middaeg | tatakai

[ perhaps he should’ve stuck closer to styx tonight, but who knew that the month’s rare and second full moon would be his first hassle in a long, long time. elliot was gone, and eren hadn’t been a stranger to holding onto a single bond for magic and supplementing with questionable drinks. it shouldn’t have been a problem.

the problem lied in consuming enough witches and maiming still living ones for their blood on the night the mirrorbound chose to protect the sleepers of dorchacht; there had been an emptiness in him since then. a hole that pleaded to be filled every time he closed his eyes. it would snatch his sleep away and keep his dreams hostage, it would leave him anxious and irritable and hungry the more the twin sisters waxed into spheres.

he crawls from his hole outside of the bright wall and closer to the wilde’s gentle spring edge for comfort. his body twists and his bones pop, some crack, he cries out to nothing as the agony felt like deafening white noise. the full moon seized his frame and made the spines on his back elongate, his tail spread, his chest expand and his neck to swell in length. his skin rips apart, and the burning beneath it forces eren to relentlessly claw his way out of it, sinking talons into his face and his sides with more desperation to be rid of what caged him, what hurt to stay stranded in.

the wyvern now standing upon the remains of a human, pieces of bloody flesh and what have you, rose from its steaming heat and shimmering black scales, pitch as the unsullied sky, to greet the full moons with a shriek that sang a famished song. and he wondered there, as he fell into a drumming silence that wanted to stretch his newly fit wings— was there anyone out there who’d like to listen to it? ]

Edited 2020-11-01 02:42 (UTC)

[There would be a recipient to that song, the smell of an interloper on the wind. But how elusive a figure; how ghastly a presence it would be, this audience of Eren's.

Mettaton's restless. Addicted to blood but picky about its source, Monsters wouldn't do, and he preferred practicing Witches — his Bonded, really, for the most intoxicating of experiences like the finest of wines. He had a Bonded who would ~~maintain his addiction~~ offer up his neck whenever he pleased, but as Mettaton was unable to focus enough to return to his side, the Puca found himself distracted and wanting, trying to solicit the attention of Witches as though seduction would be the key to getting their necks between his teeth.

But when he found nobody would pay a single iota of attention to him, he got mad. Spiteful fury overcame him, violent the more the moons exerted their influence upon him. His rage was growing and his hunger for blood ever increased, his desire to pick fights and be chased or to chase growing beyond him. His legs itched and he needed an outlet that nobody would provide. How dare everyone ignore him, on such a crucial night! When no Witch would approach and no Monster would chase, he made the only "sane" decision that night, to retreat toward the Wilde where he was sure he'd be able to work the night off on his own.

Indeed, Mettaton stands nearby — in sight, in fact, but somehow out of sight. He was strangely difficult to spot, a specter-like haze obscuring his boisterous presence. The robot witnesses Eren's grisly transformation, his succumbing to the full moon and inky scales, his golden eye quite glowing under the moons. Dark black fur reaches along more of his body than before, his presence difficult to notice despite standing close enough for his ears to rise in alarm, his attention rapt as the Dragon emerged from both his hole and his very own skin.

A strange "power" blooms newly in the Puca, and that power makes him all but a ghost to those not paying careful attention. But with senses intended to taste smell, how could Eren mistaken his elusive company for anyone else? The spark of electricity and astringency of metal, somehow sweet and shocking at once. All it would take is to focus on the right spot, to track him down like a true thrill of the hunt, to find him.

Mettaton's temporarily distracted from his plight, and instead wonders with sick curiosity if he could get Eren to pay attention to him. He remembers him on their last full moon, daunting and demanding, and he wonders if he could be that way again... It serves only as a potential thrill to a thrill-seeking Puca, even as he's glued to his spot from the rattling sound of his cry. He stands under the thick branches of a greening tree which hid Mettaton even from the moons overhead — but he makes no effort to break his instinct to freeze at the startle of Eren's roar, not yet.]

