ph_logs | Supression Request: These Feelings [November Open]

Supression Request: These Feelings [November Open]

Who: "Slasher Face" Jean and YOU + 1 Closed
What: Jean fuckin' died y'all
When: Early November (before Voyage of the Hollow Men)
Where: Oak & Iron, the Community Board, Around Town, the Temple
Warnings: Discussion of death, Bad Feelings, likely shit from Jean's dark-ass canon, traumatic flashbacks, burning/scarring
Notes: Just getting on this early while I have spoons

Containment Breach [Oak & Iron | Closed to Zelda | CW Traumatic Flashbacks, Burning/Scarring]

Jean wakes with a start, and the phantom feeling of cold. Their clothes are ill-fitting butcher's slops, smelling incongruously of wet dog, and the uncomfortable sensation is almost enough for them to center themself.

Almost.

The sensation of burning starts immediately, and the contrast between their mind's insistence that they are freezing to death and the reality of the crawling heat against their left cheek draws a gritted sound of pain from their throat. Over the course of nearly a minute, a skull and crossbones is scorched into their face, and they have to take awhile to just breathe.

It's in vain. The tally mark comes next.

Jean has no idea that it's been exactly 24 hours, which means they're trapped in the inn; after all, it's well after dark. A familiar face might be needed to coax them out from under the table. Goddesses know the staff don't want anything to do with this.

Org Chart [Community Board]

Signup sheets go up on the community board, asking for volunteers for three emergency teams, just beneath a note explaining the idea.

To better effect emergency responses to the ongoing siege of Marrow Island, Comrade Jean (Pumpkin Hollow Recovery Task Force) is seeking volunteers to staff and lead response teams which will coordinate on own initiative during notable crises. The teams are as follows: COMBAT TEAM: Directly combat curse incursions with a focus on harm reduction and pro-active containment; protect citizens and infrastructure through violent force. MEDICAL TEAM: First aid and triage, preventative care, bodymen. The grim work of aid during a disaster or surprise attack. COMMUNICATIONS TEAM: Detect and report emergencies, coordinate activities between all teams and citizens, swiftly and effectively transmit information on the disaster in a concise manner. Volunteers are encouraged to leave their names and phone numbers on the forms provided below, or to contact JEAN or MADAM PRINCESS ZELDA directly at their homes or anywhere in town. These teams are not sanctioned or sponsored by any existing organization on MARROW ISLAND and are strictly voluntary; however, JEAN is offering combat training to any citizen or Task Force member that desires it, regardless of volunteer status, during their shore leave between the hours of 6 AM and 1 PM.

[OOC Note: Feel free to leave a drive-by to just handwave volunteering, to seek Jean out in person for a thread, or even to attend training!]

This Meeting Could Have Been An Email [Around Town]

With the events of the festival heavy on their mind, Jean is making an effort to check in on friends, peers, and potential assets, not that those divisions are particularly clear in their mind right now. Did you make plans with Jean before the catastrophe? Here they are to follow up. Consider this the catch-all for That Thing That Was Plotted, but it's also the chance to catch Jean at the Oak & Iron getting their coffee, haunting the tailoring shops again with a distinct thought towards actually spending money on clothes, interrupt them grocery shopping, or otherwise gently find (and possibly hold) the nugget.

Fuck You, Pay Me [The Temple]

At some point when Jean feels like they've got ducks in a row, they come into the Temple of a morning to provide a strong contender for least reverent prayer in recent history. Curiously, they've washed up extra hard first, combed their messy hair and even shined their shoes, but...

Well. Jean doesn't kneel before the altar, and while their tone is quiet respect, the words...

"Your enemy seems to think you exist, Manager Kora, and that you have some manner of power, some stake in me. I fought too hard and too long to choose for myself only to end up here for reasons I couldn't control, and as amazing as that is...I don't work for free. Not ever again, not after the Library. I am not your plaything. If you want me as your employee...then we need to talk. And if you won't, kindly stop by the City, make an appointment with R-Corp to rent their cloning vats, and use them to go fuck yourself."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

A proud nod. "We did good work. Never lost a fight, even when we took casualties - it was a good team. As for Doctor West..." Jean falters.

