myironeyes | Recent Entries

[Public, video]

[Marsh looks, if possible, even more grave than usual. He looks very tired.]

Kara Zor-El's door appears to have reverted to barge standard.

[His mouth pinches, and then he takes a breath, as though to say something else - but he doesn't. The silence stretches, for a few more seconds.]

I will be leaving the barge and returning to my own world. Shortly.

[Private to Luna]

I would like you to consider taking my place as Kitchen Supervisor for the dinner shift.

[Spam for Zane]

[He's there when Zane wakes, as they lurch and rumble and sail away from Karazhan. He couldn't go back, of course, not like Iris did, would be more a hindrance and a danger than any help, as much as he hated to watch her descend again. But Zane, at least, was here, safe. He makes tea with shaking hands, and keeps vigil like he once had for Kelsier. It feels like it was very long ago.]

[Spam for Cassel]

[A knock on his door, the day after their return.]

It's Marsh. I have. Something for you.

[Private to Jean]

[Heavily,]

Thank you.

[Spam for T'Pol]

[It's in the middle of one of their irregular - by barge necessity - sewing lessons, after they've settled into the rhythmic silence of practicing a new technique. Without looking up, or any particular emotional inflection, he murmurs,]

When we were small, you asked how I knew about allomancy, if it was supposed to be a secret.

My mother was skaa, but my father was noble. It was very illegal.

[Private to Dean]

I apologize for my actions.

[Private to Clementine]

When you are done here, I hope you will visit me. I think you might enjoy meeting my god.

[Private to Sylvanas]

I hope someday you find peace in a manner that suits you.

[Private for Iris, backdated to right after the Pacific Rim breach]

[The first few minutes, after the spikes come back to him, are alway a special sort of excruciating. He sprawls on his chair, tries not to shudder, tries not to whimper. Later, when the fog of pain retreats just slightly, clears a space for thought, the rest seeps in, Zane's baby toes and the white-hot meld of drifting and Iris, a life with Iris, in patches and screaming and tight knuckles holding on, the smell of her hair, the slow march of lines on her face and the way he knows each one. Knew. Knew each -

- it's something. And he doesn't know what to do about it at all. He opens a voice channel, because he loves her too much to let it make him a coward, has no idea what to say.]

Iris...

[It comes out raspy and tender at once, more than he meant it to. Did you win, he thinks, even though he was watching everyone's progress when the breach ended. They regaled each other so many times.]

[Open spam, basically anywhere]

[He drifts. He expresses the will of the place he is in. If someone tries to interrupt a performance or deviate from the script in the Opera House, he will prevent it with a snapped wrist or an effortless backhand into the wall. Someone upsetting the ghosts in the stables or interfering with the banquet, anyone doing too much damage to the walls, or fighting the inhabitants - he hurts them until they stop. Somewhere, he acquires a broadaxe, heavy and eerily crystalline, not the little obsidian hatchets he knows, but light in his hands. The brief moments of brutality are like scraps of food to a starving hound. But he does not always kill, even though Ruin's chasms in him yearn too. The place is not concerned with how fast the intruders die. And before any of his own concerns, he is its hand.]

I smiled, and you missed it.

[He is fairly confident this taunt will summon Kelsier from any corner of the multiverse. And there are other friends he wouldn't mind hearing from either.]

[Public, video]

[Marsh, the barge's resident friendly constantly dour eyeless spike-horror, is currently lounging on Iris's most garish couch, the first time the vast majority of barge residents have seen him without his Nazgul-style engulfing black cloak, which is tossed over one of the arms of the couch. Underneath he's wearing vaguely 19th-century style workman's trousers and and loose shirt, both in a drab, unpurposeful sort of dark grey. Bumps - and a few poked holes - in the shirt reveal a topography of even more spikes, over a dozen of them, impaling his chest and abdomen in odd configurations. Nevertheless, he seems both drunk - an unlabeled bottle of dark green glass hanging from between his second and third fingertips - and entirely cheerful, laughing in a low rumble even as he's in the middle of protesting.]

- said I can doesn't mean - Iris, put that down -

We're celebrating, you plonker. 'E deserves the recognition. If you don't tell them I will!

-aaaugh, fine, woman.

[He throws his head back against the couch in defeat. There is a small ripping sound from the spike-tips at the back of his skull taking their toll on the upholstery, but he'll mend it later. He's not looking right at the camera - but he's beaming.]

C'Rizz graduated.

[That's all. Marsh isn't really a speech guy. But some people may connect this with the abundance of pie at dinner, the last few days.]

[Spam for C'Rizz, backdated to a little after the thread with Roderick.]

[Marsh's heart stops when he sees C'Rizz vanished from his item. Truly stops, falters in its constant aching rhythm, still beating around the spike perforating his ventricle. Not dead, gone. He tears up the stairs to C'Rizz's room, a shadowy blur, gasps and sags against a wall when he sees the door still there. So. So -]

[Spam for Iris]

[A knock, after dinner.]

Iris, it's me. I want to tell you something.

[He sounds happy.]

( Spam for C'Rizz, backdated to a few days after Christmas )

[Private to Scott, Stiles, and Gene]

I'd like your inmates to join the kitchen staff, unless their files include incidences of poisoning or cannibalism, or if you believe it would be unduly detrimental to their progress.

[Private to T'Pol, Clementine, Wichita, and Jimmy separately]

You should come help us in the kitchens.

[Private to Loki and Ceres]

Your wardens have suggested you for kitchen duty.

[OOC: more threads will probably be added as I work out OOC permissions/logistics.]

( Gift List )

[Public Video]

[For those who have not seen Marsh before - and he does keep to himself, sometimes - the sight of him and the steel spikes pounded bloodlessly through his eye sockets may be a bit of a shock.]

Esther Coleman has departed from the barge. Her cabin has reverted to standard.

She was not a kind young woman, but the world was not kind with her, and she - she had very little hope in her life. But she carried on.

[Brief though it is, it is a very sincere eulogy, one he feels a great deal of kinship for. He hopes the kitchen was a small solace to her, while she worked their - a place she could be respected purely for her performance, a place where she need not hide or pretend or be interrogated. But now he'll never know.]

We are now short six kitchen staff inmates, and although we appreciate our volunteer on-call wardens greatly, this cannot continue.

Wardens, if your inmates' files contain no poisoning or cannibalism, they are now candidates for kitchen work. Inmates, if you're getting bored of our current staples -

[Barge food isn't bad, but neither Marsh nor Ben are especially creative.]

- the position comes with considerable menu control.

If we don't get at least four new inmate staff, I will start drafting people.

[Public Video]

The kitchen is, as usual, understaffed. We were understaffed before this latest shake-up and now we are more understaffed. We require at least one temporary warden supervisor for the lunch shift and four or five new inmates.

Those interested should speak to Riddick or myself.

[Open spam, backdated throughout the last few days]

[Marsh can be found in odd times at odd places - late and night on the deck or early morning in the greenhouse, hunched over, making soft, choking noises, his little cockatiel crooning worriedly and attempting to preen his short hair. Folded in a corner of the ice-damaged stairwell, a hand splayed over his spikes, breathing hitched, shoulders shaking, looking like nothing so much as a man desperately trying to sob and unable to manage it.

The crying from Iris's room - it's psychic, he doesn't just hear it. It gets in when he is too tired to fend it off from ripped-open places, and then it becomes him, the loneliness and fear and grief, the confusion of the very young. He remembers himself - it is not overwhelming, not like Ruin at its worst, nothing like that - but he cannot stop feeling it. And the feeling is not entirely unfamiliar.]

[Private spam for Bianca]

[He decides, eventually, that it cannot be a trick, that something is real, must be suffering. Or perhaps he doesn't care anymore, as long as it stops. He arrives at her door with his jaw clenched from the effort of holding the lost, abandoned feeling back, and it still drips through his cracks, stings like salt in his punctures. He knocks.]

