Cyberpunk AU: Pakku
More in the 'verse of Pux's cyberpunk meme and my The Boy With the Steel Arm. I suggest reading Pux's worldbuilding notes, since a lot of what's going on here is in the implications.
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Master Pakku never gets sick.
Some of the younger Water Tribesfolk marvel at it. He's an old man in a harsh land, but he's aged extremely well. He is still handsome, strong, swift, better than a lot of people.
He tears the head off of anyone who comments on it. Which, Yugoda says, is better than what he used to do. The wounds from words are easier to heal than frostbite from being frozen to a wall.
Sometimes, in the dead of winter, in his own apartments, Pakku rolls up the sleeves he never rolls up outside. He looks at the barcode tattooed on his inner arm, tries to remember the joy from his first day in the Earth Kingdom before everything went bad.
He can never remember it. Green makes bile rise in his throat. The only bit of it he can stand is Bumi, because Bumi got him out.
He traces a pattern in ice on top of the barcode, obscuring it. White lotus.
---
Master Pakku never gets sick.
Some of the younger Water Tribesfolk marvel at it. He's an old man in a harsh land, but he's aged extremely well. He is still handsome, strong, swift, better than a lot of people.
He tears the head off of anyone who comments on it. Which, Yugoda says, is better than what he used to do. The wounds from words are easier to heal than frostbite from being frozen to a wall.
Sometimes, in the dead of winter, in his own apartments, Pakku rolls up the sleeves he never rolls up outside. He looks at the barcode tattooed on his inner arm, tries to remember the joy from his first day in the Earth Kingdom before everything went bad.
He can never remember it. Green makes bile rise in his throat. The only bit of it he can stand is Bumi, because Bumi got him out.
He traces a pattern in ice on top of the barcode, obscuring it. White lotus.