2023-07-03: Locust Blood
- Log: Locust Blood
- Cast: Parminder Chaudhri, Shari Loom
- Where: Salamis Kai cruiser "Shandor" -- En Route
- Date: 2023-07-03
- Summary: After a battle with a raging submarine and another Whispered, Parminder Chaudhri gets Shari Loom back in what's only close to one piece. He hauls her back to reality with a fun, frank little chat about evil crystals and horrific women in the infinite Void.
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
The Salamis Kai cruiser "Shandor", is, well, a cruiser. It cruises, by definition. And it's cruising back to the Silent Castle, now, as its thin crew of dull-eyed 'officers' drives it on. One of the men here still has all his faculties, at least; Parminder Chaudhri is a dark-skinned man with an absolute mane of orange hair, and stubble he can't quite bother to shave or to grow out. "Take us back to the Castle," he instructs his crew, with a loose, rogueish grin. "I gotta dip a sec. Let me know if something comes up."
(It's not that these people can't adapt to changes, it's just -- they're not very adaptive about it. They tend to get stuck on a single solution. Fine for small, operational problems, but there's a reason why Parminder's calling the shots here.)
He saunters off, hands shoved in his pockets -- tracksuit pants and a t-shirt declaring 'IDK, PEBKAC?', he is NOT in any kind of uniform, they couldn't even fit him in one when he WAS military -- to make his way to the hangar, and the Alto they've retrieved. He hops up onto a gangway, to meander his way over to the cockpit... just about when the ground crew's getting it open.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari thinks the crew is super creepy! Not even putting funny signs on them with Parminder is enough to make Shari happy about them. (Though that is pretty funny. Even if she feels kind of bad about it.)
But she's not thinking about that right now. No, right now she's in the cockpit as it's being opened, and the crystal at her side is no longer glowing. The crew might stare into it anyway, though. It's like that.
"SHE SEES."
Shari is still buckled in, but her legs are curled up against her chest, her arms holding them against her. She can't really move like this, but there's a sense of motion anyway.
"Darkness is not darkness. Time is not time. The world is not. I am held."
She's shaking. "It's her fault. Her fault, her fault, her fault, she brought Her down and now it's--"
Shari opens her eyes and stares at Parminder, pupils dilated.
"The jester comes. You are in Her sight, too."
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
Parminder doesn't feel bad about it. It's a glimmer of amusement in a sea of ennui. Fuck yeah, tbh.
He leans a hand against the side of the cockpit, leaning in. The crystal... is fascinating, obviously, but he doesn't really want anything it can give him, so he's not stuck staring at it like moth to flame. No: he gets to watch Shari, instead, all locked up inside herself.
"Yup," he agrees, loose where she is taut, casual where she is chanting. "Sure is her fault. So, uh, which 'she', again? We're up to, like," he lifts his other hand and folds down his fingers, "one, two, three... four? Four now? I reckon it's four now. Can we start using names, or would that throw off the whole vibe, or..."
He shrugs, and leans his shoulder against the cockpit, folding his arms across his chest. "'Course She's lookin' at me," he grins. "I'm hot as hell. Don't really swing towards loose metaphysical concepts with tits, though. I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure there's like, six pairs and they're inverted and if you look upon them your eyes turn to milk to feed the young or some shit, but I'm just sayin', if you want me to spring for that you're gonna have to bring me a man in the Void."
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
The crystal glows, if you stare into its depths. But Shari's never tried to use it on Parminder. Why should she? Also he'd probably dropkick her or something. She can respect that in a man. Enough not to do the thing, anyway.
But his casual approach is, if anything, like cold water against her senses. It shorts out her mind a little, and she pauses. Her.
"...Different her," Shari says, "The interloper reminder danger ENEMY ENEM--" She starts shouting and pauses, closing her mouth and opening it again. "I ran into a really annoying girl," she says instead.
Then she shakes her head. "You shouldn't joke," Shari says. "I mean, I know that's entirely your Thing, but it's... scary stuff. All that stuff is true." Pause. "I'm not sure about the twelve boobs thing. But the general principle. I'm just saying you're lucky it's not a man in the Void."
