Logs:If someone is burdened with the blood of another, let that killer be a fugitive until death; let no one offer assistance.

If someone is burdened with the blood of another, let that killer be a fugitive until death; let no one offer assistance.
Dramatis Personae Akihiro, Carnage, Leo	2022-05-15 "That was fucked up, right? Fuck. Tryin' to work on that. Sorry. Fuck."
Location <BOM> Training Center - Bom Lodge
Down a short flight of stairs off of the common room, this room is a departure from the homier stone and wood upstairs. Its bare concrete walls are clearly basementy in feel, though its floor has been refurbished in gleaming synthetic flooring marked out like a basketball court. This spacious gymnasium includes a variety of punching bags -- of several compositions (for normal strength mutants or mutants on the high end of the spectrum) -- a boxing ring, a wall for climbing, several lengths of rope, and many, many training dummies for people to practice their powers on. Someone's dressed up one of the training dummies as a police officer, and scrawled a dopey smiley face on it; the sign on his chest declares him to be 'OFFICER SHITS-HIS-PANTS'. Officer Shits-His-Pants has seen better days; by the look of him, he's been set on fire and lost at least one of his limbs. In the back room is more training equipment -- everything from boxing gloves, medical tape, sports equipment, and even some unusual customized equipment for the more 'physical' mutants. The infirmary door stands near the stairway leading back up. KWTHHNK. Cletus -- Carnage, when he's 'on-the-clock' -- has slipped in here later during the evening, when most of the other mutants are away. KWTHHHNK. The lanky ginger's left eye-socket is filled with an unnatural moon-yellow glow; delicate wisps of smoke rise from it, as if the blood within is actively burning. His left arm is pure crimson from the elbow down -- with a hand that ends in sharpened steak-knives instead of fingertips. KWTHHHNK. As for what he's doing... he's currently launching those fingers -- just like steak-knives! -- out from his hand, letting them slam into OFFICER SHITS-HIS-PANTS' torso -- from about fifty feet away. After he's launched all his 'fingers', he stops, approaches OFFICER-SHITS-HIS-PANTS, and touches his digit-less hand to the 'pommel' of each crystallized blade... absorbing it back into the artificial 'knuckle'. Then, he walks back to repeat the process. Somewhere behind him, there's a small cooler -- with words scraped across it in rusted red: `BLOOD NOT BEER (DO NOT OPEN)` The footsteps on the stairs leading down here are very quiet. In sharp contrast to his usual attire, today Leo is dressed in black track pants, sneakers, a daisy-yellow quick-dry tee. He's already had some measure of discomfiture on his face that only grows when he reaches the gym and spies Carnage already at practice. His hands wring slowly together, brows pinching and his teeth biting down against his lower lip. Though he opens his mouth once, twice -- he doesn't quite get out whatever he was thinking of asking. Some fifteen or twenty seconds later a much heavier set of footsteps can be heard as Akihiro half jogs down them. He's dressed in a pair of gray sweatpants and a burgundy tank-top that are already soaked in sweat from his run around the island. Once at the base of the stairs he pauses and looks around, "Guess I'm not the only one looking to get a little practice in this evening." His gaze falls onto Carnage causing his brows to pinch together slightly before a flash or recognition hits him, "Carnage, right? Don't think we've met outside of getting ready for the jailbreak." KWTHHHHHNK! The next knife-throw is off by a large margin; it barely nicks the side of OFFICER-SHITS-HIS-PANTS, spinning frantically off-target and clattering to the floor. Carnage clicks his teeth and hisses, stalking toward the knife to shove his bare toe at it. It melts and engulfs his foot, flowing up the leg of his grey sweat-pants. He cracks his neck, turns -- and stalks back to the spot he's marked on the floor. Never even once acknowledging Leo's presence! He's getting ready for his next throw when Akhiro speaks. "Aaa-yep," he states, right before -- fwosh! THWWWNK! This one thwacks into the dummy's flank. Carnage grimaces, not turning. "I remember you. Your blood smells funny." He sniffs the air, and -- finally! -- does turn back, his eyes settling directly on Leo. "...don't think I've smelled you before, though." Sniff, sniff. "Yeah, you're definitely new." Leo twitch-jumps, startled at the footsteps behind him -- he's hastily moving out of the way when Akihiro thumps in. "I'm not new," his protest is too meek to be all that indignant, "I've been here longer than you have." His eyes are skimming from Carnage to Akihiro, and he skirts back against the wall, his arms crossing over his chest. "What do we -- smell like?" "Yeah, weird how?" Akihiro asks, the muscles in his forearms twitching subtly at the perceived insult. "I could see me not smelling great right now, but I figured my blood smelled normal." He turns his gaze over to Leo, "It's a little odd explaining to people with regular noses what they smell like, at least I've never been great at it." "Aw, shit. I didn't mean -- I meant new to me. Everybody's been here longer than me, I'm a goddamn..." Carnage's tone is a mixture between apologetic and annoyed, though the annoyance sounds self-directed. He throws another knife -- FWSH! -- that's a complete miss. The blade strikes the concrete wall, shattering like glass. Blood-red shards glitter on the floor. Carnage snarls. His arm snaps out, spearing across the room. The dummy is impaled, reeled in like a fish -- and then Carnage's head is swelling like a blister, turning pink, then red. And then -- CRNRRRNCH. A mouth full of serrated teeth bite down into the dummy like someone might bite into an apple. An instant later, Carnage spits the mangled dummy's head out... his own head rapidly shrinking, the blood receding into Carnage's skin. In just a few seconds, he's back to looking like a ginger with an empty eye-socket. Even his arm is gone. "...fuckin'... fuckin' sorry. Not used to -- fuck. That was fucked up, right? Fuck. Tryin' to work on that. Sorry. Fuck." Akihiro's words go fully ignored as Carnage mangles the dummy. Leo's eyes have gone very, very wide. He looks between the mangled dummy-head on the ground -- to Carnage's head -- back to the dummy -- back to Carnage. He's shrunk back juuust a little closer to the wall. "We --" His voice is very tentative when he speaks, like he's having to summon up the words over great reluctance, "-- can probably. Get a new dummy." Akihiro's reaction is completely different from Leo's, a grin forming on his face and any imagined slight seemingly forgotten. "Alright, I'll admit it, that's pretty cool. I can see why all those guards were running towards me instead of away." Walking over he scoops the head up and inspects it, "That being said, most the other members don't really appreciate how easily I do murder, so take what I say with a few grains of salt." Cletus -- all of the blood is gone, now, having fully retracted into his body -- seems to grow even more agitated in response to Leo's response, taking several steps away while raising both hands (well, just one; the other 'hand' is just an elbow). "I'm -- I'm not gonna hurt you, I swear, I'm not -- I'm not fuckin' dangerous. I mean, okay yes I am I'm fucking dangerous as fuck --" and for just a moment, Cletus's distraught face is interrupted by a manic sort of grin, even as he takes another step back -- "but I'm not dangerous to any of you, not -- not... anymore. I swear." The grin has faded, replaced with a crumpled brow of concern. He glances toward the mangled head and Akhiro: "--I didn't even kill any of those guys. Like fuck, I wanted to. I really wanted to, but... Dusk asked me not to do my whole..." He swallows, looking down at his bare feet. Hand(s) still up. "It's like. You ever just..." There's a flicker of light in that empty socket. "...wanna... fuckin' murder the world?" Leo's eyes flick to Akihiro, his lips twisting thinner, but he makes no comment on ease of murder. His tight-clenched arms, hunched shoulders, ease up fractionally under Cletus's reassurances. "Sorry," he says softly, "it was just -- startling." Despite the reassurances, it's Cletus's final statement that relax his posture properly. He doesn't smile, but the thin press of his lips evens out into a neutral thoughtfulness. "Oh," he replies, quiet, "every single day." The grin on Akihiro's face fades as Cletus talks, replaced with a sad sort of understanding. "Yeah, Ion seemed kind of disgusted with me decapitating that guard. I just didn't say anything about it to him." Without looking he tosses the dummy's head over in front of where it's feet would be. "Between the torture, being used as a weapon, and the world changing so much I can barely recognize it anymore, yes. I train every day like I'm expecting the feds to finally raid us, and it doesn't help at all. Honestly I'm just waiting to finally meet somebody that can kill me." Something about Leo's quiet response calms Cletus; the mania melts away. He lowers his hands, peering at him with that lone eye -- as if searching for something familiar, there. Little by little, the red arm returns, swirling out like a slowly growing vine of crimson, only to bloom into four fingers and a thumb... while the yellow glow returns to that socket. "...huh." He partly turns, extending his foot... red lines stretch out from his big toe in jagged, fractalized patterns, thin as a pencil -- slowly making their way toward the distant remnants of that shattered knife. He glances back at Akihiro, a slightly manic grin flickering across his face: "I mean... you can do a lot of shit with blood." "Sorry," he says, to Leo -- not looking back at him. His voice is soft, now; none of the earlier panic. "It's not an excuse, but... it's hard to control when you can't even talk about it, show it, without... scaring the shit out of everyone." Leo's lip thin again at the mention of torture and being used as a weapon. His head tilts, minute and curious, to the side as he regards Akihiro. "Do you want to die?" His expression softens when he looks back to Cletus. Now he's just back to his baseline level of Fidgeting, fingers playing restlessly with the hem of his tee shirt. "It is hard," he agrees, "when what you are is terrifying to people." His eyes lower to the floor. "I'd think here of all places, at least some of us might