[ the polar opposites that fought inside him— lonely, he was, but enraged that such must be his fate. no, he would not be alone, as much as his heart pleaded to be, the dragon in him hungered for contact, for conversation, for a slosh down his throat, maybe . . . he scents the air before him, a pointed skull tipped back, before the massive reptile exhaled steam, euphoria, and the rasp of a voice twisted into something unlike a man. it was dangerous, but it was charming. it was as profound and dark as a trench, grating like stone being crushed together in an endless rumble. ]

Come out . . . Now. [ metal . . . ozone . . . chemical. organic fur weaved between it. eren cannot see past the darkness that blended so well with the specter that the puca was able to hide behind (intentional or not), and there the dragon strained his eyes to stare beneath the tree, wide with pupils thinned, the tips of his brilliant horns rasping against the tree’s lower branches, and then, with a crack, he effortlessly breaks it by the base of its roots to bend it out of the way. the earth quivers and hushes when the wood falls with its swayed canopy. his tongue slips out, long and thin, dances in the air that scented the strongest, and there he rumbled, low and even enticing: ] I can tasssste you, Mettaton.

[ why would he hide? to toy with him? the dragon holds his breath, their ambience going eerily silent, and where the scent and taste of the robot puca bundles in front of him, eren’s neck snakes into a curl behind him, into a positioned strike most land serpents would take . . . only waiting. oh, he wouldn’t strike. yet. he’s just very . . . very . . . curious. ]

Edited 2020-11-07 20:16 (UTC)

[Mettaton's ears bolt up. He... could notice him? Somehow, despite the night he'd been having, Eren could taste him.

And yet he stood before him, in his line of sight. No, his new power was uncontrollable, and he was in a constant state of odd invisibility, as though on a plane of existence separate from this one. But somehow, Eren could taste him, and knew it was him.

There was something chilling about that, he decided. And yet... thrilling. There was danger in the air, but there was the tease of being seen; and if Mettaton was to fall victim to anything, it was a chance at being noticed. Eren was offering this. He was the first person all night to notice him.

His luminous gaze is locked on Eren's figure while his body remains so still that not even the sharpest of ears could pick up a sound out of him. The light of the sisters highlights his acquaintance's line-like pupils, crystalline horns felling a tree with ease as though he'd tear this place apart looking for the robot, if he had to. Mettaton doesn't move. And in not moving, he tempts fate. In not moving, he remains hidden to all other senses. Eren even rears back in a posture he knows is for a strike, and he's somehow pinpointed the robot without even seeing him.

Mettaton's lip peels back in something of a taunting snarl. With the lack of focus in Eren's gaze, he can tell: he doesn't even see him! He only tastes him, and that's where it ends! Mettaton is offended.]

And I'm a taste worth a game of chance, aren't I? [Cocky in spite of his fear, he's so scared he's not even moving. Yet he's also furious.] Because you're not even looking at me, darling. How dare you. Is this how you treat a guest?

[Unfortunately, unnoticeability was a wretched thing. There was a chance his voice could even be ignored by Eren: the only way to circumvent his present circumstance was to touch him, unless Eren got lucky and managed to overcome the boundaries of notice. And Mettaton wanted to be noticed, even at his demise. He hates feeling like a ghost, and his head wasn't making much sense, prioritizing his ego, his safety, his fear, and his temptation in cycles.

That was ego. And this, for a fleeting moment, is fear:]

What are you... doing?

Edited (bad punctuation) 2020-11-10 22:08 (UTC)

[ it's eren's second masquerade here, and he shows for the possibility of easing nerves that always seem tense somehow. his clothes are a sleeveless inspiration to what could comfortably fit on a dragon that's always moving, so everything he wears it at a descent mix of party-appropriate and free. yes. free. there's no mask to hide his identity, just one impaled through its empty into one of his horns as a decoration.

he takes a break from drinking, for the most part, and ends up gravitating toward the empty pool tables. he's never seen these before and stalks around the frame, runs his hands across felt and studies every corner from the nets to the balls. and the stick. hm. he can get an idea on how to play this. get the balls into the net. sounds simple enough.

eren jaeger takes the stick by its thinnest end and prepares to swing the thicker end onto a yellow ball, being aimed at a blue one. it won't go well, mind. ]

[ it felt like the wind. the robot's voice fell to a whisper and made the dragon's ears prick up almost as a third set of triangle horns that try to filter the noise of the tree leaves shivering and the ground thumping. where there was something, there was nothing.

