You can come to my place if you like, the weather's getting a bit chilly to invite someone outside (∗´꒳`) But if you'd prefer outside, I was going to do a little run outside the barrier for fish later
[He doesn't specifically know how scorpions hold up in this weather, but he figures it's going to be different for everyone, so he'll give options.]
Hubert shoots over an affirmation. The cold wasn't yet too bad as long as the sun was still up. He sends another text when he approaches the residence, and he cuts a silhouette that's impossible to miss between his black chitin, heavy black winter coat, and the only splash of color a red scarf tucked tightly around his neck.
Momo heads out to perch on his balcony railing when Hubert texts - the cold has him feeling a little more sluggish than he's used to, but he's also not feeling the actual cold as much as he'd expect, despite his fungi not being very fond of it. It's not just for fuzz reasons, since he remembers noticing a similar dullness to temperature not long after he arrived, but it's been a while since it's come up as obviously.
But regardless, he's very easy to spot out the front (of a nicer row-house near the entertainment districts in southern Belle Ville), and he waves all four hands in greeting when he spots Hubert approaching.
"Hi, hi! Thanks for coming out. It's way warmer inside, and you look like you need it," he says, nodding a little towards the coat. Momo is certainly dressed for winter, but not exceptionally bundled up, and he'll wait for Hubert to get nearer before he opens the door, to minimise how much heat escapes.
Waving with all four arms. How excessive. The other man really was an entertainer to the core. Hubert shakes his head slightly in response, a gesture of exasperation rather than judgment.
As he steps inside, it's clear he's sporting horns he hadn't been the last time they'd seen each other. Hubert hums a dull approval of the temperature as he unwinds his scarf, but leaves it draped loosely over his shoulders.
"Your heater is nicer than mine. A terra cohabitant of mine keeps heat lamps for her plants and they've done a great deal to supplement the temperature at our residence."
Hubert glances toward his host, his quiet emotions briefly passing through a concern that is gone as quickly as it came. Momo seems to have recovered well from October. As well as any one of them could, at least.
If anything, the mild exasperation seems to make Momo's smile widen a little - he tries to resist the urge here, but he's the type to poke at least a little fun when someone's being very serious, or at least continue being excessive, which is generally how he's been handling it here.
But as Hubert gets near enough for Momo to get a closer look, his eyes focus with immediate interest on those horns. He's spoken to one or two others recently who've acquired second souls, but this isn't one he immediately recognises as matching the existing ones, and he has to wonder whether other unknown-to-Patho-Gen souls like his second one are finally coming to light.
Passing into the inside of the apartment...it's pleasantly warm, but there's some oddities there. Shoes are set near the door, an indicator that Momo doesn't typically wear shoes inside (and indeed, he steps out of the ones he came out to the balcony in as he re-enters), but there's a box set to the side that appears to have some shoes of a different size and style packed away into it, and others near it that haven't made it yet. A staircase to one side of the door leads upstairs, and a hall leads past the stairs through to a living area, but there's something glowing ominously from a large nook beneath the stairs. It's mostly clean, but there's some glitter here and there on the floor from Momo's wings, and perhaps one or two shoes that have tipped past the boundaries of where the rest of them are kept, signs of someone who's been staying clean for someone else recently getting sloppy.
"Oh, I might have to ask about heat lamps...I'm probably going to have a terra cohabitant of my own eventually, but I don't want to rush him out of the Valentia," he admits, gesturing for Hubert to follow him through to the living area. Getting nearer the glowing reveals that it's...a vending machine, some mix of retro and futuristic, and all text on it (and the various snack foods behind its glass) in a completely unreadable language. "Anyway, those look kinda like rhino horns you've got now, when did they start coming in?"
Hubert's eyes scan his surroundings, lingering on the deliberately placed shoes. His brow furrows; after a moment of glancing between that and Momo's removed ones, he bends down to start the process of removing his boots. One didn't spent their entire life in political circles and noble courts without quickly picking up on cultural cues.
Though his eyes don't move from the work of his hands, Hubert's attention sharpens quickly at Momo's last sentence, an intense curiosity honed on him.
"Mid-October." You know, not long after their return. A normal time to grow horns. "Rhino horns? You recognize these?"
Momo will remain near the mouth of the hallway until Hubert finishes with his boots - normally he'd probably offer to help, but Hubert never exactly strikes him as the physical contact type. And while that doesn't always matter to Momo, here he tends to bear it in mind more.
The pique of interest certainly doesn't miss him, though, and he nods a little, making a gesture with two fingers as if to indicate a horn on forehead and nose. He can certainly see why mid-October would be a fitting time for it, considering how much it accelerated his own second soul's changes, but he'll leave that thought to himself for now.
"I can't say I remember what group of animals they're from more specifically than just a mammal, so it might not be much help for identifying the soul if you don't know it," he admits. "But they're a really huge, plant-eating animal with thick grey skin and one or two big horns on their nose - the full name is rhinoceros, but most people just call them rhinos."
It's wise not to reach out to a feral cat without considerable warning.
"A large plant-eating animal," Hubert repeats thoughtfully under his breath as he finishes removing his boots; he isn't wearing socks beneath them and it's obvious he has only three chitinous toes to a foot at this point. An undeniable feeling of relief follows his words. He shakes his head slightly as he stands. "After the horns grew, I wondered if it was the influence of some sort of fell spirit or demon."
Hubert takes one more glance at the shoes with a frown, then starts to join Momo in the hall—and stops abruptly, turning back and nudging that wayward pair of shoes left askew back into line with the others with his foot. The compulsion was growing annoyingly intense.
Momo's gaze flicks to the unusually-formed feet for a moment; he recognises that as indicative of a rhinoceros as well, so there's no surprise to his reaction before his attention returns to Hubert's face. He does give a bit of an understanding grin at thinking it was something stranger...that immediately quirks into something almost apologetic, mingled with amusement at the nudging of his stray shoes.
"Can't really blame anyone for not wanting to be a Spectral, fell spirit or not," he says, and as they head past the oddly glowing vending machine packed with illegible snacks, it might become more obvious why he was looking a bit apologetic a moment ago. He hasn't had time to completely trash the place since Chuuya disappeared a few days ago, but Momo is far more careful about keeping house when he's living with someone else - thus, as they enter the main living space, with both two long sofas and smaller pouf-like chairs surrounding a coffee table, there's a number of things out of place. A whiskey bottle or two not returned to the collection of them Momo has sitting on one shelf, a shirt draped over one of the chairs that hasn't made it to wherever it was going, dishes from meals earlier in the day that haven't been washed yet...
Momo doesn't appear overly concerned about it himself as he gestures for Hubert to take any seat he likes; he's used to his apartment back home being legitimately in too bad shape to invite people over quite frequently.
"Anyway, ask away with what you wanted to know. If this soul of yours turns out to be like the fungi one and Patho-Gen doesn't know what it can do yet, then it's definitely better kept off the Syntrofos."
The aspects of the dwelling in disarray get a glance, and on the surface, nothing but—yet a fellow arthropoda could feel Hubert's attention linger on them even when his eyes are directed elsewhere, a stubborn tug drawing it back whenever he manages to focus his attention elsewhere.
He considers the sofas and the pouf chairs with a slight frown. After a moment, Hubert carefully settles on a chair by the table, his metasoma tucking between his feet and curling into a loose disk. The growths certainly made furniture difficult at times.
"I was pleased that you honed in on my inference and extended an invitation. I certainly can't ask them about my developments." Not any more. His head shakes slightly. "My new changes haven't aligned with anything else I've seen. How did you develop those?" The mushrooms. "I seem to recall you with them as early as summer."
Momo can certainly feel that bit of...disturbance, of a sort, around the displaced items, though he leaves things as is for now, settling on a pouf since it's far easier to handle his wings on a chair that has no back, and bringing himself into a cross-legged position. The remark on taking the hint to invite him merely gets something of a wry smile - this isn't Momo's first rodeo having his communications observed, so the Syntrofos situation isn't unfamiliar even if he has to use different means here - but at the question of his own changes, it settles into something more thoughtful. The long claws on his lower set of arms, the ones that have now turned completely into a fungal form, lace together and rest under his chin for a moment as he considers the timeline as he recalls it.
"I first felt it in the second half of August, around the 20th. I was just preparing for bed, nothing really out-there about it, and then there was this pain in my Augmenter," he says, fingers of one of his upper hands touching gently at that spot on his neck. "It was maybe a minute or a few before it settled down, and I could tell then that something else was there. But I'd had an extended trip outside the barrier planned already with my expedition group, so once I'd come back from that, about a week and a half or so, the first mushrooms had already started coming in."
He gestures down to the tips of his wings, where tiny pink mushrooms are clustered. The exposure of being outside the barrier that long had kickstarted things for him, and between that and what happened in October, he feels he's gone through these changes faster than even his original ones, since from what he's seen in Kelesis he may not have much left of them.
Hubert listens impassive, his only outward tell the slightest press of his lips into an even thinner line. It's a disturbingly familiar story. Parts of it, anyway.
"I see. I experienced a pain as well, as if someone had stabbed me in the neck. I had been culling the maddened Augmented beneath Kelesis at the time—" Hubert says casually, as one did, "—with Mel and Pom. They said I blacked out."
He pauses here, recalling the event. Hubert still wasn't sure what to make of it, even if he had a nagging suspicion. He hated relying on intuition over logic, but here, sometimes it was all they had. "I heard voices—the same whispers that warned us to 'not expose it to light.'" Momo knows the one. Hubert holds his gaze for a moment. "I heard the Katalyth song of Kelesis. The voices sounded worried, and told me to take good care of 'it'."
Momo gives a grimace at the mention of culling the Augmented under Kelesis that's both sympathetic and knowing - he went down there to help with those efforts as well, even though he referred to it more as mercy killing. In the state they were in, with the all-consuming pain he'd been able to feel when he'd tried to reach down through the facility when they were first exploring with his spores, any other solution would have been a gamble and reliant on keeping them in that state even longer.
But there's an unmistakeable interest in his expression when Hubert mentions hearing the same voices as those that direct them in Kelesis. That didn't happen with him, even if something did, and he knows the Katalyth song well enough by now as well to get a good mental image of what he's talking about.
"...That's new. I did hear something when I got mine, but it was..." He trails off, gaze slipping to one side for a moment as he tries to find the words for the experience. It had been far from spoken word, but stuck with him all too easily despite that. "Like a heartbeat, this persistent, meaty sort of throb. It kept getting louder and louder, nearer and nearer, like it was swallowing everything up, and it was going to do the same to me."
Hence why he'd had a little trouble remembering exactly how long the pain had lasted, because being consumed by an experience like that hadn't exactly made it easy to track. Still, his eyes flick back to Hubert; there must be some kind of reason as to why his experience was seemingly that aligned with Kelesis. "Have you been back to Kelesis, since then? Or since the changes have come on more visibly?"
For as coldly as Hubert spoke of the killings, Momo has seen what it meant to him first-hand, that first month in the pit.
Hubert was quite happy never knowing the sound of a meaty throb. He subtly grimaces at the description. "I haven't. I've been prioritizing readying my residence for winter. It has been on my mind, though."
He gestures vaguely at his forehead. "The primary horn grew the day after our excursion. I was... exposed to a considerable dose of radiation down there. I'm not surprised it appeared so quickly. However... A few nights ago I experienced one of my cohabitant's dreams as if I were present. The similarities to Kelesis are striking."
Given how bundled up he'd been on arrival, Momo can understand that logic, but he's distracted from that almost immediately by the mention of arcane radiation exposure. His brows draw in visible concern, and the mention of more recent events doesn't help.
