother, Hanzo has been moving restlessly through the halls of this place, uncertain what to do with himself. The cold doesn't make it any easier to think through the numb haze of encountering the impossible, and now having to live alongside it for each day going forward.

Survival comes first. Worrying about what to do now that his brother is back from the dead comes after.

So focused is he on his current predicament, that Hanzo very nearly misses the young woman dashing past at breakneck speed. He doesn't miss her on her return trip, however, as only his reflexes prevent a very abrupt collision.

"Watch yourself."

It comes out sharper than he intends, already on edge. But his ire is not for her.

good lord you are speedy

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho spins as gracefully as she can away from Hanzo, managing to not fall, but not all that successful on the grace front in any measurable way. Image definitely tarnished further by her pink pajamas, covered in penguins, and her lilac sheepskin slipper boots. She looks ridiculous, and very panicked. Still, something about an older Japanese man with a very stern bearing and disappointment laced in his voice smashes on that familial expectations trigger in her brain, and her head bobs in a quick and fully involuntary bow. "Sumi masen." She looks nervously around the hallway, as though just realizing what she's done, where she is, a bit of that tunnel vision spell broken. "Yurushite kudasai." While most people would probably just hear 'sorry - forgive me' with the nuance of it lost entirely, as not all aspects of language ever fully translate, Hanzo will probably hear her whole bundle of nerves and regret and that little snap of automatic deference.

What is probably even more obvious is how distressed she suddenly is. She can make it back to her room quickly, sure, but then she has to get all the animals up several floors, and she can carry maybe two cases at once, and she won't be able to run without shaking them all around. And it's just so cold. She needs something to carry them in, so that she can make one trip. Well, probably not one. Too heavy. Adding insult to injury, now that she's stopped running, she's beginning to shiver. Really should have grabbed that coat.

had to crank it out before i fell asleep!

[nockturnal]

It strikes him as something all too familiar, and he lifts a hand to stop her. Or at least slow her down for just a moment, quietly responding in kind.

"Daijōbudesu. Shinpai arimasen."

The edge to his tone is gone, just for a moment. It's clear she's sorry, in a hurry, and distressed on top of it all. Part of him wonders if it's for any reason he should be concerned with...and part of him simply appreciates something to focus on that isn't what to do about Genji.

Hanzo's brow furrows as the girl shivers in front of him. "What is going on?"

no this is the best. shimada first meeting unmitigated disasters. it's her theme!

[tenuefarfalla]

Is he new? She doesn't know his face, she's sure she wouldn't forget it. More so than usual. She's also been distracted, and not out in force the way she used to be, and it's possible that he's not. Which is really not the point. "It isn't usually so cold." He'll either know that or he won't, the important thing is: "Something is happening, and it's getting colder. It's colder now than when it woke me up, and I have animals in my room. I was making observations. They were more comfortable there, but now the temperature is dropping and some of them won't be able to handle it - they're already lethargic, and they're my responsibility and I have to keep them safe and I don't know how I'm going to get them all upstairs in time. I have no idea what I can carry them in, and I'm not very strong." Cho gestures at herself with a heavy resignation. She is small, and so very powerless, and she knows that her friends think that she isn't, but she also knows how she feels.

Then she runs out of steam, runs her hands through sleep rumpled hair, making it stick up at odd angles, and her breath hangs even more visibly in the air when she exhales again. She shivers once more, even more violently. "And it's so cold and I think the cold and the panic is making me stupid, all right? I feel stupid, and they're going to be hurt because of it." Maybe she could get Peter? But Peter's speed isn't steady. If they rattle them around in their cages, they'll still get hurt.

[nockturnal]

The amount of words she manages to string together, that quickly, is rather impressive. Or maybe it speaks to the panic that she's in.

"And there is no one who could assist you?" He wouldn't normally think of volunteering himself for such a task. But Cho looks so pitiful standing there, clearly out of her depth. She hasn't even attired herself properly for the task.

If he had anything else to do...

Frowning sternly, Hanzo lifts his chin. "Hn. Show me where they are," he murmurs, nodding in the direction she'd seemed to be heading before nearly running into him.

[tenuefarfalla]

“I left my phone in my room,” she admits, the self loathing in those words palpable. She says it like it’s an unforgivable sin. A failure. An error in judgement that she shouldn’t be forgiven for. Maybe it is. The whole time she was running around she could have called Peter or Finnick or Cole or even Kabal. But she’s leading him down the hallway all the same, because fixating on her screw up will only do more damage. “Peter is strong, but he’s sort of. Pin-ball-y, and I’m not sure how well they’d handle that. And Finnick is fast but we haven’t talked in a while, and I don’t know if Cole’s teleporting is safe for things that aren’t him and Kabal is... Kabal.” He’d help her. She thinks. Probably. Maybe there is some tiny part of her that is afraid to test that. She can’t ask Ben. He ready carries so much guilt on his shoulders for the harm of animals like these, harm that was not of his design. She will not run the risk of adding to it. She will not.

