thecapitol | (no subject)

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WHO| Closed to Jan and Kurt, Jan and Penny
WHAT| Jan gets taken in by Wallander, then tortured by Penny, until he learns to behave
WHERE| Jan's room; Peacekeeper HQ
WHEN| After the mini-arena
Notes/Warnings| cw: for possible violence and minor self-harm, definitely for psychological torture in the Penny thread

His room was a mess. Every vase was smashed, the TV holoprojector lay shattered on the floor. A floor lamp was broken in half, wires still connecting both halves, the bulb still flickering.

He turned to the new intruder, his expression almost feral, one hand clutching his communicator - now dead from the device Kurt had used - so hard that he almost broke it, the other clawing at the flesh of his face as if he wanted to tear it off, leaving bloody claw marks behind.

"You transmuted me," he hissed in a strangled voice, in a way that made it sound like the words were crawling out of his throat. "You had no right."

Then, fingers curled as if he wanted to claw out Kurt's eyes, he screamed out a shrill cry of rage and distress that was just as inhuman as his insect eyes.

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"You need to calm down," Wallander said loudly. "Whatever you were in your previous life, that doesn't apply here, and you could find yourself in a great deal of trouble if you continue on like this." He had absolutely no idea what trasmuted meant, had barely understood the man's network post, just knew he needed to bring it to an end. And fast.

He wished he'd had time to read up on Jan's file.

He calmed down just enough to speak, though it was clear he was still on the edge of hysteria.

He threw out his hands as if trying to emphasis the grandeur of the things he knew that others could not know.

"I've seen stars born and seen them die. The whole span of your miserable little planet's history will be the blink of an eye for me."

He tilted his head, the gesture more lizard-like than something a person would do.

"Do you think you're special? You haven't even moved past holograms or progressed to faster than light travel."

He seemed to be talking to Kurt as if he was his entire species rather than an individual, like the idea of individual people with their own thoughts and beliefs and dreams wasn't so much an alien concept as it was irrelevant to him.

"I seriously doubt I will ever 'progress' to faster-than-life travel," Wallander said bemusedly, his hands raised in what he hoped was a universal sign for 'chill the fuck out' and 'I have no intention of coming near you'. "I can barely understand my microwave."

And he never was an astronomer.

"But like I said, whatever you were before, you're human, now. Or close enough."

He could have added a threat there, reminded Jan just how mortal humans were, but he hated to use threats and he really didn't think it would help him, in this situation.

Edited 2014-04-11 19:37 (UTC)

"Do you know many worlds like this I've ended? And they were ones full of species I'd made. I didn't make you. You're variant to my purpose."

His voice was filled with abject disgust, like Wallander were just a thing, like something caught in a bathroom drain.

Because he was rabid. That much should have been clear by now. He was not a sane individual, and he was used to working at a scale very, very different from the Capitol, for all their oppressiveness towards the districts. His powers being limited hadn't seemed to have created any fear.

"I don't need my powers to do it. There are gene bombs, even primitive nuclear weapons - and how will you stop me? Torture? Death? Death holds no secrets from me." He opened his eyes a little wider, as if he was excited by the prospect of dying. "If I meet it in the attempt, it will just be a promise fulfilled."

He meant it and that was the risk here. The rebels held back from certain actions because the retribution would be devastating. The Tributes held back because it would mean torture or death for themselves or their friends and allies - sometimes their family.

If in the course of the chaos between the Capitol and the Districts, he managed to get his hands on a bomb, what was to stop him from strapping it to himself and walking into a Capitol school?

"For what you've done to me, your children will die screaming."

Nothing, apparently. Fear wasn't going to stop him. He had to be killed or the fear had to be created artificially.

Any sort of sympathy in Kurt's face disappeared, and for once in his life he wished he carried his gun. He hated the thing, hated it utterly, but now he felt the lack of its weight at his side as a detriment rather than as a comfort.

"That's quite enough," He said, his voice sharp and angry, the rage brimming under the surface. How dare this man threaten his daughter. How dare he.

For once, he almost didn't feel bad about the idea that he may need to take someone to see Penny.

"You're coming with me," He said, hoping backup followed soon.

Once upon a time, before billions of years of loneliness, he had been a being that deserved sympathy. Back then he'd been a boy from a dead world, who had lost everything trying to save the people he loved.

Not now.

Now he was the being that had ordered the Barontyk burned from orbit, in a death that was ironically like that of his own species that he'd forgotten. The Sumal lasted two days against the onslaught of his Progeny and none lived to see the third dawn. The Dr'pp'rr died screaming.

They hadn't been the only ones.

"Make me."

It was said jovially, like they were simply playing a game.

Edited 2014-05-02 03:36 (UTC)

Kurt was hardly a well built man. He might have been, twenty years ago, but it had been a long time since he was a regular peacekeeper and sitting behind a desk and drinking away his worries had given him a good gut and taken every muscle that might have been of use. That said, however, he knew when he had to do something, and this was something he had to do.

With a grim expression he reached into his pocket and pulled out the handcuffs.

"This will go a lot simpler if you simply hold out your wrists."

Jan look almost delighted, as if thy were still playing some silly game that he'd forgotten about since his childhood. There was novelty in a blinker trying to exert power over him.

"Like this?"

He held out a hand, seemingly willing to come in quietly.

Of course, he might not prove as willing the moment Kurt laid a hand on him.

