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

[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."

HAHA, I'm sorry if I'm dragging it along?! But you're perfect, please never worry!

[alterplex]

Her comment about his impropriety earns the slightest of a raised brow, borderline amused at how Eli adopts and discards conventions when it seems suitable to do so. It doesn't deter from the eventual, and he displays his equivocal adeptness at handling banal domesticities as he is at lodging small metal pellets in human skulls.

In truth, he feels at home like this. Fingers wound in something living, breathing, without counting the number of the spine that he has his thumb pressed against. The L4 and L5 vertebrae— sever it and a man will never walk again. Technical knowledge he can discard when he has his hands full with thin shoulders and cold curls.

"You remember your father?"

He asks, and realizes the cruelty of the question once it slips from between scarred lips. He'd meant it to be an idle point of comparison, a segue into the trite 'getting-to-know-you' ritual, but he recognizes it posthumously as a misstep.

"...Don't answer that if you don't want to."

You certainly are not. If I lag it's because I have the flu.

[vakna]

It isn't so much that she holds him to some arbitrary system of principles but that she is contentiously recalling humanity; the beast is indifferent decorum and when she must fend for herself in the wilderness for fear of a lynching (or whichever method of legal or extralegal destruction the community had settled upon) all conventions lose their savor and she begins to transform into something terrible and absolute. By occasionally humoring standards she keeps the savagery at bay.

Venom has mastered the dance of death but the orchestra plays well into the night. As if by sheer muscle memory he endures his routine and its endless cruelties. It's not all you know!, she wants to grab him and exclaim, so that he understands. Perhaps he can see it in her eyes when the clouds of ambiguity part.

His line of questioning gives her pause although she is intimately acquainted with it. For another audience she would craft a fabrication, or else nothing.

"I remember that I had a father. Yes." A man invisible in life and doubly so in memoriam. "He was a villein under our lord, and having to work his demesne, he was rarely with mother and I.
"My elder brother and sister could work, but he had no use for an eleven year old boy."

Or what became of the child. "I was noticed nonetheless. Everyone who saw me then ... said I was overwhelmingly beautiful."

Eli folds her left leg under her and glances from her swaying ankle toward the stalk of her wrist. Would it bear scars if it could? "Too beautiful."

oh man, I hope you're feeling better...!

[alterplex]

Is it in poor taste to compare a life history to a parable? Likely so, but Eli weaves her words with such a sobriety that Venom expects a hungry wolf to be part of her narrative, or maybe a king who orders that children spend sleepless nights spinning riches out of trifles.

And, in a way, her reality doesn't seem too far-removed from fairytale foibles. The patterns are there: the doomed rule of threes (two elder siblings and an extra mouth to feed, always), the burden of beauty, the father as an afterthought.

Venom's fingers tangle, as if in confirmation that this isn't a dream. He's seen far too many ghosts in his waking moments to rule out the possibility entirely.

"...That's no way to talk about an eleven-year old."

He says in her defense, though the honor he attempts to defend is likely decades, centuries displaced. Beyond reaching, beyond salvaging? Is it kinder not to try, or is the continued negligence another scar to compound upon all the others that will never show themselves on pale skin?

Venom frowns, and lays the now-dampened towel by his side.

Thanks, the worst of it is over.

[vakna]

"Is that so?"

The peasantry's reception of her looks had not struck her as an overly dissolute affair. Though Big Boss and she coincide in the contemporary world Eli's formative years (before her clock stopped still) were spent under an archaic sensibility. Rectitude was prescribed by religion or else the precarious wills of lords who generally left the welfare of children to their families. No wrong could be said to a child that was not markedly explicit, ergo his disapproval surprises her; Eli is, ironically, too old.

Perhaps the storybook motifs in her tale amuse him, in a manner of speaking, because while despots never ceased to thrive the Swedish Empire has faded into the mysticism of antiquity — is material for fiction, and by that virtue echos fiction once revived in her telling.

He looks restless with her hair no longer a tactile focus. Like he might have prolonged the simple act if he could. She places her hand to his chest and nudges — then a bit more forcefully (he's hard to topple). He occupies much of the bed and she crawls to lie on his ribs.

"How did it happen...?" she quietly asks, touching a fingertip to her forehead in respect to the onyx ridge protruding from his skull. "Your arm." She inches closer and her features loom pale above him. "Your eye...."

[alterplex]

Her dismissal of his concerns is to be expected. Morality is a scripted concept held high on paper-thin flags, swaying in arbitrary winds and often abandoned for convenience. It was too heavy, is the running excuse of most former pole-bearers, and who really has the purity of heart to blame them?

So, yes— he's resigned to the touch-and-go nature of humanitarian standards, but understanding it doesn't necessarily preclude him from holding negative opinions on the nature of his fellow man. Especially if it pertains to injustices (real or perceived) done to people who reasonably should have been given options instead of ultimatums; his expression is obstinate and unyielding as those small palms force him to fall backwards onto cold bedsheets.

(The furrow between scarred brows says it all: none of this was your choice.)

Her fingers move over the ridges of his face, traces the frown and follows the canyons of his disapproval up to the deformity that he wears so well nowadays. He transitions from sullen to somber, false arm drawn up to brace the negligible weight on his chest.

"—There was a bomb," he mutters between suddenly heavy lips. The cramped space of the military barrack suddenly feels oppressive; he glances at the ceiling just beyond Eli's haunting eyes. "Not for the eye. For the rest..."

His confusion gashes along the shadows of his face, like new wounds rising to his skin. "No... there was no second bomb." If he's aware that he's speaking in fragments, in riddles, he doesn't seem to notice.

