(no subject)

[friendsfordinner]

Who: Hickey & OPEN!
What: cave visits, exploring around town, making some booze!
When: through the month of December
Where: in town, Misty Falls Cave.

Content Warnings: Hickey's god complex, animal death & mutilation, usual warnings for the Terror boys (possible talk of body horror, gore, cannibalism, etc.)

in town
Hickey makes a point to be a good neighbor. Moving something? He'll help! Chopping wood? He can help with that as well. The more useful and helpful he is, the more he ingratiates himself with everybody, the more likely he'll have people on his side whenever one of the rest of the crew of the Terror decides to actually say something about what happened back home.

When he goes out to hunt, occasionally he'll return with a rabbit or a ptarmigan, something he'll happily cook up for whoever wants any. This time is different. He's brought back an animal, a rabbit that looks off, burns on the flesh but nothing more. He makes sure to drop it away from his house (we're not going to contaminate the food) before carefully, in the middle of what passes for his yard, Hickey starts to carefully vivisect the rabbit. It's certainly a sight, and he looks up at whoever might be passing or walking by.

"Have you noticed some odd tracks out there? Out in the woods, just outside of town."

Misty Falls Cave
You're exploring the cave. It's dark, cold, there's a moment where you think you might be the only person in here. It's trapped, kept away, a small, solitary place cut off from the rest of the world—

And then you hear a loud "What the hell?!"

It's Cornelius Hickey, further down one of the paths. And he's just run into a dead end. And is very annoyed about that.

closed prompt for March
There's a loud pounding on March's door, the sort of pounding of someone who obviously doesn't really care about things like 'social conventions' or 'the fact that people might be asleep. Hickey continues knocking, but as he does so, he calls out,

"Oi! This is March's place, yeah? I brought some sugar for the alcohol."

Turns out that horrible trip in that cave had some results!

wildcard
( Hit me up if there's something you want to thread that's not on this post! )

Comments

[questioningmermaids]

Good news: there's booze. Better news: there's only one way to test if it works. March figures it either kills him which means he gets out of here, or he gets drunk which means it's worked.

It's definitely worked. Bad news: the combination of sugary-sweet and alcohol means one hell of a hangover. March is draped on the couch, blanket barely covering him despite the cold. The sharp knocks causes him to jolt upright and the jolt upright causes a wave of nausea and a sharp stabbing between his eyes as the world spins. He has gut rut. He's pretty sure he has gut rot. Either it's too sugary or he really will die from improper canning techniques.

March hears the words but doesn't actually comprehend them other than his name, groaning loudly. The attempt to get up to get the door is met with the spins so Hickey is treated to a loud thud and a louder swear before March finally scrambles up and opens the door.

He's in his boxers, hair askew, white tank-top on and a wedding ring around a chain on full display. March winces as he immediately feels the cold on his barely dressed body, shuffles so Hickey can come inside and he can not be assaulted by the very rude arctic blast that's shriveling his balls, and closes the door as quickly as possible.

"Aren't you one of those Victorian boat guys?" March, bleary, is reaching for the pants he'd drunkenly kicked off on the floor.

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey just...looks at March. Right. Well. Either someone's aggressively hungover or March didn't make alcohol, he made something that could poison people. Hickey keeps a relatively neutral face as he looks at that complete mess of a man in front of him. How is this man the one who figured out alcohol?

He lets himself get pushed inside, perfectly happy to be inside a building and not outside in the freezing cold. Once the door is closed, Hickey holds up his offering: a large jar, full of sugar.

"Those Victorian boat guys. Odd description but yeah, that's me. The name's Cornelius Hickey and I want in on whatever alcohol you've got going."

[questioningmermaids]

"Yeah." It processes a split second after he actually agrees to it: only when the jar is physically in his hands he seems to fully grasp what's happening, and March sniffs slightly, fingers curling around it a little less delicately.

"Yeah--Give me--" He'll set the jar down, huck on a turtleneck sweater as quickly as he can and snatch up the sugar again, motioning for Hickey to head to the basement with impossibly rickety stairs. Hickey.. He's heard that before. What was it? It was funny in a way that wasn't supposed to--ah, that's right.

"Hickey.... You take care of all the caulk on the ship, right?"

There's a better way to phrase it. March purposefully doesn't.

[friendsfordinner]

What an odd way of phrasing it. Hickey raises an eyebrow before pointing out, "Caulker's mate, yeah. Who were you talking to about me?"

And how does he need to tailor the conversation so that he comes off as a wonderful, normal, perfectly fine sailor who's only problem is that he's got a tough personality?

[questioningmermaids]

"One of your friends. The Doctor guy. Goodsir." He's at the bottom of the stairs when he turns and looks up.

