come_sailaway | So long Nashville, Tennessee

Entry tags:

mcu: steven grant

So long Nashville, Tennessee

Who: Steven Grant & OTA
What: March event
Where: Around the ship
When: March
Warnings: Sex and violence, nothing particularly traumatic

Tonight I'm wondering, what are you listening to? [OTA]
Most of Steven's recent memories before coming on board this ship involve bickering with Marc, unfortunately. But for some reason Marc seems to exist as a different entity in the glass, in the mirror, in any other reflective surface around him, and not as another person like the way they've manifested as individuals right now. Even when Steven first learns of the suit, of his own capabilities, they're still bickering over ceremonial armours and Colonel Sanders.

But hey, it seems like even someone like Steven Grant can be some kind of not-so-big damn hero. In his memory he's in the dark streets of modern-day London, wearing a white three-piece suit with his head and face covered also in white, trying to put up a fight against a monstrous jackal, trying to protect Marc's wife, Layla.

The fight doesn't seem to be going too well though...

Broken halos that used to shine [Closed to Marc]
"Hey Marc?" Steven whispers, grabbing a fistful of lowered, pooled blanket as he tilts his head away from Howl's moving castle to try and look up as high as he can, even though he can't really see past the closet and door. A mop of semi-tamed curls tickles against Marc's bare skin and the soothing hand running through Steven's hair briefly pauses as Marc wriggles a bit to reposition Steven's head against his stomach again.

"Hm?" Marc asks, without taking his eyes off the movie. It's the most engaged he's been with Studio Ghibli and Steven almost feels guilty for interrupting him. He's usually disinterested or thinking about something else or otherwise distracted during movie night, and it's been-- nice, to have Marc present and enjoying what Steven enjoys too.

"Was I... enough? I mean. Did I do enough. For you?" Maybe it seems like an odd question to come up all of a sudden, but. Steven always has these sorts of troubling thoughts swirling around in his mind. And Marc seems to know intuitively that answering him verbally won't really abate his worries or soothe his fears. He doesn't say anything that he knows Steven will try and overanalyse and rebuke and dismiss. Instead he simply reaches for the remote and puts the movie on pause. It gives them just a little moment together - just enough for him to sit up a bit and move in closer, to cup Steven's face and lean in to kiss one closed eye, and then the other, and then the tip of his nose, and down to his lips.

The little stolen moment stretches longer, and longer, as the hand on Steven's cheek slides into his hair, grabs hard enough to get a surprised whimper out of Steven, one leg winding around his and rolling Steven over onto his back slipping a tongue in between his lips keeping him distracted long enough to not panic at the other hand rubbing and squeezing between his legs, shoving his sweatpants off, grabbing his ass--

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He appears on a dark street and immediately starts cursing because he really needs to stop touching these things. But at least he's in a city, that's nice. He misses cities, and it's also not America which is extra nice.

Until a white suited... someone? Runs past. And then a... "What."

He stares, and then back pedals to avoid the jackal because what is even going on here.

Nope. He's in a-- well, it could be a nicer part of London, but at least it's not a bad part of London?

"What're you doing?!" Steven exclaims, skidding to a stop and grabbing the man by the arm, yanking him forward and away from the jackal. Just as well it's dark and Steven doesn't notice he's lugging some ChatGPT avatar around. And yes, that's Steven's muffled voice coming out of that white suit.

"Don't just stand there! You'll get yourself killed mate!" As if running into traffic is not going to get them killed.

It's not London from his world and that's what's important because King's Row is a hotbed of anti-Omnic sentiment with the most vocal advocating for a full on genocide. So even with strange suited men and jackals he likes this one better.

"Well attempting to not be here doesn't seem to be an option! Otherwise I wouldn't.." He huffs as he's dragged forward, gathering his feet and running after someone overly dramatic and ... "Steven? Is that... what are you wearing?"

The most important question as they're being chased and cars fly by.

"Hello!" Steven actually waves, redirecting his attention from over his shoulder to Max. "Do you like it? Feels like Tom Ford! Or maybe Hugo Boss." Okay fair, Max asked him what he's wearing, not who he's wearing, but just give Steven a moment to rub down the front of his jacket and admire the handiwork here!

"It's the uh-- 'ceremonial armour of Khonshu'!" No, he's not introducing himself as 'psycho Colonel Sanders'. That was a rude observation. "Only-- I don't know what it's supposed to look like! Or-- oop--" Steven trips over himself and nearly goes flying, but he somehow manages to stumble and straighten up and picks up the running pace again. "What we're supposed to do. How are we supposed to deal with that?!"

He shakes his head, leave it to Steven to be so cheerfully unobservant that he's waving during a chase. "Hugo Boss hm? Not bad. Though you might want a pop of color in the tie at least, something to lead the eye."

This is absolutely a normal conversation to be having while being pursued by some sort of jackal monster.

"Well since it's chasing us I think ideally we kill it. Shall I?" He pauses in their frantic running, pulling a handgun from inside his jacket and opening fire. He's got fairly good aim, but the thing isn't moving like a normal animal, and Max mostly shoots people anyway.

Nobody has guns in London, it's rare to even see the police wave one around, so Steven yelps and instinctively raises his gloved hands, cowering away from the loud bangs. At this rate Max might actually wind up shooting people instead of the jackal.

"What're you doing?!" Steven exclaims, trying to raise his voice over the sound of the gunshots. "This isn't America! Put that away! Oh my days..." He's going to get them both arrested!

Because apparently spending a few hours trying to talk themselves out of Steven's first ever arrest is definitely worse than getting torn to shreds by a mythical animal or being a hero and saving the day.

"Would you rather get eaten by an animal? Because I've seen the aftermath of that and this suit won't look as dashing hanging off a corpse. Blood stains are horrific to get out of clothes." He rolls the diodes of his eyes, but doesn't put the gun away, cursing under his breath in French. Why oh why did he even try to help? He's really going soft. "I'm not from America. I've barely even been there."

Twice. While in prison.

"What's your brilliant idea then?"

"Why would you care about your suit when you're dead?!" That's just bonkers! Unless he's worried about all the extra work the undertaker has to do... (Won't someone think of the poor undertakers?) 'tis true that they have to get dressed up nice after they get embalmed and all that. Or, y'know, not, if that's not what's culturally appropriate. Or if it seems like a lot of toxic chemicals just to wind up being cremated and releasing all those toxins into the atmosphere. How dreadful...

"Um!" Hang on, he's getting carried away on a different train of thought here. And also he's starting to get tired. He doesn't normally do this much running... even if he can't afford to slow down without getting himself hurt.

"Let's lead it away from the crowd and give it some food?" Food usually works right?

"Personally I always care about my suits. And this one was a gift." Skulduggery had said the suit was basically stabproof, he hadn't said anything about monstrous animal teeth and Max doesn't want to test it out first hand just in case whatever magical properties or technology went into this no longer works in ... wherever they are.

"You're such a hero." He says it scornfully, but fine, lead it away from people. And then find it food that isn't them, shouldn't be so hard. Not that Max has much to worry about, unless it has a taste for Tungsten. "Fine. Fine. Why not? Let's risk ourselves for a bunch of strangers we'll never see again instead of saving ourselves."

He continues to complain the whole time as he reaches out to tug Steven down a different road and towards what looks like a less populated area. "What do you suppose it eats other than people?"

Steven is definitely starting to slow down a bit as they get further and further away from the crowds. The suit basically makes him impervious to anything, but he doesn't know that at this stage. He doesn't seem to know anything at this stage. (Or at any stage, really, let's be honest...)

"Um-- I don't know... I guess... meat?" Steven suggests quietly in between panting heavily. He's not had to rear anything more complicated than a goldfish. Well, that and Marc. But Marc is fairly self-sustaining, fairly low maintenance.

"Do you have any meat?" Sentient robots surely keep emergency packs of beef jerky in their pockets, don't they? Well at this moment it's far more likely than Steven having any meat on or near him.

"I'm looking at quite a lot of it right now." He says wryly glancing at Steven. He's about two minutes away from tossing Steven directly at this creature and then hiding somewhere until this memory spits him out.

"That is a frankly ridiculous plan. Let's just kill it and be done with the whole situation, we've gotten it away from everyone else, that's more than most would do - let's shoot it or electrocute it or set it on fire. Anything but running for eternity."

"I'm not meaty!" Steven protests. He's not always aware that he's got Marc's beefed up body. Clearly he's never questioned it (or the weird scars he's got) despite being on a vegan diet with a protein shake-free and gym-free, danger-free and perpetually exhausted lifestyle.

