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RULE UPDATE [8/3/2022]
Once again, pretty self-explanatory thread. Your character tells the next character a secret about themselves, they respond, and so the cycle continues with them.
RULES AND GUIDELINES:
- Keep NSFW to a minimum -- suggestions, implications, and innuendos are generally fine, but keep in mind that minors have access to this thread.
- Romantic interactions are allowed, but only between adult characters.
- Sensitive or gory interactions are also allowed, but must be put under a spoiler or blacked out.
- Remember to post IC! The IC button is on top of the field where you write your post, just switch it on and select the character you wish to use.
- There is a five sentence minimum in your response to the character above!
- As a general suggestion, not quite a rule, however, please try to match half the post of the person you are responding to.
- You may only post every three posts or three days after the last post, not three days after your own.
- Example: [You] [x] [x] [x] [You] or You [x] [x] [three days pass] [You]
- You may post a "claim" to avoid getting sniped, but please do not take too long on it!
- You will be pinged here with a reminder after twelve hours of an unfinished claim. After twenty-four hours of an unfinished claim, you can be skipped by the next person.
- You must prove that you have read the post that you have responded to. Your post must contain elements of the post above and/or the above character's information.
- Be kind to your fellow players, but know that in-character views are not their own out-of-character. Just because their character's rude to yours doesn't mean they themselves feel that way!
- Do not skip over users who have you blocked or who you have blocked. Wait for someone else to respond to them before posting.
- I supervise this thread as much as I can, but if you spot problems, please either DM or ping me.
n64bug: Juno was over six inches shorter than Vendetta, so the woman knelt down as to appear less imposing to the boy, who seemed to vibrate visibly with fear. She kept her face soft, her smile, encouraging. "Shhh. I know you did." She said soothingly, holding out a gloved hand for the boy to take. The blood was heavy on his hands, so she would share in the permanent stains it would leave. Their burden was one she bore many, many times over. "It will be difficult for a while, my darling. You never forget your first. Their face will haunt you each time you draw your knife. But it will get easier, I assure you."
She opened her arms to him, caring not if he passed the steel through her next in his panicked state. "I could never hate you. But you walk a dark road now, Juno, darker than the one you previously walked. Things will never be the same. I won't ask you never to do it again— better men have tried and failed— but you must learn to control yourself. Channel the pain you feel right now into that special blood of yours, and once you've sharpened it to a fine point... strike again, and strike with no hesitation."
Vendetta resumed her full height, dusting off her expensive coat with a superior smile. "Now, let's get you a hot meal. No, no, I insist. No one should ever chase death on an empty stomach, I say."
---------------------------
Vendetta stared at you, for a moment, over the top of her glass, a thick red liquid swirling within. Through the smokey light of the bar, amidst the flash of diamonds, hearts, spades and clubs as chips were thrown and bets made, she almost seemed solemn; the smile on her face, however, never left.
"The truth of the matter is, I remember all of their faces." She murmured, with what almost sounded like regret. Vendetta was not one to wallow in self-pity, but she was also not one to speak to strangers at bars, so perhaps her contrarian was showing. "When you've spent as many years as I have learning every little detail about them, tracking them down, and ultimately exacting justice, you get terribly sentimental. As comfortable as I am in this life, I do not recommend it."
Then, she drank down the entirety of the liquid in the glass, claiming, "speaking of, I'm late for a very important date." She said, eyeing a man a few tables down, whose dead-eyed expression implied he had experience of his own with 'exacting justice.' "Don't save my seat; I won't be returning." Her eyes sparkled as she added, "be safe out there; you never know who you've wronged, after all."
Boss was unsure of when this mysterious woman strolled up, or how long she'd been there, but when her voice broke through the smoky air, cutting through the noisy chatter of the bar, she found herself listening.
"If I were a younger woman I'd take your recommendations to heart. Unfortunately, too little too late, ma'am," Boss responded before taking a sip of her own whisky, the smoke of the air leaving a lingering taste on her tongue. "Do what I do. Drink 'till you forget. And if you can't forget, then I guess you n' I are both shit outta luck."
Boss tipped her hat toward the woman as she hurried off, leaving the emptied glass behind. She could only hope someone as pretty as her would come to fill the vacant seat. "Long as it's me doin' the wronging, I'm sure I can handle myself."
(NP: Ping me please!)
Hours later at this same bar, Boss found herself quite drunk. She was told she was an honest drunk, which she always called bullshit upon, but when she wakes up with a pounding headache sometime later, what she can recall saying is often stuff she'd have preferred to stay within their depths. She swore on her cross each time that she'd never be drunk enough again to mutter her filthy secrets.
And yet here she sways, emptied bottles of booze beside her, already flapping her lips to the unfortunate bastard beside her.
"He's my baby boy, y'know," she slurred heavily. "My Jamie-boy. 'Lil Devil shoulda never-NEVER gone off to war, oh but he don't listen, now do he?"
Boss lifted her remaining glass bottle and downed the liquid inside far too fast. She slammed the bottle back down, a jarring noise even in the noisy bar, and wiped the excess from her mouth with an uncoordinated hand. "You ain't never tell 'im I love him way I do, he'd kill me, the... the silly bastard... But he's my son, my baby. I ain't never had no sons, never wanted one'a the foul things neither! But he! He'ssss perfect. My darlin', beautiful boy."
Boss let out a deep, drunken, rumbling laugh as she finally squinted her eye at the person beside her, her face becoming sour once more. "Who'n the hell 're you?"
If it was any comfort to Boss, there was always the chance that the unfortunate bastard in question might not remember their conversation the next day -- if one could call it that. The discussion was led mainly by her, once brutal and infamous and now dwindled down to a slurring, half-weeping, drunken disaster. As was he, admittedly. He paid her heed, however, nursing a snifter of cognac in between her words, his stern demeanor only able to falter in the company of good liquor.
Hakim could not completely relate. Never in his life did he experience much in the way of paternal feelings, but in the sliver of which he could understand it -- it was the slightest anxiety. War was a cruel mistress, and yet he, who might as well be her husband, called upon for her services even then. She whipped the backs of soldiers and civilians, sinners and saints, everyone in the world. He poured himself a second glass of brandy.
"You've been ranting to me almost all night, and you're only now asking me who I am?" he laughed coldly, "I'm getting to know all about you and your little man, and you haven't a word from me, have you?"
..As alien as it was, he wondered how it felt -- how it all truly felt. He could make guesses, but nothing could come close. And it really was sickening. It was a terrible thought that made him want to claw his eyes out--
But he wondered what he might be like as a father.
"Secret's safe with me." Hakim then told her, between calling down the bartender. He would get her another drink, merely an act of kindness. "I don't have much use for your... motherliness, you know. Gum all you want about him."
@ NP: cw for some ?? internalized transphobia is probably the closest term for it but here you go.
"I'm not truly a man."
Hakim spoke the words with the hesitance expected, the fear of being vulnerable. He got this way, sometimes. Confessing it to a stranger -- a complete foreigner -- was easier than wailing it across the his own continent for others to judge in an uproar. There was a sort of self-hatred that came with the word "truly", however. He bit his bottom lip for a moment. He might tear it off.
Then, he turned to the other person. "I am Hakim Burnett, but once I was something else. It's freeing, not being what that was. I cut everything away. I underwent a metamorphosis, and shed a past that no longer fit me."
"..But, I am not a man." he then repeated, "I'm still a thing."
Patterson let out a soft misplaced chuckle. The pipe that was clamped between his teeth danced.“I am not a man either,” he said. “I never had the chance to be one. I am a sword, a halberd, a weapon,” he spoke. Patterson leaned on one leg. His hand fidgeted with the pipe. Nails digging in the white clay.
“A utensil for war. Just like you. A thing. Yes. I think that titl e suits us both.”
—
“I would have killed him, if Patveer didn't interfere.” Patterson’s gaze studied you for a second, before they shifted away and to the frozen lake the two of you stood in front of. Cold air pricked Patterson’s skin. His nose had gone red. Lips gone blue.
“I would have killed him, Bennet, my friend. My lover. Out of rage.”