ArchivedLogs:Penny For Your Thoughts

Penny For Your Thoughts
Dramatis Personae Hive, Penny, Dusk	2013-05-18 Picking up strays
Location <NYC> Village Lofts - Fifth Floor - East Village <NYC> 403 {Geekhaus} - Village Lofts - East Village
The hallways here are not as bright as they once were, cheery yellow paint faded to a dingier shade, carpeting old and worn and threadbare. They are generally clean, though, despite the fading, diligently cared for by the building's maintenance. She's only mildly hungry at the moment. When she's REALLY hungry, she steals pies from windows and other such food, or begs, or shows up at a mutant-friendly soup kitchen. When she's just a little hungry, though? Sometimes Doug feeds her, and he has CATS. The cats kind of stare at her funny, and once in a while scratch themselves on her purposefully. Otherwise, though, they mostly leave her alone and they're fun to watch. Her current posture is frog-like, crouched next to the door. Penny usually tries very hard not to destroy or damage anything, so she mostly just huddles next to the wall when a passerby comes. There's a creak of stairwell door, and the next person to emerge is -- not really a passerby. At least, he isn't passing. A lanky-thin young man with shaggy dark hair flopping into his dark almond eyes, his jeans faded and flopping down heavily frayed at the bottoms where they hang over his bare heels, his t-shirt a faded grey reading 'resistance is futile (if <1 ohm)'. He has hands shoved into his pockets, and he leans back against the wall just beside the stairwell, looking the short distance down the hall to /watch/ Penny. Curiously. His posture isn't overly threatening, a lazy lean against the wall, wiry shoulders kind of slouched. "... Yo." That's all. But it's clearly to Penny; there's nobody else currently /in/ the hall. Penny only has one set of clothes. Mainly because everything else ends up shredded in days, hours, or sometimes even seconds. Whatever the reason, she still recoils from Hive when he turns his gaze in her direction. She clacks her talons together nervously as the shadows that always seem to cover her writhe around her. Her thoughts are chaotic. Much like an animal, they contain no words. Only impulses, instincts, and emotions: < Curiosity. Writing. Hard to read. Fear. Be small. Avoid notice. Hunger. Communication. > That last impulse/emotion is where words finally enter her mind. She struggles, her minding wrapping around first Russian, then an English greeting. "< Yo. Hello. Greet. Polite. Courtesy. >" She clicks her talons together, then lifts one and wiggles it in the man's direction. So much effort in just GREETING the man. "You don't talk." It's not so much a question as an observation. Hive's hands stay shoved into his pockets, and he watches this greeting with lazily half-lidded eyes. "You know that guy?" His chin jerks towards Doug's apartment door. He doesn't come any closer, but beneath the half-lowered lashes his gaze is deceptively alert, watching Penny carefully even if his posture remains in its lazy slouch. Penny clicks her talons together once in affirmative to Hive's 'non-question', and then again, when he asks about Doug. She looks towards the door, and again that riot of emotions and impulses: < Food. Shelter. Comfort. Companionship. Safety. > She's already picturing the inside of the apartment, complete with a certain sort of glee directed at the cats the man has. For some reason, she's UTTERLY fascinated with them. She likes animals, apparently. Ever so slightly, curiosity spikes inside her and she skitters forward a few steps to peer at Hive, paying close attention to his body language. To her, it's far more important than words. Hive's head tilts, slightly, as Penny skitters closer. He still watches her carefully, looking over her face first and then the straps. Then her face. His brows crease, slightly. He doesn't move from his slouch. "Those are all good things. You like cats?" This makes his lips twitch, slightly. "I'm Hive," he introduces himself, "and I can understand you. Y'hungry?" He tips his eyes up to the ceiling. "I live just up one floor." Penny frowns. Understand her? Humans don't understand her. The super-subtle body-language she displays... Doug does a pretty good job of understanding, but only basically... And she hadn't remembered much in the way of actively trying to communicate with him. Maybe he's just smart? She clacks her fingers together once in the affirmative, and then again. Cats induce memories of hours spent watching the things sleep, laze, eat, and play with things that aren't there in ways that Penny only vaguely comprehends as hunting exercises. The way they like to rub against her sharp skin is especially pleasing on a much deeper level. The purring sound even makes her heart ache. It's a sound of approval, a thing she misses without realizing she misses it. The mention of food subjects Hive to a different