tampered | Log; Ongoing

Log; Ongoing

When; Sept. 6, midnight?
Rating; PG (likely)
Characters; Scarab (

noh_dancer), The Corinthian (

bitingnightmare)
Summary; Having helped guide him to the library, Scarab calls in a minor debt.
Log;

It was late night, again, and he was alone with that grating tick, again, what harm could it do? The Corinthian accepted Scarab's offer, though it was more like a duty he owed her out of respect, and agreed to meet at one of the few places he'd seen serving alcoholic drinks that weren't mixed with liquor of questionable origins. It wasn't that he didn't like opening up to new ideas, the white-blond just didn't believe he should expose himself to such potential risks so soon. He didn't even wait for her inside the establishment, choosing to stand around outside like the 'hardcase' he was.

Actually he loitered on the sidewalk to enjoy a cigarette, one of the few in his slowly dwindling pack. He'd have to restock sometime later though he would be most meticulous about the brand if they didn't serve any earthly kinds.

Considering the absence of most laws in The City one might wonder why he didn't take his poisonous puffing inside where he could have an ashtray within arm's reach. Like Scarab seemed uncomfortable presenting her disfigured hand, The Corinthian was uncomfortable sucking down carcinogens that would have to escape through all three of his mouths. Holding smoke in one's normal mouth was distasteful enough, keeping the clouds in his teeth-eyes were just masochistic.

So he puffed away, waiting for her arrival, seeping gray from his lips and his glasses.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

" Alex, Thats it!"
She grinned and even went so far as to poke him in the chest for emphasis.

" Thats how you can get out of here! If you have a return ticket without the tiny details of death and afterlife, you can get out of here!"

She leaned back, still grinning.

" The city keeps the dead from moving on to the afterlife, but I'll bet money it can't keep someone who belongs to another 'god' from crossing boundaries without causing some serious inter-dimensional feather ruffling."

She took a sip and quirked an eyebrow at him.
" That is, if your Dream Lord is as important as you make him sound?"

....... He looked down at the chest-poking. He wasn't used to being touched by strangers in a situation that didn't involve sex or death. It wasn't even much of a touch, but the gesture alone was similar.

"Are you saying I need to die," The Corinthian asked, neither humorous nor hopeful despite her grinning. Hmm... this time he leaned towards her. "You think I can get up and walk out?" Well hadn't he done something similar before? But the last time he did it on his own free will, without permission from Dream, the boss had been imprisoned. He didn't think the current King was in a similar state, and if he was then this was the least of the nightmare's problems.

"He is important, I'm not too sure about how far his influence extends here. I've heard that people know him, some know me, but the're always rules regarding interference." Hrm, he appeared thoughtful again, considering what Scarab said as he stared down into his glass. "My Lord might not even know I'm gone," which The Corinthian knew was a rare, rare circumstance, "or he might choose to keep me here, regardless."

What a terribly dismal thing to say. He raised his glass for a heavy gulp then turned a rogueish smile to Scarab. "It doesn't matter, I'll do what I can during my stay. I'm not opposed to learning a little more about this place, it might be what he wants."

She frowned a little.

Definately not the response she expected.
" I thought you wanted out of here...?"

Taking another hit off her now-dwindling smoke, she considered what he said.
" Do you really like it here that much? Jeez. I know some people who would remove some imprtant piece of thier anatomy for the chance to go home.

" And why would your Lord choose to make you stay? Did you piss him off?"
Probably not terribly tactful, but she was confused, and Sake had always tended to make problems for her internal censor.

The mention of 'doing what he could' made her blink. Was he referring to the countdown? She hadn't pegged him for the sort to really care about people or The End. He wasn't human after all, and he talked about being some kind of servant to an equally supernatural being.
Surely he wouldn't be worried over existence when he could just travel through worlds and dimensions and find a new set of places to exist.

"I do, but the more I think about it the more it seems like there may not be a way out if He isn't allowing it," he explained to Scarab. "In the last 48 hours I've tried contacting the people I know, read up on what's worked so far for people here, thought about sacrifice but hell what's the point if no one here really dies," he gave a one-shouldered shrug.

"I thought it might be a joke, that I'm trapped in some part of the dreaming for shits and fucking giggles, that doesn't seem to be the case." He said this while tracking his toothy gaze from Scarab's head to toe. "Meeting you makes the least sense if that was the case," if someone in the dreaming was yanking his chain. He settled his elbow on the bartop and cradled his chin on the heel of his palm.

"Maybe," he huffed once. "I pissed him off so hard once, he kept me dismantled for four years," the words sort of flowed out of him like whiskey across his tongue, not that he would admit to even being able to feel buzzed. "More disappointed than pissed, I guess," the nightmare added.

What he meant was that he would do what he could to leave The City, and if it involved having to wage some sort of war against the gods, the clock, even the Pyramid beast, well he would have to get involved. There was always a bit of self-preservation in his intentions, self-preservation that masked his aching need to please the one he served.

Shifting back on the stool, she regarded him quizzically.

"Meeting me? What does that have to do with anything?"
The fuzzy memory of the dream where she had first seen Alex flitted through her mind.
She had no special gift for clairvoyance, that was Frederick's schtick, but she did have the occasional dream that inspired a sense of deja vu'.

Here was one such instance, and she was fairly certain that dream had occurred not very long before meeting this odd man with teeth for eyes.
She wondered why he had insisted the dream was an older one?

Picking up the cup she was vaguely surprised to find it empty, and set about refilling before speaking agian.

"Oh, and what's The Dreaming? Is that your home world?"

"Meeting you was a coincidence but you're too complex to be a trick," unless she was crafted with diamond precision in which case Scarab would be a most sophisticated trap. "Anyway I don't get that from you, you take out that bloody ticking," The Corinthian shook his head, trying not to mention the traces of emotion he felt from her lest she accuse him of prying like a telepath.

He lifted his chin to take another sip from the already half emptied glass then folded both arms across the bartop. "Yeah, my home world, it kind of looks like this place, always rearranging, but none of that clock shit," the white-blond shook his head. "I think I've even seen some of these people pass through before."

The Corinthian looked to Scarab again. "I lived in the castle with My Lord, then I moved to nightmare, which looks nothing like this."

" Ya. The ticking goes away when your near someone."
She took a drink, no longer concerned with her intake, because the sharp edges were gone, and she felt much more comfortable with this direction of the conversation.

" If your in a crowd it will die down some, but talking to someone like we are now will make it go away entirely.", She shrugged," Something to do with hearing only your thoughts when your by yourself, I think."

Her cigar was pretty well gone at this point, so she tapped another out, and took a quick inventory before offerring one to Alex.

" Do you mean you've seen people with the ability to travel between worlds, or are we talking something even wierder?"
The whole idea of jumping from one reality to the next wasn't as difficult a concept now that she had spent a little time in the city, but the mechanics of how it worked was still completely foriegn.

" Moved to nightmare.." she echoed a little stupidly.
Correction: the mechanics weren't just foreign, they were fucking nuts.

" You moved into a nightmare?", she smirked, " I can relate to that."

"I tried the first one, blending in with the crowd," he nodded, and wasn't it funny that in this city's crowd, all he had to do was put on his shades to appear more normal than the rest of them. His hair color was a bit unusual but so were the blues, pinks, and purples that littered the world. Maybe his normalcy even worked against him.

He gestured 'no thanks' to Scarab, cigars just weren't really his thing the nightmare concluded, and the scotch was doing its job far better.

"Yeah, I have. I do know people who can travel between worlds, myself included I guess," he rubbed the back of his neck then shrugged the heavy leather jacket off his bare shoulders and folded it over his lap. Not bad looking for a man who often trolled the gutters and rubbed elbows with the dregs of society, on the job that is. Off work he spent his time having conversations with ladies (and men) in bars, or exploring the neverending great library, or hiding out in his citadel.

"No, I moved to nightmare. The dreaming..." he thought about how to explain this to Scarab, swirling the scotch in the glass. "It's the place you go to when you sleep, when you dream. It's everywhere, no fucking borders, endless," The Corinthian shook his head, turning his thoughts inward briefly when he said the E word.

"Nightmare's outside of the main 'city' if you want to call it that, nightmare is what I am," he said to her, putting it bluntly, though not as bluntly as Jan would have it; the bogeyman and all that. "The thing you're afraid of, the guilt that eats at you when you sleep, that's my job."

Scarab fell quiet for a few minutes.

Her dreams had been anything but pleasant lately, and somehow the sense of deja vu' was beggining to make sense.
She studied Alex critically, and wondered if he actually took pleasure in tormenting people in thier sleep.

...But he just didn't seem that cold?

She sighed a little, and decided that it must be a similar dynamic to her own: She killed, but took no pleasure in the act. She was a killer because she was good at it, because she had been made that way.

Maybe it was stupid to think of it that way, but Scarab liked Alex well enough, so it must just be a job:
Something he was good at, and what he was made for.

" Then that must be how I know you," she mused, her cordial tone and demeanor restored, " My dreams have been anything but pleasant lately."

She took the last half of her current cup in a single shot. This was definately not a conversation to have while sober.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Log; Ongoing

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject