Oh Mr. Clown, Oh Mr. Clown

[maskormods]

WHO: YOU.
WHERE: Heropa Greenland Park.
WHEN: Sunday August 17th, from 11AM to 10PM.
WHAT: ImPorts participate in the local carnival, hosting their own attractions, helping with the booths and rides, and/or come looking to have a good time. Details here.
WARNINGS: None anticipated; please let us know if this should be edited.

Even in the daytime, Heropa Greenland Park appears almost dour in appearance and atmosphere. Employees of the park open the creaky gates at a few minutes before 11:00AM to allow imPorts and soldiers who have been ordered as security inside. Preparations have already started, with thick and colorful streamers lining hanging from one rusty looking lamppost another along the park's pathway. The booths look a little worse for wear and the while an effort had been made the night before, the park grounds are still coated in soda spills, popcorn, leftover hot dog bits, and other sticky and grimy messes. Sometimes the lights in the event booths flicker or burst entirely.

Needless to say, this place looks like it can use a makeover. While it fares well among its locals and those from Cape Canaveral, it has not been a place of interest among others in the state for quite some time. Right now? It looks more creepy than wholesome family entertainment.

But that's what imPorts are here for, aren't they? To liven up the place!

At the heart of the park is where employees have made enough room as possible for imPorts to set up their own attractions, booths, and whatnot. There will be small platforms for some imPorts and bigger ones may need to be shared among each other, scheduling their time slots for their own performances. There will be tables should anyone need it for performances that don't require a grand stage.

By noon there the line-up park employees had been expecting turns out even better than they had hoped. There are twice as many locals who've shown up, eager to see imPorts in action up close. By 12:30PM the park is bustling with people of all ages and all appear to be having quite the time, despite the occasional issue with the rides such as the merry-go-round (oops, it slows down more than it should), the carousel (it stops at least once every two hours), and the haunted house's lights go down at some point, though this seems to have worked in its favor.

Kids are screaming in delight everywhere, there are teens trying to do risky things on faster moving rides, and everyone is passing through the center at some point to come and check out what imPorts are going to do next.

Put on your best face and give them a show they'll remember, heroes!

Comments

[lyingheart]

She hadn't even expected him to address her directly the last time. Not that she'd aimed to be anything other than mildly provocative, but she hadn't addressed him, only around him. It was probably more than she should have done - no, definitely more than she should have done - indicating that she was even paying attention.

She doesn't expect him now, doesn't even see him at first, watching the far stage with a quiet sort of calm. One imPort's demonstration ends, and she breathes out, thoughtful as she turns her attention back to the throwing line. Blue hair. Color can register as fast as facial recognition, and Annie recognizes his face, whatever of it's exposed.

As with Light, she doesn't know what he wants. There's the obvious, taking a kind of (not so cheap) shot at her, sending her falling down into the water below, which might carry some sense of satisfaction. For Light, over her rudeness over his rudeness (more misunderstanding, but still, she's allowed to indulge in unfair opinions in the sanctity of her own mind), but with Houka, she doesn't know how that satisfaction factors in. The vehemence of his reaction at the start of the month, how little he wants to engage, it's stranger to see him here now, poised to... what?

I've already fallen further than this. The surprise that widens her eyes, has her moving her head back an inch, lips twitching in a non-expression, changes into something still and braced. Annie tucks her chin in, a kind of protective stubbornness, bangs clinging to her cheekbones in resistance to the soft tug of the warm wind. She levels a stare right back at him, unblinking.

All movement stops aside from the haphazard billowing of her drying carnival t-shirt, pulled this way and that way by the summer breeze. Annie is simply waiting.

[databoner]

No words need to be exchanged, and so they aren't.

Inumuta takes one of the worn but heavy baseballs provided at the front desk in hand. He has an awful throw, personally. But one of the beautiful parts of his regalia is his ability to analyze any situation, this one included. The wind is blowing from the west, weakly. The weight of this ball is another factor to take into account. Inumuta takes out his phone- which might seem rude in the moment, but it's how his regalia communicates to him those statuses. It's also what tells him which angle he should throw at, and with what force, to hit the intended target. With another swipe of his phone's screen, he's completed the analysis. It's just a matter of throwing.

And yet he stalls. He has the ball in his hand, he's ready to go, and he... doesn't. Not yet. He knows if he waits too long, the wind will change and he'll need to analyze again. But for just a brief moment, he looks over the ball in his hand, and then drags his eyes back up to Annie. Just as stony-faced as always. Inumuta doesn't know why he was expecting to see anything else on her face than something entirely neutral.

He gives one more glance to Annie, before shifting his eyes back over to the target, and throwing. It's a direct hit.

[lyingheart]

It's there, right before he throws. Annie tucks her chin in toward her chest, lips twitching toward a frown. Everyone else, intent on dunking her or not, has said something to start. Questioned if she's even safe in public, awkwardly wondered why any of them are here, conversed over fabricated concerns over the fairness of her skin and the chance she'll sunburn. Asked if she doesn't find all of this embarrassing, and she'd responded, saying everything has a cost. Hers wasn't much in embarrassment. It was in tolerance.

Or it had been. She jerks back when the handle behind the target is hit, the thwack coming before the drop in her stomach and underneath her, tongue collapsing as she presses her lips together in an obvious frown, closing her eyes and breathing out hard through her nose as the chlorinated water swallows her whole, swirling over her head.

The weightlessness in water that had been frightening the first time she hadn't been able to find the bottom is familiar by now, as are her actions: moving her arms out and up, bending her knees as the movement forces her to the bottom of the tank. The clear plexiglass front makes her every move in the water as on display as when she sits above this, exaggerating her motions in a viscous version of what the wind might otherwise do if she were moving like this with her maneuvering gear.

Her eyes open, ignoring the slight burn behind the chlorine. There's warping to the plexiglass, but she can still see him out there. For all the tolerance earlier in the day, masking over the fear or anything else bubbling to the surface, she doesn't feel close to tolerant now. Now she just feels angry, over a collection of things, but several which sum up to him. She isn't even aware of how obvious her glaring is, in those scant half seconds before she pushes off the bottom of the tank, twisting her body around to give him, and everyone else, her back. It takes two kicks to breach the surface by the ladder, Annie heaving herself up and out to a spray and splashing of chlorine up the sides of the tank, accompanying her up to the top of the platform.

She was still frowning, trying to get a handle on the anger that was curled up in her chest and breathing in as she does. It should be as senseless as this all is. She didn't have to understand the strength of his reaction; it was better, to push people away. If not better, than it's supposed to be easier. Why does itgrate like this? Her back is too stiff, the way she walks the back platform stilted even as she pulls her shirt forward, digging her fingers in to wring out some of the water for the umpteenth time today. Her lips pull back from her teeth, a partial grimace that ignores the taste of the chlorine that intrudes on her mouth. Annie turns her head, looking back toward the front of the line. Her struggle to keep a tight reign on her anger is failing, and it's obvious, from posture to expression.

She needs a break, time away, whatever to get herself calmed down. A familiar head of half-drenched curls catches her attention, and there's her easy out. Walking down the stairs with more force than she needed, Annie calls out to the returning teenager. "Jayden! I'm tagging you in!" She didn't give a damn how many balls Inumuta had paid for, let alone if anyone else was waiting around to take their shots at her. She needs to walk off the irritation that's making her hands curl into fists, hidden by the damp material of the shirt she hasn't been able to let go. She doesn't understand, and she's so angry over it, over whatever the hell is going on in his (comment locking, deriding, angry, too avoidant) head. Angry because she can't even figure out if she has the right to ask what's going on, when there's the obvious - hello, nice to meet you, and yes, at home, I'm a monster and I've killed and I can't give you a satisfactory answer on the why - paired up against... what?

She doesn't know. Annie stalks around the back of the stairs, hidden by the platform itself in a matter of seconds.

[databoner]

Is this victory? He's not entirely sure. He's also not sure exactly what he was hoping to achieve, other than to take some of his negative feelings out on Annie, yet again. Which maybe he should feel bad about tormenting her like this. No, he does feel bad about it. Absolutely.

But then he just thinks about what she's done. Maybe she wasn't directly responsible- maybe she didn't personally kill those thousands of people- but she, along with Reiner and Bertholdt, caused it. It wouldn't have happened, without their actions. To be the one to cause those deaths puts as much blood on their hands as the ones who did the actual crimes. He doesn't know exactly how it happened. Doesn't know enough about Annie's world to understand it entirely. But he knows enough. He knows that it's so, so similar to what Ragyo did on his world. Ragyo personally, killed no one. But that doesn't change that her actions lead to the deaths of just as many as Annie's, if not more.

And that's why he can't forgive her.

Inumuta sees her glare at him through the glass of the tank, and then quickly takes off down the stairs, behind the booth. She certainly sounded mad enough how loudly she calls out, aggression in her tone. She was also aggressive enough in their conversation a few days earlier. But why does she get to feel bad? Did she not expect this? She had acted like she knew exactly the repercussions she was signing up for, and now she seems mad at him for not forgiving her, like everyone else had. Is he really the only one, aside from that raving Lunatic, to not forgive her?

He rolls his shoulders to relax, and hands off his remaining baseballs to the person standing in line behind him. He has no use for them anymore now that Annie's gone, anyway.

[lyingheart]

It's that correlation that's missing from Annie's calculations. The concept of hatred leveled at her isn't new. In ways, she's lived with that promise tied around her throat since as long as she could remember, and it'd always been a sobering reminder. Don't get close. Don't find a way to get lost in people who will hate you in the end.

There's no concept of forgiveness in her mind. She can't take Kay or Minako's words seriously; forgiveness can only come from the people of their home, and it never will. She refused to divorce herself from the greater picture, tying herself to the two people who had to understand some measure of what it meant to be titan shifters, isolated and cut off and raised as surely as a brood parasite in the frail, shaking arms of an empire that lived and thrived on the lies that kept it whole.

If people like you ran things, then we'd really be screwed. Her own words on Marlowe's sentiments, his desire to change people, as if people were the ones who needed changing, as if the structure itself didn't need that rearranging... Annie walks, aware in some part of her mind that she's shedding water as she goes, a short, displaced water creature from the chlorine lagoon, but she doesn't care. Damp footprints leave more of a mark in their fading, transient way than she ever wanted to leave a mark on anyone here.

She doesn't want forgiveness. She wants acceptance. You have done these things. You are that person. If you'll be anything else, we'll see. Acknowledgement and everything else, and yes, yes, the hatred. The lack of forgiveness, when she'd seen what the real cost was, when Annie, Annie whose heart was locked away behind walls as formidable as the ones in the human empire, as alien and treacherous, too, when her heart had felt the cut, staring down at people who she knew, dead. For what? She didn't need to be bosom buddies with her fellow monsters to have watched the fallout in Trost. She'd fought, and she'd thought, what if, and in the aftermath, it had been Reiner who told her apologies would do nothing.

We can just burn the bodies before even more people die.

It is hard, physically and emotionally, to shake herself out of the grip that the entirety of her life has over her. The past is a powerful, powerful pull, but she resolved to move forward. Take those steps, endure the things she'd known were coming, struggle to find that acceptance, where it could be found. Unable to understand the examples that came forward, in Tony's words, in the things that were not forgiveness, in her eyes, but acknowledgement.

She hadn't wanted to think about the things she might have had to lose. She shouldn't have had those in the first place, and in the end, that's where her anger directs itself. That he, much as Wally, or Artemis, had been part of her staring at herself in the reflection of the windows that lined Nonah's too crowded streets and seeing what the lies let live on and knowing, with that cold clarity, it had to end. Knowing which bridges would hurt to watch burn, but thankful that this time, she wasn't watching years turn to ash between her and the faces watching from the far shore.

It hurts right now. It'll fade. As long as she's alive - not just surviving, but learning what it is to live - it'll fade. Scars never left; they scabbed over, healed, turned into a gnarled mess around her heart, but it would keep beating. A heart - even outside of her name, she still had one of those. She was never monster enough to do what needed to be done. Not for the human empire; not for the lives outside the Walls.

So what is this anger? She slows, staring through the carnival games laid out to the side. She doesn't see any of them, keeping a level of watchfulness for any threat to her person, but otherwise little more than a carnival worker who seems to have forgotten her way. It's not understanding why it feels personal. He didn't know her well enough to care; couldn't. No one did. So why did this get under his skin? Why was he persisting in picking at her, like a scab he can't quite let heal?

What are you seeing when you see me? It's not Annie Leonhart, the Female Titan. That's what Levi saw, and Erwin, Hange too. What Eren would see, and what Armin saw, in equal parts intercut with Annie, the distant, the quiet. Houka didn't have that personal edge, hadn't seen her kill comrades who tried to attack and failed to account for a sharp mind behind a Titan's mass. Knowing her here, it's too small a time. She's nothing. She's not an impact. She feels she knows that, so it isn't what she is... or it seems unlikely. What had he said on their confession? It's not what you are, it's what you've done.

Is confronting him worth finding that answer? She doesn't need to. Annie pulls in on that anger, shoving it down, fingers clenching and unclenching. Senketsu had offered to talk, sometime, for reasons of, ah, what. Monster to monster? Horrific creation of mankind to horrific creation of mankind? She could ask him if he knew. It might be misconstrued... she shoves a hand through her hair, grimacing as fingers tangle in damp locks.

Wally has talked to her. He's said he can't understand it. He's told her, outright, that to sound like a person willing to change, she has to start speaking like one. Artemis had left before she could ever find an inadequate way to say, thank you for what you gave me before all of this. Houka... she grits her teeth. She can still say thank you, little as those word will mean to him. And in facing down her own anger, maybe she can ask about that, too - not run away, which has always been easier, but try to face an understand someone else's feelings.

If she can stop being a coward. If she can admit, without needing to be half starved for air, that in all those people, she'd been scared of what she almost might see. I don't have friends.

Even if it'd been nice to half-believe otherwise might have been true, in a different life. If Annie were a different girl.

She's subdued when she returns to the tank, and to Jayden, bringing along a water bottle as an awkward apology to yet another person who can't really stand her. She had left him to face a crowd of eager dunkers on his own. Time to take up that duty again, and take her share of falls for public amusement. To look out over their gathered heads, ceasing to see the people there, and seeing only the thought of a crowd. Are you not entertained?