his neck remains the same, a pretzel, a near figure eight close to his thorax and iridescent chest marking the cracks of light and heat from an angry fire. as it comes close to the grass, the almost-contact forces the small earthy blades to curl into dryness, to shrivel and lose the life it held to the fever of his body. in his movement, he steps right by mettaton, he turns, he searches . . . and his tail drags a circle behind where the rabbit should be, decorated with a marvelous stack of thorny, equally gem-like spines turned needles. ]

You know what the Wilde is for. [ the dragon's voice drumrolls into a begging sort of purr. oh, he was hungry . . . he was hungry and he was offended. why was the puca straying from his sights—? did he not want to spend time with him? entertain him? was he frightened? upset? was he wanting something of him that eren had yet to approve . . . or even be aware of? he assumes this ghastly voice speaks of what he does out here, or, maybe he's just being purposefully dodgy. ] But why would you hide from me—?

[ maybe it wasn't even mettaton at all. maybe it was an illusionary pest. a nightmare moth. d̷̨i̵n̵̕͜n͠er̨ . . . ]

[ and viren hadn't been quite so preoccupied by the pool tables, but lingering about a circle of people chatting, listening and mostly disagreeing with so many of the opinions (as he's wont to do), when he hears the smack of wood against resin, and a little too close for comfort, at that; he just barely finds himself missed by a flying one. it collides against the ground, unpleasantly. ]

Who—

[ he rounds on where the noise originated, prepared to chide (it's been an exhausting night already, frankly, in that respect)- ]

[ ah. ]

[ culprit spotted, viren deflates, just a bit. ]

Eren.

[ a puff of a sigh. ]

You're wielding that like a club.

[ damn . . . a miss. a miss that nearly takes someone’s skull out, he thinks, and very carefully, eren turns . . . away . . . and faces the most adjacent wall, proceeding to inspect his stick and aim a swing at the next one. a slower swing, a tap, maybe? so he won’t hit anyone. he’s caught anyway. ]

How else are you supposed to hit it?

[ like baseball. come on. (he doesn’t know a thing about baseball beyond it involving a ball, a bat and a glove). eren’s wording is straightforward and brash, but he doesn’t mean to sound arrogant. he simply really doesn’t know what other way was meant for this empty bar game. ]

[ viren stoops to fetch the misguided ball, then pulling himself nearer to eren's side to roll it back onto the table. he takes a spare pool cue. an eyebrow arcs, and with a pointed nod as he (hopefully) has garnered the other's attention fully - ]

[ he ducks nearer to the table, end of the stick lifted, and emulates a jabbing motion with it. ]

Like so.

[It was incredible, how different Dragons could be from one to another. He remembers still the look of Soren in the depths of the basement, practically frothing with ferality and completely beyond sense. Unhinged, inhuman, bestial. But Eren is the same in this moment, in a chilling sort of way. His was an imposing fury that made the world around him wither and die, as though expecting that Mettaton would bow in the same way.

He wouldn't. Unseen by Eren, Mettaton wrinkles his nose and bares his (less impressive by a long shot) teeth. He wouldn't bend like the grass because he was Mettaton, but also because he's a Puca, and he's scared. Yes, he is scared, as Eren curls that spiny tail about his petrified figure.

Both Dragon and Puca are horribly offended, Eren offended at Mettaton's dodgy presence that seems like the wind, pathetic and illusory; Mettaton offended that Eren deigned to overlook him just like everyone else, rubbing it in his face that he'd somehow lost even the tangibility that corporealization brought. But if Mettaton had a heart, it would be as quick as a hare's.]

How— Are you blind?! [He sounds put off. Mettaton wants to cross his arms indignantly, but his Puca instincts have him frozen save for running his mouth like a damn fool. (He doesn't think he's being a fool right now.) Yet his tone evens out after a snort:] Or maybe... you just can't see what's right in front of your eyes. Ah ha ha... Hide from you? Actually, you should feel flattered that I stand before you, in plain sight!

[Mettaton has had only a few experiences with the Wilde. The ones that don't involve being hunted or running away involve... more being-a-Puca, giving into primal, base desire. He smirks darkly, but Mettaton can't even strike a pose when he wants to. He loathes being a Puca sometimes. Despite this petrification, his voice is amused and steady and vicious.]

What the Wilde is for. What could you mean, except— Oh my... Eren. Darling. Are you coming onto me?

[After offending him by being incapable of seeing him?! How dare he. This is the worst attempt at flirting ever!]

[ viren's here just to break his balls, he sees. he watches on and allows a hefty sort of silence to build when it wasn't what he was expecting. it's not so . . . aggressive, and that somehow seeped some of the fun from it, but what does he know (nothing, from the looks of it).

cue in his hand, eren emulates the movement shown to him, hitting the ball and causing it to roll with a crack against another. ]

. . . That's all?

[ well, no, that's not completely it, viren wants to say -- his expression does so instead, holding his tongue with the thought. eren receives a bit of a flat look. ]

[ it easily occurs to him how ludicrous he could make this game. ]

What did you expect next? For us to stick-fight?

[ the frisky comment goes right over the dragon’s horns, all in favor of his neck slithering, again, into a sideways S formation, tight and locked below. his eyes con only fixate on an estimated point. right there. in the middle of the cage he creates. ]

I’m . . . Right over you.

[ aren’t i? he doesn’t need to ask. the voice, the smell, the taste bundling at the very tip of a now rapidly shooting tongue down to his target. mettaton needs to stop talking, needs to stop prodding and dipping his words into such repulsive play that eren could see in two different ways. was he blind, could he not see what was in front of him? wasn’t that what was happening to his day to day life? his offense escalates until fumes crackle from flared nostrils, the only sound amidst a large, large monster going so absolutely silent.

a thick ribbon of saliva dribbles from the dragon’s teeth, his skull held in a complete slanted angle. if mettaton were lucky, he’d move— because the dragon strikes as quick as the serpent his body emulates, springing the muscle of his neck into an arrowhead: his jaws pull open into a disjointed divergence and, without a single lick of preservation, dives into a tight snap. mettaton would see the back of his brimming throat coming alight, hundreds of teeth and heat that scorched and dried the grass and trees itself. ]

[As a Puca... He just couldn't help himself with the ~sensual commentary~.

Eren doesn't need to ask. Mettaton was close enough to taste, and he felt cemented to the spot. A split between his personality as Hotland's idol, and the Monster he'd become, a succumbing to his natural instinct of fear that only grows as Eren evokes a memory of Soren, of danger, where the robotic Puca had otherwise lived a life without.

Eren hoped he'd stop talking, and Mettaton is finally rendered mute, legs as taut as springs. His ears are upright and the air itself weighs heavily over them.

Before he knows it, Eren lunges. Mettaton barely, scarcely leaps clear into the air on powerful legs in the nick of time, pulling his legs close to his torso. It's primal; it's self-preservation, and Eren clips his shin with his snout. But that contact would be all it took to see him clearly, and Mettaton's airborn, gaze luminous and fur black as night, body rigid as he prepares himself to kick whatever gets close to his legs — be it Eren or the ground, whichever came first.

But somewhere in the back of his mind, he knew that it had happened before: Eren could catch him this way with just the right twist of his neck. He can't think about it in any definition, but it's the precognitive sense for danger that's already to come, a sense that arrives too late.]

[ you know what? from flatness to flatness . . . that was probably the most exciting thing he's heard tonight, and quite literally makes a move to whack viren by the midsection. ]

It's not a bad idea.

No.

[ bad. eren is not a cat, or else the sentiment might warrant a spritz from a water bottle. alas, if he doesn't stop short of hitting him in the midsection with the stick, viren will just... kind of let that happen. ]

If we're to play, we're going to play properly. [ that's what viren says, anyway - he knows rules can be stupid: ] Will you listen to the rules?

[ it’s a valid course of action even if he’s not a cat, survey corpse agree. the world agrees. as much as eren would like to make up his own rules right now and fight to the death with these sticks, he’s curious enough to choose to hear about how the game actually works. things don’t actually work without the right rules (and you should break them once in a while). ]

I’m listening.

