psychoshenanigans | Skeleton City // PSL

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Skeleton City // PSL

They call it the "Market", and it's always buzzing like a hive. The vast caverns are warmed by the hundreds of bodies all hauling, shouting, pitching, laughing, exchanging things from one hand to another. Even more people stroll up above, their voices lost in the tangle of bridges made of stone and wood and metal. The place is lit by dozens of electric signs, spilling brightwarm colors where the hanging lanterns cannot reach.

There is a lot to look at. One person seems to trade a bolt of rich red cloth for some nails and hinges. One man is trying very hard to convince another that the chicken he is holding is worth at least three bags of grainmeal. And then there is whatever Phalanx is holding, which they most certainly did not trade for, and it most certainly leads to someone reaching out over their stall table and grabbing them harshly by the arm.

"Hey, you little theif!" Says an irate, heavy-set woman, "What do you think you're doing?"

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Vincent finds the bag of food on the table surprisingly fast. At least part of it is by smell. But by the time Robin speaks up, he's rustling through the contents to see what his friend brought home.

Robin looks at Phalanx's empty hands too, tilting his head. "Huh."

At almost seems like it surprises him that the card isn't just in their hands--but then he tilts his head the other way, towards the other shoulder, and starts patting down Phalanx's blanket.

"You must have put it somewhere, while we left. The black card. Do you remember?"

"I remember," and Phalanx still sounds sure about it. Of course they remember... but where it went after the card was in their possession is an entirely different question.

Phalanx mimics the motion of patting their hands over the blanket, but there isn't a real goal behind it. They're trying to help, but it's mostly just copying mindlessly while they think.

After a minute, whether by intentionally retracing their steps or just compulsively copying what they had done back when they'd first taken the card, Phalanx eventually pulls their hands up into the sleeves of their coat... and a card clumsily shuffles back out the end of one a few seconds later.

This gets a good reaction out of Robin again--he was just twisting around to start going through their coat when the card is revealed out of their sleeve, and his face lights up with a broad grin.

"Hey, there you go!" He pulls the card out of the sleeve like a ticket out of a dispensing machine, "Good job finding it again."

"So what'd you clowns get up to?" Vincent interrupts, turning to face the couch with a mouth full of kebab'd newt. Robin says nothing, busy looking at the front of the card instead.

Phalanx looks a little pained by Vincent's question, drooping forward with their still-handless sleeve-arms wrapped around their middle like they have a stomachache, but they regurgitate the events of the day anyway. It kind of looks like they don't have a lot of choice in the matter.

"Sewing. I got stabbed... shopped... smoke. With a skirt. I'm from nowhere. Drums and... nobody believed me. But she liked the story. We stole a card because... it was important? Trees, but the wrong trees. We got lizards."

Vincent interacts with crazy people on a regular basis. One of them lives in his house when they aren't gallivanting around in other cities' political circles, or whatever the fuck Robin does with his free time. So he can't say he's... surprised to get a very, very weird answer out of Phalanx.

But it's still... pretty weird. His chewing slows while he listens to the laundry list of events. By the end of it, he's stopped eating, and Phalanx can hear him very clearly small the air with a short inhale.

Whatever he's smelling for, he apparently doesn't find it. A moment later, he finally asks, raising an eyebrow, "Was that, uh... In order?"

Oh, that question. It must be one that Phalanx has been asked before, because there's just a helpless (and vaguely sickened) huff of a sigh from them. How are they supposed to answer something like that?

It doesn't take Vincent long to double-back on the question, "You know, nevermind. I don't need to know."

Robin continues to be transfixed by the image that has appeared on the face of the card. He looks a little like he's reading it, digging into something deep in whatever has appeared. Vincent can't see any of that and isn't particularly interested, so the tall man leans back against the little table and resumes eating.

But one part of that stuck out to him, so he offhandedly asks another question soon after: "What did nobody believe you about?"

"That we're too many times. Too many... skins and eyes. The dark. And we sew. And all the magic."

Especially that last one, with how much that topic gets danced around here. Phalanx sighs a little as they confide in their large friend.

"A lot. A lot of things... and we're a lot."

Vincent listens patiently, nodding a couple of times--once at the mention of magic, and once when Phalanx confides that they are "a lot", in whatever sense they feel that to be true. Vincent finishes the last bite of his skewer, chewing thoughtfully, before blindly reaching back and dropping it into the bag it had originally come from.

"I don't really understand that kind of stuff very well," he admits, "But I believe you."

Again, Vincent isn't a smart man by most accounts. But he doesn't need to be. He doesn't have the same fixation with understanding every minute detail of every interaction that Robin constantly chases. He can coast along pretty far on very little. He doesn't need to understand how a pile of souls could exist to imagine that it probably gets pretty fucking crowded and busy in there. If Phalanx says they're a lot, Vincent has no reason to doubt them, especially because he's heard them be more honest in casual conversation than most humans with only one soul to work with.

"I believe you, I believe you," Phalanx mutters as they sit back again and bring their knees up with them. Curling up like a pile of laundry left on the corner of the couch, the souls murmur to themselves--still sounding that vague sort of upset that they've had going for the past few hours, but also like they're now trying to soothe themselves a little bit, at least.

It's nice, being believed. And maybe repeating it, running it a few more times until everyone in there can hear it, will help the feeling stick around.

Vincent feels a little sorry for them, much the same as he would for anyone who sounded like they were having a hard time. He doesn't think it's good that they're upset about people not believing they're a magical abomination... But he also understands why it'd be weighing on them. It hurts, being brushed-over. Used to happen to him all the time.

"Robin believes you too, you know that." Vincent says this, trying to be helpful, "That's why he's vouching for you so much. Ain't that right?"

That last bit is directed more towards Robin, who up until this point has been looking very intently at the face of the card. Now he smiles, looking brightly up at Vincent, and then at Phalanx.

"That's right. And it's not just us, either. You've got a ca'ar on your side."

As he says this, he turns the card around to show Phalanx.

The face of the card is still stained, but now there is variety to the dark shades that have covered the original image. Little white splotches have also appeared all over it in some kind of pattern, maybe--they look a little like bright stars nestled in a dark knight sky.

"I think it found you."

Vincent mumbles a "what in the fucking Haunting are you talking about--" under his breath, because he can't see the card, but doesn't actually want to be that involved in whatever Robin is going on about.

Phalanx's doll-eyes widen when they see that the card has changed, and they lean over a little bit to get closer to it. It doesn't take long for one of their hands to come snaking out of sleeves and blankets and go reaching for it as well.

Phalanx doesn't want to take the card from Robin, just touch it. They want to poke one of those little points of light.

"Was it looking?"

"It always goes looking," Robin explains, smiling broadly, "That woman thinks it's all her doing... But it doesn't make her fortunes any less accurate, I'll admit."

"Wait," interjects Vincent, "Are you talking about Auntie?"

"That's not her name," Robin quips back, though he still sounds in high-spirits about it.

"So what?" Vincent's eyes narrow, despite his blindness, "Why'd you go there?"

As they're idly babbling, the card is still there. It feels slightly warm to the touch, as if it was just being held in someone's hand. It also feels like there is some dimension, some soft give to it, even though that shouldn't be possible. It's just a flat card.

Still, the stars seem to move a little--just a little--twinkling in the dark. Whatever spirit is active in this card is small and not inherently friendly or outgoing, but it isn't menacing or ominous either. It simply is, and right now, it is just for Phalanx.

Phalanx's attention is absorbed in the card and its current inhabitant, with just a little left over to answer Vincent with.

"--To take her card," they helpfully mumble, while extending the rest of their fingers until five magical stars are each being poked.

And the next question is for Robin. Phalanx glances up with light brown eyes that could suddenly be easily mistaken for lucid.

"Does it know?"

There's a short "oh" from Vincent, as Phalanx had mentioned something about stealing a card earlier.

Robin looks back at Phalanx, looking into their eyes as if there was something within them to read, some new page of a story he's been meticulously writing for the last twenty-four hours.

"About you? I'm not sure." But he smiles all the same, not discouraged in the least, "It knows some things, but I'm not sure if I could tell you what those are. But I do know, here--"

He reaches around, craning his neck to get a look at the card that he, himself, is holding up for them. He taps a particular star, one that is just a little bigger and more ovoid than the rest, "This is a guiding star, Pylires, that marks two separate constellations. One is the Traveler, Leuriot, in the Summer. The other is the Winter sign, the Burrows. The former gathers stories wherever he goes. The latter is a home to many, strength in numbers."

Phalanx goes from just holding their hand there, lightly touching a star with each finger, to picking at the image of the guiding star. The spirits dig at it with a fingernail, like they might peel it off the card.

"All the stars. Are they stuck to him? Does he keep them there?"

"In some stories, yes."

Which is not a very concrete or helpful answer, but Robin has never been very talented in the arts of divination or soul-reading. That was another brother's job. Instead of trying to explain it all away, he tips the card in Phalanx's direction, nodding for them to take it.

"Keep it on you. Maybe it'll bring you luck. Or a dream."

Phalanx grabs up the card just as greedily as they had coveted all the pins and needles, and pulls it right into the core of themself. They crush it against their chest and curl up around it, shoulders folding in like they're embracing the little thing. It's as if they're trying to absorb it in through their skin.

"Will it leave?"

Robin watches them crush this card as close to their chest as they can manage. He feels a pang of sympathy for them, wondering in that abstract, half-aware way that he does, if Phalanx ever gets lonely. With so many of them all crammed into one space, it's probably the opposite--but that doesn't stop the thought from crossing his mind all the same.

"Hm..." He tries to think of a good answer for a moment, tipping his head to the side. Spirits are tricky, and he is a King, not a God. He can predict and theorize the mindset of his subjects as a whole, but ultimately, it is still up to each individual to make their own decisions. This spirit has come to the card through a fortune teller's bidding, and who knows how long it will be until it decides the task is no longer worth the effort.

Without so much as a word of warning, he reaches forward, aiming to touch the back of the card with just a couple of his fingers. The skin of his palm splits open as he does--not gushing or tearing dramatically, but subtly slicing itself open from the inside, the blood held in place by his own mysterious power. The slice is in the shape of a near-perfect circle, with some other lines and strange runes cutting through the inside.

"Not for a while," he says, giving some energy (and a silent prayer) into the spirit currently inhabiting the card. He only needs to touch it for a second before the spell is complete, and his hand starts stitching itself back up again like nothing had happened.

"...So should I just..." Vincent speaks up, now bothered by the smell of fresh blood out of nowhere, "...go...? Because if you two are just going to talk about cryptic shit, I don't need to be here."

Phalanx is watching with an abstract sort of focus--somewhere between paying more attention to the subtle things going on than would be considered natural, and completely distracted, until Vincent's interjection nudges them out of it.

"Crypts," Phalanx corrects in Vincent's direction, before pulling the card away from themself and flipping it around so they can place their fingers on the back like Robin had done.

"I wish I could keep it."

"Cryptic," Vincent corrects Phalanx's correction, as if Phalanx misheard him. That probably isn't the case, but that doesn't occur to Vincent until several long seconds after he's already said it.

"I know," Robin says to Phalanx's other comment (though it sounds a little like he's responding to Vincent), "But we'll just have to do our best while we have it here."

After this, the demigod reaches out to playfully run his fingers through their hair. "Speaking of that, are you still interested in sewing? Or has the moment passed?"

There's a definite pause while Phalanx processes Robin's question, but as soon as something clicks, they're sitting up straight again and forgetting all about the card. And their sleeves fall over their hands again during the rearranging, so it's probably only a matter of seconds before that card disappears entirely.

"It won't." Phalanx sounds sure about this fact. "We're interested. I'm interested."

Though, judging by the way that Phalanx starts aimlessly looking around themself, they have lost track of all traces of pins, needles, threads, cloth...

"Really?"

Suddenly, Robin's face lights up and a bright grin appears on his face. Vincent must hear it in Robin's tone, because the taller man looks a little startled in Robin's direction.

Robin doesn't seem to notice. He'd assumed that Phalanx wouldn't remember, but now he springs up off the couch, darting around the arm to duck back into Vincent's bedroom.

"I'll find something!" he announces on his way, leaving Phalanx and Vincent alone again. The sounds of drawers being dragged open and bags being shoved over fill what would otherwise be an awkward silence.

Vincent reaches into the bag behind him again, tentatively chewing on another fried newt.

"You uh, want one?" he offers, after a moment, while Robin is busies himself with being insane in the back room.

Vincent can't see, but Phalanx is leaning in closer to look at the questionable offering. Their voice sounds closer.

"Lizards? Their... tails fall off. And they hold on. Hang. Hanging? With claws?"

They sound skeptical. Probably.

"Nah," Vincent can't see, so he dismisses the claim easily and casually, "These are for eating."

As if that somehow fixed all of whatever problem Phalanx may or may not have had.

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