RP [Strays] Yamog and Prig Lounge With Lasers

[Hollander]

RP Date

45.7

RP Location

GG-X44 "Lome" System, Aboard the Avater of Clang

Spoiler: OOC

This is a one-on-one Strays story involving Primitive Polygon's Yamog and Hollander's Prig Wilkins. It takes place on the Avatar of Clang, the ship of the Strays. It takes place chronologically after the conclusion of Slug War, which took place in YE 45.7.
@Primitive Polygon

She was a mile-long mistress of cold steel and sheer, shining deck plating, of vast rooms that alternated between terrifying emptiness and utter, packed, chaos. She was huge and hulking, burly, built to break the crust of a planet and devour its tenderest, juiciest bits. Forty was the number of her decks from top to bottom, but it was on the eleventh of those decks that a strange scene was unfolding, deep within the metal ribcage of the starship’s body.

Beginning from an intersection with ladders that ran up and down a deck, a single hallway ran long, door-less, windowless, featureless. After thirty yards of anxious and empty space, the hallway ended raw and ragged, like the bleeding edge of a shorn-off limb. From the deck plating to the ceiling the hallway had been cut apart so that a teeming host of thigh-thick cables could be routed from the rest of the ship and into this… Hole… It had been a room once, but the doorway was gone, and the metal around the doorway was gone, and the ceiling and the walls had been peeled back to allow a hundred technician’s hands grasping access into the veins and arteries underneath. More space was needed to feed the occupant of the room. More cables, wire bundles, junctions, re-routes, to guide more surging energy to…

To the thing in the middle.

Silently it rose from the floor, through the floor, is steel tumescent with more of those cables and wires running from its inside to its outside and back again. Like the room, its protective plating had been scraped away like so much scabbing, and the beating red glow of its hundred-thousand light emitters flared and swelled and pulsed with wicked intent. This had been one of the ship’s original mining lasers, heavily and disastrously modified to make it an even deadlier weapon. It had already been capable of carving up a planet like a steaming turkey, but an overload of power and an irresponsible cascade of upgrades had reshaped it into a ship-eater. And it looked hungry, standing there in the dark of that room… Noiseless and waiting.

Prig had done his best to decorate it.

He’d found the room while exploring the deck above Deck 10 in the bow, which is where his quarters were. In fact, he was pretty sure quite a few of the other mech pilots were on Deck 10 too. And right above them, just a ladder-climb away (which was pretty fuckin’ far when your legs were shit and you had to sling your walker across your back, and then one of the damn tennis balls got knocked off the legs so you had to climb the fuck back down the ladder and catch the rolling bastard, and then resist the urge to carry the ball in your mouth because if anyone saw that they’d have a bunch of shit to say about it), was this lovely un-used room. Un-used, of course, with the exception of the cables and the great big thing. Did Prig have any idea that the mining laser was… a mining laser? That it was remotely operated for a reason, because the room where it stood could become rather terminal for living beings once it was operational?

He did not have any idea.

And so he had decorated it.

He’d spent the last couple days scavenging around the immediate area of Decks 10 and 11 in the fore, hunting down bits and bobs and unwanted things. It was as survival technique learned as a kid before he’d grown his first patch of fur, back when he was crawling around in Hive-muck and knife-fighting with the other toddlers over a fresh rat-kill. Terrible-Two’s, right? But Prig had gotten together all kinds of neat stuff, and was starting to turn the mining-laser room into a mining laser lounge. Thus far, he’d acquired:

A table he’d cobbled together from two broken metal chairs.

A chair he’d cobbled together from two broken metal tables.

A bean-bag chair, which actually was a gigantic bag of real dried beans.

A bookcase full of data drives.

A data drive storage container full of books.

Three nearly-expired bottles of Phodian corn whiskey.

A mixture of beers of various qualities, mostly crap.

A box each of knick-knacks, tchotchkes, bric-a-bracs, and creepy things.

A rolling chair with an overly-designed back, lumbar support, colored fabric, heated seat and LED light strips along the arm rests.

Fifty-four cartons of Delsaurian bug-flavored cigarettes.

A box of menstrual products.

A box of never-expiring, sugar-laden, chemically-preserved, plastic-wrapped pie treats called Booger Biters.

A two-toaster, a green-bagged electric vacuum, a small yellow lamp, a one-foot-square electric blanket, a red vacuum-tube-based radio, and an adorable little living flower planted in an old Nepleslian helmet. These seemed to go together for some reason.

There was more. And then there was Prig, seated at the metal desk, upon which sat a decades-old Nepleslian computing device. His walker was folded up nearby, forgotten as he loaded data drive after data drive into the computer, focused entirely on his explorations, and ignoring the man-killing, ship-eating mining laser in the room.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

There was no shortage of ambient sounds in the derelict hollow. The general activity of the pseudo-human crew, combined with about ten generations of vermin infestation, was nothing compared to the frequent, creaking torsion the malformed ship made every time it adjusted course. It sounded like a distant metallic earthquake, a murmuring creek that bellowed from every direction at once...

That made it very easy for the spider to loom up in the rafters, and watch the mutant wolf's activity with great scrutiny and patience.

A cacoon of silver descended from the black now. Reflective survival blankets and molecure tape. A trashy, misshapen UFO gradually descending towards the floor on a glimmering thread of pure platinum white.

As nary but clattering keys echoed about the desolate hall, cheap trainers made contact with the riveted deck, and the hood pulled back just enough to expose a single, oversized red-yellow eye beneath.

Yamog didn't hurry. They patiently lit three candles, carefully placing them upright in a triangle around themselves. Unfolded a flaky old wood-bound book, with the words to the ritual. Scrapped open a rusted orange butterfly knife, an ID-SOL model that was like a gladius in their weird, slender little barbed hands.

...Opened their mouth- Closed it.

Moved the flower in the helmet further away, so it didn't get damaged.

And then returned to the spot.

"Nemesis!~ You have been disturbing the sanctity of the holy induction!~ Transgressing into the aura of items thou shall not touch!~" A muffled declaration, haughty and practiced, but lacking the lungs to be truly imposing. What was offputting was the twitching under her hood, the movement of additional limbs beneath the shawl- Despite a feminine voice, it wasn't something the corner of the eye picked up as human, until it moved and swayed about. "This trap will fail to dissuade my dedication! The will of the black claws is in my blood, and they will see divine actions performed rightly!~"

 

[Primitive Polygon]

((!!♪♪♪♪♪MUSIC!!)) ((!!♪♪♪♪♪MUSIC!!)) ((!!♪♪♪♪♪MUSIC!!)) ((!!♪♪♪♪♪MUSIC!!))

(Spider Cultist)
Lv 3
[IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII]

 

[Hollander]

Prig remained utterly, hopelessly unaware of the silver-stringed demoness sliding down from the shadowed rafters of the room. He focused on the screen, squinting his lupine eyes as he digitally unzipped another archaic archive on the computer. Between the cathedral-esque ambience of the room, and the painful groaning of the computer’s physical drive, he didn’t hear the moving of the helmet or the lighting of the candles.

In fact, he was so distracted that the first declaration uttered by the blanketed, cyclopean spider was only half-heard. Thoughtlessly, like a video-gamer only half-listening to a nagging parent, he said “Yeah, I get that.” He turned, saw the scene laid out, heard the thing speak of traps and dedication and black claws and divinity, and for just a second he turned back to the computer before performing a double-take of shock and fear. He leaped up from the chair, managing to say the words “Whoah!” and “Fuck!” at the same time, even as his wobbling legs failed him and he stumbled backward onto his rear.

He planted his clawed hands on the deck plating on either side of his hips, staying seated, not sure what in the hell he was looking at. Prig didn’t know Yamog, hadn’t seen a picture of her, and had no way of knowing she had been the pilot of that nanite-riddled, leaping, ripping thing he’d seen on the battlefield not long ago. She’d said something. A bunch of creepy somethings, and none of them had filtered through his distractions to actually make sense in his head. His eyes wide, two furry ears trained right at her, Prig tried to clarify.

“Whuh?”

 

[Primitive Polygon]

The blue spider was satisfied with this level of terror. Their theatrical juggling of the oversized knife became more ginger, and her half-hidden grin grew in smugness. To her, a true monarch of the pits carried a terrible magistey, after all- The actual act of causing of violence was the more messy and less interesting part. The muscular lupine creature might as well have been flattering them.

Still... Didn't they come here for a reason?... Oh yeah, the rituals...

Breaking their rhythmic dance for a moment, Yamog took a break in order to take off her reflective blanket, and put it directly on top of the dormant laser's outer casing.

...If a survival cloak reflected heat, it would contain microwave energy, right?...

