Adventures

Participants:

deckard_icon.gif hiro_icon.gif

Also featuring:

bella_icon.gif

Scene Title Adventures
Synopsis Deckard sets out on one, after telling his girlfriend.
Date October 19, 2010

On the edge of Central Park


When Hiro appears near Central Park, in the current hour, the current day, the current year, he's still covered in dust from Cairo.

There is strain in his breathing, and not even from the exhertion of his ability. Things are sliding apart and it's a little like trying to stem the breaking dam on your own. Which is why you need people. It's why he needs people. Had barely stopped to breathe after meeting with Bluthner, who sent him like the Wicked Witch— or maybe just Idina Menzel— and her flying monkeys, to here. It's black like it gets past curfew, but there are no cop cars in sight. Not yet, anyway. The brief ghost of a vehicle passes its lights against the side of a building from viewing distance, like the shadow of a shark beneath water.

It is, however, the least of Hiro's worries. The silver of his sword flashes in the dark, catching what little light is available, as he arcs it back to slip within the sheath strapped to his back, and then dusts his hands of Egypt dust. Checks his still working watch, and sets off on a course that's meant to have him find who he needs, boots sinking quietly into damp earth.

Deckard hurts.

That's what happens when you take one in the chest and go out drinking a week later. And.

Other things that he shouldn't have been doing.

Zombie indifference to pain retracted along with the fuzziest edges of his buzz, degree by aching degree, he wanders windingly in search of a place to lie down out've the wind. His progress is more aimless with every flush of (insufficient) blood through his liver. More distracted. There is a bridge over there he hasn't noticed. And a park bench. And soft grass blackish green underfoot.

At a distance he is tall and lean, bristled like an old, much-abused paintbrush. Wiry and coarse beneath the worn brown leather of his jacket.

Closer he is — pretty much the same, actually, sunglasses matte black against half a moon's ghostly light.

At the first sign of movement, Hiro stops walking, scrutinising with a squint and wary assessment. Deckard isn't noticing much of his surroundings, and Hiro is yet some distance, free to stare as if making a decision. A breath swells his torso and squares his shoulders, and after patting his own arms down to free them of the looser dirt that clings to black wool, the time traveler of particularly small stature heads in a direct trajectory for Deckard. The hilt of his sword bobs and weaves with each step, jutting for the sky like an exclamation point.

"Flint Deckard," he announces in his customary way, coming to a stop some ten feet from the other man. Hiro is small, round faced, and Japanese. Dressed in black— or some mix of grey from the dirt— with a sword and a ponytail, and probably an unlikely mugger even if Deckard looked like he had anything worth taking.

His glasses are pretty sweet. Hiro is opening his mouth to say more, but hesitates, at first, recognising the signs of fatigue and injury with an obvious note of disappointment. Maybe he got the time wrong. Again.

Undead progress slowed into an inelegent stumble at the sound of his full name on the wind, Flint listens as if for confirmation that he didn't hallucinate it before he tips a hazy look over his shoulder.

There is a small japanese man standing there. He has a sword.

The rest of Flint turns in a sluggish, inevitable kind of progression. The way an alligator's tail follows the rest of the alligator. Leather rustles over cotton and the stink of alcohol about him is enhanced by the brace of his back to the breeze.

A slow beat of surveillance later, he chuckles. Dusty dry and purely at the LITTLIST NINJA's expense — less than half a breath wasted before he coughs as slightly as seems humanly possible and swallows the rest down into a hood-browed blanch. Ow.

Alcohol and bullet holes are probably better things to have in you than ghostly Frenchmen. Prrrobably. So there's that.

It's with that once over too, that Hiro is silent before he takes another step forward, slight sag in his shoulders — not that he needs to do a lot to seem harmless. He has to work hard to seem harmful, occasionally, for those that don't know him better. "I am sorry, I think I was meant to find you before you were injured," he says, as if he had been the one to turn weapon of Flint himself, a chilly kind of sincerity. Something on the to-do list that was forgotten. He's worn out from being sorry, apparently.

"But I still require your help. I can give you time to heal, but you must come with me tonight. Contrary to popular belief, there is not much time left," he says, his voice sedate and even.

Deckard doesn't even twitch for the revolver seated warm at the small of his back, drowsy apathy at Hiro's appearance such that his pulse hasn't even picked up. A regular (and subtle) hitch in the rhythm of his breathing aside, he watches as he would the approach of a chubby puppy. It's like being mugged in the park by Teddy Ruxpin with a sword. Except then Teddy says he wants to come with him on an important adventure that will inevitably involve rainbows and/or unicorns in some capacity.

He isn't stoned, is the only thing. At least, he doesn't remember being stoned. An experimental sniff at one leathery sleeve yields no (fresh) scent of ganja.

Altogether okay with being insane without benefit of any illegal substances after a moment of queasy thought on the subject, Flint eventually nods his head. Slowly. Just once. "Okay. S'just," he says (slurs) after that, second thoughtish, "can I call my lady friend, 'cause…" he gestures vaguely over his shoulder with a cell phone he's somehow already produced, "she's probably gonna be kind of pissed."

"I— "

That was Hiro about to reassure Flint that no time would pass at all, and his lady friend need not fret! Except. He's been out of luck when it comes to accurate time hops, and his expression grows dimly troubled, gaze dropping as he tries to judge the worth of his own power right now. Considering the headache going like a klaxon in his own skull right now. "Yes," Hiro says instead, word clipped, managing to banish all hesitation from his voice for a goodly decisive one syllable of consent.

And turns a shoulder to Deckard for the illusion of privacy, inspecting his watch.

"Thanks," graveled with a genuine, absent gratefulness for the allowance of a phone call that may save him from an unscheduled dry spell, Flint clamps the end of his thumb down onto the 1 with faintly exaggerated flourish for his super-advanced-high-tech use of the speed dial function.

Flip phone then pressed to the jut of one ear, he rocks back on his alligator bootheels and becomes interested in the progress of a centipede under the dirt instead of sparing the 5'6" samurai swordsman standing ten feet away further study. Brrrrrrring.

It takes a couple rings before an answer comes at the other end of the line. A single word, spoken by the intended phonee, in a tone that communicates something between irritation and anxiety, a mix that is probably mutually supporting and catalyzing.

"Yes?" asks Bella's voice from who knows exactly where.

"Hey," says Deckard, whose voice sounds like it is somewhere outside and a little windy. Black leaves sizzle and rasp in invisible trees; static fizzles obnoxiously under the scuff of recovering stubble against the receiver. "Hhhey. Ahhh…there's a Chinese guy with a sword here." He pushes that same sleeve from earlier across his forehead, blearily restless. "And. He says I have to go do some — stuff. So."

There's an intake of breath on Bella's end of the line. Breath that's held, and only expelled once words begin to come out in what might best be called a barrage. "What? Who? What is this bullshit? Are you fucking kidding me? Is this… are you dealing with the Triads?" this latter bit comes a bit hushed, so maybe Bella's somewhere where talk of criminal fraternities isn't strictly kosher, "do not get yourself killed. You have been fucking around all this past week. I thought you were done with this. I thought we were done with this!"

"Um…"

Says Deckard.

He seems to be looking back at Hiro again now, though it's hard to tell with the sunglasses and all. "He's…little. And…he has a sword." He already said that, but it's the kind of thing that needs to be repeated between spans of uneasy silence, maybe. "He doesn't look like a gangster."

Voice lowered not at all for all the difference it'd make with Hiro standing so close anyway, Flint rankles his nose against ongoing barriage-style crosstalk. "Yeah I'm. I dunno s'just everyone at once coming back in and. I'm really sorry." There's an odd pause, then, optimistically: "He says he's sorry too."

The silence Bella employs may be chilly. It's sort of hard to tell, sans expression. A tight line formed by her lips, a certain brow furrow that, let's be honest, can't be unfamiliar - these potential additions to the quiet can't be seen. Heck, maybe the connection's just dropped, it's not impos-

"Come back intact," oh wait, there she is, "come back in one piece or I swear to God…" she'll what? "Just… please come back. Okay? Call me when you're done with… whatever." That seems final, only then it occurs to her, "how long am I looking at? When should I start worrying and/or mourning?"

"Okay." Chagrined, or at least remotely guilty in the smother of his whiskey fog, Flint toes his way back into the kind of hangdog reticence that makes phone conversation with him about as unwieldy as one would expect. "…Soon." Hopefully. "I don't think it's dangerous," also optimistic, he hesitates an awkward beat and hangs up before he has to think of what kind of farewell is appropriate for their situation. That should go over well later.

Hiro turns back to him promptly the moment the cellphone lowers from Deckard's ear, taking a couple of steps forward that put them within reach distance of one another. A degree of smelling distance, too, although if Hiro feels guilty about recruiting a very intoxicated man on death-defying missions of heroism— maybe— for a reason he is not yet even aware— it certainly doesn't show. "Thank you," he says, in what seems like a genuine show of gratitude. "I do not expect for you to be gone very long, although it will feel longer to you than it does to your friend.

"And you will succeed in what you set out to do." Kind of like a fortune cookie, all on his own. He doesn't bother to correct Deckard that he is Japanese, as a favour, and he holds out a hand as if he desired to shake Deckard's.

"That happens in outer space," Deckard tells Hiro, quietly miserable, helpful and dismally serious at the same time. She was mad. He shouldn't have hung up. It's written soft into the lines around his mouth and more stupidly in the tilt of his brows when he tucks his phone away.

But even with current company and recent events, outer space seems like an unlikely destination. Wherever they are going can't be worse than last week. People with swords are exciting. They will have exciting adventures and there will be plenty of pain medication and beer and Flint is definitely sulking now, not looking like he believes himself very much at all. He doesn't raise his hand and digs subtly in instead, like a dog who has just realized it's raining out beyond the front door.

There will at least be one of those things.

Hiro's hand remains hovering between them, before vague sympathy reflects in the look Hiro has angled up at Deckard. He knows what this is like, being a hero, standing on a precipice of uncertainty with the tinny voices of friends and loved ones still ringing in his ears. It is very probable that Hiro would have a hard time understanding what goes on in the memory-torn cobweb of Deckard's mind, and vice versa. Still, he imagines he can empathise.

"It also happens in the space-time continuum. Do not worry, Flint Deckard," accent making those consonants strike sharp as the other man's name against rock, "I will tell your friend if anything bad happens to you." Arigato, Hiro.

Central Park falls away. The present second unravels, reconstructs into a different set of ticking. Outside, it's raining, and it's also daylight over Deckard's shoulder, some filmy, hazy afternoon in a city that is as waterlogged as New York on a bad day. The waiting room is clean, with a crowd beginning to fill the chairs, and no one's really noticed the fact that 6'2" of rangy limbed injured American just appearing out of thin air. Trick of the light, trick of the crowd. There are snowflake cut outs in the windows, seasonal efforts at tinsel on some of the doorframes.

Hiro isn't here.


England, London: King's College Hospital
December 28, 1998


But there is a nurse, raising her plucked eyebrows with some small amount of fear shining in her eyes, briefly, but she's standing up from behind the desk and moving on over at a cautious step.

There's no wow or shock or even awe. One breath Flint is smelling damp grass in Central Park. The next he is in a hospital.

A veritable pro at non-reaction to disconcerting stimuli and also quite drunk, he opens and closes one overlarge hand, then looks slowly over the waiting room and the English people in it. They look like any other skeletons he's ever met, except that their low murmurs of conversation have gay accents.

Blandly unaware of what decade or country or time of day he's in, he stops looking once he's vaguely discerned the chinaman has left him to fend for himself. Nobody in this waiting room has a sword. There is a nurse, though. "I dunno where I am," confessed with an unenthusiastically apologetic cant of his brows, he indicates his own torso with a turn of his right hand. "Someone shot me."

Her eyebrows go up. In Deckard vision, the hinge of her jaw loosens a little in surprise, before her own gay accent flies out of her mouth to bark instructions at people who aren't Deckard. A call for a room, a doctor, some help. "You're okay," is to him, though, sweetly reassuring and genuine as her hands go out with the expectation he might collapse at any time. There's a gurney rattling its way over, and there's a crucifix that hangs from her throat.

By the time he's being wheeled into an exam room, by the time someone is shoving an IV needle into his arm to wash the perfectly good whiskey out of his system, by the time someone is suggesting that they go ahead and get the police— it probably still won't have dawned on Deckard that it's going to be a long day.

But that doesn't make it any less true.


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