Johannes Cabal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
somelittleinfamy) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
taxonomites2013-02-18 06:47 pm
somelittleinfamy) wrote in taxonomites2013-02-18 06:47 pm
Entry tags:
[holo] [location: Sanctuary] a devil put aside for me
There is something stuck to Johannes Cabal’s wrist.
Oh, and it does rather appear that someone’s abducted him--again. But that’s a matter of secondary concern. There’s something stuck to his wrist and that’s annoying. It’s some sort of lady’s wristwatch and it’s fused straight through the skin of his wrist: molded seamlessly into his body like some demented surgeon’s flayed the skin off his right arm in a ring and lovingly stitched it back up with a smooth hard bracelet where his flesh had used to be. He worries at it with the fingers of his left hand but all he succeeds in doing is turning the skin around the wristwatch rash-pink: it won’t come loose. The watch is useless, too. It’s covered in pointless buttons and it hasn’t even got a face.
“Verdammt noch mal,” he mutters and resigns himself to looking around.
This is how this always works: 1. Someone abducts him. 2. They want something. 3. The something is either something to which he might assent, like creating a horrific monster for them, or something to which he won’t, like being tortured and executed. There is not usually a point in this process where someone consults Johannes. There is not even always a point in this process where someone explains to Johannes what’s going on. So finding himself in an odd room with some sort of collar fused to his wrist and not the foggiest idea of what’s happening isn’t quite as disquieting for Johannes Cabal as it might have been for other persons of his acquaintance; this sort of thing is, not to put too fine a point on it, always happening to him. He’s never been at a loss for enemies.
Usually, though, they have the decency to turn up at all. He takes inventory: he’s wearing everything he was when the ship he was on--er, crashed--and he’s got his cane, which is a trifle insulting, really, because no one ever leaves a prisoner with a weapon unless they’re making a point. And he still hasn’t seen a sign of who sent him here.
The metal room is bare, clinical, even a little laboratorial, which doesn’t surprise him: cells tend to be featureless. What they don’t tend to be is open. This room has an open doorway: waiting for him, it seems, to walk through. To Hell with the doorway. It’s clearly a trap. He ignores it: anyone who goes to the trouble of kidnapping him can damned well come and explain things to him themselves; he has no interest in running some sort of ridiculous rat maze for his captor’s or captors’ benefit.
The really irritating thing about this is--all right, all of this is the really irritating thing. This is a really irritating situation. Look, resigning yourself to this sort of thing and developing a tolerance for it are not quite the same. But the really, really irritating thing about this is he has no genuine idea of what’s happening. He hasn’t stolen any books recently. He doesn’t think this suits the modi operandi of any of the people he’s recently angered, most of whom are dead, anyway. If he didn’t know better, he’d have to say that about this whole situation, there’s something curiously--impersonal, almost.
This is stupid. Someone is going to turn up sooner or later, they’re going to tell him what they want, and either he’s going to give it to them or he isn’t. This is stupid, he tells himself and, still clad in his black waistcoat and jacket, sits down on the floor to wait.
As far as Taxon’s concerned, he’s a nondescript, yellow-haired man of about thirty wearing spectacles and a three-piece suit cut in the style of the late nineteenth century; he looks peeved, but not shocked, and like he has every idea of what’s happening and just doesn’t care for it. (In fact, he’s cultivated this expression; it’s amazing how far you can go in life simply by looking as though you aren’t surprised by anything.) As far as he’s concerned, he’s a necromancer of some little infamy and things don’t just happen to him without a distinct purpose: someone always wants something. Ergo, he’ll wait here until they tell him. The only thing that casts a shadow of doubt over his straightforward hypothesis is the open door: when he glances at it some rebellious part of his mind says, and what will you do if there is, in fact, something you haven’t accounted for?
Oh, and it does rather appear that someone’s abducted him--again. But that’s a matter of secondary concern. There’s something stuck to his wrist and that’s annoying. It’s some sort of lady’s wristwatch and it’s fused straight through the skin of his wrist: molded seamlessly into his body like some demented surgeon’s flayed the skin off his right arm in a ring and lovingly stitched it back up with a smooth hard bracelet where his flesh had used to be. He worries at it with the fingers of his left hand but all he succeeds in doing is turning the skin around the wristwatch rash-pink: it won’t come loose. The watch is useless, too. It’s covered in pointless buttons and it hasn’t even got a face.
“Verdammt noch mal,” he mutters and resigns himself to looking around.
