Mask or Menace | IC Contact

[mycrosstobear]

"...This is Wolfwood. Leave a message, I guess."


voice | video | text | email

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untraceable text

[maskormods]

//

n•-e-r
l•-l-e-l
e-m-r-u
e•-n
e-b-d-a-i-e
r-s-r-o-e•-s
h-l•-l•-l-f
i-h-m

voice

[adamantlyardent]

Hello, Wolfwood. I'm calling to inquire if you are currently at your residence? [boy this message is delivered stiffly as possible, isn't it? with all the sandpapery smoothness of polite discomfort.] If you are, then I would ask a favor. A small one. Very easy, in fact.

Otherwise, please disregard. I'm not looking to inconvenience you.

voice

[mycrosstobear]

[Why does she talk like this.

But if she's calling him she must be low on options. So he doesn't actually sound irritated when he replies.] Yeah, I'm home. What is it?

[adamantlyardent]

[oh!! he answered!

she...wasn't actually expecting that.

...she probably should've expected that.

she clears her throat.]

Ye-yes! Hello. I...I just need some help...retrieving something. From outside? I can see it from the front window easily. It--my shawl? Could you...get it for me? [all that stiffness is getting rapidly replaced by her usual bit of fluster with a slight serving of preemptive defensiveness:] I, I know that seems silly but I wouldn't ask if I could do it myself, so...!

[mycrosstobear]

Your shawl? [He sounds incredulous, but before he can insist she must be able to do that herself he realizes he never saw her at the end, in Jeopardy. Did she get hurt?

Feeling a sharp twinge of guilt over not checking in on her properly, he leans out his window. Well, there it is. Pretty easy to spot.] Yeah, I can get it.

12/30

[adamantlyardent]

[a fancy stationery envelope addressed to Wolfwood makes its appearance, and inside is fancy stationery letterhead with writing in fancy ink script:]

The Wolfwood is known to its neighbors in some ways, but not all. It's not known for verdant canopies or welcoming birdsong, and more often than not it appears a threatening color on the landscape: Blotted black ink on a canvas of green and gold.
Its trees are tall and stark, seemingly brittle and sharp just from appearance, let alone touch. Dense thorn thickets thwart all but the most stalwart of travelers, and even then, passage is tricky, for there are few landmarks to guide one's way within, and the seemingly right path can easily yield disastrous results.
If it was named for wolves, then it must have been very long ago indeed, for rarely is there ever the sound of a hunter's call. Perhaps some trick of the wind conveys a lonely cry to curious ears, but it's been a long time since there's been tell of a hunt within. It's not something to utterly dismiss, of course, as all deep places can hide many dangers.
There is often the smell of smoke that drifts from the forest, but whose origins are unseen to the naked eye save for the faint speckles of ash and cinder when the wind blows just right. It's no inviting campfire scent, either, but something more akin to tar and rot; it must be a very hardy beast indeed who lives and thrives amid such stench.
Despite the sinister atmosphere it can exude, there is a strange sense of security that comes from those trees and thorns: They are tall and tangled together quite tightly, so no storms or blustering winds have yet to uproot even the smallest of shoots. It seems quite determined to be where it is, and even flames seem to hardly change the quality of it on the whole, as the trunks of the trees are blackened to begin with.
Folk who live nearby are not keen to wander too close, yet all the same, they find some semblance reassurance in keeping the wood to their backs; it would take something mighty and truly awful to pass through those trees and bring harm, and so in a way, those dark trees serve a kind of protection to the gentler lands it dwells nearby simply by being there. So long as one does not draw too near as to be raked by thorns and splinters, at least.

[monster_san]

[Wolfwood gets a card with Mount Fuji on it. The reverse reads: Happy New Year!]

backdated to Christmas

[usaf]

[ Carol isn't really on top of her Christmas giving this year, but she still wants to get something for the people she shares a house with. So, Wolfwood will find outside her bedroom door a small basket with a gift card to the nearest coffee shop (which happens to be in the same building as the gas station convenience store), along with a few scratch tickets. ]

MEMORY SHARE (cw: child homelessness, pedophilia, child prostitution)

[justlittle]

There comes, beamed to Wolfwood's AR glasses, a scene of a busy, filthy city street. Overcrowded, old, European architecture with a futuristic twist. Levitating cars on the cobblestone streets. And there, in an alley out of the way, a gang of kids. Their leader is a girl of about nine, though she's so scruffy looking it's hard to even tell that she is a girl. She keeps the rest of the kids in line, and distributes whatever food she can scavenge with the group, hiding it away from the bigger kids who will bully them and steal the food for themselves.

