Change of Plans [Daniel, Open]

[Syph Passman]

One less educated might have called a hunch, but Syph thought that was a little too simplistic. No, an educated guess would have been closer. Regardless of the name, it was what it was. Syph had more than a twinge of a feeling that one of the masks it so sought was somewhere in this city. It just had to figure out where.

Then again, rushing the process was probably a bad plan. If it played its cards right, it would have quite literally forever to try to find them. But it wasn't certain it would play its cards right, confident as it was. There were a lot of powerful people around these days. Maybe it would do well to make a few friends for once instead of as many enemies as Syph was used to gaining.

Angels were out of the question, but anything else was anything goes. It supposed that it was good, then, that it had ended up in San Francisco, home of the Pluses. It was just as good a place as any, and maybe it could make itself seem useful. Its fingers flexed nervously over the mask at its side. It was the middle of the day, so the only option was to bring the literal firepower if things got ugly.

It balled the other hand into a fist, allowing its back to slam into the wall in the alley in which it had chosen to hide itself. Its eyes moved back and forth quickly, making certain it wasn't cornered, before continuing to move and stay on top of things. It knew there wasn't anything in this back alley, but it had been informed that it might lead to someone who knew more.

Syph had ended up in the wrong alley, though, so things were going to go much differently.

words (( 305 ))
mask (( volcano ))
mood (( could be better. ))
tag (( Daniel Silver, @open ))
notes (( none ))
credits (( child of burning time by slipknot, the legend of zelda: majora's mask ))

[Daniel Silver]

[googlefont="Amatic SC"][googlefont="Loved by the King"]

~~~~~~~~~~

Hungry, always hungry, and if it wasn't one stomach growling at him it was another. For now, though, Daniel had to sate his actual stomach, managing to steal a couple of pre-packaged sandwiches and chip bags from a supermarket. Daniel had no preferences when it came to actual food: it never compared to the taste of his real meals. He had found a little alleyway to settle in to, sliding down next to a dumpster and dropping his backpack in his lap. Pulling the glove off of his right hand with his teeth, he attempted to open a sandwich package with just those fingers, fumbling around before getting agitated and giving up, instead choosing to pop the chip bags open and munch from them all at once.

Daniel flexed his left hand as he ate, and damn, it still hurt. The encounter with the shifter had left him with a gaping hole in his palm, and in the heat of the fight he had healed it up too quickly, messing up some of the reconstruction somewhere on the metabolic level. It hadn't formed back up right, and it twitched like hell when he tried to grab anything. He'd taken the gloves to cover it up, choosing to ignore the misshapen scar. Eventually, he'd have to re-open the whole thing and try again, but until then it was on the back burner of "things that held Daniel's attention".

As he ate, he could feel his brain light up, forcing his attention to the opposite alley opening around the corner. Something's coming, Daniel. Something with big power. Let's go see, let's go eat. Theo was right, something big was around that corner. Big could mean strong, or it could mean whatever was over there had lots of energy stored in it. Daniel looked down at the food scattered around his backpack, then back to the alley's mouth he had come from. [Could be another shifter. Should we ambush it, or play it out?] We take it, fast and hard. Play mugger, play executioner, we can loot it when it's dead and eaten.

Daniel moved quickly from his seat to the alley's corner, pulling the hood of his jacket up as he went. He kneeled down, pulling the knife hidden under his pant leg free from it's holster, and peered around the corner from below. A gaunt, frail man in a suit, who looked like he could float away at any minute, walked towards the corner when Daniel waited, unknowingly walking into a deathtrap. Daniel stood back up slowly before rounding the corner, stopping short of the man and raising his knife between them. [Stop. Give me everything you've got, now.] Daniel's eyes move to the man's hands, focusing on the mask he carried. [Give me the mask, too.]