"Right, them drawing us into that dream to ask for help rings pretty close...and we still don't fully know what's going on there. Now that the pain from underground isn't there to override everything, the times I've been there since then, it's been easier to feel the deception, even if it's not out of malice."
And so he wouldn't be surprised if the aspect of dreams was connected in a larger way to Kelesis - it's certainly worth investigating, if they have a lead. "With the radiation dose you mentioned - what caused it? Were the other two involved as well?"
He's seen Mel and Pom around since then given everything going on with Aparallaxia, so he at least figures they're fine, but a dose so high that it triggered Corruption that quickly is something he can't help but ask after.
Momo doesn't look necessarily surprised at that warning - and, seeing Hubert sizing him up, allows his mask to slip slightly in a way that's undoubtedly deliberate with how much control Momo tends to have over his reactions overall. There's something resolute and focused in his eyes as he returns the gaze, knowing but refusing to turn away.
"I'll manage. I went down there to help as well, and I can't call that anything other than a gruesome matter either."
Between him and Dedue, it had been blades and Momo's abilities, and putting something to sleep before it's returned to the earth in the most literal sense only spared the plants living the experience, not him.
That'll be that, then. Momo was an adult capable of making his own decisions. His emotional steeling certainly made that clear.
"Very well." Hubert nods once, and without missing a beat continues levelly, "I removed what remained of an augmenter from one of the Terras for our scientists to study. Its body reacted violently, instantly accelerating into the last stage of arcane radiation poisoning. My exposure resulted from some of the boils bursting on me."
Since he'd still been two knuckles deep in a Terra's neck at the time. Pom and Mel did help, but they were already riddled with guilt about the culling as it was.
Momo's expression twists into a grimace at that, something pained in it, but his eyes are sharp as they shift away from Hubert for a moment. Processing, not merely in the sense of digesting the horror of it, but the ramifications, what it means for them.
"...The levels down there seemed like they must be high, with what happened to the Patho-Gen people who went," he says first, voice tight, thinking back to the information at the meeting regarding the multiple deaths underground. "But something like that...I guess there's more than one reason to make the Augmenters hard to remove."
Was it sheer sudden exposure overwhelm on a then-unprotected Terra that did it, or had the radiation built up and remained, only being held back by the Augmenter until it was removed? Neither is a promising thought for what could happen to any of them if they manage to remove an Augmenter from themselves in a way that's not already fatal.
He can ask about the Augmenter study when he's next at the science hut, since he's been assisting with Katalyth research for a while, and instead focuses back on Hubert to ask, "Besides the changes, how were you afterwards?"
"Precisely." Hubert utters the word with a hint of a sigh. The ramifications of it were a heavy, demoralizing thing—but that was exactly why Hubert thought to do something so horrific and cruel to a being that had already suffered as much as it had. The current Augmented needed to know if the warnings had been real or designed to control them through fear.
"After the exposure? Fine. It was unpleasant in the moment, of course—" both the moment of exposure and the horn growth the next day, "—but among other things, the scorpion soul is resilient." Hubert's voice turns dry. "In exchange for turning bright blue in the presence of radiation in the dark, I can shrug off radiation to the degree a golem can—perhaps even better."
Even if Hubert overestimated that resilience and discovered that he can, in fact, still experience negative side effects after months of reckless exposure.
Momo's brows lift in interest at that. He'd never been particularly immune to Katalyth exposure as an Arthropoda, and he's noticed by now that the Natural Soul abilities are to some degree tuned by the species (his sleep dust, reliant on the scales moths shed from their wings, hasn't been shared by any other Arthropoda he's met). But to hear a strength like that confirmed based on species is of particular interest, especially given his fairly recent discussion with Northly about the return of her water abilities based on a soul that could have potentially been Arthropoda as well.
"Honestly, having an extra warning system for it on top of our senses seems useful as well...I glow in the dark these days, but it's not the Arthropoda soul, and neither is my Katalyth resistance," he says, flexing his lower set of hands, the ones completely corrupted by fungal influence. "That was one thing I learnt out of that facility, that I've got a strong resistance to Katalyth now myself. So that's something to consider if we run into anything that'd be a way worse exposure risk for others."
He knows Spectrals have that innate resistance as well, and there's at least no shortage of them either, but it's always useful to be aware of details like that if the situation ever arises where it's needed.
Hubert nods. Momo's logic is exactly why he pushed so hard on the katalyth readings for some months before that backfired horribly.
His focus wavers and twitches again. He removes the scarf draped over his shoulders, placing it on the chair beside him. "Unfortunately I have still discovered there is limits to our resistance." Hubert stands as he talks, unbuttoning his thick winter coat. There's only four sleeves on this one to keep the heat in; as he lays it over the scarf, four more appendages on his lower abdomen, these ones insectile rather than humanoid, stretch before curling again at his waist.
"Have you met any others with souls that do not seem to align with anything known?"
Hubert adjusts his sleeves higher up his forearms as he wanders over the sink to work on the dishes. The weird split-focus of his attention calms and settles entirely on Momo, like the relief of someone who finally found where an incessant beeping was coming from.
Momo watches Hubert shed his outer layers with a bit of a tilt of the head, but figures the room might just be warm enough to allow for it more easily than outside. Since he's had Yuki over here and there, he's been trying to keep the place warm enough for him, and he's a lot less resistant to cold than Momo is.
The question gets a shake of the head, and he opens his mouth to answer...but he does hesitate a bit when Hubert goes to the sink, hands lifting but then pausing, as if torn between the urge to not have a guest doing his chores and the fact that he knows he's left it too long already. He's never been good with housework, especially with the frequency he's out of the house dealing with other matters; he just shares it or offers other things to the household when he's living with others.
"Ah...not yet, you're the first other than me. I've met someone with a second Natural Soul who isn't sure what it is yet, but from how they described it I think it is still one of the ones we know," he says, hands curling a little as he pushes himself up from his seat and gestures to the dishes. "I can help you with that. My roommate's only been gone a couple of days, so I guess I'm getting a little sloppy...you seemed pretty distracted by it, though."
He says that a little apologetically, as if to indicate he didn't realise it'd be the case, but there's also something of a question in his gaze. He's noticed he really has to pay attention to keeping things clean for other people since his Fungi soul came in (and it's worsening his habits when left to his own devices), so he wonders if this one might be an opposite case.
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But if you'd prefer outside, I was going to do a little run outside the barrier for fish later
[He doesn't specifically know how scorpions hold up in this weather, but he figures it's going to be different for everyone, so he'll give options.]
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It's grown unpleasant outside, yes. Your residence it is. Is now convenient?
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If you let me know when you're nearby you won't even have to knock
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But regardless, he's very easy to spot out the front (of a nicer row-house near the entertainment districts in southern Belle Ville), and he waves all four hands in greeting when he spots Hubert approaching.
"Hi, hi! Thanks for coming out. It's way warmer inside, and you look like you need it," he says, nodding a little towards the coat. Momo is certainly dressed for winter, but not exceptionally bundled up, and he'll wait for Hubert to get nearer before he opens the door, to minimise how much heat escapes.
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As he steps inside, it's clear he's sporting horns he hadn't been the last time they'd seen each other. Hubert hums a dull approval of the temperature as he unwinds his scarf, but leaves it draped loosely over his shoulders.
"Your heater is nicer than mine. A terra cohabitant of mine keeps heat lamps for her plants and they've done a great deal to supplement the temperature at our residence."
Hubert glances toward his host, his quiet emotions briefly passing through a concern that is gone as quickly as it came. Momo seems to have recovered well from October. As well as any one of them could, at least.
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But as Hubert gets near enough for Momo to get a closer look, his eyes focus with immediate interest on those horns. He's spoken to one or two others recently who've acquired second souls, but this isn't one he immediately recognises as matching the existing ones, and he has to wonder whether other unknown-to-Patho-Gen souls like his second one are finally coming to light.
