西園弖虎 | nishizono "anarchist antichrist" tetora (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
nishizono) wrote in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png)
thisavrou_log2017-07-30 11:11 pm
nishizono) wrote in thisavrou_log2017-07-30 11:11 pm
ripples in the ocean (open post)
Who: tetora nishizono & (open)
When: fluid
Where: generally the ingress complex
What: when you miss your band of misfits from home, you end up with some pretty bad decision-making.
Warnings: PG-13 language
When: fluid
Where: generally the ingress complex
What: when you miss your band of misfits from home, you end up with some pretty bad decision-making.
Warnings: PG-13 language
a) chicken scratch
He hasn't learned to write.
This is an interesting realization to come to when up in space, and a pretty frustrating truth to come to terms with. The facts haven't changed since his "awakening" - he's a delinquent raised in thinly disguised captivity, and when he's not being poorly managed, he's skipping out on basic education to murder politicians. Kind of hard to fit maths and basic kanji in a schedule like that.
Which is why he's sprawled out on the floor with a cheap notebook and fat marking pen, struggling with his own name. He's written it before. He can spell it out with the English alphabet. Ironically, pinpointing the locks and buttons that isolate him from - well, himself - also means he's not accessing the wealth of information the identities have made easy for him to use. Add that to the list of fuck-ups, he thinks wryly to himself. Writing is hard.
"Hey!" He calls out at the first humanoid-shaped thing that crosses his peripheral vision, ever the rude person that he is. "Do you know Japanese?"
b) drop the beats
Rigging up a mixing console from scratch is exactly as tedious as it sounds. Relearning the technical parts took the better part of a handful of months, and in the end Tetora's only managed to build a bass-treble amplifier, with a switchboard for mono and stereo audio channels. There isn't even a panning slider, or a reverb unit; just switches from option A to option B, some volume controls.
He's stupidly proud about himself for something so basic, though. He loves music. Whether or not Lucy Monostone has anything to do with it is a can of worms he's not going to acknowledge, but for all it's worth Tetora knows he's always going to be captivated by music no matter where he goes. He doesn't know how to play any instruments, or maybe one of his versions did and kept it to themselves, but Tetora had inherited Ooe's skillsets and nurtured it whenever he got the chance. Just like he's doing now.
The growing collection of handmade tools are scattered around him on the long bench he's commandeered for his work. Screws, wire clippers, a soldering gun running on batteries and held together by tape. If anything, Tetora's been resourceful.
Unfortunately, he also only has two hands. He looks up and stares at the first person he catches staring back, before asking (somewhat politely): "Wanna hold this?"
C) make your own adventure
[ Leave a prompt for him, anything goes. ]
no subject
Do you know Japanese? Is what Kaz hears, shouted at someone else but in a voice that he knows and hasn't heard in a while. Miller's had to make a lot of trips between Chioni and Kauto, using the Ingress complex to do so. Lucky him. It's been a while since he's been able to check in on Tetora.
He approaches the boy from the side, clearing his throat in warning so he won't surprise him (it's unlikely that he would anyway, but he has every bit of a reason to be wary).
"I know someone that runs a school for gifted youngsters. I could talk to him about securing you a place there." Sure, it's not as if Tetora is any sort of mutant, but he's far from typical in history or skills.
"But in the meantime, would you like some help?"
i forgot to hit post
Not Miller, specifically - the whole sitch from before about being restricted to a limited scope hadn't sat too well with Tetora. It's a familiar beat. Look at the world, it's his for the taking, but only as long as he's under Gakuso's thumb. If not, then the world's a giant cage that he can never escape from, because Gakuso is everywhere, and Machi is everywhere, and the whole fucking project can be anyone he meets out on the street.
He's started to build bombs again, under the pretense of boredom. Truth is, he doesn't feel safe again, and the only way he knows to soothe the feeling is by killing people. Not the best thing to do here. For one thing, he's pretty sure Miller would be disappointed.
