Angry and Disillusioned

Participants:

eve_icon.gif hagan_icon.gif hiro_icon.gif

Scene Title Angry and Disillusioned
Synopsis Hiro Nakamura is clearly on crack.
Date February 17, 2009

Ruins of Midtown


The sky is clear and Eve is currently sitting on a pile of rubble facing towards more of the destroyed side of the area. She is wearing a black dress with high black boots. Her hair falls down past her shoulders and she looks up at the sky. "Darkness.. alone.. gone.. forever." She sings softly to herself and closes her eyes. This is the case for many right now, the survivors of the confrontation with Kazimir, the ones that died.. the ones who are lost.

The silence in this area is stark in comparison to what it once was. Once there was a lush island here, forested and with creeks and wildlife. Then there was a city that grew like a fungus until it took over the whole island. Now there is a desolate ruin of some of that city, Nature unable to reclaim just yet what was originally its own.

Hiro Nakamura has had the dubious honor of seeing this place in more than one state of being.

Because of the silence, the scuff of one of Hiro's boots reaches farther than it normally would. He's walking very slowly through what was Kirby Plaza, the last place he ever was in New York. Indeed, this is his very first return to the city since that fateful day of the Bomb. It's changed. He's changed.

The figure in mostly black with what could only be a sword slung across his body seems not to care that he's highly visible, that he is in a restricted area, that Homeland Security might find him and make a move. If any of those thoughts crosses his mind, he seems completely at ease with it.

There's no such thing as 'restricted areas' for a man who can move through shadows. Though this is decidedly harder to accomplish when winter blankets the area with snow and footsteps reveal him. Hagan O'Sullivan is here to practice. He is woefully inadequate when it comes to defending himself, and shadows only get you so far.

Given that he knows he can disappear into the shadows cast by various sundry rubble and half-intact overpasses, he's not concerned with making noise. And he's making a lot of it. The Irishman is trying to move as quickly as he can through the broken landscape. He does his best to avoid hunks of metal, plastic, trash and pits of burnt out debris. Every now and again he disappears entirely from sight. Seems he's trying to learn how to run, avoid obstacles and use his power all at once. He might be more mysterious and incognito if every stubbed toe wasn't punctuated by a loud, "FUCK."

"Careful." Eve's voice rings out. "They are stricter around here now." Then why is she out here now? Her eerie grey eyes falls on Hiro and she stares at him. Then it's back off to the sky. When Hagan appears and curses, Eve looks around. "Shhh, if you're too loud. They may hear you." She says and shakes her head. Bad Hagan bad.

Just when you thought you were alone. For some reason the fact that others are here strikes a chord of disturbance within Hiro, although the self-realization of that is a cause for curiosity. Why should it disturb him? This place is bleak exactly BECAUSE people have left it. To see some returning for whatever reasons ought to be a cause for hope.

Hiro says nothing in response to the attention he's gotten from Eve, just yet. But he has stopped walking and gives a look at the obscenity-spouting man that seems to flicker in and out of vision. So, others with abilities still run free in the daylight.

Without moving, Hiro ceases to be where he was and comes to stand some five yards or so away from Eve, looking right at her. His eyes look down, as if glancing at her feet, then up, as if taking in her face. And thus the measure of another it taken. With a blink he shifts his gaze toward where Hagan does his practice and proceeds to watch him. There is a definite sense not of aggression but of readiness about the man in black.

Hagan casts a glance Eve's way in one of the moments where the Irishman is visible. Then he leapfrogs into a long shadow cast by the skeleton of a Ford Contour stuck ninety degrees into the ground. The only way to track his progress is by the faint movement of debris and the occasional curse that seems to come from midair. Whenever he does curse, his image flickers and for a brief moment he is a mirrored silhouette.

Then he seems to disappear entirely. There's no sound of shifting debris, nor sudden appearances or disappearances. If ears are sharp, it might seem like there's someone off to the left and back, but there's nothing there. Surely it's just the ruins playing tricks on the senses, right?

"Evolved.. we always seem to have a way of coming together." Eve snorts and returns the assessing gaze to Hiro. When Hagan disappears she blinks and shakes her head. "Careful." She warns.

With a slight jerk of his head to punctuate the question Hiro asks Eve, "Who're you?" He doesn't look over his shoulder but says cryptically, "I can feel the other one." His voice crescendos a little to make sure Hagan hears, "If you've come over here to spy it's going to be boring."

There's the sound of shuffling over towards where a piece of metal is covered in undisturbed snow. Then a message starts to appear in it. It's kind of ghostly, were it not for the fact that the 'handwriting' appears in slashes. The word appears slowly and is slightly smudged, but it clearly reads, 'PRACTICING.' And then, after a pause, a frowny face appears.

"Eve.. and you?" She rises and her dress rustles as she moves. "I've never seen you around here and I come here a lot." She sees Hagan's message and shakes her head. "Sorry, didn't mean to interrupt. Shadow Walker." Eve blinks and looks up to the sky. "Ya know.. the sky is beautiful today. I wish the future was as beautiful."

Hiro glances down toward the message on metal from an invisible hand and smirks a little. "Cute." he replies, seeing the frowny face. Then looks to Eve to answer her. "Hiro Nakamura." he says by way of introduction, looking up and around. "…and I suppose it is. The sky." Funny. He didn't see much beauty here at all until it was pointed out.

"It's NOT cute damnit. It's angry and disillusioned. See how he frowns at you," comes a disemboided voice with a thick Irish brogue. "Judging you. And your little sword. Well…" a beat, "…actually it's fairly large, but that is beside the point."

"Remember that Hiro.. some things look better in the present, then in the future." She backs away. She must have to go somewhere. "I'll see you two gentlemen later.." of that she is certain. "Watch out for yourselves." Eve stops a moment and looks at the message again that Hagan left. "From what I can see, you're pretty good at your ability." She wishes she can say the same for her own. Her boots made a clicking noise on the ground as she walks away. Eve has left the building!

Trying to locate the disembodied voice with his ears, Hiro looks distracted as Eve gets up and leaves. There's no motion to interfere with that. "If you say so." he replies to the voice. It's made of equal parts interest and disinterest. Interest in who this might be or how they're doing it, and disinterest in what he thinks of himself. "You always come out here to practice, Voice?"

"This is my first time," the voice seems to be panning to the left, like surround sound. Feet clatter over bits of debris that once made a whole city. "Seems like a good place, don't you think?" There's the smell of cigarette smoke in the air. Hagan's progress is suddenly easier to track by the smoke that falls off in his wake. He isn't moving very far though. "It's like a post-apocalyptic obstacle course."

With a sigh Hiro looks in the direction of Kirby Plaza once more and replies, "I was here when this happened." Like he has to say it. "I was part of this. I tried to stop it." Some people are haunted with ghosts composed of regrets and memories. Others are haunted with more traditional type ghosts. Hiro's got some of both going on. "This shouldn't be here. This…scar."

Slowly, the shadows part from around Hagan. He's wearing a long black coat, dark jeans and a long cotten scarf curled around his neck like a snake. He pulls from a cigarette. "My apartment used to be right…" he points off a short distance away. "…there. My fucking cat got vaporized. And ten years of graphic work." He looks back to Hiro, one eye squinted. "What scars should ever be there? Cept ones for life-saving surgery. And this city didn't have a triple-fucking-bypass."

With Hagan's appearance, Hiro gives the man the same once-over look he gave Eve, evaluating him silently. Then looks along where Hagan pointed to the former site of his apartment. "My best friend died in the blast, trying to kill the man who was going to cause it." he explains. Then he waves out at the city itself. "Don't they care? It's been months. Why aren't people here? At least clearing this out. Cleaning it up. Doing something. Anything."

"Because the city's got bigger problems," says Hagan around his cigarette. "Like exploding bridges and islands cut off. And riots. Brown-outs. Forced registration's probably on the horizon. Rebuilding a partially irradiated section of the city isn't exactly at the top of the politicians' 'to do' lists I don't imagine." Disillusioned indeed. Just like his snow-drawn frowny face.

"That's sick." judges Hiro simply. He shakes his head and considers the view. "What year is it?" Now that's an odd question, isn't it?

"What?" the word is spat out. Smoke curls away from Hagan's lips at the emphatic power of that one word twisted and dipped in Irish. "What do you mean? Have you been on crack?" He squints. "You don't look like you've been on crack. It's oh-nine."

A hint of a grin plays across Hiro's face in spite of himself. "I know." he replies, "It's a weird question. Oh-Nine? Two thousand nine?" The Japanese man nods slowly to that, eyes distant. "Well. There's time then."

"No, it's the year three thousand and bloody-nine. Welcome to the distant and fucked-up future." Hagan puffs on the cigarette and drops back a half-step away from Hiro. He should've figured he'd run into nutjobs out here.

"Thanks." Hiro says simply, looking straight ahead and obliquely to Hagan. And then, quite suddenly, vanishing. Like a dream no longer there.

"Hey, HEY!" A beat, then a muttered, indignant, "That's my trick." And Hagan disappears as well.


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February 17th: No Love Lost
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February 17th: Mercy
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