thornroyal

[thornroyal]

yor still finds herself unable to look this man - robot man?- directly in the eyes, but not for lack of effort. it isn't because he's not human, either; very much the opposite, in that he behaves more human-like than some of the actual humans she's met here. and really, who is she to judge someone on the basis of their humanity anyway?

"i hope so... i really don't enjoy doing that sort of thing." her eyes are still averted as she brushes imagined dirt off her skirt. "maybe he'll find another job around here now?" a pause, then: "um, should i... get him medical attention? he's not waking up..."

❁ : yor, for better or worse, misses the sarcastic undertone of this (robotic? sure, that makes sense for this place) man's comment. instead, she's worried now that she's yet again blown her cover as a perfectly normal housewife.

if only that man hadn't tried to steal her bag - the money she was carrying was negligible, but that phone was her only connection to her job and the few ties she had on the island - ! she might have overreacted, it seemed.

'i... i promise this isn't what it looks like!' spoken while a man lies unconscious at her feet. he should wake up in a while... should. at least she remembers to pluck her bag from his slackened grip. 'it was just adrenaline! the heat of the moment! he took my purse!'

[thornroyal]

yor hadn't meant to eavesdrop, but nonetheless she overhears the girl's musings to herself (and her cat?), and her curiosity outweighs her good sense.

"i don't think you are drunk." or, at least, she was of the opinion that the girl did not sound drunk.

a pause, then she sheepishly adds: "but then again, i don't think i've ever heard of a lost world or a singularity... maybe i could help you find the belt?" she feels compelled to be useful after interrupting a stranger.

" Sometimes I wonder if this place is more of a Lost World than something like a Singularity or Lostbelt." a very loud crunch from the chocolate sticks in her hands.

" It'd take a lot of power to turn something from 'fantasy' into reality.....and considering how this place works, it isn't too impossible. "

there's a sharp, resounding 'dafou!' from the small creature on her shoulder.

" No, I am not drunk, thank you very much!"

[thornroyal]

@tacticalslaughter

❁ : the water of the styx is clearer than clear, true to its name. even in the dying embers of daylight, yor can still see straight to the bottom of the pool. it seemed like the ideal place to take off her heels - they didn't hurt so much as become irritating after a full day of running around - and dip her feet into the edge of the water.

the last of the light fades from the sky, and she realizes that the water is steadily warming - she'd forgotten the pools were heated in the evening. distracted by that small comfort, yor almost doesn't notice the woman who swims up to her as she sits on the edge in her work clothes.

'oh! uh... hello. sorry, i was thinking...' she'd started to become lost in thoughts about her family again, which, truthfully, had been starting to weigh on her more and more. happy thoughts, happy normal thoughts and normal conversation, yor! 'the water is so nice here, isn't it?'

[thornroyal]

❁ : yor, for better or worse, misses the sarcastic undertone of this (robotic? sure, that makes sense for this place) man's comment. instead, she's worried now that she's yet again blown her cover as a perfectly normal housewife.

if only that man hadn't tried to steal her bag - the money she was carrying was negligible, but that phone was her only connection to her job and the few ties she had on the island - ! she might have overreacted, it seemed.

'i... i promise this isn't what it looks like!' spoken while a man lies unconscious at her feet. he should wake up in a while... should. at least she remembers to pluck her bag from his slackened grip. 'it was just adrenaline! the heat of the moment! he took my purse!'

❝ ... INTERESTING. ❞ he remarks upon the scene, noting in particular a man collapsed in a battered heap on the pavement, ❝ I WAS UNDER THE IMPRESSION THAT HUMANS WEREN'T CAPABLE OF SUCH VIOLENCE. ❞

there is an underlying note of sarcasm in his tone; he knows perfectly well the atrocities that humans are capable of. what he did not expect, however, is the speed and strength at which she dispensed that violence.

@thornroyal

[thornroyal]

❁ : it would take her some time to properly tidy this place up, but in the meantime she was overwhelmed by... relief? yor knew less about her boss than she knew about the city - was boss really his name or did he just answer to that no matter who called for him? - and yet he was more constant a fixture of this place than almost anything and anyone else she'd met here. yes, it was definitely relief. a return to her normal - however strange that happened to be - was about as good as her situation could be right now.

plus this meant she had a job again!

'oh! it's good to see you too, boss.'

'um... what's our first order of business?' she'd been thinking about some ideas she wanted to propose, but had since realized she wasn't so certain of the potential of those ideas. yor knew she was no genius, but perhaps she'd have been able to help give someone else a good idea... maybe another time. maybe. 'maybe we should go get lunch and talk? i can find us somewhere good.' or, well, she hoped she'd be able to do that.

For a while now, Django had been taking care of the store remotely as he saw no need in having to be physically present to oversee its day-to-day operations. At least not for the moment. There was much he had been thinking about regarding his time spent in Spirale ever since his abrupt return some months prior. And so in what seemed to be a long time coming for the retired gangster, Django made the healthy decision to give himself some time to sort through the leftover baggage, before he would even entertain the idea of working again.

His return to GANGS✩TAR must have come as a surprise to everyone working there. He had made no mention of coming in today, nor did he even make a hint of it in prior correspondence. Surprise would give way to warm greetings and the usual assortment of pleasantries. And while Django was most certainly appreciative of it all, what stood out the most to him was just how normal it all felt.

I suppose there could be life for him outside of the criminal underworld.

Stepping off the elevator and into his office, a familiar voice calls out to the man. His ears would perk up at the sound of her greeting. And as he turns around to face her, Yor would find Django smiling quite warmly at her.

" Thanks, Yor. I can't tell you how happy I am to see you again. "

[thornroyal]

❁ : she hadn't expected to get stuck out of doors in this weather, and yor felt it was bad enough to get soaked by the sky dumping all its rain at once. it was worse, as it turned out, to become noticeable to the point that even a stranger had been drawn to her. was it perhaps because normal people didn't do their errands in storms? was her cover as a housewife blown by as simple a mistake as this?

'i - are you certain?' she had been petrified in place by her runaway train of thought, but now she takes the shoes gingerly, as if they might bite. 'thank you!'

'did you really make these?' she's not absorbed the statement about levitating one bit. 'they're so... stylish! and tall!'

@thornroyal

● "Ugh. Don't give me that attitude, I don't care!" Archer wasn't exactly very receptive to kindness, both giving or receiving it. So she wasn't overreacting to this woman thanking her for offering her... her shoes. The stranger had ended up in a rather deep puddle and Baobhan had stripped away her own heels to give her something drier.

The stranger was evidently worried about her own feet without her heels on.

"I can levitate home, it isn't a big deal. I also make heels for a living so it's whatever. You don't need to reject my generosity!" Why did some humans make being kind so hard!?

[thornroyal]

❁ : on her way back home, yor espies a young man in passing addressing a crowd of children around him. the innocence of the scene strikes her first; it seemed as if there were perhaps bits of goodness to be found in this place after all. she can't help herself but to stop and eavesdrop as he mentions hopscotch. hopscotch! she hasn't played that since she was little - and her little brother was never really a fan, seeing as yor never seemed to wear out...

'i also want to see the number one hopscotch champion!' she hopes she isn't being too forward, but there's something briefly ignited in her that wants to live out a happier childhood memory, even if only vicariously.

｢𓆄｣ 'Hey, it's Hawks!' A myriad of young children native to the city called out as they saw him passing through the streets. "Hiiii." He nonchalantly called and waved to the kids, who took that as their opportunity to storm the man and talk to him about their days, as well as thanking him for his help as he'd been passing through days earlier.

"It's good to see everyone's in high spirits. If you're on your best behavior I'll show you how I became the number 1 hopscotch champion." While that wasn't true, he was quick with it, the children took it at face value. And boy, did that get them even more excited!

[thornroyal]

@sanpatron / get over here.

❁ : yor thought she'd have more time to clean up before the boss got into the office - she knew he was back from the way he'd popped back up into that neat little portable phone's list of people - and when he walks into the office without a word, it catches her off guard.

she hadn't even had time to get a present! maybe she could bake him something later on. what did he like, anyway? they'd never gotten around to talking about food, or drinks... actually, yor realized, she knew less about him than he knew about her, it seemed.

'mister boss!' with a word, she grabbed for a broom and started sweeping. 'i'm sorry, the office hasn't been cleaned in the entire time you were - '

how did you phrase one's disappearance into thin air in a delicate and normal fashion, anyway?

'um, indisposed? ...welcome back!'

[thornroyal]

@bimeval

❁ : in the end, yor had dragged the unconscious ne'er-do-well and left him by the side of the road underneath a street lamp, in the hope that someone would find him and take care of him one way or another. she had had intense guilt over effectively leaving him as a problem for someone else to handle, but that man's words had eaten at her: was she leaving a criminal on the streets to hurt someone else? if she did get rid of him, would someone else replace him? was she responsible for what he potentially did next?

she needed to clear her head. this wasn't something she could let eat at her for weeks to come - and without the shopkeeper to turn to for advice, she had settled for gazing out upon the ocean in an attempt to find some sort of solution. peace. anything.

the quietude of the dock doesn't last for long, however; yor detects a presence from somewhere behind her that sets the hair on the nape of her neck upright, and she whirls around to face that man. it would seem her decisions were intent on haunting her one way or another.

'i didn't kill him.'

'i'll take responsibility if anything happens, but - !' she trails off, uncertain. the implication, she realizes, is that she's allowed a criminal to walk free because she was not firm enough in her ideals. didn't she want to make her home a more beautiful place? was it not her duty to make this place safer as well, for all the perils it held for its unwilling citizens?

[thornroyal]

Based on this twitter trend

[thornroyal]

@sickhackbassist / starter call.

❁ : she'd stumbled in the street coming out of a club, and yor had caught her by the hand and righted her. the poor woman seemed mostly alright - though yor was more concerned with any further endeavors, namely whether or not she would make it home in one piece if she was this clumsy.

'do you need someone to walk you home? it's awfully late to be out alone - ' and i don't want her to trip over the edge of the curb! her brain filled in the rest of the sentence. never mind all the horrors the island had presented in the past.

'a-anyway, it wouldn't be any trouble for me.' she hoped desperately that this all came off as something a normal person would do. this was just human kindness, right? right.

[thornroyal]

❁ : there's something about loid's response that, however calm he remains, leaves yor awash in a cold wave of dread. how does he not know where anya is? how does he not already know where they are? maybe she's grown too accustomed to loid's ever-present cool confidence, to his ability to always know what to do in every situation. did this mean she'd become dependent on him to function?

more importantly - this meant anya was with neither of them. that makes her want to panic, but instead yor tries to mirror loid's expression. it isn't working well.

'i've been stuck here for months, loid.' wait, does that mean he didn't notice she was gone? that stings more than she'd like it to. unless they replaced her with a body double? that sounds crazy, but certainly she's been party to stranger things. 'did... did you not notice?'

'i don't know exactly what this place is. it's an island... but it isn't any island i've ever heard about.' geography had never been one of her strong points - nor had most other school subjects - but a remote island this strange would have dredged up some memory, she likes to think. 'anya was here too, but then she vanished - without a trace.'

she doesn't add how long she searched for her. somehow it just makes the situation all that more bleak.

'loid, what do we do now?'

Violence flashed briefly in Yor's eyes, warranting his muscles to tense in preparation of a one-punch knock out. He rather avoid being chastened by her in public again. Although, he knew he could use some humbling every now and then, she kept his ego in check as Twilight.

Yor confirmed her wellbeing in her usual polite tone, then her following words froze the world around him. Rather, he began to astutely examine the environment. Her clothes lacked pink hair strands and clumps of white fur. The air was absent of the grating of their daughter's voice on his ears raving about spies and peanuts. Before he could open his mouth to investigate the unusual scene, Yor unveiled the larger problem.

Operation Strix was in danger. Our fake daughter was missing!

Loid felt his stomach lurch, his head pulsated in excruciating pain. He needed to deduce her whereabouts immediately or hope Franky proved to be a stout babysitter once more. "S-she's not with you?" he smiled calmly, masking the terror that assailed his heart. "T-then..."

The police cannot be involved otherwise they will doubt my skills as a father and ultimately unraveling my cover. I would not only put Anya but Yor in danger of being punished. This cannot happen. She must be he-- wait.

"Yor," Loid's grave tone matched the cold expression he wore. "Please explain what you meant by: when did you get here? You were not expecting me, and the hole," he trailed off, turning half-way towards the center of the city, "this isn't a section of Berlint, nor does this look like Westalis. Yor, what have we gotten ourselves into?"

[thornroyal]

Mamas that would totally unalive you if you hurt their baby

[thornroyal]

❁ : it's a tad embarrassing, actually, to ask for help not because she can't reach the zipper - she can - but because yor cannot work the thing with no mirror in sight. camilla has been so kind and obliging that yor would be moved to tears if she didn't think it would be considered strange to do so. were other people always this kind to near-strangers? or were they becoming friends already?

'oh!' she's distracted by the sight of herself in the mirror. the red is decidedly flattering - it is a gorgeous, form-fitting dress with little ornamentation that cuts off halfway down the calf. she likes it more than she'd thought she could - thorn princess should never stand out so, but maybe yor forger can do it here.

'i - i think it looks great!' a pause, then she adds, 'i mean, do you think it looks good? oh, but we should pick something for you, too!' should she suggest something to match? is that weird too?

At least there wasn't much in terms of debate between the two of them. Not that Camilla really expected much when it came to dress choices but she did really feel that the red would bring out the most on Yor. A striking color for sure, one that'd grab the attention of anyone in the area if they passed by her while she had it on.

But sometimes that boldness is something everyone needed to finally take that step forward.

"I can help with that dear." Without a second thought she slipped on through to the dressing room, noticing the zipper just out of arms reach and helping herself to pull it all the way up.

"Now lets see how it looks..."

[thornroyal]

@celestellestial / starter call.

❁ : how it's gotten to this point, yor isn't quite sure, but they've both been staring at the screen of this game for the better part of an hour as the other girl - stelle? did she remember that correctly? - taps and presses away at an arcade game. it is entrancing, in the sort of way a gaping hole in the ground would be.

'but what is it even about?' maybe she should have asked earlier, but the act of cheering the other on was... a little more fun that she had thought it might be. 'there are so many flashing lights... and what is the score for?'

[thornroyal]

❁ : she would have done anything to avoid having this conversation; yor can't put words to why it's so distressing to think about these matters. it should be black and white - there is evil in the world and, to balance it out, there are good people like herself. she gets rid of evil, cleanses it, helps keep her country and its citizens and her brother and anya safe. garden has never led her astray.

but this? this is different. she doesn't know why, or maybe she's just not ready to confront the why and how just yet. she does know that she won't let evil people run rampant in the streets, not right in front of her very eyes, even if it isn't her responsibility to do so here.

'my duty is...' she falters in her speech, looking sidelong at the unconscious man upon the ground. 'my duty is to my family.'

'if someone like this could hurt my family, then yes, i will take care of them, but...' the words are just out of reach to put a voice with her thoughts. 'i can't chase down every single threat to my family, let alone to everyone here. they can come to me first. i'm not... i'm not a vigilante. people will do whatever they want, whether i am there to stop them or not.'

it doesn't cover all of her emotions, how this man's words do not sit well with her - of course she doesn't want to let criminals like this roam the streets! - but there's no good solution to the potential problem he's posed, no simple answer she can give. it leaves her dissatisfied and drained to not be able to firmly tell him off.

ㅤSukuna hummed a laugh. The woman’s responses, though somewhat reactive and repetitive, still left room for discussion–she yet questioned his reasoning. That hesitant curiosity held his interest, as people who allowed themselves to remain open-minded proved the most entertaining to engage with – and in the realm of curses and humans, a willingness to change or expand one’s perspective was a trait near-extinct.

It was worth his time to indulge in it until he grew bored.

“It’s not just him,” he began again, tone cryptic, as he stared into the unconscious face at his feet, his eyes peeling back the mortal layers. The man groaned in his sleep. “People like this don’t exist in a vacuum. Perhaps you intend to reform this man, but it won’t be enough.”

“Countless others will replace him. Is it your duty to do the same to them as you did to him?”

[thornroyal]

❁ : yor's nervous smile drops for a moment when aerith says that it wouldn't be worth it to teach her, but it is replaced by a more genuine look of joy as she clarifies that she'd do it for free. it is a far better answer than yor could have hoped for; she'd already mentally steeled herself against the potential disappointment of a refusal.

'i - i'd love to learn! i'm not... i don't have very many talents.' outside of murder and cleaning, anyway, she thinks to herself. 'i would love to learn something new - not just because i think i should, but because i want to do it.'

she's a bit more enthusiastic now, realizing she would love to create something beautiful with her own hands. leaning in closer, yor clasps one hand to her chest. 'i want to do it! ...please!'

Yor's compliment leaves Aerith beaming with pride. After all, how couldn't she be pleased with someone earnestly taking the time to admire a skill that she's perfected? Yor's hesitation, however, leaves her with a bit of a quizzical look on her face, but she can't help but smile at the honest attempt at asking for lessons. "Depends!"

"If you're asking if I can teach you in exchange for money, I don't really feel like it's worth the trouble," finger taps against her chin as she leaves the other in suspense for just a moment before finally coming around the say, "But I'd be happy to teach you for free just because I think more people should get into the art of flower arrangement!" Followed by a wink after saying so, she's teasing, of course, but hopefully, she hasn't left the poor woman's nerves too shaken up.

"Only if you're really interested though. It'd be kind of a waste to teach someone who wasn't really into it, don't you agree? The flowers deserve better than that."