lostcarnival | [open] bro bro bro bro

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[open] bro bro bro bro

Who: Rhys and you!
When: D48-D49
Where: Various Locations
What: It's time for Rhys to make himself at home (or more likely whine that he's not the boss)
Warnings: Probably low but I'll update if anything happens

[day 48 - all around the carnival grounds - what have i gotten myself into?]

Rhys doesn't regret the decision. He doesn't regret taking a deal from some shady Ringmaster (and he hates that he'd never thought of that as a nickname for himself) to escape August and Vasquez and a bunch of killer robots that would have surely ended his life.

What he does regret is leaving Vaughn behind. Fiona and Sasha less so. But, there's still a sliver of sadness that he's here and they're not. Hopefully, whenever this whole thing ends, he'll go back and they'll forgive him.

(Though he seriously doubts that. They'll either be dead or they'll kill him.)

For the first little while, he wanders. He gets his shoes dusty (a development that makes him frown) and his hair wind blown but what else is there to do but figure things out? His lodgings, a trailer in a park surrounded by similar metallic bumps, isn't luxurious but it's not a hole in the ground.

He'll take it. He'll whine about it later.

[day 49 - anywhere that needs cleaning up around the carnival - where's a loader bot when you need one?]

Rhys regrets the decision.

As soon as he reports for work and someone slaps a mop into his hand, he regrets the decision. Janitor. A janitor again. Somewhere, Vasquez is probably laughing his ass off. The only good thing, Rhys guesses, is that whoever's in charge isn't Vasquez and won't be making him run all over the place to do menial things.

He still has to clean though and the grimace on his face as he starts mopping a dirty floor is evidence of what he thinks about that. But, he tells himself it won't be for very long. He tells himself that time will pass quickly.

He tells himself that he can drown himself in his mop bucket if it gets too bad.

Mopping isn't a hard think to do but he still mops over various people's shoes instead of telling them to move and he steps all over his own freshly cleaned floors more than once.

The third time he does that, he curses loudly and then looks around, hoping no one's heard that. He hasn't memorized all the rules but he's pretty sure cursing on the job is frowned upon.

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Cole shakes his head. And then, he looks back at Rhys for a moment, staring at him as if he can see right into his head.

"I won't tell." Because obviously there is someone else in his head, Cole knows this. Two thoughts, two worries, two sets of hurt. But if Rhys didn't want people to know...well, he's kept secrets before. He can do it again. This place can be just so weird and so confusing that he wanted to know.

"As long as it's managed, the secret is safe." He won't tell, not unless shit goes southward and he really needs to explain.

Rhys winces. Right now, Jack is managed but Jack is also Jack. He's a psychopathic megalomaniac who won't stop trying to rise up and conquer the world until his atoms are smashed and his consciousness is sucked into a skag's intestines and even then, Jack would probably just take over the skag and continue trying for world domination.

"What happens if it's...not managed?" Rhys asks. "Just for my curiosity. Everything's fine up there now, all systems go, but having an incentive to keep it that way sounds like a good deal."

Jack always has a plan and Rhys knows he won't want to just chill in Rhys' head forever. Rhys wants to make sure he doesn't get out to hurt someone but he also knows he's not that powerful. Not in comparison to some people.

"If it's not managed? I tell the Ringmaster and she manages it. Or I manage it myself."

Cole's certain the Ringmaster knows about Rhys and Jack. Why would she bring him on if she didn't know? But she has so much to do and so much to manage and so many people that he knows she can't keep an eye on everybody at the same time. Cole can help with that. Cole can keep Rhys's secret (because Rhys obviously wants it to be secret) while also keeping an eye on Rhys's behavior.

No comment on how he can manage it himself, though.

"I don't think I'd be here if it wasn't managed," Rhys says, just barely stopping himself from bringing up the mop in defense. This guy seems slight, like he wouldn't be too much of a challenge but Rhys also knows that he's managed to pick up on the fact that he's carrying around Handsome Jack in his head.

Jack wishes he wasn't controlled so he could be out there and influencing everyone around this place but Rhys is going to try his best to not let that happen. He doesn't want everyone to be coming after his very soft skin.

"Doesn't that make you a tattletale though?" Rhys asks, tilting his head. "Telling on me because of something I might not be able to control."

"You don't think you'd be here if it wasn't managed," Cole parrots back, mimicing Rhys's tone of voice somewhat. He'll only tell on Rhys if things go sour. But the Ringmaster brought him here, so she must think things won't go sour in the first place. It's simple.