sort of assessment: < Curiosity. Squishy, weak, friendly. Not big. Share food. No threat. > After this assessment, she points to the stairs with her talon, and clacks her fingers together several times rapidly: < Lead. > "Not a threat," Hive agrees. He pushes away from the wall, holding the door open for Penny. "I don't have a cat," he's telling her; his oddly accented voice is kind of gruff as a default but today it's just sort of quiet, almost light. "But I've got a ferret, they're crazy-ass things. -- I understand you," he's explaining this as he leads the way into the stairwell, down the stairs, "because I can hear what you're thinking. You like Chinese food?" Some people might find it irritating to have their thoughts read. Penny's reaction, one she tries forcing her thoughts into an 'english' framework: "< Make things easier. Not have people talk to... Many times. >" Almost nine years, really. The longer she tries to force her thoughts into actual words, the easier it gets for her to do it, oddly. Like someone remembering an old skill: "< Like cats. Very fun. Independent. Penance is independent. Likes help sometimes, though. Freedom is good. Best thing. >" She follows Hive up the stairs, which get a little gouged up from the exercise admittedly. "< Only touch Penance black straps. Red Penance cut not-threat. Ferret. >" Her mind gropes for a picture until she finds a memory, and then she queries: "< Ferret. Reticulated stink-weasel? >" She attaches a picture to the query, answering Hive,"< Like food. >" "Yeah. I've got a friend -- he lives here, too. /Another/ floor down," Hive is pushing open the fourth-floor door as he says this, gesturing Penny out into the hall, "he doesn't really talk, either. At least not so most humans can understand. Sometimes it's nice for him to have someone to --" He shrugs. "Cats are assholes," is his opinion, "but the purring's kinda cute. Like someone stuck a motor in them. Uh --" Something in Penny's words draw a slight furrowed-brow of confusion, at least until he glances back at the stairway to the scratches in the stairs. "Only touch -- uh -- the red is -- dangerous?" He works through this uncertainly, but then nods, filing it away. It ends in a snort of laughter. "Shit, yeah. Stink-weasels. That's them. /Crazy/-ass fucking stinkweasels. Penance? You new to the city?" He's eying the straps she mentioned with -- a /lot/ of thoughtfulness. Penny nods at Hive, a barrage of surface thoughts sort of just launching at him. As she has no real experience or training with telepath, it's a little chaotic, and a LOT of information. Penance, crouched in a very cramped transport truck. A long time, feeling increasingly isolated and cramped. Seeing noone for hours, maybe even days. Hunger. Then finally, it gets to be too much, and turns into panic. She shakes herself repeatedly until she frees her claws from the restraints. She starts slashing at her surroundings wildly. Talons slide through hardened steel like butter. There is an explosion, though still no pain, and she flies free harmlessly. Gunfire, shouting, a man loses a hand trying to tackle her, more get cut up, and then she is running off into the snow, with merely a glance back at the truck before the memory ends. Apparently that's her answer to how long she's been here. Since that incident in the... winter? "<Red. Cut. Sharp. Can't help it.>" At least her english is getting more coherent. She pours into the fourth floor hallway,"<Ferrets like chinese? Penance stinky too.>" <NYC> 403 {Geekhaus} - Village Lofts - East Village There's kind of a college-dorm feel to this place, though some of its occupants have left college behind. Entering the apartment finds visitors greeted by the perpetually messy living room, a mismatched assortment of couches and chairs (and milk crates) surrounding the wide table in the center. The wall holds a range of posters; some political, some sporty, some from video games, and a string of white lights strung over the kitchen doorway might be a holdover from Christmas. The kitchen adjacent is just as cluttered, its table unfit for eating due to its perpetual covering of books, papers, cereal boxes, projects; the fridge is usually sparsely populated. Ketchup. Beer. Not a lot of food. There are two bedrooms here, split between the four people; the fold-out couch in the living room (often folded out!) suggests that at least one of them does not actually claim a room as their own. "Wo-oah." Hive kind of winces at this information overload, freezing outside his apartment door with the keys clutched in his hand. "That's -- a lot of --" He reaches to unlock the door, pushing it open to let Penny inside. "... ow. That's kind of a shitty ride into town. Where've you been staying now?" The apartment inside is messy. There are books (textbooks, a few sci-fi novels, a couple comic books) on the coffeetable scattered among dishes and a couple remote controls; the kitchen