Inside 72: Halfway to a Gross

[bc56]

Whisper on the Wind
Lizzie responds with a different sort of uncomfortable memory.
Rather, it's very comfortable for her. It's probably not comfortable for Miranda.

"Please! No!" The scream is cut short by Lizzie's knife. Blood splatters from the serving girl's throat onto Lizzie's hands and pours down the sides of the ancient altar to fill the basin beneath. She laughs darkly and wipes her hands on her dress, then turns back away from the grisly deed to the row of young women tied up in the hallway. Roughly, she drags her next victim towards the altar, shoving the cooling corpse off onto the growing pile so she can make room for the next sacrifice.

[Vahnavoi]

[Glass Lake Penitentiary]

Bunny listens to the table-talk with a keen hear. "Oh, you have a wife? That's so cute! I hope she's doing well." She leans closer and lowers her voice. "How much could you do? Maybe not a lot. But you could see how this Hana of yours is doing. Maybe whisper in her ear, appear in her dreams. Or, maybe get a message to someone else. So, suppose there was a way for you to become a ghost, for a while? Would you give it a try?"

[Ironsmith]

[Whisper on the Wind]

If Lizzie ever wanted to know what her brain punching itself felt like, now she did. Miranda clearly did not enjoy that memory... but far from breaking her resolve, it seemed more to tick her off.

Why?

Miranda lowers her weapon, calling back to her teammates. "Clear!" All hostiles down. Now time to learn what they were doing here.

Disposing of a body, by the look of it. GIN generally didn't requisition steamrollers for anything less. They were too... unsubtle.

Looks like they just finished, too. The asphalt here is still fresh. Maybe they could stand to benefit from figuring out who they were try to hi-

Oh god.

It just moved.

"Jones! Stane! Get some excavation gear up here stat!" She barks. "They're still alive down there!"

Who would do something like that? She could understand executions; it was, tragically, part of the job. Sometimes people had to die. But this was just cruel. Pointlessly, viciously cruel.

Miranda grabs one of the workers they'd jumped and hauls him to his feet. "Who's down there?" She demands. "Who is it you monsters were trying to bury?"

The man chuckles mirthlessly. "Heh... heh... nobody of... consequence..."

thwam

Miranda throws the man against the roller, before hauling him up again. "I asked you a question, scumbag." She growls.

"Cortez! We've got her!" Calls one of her comrades.

Miranda drops the worker and makes her way back to the patch of fresh asphalt, from which her partners were pulling a badly-burned woman. She's practically catatonic... but alive. They'd arrived just in time.

"Have you called the medical team?"

"On their way now, ma'am. Ten minutes, tops."

Miranda kneels down next to the woman. "Miss? Can you hear me, miss?"

She nods, still shaking and shuddering.

"Hang tight. Help's on the way."

"M...merci..."

A cavalcade of images and memories follow from there; Miranda would go on to get to know this woman very well, it seems. She won't divulge her name, but... they're close. A good friend, perhaps? Someone she cares about enough for her to be freshly enraged at the prospect of watching something like that play out again.

[Glass Lake Penitentiary]

Hazel frowns. This was starting to sound less and less like a hypothetical question. Bunny wasn't giving her an unusual icebreaker, it seems. If she actually could enable her to get a message outside... that would mean a lot to her. "...Yeah. Yeah, I probly would." She admits, before hastily returning her attention back to her pasta. If Bunny really was proposing that, it'd be better to get into a good bargaining position... which is to say, one that downplays the value of what Bunny is offering.

[Vahnavoi]

[Glass Lake Penitentiary]

Bunny smiles. "Well, give it some more thought. What you'd do as ghost, I mean." She leans back and winks. She finishes her food and stands up. As convenient as it'd be, they can't conspire here forever. "Find me when you want that proof", she whispers as she picks up her tray and leaves.

[Ironsmith]

[Glass Lake Penitentiary]

Well, that was cryptic. Hazel watches as Bunny leaves, not entirely sure of what to make of her offer. She couldn't possibly be for real, right? If she had a way of ghosting people out of prison, surely she would have used it on herself.

Then again, maybe she does. She vaguely recalls hearing about something called "astral projection" that does much the same thing as Bunny described, but with the caveat that it'd leave her body behind. So she couldn't physically leave the prison, but she could, as Bunny had suggested, check up on her wife.

Assuming that's what she's offering, would that be worth it?

Hazel has her answer ready a few hours later, in the exercise yard.

"Allright, Bunny." She mumbles, kneeling next to the smaller woman. "Yous got my attention. Tell me mohe 'bout dis ghost trick'a youhs."

[Rebonack]

[Wandering the Streets]

"That is all she is, a mother's love," the little old lady replies as she offers a refill of tea. "Nothing more. The love of a mother given intent. I suppose there's a question of whether the love of mothers gave rise to her, or whether the love of mothers is a reflection of her, but in the end it matters not one whit. She is what she is."

Does that answer Sekhmet's question?

Maybe!

Maybe not.

Maybe she needs to dig a little deeper.

Or she could just trust.


[Unwitchery]

The word 'You' has scarcely been uttered by the time Khannie is making her follow-up attack. She's offering no quarter and giving no opening to allow Taharah to go on the offensive. If she can control her minions and the garbage nearby then giving her any breathing room at all is a losing fight. She's gotta keep the pressure up and end this as quickly and decisively as she can.

Preferably without using a ton of magic.

She was expecting a fight with an actual Witch to take some of the darkness out of her soul gem. This means she's going to have to begin hunting again.

Follow-up punch against the prone foe, a few notches above the last explosive hay-maker.

Then truck.

That wasn't exactly what Khannie was expecting but it's something she can deal with. She throws out her free hand even as she's aiming to clobber Taharah, scarf flapping dramatically in the air. It twists and turns and widens and just swallows up the whole truck, vanishing into the billowing folds of purple fabric. Hopefully with Taharah's surprise attack being summarily deflected the 'witch' will be left open to more punching.

Or more punch in this case.

One solid normal punch. Normal in the sense that the magic behind it will detonate like a bomb and hopefully crush Taharah like a bug between a hammer and an anvil.


[Midnight Park]

Hug complete.

Can equestrians sew with their hooves?

Technically, yes.

Practically?

Unicorns and kirins are the ponies that typically get talents related to crafts that require fine dexterity. Being able to levitate objects helps quite a bit. But that doesn't stop some very talented ponies from other tribes from existing.

Regardless!

"Fine Thread just put it together for you," Lavender says as she offers the outfit to Jaahlyn. "He's in charge of making most of the uniforms and outfits for the po-err-people of the Court. He said your unusual figure made the work challenging and enjoyable."

And fast.

It's been... what?

Maybe an hour at most?

"Once you're dressed we can show you to your temporary quarters here in the palace," Sudsy says. "You'll have some time to get settle before your audience with the Princess."

[Ironsmith]

[Unwitchery]

Appropriate metaphor, given the context.

What follows at first seems to be a series of special effects from an action movie Khannie is still way too young to watch. But, when Khannie looks closer, she'll see that Taharah's head really was an overripe melon, as opposed to merely exploding like one. With that, the various viscera scattered by the force of this explosive punch don't seem quite so gratuitous; most of it is just food that's no longer fit for consumption.

"Well, that's very rude. If you want my hardest fight, I guess I'll oblige."

How's she doing that without any vocal chords?

And that's when the ground gives way, the compressed trash Khannie's standing on rolling down into a funnel-like shape at the center of the junkyard. If she manages to keep her footing, she's going to be unpleasantly surprised to learn that the walls have gone supernaturally slick, making climbing up them quite impossible.

[bc56]

Whisper on the Wind
Lizzie replays the last memory for Miranda's benefit. But at the same time, she attempts to transfer over her associated emotions. Contempt for the mewling underlings she's using for this ritual. Pride at having hidden this plan from everyone. A thrill of sadistic pleasure every time the knife claims a new victim. She wants Miranda to feel what she feels, and in some deep part of herself, agree.

Wandering the Streets
"Oh, so, uh, what powers does she have? What does she do?" Sekhmet asks. This is maybe the important question for whether she can trust this being to keep her word.

[Ironsmith]

[Whisper on the Wind]

What Lizzie recieves back is a set of fabrications... less memories and more imaginings, really. Who were each of those girls? Did she just make up with her sister? Wasn't she set to be married tomorrow? She just got promoted, didn't she? She's recovering from a bad breakup, isn't she?

It didn't matter now. Lizzie killed them.

She killed them and she wasn't even sorry.

Didn't she appreciate the weight of what she was doing? Didn't those people matter? Or were they just... just toys to her?

