thefolder | The New Guy

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The New Guy

Who: Shannon and Roze.
What: Meeting the new roomie and a date.
When: Backdated to December 6th.
Where: Apt F3-09 and on the town.

Finishing up with her shower, Roze poured herself into a slinky green dress and her trademark thigh-high stilettos. Piles of long pink hair too wet to be troubled with were whipped into a quick braid and a few rose-shapped twists, then pinned atop her head.

Shannon might not be able to appreciate the effort, but Roze never went out into public with anything less than her best face - normally. And the dress was more conservative than usual - she hoped it might aid in her not making an ass of herself and inspire a little more modesty for the evening.

Probably not, but at least she was trying.

When she exited the bathroom, the inordinately tall girl felt fairly good about her plans, even if they were more spontaneous than usual. She'd be lying if she said she weren't nervous or excited. She loved sudden plans, after all.

"Hey, anyone out there?" she called around the corner into the room.

If Shannon had already left, she'd just kick back on the couch to wait. Otherwise, she strolled out, looming at 6'4" in her heels with legs that didn't quit, hips for grip and a rack capable of hosting a clearance sale. Cranberry-colored nails tapped idly on the scabbard of a long blade as she hummed to herself, finishing the song she'd been singing as she smiled and waited politely for new companions to familiarize themselves with equally new surroundings.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Your mom isn't you," Shannon said easily. "Some people might be dicks and hold you to their standards, but if people did the same thing with me they'd expect me to be stupidly wealthy and running a sporting goods business. Which... I'd go insane in the first week, let me tell you." He laughed good naturedly, not seeming at all bothered by the tilt of the conversation.

"But, if that was a deflection from talking about you and to start talking about your mom instead..." Shannon shrugged. He wasn't going to complain.

"No, it wasn't. Just a minor mention," she remarked, shrugging and waving the waiter over so she could order hot tea. No sake without being invited to drink.

"I only mentioned it because I inherited the gang from her and talking about her makes me look like saint," she added with a laugh, leaning back in her chair.

"I can talk about me all you like. You were supposed to grill me, officer."

"Ah, that was supposed to be this dinner?" asked Shannon teasingly. He added an order of iced water for himself before the waiter continued on his way, finally setting the menu down to start reading it quietly. "Well, now I have to think of questions. You mentioned some kind of boundary between magical and human before. What does that mean?"

"Oh what, back home? Hm. Well, there's no like, physical boundary or anything. Its kind of an overlap, really. People see what they want to see, so all the spooky, weird things in the world that existed long before mankind, its still there, living in the same cities as everyone else, just invisible to people who aren't really awake to that sort of thing," she explained, resting her hands on the table to weave her fingers together idly.

"Demons is a blanket term back home for anything not human. It covers everything from dragons and faeries to kappa and tengu. People like me come from loads of marriage into demon lines to breed the very best, most skilled and flexible warriors to police the territories and mediate interactions. Mostly just lots of fighting and jurisdictional bullshit. LOADS of racism and elitism."

"Just like any other border police operation," Shannon summarized. "Only with more political BS tying it up. Have you actually started doing any of that yet? You mentioned school and your gang and all that... Or are you actually part of that movement at all?"

It would stand to reason that just as people bred themselves for generations to become the perfect mix of genes and magic, that some people would be born into the lines who wanted nothing to do with it. Like Eli, compared to Javier, Matheus, Harvey... any of the others. (He himself had no idea where he fit on the spectrum, wasn't sure he even belonged in it without memories of what everyone else was on about.)

Maybe Shannon was reading into it too much.

"That was kinda the point with my birthday," she answered after a thoughtful silence. She waited to say more until she had her tea, pouring a cup and holding it for the warmth.

"There's a ritual when Guardians turn eighteen. We're neutral and untouchable until then. After that we're fair game to be hunted down, and we have to accept our role as Guardians and begin meting out justice and handling disputes, etcetra. Lots of Guardians don't make it to nineteen."

"Thus why you're so obsessed about people missing it," Shannon said bluntly. It was considering, too, but mostly blunt. He didn't really see a point to dancing around that particular topic. "Did that happen here? The ritual? Or are you still kinda... technically underaged?"

"There's nobody here to hunt her down anyway," Kera said. It sounded, like many of the things he said, as though he thought the concern Roze was putting into it was rather dumb. "So who cares?"

"Well, that's kinda the point right there. I was celebrating escaping it, you know? As long as I'm here I'm still alive and free to act as I see fit without the circle of elders looming over me or demons begging for help, or the church trying to roast me," she replied, shrugging at Kera.

"And I'm not technically underaged. Sheesh. I'm not underaged at all. I haven't been for years, since age of consent in my birth village is fourteen. I could be married with kids right now, y'know," the girl grumped, taking a swig of her tea and bristling.

"And you never know, someone here could be a hunter or part of the church." She sighed, looking off to the side before rolling her eyes and looking at them both. "My father is here. And if I join the demons instead of the humans, that means we could have to kill each other some day. So he's potentially an enemy, despite being a direct relation. Sort of. He isn't anymore, technically. Its a long story."

"People like you live for a thousand years, and you start having babies at fourteen?"

Shannon shook his head, trying to work the logic of that. Yes, a lot of them didn't make it to 19, apparently, but wouldn't that just engender some sort of natural selection response in the community? He probably shouldn't be analyzing something he didn't really understand, but he couldn't help it. It was part of what made him a good aide to the police, and definitely what made him a huge pain in the ass to people who weren't used to him spouting shit all the time.

"Wait," he said quickly. "Your father but not your father is here? And he's sided with the guys you're against?" Now why did that sound familiar? he thought a bit wryly.

"This is such an excellent first date," Kera commented. "Is our food coming soon or what?"

"Stuff it, bobble-head," she chirped with a saccharine sweet tone, smiling at Kera maliciously.

"And just to clarify, contrary to popular belief, Japanese people tend to have normal lifespans like any other human. The age of consent is different from one place to another in Japan and a lot of the mountain villages have pretty low ages. Once we moved to Shinjuku though the age went up. I was just making a point about it."

She sighed, tossing her hair and casting a look over at the chef's bar. Prepping sushi tended to be quick, but they had ordered a fair amount.

"My father died when I was an infant. He used his own abilities to possess an infant body and grew up alongside me so he wouldn't have to abandon his family or something. Didn't quite work like he wanted but whatever. So...spiritually we're related, but genetically we're not, anymore. Since his first body died. You follow?"

"Yeah, but I more meant... not the Japanese, those—the ones who have all that demon blood?" he asked, more than stated. What was the term for that? Roze had mentioned Guardians, but was that a profession or their actual tribe name or something? He really was pretty clueless, try as he might to keep up with the conversation.

With a grimace that said more than he probably knew, Shannon nodded. "Somehow, I think I do follow. Weird as hell and normally the stuff everyone would call you batshit for thinking it was real... but we're in a digital world right now. What happened to the infant?" he asked, voice going low as he contemplated it.

"It was dead," she answered, her tone suggesting she felt poorly for it and the life it never had. She felt more strongly about it than her father had, likely.

"There was an accident and the mother and father were killed. The baby died as well, but Tetsushi's soul brought the body back, so the paramedics saved it. Sort of." She shrugged, nose wrinkling as she tapped a finger on the tabletop, only to be interrupted in her thoughts but the first dishes being set on the table. She waited until the server left before speaking again.

"Guardians like me usually wait to have kids, so no. Its difficult to find suitable partners, since you can only be with awakened humans, demons or other Guardians - and often its a case of Montagues and Capulets."

Shannon tilted his head toward the waitstaff, then turned toward the plate. His hand began exploring it from the edges to see if he could figure out which was which — when it came to sushi, it tended to be a guessing game, but one he didn't particularly mind. As long as there wasn't anything mindblowingly disgusting on there, he'd live, learn and move on to the next.

"What's an awakened human?" he asked carefully. It was the same term everyone had used in the van. Awakened. Shannon could hardly believe it would mean the same thing, but it did keep him somewhat on edge. He hadn't had enough time to process the whole thing yet, and he kept jumping at damn shadows whenever something pressed his buttons wrong.

"The whos and the whatsits?" Kera asked.

"Its from Romeo and Juliet. Two people in love and not allowed to be together," she answered in brief explanation, lifting a pair of chopsticks and setting to her own food immediately. She didn't need as much food here as she did back home, but the appetite didn't change.

"Awakenedd humans are humans that can see everything," she answered after chewing and swallowing. "Like...the lowest tiers are people that see the shadows, that movement at the corner of your eye and when you turn your head there's nothing there. People that feel the hair rise on their neck and arms but there's nothing around them. people that feel like they're watched when they aren't. but the are. Then abilities and sight go up from there. If it starts young, you end up with young human Guardians eventually. First generation sympathizers, stuff like that," she went on, eating in brief pauses.

"Some people don't come into it until they're older and they can't handle it, end up nuts, or worse, they become religious fanatics. Exorcists and hunters. Most humans hate demons for no real reason other than they're strange, since a lot of demons are totally docile and harmless, but the church and hunters persecute them mercilessly because they aren't human."

Shannon made his own collection of sushi pieces, making sure to keep like-pieces at certain points on the plate. Kera made similar grabs for the food while he settled himself to sit next to Shannon, having no such compunction and just plopping everything where it lay. No chopsticks for either of them thanks to wildly different reasons.

"Guess you wouldn't know it if there were ever any blind awakened humans, huh?" Shannon asked before taking a bite out of one of his pieces. His expression turned a bit as he figured out the flavors—not bad, not bad—and he finished the bite.

"Actually, there are a lot of blind awakened," she corrected, rolling her shoulders and leaning back in her chair for a moment, cleaning her lips with a napkin.

"They sense the sort of energy around demons, like a pressure or weight in the air. Sort of how a lot of blind people don't hair to hear breathing or footsteps to know someone is in the room with them, because they can feel the subtle shift in the air and feel the eyes on them. Usually blind awakened are very well-respected and taken care of among demons. They're the humans that judge the least. They can't tell when a human form is fake and they're often more ready to accept differences in their companions because they to struggle with the scrutiny of humans, just in a different way."

She cleared her throat, sipped her tea and added, "There's an entire monastery of blind "monks" who are really historians and physicians, of a sort, for the demons. Many have demon husbands and wives - though usually only the most human sorts like Nekomata, Kitsune and the like. The lord dragon over the province I came from is married to a blind awakened. He saved her from drowning in a pond."

"Huh. Guess my joke was more serious than I thought," Shannon said with an amused grin. "Wait, is that why you were so... well, excited when you heard I was blind?"

Kera had taken to stuffing sushi into his mouth, not quite like he was starving but as if he wanted to try all of the flavors at once. His gob was certainly large enough to hold all of it at once and he hardly made any mess as he did it. It would almost be fascinating to watch if he wasn't himself.

While normally she might have protested such treatment of sushi, Roze was just happen the Keramon was enjoying himself and more importantly, silent.

"A little," she admitted, before clearing her throat. "I mean, not that I was excited because all 'wow! very blind! such marriage prospect!' or anything. Partly just because I think personal struggle makes for stronger people I'd rather know and partly because if you were an awakened human, it would have been neat to just know. I've never actually met one unaware of what they were myself. I thought I had with Tetsushi but he just turned out to be my dad in a human body."

Shannon gave a bemused laugh at her style of speech before he took another piece of sushi to try. Another good one, bit too much on the crunchy side for his tastes but he wasn't about to spit it out. "What do you mean, an unaware awakened? That doesn't happen?"

