A WET, RED STAIN

" you're asking me ?? i'm your dead weight — don't play coy. we can be out of here before the hours up. "

why doesn't gojo just do it ??

what an admittedly ugly, private sort of almost-envy he'd festered in their youth. nanami could train as hard as was possible. mastery, sheer and utter, staggering mastery of his own tools assisted by an extra thirty three kilos of hard-packed muscle, stacked on in four years. he could hit as hard as a man could hit. run as fast as a man could run. but gojo, as had been the case with dear departed geto, was cut from a cloth no amount of labor, skill or discipline could hope to replicate. then, nanami had envied him for it. now he only ever wishes to help shoulder a fraction of said chosen one's burden. now he's old enough to understand. perhaps worse, still just young enough to to grieve the last vestiges of their fading youth which never was.

the weight of satoru's hand falls on his shoulder, or more accurately he wills the world to join them; a concentrated effort made to look effortless. it's brief, but nanami's hand comes up to meet satoru's, where it lays for a heartbeat before he rises. i see you, i do.

drawn to his fullest height, shoulders squared and sleeves pushed to crooks of his elbows, he stalks forward.

it's extra effort for gojō to do things the "team" way— but gives him an excuse to keep his companion at his side. they both know it. headquarters knows it.

it's more fun like this anyway. they stand shoulder to shoulder, satoru counts aloud : ichi- ni- san! then together they each ram a leg into the boarded door. it's rotted and caves easily beneath the force of their joint kick. keeping kento enveloped in his protective field of infinity, satoru descends first. perfect darkness below— but he can hear something already skittering along the stone. bright eyes cast a faint glow as they walk, gloomy-pale on his cheeks.

❛❛ mm, they know they're cornered. they're going to be aggressive. let me take the one that attacks first. we'll wrap this up and put a pretty bow on the area, then go get some food! ahh, i'm so hungry. i forgot to eat earlier. too much stuff to get done before i saw you today, so my evening could be cleared. are you craving anything? ❜❜ leave it to satoru to small-talk in the face of danger.

his prediction is accurate, as it usually is. six eyes seems to see the world in dimensions a normal human could not dream of ... and his other prediction is right, too, he sees it as he swings first and grapples with the first of two. a wound heals too quickly on it.

OLROX

@skrimslis was a human hazard detector. no, that wasn't true; he was an alien. nope, that wasn't true either; he was a clone. the distinctions didn't really matter to adam. kon was a person: one with incredible hearing and a good heart.

if something was happening, he was the first to know.

' evil never sleeps, '  adam agreed. by extension, neither did good. and by extension of the extension, neither did the two of them. it was already late, and the moon winked in through their half-drawn blinds. he yawned. because he was usually polite, he covered his mouth; because he was sometimes not, he shook his hair out like a dog. ' but i wouldn't mind if it took a break once in a while. '

he peeled himself off of the couch and stretched in a way that failed to crack even a single part of his spine.

adam didn't actually know if kon slept, or whether he needed to. sometimes his breathing slowed down and his eyes closed—but that could mean anything. he could be really into meditating. he'd learned recently, from a midnight made-for-tv ad, that mindfulness was the next big thing in self-care and personal enlightenment.

maybe evil should try meditating.

the kryptonian giggles, one, fingerless-gloved hand covering his mouth. then, he shrugs his signature leather jacket on : covered with cool patches and metal studs and pins, but most importantly, brandishing the super’s signature s-shield on his back.

standing where he is, mussing up wild curls with both hands, kon swivels around by the rotation of his hips and looks. x-ray vision. pretty handy power ( but aren’t they all? ).

satoru can’t help but giggle. it’s daytime in america, pitch black over here— but what’s rest to a guy who can regenerate entire limbs on instinct! gojō doesn’t need sleep, no. he’s busy working, anyway. this is just a way to entertain himself for a little bit until it’s showtime, and his exorcism assignment can get underway.

steeping guilt had carried him away from his duties, replacing them with ghosts he couldn’t resist chasing. neon bathed streets of tokyo were almost exactly the way he’d left them, though something terrible tainted over the asphalt. to say he knew better felt lost now, determination to mend where he came from swelled high in his chest. he could try, as anyone might, lest he leave it be to rot. even hope appeared futile, for his taint as a former heir would follow him for the rest of his days. inevitably why he’d made the reluctant call for help.

[ OUTGOING ... MIGUEL ] : will do. [ OUTGOING ... MIGUEL ] : they know i’m here. [ OUTGOING ... MIGUEL ] : how much time do i have before your arrival? i’m outnumbered. [ OUTGOING ... MIGUEL ] : i can’t take them on alone.

two, he strings up, covering their faces in webs as they dangle so they suffocate to death. further in he goes, eyes swiveling behind his mask, crawling upside-down on the ceiling. the ten minutes have stretched into twenty. miguel kills one more, then finds genji. he’s relieved, though he won’t say such in so many words.

𖤝 for miguel o’hara : growing closer, accepting.

a tilt of her head, and the chromatic light of her eyes take stock of him. six foot something sweet, with an irritated face that impressively could only match his own. though, she can’t fault him for being curious, or if she was right, a little suspicious. this was by all intents and purposes entirely on the pole opposite of things she had expected to happen.

she wasn’t sure what she had expected to find on the moon, but this had not been quite it. blackwall lined the back of her nightmares, but so did this: future, possibility, a hot piece of tech that could leverage her grief. or, maybe, she’s just overthinking it. sleep deprived with eyebags as deep as craters. got more than what she bargained for trying to bring back the dead, or undo the past, or anything that could level adam smasher’s face on electric monowires.

at any rate, all of her rooting around in forbidden tech seems to conveniently land her in his presence. by now she thinks he’s begun to put two and two together. how was it that she was present around every crime scene or site of stolen data? she stares him down, doesn’t let up on the bit of tense stiffness gathering in her balled up fist.

even the bartender has inched away from this interaction, suspecting something grave. might as well be the boogeyman standing in their midst for how silent the single employee has gone— but the spider doesn’t make any moves, yet, that could come across as threatening. for now, he seems intent to just talk. off-putting, isn’t it? he speaks with a dialect that’s evidently linked to where he comes from : fluctuations in each syllable sounding just like a nueva yorker.

he stares at the netrunner behind his mask-lenses, and unbeknownst to anyone aside from himself, observes the heat-patterns of her body. running warm, like any other human, but he can always tell what cyber enhancements they have ( even not-so-obvious ones ) because of interruptions in the map of natural temperature.