Logs:A: Several points of disharmony among pts. stemming from widely different reactions to/interpretations of trauma. Tense session, with open hostility averted via some physical distancing.

A: Several points of disharmony among pts. stemming from widely different reactions to/interpretations of trauma. Tense session, with open hostility averted via some physical distancing.
cn: Discussion of Prison/Medical Torture Trauma
Dramatis Personae Daiki, Joshua, Polaris, Zack
In Absentia Jax, Ryan, Dawson, Harm	2024-06-26 "S'a dumb fucking question. It all sucked."
Location <NYC> Abandoned Warehouse - Red Hook
Just one among many old buildings in an industrial section of the borough, this warehouse was undoubtedly once bustling. It's large, a spacious segment of floor with a number of high-rising shelves still lining the walls from floor up to the exposed beams of the ceiling. There's plenty of smaller nooks and rooms tucked away at the sides of the building, and though the ceiling is mostly still intact and the windows boarded up a crumbling hole near the roof and a few removed planks from a window near the back make it a common home for wayward birds, stray cats, and the occasional vagrant taking advantage of strong walls and bathroom plumbing that still largely works. The latter tend to avoid this place more often than not come nighttime, though; among street people there are rumours that this building is often populated by monsters. Things have come a very long way, since the days of scrapping in a cramped basement in the Lower East Side. The fighting ring is expansive, now, dominating the center of this capacious warehouse -- a blessing for those whose fighting styles are predicated on taking advantage of more planes of movement. The betting is well-organized, odds posted for the night above where the Mongrels are collecting bets near the entrance. There's actual seating for the spectators, and at enough of a remove to be at... slightly less risk of catching stray bloodsplatter or an errant fire blast. The healer station has had an upgrade, too -- an actually comfortably-appointed room at the side with plenty of first aid supplies, snacks, drinks, cots and comfortable seating for those who need to recuperate a while; some extra seating outside for those who don't need Quite as much attention. Joshua is outside the actual healing room (maybe out of respect for the very bruised young man now sleeping in there, maybe so he can watch the high spectacle of the many-limbed many-clawed fight happening in the ring.) There's a wide cordoned-off berth beyond the doorway also bearing snacks and seating and strict injunctions that anyone whose splash damage splashes over here will get a prompt and forceful ejection. Joshua is seated in one of the folding chairs, half his attention on the fight and half on knitting together the very ugly-bloody gash in his current patient's torso. He doesn't knit it the whole way; once it's back down to a safe level of not-actively-bleeding, he's turning all his attention this way and bandaging up the smaller gash the mundane way. "Was impressive," he eventually volunteers -- maybe he's talking about the ugly cut. Maybe the fight that caused it. Maybe both. Polaris is modest enough these days to wear a skort when she's fighting in this kind of heat, but not so modest as to be uncomfortable sitting around in her sports bra watching the current match while Joshua patches her up from the last one. The shirt she had been wearing was black, just like the remainder of her clothing, for reasons that are probably apparent now that all of them have been copiously bloodied. She's been gamely sucking down apple juice and looks slightly less pale now. "Yeah, I'm not even mad." When she winces, it's not at the bandaging, but at one of the fighters getting hurled half-way across the arena. "If I don't get trounced often enough, I start getting cocky. Ain't nobody got time for that." "I kind of feel like you've earned some cocky." Zack is not fighting, dressed in a casual jeans-and-tee-shirt outfit that suggests he has no plans to. He's leaning back against the wall just outside the healer cordon, mostly because this was a decent place to avoid getting too battered last fight round. He has, just recently, lost a decent amount of money betting on Polaris but is not letting that dampen his cheerful good mood as he clings to his next fight ticket (he's ignored the odds and bet, Again, on the Promethean in the ring) with a dogged hope. "I mean, forget the ring, right, you've held your own and then some when it really counts, right? Had a lot of people's asses back in Freaktown and -- shit, how many people busted themselves out of a lab, not many." Daiki was never a frequent fighter, but a reasonably regular attendee who nevertheless hasn't been seen here in months. His arrival draws a very faint but palpable ripple of attention that pulls harder at some than others, but even the glances of complete strangers linger on him just a little longer than they might on some other slender unassuming Japanese man. He's dressed down by his standards -- blue pinpoint oxford button-down, gray slacks, black penny loafers -- and has a black gym bag slung over his shoulder. He was making a beeline to the prep area but hesitates