mutiny

Now the bed's on fire and the ceiling's gone And your mom and dad still sing the same old song I closed my eyes and saw my father's sins They covered me like a second skin I peeled them off and sure I bled it in And now I'm free to sink my own damn ship I cut the bridge down from my family tree To start a fire in the middle Now the house is just ash this time, sink or swim Tag: ohnohesbeenimpaled Indie Karl Heisenberg of Resident Evil Village Written by Kevin

[leonkennedy9642]

Leon inhales. He holds it for barely a second before blowing all of it from his nose. It's a bit like venting hot air from one of Karl's machines. It's true. He's trying his best and part of him wonders if the man opposite him has already given up on hope? "The same that Miranda needs from you. Everything."

Isn't that the truth of it? They'll need to bring everything to bear if they want to succeed against an old power like the village 'mother', she has maintained control for close to a century.

"Go to the village. Bring back as many of them as will follow you." He opened the palms of his hands. "Am I allowed to pick through your scrap? I might be able to craft some last minute fire power." He has almost forgotten about the dead soldat. It stinks something awful, made from a cadaver god-knows-how-old.

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

"Everything, eh?" There wasn't any hope to be found in that village. Not with the people, and not with the so-called Lords that surrounded them. There was just fear. Fear and suspicion and things that went violently bump in the night.

He has half a mind to say 'no', and to either chase Kennedy away or toss him into the underground. But Heisenberg's also smart enough to know that that's not really him thinking, it's something else. Not quite Miranda, no, she didn't have that kind of power of them as far as he knew, but something...

Well, he'd always been a rotten kind of man with a gloomy outlook.

In the end, Karl shrugs.

"Yeah, sure, help yourself. But avoid the underground. The basement, if you will. There's stuff down there you won't like, if you catch my drift..."

Namely a guy, in the loosest of terms, with an aircraft engine for an upper body.

"Nothing friendly," the Lord adds.

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

Edna's ready for a lil snacky. Anyone got any spare fingers and toes? Maybe an arm they're not usin'?

[leonkennedy9642]

Leon offers a tip of his head. Respect. Fear. Almost the same hat. Thing was, the villagers were never going to listen to an outsider. Didn't matter how good his intentions were. He was as good as the devil coming to lay waste to their way of life. Something Miranda probably warned them about.

Karl proposes that they might be a lose cause. He can't help the frown that creeps onto his face — he can't keep chasing the same circle, where an entire population has to be wiped out because of someone else's greed or delusions of power.

"We have to try." He insists in a firm tone. For everything that he guards, it's still quite obvious what his sore spots are. He's so tired of failing everyone. People always die around him. He has rivers of blood on his hands and for what? He has to hope for better. He has to.

"Fuck Miranda and fuck her games." He's already tired of her shit and he hasn't met the woman. Only distantly, through gathered intel and a blurry sighting that gives little detail away. She shrouds herself in mystery and seems to make a personal appearance only when she needs more bodies. "If they still look human, they're probably fine. There are a lot of things that she can be faulted for — but she hasn't wiped out the population of the village through a mistake yet. I don't think people are allowed to come back wrong."

All he had to go on was speculation. A feeling in his gut. Hard evidence was better but it was all he had.

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

Karl's quick to raise his hands at Kennedy's insistence that they have to try. He's not going to fight a stubborn man, not one who's marched in offering to do his dirty work against Miranda for him. If he wants to try, then they'll try. Karl'll even refrain from an I told you so if it failed.

He's nice like that sometimes, and his hands drop in a gesture of giving in. And while Kennedy goes on about trying to reassure them both that it'll be worth it, he lights a cigar.

Part of him thinks the agent's trying to convince himself more than the mutant standing in front of him.

"Yeh, yeh, we'll give it a go. What else ya need from me?"

Seemed the agent was very insistent on saving people. Must have had history.

[mold-girl]

....."Eva.... ... I've kinda come around to the idea I am her....it just....makes too much sense.." the girl sighed "you went through because of me"

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

"Hi, Eva, I'm Karl." He stopped his tinkering at that last sighed statement, and his head tilted to the side. Now what was he to make of that? "Yeah, don't worry about it, kid. Shit happens."

[madeofthreads]

Leon exhaled through his nose. It's a minor set-back. Miranda might know when a Lord falls, which begs the question how she would react? If he were to hazard a guess — send the other two Lords to him. Though Karl has a more pessimistic outlook.

He thins his lips as he purses them together. Eyes lowered, his gaze dances back and forth over an invisible map. The castle. He knows in his gut that's the place to strike first, Lord Moreau is a fish out of water and Lady Beneviento won't have her doll house. Take them away from their base and they're weakened. Lady Dimitrescu, however, can toss a man around regardless of where she is.

He looks back up to Karl. Leon gets the luxury of being removed from the history here, but the man in front of him is steeped in it. He talks about everyone being expendable. Not good. Then he... apologises?

Leon finds himself blinking at the man. Maybe studying someone from the outside isn't enough, because he never would have expected Lord Heisenberg to apologise to anyone, let alone an outsider. "Don't worry about it." he brushes it off.

"This is going to get ugly." Leon closes his eyes with a pensive shake of his head. He hates it. So much death, and for what..? This time it has to be different. He can't step into the same loop again and again. "The villagers respect you. Is there any way you can call them to your factory? Claim a celebration for..." he looks down again. The ominous rumbling under the floor giving him a moment of pause. "... for yourself, make it look like an ego trip? If you can get an invitation out, close the doors on them, trap them here, give them safety from Miranda..." Leon offered a shrug. "Then we'll actually have a sizeable civilian evacuation after the bloodshed."

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

Sometimes, Karl had what one might consider a conscience. Did he listen to it half the times it reared its pathetic head? No. This time? He did. He listened to it and apologized and apparently it had caught Leon off-guard or something. It was a bit weird, but Heisenberg supposed that outsiders only had the worst information about them to go on. They didn't know that Donna had a genuine love for dolls, that Moreau genuinely liked shitty movies, and that Lady Dimitrescu absolutely adored her daughters probably more than she was loyal to Miranda herself.

The Lord couldn't really blame them for not knowing.

"Don't know as I'd call it respect," Karl mumbled, because it definitely was not respect. Though he considered himself to be the most approachable of the four Lords to the villagers--only because he sometimes agreed to tinker with their broken shit when needed--it wasn't a respect sort of thing. They feared him, and every now and then, he was useful to them.

"And I'm not too sure there're any actually worth saving. Miranda turns them into experiments or Lycans. Best they can hope for is they die and get discarded after the experiments. Of the ones she hasn't touched, well...I dunno if she's touched them all or not, to be honest with you. I don't go meddling in her affairs if I can help it." It painted a very bleak picture, it really did.

"But I guess I could try, and let you and your people deal with whatever she's done to 'em if the evacuation works."

[mold-girl]

"I tried to .... Tell her but no I'm just a failure..." She wasn't crying.... She was... mature about it.... "I mean I'll always be one ..... I don't even have a body anymore this ...is that's left of me ..my manifestation" eveline hummed "I mostly stay on the baker's stratum......they...they...met the real me...this time...not the monster...that....made them do those horrible things...."

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

"Yeah..." Heisenberg could sympathize. He even found himself feeling bad for the kid. It was a terrible thing, being created and then told you were a failure, being rejected at every turn. "Yeah, if it makes you feel any better, she's deemed us failures, too." Karl glanced at the girl again.

"So what you am I talking to?"

[mold-girl]

Eveline takes a deep breath in and out as she's carefully put back down on the floor as she sighed "......flashes of before the lab.... Like.... being in her...arms.... Her doing my hair........ she didn't want me because I couldn't remember..... At the time......" She huffs resting her fist on her chin

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

"Yeah?" The fact that Karl was even responding was a sign that he was listening, even if he turned around on his stool and went back to his clock. It was just to keep his hands and brain busy.

"Who, Miranda?" he guessed, because unfortunately Miranda was the only one that came to mind with the description.

"She'd want you now, right? If you remember?"

[mold-girl]

"no....you haven't.... But you'll get rid of me.... everybody always does.....Miranda the connections.... ..Mia" the girl croaked ..."sometimes I have....these flashes .... it's weird..."

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

"Why th'fuck would I get rid of you? You're a kid." Yeah, he knew she was more than just a kid, but she was still a kid. Turning from the clock he was working on, he squinted up at the girl.

"Shouldn't you be with Miranda or something? I'm not a babysitter." But he reached up with a sigh to gently free the girl and set her down on the floor.

"Behave yourself and I'll let you stick around. Flashes? Of what?"

[mold-girl]

Eveline let's out a shriek of pure fear "let me down!" She yelled and thrashed only making herself sick and nauseous "I'm the oldest I was first....put me down!"

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

"I'm the oldest! I was first!" Heisenberg mimicked in a high-pitched voice; immaturity met immaturity every time.

"Could be worse. I'm not usin' you for a pinata, am I? Ain't fed you to Edna or sent you down to play with Sturm, have I?"

