psychoshenanigans | GRATIA // PSL

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GRATIA // PSL

So, here's what Irahl knows.

He's alone in a dark, cold cave. He has most, if not all, of his gear. No one is guarding his location. As he heads away from the spot where he came to consciousness, no one tries to stop him, and no one gets in his way. The few people he finds down there seem human, and not about to approach the nearly-seven-foot man that comes stalking out of the lower tunnels. Honestly, everyone here seems a surprised and a little astonished about his... Entire scene.

There is a way up. It's a maze of twisting corridors and confusing passageways, half of which feel too small for him. It's bigger and bigger groups of people, some of which scatter like schools of fish, and some of which have to be pushed through to get anywhere. It's climbing up into streets lit with dingy lights, graffiti-covered hallways, warehouses, weird holes in stone walls that may or may not be windows. It's alarm bells, it's people yelling at each other down the street. It's just an absurd number of stairs. A couple of people make an attempt to stop him somewhere, and it goes poorly for them.

Elsewhere, events are being set in motion where Irahl cannot see. But he's on his way out.

Eventually, more people try to stop him. At the end of another long stretch of Underground city, a group of official-looking folks are putting a real effort into blocking off the obvious exit, and some of them have weapons.

Down a side alley, into another tunnel, and then the space opens up into a... Plaza, of some sort? The floor is made of stone. The buildings surrounding it are made of stone and are hard to distinguish from one another. At at least the ceiling (also made of stone) is a lot higher than before. Cavernous. There's some kind of sculpture in the middle of it, some impressive feat of geometric stonework that gives the illusion of defying gravity despite weighing literal tons.

This is where someone finally catches him. Sounds have been echoing unhelpfully down every passageway, making it hard to tell if people are coming or going - but this series of quick footsteps comes from an upward direction before someone hits the ground about five feet in front of Irahl.

His clothes are different. His hair is better-kept. Maybe if the situation wasn't quite so tense, there'd be time to see the ways in which his face is different, the way his eyes don't have quite as vicious and sharp a gleam as they used to. But whatever Irahl can take in of him, there is Robin, having hopped down from a rooftop to put himself between him and the exit again.

"...Holy shit."

Kind of weird that he looks absolutely shocked to see the person in front of him, though.

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The watch is retrieved wordlessly and without checking to see what, if anything, has been done to it, and he doesn't think to say anything as his chaperone then departs for the night.

The following minutes are almost pleasant with one less person in the room and the sounds of methodical tinkering in the background, somewhere behind his music. And when that mostly-silent peace is finally broken, he doesn't mind all that much, as it is about something he'd been planning to talk about at some point anyway. In fact, with this person supposedly being second-in-command, they might be the perfect person to discuss it with.

"Not yet. It's an Enclave. Takes armor-piercing, anti-vehicle rounds, both standard and arcana."

If there's anything that Irahl will offer more words than necessary on, it's his rifle. He also blindly reaches next to him and nudges his gear bag in their direction, silently offering for them to look if they're that curious.

Well, don't mind if they do! With a soft noise of interest, they set down their tools, pick up their lamp, and head over. They crouch near the gear bag and pick through it with one hand until they find the rounds they're looking for--and fish out a normal cartridge and an arcana cartridge to get a look at them both in the light.

Each one is regarded with exacting focus, and the kind of attention that comes from being intimately familiar with the math and science of how these things are normally made. They'd been hoping to get a look at whatever these "arcana rounds" are ever since they saw the inventory list captured by Jandru a couple weeks ago.

"I think we've got some rounds that would work for your standard," they explain, still looking down at the arcana round, "And if not, we can make some to spec. But these guys..."

They hold it up at the open window, looking at the silhouette of it, before sighing and lowering it in their hand.

"I've got to admit, as much as it pains me... You've had us stumped around here with your 'arcana' rounds." They smile again, as if them being totally in the dark on this is actually funny, "I've got a bet going with a buddy on what they actually do."

