Idril

Maja was pleased to have pulled a laugh out of the cyborg. It was a lovely, musical sound and the doll was intent on hearing more of it, by whatever cost. She smiled. 

Maja found herself giddy amid a sudden good mood, and for the first time in a long time, she was excited about what the rest of the day could bring. For an immortal, passing days bore little dissimilarity from each other, and if Maja didn’t make something happen, nothing would. The droll of mortal life held no interest to her anymore. And yet, in the presence of this new friend, she found herself reveling in the prospect of the mundane: walking around the city with this Amazonian woman, the tantalizing possibility that they might hold hands, not knowing where the day will end. She wanted to ride this wave as long as she could. 

“There’s tons to do,” said Maja, weaving through packs of giggling teenage girls with frappes and men with laptops to exit the coffeeshop. The sun hung like a pad of melting butter in the cloudless sky, and she pulled out her sunglasses from her purse, slipping them on and walking down the street. “Bars, restaurants, thrift shops, art museums… Oh! Unless you meant, like, what I do as a job,” she said, poking out her tongue and making a face as if to say, silly me. 

“My big girl job is freelance software developer, but these days I’m making way more money as a streamer,” said Maja. “What do you do?”

The way their fingers were intertwined felt as natural as the flow of the idle river and yet it was exciting and refreshing for the cyborg. For a moment her life that was filled with deceit and secrecy, suddenly become like one of those coming-of-age movies that she enjoyed so much. The thrilling new chapter of her was even more interesting by the presence of her online friend. She was open for all the possibilities that the twin city of Seoul had to offer for her, yet her expectation was rather dark and gloomy and this surprise was more than what she could ask for.  

She threw her head back and let out a light laughter. It was odd, almost strange for her to enjoy herself so much, to laugh freely like this. There was a tenderness and lightness around the other that just made her feel so at ease. Growing up in an environment that she was indoctrinated to deceive others, it was nice to be a little carefree. “Well, actually I meant the first one. Thrift shops sound like fun. Is any of them nearby?”, another wave of warmth rushed through her body when the other made a silly face. How could one be so adorable and so intelligent at the same time?

“You gotta give me your link, I might tune in soon. Well, it’s pretty mundane, what I do. I just opened a computer repair shop, Re-Pear... Like the fruit?”, awkwardly she scratched the back of her neck, “I thought it was fun to go for a pun like that. Well in my free time, I also play in a band. But tell me, what do you do on your stream? Do you play any games?”

⛧

Idril had always reminded him of glory days. Not his glory days, but the term in itself. She was riding a high he could never come down from. One that was addicting, settled into the other substances that came with their lives as stars. She was the squeal of a guitar, piercing your ears and then the shift of scene as the crowd’s screams only served as background music to her moans. Idril had served as a comfort, and confidant all wrapped into the delicious bow of her body.

They were so young then, only attached to each other because who else could adequately understand? It was easier to wrap themselves in each other’s arms while the world screamed their names. She was the way the crowd swelled when the opening note was played and the way they begged for their return when the lights dimmed, and he supposed the previous concert had thrown him into the need to be reminded of that all over again.

“If you think I’m a group you must have forgotten who was leading our little ship back then.” He teased in return, tone husky behind his content sigh in the familiarity. He’d expected her to be like Maja, livid, scream, yell, beg, curse. Ask him where he’d gone and why had he been the only one to break the promise to stay in touch when they finally disbanded. He hadn’t gotten the chance to tell her how deep of trouble he was and had been in before he found himself in Seoul’s sister city.

She had been wrong, sort of. It wasn’t until recently Kakuzo found himself falling back into his old ways, his allure finding him in the beds and embedded in the heads of many. His hands slipped up her waist, teeth taking to his bottom lip as her lips ghosted over his skin, the familiar feeling only making him chuckle darkly at her brass. He let one of his hands wander up the curve of her back before tangling in the long tendrils of her dark, onyx strands, tugging lightly. “Hm, suddenly all that time I spent missing you never happened and I need a reminder.” Even then he brought her in, delicately kissing her forehead as his official ‘Hello, I’ve missed you,’ before following her to the bar. 

