voidtreckerexpress | black butterfly, flutter me by;

Entry tags:

black butterfly, flutter me by;

Who: Otoha and anyone who wants to find him.
Where: All around the train!
When: Jelly, anywhere between day 3 - 5ish. (Please specify a particular date if it matters to you!)
What: Settling into train life is hard when you don’t know how to relax or... really function without direction.
Warnings: Interacting with Otoha is likely to involve talks of murder or general talk of him not being a person. Let me know if you need me to limit that! Also probably injuries in the second prompt.

[Training Gym]

Otoha has never missed a day of training in his life if he was able to get up and walk. As soon as he finds the training gym and it’s not a time when it’s occupied he makes his way in to take it over.

What follows is a bit of a mess as he drags things out to create an obstacle course. He positions dummies in strange clumps, around pads and behind larger blocks. He moves them around a bit until he’s satisfied and then starts springing between the dummies.

The sword he uses is long and sharp and probably not something the dummies were designed to withstand. After some damage, he swaps to just kicking and punching them, landing easily and setting them back up after every round.

[Kitchen]

Cooking can’t really be that hard, can it?

Maybe it can be, because Otoha is struggling with it. If it’s not the avocado being annoying to cut through - he’s not using his sword on this - it’s grabbing a pan from the oven without remembering to put on an oven mitt or rubbing his eyes from looking over a steaming pan.

At least he now has some bandages in his hoodie pocket.

[Greenhouse]

The greenhouse is probably not a place someone might expect to find a man like Otoha, but he’s still sitting there in the dirt, carefully making small holes in one of the plots and carefully trying to put the seeds in. … Is he supposed to do just one in each hole? How far apart are they supposed to be? He keeps having to get up and go over to the ICP and check things.

He knows about harvesting some of this, but planting it is another story.

[Wildcard]

Otoha’s a busy guy in some respects. He still wanders the train, looking out for both things he’s missed in the cars and also people he hasn’t seen before. He has to size up everyone, after all. You never know when someone’s going to be a threat.

Alternatively, you never know when someone’s going to drag you into something....

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“...” He sighs deeply, closing his eyes for a moment while his shoulders slump.

“I was looking for a book on herb and flower medicine. Figures it’s be easier to get that stuff than a lot of complicated painkillers or antibiotics.”

"We have a few medical specialists on board, too, but you're right. As for those books..."

Nita pauses, trying to recall if there were books in the library on those topics.

"I think if anyone bought them, they didn't make it public. But I can get those books no problem, sure."

“... You don’t have to go out of your way for me, it’s fine. I’m just trying to find something to do... body won’t handle training literally all day.” As much as he wants to.

He shifts, revealing the end of a bandage near his shoulder.

Nita's glance shifts in turn, to that hint of bandage.

"Meaning that literally, huh? ... I get it, though. And it really isn't a problem; I'm one of those usually buying books to try and figure out more about where we're going anyway. What this train's history is, that sort of thing."

But looking up medicines and herbs? That feels far less like a wild goose chase to her.

“... If you’re sure. And yes. I mean, I spent entire days training when I was younger but other people need to use the dummies here. Can’t go breaking them all the time, either.”

He gestures to the sheathed and cloth-wrapped sword at his side.

"Well, that's true enough. Though it's okay to ask around if you want to improvise new ones, I'm pretty sure."

She nods at that sword, before making her way over to the ICP.

"So, which titles were you looking up? I can't purchase them from in this car, but I can write the titles down while I'm up."

“I’m not good at making things, just breaking them.”

Shit, what were those books called? “Basic Herblore, Herbology: The Basics, Natural Remedies, and Flower Medicine. I’m pretty sure those were the ones. ... Don’t have much I can pay you back with, unless you want fighting lessons.”

Nita gives a thumbs up, rushing back to her chair in a whirl of motion to write those titles down.

Hopefully her other notes won't be too disrupted...

"It's no big deal, honest. And you wouldn't be the first in line when it comes to lessons, either."

It was something of a necessity to know how to defend herself, wizard or Voidtrecker.

"But - until the books come in, just let me know if there are any others you want, okay?"

“I... just trying to be useful. Garbage at my team’s chores.” He holds up a hand with a few newly-closed cuts and bright red burns. “Don’t want me in the kitchen again.”

