lostcarnival | [open] bro bro bro bro

Entry tags:

[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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Rhys is so bored of this already. It's just swipe and swipe and swipe and swipe, mop and mop and mop and mop and it's just turning his brain into sludge. Why couldn't they get someone else, someone less talented and less useful than him to do this? Why couldn't they make some robots do it? That always worked on Hyperion. The claptrap units loved picking up litter.

"Dancing a jig," Rhys says, barely even processing what he's done. "I'm mopping. It requires intense concentration and focus on my part. It's a very important job."

He spares a look up at the guy and shrugs. "Why, you need me to mop somewhere else? Well, make a list. I'll get to it eventually."

Yukio's tail curls around his legs under the hem of his shin-length uniform coat, fur bristling even as he schools his expression into politeness and gives a little, embarrassed sort of laugh. He doesn't want to fight with a stranger, and so he's just trying to diffuse the situation.

"I'm sorry, you mopped over my tail and it startled me."

Intense concentration and focus? Bullshit. The guy isn't paying any attention to anything around him.

"I think we're glossing over the most important issue here and that's the fact that you have a tail," Rhys says, pointing at it with the wet end of the mop. It's an actual tail, not some party gag that's just stuck on with tape or a safety pin. This guy's got a tail and it's growing out of him.

"Are you part skag or something? You can't be because that tail's fuzzy and skag tails are not. We don't really have a lot of fuzzy animals back on Pandora so..." So, the point was moot. Rhys was back to focusing on the tail thing again.

"Why a tail? How did you get that?" he asks bluntly.

It's more than just the tail, though the blue, flame-like mark across his eyes could be some kind of tattoo or birthmark, and the double set of small fangs in his mouth and the claws on his fingers are easy to miss.

"If you look around the carnival, you'll notice that most of the employees have experienced physical changes as a result of continued exposure to fae magic."

His tail flicks away from the mop, thudding against the leg of the table with a more solid sound than should happen if it were just a tuft of long fur at the end of a lion-like tail.

"You should begin experiencing some minor changes within a few days or weeks."

"Are you serious? Was that in the contract? I'm pretty sure I read all of it!" Rhys had read the most important parts, checking to make sure there were lines in there about what he'd get to do once he was free but apparently there was fine print that he'd missed.

He really needed to pay more attention.

"Will it go away when I leave?" Rhys wonders aloud. Maybe this guy doesn't know since he's still here and still changing but it's important to figure this out now. He can't go back to lead Hyperion if he's got an extra arm growing out of his forehead. That would be...well, kind of cool but it would probably frighten employees, which would be a decent way of controlling them.

Still, it's an arm growing out of his forehead. He doesn't want that.

Yukio is about to answer Rhys' rambling question when the man keeps talking. And then... then Rhys mutters a question that Yukio hadn't actually considered yet.

"I... don't know. When we go to worlds where our changes would stand out, they get covered up and hidden, so it might work similarity when we go home."

Because Yukio really doesn't want to deal with claws and fangs and a tail at home.

"That's...good, I suppose," Rhys says but it doesn't fully answer his question. Having them covered would be a necessity if he was going to lead Hyperion but he would still know they were there and that would bother him.

"Do they hurt when you get them?" Rhys asks because it's another important question. The modifications he'd added to himself hadn't hurt much because he'd been knocked the hell out so he had to hope that's how these...changes would work.

"I'm not gonna feel the sudden appearance of ears or a tail, right?" Rhys asks. If he can't avoid them, he doesn't want to have to deal with a tail growing out of his ass for days.

"You'll feel them, but the changes aren't excessively painful." Yukio's changes haven't been painful at all, just odd, but he isn't going to be too optimistic.

"I didn't even notice when this happened," he says, gesturing at the blue marking on his face.

"And it happens to everyone?" Rhys asks, wincing. "No way to avoid it? I can't take some medicine or something to stop a horn from popping out of the middle of my head?"

That would be handy as a weapon but Rhys can just picture himself running into a myriad of doors and people, all of them bitching about his dumb horn and how they don't want to be run through by a part of his body, like he could help it.

"And if I can't prevent it, do I get a choice in what I get?" Rhys wonders.

"You might be able to ask the Ringmaster to help with your changes, but she might also decide that it's worth another year of service." Yukio isn't fond of his changes either, but he's dealing with them.

