maskormenacelogs | While the lines on the wall start to fray

Daryl had stopped paying active attention to Tetsuo's driving. His leaning back and forth, moving with the bike, absent and automatic reactions. Paying more attention to the route they were taking.

That changed when he felt the body in front of him straighten up and then lean back. He didn't react at first, thinking it was just the kid prepping to slow down for a stop. His eyes scanned the road for a sign saying Neo Tokyo. But when he didn't see it and when it was obvious they weren't slowing down, his attention shifted to the bike itself and it's driver.

The lack of hands on the steering was not quite as unfamiliar to him as it should have been. His brother had played that trick on him when he was still little more than once. Found a way to lock his (then) crap bike's steering column into one position and let it roll. Had to stop to unlock it and get it working properly again. But this was decidedly not that sort of bike and while Tetsuo may have been doing it to show off, Daryl wasn't sure it was the kind of showing off that was meant to freak a 10yr old and end with them doing that laugh-cry thing while hitting their older brother as they get mocked for being a sissy.

This seemed more natural to the kid for some reason. Like he just did it to do it. Maybe it was because of how the bike reacted as though it still had someone piloting it than because it was 'coasting' along for a trick.

Daryl's hands still tightened a little and he leaned forward out of instinct, putting his chest so close to Tetsuo's he might as well have been laying against it. But his spine was too stiff to allow that kind of relaxed position. His breathing had to noticeable. The intake more controlled, air held in his lungs for a long count, then let out and repeated. Something to force him to remain calm while he watched the bike practically drive itself.

Unused to someone not familiar that close to him, Tetsuo also tenses, but doesn't let that break his concentration. This is too engaging to care. Ahead, they're going to need to pull into a turn and cut across several lanes of traffic, meaning he's going to have to decelerate into the turn..

He unfolds his arms, resting gloved hands on the gas tank to lean into a turn. The bike follows obediently, not wiping them both out into oncoming traffic but instead gliding serenely through openings, twisting back and forth as if it's calculating the exact angles needed to pull off a dangerous maneuver without any input at all.

Tetsuo's eyes are wide open, sweat beading on his forehead in concentration. His teeth grit for a moment, head lifting in anticipation as the final car doesn't slow down as fast as he thought it would.

But it doesn't matter. He leans away, and the bike curves with him, only to curve back into the rest of the turn, grinning to himself as he weaves his bike around and across just in time to not miss the street he was aiming for. What's left of the ride isn't that much, but it'll play out similarly; incredibly eerie and aggressive riding, but without incident. This is routine to him.

He finally puts his hands back to the handlebar as the Benny's sign looms ahead, ready to coast his bike the rest of the way.

Daryl's breath hitches when they make the lane change and he holds it until after they've turned off the main road to the one Tetsuo clearly needed to get to. He doesn't let it out in a fast exhale, but rather a long, low one. Still controlled. The way he had to be on a bike he wasn't driving.

When Tetsuo's hands go back to the bars, Daryl leans himself back again. Relaxing once more. Becoming that barely present ghost of a passenger until they were stopped.

Just to make things more surreal, he lets his bike coast the rest of the way. The building he approaches is largely undecorated, except for a large sign written in English with Japanese crossing it at an angle.

Neo Tokyo.

Tetsuo's still measuring out the timing on how long it takes to coast up and right on into the garage itself so he doesn't have to nudge the engine at all. He doesn't quite manage it, but a small pull at the ground in front of him with his power fixes that problem. Hopefully without being too obvious.

The inside looks pretty standard as far as garages go. Lifts, parts along the edges, some piles of pieces and projects on Tetsuo's workbench and shelves, paint cans and tarps on Kaneda's. There's a half-dismantled bike off to the side, and currently a stripped down car waiting patiently on one of the lifts.

Just inside the building, they come to a final stop.

