mental link // S72

[servitor]

DIASPEIREIN To scatter, spread about.	MELIORISM The belief that the world gets better.
ORIFLAMME A symbol or standard that inspires confidence, devotion, or courage.	VANGUARD The troops moving at the head of an army.

( CODE BY WHAMBAM )

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[sistershoggoth]

[ Another day with all their little cadets, the stiff and the bruised limping off to eat or shower. Then there's her, still brimming with energy and misdirection. ]

( Hey. )

[servitor]

( I'm in the shower, Annie. )

[Excuse him if he sort of doesn't answer immediately, he's trying to assess the damage from getting punched and bruised by four different people.]

[sistershoggoth]

( Sounds convenient. )

[ Being attached to Annie is like having a loudspeaker to her feelings warbling away like a satanic ritual all day every day. Nothing about what she wants or what she does is really a secret, if you take the time to pick apart the knotted threads she exudes.

She doesn't know how to keep it a secret.

She wants to train everyone because she's terrified they'll die, that she'll have to watch knowing she didn't do enough to prepare. She is kinder and softer with the girls to a startling degree because they remind her of all those who have already died. She's tender with Noctis even though she pushes him around because he keeps her nightmares at bay, she thinks of holding his hand when she lays down to sleep.

Then there's Nyx. The one she wants to punch and fuck. A used up soldier like herself, someone she doesn't have to worry about so much. She wants that easiness. ]

( Can I come. )

[servitor]

[His eyes flicker to some nondescript point on the wall. It's not hard to follow Annie and her train of thoughts. Nyx could hear everyone but Annie... her voice was insistent and continuous, even in her sleep. Of his own emotions, he can't entirely say the same, at least not outwardly.

The brood has had to learn quickly that what he seems and what he feels are both mutual and distinct. Training and years of putting up with so much crap has changed how he's had to handle himself.

She's made it pretty damn obvious what she thinks of him.

Call him flattered. Even the used up soldier part. It's not wrong, at the end of the day. It's probably the last thing he'll end up doing in his lifetime, anyway. He's not expecting any kind of end that leaves him intact.

The girls are to him in the same way Crowe and Selene are to him. Noctis is one to protect and train, to get him to the bitter end.

Annie's the woman that would get him more than anyone else in the brood, scars and punches and dead-ends and all.]

( Yeah. )

[sistershoggoth]

[ She's pleased, not just to get what she wants, but to be understood in wanting it. Sex is a medicine that eases a constant miserable longing in her. Too much adrenaline and your body starts to crave it all the time, that's what the soldier types are going to identify with the most in her. That same hunger, though, it's also the way she craves liquor and chemicals, the way she craves to be free of her skin, to once more feel the expansive power and thought of her true self. A whole distant world, wet and dense and dark, murky waters swirling beneath strangle colored mist, heavy with ice crystals...

This human body is easier to tolerate when it's overflowing. With pain, with exertion, with lust. That's what's on her mind as she takes the permission she's gotten. The promise of not having to think for a little bit, of using up the energy that winds her tight all the time: dissatisfaction, guilt, anxiety, her own manic desperation to fight through it.

Her initial approach is unpleasant. The space right before you turn and really look at her, she could be any number of horrible things, but like the jump scare in a movie, it's always just her. Petite and pale with that big ugly scar raised into her chest, faded pink and purple at the edges. She's been wrapping herself up in compression bandages to contain the symbiote slime that won't stop exposing what a rotted thing she is on the inside. She hates it, she's worn a bra all of never and finds the thing oppressive. She also leaves it exactly the way it is when she comes to find him, kicks off her boots somewhere in the halls and steps out of her cargo pants somewhere in the doorway. The spray from the shower flecks grey across the white fabric of the wrap, makes her hair frizz, but she gives him the same roguish sideways grin that appeared on her face after she asked him who the fuck he was. ]

C'mere, I promise to bite a little.

[sistershoggoth]

( How's it going, big guy? Keeping your shit together? )

[ As conversational as it gets when her mental voice still sounds like an eldritch creature from the deep. ]

[servitor]

( I haven't died from a migraine if that's what you're asking. )

[He still hasn't gotten used to the ungodly muffled voice echoing in his brain.]

[sistershoggoth]

( Good start. You makin' the rounds, bein' friendly? )

[servitor]

( I'm not sure how friendly I can be when everyone's one edge and suspicious of the new guy. Sort of. )

[somnifacient]

[A mental knock on Nyx's figurative doors. Your sleepy King wants your attention.]

(Hey... are you busy right now?)

[servitor]

( No, just clearing my head out here. What's up? )

[somnifacient]

(You mentioned that we needed to talk, right? Earlier, I mean.)

[The empty space of hesitation.]

(It can wait if you want. Not really conducive to clearing your head.)

[servitor]

( It's fine. It's the same thing from back home, just a little bigger. I can meet you wherever you are. )

day 55; late

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sam doesn't know Nyx as well as he does some of the other Hosts, but he's still someone that Sam thinks of after talking to Cathaway about their mission. He's not about to go barging into Nyx's head, though, so when he focuses on their connection - he hovers on the outskirts with the faintest hint of a brush of feathers, something closer to a polite knock than anything else. ]

[servitor]

[Having a proverbial knock on the mental door is still weird, given that there wasn't near as much courtesy for him when he was in the Glaive. Knock and barge in is how usually that went, even if it was a more physical instead of a mental thing.

He'd been practicing his shields for the past few hours, on and off. They're not as strong as Steve's shields, nor are they so imposing, either. Bricks and mortar had been for Steve. Nyx's has taken in the form of thick forests and greenery, sunlight pouring in through the canopy and reflecting clear rivers. Somewhere prowling is a beast, white with blue eyes, a coeurl that is the last to fade away from the scenery as it shifts into something more open, more recent and certainly more militaristic than the former grandeur of his home: The Citadel training grounds. To the Earth-born people, it looks like Rome's ruins, covered in scaffolding, bullet holes, and knife marks all around a central column, surrounded by a levels of broken arches and columns spanning upwards to at least 10 stories.

Galahd keeps him safe, the Citadel brings him back. And so, with this image of the training grounds standing quietly in the sun, Nyx answers the door.]

( You rang? )

[sizeofyourbaggage]

[ Sunlight gleams faintly through the patches in the clouds that represent Sam's shields as he opens up their connection a little more, taking in the visualization of Nyx's shields.

Not bad, and the link hums with that thought - and with a hint of curiosity about the forest and beast and grounds - before he refocuses on what he contacted Nyx for. ]

( I spoke with Cathaway about the mission. She - well, she pretty much said we've got no extraction plan if we blow our cover and the Enemy finds us. They won't risk it following us back to the Station. )

[servitor]

[When he sighs, the images shudder slightly. A near-suicide mission. As if the past missions turning into shit hitting the fan scenarios and amounting to rescues weren't bad enough, now there's no option of going back.

Except that's what Drautos told him, and he went back for Libertus anyway.]

( So we need to make sure everyone does what they have to do and don't deviate too much from the plan. )

[He's already thinking, already trying to work out some basic skeleton that can be filled in with the mission parameters.]

( Do they know? They're going to hate Station orders and whoever tells them to not wait for anyone to come save them. Probably hate the idea of forcing everyone into teams, too. )

[On his end, he's scrubbing his face. This isn't unusual for him, but it could be to most people here. Even if it's not, he can literally hear everyone protesting in his head. We don't need your team work. You're too new. You haven't been on a mission before. You haven't earned everyone's trust. You're going to get excuses for our fear and distrust. We're all too paranoid to hear you.

It makes his eyes roll into the back of his skull. He doesn't even bother to mask the annoyance of the future and what he hears in the excuses that everyone's thrown at him. It's what has to be done, and he'll make himself enemy number one if it means getting out without abandoning anyone.]

D55

[somnifacient]

(They're gone.)

[There's no mental knock this time, only Noctis slipping past the doorway, through the frame itself, like a shadow sliding in. Loss rings prevalently in his mind, a gaping hole where there were people and thoughts and emotions before. It's like his limbs have been severed -- no, it's more than that. A part of his very being, gone missing, lost into the void.

Nyx is still here, though. Nyx is familiar, Nyx is from Eos, Nyx is a member of the Glaive, and Noctis leans into this. Does he feel it, too? Surely he does, how could he not?]

[servitor]

( ... Yeah. Gone. )

[It's different. It hurts almost as much if not more than losing his sister, losing Crowe, and that's what gets him here too. He hadn't known Annie and Annabeth particularly well, outside of being attached at the brain.

But it's a missing nothingness. A void. Not even vacuum. It's simply ceased to be where something once was.]

( What now? )

[He's at a loss here. What is there to do? The obvious answer is carry on, as he's always done, as he always will. He knows that's not going to cut it.]

[somnifacient]

(I don't...)

[Know. He doesn't know. What is one supposed to do, faced with a cavernous hole in their minds? A space that only Annie and Annabeth could fill, and to think that it might ever be something that heals does nothing but a disservice to them. Outwardly, he shakes his head, doubt ringing throughout their link.

Noctis does his best to push it aside. Loss is a good friend of his, something that he's grown close to recently, whether he likes it or not. He thinks back to Insomnia, the sun forever obscured by darkness, and in that bleakness, he had still told the others to keep pressing forward. To walk tall.

Maybe this is the same? He wants to sound confident, but it wavers. The loss is still too raw.]

(There's nothing we can do. I just didn't know it would feel...)

[This way.]

(Are you going to be okay?)

[servitor]

( I'm used to it. )

[Not the mental hole, the loss. He'd learned over the years how to detach from physical pain. It takes shape now as the white coeurls of Galahd, in an effort to try and not let him fall prey to the loss that keeps coming back time and again. But that beast won't leave the holes in the head.

Help me!

Nyx forces himself to refocus, forces that coeurl to turn back in the direction of the conversation. Where he felt like he could get lost in the unending chaos of Annie's galaxy, he's sure he could get lost in the blackness of his mind.]

( You? )

[sistershoggoth]

[ She's aching at a distance, sick with it. She's looking for him. ]

[servitor]

[And, like always, he's there, a level of calm and steadiness radiating in the link. He excuses himself from the guards he's been making friends with to really focus on Annie.]

( You rang? )

[sistershoggoth]

[ She grits her teeth. This isn't the kind of thing she usually takes the Nyx. Noctis has the background with it, her feelings about shit, but she and Noctis also just had a weird dream share that has left her feeling too vulnerable to him right now. She needs some balance, and so there's this fucker. ]

( The kid soldiers make me want to fucking die. )

[ A thesis to the pain she's feeling at the moment. A bunch of shit stirred up into a swirling potion and she could just drink drink drink all day. ]

[servitor]

( What happened? )

[He can't push her into telling her specifics, he knows that much. He can't make her unload whatever she's feeling. His best tactic? Ask, and let her steer the conversation.

Maintain an evenness to his tone and the link. There's a chaos, there's always a chaos with Annie, but it's moving in a way he can't discern, nor does he immediately recognize besides some kind of pain.]