@Joshie Defend or Engage Enemy?
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STATUS: Acquire child. 8 yrs ago
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I watch and I wait.
Nothing new on the radar, of course. Honestly, even with its necessity in the field, overwatch duty was boring stuff. No sign of reinforcements to be seen. No fun little easter eggs hidden in the graffiti. No nothing. Just simulated movements of simulated civilians, and not even interesting ones either! All she saw was plainly fake walking around routines, followed by artificial running and panicking once the fighting had started. Would it have killed one of the Guardians to throw real personality modules into these things?
...Nevermind.
Now, back to the doldrums of watch duty. Pretty standard ‘sit back and watch the show’ procedure, except at some point the show’s projector decided to glitch out, proverbially and - if my metric crapton of eyes weren’t lying to me - literally. The simulation went from Danger Room to musical dress rehearsal in six seconds flat. I couldn’t believe my eyes: they’d programmed dancing - and good dancing at that - into these things, and they didn’t even add a street performer NPC? Shame.
I shrug. Then I start nodding my head side to side and, at the same time, move my arms in tune to what inaudible beat I could infer from the simulacrums. It was probably off, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that the rhythm was familiar. Da-da-dadada-da-da. Da-da-dadada-da-da. In hindsight, I probably should’ve cared about this situation a bit more, but the NPCs weren’t real. Why should I care, especially now that this had become about 20x the farce it was earlier?
Then I hear Network - a flesh and blood teammate affected physically by the simulation, and thus firmly in the ‘people Swarm should care about’ category - shout for me to cover him. Leaving him to face this thing alone, especially if he was asking for it - help, not a butt-kicking - was something I couldn’t do, and if there was anything I knew about, it was the importance of synergistic action and camaraderie within the hivemind team. So to support him, I array my fastest bugs to shroud Network’s movements among their chaotic swarm, and to infiltrate Dragoon’s armor through whatever openings they could find, using the distraction of Ian’s car bomb to do so relatively (for a giant mass of bugs, anyway) stealthily.
Or at least that’s what I would’ve done if the good-for-nothing holobugs would’ve followed my orders!
Instead they just vibrated. ’Well,’ I think, ’This is certainly going to prove problematic.’ I guess once whatever glitch had struck them, my power stopped considering them insects? Or maybe the vibrate function was overriding the move function. Whatever the case, I could still see through them, so they weren’t useless to me just yet.
With as much celerity as my statistically modelled peak human body could muster, I spring out of cover and across the battlefield. At first, there was an unavoidable wave of nausea as my expanded senses and personal senses contended - a conflict of senses that I really, really needed to get used to before it messed me up when it counted - but I’d done this once before. Doing it again with help shouldn’t be so hard, yeah?
I use the diversion made by Network’s failed attack to take Dragoon by the flank - hopefully proving myself enough of a nuisance to let Network get his wits about him again in the process - with a strike aimed at the side of her knee. Divine armor or not, I was sure it should destabilize her enough if my presence wasn’t enough.
Unleash Powers Roll - Overcome Hacking: 6
Engage Enemy - RIP Net and Swarm: 5
Nothing new on the radar, of course. Honestly, even with its necessity in the field, overwatch duty was boring stuff. No sign of reinforcements to be seen. No fun little easter eggs hidden in the graffiti. No nothing. Just simulated movements of simulated civilians, and not even interesting ones either! All she saw was plainly fake walking around routines, followed by artificial running and panicking once the fighting had started. Would it have killed one of the Guardians to throw real personality modules into these things?
...Nevermind.
Now, back to the doldrums of watch duty. Pretty standard ‘sit back and watch the show’ procedure, except at some point the show’s projector decided to glitch out, proverbially and - if my metric crapton of eyes weren’t lying to me - literally. The simulation went from Danger Room to musical dress rehearsal in six seconds flat. I couldn’t believe my eyes: they’d programmed dancing - and good dancing at that - into these things, and they didn’t even add a street performer NPC? Shame.
I shrug. Then I start nodding my head side to side and, at the same time, move my arms in tune to what inaudible beat I could infer from the simulacrums. It was probably off, but I couldn’t help but get the feeling that the rhythm was familiar. Da-da-dadada-da-da. Da-da-dadada-da-da. In hindsight, I probably should’ve cared about this situation a bit more, but the NPCs weren’t real. Why should I care, especially now that this had become about 20x the farce it was earlier?
Then I hear Network - a flesh and blood teammate affected physically by the simulation, and thus firmly in the ‘people Swarm should care about’ category - shout for me to cover him. Leaving him to face this thing alone, especially if he was asking for it - help, not a butt-kicking - was something I couldn’t do, and if there was anything I knew about, it was the importance of synergistic action and camaraderie within the hivemind team. So to support him, I array my fastest bugs to shroud Network’s movements among their chaotic swarm, and to infiltrate Dragoon’s armor through whatever openings they could find, using the distraction of Ian’s car bomb to do so relatively (for a giant mass of bugs, anyway) stealthily.
Or at least that’s what I would’ve done if the good-for-nothing holobugs would’ve followed my orders!
Instead they just vibrated. ’Well,’ I think, ’This is certainly going to prove problematic.’ I guess once whatever glitch had struck them, my power stopped considering them insects? Or maybe the vibrate function was overriding the move function. Whatever the case, I could still see through them, so they weren’t useless to me just yet.
With as much celerity as my statistically modelled peak human body could muster, I spring out of cover and across the battlefield. At first, there was an unavoidable wave of nausea as my expanded senses and personal senses contended - a conflict of senses that I really, really needed to get used to before it messed me up when it counted - but I’d done this once before. Doing it again with help shouldn’t be so hard, yeah?
I use the diversion made by Network’s failed attack to take Dragoon by the flank - hopefully proving myself enough of a nuisance to let Network get his wits about him again in the process - with a strike aimed at the side of her knee. Divine armor or not, I was sure it should destabilize her enough if my presence wasn’t enough.
Unleash Powers Roll - Overcome Hacking: 6
Engage Enemy - RIP Net and Swarm: 5
@Tengri "Thanks for the positive reinforcement, Net."
@Joshie Nah, prob get something up 3nite
*points at six Unleash Your Powers roll*
...Which makes sense since they're not even real bugs.
As for Hana, I'm not sure what to have her do. Maybe she tries to reassert control of her holo-bugs.
*points at six Unleash Your Powers roll*
...Which makes sense since they're not even real bugs.
Takumi Minamoto - The Second Sexy Halloween Costume
Third Ward, Sakura Clinic, Fourth Floor
For a few long seconds after his final utterance, the world was left in a tense repose. The half-ghoul’s eyes - now both a very human shade of green - remained affixed to the sight of his older brother and the defeated but still defiant kakuja. Itsuki… Takumi didn’t know what to think about Itsuki, his reckless rage, and the sudden stillness that had come over him. It was true that desperate times called for desperate measures, but he still felt like an absolute waste of human life for using that particular piece of ammunition against his unhinged elder brother.
It was an impulsive move, probably one of his most impulsive ones to date, but it was his only shot. The fingers of his mained hand dug into the bloodsoaked carpet. If Takumi could put himself in Itsuki’s shoes, he knew he wouldn’t be feeling so hot right now. Past failures, lapses of judgement, personal weakness… Nobody wanted to remember those. Especially not someone like Itsuki, who didn’t seem to be able to let go too easily.
But to Takumi’s pleasant surprise, Itsuki just let the girl go. Falling forward onto the bloodsoaked carpet, the human breathed a sigh of relief, only now conscious of the fact he’d been left breathless by the anticipation. He forced out painful, gladdened laughter, silencing himself only upon the sound of his name in Itsuki’s irate voice. ’Time to pay up,’ Takumi thought grimly. He was really going to get it now, he was sure. He winced; somehow the possibility of getting hurt was a lot more painful than all the puncture wounds. Slowly, he turned to look at his brother, the guilt spelled out on his face plain as day. “I understand, onii-san,” Takumi lowered his head, “It won’t happen again.” Yet somehow, he had the feeling that he wouldn’t be able to keep that promise.
As Itsuki moved to speak to Rin, Takumi placed his good hand flat on the ground next to him, and pushed himself up to his feet. “Nngh.” The heat of battle was gone, and replaced only by the soreness of flechette rounds and spikes, it seemed. He looked at his mutilated hand and let it hang against his side. “I don’t think that’s very necessary,” he countered upon hearing exactly what Itsuki had instructed, “She said earlier that she didn’t want to fight us. I’m thinking she was just crazy because it's a kakuja thing.”
Perhaps he could’ve worded that a bit more elegantly, but he meant exactly what he meant. It was only now that Takumi had come to the realization, but he’d given Itsuki the benefit of the doubt for far too long. He couldn’t let him stay on his current path. Even after all the charity he’d been shown, the kakuja had shown a blase disregard for everyone and everything apart from his own whims. And as much as Takumi didn’t want to believe it, he was sure this was some kind of self-serving venture. A way to justify the results of his actions to himself, and to rectify the aftermath of his actions.
“...”
Takumi’s mouth became a hard line, and for a moment, he breathed a bit more ragged than before. ’Yeah,’ he thought, ’Yeah… That’s the problem.’ He looked back to Itsuki and Hana, the latter of which had thankfully interrupted his train of thought by making some subtly sarcastic statement about shoving stale genitalia down her throat. “Heh, sorry onee-chan,” he apologized sheepishly, unintentionally rubbing blood into the back of his hair with his injured extremity, “Guess I don’t make great calls under pressure, huh?” He grinned. The battle was over, so it was best to get back to the swing of things quickly; no use wasting time moping. “But it worked out for the best, didn’t it? Er, sort of.”
Takumi was taken aback by the angry glare, however. As much as he wanted to say something like “You didn’t see what I saw!”, he refrained. The kakuja lady could explain for herself later, and it wasn’t as if Hana was being uncooperative right now. As he watched the doctor do her work, he heard her quote a familiar passage. ’Art of War chapter 12’, he recalled before confirming Hana’s rhetorical question with a simple: “Mhm.” Everything seemed to be going alright so far, so Takumi took a seat on the floor - getting some blood on his butt in the process- and decided to take it easy in the meantime.
He snapped to attention upon hearing his name in a surprisingly imperative tone. He turned his ear to Hana, who was issuing out commands at a rapid pace. “Affirmative,” he nodded and, before Hana could even finish her final sentence, was up and ready to carry out his orders like a good trooper. But there was something that was bothering him. ’Third drawer… Key.’ He clenched his good fist around the metallic object and headed for the elevator.
’Counterclockwise…’ he pushed the key into the hole and rotated to the left. His fingers travelled along the underside of control panel, before encountering a bump. ’Secret button.’ Immediately the elevator began to descend. He began naming off the checklist of things to retrieve. ’Five flasks of GBP, and two doses of...’ He paused. “...RCS...” There was no way that meant what he thought it did. No way at all! That stuff was usually too expensive for even hospitals, and the only other way was...
Before he could hypothesize, the elevator dinged and opened up to a chilly room filled only with the hum of machinery and rows of lockbox-esque cabinets. “It’s like a morgue,” he noted during his search for the freezer with the keypad. “Here you are…” he began punching in the numbers. 5-4-2-1-enter-mechanical-rotation-click-open. “Bingo,” he grinned, grabbing hold of the properly labelled flasks and setting them in the simple little basket he had made with his kagune. ‘Now for the RCS…’ Of course, it didn’t take long for him to find it; that box of syringes was unmistakable.
“No fucking way,” Takumi’s voice was a combination of horror and amazement, “Now how’d you get your hands on these babies?”
The elevator arrived on the fourth with another ding, and out stepped the designated nurse for today, holding a gift basket for the poor patient. Sadly, there were no get-well cards, flowers, fruit, or anything that fluffy. Just two pointy objects and bottles of strange fluid. Takumi set it down gently beside Hana, looking rather awkward as he did so. Should he pretend he didn’t know what those syringes were? The box was labelled, but…
“Erm. This is the stuff, yeah?” He asked as a final confirmation before turning his attention to the wavering form of Miyako. "I'm back," he joked before taking a few steps back to give the Hana and Rin room to work.
Third Ward, Sakura Clinic, Fourth Floor
For a few long seconds after his final utterance, the world was left in a tense repose. The half-ghoul’s eyes - now both a very human shade of green - remained affixed to the sight of his older brother and the defeated but still defiant kakuja. Itsuki… Takumi didn’t know what to think about Itsuki, his reckless rage, and the sudden stillness that had come over him. It was true that desperate times called for desperate measures, but he still felt like an absolute waste of human life for using that particular piece of ammunition against his unhinged elder brother.
It was an impulsive move, probably one of his most impulsive ones to date, but it was his only shot. The fingers of his mained hand dug into the bloodsoaked carpet. If Takumi could put himself in Itsuki’s shoes, he knew he wouldn’t be feeling so hot right now. Past failures, lapses of judgement, personal weakness… Nobody wanted to remember those. Especially not someone like Itsuki, who didn’t seem to be able to let go too easily.
But to Takumi’s pleasant surprise, Itsuki just let the girl go. Falling forward onto the bloodsoaked carpet, the human breathed a sigh of relief, only now conscious of the fact he’d been left breathless by the anticipation. He forced out painful, gladdened laughter, silencing himself only upon the sound of his name in Itsuki’s irate voice. ’Time to pay up,’ Takumi thought grimly. He was really going to get it now, he was sure. He winced; somehow the possibility of getting hurt was a lot more painful than all the puncture wounds. Slowly, he turned to look at his brother, the guilt spelled out on his face plain as day. “I understand, onii-san,” Takumi lowered his head, “It won’t happen again.” Yet somehow, he had the feeling that he wouldn’t be able to keep that promise.
As Itsuki moved to speak to Rin, Takumi placed his good hand flat on the ground next to him, and pushed himself up to his feet. “Nngh.” The heat of battle was gone, and replaced only by the soreness of flechette rounds and spikes, it seemed. He looked at his mutilated hand and let it hang against his side. “I don’t think that’s very necessary,” he countered upon hearing exactly what Itsuki had instructed, “She said earlier that she didn’t want to fight us. I’m thinking she was just crazy because it's a kakuja thing.”
Perhaps he could’ve worded that a bit more elegantly, but he meant exactly what he meant. It was only now that Takumi had come to the realization, but he’d given Itsuki the benefit of the doubt for far too long. He couldn’t let him stay on his current path. Even after all the charity he’d been shown, the kakuja had shown a blase disregard for everyone and everything apart from his own whims. And as much as Takumi didn’t want to believe it, he was sure this was some kind of self-serving venture. A way to justify the results of his actions to himself, and to rectify the aftermath of his actions.
“...”
Takumi’s mouth became a hard line, and for a moment, he breathed a bit more ragged than before. ’Yeah,’ he thought, ’Yeah… That’s the problem.’ He looked back to Itsuki and Hana, the latter of which had thankfully interrupted his train of thought by making some subtly sarcastic statement about shoving stale genitalia down her throat. “Heh, sorry onee-chan,” he apologized sheepishly, unintentionally rubbing blood into the back of his hair with his injured extremity, “Guess I don’t make great calls under pressure, huh?” He grinned. The battle was over, so it was best to get back to the swing of things quickly; no use wasting time moping. “But it worked out for the best, didn’t it? Er, sort of.”
Takumi was taken aback by the angry glare, however. As much as he wanted to say something like “You didn’t see what I saw!”, he refrained. The kakuja lady could explain for herself later, and it wasn’t as if Hana was being uncooperative right now. As he watched the doctor do her work, he heard her quote a familiar passage. ’Art of War chapter 12’, he recalled before confirming Hana’s rhetorical question with a simple: “Mhm.” Everything seemed to be going alright so far, so Takumi took a seat on the floor - getting some blood on his butt in the process- and decided to take it easy in the meantime.
He snapped to attention upon hearing his name in a surprisingly imperative tone. He turned his ear to Hana, who was issuing out commands at a rapid pace. “Affirmative,” he nodded and, before Hana could even finish her final sentence, was up and ready to carry out his orders like a good trooper. But there was something that was bothering him. ’Third drawer… Key.’ He clenched his good fist around the metallic object and headed for the elevator.
’Counterclockwise…’ he pushed the key into the hole and rotated to the left. His fingers travelled along the underside of control panel, before encountering a bump. ’Secret button.’ Immediately the elevator began to descend. He began naming off the checklist of things to retrieve. ’Five flasks of GBP, and two doses of...’ He paused. “...RCS...” There was no way that meant what he thought it did. No way at all! That stuff was usually too expensive for even hospitals, and the only other way was...
Before he could hypothesize, the elevator dinged and opened up to a chilly room filled only with the hum of machinery and rows of lockbox-esque cabinets. “It’s like a morgue,” he noted during his search for the freezer with the keypad. “Here you are…” he began punching in the numbers. 5-4-2-1-enter-mechanical-rotation-click-open. “Bingo,” he grinned, grabbing hold of the properly labelled flasks and setting them in the simple little basket he had made with his kagune. ‘Now for the RCS…’ Of course, it didn’t take long for him to find it; that box of syringes was unmistakable.
“No fucking way,” Takumi’s voice was a combination of horror and amazement, “Now how’d you get your hands on these babies?”
The elevator arrived on the fourth with another ding, and out stepped the designated nurse for today, holding a gift basket for the poor patient. Sadly, there were no get-well cards, flowers, fruit, or anything that fluffy. Just two pointy objects and bottles of strange fluid. Takumi set it down gently beside Hana, looking rather awkward as he did so. Should he pretend he didn’t know what those syringes were? The box was labelled, but…
“Erm. This is the stuff, yeah?” He asked as a final confirmation before turning his attention to the wavering form of Miyako. "I'm back," he joked before taking a few steps back to give the Hana and Rin room to work.
Takumi Minamoto - Break
Third Ward, Sakura Clinic, Fourth Floor
The beast had finally been defeated. He’d felt its arm and armor shatter with a sickening crunch under the weight of his attack. He’d felt the defiant weakness in its last attack, the rounds of which tore into his abdomen like stinging bees, but were otherwise unable to fell him. Now, the finishing blow was his.
But he couldn’t take it.
Takumi had the hammer raised over his head, ready to put the ghoul out of its misery. If his instructors from the Garden were here, they’d call this a textbook example of why the CCG told their investigators not to speak with ghouls. Sympathy was a powerful weapon against the uninitiated. They were the ones who’d forced the girl (’Ghoul,’ he reminded himself) into a more confrontational stance, right? It was their fault, wasn’t it?
Takumi’s hammer fell, but slowly and to the ground.
Unbeatable, unbreakable, and unstoppable - that was how Takumi was should have been feeling in the aftermath, right? It was a fight. Not only that, it was a fight that he’d emerged victorious (from a certain perspective, at least). He should’ve been feeling good, great even. The boiling of blood and the clash of arms was supposed to be the one constant that he could take solace in, no matter how bad or how confusing the rest of his life became.
That was the ideal. Unfortunately the reality was far more unfulfilling than that. After all, the aftermath of battle is when you begin to count up your losses, when you lick your wounds, and when you take your good look of the consequences and wonder. If he were in a better state of mind, maybe he would’ve thought it was funny - or disgusting - that he only knew the situation was off because there was no catharsis nor thrill of encountering such a wonderful opponent to be found there. Not the eviscerated face of his sibling, not the girl with the hanging arm and the pleading eyes, but the fact it hadn’t left him satisfied with the result.
The only thing it had left was the storm.
Takumi blinked, gaze blankly locked on the crying kakuja girl and the sister with the shredded face. “...Ah...” he uttered softly. He was completely at a loss of what to do, even with the thin, ever-cracking veneer of serenity. For all that poetic waxing about justice and sacrifice, he’d never actually saved a life, at least not in this way. Slowly, his breathing began to intensify. ’Calm down, calm down…’ he thought, snapping himself out of his stupor, ’I'm better than this. I need to thinkthinkthink!’
Time was of the essence. Takumi was no medic, but even he knew that much. But Takumi was no medic, so he didn’t know enough to do anything good about it. But he did know one important thing. He stared down at his left arm. A half-ghoul was effectively a human in composition, or so he’d been told. If that was true... Could he do something about this? Almost unconsciously, his kagune slithered from his shoulder blade and connects with his hammer, warping the shape into a short, wicked edge.
Justice and sacrifice, right?
’If Aso-’ Then it hit him. Asoka. Kitchen. Dick-eating Itsuki. Human remains. Leftovers. Regeneration. The gears of his masterstroke were turning. ’...Nee-san is going to disapprove of this,’ Takumi quickly turned to the kitchen, his final source of hope in this worrying time, ’But this is much less needlessly masochistic on my part.’ By the looks of it, things were finally starting to go his way! (...Sort of.) But the question was: could the ukaku girl wait? He looked to her distraught visage, and back to his arm. '...It's insurance.' He sighed, made a face, and cut a chunk of flesh from his left hand. “I’ve got. Got some stuff to do,” he explained, his wavering voice and nervous smile doing their best to bring levity to this grim situation, “Just. Just try to stop thinking about dying. Or just. Try not to die in general, please?” He dropped the small morsel into her mouth. “I’ll be right back!” he called out, rushing over to the kitchen as fast as his wounded body could carry him.
“Nothing is going wrong,” Takumi explained calmly to Asoka as he bled a trail over to the freezer, “Your elder siblings have everything under control.” He popped open the freezer and withdrew the container with the preserved part from last night. “...Still here.” He closed the container and tucked it under his arm - the one with the mangled hand - before turning to face Asoka, “No need to worry about us.” He gave a particularly pathetic thumbs up, then he walked right back out to the fray, leaving bloody footsteps in his wake.
Slipping on a pool of blood, Takumi skidded to his knees in front of Hana’s mangled body. His body was shaking, but his right hand was firm and purposeful as it gently opened the container and lifted the appendage. Then, rather inelegantly, he forced it in Hana’s mouth and down her throat to kickstart her regeneration. Now he had to wake her up. First came one slap with all his strength - probably not a good call given her condition, but he was desperate - then the shouting: “WAKE UP!” He was almost so absorbed that his keen ears didn’t catch the elevator opening.
Takumi’s head whirled to the door, where there stood none other than Itsuki himself. Even with his self-perceived inability to really understand these people, he knew what those eyes meant. He’d seen them before, in the eyes of investigator and ghoul alike. Unbridled rage, fueled by a desire for vengeance against the girl. He was helpless and left only to watch the events unfold. Then another presence. He looked to Rin, eyes containing some combination of desperation, hope, and confusion.
“I CAN EXPLAIN!” Takumi screamed - he didn’t mean to, but there wasn’t much room for control right now - at Itsuki, trying to get through to the mind-addled young man. Except he couldn’t explain, not really. But he’d do his best, because the girl definitely. “She came here for help!” he said, voice hoarse and raw, “We provoked her. This our fault! AAAAAAAH!!!! AAAAAAAAAH!!!!!” This wasn’t going to work, even he could see that. He wasn’t smart enough or charismatic enough for this. ’Dammitdammitdammitdammit!’ He scanned the room for someone or something, anyone or anything, to get Itsuki to let go. Itsuki. He could use Itsuki. Appeal to his interest. What did he know about his bro- "I brought her here!" Takumi crawled forward, pathetically reaching out for the two, "She's... I... She's like what that girl of yours is, but for me. Just let go. Please."
Third Ward, Sakura Clinic, Fourth Floor
The beast had finally been defeated. He’d felt its arm and armor shatter with a sickening crunch under the weight of his attack. He’d felt the defiant weakness in its last attack, the rounds of which tore into his abdomen like stinging bees, but were otherwise unable to fell him. Now, the finishing blow was his.
But he couldn’t take it.
Takumi had the hammer raised over his head, ready to put the ghoul out of its misery. If his instructors from the Garden were here, they’d call this a textbook example of why the CCG told their investigators not to speak with ghouls. Sympathy was a powerful weapon against the uninitiated. They were the ones who’d forced the girl (’Ghoul,’ he reminded himself) into a more confrontational stance, right? It was their fault, wasn’t it?
Takumi’s hammer fell, but slowly and to the ground.
Unbeatable, unbreakable, and unstoppable - that was how Takumi was should have been feeling in the aftermath, right? It was a fight. Not only that, it was a fight that he’d emerged victorious (from a certain perspective, at least). He should’ve been feeling good, great even. The boiling of blood and the clash of arms was supposed to be the one constant that he could take solace in, no matter how bad or how confusing the rest of his life became.
That was the ideal. Unfortunately the reality was far more unfulfilling than that. After all, the aftermath of battle is when you begin to count up your losses, when you lick your wounds, and when you take your good look of the consequences and wonder. If he were in a better state of mind, maybe he would’ve thought it was funny - or disgusting - that he only knew the situation was off because there was no catharsis nor thrill of encountering such a wonderful opponent to be found there. Not the eviscerated face of his sibling, not the girl with the hanging arm and the pleading eyes, but the fact it hadn’t left him satisfied with the result.