There's a kind of roiling in Miranda's mind. She's not the type to hate. She doesn't have the stomach for it. She can't look another human being, or anything resembling one, in the eye, and try to will them dead.

But what she was feeling now? Probably all too familiar to Lizzie.

pang

She'd hurt too many people already. And if Miranda let her go now, she was just going to hurt more people.

pang

She doesn't want to do this. She wants to believe that if she could just stop Lizzie, get her to see reason, maybe things would change and nobody would have to die.

pang

But it never worked out like that, did it?

Lizzie will be treated to a montage of Miranda having to kill in the line of duty; terrified, resigned, angry, saddened, joyous faces as she shoots them, throws them down a cliff, grabs ahold of their chin and forehead and snaps their neck like a twig, each time having to tell herself she hadn't been given a choice, having to bite back a sense of remorse, a torrent of guilt and doubt over what she had done, and only coming to terms with it when she saw what happened when she didn't make those hard choices.

Not that Lizzie would ever see it. Miranda keeps that memory locked away in a mental bunker, never to be opened. All she'll leave is the ringing of gunshots in her ears.

[Fenric]

Poisonous without counting as poison, that's a neat trick.

Omiko's passage ripples the water a little more than it should; this stuff isn't so bad after all.
When they approach the intersection, she pauses to try to get a better look at that thing, shining her flashlight over it. A creature? A machine? Some weird phenomenon of flowing sewage?

Selekhael waits hesitantly to see what the thing is, her weapon in hand. She's starting to get used to this icky water at least. But it's still icky.

The thing takes notice of the light and while there are no visible eyes it clearly turns to face the pair. several black slimy tentacles rise from the water and it approaches much faster than one might hope: clearly a Black Ooze of some sort, probably from the outer wild caverns rather than anything that was ever intended to be here.

[Vahnavoi]

[Glass Lake Penitentiary]

Well, that was cryptic. Hazel watches as Bunny leaves, not entirely sure of what to make of her offer. She couldn't possibly be for real, right? If she had a way of ghosting people out of prison, surely she would have used it on herself.

Then again, maybe she does. She vaguely recalls hearing about something called "astral projection" that does much the same thing as Bunny described, but with the caveat that it'd leave her body behind. So she couldn't physically leave the prison, but she could, as Bunny had suggested, check up on her wife.

Assuming that's what she's offering, would that be worth it?

Hazel has her answer ready a few hours later, in the exercise yard.

"Allright, Bunny." She mumbles, kneeling next to the smaller woman. "Yous got my attention. Tell me mohe 'bout dis ghost trick'a youhs."

Bunny's been leisurely strolling in circles around the yard, observing other inmates. She nods to Hazel and stops when she approaches. "Suppose there's a candy. Round like a marble, light blue, very hard, slightly mint-flavored", she explains blithely. "When you swallow it, it kicks your spirit out of your body. I have one such candy on my person. If you want it, we can swap spit, but maybe that's too much to ask of a married woman. Or, you could just beat it out of me." She shrugs. Bunny places her hands behind her back and looks around innocently.

[Ironsmith]

[Glass Lake Penitentiary]

Hazel winces at the suggestion, her hand balling into a fist as she nearly impulsively decks Bunny then and there. Gross! How could she even consider asking that of her, knowing the first thing she was going to do was try to get in touch with her wife?! That cheeky little-

Hazel sighs and forces herself to calm down. It's not... really cheating exactly, is it? She's doing this because she loves Hana and wants to make sure she's okay. That made this pretty much the opposite of being unfaithful, then, right?

...Still gross, though.

"Is... is dat it, den?" Hazel asks. "We sw..." She makes a face and grimaces, trying to banish the mental image- or more accurately, sensation- from her head while she gets the words out, and finds that extremely difficult to do. "...We make out, an' you send me outta my body sos I can talk ta my wife?" She's still a little leery of the offer. In this prison, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Except, ironically, the free lunch. "...Whaddaya get outta dis?"

[Rebonack]

Hey look there's a hobo with a sandwich board wandering around the streets shouting at everyone!

"Repent! Repent for the end of thread is near! Repent!"

Gosh.

This guy just never gives up, does he?

Every few months for years he crops up and starts shouting at people about the end of thread.

Thus far no one has run out of string so maybe he's just crazy?

Or...

Maybe?

He holds some deeper, more nefarious insight!

Like the fact that there's a-

NEW THREAD!