understand." "I imagine. A lot more than I can do with my hands and claws." Akihiro says with a nod towards Cletus, his forearms flexing again, only this time three claws burst out from between his knuckles. "Sometimes." he answers Leo honestly, not looking back at the man. "More often when I was younger, why I threw myself into my missions as hard as I did. I've killed thousands hoping they'd put up enough of a fight, and some came close. I know I've met plenty now that could, but I have too much respect for them to pick a fight. Hell, I'm sure you easily could if you really wanted to." With that his claws retract, the small wounds they left behind closing up almost instantly. Carnage is deep in concentration, working to extend those lines of red across the floor just a few more feet... for a moment, his crimson fist clenches, the fingers themselves retracting. His breathing grows deep, brow crumpling... the tips of those red lines touch the jagged crystals at the end of the room, absorbing them -- and at once, the lines dart back toward him, re-absorbed up into Carnage's foot. "Mhh..." he exhales, like he just stretched a muscle. "Yeah. 'Here Be Monsters'. Heh." When Akihiro's claws burst forth, Carnage turns his head, sniffs the air, and grunts. He then moves toward the cooler. "I can't do that... heal-y thing, though," he says, waggling his blood fingers. He crouches besides the cooler. "Don't think I ever wanted to die. Just never really... gave a shit, one way or another. Till recently." Just before he opens the cooler, he pauses, raising his eyebrows at Akihiro's comment, swinging his gaze back to Leo. His mouth turns up in amusement: "What, you some sort of bad-ass?" "Who -- were you doing those missions for?" Leo wonders curiously. He gives a sympathetic wince to Carnage, a very small nod. "It's -- harder to care, in those cages." His eyes widen at Carnage's question, and he shakes his head. "Oh, I'm -- I'm no kind of bad-ass." "The Weapon Plus program out of Canada. They were planning on making super soldiers in case of a mutant human war, but back then there were barely any of us, so they ended up fielding me in Vietnam and using me as an assassin. Ended up being used by them for a little over thirty years before Magneto recruited me to the Mutant Liberation Front." Akihiro explains, brushing over decades of history. "I don't talk about it much, but I've been around since before the Brotherhood was the Brotherhood, even helped get ready for the Liberty Island attack. Couldn't help but feel like a failure when they caught him." The cooler -- marked `BLOOD NOT BEER (DO NOT OPEN)` -- is flipped open. Inside, five bottles of stout embedded in chipped ice. Carnage plucks three of them out, dangled by their necks between his red knuckles. They clink as he shakes them. He offers either man a bottle, flicking the cap off with a thumbclaw if they accept. Otherwise, back into the cooler they go! "Oh no, you can't pull that humility shit -- not after the Highlander over here just told me you could body him," Carnage replies, grinning wildly. "What is it? You light people on fire? Turn 'em into spaghetti? C'mon, you ain't gonna freak me out, I've eaten--" The manic grin vanishes. Something pained swoops over Carnage's face; he stops, steps back, looks away. "--uh. You don't have to say, if you don't want to." He glances back at Akihiro, his eyebrows lifting high. "...th' fuck? Are you the Highlander?" "Sorry, you -- killed people for the humans who tortured you? For three decades?" Leo has no poker face; though his voice is gentle, it's impossible to mistake the disdain in his expression. He does accept one of the beers (with a fleeting amused smile at the cooler it's come from), letting his contempt melt away with his first long gulp. "No, nothing like that. I -- I make diseases." He sounds mildly embarrassed by this, happy to be distracted into: "What's the Highlander?" "Technically I did it for the man I considered my adoptive father, until I realized he was just using me." Akihiro says with a sigh, taking the beer with a grateful nod. "I wouldn't be surprised if he's the one that actually killed my little brother, knowing my mother would blame me for it and cause my claws to pop for the first time." "I've actually seen that movie, yeah. Immortal swordsmen that can't die unless they're decapitated. Pretty spot on actually, seeing as I'm one of the last actual samurai." At the mention of 'killing people for the humans who tortured you', Carnage just takes a very, very long swig of his stout. And chooses silence. When he's finishing -- wiping his mouth with the back of his hand -- he catches Leo's mention of his power: "Diseases? Like... any disease?" A pause: "Some of us can do shit like that? That's..." A ghost of a grin curls over Carnage's mouth, but then fades to something far more soft, far more melancholy, as he watches Leo. "...oh." This longer explanation does not make Leo any less disdainful -- mostly just baffled as Akihiro keeps speaking. "That -- does -- not sound like a good father." He tries to rearrange his face into an expression of sympathy, with middling results. His hand curls tight around his beer bottle, thumbnail scraping against the corner of the label. He's studying Carnage pensively through