They reach her room, and she keys open the door at the panel. “What if I take the time to call them now, and the time I waste means these guys end up too cold to pull through? Or what if I don't wait and move them myself, but I’m not quick enough and that’s what kills them? I just. I don’t know what the right thing to do is.”

She used to. She thinks she did, anyway. You do your best to help those who need it. Animals, people, it doesn’t matter. If you can help, you help, you do your best and keep your word and trust that things will work out if you put everything you have into doing what’s right. She hasn’t been certain of much in her life, but she was certain of that. Until she wasn’t. Now she just doesn’t know. She doesn’t know how to help, what will just make things worse, how to be worth anything. She’s caught in limbo. It sucks.

Her shaking now is not all to do with the cold, but it’s certainly part of it. She pulls on the first coat she gets her hands on, a long beige wool thing with a hat and scarf that she also puts on. Her room is crowded. Empty of people, she’s clearly the only one who actually sleeps there, given that the other bunks are used for storage and one is missing the mattress entirely, but crowded with things. Lab equipment, clothes, books, pieces of robots, they cover mostly available surfaces. Carefully folded origami decorations, including strings of hundreds of tiny paper cranes, hang from the ceiling and are stuck to the walls. There are also pictures in the walls, carefully and lovingly rendered portraits. Snapshots from her memory. There is an organization to the chaos, but it’s anything but sparse. She doesn’t seem to have time to be self conscious about it. She just pulls her blanket off of the stack of acrylic containers, looking over her charges with worried eyes.

The pale pink sugar glider has stopped moving entirely, curled in a ball in one corner, and she takes it out and tries to rub some heat back into its little body with a careful touch. “They’re not doing well...”

B.

[kaballin]

Aww, look at someone running, that's cute. He speeds by her in a purple blur, disappears a few meters away and then reappears next to her, keeping pace.

"Something chasing you?" Kabal is in a good mood. There is food around and he's had more than a few hot chocolates laced with bourbon. So even though it's cold and he's actually wearing a shirt for once, he's not feeling it in the least.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho is currently running in one of her warmest outfits, with a long wool coat over it, and a scarf wrapped securely around her neck. Just because it's colder than all get out currently, and she's sleeping even worse now that she's doing it on a cot in the lab, doesn't mean she doesn't still wake up some mornings with that knot of panic choking her, and the urge to run until she's far away from everything, until she's certain she can be fast enough to be safe.

"Not currently." She's trying for jovial, but the smile doesn't reach her eyes. Hopefully Kabal is too tipsy to notice.

[kaballin]

Kabal wouldn't notice stone cold sober. He's not the brightest chunk of charcoal on the bbq. "So this is just for fun? New hobby?"

Unless she did this daily because he hasn't been paying attention. "Don't have people to feed or science to do or whatever thirty-thousand other helpful things you do gooder types are always up to?"

And then because he had a single unselfish thought for once, "You see all the dragons?"

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho nods her head, still running, the exertion of it making her a little breathless as she responds. "Old hobby, but yes. It-- makes me feel safe. Safer." She realizes how ridiculous it is to be saying that to a man who can both easily physically dominate her, and outrun her without any apparent effort, but the point stands. Besides, if she accepts her actual situation, that will be the end, she'll crawl into bed and never get out again. So she runs, and tries to believe that if the worst happens again, she'll be able to get away.

Dragons, though. Cho turns her head and her pace slows, because it's fairly difficult to run with the top half of your body twisted to the side. "Did you say dragons?"

[kaballin]

"Practicing so you can run away? Smart." Well sort of, he'd be a little more impressed if she learned how to use a knife or a sword or something. Not very imaginative at the best of times he can't even begin to fathom what Cho would look like holding a sword. She'd probably fall over.

"Yeah, little blue and silver ones that are out eating the snow. Figured you'd have a whole room full of them by now." It's like he knows her.

A/wildcard

[lallipop]

It's some time after the explosion that Lalli finds himself at Cho's door, holding the (now thoroughly empty) lacquered box that he told Onni to essentially steal. Now that he's better, there's no reason to hold onto it, and, well... it's a nice box. Even if it wasn't, it's only right to return it, but there's a good chance it has some value to Cho.

So here he is, standing in front of her door and staring.