And there, across the street from the gaggle of urchins, perched on top of a garbage can, is the smallest boy you've ever seen. He looks to be about two, but his eyes are older. His clothing is threadbare, or at least what little of it remains is. His limbs are thin and gangly, and his belly distended from hunger. He won't make it past autumn.

A pair of preteen girls walk by, scantily clad to appeal to the perverts who frequent these streets. They see the bread the gang leader has stolen away, and demand a portion of it. Their "protection" fee. Having no other choice, she gives it over to them.

Suddenly, the small boy is there.

"Go away, you little bastard, you're not getting nothing from me," says the girl. "I'm not taking one bean out of the mouths of my crew, you aren't worth a bean."

"Why you give your food to them?" says the boy. "You need that food."

"Oh, excuse me!" the girl pipes back, raising her voice, so her crew can hear her. "I guess you ought to be the crew boss here, is that it? You being so big, you got no trouble keeping the food."

"Not me," says the boy. "I'm not worth a bean, remember?"

"Yeah, I remember. Maybe you ought to remember and shut up."

Her crew laughs.

But the little boy doesn't. "You got to get your own bully," he says.

"I don't get bullies, I get rid of them," the girl answers, looking ready to push the boy right onto his butt.

"You give food to bullies every day. Give that to one bully and get him to keep the others away from you."

"You think I never thought of that, stupid?" she counters. "Only once he's bought, how I keep him? He won't fight for us."

"If he won't, then kill him," says the boy simply.

That makes the girl mad, so mad she knees the boy to the ground, and kicks him while he's down. "Maybe I start by killing you."

"I'm not worth a bean, remember?" says the boy. "You kill one bully, get another to fight for you, he want your food, he scared of you too. They eating you up. Eating you up. So you got to kill one. Get him down, everybody as small as me. Stones crack any size head."

"You make me sick," the girl says.

"Cause you didn't think of it," he replies.

The girl looked around at her crew. She can't seem to read their faces, get a sense of how they're feeling about this scene.

"I don't need no baby telling me to kill what we can't kill."

"Little kid come up behind him, you shove, he fall over," says the boy. "Already got you some big stones, bricks. Hit him in the head. When you see brains you done."

"He no good to me dead," she says. "I want my own bully, he keep us safe, I don't want no dead one."

The boy grins. "So now you like my idea," he says.

"Can't trust no bully," she answers.

"He watch out for you at the charity kitchen," says the boy. "You get in at the kitchen." He keeps looking her in the eye, but he was talking for the others to hear. "He get you all in at the kitchen."

"Little kid get into the kitchen, the big kids, they beat him," says the girl's second-in-command, a boy of around eight, who fancied himself something of a sergeant to her commander.

"You get you a bully, he make them go away."

"How he stop two bullies? Three bullies?"

"Like I said," the boy answers. "You push him down, he not so big. You get your rocks. You be ready. Be not you a soldier? Don't they call you Sergeant?"

"Stop talking to him, Sarge," says the girl. "I don't know why any of us is talking to some two-year-old."

"I'm four," says the boy.

"What your name?" asks the girl.

"Nobody ever said no name for me," he says.

"You mean you so stupid you can't remember your own name?"

"Nobody ever said no name," he says again. Still he looks her in the eye, lying there on the ground, the crew around him.

"Ain't worth a bean," she says, finally.

"Am so," he says.

"Yeah," says the sergeant. "One damn bean."

"So now you got a name," says the girl, with an air of finality. "You go back and sit on that garbage can, I think about what you said."

"I need something to eat," says Bean.

"If I get me a bully, if what you said works, then maybe I give you something."

"I need something now," says Bean again. It's obvious that it's true. If he doesn't get some food now, he'll surely die.

The girl reaches into her pocket and takes out six peanuts she had been saving. Bean sits up and takes just one from her hand, puts it in his mouth and slowly chews. It's not much, but it's enough for now.

The scene fades.

textish

[mycrosstobear]

Bean. That's the kid from the network, the one whose genetics were messed up by an experiment. Even more messed up than Wolfwood had realized, it seems.

The kid won't want this out there, he's sure. Shit.

He doesn't know where, in the chaos that's erupted, Bean might be. So he pulls out his actual communicator and quickly sends a text:

you okay?

[justlittle]

Bean was at the Swear In when the glitch started. He's seen memories of other people. It's not a hard stretch to imagine that some of his own memories are out there, too.

So when someone he's only spoken to once texts him out of the blue... He has some suspicions.

Fine. Annoyed by this memory leak greeyaz.
What did you see?

No reason to beat around the bush, to Bean.

[mycrosstobear]

That makes it easier.

You coming up with a plan for some other street kids.

That's why you're called Bean?

VIDEO//source: anon//postdate:03.14

[adamantlyardent]

The clip seems to pick up right in the midst of something, framed in the reflection of an elegant vanity mirror, and right away, there is some sniffling from the child its primary focus is on.



"That won't fix it," she whines.

The olive-skinned elf woman who is consoling her smiles sympathetically. "No...but it's like make-believe, isn't it? And no one will be looking at your freckles if they're painted."

The little girl pouts. "Can't you just poof them away?"

"No, tae one. We do not practice spells that can alter one's body like that. The paint will have to do."

Again, a whiny sound as the child fidgets, reaching for a bottle on the vanity.

"So I have to paint them every day?"

"If you want to not see them, then yes. But perhaps you would rather just let people see what you really look like?"

"No! No, no, no!" Her eyes well up. "It's ugly! I hate it! Everyone hates it!"

"Cecelia--"

"They laugh! Call me quail egg! I hate it! I wanna be pretty! Like you! I want my skin to be clean and my ears to be long and my hair to be flowy like everyone else's! I hate it!"

The woman sighs.

"...Here. Let me show you how to paint."

log -> text (??)

[mycrosstobear]

He's good with faces. And he knows that one, even if it's much younger than he's seen before. And of course, the hair's kind of a giveaway.

She is definitely, definitely going to yell at him if he mentions this. He remembers how upset she was when someone filmed her singing back when everyone kept bursting into song for some damn reason, how she avoids pictures in public.

(Is this why? Because she didn't look like the people she grew up with? Come to think of it, in that dream- nope, no, that didn't happen, he doesn't remember anything from it, definitely not how she looked there matches what she's talking about in this video.)

But he does feel obligated to say something. She should know it's out there. He's been grateful to know his memories are out there, after all.

Well, if he texts it, at least she'll have to open her window or call him before she can yell.

--

looks like a memory of yours is getting sent out. figured you should know.

[adamantlyardent]

Is it the poison arrow thing? I thought only Catra saw that.

[mycrosstobear]

the poison arrow thing?

as promised

[adamantlyardent]

Greetings.
Are you busy?

yesssssss

[mycrosstobear]

not right now

why?

Muscle emoji

[adamantlyardent]

Come to the window, please. I’d like to talk.

[mycrosstobear]

[That seems ominous.

He gets the deep sigh over with before opening the window.]

Yeah?

text;

[thecacophony]

[ Sal allows herself a little time to rest up and remember just how it feels to function in this world again. For her it's been months away. Taking on a new job, sneaking into fancy parties, running from cultists, fighting not one but two pissed-as-hell armies who both want her dead — it was no spring picnic.

So, it takes a while to regain her footing. But she's learned a few things in that time away. That friends are just as important in either world, and there's a handful here she wants to keep track of. Make sure they're...safe or something? Shit, she's no good with articulating these kinds of thoughts, but she's got to try.

So, she settles down with her communicator and types out a message to one a few select people who, in all the time she spent here previously, ended up meaning the world to her. ]

Didn't manage to forget me while I was gone, did you?

[ It comes across as a light joke, but...it's also a genuine fear. To be left behind by her friends, forgotten; she might have learned a lot, but those scars of old still serve to remind her of darker times. Sal heaves out a sigh and hopes for a reply. ]

text;

[mycrosstobear]

[He doesn't get his hopes up, when a name disappears from the network. Just because he expects to be the one to leave doesn't mean it's always going to work out that way. Everything here is temporary, right?

And memory always counts for a lot.

But when he gets the text and sees who it's from, he's grinning right away. It's a relief, and more than that, makes him feel a little more at home again.]

Not yet.

[thecacophony]

[ Sal reads the message and realizes she's been holding all of the tension in her shoulders, waiting, worrying, readying herself for the dread and possibility of being forgotten. She sits back in her chair and releases a tense breath. ]

I could use a drink.

[ There's not enough ways in which she can convey her relief. So she maneuvers around platitudes that make them both squirm, hoping to bridge the gap in a way they both are used to. Shit, she just needs to see him for herself and make sure that things are still okay. A few weeks away, but the world hasn't shifted too far underneath their feet. ]

[mycrosstobear]

[Hah. He can sympathize with that reaction.]

Funny, so could I.

Got anywhere in mind?

New Year's card

[monster_san]

[Wolfwood gets this in the mail on January 1st:]


Welcome to a new spring