“Three servings of Caleilonie and baklava please” Alex says as she and her friends enter the stall
“Ah fuck” Fadi says “the brats multiplied”
“Just showing my friends the wonders of arab cuisine!”
He shrugs “more customers for me I guess”
Alex, Sasha, and Aki all sit on the stools by the countertop as they wait for their food.
“This better be as good as you say it is” Sasha says “I’m missing out on a new episode of Galaxy Frontier for this”
“You can just stream it” Alex says
“It’s not the same! I’m gonna be late for all the discussions”
“Don’t those sites just make you angry?” Aki asks
“Only because theorycrafters are a bunch of pussy ass bitches”
“Don’t you theorycraft?” Alex asks
“I predict! It’s different”
“Suuuure”
“Fuck you Alex, all you watch is romcoms”
“They’re entertaining”
“They all follow the same plot! There’s no fucking variety. Well, except for A borg and their mate, but that one was just weird”
Alex shivers “The less said about that movie, the better”
“What? What’s it about?” Aki asks.
“It’s a love story between a borg and a wolf” Sasha explains
“Like, a werewolf?”
“No”
Aki starts contemplating “So was the borg a dude or…”
“Both”
-
“But why did it have so much sugar? I can feel my teeth rotting as we speak” Aki says.
Alex shrugs “Sugar good, add more, food better” she explains simply.
“Are all middle eastern sweets like that?”
“Some are worse, there’s one that’s just solidified cane sugar, can’t recall what it’s called off the top of my head though.”
“It’s not too bad honestly, in moderation” Sasha says.
“That can be said about literally any food.”
“You can never have too much lettuce.”
“I’m pretty sure you can, it just takes a lot,” Aki says.
“If it’s more than your stomach can fill, it doesn’t count”
-
Lucas is having a weird day.
He’s decided this fact because he hasn’t killed anyone. In the middle of a war! Everyday they just gave him targets and he picked whichever one he felt like mowing down. Then came the blood, and the screams. Borg screams are actually kinda funny, they all modify their voice to sound more robot-y so when he kills them slowly they sound like a DJ’s nightmare. But today he has to stay in one of the safehouses, no violence for him, no sir. It’s okay, he’ll play the part of a good little doggy and not tug on his leash.
But, fuck, is it boring.
There are others here, but he doesn’t feel like talking to them. He likes the smell of fear in small doses but these people positively reek of it. It’s fucking pathetic is what it is, what’s there to be afraid of, the war? That’s just business as usual. Him? Okay that’s kinda fair, but still! It’s rude!
He’s gotten tired of their scent, so when something new invades his nostrils he homes in on it like those missiles from the old world he’s heard so much about.
What he finds absolutely delights him.
“Takeshi! It’s been so long, how’re the kids?”
“I’m sixteen Lucas, I don’t have kids”
“You will one of the times I ask you”
Takeshi groans and Lucas can smell the stress on the kid lessen. Just a little.
“Is it too much to ask for you to be serious?” he asks
“I’m always serious! I just have a different interpretation of it”
“So you admit you’re insane”
“No comment!”
Takeshi just sighs as he walks further into the safehouse, a few House members stiffen up at the sight of him, but Lucas isn’t concerned. If he’s here that means the higher ups trust him.
The boy’s wearing his full suit too, black tuxedo with a red tie over a black dress-shirt. On his finger is a ring. It’s a very important ring.
“So what brings you here my dear lad?”
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Takeshi looks at Lucas “Don’t call me lad” he says before sighing at Lucas’s puppy dog eyes “This war has gone on for too long, father wants to…tip the scales”
Lucas' eyes light up like a kid on christmas day “Are the dragons joining?” he asks excitedly.
“No” Takeshi denies instantly “But we will be providing…Logistical support. I am to organize what comes in through my clan while you are to protect me.”
Oh joy, time with Takeshi is always fun!
He’s almost not disappointed by the fact that his spree will probably end here.
-
Roan doesn’t know how to feel about his life right now.
Gangs are bad, he knows that because they took away his mommy and papi, and left him to starve on the streets. Then there were the beatings, they were fairly frequent, and all done by gangers. So that’s been his motto.
Gangs are bad.
He’s been proven right time and time again.
But then he met the strange girl who just knew where he was. She offered him food, all he had to do was follow. He did not believe her, but he went anyway for a fairly simple reason.
They all had guns.
Guns kill, quicker than you can think.
Roan did not want to die.
Then a group of stupid people decided to threaten them. They blew off the leader's head, and the girl with pink hair cut down one of the people who charged her and beat the other with her gun until he was on his knees. The boy just turned another ganger to mist before a man tackled him to the ground. Then the strange girl cut open the man's neck, and blood flew everywhere.
So, so much blood.
The most blood he’d ever seen.
No one bothered them after that, no one dared. Roan was pretty sure he was going to die, this all being some twisted joke by a group of gangers. He repeated his motto like a prayer.