And speaking of—
"...Hey." Something unfamiliar curls around Tetora's belly: embarrassment. He does scoot aside, at least, offering space if Miller would want to join him on the floor. "I don't wanna go to school, I just wanna write my own damn name.
"That 'gifted youngsters' thing sounds like a freak show, anyway," he adds, but without much conviction. "Are you headed out or coming back?"
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He finds a place to sit beside him. "Coming and going. I just went to see an old friend." He digs in his pocket to retrieve a pen and a tablet. "There's more than one way to write your name. So I'll write down some examples and if you see one you recognize we can practice that."
He considers it carefully, because 'Tetora' is an unusual name, before writing a-
手
-he doesn't even think of the actual one. Not at first anyway. Instead he erred towards common. But then gives him some options for the 'tora' part.
手 虎 彪
He taps his scruffy chin as he looks at the options and waits on Tetora's input. "Any of these look familiar? ...Wait." He opens up the TAB to see what translations of Tetora's name they had used when logging his information.
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Who is he without the combined efforts of everyone else he's taken over?
Tetora's not sulking. That would be juvenile, and uncool, and there wouldn't be a real reason to sulk anyway. He can write - just not with this writing system. It's better than nothing. "There's more squares," he comments; the uncertainty bleeds out clearly in his voice and it annoys him further. "It's more blocky. I don't know how I know, it's just that way."
He's looking over Miller's TAB anyway, any pretense of manners now discarded. Nosiness has always been what he has instead of a hobby. "...So how many friends do you have?"
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He figures out what the first character is, and then shows it to him. "Okay you start off by doing this. Now you try it a few times so you get the hang of it."
He hands off his tablet and watches.
"People don't usually come in 'friend' or 'enemy'. You get shades of acquaintances more often than not. People you know that have generally positive interactions with, or vaguely negative ones. I've had plenty of people I've regularly talked to with no ill-will towards, but they're not friends. I wouldn't ask them to have food with me or seek out their company if I was unhappy or ask their help if I was in pain." The latter is pretty frequent.
"I consider you a friend. But I'd feel like I was inconveniencing you if I needed anything. You've got enough to worry about."
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People go to school for this. Spend years just memorizing entire books of characters for this. Tetora can already feel his teeth on edge over it; he knows the limits of his own patience, tested to the brink as it's been all these years.
Regular people are insane.
"No one's asked me for help before," he comes to realize, and says out loud. There was Kitou, that one time, but it had been a mutually agreed thing. They were both after the same man, and the enemy of enemy is more tolerable than fighting at two fronts at the same time. "I had allies, I guess you could call them that. They weren't mine in the first place, too. Not really."
Setagaya didn't count. Tetora doesn't want for him to count.
Tetora hands the tablet back to Miller, blowing his cheeks out as he wrinkles his nose. "You should ask me if I can help with anything.
"I wouldn't mind." You're not terrible, he thinks to himself. You're okay.
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"I'll keep that in mind. But it might be something like, 'play with my dog while I'm busy'. I tend to be a little bit of a workaholic."
And also he's been injured enough times in the past two months he's been forced to acknowledge he might need more help than usual. His chest and back still hurt, and he was laid out for at least six days where otherwise he'd be working whenever he could.
"Okay, try them both together like this."
He hands off the tablet again and waits, considering how much Tetora knew about repair work. "You actually pick up things pretty quickly. How much can you read?"
no subject
He can read katakana and hiragana, at least, and he manages to get by through context and letting the other identities' skills slip through whenever he needs them. It's like muscle memory, only it's memory from somewhere outside the body - some he can recognize on his own purely from constant exposure, but the rest is as alien to him as any person who's never read in kanji might find things to be. He writes his name in English, to emphasize the point. Look - perfect handwriting.
"They didn't need to teach me shit I could actually use in normal life," he bites out, not a little bitterly, because why would they? The social system records has him pinned as a juvenile delinquent under the care of a generous outside organization, albeit one tied to political interests. On paper, he's a parentless kid who won't amount to anything in life, met with the unfortunate accident of surviving a crazed attempted bombing.
It's funny. He can rig a whole train of explosives without getting detected, and he can hijack cars like it's nobody's business, but he can barely make out street signs on his own.
Something else is more important right now, though.
"—You never said you had a dog," Tetora swings around to Miller as the man's idle talk catches up on him. A dog. The man has a dog. He elbows the older man - fairly harshly - and grips him hard on the arm. "What kind of dog? Is it a big dog?
"When are you gonna get busy."
Priorities. He has them.
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"I could show you some more. Give you some things to read that are interesting depending on what you like." Then Tetora could get help from his TAB with translation.
The sudden shift of topic though makes him raise his eyebrows higher, and he looks down at his arm. "Yeah. Her name is Mama. She had puppies a while back." He handed many of them out to crew who moved on. Only three of them are still around. "I'm busy at work almost every day. Usually Venom Snake takes care of them, but if you wouldn't mind a dog sitting job while I'm at work."
It's an offer of very slim gainful employment.
"Part of my left leg is a prosthetic and still hurts. I try to keep up with my running but, unfortunately, sometimes it's too much." And huskies, they like to run. "She's about sixty pounds, which is relatively small. A lot of hair and a lot of muscle. A husky."
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He's never held a job. Living so far off the proverbial grid has taught Tetora how to take without having to feel bad about it; who needs a concept of money when he could just make someone give him what he wants? It's not like he knows the value of hard work, either. The others in this body have lived full lives, even Shinji - they've been musicians, detectives, forensic consultants, teachers. They've learned to love and how to recover from heartbreaks, in their own little ways. Even the very worst of them understood the intricacies of human relationship; how else could they use it to torture others, like they'd done to Yosuke's fiance?
But Tetora understands animals. They're simple. They cry when they're hurt. They touch you when they're happy. They claw at you when they're angry. They've only the basest impulses, the most basic needs, the most simple thoughts.
Tetora can't lose himself in their minds, because there's not enough space for him in there.
(This is probably not what Miller had in mind, bringing the dogs up.)
"I'll do it for free," he asks, asks with hands pressed together in front of him, the tablet and notes practically forgotten now. "I'll look after them. Please, Miller-sensei."
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"She's not good at fetch. Mostly she just wants to run to whatever you throw and look at it. She can jump pretty high and she likes snow but not water. Too much fur."
He sees another thing that he has in common with Ahab, there. A love of something simpler than what's trapped in his head. "She's not a trained working dog. Ahab has one of those- his name is D-Dog. He went out in the field a lot. But Mama... I decided I wanted her to be a civilian. I never gave her any special training.
"But her and DD get along fine. They curl up and nap together and she licks him so I guess it's good to know that DD can still interact with other dogs."
Dogs of war don't get to go back to what they were, they don't unlearn their tricks or their trained reactions, but they can sometimes find other things to do. "Just remember, if she ever gets sick or gets hurt, take her to a vet and contact me. Don't be afraid of how I'll react. That's why I'm telling you beforehand I know the possibility is there. Dogs will be dogs. They make mistakes."
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He can't remember. He's electing to ignore the weird-as-shit dog names, too; D-Dog? Mama? Whatever the story is behind those names, he's out of it. "I'll look out for her, it's not like I'm gonna take her running across a minefield or anything."
Tetora even almost reaches out to grasp Miller by the face, to turn his head to him and convince him to— but he stops. Hands freeze in mid-air and then pull back, balled up into fists, teeth clearly gnashing. Bad move. Bad idea. He can feel his nails cutting into his palms, now.
That was too close. That was almost a slip.
"Tell me how to feed her and where she does her business, I'll figure out the rest." Too close. Blood's rushing in his ears, minute shaking on his hands. He can taste it against his teeth - he was ready for a jump, and he didn't even think twice until he was at the brink of it. "I'll call you even if there's nothing wrong."
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He can tell, then, that it's a real worry. "I just meant that sometimes dogs will eat something they shouldn't. Or they'll get tangled in something. Like I said, it's what dogs do. And if something like that happened, I wouldn't want you to blame yourself, just focus on getting her some help."
He can't tell what's wrong, just... something. He'll take it as preliminary guilt for now, given the conversation.
"Tetora, it's okay." Kaz uses his calm voice, his radio voice, the one that he's used time and time again to urge Snake out of danger, to urge him to think. "You're going to do fine."
sorry for the incoming weird
Self-sabotaging. He's pretty good at it, given the chance. Here he is, volunteering honest work for someone who's been nothing but kind to him - an undeserved kindness, through and through - and all he can talk about is his greatest hits. The best of his wonderful skills. He's the closest that Gakuso ever got to perfecting the shit they've spent decades working on; death just sticks to him like a persistent cough, like a rattling cold rooted deep in the lungs.
{ It's just a dog. It's not a person. How hard to you have to try to fuck that up? }
Shut the fuck up.
It would make sense that he'd show his damn face now.
"...I think I'm gonna barf." Tetora puts his hands over his ears, like it'd even help.
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"I don't either," he admits sadly. As bad as he wants to change that, he's already lost so much. And for all his efforts, none of his paranoia has saved him.
"Do you want to meet her now? I'll take you with me if you would like." If Tetora wants to talk about it, the trip would give him the opportunity to come around. Sometimes it seems like it overflows in him, the poor guy.
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But it's not his dog. And the owner is someone he's— maybe, sort of, kind of, would like to stay on the good side of.
Hilarious. Shinji's laughing at him from the depths of their self-made hell.
"Are we walking?" At least, if he's going to throw up, there's the promise of a scenic view.
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He stands up and tucks his hands into his overcoat pockets. A black number, new, to replace the one that was destroyed by his most recent attack.
He doesn't really want to leave him alone with whatever is in his head right now. Whether it's unfortunate or lucky for Tetora, who can say, but Kaz now has enough experience with people with wandering minds that he can at least make the attempt to ground them, to bring them back to a safe (?) place in reality where things are tangible and sounds are real. He can cook things that fill a room with strong spice scents and he can give commanding speeches that can rip a person back into the here and now. Or he can present someone with an animal that's soft and a little strange.
What Venom Snake has been through is, for once, being of some benefit to someone else in a way that shouldn't ever have to be.
no subject
Tetora doesn't make much noise as they make their way down to Kauto, and Miller - thankfully - seems to have decided not to pry. There's a bit of small talk in between stops, though what they've talked about slips through his presence of mind. Static comes in waves, is the thing. It's a side effect, or complication, or whatever the term is for unwanted mental memory backwash. Fragments of pictures cut at the edges of his view, like overlapping faded film on pristine OHP slides, sepia and technicolor fighting for space in the light.
It's annoying. It's loud. He doesn't think he'll be able to stand being anything else other than this mess.
They're taking what seems like the scenic route when he makes an effort for a conversation again. "Do you like coffee?"
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"I like a lot of different teas, too. I wish I had access to half the supplies I wanted. I'd make sure people could try all kinds of food that I've gotten the chance for. When I was in Somalia I learned to make the flatbread that lets you scoop up food in handfuls." He makes motions with his hands, indicating what he means.
Things that he did in wartorn lands that didn't involve shooting.
When they get closer to his apartment, he can already guess that he won't be judged by Tetora. It's a bland place he opens the door too, clinically white walls with the occasional furniture scuff, a kitchen table lined with Kaz's paperwork, a bookcase not even half filled, and two dogs. Both look up. One is a beige husky who warbles happy husky noises as she happily lopes over to her owner, and the other is a wolf-dog with one eye and an eyepatch.
An actual eyepatch.
no subject
Between the food talk and the lessons and the ride down, Tetora's gotten a loose feeling around the shoulders that's dangerously reminiscent to safety. Watching Miller gesture through his spoken experiences is a small, not-entirely-guilty pleasure he's not indulged in for quite a while now. The man moves his hands, speaks with them, and Tetora guesses at the shape of the stories he's hearing - if the air was quiet, if the sun beat on Miller's back like a friend instead of an enemy, if the water ran clean instead of bloody.
But now there's a dog with an honest to God eyepatch in front of him, and Tetora thinks this must be what love at first sight is like.
"Holy..." He sounds awestruck, even to his own ears. Tetora turns, drops an actual kiss on the head of Miller's beige furry child - with a quick hug, not minding any possible dog bites caused by surprise - then falls to his knees after a few steps forward, hands held out to the wolf-dog. Look, okay - he knows what it's like to have eye problems. People he can't relate to on an intimate level, he even has trouble empathizing with most of them, but animals are easy. Animals understand captivity.
Dogs in particular understand what leashes mean.
no subject
Kaz walks by them to put his things down. To hang his coat up and do all the normal things that strangely domestic people do. There are hints of their military nature around: some books on the bookshelf about military history, a single clip on the kitchen table among all the reciepts, a few pictures of soldiers among Venom Snake's photo collage.
At least one of the dogs isn't especially well trained.
"I think they like you."
this isn't done don't tag it yet
He feels peaceful. Something like... happy.
This could be something to get used to. Having-- not friends, exactly, but people he could consider for it. People who have lives not viciously intertwined with the violence of his own. Separate personalities from the ones in his head, and completely removed from the drama of it too. Miller - and Snake, too - are two men who have lived, the pictures of their day-to-day lives full of the minutiae of their personal histories.
It's a sobering thought. Tetora can hardly present any one thing for a history.
"Where do they sleep?"
I will assume you are done now probably maybe sorta
Kaz watches the kid react to the dogs like someone who's never played with an animal before in his life. It's endearing.
It's unfortunate he doesn't say his thoughts, or Venom Snake doesn't say his. Because those pictures are memories, traces of experiences that happen from day to day and that he wants to keep with him. A life he's having to rebuild from scratch. He could convince Tetora to keep his own pictures, his own memories.
As it is, they just exist from place to place, marking this little cutout in the city as their home.
i just realized i forgot to remove the disclaimer aaaaa
"Good dogs," Tetora hums in what he thinks is a low volume. "You're good guys."
There's a few minutes' silence as he lounges on the floor with the canines, but after a while Tetora's body demands for him to move for circulation's sake. Now having pushed himself up to sit cross-legged on the carpeted floor, Tetora eyes the room's furnishings properly. The picture it makes - hah - is fairly domestic, yes. But it's a domesticity that feels new; like it's been lived in before it was acknowledged. A residential chicken-and-egg situation.
Tetora nods at some of the pictures. "Who else do you have on those? Other than the two of you."
no subject
Mama still acts like her name, too, just as fussy as Miller in checking over people.
This by far isn't all their pictures, but Kaz starts to point at soldiers and list their names. Most of them sort of silly, too. Sly Iguana did this or Rogue Bison did that. "This is Link. I took care of him for a while on the ship." He points to a boy with pointed ears and a very serious expression. "This is my 39th birthday. This is Bucky Barnes. Kid from World War II. A friend of mine.
"I think he died when our ship crashed."
Bucky, Big Boss, and Kaz had been something of their own family unit and he'd loved it. Their own little silly military sanctuary in space. But Big Boss had died, then Bucky. And he'd lost his illusion of a family again. One more time. Bucky doesn't look much older than Tetora, actually, in the photo. No more than a couple of years.
The pause lingers, before he points out a couple of more pictures. "These are from planets we went to. And that's an asshole." He points at Ocelot.
Just ignore him. He's biased heavily against him.
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