taxonomites | Arrival Post

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Arrival Post

Briar's wary gaze slid around the unfamiliar room, and he prepared a tiny shoot of power to untie the hemp cords that held knives in place under his shirt, an impractical sheath for anyone but a plant mage. No windows, no visible entrance or exit. Metal walls, metal device above his head, metal pedestal with a partly metal device on it. And as he focused on his knives, Briar noticed something unfamiliar on his wrist just below the hilt of the knife. He rubbed at the metal bracelet that bisected a bright blue orchid tattoo. It didn't budge.

"Great, everything's metal," Briar grumbled, magically reaching out to the shakkan, his only company in the bare and polished room. The tree's calm and patience steadied him through their connection. "Y'know," he called out to no one in particular, "I think maybe you were aiming for my sister. I can't do anything with all this metal." That's of course if they were aiming for someone to work with metal. They could just as easily have been looking for someone helpless against it. That last part was what had Briar fighting down a growing urge to panic.

Confusion only added to that urge. Briar couldn't think of anyone who'd capture a person only to give him an anchor and boost for his power. He went down the few steps, fingers running over the walls in search of a catch for a hidden door. Seams would be awfully hard to hide in a smooth metal surface, but illusions and metal mages were both things that could just maybe manage it.

Several minutes of searching later and no closer to figuring out where he was or how to escape, Briar sighed. He tapped into his bond with the shakkan again to give his power the greatest possible reach, speaking through his magic, Daj'? I don't know if you can hear me, but I could really use a hand right now. If anyone could get him out of a metal room, it'd be Daja. When no answer came, Briar strained for a sense of any of the three girls. None were there. He had to be cut off magically if he couldn't even feel them; they'd certainly been in range before, even if all four had closed doors on their minds.

"I'll just sit here then," he remarked dryly, "And wait for someone to tell me exactly what you've snatched me for." While he waited, Briar strained his magical senses for hints of plant life outside the room. He concluded that his suspicions about a magically shielded room were tentatively confirmed, as he could reach no local greenery either, not so much as a blade of grass. The mage stopped trying, saving his energy for whenever his captors did make an appearance.

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"Look alive, sunshine. Welcome to a gilded cage that's pumped up full-throttle, expanding your universe one day at a time, cityrat."

Have a shock of red hair on your tablet, hazel eyes staring intently.

"Aliens. Kidnapped. Some sick kinda social experiment. Watch the food and water, it's drugged. Watch the people without bracelets, they're automatons. Watch the people with bracelets, they've all got their fair share of emotional baggage checked-in an the Holiday Inn, ready and waiting for a whole ton of excuses to fuck you over." A wry smile. "I'm Party Poison, and if you know what's milkshake, bring the slaughtermatic jams over here, if you're picking up what I'm putting down."

Hey. Party was trying to explain things. Not his fault if no one here save for Kobra Kid spoke the peculiar dialect of English that Killjoys did.

Briar laughed at the easy stream of mostly unintelligible slang as he got up and walked over to the pedestal to look down at the screen. Party Poison did not seem like a very welcoming name, but the speaker sounded nice enough. And as someone who had once been named Roach, Briar really didn't think he had room to talk about names.

He responded with a grin, completely unperturbed by Party's phrasing. "Drugged with what? What's an automaton?" Briar skipped over the emotional baggage part. That, he was fairly certain he understood correctly, and he was no exception to the rule. "I can't bring anything anywhere till I figure a way out of this room. I'm picking up a decent amount of what you're putting down, but I could probably stand to pick up a bit more."

Party blinks rapidly, clearly surprised by something. Or more accurately: this guy responded to him with something other than just a confused stare and 'what?'

He runs a hand through his hair, sighing slightly. "Alrighty, well, you gotta touch the tablet thing my face is on, and then sssshhhhhhhkrt, door'll open. Anyway--dunno what it's drugged with. I ain't eating it." It shows on his face--he's gaunt, pale. Starving himself due to pure paranoia.

"And those automatons? They're Extras. They're here but not really here, trapped in a cycle of living and not-living. Personally? I don't give two zappers and a lawnmower about 'em, but other people do." He's still bitter about the Molotov cocktail incident.

Briar recognized that blinking stare. It was the same one he got every time he met somebody new in a slum and broke out in the same street slang they used. Even if he looked like a Bag now, that didn't mean Briar had forgotten how he talked for half his life. The best thing to do in response to the stare was grin and carry on as if no pause ever happened.