He stays like that for several moments before he reaches up and scratches at the door--then thinks better of it and knocks, since that's what most people do. When she opens it he simply thrusts the box toward her without meeting her eyes.

"Here's your box back."

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho is not expecting Lalli to be standing in front of her. Not at all. The surprise of it is probably written all over her face. Her door opens immediately after he knocks, even before his hand has lowered. The scratching sound was enough for her to come investigate. Every odd sound now sends a little tendril of dread creeping through her. She can't ignore them any more, her brain won't allow it.

Lalli is a good thing to find on the other side of the threshold, even if he's unexpected. The box even more so. A part of her had wondered if she was ever going to get it back, if maybe it hadn't been some kind of calculated choice to take it. Not that it made sense to her in the moment, or really all that much sense now. She's just glad to have it back. She clutches it to her chest as though it's far more important than a simple box.

"I'm glad you're feeling better," is what she finally says to him. He looks good. Not so much on death's door any more. "Would you like to come in?" Her room is clean, but cluttered. There are animals in acrylic cases all over the place, about a dozen of them. There is also a small collection of scientific equipment on a table shoved against the far wall and spilling over onto the desk. An orange cat and a grey kitten are lounging on a large floor cushion in the sunlight, and a truly gigantic caterpillar is hanging from the corner of one of the bunks. There are also folded paper decorations hanging from the ceiling, including hundreds of tiny paper cranes. A few are also stuck on the walls, though that space is reserved more for drawings, almost all of them of people in candid poses, usually smiling or laughing.

[lallipop]

He does step over the threshold, but hesitantly, like he's not sure he really should. The contents of her room are too overwhelming for him to really examine, so he mostly stands in the center of the room with his head bowed awkwardly. Though he does make sure to give the cats a wide berth.

He stands there like he's waiting for something to happen, before he remembers that this was his doing in the first place.

"Um." He has no idea how to say anything on his mind, and he's starting to regret even trying. Eventually, he just blurts it all out. Better to rip off the bandage all at once.

"I caused everyone a lot of trouble that didn't need to happen. So I'm sorry. And I'm sorry for taking your box. And don't say it's okay because I was sick." The last sentence comes out more rude than he meant it to, and he closes his mouth with a sharp click of teeth, eyes still trained on the floor.

[tenuefarfalla]

Cho is, in fact, about to tell him it’s all right because he was sick. She closes her mouth. Instead, she says: “I appreciate that you brought it back. Would you like some tea? Or some cookies? We could sit in the dining area. It’s a little... simpler.” Less overwhelming. The chaotic nature of the decor doesn’t spill into the area, the walls blank and the tabletop clear, save for a semi translucent container of honey cookies.

She’s moving to put the empty box away, to heat some water. It gives Lalli a little space to make his way over in his own time, or to reject the idea entirely.

C

[redwinekindofgirl]

Julie goes to the spa for much the same reason that Cho does. To get away from things for a while and especially to get away from her own thoughts. The size of the place relative to the current population of Anchor keeps it quiet at the times she chooses to go (sometimes texting Klaus for company, sometimes not), and it's ideal if she really, really doesn't want to run into anyone but is sick of being in her room.

Today isn't her lucky day for not having company, but she doesn't mind. When she walks into a room that Cho is already occupying she doesn't immediately back out, but clears her throat to announce her presence in a way the soft steps of bare feet did not.

"Hey, mind if I join you?"

[tenuefarfalla]

At the sound of the clearing throat, Cho sits bolt upright, cold cucumber slices falling from her eyes, heart in her throat. Later, she will blame the sound of the water splashing into the pool at the far side of the room for her total lack of awareness that Julie entered. It beats believing that there is yet another person who can move silently enough to sneak up on her. In the moment, she takes a deep breath to calm her pounding hert, and smiles, retrieving the slices from the folds of her plush robe with hands that shake only slightly. It's only Julie. She likes Julie. This is fine.

"Not at all. Please." The hand without the cucumber slices in it gestures to the room as a whole - the loungers (one of which she is occupying) and the pool and the steam room occupying one far corner. A little bot chooses this moment to return holding three bottles of nail polish - all of them in pretty neutral tones. "Hey, we got lucky today," she says with a smile. "The nail polish is actually nail polish."

[redwinekindofgirl]

Even with the quiet way she walked in, the level of surprise she triggers when she speaks is enough to have her coming to an uncertain halt. The visible start, that small shake in the hands as she picks up the cucumber slices... Julie files it away in the back of her mind.

"Haven't been in this part before. What is it when it isn't nail polish?"

These bots try, but while Julie is no IT specialist she has a feeling they have more than a few bugs in their software after so long rattling around this place on their own.