There was a bit of a jolt when they were stopping. Not a big one, but like the brakes had been squeezed just a little too hard. It wasn't enough to throw Daryl (figuratively or literally) and when they did finally stop, he slid off the bike with as much a practiced ease as he'd climbed on. He wandered a few feet away, letting his eyes taken in the set up in a half-attentive manner while he watched Tetsuo turn his bike off and get up.

After a couple moments of silence on his end, Daryl asked, "That a power'a yours? That thing you did with the ridin'?"

While Daryl looks around, Tetsuo makes sure his bike's where he wants it to be, checking it over quickly for good measure. Still good as it ever was, no problem at all... He turns at the question, clearly very satisfied wth himself. That's right, go on. Be impressed.

"Mmhmm. I can do way more than that, too."

"Yeah. I remember," Daryl answered in a nearly flat tone, sounding very not impressed. Which didn't mean he wasn't - he was. Just that the impressiveness of Tetsuo's power to control the bike was heavily cut by the memory of the concrete street and stone walls being torn up by an invisible force that was out to kill him.

But now that he knew it was a power, he could probably relax if he ever road behind Tetsuo again.

"So how much those shocks gonna run me?"

"I don't like bothering with the prices. You wanna talk to..."

He looks around, doesn't immediately see him, and decides to take the approach of yelling, letting the garage amplify his voice. If he's anywhere in the building, he'll hear-

"OOOOI! Kaneda!"

"OIIII!"

It doesn't take long for Tetsuo to get an answer, either. On Kaneda's side of the garage lay pieces of a ceramic mold all lying out and ready to be painted, stencils spewn across the floor like a child's colouring book torn page by page and scattered. Paint cans lined up and one or two fans already set up. It's hard to hear, but Kaneda's voice rings true in response to Tetsuo's little call-out, scooting on his rolling stool from his momentarily-out-of-sight computer desk. With some of the casing hanging up, it blocked the view of his entire workstation.

He childishly scoots with his feet out completely and stands up, letting the chair just kind of drift off wherever it was headed as he walks over.

"You called?"

There's a look to Daryl, brows raised before giving a cocky little smile. "You know, YOU could try talking to customers sometimes."

"He already talked to me," Daryl answered, giving the new kid a once over. "Back at his house. Looking to buy the same kinda shocks he's got on his rig."

And just to be sure it was clear which bike he was talking about, Daryl twisted around and nodded at Tetsuo's, "Rides real smooth. Could use some like that."

Tetsuo doesn't even bother hiding his satisfied smirk as Daryl immediately proves Kaneda wrong about something. Sure, he might just be here because he thinks Rick being gone still means shit, but he's so far proving whose side he's on. AND talking up his bike.

"See?" He gives Kaneda an infuriatingly haughty look before turning, ready to walk away. "I can. Now you're gonna."

Because just because he can doesn't mean he wants to.

Tetsuo's one sided competition with Kaneda doesn't go unnoticed, walking past him as they go to trade places. His hand reaches up instinctively to run through those white locks--a playful gesture as he sighs. Never change, Tetsuo. Never change.

"Kaiiijuuuuuu, 'please' wouldn't kill you."

Those fingers lock on, though, softly turning the boy's head to avert his head as if there were no care in the world that a deadly-ass psychic with anger issues were in his vicinity. Kaneda, you play with fire sometimes. Tetsuo, you're not getting out of it that easy.

His attention turns back to Daryl, although still keeping Tetsuo in this conversation. "Course it does. Tetsuo's been working on that thing for months."

Speaking of. Time to turn to the giant manbaby you adopted in this three way business transaction.

"Oi, if you want a price, I'm gonna need to know what you did with it, dumbass."

If Tetsuo was at all paying attention to the mental vibes coming off of Daryl, he might feel the protectiveness that is suddenly spiked with a quick flash of suspicion and worry when Kaneda's fingers do their first tug. The sensation eased, however, a moment later when it was obvious this was not necessarily a rare occurrence for the two. Daryl had to force himself to relax, but otherwise the tension that had briefly overcame him was not visible in his stance or expression. He was watching the two pretty intently, though that could be put to his confusion over who he was supposed to be talking to about prices right about now.

And the implication that the shocks were a frakensteined job didn't surprise Daryl at all. But he couldn't personally recognize the brands that would have gone into making them what they were. Especially if most of them were a Japanese manufacture. So he stayed where he was, continuing to watch the two.

Of all the damn things Kaneda could have done, he had to grab him by the head and nearly trip him. Tetsuo barely stops in time to keep his balance at all, stepping back once and giving the teenager a dark look. He doesn't break this stare once as Kaneda addresses Daryl again, continuing to glower at him when Kaneda turns, all too cheerfully for Tetsuo's taste, back to him.

He can feel that Daryl's not pleased about this. That, in turn, encourages him to be even more difficult than he'd been intending to be.

In return, Tetsuo's glare takes on a familiar look of challenge. Play that way, huh, Kaneda? While most people could have faced being psychically thrown or worse, all Kaneda gets is ... quintessential teenager obnoxiousness.

"It's a secret. I can't tell you."

There's nothing malicious about the gesture, certainly. As if Kaneda were playing with a tiger like it was a housecat. After all, Tetsuo's secret project was that bike, and it was the one thing he never really prodded his nose into. What Tetsuo did to it was his own doing, he only bought the thing.

But that brings up our problem now, Kaneda's face visibly flatlining into what can only be described as mild annoyance.

Tetsuo's doing this shit on purpose, isn't he.

He gives Daryl a look--one that just screams 'I live with this. Willingly' with a mix of silent apology before turning to face the psychic who seems to believe that EVERYONE ELSE has the power to read minds.

"And...how do you expect me to price it, genius?"

Letting go of Tetsuo's hair, he walks over to his desk to pull out his laminated chart of American money and a notepad filled with shakily written English letters, flipping through it to a blank sheet.

"Out with it."

The attempt at solidarity is not missed by Daryl, and while his eyebrows raised up in acknowledgement, he didn't exactly return the sentiment. He still wasn't sure of Kaneda. Needed more time, really, to get to know him and figure him out. But he seemed like a good person. Friendly enough and genuinely so.

"You known each other for a while?" he asked it in a casual enough tone while he let himself wander over to one of the half-finished projects so he could take a look at it.

"More like forever," Tetsuo mutters, neatly taking the conversation change as an excuse to not give Kaneda the information he's impatiently waiting for.

Kaneda could tell there was some hesitance around him from that moment on, Daryl's whole personality shifting to revolve around Tetsuo for the time being. It wasn't a bad thing--if he weren't entirely sure if the sentiment was returned on Tetuo's end. But this isn't about making friends in Kaneda's eyes, but his friendly demeanor doesn't shift in the way his body language does, taking on a slightly more serious, if haphazardly professional one.

The end of the pen gently clicks harmlessly against Tetsuo's head as he mutters Eeto?? to urge the boy to spit out the prices.

It's only then that he turns to the other conversation.

"Family." His tone's warm at that, brows softening at the little gremlin.

Daryl's gaze shifted fast between the two. Kaneda's pleasant answer and Tetsuo's muttered words like it was an annoyance to know the other guy as long as he had. But no actual malice there. He honestly couldn't tell if Kaneda meant blood-relation by that or not. Not that it mattered. Just meant Daryl had to make new calculations and add another name, another face, to those who were part of the group.

Outwardly, he simply grunted an acknowledgement, then swung a hand in a circle, "This place recent for you?" He'd only been in this world since May. He didn't know all the little details. And then, just because he was curious, he moved over to Kaneda's space and started poking around at what he had laid out. Not really moving anything, just touching it as he examined all the parts and what was being done with them.

"Yeah, I guess."

Tetsuo's side of the garage is full of power tools and bits of stray projects or salvaged or otherwise scrap metal. He doesn't so much have it organized as it's in a halfheartedly arranged series of heaps on shelves, sometimes long pieces dripping down towards the floor. The power tools look new; they retain a lot of shine and have almost no blemishes or stains on them yet. There's a lot here, but it looks like he's just been snagging what he needs and not bothering to put in extra work to organize it all yet.

