thecapitol | There are materials enough in every mind....

Entry tags:

There are materials enough in every mind....

Who| The Ψiioniic

biiowiired & YOU
What| Psii can't sleep and tries to fill in time he would normally spend coding. See Psii doing more than one activity if you wish. Also there are tribbles.
Where| Anywhere in the Tribute Tower. Pick a specific location if you wish.
When| jan 03 and after. Pick a date and put it your subject header.
Warnings/Notes| language (always with Psii), hypomania, talk of death, attempted animal harm (thanks Jason), mention of buckets in relation to troll reproduction (it's canon i swear)

Whether Psii wanted to admit it or not, he only holed himself up half the time. The other half, he needed conversation, some sort of social contact. Psii was a troll of opposites and extremes, avoiding people only to pester them two hours later. After resting from the mental trials of dying for the first time, he finally left the stifling confines of his respiteblock, thoughts racing.

He couldn't sleep, weighed down by the experience of dying only to come back still a slave in Panem. He couldn't code, the Peacekeepers being on the lookout for hackers. He couldn't speak his mind, when even his outspoken preacher friend told him to lay low. So Psii careened down a sleepless path of quietly frenetic activity with whatever else he could get his hands on. At all hours of the day and night he could often be seen doing two things at once to stave off perceived boredom, heavily shadowed mismatched eyes flicking back and forth with equal attention. His lip curled around his fangs in deep thought.

He was a rodent spinning its wheel and going nowhere fast.

Reading; anywhere

He would sit in the common area, the bar, the rooftop garden, surrounded by piles of books from the library. He was rapidly familiarizing himself with the flora and fauna of this planet. Know thy enemy and all that. He'd also checked out e-books and videos, though he opted to insert them in his communicator rather than hog the television in the common area. It chattered information away, mostly general overviews of past arenas.

Psii was mostly interested in what environments and hazards the Gamemakers preferred, rather than individual track records. Suspicious of everyone though he may be, he wasn't ready to turn on his fellow Tributes unless they attacked him outright. He'd seen infighting among slaves in squalid conditions, but it was more useful to work together, at least temporarily. Anyone with half a brain could see that, even without being a fucking genius like him.

He'd hear footsteps nearby and stop drumming fingers on a book to point to some video or other, his words lisping out rapid-fire, "Look, they had an arena in a retail complexth, what the fuck...."

Drawing; anywhere inside

He procured some paper and began to frenetically scribble equations and fractals in red and blue pen. He had enough math and physics to occupy himself without showing too much intelligence. Flight patterns and gravitational calculations were ok, but programming languages were not. He wasn't going to be arrested and executed like that hacker Brainiac. He spent too much time laying low under the Alternian Empire to be caught by mere humans. His hands would tremble slightly, mirroring his head filled with thoughts shouting over each other even without prophetic voices muscling their way in.

Soon he had a growing pile of intricate but ultimately useless chicken scratches strewn about him. He could come up with new codes in his head, but no way was he putting down on paper what could get him caught.

Knitting/weaving; anywhere

His interest in fractals and geometry lead him to knitting, weaving, anything he could teach himself with minimal tools. This also kept his hands steady whenever they would be hit with shaking from his racing thoughts. He perched his communicator on a table to display some tutorials and got busy creating anything but clothes. His interest lay in repeating loops of shapes, not wearable couture. Fashion was Dolorosa's deal, not his.

A simple but oddly soothing esoteric yarn atrocity grew from clever scarred fingers to cascade over his knobby knees to the floor. He could see himself making a hobby out of this, if only it wasn't so useless to him. Perhaps he could find some way to work a code in it, but he hesitated to risk that.

Tribbles; anywhere inside at night

Psii was on his way towards the living blocks. Everyone else was asleep, but he was still on a nocturnal clock, awake as a live wire. It was quiet enough that any untoward noise would be noticed, even by someone who wasn't as paranoid as Psii. A soft coo ululated from the wall.

