longestnight | Entries tagged with branch

All right, people. I’m going through the archives of this place to convert all the parchment confetti into indexable data sheets.

You can thank me later for saving you all the headache.

[ The vibe of this is an 8 AM Stand-Up Meeting rather than a gathering of guardians. The video's pov is from his lab, which in addition to the completed gigacomputer, was beginning to have half-finished little magitech doohickeys scattered in sparse nooks of free space. The amount of spiderbots seems to have been left at one (1) so far.]

First item: Mission debriefs. If you've fought any dark forces recently and have extra concerning details to share, we should write it down instead of keeping it in our heads.

Second: Current Projects. Anyone who's a friend to reindeer - you ought to talk to Phil and do him a solid for all the holiday prep. For the science nerds lurking around, I’d like to borrow your brains over here.

[ He'd normally have Lyla take care of this, but he's stuck with non-sentient computers. He hates it! ]

Last: Introductions for the new kids. And universe number, if your world has one of those - the chalkboard maps are getting digitized. I'll start.

My name is Miguel O'Hara, Spider-Man of Nueva York. No, they aren't vampire fangs. [ tired hand wave, as if recapping for the millionth time. ] I‘ve been mopping up messes in my neck of the multiverse until getting picked for fairy-tale duty with the rest of you.

branchifer

Okay, did you guys know people in this world make stuff of some of us? Apparently the yetis make toys of us on their own if none exist but also imitate ones that do exist if kids want them.

[Branch is hopping along a table of merch that is meant to mimic exactly the merch of him in stores. A lot of it is actually bigger than he is. He shows off the dolls with his tiny little wrist comm. They look even weirder at that perspective.]

Now that I know they're not ritual effigies, the toy thing is kind of funny. Weird, but funny.

Look at this. Look.

[He holds up his comm so the camera picks up some absolutely hideous toys.]

Like, who is this guy? I wouldn't even know who this was if it wasn't labeled with my name. Like, some random guy from the village maybe. I've never dressed like that in my life.

[He points the camera at another.]

This one is the closest to actually looking like me and it still has the random skull symbol hair thing. What's up with that? [A pause as his face comes back in view. It screws up in thought.] ...Okay, actually I don't hate it.

[Because even though he's a much happier person than he once was, he's still slightly an edgelord. Just slightly.]

[He looks upward and similar skull designs suddenly appear in his own hair, thanks to his ability to change its color. Maybe that explains why some of the dolls have black hair and some have blue (if manufacturing inconsistencies aren't to blame).]

[(It's actually not but he's not about to explain the subtleties of troll coloration when it comes to emotional state.)]

Seriously, you should check it out, and see if the yetis made stuff based on you. It's hilarious.

[ooc: If none exists IRL, people can make up imaginary merch, though all merch at the Pole would be for kids or teens. The stuff made purely by the yetis would largely be decent-looking and accurate, uglier stuff would be based on designs existing in the game world because well, that's what the kid pointed at in the store. Googling themselves would produce other merch for other demographics, as well as let people find out about any internet fandom. People can feel free to thread hop a lot because the point of this is probably going to be a lot of pointing and laughing.]

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branchifer

[cw: mild insinuation of cannibalism wrt to mentioning the Elf chewing on him]

[Several days after his freakout, Branch is trying to figure out how to apologize to everyone. So much that had colored his initial freakout had been filtered through a lens of feelings dragged with him from home. Just a long string of unfortunate coincidences. People spooking him by accident or through a lack of care. Escalation when he needed the opposite. Mistakenly thinking they were forcing a child to fight because said child also feared it (probably for good reason, depending on the situation Lucky came from.)]

[But mostly it's all been his own brain feverishly working against him.]

[It makes him feel a little broken. He likes to think he's worked past a lot of his issues but apparently, without the upbeat attitudes of his people, the tsking of his best friend when he gets too paranoid, and the safety of the bunker being nearby, he's more prone to losing it than he'd have hoped.]

[None of the others back home are like this.]

[But the others also can't always articulate their fear and sadness in the ways he can. Even if he keeps things pretty factual. It's hard for them to talk about negative things; they struggle even with relaying the events that have caused the negativity. Instinctually, he knows the ability to talk through things rather than deny them sometimes benefits him. Sometimes it helps him articulate complex feelings. Or convince the village that something needs to change or be acknowledged.]

[It serves him here. He could be blunt. He could keep things simple. Distant. Cold. Impersonal. Or forcibly overly upbeat. He could just try to gloss it all over.]

[But he's reckoned with the past enough to speak plainly about it, in the way some people do when they've processed a lot of it.]

[He's tucked away in one of his little boltholes as he types something up on the floating screen of the very teeny tiny watch the yetis made him. The little den has some entrances he's already built lockable doors to (just in case the place has mice) that lead to tunnels around the Pole. He's already partly furnished the place with doll furniture and has been working on ripping apart fabrics from the toys to stitches together a warmer wardrobe, using a needlekit he kept stored in his hair.]

[He keeps idly scratching his leg while typing. The myth healing is powerful but between necrotizing poison and walking on an injury so it keeps bleeding, you wind up getting a scar out of it. It doesn't really bother him that much, though. He's used to being the only one in the village with some kind of damage.]

Hey this is Branch. The guy that did all the traps.

(Yeah, I know, not exactly my best moment.)

They're all dismantled now. I handed over a map of the worst ones when they talked me down, and got the last few unsprung ones dismantled when I recovered. I really wrecked my leg running around on it or I'd have tried to make sure they were all cleared out sooner.

I'm sorry for the mess I caused. A long string of stuff twigged me out and tripped off some stuff in my head. Like not even just the monster stuff in that building.

Something important about me that you probably didn't get just from my voice: I'm very small. A little over 7 and a half centimeters, not counting my hair, and I checked, centimeters in this world measure the same amount in mine. So, 1) please watch out underfoot. I'm pretty good at avoiding big people while getting around, but still.

2) More importantly, as was probably obvious...

I have a lot of trouble trusting big people. I won't get too much into it, but the ones back home used to regularly kill my people. They knew we could think and talk and feel and it just didn't matter to them. So maybe it wouldn't have been the most logical thing for the ones here to randomly start trying to kill me but the problem is that kind of horribleness isn't really logical. It's just random and senseless.

One day the Bergens just up and decided, "hey you know what would be a great thing to do and make a whole holiday about doing?" So it gets really easy to think that if it happens again it also might just be random and senseless. Add in that I woke up to one of those stupid Elf kids gnawing on my head because he thought I was a toy and it just set me off.

I'll be the first to admit I can get a little paranoid. And it was worse here since I didn't have a heavily fortified survival bunker to run and hide in like I do back home.

[Boy does that say a lot.]

I'm not trying to make an excuse. I just wanted to explain. I didn't want to hurt anyone and I wasn't doing it to be mean. I didn't know human (and Elf?) kids did weird things like shove toys in their mouths because troll ones don't, so I figured someone gave me to him. I really thought at least someone was trying to kill me, in a way a lot of my people have died.

The good thing is I get that some of the big people here are good people now, which means a lot of the ones I haven't met yet probably are, so I don't think I'll wind up getting into that place again.

Annnnd even if I do, I at least know I don't have to rig the whole place up with traps to avoid dying. Since some of you are alright.

So there's that.

I think that was it. Sorry again.

[At least these people not being his people has one single upside: they don't know that the situation is severe enough to warrant an apology song.]

[He does decide to add one thing and decides to absolutely be a smartass about it because he's a little upset on Lucky's behalf.]

ps is that kid okay? He thought people were going to force him to fight. That's why I tried to bring him with me. I know now that's not the case but if we're all supposed to start trying to guard children and teenagers, we should possibly think like hmmmm "maybe we should make the ones here in the group feel safe first."

Just saying. That one's a little on you guys. And if nobody's done it yet for him, someone should.

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branch,
elle bryant

branchifer

[After a while, there's no need for anyone to keep too much of a close eye on Branch, despite the fact he was possibly one of the closest to death by the time they got to the Pole. By the time everyone else is feeling well enough to leave the Infirmary (albeit maybe with a limp in the case of some of them) he's still out but at least finally firmly stable. Breathing easily and far less pale. It's just that the sleep caused by the myth healing has him firmly knocked out for far longer than everyone else as all that extensive poison damage heals up.]

[Jack at least keeps occasionally checking in on him. He'd placed him in a little doll bed and placed that in a little dollhouse. The house is meant to make it so the troll won't just sleepily stumble out and fall right off the table or something before he's fully awake.]

[The problem is he hasn't noticed that one of the Elves noticed him initially tucking Branch away. And said Elf also keeps watching him go in and open up a little doll house. Bingle knows better, he knows he's not allowed in the Infirmary unless he wants to be helpful and has been given specific Infirmary-related instructions....but he also thinks that toy looks so adorable. And!!! Jack keeps playing with it and Jack liking the toy makes it seem even cooler!!! So after one of the times Jack closes up the little dollhouse again, and leaves the Infirmary Bingle jingles his way happily into the Infirmary after he's out of sight to go play with the toy...]

[A short time later, there is a whole lot of screaming. Terrified, Bingle drops what was in his hand, and runs out. Then what Bingle thought was a toy also runs out of the Infirmary and the rest...]

[The rest is the kind of mess that happens when a bunch of upsetting events running consecutively are filtered through a filter of high octane paranoia. Branch doesn't waste time after escaping his would-be murderer. Limping out of the room, he makes his way onto a hustling bustling floor filled with furry artisans. Looking around in awe at the strangeness of his surroundings is how he gets run over by some kind of toy car. Great. Wonderful. The injury jangles his leg even worse and causes it to break open the partially-healed snake bite gouge. But that's not about to slow him down.]

[Some stolen ribbon is tied over the bandage to put more pressure on the injury. (They must have bandaged it because they wanted him to live long enough to clear the poison.) His hair is quietly washed in the as-of-yet unused paintbrush water of a yeti setting up a table to paint toys. Then he smears green and red paint on his body and more bits and bobbles, pieces of ribbon and tinsel and pine are used as camouflage all over his body. The place is littered with garlands and scraps of ribbon and tinsel. It genuinely lets him blend. All he has to do is stop moving and then he looks like all the rest of the detritus and garland on the tables and floors.]

[He blends enough that he manages to limp to one of the windows and see what's waiting for him outside without being seen. The view is devastating and makes him realize he has to change his tack.]

[He figures out the comm devices the hairy guys are making are important by silently watching a yeti test one out, including by using some kind of... listening devices with it? Ones that go in the ears? When the yeti's back is turned, both the larger watch device and the two ear-things are stolen, as is the box and instructions for the ear things. And Branch spends the better part of an hour figuring out what it's all for, how to sync the devices, how to use the mic on the one ear bud, and how the menus are navigated - including how to navigate them by tapping the earbud certain ways without touching the comm watch.]

[Then he looks out on what is to become a battlefield, a place to lay waste to his enemies, and starts to get to work. It takes him the better part of a few hours to prepare, the large space of time between anyone possibly thinking to check on him in the Infirmary. He has to use his hair to do most of the traveling because of the shape his leg is in but he pushes his way through it.]

[Then the first casualties start rolling in. The Elves and the yetis, the most numerous of the Pole's residents and most prone to roaming around, are disproportionately affected. The first trap is tripped by an Elf. Somehow the Elf is successfully netted to the ground in a weighted net made of volleyball netting. A yeti trips a trap that causes a cascade of marbles that causes a whole group of yetis to slip and fall. A snare trap somehow whips someone upside down. Super soakers full of lemon juice are activated by a tripwire to squirt the juice in someone's face as they walk by.]

[The traps are all harmful but not permanently damaging. There are no traps that might make people fall over railings or down stairs. Nothing will permanently scald anyone and even if things cause pain and irritation they don't cause permanent damage. And it's possible to avoid tripping traps, certainly. After all, most of the traps are in the busiest areas of the Pole, and not quieter ones prone to relaxation. There's no point in hunting the hunters if you do it in places where they don't heavily congregate.]

[But for those in the more heavily trap-set areas: visible chaos erupts. The Elves and the yetis are clearly panicking. Then, in explanation, a voice comes over the new comms, in audio only, spoken over the mic of a single Samsung earbud. A few of them might recognize said voice from their time in the Multi-plex or before.]

Yeah, hi, all those traps going off around you? Those are mine and I work fast. I guaran-flipping-tee you there are a whole lot more of them than you think. Pick a random number, then quadruple it, because that's what I did when deciding how many to set. And I'll keep setting more the longer my demands go unmet.

Now I'm sure some of you are thinking "well, I can avoid all the traps." Maybe true for you, but your ugly, pointy-headed little children and the big hairy guys sure seem to be running into them. And wow, they are really freaking out right now.

So we're going to do this my way. If you want it to stop anytime soon, you'll do exactly what I say, when I say it. If you don't do what I say, I will make it worse.

[Branch is about to limp around and be a problem.]

[Yippee-Ki-Yay.]

[ooc: Threadhopping is encouraged. The main negotiations will happen with Miguel playing hostage negotiator, but anyone can talk to Branch. He can't see anything because it's all audio but he'll definitely gloat if he hears someone get trapped while on the comms with him, completely endearing himself to them instantly, I'm sure. All the traps will be inconvenient, annoying, and maybe slightly painful but not cause any genuine risk to life and limb - yet.]

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