ru5t

[ru5t]

random would you like to know a fun fact? tech's very first design outfit, i actually owned

she's on. the left if that was unclear ;dslkfjgs;dlkfgj

and then three of her like. in-rotation tops are also tops i owned at one point or another

the last outfit being another one i had the entirety of

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look alive, sunshine ☆

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thinkin about. how readily frequently rabidly she will avoid being hurt and damaged, ever vigilant ever terrified ever defensive. and yet when she gets hurt it's so. sometimes you don't even know. and there's so much that she can stomach, so much she can withstand and still. be steady (well. as steady as she ever is.) and ready and sharp. sometimes you don't even know.

[ru5t]

@hvndredbattles //> Five Times Prompts

five times noticed: ( five times the receiver noticed the sender properly ) [ I keep thinking about when Maddy noticed Richie's Issues With Rodents ]

  He flinches -once- just a couple of weeks after the chain of command saddles his team with this little experiment. And flinch is a strong word for it. More of a twitch, really. The edge of an eyelid. He's already scowling, but somehow it seems really sour, when the conversation at hand about rats holes found in (some station she doesn't care about)'s bunks. Apparently the soldiers in question figured it out when one of their new recruits woke up with one perched on his chest. After that, they found the shredded fabric and a hole chewed through the ceiling tiles.

  Maddy initially takes it for general irritation, given the way his little flock of chickens can be set clucking, as she's so readily discovered in the process of giving them all lip. (And teeth.) In the aftermath of the world's smallest twitch, though, he emanates such an aggressive form of not addressing all of it. That's what piques her eyes and ears: he's not just exasperated or even redirecting them, but actively disengaging. She calls it uncomfortable in her small but growing list of mental notes on the lieutenant. Her tools for puzzling. A random childhood thing? Some people just never made peace with the very concept of certain animals — despise snakes, wigged out by birds, horrified by the idea of a marsupial that kick-boxes. Or.. is it something else? One little twitch is too fleeting to make sense of, and asking would be foolish.

  When he clocks her attention, she doesn't pretend she wasn't looking. He doesn't seem to care. But then, who knows? The twitch is the most she's gotten that wasn't something he told her directly. And most of what he's told her has been don't do that.

  Beneath the earth, in the whispery, wet hollows, he kicks the furry little body away hard enough to inspire thoughts of bugs on the bottoms of shoes. She teases him about chinchillas and hamsters and ferrets, and he lets her. But only just.

  It leaves her mind when things go hot. There's enough to keep track of during a field mission without puzzling over her page of personal notes at the same time. Keeping her hands warm and her eyes up and her head out of firing lines. Killing drones and capturing clouds. Trusting, on purpose, the men at her back. It's only later, sleepless and bored and biting her cheek, that his words begin to populate her thoughts anew. Chew. Climb he'd said, and chew. Not bite or nip or scratch or squeak or 'grab with their weird people-hands' but chew. The inside of her cheek. The corners of her fingertips. Chew. Slow and bloody. The vague iron taste in her mouth makes her stomach turn. She rolls onto her side and hikes the sleeping bag higher, pinching the open end tight around herself.

  She gets the faintest glimpse of a report before they realize what she's done. One little desperate grasp at a phrase that might be bite wounds and then- ‘WOAH NO-’ ‘ABSOLUTELY NOT’, Rhys and Yves are on her, one pushing her chair, rolling her away from the computer, while the other takes over and — “How'd you even- Jesus Christ Kit.” backtracks out of the database. She slouches down in the chair, groaning at them loudly.

  “I was just looking,” she whines as if that's not what got her in all this hot water to begin with.

  The 'rat infestation' has become a widespread joke. Someone takes it too far the day an unsettling realistic looking rubber rodent gets stashed in a cabinet, comes flying out thanks to the string tied to it, taped to the door. Richie strikes it to the floor so hard one of the seams of it explodes outward, and even the dog-toy squeak of it sounds mortally wounded. Whoever's to blame, Ollie catches the short stick for the surprised exclamation that leaves him at the sight of it.

  It occurs to Maddy he must not know. None of them, though -as she scans their faces- some must have better guesses than others. But no one knows. Richie's steely look touches her and this time her eyes skitter away, swift with guilt. When she dares to glance back, he's still looking. It is not a happy look. She ducks behind Yves and, with a quick question, escapes to counter/sabo lessons before Richie can figure the look out and call down some triple-worse and thoroughly tedious punishment on her, too.

  Or just kick her altogether. Which she'd technically deserve.

  Darker than empty space. Whatever hole it is they've been crammed into gets totally, completely black at night. At least, she assumes it's at night. Time is twisted and strange, here. She doesn't know how it got that way, it's usually so easy for her to keep track, thoughtless awareness that held her together all those years in her mother's house. Now it escapes her like she never knew it at all. So it might be the second night away from their team, or maybe still the first, but the second time the lights have gone. It feels longer either way. Endless waiting. Waiting to be found. (Because they will be found. She just hopes--)

  The sound stirs her from the vague thread of thought. It's so unfamiliar, so new, she's not even sure what to call it at first. Pebbles? Rain? It doesn't fit. As she lays there, listening, it turns into the pitter pattering of tiny feet. One soft, interested squee?

  Richie makes a noise she doesn't even know what to name. Not a scream or growl, not a gasp, though it feels like there's elements of all of them churned into the hoarse desperation. Whatever it is, it sends a sick pulse of fear echoing through her, lifitng her heart into a gallop. The ground vibrates in time with heavy thuds — his feet. His arms are secured behind his back. He can't get it.

  Maddy fumbles her way to her hands and knees. There's not so much space between them, not since he first blocked the door, but in the dark, listening to him swear and snarl, her whole body shaking, it feels like miles. Finally she crashes into his shoulder and finds, by feeling, the wormlike tail as it darts over his knee, trying to escape. She drags it into her hands proper. It squirms and screeches as she pushes to her feet. Its teeth feel like rusted nails (an old fence, she'd tripped) as it bites and bites at her hands. Chewing for freedom. Before she can think about what she's doing she spikes its little body down toward the ground with all her might, producing a surprised schwee— then she kicks it. Hard as. It screams when her shoe connects, then makes a wet crunch against the wall.

  The blackness goes quite again, except for the ragged breathing. And the thunder of her heartbeat in her ears.

  His elbow touches the side of her leg, searching for her in the dark. She sits. Suddenly heavy. Sniffling and shuddering, she finally gives up the pretense of bravery or rightness or whatever has, so far, kept her at least a foot away from him until now: she tucks herself against his side, unthinking of whatever damage has been done, uncaring of the awkward twist it takes of stiff joints, unwilling to drift alone in the empty dark anymore. She presses her cheek against his shoulder, trying to still her shiver.

  “w-- m---- d--,” she almost whispers, the sound only just hitting the starting sound of each word. One more day one more day one more day.

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  There's a part of her that still says no. Wrong. All those years and it took what, a few conversations to clear up and clear out? How could someone who barely even knew any of them do that? It's total bullshit.

  Because you've been such a good conversationalist.

  “You're guessing but already have a 'hard work pays off' lecture for it?” she scowls, drowning out the bite of her self criticisms. Classic administration. A catchy acronym or two-step mnemonic device or kitty poster for all your woes, just don't expect anything actually useful. She shakes her head. This is pointless. “Do you actually know she 'crossed over' or are you just guessing about that part, too?”

  God, the questions. So many questions. Every year only brings more, and more oddities. And nowhere to go. And no one to ask.

Midge has to laugh at the damnation, tipping her head in acknowledgement. The deaths certainly hadn’t slowed down any with Split River abandoning the Devil mascot. This school does seem to have an unreasonable amount of casualties in its student body—and she’s proof the teachers aren’t necessarily safe, either.

“I don’t know the specifics,” Midge answers. “But if I had to wager a guess, Madison helped Dawn address whatever pain was holding her here so that she could let it go, and when her exit appeared, she took it.” She does know, without a doubt, that Dawn crossed over. They all felt it. A thought occurs, but Midge holds back the sympathy that rises. Madelyn doesn’t seem the type to react well to it. Instead, she says, “It’s not easy to do, but the option is there for all of us.”

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@femlette ( Aurin ) //> plotting-starter.

  She'd make for an odd holo. Spanner stuck behind her ear and a handful of servo pins hanging out of the side of her mouth, hands free easy access. She leans at an awkward angle, a furrow stuck between her brows as she manipulates something out of sight inside the chest-like chassis of the soon-to-be droid in front of her.

  Mads noticed straight away that her workshop isn't empty anymore, but doesn't bother looking away until her incredibly finnicky task is done. Such a small thing, but it makes the whole project more stable, less likely to fall over. Or blow up.

  She sits back. Wipes her hands on her pants.

  “Don't tell me you broke one of my boys again,” she grumbles around the remaining pins. Then she grabs them, stashing them away in a pocket. “ -Or did you bring me another misfit to fix?”

[ru5t]

okay well. writing confidence in the gutter but at least i can do this

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how it started -> how it's going

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sometimes i think im doing too much and sometimes i think i could be doing so much more but the thought is. in terms of the zones and what influence Tech has had on things, I don't think she's in BL/ind's top 10 most wanted list. but i do think she's on a list. like they know her name they know some of what she's done they're not happy about it. she just isn't necessarily enough of a rallying point to warrant the widely publicized attention. (if anything they might want to keep it on the down low that there's a killjoy communications system they can't seem to crack down on/break into. if some of the more fringe population heard that, heard of a weakness that wasn't a direct act of or caused by Violence. they might start getting Ideas! thinking thoughts! imagining BLI...could be evadable.) the company want her dead (or maybe still reclaimed) but they're not printing that on fliers and posters. she's just flagged in every database so if a patrol does come across her...

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oh it's midnight where i am- 🎉girl birthday🎉

girl birthday tomorrow

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I'm crawling into bed as I type this but what if I said. like this post for on-the-run plotting. which is to say I will write you a starter with whatever idea I get for our characters and probably yap in the tags at you and we just see if it takes. so like. a plotting-starter call.

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knees by sarah+evers on Flickr.

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“Here’s to us, the rotten children: They made us into violence. Your bones, your skin, it’s all been turned into ash. Here’s to us, those born of violence, turned into a war-ground.”

— We are beauty and fire; ash we may be, but we are stronger than them. (CNS)

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  Squish the mouse. That's the way. Squish the mouse. She's got a cat, how hard can it be? Squish the mouse, find the door, no more hallways no more war. Squish the mouse. Squish the mouse. Squish the mouse. Squish the mouse. Squish the mouse. Sq-

  Tech inhales sharply, out of rhythm to the rest of her breathing, as his hand finds her arm. The floor has gone still. No steps. She pulls on his shirt and stomps her shoe against the bare concrete. “Squish the mouse,” she whispers. So soft that surely it doesn't escape her hiding place, but it still turns sour as soon as she says it, guilt going 'round. She turns her head in the direction he sent his arm from, clearing the way for.

  Something. She can tell him something, surely? What happened. What happened, that happened. “...Wide open spaces.” A slightly louder whisper, though still designed not to carry. Not supposed to be there. Here. Dangerous things aimed her way, but her feet won't move, because... “Th- ----.. K----” Tech makes an annoyed noise, shaking her head. She pulls on his shirt again. Pulls and pushes at the same time, trying to steer him, turn them both around. Put him between her and the –empty empty empty she knows it's empty but still turn turn turn– walkway behind her. So she can open her eyes again. And find what she's trying to say.

Want? Pale eyes flash up to catch Midnight’s, genuine confusion reflected there. The question—demand—catches her off-kilter. What she wants so rarely factors in to things; the last time she gave it any consideration was when she chose to stay.

What does she want. What pushed her to say this, here, now. She knows the answer to that isn't something easily explained, and certainly not something she wants to get into in front of a veritable stranger. Her gaze slides away again, goes distant, as she tries to find an acceptable answer for Tech.

After perhaps too long, she says, “I want you to be safe, but I know it'll be a cold day in Hell before that happens.” Fond irritation tips up the corners of her lips. “I don't…” She sighs, struggling for words. She understands, in a nebulous sense, where the miscommunication on her end is happening, she just doesn't know how to explain it.

The words come out slow, quiet, uncertain. “I don't know how to show you in a way you'll understand, so I’ll tell you. No matter how angry or frustrated or hurt I am, no matter how much I might want to push you off the roof to see if you bounce… I'm in your corner. Without exception. And nothing you might do is going to change that.” She hesitates. “Well, okay, there is one thing, but I don't think I need to worry about you trying to kill my little mouse.” She shrugs, gaze low and a tight, unhappy smile on her face. “I'd like for you to believe that, but… I want you to know it. That's all.”

And, feeling uncomfortably raw and exposed, she retreats to her unit.

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  “An' what, you think no one else in the world knows how t'ask me pretty, pretty please?” The very idea! Honestly, it's like he doesn't know her at all. His offer -though a warm fuzzy that tickles the end of her nose- also sounds like he doesn't know the twins at all. And if that's not the travesty of the era, she doesn't know what is. Tech shifts again, leaning on Omens' shoulder to get more height, better vantage.

  “Hold on-” She scans. Matching faces, of a sort, definitely, but maybe not... the best thing she could have said. 'Cause- “It's not like.... copy-paste. It's. Cup n' spoon... Sun n' moon.... Crow and shiny bit.” Not identical. Still, a matching set. “An' they did not leave me here.”

"Last I remembered, I had t' say pretty pretty please t' get the girl out." He's grumbling at least, less of a sourpuss than when she first came over. His elbows thunk to the table surface, but he doesn't get more than that far into his planned mopey slump before he's glancing around for her "matching faced boys".

It's a lot of people, busy and dancing and all sort of blurring together. Mmmmmmmmmm- "I don' see 'em, baby." When he turns back to the table, he lets one forearm rest fully on the tabletop, and his chin finds a resting place in the palm of the hand of the other arm. "I can give ya a ride home if y'need."

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  The rise of lights sends her heart screeching into her throat, but Tech stands her ground like she's got an army at her back. Doing he best to exude I belong here. It's almost true. If she has to turn tail, as long as she beats them back to Tess's then— the call of her name interrupts the thought.

  She tosses her head, flipping hair out of her eyes like a cat's ear flick at a fly. Name yourself, not me. Lucky for them she's good with voices, drowned by backlight into shadows as they are, and she isn't toting anyone trigger happy with her. Well, nobody trigger happy with the hands to pull a trigger, anyway. Glitch makes a disgruntled noise at her as Tech puts her gun away. She soothes him with a little pat, aiming for where she thinks his head is inside her bag.

  Strange little bug, this Synth. Tech's still working out what to think. Towers and terminals. 'Better' halves and bitter mentors. “I'm the only Tech there is,” she tells the new face. Strike — strike off, strike out, strike hard, strike a match, strike your flag, strike a bargain, strike from the record? Hm. She glances between them, her eyes eventually landing Synth with a contemplative look. “Never knew I was worth hearin' about.” Exponentials, or repeating decimals? She'd never thought about it before. Her eyes slide back to Strike. “S'there really a lot to hear?”

They’d tried to get Aqua to come out with them, but she’s been withdrawn after some argument with Sin—it was severe enough that Vel’s not comfortable leaving her side, so it’s just the four of them. Strike had seen the dracs first, and it took no convincing for Jounce to yank the car off the road, cut the lights, and race to the fight. Strike shoves Synth back into the backseat when they try to join the fight, knowing the three of them will do better if they aren’t worrying about their puppy.

Twist gets hit in the ensuing battle, so they’re in no rush to get moving once the masks are dealt with. Synth helps patch him up, Jounce and Strike making sure the car is still road-worthy, discussing whether they’re continuing out or heading back. Synth yelps at the surprise shot, Twist instantly shoving them behind him. Jounce leans into the driver’s side and starts the car, flicking the high beams on, flooding the battlegrounds with light.

Strike winces at the carnage and turns away, but Synth’s peering around Twist to see who spoke. They clamber onto the trunk, squinting against the light. “Tech?” They shout back. They wave impatiently at Jounce to turn the high beams off—he does, but only drops to regular headlights.

“Tech?” Strike echoes, walking around the car to help Synth back down to the ground. “Shiny.” She laughs as Synth keeps hold of her hand, dragging her past the car and into the light.

“Promise we don’t got Aqua with us,” Synth calls as they close the distance. Over Strike’s cackling, they continue, “Twist got got—he’ll be okay, but, y’know. Jounce’s stayin’ with him ‘n the car, and this,” Synth turns proudly to their companion, “is my better half.”

“Don’t listen to ‘em,” Strike says, grinning. “They’re definitely the better half’a this equation. ‘M Strike. ‘Ve heard a lot about ya, if you're the Tech I’m thinkin’ about.” Synth gives her a quick nod of confirmation.

[ru5t]

also that meme says don't add any and i will not be adding any but if you thought of a different thing than the ones in the list i'd accept it tbh. i didn't even read the list i have no idea how relevant to tech they are i just saw all the fives and zoned out.