Logs:Deep Cut

Deep Cut
Dramatis Personae Ion, Tian-shin
In Absentia Scramble	2024-03-05 "I really think this is symbolic sort of grave."
Location <NYC> Freaktown - Riverdale
It's pretty late -- not that Freaktown ever really sleeps, but it's quieter, here. The daytime bustle of Town Square has dwindled heavily, many of the houses have gone dark; there are a few people out smoking on a balcony overlooking the square, a few people drinking around a backyard firepit. There's a once-familiar flicker that ripples through some of the many string lights glimmering all throughout Freaktown, twinkling and then winking out. A once-familiar figure coalescing by the edge of the square, in jeans, red leather jacket, a glimmer of sparks winking over the pronged hook where his hand once was. He's not trying to call attention to himself and not trying not to, just leaning up against a lamp post and plucking out a cigarette, eyes fixed steadily on the pavement ahead as he lights it. Tian-shin is just emerging from one of the manors bordering the cul-de-sac, pulling her black leather jacket to complete an oddly dapper ensemble, a red stand-collar blouse, heavy black jeans, and heavy black boots, her vest new and smooth and marked prominently with a PROSPECT patch. She's heading toward her bike, an old but meticulously maintained Yamaha Bolt, its tank painted deep shimmery red with a gleaming black dragon coiling between wisps of stylized silver clouds, joined by a bright golden bolt of lightning. She's just pinning up her braid for the helmet when she goes still. Maybe her subconscious mind clocked his body language first, but she's definitely recognized him now. She blinks, then very slowly, very deliberately makes her way over to him. "If this is a prank," she starts, her eyes skip down to the hook, back up to his face. For a moment she seems to struggle to finish that sentence, and what finally tumbles out, non sequitur, is "The beard looks good on you." The grin that breaks broad across Ion's face is definitely familiar, beard or no beard. "{A good thing you like it.} Shaving a bitch these days." He blows a long stream of smoke out towards the sky, eyes cutting over to -- bike, first, then Tian-shin. Maybe he was going to say something more, but his smile has dropped abruptly away, his eyes stuttering on the vest. His tongue sucks hard at his teeth, hand lifting to dig knuckles against his eyes and then drop -- nope, okay, vest is still there. His jaw tightens, head shaking once. "Fuck," rumbles low, and though it's distinctly far from pleased his grin is back, sharper than before. "Guess that ain't no prank, too." For a moment, Tian-shin does not move at all. She shivers at the sound of his voice and looks as though she's caught between throwing her arms around him and backing away, but does neither. "No." Half a year ago, she would have added "sorry", and there's still a faint quiet space in her speech where the missing apology would have been. "I don't know what happened to you, but I didn't come back the same, either. From Lassiter." She swallows. "Have you...has anyone told you what happened?" "People tell me hella shit, but ain't nobody think to mention this. Who --" Ion is still staring at the vest, though as he cuts this question short his eyes pull away. He's staring up at the string lights above through his next puff of cigarette. "Don't none of us come back the same from that place," he finally follows up. "{If we come back at all.}" Tian-shin shuts her eyes at this last addition, and bows her head a little too late to conceal it. "A lot has happened, and the last few weeks have been..." Her shoulders actually start to hunch up before her long-polished poise reasserts itself. "We haven't heard from the people who went missing after the HAMMER raid. We don't even know if they're alive, but if they are, they're being hunted." She swallows hard, but when looks at Ion again she seems calm enough. "I wasn't here for it, but they held a funeral for you, before they voted Scramble president. If you wanted to do that whole 'visit your own grave' thing, it's over by the gazebo." There are several gazebos in Freaktown, but this is the one people mean when they say "the gazebo" without modifiers. She tips her head not in its physical direction but up at the string lights overhead. "Nobody wanted to take those down." "Oh shit," Ion's eyes are getting wider at this news, "thank god they bury me by the action, {think how many stories I might have miss.