exsiliumlogs | we must rearrange reality;

Entry tags:

we must rearrange reality;

Date & Time: jan 19 and the week following.
Location: around the hold.
Characters: remy & open.
Summary: teenage thief awakens in post-apocalyptic wasteland and decides to make a profit. or, true life: lost children in exsilium.
Warnings: n/a.

Waking up had been disorienting, to say the least, and as the day wore on the sensation didn’t fade. He thought at first it might be some kind of test, some survival exercise, but it was far too elaborate and far too cold to have come from his family. His next thought was of the Assassins, and the great lengths they’d go to terrorize a Thief, but this was beyond their capability, too. So Remy was forced to admit that this was something far outside his understanding. Once he accepted that, he set to work.

The first day he spends ducking around corners and trying to stay hidden. It’s a mostly futile effort, considering how he’s dressed, and the fact that he knows nothing about the layout of the place he’s in. So he can be found, for the most part, hiding behind doors and darting between shadows. He doesn’t dare venture outdoors, because he’s sure that as soon as he does something horrible will happen, but he does manage to make quite a few rounds of the Hold itself. He’s skittish, when approached, and over-reactive—in fact, most every time he’s found there’s a card in his hand and a glow in his eyes before he stops to say hello.

The second is more adventurous, if not better entirely. Now, the most likely place to find him is swiping food from anywhere he can find it. That means—the shops in the city, the halls of the Hold, and, oh yeah, right out of your hands, if you happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. It’s a quick trick, one he’s been doing practically since he could walk, and so he doesn’t expect to be caught. But, then again, the past few days have been full of surprises.

A few days later, and he’s finally exploring the city for more than food raids. He looks ridiculous, wrapped in his older-self’s trench coat, which is far too long for him. He has the sleeves rolled up to the elbows and the thing drags behind him as he walks. He doesn’t seem to mind the rain, much, and moves with the same agility and performance as he always has and always will. But at this age he’s also got a nervous energy, stopping and taking things in, muttering under his breath, and even pausing to stare at passersby.

And so it goes. As the days go on he can be found just about anywhere, picking locks or asking questions, hiding his caginess and fear behind a lot of boyish charm. Feel free to find him wherever you may be, and hope that that doesn’t mean he’s either just blown up the door to your room or stolen the rug out from under your feet.

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"Everyone's always running by," Sho mutters, kicking at a stone that just so happen to be right in his path. Remy might have the teenage boredom look down pat, but Sho had mastered the pout of injured teenage pride. He might be exaggerating the number but in the time he had been hanging around the area, he had seen a lot of people - and quietly took a few things in the process.

He was curious. It was a suicidal habit for a street rat, something that he tried to curb when he was younger but now, with all the teen self-importance, he just didn't care what kind of trouble it got him.

"Probably same as you. Woke up and got outta the gilded cage." He pointed his chin at the Hold, braids chiming at the jerk. "You're not from here are you?"

The accent was definitely a give away. Just like his if he bothered to think about.

At the assertion, and the nod at the Hold, Remy just shrugs. It’s probably as good as affirmation, but he’s not about to give out information on himself. “I dunno, homme,” he says, sarcastically. “I didn’t see much gold around.”

Which is true enough. To a boy who’s barely been outside Louisiana for his entire life, the Hold and surrounding city are bleak and uninviting. The Spartan buildings and raggedly-dressed people don’t make it more inviting, though he did stop into one tavern and a women there smiled at him kindly, but oddly. Like she was trying to recognize him, but got confused.

“I don’t think anyone is from here,” he says, trying to sound casual in his knowledge. What he does know, he’s only gleaned from stalking the network. “All… exiles. Or kidnapped.”

"They're probably keeping a kind of gold but not in coins." He was used to this sort of place, where most everyone outside the fancy rooms looked two steps away from starving. If it wasn't for the cold, he would have thought he was close to home and this nothing more than a prank from Toshi and Shinji... But Toshi was dead, right?