“How have you been?” He asked her, truly wanting to know how the world had been treating his theoretical other half in his absence.

When his soft lips pressed against her forehead and her eyes closed for a second, she could feel a wave of emotion rushing through her body. The feelings of the lonely nights after he left were mixed with the ecstatic high when they fell into each other arms and became one with the presence of each other. But when she turned around to lean against the bar, her gaze was unfazed by the storm of emotion within her. In this chaos of feelings, she was mostly relieved to have found him again.  

“Well, the band went on quite well for a while. But I grew bored of it and I thought opening a repair shop somewhere new might be a nice change of pace. And yet I still need a side gig as bassist. I will probably never truly get tired by it”, she shrugged with her shoulders as if it was all that had occurred in her life after he left. How was she going to tell him that missions after missions she was questioning the meaning of her life and whatever she was meant to do? Certainly, she couldn’t trust him with the fact that her relocation to Agdoeg was not mere chance, but determined by her new path as a member of G.H.O.S.T. Still the small smile on her thin lips perhaps had given him a glimpse to the truth that she was not being fully honest with him.  

At this point in her transition, she was more machine than human, yet something so irrational, her gut feeling, was telling her that there was more going on than what he was letting on as well. Gently cupping his handsome face with her right hand, she looked into his gorgeous and felt hypnotized by the depth and darkness that they were bearing. What a mystery he had always been. Yet he was her comfort in a time of chaos. Without him, she might have just given up on her humanity and become the perfect machine that her parents had hoped her siblings and her to be. In his presence, she didn’t feel alienated by her own nature, she was not just a tool, she was accepted and loved for who she was, whatever that ought to be.  

Maja considered this. Of course, her foremost thought had been Kakuzo, but she could do that on her own time. For now, she was allowing Idril to take the lead and deemed it unbecoming of her to request her new friend (someone she liked immensely) dig up dirt on her not-husband. To circumvent this, she simply said, “I’d be happy to dig up anything damning on the Agdoeg pigs.” By pigs, she meant the police. Not Kakuzo, but… not-not Kakuzo either.

Maja collapsed into the desk chair next to Idril’s, swinging her legs merrily like a girl at a sleepover. And that is exactly what she looked like, bedecked in slouchy socks and a pink cashmere short and tank-top set. Maja reached for the cup from which Idril had just drank and took a drink from it herself. She could feel warmth lingering from the other woman’s mouth.

Watching Idril code was like watching the performance of a world-renowned orchestra and the capable conductor directing them. She was faster than Maja had thought was viable; her movements were sharp and energetic as she drummed at the keys. If it were anybody else, Maja would’ve loathed taking the backseat, but it was Idril. She’d join in when the going got tough. If - or when - the taller girl needed her. In the meantime, she was happy to watch the show.

Maja leaned in and touched the other woman’s arm, fingers skimming the cyborg’s cool, pale skin. It was firm enough to get her attention but delicate so as to not disturb her flow. Ever since their in-real-life meeting, she’d been finding innocuous excuses to touch her. “What about you?” asked the doll. “You got a bone to pick with anyone?”

Normally the cyborg would be hyperfocusing on her task at hand, but it was not quite as easy when the slender legs of the other were dangling around in the air. Every now and then she caught herself wondering about the things they could be doing instead of coding. Her face was feeling slightly warmer. Was it the drink or was it because of Maja?

Straightening her posture and rolling her head from one side to the other, the cyborg took a deep breath before getting back to cracking the firewalls. She pulled in her lower lip and started to bite on it, a bad habit whenever she was focusing on something that she could never get rid of. But when the cool hand of the other touched her arm, she stopped chewing on her bottom lip and look at her friend for a second before turning her focus back to screen.  

A low hum came from her while she was thinking about the question. Certainly, she could use this opportunity to find out more about whatever Kakuzo was doing here before they reunited. But they had always given each other enough space for their private matter. It didn’t seem right to dig up dirt about him now. “Well, the recent news about Apollo Abdula’s murder, I feel like there is more to it than what’s public. It’s also been a little too quiet around Lotus. A little suspicious if you ask me”, she hummed a familiar tune to herself before going on, “in a few minutes I will finish the programm and then it would probably be another 15 minutes, give or take 5 minutes, and we are in”  

After finishing the final lines of the code, she spun around in her chair to look at friend with a mischievous smile tugged at her lips. “Now what?”

