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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Yeah, Irahl plans on playing it safe and sitting back to watch the Vincent and Finn show, both because it's fascinating to watch and it's the best way to keep up the illusion of sobriety.

He isn't disappointed. Vincent's opening line is classic. Irahl almost smirks behind the protection of his scarf over it. And it takes Irahl a moment to wonder about how quickly Finn stops in his tracks, but once he thinks about it and forms a couple of guesses, that turns out to be pretty funny too.

It isn't until Finn's counter-question that Irahl changes his mind a little bit.

"Why?" he counter-counter-asks before Vincent has a chance to respond. One word that doesn't have easily-slurred sounds in it should be pretty safe.

He wants to know the answer before proceeding. There might be just a smidge of preemptive and automatic pushback against the thought that a freedom might be being leaned on right now--if it turns out either that Finn had been sent down here to find them, or had run into them on accident but for some reason thinks that they shouldn't be down here.

If neither of those things are true, they're all good. Otherwise: Finn is not the boss of him.

Vincent makes sort of a "wuh--" sound, the start of some sentence that he cuts off as soon as his brain belatedly registers Irahl's counter-counter-ask. Maybe it's his turn to observe for a little bit. He listens for Finn's response.

Finn isn't actually that small of a guy, but he has a habit of always standing next to giants. Next to Irahl and Vincent, he looks and feels positively miniscule. It doesn't help that his shoulders hunch incrementally at being addressed so directly by Irahl.

"I thought..." He starts, looking at Irahl before glancing between the both of them, not sure who to address, "Shouldn't you be in your hotel room? Recovering? From being very stabbed?"

Okay, that's... maybe fair. At least more acceptable than the two very specific things he'd been ready to get his hackles raised over.

Not that he's considering being cooperative or anything, of course. He shrugs.

"You do good work," he says in that way he does where it's impossible to tell if he's being funny or absolutely as dead-serious as he sounds.

In reality, he's still trying to keep his demeanor solidly locked down to appear more sober than he is. At the present moment, he's thinking about the fact that his answer had almost included the word 'stitched,' which would have been an immediate giveaway, considering how many easily-slurred sounds it would have used.

Finn raises an eyebrow, visible above the round frame of his glasses.

"Not that good..." He mutters, though it's bowled over soon after by a comparatively noisy Vincent.

"He's fine," Vincent says, swinging a large hand through the air as if swatting away the guy's concern, "Heals fast. We're just walkin' around."

Finn stares at Vincent for a moment, looking... Well, once he realizes what's going on, his expression flattens into something between incredulous and disappointed.

"Are you drunk?" He asks.

"Nah," Vincent lies, for absolutely no reason. "Hey, do you... Know how to get back to the hotel from here?"

Finn doesn't answer right away. He stands there and sighs instead, glancing back at Irahl to try and guess where the sniper lands in all of this.

Irahl--the extremely cool and inscrutable new sniper on the team, supposedly a full-blood monster, who had just recently had a completely terrifying and feral brawl with their equally-terrifying boss--just kinda shrugs again when Finn looks his way.

That's all he's got. He does not seem interested in being any more helpful than that.

Finn still doesn't know what to think of Irahl. He's had a couple of days to mull it over, and obviously likes him enough to give his approval to join Seth's special squad, but even with those facts being true he can't tell from looking at him if they catch each other's drift, or if they're on two completely different planets.

So the shrug is both surprising and... Entirely unsurprising at the same time. Finn knits his hands behind his head and lets out another sigh up towards the high ceiling of a city plate somewhere above them.

"Yeah, I know how to get back. S'that why you guys were smacking this street sign?"

"I can't see," Vincent says by way of an explanation, "I know it's up, but I ain't been in this part of town in a long time."

"Yeah, it's not a great part of town to be in," Finn says, glancing briefly to the side, "Listen, if you guys are lost, I can at least get you back up to a carriage hub..."

Irahl resists the urge to say that he knows that this isn't a great part of town, that's why they're in it. Where else are they going to find the good bars? Also, he would still love someone to try and mess with them. A lot of the caution he's been carrying around in his city has been drank away, so the thought of getting into a fight seems like nothing but fun right now. It would really hit the spot, honestly.

He's not lacking enough caution to start getting comfortable and talkative around their new friend, though. So, he ultimately keeps his mouth shut about the neighborhood.

Finn's suggestion does require a comment, though.

He immediately gives a low, doubtful sound before Vincent can even think about responding. "They got real big carriages?"

Unfortunately, whether or not he's intoxicated, Irahl has a good point. Finn regards the both of them again, this time clearly envisioning either of them trying to fit into a street carriage. Gods forbid they both tried to get into one...

"Hm, no..." Finn drops his hands after a moment, frowning, "Not really. Guess that's a problem..."

"We'll just walk..." Vincent helpfully suggests with a shrug of his own, "What'sa direction?"

"No, no," Finn shakes his head and finally just stuffs his hands in his pockets, "Pretty sure Gener--" He corrects himself, "Uh, Seth wouldn't like knowing I just let you two wander into the lower rungs while you're drunk."

And while Vincent starts to unconvincingly protest, "Hey, I ain't drunk...!" in the background, Finn shoots Irahl a pointed look, his gaze thankfully protected behind thick tinted glass.

"Besides, you popped a stitch."

Maybe it's because he's drunk, or maybe it's because Finn truly is his coworker now, but Irahl sure is currently seeing him through that lens... which means that he is fair game to be messed with. At least a little.

With his scarf in the way, it's impossible to know whether Irahl is smirking or not as he looks down at Finn, but the amused look around his eyes seems to suggest it.

"Am I gonna make it, doc?"

He may be one of the littlest guys in the bunch, but Finn was a military medic before he was monster-kin, so he's not all that phased by big guys who act like sarcastic shitheads because they don't know how to express their feelings through polite avenues.

"Depends on how badly your blood thins out, I think," Finn smiles wryly, "But... Nah, guess you're probably fine..."

He isn't about to get punchy with his words, though. He averts his gaze again, instead looking somewhere in the vicinity of Vincent before he makes up his mind to try it again.

"Listen, I just want to make sure you guys can get back before everything closes."

To be fair, Irahl is in no danger of bleeding to death or catching a bad infection... but yeah, if he has been drinking, his blood could be thin enough to be making a mess of his shirt and he sure wouldn't notice.

However he is distracted from whatever other smartass remarks he might be formulating by that second thing that Finn says.

"...Don't tell me your hotels close down at night around here."

This is a silly town, but that would be too much.

"No, that'd be..." Finn's about to say ridiculous, but he glances over at Vincent again because he isn't sure if that's something they do over in Skeleton City or not. He's never actually been there, but he's heard they've got all kinds of strange customs and facets of life based around that electrical grid of theirs.

"Huh?" Vincent seems confused by this, "Whas'the problem?"

"You just... Don't want to be caught on this side when they close the gates." Finn looks expectantly at the both of them, and when he doesn't get a knowing reaction from either man, realizes that they really don't know much about the Capitol.

"Oh, there's--" With a weak smile, he explains in more detail, "They kind of... They lock down higher platforms after a certain hour. So if you're on this side when it happens, you'll be stuck here until it opens again the next morning."

Vincent scratches his head. He doesn't remember this at all, so it's either too new for him to have any point of reference, or he's a hell of a lot more drunk than he thought.

Wow. He blinks at Vincent's confusion and then his eyebrows raise at Finn's explanation. It turns out that both of theses cities are somehow even more confounding than he'd thought. He couldn't understand why there wouldn't just be armed guards and ID-based checkpoints monitoring movement within the city like normal.

"So... that mean you're walking us home?"

It's a cute thought.

Finn laughs again, weakly. It's absolutely absurd of him to try to be responsible for these two giant, troublesome men, but he has a bad feeling about the idea of just letting them wander deeper into the lowest bowls of the Capitol on their own.

"I'm going to try," he says, throwing another shrug on for good measure, "I can't really go all the way up, but I can at least get you guys to the other side."

"Why's it get locked down?" Vincent asks, very belated, still lingering on the previous comment.

"Uh, I think it was because of the riots...?" Finn guesses, turning a little and taking an exploratory step in a direction to see if these two are on-board, "We'll go this way."

The sniper is slow to listen and sluggish to get going, but he's at least beginning to move in the direction of their impromptu guide. He's not quick about it, but he's technically following.

Part of the lag is because he too is circling around a point that the conversation is moving past. Hopefully Finn won't mind swinging back and forth between topics as these two tipsily struggle their way through the concepts he's introducing.

"Why can't you go all the way up? Don't have clearance?" he asks with audible skepticism in his voice, either doubting Finn's truthfulness or just preemptively throwing shade on how this city works.

"What's the riots...?" Vincent asks noisily from behind the both of them, right on the heels of Irahl's questions. They'll hear his heavy bootsteps slowly beginning to follow along at the back of the pack even though Finn doesn't answer him right away.

"Okay, okay..." Finn replies, "One at a time..."

He turns around enough to face Irahl again, though he keeps taking steps backwards in hopes of keeping this train moving.

"I'm, uh... I have clearance, I just don't... You know, blend in very well. Worried I'll run into people who know me from before."

It's no coincidence that he pushes his sunglasses further up his face as he says this, though he doesn't realize Irahl may not have all the context needed to put together why.

Irahl has no idea what "before" Finn could possibly be referring to, and he would have asked about it if another very specific opportunity hadn't also made itself available at the same time. It's something that had occurred to him to potentially poke at before, so now that Finn conveniently leaves the door open for him to make a comment--and the topic is even more relevant with them being underground--he pulls the trigger.

"Makes more sense upstairs in the sun than down here," he remarks with the sort of casualness of a called shot.

Sure, Finn's options are a little limited, generally speaking, but Irahl still had to say something about Finn's habit of wearing sunglasses in dark places.

It doesn't take Finn long at all to realize what Irahl means by that very called shot--and it has him frowning a split-second later.

"Yeah, I know they're not great down here, okay?" Finn says, clearly irritable about the subject, "I know it's weird. You're not the first person to tell me that today."

"...What're we talkin' about?" Vincent asks, from somewhere over Irahl's shoulder.

"I can't--" Finn spins around again with a huff, "Nothing. It's stupid."

There's no remorse or sympathy to be found here, of course, but there's also a lack of real antagonism. Irahl isn't trying to pick on him. Especially after drinking, it's more a matter of him not caring enough to keep comments to himself than anything.

This is equally as true for sort-of-mean comments as it is for sort-of-helpful ones. So, he gives another loose-boned shrug.

"...If you all replicate my equipment, might be something to do about that."

Finn doesn't even really want to be talking about this in public. Though they've begun slowly meandering along a street, passing what looks like a scrapyard with only a few late-shift workers left, Finn still considers this area very much in public.

So he shakes his head, even if he is very curious to know more about whatever Irahl is talking about.

"I don't wanna talk about it here. But I'll ask you about it later."

He responds with the barest verbal approximation of a shrug, which is the closest approximation to a 'sure' coming from Irahl. Doesn't matter either way, to him.

The only amount of motivation he could possibly have on this topic is if it turns out that Finn is interested, it might be one more ounce of pressure on these people to hurry up and crack the technology he'd brought from home.

Either way, he's good going back to being quiet and focusing only on keeping his steps straight. The conversation has now been freed up, in case Vincent still wants to find out about those riots or whatever.

An awkward silence settles over the three of them... Well, it's only really awkward to Finn. Vincent is busy thinking and sluggishly working through everything that Finn's hesitation means, coming up with a million questions but knowing (even drunk) that he shouldn't say anything. He's barely aware that the space where no one is saying anything is dragging on far longer than a sober person would generally consider comfortable.

Finn, on the other hand, is worried that his direct rejection of the topic at hand may have come off as a rejection of any and all conversation. Especially with Irahl seeming pretty talkative in comparison to the last time they saw each other, and then just getting quiet again...

"...Sorry, I didn't mean to shut you down, or anything," he apologizes, shrugging his shoulders up towards his ears, "What were you... Uh, you...?"

He cranes his head to look over his shoulder and call out towards Vincent.

"You had a question about the riots?"

Vincent blinks in surprise, having clearly forgotten until now, "...Oh, yeah! The fuck're you talkin' about? S'that new?"

"Not... Really?" Finn would shrug, but he's already got his shoulders up, "Happened a few years ago? Something to do with mage work rights, but a group of guys got up to the government buildings and tried to trash the place. Twelve people died."

"Shit," Vincent says. Finn doesn't sound bothered, like it happened somewhere very far away from him and not in his own city.

"Yeah, it sounds like it was a big PR mess. Now they lock the gates to... I don't know, discourage drunken mobs or something."

This is how things often happen around Irahl. Social interactions lap at him and glance off like waves against an island, with him hardly registering that they'd been aimed at him in the first place. He doesn't know what Finn means by 'shutting him down' and doesn't bother to think too hard about it. He just idly wonders while Finn flops around in his own discomfort, then drops it when he decides he doesn't care.

The new conversation also bumps against him, but--in this case--he does reflect something back: a small scoff under his breath.

Of course he has Opinions on at least some aspect of this topic, but he also doesn't seem like he's intending on becoming more of a participant in the conversation and elaborating. Sometimes, when you have Opinions (and you've been drinking,) they just spill out a little without notice.

Irahl is not alone in having opinions. Vincent makes a similar sound, though it's not under his breath.

"Stupid," he says, looking distant for a moment, "Like that's gonna fix anythin'..."

"Yeah..." Finn sighs, seeming already tired of the subject himself, "I mean, it's way more complicated than that, obviously, but that's the short version."

"S'fuckin' stupid," Vincent repeats sullenly, before he finally plods up to walk next to Irahl rather than behind him. "Spineless shitbags hidin' behind a gate. Fuckin' cowards."

Well, Finn really didn't mean to make one of them mad. He'd hoped that the surreal experience of hearing his boss' voice with the entirely wrong inflection would go away after hearing it for a little bit, but it only seems to be getting worse while he's not looking at him. He half-turns again to try and address Vincent.

"Hey, hey. You can take it up with the Claims Office once you're back up there. But for now, what were you guys even doing down here to begin with?"

There, maybe a change of subject can get them back on a better track.

There are two Irahls, unbeknownst to himself. One Irahl--the one he has toiled so hard for years to be--is the dutiful, law-enforcing cog in the machine. The other Irahl, however, is the chain-breaking, unwavering rebel fighter. He's pretty sure that second one isn't a thing that exists anymore, but as long as his primary drive is justice instead of authority, it's still going to be a part of him that can be lured out when he isn't careful.

He might be naturally drawn toward order and peace, never having been considered a rabble-rouser even when he'd been participating in an active rebellion, but that doesn't mean he can't recognize the signs of potential anarchy. If anything, it might make him even more sensitive to it.

So, with the buzz of alcohol making everything feel easy, Vincent's attitude coaxes out that other side of him without effort.

"Gates are dangerous," he mumbles dryly and seemingly to himself, but it's really for Vincent and Vincent's brewing anger pulling up beside him. "Got to hit them harder, you know."

Then, he is distracted from his dire prognosis by Finn's question. He doesn't know if that question had been aimed at either of them specifically, but he has an answer anyway.

"Brunch."

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