[vakna]

She does aim to appeal to his emotions and while her background is a serviceable vehicle to reach him the vampire child mysteriously sidesteps the pathos of her childhood. Indeed, her recollections are clinical or anecdotal in their disassociated delivery and she does not anticipate some emotive cascade from the old soldier. The past is colorless but if she yields to feeling, goes on, these monochrome scenes will awash with red wine. There are things that turn everybody silent, and eventually oneself.

The consequence of her self-distancing is that the girl is nonplussed by his emphatic spirit (she is looking at Snake with concerned brows). Her former accomplices had certain emotional deficits that aided her darker purpose at the cost of a mutually destructive relationship between guardian and child. She had never met his like.

He trails off in a manner that Eli recognizes in herself. Should she encourage him to remember if the knowledge is unavailable to him, and if a person is their memories who is he — Big Boss? Now it is she who frets over his psyche. A man built for war yet gentle as a shepherd with his flock.

Her nails fork under his eyepatch and draw the curtain from his damaged eye. She lays the eyepatch aside. She tucks his aspen hair behind his ear. She strokes his head. Even his substitute limb feels organic about her frame.

"I'm going to make it better." Help him regain his shattered self. "I don't know how, but I'll try. I promise.
"Will you let me ... try?"

[alterplex]

If anyone had taken it upon themselves to look— really look— at this facsimile of a man, they would have identified his false identity under the obstruction he wears so obviously on his face. The genuine article, the real python in the grass, has an abyss sunken into his skull under that ridiculous accessory-made-trademark. 'Big Boss' is a yawning pit, but 'Venom Snake'...

...'Venom Snake' is mist. Rainwater. A muddled fog, milk-white and visionless. Lost. They allowed him to retain his ruined eye out of pity or carelessness, no one can say, but neither option is terribly generous (or generous at all).

He doesn't know of the incongruity. What they've done to him is the equivalent of redaction and substitution, so he doesn't balk at Eli's observance of his mismatched features. The waves of his fractured memories, the uncertainties that rake along the sandy beach of his psyche, smooth and settle like silt.

"I'm not gonna tell you what you can or can't do."

Better is a myth, but they're both cryptids. Their pursuits aren't unreasonable.

Devastatingly resigned, he bumps his forehead against Eli's (minding his horn).

[vakna]

Perhaps the yearning to patch a wound is as of little significance as his equivocal compliance suggests. He is reluctant to opine on her wishes for him, of which he is naturally her chief concern, and therefore his opinion is in fact indispensable to the girl. If the only feeling she can invoke in Venom is neutrality can she even begin to approach his sealed-off psyche? No, she is woefully unqualified if she is no closer to him than a regular Code Name So and So.

She had only had a father in name and when Venom broke her free it was under circumstances eerily similar to those which haunt her diurnal sleep — a time when she had needed her parent most. A century crawled by and came Venom and it is possible that the instant he released her from bondage Eli's unfulfilled need for a strong masculine figure found a surrogate in him (with or without his consent). But when she seeks his guidance he is as ambivalent as her late father.

"I ... don't know what I can do!"

Eli pulls back roughly and the shirt again slacks from a shoulder which rises and falls with her anxious breathing. Her head dips and she rubs at her forehead with her fingertips in the very specific fashion of an aristocratic lady with a migraine.

"I'm trying ... very hard. But you are so difficult."

[alterplex]

Venom scratches at his chin when Eli withdraws, like a wild animal scolded on human terms. He's a man without his id, a man comprised mostly of a superego fashioned by an external force. She asks him for guidance regarding his wellbeing, and the truth of it is that he has no earthly clue how to approach it at all. Being cared for is simply not within his prerogative.

But that's unhelpful, so his ultimate response is a hushed "sorry." Not meek— he's never capable of that, but it does come accompanied by a semi-awkward rake of his palm over his facial hair.

Maybe he can regale her with more personal information about himself. Would that help? He has no idea, but he feels that he owes it to her to try.

"...That's not the first time someone's said something like that to me. That I'm difficult."

Dense, was the word. Venom sits up, motions for Eli to come back closer again. A request, not a demand.

"She—"

("—was blonde, charming, whip-smart. Sexually aggressive on her own terms, which you liked because there was nothing soft about her. You handled her like a loaded gun with a mean kickback, and that's how you'll approach interest when it's presented to you: as a tool for negotiation.

Need a refresher? Don't try to answer, because you can't. Not to worry, though— I've got the recorded radio calls right here.

Keep your eyes closed. You'll remember in no time.")

"—didn't think I knew how to understand women at all. Maybe she was right." Venom scratches at a line running from his ear to his cheekbone, torn between fondness and...

...and? He isn't sure. What did he feel about that beautiful female spy, all those decades ago?

His motion for Eli to come closer becomes a touch more insistent, a need for tangibility outside of his own corporeal presence.

"Can't say that I'm someone who makes anything easier on anybody."

[vakna]

She declines his invitation although she acknowledges his beckoning motions with a smoky look that is more of turmoil than any superciliousness. Does physical closeness equate emotional solidarity? — is she any nearer to him now than if they were poles apart? The proverb reads We die alone, and it is reversible: all thinking creatures are barred from one another's experience like solitary inmates in the Panopticon of existence. If one can sense but their own mind it is accurate to conclude that we live alone, as well.

She sneaks a tentative glance at Venom when he, to her understanding, identifies his small bed mate as a woman. She is wary of classifications yet her mannerisms are those of the opposite gender, coupled with the androgyny of young age. Is she perceived as a female companion or is she sifting through nuances?

At his behest Eli sidles beside him but is otherwise still. To think she could heal was supreme conceit. Father was right. She isn't good for much.

"I don't understand what I mean to you. Who I am."