what is lust (baby don't hurt me) (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
fingerbang) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
maskormenacelogs2014-02-25 09:56 am
fingerbang) wrote in maskormenacelogs2014-02-25 09:56 am
Entry tags:
slow down, it's a science
WHO: traumatized and traumatizeder
WHERE: whatever the name of the salon they both work at is! Personally I like to call it Dye Screaming.
WHEN: last weekend sometime idc
WHAT: Lust and Ruka are infected with the same strain of the virus at the same stage! Lust and Ruka are employed by the same establishment! Lust's number one hallucination has just arrived for reals in Heropa and is making her paranoid beyond recognition! Ruka has psychometry and probably has touched the same things Lust has! This will end poorly!
WARNINGS: possible traumatic content in hallucinations that will definitely at least include getting burned to death
[ This is all in her head, she repeats to herself, over and over again. Don't lash out. Don't look for them. Don't let him win. She's in a public place, with her hands dangerously close to the throats of innocents. With all his accuracy and deadly self-possession, he still can't ensure that she wouldn't be able to cut one of them down in the midst of a strike; even he wouldn't risk lives like that. This is the safest position she could be in. That knowledge, solid and unarguable, should be enough to put her mind at rest.
It isn't. She hears him over her shoulder. She hears them, too, snatches of voices from people she hasn't seen in years and may never see again. People from the City, even, pathetic as that is, and all of them are getting louder. Her typical customer manner is gone from her now; typically she's unnaturally friendly and receptive to talk from anyone who seems promising, the better to extract any potential information. Under the current circumstances, though, talk distracts her too much from the task at hand, which is making sure she doesn't react defensively and end up severing the top half of someone's skull! Besides, she can't guarantee she wouldn't strike up a conversation with someone not in the room at all. Distant by nature, on her breaks she sequesters herself more than ever. This isn't a very good idea, in truth, since it just means she's left to her own devices, but the strain of keeping up a facade of normalcy is taxing enough when it's strictly required; she's not about to expend her resources for a second more. It works, strained as she is -- at least for a few hours.
She's washing her hands in the restroom, solely so there's something to do, when she sees the door behind her open in the mirror and Roy Mustang comes striding in to slam it shut. Sometimes looking around shakes the images off, but this time there's no such luck. He's really here, cold and unwavering, his hand already in position for a snap; she can even smell him. In a more stable state of mind, she would wonder why the things that make his presence so convincing (the smell of smoke and the grease from her own burnt flesh) are present at all, but she hasn't been stable for days now. A guttural noise comes out of her throat without her even noticing she's making it. The only thought processes running through her mind are he's found me, there's nobody else, and kill him.
Which she does. Only when her fingers pass through his throat without the slightest resistance does Lust realize the error she's made, and at that point two of them have already pierced the bathroom door. Once she's outside, she notes that the "lady" on the unisex sign sports a puncture wound that appears to have removed the top half of her skull. ]
I'll pay for that, [ she says, to no one in particular. ]
WHERE: whatever the name of the salon they both work at is! Personally I like to call it Dye Screaming.
WHEN: last weekend sometime idc
WHAT: Lust and Ruka are infected with the same strain of the virus at the same stage! Lust and Ruka are employed by the same establishment! Lust's number one hallucination has just arrived for reals in Heropa and is making her paranoid beyond recognition! Ruka has psychometry and probably has touched the same things Lust has! This will end poorly!
WARNINGS: possible traumatic content in hallucinations that will definitely at least include getting burned to death
[ This is all in her head, she repeats to herself, over and over again. Don't lash out. Don't look for them. Don't let him win. She's in a public place, with her hands dangerously close to the throats of innocents. With all his accuracy and deadly self-possession, he still can't ensure that she wouldn't be able to cut one of them down in the midst of a strike; even he wouldn't risk lives like that. This is the safest position she could be in. That knowledge, solid and unarguable, should be enough to put her mind at rest.
It isn't. She hears him over her shoulder. She hears them, too, snatches of voices from people she hasn't seen in years and may never see again. People from the City, even, pathetic as that is, and all of them are getting louder. Her typical customer manner is gone from her now; typically she's unnaturally friendly and receptive to talk from anyone who seems promising, the better to extract any potential information. Under the current circumstances, though, talk distracts her too much from the task at hand, which is making sure she doesn't react defensively and end up severing the top half of someone's skull! Besides, she can't guarantee she wouldn't strike up a conversation with someone not in the room at all. Distant by nature, on her breaks she sequesters herself more than ever. This isn't a very good idea, in truth, since it just means she's left to her own devices, but the strain of keeping up a facade of normalcy is taxing enough when it's strictly required; she's not about to expend her resources for a second more. It works, strained as she is -- at least for a few hours.
She's washing her hands in the restroom, solely so there's something to do, when she sees the door behind her open in the mirror and Roy Mustang comes striding in to slam it shut. Sometimes looking around shakes the images off, but this time there's no such luck. He's really here, cold and unwavering, his hand already in position for a snap; she can even smell him. In a more stable state of mind, she would wonder why the things that make his presence so convincing (the smell of smoke and the grease from her own burnt flesh) are present at all, but she hasn't been stable for days now. A guttural noise comes out of her throat without her even noticing she's making it. The only thought processes running through her mind are he's found me, there's nobody else, and kill him.
Which she does. Only when her fingers pass through his throat without the slightest resistance does Lust realize the error she's made, and at that point two of them have already pierced the bathroom door. Once she's outside, she notes that the "lady" on the unisex sign sports a puncture wound that appears to have removed the top half of her skull. ]
I'll pay for that, [ she says, to no one in particular. ]
arrives a week later with Starbucks
More, in that she doesn't realize they are hallucinations. The boundaries between dimensions may be weaker here than they were in the City, she rationalizes, or perhaps Rua's return to their original world left some passage of it open to an extra-dimensional bleed, but Kuribbon's here-and-gone chirrups of concern don't register as some impossible circumstance.
It is just really distracting when so many people on the street trade baseball jerseys or sundresses for faux-Roman armor, humans appearing as the simian foot soldiers of a demonic king she is relatively certain is supposed to be dead.
Okay, so maybe some of it is kinda weird, but when are things not?
In any case, the sound of Lust's voice cuts through the din of monstrous chatter, and the vision of a decaying forest recedes, not disappearing, for the presence of salon seats and mirrored walls. And Lust, at least, still looks like herself, though her statement makes no sense.
With the look of coming out of a daze, or still in one, Ruka blinks her single eye in confusion, fixing the significantly older woman with a significantly curious gaze. ]
Pay for what?
[ The woman whose hair she's meant to be washing is probably on the short pier to drowning. ]
no subject
[ Nor is the woman whose hair Ruka is washing, apparently! In her torpor, truthfully, it takes a while to notice there's another woman there at all. The majority of imPorts have always been incidental enough to Lust, and locals of no particular importance might as well not exist -- whatever has caught hold of her now is just taking that apathy to its natural conclusion. Still, it occurs to her after a bit, this is a salon (one that's underground, apparently, and full of pipes and tubes, but who's counting), and that is a customer with her head in the shampoo sink. Her brow crinkles. No, this won't do at all. ]
G-- [ WAIT ] Ruka. Eyes down there. [ There's nothing truly malicious to it, though it's rather exactly the same way she might say Envy, he's already dead or clean up after yourself, Gluttony, so. ] I'll get you a towel.
[ And she does, indeed, grab one so she can have it at the ready! With her bare palms, wink wink. She's already forgotten she's on break, it seems, in her eagerness to make sure the clientele isn't waterboarded. The attention would probably be more impressive to the poor woman if both attending employees weren't acting stoned out of their minds. ]