Log01.entry

[ugh_emotions]

Who: SecUnit, Charles, and eventually other people depending on how things go lots of other people, everyone join in
What: SecUnit checks up Charles, no one has a good time
When: Just before the start of the Story
Where: The stacks
Content warnings: SecUnit getting accidentally bricked

Every time SecUnit or one of its drones caught sight of Charles, he seemed to look even more dead than the last time.

Which was weird. He was already dead (which was also weird), surely he couldn't get any more dead. You were either dead or you weren't.

Whatever. It wasn't SecUnit's problem. Charles wasn't one of its humans. It didn't need to worry about him.

(It worried about him.)

Eventually though, it gets to the point where it can't ignore it anymore, and it stomps over to where Charles is in the Stacks.

"What's wrong with you?" it demands.

Comments

[hellandbackpack]

Charles heard the footsteps but at first he didn't quite realize what they were. Not until it was too late- the other had spotted him clearly, if the way he just settled down... with a book?

That was a bit strange. The teen glanced from under his hands towards him, brows furrowing as if he couldn't quite figure out why they were there. It helped that they weren't obviously focused on him. Made existing near someone else for even a moment a bit more bearable as he tried to sort what to do. Pretend he was still alone? Go invisible and find somewhere else? Was there anywhere else?

Considerations that were put on hold when the familiar voice spoke up. Earning a slow blink as Charles' mind quickly put a voice to a face. Not the face he'd seen before but then that had been in a Story.

"Dunno," He admitted finally, with a faint little shrug. "Didn't really think that far ahead."

[unsheathedfromreality]

"Still kicking yourself for hurting Rin, or have you moved on past that?"

The shrike turns a page of the book, frowning faintly down at it. For a story in the tradition of the dragon-bride, it's not as engaging as he'd expect. No risk of anyone losing anything, whether it's a mate or self-control.

Solving what's got Charles exiling himself in a miserable little corner -- or at least, nudging the kid toward a solution -- is eminently more worthy than reading this. But the Assistants had said learning to anticipate a story would help him resist it... And as one of the dead, boredom doesn't really signify. Only orders, and their priority.