All Night, Me And My Wretched Device

[string_instrument]

Who: Nova Pastos, Lil Cal, the Abyss, and-- (you!)
What: Catch-all for Nova Pastos' time in the Abyss
When: 7/31 and on until they're saved
Where: The. Uh. The Abyss.
Warnings: Suicidal ideation, derealisation and depersonalisation, break with reality, child neglect, more to be added as things are written



Like failure itself, the Abyss knocks the wind from him.

Not physically, and not like a punch, but mentally and like the hard, bone-shattering impact with the water's surface tension. It cracks across his psyche just like that, splintering across the sheer plane of his mind. It wants him to break first, of that he's sure, but he doesn't.

The pain, however, wraps around his brain the same way his body was engulfed by ocean--in that dream.

But this is not the Abyss of his ocean. In some ways, it's similar. Endless, with an infinite depth and a vastness of existence that renders any single living object irrelevant. But it still has solid ground, and gravity, and air to breathe. The terrain varies from lifeless sand to gritty soil, peppered with inert rock. It's like the earthy quasi-beach before one reaches the ocean shore, but without ever seeing the sea at all.

There is no ocean.

The dark sky yawns hollow above him, void of sun or moon or stars.

This is also reminiscent of the ocean, but without the pressure, the movement, or the power. It's thin and strange and empty. There is an absence, a death of substance, that he feels every time he breathes in, filling his lungs with nothing and leaving him aching for purchase, for presence, for reality--for any sense of realness at all. It is as though reality itself has disincorporated him, and it...

It is horribly familiar.

It feels like home. Like his penthouse suite, its rooftop 168 metres in the air, a perfectly isolated habitat soaring above the Chalra skyline and filled with a restless accumulation of stuff. Computers, horse statues, movie posters, horse prints, puppets, furniture, weaponry, mechanical dreams, workout equipment.

But it never felt any less empty.

Now, in this uncanny echo of that infinity of loneliness, that lonely infinitude--the reality he holds in his mind gives way to the tangible waste of his existence. It seeps into him through the cracks of his broken heart--the soup can, rent asunder into mere atoms, compressed and devoured by the sea. A discaded husk whose failure was inevitable. And that was okay. It was always meant to be.

But not like this. Not like this. There is nowhere for him to go, nothing for his essential nature to become.

This is not his ocean.

There is no ocean.

This is just stone, and grit, and Nova Pastos, and Lil Cal.

And--

Comments

Storms, the glint of gold in the distance

[theriflespiral]

And what may yet come, from that far and sunless
that far and sunless
that far and sunless land?

Briefly, it seems... Heralds of a storm. In as much as there are storms in the Abyss, so close to fully wind-swept that even the wind feels temporarily embarrassed to move. There is something golden, on the half-existent horizon. It twists, and writhes, and catches the lack of light. Black lightning cracks and thunders far away.

Wisps of dust curl around Nova Pastos's feet, winding, sinuous motions, that only playfully threaten to sink the rest of him, along with his feet, should he wish only to stay still, to let himself do so.

And why shouldn't he? After what happened?

[string_instrument]

At first, Pastos is truly not sure if what he's seeing is even real. Not that 'real' means anything any more. Then again, what does it matter if it's not real (or not 'real'), either? What part of what he does now, or of this unsleeping nightmare, this manifest result of his own failure, matters at all? What is the worst that happens now?

He fucking dies?

Lil Cal laughs at him, and the sound of his voice--HAA HAA HEE HEE HOO HOO--runs through him to become trapped in the base of his spine, like a shiver. Golden light flickers, reflected in Lil Cal's eyes.

That'd be too easy.

He envisions it anyway, but he knows better than to fantasise too hard, to imagine--because the line between fantasy and reality is so thin for him, the entirety of existence held perfectly and precariously only inside his own mind. Not that he lacks self control. But that sometimes his mind is more powerful in its temptations than others. He could but imagine himself dead, and by extension, find himself there. He could cast back in time, step backwards a single mental step, and be once more a child, and experience his life at that point once more. And then to snap back, to find himself back in place, is jarring. A kind of vertigo he can't stomach right now. He already can't stand it, just being here. But--just like in his apartment, for all those years--he can't actually leave. Even if that feels false. He is here. In his own head, and out of it.