}" There's no sarcasm here, just an unaffected delight; Ion is bapping Tian-shin light in the shoulder (the accompanying jolt is noticeably stronger than it used to be.) "When the last time you gone grave robbing, huh?" --- The gazebo is an elegant octagonal affair of sturdy wood, with railings and padded benches along six of its sides and two open sides opposite each other. It has long been a popular spot to hang out, tell stories, and jam, but it's received a glow-up--literal and figurative--in the last few months. Like most outdoor structures in Freaktown, it is adorned with fairy lights, but someone has added and rearranged them to outline every column and railing and even the tiers and edges of each roof face. From afar, especially on a dark night like this, it looks like a gazebo made of many-colored lights. Beside the gazebo is a fire pit ringed with log seats of varying heights and orientations, often augmented with more comfortable folding chairs brought down from the house. The log nearest to the gazebo has been removed and a garden installed where spring bulbs are just starting to poke up through the patchy ground cover amongst a chaos of outdoor art. A trellis now leans against the side of the gazebo, decorated with silk flowers, ribbons, Christmas ornaments, and all manner of random trinkets. Some of the art has been moved aside tonight in service of graverobbing. A scrap metal sculpture of an abstract human figure with a bolt of electricity arcing between its upraised hands now leans jauntily against the trellis to watch the excavation, beside a wild-eyed dog (coyote? wolf?) just about the right size to have been carved from the missing log stool. Tian-shin steps back and leans on her shovel, squinting down into the ditch she's been digging. It's only about three feet deep right now, and nowhere near long or wide enough to accommodate a body. Also, the body it would theoretically accommodate is still in fact very much alive and not in it. "I really think this is symbolic sort of grave," she ventures again, not very hopeful it will convince Ion this time. "More like a memorial. I mean..." She looks up at him. "...you're up here." "All graves is symbolic." Ion has been growing slightly more unstable as the digging goes on, an intermittent insubstantial flicker in his entire person like he might perhaps disappear at any moment. He's very solid right now, though. He's wiping a hand across his forehead, which doesn't so much get the sweat off as put some extra dirt on. "You chuck some meat in the ground, you think someone there? {Where people remember you --}" His chin tips toward the eclectic handmade decorations, the bright-lit gazebo. "{That's where you are.} Little faith, huh?" "I don't think that people who die are their...remains. I just meant." Tian-shin returns to digging with a renewed vigor. "I don't know what I meant, {but. I do agree with you. I just don't understand why...}" Her breath out is almost too nervous to be a laugh. "Right, faith. I can do faith, even if--" The tip of her shovel suddenly hits something hard. She taps it again, and the thunk is definitely hollow. Another tap a few inches over yields the same noise. It's hard to say how much she can see in the darkness and through all the loose dirt, but when she looks up at Ion her eyes are very wide. "I think that's...a box?" "'course it's a box." Ion grins bright at the sound of that thunk. "What you usually find in graves?" He is scraping the dirt aside and wedging his shovel deep into the ground and stepping on the handle. A solid wooden corner pushes upward, shedding a covering of dirt as it shifts. Ion drops down to pull a fairly small and sturdy box out of the ground, one arm holding it against his chest as he brushes the dirt off with his hand. "Hell yeah. {'bout to be whole again.}" Tian-shin steps back, maybe a bit farther and more hastily than necessary, to let Ion unearth the box. "Well, Okay, urns, but that's actually a fair point, plenty of people put--" Her eyes go even wider at the size of the box. "{Holy fucking shit, is that your hand?}" she blurts in Mandarin, then switches to back to Spanish, "{you know you can't just uh--to sew it on again? Now. It's been way too long!}" "(How I gonna know that, I look like a doctor?} I bring my hand down Mendel you know they seen hell of weirder shit." Ion is setting the box down, flicking its clasp open with his hook. He lets out an excited whoop when he opens the box, shedding the red jacket he's been wearing. He pulls his old vest from the box, shaking it out and tugging it back on. His fingers touch briefly against the empty spot a rank patch used to be, but he's still smiling broad when he looks back up. "{Ain't been too long, still fits perfect.}" He braces his hand against the ground as he pushes himself back to his feet. He's eying the gazebo a moment, then Tian-shin, mouth twisting to the side as he looks her over again. His hand claps to the shoulder of her vest, kind of jolty as he pulls her in for a hug. "-- cut look good on you."