He shrugged that thought aside. It wasn't right to think of those weird dreams when he was stuck in this strange place.

"It's the accents. Most got the same accents but a few don't. The ones that don't are like you and me." He didn't spend his time looking at a machine since it was better to listen and watch.

“It’s like England,” Remy replies, more to himself. He’d taken a look at the maps. He’d never been to London, but Essex had been from there. Essex also made his skin crawl, and he could imagine the man living in a place like this. But he didn’t have anything to do with this. That much seemed obvious.

“..you an’ me? What’s that make us, then?”

"Never been to England. I'd always thought the rain and the cold was just something they say to keep people away."

Made sense to want to keep people away. After the crash that made China the biggest and strongest economy, those places that kicked out their poor did not want to share what was left to the immigrants and thieves still running around. Sho dug in the pockets of his over-sized jacket and took out half a pack of cigarettes and a lighter.

"Outsiders," he replied, shaking a smoke out, sticking it in his mouth and lighting up. "Mebbe something more."

Remy eyes the cigarettes with a mixture of curiosity and derision—not for the act itself, but for what Sho had just said. “Outsider” was a strange word to him, because it seemed like everyone he had come into contact with in his life could claim the label—and then it just became a contradiction, didn’t it? In any case, he hadn’t thought about being on the outside for a few years, at least not until his powers had started to manifest. But here the word took on different meaning. He cocks his head to the side and shrugs.

“Transports,” he says, rolling his eyes. “Dat’s what someone said on that network. But if there’re so many a us, maybe we’re s’pposed ta be here.”

He got the habit early in life - Kei was a smoker and Sho always mimicked what Kei did despite the amount of arguing that followed. The smoking was just one of the many things that Kei gave up on after listing all the things that would kill him from that path. Silently, he offered the pack to Remy. He wouldn't think anything bad if he refused since he knew a few people that weren't smokers.

"Most people call themselves Outsiders; I don't think they know what it means." Transports though, that had him smile just a little, a little bit of the devil in him showing.

"Probably but it doesn't mean that we're stuck without having some fun around here."

He tilts his head at the offer, then nimbly picks a cigarette out of the pack. He turns it over between his fingers a few times, then charges the tip a bit with the softest, almost imperceptible pink light. It works as he figured it might, lighting the cigarette without a lighter. He takes a drag, experimentally, and then tries to swallow the cough that seizes his throat to minimal success.

“I don’ think there’s anythin’ they could do ta stop us from having fun,” Remy says, holding the cigarette away from his face for a moment and smirking. “But I guess it d’pends on what y’mean by that.”

He remembered the first time he took a drag off a cigarette - the way the smoke caught in his throat making him wheeze. Kei had a field day laughing about it, and that was something Sho wasn't going to do.

"Well, did you see the one building with all those guys trying to guard on the East end?"

Remy's eyes flick in that direction instinctively, and he nods. It's been a long day, full of seeing different things, but he's more or less got the layout of the city mapped into his head, now.

"What 'bout it?"

"Wanna get a better look at what they're guarding?"

He was bored and he already had a good idea of the layout but the thing with knowing the layout and actually getting in was that there had to be more a second set of eyes. At home that included Kei and Toshi - again rain and blood and deep hopelessness rose and was gone stupid dreams - for a backup. Here, anyone quick with good instincts might be interested in taking a peek.

He doesn't hesitate, just nods. It's something to do, something exciting, and something which isn't dictated by the fact that he's still more or less lost.

"I'm Remy, by the way," he says, as an afterthought. It'd be best to know what to call each other, if they were going to undertake this.

"Sho. Nice to meet you."

It took him a second to orient himself within his head map before heading in the right direction. When they got close, they could find a better angle to get closer but for now they had a few blocks between them and the warehouse.

"You got Family?" The way he said it, he wasn't talking about blood kin.

Remy falls easily instep with him, although the question has him tilting his head a bit. "I got a Guild," he answers, finally.

"Must be interesting," he replied after a pause. The streets had been his home and no one took him in. Kei taught him, but Sho always knew that he was nothing more than an orphan in a city of poor orphans, all of them struggling to find a place. Most of the Families he knew of had been focused on saving their own blood first; Sho decided that blood didn't matter over spirit and skill.

The guards would start peppering the streets after another block. Sho glanced around and then nodded at a half crumbling building. "Let's get some air."

"It's alright," he says, with another shrug. In truth the Guild is the best thing that has ever happened to him, up to this point, but he'd never say it. But with it came occupation, training, and a family, which is about all a street urchin can really ask for.

"Y'gonna scale it?" he asks, tilting a head at the building. He clearly wants to.

He grinned, reaching back and tucking the length of braids under the collar of his jacket just to make sure the tiny beads didn't make any noise. Sure it was a pain but the hair was his signature - always, always even when Shinji got rid of his - and he wasn't about to cut it off.

"Why not?"

With that, he went for it, and while he may not have the vampire speed and strength, he still was agile and quiet for a mere human.

Remy moves to follow but takes a different route. He doesn't quite have the agility he will when he's older, the ability to manipulate the energy around him to make such climbs as easy as breathing, but he's been trained since he could walk and he has fun as goes. There's a brash smile on his lips as he throws his weight upwards and hooks his fingers on barely-perceptible ledges in the construction. The aim, of course, is to beat Sho to the top. Whether he's successful is another matter.

Just let your fingers find the holds you need, don't think about it, just let 'em do what they know, and don't question it.

Kei knew that much, the voice still in his head even without the vampire making faces and blowing smoke at him. Sho's fingers found their holds and he pulled himself up, rough stone making an excellent purchase for fingers and toes. It was a race to the top, and one he hadn't enjoyed in a long while. Mallepa was a network of rooftop hovels and tent cities clinging to the old and broken down buildings from the riots and fires of his childhood. That this place still clung to these buildings did not make that much sense to him.

Edited 2013-01-27 01:38 (UTC)

New Orleans is a city built on top of itself, modern and aged blending together into something of an incomprehensible union. So Remy appreciates places that are ruined, though he can't make much sense of this city in other ways. Why everything is so drab and unadorned, for instance. Though he manages to find some purchase on the wall, its smooth and concrete. He reaches upwards, but finds no grooves worn away, but before he can fall he pushes off the wall with incredible force. Pink sparks fly from his fingertips as he flips slowly, and finds the edge of the roof with one hand. From there, he scrambles to the top, less elegantly than before.

The pink flash was distracting as he pulled himself up, but Sho was good at pretending not to see things. Like Kei floating on thin air, or Shinji smoking a pipe. You just don't say anything and let them talk about it - if they wanted to talk about it. On the roof - crumbled and broken like the rest of this city and not a person in sight who'd use the open space for anything - he crossed the ground and bent down, making himself invisible by just moving normally, and waited for Remy to join him.

He arrives barely an instant later, pulling a face when he realizes he's lost. Still, he's gracious enough, nodding to acknowledge a point scored.

"Nice work."

"I've got a little height on you," Sho said smiling. "A couple more inches and you'd have me beat."

It was that close and Sho knows that rubbing it in would just cause all sorts of problems later on. After all, there was no telling what the guards around the building were packing yet, if they were packing, and it was never wise to go on one of these things with half of the team feeling sore.

He ducked a little lower so he didn't stand out as he peeked over the edge. The guards were patrolling around the warehouse's back doors with lackadaisical regularity while the rest of the buidling remained fairly dark and quiet.

"They've painted the windows," he said, noticing the oddness. "Maybe they're smugglers; can't see them spending that much to hide cooking drugs. 'Sides, no vents for a drugger's workshop."

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we must rearrange reality;

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