Cacophony

Worlds Apart

Credit

This post written in collaboration with @Redward.

'Corpse' is such an ugly word. Eufi and Dave aren't corpses. They aren't cadavers. They aren't husks. They're at peace, at rest. Even now, they're together. Torn apart for only a second. They didn't suffer.

The quiet young man took distant offense at his companion's methods. He rarely brought it up, but the blood made him uncomfortable; unhappy. Still, this was something he had to think about. Something he had to fully analyze. Fifteen corpses, rolling the word through his mind again made him feel dirty, but only fourteen... It didn't make sense. Something in him couldn't reconcile the miscalculation. While their methods differed, the quiet young man and his friend were thorough. There had never been something of this nature to worry about. It ate away at him until they reached their destination, keeping him largely in the grip of silence.

The diner, Hands On, was a small but somewhat reputable place; known to remain open all hours of the day. It wasn't pricy, and it wasn't particularly good, but the quiet young man had found through the years that few prying ears existed within its confines. Indeed, the patrons would more often than not place themselves well away from one another; when night bit down on Lightbridge. He had chosen their seat without asking the dapper lad, sitting in a corner; his gaze fixed on the world outside, through the film of fog that had formed on the window.

Their server had come and gone, a dark-haired girl that had tired features despite her age. She was polite enough, but the quiet young man could see that her mind was far away. She's pretty. I wonder if she has a vacation coming up. Looks like she could use it. He had ordered a simple meal. Eggs, bacon and two pancakes. It was his 'usual' for Hands On and one of the only things he could legitimately enjoy from the place. Water, he had said, instead of coffee. Coffee was too bitter, even when drowned in cream and made into sludge by sugar. The taste wouldn't leave his mouth for an uncomfortably long time.

He watched her, as she trudged along, wondering what was going on inside her head. Probably nothing important, but I want to know. A part of him nudged the budding thoughts aside. She was nothing special, it told him. Nothing to concern himself over. There were larger issues at hand.

It worked out. The facets are filled, now. Tonight wasn't the night, anyway. Not with...

He didn't waste any time, once she disappeared. His eyes drifted back to his companion, their cast something unreadable to most. The quiet young man was quite serious. Troubled, perhaps. This was not something that either of them had accounted for.

"Maybe your watch is broken? Cracked?" He didn't think it entirely sensible, given what he had come to learn of their 'weapons', but it wouldn't hurt to ask. "What happened, exactly? I want you to tell me everything about that missing one."

The dapper young lad perched upon his seat across from his quiet young companion with all the presence of a gargoyle, his elbows propped upon the sleek yet drab surface of the table, his index fingers supporting his sharp chin above his narrow, clasped hands. He'd not argued the choice of eatery, as much as he absolutely loathed this sort of "cuisine;" it did, after all, afford a few rather palatable tactical bonuses for people such as themselves carrying on a conversation such as the one they were getting underway. He'd waited patiently for the quiet young patron to order, and had simply signaled to the waitress that he'd have the same.

He almost let himself get caught starting right into the other's eyes, studying him intently as he watched the waitress recede. He knew, deep down, that the silence itself couldn't hide the disquiet writ upon his companion's mind as they'd waited to discuss what, exactly, the 'shitting fuck' had taken place. As the tenuous question was finally posed him, he closed his eyes and let out a long-suffering sigh. He really didn't want to deliver this news. Before speaking, he unclasped his hands and, parting his coat's breast with one, reached within to retrieve the incontrovertible evidence of his near-failure. He tapped the corner of the thin, laminated plastic card upon the table three times in quick succession, before sliding it unceremoniously across to skitter to a halt - in perfect orientation to be read - before his friend.

"Well, this particular would-be Eufi was my fourteenth collection," he began quietly, his brows furrowing tightly above eyes so tightly closed as to furrow his temples with crow's tracks. "Or at least, she was supposed to be."

He waited for the quiet young man to pick up and examine the identification card before continuing.

"She was an... uneventful encounter, at first. I took her quickly, silently, efficiently... I don't think she even felt any pain. You would have rather liked her; she seemed... sublimely innocent, in a nigh-bovine sense." Any other day, he would have allowed himself a slight chuckle at his own sense of humour. Opening his eyes and turning an unfocused, silvery gaze to the night beyond the nearby windowpane, he took in a breath and continued, perching his chin now upon his right palm while his left produced his pocketwatch, absently turning it over and round in his nimble fingers in a practiced flurry... another absentminded behaviour he'd adopted along with his molar-grinding in order to avert his own stress.

"I placed my hand upon the right side of her head, covering her ear - she hadn't noticed the silence on my approach, I mean, my methodology was not at fault - and within three seconds, the hypersonic polyhedra had split her dura and pia mater, sliced several cranial arteries, and broke the covalent bonds between the atoms of her brain-stem. She died rather neatly, compared to that bloody student in the alley." Here he paused and clenched his watch tightly, bringing his other fist down upon the table. The sudden sound startled even him; he'd forgotten, in his introversion, that the silence was without him at this moment. He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, glancing around at a couple other patrons who'd turned annoyed, quizzical glances in his direction at the outburst. They all immediately went back to their own banal existences, without any protest, and he took a deep, grounding breath before turning to fully face his quiet young partner in murder. Before he continued, his face seemed to melt into a softer, almost apologetic expression. He opened his mouth to speak, a hard "d" consonant escaping his lips before he caught himself, and continued, barely above a whisper.

"I promise you, everything went absolutely par for the bloody course, but... she..." He fidgeted in his seat in a display of extreme internal conflict, likely to the annoyance of his only friend, before mentally urging himself to just spit it out. He knew his next statement would not sit well with the quiet younger man; the very thought of it still didn't sit well within his own mind.

"This Euf- no. This non-Eufi," he spat, as though denying her the pseudonym was a slight against her for fouling up their plans, "She was just... she died, and no soul filled the fourteenth facet on my watch. The vapid wench was bloody empty, I tell you!" He took another brief breath to ground himself once more, and continued quietly, his eyes downcast, staring through the table top to some distant nowhere.

"I thought I'd failed myself, the others... and worse? Failed, well... you..."

He let these final few words hang on the air, his face an open mix of confusion, frustration, annoyance, and, though only the very person sitting across from him could ever identify it, a great deal of fear.

I don't want to talk about Eufi, right now.

They had met gazes, for a moment; before the card came sliding across the table, stopping perfectly before him. It made no noise as he slid it from the table and into his palm, held low against his lap, the quiet young man tracing the girls' features. His companion told of the girl's demise, and of her innocence. I can see it, he told himself, tracing a finger across the curl of her lips, she was happy. Maybe stupid, but happy. I bet she was alone. His chest tightened, and he removed his fingers from the ID; taking a moment to cover it with the edge of his jacket, in case the waitress were to return. She didn't even get a proper talking to, before going. Just...silence. Surprise.

He listened, lifting his gaze slightly, his strange displeasure veiled behind the usual wall; watching as a pocketwatch was produced and played with. As his companion's grip tightened. I would be worried, too. The quiet young man wouldn't fault his friend for his methods, despite the earlier unseemly display; and even smiled, slightly, when the debacle was mentioned. That's a haste-job, though. He would've been neater, if we hadn't run into a problem. I'll let it go. Besides, that guy's already dead. His friend was precise, and professional; much as the quiet young man considered himself to be. His friend was also nervous. The sound of his fist hitting the table had resounded throughout Hands On, and the quiet young man turned; but not to meet the gaze of the patrons.

Instead, he was looking for the waitress. His hand moved slightly, in its place on his knee, taking the ID card back up; hiding it against his hip, much as he did with his blade. The use of Eufi's name, again. The fidgeting. His mind started to drift, but the tension in his chest throbbed with disgust at revisiting that painful memory and brought him back to the table. He let it slide, bringing his hand to the table. It was then his companion began to say something, a very familiar sound quickly cut-off. He smiled, bringing his free hand up.

