NOVEMBER TEST DRIVE MEME

[sodder]

NOVEMBER 2019 TEST DRIVE MEME

Welcome to November's Test Drive Meme! This month's Test Drive's theme is: DEATH/ZOMBIE HORROR.

All Test Drive Memes contain at least one clue to the Deerington's upcoming in-game events for the month! Keep your eyes peeled! But...not literally.

Characters may die during TDMs, but you do not need to count it towards a game-canonical death unless you want to. Consider it a freebie. All TDMs can be considered game canon as TDMs introduce minor aspects about the world of Deerington that can be revisited by characters later on in the game. You may also use TDMs for your application writing sample as well as AC.

CW: Possible mild cannibalism, organs (including pictures of fake food that looks like organs), mutant insect in linked picture, blood, sensations of starvation, possible binge eating, possible binge drinking.
Don't forget to tag content whenever necessary. Have fun!

Prompt One
Prompt Two
Character Arrival
Master Navigation

NOT BEAST NOR KIN

The blood and organs that have been festering in the ground and walls of Deerington seem to not only be attracting rats at this point, but something far more dangerous and... just plain gross. These deadly looking maggots are roughly the size of an average human. They’re slithering in an out of the ground, filling up holes where some organs seem to have burst open, or writhing around in the wake of the red waves that have left bloody puddles in the street. If you keep your distance, they’re mostly just disgusting to watch, adding to the feeling of utter decay that the town has gone into.

But those who wander too close or who are unfortunate enough to go by a nest of these maggots without noticing could end up swarmed. They can leap farther than something that large should physically be capable of and the sharp teeth on the end of their bodies will pierce through even the toughest of skin and bone. Once they latch on, they won’t let go; not until they’ve finished their meal. If you aren’t quick, the blood loss will be, and you could end up an evening snack for a whole group of these creatures.

They are fairly easy to kill, luckily. Average weapons seem to take them down or you can smash their heads (if you can call it that) with a few good stomps from a boot. The only trouble is how quick they move and how strong they are; you might need to call for help to get away from them when you get cornered by too many of these monsters.

ALL YOU CAN EAT

Maggots aren’t the only things that want to eat, though! And it seems that the community center is aware of that as well. Advertisements are strewn all over town for an all you can eat buffet that will be set up, not even an entrance fee required (though donations are welcome at the door if you’re feeling generous). No one in their right mind would want to go and get food from a party into Deerington at this point though, right? Of course not. You’re way too clever for that.

Except that as the party draws closer, anyone who saw the advertisements will find themselves slowly feeling like they’re starving. There’s a hallow belly feeling that no amount of food you consume will ever be able to fill. It feels like you might go crazy from how bad the hunger gets, craving something to fill your stomach, anything... And in the back of your mind, you might remember the buffet. You might start to feel a strange realization that the food they’re offering will actually help get rid of your cravings and you’ll be drawn to the party no matter how adamant you’ve been that it’s not a good idea.

The spread they offer isn’t something that should be appetizing to most on a regular basis; raw, very clearly human organs are laid out across the table on fairly decorative plates. A fountain of what looks like blood is put up in place of chocolate for you to dip your food into. No matter how disgusted you might normally feel, you find yourself practically drooling at the mouth and you’re quick to grab a plate and dive in.

At least the drinks look like they’re normal; sodas, beer, wine, champagne, and liquors ready to create your favorite cocktails. A menu will give you an idea of what pairs best with each organ, so make sure you select something that goes perfectly with your plate of intestines.

What would a Deerington party be without something tricky attached to all this. Even the smallest bites of any of the organs will offer sudden changes to the consumer, each power growing stronger the more that you eat.

• Eating BRAINS will make it so that you are able to hear another person’s thoughts. Anyone standing near by, really. They’ll trickle in slowly at first, but the more that you eat, the more you’ll hear, and eventually it could become overwhelming. Sometimes you can focus in on just one person if you stare at them intently, but that could make you look like a creep. Maybe you should just go somewhere quiet until it passes.


• Eating a HEART will make you feel compelled to confess your emotions to someone. Maybe a specific person or maybe it’s towards a complete stranger, but you just want to get everything out onto the table. You’re overcome with feelings so strong you don’t know how to contain them anymore and you’ve just got to get them out somehow.


• Eating LIVER will cause you to want to drink. A lot. You might find that you’re not able to get enough, even. It doesn’t make you immune to the alcohol though, so it’s got the potential to lead some pretty nasty alcohol poisoning if you aren’t careful. Characters who usually can’t get drunk will find that consuming liver makes them a total lightweight. Woops. Better have someone help you walk home.