"There! Your devious trap is neutralized!... I've survived many petty assassination attempts like this, don't you know?" A black gothic dress was underneath, product of the planet they had just been to. If Prig's nose was working, he probably would have caught a whiff of that horrid place. Four arms. A spider-like abdomen. A pair of ear-tenna-horns that seemed quite prehensile. "A monster so muscular he can't even hold his own tremendous physicality, huh? That's just a meat-level consideration, and not a spirit-level aspect! You can't intimidate a member of a divine, holy lineage!..."

Another pause, and another struggle to focus. She looked around at the disarrayed shelves, the computer, the makeshift but surprisingly civilized garments the wolf was wearing...

"...Why are you stealing my stuff? Did you sell it already?" A sneering aside, almost as if consciously talking in another language to translate. The pocket sized abomination could go from aloof, to cold and direct, on a dime. "The book, the multitudes of nazgaroth, was removed from the sealing ritual on deck six... The RD212 Zanycom system game Rockson the mega barbarian containing the secret demon malware skyshredder, I left plugged into the commissary computer... Twenty seven personally written parchments, eight seals, fourteen home made candles..."

"Where is it all!?... Are you eating it!?"

 

[Hollander]

Prig’s face continued to screw up in a mixture of confusion and anxiety. The thing cast off its cloak of garbage, revealing the decidedly not-quite-humanoid body underneath. It was... certainly a sight to take in.

The blade had that been passing between the thing's hands may well have been passing through four hands, given that he could see quadruple arms sprouting from its chest. From her chest, he couldn't help but notice. Shrouded as it was in a dress of black fabric, he thought he saw clues of a female-ness in the... outlines. Underneath the fluffy hair was a mono-eyed face that, despite the addition of an extra pair of ears, some teeth that rivaled Prig's own in sharpness, and a general look of smug superiority, seemed feminine to him. Could demons be female? He looked away quickly after his eyes fell on the abdomen poking out of her back, not sure if that was some kind of extended booty or something else entirely! What the hell was this girl? What was with the creepy markings? What was-

She was talking again.

She spoke of a devious trap, and of an assassination attempt. Was she... some kind of royalty? A princess? She talked on, - maybe babbled on? - about meat levels and his musculature and monstrosity, and about her own divinity. Was he being threatened, or flirted with? Then she got to the theft, and Prig worried his life was on the line. Small as she was, he wasn't exactly a dangerous combatant unless he could grab hold of his foe. And with her four arms and arachnoid setup, she was probably superior in the grappling arena. But she'd finished with a question, and he had to answer honestly.

"P-probably?" he had to say. He struggled to rise, ambling up slowly toward his walker so he didn't alarm her. She was... pretty short, now that he could see her from a standing position. If he straightened his back, he'd have nearly two feet on her, but that didn't reduce the intimidation factor of how damned strange and freaky she was. He tried to explain his side of the whole theft accusation. "Hey, if you've got claim to this stuff, I apologize. The stuff that wasn't in garbage piles was sorta lying around and... I mean if I'm thinking of the right book you're talking about, it was... Just sitting around with some candles..." His eyes now snapped to the candles in this very room, organized triangularly and lit. He remembered some of the words she'd said. Ritual? Spirit-level? Holy-induction? Prig was beginning to realize he'd probably screwed up this bizarre woman's religious practices somehow.

"And that's not cool of me. If any of this shi-.... stuff is yours, go ahead and take it back. I was trying to collect interesting stuff in one place, so folks could have a break area. Read books, play games, whatever. This ship's a little... rough and tumble."

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Yamog paused and flexed their ears, giving off an impetuous little scowl. She was surprised at the fine quality of the hulking lyncanthrope's manners, especially considering he didn't seem to have a digital aid to process the speech from his extended, toothy maw. Staring at those fearsome gnashers as they moved made her instantly distrust the polite nature, continuing to suspect some sort of trap was at play.

It was sort of endemic to how he looked, as well as her garden variety paranoia. The creature-person before her would have looked far more natural on all fours, leaping after her like a hungry monster- Standing there awkwardly on hindquarters, doe-eyed, propping himself up, just felt... wrong? Too timid and reticent to match the leering, grey statue of sinew. A brutal thing that must have a hidden reason, to pretend to cower...

A twirl on the spot- disorganized- a not-quite-graceful arcing hand struggling to seize the long line of tense gossamer, still attached to the blueberry spinnerets behind her. Without breaking eye contact with her supposed assailant, she tugged it in a specific rhythmic way until it fell down from the ceiling, looping a thin nigh-weightless pile down onto the upper right forearm- Then she shoved the apparently precious material down the front of her slightly loose-fitting corset.