Rallies: "His particular grievances are with the de facto owner of the island and with its religious institutions. Those are, haha, ha...not good enemies to choose. You can see the problem."

People said enthusiasm and stuff like that was infectious--Kavinsky wondered if that applied to pride.

As for the rest though, Kavinsky made a thoughtful noise. He preferred not to have enemies whenever possible, though it...usually wasn't possible. At least, not to avoid enemies entirely. "So, what are the religious institutions here like?"

"Understaffed! Comrade Degas is in sore need of material and human resources! I'm uncertain how to answer the question otherwise..." Their eternal grin becomes a thoughtful and even somewhat guilty frown. "...I...am unused to faiths that aren't business ventures, which is perhaps as politely as I can say that. It's a social context for which I have no context! But the gods they venerate do seem to understand the appropriate actions for an employer to take for their employees..."

Here their thumb rubs a ring on their hand, gently, even thoughtfully.

"...I'm afraid I can't help you there, Comrade!"

He nodded thoughtfully while he listened. "That's okay. I'm not religious anyway, just curious." And he could probably do some poking around, himself. He'd never seen the point in believing in any sort of god when he felt like a god himself--...when he wasn't feeling like a monster.

"So, what sort of things do you wanna know for the interview stuff?"

"Prior experience, relevant skills, any accomodations you might need - the usual!" Jean pauses. "Medical information should probably go to the clinic though, that's absolutely none of my business! Still, any deviation from the baseline that might be relevant in an emergency could save your life, if the doctors know."

"Prior experience like, jobs? Cause I haven't had any. Wasn't sure what I wanted to do with myself. Figured I'd worry about it after college." And what a joke that was; he'd probably never get that far.

"And I don't need any accommodations." He paused a moment. "I'm also healthy." Wrong. But he didn't know how to talk about mental health or his drug addiction, and if it wasn't required, he was just...not going to mention those things.

"I've got a lot of skills, though. Dunno if they're all relevant but, I know my way around guns, and I've got an eye for details. I did forgeries, mostly for fun. Let me see something a few times and I'll probably be able to recreate it, though it also depends on complexity." Cars, for instance, were considerably more difficult than a fake ID. So many moving parts to try and hold in his head at the same time.

"I can also take things out of my dreams." There was the big one, and he was well aware it needed more explanation but- he wanted to give things a moment to sink in.

Jean dutifully writes everything down, leaving space to elaborate on each. "Formal work isn't necessarily the only prior experience; being a student teaches skills! And it sounds like you've got quite a few very interesting ones relevant to the investigative part of our collective duties...skill at forgeries in particular could be very handy for accurately recording information." The positive spin is slicker than a corporate lawyer, so smooth one might believe that Jean sees it that positively and hasn't noticed the potentially criminal applications at all.

They pause at that last, and their expression is curious. "You can transfer objects from your dream into a physical form?"

Kavinsky had never seen anyone put a positive spin on his forgeries--anyone who wasn't actually asking him for something like a fake ID, anyway. It was charming, and he liked the idea that he could use his skills for something more positive--and important, even.

"I guess so. I feel like being a student mostly taught me to get used to feeling like I was being strangled by a tie every day." He was absolutely not fond of the Aglionby uniforms.

He'd always figured people would be confused when they heard what he could do--even Ronan hadn't taken it well, and he could do the same thing. So he was actually pretty pleased that Jean got it. "Yeah, exactly that. I practiced my whole life to get good at it. Started out with small shit, but the dreaming was real good in Virginia." He didn't know it had to do with the ley lines there; he didn't know they had anything to do with dreaming. "Had a whole field of cars there. Sure, a lot of them were fucked up, but there's so many parts to keep in mind. It took a while to get it right. Smaller things are always easier, though."

