poly_chromatic | ♦♦ 33RD CONTRACT

Entry tags:

darker than black - hei

♦♦ 33RD CONTRACT - ANONYMOUS TEXT/ACTION

...Back again.

I could do without the psychic jetlag. No worse for the wear, despite it.

[ Anonymous Text ]
Sing A Song of Sixpence The Child's Rhyme A Lie 1 & 20 Blackbirds Baked As They Die

[ Do not be alarmed. It's a code, not threats of animal abuse. Simply Hei's way of testing the Network-waters. ]

[ Private to Yin ]

~~Are you all right ...?~~

Status?

[ Private to Pai ]

I'm at the safehouse.

[ Options For Run-Ins ]

Cafe: He's assumed 'Li's persona -- timid and dopey-faced. A walking chameleon. But right now, blending with the scenery isn't his priority. The opposite. He's utilizing the freedom afforded by the City to stick out. To play chicken with himself -- after months of paranoid caution. You'll see him seated at the corner, with an unobstructed view of the cafe's interior. Elbow-deep in several platters of fried food, gorging like it's his last meal on earth.

It's his sixth. But fugitive life does wonders for an already freakish appetite.

Dojo: Avoiding the facility’s tangle of Life Cycles and Cybex machines, he's focused on a series of punches, blocks, and kicks to the air that, to the uninitiated, might look like a martial dance routine. It's a kata, but nothing formal or stylized. He has no interest in revealing the full scope of his abilities. Even so, his moves are good -- smooth, practiced, and powerful. They would be impressive in any grizzled combat veteran, but this guy seems at least half that age.

His visit to the dojo isn't an indulgence, or a way to burn off energy. It's a way of reassuring himself that his enemies-- his real enemies -- really are all back home. Or it could be a way of saying come out, come out, wherever you are.

The Underground: In his absence, things have moved around. Locations have changed; reigns of power have switched hands. But it's nothing too drastic. Masked, alone, he propels himself into his first patrol of the year. He feels almost like a kid, a high school student, gone away during summers -- not to visit family and friends but off to anonymously toil in some big city. Now he's back from big travels -- big character-altering, mind-boggling travels. And somehow, the cliche is true: everything in the City seems slightly tepid after having experienced all that disasters and miracles back home.

Of course, it's never a good idea to imagine there is anything tepid about the City. Not so long as it brews with such indefinable magic. Things that pour out of it, or gravitate to it, large or small, are never harmless. In that department, even Hell's Gate has nothing to boast of in comparison.

Anywhere Else: Invent your own setting! You know the drill! c:

[ OOC: Officially off hiatus, and Hei is back in the City, after a brief canon update! Post is anonymous and unhackable as always! Tags will be sporadic so your patience is appreciated<3 ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[The moment Pai gets the message, she's off and running. She has to move quickly, before Korra gets home. Because if Korra sees her going somewhere, she'll ask where, and Pai doesn't want her to know that Hei's back.

Hei's hers. Her brother, her world, and Pai will kill before she shares.]

[ Here, he's only been gone a few weeks. Back home, it's been eight months since he defected from the Syndicate. ]

[ It's still strange to think of it like that. The disorientation -- the displacement -- buzzes and flickers behind his eyelids. Time crunches together like pleats of a concertina. He has to stop, to give himself precisely six breaths. Six breaths to absorb everything -- no more, no less. He'd keep it to one, but even he can admit it's surreal -- feeling both seamlessly integrated into the City, yet entirely strange at the same time. It's always made him leery, this science/magic hybrid that shimmers here. Cautious. (He'd call it fear, but he's had too many similarly stupefying experiences at home to let something like this paralyze him anymore.) This is more about the fact that he doesn't, and never can, come up with a rational explanation for the City, the Why-When-Where-How. ]

[ So he doesn't dwell on it. ]

[ Instead he waits for Pai. Alone in the narrow bathroom. Peeling wallpaper, mildewed tiles. Stripped to the waist, he washes himself at the stone basin. He's shed weight. Gaunt and tapered, his every muscle is visible under a thin stretching of flesh. New scars overlap the old. A pair of star-shaped welts on his torso, one between the second and third rib, another above the right nipple. Knife wounds. At his back, slashes from shrapnel and whizzing bullets; scar tissue like lumps of bubblegum smoothed across the underside of a table. There are sunken rings around his eyes, and a three-day growth of beard. ]

[ But that's not the only change. When the security blip trills and the safe-house's door creaks open, the blade of his throwing knife embeds itself point-first into the wooden doorframe. Hei -- strained and water-dripping and narrow-eyed -- relaxes only when he sees who it is. ]

You startled me.

[ Of course, his usual low-bubbling paranoia has kicked up to a boil while on the run. ]

[She doesn't flinch as the knife flies past her -- although there's a spike of adrenalin that eight months ago would not have felt unusual. She's gone soft here. But soft is what this place demands.]

How long were you gone?

[She doubts he could have gotten that many new scars in the month he's been gone.]

[ Soft is what this place demands. But Hei's been places where that thin little tissue of a half-baked goodness in him -- consideration, restraint -- has no meaning. If he'd succumbed to it, he'd have been smashed like eggshell, his brains broken like yolk, running gooey and useless across the streets. So much the better, that he couldn't remember his time here.]

[ Except ... coming back, the memories of City and Home are converging on him, making him feel like he's had too much alcohol, too much sun, ideas and emotions crumbling to multicolored shards. Everything from the familiar streets to the well-lived-in safehouse to Pai's face makes him think of how he'd felt when he was running with Yin. The whole experience had calloused him for survival snatched hour-by-hour; everything he's being re-exposed to here, from the frothy shaving cream that smells of fucking flowers, to no bullets or bombs cascading on him in broad daylight, to Pai's full attention as she regards him ... It's already unfitting him for that life. His true life. ]

[ It's funny. After yearning so long for a reprieve, having it chills as much as it thrills him. ]

[ To Pai, ] Close to eight months. [ A beat, before he sidles closer. Measured steps; measured tone: ] The Syndicate's fallen into factions. The ones with firepower ... are after Yin and me.

[ But specifically Yin. Bewildering and illogical; but he can't tell Pai about that. He can barely make sense of it himself. ]

[She could ask Why? or What kind of factions? But really, it doesn't matter. That's a different place, a different life. What matters is the here and now.

She holds out her arms to him, asking to be held. She knows better than to make the first move with his mind in a state like this.]

[ It shouldn't matter. Time works differently in different realities. So do priorities. It's hard to keep track of them. They're another thing that has no meaning here. Still, he finds himself turning the events of home over and over in his mind, like jagged seashells, his fingers tracing the sharp edges, trying to find a pattern. Why were those agencies after Yin? Why go to such lengths to pluck her away -- going as far as to employing an Amber-lookalike so he'd drop his guard? It makes no sense. (Except it does. Memory leaks behind his eyelids, ineradicable in its sheer bright intensity. Yin's specter blossoming out of nowhere. The fake-Amber forced to raise her gun to her own temple. Gunshots. Bloodsplatter. A wavery, strangled cry. It's impossible. You're just a Doll.) ]

[ He shakes it off. In his peripheral vision, Pai moves. It's enough to make Hei unfold his arms in a fluid, startled movement, as if expecting to have to defend himself. ]

[ Except that's not it. She only wants ... ]

[ Oh. Hei opens his mouth, closes it. In one breathless, dizzying movement, he's swept in. Gathering Pai in tight, her hair slipperysoft against his cheek, her body light yet somehow impossibly weighty. Humming and alive. When the emotional reaction finally hits him it is violent, like a sudden retch. Even though there's an open space in his chest which logically should've been bursting with happiness, what he feels is a kind of terror which makes it hard to breathe. I left, and she was all alone. What if something happened to her? What if the City sent her back? ]

[ He refuses to consider it. ]

[She wraps her arms around him and squeezes. She'd never admit it, even to herself, but she now feels like she can finally relax. She's always been safe in her brother's arms, and even though there's no logical reason to feel threatened now, nor anything Hei could do to protect her from what dangers do lurk in the City, she feels better with them there.

No point in saying anything. She doesn't have any questions about home, nor any desire to stir up painful memories for him. He can ask whatever questions he wants on his own time; she's not interested in reminding him that anything else exists outside of this moment. She's in no mood to share him.]

[ It's just as well. He's in no mood to be shared, for the inevitable forking of his attention. His arms tighten around her; she's probably dangling on tiptoe, the way he's holding onto her. It feels less needy, more like he's snatched her back from the lip of some overspilling catastrophe, and is examining her for wounds, enraptured to find her whole. Her presence feels like a homecoming in a dream. ] I'm glad to see you, [ he says to Pai, and the tone of his voice is honest, quiet, worn to the bone. It's a long moment -- probably several minutes -- before he detaches. ]

[ Not completely. Just far enough to examine her. Pai seems tanned. She's gotten some sun since he left. Not the usual outdoors bronzing, but a faintly ruddy sea-tan. There's a powdering of sand on her shoes. The sparkling type found at the beach. Hei absorbs all these details, weaving them together in a faint sketch at the back of his mind. ]

Tell me who you've been staying with.

[ Because he's already ascertained, by the state of their apartment, that she wasn't there while he was gone. ]

[He would ask that first.]

I've been staying at the Beach House. [Maybe he's forgotten his little girlfriend; eight months is a long time.]

[ He hasn't forgotten. But where Korra would've been a fraught topic for him eight months ago, now it is almost academic. There are too many other heavy things piled up over it. Before he left, he had not just been trying to get out of his old life, but actually making progress, both body and mind. And then he wasn't just dragged back in, but outright blasted all the way back into the proverbial heart of darkness he'd been gradually leaving behind. He hasn't yet absorbed it, what it means to succumb to the deadliest, most ruthless, most resourceful aspect of his own personality. The civilian he wants to be, colliding with the killer he is. ]

[ A chilling mismatch. No wonder he's disoriented. ]

[ So disoriented, in fact, that he blames it for mishearing Pai's reply. ] The ... Beach House. [ He stares at her with some surprise. An unintentionally dazed variety of surprise. Given everything he knows about Pai -- and Korra -- it makes no sense. A pause before he speaks, blinking slowly. ] Why?

[ As in, Why would you stay with her? As in, Why would she keep you? ]

[Pai shrugs carelessly.]

She fed me.

[It had seemed like too much trouble to resist when Korra insisted, and maybe a part of Pai had enjoyed the thought of pestering the interloper. (One of the many things that she would never admit to, because Contractors are above such pettiness, even if 14 year old girls aren't.)]

[ Surprises heaped upon surprises. Hei had assumed that Pai must've relocated to the Underground, shacking up in his safehouse. That maybe she'd wrangled Chekov into buying her meals. The idea of Korra taking her home ... it had never occurred to him. Mainly because it is absurd. Hate is a strong word. But the two girls ... don't like each other. At least as far as he could tell. Pai's expedient nature (and, let's face it; she must've enjoyed making a nuisance of herself at Korra's expense, just because) is somewhat less of a surprise. She is a Contractor, after all. Things change, priorities shift. Her concern would be how to get her next meal. ]

[ Even so, his voice is quiet and slightly bemused when he says, ]

She really is a masochist.

[ Whether this was out of kindness, or obligation, or for ulterior motives ... He doesn't know. He'll have to ask Korra in person. ]

I think she just wanted help taking care of her pets. [Guess who didn't like doing chores. Yup. This Contractor.

Guess who's also sick of talking about Hei's stupid girlfriend.]

Are you hungry? [Stupid question on the surface, but she really just wants to change the subject. It may also be a coded offer: I'll treat.]

[ Hei's mouth tugs upward in an almost smile. Not much humor, but a sense of relief. He feels so scooped-out. So altered in himself. Unsure of his bearings back home, wary of the past, wary of the future, wary of Yin, for fuckssakes. But Pai is still Pai. It's a simple thing. She is his family and he is hers; they are both killers. These facts are as cleanly connected to him as each finger at the end of each hand. The circle closes upon itself and he is content within its circumference. When she asks if he's hungry, he senses the subject-change. Doesn't remark on it. Just squeezes her tight, before letting go. ]

Starving.

[ There is a cabinet of food in the safehouse. But it's chocked full of non-perishables like dry fruits, canned soups, cake mixes and cereal bars. He's in the mood for something a little more nutritious. ]

[He lets her go but she holds onto his hand, not willing to let him go entirely.]

Pick a place.

[ On instinct, Hei twines his fingers with hers. Their hands differ in size and shape, but in a lot of ways, they're mirror images: the calluses are in almost exactly the same places. The turmoil of Tokyo, the mind-boggling trip to the Gate, are still fresh in his mind. He can't stop thinking about it all. Pai stands for it all somehow, like a treasure snatched from a burning building. ]

[ Gently, he squeezes her palm. ]

Someplace that serves meat. The more, the better.

[ re: a steakhouse would be nice. ]

I know the perfect place. [There's a Korean barbecue that opened up down the street while he was gone. It's actually a front for some underground smuggling, but the meat is good, cheap, and plentiful.

She tugs him hard out the door, for once seeming like the excited teenager she's supposed to be. An illusion, of course, but it's for him.]

[ Even if it's an illusion, he doesn't care. Some people look at a mirage in the desert, and lament it's not a real oasis. Other people watch that heat-illusion shimmering in the sand, and marvel that something so surreal exists at all. Right now, gripping her hand, letting her lead him to wherever there'll be food, he experiences more pure joy in one moment than he'll otherwise lay claim to in a lifetime. It's enough. He's with Pai, and loving her defines him like a chalk line around his form, the form of his existence. ]

[ It's something that'll keep control on that ravening and pacing monster, caged behind the brittle bars of his sanity. At least for a while. ]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

♦♦ 33RD CONTRACT - ANONYMOUS TEXT/ACTION

action;

action; 1/2

action;

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject