"Excuse me? The violent god?!" Simon's back had long hit the door by this point. 'These people are insane. Why the fuck am I even here? To join some league of insanity?! Cause I must be crazy to come up here instead of staying cozy down in the perfection of the Hive!'
"Violet. Purple. The end of the rainbow, the Librarian of Souls."
Simon stared. 'Momma? I think I just joined a cult.'
"Lady Blake!"
Another door in the room-why hadn't Simon noticed that earlier?-and out of it came a woman dressed in dark purple cloth, like a robe of some kind, and purple-tinted glasses hung on her neck by a cord.
Simon blinked. 'Who the fuck is she?'
As Blake turned to face her, Simon shot a glance at the scarred man only to see an expression of solemn respect. He had bowed his head and refused to raise it after the lady's entrance.
"It seems Jakob's men have overstepped once more..."
'Yah-cub? Who? What did these people do exactly?' Simon restrained the millions of thoughts flying in his head as he resolved to watch, trying to learn something by observing with as much patience as he could muster.
'Dammit I'm tired! I still haven't slept-wait isn't it the middle of the night?'
Simon blinked, unconsciously speaking aloud. "Why is it so bright outside at this time? Does the sun no longer set?"
After a strange quiet caught his attention, Simon refocused on his surroundings to see the three people in the room staring at him.
Blake's purple eyes stared him down, almost with curiosity and a slight bit of annoyance.
'Lady Blake? Blake was a woman? I could only remember her eyes so I really couldn't tell... now that I believe that though, it seems to feel true?'
The woman in purple just stared in shock and disbelief that rapidly became annoyance and disdain at this muddle-headed idiot speaking out of turn!
The scarred man both looked scared and impressed, as though he were mentally giving a thumbs up to a daredevil currently tempting a Siberian Tiger while covered in blood and fresh, raw meat.
"...sorry, idle-thoughts." Simon's face twitched in discomfort at the awkwardness that filled the room.
Blake turned to the scarred man. "Put him in Amara's squad. They will be tasked with raiding Jakob's supply trains."
Simon strangely felt like he could fill in several blanks. Like after the first sentence, in the pause, the meaning of 'they can explain this newbie shit' was pretty clearly added on.
For the second and last sentence, the meaning was a bit more nuanced, but Simon mentally added a childish voice of a little girl to the end of it. 'That'll show that boy! Thinks he can be a bully, we'll show him!'
Simon quirked a lip in a smile. "Hey uh... I think I still need that bichromatic or whatever to fix my head."
Blake looked at him, a strange stuffy feeling filling his head as the barrier and Lion shifted, becoming illusory as if they were mist. A bit of said "most" soaked into the tattered paper of his ripped mind scattered about, like water nourishing soil, and a cooling sensation slowly spread.
"You'll be fine." Blake looked away, and Simon once again added more to the end of the sentence in his head. 'Now leave and go do shit, useless newb.'
Simon took the hint and pulled the bar on the inside of the heavy metal door, pushing it open to walk back out into the blindingly bright light of day.
The scarred man followed after giving another bow to the two in the room.
Simon took a breath outside as the scarred man walked up beside him, before walking ahead without saying a word.
Simon began to follow, inwardly ridiculing himself. 'Why does the internal dialogue I add to other people's words always seem to be mean to myself?'
He quickly jogged a bit to catch up to the scarred man. "Hey uh... what's your name?"
"Ben."
"So Sir-I mean Ma'am-Lady?" Ben raised an eyebrow at Simon. "Nobody can remember what Commander Blake's appearance, gender, height, or even voice are. Ever. Whatever gender you are more predisposed to believe he is, that's how your brain will fill in the gap."
Simon nodded. "Aaaaahhhhhh... so we both were predisposed to assuming authority is male? Not sure I like that idea..."
Ben shot an incredulous look at Simon. "Are you missing a few bolts?!"
Simon nodded with utmost seriousness. "Yes, I think I need a doctor. Mind doctor. Doctor of my... miiiiiiiiiiind~!" Simon sang the last word out, and Ben took a nervous step back as people turned to stare.
"No, thinking he's male probably had more to do with you assuming the one who messed with your head would be male rather than female, that's the strongest impression you have of Commander Blake after all." Ben hesitantly spoke, before looking confused.
"Wait why am I even thinking about this? Dammit kid, stop distracting me, we need to move before Jakob moves those supply trains!"
Ben turned and suddenly began to run, a slow run or fast jog maybe as he ran around stalls and up stairs of metal built into the ravines cliffs, going back up to the wide surface of the "valley" between two ridges of the mountain.
Simon had come out of a cave on one of those two ridges. He could see from down here that some towers of metal and perhaps plastic seemed to be built higher up than where he'd come out. He hadn't noticed before as he hadn't looked behind him, up the mountain, when he came out.
Ben seemed to be going towards one of the many structures of steel in this "valley" besides the many scaffolds down the ravines and in this valley, making a weird giant rusty jungle-gym of a town.
"How the heck did the land get like this?" Simon asked as they walked across a walkway, slowing down for safety as the walkway over this smaller ravine had no railings.
"What do you mean?" Ben was about to give up on ever following this guy's train of thought. "Are you asking how the Extinction happened?"
"You know?!" Simon suddenly jerked his head to stare at Ben with laser focus, his expression in absolute incredulous shock.
"Of course I don't know! Nobody knows! Why would you even ask?!"
"I didn't ask! I was asking how the heck the land formed such strange ravines in the arms of a mountain out in the god-knows what kind of land!"
"Y'all need to chill." A stall-tender standing nearby butted in suddenly, and both Simon and Ben looked at him. "I go' some good green-wonder that cen hep ya with dat."
Simon blinked as he realized the stall-tender was offering a ball of some kind of green-brown plant all smushed and wrinkled together, along with a pipe to smoke it.
"I'm good, thank you."
"No, thank yeeewwww, mekin all dis noise! My customahs man, they donnae come if these bad vibes donnae get out!"
The man with jaundiced eyes began shooting them away, and Simon followed Ben.
"He was... unhealthy looking."
"Yes." Ben gave another monosyllabic answer, unwilling to converse with this crazy guy.