capeandcowl2020 | Open Post 002

Nope, probably not getting off his chest any time soon. His rolling eyes gratefully invisible (sympathy was, after all, quite hard for him still), Eridan settled his other hand at Eddie's back, mindlessly smearing ash across the material of his shirt; turned head, lips pressed to temple.

"Shhhh."

Far too intimate for Eridan's tastes, this. More intimate than the gunmetal on his molars had been. He didn't like being the soothing party in any arrangement, quickly removed himself from the encounter when someone came to him for a sympathetic ear — I don't let people cry on Gucci, he had sneered more than a few times — and this? This reeked of pale overtones. Not an exact match, but it fit well enough.

How completely fucked was that?

Eddie raked down his chest, and Eridan swallowed a wince. Began to hum the bars to some obscure hipster coffeehouse drivel, low and soft in his throat.

1) Return

Coming back to the City after all these years is sadder than Jack was ever prepared for. There's a grimness to the air that seems to pervade every street and every building. This is where the new regime's grip first closed, this is where everything went wrong. The government's propaganda reminds the Cityzens of how long it's been since a supervillain attack or metahuman disaster. There was a time when Jack could and did kill to hear that kind of news, when he would do anything to keep people safe. Not this though, never this. The City has been quiet a long time, but that doesn't make it safe.

That's why he has come back. It's time to stop running, and time to try and help make things right. Jack sees patrols and cameras everywhere, and it takes all his experience and skill to slip past them. Disguises, distractions, back alleys, a few undignified shortcuts underground. He makes his way to where he needs to be, one of the remaining Resistance hideouts in Manhattan. Perhaps he runs into someone familiar along the way, or perhaps he meets them at the base. Either way, once he reaches his destination it's time for...

2) The Mission

Jack hasn't returned without a plan. Once he's gotten his bearings at the base, he immediately starts gathering the information, people and resources he needs for a strike, something drastic, something ruthless. All his old boundaries about not killing cops and soldiers have been stripped away. The United States Government that he once served is now the enemy. Jack's made his peace with that, and he won't flinch from what that entails.

The plan is simple yet ambitious. The government's grip on ImPorts depends on information: lists of names, lists of powers, who's wanted, who's compliant and registered. Jack wants to raid a federal building and get some of that information. He wants to find out what the enemy knows and doesn't know about them, what could be dangerous and what could be exploited. It's a mission that could open up new ways to weakening the regime. It's also borderline suicide.

Jack makes his rounds in person or electronically, making his pitch, trying to build a team. Once he has his volunteers, he assembles them in the base for a briefing: quick and informal, down and dirty, the only thing they have the time and the resources for right now. Whether he's talking to your character in the briefing or while trying to recruit them, it boils down to one question: are you in?

I get tired of flash. You manage always to make it awfully gaudy.

[ Norman puts his helmet on and flies himself forward, fast. ]

Hmm.

[ The tazer hovers. He drags Quentin with him as he begins walking. ]

I suppose we'll find out in two days then. And if you're right, I'll let you walk.

"No thanks. I wanted to make you an offer, actually. I thought maybe you could use one," Norman said with a lazy smirk, his other hand gesturing idly to the warehouse around them. "I'm aware of your reputation, of course. But I think you could be putting your skills to better use."

His smirk grew slightly.

"Thoughts?"

I just did. [ Norman kicks him, pinning a hand against Eddie's throat. ] Anyone can be a boy when they're facing trouble. Especially if it's at the hands of a man. Hm?

You think I'll let you escape again?

There is an island. On that island, there used to be a base. It had automatic machine gun posts, mortar pits, surface-to-air missiles, dozens of fanatical bigots in uniform, maps, antennae, radar dishes, booby traps, stockpiles of loot and explosives. That base and the mind of its commander contained dreams for war, suffering, conquest, villainy and horror. It was the launchpad of schemes, the springboard for grotesque designs on innocent lives, a cradle of evils.

These days, there is not a base. There is a rusting monument to one man's undying ego, a slowly decaying testament to how obsession can outlast anything, including the ability to pursue the obsession itself.

But if you ask the Major- and he will be happy to tell any visitor before he releases the hounds- it is still a base, he is still active, and the world will once again know the fury of war without boundaries springing from his twisted brain. Governments change, the world changes, people change, but the Major remains exactly the same bloodthirsty madman he has been since the 1940's.

His suit is stained and his 'command chair' appears to have come from a yard sale and his arsenal gets more and more sparse every year, but for someone who lived through the final days of the Third Reich this is all nothing. He went through dark and quiet years before, and now they have come again, and he will be undaunted by them just the same. He will tell you with an undiminished smile on his face, he is still one of the government's most-wanted and the world's most-hated, and he has plans to remind them all of just why that is. Oh, he has so many plans, wonderful brilliant plans! Plans for fights becoming battles becoming wars, plans involving everything from individuals to global alliances. He exults over them with unrestrained wickedness to whoever will listen, and when there is no one he speaks just as happily to himself.

He has to make his speeches to himself more and more often these days.

Well, that's just it. They won't meet in two days because if I don't do what I'm supposed to do, [he pauses.] the meeting is called off under the assumption that one of us have been captured.

[It's a buff on top of a buff. It's either Norman captures him, and the entire fake operation is called off. Or, Norman lets him blow up the police academy and Quentin escapes freely. A loss for a loss, a win for a win.]

Your call.

Once he has the collar away from her, it disappears right back into his sylladex, just in case she were to attempt to try to snatch it away again. He makes a strangled noise of distress at the back of his throat when the torrent of feeling looped from her to him doesn't let up even with the device wrested from her grasp. God, what if this is just too much for her? What if there's a limit to how much she can take in? That would just be fantastic, wouldn't it, great reunion gift there, Vantas. He shouldn't have come back at all.

The hand that still rests on hers curls around it, fingers linking with hers -- the other one he'd used to stash the collar away moves to her shoulder as he scoots forward to kneel beside her.

"Ruka. Listen, it's not you. That's not yours. Ruka. Ruka. That's not you." He repeats her name, trying to call her back out of him, his heart. The longer he does, the more panicked the edge to his voice grows, the more pleading it sounds. "Ruka."

"Oh," began Edward. He cleared his throat, his eyes darting. He shifted on his feet, inundated by his own thoughts. She was watching him, he knew. She was analyzing him. He had so little weaponry against her right now, in this room. She was thinking of what to do with him.

She had to be.

"Is it relevant?" He glanced over at her again, this time keeping his gaze straight. "My day, I mean." There was a tightness in his chest, a gripping. Iron and cold and insatiable. He took a few breaths, his palms flat on the desk before him as he pretending to peruse a debriefing. It wasn't going to be enough to throw someone as apt as Max Gibson, he knew, but his effort was instinctive.

"I don't need to talk about it," he said. Breaking the glacier between them. "If that's what you mean. I haven't -- I haven't had a bad episode in a long while."

A name. Over and over, pulling through the darkness, but she has to see this through to the end. She has to swallow it down to where her own heart can break it down, or else it'll never dislodge from where it burns her nerves and chokes her breath. Her hand spasms in his, trying to grab hold and flinching away, back and forth.

Fire burns through the darkness, bright and powerful like the sun, somehow more blinding than blindness; the ghost before her seems to grow more solid, light defining more features. It's so hard to recognize anything familiar under fear, but gradually it burns away in the wake of something bigger, something brighter. Less of Karkat Vantas filters back through the loop, draining down. Light overtakes darkness, and in that illumination, everything snaps into place. Her vision focuses on the world outside her.

Hope.

"... Karkat?"

[She waits, trying to be patient. Something feels strange about this. He never used to laugh so much, even if it's just half-chuckles right now. He never used to smile so much either. Or maybe he did, and she'd just never noticed. Either way, she takes a larger gulp of her drink, trying to make herself ignore it. She's just become too paranoid, that's all.

Her gaze lands on the screwdriver for a few seconds after he answers. Her fingers twitch on his arm.]

If they left, would you?

[She listens, trying to formulate answers for the inevitable questions to come. She can't tell him the whole truth--that would be far too dangerous, considering how loose-lipped Jake could be. But she doesn't want to completely lie to him, either. That just didn't feel right, not even after so long.

Her expression is both polite and genuinely interested. She laughs (silently) at his quip about Indiana Jones. These are actions she's done a hundred times over with people she likes much less than Jake, and for him they're sincere. He's a good guy. That much didn't seem to have changed.

A knowing nod is her response to the last bit. She never gets letters anymore. There had been a few, when she'd been in Switzerland. Close friends had her address, and she had even sent some herself. Now it's just the occasional postcard (without return addresses) to places she isn't even sure are occupied any longer. Nill reaches out to pat his arm; it's okay, she means. She knows what that's like.]

Nill slips her hand over the scrap to cover it from curious eyes. She puts on the too-enthusiastic smile of a diehard fan, all for show. It makes her look silly, and she hopes, a little, that it might make Rose laugh. The blonde pulls the book to her chest and gives a nod of thanks, both for the signature and the number before turning (the back beneath the jacket devoid of the lumps that might give notice of her wings) and leaving the bar.

Later, a text message, from a number that will only be used tonight:

Dinner or drinks? Either is on me.

The panic eases when the feedback loop between them does, settles into guilt and worry. When she says his name, though -- for the first time in two years -- his breaks off in his attempts to call her back, words stalling in his throat. His heart throbs; he can't tell if with pleasure or pain. The hand holding hers trembles.

"You idiot," he forces out past the verbal roadblock. "Why would you do something like that?"

[The smile disappears at her question. Its a slow disappearance, and he distracts himself from the question by tracing the rim of the glass he had just finished.]

You know, I hadn't really thought about it.

[It disturbed him a little to think that his answer hadn't automatically been "yes". True, his interests always lied greatest with his friends and family, but here he was, fighting for a much greater purpose than all of them. It was kind of nice, on the one hand. Nice to have a purpose and not completely wallow in how much he hated being what he was. In fact, a lot of that self-loathing had gone away with age. Not all, but a good chunk of it.]

I guess if the time ever comes, I'll think about it.

[He picks up the glass again to suck a piece of ice into his mouth.]

It isn't allowed to tremble there for long; he's barely allowed to get the words out before she's moving again, using her hand in his to pull herself up, forward, release, she unashamedly throws herself forward and wraps her arms around his back in an unsteady hug. Her hands make tense fists in the fabric of his shirt, and she doesn't have the strength to keep herself from shaking.

"I thought you were dead." Quiet and shaking, honest, in the way she so rarely is or was. "How could I believe it was you?"

[She hates herself a little, as she watches his expression shift. The question had been insensitive and inappropriate, to say the least. Nill knows that it hadn't been fair of her to even pose it. As absurd as she found his sense of responsibility, that didn't mean she should belittle it. He wasn't berating her life choices, after all, and he must have known that they weren't on the entirely bright side of moral.

Nill finishes off her drink in one more gulp and takes a long sip of the last vodka cranberry. Her head is starting to feel light. She sets the glass on the table between them, and her fingers curl into the material of his jacket.]

If you do decide, I'll be there to get you out.

[She doesn't mention how he might contact her, if the time comes, but she still knows that she'll be ready. But it seems as if tonight, at least, he's set on staying. When had she even made the decision to try and change his mind? She can't immediately place the moment, and so she stops trying.]

He tenses as an instinctive fear flutters in the region of his stomach when she first throws her arms around him, but it's quickly trampled and overtaken by something stronger, something familiar; that need to be close that moves his arms to embrace her in reciprocation before he even consciously wills it.

"I'm sorry," he breathes, dazed. He's really here. He really made it. He has this back. For a moment, he has trouble believing it himself. His hold on her is likely too tight -- one arm wrapped crushingly around her ribs, the other flung across her shoulders, the back of her neck. He'd forgotten this, this desperation, the way his heart seemed to want to pick up a new career as a battering ram, the way she felt and smelled and sounded like this, in his arms. Or perhaps they'd both simply changed in the interim of separation. He struggles to press closer to her, despite their uncomfortable position on the floor. "I'm sorry."

[He feels her fingers curl and it draws a sigh from him. He doesn't move his arm, but his own fingers relax a little.]

If I can't get out on my own, then I don't need to leave.

[It was an easy enough philosophy. If he couldn't get out reasonably, then neither could anyone else. That meant he still had a job to do. Even now with all the measures in place, imports could leave if they talked to the right people (namely, him). Part of him wonders if he still comes off as cold and dettached. He had worked on that a litle, if only so Rose didn't have to suffer in silence dealing with it whenever they saw each other.

Its wasn't perfect, but he was trying.]

She'd forgotten just how warm he always seemed to be. He's thinner than she remembers, a little more narrow, and so many of the little things are different, or distorted in the distance of time. He smells different, his hair is too long, his voice hits the wrong pitch, his body's been whittled down so much. It's too much to take in, and she's terrified of waking up.

"I'm sorry," she echoes, muffled words into his clothing. "I didn't believe you." Didn't believe in him, didn't trust him, didn't put any stock into his promises.

Yeah! I couldn't leave when I knew that you'd all have to come back someday.

[it would have been so much easier to flee the city and disappear into the wilds of some South American jungle, living in a manner that was more comfortable and familiar to her. but if she had, then Nepeta would never have been able to make this very moment a reality. it's more than worth the effort.]

An offer from Norman Osborn.

Huh. Perhaps the day (night? who cared?) wasn't completely shot to frell.

"I ain't a charity, yanno," he said at last, sitting upright, fidgeting under all that coat. "Don't be expectin' me to jump through hoops just 'cuz yer somewhat famous or whatever."

[She almost takes her hand away at that sigh. She can't tell which one of them is more agitating to her right now: him for refusing to take her help still, or herself for being upset that he wouldn't. She should have expected it. People can only change so much, even her--somewhere deep down, she had always wanted to be on her own (or with only Heine). She hadn't wanted to feel the need to care for the people around her. Caring was hard, and more often than not, it ended up hurting.

But even years later, she can't completely stop. It's part of why she'd come back, right? And if he was hell bent on keeping himself chained to this place, there's nothing she can really do about it.]

I just hope you don't die here, Dave.

[It's as much sentiment as she can muster at the moment, and with it she draws her fingers away from him. She lets her hand lay on the table in case he poses anything else that requires a response, but she'd prefer to finish off the last of her drink without thinking of anything but how her body buzzes with the alcohol.]

[fairly, but barely, right at the moment. Steve's just stepped out of his own room, pulling the door closed behind him as he juggles his lunch and few odds and ends in his other arm. once the door's clicked secure behind him, he lifts his head, ID badge in his mouth, and blinks, looking toward the hullabaloo.

blinkblink. wow, what a noisy customer, that oncoming bird.

blink.

squint.

wait.]

Open Post 002

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