2022-07-02 - Concealing In The Wind
- Log: 2022-07-02 - Concealing In The Wind
- Cast: Heero Yuy, Sousuke Sagara
- Where: Tokyo-3
- OOC - IC Date: 2022-07-02 - UC 0096-07-01, I guess, technically
- Summary: Fresh off an unpleasant runin with a middle schooler with a circular saw, Sousuke Sagara makes an unexpected new contact.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Heero Yuy -- sorry, "Duo Maxwell" -- is returning home after classes, standing in front of the train station waiting for his ride home. He's dressed in the usual school uniform, carrying the thin leather bag that his student stipend allows, and also... has a bag of groceries with him, because he's managed to become extremely independent and capable of feeding himself in the last six months.
The clack-clack, clack-clack of the trains, the *pin-pon*, 'the train will be arriving on platform 3 in a few moments. please steer clear of the yellow line' PA... the chatter of the station all around him...
Heero allows himself a momentary distraction to absorb the everyday life around him.
It's about to get a lot more messy.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke Sagara has just had An Evening, where An Evening involves a gun fight with a super-powerful kaiju-middleschooler armed with a rotary saw and a can-do attitude. Sousuke has learned many important things. He has also gotten a bit cut-up and definitely pretty scraped. He had to leave some of his equipment behind, too. But he got out of Tsutsujidai intact.
The doors open.
A young man emerges at some speed. Brown hair; sunbeaten skin; flinty gray eyes. He's taken some effort, during the return trip, to bandage his wounds, but the fact of the matter is he's in what looks like a hastily donned high school uniform for a school that isn't in this area; a pair of trousers that look like they're for a military uniform; obviously scraped up and dirty; also he's got a conspicuous scar on his cheek; also the duffle bag he's holding has been rooted around in enough that the outlines of what's DEFINITELY some kind of rifle can be seen on the bottom, and--
You know what, he's probably just some kind of airsoft weirdo, it's fine.
Sousuke steps out, takes a look around, and his posture coils. Got to...make some calls, he decides. Where's the Tokyo-3 safehouse again...
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Heero Yuy has been off the battlefield for more than six months now, following the self-detonation of his Gundam. It's a semi-public event; a terrorist refusing to give in to parley and destroying his secrets with him when cornered, the news reported. The part about G-Hound threatening the colonies' safety is predictably omitted.
But some instincts don't go away so easily.
Sousuke passes Heero, and all the alarm bells fire off in his brain -- the hastily donned high school uniform: a bad attempt at camouflage? The pants, which don't match; he's been in a scuffle; his ability to visualise a battle rifle inside the duffle bag he's carrying--
"Excuse me," Heero speaks up all of a sudden, turning around, casting blue eyes on Sousuke. His posture is neutral, but his eyes aren't a regular high school student's...
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke, on the other hand, is in high alert already. Just got to get to his safe house. Make some calls. Straighten himself up. Chidori will be worrieed by now. Not to mention he has to compile a report. He needs--
'Excuse me.'
Sousuke stops moving and takes a long breath. He half-turns, taking Heero in with his own steel-gray eyes. ...Something's wrong. This man doesn't look right. This man looks like...
....hell.
"Can I help you?" Sousuke asks, tension wired through him like a detonator cord.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Heero can sense someone who's on high alert -- if only because he's gone from orange to red now already; there's something in both their body languages now, like he's waiting for Sousuke to make a sudden move. Very brief glances betray Heero's train of thought on a tactical level: he's identifying the exits, the chokepoints, the areas of highest risk. There's so many people around here. Casualties might not be avoidable, if he tries something.
"You..." Heero starts for a moment.
Hell is in his eyes... and he sees a reflection in Sousuke's eyes too. That scar is old. That's a battle scar.
"... you're injured," Heero says a bit more lightly. "Do you need..." Medical help? An ambulance? No, that'd send him running. He tries a different tack.
"A safe place?"
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
You're injured. Yes. Correct.
These are not Mithril codes, is Sousuke's first thought. Still not cause for action. He has to get this report out. What Anti told him...what Sousuke confirmed..cannot be lost. Besides.
...he cannot miss another day of homework.
"I have already treated the worst of it," Sousuke says, still wary. Yes or no. Yes or no. Kind stranger, enemy agent, or underinformed ally?
"...but what did you have in mind?"
Gamble it is.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Heero doesn't even know of Mithril's existence; his intelligence of Earthside military operations and organisations are, at best, spotty. But he thinks: it's best to offer what he thinks this individual might want and lead him away from a possible shootout in a crowded place like a station...
... why is he getting involved?
He's wary. He's treated the worst of it; he's skilled at dressing his own wounds. Not surprising. "... I'll lend you a place nearby."
He glances left and right again, and seems satisfied no other agents are tailing them; he proceeds to leave the station, moving in a manner that Sousuke can identify is designed to naturally wean out any people tailing them along the way, through the crowds, into the blind spots, and out of camera range -- which is difficult, to say the least, in a place like Tokyo-3.
In the end, they end up at what definitely looks like an unassuming apartment in the middle of one of Tokyo-3's suburbs; a safe house, in every sense the word usually is. Heero climbs up the stairs and unlocks the door.
"You're not following standard urban camouflage patterns," he finally explains his reasons. "I figured you were compromised, and needed to disappear immediately for a few hours."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
...angles. Angles. What is this. Why...
...but maybe that itself is reason. Was this person waiting for him? Here? Who could possibly? "...very well," he says.
Sometimes to learn about an enemy, you must walk into their den.
The path forward is pleasingly indirect. Kaname makes Sousuke walk through so many wide-open avenues, it's almost relaxing to be guided by someone who understands 'stay out of the cameras' as a life philosophy.
Sousuke glances to the doors, looking for enemies prepared to ambush, and when Heero opens the door...he says the magic words.
"Something like that," Sousuke says; it's more or less exactly what happened, but there's value to an air of secrecy. He has, after all, not actually accepted that this man is a friend, merely friendly. Friendly is dangerous. But sometimes you take what you can get.
"Have you heard of the phantom town?" he asks, because honestly just everyone should know at this point. "...it's dangerous." He plops his bag down. He wants to sit down and take a break. He doesn't. He reaches into the bag - olive uniform, sliced open and removed recently, small bits of blood on it; machine pistol; an older model machine pistol; a battle rifle that looks like it's configured for reconnoisance. What he pulls out, though, is a box of CalorieMarks, opening one packet and snapping into it immediately.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Friendly is dangerous, and Heero knows that. Because he also doesn't want Sousuke to let down his guard, per se, not that he expects him to; but unexpectedly, nothing actually happens between here and the safehouse. Inside is...
It's pretty much an almost identical mirror of the habits of one of Sousuke's undoubtedly many safe houses: a Japanese studio apartment designed to look inconspicious -- not empty, because that's suspicious, but 'mildly lived in', to the point where the aggressive mundanity of it all becomes telling to those in the know.
"Mm," Heero nods in assent. Then Sousuke asks him about the phantom town. "... phantom town?"
He sounds genuinely curious. The danger part isn't what intrigues him; Sousuke plops down, and he goes for the window from a dead angle and rolls the blinds down. Classic way to obscure the windows without exposing oneself.
He looks towards the two pistols and rifle, and to his credit, he doesn't leap to his own defence or anything. The CalorieMarks though...
"... fruit or chocolate?" he finds himself asking, as if this, above all else, was the true test of whether or not he could really trust this guy.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
"It sounds mad, I know," Sousuke says. "...but denying the evidence of my own eyes is much worse than madness. It's accessible by falling asleep on a certain part of the Nouvelle Tokyo train system. It appears quiet at first, but there are..." He taps at his arm, obviously recently injured. "...defenders."
Having just revealed the presence of a literal dream town as if he were discussing a perfectly normal enemy encampment, he glances at Heero's question, and then chews and swallows his cookie. "Fruit," he says, matter of factly. "I can't stand anything else."
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
"... hmm," Heero quietly nods, because it's not as if he hasn't seen truly bizarre things ever since he came to Earth. "Falling asleep? A concentrated gas attack? It'd be difficult to sabotage Nouvelle Tokyo's train station without drawing attention to the Concern and other child companies. Strange."
He folds his arms gently, and puts his bag down. And then Sousuke speaks: fruit.
There's a faint smile on his lips as he hears that answer. "I can't stand chocolate either," Heero answers, sliding a drawer open to reveal a small stash of, indeed, fruit CalorieMarks.
"I'm a ghost, as far as anyone is concerned," Heero says. "Almost every agency believes me to be dead and disposed of, as far as I know." Except G-Hound... he knows G-Hound's onto him now. "That should be one less loose end for you to worry about."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
"My thought as well," Sousuke says. "I believe some manner of gas is involved, but the destination has been more important than the mechanism, so far."
In other words: Not his department, they just send him in.
He glances at Heero's stash, and finds a thin smile on his own face. Despite the treasure trove, he tips a fruit cookie out of the package for Heero. A bond between soldiers, of sorts.
"...in the clear, huh," Sousuke says. "Congratulations. My own group entrusts my safe houses to my discretion so...don't worry about them tracing it back here."
In other words....safety. For now. Sousuke releases a slow breath.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Heero takes hold of the cookie when Sousuke hands one to him; he inspects it for a moment, then nods and takes a bite out of it. It never fails. Many may deride it for its flavour, but there's a nostalgic familiarity in how it tastes and how effective it is when trying to just resupply your body in the heat of battle...
"... maybe," he says, however, when Sousuke congratulates him. "My mission is over. ... I'm finding it a bit difficult to understand what comes after that. What happens to a soldier, when he's no longer needed."
He doesn't know why he's being so forthcoming... maybe it's the bond shared between CalorieMarks. A pause.
He thumbs towards the bathroom. "... there's an encrypted comms device in there, if you need it before the night's out. The walls are soundproofed, so don't worry about me snooping. Never met anyone today."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Heh. "I usually found another mission," Sousuke says. "Another theater to fight in." ...this guy looks like he's seventeen tops, but he talks like he's been doing this for a whiiiiiile. Then again...maybe that's not so unusual.
Maybe it is the bond shared between CalorieMarks. He finds himself saying, "Sometimes I do wonder what it's like to be a man who doesn't need a weapon. It seems like such a strange idea." His eyes fall to that bag. "But...they seem happy, somehow."
He looks up toward the bathroom at Heero's instruction and nods. Not quite forthcoming enough to say exactly when he'll do it, but he does say, "Understood." He will need that, in fact.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
"... hmm," Heero is thoughtful about Sousuke's response. Just find another mission. Apply yourself to another cause. Find another theatre of battle to be in. Realistically, that's what he should've done -- cling tight to the idea that his mission isn't truly over, no matter how many people fall apart before him, until OZ is destroyed. But...
"... I followed that route instead," Heero admits. "I woke up with no name, no weapon, no mission... not even a home left to fight for. In that confusion, I tried seeing what it was like, even though I also found it to be an alien idea."
He frowns quietly. "I still don't think I get it. But... there's something useful, in trying to understand life, if you fight with all your might to protect someone else's life."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
"Yes," Sousuke says, quietly. "I've...done some undercover work, recently. There's so much that doesn't make any sense. But..."
His hands fold. He thinks of Shinji, the geeky boy with the love of models and AS specifications; and Onodera, the bleach-blond guy who would look like a delinquent if he weren't in the permanent orbit of someone like Sousuke; and Tokiwa and Inaba, and...
Blue hair in the wind....
His eyes turn up. "Even if I don't entirely understand the world they live in, I find more and more I want to protect it." Yes. Protect it. That's what this emotion is. He surely couldn't dare to try to truly be part of it, of course.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Heero is silent, thinking of those around him...
Relena yelling at him to come kill him, as he desperately hides underneath a rock. Asuka definitely not buying his cover story, even though it's actually not that far from the truth. Relena showing up again at a cafe he's working at, half a country away.
...
Actually, the people he's been around are weirdos. But... that doesn't diminish that statement.
"Hmm. That's a good conclusion to come to," Heero finds himself answering. "Up until now, I've been dedicated to only one mission, and at the end of that, I found myself... insufficient, in many ways."
Heero is younger than Sousuke -- and in a sense, may not be as experienced as him, hasn't fought in many theatres due to the sharp hyperfocus of his mission... but he's experienced enough to find the ways in which he finds himself needing more, as well.
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
Sousuke can sense that - the similarities yet differences. Heero speaks of only a single mission, the way Sousuke had long ago. Before Majhid bested him. He finds himself thinking also of Anti, the way the young Kaiju-boy couldn't even seem to think of the possibility of missions beyond the first.
Something aches, deep in his chest. He wonders why.
"For what it's worth, it's a talent that comes with practice. Though I've found a harsh tutor is helpful." Is it strange, that he admires that fan of hers, now...
He finishes his cookie, then stands. "I should check in," he says.
<Pose Tracker> Heero Yuy has posed.
Heero shifts again and lifts his groceries up. "... I can see that. I picked one skill at... basically random -- making coffee -- and it seemed to draw people to me," he admits, which may be a familiar way with trying to relate to a social life which seems byzantine to soldiers like them. "I'll find my path, I'm sure of it. Thanks."
He starts towards the door. "The door has a latch, so feel free to lock up when you want to leave. I'm going back to my apartment."
A quiet pause, and he turns around and offers his hand to shake. "... Heero Yuy. That's as close to a name as I have. It'll do."
<Pose Tracker> Sousuke Sagara has posed.
"Coffee...hm. Better than mine." Sousuke finds himself chuckling. "I ended up as the trash monitor."
He's putting his bag in order - trust may be won, but maybe not 'leave all his guns unattended' trust - but rises just the same to shake the offered hand. "Sousuke Sagara," he says, and shakes firmly. His real name, such as it is. And then...lingers.
He meets Heero's eyes. "If something comes up, find me at Jindai High."
Equal information. More or less.
He steps away to sling his bag up and make for the transmitter.