psychoshenanigans | Skeleton City // PSL

Vincent's eyes are blue, he thinks. Were blue, before he lost them.

Maybe that's what he'll do.

Yes.

"Listen," he says, ducking down enough to meet their eyes under the edge of their hood. "I'm going to take you to see my friend. We can talk there. You aren't in trouble, but there are a lot of questions I need answered."

Which he thinks is important to say, now, with how he has decided this thing is not a monster in disguise. Even calling it a brab'ja would be giving it too much credit, too much agency as an individual. He doesn't know how to explain it, but Vincent is smart when it comes to people, so maybe he can find an answer there.

The direction is very assuring. It resonates through his entire person, a flickering candle now burning with a steady flame. He's back to holding Phalanx's hand.

"Do you understand?"

"Do you understand?"

Phalanx is repeating the words almost before Robin is done saying them, but their (now big blue) eyes are holding fast onto Robin's. And there's a subtle shuffle of motion, almost a nod. They're listening and comprehending and agreeing as much as they can.

--Which is a good thing, because there's already something shifting about their face again. In a few blinks, their eyes are much more hazel than they had been a moment before.

Close enough. Whatever this thing is, he needs to get it out of sight of normal people. Who knows how many humans it has interacted with already, or how long they have until someone says a little too loudly that they think they saw a budding Mage wandering around the market.

They're standing again. People see them holding hands, but don't look any further. Robin brings them back into the drifting crowd and guides them along the current, down the river, and eventually, back into the sea.

And then back into some dimmer, emptier places. Smaller tunnels. Stairs going down down down, sometimes with two walls and sometimes with high ceilings and sometimes just a narrow path with the guts of a chamber exposed the whole way down.

And then they're just sort of there, through a doorway and into a dark room where Robin finally lets go of their hand.

"Vincent?" He calls. No one answers, as no one is home, but that doesn't stop Robin from heading further into the room. It's not a very big place; most of the space is taken up by a musty couch pulled up in front of a large, old radio. There are a couple of shelves and small tables, but they are mostly covered in old newspapers, printings, and beer cans.

Lots of beer cans. What little of the kitchen visible from the doorway looks like a nightmare of old bottles and takeout containers stacked up against other garbage-things. Robin steps gracefully around a group of six or seven cans by the foot of the couch on his way towards the bedroom.

He sticks his head in, just to look, while Phalanx is left unattended.

Luckily, Phalanx really couldn't be easier to puppet along, especially in a setting like this. The being truly does melt into the crowd, some core thing about them dispersing or quieting until it's almost hard to remember that someone is actually still following along.

And just like before, it isn't until they reach their destination and Robin detaches that Phalanx seems to return to their own body. The blinking as they enter the room isn't only because of how dark it is.

Then Robin ducks away, and the visitor is left to their own devices. Which, in this case, turns out to be curiously following whatever happens to be a prominent sense. With how dark and quiet it is in here, that sense is understandably scent.

Bear cans stink. So, by the time that Robin returns, he will find his new friend picking up, tipping, smelling, and maybe tasting part of the collection.

Yes, he turns around to find the stranger investigating the beer can as if they'd never seen one before in their lives.

"Ah..." He raises his hand in a futile gesture, already too late, and lowers it again. "...That's probably not... very good."

"That's probably not..."

More parroting, but the curious expression that they turn toward Robin puts a question-mark on the end of the sentence for them.

As least they have paused in their investigation, leaving room for Robin if he wants to interject with anything else.

With that pause, he has time to start shaking his head.

"That'll taste terrible. Don't do it."

To be fair, the beer that Vincent drinks probably tasted awful before it had time to percolate. He holds out his hand again instead, since his new friend has been fairly responsive to that already.

"Why don't you put that down and come over here."

And just as before, Phalanx (again with their original washed-out features and abyssal eyes) readily complies. The beer cans are forgotten, they pick up the hem of their cloak, and they carefully maneuver across the room to take Robin's hand.

At least they are obedient, if nothing else. A monster would never follow him around like this. The tribesmen from the world above know some small scraps of magic, and he knows that strange things sometimes fester out in the wastes where no one goes--but even those kinds of people would never walk up to him and willingly take his hand.

The bedroom is cleaner than the front room, but only because the bed takes up any space Vincent could have otherwise set things down in. There are some drawers with a mess of clothes in them, a closet with a broken door, and that's about all there is to see.

But Robin seems to like it in this room. The air feels kind of like him, or maybe he smells like this room smells, or maybe it's something else... But being here seems to calm him down in ways he may not even notice.

