Lemons

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn didn't answer right away, opting instead to help Dahlia pick up her clothes, shake the ice cubes out of the shoes, find the sweatpants in the freezer, and so on and so forth. It was almost impressive just how much Roaki had managed to accomplish with no legs and one arm in such a short time. After bringing it all back into Dahlia's room, she returned to the common area, sinking down into her beloved blue chair and staring up the ceiling before she finally responded, a look on her face that could only be described as brittle.

"...No. I didn't figure anything out. I think I'm even more confused." She paused, took a breath, thought. At least her entire brain wasn't trying to combust in on itself anymore. Talking to her sister and deep breathing, probably. Both of those were things that calmed her down, so combining them--and the distraction of Roaki's textile slaughter--had her thinking pretty straight again. "Buuuut I did figure out that I can't figure it out right now, and that I shouldn't worry about it until I can."

That was, of course, underselling the turmoil that was still boiling inside of her, threatening to burst out at any moment; Quinn was emotionally fragile at the best of times, and this was not exactly that. But she found that when she was with Roaki, it was a bit easier to keep it all down, to hide it and deal with it later. Perhaps it was an artifact of the way that they'd talked when Roaki was still in that room in medical, or perhaps it was just the ways that their personalities played. But even though she really did want to curl up in a ball again and keep crying some more, she...wasn't. A faint ghost of what might one day be a smile came to her face as she considered that Roaki could therefore be perhaps classified as a good influence. "So...thanks--"

She realized only after she said it that she didn't exactly know what she wanted to thank Roaki for. Just that she did. So she paused for a second, only to shake her head a moment later.

"Just...thanks."

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn...stared. At the clothing scattered around, the brutal fabric massacre covering essentially the entire common room of the dorms. Dahlia screaming at Roaki. Justifiably.

Stared some more, at the entire bizarre tableau.

Stared at Roaki, as she let fly a bunch more of Dahlia's clothes.

The spell was broken as a pair of balled-up socks bonked her in the nose, prompting a sneeze of alarm. Her eyebrow twitched, and the loud, jagged grinding in her head was nearly audible as her brain abruptly shifted gears that were not, at that moment, prepared to shift. Dahlia's stuff being thrown about--Dahlia yelling--Roaki doing it--Quinn's affection for Roaki--

The socks that had bounced off her face rolled to a stop a few feet away from her, and for a moment that felt frozen in time she just...stood there. And blinked. And stared at the socks, completely unsure what she should do in this situation.

Then the gears in her brain caught and started to move again, and something like a strangled growl crossed with a tired groan seeped from her throat. She marched up to Roaki, face caught in some bizarre triangulation between sadness, confusion, and stormy frustration. Taking care not to step on Dahlia's dress, she stood in front of the smaller--and legless--girl, took a deep breath, bent down, lifted her hand, and...

Flicked her once, gently. Right in the middle of the forehead. "Roaki, you..." she chided--then paused, and the chiding tone left her voice, to be replaced by restrained frustration. Still gentle, as Quinn always was with Roaki, but present nonetheless as Quinnlash's anger reared its head as well. "Apologize to Dahlia. Right now." She took another deep breath as she straightened, trying to quell the irritation and annoyance that were bubbling up in her. She'd had a long day. "You're acting like a child. You're better than this."

Amygdala Circuit

As Dahlia, clearly as shocked as she herself was, stumbled out questions, Quinn could only nod dumbly along, eye wide.

Yes, she should be dead. By all rights, from everything she knew of modium--which was more than a lot of people--she should've died a long time ago. Years. Modium did not pull its punches, and the idea of a growth sitting benign in her head for that long was--as far as she was aware--unprecedented. That she was alive at all was a miracle, and not a small one; and the fact that even her existing growth had never swelled after sessions in the cockpit just added another layer of unreality to the entire surreal thing.

And...yes. Yes, Follen had to know. He was the one that had come up with the idea for the surgery; and the one who'd prepared her for the surgery, cleared her for operating; and the one who'd performed the surgery, without ever telling Besca until it was already done. The idea that he didn't know was, frankly, impossible, especially since he'd tapped her on the growth just earlier that day. Why? Why did he--he had never done that before, why did he? And why didn't he ever tell her?

