route666radio | [Video+Action, post moon-warp]

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[Video+Action, post moon-warp]

Hello all!

This is Jack, from my little nook in the convoy where I make and repair clothes.

[He smiles at the camera, showing off the fluffy little fox ears he is now sporting instead of regular ears, and the white streaks in his blue-gray hair, then turns his radio device around to show the little shop. It is, frankly, less like a shop and more like a workspace, with fabric in cabinets on the walls and a pair of tables and some chairs, with more fabric strewn across them, some in good condition and some in less-good condition.]

I just wanted all of our new people to know that if the moon warp ruined your clothes, I can probably help. I have mostly figured out trousers, I think, and I am still working on proper shirts, though I can make, um, cloaks and drapes and things.

[He sets the camera down on one of the tables, and sits down to face it.]

I did want to, er, also tell everyone something else. I know we are all... changing. Into something we might call monsters, some of us. I just wanted to say I was a monster before I came here. Not a-- not a bad person, no, not a cruel person, but a werewolf. I turn into a beast once a month on the full moon, like moon warps here.

So. So I just wanted everyone to know, I have done this before. This changing, this becoming something else for a time. I don't know if it will help anyone, but if it can-- I wanted everyone to know.

[He has "come out" piecemeal to various people, here and there, and it's gone well. But now he's doing it to everyone, to people he's never talked to. It's a little scary, but he's doing it.

And now that he's done it, he hesitates, then fumbles for the radio to turn it off without further comment.

He will be available in his shop most evenings, for people to come by to get clothing repaired or measured for, or for people to ask questions, and of course he's around the convoy or in his van during the day when they're on the move.]

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Demon doesn't carry the same sort of connotation in Serph's mind, for even transformations that are named and appear to be angelic are still demons, creatures of unending hunger, born of humanity.

Serph nods; confusing is certainly one way of putting it. And that confusion had only grown as they found more pieces of the puzzle but were unable to quite understand how they fit together.

"She came to help us. But she forgot who she was when she entered our world." Serph's gaze slides down to their joined hands, the smallest of smiles curling at the corner of his mouth, fondness tinting his words. "I was drawn to her. So was one of my officers. She couldn't fight, so we wanted to protect her."

For reasons beyond the fact she was a stated requirement for entry into Nirvana.

Edited (typooooooessssss!!) 2025-05-09 09:56 (UTC)

Jack can see this repetition again, even if the smile suggests it might not have ended as badly. "Was... that another three where someone died?" he still has to ask tentative. The other officer, him, and their creator. "Or did that one turn out better?"

The answer to the question is immediately obvious before Serph replies; the small smile fades, crestfallen.

"My officer was shown what had happened before. He turned against us. Against me." He tenses. "I... allowed him to kill me."

Oh dear. Apparently it was in fact just as bad. He gives Serph's hand a little squeeze in sympathy, covering it with his other as well. It sounds terrible that someone would simply let someone else kill them, but-- well, if you thought they had a good reason...

There is not a good reason Jack can think of that would make him want to kill Serph, so he says, "That is one thing I can promise you I am not going to do. Okay? I do not kill people." A quick pause, then, "Well, the werewolf might try, but not because of anything like this. Did he not even tell you why? Your officer?" That doesn't seem very fair.

What is it like to know you would not kill of your own volition, no matter the reason? He can't grasp what that kind of life is like.

Serph shakes his head. No, Heat hadn't told him why. But, "I can guess."

Serph had said he thought he'd killed his friends. In truth, it's a bit more than just merely killing.

"I think... I devoured my comrades when we were human. Including him." His wings tense with his shoulders as he speaks with an unusually agitated cadence. "Heat is his name. He's the most protective of Sera, our creator. Whatever he was shown, he must believe I was going to hurt her. Maybe I had, back then. I don't know, but I wouldn't-"

Serph cuts himself off before emotions get the better of him, letting out a long breath as he calms down.

"Whatever happened before, we're comrades." Even if Heat doesn't believe him worthy of that title any more.

Jack pets his hand soothingly. If they weren't sitting, he'd probably have already hugged him again, but right now it's just awkward to try. "Sometimes we do things in our pasts that we are not proud of," he says. "For reasons that no longer apply to us. Even I have done things, not just things that the wolf has done, but things I decided to do that were not good things." He looks up at Serph's face, expression fond but also determined. "But Serph. That does not mean we cannot try to be better than what we have done before. To choose different things, better and braver things. I believe that you would choose a different thing, now, than as that human you were before."

Serph remains silent for a long moment, letting Jack's words wash over him. He had already long decided to do better after his conversation with Apollo, who suggested that harm caused in one life would carry to another. But after the moon warp, the familiarity of having his close friendships break around him had made him waver.

