Lucky Like That

     to see him smile and act as if nothing was wrong — it was more disconcerting than he would ever think. to know the younger was dead all along, but now seeing him in front of him, in one piece, smiling and talking as if he hadn’t died — he had to freeze for a few seconds to think. he had a good memory, all androids did, and the newspapers from that day were in front of his eyes immediately. lucky had died, he hadn’t made that up out of thin air.

     leon’s eyebrows furrow in confusion, head tilted to one side as he purses his lips. “lucky? what? how —” he can’t help but take him by his shoulders for a brief second to make sure he is there, before pulling him into a hug. “you’re alive! oh my god — you’re not dead, you didn’t die!” the android exclaims excitedly before pulling back, not wanting to pester him, but god it’s hard not to.

     "why are you acting like it’s so normal? i saw your obituary, i thought i did — you disappeared for a while and i was so sure you were dead, what —" he rambles on quickly, one word after another as if he can’t stop himself. “what happened? why did you disappear?”

The hug startled Lucky, a muffled, slightly squeaky noise escaping him as the air was pressed out of his lungs momentarily.  He returned it all the same, patting Leon’s back in a slightly confused manner, before his friend’s words hit him less than a second before realization did, and his eyes widened.

Oh.  Oh, shit.

It was official.  Lucky was an even bigger idiot than he had thought.  He knew Leon was the type to watch the news, to keep up to date on the going-ons of their city, so what on Earth had possessed him to think that the man would have  missed the story of his supposed murder?  That he wouldn’t have seen Lee Taeseok was dead, shot in a back alley like the street scum he’d been?  That he still was, deep down. The Matrix had made sure that the story had remained public, that no news of his survival had made it back to those he’d known before.  They were, after all, supposed to be ‘off the grid’.

Whelp, so much for that.  He’d deal with the Matrix later - right then, the important thing was that Leon had thought he was dead.  Holy shit. Suddenly the man's reaction to Lucky randomly showing up at Fujita made a million times more sense.

Lucky cleared his throat a bit as the other pulled back, looking sheepishly up from under the edge of his hoodie.  “Would you believe me if I say that I forgot that happened?”  Hey, it was true - even if it was the only truth he would be able to tell Leon.  “I, uh...”  Think, think - ugh, not something he was usually good at.  “I almost died, yeah.  I don’t know if you remember, but there was that guy who was bothering Yeongja for a while, who I screwed over ‘cause he wouldn’t leave her alone... He kinda caught me in a back alley, can you believe?” 

Making a split-second decision, Lucky lifted his shirt up to show Leon the scar right beneath his ribs, still prominent even several months later.  “Luckily the guy wasn’t as good a shot as he thought he was, hah.  I didn’t actually die, so uh-”  He coughed slightly, dropping his hoodie again and rubbing the back of his neck sheepishly. “Not exactly sure how that ended up being the story going around.”

She could not stop herself from smiling, overjoyed at Lucky’s reaction. She couldn’t recall many people having the same response when she had showed them Bear. Many seemed rather confused as to why he appeared so…machine like. Most seemed to prefer the life-like appearance of modern society, and perhaps that was the sole reason why her father never found success in his work. While her father did like the life-like look that people grew accustomed too, his works tended to take on the more steampunk appearance, as people would say. A look that Sunhee, herself, was rather draw too as well. 

His questions were fast, one right after another. Perhaps anyone else would start to feel overwhelmed, but she did not. Whether if was due to her own habit of speaking fast, or not, she was able to keep up. “My father, made him, he did. A birthday present,” she started, moving to gently drop Bear in the male’s eager hands. “He has an old design, or did. I managed to upgrade a bit over the years. Has a similar, a little out of date battery, or a lot, that modern robots have. He is mostly built out of vintage watch parts, mixed with parts that were invented about twelve years ago. Thus the reason his wing feel off. His parts are old, and new ones are over budget, they are very much so.”

It was the last question the stumped Sunny. How did Bear become, Bear. When she thought back on it, she couldn’t remember the reason. Perhaps the excitement of the gift caused her to name the wrong animal it was modeled off of, or perhaps, she did it as a joke. “I’m a little unsure. It’s been a long while, it has.” She stared down at the small robot, who seemed rather content. “Very nice to meet you, Lucky. Bear, I bet thinks so too. Are you majoring in engineering? Do you have interests in robotics? They are all amazing, in their own way.”

Whoever this girl was, she seemed like she was able to keep up with Lucky’s runaway train-of-thought manner of speaking, which only served to make his smile spread even wider across his face. They probably looked like a pair of idiots, he was sure, grinning over a half-broken robotic bird, but he was having too much fun to care at the moment.

He listened carefully as she spoke, doing his best to get the entire meaning of her words.  As she finished, he nodded rapidly to show that he’d understood - he could see, now that she’d mentioned it, that the bird was missing a wing, wires and gears exposed at the stump where it had probably lived.  “Gotcha, gotcha.”  Lucky tapped his chin slightly, humming a bit to himself.  “Have you ever tried Fujita?  I haven’t been in a while, but I used to go wandering around there as a kid a lot.  You can find plenty of scrap metal and abandoned parts, especially less up-to-date stuff.”

To say she was shocked, would be an enormous understatement. In fact, she all but gawked at the male in front of her. While it was her suggestion, she hadn’t expect him to exactly be opened to it. Honestly, it was rather silly of her to think such thoughts. Perhaps it was only habit, even used to people turning her down. She was odd, she knew that.

To some extent, at least.Having been told so many times before. 

“Lucky,” she repeated. It was a strange name, she thought, one she hadn’t heard used for a person before, only dogs. He didn’t look like a dog. 

“He’s in my pocket.” Excitedly, she scurried over, digging her into her jacket pocket for the metal bird. “He is very nice, means well.” She crouched on her knees to be leveled with the man, she cupped her hands together as she held out Bear. The tiny, robotic steel sparrow twitched, looking to and fore. Fluttering his wings out, or rather wing, as he was missing one, settled himself against the palm of her hand. 

“Sunhee,” she answered, almost as if it was a mere after thought. “You can hold him, he won’t hurt you. Never hurt anything, don’t think he can, doesn’t have it in him. Here, here, hold out your hand.”

The second the tiny robotic bird emerged from the girl’s pocket, Lucky’s eyes widened with obvious amazement.  “Holy shit,” he breathed, shifting from his relaxed seated position to kneel up a little in order to get a better look at the bird.  It wasn’t like anything he’d seen before - not smooth and life-like like androids, but almost stylized in its obviously mechanical nature.  And clearly working, even if it was missing a wing, as it looked back and forth, eyeing Lucky with something that might have been either curiosity or caution.

“Dude.  That’s fuckin’ sick!”  He couldn’t quite keep the excitement out of his voice, volume and tempo increasing rapidly as he spoke.  “Where did you get him?  How does he work?  What happened to his wing?  How come he’s named Bear?”  It didn’t occur to him that he might be overwhelming with his inquiries - Lucky’s brain was generally only capable of traveling down one track at a time, and in that moment the track was entirely focused on the robot that the girl was holding. 

Coming back to studying after realizing how late it was seemed to be harder than starting to study in the first place. Since he broke his focus, his sleep-addled mind kept trying to whisk him off onto dreamland. Falling asleep would be so easy right now, it’s nice and quiet here… not too warm… no one would bother him if he just shut his eyes for a little while…

Jitae groaned each time he snapped back to, his head having lolled to the side. Rubbing at his burning eyes, he let out a grand yawn, stretching his legs out underneath the table and groaning at the tension in his stiff muscles.

“I’m never going to get anywhere at this rate…” he thought as he gazed at all his papers sprawled out on the table before him chaotically. Jitae shook his head in disappointment, reaching out for another oreo and nibbling on it tiredly. Hopefully a little sugar will work to wake him up properly. 

Well, let’s say the sugar didn’t wake him up as well as the only other person in the library did.

Jitae jumped. Oreo shooting out of his hand and onto the floor, chocolate cookie crumbs sprinkling the floor. His whole frame essentially shot out of his chair - he wasn’t scared, though. Okay? He was very sleepy. Dozing off. Anyone would shoot out of their skin jump at a sudden movement or loud sound. Jitae snapped his neck to face the source of his heart attack surprise.

It’s that other boy. The one who was previously hunched over his computer with headphones on. How in the world is he able to stay that active at this hour? Jitae just kept staring at him, head moving left and right slightly in confusion – he wasn’t being rude! He just really couldn’t believe he was being spoken to from two tables away…

“Those things…,” Jitae uttered softly, looking around in confusion more. “Y-you mean… my… cookies…?” eyebrow piqued, hesitantly pointing to the disfigured dessert on the floor. What was this kid even talking about? There’s no way a cookie could tell a thing about your personality…

Lucky couldn’t help it - the second the other jumped, he burst out laughing - full on cackling, really - at the top of his lungs.  It was almost cartoon-like, the way the guy startled.  Cookies flying, chair clattering... he was almost surprised their wasn’t a boing! sound effect that went with the jump.

“Whoa!” he managed to choke out, still cackling loudly.  “Easy there, my dude - it’s just lil’ old me providing a fascinating tidbit over here.  No ghosts or ghouls or murderers out for your blood.”  Laughter dying down into chuckles, he considered for a moment and then added, “Actually, I guess there’s no way for me to prove that I’m not a murderer out for your blood, so let’s take my noodle arms as evidence that I’m too weak to lift an axe and leave it at that.”

     for the past two years, since he began helping the defiant movement with repairs, leon understood how crucial it was to have the right parts at hand. when he was working with riku at neatech, this was never a problem, anything riku wanted, he could get it in a matter of hours. even custom parts weren’t difficult to get by when it was riku sato who wanted them in his office. leon hadn’t even thought about having trouble when it came to that regard, when they needed something to fix an android, there was always a surplus of resources.

     however, when it came to the movement’s resources, the situation was nowhere alike neatech. it was near impossible to find custom parts, and other parts were often re-used even though it wasn’t likely they operated at full capacity. he did his best nonetheless though, wanting to help injured androids as much as he could. and one solution to get more parts was the junkyard. even if it hurt to see so many of their kind scrapped, dead — and it sent an eery feeling through his chest, but it was a small price to pay to save more androids.

     so, when he has the day off and there is nothing to do back at the movement, he goes to fujita again, knows the place like the back of his hand by now. even if it’s only been two years, he comes here at least once every week, to see if there is anything they can scavenge or better yet, anyone they can save.

     as he’s wandering through the piles of metal, his eyes catch a familiar sight, and he freezes on the spot. no, it can’t be — it feels almost like a mirage, because he knows the boy is dead. he saw it on the news, shed tears for another friend lost. they lived in a horrible world, and he had been so sure lucky had left it altogether. but his eyes do not fail him, and he rushes towards him, eyes wide before he yells out. “lucky! is it you? it can’t be —”

Lucky was just about to get started, leaning forward towards a pile of scrap to pick out an interesting-looking piece of metal - an engine, maybe? - when he heard his own name being called, and froze on the spot. 

Ground control to Lucky, you are an idiot.  In his eagerness to visit old haunts, it honestly hadn’t occurred to him that there may be familiar faces at said haunts.  While he obviously liked Leon plenty, he didn’t exactly feel like explaining to his friend - who had always reminded Lucky vaguely of a somewhat-concerned older relative - exactly how he’d managed to get himself involved in a criminal organization in the time since they'd last met.  He'd have to think of some sort of lie, but there wasn't any time right then.

So, improvization it would have to be. Turning around, Lucky raised his hand in a wave.  “Hey, man!”  The smile on his face died, however, at the sight of the other’s expression.  Leon looked absolutely shocked, all but running towards Lucky, and yeah he hadn’t been around in a while, but this seemed like a bit of an overreaction in his book.  “Whoa, you okay?  You kind of look like you’ve seen a ghost.”

 ‘ You have a bear?’; It was a strange question, at least to her, and probably only to her. Truthfully, it was a probably a very sound question, considering her statements included the word bear. It was only she that knew she meant Bear, and not an actual bear. To her, it was rather strange that people would always assume she meant a real bear. 

“I have Bear, he’s my friend. Small and old, falling apart, mostly. Expensive parts, old parts, makes it hard to fix him. It’s rather worrying, and Bear keeps causing trouble. Honest mistakes.” Her answer, compiled with more than what was asked, and provided more information than wanted. 

“Bear isn’t a bear, though he could be, maybe. A lot of work, many parts, money, we don’t have that, and Bear seems content with not being a bear.” Sunhee hummed in thought, seemingly forgetting she was there to hide, and not make friends or show off her friends. “Do you want to see him? His wing feel off, again, have to fix it, again. But you can meet him, be his friend too, if you like. We don’t have many of those.” 

Lucky tilted his head to the side as he listened to the girl talk - babble, a bit more like.  She still had that odd pattern of speech, but it wasn’t like he couldn’t understand her, so he didn’t see much of a problem with it.  Then again, although he was getting the general idea of what she was saying, there still seemed to be some aspect of it that he wasn’t grasping. 

So not a bear, but something called Bear.  Something that needed work and parts, so his first thought would have been android.  But there was no one with her that he could see, and she had also said that a wing fell off...

thotriviahaze·:

[ ’ chatterbox ’ ] starter for @luckyleetaeseok – ! 💭

His shoulders were so stiff. It ached to roll them. Shutting his eyes and nodding to himself, he pushed his chair back away from the table and stretched his arms up. Rolling his shoulders slowly as not to cause any further pain to them. Jitae had spent most of the day in the Library of Alexandria hunched over his notes and textbooks. There was an exam coming up soon and he needed to focus as much as possible, writing evaluations was one of his weaknesses and he needed to address that as soon as possible. He hated having to remember every little detail of a psychological study, it felt so tedious, but this is the path he had chosen so it’s best to shut up and suck it up.

Feeling that just stretching his arms wasn’t enough, Jitae stood from the chair and groaned feeling the tiredness from all of his joints. How long had he been sitting like that for? Wincing slightly as he craned his neck to glance at the clock, his eyes maintained their ever present sleepy appearance. That is, until he read how late it was. They snapped open wide within milliseconds.

“How has it gotten so late..?” he whined softly to himself. He had immediately trekked to the library after his last class of the day, needing to rewrite his notes to remember all of the variables and controls from the study synopsis he received that very day. He had been so caught up in his work that he genuinely did not feel the time pass, or notice the population dwindling within the library. 

It was so late that he didn’t even eat… luckily, he always kept some snacks in his backpack. He reached in and grabbed the plastic lunch bag containing five oreos. He smiled tiredly seeing the perfect number of cookies and proceeded to nibble on them quietly. “I wonder if there’s anyone else here…” he thought, deciding to take a small break to just gaze around the quiet building. There was one other person that Jitae could see. He frowned in concern, thinking how tired that boy must be. “Hopefully he finishes quickly and can proceed home for the night..” Jitae sighs around oreo cream and then turns his body to return to his own studying. What a drag…

Lucky was doing great.  This was the time of day he worked best - long after the sun had gone down, long after nearly every reasonable person in the city had gone to sleep.  Morning classes were a problem for Future Lucky - he’d probably end up sleeping through the majority of his first lecture again.  But at that exact moment, he was as productive as it was possible for a usually highly-distractable nineteen-year-old to be.

