121 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
16 Years
Uncertain-male?
Student-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Robin Engell on Sept 10, 2018 19:45:39 GMT -4
It’s cold here under the evening sun.
Shivering even beneath her hastily bought shirt, plain black cloth screened and painted with the logo of the JSDF, even beneath the hastily bought hoodie to hide the obvious lack of bra beneath. Fidgeting, readjusting to a neglected form – legs are pulled high and tight until her knees touch her chest and hide under that newly bought fabric.
She knows what’s happening – lethargy, chills, symptoms of a corpse. A desperate void in her gut, a warning she’s empty, with no fuel to move, no fuel to keep her body warm – her quirk sits idle. Under a sun soaked sky, even the heat in her cheeks has died.
A mistake, she thinks, imagining first the scene from earlier that day before the sentiment leaks, spreads in a backpedal sprint through the last days, months, years of her life. Overusing her quirk, coming to the military exhibition, coming to UA, coming to Japan, trying to fix her quirk.
Artillery in the distance, live and loud, and those abstractions coalesce, attract and glob and meld in a weightless aether until they forge into a shell, a ball that she loads into that cannon. An arm unsheathes, rises through the air with finger and thumb pointed, a gun aimed to the horizon.
And a round is fired, a blank, a roar that tears through the air hot and heavy, tactile boom in her chest. And with it, her fingers cock and fire as well, synched in time.
Her arm falls, rests at her side, loose and limp.
Stomach restless and growling, echoing the shot she took – the only aftershock is a sigh that leaves her mouth as she slumps, falls over sideways and lays, curled in her hoodie.
“I wish I hadn't forgotten my bag.”
WORD COUNT: 304 NOTES: Robin's using "boku" while mumbling the final line there.
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633 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
Male
"Kinetic Activity"
Student-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Daimon Darren on Sept 11, 2018 2:04:29 GMT -4
“These boots are made for walkin’,” hummed a pair of boots and their owner. The song was both being hummed and played on a mobile phone’s cheap-ass speakers. There was a spring in the step of the feet who were wearing the boots, made of thick black leather, and the song their owner was humming told no lie about their purpose. Above the boots was a pair of cargo pants, and if his white T-shirt didn’t say “Booty” in black letters, the adolescent and his wild blonde hair could have easily been mistaken for another private. At first sight, at least. Upon closer inspection, one would have noticed the boots were brand new and shone like a bald man’s head. They had been bought from the surplus not a week ago. And upon spending any length of time with Darren, they would also notice there was no way in hell this idiot could be a soldier. Slung across the idiot’s chest was the sling of a sports bag. The bag was filled with all manners of snacks, all manners of cheap: store brand soda, store brand chips, store brand candy bars but also a pair of 4oz gloves, a pair of 8oz gloves, hand tape, a pair of boxing shorts balled up in a corner, a mouth guard in its box between two packs of chips and a towel, also balled up in a corner. The only semblance of order in that sports bag was that the soda was placed below the chips so as not to crush them. After a long afternoon of trying to break his previous record at the obstacle course, with and without using his quirk, he was drained. His Autokinesis could even burn into his fat if he overused it; he got a clear reminder the other day when he went skydiving with Yumi, and he showed her he was an independent man who didn’t need no parachute but still needed to be saved from drowning.He had to spend hours in the infirmary even though he claimed loudly that didn’t hurt himself. The geasles was almost gone, but there were still a few dots on the back of his arms. Darren hated spending the afternoon in bed; that was something he reserved for his mornings. From then on, the blondie was not seen at the military base without his sports bag full of snacks. He had found himself a nice spot to eat at, just out of view, in the shade of one of the only actual buildings in the maze of tents. It was quiet, no one bothered him here and he could pork on chips and look at memes in peace. Rest was important too. Today, however, there was a girl in his spot. “Yo,” he said automatically when he spotted her. Well, it was never really his spot, but neither was it hers, and there was enough room for two people to sit, he reasoned as he sat his ass down casually, like he was sitting next to an old friend. He turned down his music a notch or two, but didn’t cut it off entirely. “I see you know the best lunch spot in here too,” he said with a grin as he tore open a convenience store triangle sandwich. He began to devour the first one. As he did so, he opened his phone onto his social media feed. His social media feed was carefully curated to display exactly two things: news about himself and memes. Everything else was irrelevant. For every selfie, for every cat picture, there were a half dozen memes and an article or two about U.A. The articles about U.A. were particularly interesting these days because they often mentioned him and his shark wrestling adventures. Nothing pleased Darren more than reading about his shark-wrestling adventures. Except being asked about them. Why, if the girl sitting next to him -- that he sat next to in reality, but details -- happened to recognize his picture as he scrolled down his social media feed of news and memes, that was just a happy coincidence, wasn’t it?
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121 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
16 Years
Uncertain-male?
Student-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Robin Engell on Sept 11, 2018 2:59:14 GMT -4
“Y- Yo.”
She stutters, off guard. He’s a giant at this angle with her head on the seat, loud and obnoxious – the blonde on his head blooms and blends with the sun in her eyes.
It takes seconds for her to decide she doesn’t like him, the kind of brazen self-confidence that lets a person blast music on speakers in public - it's too familiar, too close to people she's known on top of being obnoxious. 'Don't talk to me,' she almost bites, 'don't even sit here. Keep going.' Narrowed eyes and narrowed lips glare for a moment, just a few, until they drift down and catch sight of his bag. Piles of treats, mountains of food – it triggers her gut, sends it screaming again, audible rumbles.
And she sits up, rockets and bounces back to a proper pose – legs creep out from beneath her hoodie, bare feet and a pair of shorts far too loose to be her size.
What’s at the bottom of the human soul, she wonders. Is it the heart, the wellspring of pride, the emotional keystone that lets human beings stay human through trying hardship? Or is it the stomach, slave to impulse and urge, bodily need and -
“Oi, Headphones,” her gut decides for her, “That sandwich – Are you sharing? Or, uh, could I have some, I guess.”
Eyes tethered to ground, not facing him, not acknowledging the shame on her cheeks for having to ask. One finger reaches from the pocket of her hoodie to scratch the side of her nose.
“I’m kind of hungry, is all.”
WORD COUNT: 264 NOTES: Still using "boku."
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633 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
Male
"Kinetic Activity"
Student-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Daimon Darren on Sept 18, 2018 1:00:26 GMT -4
Darren didn’t hear the girl’s stomach grumble over the music, but he did see the bare feet and the oversized shorts. Now that he thought of it, it was rather baggy attire she was wearing. In any case, her body language was opening in his direction. He didn’t think the news would work so well.
Holy shit, he thought when she addressed him, they really work like a fucking charm, until she got to the point, which was the other sandwich in his pack. He took a bite of his own and stared at her blankly as he chewed. He swallowed. She wasn’t looking at him, looking very embarrassed. She even scratched her nose like a textbook tsundere.
“What’s with the boku?” he asked with characteristic bluntness. “And, sure, I guess. Mama always told me to share,” he added with a smile. “In her eternal words: share your toys, or I’ll kick your ass.”
He fished a can of coke from the bag to wash down his sandwich. It was a store brand. It pschiited and cracked like a name brand when he opened it, and it was just as unhealthy.
“I’m Daimon Darren. Maybe you heard of the shark thing? You follow U.A. News?” he asked proudly, eager to be asked more so he could brag more about the news articles about himself he couldn’t shut up about these last few days.
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121 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
16 Years
Uncertain-male?
Student-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Robin Engell on Sept 18, 2018 2:13:45 GMT -4
“Boku… ka?”
Green eyes wander from the spectacle to the boy to her side, blunt and grinning and the same kind of oblivious that still manages to piss her off. Although...
‘… Oh, shit!’ the words playing in her head.
“Ah! Atashi, atashi!”
On her face, a panicked blush and a dumber smile, broad and forced while she waves off the question. “I just got confused is all, sorry! Uh, I’m a foreigner as you can see, right? So I still get hung up on some of the weird Japanese stuff like that – sorry.”
Her Japanese is practiced despite her words, though follows conventions, cliches, as if learned from anime. It might seem odd for someone with that fluency to make such a mistake.
It’s a blatant lie to anyone with eyes or ears, were the truth not so bizarre.
“And, uh, thank you.” Her hand crawls, slides into his bag and pulls one of those sandwiches at random – plastic torn and shredded, sandwich gone in one, two, three bites. She’s ravenous, far from demure, the kind of hungry that borders desperate, the kind of hungry that blocks his words even if she’d wanted to hear.
“I’m… Uh...” Sweating, “Engell Robin,” for lack of a better response, another identity. “No, sorry. I don’t watch much news. If it’s alright, could I have another?” A small lie - she'd heard something about a shark, nothing beyond that, definitely nothing she wanted to talk about.
She turns to him, face still red, embarrassed to ask, embarrassed to have to use atashi so boldly, as if to drive home the point to herself. That she’d slipped, that Yumi knew, that the female Robin Engell exists and had been exposed to the world.
And with the look on his face, with the hole in her gut still fresh.
“Uh, you can tell me about it, though. If you want. If I’m eating. If that sounds okay.”
‘A few more sandwiches,’ she thinks, ‘and I’ll probably have enough fuel to get home, at least.’
WORD COUNT: 338 NOTES: Very blatantly using "atashi," occasionally switching to "watashi."
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633 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
Male
"Kinetic Activity"
Student-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Daimon Darren on Oct 3, 2018 21:46:32 GMT -4
“Issa alright,” answered the delinquent, unhelpfully in delinquent jargon. “Fuck, I lived here all my life and I still get confused by this shit.” He switched to English, with a bastard mix of an American, Australian and Japanese accent. “We can speak English if ya want. My dad is from Australia.”
Robin Engell, he name was. She gave it after she devoured the sandwich in three bites. She asked for more food, saying that no, she didn’t see the news, but he could tell her all about it in exchange for some food. “Holy shit, you drive a hard bargain. Fine, help yourself to my extensive collection of unhealthy crap,” he said opening his sports bag wide, revealing the full extent of his cheap sodas and store brand chips so-called ‘collection’.
“You’re new to town, ain’t ya? We’re close to U.A. here. Surely you heard of it. First hero school in the world, yadda yadda, long story short, I study here,” he said, beaming proudly, sure to impress anyone who wasn’t a student with that. “And I got some real world practice recently. There I was, minding my own business -- for real, because often when I say I was minding my own business, I wasn’t, but in this story I was -- anyway, minding my own business, jogging through the park, and out of the fucking ground comes a god damn human shark who start eating people, so I played matador to the thing for a while before he retreated, I even saved a cop! Snatched that mothefucker straight from the jaws of death. Maybe next time I get in trouble they’ll have clemency, heh?”
Without any prior warning, Robin received their first exposure to the rapid-fire verbal shitposting that Darren was capable of executing, spitting roughly a thousand idiocies a minute. Roughly.
“What about you? Whachu doing here?”
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121 Posts
0 EP
EXP
Total
16 Years
Uncertain-male?
Student-Rank Quirk:
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Post by Robin Engell on Oct 4, 2018 22:57:04 GMT -4
‘Everyone speaks English in Japan, I guess.’
She’s almost bothered – she’s proud of her Japanese and the fluency she has, and for that bilingual skill to be so easily matched, for him to think so little of her ability that he switched to her mother tongue, even if she’d prompted it – it’s a slight, one she recognizes is self-inflicted, but still one that hurts. Vulnerable, weak, exposed in body and heart and now language, she feels the wind lick at open wounds free of their shell, squirms with the sensation.
He’s off with the slightest invitation, exploding with noise and what might be words. She nods between bites, cocks her head and sighs in her mind.
“UA? I’ve heard of it, yeah.”
“Oh? Sounds scary.”
“Maybe they will, yeah.”
Automatic and trained – she’s less than convinced, takes his words with enough salt to season the meal in her hands. He’s nice enough, probably capable, but almost definitely indulging himself, aggrandizing achievements that almost happened.
And then he does the unthinkable.
He asks about her.
Sitting up straight, fumbling that sandwich before recatching and squeezing it. Her eyes go straight ahead, can’t meet his in the act of a lie.
“O- Oh! I… My Dad is with the US military. And we – we came to the event because I’m a quirker and he wants to see, uh, how I would fare. In the military. He’s on a base here in Japan.”
The words come with difficulty, squeezed out with force, the last drops in a tube of paste, until eventually she turns and scratches a cheek, shuts her eyes and forces a grin. The smallest effort to abuse her current form.
“Sorry, I’m not really as impressive as you~! I bet you’ve got recruiters begging to have you in the JSDF!”
‘Turn back the conversation, keep the braggart on himself!’ A basic plan, improvised and desperate.
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Post by Deleted on Oct 25, 2018 5:26:45 GMT -4
Robin 22 exp
Darren 24 exp
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