(No Room for Error [Carina GB/Public]

((Her story is a bit different based on the differences between Cosim and Carina-- she never willingly killed anyone))

"Stop shaking it!!"

"I'm not!"

"Do you want to kill me, asshole?!"

"I wouldn't knock it-- thanks for giving me the idea."

Carina spit onto the ground near one of the porters from her stance on the wavering bar. The man standing underneath only scoffed. "Spit all you want, you're the one that's going to be falling on it."

How long had she been out of prison? One year-- a year ago today. She still didn't know how to handle people. Especially people who were in charge of 99% of her life. She was a gymnast before, and a gymnast after-- her skill had gotten significantly better after gaining the strength needed to stand up for onesself in a prison-- but her ability to communicate correctly with people (or, be unguarded at all) had gone completely down the drain. Prison hardens people-- or was it more than that? Was it because she was still angry at the injustice of society in general?

People who were in circuses were generally looked down upon. "They're gypsies", "they steal money", "they hustle"-- the thoughts made her cringe. She still remembered the day all of it applied to her. Well, the negativity. She was trapeze, then, part of her act at the Ragtags, afterwards. But she tended to shy away from it when it was a choice. The last time she had performed it before going to prison was when her partner had fallen--no net-- when she was supposed to connect with her on the other side, thanks to one side of the bar's rope being razored before the show. She held her hand for just a moment before she watched the woman fall to the hard earth below.

Sure, a human could have done it. An animal could have chewed through the rope in cargo. But no-- police suspected it was her and 'gypsy woman jealousy' over.. something. She didn't remember. It didn't matter anymore. The only thing that mattered was that they were wrong, and she could never prove it. She wasn't even a gypsy. Maybe that was what kept her afloat, that little dark humor-- they couldn't even get that right.

She liked the Russian bar. Clear cut, no room for error, nothing had to be checked beforehand so nobody would chance dying. Of course, anyone who stepped onto the bar chanced dying. By choice. By not communicating. Which she was admittedly 100% worse at than she used to be.

"Fine." She resigned the battle never really announced. "Just give me the signal when I look over there, okay?"

"You'll get it when I damn well feel like it."

"Jarvis--" The other porter finally spoke up, not wanting to see the woman in a crumpled heap in the next ten minutes. "Do what she says."

He was her favorite.

"Alright, get off, let's try again. No slip-ups this time."

"I only ever slip up when you're too weak to keep it up." Carina sneered, falling to a sitting position before jumping off.

"Well why don't you try holding it, then."

She patted him hard on the back with a chalk dusted hand before walking back up the bar, one side on the floor, and preparing for the next set. "Why don't you try this view-- I can see that bald spot." It was all good natured. Mostly.

((This is the russian bar ffff https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRJxJdgc4Ng she is still technically, a strongwoman-- you need to have a core of steel for this :I))

((I'm leaving in a week, therefore I will not wait any longer to give someone else a chance to reply to this. :I /shot Here is Mona's tentative design. She doesn't wear her traditional clothes often, out of fear. Symon is...pretty much exactly the same (but maybe slobbier--/shot), lab coat and all. Because I cannot imagine him not wearing a lab coat. XD))

Monashir wasn't sure what to do with the strange man when she found him passed out face-flat on the ground not too far from where she kept her bear. He was blonde, and therefore clearly not Japanese, so she had no reason to be afraid of him. But he wasn't moving, either, which made her wonder if he was dead. He was dressed in a white coat, which seemed to suggest as much--the dead dressed in white, after all. (She didn't stop to think that it wasn't that the dead dressed in white, rather, people dressed the dead in white. ...And only after they were actually found dead.) And if that was the case, she didn't want to touch him--dead things were impure, and she didn't want to be cursed or something.

Hesitantly, she poked him with a stick lying on the ground nearby. Nothing. She thought his chest looked like it was moving, just slightly, but she couldn't be sure. Did she want to take the chance and assume he was just unconscious?

...Not really.

The poor girl was good-natured, but not altogether very bright, and certainly not educated. On top of that, she'd been keep in hiding for a good chunk of her life (all due to the tattoos on her lips), and hadn't much experience with the inhabitants of the outside world, let alone this foreign one. It was difficult for her to know what to do.

...But Carina might. Carina was a lot smarter than she was. Leaping to her feet, she said to the body, "Don't move," on the off chance he could hear her, and dashed off to the main tent.

Bursting in on the other woman in the middle of her rehearsal, she exclaimed, "Carina! Carina! There's a dead man next to the bear cage, is it safe to try and wake him up?" No points for phrasing.

((Djfndn she looks so cute X) I'll have to finish my designs for Carina FFFF still working on the acrobatics costume XD ))

No points for being opportune, either. Of course, there was fault on the other end, as well. One couldn't expect someone as reactionary as Carina not to halt her activities when her name was called. Unfortunately, her activities included being suspended in the air. Which, if anyone knew anything about gravity (certainly not Mona--) could not be sustained for long.

As she fell back to the bar, she failed to give the porters the signal to crouch as she landed to absorb the shock, and hit the bar hard on her heels-- only going up about a foot before falling onto it again and subsequently off to the side onto a mat.

She was wondering if she should try to wake a dead man up? Was she hearing that right, or had she hit her head harder than she'd thought? ....No, it was Mona, she was hearing it right.

After standing and wavering a bit, she wiped the chalk dust off of her face and digested the information. "Well if he's dead, why try to wake him up?" She must have just been wondering if he was dead.

Turning to the two porters, she ended the practice for the day-- after all, a dead man was alot more important. "Where is this guy?" It wasn't every day a 'dead man' just appeared at the carnival like some kind of beached whale. She may as well see it.

((I still have no idea what Mona would actually do, as far as performance goes, but w/e-- And FFFFFFFFFFF you just had to use the phrase 'beached whale'. For some reason, I laugh like crazy when I hear that used for anything other than it's literal meaning. :I XDD))

Monashir just watched as the other woman took a fall for her interruption, wondering if it was supposed to be part of the act or not, and whether she was supposed to laugh. Probably not, that didn't look like it was planned. She ended up biting back both her lips to keep from smiling too goofily, in an attempt not to laugh. It was kind of funny-looking, the way she'd landed--

When she got up and spoke, though, the Ainu woman responded, "Well, I think he's dead, but I'm not sure..." Gesturing for her to follow, she lead the way to the spot...only to find that the man was no longer there.


The world was a dark, dark place, and Symon knew that better than anyone. He was going blind, after all. ...Or at least, he'd convinced himself he was.

He hadn't eaten in two days out of sheer depression, and it showed. His hair was rumpled, and his clothes were (if possible) even more so. Bags were sitting under a pair of dull, sorry eyes (which were otherwise perfectly functioning), framed by a smattering of radiation burns. Ever since the accident at the power plant, he'd more or less been wandering around in a state of sheer gloominess, trying time and time again to end his own life and (obviously) failing. He was never sure where he was going--somehow he'd managed to get all the way to this place--just that he wanted to die when he got there.

He was, shortly put, a loser.

Upon arriving at the carnival, dizzy from the lack of nourishment, he'd passed out for some short amount of time before being prodded awake. However, as it always took a considerable amount of time for him to wake up, he'd come to with nobody around in sight. Nobody but a bear, that is. He remembered why he'd been heading in this direction in the first place.

Dragging himself part of the way there, he managed to stumble to his feet, practically falling at the bars of the cage. Already being a rather thin man, the widely-spread bars of the cage were simple enough to slip through. For a moment, he just stood there. The bear didn't seem as interested in mauling him as he'd hoped. Maybe it just needed a little encouragement. Fumbling, he managed to get the massive creature's jaws in his hands, and opened and closed them. The bear snorted and scratched itself behind the ear. Unbelievable.

"You've gotta be kidding," he grumbled, "Come on...kill me, already..."

So engrossed he was in trying to bait the animal into doing something other than yawn (he even put his arm right between it's teeth--), he didn't notice the two women approaching the vicinity.

What a sight. A thin man in white trying to coax Mona's bear into... Killing him?

There was an institution nearby-- by what he was wearing, couldn't he have been a patient? ...Or a doctor? The latter scared her a bit. "Hey--" She automatically went up and pulled him away from the cage (not because she saw it as dangerous, but felt bad for the bear.) "We'll take you right back to the lunatic asylum," She'd finally assumed he was a patient and had been lost for some time. She spoke loud and slow, like she was speaking to someone less than competent. "Don't worry-- you'll get back home and to your medicine soon."

He was thin enough that she could pull him up to sit on a crate and quickly went off with a glass she took off of the food tables to get him some water. Placing it in his hands, she explained, "WATER."

He was burned all over and had a hollow look about him. "Definitely a loon," She alerted Mona. "Arson, probably."

Why was Carina talking like that? Monashir felt quite confused, but her friend's tone coupled with the somewhat 'off' appearance of the man disturbed her somewhat. She even felt herself feeling a bit concerned for her bear's safety. "Down!" She commanded to the animal in her mother tongue. It lazily shifted away from the man and slumped down for a nap.

Symon was feeling quite sour about this turn of events. Why did this always happen? There was no reason why he couldn't have died just now, not unlike all the other times he reasonably should have died. Someone up there really hated him, he felt. And the way this girl was talking to him... Really, really hated, that had to have been it--

Before he could inform her that he was not crazy, just depressed, she sat him up on a crate (Jesus Christ, she was strong--) and shoved a glass into his hands. "I KNOW," he responded, mimicking her slow, loud speech.

"What's a loon?" Monashir asked, looking somewhat frightened. Whatever it was, she felt like it wasn't a good thing. And what was arson, for that matter?

The young man snorted and interjected despondently, "I'm not a loon. I'm a scientist." As a bitter afterthought, he added, "Though some might tell you it's the same thing." And if they knew the consequences he'd seen from being a scientist, it wouldn't have been without reason. "I don't need this," he handed the glass of untouched water back to her, "I'm trying to dehydrate or starve myself to death. Whichever comes first. Unless you have a gun or something I can borrow? One that actually works; I've had too many misfires already."

Oh. He spoke.