Maja’s brown eyes glittered like diamonds at the prospect of this lovely woman committing mass violence in her honor. She clasped her hands together, delighted. “Upon seeing the attack, I will realize that I, too, have fallen in love with you. And we will reunite and kiss amidst the blood of the slain.” She said all of this as though she were recalling a particularly sweet scene in the latest episode of some K-Romance series. Certainly this fantasy was not something you’d see in any popular drama - at least not on Korean television. 

“Areum,” repeated the doll, trying the name out on her tongue. “Pretty.” Maja adjusted the collar of her white halter top as the taller woman spoke. The weather was nice - summer was giving way to autumn like a gentle sigh, and a sweet breeze hung in the air. “Sure,” said Maja. “That sounds nice.” She stood and tugged her denim skirt down her thighs. And with outfit properly adjusted, she offered her hand to the other woman. It was politeness coupled with want: she wanted to touch the hand of the woman she had loved to code with all these months, the woman who’d raid a hypothetical village for her. She smiled. “Let’s go.”

The cyborg couldn’t help herself and burst into a fit of laughter when the other went along with her silly dramatic scenario and gave it a hit drama series worthy ending, at least it would be an ending worthy of the work by the authors whose name they chose as their alias so far. “I bet that kiss is worth the anguish and horror that leads up to it”, the idea of her own lips brushing on the rosy, soft lips of the other drew a gentle smile on her rather pale face.  

For a moment, she lost herself in the brief daydream. Before she knew it the other was holding out her petite hand. The late summer honey coloured sunshine fell upon the other, letting her flawless skin glow in such angelic beauty that Idril felt the need to take a mental picture of the moment. How convenient that her robotic eyes actually captured this fleeting moment. Taking her hand in her own, a soothing yet thrilling warmth was spreading through her body. The silence between them was filled with comfort yet there was an undeniable tension rising. “So, tell me, what do you do in this city that I am about to set on fire to unleash my pain of losing you?”, she gently squeezed her hand as she was joking around.  

Another Life || Kakuzo + Idril

⛧

Upon coming to Agdoeg Kakuzo had found himself getting accustomed to the night life quickly. He’d duck in and out of bars on rainy nights, a small piece of him still yearning for the way the world would be a constant steam of smoke and fog. Sure he’d been much too young to be indulging in the harshness of Rockstar life but he’d loved it. He’d fallen for it just as quickly as he’d fallen for the other vices in his life and without shame.

Tonight was no different. As the city began to grow restless with it’s night owls, Kakuzo readied himself to be seen. Boots thudded against the concrete of the parking garage as he unveiled and unchained the chopper he only tended to take out on nights like this. Tonight he had a mission, and it began with the fierce growl of the bikes engine, echoing around the concrete box before he sped down the ramp and to the exit.

A little birdy had told him that an old flame had been in the city before the pride festival, which made it easier to get the band back together for their special performance. But following Idril had been gone to the wind once more, only for him to come up with (see: dig up) the next performance for her new band.

He made his way to the club, just in time to watch the set and just in time for him to feel he presence just as easily as he did back then. She was still a rock star, owning the stage just as she did when  they walked it together and he couldn’t help his smile when her chill ran down his spine. 

A chuckle left the demi-gods lips, “what am I not supposed to come support you?” He teased, wrapping his arms around her tightly. “Aaaand maybe I am stalking you but who knows.” He tipped his drink to his lips with a smirk, “so you’re hunkered down in the good old Agdoeg too, and to think I didn’t even feel you the whole time you were here. You can tell me if my dick was bad Dril, it’s fine.”

The music in the background and the screams from the crowd seemed to come from a place far away from them. For a moment, their surrounding seemed to have frozen in time. His beautiful eyes that seemed to bear some darkness that she could not grasp were still as gorgeous as ever and they evoked deeply burried feelings within her barely human body. Memories flashed by, it was overwhelming for her.