Despite his talks of stopping Rhys, Cole isn't making any moves towards him. He's not stepping towards Rhys, he's not hovering near him, he's staying a safe distance away and just watching in a slightly creepy manner. The most movement he does is occasionally wringing his hands and his ears occasionally twitching.

"That's not very nice," Rhys says, frowning. There's something about this guy that's making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end, a feeling that he's experienced a few times today, it seems. Cole just keeps looking and looking at him like he has some food on his lip or something in his teeth.

Eventually, Rhys can't stand it any longer. He smacks the mop against the wall and says, "Why are you looking at me so hard? What are you trying to see? Is there something about your eyes that lets you see underneath my clothes or what? Because that's not nice either."

Oh. Whoops. Cole didn't realize that his staring was slightly creepy. "I was trying to see if I could see the more of you. But I think it's just in your head."

There's the weird arm and the weird eye but since being at the carnival, Cole got weird hands, so he can't really judge. He resumes staring at Rhys for a moment before Cole remembers right, Rhys doesn't like that, and then deliberately looks up at the ceiling.

"I'm Cole, by the way. Did I tell you that already?"

"No, you haven't and I don't have any way of knowing your name like you do mine," Rhys says. He hasn't forgotten that and he still wants to know how Cole had known his name without Rhys telling him. Maybe they'd had some meeting before he got here, a meeting about the new guy to devise a plan on how they were going to freak him out.

"Rhys," he says again even though Cole knows that. "You still didn't tell me how you knew that. Did this place have a little pow wow before I got here to talk shit about me? Make a plan about how to break me in, haze me? Because that is, again, not very nice."

Cole shakes his head, a bit of a shocked look on his face. A meet-up to find a way to haze Rhys? Why would he do that? That's so mean! "I know your name because I do," Cole explains, as if that somehow answers all of Rhys's questions. It doesn't, and thankfully Cole realizes it doesn't, so he pauses before he tries to explain again.

"I know things. Most of the time it's hurts and worries, things I can help with, but occasionally it's other things. That's how I know your name."

Which still isn't that much of an answer, but it's a better one. It takes a bit for Cole to actually vocalize the whole 'spirit of compassion' thing: it's a given in his world, so obviously people here would know about it too. If Rhys scans Cole, he'll probably get some fun Borderlands stats like 'spirit of compassion', 'intelligence: fuckin weird,' 'dies like a bitch,' and so on and do forth.

"You know my name because you do?" That doesn't even make sense. Rhys can feel the beginnings of a headache popping up behind his eyes and he rubs a hand over his face to try and stave that off. It won't do to have a migraine or something similar in his first week. Calling out sick will probably look bad and probably...won't be allowed. He's going to have to look into that.

"Well, I can know things too," Rhys says and takes his hand away from his face so his ECHO eye can focus on Cole. It works for a few seconds, playing some annoying hold music (when had that become a thing?) before popping out some information.

ANALYSIS COMPLETE
Name: Cole
Last Name: Cole.
Really? No. We have no record of a last name. Just go with it.
Intention: To Know Things
What Kinds of Things? All The Things
Really? Yes. We don't have everything. Just go with it.
Has this scan been a waste of time? Yep!

Rhys clicks away and growls a bit. "Your last name isn't Cole too, is it? You're not Cole Cole?"

Edited 2018-05-06 18:42 (UTC)

Cole just waits patiently as Rhys's eye does the thing. When the question's asked, Cole perks up a little. Oh, he can answer this, he knows this one. "I don't have a last name," Cole answers, with a little nod. "Dorian does and Cullen does but I don't. I just call myself Cole because that's who I thought I was."

Another sentence that doesn't make sense for Rhys but makes sense for Cole. He thought he was a ghost, a human mage, a remnant of this Cole person before he learned he was someone else entirely.

"Besides, people like it when you have a name."

"Who you thought you were?" That just opens up more questions! More questions that his stupid ECHO eye could answer if it apparently wasn't trying to be funny. Rhys doesn't want to keep peppering the guy with questions but he seems willing to answer them which is more than Rhys can say about a lot of the people he knows back home.

Mentally, Rhys asks Jack if he wants to contribute or help out in any way. Jack smirks, throws him the finger and shakes his head. Fat lot of good he does.

"So, you're not Cole? Or you don't think you are? I don't understand what that means, you saying that's who you thought you were."

Not for the first time in his stay, Cole wishes Solas were here. Solas could explain everything. And Solas could explain it better than Cole himself ever could. Because he wants to talk! He wants to tell Rhys about himself! But the words get stuck in his throat.

"There was a real Cole, once. He was dying. I tried to help him, tried to reach out, but something happened and I changed. I thought I was him." There's a bit of a pause before Cole explains, "He was human. I'm not."