The only thing it had left was the storm.
Takumi blinked, gaze blankly locked on the crying kakuja girl and the sister with the shredded face. “...Ah...” he uttered softly. He was completely at a loss of what to do, even with the thin, ever-cracking veneer of serenity. For all that poetic waxing about justice and sacrifice, he’d never actually saved a life, at least not in this way. Slowly, his breathing began to intensify. ’Calm down, calm down…’ he thought, snapping himself out of his stupor, ’I'm better than this. I need to thinkthinkthink!’
Time was of the essence. Takumi was no medic, but even he knew that much. But Takumi was no medic, so he didn’t know enough to do anything good about it. But he did know one important thing. He stared down at his left arm. A half-ghoul was effectively a human in composition, or so he’d been told. If that was true... Could he do something about this? Almost unconsciously, his kagune slithered from his shoulder blade and connects with his hammer, warping the shape into a short, wicked edge.
Justice and sacrifice, right?
’If Aso-’ Then it hit him. Asoka. Kitchen. Dick-eating Itsuki. Human remains. Leftovers. Regeneration. The gears of his masterstroke were turning. ’...Nee-san is going to disapprove of this,’ Takumi quickly turned to the kitchen, his final source of hope in this worrying time, ’But this is much less needlessly masochistic on my part.’ By the looks of it, things were finally starting to go his way! (...Sort of.) But the question was: could the ukaku girl wait? He looked to her distraught visage, and back to his arm. '...It's insurance.' He sighed, made a face, and cut a chunk of flesh from his left hand. “I’ve got. Got some stuff to do,” he explained, his wavering voice and nervous smile doing their best to bring levity to this grim situation, “Just. Just try to stop thinking about dying. Or just. Try not to die in general, please?” He dropped the small morsel into her mouth. “I’ll be right back!” he called out, rushing over to the kitchen as fast as his wounded body could carry him.
“Nothing is going wrong,” Takumi explained calmly to Asoka as he bled a trail over to the freezer, “Your elder siblings have everything under control.” He popped open the freezer and withdrew the container with the preserved part from last night. “...Still here.” He closed the container and tucked it under his arm - the one with the mangled hand - before turning to face Asoka, “No need to worry about us.” He gave a particularly pathetic thumbs up, then he walked right back out to the fray, leaving bloody footsteps in his wake.
Slipping on a pool of blood, Takumi skidded to his knees in front of Hana’s mangled body. His body was shaking, but his right hand was firm and purposeful as it gently opened the container and lifted the appendage. Then, rather inelegantly, he forced it in Hana’s mouth and down her throat to kickstart her regeneration. Now he had to wake her up. First came one slap with all his strength - probably not a good call given her condition, but he was desperate - then the shouting: “WAKE UP!” He was almost so absorbed that his keen ears didn’t catch the elevator opening.
Takumi’s head whirled to the door, where there stood none other than Itsuki himself. Even with his self-perceived inability to really understand these people, he knew what those eyes meant. He’d seen them before, in the eyes of investigator and ghoul alike. Unbridled rage, fueled by a desire for vengeance against the girl. He was helpless and left only to watch the events unfold. Then another presence. He looked to Rin, eyes containing some combination of desperation, hope, and confusion.
“I CAN EXPLAIN!” Takumi screamed - he didn’t mean to, but there wasn’t much room for control right now - at Itsuki, trying to get through to the mind-addled young man. Except he couldn’t explain, not really. But he’d do his best, because the girl definitely. “She came here for help!” he said, voice hoarse and raw, “We provoked her. This our fault! AAAAAAAH!!!! AAAAAAAAAH!!!!!” This wasn’t going to work, even he could see that. He wasn’t smart enough or charismatic enough for this. ’Dammitdammitdammitdammit!’ He scanned the room for someone or something, anyone or anything, to get Itsuki to let go. Itsuki. He could use Itsuki. Appeal to his interest. What did he know about his bro- "I brought her here!" Takumi crawled forward, pathetically reaching out for the two, "She's... I... She's like what that girl of yours is, but for me. Just let go. Please."
roleplayerguild.com/rolls/1309 tfw your plan to send simulated bugs doesn't work out
guess swarm's just gonna live la vida loca
guess swarm's just gonna live la vida loca
Sasaki Kirima - ?????????