"Ugh, my head. Anyway, Her is obviously Her. The one watching. I think She looked away finally..."
"She's mad. She really didn't like that girl. Not that She likes me much either."
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
Parminder's not immune to the evil magic rock or anything. Indeed, the way he doesn't really empathise with people around him probably makes him the opposite of immune. But really, they don't need to use it on him.
They just have to convince him their horror is funnier than not doing horror.
"Awww, shit, five 'hers'?! Seriously?!" Parminder whines, blowing out his cheeks. "Talk about pronoun trouble... man, what a pain in my ass."
He grins, shifting to the side a little to let one of the dull-eyed ground crew lean in to release Shari from all the straps and harnesses keeping her safe inside the Alto. "Nah," he shrugs. "I reckon She's got a sense of humour, or, like, all my blood would have been replaced by leeches or some shit by now? Wait, locusts," he snaps his fingers, "it's locusts She's big on. Yeah. No locust blood, She's laughing it up, just trust me on this one." Parminder has never once heard Her -- he wouldn't know.
He doesn't have locusts instead of blood, though.
"So who's this annoying girl? The one in the, uhhh, shit, what was it..." He thinks back to the scans they took of the battlefield, "the Sukeban, that's what the machine was pinging on, right. IFF Three Ships Alliance, for some reason? I mean, I know the Captain pisses that gang off, but she was all tied up with her Witchiness's schemes today, soooo no fuckin' clue why three-ess-ay was comin' down on you." He was an Intelligence agent for most of his career; if anyone could know, in the Castle, it would be him.
Anyway.
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Shari is! Shari is pretty immune to a lot of these things, actually. It's very strange.
"It's OK. This one's not that important, probably. Or she wouldn't have whined so much. Don't you hate it when someone goes all 'oh no, you hurt me, I'm so wounded' on you? It sucks, right?"
Then she considers, as she gets released from the various things, and finally lets herself unwind. "...Ugh. You guys. You smell, you know that?"
Pause. "Not like you care."
"Locusts don't have blood," Shari points out. "...But I guess I take your point. Lucky you, She doesn't want to talk to you. Wish that were me."
Shari stretches as she steps out of the cockpit and onto the platform, still cramped from--well, all the muscle cramps, from the horrors. "Sukeban. Yeah. At first she was all optimistic and nice and barf, and then she got weird, and then everything got louder, and she was just so AWFUL have you ever just--wanted someone to die? It was like that."
Pause. "...Huh. That is really weird," she reflects. "What's a bunch of spacenoids doing here?" Pause. "Well, whatever."
"Ugh. It's still echoing in my skull. And these people are making it worse. It's like, I look at them, and I'm reminded of the infinitesimal nature of our reality compared to the limitless darkness that stretches out before us. Eons pale in comparison to the endless Now that is Not."
"It's like that, you know?"
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
"Totally sucks," Parminder agrees. "It's like, take a joke, right?" One gets the impression that Parminder's jokes are, on occasion, at someone else's expense.
But they're still funny.
The ground crew, indeed, doesn't much care at all. They don't care about being insulted, and they don't care about replying. "Pilot free," this one reports, as he steps back.
"Aight," Parminder says, more out of habit than anything. He doesn't bother giving Shari a hand out of the cockpit, but it's fine, she didn't need one anyway.
He takes a step back, to lean, backwards, on the gangway railing instead. "Uhhh. Tried being a dude?" He advances, lightly. "Shot in the dark, here, but the Queen Of All Nothing or whatever really just seems to target ladies." She's the Empress at the End of All Things, Parminder. "Like, if I didn't know better, I'd say the eldritch horror was a lesbian?" He shrugs, and scratches at an ear. (He has one singular earring. It's like that.)
"Oh yeah, sure, sometimes someone's talking and all you hear is 'kill me, kill me, kill me!'" He adds, with a loose grin. "Not really an auditory issue I got, but the Captain's explained her issues at length. And depth. You know if you fling a coffee machine hard enough it goes right through the wall?" He laughs, because apparently it's funny. "... good thing she was busy today, tho'. I mean. A buncha Spacenoids." He gestures, as if his point is entirely obvious. (His point is anti-Spacenoid violence. That's funny, too.)