Passing into the inside of the apartment...it's pleasantly warm, but there's some oddities there. Shoes are set near the door, an indicator that Momo doesn't typically wear shoes inside (and indeed, he steps out of the ones he came out to the balcony in as he re-enters), but there's a box set to the side that appears to have some shoes of a different size and style packed away into it, and others near it that haven't made it yet. A staircase to one side of the door leads upstairs, and a hall leads past the stairs through to a living area, but there's something glowing ominously from a large nook beneath the stairs. It's mostly clean, but there's some glitter here and there on the floor from Momo's wings, and perhaps one or two shoes that have tipped past the boundaries of where the rest of them are kept, signs of someone who's been staying clean for someone else recently getting sloppy.
"Oh, I might have to ask about heat lamps...I'm probably going to have a terra cohabitant of my own eventually, but I don't want to rush him out of the Valentia," he admits, gesturing for Hubert to follow him through to the living area. Getting nearer the glowing reveals that it's...a vending machine, some mix of retro and futuristic, and all text on it (and the various snack foods behind its glass) in a completely unreadable language. "Anyway, those look kinda like rhino horns you've got now, when did they start coming in?"
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Though his eyes don't move from the work of his hands, Hubert's attention sharpens quickly at Momo's last sentence, an intense curiosity honed on him.
"Mid-October." You know, not long after their return. A normal time to grow horns. "Rhino horns? You recognize these?"
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The pique of interest certainly doesn't miss him, though, and he nods a little, making a gesture with two fingers as if to indicate a horn on forehead and nose. He can certainly see why mid-October would be a fitting time for it, considering how much it accelerated his own second soul's changes, but he'll leave that thought to himself for now.
"I can't say I remember what group of animals they're from more specifically than just a mammal, so it might not be much help for identifying the soul if you don't know it," he admits. "But they're a really huge, plant-eating animal with thick grey skin and one or two big horns on their nose - the full name is rhinoceros, but most people just call them rhinos."
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"A large plant-eating animal," Hubert repeats thoughtfully under his breath as he finishes removing his boots; he isn't wearing socks beneath them and it's obvious he has only three chitinous toes to a foot at this point. An undeniable feeling of relief follows his words. He shakes his head slightly as he stands. "After the horns grew, I wondered if it was the influence of some sort of fell spirit or demon."
Hubert takes one more glance at the shoes with a frown, then starts to join Momo in the hall—and stops abruptly, turning back and nudging that wayward pair of shoes left askew back into line with the others with his foot. The compulsion was growing annoyingly intense.
Now he follows Momo.
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"Can't really blame anyone for not wanting to be a Spectral, fell spirit or not," he says, and as they head past the oddly glowing vending machine packed with illegible snacks, it might become more obvious why he was looking a bit apologetic a moment ago. He hasn't had time to completely trash the place since Chuuya disappeared a few days ago, but Momo is far more careful about keeping house when he's living with someone else - thus, as they enter the main living space, with both two long sofas and smaller pouf-like chairs surrounding a coffee table, there's a number of things out of place. A whiskey bottle or two not returned to the collection of them Momo has sitting on one shelf, a shirt draped over one of the chairs that hasn't made it to wherever it was going, dishes from meals earlier in the day that haven't been washed yet...
Momo doesn't appear overly concerned about it himself as he gestures for Hubert to take any seat he likes; he's used to his apartment back home being legitimately in too bad shape to invite people over quite frequently.
"Anyway, ask away with what you wanted to know. If this soul of yours turns out to be like the fungi one and Patho-Gen doesn't know what it can do yet, then it's definitely better kept off the Syntrofos."
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He considers the sofas and the pouf chairs with a slight frown. After a moment, Hubert carefully settles on a chair by the table, his metasoma tucking between his feet and curling into a loose disk. The growths certainly made furniture difficult at times.
