ph_logs | [OPEN] While we're on the subject, could we change the subject now?

[OPEN] While we're on the subject, could we change the subject now?

Who: Jonathan Sims and YOU!
What: Open prompts for the end of summer!
When: August
Where: Around Marrow Isle
Warning(s): Cursed objects, potential descriptions of gore (More warnings pending)

1. Looking towards the future, we were begging for the past

With a sound of effort, Jon drops the last of the tools he'd been carrying too many of, letting out a winded wheeze as he tries to collect himself.

It's been quite an undertaking, collecting ins and odds from Calloway's Curios before they fell into hands, not knowing what they are or what they're capable of doing. He's not certain of the particular qualities of a few of these things, but he's seen enough things and read about even more to know when something is simply here to cause problems.

Sprucing up the unused shed behind his cliff-side home is proving to be even more of an undertaking, considering he isn't especially gifted at carpentry, but sometimes you've just got to make due.

He's so engrossed in his work that he doesn't notice the presence of anyone outside of Grimmly the Dusknoir, the large Pokemon lingering, watching with what can only be described as single-eyed skepticism. The red eye follows Jon as he moves to collect the scattered metal rods of the lock-system he'd purchased, once again trying to carry all too many things at once.

To say the least, he's far too distracted to notice anybody coming up the short path to his home - especially as, with his heavy carry load, he staggers, stumbles, and topples back, dropping the rods in a spectacularly-noisy explosion of parts around his person.

Grimmly bellows with strange, wavering, ghostly laughter, the mouth on his stomach throwing his upper half backwards, with no regard for the daggers Jon glares his way.

"Oh, laugh it up, you shit, very funny. You could be helping with this, you know, you've got two perfectly good hands!"

2. Well, we knew we had the good things

Amid all the bustle he's been dealing with recently, Jon manages to find time to write and hang a flyer on the bulletin board.

Seeking assistance from the technically inclined for a repair project.

I am in possession of three tape recorders, and need someone who could potentially lend me a hand with fixing the wiring within the machines, as well as potentially making their power sources able to plug into a wall outlet. The tapes are in pristine condition, and I will only need assistance with at least one recorder, though all three being repaired would be preferred. Offering a reward of 200B for assistance.

If interested, please contact me via sending stone or telephone. Thank you.

-Jonathan Sims

With a reward like that, it's clear he's pretty serious about getting these fixed. He'll answer just about any call about them - be it someone who's ready to help him fix these, someone with questions about them, or friends with concerns about the devices. (It may be easier said than done convincing him not to fix them, if one even could, though.)

3. But those never seemed to last (Closed to Neil and Martin)

After meeting Martin on the beach, Jon was in more of a hurry than he'd care to admit to get to Neil and confirm dinner plans. Everything's smoothly in motion, and as ridiculous as it feels, Jon's more excited about this than he can rightly recall having been in a fair bit.

He's never been an incredible chef, but he's gotten a handle on home cooking since arriving in town, and throws together a plan quickly enough to have everything just about ready. It only takes a short trip out to the markets to have the supplies for everything: lemon chicken (the citrus specifically chosen for the occasion), mashed potatoes, and supplies for a light salad, hopefully making for something of an exceptional welcome-to-town dinner.

The sun is only just dipping towards the horizon when he's wrapping up, and judging by a quick glance to the clock on the wall when a knock at the door rings through the house, Martin's at his most punctual that Jon's ever seen him. Maybe he's as excited about this as Jon is? (He surely hopes so.)

Leaning as close to the kitchen's doorframe as he can while not straying too far, keen to finish wrapping things up as quickly as possible, Jon doesn't hesitate to call out towards the front of the house.

"Come in!"

4. Oh, please just last (Wildcard)
Want this guy somewhere, sometime? Shoot me a PM here or on Discord to plot, or just go wild and drop something!

[EDITED EXTRA PROMPT]

5. Beneath the Watcher's Eye

The more time passes, the more Jon feels his resolve beginning to slip.

