forum Man Eating Moss

Started February 28, 2021 by @tungsten fastfood

tune

Cool! Just give me a few minutes!

Name: Ysa
Age: Well, her body is probably 8-9 but her mental age is like, 5. She hasn't had much experience with the world is the point.
Gender/Pronouns: Cis girl, she/they
Orientation: She's a child. Enough said.
Appearance: Ysa is small, about 4'7", and frail. Her body is made up of flesh and metal parts alike, but she's less of a cyborg, more of a semi-automaton. She has curly black hair and dark brown skin with warm undertones. Her eyes are a combination of reddish brown, and they glint gold underneath the surface. Also, when she's feeling strong emotions, they'll glow gold according to the intensity of the emotion. See, royally pissed as like having your brights on, mildly upset is just a faint glow like a flashlight out of battery. She wears an oversized faded blue sweated and a pair of gray shorts, along with converse that she doesn't know how to tie the laces on.
Personality: Ysa is very easily upset, but she usually reacts to things with sadness than anger. She doesn't like how the world isn't fair, and wants to change it, but she doesn't know where to start and that upsets her. She always seems too young for her age, or too old, but never an in-between. She's a bit naive.
Interests: She hasn't really developed her brain enough for that. But, she has found an attachment in stray cats, and likes finding the best food in dumpsters to feed to them.
Theme Song: I cannot find a good song for her for she is a child and all of the songs I listen to range from low-key to high-key slutty.
Other: She's probably going to snap someday. Probably in her teenage years. Idk she's just had such a hard life and she deserves to go a little batshit.

Name: Pandora Takana
Age: 29
Gender/Pronouns: Transgender man, he/him
Orientation: Bisexual homoromantic. Basically, he's sexually attracted to everyone but only romantically attracted to the Menfolkses
Appearance: Pale olive skin, with thin, wide-set eyes with a monolid and pitch black hair that's cut in an undercut on the sides and very short and spiky on the top. He wears a lot of very "dark academia" clothes, like sweater vests and button downs, large overcoats, oxfords, and gold jewelry combined, he just likes it for the aesthetic, and while he doesn't need glasses, he still wears them regularly. Very tall, and very, very buff.
Personality: Smug bastard, thinks he knows everything and always pretends to despite not having a clue what he's talking about most of the time. He's kind of a himbo, except that he's too much of an asshole to have that status.
Interests: Any science relating to the human body and how it functions, the occult.
Theme Song: Take A Hint from Victorious (more directed AT him rather than sung BY him) and Hardest of Hearts by Florence + the Machine
Other: Hates cats.

oooooh nice charries!

I lomf. Ysa does deserve to snap, honestly. It’s prolly so hard for her :(((

anywho! I love them and I’m ready to start when you are.

Okay, can you start first then?

Sure thing!

Thanks so much!

It was much too late to even fathom being out. The sun had dipped away hours ago, leaving the streets of the city chilly and unforgiving in the late evening of the fall season.
Leaves crunched under the careful, swift feet of Metaphorical Whembrooke, or more simply put, Met. The night bit through his white, thin collared shirt, and a light rain had soaked him to his core as he walked home, his head hanging low.
He panted under the weight of his wet clothes and sopping wet hair, along with his work bag. He had already been working too long with little break, and walking home this late at night was the cherry on top of the shit sundae; every day this walk home exhausted him. He’d get home to his empty house and flop onto the couch and immediately fall asleep, sometimes with the help of some therapeutic wine. Sure, he would wake up more exhausted and hungover early the next morning for the next day at his monotonous job.
As he scoured the streets, looking more pathetic than a street rat, he couldn’t help but think about that sweet, sweet wine, completely zoned out into a world where he was warm, comfortable, and drunk.

Ysa slammed into Met and fell over, she'd been running through the rain as fast as she could but now she'd stopped, and she looked up. She was frozen with fear, the metal plate that helped hold her shoulder together was loose and painful and she didn't know what to do.

Her dad-or, at least, the man that was taking care of her, who said he'd fixed her, was coming, and she didn't know when he'd show up to take her away again. She'd seen him on the street, and unfortunately he'd seen her back, and now she was running, but wasn't running anymore as blood pooled on the pavement and her shoulder began to hurt, a lot.

Met wasn't scary, but he could become scary, and that was where the fear came from really. She was so confused, she just wanted to sleep and be okay but she knew that wouldn't be possible, someone had seen her, and seen her with her metal parts, hanging by a thread and now she'd be taken by the government just like Pandora had said and she'd never see the light of day again, which she didn't know what that meant but it sounded very bad.

Ysa's breath sped up, and she tried to move away, but her little arms were too weak and shaky to move her with the way her shoulder had broken. She began to cry, eyes glowing a strong gold that nearly burned through you, that poured onto the pavement and spilled there.

Met leapt thirty feet in the air when he was bumped in to. Usually he has a fair warning of when someone is approaching, but perhaps he was too far in his own mind to pick it up.
He looked over his shoulder, his blue eyes as big as saucers. But… he did not find anyone until he looked down to the wet, cold pavement.
Met was startled to find a child there, much too young to be outside in the chilly rainy night. She should be tucked into bed somewhere, safe and warm. It took a few more moments of analysis to realize that she was bleeding, and panting heavily. Met moved to stand over her, protecting her from the rain the best he could. His mind and heart was racing with what thing could have done this to the child, but he attempted to stay calm.
“Are you okay? Do you need help? What are you doing out here so late?” He used his best detective “nice guy” voice, but it was exceptionally hard with how exhausted and hoarse his voice sounded. His desire to help still remained, though, as he gazed at her with soft eyes.

Ysa shivered, she only just now realized how cold it was and she decided that honestly? She didn't want to be here. Her bawling only intensified, and she blubbered out a series of incoherent words that even an expert wouldn't have been able to decipher. She realized how hard she must have been to understand, and slowed down a bit, voice still shaky and scared. "Buh, buh, I, Pandora, scary, ran into you, shoulder hurts," she broke into hysterical sobbing once more, the metal guard on her shoulder falling off completely and exposing the intricate mechanisms underneath that were grinding at top speed just to keep up with her. She wanted to go home, even if Pandora was there, even if he would just take her apart even worse and stick his hands in her internal organs and rummage around in there until he'd completely remodeled her system. It always hurt when he did that, but she didn't have a choice, it hurt more if she refused to let him and by the time she would, he'd have to replace her insides completely. She knew he probably meant well, but it scared her still, beyond belief.

Met seemed a little more than startled as he heard the buzz of mechanisms once the shoulder completely came off. He couldn’t say that he had ever seen someone made of machine parts but still had… flowing blood?
The situation was too confusing to muddle over it in the freezing rain of the late night city. Met had enough sense to realize that this child was in danger which was more important to him right now. He set his bag down and very hesitantly wrapped his thick, wet jacket around her, ready to stop and run like hell if she protested. This wasn’t even any of his business, but here he was wrapping a child in his coat and lifting her up. He may have been scrawny but he could lift things if he so desired.
Still ready to put her down if she wanted, Met continued on his way home.
“I’ll take you back home to my place but when we get there, I want you to use my cell phone to call your parents or something, okay?” He asked, glancing down at her as he quickly walked back home, a sort of energy returning to him. Perhaps it was the now present cold in his practically naked body due to his jacket being off, or this child being in danger, but he wanted to get off the street as soon as possible.

Ysa picked up her piece of fallen-off-shoulder, and held it close to her chest in small, sticky hands. She shook her head at the cellphone remark, she couldn't call Pandora. He'd hurt her more, he would do his modifications and rip out her heart again, and he'd laugh while doing it, she knew. "No, no, no," she mumbled, but she didn't protest being carried. She didn't even think she could walk at this point, and didn't want to try. She calmly traced the metal engravings on the shoulderpiece, and used that to keep herself calm. She couldn't start crying again, she was too strong for that. Or at least, she had to be. "Where are we going, mister?" she asked, trusting to an almost ridiculous degree but trusting all the same.

Met thought he heard her say no, but her body language didn’t suggest it was to her protesting him moving her, which was fine by him. He walked in silence and in his own thoughts, long away from the warm cozy ones he had earlier. He would have to call the police or something about the child, right? Though, she looked very okay with him just… helping her. Perhaps he could get more information when he was back at home.
“We’re just going to my house, which is just at the end of this block,” he murmured to her, looking down at her tracing the metal that came off of her. “What is your name?”

She hummed a little before answering. "Ysa, but don't tell Pandora. He doesn't want me to have a personality, he says I'm supposed'ta be a empty husk without feelings. He doesn't like it when I call myself my name." she said, and it was clear that this upset her greatly, but she'd do anything to avoid showing it, so it was best not to comment. "I don't even know what a husk is, is it bad? Pandora says I don't have a soul, so he's keeping me together with the metal parts. I guess that makes sense, but I don't know what a soul is either so I can't really say that it's stupid because I don't know if that's stupid or not." she bit into the metal, and then removed it. "Tastes like blood, I don't like blood. I have Pandora's book, but I can't read and he won't show me so I can't fix myself unless the book has pictures, and it doesn't have many pictures."

Met listened with a look of bewilderment. Tonight was a night of new discoveries, such as children made of metal and parents calling them husks. Nevertheless, he listened anyway, wondering if he could get a grip on who Pandora was.
"If you have the book I could read it with you," He sounded hesitant to even say anything, but he didn't want to leave the child in silence. Met turned into a small alley and through the doors of a dark apartment building, where he took the elevator up to the third floor to his room, hoping and praying that someone didn't see him. He made it out and took the first door to the left, tucking himself away into his quiet, dark, and clean room.
"You're safe with me, though, Ysa." He grinned down at her, carrying her to his soft leather couch (albeit never used, so it was spectacularly clean), and setting her down.

"I'm going to bleed all over your couch!" she sprang up with surprising strength and moved to the tile kitchen floor. "Please don't be mad." she looked ashamed, and also looked like she was about to collapse. She stayed up though, and took the book, which was a battered old journal, out of her pocket. "Pandora writes messy, he said, and he doesn't like people reading his things so he writes it all in code. What's a code? He said it was clever." in reality the code was easily cracked, and Pandora had actually just picked up the method off of the internet. However, his writings were sporadic and all-over-the-place, and it would be difficult to decipher if you were not him.

"Oh, no, it's fine! You don't have to–" He was cut off by her running away from the couch to plop onto the chilly tile of his kitchen. "I'll just read it to see how I can fix you… er…" He sat and read for a bit, deciphering the code as he described what a code was ("basically just a way to mix your words around to hide stuff"). Met ran his fingers through his hair at the pure insanity on the pages once he figured it out, shaking his head. How is anyone this unorganized? It made Met's head hurt the longer he looked at it. Though, he continued reading to try and see how to fix the bleeding and Ysa's bleeding. Just to help a little bit more than bringing her home.

Ysa shivered some, and she held onto the counter with her unbroken arm to steady herself. Eventually, there was a section on Ysa's shoulder part, it said in short that if you popped it back on it would probably stick, but if it bled you'd have to see which gear was stuck and unstick it. That was the short version, the long version was a lot more tedious to get through and was a lot more confusing. "Did you figure out how to fix me yet?" she wavered, her teeth were chattering in the chill of the room, and everything was starting to hurt at this point.

Met looked unsure, but he nodded as he rose from the journal and set it down. He blinked back the headache, then moved forward to Ysa.
"So it said to unlodge a gear in your shoulder? So I'll do that then stick the shoulder back on." He scooted closer to her, still a little uncomfortable with getting this close to her. But he wanted to help, so he grabbed her arm gently. "So I'm gonna reach in and see what I can do." He grinned nervously, waiting for her to get a little closer so he could get a better vantage point to her… insides? Something like that.

Ysa shuddered. That gear. It didn't always make her bleed, at least not immediately, but always eventually. She hated that stupid gear, when it got stuck her blood didn't pump right and spilled all over. She'd nearly died from it a few times, actually. Pandora never noticed when she was hurt, unless he needed her to be hurt, for science. Or something along those lines, she didn't really know. But this stranger was kind, he'd protect her and fix her gear, hopefully without hurting. He seemed good, and kind, unlike Pandora, and she was hopeful that this would end well enough for her to be fixed, safe, and happy. She moved closer, lifting her arm a little to get it closer to Met's line of sight.

Met gave her a quiet thanks as he peered at her shoulder, ducking down slightly to get a better look. He pulled his sleeves up, willing himself to not vomit as he went to stick his hand into her shoulder to feel around for a stuck gear. He moved his big hands carefully so they didn’t get stuck on anything, and also moving slowly in case he hurt her.
Did Met imagine himself in a situation like this on a dark, somewhat rainy night? No, in fact he imagined himself in bed. Perhaps it was just a weird dream he’d wake up from in the middle of the night…

Ysa allowed him to fix the gear, and when a finger brushed against the stuck gear and set it back into shape, Ysa sighed with relief. Her gears were no longer grinding horribly, and the bleeding had mostly stopped. It had hurt, but she'd only cried a little and that was good, it was a record for her usual amount of bawling. She handed Met the shoulderpiece, and waited patiently for him to reattach it, let it graft back into the skin. It was intelligent metal, it knew how to form to make things good again, safe again. It had only fallen off because a dog had mistaken it for a snack while she'd been running away from Pandora.

Met reattached the metal piece, watching it contort and shift with her shoulder and click into place.
“Do you feel any better?” Met asked gently, as he turned to wash his hands free of what managed to get on them. As he looked down at his long fingers he couldn’t help but feel he got himself into a situation that would be incredibly hard to back out of. But how could he have just left her in the cold and the rain, bleeding profusely and shaking in fear?
Whatever was causing Ysa’s fear was obviously someone to be afraid of, though. Met didn’t want to think about what would happen if he were to be found by… Pandora. He planned on taking a few days off to stay around Ysa, wondering idly if the young child would eat anything.

"Yeah… sleepy." she said, wobbling and coming close to fainting, her vision going black for just a second. She alerted herself back up though, holding onto the counter to not fall over completely and flop onto the floor. She worried that this nice man would turn out to be just as mean as Pandora turned out to be. He'd been nice a little, at first, but then he seemed to have gotten bored of that and started to be just plain mean, because people were always like that, always cruel in some way and she'd learned that trusting people was unwise. But she still trusted, just in case, because she didn't want to turn mean too, and because she cared too much to not.

Met looked concerned as he watched the young child sway around, drying his hands off on a rag.
“If you need to go lay down, you can sleep on my couch for tonight if you’d like.” He wasn’t going to offer a bed, for the only one he had was his personal one, whose sheets weren’t filthy but still generally not okay for a child to sleep in. And if he were being honest, the couch was probably more comfortable.
“I’ll get you some blankets and a pillow, too.” Met reached over and gently took her arm. “Let’s get you settled in, okay?”