He sits down on the edge of the bed. The mattress springs sound pretty old.

"Do you have a name?"

Before, Robin had wanted Phalanx to sit beside him on the bench, so that's what they automatically do in this case as well, despite the creaking springs. And though Robin is asking another difficult question, this is at least a relatively frequently-asked one. It only takes Phalanx a moment or two to think before they answer.

"Don't know about a name. They called us Phalanx."

See? This is already much better. Robin leans in a little like he did before, propping himself up on his arms as a sly little smile returns to his face. Much of his sharpness is gone, though. His excitement is boiling somewhere in his chest, not crawling manically out of his skin.

"Phalanx," he copies the sounds exactly, in the way he often does--and lets out a breathy laugh when he realizes how close that is to this thing's own habit of repeating things back at him. "Are there more than one of you?"

Copies, or maybe a split soul? Finch was like that, sort of, and Robin hasn't forgotten the mention of "twins" from earlier...

Phalanx reflects Robin's smile--it doesn't have quite the same sly edge to it as his does, but it's not for lack of trying. And they nod a little.

"Mm, we're... many." But the answer only sits for a moment before their expression falls and they glance to the side, as if they've suddenly remembered something important. "...Sometimes."

Sometimes. That doesn't clarify much. Robin's eyes follow the direction that Phalanx's seem to go, as if he could see whatever brought the thought to mind... but there's nothing but empty space, the bed, and part of the floor.

And now he has a choice. He could keep asking questions, but he lacks the basic understanding of this thing to know what to ask. At this rate, it'll be an hour before he gets anywhere.

His other option is to simply step in and take a look--which could potentially be dangerous. No more or less dangerous than bringing an unknown creature home, though. He'd done worse things just earlier today, probably.

He points with an index finger at Phalanx's face, somewhere between his eyes. "How about I take a look for myself?"

It isn't until all that pointing that Phalanx finally seems to have a problem with some sort of physical proximity. They lean away from Robin's finger and their pale brows furrow.

For once, the creature finally seems concerned about something. Finally, they're looking at Robin with some amount of reservation.

"Take a look...?"

"Yeah, just for a minute..."

He takes his hand back, but it's only so that he can prop himself up and lean in even closer, follow them as they start to retreat. He isn't about to explain himself, not even here--but he feels that this creature deserves at least a small warning that something is going to happen.

"It won't hurt, I just need to know..."

And if he can, before Phalanx scoots too far away from him, he tips his head forward to create a direct connection to their mind. He hopes that he won't need more than a glimpse, a second or two, to figure out what it is he's dealing with.

Robin catches his prey before they can get very far, and dives in.

And that saying about eyes being the window to the soul can occasionally be very literal. The first step into Phalanx's mind is what it would feel like to be sucked into a pair of hungry black pits, dragged into a fathomless space that is always breathing inward toward the heart of itself--and judging by the weight of it, that heart might not have an end.

However, immediately after that first, empty threshold... Robin runs into everyone.

Calling it crowded would not be doing the experience justice. Bright, buzzing, individual energies (some whole and some only in mindless chunks) shove together until there is barely any breathing room. For a second, the overwhelming clamor is only made up of chattering and the constant elbowing for both space and control. But then, in the next moment, just as Robin is getting a better look at them all, he is noticed too.

The first fact that he can be sure of is that these souls are all strung together, all tied to something in the center so they can't escape. And the second certain fact is that they are all angry.

Their anger is maybe not directed at their own captivity, however. It is much more likely that their fury is aimed at a certain intruder, as the din suddenly becomes deafening.

Out. Out out OUT. Get out get out away away away GET OUT--

He is not prepared for the vision in front of him. How could he be? He's never seen anything like this, not outside of his own head. Being braced against intrusion does not brace him against the awful sound of it, and he flinches--his body pulling the rest of him along with it as he startles suddenly backwards and knocks his head into the corner of the dresser.

He groans, swears, grabs at the back of his head--which very quickly turns into him holding the sides of his head with his eyes closed, his ears still ringing with something that may or may not be a mess of his own creation.

"Sorry..." He says, through his teeth. It's probably to Phalanx, or whatever he just saw inside of them. But he isn't sure. He thinks that was real, but his head hurts.

Coincidentally, Robin isn't the only one whose head hurts. With his eyes closed, he wouldn't notice that Phalanx is curled up in much the same shape he is--grimacing with palms clamped over their ears--but he might notice the mattress shiver as Phalanx begins to move.

