exsiliumlogs | 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.]

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"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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