sixthiterationlogs | [MINGLE] Saints & Sinners Masquerade

[MINGLE] Saints & Sinners Masquerade

WHERE: Corn field next to the inn
WHEN: 31 October, all day and night
OPEN TO: ALL - MINGLE
WARNINGS: Please warn as appropriate in your subject lines
NOTES: Please make sure you have read and understand the event details! If you have questions, drop them here. RECOMMENDED BUT NOT REQUIRED: Put your SCRUBS COLOR in your OTA subject line for folks doing bingo. Time your OTA for the harvest feast, the masquerade, or both. Costume matches and details for folks who did not get matched are here.

This morning, our intrepid villagers awoke to a surprise of the nicer kind: A bundle of clothing left at the foot of their bed, tied with a bow. There is also a note: Put on your new outfit and join the festivities in the corn field next to the inn.

You may be thinking, what corn field next to the inn? The one that sprung up fully-mature overnight, of course.

In the middle of the field, villagers will find an autumn feast: Tables piled with harvest time food and drink, warm and rustic decorations, the day's sunshine fending off any chill in the air.

Tuck in and enjoy, villagers, but take note: Things often look different in the dark, and you might be one of them.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Part of being in the public eye is being aware of when you're watched- though Tony doesn't think it's any particular kind of staring that should have him concerned, when he finds the source of the itching between his shoulderblades feeling he cocks his head to the side, staring right back.

Feral, his mind supplies, but that thought usually applies to like. Cats. Animals. On occasion scraggly biologists but he hasn't seen it on a person in a few years. "...Pretty sure none of this is poisonous. Come on and grab a plate."

Because he's seen that lean, hungry look in a person before. What the hunger is for, that kind of depends on the person. But food's easiest to offer and- well. She's a new face.

He's staring back. She feels like it's something of a challenge, and doesn't look away. If anything, she tenses, a slight posturing of the shoulders as if daring him to act on this eye contact.

Then he speaks, and she's not sure what to do with his words. He's talking about the food, she's able to figure that out, but it throws her enough to cause her to lose the edge.

She makes her way closer to the table, keeping an eye on him until she needs to look down to take a plate. She takes a moment to inspect it; turning it over, running her thumb over the smooth surface. It was whole, unbroken and unspoiled. She'd seen fragments of plates, cracked pieces, but never something whole and clean.

7 looks then to the food, thinking back on the way things had withered when the gas went through. This didn't really look like that; it looked more like the pictures and paintings that 3 and 4 had collected in their library. "Is this what it looks like, when it's not poisoned?"

"...generally you can't tell when it is, honestly- but no one's dropped dead yet and I'm pretty sure it'll fuck up their study if they kill off all their subjects." They're trying to fix something, to make something happen. A brute force sort of way of doing it, trying over and over with different people, different clones until the tests come up any particular way but-

That's big game thinking. Right now? There's food, a feral woman that handles plates like they're a mystery to her, and an odd tension at the base of his spine that reminds him of staring down Loki.

Unhinged? Feral? Run ragged in one way or another. He keeps his posture open, his hands visible, his voice low. That's what you do, right? right. "It's fine. Have some."

It's certainly helping. The arrival had been a shock, and now she's having to relearn all her preconceived notions of humans. With one exception, she'd only ever seen them at war. Each positive encounter she has is another step towards quieting the fight or flight instinct she keeps battling with.

She evens her plate out and reaches for a roll, picking it up, squeezing it, looking it over before setting it on her plate. Grapes, next, she'd seen these in a painting, she's pretty sure. Giving them a once over before adding them next to the roll.

Her stomach rumbles, and she tenses at the sound and gives him a sidelong glance, trying to gauge if he'd heard it. She's not entirely sure what that even was. "Is this sort of thing normal, here?"

She makes a general motion towards the feast.

"No idea. I haven't been here that long, you'll have to ask the old timers." Ignoring the grumbling of her stomach is easy- he's been there, he's heard Bruce while he was there. Learning how to trust food being readily available took him awhile after Afghanistan. Getting Bruce comfortable enough to trust that whatever he needed he'd get took awhile too. "We all throw in now and then for a dinner, I think there was a crawfish boil? And I managed to get everyone together for pasta and pizza a few weeks ago."

Tony shrugs, fluid, slow, careful. "Food brings people together. It's a universal thing."

Food brings people together.

Maybe that's why humans painted so many pictures of fruit.

It's something interesting to consider, though, and she pulls off a grape and pops it into her mouth. It's ... weird ... with the tough outer skin and watery insides, but the taste is pleasant.

"I guess I hadn't thought about it that way." Which is to say what humans ate and why wasn't part of her daily routine battling their leftover creations.

