#━ ♔ proof you were not the ghost : open starters.

[quillheel]

Hornet had been born a thrumming, slashing thing, and this way she would die.

Her feet moved like pinpricks in the sullen, loamy dirt ━ fast and precise and as needle-like as her nail itself. cutting lines like some kind of dance into the gravel-dimpled ground, swinging, forward and back, lunge & retreat & motion ; effort in grace.

A small thing, always. Hornet would never outgrow the worst of them, but she was fast, and sharp, and in this she found pride. Metal, tension of the string like a blade through the stagnant air, her weapon in her hands. the needle circles, circles, stabs like a stinger through carapace and flesh, piercing the shoddy warped scrap-metal of a training dummy she'd maybe had made herself. Reel it in, the thread returns to her, and with it her needle. Jump! Air whistling through her armor as she rises, joints spry as her eyes widen ━ reorient.

━ And catch! tangle the writhing limbs, trip them up, a flailing of precise white cord through the cold air that burned in her. Suffocate, string them up, cut them out!

This was her name. ━ Names like titles, she was Hornet; a buzzing, fast, terrible thing : with a body like a blade, body from the beast and practice from the bee and mind from the pale, she would stab, slash, spike them through! She is more, she is greater, she is-

━wait, 'them'? it was supposed to be an it. ( how single-minded, to forget just whom she'd been fighting. an internal battle, as much as a physical one... )

[quillheel]

open starter! // goro akechi

somewhere in the city, a white crow looms, deathlike, over the bones of mouse. feathers like ivory, eyes like blood vessels, mind like something hungry wing into limbs built for it, gravity taking hold, and catching air in asphalt claws. Akechi feels the same, for a blinding moment, and wills himself to be unflinching after finding an anticipation of one less step than there was as he goes up the stubby staircase of his office, only realizing his error as his foot goes through the space where the ground comes up to meet him, just in the wrong way.

his balance threatens him like gunpoint for a moment, and some minor shameful part of him shivers with the fact he'd have preferred that opposed to someone catching him like this ━ an angry thrum behind his eyes making them feel tense and pained and dull ━ but the rest of him floods in too fast by the time he's down the stairs properly, releasing held breath only when he's halfway down the hall, and reminds it that a little humility/humanity is a good thing, as that minor shameful part mumbles under its breath that perfection is a virtue, or at least, it used to be.

he finds himself navigating the office almost blind as sharp pain crackles along the seams of the skull like an electric board, shuffling mindfully in some of the more cramped spaces as the brain struggles to consciously process the outside world, so instead it reverts inwards, leaves him on autopilot; on memory. Goro is lucky that while he had not memorized the stairs, he has with nearly the entire rest of the building, or at least the route to his office. some coworkers try and catch his sleeve in conversation as he passes, but he brushes them off, social and sweet, that he's very busy right now, perhaps later! and the mission resumes. ( perhaps it simply does not occur to him of how rushed his stride is, how his knuckles turn into angry white ridges on the grip of paperwork, how one eye on the left side twitches; how this would be worrying if you knew him well enough, and sometimes, if you didn't. )

and when he does get into his office, he shuts the door, turns off the light, and sinks into the feeling of plushed-out fabric on a relatively cheap but not terrible desk chair that offers what familiar comfort it can, and what familiar discomforts he knows which he can avoid and which ones he can't; precise poise not enough, where he imagines he could stay for the rest of the day. ━ he'd rather be lying down right now, migraine lashing into him where even the modest sunlight drips in behind him from concealing blinds is too much, but he takes what he can get with two sharp hands, nails digging into it, and he accepts that this; in all likelihood; is going to be the best remedy that he has for the majority of the day until he can snag a bottle of painkillers on the way back home. resting the cool gloved back of his hand overtop the skin of his eyes. best just to survive, for now, he quietly decides…

… and the peace he craves does not last as long as he so wished it would. minutes or hours, he catches footsteps outside his door just before his doom comes, jolting alive in his seat even to the chagrin of the flesh of the brain as the doorknob rattles, he's lucky he can mask the pain with the squint of trying to change out a lightbulb in his turned off lamp as he peers over to the opened door ( although, he can't hide the twitch ) part of him begs to swipe at them with large heavy claws and rip out anything foolishly not nailed down from his rude guest, fingers poised at the neck of the lightbulb and dexterous enough to turn them even if he was blinded by the light from the rest of the station sweeping into his own little room like bleeding an infection, but he carefully tucks the impulse back. at least, in part, to know who he was going to be clawing at in the first place; not really out of unwillingness to be ruthless, perhaps cruel.

Akechi's head pounds. He finds himself unable to remember the shape of their shadow through the glazed window that otherwise he should've caught. He resists a wave of nausea that threatens to sink in. ( easy, now… )

" Oh, hi! I'm a little preoccupied at the moment, so you might want to take up your problem with someone else if you're looking for speed, but what can I help you with? "

[quillheel]

his body was a tiny morsel in the mouth of a big god. 

not always like this, his digital plastic and his digital bones and his digital-digital-digital darkness. not always like this, but you can give up everything for a lot less than you expected. a failed seed, a failed save, something going wrong. a corruption in a corruption in a data mainframe in a person in a phone-call-waiting-to-happen-unable-to-listen-please-just-one-more

digital colors bleeding into corrosive bad luck. maybe that’s why he liked — or will like — the Dreamer. the Lightner. the one who came to him. the big break in 44 years of a rotten run still running. a computer nobody cared enough to shut off. an email no one would kill. nobody, nobody, nobody.

his body was a tiny morsel in the mouth of a big god.

his digital plastic and his digital bones crunching under heels/paws/rocks/roots, casing popping open, joints unstrung on their own code, eyes a static haze; out of it, gone, communion with nothing but a one-time band who already played their set but wouldn’t get off the stage. sorry, call again later. sorry, break something that mattered-

the little doll body you were stepping on, walking by, sprang to life. Pinocchio, eat your heart out. pink and yellow glasses gleamed like car headlights with a bulb smashed in. There’s the clicking of a fist forming, and a finger raising, and then his jaw snapping wide as his half-voice piled through the wavelength.

" HEY THERE EVERY [[ On My Bones ]]   !!! MAKE LIKE AN [[ Archeologist College Degree for thsoe eligible- ]] AN D CLEAN UP IN AISLE   [[ help. ]] "

a string of incoherent, jarbled numbers scatter from his maw like a dream of losing teeth, high pitched and sped up. his voice’s tones and phrases spliced together in an adware program that was particularly strained on the ears; volume like a dial that never stayed still, akin to his twitching joints. An unfortunate facet of existence, but one, at least, still existing.

Man, it's really easy to step on someone when you're not looking where you're walking, huh?

[quillheel]

" Move. Now. You are in my way. I have little patience for games, and I will not ask you twice. "

[quillheel]

a tension pulls at the air, weighted with the smell of chestnut-scented smoke and cold, stagnant wind, as Kitsuragi was viscerally aware of attention on him. the roads are lovingly iced in the early morning, world slowly coming alive from the night prior, and already beginning to discolor in the dust & the sunlight. Nothing stays perfect forever. the Lieutenant speaks finally, back turned but conscious, attentive. specific in his posture to perhaps look bigger than he was, calm & prepared for what the day might hold. ( Show me your cards, I'll show you mine. ) ━ " ... If you have something to say, say it. "