And if that doesn't do it, there is also a whimper.

Eyes clenched tight, fingers curled hard on either side of their head, Phalanx is retreating. Digging their heels in and pushing back, scooting away along the mattress, threatening to tip off the edge of the bed, Phalanx is clumsily trying to get away from nothing.

Whimpering is a very real sound. He picks up on it quickly, cracking an eye open to see that the world is still just a dark bedroom with a large bed in the middle of it, and that Phalanx looks like he's having an even worse time of it than Robin.

'Look what you did,' slithers a thought almost his own, 'Ruined already...'

But he doesn't want to ruin it, so here he goes, curling forward to crawl across the bed and reach for something--an arm, a knee, something to pull them back to the room with him.

"No, hey..." Trying to pull himself up close again, speaking so as not to spook an already agitated creature, "Hey, it's okay... I'm sorry, I didn't think..."

Grabbing hold of a knee keeps Phalanx from losing balance and falling off the edge of the bed, and manages to ground them enough to halt the retreat.

With the way that their hood has fallen back during the commotion, Robin has a nice clear view of their face as their eyes fly open. Phalanx stares at Robin, stares past his face, shoots a look off to the side at nothing. Whatever balance had been upset in there, it's spilling voices and visions on every side.

Phalanx is anchored in one spot, but now they can't seem to make themselves small enough--arms wrap tight around their torso, and the knee underneath Robin's hand tries to pull up as far as it can. While any energy or sensation radiating from Phalanx is usually hard to grasp, Robin can be absolutely certain in this moment that existing in real, open space is terrifying.

He knows that look very well. While his apologies were genuine, he was more sorry for the nosedive of a situation and his own misfortune than he was for Phalanx's well-being. Now, however, watching their unseeing eyes flicker back and forth between ghosts and hallucinations, watching them curl in on themselves to try and get away, he knows exactly how much damage he's just caused.

He has to help them. He gets an arm around them and pulls them in closer, trying to keep them contained, hoping to give them some sense that the things out there can't get them if they're close to him.

And he finally says nothing, just waits for this surreal little nightmare to calm down.

Though Robin has had a special talent for doing all the wrong things up until now, he finally gets something exactly right. As soon as the creature is scooped in and contained, the relief is tangibly immediate.

Not only does Phalanx fail to fight Robin's arms away, but the fragmenting creature shrugs up its shoulders so that Robin can hug them around as far as possible. They just want the pieces to be held together again... so, once they're close enough to something real, they turn and retreat to the darkest and most solid place--burying their face into Robin's chest.

He buries his face in their hair, almost mirroring their retreat. He keeps his eyes closed, waiting for the waves to stop, stomach churning as relief becomes anxiety becomes comfort becomes despair, until he realizes that those feelings aren't coming from the person in his arms.

He tries to swallow it down but a choked sound escapes him instead. He tries not to start shaking, but his grip on Phalanx only tightens because of it. He tries, he really does, to tell himself that it's okay it's fine it's nothing he should care about, but no one is here to cover his eyes and tell him not to hope that Phalanx doesn't hate him as much as he hates himself.

It isn't until he shifts and his face feels wet and hot that he suddenly remembers to breathe again, and his frenzy begins to slowly settle back down.

Just a pair of beings that shouldn't be, trying to put themselves back together again.

Phalanx's struggle is a little more literal in this way, as Robin is at least mostly in one piece already. So, while Robin tries to stay still in order to settle down, Phalanx first needs to move.

Whether or not they notice the plight of the person whose embrace they're dwelling in, Phalanx does a little maintenance to try and ease their own struggle in the meantime. They shift around with only the smallest motions, as they don't want to interrupt this safe place. One curled arm is able to sneak out a few fingers to grab an edge of cloak and draw it tight. Their knees snug a little bit closer to their chest so they can settle even closer to the body surrounding them.

It's only when Phalanx moves a half-pinned arm up between them to try and find the edge of their fallen hood that Robin ends up really being nudged. They're trying their best not to disturb anything, but they just can't quite reach...

It's probably a good thing. With something bumping into him, he's able to remember that he has limbs and skin and other things that might be in the way--and he's quick to lift his head and realize what it is that Phalanx is trying to do.

"Ah--" He tries to help, tugging the other edge of their hood up and over their head. "Is that better?"

His face is a little red. He starts to rub at his eyes with his sleeve, though he barely thinks about the fact that he's doing it.

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