OPEN LOG

[nitrodamus]

Who: Sollux and ANYONE.
Where: Around downtown Los Angeles, whoops.
When: Twilight on January 28th.
What: Karkat makes the mistake of leaving Sollux alone in the TB dormitories, which results in Sollux fuguing out and having a wander and upsetting a lot of people.
Warnings: Mental trauma and probably references to body horror.

It's so loud in the empty dorms that it wakes Sollux up. Karkat isn't there, and he doesn't know how long it's been since he left. He doesn't even think about it. He doesn't care - reality outside of the present is only a faint glimmer in the back of his mind.

The voices in his head are loud and clear. The voices of the dead and the dying. They were more frightening before, when their deaths had been imminent and unavoidable. Now they just linger like pedestrians waiting to catch their ride out of town.

The light looks dimmer than before, outside. Night. He decides he wants to leave.

Sollux leaves the Trailblazer dormitories without thinking to put shoes on, and wanders without direction. His appearance and identity as a troll are unconcealed, with him wearing nothing but an oversized t-shirt and jeans. The metal plugs and machinery built into the back of his skull is fully visible, and for once, he isn't thinking about it. As is the metal collar around his neck. He's decided that he's going to go somewhere, and do something, and he doesn't know what.

His ears flick at sounds that remind something in his ancestral subconscious of prey. Humans who see him on the street react negatively, and when he shows minimal or defensive response, they become afraid. Alternians are never especially welcome, but with one acting like this, they have no reason to believe he's actually a citizen. Especially when the only language he uses are threateningly insectoid hisses and clicks that resonate unfamiliarly from his throat.

Comments

[bombsheltered]

Day shifts are the absolute worst, and Milly would like to locate the person responsible for having come up with them and sue their pants off. She didn't get a part time job to work during the day; daytime is designated superhero time. Daylight is when all the stuff happens! But more often than not, lately, she's had to work through peak hero action time,

Her bag is slung over her shoulder as she walks home, a colorful, lightweight scarf wound draped around her neck. She's mostly fixated on her phone as she cuts down the sidewalk toward her apartment, checking her favorite pegasus fan forum and going through her likes on Tumblr. She isn't really paying attention to what's going on around her, so when she hears an eerie, insectoid clicking that only gets creepily louder, she gives a start and whirls around to see where it's even coming from, and -- whoa.

Milly's seen Alternians before -- she doesn't live under a rock, okay -- but usually they look at least a little more...well, civilized. She's taken aback by his manner for a long moment, not quite frightened but definitely on guard, until she realizes, looking at him in the dim light of a nearby street lamp, he doesn't really look threatening, he just looks...lost.

Still, she maintains a defensive posture, just in case she's wrong. One hand held up in a gesture for hey, don't attack, she tries talking to him. Can he even understand her? Man, she barely paid attention to French class in high school, she doesn't know any alien languages.

"Whoa! Hey, um...are you okay?"

[nitrodamus]

His growling intensifies to a shrill insect buzz, one that resembles an angry cicada more than anything else. Most of the humans he's seen thus far have fled, or crossed the street. Some linger at a safe distance, watching him, others apparently taking videos on their phones. He ignores them, though, because this one spoke.

He doesn't know why he's out here, really, but his instincts tell him that fighting is as good of a reason as any. Fighting people seems to make sense, even if most of those words are ones he's come to understand. The meaning rattles around in his head as he turns on her and hisses.

His eyes glow faintly but that's it.

[bombsheltered]

Okay, the buzzing is freaking her out a little bit. Milly does not do bugs. She can feel the hairs on the back of her neck prickle a little at the way his eyes glow, the way he hisses at her. He looks a little more threatening than before, but...maybe he's just scared. She takes a half-step back, still holding her hands up to show she means him no harm. All she's got in her hand is her phone.

"Hey, I'm not here to hurt you!" she says, a little startled. "My name is Milly. I don't even know if you can understand me, but...are you lost or something? Do you need help?"

She tries speaking slowly, a little haltingly. Maybe he doesn't understand any English at all. What's an alien like him doing wandering the streets alone at night, anyway? Doesn't he need some kind of supervision?

