bottlecaplogs | [closed] some get dealt simple hands

Jack has never seen a catapult before, much less built one. But they got supplies and instructions, and that's all he actually needs to figure it out. They're both prodigies in their own way, it'll be fine. The real problem is that his big teddy bear paws don't actually give him that much dexterity... and he does have the better paws for it out of the two of them.

He's just finished very carefully sliding a dowel into place (and transferring some honey from his paws onto it, they are... probably going to have to clean this thing first) when he glances up at Eleanor.

It doesn't seem it, because he's talked even less now that they know each other (he didn't even say anything when he set up his bed next to hers), but he is intensely curious about her. He's just... not sure where to start, when he's limited by how much he can say in the first place.

"Have you done this before?"

"Nope."

Her reponse comes quite quickly - near instantly, in fact. She has no experience in this whatsoever and is running purely on vibes. Which is fine. This is fine.

Eleanor is limited in what she can do by her flippers. She's relatively dexterous with them, in fairness, but she still needs Jack's actual fingers to do most of the heavy lifting if they have any hope of getting this done in good time. She's awkwardly slapping a peg into place to ensure it's in the hole as tightly as it can. Yep, seems about as secure as it'll get. No problem.

She glances over at him and tilts her head to the side. "I can assume you haven't, either?"

Jack shakes his head. It is similar to the mechanics of a grenade launcher if he squints... and he can imagine the schematics for that, even if he hasn't actually put one together. He's certainly fiddled around with one to upgrade it, although that was with the help of a machine.

"Easy, though."

Easy enough, since they have instructions and it's fairly good practice for Jack to learn hand-paw coordination all over again. He finds himself just... casting around for a conversation topic, figuring it will go faster with some exposition.

"How long have you..?" He waves, generally, toward the city buildings.

A Pokemon generally lacking certain fine motor skills makes a lot of the designs for machines (and anything adjacent to them) relatively simplistic, she's noticed. Something you could probably hand to a young child and watch them put together with minimal assistance. Sure, they're complicated and there are plenty of ways they could go wrong, but the actual methods in this instance especially feel that way. Not that she's complaining, it means the Miniors can go home faster.

She glances up, having half turned to go and grab some more rods. "Six months, as of this month. I think." She tilts her head to the side and frowns. The Little Sisters back home have to be okay by now, right..? A ship could have found them. And her mother.

Don't think about that.

"That's what you mean, right?"

He nods. Six months, that's... okay, so this probably isn't a temporary situation. Rapture was temporary, even if it was also sort of his entire life. Ten hours of torture, and then it was done, and he only sort of remembers being in Rapture before the surface. But this is... possibly the rest of his life, safe but without any sense of what happened to his daughters. Hopefully they're okay, they were with Tenenbaum. But there's no way to be completely sure.

He's not even completely sure they're safe with Tenenbaum, but he has to trust something. Otherwise he'll just tie himself in knots.

Jack has more questions, but he's struggling with the programming in his head again. His brow furrows a bit while he tries to come up with something, and then come up with the least amount of words to use. And all the while he keeps just... messing with the catapult.

"Hard to get used to... everything. Here."

But they've got time. Nothing but time.

"Yeah."

She's thought this to herself before, but she really hadn't expected him to be so... sad. Of all the things he could be, anyway. She'd heard conflicting stories back home and hadn't been entirely lucid for his rampage through the city. She remembers it, sure, but not well. Her understanding of him as a character was basically everyone arguing over what he did afterwards. The only facts she has are that, regardless of what he did with them, he hadn't left enough Little Sisters in the city to keep the ADAM flowing. But this didn't seem like a man who'd have killed them.

Eleanor drags another bundle of dowel rods over and begins to work at the hemp tying them together with her teeth, pulling away when they unceremoniously collapse. "Yeah."

She's not sure if she experienced the same thing as him. She definitely didn't. Her adjustment to the foreign body wasn't that hard - she almost prefers this one. Being a Brionne. But for Jack...?

"What's on your mind?" She tilts her head to the side, trying to push a little more. Test the waters a bit.

It's a good question. A lot of things are on his mind. It often feels like he's overwhelmed with thought until the second he tries to speak up, and then it all vanishes. And especially when someone else is nearby, he thinks some part of him is still waiting for instructions.

"Shell shock, mostly."