You use the end of your stick. The aim is to hit your designated balls -- stripes, or solids -- [ all of which he has helpfully pointed out!!!: ] into the holes along the sides. After you have done so, you hit the eight ball, that black one, into one of the holes. Doing so beforehand has you immediately losing the game.

[ he grabs the triangle thing. time to set this baby up. ]

You can continue hitting balls so long as, in each turn, you get one of your balls into a hole.

[ he's neatened the balls into a triangle formation. ]

Questions, so far?

[ the clap of his teeth into the wilde earth uplifts soil and quakes it in his bolt recovery for the ball of fur jouncing away. he’s too late now, he should’ve stopped and left when he had the chance to (though eren would still give him little of it, as soon as his scent was a particle dense enough for his tongue to grasp). the dragon’s shriek is horrid and cringing like the sluggish drag of metal upon glass, it shivers even the thickest of trees, their leaves and the air gone still. bats and birds flee from the chaotic explosion of sound and movement that carelessly bulldozes their homes, tramples them in rippling, striking talons that have him catching up in only two strokes at once.

again, the dragon’s splitting maw is upon mettaton, hot and scorching the plant life it engulfs to black by mere proximity. he doesn’t miss his mark, but he doesn’t hit the bull’s eye. the wyvern’s fangs, like a row of swords layered by more swords, split the puca’s metal limb from his body the instant pressure is applied. the beast’s head snaps in a whip motion to pull in, and feels the utmost disappointment when the part he’s snapped doesn’t fill the spaces between his gums with at least a little pop and burst of ooze.

whatever the puca is doing until then, he has but a second to get a head start: eren spits the mangled arm out, pointed ends uneven but attractive for just a moment as it glints there, dripping and fuming—

but he’s hungry. ]

[ it was strangely discomforting to be stripped from his own magical quirks, but it hadn't put a pause on any of his strengths and weakness, behavior or draconic habits. the hunger still rumbled in his belly when something angered him, but the winter chill had dampened his will to truly bother. eren was still affected by the cold, and now, without even the heat of his breath sack devoid of fire, he's left trying his best to use enchanted layers of clothes, blankets over his shoulders, everything that made him a walking lump of something that looked as if it should be sleeping rather than out here. what was he doing?

manual labor. this part of town still had ways to go even when he'd been working on it for nearly three weeks, every day. he would've finished much, much sooner if he could handle it: peculiar, the passerbys that know eren, that they'd find him picking up average bulks of broken wood, actually using tools rather than his bare hands to take mangled house frames apart and into planks. the planks, he'd carry four to five at most, and even struggle with his balance until the middle of them were each on his shoulder.

he's making an effort, he's tiring out— he's not using his dragon strength, all thanks to the cuff of binding magic strapped to his ankle. ]

[She'd... seen some of the destruction, of course. It didn't run through too many of the areas she frequented, but it was difficult to miss. Besides, she could hear the murmurs - nothing specific, but something about brute dragons and destructive tendencies, and she feels that old energy in the back of her mind that sets her hunter instincts on edge.

The same one that led her to threaten all the Monsters in this world. The kind that nearly saw her in a fight with Mhairi on her first arrival. She'd since made a tenuous peace with the Monsters, and the fact most of them retained their faculties, but in the face of this kind of destruction...

Well, all that happens in the back of her mind is a niggling little voice that says I told you so and reaffirms that maybe her Hunter mindset is right. Maybe some day all that's going to happen is the Monsters will turn on them all, and show themselves to be no better than Beasts.

Eren is difficult to miss, even when she's just walking about town, doing some shopping for the upcoming holidays, and there's a bustle in the streets. What is odd is how he looks - she knows him to become sluggish during the colder months, she discovered this the past winter, but he's worse than usual. And he seems to be struggling with things he should be otherwise capable of.

She misses the anklet at first, because she's more watching the way he seems overburdened by a few wooden planks, and it's just as she sees one about to tilt down and probably fall that she finally steps in, lifting the back end of them up to rebalance them.] ... Is the cold really this bad for you?

tatakai

october 💥 2020

@mettaton, ft. mikasa; october 31st (cw: body horror)

november 💥 2020

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@viren, masquerade

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1/2

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december 💥 2020

@maria

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