hadriel | [video] Locked in a cage

[It's been, what, a week or two? He has a hard time telling without an actual sun and moon to tell him how the passage of time is going. Mantis is curled up on a bed in Liquid's apartment. Sleep never came easily to him and it sure as hell doesn't come easy now. The camera feed off the phone shows him breathing very slowly, deliberately, with a cut of cloth covering his head. Cradled against his chest is a leather gas mask.

Then he sighs. It's a deep heave that makes his whole abdomen move in a fluid motion. He died. That fact has been eating at him since he arrived in the city. It didn't feel like death, and yet a part of him was convinced that this was some kind of punishment.

Fingers on one hand twitch and the phone moves closer to him. He peels back one corner of the cloth from the top of his head, exposing a pale blue-grey eye.]

This place is real. I touch things and feel texture and temperature and yet it all seems far away and removed. [He puts the cloth back into place and curls up more on himself.] It's been too long since I felt like this.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[Liquid didn't know how to feel seeing his comrade and old friend laying on the bed in his apartment. He was dead back in his own timeline, yet here he was alive. He had failed though. Snake had killed him. What hadn't he done to stop that? Perhaps, Liquid should have been there to halt Snake's final death blow to Mantis? That was all history to him now. He felt anger and remorse over what happened but also regret. A regret that his team members were wiped out by his brother. One man against elite soldiers. It shouldn't have happened.]

Mantis? Yes, this place is real enough. Better gets used to the idea of spending our days stuck within his cave, since there is no way out. [Doesn't mean he won't try to get out though. No one could keep him here.]

Perhaps exploration would take your mind of your bad feeling?

[You'll have to forgive him not getting up straight away. This bout of whatever it is knocked out his motivation very thoroughly. He curls up more on the bed and takes what little comfort he can in hearing Liquid's voice.]

I'm sure I can, Liquid. The problem is this...dissociation that I feel. [He rubs his thumb over the little window showing Liquid's face.]

Depends on where you want to go exploring.

[Liquid frowned at Mantis's lack of will to move or get up. Was he drowning in self-pity? Was he upset at being wrenched away from Shadow Moses or was it something else? Liquid couldn't read his friend's mind unlike Mantis could read his own, so he couldn't guess what the other man was thinking.]

Dissociation? From our real home? [It was a stab in the dark but a meaningful one. Surely, it had to do with back home?]

What about the Park or somewhere peaceful?

[Depression, most likely, or perhaps it was some kind of PTSD come to tear down his willpower. He's felt it before, but there was always a different cause behind it.]

It's that moment from Shadow Moses. I knew right then that it was the last one I had left to myself and now I'm walking, talking, breathing... I'm alive. This isn't right.

[His fingers trace the shape of his mask lightly as he considers the proposition.] I'll try. The more I wallow around, the longer this is going to last.

Edited 2016-06-04 19:42 (UTC)

Hey. I saw your post, and wondered if you felt all right, if you had someone to talk to?

I haven't seen you around before.

[He pulls down the cloth away from his eyes to see this new person. It's enough of a view that you can see the scars going around his head and his pale eyes, but little else.]

I feel like fresh hell, but other than that, my overall health seems to be holding up. Had a rough time before showing up here, and now it's starting to get to me. My name is Psycho Mantis. If you're familiar with Liquid Snake, he's a colleague of mine from back home.

[Interesting naming system, he thinks privately, but just introduces himself;]

Bruce Banner. I'm sorry, I don't actually have much to offer by way of help.

Edited 2016-05-29 17:00 (UTC)

["Interesting" is one word for it. Mantis personally thought it was always very gimmicky.]

Mmmm... Sometimes talking is enough. I don't expect a clinical psychiatrist to come crawling out of the woodwork.

Which is good, because I'm already doing double duty as a doctor when I'm technically just a physicist.

I mean. If it helps I know basically all there is to know about anger and stress management?

Physics? The science of understanding how the world functions overall.

[He gets up slowly, minding to keep the cloth over his face until he can get the mask back on. Orange-covered eyes peer at the phone as it lifts up on its own into his waiting hand.]

That might help, actually. I've had constant issues with both.

I don't know if it would, because all I'd really be able to tell you is how physically impossible this place is.

It's kind of mindblowing, unfortunately, and more likely to unfoot you again.

[video] Locked in a cage

video;

video;

no subject

no subject

private

private

private

private

private

private

private