"I--"

Quinn's thoughts--dropped from their earlier racing babble--slowed in her head like molasses. The eyepatch in her lap felt suddenly like it weighed a hundred pounds, all pressing down on her. She wanted to run and hide but there was no way to run or hide from your own head, so she instead curled up against the wall again, staring down at her knees as she pulled them up to her chest. Her voice shook as she spoke:

"I don't know."

Heiseina: Memories Long Forgotten

---

"Aww, if you say so. I'll see if I can bring you some food, 'kay?"

Haruhi's mouth opened to continue talking...then abruptly snapped shut again with alarming speed as she heard shouting in the street, followed by someone new arriving. And not someone that hadn't been at the forge before; she probably wouldn't have even stopped talking, were that the case. Someone...new.

"I am Captain Ashida Katsuro of the Blazing Fist." A pause. "I was hoping you could help me."

She didn't recognize his voice. She didn't recognize his name. She didn't recognize the organization he was part of. And hey, she was nothing if not friendly, she backed slightly away from Mio and poked her head out of the shop interior, preparing to go out and greet him. Though...she didn't recognize what he was carrying with him, either. She'd spent her whole life working with tools, more--she wagered--than most others in the valley because of her stubborn refusal to use Signs. She could tell the purpose of pretty much any tool on sight; a pick for breaking rocks, a kama for harvesting grain, an axe for splitting wood, a shovel for digging, a hoe and a plow for tilling the soil...

...She couldn't tell what this was, or what it did. But for some reason she didn't understand, looking at it sent a searing blast of anxiety and...terror racing up her spine like ice. As her mind stuttered and stopped and she nearly tripped over herself as she changed course from approach to retreat, she shrank away, stumbling backwards deeper into the shop and unable to take her eyes off of whatever the thing was that was in front of her. She dropped the hoe in her hand with a loud clatter and tipped over, falling to the hard floor with a muffle sound of surprise and pain.

---

Interactions: Mio @McMolly

Amygdala Circuit

Quinn's thoughts stuttered to a stop.

"W--what?"

How? How could that...? That didn't make any sense. She'd been so angry, Quinn had seen it in her eyes, she had been furious. Didn't that mean--how could it not--

"But, but, you saw it after the duel, right?" She reached a hand up to take Dahlia's, pulling it from her face and squeezing it tightly, face writ with confusion as she began once again to fumble over her words. It didn't make sense. It didn't make any sense. None of this made any sense at all.

"That's--isn't that why you--you got so angry I thought you--" She swallowed hard, cutting off her babbling, and her eye flicked over to the penlight that Roaki had left on the nightstand. She grabbed at it, pulling it towards them, but dropped it before it could reach her, tumbling down and rolling under the bed. She reached down to get it, but only barely managed to pull herself back to stop from falling herself. She swallowed heavily, feeling the hysterical tears starting to bubble towards the surface again, and closed her eye to keep them locked down.

Oh. That was right, Dahlia could see in the dark anyway.

At that thought, Quinn turned to her, yanking the eyepatch off her head to reveal the twisted expanse of gray scarring that dominated the right side of her face before leaning in towards her.

"Look," she begged, eye still shut tight as she hoarsely whispered. "Just--look--please."

Arknights: 5S

Aoife followed after Baltasar, joints cracking as she did from previous inactivity. She'd been in Hisn-ul-Zahra for about a week now, but she wasn't going outside much. Tara, after all, was a chilly, cloudy, damp place; deep forests, verdant swamps, misty rain. A part of her missed her homeland deeply, but an equal part of her knew that she could never go back; that though it might've been her homeland, it certainly was no longer her home.

Hisn-ul-Zahra, on the other hand...it could not be described as "chilly," or "cloudy," or "damp," by any stretch of the imagination. It was scorching hot, perfectly clear, and dry as a bone. Stepping outside of the branch office was extremely uncomfortable and had her sweating bullets almost immediately.