There is no division between thought and reality but the one he adheres to out of something like obligation.

He can't call that rigidity hope any more, if ever he could. Duty? No. Wait. Purpose. He wanted it to have a purpose. That's right. He wanted it to become something real. And he wanted what is real to have substance, meaning, consequence. And all of this was possible, and real, and under his complete and total control, as long as it was within the meticulously self-controlled environment of his own mind.

All of which is to say, Nova Pastos has a hard time keeping his grip on the actual facts of what is possible, and what he believes possibility to be. But who doesn't?

Not here, though. Nothing is possible here. This is where possibility goes to die. And if he never had any chance, any possibility of success or gratification or purpose or meaning, then this will not kill him.

So, no. He will not die, he's pretty sure.

That would be cause for gratitude. He is here to suffer.

Suffer the death of possibility. Of purpose. Of potential.

Time to kill more of it. Much as Pastos would imagine his own relentlessly unceasing existence so effortlessly and efficiently ended, he lines these concepts up, prisoners of a war waged between his failure and his ego, and decapitate them one by one.

Roll call.

What else?

He wastes his time? Makes a fool of himself? That's actually funnier.

"YOU SHOULD GO. AND SEE WHAT IT IS. YOU ARE ALREADY A WASTE OF TIME. AND SPACE. AND EXISTENCE. YOU ARE WASTING MORE OF IT. EVERY SECOND. YOU ARE A DRAIN. ON REALITY. YOU ARE A WASTE. AND DISGUSTING. AND BORING. YOU ARE BORING. DO SOMETHING. MOVE." Cal's voice is so loud. Exactly how he imagined, and exactly how he gave him voice himnself. The division between them was, much like the division between reality and thought, never so great as it appeared outside of himself.

Without conscious effort, Pastos' feet start to move.

When A Legendary Pearl Forms Around The Hatred And Jealousy In An Otherwise Fortunate Person's Heart

[theriflespiral]

And so, he walked.

In a world as indistinct as the darkness, as bright as the dying embers of the day, as still as the grave, save for that gathering storm.

That wall of black, a dust storm of intense power and fury. The friction alone is setting off little cascades of negative energy. And, writhing and raging in the center of that storm, slowly resolving itself...

It seems, at first, to be a golden snake, some hundreds of meters long, each scale gleaming its own prestige. In as much as there are storms, in as much as there are snakes, this one exists, and looms larger than anything in life, Like a city, or a throne room.

The dust shifts, obscures Dirk's vision for a moment.

The dust clears, and the shape is... Familiar, even if the particular form is not. A dead ringer for a certain girl, albeit with black armor, amythyst gems and a cape of tattered tyrian, crowned with fury, hair as golden and shining as the scales were, eyes that shone like stolen emeralds, and a grin like she could open her mouth wide and swallow Dirk whole. At her hip are two knives. Only the two, with wicked curves.

The storm, abruptly, dies, in the manner of all dust storms. The voice is all wrong, too-- high-class, not Commissariat. Full of malice-- no, full of venom. "So. You are Nova Pastos."

[string_instrument]

As the dust engulfs him, he stops. Because what else is he going to do? He can't see, he can't breathe--and then suddenly he can see, and he can breathe, but nothing he's seeing is making any fucking sense.

(What else is new?)

Unsurprisingly, Lil Cal meets her smile with his own. The way Nova Pastos holds his puppet is a little different than usual, however; Cal is draped over his shoulders, yes, but this time by the torso as well as the arms. Like a mink stole, perhaps. His ass hangs down, and Nova Pastos' right arm clutches the doll tightly by the legs.

To be frank, the way he holds tight to the puppet's plush is almost childish--or at the very least a bit more vulnerable.

On the other hand, the look on his face suggests the same old Nova Pastos he's always been: an unforgiving mien with a hard line for a mouth, heavy brows low and stern over the sharp pink angle of his shades.

"Oh. It's... you." The lack of conviction in his quiet monotone is mostly attributable to his confusion. Out of all the Knights he's met, he doesn't remember getting into it with or about Neos at all. But here she is.

Or at least, her unhinged evil alter ego? He doesn't understand this at all.

"Why you? What do you want?"

Poisons, Whips, Disasters, and anything that moves like a snake.