• Eating the STOMACH will make you want to eat everything. You’ll no longer feel starving, but you just want to taste any food that’s near you, and you won’t stop no matter how full you feel. It’s not just organs, but any food consumed outside of the buffet. It might be a bad time to go to Peter’s Pizza for a late night meal.


• Eating INTESTINES will give you an abundance of courage. You’ll find that you’ve got guts you never knew you had and it might make you willing to go tell your crush how you feel about them, or tell off that one guy who’s been pissing you off for weeks, or maybe you might start to think it’s cool to go scale a building or fight a monster when you don’t have any skill sets to actually take one down. Hopefully you don’t do anything you’ll regret in the morning— assuming you don’t get yourself killed doing something stupid, of course.


• Eating EYEBALLS will allow you to obtain the memory of the first person that you touch. Depending on how much you’ve eaten, you may just see a small snippet or you could get sucked in to a full and heavy flashback. The memory will feel like it takes place in real time, but by the time that it’s over, you’ll find that whoever you touched is only just starting to ask you what’s wrong — or tell you to watch where you’re going, buster.


All affects from the food will wear off within about an hour if you’ve only had a bite — or they could last up to twelve if you really stuffed yourself. Please be sure to obtain OOC permission from any players for the brain and eyeball prompts!

Character Arrival

You can read how all characters arrive in Deerington here.

There is not a collective "all these characters showed up at the exact same moment" occurrence in Deerington. Since characters fall asleep, die, or pass out at various times throughout all their worlds, it wouldn't make too much sense if they arrived in game all at the exact same time. There should be some discrepancy between character arrival, whether by a couple minutes, hours, or even days up to a week.

The players are entirely in control of how/when they want to play their characters arriving in Deerington. For TDMs, you can play it like your character has just arrived and that can be maintained as your game canon, or you can wait until game events for that moment. Or you don't need to acknowledge it at all. The flexibility for character allows a bit more of an organic feel to the character arrival situation, so please play it to whatever feels right for you.

If you are interested in having an "arrival" introduction for one of your TDM prompts, you are more than welcome to explore that option.

Comments

grady numbers | fargo (tv)

[dividingline]

from the housetops to the gutters - arrival

Waking up is a surprise. It's not so much the act itself as the fact that it takes place in what clearly isn't, in fact, a freezing cold motel room in the middle of Bumfuck Nowhere, Minnesota, with a broken heater and Wrench snoring in the next bed over. In fact, he wakes up in a pretty nice bedroom, all mid-century decor and wreathed in peaceful silence. It's actually kind of nice. For about five seconds. Then his fight or flight instincts kick in.

Grady throws back the bedsheets, gets tangled in them on his way up, and falls out of the bed onto the floor.

"What the fuck?" The floor doesn't seem to have any answers either, and remains solidly unreasonable as he pushes himself up and staggers out of the room, seeking some kind of clue as to his surroundings and the fact that he's alone(!) and unarmed(!!) and nowhere near where he was when he fell asleep.

An exit -- namely the front door -- presents itself. Ignoring the rest of the house, Grady takes it as a gift and stumbles out into the chilly nighttime air of.. well, it looks like a suburban town, but not the dull, flat Midwestern sprawl he's expecting. Instead there's forests and mountains and a weird blue thing in the sky. No snow. No motels. Everything smells like salt and blood.

His earlier enquiry bears repeating.

"What.. the fuck?"

from the ocean to the shore - beast or kin

Okay, so it's a dream. Or a nightmare. Either way, it's not real. So it feels more than a little unfair to Grady that it feels real. That it smells real. That the hideous monster maggot creatures he's alternating between bringing his heel down on top of and shooting when he can't reach them seem, in every way, to be perfectly real.

Grady's not quite made for this. He wasn't the kind of kid who grew up reading Lord of the Rings or The Neverending Story. He read car manuals and old copies of National Geographic he stole from the library. He didn't want to be told about something that didn't exist; that didn't interest him for a second. He wanted to understand the world around him, the world that seemed so often unfair and strange. Wanted to make sense of it all, if only for a little while.

And this? Doesn't make sense.

He talks while he works. He can't help himself, he's used to having someone to talk to.

"Gonna wake up any second now -- " stomp, squish, " -- gonna wake up and get breakfast -- " bang, wow those things really explode, " -- maybe eggs, some toast, okay maybe not eggs -- " there are a lot of them though, " -- gonna go find that bastard and do." Stamp. "The." Maggot all over his goddamn shoes. "Fucking. Job."

