| Coming Back from the Brink; [Naoya wakes up. Open.] | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Jun 27 2013, 10:50 AM (1,021 Views) | |
| Czernobog | Jul 15 2013, 05:21 PM Post #31 |
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Best Influence.
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Naoya watched as Charlie seemed to go into failure mode. It hadn't been the same as his experience, but it was close enough that he could easily imagine it. The other way his life could have gone: if he hadn't fucked everything up, and watched as Toru's flame faded instead of being snuffed out suddenly. If Toru had gradually turned on him out of his own madness instead of because a wound inflicted upon the core of his being. The boy nodded, and tried to think of something to say, but he hadn't been able to deal properly with his own version of the situation. He had noticed -- but not understood -- Charlie's outbursts and the seething rage, but hadn't known what to make of it, how to respond, how to pull it out. So he hadn't. He had ignored them. Charlie was drawing into himself. Naoya looked over his food tray quickly, then picked up the bowl of fried tofu, and held it out toward Charles, hoping to briefly distract him with food -- or at least the strangeness of the gesture. Besides, fried tofu was delicious. Not so much as Natto, but still delicious. "You act like, uh, like any o' that's your fault," he pointed out simply. "I ain't seein' it yet, though I understand that my understandin' o' th' situation's kinda limited. I imagine it's, um, that it's tied up with the girls you mentioned?" |
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| The One True Nobody | Jul 15 2013, 05:43 PM Post #32 |
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
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Kyo remained sitting where she was, her eyes never leaving Charles Oliviera's face. A friend and an idol who had gone a bad way, who had then turned around and stabbed Charles in the back. She swiveled slowly in her seat as he spoke, until she was sitting sideways in her chair, facing him directly. She swung one leg up in an absent-minded way, crossing it over the other knee like a boy would. Vaguely, she found herself comparing Enrique to Nana. But there was no comparison at all beyond the surface impression of gang to end all gangs. Nana was calm and collected, knew what she was doing, and most certainly not a drugged-up psycho. Enrique sounded far more volatile than Nana. Then again... ...Why was she thinking so deeply about this, now of all times? Yeah, that was a more pertinent question. She shut down and focused on the rest of Charles's story. It wasn't one she had much of a place speaking on, that much she knew. She hadn't had any friends before Kenshin and Chika. If anything, she'd been the catalyst that had swayed other people into stabbing loved ones in the back. So she tried a different approach: she thought of how she would have felt if Isoroku had gone through on her revenge plot and ended up turning into some kind of monster. ...It wasn't a happy thought, but as she imagined it, she thought she could see some of what Charles was thinking right now. Folding her arms over her chest, Kyo looked up at Charles and said, "Naoya's right, though. None o' that shit's your fault. Unless there's somethin' in the parts ya haven't said yet where ya did somethin' that actually caused more shit. So, didja? Or is this more about stuff ya didn't do?" |
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| RickenbackersAllTheWay | Jul 18 2013, 04:01 AM Post #33 |
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birb was here scruffs is a loser
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Charles grabbed the tofu and scarfed it down. He tasted as much as he could without slowing down his chewing. It needed some chili sauce, but otherwise, it was just fine. When he swallowed the tofu, he breathed out a sigh of relief. It eased his stomach and distracted him at the same time. Naoya was a good friend if he was seriously able to know how effective those pieces of tofu would be. Not only the tofu relaxed him, but hearing it wasn't his fault did as well. He hated himself too much at times, so it was good to hear something good, at least once out loud, instead of some old record from inside his head. He closed his eyes for a moment and breathed deeply. "Nah. I didn't do anything to exacerbate. It's like Naoya said, it's tied with the girls more than anything. But what happened to the girls felt like a byproduct of me just not doing enough, you know? The stuff that I didn't do probably just started to add up." said the boy, shifting his eyes to the ground. "Now this is going to be about the girls for a bit, I think. They both kinda tie in to his mind state. At least, one of them did." said Charles. "The most important one, I think. Or my favorite one, anyways." "Man, she's younger than you though!" "So?" "I met her first!" "So?" "I danced with her first!" "That doesn't fucking matter, you little shit. What matters is if she puts out." "Enrique, what does that mean?" Charles smiled slightly. The memories of his first fight with Enrique made him smile for a moment, until he remembered the deeper meaning behind it. Still, like many memories, he could laugh about this one in hindsight. |
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| Czernobog | Jul 18 2013, 08:21 AM Post #34 |
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Best Influence.
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Naoya smiled as Charles ate the tofu. It had helped, and that made him smile at least. He crossed his legs, and turned to face the two of them, resting his wiry arms on his knees. The silhouette-altering scar through the left side of his head was visible from the front, but he wasn't thinking about trying to hide it anymore. Several obvious questions came to mind: "Who was she?" was the first. The more limited "What was her name?" came next. He was tempted to ask "What happened to her?" but didn't, feeling it would be rude. Of course, what he really wanted to know -- more than anything else -- was the answer to the question "What did she mean to you?" He opened his mouth, then closed it. He opened it again, having decided on the second question. Best to start small. He stumbled slightly while asking: "What d...um...what was 'er name?" |
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| The One True Nobody | Jul 18 2013, 11:12 AM Post #35 |
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
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How bad, exactly, had Enrique fucked these two girls over, in the metaphorical sense? That was the question on Kyo's mind. Who they were was irrelevant so much as who they were to Charles and, if he had indeed lost them, how bad it had hit him when he did. If it all came down to his friend and those two girls, Kyo's first assumption was that there was death involved. The death of a loved one... ...the cold carcass of a loved one laying on his back on the rough cement floor of an alleyway, a bloody gory bullet blast obscured only by the snout of a stray dog eating his face as if God Himself had decided it wasn't enough that he was gone, there had to be one last crack at him before they burned him to ashes and put him in the ground-- Kyo closed her eyes and took a breath, as if to will those thoughts away in the act of exhaling. And then she opened them, watching and waiting for Charles to answer Naoya's question. |
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| RickenbackersAllTheWay | Jul 18 2013, 03:54 PM Post #36 |
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birb was here scruffs is a loser
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Mei. It was technically a surname, but her parents wanted to choose something that was Chinese but sounded Western and could be spelled in English in a different way. That's why she was M-A-Y as kids instead of M-E-I. Funny thing to think back to. "...Her name was Mei Gung-syun. It was odd how her name worked. It was supposed to be a Western name, but her parents didn't know how to spell the Western version of her name when she was born. It's M-A-Y if you remember anything from English class, but they spelled it M-E-I, which is a Chinese surname when you put it in kanji. So when I first learned Chinese, I used to give her shit for having two last names instead of a first name. And then she'd pinch my face and shit. Call me puk gai in a really hilarious way." explained Charles thoroughly, in an attempt to show his skills in multiple languages. The reminiscing youth laughed a bit. "That was really a long answer just based off of 'What was her name'. If any of you ask 'What did she mean to me' next, I think that might say a lot right there." He breathed out another relieved sigh. Naoya was smiling too, at least, but Kyo seemed to be off in her own space of mind. "...The answer to 'what did she mean to me', would be: she meant the entire fucking world at one point. As much as you should never say that about someone you like, she did." Edited by RickenbackersAllTheWay, Jul 18 2013, 04:16 PM.
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| Czernobog | Jul 18 2013, 04:15 PM Post #37 |
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Best Influence.
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Naoya blinked. He had known his friend was multilingual, but had forgotten about his aptitude with the Chinese language. He sat and listened attentively, his eyes briefly flickering over to Kyo and making note of her ashen face. There was something there, too. It seemed like everyone he knew was bloodied and battered in some way. Everyone was trailing their own line of ghosts. He remembered Toru standing on a park bench at sunset, laughing after some joke that he couldn't remember, the other members of their little crew sitting and standing, occupying a lower level. He shook his head, clearing it. "Y'know my, uh, my MO very well," he commented. "So yeah. What did she mean to you? Sounds like you two were...uh...y'know, close." He felt his stomach do a flop, and reminded himself: saliva was 99.5% water. Sweat even more so. He glanced down at the IV, noting the irritation of the skin it was plunged into. |
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| The One True Nobody | Jul 18 2013, 04:35 PM Post #38 |
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"...does this clockwork hand follow you... or guide you?"
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"...I can guess," was all that Kyo said. She had smiled a bit halfheartedly at the anecdote about Mei's name. She could probably have come up with one or two little anecdotes about Kenshin, too. But the important things hadn't been said. The most important question, which Naoya had just asked, probably didn't need to be said. Kyo watched, waited, and listened. She glanced at Naoya and quirked an eyebrow as if to silently ask if he was okay--but she wasn't aware of his weakness to water, so she was more or less without a clue as to what was going on in his head, not that it showed clearly enough even if she'd known. |
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| RickenbackersAllTheWay | Jul 19 2013, 02:33 AM Post #39 |
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birb was here scruffs is a loser
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Charles let the two float in their pasts for a moment, then let his own thoughts resurface back. What did May mean as a person? Currently, she was an ideal to him. That shy girl that needs someone to hang off of. The cute girl that needed some affection and would reciprocate no problem. That usual girl with glasses from all the shows that had a really tender side but was too quiet to express it properly. In other words, she was that cliche quiet girl from all the shitty series who got matched with a wild and contrasting boy. But as a person... "...She was honestly like another half of me. As cheesy as that sounds. I thought I'd be the one protecting her, but... She protected me more than anything." He smiled and leaned back into his chair. Despite all the fighting he did for her sake, despite the injuries he took instead of her, nothing ever put him at ease like a kiss and a night watching movies with her. A few tears came down his face, which he wiped slowly, taking off his foundation as he did so. The scars on his face were becoming more and more noticeable by the second. "Honestly, she fucked like a tiger after a while, but it was the non-sex stuff that did it. She was the first person to visit me when I got put in the hospital for the second time. She said things like 'I love you' and all that. She meant a goddamn lot, man. It was things like that combined with my own sheer mental will that let me survive half the shit I've been through." said the boy with glazed eyes. A deprecating laugh came out from his mouth, as he wiped the makeup from his cheeks, showing off the smile carved into them. "Fuck, I'm getting sappy. I might as well describe how we met while we're at it. Or something. Might as well let all these memories flow out as much as I can." |
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| Czernobog | Jul 19 2013, 07:53 AM Post #40 |
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Best Influence.
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"We're willin' t' listen to whatever y' got t' tell," Naoya said, glancing over at Kyo for confirmation. Doing so would give her a view of the ugly furrow in the mostly-bald side of his head, but he was feeling relatively unselfconscious at the moment. Possibly, it was seeing Charlie unconsciously reveal his own scars. A sort of solidarity in scarification. He was doing his best to forget his own romantic history, though it was difficult. It was also very brief: the girl in the sanitarium who had held his hand in the yard as he tried to make his voice come out as anything other than a confused series of liquid noises and hard consonants; Ayumu holding on to Toru's arm and his own confused mixture of adolescent lust and desire to impress. He had difficulty even remembering what she looked like, and thinking too much about it would bring to mind his memory of the Accident. "If you want t' tell us how y'all met, y' can. Get it all out there, if'n y' want to." There was a perverse, voyeuristic part of him that he slapped down, though. The part which wanted to say what happened to her? Tell us that. Tell us what Enrique did. He beat down the thought, stuffing it as far back as he could, doing his best to prevent it from showing up on his face. |
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