"Oh no, it happens a lot. Awakened in general are kinda rare, but when they're known about, people try and pull them over to one side or the other as quick as possible before they do something stupid or go batshit because they think they're crazy," she explained as she finished off her a la carte pieces and picked a few bits from the rolls.

"Lots of doped up schizophrenics are just awakened humans that others who aren't awakened have taken it upon themselves to "fix". Kinda why demons don't trust modern medicine for shit. Humans tend to have no idea what they're doing."

Pausing to refill her tea, she considered a point and shrugged to herself.

"People might be awakened, but don't know what they're seeing isn't a hallucination or something. With blind awakened, they lack the normal sight that prevents them from "seeing", you know? So because demon glamours don't work on them, all the other senses are free to pick everything up unhindered. But of course they aren't gonna know some benevolent spirit has been in residence in the house for decades or a curious fae wanted to see what they were cooking or what have you," she mused, turning a slice from one of the rolls over in the sauce left on her plate.

"Most demons tend to be insular and cautious, but they can be pretty bad about boundaries when they're sure no one can see or feel them. Its hard to tell the difference between a kind, curious demon and a malign spirit when both of them are prone to home invasion and you're fuckin' legitimately blind, to boot."

"Glad we don't have to worry about any of that here," Shannon said thoughtfully. "Just gigantic city attacks and other miscellaneous terrors from the digital deep."

Shannon paused long enough to drain half his cup of water in a go, pausing to wipe at his lips with his thumb before he returned to the conversation. "Generally speaking, even blind people can tell when others mean them harm. It's kind of in the air, you know?"

"No, I don't," she answered honestly, arching a brow. "I only know what I'm told in regards to that. I've never been blind or even had any of my senses stunted somehow. The closest to it was coming here. I don't have my strength or stamina, my animal senses, my bit of magic. Nothing. But its still not the same."

She raised her hand, gesturing for a waiter to come refill his cup and her teapot before leaning back to consider what he'd said.

"Maybe its the fear, you know? when demons know they've been sensed, fight or flight kicks in and they can rise to violence no matter how passive they normally are. I've seen pixies kill people. Its pitiful, but it happens."

Edited 2013-12-11 20:57 (UTC)

"Not like it's fool-proof or anything. We just pay attention to the kind of stuff people take for granted because they think it's all useless information," said Shannon.

"Fear is for kids," Kera said in a moment where his mouth was empty. He began arranging more pieces of sushi for his next dive into the culinary delicacies. "If they're that easy to spook, maybe there's something to your Guardian guys holding the peace."

Shannon was silent on Kera's opinion, but he couldn't help but agree. At least partially. It sounded like the ones being the pests couldn't always handle being pestered back, and that was usually when people realized they should stop playing the game. These weren't people, however, and that was probably where the wires got crossed.

"Well, you're usually pretty scared when your ancestral home is taken over, you have to cast illusions on yourself to survive and people always try to kill you if you're outed," she remarked, trying to keep any defensiveness out of her tone and failing. She sighed, tapping her finger on the table as she counted, cooling off.

"Fear isn't for kids. You'd be scared, if you thought Shannon were going to die. Really believed it. Demons always have to be afraid. Humans just rose up and took over everything in such a short span of time. Demons welcomed them into the world, and then they started massacring everyone. Young demons are stupid and playful and end up in all kinds of situations tangled up with humans, but they aren't usually aggressive on their own. Its like scaring a wild animal and backing it into a corner. They're gonna lash out sooner or later."

Edited 2013-12-11 21:10 (UTC)

"Why not just let 'em fight?" Kera asked belligerently. "If you've got so much on humans and you aren't even a full demon or whatever, I bet you they could give as good as they've gotten."

"Landmine?" Shannon asked after a moment. He had already determined he wasn't going to apologize for Kera. His partner was definitely a free spirit and had very strong opinions, which may or may not have reflected some of Shannon's own, and he would let that come back to smack Kera whenever it managed to happen. Or not, if he escaped the karma. Either way, it wasn't Shannon's business to police Kera.

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