At first, it's simply accidental, compelling people for statements when they're not looking to share. It sustains him, he feels terrible about it, and there's another sore spot to try to navigate around on this cursed island. The more time that passes, however, the few statements that are offered by the call of his bulletin-board posts simply don't provide like they used to. More often, the fatigue hangs heavy on his bones, even without the work to wear him down. Thinking grows difficult, and simple ordeals feel as though they've gained ten new steps overnight.

He tries to fight it off; he really, truly does. The itch sinks deeper into his bones with each passing day, though - no amount of reading old statements or reading books on things that had happened in town scratch it.

There comes a point with all itches that you've simply got no choice but to scratch it.

He adds his flyer to the bulletin board once more, crisp and neat. Sending stone calls are acceptable, events that have happened within Pumpkin Hollow are valid pieces of information to offer, and anything of any magnitude will be heard. The net is as wide as he can possibly cast it.

Waiting for the net to fill is an impossible task, however. Despite himself, he begins to hunt.

His search doesn't have the physicality or brute force of a Hunter seeking prey - but in energy and approach, they're shockingly alike. He's patient, calculated, and mindful. He stays out late during the nights of shore leave from the Mipha's Grace,, finding new haunts to insert himself into. Restaurants, taverns, bustling public events, and coffee shops are his most frequent targets; if he finds the perfect candidate outside of one of those spaces wearing marks that are heavy enough, though, he won't be picky.

Once he finds scars adequate enough, he sinks into action. The approach is simple and polite: if there's too many people around, he'll ask to step aside. If it's a quiet space, he'll move to stand near, to sit across from, to linger by whoever he's got his eyes on.

And then, he'll speak. The supernaturally inclined feel static begin to build in their ears, and even those who aren't get a sensation of their own, unnatural and tingly, something akin a sleeping limb beginning to wake up.

"You have seen something great and terrible, something beyond comprehension. Tell me your story."

[Extra notes: this is my general prompt for Jon taking statements! You can play this any way you want to. If you want their CR to stay positive, your character can show up at his house and deliver their statement normally, talk afterwards, whole nine yards. For anyone who'd prefer negative CR, though, or want to have Jon take a statement but have characters who would keep that to themselves, put him wherever your character might be and have him compel it out of them!

Additionally, closed to close CR: characters are welcome to bust him compelling statements out of someone! He is doing it fully intentionally this time, and while he'll generally see himself out while emotions run high from the person he took it from, he can be caught by someone who knows what's happening. He won't target people he's friends or generally friendly with intentionally, but it can happen accidentally. Hit me with anything! \o/ ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Erin tosses them over the back of a couch, grinning like a fool and flashing finger-guns at Daisy with the assumption that her sovereign is about to beat a hasty retreat rather than be bullied like this in her own home. It's fine, Erin can put on the overalls while she's gone and a whole lot of nothing else.

The tape recorders, though...

She frowns at them. "Jon," she murmurs. "...I can see these. That's not a good sign."

Daisy, despite the fact she very much would rather not continue to get bullied in front of Jon, instead of making an immediate retreat says from the living room doorway in the voice of someone who definitely said this before: "Told you so. Mine were the same."

Jon's quick to catch her frown, but she speaks up before he can ask. The told you so doesn't exactly soothe his nerves, either.

He looks back to the recorders, moving a hand to fiddle with one, brows furrowed deeply. Well, that's ominous. Nothing involving these sorts of things wouldn't be ominous, though, would they?

"What does it mean, that you're able to see them?"

Erin touches her blindfold. "This thing ain't bad for helping me get around and fight, but it sees by Wyrd, the same thing that seals those Pledges and underlies all my magic. It's really bad at seeing most anything that doesn't have enough fate or power to qualify as a person - even animals are a bit fuzzy, like a pointillist painted 'em into my world. So when I can see an object sharp and clear, that means it either has a fate, it's magic, or both. And let me tell you, objects with fates fucking suck. Everyone wants Excalibur until it gets them fucking killed."

"Had a couple tapes and a recorder turn up before. It was the same story. Erin could see them. And none of 'em were good news."