"In thanks for telling me how to get out of here," he said, touching the 'tablet' and turning to see the previously hidden doors slide open, "how about I find a way to get you some food?" Briar hoped he could deliver on this. "I'm a gardener, and I can always tell whether plant's've been messed with. I'll find some seeds and make sure nothing bothers 'em while they grow." He wasn't sure why he hesitated to mention his magic except that it usually got him suspicious looks from people who talked like Party did.

Briar was entirely too familiar with the look of someone who hasn't gotten anywhere near the nutrition they need. It was the same look he'd had most of his life before Niko brought him to Winding Circle.

He can't help but think of Tris and her lightning at the mention of 'zappers,' distracted momentarily from trying to figure out exactly what Party meant by a cycle of living and not living. The closest he could think of was leafless trees in winter, but even that was part of a natural cycle. This sounded a lot worse. He shuddered a little, picking up the shakkan in one arm and balancing the tablet on its pot to keep a hand free.

"So I guess there's a big mostly empty city outside of here?" The question was mostly just idle conversation, as he would see for himself soon enough.

Party's face switches--his jaw is set, jutting his chin out, looking not quite defiant but certainly distrusting. "No offense, cityrat, but how do I know you're even telling me the truth?" He's caught off guard at his kindness, that all it is--because it was just plain odd for someone to guess right off the bat. He makes a mental note to talk to Kobra about this guy, maybe even get him to meet him. With guns on, of course.

"Mostly mentally," He states, and he's perked up now, atching the other intently. "I mean, the prisoners, they're the real people. The place is filled with the wallpaper known as Extra. Pretty creepy, if you ask me." He pauses. "Too creepy, but some of the other prisoners? They're soft and rather partial to 'em even though they're not even real."

"Because I'd hardly eat it myself if I were lying, of course," Briar countered calmly, a small smile on his face. The mage was obviously not the least offended by the question. People who came up and offered to help usually had ulterior motives in his experience too.

Shrugging, Briar replied, "They do sound unsettling, but I can think of worse things than being too considerate toward people. Better than the reverse, anyway." He'd seen too much of the opposite lately. Briar wasn't ready to take a stance on the so called Extras yet, not sight unseen, but he knew he'd rather people be too kind than too cruel if it had to go in one direction or the other.

Party's next response is more visual, throwing his hands up infront of him in an uncalculated manner and wiggling his fingers as he spoke, weighing his options out loud.

"You're makin' promises when you're from a different world. Even if it's good food--" his stomach was rumbling at the thought "--no reason you're not even human and makin' something you can eat but we can't. Lizards and buzzards stomach more radiation than zonerats to," He points out, but his fingers have stopped wiggling and he kind of flaps his hands in the air, as if flailing about means 'Hah! I told you.'

"And whatever you think about the Extras. They're the least creepiest. You got glitches and Cain and Drusilla. Oh god, Drusilla. There's a gal who's pistols aren't cyclin' fully."

Briar looked genuinely bewildered when he wonders, "What would I be if I weren't human?" He shook his head. That really wasn't the point. "I have a little bit higher resistance to plant-based medicines than most people, but I can still be poisoned or drugged if someone does a good enough job of it. Anything bad enough to do serious harm would affect me too."

Briar's suspicions had never run toward the chance of poisons specifically, but the general feeling was similar enough to what he'd felt or seen plenty of times in his life. He splayed the fingers of his free hand, palm up, in a gesture of nothing to hide. "You're gonna have to eat sometime. Anyone can skip a few meals, but there's only so long a person can live like that. Let me know then if you'd rather trust me or the people who kidnapped us in the first place." Briar never wanted to go back to missing meals again unless he absolutely had to. He didn't like watching other people miss them either.

He made a note of Drusilla as someone to watch out for. As for Cain, Briar would wait. Certainly the man had seemed nice enough so far. "Glitches?" he asked.

Why the hell was Briar telling him this? It made absolutely no sense. 'Here, have a list of things that will affect me in case you want to kill me. I'll also give you how much I can take when it comes to stuff like that.'