when he sees Joshua, and after a moment's wavering re-routes toward the healer station. He offers Joshua and Polaris a small bow and an also small smile. "I see you are not too busy," he observes, and though he does not say "yet", something in his bearing suggests it. Joshua finishes taping off his neat bandaging. He's peeling off one glove, balling it up in his other gloved fist, pulling the second glove off inside-out around it. He tosses the pair of gloves into a bright red biohazard bag lining a nearby trash can. "And stayed free? Thirty," he answers, though he's got a deep frown on his face as he does. "That I know of." His chin jerks up when Daiki nears. He glances to the gym back. Then back to Daiki's face. Squints over across the room towards the posted odds for tonight's matches, little though he can read the card from this distance. "Welcome back." "When it really counts? Cocky gets you killed." Polaris presses at the bandage gingerly and gives a small lopsided wince that covers some other expression that had started to form. "Cocky gets other people killed," she adds a little more quietly and less glibly. Then, to Joshua, "Thanks, man." There's something ineffable in her smile when she sees Daiki, and like Joshua her eyes track significantly to the gym bag. "Right? I thought he was getting bored, so I took one for the team." She looks back over at Zack. "You know, I didn't fight either of those times. I'm not sure we'd have made it out of Blackburn if I did." "You didn't?" Zack can't keep the incredulousness out of his tone, and he's turning briefly away from watching the fight to look at Polaris. "No shit? But how -- I mean, we definitely heard stories but, like. Filtered through a couple years and a half-dozen labs' worth of grapevine. Our guards had paranoid-ass shift change procedures that I'm pretty sure were full on because of you. Legit worried that the instant that grid was down --" His hands clap together, one skating off the other in a whoosh kind of takeoff motion. "Kinda bogus with half of us, like I'd have luck shambling my ass outta jail. Pretty reasonable worry though with, like --" He's looking from Polaris to Joshua pensively but his eyes stutter when he gets to Daiki -- possibly it's effects of his indefinable allure but possibly he's just trying to weigh this unassuming newcomer's potential for Jailbreak. Daiki bows again. "Thank you." He's stopped smiling, but seems more at ease than he was before, and less weirdly compelling. "I'm Daiki. Penfield, '09. I don't think Prometheus was ever worried about me, before or after that. Though, by the time we were liberated, I probably could have just politely asked the staff to let me go." This does not sound like a boast, and even less so when his brows furrow in thought. "If I timed it well, anyway. But it never would have occurred to me." He makes a small show of considering the snacks he is definitely not going to eat. Yet. "Love being bored." Joshua's slouching back in his chair, now. His hand lifts; he worries absently with his teeth at one already pretty chewed-up nail. His eyes are drifting back to the fight, one squinching up at a particularly solid rake of claws. "Security theatre," he volunteers, about the post-Blackburn stringencies. "Suppression didn't exist, first decade or so. They --" His mouth twists down. "Managed." "Heck no," Polaris says with a not excessively forced laugh. "Even if I knew how, I was needed on defense. But yeah." She snaps her fingers and points at Joshua. "They had zero suppression tech when me and Wendy first got locked up. I feel like they were more brutal, back when they had to uh. Manage." She puts scare quotes around the last word. "And more vigilant, too. There was no way we could have pulled off Blackburn if there were more guards on that night. We barely got out with the grid down, and we'd have still been frakked if no one had been there to pick us up--thanks again, man," she adds to Joshua. "Danger aside, that was--a what, ten-hour drive? There's a reason they put those places a billion miles from nowhere." "Wait, no shit?" Zack is blinking, looking at the others in an uncommitted kind of skepticism like he slightly thinks this might all be some kind of collective joke to play on Gullible Newbies. "But you -- teleport. You --" Is his outstretched hand supposed to be some kind of Magnet Pose, cuz it's what Polaris is getting in indication. "You --" Actually he has no idea what Daiki does so this just flounders, sputters, shakes his head. "Like, none of you? Black? Holland?" A touch of disappointment in his follow-up like some legend is getting shattered in his mind: "Flicker? Couldn't you just -- walk out." Daiki evinces no outwardly sign of impatience, but when he speaks his quiet voice is impossible to ignore. "They told us we were dangerous, to ourselves or to others, and often they were right. Most of us were in there because we had hurt someone." He takes his glasses off and folds them fastidiously, as though it were a procedure that required a great deal of precision. "If we acted up, as often as not it was our labmates who suffered. They had all sorts of mind games, to say nothing of literal mind control." He produces a clamshell case from a side pocket of his bag, settles his glasses