saveourearth | Take Out with a Smile [Closed Log]

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Take Out with a Smile [Closed Log]

Date: September 12th
Characters: Benjiro, Walter, and Russell

It has been a few weeks since the group outing to the arcade, and since then a minor matter has gone unresolved. For one reason, then another, Benjiro had delayed in explaining why he had begun donning a face mask in public to his distant cousin. The line between reason and excuse had blurred many times to justify the evasion. Yet now that summer festivities are only a memory, his sense of time has corrected.

His wear of the mask at the house had caused some friction with his great aunts - especially when he struggled to find a way to evade dinner time chatter. As a streamer, he had to ignore much of the attention the change brought after posting a single explanation and a request for understanding. School had been rough in its own way; fielding questions with an outright lie and enduring the teasing the unusual measure encouraged. All of that on top of the physical drain from the pain and disruption of his sleep - it was all he felt he could do to simply focus on routine.

Painfully aware of those days passed, Benjiro had reached out to Walter for advice. A discussion lead to a solution with an invitation over to the flat for an evening after work and school alongside a requested order.

Arriving at the door of the flat Walter and Russell share, Benjiro knocks. Held securely in his other arm is a hefty bag of take out noodles and food ordered from a nearby restaurant recommended by Walter.

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Maybe it’s the dangling chicken, or the way that Russell insists only to not remember what he had been saving for at the time, but the levity of the conversation forces Benjiro to restrain laughter more than once as he listens. Thankfully, he manages to keep it withheld - if only barely.

When Walter pulls him in, he’s half grinning himself, “Thanks, but no. I’ve seen too many lost teeth lately, so I’ll take him at his word on this.”

"Thank you. I'm not lending them about, so there's no need to go losing my teeth. That'd be dreadfully rude," Russell agrees with a solemn nod, though his lips keep twitching with a hidden smile and his voice gives the inner laughter away.

The mood from before feels genuinely broken, and his head is starting to settle down from the earlier dizziness. After a few more bites, Russell rests his chin in a hand and considers his cousin.

"Say... You remembered caves too, before." Slowly, gently enough to signal: he means to return to the earlier subject.

"What about... Blue skin, sharp teeth, uh... fins?" Russell gestures at the sides of his face, to suggest fins spreading out from behind cheeks - as if in replacement for ears. "Does that sound familiar too?"

"Rude for whom, however?"

As Walter has never gotten any strange flashbacks or feelings from the caves (apart from the general idea that going inside alone was a bad idea), he elects to remain silent when Russell asks his question.

Instead he remains calm, and continues digging into his food. ~~Would that his mood acts as something of an anchor for this conversation...~~

Took long enough for a hint to come through to give away the act. "In this case, rude to everyone involved I should think," he proposes with levity.

At the prompt regarding the trip into the cliff tunnels, Benjiro's expression calms as he sits up a touch more at attention looking over to his distant cousin. No longer feeling the need to hide, he has nothing to withhold in terms of those present in his memories. With a soft hum, he furrows his brow in concentration, then shakes his head, "Not together. One of them was blue, but that one didn't have sharp teeth. No fins on any of them, only spikes."

"Can you describe what you remember about that?"

How much of the tangent was levity through acting, and how much was a real thing exaggerated for the sake of humor, will be a mystery for the ages.

Russell's face falls a little with discouragement and confusion, at the surprising coincidence not quite matching up or making sense. But he nods a little at the question.

"I remember more than last time, and it had the same sense of, something I had done many times before. Noticing things because they were unique to that time, and other things seeming just so ordinary they weren't to be thought about."

He shifts back in his chair, glancing around their surroundings for comparison. "I was... visiting, as I usually did? She was a friend, and it was her house... and it was surprisingly normal looking, considering." Blue with fins wasn't normal, but more than that, "it didn't seem underwater, or anything. We talked, she laughed, we cooked - with fire, on the stovetop. And... I don't think she had a nose, but those sharp teeth and bright red hair, and I didn't blink twice."

It's hard not to sound uncertain, talking about a suddenly remembered person so obviously alien, with no apparent connection to his own life. But the lingering discomfort about it is in trying to piece the memory to Russell and getting stuck, rather than her.

It's an acceptable compromise, at any rate, and Walter lets the conversation pass on with good grace.

"... You didn't get anything about how you looked, though, did you?"

Ben had gotten some - what made him similar to the other creatures, a physical reality which provided distance - but Russell might not have that.

Benjiro listens quietly, food left untouched as he does. The more mundane description of the interaction is stark in contrast to his own strange and charged memories, yet it coincides well with the prior memories Russell had described in that familiarity of a routine. Odd company or not, it sounds rather nice. Cooking together on a stovetop speaks to a relatively modern level of technology.

Idly he wonders whether or not that friend is the reason Russell remembers travelling through tunnels from his home.

The question posed by Walter is of equal interest to the teen, brows lifting slightly in curiosity.