Again, Nita winces.

"I've had accidents before, but that looks... yeesh."

And-

"... I mean, I can help heal those if you need, but, how did you get those in the first place?"

Accidents like hers, or something else? If it was something harder to avoid, no wonder he would be wary of doing the cooking.

Though-

"What's your name, by the way? I'm Nita."

Edited 2021-01-09 21:55 (UTC)

“They don’t hurt.” He pauses, prodding them idly. “Cut my hand chopping, burned it grabbing something out of the oven... happens. It’s normal.”

Oh, right. “Otoha. Nita... sure.” Oh wait, hang on - he grabs a roll of bandages from his coat and tears off a strip to cover a cut that starts bleeding again. “Stupid thing...”

Nita's mind briefly boggles.

"You don't... feel it, when that happens?"

But she recovers, enough to offer, "I can help make the wound seal itself better, if you want?"

“Don’t feel pain. It’s fine, it’ll heal. You don’t need to fuss at me, I’m not that helpless.” Why does everyone keep jumping on him for healing? He’s fine.

"It's more pragmatic than that - getting a bandage caught on some equipment, or the door, can get real unpleasant, real fast."

She makes no additional move to grab him or the like. Just talking.

"That, and if something does get infected... it'll save us both a lot of work if it's handled now, and I don't mean the fussing."

“... Don’t hurt yourself to help someone like me. I’ll take it if it’s free, but a kid like you shouldn’t have to put themselves out for me.” Sorry, Nita, but you’re still a kid.

Nita... quirks an eyebrow.

"You'd be far from the first I've helped, okay? I know my way around this, and I've been at it for years. This isn't just - a matter of putting out, or whatever!"

Fun choice of words, there.

Thankfully Otoha is repressed enough that he notes it but doesn’t comment. He sighs and holds out his hand.

“Don’t know why you’re helping a monster like me, but fine.”

Nita, repressing a comment about having helped the Inventor of Death Itself, takes his hand with no small amount of firmness.

"Okay, here we go..."

She drops into the Speech, reciting the first few parameters for a minor-class healing spell - encouraging limited growth for restoring healthy skin and muscular function.

Once it starts, though, there's more of a pull than she's expecting - but, rather than pull away, she furrows her eyebrows and keeps it up instead, focusing on regular breathing.

She's got this, she's got this...

... it’s strange. The words feel both familiar and not. There’s something about it that reminds him of the seal his soul passes through during his transformation, and it’s still different.

The pull comes from further down his body, to his shoulder and sides. All the way through there’s scar tissue pulling and resisting. We’re here, do not change us, we are part of this system now! Through the pull there’s a weird sense of some parts of his nerves just stopping.

The skin around the wounds starts to heal and pull back. Otoha stares at her, hust trying to figure out what she’s doing.

The more resistant tissue is left alone; the matter of the nerves (first through a hunch, then the peridexis) gets confirmed as congenital and also left alone.

Not exactly something he'd be in a hurry to change. As useful as it could be to know where pain was coming from, it was still pain.

She continues the spell, regulating her energy flow into it so she's not left gasping afterwards, focusing on both recent wounds and anything actively hampering maneuverability.

Eventually, "There," Nita breathes, loosening her grip so Otoha can pull away.

"That should be the worst of it handled. ... These sorts of things happen to you that frequently?"

Or was it just a matter of accumulation, that he didn't seek healing often?

Edited 2021-01-10 12:22 (UTC)

Fortunately most of it's more surface damage and close to the top of the skin - there's no cuts to tendons or anything of the sort. He pulls away as soon as she lets him, tucking his hand into his pocket.

"Sort of. Deeper cuts not too much. Usually good at this stuff, but I'm not used to the knives here, and I'm not great at cooking. Not used to it."

Nita stretches, feeling a spot of soreness creeping in beneath her shoulder.

"Better to avoid it outright than risk the learning curve?"

At least if Otoha really wanted to avoid the fussing...

"Probably. A lot more injuries from sparring, but that's just how sparring goes."

Especially if your training partner also can't feel pain.

"Not the same kind of injuries, unless you train with knives too."

Still, she could understand it being different. Different purpose, different mindset.

"No, but spear injuries. I don't cut myself with my own sword - not in a long time."

He's moved past that. It did take a lot of injury first, though.

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