♦♦ 33RD CONTRACT - ANONYMOUS TEXT/ACTION

[mortemscintilla]

...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 ]

Comments

action;

[sleepingstar]

[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.]

action; 1/2

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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. ]

action;

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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. ]

[sleepingstar]

[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.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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. ]

[sleepingstar]

[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.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ 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. ]

action; the Beach House

[anatural]

[Typical Hei. Even when Korra bothers checking the network -- and she did take a peak at it today -- his obsessive need to be all obscure and shit means she has no idea he's back. The poem just strikes her as something from yet another one of the City's creeps.

So she spends the day in perfect ignorance. She's been keeping busy the past few days with sick animals and working on her bending training. Ever since that day with Chekov, she's been trying to figure out what other unconventional places she can find & manipulate air. It hasn't exactly been a success, but it hasn't been a failure either. She knows she's got the right idea, but even when you're using the air inside the rock to move the rock, you can't treat it like a rock, and that's her problem. It's grueling training, and it leaves her exhausted. Particularly today. Today she's too tired to wrangle Pai out of bed to make sure she does her chores before dinner; she's too tired for even dinner. The sun sets and she stumbles into her bedroom and under the covers. Her last thought is that it's a little lonely without Mocha and Hamlet (who've been quarantined in another part of the house to keep them from infecting the cats) asleep beside her.

Then she's out like a light.]

action; the Beach House 1/2 such two parters. much tldr. aghast.

[mortemscintilla]

[ Flecks of dust glitter in the dim light floating from the window. Hei sneaks in without sound -- he's always been good at that. ]

[ Stepping into Korra's room is like walking out of the choking smog that is his blocky re-orientation (not just to the City, but to a non-fugitive life), and into temporary shelter. He tries to hold his mind very still. But his heart is beating so hard he wonders how it's not echoing through the room. He's aware of Korra, recumbent and warm, curled up in bed. The bready aroma of her sleep fills the air. Watching her, Hei flexes his empty hands. They feel parched. His joints still ache, every muscle half-knotted. The injuries he'd sustained from his last fight, before getting sucked into the City, are only half-healed; the skin itches and crawls and stings. ]

[ But somehow it matches the quality of his thoughts. ]

action; the Beach House

[mortemscintilla]

[ In truth, the stuttered healing process is probably good for him. It reinforces something he'd only just been coming to grips with: eluding the Syndicate has slowly run him ragged. Time ago, in Heaven's War, he'd have ripped through a whole battalion of Contractors before they could've damaged him in return. But now, although his skills, his tactics, are better than those of his younger self, he understands that his quickness, and his resiliency, are not infinite. It's a matter of simple attrition. ]

[ He tries to tell himself he can evade the Syndicate for as long as need be. By one means or another, he's managed to outlast all his enemies so far. And if he can't ... Well. Better to die fighting than expire old and crippled. But that's bullshit. Almost dying, each and every day, is a powerful reminder that he wants to live. He can't articulate why, exactly. But it isn't just the sight of fried food or the sound of Pai's voice or the feel of Yin's hands. ]

[ Korra is tangled up in the fabric of those ideas, strangely enough. But watching her, Hei wonders if it's right to intrude. Maybe, during his absence, she'd decided she was better off without him. Maybe she'd moved on. He doesn't want to interfere with any of that. Most of all, if any of his enemies ever come to the City, he doesn't want an association with him to be the thing that gets her hurt, or worse than hurt. ]

[ Yet, even as he tells himself this, he's stepping closer to her bed. ]

[anatural]

[There's not a single sound -- not a breath, not a creak, not a scrape -- that gives his presence away. It's something indefinable, a change in the energy in the room. She finds herself turning towards it unconsciously, making a soft sound that could be surprise.]

[mortemscintilla]

[ She turns toward him. Hei freezes, wondering if she's awake. ]

[ No. Her breathing stays deep and undisturbed. Part of him can't help but frown at her obliviousness. There are a hundred creatures in the City who are as stealthy as him. Better. She can't defend herself effectively if she's a living bullseye. The other part of him, absurdly, is grateful she doesn't spring awake. Slowly, he peels the blankets half-away from her, with the delicacy he puts into preparing incendiary devices. Trying not to disturb her; trying to figure out what he wants. His breath is short in his lungs. The night air feels chill. ]

[ His intention, at the outset, was to wake her. Thank her, with terse politeness, for watching over Pai. Explain that he'd be taking her back to the apartment. Mentally jot Korra's name in his ledger, bright-red and bold; another debt to pay off. Simple. Neat. Concise. Except now ... Korra is too close. Listening to her quiet breathing, a thrill creeps through him. ]

[ Wake up. He wants to say it. Instead his fingers twitch, before his right palm moves to fit against the warmth of her cheek. The pad of his thumb ghosts along the rise of bone there, skimming the feathery underside of her eyelashes. ]

[ Simple contact. Not loaded, but almost rueful. ]

[anatural]

[Her eyes open at the contact.

She's gotten better in the month he's been gone. The depression that had sunk its claws into her, that had always kept her tied to sleep before, has lost its grip. Still, even without the depression, she's not a soldier like Hei or a wild animal like Naga; she doesn't have the training to wake instantly from sleep. She stares at him wide-eyed and completely uncomprehending; it takes a long moment for her mind to even register his name.]

Hei?

[mortemscintilla]

[ She opens her eyes. And Hei tells himself he's imagining it; that slight tremor of his hands. ]

[ He withdraws his touch matter-of-factly, as if she's a weapon or a tool he's finished with. His posture doesn't change. His expression is the same. He says, ]

Didn't mean to wake you.

[ And he sounds like himself, but there is something hollow in his voice, noticeable not as he speaks, but in the little silence between. As if he is doing an impression. An imitation of normalcy. It unnerves him. He's been trying all these months to hold tight to his calm, his reason. But now he feels stiff, out-of-place in Korra's room, head angled, arms folded, trying to project benignity, sanity. ]

[ Trying so hard he wonders if she can feel it. ]

text;

[studmuffin]

well that's creepy

[ The anon rhyme. ]

anonymous text <333

[mortemscintilla]

Everyone's a critic.

[ Face it, Hei. Wordsworth, you ain't. ]

[studmuffin]

So is this a cannibal thing? It feels like a cannibal thing?

[mortemscintilla]

It could be a marijuana thing.

The word 'baked' has several applications.

[studmuffin]

i'm seriously troubled i didn't got here immediately.

[mortemscintilla]

Clearly you've been keeping company with the wrong [ right? ] sort of people.

[moonlitrequiem]

[She doesn't answer for the longest time. Either because of shock, or disbelief, or many other things a Doll should not, can not feel. When she does respond, there's the tiniest lilt to her otherwise monotone voice.]

Hei....

I'm the same as when you left. [And yet not. She doesn't understand how much she's regressed in that short time, barely functioning. And yet the second she found an entry from him once more, some of what she gained rebounded, allowing for relief, almost gratefulness.]

Private

[mortemscintilla]

[ In the months they've spent on the run, he's learnt to gauge the nuances of Yin's voice. It's no longer shocking -- the idea of her expressing shades of emotion behind that colorless mask. ]

[ She says I'm the same as when you left. And he's not sure if what he feels is relief -- or something charged and white-hot that makes his throat go tight, which makes all his precise and modulated words tangle up in a sudden burble he isn't prepared for. (At the back of his mind, there's still that burst of memory so strong he can almost inhale it. Yin's specter, manifesting behind the faux-Amber. The gun being forcibly raised as if by invisible strings. The colors moving in the wide rings of the Contractor's eyes. The gunshot; the splatter of red. The specter burning bright blue against the dull walls. So much more vivid than the City, than anything he's experienced here.) ]

[ He still doesn't understand what that was. Doesn't understand why that group of Contractors were after Yin. But right now, it doesn't matter. Here, as there, her safety is his first priority. ]

I'll come see you. [ He has a feeling that wasp-like buzz of concern -- paranoia -- won't settle until Yin is nearby. Close enough to examine, to touch. ] Send me your coordinates.

Private; going to handwave location, as I tire of waiting to respond

[moonlitrequiem]

[There's no Izanami here, at least not yet. Her specter is still more of a formless puddle. In fact, it's watching Hei right now, but with a level of dedication that wasn't there before.]

[Yin inputs her coordinates - instead of saying where, like normal people - and then waits for Hei to end the conversation.]

action; <3

[mortemscintilla]

[ He spots the specter from the corner of his eye. ]

[ Part of him expects it to shift into a blurry girl-form, the way it had they were on the run. But it stays as it is, looking unreal in distorted tones of blue. But then all of the City looks unreal and blue to him. He's half-convinced he doesn't fit here, that his molecules are too altered for this world. ( Which is, of course, distracting, especially when he has other things to worry about. Speaking English instead of Portuguese or Japanese, for instance. "Obrigado," he keeps saying to shopkeepers, train conductors, strangers in the street, or, "Kinishinai de," to the same, or, "Stop. Stop," to himself, occasionally too quiet but much too public, earning himself strange looks.) ]

[ He accepts Yin's location with a terse nod, and disconnects. It takes him a few minutes to reach her. He's looked worse -- eyes sunken in his skull, stubble clinging bluish to hollowed cheeks, and an attenuated air about him that's at odds with his brisk stride. But that's not what he cares about. Injuries heal. His main concern in Yin -- and how she's gotten on in his absence. ]

[ There's a movement in his chest -- like a buzzer sounding -- when he spots her. He closes the space between them, not intrusive so much as testing. ] Yin... [ It's Glad to see you and Are you okay? wrapped in one word. ]

action; <3

[moonlitrequiem]

[Yin looks as she ever does, thin and pale. She might seem a little less receptive, at first. Normally there's a slight change in her Hei approaches, but this time she stays still, emotion empty and lifeless. She takes that time to observe him, take in the obvious signs of distress.]

[Once she has, though, she reaches forward to hug him.]

Hei. [Her word gives no answer, but speaks of her concern for him, instead.]