capitalh | there are dudes everywhere

Entry tags:

there are dudes everywhere

Who: Sollux, Feferi, Milly, and Ana. Also anyone else who wants in!
Where: Mostly around Grand Park in central LA.
When: Sometime during the week of the 16th, in the early evening.
What: CONDOR tries to get Sollux to deal with his hideous agoraphobia by getting him to go to the park for a while, under heavy surveillance. Also, previously, Sollux gets shown knives by his matesprit.
Warnings: Sollux problems.

There are less people in the park in the evening, but still enough to make Sollux nervous. Everything makes him nervous, which is why he was told to come out here. Despite his terror at the idea of trusting anything to CONDOR, and the fact that recently he's been convinced that it's only a matter of time until someone destroys him, after a great deal of persistence he's grudgingly accepted their offer for a way to work through some of his fears.

Apparently they are watching him, enough that they can keep him safe. The idea of being spied on doesn't bother him as much as the idea that their protection may not be adequate. He claws at his collar anxiously, sitting on a bench by himself and eyeing the water fountain with intense trepidation. Already, the sound of running water is starting to get to him.

Theoretically he can go whenever he wants, but he feels like he should be waiting for something to change. Like, maybe if he can keep himself from having a panic attack long enough, it won't happen at all. It's not seeming likely, though.

So he sits by himself on the bench, dressed in his red and blue flannel and jeans, trying to blend in. He doesn't really. The red and blue sunglasses he ordered online don't cover all the metal implants coming out of his head, and they definitely don't cover his horns or his great skin.

A lot of people have been staring at him, and it makes him want to start screaming. He may not see the CONDOR agents watching him, but other people very well might notice the government agents stalking this strange alien.

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Miko had initially come to the park just to hang out, immediately sitting down in the grass to draw for a while (one of these days she would bring her guitar here, but, since she left it in Japan in the chaos of her initial move, she would need to have it sent over first).

However, as she takes a moment to pause and look around, something - or someone, more accurately - catches her eye.

She tilts her head slightly, pursing her lips as she examines the troll from a distance. After a moment, she rises to her feet.

She trots up to him, stopping only a foot or two in front of the bench, not waiting for him to notice her, or making any effort to make her presence known subtly. "Hey, you're an... Alternian, right?"

He looks up at her, sort of alarmed, and mostly just surprised that a human wants to talk to him so eagerly. He folds back his ears, and glances away awkwardly.

"Yeah," he says carefully. "And you're human."

"Well yeah!" Miko replies. She gives no indication of noticing his discomfort, but flips open her sketchbook, tugging a bright orange marker from the binding.

She bends her knees to lean slightly toward him, twirling the marker in her fingers. "So I heard that a lot of trolls have like super-strength and mind powers and stuff and it's not even that big a deal for you guys, do you have anything like that? Oh, and how does the whole blood-colors thing work anyway? Are you really all born from some kinda giant grub-thing? Cuz that's kinda gross but also pretty cool."

Oh fuck. A bunch of those words fly right past him, said too quickly and eagerly for him to be able to figure out her meaning. He picks out trolls and mind powers, and blood colours, though. And maybe something about babies?

"I'm not allowed to," he says in way of his slightly confused response, tugging at the depowering collar around his neck. "But I'm...I'm yellow, maybe."

Miko's eyebrows draw down a bit at his response. Okay so clearly this guy's English is not the best, but he's not completely incoherent.

"You don't look yel- OH! Okay, so your BLOOD'S yellow, that it?" She pauses, thinking over his first response again.

Somehow, she completely fails to consider the possibility that he may just be answering her first question.

"Not allowed to..." Her eyes widen as the answer clicks into place (or she thinks it does). She supposes she shouldn't be surprised that a militaristic alien empire wouldn't want other species having in-depth knowledge of their biology, but forbidding anyone to even talk about it? That seems a bit harsh.

"Holy crap. Seriously? What do they think is gonna happen?!"

"Yeah, yellow blood," he says, though he squints in confusion at pretty much everything else she's saying. She's confused about why he can't use his powers? Well, it's an opinion he'd like more people to share.

"They think I'm hurt people. Because I'm powerful," he tries, one of his ears raising in confusion.

"Wait, that might hurt people... because you're powerful?" Miko pauses in her scribbling on the sketchbook, looking up with one eyebrow cocked. "I think I lost you somewhere, man."

She bites her lip and looks over her scrawled, nigh-incomprehensible notes. "Let's maybe start over here. What's your name?" She's been told her attempts at interviewing people tend to be 'confusing' and 'hard to follow'. Now seems like as good a time as any to work on that.

He's sort of confused now, too. He frowns, folding back his ears is visible bewilderment.

"I'm Sollux," he says. "What are you?"

"A human, like you said!" She smirks at her own joke as she sticks out a hand toward Sollux. "Anyway, my name's Miko."

He shakes her hand uncomfortably, looking her up and down.

"Why are you talking at me?" he asks.

Miko frowns at what seems to her to be a wholly unnecessary question."Why not? I mean, let's face it, you don't exactly see trolls every day around here."

She circles to the side to sit on the bench next to him. "'Sides, you don't exactly seem dangerous or anything, and it's not like I've got a ton going on right now."

"I could be dangerous," he says, but he's just being contrary more than anything. "But okay, never mind. If you want."

"Great!" She sits up straight, tapping her marker against her lips. "So, okay, hoping this doesn't sound bad here - why are you on Earth anyway?"

He gets that question at least, though he's not really sure if this is a topic he wants to be interviewed on. This girl is weird.

"The Empire is not want," he says, not sure if he knows enough words to talk about this. "Bad to me and my friends. Earth was going to better."

It was supposed to be better, anyway.

Miko nods as she scribbles more notes; it comes as no surprise that the Empire would be unpleasant to live under.

She pauses, though, at Sollux's last sentence. 'Going to be'? It might have just been a matter of phrasing, buuut...

Hey, a good journalist follows any possible lead, right? Or something like that. Truth be told, Miko's less concerned with professionalism than with getting into other people's business, but she figures there's little difference in this line of work.

"So how's that going so far? Earth turning out to live up to the hype or what?"

Edited 2014-03-31 01:15 (UTC)

He folds back his ears, looking uncomfortable.

"No," he says, grimacing. "There are bad humans here and they fucked me up."

Miko pauses her scribbling and looks up.

"Man, that sucks. Some shitheads just screw everything up, huh."

He frowns back at her.

"Yeah, shithead fuckers. Worst I have seen here. You seen TRIDENT?"

The actual name is said in a hushed tone.

Miko's eyes widen, and she leans closer to Sollux.

"TRIDENT? You mean like, the huge-ass evil organization, TRIDENT?" She pauses momentarily as this new information sinks in. "Well fuck."

He flinches when she says it so loud, weakly bringing up a had as if to tell her to keep it down.

"Yeah, that. They hurt lots people."

"No kidding."

She stares down at her paper for a few seconds; Miko may not be the best when it comes to tact, but she gets the feeling this may be kind of a sore subject (and no wonder). May be time to change topics.

"...What'd you mean earlier? About being powerful and hurting people?" Okay, so she's resorting to backtracking, but she still gets the feeling she missed something there.

He looks sort of irritated at the subject, but not her specifically. He's sick of this fucking collar, and he's sick of being controlled.

"I'm a psychic," he says. "I move things with my brain. Lots of things. But, not allowed to."

Her face lights up immediately. "No way! That is so fucking cool! But... you're seriously not allowed to? Who's stopping you?"

"CONDOR," he says. He tugs at the metal collar around his throat again. "I can't with this. I have to have it, they said. Too much dangerous."

She nods thoughtfully, back to scrawling. CONDOR - block powers->dangerous apparently

She stops and examines the orange scribbles all over the page. She hadn't really thought over what she would DO with all this, but come to think of it, was she even supposed to know this stuff? She knew some stuff CONDOR did was top-secret or whatever, but was this one of those things or what? Freakin super-spy organizations.

"So, uh, if CONDOR's involved here, am I supposed to be hearing this? Like, are you gonna have to kill me for 'knowing too much' or something?"

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