[Private spam for ~~C'Rizz~~ the Dalek Emperor, backdated to shortly after the arena]

[It's not a pleasant return, but he falls to the necessary housekeeping with a grim sort of gratitude. He asks the admiral for a resurrection, then swallows a truly foul amount of powdered pewter and a small sliver of feruchemy-laced gold. Then cooks until he stops seeing Iris on every blank nonmetallic surface, and brings the egg soup to C'Rizz's room. He knocks, then lets himself in.]

It's me.

[Marsh hasn't made a public announcement in a long time. Not since before the last convergence with the mirror barge, in fact. He frequently keeps to himself outside of his work shifts in the kitchen, his inmate, and a dwindling circle of friends, so for many newcomers this may be the first good look they've had of him: a stocky, tired man in his late thirties or early forties, wearing a hooded black cloak nazgul-style and thin, spiky red-and-black tattoos around his eyes - or, rather, where his eyes should be. Instead he has two blunt steel spikes that have been pounded into his sockets.]

There are few differences between myself and my counterpart. It does not matter which of us I am, or where.

I am strong, and fast, and difficult to kill. If you need help, call and I will help you.

[There's a pause, and for a moment it seems like that's all he has to say. But not quite. The Dalek had prevented him from being psychically puppeted last time, but that isn't a guarantee that it won't happen in the future.]

Unless you see me smiling. In that case, run.

[Okay, now he's done.]

[Public, text]

First. Everyone should stock non-perishable food and water. More than you need. And carry some on you, if you can. Those who remained themselves kept possesions on their person when they switched over last time. I will prepare small packs for anyone who would like one. Volunteers who wish to do the same may meet me in the kitchen after the end of dinner shift.

Second. Medicines, if you need them. Can the infirmary provide small amounts of disinfectants for everyone? I will make up suture kits, and if anyone does not know how to sew, I can teach you. It isn't difficult.

Third. Everyone should arrange signals with those they trust, so those who have not been remade can recognize each other without being revealed. We should also share anything that might help those from this reality gain our confidence and cooperation if we are changed - many there would have overthrown it if they could.

( TW for suicidal themes/plans/contingencies )

[Private to Riddick]

I want to try something.

[He sounds a bit - strained.]

[Public, video]

( Cut for gore/eyesquick/lackofeyesquick. )

I've noticed a number of absences at dinner.

I'm not affected and I'm not interesting in asking you questions.

[The first is a lie: he can do that, when not asked a direct question. The second is mostly true, except by implication, because he might ask questions anyway. Like this one.]

Which of you are skipping meals to avoid encountering people during this flood?

[Anyone who answers yes - and even some of you who don't - are going to get food deliveries from Trainspike Hedgehog, here.]

[OOC: feel free to through up a spam response to him knocking, if you want that instead of a network thread.]

[Open Spam, literally any day of plot, he might spend the whole time there in a high class quasi-public green park space. If your character is slightly important in any way, feel free to assume they have access to it.]

( Cut for length )

[OOC: Also if some apparatus people decide to fetch him back at some point, that's totally cool with me.]

[Spam, all public areas, including some warden-only areas. He is particularly meticulous in searching the greenhouse and the dining hall. He also checks zero.]

[Once again, Marsh has been turned into a tiny, scowly, ragged child with the visible skeletal geometry of someone not too far away from starvation and ashes in his hair, although his face is mostly clean. He keeps moving, keeps his head down, keeps his hands in his pockets. He attempts not to draw attention, and if he weren't so utterly out of place, he'd be fairly good at it. And he is searching for something - someone - very, very determinedly. He is so suspicious of all of you.]

[Public, video]

Where is my brother.

[Marsh has shadows under his eyes and he looks like a good wind might push him over.]

He's grown up now for no reason but he probably doesn't act like it and he has stupid yellow hair and he smiles too much and I can't find him anywhere. He was here.

[Aster flutters onto his shoulder and croons softly. Marsh makes a gurgled noise of despairing frustration in his throat and flaps his hands with her until she flies a little ways off.]

And this bird won't leave me alone!