Not here, was the unspoken caution. His friend continued, and he listened until he was through.

"Stop. It's not your fault," the quiet young man let his gentle smile reinforce the words, hoping to draw his companion "we both know that they wouldn't blame you." It wasn't entirely true, the quiet young man knew well that at least one of them would have thrown a tantrum. "And me? I don't see how you could fail me. It's not like we've lost, or that we can't progress. It's weird when you talk, like that, you know? Beatrix Ashworth," he looked more pointedly at the ID, then back to his friend, "is a strange thing, but not one we should be worried about. In the worst case, she was a 'doll', which would mean someone could be watching us," the quiet young man reclined, a little, draping his arm over the back of the booth.

She looks like a doll, with those eyes, that's for sure. And tall, too. I wonder what she was really like... He could imagine her smiling, and for some reason, running. Again, the sharpening of pressure in his chest. A return from flights of fantasy. Disappointment. He shifted, bringing a hand up to his cheek and leaning against it.

"Best case she was just 'empty', like you said. Not many other reasons I can come up with, that'd keep your watch from functioning." Several terms came to mind, though, passed down from missed mouths. "I'm not sure what we should do, if anything, about her." She was, after all, from what he had heard, quite dead. "For now, we're set and ready to move forward."

True, it was disconcerting to him that a human shell had been walking around. Something without a soul could be dangerous, or nothing at all. He didn't much like that things had gone awry, but they weren't far from the path they'd predicted.

Worlds Apart

Listening to the quiet young man speak with his proper voice, safely within their bubble of silence, the taller young man finally felt himself relax somewhat. Just the slightest softening of his posture for the first time since he'd found himself forced to break into the cathedral. He let out a breath he wasn't even sure he'd been holding while he listened to his hooded acquaintance. His grin faltered ever so slightly, however, when the quiet young man mentioned that he'd acquired fourteen, just like they'd talked about. He accepted the plastic cards quietly, pushing them deep into an inner pocket within his coat. He wouldn't say a word about them, or inquire as to the nature of the recent Eufi and Dave. He understood, already.

"I was going to get some food, before meeting up with you. It's been a little while since we've sat down for a meal together. Gives us time to talk some things over. I don't think tonight is the right night to put things into action."

He allowed those last few words to hang in the air, feeling them reverberate in the spaces between the silence, spaces only his ears could hear. It was like the sound of the organ echoing throughout the Cathedral, undulating repetitions of the original sounds that folded upon themselves and wove a tapestry of discordant overtones - a true cacophony, but an effect he'd always found to be calming and grounding. His rêverie lasted but a moment before he took in a breath and answered in a more subdued, hushed tone than before.

"It's... interesting you should say that, actually," he began, pausing to glance over his shoulder in a rare display of nervousness. "It was to be my unhappy duty to inform you that tonight couldn't be the night, at all. I only have-..." This time, his voice cut off sharply, and he visibly stiffened. Far behind them, at the entrance to the alleyway, he heard the sound of trainers - footsteps upon the cement. It was a minuscule sound, barely perceptible to the ear, but the vibrations produced by those footsteps carried far enough to intersect the edge of his bubble of silence. The folding reverberations in the spaces between the silence produced in his ears a sound more like someone scuffing their shoes right next to him. He slowly lifted a single finger and pressed it to his slightly-parted lips, narrowing his eyes briefly at the quiet young man. <We have company... let me take this one. I'll explain after.> He nodded at the other before turning swiftly on his heel, his longcoat flourishing about him without a sound. At this point, his every move was silent, even unto his own ears.

He locked his gaze upon the corner of the alleyway, near the street he'd left just moments ago. The footsteps were getting closer, and something about them suggested that they weren't those of a simple passerby. They were slow, measured steps; he could tell by the rolling sound of leather and polyester against cement that each step was weighted toward the front. Whoever was approaching did so very carefully, on the tips of their toes. That's definitely someone sneaking around, he thought warily. Did I cock this up? Did someone actually hear me? He mentally kicked himself as the person slowly stepped into view. It was the student-looking guy he'd passed a little too close to earlier - the one who'd almost glanced back, as though he'd noticed him.

