The Random Scenario Meme 3.0

[emeraldfields]

THE RANDOM SCENARIO MEME 3.0


- Post your character, name, and series in the subject. Include any preferences as well.
- Go to RNG and enter 1-6 for a scene type, and 1-20 for a scene to play out.

TYPE OF SCENE.
① Action → Gun fights, bar brawls, fights to the death are all possible scenarios.
② Angst → Characters suffer emotionally or physically from relationships breaking up, death, injury, etc. Hurt and comfort themes are included.
③ Crack → Genderswaps, super powers, sudden compulsions are all possible outcomes.
④ Fluff → Something that is devoid of angst. It's light-hearted and might have the overtone of romance.
⑤ Gen → General fun, things that didn't fit in the other categories.
⑥ Sex → First times, kinks, even dubcon are all possible themes of sex related scenarios.
⑦ Your choice → Think of your own scenario, choose one of the above or make a combo even!

ACTION.
① Zombies → It's the zombie apocalypse, lock and load!
② Bar brawl → You had one too many drinks, said something wrong, and now you're being asked to take it outside.
③ Chase → You're caught in a high speed chase.
④ Gun fight → You're caught in a big shoot-out.
⑤ Fight with a friend → You're fighting with a friend, all out.
⑥ Interrogation → You're being interrogated for some offense you've done.
⑦ Aliens → Aliens are attacking and you're not going to take your probe laying down!
⑧ Final battle → This is it. The battle that will end all the fighting for you. Will you win? Will you get that peace you want?
⑨ Training → You're not actually fighting, just training for the inevitable.
⑩ No hope → You know this fight has no hope. It's not going to end well for anyone involved, but you can't turn away.
⑪ Sneaking in → You're stealing a diamond or sneaking in to kick some bad guy butt, but whatever it is, you have to practice stealth.
⑫ Blue wire → You're faced with a bomb that needs to be disarmed.
⑬ Fight for honor → You've been disgraced or someone you care about has, so it's time to fight for honour.
⑭ Showdown → Time for a cowboy-style showdown. Whoever draws the fastest wins.
⑮ War → You're caught in the middle of a war here. Remember to keep your chin up and keeping fighting.
⑯ Apocalypse → The apocalypse finally happened and now you're left to scavenge and fight for whatever is left.
⑰ Sabotage → It's time to sabotage someone's plan! How is entirely up to you. Do you set up a bomb in their toilet? Do you double cross them at the last minute?
⑱ Big damn hero → You know you have to handle this one alone, so that means disarming or knocking unconscious the person who wants to join you.
⑲ Fight club → You know the rules... you're in an underground fighting ring and you're fighting with all you've got.
⑳ Threaten → You've just been sent here to rough them up a little, threaten them into behaving.

ANGST.
① Injury / illness → Your character has become injured or ill! To what extent is the mun's choice.
② Last moments → You character has been gravely injured and this is their last chance to say their last words.
③ Depression → Your character is depressed, what actions they take is up to the mun.
④ Betrayed → You character has been betrayed by the other. How do they react?
⑤ Tortured → Your character is being tortured and needs rescuing or at least a sympathetic ear to help him through it.
⑥ Jealousy → Your character is feeling jealous and must deal with it, how will they do it?
⑦ Breakup! → This relationship has gone as far as it can, it's time to breakup.
⑧ Broken → For whatever reason, the character is broken, mentally or or physically.
⑨ Fight → You can't even be in the same room as your friend or lover without arguing anymore.
⑩ Lost → You lost the biggest fight of your life and now all you can do is try to pick up the pieces.
⑪ Worst nightmare → Whatever you fear the most is now real or maybe you're just trapped in a dream together, but whatever it is, it feels too real.
⑫ Addicted → You're addicted to something, alcohol, drugs, sex, whatever. It's destroying your life and you can't do anything to stop it.
⑬ Hurt you → You're being forced to hurt someone you love either by betraying them or even being forced to shout things you don't mean. It's for their own good in the end though.
⑭ Separation → You were forced to leave this person for their own safety and while you've been miserable without them, you really didn't mean to run into them again... maybe it was by accident or you were watching them from afar this whole time.
⑮ Becoming a monster → You are slowly changing, becoming a monster: vampire, zombie, demon, something you can't recover from and no-one can help you.
⑯ Frozen → You are entirely helpless, frozen, to stop some kind of disaster.
⑰ Prison → You were very bad and now it's time to pay the price by turning yourself in or maybe the law just finally caught up to you.
⑱ Fear → You're not sure why, but you are suddenly terrified and you can't deal with it. You need help.
⑲ Hated → You are now hated by the person you loved the most.
⑳ Down and out → You're living on the streets, you've hit rock bottom, and you don't know what to do.

CRACK.
① Sexswap → Uh-oh, you're suddenly the opposite sex!
② Forced confessions → No matter what it is and no matter how hard you resist, you're going to be compelled to spill some deep dark secret!
③ Mind-reading → You've suddenly got the ability to read minds!
④ Animal → You're suddenly part animal or transformed into an animal!
⑤ Awkward pick-up lines → You're compelled to use bad pickup lines on whoever is closest!
⑥ Back in School / Graduated → You're suddenly back in school! Or if you were already in it, you've aged and long since graduated!
⑦ Vampires, werewolves, and zombies, oh my! → You're suddenly a vampire, werewolf, or zombie! Maybe even a demon or a devil, whatever creepy crawly you can think of. What do you do now?
⑧ Ghost → You're suddenly a ghost or at least invisible. What are you going to do with this new ability?
⑨ Awkward conversations → So did you just fart or what? Any conversation goes, as long as it's embarrassing and awkward.
⑩ Crossdressing → For whatever reason, you're suddenly dressed in clothes of the opposite sex.
⑪ Suddenly naked → Oops! Your clothes are suddenly gone.
⑫ Suddenly a kid → You're a kid again! Have fun with that second childhood.
⑬ Fortune cookie → You've suddenly received a note with something that will happen in the future, either precise or vague.
⑭ Super power → And suddenly you're like Superman! Any power goes.
⑮ Bodyswap → Somehow you've changed bodies with the other person.
⑯ Back in time → Somehow, you wound up in the past again. Do you try to correct something or just sit and wait for time to jump? Maybe it jumps to various points in your life or maybe you actually think you're back in the day. Have fun, run wild with the idea!
⑰ To the future → Is it everything you've dreamed? Is it horrible? Whatever happens, you're here to witness what happens to you in the future. Either you take the place of your future self or you're just there to watch. Might cause some confusion if people start seeing double though...
⑱ Angels, mermaids, and fairies! → You're not necessary something dark or evil. You're just something different. How do you deal?
⑲ Locked in a closet → For some reason, you're locked up in a closet with someone else. Do you make nice and try to figure your way out or what?
⑳ Finger trap → You're caught in a Chinese finger trap... with somebody else! You can't figure out how to get loose either... have fun with that.

FLUFF.
① Cuddling → For whatever reason, characters feel like being close and cuddling.
② Pillow talk → After the main event, characters are up for some pillow talk.
③ Celebration → Anniversary or some other big event is taking place and characters want to celebrate!
④ Love confession → Someone has finally decided to confess their love and today is the day!
⑤ Appreciation → You feel the need to show appreciation for that person closest to you, even if it's just a pat on the back.
⑥ Apologies → You made a mistake and now it's time to make it up in some way you know the other can't refuse!
⑦ Get back together → Why did you break up again exactly? Whatever the reason, it was a huge mistake and you both know you can work through it.
⑧ Date night → You've planned for a wonderful night together and you can't wait to get it started.
⑨ Family → You've either found out you're pregnant or you've already got that addition to your family.
⑩ Marriage → You're just about to get hitched or maybe you're enjoying your honeymoon. Maybe you've been together for years now! Whatever the case, it's time for that next big step.
⑪ Meeting again → It's time for that happy reunion finally!
⑫ Love at first sight → For whatever reason, you are now insanely in love with the first person you set eyes on.
⑬ Flirtation → You can't resist to do a little bit of harmless flirtation all of a sudden.
⑭ In the snow → Look outside! It's a winter wonderland, so why not go out and play in it?
⑮ Engagement → You've planned it all out and now it's time to finally pop the question.
⑯ Friendly games → You've set up the game station or board games for a friendly competition!
⑰ Gift → Time to give that special someone a gift just because.
⑱ Recovery → You're taking care of someone who's just recovered from some illness or injury.
⑲ Healing → Time to help mend that someone who's been through hell and back.
⑳ Better than ever → You've finally got everything you've ever wanted here. What is your ideal life and who does it include?

GEN.
① Nice meeting you → It's your first time meeting this person! You bumped into each other on the street, in a bar, at work... whatever!
② Drinks → You're out for drinks! Or just chilling at home with some beers. Wherever!
③ Lost → You're lost and you kind of need help finding your way to where you're going. A little help with directions?
④ Costume party → You're at a costume party, both of you are wearing masks. Do you keep the anonymity or take it off and see whose company you've been enjoying?
⑤ Wrong number → Oops, actually you didn't mean to call that person...
⑥ Drunk → You're already drunk! Drunk dialing, stumbling into someone, showing up unexpected... what type of drunk are you anyway? Aggressive, loving, happy? How does the other react?
⑦ Old friends → you haven't seen this person in a long time!
⑧ Rivals → you're suddenly rivals! Or maybe you have been all along...
⑨ Problems → you've got a problem with each other, just got in a huge fight, whatever. Try to work it out!
⑩ What are your intentions... → This person? They're dating a close friend, family member, etc. You need to find out if they're going to hurt them! Or you need to discuss your friend/family's dating choice.
⑪ I saw you → you saw the other person doing something bad and you need to confront them about it.
⑫ Sorry but no → the other person has feelings that you just don't share. They don't necessarily have to be romantic... maybe you just don't agree with their sudden desire to quit their job and start a business making tiny, fuzzy teddy bears.
⑬ My hero → you need to tell this person how much they mean to you. They've been your best friend or your role model your whole life and they need to know.
⑭ Enabler → you're enabling the other (or each other) to do something bad, really bad. Addiction, stealing, killing, or just any other self-destructive behavior.
⑮ Cooking → Time for an impromptu cooking lesson!
⑯ Oh, sure, I remember you... → It's that awkward moment when someone comes up and seems to know you, but you have no idea who they even are!
⑰ Rescue! → One of you was in trouble, but you came to the rescue!
⑱ Boss → One of you works under the other. Is your relationship good? Are you scheming things? Or do you hate each other?
⑲ Perfect crime → You and the other person have just pulled off the perfect crime... or you're planning to! What are you doing? The heist of the century, an assassination?
⑳ Movies → movie night! Maybe it's a sleepover. Whichever the case, it's time to eat a lot and have fun.

SEX.
① First time → it's your first time together or your first time ever! Enjoy the awkward times!
② Bondage → You and your partner decide to experiment a little with ropes or handcuffs or whatever you'd like to tie your partner up with.
③ Rough / Aggressive → Your characters want it rough.
④ Romantic → Slow and gentle, meaningful, that's how characters want it.
⑤ Dubcon → Character A wants Character B and it doesn't really matter if Character B wants it as bad or not.
⑥ In public → Characters feel like taking a risk and doing it in a public place.
⑦ Roleplay → Naughty nurse fetish? Pirate kink? You and your partner decide to try it out now!
⑧ Healing → You've both fought hard or gone through a rough time and it's time to get some R&R in.
⑨ Last time → This is the last time you're going to this because you're breaking up or maybe your lover is running off to sacrifice their lives in some heroic way. The possibilities are endless, but you better make this one count.
⑩ No strings attached → You're just friends with benefits. Nothing wrong with that, right?
⑪ Anonymous → You met in a restroom or bar, any location of your choosing, but you don't even know each other's names.
⑫ Toys → You're eager to try something new, so why not toys?
⑬ Aphrodisiacs → You've been slipped a strong aphrodisiac somehow and now you absolutely cannot control yourself.
⑭ Show → You're putting on a show by either doing it right in the club or filming it for a bunch of people.
⑮ Ménage à trois → It's time for that threesome you've always dreamed of.
⑯ Non-penetrative → Frottage, handjobs, whatever you want to try out.
⑰ Controlled → You are under mind control and must do whatever your lover asks of you.
⑱ Hate sex → It's not just rough or aggressive, you absolutely cannot stand each other.
⑲ Extreme → Fisting, knife play, whatever you can think of so long as it tests the boundaries.
⑳ Fantasy → This is just a fantasy, a dream, and you know it, but what is your ideal fantasy and how willing is your partner?

Comments

[vakna]

When she is moved her head bobs as though in agreement, but she'd like to differ. An accomplice acquired by happenstance is still an accomplice. Cautioned as his judgement was he let the girl subscribe to his cause and hence recognized utility. In working toward a common goal their existences are intertwined.

"You already have."

It is his officers, she thinks, that must reconcile with the actuality of his decision. On the other hand, her enrollment in the fold is a flimsy vindication for doing what he did not hire her to do. There are still rules particular to an individual, but does she breach them? He humors her so-called misbehavior only to correct it piecemeal, which incrementally deepens her confusion.

Pensive she watches her collar rise under his thumb with her delayed, inaudible breathing. "No, you wouldn't, because you're complicated." The pilot's courtesy elicits a knowing if a touch contrite smile from the girl. "A bullet from a gun would say it all."

She takes his hand in hers and hooks her fingers in his glove and removes it without breaking eye contact or so much a blink. She settles his naked palm upon a triangle of skin where her collar had come unzipped, holds it, then guides his hand back of her own accord.

"You don't want to touch me, but hesitate and do. Have I forced your hand...?"

[alterplex]

Her freedom wouldn't be hard-won: if she ever had the inclination to leave, Venom would personally make sure that Eli be carted out of Mother Base, but circumstances are rarely so cut-and-dry. Choices are like dreams, oft-contemplated but hard-won.

The comment of him being complicated erodes at Venom's features. His hand on her skin is furnace-warm, blood roiling hot under the placid exterior of his physical shell.

"Not as complicated as you think."

His gaze flickers out of the window, still soot-gray from residual fire. It's a zero-sum game he plays, despite the nature of his character; there's self-deprecation wracked in his tone as bare fingers curl inwards to his callused palm.

"No." For the question of whether or not she forces him to recall the tangibility of the people around him, he only has a shake of his head to spare. "—Just not used to people seeking it out."

[vakna]

She rolls her eyes at his humility. A simple man would commit to his homeland without complaint yet he willfully abandoned his national ties, or so the stories go. The colorful narratives one might not-so-accidently overhear on a nightly excursion agree, at least, on his defection. It follows that Venom's ideas are diametric to the state — the entire world perhaps. Can such a man be called uncomplicated, or else, sane? How far removed is his venture in the Seychelles from that of a cult leader withdrawing into the jungles of South America with his well-armed surrogate family?

She is too quick on the trigger: "Then, why do I ..." Eli's voice ebbs mid-sentence, eyebrows crease, the question has become a sort of epiphany about her mental preoccupation and thus herself "... think about you?" Her eyes fall like setting suns — an impression rendered by their feline luminosity, then regard him again, swiftly.

"Why not?" she chirps, and placing a hand upon the breast of his suit leans in as if to topple him with her diminutive frame, although she does not possess a fraction of his mass. Her elbow bends and her chest — flat, unsurprisingly — is stopped by his. "You are very sexy."

[alterplex]

The cloth that Venom is cut from deserves the credit for warped seams and haphazard stitching, really. Consider a government that grooms maladjusted young men to fight for king and country on solo missions that breed sociopathy: it's the reason for Venom's blasé attitude towards his current predicament.

Eli's not-quite subtle expression of exasperation goes rogue by her own volition, interrupted by a revelation and a question that Venom perhaps anticipated but didn't expect to be articulated so distinctly. Her attachment to him is something that needs to be unpacked, layer by layer. Venom blinks through the dried refuse of blood that cling to his lashes, providing him with minimal clarity but just a sliver of time.

"...It'll pass."

The platitude is, in a word, groan-inducing. Teachings of a lazy parent. Karma strikes back at Venom swiftly for this lame excuse for an explanation, lashing out with Eli's followup observation of his would-be sexiness.

The 50-something looks at a loss, for a single fleeting breath.

"Don't tell me you heard people talking about that."

[vakna]

Eli has no quarrel with Snake's unsentimental attitude toward politically sanctioned villainy. The right to kill is historically exercised by the mighty hence his autonomy is an embarrassment to the nations; he does not work his deathly magic for them. The mercenary is immoral by virtue of independence.

Would she have done the same in his skin? A sociopath can thrive neath the clandestine wings of the secret services, and she can assail a stranger without remorse. She will seldom feel anything before and after the deed though she is loath to admit to it.

Pass, he says, like a fever or set unit of time. It is not so much that the sentiment is cliché to her ear as it is decisively pessimistic, yet can she rightfully argue that affection is not ephemeral when personal experience had taught her to expect, nay, foreknow the extinction of feeling? While men had sworn undying love for her before, Big Boss had discovered the girl alone.

"Noo," she intonates then rolls her lips shut, yet her gaze dances as though cruelly savoring his bemusement. Perhaps timelessness has rearranged her aesthetics but she isn't exaggerating one bit.

"All of you ... are infatuated with masculinity. They didn't say it, only thought it."

Eli lists as if depleted and lays her small cranium on his shoulder, a brief reprieve before her lips close over his ear and start to suckle softly on the cartilage. "But I mean it, through and through." The squelch of saliva is a little obscene, but so what.

She murmurs something indistinct to Venom under her breath, in Swedish.

[alterplex]

All of you. The distinction between the exclusive 'you' and the ostensibly-royal 'you' is often blurred when Eli speaks. Does she refer to mankind as a whole (excluding herself cleverly from it), or the sad reality of poorly-socialized outcasts? Or is there really a difference between those two categories at all?

Venom sighs like a man defeated, the proverbial white flag billowing between his exhales. Bob Dylan plays softly over the radio behind them, interrupted occasionally by static that their pilot smooths over with clever hands. All we are is dust in the wind, the speakers sing. Outside, in the fickle atmosphere of the jungle, rain starts pattering in staccato over the body of their vehicle. Wetness outside, wetness inside.

Rough, careful hands dislodge Eli from his ear, and reposition her more sturdily against his bloodstained shoulder.

"...Is that your native language?"

Again, he maneuvers the topic away from some perceived focus on himself, to the whispered undertones of a language that he can't recall if he's ever learned.

[vakna]

Her claim is applicable to the people at large but it is especially pertinent to men of war be they recognized peacekeepers or organized cutthroats — a sense of machismo permeates their ranks, as with any fraternity, but often with a greater intensity than their civilian counterparts. Venom's profession was the acme of masculinity during every epoch the girl had ever inhabited. The warrior is immortal. Though, some will argue there is an older occupation still. She feels a sudden psychosomatic bout of nausea and merely grows limp upon being moved, her gaze drifting to the rain spattered window. Dylan sings to her something which equally terrifies and soothes her very core.

She nods. "I'm Swedish." She smiles somewhat cynically, "but what does that mean?" Her roots were long pulled, washed away by naught more glamorous than the changing of the times. "I've been here and there. The wind up toy that wouldn't stop."

She hooks her lower lip with a canine and turns the pliant flesh, thinking. "Is it because." She pauses and starts again, in the interest of clarity. "When I speak, it isn't just my accent you hear. Yes...?" She searches the whirlpool of his eye for some kind of assistance.

Why is she communicating to Venom in riddles? Just be out with it. Eli shuts her eyes, and after a moment says "... If I was a girl."

[alterplex]

Frankenstein’s monster, sitting side-by-side with a vampire. The opening lines of a joke in some cultures, no doubt. This one lacks a punchline, and that’s the humor of it, perhaps— how funny, that such anomalies can also be so helpless.

The mist outside of their windows recedes, and verdant canopies are replaced by the familiar outline of water. There’s no escape, once they reach this point above the earth and into the horizon. What waits for them is ocean, and a haven outside of heaven.

Venom wipes his tongue over his lip while Eli finds her words. For once, he doesn’t taste the blood that’s meant to be there.

“If.” The hypothetical is tossed back into Eli’s lap. “That’s not my issue with you.”

Issue, he says, and he realizes the accusatory nature of that term. His nose wrinkles, wolfish in his contemplation.

“You’re thinking about me in a way that won’t help you.”

[vakna]

Deliberately or otherwise Venom brings attention to an unsaid qualm which apparently eludes his new recruit. Though she had utilized the utmost mental effort to understand what it is that keeps them apart her skull is heavy and she can exert it no more. The opiate rush of foreign blood in her veins had emboldened her, yes, but the catalyst of her affections lay in the heart. The poetic construct of the thing and not the infection ravaging her biological organ. If she were to cut it from her chest would it bear any resemblance to his? Would he believe her?

She'll not contest his response even if it's not what she wanted of him. One must face reality or risk delusion. "Yes," says Eli. "Nothing will."

She silently climbs off of Snake and heads for the window, where she rests her hands upon the glass and looks out on to waters dark and without much distinction. "There's a story," she says. "Man was made two headed. He had eight limbs. Then he was split ... down the middle. He lost his other half." Her blood streaked bangs flatten upon the glass. "He can't find it."

[alterplex]

"...Plato."

He watches as Eli climbs off and wanders, like one in a trance, over to the beaded windows and looks out into oblivion. There's nothing he can say about the matters of the heart that would soothe her ailing mind or anesthetize wounds that he barely has expertise in handling. The fact of the matter is that what he wants is to sit and watch seagulls with her at night, for her to sink her teeth into his forearm and remember him by taste instead of the void he usually leaves behind.

When presented with a philosophical allegory he's only half-familiar with, Venom takes a moment to pull his gore-slicked hair out of its trademark tie, combing out remnants of bone and cartilage from dust-brown strands.

"You've been searching for your other half?"

[vakna]

"Yes," she answers his reflection in the reinforced glass (plastic?) of the window. "Everyone is — I think." No one is a stranger to the void insofar as humankind is born of it; the void in human from. Das Trauma der Geburt is but one hypothesis for the emptiness inherent in living flesh. "We want to be whole."

In the conflict of arms other people are assets, a means to an end, and yet the unlikely duo subsist on the thought that their acts will someday be recognized, if not by the mass than those few who are alike in character. Is Venom's "half" estranged by distance? Faulty memory? The impassable limit of death? An ostensibly sentimental notion, perhaps, nonetheless even the most disreputable of men wish to be understood. Without comprehension everything collapses into absurdity and nothingness.

Eli turns from the uniform sea and comes up to him. Thin arms encircle what they can of his shoulders, passing beneath his loosened hair like pale newborn serpents. With eyes shut she holds him firmly — that it is felt.

"Sometimes I don't show it, or can't, but ... you make me happy. Very much."

[alterplex]

It's unbeknownst to the man himself that he is very much a portion of a larger equation, a muddled legacy that necessitates his presence but never his sense of self or being. He is a half, but not for the purpose of creating a whole. People tread over shadows without wondering if the person it belongs to has hurt for it; Venom is riddled with footprints but he hasn't a name to attribute to his pain, if he feels it at all.

"You think I can do that for you."

His words when she comes back to wind, serpentine, around his body is phrased not as a question but as a soft concession of bemusement. This not-quite-girl with decades on him, this unknowable existence who will likely see the world burn three times over because of men like him, seeing a potential for wholeness in him, professing that he makes her happy?

It's all intensely preposterous. But, then again, what part of his life hasn't been?

This is what makes him laugh through his blood-stained tongue, features softening in morbid honesty while he tips his head back into the touch sifting congealed blood over his scalp. A low rumble, like the moments before an eruption.

"Can't say that that's something I thought I'd hear from you after what happened today." But it's the truth, that even catastrophes are fleeting when distance and time are on their side. Venom brushes into Eli's touch in a way that would remind others of a lion at a circus, regal if not for its docility.

[vakna]

His fame precedes him across geography and language and yet is the prestige his to reap? His hounds are convinced, while his duality is but an incipient theory in her mind. His capabilities are the genuine article, likewise are the looks she had praised, so where does Naked Snake terminate and true individuality begin? Surely he and Venom deviate in thought as they cannot see eye to eye indefinitely. Had she been privy to his condition she might broach the matter, not for want of determining a flaw but to, if only temporarily, alleviate his pain. She wants to help him.

Granted she makes a peculiar companion and yet he too is an anomaly in almost every sense. He posits that his (alleged) moral defects are an incentive to keep one's distance when in truth Eli identifies with those very transgressions. The boy relates to the blood on his mentor's hands.

She seems to smile in turn, that slightest waver of the lip when she feels patronized, although she hears no real derision in his laughter.

"You could have punished me."

He is reluctant to tear down on his subordinates. His punishment is self-inflicted, it seems.

Eli inhales the copper in his hair. The smell only taunts her chronic thirst. "I'm ... suffocating. When we are together, I breathe again. You hear me when I speak, while others hear nothing."

She lays her temple on his shoulder. He can see her dark eyes, oft mistaken for "Gypsy features", watching him from his peripheral vision.

"I care for you. Even if I'm ... unrequited."

[alterplex]

What had Ocelot said, in another context? That some people love the legend— they always do. Be that as it may, the root of Eli's affections seem to come from elsewhere (what would she care for wars waged against nuclear deserts?), and a selfish part of him is struck by her courage to say so.

Dylan winds down from one song to the next, and reassures them both that the times, they are a-changing. Condemns them, maybe. Warns them.

Venom hums.

"...When we count seabirds, your breathing matches my breathing."

Her silences, his silences. They follow the same trajectory with their eyes, point to the same darkened spot in the night. He looks out of the window now, battered by rain, fogged by condensation; there's nothing outside for them anymore but the promise of a dawn, and they need to get back to base before the sunlight hits. His shoulders turn inwards as if to shield her from the inevitable.

"So, I care about you. Maybe not in the way you want."

[vakna]

Her lips show the beginnings of a smile and if the small vibration of her shoulders is of indication Eli is laughing; it isn't the conniving, astute laughter one might come to expect of her, but distant, the paper-thin eyelids closing as his remark transports her back in time.

He recounts their history with the night birds as a perfectly encapsulated memory, brief yet reconstructed in minute detail down to the consonant pace of their breathing. Despite, or perhaps because his existence is nothing if not eventful it is the simplest and most peaceful of moments that left an indelible mark on the man.

"Shh. I know."

She raises a feeble looking wrist, places the tip of her forefinger against his jaw.

"You don't have to ..." she says. "You've sacrificed everything to Cause — your body, mind, time. But there's always a war, Venom."

She rights herself and takes his hand in her hands, fixing her eyes on his lone iris.

"Leave," she says. "Just ... leave. Come with me, we'll find a home someplace by the sea. You could work with animals. We'll watch the birds every night."

Her fingers close around his and Eli looks at the old soldier encouragingly.

[alterplex]

For a moment, he sees it through her eyes: a nondescript cottage bordering the ocean, his bare feet on sand and the impartial, effervescent lapping of water over his skin. The world turns somewhere far away from the both of them, hunger and death and famine a distant nightmare that they remember when they close their eyes against the idyllic hum of the seabirds outside their window. He forgets about serpents as easily as the accident rendered him unable to delve into the past, all those years ago. Like the man in the burning hospital that gave him his moniker, Ahab, Eli will give him a new name. Maybe something Biblical. She seems the type.

The moment comes and goes, drowned in acoustics. His fingers slide down the length of her palm and find her cephalic vein, traces along the length of that branching blue line.

"'Only the dead have seen the end of war', huh."

A sigh that lilts on the edge of self-deprecation, and Venom shakes his head. Acknowledging futility would only still his heart— this is all he has, the violence he causes and the faint hope that he, too, will become obsolete. His loyalty to his men is his blood, and the absence of his past— his real past, the one that doesn't read like scripture, memorized for the sake of memorization— only cements him further into the unforgiving present.

"I'm a soldier, Eli. I'm never gonna know how to be anything else."

[vakna]

Though his fingers move as if to inquire her gaze is committed to him. Is her heartbeat palpable to him or does her infirm complexion belie reason? Her veins, like lightning shot through a body by an angry god. What motive could the divine have for furnishing anyone with such crooked circuitry if not spite? Her current is the blood of his most precious creations. God, was not in the room when everything irrecoverably changed — she remembers him by his averted face.

The dead are oblivious to their own repose; she believes he can attain a modicum of peace in the corporeal plane, not the sleep of forever.

"I'm a murderer," she looks off with features void of discernible emotion, "we can't reform — all that we have is now, and what to do with it."

Her affect is free of the naiveté exhibited by would-be elopers. Her knee finds purchase on the floor of the helicopter and her middle fingers outstretch over his jawline. She holds his head fast and meets his gaze with an intensity bordering on the maniacal.

"Forget dreams. You can do it. You are the master of your own fate." She eases up ever so slightly as the command strut rears outside the rain beaten windshield. "... Home."

[alterplex]

Her faith in him is staggering, and perhaps hard-won. She kneels as if the cramped space of the helicopter is a confessional despite Venom Snake being a poor excuse for a priest.

"We're both murderers," he concedes. Her hands cradle his jaw, and his pulse is strong under her finger. "But it's on me to make sure that there's an end to what I do."

To stop the ebb and flow of blood with his stained palms, to keep that tide from washing over the rest of the world. His battle is against the human condition, and Eli's against her own; he doesn't have the yardstick with which he could ascribe a measurement to the depth of her proverbial sins. So he doesn't.

Their vehicle slows to a hover above the helipad, where Venom can see the faint outline of his XO in the rain. Flanked by a soldier holding an umbrella, sunglasses glinting coal-chrome under artificial lighting.

"...Kaz is gonna give you an earful." Venom can see his second-in-command already, remaining hand curled in tight-fisted austerity while his lips draw in a tight line. Ill-stitched seams holding a hurricane of a man together. Ocelot is curiously missing; busy in that Orwellian torture chamber extracting secrets from soldiers who should have known better, no doubt.

Venom draws up into half-crouch, dislodging himself from his companion to pry the heavy sliding door open. Before Miller can say anything, Venom silences him with a raised palm and a gesture towards their hard-earned contraband, yelling 'We'll talk!' above the spatter of rain and revolving blades.

With that done, he has the freedom to turn towards Eli and murmur: "I'll keep him busy. Go shower and rest."

[vakna]

An end in the sense of conclusion, or purpose? She envisions the finish line as a mirage that tempts him onward as one urgent and wholly unavoidable matter gives rise to another of equal import and his Sisyphean labors, as it were, begin anew. He is honor-bound which is, traditionally, a masculine construct — "a man has to do what a man ..." and so forth, the reasoning is secondary so long as one sticks to his guns, which Venom does quite literally.

Oh, why a soldier? She bemoans in her head like some histrionic widow-to-be. But indeed, why is it not the baker or the butcher that is the object of her thoughts? Goodness knows she has had her fill of characters yet here he is uprooting her from her perpetual indifference time and again.

Eli offers up a sour smile in response to the inevitable explosion from Master Miller, but little does the good officer know it is not uncommon of a child to accept blame and admonish itself without intervention.

The door clatters back and the realization that Ocelot is not in attendance gives her pause and she is rather slow to disembark with her defence absent, until Venom himself orders her to circumvent their fiery judicator.

"Ah. Thanks ..." she murmurs back, made slightly bashful by his rescue but obliged nonetheless. She sidesteps Kaz but lingers then on the platform; Snake can see the girl looking over her shoulder at her crippled detractor, her open collar beating in the wind.

Washed and changed into her graying hand-me-down shirt she ruminates at her desk for several minutes, then jots a note in ink. Eli leaves her room and heads for Miller's quarters, where she crouches and inconspicuously slides the torn paper under the door. Sooner or later we must talk., reads the note.

She reopens her eyes in the half-light and watches the fluorescent strip on the wall emit frigid, white rays until her bed starts to mirror a dissection table and she must sit up, look instead at her dangling feet. Sleep eludes her. She thinks of her aloof compliance with Venom's admission; she didn't appeal to his emotions then, or stir up a fuss in protest. It would be untoward. And she is composed even now, as water trickles down her cheeks. She takes her face in hands without a sound. When the ache subsides Eli lies on her side and tries to sleep.

[alterplex]

Emotions, as Kazuhira Miller reaffirms, are difficult. Venom spends the majority of the hour post-disembarking in fielding his second's swinging moods, starting first at acerbic, then emphatic, to adoring contempt. He doesn't understand how to allay Miller's devotion, how to reconcile his companion's willingness to sacrifice life and limb for their cause, only to spit poison at him for it later— more and more he finds that the language they share is far from a common tongue, and the tenuous time they spend in each other's company, licking and reopening wounds, clings like ashen fog.

What is affection, anyway? Kaz says he has it, as does Ocelot: and now, Eli. They come to him in different packages, frantic and scripted and...

...and. The last one, he can't describe. It sounds to him like a malaise, like violins in the rain.

Silent feet fall over metal grating, traveling through the labyrinth of walkways before they stop in front of the room he now knows to be Eli's. He knows what some people would call this— 'a fucking mess'— but he has reassurances for the girl in the form of important documentation left snug in the suitcase they'd retrieved from their mission. Their pains and trials, not entirely in vain.

"...Eli."

If she doesn't answer, that's fine; he'll disturb her when the sun sets tomorrow, to take her to the roof of their Medical Platform where they can hunt for nocturnal seabirds.

[vakna]

The flesh tires but the brain will not alleviate him the burden of wakefulness and this disharmony of mind and body soon forces him upright. He climbs out of bed and swats the blanket clear as if was complicit in his condition, though he knows better of it. The true adversary stirs within.

He finds himself facing a figure in the small, unframed mirror, Eli standing there with his hand scrunching the shower curtain like a useless rag. A million showers won't be enough, he thinks. He squints at his reflection as to perhaps "see" it better. And there he is. A person of some kind.

Insofar as Eli understands he is unsupervised in the privacy of his room and thus his performance is suspended; the boy no longer associated with a single pronoun in favor of consistency.