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

Jumpscare the metal man!

@mold-girl

When the hell does that ever work...

Uses a bit of metal to fashion a cuff around the girl's ankle and a chain to hoist her up upside down from the ceiling.

@mold-girl

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

i keep forgetting which blog i'm logged into

[madeofthreads]

Leon bites his own tongue. His kneejerk response ranges somewhere between 'no shit' and admitting to a mild case of tinnitus. He knows how to behave. Instead he opens his mouth — he meant to speak. Was going to say something about assessing the situation.

But the handshake with Lord Heisenberg is electric. His mouth closed and he offered a firm nod as that feeling crept up his arm. It's like a flashbomb to his senses. Pull back. Ready. Fight. His heart is galloping in his chest when their handshake concludes. His body anticipates violence that does not come.

"Karl." Leon repeats, voice more serious than usual. And he's a pretty serious guy. He clears his throat with a subtle flex of his fingers, as if that might help disperse the feeling of being charged up.

So. There was an alliance here. He was doing his damnedest not to stumble in the first seconds. "You're a man with more knowledge than me. I don't know the full scope. Plan was to take out the Lords that are loyal to Miranda one by one," so, the other three, "but would that be possible without Miranda knowing? If... a Lord died, is she connected?"

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

"Better get a happy meal outta this, at least…"

Oops. Maybe he should have warned him first. Heisenberg can feel it, the way the electricity crawls between them, the sparks, and he can feel the jumping and jerking of muscles in the man's hand. He isn't doing it on purpose; he's a walking, talking coil.

And Karl doesn't find it particularly fun. He had, at first. Who wouldn't? But as the years had gone on...

The fun wore off. ...At least he was good for charging batteries, though.

Just as Leon flexes his fingers, Karl brushes his off on his coat, dispelling as much of the electricity as possible. It never works.

"Connected? ...Fuck's sake, I hope not. But kinda hard to say." He plucks the hat off his head and tosses it onto the head of the deactivated Soldat, then scratches a hand through his hair, making more of a mess of it than it already was. "To be honest with you, I'd probably err on the side of caution and assume she'd know. Better question might be how much she'd care. She talks big about 'family', but I know it's all jus' talk. We're as expendable to her as the villagers are. All she cares about is that kid of hers and bringing it back. We're just...the failures."

Then he slipped his glasses up onto the top of his head.

"Sorry about the electric shock. ...Can't really turn it off."

[madeofthreads]

Leon doesn't take the hint. He leaves his hand where it is — he's not ashamed to be left hanging. Lord Heisenberg doesn't have a reason to trust him. Still, he searches the other mans face, offers a small tilt of his head. He acknowledges the words but he doesn't leap in to passionately defend against the accusations. That looks desperate. Like a lie.

Instead, his hand catches the hem of his own shirt. He'd be appalled at himself if it hadn't once worked on him. He lifts the fabric up past his chest. His body is littered with scars. A tapestry of close calls, misteps and his dedication to his work. But it's one scar in particular that his pointer finger taps. It's at the center of his chest. Looks a lot better healed, from the angry and raised thing it used to be.

"You'll join the club. Three members, and you're used to fours." Leon makes himself decent again. "I'm not bullshitting. That thing Miranda shoved in your chest, adio. Then you'll be monitored, same as I was, to make sure you don't mutate. Then after? Could put your talents to good use for folk who fight back against this shit. Could walk into the sunset and spend your days trying to forget. That's up to you. But I don't go back on my word." He let that sit in the air before he thrust his hand out again. "I'm about to kick the whole damn hornets nest and trusting an outsider is the only offer you've got on the table. You in, or am I going in alone?"

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

Somehow, it feels better that the agent doesn't defend against what Karl's said. Almost like he respects him enough to be honest, and that does go a long way for a man who always feels he's being disrespected by those around him. But there's no real readable expression; whatever he's hoping for, he's keeping that hidden away as he looks over the revealed scarring. Not only that important one, but all of the other scars.

Man was a survivor, he had to give him that one.

Better not to get his hopes up for any decent outcome. Not for him. After all, how the hell did someone come back from having his innards essentially replaced by machinery? If he was understanding his own shit, at least.

But what if he was wrong?

He lets out a snort.

"Might find my situation to be a bit different from yours, buddy. I'm already pretty mutated. But at least I'm not the type to ask for much. A quiet life, maybe something to get rid of the damned ringing in my fucking head. You know how that feels, to always have a ringing..." A hand raised to flick the side of his head in annoyance.

