Taura's stomach was growling, but she could be patient. Her nails were still tacky; she'd rather wear nail polish and eat lunch than vice versa
( Read more... )
Sing a song of sixpence. Shift it into 'penance', and maybe perhaps he would allow the phrase a little clearer. Six could refer to anything, them, of course, and perhaps others--it was nothing but obvious, that here, a commonality was the issue of siblings. Too many, it seemed, were destroyed and in turn destroyed their blood, and he was beginning to wonder if that was to be a pattern in itself. He hated that man, he hated Klavier, and Albedo rejected the concept. The other did not deserve his hate--a basic human with little else but ignorance and bumbling steps to call his own was not enough to touch him. Hadn't Albedo taught him that?
Quite and so, and yet still, here he was and had been, ready to tear the other's head off without a thought. And here it was, hours later, and it was still on Albedo's mind. He paused in the street he was wandering on, weight shifting to his unbandaged leg as he frowned at nothing, arms crossing over the shirt he was wearing. A distraction, then. Little brother was a bit far away, but something else,
( ... )
Objectively speaking, the snow and the cold were indicators that the weather was changing--or at the very least, it was capable of changing, whether or not everything around Yomi was nothing more than an elaborate illusion. Other than that, she wasn’t very concerned by the temperature and continued to walk around town at her own pace, hands in her jacket pockets. She’d discarded the bagged lunch as soon as she’d gotten off the bus, which just left the coupons and the credit card
( ... )
Speaks of devils and yet they appear. Dark hair swinging slightly against a back called familiarity, and he considered briefly, before moving to intercept. He was bored, and hadn't spoken to the other in quite some time. It was possible she had something of interest to share--something more than the basic chatter he was given hours ago.
He stepped a few feet away and raised a hand to gain attention. "Aren't you looking well," he gave pleasantly, smile leaning into a smirk. "How have your days been?"
Considerably better than his, one might imagine. It wasn't nearly every day that a heartbeat bounced from one to two to one in a maddening repetition, or a younger brother declared affections to one bleeding out in the snow. However. Who was he to complain, mm?
She’d lived too long with a guarded awareness of what went on around her to be able to turn it off and be an oblivious, untrained civilian. Even so, the sesshouseki had given her more security, security and perhaps arrogance. Enough not to worry too much about what might try to get under her guard.
At the wave, she stopped and turned to look. From the suddenness in which he appeared, the little one must have been on the street and just spotted her first, before she him.
How long had it been? Ah, yes, she remembered. The boy hadn’t factored into her time much at all lately, replaced in part by the History Club and other inconsequential strangers. And the absence of faces, too. Some moments interesting, some not, like her time with Albedo. But here he was again, giving her a brave face.
A smile touched her lips, too. “Better than you were last time, anyway. My week has been normal, give or take. What about yours?”
And, of the fourth week, she had visited this town, nothing but the weather seemed changed. Of course, the circumstances were different, both militaristic and monetary, but those were slight details. The picture behind the larger change seemed to becoming a bit more clear. The military was outright, in both factual data and what it wanted from them. The added incentives, rewards--seemed more like a system of encouragement of participation. Even giving them money today seemed like another thing. She had seen others rushing to spend their small funds, and Renamon felt like nothing more than a piece to be played. Any gain that was given was no gain at all
( ... )
Poor Byrne was starving by noon. He hadn't eaten all day - though admittedly, that was his own fault. He'd left that sack meal on the bus, after all. But whatever. He had those coupons in his pocket and he knew at least one of them was for a free lunch. Anything was better than that goo the Institute dished out, anyway. (Assuming that was what had been in the bag. What else would it've been
( ... )
Of the man, the Digimon had seen him approach and paused where she stood, waiting. It had been less than a day since they had spoken, and the man had showed his unwillingness to accept the differences that came with this place. It was nothing to hold fault for, but it was a liability nonetheless--something that could end in his destruction if he held to it too fiercely. Still, he looked relatively unharmed; so far, then, he had not come to pains over his misconceptions.
She shifted to face him, eyes bright and intent. "Byrne," she greeted casually, giving a polite incline of her head. "Are you doing well?"
Oh good, she seemed to be in a good mood. But her question, despite being simple, caused him to hesitate for a brief moment. Was he doing well? Uh. No?
"I'm fine," Byrne responded after a second's pause, smiling at her as if nothing were wrong with the world. "I was just about to go get lunch, in fact. At uh..." - he paused to quickly pull the coupons out of his pocket and examine them - "Tasty Burger. Wherever that is." Maybe Renamon knew? She'd been here before, right? Hopefully she knew because god, he was so hungry he could die right now. "Anyway, how're you?"
It really is like one of those trips... Celty finally decided after spending some time going up, down, around, and back onto what she had to guess was the main street of the town. Shinra had once explains about how classes in his school would go on trips during the year - usually the warmer part of the year. She could recall him trying to get her to sneak away on one with him, but she'd wanted nothing to do with it. And given what she'd heard had happened during it, she was quite thankful to have turned down that terrible plan.
This town was small, but it was different than the restricted hallways of the building they were being held in. It counted as a field trip in that sense. But the real question was what was she supposed to do? After all the rules of the Institute, were they really just supposed to go off on their own with cards and coupons? And just what the heck would five dollars get her anyway? That wasn't even enough to get someone to take a look at a broken PDA let alone buy one
( ... )
This place was always the same, from the predictable small-town snailbot creep of people in the streets to the clean sweep of stores filled with things he didn't particularly need or want- and whatever he did want probably came with a four-man military escort to confiscate it the second he so much as looked at it
( ... )
She'd just spotted what she thought was a electronics store and had been considering if bartering might be a viable option for getting a PDA when a familiar voice interrupted her not-so-realistic thoughts. Her head turned from the store and looked down the way to spot the person she had seen the most in the place. The... uh... robot.
While he looked different in the clothes he had on, he still didn't look at all like a robot as she pictured them. Still, she had to give him the benefit of the doubt with what she was herself.
"Um..." she blinked then looked around at the stores again. If she hadn't have already equated this event to that of a school outing, she might have admitted to being lost. That fact alone kept her from answering at first as she considered what she should be saying. Eventually she remembered what had happened the last time she had seen the man and spun back to him, looking panicked. "Your arm...?" she asked suddenly, lifting her hands as thought she might try to help.
As it turned out, he got a little bit of both. The first thing Celty did was turn to the stores, like some handy tour guide type would pop out of the nearest door and helpfully inform her of exactly where she was. Not for long, though- next thing he knew she was staring at him again, looking anxious and asking (with words, no less!) about his arm.
Depth Charge blinked for a moment, briefly taken aback that she'd bothered to ask at all, then he gave an awkward, gruff little laugh. "It's not so much my arm anymore as it is my everything." Quickly he unzipped his jacket and lifted the white shirt a little in demonstration, just enough to reveal the thick layer of bandages he'd acquired overnight, striping across his torso. "Got into a fight with a cyber raptor or three. No big deal. We won."
He dropped his shirt and zipped back up before the cold could get through to his skin and doubtless start up the pain again. He'd just about gotten used to walking- no reason to make it worse for himself again. "What about you? You keep safe last
The snow was cold, the pants were chafing in a way that she wasn't quite used to yet, and she maybe possibly regretted making fun of the stupid hat now, because maybe then if she had it, the snow wouldn't be getting into her hair. Gross gross, why couldn't her jacket have a hood? Was there some sort of decree that they would only give her a hat when it was the most unnecessary? Grumble grumble grumble.
And she was being stared at, but that was okay since it had happened the last time, too, and nothing had happened last time. At least most of them were doing their best to get out of her way. Would be better if the stupid guards reacted that way, she grumbled. At least then it would actually have been useful. And maybe she could break into one of these stores and get a weapon.
"Which store is most likely to have something useful and weapon-like, do you think?" Mele asked as she caught up to Taura. "You looking for something?" she added, looking up at Taura's face.
Taura had been so used to hardware being a euphemism for weapons that the first time she'd wandered into the hardware store in Doyleton, she'd spent a good five minutes just blinking at the displays. Still, that and the kitchen supply were the only place she'd seen anything with an edge. There was something that always made Miles laugh when cleavers were suggested as weapons; he and insisted the details were classified, so she hadn't asked. The memory of warm puffs of laughter on her skin, though, she could treasure without knowing the story.