"Uhhh. I don't recall...?"

Russell frowns and thinks on it further as best he can. The friend in question, there, stands out enough from the rest of his Russell memories to make the whole thing stand out a bit, enough to hone in on. He considers his own body, his own hands, and crosses his eyes to make note of what he can make out of his own features normally... and finally, slightly annoyed, shakes his head.

"...I think I was wearing gloves."

That much was clear, but for the rest of the memory there's nothing much. No mirrors in clear view, no studying his own reflection. And what he does remember seems more like it wasnfrom a pair of cameras, with no transparent nose or hair blocking parts of his view.

"Huh."

Neither a positive, overwhelming response, nor a negative one.

"Could you tell the color - or where the house was, even?"

He really hadn't planned on asking these many questions, honest!

Not wanting to disrupt or taint any recollection, Benjiro will limit his own questions and prompting for the moment into a single comment and suggestion, "Hands were what I could see mostly too. Otherwise, I had to think about how I felt when I moved." It certainly made it easier to recognize the fifth limb when it was grabbed and used to fling the creature in his memories.

Nudging the food still on his plate around, he goes ahead with another bite. The teen is still hungry.

Russell shakes his head at Walter, continuing to eat as he does his best to think back. His attention flickers and wanders, it has all his life, so it's a challenge to hold the memories well enough to pick up those sorts of details... But there's another piece that he recalls abruptly.

"I couldn't see the color, we were inside, but. I could see the window. A window, a broken window, noticing it but not being surprised by it, with a little bit of... having a part in it? As if I broke it." He rests his chin on his fist, rests the other hand with fork on the table, and slowly nods after mulling it over. "As if I broke it, but we sat there laughing and drinking tea and talking of other things. Outside the window was a nearby cliffside, dark gray stones in shadow, and that wasn't a surprise either."

Darker gray than the limestone, so it probably hadn't been nestled against the cliffs with the tunnels in Mossgate. If the house even existed at all, beyond a persistent waking dream.

The idea of having Russell break a window here in an attempt to recall how that other window was broken is thrown out as soon as it's thought - it probably would not end well for them here in modern Mossgate.

"Dark gray cliffs... not like the ones here, then."

He ponders it a little more, then comes up with another question.

"Any sky, or just the cliff?"

He's still eating, but much more slowly - and not while talking!

Plate nearly cleaned off, Benjiro serves another helping onto it. The noodles and rice are far less difficult to eat, so he mainly focuses on those for this portion.

The detail of the window is unusual, and it makes him wonder if that detail happens to be part of a wider condition or is something more focal, “Was the rest of the house disorderly? Or was it tidy?”

Idly he considers whether or not Sadie could help identify the stone seen outside. The shadow may make it difficult with color such an important aspect to visual identifcation.

Edited 2018-10-28 14:49 (UTC)

Russell glances between them, as they offer different directions of questioning and examination, and smiles weakly. It feels like he should be taking notes, but he has so little idea what, if anything, is important about a memory of talking in a kitchen.

"No, no sky, the cliff was too tall," he tells Walter first. "I don't remembering looking up and out, so no sighting of the sky. Inside the place..."

He buys himself a moment to think with a bite of some beef and vegetables dish, glancing around at their own surroundings for comparison. "It was... neater than the broken glass. Knickknacks here and there, a... piano a few feet from the sink?" He can't explain the fish lady's interior decorating style.

"I don't know. Have you guys remembered things, and found anything significant about them?"

They're only doing the same with Russell's memory as they would any of theirs.

Walter reflexively looks away.

"Mine didn't have much by way of background context," he says.

There was whatever he'd been watching as the center of his focus, but apart from that... no location.

The broken window seems more odd for that contrast of a clean interior state, as a window should be boarded against weather until repaired, but the time since the window was broken is not clear enough to absolutely guarantee a discrepancy.

When Russell asks for significance in their memories, Benjiro looks to Walter with his fork stalling midway in the motion to twirl a couple noodles. Walter is already looking away when he answers the question with nothing to offer.

As it falls to him to respond, Benjiro glances down to his plate as he selects his phrasing and looks back to Russell to speak to him directly, "Science fiction level technology, but I've only gotten two memories so far. They belong to something not human if my teeth didn't already tell you that."

Edited 2018-10-31 23:07 (UTC)

Russell purses his lips as he watches his flatmate look away, as Walter's reaction isn't promising. Kind of like there's something... very wrong, there. But Russell's trying to be supportive right back at them, and he's pretty sure that means matching whatever amount they want to talk. Which means letting Walter be, and responding to Benjiro.

"The teeth... didn't leave much question," he admits. No sense skirting around the topic and making it more uncomfortable with silence. "But, science fiction? An alien's memories, and technology, and all?"

His kitchen memory had been odd, but everything seemed pretty mundane besides the fish lady. He can't recall anything else in it that didn't look to be from bog-standard modern Earth.