that silence, shaking his head when the other man breaks it. "No, it's -- more than any disease. New ones, too. The labs are -- well." His smile is just a wisping ghost of a thing, small and bitter. "You learn a lot about yourself in there, yeah?" "I was twelve, I didn't know any better." Akihiro says, leaving it at that and taking a long drag from the stout. "The labs and the bigots seem like the one constant thing, it's the only reason I haven't just disappeared. I couldn't live with myself if I just stopped fighting, I'm not Logan." "Yeah. You do." Quiet, sullen. Carnage is eyeing his toes, again. After a moment of listening to Akihiro, he replies, without looking up: "I don't remember how old I was, but... I knew better. Even as a little kid, I knew. I just think at a certain point, I just..." He fights to lift his eyes up to meet Leo's. He can't seem to quite bring himself to. "It's fucked up to say, but I'm glad... that I couldn't do what you can. I would've just given up. I did give up. I would've..." He shakes his head, turns away, and downs as much of the stout as he can stomach. He still can't quite look at Leo, turning to the side as he wipes his mouth: "You ever read that story, the one with the kid they keep in a cage under the city? The one they're like... torturing and shit?" "You were twelve for -- thirty years." Leo sounds flatly unimpressed. "The only reason -- what have you done to stop the --" He pulls himself up short and scrubs his knuckles against his cheek, blowing out a hard breath. "Sorry," he says next, quiet, "your life really isn't my business." He's regarding Carnage steadily over his next swig of beer. "I think I'm glad I can't do what you can," he replies. "Killing would probably have been way easier to justify to myself if I was literally starving for it. But with what I do do, there was no amount of torture that made what they were asking seem..." He shakes his head slowly, very deliberately not looking back to Akihiro. "The Le Guin story? I think -- English class, a million years ago." Akihiro’s grip tightens, causing the bottle to shatter in his hand, sending what little beer was left in it and some of his blood to splash onto the floor. “You’re right, I’m just a fucking idiot.” he practically snarls, before shooting Carnage as much of an apologetic glance as he can, “I’m sorry for wasting your beer.” Without another word he turns and marches back up the stairs, heading out of the common room. "Maybe, I dunno. I don't even know when I read it," Carnage confesses. "They're torturing this kid to keep this city running perfectly, and the story's about how they let everybody living there know, one at a time, and -- they either accept it, or they leave. And I remember thinking... what the fuck? Fuck leaving. Grab a flame-thrower. Burn every last fucker who saw that kid and thought burning down that world wasn't the right choice." As Akihiro's bottle shatters, Carnage's head shoots up -- his nostrils flare, catching the scent of blood. He stares at the splatter on the floor, lost in thought -- he doesn't look hungry, but he certainly looks... interested. Like a cat who's just eaten dinner but suddenly sees something scrambling across the floor. He shakes his head: "It's fine," he tells Akihiro as he leaves. He finishes the thought, still staring at the blood-splatter: "But now, I just think... how fucked is it that we might live in a world that survives only by the grace of some kid in a cage -- and they haven't pulled the trigger? How fucked is it that I -- kind of want them to?" Leo flinches at the shattering bottle; his death grip on his own bottle produces no such results. "No," he says at Akihiro's snarl, though his expression very much says 'Yes'. "It's just..." But whatever else he has to say he lets it drop as Akihiro storms off, picking harder at the label on the beer bottle and letting his eyes fix steadily on the blood splashed on the floor. "I think," he says slowly, "there's a middle ground that the story doesn't cover. There are people working hard to free those kids -- make a world where we'd never..." He swallows, hard. Shakes his head hard. "Though I guess that's why the story never had that option. Because after being in the cage you can't just -- return to life. You have to wake up every single day in that same world and decide --" Now his eyes are flicking toward the stairs that Akihiro just tromped up. He looks back to Carnage with a softer curiosity. "What stops you from trying to burn it all down?" "Someone was kind to me, once," Carnage replies -- still eyeing the blood. His red hand extends, stretching slowly outward... as it lightly touches the blood-splatter, the puddle rapidly retracts inward to his fingertips. "Made me feel like I was worth something, just for a little while. If not for that, I don't think..." His voice trails off. "I wouldn't even care." Leo just nods at this, slow and understanding. He bows his head, teeth clicking against the lip of his bottle though he lowers it again without taking another sip. "I'm glad. You are worth... everyone should have some kindness in their life." Now he manages a hesitant smile. "Besides, burning the world down kills a lot of people trapped in it. I think maybe -- a focused destruction gets more people free."