"Usually when it's abundant it's a sign of safety or a celebration of survival- or trying to get everything eaten before it goes off and becomes wasteage as winter rolls in." He shrugs. "It's- a thing? I think it's a thing. I'm not used to this shit."

He's well aware of coming from privilege. Never having to go hungry or think about when the next paycheck is going to come in, if the bank account will be empty. Here? None of that shit exists, let alone matters.

She's never had to worry about eating before, let alone stores and shortages. In this specific case, her privilege might trump his. Of course, she had other things to worry about back them, too.

"So, this much food, we don't have to worry?" It was a large spread to her, at least, and between the people and the costumes it's as much a celebration as she'd ever have been able to imagine.

"The food's safe, I'm pretty sure we're stored up well for the winter. If not, we've got hunters that are willing to fill the gaps and a greenhouse that's still growing." Which'll keep everyone fed, the well water still comes up clear, and fishing hasn't ended badly just yet.

"I can hunt."

It's out of her mouth before she even realizes she's saying it, but she doesn't back down on the sentiment. She'd tracked and killed the beast, she'd helped take out the Flying Machine, she may not have bested the Seamstress but as long as she was alive she would throw herself at challenges and hunting wasn't that much of a difference, was it?

"I can track."

"And lo, one more hunter appears. We should be set for winter, then. I can build things but I'm not much for hunting. They didn't have classes for that in MIT." At least not in his degree path. Tracking might've been in one of the more outdoorsy degree programs but, not something that ever came up for him.

"Ehmitee?"

2 would have loved this place, 2 would have been asking all of the questions. 7 catches them as the come, but she's mostly interested in the here and now.

"I can track," she iterates, "it's good to have a variety." She could make weapons but she couldn't construct things like 2 or 5 could.

"M I T. College? Guess they don't have that where you're from. University for tinkerers." It's the est way he can sum it up but, shit. She must be extra removed from what he knows if a predominant college rings zero bells.

"Good, because I enjoy eating meat but can't hunt for shit. Or track. I mean there's my cheat code I got when I woke up here, but that's about it."

"I have a couple friends who would have liked that." She could see 2 and 5 getting on very well in a University for tinkerers. The memory gives her a fleeting smile, but no, she had absolutely no recognition with Tony's elite alma mater.

"Cheat code?"

"The power that came with my scrubs. Insert stress, get a light blue glow pointing in the right direction." Ish? He's still testing the parameters on that, but having nailed down the stress and anxiety trigger has helped a lot in sorting out how to use this new magic...whatever it is. Silent Jarvis Vision.

She picks another grape and rolls it between her fingers as she listens. What he's describing was reminiscent of the thing she experienced in the well.

"I've seen that," She certainly was under a lot of stress when it happened. "Is that normal, here?"

"That specifically? If someone woke up in Navy Scrubs. Different colors have different quirks, I don't know if anyone's sat down to examine them all properly. I know...Red Scrubs pop a bubble like shield around them if they're stressed."

Or horny, but maybe that's just Wynnona.

"Okay, that's ... interesting." Just having powers in the first place was rather odd, now hearing that they were specifically triggered and were varied as well.

"A bubble shield ... that sounds useful." The little path, though, that was pretty useful the first time she used it, too.

"We might have to sit down and figure them all out but, honestly? I'm more curious about why we have them. Why take away what we can do, put them in a vending machine, and give us something that, while useful? Is very different from anything we had onhand before." It doesn't make sense.

So much of this place doesn't make sense.

"How much do they change? Do they change everyone? I saw someone - big, tall, gray, he had horns ... there's no one like that where I'm from. He says he wasn't changed." But I was. She thinks, but she can't say.

"Enhanced. Mages don't have their magic, supersoldiers don't have anything that make them stronger or faster or heal better than an average human being." He guesses that's the way it shakes out? He's not sure.

"So ... if they're not human, it just removes the extra bits?" Maybe, was it because she hadn't been organic?

She's missing being small.

"I think so. Sometimes what made them more is up for grabs in the power vending machine in the bunker but-" He waves a vague hand. "I haven't been there to look too deep into it or how it works. I'm just assuming the wristbands are involved."

Her eyebrows peak and she points at the wristband. "This? This thing?" She looks at it, for the first time really thinking about getting it off. She hasn't thought much about it until now.

She picks at it, as if she could peel it off that easily. "No no, no machines." She's muttering that more to herself.

"It's not worth trying. No one can get them off. I don't know how they managed that either but- they're benign." Harmless, relatively. Useful to have too.

[MINGLE] Saints & Sinners Masquerade

Harvest

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