#gintoki 01

”The hell!? Are you sayin’ the staff of the behind the scenes are all ran by apes!? ...I’d actually believe that.”

“But you ain’t sidetracking a damn thing from the point here!”

”You’re also thousand years too old to have worries like these, dead fish-eyes thief. I...” A thoughtful (solely for himself) pause ensued as the very real struggle is brought to the table. “Ah! Perfect idea!”

”Going by the Protagonist hierarchy act #42, season 7. For bullshit like this I can just go and make ya my sidekick! Can’t ya just picture how damn relaxing that’d be for ya?”

Another damn lie. This was just an equally twisted form of highway robbery.

Especially since they’re both fucking protags.

And he had certainly never fought in earnest.

The past several days had been revealing, though, making things apparent that he had wanted to avoid if possible. Between being robbed and assaulted and having to intervene with nothing but his bare hands to fight, and finding the... In the wake of all of that, Norman considered it an inevitability: he would have to fight. Really fight. His wit and agility were no guarantee, and no guarantee meant that he needed to regard it as if it couldn’t be avoided.

But he could try. He kept to back streets still, evaded larger congregated groups of the infected as well as he could, and minimized confrontations to whatever degree he could. It was in one of these back streets, taking the long way around to avoid being detected by a throng of them up ahead, that he nearly tripped over it.

A four-foot iron pipe, with a crook on one end and a few screws protruding, broken on one end and lying in a puddle. Norman stared at it as though it would bite him, for a moment, before bending down to pick it up. It was a hefty piece of metal. Must have broken from somewhere and ended up here? He gripped it in both hands experimentally, weighing it -- figuratively as well as literally.

Well...a real weapon wouldn’t hurt. Wouldn’t hurt him, at least, not in his own hands. He’d prefer it to be longer -- more varied uses, better reach -- but it would serve. It would serve far better than bare hands, certainly.

Approaching footsteps interrupted the thought process. Behind him? The infected, had they... The boy wheeled about with his new weapon in hand, startled and brandishing it at the ready almost without thinking. He stared, wide-eyed, at the stranger...though the other didn’t look out of his mind by any means. No reason not to regard him a little cautiously, at any rate. He’d gotten...lax about simply trusting strangers off the bat.

“Who are you?”

There’s not a moment passed here in this new locale she’s woken up in that she doesn’t wonder if her surroundings are truly as they seem; whether or not some ruined buildings are figments of her imagination, or perhaps the populace bustling about, or perhaps this ruined city entirely. This doesn’t appear to be anywhere she recognizes from Wonderland, but the Wonderland of now hardly ever completely resembles the Wonderland of her memory and there’s never been any sort of rule saying new locales cannot be added, so for all she knows she could be wandering the streets of London in a daze. Though, a seemingly inescapable one such as this is rather new...the Cat has not yet arrived to bother or confound her, though, which is a comfort.

She’ll take any comfort she can get, honestly. She’d rather not have gone back to Wonderland.

One thing she does know, however, is that trying to get anything useful out of the locals seems to be an exercise in futility. The idiots seem to simply go about their business, heedless to the world around them, rarely responding with anything worthwhile if they bother to respond at all. In this way, they’re not too different from the populace of London, especially those among the upper class, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t still utterly useless. At the tail end of a long, frustrating and fruitless bout of information-gathering, however, a man catches her eye--dressed in a manner that sticks out from the others, rather much like the samurai of old that useless, greedy toad of a lawyer Radcliffe used to tell her stories of. When the familiar continually fails, perhaps it’s time to try something new. With that in mind, it’s a quick and easy thing to decide on a brisk, purposeful approach. She’ll not have wasted these last couple of hours entirely if she’s got anything to say about it.

This place was entirely too loud. Ai hadn’t the faintest idea why anyone would want to cause such a commotion until she’d neared the street-side crowd... and into a jumble of figures either regretting or celebrating the outcome of some medium-scale bet. She’d been used to gamblers before, often sought out for vengeance on “unfair operators” by sore, drunken losers.

She pressed her back against the dingy wall, eyeballing a particularly dejected looking man with snowy hair. His garments... they seemed almost familiar, like he had come from some place like her, when she was still human. Before she knew it, it seemed as if he’d caught her staring with her wide, curious eyes.

This was it. That had been the last straw.

She had no problem with her father dating again-- she would have found it weird if he didn't at least try to find someone. While it was a bit disconcerting thinking of her father with someone besides her mother, it wasn't a problem to her. What was the problem was him springing huge news like "hey so i've met someone and we're married by civil. she has a son, and she's pregnant." THAT was a problem. It was so ridiculous, May had thought he'd been joking around at first, but lo and behold here comes a three month pregnant lady walking--waddling--through the door!!

She'd been outraged that her father had never told her anything about his relationship. She'd been outraged that her father had gotten married without telling her anything, and suddenly all the business trips he took, the ones May had been perfectly okay with because it was part of his job, weren't so okay to her. She couldn't help wonder if he'd lied to her. For all she knew, he could have been living with this woman pretending to be working, instead of spending time with his daughter. She felt hurt, and she felt betrayed. He'd moved on completely; he'd traded what was left of his old family for a new one.

She felt totally abandoned.

The woman was nice; she was almost apologetic for the entire situation, and she said that her son would be excited to meet her, but May couldn't stop shaking. She couldn't take her tear filled eyes away from her father, who couldn't even look at her. Instead, he slapped on a fake smile and offered to help the woman with her luggage. She wanted to know what she was expected to feel. Did he think that she'd be completely, and 100% okay with everything just like that?

As soon as they were outside, May stormed into her room, shutting the door and locking it behind her. The tears that had pooled overflowed onto her cheeks. She didn't want to live with them. She couldn't. Not immediately like he was expecting her to. She wouldn't be able to adjust to it. Years of living on her own, missing her mother, coupled with the occasional visit from him-- she couldn't bring herself to accept the fact that he'd gone and found a new family while she missed her old one. No, not her old family. It was her family. Her deceased mother, her workaholic father, and her. That was her family and that was what she wanted, though she knew she couldn't get her mother back, she thought maybe her father would return to the way he used to be. She just couldn't do it.

With tears clouding her vision, May made for her backpack. She emptied out her school supplies and started packing. There was a tiny voice telling her she was being stupid, but she ignored it completely. She was well aware that all of this was being done on impulse, but she didn't care. She was leaving and that was it. That was her decision, just like her father had decided to meet someone, marry them, and start another family without telling her until now. She grabbed any money she had left and climbed out the window.

There was only a second's hesitation before it was shaken away. She could mourn her family home later, right now she had to leave. She snuck away from the house, taking care to not be seen, and then booked it towards the train station. She went for the automated ticket dispenser as the people at the windows knew her fairly well since she rode the train to school everyday, and she needed anonymity. She used her student pass, took her ticket, and boarded the train. How lucky that it had been pulling into the station just as she'd arrived.

The train ride into Kairos itself was a flurry of regrets and what ifs. It wasn't until the thing stopped and she stepped onto the platform, she realized the gravity of what she'd done. It had been at least an hour since she'd left, and without a doubt they knew she was gone by now. Taking her cell from her back pocket, she noted it was dead. Oh well, she was still sure that she didn't want to go back there, so instead of buying a ticket back, she left the station.

Already, the sun was starting to fall behind the horizon, and soon night would set in. Her legs slowed from a determined, steady pace, to a stop. She stumbled back against a building and dragged a hand down her face. Her eyes still stung, and her nose felt raw from sniffling. This whole situation... god, she'd never been so stupid in her life. She didn't even have a place to stay. Tears threatened again as she turned the building's corner into a small alley and let herself slide down the wall. The brunette shrugged her backpack off, and sat it next to her.