[theriflespiral]

"To give you a gift, if you will accept it, and return its like in kind." Her gaze is imperial, patronizing. Regarding Pastos-- Dirk-- as beneath her notice, save for what he can give her.

"Surely, you have noticed, none of you are strong enough?"

This is so experimental,

[string_instrument]

The Knight and his puppet stand in front of her, and he doesn't move. He doesn't emote. He says, simply:

"What."

"HAA HAA. I GET IT. YOU WANT TO PLAY A GAME."

Lil Cal's voice is so much stranger and more attention-grabbing than Nova Pastos' dull deadpan that if it wasn't for the movement of Pastos' human mouth, it would be easy to miss that he spoke at all.

Not like it really mattered what he said, is it? It's not like it would make any difference.

Cal's not talking to the terrible and resplendent figure currently looking at Pastos like a bug that crawled into her throne room, though. He's talking to Pastos.

Which... unfortunately, helps. He shuts his eyes for a moment. Once Cal puts it like that, it almost makes sense. Behind his shades, his gaze turns up towards her. The muscles in the back of his jaw tighten.

None of you are strong enough.

His gut burns with resentment, with humiliation, with failure. His chest constricts again, threatening to crush his lungs and heart like a massive serpent made of bone.

And in the immediacy of understanding, his cognitive reflex is to tell her to fuck right off.

Not just because she's being cryptic as hell, or because he's tired as fuck, or even because she's right. But because Nova Pastos--Dirk Strider-- only knows how to play 'yes, and' with the right kind of person. And there is no such person here. Only in his imagination--or at least powered by it.

But the delay caused by this little interaction does give his brain--overtaxed, overclocked, and overheated though it may be--time to process what she's saying for real.

"This is some kind of devil's bargain shit, isn't it." He says it carefully, weighing his words with steel to hide the calculations. A kind of maths being performed behind his eyes, desperate and confused and angry. And yet efficient and cruel and cold.

"YES. SAY YES. THE ANSWER IS YES. LET'S PLAY. DIRK. PLAY HER GAME. I WANT TO PLAY." Lil Cal's bright-eyed enthusiasm for real play, for risk and stakes and fun still tugs at his heart, somehow. It's hard not to hurt. Not when he doesn't owe anyone anything as much as he owes Cal.

[theriflespiral]

"A bargain, at least. I seek... Escape, from this place. As I have since I was reborn." Her movements, unlike her bulky bulky silhouette and powerful limbs, are sinuous and winding. "There is someone... I need to meet."

As she walks, as she moves, the wind whips around her, little eddies of dust and wind. "Someone I need. For this boon, a gift. I aid your escape."

[fibrillate]

And anger. An indecipherable anger, one that blazes in place, a purple fire silhouetting the form of someone smaller but no less livid. The form approaches Pastos deliberately, shadows obscuring its face until it's close enough to be seen properly, and... well, of course it's Nova Pandora.

The firestorm rages until they're a step or two away, when all the flames condense and flare from their shattered eye. They stand there with their fists clenched at their sides. "So you ended up here anyway."

They keep their hands away from any imagined weapons and keep their fists at their sides. It's all empty threats anyway, isn't it? Always has been. When would Pandora ever have the balls to go through with something?

"Even if I told you I didn't want this for you, you wouldn't believe me." It's not a question. "And when you get out of here, you're going to pretend it didn't bother you at all. How brave." They don't expect they'll get a rise out of him. They don't expect anything; they don't exist. But it's only ever taken a little poking to get Pastos—to get Dirk to spew sentence upon sentence of callous invective that he thinks he can smelt into a shield.

[string_instrument]

At first, Dirk watches this figure--wreathed in flame and fury, a tiny raging apocalypse of some kind or another--approach him with a kind of numb, nonplussed detachment. At first, he has no reason to believe this apparition is anything but completely real.

Why wouldn't it be? Everything since that first depths-plumbing dream that broke the spell holding him back from himself has been more real than anything else he's experienced outside the confines of his own head, and Lil Cal's downy soft puppet shape.

Including his failure.

Nothing more real, or more painful, can exist, he's pretty sure. But maybe this place is about to try. A thousand fiery possibilities pass through his head--like, maybe it's just going to grab him and set him ablaze himself, and that will be it for him--but the ability to move, or care, seems to have been lost along with any hope he'd ever had for himself.

So fucking be it.

He simply sets his jaw and waits, the burning in his eyes comes not from the heat, but from his heart--it stops in front of him, and the blaze clears to make way for a face.

"You're right," he says, deadpan. The fire is out, and everything inside him ices back over. "I don't believe that."

Is this real? He's not sure if it's real.

It feels real. Real, like everything else since that sentence that was already written about the point when it felt like he might exist, and be real, and the things that were happening actually mattered.

But it also feels 'real' in the way of everything that came before. Everything that he could touch and see and experience, all alone, all by himself in the confines of his penthouse apartment overlooking the city, all the things he could make and control, all those things he could buy, all the words he could write.

The real that existed in the suspended space of himself and his mind and his body, made by and believed in by him, subject to no one else's material reality--and therefore only 'real' in a truly subjective sense.

A perspective that could be erased at any time with no one ever the wiser.

A loss to no one, but a loss of such magnitude that he never could make himself go through with it.

Such is the plight of the ego.

"Sorry to distract from your self-rightous invective or whatever, but before I waste my words on you, I gotta know: is this real, or is it just me having some kind of fucked-up episode?"

[fibrillate]

Pandora laughs; it's sharp, bitter. It's coming from two other places, invisibly triangulating Pastos' location. It won't be easy to run away from this one. But he wouldn't do that, right?

"What difference does it make?" they say, back to just the one voice. "Would it make you feel any better if I told you that this was you having an episode?" They extend their right hand, palm up, and a flash of purple fire reveals another set of their own glasses, white-rimmed and a little dirty, and they speak again. When they do, it's not just in their own voice.

"This happens to be a subject I know a thing or two about," they say, Pastos' voice coming out of their mouth simultaneously. "Worry less about me and more about yourself. I think you just want an out."

The fire flares up again, and the glasses transform to an extra set of Pastos' own. When Pandora speaks again, it's only in one voice. They haven't broken eye contact this entire time. They've barely blinked. "There's a thousand ways to run away without moving your feet. Have you ever let yourself feel a single emotion you didn't like?"

[string_instrument]

That laugh bounces off his senses, and Dirk becomes aware of a sharp headache layered over the other, duller one.

But of course he doesn't run. Sure, even without somewhere to run, the act of running itself might be an escape--emotional if not physical--but Dirk isn't used to having that luxury, and he wouldn't have taken it even if he were. Even if this is real, it's still inescapable.

And he can't outrun the pathetic piece of shit who got him here.

Can't outrun himself.

It's this knowledge, as much as any deep-worn habit or instinct or insistence of ego, that holds him fast.

His ass might as well be an anchor for all it budges on the rock.

And it's this knowledge, this grim truth-in-perpetuity finally surprises him: his own voice and his own visage, his own valiant cruelty, displayed in the palm of their hand.

For a second, it even shuts him up.

Not for long, of course. But long enough for judgment to follow. Cruelty in someone else's voice. Or the attempt. The sour iron in his gut isn't going anywhere, but it also doesn't feel much worse.

Maybe there's nothing else out there that can hurt him worse than he's done already--first by existing, and then by failing.

It's a sickening thought, but perversely reassuring. It gives him an edge.

And speaking of edge--

"Yeah," his drawl comes out clipped, a harder and meaner edge creeping up on his voice. "Right now."

His gaze rises to meet theirs--not that this is visible, but who knows. Maybe this ghost of comeuppances past can sense it.

"Or is this a trick question? What is this supposed to imply? That I've never been miserable? My misery isn't authentic enough for you? Or are you just saying I'm a cold-hearted bastard? Is that it, I'm a heartless machine who hurt your feelings by having some experience with the phenomenon of having a hard time with yourself? Whose baggage is this? Can't be mine. I don't recall being that bothered by that conversation, but you sure were. So this is your problem, and you're... what, haunting me about it? You're that fucking mad that I was right, and your little self-improvement job wasn't one-and-done while I'd figured myself out--yeah, I think I'm onto something here. Whatever you are, you didn't come from my brain."

[fibrillate]

Pandora keeps staring.