"Aside from some food that doesn't look like it came back out of Waste Recycling?" She smiled, making it a joke, though the lightheadedness she'd had last night hadn't been at all funny. "Knives at the cooking store, and lots of things you could improvise with at the hardware store. If there's an underground weapons trade, I haven't found it."
She spoke with the frank confidence of someone who expected she could, which was likely true. She wouldn't mind being proved wrong, though.
"Mnn," Mele acknowledged. The underground weapons trade sounded promising, though looking at these people, it probably didn't exist, on the grounds that something like that had to be fairly badass and the people hanging around the town avoiding her were certainly not that.
They were too many guards to go looking for it, anyway. And yoinking something from just the cooking-slash-hardware stores would be hard to pull off, even if the guards weren't disguised and hard to spot. There was this one time that she had considered a book as a weapon.... "Mnh," she repeated, irritated. A weapon shouldn't be something she depended on: rather, the opposite, but she had to cover her new (well, not new anymore) newby weaknesses somehow. A weapon she wasn't prolific with wasn't going to do any good, though.
... No sense dwelling on it. Sigh. Moving on. "D'ya think it is? Waste recycling?" she asked. The food wasn't that bad, was it?
"Well, isn't everything? We eat, we, er, excrete, it ends up as fertilizer, and then they grow plants, and feed that either to people or to animals." She shrugged. Shipboard the plants/animals might be things that sort of straddled the gap between those two, with, really, similarly bland but filling results. Dirtside there were a lot more options, but Taura was only familiar with the tasty results, not the ins and outs of farming. "That...food...tastes like they skipped the part where you add flavor so no one remembers that part."
Even then, if there'd been enough of it, Taura wouldn't have minded that much. "I can shop for rations later. Let's find you some gear."
[From here.]It didn't seem like the snow was going to be letting up any time soon. Zack knew it couldn't last forever, but there was a good chance it would continue to build up until they headed home. He wondered how the buses would manage going back up the hill and seriously hoped that it didn't turn into some sort of disaster
( ... )
Hope had his hands clenched in his pockets the moment they stepped outside, trying to conserve as much heat as possible and huddle into himself. The second time seemed colder than the first time, even though he had been bracing for it. It had never gotten past the point where jackets had been preferable in Cocoon, rather than mandatory, and for once he was glad for change of clothes. He had never had clothes for this type of weather, and despite his distaste for what the hospital had to offer, it was better to be warm than anything else... even if he didn't feel warm, especially with the snow that had previously melted into his hat and on the bottom of his jeans where it had been dragging on the ground.
Cold. He stepped closer to Zach, trying to contain his shivering (he could tough it out-- especially if everyone else seemed to be able to) and hoping it was okay. Vanille and Sazh had never seemed to mind him stepping close as it was always Hope who broke away, but after Lightning... he just couldn't be sure. He wanted to be better
( ... )
As someone who was by nature a leader type, Zack didn't mind at all that Hope was following close behind him. In fact, it seemed like the smartest thing to do, considering it would be easy to slip on the ice here -- and there was something to be said for huddling for warmth. Not that they could do that when they were wandering around, but
( ... )
"I don't know," He admitted. For all that he was unused to such weather, there was something comforting in the cold beyond the freezing and the shivering. It was sharp and biting and like ice down his throat with each breath he took in a way that kept him awake and going as if reminding him that slowly down would mean being colder. Keep moving. It pushed all other thoughts out of his head, and that made it a good incentive to go on
( ... )
Comments 68
Quite and so, and yet still, here he was and had been, ready to tear the other's head off without a thought. And here it was, hours later, and it was still on Albedo's mind. He paused in the street he was wandering on, weight shifting to his unbandaged leg as he frowned at nothing, arms crossing over the shirt he was wearing. A distraction, then. Little brother was a bit far away, but something else, ( ... )
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He stepped a few feet away and raised a hand to gain attention. "Aren't you looking well," he gave pleasantly, smile leaning into a smirk. "How have your days been?"
Considerably better than his, one might imagine. It wasn't nearly every day that a heartbeat bounced from one to two to one in a maddening repetition, or a younger brother declared affections to one bleeding out in the snow. However. Who was he to complain, mm?
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At the wave, she stopped and turned to look. From the suddenness in which he appeared, the little one must have been on the street and just spotted her first, before she him.