[Spam for Steph (and possibly Esther?) in the Kitchen for dinner shift]

[At some point, Nathan let slip that Marsh not only had a key to the kitchens, but was in fact in charge of feeding the entire ship dinner. After a very small, totally manageable, super mature freakout under Nathan's desk, he has decided that this is going to be amazing and he is absolutely going to take care of everyone. He has dragged a chair into the kitchen and is crawling on the counters to reach flour, slicing vegetables with a dubious little off-white shank that looks like it might be made of bone, and humming softly to himself with a little smile.]

[Private to everyone on the kitchen staff, including on-call people, on the second day.]

Do you know how to make little cakes?

[Open spam, later]

[Marsh has, maybe, possibly, totally for a good cause, stolen some honey from the bees in the greenhouse. He may have several stings on his hands and face and a large, sticky section of honeycomb to show for this adventure.]

[OOC: replies will come from

whippersnapped.]

[Public]

We need at least one more inmate on the regular dinner shift.

[Spam for Aeryn & anyone on the Kitchen on-call list who wants to be there.]

[There's no lack of volunteers on the barge, but Marsh dislikes the messiness of it, the last-minute rearrangement of high turnover.]

...why don't we just make everyone pancakes tonight.

[This is not a question. There is no good reason not to make pancakes for dinner.]

( Valentines: Jean, Ned, Iris, and Nathan. )

[Public text + open spam, the afternoon of Iris's reunion with her bus]

There is fresh pie in the Dining Room.

[Or anyone could encounter Marsh in the stairwells or in the Dining Room itself, appearing in a stern swish of black shrouds to drop them off, one each, steaming slightly, at neat intervals. He needed to do something with his hands, and for once sewing felt insufficient.]

( Confidential to Kelsier, Iris, Nathan, Zane, Touko, Riddick, Ben, and Sylvanas. )

[Private to the Admiral]

I object. I do not - I will not not be bribed into celebrating this. I've been making gifts for people anyway.

[Open spam

[Marsh can be found on deck, unceremoniously tossing his communicator overboard. He can also be found scowling and hurrying through the halls as the damn thing reappears in each empty room he enters, prompting him to turn around and go the opposite direction.]

( the most reluctant gift list )

[Voice, Private to Friends, at various points throughout the flood]

[He sounds both flatly mechanical and extremely disgruntled.]

Could someone please come...wind me?

[Spam]

[OR you can just come across Marsh in the hallways, in plain clothes with artistic joint articulation drawn on instead of his normal dementor-shroud, with a giant bronze key sticking out of his back, frozen in rigid poses, scowling while Aster hops worriedly from his head to his outstretched hand to the key and back again. Aster may also have tugged you to him by your hair with much cheeping and flapping.]

( Private to Nathan )

[Private to wardens, voice]

My inmate was killed and gutted in the CES today. He does not remember his attacker.

Organs were not removed.

( confidential to Ned, Kelsier, Alpha, and Nathan )

[Open Spam all over the barge, from a few days after the mirror event through White Flag, particularly relevant to Jean, Cassel, Alex, Zane, and Ryan, because you guys now have a pointy extra shadow.]

[Several months of memories of being used as a brutal nightmare of a weapon have made Marsh even more skittish, if possible, than he was when he first board the barge. He skulks and lurks and generally keeps to the corners of the regrettably well-lit corridors. He ducks into empty cabins when people pass in the halls, and he collects food at odd times. It is, however, less absent than his usual hermitage, because he's actively stalking a few people at a distance whenever they emerge from hiding.]

[OOC: feel free to run into him while he's watching out for someone else, or if you want to say your character was chopped to pieces once or a dozen times by mind controlled!Marsh in the mirror event, he might feel obligated to quasi-discretely check on them too. Just let me know!]

[Open Spam, CES]

[It's pitch dark, except for the small area illuminated by the light spilling in through the open door; Marsh doesn't need light. The CES gave him the rebellion's cave systems today, and although there are torches stashed here in there in the tunnels, Marsh doesn't need them. The rock is solid, cool but not cold, and he's tucked just around a bend, holding still. Letting himself be still. He isn't sure himself if it's comforting or just stalling, but at least it is familiar.]