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
"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."
no subject
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."
no subject
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.
no subject
"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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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?"
no subject
"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.
no subject
Tetora doesn't have any inclination for that sort of thing, personally, but he understands it. Kitou would love this moment, though - character development at its finest. Caption it with this: "Teen psycho develops some empathy."
"Sorry for your loss," Tetora murmurs awkwardly, uncertain about the tone to use when the mention of recently-deceased close persons is brought up. He has no attachments to the names Miller recounts, but he's also aware that this is a fairly intimate admission from the man.
He can, at least, take after Miller's cue about assholes. Those are easy to run with. "That's a really big asshole, though."
no subject
"Thanks," he says in regards to the condolences but doesn't dwell. Bucky was a soldier and knew the risks. The loss is saddening, but it's not a whole base worth of people that he was meant to be responsible for. Bucky Barnes had been his own man. A young man, yes, but his own man.
"And he is. I worked with him for a long time. We don't get along."
Which is to put it lightly. He'd probably never recover from the guilt and rage left over from the MSF base, but he thinks that his life might have ended up a little better if Ocelot hadn't got involved. At least moderately.
He gestures over to where the dog food is kept. "Come on, I'll show you how much to feed them."
no subject
Tetora pats both on their flanks, runs his nails along both dogs' backs all the way up to the crown of their heads. He's mentally calculating how much weight either dog carries, and if he can lift at least one of them up. For exercise. Maybe. He has badly hidden motives for the dogs and he's sure Miller's picked up on it the minute his back hit the carpet earlier.
Folloing Miller over is easy enough, at least; the dogs don't get in the way much, though they bump against Tetora's legs. It's fairly unavoidable when they're both of a large breed. "How often do I feed them?"