littletonoidea | IC Inbox

With you, I am going to get through this door, Kujen predicts smugly. The door does, indeed, open for Eiffel's face, and close behind them. With Hakkai gone there's no one to stop Kujen from methodically ransacking the bedroom for Jedao's communicator and key.

Jedao this feels like a very big oversight in security that he can just walk in here possessed!!

As soon as Hakkai finds out what you're doing he's going to make sure you don't see anything except the bars of the goddamn prison! No one here is gonna protect you!!

You are over-estimating his carceral leanings. Have you ever been choked to death by hand? It's a bit boring, as these things go. Very...gurgly. It takes longer than anyone thinks. Is Hakkai the type to make the same mistake twice?

He pulls open a closet, revealing the heap of a tied-up, cooling corpse. Blood pools in dark finger-stripes on its partially swollen neck. The face would be stunningly beautiful, if not for the waxy, repulsive slackness of death, the way the flesh no longer seems to hold its own weight anymore, sagging on the bone. Kujen fleeces its pockets briskly, and finds the engine room key. Jedao hadn't slept with his communicator on him, but this - yes, that makes sense.

A violent nausea suddenly swims through Eiffel's body, regardless of Kujen's control: Eiffel doesn't like bodies, nor the fact that Kujen is fucking playing with it, and a lot of his outrage flickers out in favour of disgust and empathy for this poor random guy that got consumed by Kujen.

You're a monster.

There's no grandiosity or play behind the insult. Just the quiet, real horror of seeing the results of his work.

Me? But this is Hakkai's handiwork.

Quite literally. Kujen is about equally amused by the pun and the sadistic opportunity to rub Eiffel's face in it - thankfully, not literally.

Oooh - he pulls something small and crystalline from the other pocket, his amusement vanishing in a spike of excitement. Once he's sure Mahar's body isn't concealing anything else useful, he shoves it back into the closet haphazardly. Leaving it strewn on the floor would only tip off Hakkai, and Kujen doesn't have a lot of time to be dodging extra complications.

Edited 2024-06-16 23:47 (UTC)

And there's that fury again, cold in a way that twists his stomach unpleasantly. At least there's no literal blood on his hands, but the callous disregard is still sickening.

I'm gonna make sure he doesn't kill you. And it's a threat as much as a promise. I'll make sure you rot in Zero for the rest of the flood so you know how it feels to be goddamn helpless.

He does know, of course. Why else would he have spent so time and effort ensuring it would never, ever happen to him again? And now Jedao, of all people, has brought him so close -

Go back to the songs. They were less predictable.

He considers searching for Shen Wei's file. But that's probably much better hidden, if Jedao didn't destroy it entirely after memorizing it. Not worth the risk. He slips out, heading back up to the first floor.

How about you give a damn about the people you're hurting! That'd be a pretty fucking different fiddle for you!

God he's going to grill Jedao so hard about setting up fucking secret passwords or something later for him.

You know what is predictable? That we're gonna stop you!!

Caring is what stops men of ability from using all the tools at their disposal, Kujen explains, in a terribly teacherly tone.

Which is why I will always win, and you will lose. I've already done the math.

Get off your high horse and go sit on a dick.

He's not going to comment about the math, because smarter people have tried manipulating Eiffel and every time it's exploded in their faces. He's not about to give up being a wildcard and unknown variable just yet.

Perhaps later.

There's a conveniently empty cabin right beside Eiffel's. Kujen slips inside and settles himself cross-legged on the floor. Eiffel has the dubious pleasure of witnessing an unproductive conversation.

Honestly that lifts Eiffel's mood like nothing else. At least the Admiral was sensible. And it gives him the energy to rally and start another song.

I've got a song that'll get on your nerves, get on your nerves, get on your nerves~ I've got a song that'll get on your nerves and it gooooes liiiiike thiiiiis--

Edited 2024-06-17 04:38 (UTC)

Too bad. Still - he lets himself hum along with it, whatever it is. No doubt the inanity will make him seem more like the anchor to anyone he encounters in the stairwell, as he goes down and down, toward the engine room.

You're not supposed to enjoy me being annoying.

He sounds put out and annoyed by it more than anything else. It's still very distressing to feel his body doing things without him, and right now he's doing the (extremely visualised) mental equivalent of pacing in a cage trying to think of ways to get around this.

She's not gonna listen to you! he points out desperately. She's gonna know you're not Jedao, that you're not even me! She's way smarter than you are!

It is annoying, really - but Kujen didn't get to be as old as he is without developing some patience. He's a hard man to perturb.

It doesn't matter how smart slaves are.

What matters is how vulnerable they are to control.

Inside the Engine Room, Kujen begins by examining the interfaces, fiddling with a few of the panel patterns.

GET THE HELL AWAY FROM HER!!

That is a vicious yell, even and especially by Eiffel's standards, and his hands actually tremble with the force of Eiffel trying to pull control back.

He doesn't know how to project his thoughts to anyone else but he can sure as hell think in Morse fucking Code, and a rapid-fire string of beeps and boops that will mean nothing to Kujen and hopefully something to the Barge rattles through his brain.

babe if you can hear me zap me right now get him off you

The barge doesn't react, but Kujen does, a wave of shocked affront at the defiance - at the hands trembling, at substantive defiance. It's been so long since anyone fought him.

(Anyone except Jedao, so very, very recently, holding him in place to die -)

That's enough! The mental command is utterly cold, utterly contemptuous, remote as the stars, precise as the last digit of pi, furious as a bully interrupted. He wants to be stating the facts of the universe, but Eiffel can hear the petty, self-centered childishness in his snarl.

Kujen tases Eiffel in the belly.

Shut up, now.

This part, he does have to concentrate for. He produces the crystalline lens, and begins calculating the Calendrical adjustments that will allow him to bend the timeline of the flood.

Edited 2024-06-18 03:34 (UTC)

Just because Kujen can't feel the pain doesn't mean it doesn't affect his body - Eiffel screams in his brain, breathing shallow as agony rushes through his system and his knees would buckle if Kujen didn't have such tight control, nausea swells and the acidic taste of bile rushes up his throat, threatening to overwhelm and escape.

But Eiffel... gives off a tiny flicker of satisfaction. So he can try harder. And his body's weakened, with the shock, so maybe...

Darken the city, night is a wire! Steam in the subway, Earth is afire, Do-do-do-do, do-do-do, do-do, do-do-do, do-dooooo--

And while he's pumping that base he's pushing for control, trying to flex his hands, loosen Kujen's grip in any way - all he needs to do is make Kujen drop that thing, he's sure.

He doesn't drop the lens.

But it is - unexpectedly difficult to keep the equations in his head under these conditions. The litany of functions and fractals stutters, restarts, stops. Kujen opens one of the bulkheads covering anti-spiralling coils, and rests the taser very near it, but doesn't actually give it a zap.

You didn't want me to touch her. I suppose I could just start torching things.

He's bluffing, though. If he weren't, he'd do it, punishment and threat in the same action, just like he's already tased Eiffel. He doesn't want to damage the barge's mechanisms when he doesn't know them well enough to account for it in his math.

And Eiffel can see the bluff for what it is this time; he's zapped him twice for insolence and that makes a pattern, shows willing with no precursor or threat. The fact that he is threatening, now, fills Eiffel with a smug sort of hope that he doesn't try and hide.

Mouth is alive, with juices like wine! And I'm hungry like the wolf! Awooooooo!

It's a horrible stupid wolf howl but it gives him an unreasonable confidence, and he's going to keep focusing on making him let go of something. Hell, even his temper works at this rate.

He's a patient man, but he's also a selfish one. Despite the challenges since Ajewen Cheris made off with most of Jedao's useful bits, Kujen has not had to put up with actually unpleasant experiences in a long time. He's out of practice.

What he is used to is remaking or disposing of things that displease him, and he doesn't have the ability to remake Eiffel.

Although - with all his mental powers - Shen Wei probably would. It doesn't matter if he still has them, if Kujen can control them as well -

- it might be worth the risk.

Uhg. Fine, he snaps, forcing the body to stumble back to the elevator. Have it your way.

Edited 2024-06-18 04:21 (UTC)

Eiffel's just keeps making the most pitchy, erratic and loud wolf-howling noises for Kujen's pleasure, as he focuses instead on trying to make his feet drag. He's moving way too much for having been tased twice - even his alien powers aren't that good - and the nausea's coming back in a bad way. If he can stumble or trip, upset his stomach enough--

Or, hey. The taser's still right there.

You fell victim to one of the classic blunders! He crows, with vicious triumph. The most famous of which is, ‘never get involved in a land war in Asia,’ but only slightly less well-known is this: ‘Never go in against a crashhawk when death is on the line!!

And with every ounce of willpower he has, he's going to seize his hand back - just for a moment, just for long enough - and slams the end of the taser into his own knee as he squeezes the trigger.

Edited 2024-06-18 04:29 (UTC)

Well. No going back now. He's got to put down this anchor and take a new one.

Kujen laughs internally - slightly hysterically - as they tumble over, as the body finally vomits. It's disgusting, ignominious, crude. It's the perfect end to a bad mimic suicide hawk. He thinks he's won, and Kujen is happy to leave him wrecked and miserable, burning in his own stupid flames, like they all do.

I should have fucking known, he half-spits, half snarls. A crashhawk, no wonder he won't fall in line. Except for death, which no Kel can resist. That line is all yours.

He crawls Eiffel's body through the vomit, shoving the Engine Room key under the door of the empty cabin 20. It doesn't have to be hidden well, just out of the way until he can march Shen Wei's body down here and pick it up again. He drags the body into cabin 19, and pulls the door shut. He spends a few minutes wiggling, gets the taser trapped under his body weight, and shoves a finger down on the trigger. Then he slips out of the body, before the pants-shitting and burnt hair phase of operations.

Eiffel loses time to the pain - he doesn't know how much, and he's not sure he wants to, just that at some point between the waves of pain and the breathless choking around it, the muscle spasms cause him to flail hard enough that the taser finally breaks contact with his skin, and he goes limp.

Then there's a ragged gasp, as his body remembers how to breathe, and he curls up on his side in a trembling mess as he chokes and coughs violently, smelling like smoke and literal shit and everything hurts.

No rest for the wicked, though. He's still shaking uncontrollably, he almost fumbles his communicator completely as he drags it out of his pocket and up to his face, and chokes his way through a very important call.

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