"Hnnngh..." Steven doesn't seem to like the idea of killing it, but it's true that they can't run forever. He's just about too tired to keep going now. In fact he has to wonder how he managed to run as much as he did, citing again those complete lack of leg days.

"Fine! I'll. Deal with it." He slows to a stop so he can turn around and get his poles-- um, batons out from behind his back, taking a deep breath and puffing out his chest a bit just so he can feel a little bit more prepared to face this thing down.

If he just-- lunges at it and bludgeons it to death, it should work. Right?

"You're going to hit it? With melee weapons?" He might otherwise have enjoyed watching someone completely fail in a fight, but he doesn't actually dislike Steven and this is just going to be sad.

"It's going to bite you if you do that. Why don't you have a gun?" And right as he says that he considers another question, "Actually why do you have weapons at all? Aren't you a pacifist?"

"I have poles!" He shows off his batons, waving them around a bit frantically like he doesn't know how to use them. Which is. Not entirely far from the truth at this current juncture.

"Why would I have a gun?! Nobody has a gun in London! Not even the coppers!" Well, maybe a very small handful of them do, he's not sure, but all the police he's seen in London don't carry any guns.

"The poles came with the suit... I don't-- I wouldn't hurt anyone..." It's true, he doesn't believe in violence, and doesn't really know what to do when faced with it. Marc's always helped, taken over when Steven's in trouble and looked after him. But! Steven doesn't want him coming out right now! He's going to hurt somebody...

"But you're right. I have to do this. Stand back now, I've got this." He takes a few deep breaths and tries to steel his nerves, a tightness in his jaw and a hardness in his eyes before taking a lunge at the jackal and swinging his arms like crazy, flailing a bit trying to get a hit in.

He doesn't got this.

"They're not poles they're batons. Or maybe truncheons I'm not sure the technical definition between the two but you'll be lucky if you don't hit yourself in the face with them. And you should have a gun if you're going to be chased by creatures that want to eat you, unless your plan before I arrived was to engage it in civil discourse where you politely request that it turn its attentions elsewhere and not rip your skin off in bits."

He stands there for just a second, watching this. He's going to have to do something or he's about to watch Steven get eaten. With one hand he grabs the back of his jacket and yanks Steven back, unloading several rounds into the jackal. At which point he's going to have to reload before trying again so now's a good time to wail on it with those 'poles'.

"Look here, Mister! Violence isn't the answer to everything, alright?!" It doesn't have to be the answer to evil magicians and their flesh eating creepy-looking evil and dangerous monsters!

Even though the jackal is the one getting shot, Steven is the one gasping and yelling and whimpering. He doesn't like the idea of this at all! No thank you! But he doesn't want anyone getting hurt either...

He might not have had any formal training or inclination to whack anything but he's definitely planning on going out swinging at least! Much as he doesn't like the idea of beating anything until they stop moving, he's going to Taiko drum town on the jackal and smacking it repeatedly with alternating poles (or truncheons. Wha'ever mate!) until it stops moving.

Of course he's a little bit upset about doing this. He's been a good vegan boy all this time, never would hurt a fly. This is just dreadful business.

"Violence is the answer to something trying to kill you! It's basically the only answer." He scoffs at Steven who seems to have earnestly wanted to talk this out. With an animal.

It's okay Steven, no ones gonna eat it.

"See? That wasn't so hard was it? And no you're not getting killed, my suit remains unscathed and," He makes an airy gesture, "no innocent civilians were caught in the crossfire. You can go home a hero."

It's not the eating it that's the problem here!

"I don't like it," Steven proclaims, dusting off his own suit. White is a terrible colour for all this combat... Of course he's not referring to the suit, he's talking about all this heroic business.

"A hero is somebody who brings food to the homeless and the elderly, or teaches people to read or be be'er with their money. Not some-- loony twat in a three-piece suit swinging sticks around that the people are going to call the SPCA on." Yes, he's aware he's calling himself a loony twat. He's just recently come to the realisation of how loony he actually is. He stops to point accusingly with his gloved finger at his own reflection in a parked car passenger window.

"Did you hear that Marc? You're not a hero, alright? You're just-- we're just. Twats. Loony twats!" Because being snippy at a black Toyota Yaris is totally normal.

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So long Nashville, Tennessee

let's dump a whole robot into the moon knight fight.

why not? haha

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Steven pls

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