"I was pleased that you honed in on my inference and extended an invitation. I certainly can't ask them about my developments." Not any more. His head shakes slightly. "My new changes haven't aligned with anything else I've seen. How did you develop those?" The mushrooms. "I seem to recall you with them as early as summer."
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"I first felt it in the second half of August, around the 20th. I was just preparing for bed, nothing really out-there about it, and then there was this pain in my Augmenter," he says, fingers of one of his upper hands touching gently at that spot on his neck. "It was maybe a minute or a few before it settled down, and I could tell then that something else was there. But I'd had an extended trip outside the barrier planned already with my expedition group, so once I'd come back from that, about a week and a half or so, the first mushrooms had already started coming in."
He gestures down to the tips of his wings, where tiny pink mushrooms are clustered. The exposure of being outside the barrier that long had kickstarted things for him, and between that and what happened in October, he feels he's gone through these changes faster than even his original ones, since from what he's seen in Kelesis he may not have much left of them.
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"I see. I experienced a pain as well, as if someone had stabbed me in the neck. I had been culling the maddened Augmented beneath Kelesis at the time—" Hubert says casually, as one did, "—with Mel and Pom. They said I blacked out."
He pauses here, recalling the event. Hubert still wasn't sure what to make of it, even if he had a nagging suspicion. He hated relying on intuition over logic, but here, sometimes it was all they had. "I heard voices—the same whispers that warned us to 'not expose it to light.'" Momo knows the one. Hubert holds his gaze for a moment. "I heard the Katalyth song of Kelesis. The voices sounded worried, and told me to take good care of 'it'."
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But there's an unmistakeable interest in his expression when Hubert mentions hearing the same voices as those that direct them in Kelesis. That didn't happen with him, even if something did, and he knows the Katalyth song well enough by now as well to get a good mental image of what he's talking about.
"...That's new. I did hear something when I got mine, but it was..." He trails off, gaze slipping to one side for a moment as he tries to find the words for the experience. It had been far from spoken word, but stuck with him all too easily despite that. "Like a heartbeat, this persistent, meaty sort of throb. It kept getting louder and louder, nearer and nearer, like it was swallowing everything up, and it was going to do the same to me."
Hence why he'd had a little trouble remembering exactly how long the pain had lasted, because being consumed by an experience like that hadn't exactly made it easy to track. Still, his eyes flick back to Hubert; there must be some kind of reason as to why his experience was seemingly that aligned with Kelesis. "Have you been back to Kelesis, since then? Or since the changes have come on more visibly?"
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Hubert was quite happy never knowing the sound of a meaty throb. He subtly grimaces at the description. "I haven't. I've been prioritizing readying my residence for winter. It has been on my mind, though."
He gestures vaguely at his forehead. "The primary horn grew the day after our excursion. I was... exposed to a considerable dose of radiation down there. I'm not surprised it appeared so quickly. However... A few nights ago I experienced one of my cohabitant's dreams as if I were present. The similarities to Kelesis are striking."
A little distressingly so.
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"Right, them drawing us into that dream to ask for help rings pretty close...and we still don't fully know what's going on there. Now that the pain from underground isn't there to override everything, the times I've been there since then, it's been easier to feel the deception, even if it's not out of malice."
And so he wouldn't be surprised if the aspect of dreams was connected in a larger way to Kelesis - it's certainly worth investigating, if they have a lead. "With the radiation dose you mentioned - what caused it? Were the other two involved as well?"
He's seen Mel and Pom around since then given everything going on with Aparallaxia, so he at least figures they're fine, but a dose so high that it triggered Corruption that quickly is something he can't help but ask after.
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"It was a gruesome matter I expected you won't enjoy having described to you. I believe Pom was briefly exposed, but perhaps less so than I."
He's willing to speak on it—but Momo needed to be warned first.
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"I'll manage. I went down there to help as well, and I can't call that anything other than a gruesome matter either."
