i_speak_softly | Entries tagged with coming home

[Don has been living in the tunnels since the beginning of the last experiment, and for that time he's been almost entirely absent from the journals as well. Today, he finally re-establishes contact with the outside world.]

Has anyone ever considered building another village elsewhere in the enclosure? [...] Don't we have an organization that's always looking for that kind of volunteer work? The "Blue Viscera"?

[The transmission ends there, but later in the day there's another one:]

If anyone is willing, I would be very honored to have a new sensei. I'm fourth-dan in bojutsu but I haven't been formally trained in two years.

[After dark, he seals up his lair and goes home. When he reaches House 55, he doesn't announce himself, but goes silently to the winter room and re-closes the door behind him.]

((First part is backdated to yesterday, November 10.))

[Would it really be so difficult for John's droids to just bring Don home?]

[Apparently, because they instead leave him in a side room of the barracks. On their way out, they drop his journal on the floor, just beyond his reach.]

[He can't feel his legs.]

[He woke up this way on John's table, and while part of his brain tried to assess the situation rationally and offer the mitigating factors that it's just for a week, thank goodness he didn't get this as his death loss, the rest of his brain was screaming too loudly to notice or care.]

[And now he's back in the village, half-paralyzed, still uncertain of his speech, and completely alone.]

[It takes a while, but he pulls himself together, drags himself a few feet across the floor, and painstakingly constructs a filter in the journal.]

Voice to Beast | Unhackable

Help. The barracks. Please...

[He closes the book when he's done. Beast won't get any reply from him through the journals, but will find him prone on the floor of the barracks, just wanting to go home.]

Voice for Everyone, November 11

[By the next day, Don has rediscovered his voice, and wants everyone else to hear it too. Being couchbound, he has nothing better to do than broadcast his every thought over the journal system.]

EVERYONE. Citizens, denizens, residents and inmates of our village of Luceti. Those of you who have just arrived, please find adequate shelter, because this is miserable weather to be out in. You're fortunate, though, to have missed our recent tornado. Also an infestation of ghosts and some messy business involving zombie viruses. Never a dull moment. I advise reading the guide, which can be found in your journal.

Those of you who are already jaded by such events, please entertain yourselves on this dreary day by suggesting a topic of interest: a fascinating subject, an intriguing project, or a hypothetical occurrence that you would find truly surprising. Jokes and stories are also welcome.

[He'll stop there. Finding words is still difficult and tiring, and like exercising any other faculty that hasn't been used in a while, he should take it slowly. Full recovery will come from patient practice, not from exhausting himself all at once.]

((Initial action is locked to Beast. Friends of Don are welcome to handwave hearing of his return and come visit, yesterday afternoon or any time during the week. Today's voice post is open to all.))

[Luceti is a cruel and perverted world. That's the only possible explanation for why Don revives from his death-by-drowning at the bottom of the lake. He thrashes for the surface with none of his usual graceful movement, and crawls ashore, panting and trying to figure out what happened.

He knows he died.

He remembers there is a price for being restored to the living world.

He lies in the rain, wondering if it will ever end.

When he has enough breath back to sit up, he does so, and carefully checks himself over for what the Malnosso took. Limbs, senses, memories… all seem in order. He stands and walks, and his legs work. He speaks a few words, and his voice is still there.

It doesn't seem possible that the Malnosso brought him back for free, and he's scared for what hidden deficit might reveal itself later.

He has his mask, belt, and pads. All his other gear is absent, hopefully still at home where he left it.

He starts walking.

He knows it will take some time to travel from the western lake to the village, but he knows the way and he's not in a hurry. It will be good to get his thoughts together before he sees his housemates.]

((Don's death penalty is a language disorder called aphasia. Reference post is here, and linked from the index post at the top of his journal. Meet him anywhere on his way back to House 55.

Plotting note: In the near future, Don will want to go to the clinic to find out what's wrong with him. If your character works there, and especially if they would recognize aphasia, please hit me up via PM.))

[Don has been returned from his mission with the Malnosso. In this case, that means that his guide-droid politely but firmly made it clear to him that sorry, but he had to leave.]

[His journal is returned to him, he's shown to a teleporter, and a moment later he's standing in the village's coffee shop. After getting something - well, a number of somethings - to eat, he settles into a booth and opens said journal.]

Filtered to housemates || Unhackable

Guys, I'm back. I'm at the coffee shop. [Almost as an afterthought:] I'm okay. Robert, can you bring my snowsuit?

End Filter

If anyone was waiting... I'm back.

[Some time later, he adds:] Has anyone heard of a Deadly Nadder? Or a Gronckle?

((Action part backdated to the wee hours of this morning.))

[The horror ends at midnight.]

[Sort of.]

[Don doesn't know how long it takes him to realize that he's lying on cobblestone instead of mud, and that the water pooling around him is only the rain running off his own skin.]

[It's still raining now, but so lightly he can't even feel it through the numbness.]

[He gets up. People are running in every direction. Someone had organized a clinic and healers, and everywhere he looks the injured are being tended to.]

[There are no provisions for the dead. There are never any bodies.]

[Don turns away from the confusion, points his steps towards home. The walk seems to take a long time. When he gets there, the house is quiet. Don finds Mike asleep at the kitchen table, gives him what may be a startlingly cold hug, inhales the plate of spaghetti at his elbow, and moves on.]

[He closes the door of his room, drops his gear to the ground. Climbs into Leo's bed and finds his brother not yet asleep.]

We lost.

[That's all the words he has energy for.]

[He sleeps for the next thirty-six hours. He wakes intermittently to whisper half-intelligible accounts of the battle into Leo's ear. He runs a low fever.]

[On Wednesday afternoon he manages to get out of bed - or at least sit up, if his family won't allow any more than that - speak to his brothers and father, listen to his messages on the journal. In the evening he'll put out some short, poorly-filtered messages to obvious people.]

*

Ms. Daisy... I lost the samples.

*

Frederic, I'm so sorry. Do you want me to come over?

*

Mr. Mulder. Did you make it back safely?

*

Kay, ah... What are you doing Saturday?

*

((Feel free to leave Voice messages, but assume Don's replies are forward-dated to tomorrow. You may also get a more-timely response from one of his journal-stealing housemates.))

((Trip journal, for reference. Still locked ICly.))

[Donatello rose with the sun this morning, struck his camp, and then started covering miles with single-minded purpose. He came down from the mountains as only an energetic young ninja in love can, then settled into a steady ground-eating pace to cross the remaining distance back to the village.]

[His path only wavers in the final stretch, when he curves west across the river instead of going straight to House 55. He needs to make a brief detour to C3 to tuck a note under the door of his favorite scientist.]

Happy Pi Day. Want to celebrate White Day also?

[Then it's directly home, where his first order of business will be to track down Michelangelo and apologize to him properly. Once he's made up with his long-absent brother, it's time for a more sober reunion.]

[Master Splinter, your second prodigal son is home.]

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And I Carry a Bo Staff

The Wisdom and Adventures of a Mutant Ninja Turtle

Entries tagged with coming home

Seventy-Second Theory [Voice]

Sixty-Fourth Theory [Action/Voice]

Sixtieth Theory [Action]

Fifty-Fifth Theory [Voice/Action]

Forty-Sixth Theory [Voice/Action]

Forty-First Theory [Action]

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June 2020

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