not saying im doing any better // p - beck

[valo-kas]

the mud was cool here, almost firm ground until you found your paws sinking into it. valo-kas foraged like a dirty, oozing hog, shoving their face into it to pry free the squirming bodies of worms that hid there.

it was part of the look. the nasty one. sure, worms were also tasty, but the look mattered too. like any good venomous beast, valo-kas was brightly colored, leaking a bubblegum pink Do Not Disturb sign, but people were stupid. people would ignore red flags. they’d even ignore pink ones. too many weirdos had a thing for bad people.

gross people though? yucky ones? not even the freakiest hybristophile wanted to be around a bastard that was disgusting. valo wasn’t sure what had put that line of thinking in their head. after the memory loss, they lacked context for so many things. they didn’t want the answer, though. feared it would be a helluva lot worse than the habit itself. whatever their old mind knew, valo-kas didn’t think it was any of their current mind’s business.

valo-kas sucked down a pair of worms and gagged when they got stuck. spat the tangled bodies, gooey and glossy with blush-colored mucus, onto the wet ground only to eat them again, making sure to chew this time around. they knocked against a very muddy basket, the contents covered in a layer of bog muck. the gator offering basket, complete with bottles and scandalous poetry rendered illegible with drool and murk.

the search never panned out, but whatever. valo-kas stuck their face into a hole they scraped into the earth, nosing into the soil for another worm.

[member=67]beck.[/member]

[beck.]

    It was hard not to love mud, considering Beck had grown up in filth and below-poverty. Was it possible to be poorer than poor, to only have mud and trees and brick walls and an open sky as scenery in your living room, to scrounge around in the streets for food? Quite an achievement; out here, distanced from society and roughing it with a bunch of critters in the woods, social class or wealth didn't matter. Eventually the beginnings of their society would evolve and corrupt themselves with riches, an era the boy would unfortunately exist to witness, yet for now, nothing mattered. Nothing but the fact that he was wading chest-deep in a slimy mud. No wonder Beck was so disheveled and grimy all the time -- a quirk shared with the snuffling figure not to far up from the steep ditch the poltergeist found themselves in. Now Beck's mind may have been fractured beyond convenient repair, yet Valo-kas was deranged on whole other level. Not necessarily in a bad way, that would be hypocritical, but just... weird. He wasn't a fancy word poet, and never would be so why convolute his observations? Valo was weird as hell.

    Flicking sludge from his paws as he high-stepped through the mud, Beck trudged towards the blurred figure of the mutant. Before he could heave himself from the mud-filled ditch he was in, his footing slipped and stumbled, chin splatting against the mud and causing a pitiful splash. "Goddamn-fff --" came the whistling hiss through clenched teeth as he sloppily recovered, drenched in mud. Luckily mud could cover the cold flush rising to his features from Valo's three-eyed watch, if the mutant cared to look up from their worm-hunting. Spitting out a mouthful of silt and ruffling out his dappled pelt, Beck forgot entirely about Valo's presence, busy wringing mud from his apparition.

[align=center]»――▸

[valo-kas]

“[color=salmon]ooh, buddy. have a nice trip?” valo-kas paused their rooting to gurgle the joke in beck’s muddy direction. “[color=salmon]i’d lick you clean if that would, y’know, help at all. but it’d just turn ya pink.” they sighed as if that was really a kind of tragedy to them. the glutton stepped over, swamp earth squelching between their toes. it felt safe out here, safe in the radioactive filth. more home than they had known in...in how long?

fuckin’ memory.

they sat with a soft, wet sound, a three-eyed squint focused on the ghost. how’s it feel to be dead? they wanted to ask something that would make this meeting between the two of them unnecessarily uncomfortable and cruel. valo-kas was unnecessarily uncomfortable and cruel, and they didn’t know why beyond the firm belief that that was how it had to be. that’s just life, baby!

“[color=salmon]better clean off quick, you look fuck ugly like that.” it wasn’t really the truth, but it was sonething to say. maybe i’m bad at talking to people. hm. a definite possibility.

[beck.]

    The entity wished he could forget Valo longer than the world allowed, the oozing drawl from the mutant prompting Beck to poke a strikingly blue tongue out in his direction and childishly hum a few mocking notes. An easy solution to cleaning off the mud would was simply disappearing for a moment or two, leaving no physical apparition for the filth to cling to, but he preferred not to acknowledge his nonexistence. Choosing to shake and smear the mud away, he remained silent at the suggestive offer, casting Valo a dirty look with a dull glaze settled over amber eyes. Yet internal commentary spat out a flustered 'Gross,' and his dead-eyed glare lingered on the pink slime hanging from the other's jowls for a second more than usual.

    Despite having managed to clear his dark-furred pelt of a majority of mud, choppy fur bristled at awkward angles still. Beck resigned from the impossible task of cleaning up what was essentially an untouched body from a murder scene, slouching and finally acknowledging Valo's attempts at socializing. "Yeah, guess m'ugly -- but 'least I look way better than ya," the poltergeist taunted back, echoing giggles hissed through clenched teeth. He rose from his defeated slump in the mud, somehow shorter than Valo even while standing at full-height, albeit not by a lot. "Have ya seen yourself in a mirror lately? Ya kinda got a bunch'a weird pink drool, uh, all over." A frigid paw motion to the siamese's pink-stained chin and chest, lacking any sort of hesitation -- what if it was a sensitive subject? No, wait, Valo wasn't sensitive. Beck couldn't even be certain if their foul mind was capable of processing guilt and other regular feelings. Truly an enigma he hoped he never would decipher.

[align=center]»――➤

[valo-kas]

“[color=salmon]ehehegh,” the sound that left them was akin to a small stalling car, laughter impeded by a net of rosy moisture. “[color=salmon]like that’s hard?” fortunately for them, the personality valo-kas was stuck stagnating in had bypassed self-conscious hatred of their appearance in order to sink straight into an earnest and vicious acceptance of it. not everyone could be beautiful, or even just average looking. that wasn’t how the world was and, despite their foggy memory, valo-kas was positive that they had this world thing pretty figured out.

“[color=salmon]yeah, and? you’re dead.” ah, the ultimate trump card. you’re dead, na-na-na. simplicity, thy name is valo-kas. oh, that these too, too sick burns would flourish. they blinked, their third eyelid twitching a split second faster than the lids of their normal eyes, and shook with another laugh. “[color=salmon]’sides, if the worst thing about me’s a little bit of goo then i’m doing pretty good, i think.” the worst thing about valo-kas was absolutely not just a little bit of goo. they knew that. but nobody liked it when their conversational companion unbuckled an admission of unknown duration’s worth of accumulated faults and insecurities. dumbass brainlessness and the perceived inability to be self-aware was one of their many charms, after all. valo wouldn’t jeopardize that.