exsiliumlogs | out and about [open]

Entry tags:

out and about [open]

Who: Asuka Langley Soryu, Open
What: Exploring the city and its many ruins.
When: Friday afternoon
Warnings? None, for now. Maybe Asuka being Asuka.

One could only stay cooped up inside for so long. Asuka's routine had been the same for months: get up, go train, come back to her apartment, maybe go shopping, kick the soccer ball around occasionally, drop in on Utena or Kanaya or someone. Or get sent on missions. She'd rarely ventured beyond the market. The crash and subsequent reshuffling of roommates had shaken something loose (or maybe it was because Kaji had returned, maybe it was because of Kaworu or Shinji or a thousand other things that had changed) and Asuka had decided that she wasn't going to keep herself penned in anymore. She was going to see the rest of the city. She'd wandered through the market first, buying a few knick-knacks and snacks (haggling all the while and yelling someone down if she didn't like the price) and then, slowly, she'd started to wander outward. She'd passed through slums, passed crowds of the downtrodden. She hadn't said anything to them - no, she was out here for herself. Not for them. The buildings seemed to become more run down the further from the Hold she went and that hadn't surprised her.

She'd finally chosen one and random and started scrambling up the slope of rubble that made up one wall, intnet on getting to the top to see the lay of the land. It was raining, as always, but at least it was a drizzle instead of a torrential downpour. It was still slippery and once or twice, she caught herself before she took a disastrous tumble. Finally, she settled on the (what had been) the roof, panting, a bit exhausted and a bit banged up, but she felt the better for it. Better then sitting around in her room all day, like she tended to do, after all. She didn't exactly feel happy, but at the same time she wasn't sad or angry. And the view was great! At least when the mist didn't obscure everything.

And that was an improvement. She took a deep breath and then grinned. At the very least, she could smile on the outside.

[OOC: Feel free to encounter Asuka in the market before she heads out or anywhere else in between.]

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Yukiteru had been making an effort to get out more, too. Anything to keep his mind off of what week it was, and the upcoming anniversary that would go un-celebrated. It was an occasion that would have otherwise had mixed feelings attached, but without her here, it was so much worse.

He had left with the original intention of going to get some lunch at Rise's diner, but halfway there, he had lost his appetite. He didn't want to go back to his room; something about living with two women he barely even knew just seemed like a bad idea. Pulling his jacket tighter around himself, his cap barely kept his head dry.

The rooftop he was on had a faded billboard. One he could even easily climb. Yukki reached into his pockets, and retrieved his non-lethal dart case. The chrome case, which he kept safely inside a backpack, was one he had hoped he never had to open. Ever since he found out from Shelke what was inside those glass cases, he didn't even want to touch those things. Potassium chloride? White phosphorous? And he thought that machinegun he had in his own world was dangerous... the Initiative gave him an arsenal of chemical weapons that would make Minene nervous.

He began tossing darts at the billboard, the face on it faded from prolonged exposure to the elements. It landed exactly where he aimed; the person's nose. He had to stop himself from cheering; he just made that shot in the rain and wind.

He didn't even notice Asuka as she joined him there. Instead, he was grabbing another dart, this time aiming for the right eye.

Edited 2013-05-10 03:37 (UTC)

Asuka blinked some of the rainwater out of her eyes as she finally clambered onto the roof. Hey - wasn't that Yuki? She watched him chuck another dart and then carefully eased up behind him so she could lean past him and crowd his personal space.

"Hey, Yuki, nice shot."

The only reason he didn't freak out right then and there is because he's all too used to a girl sneaking up behind him unannounced, invading his personal space, and then calling him 'Yukki.' It takes several seconds to realize that A, Yuno isn't here, and B), the word 'Yukki' didn't come out nearly as high-pitched or nasally as he's used to hearing... or as a bloodcurdling, hysterical shriek in other, far less pleasant cases.

"E-Eh!? Ah, Asuka!" His throw goes wildly off-target, instead hitting the bottom part of what looked to appear something vaguely resembling the letter O to the left of the face on the billboard. He'd have to climb even high to reach it... maybe even jump. Or he could use Deus's Core, but... not in front of Asuka.

Catching his breath, he sits down on an old ventilation shaft mounted onto the rooftop. "I didn't think I'd run into you out here..."

Asuka nearly burst out laughing when Yukki fumbled and very nearly shrieked. Her gaze followed the dart as it buried itself off-target (rather far off-target, she thought) and then she glanced at Yukiteru again with a grin. As he sat, she settled herself against a crumbled wall, hands stuck in her pockets.

"Really? Why? I do go out, you know."

"But it's raining. You could get sick." Never mind the fact that he's out here, too. Leaving the darts there for now, he puts his remaining dart back into its plastic case, and sits down next to her.

"Sorry, it's just... well... even though I'm kind of used to someone else doing that, I didn't expect it to be you." He pulls his jacket around him tighter. The overhand blocks most of the rain, but the wind doesn't help.

"I don't get sick," Asuka retorted with a snort, "I'm way too healthy for that."

She cocked her head curiously, "Why are you out here throwing darts anyway?"

Well, that was an interesting tidbit. Maybe she reminded him of someone back home. Which wasn't exactly a comforting thought, but it wasn't really terrible either. "Really? Who used to do that to you?"

Honestly, she didn't like following in someone else's footsteps.

"Anyone can get sick," he answered with a shrug. But he's not gonna argue about this. "There's really nothing better to do... and I'm trying to get my mind off-"

He sighs. She asked... and, well, he trusted her enough to tell her. "Yuno. My... girlfriend. From my own world." The frown on his face suggests that not all of the memories of her are happy. And they weren't. They've been through so much, but she HAS saved him so many times. He owed his life to her a hundred times over.

"Ooooh? You've got a girlfriend?" Asuka's voice rose into that sing-song she tended to use when she was about tease someone mercilessly. "What's she like?"

She just had to go there, didn't she? He hesitates, as if looking for the right way to phrase this. "Yuno... um... is really nice. But she's... kind of... umm... protective of me."

Understatement of the friggin' century, but he won't say that out loud.

"Protective? Isn't that a good thing?" She gave him a weird look. Yukki was decent. But he reminded her a little too much of Shinji sometimes.

"Or is she like totally stifling?"

He really, really doesn't want to say anything bad about Yuno. She wasn't that bad, and he didn't want anyone to get the wrong idea about her. But, well, he had kind of talked himself into a corner here, and Asuka was too smart to downplay it.

"She, um... has some jealousy issues. And where we came from... there was a lot of people trying to hurt us. She just wanted to keep me safe... and she saved my life more times than I can count."

"Kinda clingy, huh?" Asuka tilted her head back slightly so she could eye the grey clouds overhead. She shifted for a moment - she didn't exactly like handing out relationship advice. Her frown deepened and then she tried to shake it off.

"Sounds like your world kinda sucked."

Clingy doesn't even begin to cover it, he thinks, but of course, he won't say that out loud. It had gotten to the point where he not only expected the stalking, the bouts of jealousy, and her being paranoid of everyone and anyone, he had actually accepted it.

"It did... and I haven't even mentioned the Survival Game, yet." It was anything but a game. In fact, just about everything wrong with his life, except for his parents' divorce and his own social awkwardness, can be blamed on that.

"Survival Game? Oh, well, that doesn't sound ominous at all," Asuka muttered. She slowly slid her gaze back down to him.

"So, tell me what that was all about, Yukki."

Treading on a pretty sensitive topic there, but he did mention it. It's only natural for her to be curious. "It is," he sighs, and leans back. It didn't help that he was going to be telling this story in the rain, while it was cold out.

"Deus - that being God - wanted to find a successor, because he was dying, and his death would have caused the end of the world. So he picked twelve people and gave us Future Diaries. We were then supposed to use them to kill the other eleven people, and the last one standing became God. Me and Yuno were two of those people who participated." He sighed, and shook his head, "A Future Diary is a diary that tells us what is going to happen in the future, including when we're going to die. Each one worked differently, and we had to change the future to avoid dying while using what we know about other people to kill them."

He closed his eyes. Lots of bad memories, here. "Deus basically admitted that he only did it because he thought it was fun. I still don't believe that there wasn't an easier way to find a successor than that..."

"And you guys just went along with it?" Asuka's expression haD shifted from interest to shock to disgust. Kill some people to save the world (she wasn't any different), but the way he made it sound....

"That sounds terrible! I mean, what a thing to do - pick twelve people and make them kill each other! That's ridiculous!"

"It's not like we had much of a choice..." Paradox totally doesn't count. His eyes lower, and he draws his knees up to his chest, folding his arms over them. "It was horrible... and I know this sounds weird, but being here, my life has been more normal than it ever was back home. I just wish some of them could be here for it..."

Not everyone from the Survival Game was that bad. Yuno, obviously, but there was also Minene, and Kurusu, and Reisuke, and... well, Tsubaki might not have turned out so bad if certain things hadn't happened to her, but still. And then there was Hinata and Akise...

"And at least this time, we'd be fighting for a halfway decent cause."

Asuka grimaces, "...I know what you mean. Life here is just... normal, I guess. As normal as it gets, anyway. It's weird."

She trails off with a frown and turns to stare out at nothing in particular, "Maybe. I guess fighting for these people is better than doing nothing at all... I think I'd go crazy if I just had to keep living normally for the rest of my life."

"I didn't hate my world... just what I had to do in it." But the way she said 'normally' caught his attention. "What about your world? What was that world like?"

"Dead, now," Asuka replied, bitterness creeping into her voice. "It doesn't matter."

"It... ended?" In all fairness, so did his; the world he inhabited with Yuno technically wasn't even his anymore. It was a world created through a time paradox. But, it was clear from what Asuka said that she didn't want to talk about it. He won't pry.

"I'm sorry to hear that... so you don't even have a home to go back to, if you left." That's... awful. At least he had a world.

"I don't want to go back away," Asuka replied, words a bit too quick and forced. "There wasn't anything I really cared about back there, anyway. So don't worry about it."

She pushed to her feet and paced a few steps so he wouldn't be able to look at her face.

"I'm fine."

She just had to keep him at arm's length. Just like everyone else (that's wrong, she thought, but she didn't know what else to do).

Yukiteru frowned as she got up. She sounded really upset. And... well... she was his friend. He should try to make her feel better some way, right? He stood up, and followed her. "Would you... wanna play darts? I can show you how if you don't know already."

The rain wasn't quite a bad as it was earlier, but it was still coming down. He didn't know if she even liked darts, but hopefully it would get her mind off whatever it was he had accidentally brought up.

"What's the point?" Asuka grumped. A bit insensitive, but Asuka had never really been attuned to other peoples' moods. She flopped back into her impromptu seat with a sigh.

"I already have a spear I'm learning to use - I don't think I need darts."

"I'm not talking about using them as a weapon, I'm talking about playing a game." She's... never heard of the game of darts? One of the most popular bar games in the world besides pool? "It's just for fun... there's really no point at all."

Come on, Asuka, he's trying to be nice, here.

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out and about [open]

That same rooftop!

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