Edited 2024-10-05 21:55 (UTC)

Irahl can't help it, the small sound under his breath is almost a 'tsk.' However, it's aimed at the general inconvenience of how few things seem to directly translate between his home city and the two that he has visited here, and it isn't necessarily a judgement on the Capitol or anyone in it. Not that he clarifies this fact out loud.

Right now, it's only a subtle nonverbal comment to himself. Right now, going off of the conversation he'd had with the scavenger down in the junk pile, he assumes the discrepancy is only one of terminology.

"Anti-magic rounds," he explains with the flippancy of someone who is expecting things to easily fall into place with only a little clarification. "Nullifies magical effects and destroys supranatural energy."

"Mmm... Nope!" Irahl can practically hear the overpronounced shrug in their voice as, once again, admit to having no idea what Irahl's talking about, "Don't have those here. Man, I've lost a bet and I've learned we're behind..."

They're treating this like a mild inconvenience even though they immediately think of a dozen people to whom this would be a very big deal if it's true. This is a life-changing discovery and the kind of thing that could very well alter the course of human history. Which is precisely why they move to put the arcana round right back in the secure case in the duffel bag of a guy who doesn't talk much.

The sniper takes his eyes off of the desert.

It's barely a second or two, but Irahl finds this statement so hard to believe that he lowers his binoculars long enough to shoot a glance at this 'equipment expert,' mostly to double-check their expression and judge if they're messing with him or not.

He diligently returns to his task right afterward, but a good portion of his attention is still on the conversation. It's Irahl's turned to be a little vexed.

"...Scrappers down in the other city didn't seem confused about it."

Nikaro is not exactly easy to read at a glance... But it'd be a little weird to feign embarrassment like this for a prank. And they don't back down from what they've said in the slightest.

When Irahl says that, it takes them a couple of seconds to realize what he's talking about. But only a couple.

"You mean those guys that haunt Fourth?" They ask, before they laugh out of delayed surprise, "I didn't realize you've been in touch with them... And I guess I'm not all that surprised to hear they're figuring it out faster than we are."

They shrug again, before remarking more to themselves than to Irahl.

"Three points of hard news in a row. What bad luck..."

Whether or not it's genuine, the laidback attitude grates on Irahl a little, especially as this revelation has more time to sink in. Replacing his arcana ammo is going to be a pain, but if the entire technological category is just as much of a mystery to these people, it's going to make his life more difficult in several different ways. On top of that, it's annoying to find out that even though this city is more welcoming of technology than the other one had been, they're still missing a couple important things.

"Guess you don't have cloaking fields either? Nullifying armor?" He doesn't sigh, but the sentiment is under there. "Miracle you've been hunting without it."

Interesting. What a judgmental statement. But it reminds them of something Seth had told them about this guy--and they make no attempt to defend themselves, deciding to take another route through this conversation instead.

"Not outside of prototypes, really. Incorporating magic of any kind into our equipment is a very new concept; we've had a hard time getting stable models out."

Still crouched there, they rest their arms on their knees as they look out at the empty desert. They're still holding the giant (standard) cartridge loosely in one of their hands. They still sound pleasant, but there isn't much humor in their voice now.

"Is that something you'd be interested in helping out with? Or are you more about using the gear and less concerned with how it's made?"

Even with how cold and sedentary Irahl tends to be, especially while sniping, something about his demeanor subtly goes even more still and frigid. It could easily be mistaken for Irahl suddenly spotting something out in the dark, but he doesn't shift from his binoculars to the scope of his rifle.

The pause becomes distinct as Irahl needs several long seconds to remind himself that if this person is as unfamiliar with the technology as they claim, they probably don't know what creating and testing it entails. This probably isn't the veiled threat that it sounds like. Once he takes a moment to tell himself this, he takes a few more to let the spike of anxiety drain out of him again, and wait for the ice in his voice to at least halfway melt.

"Not qualified."

Whatever's happening here, it's clear that it isn't good. Of all the things they'd meant to do with that offer, somehow freaking out their newest potential recruit was certainly not one of them.

