event } you're never gonna fit in much, kid.

[seeingyou]

WHO: Open to all passengers.
WHAT: Teen time!
WHERE: Anywhere on Navi.
WHEN: The next two weeks (Sept. 11-25).
WARNINGS: Add these to your comment subject lines as needed! And if your teen angst includes a body count, please report it on the death page.

When Navi wanders through this particular nebular cloud, you may find yourself feeling sleepy. Wouldn’t a nap be fantastic right now? Of course it would be. Treat yourself - you deserve it.

When you wake, however … that’s perhaps less of a treat. Where are you? (Or maybe who are you?) How did you get here? And why, when you look in the mirror, do you look so much older than you remember?

Comments

[imarealistnotacynic]

"take that back." richard glares, "I'm not my father my name isn't Howard Strand. My name isn't "Asshole who leaves for six months and makes my wife cry."

He lets it slide, "C'mon. Let's go have a drink. You should try at least one."

[albatrossomen]

Mahzian turned his eyes back to Richard. That strange, distant stare not quite looking at him but through him. While the timelines didn't match up and this current path of memories wouldn't align the threads of time and history were writ throughout his body. All the betrayals, all the failures. Richard Strand was only a few letters away from Howard.

"Isn't it?"

Don't mind him, just peeking where his nose doesn't belong. But, despite the comment he's content to power through. He moves, quick to leave the struggling man a few paces behind. All this wallowing in the hallway was boring. "Fine. I do not understand what you intend to prove."

[imarealistnotacynic]

The angel gets a look of rage, pure animal rage, before Richard smiles a drunken lazy smile. The same seductive smile that would earn him an out-of-wedlock child. The same smile that would win the hearts of women and the anger of men for years. It feels weird on his face, strange, but the sixteen year old glares again. Hurt.

"Quit reading my mind. Drinking's cool. That's why." Dragging him towards the bar, he'll reach for something amber colored, Scotch or liquor, "There's good stuff here."

And he'll just help himself and look stupid when doing it.

[albatrossomen]

A smile so charming it would absolutely work on a human. But Mahzian was no human, and he seemed the furthest thing from moved. For to him human expressions were foreign, their body language strange and unreadable. No, it was the emotions that he heard more than the words. The noisy thoughts that were as impossible as a tempest to quell.

"You're angry." Again that distant unfeeling monotone. Puzzled. Always puzzled. "I wouldn't do that if I were you." Richard was already teetering on the edge of alcohol poisoning, did he really want to go through a night puking out his guts with no legitimate doctors on board?

"I do not understand what that means." The cool, or the good stuff. Much of what Richard said made little sense to him.

[imarealistnotacynic]

Richard pauses and turns back, "Which part? About drinking? My father always says classy people drink nicer liquor. Gold stuff. Not cheap clear stuff."

Pulling away he sits, staring bleary-eyed, "...I um. I thought everybody thought that and it made sense. You know? That it was like, a thing. That people knew."

Why's the angel got to be like this, staring at the creature in front of him, "I can tell you're an angel. S'hard not to be mad about that. You should know these things. Help people with them. Punish people who hurt other people."

[albatrossomen]

"Is this some new method of establishing status among your kind?" No matter how advanced they grew, at their core it would seem humans would ever be hairless apes. How disappointing.

Mahzian just continued to give him that flat look, as if waiting for Richard to remember that he's not "people" nor human, and therefore was unlikely to understand his strange rituals. How many times will he need to say it before it sticks? Forcibly removing the alcohol from his system was becoming a more and more appealing option.

He furrows his brows, just faintly. "I would have expected my telling you as much should have been sufficient," Humans. "You would have us arbitrarily casting judgement upon your kind? When you yourselves can scarcely keep track of what you consider "moral" from one moment to the next?" Think real hard about that Richard. That would be disastrous.

[imarealistnotacynic]

"I'd have you actually doing the job. Proper justice isn't arbitrary. It's the free will argument all over again. You don't question your existence - that's fine. Your father, my father, our father should set rules and abide by them. And then you help. Like helping kids like me."

He points and frowns, dropping the bottle, "You should know what's good and what's bad more than you do!"

[albatrossomen]

"And what rules are those? Perhaps the one where disobedient children are stoned to death? Or the one where the sins of the parents shall be carried by their children, and their children's children, for seven generations?" You see, Richard, free will is a touchy subject. Make hardline rules, then free will goes right out the window.

Without warning he reaches out and he snatches Richard by the collar, dragging him close to hiss in his ear. "I move stars, monkey. I have watched them burn into life and die a hundred times. What violence you and the rest of your kind choose to enact upon each other is of no concern to me." He reaches up, and presses two fingers to Richard's forehead as he pulls away.

The magic that flows through him will gather up all that wonderful alcohol swimming around in his bloodstream, concentrate it, and cleanse it. Of course, it'll need to go somewhere. Richard's free to guess what that entails as Mahzian moves away just in time to avoid collateral damage.

[imarealistnotacynic]

Oh. Oh.

He's about to fight, to struggle and throw a punch when something hits him like a knife to the stomach. Only it's warm - warm and filling and for once there are no shadows, there's nothing clouding him, he sees his mind and Screams for half a moment. He imagines in his mind he can see everything.

Then he twists and vomits. All of the alcohol he had. All of the food he'd eaten. His lungs and throat are on fire and he twitches out of shock, trying to climb to his feet looking kicked and broken and done.

Instead he lies on his back, gasping, crying.

[albatrossomen]

"You're annoying when you're drunk."

Is all Mahzian has to offer. In a blink, with a faint rush of air he's gone. Like he'd never been there at all. Guess you didn't convince him to try a drink this time, Richard.

[misterbrekker]

By the time Kaz comes across him, Mahzian is long gone and all he sees is Richard in a particularly worse state than the one he left him in earlier. Having grown up on the streets of the seedy pleasure district known as the Barrel, Kaz is no stranger to coming across people who can't hold their drink, but in contrast with their current surroundings it's a pretty jarring sight.

The most tempting option is to just turn around and go back to his room, leaving the man there to tend to himself. Instead, Kaz heaves a sigh and decides to do him a courtesy. Unfortunately for Richie, that courtesy was giving him a few thumps on the shoulder with his cane. "You don't want to be on your back if more comes up."

[imarealistnotacynic]

Richard's gaze is dark and furious when he glares at the man with the cane, he's never felt this bad ever. Not in a million years. Wild and free times aboard a space ship have taken a dark turn for the worst and all he wants to do is curl up somewhere and cry himself to sleep. Or maybe just punch something. Both sound good. He settles for rolling over onto his side and glaring, one eye open at Brekker before he tries to climb to his feet.

"I feel like shit."

And he looks like shit.

"Fucking Angels. Fucking angels." Stupid supernatural beings. His hands clench and he moves to push himself into a sitting position before letting out a whimper and wrapping his arms around himself. Looking up at Kaz he blinks, "...Who're you?"

[misterbrekker]

If it came to a choice between crying or punching something, Kaz would hands down definitely prefer the latter. The man is certainly looking rough, and when he says he feels like shit, Kaz agrees that he definitely looks like it too. He could extend a hand, offer to help him up, but he doesn't. Instead, once Richard starts stirring following the jabs from his cane, he turns towards the nearby selection of liquor. For the briefest of moments after hearing Richard curse angels, he tenses and halts, before continuing on as though nothing happened. Angels had definitely become a topic of interest for him since arriving here, owing to the fact that a certain one had taken a rather annoying interest in him.

It was clear by now that certain people aboard Navi had become afflicted with something that had taken them out of their right minds, and he would venture a guess that the man currently sitting on the ground was one of the people affected. He also knew that there were self-proclaimed angels aboard the ship, and doubted that Richard cursing them was mere coincidence. Looking at his current state, it seemed likely that he had a run-in with one and came off worse for it.

Resting his cane against the counter in front of him, he gives Richard a sideways glance, quirking a brow at him. "Not an angel," he answers dismissively, turning back towards the liquor and selecting a whiskey, pouring himself a modest amount. Lifting the glass, he studies it passively for a moment, before tilting his head and tossing it back in one gulp. "They seem harmless enough, though," he finally finishes, in that same dismissive and nonchalant tone.

[imarealistnotacynic]

"Wrong." Richard's voice is harsh and gravelly as he rubs the back of his neck and tries to move, "Wrong, Wrong, WRong. I was right. You offer thoughts of autonomy and...and support to beings clearly in thrall to forces they could beat and they deny it?" He presses his lips together. Nope. He's mentally 16, but physically he feels like he's a bajillion years old, "...Fuck them. Fuck fuck fuck..."

Nope.

"...Do you have water? Sir? Please?"

[misterbrekker]

As he listened to him ramble on, Kaz barely restrained a sigh. It seemed as though anything he learned from him would have to be filtered through the man's inane rambling. Wishful thinking, he supposed, for hoping that Richard would go into a coherent rant. If he was going to get anything out of him, it seemed like he'd have to calm him down a bit. The mental image of hitting him with his cane made a happy lap around his head, but luckily for Richard Kaz leaned much more heavily into being patient rather than being impulsive.

Returning the whiskey bottle back to it's place on the shelf, his eyes scanned and found a clean glass, and he leaned towards the sink to fill it with a bit of water. Turning, he took a couple steps towards Richard and lowered himself a bit, ignoring the sharp protest from his leg as he did so.

Though he was wearing his gloves as always, his stomach gave an inward lurch as he offered the glass, mentally bracing himself for the possibility of Richard's hand making contact with his. Still, he managed to hide any visible signs of hesitation and kept his hand steady as he held it out.

Despite the rough stone texture his voice always possessed, his tone was otherwise relaxed and even, the quality of someone who was curious and willing to listen. "What happened?"

[imarealistnotacynic]

"I was drunk." Richie rubs at the back of his neck, "Was. and he just...detoxed me." His hands are shaking and he frowns at that. Shivers are slowly settling in along his back and neck and spine as he curls up in on himself with a frown, "I was just having fun and he came at me like...It was awful. It was really awful."

His lips press together and the shivers get more intense.

"I feel like I want to die. It feels like he pulled my veins out."

[misterbrekker]

As Richard explained what happened, Kaz held his position, playing the part of an intent listener. He kept his eyes on Richard's face, though they broke away for a brief moment to scan the mess around them. For all appearances, Richard looked like any other fink that couldn't hold his drink. If what he was saying was true, though, his description reminded Kaz of Heartrenders back home, Grisha who could manipulate a person's insides. He'd never seen one expel the alcohol from a person's system, but it seemed within the realm of possibility, especially a Grisha under the effects of parem.

However, Kaz still had the feeling there was more at play here. A Grisha on parem suffered severe detrimental side effects and withdrawal, and while a Heartrender boosted by it could compel a person to do something, they couldn't pull information out of thin air. At least, as far as he knew.

Turning his gaze back to Richard, he almost rolled his eyes, but managed to restrain himself and keep his tone calm. "If you want to die, I'm sure it could be arranged, but it doesn't seem like you're going to. What did they look like? Did they have a name?"

[imarealistnotacynic]

" 'm not - I don't want to die." He glares at Kaz, "He's ...gawky and he called himself..." He shakes his head, "He was bright."

Richard tries to right himself, tries to shake it off and straighten as he wills his body to recover, "I see some things sometimes. Stuff that shouldn't exist and this guy was bright and powerful."

"Mahzian."

He nods, "Mahzian. Where's - can I have more water?"