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LokiLeo789Izumi Airi — North Miyama
@Berserk Gene
"Jeez, the low-flying aircraft today...is there a military base near here...?"
She had almost choked on her mochi when the sonic boom came from just overhead, it felt like. Seriously, who flies that low? Over a city? Well, it's away from the bridge, so things are a bit sparse and it's more town-like, but still. Have some courtesy, dammit!
...Granted, she's complaining about almost losing food that she bought from a 100-yen store. Thinking about that feels a little pathetic, so the girl doesn't dwell on it.
"Let's see...47600 left...? This would be easier if I knew how long I had to make this last..."
Even in the summer, she wore that hoodie. For a long time, she didn't have access to things like laundry, and that one set of clothing was what she had. When one lives with only a single outfit for a while, it's easy to get attached. She could easily imagine that even if she had something like a closet, it would just be filled with that same hoodie, or that same jacket, or whatever.
It was pure white, once, but after countless stains of everything from food, to blood, to grass, to just wiping her nose on it every now and then, it was kinda more grayish, with a few holes patched up here and there. You need to throw it out and buy a new one, she'd hear all the time. Hell, with this kinda cash, maybe she could, but fuck it, the thing's comfortable and dirty clothes are nothing new. Plus, she doesn't really know how long this holy cup war thing will go on for, and running out would be less than ideal. Not that she couldn't manage, but the convenience of having money to buy quasi-real food beats out the convenience of clean clothes that are just going to get dirty again after one or two fights.
She just caught the tail end of it, but that building...
...Is there a hole in the wall?
Yeah, a massive exit crater just...kinda...going through the wall. On the umpteenth floor.
They should really get that fixed., the girl thought to herself for the briefest of moments, not realizing that the hole was new until a dude just fucking cannonballs out of it like the asphalt is a goddamn community pool and it's his day to piss in it.
She didn't even see him land. What the fuck. "Jesus shit, that dude just went full-on Dangeresque..."
The girl is muttering banal things to herself during this time.
But still, she realizes...this isn't normal.
It's something of a shock mechanism. The second piece of mochi, out of a pack of four, nearly falls out of her mouth, snatching her mind back to reality as she instinctively catches a chewed-off half of it, red bean paste soiling her fingers.
The breadth of the leap. The speed. And more than that, the delay between 'intent' and 'action' was almost zero.
If something like that came straight at her, there might not even be blood left.
It was enough to make her shiver. This was a whole different ball game, for sure. Different than the goons in her home neighborhood, or even the fucking zombies.
This was...
This really is a 'war'...isn't it...?
The pit in her stomach turns as she follows the potholes in the street. At first, she figured they were just that — which was strange, because normally they're pretty good about fixing those. Well, the ones that were on fire were somewhat more excusable, as far as repair timelines went.
Then she started to notice that the holes were all rather evenly spaced. And some of them were vaguely foot-shaped.
A storm with arms and legs had blown through this area. That storm. It was the only thing she could think.
...I should probably just turn around.
Who wouldn't think something like that, following a trail so absurd?
But the alternative, was what? Turn around, go somewhere else, and then what? Go home? Tell Hana and Yuko that she had chickened out of the whole thing, and that she didn't really care about Asuka all that much, and just pretend that none of it had ever happened?
The vision of those red eyes haunted her, even now.
She had to turn them blue again. Somehow, someway.
"...Then, move quickly."
She whispered it to herself. Her mantra. The words that had given her courage in the past.
Move more quickly than the speed at which the world spins, and you can surpass it——
...That looks like him.
There's a dude in an old military uniform and a top hat (with fucking feathers in it, no joke) just kind of standing around in the middle of the road, with a surprisingly forlorn expression.
At first, her plan was to just observe. Figure out what was going on. Her immediate goal was to find a way into this ritual, and this clearly had something to do with it, so just keeping a safe distance and seeing what was happening seemed like a relevant thing. She definitely, in no way shape or form, had planned on trying to interact with the flying, pool-pissing monster of a man that had, presumably, caused the flaming swath of destruction behind her.
But he looked...defeated.
It was a little unnerving, when her Eyes looked at a person and saw nothing. A person devoid of 'intent'. A person who...just...stood there. Sleeping while awake, not caring about the dreams they saw.
It certainly wasn't the vision of the mindless beast of rage that she would have expected, having seen everything up to this point.
What...happened to him? What had caused him to do what he had done?
She had only seen it for a brief part-second, a space shorter than a blink.
But when he had flown out of the side of that building, so far behind them now, the 'intent' surrounding him had been 'to protect'.
"You, uh..."
Her mouth opened before she thought about whether or not she should speak. Before she realized that, maybe the moment the sound left her throat, the space she was standing on would just become another 'pothole'. Before she remembered what the person in front of her was capable of, and before she realized how absolutely little she knew about him aside from that simple fact.
But, hey, she had started a sentence, so might as well finish it.
"You, uh, might not want to stand in the middle of the road." Izumi Airi referred to the man somewhat nonchalantly, covering up her fears and doubts behind an indifferent persona. "You know...cars...that sort of thing. Though I'm kind of more afraid for the cars at this point."
With both of her hands in the pockets of that dirty, patched-up hoodie, Airi hadn't noticed.
The symbols on her hand were no longer blurry or smudged, but whole.