psychoshenanigans | Accord // AU

So he knew that this hell-beast was approaching, but he wasn't expecting the thing to just keep going and then drape all over his shoulder like a dumb dog.

"...Um."

Surprised and confused, to say the least. He tilts the book away a little, as if offended that this thing would try to read over his shoulder like that.

"Hello."

"Hello!" Sounding at least a little more bright--and certainly less confused--than Robin.

Surprisingly enough, he seems to get the hint about reading over Robin's shoulder... It's all the other social atrocities that he's oblivious to. He stops peering at the book when it's tipped away, and focuses on Robin's face instead.

And this includes sniffing at it. Not exactly touching him, but it's alarmingly close. Especially with the way that the guy's eyes appear to just be indiscriminately leaking red.

On the one hand, that's not... unusual for him, and he has the instinctive thought to hold still while this creature picks up whatever scents it needs to identify him. But on the other hand, that automatically labels this thing as a monster-level creature that's making him scrunch his mouth to the side to get the still-lit cigarette out of the way.

"You've... kinda got somethin'..." Mumbled out the other side of his mouth, "...Leakin' out of your... face..."

"Oh."

He gives Robin back some space, but only enough bring up a sleeve to wipe at his eyes with. And those sleeves are made of leather, so mostly just smears it all evenly around his eyelids instead of welling along the rims.

And it's somewhere in this that he finally notices that something is wrong, and hesitates.

He suddenly leans in again and goes to give Robin's face and neck a much more thorough sniffing, along with a thoughtful "Hmmm..."

He watches this failure with the calculated analysis of a chess player... at least, up until the guy's face is all up in his personal space again.

"Oooookay," He pushes the monster away with one, unusually strong arm. "I'm gonna need you to back up and explain why you're intently smelling my face."

There's a deep groany sort of noise when he's pushed, but he does back up a little. Mostly because he needs some space think in as well.

He can provide an answer in the meantime, though. That's easy enough.

Wiping at the blood coming out of his eyes, sounding pretty matter-of-fact about it, "Because this is supposed to be yours."

"Yeah, it's... not..."

He actually grimaces at all the blood that's being smeared around and, assuming this thing has about as much intent to kill him as it has intelligence, reaches forward to wipe the blood away from the thing's eyes himself.

It gets picked right up with a swipe of his fingers. There will be more, but he can analyze what he's got closely. The blood congeals on his fingers in little, gummy droplets.

"You've under quite the binding spell, aren't you?"

It has the deepearth feel of fire and sulphur, with the tang of some ancient, otherworldly history. But there's something about it that feels decidedly empty. It's only half his-- the rest is nothing.

"I wouldn't call it a spell..."

And yes, it's kind of nice having clear eyes for a minute, so he grins a little bit, though it's still a mostly bitter expression.

"But something seems to be wrong with it, either way."

"Ah. What a shame."

So, there. He's just a wandering creature that's found himself in a weird place with no idea what's going on. He's already displayed buckets more intelligence than the usual monster, so he figures... eh, heck, it's not like he's got anything better to do.

He closes his book properly, adjusts his quickly-burning cigarette to somewhere more comfortable in his mouth, and pats the bench next to himself.

"Take a seat. Tell me about yourself."

He lopes right around and plops down next to him. It seems that he at least appreciates the company, despite his utter uncertainty of where he is or why. For the moment, he seems nothing but amiable.

"I'm looking for who called me."

He leans in a little, but decides that he really has already gotten a good enough smell of the guy, so rocks back into his own space pretty quickly.

"And I guess it's not you."

"Probably not," he agrees, "I tend to keep track of where my blood is going."

He'd call him gross, but perpetual bleeding from the eyes isn't that bad. As a fellow blood-monster himself, he knows better than most that this kind of shit just happens sometimes. Magic is messy.

And an amiable monster might be more fun than what he was reading anyway.

"So you belong to someone?"

"Yes. ...Well. I should."

Perfectly content where he's sitting now, he looks all around at the vaguely bewildering scenery and the distinct lack of other people. After another sniff of the air, he just sighs.

"I don't know where they are, though."

"So you've fallen out of the nest, as it were."

So now it's Robin's turn to invade his personal space, leaning in and looking at the angles of his new interest's face like his skin is hiding some deep, informing secret that'll tell him everything he wants to know.

And when it doesn't, he picks up his hand and starts looking at that instead. He tries to pop one of his finger joints. Just seeing if he can get away with it. Or get his finger to pop. Either would be a victory, okay.