"Hey, understood..." They don't react much physically, but their tone does soften a little in acknowledgement that they've tread into some unsteady territory, "Besides, we've been making do without all that stuff just fine, we can keep going without it for a while more."

Easy enough to say. They aren't in a hurry to start an arms race, and Seth can tell him otherwise if he disagrees. They'll lift the standard round up one more time, more gesturing with it than anything.

"This, though--not a problem. It's only fair that we replace what you used today. Mind if I keep one of these for reference?"

Even without the olive branch--whether the offer of helping with the standard ammo had been meant as such or not--Irahl's ruffled feathers smooth out quickly once he can tell that they hadn't meant anything by their earlier question. If he is still holding any of that anxiety or suspicion, it doesn't show, and that's what matters. So, he might have a couple of nerves that are easy to hit, but it looks like he doesn't hold grudges where it isn't warranted.

"All yours," he replies. "Take a couple if it will speed things up."

He assumes (or at least hopes) that they're going to dismantle the round in order to get everything perfect, and he figures that keeping a whole, untouched one on hand as well will help.

"Hey, wouldn't hurt..."

Sure, they'll fish out another one from the bag. They have a feeling they aren't going to find exactly what they need in a storeroom or anything, so having more to work with is going to come in handy. Irahl can hear the two rounds clack together quietly in their hand.

Interesting again.

"All right, I'll leave you to it. Just holler if you want anything."

They will take their lantern, the rounds, and themselves back in the direction of their previous project and hunker right back down to whatever they were doing before. Their report won't be nearly as thorough as Jandru's, but this has given them something to think about.

There might have been a slight nod of acknowledgement, (as if he has ever 'hollered' for anything in his life,) but otherwise, Irahl just lets them get back to it.

Irahl has a few new things to think about as well, but it's added to such a big backlog that he has been gathering over the course of the day, it'll be a while before they'll get their turn. Because he certainly isn't thinking about any of it right now.

He can't afford to get distracted by his own unsettled mind, so he clicks the volume up a couple notches on his player and settles back in to wait for... whatever he's waiting for. Even if this whole thing turns out to be a trick, it's still a test, and he would rather be the guy known for waiting all night at his post than the one to give up or even doubt a hunt early.

For as amicable and easygoing as they are, Nikaro continues to work in silence as well, with no further questions or comments directed at Irahl. As another hour comes and goes, they bring down their goggles and begin a little light soldering of delicate electrical pieces. At some point they drape a blanket over themselves against the cold night air, but they don't seem to be losing focus any more than Irahl is. Trick or not, it seems they've really committed to being here however long it takes for him to either give up or complete his task.

The Capitol is a lively place when the sun goes down, but even this desert oasis settles into its own quiet as the hours crawl into morning. It's in this silence that one more person arrives, announced only by the clunks of the metal door unlocking, opening, and being closed again behind them. There are no further footsteps into the room, and if Nikaro regards their presence, it's not verbally.

Should Irahl glance in that direction, he'll see that Seth has finally joined them. He stands, leaning against the wall near the exit, and begins idly reading a book he's brought with him. He, too, is apparently ready to stand around and wait for as long as this takes to conclude.

And then, after nearly another full hour of waiting in the cold and the dark, it finally happens. Things suddenly pick up. There's movement out in the desert, a dust cloud kicked up by the tires of an offroad vehicle speeding towards the Capitol, the back bed piled high with secured cargo. Their headlight beams come in and out of view as they drive up and down the dunes. The moment he feels monsters stirring out in the sand, Seth finally looks up from his book.

A massive fissure splits open behind the speeding truck, hissing with the tremendous force of hundreds of pounds of sand pouring into this sudden wound in the landscape. About a dozen pitch-black smokewings begin pouring out of the fissure, shooting upwards like falcons diving in reverse, and they are much, much bigger than Jandru's vague instructions had led Irahl to believe.

Only at the top of this upward climb do they finally spread their tattered, feathery wings and spin dexterously to catch the updraft; with wingspan, the smallest one Irahl can see is about as big as the truck, with the largest ones closer to the size of a modest house. Their bodies are thin, strangely skeletal, and they're perpetually... Molting? They leave some trail of themselves behind as they dive and circle, though those pieces quickly swirl and vanish in midair like the smoke at the end of a candle.

