Dorm Lawn [Monday, Afternoon]

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

George had spent the weekend without hands and with hooves. For all the warnings Kenzi had given him, that had still been... an extremely strange experience. One that took a little recovery. Or at least a little head clearing time. So after a lazy start and a good breakfast this morning, he’d taken a bit of a walk through the preserve and found himself a candidate for practice.

Maybe it was weird that this was how he felt the most himself when he was raising dead things, but he wasn’t about to start reading into that at this stage.

Rather than take it back to his room, a quiet place on the lawn outside the dorms had been found, and he was repetitively seizing and releasing control of the bunny's unliving mind. As much as anything else, it had been a while since he’d done any practice, and he really didn’t want to fail out of Nancy's Mirror training because of something like that.

To the untrained eye it would likely look like he was alternately meditating and watching a very brave rabbit.

[[ open like a lawn, and George is interruptable. ]]

Comments

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

If Ace had known her roommate was thoughtfully leaving her a necromancy-free dorm room, she... probably would've been out here on purpose, instead of just wandering past by sheer coincidence.

"Hey, wotch-- ooh, cool!" She paused and crouched down near George to stare at the rabbit. Who maybe seemed a little off, but that might just have been how near to a human it had strayed, and was staying. "That one's got some spine, yeah?"

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

Not everyone was so tolerant of zombie rabbits in their room, at least George was aware of that.

He glanced up at her, dipped a slight nod and smiled. "You could say that, I suppose." It did have a spine, after all. "Afternoon, Ace."

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

"Are they all that tame around here, you think?" Huh, maybe it wasn't just the squirrels that were super-smart mutants, or secret aliens, or whatever made it possible for them to spy on everybody and digest rum. "Or are you some kind of bunny-mesmerist in your spare time?"

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"I'm not," George assured her, lips twitching in a grin. "Though that sounds interesting." He liked little forest creatures...

"This particular bunny is dead." Which was probably the only reason it wasn't nibbling on the tufts of grass around it. "So I suppose I am mesmerising this one." He wasn't at all sure what mesmerising was, or if it was really a word.

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

"Oh, well, that explains it," Ace replied with a snort, thinking he was having her on. "Not like vampire rabbits have much to be afraid of, right? Besides a carrot shortage."

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"Oh, he's not a vampire," George told her, "Closer to the lore of this world's zombies. Except it's very unlikely to try and eat your brains." None of his smaller creatures had tried that one.

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

Ace eyed him, still sure he was taking the piss. "'Cause they eat carrot brains?"

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"I feel you may be a little confused by the biology of carrots," he joked.

"If left to his own devices, he might try to eat corpse brains," George allowed. "But I'm not inclined to let him." Because it wasn't necessary to facilitate it's ongoing undead-ness and was a little gross.

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

"...You're serious?" Ace took another look at the rabbit, who was holding awfully still, then back at George. "My roommate's got a pet zombie bunny?"

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"Well, no." Because this wasn't a pet, as such. "But your roommate is a necromancer who could, if he wanted to." If that weren't completely against the natural order of things.

The bunny twitched his nose, and George looked briefly thoughtful. "I'll be letting him go later."

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

"You're a what?" Not that she couldn't pick up the idea from context, but some question containing the word what, or rather the word WHAT, was absolutely necessary here.

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

George shrugged. "I don't tend to bring my 'pets' home with me," he offered. "I know other people don't often take to them well."

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

Ace was a little too bzuh on the conceptual level to have reached any conclusions yet on how she felt about any specific zombie bunnies.

She wasn't exactly fond of taxidermy, for various reasons, but... those were dead dead things, and this was... Something.

"So you... bring things back from the dead?" Her tone was guarded now, but she refused to look freaked out enough to move away from him. Or the rabbit.

Well, maybe a millimetre away from the rabbit.

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"Sometimes." At previous schools, freaked out hadn't been an issue, but certainly he'd unnerved a few. It was an unusual talent, even for the Weird. "It's earned me nickname or two."

"But there've been times it's been useful." Saved lives, even.

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

"Does it..." What did she even want to be asking, here? Ace stared at the rabbit and replayed corpse brains in her head. "Do they stay alive? Uh, back...? Is it alive?"

She'd heard about the band at the bar, yeah, but she hadn't seen them yet, and had been taking 'zombies' with a grain of 'yeah, but that's what they call Kane's brain-wiped mercenaries too, and they're not really dead' salt, so far.

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"Not alive," George assured her, shaking his head. "He has... I suppose an imprint? An idea of what he did when he was alive. But he is dead."

"I didn't kill him," it felt important to clarify. Also to keep referring to the bunny as 'him', rathern than 'it'.

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

"Never thought you did." Which maybe she ought, since the retroactive thought gave Ace a deep involuntary shudder. "You don't seem like the killing small animals type."

Which she had not a lot of experience identifying, but more than she'd like, since those also tended to be the pouring petrol through letterboxes type.

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"One thing to be thankful for." Because he would hate to come off as that kind of creeper. George would not pour petrol through a letterbox, and smiled likely to ensure it seemed even less so.

"This is a little too strange for you?" he hazarded from her hesitancy.

[upmysleeve.livejournal.com]

"It's weird, but nah, I don't care from strange. Dead stuff just creeps me out a bit," Ace admitted. Guardedly, insofar as the a bit was a complete lie.

"Not fossils and such; I love dinosaurs, but those stuffed and mounted hunting trophies? Bad enough to kill the poor things just for sport, but then to keep them around like that... Ecch." She wrapped her hands around her knees and leaned a bit closer to the rabbit again, studying its eyes. "I dunno where this falls."

[dressedinblood]

Anna couldn't quite explain why she found herself drawn out to the lawn--not, that was, until she saw George and the rabbit. "Are you sure that's very polite?" she asked.

Yeah, hi, George. Meet the resident superghost. You may have already noticed the aura hanging around.

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that was a difficult thing not to notice when he was already in that state of mind. George looked momentarily puzzled, before remembering something of his manners and nodding a sort of bow.

"If he finds it not so, he has yet to tell me." Likely not especially, but this was preferable to many ways of learning.

[dressedinblood]

"It's a rabbit," Anna pointed out. "They don't usually talk even when they're alive. Even here."

The bow was different. She found she did prefer it to, say, coming at her with a knife or a baseball bat.

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

Ghosts were a new experience to George, but the dead in a more general sense were something he was in fact comfortable with. It seemed... impolite, somehow, to ask too much.

"No," George confirmed, "Not at home either. I've mended his wounds, and will set him to rest soon enough. I thought I'd let him enjoy the sunshine for a little first, though."

[dressedinblood]

"That's very decent of you," Anna said, bending over to look more closely at the rabbit. Especially compared to many of the other motivations she could have imagined. "I'm Anna."

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"George," he offered in return. "I hope my practice isn't disturbing you." He wasn't entirely sure how that sort of thing felt to anyone else, so it was worth checking. He could always take it a little further from the dorms in future.

[dressedinblood]

"No," Anna decided, "not really. I just...noticed, is all." Yeah, she didn't know how that worked, either.

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

Yep, weird, but George wasn't going to question in. "I... can't say I've met anyone quite like you. I thought I should find out." When Grandpa Cletus had been wandering around undead, he'd hardly been a pinnacle of conversation, but Anna seemed to be getting along just fine.

Also not trying to eat brains. Big plus.

[dressedinblood]

"Well, I'm not like most ghosts," Anna allowed, giving George a shrug. "Or...any other ghosts, as far as I know. As far as I know the part where I know I'm dead is a dead giveaway--" Ha. "--but maybe that's just my universe."

[nottheshoes.livejournal.com]

"I haven't come across any ghosts in mine," George admitted. "Though I feel like my grandfather knew he was dead after the fact, in some sense." A very vague sense. "But he was not a pinnacle of conversation, which made it difficult to tell."