#cribasks

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In the usual theatrical style of such greys, the immediate area of the forest floods with smoke, choking out objection or retaliation to the involuntary magicking. However, once it clears, the change isn’t obvious. There doesn’t seem to be any change at all. Crib looks himself over, noting all the usual nicks and dents, the same shape and size and metals he’s been.

“Oh.. Huh,” he mutters, startling slightly when his voice comes out a few tones deeper than before, than intended. “Guess that could’ve been worse…Don’t feel that different. Guyish, whatever that means. Might even keep the skirt.” TM laughs at him, and he can’t help but chuckle back. And it’s not a bad sound that comes out. 

The Mouse is equally unchanged— apparently a bit miffed by the fact, that none of his belongings, wigs, clothes, or otherwise, seem in the slightest bit altered. he remarks, but he leaves his wig in the lockbox for the day.

”..What..? Oh, God, TM, no, put the helmet away.”

She’s barely finished taping up the book cover she tore and stops dead at the movement, movement that sounds nothing like settling firewood and nothing like TM. She stands, slowly, surveying the rafters for an unfamiliar heat signature— maybe it was nothing— when Elijah’s voice cuts her and she lets out a horrified scream.

“TM!” she shrieks, whirling with burning eyes to the rafters, jumping mindlessly to climb to the hayloft to face the—

The moment she puts her hand down the hayloft cracks and breaks under her weight, sending her and an unfortunate amount of floor and firewood crashing to the ground. As she struggles to free herself and get back to her feet, the sound of TM knocking on herself catches her attention, causes her to freeze.

TM stands at the edge of the hole in the floor, staring down into Crib’s red eyes with a look of abject concern. No fear of an attacker; fear of her. Fear for her. “You— I heard—” Crib chokes on a word, eyes flickering as she tries to reconcile what happened. The Mouse drops the book in her hands and drops to the ground, the worry in her expression deepening. Despite protests, she approaches.

{you’re chasing invisible monsters again,} she says. <{you need to sleep.}>

“B-but I, I heard…”

{my hearing is better. i didn’t.} 

“Elijah…”

For a sigh’s length The Mouse simply stares at Crib, then takes her by the hand and pulls towards the wall. {come on, baby, you’re sleeping now. done being scared today.}

{crib we match}

[[i can dig it but crib wanted to be pink pretty sure there's gotta be some shade that doesn't clash with her metal also they can fly i guess ..i think i misread hooded cloak over tunic for hooded tunic but hey let's roll with it

[[Ask: After Crib tore herself to pieces and Laurie was forced to shut her down, she didn’t ask permission going into Crib’s core. She didn’t ask permission installing a sleep function, or modifying Crib’s furnace to be self-lighting. She didn’t ask before growing the start of another blue matter core off of Crib’s, before setting to work on new limbs for her and an entirely new bot to be companion to her. She didn’t ask to wake Crib up again, if she ever wanted to wake up again, but Crib never argued, or objected, though she probably would have if she had been asked. She also probably would have eventually agreed. After two months (Laurie was a busy Lady, after all), Crib had new legs, and another four months later, on Christmas, she had a new arm and friend.

Numbers: The majority of TM’s clockwork is untouched by blue matter, and as such… is mostly just literal clockwork. It tells time, and some regulates the energy output from her wind-up, when she uses it. If anyone asks the time she’ll arrange her arms like a clock face, but sometimes she’s preoccupied enough that she’ll just display the numbers in her eyes.

Tell: Crib keeps more secrets from TM than TM does from her, and is prone to bottling when The Mouse upsets her, because she’s afraid to lose TM’s love— as ridiculous as that would be. Then again, the only reason The Mouse hasn’t told Crib about her potentially unstable core is because she knows Crib would feel betrayed and upset, and as it is, there’s little chance it would blow without someone forcibly trying to remove it or destroy it. So it’s a, uh, defense mechanism. Totally, uh. Totally not worth mentioning. ({shit.})

[[Absolute: Crib has grown up with a very conflicted sense of morality. To make things simple for her to understand, Eliza often explained things in terms of good and bad; it’s good to be honest, it’s good to protect, it’s bad to interrupt, it’s bad to hurt good people. But then who were good people? And didn’t Eliza sometimes do bad things? And yes. Sometimes good people did bad things, and bad people did good things, but it didn’t change the kind of person they were. Crib doesn’t really believe that people can change who they are— or maybe she’s afraid of it— and while she’s matured and grown to think more complexly as she’s gotten older, she still sometimes has problems thinking in terms of absolutes, and shaking first impressions. She holds few illusions about the fact that The Mouse functions on a much different— or complete lack of— morality compared to most people, but when TM does anything particularly nasty, sometimes Crib wonders if she’s the bad one for loving her.

Citrus: Crib refuses to have her tarnish scrubbed off because she doesn’t want to go back to being golden and glaring, but TM keeps her cleaned enough as to not look nasty. (disclaimer: i really need to draw updated references for both tm and crib jfc)

Hell: Crib isn’t sure if she believes in souls or not, or if she believes in an afterlife, but she’s pretty sure if both were real she’d be going to hell. Even if she weren’t, she figures, she’d probably try to go down just to be with the people she’s loved the most.