Then Heisenberg takes the offered hand.

"Deal. Name's Karl." It feels a bit weird, telling someone he can call him Karl. What the hell is wrong with him now? But he knows what's wrong with him. He's sick and tired of Miranda and her lies about 'family'.

He also has a hunch that whatever comes out of Miranda's scheming might just be a whole hell of a lot worse than the four Lords.

[madeofthreads]

Leon watched Lord Heisenberg touch over his chest. It was such a small gesture, easy to dismiss, but he was a keen observer. He could recognise the delicate beginning thread of an alliance. The Division of Security Operations didn't deploy him into highly-dangerous operations for the fun of it.

He picked himself up from the factory floor and lifted a finger in acknowledgement. "Guilty." Neutralise the source, search for research documents and assess the village for survivors before the inevitable. It always ended with an explosion.

Though he didn't lament in the endless loop he found himself in. Instead, he offered up another smirk. A full one at that. "If I lose? Then..." He gestured with his arms thrown open in a full turn, a brief moment with his back to the other man. "This place will have another member. You wouldn't let me go to waste."

Grim, but true. Almost fitting, even, that should Leon fail he would continue fighting even in death. That'd be his fucking luck.

Arms lowered, his footsteps echoed over the metal floor as his expression sobered again. He walked to stand directly across from the Lord. There it was. That feeling in the air, the one that put him on the edge of fight or flight. Whatever parasite had been 'gifted' to him by the 'selfish bitch' had made him into a powerful man. Leon was no longer smirking.

"If I win, this place gets wiped off the map. There'll be no trace of Miranda's lab site or of the shit she's been experimenting with. No one will have a chance to recreate what's been done here, because what's been done here shouldn't have happened in the first place. In an ideal world there will be survivors to evacuate... but that's the best outcome. If Miranda feels the walls closing in around her, she'll probably sacrifice the entire village before she has to face a fight. So... want to kick off a rebellion?" He offered his hand to shake.

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

He didn't like it. He didn't like the fact that he was actually entertaining the idea of working with this agent to achieve his goals of taking out Miranda. He'd always been more of a lone wolf; people disappointed him by either turning on him or dying. It was kind of the curse of being what he was. Couldn't be trusted, basically couldn't be killed... Could he blame anyone?

So Heisenberg absolutely did not want to trust the man. He absolutely did not want to agree to work with him.

Also he was pretty sure that in the end, he'd just be killed off, and he wasn't a fan of that outcome. What was the point of everything if he didn't get to enjoy being free?

"If you win, this place gets wiped off the map, and everyone with it, you mean." Karl didn't buy the bit about there being the potential for survivors. No sir, he wasn't a stupid man; he did know how these things worked. He'd been around exactly the sort of people who took that exact approach; Miranda was one of them. She'd bring the whole place down herself if she had to, and everyone with her.

"Myself included, and while I can't say I enjoy being alive, I'm not the type to fight only to be wiped out in the end. Kinda takes the fun and point out of it, y'know? What happens to me if you win?" His hand dropped from his chest to dangle at his side, fingers flexing almost...anxiously. Fidgeting, and the sparks between his fingertips weren't a conscious decision on his part. He wasn't even aware of them.

"What can you do for me when it's all over?"

He wasn't going to shake that offered hand yet.

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

heisenberg would be perfectly happy in captivity being left alone to tinker with stuff and watch tv. he loves tv. real tv, all those daytime talk shows and dramas. give him a good sitcom. he doesn't like the radio much. too easy for him to break.

his only request would be something put in place to counteract the buzzing, humming, ringing in his ears.

[madeofthreads]

Leon followed the kicked corpse with his eyes — it wasn't being hurled at a button or contraption to plunge him into some deep dark pit, but it did have a spectacular landing. His nose wrinkled a bit. He wasn't completely unbothered by all of the blood and guts related to his line of work. It was a healthy bother to have.

He flicked his gaze back to the Lord. "Cheeseburger, fries, coke and a toy if you've been a good boy." Of course he wasn't dense. He was an outsider speaking a string of gibberish that meant little to the man in front of him — precisely why he did it. They were worlds apart and they both knew it.

Hit a sore spot with Miranda. Almost made him breathe out his relief, but he maintained a calm composure. The notes about the Four Lords weren't lying, Lord Heisenberg was the most distant of them all. He was detached from the village. He snubbed more meetings of the Four Houses than he attended in the weeks of watching this village. When he did attend, it was begrudgingly.

