Logs:Conversation Starters

Conversation Starters
Dramatis Personae Akihiro, DJ
In Absentia Dawson	2022-05-06 "They say to talk about what you know."
Location <NYC> Freaktown - Riverdale - The Bronx
It's a drizzly evening on and off -- currently off, and the temporary pleasant weather has brought Riverdale out in force. There's an impromptu concert happening in the informal town square, and plenty of the residents congregating to dance or eat their dinner or just chat around the barbecue pit. DJ hasn't been among the revelry. He's only just returning to the neighborhood, dressed as blandly as ever in a slightly damp grey checked flannel, jeans, suede workboots. He's holding a pair of leather Purifier vests in his one good hand (his other sleeve, empty, is pinned neatly at his side) which he tosses wordlessly to a young woman with yellow-green scales running down her skin. Her grin at him in return is sharp and fangy -- she sets her beer down and goes off to scale a telephone pole and hang the vests alongside a Swords of Tyr vest and a chain full of Friends of Humanity signet rings where the trophies have been strung up on the wire. DJ watches this with a mild satisfaction, grabbing himself a root beer and taking a seat on a damp upturned milk crate. “You know,” Akihiro starts unprovoked as he walks over to look at the telephone pole, “I’ve been killing and fighting those purifiers for thirty years. Thirty years.” He shakes his head and sighs. “Feels like there’s more of them every day.” He’s dressed in a red button down covered in black flowers, dark grey joggers, and has his shoulder length hair pulled up into a tight bun. “I don’t think we’ve met, I’m Akihiro.” DJ just blinks at Akihiro at first, a thoroughly blank expression on his face before it gets determinedly replaced with a polite smile. He's staring a few beats too long at Akihiro's face at thirty years, but doesn't ask -- about his age, anyway. What he does ask as he cracks his root beer open is, "Do you, ah, usually lead with your history of murders?" “Only if I can help it.” Akihiro offers his own pleasant smile. “They say to talk about what you know, and in one form or another I’ve been a soldier for almost a century now. So I tend to just overshare about it.” His shoulders raise and drop in a small shrug. “Maybe one of these days I’ll find something else to talk about.” DJ is getting up from his seat, uneasily backing up a step or two. "Yeah," he offers -- cautiously. "I'd really, really recommend that." His smile is a little fixed, now. "I'm sorry, I really have no idea how to, uh, follow that." “Sorry. I’m not really,” Akihiro struggles for a second to find his words before settling on, “good at talking to people. You can sit back down and I’ll head out. I just wanted to say hello because I fought beside Flicker once, unfortunately that was the only time I met him. Was good people from what I heard though.” He lifts a hand to wave and turns to walk away, his smile dropping once his back is turned.