inside, and tucks it back whence it came. "All else aside, none of us are bullet-proof." The understated turn of his hand sweeps from Joshua to Polaris to himself before dropping, the truncated gesture somehow heartbreaking in its own right. "Neither was Flicker." "Jax was a child. Ryan, too. Flicker. Legends tend to forget that." Joshua's dropped his hand; it falls to rest on his knee, now bouncing jittery up and down. He's nodding, absently, at what Daiki says, but his answer to Zack out loud is: "Sure. Could've." Polaris grits her teeth. "The whole prison system is a mind game. I was already a terrorist, and it took a long time to accept I was never getting a court date, period." She looks back toward the fight, where both combatants are flagging. "Even then, I didn't want to risk getting thrown into a deeper, darker hole. Or getting killed." She blows out a long breath. "...or getting someone else killed." "Yeah, I just..." Zack's attention has fully left the fight, his outstanding bet notwithstanding. "I get it's not so simple for everyone but. All that time, and nobody -- some people are bulletproof. Some people do mind control right back. Some people --" He's waving one hand in the air like he is trying to encourage the words he wants to come to mind. "Just -- really hard to picture what it would even have looked like if they'd never had an off switch for some of us." Daiki studies Zack, long and considering. "Would you have just walked out, if you could?" There's no challenge here, just a careful, polite curiosity. "I'm sure some people did, and we just don't know about them. Say they survived the trek without supplies to the nearest town, didn't get turned in as an escaped con, secured transportation without money to someone who cared enough about them to harbor a fugitive, or just pulled themselves up by their canvas slip-ons and started new lives." He turns both hands up helplessly, even this ambiguous gesture unaccountably intense. "They wouldn't have known how to seek us out even if they wanted to, and why would they?" Joshua's expression has tightened. He's looking back to the fight as the clamor in the room grows louder -- one of the current contestants has tapped out, and is giving some consideration to the healer station as he stumbles out of the ring. With his Potential Patient still undecided, though, Joshua isn't moving. He does glance to Daiki's bag. Then back to the ring. "Would've looked bloodier." Polaris is plainly exasperated now. "Dude, what do you think we've been telling you?" She tousles her short(ish) hair, working her fingers through where spattered blood has dried. "Look, it was bad, okay?" She's now eyeing Joshua. "I can text Harm if you want a go. Five bucks say they're just like, knitting." After a very brief pause, she adds, "Crocheting counts, too." "Sorry, sorry," Zack says, holding his hands up in a gesture of surrender, "I get it, you all were playing labs on Nightmare Mode. It just --" He's looking over, briefly distracted by the excitement by the ring and, after a squint and an evaluation, tears his betting slip and shoves the scraps into a pocket. "I didn't exactly think it was a picnic. Just heard so many stories for years and --" He shrugs, a quiet rasp of motion where his shirt pulls against the rough wall. "You old guard all talk like there is an us but it feels like two way different worlds." "I think Penfield would have just been a slightly different nightmare, if we'd had suppression," Daiki says softly. "I want to say I would have preferred that one, but I can't really know that." He studies Zack -- briefly, before his gaze falls away. "It's very easy to imagine someone else had it better or worse. That's not old guard or new guard -- ask anyone about Oppenheimer. Or Blackburn, for that matter." He inclines his head at Polaris. "I think the difference is the direct, personal support we got after we were rescued. Even with that, most of our labmates didn't stick around. The new guard is self-selecting, too. But you had to do it on your own. That," he says, and the word has a strange gravity all its own, "is why I think you had it harder. Not the suppression tech, not the mutant mercs, not the security theatre." He hefts his gym bag and raises his brows at Joshua. "I'm not sure I'm ready for a flight, after all, but my gear will fit you if you cuff the pants." Here a small twitch of a smile. "Or wear heels." Joshua's expression is always kind of dour, kind of flat, which makes it hard to fully tell if the thin-pressed mouth and sharp cut of his eyes towards Polaris is unimpressed or simply evaluating. He doesn't look at Daiki, or the offered gym bag, though he must have seen them. There's a deliberateness with which his eyes turn away like he is Definitely Not Looking -- first toward the ringside where one of the recent contenders hasn't so much made a decision about visiting him, simply plopped down where they're at like their legs are Not Working, and then toward the ceiling. "S'a dumb fucking question," he says, blandly, "it all sucked." He pushes himself up out of his chair. Not to fight -- he's just slipping out of the healer's area to trudge over to the ringside, sitting himself down wordlessly beside his maybe-patient and offering out a hand in blissful silence.