How long had it been? Ah, yes, she remembered. The boy hadn’t factored into her time much at all lately, replaced in part by the History Club and other inconsequential strangers. And the absence of faces, too. Some moments interesting, some not, like her time with Albedo. But here he was again, giving her a brave face.
A smile touched her lips, too. “Better than you were last time, anyway. My week has been normal, give or take. What about yours?”
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She shifted to face him, eyes bright and intent. "Byrne," she greeted casually, giving a polite incline of her head. "Are you doing well?"
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"I'm fine," Byrne responded after a second's pause, smiling at her as if nothing were wrong with the world. "I was just about to go get lunch, in fact. At uh..." - he paused to quickly pull the coupons out of his pocket and examine them - "Tasty Burger. Wherever that is." Maybe Renamon knew? She'd been here before, right? Hopefully she knew because god, he was so hungry he could die right now. "Anyway, how're you?"
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This town was small, but it was different than the restricted hallways of the building they were being held in. It counted as a field trip in that sense. But the real question was what was she supposed to do? After all the rules of the Institute, were they really just supposed to go off on their own with cards and coupons? And just what the heck would five dollars get her anyway? That wasn't even enough to get someone to take a look at a broken PDA let alone buy one ( ... )
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While he looked different in the clothes he had on, he still didn't look at all like a robot as she pictured them. Still, she had to give him the benefit of the doubt with what she was herself.
"Um..." she blinked then looked around at the stores again. If she hadn't have already equated this event to that of a school outing, she might have admitted to being lost. That fact alone kept her from answering at first as she considered what she should be saying. Eventually she remembered what had happened the last time she had seen the man and spun back to him, looking panicked. "Your arm...?" she asked suddenly, lifting her hands as thought she might try to help.
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Depth Charge blinked for a moment, briefly taken aback that she'd bothered to ask at all, then he gave an awkward, gruff little laugh. "It's not so much my arm anymore as it is my everything." Quickly he unzipped his jacket and lifted the white shirt a little in demonstration, just enough to reveal the thick layer of bandages he'd acquired overnight, striping across his torso. "Got into a fight with a cyber raptor or three. No big deal. We won."
He dropped his shirt and zipped back up before the cold could get through to his skin and doubtless start up the pain again. He'd just about gotten used to walking- no reason to make it worse for himself again. "What about you? You keep safe last
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And she was being stared at, but that was okay since it had happened the last time, too, and nothing had happened last time. At least most of them were doing their best to get out of her way. Would be better if the stupid guards reacted that way, she grumbled. At least then it would actually have been useful. And maybe she could break into one of these stores and get a weapon.
"Which store is most likely to have something useful and weapon-like, do you think?" Mele asked as she caught up to Taura. "You looking for something?" she added, looking up at Taura's face.
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"Aside from some food that doesn't look like it came back out of Waste Recycling?" She smiled, making it a joke, though the lightheadedness she'd had last night hadn't been at all funny. "Knives at the cooking store, and lots of things you could improvise with at the hardware store. If there's an underground weapons trade, I haven't found it."
She spoke with the frank confidence of someone who expected she could, which was likely true. She wouldn't mind being proved wrong, though.
Reply
They were too many guards to go looking for it, anyway. And yoinking something from just the cooking-slash-hardware stores would be hard to pull off, even if the guards weren't disguised and hard to spot. There was this one time that she had considered a book as a weapon.... "Mnh," she repeated, irritated. A weapon shouldn't be something she depended on: rather, the opposite, but she had to cover her new (well, not new anymore) newby weaknesses somehow. A weapon she wasn't prolific with wasn't going to do any good, though.
... No sense dwelling on it. Sigh. Moving on. "D'ya think it is? Waste recycling?" she asked. The food wasn't that bad, was it?
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Even then, if there'd been enough of it, Taura wouldn't have minded that much. "I can shop for rations later. Let's find you some gear."
[to here]
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Cold. He stepped closer to Zach, trying to contain his shivering (he could tough it out-- especially if everyone else seemed to be able to) and hoping it was okay. Vanille and Sazh had never seemed to mind him stepping close as it was always Hope who broke away, but after Lightning... he just couldn't be sure. He wanted to be better ( ... )
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