He shrugs, again, and straightens up. "You wanna beat feet outta here? I don't reckon anyone's in the mess hall right now, like... I'm not gonna allocate that shit for a milk run." A beat, and: "Or you can vibe in the limitless darkness or whatever. That's cool." IS IT COOL?
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"That's sort of what I meant but also kind of awful!" Shari chirps pleasantly. "Eh, whatever, it's not like she didn't hit me first. So to speak."
They are funny. Pilot free, and... that's fine. She gets out.
Then Shari actually considers Parminder's advice. "That's..." She actually seems to really think about it. "That wouldn't be so bad," she reflects. "I like dudes. I could pull off being called 'sir'."
It probably wouldn't work out though.
"She probably wouldn't let me go that easy anyway."
Kill! Kill!! "Oh yeah, she's like, all the time with the death and the murder, huh?" Coffee machine... "I did not know that. But I guess that's physics." Pause. "Yeah. She doesn't really care what happens to them..."
Does Shari?
"LET'S DEFINITELY DO THAT." Shari says, immediately at Parminder's side without seeming to cross the intervening distance. Then, "Oh, shit, gotta get the ball." She hops back toward the cockpit, picks up her crystal, and shoves it in her purse.
"Anyway yeah I don't want to vibe. I hate vibing with the limitless darkness. I feel like the limitless darkness might actually be not great? I mean, it doesn't matter, I'm stuck with it anyway."
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
"I mean, that's gotta be self-defence under some set of laws." Parminder shrugs. Britannian law, maybe? Who knows.
(Parminder knows.)
"You reckon?" He asks, raising a brow. "You're a bit short for my shit, but I can take you clothes shopping one of these days if you wanna try it out." Far be it from him to stifle the next generation of cool dudes. He grins, though, and adds: "But yeah, She probably doesn't have that short an attention span. You know the Captain once told me She's been in her head for like, eleven straight-ass years? Don't forget, you're here forever!"
Yuliana definitely doesn't care what happens to Spacenoids. Except for one or two special Spacenoids who are a credit to their colonies. Parminder thinks the racism is funny, too, especially now Yuliana's trying to paint herself as this charity queen or some shit. Hypocrisy is real funny.
He actually jumps a little, though, when he looks away for a second and suddenly SHARI'S RIGHT THERE, "WHAT THE FUCK. Give me a heart attack, why don't ya!" He pats down his hair from where it obviously poofed right up, Ghibli-style, as Shari remembers her orb.
"Soooo... why do you carry the horror trinket around if you hate it?" He ventures, as he shoves his hands back in his pockets and ambles down the gangway stairs towards the mess hall. "I'd catch the Captain fucking with a blatantly evil necklace sometimes, too, when she didn't think no one was watching her, and it's like... just drop the rock! It's a fucking rock! It's not gonna grow arms and cling to your hand!"
He pauses, and looks over to her. "Wait, do they do that? If they do that I wanna see them do that. Drop the rock so I can see it latch onto you. C'mon, I dare you. I double dare you."
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"Not like laws matter! I'm a super terrorist!"
But Shari considers. "Hmmm. Could be fun. Even if it doesn't work I might look hot like that." Shari is a member of a dress up club, she's always up for trying new styles. Though this isn't her usual style--she doesn't even have her dark makeup on with the flight suit, not even a little black lipstick.
But Shari shivers. "Ugh ugh ugh. Hate that." Eleven years. "Thaaaaaanks, man."
Shari sighs, and then there is--
"You have a heart?" Shari quips at Parminder, lifting an eyebrow. And then...
"I mean..."
He ambles, and Shari catches up with him. And then--"It's not gonna latch on," Shari says with a roll of her eyes as only a teenager can. "...Probably."
"Anyway I have to deal with the horror whether I have the stupid crystal or not. It's in my head, you know?" She considers. "it's funny though. Those evil rocks? When I treat them the right way, they actually make it a little better? Anyway, forget that. The reason I carry it is..."
"...I gotta deal with it either way. This way, I can control it a little. It sucks, but... Well, I got powers with it. And if I have to deal with all this crap, what's some normal girl going to do about all of it?"
