(open) back to ordinary

[sparsity]

Who: mikazuki augus (sparsity) & various & you!
What: october plot - open prompts, closed starters.
When: various days in october.
Where: olympia & thesa.
Warning(s): violence, probably murder.

I. YOU'VE GROWN OUT OF US

[ All things considered, the events leading up to Olympia's current state are familiar in the way the lay of a skeleton is familiar, flesh stripped from bone, the impression of something once whole. Bare joints exposed, a working order, if not quite... right. Explosions rocking a populated area, terrified people, dubious claims opening up a chasm of blame for anyone free to explore. It leaves too much to people he doesn't trust. Too much like the colonies he saw falsely accused.

Years ago and yet fresh again, for all the subtleties he doesn't understand about it. All he knows is that people are ready to fight.

Mikazuki isn't really the vigilante sort, though he's moving through the streets of Olympia like he is, eyes trained and alert as he glances down alleyways he passes, storefronts and establishments a little too dark. He's most familiar with the marketplace, as much as he's a familiar face there too. All its corners have been thrown with smoke, illness, and shadow. Electricity is in the air, the same sort after the announcement. Mikazuki tastes it as he rounds the bars he knows, looking no where near old enough to enter one and now not marked by Ashti's stone or uniform to signify he's patrolling them, instead dressed in somber neutrals.

His pace only slows when he comes across one of the posters strewn about the city, wide things pasted sideways to the front of a building. Broad daylight, people around, hunters, accomplices. None of that matters. Only the face on it matters, a boy no older than himself, blocky angles and friendly eyes.

Reaching up, he scrapes his nails across its topmost edge and tears it off, crumpling the pieces in his palms. To anyone within earshot that may have stopped in light of his display, he passes a glance to. ]

What?

[ Polite, as always. ]

II. AND YOU'VE BEEN DYING TO GO

[ Every so often, the liveliness of Olympia drives Mikazuki to space. Not because of the noise, but because the conflict this time isn't his noise. It's not Tekkadan, not their conflict, save for those here with him now in the crossfire again. That's the only loyalty he owes, the only allegiance he has. Except this one thing.

Show us we can trust you.

Those words shadow his footsteps as he makes his way through Thesa and into the hangar, the chilly smell of alloy and fuel stinging pleasantly in his nose. He knows his way by heart now, just like he knows his way by heart through the stasis units on Alria to the one he visits day after day. It's quiet up here, compared to the surface below. There's an odd shuttle that takes off or docks in a whir of hydraulics, the natural shift and boom of metal, even at rest. But it's not any of the mass produced training machines that he's focused on as his footsteps thud across the catwalk lining the hangar perimeter, secured in front of the mobile suits. No, it's farther down that he focuses on, where the makes of suits starts to shift. Eventually, he slows next to a hulking white machine, crowned and clawed in gold. ]

Sleeping like usual. [ With no one else around him, he's actually addressing the suit. Hands in pockets, his gaze travels up and up, settling on its clean, quiet face plate. Repaired from that moment he was brought, breathing, to Thesa. ] I wonder what you'd want to do about this, too.

[ ...if there was any doubt that he's legitimately talking to a robot. ]

(ooc. closed starters below, if you'd like something specific feel free to hit me up here, rivalry, or axia#4656!)

Comments

[sparsity]

[ Her teeth grit in a spark, that slow, agonizing grind of deteriorating options. ]

A place in Wyver. Doesn't move, but the people there do. You hear all sorts of things there. 'Cause, you know. When the door's open, birds come and go as they please. Sing sometimes, too.

[ Though the admittance had been a hard sell, once she starts she seems to have an easier time just coming out with it. Mikazuki's brows knit, not immediately likening the description to anywhere that suited what Takasugi was looking for. ]

Birds?

[shikomizue]

[Mikazuki is as sharp as he is aloof; he's picked up on exactly what's piqued Takasugi's interest. His eyebrows raise, a lingering glance - and smile - cast towards his companion.

For confirmation, and intimidation.]

Following singing birds won't get us anywhere but lost, in the jungle.

Tell me more. He's confident that he can find the place based on this much alone, but for the sake of cutting her friend, and her, down, he'll press and press until there's nothing left.]

[sparsity]

[ Attuned to the unspoken, Mikazuki barely has to catch the look passed to him to shift his heel on the cobblestone, arm giving the barest twinge of movement as if to amplify the pressure even from a distance. She's visibly nervous now that the weight of betrayal is upon her too. ]

Not for birds who have a home. A cage, nice and gold. Why chase birds when there are dragons around? That's what Cree always said... the bastard.

[ An explanation for its location in Wyver territory. Mikazuki looks aside now, silent. ]

We done?

[shikomizue]

[Oh, a name. Now that's something.

Takasugi's lips spread, baring teeth no longer smiling - sharp and voracious. He stares, the woman not dire in his eyes but captured. Prey.

To clench in his maw, crack bone and shake until every shake and shudder of breath is gone.]

Aa. [His wrist twists his blade, arm raising.] We're done. [He gives no signal to Mikazuki - only the downward swing of his blade in an arc that's more than necessary to kill. Steel severs skin and arteries clean, blood splattering from his sword and the man's neck alike in his follow through.

His companion has only a moment to do as he wishes with the woman, before Takasugi would close the distance and cut her down himself.]

[sparsity]

[ It's a moment seized when she cries out and lunges on instinct, Mikazuki's own reflexes acting just a few seconds faster. His arm cocks and he fires, the recoil straining his wrist in the brief flash of muzzle fire. His aim is true, a bullet burying itself in her skull with a dull thud and a minuscule pop of blood. She crumples, the motion of it a swift, simple thing.

Only a rivulet of smoke rises from the alleyway, the color of life and magic and sound now drained from it.

For his part, Mikazuki's expression is unreadable. The act was just as it was, without regret or glee or glory. He feels loyalty to no one here, and he's put off honor time and time again in his life.

He can do without it a while longer. ]

[shikomizue]

[The gun's flash dampens the glow of the woman's magic, sharp ricochet of sound in the alley confirming that the blue light has been snuffed cold.

Sunset spills, not violent red but the gentle hue of waxing night, between the buildings, dust disturbed by the woman's body swirling in its weak rays.

Takasugi flicks the blood from his sword before sheathing it, and only after he's stepped over the body of his slain does he cast a glance, almost curious, to in Mikazuki's direction.] Did you get what you wanted?

[sparsity]

[ His body unlocks, a long, unwinding twist of tendon and muscle. When his arm lowers, his expression creases without growing any darker or lighter — only in consideration of the question. Now that his target is gone, his attention isn't quite anywhere. ]

One less person in my way.

[ It's not going to change Shino's situation. He would still stand accused.

But less opposition is less opposition. ]

[shikomizue]

[Three less, really.] Aa.

You have more work to do. [Striding over a corpse, another stepping stone in a path forged of bone and metal, has never been quite so emotionless as Mikazuki sounds.

Elating. Exhausting. To know that another has been claimed by vengeance or necessity. To know that there are countless more, and that this death hardly matters. It fills a crack in the road that could have been bounded over.

But, with a place and a name, this instance isn't quite so inconsequential as so many others.] I'll be in contact.

[No reason to linger - the city guard (those on duty, to exempt Mikazuki) could clean up the mess. Takasugi steps past both Mikazuki and the woman's corpse, not a glance spared over his shoulder.]