Number FIVE ☂ (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
somebadnews) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
westwhere2021-09-08 05:26 pm
somebadnews) wrote in westwhere2021-09-08 05:26 pm
time doesn't love you anymore
WHO: Five and OPEN (with one closed starter)
WHEN: Early-to-mid September
WHERE: All Around Taravast
WHAT: September Catch-All: Obsessions, Curses and Family Meetings
WARNINGS: Language and... whatever Five-related things come up
i. Southern (Artist ) Areas (open)
It's been a while since Five took a walk to get some fresh air. Tensions have been escalating again, and despite his best efforts to claim otherwise, his thoughts have been too erratic to feel like he has anything under control any more. It's an incredibly inconvenient time to be staving off the effects of a curse that he's stubbornly against prioritizing, and refuses to think about now. He's well accustomed to dealing with anguish; acknowledging it just makes it more insufferable and he has too many other things to worry about.
He needs a clear head if he's going to avoid another gaffe like they had at the masquerade. Hence the outing. He gives himself an errand or two — find a more secluded meeting location, procure more coffee — if only to get away from all of them before he snaps and murders someone else just because he's frustrated and running on fumes. As he makes his way through the streets, he thinks bitterly that his thirteen-year-old body could probably use the exercise.
When they first arrived in Taravast, he had been vaguely insulted by the identity he'd been assigned. That was before he'd learned it could be much worse. He's largely left alone, and when he's approached by anyone who seemed to have gotten his description from who-knows-where, he can make them disappear in relatively few words. Just drop a comment about their staggering irrelevance and they walk away shocked and offended. Temperamental artists are apparently common enough to play on assumptions. He barely cares.
All this time he hasn't actually bothered to look at any of the actual art in the city, because why would he? It's all useless decoration that doesn't serve any purpose, and mostly makes him think of the Academy and those terrible portraits his father had done of them as kids. That was his closest point of reference; nothing really survived in the apocalypse and he certainly didn't spend any time looking at it during his years at the Commission. — So it's strange that in the middle of his hike through the citadel, he finds himself facing an unfamiliar statue in the middle of an alcove. It's only half-finished, the form just starting to emerge from the stone, and he stares for full ten minutes before he realizes where he is. They have plenty of paintings on display and jewelry stands stretched along the alleyway, but not a single one of them sells coffee.
Fuck, he's tired. He nearly blinks away instead of walking back to where he made a wrong turn, but it's quiet here and all he really wanted was somewhere to think. So he wedges himself into the small space between the stone and the wall while he tries to do the math to get him to where he meant to go.
Moments later he's fast asleep where the statue's feet would be.
ii. Necromancer District (open)
Five went back to that same location where they'd picked up a cure for the poison a few days later. So far they hadn't heard any grief about what they did to obtain the blood; no one so much as questioned any recent murders, but he does think enough to stay away from certain incriminating areas to avoid the hassle. He wanted to see if he could find this particular house again by memory, and he feels some satisfaction that he manages to, even if it had been an entirely different time of day.
It seemed strange to him back then, and he said as much, that the necromancers had a cure for the poison almost before they asked. Not until later did he find out that Lady Vannozza has ties here. There's an almost too-obvious link between her and the attempt on their lives, and looking into it actually feels useful in a way he hasn't been lately. It's straightforward enough to investigate, and something productive he can share with his family later if he gets any leads.
A shorter route would have been to ask Allison to rumor Vannozza to tell them exactly what her involvement was, but he knows his sister will want more than his paranoia to go on. The other solution involves having them conjure the man responsible for delivering the poison, but Lan Wangji was acting strange about it after he was the one who suggested it. Five still doesn't understand his great moral objection, but he rarely does, and spends far too much time trying to. Several of the necromancers here could do it, if he really wants to pursue the idea.
That doesn't mean he won't also try and get more information about how the necromancers work while he's poking around. He pays careful attention whenever he spots their customers coming and going, and if his timing is good enough, he might teleport in to see what their healing rituals entail. For curiosity's sake.
Today it seems noticeably less crowded in the district, which is... not ideal and throws off his plan slightly. If he stands out too much they might start to recognize him as a kid who keeps hanging around here, and he'll have to put more effort into hiding in the shadows. It also might mean he's missing something again, which just makes him feel more out of sorts. He doesn't abandon the methods, but he keeps an extra eye out for anyone he recognizes that might fill him in.
iii. Academies (open)
Five comes around eventually. He really hadn't needed any magic curse to break his fragile grip on sanity. But when he keeps confusing the anguish he's stubbornly holding onto with memories of the apocalypse, he knows that pretty soon people will start noticing what's wrong with him. At some point he's going to need to make it stop. The unfortunate truth is that there's no way in hell he can trust that the easiest solutions available to get rid of it, and his other idea isn't any guarantee.
Under normal circumstances, he would have learned enough about magic to handle his own problems, but there's just so many different types and languages that he doesn't know where to begin. The research he left to Fox came to a halt after the masquerade, because of course they try to murder the one person he had chosen to tell about his problem, which left him largely on his own. (While Fox presumably recovers. He's sure he would have heard from Mingyu otherwise.)
The academies are easy enough to break into for someone like him, but without a guide, he's less sure of which books to disappear with that might have something worthwhile in them. He ends up with one that looks questionably promising, and others he grabbed simply because they were near it on the shelf. While he's waiting for his personal translator, he flips through the pages and tries to make sense of them.
Almost immediately he starts to write notes in the margins, which quickly devolve into something more familiar to him. Soon he's sitting in the courtyard working the equations he hasn't touched in weeks, trying to work backward to the earliest he could alter the timeline without jeopardizing his family, what events he could change by eliminating various people, and ways to predict where and when they might find his remaining siblings. The mask they insist that he carry around is beside him and he seems intensely focused and oblivious to anyone who might have noticed that he isn't a student.
In hindsight, he should have brought a different notebook with him, but it helps him for a time to slip into the world of time travel and probability equations to remember that he's actually smart about some things. Eventually he'll return to the palace and try to track Fox down to explain what he was originally trying to do. When he does finally hand off these books to him, he's sure he might even have the math worked out and not need him any more.
iv. Undisclosed Location (closed to Hargreeves)
The meeting is, frankly, long overdue. Playing political games for the sake of the group at large has only left them out of touch and ill prepared. They weren't ready for the attempted murder at the masquerade, and he was blindsided by Allison's trip to see the necromancers, purely because he hadn't kept a close enough eye on his family. They need a better system.
Fortunately, securing a suitably discrete location wasn't all that difficult once he started looking, and his ability makes it easy to get around any onlookers who might catch on that he's in cahoots with his family. Before arriving, Five had made at least some effort to splash water on his face and put on a less rumpled set of clothes to disguise the exhaustion that makes him feel every bit of his actual age. He does a passable job. He won't admit that the nap he had earlier might have done some good.
They haven't been together in the same space since the masquerade, and he takes time to assess all of them as he paces around the room. The wolves are still hanging around, apparently. Five takes a moment to look at each one of them before narrowing his eyes at Diego. He's already made it clear what he thinks about his new coping mechanism, but that doesn't mean he won't bring it up again. The only one of them to stay out of trouble is Vanya, and thank god for that.
"Alright. To start with, great job all around at not getting stabbed or poisoned." Really, it's a low bar, but they've managed to cross it. As far as he knows, he's the only one who screwed up anything major, and he's fine with delaying that news until the end. "We don't have a lot of time, but I thought we should get on the same page."
v.
Wildcard for whatever else. Additional starters available on request.
Action spam or prose idc/will match format/I swear I will use less words one day (I will forget I said this).
WHEN: Early-to-mid September
WHERE: All Around Taravast
WHAT: September Catch-All: Obsessions, Curses and Family Meetings
WARNINGS: Language and... whatever Five-related things come up
i. Southern (Artist ) Areas (open)
It's been a while since Five took a walk to get some fresh air. Tensions have been escalating again, and despite his best efforts to claim otherwise, his thoughts have been too erratic to feel like he has anything under control any more. It's an incredibly inconvenient time to be staving off the effects of a curse that he's stubbornly against prioritizing, and refuses to think about now. He's well accustomed to dealing with anguish; acknowledging it just makes it more insufferable and he has too many other things to worry about.
He needs a clear head if he's going to avoid another gaffe like they had at the masquerade. Hence the outing. He gives himself an errand or two — find a more secluded meeting location, procure more coffee — if only to get away from all of them before he snaps and murders someone else just because he's frustrated and running on fumes. As he makes his way through the streets, he thinks bitterly that his thirteen-year-old body could probably use the exercise.
When they first arrived in Taravast, he had been vaguely insulted by the identity he'd been assigned. That was before he'd learned it could be much worse. He's largely left alone, and when he's approached by anyone who seemed to have gotten his description from who-knows-where, he can make them disappear in relatively few words. Just drop a comment about their staggering irrelevance and they walk away shocked and offended. Temperamental artists are apparently common enough to play on assumptions. He barely cares.
All this time he hasn't actually bothered to look at any of the actual art in the city, because why would he? It's all useless decoration that doesn't serve any purpose, and mostly makes him think of the Academy and those terrible portraits his father had done of them as kids. That was his closest point of reference; nothing really survived in the apocalypse and he certainly didn't spend any time looking at it during his years at the Commission. — So it's strange that in the middle of his hike through the citadel, he finds himself facing an unfamiliar statue in the middle of an alcove. It's only half-finished, the form just starting to emerge from the stone, and he stares for full ten minutes before he realizes where he is. They have plenty of paintings on display and jewelry stands stretched along the alleyway, but not a single one of them sells coffee.
Fuck, he's tired. He nearly blinks away instead of walking back to where he made a wrong turn, but it's quiet here and all he really wanted was somewhere to think. So he wedges himself into the small space between the stone and the wall while he tries to do the math to get him to where he meant to go.
Moments later he's fast asleep where the statue's feet would be.
ii. Necromancer District (open)
Five went back to that same location where they'd picked up a cure for the poison a few days later. So far they hadn't heard any grief about what they did to obtain the blood; no one so much as questioned any recent murders, but he does think enough to stay away from certain incriminating areas to avoid the hassle. He wanted to see if he could find this particular house again by memory, and he feels some satisfaction that he manages to, even if it had been an entirely different time of day.
It seemed strange to him back then, and he said as much, that the necromancers had a cure for the poison almost before they asked. Not until later did he find out that Lady Vannozza has ties here. There's an almost too-obvious link between her and the attempt on their lives, and looking into it actually feels useful in a way he hasn't been lately. It's straightforward enough to investigate, and something productive he can share with his family later if he gets any leads.
A shorter route would have been to ask Allison to rumor Vannozza to tell them exactly what her involvement was, but he knows his sister will want more than his paranoia to go on. The other solution involves having them conjure the man responsible for delivering the poison, but Lan Wangji was acting strange about it after he was the one who suggested it. Five still doesn't understand his great moral objection, but he rarely does, and spends far too much time trying to. Several of the necromancers here could do it, if he really wants to pursue the idea.
That doesn't mean he won't also try and get more information about how the necromancers work while he's poking around. He pays careful attention whenever he spots their customers coming and going, and if his timing is good enough, he might teleport in to see what their healing rituals entail. For curiosity's sake.
Today it seems noticeably less crowded in the district, which is... not ideal and throws off his plan slightly. If he stands out too much they might start to recognize him as a kid who keeps hanging around here, and he'll have to put more effort into hiding in the shadows. It also might mean he's missing something again, which just makes him feel more out of sorts. He doesn't abandon the methods, but he keeps an extra eye out for anyone he recognizes that might fill him in.
iii. Academies (open)
Five comes around eventually. He really hadn't needed any magic curse to break his fragile grip on sanity. But when he keeps confusing the anguish he's stubbornly holding onto with memories of the apocalypse, he knows that pretty soon people will start noticing what's wrong with him. At some point he's going to need to make it stop. The unfortunate truth is that there's no way in hell he can trust that the easiest solutions available to get rid of it, and his other idea isn't any guarantee.
Under normal circumstances, he would have learned enough about magic to handle his own problems, but there's just so many different types and languages that he doesn't know where to begin. The research he left to Fox came to a halt after the masquerade, because of course they try to murder the one person he had chosen to tell about his problem, which left him largely on his own. (While Fox presumably recovers. He's sure he would have heard from Mingyu otherwise.)
The academies are easy enough to break into for someone like him, but without a guide, he's less sure of which books to disappear with that might have something worthwhile in them. He ends up with one that looks questionably promising, and others he grabbed simply because they were near it on the shelf. While he's waiting for his personal translator, he flips through the pages and tries to make sense of them.
Almost immediately he starts to write notes in the margins, which quickly devolve into something more familiar to him. Soon he's sitting in the courtyard working the equations he hasn't touched in weeks, trying to work backward to the earliest he could alter the timeline without jeopardizing his family, what events he could change by eliminating various people, and ways to predict where and when they might find his remaining siblings. The mask they insist that he carry around is beside him and he seems intensely focused and oblivious to anyone who might have noticed that he isn't a student.
In hindsight, he should have brought a different notebook with him, but it helps him for a time to slip into the world of time travel and probability equations to remember that he's actually smart about some things. Eventually he'll return to the palace and try to track Fox down to explain what he was originally trying to do. When he does finally hand off these books to him, he's sure he might even have the math worked out and not need him any more.
iv. Undisclosed Location (closed to Hargreeves)
The meeting is, frankly, long overdue. Playing political games for the sake of the group at large has only left them out of touch and ill prepared. They weren't ready for the attempted murder at the masquerade, and he was blindsided by Allison's trip to see the necromancers, purely because he hadn't kept a close enough eye on his family. They need a better system.
Fortunately, securing a suitably discrete location wasn't all that difficult once he started looking, and his ability makes it easy to get around any onlookers who might catch on that he's in cahoots with his family. Before arriving, Five had made at least some effort to splash water on his face and put on a less rumpled set of clothes to disguise the exhaustion that makes him feel every bit of his actual age. He does a passable job. He won't admit that the nap he had earlier might have done some good.
They haven't been together in the same space since the masquerade, and he takes time to assess all of them as he paces around the room. The wolves are still hanging around, apparently. Five takes a moment to look at each one of them before narrowing his eyes at Diego. He's already made it clear what he thinks about his new coping mechanism, but that doesn't mean he won't bring it up again. The only one of them to stay out of trouble is Vanya, and thank god for that.
"Alright. To start with, great job all around at not getting stabbed or poisoned." Really, it's a low bar, but they've managed to cross it. As far as he knows, he's the only one who screwed up anything major, and he's fine with delaying that news until the end. "We don't have a lot of time, but I thought we should get on the same page."
v.
Wildcard for whatever else. Additional starters available on request.
Action spam or prose idc/will match format/
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