They're hard to see against the night sky, sometimes visible more as the silhouettes they create against the stars. They make no noise, save for the flapping of wings, and four of them silently break away from the chaos above the fissure to chase the lure humans in a vehicle barreling away from them at top speed.

They don't move in any particular formation, but they at least mostly seem to follow the natural physics of birds once they've taken flight. And as they swoop closer, a weakness is revealed--their feathers are dark, nearly matte black, but each of them has four red eyes that glint as they reflect the ambient light of the glass city they're soaring towards.

Finally.

Irahl is awake and hungry in an instant. Especially with the frustrations of the day, feeling suddenly in his element is a much-needed rush.

However, as eager as he is, Irahl still doesn't hurry. At first, there is only a slight sharpening of the chill in the air as he locks in on prey. He doesn't move over to his scope right away, taking precious seconds to observe his targets--how they move, how they brush against his mental radar, feeling out the busy patterns of them before he sets up to strike.

It isn't until he catches the glint of their eyes as they head toward the city that he finally shifts over to his scope. He takes his time. Instinctual math tallies up in his head--calculating the angle at which his bullet will drop from this distance, considering the cold temperature's effect on the velocity, choosing his target carefully until he's assured that he's accounting for everything correctly.

He aims for the largest creature first, and when the perfect opportunity presents itself, when its head swings down in line with its body like a lethal eclipse, he pulls the trigger.

Just as the creature begins to duck into a dive, a bullet designed to punch through armored cars completely demolishes its head. In a spray of blood, its body suddenly loses all tension and its precise dive becomes a dead-weight plummet into the sand below.

Nikaro makes a small, impressed sound from where they're sitting.

Two of the smokewings scatter, seeing or sensing that something instantly destroyed one of their number from a much further distance than usual. The third darts away but begins to circle back, not yet willing to give up the hunt.

Technically, Irahl can stop here. He was tasked with taking down one of these creatures. Per the rules laid out by Jandru, he can go home now. Since no one is speaking up or announcing the conclusion of the test, however, it is up to him if he wants to end it here, or if he wants to go above and beyond the range of his instructions.

In all honesty, he has forgotten that he only needs to kill one of them. He still has four rounds left in the magazine. It would be harder for him not to pull the bolt back, chamber the next round, and catch the easy target as it wings around to glide back in on an easily-predictable trajectory.

When he pulls the trigger and drops the second target, it's clear that he is faring much better with these living, thinking targets than he had with the inanimate ones from earlier, even with it being the middle of the night.

It isn't until he chambers the third round that he actually takes a moment to think and assess, scanning the field for any remaining targets and estimating his likelihood of being able to take down another.

Edited 2024-10-06 19:44 (UTC)

With a second smokewing out of the picture, the two that had retreated certainly aren't about to turn around. While their trajectories look like straight lines back to the rest of the flock, they're facing away from the light. He'd either have to get very lucky, or shoot them from behind--which may still very well kill them, but also may not.

The ones in the flock, though, they're much further away... But they're circling the fissure in the ground like vultures circling a carcass. The distance would be challenging, but the chances of another headshot are higher.

Given a little more time, the retreating two smokewings return to the group and something about that causes them all to tip, circling tighter and faster for nearly a whole minute before their movements seem to calm back down, and some of them even begin heading for the ground to land.

Colleagues of his would play the odds and either tag one of the retreating ones from behind or shoot into the tightly-spiraling cloud, and Irahl does at least briefly consider it. But the behavior he is observing is so interesting and odd that his finger hovers at the trigger but doesn't fire yet.

He watches, comparing to what he knows and making instinctual predictions as he gathers more data. And then, most delightful of all, a few of them begin to land.

Choosing a prime target on the ground, he lines up the shot. It has been a while since he has gotten to hunt anything at this sort of distance, but he's pretty confident now that he has at least one sitting target. So, he takes this prime opportunity to chance a few more moments of patient observation.