He brings his gun up to bid another maggot sayonara, except this time he gets a hollow click instead of a deeply satisfying rapport.

"Oh, shit."

[wwrench]

There are certain aches that will never leave you, no matter how far you get from the inciting incident. Over time you may grow a callous over the wound, or learn to hold your weight differently so as to protect it from repeated strain. You might find other means of dulling the sensation, whether in substance or the form of a distraction. But the pain will always remain, insisting acknowledgment in quiet moments of inactivity or times when something brushes too closely up against the place of that old wound.

Loss in Deerington may take on a different form than in the rest of the waking world, but it still hits with a pain all its own. Wrench has had too much of it in recent weeks. He's strived to be a savior, to fashion his hands into safety nets instead of the brutal tools he's come to know them for. But the man simply isn't built for rescue. So instead he stomaches loss after loss, subsisting on the small hope that they won't be permanent even as he feels his failure so acutely.

There are things that still demand his attention, and that for Wrench may be a blessing. There's a certain rhythm to life that he's found in this place. Odd jobs to fulfill, and students to tutor in sign. Sometimes helping shape their fingers through the letters of the alphabet makes him feel more alone than ever, but eventually, he knows there'll be more of them to talk to. He's heading back to the cabin, fresh from another lesson when he's struck all of a sudden by a familiar figure standing in the middle of the sidewalk, looking lost and confused.

The coiffed hair, the shape of the jaw, those unmistakable eyes... It's anger that Wrench feels rise in him first. Furious, destructive rage at this place that's taken so much and intends now to taunt him too. To mock his senses and give false hope to something he knows can't be. His footsteps are heavy with his approach, but when he's only twenty feet off he draws his pistol from its holster, takes aim at the back of that familiar head, and stamps his foot for the nightmare's attention.

[dividingline]

There's a certain familiarity to the place he's found himself in. The more Grady looks at it, the more it seems like he should know where he is. Like it's a postcard he's seen in a store, or something from a movie. He squints around at the houses, the little walks and the streets, trying to figure out where it's supposed to be, trying to sort his mind into some kind of order. The last time he checked he was asleep, so maybe this is just a really intense dream, right?

"Just a dream," he murmurs to himself, rubbing his hands together in the frigid air. Figures he would dream about being cold. Even his imagination can't stretch to getting him out of goddamn Minnesota.

Distracted, he doesn't hear the footsteps until the smack of one heavy boot against the sidewalk. He doesn't so much turn as startle in place, undignified but it's not like he's got anyone to impress here anyway. One hand automatically drops to his hip and in the split second that he remembers he hasn't got a gun he also recognises the figure standing before him, those wide shoulders and unruly curls and the goddamn fringe he loves to hate, so the sum total of his body language relaxes for the beat it takes for him to realise he's being held at gunpoint.

Automatically, he makes the universal gesture of 'let's everyone calm down a minute here', palms up and out, fingers spread. Then, with a frustrated growl, he gives that up for something more useful.

Hold on, what the fuck? What the fuck are you doing? What is this? His outflung arms beg the world to answer. He takes a small step forward, frowning as he takes in the sight of his partner. You look like shit.

[wwrench]

That moment of shock and startle satisfies Wrench like picking loose a scab; it is a pinprick of self-inflicted pain. Recent events have lessened the struggle it may otherwise have proven to hold his former partner like this. He's seen the destruction look-alikes can cause, and how cleverly this place can conjure them up and set them loose on unsuspecting Sleepers. Wrench knows the powers that control things have enough of his blood to do with it what they want. He can't know where they might've come by Grady's, but it isn't such a stretch. At least not until the hands raised in surrender shift and shape into something else entirely, and he's left watching the accented formation of words as familiar to him as the thoughts in his own head.

What seems most reasonable isn't necessarily truth in this place, but Wrench has more to lose in opening himself up to a desperate possibility. For five long years he's wondered after the body of the partner he never saw laid to rest. Five years spent wrestling with the possibility that the policewoman was mistaken, that Malvo was a liar. That Grady was still out there somewhere, searching for a way back. It's hard to find closure when you can't see it for yourself. Now the man stands before him, looking every bit the same as he did five years ago. Trapped in time, while Wrench has become something else in the years since his absence. Leaner, wilder, more hollow-eyed and unkempt.

Stop! Don't come closer. Wrench re-trains the barrel of the gun on Grady, his shoulders shaking with each heavy breath. He can sign, he can sign. He signs just like his partner. How did you get here?

[dividingline]

There's a desperate, wolfish quality to Wrench's stance that gives Grady enough pause to obey him, though normally -- and especially given he's just dreaming this whole thing -- he would have cheerfully told such an order to go fuck itself. Instead, he pauses to assess the situation. Wrench really does look like shit, like he's been running for days and doing that thing where he doesn't eat and doesn't sleep, trying to kid himself that if he doesn't stop he doesn't have to think about what he's doing. Grady's seen it before and it always makes him feel guilty, like he's failed him somehow, failed some duty of care.

But he also looks older. Just a little, around the eyes, in a way that turns something over between Grady's ribs.

How do you think I got here? The question brings back his obstinate frustration of being questioned by a figment of his own psyche, or whatever this whole deal is. I fell asleep, despite being half frozen and the amount of noise you somehow manage to make when you're not even fucking awake.

He pauses, rewinding a little. Frowns and tries not to feel the sense of impending doom creeping up the back of his neck.

What do you mean, how did I get here? Where are we?

[wwrench]

In the absent, hollow space created by a half-decade, some things are bound to start to fade. Wrench can tell himself that he remembers the exact shade of brown in Grady's eyes and the precise angle of each strand of hair on his head, but these are just stories intended to make him feel better. When he really stops to think, he's forced to admit the degradation of the picture in his mind's eye. It's harder and harder to recall now the smell of Grady's preferred hair products and the cut of his jaw beneath the thick beard. Wrench wants to say he'd know immediately, but the truth is there's just too much uncertainty. He keeps the gun trained, wanting desperately to believe but knowing the cruelty of this place and the danger of letting down his guard.

Both Logan and Kurt died once before this place, didn't they? The bounds of this strange imagined town seem not to obey the laws of mortality. It could be that they've reached even further back in time and plucked his partner from a place before Malvo, before the blizzard, before Grady's tired pleas and Wrench's own demands for meticulousness. But then why would he be asking where they are? Wouldn't he have gotten the letter?

Wrench is no more silent now than at any other time. Confusion makes him grumble over his own breaths, frustration seeping from him in ways unknown to him. A sigh, a wordless murmur, the scuffle of his boots on the pinkened concrete. He's desperate to give in to what he knows he shouldn't allow himself. Like the naive peace of a full night of rest. Like trust. Show me where you came from. Where? He crooks his finger around the scene, a sweeping gesture to the buildings that surround them. If Grady was brought here same as he was, surely he'll lead them to something familiar.

[dividingline]

Frustration is a familiar emotion for Grady. The standards to which he holds both himself and the world around him are high, though he'd be the last person to admit to it, operating instead under the attitude that they're the only standards anyone ought to have. The battle between his own expectations and the reality in which he finds himself is constant, brought about by a need for understanding and reasonable responses which the universe continues to defy, but it's the grit and the grind that keeps him going.

It's frustration that drives him now, rolling his eyes and throwing out his hands in disgust at Wrench's strange request. He makes enough noise himself, a stamp of his feet as he turns to point up the little shaded walk to the pleasant house he more-or-less fell out of.

There. What difference does it make?

[wwrench]

Show me. Wrench gestures up the walk with the barrel of his gun. When Numbers seems to hesitate, he reaches for the scruff of the shorter man's neck and hauls him in the direction of his indication. The first touch is electric to his fingertips. It's enough to dizzy and disorient him, just to feel the solid matter of the man's skin and muscle squeezed beneath his hands. Maybe he'd expected him to disappear like an ether, or maybe he'd expected that he'd feel different somehow. Inhuman, with razor-sharp scales or skin like fire. But the man he grasps is as solid as Wrench himself, and he nudges at the back of his shoulder with the barrel of the gun to inspire his footsteps forward. Back up the path to the little home.

If any bit of this story is real, there should be a letter and a jar of food. A few meager possessions in a basket, even. If this is a deception, Wrench has no idea what might be waiting to capture him or the fool he's been for entertaining the impossible for this long.

[dividingline]

The brief novelty of being in this strange dream space is rapidly disappearing. Grady narrows his eyes at Wrench's request, about to respond with a suggestion of what he can do with that gun instead of pointing it in his direction when one of those wide hands closes around the back of his neck and shoves him forward.