"So, you stole someone's identity?" It had been a toss up on what Rhys wanted to ask about first: the identity thing or the fact that Cole wasn't human. That's not too unusual, not where he comes from but he doubts that Cole was a robot or an artificial intelligence or some animal before he became this guy standing in front of him.

"I suppose if they weren't using it anymore, that's a pretty smart thing to do," Rhys decides. "But, what are you if you're not human?"

That could have been asked in a more sensitive way but again, Rhys isn't sensitive especially when he wants information. He's not a delicate man for the most part.

"I didn't mean to," Cole quietly whines. Because he didn't! And it would have been better all around if Cole didn't steal the real Cole's identity because it gave him one heck of an identity crisis in return.

At Rhys's question though, Cole can answer that. "I'm a spirit. Compassion, I think. I can hear the hurts and I want to heal them."

Rhys's lack of subtlety doesn't seem to bother Cole. After all, he's had worse conversations. And at least Rhys says what he wants instead of saying something but wanting different.

"So, you're a ghost?" That's what a spirit is, right? Though, he's never run into a ghost named Compassion. Okay, he's never run into a ghost at all but Cole doesn't need to know that. Ghosts don't tend to run around Pandora because even they're terrified of that place. Any smart spirit would be.

"You're a ghost in someone else's body," he surmises, looking Cole up and down before he nods. "Well, that's certainly one way to stay alive. I think I'd do the same thing."

And he's got someone (something?) currently living in his head that had taken extreme measure to make sure he wasn't completely out of the game either.

"You been in there long?"

"I'm a spirit," Cole clarifies. "Ghosts were people. I never was."

No, Cole's weird. An abstract personification of an emotion who got an identity crisis, thought he was human, developed a bit beyond the abstract personification of his emotion, but now is starting to swing back towards abstract personification form. It's odd. And it doesn't help that Cole seems incapable of explaining things in a straightforward manner.

"I'm a spirit of compassion. I just look like the real Cole."

Ghost. Ghost. Rhys was going to think of him as a ghost no matter what. It was easier to remember that than to think of him as some wisp of smoke who maybe went around and gave smokey hugs or something.

"So, what's a spirit of compassion do, then?" Rhys wonders, tilting his head. "Do you go around and just...spread love? Make people hug each other? Provide a ghostly hand when someone needs someone to comfort them?"

"I help heal hurts. Sometimes I listen to others. Sometimes I take action. It all depends." There are an infinite amount of ways that people can get hurt. As a spirit of compassion, it's Cole's job to find those hurts and try to find a way to heal them, making people feel better as needed.

"I can't make people hug, though." There's a pause, as Cole looks over at Rhys. "Do you want a hug?"

He can do that, if needed. And asking if Rhys wants a hug is 100% a serious question.

"What? No," Rhys says, shaking his head. "No, I don't need a hug."

Maybe he kind of needs a hug but he's not going to admit to that. A hug might help settle him down and a hug might make him feel a little better about everything. About this decision, this contract, this year of servitude he's decided to give up in exchange for a hopefully better life.

"But, I'll keep you in mind for future needed hugs," Rhys assures him. "Never know when I might have a bad day, right?"

Cole looks looks over at Rhys with his creepy expression like he can look through him. He takes in Rhys's thoughts, his worries and his hurts, his frights and fears. He's nervous about this. That's to be expected, so many people are nervous about this. But it's still sad and it's still something Cole wants to change.

And so, still not saying anything, Cole reaches over to awkwardly give Rhys a hug. For all of his saying 'I don't need a hug,' Cole has decided that no, he does. Pity that Cole really doesn't know what to do with his arms while going in for that hug and the brim of his hat is inevitably going to hit Rhys in the face.

Okay, he was getting hugged and it was a little strange. It was a lot strange. People didn't really hug him and people really didn't hug him wearing huge hats that knocked right into his eyes and made the one real one water.

"Hey okay, we're hugging," Rhys says, patting Cole awkwardly on the back and trying to blink away the tears from his eye. Cole's arms seem to be all over the place but at least he's not trying to bear hug Rhys or pick him up.

Rhys just really hopes Cole knows how long a hug is supposed to last or this is going to get awkward quick.

Thankfully for everyone involved, Cole does know how long a hug lasts. He pulls back from Rhys after the appropriate amount of time, putting his hands back at his side.

"You're new here," Cole points out. "Most days are bad days for new people."

It takes a while to actually adjust to the carnival. That's something Cole knows and something Cole's learned since he arrived here. Rhys...probably hasn't adjusted yet.

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