hugtopia_logs | happy birthday to u

Entry tags:

happy birthday to u

♥ Who: sad rawna kids, maybe less sad other people
♥ Where: rawna’s house
♥ When: 7/4-7/8
♥ What: canon update party
♥ Rating: prolly pg for intense worry

This was not how the afternoon was supposed to go.

It was really just supposed to be a little lounge in the afternoon. Kai had taken Bug out for a little romp in the sunshine, let the little guy stretch its… uh… rind? Get its roll on. Enjoy that one patch of grass for a while, a fruitbug needed some quality time outside sometimes, probably. Kai did at least. Playing with the orange eventually devolved into just sitting around for a bit as it rolled around, and that eventually led to laying back to watch the clouds roll by. Had there been any plans for dinner? Was the kind of idle thought that passed by. Maybe when all three of them were home, they could try making oyakodon or something together. That seemed like a good time.

When idle thoughts and lazy clouds became a nap, he didn’t know.

He didn’t wake up when Rawna’s priests came and picked him up. He didn’t wake up when Bug squeaked at them either, so he missed all the erratic circles it rolled around them as they went off to the temple.

It rolled all the way there, and all the way back, rolling around in obvious circles in the yard until someone it knew came home. Was it you? Yes? Well, better follow that fruit cuz there it went down the road to Rawna’s house.

The priests were kind of expecting them. Even with the mishaps that had happened, Rawna’s priests were familiar enough with this group to know that there was one pertinent reason Shinji or Kyoko would have shown up right now…. Even if they didn’t yet. Yes, their friend was this way. Yes, they could visit with him.

He didn’t wake up then, either.

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Kyoko had stood up to gather their dishes, and was thinking about telling the boys to go on ahead back to bed, when Kaito spoke up. Still reaching for Shinji's bowl, she met his eyes and went still at the look in them.

"Um," That sure was a thing to suddenly bring up, "no, but... it's fine." He didn't have to, even now, not if he didn't want to. "I... don't mind either way."

That sure does sound like a segue into possibly learning about what Kai might have experienced over the past few days. That's where he'd been right before he came here in the first place, right? Shinji's a bit more privy to the details, and feeling much more alert than when they had all sat down, so he's the one who should be taking care of cleanup while Kyoko gets brought up to speed.

He gives Kai's arm a warm pat before carefully sliding in to take Kyoko's dishes. "I've got this," he comments quietly, you two keep talking without him for a bit.

Kai offered her a grateful smile, small as it was. "It wasn't for anything awful," he assured her. "Things will make more sense if you know."

Shinji got another warm look in turn and a soft thanks. Taking the dish burden is appreciated so Kai could burden her with other things. He made a motion for her to take a seat again. Waiting for her gave him another chance to consider which parts were important. The secrets... probably were, for later parts. He hummed, continuing when she was ready.

"Do you know what an ajin is?"

For a moment, Kyoko looked like she wanted to protest being relieved of dish duty--because she did! She had it! Shinji should just rest and hold his boyfriend's hand or something!

But when Kaito pushed on with that little smile, her objections died down in her throat. With a quiet word of thanks to Shinji, Kyoko sat down next to Kaito again, brow creasing with worry.

Honestly and truly, Kyoko didn't care what he'd done to land in jail. She knew who he was, and she knew how she felt about him; nothing else was really important. But if he wanted to share this part of himself with her... well, she couldn't help a little curiosity.

"A...jin?" Another little wrinkle knit her brow. Should she know that word? "No... I don't think so?"

"Kinda figured," Kai said with a small nod. "If your Japan--" or Earth, really-- "had 'em, I'm sure you woulda heard. We get lessons on 'em in school, when they show up in the news it's a big deal, I guess..."

He shrugged a little. "They're immortals, basically. People that can't die. S'really the only difference between them and any other person. Anyway, my friend Kei found out he was one by accident."

