Intro Log: Rock This City

[hadrielmods]

Who: New arrivals and everyone else!
What: The intro log for January
Where: The colosseum and all around the city.
When: January 10th-14th
Warnings: New folks, rockin' dudes made of rock, and collectible friends!

This time, it's different.

There's no cave, no stone walls looming up around you and overhead, no stifling air or artificial light- not that you'd appreciate it, seeing as to how you've probably never been here before. And still, when you land facefirst on the dirt ground of the colosseum, you may not quite appreciate all the improvements and steps we've had to take to get here- after all, you're still surrounded by strangers in a crumbling city on an alien planet in the middle of nowhere.

Oh, and you're being attacked by Earth Elementals. These creatures are tall, between seven to ten feet, and made of solid rock, capable of punching through all the squishy bits of you- and for whatever reason, they definitely want to start punching. They're incredibly strong and, seeing as to how they're enchanted alive and have no internal organs, they're very difficult to kill.

But don't let that scare you off. For all the collectors in you, you can also find a very special array of beanie babies all scattered at the ground at your feet. Do you know that some of these things will be worth a lot of money someday? Better find the rarest one and stockpile it while you can! You might run into the rainbow crab, the platypus, or the sought-after bald eagle, or many more! Be sure to never take the tag off and never ever let anyone play with them so they don't lose value.

Once you've got your kids' college fund squared away, it's time to start exploring! You can explore the rest of the city! Find a house, a new monster, a project to help with, or simply scavenge for supplies. Good luck, and enjoy your stay in Hadriel!

► This log covers January 10th-14th.
► Feel free to make your own logs as well!
► All characters arrive with phones that have network communication and the newbie guide installed.
► Please put your character's name and open/closed in the subject line of your starters!

Comments

*heavy breathing*

[slapsyouback]

[She hears that familiar voice, that tone, and her eyes find him immediately. Taako. He's looking rather nonchalant, which is the case more often than not, and though he's not looking at her she immediately feels embarassed to be found sitting on the ground like this, a child's toy in her hand. She stands quickly and brushes herself off, clearing her throat and trying to hold herself with some level of composure.

She doesn't quite have the strength to let go of the stuffed animal yet, though. She holds it with both hands behind her back, in the hopes he hasn't seen it, and won't.]

Taako. I'm--I wasn't sure that I'd find anyone else here.

[It's good, right? This is a good thing. Whatever happened to bring her here, she isn't all alone. Whatever strange adventure this may turn out to be, she doesn't have to deal with it all by herself.

But that's a pretty naive way to look at it; she knows that as soon as she thinks it. He didn't come running to her, asking if she was okay. He doesn't even seem to be doing that thing he sometimes does where he pretends to be aloof when he's actually concerned and doesn't want to show it. What he did say doesn't make a lot of sense at all, actually, but she has no reason to think this isn't the Taako she'd seen only moments before, and that Taako had just started remembering some stuff.]

Um. This is pretty shit timing, huh? Being brought here, after-

[After. She doesn't want to finish that thought. Just in case--in case he doesn't remember. Maybe the inoculation process was interrupted by the trip here. Maybe, just maybe, this little debacle will have helped her in some way. Maybe he still doesn't know everything he's not supposed to know.]

R I S E

[pocketspa]

[After. That's what he latches onto, and his eyes shift over, because that's what he wanted to know.]

After what?

[He doesn't give her the chance to respond, pushing off from the Umbra Staff and hooking it onto the crook of his arm. She has to know. She has to, or she wouldn't be dodging him, but he doesn't want to give up his hand. He wants her to fold. There's still a part of him, ugly and visceral, that wants to make her really pay for the years of pain and mistakes and loneliness. But it's been months for him, since he stood in that office and met her eyes for just a moment before he ended up here. And... a lot has happened. Lup has been here, and he knows she's still-- well, she's alive. It's a start. But the future is so uncertain, and seeing her again lights that fire, that well of hurt and pain he's been ignoring while he can.

Always the problem with putting things off. But it's not what he cares about right now. What he cares about is she's here, and she knows, she has to.

He's going to make her pay for it.]

So what is it, huh? What're you expecting out of ol' Taako? You have another plan? Another place you wanna shove somebody until it's convenient?

[He's watching her, now. Eyes forward, arms crossed. This isn't a greeting. It's a barricade.

But maybe Lucretia knows something about walls.]

[slapsyouback]

[Well. That certainly does settle that, doesn't it?

He remembers. Of course he does. It was a ridiculous, last-ditch, pie-in-the-sky kind of hope she'd held on to that maybe, maybe she wouldn't have to have this conversation. But it's not that easy. It's never that fuckin' easy.

She doesn't want this to escalate--if she has to talk about this, she'd like to do it rationally--but she finds her hands balling up into fists and her jaw clenching already. It's the 'shove somebody until it's convenient' line that gets her. As if it was ever that simple. As if convenience ever crossed her mind.

She tries to remind herself that he doesn't know her thought process, he doesn't yet understand why she did what she did. If she does this moment right, maybe she can make him understand. Give him the explanation he deserves, the explanation she'd always intended to give, after her mission had been fulfilled.]

I'm--well currently I'm not expecting anything of you, Taako, except, maybe the request that you'll listen to me for a moment. I'm sure you're...angry, and you have right to be. I'm sure you have questions, and I can do my best to answer them. Just--

[She takes a step toward him, her hands going up as if to reach out to him, but thinks better of it immediately, and her hands stay frozen a little ways out in front of her. She's sure she must look very weak right now. Maybe that's for the best.]

I didn't do any of it for no reason, Taako.

[pocketspa]

[Oh, those were not the words he wanted to hear.

If he was being honest with himself, there were no words he wanted to hear. There was nothing she could have just said to make it better. To make ten years- ten fucking years- of loneliness and pain and false idols and attribution just okay. As far as he's concerned, her only saving grace is that Lup is alive, here and back in Faerun. But that's it. If she had been killed, if he was going home to be alone the rest of his life, he'd have gunned her down without hesitation right where she stands.

She steps towards him and he freezes, a hand crossing his body to clamp hard on the Umbra Staff. He'll fight. He'll fight her here. She is dangerous, she is the most dangerous thing he has ever seen, because she took him from himself. She took his heart and it only took seconds. She was surgical. Precise.

He will never make the mistake of letting her that close again.]

I don't give a shit what reason you did it for! Your stupid plan? Thinking you knew better than all of us? Are you kidding me?

[The Umbra Staff is unhooked from his arm. He's not pointing it at her yet-- yet-- but it's part of his gestures now, sweeping and violent.]

You fucking took everything from me!

[slapsyouback]

[Ok. Alright. This is already very bad. She shouldn't have moved, she should have stayed put, maybe given him more space, even, because she could see--between all the anger--that she frightened him just there, just a little.

Somehow that's worse than anything else. He can be angry and fight and scream, but she can't watch him freeze up like that again. She's seen Taako come out of a lot of bad situations if not unscathed then at least alive enough to make some snarky comment and carry on. Seen him force his way through every situation on sheer 'fuck no' alone. And he's...afraid she might do something to him now. She made him feel that way.

It's a pain that throbs in her chest and makes her want to collapse in on herself. Enough that if he raised that Umbrella to her now she's not sure she'd do anything to defend herself. She doesn't want to fight him. She doesn't want to hurt him anymore, she never did. None of it was supposed to be like this.]

I--I know, Taako. I know what I did. Believe me when I say that I only did what I thought was right. I know it was horrible in a lot of ways, but it was supposed to fix things. We were destroying that world, and I wanted to save it. I wanted to save all of you. From the guilt, from everything. I thought I could do it alone. It was always supposed to be temporary.

[She's got her hands up now, so he can see her open palms, but otherwise she doesn't move. She won't move again, regardless of what happens.]

I never meant to take anything from you for as long as I did. I'm--please know I mean this--I am so, so sorry, Taako. I'm sorry.

[pocketspa]

Save me from what? The memory of my fucking family? My sister? You think you knew better for my own fucking head than her?

[He doesn't even know what he's feeling right now. Grief, but it feels muted. Anger, but it burns in a way that's taking him out faster than it's hurting her. He doesn't want her to be here. He doesn't want to think about this, to deal with it. This was supposed to be where he could have his family again- no Hunger, no her, no problems.

The gods, he thinks he can beat. Her... he feels like he's already lost.]

What do you think your apologies are gonna fuckin' do, huh? You think you're gonna walk in here and we're just gonna be okay? Like, hey, it's fine 'cuz you also went through shit?

[He doesn't know a lot of the finer details, about the loneliness, about the careful placement of making them happy, about any of it. But he doesn't want it to matter. He doesn't want to feel bad for her. He wants to be angry, he wants to be validated, he wants to be fucking right.]

You have no fucking idea what happened. You stole ten years of my life. And you just think you can make it okay.

[slapsyouback]

[Despite the fact that much of what he says makes her want to drop her hands at her sides and ball them into fists, she doesn't. She stays stone still; the only movement is in her facial expressions as she tries very hard to remain neutral looking, empathetic even, and not let the frustration or defensiveness she's beginning to feel show in her eyes.]

You remember now, Taako. So you must remember what it was like back then. Everyone was so unhappy. Lup was unhappy with what was happening to that world. With what we had done. And then she disappeared.

[It had been the final straw in what had made her enact her plan. Lup, who's plan they had gone through with in the first place. Lup, who was so disturbed by the outcome of that plan. Lup, who had once railed at them against even the idea of hurting a world with their decisions--gone, suddenly, with nothing more than a note. What was Lucretia supposed to think?]

None of us knew where she had gone or why, but I thought--I thought maybe she'd gone to undo some of the damage we'd done with the Relics. Damage I also wanted to undo. We couldn't find her then, Taako. I thought-- I thought my plan was the only way to fix things. Maybe I was wrong about that, but at the time I could see no other way.

[She doesn't want to give ground. He has every right to be angry, but she has always had her reasons for what happened. Her reasons were the only thing that kept her going, along with the idea that someday they would all be together again. She has never let go of that. It was not a perfect plan, it was cruel, certainly, but she is sure Taako himself could have done no better with the options available to them.]

I'm not asking you to forgive me. I only say that I'm sorry so you know that I am. I don't expect things to just be all right now--that would be foolish. Maybe you'll never forgive me. Maybe you'll never speak to me again. And I will have to live with that.

Is that--Is that what you want? [It's an honest question, not meant as a taunt. She sincerely doesn't know what he'd prefer from her, but she's prepared to give him just about anything.]

[pocketspa]

[Is that what he wants?

God, what does he want?

The times he'd let himself entertain fantasies of this meeting, it had changed. At first, one of those first nights when he brought Lup back home and they didn't have a second bed yet and he slept with his face pressed into the crook of her neck, arms around her, he imagined it. He imagined pointing the staff at Lucretia, counting down, and firing. It was an eye for an eye. A sister in his life for... well, she was family. What other word could he have used?

He didn't think about it again until she showed up the first time, that meeting where he screamed, and cried, and wanted to make it hurt. But she couldn't understand. And she disappeared again, and the fantasy changed, back to where she was old and knew her sins and still did not show mercy.

But it's been a long time since then. And Lup is-- not dead, very much alive, and he knows her now, won't forget again. And the hurt is still there, raw as he digs his nails into it, as he rips open his own chest to the well of pain he's kept there. He can forget about it- he's incredibly good at forgetting about everything- but it's there. And he's ripped off the scab, any kind of healing he could have offered, and he feels like he's bleeding in front of her in a show that only feels grotesque. He's a parody of himself. Ripping himself apart for some semblance of a show.

He stops, dips his head a bit, closes his eyes and takes a breath. Hold it together. Don't let her see you fall. You're better than this. Put those feelings away. He's looking at the ground, ears drooped towards his shoulders, chin tucked down by his collarbone.]

If it wasn't a good idea for Lup to run off on her fuckin' own, what made you think it was so smart?

[Says the man who spent the following ten years alone out of choice. No bonds. No heart.]

I won't let you take her again.