"Whoa, hey -- the fuck!" Grady yelps, stumbling forward and not particularly happy to feel the barrel of the increasingly persistent weapon in the back of his shoulder. The fingers that grip him feel, as far as he can tell, as real as the ones he's left behind curled in the cheap cotton sheets of the Best Western. He knows from personal experience the kinds of things Wrench can compel men to do with those hands, and perhaps he's a little curious himself, so he doesn't fight him any more than is required to make the point that he's unhappy as they make their way back up to the house, alternating between spoken and signed curses as he stumbles along.

Thankfully, he hadn't thought to close the front door behind him in his desire to escape the place. Once inside the shadowy hall, he turns and knocks Wrench's arm away, not caring if it earns him more punishment.

This is fucking crazy, he points out, gesturing at Wrench, the house, the entire world, what's --

As he swings his arms out, a needling, tingling feeling explodes in his hands. He clenches them, cutting himself off mid-sentence, then brings them in front of his face, glaring at the offending fingers.

"Ow! What the fuck?" It feels like radio static under his skin, like he's not tuned to the right channel. The rest of the strange situation momentarily forgotten, he rubs his thumb and index finger together and watches, with unhappy and dawning horror, as the skin seems to flake away, the dust of himself falling upwards in slow ballet, disappearing into the air.

beast or kin

[effinphd]

Fortunately there's an avenging angel with a crowbar, swooping down to save him from a maggoty death. -- okay, that's a little much, it's just a pissed-off-looking lady with maggot guts splattered on her, coming from around the corner in time to help. She does have a crowbar, though.

A crowbar she swings down hard, like a grotesque imitation of a professional golfer, driving the sharp, pronged edge into the nearest maggot's face and grimacing as it explodes like a potato in the microwave. Theo shakes the crowbar a couple times to get maggot gunk off, then glances up at the man.

"I can't believe you're talking about food at a time like this."

[dividingline]

Grady can appreciate a good life saving moment, especially when it comes between him and death by pincers, or teeth, or whatever it is these things have. Still, he kind of wishes that she'd chosen a different way of dispatching the maggot monster when he ends up splattered with the thing's effluvia.

He wipes goo from his cheek and shakes it off of his fingers with an expression of deep disgust, then holsters his gun.

"I can't believe a lot of things about what's going on right now. Is this normal for.." he waves a hand around them, "this place? Is this gonna happen every day?"

[effinphd]

Beggars, choosers, etc. Theo at least has the good manners to turn a little before flicking the maggoty goo off her face and arms. The crowbar gets leaned against a nearby wall as she carefully peels off her long, elbow-length gloves and wrings them out.

"I'm just as lost as you are, buddy," she snips, shaking the gloves a couple times before pulling them back on with a grimace. "But it stands to reason that if this is the welcome committee, the rest of this place is just as fucked up."

[dividingline]

Grady watches her with the patient interest of a man used to studying other people, in much the same way as a lion is used to studying small antelope. The gloves earn her raised eyebrows.

"So you're.. here too." The word he's looking for in the middle of that sentence is 'new', but he's still not quite up to acknowledging that he's anywhere, even by inference. "I like your.." He mimes the golf swing, adding a click of his tongue in place of the thwack of the ball. Or the sound of the maggot's head exploding, as it had been in this case. "Do you, uh, do you practice?"

[effinphd]

Theo quirks her eyebrows right back, smoothing the gloves into place, self-consciously, then crossing her arms. "Sure am. It's a big thrill." She tilts her head, shifting her weight to her back foot. "And you're...here, too. When'd you get here?" Denial never helps anyone, Grady.

She looks down at the crowbar, lips quirking up briefly in a humorless grin. "Softball. College. It's been a minute, but the general motion's the same, yeah?" She nods at the gun holster. "I'd trade it in a heartbeat for one of those, though."

beast or kin

[dramaquinn]

[ She just happens to see this happening, and catches sight of the moment where it shows on his face that he's in too deep. Damnit. She wanted to just keep going. Now she'd have it on her conscience if something happened to him. She has enough on her conscious. Goddamnit.

These thing at least don't seem conscious on the level the Lamprey and his family were, so killing them doesn't fill her with quite as much dread as it might otherwise. She casts, feeling the magic, adjusting for the city's interference, and shoots off a basic battle spell.

It hits, but it does little more than stun it. ]

Shit. [ Fuck you, Deerington. To Grady, she says, ] You'd better run.