~~~~~~~~~~

word count :: 466 ::
notes :: none ::
tagged :: @Syph Passman, @open ::
outfit :: here ::
mood :: hungry, confident ::

[Syph Passman]

Syph's eyes fell to the knife, then lifted back up to Daniel. This was probably quite frightening for humans, but was a non-issue for the mannequin. It wasn't as though it had much to give, anyway. It considered responding, if only to state it had nothing of interest, when its would-be attacker asked for its mask. Syph let its eyes go cold and its head tilt slightly, as though it were curious about what he'd just said.

"No," it said. "It's mine. Have you seen any like it before? I don't foresee this whole "mugging" business working out very well for you, at least not if you press the matter with me, but if you can lead me to another one of these, I'd be happy to get you what you need." This was an old trick Carrig had taught it: play on the vulnerabilities of the person in question, even if you knew next to nothing about them. Syph knew that few people mugged others just for fun. They usually needed quick and easy money, so if there was something in it for them? All the better.

And, if it got stabbed, it wasn't exactly concerned. It wouldn't quite feel pain--more akin to a disruption in the magic keeping it animate, which would still cause something similar to pain but would fade more quickly--and it could be fixed with time. Its mugger didn't know any of this, of course, and it wanted to keep it that way as long as it feasibly could. That probably wasn't going to be much longer, as it could admit it was baiting the boy a little, but that was of little consequence.

Without fully realizing it, Syph's hand grabbed tighter onto its mask, locking its wooden fingers in a death grip on the accessory.

words (( 301 ))
mask (( volcano ))
mood (( calculating, a bit displeased ))
tag (( Daniel Silver ))
notes (( still feasibly open at any point--just not stating it outright anymore ))
credits (( child of burning time by slipknot, the legend of zelda: majora's mask ))

[Daniel Silver]

[googlefont="Amatic SC"][googlefont="Loved by the King"]

~~~~~~~~~~

"I'd be happy to get you what you need."

Beneath his hood, Daniel's eyes widen slightly, and his mouth turned upwards into a grin. If that wasn't an outright invitation to eat this poor fool, he didn't know what it was. He couldn't know what Daniel was really after, but that was honestly a moot issue by now. Even if he did, this was going to be over faster than he could imagine. [Wrong answer, friend. But it's okay. You can hold on to it.] Daniel releases the knife in his hand, allowing it to float from his side to just above his shoulder, slowly turning in over in the air with his mind. His grin grows wider, and he pulls back the hood of his jacket, staring at his to-be meal. [I'll just pull it from your hands after you're dead.]

In an instant, Daniel closes the space between the two of them, grabbing the man by the lapels of his jacket and throwing him against the wall. He moves in, stopping an inch from the man's face, staring into the reflection of blue on blue. He didn't look frightened, or even slightly startled, but it didn't matter at this point what he was feeling. Now, it was feeding time. With a quick exhale, Daniel begins to suck in air, attempting to bring out the energy he so desperately craved. 

But it didn't come. Daniel exhaled again, stared at the man's mouth, then tried again with a bigger inhale. Nothing. He could hear his mind scream WRONG WRONG WRONG SOMETHING'S WRONG, but he somehow failed to understand why his absorbtion wasn't working. As he looked back at the man's face, anger began to bubble up in his stomach, and he released the man, taking two steps back. This was wrong, and Daniel felt a twang of fear mix into his anger. Whatever this thing was, it had power, and it didn't have life. His knife quickly dropped back down to his side, blade pointed at the man's chest, quivering slightly in the air. [Why can't I eat you?! Why?!]

~~~~~~~~~~

word count :: 377::
notes :: none ::
tagged :: @Syph Passman, @open ::
outfit :: here ::
mood :: shaken, angry::

[Syph Passman]

"You might find that quite difficult," Syph started, its face splitting in an unsettling grin. It dropped the glamour from the hand not clenched upon its mask, showing the wooden digits as they flexed and reached toward Daniel's head to ruffle his hair. "Such a cute little thing. I don't suppose you have parents if you're mugging people in back alleys and trying to... what is it that you were trying to do? Eat me?" It stood, pondering this for a moment, completely unfazed by the knife pointed at its chest.

"Oh," it said, raising the wooden finger like it'd had an idea, "have you got the ability to suck the powers from others? Or maybe their soul, or something else intrinsic to most beings. I'm afraid that isn't going to work out. As you can quite plainly see," Syph continued, pulling up its sleeve with its other thumb and forefinger while the rest of its hand remained firmly on the mask at its hip, "I'm not quite human." It would be terminally obvious to anyone viewing it that it really shouldn't have even been moving. Its skin was smooth, sanded wood with grain patterns and all. The glamour flashed back along its arm, replacing the grain with pale skin once more. "So, that considered. I'm not going to be the quick meal you'd thought I would be, certainly, but I'd still like to chat a bit. After all, it looks like you do have something you need, something you need quite desperately."

The smile rose on his cheeks again, and this time there was the flash of a still white mask beneath Syph's toothy grin. "If you want to help me find more of these masks, I can help you get whatever it is you need. If that's food, shelter, more things to devour? Whatever you'd like, just so long as you help me." The boy could certainly be useful if he did things correctly. "What's your name?"

words (( 329 ))
mask (( volcano ))
mood (( syph no that's not the right response to death threats ))
tag (( Daniel Silver ))
notes (( hand looks kinda like this ))
credits (( child of burning time by slipknot, the legend of zelda: majora's mask ))

[Daniel Silver]

[googlefont="Amatic SC"][googlefont="Loved by the King"]

~~~~~~~~~~

Daniel seldom got what others called "the creeps". He had lived in dark, abandoned buildings that others never dared to go. He had looked straight into the eyes of world's most awful creatures and walked away no worse for wear. He like to think that he was "creep"-proof, that nothing really phased him anymore. 

He was wrong.

This thing, whatever it was, gave him shivers. The way it moved, talked, was just so unnatural. Daniel knew what unnatural was: he pretended to be "normal" when he had to, knew what faking emotion and movement was like. But this was nothing like that. This was . . . something inanimate pretending to be human. Something like him, but so far away at the same time that he was unnerved by it. When he saw the man's hand slowly shift into wood, it only further cemented the uneasiness gnawing at him from inside.  Daniel instinctively recoiled from the doll - an appropriate term, it seemed - when it's fingers touched his head. [Don't touch me, don't.]

Well, at least that explained why Daniel couldn't eat the thing. It wasn't alive, it seemed. Whatever force made this thing walk about like it did, it wasn't like anything he had encountered before, and it seemed like Daniel couldn't suck it down. He tried not to let that prospect sink in too much, instead choosing to focus on what the thing was saying to him. It had asked about his powers, about his hunger. Daniel took two steps back, never dropping his defensive stance. The knife moves between the two, though Daniel doubted it would do much. Knives rarely had effects on the chopping blocks, and he guessed the same principal applied here.

DON'T TELL IT ANYTHING DANIEL, IT DOESN'T NEED TO KNOW. RUN RUN GET AWAY, WE DON'T NEED IT, DON'T WANT IT, NOT RIGHT.

Theodore was screaming in his head, and Daniel was halfway to taking off at a dead-run out of the other end of the alley, but what the doll said next kept him glued to his spot. It wanted to talk, but it was more than that. It guessed what he wanted, needed, and offered it to him. Food, shelter, more things to devour.

The thing was disturbing. But that didn't mean it was dumb. It talked like a man, and reasoned like one. The way it held the mask in it's hand, asked for help finding more, it might have been as desperate as Daniel was. Maybe it could make good on what it was promising, even if it was just a quick meal or two. If he had to, Daniel could always throw the thing into the dumpsters with his telekinesis. Against his better judgement, he decided to stay. But he wasn't ready to give up his name, or what he could do, that quickly. He stayed quiet until the mannequin had finished speaking, and then for a few seconds after. [Giovanni. My name is Giovanni. Tell me what you are, and then we'll talk some more.]


~~~~~~~~~~

word count :: 534 ::
notes :: gonna go ahead and say "closed" on the thread? ::
tagged :: @Syph ::
outfit :: here ::
mood :: wary, maybe he should have just stayed and ate his damn 'tato chips ::