This is an emergency message.
You can thank me later.
Sasaki stared down at the message on his D-Watch, his mouth a hard line and his brow more furrowed than the Grand freakin’ Canyon. It didn’t take a genius to know something was up, especially with that terribly unsubtle message from Pride himself. For the first time in a very long time, he felt fear. Not worry, but that all consuming dread that something was about to go horrifically, unstoppably awry. Slowly, he attempted to unlatch the watch before fumbling and tearing it off out of frustration. ’Don’t worry,’ Sasaki thought, peering over his left shoulder, then his right, ’This is one of those ‘social experiments’ from Showtube that I’m always hearing about, right? Where are the cameras?’
The giant shook his head. He was being absurd. With Aria around, he was sure that Pride wouldn’t do anything too rash because doing so would be detrimental to his image. As much as he liked to tease him, Sasaki knew that Pride had exactly that: pride. Anything that would mar it was to be avoided. Which meant… Whatever was going to happen, was something that only he would know was very, very wrong.
....Which somehow more frightening than anything he’d thought of before.
’Argh. I can’t understand that man,’ he rubbed the back of his head frustratedly, ’As long as he didn’t go through all my files or something...’ There was no sense in worrying, his mind told him; and yet his heart told him there was all the sense in worrying. He began counting numbers down in his head to calm his nerves. And for a moment, all was calm.
And then someone someone said his name loudly, and with purpose.
There was a distinct choking noise as Sasaki used every screaming fibre of his being to remain still. To not lash out violently, as much as his knee-jerk reaction wanted him to throw fists. Raising a twelve year-old with superspeed for six years did wonders for his self-discipline, far more than any of Seneca’s other attempts had. But even so...
’Oh lord that was embarrassing,’ he thought with a sharp inhalation, and an inward cringe. Half of him wanted to pretend the person wasn’t there, but the other half knew better. Not just from the perspective of someone who wanted to be polite, but also from his own personal experience. This voice, soft in sound but firm in bearing, was unmistakably hers.
Immediately, he understood what Pride had meant, immediately he had agreed with him, and immediately, he had become about 10000x more suspicious of this situation. What was the twist?
“Yes… It has been a long time… yes,” Sasaki’s voice was slow and measured to catch speech errors, rather than resolute and rehearsed like Kotori’s. He still felt as if he was speaking like a goddamn nerd. When had he become so awkward? He spoken with many people in the past, so this shouldn’t be of great difficulty. His face blanched the moment she mentioned a ‘peculiar message’. ‘Oh fuck.’ Adam didn’t do something weird in his name, did he? He’d heard all the man’s shitty pick up lines from his wife. God of Science he may have been, but he was no God of Seduction, that was for sure. Sasaki narrowed his eyes slightly, still doing his best to awkwardly avoid the gaze of the woman standing beside him. He put his hands in his pockets to avoid fidgeting. “Was this message… Was it from-”
Fortunately, his question was answered before he could complete that sentence. Though it was not an answer he was pleased with, but it was an answer that brought relief to his heart. “I... “ For the first, he was at a loss for how to explain something. “Erm. Yes. In a way,” he fumbled with his words in his own stoic way before he was saved by the arrival of the blonde herself. “As you can see, that was definitely bad intel,” he nodded, still trying to avert the songbird’s gaze while casting curious glances of his own. He scratched the side of his jaw.
“She’s in your class I take it?” he asked Kotori. He was aware that the songbird was an ENMA professor, and that Aria Fabre was an ENMA prospect, but he hadn’t known if there’d been any acquaintanceship made between them. Then, a thought occurred to the iron giant. “It’s not what it looks like. I’m picking her up and escorting her around town for a coworker. We’re supposed to meet up with someone else later today, but otherwise… No hostage situations, mm...”
Yep. Best to be frank and cut off any potentially volatile, rom-com-esque situations off at the bud.
“Do you happen to be busy today, Namashiya-chan?”
I have an eternal, irrational grudge against Fairies because, in my eyes, they shouldn't be able to shut down dragons the way they do from a logic standpoint. I get that it's for balancing reasons but . . . it just bothers me, especially since that;s my favorite type
Dragons are slain in fairy tales. At least that's how I justified it to myself.
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