psychoshenanigans | Paradisa // So AU

Entry tags:

legato,
nadia

Paradisa // So AU

[Well, if it isn't just another normal day in Paradisa. The sun is shining, the ghosts are cleaning, and the Castle's many residents are experiencing any variety of strange losses, transformations, and generally magical shenanigans.

Though it's hard to say whether or not the Castle is responsible for this one, since it's pretty... weird.

It comes slithering in under the door to the kitchen. It's a dark, shiny shape that might have been considered stealthy aside from the fact of it roiling as soon as it has enough mass to do so. Maybe a foot tall at the highest, it starts to slink along the base of the wall, occasionally extending a thin tendril of itself to feel up the side of a counter or look for a way around a series of chair legs.

Alarming? Yes. Probably very unsettling.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Sitting on one of the tall stools at the center island, the kid is minding his own business, eating his way through an entire package of sandwich cookies, when something upsetting happens in his head.

At first he assumes what he's picking up must be an error of his own brain. But the shape continues to really move in a definite direction across the kitchen... and then he actually sees a tendril snaking up along the side of a counter across the way.

With a horrified, quiet little gasp, he pulls his feet up onto the seat until he's perched there like a gargoyle, just staring.]

[It continues to churn its way along the edge of the wall, looking for... Well, it doesn't actually know. It's reverted to doing what it normally does in times of stress, which is scout the area and try to find a readily available source of food. It's an almost mindless effort of exploring driven mostly by instinct, because its logical mind is busy trying to fend off some waves of high-key panic.

That's why it doesn't quite pick up that there's a person in the middle of the room. It's picking up all kinds of sensory input from all over the place. It's a little frazzled. It sends another pseudopod up along the surface of what seems like a metal stove, feels around on top for traces of tastes and--

There's a short and sharp hiss of a wet tendril touching a hot burner for just a second. It gets sucked back into the mass immediately, as the rest of it recoils with a quiet, upset little mewling sound.]

[He sort of flinches when the blob does, with how honed in on its array of neurons he is, as he struggles to get a feel for them. That is a viscerally-understandable reaction to pain there, so he can't help responding to it.

It doesn't stop him from continuing his retreat to safety, though. His nervousness over being caught doing something he shouldn't has lessened somewhat in recent weeks... so he doesn't hesitate in climbing all the way up onto the island.

This gargoyle-perch is even better for spying from anyway.]

[It's a perfect vantage point to watch this blob of a creature kind of double-back on itself, as its leading half starts to retreat and its lagging half catches up. The motion turns into the creature turning in place a couple of times, and it momentarily slides up into a shape more akin to cat or a dog--in that both of those animals have four legs and a head and will sometimes pace in confused, frustrated circles.

All told, the dark mass is now approximately the size of a smallish-person, if one were of the mind to think of the relative sizes of creatures that way.

It is in this fevered mess of motion that it perceives a person perched on a center island, staring at it. The boy can tell, because it suddenly freezes, tenses, and presses its entire ooze-like body back against the wall, away from him.]

[Whether because he's still paying too much attention to the blob's shape and behavior, or he's just naturally a little feral, he freezes in much the same way--crouched up on the counter like a startled cat.

...Until he suddenly throws the cookie he's holding at it!]

[Oh god, oh no, a person. They look scared. Oh god, they're going to start screaming. It's so sure they're going to start screaming and then a bunch of people will be here and it'll be in so much trouble and--

Then a cookie flies towards it and the creature reflexively snaps it up. Before even thinking about it, just kind of... Forms a small mouth with jaws and sharp teeth that juts out just far enough to grab that thing out of the air and swallow it, before it sinks back into the mostly-shapeless and mostly-still shape of the blob.

And then it slides down just a little lower, feeling crazy and more than a little embarrased.

As a point of either interest or deep distress, the cookie is barely visible, still floating in the matter of its dark form. It's slowly dissolving.]

[Whoa.

His gold eyes are round like an owl's as he watches that crazy snap of change, his terror turning to an even greater amount of horror and curiosity. This time, instead of matching its body language, he leans forward a little to watch as it sinks down lower.

...It does not take very long for the morbid fascination to grow (is the cookie dissolving??) until he blindly gropes into the package of cookies beside him... so he can chuck another one at the creature.]

[It is now so honed in on the person in front of it that it visibly shifts its focus as he moves. Something, not really a head yet, but maybe something resembling a "front" bulges gently out of the mass and follows the motion of the hand with the cookie in it.

This time, its not as sudden. Instead of snapping up the snack on impulse, the sharp mouth reappears out of the shape to catch the cookie and swallow it with a little bob of its form. Now there are two cookies floating around in there.

It is... Completely fucking confused about what's happening, but snacks are good. Snacks aren't screaming and yelling. What flavor is that, chocolate? Are these the things with the cream filling? Those are good.]

[This is so bizarre. He is so freaked out. But this thing hasn't attacked or started screeching or done anything too horrible now that it has... legs? It seems more like a very melty animal now, which he still does not know what to do with, but that seems at least slightly more comprehensible than being a creeping nightmare fluid.

This time, he picks up another cookie within its... eyeline(?) but just holds onto it, watching (and feeling) the creature's behavior as he does so.]

[Okay, the cookies are... Well, it doesn't realize just how quickly the cookies bypassed its logical self to go straight to the instinctual "positive reinforcement" center of whatever particular bundle of neurons counts as its brain. If it keeps eating cookies, this kid doesn't scream and it gets to eat cookies!

The boy gets to watch its leading mass track the motion of the tiny snack, wait for it to be thrown for a couple of seconds, and then glance (??) up at the boy, then back at the cookie, and then back at the boy when nothing happens.

It ends up sinking a little with the lack of any immediate thing to do, but then some of it starts... Rearranging. The legs slowly disappear under it while it pulls the rest of its mass into something that could vaguely considered a body with shoulders and a ovoid, head-sized thing on top, and not much else.

With its head at about the height of the counter, it'll slowly and cautiously slide a little closer to investigate.]

[Whoa. Whooooooa.

As this thing rearranges and then sort of morphs closer, his eyes get huge again and his whole body tenses as he sort of half-rises-up on the counter like he's getting ready to drop this cookie and run if he has to. Or maybe like he's trying to keep a hold of frayed nerves and not just run.

In either case, he looks like he's ready to bolt at any moment, but... manages... to reach out and hold the cookie a little closer to its "face"...]

[To its credit, it pauses a little as the person tenses and starts to back further away--which hurts its feelings immensely, the first normal human feeling that's really surfaced through their feral panicking and jumbled survival instincts.

It's enough to bring a little bit of their humanity back to their thoughts, though, and they decide in that moment that they really, really don't want to freak this guy out more than he already is.

So they drift a little closer before slowly stretching their head towards the treat. Even slower than that, they carefully form that sharp mouth with all the teeth in it and very gently put their teeth around it and wait for the other to let go.]

[Terrifying. It's terrible.

All those horrible teeth grasping so slowly. He can't help the full-body shiver as he watches this happen.

And yet. He also can't help hanging onto the cookie just a little longer... tilting his head like he's trying to see into the creature's toothy maw around the cookie... maybe very gently pulling on the cookie to see if it will stretch its "neck" more...]

[To his (very morbid) credit, they do keep their delicate, awful grip on the cookie for several seconds longer than they should have, and their neck stretches several inches along with it.

But since he's not... giving up the cookie, they start to worry that maybe they've misread the situation. They gently un-bite the cookie and slide back into having slightly-less-upsetting length of neck, but the teeth remain a visible feature on their face.

Sort of like a weird, inky, deep-sea fish, they've got a little bit of a jaw and too many sharp teeth for them to really look normal or reassuring to anyone. What's more, they've got two particularly shiny spots that weren't there before, about where a human's eyes would be.

The head swivels a little to look between the cookie and the person again, some recognizable self-conscious hunching making it into the shoulders of their form. Is the cookie... not for them?]

[With how the creature had raised up to about counter height, and he had sort of leaned in as he'd drawn his hand back, he's now much closer to peering at it eye-to-horrible-little-eye.

He continues his stare of unblinking fascination until he's sure he has watched its entire expression play out. It's now clearly waiting on him again. So, after a beat, he cooperates and hands the cookie out much more definitively this time.]

Here.

[He's sharing for-real now.]

[Oh... Perhaps the boy changed his mind? That's... Good, that's good!

They give another quick glance between the person and their offered snack before they lean forward again, and this time they simply open up their horrible mouth in front of his hand as as an invitation to... just sorta... toss that puppy right in there.

Or maybe set it down in there, it's not clear. The level with which this boy wants to get involved with how Nadia's mouth works is entirely up to him, now.]

[Oh, this gesture is horrifying and endearing, and he's no longer hesitating when he risks his fingers to gingerly place the cookie into that waiting maw.

He can imagine pretty clearly what exactly would happen to his hand if those teeth snapped down on it. An off-kilter little smile crosses his face when it doesn't happen.]

[As much as they would love to taste whatever dead skin cells sloughed off as a result, they stay good and keep their mouth off of his fingers. Their teeth are very sharp, but the smooth interior of their mouth has a bit of give to it, like a water bed.

They make the motion of "swallowing" this cookie too, and it sinks through their body to join the mostly-dissolved remains of the previous two.

This is now going very well. A shiver goes through their ooze-like body and their mouth changes to imitate his own fairly normal, human-like smile. Still all the wrong colors, still a little simplified.]

Hey... [A voice comes from somewhere in their body, quiet and feminine but backed by some inhuman vibrations that are almost too low for most people to hear.] What's your name?

[Hearing a voice, realizing the creature has intelligence enough to do so, startles him nearly as badly as their arrival first had. He gasps and sits up straighter with a jolt.

There is a string of fear in his voice, of course, but it's a different kind of fear than what comes from meeting a monster. This is the sort of horror that goes along with realizing that he knows how to behave and hide and speak around different kinds of people, he hasn't been doing any of that so far, and has no idea how he's supposed to be around... this.]

I dont-- [He ducks his head a little.] You can talk??

[Oh, shoot. They feel another pang of fear the moment it starts to go badly again. Damn it, damn it, you idiot, they think--what did you have to go and do that for?]

Sorry, sorry...! [The voice is more hushed now, as a majority of what could be considered this ooze monster's lower body inches backwards in a flinch. They're compelled to sprout a couple of skinny arms with hands on the end of them, so that they can hold them up in the universal "hey, calm down" gesture.

Their hands have four fingers instead of five, but at least they remembered thumbs!]

Yeah, I can talk. Sorry. You didn't-- [WOW IT'S BAD.] --You're okay, I'm sorry.

[He settles down! Still deeply freaked out, but managing himself better. Shoulders hunched up, but he doesn't seem like he's about to run off or amp up to a more dramatic version of anxiety.]

You just... didn't seem like...

[He thought they were just an ooze monster! Oh god, and he was throwing cookies at them...]

No, I... We were doing a thing...

[They gesture vaguely, helplessly, before their form sinks back into itself a little bit. Still deeply embarrassed even though the situation isn't escalating.]

I was being weird and it's fine. I liked the cookies. I...

[Is that the right thing to admit??]

I'm not normal. Sorry.

[Of all the things, "I'm not normal" seems to be what calms him down the most. Admitting that they liked the weird cookie interaction helps too. He stops hunching up his shoulders so bad.]

That's okay.

[Is that the thing to say?? It feels so weird leaving his mouth. He may have never said anything like that before--excusing someone else. He should also probably be apologizing more himself, but it's all just so uncomfortable, it's hard to say anything.]

...Okay.

[The ooze creature sounds like they're a little hesitant to believe that, but they at least seem to solidify a little more. Their arms disappear and a couple of shapes slither around in their mass as if they're fidgeting, unsure what shape to take next.]

Thanks for not screaming. [After another awkward pause, they straighten up a little. Not more human, just taller.] Do you know where this place... is?

[If "thanks for not screaming" is a weird thing to say, this kid does not seem fazed. And then-- oh! He knows the answer to this!

He immediately perks up, shoulders straightening a little, because the attention is going toward something like a conversation that he knows how to navigate.]

Yeah. It's a castle called... [God, give him a second to remember it's stupid name.] ...Paradisa? No one knows why we get taken here, but everyone in the castle came from somewhere different. So, if you just found yourself here, that's what happened.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject