The Way I See Things [Arata]

How long had it been, she wondered. When was the last time she felt pain so... raw. She was used to being bruised and battered. Taking a hit or fifteen? Fuck it, she'd just shrug it off and come at you even harder. But she could never, ever get used to something like this.

People say that you get used to things like this over time. That you get desensitized with every person you lose. Bullshit. That was complete and utter bullshit. You didn't get used to it. It just got worse. She had already lost too many people to count, and with each new loss it simply felt like Jasmine lost yet another part of herself as though the world was just some cruel kid tearing apart his toy. With each piece gone the toy simply wasn't the same anymore. You could try to stitch it back together but the scars would still be there, looking like a pathetic shell of itself.

Was that what she was doomed to become? A husk of a person tormented by what the world had taken away from her?

Her head swam with thoughts. So many thoughts and emotions. She didn't know what to do with them. It didn't matter how much of that disgusting whiskey she drank - it didn't help. All it did was remind her of all the time she'd spent with Mike and everybody else. It was a memory that seemed like a fairy tale from another world, but at the same time it was so fresh in her mind it left her feeling like somebody stuck a crooked shiv into her gut and twisted it up and above her side.

She brought her knees up to her chest and wrapped her arms around them, wrapping herself into a ball while holding the whiskey by the bottle's neck loosely. Jasmine buried her face in between her knees, closing her eyes shut as she tried to escape from the world and all of the evil it brought with it. So many things... so many things had gone wrong in her life. Why was she even alive? How was she alive? How did she manage to survive through it all and keep on fighting? Why was she the one to stay alive?Why not them? How was she better than all of the people that died fighting? Maybe G was right... maybe there was no hope. She had realized exactly how much she had lost and the memory of her patronizing G looked ridiculous to her at that moment. What hope was there to be had when a downward spiral into into depravity was all that waited for you at each step you took?

A short and dry laugh came from the blonde, venom staining every single decibel of her voice, "Okay, teacher at my school," she said, "what, you here to educate me on underage drinking? Please."

Jasmine didn't know what these feelings were that were flowing all throughout her system. Nor could she come up with a way to deal with them. There was just... there was just so much shit. So much baggage clouding both her judgment and her ability to any positives of any situation whatsoever. She hated it. And it reflected on her. A temporary flame lit up inside her, bubbling up in her chest like a ferocious blaze. It forced her to grit her teeth and clench her fists, almost cracking the neck of the bottle in her hand.

Anger. The feeling she knew how to deal with the most. It was the easiest one to resort to. Rather than feeling pain, resorting to lashing out had always been simpler. Depression and hopelessness were two of the most difficult enemies to face, which was why Jasmine always avoided them. She'd rather focus on the more fiery aspects that made up her personality. Leave those wounds to fester. They might not go away. Heck, they'd probably come back and bite her in the ass. But she couldn't deal with them now anyway, so what was even the point in trying?

She wanted to lash out. Swing the bottle at something. Punch something. Blow something up. The desire to do all of the above were firmly burning in her mind, driving her crazy. But somewhere, deep within her head, some form of clarity was still present. She knew what kind of trouble that might have brought her. And while she didn't necessarily care - heck she thought that getting expelled would bring her back to New York where she could be with her mourning friends - a voice in the back of her head kept whispering to her that, somehow, that would've been one of the worst decisions she could've made.

And yet she still struggled to understand how coming to Yuuei wasn't exactly that in the first place.

Thus she held on. Jasmine defaulted to the snide, deflecting, and borderline projecting side of her personality. She wasn't in the mood to talk with this guy, whoever he was. She didn't care for his reasons. She just wanted him gone so she could go do what she set out to do - get fucking wasted and pretend like none of it ever fucking happened. It wouldn't last. But at least, for a while, she could try to be the girl she was yesterday.

"I dunno, teach. I'm sitting on the edge of this obnoxiously tall fucking sky-scraper, drowning at the bottom of a bottle of some cheap-ass booze while I'm clearly still a minor. You probably already assumed I thought of killing myself. I mean, who wouldn't, right? All of us dumb teenagers go through a phase at one point or another. So, you tell me. How am I doing tonight? Pretty fucking fantastic, I reckon."

Jasmine clenched her fists almost immediately after mister 'Glovebox' opened his mouth again, her teeth grinding against one another as she fought the urge to just knock this guy off of the roof with all of her might.

But as quickly as her anger came, it faded. A long, shaky breath left her as the blonde shut her eyes closed, her head slumping into her knees again as she squeezed her legs tighter to herself now. As fiery of an emotion as anger was, it wasn't a perfect substitute. It was easier to handle, that was true. And in most cases it worked perfectly to help her refocus. Or rather, avoid things she didn't want to deal with.

This was definitely one of those things. Her feelings were a mess and she didn't know what to do with them. But, at the same time, they were too strong to be ignored.

"I..." She finally spoke, her voice a whisper drowned out by the buzz of traffic below them, "How... how do you deal with all of it?" She asked, a bloodshot eye glancing at the Pro Hero, a clear sign of crying, yet there were no tears. "What... why are we fighting in a world that doesn't want to be helped? What's the point?" She asked. There were so many different thoughts in Jasmine's head that she struggled to form them into a coherent sentence. She didn't even know if what she was asking made any sense. She just needed to talk because she was afraid that if she let the darkness drown her, there'd be no coming back.

Jasmine was drunk. She wasn't dumb. Okay, scratch that. She wasn't even that drunk. So when Glovebox made an attempt to snag the bottle if liquor she had procured for herself from her, she visibly pulled it away from him, giving the older male a light glare. A soft sigh left her lips before she pushed the damn thing against her lips again. It had begun getting heavy in her hands. Or rather, it would probably be more accurate to say that Jasmine wasn't even feeling the weight properly anymore. Her intake of alcohol was slowly but surely numbing both her brain and her senses, making things easier to deal with for her. And, while underage drinking was surely an issue... on the flip side? It made Jasmine easier to deal with.

The second the neck of the bottle touched her lips, Jasmine reared her head backwards. She took her sweet time; one gulp, two, three, four... and these weren't your small 'sips' that you'd expect from someone her age. No, these would put even your most avid drinkers to shame. It wasn't until the blonde finished about a third of the bottle until her throat began burning more than she could hope to cope with. The sudden sensation made her cough and almost choke, the sound seeming both sad and desperate. She took a few moments to compose herself, the world around her blurring even more than it had before. Something about alcohol was utterly mesmerizing, if you asked her.

Jasmine knew so many people who succumbed to alcohol. At first it was nothing out of the ordinary - a party every other Friday. Then it begun escalating. Fridays and Saturdays. Suddenly a Thursday was thrown into the mix. Then the Sunday. Before they knew it, they had been drinking four days straight. Hangovers became too much to deal with, so they remedied that with more alcohol. Then they realize just how much alcohol helped numb the pain. Just how much of a fog it cast over both your mind and body. It helped numb your brain. The thoughts that would normally keep you up awake at night, cause anxiety and pain attacks... all of it was gone. But the harsh reality of things? They came back ten times worse whenever you woke up sober.

It was why Jasmine had never indulged too much. Or why she never aimed for anything else. Alcohol, as dangerous as it was, didn't even begin to compare to the other shit that was on the streets.

This knowledge was in her head even through this particular bout of grief. Her best friend had died. She wasn't able to cope with the hurt by herself. It was just... too much. But neither was she going to drink herself to death. As soon as she was done applying her dose, Jasmine set down the bottle beside the older male, accidentally almost breaking it in the process as she swerved in her seat clumsily, almost losing her balance.

A soft burp left the girl's throat, the searing and rather disgusting aftertaste still fresh on her tongue. Despite it being difficult to focus, Jasmine managed to piece together what Arata was saying. She got it. She understood what he was trying to say. But it still didn't answer her question.

"M-my friend..." another burp, "I'm from New York... things are... bad. Over there?" She said. The quirk riots were no mystery to anyone. People there hated quirkers. That's why so many of them had lived on the street under constant oppression all this time. That's why Jasmine was forced to fight so much. Every single day was spent on her toes, fighting the lives of others and herself. She had lost so much. Her eyes bore witness to so many people - both friends and otherwise - dying... a part of her was surprised how she was still able to even remotely care about anything.

The quirk riots this time had hit much, much worse than they had before. She didn't know how she knew - maybe she looked it up during her blackout - but she knew exactly what had happened. Another riot went down in Brooklyn; this one was bloody, taking the lives of several people. A kid had only just manifested his quirk, and that quirk had just so happened to be radiation control. The resulting panic from that ended up having the more radical anti-quirkers get especially violent.

And among the casualties was her best friend. The person she knew since she was barely twelve. Mike. Practically her brother.

"The recent riot... they killed... my best friend... my brother..." A quiet sob was heard through the slurry of words the girl managed to whimper out, the alcohol serving to numb her mind more than she needed, but just as much as she wanted, "S-so... tell me... how am I supposed to fight and... protect... people like that? Would you be able to...? Would you... can you... can you h-honestly say... you'd be able to be this... paragon you keep talking about?"

"Even if... these people have... taken absolutely everything from you that mattered? Would you still be able to say these same... words?" Despite how slurred Jasmine's words were and how utterly wobbly she had become from the the sudden bursting of the dam that was her alcohol tolerance, the meaning of her words was clear. And if Arata thought she was just talking out of her mind drunk, the gleam in her lilac eyes when she glanced at him would tell him a different story entirely. Jasmine was reaching her wits' end. She needed purpose. And that was becoming ever more difficult to find through the haze of grief and sadness that had been cast over her time and time again.

This world made her see the faces of her dead friends in her sleep. "...why?" she asked, "Why... how am I supposed to... fight for the people... who took from me everything... I ever l-loved...?"