He'd done this rodeo enough times to know the flashing warning signs when he saw them, but he also didn't see that he had much of a choice. So he stepped forward carefully, holding out the handcuffs to snap them around Jan's wrists--

Something strange flicked on his strange insect eyes, the lines around them relaxed and made them seem older and younger all at once, and then he lashed out, a hand grabbing at the arm holding the cuff in an attempt to pass it in front of his body and knock him off balance, and a kick aimed at his side.

Clearly, he was trained by someone to fight in ways without using powers.

The expression on his face, though defensive, made it seem as if his current state of fighting back with martial skill was almost surprising to him. As if it was something he'd learned long ago and forgotten that he'd learned.

"Well, this is new."

Jan might have been trained, but whatever training Wallander had gotten all those decades ago had clearly long been left behind. He stumbled, off balance, as Jan's kick connected into his side with a dull THUMP, winding him utterly and causing him to cough. He ripped his arm away, stumbling backward, utterly furious. His face was beginning to resemble a beet.

"You are really making things quite difficult for yourself," He snapped, before trying to grab vainly for Jan's wrists.

Edited 2014-05-03 18:15 (UTC)

"Really? I thought I was making them difficult for you," said Jan, and now he directed a blow towards Kurt's face.

The fist connected with a hard smack, and through the pain Wallander wondered dully what his life was, that he was becoming a punching bag for the tributes. He spit - blood mixed in as the punch had caused him to bite through his cheek, and glared up at Jan.

"Well that was incredibly stupid," He snapped, and luckily just then the other peacekeepers burst through the room behind him, just in time to follow up on the inherent threat.

"Take him down to Penny," he said, slightly vindictively, a part of him that he didn't indulge often but at this moment felt absolutely no qualms about.

The Capitol wasn't the only place that could make monsters, after all.

He managed to punch another one of them in the faceplate before they pinned him down and got him into the cuffs.

Something about seeing people in armor, about being pinned down, seemed to bring about a change in him, seemed to jog some ancient memory. The imperious, snarling, nasty creature temporarily faded away.

He sounded like a boy now, scared and sad and confused.

"Where are they?" he asked them. "Where are my friends? What have you done with my friends?! Tell President Chu I won't let her hurt them. I won't! Not anymore. I won't do it - I made my promise in the spaces between stars. In between the blinks. I promised it would be forever. I promised them it was worth it. It was -"

He looked at Kurt as he was dragged off, a tear rolling down his cheek. It seemed no less sincere than the rage and threats earlier, as if he'd vacillated from one state of thinking to becoming another person entirely in the space of a second.

"I promised them it was worth it..."

He trailed off as they started to roughly drag him away.

Kurt scrubbed at his bruised lip as he watched them drag Jan out into the hallway and toward one of the elevators. He followed, wondering vaguely if Jan had some sort of multiple personality disorder, almost a fraction of sympathy - but then it was gone. Vanished. He was still responsible for his behaviour, and unlike with Joel there was no way he could cover this up.

And he didn't really want to. He flipped his communicator open. "I need a processing transport outside. And someone get Penny on the line."

He was quiet as he was taken...wherever it was that he was being taken. In mere seconds, he'd forgotten the friends he'd spoken of or that he'd had any friends at all.

He'd even forgotten why he was here. Something with a fight? Something.

His mind just wandered off sometimes, really it did.

This one will be special. Penny already knows that before Jan's even brought in, because the footage from the video is delightful. There's a definite pleasure in driving someone mad, but to start with madness? It's an art she rarely gets to partake in.

Penny sees her work as a delicate sort of surgery, like pulling a form out of marble, wicking away the defenses until only the bare neuroses and pain exist. She pulls out the core of a person and lays it out bare. She pulls metaphorical rabbits from hats, only these rabbits cry, they quiver, they bite their tongues until they bleed and wet themselves. And though it's all the same, all familiar sleight of hand, she finds the extra challenges quite enjoyable.

"Jan Arrah, I've heard?" He's wheeled into her office by Avoxes, and she immediately pulls the long curtain that plunges her room into dimness, away from a world that could watch them. "What a pleasure. I'm Hsiang Jiao."

Jan was fiddling with his cuffs curiously as he was brought in, as if he'd only just realized they'd been put on.

Curious things when one couldn't simply melt them away from the flesh.

Curious things when one actually had flash that wasn't simply a cover for cold, ageless Tromium underneath.

"You will address me as the Progenitor," he informed her.

"I will address you however I want," she says, affecting boredom, although it does pique her interest that he doesn't seem scared at all. She lights a lantern up above the worktable, one that drips hot wax. She prefers this ambiance. Her shadow looks larger than her, like the specter of her cruelty given form.

"Gods are all-powerful, are they not?"

Penny's never been a religious woman, but she understands the basics of religion. Plenty of people have called for deities under her hand. Plenty have even renounced them after she had her way with them.

"No," he said simply. "Yes. Sometimes. Sometimes they're powerless, sometimes they die, sometimes they're reborn. The nature of a god is a changing state, just as it's the nature of all existence."

He seemed to hold no ideas that being a god meant having absolute power all the time.

"I'm a god because I've created and destroyed whole species, because I've seen civilizations like this be born and I've made them die. The nature of a god is the ability to transmute, to create and destroy."

Edited 2014-05-29 03:45 (UTC)

"That seems a rather simple definition. I would think the nature of a god is power, rather than the type of ability." She leans in, brushing his hair aside. After a moment she clicks her fingers and Avoxes begin to transfer him onto the bed.

She leans it, letting her breath linger in the whorls of his ear, a smirk practically audible on her face.

"Creation and destruction, however, are in my own legerdemain."

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feel free to god the backup whenever you want

We'll let Kurt get a little roughed up first 8D

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