silver & steel.

This is a surprise - a rare, out of the blue sort of surprise. Rarely did anyone approach him, not hunters, much less survivors, therefore, what could this one want to do with him? The distance closes, and despite his own cautious step backwards, an envelope's presentation serves to close- standing in that gap, polite in an invitation to take it from the hands of this young man, who looks distantly familiar.

"..." He takes it. Scanning over the words carefully, the message is...unexpected. 'Best Friend', it stirs memories of old, in golden rays, golden days - fond, this he could not deny.

Would he? 

 “Don’t try.” He is serious.   Bonus under the cut! 

“...”  Duplicates, no- doppelgangers were considered once, and Naib vaguely recalls another man, another him, of shaky hands and a wish he shared.  A wish to protect.  No surprise there, he thinks, they were the same person - yet different. He doesn’t reply, unable to recall having ever met this individual who’s attempting to...befriend? become amigos with him? “A...migos?” 

Eyebrows come to furrow, the word is foreign, but familiar - suggesting something close, but far, and it confuses the soldier. Why, and for what reason would they be ‘amigos’? He couldn’t blindly agree to something he didn’t know of, much less trust. Still, an answer had to be given.  “Why?” Bonus under the cut! 

I saw this post at exactly 2:38AM and it grabbed my wig. Instant Balding. 

Click for some mildly in context bonuses, or rather, ✨compromise✨ 

He’s harmless, I promise. As harmless as a hamster! 

Bonus under the cut! 

「 We all pretend to be the heroes on the good side, but what if we’re the villains on the other? 」 Lyrics from Stella Jang’s song, Villain! It’s a bop, and it does give me Fortune vibes. Here’s some process pics and the final version for this promo art- aforementioned project I took up. I haven’t done serious shading/rendering in quite some time, so there are certain things I’d definitely work on improving if I have the energy and motivation to work on this again, possibly redraw it. Eh, we’ll see. That aside, I’ve learned a little more about lighting and how to shade things.  Bonus under the cut!

ooc; These were actually done before the mochi concepts, and I’d forgotten to post them. Soldier as a kitty...? Or maybe...Pallas cat? The red panda might suit him better. 

ooc; About that ‘hamster’ that people liked, 

ooc; similar ask here! There are more survivors than fingers, or knives that he has, each one of them hailing from places near and far, of backgrounds he’s never heard of. Troublesome as they could get, maybe he did find them interesting- from a distance. "Some of them." -have indeed piqued his interest, stated flatly.   The soldier doesn't elaborate, keeping it vague. He knows that there is much more than putting names to faces, titles to people, and abilities aside, the camaraderie he’s witnessed during matches did make him wonder about what they were like. Only to some extent, because it reminded him of the past. 

However, he will admit, it's interesting- admirable, to think that they'd come all the way to this strange manor for the sake of winning a death game. - "We get along fine." He thinks of the other hunters as colleagues, and supposes that they're okay to be around. Being relatively new to the manor, there's always something he could learn from those hunters- about survivors, and sometimes, about the hunters themselves. About this manor no one can ever escape from. About people. 

"No preference." “Anyone else who isn’t dead weight, is good enough.”  If it weren’t for the fact that hunters did have schedules to follow, he’d have long skipped it. Someone else could eat those flare guns instead of him.  He’ll simply go with whoever else is assigned for that match, or whoever is in the matching room. Finish the job quick, and it’ll be one less thing to grumble about. 

Bonus under the cut!