"...You're... A mutant, right? So... this is a ruse, isn't it?" She sidestepped now, towards the bookshelves. Able to actually get a bit of distance, betraying what fear might have been hidden before. "You're a mutant, so you must know how mutants are... Don't try and act so innocent..."

The book they retrieved was thickly bound in a dense leather. Hopefully from nothing sentient, but you could never be sure. The runic script on the cover was unrecognizable and occult, accompanied by a singular large stylized eye. Come to think of it, he'd seen a lot of the same script written concentrically around the area where he had found it, on all of the floor panels and bulkhead frames. It matched some of the cursed markings on this she-thing's bodymeats, too.

She hugged the twisted relic like a stuffed animal, and then shot him more daggers.

"Who let you on this ship anyway? What's your name? What's yer' job?" At a loss to explain his passiveness, and still trying to justify her smugness by following the narrative that the wolf knew who she was, the agitation built until she was swinging the knife around irately again. "Who'dya think you are!? I'm a very important asset you know!"

Almost knocked over the flower. The rear-left hand reflexively shot out and righted it.

Did she need to be afraid? Was this big dogman a real assassin? A swindler? A crazy person who was genuinely confused, but still wanted to do bad things?

 

[Hollander]

Mistrust… A natural reaction. His own mistrust of her had led to fear and uncertainty as they’d faced off. Still, he’d backed off, he’d apologized, and she was still razzing him. She was swinging the knife around, asking him who ‘let him on the ship’ like he was some sort of… ‘stray’… Asking his name and his job… Who the hell was she? Important asset? There were no important assets on the Avatar of Clang. Maybe it was the presence of that huge and hungry tool of destruction, and its deadly energies lying in wait. Maybe it was the fact that he was hungry, and something about this fussy, fuzzy spider was telling him she was ‘prey’. Or maybe he was just getting pissed at her claims of authority. Whatever it was, it drove him to stand to his full height. His shoulders seemed to spread, and his furry hackles bristled as his lips peeled back. Now, a speech processor would’ve been handy…

“Hey, take ‘er ‘own a hhhhuckin hnnnotch.” (1) he growled, stepping toward her while supported his walker which he’d collapsed into a cane, its tennis-balled-bottoms striking the deck plating with dull thumps. “Hhhi a’holohized, and hyou hot hyour hhuckin…. BOOK.” (2) He had to force his lips down to pronounce that last consonant, and he made to thrust his cane at her chest, where the book was being hugged protectively. Prig wasn’t lunging to actually strike her with it, but more to express his rising indignation at being crapped on, hypothetically speaking.

Spoiler: Speech Translations

1."Hey, take it down a fuckin notch."
2. "I apologized, and you got your fuckin book!"

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Yamog's eye grew wide in horror as she got exactly what she'd been asking for, suddenly dwarfed in shadow. With the thin veneer of civilisation peeled back, his dark and glassy canine eyes much too easily took on a much more fearsome aspect, as he stretched out into a herculean new form which blocked out the ceiling lights above.

This was just proof that her majestic, otherworldly intellect could detect the true soul of those around her, wasn't it? It was proof she was right!

Awkwardly, with too much of her weight off balance because of the sizable arcane tome, she brought up the rusted blade in a slow unsteady angle, just about catching the jabbing cane- More pushing her own body out of the way, rather than deflecting the considerably robust force of the monster-man's casual gesture.

"I knew it! I trusts mine holy eye!" Incensed and desperate, their own awkward limb arrangement clattered against the bookshelf. Utter fear stopped them from looking away from the approaching hulk, leaving only scrambling fingers to work out a path of retreat. All the while, the oversized blade kept getting swung around, in slow, lazy arcs. A cold sweat welled up, and vestigial mandibles twitched. "Too much nicety, an obvious falsehood... You sir, are after mine string! Mine skin! A cannibal-ist occult-ist brute! The lady Versanti sees! And knows!"

 

[Hollander]

Prig slowed up a little, once he saw through the red in eyes to a vision of the effect he was having on her. Her defensive posture with the blade, her awkward clattering against the bookshelf, and the fear overtaking that single eye of hers. Prig's rapid heartbeat slowed, even as hers seemed to jump up its pace. He wasn't exactly the best at defusing situations, but damned if he didn't feel obligated to try. He wasn't scrambling around the streets and hovels of Nepleslian hives anymore, mugging innocent people for food-money. Guilt replaced his anger... Well, some of his anger. She was still being a feisty little creature, but from her perspective, he'd screwed up her spiritual stuff and taken her things, so...

He backed off a step, putting his cane back down before he lost his own balance. His snarl receded, a little, and he regained some of his ability to talk.

"Hnot hh... not too fhun getting... yapped at, is it?" he asked her. "See how we made each other feel? Not good, right?" Prig tried to relax his claws where he was gripping the cane; he was squeezing the already compacted steel at the hand-grips. To cool himself off, he looked up to the shadows of the ceiling where she'd come from, and from where she'd descended on that string of hers. He thought about trying to appeal to her sense of logic, that it made no sense for him to try to steal from her or assassinate her, and then sit down in her lair and fuck around on a computer, but... Logic and this spider-fuzzball didn't seem to be on good terms.

"Listen, I'm gonna step over here and sit down. I don't think you want a fight, and neither do I. So, maybe talking's not a bad idea." He licked at his teeth reflexively, not realizing that could look a little freaky, as he started to amble over to the beanbag chair, if she let him. His veins still felt cold-slick with a brief rush of adrenaline, and collapsing into a bean bag chair sounded like the right way to recover. As he moved away from her, he ventured at making introductions. "So, you asked for my name. Kind of in a bitchy way, but... I'm Prig. You're... Lady Vissaunty?" She'd spoken that part of her name while she'd been freaked out and while he'd been in a rage, so he hadn't quite picked up on the pronunciation.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Unstable, whispish, Yamog found it difficult to let go of the intense concoction of delirium, paranoia and pure psychosis gripping their brain... He was walking away again, but that aggression proved something, didn't it? Didn't it? Shouldn't she attack, whilst his guard was down!?

But then why wasn't he just finishing the job? Killing her and getting what he wanted?

Hands covered her ears as the glossy monoeye winced, restraining the backflips her stomach was doing, as well as the constant screaming noise in their head...

Heavy breathing, red nails clenched, no verbal response could escape...

Until...

Bending back a bit and raising one limber leg into the air, torn stockings made way for their bulbous abdomen to take aim- Twin bumpy spinnerettes creating a helix of airborne web material, which clung to a nearby book case.

After that, she crept in a wide, slow angle towards the oversized wolfman, as if dragging a tow line.

"...C-c-an I.... tie you up, Prig?..." Whispered nervously, as if it was the obvious less violent option. They weren't really hiding the slow walk at all, so that meant it wasn't aggressive, right? A totally normal thing to be doing... "...I-I-I... I w-w-would feel m-much s-safer, if... Th-then we could... t-talk... and..."

Too many wiggly parts on this girl-thing. Sullen, downward ears, a narrowing eye and pouting lips gave off the expression of... Somebody who was just barely holding back the voracious, venomous little haemonculus inside?

 

[Hollander]

She began her slow, creeping approach, and Prig slowed up to a stop in front of the bean bag chair, hesitant to take a seat while she was doing… whatever she was doing. She whispered her… request? Proposition? Offer? He couldn’t help but wonder at her motive… Why, so you can drain me dry with spider fangs? Turn my guts into goo and drink it up like a flesh-and-blood slurpy drink? Mark me up with creepy symbols and sacrifice me to a video game character? She’d gone from threatening and commanding to submissive and uncertain, and though frenetic highs and frightened lows seemed somehow normal for her, Prig couldn’t help but suspect a careful cunning under the surface of her behavior.

But he considered her request, just the same. Maybe that’s what it took for this little creature to feel safe? To only engage in a conversation if she was completely in control? His own willingness to finally just fucking die also factored in. He only had what, maybe six more years before Guppy’s Disease starting turning his guts into goo anyway? What difference did it make if he met his end as the meal/prey/ritual-sacrifice of a trash-covered, cyclopean occultist? At least he could say he died at the four-hands of a… somewhat… cute… girl? Better here than in a gutter, or in a Slug’s belly, or burning alive in a plasma fire. Ultimately, he shrugged acquiescently. If Lady 'Vissaunty' (he was starting to doubt that was right) killed him, he’d be dead. If she didn’t kill him, maybe they really would talk and someone would end up happy. This was a ‘lounge’ he was building, after all. Who was he to say how people were allowed to lounge about?

“Sure, why not.” he said, turning and plopping into the bag of beans with a heavy crunch. “But if you don’t end up killing me, promise me you won't leave me here tied up to die of starvation or boredom or something.”

He didn't want to die of boredom.

