ArchivedLogs:Chocolate Monsters

Chocolate Monsters
Dramatis Personae Kay, Lucien, Alan, Jenny, Sera	2014-02-04 Part of Morpheus TP.
Location <NYC> High Line - Chelsea
Built on a freight rail, the High Line once was a railroad and has been reclaimed as green space in the middle of the city. A park situated high above Manhattan, what was once a rusty industrial wasteland is now a stretch of peaceful space to lounge and relax among grass and flowers and plant life. There are restaurants, ice cream sandwich stands, a beer garden, and the view all along the elevated parkland is unbeatable. It's a grey and rainy day in New York today -- or a brown and rainy one, really. But far from keeping people indoors, today the city is flooded with people /out/ of doors, /rejoicing/ in the chocolate bounty flooding from the sky. Here in the park as in many such parks there is something of an impromptu chocolate /festival/ going on, vendors hawking all manner of chocolate toppings, mix-ins, set-ups for ice cream sundaes. Music is playing, chocolate raindances happening. Over in one corner, a young -- girl? The short bowl-cut and gender-neutral overall-and-denim-jacket makes it hard to tell, at this age -- with bright green galoshes on is SPLASHING eagerly in a squishy puddle of gelatinous chocolate pudding, head tipped back and face a sticky mess of chocolate mousse already. Splish-sploosh. Intermittently she stoops to start scooping -- Until, from a nearby bench: "{Don't eat it off the /ground/, child.}" The child returns to tipping head back. Turning up cupped hands to funnel milk straight into mouth. Over on the bench, an older man -- older in /weariness/, at least, older /comparitively/, he may not really be all /that/ old in his young-twenties but /old/ in that he is not joining /in/ this exuberant chocolate /rain-dance/ and is, instead, sitting under an /umbrella/ so that he can scroll through emails on his phone unmolested by this fall of rain, keeps an absent eye on the child but mostly watches his phone. Occasionally the child races over to offer him a sip of chocolate. Which he politely declines. Slowly, by dint of letting the chocolate get cold, she is discovering she can build herself an entire chocolate /castle/. Which she is doing with some manner of /delight/. Putt-putt-putt-putt-putt-rrrmmmmm. This is the sound of a powder blue Vespa pulling up to the curb and then shutting down. Carrying an ill-advised /three/ passengers, two of them are small enough to maybe count as one big person, all three rise up from or otherwise EJECT themselves off the moped like it's a freaking clown car. The two children, a little blond boy with a classic little-boy crew cut and a girl possibly nearing her early preteen years with the sides of her head SHAVED and purple stripes died throughout the rest, tied up in a pony tail, take off running (albeit, the girl at a more sedate-happy jog) stripping out of their helmets as they go. Their clothes are rather nice (if soaked), the girl in a denim skirt and jacket with a child-sized Harley Davidson shirt underneath, the boy in a collared green shirt with a tie he seems to have PURPOSELY loosened for a miniRumpled look. He's sprinting dead-ahead towards the bowl-cut kid currently building a chocolateCASTLE, and doesn't just STOP when he sees her, he throws himself to his knees and SKIDS up alongside her, "Hi!" His smile has SO many little teeth, and regardless of whether his hair is long enough, he gives his head a toss, "I'm Alan you made that?" The nominative 'adult' among them is wearing skinny jeans and thigh-high shitkicker boots, a wallet chain and a black leather jacket that is well-crafted but equally well /broken in/ and dusty, a black beanie hat and a pair of John Lennon sunglasses. Coming up behind the park bench where Lucien sits, his long legs allow him to step up and OVER the bench back, step up ONTO the seat, and set his bony ass down on the bench back, without taking his hands out of his pockets, "Freak-fuckin-thing, huh?" Sera is dropping down back onto her knees when she is dismissed by Lucien back to her castle, adding a /turret/ back to its side. There's an aura of delight around her that /isn't/ just caused by CHOCOLATE RAIN but by a low-level empathic field of exuberance that spikes higher when she finds herself with company. Bopbopbop, she bounces on her knees and plops another handful of chocolate pudding to the top of her castle to let it harden so that she can shape it up higher. "{I built it!