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Post by werdnari on Mar 16, 2011 23:06:11 GMT -5
Werdnari's shoulders sank at Agate's words. Was his brain scrambled? If two people had blended together in his mind, it could be true. Had Momo scrambled his brains? ... He didn't have an answer for that. "He... revived me, again. In the Needs." Werd flinched as he remembered coming to on a table. Rotters were the only people that needed to be on those tables; they often had garbled memories, too.
His heart began to race at the thought of being a rotter, most of Kay's words falling upon deaf ears. "He... Momo said he had let Fa know... that I was here." Panic boiled in his belly as he sullenly glanced around in vain for the comfort of her familiar face. "I haven't seen her," he glanced at the snow on the ground, barely recalling that it hadn't been there before he'd awoken in the needs, "in weeks, maybe months?"
His mind snapped back to Momo as Kay caught his attention once more. "The sewers... by now. You'll never catch him in there, we all had to memorize the layout."
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Post by dray on Mar 16, 2011 23:22:46 GMT -5
"Last I heard," Agate sneered, "Fa hasn't seen you since you wandered off three years ago; if you were around, she'd've done something about it... 'course, nobody knew you were working with that mouth-breathing son of a bitch or else I'd've said something about it." He spat on the ground near the newly revived man. "Soon as she finds out, she won't want you around, either."
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Post by werdnari on Mar 17, 2011 0:13:10 GMT -5
It was too much. Three years? The world was spinning. The thought of Fa not wanting anything to do with him... it burned. His brow and lip twitched as his eyes lost focus on his surroundings, focusing on some infinitely distant object. His eyes darted to where Kay had been before his balance evaporated, sending him ass first onto a small snow drift. Werd's hands sat in his lap as his eyes examined the menagerie of new scars covering them. At least the cold wasn't bothering him any longer.
((I never thought I'd actually get "menagerie" in an actual sentence without forcing it!))
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Post by Kat on Mar 18, 2011 21:39:40 GMT -5
Kay watched flatly as Werdnari collapsed into the snow, and then finally snorted, shot a look up at Agate. "I think you broke him."
She hoisted her axe and, with disgust, holstered it. Momo was gone, or at least out of sight. If he was going to pull sh*t, it wouldn't be while she was standing there nice and ready with her weapon. She looked down at Werdnari and her face drew briefly into a snarl; in her books, she was the cause of Momo's escape, with his idiot covering for the man. Still... "Fa'll throw a f*cking fit if we don't bring him home," she said to Agate in a low, flat tone, wrinkling her nose.
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Post by dray on Mar 18, 2011 22:25:57 GMT -5
Watching the bedraggled man sulk in the snowdrift, Agate couldn't help but pull a face of disgust. Anyone who survived in Malton had to toughen up a whole hell of a lot, one way or another. Maybe that was why Werd' had dropped out of the running, so to speak, for so long... he was weak. Fragile, maybe.
In any case, Agate was disappointed: he'd recalled Werdnari as having more lip than he currently did. His brain really was scrambled. "Yeah," he replied to the redhead, voice low to accommodate their semi-private conversation. "But she doesn't know..." he began. He cast another look Werdnari's way, and was unable to finish his sentence. The man was absolutely pathetic.
"Jesus Christ, you really want to haul him back?" he asked petulantly. "What if he brings his fucked up friend?"
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Post by werdnari on Mar 18, 2011 22:57:46 GMT -5
There were so many; he couldn't count them all. Ten larger scars. Dozens, perhaps hundreds of smaller ones. The smaller ones usually faded after a while...
Kay's voice felt distant, but she spoke a word Werd wanted to hear: "Fa". His head lifted slightly as his eyes gazed where he last remembered the woman standing. Agate's comments stirred something strange in Werd, a sensation that had both gotten the man through hopeless times and moved him from the frying pan to the fire. He began to laugh.
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Post by Kat on Mar 20, 2011 22:08:22 GMT -5
She had been about to reply to Agate, when Werd began to laugh. She stared at him with eyes that widened incredulously, brows drawn in low. It wasn't even that she couldn't understand what was going on inside his head -- the man had cracked, obviously, and maybe in more than one way. It was more related to a deep sense of frustration at the situation. She had long since given up on having the kind of crew around that had been around while she was pregnant and while Casey was young, but why did it have to be that when they found a member of the old guard, as it were, he had to be collaborating with the enemy AND and a sad nutter?
"Get up," she told the laughing man loudly, taking a step towards Werdnari. "Isn't nothing wrong with your legs, and I am not carrying you back to the f*cking Cosway, Fa's wrath or no." She didn't expect him to respond to the words as much as to the tone, into which she was injecting a good deal of force.
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Post by dray on Mar 21, 2011 10:21:16 GMT -5
That sudden, unexpected laugh prickled the hairs at the back of Agate's neck. Werdnari wasn't just a little scrambled, he sounded as though he'd completely lost it. Agate glanced at Kay, surprised at her determination to have the newly revived man up and headed back to the Cosway. The urge to tell her that they had better just leave him -- Fa's wrath or no be damned -- was strong enough to make biting his own tongue a real difficulty. He slammed the bottom of his bat against the rooftop in frustration, glaring at the 'sad nutter', as Kay saw him, seeing something potentially worse.
It didn't matter if Fa was fond of him or not. It'd been three years, give or take. A person changed a whole hell of a lot in that time, especially if they'd been so far gone they needed a rotter's revive. As far as he'd been concerned, Agate saw enough evidence to just brain the man, leave with Kay and tell Fa that they couldn't catch Momo, and move on... but he knew that something exactly like that would come back to bite them all in the ass. Weighing Casey's safety with a nutter in her direct vicinity and one lurking God knew where, versus two nutters lurking as unknown factors... he managed to keep his own council for now, though just barely.
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Post by werdnari on Mar 21, 2011 10:58:27 GMT -5
His body burned as a second wave of laughter wracked his body, Kay's words only adding fuel to the fire of his brand of coping mechanism. "What? What's the matter Kay? No more maternal instinct?" His vision slowly returned as the burning sensation in his body began to center his senses. "Or, or have you been forced to- to play- hah! play daddy since, since Agate nev-" the man gasped for breath as he struggled to complete his thought instead of laugh, "never had a- hah! a spine to begin with!" (( I tried to keep it readable, but Werd is basically laughing or struggling to breathe every few words. If anyone has a better way of typing that up, do tell? ))
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Post by Kat on Mar 27, 2011 13:41:41 GMT -5
Kay's nose wrinkled and her look of contempt deepened. Werdnari was off the deep end. That was clear.
She crouched down in front of the man, letting his mad words tumble forth, ignored. "Not even remotely interested in your verbal vomit, Werdnari," she growled at him, leaning in so he got the message as much from the look on her face as from the words. It was like talking to an animal, trying to communicate with someone this far gone. Tone, body language, meant more than words. She barked, "Shut your mouth and listen. We take you back to the Cosway so you can get your sh*t together, right? If there's any sh*t left to get together. You cause trouble, I brain you. Your ugly little friend so much as shows up in the area, I brain both of you and I toss his ugly little corpse on the bonfire. Got it?" She doubted it, but it was a warning she'd make sure to reiterate.
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Post by dray on Mar 27, 2011 13:49:45 GMT -5
Before Kay could even lean in to chastise the man, Agate had retorted, "shut the f*ck up, you rotten little sh*t!" If it weren't for his wife taking a more direct and sedate approach... When she'd finished, he cursed again, though he'd subsided into a low, dreadful mutter. "He doesn't get his sh*t together, we'll take turns braining him," he finally amended. "Can't let you have all the fun." He spat, contemptuous that they were even giving Werdnari this first chance.
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Post by werdnari on Mar 28, 2011 1:40:30 GMT -5
"Oh, I- I've got it! Go wi- with the two nice people th-" He snorted loudly, failing to contain his continued laughter, "-that want t- to k- t- to kill you for being re- revived by yo- your old coworker!" Werd's eyes watered as his arms gripped his sides in an effort to quell the laughter. "They- they're thinking more clearly th- than the laughing rot- r- rotter th- that's-" He froze suddenly, his eyes fixed upon Kay's. Three years, huh? His head turned as the nausea struck, a bloody concoction of bile and partially digested flesh bits spewing fourth upon the snow to his right. A second spasm produced more bloody bile and a bit of finger.
Werd promptly fell completely supine as he gasped for breath, a stupid grin slowly drawing across his face. "Mood swings, are fun."
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[Location: East side of the Needs building]
The sewer lid gave an audible whine as Momo pressed his shoulder against its rusted form. One, two... three! He pushed with his legs, wondering if the rusted lid or the foot rung would give first. The sewer lid crackled for a moment before giving way without warning, nearly sending what passed as a man tumbling down into the sewer proper. With a silent curse, he removed the lid to his left and scurried out onto the street. Another silent curse followed as Momo turned back to replace the lid, some ancient voice in his head noting that he'd be written up for leaving a sewer access open.
Taking position behind the rusted and rotted remains of a dumpster, Momo used his small pair of binoculars to see how Werd was fairing with his friends.
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Post by Kat on Apr 1, 2011 23:28:21 GMT -5
Kay jolted and danced backwards away from the hideous fountain of Werd's zombie-vomit. Her own stomach churned, remembering what that was like. The moment of compassion was overridden by the smell, though, which also chased away the last vestiges of Kay's patience. She was even less interested in literal vomit. "Get up," she repeated loudly, pointing at the prone man. "This is your last chance. Up, or you're on your f*cking own." He should be, anyway, she thought resentfully with a deep scowl on her face, but things were not yet so dire that she was completely indifferent to leaving him to the elements. Maybe he'd shape the f*ck up with a good night's sleep and something other than viscera in his viscera.
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Post by dray on Apr 1, 2011 23:57:04 GMT -5
At least Agate seemed to have a stronger stomach than his wife; he watched as Werdnari went from choking on laughter to letting loose the contents of his stomach with the same disdainful twist of his lips. Kay'd said it all for him, in any case; Fa would want to see her lover-boy, here, chances were, though Agate was not particularly interested in whether Werdnari made it back to the hotel with them. They'd always shared a contentious little niche, and Werd had a strange way of collecting friends that Agate hated the guts of. His dislike of the ex-water department lackie had long-since crusted into a fine resentment, and even after three years of Werdnari's absence, he was mistrustful.
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Post by werdnari on Apr 2, 2011 20:55:12 GMT -5
Werd's gasping began to slow as he raised his hand toward Kay, stretching the fingers widely before relaxing them into an opened hand. "Can I get a hand up or do you want to kick me a few times first?"
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