[nitrodamus]

He rumbles out another small growl before lowering his hands a little. He keeps his fangs bared, which honestly doesn't make his attempts at English any easier to understand.

"Who are this?" he buzzes, warily. "What you?"

[justkiding]

He's out doing his usual nightly hero activities, and by hero activities he of course means threatening people for information and occasionally actually stopping crime to improve his image. The commotion in the streets attracts him to the scene at first. Startled frightened citizens usually mean some kind of villainous activity. He thinks for a moment, he might get lucky, and finally find who he's looking for.

When he sees a troll is the cause, it's not quite what he expected, but it's definitely not an unwelcome surprise. He tries to shadow him for a bit, hanging back in the crowd as Sollux mindlessly ambles, but it's sort of hard to look inconspicuous when you're 14 and in a poorly made super hero costume.

[nitrodamus]

Not too long after he starts following, Sollux encounters a man and a woman walking together, and things quickly start to get violent. When the man spits an insult at him, he snarls in return, and that just causes the abuse to escalate.

"Mothering fucking bug, you think you can come to my planet and-"

Sollux swipes at him, and the man punches him across the face. The troll spirals into the wall, visibly weak.

[justkiding]

"Hey!" Kid shouts, honestly surprised by the quick escalation of the confrontation. He'd seen people fighting before in the few days since he'd been working in LA, but those had all been fights between "justice" and criminals. Not something like this. And didn't this human know how rare and valuable a test subject he'd just hit?!

He moves quickly in between the two, facing the human assailant. "Calm down! I'll take care of this."

He glances back to the troll behind him trying to assess how damaged he looks. More importantly, he wants to make sure he doesn't have time to get away.

[nitrodamus]

"The fuck are you doing kid," the man snaps. Kid's shittily made costume doesn't make his abilities as a fourteen year older superhero all that convincing. "That's a rabid fucking troll right there, this isn't fucking play pretend-"

Sollux growls, gripping at the wall with hurting fingers and slinking away from Kid as he gets up close. He hisses again, his ears folding back.

[liberaition]

Kit is doing what she's usually doing when she's out of the house - snooping on other people's internet activity. This time she's perched across the alley from the back entrance of a small hotel well known for its high profile clientele, elbows deep in its wifi network. The pickings tonight are slim, mostly just a few senators sexting their mistresses. Nothing interesting.

What is interesting is the troll shuffling along looking half dazed. Even more interesting is the hardware it's sporting. Kit stares for a long minute, and finally hops off the low wall she's been sitting on and approaches. She's also barefoot.

"Nice evening for a stroll, hmm?"

[nitrodamus]

The almost continue growl in his throat intensifies, the buzzing sound radiating out of his throat. He hisses, walking a partial circle around her. His fingers are spread like he intends to threaten her with them, but in reality, the end of his fingers are yellowed as if recently injured and there is nothing but ruined nubs where his claws should be.

He snaps a harsh word in Alternian. None of that English means anything to him, nothing that he can remember.

[liberaition]

Kit does her best not to flinch, which mostly works. She doesn't have much experience with trolls, but this one looks like he's in a bad way. And getting a closer look at his implants wouldn't hurt, either. Slowly and only a little shakily, Kit reaches out a hand to him - her organic hand - and tries to make her voice sound as soothing as possible.

"It's okay, I'm not going to hurt you. Do you speak any English?" She quickly flicks through a translation program in her head, but it doesn't have an entry for Troll. "Hablas Español? Parlez-vous Français? I can help you."

[nitrodamus]

He stops, lingering defensively against the wall, bearing his fangs and continuing to growl. But he doesn't move to strike, and it gives her the chance to speak. And the meaning of some of those words actually trickle through to him.

It's okay she's saying. Asking if he speaks...English? Saying something about hurting? His head hurts now, more than anything.

"I don't not speak English well," he says with a buzz, his English thickly accented and hard to make out. Even as he says it, he's confused.