Well, they've certainly come full-circle in terms of discussion balance... or something to that effect.

"Isn't most science fiction just fantasy with modern rules? Or projections of future ones?"

In terms of themes there was some overlap - between the things that couldn't be real and those that might yet become so.

Still, the words come out both softly and hurriedly, a loosening of the conscious effort to keep things at a 'normal' speed.

That word 'alien' makes Benjiro blink twice before his brow furrows in consideration with an immediate rejection withheld as he grasps for vague notions. It feels like trying to grab at smoke, but that at least stirs it in the right direction as he realizes that word doesn't sound entirely wrong, "Not aliens exactly... I don't know what they were, but they were staying in what I think was a warehouse with a human around and crates made of wood." One or more of which broke under him in the memory. Shaking his head in dismissal he focuses on the technology, "The human had a large mechanical suit with the chest armor and gauntlets floating in the air and mimicking his movements. Though, there was a ship that did look like an alien craft."

When Walter picks at his choice of wording rather than the memory he's all too glad to turn to that, "More or less. I couldn't tell you how the armor was sustaining its position and following the way the man moved flawlessly. Absolutely no delay."

Taking up the waiting noodles, he'll take that bite as he waits for more questions to answer. The teenager could describe the memories as Russell had his, but he hesitates to review them in full with such unpleasant aspects to them.

"So, very not modern human technology... But, maybe aliens sharing what they know, with some guy in a warehouse." He's going to stick with aliens, because it's that or faeries, for explaining inexplicable technology and utterly inhuman features.

And having ideas for an explanation seems relevant and important to him. If they're all connected on that network, and also remembering things that connect into some coherent mirror world... Well, that would imply some things. Like maybe the memories being communications from some telepathic alien trying to share the memories of its people. He's probably seen a show like that. But Russell's odd memories don't seem connected to what Benjiro's describing, and why would they have the hallucinatory network but have completely different things coming out of it?

Russell quirks a smile like he's figured out something clever. "Did your warehouse have windows?"

That armor sounds fascinating. ~~Pity it's probably an animation thing, but there's no way these people can figure that out...~~

"More like second skin than a Kevlar vest?"

He's going to let Russell's question stand as-is, taking more bites of his own. It's an odd thing to focus on, sure, but just as valid as anything else, in his mind.

The conjecture proposed by Russell is far more appealing than what the memory contains, phantoms of fear and gnawing hunger still potent within it. Swallowing his bite, he’ll follow it with a drink of water as he hears the questions proposed from both Russell and Walter. Interest in his plate dwindling, he leaves it be to address what was asked.

Rather than leave the false impression intact, Benjiro offers a gentle contradiction, “The dynamic was more one-sided to the human...and not exactly friendly.” Far from it. Not lingering, he answers regarding the windows, “Yes, but they were positioned high up. I recall artificial light, which makes sense as I believe they were in a city.”

“As for the armor, yes he was wearing tight suit, but the metal armor itself was separate. Boots on the floor that stepped in time with him. Think more like an open mecha suit.”

"That suit sounds alright," Russell comments a little more mildly than usual, gently sardonic. The unfriendly part doesn't, goes unspoken but hinted in his expression.

So much for turning the tables in a light-hearted and fun way, after all their curiousity about the broken window. He's still curious about it, because who sits for tea before sweeping up the glass? But the changing tone of Ben's voice and expression are about as noticeable as Walter pointedly dodging the question earlier, and Russell's still being... careful, with the reveal of those teeth so freshly in mind.

Walter nods again slowly. It sounded more like a projection, put like that...

"Humans being bastards?" he suggests wryly.

That, unfortunately, was nothing new. Though, this made something of a question: was being a 'monster' all that bad, in comparison to how humans could get?

Having inadvertently dampened the mood, Benjiro tries to interject a remark to lighten it again with a small smile, “If he hadn’t been such a rotund man in both physique and word, it would have been more appealing.” Top heavy in structure as the human was, that failed to balance out his massive gut.

To Walter’s comment, his smile falters as he drops his gaze down in guilt, “...yeah.” He can’t tell them his memory included being told to kill someone.

There was more to his memories to offer, and with his teeth out in the open, he has no reason to withhold what he remembers of the creatures in appearance, “Right so... There were four creatures in both of my memories. The one that the memories came from was the tallest, but all of them were rather large, and he had a long, prehensile tail. The others didn’t have long tails but it looked like they all had shells and spikes of one kind or other. One was bright blue, one was red, the third was yellow, but I couldn’t see what color the fourth was. He had metal covering his arms.”

Edited (Phone tags sorry) 2018-11-14 17:48 (UTC)

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Mun may be misinterpreting what Russell's getting at, here. |D

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Russell is Good Friend. ;;

Seconded

plus he's paying it forward after ben reassured his own sanity

These people are good for each other! <3

That’s what family does

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