"So where are you from? What do you do? What's the prerequisite for belonging to someone?"

As long as it's just his face being being inspected and he's not being stared in the eyes, he seems just as curious about what Robin is doing as Robin seems to be about him. He even lets his hand be picked up, until his finger is tugged on.

His knuckle does pop, actually, and it gets a little animal yelp of discomfort out of him. He takes his hand back, after that. It's only then that he finally starts to look a little bit wary about his new friend.

"I'm from the Kingdom of Hell," he shrugs, "and I mostly do whatever my summoner bids me. ...That's who I belong to."

He holds his hands up to show that he's not going to tug on his fingers anymore. It doesn't stop the delighted grin from spreading over his face, though.

"I've heard of Hell. Sounds like a rough place."

What a funny thing. He drapes one arm over the back of the bench.

"So what'll you do if you can't find whoever summoned you?"

"It's rough if you don't live there. I mostly just sleep when I'm home. It gets pretty boring."

Not like the mortal plane, however. Right on cue, the surroundings distract him again, ears perking up when some bird flutters too close. The quick movement catching the corner of his eye is exciting.

"And I always find who summoned me. Normally they're right nearby, but... maybe they're not very good at it, if I ended up this far away. I guess I just look for them until I find them."

He really doesn't seem all that concerned about it, though. Whether or not there's normally some urgent instinct that pulls on him to hunt down his master, there isn't one now.

"Chase the mice, not the birds."

He sees him getting distracted over there. While he's all kinds of interested in seeing what this thing could do, he's got priorities.

"Why not?"

It's maybe a little challenging, with the way it's said with half of a toothy grin.

"What else is around here? Are there tigers?"

Tigers live in jungles, right?

"I..." He was going to say something, but tigers are way more important than his own personal angst over metaphors.

"...I don't know. There might be. I'd like to watch you fight a tiger."

That would be cool. Come to think of it, he'd like to fight a tiger.

"I have always wanted to fight a tiger."

And the fact that this guy is already thinking the same thing is just wonderful. New best friend material, right here.

"I fought a lion once. It was great."

"I'm jealous."

He thinks he fought some lions once, too, but it was not under enjoyable circumstances. They hadn't stood a chance. He might have been trying to prove a point or something. Either way, it wasn't fair to the lions, and that's no fun at all.

"So yeah, tigers are fair game. I think they've got a bear in one of the other biomes..."

"A bear?"

Oh, now he's excited. He's looking away, off through the trees, as if he might see one right there. He doesn't remember anything about bears that live in jungles, but he does have to admit that knowledge of earth animals is not where his strongest skills lie.

"I haven't seen a bear since Rome." And it's only after a minute of reminiscing over this that the rest of Robin's sentence finally registers.

"...Where?"

Robin has no idea where or what "Rome" is, so the significance of the mention is completely lost on him. He's just busy watching the way blood seems to ooze its way out of his lovely-colored eyes.

That is, until, his reference to location is questioned and Robin has to focus again to figure out what he's talking about.

"In that..." He points vaguely to his left, unhelpfully, "...Temperate biome, I think it's called." And then, a second later, he raises an eyebrow, "You do know that we're in a building, right?"

"Wha--"

He looks up, surprised, through the leaves at what must be a combination of glass, sunlit sky, and artificial light. He knows quite well that technology is capable of many terrible and wonderful things, but this is still just plain fascinating.

"Really??"

Oh, maybe he's from a time before this sort of thing. Though, from what he's read, this "Hell" concept seems like it'd be pretty devoid of anything nice, possibly including buildings with controlled environments and stable wildlife populations.

Robin likes his excitement anyway. He looks up with him.

"Yep. The whole thing's a carefully monitored, self-contained little dome. Jeez, that means you can't have been here for more than... what, five minutes?"

"Is that why I can't eat the birds?"

Though, he figures that a tiger would be way off limits, in that case. They're pretty endangered, from his feeble understanding of things.

He doesn't get all the way through the thought, however, before Robin calls his attention back down from the ceiling.

"Yeah. Ten minutes, maybe. I smelled you and came over."

"...You can't eat the birds because I said so."

He supposes that, technically, he shouldn't eat the birds because it would mess up the delicate balance of life maintained in these biomes, and the Metal Men would pitch whatever fit that they're capable of... but you're not supposed to smoke in these things either, and that hasn't stopped him at all.

"Though I'm flattered I was the first thing to catch your attention."

Accord // AU

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