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
"So, like, would that make us the Super Terrorist Bros?" Parminder pauses, and shakes his head. "Nah. It'd never catch on. I am not wearing the overalls to pull off that look."
He grins, and adds, to her surely not sarcastic gratitude: "No prob."
Parminder pauses, for a moment, and puts two fingers to his pulse. "Hang on... just a second, let me..." A moment's silence as he tries to feel it. "Yeah, looks like I still have a pulse. So, like, unless I'm a secret cyborg I totally got a heart."
Hands shoved in his pockets, he walks along, with Shari. "Lame," he pouts, when she declines to throw away the horror rock. He's probably the one person who could get away with saying that, if only because...
... daring someone like Shari to do something is probably the quickest way to get her to not do it.
Teenagers, man. Parminder does NOT miss those years.
"Wait, they make it better?" Parminder laughs. "Pshawww, right. Ever since I noticed the Captain's jewellery, I realised she was getting worse on them. Like, she was always kinda weird, but she wasn't always this mega weird. I coulda told her she was fucking her brain up on evil rocks, I guess..." He looks up to the lighting, as he ambles onward. "Nah. It was way funnier seeing her turn into the Cultmaster General."
He shoves the door to the mess hall open, and, just as he said, no one's here. No one's here, because he didn't tell anyone to be here. He ambles over to the vending machine, and gives it a kick on its side, at just the right spot to get it to dispense a drink with no input at all. He grabs it, cracks it open, and goes to sit at one of the tables here. "... I mean," he says, after that pause, "I guess getting horror powers are cool. Not really my bag, tbh?" He literally says the letters 'T' 'B' 'H'. "I'm just a normal dude. That's like, my whole brand. But if you're the kind of goth chick who's into that shit, yeah, I can see leaning into it."
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"Who?" Shari wonders guilelessly. She has no idea what Parminder is referencing. Teenagers!
"You could be a secret cyborg," Shari points out. "You wouldn't know. Because it would be secret."
It's true. Shari isn't going to do what you tell her. Not in general. With some exceptions...
"Oh no, the stuff Dr. Kafim treats is super horror shit." Shari definitely agrees with that. "...Yeah, it's pretty special how she went full religious with it, huh? I'm like. You know those ancient cults in the middle ages that believed everything is predestined and you should just Work Hard and all that?"
"It's more like that for me. Everything sucks anyway, you might as well do whatever. But no my point is, when I make the fold quartz on my own it quiets the voice. It's nice."
Nobody's here! It's how it works.
Shari looks at the vending machine. She kicks it, too. Nothing happens. "Ow..."
"Fine, whatever," she says, and puts in money instead. SHe grabs her own, and then...
"Yeah, but, it kind of is my aesthetic," Shari says. "Ugh my face feels naked like this. Anyway yeah this is more my brand."
"Besides," she says, "I can make assholes give me money. That's good, right?"
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
"IDK, man. Some historical shit. The Captain's the one who's really into that." Yuliana likes old movies, not old video games, but then again...
That's a horror we don't need to approach today.
"True," Parminder says, all too chill about the possibility that he is robot.
He raises a brow, when Shari talks about her quartz. "What, you're saying your crystals and Her Witchiness's crystals are.... what, different? I dunno, sounds implausible, man. Why would the horror crystals be different when the human sacrifice chick's handling them instead?" He pauses for a good ten seconds. "Wait, no, okay, yeah, I hear it."
Parminder snickers, when Shari kicks the machine and just ends up hurting her foot. He does not tell her what the trick is, because it's hilarious.
"... that's 'cuz your face is naked," Parminder points out, grinning. Siiip. "Well, I guess getting money's cool. Apparently you can exchange that shit for goods and services." He did not exchange any money for the good he's now drinking from, but anyway. "Buy anything cool lately?"
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
"Oh. Yeah, whatever on old stuff," Shari answers with a shrug. But Parminder's fine. Even if he's old.
Shari, though, is pretty certain she is not a secret robot. But Parminder gets to learn some things, because he got Shari talking, and she says, "Yeah. They're--" Pause. "Okay you get me, then. It's sorta weird. But I've been messing with them when I'm bored. I'm pretty good at making jewelry by now."