He tucks his hair behind his ear and smiles alluringly in the glass. Well hello, how are you? he purrs, but the livid discoloration about his eyes, the sockets pitted into his skull like dark wells break the immersion and remind him of his nature.

Disturbed, Eli escapes the mirror and approaches his desk. He coasts his hand through the sparse interior of a drawer until his fingers brush upon a recognisable shape. He sits on the bed and turns the small, bronze horse in his fingertips. Old bric-a-brac from a chapter in his life. Eli makes the horse gallop across his arm at the behest of an imagined rider. He smiles. The play entertains the precocious boy, despite himself, but upon realizing this he stops the childish activity altogether. He snaps the bronze toy in two and tosses the pieces at the wall.

He looks at up at the sound of Venom's voice. His bare feet make no sound as he nears the door, then quickly backtracks to the sink and splashes water on his face.

After a moment the door opens. Eli still in underwear, an oversized shirt. "Well ... hello," she says a little stiltedly. The girl then steps aside. "Come in?"

[alterplex]

It's a strange sort of midnight rendezvous, this. Some might consider it indecent, the offer, and even more so the fact that the seemingly older man obliges it, that he steps inside and closes the door behind him to confine their conversation to the cornered walls of standard military housing. Once inside, the accommodations are almost prisonlike: the distinct lack of windows add to the Spartan atmosphere, though their absence is for Eli's safety rather than an attempt to wear her down.

Venom wonders how she can live like this. Sequestered. Like a toy in a tin can.

He lingers by the entrance before straying towards one half of a discarded horse, kneeling by it to run metal over metal.

"Couldn't sleep?"

An obvious question, to lend normalcy to their collective insomnia. There is nothing particularly special about either one of their inability to rest, and a reminder of that is meant to be soothing in its morbidity.

He lays the piece of bronze back onto the floor, empty eyes facing the wall.

"...Your hair's wet."

[vakna]

Although she is often at the mercy of her own thought process that mechanism is almost bereft of any and all concern for her social standing or the misconceptions attached to her persona; he visits her in the dead of night and she is in a state of undress — so be it, what's the worst that can come of an off-color rumor? Is the notion of a tryst with a young girl too much for his bloodhounds? Not with the score of misdemeanors the men omit from their own biographies, or else brag about after one too many beers.

Her cordial invitation however is but a smoke screen. Such a visit feels implausible from Venom, though not impossible. She scans his expression for a sign instead of prodding the man for the unnecessary explanation. His presence is a kind of explanation in itself.

The girl shakes her head no, looking on uneasily and he retrieves the broken toy. Once he withdraws his hand she quickly approaches, scoops up the pieces and unceremoniously drops them into the trash can. She fears he will think her immature.

Eli raises her hand to a tangle of wet hair, meekly. Soaked no doubt while she was trying to conceal her reddened eyes. Too weary to lie she instead takes him by his gauntlet of a hand and leads him to her bed, where she sits in the shadow of his frame with the benumbed air of her toy. Her heart however is anything but static beside his.

The top of her shirt is unbuttoned; the slightest flex of a shoulder and her shirt slips easily along her arm, bearing the shoulder's bony curve, then a portion of her chest. She considers the exposed skin but makes no attempt to cover herself. She slowly looks up at Venom — a steady, undeviating gaze.

[alterplex]

There's fragility in the way she bares herself to him. Those hands that could dismantle him, tear his spine and string them around that wan neck, implore him to sit beside her on a cold bed and card his fingers through sink-damp hair.

She wants such simple things from him.

"Wait here," he says, as if she would have the notion to slip away while his back is turned. As if there's anywhere to go beyond their earthly restrictions. His palms rest on the plane of her shoulders, one bare and the other barely clothed, before lifting and searching through the hollow skeleton of Eli's accommodations for a nondescript, almost comically-beige towel.

It settles like a cape around her neck; cheap, like spider's feet. Venom resumes his perch next to her knees, his hands occupied with the task of drying tousled-black curls and mopping moisture from translucent skin.

This is astoundingly long. Am I reasonable with your time?

[vakna]

"'Kay."

Like a somnambulist the girl teeters when his hands leave her shoulders only to right herself slowly as if the pillar of her spine is a spring. Her anatomy evokes an impression of malleability, that like a manikin she can be manipulated at his discretion without a hint of resistance. Is his canine companion too not artfully passive in his arms?

She cocks her head as he makes a sweep of a room bereft of any character but theirs. "Going through a girl's things," Eli reprimands him softly — being a disciple of irony. Her belongings are of course scarce, and neither is she what she says she is. The ideal word escapes her.

He plys her locks with a towel. So intimately is his name tied to violence that at times his tenderness is remarkable even to Eli, and yet he is in his element, sure of hand and his eye focused. A kind of nurturing variation on his poise in battle.

Seemingly from nowhere, or perhaps from a discerning place after all, Eli turns her head and says, "You would make a great father." Whether she would pass for a model daughter Eli doesn't say. "It shows."