Logs:Eyes of the Mask: Save Who You Can

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Content Warning

Homophobic slurs, depictions of PTSD, war violence references, explosions, body horror.

Cast

Jean-Louis Visigny-Winthrope and Spider as ST

Setting

The Gayborhood - Part of The Eyes Of The Mask

Log

Well, it's a midnight, bleak and dreary, in the middle of January, as the most cheerless month of the year slides down into the interminable slushy grey of late Winter, when all of the holidays are over and the days have just started to get a little bit longer, but the nights are still perfectly long and good for wandering.

So where does our intrepid hunter find himself, on nights that he hunts without his wives?

Tonight it's tight leather pants that lace up the sides with tassel chains about the waist in lieu of a belt. It leaves a strip of his back and belly bare for just the right amount of cockslutty to get the point across. The top being sheer helps, the leather biker jacket he wears over the top would help masculinize the look if it weren't one of Annikah's. His hair is spiked up and colored blue, his nose is pierced, and the mascara and black eyeshadow he's wearing are top notch. And so the queen hunts, not the crime ridden streets of West Philadelphia, nope. The fringes of the Gayborhood, nearer to Temple and Penn. Just him and his cane and the night and the occasional drunken giggle into the phone at his ear. It's all in French, because that just accentuates the helplessness of his predicament to prospective food.

You know who else hunts the fringes of the gayborhood?

Yeah. The kind of men who become Visigny's dinner. He can hear the rough laughter of the men in their black and gold, bomber jackets with gold stripes up the sleeves as they push themselves off of the car they were leaning against. Could be Proud Boys, could be Yellow Jackets. Someday, there's going to be delightful confusion between the colors and markings of those two particular groups, and won't that be fun to watch.

He can smell them -- cheap bourbon, cheap malt liquor, and Marlboro Reds. A bargain-basement sort of White Masculinity at the cost of anything of value or taste or enjoyment encroaches upon his person. Start the countdown to one of them yelling 'hey, faggot': three, two...

"Alors j'ai dit au policier : 'Ce n'est pas mon gode, mais vous pouvez voir s'il rentre.'" Visigny enjoys a thoroughly catty, fruity, curling queer cackle at this joke. "Vrai? Vrai? Mais je dois aller tuer des gens maintenant. Mwua! Mwua! T'aime t'aime toujours! Mwua!" He hangs up the phone and slides it into his too tight pants with a little wiggle, adjusts his tackle with a tug, and then sways his old cane back and forth to see just how much play it has in this cold.

"Pardonuh miiii, jentilmen! Escuse mi! Where is the eh. Discos? For dancing?" He wiggles his fingers invitingly. Over heeere! Over here near this dark alley way! Right over here near this dark alleyway with the big dumpster! I'm so gay and helpless!

... one.

"Faggot." Ahh, there it is! Just like clockwork. You can set your watch by the boring slurs of the homophobic, fittingly slurred around a tongue made thick by shitty alcohol consumed too quickly in the cold.

Over here, right near this dark alleyway, exactly halfway up the block! He wiggles his fingers towards them, and there's a crude, rough laugh... but then the men stop, and start backing up. Behind him, the silken sound of servos hissing.

"Greetings, Citizen. Do you require assistance?" The automated voice echoes down the suddenly-emptying street, as the men in black and yellow jackets are suddenly just casual citizenry on their way elsewhere, and have absolutely nothing to do with the blue-haired Frenchman looking for a disco. A single Mark Two Autonomous Policing Unit hisses and clicks towards Visigny, its motions just a little bit shy of perfectly fluid. Maybe it's an older model.

"I have a cigarette, yes! One moment--" Visigny starts fishing for his tin of hand rolled cigarettes when the canned cop behind him chirps off like the fun ruining joyless creation it is. He puts on his best affable tourist voice and laughs, resuming his walk without turning back around, "I don't believe so, Officer! I was looking for the discos, but I see the signs now." He points to the rainbow street signs up the corner, just ahead. "Merci, officer!" He tries to get some distance from the thing, like you do.

The machine police officer raises his hand, and just... pauses.

It's like watching someone die, in a way, except it's just a machine, so what does it matter, right? It's no more watching something die than shutting off a light. Right?

But then a second later, the blue LED lights flash back on, and a much-less-automated voice, somewhat breathless, gasps, "Jean-Louis?"

It is a young man's voice, something from buried memory. Something from a long, long time ago. "Jean-Louis? It is you?"

The Mark Two staggers a step towards him, and then another, like a colt fresh from its mother, trying to figure out how legs work.

It's hard to explain to people who have never been through a thing how a voice and a name can turn the distant roar of a sports car into the scream of a stuka. And the flash of oncoming lights from a city bus into the explosions of the 88s. And the sound of footsteps over sewer grates into the burping of a distant MG42. It leaves him feeling exposed, wondering why the snipers haven't got him yet, wanting for his pistol and his fine white hat. And that useless fucking whistle. The metallic clopping sounds of the robot's approach climb right up his spine, like a two digging spades into rocky mountainside.

He wheels around sharply and says the one thing that always made the men feel like he knew what was going on. Even when he didn't. "Oui? Report." He stares the thing dead in its red eye. When the truck drives over the metal road work plate with a crack like rifle fire, Visigny stands there and tucks his cane under his arm. (edited)

"Lieutenant," the Mark Two's voice -- it's the wrong voice for the robots, he's seen them on the news, he knows the voice, he can't place it -- crackles and whines, plaintive. "Lieutenant, where are we?" It staggers towards him, his voice (yes, his voice) uncertain. Afraid, and in French, it continues. "We were in Italy... "

Its head turns back and forth frantically as other inhabitants of the gayborhood slowly start to approach, in that way that bystanders will begin to accumulate (at a safe distance, or what they think is a safe distance, anyway). If a phone hasn't come out yet, it's about to. If this isn't being recorded yet, it will be soon. "Lieutenant, it is Touati," comes the Mark Two's voice once more, begging helplessly from that strange, dispassionate face.

It is like dropping through the ice into the abyssal dark of buried memory, swallowed up by the cold. David Touati, that most diminishingly rare of creatures, an Algerian Jew. At the time, of course, there were a hundred and fifty thousand of them. Today? Two hundred, more or less. A barrel-chested man with a hearty laugh, warm and companionable in so many ways. He sang bawdy songs that most of the Americans couldn't translate but knew were filthy, and then grinned and grinned while they tried to discipline him. Maybe I will just go, and then what? Then who will make you laugh? he asked the Major.

And he died like the rest of them, gut-shot on the slope of Monte Cassino, laughing until the moment machine gun fire took his legs out from under him, mixing his blood with so many others on the rocky Italian hillside.

His servos hiss, his gears grind, and the Mark Two's eyes flash red -- blue -- red. "Citi-- " Click. "Lieutenant." (edited)

"David, it's safe, my friend!" This in conversational French as he dips into to slip an arm around the machine's shoulders and drop a gentle tap on the braincase with his left hand. He's back around to the front of the machine, smiling. Solicious. Himself. Himself at his best, all those years ago. "The war is over, Europe is free, Hitler died in a ditch covered in petrol. On fire! Come, there's drinking to do. Stay with me a moment longer, won't you old friend?"

Having Carthian Law means it wasn't him talking to the robot about Italy in French in front of pedestrians at 2am on a Tuesday. Honest, Saakima. (edited)

He touches the case, and when he tries to pull the knowledge of who touched the brain case before him, he can see the strange, long fingers, the bizarre, emotionless face. It's a person's face, but it's almost exactly like the Mark Two's. Human, but not human at all. It hums softly, a little tune which will stay in the back of Visigny's brain like an itch he can't reach, lingering for days.

Webbing reaches across the world, the way that electrical wires stretch across alleyways when ad-hoc power grids rise up from necessity. He saw those often during the years after the war. Pulses of powers, of powers, red blips, Morse code. Cold red fingers close around the brain case, a fist that squeezes, crushes.

The third vision is less certain. It's almost like talking to a rabbi, that feeling. One of the sages says yes, another says, but it is just a man! It's more of a feeling than an answer. Yes? But no? But yes? But no?

And then he sees the Mark Two, somehow more solid, more real, than the robot who he has his arm around. He knows it's under the Mark Two's control, at least... kind of.

