exsiliumlogs | last despair calls first hope

Entry tags:

last despair calls first hope

Date & Time: July 2nd & 3rd
Location: Initiative Library, Room 701, around the apartments
Characters: Haruto Souma (

ringwizard), Kousuke Nitoh (

ringbeast), Oriko Mikuni (

precludes)
Summary: Haruto ~~witches out~~ ~~gets the d(espair)~~ hits his breaking point, becomes despair monster.
Warnings: ~~Upupupupu.~~ Depression, despair, a dickbag monster, at least one fight, Chimaera being a tool, references to mass murders, references to not so mass murders, possibly suicidal ideation, character death. ~~Oriko's sense of priorities.~~

Haruto leaves the Initiative's Hold early in the morning with a certain spring to his step. He's gotten a little tan--his time in 2050 had done him some good, a lingering scrape on the back of his right hand aside, and it's obvious. Being back in the city again leaves a lingering malaise to his mood, but he forces it away. With things to be done all around, he's got to keep moving forward, right? There's a lot of hustle and bustle outside the Hold with the still-lingering confusion of new arrivals, as far as he can tell, and he steps around people talking as he opens his tablet and messages Nitoh.

Are you still asleep?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"They match my rings," Haruto answers, snooty. "People who only have one-arm capes shouldn't be talking." He takes a sip of coffee, but when he sets the cup back down he's still snickering.

Haruto polishes off his first doughnut and moves on to the second, holding it carefully between his fingers to look through the center hole like a sugary telescope. "Oriko must be so disappointed," he says, "but as long as it doesn't stink any more, I'm mostly satisfied." The ash and the dust had been the largest issue, besides the broken glass.

"Ohh! You getting down on my capes? Thos're fighting words! My capes are super stylish. Plus, if they weren't on my shoulder I couldn't aim them as well!" He points his accusing finger at Haruto, with a half-smile cracked on his face.

He sips his tea. "Well, I told her there wouldn't be doilies and she seemed a little confused. Haha. But yeah it's all cleaned up and smells fresher and everything, so you won't have any problems getting used to it after all that fresh air you got to get."

"Of course I'm getting down on your capes, they look ridiculous," Haruto answers, and makes a finger-gun at Nitoh, under the accusing finger being stuck toward him. "Bang," he says, and straightens up. Hopefully this time Nitoh doesn't fall out of the chair reacting.

"Thanks," he says, when Nitoh recovers. "For finishing up the cleaning."

He grips his shoulder, not-coincidentally the one the capes manifest on, and grimaces. "Ah--! Wait, no!" He shouts, slapping Haruto's hand away. "My capes are the best and you're just jealous," he says, as if that's the final word on the matter.

"Yeah, no problem. Not like I did much of anything the week before the big bombs anyway. I'm just glad that it was still there, so cleanin' it up wasn't much of a chore." He starts to mayoify his second doughnut with glee.

"So how was everything out there? How was all the... saving people business?" He gestures vaguely, unable to recall immediately the details of the mission.

Haruto turns his face determinedly away from Nitoh's plate, looking toward the bakery counter. "There was a lot more sleuthing than I thought there would be," he admits, "I mean, they gave me a dossier with some names to start on, but this place let anybody in. So I did a lot of asking around. Wound up locking a bunch of guys up in one of the storage closets for them to find and hit-and-runs."

He looks back, toward Nitoh. His expression is more open than it's been in months. Before Elmer's world fell, probably. "It was--good. And I think most of the ladies at camp fell in love with me."

He's halfway through his doughnut with mayo all over his mouth by the time Haruto finishes talking. "Huh... Look at you, Mr. Detective. Glad you figured it out, though. Saved a lot of people's lives, I bet." He grins.

Nitoh is pleased to see his mood better. He was hoping this little trip would cheer Haruto up and it looks like it has. He punches Haruto's shoulder gregariously. "Good job, man...! I bet you charmed everybody. Wish I coulda been there too!" He pauses for a moment and then adds, "I coulda been your wingman or something. I bet we'd have knocked them dead." He shoves the rest of his doughnut in his mouth to cut off the flow of probably stupid comments about to come out.

Oh, gross. Haruto makes a face, and leans kind of gratefully away with the impact of Nitoh's fist to his shoulder. Everything seems a little more hopeful today, six months of spinning his wheels buoyed up by a warm sense of accomplishment.

"Well, of course I did," he says. He still feels like he works better alone--he knows his own abilities and limitations better than he can hope to understand Nitoh's weird combination of abilities, never mind the mana sharing aspect. "You as my wingman, huh?" He seems to consider it, leaning his chin on the table and eyeing Nitoh up and down. "They wouldn't have stood a chance," he settles on. Fighting alone, that he prefers, but he's grown used to Nitoh's attitude and his upbeat cheer.

Nitoh licks his mouth clean of Mayo and then washes down the last bit of his second doughnut with tea. When he swallows, it's to let a broad smile cross his face. "Yeah! Two good-lookin' guys like us, maybe it's better we didn't go together... All the broken hearts we'd leave in our wake, right?" He laughs uproariously.

"You got any plans for the day? I was gonna make a big welcome home dinner, but I dunno what you want... That I can make." He grins. "I was thinking maybe stew?"

Haruto pointedly pulls his eyes away from Nitoh licking himself clean. What was he, a dog? "We'd manage to get ourselves kicked out of the commune," he agrees.

He considers, tapping the lip of his coffee. "I want to hit the library," he says, "other than that, I think I just want to lie around the apartment. Maybe play checkers with Kirika...?" Nitoh's offer to make dinner draws his attention away from his board game plans. "Stew doesn't sound too bad," he says, "or a hotpot, but I guess we don't have the right appliances..." Not for the first time, he wishes there were a place that catered to more familiar cooking.

He laughs. "Too hot for time travel," he says agreeably.

"The library? I ran that book that came due while you were gone back for you." He purses his lips. "You want more, I guess. Probably the whole mission thing was way more fun than hanging out here usually is."

At the mention of hot pot, he groans. "Man, that would be awesome. I love hot pot. I guess I could try to figure it out sometime, but stew is probably good for now."

"Time traveling heart bandits," Haruto muses. It sounds like a really dumb band name, honestly, and he discards it.

"You can't take any of the history overview books out," he corrects, then--"oh, uh, thanks."

"It was a nice change of pace," he admits. "I wish every mission were like it."

"Right?" he asks, and smiles, ruefully. "We can have a hotpot party on floor seven some other night. Stew's perfectly fine for now." Truthfully, he'd missed when Nitoh was well enough to be cooking. There had been a lot of sandwiches in the weeks before the bombing.

He laughs. "Probably we'd ruin history if they let us."

He gets it. "Oh, you wanna see what happened to all those people you met, right? Wow, it's kind of weird to think about the fact that they all grew old and stuff since then, huh?" He muses quietly, leaving off the 'and died' part of the equation. "Well, I'm game."

He wonders if he can take a mission for himself one of these days. The Initiative is working on a mana solution with what meager resources they have to spare at the moment, but he doesn't expect the full-on answer will come anytime soon. "Yeah, stew'll be good. I been trying to figure out curry without the roux, now that I'm out, but it's been harder than you'd think. Most curry around here's real Indian, yellow curry not brown."

He shakes his head. "Anyhow, I'm ready when you are. I wanna see if we can read all about the mysterious man who saved the day."

"This whole thing is weird to think about," Haruto agrees, draining the last of his coffee down. He sets the cup down, leaning his forearms against the edge of the table.

"Maybe ask the network if anyone has any ideas?" he offers, "a lot of Transports have been here a while--someone might have a solution." Nitoh might yet come up with one, anyway--it's not like he's been doing that much cooking, right?

"Anyway, let's go," he says, standing with a scrape back of his chair against the floor. "I hope someone wrote a book about me," he muses. Realistically, he hopes he didn't make that big a dent. The real triumph was in letting a place as accepting as the commune go on working.

"True," he says agreeably. And then at the suggestion he brightens. "Yeah, there's a lot of Japanese people here, to. I'll ask about recipes and stuff on the network later."

"Haha that'd be awesome. I hope it's super fictionlized and talks about how buff you are and how many ladies you got." He winks and chuckles. Then he gets up and chugs down the last of his tea. "To the library!"

"Hey, there's no fiction in these," Haruto says, lifting one arm like a body-builder and tapping his bicep. "Don't be jealous."

He waves a little goodbye to the staff at the front and turns easily toward the front door, opening it for Nitoh and leaning on it, hands cradled in his pockets. "Let's hope it's not too busy with nosy newbies," he muses. There's got to be a couple of proactive types in this latest batch, right? There always are.

"Sure, if you have that weird hulk ring on." He says with a laugh. Then he waves at the staff and walks through the door. "Looks like you learned some manners over there."

He stretches his arms and legs as he walks out onto the street, basking in the tiny amount of sunlight that's coming through the clouds. Even this tiny amount of sunlight feels good with Haruto in a much better mood. "Yeah probably, but we can say hi at least."

"I have a weird hulk ring?" he asks, as he follows Nitoh out. "Huh." He ignores any comments about his manners--he's a perfectly polite person, thank you.

Haruto quirks a smile. "Yeah," he says, "we're the second day welcome wagon in the library. The cookie guy can eat his heart out." As always, he walks a little faster than Nitoh, head starts or not; he tilts his head back to look back over his shoulder.

True to his prediction, there are people around in the library's front lobby, at least one or two of them visibly new (and confused). Not quite as many as he'd thought, but still busier than a normal day. He pulls his tablet from his back pocket to get access to the library's catalog. "Guess we should start with region," he guesses, out loud.

"It's freaky. I don't even wanna know what it looks like without the suit on." He jogs a little to catch up as they get to the library.

"I forgot about the cookies. I dunno how we can top that." He blinks around the library, "Yeah I guess that's the best way to find it. Big bombings or whatever that didn't happen don't exactly get big parts in books."

"Don't be jealous your buffalo cape doesn't make you any... buffer," he says, and only belatedly catches onto the pun. Dammit.

"You don't think you're cute enough to overwhelm some baked goods?" he asks, as he taps 'Spanish History' into the search bar, and scrolls through the results.

After a minute, he taps a title. "Mmm, probably not," he decides, scrolling the list again, and narrows his eyes. Then, wondering, he taps in the name of the commune.

"'Russo-Spanish Politics in the post-Olympic era'," he reads, "why the hell..." He taps the title, to see a summary. There isn't one that's terribly helpful, but it's one of only two results, and the other looks like some kind of sociological study.

"No better place to start, right?" he asks, and moves to examine the likely shelves toward the back of the building.

"Pfh, who are you, my old man?" He puts his chin on Haruto's shoulder to read over the results himself. He purses his lips, and then when Haruto begins to walk back he nods and follows along.

"There's tons of books here, something must have info for you." He follows along behind, poking books on the shelves as he walks by. The idea of stuff in his future being history kind of bothers him, but he hasn't really had a chance to think about it.

"I certainly hope not," Haruto drawls, "that might be a kind of weird thing to find out." He lets Nitoh lean on him without comment.

"I'm just confused about why they're showing up in a book about Russia," Haruto answers, and slides around one of the tables to get a look at the call numbers. "...this way," he says, after a minute, turning on his heel and pointing left.

Two more turns later, he steps into the Western European History section. "Eastern Spain, 2050," he says, to remind either Nitoh or himself, and goes to start looking.

"Nah he's way shorter than you," Nitoh says offhand, looking around. "Man, it's a shame they haven't digitized all these books yet."

He pokes through the books, trying to remind himself of the title. "What was the book you wanted? Post-Olympic something? Are you sure it wouldn't be in Eastern Europe?"

"You're telling me," Haruto answers, "I keep having to come all the way down here when something I took out references something I don't know."

"Russo-Spanish Politics," he says, and pauses from tapping spines. "It might be," he admits, "do you mind...?"

Edited (RIGHT COUNTRY THIS TIME WOO) 2013-07-02 04:15 (UTC)

"Sure, I'll look." He jogs around the corner and starts to read the titles. He kneels down and taps them. After a moment, he calls out over the wall. "Was it 'Russo-Spanish Politics in the post-Olympic era,' cos I found that one!"

"That's the one," Haruto calls back, sliding a more general history book off of the shelf. "I'll be--at the end of the row," he continues, and turns, cradling the moderately thick hardcover in his palms as he walks back to meet Nitoh.

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