table is cluttered with leftover food, some notebooks, a newspaper, a closed laptop. The sink is full of dishes. There's a rail-thin young man, pale, dark haired, shirtless but in dark jeans, tucked sideways an armchair; a pair of very large leathery-soft wings are draped over one arm and his legs are draped over the other. He glances up as they enter, with some curiosity but without surprise. "Hey! -- 've we met?" "Nope. Penance, Dusk. Dusk, Penance. She's here for food." Hive trudges off to the kitchen to try and rummage up a clean dish. "... I dunno if ferrets like Chinese, I think they just feed her -- ferret food." Another memory. A picture of a bush the underside of which is covered in shreaded cloth, branches, and leaves. Her home. She seems to attach the same sense of warmth and comfort to it mentally that most people attach to real homes. Then again, when your skin has the density of a white dwarf star, not much can cause you real discomfort. "<Apologies. Man hurt?>" She skitters forward, smelling and sniffing hear and there as she enters the apartment, then settles for investigating Dusk. She spents a lot of time examining his wings. There's even a little bit of envy over those, in fact. Then she wiggles a claw at Dusk in greeting. "<People. Sometimes say 'Penny' for name. Like little coin.>" "Penny?" Hive nods at this, and corrects: "Penny, then. S'Dusk. He lives with me." "Hey, Penny." Dusk has a laptop on his lap, and his fingers have been flying over the keys though now he stops to look up and over at the girl. "Don't think I've seen you around. Where'd you --" He's stopped, as he looks more closely at her, at the straps. He glances up at Hive. Hive just shrugs, washing out a bowl from the pile of them in the sink. "Not hurt, no. Just -- sometimes brains are /loud/. S'it been safe for you, out there? I know the city can be kind of shitty to --" He waves one wet hand towards Dusk and Penny both. "Anyone who looks different, really." Penny peers at the laptop Dusk has been messing with, wiggling a talon at him again. "<Looks fragile. Skin. Like razors. He not touch. What look at? He has clickety box.>" Clickety? Now she's making up words. She rises to stand straight and peer at Hive's pile of dishes, then crouches again. "<Skin tough like (an image of men looking at her with many instruments and a computer screen with a picture of a rotating white dwarf on it)... Like that. Can't hurt... Only Pain-bringer hurt.>" There is another image, this one of a towering, monsterous figure shrowded in darkness. It is, literally, about as monsterous as Penny can imagine a thing, and a sense of soul-rending anguish and mortal terror is attached to it. This is, literally, a think Penny's mind recoils from recalling correctly, the most horrifying thing she can remember/imagine. The quality of the 'memory' however, is such that this is more Penny's interpretation of the man she is thinking of, than a true memory of his appearance. "Says don't touch her," Hive relays to Dusk, "at least not her skin. Sharp. -- It's a computer. I don't know what he's watching probably porn." Dusk just snorts at this. "Right. Uh. I'm writing." It's a text document on the screen, nothing particularly interesting. Exceptionally boring, really, an article about Yahoo's potential acquisition of tumblr. If he's startled by the appearance of a mute taloned girl in their house, it doesn't show. Hive /does/ look kind of startled, though, by the images in Penny's head. He's been drying off his bowl and now it thump-clatters down onto the counter. "..." For a moment there is just silence. "What -- the fuck is that. That thing isn't around /here/ is it? Are you -- safe? /Now/?" Penny quickly grows bored with the text about the internet companies, and clicks her talons together,"<Find pictures of cats. Ferrets. What interweb for.>" She nods emphatically. Still, she doesn't really blame Hive's startled reaction. The next concepts she 'beams' at Hive are difficult for her to articulate. That the creature, whatever it is, is very, very far away from here. She shrinks a little from ANY question do with him, but she shares an old, old memory, vague and fuzzy with time, of that same monstrous, amorphous creature, and herself, a small, screaming black haired girl being torn from the arms of a screaming older woman whose head is DETONATED by something mere moments after their hands part. "<Pain-bringer. It eats me. It eats you. Your essence is different. Is food. Eats your power, eats your pain. Nowhere safe from it. Is far away. Not know where Penance is.