"Mother Grub'th thecond thphincter, what ith it now...." he groan-whispered to himself.

He stepped lightly to the room on the other side of the wall. Something sat in a corner nearly out of sight next to some crumbs. Certainly no one without nightvision would have noticed, but for the cooing. The furry ball didn't run when he appeared or when he took a step closer. He blinked, then looked around trying to find someone to quickly wave over so they could explain this mystery to him.

Gaming; District 9

Psii missed his husktop with the besotted ache of a stranded lover. His codes, his games, his porn was on there. Though he was hesitant out of pure spite to do what the Capitol provided for him, the siren's call of technology pulled him to the gaming consoles in his district's common area. The heart-racing virtual combat and hidden strategy of a first-person shooter should occupy his over-active mind. He fired up the highest-rated game he saw and wrapped long grey fingers around a controller, adjusting to a shape that was similar-but-not-really to ones he'd used at home.

"....Wow thith shit'th primitive. What kind of two-bit engine are they uthing for thethe graphicth?"

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Nitou's been roaming at night lately. Between the trauma that was his first Arena and the fact that he's more comfortable bedding down in a tent than a fluffy Capitol bed, sleep hasn't been easy.

But that's okay, because that means he can prowl around the Tower in search of a good midnight snack. He's in the process of getting back to his room with his snack of the hour, a sandwich he's in the middle of squirting a bunch of mayonnaise on top of, when he hears that cooing noise. Though he'd really rather go back to his room and eat the sandwich, he's got to investigate. You just don't let mysterious cooing go uninvestigated.

He spots the Psiionic first. (Okay, he spots a shadowy shape in the dark, but that shape wasn't there earlier, so he's assuming it's a person of some sort.) "Hey, you're not doing all that cooing, are you?" he asks as he takes a bite of that sandwich he's carrying around.

He turned, all horns and fangs and pointiness. Not exactly a soothing sight, but maybe the dark might save him from looking like a total fright to a human. As for Psii himself, he was leaning on one leg and looking slightly exasperated instead of predatory.

"No, I don't make thoundth like that. I'm more like—" Psii buzzed a low, purring trill, soothing in its own right, but obviously bug-like. The tribble cooed back from its spot on the floor below and began inching its way towards Psii. He hesitated, then tentatively picked it up. He turned it over, but it did not appear to have legs, eyes, or even an ass.

"It'th thith furry thing. Lithten." He held it out.

Nitou's dealt with weird monsters before...mostly through fighting them and then magically eating them. But he doesn't have Chimera inside him demanding food, and the other guy isn't exactly jumping out as being some kind of threat there. He's cool with the horns and fangs for now.

He is, however, thoroughly confused by that weird buglike trill, because that is not at all what he expected. "Uh..."

But he takes the furry ball and listens to it as instructed. "Weird." He's flipping the ball this way and that, trying to figure out what's going on here. "You got any idea what it is?"

The cooing continued, despite two people manhandling the tribble. Unlike Psii, who was always on edge around here, it seemed to have very little basic survival instincts. Poor defenseless thing. He was definitely keeping it, it'd probably die on its own. Who better to protect it than a predator?

"Nope. But it'th oddly thoothing, huh? Like a warm pile on a dark night, or a fresh nutrition platter of grubthauthe...." He didn't care if those things were lost on humans. "Hey, give that back. Finderth, keeperth." He made grabby hands. The tribble was uncannily endearing, making Psii protective. He was usually protective about the things or people he cared about, being a first line of defense. His specialties were communications (hacking), long-distance mage combat, and precognition.

"Like a what?" Nitou passed it over without a fuss. It was nice, but it wasn't something he cared enough about to fight over. "I dunno, man, it kinda reminds me of this old asthmatic cat my grandma used to have. Only it's not trying to tear my face off." It's not his fault the cat hadn't appreciated being taken on adventures.

"Wigglerhood thtuff," Psii offered as explanation, though it probably didn't help.

Psii cradled the fur ball more protectively than he thought he would.