 

[Primitive Polygon]

"Yaaayyy~ You're my prisoneerrrr!~" Yamog's horn-ears vibrated with a sudden release of pressure, and her dorky beaming smile showed off a silvery set of braces. Now using the knife like a marching baton, she trotted around Prig like a maypole dancer, causing the ribbon-like silk to slide across the floor and begin winding around him, ankle-to-torso. A pencil's thickness, ivory white and smelling distinctly like... licorice? It was kinda tough, but more post-it tacky, than superglue-sticky...

"My name is Yamog Genry Versanti, disciple of the prophet of Itandeon', pilot of the Immortal Razor..." A more nonchalant tone now, just the edge of nerves left- More like striking up a converstation with a stranger on the funky city tubeway. "...Hurm... Prig... That sounds... are you the same person as Pig Thickman?... You're a stray pilot too?..."

A slow process, but the string just kept going and going... How hard even was this stuff to break?...

 

[Hollander]

The word 'prisoner' gave Prig pause. He'd been jailed before, a few times, but this was already strikingly different in a number of ways. And it was more than a little uncomfortable to see the stuff coming out of the back of her... thorax?... while she danced around him. At least it didn't feel too strong, and it only barely pulled on his fur as it looped around and around him. But she then gave her name, her full name, and he grimaced a little as he realized he'd been pronouncing her last name wrong. She also told him her title, which he'd never heard of, and the name of...

After she asked her questions, he suddenly realized who she was at the same time she realized who HE was. This spider-girl was the pilot of that mech that had given him a bizarre nightmare the night after the Slug Wars battles. Now the dancing and the madness seemed to make a little more sense to him.

"That fuckin bird-man." Prig grumbled. "Yeah, I'll tell you, I said my name to that man multiple times. I wrote it down, even." He puffed out his slowly-being-restrained chest a little, proud that he knew how to read and write; not a terribly common skill among mutants these days. "Prig Wilkins, and yeah, I'm a pilot. I was in the mech that shot the drill-rockets. When the big bug was... Well, you were doing your thing, so you may not've seen it."

He thought for a moment, deciding to voice the honest thoughts he had, flattering though they may be. "I saw you, though. You were scary as hell, but we might've ended up slug-chow if it weren't for you slaughtering a baker's thousand of those things."

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Yamog made a couple of uh-huh sounds, and began thumbing through her communicator as he talked... Rude, but to be fair, she was walking around in circles and had no peripheral vision.

By the sounds of the tinny voices and cutoff ads, she was on some crew blog video site looking up information on him... Oh no, right, it was clips of you know, Shasta, talking about their recent exploits for content...

"Oh yeah, I was kinda seeing the invisible waves of- I was shitting bricks, TEE-BE-HACHE.~" A glance back up, curling their hair absent mindedly, kind of embarrassed about their lack of a cool way to rephrase it. She really was just trying to survive, herself. "So the gun on legs was you, huh? Feels to me like you did a pretty good job, you didn't blow nothin' that didn't deserve it to bits..."

"Mr.Chips, well... I dunno, he's very killy, guess that's how you gotta be to survive around this kinda place."

A disgruntled pause, forcing herself not to get distracted, and put away the pocket computer.

It was a good thing Prig breathed out- Through either careless malice or general incompetence, she'd twirled quite a bit of the string around him.

Appraising the work, the spider finally figured it was enough to feel safe, and so simply laid down on the floor.

"Prig Wilkins... Prig Wilkins... Feels like a very neppy name, sure... Does it annoy you when people compare you to a doggy?" An inquisitive blink, curling up in a ball with hands on knees and belly. "Guess you're just another... daring fellow from some no-place-good, like a lot of people 'round here, huh?... You... seem a little too nice for that, though..."

 

[Hollander]

Prig's name popped up in a few obscure search results. They were on the kinds of internep sites that your browser warned you about immediately, begging you to direct your searches anywhere else. The search results included:

A series of posts from a Nepleslian Hive district jailhouse. These were posted either as a public service in the interest of transparency, or in some kind of attempt to publicly shame the offenders. Prig Wilkin's name showed up a couple times.

The jail reports looked like the following:

• Arrested for vagrancy. Insufficient funds to pay the fine, subject was given a Level 2 beating and let off with a warning.
• Arrested and booked for disturbing the peace. Released from jail due to insufficient jail space.
• Trespassed from Usury Yue's Used Car Lot. Given a Level 2 beating and fined.
• Trespassed from District 14 Hospital Ward for bleeding on the floor. Given a Level 2 beating.

An old 'mommy blog', written by an aging mutant woman with an unspecified physical disability, wrote a thankful message about Prig helping with her vegetable garden. She talks about how he asked her "Please don't use my full name on your website" and how sweet and humble that was, as she went on to repeatedly use his name and describe his physical stats.

There was some kind of anarchist street-news site that was active for three months before becoming a malware-riddled mess. One seemingly genuine article showed a picture taken at a "Lasagna, Not Lasers" event. Prig could be seen wearing some kind of hair-net and a 'LNL' shirt, serving food to other mutants.

The rest of the links were outdated and not archived, at least as far as the quick search could show.

Prig wasnt' quite able to piece together her first sentence into anything sensible, and her utterance of 'TEE-BE-HACHE' was lost on him. He only knew a little of internep nerd culture; he'd downloaded some old video game ROMs once, and had seen some videos here and there when he could steal time with a technical device. In fact, his most edifying time with regard to internep culture had been while he was substitute teaching for a public school. Kids knew all kinds of stuff these days.

"Gun on legs was me." he confirmed, shifting a little in his bindings. It wasn't so bad, at first. It wasn't squeezing too hard, and the line wasn't so sticky that it pulled at his fur. He appreciated her compliment too.

She'd put the device away and had plopped down on the floor. He tried to keep his eyes respectful, and not ogle her as she plopped down. He was mostly successful. "Not terribly." he admitted, and his answer seemed to indicate that not much annoyed him. Being pestered and hassled by a spider-girl apparently did annoy him, but he didn't bring that up. "At first, when I was a kid, it was pretty cool, when all the parts worked. But after a while the legs, and my nose, all shit the bed. So, it's just a thing now. I'm furry, and maybe I look kinda cool if people only look once from the right angle." He tried to shrug, and realized he couldn't. He heard her thoughts about being nice, and he was about to disagree, but a thought struck him that he felt compelled to share. "You know, this might sound weird, but... this is kind of nice. Being tied up." Prig admitted it with no sense of shame. "I feel like I'm being hugged. Like someone's hanging onto me."

 

[Primitive Polygon]

Yamog didn't really know how to feel about the information gained. It was too awkward and lamentable to be AI generated. Outwardly she was struck with a pang of guilt now that she had the time to consider it, perhaps merely reminded of some unrelated situation.

"...You... look cool, though?... It's not all 'bout looking like... a super perfect action figure..." The spider softened just a morsel, then tensed up whilst looking into the dusty floor panel next to her face. "It's bout context, you know... All of us are... like just some pathetic copy of a nicer dream, you know?..."

A split of emotions, a squirming feeling in the gut- A bitter reaction telling her hate would keep her safe, and not to trust this lying befangled creature.

...But they were both mutants, and weird ones, and Yamog related rather more than she liked to?...

She was being pretty mean to him, and they were just kinda there, yarn-bitten like a faberge egg, taking it.

"Belonging is like a value, isn't it? I want to be hugged too." A slow arcing angle propped her head up, then moved her into sitting upright. The orb-like attachment of the rear basically always got in the way. A look at the ceiling... Then the oversized red monoeye trailed downwards, both more calm, but also more penetrating, than before. Fingers crawled over the arcane skin-symbology of their cobalt thighs.

Opened her mouth a little, then closed it.

Rotated on the spot three times whilst looking straight ahead. Stood up with an awkward gait.

Tried to disconnect her brain from that strange, ghastly zone inbetween fear and attraction, where she was chilled by visions of those huge biceps popping her head off of her neck like some meaty plaything...

"...You collect vidya but you play them too, right? Let's do that!" Self-distraction achieved. The spider moved over to his computer and messed with the ports, returning with some shitty third party plastic controllers that weren't even decent when they were new. His weighty claw-hands actually were free, so they might have been considering this earlier.

Perched sideways on the makeshift table-stool glorious metal throne of steel, all that was left to do was watch the dumb chirpy loadup screen, and a small orange sunrise fuzz into the life. 'Rockson the mega barbarian' was predictably a hack-and-slash with cultish themes. But it had co-op, the physics and ragdolls were the good kind of bad, and the music was good. Pretty soon they were fighting hordes of low poly ant-men with axes, merrily blowing them away with flamethrowers and oversized grenade launchers.

 

[Hollander]

Prig tried not to scoff when she said he did look cool. It would've been a disbelieving scoff, like the one someone would make if they were being teased. But as far as he could tell, in trying to get a read on this girl who mused about 'pathetic copies of a nicer dreams', maybe she was being genuine?

What the hell was going on here? Was he, a messed-up mutant tied up in spider-silk on top of a bag of beans in a creepy-freaky death room, making a godsdamned friend?

Prig let her think, keeping his mouth shut. He found that silence had its own worth in these kinds of moments. Like when you were accosted by police, for example. Or when somebody's got a gun poking in your ribs and they're telling you to be quiet. He saw her eye shift down, saw her fingers play across her skin like she was playing some sort of... skin-based instrument. A skinstrument? She turned around. Stood up. Was it time for her to eat him, after all? To dig around in his chest cavity looking for juicy bits?

Oh. No. It was time for video games.

"O-oh... Yeah. I'm not good, but I game a little." She fiddled with the computer and brought over some controllers that looked like the kind you gave to dirty-fingered guests, or to irritating younger cousins with snot perpetually streaming out of their noses.

Prig didn't see the hunky-junky steel table become a throne (because it didn't), and he didn't see Yamog transform into a marvelous royal wizardess (because she didn't), but he did see the digital sunrise, and the loading screen, and he saw his character pick up a 'RAWKET LAWNCHAIR' and blow an angry ladybug into smithereens.

Tied up, he let some time pass, the two of them just being together for a bit. That magical moment seemed to come when they'd hit their stride in the level, so, constrained as he was, Prig decided to field a question or two.

"So the ahh... thing you were doing, that you needed the book for. Is that gonna be okay, even though I screwed it up for you? Like, is it a thing you can re-do?"

Spoiler: OOC

Referring to Yamog's earlier mention of "The book, the multitudes of nazgaroth, was removed from the sealing ritual on deck six... "

 

[Primitive Polygon]

"Hey, you are the one who screwed it up, so it's not me who is getting cursed..." Yamog responded with a haughty scowl, almost getting shot by the laser from a UFO whilst distracted. She hid behind some crumbling buildings whilst looking for a longer ranged weapon to blow them up with. "Though I am gonna have to make some kind of arrangements. To call the elder things is to ask for guidance, is to provoke them to get involved... Nothing like a god would be watching us at all times, omnipotent or not. That's kinda arrogant... You just better fufil your end of the bargain, if you do get them to listen."

Stomach grumbled. The feeling of reality seeping back in. Yamog itched their ribs and tried to ignore it, but the crushing sensation of her disgruntled inner bits made her cognisant of the fact she couldn't actually remember when she last ate.

What food did Prig actually gather again?... Just some alcohol and what looked like microwavable pies… Standing up and lurking around the various boxes, she then skulked around behind the tremendous wolf, having to climb slightly up his back, to feel his fluffy triangular ears.

"Were you going to make the laser into an oven, or something?... This place is very lounge-y, but you got no good food..." A disgruntled sigh, looking up and down both sides of his head, whilst she tried to figure out what exactly he was eating, to get so big. "...Tell you what, why not let me build a proper shrine here? Then I'll have a reason to get proper chow in, hurm... Oh, I'll untie you too, I guess..."

So she wasn't, if he didn't agree?

"I want pierogies... and coffee... and Khofan blood bagel, you know, the spicy red one with loads of cheese..."

 

[Hollander]

Prig flinched and grimaced (flimaced? grimched?) at the mention of the word curse. He was ignorant enough to be superstitious, and this spidery girl had a way of making a person worry irrationally. He tried to internalize her instructions about gods, and their omnipotence, arrogance, bargains. She seemed to know her stuff, from the way she was saying a bunch of words. Maybe she'd help him out? Lift the curse he'd stumbled into?

When Yamog stood up, her character in the game stood still. Prig kept the digital enemies at bay; a horde of mummies, shambling and vomiting up robotic scarabs, which were no match for his buzzsaw cannon. After a bit, the enemies were cleared, but with Yamog's character bopping around in an idle animation, the game didn't move forward. A big arrow popped up, saying "Move Right! Move Right!" But Prig moved his character over to hers. They high-fived on-screen.

He'd lost track of her after she had lurked around the boxes, so he started saying "D'you think this curse is something you can fi-uhhhh..... huhhh..."

Fingers were on his ears. It was a... lovely sensation. He melted a little, sinking a few inches further into the sack of beans, the webbing settling onto him further. Yamog was talking again, so he tried to listen to her over the distracting sensation of her touch. Food... Shrine? Chow? She listed things she wanted.

"I think uhh... I mean, I've done food stuff." What was the word for that? Prig tried to think clearly. Being tied up and locked down seemed to only focus his attentions on his immobile body. "Cooking. I can do dumplings. Coffee. Dunno bout... blood bagels. And a shrine's fine, folks should make the lounge their own kinda place, I think."