[tenuefarfalla]

"Depends on the day. If you're lucky, it's just empty bottles. Last week I had a bot who only brought a real bottle of top coat. Everything else had dried out a long time ago. I still let it give me a manicure. It just seemed so happy, and so careful with its brushes loaded up with nothing. It was weird and... kind of sweet?" She shrugs one shoulder. "Other times I've gotten perfume, some kind of hair dye, something that smelled like amonia, hand sanitizer. Once they brought out what I am ninty nine percent positive was the undiluted chlorine solution they use to keep these pools clean. If you ever see one coming at you with an orange bottle with blue writing on it, run. They seem to lose interest once you pass into the next room."

[redwinekindofgirl]

"Huh."

Julie's interest in cosmetics has mostly been more of a passing fancy. There was a stage, in that awkward cusp between pre-teen and adult, where she just wanted to be 'normal' and she'd grab the odd piece of makeup anywhere she could. As the years went by, the amount of cosmetics that were usable at all went down, and Julie stopped caring that much.

But, you know, a girl does just like to look pretty sometimes (or maybe she just has a need to put makeup on her zombie boyfriend so no one shoots him).

"Think they were giving each other makeovers before we started showing up here?"

The Park

[killedwithlove]

In an alarmingly show of his actual inhumanity, Cole is wandering around the snowy field with bare feet, sweatpants, tee and a hoodie that looks suspiciously like one of Ben's. He's not wearing his hat, because he has the hood pulled up, strands of pale gold hair brushing over his forehead.

There's also a small dragon attacked to his leg, trying to climb him and making tiny, pathetic noises. Another is on his shoulder, clinging to his head and arm and chittering at the one trying to climb him.

"Hello, Cho." He watches as the one on his leg abandons him for the promise of flavoured ice. "They like what you have to eat."

[tenuefarfalla]

Most people would barely be able to see it in the softening lines of her body, but Cole will absolutely be able to feel how every drop of anxiety in her vanishes at the sound of his voice. Before she even turns to see him. "They are so cute," she tells him, reluctant to leave her crouched position by a very rotund tiger stripped dragon of pale silver and deep navy. It has been getting the bulk of her attention, and the bulk of her food.

When the one from Cole's leg begins pawing at her coat, she turns to feed it, and gets a good look at Cole. "You got new clothes! I like them. They look--" It's the feet that steal her focus first. "Where are your shoes? Don't you have a jacket?" Part of her mind, the purely logical part, knows that Cole is not human and does not have the same needs and frailties. The emotional part of her mind, however, does not care. The emotional part of her mind floods with concern that he may make himself sick, that this might harm him somehow.

She quickly feeds the dragon from Cole's leg the rest of her snow-cone and closes the small gap between them. She knows her coat and boots won't fit him, though she'd give up each if she thought they might. Her hands are already pulling the scarf from around her neck, though, so that when she gets to him she can loop it around his neck, tuck it high against his ears. It's dark green cashmere, butter soft and smelling faintly of Cho's beauty products, herbal and floral and clean. It does a small measure to quell her reflexive concern for his wellbeing and comfort.

[killedwithlove]

"I washed them and they fell apart." Which was a surprise to no one, even Cole, honestly. "I don't know how to put them back. I asked nicely, but they don't know how to be the shape they were. But I have this hoodie! It keeps me warm like the armour Cadash gave me did, have to protect him, he's so fragile, don't want to watch him bleed again- It's warm like that. But more. Because Ben gave it to me."

And watch the way that Cole positively glows when he mentions Ben. The dragons look to him, hypnotically drawn to the burst of emotion.

He ducks his head to let her wrap the scarf around his neck, around the outside of the hood and it's warm like the hoodie and smells sweet and feels soft. "I don't actually feel cold like humans," he says softly. "I don't get sick. Or frostbite."

[tenuefarfalla]

"Oh..." Cho is still fluffing the scarf around his chin, though her movements have slowed. "So this must seem pretty silly to you, huh?" It was nice, actually, to think that she could do something for him. He does so much for her, and she feels like all she does is take. For one moment, it had seemed (however illogically) like she might be able to take care of him.

Below them, the dragons do not understand why the food has stopped coming, and the smallest and most nimble goes investigating, climbing Cho's leg, and then her coat, stuffing its little head into the pocket in search of another sweet treat.

[killedwithlove]

"No." He shakes his head. "Not silly. Like caring. So it does help me, just in a different way." The scarf doesn't give him physical warmth, but it gives him something else that he needs and uses far more.

"Just because I don't need food or heat doesn't mean you can't help. You do." He scoops a hand under a dragon's haunches and lifting it up to his shoulder.