<Ah, putain!> he virtually shouted in the voice only he and his companion could hear. Realizing just how badly he'd slipped up, he felt a burning rush of heat colour his pale cheeks a sharp crimson as anger welled up within him. Being noticed by someone at all was bad enough, but to have been followed thereafter? It had never happened. Not once, in Lightbridge. He clenched his jaw, grinding his molars together in a terrible habit he'd developed in recent years as a stress response. His grip on his pocketwatch tightened as he raised it up before him, flicking the cover open to reveal the multi-faceted acrylic crystal window and the three hands ticking their lives away beneath. The window of the watch had fourteen individual facets; of them, thirteen seemed to glint even in the minimal light of the alleyway. One facet remained dull no matter the angle of the light striking it. The dapper young lad glanced down at that narrow, triangular glass edge briefly, and nodded to himself.

The student at the entrance to the alleyway was a tall young man in his early twenties - about the same age as the one he thought he was following. He was exceptionally tall and had an athlete's build. The weight of tumultuously mixed emotions was set upon his brow; uncertain scrutiny flirted with a kind of confused fear as his eyes danced around his surroundings on high alert. He took extremely slow steps, and stood in a defensive posture, arms up and knees bent slightly as he rounded the corner into the alleyway. The dapper young lad waited until he'd taken two full steps towards them before making his move.

He suddenly sprang forward, his feet propelling him up the alleyway noiselessly. He allowed the silence to linger behind him in his wake, keeping his quiet young companion in its grasp as he rushed the approaching student. The twenty-odd yards between them closed quickly. As the silence moved along with him, it pushed out before him, stretching out like the wretched claws of Death itself. Three seconds before he struck, the unfortunate student first became aware that something was wrong. He felt as though his ears suddenly needed to pop; a half-second later, he realized that the odd sensation was actually his apparently having suddenly gone deaf. He spun around wildly, his heart pounding - an incredibly unsettling sensation when felt in one's ears, but not heard. He raked wild eyes around the alley, the street, the nearby buildings. He could feel the spectre of his final breath approaching. He just didn't know how to identify that feeling.

The dapper young lad took the final sprinting stride and skidded to a halt mere inches from the still-unaware student. He was so close that as he exhaled, his next exhalation warmed the back of the taller man's neck. To him, the next few seconds seemed to go by with all the haste of a stone making its way up a hill. His soon-to-be-victim bristled at the sensation of breath upon his nape, hunching his shoulders and whirling around so quickly that he stumbled. He took in a sharp, soundless gasp of air as he lost his footing, and finally saw the dapper young lad he thought he'd noticed before. He only saw him for a fraction of a second, though. As his centre of gravity shifted and he began to fall back, his vision was obscured by the attacker's palm. The black-coated lad's fingers dug into the student's temples, cheekbones, and hairline, gripping tight enough to cause a flare of pain, as well as hold him awkwardly upright, unable to fall or to regain his footing. If he'd had a second more, perhaps he could have steadied himself. Instead, the shorter yet somehow so very much stronger young man depressed the dial atop his pocketwatch and held it down; the effect of this simple action was swift, and severe.

The student's entire musculature contracted in a massive seizure, his jaw flying open in a gut-wrenching screech that would never be heard by anyone - not even himself. Beneath his captor's thin, graceful, yet powerful grip, his skull was buzzing, vibrating at such a high frequency that human ears couldn't have picked it up even outside the silence. In that split second, every atom that made up his head had been forced to vibrate at frequencies exponentially higher than nature ever intended. The molecular bonds that made up the cells of his pia mater began to degrade as hypersonic waves pulsed out of the dapper young hand. In essence, his head itself had shifted quantum states, each subatomic particle being vibrated across the quantum spectrum from singular particles into wave-forms. The only particles known to exist that exhibit both particle and wave-form states were photons - light itself. No solid matter could withstand such a feat.

