May 9
are ossy & lacie twins?
maybe, maybe not. either way, ossy is older 😈
them being twins would mirror the alices situation so well though!!!
seen from China
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United Kingdom
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Singapore
seen from Malaysia
seen from Malaysia
seen from Germany
seen from Pakistan
seen from Malaysia
seen from South Korea
seen from Australia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from United States
seen from Malaysia
seen from United Kingdom
seen from Colombia
seen from T1
seen from United Kingdom
are ossy & lacie twins?
maybe, maybe not. either way, ossy is older 😈
them being twins would mirror the alices situation so well though!!!
TENSION LINER PROMPTS | @xoline "You’re playing with my patience."
❝ Doesn't sound like it was stable to begin with.❞ Prism retorts, levitating there above the woman, her eyes glowing as she begins to mentally poke and prod into Punchline's consciousness with searing accuracy. ❝ I'm taking you in. My suggestion is to just give up───I won't even ask you to come quietly. I don't want to hurt you, don't make a choice you can't step back from.❞ Prism doesn't need to delve deep to discover how compromised the woman is, but the option is provided before it's removed entirely.
@xoline continued.
Rain had stopped a while ago; fell in a thin, cold drizzle, nothing like the heavy, dramatic downpours of St. P. but enough to make the wooden planks of the old pier slick and treacherous. The lights of the city across the water flickered like dying stars.
The place reminded him of home more than he'd want. Not the one that ended up on covers of tourist brochures, no —— the one he lived in when the Soviet was coughing up blood. Back then he was just a scrawny kid in that orphanage near the Gulf of Finland. Fourteen-fifteen years old. Nights when the supervisors were drunk or gone, kids would sneak down to the commercial port. The docks were beautiful in their own rotting way, especially when skies were colored bright and air was so cold you could bite it. Containers stacked like crooked teeth, cranes that looked like hanged men against the white nights. The Neva smelled of fuel oil, wet wood, brimestone and more. Gangs, smugglers, ex-military guys selling whatever fell off the trucks from the dying factories. Boys would trade stolen cigarettes for stories, or watch them dump things that weren’t supposed to be seen. Here the water may not be warmer, but it is lazier. Holds onto the bodies longer, he'd bet.
Drowning was a popular mode of getting rid of people back home, so why not here? Most popular mode, in fact, though the media would disagree —— his home city was lovingly nicknamed Dismembermentgrad by it after all. The police could claim all they wanted that St. P. didn't make it even into top 10 cities with dismemberment crimes, the image stuck. Nor for nothing: Razum clearly remembers skipping class to loiter in the Yusupov Garden only to come across black bags and thankfully being smart enough not to check what's in there but turn around and quickly leave. The joke about girls from St. P. being rather good at sharing men has nothing to do with the city's highly developed erotic culture either. So can you blame him for wondering if the girl talking about throwing away a suitcase tied to her ex could actually be throwing away her ex?
Gotham’s one of the few places chaotic enough that a guy with his skillset and a very particular set of “talents” can disappear —— plus, the black market for tech and untraceable weapons here is legendary. He wouldn't be here at this hour for any other reason but quiet arms-and-tech contact arranged through dark web channels —— someone willing to trade untraceable biometric spoofers and a few “exotic” chemicals for cryptocurrency that couldn’t be followed. He'd perfer not to meet the guy face to face at all, it's not his style, but right now he can't be choosey. So there he is, the edge of Pier 47 at 3:47 AM, hands in the pockets of a worn black coat, hood up, mask covering his lower face, no flamethrower gloves for once, entertaining whatever this farce of a conversation is.
He wouldn't have spoken to her if they didn't run into each other at such close proximity. But he clearly witnessed something he shouldn't have, and his pride wouldn't let him pretend to be blind, deaf and dumb at the same time. Not when she was this rude.
“ Not to worry, miss —— I've had chances to jump off from far prettier bridges, ” if not of St. P. then of Venice; self-annihilation was never even a possibility in his mind, no matter how fractured, “ you go take care of whatever needs taking care of; I've got someone to meet here. ”
Razum wouldn't snitch on her, but he also wouldn't move away. He had an agreement to meet here and wouldn't risk it going sideways.
“shut that oversized chicken up.” ( IM SORRY )
𝐁𝐀𝐋𝐃𝐔𝐑'𝐒 𝐆𝐀𝐓𝐄 𝟑 𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐒𝐓𝐀𝐑𝐓𝐄𝐑𝐒 | accepting | @xoline
“ I —— chicken !? ” her voice did the unusual, rising an octave at the phrasing. Insults towards her she understood and expected, but insults towards an existence older than this little world —— a very concious and clever existence at that —— was beyond madness, especially when the said being was thrashing uncontrollably.
“ Perhaps, if you behaved a bit better, none of us would have to suffer this ! ” Ossia grabbed one of the chains that went around Raven's throat and pulled it downwards in an attempt to bring the Chain's attention back to the matter at hand, ignoring the heat searing through her hand. Punchline reacted poorly to the discovery of Raven's existence and did the next logical thing after concluding that bullets were useless —— brought out toxins.
The silver lining is: she wasted so much in self defense that she most likely ran low on stock, potentially sparing many and reducing the number of affected in the future. However, that also meant that now Ossia had a disoriented and highly offended firey bird on her hands, which was shaking its head and spewing flames in an attempt push out whatever gas made its way into his nostrils. The toxin would have no effect on Raven, but it was still an unpleasant experience, judging by the Chain's prattle of threats aimed at Punchline.
Whatever he chooses to do with you for this, I'll let him. was Ossia's thought amidst the blue flames.
“ if life’s teaching me a lesson, then i want to skip it. ”
answered! <3
✞ · @xoline : / &. / ❛ if life’s teaching me a lesson, then i want to skip it. ❜
“if only life worked like that,” huntress dryly responds, still peering through the neon lenses of her binoculars, as opposed to facing her unexpected companion. “you can try running away from it all you want, but sooner or later, it’ll hit you like a truck on a clear summer day when you least expect it. if there’s a lesson life wants you to learn, then your only choices are to learn it the easy way in due time — or spend your life running with no aim. there’s no skip button — well, besides death.”
silence befalls when the evening breeze passes by, the speck of dust it carries briefly sullying the lenses, taking away her razor-sharp focus. with her cape billowing regally behind her, helena takes the moment to retrieve a microfiber fabric from her utility belt and carefully wipe off the detritus.
“what or who are you on the run from, punchline?” she inquires, finally turning to face the other. “because i’d rather you not get me involved — hide somewhere else, preferably anywhere fifty miles away from me. thanks.”
“People talk about skeletons in the closet. I’ve got a whole graveyard.”
too many closets to stay clean / accepting / @xoline
Razum's not sure why this makes him smile, can't help it. though. It's crooked, and it's not quite laughter, more of a shaky huff, but it's the closest he came to amusement since escaping Siberia. What, was this kinship that he felt? With this maniac, at that?
Well, to be fair, he's no better when it comes to numbers: over 200 confirmed deaths as Plague Doctor only —— according to the official sources. Ones done after or before that, names thet were not counted on the account of being too small, or ones that lacked his signature were forgotten even by him. Disease ridden vermin do not deserve remembrance.
He’s not wearing the mask anymore, but old habits die hard. He’s been quietly taking out a few low-level corrupt businessmen and gang lieutenants who reminded him too much of the old targets back home. Nothing flashy, just surgical work that crossed him, done with the laziness of a sunbathing cat batting at mice running near it; even if its stomach is full, instincs are instincts nonetheless. There's no grand plan this time, he's too weak yet, mental wounds too fresh and most importantly: it's not his city to deal with. Gotham's rife with bloodshed and violence, so much so that his own additions either went unnoticed or got pinned on someone else. Once, he'd be offended at such ignorance. Now he's just counting blessings, or hoping he can outrun the curses for a while longer. By now Razum should've learned not to hope too much, he ends up jinxing it.
He calculated that authorities would have bigger fish to fry to mind a ghost like him passing through, and clearly miscalculated by forgetting to include the variables in form of the criminals minding who crosses their turf. They have met before only briefly, he sees her a bit clearer now —— girl's all show and media drama. Credit where credit is due: she's good at it when it comes to capturing attention and getting a reaction out of people. A good hook at the start, a catchy line, a referance at something culturally relevant in the moment, a strong word, and you have the crowd going wild, or at least glued to the screen. He's done that too, back when he was climbing the ranks and playing the rich eccentric IT genius while also playing the masses. Razum briefly wondered where she got her media manipulation training, or if it's natural talent. He just hopes she wasn't a journalist before the clown paint —— he has a bad record with those, and the joke would be too on the nose for madame fate. He would've asked about it too, if her presence didn't mean danger: heard she's liberal with psychedelic chemicals and he has had enough of those for a few lifetimes by now.
“ You and every other dog in this city, I'm sure, ” he's got teeth too, as well as a gun on his hip and a knife in his coat pocket he's palming at, for all the good it would do. “ Between you all it's a necropolis with entrance tickets and weekend tours sold by the vigilanties with a ' no-killing ' clause. ”
No, really, what the hell.
Graveyard sounds... neat. Organized. Respactable, even. What he has is more like a post-apocalyptic dump —— bodies mixed with good intentions. Then, he made the mistake of burying one guy alive and he had the audacity to climb out; it all went to hell after.
( He had an actual graveyard in his garden back then, though. Bodies buried there had the maze bushes grow like crazy. )
Razum offers a small, almost boyish grin, voice drops into that easy, witty cadence, all the beats that once made him the idol of hopeful youth.
“ Do you have the graves alphabetized, or is it just bodies dumped in a pile and doused with acid, like a normal psychopath? ”
Maybe somethings already in the air. Maybe it's his withdrawal effects. Maybe it's adrenaline. Either way, he swears there's blood and burning flesh. The air smells dead.