He's pretty sure that's what this is. He can't really remember how much he talked in his true memories, before Rapture, but doesn't feel normal for him. And certainly not this... constant feeling like he's going to wake up one day and be back in Rapture.

The smell in the Spire really doesn't help.

"...It's slow here."

And he's not actually sure if that's a good thing.

"I think that's how it's supposed to be."

'For normal people', she wants to add. But nobody here is normal, not really. ~~Let's ignore the Mayaka shaped elephant in the room.~~ A slow, relatively uneventful life. Perhaps not quite what Eleanor longed for, but close enough. She would've been in New York by now if she'd had her way, helping her sisters finally get home. Or having long done that.

She holds out a fistful of rods to him. "Is that such a bad thing?"

No one is normal, but they don't seem quite... Rapture levels of eccentric. Jack has to wonder if he'd be cut out for living here even without the trauma, given how much he struggles with being left to his own devices. He's just... truly not sure what to do with himself, most of the time.

But he shakes his head, while he takes the rods from her and works on figuring out where they need to be placed. No, it's not a bad thing. More like... Jack is too much for everything here.

"Just... new."

It makes him wonder how he was supposed to raise the little sisters Tenenbaum entrusted him with, if he doesn't even know how to walk into a crowd without hearing horror strings.

"Well... you have me to help. Okay?"

She smiles at him reassuringly. If nothing else, she can hold his hand. And help him settle. And then, eventually, she hopes he can find friends of his own just as she did. She scoops up the remainder of the rods and begins working on the other side of the catapult, poking her head over the mechanisms to continue talking to him.

"I'm here for you when you need it."

There's a pause, before Jack returns the smile. They're rare from him, but he really does appreciate her being here. There are... so, so many worse people he could have run into from home.

Rather than speaking, he reaches over to scritch the top of her head. Which means that Eleanor now also gets to be a tiny bit sticky and honey-scented.

Eleanor blinks in surprise, before just... leaning into it. And letting out a chirping sound. The bubble-like ears on her head fold down and her eyes close contently.

The stickiness is a little offputting, but she's been handled by people with far dirtier hands. This is nice. Jack is nice.

Oh, that noise is so cute! Jack ends up laughing softly, and patting her one more time before going back to his work. He just needs to put a few more of these rods into place, and... the catapult looks like it's done? At least, it's the right shape, he supposes they should test it before launching a living being with it.

He glances at Eleanor before placing a rock in the basket, mostly making sure she doesn't think it needs anything first.

She gives the catapult a once-over after lodging a few of her own dowels into place. It... seems done? She thinks. She wouldn't know for sure. She glances over at Jack and nods.

"May as well."

Jack nods back seriously, and pulls the lever. The rock goes flying... and lands far enough away that they can't see where it ended up. Success!

His tail starts wagging aggressively. Time to start launching Miniors.

Eleanor giggles, clapping in delight. "We should let them know we're done! Come on!"

It's silly, really. The amount of childish joy she has over such a task. But it's fun!

Jack had been nervous when they first signed up for combat - although he hadn't actually been very clear about what was making him nervous. It's not that he doesn't want to fight anyone, that part is fine. It's that fighting is different here, and he's already gotten a sense for that in the week or two that he's been around. There's an expectation not to kill, and he's never actually left someone alive who hurt him before.

He hadn't mentioned it. Even if he could speak more, he didn't want to scare Catrina off. But he'd been quietly determined when they set out to fight the wave of transformed Ditto. And now they're in the thick of it, with Jack wasting zero time before picking an "Oddish" and whaling on it with Thunder Punches and Fury Swipes. He doesn't even try to dodge any attacks in return - he's just tanking everything, continuing to move forward with the clear goal of killing this thing before he moves on to the next one.

To be fair with Jack...Catrina is no stranger to violence whatsoever. From the infamous 'apology' pies to her very own former cremate, Biggs, who pretty much ate everything and everyone, Jack is considered pretty nice normal to average at best with the beat down of the weird Pokemon in Catrina's mind. Good kid, can throw a good punch.

So when the Oddish or at least what they think are Oddish, Catrina wastes no time in letting loose the Smog upon the weird blueberry onion creatures. "Just remember, if yah kill it, yah eat it!"

...Can Oddish or for that matter, can Ditto soup well?

The words force Jack to pause, and glance over at her. Does he... actually have to eat these things? He's not sure what they are, but that also means he doesn't know the first thing about preparing them.

He's not opposed to it either, but... maybe cooked. Maybe in a stew.

The thought distracts him long enough to be looking away when the Oddish under him uses Petal Dance - he has no idea what the hell these petals are that are floating around him, but he's reminded with a shock of fighting Rosebud. He knows they cannot be good.

Jack tries to leave the dust-devil of petals, but a few of them slice into him painfully. He ends up letting out a pitiful bark, in an attempt to get Catrina's attention.

Did those...did those blueberry radish monsters just shoot murder petals at the teddy bear child? OH HELL NO! Catrina is seeing red and damn it all, this candle is about to ruin these Dittos' day.

"STAND BEHIND ME JACK, I'LL PROTECT YOU!" Catrina might not be the best of medics ~~and isn't...you do not want first aid from Catrina~~, but Catrina is a good little brawler of sorts for the most part. Scrunching up her face like she bit into a lemon Catrina goes to use Psychic...

A bunch of rocks start levitating up from the ground..

Oh Dittos, there's an incoming psychic rock storm coming provided by a very angry candle...

Jack ends up sort of frozen in place at first, just... staring at her. Because across his entire span of memories - false or real - he can't actually remember someone rushing in to protect him of their own volition. His false memories painted him as the sort of cocksure go-getter that never needed rescuing, and his real memories... well, he's never been valuable enough to warrant it.

He blinks back to reality the next time those petals slice into him, and he scrambles to get out of the way while the Dittos turn their attention to Catrina. He doesn't want to move too far away - just far enough to duck behind cover and lick some of the honey off his paws. It should give him some health, at least, even if he's lost his human(?) body's terrifyingly efficient metabolism.

And he's keeping an eye on Catrina, just in case she needs help. Because he is absolutely willing to jump back in regardless of how dangerous it is for him.

You can hear that ominous boss music now as the rocks rain upon the Oddish disguised Ditto and it was relentless. Catrina would've been cackling maniacally at the scene, but she wasn't. No, Catrina was far too pissed off to even register just how successful this was.

Some of the 'Oddish' start running off from the war machine known as Catrina and her Psychic induced rock storm...Catrina what the hell did you do!?

"You better fucking run and be sure to tell yah little buddies about it!" Catrina goes to risk a glance and check on how Jack was holding up.

"Yah doing okay there, Jack?" Catrina...there's still some OdDittos there..

...What a woman.

Jack blinks a little dumbly when Catrina checks on him, and coughs up a bit of blood. He can still compartmentalize his pain, so... he's fine. He can deal with this later.

"Gee..."

Another OdDitto moves toward Catrina, and Jack moves without thinking. Grabbing whatever is closest to him - a rock - and Flinging it at the thing. It hits the Ditto square in the face, and Jack's tail wiggles proudly even if he's not quite ready to fully rejoin the fight.

Ah shit...Welp, maybe someone has healing moves on them to help Jack out with the blood coughs. It does, however, cements to Catrina's ghoulish little brain that these OdDittos deserves unholy terror at the hands of an absolute sideshow of a candle.

....Damn that was a good shot from Jack though! Catrina is fully impressed by the rock throwing marksmanship of Jack.

"Good job Jack, you kicked that mean blueberry radish's ass perfectly!"

Yep...looks like throwing rocks at the OdDittos is working perfectly as they start retreating. To where...well that sure is a mystery of sorts..

Jack lets out a startled laugh, just because he isn't completely used to that kind of crass language. Swearing, sure, but... even when he was listening to Atlas and Ryan bicker in his ears, they tended to be more eloquent with their insults.

But... good, the Dittos are finally retreating. Jack glances around, before gesturing for Catrina to come sit with him so they can both take a breather.

"Are you hurt?"

Catrina is a candle of little class or eloquence, she curses like she breathes. On the other note, yessss those awful awful Ditto are retreating away and Catrina puffs up her chest or at least is considered a chest.

"I'm doing good, what about you? Let's get those cuts cleaned up and then we can get some desserts after all this."

After all this nonsense with the Ditto, getting an absurd amount of dessert items was the best route to go as a treat.

Jack's puffball tail starts wagging immediately. Treating his wounds is good, yes, but more importantly-

"Milkshakes?"