Shari hears that snicker. Rude!!!
Then she frowns, a big frog-faced kind of frown and sloooowly tips forward onto the table. "Uuuuugh, you're not supposed to agree with me!!" Shari complains. Then she sits back up. "Yeah! Lots of 'em. And with the crystal I can also convince people to dress up in weird clothes so that's kind of fun."
Pause. "Well, i got some new eyeliner I want to try out. But no, the cool stuff..." She looks up. "Nah, I mostly put that toward my lab and stuff. But I'm working on getting your Captain a Knightmare Frame. I'm gonna steal that, though."
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
Parminder is still in his 20s, which is either youthful or ancient, depending on who's asking. And what does he think about it? Well, that depends on who's asking!
He grins, sly, and glances sidelong to her. "Sooo... does the Witch know about your little crystal healing side-project, there?" Parminder is great at reading between the lines. Unfortunately, he's also completely mercentile, so now Shari has a problem on her hands all a sudden.
"Yeah, but I just did," he points out, on agreeing with her. Siiiip. "You're gonna give yourself, like, the weirdest fucking kinks doing that," he goes on to point out, on the topic of making people dress up, "but I'm not your dad, so I don't really give a shit."
There's a horror story for you: Parminder, Father. ... nah. Kids are too much of a pain in the ass. He doesn't have the kind of baby brain the chicks have. He'd examine whether it's weird that he thinks of Wen and Yuliana liking kids as a trait connected to their gender, but that's a pain in the ass, too.
(It is weird, though. Why are her aunt's new additions all so fucking prejudiced?!)
"A Knightmare Frame? The fuck's she gonna do with that? I thought her Witchness banished her from the stables after she ran off half-cocked in that Masquerion." Parminder hasn't yet heard that she's gotten leave to work on the Desmatz! He doesn't know everything. Or does he?
<Pose Tracker> Shari Loom has posed.
Ancient! Definitely ancient.
"...Uh." Shari considers Parminder. "I mean, I dunno, probably. When I first gave them to her she figured out how to use them all pretty quickly, like she knew better than I did. So I just kind of assume she does?" She might have to get a little mercenary herself, here--she considers the crystal in her purse. "Anyway, she already knows it gets better when I'm working on void tech. That's why I work on void tech. It's not like I actually believe in all that stuff."
But weird kinks... "What, like I'm not already gonna have weird kinks hearing voices all the time and being around you guys?" Shari rolls her eyes. "Whatever. My dad doesn't care either."
Shari may be too young for baby brain. Maybe that's it. It couldn't just be that it's not an inherent gendered trait!
"I dunno," Shari says, "But she wanted one. And Dr. Kafim wants me to make her happy, so..." Shrug.
"Anyway, I think I'm gonna go pass out and wait for us to get back in a few."
<Pose Tracker> Parminder Chaudhri has posed.
"Oh, sure, yeah, she probably knows. No need to hook her in or anything. I bet she's not gonna be mad about crystals that chill out the horror voices instead of making them worse." Parminder is betting on the opposite of that thing. He's the one who would roll the golden apple into the room full of divine socialites.
"Hey, cool, mine neither," Parminder grins, and offers no input at all about whether hanging out with this crowd is bad for Shari's development. (Obviously it is. But that's why it's funny.) "But I ain't talked to him since he had a tantrum about me not finding a nice girl to settle down with. It's like, chill out, dude, Sikhs are supposed to be the cool guys? Anyway, I've got eight siblings who can do that shit." Beat, "Nah, wait, seven. Jagjit's gay, too."
Couldn't be!
Parminder laughs. "I mean, that's basically the first law of the house, right? If the Captain's not happy, no one's happy." He waves it off, with a light gesture. "Sure, sure. There oughta be bunks made up, just go steal one. I'd better get back up to the bridge and make sure they're not, like, driving us into a cliff repeatedly 'cuz their pathfinding broke."
Parminder chuckles, as he tosses his empty can into the trash on his way out. Crushing someone's will and making them into a lifeless pawn is hilarious shit, apparently.