Print: Team Gino is trying and failing to remove the ink, now with beauty products with fancy labels.
Pain, beauty products. I have moved beyond the need for prompts.
All the good things belong to MonolithSoft.
Gino passed out twice during the attempts to remove the ink, an unconsciousness that hadn't stopped him from failing and sweating. The micellar water had been bad enough, but then Susu moved on to something that smelled like it would melt plastic. That caused the first collapse, and resulted in a certain gummy quality to Gino's skin. Diego stopped it the minute he'd noticed the change, but not soon enough for Gino. He'd howled and slammed his head on the back of the sofa.
While Josefina calmed down a repentant Susu, Diego held onto Gino's wrist, wondering if there should be a pulse or if the slight whirring under Gino's skin was a good enough sign. Mimeosome bodies mimicked human ones, but there were limits. Gino woke a second later and wailed loudly and unintelligibly. Susu showered him with apologies.
"What you got next?" was all he said clearly. His skin was healing after the assault, as mim bodies were supposed to, but the ink was unmoved.
There was quite the choice: a cream that smelled like strawlennies, a tiny golden tube of Ma-non oil conditioner which fizzled but did nothing, a bar of soap with pumice from Cauldros. Diego insisted they only test things on the leg without scratches, which meant that Gino's left leg was becoming smooth and supple in novel ways, none of which reduced the broad ink designs.
"That's it," said Susu, screwing the last lid on the last jar. She looked away guiltily.
Gino swore richly and Josefina made noises about making coffee, but Diego was staring at Susu hard. Her sleepy eyes were lowered to the edge of the rug, but she wasn't moving away from the duffel of beauty products or from Gino. Diego took a risk. "What else is in there?"
Gino hopped onto Diego's suspicion. "You got more? Anything?"
"I don't know," she said defensively.
Josefina moved between Gino and Susu, which was nonsense. Gino wasn't going to move off that couch without help. "Don't bully her."
Diego tilted his narrow head and looked at her from under lowered eyelids. He was anything but sleepy. He was putting on his best come-hither look, one that had patrons of the Repenta flocking to buy him a drink, and not even Susu could be fully immune. "Don't worry. You can tell papi. What else you got?"
Susu leaned against Josefina. Diego was afraid she'd hide and go silent, but she poured it out in a rush. "I was thinking, about Jennifer. She was curious about makeup, sure, but also about rituals, for our coven. We practiced a mixture of sources, mostly Wicca but other ideas. It was a struggle on the Whale because you know our Mother, Mother Earth right? She was gone." Susu was crying at that point but she kept going. "How do you establish balance in a space ship? It was so much harder, but so much more important. We welcomed newcomers like Jennifer, but eventually we sort of ghosted her. She wasn't asking the good kinds of questions. So I thought it might be something related." She dipped both hands into the duffel and brought out multiple glass containers with hand-written labels.
The third bottle was the one that made Gino pass out for the second time.
Next up: Medals. Tbh I'm going to ignore prompts until we get this done.