>" "That's pretty fucking horrifying," Hive judges, too blunt to be pitying. There's a frown on his face, though, as he fills up the bowl with food from Chinese takeout containers; some rice, some sort of garlicky eggplant dish, some sort of spicy chicken. He sticks it in the microwave. "So what do you do now? To stay fed and all -- uh. He's /working/," he adds, of Dusk, "I don't think he has time for cat pictures." "Who doesn't have time for cat pictures?" Though Dusk is still writing, at this, even if he looks /amused/. From one of the bedrooms, a tiny nose is poking out. Then a masked face. Then a long slinky body. Penny doesn't actually seem to want OR comprehend pity for that matter, if her reaction to Hive's statement is any indication. A simple nod of agreement follows that statement as she wiggles on into the kitchen and plops down on the floor to wait for food. The smells are stirring her hunger. <People give me money. Or food. Sometimes they leave windows to cookplace open. I take it.> In other words, beg or steal. Then the bandit-like face pokes its nose out. Suddenly, Penance is on all fours, eyes wide in fascination as she watches the beast. "Oh. Huh. I mean, if that works for you. Seems like it might get a bit dangerous, though. Like if people freak the fuck out about you. Or the cops --" Hive shrugs, eyes fixed on the microwave as it counts down. Behind him, the little ferret is slinking out. Then hopping. Closer. Hophop? She is coming to INVESTIGATE, nosing her way towards Penny. "That's Alanna," Dusk introduces the ferret. "She probably wants to play. She always wants to play." Penny shrugs at the man helplessly. "<Not know what else. Felixfriend is helping me. So is Coreyfriend. Hannafriend feeds me a lot too. Felixfriend and Coreyfriend... they are my daddies now, I think. Dougfriend feeds me frequently.>" She leans her face close to the ground as the ferret approaches. "<Alanna moves like bouncy worm. I cannot play with her. She would die.>" Speaking in her mind is DEFINITELY getting better. Like somehow, the man has reminded her just how. "Oh, god, /Corey/." Hive mutters this with some /exasperation/, picking out identity probably as much from thought as from name. He takes the bowl out of the microwave when it dings, slipping past Penance to shove aside junk on the living room's low coffeetable and set the bowl down on it. "... don't -- suppose you want silverware?" He eyes her talons uncertainly. You never know. Alanna /is/ moving pretty much like a bouncy worm, squirmy hophopwrigglehop as she sniffs her way closer. "Cool. Doug's alright. You come around here a lot, though? I got a friend I think you should maybe meet. Sweet guy. Cooks like a freaking god." Penny giggles inwardly. Outwardly, this manifests as the only sound she's made as of yet. A soft, jittery hissing sound from her lips. As for silverware,"<Can't hold it well. Hard not to destroy it." She scritches her nose, rises, then reaches for some kind of noodle (it loops over a talon) and dumps it on the floor in front of Alanna. Then she sort of examines the bowl as if deciding HOW to attack eating. "< I like food. Meet your friend. Go get him now? He can hold Alanna. >" Alanna /pounces/ forward, jumping onto the noodle to /attack/ it. Wrestle it fiercely. She grips it between her paws and rolls onto her back to chomp at it. "Good job, Alanna," Dusk is looking back at his computer again, typing one more. "You show that noodle who's boss." Hive pauses for a moment, frowning in brief conecntration. "Not sure he's home right now. He works Saturday nights. But if you're around enough -- I mean, if you come back. Or hang out the night. Whatever. It's safe here. For people like --" He shrugs a shoulder. "Us. Safe enough, anyway. And out /there/ right now it's been -- less safe." He glances at the straps Penny wears again. "And you -- kind of seem like /maybe/ you've already had your fill of not-safe?" Penny watches Alanna conquer Noodle-Foe with the fruit of millenia of apex stinkweasel gene-engineering. "<She is ferocious beyond her size.>" Then Penance sort of just lifts the bowl to her mouth and just kind of pours a bunch of food in it and slurping bits hear and there. Since she doesn't need to breath to talk to Hive, she keeps doing so. "<Sometimes... I sleep on... flat place between stairs. Penance not hurt outside anymore. Penny can only hurt inside. Pain-bringer hurt Penny's inside. Noone else hurt Penny outside, though.>" As for the look at her straps? "<Penny hurts inside sometimes. Safer to be alone. Aloneness hurts.>" "Well. /She/ certainly thinks so," Hive says with a snort, watching Alanna roll back over to shake the noodle in her teeth. Maybe she thinks she's breaking its floppy noodly neck. "... safer for other people, maybe, but is it safer for you?" He's leaning back against the counter, now, that divides kitchen and living room, crossing his legs at the ankles. His elbows rest back against the counter. "I mean, seems to me like not hurting inside /or/ out is better. Though sometimes that can be -- hard. Especially if you've been through a lot of shit. Aloneness hurts. What helps?" It's perhaps an idle question, more absent than focused; regardless of answer he is preparing himself his own bowl of leftovers, settling in to EAT.