All this time she'd known Kaito, and though she'd known they were from different Japans, it somehow hadn't ever occurred to her to wonder if his was different from hers in any fantastical ways.

Immortals at least was a pretty easy concept to grasp--maybe even a little boring, compared to other worlds. Kyoko nodded slowly, brow still creased. She couldn't see how this connected to Kaito ending up in juvie yet, but she was listening. "By accident... so you mean he... almost died?" she asked carefully. "That's scary..."

"S'gotta be all the way," Kai corrected gingerly. "It was a traffic accident. Happened in front of people, so there was no keeping it a secret that he got up. Just like that... everyone forgot he was a person, acting like something dangerous had escaped containment or something."

He frowned deeply.

"So I tried to help him get out of there."

So it was a case of dying and then coming back, instead of just being impervious to anything that might be fatal? That was definitely more horrifying than what she'd imagined, but if Kaito hadn't lost his friend, that was the most important thing.

Though there was another detail here Kyoko wasn't quite sure she understood. Her thoughtful frown almost mirrored Kaito's. "You said... everyone already knows about them, though, right? That not dying is the only thing different about them?" But they were treated as something else?

... She could believe that. "What... happened to him? --If it's something you can say."

"Right. S'why everything that happened was bullshit." Completely expected bullshit.

"... I didn't know what happened for a while. He took off on his own after that first night. The cops caught up with me after that. Got charges for assaulting an officer and being Kei's accomplice in his escape." He sighed, tilting his head towards the ceiling.

"No news was good news though. The whole damn country was looking for him, cuz I guess he's only the third one in Japan or somethin'? So as long as the news was saying they were still looking for him... meant he was still okay somewhere."

What a reason to get locked up. Kyoko sucked in a breath and then, frown darkening, looked down at her hands resting on the table, where they'd curled into fists. For a long moment, there was just quiet fury.

But all this information was still turning carefully over in her head. There was a point to Kaito telling her all this now, and she thought she was starting to grasp where he was going with it.

"... But you did hear something about him, didn't you? While you were sleeping."

Ah. Even if he'd seen it before, it still threw him off when he saw her get so angry on his behalf. There was a quiet moment of deliberation first, but then his hand settled gently over one of her fists. Just long enough to get his sentiment across. Thank you.

"Mmm. Woke up around when I had those fights." They would both be correct on which one he was talking about. "For a while it was just... all the same stuff day in and day out.

Kai leaned back a bit, looking back to see what the boyfriend dishes status was. Come back, Shinji. "He showed up on the news twice. The first time was 'cuz he'd fallen off a building a terrorist attack was taking place? Another ajin stirring shit up, I guess? I dunno, Kei got away in a van, didn't catch where it was. Then he showed up again at Iruma's air base."

His touch made something tighten in her chest, but her hands at least relaxed. When he drew his away, she tucked them down in her lap, and then took another soft breath as he went on.

Now was the time to listen to Kaito's story, since he wanted to share it, so she would push that anger back, out of the way. She wasn't sure what all this news about falling off buildings and being in places would have meant for a locked up Kaito--except, well: "That... must have been frustrating, having to just hear about it from afar."

Luckily, Shinji had been keeping an ear on the conversation and his cleanup process as quiet as he can manage, so once he hears that 'while you were sleeping' comment from Kyoko, he hurries to put his work on pause. Here he comes, ready to hear about terrorist ajin stirring up trouble and Kei slipping in and out of the public eye.

Kyoko might be entirely in the dark about what might have happened next, but a particular memory that had been waiting on the edge of Shinji's thoughts for a while now comes back to the forefront once more. Is this, by some chance, leading up to some kind of impossible prison break...?

He lets his hand come to a rest at Kai's back, a quiet announcement of his arrival. He is here now, and he's ready to listen to what comes next.

This was indeed leading up to such unbelievable things!

