vatheon | New Arrival

Who: Sollux Captor and ANYONE!
Where: By the coral
When: Today
Format: Starting in prose but I'm happy to follow your lead
Status: Open as Sollux' gaping ocular sockets

He was killing himself. He could feel it in the intense pain that exploded across his think pan like someone was jabbing two culling forks through his eye sockets and then wiggling them around inside his brain.

He was sure he had killed himself. He sort of hoped he had killed himself, because living with that kind of damage was going to suck serious hoofbeast testicles.

And then he'd expected to hopefully find himself safe and sound in the bubbles, where he could spend eternity reliving the few good moments he'd had in his short life and leave the universe-saving and misery to someone else. What he hadn't expected was a whole lot of water, and confusion and a lot of voices, none of which were familiar. It sounded like he'd suddenly landed himself in the middle of a city.

Frightened and confused, he pushed himself up, coughing up a lungful of sea water and yellow blood, and felt around helplessly, searching for something, anything familiar. "Hello?" he called out, but not too loud. Karkat, Kanaya, Terezi and Gamzee had been right there. Why wasn't anyone saying anything to him?

"What happened?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Shizuo still tried his best to avoid being a greeter for newcomers, but sometimes he just happened to be around at the right time. This was one of those times. He had been walking by the coral when he heard a bunch of coughing and sputtering, which led him to circle it until he found - a troll. A wet troll splattered with yellow.

Shizuo had never really spoken with the trolls, except for that "dangerous" one Zelda had warned him about - the one who for some really weird reason Shizuo found stuck to the sidewalk one evening. He hadn't seemed threatening at the time, but Shizuo trusted Zelda's judgment. He did know that Sola had made friends with a couple of the trolls, though, and surely that meant they weren't all assholes like that one troll was supposed to be, right?

He'd just ignore the fact that Sola had a tendency to put his trust in the wrong people.

Shizuo grabbed one of the towels that were on hand for new comers and initially went to hand it over, but then realized that the troll was feeling around like he couldn't see. So Shizuo stepped forward and said, "Here," pushing the towel into his hand.

Then he asked, "You're not going to get stuck to the sidewalk too, are you?" It seemed like a perfectly logical question to Shizuo - for all he knew, that happened to all trolls.

Sollux was not only bleeding from several orifices, but his eyes had been burned out. Though they were covered by a set of pink swimming goggles, the sockets were quite visible.

He jerked back in surprise when Shizuo thrust the towel into his hand, then began cautiously wiping away the worst of the water and blood.

He didn't know how to answer the question. "I don't think so. Who're you?"

Unfortunately, Shizuo wasn't the best at observation, and he hadn't really assessed the situation until he tried to hand the towel over. Now that Shizuo had a better look at what was going on, he wondered if that yellow stuff was supposed to be blood. It kind of looked like it was flowing, but he wasn't sure what to think about it. And - oh. Those eye sockets explained why the troll was feeling around like he had been.

He probably should have approached the situation a little bit more delicately or something. This was why Shizuo usually left the greeting to other people.

"My name's Shizuo Heiwajima," Shizuo replied. "Do you need to go to the clinic or something?"

Or - should he give the whole this-is-Vatheon talk to him first? When Shizuo arrived, he had been shot and bleeding, but he had managed to carry on a conversation just fine - then again, his stamina wasn't exactly normal.

What the hell kind of name was that? Sollux swallowed and continued mopping himself up as best he could by feel. There were so many questions, and he wasn't sure what was most important to ask.

"If I might need to go to the clinic, I guess that means I'm not dead?"

"No, you're alive." Then again, hadn't Zelda - or someone - said something once before about how some people showed up around their time of death? Shizuo wasn't really into philosophizing about the nature of Vatheon, so he couldn't really remember. The troll wasn't dead for now, and that was the current concern.

"You're in a place called Vatheon." This was the point where Shizuo would grab a brochure and hand it to the troll, but if the guy couldn't see, he couldn't read, either. So that was out of the question. "People just kind of get thrown here." Yeah, he was doing a fantastic job of this. "I can show you where the clinic is." Though maybe show was the wrong word.

Sollux frowned and nodded. He really wasn't sure what to make of all this, but he figured he could only deal with one thing at a time.

"Well, if I'm not dead, then probably I shouldn't actually get dead. Are you a human?"

"Okay...can you walk, do you think?" Shizuo wasn't sure how close to actually being dead the troll was, but not getting there sounded like a logical plan to him. "Yeah, I'm human. But there aren't just humans here."

"Trolls, too?" Sollux struggles awkwardly to his feet. "I...think I need to lean on you if you want me to walk."

"Yeah. I've met one, and I know a guy who's friends with a couple," Shizuo replied. "There might be someone you know here." He stepped closer, wondering if he should help the troll stand up or not. "That's fine, you can lean on me." And once he did that, Shizuo started a slow walk toward the clinic. "What's your name?"

Sollux really didn't want to lean on someone he didn't know, particularly an alien who was...really, really tall and extremely muscled, woah. He had thought the humans were sort of shrimpy and weak compared to trolls.

Fuck, he hoped this guy wasn't an axe murderer or something.

"My name's Sollux." He took a moment to savour the fact that he could say his own name. "Sollux Captor."

"Sollux," Shizuo repeated. Weird name, but what wasn't weird in Vatheon? It was the ultimate melting pot. "So what happened to you?"

"I had to use psychic powers to move this giant rock across a solar system to a distant star," Sollux said quietly. "Blew my thinking sponge out my aural clots."

"Oh." That...didn't exactly make sense - thinking sponge? - but Shizuo nodded. Not that Sollux could see him do that. "I heard that a lot of the people here show up after something big like that happens. I was shot right before I woke up in the Plaza." He paused, considering. "You must be powerful if you can do things like that." Not that Shizuo was surprised. He had met people with all kinds of abilities - people stronger than him, even.

"Yeah, my powers are pretty impressive, I guess," Sollux said glumly. "Being able to kick pretty much anything's ass without even using a weapon is pretty much the only good part about them, though."

New Arrival

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject