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

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.