wildflowers.

consciousness seeps in, slowly, one wisp at a time, and he eventually notices that it’s not morning. which is… odd. there’s a general feeling of unease creeping in, enfolding him like a cloak, but he shrugs it off. it’s a familiar feeling, one he experiences enough to know how to categorise so he doesn’t hesitate to jump to conclusions. “kwon nora,” he growls, calling out, his accent particularly strong at that time of night. “what d’ya want? either come out, or go away.” he then turns to switch on the lamp on his bedside table, its soft tone illuminating his room.

death walks slowly.

softly, she creeps in the quiet of the compound, fancies herself a phantom in her plain white shirt, gray shorts. the pallid glow of the moon through high placed windows leaves her washed out, her surroundings sterile. if you were to see her, from the end of the hallway, you might think her a ghost.

and really, you wouldn't be entirely wrong.

right now, however, nora is all girl and no ghost, despite what her visage may imply, a lingering fearfulness that clings to her like a cloak, follows her miasmatic, creeping fingers that curl into the hearts of those who approach. fear, like a shield, protects her. but in its protection, she is dually isolated. and so in small ways she reaches out, reconnects, forces herself into the lives of those unlucky few that have shown tolerance for her presence. hanjun is one of them, the poor thing, too strong to reveal the fear that crosses the eyes of so many in her presence, a strange truce between them, a friendship that lasts until morning and dissipates just as easily.

she likes his accent, and the gruff rumble to his words, as she slides through his door quite literally, not bothering with locks or the tangible restraints of the human body, a little laugh on her lips. he reaches for the lamp and just as swiftly as the light flickers on nora flickers away, an absent, chilly presence felt but not seen.

     “Go in front of me,” he commanded, trying to focus on gathering a dead enemy’s blood to form some sort of shield. It was brittle, but at least it would give him some layer of defense. “Run. Don’t look back.”

Practice missions are easy. The labyrinth had been a piece of cake- what good are armed men and machinery against a ghost? Fears - ok, that had been a little more iffy. But in general, Nora knew what she was doing. She was beyond fear now - she caused it. She was beyond life now - she was Death. She was dead, could render herself blinked out of existence in a half a second. She'd seen grown men with eyes wide and frightful just from taking a glance at her.

But it sucked. It was hard to feel like she cared about anything these days. Training seemed pointless - what good was hand to hand combat to her if she could vanish? All she needed was a gun, really. And friendships? Those were few and far between, when her very presence spelled fear and anxiety, brought nervous energy and a cloud of gloom and foreboding bearing down on those around her.

At least on a mission, Hansol had no choice but to stick by her. Technically she didn't have a choice either, but it was a bit easier to ghost on someone (pun intended) when you were invisible, intangible, inaudible. She finds him anyway, flickers into place beside him, and watches his pupils dilate. Very slightly, perhaps imperceptibly, he pulls away from her. He probably doesn't realize he's doing it, even. Nora has become acutely hyper attuned to these miniscule actions in others, to the signs of fear she brings about. She wonders if this is the true meaning of death - the gradual isolation she faces. It sours her already unstable mood, the smell of blood thick in the air now that she is near to him, her face flinching at the notion of retreat.

A glance behind her exposes the fact this is their only option and she nods abruptly, transforms into something ephemeral - her body created from a strange misty substance, shimmering and silver gray. With her back towards him she manipulates her ectoplasmic features from Nora into a visage of horror, turns back to glance at him, monstrous mouth moving to state and rasping and otherworldly "No one will bother us now, right?"  The giggle that follow is pure Nora, however, though she maintains this horrific disguise as they speed through the compound, startling and frightening a few stray soldiers who cross their paths, until they reach a cleared area and she drops back to the ground, all girl once more - panting quietly as she rummages in her bag.

“i’m pretty sure you brought that up all on your own, with your thinly veiled blow-talk.” moonsoo corrects her, though he cranes his head back disinterested as he says it, looking for a place that might work before he turns back to the man he’d dragged along with them on their walk so far, shakes at his shoulder before he asks if he’s a local, and when he gets an affirmation, asks him in his limited mandarin where some out of the way locations are. eventually he picks up enough to the point of where he has a vague idea of an out of the way spot, and he sends the guy on his way before taking a sharp turn right, fully expecting nora will fall in step next to him, apparently indifferent on the notion that she won’t.

moonsoo is obnoxious, and nora wants badly to punch him in his smug, obnoxious face. he makes her feel ridiculous - juvenile bursts of anger boiling in her veins, moodswings the likes of which she thought she'd left behind in high school. that, paired with the drama of the mission unfolding around them, plans quite literally blowing up in their faces, has her riding on a mixture of adrenaline, uncertainty, and petulance that doesn't make for an ideal mission companion. but then, is moonsoo, with all his fragility and pride and sardonic dismissiveness any better? its no wonder, the things the other say about him when he isn't around to hear. moonsoo has a strange sway over the other arcana - it makes sense, given the fact he can force anyone to do anything at any moment. it breeds a kind of fear, and respect. and in his wake, when he is long out of earshot - resentment. as he rolls his eyes and snaps at her again she sighs quietly, pushes her hand back through her hair, eyes sliding closed as she sets him aside and tries to push away the maelstrom of chemicals in her blood.

the offer for a middle-ground sort of plan, she thinks, is a fine enough idea. instead, moonsoo drawls back at her, as if even this attempt at teamwork is absurd, and she pinches the bridge of her nose. "fine, jesus christ, just do whatever the fuck you want." she's ten seconds away from leaving him there to figure things out on his own - its not like she really needs help, to get back to the rendezvous point. all she needs to do is disappear and boost there with a little ectoplasmic help, or wear a meat puppet of a passerby to walk there, much the same way he is at the moment, though admittedly his manner of implementation is far cruder. she exhales, impatient, when he continues. "yeah, of course, just - get a move on." she mumbles, too annoyed with his constant, incessant snark to fight. she follows after him, falls into step and wonders if she ought to try and sooth his meat shield, but the man looks pretty lost in mumbling his own frantic prayers beneath his breath, so she figures he's handling himself fine.

he is doing his best to start light, the basics of the essential martial arts, a few extra tricks to her training, just to help her in time of need — because he knows that her capabilities are more than enough. he witnesses just then when he aims a careful hit towards the side of her face, the force behind it infinitesimal, and she just disappears out of his sight for a moment. a small sigh leaves his lips as jinwoo lets his hands fall down on his sides, a small sign of his frustration bubbling during the past hour. “yeah, yeah — i know the feeling —” he grumbles, one hand going to grab the back of his neck as he pauses, more upset with the fact that he doesn’t know how to help with that problem. “if you can blink out, that’s good, you won’t need all of this. but i don’t know, if someone jumps at ya, you still gotta learn to kick their ass. even if they don’t, it’s still a really satisfying feeling —” offering her a grin, he raises his palms, open towards her. “come on, let’s try something different — why won’t you hit me. try to do what i was doing for the last couple’o minutes.”

honestly, nora finds it a little unfair.

jinwoo doesn't look like much - all thin limbs and pale skin and sleepy eyes. so why is it so easy for him to bob and weave and dodge around her. okay, its fair - she's been slacking when it comes to hand to hand combat. and yeah, alright, its a power thing, and it isn't like her powers make sense either. it just seems like it doesn't suit him, she decides reproachfully, perhaps more out of envy than anything else.

she's found herself wondering lately if the powers they manifested say anything about who they are as people, if there was some strange predisposition in them that caused this strangeness to mutate or awaken. none of it makes much sense - the science behind it seems fragile at best, but then, what does she know? she knows that at least spiderman was introduced to radiation, at least the x-men were born with a dubious genetic mutation. even harry potter's wizarding gene is chalked up to something scientifically traceable. but the arcana? what - some meteor shower? its not as though they touched the rock, breathed in some bizarre stardust or something.

but whatever the reason, the upshot is this: they've been at this for hours, and she can tells he's trying to restrain himself, to temper the strength that permeates his limbs now, and yet despite her best efforts she's blinking out in front of him, drifts through him with a groan - so that he too can feel the icy disappointment of her own inability to control this strange new set of reflexes. she slides back into place, solidifying before him with a sheepish smile - even the proud and arrogant nora knows when she's being frustrating, and considering she's asked his help specifically with this, even she has the decency to be apologetic.  

he shudders, and his shoulders curl backward at the feel of her hand shoving its way through his spine. throws a nasty look at her over his shoulder immediately after. “and now you want to go south, it’s like you’re trying to be unsubtle.” he mutters out, if only just to piss her off further. “sure thing sweetheart,” he answers her back, even if he is dubious at what kind of cover the area surrounding the river might have. still, he follows after her, head ducked down and adrenaline bubbling through his veins, eventually catches a passerby with a hand closed around their arm, a mumbled out order to follow into step next to him, effectively turns them into a human shield from the open square beside them. “i don’t know where that thing’s been.” moonsoo determines after a beat silence at hearing nora’s proposition.

moonsoo is infuriating, in the way he sneaks beneath her skin, in the way he shoots of barbs as easily as he breathes. he's silvertongued, quick witted, fits the moniker he's been given down to his very core: he is not just devilish, he is the devil himself. it drives her crazy, yanking away from the  tight grip of his fingers, pulling back to herself and flickering away again, an instinct she has trouble suppressing. "jesus christ." she mumbles beneath her breath, pitches it low as the other shoots down her statement, but what the fuck else are they to do? go to ground and wait for some asshole enemy combatants to ferret them out? squat in fear somewhere? he can do that all he wants, but as long as she is intangible she's bulletproof, and she's not particularly keen on sitting around waiting for danger to show up at her door.

its not exactly team spirit they're showing off here.

"alright, should we go hide out in a fucking bunker then, and wait for someone to show up and blow a hole through your head? does that sound like more fun? or what, are you just gonna shout 'stand down' every couple minutes and hope for the best." the truth is the best option for either of them probably exists somewhere in the middle, but they're entirely too busy being angry at one another and the situation to really think that through.

once he reaches the fourth floor and sees her jihoon doesn’t even wait for her to say anything. he open his arms slightly, smiles in a sarcastic manner. sarcasm and irony is the only way they can communicate to one another if he has to be honest. “did you wait too much for me, babe?” the pet name they’ve been using downstairs leaves his lips almost with annoyance. he looks around, then back at her. “ok, i fucked it up. we gotta go. fast. do you have the statue?”

nora plays the part of an art buyer well, drifting through the yammering crowds of the elite, casting benevolent smiles towards those who she knows to be particularly important. she lingers over brush strokes and exclaims delicately about the intricacies of this or that, the suggestion of this piece or the freedom of that one. all the while, the gears spin and stutter in her head, etching out her course towards the top floor. she’s impeded by the boy on her arm. she leads him around the room for awhile, hoping his clumsy grip on her arm will strengthen, hoping his words will lilt more convincingly from his admittedly pretty lips. instead, he stumbles over everything he says, his laugh is a little nervous. get it together, she thinks towards him, and when he has (mostly), off she goes.

its easy enough to make her way to the room, to flirt her way past a guard, and to claim illness to escape from another. she’s delicate, she just needs to lay down a moment to get her wits about her- all that wine went right to her head. he smiles benevolently at her and she rolls her eyes when she turns her back. men are the easiest to fool with a pretty face like hers. the sculpture, when she finds it, is heavy and smooth and lovely, btu seems awfully underwhelming for all the fuss they’ve been going to in order to get ahold of them. but hey- whatever pays, right?

it should be easy now, she waits for jihoon, he teleports up, then they teleport out. solid.

ten, twenty minutes later she knows something has gone wrong. thirty and she’s about ready to abandon him, sneak out with the sculpture and make her own way back to the compound. he appears just before she decides to go for it, wild eyed and a little flustered, his words tumbling harried.  “you’re so fucking stupid.” she scolds when he smiles at her, “of course i have it, now get us out of here.” she instructs, takes a few steps closer so they are toe to toe, better range for him to whisk them away. but he doesn’t, stands sheepishly before her instead. “what is it now?”

truthfully, he sets himself up in traps like this often. where ego beats out sensibilities and he cuts off his own nose to spite his face. there’s a marginal amount of sense still left at the moment though, at least. they don’t know who’s around them, who set off the bomb, and if the mystery players have identified all of the arcana (or more importantly, moonsoo and nora specifically). they just have a destination in mind, not a roadmap to get there that details how not to get killed in the process. he finds himself sighing, reaches into the holster he has strapped underneath his shirt, takes out his gun, makes sure he has a bullet in his chamber before he fits it back in place, though he leaves his fingers wrapped loose around the grip. “did you decide whether to blow yet?” moonsoo asks her pointedly, like a jackass.

moonsoo is all careful control, calm and cold. his voice is steely and his gaze a purposeful nonchalant, and if nora was another girl, she might even have believed he was as levelheaded as he presented right now. but she isn’t, she’s nora, and sheknows the fire that boils and burns beneath his placid surface.  moonsoo is all fury and power, spikes of adrenaline and rage prompting him to abrupt movements, surprising even nora, in the moment, as he yanks at her wrist, twists it around. “fucking bitch,” she fires off, fingers curling as she pulls back, flickering from corporeality to intangibility, still rubbing at the red mark his grip at left, as if she could feel it, or touch, her fingers phasing through her forearm in the movement.

“you’re such a child,” she scolds haughtily in the wake of his temper tantrum, eyes rolling as he snaps out a suggestion, and lets out a sigh worthy of the most annoyed of teenaged girls. she had perfected the art long ago, carried it with her into adulthood.  “the safe zone, you fucking idiot? you know, when they gave us the rundown on the situation, they told us to meet up on the outskirts?” she rattles off the latitude and longitude they’d been provided with, brow lifting expectantly. “you’re so fucking ridiculous.” moonsoo’s pride is what fails him so often, ego obscuring his good sense, prompting him to take every word she says as some kind of criticism, attack - and in fairness they often are.