And he said he wasn't crazy. That's what they all say. Or at least that's what she'd heard from inmates. A scientist? "If you were that smart you wouldn't be trying to kill yourself." She muttered back.

He was a loon-- completely. "It's someone who--" she was about to say 'lost their mind' before realizing that Mona would only ask if they could help him find it. "Doesn't think like normal people should think."

Facing him again, she frowned and ordered, "Drink that or I will take you to that asylum whether you like it there or not." She'd been to one, in an effort to try and plead insanity. It didn't work, but she'd learned some things. "People that act like you get lobotomies."

Life was precious. Or, that was what she believed. People who wasted theirs and drained others' along with it made her sick. And like he was set on dying, she was set on setting him straight. "You're a 'scientist', right? You know what lobotomy means?" even if he was set on dying, with these intellectual types-- she figured they'd rather not lose their cognizance.

"If you were smarter, you'd know there's no reason not to kill yourself," he shot back, "There's no meaning or purpose in being alive, so why live and prolong the inevitable?"

Monashir wondered if by what Carina was saying, she meant a person who didn't want to live anymore. "Why is he talking like that?" She whispered, though he could probably still hear her. Was 'loon' contagious? Would they catch it, too, by listening to him? She had half a mind to put her hands over her ears.

She did not understand what a lobotomy was--though he seemed to. His face went white, and rather than looking uninterested, he was suddenly regarding the taller of the two women with distrust. "They only do those to crazy people. I'm perfectly sound in the head--just depressed. By the way, you shouldn't assume that just because I'm a scientist, I know about surgery or psychology. I'm a physicist, we work with numbers. Not that anyone appreciates numbers..."

Mathematics was all he had, but if he went blind soon (as he highly suspected he would), then he'd lose the one thing life was worth living for. And if she took him to get his brain screwed over by a couple of psychos (he was of the opinion that psychologists were just as crazy as the people they studied), then he would lose it all the sooner. And he wouldn't even have the wit left to know to kill himself over it. He couldn't imagine a more terrible fate.

"So you think you beat the system?" She spat out sarcastically. "It's called being a pussy-for-brains coward." She hated people like that-- people that thought suicide was best because somewhere in their minds they thought they could look back at their loves after they died and say "glad I'm done with that". But one could ever do that. Death means you return to nothing, after being given something for free.

"He's talking like that because he's obviously off his medication." She informed her friend. Then, returning to the now even more sallow face of the man, she clarified. "They lobotomize you crazies that are a danger to yourselves and others. You're a danger to yourself--" she gestured to the Ainu. "And others. Look how scared she is. That's grounds for a drill in your head-- it's not gonna be hard to drag you there."

So once again, she repeated, "Drink the water."

It was a shame, she really was quite a fond person when she wasn't being argued with. Deep down, she did feel sorry for the man, and wondered what had happened to make him this way. Perhaps she'd never find out.

((LMAO-- "lobotomies were used to treat many different types of mental illnesses, including anxiety, depression and schizophrenia. The procedure was also performed on people who were considered extremely emotional, difficult to handle or simply "moody."" this is like all him XD))

((Lmaoooo FIRE UP THE DRILLS--/shot XDD))

"You can call me what you want, it won't matter once I'm dead," he half-shrugged. He'd met a lot of people who refused to understand (though not quite as vehemently as this girl) his way of life. And it was a way of life. The short, intelligent way, in his opinion. Life was only one side of the equation: the means to the end, to the product. Death was what always sat on the other side of that equal sign. Always. It was the final, clinching proof, to him. There was not a single person who had lived that hadn't or wasn't going to die, and therefore, the only true 'meaning' of life was to die. The very act of living was only a buildup for the end. He just preferred to solve his equations faster than most.

"I'm not crazy," he reiterated, more insistently. But...he looked down at the water. He wasn't a particularly prideful man (all he had to be proud of was his intellect), and he certainly didn't want to forcibly have his brains (again, the only thing he had to be proud of) turned to mush.

...But if he drank the water, then that negated yet another form of suicide for him.

Weighing the pros and cons, he did the math (literally) and decided that the probability of failure was inevitable, anyways, given his record thus far (he had the sneaking suspicion that he was immortal). So he brought the glass to his cracked lips. Through focusing only on how depressed he was, he'd made himself forget hunger and thirst, but the sudden presence of water made it impossible to ignore any longer. Despite himself, he ended up draining the glass, going into a coughing fit when it when down the wrong way in his haste.

"Happy now?" He managed to choke out as he struggled to clear his throat. If only water was solid and posed as an actual threat to his windpipes.

"Which you won't be," She reminded coldly. "For a very long time."

He was only making it worse for himself. The more challenging something was, the more she vowed to do something about it. She was stubborn to the point of it being dangerous.

She wasn't joking about putting him away, and it seemed like he finally got the message. But she didn't expect him to drink the whole glass. Finally granting the situation a knowing smile, she tapped her temple. "See? It's just your head that's wrong, the rest of you wants to live. And if you're wrong in the head, then, well... You're crazy."

After signaling someone who was watching with confusion to go get food for him, she finally had to ask. "So how did you end up here and why are you being such a little asshole?"