Your loss, Party thinks, making a mental note. Definitely not the desert life for you, cityrat. In a weird way, it kind of disappoints him. He settles on just ignoring the meal lecture because Party is not only stubborn but the leader of his crew and his own life, thankyouverymuch, and Briar has no idea what could possibly be going on within the caverns of the alien hamsters. His stomach is telling him to listen to the slightly younger boy, but his stubbornness combined with his paranoia means it's like talking to a brick wall for now, though he is starving.

"There's a few vampires here. And like.. I dunno. A Really, really cool tumbleweed that zaps people. But she's human, so that doesn't count. Uhm," he's talking with his hands again, flailing with each description, looking a hell of a lot younger than he first did on screen. "Glitches--glitches, they'll set your grapefruit on fire if you think about 'em too much. Personally? I hate them. Turnin' you into stuff... messin' with your personality--and I mean..."

Duck and cover, Party's got a way with words:

"I been through hell. Not real hell, but just as close, the wailin' and the yellin' and tiny children reachin' out, their hands like tiny daggers up to heaven askin' angels made from neon and fucking garbage 'what will save us?' That hell, I've been through stuff and I'm not sayin' you haven't--easy, tumbleweed, don't even go there--but I'm sayin' they can 'rearrange the place like it's made outta fucking building blocks' just like that. They can make it like you never existed. Ever. Boom. They can fuckin' change your personality, havin' you dye your hair and be nice to everybody with a grin on your face and a fucking coffee in your hand. They can fuck with you. Wheel and deal and dine without the cheque, good-bye, no-more, no bright lights to save us just down in the dirt. Ghosted. Dusted."

He takes a deep breath, and for a moment it looks like he's done, but the fire's still in his eyes. Raw passion, raw determination: a wild dog that's been caged.

"That? That ain't milkshake. You can censor art, fine. Music, fine, fuckin' opinions, fine. I'll find a way around it. But you get up in here? Noodlin' around my grapefruit? Knowin' my thoughts and hopes and fucking plasticized dreams in a marigold nightmare? Not. Milkshake. you can be your slaughtermatic Exxie fanny when I find who's responsible for all these glitches? Messin' with us? I'm gonna dust them so bad even their damn ghosts'll fossilize."

Of all the many ways Briar could be killed, he considered poison one of the least likely. If it were plant-based or entailed the use of magic, he would have to be paying little to no attention for it to make it past him, and most people tried plant-based first. It was far more probable he'd get killed by some other means before anyone managed to poison him. If saying he could potentially be poisoned helped talk the other man into eating, Briar would do it.

Of course it didn't work, and Briar couldn't say he was really surprised. Stubbornness was hardly a foreign concept. It had certainly been present in Briar's life often enough. But he hoped Party would keep it in mind later. He let the subject go for the time being.

"The one that zaps people isn't named Tris, by any chance, is she?" he asked. It wasn't likely, not when he couldn't sense her, but if Coppercurls was here, Briar wanted to know. "And I've never heard of vampires."

Party's long tirade contained a lot of completely unintelligible words and phrases, but Briar was less distracted by them than many people would have been. He focused on the parts that did make sense, grasping the gist of things. Their captors could rearrange the city and the minds of their captives, and would do so without a second thought. Briar touched his shakkan for reassurance, the miniature pine tree's century and a half of patience and calm steadying his nerves. It wasn't a good idea to rely on the tree for something like this too often, and Briar never did. Today, though, was a strange enough day that he wouldn't fault himself for it. "I doubt I'll be here too long before I'm ready to help you do it," he told Party grimly.

Party nearly laughs at the name, but who is he to do that?

"Nah. Fiesty Brunette? A bit older than me? Really, really pretty eyes..." Yup, that's the face of one rebellious redhead crushing hard on something he'll probably never get. "Yeah..." He clears his throat though, snapping out of it.

"Vampires are like Dracs, but for real." And he pauses because he forgets no one knows what he's talking about. "Just, uh, I'd do my best to remain cheerfully cautious 'round those Exxies."

There's a bit of a chuckle, though. It's dead laughter, because Party hasn't fully laughed in years and certainly not with this. "Tell you what." He explains the basics of using the tablet, along with paranoid advice to constantly lock important things, and then gives him the thumbs up.

"You call me or the Kobra Kid if you want. We'll be at Bronte Beach, or one of the forests, which uh.. I'm guessin' you're gonna go? Since you're makin' out with that bush..."

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Arrival Post

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[holo] - Briar has no idea how to change the settings on this thing

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[visual] ...aaaaand party word vomit!

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