Logs:All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad

All my means are sane, my motive and my object mad
cn: violence, reference to child death, discussion of genocide
Dramatis Personae Erik, Ion
In Absentia Anahita, Polaris, Leo, Dawson	2023-02-17 We still fucking here, yeah -- not you not me but us. (immediately after a needed intervention.)
Location <???> Joyland Amusement Park - Wichita / Land of Oz, Beech Mountain, NC / Pripyat Amusement Park, Pripyat, Ukraine
Just a heartbeat before, there was the distant fireglow of the Freaktown evening bonfires, the cheerful glimmer of the myriad fairylights, the anxious eyes of the community gathering at a wary-safe distance. But that was just a moment and hundreds of miles ago. The world has only gone black for a split second, but a split second charged with jagged-livewire pain, a split second where awareness has suspended in a suddenly disembodied disorientation, can feel like longer. When the world coalesces again they are -- definitely not in Kan... well. The ground around them is littered with debris scattered through the unkempt grass, a sliver of moonlight in a sky far more full of stars than New York's silvering a very different scene than the one they left. Behind where they've landed, the curves of a rickety half-collapsed rollercoaster is starting to grow over with climbing vines. Beside them, a scorched and crumbling children's teacup ride sits dilapidated in front of an equally unstable half-charred building, the twisted words 'WACKY SHACK' still mostly legible on the sign drooping from the pointed roof. A grim half-melted figure whose wide red mouth and eerie overdone eye-makeup suggests it was once a clown is now toppled on the ground nearby, its hand frozen in what was probably a wave but now looks like it is reaching through the grass to crawl towards them. It has the distinct feel like at any moment zombies might come lurching out of the ruined structures and overgrown weeds -- but instead of such horrors there is just Ion, irritably and futilely brushing stray wood chips off the bottom of one sock against his jeans, a faint skitter of blue-white light dancing along his limbs. "Damn but I was hoping for the no problems way." Magneto’s eyes were already wide and angry before this cross country jaunt — now, with the flex of his power grasping at steel links that are not there, electricity still sending spasms through his muscles, he is incensed. “How dare you —“ He grits his teeth, another involuntary flex of muscles making his arm twitch as the electricity passes through him and out his own overbright bioelectric field. “— I will not suffer such insolence.” This theme park is covered in rust and metal. Magneto rises into the air, held aloft by the earth’s magnetic field, while the rollercoaster behind them begins to squeal with the pulling of spikes from the dilapidated track. How much metal in the teacups? Not a lot, but here comes one, hanging upside down by the casters, flying with some significant speed to catch Ion in the side. "Suffer? I ain't tryna make you suffer nothing, you're --" Ion's words cut off abruptly here with the teacup hurtling toward his side. It slams -- into where he just was, hard enough and fast enough that it certainly seems like it hit him solidly. But there he is, in the very next moment -- did he even disappear, it's hard to track -- a whiff of ozone smell as he solidifies back into place a foot or so from where he'd been standing, evidently quite unharmed. Around him, Magneto can surely feel the heavy distortion of the magnetic fields -- always just slightly out of whack in Ion's own far-too-bright electrical aura, but now the hungry siphoning of power is intensifying. "If I wanted to insolence you we'd be back in Freaktown right now with all our peoples watching. I just think maybe we talk, huh?" He, admittedly, does not sound deeply hopeful that Talk is forthcoming. Magneto's mastery over the forces of magnetism pull back at the distortion in the field lines, grudgingly giving more attention to remaining aloft where the two men's fields are clashing together. The teacup thuds into the ground, his expression curling sour. "Certainly!" Magneto's voice booms, hundreds of spikes and bolts finally dislodged from the rollercoaster and hovering in haphazard formation behind him. "Let us talk about your harbouring of traitors!" The arsenal flies out -- not just to the space Ion is standing but peppering a two meter radius around him with rusty nails and screws. "Jesús-José-y-María," tumbles out in a rush. This time it is far more obvious when Ion takes off -- there are bright flickers of sparks dancing among the detritus as it whizzes through the space he's just been. It's a beat or two before he reappears in the scattered field of debris -- still unharmed, though considerably less unphased this time, his eyes wider and a lingering unsteady buzz around him. "You gonna fucking kill me? Over what? Who the hell is traiting. Them people look up to you, how long you think that last if you barge in our home and get your killing on?" His hands have curled into tight fists at his side -- though he's making no actual move towards the Master of Magnetism floating overhead, the gesture feels like a constriction, a sharp and erratic yanking at the fields around them. Behind Magneto, rusty pieces of iron pull up and away from the wood of the roller coaster. Two large pieces hover for a moment behind him, then the first tears off in a spin towards Ion, first driven by a push of magnetism and then carried by the forces of momentum and gravity alone. "Admiration is not a community defense!" The other length of track sweeps out towards Ion, the field around it tense and held tightly until that constriction. It drops, the field suddenly pulling it down -- so too does Magneto drop, only barely righting his course enough to land on his feet. Ion steels himself, eyes flicking away from Magneto and to those pieces of iron. "Oh it sure as hell is." His teeth are clenched, his now-sadly-filthy fuzzy socks digging toes down hard against the earth. "If I didn't admire you --" When the metal whirls out towards him he leaps toward it, a fierce jolt of power that runs through the metal and out again, licking its way into Magneto. The world goes painfully too-dark and too-bright yet again, Ion's voice audible again a split second before the rest of the world is fully solid. "-- you'd be real fuckin' dead." This time, they have coalesced on a vivid path of yellow bricks, a blank-eyed and rusting Tin Man lolling drunkenly beside them against a length of chain-link fence. Ion looks to Magneto, looks to the tin statue staring ruefully at him, and just -- sighs. When Magneto is solid matter again he stumbles, unsteady on the yellow road. The anger in his eyes is not dimmed but somewhat unfocused, dazed as he tries to focus on Ion again. “Then you would be a better leader for it.” The fence rattles as his power flexes out for steel that’s no longer anywhere near them, pulls up out of the poles to become netting to trap Ion. The Tin Woodman creaks, bends, doesn’t stand exactly but the face turns and the neck pulls up like the whole head is going to come off — -- and maybe it does, maybe it did -- at least with the next jolting-sudden blink of the world, when there is solid ground under their feet again there is a head, lying rusted and big-eyed at their feet. Admittedly, it is not the Tin Man's head but a large yellow metal clown, rust streaked like running makeup down its cheeks, its tongue lolling out hungrily. It's just one of several large metal cars on a spindly spinning ride nestled in drying grass; overhead, a stretch of metal scaffolding runs between them and a set of dilapidated bumper cars; to their other side, a huge ferris wheel looms large overhead. The trees here are spindly, the grass browned, what signs can be seen still hanging askew on their posts or fallen to the ground no longer written in English but Ukrainian. Ion sighs. His hand reaches up to scrub at his cheek. "Fam this cannot be fun for you. I be a good leader cuz I trust my people. Be a wild thing to try." Magneto is wobbly again on his feet after this disincorporation, managing to stay up for two seconds before he falls to his knees, keels overs, and vomits onto the browning grass. Has he heard Ion? When the heaving stops there’s quiet, the shimmer of field lines around creepy clown cars pulling once before letting go. He glances up when he can, slowly climbing back to his feet, looking at the signs with — not rage nor anger, but a confusion mixing with nostalgia and grief. “Chornobyl?” The Ukrainian flows easily off Erik’s tongue. “Is this where we are?” "Shit, you be good at that map-guesser game, huh?" Ion is relaxing -- although not much -- fists unclenching, shoulders untensing, though his sharp-eyed gaze is still waaaarily tracking Erik. "This place just outside, yeah? Built some playground for the people worked there but I think the --" The exploding-flare motion of his hands is easy enough to comprehend, "-- happen just before it open." Cautiously, he's lowering himself to lean against the side of the rusting clown-car, patting at his chest before he remembers his cut and its pack of smokes are somewhere far -- far -- away from here. "These places got a feel that..." He trails off with a crumpling of his brow, a searching look at Erik like he is trying to decide whether he should, in fact, be talking or preparing once more to run. “I know the language,” comes dry and hoarse. “And the country.” Erik points almost due south, tacking just a touch east after a moment. “Three days walk that way is Vinnytsia. There I trust a man to keep my secret. In return he brings a mob to beat me and burn my daughter.” He turns again, more east now, gesturing at a stretch of distance. “There is Poland. Seven, eight days walk maybe, Warsaw. Nazis catch my friend when we smuggle bread. He betrays our other smuggler to live. Gets shot in the head for his trouble. My sister starves anyway.” Further south, just a smidge. “We smuggle out the ghetto to the river, and the boatman sells us to the Nazis. My father in some mass grave, there.” Turns again, hand dropping. “This continent is littered with the bodies of Jews who trusted other Jews when they should not have. This place?” The squeak of clown car is brief as Erik rolls it experimentally before letting go. “No more haunted than any other. Is that the feeling you have, here?” This whole time his face is turned from Ion, his voice flat and tired. His left hand rises up to his head, removes the yarmulke still somehow pinned there. Ion's hands press flat against the car he's leaning against, his eyes steady on Erik as the older man speaks. He tenses when the car rolls, squeaks, bracing harder but then easing again when the magnetic grip lets up. "Ain't that," he replies simply. For a moment that's all he says, fingers pressing hard against the rusted metal and a deep breath filling his chest. "You know, I ain't Argentinian? Everyone say, Argentinian. But Argentina it's just the place that been trying to kill us for ages now. Drive my people from our land, starve us, shoot us, drown our children in the goddamn rivers they poisoned so we can't drink." His voice is quiet, but there's a ferocity buried in its low rumble. "And yeah, shit, all that it come with some betrayal. Motherfuckers sell us out to the cops, to the ranchers, how many times we been drive out our home, how many family I left --" He cuts himself off with a hard press of lips, a shiver of energy crackling through the eerie car he is leaning on. "Even ending up in Prometheus fucking torture cages, that was some other freak tryna save his own skin. Think for lotta us over a lotta years, a lotta lands, genocide come with its share of backstabbing. Maybe-maybe seeing daggers in everyone hand might keep me alive longer, I'ono." His eyes shift, settle on the yarmulke now held in Erik's hands. "But the thing is, my people, your people, our people, how long they try to wipe us out? How long they fail? We still fucking here, yeah -- not you not me but us, and that shit don't happen by assuming we all out to get you. We still here because the people who want to look out for each other, keep a society going, s'way more of us than the fucking quislings. How many people every damn day rocking up at Freaktown don't even need to live there they just want to help build it, want to keep it strong, want to keep our people safe? And shit, it ain't gonna last, I know what people think of me but I ain't fucking stupid, man, that fascist-ass country ain't gonna let our people stay free there. But the energy they bringing? That hope, that fire to build something together, no matter what the fuck we facing, how you keep that going, how you build something new out the ashes if you don't got trust in who you building it with." Now Ion is straightening, turning side-on to Erik, his gaze drifting up toward the ferris wheel towering overhead. "Every place I ever live, some fucking colonizer built it on bones and blood. If it ain't my people's graveyard it's someone's. But every place I ever live been laughter, stories, been people singing songs in the languages they try to rip from us. Ghosts be with me everywhere, I ain't come here for the ghosts." The clown car shivers again, but this time the rusty creak doesn't still itself -- the mechanism is groaning back to life as Ion pours energy into the disconnected ride, the car swaying precariously beneath him where he perches on its maw as the Definitely Structurally Unstable arms of the aging ride start working their way up to a spin. "I come here, remind myself there still some joy to find in every nightmare fucking ruin." Erik is quiet throughout this monologue, watching Ion with unnerving intensity that masks whatever he is feeling with a sense of Too Much Attention. Tucks the yarmulke into a pocket of his jacket when Ion's gaze lingers there too long, hand emerging with silvered cigarette case and matching lighter instead. Lights his second cigarette of the evening, some tremble in his old and callused hands when he removes it from his lips. The pull of nicotine into lungs seems to smooth out the tremble, soothe the rage just under Erik's skin. "You are so young," comes at long last, wistful and grieving and quietly enraged all at once. "All of you. I could be some of your Mongrels great-grandfather." His gaze casts up to the ferris wheel, nudging some blockage of fallen metal out of the mechanism's way to let it spin. "I will not stop working for a world you can all find that joy among the graves. But my eyesight fails me -- I see shadows and ghosts at every corner. Made those ghosts, even, hunting in your oppressors' cities." There's just a glint of some grim amusement there, quickly gone again. Eyes dip to his hands when he removes the cigarette from his lips, the empty space at the base of each ring finger. "Your Freaktown, it has reminded me of better days. And what ended them. Perhaps..." On the next drag off the cigarette the case and lighter float to Ion, bobbing just a little less steadily than usual in the interference of Ion's bioelectric field. "...perhaps I jump at the shadows too quickly. She --" A quick intake of breath, that frenetic intensity creeping back into his voice, "--she was caged for a decade, you said? You know this?" "Damn but there some people out there that needed ghosting." Ion sounds quite pleased at Erik's mention of Argentinian Hunting Ground. He's watching the creaky old attraction on its journey -- every once in a while some light bulb decorating an arm or a car struggles to light itself, then gutters out, but the movement continues. "Shit, more than. Busted her own damn self out -- she was in with your girl, you know? Polaris and Leo and Flicker and allem. Some bad ass motherfuckers, only lab I ever heard of worked up a plan from inside and got their own selves out, and that's with them damn power-grids in every fucking cage now." He was trying not to eye Erik's cigarettes with too much hunger but his relief is quite evident when the case bobs over. He snags it out of midair, plucks a cigarette gratefully to light it before kind of uncertainly releasing the case and lighter back into midair. "S'gonna end, too. But when it does, we build something new, huh?" Erik did not know, it seems, from the way he sucks too-hard-too-fast on the end of the cigarette. Blows the smoke up into the sky, up towards the top of the ferris wheel. "From generation to generation, it's the same," he muses, softly. "We are persecuted. We fight." His eyes track back east, just where his hand dropped before, where some other horror ended. "We free ourselves." The cigarette case and lighter bob back to his open palm and land. Erik looks over to Ion again. "We build and build again." Another steadying drag of tobacco, followed by a slump of shoulder. "We depend on our fellows to guide our failing eyes and indiscriminate rage." He scrubs his knuckles against his cheek. "Oy, but I am too old to apologize well." Ion pulls on his cigarette, long but slower as he nods at Erik's words. "S'what a Brother for." When he lets the breath back out there's a more genuine relaxation that settles into his posture and likely has very little to do with the nicotine, judging by how his wary gaze is finally relaxing its constant-ticking vigilance towards Erik. "Shiiiit, I'onno from English good enough to tell if you do it bad. Anahita, though, maybe she like a lil thought behind it." His shoulders roll, and though he takes a step closer to Erik he doesn't seem in any hurry to rush through his smoke and return, casually amused now with his, "... damn. my chicken gonna be so fucking burned."