un: klapbak | video

[klussy]

Surprise, bitch. I lived.

(Have Eddie, flipping the camera off with his right hand aka his prosthetic.

Eddie looks different than the last time most people had seen him. For starters, he has a green undertone to his skin. For another, his tongue is completely black. Behind him is an empty room with gray floorboards and peeling green walls. It at least looks clean. There's a Gucci suitcase on its side, opened up, with clothes spilling over and across the floor. Another Gucci suitcase sits next to it, but it has been partially charred.

A dog is passed out and snoring rather loudly in the opened suitcase.

Despite his on-point meme drop, Eddie's delivery is completely and suspiciously blank. His gray eyes are flat, and his expression remains completely empty.)

Richie's here too. (As if on-demand, a massive fireball blast out from the doorway of a nearby room followed by some crashing and yelling. Eddie doesn't even bother to glance over his shoulder.)

We're settling in okay. We're in Lumenwood. I've got some of my supplies from Deerington but I've got a shitton of stuff I need to restock.

(Which was going to be such a drag.)

But for those on a need-to-know basis, I've already made some important notes on this place. Not that any of you give a shit, but if you do...I guess we were given journals for a reason. I suck at journaling though. Here's a uh --- transcipt? Is that what it's called? Whatever, I typed it up.

(He shrugs. The screen goes blank only to be followed up by some text that Eddie clearly wrote up ahead of time:)



IMPORTANT TRENCH NOTES SHIT STUFF?
i dont know i dont normally do the note takin thing so feel grateful

1.)

our blood's fucking weird now but also no shit it's weird now is anyone surprised

give me your blood so i can figure it out. i studied hematology a LOT

last time i checked out my blood under a scope it was totally different than what it is now on a cellular level.

i actually tried to expose my blood to some bacteria and germs that would usually cause an infection and it was really weird? what look like my new white cells just immediately seemed to swallow up the bacteria and it was like it never existed at all

thats not to say you should run around and stab yourself with a rusty fork anytime soon

but it'd be cool if i could get more samples to see if this is just a Me thing or an Us thing

2.)

i spit on richie and we figured out that my spit can cause a numbing feeling. if you ever need to spit on you, let me know
it's probably gonna be useful if anyone gets injured
normally i would say don't let someone spit in your open wounds
but my spit is totally sanitary
i swear



(shut the hell up)

3.)

only 1/3rd of my closet made it here and no im not ready to talk about it. this place doesn't even have goddamn chanel

4.)

taylor swift still exists so we're gonna be okay

Comments

[vibing]

[ For what it's worth, it was both sincere and teasing at the same time. ]

Right. So it's polluted if it hits the air?

[ Listening to Eddie talk like this is a lot like listening to Rita talk about blastia. He nods his head, trying to pull out the important parts, because even if it's over his head, it's still important to try and learn. Learning about blastia and aer helped him figure out how to stop Duke and the adaphagos. Learning about blood pollution might help him figure out how to stop this world from going down the same path ]

Is it just us? The, what are we--Sleepers? Or all the other people too?

[ He's noticed this stratification between the people like them and the rest of Trench, and it doesn't sit well with him. There's no reason he should be special, even if his blood is weird and blue and freezy now ]

Man, if just having blood is polluting everything-- that's not really something we can fix, huh? We can't just not have blood. I met a girl who's a robot and even she has blood now. The grass kid has blood now. It's like whatever made us into squids forced everybody chock full of the stuff.

[ Normal things to say. At least he's just rolling with it. Don't think about it too hard and it's not weird. ]

Yeah. If it can help us figure out what the hell is happening, you can have as much as you need.

cw: homophobia

[klussy]

I think so. Maybe if it's swallowed too. There's...There's a lot to study.

(It felt a little overwhelming and he found himself missing Moira more than ever before. She would know what to do. She would know how to lead this behemoth of a new world. Eddie falters for a second, not feeling like he should be the one doing this, explaining this. I'm really not smart enough for this.

The thought slides through him and then passes into the haze of indifference his corruption had him lulled into. He doesn't have a chance to wobble to uncertainty vocally, and instead just has a delayed reaction, staring at Yuri as he spoke, not really reacting until a belated few seconds later.)

