ioduanlogs | "Kills fascists and eats kidney beans." Put that on my grave, which I'll need in about two hours.

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"Kills fascists and eats kidney beans." Put that on my grave, which I'll need in about two hours.

Characters: Gene Khan, Miles Upshur, Aly Haskell, Kai, and y'all
Date: throughout April
Location: Aifaran and environs
Situation: A bunch of April Fools.
Warnings/Rating: Will be added as they arise

[A] | Gene | the mean streets of Aifaran | April 10 | closed to Valdis
The noise rolling through the city at least happens at predictable intervals. That doesn't make it any more bearable, and it makes anxiety swell in Gene, and his teeth ache and his bones rattle. At least it hasn't given him headaches like it has Tony, but it still hasn't been good for him. He's jumpy, and paranoid, and it seems like a lot of other people are, too.

He's late returning from the dojo when, like clockwork, the noise-that's-not-quite-a-noise begins again. The pulses have been getting a little longer, but he hasn't been keeping track of the pattern. It should only be a few minutes, right? He doesn't want to walk like this; he goes to lean against a wall instead to wait for the noise to pass. He hopes it ends soon.

[B] | Kai | the Dreaming Bridge | April 5 | closed to Nita
One would think that Kai would be reasonably used to weird things happening, given that she'd been here this long, but walking into the room to see words - actual physical words - spilling out of her roommate's ears like someone busted a fire hydrant is something else.

"Um..." She blinks. "You okay, famsquad?"

[C] | Miles | a park | April 4 | closed to Kit
Miles is going to be a little bit sad to see Flekk go; he'd gotten used to having the weird little creature around. He hadn't had a pet in a while, and when Ilda had disappeared he'd been left holding the bag, as it were. At least he hadn't hurt the poor thing. That had cheered him up a little; maybe he wasn't truly the monster he thought he was.

He's holding the fidgety little bibiru in his arms when he sees Kit. "Hey, salroka!" he calls out.

[D] | Miles | Pepper's townhouse | March 31 | open
Forgetting that he'd told Pepper when his birthday was had been a grave, grave error. She'd promised to throw him a party, and he hadn't been able to avoid it. It's not that he doesn't like parties or being the center of attention, but...

...there's no real reason he should be feeling squirrely about this, but he is anyway. "You sure I can't ditch?" he asks Pepper outside.

Once he's been chivvied into the party, though, he's far more in his element, relaxing for the first time in what seems like ages. And the man can put away a stunning amount of cake.

If you want another starter, hit me up at

Chatvert!

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The sound rises just as Valdis is heading to the Dojo, starting low and then rising to an irritating and painful pitch. The evening is quickly fading into night, and Valdis has only one instinct. Run. She shifts on the move, Revelations dropping to the ground as her muscles twist and tear, bones moving and changing. With a snarl she turns down a nearly empty street, sliding into a wall with a loud thump and falling in a tangle of black limbs and fur. She lurches to her paws, shaking her head, a low noise rumbling in her chest and throat.

Gene would mistake the twisting mass of limbs and fur for a werewolf if he didn't know better, and he'd get closer if he hadn't made the same mistake before. Fool me once.

"Valdis?" he says cautiously, trying to decide whether to go for the rings on the necklace he always wore. He never left home without wearing two of them - the one from his mother and the one he'd stolen from Tony's father, and those were enough for defensive purposes. He never needed much offense these days, but he never wanted to risk the others falling into the wrong hands. And Tony had custody of the final ring to keep that one from falling into the wrong hands...his own.

"Valdis, can you hear me?"

Valdis snaps at the air, slipping her tongue through her large teeth and planting her paws, but her eyes are clearly green, which should be a relief to most.

I hear you, she hisses, shaking her head again and clacking her jaws together. My ears are ringing and I can feel the sounds in my bones.

She doesn't like it at all.

Green. At least that much. Gene's not in immediate danger. Not yet. He still keeps a decent distance away from her. Especially since she seems like she's in pain. She could snap at any moment.

"It's hurting me, too. Giving Tony migraines. It's just disorienting me."

She flattens her ears against her skull, closing her eyes tightly as the sound continues. Her jaws continue to move, chewing at nothing, her head shaking.

In my bones, in the coils of the serpent.

She snarls, the sound turning into a whimper when the shrieking begins to fade.

"What?"

Gene has no idea what that means, and he's not sure that she does, either. As the sound fades away, he leans over, panting, his palms braced on his thighs.

"God, I hate this. Do you think that's the last one?" He's not optimistic.

The sounds trail into silence, but she keeps her eyes closed for a little longer, dreading that the noise might return.

I do not. She sighed, But at least for now we have relief.

Valdis lifts her head, fixing her emerald eyes on him.

There is an edge to your emotions, she continues, Do you feel it as well?

Gene nods, and raises his head to meet her eyes. "Yes. It's...sharp, everything feels sharp." There's an undercurrent of anxiety to everything, too, but everything feels sharp enough to cut for a moment, the aftereffects of the pulses.

Valdis curled her lips back to show her teeth.

Sharp. Yes.

She takes a step back, dropping her head, but not her eyes.

Let us hope that it does not cause permanent damage.

"That would be ideal," Gene says, unable to keep a dry edge from creeping into his voice. Still, he's more worried than he's trying to let on - futile, around an empath. If this is the way Aifaran ends, shaken apart by soundquakes...it doesn't bear thinking about.

Nita shakes her head - which just makes the problem worse, and are the words actually changing as she thinks about things?

Yes, Nita, yes they are. She's briefly distracted by seeing some of her own potential answers to Kai's question - nowayhosayDoesitLOOKlikeI'mOkayNahI'mfinejustgotwordsandwateronthebrain - go flying out, before wincing and turning back to face her roommate.

"I think this is a side-effect of what's been going on with the ships. It doesn't hurt, it's just weird," she says with a little more firmness than is probably necessary.

"Really weird."

Kai blinks and just stares at the fountain of words gushing from her roommate's head. "It kind of looks like it hurts. Why's it doing that? Like, why would the ships make you, you know, spew words out your ears like your brain's getting splatted?"

Nice, Kai.

"Probably something metaphysical, if I had to guess."

Todowithhowtheygotheremaybethestuffofthoughtishowtheytraveled?

Though, Kai's parallel just makes Nita make a face.

"You haven't had words come out your ears before, have you?"

OrequivalentIguessSorry?

"I can't read that fast!"

Kai squints, and then shakes her head ruefully. "Nah, but I've been splatted. Can't imagine it feels all that different. That doesn't really hurt, it's just...weird."

"Not using it to communicate, I swear," Nita said, eyes tracking the words - and sure enough, there's even punctuation marks in there.

This was going to be hard to clean up.

Nita tilted her own head (and feeling oddly like there was water in her ears, while they weren't level), trying to visualize what splatting was like.

"Don't think I could pull my thoughts back into my head."

"Maybe you need a bucket?" Kai offers helpfully. "Or, uh...do you think the hydro-whatsit machine might be helpful?"

The Inkling casts about the room for something to catch the words in and ends up dragging out her ink tank. It looks like a backpack crossed with a water bottle, the size much closer to the former than the latter. "Maybe you could catch some of those in here?"

"... It might be," Nita admitted.

"Just for containment."

She wasn't as certain about the hydroponic unit, though.

"And I know talking to plants is good for them; dunno if thinking at them counts."

"You could always try." Kai shrugs. "Aside from that, I dunno what to do. Sorry, I was never good at science. Or, uh...whatever this is."

Nita thought about that a moment (something reflected in the nature of the words spilling on the ground), then nodded.

"No worries; it's new for both of us. And hopefully a one-time thing."

"Well, yeah, I hope it's not permanent, that'd kind of be annoying," Kai said offhandedly. That's putting it mildly, Kai. "So we could try and catch the words, or think at them. Words are words, right?"

"Think... at the thoughts?"

Or did Kai still mean the hydroponic unit and the plants? Hopefully that's what she meant.

"No, the, uh, the plants, the plants." The Inkling goes a bit cross-eyed at the thought of thinking at the thoughts. Oww.

"How would that even work, anyway? Wouldn't they get all jumbled up coming out of your ears and all?"

"Leeeet's not think about it."

And now her streaming-thoughts were trying to flow in knots and urgh.

"Let's just focus on putting them in things for later. Maybe it'll stop the next time the pulses come through?"

You're going to make a grown man cry, Miles.

But for now, though the dwarf in question is undoubtedly a little misty-eyed over seeing his bibiru, Kit's only expression is a broad grin as he heads over to accept the wriggling critter from Miles' arms. "Look at you, buddy," he says, chuckling, and strokes a hand over his fur and feathers, "you look so good. Thanks," he says sincerely to Miles. "I hate to think what might've happened if no one took him in, what with his bum wing and all."

"I know I do, but it's nice to hear it sometimes," Miles joked, misinterpreting the compliment on purpose. "Of course I was going to take him in. I'm not an asshole. He kind of made his way through a chain of custody to get to me, but he's back to you now."

He gave the bibiru a scratch on the head. "And he was pretty good, when he wasn't trying to chew on everything."

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"Kills fascists and eats kidney beans." Put that on my grave, which I'll need in about two hours.

A is for Alpha

A is for [A emoji]

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B is for... Brains?

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It is time for Nita to learn Squid Kid biology, clearly.

good luck, kai failed biology

rip

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C!!

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