He's never actually had one before, but he has memories of them. They seem nice, and like the pinnacle of sweet treat for a young man from the 1950's. It's just... very difficult to get fresh milk at the bottom of the ocean, go figure.

"Hell yeah, milkshakes sound good to me. Let's go for those then, my treat. What flavor would you like?" Catrina goes into treating wounds mode the best a candle can via picking out the petals.

There were Miltank in town and Moomoo milk was hella good from what Catrina tasted beforehand. Clearly, these would be the most superior milkshakes out there at the Cafe.

Now...how bad are the injuries?

Flavors? Uhhhh right, he knows... so much about food. His false memories tell him that chocolate is his favorite, but he can't actually... visualize what any of them taste like.

"Strawberry."

He can work his way through all of the flavors, he figures, but he has no memory whatsoever of what strawberries taste like. ~~What a sad life he's had.~~

As for injuries... he's definitely still got a stitch in his breath, and cuts all over his body, but he doesn't seem to be moving differently. In fact, despite the blood still staining his chin fur, he genuinely doesn't remember that he's injured in the first place.

Hot damn...Jack was handling pain a lot better than what Catrina would and without swearing up a storm too. Catrina was throughly impressed with him, still....that rare and fleeting thing called a moral compass is rearing its ugly head. She would have to get Jack to go see the clinic for the bloody cough ups.

Catrina is putting on her adulting cap and sucking it in with having to deal with the dreadful pink beasts.

"Deal and we'll go for a flight of milkshakes too after seeing the clinic."

This is the most well behaved Catrina has been...it's an ill omen indeed...

Jack has survived one wave of Ditto so far, and learned a little about fighting them. He still hasn't really paid attention to the nuances of fighting other Pokemon, could not tell you about Type match-ups or any of that. But he's got his trusty Thunder Punch, and a mission to get through this without himself or Emporio falling unconscious.

To that end, the moment he sees a "Trapinch" snapping its jaws near Emporio, he reacts with extreme violence. Grabbing it by the face, pinning it to the ground and slamming a Thunder Punch directly into its face before just punching it into unconsciousness. There are more enemies around, but his instincts still strongly insist on making sure it can't get back up and cause more harm... so Emporio might want to stop him before he curb-stomps this thing to death. Or worse, gets hit by another one while he's distracted.

"WOAH-!"

Well, Emporio would normally do his best to stop this from going sour, but something very strange is happening between the 'Trapinch' and Jack. Normally he'd be quick to say that 'thunder punch' won't do anything. Trapinch is, after all, ground type. But these are Ditto, so that shouldn't be a factor...right?

Right???

Except indeed, the Ditto giggles as the rest of the crowd pause to laugh for a little bit.

And Emporio clues in pretty quick from there. "J-Jack!!! Jack, I think they're immune to paralysis!!!"

~~They're so....Limber.~~

Jack pauses, letting out a frustrated noise at the Ditto giggling at him. It's- well, he honestly prefers it over the babbling of splicers, but it's still deeply bothering him to be laughed at while he's trying to fight.

But okay, he can't paralyze them. The one-two punch is not an option, but Thunder Punch still does damage them, and he has claws and teeth for Pete's sake.

Jack grips his claws into the Ditto and just starts repeatedly picking it up and slamming it into the ground. Which also doesn't stun it, but its short little Trapinch legs are struggling to get out of his grip. And just to make absolutely sure it's ~~hopefully just~~ unconscious, he blasts it a few more times with Thunder Punch.

He's going to run out of energy for those... very soon.

The swarm of giggles doesn't last too long- fortunately, or unfortunately. These Ditto are here to test their mettle after all, and testing their mettle means actually fighting. Emporio soon finds himself back to back with the bear regardless of what Jack might want, beating at a nearby 'trapinch' with his bonemerang bat.

It's after he batters one back enough to get breathing room again that he turns around and...Uh.

"D...Do you still have energy for that kind of move!?"

The good news is that by the time Emporio turns around, Jack has successfully knocked the Ditto unconscious. The bad news is that the next time he tries to charge up a Thunder Punch... nothing happens. It actually hurts if he strains too hard, which feels a whole lot like being out of EVE. Fuck.