Gangs are bad
Gangs are bad
Gangs are bad
Then they gave him food, gave him a bed and a roof. They taught him how to speak with his hands, and how to write, and now they are teaching him how to fight. Roan is not stupid, he knows this kindness comes with expectations.
Gangs are bad, after all
But maybe the strange girl and the stern woman are exceptions to the rule.
-
“-so i threatened his family to get the information we needed” Akihiro says
Ellie tilts her head to one side, then to the other as she regards her newest interest. Somehow he is both stupid and smart. He knows what makes people tick, and can read between the lines, what he does with that information though is…questionable
“You went as my messenger and threatened his family?” Ellie’s voice is cold and level, her eyes seering holes through the boy's skull.
She’s not actually angry with his bluff, it was pretty basic all things considered, but that doesn’t mean she should encourage stupid decisions.
That and she’s going to have to find some way to compensate Trevor Jones, which is enough of a pain in the ass that she is actually a little angry.
Akihiro pales, his eyes widen and blah blah blah.
Honestly, being one of the dragons fingers can get so predictable. For example, if at least half his brain is functioning then he’d know that talking right now would be supremely stupid.
So he doesn’t.
She sighs.
“Did you at least get the client's name?”
“Salamander Ballistics, Ma’m”
“Even I could have figured that out with enough digging, did you get a name”
He goes quiet at that.
Ellie slowly claps for him, every clap seeming to physically hurt the boy.
“Congratulations” Ellie says “you’ve been played”
-
Dreams.
Such a nebulous thing, where reason goes to die and the absurd makes its home. There’s so much potential in dreaming that gets squandered because the common masses use something as banal as logic to find meaning in the madness.
It takes a broken mind to interpret dreams.
Even then, Rei isn’t always right with her predictions. That’s the nature of dreams, sometimes they just don’t make sense, even to her.
But her most recent dream isn’t one of those, it’s actually fairly simple.
Three little midgets, the size of her palm, walk through a jungle, weaving through poisonous plants and predators poised to strike.
They find a sleeping lion.
They enter its mouth, and for a while nothing happens.
Then they rip through the lion's stomach with only two rising from the gore.
A smile spreads across Rei’s face.
This is very, very good.
-
To wield the sword is to dance, it is a series of motions, a cadence that only the wielder understands. There is so much to something as simple as the blade, when two Masters fight it’s as though the whole thing was choreographed.
It is beautiful.
For a long time he was the best among the adepts. The residents of lost hope no longer presented a challenge, even Danny couldn’t keep up. Everything was just so easy. But come next May and he’ll be able to participate in the annual tournament, that’s what kept him going, kept him diligent, kept him focused.
When he was assigned to train one of his juniors he thought it a decent opportunity to brush up on his foundations. A solid house needs solid foundations, after all. At first that’s all it was, she wasn’t anything impressive, perhaps she would have made adept properly come the end of the year if Korin wasn’t such a bleeding heart.
But who is he to question a Master?
It went like that for a while, him teaching her through fire, ironing out the mistakes and actually finding a few tidbits that could help with his understanding of the blade.
Then one day she beat him.
Then she kept beating him.
It had been a long time since he felt the thrill of combat, the adrenaline fueling action before the mind can register what is even happening. The instinct that was trained for so long being truly tested. It had been so long since he actually had a challenge.
It was wonderful.
-
A giant cleans his gun with meticulous care and surprising precision, his rifle is easily the size of a person, but compared to him it is a simple rifle. There aren’t that many guns that reach its size, and he had to get a custom order for this one. It’s essentially an upscaled Oni, a simple thing from Taiyō, normally not all that noteworthy.
It’s just a rifle, but it’s all he needs.
“Banzan” Say’s a feminine voice to his right.
He is broken from his reverie and has to hold back from blowing the woman's head off. But that would be bad, he reminds himself. She’s an ally, you don’t shoot allies. Even if they have a tendency to annoy you.
“What?” He says with a bite he couldn’t contain “I’m busy.”
The woman hesitates for a moment.
“We have a Job for you”
Banzan sighs “Who needs to die this time?”
“No one, there’s just a curiosity that’s emerged from Lost Hope that needs a…specialized eye”
Banzan snorts “You think a child would be of interest to us? We truly are scrapping at the bottom of the barrel these days”
“It is more than that Banzan” the woman says “Micheal reported someone who's been marked”
Banzan hums “and you don’t want me to kill them?”
The woman nods “They don’t seem dangerous at the moment, and they’re perfectly sane”
“Those are usually the most dangerous”
“She is a child, she is as dangerous as a dog with no teeth.”
-
Step step, go the boots over the pavement.
Snap snap, goes the fingers against one another.
Tink tink, goes the bat against the railing.
Crunch crunch, goes the bone against the bat.
A smile, not of sadism, but true joy, spreads across the killer's face.
She loves war.