Or he has it completely organized in a way that only he knows. That's possible.

Before he can add details, Kaneda's pen clicking saps his final nerve. Tetsuo snatches the pen with unnecessary force from Kaneda's hand with a muttered "gimme that!"

Kaneda's couldn't have been more different than Tetsuo's, in that everything was pretty much put away save for the tarp on the floor, some pieces of motorcycle casing hanging from hooks from the ceiling, and his bike resting just next to a workbench that was nailed to the wall. No pieces of scrap metal to be found, paint cans decorating the floor if only because Kaneda was in the middle of using them, stencils laid out like colouring pages...

A jukebox rests in the corner, neon lighting matching the signs hung on the wall, mostly saying things like "OPEN" and "EXIT" (it's all he could find, okay). And right next to that is a hodge-podge pinball machine, lovingly used and a current work in progress. There's a dog bed under the bench itself, with a rather large golden retriever lying down in it. It doesn't look like it's going to move from that position any time soon, either, eyes trained on Kaneda to watch his movements more than anything.

"About a month," Kaneda clarifies, watching his pen get snatched out of his hand, only letting a moment pass before shoving that notepad into Tetsuo's arms. You want it so bad? You can write it.

"Little more than that, actually...easy to lose track of time in this place."

Edited 2016-09-03 20:18 (UTC)

Easy to lose track of time anywhere. Not so much the hours, but the days. Weeks. Those numbers got jumbled. Hours and minutes were easy. The big spans of time were the ones that bled together.

"Got a lot of business?" It looked like they were doing decent enough, anyway. That was good. He wasn't going to ask them for help going in on the house he was looking to get, but he was happy to know they had something that brought in the money everyone needed in this fucked up world.

After another moment, seemingly out of the blue, he turned to Kenada and asked in a straight-forward and half-casual tone, "How many people you killed?"

The question about walkers wasn't exactly applicable, so he'd go with the other two.

"Yeah, we get some," Tetsuo muttered at the first question. It was true enough; even with the poor advertising job they did, word of ImPort businesses spread.

With the pad thrust into his hands, it's Tetsuo's turn to click the pen a few times, finally putting it to paper...only to pause at Daryl's question. Tetsuo's eyes snap up to watch, intensely curious about this. He'd never asked Kaneda that. He assumed the answer was 'no one'.

Tetsuo couldn't really answer that question if it'd been asked of him. Sure, he killed people. He remembers one specifically that died, but there's easily been more. It just wasn't to his interest to pay attention at the time; he's certainly taken more than one person down. He has no problem with killing.

But Kaneda? Kaneda was the one who'd tell him not to, or hold the threat of someone dying over him as if it was something to care about. He always held back like that. Then again, Kaneda didn't seem to hold back much that one time at the swear in... towards him.

Hard to know just how much he's changed there.

Edited 2016-09-06 14:02 (UTC)

Kaneda's hand slows, the question really sinking in. It's not a question he gets a lot, and it's not one he particularly enjoys answering. Sure, he accepted that death was something that happens. People kill people, they're dead, they're gone. That's that. He's not so naive to assume that it can work any other way. But he's not a malicious person, and he doesn't actively seek out to kill people.

He does it only when he has to.

He does it to keep others safe.

There's a moment where his hair covers his eyes, only to be swept out with the single movement of his hair, letting himself thinking it over for a moment as he idly hands his dog a treat.

"No one here." Which is all that matters, really. It's enough that he can insinuate he's done the opposite, but beyond that was really none of his business.

"I let someone die once. But that's it."

"Didn't ask if you let someone die," Daryl said with a flat tone. "Asked if you killed anyone. Don't matter if it was here or there, neither"

He paused for emphasis on that and then turned to face Kaneda and look him in the eye, "How many?"

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