Leon offered a half-smirk in reply. "Didn't say." Oh, he was being an ass. Toeing a line that was electric. "I had a parasite once. Given to me against my wishes. I was lucky, damn lucky, that the one guy who knew how to kill it was right there alongside me. Even luckier to have another guy who could fully remove it from my chest cavity. Was told it buried itself in deep. Tried to make a real home in there."

It was like dangling a toy in front of a predator. He subtly positioned his own limbs to make a quick roll out of dodge just in case he royally pissed him off.

"I'm with an agency you don't care about, from a country you have no affection for. What probably tickles your interest is that I am the guy they send in to stop people like Miranda. Name's Leon. Leon Kennedy."

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

Worlds apart probably was an understatement. They were galaxies apart. Life in the village was slow, quiet, dull. Just people caught up in something no one should have been caught up in, trying to survive, trying to...

Trying to not die even though death was inevitable for all of them because that was the entire point of it all. Death, dying, sacrifice, worship, primitive living that left no space for thoughts that things could be different. Even Heisenberg had always just accepted it, though he did so with annoyance, with anger, with bitterness. He'd been a child once, and he remembered it.

He remembered running through fields of wheat in bare feet, knees scraped, the weak sun warm on his skin. He remembered throwing rocks across lakes, watching the stones skip along until they sank. He remembered cold nights on a straw mattress beneath the warmest quilt, his mother humming as she mended clothing by the hearth.

He remembered being alive, and he remembered that he'd been taken and that feeling had been stripped out of him.

The Lord didn't really have a response to the cheeseburger comment. No, no, his mind was floating unchained on what followed, and what followed sounded a whole lot like maybe the agent might have had a small idea of what Karl suffered with.

Subconsciously, a hand moved to his chest, and the buzzing static in his head grew a little louder as if it were responding to his touch, emanating from his chest. Such misery and for what? For some woman's selfish want to bring her own damn child back from the dead.

"That why you're here, Leon Kennedy? Snooping around, planning to take out that selfish bitch?" It sounded a little too good to be true, and it probably was. Nobody outside gave a shit about them. They didn't even know about them. Except they did.

"One man against three mutants and mommy dearest herself? What happens when you lose? What happens if you win?"

[madeofthreads]

Leon scowled — which wasn't particularly different from his default expression these days. He was getting air back into his lungs again. It was like a weight had shoved him, completely knocked the air out of his chest.

The flashing warning sign was coming from within the room, so to speak. This wasn't just some guy. He was the guy. One of them, anyway.

"Lords don't send out invitations." He mused. Dinner? Seriously? "How about a Happy Meal?" Too bad. The village only served blood wine and soup.

Though he realises what a spectacular mess he has landed in, Leon doesn't outwardly show it. It's all jokes and veiled threats for now but if the Lord wanted to go toe-to-toe, fine, he had time to spare.

"Pass." He doesn't doubt for a second that the man in front of him is considering his options. But if he wanted him tabled and tortured he wouldn't have... done whatever the fuck he did. The hairs on his arms and the nape of his neck were still standing on end from that little trick.

Leon raises his chin. It almost looks like defiance. "You're different. You're not attached to Miranda like the others. This factory... it isn't to attack others on the outside, it's also not for the village. No... This is to attack anything and anyone that stands between you and Miranda." Bingo?

[ohnohesbeenimpaled]

A kick of his foot; the destroyed Soldat slid across the floor to hit the wall, then exploded into pieces of spare metal and human body parts. Might have been some animal parts thrown in there, too, though no one could likely tell in all of the mess. The metal would be repurposed.

The organic shit would get fed to Edna or tossed into the basement for Sturm to play with. Sturm liked gross shit.

"Happy Meal, eh? Th' hell's that?" Color him intrigued, whatever fucking color that was. He'd lived his life in the damn Village, early years spent in poverty, later years spent under the thumb of Miranda; what did Karl know about the outside world and whatever it offered?

"Attached to Miranda? Oh fuck no!" Heisenberg spat with disgust, and he turned to look at the agent with a very healthy measure of confusion and suspicion.

"...Where'd you say you were from?" he asked, eyes narrowed behind his glasses. He wasn't one of Miranda's, not that Heisenberg would have thought that in the first place, and outsiders didn't often venture this far out. Wasn't anything for them, unless they were looking for whatever Miranda was selling. Not that he knew how they'd even know what she was selling, though he guessed she probably had contacts in the vague 'out there'.

The static electricity always present in the air intensified with Heisenberg's suspicion, a hum that buzzed between his own ears, and God as his witness, he hated that damned buzz.