duplicity inbox / cw for nsfw shenanigans.

[unlawful]

TEXT / VOICE / VIDEO / ACTION NOTE: felix generally responds to everything in text, even voice or video calls. expect 90% of his replies to be text-based regardless of urgency.

Comments

[unlawful]

again: have you tried liquor
or downers
or any combination of the two

( a graveyard of a person, each memory a tombstone. only place he's haunting is himself. felix doesn't give enough of a shit to pick at that wound even when he offers it up on a silver platter, easy pickings for him to take his fill. the goal is to not think about sharkface randomly, like he wasn't a fucking dead man the moment he met felix and locus anyway. like felix wouldn't still rip his head off for even breathing in the general direction of his rig.

doesn't at all explain why he's continuing to text him.

felix tips the bottle to his mouth. )

you know what i know
i was turned into a human water balloon literal seconds before i ended up here and this place brought me back fit as a fucking fiddle like it never even happened
no reason it can't do it again

[requiemshark]

not for a while. don't drink prison wine they literally make that shit from bread and engine runoff.

[ He only tried it once in all the years he was there, on a very bad day, and then told himself never again. And then he held it up. He can drink here, but largely hasn't. Have to stay sharp. And it occurs to him now that he could push Felix, if he wanted. Make this sharp, turn it into the sort of fight they'd meet with brutality. When your enemy is at ease, weary him. When well fed, starve him. When at rest, make him run. The lesson was an early one. It held true. He could do that. Felix would respond. They could tear each other apart, one of them would win - or neither - and then what?

Like with Carolina, it'd probably just turn into one of those oroborus situations. Rinse, repeat. Do it all over again. ]

that's what i like about you
clearly
your can do attitude

[unlawful]

you know, i've never been

( never even really had a close call in the five years he spent sidestepping the unsc and interstellar authorities. ortez was thorough in covering their tracks, possessing a very specific and refined skillset that would put most forensic cleaners to shame. the jobs used to be a lot more simple, of course. easy bounties, easy marks, fucked up criminals with fucked up histories and a list of crimes so heinous that even felix refrained from making tactless jokes regarding their illicit activities.

somewhere along the line it changed. everything did. )

i'm full of silver linings
someone's gotta be the optimist and my optimism tells me that i would sooner slit my throat than let you take my legs from me
or any other body part for the record since i know how creative you are

[requiemshark]

you'd do fine. or you'd get your head bashed in the first day.

[ Either or. The Tartarus was full of Insurrectionists and UNSC fuckups. And then a couple like him, who qualified as both. Fun times. There were a couple men in there who might've been decent human beings under the posturing, but everybody played the part they had to play. There was a corpsman who looked after Ephemera once, after one of those bad days ended up with him seizing out and cracking his skull open when he pitched the fuck over and managed to brain himself on the way down. Because on top of everything, his implant's fucked too. Guy's name was Bird - nicknames, again, even with the Insurrectionists - and Bird didn't have to do shit about it, probably would've been better served by walking the fuck away, but for some reason didn't.

No. Bird patched him up. Sat with him afterward and told him yeah, that's probably a seizure, you have a history of those?

It was surprisingly decent of him. Bird's probably dead now, gone right out the airlock with everybody else. Or maybe shot in the head by some fucker on Chorus. Gone either way. Why bother dwelling? ]

that's almost sweet. i probably won't set you on fire.

[ Yeah, he definitely will at some point. ]

[unlawful]

have to get their hands on me first
i'm a slippery motherfucker

( wiry and lean, fast. not carolina fast, as sharkface helpfully pointed out in the elevator, just faster than most people and that's all he needs. a prison cell beatdown is not the kind of gangbang he's looking to participate in, but he's had worse odds. )

yeah you're full of shit
rest assured if that ever happens which it probably won't bc full, deliberate offense the only way you're taking me derigged is if i let it happen BUT
i'll butcher the fuck out of you and everything you sort of even moderately like when i come back
👉 😎 👉

[requiemshark]

not that slippery

[ It's idle banter. Doesn't mean all that much. Felix avoided the powers that be back home, apparently, but he still ended up in Duplicity same as the rest of them. And it's not like the Tartarus but some of the dynamics are familiar. The lines that are drawn, who has power and how it's reinforced. That might be irony.

Or karma. ]

🖕 yeah one of these days i'm dousing you in napalm. don't even need a rig for that shit

[unlawful]

uhhh remind me who evaded the long dick of the law for half a decade and who ended up in the pen again?

sounds hot
looking forward to spitekilling you in the future

[requiemshark]

got out eventually. it worked out.
and i survived a direct missile strike so i win that.

[ Gravity hammer to the face. Then a missile strike. Fun times. ]

promises promises

[unlawful]

oh now you're just fucking peacocking

[requiemshark]

dropped a building on me. 110 stories.
suck on that.

[ He might not always win, but he survives.

Well. Right up until he didn't, apparently. ]

[unlawful]

yeah well pfl's pet mammoth could do all that too and he still fucking drowned so
the bigger you are the less dramatic and climactic the fall, apparently
defying physics entirely

[requiemshark]

[ Drowning's a painful way to go. The sergeant drowned, Ephemera thinks. If she was lucky, she was unconscious. Split her head open on the way down, her helmet lost in the struggle. If she was lucky, she didn't feel it at all when her armor dragged her under. But they've never been all that lucky, have they?

He hopes it hurt when Agent Maine died. He hopes it took a long fucking time. ]

always an angle if you work it. course here nobody stays dead so that's just fun.

[ He wonders if he and Carolina are going to do that dance. Maybe. Probably. But he doesn't know. It feels like he should. ]

[unlawful]

not an ideal locale for us petty bitches is it

( or the perfect one. no theoretical reason they can't murder each other on eternal repeat until someone or something in the city makes them stop. sharkface is a broke bitch who doesn't have shit that he wants, and his business with carolina and washington and the moron simmies concluded on chorus. he's not picking a 1v1 direct fight with freelancer's top agent without an attractive incentive attached to the hit.

nah. it's fun enough needling her from afar, like prodding a cranky and sarcastic bear with a very long stick. )

[requiemshark]

speak for yourself. i'm not petty.

[unlawful]

vindictive
manic
obsessed
try those on for size

[requiemshark]

sure.

[ It's not like this is a surprise. ]

but not petty. i got cause for the shit i do.

[unlawful]

( mmmmmmmmmmmm weeeeeeeeeeeeeell )

sure.
i didn't work in a team so i can't say for sure what i'd do if someone blew them all to hell

[requiemshark]

they were my people and they died shitty fucking deaths. nothing else to say. somebody's gonna answer for it.

[ Not somebody. Carolina and Washington, specifically. ]

[unlawful]

most people in this game die shitty fucking deaths, it's a prerequisite
but you do you dude

( like he cares. )

have you even scoped her out to see if she has her ai

[requiemshark]

[ There's really no point in going over it with Felix. Ephemera isn't in the mood to lay out all the brutal details, why it mattered. It's simple. It doesn't need to be anything else.

Only problem is, he hasn't killed Carolina yet. And he keeps wondering why. ]

she hasn't tossed him up as a project yet. doesn't mean anything yet.

[ He's stalked her a couple times, from a distance. Wasn't hard to do. All the new subs end up in the same places. ]

[unlawful]

i don't know why the fuck she would when she knows you're here
you have the subtlety of a sledgehammer

[requiemshark]

if i wanted it subtle i would have hit her with a rocket launcher back on chorus and been done with it

[ Well. Subtle and quick aren't the same thing. And he wasn't looking for either. ]

this place needs different tactics.

[unlawful]

even your definition of subtle is completely fucked
why i was expecting anything else from a guy who modded his rig for a surprise flamethrower is beyond me

( to be fair, neither locus or felix brought him on board for his subtlety. )

she's a bitch with or without her ai
a well-rounded bitch
a bad bitch, as the kids say
how are the laws here

[requiemshark]

you know why i use a flamethrower? because even the freelancers and all their fancy gear don't expect it. weren't trained to counter.

[ Somebody can have all the fancy gear in the universe, but you blast them with napalm and they'll flinch. Maybe not for long, maybe not for long at all, but it's always enough for an opening. It's something in the lizard brain, something deep and instinctive that shies away from fire like they've all gone primitive all over again. ]

tough when you go against a dominant. they'll fuck you over for that and make sure everybody sees it. people care less when it's subs, unless one's contracted.

[ Which he is. A complication. ]

[unlawful]

probably because they never needed to learn how to counter it
they moved in a pack like well-fed wolves, look what happened when they split
picked off one by one, by one of their own

( and that makes carolina all the more enticing of a target, no washington on her six. )

easier to circumvent the laws when you have a clear outline
my very rough and early take is that the down is an ungoverned shithole abandoned to the vultures
nice and homey, massive advantage
except with the vultures comes the hawks and all ungoverned shitholes have some form of de facto jurisdiction marked by the territory
they've got some lame ass names too
bulldogs? fuck off