That wasn’t to say he was doing homework, of course.  That was still something going a bit over his head, and he was hoping that if he ignored it long enough it would just go away.  It probably wasn’t a viable strategy, but it was the one he was going with.

Besides, it wasn’t as if he wasn’t actually working on anything - just that it was a Matrix project, not a Shujin one.  It was a virus, though what in particular it was going to be used for he hadn’t been informed.  All he had to do was make it undetectable, and make it destructive. 

A few more taps to the screen, and Lucky decided he was at a good enough pause point to take a break.  Pushing his chair back, he raised his arms up above his head in a luxurious stretch, smiling a bit to himself as he slipped off the large headphones that had been covering his ears.  The shift from loud electronic music to absolute silence was deafening, and Lucky stared around the library with wide eyes as he realized that he was the only one left in the vicinity.

No, wait.

There was someone else, two tables over, papers spread out in front of him and a look of absolute exhaustion on his face.  He was eating oreos, Lucky noticed, and less than a second later the words had jumped from his brain to his mouth, as usually bypassing any potential stops along the way.

sunhee-p‌:

It was an honestly mistake, it truly was. One she would not repeat. While she was used to people ignoring her, and the annoyed looks on her peer’s faces when she spoke, she was not used to their angry tones and harsh looks. No matter how hard she tried to apologize, they would not calm. Even when she offered to help fix the mess she made. 

It eventually lead to her being chased away from the engineering build, in search for a hiding place. The rooftop being one of the better options. Course, she wasn’t expecting someone to being already in her hiding spot. 

She was quick to hold a finger to lips in a hushing motion, despite the fact the person hadn’t bothered to look over at her. 

“Please, please, shush.” It was rude, she knew, but she was not wanting to be caught, not yet, not when she just managed to elude her pursuers. “Bear and I are here, we are. Promise we won’t tell, if you won’t. No need for ice cream, though ice cream is very good, and kind of you to offer, it is. Bear thinks so too, though he can’t eat it. You can stay, just quiet for a moment. A small moment, just a moment please.” She begged for the strange, rooftop man for silences, all the while being loud herself. A terrible habit she had, one she would probably never be able to break. 

“Won’t tell, we promise.”

Lucky frowned at the voice behind him, though he made no motion to sit up or face its source.  There were several puzzling things about this response.  First of all, he was being shushed, which wasn’t an uncommon occurrence in and of itself.  Given the amount he usually talked and lack of general volume control, it was usually only a matter of time before people told him to shut his too-active mouth.  But in this situation, the fact that he was being shushed implied that whoever had intruded on his hiding space was also looking to hide.

Second oddity.  The speech pattern.  Hurried, repetitive - it sounded harried, words doubling over themselves.  It added to his theory that the other person was trying to hide as well - that they were stressed, and caught off guard to find him. 

But the third, and in Lucky’s opinion, most important oddity... It was this one that made him actually push himself into a sitting position, turning to face the other side of the roof where the voice had originated, and say - 

INCOMING MESSAGE …

FULL NAME: lee taeseok ALIAS: lucky DATE OF BIRTH: 2123/08/02 ALIGNMENT: neutral OCCUPATION: student at shujin university, computer science AFFILIATION: hacker for the matrix ACCOMMODATION: watanabe hall, shujin university FACECLAIM: chwe hansol

ACCESSING: BACKGROUND …

–> Started from the bottom, now we here (just a bit above the bottom).

Born the lowest of the low, if he had a family once, Lucky has long since forgotten about them.  His young childhood was a blur of being passed from place to place in the lower level, never staying in more than one family or location, never any faces or voices sticking out in his memory.  The backstreets of Sangenjaya were a tough world, and no one wanted a kid they didn’t need on their hands.  By the time he was thirteen years old, he was on his own, and Lucky – then called Taeseok, or brat, or piece of shit! – had learned that to survive, you needed money, cleverness, and a whole lot of luck.

The way he sees it, two out of three ain’t bad.

Taeseok had never had money, and he wasn’t smart, per say – he didn’t have time to be smart, to study or get good grades.  But he was clever, and more than anything else, he was lucky.  He had the ability to pick up almost anything he tried with ease, to act like he’d been doing it all along.  He slipped his hand into a stranger’s pocket and came away clean with enough to pay for lunch.  He was cornered by a bully and figured out how to scale a fire escape to safety.  He stole books, read them voraciously, then snuck into the junkyard and internet cafés and lost himself in electronics and cyberspace for hours at a time.

Lucky, the other street kids said when he showed them the food and money he’d swiped.  Lucky, the old ladies on their doorsteps would chuckle as they watched him do backflips for the younger kids’ amusement.  Lucky, the owner of the internet café he frequented chuckled when he showed them his latest accomplishment breaking through someone’s technological defenses.  Lucky, the cops would yell at him as he escaped them yet again by jumping from one roof to another.

He was seventeen when his luck ran out.  Although he didn’t have a family, Taeseok considered his little band of street kids to be the closest possible thing.  As one of the eldest, he was fiercely protective of them, so hearing that one of the younger girls was dealing with an unwanted suitor – a much older, very much married businessman – was essentially a call to arms.  He told the suitor in no uncertain terms to back off.  The next time he saw the girl, she had a split lip and tears in her eyes, and then it was all out war.  Within two hours, the man’s accounts were emptied, his wife and employer provided with proof of his actions, and pictures of him with bold font detailing exactly the kind of person he was were plastered on almost every screen around the neighborhood.

As said before, Taeseok was clever, but he wasn’t smart.  He wasn’t hard to find, and certainly wasn’t hard to shoot.  According to all official records, Lee Taeseok died in a back alley in Sangenjaya, bleeding out amongst the garbage.  And in a way, they are correct.  Lee Taeseok died, but Lucky survived.

When he woke up, it was in the middle layer, in a room he’d never seen with people he’d never met.  To his surprise, he found out that it was the owner of the internet café he frequented – Linked – who had found and saved him.  Even more surprising, it turned out that the man was a member of the Matrix, and while he’d had his eye on Lucky for a while as a possible initiate, it was the final, almost deadly stunt that convinced him the seventeen year old was up to snuff.  Suddenly, Lucky had a tattoo on his ankle, a spot in the university, and more important than anything else, a purpose.

The way he sees it, his luck never ran out after all.

ACCESSING: PERSONALITY …

POSITIVE TRAITS: Fun-loving, Talented, Charming NEGATIVE TRAITS: Air-headed, Callous, Self-serving

Lucky, put simply, is what most people would affectionately (or not so affectionately) call a ‘little shit’.  He’s mischievous, cocky, and a tiny bit conceited.  Despite technically being a legal adult, he refuses to grow up, claiming that maturity is something that happens to other people – a claim that seems to be fact, if the frequency of his pranks and foolish behaviors is any indication.  As a result of his upbringing, he’s fundamentally selfish, and will almost always help himself first when push comes to shove.  After all, you need to have a bit of a loose moral compass to make it in the Matrix, and you definitely need to be more than a little cutthroat if you want to avoid getting tossed out in the trash.  It’s no secret that he will use his skills against almost anyone and for almost anyone, as long as it’s for the right price, which definitely says something about his values, and sometimes his ‘pranks’ can go more than a little overboard.  Despite all of that, though, Lucky does have a good side to him.  One of his best traits is that he is incredibly loyal to those he cares about.  Once he has decided that someone is friend or family, he will stay by their side through almost anything, helping in any way that he can.  He’s open and friendly to almost everyone he meets, always ready with a silly joke or a charming smile.  He loves to make other people laugh, and more than anything else he loves having a good time.