"It sounds a bit like what my former employers did," Jean muses, sounding more wondering than anything. "But stabilizing the archetype was always the hardest part, and rarely wholly successful; often we could only mimic power, and not wholly re-create it. That sounds like incredibly difficult work, comrade."

"Oh, it's-" except he stopped, because that sounded an awful lot like a compliment, and no one had ever, not once, said anything even remotely positive about his dreaming ability.

"It is, actually. I've worked really hard to turn it into something that I can make work for me. Like, feeling like it's productive. Or even just useful." And he was proud of what he could do, even if it seemed like he was the only one who felt that way back home. "Also, uh. Thanks for being cool about this. Past experience made me worry everyone would be a dick about it."

You ever see someone blink so rapidly it's like their eyeballs are trying to achieve flight? Yeah.

"...That seems like an odd thing to be rude to someone about. Did you exclusively spend time around tax collectors and other people whose jobs were to obsess over fraud and counterfeit? I'm a warrior, comrade, I don't particularly care about those applications! What I care about is we're starving for proper support staff and investigators!"

"No, worse. My father." And he was absolutely not going to clarify unless it was necessary.

"I dunno what, exactly, I can do here to help people but- I'd like to try." Because, contrary to popular belief back home he did enjoy helping people. He just usually did it in his own way, which just so happened to typically be illegal.

"I'm not sure either, but I know where you might be able to find a peer. Doctor West claims some expertise in dreams and dreaming - could be worth sharing notes with him. Though, hahaha, I would say that considering that I've thrown my lot in with him..." Jean's expression is painfully self-aware.

That moment of reflection reminds them to write this all down before they forget.

"Mmm, maybe, yeah. It's going to take me a while to get used to the idea that I can just...talk about this kind of thing here." Because all of his instincts were ringing alarm bells telling him to keep it as quiet as possible. But things were different here, and eventually, maybe, he'd become more comfortable.

"So, was that everything?" Not that he was in a hurry to go anywhere, he just didn't want to have skipped anything vital.

"Well..." Jean hesitates. Frowns. But it does need to be asked, doesn't it? "Any relevant combat experience? I need to know who I'm protecting in case of emergency...and who I can ask to protect others."

"Pretty sure I don't have any. Shot a nightmare monster once, but that's probably like, an outlier." And he knew fist fights at school or parties didn't count. Especially when he was content with getting his ass kicked most of the time--so long as the person doing the kicking was Ronan, anyway.

"Like, I'll fight, I'm not a coward, but-" he shrugged. He didn't have any formal training in anything. And he knew he wasn't the strongest, though he wasn't particularly weak, either.

"...Comrade." Jean sets their pencil down, takes a deep breath. "Cowardice is irrelevant. If you don't have combat experience, I'm not going to call on you to fight things. If you insist, at best you'll be a distraction to more experienced warriors; at worst, you may become compromised as an asset, a circumstance which, hahaha, ha, ha, ha, comes with severe psychological damage thus far. There's no shame in being support staff and if anyone tries to give you any they'll answer to the most abhorrent violence I can possibly muster."

Kavinsky was quiet for a moment, mulling over all of that. "...Yeah, that's fair. I don't want to get in anyone's way, especially if they actually know what they're doing."

He was stubborn but he wasn't an idiot. He wasn't going to be one of those assholes like he'd seen in movies, who insisted they could do things they couldn't--and then ended up being responsible for getting themself or others killed.

"I can do support, or whatever. Not really in a hurry to die, anyway." A beat. "I think my boys would like you. If they were here."

Jean's cheeks turn a delicate red color, and they cough. "Hopefully their circumstances are not so unhappy as to need to arrive. Did you have any questions for me, Comrade?"

Sprint past the compliment, sprint, SPRIIIIIIIIIIINT -

"Yeah. I hope they're all healthy and happy and- all of that shit." He might have tried to come off as super casual about it, but he genuinely wished the best for his friends.

"Hmm. I don't- Oh! What're your experiences with the Pine Devil?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Supression Request: These Feelings [November Open]

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cw: drugs mention

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