}" she agrees, first in French and then in English: "By myself because Luci's /boring/. I'm making a turret to shoot /arrows/ out of." Maybe for ants to shoot arrows out of. Or -- small beetles. Elsewhere, Lucien's eyes narrow in mild contemplation on the children. The skirt. "Gaetan had a shirt just like that," Sera continues in cheerful chatter as she hands the boy a handful of chocolate /mud/ to build with. "And I had a skirt but mine was --" She puts her hands down to her ankles. About how long that skirt /would/ be on a child her size. Lucien taps at the screen of his phone. Eyes flicking from children up to Kay. Back to children. Up to Kay. /His/ clothes are largely devoid of chocolate, owing to the umbrella, though there are speckles of it flecking the hems of his (/very/ nicely tailored) slacks, his /very/ nice Alexander McQueen ankle boots. Grey suede jacket over soft sweater, button-down, all very /put/-together. The watch peeking out from beneath his jacket -- /might/ be comparable in price to Kay's. Does not /look/ comparable, quietly understated, sleek-dark-muted in brushed-dark metal though it does quietly have (a few) diamonds of its own. "We seem to have a lot of --" Lucien tips his umbrella back just far enough that his brilliant green eyes can tip up towards the sky. "Freak things lately. Are they yours?" His eyes slide over enough that he can indicate he means the /children/. "Really? /Awesome/. Maybe it /is/ Gaetan's, did Kay mug 'im? That's Kay over there, he's badass, he'll mug /anything/. What's {I built it} mean?" Alan's French pronunciation is atrocious, but he hardly gives a shit. He holds his hands together to accept her glob of pudding and shifts around to crouch within line of sight of the castle. "Be shooting arrows at muckmonsters, okay? I'm making muckmonsters, we're gonna lay siege. Roarrlgh." His handful of pudding is dropped down in a wet 'splut', which he crouches over and tries to coax up into something oozey and humanoid. "Did you know. Sometimes. Siege is my NAME." "He's making that up," his older sister has caught up with the kids, standing above the younger kids and licking the back of her chocolately hand, "He says his name is /everything/." "That's my sister," Alan leans nearer to his fellow choco-architect, "her names /Poop/." "Is is NOT!" "Uh- kinda." Kay clicks his teeth, "They turned up in the subway when the dead were walking. No family. Figure they kinda more belong to /each other/, y'know? The girl yours?" Kay is /eyeing/ Lucien's watch, his nice clothes, then rolling up his gaze to the umbrella protecting him from the delicious downpour with one eyebrow WAY up. "I know you, don't I? You were uh - around the Lofts, right?" "Poop's not a /name/," Sera answers with a sudden empathically infectious /giggle/, "except that it's sometimes Gaetan's name. It means I built it. This whole castle, it's called Chocovania and I'm the countess. Because of I'm a vampire." She gnashes her very unpointy baby teeth at them in demonstration of this. "/Did/ he mug Gaetan?" She tips her head, studying Alan's clothes thoughtfully. "My army'll shoot arrows at anyone." She plunges her arms deep into the muck to offer the older girl her own armload of chocolate. "/I'm/ Sera. You can join my army? We have a fortress. To shoot arrows. You can be a countess too," she offers magnanimously. Lucien's eyes have returned from Kay to the phone, but the slight tilt of his head implies he's keeping tabs more on the childrens conversation than anything else. With one quick tap of finger he shuts off the phone and tucks it back into an inner pocket of his jacket. "My sister." His gently accented voice is dry, a slow creep of tension hardening the line of his jaw as his eyes slip back to Kay. "And I bought her that skirt when she moved in." "Yeah?" Kay is beginning to grin eagerly, nodding his head like 'go on!', one hand stealing into the lining of his jacket to withdraw a pack of cigarettes. "Get out. I got that skirt for Jen when /she/ moved in." Imagine the /coincidence/. A few brown speckles form on the soft paper of his smoke the instant it's exposed to the rain, but hey - if it's good enough toe at, it's good enough to inhale. Holding it between his lips, his fingers splay open to form a snarly little flame in his palm to pull a light from. Then shaking out his hand because - aaaaa hot. "/Maybe/, who's Gaetan? Is that Gaitan?" Alan jerks his chin towards Lucien, who he's sizing up as though trying to decide if he LOOKS like he's been Kay-mugged in recent history. His muckmonster army is pretty in-character for it's muckiness - some of its soldiers are just gathered up lumps of chocolate sludge with a hole poked in them for a mouth and two smaller holes for empty eye sockets. He's a cruel warlord - every fourth potential muckmonster is scooped up half-formed and devoured. After a side-eyed moment of trying to decide if playing with Littler Kids is acceptable, Alan's sister primly puts