Between him and Dedue, it had been blades and Momo's abilities, and putting something to sleep before it's returned to the earth in the most literal sense only spared the plants living the experience, not him.
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"Very well." Hubert nods once, and without missing a beat continues levelly, "I removed what remained of an augmenter from one of the Terras for our scientists to study. Its body reacted violently, instantly accelerating into the last stage of arcane radiation poisoning. My exposure resulted from some of the boils bursting on me."
Since he'd still been two knuckles deep in a Terra's neck at the time. Pom and Mel did help, but they were already riddled with guilt about the culling as it was.
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"...The levels down there seemed like they must be high, with what happened to the Patho-Gen people who went," he says first, voice tight, thinking back to the information at the meeting regarding the multiple deaths underground. "But something like that...I guess there's more than one reason to make the Augmenters hard to remove."
Was it sheer sudden exposure overwhelm on a then-unprotected Terra that did it, or had the radiation built up and remained, only being held back by the Augmenter until it was removed? Neither is a promising thought for what could happen to any of them if they manage to remove an Augmenter from themselves in a way that's not already fatal.
He can ask about the Augmenter study when he's next at the science hut, since he's been assisting with Katalyth research for a while, and instead focuses back on Hubert to ask, "Besides the changes, how were you afterwards?"
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"After the exposure? Fine. It was unpleasant in the moment, of course—" both the moment of exposure and the horn growth the next day, "—but among other things, the scorpion soul is resilient." Hubert's voice turns dry. "In exchange for turning bright blue in the presence of radiation in the dark, I can shrug off radiation to the degree a golem can—perhaps even better."
Even if Hubert overestimated that resilience and discovered that he can, in fact, still experience negative side effects after months of reckless exposure.
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"Honestly, having an extra warning system for it on top of our senses seems useful as well...I glow in the dark these days, but it's not the Arthropoda soul, and neither is my Katalyth resistance," he says, flexing his lower set of hands, the ones completely corrupted by fungal influence. "That was one thing I learnt out of that facility, that I've got a strong resistance to Katalyth now myself. So that's something to consider if we run into anything that'd be a way worse exposure risk for others."
He knows Spectrals have that innate resistance as well, and there's at least no shortage of them either, but it's always useful to be aware of details like that if the situation ever arises where it's needed.
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His focus wavers and twitches again. He removes the scarf draped over his shoulders, placing it on the chair beside him. "Unfortunately I have still discovered there is limits to our resistance." Hubert stands as he talks, unbuttoning his thick winter coat. There's only four sleeves on this one to keep the heat in; as he lays it over the scarf, four more appendages on his lower abdomen, these ones insectile rather than humanoid, stretch before curling again at his waist.
"Have you met any others with souls that do not seem to align with anything known?"
Hubert adjusts his sleeves higher up his forearms as he wanders over the sink to work on the dishes. The weird split-focus of his attention calms and settles entirely on Momo, like the relief of someone who finally found where an incessant beeping was coming from.
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The question gets a shake of the head, and he opens his mouth to answer...but he does hesitate a bit when Hubert goes to the sink, hands lifting but then pausing, as if torn between the urge to not have a guest doing his chores and the fact that he knows he's left it too long already. He's never been good with housework, especially with the frequency he's out of the house dealing with other matters; he just shares it or offers other things to the household when he's living with others.
"Ah...not yet, you're the first other than me. I've met someone with a second Natural Soul who isn't sure what it is yet, but from how they described it I think it is still one of the ones we know," he says, hands curling a little as he pushes himself up from his seat and gestures to the dishes. "I can help you with that. My roommate's only been gone a couple of days, so I guess I'm getting a little sloppy...you seemed pretty distracted by it, though."
He says that a little apologetically, as if to indicate he didn't realise it'd be the case, but there's also something of a question in his gaze. He's noticed he really has to pay attention to keeping things clean for other people since his Fungi soul came in (and it's worsening his habits when left to his own devices), so he wonders if this one might be an opposite case.
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