The dapper young man closed his eyes, feeling the undertones to the vibrational matrix he'd just set up in the space around his victim's head. He let out half a breath, relaxing the deluge a fraction of a second after it had begun. A tiny spasm tickled the outer edge of his left eyebrow as he focused on the undertones, using them to guide the vertices of the three-dimensional field of hypersonic, changing its shape. His pocketwatch audibly ticked the first full second since he'd breathed on the back of the hapless student's neck. That normally tiny sound was deafening in the spaces between the silence. As that tick reverberated around him, through him, he took in a sharp breath. The shape of the sound waves coalesced, finally; he'd targeted the vertices of the virtual polygon of sound waves to intersect with specific anatomical features - or at least, their general locations. The next tock of the pocketwatch smashed through the spaces between the silence as the student's pia mater was lacerated in a dozen places, the delicate membrane ripped apart by the intensity of its own atomic vibration; the same process ripped through several arteries, and turned the cerebellum and brain stem into a liquid mix of all the component matter that it used to be. The student stopped seizing as he hemorrhaged; he stopped breathing as his brain stem, the centre of the brain where the most basic bodily functions were kept going, liquified. He went limp in the young man's grasp as the third second ticked out of the watch, and it was over. He fell into a crumpled heap on the pavement below, dark rivulets of blood streaming from his ears and nostrils.

The dapper young lad let out a half-annoyed, half-satisfied huff as he dropped his arm to his side, opening and closing his hand. It would tingle for a few moments. As he turned around, he turned his gaze back upon the glinting surfaces of his pocketwatch, allowing himself a half-grin as the one dull facet joined the other thirteen in bright reflection of even the softest light source. He strode casually back over to his quiet young friend and held his pocketwatch up for the other to examine. As he spoke, neither his voice nor posture seemed to give any indication that he was in any way concerned by what had just transpired, or that he particularly cared about the corpse lying in a heap just within the boundaries of the silence.

"Well, with that done, it turns out I don't have to give you bad news tonight, mate," he quipped in light but restrained tones. "That makes fourteen apiece. However, this is my fifteenth corpse. We, erm... well, we certainly have some things to discuss over food. Did you have anything in particular in mind? My treat."

Worlds Apart

The night air weighed down on his shoulders like a cloak, blackness suspended like a filter over the spectra of colour which had retreated from the northern shores along with the sun so many hours ago. Half a moon seemed to peek out at him from time to time, an uproarious cacophony of unruly silence leaving him disquiet and wound as tight as a piano string as the massive, weighty doors of the Myriad Aegis Cathedral slammed silently shut behind him. A long, quiet sigh parted his lips, a gossamer wisp of breath writ upon the velvety parchment of the umbral night. Standing beneath the eves of the cathedral, he stood as still as the shadow of a corpse, now tenuously holding his breath, his weight shifted ever so slightly forward, to the balls of his feet. He reached a slender, delicate hand into the soft inner pocket of his double-breasted longcoat, retrieving a glinting silver object tethered to some hidden inner threading via a long, narrow chain. The clouds above parted momentarily, a shaft of flirtatiously impudent half-moonlight stabbing through the darkness to illuminate the emptiness of the grey gaze so firmly set upon the gentle sharpness of his young face. The silver object in his hand glinted in the pale glow as he depressed a small dial near where the chain met the circular backing. With a click, the intricately-carved face swung open, revealing the faceted glass of a watch within.

He continued to bate his breath as he locked his soft, steely eyes on the pocketwatch's second-hand, counting the last eleven seconds to himself. Finally, one last tock ushered in the eleventh hour, and within the space of a second, his exasperated sigh was totally lost by the massive surge of sound that sundered the silence about him. The Aegis Cathedral's bell tower was necessarily punctual, of course;
its deep tones tolled out across northern Lightbridge like the antecedent to a nightmarish clarion heralding Armageddon itself. He could feel the vibrations deep within himself, the crystalline clarity of the carillon resonating from deep beneath his solar plexus,
up through barely-audible overtones into his clavicles, and down through the bass depths of the tonal foundation, which seemed to plunge down somewhere around his lower abdomen and groin.

No, that's just the damnable butterflies. Get a grip, already.

The sound, at this distance, was all-consuming, and could be heard fading out across the expanse of the city, eleven separate notes that resonated and reverberated into a singular tapestry of echo. As the eleventh toll faded, receding in twisted contortions upon the ebbing tide of the nearby coastline, he set out. His footsteps were light upon the sidewalk, his black trainers seeming to glide along the cement noiselessly, even though they clearly made contact with the rough-hewn, well-traveled surface. As he made his way southwards, leaving the hulking majesty of the cathedral to bask in occasional moonbeams, it was as though he were enveloped in a bubble of complete silence. A stray breeze would dance around him, skittering the leaves and detritus along the walkways, but never fluttering the lapels of his calf-length coat, or even lifting a single sandy-blonde hair from its orderly mess upon his head. He walked with an air of casual determination, his eyes downcast, thin shoulders ever so slightly relaxed within the confines of his heavy coat; his steps were quick, but not quite rushed, and he held his pocketwatch in his left hand level with his chest, just before him. To an outside observer, it might appear that he was simply glancing down at a phone or other such device in his hand. Even up close, the few pedestrians who passed seemed to find themselves glancing away from him, moving out of his way. His trek southwards towards the centre of town was an almost perfectly straight line, despite various obstacles in the forms of street signs, passers-by, and even vehicles crossing through intersections. Any time he came upon something, his quiet little bubble of personal space seemed to simply excuse that something's existence for a moment as he made his way along.

I wonder if she... they... noticed me?

He'd given them an ample head start. The girl on the Bulwark, and the... other girl on the Bulwark. His left eyebrow twitched almost imperceptibly as he recalled stumbling upon them.

I'll have to be sure to repair that doorknob before the next service, he thought absently. It had been a necessary break-in. He'd kept the crumbled remains of the doorknob with him, as though he actually intended to somehow put it back together. Pfft, as if you can reassemble disintegrated brass shards. Get a grip, dammit. His lips parted and he heaved another soul-rending sigh. To his ears, the sound was completely normal; a bit sharp, for an intake of breath so coloured by self-directed exasperation, but otherwise just a normal, hefty sigh. The young man who passed him by as he sighed, though, heard nothing as he casually took an awkwardly large step to the right, allowing the dapper young lad in his quietness to slip by undisturbed. Probably a student at the nearby university, this particular pedestrian seemed to hesitate in his stride, glancing up from the path and turning his head as though to check behind him for some distraction. He stopped just a few degrees short of swinging around enough to actually look at the retreating back of the man he'd subconsciously stepped around, though, and simply shrugged the odd feeling off.

What the hell, how did he...?

His thoughts were interrupted as he came upon a large intersection. Across the expanse of asphalt, bedecked in the clashing hues of street lamps and traffic lights, sat the entry proper to the University grounds. This was where he needed to turn. He pivoted on his left heel, seeming to follow his pocketwatch through the fluid gesture as his heading swiveled Eastward. He continued thus for over half an hour, his gait and demeanour unchanging, his presence completely unnoticed by anyone or anything he passed by. His was a march of ceaseless silence, an orb of not-quite-there-ness that seemed to glide through the world around it with an anti-presence. He had to make sure to avoid certain parts of town where the air was more open, and even he would stick out against the backdrop of emptiness in the night; for this reason, he made his way through countless alleys, back-yards, and side-lots, just to lower his risk of detection. He could easily talk his way out of any encounter he couldn't avoid, but he really hadn't budgeted much extra time for "pleasantries." Not like anyone has any clue what the hell is 'pleasant' about it. People suck so hard... well, except for... His expressionless visage seemed, for an infinitesimal hint of a second, to shine with all the glee of the moon herself as his lips turned up in an honestly happy smile, the tail end of that last thought bringing him joyful clarity, if fleeting in brevity. As soon as the warmth of the smile flirted against the edges of his steel-grey irises, the lustre fell away and his face returned to its statuesque impassivity.

He continued for another several minutes, staring now at his pocketwatch with increasing intensity. His grip tightened with every passing moment, and he seemed poised on edge even as his gait, stride, and posture remained the same. It was as though he were waiting to notice something. A moment later, as another gently breeze failed to caress his face in his little bubble of not-quite-there-ness, he did notice it. A voice. A warm voice, one that forced the smile back to his face in spite of his best efforts to avoid it. He visibly relaxed, his shoulders slouching and the hand holding the pocketwatch dropping to his side. He depressed the button at its top once more, and closed his eyes. The voice was clearer now, though it spoke no words. It was more the essence of the voice he knew so well, babbling nonsensically on the periphery of his senses. He was used to this sensation; it was a sign that He was nearby. He must have been heading North this whole time, making the trip to rendezvous shorter for the both of them. Suddenly, his eyes flew open and he sprinted off on a tangent to his original path. The voice was crystal clear now, though still carried no words. He'd have to initiate contact to change that. Squeezing his pocketwatch relentlessly, he rounded a corner and stopped suddenly, peering down an alleyway.

<There you are!> He called out, the words seeming for all the world to die on his lips. No one in the area would be able to hear a thing he said in this particular manner - aside from his intended contact. For the one person in Lightbridge who could hear it though, his voice was light, yet full; a brilliant tenor, indicative of one well-trained in the vocal arts; the kind of warm, pleasant voice that seemed to always toe the line between speech and song. More importantly, it wasn't a voice that was heard by ears; it was a voice that would seem to spring up out of nowhere inside the listener's own mind - which, considering it held an almost-posh, almost-northern British accent, could be rather disconcerting to some. He schooled his face into a slightly less obvious grin, one with a little less teeth and a much more excusable mirth. <I'm going to bring you in to the silence, okay? Don't let me startle you.> His eyes found the familiar frame of the one he'd been seeking, a quiet young man who was just minding his own business, talking to his shadow and the like. He was coming up behind him, and until contact was made, even this chosen person wouldn't be able to discern his approach; for this reason, he made sure to do everything he could to avoid startling the young man. As he came within a few feet of him, he took a slightly awkward, wide step - taking utmost care not to to trod upon the young man's shadow.

Finally, he came up just behind the quiet young man's left shoulder, and reached out with his free right hand. Gently, slowly, with all the weight of a butterfly alighting upon a twig, he brushed his knuckles against the crest of the young man's shoulder, giving him the first indication of his presence. As soon as physical contact was made, even through this tiniest of gestures, the quiet young man he'd been seeking was suddenly brought into awareness of his presence. That much accomplished, he draped his arm across the other's shoulders, clapping his right upper arm in a most familiar way, and giving a light squeeze. Turning to meet his quiet friend's eyes, the dapper young lad flashed him a proper grin and tipped his chin in greeting, his silver eyes now making a go at outshining the moon.

"Oi, lad! How the hell are you doin' then?" He asked, his actual speaking voice audible only to the two of them, and identical to the voice he'd used to communicate upon approach. "Got some good news for me, I hope?"

Worlds Apart

A Character Sheet, you say?

A Dapper Young Lad

Name: Name? I must inform you that such knowledge is... privileged, madame.

Age: Are you going to ask my shoe size next? I'm sorry, but I'm really not your type.

Appearance:

[+]

Personality: Tested, at the moment. I don't usually share so much about myself with anyone, at all. But I suppose telling you that I keep to myself does, in some strange way, begin to answer your question, doesn't it? Curious.

Occupation: Sticking up for the underdog. Or something. I have old money, and I have my Steinway grand. What I "do" beyond that is really none of your business, is it, my dear?

History: That thing they say is written by the winners? I've been places. I've done things. None of it matters, though. Only him.

Semblance Type: Masks are so last-century; get with the times. Pocketwatches are cooler.