(Untitled)
Sloth didn't get very far after making his rushed exit from talking with Brody. His head kept swimming, and he kept hearing things. But not actual hearing; like there were thoughts that were floating through the air, and then slipping themselves inside of his brain. Causing him to read memories or thinking in tandem with a complete stranger
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At first, she loses her bearings. The Nexus is so...organic. It changes every moment. The sofa that was there yesterday could be a koi pond tomorrow. Trees spring up overnight. New portals, constantly shifting, constantly moving. Even if you were staring right at something and would swear up and down it hadn't changed, it would do so anyway. Just to spite you. Nasty thing, the Nexus. You needed to roll a very high number to pass your SAN check ( ... )
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There had been a feverish attempt to lose himself in his work, standing at one of his chalkboards, scribbling out plans and notes. But his mind kept wandering. Or more accurately, getting tugged away by someone else's. Other people's thoughts either drifted by, or barged into his. It's only when he steps back and looks over his work does Sloth realize what he's written thus far makes no sense; it's nothing but aimless scrawls, equations that mean nothing or stop suddenly partway through, or, worst of all, him transcribing the thoughts he's hearing. A sleeve is angrily swiped over the board, blurring all that he wrote.
Sloth eventually stumbles towards his study, fumbling for books to try and read, anything to try and not hear them. But nothing is readable when your thoughts are constantly derailed by someone else's ( ... )
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"Ah hah! Got it!"
Then she sees the position he's in...and the sheet stained with his blood.
"Frank!"
The card is almost dropped as she hurries to his side. She actually looks utterly horrified, for once the proper expression crossing her face without it being pre-planned or thought out. She tucks the card into her belt and pinches at the bridge of his nose with some very strong faerie fingers.
"You stubborn, bad-tempered, idiotic fool! I told you, let me help you, oh, what on Neopia am I going to DO with you?!"
Those insults, that rhetorical question, are the signs of a faerie in distress, and should not be taken literally. She tries to clean him up, fretting and gnawing at her lip the whole time.
"I told you to let me handle it, I said! Oh, Frank..."
She's going to keep doing this until he shuts her up.
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Sloth finds he doesn't know what to do with his sight right now; if he opens them, his vision swims and his eyes water. If he closes them, it seems to only make the thoughts louder. Sometimes he can almost see them behind his closed eyelids. Or maybe he's just imagining that...
"Get off, woman," he growls, though his voice sounds kind of stuffy thanks to the blood in his throat and nose, and the fact the Space Faerie's still pinching the latter. But it doesn't stop Sloth from roughly trying to brush her aside.
"As if it's not bad enough I'm losing my mind, my very brain is hemorrhaging along with it. Fantastic." That's probably not true (at least in the fact it's his brain doing the bleeding), but his headache makes that feel pretty believable.
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If he won't accept her help voluntarily, then she has to force him. Because damn it it's her DUTY to make sure he's not hurting anymore. Besides, she's had a low-grade headache herself this whole time. It gets worse and better as it ebbs and flows for him. So his nosebleed is causing her own head to throb.
As he shoves her off, she catches her balance with her wings, and concentrates.
She's not reading his mind, per se. Nor is she broadcasting her thoughts into his head. Instead, she's creating a 'static bubble', for lack of a better term. As long as he's within four feet of her, all he'll hear is what sounds like a mis-tuned television. Electric snow. Sure, annoying in and of itself, but better than the mental tracks of a thousand minds.
"...Better?"
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The blood from his nose is only now starting to taper off and Sloth rummages up some tissues in order to noisily blow the remainder of it, as well as wipe off his face. There are a lot of red tissues in his trash by the time he's done.
"...Gah." And with that, he plops down heavily back onto his bed. He's tired. Exhausted, even. Sleep sounds like such an incredibly good idea right now, but he doesn't think he wants to know what his dreams are going to wind up being like if he tries.
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She puts this as gently as possible, fluttering next to his bed. Her wings create soft little breezes across his face, breezes that smell like warm air and ozone and stardust. Yes, stardust has a smell. Just...use your imagination.
"I found the card you touched. I think this is how we can reverse all of this. Come on, just a little bit longer and you can rest."
She uses her magical tongs to pull the card out of her belt again, and holds it towards him.
"Okay. Touch it again."
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Yup, that is it, all right. He remembers that picture of the howling dogs and that crawfish thing in the water. And, of course, the moon over all three creatures.
Sloth hesitates when he reaches for it, now feeling uneasy. If this blasted scrap of fortune-telling trash is to blame...
His thumb and forefinger soon close over the aged card. And he waits. There is no explosion of light, no fire or burning, no surge of psychic readings or a retreat of the same.
"...This is stupid. This has nothing to do with all of this."
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"Shush. Okay."
She paces, unthinkingly. Flutters back and forth by the foot of his bed a few times. As she gets further away from him, the 'voices' come back, and as she gets closer, then the static does. This should not help his being cranky.
"Read what it says on the card."
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"Maybe if I go to sleep, it'll be gone when I wake up," he mutters, the hope that he'll get to do so only made more obvious by his wistful look back towards his bed.
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"Please, Frank. Just try it. For me?"
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"It's a picture of two dogs howling at a quarter moon with a face. There's a pool of water that contains an aquatic crustacean. A crawfish of some kind, not unlike a Maraquan Buzz. It appears to be attempting to crawl out of the water and towards the canines. There. Happy?"
Because he's not. The whole back of his throat is still flavored with his own blood and that static noise, while a lesser evil than the thoughts themselves, is still grating.
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Yes, she just said 'darn.' She does not cuss. She never ever ever cusses. Ever. B| The heavens would crash into the firmament if she were to ever say anything worse than 'darn.'
More thinking happens, with more pacing. If Frank's paying attention to anything other than himself right now, he might notice her flight path becoming more erratic, more wobbly. Lumindra appears to be reaching the end of her rope, power-wise. And, as always, she will push and push and push until she falls over insensible.
"...Try reading the card's mind!"
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"Beside the fact that I would not ever voluntarily read the mind of anything, it is a card, Lumindra. It does not have a mind to read."
Yes, he is good and tired of this. Sloth tosses down the card with disgust and strides in a haltering gait to a panel of laser guns he has mounted on a wall. One is selected and it is soon aimed shakily at the innocuous piece of paper on the steel floor. In his swing to bring the gun around, the arc happens to swing right past the faerie in the room with him.
"It's a piece of idiot, superstitious trash used by old women who think it's a smart idea to pose as though they have some kind of cosmic insight! Another way to lord over those they think have lesser minds! It's nothing, and will solve nothing!"
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Her first instinct is to go and grab the card up, to 'protect' it from his wrath. If he destroys it, and there's something they haven't tried, then he could be stuck like this forever. And her headache would NEVER stop.
But when he circles that gun around, and she ends up on the business end of it for a moment, well, other instincts take over.
She immediately darts across the room in the opposite direction, like a pinball that hit a particularly hyperactive bumper. POING! In her wake is a flash of light and a great deal of glittering sparkles landing on his furniture. They've been fighting for so, so very long that it's automatic for her to find cover when he's got a gun in his hand.
Oh, and did we mention the not-quite-sonic-but-pretty-loud BOOM she makes as she dashes away?
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But soon, where the card once was, there's now nothing but charred, black blast marks wafting acrid smoke. A few bits of glowing ash and ember flutter around, all that remains of the card itself.
There's a ringing silence in the wake of Sloth's shooting. But that's what gets him to stop looking angrily at that burned spot on his floor.
It's silent.
"...It's quiet!" he eventually exclaims. Hey, he's smiling. "I'm a genius!"
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