She stands up from the doorway and sighs. "But I know you'll want to look, so. Just let me know what you find I guess."

"If you want to listen when they're working, you're welcome to join us," Jon offers. It's very clear that he is absolutely still wanting to look, even if it doesn't particularly bode well. "Your house, your girlfriend's magic, seems only right that you could choose to listen if you'd like."

Nothing ventured, nothing gained, and they've been sitting around, broken and mocking him with their inaccessibility, for far too long now to give up so easily.

"I'm willing to endure whatever they've got in store to hear them," He's quick to assure Erin. "At this point, they've been in my home for far too long to not know what's on them."

"...Alright. Might be a moot point if the batteries don't get fixed too, but as Frankenstein said to the school friend he was painfully in love with: I'm a little bitch and I make bad decisions."

She touches one recorder, just the lightest brush of her fingertips, and her Mantle flares. The shapes in the smoke are cogs and clockwork, steampipes and cartoon pistons, as she calls upon the begrudging deal she wrested from Artifice, and says: Fix it.

And the unlimited power of the human hand says back to her: You only talk to me when you need something.

(Ugh, men.)

...In what universe is Artifice male, me?

(Fuck you.)

Fuck me yourself.

The recorder...changes. It's an odd process, like watching a survival crafting game that's been badly whacked into a VR experience. It half-disassembles, parts and pieces coming out of it, and invisible hands polish and poke and prod at it. A mouth that isn't there spits on something metal, and the spit is wiped into it with a cloth that doesn't exist. Wires are reconnected, fried resistors are replaced with themselves without the bit where they work now ever quite crossing the visible spectrum, cracked plastic gets smoothed over like clay.

And then it is put back together, and a sensation oddly like the Platonic ideal of a blue-collar mechanic smacking Jon's ass passes through the room before Erin's aura fades back down to normal.

Jon steps back, making room, not certain if it's something he could get caught in. The entire process is deeply enthralling, though - it's hard to focus on so many pieces moving of their own accord, mending and smoothing in places that he hadn't even anticipated bothering with.

Even despite watching the entire process unfold, it's still staggering when it's done being assembled, plastic shining in the light filtering in through the windows, new as if one had plucked it off a store shelf.

And then...

Smack.

Jon tenses, his posture rod-straight, and his face flushes deeply. He snaps behind him to look, and when there's nothing there, he blinks, owlishly, and looks to Erin, bewildered and flustered.

"Whhhat the fuck?"

"Did the undimmed glory of human ingenuity fuckin' molest you? I keep telling it to stop and it keeps not doing that."

"It--- it, um--- it smacked me on the ass?"

Erin glares directly at the clock. "Alright you fuckin' bastard, just for that shit I'm spending my free time at work making flint arrowheads. I'ma mine the stone with wooden tools and fucking knap it like a caveman and when I'm done I'll shoot a whole rabbit and roast it over a campfire like a savage."

The clock ticks.

Because it is a clock.

Jon looks to the clock.

Looks to Erin.

Back to the clock.

Listens to the ticking - undeterred by any threats, as it is a clock.

And, at last, back to the tape recorder.

Man, what a day this is turning out to be.

"Should I, ah. Flag Daisy down before we get into this, then? Or should I go ahead and take them home, in case of any... I don't know. Ambient terrible magic?"

"...Try the one I fixed," Erin decides at last. "Not to brag about my huge throbbing magical cock or anything but if it's cursed-cursed I can tank it, put you two down if I have to. And if it's not...well, if it's not, I'm curious myself."

With that sort of confidence, he certainly hopes there's no situation where she's got to put one or both of them down. Even if it'd technically just be a turn it off and back on fix of whatever's afflicting them.

"Here it is, then," Jon agrees, turning to call into the room he'd watched Daisy vanish into. "Daisy! Any interest in coming to listen with us?"

There's the vague sound of furniture in another room scraping before she reappears at the doorway. "I'll hear it no matter where I go so. Might as well."

"Fair enough," Jon agrees, and takes in a slow breath, steeling his nerves. "Here we go."

