What's a king bowing to a dark god?

[wrathfulkhan]

Characters: Gene, Jackie, Deon, Peridot, and yooouuuu!
Date: Mayday, Mayday, Mayday! And all the other May days aside.
Location: Keeliai and Tavimbi
Situation: The Struggle
Warnings/Rating: Will be added as they arise.

A. [Gene] throughout Keeliai | past the first week of May onwards | open
Gene is continuing to be his political self, gladhanding among the kedan and putting his unique skills of gang interaction to use to put together the nascent police force. But when he thinks nobody's watching, he looks pensive - especially over tea in one of the many teahouses, which he seems to frequent more often of late. Better than alcohol, at least?

B. [Jackie] the Golden Koi | throughout May | open
After the attack last month, Jackie doesn't go anywhere without someone else. The rogue Snakes aren't going to attack him unless he's alone. But at least his bar seems to be doing decent business, even if he's still operating at a loss for now. That part's worrying him. But he tries not to let it show, even to Leo.

C. [Peridot] Keeliai and Tavimbi | throughout May | open
Peridot, meanwhile, is continuing to scavenge. She wants to rebuild her limb enhancers, or something like them, after her talk with Bisi...and maybe something nice for Shay. She's haggling with merchants and, due to her short temper, often getting very annoyed. There's something amusing about a tiny green dorito getting mad at someone twice her size.

D. [Deon] the College | throughout May | open
The College is a safe zone for Deon, who's still wary of working on any pet projects at Stark Industries. Tetravaal had made him too leery of that. He can often be found in one of the labs, working on a design for a robot, or hand-writing some code to make sure he's got it right.

E. [Gene] House Spicy Iron Dragon | late April-first week of May | closed to Tony and Pepper
Gene has decided to live as a bed from now on.

Zhang's arrival had really shaken him up. What he'd done to Zhang had shaken him up more, when he'd had the chance to think about it instead of acting in anger. When he's not living as a bed, he's building a little stone shrine in the back garden where he's buried the extra purple ring and set up the framed photograph of his mother, and when it's done, sitting in front of it, burning incense and thinking.

F. [Jackie] the Dojo | early May | closed to Brigid
Jackie had said he'd wanted to learn Krav Maga from Brigid, and he'd gotten the chance to get some floor time from Valdis, when not too many people would be around to watch her wipe the floor with him.

He smiles at her when she walks in. "You ready?"

G. [Deon] the Hotel | early May | closed to Vincent
There was one thing that Deon had to do to make sure he and Vincent were on the level: namely, return the laptop he had found. It was Vincent's laptop, after all. He knocks on the door, the laptop tucked under his arm. "Vincent?"

Comments

[sadisticmoose]

And the look Vincent is giving you is the approximation of that. You owe him answers, punk.

[craftlife]

"I logged in," Deon said, gaining boldness. "I saw the Moose testing logs, Vincent. What were you thinking, testing on yourself with no oversight?"

[sadisticmoose]

"If you saw the logs, you'd know why." Vincent growls, grip tightening on the laptop. This isn't something he wants to discuss, Deon.

[craftlife]

Too bad. Y'all are gonna discuss.

"The reason we have teams is to share the load, not to watch as you lose your mind!"

[sadisticmoose]

"This was different." Vincent retorts, adamant. He's convinced he's done the right thing. "This was untested, highly volatile technology. It's a team leader's job to make sure his team doesn't come to harm."

It's not his fault no-one cared enough to check in on him during development, really.

[craftlife]

"Then you should have had the appropriate safeguards in place, like someone to watch you during the testing!" Deon said hotly. Granted, Tetravaal did not especially care about employee safety as long as the money kept rolling in, and the Moose was a constant loss, so...

[sadisticmoose]

"I'm not talking about this." Vincent growls. "Thanks for the laptop."

He's going to try and slam the door in Deon's face, unfortunately, being on crutches and with a big, bulky engineering laptop under one arm, is making that difficult.

[craftlife]

"Yes you are," Deon says, grabbing the door to keep Vincent from slamming it. Please don't break his fingers. "What the hell possesed you?!"

[sadisticmoose]

Well, he's just going to hobble over to his bed, ignoring Deon. Luckily, none of his roommates are around.

[craftlife]

"Don't ignore me," Deon growls, actually getting worked up. "You need to explain this. This wouldn't have happened without you. People would still be alive." Like Amerika. Deon hadn't particularly liked him, but his death had been brutal.

[sadisticmoose]

Vincent stops, leaning on his crutches, his grip whitening his knuckles. He's trying not to think about that, trying not to remember fully. His memories of his time hooked up to the Moose are a bit... fuzzy.

"I didn't have the resources, or anyone with clearance spare enough to monitor. Everyone was busy dealing with other aspects of the project."

[craftlife]

"Bullshit," Deon said. "At the beginning of the project you had the resources. Before I even came on board with the Scouts, you had the resources."

[sadisticmoose]

"The beginning of the project was spent securing the hardware and coding the power conversion matrix. You've seen the bloody notes! You know what happened. Why are you asking me?!"

He's starting to get a little more irate than usual, voice starting to raise... He seems to be cracking a bit. It's probably not a good idea to continue.

[craftlife]

Quite the opposite of Vincent, Deon's suddenly composed, calm, straight-faced.

"Because you didn't have to do it alone. I would have helped you, if you'd asked."

He'd considered Vincent a mentor, before the whole rivalry thing got way out of hand.

[sadisticmoose]

"I didn't want to..." Vincent takes a deep breath. "The system was highly..."

He shakes his head, turning away again.

"I didn't want to expose anyone to this who didn't need to be."