her knees together and settles them down on the ground beside Sera, "--/Okay/. I'll be countess Margolita. We're /sisters/, alright?" She accepts the wad of chocolate handed to her and bites into GLARING over the miniature turrets at her brother. "Let's go to /war/." Lucien's hand lifts -- it's a pretty casual lift, though his fingers clamp down firm around Kay's wrist. That snarl of flame /quenches/, as surely as though that chocolate rain /doused/ it. "/Funny/, that coincidence. She did love that skirt. And had so /little/, to love -- Do you know --" It's odd, his touch isn't really all that hard, but there's something discomfiting about it all the same, a low-grade unease that shivers out from where his fingers curl around his wrist. And no amount of trying will re-ignite even a single spark, just now. Lucien's eyes have turned to watch the children. "-- how devastated they were at the utter /ruin/ --" Sera, right now at least is anything but devastated. Lucien's voice trails off softer as his gaze falls back on her. "/That's/ Luci. He's the king of /everything/. Sometimes he makes me brownies. He let me put buckets all over the garden so we can make /ice cream cake/ at home. -- PCHOO!" This is the noise that comes when Sera flicks off a little glob from the top of a turret -- and then another and another, because it takes her a few /tries/ to hit a muckmonster. The turret is being worn down rapidly, given that her ammunition is coming straight /from/ it. Kay's skin is fever-warm to touch, beneath Lucien's fingers, and when the fire sputters out against his will, the tendons in it leap instantly /hard/, constricted. His eyes barely slip wider, smiling at the kids when they look his way and waving... while his blood and veins dilate with the measured pulse of familiar-adrenaline and heightened alertness recognizable in those familiar with violence. Uneasiness introduces a faint sweat beneath his hair. "S' too bad," he bares his teeth wider - it's a slightly /unhinged/ grin - watching the children at play. "It was the first time Jen /smiled/ since we took her in and stitched up the /bite marks/ her dead mother'd left in her." "/Pchoo!/" Jenny is backing up Sera's first volley with one of her own, sneak-glancing at Lucien with a stoic bit of /color/ in her cheeks and a little shysmile fought down, "...s'cute." She turns away quickly, trying to FOCUS on the battle at hand. "We should make ice cream cakes, too! OOORAAAGH! Rarrl! /I'M DYING/." Alan is... making the sound effects for the monsters - any that get hit by a passing 'arrow' but remain standing get /squashed/ under his hand to make it more cinematic. And he shakes out his mucky hands AT the girls, "Aaaagh rain of GUTS!" "He makes good cakes! We're gonna make a /layer/ cake and maybe a /pizza/. A /chocolate/ pizza but a regular pizza /too/. -- pchoo /pchoo/!" This time Sera just whacks the whole tower over, toppling it onto the nearest of the monsters. Which just frees up a side of castle to start building a /new/ turret. She /squeals/ at rain-of-guts but it's evidently not a squeamish sort; she's soon picking up her own handfuls of muck to fling them back at Alan. "Rain of /brains/ my castle's guarded by /zombies/!" "Funny, /that/. It was the first Sera had smiled since I took her in and cleaned up the wounds /her/ dead mother had left her with." His fingers tighten against Kay's wrist; it's not all that hard a tightening, but it come with a small flicker of pain -- not a /hard/ one, just a small uncomfortable /twinge/ that soon fades, as his eyes lower from the children. A slow swallow rolls down Lucien's throat with the next flick of Sera's fingers. The next /pchoo/. "-- Are they cared for, now." Alan fists up his hands and throws out his chest like SUPERMAN, and the flying globs of chocolate that strike him bounce off with alarming neatness to bombard the girls, laughing maniacally, "PAHAHAH your brains cannot harm the MUCKLORD." The rain of brains and guts don't -- actually touch Jenny; a faint blue glow warms behind her pupils and the splatters hit against a semi-invisible surface that takes shape between herself and the onslaught. Behind it, she straightens her pony tail prissily, squirming faintly with her eyes lowered. There's a little hard knot of sick unhappiness, "...zombies are /gross/. /Quit/ it, Alan." The nerves down Kay's arm /jump/ at the sudden pinch-pain, a sharp /inhale/ through his nose. And he swings in in nearer, under the cozy cover of Lucien's umbrella, "To their dying breath. Ease up, or this gets ugly." Lucien's eyes are watching the children but through the connection of his fingers there are other senses monitoring Kay, reading unease and nerves as his gaze hones in sharp on the chocolate-mud splatters that fail to hit home. /His/ breath pulls in soft and quiet and for the briefest of moments he tightens, rather than eases, a tenser grip around Kay's wrist before abruptly that unease all /vanishes/ in a wash of flutter-warm soothing. His hand relaxes, falls back to his lap with a sharp /flick/ of fingers against invisible lint on his tailored slacks. "Do you suppose they could do with anything more? My siblings and I have been overdue for a shopping trip. The, ah, looting hit us rather hard and the stores will be open well after our pizzas are done baking this afternoon, I expect. We have toppings enough for guests." "They're /chocolatemonsters/," Sera amends, empathic senses rather more attuned to that knot of unhappiness than most children her age. "And they've been at war for/ever/." Uneasiness is very much /there/, as are almost /eager/ animalistic fight-or-flight triggers gearing up for a PARTY until Lucien soothes them and lets go. Even then - Kay stares at his wrist with open /fascination/, sunglasses sliding down the bridge of his nose, "Eyyyaaa/ah/, man." He turns his hand over, then back the other way, finally dropping to study Lucien with his brows pulled together. The side of his mouth quirks up, "/Tiger/ brother, huh?" Jenny lets out a silent sigh of relief, an inner flood of gratitude for the change in monsters occurring partly at some level beneath her child's conscious awareness. How it comes OUT is in /great exhale of enthusiasm/, "--y-/yeah/, since the start of /time/." Alan is leaning forward to take a bite /out/ of Sera's castle so she reaches down and just /slops/ it up into his face. They both degrade into messy-sticky giggles. "HEY BRATS!" Kay's abrupt call turns their faces towards him, "Y'wanna go t'this guy's place for pizza?" The both of them shout 'YEAH' in unison. Alan follows this up with a thrust of fists in the air and a... roar. From his caked-over mosterface. "Say 'thanks, moneybag!'" "Thanks, moneybags!" When they turn back to trying to now re-build the tower (they /have/ the technology), Kay's grin fades to something more even, more serene. He's watching Sera, "...so what's her story." "There were monsters in the world long before the dead began to rise." Lucien's long fingers flex out in lazy-slow stretch, and then return to his lap. "Sera and her siblings have seen more than their share." Something eases in his posture. He switches his umbrella from one hand to the other, settles it more comfortably into the crook of an elbow. "I took them from that. They are never going back." For all his now-languid ease of posture there is a firm edge to his voice that almost /dares/ the world to try and argue with this. "What's yours?" "Heh," Kay's grin grows wider, his own returning casual-slump going in search of another cigarette - the original had tragically fallen into the CHOCOLATE, "- guess I didn't have me a Tiger brother." He lips out a coffin nail and shakes the pack offeringly towards Lucien. "Your accent's not from around here." This statement comes with a very small meaningless twitch at the corner of Lucien's mouth. He accepts the cigarette, leaning towards Kay once it's between his lips. Presumably for a light. "Neither is yours," he mumurs, in his soft francophone tones. "But this is a city of transplants. We grow here like weeds. New York is fertile ground." There's amusement blossoming in his voice, now. "With rain like this who could help but flourish." "Fertile ground for fucked up shit." The willingness in which Lucien leans towards him earns a look in Kay that's almost impressed, and Kay rewards it handsomely with a spiraling gesture through his fingers that coaxes a merry little flare up at the end of his cigarette, then scoff-chuckles to light his own. "Forget the Bermuda Triangle, this dump must look like the fucking nexus hub for The Outer Limits from the outside. S'almost like this bullshit," he blows smoke skyward and uses his cigarette to gesture towards the rain... or maybe it's just the kids, playing, "is the city's universal /apology/." Lucien exhales, quick-sharp. Amused. "Do you accept it?" "/Hell/ no." This time it does draw a smile from Lucien, a thin-slivered baring of neat white teeth that comes with a low chuckle. He pulls in a long drag of cigarette, blowing the smoke up past his umbrella and towards the sky. He pulls himself up off the bench in an abrupt motion, swinging the umbrella downwards and shaking it clean (/very/ clean, in a way that real rain never shakes off as easily) and folding it neatly closed to snap its fastenings. "No." But his eyes shift towards the children and their now very /trampled/ chocolate mud castle. Their laughter. "But there are worse places to start."