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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

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.

Seth sees absolutely nothing wrong with any of this. This is going smoothly, as far as he's concerned. Maybe that's why he returns the greeting with a brief nod in return.

"Walk with me. I will escort you to your hotel."

And then he gets up off the wall and pushes the door open, expecting Irahl to follow. Seth could be in his best mood of the century and he would still conduct himself with as little downtime as mostly-humanly-possible.

These are two guys who are too efficient for niceties and dithering. Irahl loves the consistency, honestly.

And speaking of consistent, Irahl hardly shows any signs of the incredibly long and taxing day he has had, looking more or less exactly as when Seth had last seen him. There is no lag in his step when he obediently follows.

Seth leads them in silence for a while. He doesn't really like talking in the empty hallways of this building. It echoes.

It's clear that everyone else went home a long time ago. There might be a stray lab assistant pulling an all-nighter somewhere, or a janitor tending to the spaces that are hard to clean during office hours, but they certainly don't run into anyone as they walk from one dimly-lit exit light to another. The only other soul they pass is the night guard in the otherwise-empty lobby, who nods and gives them both a brief "goodnight" as they pass through the doors and back out into the courtyard.

There are no carriages to meet them this time. Instead, Seth takes them along something that resembles a sidewalk and begins to stroll (which is a leisurely pace for him but still uncomfortably fast for most people with shorter legs), supposedly in the direction of the hotel he's stashing Irahl and Vincent in. The path will lead them through a large stretch of public gardens, which are, of course, artfully arranged and immaculately tended to.

The city streets aren't abandoned, even at this early hour, but they are far fewer people out than there were when he'd arrived. It's strange, there aren't many lights on either, but all of the encasing glass and mirror-shined surfaces bounce the light around in odd ways, washing the path in this kind of twilit dimness that makes the place feel neither asleep nor awake.

"How did you find your first day of training?" Seth finally asks. He walks with his hands behind his back, which may just be his natural resting position with how frequently he settles there.

Edited 2024-10-07 03:57 (UTC)

Strolling through a half-sleeping city is infinitely preferred to climbing back into a little box on wheels, especially where Seth would be able to witness his discomfort, so he's happy to set out on the half-sleeping streets. He'd wanted to get a better sense of the city anyway, and there's no better time to do so than when the fewest people possible are around.

The Capitol still reminds him of his least favorite parts of his home city, (at least as far as the above-ground portion had been considered,) but it's pleasant enough. He contents himself with passively taking in the sights until Seth finally breaks the silence, which Irahl had wondered whether he would or not.

"Busy," Irahl comments in a way that is neither overly positive or negative. "Definitely the most... comprehensive I've had."

"Good," Seth says.

He does not explain their methods, he does not justify the time spent, he does not apologize for any perceived expression that the tests were strange. Despite his (relatively) laid back attitude (which is, again, nigh indiscernible from his usual way of being), he's still not here to have a conversation. He's here to ensure everything is running smoothly.

"And do you feel that you were appropriately challenged?"

There have only been a handful of individuals who have operated similarly to his new employer that Irahl has gotten to work closely with over the years, and he considers that a shame. It's very nice to not slog through a conversation just to get to the point.

Irahl does not expect extraneous apologies or explanation, Seth does not give it, and he assumes that the reverse is true as well. It's great.

Under this precedent, Irahl takes his time in answering. If he'd been someone else, the pause could have meant insecurity or hesitation before trying to speak tactfully. Irahl, however, is doing the sensible thing and pausing because he's simply giving the question honest thought and coming up with the words that would most accurately and efficiently convey his answer.

"In most categories, yes." Those had been some wild tests, so he does want Seth to know that he'd been pushed out of his comfort zone successfully, before continuing. "I have more to show in skills more related to working in the field and combat."

Seth isn't the best at reading the intentions of other people, but he can tell the difference between someone hesitating to speak because they're scared of him, and someone giving his question a moment of actual, worthwhile thought. As Irahl intuits, Seth is entirely comfortable in the silence before his answer, and doesn't seem pressed or expectant in the slightest. Honestly, it gives him a little time to look at plants and acknowledge the crisp night air. A novelty, these days.

He nods curtly once he's given an answer, but likewise gives himself a moment to really digest what has been said before committing his full response to words.

"Good. You will be tested further in both categories tomorrow. Barring any unforeseen circumstances, I will be overseeing these tests personally."

Oh, how Irahl wishes that everyone would take a couple of seconds to actually think about the words that he says instead of reacting right away, immediately wanting more. He thinks his succinct statements contain enough information within themselves, and yet people always demand elaboration without stopping to think first. So, he's more than willing to wait for Seth's reply.

"Looking forward to it," he states neutrally, which isn't truly neutral, because he's saying anything at all. It isn't an automatic response. He's genuinely looking forward to the challenge, as well as seeing Seth in action overseeing anything.

Great, they've made it through his agenda in record time, and everything seems to be going as planned. Irahl was pretty frank about what he was not interested in doing the last time they spoke, so he assumes that Irahl would or will speak up again if he has a genuine complaint about any of it.

The hotel isn't terribly far from the Armadatory, but they still have a couple of heavily-gardened blocks to go. He has a little time to indulge his curiosity with something that wasn't on his strict need-to-know list.

"Tomorrow morning, I will be overseeing the evaluation of a batch of standard applicants as well. You are welcome to observe, and under no obligation to participate."

He'll make that very clear first and foremost--if Irahl doesn't want to hang out with scrubs below his skill level, there's such a low chance of it actually happening over the course of his actual worth that Seth doesn't think there's much value in testing it.

"However, if scaring new recruits is something you'd find amusing, I'd be interested to see what they do when faced with competition of a much higher caliber."

Well. That's certainly not what he'd expected Seth to lead with next. He'd figured they might talk more about the upcoming day's events, but not exactly like this.

There is a surprised and considering 'hmm' from Irahl at the offer.

Normally, he only gets stuck with the new guys unwillingly--either assigned to his unit under the assumption that they'll learn more quickly while following around an expert who also happens to be frightening, or because some higher power has decided that the willful sniper needs to be brought down a peg.

This is an entirely different concept. New recruits and hopefuls are some of the most insufferable people imaginable... which is why he has to admit that the thought of intentionally putting a little productive fear into them, especially without getting shackled to them like he usually is, has its appeal.

Besides, being able to essentially take a little break from the intensity of his own training sounds kind of nice. Restorative.

"Could be fun."

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