Mirth

Yu Yu Hakusho [AU]

KiltmanBagz said
As someone who has to get up to work at 4:30 AM the next at least 3 times a week, I can relate with this. Take your time man, the struggle is real.

I used to start work at 4 AM. It eventually began at 11:45 PM. AUUUUGH. Holidays at a shipping place. Nooooo.

Radio Free Metropolis

We're losing our Oojama ;_;

When Five Becomes Four [Mirth and Book Thief]

I've been alright. Still looking for a job... and not finding one T^T

Avengers (Mirth and Chello)

Cy was not generally known for her ability to let things go. She folded her arms and crossed her legs and shut her eyes, prepared to stay for however long it took until Loki was able to look after himself again. The set of her jaw was stubborn; nothing less than a missile to the face would make her voluntarily move. Even then, it would only be grudgingly, and she would grumble the whole way.

She slitted one eye open to make sure Loki was resting properly. She hadn’t been kidding about sitting on him if he didn’t cooperate. She wasn’t above doing it now.

Arc met Wilson in the other room and raised an eyebrow at the closed door. “So… I hear we’ve got Loki in there. Please tell me it’s not.” He’d dealt with Loki before (more than once) and the idea of the mischievous god in HIS h.q. was a combination of nerve-wracking and infuriating. He trusted Loki at SHIELD about as much as he trusted a lion in a pen full of sheep. He rubbed a hand across his bald head and sighed heavily, dropping into a chair beside Wilson. “Seriously. Tell me it’s not him so I can sleep tonight.”

Yu Yu Hakusho [AU]

The girl who strode into the middle of the fight threw an elbow that knocked a thug flat, her blue eyes narrowed to slits. She spun, long hair flashing in the sunset, to crash her bag across another boy’s face. Having made a sufficiently-sized clearing for herself, she turned to face the rest of the gang. “WHAT are you ignorant twats doing?!”

Mizuki Ikino was taller than most students in her year, casting an imposingly long shadow as Mochi bounded over to her. With a leap, the cat sailed onto her shoulders, glowing yellow eyes eerie in his grey-striped face as he studied the boys under attack and their assailants. His tail twitched and he tilted his head, letting out an unnatural meow that seemed to echo. Mizuki reached up and stroked his head, her attention fixed on the dwindling group of thugs. After a beat of silence, she glanced over her shoulder at the two boys— one was badly injured already, but the other one had taken only a few blows. Mizuki’s hand tightened around the handle of her school briefcase, her knuckles blanching.

Mochi had been drawn to this street fight for a reason, she could see that now. The thuggish delinquents radiated a malice that was far from human. She wasn’t frightened, however, having spent her entire life in the company of the uncanny; she had been born with a highly-developed sixth sense. Her childhood was a roadmap of the supernatural. Now her brain was furiously pinging that the boys were wrong, that there was something incredibly cruel and evil about them.

The reprieve had been short and they regrouped for another assault.

Mizuki stepped into a swing that broke a forerunner’s nose; blood sprayed. A hand grabbed her arm and squeezed until she felt her bones creak. Mochi flew at the hand’s owner, clawing and yowling. A wild punch caught her high, glancing off her forehead. She slammed a palm into the elbow, using her other hand to apply counter-pressure on the inside of the forearm. The crunch was loud, even in the cacophony of the melee. Backing up to sweep her hair out of her eyes, somebody wrapped an arm around her throat from behind—they were shorter than she was, so she was forced to bend backwards—and she slammed her heel into their foot, swung her head forward, and then jerked it back into their face.

Mochi screeched in pain.

Mizuki screamed and charged blind for the sound. She caught the boy holding her cat by the throat around the chest and smashed him to the ground; she straddled him and drilled her fist into him wherever she could reach. Another boy tried to haul her off and she sank her teeth into his arm until he let go, blood dripping down his hand. Someone started trying to kick her in the sides, so she pushed off the bastard under her, stomped him in the crotch, and launched into the new one. She was all but snarling, her hair wild, her skirt torn, as she flung him against a nearby wall and kneed him repeatedly in the groin.

Somewhere in the back of her mind she wondered why she had gotten into this fight. Mochi had led her here, but she could have picked him up and carried him away. What made her so keen to fight? Why was she spoiling for it? She didn’t know the other two she was fighting beside from a hole in the wall.

The boy she was still kneeing shoved her away and she stumbled, skinning her leg on the concrete. He came in for a soccer kick to her abdomen and she let it land, swallowing down the pain and grabbing his ankle to unbalance him.

Radio Free Metropolis

Skeet shoved the door open with her hip and stepped into one of the largest and loudest multi-level superstores in Metro-Tokyo: MetroPop. Modeled after a period in the 2000's when "kawaii" things had been all the rage, the store boasted insanely bright pastel and neon walls, translucent many-colored walkways, and a constant stream of cheerful Japanese music blasting out of two-story-tall ceiling speakers decorated with fuzzy bug-eyed animals. Her long hair streamed as the in-store air conditioner quickly cleared up the cloud of smog from the outside, sucking it away to belch back out on some lower level of the city. Though she would never admit it to herself, much less mention it to someone else, Skeet actually didn’t mind the décor. She might even have found it cute, if she was inclined to think much about it. But she was there for a drop-off, and she didn’t have time to think about the cute stuffed animals and the frilly clothes.

Brushing into the stream of shoppers, Skeet followed the flow of traffic. One of the boutiques in the store carried perfume; she could smell jasmine and lilacs wafting from their brightly-lit display. Sometimes she wished she could wear scent. A salesgirl in a pink cheongsam was giving out sample spritzes to passing women. Skeet made a mental note to find such a dress somewhere in Little Shanghai. She could always store it in her Neo™, considering she didn’t have a stable address.

The drop-off point was on the topmost level, near a section devoted to mechanical toys and electronics. Almost everything there was Ciao Bunny™-themed. Ciao-Bunny™, an adorable rabbit with an orange bow, could be found on all sorts of things, from RC hover toys to—and this surprised even Skeet—guns and ammunition. Most of the top floor was dedicated to her merchandise. It was the only part of the store that attracted men, since it did carry a variety of non-Ciao-Bunny™ devices.

Skeet followed the winding walkway higher into the store; there were no windows to speak of, so she was forced to guess where she was based on what departments she passed and how far away the bottom floor was. The store spanned five floors, not including the ‘roof’, which housed a tea and cake shop. If everything went well with the drop, she might consider buying something sweet and eating it outside—they were high enough up that the air was clean.

The drop itself was an out-of-place Happy Ranger™ figure with voice action sitting alone on a shelf full of electronic pets. Skeet strode into the electronics section, scanning for the doll. As she moved, she adjusted her suspender—her Neo™ silently deposited the chip into her hand in the space of a second—and she turned a corner to peruse a display of life-like mechanical kittens and puppies. Lying on top of one of the boxes, like a careless child had discarded it, was a red Happy Ranger™. Skeet crouched to look at the different styles of pets and, pretending to tip a box forward to read about the toy, slid the chip into the Ranger’s Power Belt. After a moment more of reading, she got up and left the aisle.

Her pager vibrated in her hip pocket as she strolled back down the spiraling ramp. Skeet didn’t check it yet, stopping at the perfume booth near the entrance to buy a bottle of the brand they were sampling. As she left the building, she spritzed herself.

Then she stepped off the edge of the platform, tapping her Neo™ open and tossing the crystalline glass bottle inside. Dropping to the level below MetroPop, she landed without a stutter and faded into a long, narrow corridor between a clothing store and a mens’ accessory shop. Sliding the pager out of her pocket, she clicked it on and read the number.

Anders.

Skeet was never curious about her jobs. She’d worked for Anders before and knew he paid well, and that was enough for her. Planting a foot against the accessory shop’s wall, she shoved up and off, using the other wall to counter-balance as she moved up a level. After some tricky maneuvering, she made it to a tiny four-foot-by-eight-foot stall trapped between MetroPop’s back and the Urban Flayr™ flagship store.

The stall was basically a ghetto telephone/communicator dive—it was cheap, it dealt only in cash, and reaching the damn thing required you be on foot and able to jump four feet in the air. MetPo cruisers just couldn’t fit in the space, and the Metpo didn’t come back there anyway. She bought a satellite phone and, squirreling herself away in a recessed maintenance duct, called back.

When Five Becomes Four [Mirth and Book Thief]

I know, the site went down for quite a while.

When Five Becomes Four [Mirth and Book Thief]

No problem, don't rush, lol. :)

When Five Becomes Four [Mirth and Book Thief]

Arty stared down at the boy in the coffin and relief so strong it hurt her surged into her heart. Not dead. Whatever he was, he was still there and there was hope and she could live with that. Her head fell back, loose, on her aching neck, and cool tears raced down her face, wetting the hair at her temples. She felt Nathan, more than heard him, behind her, and then she was hugged by Audrey, who she knew because Audrey’s arms only came around her waist since she couldn’t comfortably reach any higher. Ross was too relieved to be angry at her, too stunned to yell and ask her what the fuck she’d been thinking storming an altar, and Arty looked back, and there was Matt, his vacant eyes going wide and wider as something emerged within them.

And then Arty noticed the blood on her hands, and that she’d managed to rip off one of her fingernails scratching the casket open. That was about when it started to hurt, and she cussed and dropped into a crouch, clutching her throbbing fingers.

---

Eaton General Hospital

Arty winced as the emergency room doctor dabbed antiseptic on her fingers and wrapped them in gauze. The doctor had given her a strange look, as if she couldn’t decide whether to praise or scold Arty. Technically the girl had saved her friend from being buried alive, but she had hurt herself badly in the process. Clearly a judgment on the matter wasn’t forthcoming and the doctor went away without saying much at all. Flexing her bandaged hands, Arty glanced back at the others.

Noah had been rushed to the hospital and was currently occupying a trauma room with his family. Matt hadn’t been allowed in, despite protests, and he was sitting numbly on an institutional green sofa. Every now and then he would dash a hand across his chest like his heart hurt. He looked like the victim of a bombing. Arty suspected they all looked like that.

Arty sat down beside Audrey to wait for more news. So far, the outlook was far from bright. Noah hadn’t been autopsied or someone would have figured out he was alive sooner, but he had been kept in a very cold mortuary for several days and had been nailed into a coffin. His heartrate was erratic and his blood oxygenation was low. A specialist had noted that, without oxygen, many of his brain cells had died. Even if he woke, it was unlikely he would be the same person. He might not wake up at all.

Which was worse?

Arty knew, for her, it was worse if he never woke up. The twilight of his ‘death’ had nearly destroyed all of them; facing it again was not possible. She couldn’t do it. Wouldn’t. If she had to go to Death’s door herself and drag him back kicking and screaming, she’d do it to spare everyone the agony they’d already gone through. Bravado was easy for her.

Matt, shell-shocked, gradually lifted his head. He glanced at Nathan’s hand on his shoulder and eventually met the other boy’s eyes. He didn’t say anything, but he twitched a smile, which was far more than he had done since Noah ‘died’. It felt unfamiliar to him, like he’d forgotten how, and for a long moment he blinked and sighed and got used to feeling again. The numbness he’d fallen into had taken him so completely he felt like he’d been asleep. Across from him, Arty was studying her mangled hands with interest; she’d always been injured somehow, from a busted bone to scrapes and bruises, and it was oddly comforting to see her toughing it out.

Audrey was next to Arty, looking frazzled and close to crying. Her nose was red. Matt opened his mouth, and although he didn’t speak loudly his voice was distinct in the silence. “A.” It was only a childhood nickname, but it was all he could really say just then. He had spent days in a depression so deep it had consumed him, and coming out of it was a struggle. He shut his eyes and reached up, patting Nathan’s hand.

Avengers (Mirth and Chello)

With a snort, Cy tossed the fig bar wrapper in the trash can at the door of Loki’s room. Then she returned to her seat. She decided to let the ‘mother’ comment slide; he was letting them look after him, so he could say what he wanted. She shut her eyes for a moment and blew a breath out through her nose.

How long had those HYDRA creeps been at him? How long before that had he been sick? She didn’t want to think about it. If he couldn’t eat because of how hurt he was, they’d need to get some kind of nutrition into him. In order to be healthy enough to eat, he had to eat. It was maddening. She doubted he’d submit to a feeding tube—that was a little extreme—but a few small meals of light things like crackers might help build him back up. “You should probably sleep for a while, then we’ll bring you crackers or toast or whatever. God or no, having some nutrients in you will help you heal better faster.”

Loki attempted to breathe and was wracked with pain. The furrow between Cy’s brows deepened into a trench. Anna gave him a glass of water and Cy waited to see if he could actually hold it. He might not have the strength. If so, he was dangerously weak.