"Well, I don't want that," Rhys says, frowning. A year is a long time already but, when faced with a lifetime of cleaning up after people or death, spending a year doing dirty doesn't sound so bad.

He'll probably change his mind tomorrow. And then change it back the next day.

"So, do they have any...special abilities?" Rhys wonders. Maybe if they could shoot lasers or fire or ice, Rhys would be more okay with the possibility of his body growing things from different orifices.

"Everyone's changes are different." Yukio explains, trying his best not to sound like he thinks Rhys is asking a stupid question.

"If you're interested in acquiring 'special abilities', you may be able to learn magic while you are here."

"You can learn magic?" Rhys asks, attention caught by that now instead of the modifications that he was potentially going to be looking forward to on his body.

"I thought you had to be born with magic and then you just...I don't know, get better," he remarks, giving his fingers a wiggle. "I've never done magic in my life but you're telling me that I might be able to learn?"

"I haven't learned any spells, but I've heard it's possible." Yukio explains. He honestly doesn't know much about how the Carnival works, he's been so wrapped up in his own work in the medic tent and his own personal training.

"Huh. Good to know." Rhys thinks learning magic might make him a pretty powerful person back on Pandora. At least it would give him another way to combat things like robots and skags and bullymongers and, well, everything.

It would be so so satisfying to blast Vasquez's look poof of a hairdo off too. So, maybe he'd look into this. Maybe he'd see what it took to become a magician. Hopefully it wouldn't be too much work.

"I'm Rhys. Don't think I've said that yet."

"Okumura." Yukio says, by way of introduction. He's not telling this guy his given name. "I'm one of the medics here, so don't hesitate to visit the medical tent if you have any issues. Additionally, as a team we would appreciate it if you stopped by for a checkup, just so we can get a baseline."

Rhys tries not to look defensive but he probably fails. He doesn't usually mind medical checkups (though he knows he'll get questions about the modifications) but with the addition of Jack in his mind, he's a little worried that will be found and what they'll do when that happens.

"How invasive is the checkup?" Rhys asks as casually as he can.

"As invasive as you want it to be," Yukio says, with a reassuring sort of smile. "The last thing we want to do is to make any of the patients uncomfortable."

"Oh, I'd like to make it as non invasive as possible," Rhys says, wincing. He'd already had some pretty invasive procedures to get the arm and the ECHO eye. If he was going to subject his body to things like furry ears and a tail, he didn't want it to hurt. If he had to have it, it better not hurt at all.

"I'm not great with pain," he stage whispers, making a face. "I've been through a lot already. More might make me cry and that's just --"

Not cool. Not cool at all. But, if the situation calls for it, he's gonna do it.

"Then, who's gonna comfort me?"

"It shouldn't be painful, especially if you already know your own medical history. We're mainly concerned about getting baseline vital information so that we can assist you in an emergency situation." Yukio's going to stay professional while this guy carries on his drama routine.

He was pretty dramatic, it was true. Rhys was glad Yukio noticed because a lot of people pretended not to see how dramatic and attention seeking he could be when he really put his mind to it.

"All right, I'll be sure to be honest with whoever looks me over when I stop in for a check up or a check in or whatever you guys wanna do to me," Rhys promises. "Hopefully the modifications aren't gonna cause a problem since they're metal and computer parts."

He's not getting rid of them. "I wonder if they'd change too since they're not really living."

Metal.

Yukio's eyes go a little wide at that, and then he gets serious.

"Do you know the composition of the metal in your prosthetics? Fae have extremely negative reactions to iron."

"I didn't exactly ask," Rhys says, looking down at his arm. "But, it took me about five paychecks so it's probably high grade stuff. The good stuff. Because I didn't want it rusting and malfunctioning."

He wiggles his fingers a bit at Yukio and then drops his arm to his side. "That wasn't exactly a specification because I didn't really think I'd end up here. I left the instruction manual in my other pants."

"If it's steel, it will need to be removed or replaced before it burns you." But at the same time... "I doubt the Ringmaster would have allowed any iron into the Carnival, even in a composite form, but you should still get it looked at."

"If it's removed, then what am I gonna do for an arm?" Rhys asks, looking down at the robotic arm and frowning. "I don't wanna be known as some one armed janitor."

He doesn't want to be known as a janitor at all but a one armed janitor is even worse.

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