no.1

If there was one benefit to wearing this blindfold visor, 9S found, it was that people couldn’t always tell when you were sitting and studying them. In a scientific way, of course, not a creepy one. When you were made to gather data, that’s what you did, especially when you had no other goals.

His sensors pick up subtle cues that something’s not right, something’s not quite human here, not all the way. The smoke is a less subtle sign, and he watches in fascination as it mends her injuries. Some sort of nanotechnology? More and more he was finding that in this place, some things simply couldn’t be explained. Boy, it’d be handy to have self-healing that worked that fast…

Oh, she’s waving. He lifts a hand to wave back, asking casually, “Are there hostiles here?” 

Huh. That was a weird way to ask that question. Noi frowns as she fiddles with the clasp of her mask, slowly pulling the jaw back into place. The teeth of her mask come together with a quiet click.

“Nah,” she finally offers, gesturing to her bloodstained gear. “Nothing but some dumbasses who thought they could take me.”

As she scrutinizes the kid, she flexes the hand of the previously-broken arm in an unconscious measure to make sure that the muscle tissues had reconnected properly. What was with the blindfold? That didn’t seem particularly... safe. Or tactical. Had he even been staring at her, now that she thought about it?

Whether those tears are exaggerated or not, he still wants to help. He narrowly avoids being knocked on his backside when the giant woman leaps to her feet and instinctively ducks as the grate is ripped from the ground. Thankfully, she doesn’t toss it.

“I’m going to reach in there and grab it, of course!”

The opening looks pretty narrow, and there’s no doubt it’s going to leave some nasty scrapes on his plating, but he doesn’t mind a little cosmetic damage. Pathfinder gives her an encouraging thumbs up before awkwardly wriggling his arm into the drain, fingers blindly grasping for the thin slip of paper until he feels it brush against his outermost sensors.

“I got it, friend!”

He tugs, but nothing happens. He shutters his optic in a confused blink and tries again. A warning message helpfully informs him the movement of his right arm is restricted from the shoulder down, and he starts to panic, feet scrabbling for purchase but doing nothing to free his trapped limb.

“Oh, no. I’m stuck! What do I do?!”

Noi watches excitedly, gripping the grate as though it was a stress ball and noting the size of her new friend’s hands and arms. Certainly smaller than her own. Thinner. Potentially more dexterous? Overall, probably more realistic for him to be able to reach in there than herself, and it seems she’s right. Noi gives another great jump of joy when he announces his success.

“Yeah-hah! You’re the best!!”

Her mirth quickly wanes, however, when she sees that this isn’t going to be as easy as she had anticipated.

“Oh no,” Noi echoes in a strained tone, carelessly tossing aside the grate in her hands with a clatter. She crouches down to get a better look at how his arm is lodged within the opening, her mind whirling with possibilities, none of them particularly cunning. “Okay... wait! I have an idea!”

She leaps back up, excited once again. She takes a position behind him and pats his shoulder in a rapid succesion of taps--what she thinks is being gentle. “I’m gonna pull you outta there!” 

The cell phone was an interesting little thing. Noi had disregarded it when she first arrived, but as the days went by, her curiosity piqued--and she found herself wondering how En had not yet capitalized on such a device yet. As far as she was aware, there was no smoke powering it, as many of the inventions of her world relied upon.

The keyword for the thing, however, was little. It was dwarfed by her hands, and even at her most careful Noi was clumsy in typing. Too often, she would accidentally open some other application or lose what she was working on entirely--a great source of frustration.

“Piece of shit...!” 

In a flash of rage, Noi flung the phone from her hands, hurling it like it was a baseball. She expected to hear it crunch against a wall; instead, it was the sound of a grunt as it connected with a poor passerby. 

Sometimes, you just needed some ice cream, you know? But it was only when Noi looked down at the two ice cream cones in her hand did she realize that she had instinctively ordered one for Shin. Maskless for once and silver hair pulled into a ponytail, Noi frowned. Not that she minded eating the extra, but that the habit of buying for two still hadn’t been shaken soured her mood a little.

Before she could really get too lost in thought, Noi turned and stumbled, not noticing the small girl who had been behind her. She let out a surprised gasp as she regained her footing, careful not to drop her food or trample the girl. Under normal circumstances, she might loudly chastise or ignore the kid entirely, but Noi, brows still knit unhappily, regarded her for a moment before stooping to offer the cone in her left hand.

Usually, Noi let her own inner smoke do the healing when she was injured. It wasn’t as quick as the near-instantaneous effects of her released smoke, especially depending on the gravity of the wound, but she liked to relish in reminders of particularly good fights.

Here, though? There were no good fights. She sat hunched over on the sidewalk, cradling a broken arm--received not from any worthwhile endeavor, just simple carelessness. Already it was beginning to mend itself, but Noi unlatched the mouth of her mask, heaved a great sigh, and released a plume of black smoke that enveloped her arm.

“So annoying,” she hissed. When the smoke cleared, the arm she was cradling had returned to its un-broken state, and she extended and flexed her fingers for good measure. Good as new. Noi looked as though she was about to get up, still brewing in her frustration, when she noticed the small figure intently watching her across the way. 

Octavio felt like he’d hit a brick wall. Taking a stumbling step back after telling the person off, he started to understand why. This woman was so tall he had to tip his head back. Taller than Makoa, he suspected. Massive, really. Then he saw the mask. His shoulders tensed up involuntarily and he threw both hands up, palms out, displaying his innocence of all transgressions.

❝ Magic? No, no. I mean, I am pretty good, but it’s all skill, sister. ❞ And speed. Which he was probably going to have to rely on here. This wasn’t an arena, he’d gathered that much, but something about this stranger told him that if things god dicey, he should cut and run rather than trying to fight it out. He kept his sights on the woman’s mask, as if that might give him some insight to her intentions. It didn’t look like any of the Outlands gangs he knew of.

His act of innocence only raised her suspicions at first--at the show of his palms, Noi’s own fists curled, prepared to strike in anticipation of a magical retaliation. Only when it was clear that there was, in fact, no smoke coming from his fingertips did her defensive position relax.

“Oh. You’re a human, then, I guess?” Noi said, a hint of disappointment in her voice. “That’s no fun...” 

Pathfinder almost misses the despondent stranger as he prances on his merry way, but the sound of someone in distress turns his head. Immediately, he slips through the crowd to stand at her side, and is about to rest a reassuring hand on her shoulder when the enormity of the… er, situation, strikes him.

“Wow! You might be the biggest person I’ve ever met!” He means that as a compliment, of course–it’s not often that he meets someone a lot taller (and overall larger) than he is. “Are you as strong as you look, friend?”

Wait. She was upset about something, wasn’t she? The MRVN leans over to look at the grate, his optic squinting at the barely visible coupon trapped beneath their feet. Is that what she’s trying to reach? A lightbulb flickers on his screen as he bounces back a safe distance, pointing at the grate.

“If you lift that, I will try and get your coupon for you! If I can’t, I will get you a new one!”

“Huh?” Noi sniffles in a way that suggests that it’s possible she had been roused to crocodile tears, but it’s not exactly easy to tell behind the mask. “Oh... Thanks... I mean... I’m pretty strong...”

She lets out a sigh and sits back on her feet to get a look at the stranger who approached her and--oh, wow. What is he? She gives him a good once-over. He certainly looks more advanced than the robotic bodies En managed to produce. Whatever smoke powering him must be powerful as hell, and she’s about to remark on that when he makes his offer.

Noi positively sparkles, leaping from her seated position.

“What! You mean it!? Okay!!”

Not a moment’s hesitation later, she’s pried off the grate near-effortlessly, torn from its screws like paper ripped from a notebook.

Noi didn’t account for the fact that it could rain here on the island. Rain and sorcerers did not mix--it never rained in their world, and only the unfortunate bastards caught in Hole experienced the effects of a storm: lethargy, nausea, a weakened will.

When those dark clouds rolled in, she had been wrapping up some... business outside. The unconscious bodies of ruffians at her feet, Noi wiped the blood from her gloved knuckles when the clap of thunder made her jump--and the sudden downpour of rain heaved from the sky. 

Oh, no. She needed shelter, now.

Noi took a running start out of the alleyway she had been working in, a little nervous to be actually being rained on; weaker sorcerers had been known to die from prolonged direct contact. She wondered how long she had with her powers intact, even with the mask and gear on.  

  Another day at Split Happens. It’s become habit to spend a good portion of his downtime here. There’s a lot of games here that Noriaki hasn’t played; a lot of games that he hasn’t even heard of. Such as the one he’s on right now.

  Fighting games aren’t his forte, but it only took him a few rounds to get the hang of the controls and strategy. The computer opponents are going down without a problem. With a few quick inputs, his enemy is taken down in a sufficiently gory way. He has a moment to take in another victory before a loud laugh takes his attention. He turns to look at the person who snuck up behind him.

  The mask takes him off guard. She already has an imposing figure (the muscles are probably on par with or exceeds Mr. Joestar’s, and with her height? Anybody else might be scared shitless), why did she add the mask to her attire? Not to mention how many tickets she has – how many games do you have to play to get that many? What is she even going to spend that all on?

  She asked a question. Stop staring and answer, Noriaki. “It’s a fighting game.” He locks his eyes back onto the screen, pressing a few buttons to head out to the character select. “It has a lot of bloodshed. Want to play?” He’s never one to turn down a new challenger, after all.

Video games were never really something she had paid much attention to. She was a busy woman, after all--too busy actually fighting to care to do it virtually. But... she had never considered that there even were fighting games. And it’s not like she had been seeing any action here.

“I like the sound of that! I wanna rip a guy’s heart out!” The gorier, the better, in her opinion. “Okay! We can both play?”

Clearly, Noi had no experience in these things, and the cabinent wasn’t exactly built for someone of her stature, so in order to see the screen and have access to the buttons, she had to stoop slightly. At least she would get a mild workout from this. Her mask also was a bit problematic vision-wise, so after a moment’s debate she decided to remove it, allowing her silver hair to cascade down her shoulders while stuffing the mask in her pockets.

The buttons and stick seemed fragile in her hands, so she made a note to not get too animated. They seemed like they would rip right out of the console. Gingerly, she considered the character select screen, choosing the biggest guy she could find, of course.

This place fucking sucked. Maybe she could have tolerated the mysterious circumstances with which she was dropped here. She was pretty indifferent about that. Honestly, the idea of playing the game and finding an escape back to En’s manor even sounded kind of fun.

But why the hell did everything here have to be so... so... clean? 

And small. She felt like a bull in a china shop every time she entered some new little cafe or whatever with their charming bright lights and stupid friendly exterior. It sucked. Where was the grime? The unsavoryness? She had yet to find a place to eat that was as good as her and Shin’s favorite restaurant back home.

“What?! That much for a little pastry?” She snorted in indignation, nose pressed to the outside glass of a bakery that had caught her eye. “It doesn’t even look that good... who do they think they are... no way.”

When she didn’t have someone to set her straight, Noi was bad at paying attention. Could you blame her? The world was full of distractions as it was, but it was that ghost of a devil in her that really sealed the deal, the effects of an exam that never really went away--the desire to obey only the most gratifying whims, even if they were, well, stupid.

And, boy, were they stupid sometimes. That’s how she found herself on the sidewalk, on all fours, banging on a steel drain grate.

“Nooooooo!”

Noi had been en route to using that handy little All-U-Can-Eat buffet coupon the suckers that ran this island so graciously bestowed upon her. She felt it was the right time; the stress of not knowing how things were back home was starting to get to her, and she hadn’t had a real good fight in weeks. She was restless. But in a moment of distraction, the ticket slipped from her hands in the wind and right into the drain.

“God damnit!!”

Even if she removed the grate, which she could do with ease, it was simply too small and too deep for her to successfully fetch it. So Noi chose to sit there,  mourning her loss and redirecting foot traffic.

The interior of Split Happens was enough to make Noi think that maybe this place wasn’t so bad after all. All of the neon lights, the shitty arcade games, the food and bar--she couldn’t believe it. It was just a big, glitzy den of entertainment that, strangely enough, reminded her of home. Maybe it had a devil’s touch.

Noi wasted no time ping-ponging throughout the place, eating and playing to her heart’s content. She was particularly fond of the physical games, where she could rack up reams of tickets by, say, launching a skee-ball at a dangerous velocity (and no employee was paid enough to try to tell a masked behemoth no).

Once she had draped herself in more tickets than the machine could spit out, Noi wandered over to the arcade cabinents. There was a kid there, furiously tapping away, and while she intended simply to pass by, the flashing screen caught her attention. Two little men were fighting--punch, punch, kick, jump--until one of them, presumably the one the kid controlled, flashed and put a fist through the other’s chest in what the game described as a ‘FATALITY.’ 

Noi laughed gleefully. 

“ARRGHHHH!”

Noi stood hunched over in a small alleyway, having absentmindedly wandered into the disturbingly bright Chamomile district in an attempt to get her bearings. It was fun to scope out while it lasted, but when she had decided she did not, in fact, want to play this game anymore, she did what any normal sorcerer would do--summon a door back home.

Well, she sure was releasing smoke, and there sure was no door appearing.

Her mask unhinged at the jaw, Noi gave one more huff of unsuccessful black smoke before slamming her fist into the brick wall beside her in a devastating CRUNCH. 

“What the FUCK.”

Tampering with her magic? That was fucking annoying. She rose to her full height, drawing a ragged breath, tempted to take another swing. Instead, she threw a haphazard glance behind her shoulder where the alley opened to the street and--oh, there was someone there. Great. Maybe they were a wannabe magic-user looking to scrap with the wrong person.