Logs:Too Stupid to Die

Too Stupid to Die
Dramatis Personae Kamil, Kiri
In Absentia Karida, Kadar, Kasim	2024-11-26 "And -- you know, my family ain't gonna go and try and catch me, they're gonna jump too. They'd miss all the fun otherwise."
Location <NYC> Lower East Side
The thumping bass from the show downstairs is still faintly audible from street-level, periodically shot through with distant sirens or less distant late-night traffic; the bouncer slouched against the door, under the flickering marquee sign, is tapping his toes to the music, nodding his head. There is a bus stop a little ways away, with a single bench gleaming austerely in the streetlight, but Kamil is just sitting directly on the curb, his elbows on his knees and a cigarette dangling from his lips. He's dressed in torn jeans and a windbreaker in black and teal; his bald head is a little shiny with sweat, gleaming oddly off the sharp-feathered raven tattooed around his skull. He's not sitting still -- instead, he's toying idly with his smartphone, holding it by one corner and letting it yo-yo down and back up, its entire midsection stretching thin and rubbery like putty. Once in a while the screen turns on, even in this stretched-out state, but Kamil is ignoring these notifications. The door opens and music spills out louder. Not quite loudly enough to drown out "calm the fuck down" from some staff member as he sends Kiri out onto the sidewalk. She's wearing a slouchy pink sweater and a gauzy scarf that probably isn't doing much keeping her bare shoulders warm, wide-leg blue jeans, and black chelsea boots. The bouncer steps aside to let her through and resumes his previous position, looking unfussed. Maybe this is a fairly normal occurrence. She sizes him up, but thinks better of it and turns away, muttering darkly in Genoshan. She drops heavily down to the curb beside Kamil. "You get kicked out, too?" There's an intangible weirdness to the way Kamil turns to take this in, his torso twisted far around and then twisting back with a little too much speed as she sits down beside him, letting the phone retract itself back up into his hand (though then he squishes it in his hand like a stress ball.) "No, no, just needed to --" he flicks illustratively at his cigarette, plops his chin into his hands as the glowing flakes of ash drift down to the street. "Been there done that, though, you mess with the mosh, pow, mosh will mess with you back. You want?" He's fumbling for his jacket pocket, digs out a Zippo and a slightly squashed pack of Newports. Kiri blinks rapidly at Kamil. "Wo-oh, did you just go all, all --" She makes kind of a wavy gesture with her hands. "-- or I drink too much?" Evidently neither possibility troubles her terribly much. She just bobs her head eagerly at the offer and lights a cigarette for herself. "Eh brother you got some very good ink! What's 'mosh', though?" "Did I? Shit, maybe I drank too much." Kamil pulls himself a little more compact, though not much more upright, head still drooping into his hand. "I'm double-jointed. Triple-jointed, even." This has the definite tone of a brag, and then, even more pleased and self-satisfied as he reaches with one (also very tattooed) hand to scratch at his scalp, "Oh! Oh, thanks. I like it. What's yours?" He tilts his chin out toward her exposed shoulder, raises his eyebrows, stowing his cigarettes back in his pocket. "Oh -- moshing is, like, half dancing, half... fighting? But in a whole -- big group." He takes a slow drag off his cigarette, blows a neat smoke ring out at the street. "You like to dance?" She pulls down the wide collar of her sweater to expose more of her upper arm and shoulder blade. They bear two separate abstract designs comprised of triangles and chevrons, joined by another, simpler set of patterns whose flowing lines evoke. All of it is reminiscent of traditional Pacifika tattoos to a trained eye. She taps the edge of the design on her back. "These me, and my father, and my father's father's names. Well, you can only see me. These." Her fingers trace the waves that curl over her shoulder to her arm, "is because I'm good at shooting and fighting. Warrior ink." The pride in her voice is palpable, but there is a kind of stiffness to her expression. She lets the sweater slide back up and rubs the goosebumps away with a determined dismissiveness. "Oh that's mosh. Yeah I did that. Then some {ancestor's shame} put his hands up where I don't want. Then I fight 'im." Her tone of affront at the harassment is mild, but grows steeply indignant when she continues recounting. "Then they say I can't do that. I say he want fight I fight. Then they kick me out." The bristling fades as quickly as it came. "Americans so weird about fighting! For sure I like to dance, if nobody put his hands where I don't want and then I can't fight 'im." She comes up short, squinting back over her shoulder at the door. "Is he supposed to do that? In the mosh?" Now Kamil is sitting straighter, glancing down her shoulder -- "Cool," he says. "Warrior ink, I dig that. I got this dude to watch my back," he taps his finger at the raven's wing where it wreaths up over his ear, "but he don't mind a little warmongering." He grins sharply, though -- as he searches Kiri's stiff expression -- the grin drops back away a moment later, and he slumps back into his slouch, his fingers digging hard into his jaw. He shakes his head to her question -- "I'onno. People disrespectful as shit sometimes but nobody ever try to grope me," he says. "People here do sorta frown on fighting though. Bane of my existence since, like, kindergarten. So you're not from here? How long you been here." "Ay! Like my ancestors watch my back!" Kiri grins, still rubbing her arm absently. "I should get more ink now. It don't all have to look like back home. I get some lowland ones already, too." She pushes her other sleeve up to show off a sleek dragon coiling down her forearm, the intricate geometry of its scales different in style from the more abstract design it curves gracefully around and through. "I come in...to America..." She frowns and ticks off an uncertain count on her fingers. "A few months? But I went in jail for a while, maybe that part don't count." She shrugs, not really as nonchalantly as she tries to look, sucking hard on the cigarette and blowing the smoke out in a long stream. "You still fight, yeah? When's 'kindergarten'?" "Hell yeah," says Kamil approvingly, his fingers drumming on his knees as he inspects the dragon. "My brother has hella ink but I can't commit to nothing, man." He swivels his head forward again, goes back to his cigarette. "I'onno, being in jail might be the most in-America it gets. Unfiltered American experience. I was in federal for a li'l bit." He shrugs, he slouches even lower, he kicks one foot at the pavement through nothing in particular, he rubs the top of his head. "Sure do, some assholes need to get their shit wrecked. Kindergarten is just the first year of school here, when you're like... five. Six, if you're such a little shit you have to do it twice." "Commit. Committed." Kiri is frowning and nodding at same time. "That's when you can't back out of a plan. Or if you do then someone is right fucked." She gestures at the raven on Kamil's skull with the fore- and middle finger holding the cigarette. "You committed to this one. Head tattoo hurts like a {cursed --} like a -- son of a bitch." Perhaps just a little unsure of the profanity, she speaks it too deliberately to sound quite right. "Hands, too!" She transfers the gesture down toward the letters on his knuckles. "What do these mean? Are they for wrecking shit?" Kamil rubs at his scalp again -- this time, when he presses too hard, his skin warps and wrinkles around his fingers -- and shrugs, drops his hand back into the other, clasps them and gives several of his fingers a gross but satisfying stretch. "Committed to that one," he agrees, "did hurt like a sonuvabitch." Stretches his hands out in front of himself -- "Says 'Free fall'," he says. "Not really for wrecking anyone's shit but my own, heh? I been -- throwing myself around without a safety net for a long damn time." Kiri hadn't seemed much bothered by Kamil's other contortions, but cringes reflexively when he starts to cave in his head. Breathes her relief when he sets about flexing his fingers instead. Then cringes again at his explanation. "Aya, that's rough! You got no kin, no crew? I throw myself, but always my people pick me back up. Hard for me to really fall, too." A sensation that's -- well, kind of like freefalling washes over Kamil. In its wake everything feels lighter, like floating in water. The ends of Kiri's scarf drift in the breeze. Kiri herself isn't so easily swayed, but she's sitting a few inches above the curb, now. "The flying is nice, when it's not so cold, and I wreck so many shits. Not for gropes, I got fists for that." "Naw, I got hella fucking family. I got hella fucking crazy family," he is definitely saying this like it's a positive, even with his face twisting into a perplexed frown, now absently winding his elongated fingers around and around the opposite hand like spaghetti on a fork. "I don't mean they don't have my back, just --" He stops at the sudden lifting sensation (as his hands recoil back to their usual shape, they make an unpleasant snap sound), eyes bulging wide and buglike over an incongruously bright smile, nodding his head (in zero-g his entire body rocks forward and back with the exuberant movement.) "Shi-i-it, hard for you to fall, I see. I'm like, dead opposite. It is easy for me to fall. I'll just bounce the fuck back up. And -- you know, my family ain't gonna go and try and catch me, they're gonna jump too. They'd miss all the fun otherwise. They like to wreck shit too." "Good crazy. I like that kind." Kiri taps the curb with one foot and starts spinning slowly, the laziest somersault. "My family -- I'm the crazy one. This." She pulls up her sweater on one side to show a jagged scar across her lowermost ribs, framed by a tattoo that turns its pale shiny line into a stream -- fed by waves cascading from some design above -- over which a heavily stylized horse is just about to leap, with a heavily stylized rider just about to slip from its back. "Is when I get my power. Did some bounce first. My mother's father says I'm too stupid to die." She's still rotating through this whole show-and-tell, and by the time she lets go of the sweater's hem she's upside-down. "Oh! You know some other good place for to dance? Or other fun, I like to jump, too." Kamil ogles this tattoo very appreciatively -- "Wow, that looks like some bounce," he says. He's trying to put his feet back on the ground, though without gravity his longer, ropier legs are just bicycling uselessly midair. "Shit, that I do," he says, "This a great city to be too stupid to die." Kiri rolls back to a more or less upright position and uncurls her legs as the gravity gradually resumes, setting them both down on their feet. "Ey let's get into some things!" Despite asking for a guide, she has in her eagerness already picked a direction -- but then, there probably is something that way.