The moment his arms gently wrapped around her slender body, she felt like somebody had pulled her out of the trance of the past and brought her back the the present moment. Her arms naturally rested around his shoulders, pulling him even closer to her. It had been years since they last saw each other, embracing each other the way they did right now, yet it felt like no time had passed for the feelings they had for each other. A soft chuckled bounced off her black lips, as the other was obviously teasing her.

“Well, you know it’s not my style to take advantage of my groupies. But maybe I will make an exception for you because of your loyalty”, she gave him a playful wink while she was playing with his hair. Perhaps somebody else in her shoes would have demanded an explanation for his disappearance and confronted him with some dramatic guilt trip. However, things weren’t like that between. Organically they became friends and some time later, it was more than just friendship. It had never bothered them to clarify what it was and both just enjoyed it as it lasted. When he left the band without even a goodbye, she knew that it had nothing to do with them and just accepted it as it was.

“Oh, don’t try to fool me that you haven’t been naughty all this time and found yourself someone to help you with that”, the corner of her lips raised into a smug smirk on her face. The dim ligh of the club only made her gloomy face even more mysterious with her robotic, lilac eyes sparking in the dark. Pressing herself against his body, which felt so familiar, it ignited a fire within her, she leaned in to whisper in his ears, “But you’d better missed me. Or do you need a little reminder why you should have missed me?” Her lips the wandered to his neck to plant a soft kiss on his soft skin. His scent, an intoxicating mixture of cigarettes and his cologne, filled her body with desire. Before she knew it, she gently sucked on his neck.

vcmanika​:

The laugh that sprung from the woman’s indigo lips made a bloom of heat unfurl in Maja’s chest. She grinned, and this grin draped over her words. “Very prepared,” said Maja. “I’ve seen Saw, like… twice. Also, I think I’d make a fun kidnapee - that’s my most toxic trait. If I got abducted, I really do believe my kidnapper would end up being so swayed by my immaculate vibes that they’d end up falling head-over-heels in love with me and let me go.”

Angel of Death. The doll loved that. She wondered if she should now praise the taller woman, tell her how she also looked like an angel (but in a dark, blasphemous way that Maja found rousing), how wonderful it’s been coding with her, and how lucky it made her feel that they had found each other. But she didn’t say those things, not wanting to come across as sycophantic, especially on the heels of the other woman’s veiled flirtation. “Maja,” she picked up her mug and took a drink. “And yours?”

She took a sip of her matcha latte. Usually, she was quite nit picking when it came to her drinks and greatly despised it when the barista ruined it with too much sugar. Yet she couldn’t care less about her drink at the moment. A small chuckle rolled off her lips, “Are you saying that if I should kidnap you, you would make me fall in love with you and leave me heartbroken when you leave me? Thank you for letting me know, so I can prepare myself for the upcoming heartache. Don’t be surprised if I go berserk and unleash my pain in a form of an attack on the village”  

This question put her in a quite uncomfortable situation. There was an unexpected urge to tell Maja her real name, yet she was supposed to maintain her cover as a regular person running a repair shop. Even though they had just met, they had been friends for almost a year and the cyborg found herself already fond of the other. “Areum”, she bit on the inner side of her bottom lip. Before she could blurt anything out that she would regret, she put on a smile, “Do you want to go out for a walk? The weather is quite nice”

re-pearing an apple

(╯°□°)╯

Taking a better look around the shop, he couldn’t help but think that it was much nicer than the other place he had usually gone to. The other place smelled oddly of dust and stale air and had a general melancholic energy about it that matched his usual mood quite well. But sometimes it was nice to… not feel so like shit.

(The demon laughs at this somewhere in the back of his mind. And then it immediately stops laughing as soon as Doyun catches sight of the figure at the counter.

A shudder runs through him, cold from the inside out as the demon edges forward into his consciousness, curious and alert the same way a predator does upon sizing up a competitor.)

But he is on a mission to fix his phone. And while it is nothing, really, the principle of the matter is that he is slowly trying to mend the broken pieces that the demon keeps leaving in its wake. So despite the ringing in his ears and the ensuing headache, Doyun just grits his teeth and tries to focus on the conversation at hand while trying to also push the demon back. Because that thing loved a challenge, and the woman standing in front of him was nothing if not that.

The first thing Doyun noticed about her was her height. Or, well, the fact that as she stood up his gaze followed, eye-level at first before his head was tilting up and up and… up? It should not have been as surprising as it was, but his eyes widened, going ’oh, okay’ internally before shrugging it off.

“Oh, you can?” The state of his phone was… for lack of a better words, abysmal. Practically falling apart in his own hands, screen basically peeling at the edges and lines of color streaking across it whenever he turned it on. He feels dumb for doubting her, but it is tinged in his tone as he stares at his phone in her hands. “I, um… well. It just kind of… has a mind of it’s own, I guess.” He mumbled, trying to laugh a little but voice too strained to come off as anything aside from pained.

“But as for my name and address…” Fuck. Information as easy as this was slowly slipping his mind now too. He had it written in the notes app of his phone, but seeing its state currently, it would be of no use to him. Frustration threatened to bubble up inside him at the lack of fucking sense he had nowadays. “I don’t really remember my address…” hopefully he could write it off as having recently moved or something. He hated lying, so he instead left it at that, voice sort of trailing off with a defeated shrug. “I um… if you could just… give me an estimate and I could come back later…?”

“Personally, I’d like to think and believe that these things have minds of their own. That’s why I run this shop. You don’t just cast away a sick person. You take care of them until they are back on their feet.”, there was a melancholic twinge in her voice as she gazed upon the broken phone in her hand. She was a rather advanced cyborg. Her inner organs and brain were the few things left to be replaced. The last update she recently went through was the exoskeleton that helped her coordinating her movements even better. The pain after the operation was unlike anything that she had experienced before. The next upgrade would be her digestive system, if she hadn’t gone rogue and left her family.

While she was pretending to take another closer look on the phone, she was actually going through the data analysis about her new customer. Something seemed to be off, yet the readings couldn’t conclusively tell her what it was. Results like these often were linked to something beyond human nature, at least that had been her theory so far. But it was yet to be proofed. Something that she could tell though was that something was going on with the guy, the clenched jaw really gave it away. He must either be in pain or something uncomfortable must be occupying his mind right now.  

She wouldn’t consider herself a person that was known to give people comfort. Her frank nature often rubbed people the wrong way and her awkward personality didn’t really help it at all. Yet at this moment she felt compelled to give it a try. “Are you alright? You could also just take a seat. This wouldn’t take me too long”, she shrugged and contemplated what time would be appropriate amount of time for some normal repair shop to work on this. With her equipment in the back, it shouldn’t take her any longer than ten to fifteen minutes top. “I think I will be done in half an hour. But I would still need your name though.”

The early yet warm sunlight caressed her pale skin that was fairly covered with various tattoos, some done by famous artists, some made by her friends and some done by herself because why not? Slightly leaning her head backwards with her eyes closed, she focused on the warmth on her skin. The data being collected about the weather and her surrounding was running in her system, but with a few tricks she pushed it to the background to embrace the experience.  After a minute or two, she pulled her phone out to scroll down their chat. She could have easily hacked into their account and do some deep research about her date. But as someone who was programmed to do that on a daily basis and step by step losing touch with her human side, the cyborg wanted this experience to as much of a surprise for her as it was to the other.  

The only thing she knew about the other was that they were also into music as she was and that they also made music for a living, something that she used to do too. At least, that was her cover. As a touring musician, no one would raise any suspicion of her activity as a highly trained hacker for a private team of assassins. Of course, her date would never find out about any of that, otherwise, she would have to kill them. She closed her eyes for a moment to turn off the data search function of her eyes as a person with sunglasses and a chain choker, she straightened her posture and a small smile appeared on her rather gloomy face, “I guess you must be Joon” An awkward chuckle escaped her lips, “It’s nice to meet you. I’m Trashbot.. My name is Areum. Sorry, if I’m a little awkward. It’s my first blind date” She raised her hand to show him the skull ring on her right hand.

She cleared her throat as they slowly approached the rather empty amusement park. In the early hours in the middle of a work day, there were only a few groups of people there with them, which gave the park an almost eerie atmosphere. “Which ride would you like to try first?”