outsidebones | pc: lu bixing

[harrow is now freshly changed from her horrible pink jumpsuit and is instead wearing all black - a button down, pants, and dramatic looking robes - decorated all over with bone.

there's still not much space to explore, but harrow is going to go ahead and do it. you can find her in any of the common areas, opening drawers and cabinets and taking pictures on her phone or typing something down. when someone else walks into the room, she abruptly puts her phone away like she was doing something she isn't supposed to.]

[she's looking around, a bit more on edge than she was before.]

Were you locked in last night?

[ what a day

anyway we're in the void. spotting harrow, lu bixing gives her a little nod in greeting. ]

Hi, Harrowhark. How're you feeling, after all of that...?

[ i think harrow wading through the ball pit is the funniest option always so here let's meet at the bar. lu bixing is here! he's got... a shitty beer, and has pushed another glass far, far away from him at the moment.

spotting harrow, though, he offers her a grin. i'm saying this is long after his own bizarre drink experience has ended and for harrow's sake if it is after hers he will very nicely pretend like absolutely nothing happened for her dignity. ]

Hey, Harrowhark. Ever seen anything like this before?

[ clown town..... ]

[well, she will go seek him out wherever he's recuperating...]

What happened to you? Are you alright?

[lu bixing can find harrow sometime on monday exploring the new island. specifically, she's standing near the water, looking out over it, a frown on her face.

when he approaches, she seems a little startled.]

...Not you, too.

[ I NEVER REPLIED TO THE ABOVE ONE BECAUSE IM A SHAM OF A PERSON IM SORRY

anyway its time for the Void. lu bixing is outside, holding something between his fingers, though whatever it is isn't lit - when he spots harrow, he gives her a little nod and a tired smile. ]

...Hey, Harrowhark. [ what a fucking day ]

[ aren't you so sick of falling in holes, harrow? man. so's lu bixing. it really sucks. unfortunately for the both of them, they might just be standing in the same place, or just about to have a talk about corralling snakes, or god only knows what else

but then a hole opens up and drops them very unceremoniously in front of a screen. the light flickers on, and lu bixing sighs, having exactly enough time to mutter - ] Please be normal. [ before it starts. ]

[ and tragically, it is not normal at all.

the film opens to you sitting with lin jingheng in the front seat of a car. the both of you wearing protective isolation suits - the type designed to keep you safe from the rainbow virus, and lin jingheng is staring at you through his. normally, you'd be over the moon at being this close to him - in fact, you were, until about three seconds ago, when he started asking you questions. he asks you about when you contracted the rainbow virus, and its symptoms, and you rattle them off without any difficulty. he asks you, staring at you with his pretty face and his gorgeous eyes, about what the later stage is like, if it hurts, and you are so distracted that you answer him. Towards the later stage of the Rainbow Virus, the nervous system would slowly deteriorate - instead, it feels like a painkiller.”

you realize you've been manipulated into answering this question one second too late.

lin jingheng looks at you, and your stomach twists up in an anxious knot. frantically, you try and reverse the questioning onto him, asking him something insanely personal, coming up with the excuse that if two people are trying to ask deep questions, shouldn't it be mutual? maybe you can embarrass him enough he'll tell you to shut up and go away, and he'll forget you said it, but he doesn't. he answers your embarrassing little question, stonefaced, and continues what you realize is an interrogation.

"Why do you know what the late stage of the Rainbow Virus feels like?."

because if you had it in late stage, you should be dead. you swallow, and deflect. ] I read it in a book.

[ lin jingheng ignores you, and continues. calm, so calm, even if your heartbeat is beating so hard in your chest you feel like you're going to faint, as he just lays out the logical argument of the facts that you already know.

“The Rainbow Virus was first leaked out by accident from the Reinberg lab of the Cayley family. When the late King of Cayley invested a large sum of money into the research, he pretty much squeezed the entire Eighth Galaxy’s economy dry. I don’t think his goal was to develop a plague virus; if he was just a crazy murderer, the cost of production was too high, even missiles would have been more effective.”

“When the Rainbow Virus enters the human body, it begins by breaking down all organs. The immune system would be destroyed, the nervous system nullified,, and the patient’s senses all stripped away while the body continues to rot. In contrast, if organs were to be removed and reattached at this stage, the rejection reaction would also be minimized---from what I know, aside from destroying the human body, the virus can also degenerate existing human body cells into stem cells; however, they would almost die immediately and cannot be used.”

you bite your lip. it's over.

Lin Jingheng continues. “At the Primal Alien’s place, I met a young boy merged with a bird. He paradoxically retained both characteristics of the two species naturally, and unlike other mutated human pets, he didn’t need to live inside breeding tanks and could live up to 30 years...they told me that he was the only successful case from the ‘Nuwa Project’---you know about the Nuwa Project, right?”

--

but it's strange. the screen jolts, there. rattles, and then, the scene changes.

--

you're - you don't know how old you are. you're maybe eight? you're maybe seven? you don't know how long you lived in that breeding tank, just that you did - you're out of it, now, in a wheelchair, barely able to move, barely able to do anything, but your curiosity and an accident has led you to this, to the basement of the home that you've "grown up in", to a locked door that clever, clever you hacked open with a technical lockpick that will later be one of your best skills, but the door to pandora's box has faced you with this - you're staring into the face of a girl in a glass tank.

but it's wrong. her face is human - she has long hair that hangs free from her head, and her body is completely naked and exposed, but she's looking away, her arms at unnatural angles, held up by the mechanisms of what you know is a breeding tank, the same kind you grew up in. and - the lower half of her body isn't a human at all. it's a snake.

at the ding of the elevator door from behind you, her head turns, and it terrifies you. she looks at you, and her expression is listless, empty - apathetic, numb to every emotion, the inexplicable and utterly broken expression of human, human pain.

you don't even realize what you're doing. you stare at her, your heart pounding in your chest and you've moved. the security robot that must stand guard at the door is deactivated but it has, it has something, and you grab it, not even paying attention, you lift it -

your tiny fingers close unshaking around the trigger of a gun -

and you fire.

bang. the shot pierces through the glass and hits its target dead on, right in the center of the forehead - glass, liquid and blood explode backwards, showering the room as the snakelike woman jerks backwards, and you swear, you swear, she's smiling. as she jerks lifeless in the draining breeding tank, you realize in a jolt that you're standing out of your chair, and your body collapses, your useless legs hitting the ground, while your hands are still clutched around that still warm gun.

when they start shaking, you stare at it again.

No wonder I'm different from the rest of the world.

(the snake woman, with her constructed body, the way your body was made and not your own)

Everyone that's like me is here.

you lift the gun. you bring it up, your hands shaking so hard now that it's back to normalcy. you don't care. you don't want to be alive. you lift the gun, and you bring it up, up to your head, tears rolling down your cheeks, and as you're about to pull the trigger -

--

the memory jerks back to the present, again. to lin jingheng, looking at you with those dark flint eyes, asking for answers.

you take a shaky breath, and you start to explain. the reinberg project died - the lab itself was burnt to ashes, and the survivors scattered to the wind. the eighth galaxy, left to pick up the pieces. you explain, how monoeye hawk found out that the original scientists who leaked the virus that destroyed the world were disguised as human pet traffickers. smugglers. that they were continuing to experiment with the virus itself. but he didn't tell anyone - even if he had the largest arms smuggling network in the galaxy. even if he could have stopped it. he didn't. the guilt twists in your throat.

lin jingheng asks why.

you swallow. ]

...Because of me. He said when my mother was close to term, she was in an accident. When my dad made it over, she was already...and the child inside her that hadn’t been born yet suffered from a fatal radiation exposure, so when they managed to take me out I was essentially a stillborn. When my dad was driven into a corner, he remembered that Nuwa Project - he heard that there was a successful case from the experiment, but they hadn’t managed to create a superhuman, only a few genetically engineered pets. My body was broken to the point that it was completely non-functional aside from my brain, so the first five years after I was born, I was essentially just a brain in a box. Everything was sent to me through electric communication directly into my brain. My old man kept an original virus strain from the project in secret, and used the research of the Nuwa Project to rebuild my body...that took a whole 15 years. There was an underground chamber back then that was filled with genetically engineered pets that he collected over the years...they were experiment results.

[ from beside harrowhark, lu bixing swallows, too, as the speech continues, as his own voice echoes around him. the memory shifts again - not to the tiny child, but to an older lu bixing, looking up at the statue of a commander, a man named lu xin, the last remaining hope of the eighth galaxy who was supposed to have saved them all, who died. who was supposed to not have any children.

who, as he found out, had just one.

the memory shifts back, again. to you, your soft voice, your shaking hand as you begin to talk. ]

You can say I’m a homunculus, the ship of Theseus. The Rainbow Virus killed 3.6 billion people in the Eighth Galaxy, and saved my one life. [ you raise your head and you look lin in the eye, and the guilt in your body is so palpable that you want to scream, but the words are already between you, and you continue, ] I was born in debt to this place.

[ and with that ominous final line, the screen fades to black. ]

[the dock works. harrow will come out sometime later after trial. she's no longer wearing five million blankets, she's just wearing normal clothes and a heavy cloak, bandaged up some underneath it.]

...How ugly.

[ hi harrow! lu bixing is set up as usual in the new bar today. he's got a total of... five drinks this time set out in front of him! one, a garish green. one, blue and a little yellow. one, brown and sizzling a little, one a red solo cup, and... the last a drink with a cherry in it! this one's just set slightly to the side.

by now this is probably routine, right? he's here working, his personal device pulled up, typing into the keyboard. the red solo cup beer is closest to him, though he doesn't seem to be drinking from it at the moment, and when he hears the door open, he glances back and offers harrowhark a smile. ]

Good afternoon, Harrow. [ is she wearing her you tried sticker i hope she is ] Want to do a little science with me?

[ imagine that i killed childe in this onsen would that be fucked up or what

well after his usual specific-curfew-trauma-texting, lu bixing's still sitting in the onsen, looking at the notification on his phone, and... as everything processes, he lets out a sigh, running a hand briefly over his face. ]

...Two people this time.

[haha, what the fuck. we're in the void for this one, though feel free to specify a location if there's one that appeals to you. she's pacing back and forth, frustrated.]

Shit. After all that, I don't have the faintest idea what became of Childe.

[she walks up to bixing and waves.]

What's up, my man?

[harrow will go into the planetarium to look for bixing.

how is he doing?]

[ happy sunday! not, it's a very unhappy sunday.

today lu bixing is in the library - it's a favorite hangout of nerds everywhere - and there's a book in his hands. not a fiction one with missing pages, but a textbook (The Dreams of Reason: The Computer and the Rise of the Sciences of Complexity ). he's sort of flipping through the pages half idly, but when he hears footsteps, he glances up. despite looking very, very tired with eye bags that would cost you a checked luggage fee, he still has a little smile for harrow. ]

Hey, Harrowhark.

[she's out on the mountain, shivering in her stupid cloak that is warm-ish but not winter appropriate.]

...Be careful, there's someone skulking around.

[ god, what a day! what a terrible day! at some point, bixing is out of bed and wobbling around, looking for... something. he probably should not be. but - when he sees harrow, that's apparently what he was looking for, so he brightens, a bit, and hobbles over.

relief, on his face, first, then melts into a smile. ]

...Harrow. [ he looks really glad to see her, even if he's tired. ] Hi.

[she's sitting in the bar sipping a drink and looking idly at her phone.]

...Interesting.

[hi she's here wherever he is just flanked by skeletons. she's not even walking she's just being gently moved wherever she needs to go by skeletons.]

...Bixing, hello. I have something to discuss.

[friday evening, harrow is running up to bixing to give him a hug! she's wearing a skeleton kigu.]

[she's pretty dead on her feet, but she'll stop and talk to him for a minute.]

...You needn't worry, we'll see all of you returned where you're meant to go.

week 0; sunday 0

week 0; friday

week 0, saturday

week 1, monday

week 1; thursday

week 2; monday

w2, saturday

w3, tuesday!! cws for human trafficking, experimentation, suicide attempt, pandemic, body horror

week 3; saturday

week 4, monday