He's ready, though. If the creature's weight shifts to take off again, or make any other extreme movement, he's pulling the trigger. And if there is nothing particularly new and interesting to see after this final round of observation, he'll pull the trigger anyway.

Edited (I'm sleepy!!) 2024-10-06 21:15 (UTC)

The ones on the ground seem fixated on either the truck rapidly getting away from them, or the sight of the city itself. It's very hard to tell if their four-eyed staring is one of intelligent thought, or simply their passive observation of the things they had wanted to eat getting too far away. For a while, their behavior holds like this, with some landed and watching the city and some continuing to circle lazily overhead.

And then, for no reason Irahl can easily discern, it changes. Up above, the circle begins to expand. The smokewings start making larger and larger trips around, slowly spreading out and instinctually arranging themselves so that the smallest ones are at the furthest edges and the larger ones stick closer to their original central circle.

At the same time, those on the ground break from their staring contest one by one and begin to shuffle away, back into the fissure they'd come from. Behind his exact target, Irahl can watch one of them start to burrow, head-first, and disappear underneath the the sand. His target will be one of the last to move, but it does start moving to do likewise.

When the performance seems to be concluding and Irahl has gathered all he cares to, he pulls the trigger. In quick and methodical succession, Irahl spends the last three rounds in the magazine. He knows for sure that the one he'd been targeting on the ground has been hit, as it seems to utterly evaporate from his view, but the other two are a little hard to tell at this distance with the way their bodies are already half-scattering to the darkness even when they're not being shot at.

The last two were just for fun, anyway.

It's clear when Irahl finally disengages from his hunt. Sitting up--unless either of his audience members has an objection--he ejects the empty magazine, takes off his visor, and begins to dismantle his setup.

One of their number dropping so close to home startles the rest of the flock; the group scatters, abandoning whatever coordination they'd been managing in favor of ducking back into the earth as fast as they can.

This is some good news for Nikaro, for a change. No complaints from them.

"Well, fair's fair," they say, the first thing they've said to him in about two hours, "You're free to go."

They start packing up their own operation, though they're not in a hurry. The nice thing about the night shift around here is that no one will complain if you get your work done at three in the morning instead of two in the morning. They can make sure their project is set safely aside before they head off in a buggy to check on Irahl's kill.

Seth remains at the top of the stairs. The book is put away now, and he waits patiently with his arms folded. One might presume he's waiting for Nikaro if not for the fact that Nikaro seems to be making absolutely no effort to go up and join him.

Irahl does glance between the two others as he's packing up, but he of course doesn't voice any questions he might have. With the two highest in command here, he assumes one of them must know what's happening next, so he just... continues with his task.

It's relatively quick work, as he's not breaking his rifle down all the way and packing it away in its case as it had been on the ship. Really, the thing that takes the longest is retrieving his clothes and packing them back into his gear bag with everything else he owns.

Then, bag and rifle are slung onto his shoulders, which are actually feeling a little sore from the hours of exertion today, and he walks to a point that is roughly halfway between his two superiors and again looks between them, waiting for a hint.

Nikaro rolls their tools up in their case, tying them off with a leather cord, and... As they happen to glance up, they realize that Irahl seems to be waiting for further instructions. They then looks up at Seth, who does not seem to have noticed that Irahl is waiting for further instructions, and realizes immediately what's gone wrong.

"Oh, sorry," Nikaro apologizes, pointing up the stairs at their superior officer, "He's here for you."

They really have worked together for too long, them and Seth--they had a whole silent conversation, exchanged through a look, when the guy had walked in over an hour ago. They just forgot that none of it actually happened out-loud.

Edited 2024-10-07 02:53 (UTC)

Oh, yeah, that would explain it. Silly of him to be going off of the last thing he'd been told. He at least appreciates that they don't act as though they think this is something he should have caught onto.

So, with that clarified, he properly detaches from one handler to meet with the other. And through some combination of him both being in a good mood and having a high opinion of Seth, he even nods a greeting to the man as he pulls his scarf into place.

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