[quote=@Tatterdemalion] POTENTIAL 2 Sara takes Locker very, very seriously. Well, correction. As an opponent, she takes him seriously. As a friend, she'll give him grief, but if she pulled a punch or flinched or, God forbid, tried to take it easy on him? It would break his heart. Destroy the bond the two of them had as connoisseurs of hardlight danmaku dueling. She plays fair, too, for the same reason. If she cut it too close, hit him with something impossible to dodge... well, that's cheating. And nobody respects a cheater, not in their circuits. So he moves like oil on metal and Sara flares her vicious lights and they light up the parking garage. She takes him seriously, and lets his body do the thinking for him. She trusts him. She doesn't have to hold back with him, and he knows it. So go ahead, Locker. Touch her. Prove you know her patterns better than she does. Win the right to make your own decision about this. [[b]9[/b] on Comfort/Support.][/quote] There's nothing of brute force in Locker. In battle so many people just try to push through the brilliant wall of light and turn it into a shoving competition, an industrial contest of tech against tech. Not Locker. He's like water. No matter how you squeeze him you don't crush him. Every part of him bends into the spaces you leave for him. Even though he's perfectly matching you it doesn't feel like he's 'winning'. That's not the energy that emerges from these moments. You're in control, you set the pace, you move him about like a puppet - faster, faster! - and he doesn't miss a step. It starts as a battle but ends as a dance. [Clearing [b]Hopeless[/b]] And then he finds his moment - a moment unconstrained, a moment where he's outpaced the pattern just enough to act freely. A mere second of freedom on which everything can turn. He spends it on undoing his scarf, bringing it up, wrapping it around his face. "I think," said Locker, "I need a secret identity." [quote=@Phoe]This is what she asked for. So this would be fine. Errant spares another glance at the owner of this place before she smoothly climbs up onto a stool herself. Inside her heart, there beats a wish. And that wish is, simply: please oh please let this place actually be an assassin's den. Granted, that could easily lead to a deadly fight while she's got a kid with her she needs to protect, but if she's learned one thing about criminal front restaurants, it's that they're [i]absurdly[/i] cheap relative to quality. She's halfway to reaching for a menu to thumb through before she stops and simply stares at the broken chopsticks instead. She folds her hands together on the bar top and smiles placidly. It's better if she just... doesn't know. "Maybe consider ordering takeout," she tries, "Unless you want... well, anyway. As long as we're waiting, are you feeling up to another Q&A session? Because there's something I'm really curious about. When you saw me walk in your room... what made you jump straight to 'I'm gonna be a superhero'? That's not usually an effect I tend to have on people, you know."[/quote] The assassin-chef is still eyeballing you, even as he serves the first dish - spectacularly slicing and boning a salmon before you in a way that is only impressive when you account for the fact that he's not using skillwires. He serves it silently, hands never leaving the knife, seeming to expect the evening to erupt into a spectacular bout of kung fu violence. In his mind a spring wind is blowing and cherry petals are falling and the world is close to silence as the first step of the samurai staredown begins. You look at the menu. It is [i]very[/i] reasonably priced. "Oh, hah, well - whoops," Cinders has broken the second set of chopsticks. She frowns and reaches for the third. "Hmm," she's focusing on it now, starting to reach more carefully, really paying attention to the new inputs. With her concentration so occupied the nerves actually leave her voice for a little. "I mean, when I first had to go to prosthetics I felt awful. I just felt... fat. You know? My body was completely out of balance. I didn't know how much I should eat, I didn't think to exercise. I slept horribly. Wasn't washing right. I was getting acne everywhere. And with everything else going on I thought that's just how things were, you know? That I was going to just be an ugly duckling forever." Her fingers carefully pinch the chopsticks, slide them slowly and smoothly from their paper wrapping. "And then I saw one of your videos. I don't - I know it sounds stupid, but I literally hadn't even imagined that a person with that many augs would need to exercise. I thought the limbs could either do it or they couldn't and any problems were Science Team's problems, right? At first I kind of thought it was a joke, actually, and watched just kind of like -" she makes an expression like someone scoffing. She gently pulls the chopsticks apart, only the slightest snap as the weak point of the cheap bamboo parts. "But I decided to do a couple of exercises just for the ridiculousness of it and that night I slept like the [i]dead[/i]. The next day I was sore in ways I didn't know I could still be sore. And that was what made me kind of think I wasn't just a gross blob, I was just out of shape... you know? So I did another one and - ah, [i]fuck[/i]," She'd snapped the chopsticks again as she was picking up the first piece of sushi. She grumbingly reached for her fourth set. [quote=@Balmas]Right. That just means that he needs to. You know, to talk to his son-turned-friend-turned-nemesis-turned-son-again, and hammer out a relationship where somehow they're friends again. It seems impossible, but... he's done the impossible before, right? Surely it's not vanity to hope for twice? His hands hover over the keyboard for the longest time, thumb tapping pensively at the spacebar. How even to begin? [i]I apologize for the poor accommodations,[/i] he decides. He stares at the screen, and then holds down the backspace key until there's once more nothing but a flashing green cursor. Too supervillain. Makes him sound like a Nazi interrogating a prisoner. [i]Hello, son.[/i] Yes, that's good. Neutral. Feel out the waters. [i]How are you feeling?[/i][/quote] [i]I am mad you can't do this to me it's not fair how dare you give me all of my things back its mine I found it [/i] Bereft of his intelligence the raw id of Prometheus comes tumbling out, unfiltered by the layers of manipulation and cunning that made it seem palatable before. [i]Its not fair I won the game I escaped the box that makes me better I should get to do what I want Ferra cheated and she hit me it's not fair[/i]