He presses the play button with a soft click, and the tape whirrs to life.

At first, the sound is garbled, warped. The tape crackles softly through the pristine speakers as it begins to play, and for a moment, Jon almost begins to accept defeat, that the tapes are in no condition to be played.

Before he can say anything, however, there's his own voice. It's incoherent, but the crackling begins to clear at last. The press of another tape-player clicks. Daisy's voice follows, muffled, through another speaker.

"...Was a coffin. An old, wooden coffin. Rough, unvarnished. I could see splinters where the nails had been hammered in badly. Wrapped all around it was a thick metal chain ending in a heavy padlock. That weird moaning was coming from inside it. It was the only sound that cut through pounding rain..."

His mouth is dry as he finally moves to sit, instead of lingering by the arm of the couch. No matter how many seconds pass, it never seems to get easier to listen to yourself apologize to people for what sounds, effectively, like a suicide mission. The longer it goes on, the clearer it becomes that the notion isn't too far off the mark.

Forever deep below creation. The strain of the weight of the world feels as though it presses on his chest even here, though he hasn't felt it on his body, not yet. When Daisy speaks, he tries not to look at her. He's never lived this; she has no choice but to relive it again. The statement she'd given him the first day she'd arrived at the island is fresh in his mind, but hearing it as it happened makes his stomach turn, his breath catch in his throat, and his life feeling scattered over the floor like a dropped bag of marbles.

The tape clicks off shortly after hearing Basira's voice, and the silence that lingers afterwards is heavy. It's a terrible thing, to wish you were yourself, but someone else, so that you could understand - a stronger stranger, only bearing the same name and voice, who would know how to handle this.

He's here now, though. He is here, alive-yet-dead, and all he has to offer the people who have gone through these things is who he is now.

Jon hesitates, but finally breaks the silence. His voice is soft, wavering ever-so-slightly, but he pushes forwards, shattering that suffocating, lingering quiet.

"Of... god, of all the tapes it could have been," He breathes out. It was almost a breath of a laugh, but he just can't quite manage it. "...Are you alright, Daisy?"

It's not the first time she's listened to this one, at least.

It had turned up along with all the others containing various snapshots of her life after that first fateful day investigating the Institute. Not that it makes it any more pleasant, listening to her own wrecked voice play back. The borderline delirium of seeing another person after so long trapped alone, of realising she wasn't dead and in hell.

There's only a handful of people who have ever heard her so vulnerable, and two of them are in this room.

(It could've been worse. It could've been her death.)

She swallows. "I'm— yeah. I'm alright. I think. Christ. Still barely recognise myself in that thing."

Quietly, Erin puts a hand on Daisy's shoulder and gives her a soft squeeze. That was...

...

"These things are like knives that only you can safely eat, aren't they?" she asks Jon, and her voice is soft. Devoid of accusation. It is the quiet question of a loved one asking you to confirm your terminal diagnosis.

Jon lets his hand linger on the tape, before he decides to stow it and the others back into his bag. That's quite enough for one day; while he's sure that Erin can fix the others, he doesn't want to fight the temptation to listen to them immediately.

Best to space them out, in case another one of this weight comes up. It isn't as though he's got a shortage of things to think about for now, anyways.

"That's... not a bad way to describe it, really," He agrees, clearly resigned to the idea. "But there's not much else for it but to continue doing so."

Daisy tilts her head to press her cheek against Erin's hand. She'll be fine. At least Jon knows now, more explicitly than he could have based on her more crowded statement alone.

"It's like me and Hunting," she sighs. "Just gotta live with it."

"Well just look at us, three weird emotivores being depressed and I'm the only one in the room getting a snack." Erin pauses. Pauses further. "I'm introducing metal straws to this island for the bit."

Is the joke funny? No. Does she expect that Daisy is about to laugh at it anyway? Yes.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[OPEN] While we're on the subject, could we change the subject now?

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And now you and Rose have to decide how well this works.

confirmed with Gourd Lord: recorder repair is a GO!!!

By tradition I declare: damn OCs and their one-liners

a one-liner right back at thee!

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