John J. Rambo (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
theydrewfirstblood) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
ph_logs2025-02-05 06:42 pm
theydrewfirstblood) wrote in ph_logs2025-02-05 06:42 pm
and i'm ready to suffer, and i'm ready to hope
Who: John Rambo and YOU!
What: Guess who's back? Back again...Rambo's back. Tell a friend. :P
When: a highly nebulous week and a half after Kitty's post because time is soup and I'm stalking that one HARD
Where: All around the Hollow
Warning(s): The usual stuff for John's canon--violence, PTSD, torture, etc., but also a tiny bit of self harmful thinking. It's been three years by his reckoning, and our boy's done a bit of backsliding.
it's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat - Re-Arrival
He never fully forgot.
The memories never felt as tangible as they ought to, but they never fade altogether. He remembers waking up with a face full of feathers or fur, feminine giggling and warm, earnest smiles from a strapping young man. He remembers the touch of lovers, partners, the face of a demon that isn't a demon, one that makes him feel fondness and brings a smile to his face and is interspersed with flashes of white blonde hair and sad, dark eyes.
The one face he never loses, not even a little, is hers. The wild red curls, the antlers, the forest and the sugary taste of violets on his tongue.
It's for her that he gets permission to make an altar from the monks in Thailand, where he still goes every month to pray. It's the pain of longing that drives him into the fights, the homesickness. And he is, he's homesick.
...so of course he nearly drops a wagon wheel on his head.
When he's back in that room, with that white haired woman, he speaks before she can.
"Just send me back. Please...she's the spring. You're the winter. Life and death--of you remaining three, I think my vows to Serranai bind me as much to you as they do to her. You gave me this choice already. Answer hasn't changed."
The moment he's off the ferry, he reaches out to catch the arm of the first person he sees. It's been three years and a world for him--the recognition may not be immediate if he knows them.
"Hey--sorry, I'm sorry, but uh...fuck. How long since the Givingstide where that gingerbread house showed up? How many years?"
looking for heaven - closed to Baker Ranch
It happened again. Longer this time...shit shit shit fucking hell.
John borrows a horse from a local butcher he definitely remembers Co assaulting...
Okay, he stole it. Temporarily, he'll give it back--he needs to get home fast.
"Ed! Kitty! Radar!"
He's calling out in case they're out taking care of things. Because they would, of course they would. Especially Edgar, and Radar, propping up poor Kitty who's probably a mess. God knows why, but she's let him in and he went and left her because he's a fucking asshole.
"Hey! Ed! Radar!"
He slows the horse as he gets closer to the house, starting to worry despite having learned it hasn't been years, he didn't miss anything...
"Kitty?!...Anyone?...Where the fuck's--"
BAKBAKBAKBAKBAKBUKBUKBUKBUKBUKBUKBUKBUK!!! BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!
John's heart squeezes painfully tight as he hears the familiar squawking--and before he's totally aware of what's going on, he's got an armful of furious chicken, wings flapping as he gathers her against his chest even as she tries to peck him with a strange, slow rhythm, pressing her beak against his neck and face repeatedly in that familiar gesture of comfort: chicken kiss.
"Hey--Co, hey, shhh, I'm here...I'm here, I'm here..."
He's weeping as he says it, burying his face in her feathery neck and shivering as it hits him just how much he missed this.
How much he missed home.
found the devil in me - open
It's maybe his second or third day back when he realizes why he was still getting his ass kicked once a month or so. It wasn't like Trautman said, that he needed to come full circle. It wasn't the soldier that needed the fighting, the bloodshed, the violence...
It was the wolf--and one night as he's considering going to bed, he realizes why he's felt so clear since he got back. He'd forgotten this part.
So, abruptly, at one point during the night, denizens of Baker Ranch will hear the door slam, and fairly soon the white balverine will be found tearing through the woods, hunting and just running full tilt. No humans are harmed, but a lot of animals die.
And, in the morning, many people will find packages on their doorsteps: fresh venison steaks, or stew meat, or even the odd freshly cleaned and plucked pheasant with a simple note that reads compliments of Baker Ranch.
{ooc: Feel free to run into John in the forest, or have received some gift of meat you may want to track him down and thank him for. ;p}
shake it off - wildcard
Choose your own John--I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!
What: Guess who's back? Back again...Rambo's back. Tell a friend. :P
When: a highly nebulous week and a half after Kitty's post because time is soup and I'm stalking that one HARD
Where: All around the Hollow
Warning(s): The usual stuff for John's canon--violence, PTSD, torture, etc., but also a tiny bit of self harmful thinking. It's been three years by his reckoning, and our boy's done a bit of backsliding.
it's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat - Re-Arrival
He never fully forgot.
The memories never felt as tangible as they ought to, but they never fade altogether. He remembers waking up with a face full of feathers or fur, feminine giggling and warm, earnest smiles from a strapping young man. He remembers the touch of lovers, partners, the face of a demon that isn't a demon, one that makes him feel fondness and brings a smile to his face and is interspersed with flashes of white blonde hair and sad, dark eyes.
The one face he never loses, not even a little, is hers. The wild red curls, the antlers, the forest and the sugary taste of violets on his tongue.
It's for her that he gets permission to make an altar from the monks in Thailand, where he still goes every month to pray. It's the pain of longing that drives him into the fights, the homesickness. And he is, he's homesick.
...so of course he nearly drops a wagon wheel on his head.
When he's back in that room, with that white haired woman, he speaks before she can.
"Just send me back. Please...she's the spring. You're the winter. Life and death--of you remaining three, I think my vows to Serranai bind me as much to you as they do to her. You gave me this choice already. Answer hasn't changed."
The moment he's off the ferry, he reaches out to catch the arm of the first person he sees. It's been three years and a world for him--the recognition may not be immediate if he knows them.
"Hey--sorry, I'm sorry, but uh...fuck. How long since the Givingstide where that gingerbread house showed up? How many years?"
looking for heaven - closed to Baker Ranch
It happened again. Longer this time...shit shit shit fucking hell.
John borrows a horse from a local butcher he definitely remembers Co assaulting...
Okay, he stole it. Temporarily, he'll give it back--he needs to get home fast.
"Ed! Kitty! Radar!"
He's calling out in case they're out taking care of things. Because they would, of course they would. Especially Edgar, and Radar, propping up poor Kitty who's probably a mess. God knows why, but she's let him in and he went and left her because he's a fucking asshole.
"Hey! Ed! Radar!"
He slows the horse as he gets closer to the house, starting to worry despite having learned it hasn't been years, he didn't miss anything...
"Kitty?!...Anyone?...Where the fuck's--"
BAKBAKBAKBAKBAKBUKBUKBUKBUKBUKBUKBUKBUK!!! BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAK!
John's heart squeezes painfully tight as he hears the familiar squawking--and before he's totally aware of what's going on, he's got an armful of furious chicken, wings flapping as he gathers her against his chest even as she tries to peck him with a strange, slow rhythm, pressing her beak against his neck and face repeatedly in that familiar gesture of comfort: chicken kiss.
"Hey--Co, hey, shhh, I'm here...I'm here, I'm here..."
He's weeping as he says it, burying his face in her feathery neck and shivering as it hits him just how much he missed this.
How much he missed home.
found the devil in me - open
It's maybe his second or third day back when he realizes why he was still getting his ass kicked once a month or so. It wasn't like Trautman said, that he needed to come full circle. It wasn't the soldier that needed the fighting, the bloodshed, the violence...
It was the wolf--and one night as he's considering going to bed, he realizes why he's felt so clear since he got back. He'd forgotten this part.
So, abruptly, at one point during the night, denizens of Baker Ranch will hear the door slam, and fairly soon the white balverine will be found tearing through the woods, hunting and just running full tilt. No humans are harmed, but a lot of animals die.
And, in the morning, many people will find packages on their doorsteps: fresh venison steaks, or stew meat, or even the odd freshly cleaned and plucked pheasant with a simple note that reads compliments of Baker Ranch.
{ooc: Feel free to run into John in the forest, or have received some gift of meat you may want to track him down and thank him for. ;p}
shake it off - wildcard
Choose your own John--I'm baaaaaaaaaaaaaack!
no subject
After a second, Deon shakes the offered hand with his own organic right one, not the orange robotic one on his left. His grip is strong, but not a toxic-masculinity-dominance-squeeze.
"Deon Wilson. I serve..." The orange robot antennae where human ears would be go back, but that's the only indication that he's uncomfortable with the answer - or at least, whatever the answer means these days. Besides, he's still wary of outing himself as a Fourth follower after that one Fog follower had beaten his ass just for daring to be devoted to his rival god.
He's been thinking about this for a while, in his home at the edge of the woods. What did it even mean anymore? The Fog's followers had been a sadistic cult, he knew that.
...had he been in a cult, too?
FourthGod, Rambo was really cutting deep with simple talk, wasn't he?"...no one, these days."
Then his caracal ears atop his head follow suit with his antennae, nearly flattening against his head like a displeased cat. They do tend to betray his emotions more often than not.
"I'd be lying if I said I didn't before. Not by choice. By a so-called god that made me what I am. And it killed a part of me every time." He smiles again, that thin unhappy smile. "I've quite happily excised human from my diet since I arrived. No danger of human-hunting from me. I can assure you of that."
no subject
And Deon…there’s something to the way he speaks that makes John feel an uncomfortable level of empathy. Being made into something Other, losing in the gaining, having to forcibly adjust in the aftermath…
He could be talking about recruitment to Special Forces with language like that.
“I chose Serranai. Every step—truthfully, I’m not sure anyone can serve the Mothers by force. They care too much.” John replies as he releases Deon’s hand. “I became aware of a cure for what I am, but…I feel I belong to her more this way. More a part of the forest, more a true hunter.”
John can smell it on him, despite the robotic parts. The lion’s tail, even the presence of venom…
A thought occurs to him, and he flashes that vicious looking curl of lips that is a smile again.
“Can you hunt without your venom? Without poisoning your prey, so it’s safe for eating?”
no subject
(Lots of unexamined trauma here. Let's not examine it right now. Deon pushes down the unease and uncertainty, compartmentalizing it.)
"They seem..." He struggles for words. Undemanding? Chill? Normal??? "They seem like they're not about to start a holy war," he says, because, well. That's what it had been, hadn't it?
At the question, Deon nods, once. "It's paralytic, cooks off at about 50° Celsius anyway, so as long as the meat is cooked properly it's fine. But I do hunt without it, for what I sell in town." Stealth, like a lioness in the savannah grass, like an owl swooping down on silent wings towards an unsuspecting mouse. The stun of weight and claws, the mercy of breaking a neck if it goes well, the thrill of a chase pounding in his veins if it doesn't.
He used to prefer the chase, despite himself.
"It's not pretty, but it works."
no subject
There's purity in that. Honesty--not violence but the cycle of life and death, one sustaining another.
"Let me show you how I found my way to Serranai." he offers, extending a big, clawed hand to him to shake. "Not trying to convert you, just...showing you how they operate. How I chose. It started with a meal, though, and for that? In this form, I like to collect my own. We'll hunt. Together."