I'd have to compare blood. Sleepers -yeah, we're Sleepers. We've always been Sleepers. I think the civilians here are like - actual humans. From this world.

(And it was weird to not really feel like he identified with being a "human" anymore. He wasn't sure if his blood made him special, but it made him different. But he had always felt his blood made him different. Ugly mutterings of queer blood being different inherently from straight blood was just a thing he'd dealt with though. Even when Moira clarified and proved to him that there actually wasn't any difference between straight blood and queer blood, Eddie had his lingering suspicions, mostly rooted in religious fears. That nagging suspicion was coming back to haunt him.)

Not really, no. But I don't know if blood is all bad here. Seems like they use a lot of blood healing at the Lumenarium. Apparently, you can use literal blood injections to heal minor wounds.

(He had to test all of that too. God. He started to scratch down ideas he needed to work on.)

Just as a disclaimer, there's probably people a lot more capable of figuring this stuff out than me. I'm kind of just - uh. Well. (He doesn't know. But he pauses, writes something else down, and then continues on.)

Fern? Yeah. I've got some of his blood. Been checking it out. The squid thing I think definitely biologically rearranged us to some extent...Which kind of makes sense.

Thanks, man. I'll probably keep those willing on a routine blood donation cycle so I can compare monthly. Get a real set of data going.

[vibing]

[ This kid doesn't look great, does he? But Yuri sees no reason to push him. Hell, he's not wanted to talk much, before. So he waits, nodding slowly ]

And we're not. We were brought from our worlds and turned into squids for... what? Man, I still have no idea. You people from that dream have a leg up on the rest of us.

[ Not that it sounded good, exactly. Yuri wouldn't want to be there, he doesn't think. Really, he'd much rather be home, in Aurnion, helping to build the new town, build their guild. It aches, a little, that homesickness. Not for the place, exactly, but for the people. For Karol and Estelle and Judy.

At least he has Flynn. That matters. And figuring this out matters to Flynn. ]

Well, that's pretty damn handy. We use gels, back home. Blood's a little more readily available.

Hey, you're trying to figure it out. That matters. If we waited for the most qualified person to do something, nothing would ever happen.

[ There's truth there that he hasn't really said out loud before. Truth that unsettles something in him. ]

Pretty wild. Never thought I'd be a squid. [ Go figure ] Sure, put me on your list. I can come by later today if you want to start now.

[klussy]

Maybe. But maybe only for feelings of disorientation. Who knows? You guys might have the real leg up in a month or so.

(There are some disadvantages in feeling convinced of a certain kind of reality. Eddie felt like he had been better at adaptation when he was still new and wide-eyed to the world-hopping thing. These days, he was almost too jaded to react properly sometimes.)

That's what I was thinking. This world's using its surplus to its advantage. My world only had stuff like pills and cream too and if that wasn't around, you were shit outta luck.

(Eddie laughs a bit at that, because, god, Yuri is really not off base there.)

Waiting around never does anyone any favors. Anyway, I can't remember the last time I depended on waiting on adults and stronger people to come save the day. They just don't.

(He is....a PESSIMIST.)

That'd be awesome, dude. And, if I'm being totally honest with you, you might turn into something way worse down the line. Squids are a pretty good starting place.

[vibing]

Maybe. I dunno. Guess we'll do our best to figure this place out.

[ Yuri rubs the back of his neck. He knows they're stuck here, and he doesn't mind it exactly, but he hasn't really thought about how permanent permanent is. He's here, he's going to be here for the foreseeable future. That's weird. Really weird, especially after the last year when we was barely in the same place for a day. ]

You need a little magic. Mine still works. Flynn's does too. He can heal way better than me, though. You ever need a non-blood healer, let him know.

[ He doesn't feel at all bad about volunteering Flynn. Flynn would never turn down the opportunity to help someone ]

Yeah. I learned the same thing. We gotta just do it ourselves.

[ Yuri doesn't consider it pessimism. He thinks it's just taking your life into your own hands. Things weren't given to him. He got things through doing, through helping, through contributing to his community. He takes it completely in stride because, yeah. Eddie's right. ]

Uh... yeah? Like what?