"Wouldn't give me a Doctor's note. Can you believe that?" It doesn't seem to matter that the doctor doesn't know what that is--not to March, anyway, who's grabbing a large mason jar.

that rabbit. warnings for all that.

[bestsir]

Of course Goodsir avoids Hickey on the whole, but he happens to be passing by his house when he hears ... noises. And Goodsir, having been a pragmatic sort of person in a day when attitudes towards animal experimentation were a bit more freewheeling, has a pretty good idea of what's going on.

Against his better judgement, he goes to look.

Oh good God, the man has no idea what he's doing, does he?

[friendsfordinner]

The man has absolutely no idea what he's doing. All Hickey knows is that creatures don't just drop dead like that. There's no bite marks, no open wounds, nothing to suggest that something took out the rabbit. And it doesn't look diseased: there's only that slight hint of a burn. So naturally the thing to do is take apart the corpse and try to see what happened!

It is very obvious that Hickey wasn't lying when he kidnapped Goodsir for his butchery skills. He's making a hash of the autopsy.

When he hears someone approach, Hickey looks up to spot Goodsir. He raises an eyebrow before pointing out, "Here to stare or here to help?"

cw: this might get gross

[bestsir]

"Get out of the way," Goodsir snaps, his professional pride overtaking all other considerations. He bends down to look at Hickey's handiwork and shakes his head. "You've already punctured the caecum—" obvious from the smell if nothing else, "and you've sliced right through the liver. What are you trying to discover?"

cw: this is absolutely going to get gross

[friendsfordinner]

It truly is interesting how Goodsir's scientific mind takes over. Hickey raises an eyebrow, looking over at Goodsir with an expression that's pure 'oh NOW you give a shit?' But he'll back up, nodding at the rabbit corpse before sassing,

"Trying to see how it died. But if the eminent surgeon wants to take a stab at the autopsy, I won't stop him."

In Town

[moralabsolutism]

Rorschach had been on a nearby rooftop, keeping watch as usual. He'd only just started his usual routine of patrolling when he saw someone approaching carrying something and then kneeling down. He watched as Hickey began to butcher the rabbit. It didn't look like he was doing it for food. Curious. Very curious.

So down he went, with the air of someone who was used to a lot of rapid climbing. Once he was close enough, he heard the question tossed his way. Rorschach nodded, silent as the black blots on his face slowly moved around, always creating parallel patterns that never stopped moving. Thanks to his constant vigilance in patrolling and his natural paranoia, he tended to notice anything out of the ordinary. He was no woodsman but he'd seen the odd-looking tracks that weren't quite human

Re: In Town

[friendsfordinner]

Creepy bastard. Hickey doesn't know what that mask is, how it does that (or hell, how he even sees through it in the first place), but it's unnerving in a way. Granted, it would probably be less unnerving if the person behind it wasn't, again, a creepy bastard who often hangs out on rooftops (why do so many people here do that? Break your leg if you're not careful). But the fact remains.

"Did you see what caused it? Tried looking myself but I came up empty-handed." There's a pause before, "Well, almost empty handed," said as he nods down at the rabbit corpse. "But this thing isn't telling me a damn thing."

[moralabsolutism]

Rorschach shook his head. "Never had to hunt animals before." Had he grown up in a more rural area, perhaps that would have been a skill he could have learned. As it stood, he was a complete and utter amateur in the ways of tracking down animals.

"Men are easier." Well, that wasn't a disconcerting thing to say at all. It was for reasons like this some in the town thought he was a serial killer and some were convinced he wasn't even human.

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey looks at Rorschach like a goddamn idiot before pointing out, "Men have guns."

Men are easier to hunt? No they're not! In the wide array of animals, there's more prey than predators. Also in the wide array of animals, none of them have opposable thumbs. It's easy if you take them by surprise, yeah, but that's a big if. And there were various times in Hickey's life where that big if was nearly nonexistent.

"Put me in a fight with a random animal or a random person, I'd take the random animal any day. They can't use weapons."

misty falls

[jackdawvision]

You know what would come in really handy right now? Eagle Vision. You know who doesn't have it right now? Edward, who has to rely on a flashlight and is very carefully picking his way through the tunnels. He's already run into a dead end twice now and is starting to wonder if he should've probably brought some paper along and started mapping out the place—

Oh, there's a familiar voice. Edward shines his flashlight down the path he's sure Hickey's voice came out of, and calls, "Oi! Hickey! You all right?"

Re: misty falls

[friendsfordinner]

"Dead end," Hickey yells back, obviously annoyed. "And it's not like there's any space for me to turn around."

Hey, wait a moment, there's someone at the other end of this tunnel.

"Back up, yeah? Keep an eye on me and tell me if I'm about to slip or hit anything."

[jackdawvision]

Edward backs up as requested, but keeps his flashlight on the path anyway. Some days, he misses his second sight. This is one of those days.

"Aye, I can do that!" he calls. "Come toward the light." The harsh white artificial light at the end of the tunnel.

[friendsfordinner]

"What light?" yells back the man who can't really see any sort of light at the moment. But he can hear Edward's voice, so Hickey carefully starts to back up, out of the small, narrow tunnel he's currently in. And hey, give it long enough and there were the faint flickers of a light. He manages to back up and out of his tunnel, turning around to give Edward a roguish grin.

"Thanks for that, mate. Didn't want to run into any sort of new trouble trying to get out of that trouble."

in town

[bigbaddy]

Honestly, Bigby is drawn there more by the scent than anything else. Even without his usual overly sensitive wolf sense of smell, he can definitely smell what's going on way before he sees what's going on.

After all, if he would've seen it first, he might have completely ignored this scenario. But-- alas, by the time he realises who exactly is dealing with blood and flesh around here, it's already too late. Hickey has already spotted him, and is - in his usual fashion, if the cigarettes question from before was anything to go by - just casually asking Bigby this like he didn't see the other nearly turn into an otherworldly creature before.

It's the boldness that Bigby needs a second to take in, before deciding Hickey truly is the biggest weirdo this side of town. Any side of town, actually.

"Yeah."

It might be why his answer is a little curt, but-- then again, maybe Hickey actually has something half-useful to say here? Sometimes he manages to have something intelligent to say in between bouts that make Bigby wonder if the guy's got anything resembling brains up there at all.

"That got something to do with that little crime scene you've got going on here?" Look, at least this time he is just being a little deadpan, rather than actually angry or accusing of anything at all, okay.. That rabbit is not a wolf, so clearly messy vivisection is totally a-okay now.

Re: in town

[friendsfordinner]

"Just the person I'm looking for," Hickey says, with a wry little smile. And honestly? Bigby is. He says he's a wolf, well let's see just how wolf-like Bigby actually is. Wolves can smell things, wolves know how their prey would look dead, time to put that to the test.

"This little crime scene, as you so put it, is scientific discovery. Something killed this rabbit. And it killed it in a way that I can't piece out. No signs of disease, no wounds, no traces of injury. Way I see it, might as well cut it open to see if the insides are rotted."

What he'd do if the insides were rotted, Hickey hadn't really figured out yet. Take it back to the forest and dump it away from everybody else? This is just a burning curiosity that he wants to see satisfied.

[bigbaddy]

"There's plenty of stuff that could kill an animal in a way that wouldn't leave a trace on the outside," Bigby says - sounding serious enough, considering the topic, but also speaking with an ease to his tone that betrays he does indeed know quite a bit about this. You don't have to be a biologist when you're an animal yourself, after all. Even if you're a rather unique one.

"That rabbit could've eaten something that's bad enough for it to have killed it. Or gotten some bad parasite. Hell, it could even be radiation poisoning."

.. there's a part of him that's a little curious as to why Hickey is looking into this in the first place, but on the other hand, Bigby feels like the less questions you ask this guy, the easier your day gets. He isn't going to give himself a headache if he can help it.

[friendsfordinner]

"The fuck is radiation poisoning?" Hickey can't help but ask, as he moves his knife to slice into the rabbit a different way. He peels back some of the skin, frown on his face as he continues to investigate the rabbit.

Weird! This entire thing is weird! Granted, Hickey's not a biologist, but still! Point stands!

"Anyway, if it was a parasite, you'd still be able to tell, yeah? It would mess up the insides more."

town

[solitarysoul]

Levi nods at the question. "Yeah...and the dead things. Um, is that one of them?" He nods to the rabbit he can't see it so well from the street, but it seems odd someone would be cutting into it outside like this. But if it was one of the things afflicted by...whatever was happening, he could see why Hickey'd keep it out.

Re: town

[friendsfordinner]

"Yep," Hickey says, like it's a totally obvious thing. He bends down to poke at the rabbit some more. It's very obvious that Hickey doesn't know all that much about autopsying a creature, partly because he's cut a few things that should be important, partly because he refuses to touch some of the more bloody, oozing, or squeamish bits.

"I want to see how the hell it died. I don't think I'm finding much at the moment, though."

Mostly because he's not a doctor. Or a vet. Or anyone with even the slightest bit of medical experience.

[solitarysoul]

Levi moves closer, to get a better look at the thing. He also knows nothing about autopsying things, so however Hickey is doing it seems right to him. He opened it up, that was the main point, right?

"Is it like the others, without any wounds?"

[friendsfordinner]

Hickey makes a small noise of acknowledgement.

"No wounds, no blood, no traces of anything. It's...odd."

And really, Hickey wants to know how it works. How all of this works. He can't help it, he's damn curious.