So, the answer is no. And he hasn't taken the time to learn about berries yet, so he is out of energy for that move, but that's- fine. He can deal with that. He's dealt with worse... ignoring the fact that he's died several times by now and always had a handy Vita-Chamber to revive into. It's fine, Jack also hasn't thought that far ahead.

So for now, he just switches over to abusing Fury Swipes over and over again. And occasionally just straight up biting the Ditto that get too close.

That is one Ditto, good job?

Emporio would offer a berry, but this isn't really the time. If he tries to get close, he's probably going to get caught in...uh.

That.

"Uh- Uhhh..!"

And it seems to be going...well?

Maybe too well. Knocking back another Ditto, he tenses when he realizes something vital about the ditto getting swiped at. "I- I think you got that one!! They're down!!"

Right. Right. Okay. Jack's fur fluffs up as he shakes himself off, and moves on to another Ditto. He's still in the process of absorbing that... he doesn't need to wait until they're dead, knocked out is fine. Even if it makes his hackles raise when he moves past a Ditto who's breathing shakily while unconscious.

Another Ditto gets a little too close to Emporio and Jack grabs one of the unconscious Ditto to Fling it at them. Which... misses, but at least startles them enough to give Emporio an opening.

Oh huh, Jack knows Fling too...

He barely has the time to process one ditto slamming into the other before he realizes his window is closing, bone club ready to deploy as such. The tool is flung much like he would any other projectile, but Bonemerang has always been its own thing and that thing is something that can at least hit multiple Pokemon. It strikes across the Ditto that got flung, but also bounces off it to hit the one behind it, and then comes along back to do the same in reverse.

The cubone nods as both therefore go down. "That's a few others down for the count..!! How many left..."

Jack stops to watch the Bonemerang flying around, and his tail starts wagging excitedly. That thing... is so cool, and he wants to figure out how to do that. For the first time in a while, he really wishes he had his research camera.

But- okay, yes, focus. He glances around, and... the Ditto are starting to look less interested in fighting, or at least less willing to risk it with these two. One of them ventures closer, but takes off running as soon as Jack turns his attention toward them.

"...Safe?"

Hopefully???

And gone, and gone, and gone-

The remaining ditto are certainly wobbling a lot more...nervously, and so Emporio takes a chance to look at Jack. Just in time to see that one ditto manage to run before it even has the chance to get weak and goopy, wow.

...

Oh!

"Uh! Yeah, I'm fine I think! I think we might be done here, actually..."

...

hey what's that weird vibrating in the ground

Jack is just starting to relax when the ground erupts right underneath Emporio, shooting heated rocks up toward him. Jack lets out a startled bark, and scrambles over to try and help... which does not happen in time, he's still incredibly slow.

But he manages to pounce on the Ditto that attacked, and spends a few seconds dealing with it. After that, when it slips back into being pink goop, he feels better about checking on Emporio.

"UGh..." Slowly, and dizzily, Emporio sits up.

...And...stares. The other ditto, needless to say, are tearing off as fast as possible. How the remaining goop isn't dead is honestly a good question, but it's sort of inching and slinking away whatever the case.

Emporio for his part is slowly blinking wide, wide eyes at the whole thing, and gradually turning to look at Jack.

"...What did you do to them..?"

Jack needs a moment himself, to remember where he is and get back into the present. It's odd... he expected some of these lapses in time would go away now that he's not technically a splicer anymore (he thinks??) but he's starting to think this is just... what he's like.

Although he supposes he's not sure what's normal for a human, anyway.

"Didn't kill it."

Which... he's sort of looking at Emporio for confirmation on whether that's a good thing. He still feels like maybe they should be killing these things - they're dangerous, after all.

After a few seconds, far too long to let any answer sink in, Emporio nods. ...Is he...alright? Emporio might not be alright.

Still. He nods again- "...Oh. That's...That's good! Yeah. ...Thanks for not doing that," he manages to stammer, watching the last of the ditto clear out.

"They're retreating now it seems, at least..."

[closed] some get dealt simple hands

Eleanor - Not A Minior Matter

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

ICON BEING USED AS GOD INTENDED LETS GOOO

PRECIOUS BABY...

no subject

no subject

no subject

Catrina - Ditto To That

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Well...Catrina got a nat 20 on her dice roll with the Ditto...

cw: blood for comedic effect

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

Emporio - Ditto To That

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject