tampered | (no subject)

(no subject)

WHEN: grave-digging event.
RATING: PG-15 (?)
SUMMARY: The Keeper's words for the Keeper's coin.
NOTE: an individual thread per trade, please! ~~No need to confuse the Keeper...~~

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"Can be answering that first question, can do that for you."

But he doesn't, not really, not for a short while. The candle's light catches his eye, and he remembers hunger. The point, of course. His head snaps back to his prey of the hour, "You're here to die."

[Tsurugi laughs for a second]

I'm already dead. I died twice before I ever came to the City. So, I don't see how I'm here to die, when death has already taken me.

He shrugs. "And something gone put you back on them legs, and now something won't. That simple, boy, and that easy."

[Tsurugi stops entirely for a few seconds, before getting a tight expression on his face.]

Are you saying that you're what lets the dead "live" here in the City?

Is he dead? Dumb? Brave? Is this what passes in the human world for valor? The Keeper knew once, and now he barely cared. "I'm saying you'll die."

I'm already dead. I accepted that a long time ago... I promised my sister... the one which was killed by this body... that I would eliminate all the Worm, and that meant my own death.

...So, why does it matter if I'll die? I've already died... and died well.

If it hardly mattered to the intruder, it mattered less to the sack of bones in which the Keeper had fashioned himself. The boy wanted to perish. So be it.

"Let's we be getting it done with, then." He covered a yawn. "You want it with a knife? Some gutting? I'm good with a knife. Ain't seen no complaints. Ain't heard'em, either."

You're welcome to try....

[Tsurugi demeanor changes, showing a small smirk. He briefly glows showing a different body... an armored body... before resuming his human appearance.]

If you can get through that armor, I would be surprised. Still, I said I accepted the fact that I'm dead, but this is the City. The dead don't stay dead here...well, unless you're that Major fellow who was killed by that departing Deity.

"Ain't felt like sewing back his fat much, no." The pig and his lard, no, the Keeper never cared to touch that one again. He might well, the choice sometimes doesn't rest with him. But he won't do it willing.

As for the boy, well, "You's bringing me a can, eh? Spam in a can? Brought your own metal?"

Metal? No. That form is all natural...

...natural.

"Slug boy." Like what the bankers had inflicted on the common folk above. The Keeper couldn't help himself - a borrowed gesture, but one he had learned well - so he laughed and laughed and laughed, holding his sides when it took him over completely.

"Roll away, slug boy, crawl off with your - hahhahaa - your tin can. Ain't French. I don't be eating them escargot."

Slug? Oh, no. I'm not some lowly slug. I happen to be a scorpion...

Tins. Slugs. They almost drove the Keeper to more laughter. "You're some kind of freak and fool and it ain't none of what I eat."

A freak and a fool? No, I happen to be Worm... an alien species compared to humanity. I am virtually royalty amongst my kind. I stand above all other Worm.

"One thing dies as well as the other, but I ain't for worm eating. Or slugs." The Keeper had never been impressed with rank, or culinary diversity, and this wouldn't prove much different. Give him a good human organ to suckle on, that was the read lure.

"You leaving with that pathetic life I ain't too keen on taking, or you waiting on me to change my mind?"

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