"Yeah," Kai murmured. "But I had a guy. He promised if anything big happened to Kei, he could get me out. Didn't know what he meant at the time but..." He tilt his head back, looking knowingly up at Shinji. Hello. "You saw it. It actually happened."

Then he looked at Kyoko, because she hadn't seen it, gesturing as he talked. "We were on outside duty. He told me to just run at the wall as fast as I could. I did, cuz ok, but once I nearly got there...!" He waved his hand up like a conductor, imitating the leap over those tall walls.

"I have no idea how, but I flew right over the wall. Something was flying me somewhere, but I couldn't see nothin'. Heard Kotobuki talking to me though. He only got me so far, so I uh.... borrowed somebody's bike to try and go the rest of the way."

Shinji... saw it? Kyoko was stuck in her confusion for a moment, before it occurred to her--right, there had been plenty of occasions for that kind of thing, it wouldn't be strange if Kaito and Shinji had been through a few together.

By the time she'd pieced all that together, the story was already progressing. Progressing to even more confusing places, in fact. Kaito? Don't just run at walls?? Hey now?? And even with someone as easily accepting of supernatural elements as Kyoko, you couldn't just introduce flight out of nowhere!

Please forgive her for taking a really long time to react to all of this, she's processing. After a moment, Kyoko slowly turned to look at Shinji.

"He... he," she pointed at Him, "flew? You saw it?"

Feel free to be alarmed, Shinji certainly was upon seeing Kaito running full tilt at a giant, solid wall. Hell, even Kai himself was pretty shocked at even that much! It didn't compare to the sight that followed it, but. running straight at a wall, huh.

"He did!" He can confirm! "Like something just picked him up and," he raises his free hand and makes a little 'zip!' gesture with his pointer finger - right into the air! "Lifted him up and over."

That's really as far as he'd seen in that... memory? Prophecy? The scene the trip of VR mountain had rewarded them with. It's good to hear a little more context for it, even if it doesn't necessarily clear up a whole lot. It still sounds about as confusing for everyone involved as it had when Shinji had seen it, but knowing that there was a deliberate plan and culprit behind it... somehow... was reassuring in its own way.

"Yeah!" Kai said, pointing at Shinji's pointing. "Like that. I still dunno how he did it, I never asked." There was a guess, but he wasn't sure how it really related to flying? There was never a good chance to ask, and whatever. That was Kotobuki's business. The only answer he'd ever gotten from him was how he'd escaped prison in the first place, and that was because of this whole thing.

"It was good to get a ride for a bit of the way though. The air base was pretty far, by the time I got there everything was already crazy. The bad guy had been... I think he'd been flying fighter jets into different spots around the country? Gotta admit I wasn't paying a lot of attention to that part." He'd been pretty one-track minded at the time.

"Guess the last spot was the base itself, I watched the plane smash right into the runway like it was nothing at all." As casual as picking up a knife under the moonlight. Kai's mouth thinned as he paused there, muttering, "An immortals' game is really somethin' else..."

Kaito might not have cared how his miraculous flight was accomplished, but Kyoko would very much like to know! Hey now! Please ask more questions young man!

But it was too late for Kaito to get any answers now, and the story kept going regardless--in equally alarming directions. Watching the shifts in Kaito's expression, Kyoko bit her lip. "And... you went and got in the middle of all that."

She knew he had a reason for it, that this was just the kind of person he was, but... ah, she didn't like the thought at all.

No, no that is not a good thought in the least. Bizarre invisible flights are one thing, and yes that raised plenty of concerns on its own, but heading into an airbase where someone was deliberately crashing a plane? Seeing that, and still going in?

That's the kind of person Kai is, Shinji knows this, and Kei is important to him. It's not... a surprise to hear that Kai would do something so unbelievably reckless, but the thought of it ties his stomach up in knots. He's just a human. As tough as he may be, people are so fragile compared to the kind of destruction he's talking about.

Shinji doesn't say anything. His jaw tightens, his mouth pulling into a thin line and the hand he has at Kai's back curls into the fabric of his shirt, like it's going to stop him from doing something he's already done. But, he won't stop him from talking about it. Go on. He hates this already, but go on.

It was all extremely true to form. Just running right in regardless of what he knew about the situation. They both knew what kind of idiot he was, it wasn't hard to trace where this was going. Kai drew in a deep breath as he felt that tight hold on his shirt, just holding it for a moment as he nodded. Yeah. He'd gone and gotten right into the middle of all that. No surprises there.

"Drove right into it. Crashed into the guy. Not real sure what else happened there, but there was another explosion and he wasn't anywhere when I got up. Kei was the only one there."

A small smile tugged at Kai's mouth. "He told me off, of course. We both knew I was being an idiot. I couldn't feel that bad about it though, seeing how awful he looked. I have no idea what kind of shit he'd been through since I saw him last."

I just want to go home and sleep. That smile faded. There had only been red and dark.

"Last thing I saw was him getting shot."

At least they knew now that there had been someone who would chew this boy out for being reckless. Thank you, Kei. It didn't do much to soothe the anxious twist in Kyoko's gut, though.

Neither did anything else Kaito had to say after that.

Shinji had made the right call, gripping Kai's shirt like that; Kyoko was stuck digging her nails into her palms, fists buried in her lap.

Immortal or not, hearing about someone--an important friend, no less--getting shot was hard to just absorb. Kyoko's breath hitched. "The last you saw--but--he... can't die, right?" And it didn't sound like Kaito to just walk away from that. Something was wrong, the painful uncertainty in her belly rising up through her chest.

Shinji had gotten an uncomfortably close seat to seeing one of those Kei deaths in the past, and just hearing about Kai getting a front-row viewing to yet another one is enough to turn his stomach. Getting shot, right in front of Kai's eyes... that's chilling, he knows just how awful that it. Even if he knows that it's not a permanent thing for Kei... god.

Was that really the last of it, though?

When Shinji finally finds his voice again, it's quiet and breathless, his grip tightening even further on Kai's shirt. "And then you woke up back here?" It's possible, but... he's not so sure.

This was the part that had kept him from talking about things earlier. Sure, everything else was admittedly pretty bad and unbelievable on its own. This was the culmination of all his idiocy and regret though. A very different kind of terrible he knew wouldn't sit well with unrested minds.

"He can't die," Kai quietly confirmed for Kyoko. Kei had undoubtedly gotten right back up from that, just like he had before. Just like he had who knew how many times between that night on the riverbank and that afternoon on the base. He went quiet again with that thought, only shaking his head at Shinji's question.

"...Woke up in the sewers under the base," he finally went on, lifting his hand to motion across his chest. "Had huge bruises all over. Broken ribs. My shirt was all kinds of messed up. I..."

He trailed off, his palm fully resting over his heart as if he needed to remind himself that the beat was steady behind his ribs. It was real, just like the important people around him.

"I'm pretty sure I'm the one that died."

Shinji's guess would have made perfect sense, and Kyoko had tried to latch onto it right away, but an uneasiness still hung over her--it didn't feel like Kaito was done telling his story, but what more could there be after the last he saw of Kei? A whisper of fear tugged at her heart even before Kaito started to spell everything out for them so painfully.

She wanted to say something. She wanted to clasp his hands, she wanted to hold his face and stare into his eyes, to make sure they really were bright with life--but all she could do was stare at him and tremble.

That last statement makes Shinji's blood run cold. Didn't something like that happen once before in that dream he accidentally wandered into? Even if it turned out okay in the end - he was still alive after all - it was still deeply disturbing, enough to send a chill through him even now.

"But..." There's a pretty big 'but' here! His grip is still tight on Kai's shirt, but as his glance darts over to Kyoko to see her reaction to all of this, he lightly rests his other hand at her back. "You still woke up. Does... does that mean...?"

There's a precedent for that in his world, after all.

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