#farcical.

this whole thing is a complete chore. he’s well and truly abandoned his arm, at this point. left it back on the desk in his room. what point is there in lugging around that heavy hunk of steel if it can’t even connect right?  he hates the feeling of this, hates lacking the dexterity he’s used too, the strange impulse of trying to move fingers that he cannot feel, nerves firing impulses into the ether and startling him with their inaction. 

two days into all of this and it’s as if the whole world has come to a standstill. without the communication lines open it’s hard to track people down, businesses can’t operate, the streets are empty of vehicles. even his motorbike is rendered useless in the face of the inability to kickstart. he’s run out of coffee mix in his apartment and his head hurts. he can’t work on his arm because there’s no point to it, and tinkering  with any of his other toys is pointless. even writing doesn’t distract him - he struggles to concentrate without the usual soft patter of music in the background. he feels restless, useless. the one thing he can think to fix, however, is the caffeine issue. 

he happens across fei, and they have an idea. 

that’s what leads them to a picked lock and a smashed door (when the secondary lock wasn’t’ quite so pickable) and theo behind the counter of the little cafe, pulling shots of espresso and steaming milk. a latte later he’s sitting crosslegged on top of the counter watching fei shovel pastries into his mouth. “you’re a freak,” he tells him with a chuckle, pushing his hand back through his hair and tousling up the strands. he reaches over to his shoulder to scratch at the socket, from which his currently useless arm has since been removed, then picks up the latte again, taking a gulp. “how’s the power down treating you?”