This is how this always works: 1. Someone abducts him. 2. They want something. 3. The something is either something to which he might assent, like creating a horrific monster for them, or something to which he won’t, like being tortured and executed. There is not usually a point in this process where someone consults Johannes. There is not even always a point in this process where someone explains to Johannes what’s going on. So finding himself in an odd room with some sort of collar fused to his wrist and not the foggiest idea of what’s happening isn’t quite as disquieting for Johannes Cabal as it might have been for other persons of his acquaintance; this sort of thing is, not to put too fine a point on it, always happening to him. He’s never been at a loss for enemies.
Usually, though, they have the decency to turn up at all. He takes inventory: he’s wearing everything he was when the ship he was on--er, crashed--and he’s got his cane, which is a trifle insulting, really, because no one ever leaves a prisoner with a weapon unless they’re making a point. And he still hasn’t seen a sign of who sent him here.
The metal room is bare, clinical, even a little laboratorial, which doesn’t surprise him: cells tend to be featureless. What they don’t tend to be is open. This room has an open doorway: waiting for him, it seems, to walk through. To Hell with the doorway. It’s clearly a trap. He ignores it: anyone who goes to the trouble of kidnapping him can damned well come and explain things to him themselves; he has no interest in running some sort of ridiculous rat maze for his captor’s or captors’ benefit.
The really irritating thing about this is--all right, all of this is the really irritating thing. This is a really irritating situation. Look, resigning yourself to this sort of thing and developing a tolerance for it are not quite the same. But the really, really irritating thing about this is he has no genuine idea of what’s happening. He hasn’t stolen any books recently. He doesn’t think this suits the modi operandi of any of the people he’s recently angered, most of whom are dead, anyway. If he didn’t know better, he’d have to say that about this whole situation, there’s something curiously--impersonal, almost.
This is stupid. Someone is going to turn up sooner or later, they’re going to tell him what they want, and either he’s going to give it to them or he isn’t. This is stupid, he tells himself and, still clad in his black waistcoat and jacket, sits down on the floor to wait.
As far as Taxon’s concerned, he’s a nondescript, yellow-haired man of about thirty wearing spectacles and a three-piece suit cut in the style of the late nineteenth century; he looks peeved, but not shocked, and like he has every idea of what’s happening and just doesn’t care for it. (In fact, he’s cultivated this expression; it’s amazing how far you can go in life simply by looking as though you aren’t surprised by anything.) As far as he’s concerned, he’s a necromancer of some little infamy and things don’t just happen to him without a distinct purpose: someone always wants something. Ergo, he’ll wait here until they tell him. The only thing that casts a shadow of doubt over his straightforward hypothesis is the open door: when he glances at it some rebellious part of his mind says, and what will you do if there is, in fact, something you haven’t accounted for?
[Audio]
This guy looks like a barrel of fun though. No freaking out, like most people-- just sitting there with a set jaw and an air like he has no intention of moving anytime soon.
"You just going to sit there, then?" Paul's voice says, crackling into life from Johannes' wrist.
[Audio]
What does occur to him is: ... an American. Is he ever going to be rid of the Anglosphere? "Yes," he answers, pushing his hands through his pale, tidy hair.
[Audio]
Paul studies the man on screen, filing away details. The German accent, coupled with the German words that the man muttered at first; the clothing and general air of anachronism (those glasses for instance).
"The bracelet doesn't come off," Paul offers, 'helpfully'.
[holo] cough not that i forgot to format this correctly in the first place
With no other option, Johannes reluctantly files away the American's warning, edited down to The bracelet's a little difficult to remove. He peers at the object in question, now noticing that it seems to be what he's being talked to through: "And to whom do I owe the honor?" he addresses it with narrowed blue eyes behind his anachronistic spectacles.
[audio] s'all cool
"The name's Paul Smecker. I'm not responsible for bringing you here," Paul says, with that note of rote-ness that accompanies a speech given at least a few times.
"Let's see, you're from Germany? But it wouldn't be called Germany, would it-- Prussia? Bavaria? Some part of the German Empire," he hazards the guess, which no doubt makes him sound like quite the American yokel to Johannes' ears.
[holo]
"Is that all they teach you about the Kaiserreich in the United States?" he replies, but he sounds wary, not insulted or contemptuous, exactly. It's a cagey answer. It's evident he's caught onto something, at least, though evidently not how his tablet functions, as he's still staring at it and speaking directly into it.
As for I'm not responsible for bringing you here, Johannes leaves that alone. He's not exactly going to take Smecker's word on it, but if Smecker's going to assert it there doesn't seem to be any point in objecting. What would he say? 'Yes you are?'
"Tell me, Mr. Smecker," he changes the subject with more than a touch of dryness, "have you always been jewelry? Or is this a recent development?"
[audio]
He considers, again. The German isn't too discomfited, all things considered. Hell, he's not really discomfited at all; if anything his expression about being taken from his (presumed) time and whatever he was doing, dropped into a steel fishbowl, and having a disembodied voice speaking to him is rather one of annoyed resignation.
Paul chalks him up to being from one of the weird fucking worlds.
"It's a communications device," Paul answers, "like--"
He's not precisely certain when Germany is from, pre-or-post Marconi, so he ditches saying 'radio' in favor of, "--like the telegraph. Sort of."
(Many generations removed, but hey.)
"And you are...?" He can read the name on the map, of course, but Paul prefers to see how people introduce themselves, or if they want to.
[holo]
[i shall just assume they are continuing to audio and holo unless otherwise said]
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[Video]
Madelyne's trying to be cheerful when greeting new people. It helps, a little bit she thinks, in actually being welcomed here. Even if no one should want to be here or want to be welcomed here, either.
"Do you speak English?"
[holo]
He doesn't so readily assume so, of course. There's nothing preventing his gaoler from being a chipper-voiced American woman--particularly a chipper one, in fact. There is something a little perverse about cheerful people. Still, there's no use in jumping to conclusions, he supposes.
[holo]
[holo]
Johannes hesitates to agree with the basics. There are quite a number of basics he's not very clear on at all. There are, frankly, probably quite a number of basics he's not interested in hearing at all. His definition of 'basics' tends to be a great deal more basic than others', especially when impatient or tired, and he is both.
Neither prevents him from extending the barest minimum courtesy as he sees it to a strange woman--as long as she's extending it to him, anyway. "And whom would I be addressing?" he inquires. He sounds extremely disinterested.
[holo]
"Madelyne. Madelyne Pryor and may I have your name?" She smiles, thought less intensely than before, "And are there any questions I can help answer?"
[holo]
He's half tempted to shake his head to the second inquiry, but there are times when even his pride is overruled and some questions he'd prefer not to have to find out for himself, to the best of his ability. So he frowns and asks, "Who all is imprisoned here?"
[holo]
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But the man stays there for a terribly long time, and that tugs on him. If someone hadn't come to get him, it is possible he'd still be in that room, relying on the poor efforts of his environmental suit, terrified to move and do something wrong. And so, after a while, a soft voice sounds from the man's wrist:
"It's okay to come out."
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When another American addresses him through his bracelet phonograph he just lifts it up to study it again. There might be tiny text on it, but it's difficult to tell in this light. What could he possibly have done to land himself in a metaphysical prison for Americans? "Is that so, Miss," he says with even, dead politeness--there's no ? on the end, the question is completely devoid of interest. His expression is not, though.
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She nods, tiny, pale face utterly serious. "It is. You won't get in trouble or anything."
"Though I've been told that you can't return to it once you exit that room, so make sure you don't leave anything behind."
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Now he's speaking to a young American woman through a telephone surgically grafted to his wrist. The Devil take it, maybe he's sustained some sort of traumatic brain injury in the crash and he's going mad. Miss Barrow, he thinks, is going to be terribly smug. "I don't suppose you have any better idea of this all than your countrymen?"
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"I can tell you what little I know? I'm afraid I've only been here a month."
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So she isn't American after all--well, no matter. Johannes is hardly inquisitive about others' lives, though at the moment he's got very little to do. The bit his mind snags on is the last sentence.
"'Only' a month?" he repeats. His dismay is obvious.
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[holo] -> [voice]
Re: [holo] -> [voice]
[location: bazaar] sometime later that day
In their midst walks a tall man with light-heavy hair and determination, moving from stall to stall as though looking for something incredibly particular - not like most patrons do, fluttering randomly from here to there not knowing exactly what they want.
The bazaar is like any other, in that it houses hidden gems, and that its visitors had better keep a close eye on their own hidden gems.
Someone small of stature (a street urchin by any other name) bumps into the tall white-haired man, and from there on in: chaos.
Long-fingered white hands grab the head of hair and lift; the little runt screams bloody murder. In the boy's hand, a very pretty knife. A very pretty, elaborately decorated blade that would probably sell for a small fortune, given the right fencer.