That, and she seemed to catch a lot of looks whenever she went out. There weren't many Vouivre in the town, she'd found, and those that were certainly didn't look much like her, with her arctic palette. She wrapped her long, scaled blue-black tail around her leg through force of habit, keeping it tucked out of the way save for the forever twitching tip.

The point was, she'd stayed in the branch office, for the most part, so the orphanage was, by and large, unfamiliar. Thus she propped herself on the wall and waited by the door, eyes closed, and listened to the explanation of the children. A strange tent? A strange military tent? Touching a jar and nothing else to win a monetary prize, and the hawker specifically calling children over? She frowned slightly. And then Nur vanishing immediately afterwards, followed by an equally immediate departure of the tent? She didn't like it. She didn't like it at all.

Still, she stayed by the door, doing her best to stay out of everyone's hairs. Or, she had stayed, until she heard Baltasar's response, at which point she grimaced, stood, and walked quietly over to stand directly behind him as she spoke for the first time since they'd left the branch office:

"Worth checking out. What hawker would use a military-style tent, and leave in the middle of the day?" She shook her head laconically. "It doesn't make sense and I don't like it."

Arknights: 5S

<Snipped quote by Nanolyte>

Great, you can throw her into the character tab. I'll get a starting post up tomorrow hopefully.

I also wanted to ask both of you if there were any canon operators you would like to be NPCs in this RP?

@Stern Algorithm

Ah, and before I forget: I feel like it's borderline necessary to have Aoife interact with Reed at some point.

Amygdala Circuit

As usual, Dahlia's voice interrupted the static.

"Just breathe for me, okay?"

The frantic thoughts jerked, and Quinn breathed.

In, out. One, two, three.

She dropped her hands from her forehead and found a few strands of hair coming along with them where she'd pulled them out at the roots. They trembled as she held them out in front of her, staring sightlessly at them with an eye at once vague, faraway, and horrified. Not just her hands; her whole body was shivering along with them. Her jaw clenched and unclenched unconsciously, creaking out a rhythm on her bones. The same refrain seethed through her head: why? Why? Why? Why?

In, out. One, two, three.

The frantic hammering of her heart, so deafening in her ears, began to slow, to abate. She pulled her hands into fists, squeezing them rock hard in an effort to stop them from shaking. It worked. Up to a point. It was no longer so visible or extreme, but she still felt it, even if it couldn't be seen as well. She squeezed harder, closing her eye tight and trying to blot everything out so she could think straight.

In, out. One, two, three.

Now she finally began to calm down. The full-body shivering was almost gone now, and the hands weren't too far behind. She let the tight fists go, and her eye opened as well. It was still a little distant, but at least it seemed to be focused this time, as she pulled herself out of her head.

Her voice was still weak and reedy, but it wasn't as bad, and it wasn't frantic. She was almost sadly proud at how it almost didn't shake like a leaf, even if you could steal hear the tears in it.

"I..."

"I felt under my eyepatch." She let her fingers skate lightly over the fabric in question, swallowing down another spike of fear and confusion.

"Why didn't anyone ever tell me?"

Arknights: 5S

Hmm, she's more a blob of threads really, all people are to Seven.

But beyond that their proooobably simultaneously frayed and frozen simultaneously, with lots of the 'better' threads seemingly snipped off or frayed and leading to dead ends. Oh, and given the extent of Infection, it's incredibly 'twisted'. Probably manifests as some kind of mold growing on her that gives off very, very bad vibes.

While Seven can kinda deduce that Aoife has had a rough past, and has some connection to ice, she doesn't really know more then that. Her hatred for the sight basically means it's only useful for identifying human vs non-human and for general vibes. In the end it's manifestation is coloured by her experiences in the Infy Icefields, so she's more geared towards differentiating say, demons and humans compared to actually divining stuff through threads.

@Nanolyte

Oh that's SUPER neato. Such a cool power.

Arknights: 5S

You know, just rereading Seven's sheet @Nanolyte, I am really curious what 'twisted karma' Aoife shows; she's had an odd life and all.