[ ...fuck her conscience. She doesn't do what she wants to do, which is run and leave him behind. ]

[dividingline]

[ Grady isn't expecting to be saved. He's not the kind of guy people usually stop to save, mostly because he's usually the one at the other end of whatever violence is going on. He jumps a little at the sight? Feeling? Whatever of the magic skidding past him and points his gun at Alice instead. Hopefully she doesn't know it's no longer loaded. ]

Hey, no. What was that you just did? To that thing. What did you do? You shoot it or something?

[dramaquinn]

[ Oh my god are you serious, guy. ]

Yes.

[ Flat as a plateau. She raises her eyebrows. ]

You're seriously pointing a gun at the person who helped you? A gun that needs to be reloaded.

[dividingline]

[ Damn it. Grady slowly lowers the gun, then puts it back in his coat pocket. ]

Whatever you did, you should probably do it again before these guys eat us. [ He steps forward and gives the stunned maggot creature a kick in the head, earning himself a snap of its pincers as he dances back again. He looks expectantly at Alice, then waves his hand in invitation. ] Go on.

[dramaquinn]

[ This guy oh my god. Yes, it's a literal magic spell (not trick, thank you), but thanks to Deerington, she can't always be at her best.

Sighing and rolling her eyes in all her dramatic glory, Alice casts again, only to produce sparking from her fingertips. ]

Fuck. [ She shakes out her hands to try again. ] I should've just left you behind.

[ She wouldn't have, but she should've. Okay, another try. This one is more powerful, knocking the gross fucking thing back several feet. ]

Happy? I'm leaving. Come on. I might not be able to cast one that strong again.

[dividingline]

That was very cool. [ He means it, and looks thoughtfully at her hands as he does as he's told and moves to follow her. ]

Can everyone here do that? Can I do that? [ He attempts an imitation of her movements, years of speaking with his hands making him a quick study, and frowns when nothing happens. ] Aw, come on. [ He tries again, this time more forcefully. ]

[dramaquinn]

[ It was very pathetic, but non-magicians tend to be impressed by anything more than mundane.

His imitation of the forms is surprisingly not terrible for someone who's never seen magic before, but of course, it amounts to nothing. He doesn't have magic in him, or if he does - and even if he doesn't - it's not like hers, not like the kind from her world. ]

Do you have magic at all where you're from?

[ The sharp edge to her voice is a little dulled by curiosity. ]

beast or kin

[teamfun]

Gunfire is always a worrying sound for Louis. It's almost always the stupidest fucking thing a person can do back home when they're in trouble- and it's a feeling he's never really been able to shake. Noise might not bring walkers here, but it certainly brings Louis running over- just in time for the tail end of Grady's rant and the end of his bullets.

He swings his chair-leg-with-nails-in-it weapon down onto a clump of the maggots with a satisfying if gross squelch. He lets out a soft 'ugh', shaking his weapon clean of the mess it left behind, before glancing in Grady's direction.

"I mean, I'm pretty sure there's more efficient ways of dealing with these, man, but points for style, I guess?" he feels around in a pocket of his coat, just in case. "Hey, you got anything else on you? Got some... knives if you want, which probably won't do a lot, but what can you do, right? Better than an empty gun."

[dividingline]

After leaping back a little to get out of the way of the maggot innards -- more or less successfully, though the movement only serves to remind him that there's already some inside his actual shoes for fuck's sake -- Grady turns his attention to his saviour with a little disbelief.

"Do you.. always offer strange men knives when you meet them for the first time?"

[teamfun]

Louis pulls out the aforementioned promised knife, a good sturdy hunting knife. He shrugs his shoulders, offering it to Grady anyway.

"No, only when they're about to get their asses handed to them by a maggot monster. But you know, if you'd rather go out in the grossest way possible..."

Beast or kin

[laminae]

Angry bloodthirsty maggots isn't all that different from the usual nonsense Fern had to deal with in Ooo. In fact, it's kind of a relief, having something so straightforwardly bad attacking for once. There's no psychological trauma, no forced dredging up of bad memories or past scars. Just monsters that squish easy.

So he's doing pretty good for himself, despite how exhausted he looks. Probably too good, given the level of violence that entails killing these things nonstop, which he's been doing for the past several hours. He'd argue it's cathartic, if he knew what the word meant, but overkill is also a good way to describe it.

At any rate, he's been hearing gunshots and not particularly caring, not until there's an empty click that grabs his attention. Not a good sound when you're in the middle of a fight.

He does the reasonable thing and whips his plant battle axe at the maggot, you know, to help, and it lands dead centre with a heavy thud. Fern's about ten feet away, taking care of another maggot with a grass sword, but splitting his attention between it and this guy. "A gun's not a great weapon, bro," he says brightly.