"And this works for you? Deflecting everything anyone says to just make them the problem?" The glint in the replica glasses flashes purple for a second, though the fire isn't anywhere to be seen yet. "Guilt. Shame. Remorse. Or is it all just anger because you already know how to handle being angry?" They disappear from his vision in an instant, but it's not to run away no matter how much he'd think they would. Instead, they appear directly behind him, as though they'd flash-stepped. They're still holding the glasses.

"Those swings you claim I'm taking—are they really that wild?" they say in his voice. "That kind of chicanery doesn't work on me. I don't think I'm any of those things."

The dam breaks, and so many words come out.

[string_instrument]

"Not everyone," he replies, his voice steady and cold. If they're hurting him at all, the only effect has been to harden his heart against himself. The teleportation trick made his heart stop for a second, it's true--but the instant they reappeared, it started again, and them none the wiser for any tells he gave. Which is to say, none.

Now he finally gets to his feet, and turns, slowly--the lag is deliberate, a display of 'you don't scare me' aided by, quite frankly, the weight and exhaustion of his own moods. But that's for him to know, and keep to himself. His heartrate is up now, though. So good job, ghost.

"Just you, apparently." A little dryness touches his voice. "And here's where I'd say 'ask Mortis,' but somethin' tells me you ain't capable of asking her jack or shit without absolutely losing your goddamn mind at her. I still don't know what your fuckin' problem is. With her or with me. You know why I don't believe you didn't want this for me?"

He glances down briefly, staring into the fabricated lenses of his own glasses for a moment. Twin reflections cradled in the palm of their hand. How the fuck are they doing that? Can he interrupt it somehow? Break the spell? His mind clicks ahead faster and faster until his attention catches up with itself and he locks back in; having his next words locked and loaded gave him a moment to think, but he didn't get there fast enough. He looks back up, fixing his sights back on the spectre.

"You have a mean streak, is why. Throwing food, crying, hurling insults. The problem is that you regret it after. You feel guilty. Remorseful, ashamed. And that's when you no longer want whatever you did or said, and you can't remember what it felt like to mean it because you're too busy feeling sorry for yourself. Right?" He tips his head, still meeting their gaze.

"You're too fragile." The judgment falls from his mouth unbidden, but in it is a granule of truth. So he doesn't regret it in the slightest. In fact, he keeps going.

"Me, I'm a lot of things, but fragile isn't one of them. That's why you were the one asking for help and I was the one giving it. You blow up and melt down, I'm purposeful and calm. You can't control yourself. Control is all I do."

A pause, and then, with a bitterness so potent it's uncharacteristic of this stoicism-derived ego machine--

"And that still wasn't enough."

That having been resolved, he feels... no less tired, no less defeated. No less miserable. But what else is new? Nothing helps. Distraction. Productivity. Function. Building, designing, researching, understanding. Effort, and result. He puts himself to work, fills his head with knowledge as a bid to take control of his direction. Occupy his body with movement, build muscle, train skills, assemble and disassemble.

And if all else fails? Try again. Keep trying, because when he gives up, the world stops. Nothing happens, because other than Lil Cal, he is his whole world, and nothing happens until he gets back up. There's no quit in him because there's no room for it in his world.

So what if it hurts? So does anything worthwhile.

Pain is a motivator, but it can be rewarding, in the right context. You just have to lean into it. Or at the very least, between callouses and scars on the one hand, and well-developed mental reflexes on the other, he's--

Still a failure, in the end. What else do they want from him? He failed. He's admitted it.

Something turns over in the machinery of his mind, resetting something else. His thoughts reorganise, his intended point settling a bit out of reach. Someplace deeper and less offensive to his persona. He finds a sigh in his lungs and releases it.

"...look. Pandora, or Pandora's vengeful ghost or whatever--god damn it, is that what you are? Please tell me I've got that one wrong. Tell me no one has actually died because of this. Because if I--" he bites his tongue, catching the edge of his own pain creeping into his voice like a hot knife, ready to cut.

His temper, turned inward again. He narrows his eyes.

"I'm not the person you seem to think I am. I'm not an angry guy. I don't get mad. I have the capacity for it, sure. I'm a human being. I experience emotions. Real ones. But I don't think I've been angry more than once in front of the person you're visually representing here. No. Twice. That second one had nothing to do with them, though, so it doesn't exactly count. Am I angry now? Yeah. No shit I'm angry. But who am I angry at? The answer might surprise you, but it's me. I'm the one who fucked up this extremely critical mission. Let's just get that out in the open. I'm the one who let everyone down. I failed, and now everyone else has to suffer the consequences. Whatever harrowing you're trying to do to me, psychologically, it's just not that effective compared to the basic facts I'm already forced to live with. There's no penance I can perform here. But you're damn well going to try, I guess. You don't like me, so you want me to... what. Wallow? Scream? Cry? Suffer for nothing, instead of something? Well, great. That's exactly what I'm doing right now."

He doesn't waver, doesn't flinch. He holds their gaze, his stubbornness backing up in his throat and tasting like resolve.

Resolve has a flavour like iron.

[kneecapshot]

Nova Justicar—because he is still Nova Justicar, despite the shock he’s just received—clenches his hands slowly and permits himself one silent, teeth-baring scream of frustration, his forehead soft against the dirt under it. He shudders briefly before he relaxes and pushes up, looking over at Nova Pastos.

“Are you badly injured?” he asks immediately. No time to think of his failure, he can only deal with the matter at hand.

[string_instrument]

Nova Pastos hits the ground with enough force to knock the wind from him, although that has maybe more to do with the momentum before he entered the Abyss. Or maybe it's just the force of his collapse, which is less of a collapse and more of throwing himself full-body to the ground--a mix of frustration, rage, and the emotional immediacy of defeat.

Either way, he has dirt in his mouth now, grit in his teeth and on his tongue. He doesn't answer Justicar right away; instead, his hand closes tightly into a fist on the ground, but no speech seems forthcoming.

Lil Cal, however, sits atop a rock behind Justicar, apparently having either landed perfectly or else having been delivered personally with a level of courtesy that wasn't granted either of his human companions.

[kneecapshot]

Justicar is still on his hands and knees and he looks up sharply when he doesn’t hear an immediate reply from Pastos. He watches Pastos’ fist clench instead and nods, satisfied that he’s alive and feeling the same frustration as Justicar. He spots Cal sitting on the rock and declines to stare—the puppet, or whatever it is, still makes him unaccountably nervous sometimes. He decides to ignore it for now and shifts until he’s sitting in the dirt, letting himself catch his breath for a minute.

“Magic,” he says eventually, his voice raw with anger before he shakes his head and his tone softens, just a little. “Nothing we could have done about it, not really. We have to focus on getting out of here.”

[string_instrument]

"Nothing we could have done about it?" Nova Pastos finds his words, even if it's in a kind of hoarse echolalia. He is speaking directly into the dirt, which doesn't make him very easily understood--especially with his accent and failure to match normal speaking volumes. "That's it to you? You're just going to let it go?"

He pushes himself up off the ground with his arms, and his eyes land on Lil Cal instantly. This at least motivates him to move, even though his lungs and chest and stomach and every inner part of him is burning--he's on his feet without any real seeming transition, and closes the gap to his puppet so quickly it's a little uncanny.

But at least nothing seems to be broken--other than maybe his pride.

[kneecapshot]

“Feeling bad about it now won’t fix it,” Justicar says simply, “and it distracts from the task at hand. We made the best decisions we could with the information we had available. We knew we had limited intel when we went in. This was always a possibility. What’s important is that we get out so we can try again.”

He’s at least looking around now, taking stock of what they have, which is… nothing. By themselves in the middle of a howling wasteland with no supplies and no way to contact anyone. Delightful.

[string_instrument]

"That doesn't mean we couldn't have done better," Pastos rebuts instantly, even as he's unfolds Lil Cal's arms to wrap them around his neck--although he takes a moment to give the puppet a look-over for damage first.

"If you want to just skip over that to get to the next thing and learn nothing, be my guest--" He regrets that almost immediately, and places a palm over his mouth, brow furrowing before he glances sideways at Justicar--an action made obvious because he actually turns his head towards him. His stomach has filled with lead, heavy and toxic. The burning heat of anger and regret and shame and failure hasn't dissipated.

"Thought you were better than that, though." His voice drops, falling into more of a mumble, and he wraps Cal's arms around his shoulders securely. His own shoulders are slightly hunched, albeit just for a moment.

it's time

[avemortis]

And Death — cheerful little Death, bursting with animation these days, as though that timid old model had been some husk to shed. She's not so cheerful here, though, her eyes red-rimmed and wide, a battered-looking little thing. Nova Mortis looks like she's been through a wringer or two or five, just barely staying on her feet. She's tugging on Pastos's sleeve with urgency, her eyes entreating, like a child seeking shelter.

"Pastos, help! You have to help — I can't find her!"

Melly the doll is nowhere to be seen.

[string_instrument]

Two seconds ago, Nova Pastos and Lil Cal were alone together. Again. Alone, again. Together, again. A repetition of every day of his fucked up life. Admittedly, Cal's ability to answer him--not just in the realm of his mind, where the definition of what is 'real' is imagined, determined, defined, and contained within its bounds, but out loud, outside of himself, and seemingly less under his control than ever--is new. And challenging. But even the unfamiliarity of it is somehow not so unfamiliar.

So it's notable that the sound of a different, familiar voice--familiar and yet not--is like an icepick directly through his ear canal and into his brain.

Pastos turns, confused--and then alarmed (while still confused)--he is actually frozen in place briefly by the unexpectedness of this unsolicited physical contact. His first instinct is actually to push her away.

It's really a miracle he doesn't, but maybe he's just too disorientated. A dozen and a half questions bombard him from inside his own head. Questioins that range from You lost him in the Abyss? to What are you even doing here? to How did you sneak up on me so completely?, and of course, the evergreen staple What the fuck?

The last one is what comes out of his mouth, naturally.

"What the fuck?" he asks her, and casts his gaze around helplessly. He fails to divine any answers from the howling wastes.

[avemortis]

Mortis looks as scared and small as she had in the worst of the Shellustria fight, tears welling up in the corner of her eyes. If she thought she knew terror before, then surely she was mistaken. But Pastos is safety, Pastos is protection — isn't he?

"After you and Justicar left for your mission...he came back for us. Shellustria." Her voice wobbles, frustrated at her own helplessness. She doesn't let go of his sleeve, only clinging tighter. "Glimmer and Crescent, too, they...I tried to fight him! I promise, I did! But now I'm here, and...and he took Melly..."

Her voice trails off into tears. Has this place ever felt so vast, so cold, so alone?

[string_instrument]

Pastos is not a 'touching' kind of person for the same reason he's not a 'distinction between conversation and an argument' kind of person--and generally speaking, if he's going to touch someone, it's Cal who does the touching. But Mortis hanging off his sleeve doesn't cause him to pull away. He doesn't have any instinct to do that. He just stares down at her, his face inexpressive, until she starts to actually cry.

That is like a lead weight dropped straight down into his gut (nausea and lead poisoning included), and he still doesn't move for three or four seconds while his brain provides nothing but alarmingly blank space where normally ten or twenty trains of thought and by-associations would be. A few fleeting thoughts flicker in and out, at least--but they're distracted, and their contribution to his overall understanding is limited to to mere suggestions of clarity.

Glimmer? Crescent? Knights he barely knows. He remembers being particularly uncharitable to Crescent. Melly, he knows better. The puppet. That whole mission was fucked from start to finish, but that he remembers clearly--Mortis, and Melly.

He tries to focus on that part--he can't help Glimmer or Crescent. If they lost, that's it. He'd already failed everyone when it mattered, twice. This is just more weight. Nova Pastos, the asshole who took Justicar and left everyone else to get attacked while he was fucking up a mission that was only happening because he failed to do what he promised. After all that strife with Harley--Vortex--whichever, he was no more useful in the fight against Shellustria than Chroma would have been. He can't blame a single one of the others for losing that fight. And now that it's happened, what good would his already worthless contribution be after the fact?

(That wish--Pastos' wish--feels like slivers of fibreglass in his soul)

But Shellustria took her puppet? He glances at Cal--who, like Melly, had been ignonimously skewered (and repaired), but at least no one fucking stole him.

"He took your fucking puppet?" he mutters, under his breath. By that point of comparison, the idea of Shellustria taking Cal hits him, and a rare pulse of real anger grips him. Who takes someone's plush pal? Why?

This, finally, gives him some basis to act, at least.

Specifically, he acts with Cal--pulling the puppet down off his shoulders to drape a long, comforting plush arm over her head and down her own shoulder, a sort of 'comforting embrace' by puppeteer's proxy. Though he is not consciously aware of it--or at least not consciously willing to acknowledge it--the one act of comfort he knows.

"All right. But stop crying, first." No tears. Rule number one, Mortis, of

"YOU DESERVE TO CRY. HE HUMILIATED YOU. AND YOUR SHITTY FRIENDS." Cal's voice rises from behind Mortis' head, and Pastos' head snaps up to stare at his partner. He's on the verge of a muttered reproach--dude, he might have been about to say in a way harsher tone than normal, or even bro--but Cal pays him absolutely zero fucking heed. Pastos has been noticing that. There's an unmitigated bluntness to his pal that he kind of always knew would be there. But this one kind of stings. It hits Pastos in a very sore spot, and he knows Cal isn't just talking to Mortis--

"HE FUCKED YOU UP. BY BEATING YOU DOWN. A COMPLETE DOUCHEBAG, ACHIEVING TOTAL DOMINION OVER THE AWESOME KNIGHTS BY WAY OF HIS PATHETIC MAGICKS. WHICH HE USED TO ROCK YOUR SO-CALLED SHIT. BUT NOW COMES THE GOOD PART. THE PART WHERE YOU MUST TAKE REVENGE FOR THIS INSULT. AND TAKE BACK YOUR WEAPON MOST EXCELLENT. TO MAKE HIM PAY."

Pastos blinks, feeling the strain of his frayed nerves and stretched too thin by this additional burden--honestly for a second he thinks he's about to snap. But then it clicks.

"That's... huh. Actually. That's a little over the top, but he's right. We'll get her back. First, though, stop crying." He's so fucking serious about that. Stop the tears, or he's going to--

No, focus.

"How did Shellustria even take... her? Melly?" It occurs to Pastos right then that he has no idea what pronouns he's supposed to be using for Mortis' partner. Which is literally the least important concern he could have right now. Isn't Melly like Mortis' weapon? Like her old guitar, and his katana? Can they lose that kind of thing?

That's a concern that would be chilling if he wasn't still pretty mad. Apparently dread isn't stronger than anger--at least not right now.

[avemortis]

Mortis lets out a tearful little hiccup, but her eyes widen with a start when Cal speaks — it's not that he's speaking at all that surprises her, but that this wasn't really what Mortis would have expected him to sound like. But she doesn't rail against it, even as some of Cal's harsher words cause her to close her teeth on an unhappy set of her jaw. No one would like being talked at like that after suffering humiliation and injury, but to Mortis's credit, she seems to take it in stride. For the old Nova Mortis, such a monologue would have flattened the crumpled cardboard box that was her will to stand up for herself, but it seems, at least, enough to incite the new Mortis to some action.

"I will make him pay," Mortis says through her teeth, half to herself, and her hands finally pull away from Pastos's sleeve to curl into little fists. She sniffs and hiccups again — she is, bravely, trying to staunch her tears, but she's frightened and it hurts to be without Melly, a quiet agony that surfaces in her expression.

"I don't know how he took her." It makes her feel powerless, and that powerlessness only frustrates her. Her lower lip starts to trumble again. "I just woke up here and she wasn't with me. I can't even hear her voice..."

And who is she without Melly? Indeed, who would Pastos be without Cal?

[string_instrument]

It's not entirely what Dirk was expecting Cal to sound like, either--but in retrospect, he thinks, it makes sense. Most muppets have a pretty exaggerated style, and why wouldn't Cal have picked up some of his own crudeness--especially given the way he was when he was younger and edgier and all alone except for Cal and the others (made with his own hands)?

It's a relief--and, weirdly, a moment of perverse almost-pride)--that she takes his words to heart. His and Cal's. He knew Mortis had some strength in her--more than 'some,' really, because isn't she a Knight?--but to see her grasp it with her own hands seems like a positive sign. He nods slightly in tacit approval of her grit.

He even relaxes one micromeasure of whatever unit is used to measure the tension in his body and brain.

That microscopic difference might have been microscopically premature--but all that this new revelation elicits from him is a noticeable furrow of his brow.

"What do you mean, her voice?"