He had devoured as a human.
He had devoured so much more as an AI.
Where does that leave him now?

He can't guarantee he won't fall into violence again. Even though he craves peace, another part of him also relishes the pleasure of pain. That night with John... both of them had devolved into something primal, monstrous. He never wants to subject Jack to that. He shouldn't have subjected John to that.

He rests his other hand on top of Jack's, lifting both their clasped hands to press them to his forehead. His voice is steady, determined.

"I will." Choose different things. Choose better and braver things. And if it still falls to pieces around him, that's just payment for what he did before. "Thank you." He lowers their hands. "...Have you been alright? You haven't been around as much."

The oppressively awkward atmosphere in their shared room had been practically tangible.

Jack takes the movement to run one hand back through Serph's hair a few times. It's right there, it seems like the thing to do. He's going to have faith in Serph, and in John, and himself. Even if there's violence, he trusts that they can navigate it. If the worst should happen, well, he is very good at dodging, after all.

He coughs lightly at the question. "A bit lonely, but otherwise all right. I wasn't really sure if you and John wanted me around all the time still. Everything seemed different with you two after the moon warp." He quirks a wry smile. "I think in your case, I was being too cautious. You clearly do still want me around." Maybe not for sex, he's not going to assume anything at this juncture, but at least for other forms of affection.

A combination of confusion and embarrassment war over Serph's face. He's not sure why Jack would feel that he didn't want him around... was it because they effectively abandoned him during a time of need?

But he does nod; he does indeed still want Jack around. Still, at the mention of the moon warp... it was those events that bothered him. Not so much the sex(? What they did doesn't match up with anything he knows) but more the violence. He'd told John he wouldn't let anyone hurt him like the cult had hurt him, and yet under the moonlight, they had torn into each other. He had eaten John. A little. And he tasted sublime; no monster or demon tasted like that. He's not sure what that means.

"That night we..." Serph begins haltingly, wings tensing. "We tried to kill each other."

Which is why he'd been worrying and fretting about falling into the same patterns again.

"Yes, I smelled the blood," Jack agrees, without judgment. He, after all, would likely have tried to kill them if he'd been free, himself. (Well, he thinks he would have. The wolf knows their scents now and might have spared them.)

His free hand, not holding Serph's, reaches over to soothe the nearest wing. He considers a beat, whether he wants to broach the subject at all, but Serph had specifically been worried about sets of three and what might happen between them, so it seems like it might be important to have in the open. So he asks, "It did not stay that way, though, did it?"

No, it didn't. But there's a long pause as Serph tries to muddle through the confusing whirl of what had happened.

"No," he admits. "We stopped trying to kill each other. We continued to hurt each other. I ate John." He's being literal here. But his gaze slides away, his wings fluffing in embarrassment. "I should have stopped but I didn't. John tasted... like nothing else."

Like an electrifying spark on his tongue, visions of celestial bodies behind his eyes.

He understands now, why Jayce had been so worried about hurting Viktor.

Jack continues to smooth down feathers. It's nothing to be embarrassed about, not really. Awkward, maybe, especially if some of that eating was literal, but Serph is, after all, a weird cannibal creation with very little understanding of real-world relationships. What he likes is what he likes, so long as they can manage to not actually hurt each other too badly.

"If he had wanted you to stop, I imagine he would have made that known, and then you would have stopped," Jack points out. "I get the feeling he liked it just fine."

Serph makes a pinched expression not unlike the one he made when Jack had given him a bowl of the Convoy's porridge. John... liking being eaten? Considering that their entire fight had started over John getting furious over him devouring the other monster, Jack's reasoning seems severely unsound.

He blinks slowly, protest briefly lulled by light pressure of Jack's fingers running down his feathers.

"I don't understand. We fought over that."

"I don't necessarily, either, because I wasn't there," Jack allows. He isn't sure he can, or even should, get into the whole personal kinks thing right now. He hasn't even entirely gotten Serph to admit to the main event. He aims for that, for now. "But I know what I smelled when I found you. You definitely stopped fighting at some point long enough to have sex."

There is a long, awkward pause.

Serph had suspected that Jack somehow knew, but. There's a smell?

"...Sorry."

He's not sure when their fighting became sex. They didn't really stop fighting even then. He's not sure why things even went down that path. He'd never felt that kind of hunger before.

"...Do you still trust us to help you?"

Because that's his main worry. That because of his and John's actions, their negligence, that they had broken Jack's trust. That they were no longer comrades.

Jack sighs a little. He had been a little angry, he can admit that, and a little hurt, and a little sad as well, that maybe their little trio would indeed split up as John and Serph drifted towards each other.

But moon warps are what they are, and now they all know more things about each other, and it's really hard to be mad when Serph looks so dejected about it. So he says, "I still trust you. We will just need to adjust our plans, that's all, and be more open with each other about things that may affect us. John is aware of your need to eat monsters now, so he should hopefully not try to fight you about it again. And you and John are aware of your desire for each other, so we can plan for that as well, if the moon warp brings it out again."

It's a relief to hear that Jack has decided to give them a second chance. But Serph blinks at the last part of Jack's response, perplexed over the unfamiliar word. Desire? What does that mean? His brow furrows into a confused frown.

"...What is desire?"

"Dios preservame," Jack mutters under his breath. Right. He needs to remember just who he's talking to, here. This is the person who had no emotions for most of his existence and doesn't know what a dog is.

He sits up a little straighter. "Desire is... when you want someone. No, that is just another word for... okay." Different words. Feeling words. Break it down to essential pieces. "Desire is when you look at someone and you want to touch them, want them to touch you. You want to put your hands and your mouth and all of your body on them, to make them feel good, and to make you feel good. It may seem like fighting sometimes, depending on the person and the mood, but there are more than just hands and teeth involved." Please do not make him talk about dicks directly, Serph. He can, but it will be embarrassing. "It is not a bad thing."

He pauses, then in the interest of being perfectly clear, he adds, "Unless one of the people does not want any of that and the other person forces them to accept it. That is a bad thing. That was not what happened in the oasis, though, I think?" His brows go up pointedly. He does not think it was, considering neither of them are acting like they were forced into sex, but it's probably best to make sure of that.

Serph watches Jack's reaction in mild bemusement. Has he asked a question with an answer that would seem immediately obvious to anyone else?

He listens to Jack's explanation in rapt attention. Desire... is that the word for hunger without devouring? There is a very long pause as Serph processes the new information. It does very aptly describe how things felt during the moon warp after John had breathed back life into him. If he had truly wanted to hurt John he... would have used his blades like he had in the beginning. But instead they had only inflicted minor -- "minor" -- injuries on each other while tangling limbs until they joined together.

For hours.

Very slowly, Serph shakes his head. He knows he was willing. And the way John spoke his name and the number of times John said Yes would very strongly suggest that John was willing, too.

"In the oasis, John transformed." Which, in hindsight shouldn't have been so surprising; John had remained strangely human-like all this time, having so few changes outside of those ones that have since faded away. "He was like a different person."

And he has a feeling that sudden change in demeanour wasn't entirely from the moon warp.

Jack waits patiently, trying very hard not to do his fill-the-silence routine, letting Serph thing. He compromises by idly petting Serph's hand again with his thumb.

"Moon warps affect us all," he suggests. "Though I have thought John was not human since we met. He has too little knowledge of human things, the way you do. It may have been that, too. I don't know what that kind of not-human is for him, though, since he has not shared it with me. It may be time to actually ask, soon."

Oh... really?

He'd thought John was plenty knowledgeable, his jumpiness and terror in the face of danger and the pained way he talked about cults had Serph dismiss the idea of John being anything besides human. It certainly didn't seem particularly monstrous behaviour.

His gaze falls to where Jack's hand is touching his. "I want to know." John had mentioned being monstrous as Serph was sinking into the oasis, air slowly being choked out of him. "But I'll hear it from him."

So whatever John decides to share with Jack, that's between them. He won't ask Jack for details that John wouldn't tell Serph himself.

Knowing about horrible things is not the same as being human. Jack has known many so-called monsters in his time, many of them unable to blend in for most of their lives the way he can, and John shows a lot of the signs of being kept well apart from normal human society. Up to and including the way he reacts to food, conversation, and natural human kindness.

Plus, well, the weird finger and the way occasionally his eyes glowed.

He nods. "Probably for the best. Have you talked to him much since? Like you are talking to me, now?"

Serph's gaze slides away. His silence to the question is answer enough.

"...I didn't know what to say."

John had been... the word brooding comes to mind. That same sort of distant silence and separation that he had seen from Heat after he and the rest of the Tribe had returned from blowing up that cruise ship. Serph had decided to leave John be.

Maybe he shouldn't have?

"Well, it's hard sometimes even for people who know what desire is, and have experienced it before," Jack comments, a little wryly. He pats Serph's hand lightly, and suggests, "But you could maybe start with 'did you like that' and 'do you want to do it again or not'. It might be easiest for both of you to just be up front."

Serph blinks slowly.

Again?

A repeat never occurred to him, especially when it had been the result of them fighting and ultimately lead to the wolf running free. He has a furrowed brow, the sort of pinched expression he sometimes gets when he feels like he's missing something that would allow him to follow the train of thought.

Carefully, he asks, "Aren't we trying to avoid a repeat? So the wolf doesn't get loosed again?"

[Video+Action, post moon-warp]

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