"Yeah, motht thingth on my planet try to tear uth limb from limb, tho it'th weird for me to find thomething that.... doethn't. It'th not even thcared of thtrangerth picking it up, and hath no innate defentheth that I can thee."

He turned it over and over in his hands as if he could find something new if he looked hard enough, but the tribble didn't utter one squeak of protest.

No, it didn't really help, but Nitou decides to just roll with it. "I dunno, maybe it knows we don't mean it any harm." He pokes at the little fuzzball a little. "Like it doesn't need to do the defensive stuff with us."

"Tho you're thaying that deep down, thith ball of fluff could actually be a fanged killer, and we are only alive becauthe it deignth to thpare uth in return for cuddleth?"

He paused for thought, continuing to turn the tribble over. In some ways, trolls were like that. Sure they were violent, but they also sought out moirails in each other to relax and cuddle on a comfy pile of stuff.

"....Theemth about right. I should totally make thith thing my pet."

Even if he had no idea how it worked or even what it ate, Psii felt strangely drawn to it.

"I don't know about fangs, maybe some kinda poison gas," Nitou mused. "But fangs makes sense. Kind of like this cat my grandma used to have...and I guess this could be hiding anything in that fur..."

Nitou wasn't quite charmed enough to want to take the thing in, but hey, who was he to judge? Probably got kind of lonely for some people in this place. "Go ahead! Doesn't look like anyone else is gonna take care of it." He reached out to poke at the fuzzball. "Any idea what you're gonna name it? Or feed it?"

"Yeah, I hear you on ferothiouth catth." Well, more like he had a friend who was raised by a big cat lusus, therefore she tended to claw at him and such. Same difference. Psii sniffed the tribble, though he doubted it would secrete poison gas without a warning typical of defensive prey.

"....Not yet?" he answered both questions. "I thought I'd just figure it out as I went along. Or, I could thtay up till morning and athk all the other diurnal schlubth around here what'th up with thith thing. I doubt it'th high-maintenanthe."

Nitou nodded thoughtfully. "That's worth a shot, if you don't wanna sleep. Or you could just put out a bunch of food and see what it likes." He grinned. "Want to go raid a fridge somewhere?"

So he'd just eaten. He could eat again.

"Hell yeah, human--Wait, we're allowed to jutht take food, why do we need to raid the thermal hull....Oh."

"Raiding" was a common figure of speech to this human, but the only fridges Psii grew up around actually needed to be raided, when he and the other slaves weren't being given carefully rationed meals. Psii was just foolhardy enough to steal food for sick friends and take punishments himself.

"Right. Yeah. Raiding that ithn't raiding. Got it."

He started walking to the kitchen, feeling slightly embarrassed, and forgetting that the human might not see as well in the dark. His tribble, meanwhile, cooed supportively in his arms without judgment.

Nitou's just going to roll with it; he's too cheerful about the idea of raiding the fridge to be otherwise. His night vision isn't as great, no, and he walks into a few pieces of furniture here and there with a few quiet hisses of profanity. "Should be some good leftovers in there, hopefully..."

Too busy feeling a bit of culture shock, he realized he should have remembered that humans were practically useless in the dark. Well, Psii may as well start in first.... He opened the thermal hull, and then he was hissing obscenities himself when the automatic light blinded him. Humans and their light, ugh. Squinting, he held the door open for Nitou, opting to let his eyes adjust while the human helped himself. Nitou should be able to see by the light now.

"Jutht don't take the tacoth, they're mine."

"No tacos, got it." Though Nitou won't touch any food that has been labeled as not his or otherwise identified as not his, anything else in the fridge is, in his mind, fair game. He reaches in and grabs a bucket of what he thinks is fried chicken. "Sweet!" Out comes a squirt bottle full of mayonnaise, and he wastes no time in squeezing an absurd amount onto a chicken leg before digging in. "You want any of this?"

Psii blinked carefully in the light, forcing his eyes to adjust. The human was holding—oh God. It was a bucket. As in, a pail. Sweet Mother Grub, that was in the thermal hull? He had no idea humans kept their pailing apparatus in the fridge. Psii could get down and dirty, but holy shit.... Clutching the sordid genetic material collector, the human proceeded to smother the fried fowl(!!) in it with something goopy—

"Mother Grub'th thecond thphincter!" he swore. "You could have jutht athked me out! Couldn't you at leatht wait until I've put my hairy coo machine away before buthting out the pail? Are you really going to eat out of it??"

He was too afraid to sidle past this crazy human and try to salvage his leftover tacos from an icy, unsanitary fridge hell. For all he knew, the fridge drawers were bursting with sex toys.

"Pleathe tell me that bottle ith not chilled genetic material."

"Huh?" Nitou is genuinely confused by this, because as far as he is concerned with his ignorance of pretty much anything and everything troll, this is just an innocent bucket full of fried chicken. "Why wouldn't I eat out of it? And why would I ask you out?!" He is so confused. So very confused.

There's another squirt of mayo onto some more chicken, though it goes kind of wild at Psii's last statement. "It's mayonnaise, dude, just mayonnaise!"

The "innocent bucket" was a lascivious unmentionable that Psii was not shy of mentioning. It was the equivalent of pulling a used condom out of the fridge, though that was for contraception versus a bucket being an aid to troll conception.

"What the hell ith may-nayth? Oh my God, no, nevermind, I don't want to know. I didn't know humanth were thith kinky, holy shit. You're moving a little fatht for me. I mean, ith talking about an aththmatic feline thuppothed to be flirting in your culture? Did I mith thomething? I'm thorry if I did, but that'th jutht not thexthy at all. You thtill have your bucket out, by the way. I don't think the Peacekeeperth will like any kind of pailing party in the food preparation block of all platheth."

"Dude." Nitou is still utterly bewildered by this. He looks at Psii, looks at the bucket, and back at Psii. "I don't know what you're on about--it's just a bucket. What could possibly be sexy about a bucket? Why would I be worried about being sexy for another dude?!"

"Bucketth aren't thexthy per the, on their own. But the thingth you do with them—Don't humanth uthe bucketth?"

Not using a bucket was thought to be pretty weird among trolls. Psii didn't use his half the time, but good God, were all humans kinky bucketless fiends in bed? Not that Psii was accustomed to using a bed for anything. He grew up sleeping in a recuperacoon or (more often) not at all, and later kept to a sleeping bag as he traveled.

"We use buckets to carry stuff," Nitou says warily. "...you trying to tell me there's another use for 'em?" Granted, there are some things he just might be better off not knowing, but it's too late. The question has been asked.

"Yeah. Carry thtuff. But only thpethific thtuff. Genetic material. That'th how we procreate with the Mother Grub. You really don't know? Don't you have a Mother Grub? Who layth all your eggth?"

He couldn't help continuing to stare at the bucket of chicken with a sick sort of fascination. This was just an unfortunate product design misunderstanding, but that didn't stop it from looking all kinds of wrong.

"Dude, we don't hatch from eggs--humans birth live young!" Nitou thinks he's getting what's going on here. Maybe. Kinda. Sorta. "And we carry our genetic material here!" There is a lot of spirited gesturing at his crotch. "We don't need buckets!"

His eyes follow Nitou's gestures to his crotch. Yes, ok, human sex and troll sex both involved the same area. But once the deed was done, it seemed they differed widely. Live young....

"Tho you're like.... mammalth? That ith thome kinky shit right there, and more information than I needed to know—Wait a minute, doeth that mean your femaleth.... carry your young? Like parathiteth? Oh my God...."

"Yes! Yes! Humans are mammals!" They're getting somewhere with this. "Yeah, we do the live birth, feed milk to the babies kinda thing. What's wrong with that?"

There are materials enough in every mind....

Tribbles

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that icon is hilarious to me and im not sure why

he is trying to be charming with mayo and it's ridiculous, maybe