[ Frightened. Helpless. Disappointing. Hei started out in the Syndicate as all those things. One scrawny human kid in a lethal beehive of Contractors. He'd changed that -- shaped and marked himself inside and out: messy scars and neat muscles, skills to manipulate the people around him through words and emotions, schematics to take out every person in the room without them laying a hand on him, a hundred and one exit strategies, backup plans and bolt holes, all imprinted there by his will alone, to assert his dominion over himself. Because if there's anything Heaven's War, being a drudge for the Syndicate, being alive at any moment in his line of work, nights of grotesquery and deadened nerves and fingernails darkened in red have taught him -- it's that your old pathetic self can be trampled and tossed aside. Just like anything -- anyone -- else. ]
[ The look on his face is his usual blank neutrality -- neither amusement nor annoyance. ] Or you could crack open a fortune cookie. [ The rubber crepe soles of his (Li's) sneakers go vrrnk vrrnk as he pushes the cart behind her. Buttermilk or go-gurt? Hm. All around their aisle, the mass of humanity shambles by, in weary pursuit of all the good things in life. ]
no subject
[ The look on his face is his usual blank neutrality -- neither amusement nor annoyance. ] Or you could crack open a fortune cookie. [ The rubber crepe soles of his (Li's) sneakers go vrrnk vrrnk as he pushes the cart behind her. Buttermilk or go-gurt? Hm. All around their aisle, the mass of humanity shambles by, in weary pursuit of all the good things in life. ]
[ It feels like an absurd object lesson. ]