The Mark Two staggers, and the men who are watching (one of them is trying to hide the fact that he's filming, holding the camera down low like he's looking at his messages and not actually filming) take a step back. "Lieutenant," the robot who is also Touati whimpers. "I think I died." There's a shuddering that runs from the heels of the Mark Two towards its brain, and Visigny can feel its frame heating up rapidly, his sharp ears picking up crackling and popping from inside the immaculately-styled white-and-chrome chassis.

"I thought I died, too. Years, years later. In New York City. But here I am. Here we are, my friend. Come, come, stay with me a while longer. There's some people I want you to meet. I'm married now! Can you imagine? Jean the Cat by the pussy tamed?" Every word Visigny's beast wraps around like the serpent climbing the staff. Right and good, and drawing out the poison. Letting the healing in.

The absolute power of his manners manifests now as a potent proof against interruption. His eyes demand attentiveness. They forestall distraction. They are armor to the mind.

That's enough to momentarily snap the man out of his fear, but there's a rattling sound inside the chassis, as if something is trying to get out. Or possibly trying to fry the machine. Or --

For a second, he hears David's laughter, that belly-deep thing that strained the buttons on his stained olive broadcloth shirt, and then there's a crackle, and the smell of smoke. "Citizen-- " and the Mark Two, now with red eyes, tries to pull itself up to its full height. This is scary. You should be scared. You should not be touching a police officer, says this attempt at returning itself to its stick-straight posture. (edited)

He stared the Blitz in the face. He stared the Desert Fox in the face. He stared Monte Cassino in the fucking face. He stared Moritz von Stahremberg in the fucking face. He stares into the red eye and lifts his chin with just the slightest curl of the imperious lip. What. What can you possibly say to me in this moment to make what you are about to do permissible? Nothing. Be silent. The gentlemen are speaking.

He waits for the light to click back over to blue, and his expression softens again, all warm and cordial. And then comes the order, like gold plated hand grenade straight into David's mind.

"Operator, eject." It doesn't matter which one of them is listening. That command is unambiguous. So much so he circles around behind the machine to await the chassis disgorging what's left of his friend. He looks over the structure, trying to identify the weak points and clamps holding the thing in place, if needs be. (edited)

He stares back into the confused expression, the blank face, of someone who looks not at all like the man whose dead body he saw, whose family he informed. This is going to make for some really interesting conversations back at the warehouse, to be certain.

The blue eyes return instantly when his blood wills it. Such is the Penalty for Discourtesy that he can simply tell the software which is oppressing his old friend -- comrade -- and who knows what else -- to shut the fuck up for a minute.

The chassis continues to heat up, and there's a soft click-click-click as the joints begin to spark, but the order has been given, and the back of the head opens up like a clamshell disgorging a pearl. There are clamps holding the thing in place, and one of them appears to be jammed.

The beeping is getting a lot more insistent and the heat more intense, but Visigny could care less. He spins one of his knives to hand, slides it under the stuck clamp, and gingerly flips it open with a satisfying click and whirr of stressed servos. He pulls the case free with both hands, a look of sublime wonder on his face.

"Fitting," he remarks. There's a beat of silence before he turns his back and the whole world becomes red and white and yellow and fire. He can feel his body being thrown, and he can feel his body righting itself in the air, legs kicking in the air to keep his balance sufficient that he can land in a hard roll, rather than a hapless sprawl. His body slides across the street, slams into the opposite curb, and rolls up onto the sidewalk to stop at the bottom of a street light, still wrapped around the last piece of David.

He can feel his back cooking, smell the burns, taste the blood on his tongue. He tries to stand and coughs out a sound of pain before slowly pushing back up to one knee, then another, then up to his feet. He pulls out his phone and starts dialing at once. "Hans," he rasps into the phone, "spot of help, old chap?" By the time he has limped about twenty yards, the limp is gone and only only the superficial horror remains. He has to make it look good, and so he slumps back down by some garbage cans, hopefully people won't notice him? He can hope.

"Oh, you know. Blown up in an alley in the Gayborhood on a Tuesday night with a friend. You?" He checks his watch. Where the fuck is his watch? Where the fuck is his shirt? Where the-- "Can you bring me a change of everything, please? And let Artje know to start the phone tree. We need to unhappen some happenstances." He rolls his eyes and sighs, "Honestly, Hans, just call her, I'm busy being tragic and sad and deeply Byronic." He hangs up and stuffs his phone back into the tatters of his armored coat.