But no one steals from Nuada Silverlance. And no one, especially not a thief, threatens violence with the very item taken.
There's a snap, a sickening squelch as bone and tissue breaks; the blade falls to the ground beneath the wildly kicking feet; the boy shrieks in horror edged with pain, and all around the Extras milling about raise their voices in outrage.
What do?
[location: bazaar, evening]
So he gathers up his things--his person and his cane, straightening his clothing a little as he does, getting rid of nonexistent dust--and leaves through the open door as if this had been his intention all along.
The Sanctuary museum keeps him a little while. The zombies pique his curiosity, but no matter how long he peers at them, no master materializes: they just shuffle about, listless. He knows them for what they are, certainly, and they don't nonpluss him any further than anything else here--he can always feel the cold, solid presence of an undead thing. But these aren't his and they aren't in any state to be of use to him. He lingers over the dinosaur skeleton, too, but also leaves it be, not being much interested in palaeontology on a good day.
The outside world is disorienting. The sun hangs low in the sky, teasing the horizon with its bottom edge, but that seems to be this dimension's only concession to verisimilitude. Otherwise the city looks like no other city he's seen. The buildings are metal, metal and glass. The streets are covered in hansoms that hurtle along faster than horses at gallop. Once he spies a train that slinks along more quietly than any locomotive he's ever heard.
Oh, well. He's seen stranger. He supposes. It makes him feel better to suppose that. The people here don't react quite realistically, either, although the likeness isn't awful. Whoever made them put a little more effort than they could've. Johannes considers drawing on one of them and seeing how quickly these are done away with--that can be telling of something's substance, also it'd probably be satisfying--but he hesitates. He supposes if he's trapped with nineteen-odd other real people, it might do him well to be on better behavior.
At least until he can be certain that his damned wristwatch shuts off, anyway.
It's in this frame of mind, having newly contemplated and rejected Extra-murder, that he wanders into the Bazaar and takes brief stock of the wares. None of it interests him just now: there's too much to process for his nineteenth-century mind, so he puts it all down to illusion and looks around for food instead. It might be sham food, but he's feeling rather sham-peckish at the moment and it'll probably make him feel sham-better.
Then there's the problem of money. He's about to try and palm himself a kebab from a halal cart (not that he knows either of these words) when the commotion around Nuada, not far away, draws his attention. He glances up at the white, demonic figure, the screaming boy on the ground, the repetitive outrage, the splattered blood.
He blinks and withdraws his hand again, then looks away with a what? expression.
[location]
"Silence!" He calls out, and there's a softness to his voice despite the raise in volume. He means business, but for his own reasons sees no gain in turning his voice into a weapon. He turns, meeting the glares of every last one of the men and women and children, bright yellow eyes glancing over shapes and sizes as if assessing cattle.
"Let this be a lesson to you, that no one takes what is mine. And you," he says to the boy, who scrambles to get away. "If you steal from me ever again I shall have your hands for the trouble. I'll cut them off myself and hang them above my door for all to see."
[location]
What turns him around on the subject is that the thing clearly isn't a part of the scenery, on closer inspection: it has a silver wristlet just like him. Johannes winces--twenty real people in "Taxon," and this is going to be one of them? He misses Americans now. But his wariness is fading upon noticing that the thing's a fellow prisoner like himself; that doesn't imply omnipotence, that doesn't imply the power to pop out of the woodwork and cut off his hands anytime he tries to steal something.
So he takes it when the vendor's looking away and turns his back. He expects to get away with it. People are never suspecting men who dress like him of petty theft. People are idiots. He pops the end of the meat-on-a-stick into his mouth and bites off a piece, because he's hungry, and because he has a point to make. Because, after all, the bracelet also implies that the thing's sentient.
He crosses his arms. His bracelet is visible, he's dressed anachronistically, and ah, Nuada, he smells like iron and blood and magic; however, he also has no apparent idea of how to eat lamb kebab.
[location]
But why would a viper need protection from kith and kin?
"What are you looking at?" Yes, you. Salted-meat-iron-magic-bloodied you.
[location]
His wretched luck, wouldn't it be? He transfers the (now rather comforting) weight of his swordstick to his off-hand while he picks more halal meat off the skewer with his teeth. All the while, he rustles mentally through pages of memory.
"Sprechen Sie Deutsch?" he hazards instead of answering Nuada's question. "I suppose that's forward, but I'd be disappointed to find--one of the Gentry so terribly. Monolingual."
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