[nomorepantiesplz]

After work, Apollo had pretty much been forced to go grocery shopping. He'd already been eating nothing but sandwiches and cheetos for two days, which was getting old far faster than it had while he was still in law school. So, he opted to take the metro to the store instead of his bike, and then went go through the whole slightly-frustrating process of picking up necessities at the same time that seemingly everyone else in the whole city was trying to finish their errands, too.

It was when Apollo was walking back to the station, a couple of grocery bags in each hand, when he saw... well, at first he thought it was a punk kid with an interesting hat, until the figure got close enough for him to see that the grey skin wasn't a trick of the light. Was that a troll? Granted, living in LA meant coming across all sorts of people, but it wasn't like Apollo got to see aliens very often. He had friends that would jump at the opportunity to ask a troll about space travel, but he was personally a lot less inclined to approach a stranger with annoying questions like that.

Still, that troll was on his side of the sidewalk, and getting closer. Everyone else was giving him a wide berth, but Apollo wasn't - a polite one, sure, but he didn't see the point in resorting to full-out avoidance. All that metal on the guy might've looked alarming, but for all he knew, it was some sort of weird fashion statement. Apollo can't quite stop staring, though, with an expression of open curiosity.

[nitrodamus]

The polite distance apparently isn't enough, because when Apollo gets anywhere near him, the troll wavers off of his path and sort of fumbles awkwardly into the nearest building. He rolls his back to the surface, a churring whine in his throat. He bears his fangs just enough to be aggressive, otherwise looking exhausted.

[nomorepantiesplz]

A reaction like that startles Apollo into stumbling back a couple of steps, "Woah!" That was one heck of a skittish troll, and it prompts Apollo into shifting the bags he's carrying onto his arms, so that he can hold his hands up in a placating gesture. "Easy there! I'm not, uh, whatever you're thinking." And what was he thinking? Had Apollo ran into a human acting this way, he would've thought it was a drunk having a bad night, but this being a troll... well, it was a lot harder to make an assumption like that.

[nitrodamus]

It comes off a lot like formless babbling to Sollux, and he looks at Apollo deliriously. He leans back against the wall, sliding down it a little.

"What are this?" he trills in heavily accented English, an insectoid buzzing lining all his words. He looks up at the night sky in a weary haze.

[chapterfiveversenine]

Wikipedia defines "people watching" as "the act of observing people and their interactions, usually without their knowledge." Numerous CONDOR operatives have suggested that Legion attempt to people-watch in order to further understand human interaction. A pair of loose pants accompanied by boots and a hoodie with the hood pulled up generally serve to mask Legion's identity to anyone who isn't paying attention, and at peak transit times, no one's really paying as much attention to Legion as they are to everyone else.

They are sitting on a bench when they see him. The consensus recognizes Sollux Captor from CONDOR files, and he appears delirious. Seven cycles are spent deliberating, and ultimately they decide to engage him in conversation. Translation updates from the collective's last check-in, the result of cyberwarfare attacks during the last skirmish with the Empire, enable them to communicate fairly well in Alternian, although their synthesized voice is more stilted than normal.

"Sollux - Captor," they say, getting up from the bench as he passes. "What - is - your - status?"

[nitrodamus]

The name - and the voice - startle him. He stops where he is, toes curled on the gritty pavement. A number of the people who have been giving the troll wary looks react in a similar manner to Legion. Synthetic insect noises can't be that pleasant to human ears.

Nothing people have said to Sollux have made much sense, so he's surprised to recognize the question.

"I don't know," he says in Alternian, folding his arms around himself defensively. "Who are you?"

[chapterfiveversenine]

"We - are - Legion - terminal - of - geth - CONDOR - agent - hero," they respond. "You - appeared - delirious - status?"

[monkeyseemonkeysmash]

Sun Wukong doesn't have much to do with the time allotted to staying on the mortal realm. Granted, there is no longer the soul (and body) crushing boredom of being trapped under a mountain, but freedom no longer tastes as wonderful as it used to be. The Monkey King now knows how freedom can be boring. At least, the simulacrum of freedom he is afforded here in the busy city, which extends to staying in one place and one place wander. How can a place be both too noisy and too quiet? The flashing lights, tall buildings and noisy vehicles still startle him, but as he watches he notices the same old stories playing out with different people in different roles.

"No wonder heaven stopped getting so involved," Sun Wukong mutters to himself as he skirts around the tops of the brightly lit buildings and mall complexes. "There's only so much good you can do before it becomes a hellish chore."

He notices how the people (who look like ants from the height) are continuously shying away from a single figure, like a wave parting when it meets a cliff. Intrigued, Wukong descends from his cloud and takes on his general human disguise. Granted, a zookeeper janitor is not a very inconspicuous guise, but the Monkey King has better things to do than styling different human faces for different occasions. And anyways, he kind of enjoys being an old man. It surprises people when he comes out of the disguise, and it comforts him to know that there are other relics of the past.

Speaking of relics, but not the past, the individual causing the great parting of people, is a gray demon-like creature approximately the size of a human. Sun Wukong doesn't know whether to be angry or glad.

"You there!" he cries in English, pointing at the demon with his gnarled old man hand. "Who do you claim to be?" The implicit question, are you friend or foe, hangs like a spider's web in the air. And, not far behind, is the overwhelming desire to meet someone like him, suffering from nostalgia for a bygone time.

[nitrodamus]

Sun Wukong's aggressive way of speaking startles the hell out of the so-called "demon." He whirls around clumsily, snarling and bearing his fangs. He buzzes angrily.

"No!" he yells.

[monkeyseemonkeysmash]

He is taken aback. Obviously this is not an old friend, or even someone from his own time. The fangs are definitely menacing, though, and Sun Wukong takes it like a challenge.

He shifts from the human face to his own and bares his own teeth. "'No' isn't an answer," he says. Most interactions requiring etiquette head steadily downwards for Sun Wukong, and this one seems to be descending at a startling speed. "I'm a foreigner too, we're alike that way." He switches to his native Chinese, though that probably wouldn't help.

Eh, if they can't communicate well they can't communicate well. Sun Wukong finds this probably-not-demon-some-kind-of-entity-he-can't-understand interesting enough to pester him further.

[usedhammerarm]

Even in the relative safety of the night, Amanda knows better than to go around undisguised whenever she needs to make a trip anywhere. She's on foot, wrapped in a long black coat with leather gloves that cover her hands and a hat tall enough to hide her horns. Her face is covered in flesh-tone makeup and she's wearing dark glasses to hide her strangely-colored eyes; for all intents and purposes, she's probably passing pretty well.

From around a corner, she hears what would sound to most people like a hiss or a click or something inhuman, but she absolutely recognizes it for what it is. She plays the role of a frightened human as she looks around the corner—keeping herself away from the "horrible alien menace" and trying to plaster fear on what parts of her face are visible. It's easy enough for her to make out his blood color and, just for a moment, she finds herself quashing the urge to let him run free because he's a yellowblood and they deserve what happens to them.

But that's not how life on Earth works. He's the only other troll she's seen since she arrived here, and he's not higher up than her, so he can't exactly call her in. He's as much of a fugitive as she is. Unless he's being used as a trap. But she's willing to take that risk. From the shadows, she hisses out "mustardblood!" in Alternian, hopefully loud enough for him to hear. Some habits die hard.

[nitrodamus]

The surprisingly familiar words startle him. He stops where he is, growling into the darkness. No one has called him that since he left Alternia. It's something that highbloods do, and that puts him on edge.

The fact that he remembers this much dully registers as a surprise. Something from before he ended up in this strange place.

"Who's that?" he snaps, turning to face her.

[usedhammerarm]

"My name is Amanda," she says, trying to ignore that even her Alternian has picked up a Japanese accent at this point. She shrinks a little further back behind her corner, just to draw attention away from herself. Highblood though she might be, she's heard stories of mustardbloods with powerful psychic abilities. She's relying on both of them knowing that it would be a really bad idea to cause a scene.

"Come here. I won't kill you." Yeah, because he's got a reason to believe that. It's another thing she'll have to trust him to be smart enough to understand.