Pm'd.
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El Taco Taco
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Recent Statuses
9 yrs ago
Dear People: Please stop 'hating' a day where people try love with each other, however corporate the reason. Remember instead that there are people out there trying to love you, too, and let them.
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10 yrs ago
Gone from 6/19 to 6/27.
10 yrs ago
Ah, Buddhism. Dramatically worded for his and her pleasure.
10 yrs ago
Grave digger, grave digger, let me be the one that got away.
1
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10 yrs ago
My children, raise your proud and terrible heads. I will find you a better world, where man is a cautionary tale and angels fear to tread.
3
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Bio
This is my bio. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
Drop me a line if you're feeling brave.
Drop me a line if you're feeling brave.
Most Recent Posts
Finally got a stupid post up.
Mamushi | Regalia - Safe?
Nobody drove Mamushi anywhere.
In the five minutes of shivering-bunny PTSD he’d allowed himself, it occurred to him that shit like that was what got people killed. The only reason he was alive, that he would be leaving at all, was because the Main Branch was as retarded as the Regalia Branch when it came to keeping up with the times. It was all very Scorsese, “send my best guy” this and “I’ll whack ‘im good, boss!” that. The compute rat knew well enough how they operated because he’d watched it about a hundred and a half times over the past few years, keeping his own little files in excruciating detail before surgically removing them from the world’s collective digital memory. Let the other Erasers rock the lye-and-bathtub scene, he was the one who excised all the dirty little secrets from the light of day.
Gyles they’d send men for. The Twins they’d send men for, and wish they hadn’t. Vivian Hong, that fine piece of tail, they’d send men for. Warawasa Mamushi? The computer nerd? He could practically hear the eye rolling from here. Whatever Enforcer got his assignment probably felt like he’d gotten the short end of the stick.
Sup bro, you comin’ with us to take down the Reg? Cut your teeth on some real meat?
Nah, man, got some chicken-shit Teriyaki to fry.
Weak, dude, hurry that noise up and come for the real party.
Assholes.
But it was for exactly that stupid line of thinking that he was alive, that boots-on-the-ground, one-shot-one-kill bullshit that the muscle got so hard over. You want to kill someone, no question? Find yourself a good nerd.
He should have, he thought, been a smoldering heap. The moment he turned over the cylinder of the frankly ridiculous motorcycle he’d bought himself as a New Year’s present, he should have blown himself to Hell. There should have been a man waiting for him—one bullet to the back of the head, into a van, done. Hell, there should have been three men in his room so that a lucky slip like the one he’d had didn’t happen. The tiny neuron of that attempted to find pleasure in the fact that he’d beaten the odds—take that, meat heads!—was ground out under mental heel like the butt of his cigarette.
That he was alive right now didn’t change the fact that he should have been dead. As he revved the engine on his 2016 Kawasaki Ninja H2R, a duffle-bag that weighed practically as much as he did over his shoulder, Mamushi drove his damn self to the safe house.
No more room for error.
“Hold the—“
Click.
“—fuck.”
Kimberly Kristen’s hefty rear disappeared behind the red corrugated door just as Mamushi rounded the corner, leaving him another three and a half minutes of time to kill. That a cigarette was already in hand, a tight butane lighter flaring invisibly to searing life, probably said unhealthy things about his habits. Having almost been killed was, however, only a distantly terrifying prospect to him in the face of what was to come.
…people.
Friends, even, or the dreaded realization that Oh wait, no they’re not! How long had it been, he wondered, since any of them had actually seen him? Not interacted with him—he was a visible digital presence, the ghost in all of their machines—but actually seen him? Or, for that matter, wanted to?
The trouble with having people on constant surveillance was knowing more about them than they wanted you to. Having read—okay, skimmed—several books on the subject, Mamushi was more than aware that feelings of assumed familiarity were common among surveillance experts. Yes, he knew that Gyles spent about as much time as Mother Warhead on looking suave as fuck. Yes, he knew that chocolate pretzels meant that he should keep his mouth shut around Vivian—he wouldn’t, but he should. Yes, he knew how much his latest crush hated the way the assorted assholes talked about her pretty accent. But what, precisely, was he supposed to say?
Hey Devi, you remember that time Rob Marquette called you a dot-head? Don’t even trip, babe, he’s totally taking it from your Thursday driver. Wanna see something funny? Call him ‘spanky’ sometime.
Charming.
The problem was that all these little relationships were just in his head. It was easy, from behind a monitor, to imagine them laughing it up over his little asshole jokes. Watching TV. Getting a beer. Intimate little sit-com moments he was too embarrassed to admit he craved. Out here in the real, where people walked around with guns and expected to be able to take on four or five thugs at a time, for all he knew he was just their freaky pocket-geek. Dial-a-nerd.
“Get a fucking grip.” He muttered sharply to himself, breathing a plume of fresh smoke into the elevator as he stuffed his hands into his hoodie pocket and scanned his eye. “What are you, twelve?”
When Mamushi was nervous, he did a lot of things. Stepping out of the elevator like a Japanese Lizbeth Salander, he immediately found himself focusing on the fact that everyone else in the room was older, cooler, and better dressed than he was. It was like grade school all over again.
“So fuck this day.” He drawled as he padded inside, rivet-head chic in black Rage Against the Machine hoodie and sweats with still-wet helmet hair plastered down the sides of his pale face. “Like, hard. Like, really hard. So hard that, between you and me? Probably illegal. I’d call on that shit, no joke.”
...grade school had not gone well for Mamushi.
“I win the badass off, by the way. No contest.” He continued, bee-lining for the kitchen as his eyes did a near instant tour of the room, collating and processing. Kim, Devi, Gyles, Vivian—decent showing, all things considered. They were fast. He was already going for some water, pulling a cup out of the cabinet. Mamushi would have done just about anything to have a stupid beer like just about anyone else, but with enough benzos in his system to tranq a horse at any given moment now didn’t seem like the time to start mixing medicine.
“Turned some fucker into a Jackson Pollock painting with a goddamn sword. Shut up, Gyles, it was impressive.” The kangaroo pocket of his hoodie shook when he walked. The fact that he knew which bottle to grab by feel was not a good sign, nor was the one-handed pop of the child-lock. Ironically, he’d had that down when he’d actually still been a child.
He turned, threw back the pill, took a sip, and finished up his cigarette in the same motion. He ground it out on the bottom of his black moccasin without missing a beat, dark eyes flicking about to the others again above his sardonic, snake-bit smirk.
“So that was my morning. Happy Monday!”
Can't speak for anyone else, but I've got a post I'm working on getting up. Apologies it's taking so long, I couldn't really start working on it until today.
Expect a few stylistic edits out of neurosis, but at least I got something up.
"Boom, headshot."
Animated death. Pixelated gore. Imaginary hands ejected a carefully rendered magazine, sliding another one in with the rote memory of a computerized professional.
"Boom, headshot."
A meme in monotone, as devoid of humor as it was meaning. Having made the entire FPS genre his bitch during one particularly unmemorable summer while his classmates were out getting laid or smoking pot or whatever it was college kids did these days, there was little hope for the little shooter that could. Like an endless number of mechanically similar titles it would go into the disorganized stacks that surrounded his digital altar like a blocky halo. The stuff of geeky wet-dreams, a command center worthy of the movies that had inspired it, a dozen and a half monitors ran over with information. Video-feeds, text messages scrolling by in neat little windows, the muted, jagged patterns of phone conversations being zipped, encrypted and archived, it was sensory overload in its purest form.
Which, of course, was just how Mamushi liked it.
Leaning back with a low sigh, he let his digital-self die to some idiot with an AWP waiting for the lucky spawn-kill. Camping fuck. The motion disturbed the inch and a half long pile of ash at the end of his cigarette, toppling it down into what would inevitably become yet another grey smear on his black sweat pants, but who the hell cared? He had more. He could buy more, if it came down to it, he practically owned stock in the damn sweat-shop company that made the stupid things. Somewhere in middle America were dozens of poor children, running around in once-or-twice worn black sweatpants--whoever it was that cleaned the place on the abysmally rare occasions he called for it donated them to some stupid charity or another, so look at that.
He was, he snorted and flicked the butt of his Marlboro into an overflowing ash tray, a veritable philanthropist.
Unlike what seemed like the entire rest of the local Syndicate, Mamushi couldn't give less of a shit about what he looked like. And why, his impeccably organized brain argued rhetorically and saved for witty-retort-fodder later, should he? He spent so little time outside he had a fucking prescription for Vitamin D, who exactly was he supposed to be impressing?
A beep from the kitchen drew him out of his thoughts in the way that only food could. Trader Joe's Baby Backs weren't about to eat themselves.
Another entirely different beep brought him screaming back to the computer faster than he could tear off his oven mitts. Something had just gone dark. Dark was bad.
The Crest cameras were out. It took him less than a second to find that much out--hot keys were his friend--but the question was why. They were all out. A quick check to the parking lot cameras showed people filing out, but another quick check confirmed that there were no alarms sounding. No police, no fire, no nothing.
Though speaking of police…
"The fuck?" He muttered, typing one-handed as he reflexively snagged another cigarette. There was some police chatter on the band, little ants swarming over--something. He moved in nano-expressions, without thought, winding back the recorded stream thirty seconds and playing it at time-and-a-half. Shots fired, squad en route, 43rd and…
"The fuck?!" He demanded, more vehemently this time as he pulled up the traffic camera to watch some old motherfucker dragging the unconscious figure of Lex Mason out of what looked like a crash…involving two dead guys outside their car and what looked like their handguns on the pavement. His fingers were already moving for his VOIP when one of the smaller monitors caught his eye and, incidentally, froze his blood. It was the one connected to the little web-cam he'd installed just across from his apartment door, nestled gently in some trendy planter or another. The man it showed looked like no form of delivery men, utility men, or cleaning service. He could have, in fact, been one of Mamushi's associates considering how hard he was humping Tommy Hilfiger's fashion sense.
He was also screwing a silencer onto a very-efficient looking pistol and leveling it for the deadbolt.
Time stopped for a single, incredulous moment. More than terror, or rage, or any other emotion he could really discern, Mamushi felt on the verge of hysterics. Really? Something inside him seemed to laugh, with a chuckle that almost made its way to a legitimate nervous signal. Seriously? The answer, of course, was forthcoming.
The door was in pieces, a black suited body moving through. Mamushi was running--since when, a moronic part of his brain was already snorting sardonically, did he run?--for the bedroom, scrabbling over empty and full plastic cases, magazines, old pairs of sweat pants. Did he have a gun? He had to have a gun, he was a fucking mobster. Mobsters had guns.
Except he didn’t. Why, really, would he? He wasn't muscle, he didn't do wet work. He was protected, dammit, anyone who knew where he lived wanted him there doing what he did. His apartment wasn't pent-house but it was close--gated community, new place, upscale. This sort of thing didn't happen here. The silenced bullet impacting the wall just to the left of his head, as he dived into the bedroom and scrabbled to his feet across the plush white carpet, said otherwise.
He had seconds. Three, if he was lucky, probably less, and he was already spending one of them stumbling to his feet. The shitty plywood of the door sprouted a trio of holes--Sergeant Asshole was apparently not taking any chances--and Mamushi looked for the first thing that could possibly be interpreted as useful for self-defense.
'twas nerdery that saved the beast.
Mamushi, like any good geek worth his salt, had an unused daisho set sitting on top of his equally unused dresser. He'd gotten them for himself as a present when he was a teenager and had, at the time, been very proud that he'd gone through the trouble of making sure they were full-tang, 'combat ready' implements of murder. That he'd never actually done anything with them was beside the point--having them had instantly given him the sense of cred he'd desired, and they were summarily ignored for the remainder of his live-long days.
There was no reason it should have worked. He was not a trained and lethal fighting machine, some ancient master of his heritage's long-lost samurai traditions. His hours of video-gaming did not prepare him for the probable trajectory or give him any insight as to how the hit-man was going to enter the room. The only thing working in his favor was very likely the fact that said hit-man realized just how stupid an idea it was, and as such was dumb-founded by kicking open the door to a wiry Asian punk with a katana.
The wild swing caught the man's hand at the wrist of his gun hand…and took it off.
Literally.
There was…so much blood. So much more blood than Mamushi was expecting that he actually took a few steps back, shocked and wet from the arterial burst. More than the assassin was expecting as well, from the blank look on his face--he didn't really seem to process it, and for an awkward moment neither of the pair really knew what to do. They stared, dumbly, to the hand on the floor before all of a sudden the bond was broken. The man lunged for him, Mamushi fell backwards with a strangled yell--
It took him a moment to realize several things. One was that he was still alive; how he would have died in that time was anyone's guess, but somehow it was surprising enough on its own. Two, he couldn't breathe; falling backwards with about a hundred and eighty pounds of assassin on top of him seemed to have knocked the wind out of him. Three, he was soaking, and this more than anything else made him realize just how fucked things were.
Somehow he'd managed to put the sword between them, and it was currently lodged surprisingly firmly in the man's solar plexus. Sticking out like a red crescent from his back, the blade itself hung quivering in the air above them as Mamushi struggled to push the weakly shuddering body off of himself. His head was spinning, he could barely get his breath back, he couldn't even think. What the Hell was going on?
The timer went off again. Impossibly, the fact that his ribs were burning did not escape him.
---
One shower, two cigarettes and three text-messages later, Mamushi had the good sense to check his stupid phone.
Hope it's still safe. Omw.
Animated death. Pixelated gore. Imaginary hands ejected a carefully rendered magazine, sliding another one in with the rote memory of a computerized professional.
"Boom, headshot."
A meme in monotone, as devoid of humor as it was meaning. Having made the entire FPS genre his bitch during one particularly unmemorable summer while his classmates were out getting laid or smoking pot or whatever it was college kids did these days, there was little hope for the little shooter that could. Like an endless number of mechanically similar titles it would go into the disorganized stacks that surrounded his digital altar like a blocky halo. The stuff of geeky wet-dreams, a command center worthy of the movies that had inspired it, a dozen and a half monitors ran over with information. Video-feeds, text messages scrolling by in neat little windows, the muted, jagged patterns of phone conversations being zipped, encrypted and archived, it was sensory overload in its purest form.
Which, of course, was just how Mamushi liked it.
Leaning back with a low sigh, he let his digital-self die to some idiot with an AWP waiting for the lucky spawn-kill. Camping fuck. The motion disturbed the inch and a half long pile of ash at the end of his cigarette, toppling it down into what would inevitably become yet another grey smear on his black sweat pants, but who the hell cared? He had more. He could buy more, if it came down to it, he practically owned stock in the damn sweat-shop company that made the stupid things. Somewhere in middle America were dozens of poor children, running around in once-or-twice worn black sweatpants--whoever it was that cleaned the place on the abysmally rare occasions he called for it donated them to some stupid charity or another, so look at that.
He was, he snorted and flicked the butt of his Marlboro into an overflowing ash tray, a veritable philanthropist.
Unlike what seemed like the entire rest of the local Syndicate, Mamushi couldn't give less of a shit about what he looked like. And why, his impeccably organized brain argued rhetorically and saved for witty-retort-fodder later, should he? He spent so little time outside he had a fucking prescription for Vitamin D, who exactly was he supposed to be impressing?
A beep from the kitchen drew him out of his thoughts in the way that only food could. Trader Joe's Baby Backs weren't about to eat themselves.
Another entirely different beep brought him screaming back to the computer faster than he could tear off his oven mitts. Something had just gone dark. Dark was bad.
The Crest cameras were out. It took him less than a second to find that much out--hot keys were his friend--but the question was why. They were all out. A quick check to the parking lot cameras showed people filing out, but another quick check confirmed that there were no alarms sounding. No police, no fire, no nothing.
Though speaking of police…
"The fuck?" He muttered, typing one-handed as he reflexively snagged another cigarette. There was some police chatter on the band, little ants swarming over--something. He moved in nano-expressions, without thought, winding back the recorded stream thirty seconds and playing it at time-and-a-half. Shots fired, squad en route, 43rd and…
"The fuck?!" He demanded, more vehemently this time as he pulled up the traffic camera to watch some old motherfucker dragging the unconscious figure of Lex Mason out of what looked like a crash…involving two dead guys outside their car and what looked like their handguns on the pavement. His fingers were already moving for his VOIP when one of the smaller monitors caught his eye and, incidentally, froze his blood. It was the one connected to the little web-cam he'd installed just across from his apartment door, nestled gently in some trendy planter or another. The man it showed looked like no form of delivery men, utility men, or cleaning service. He could have, in fact, been one of Mamushi's associates considering how hard he was humping Tommy Hilfiger's fashion sense.
He was also screwing a silencer onto a very-efficient looking pistol and leveling it for the deadbolt.
Time stopped for a single, incredulous moment. More than terror, or rage, or any other emotion he could really discern, Mamushi felt on the verge of hysterics. Really? Something inside him seemed to laugh, with a chuckle that almost made its way to a legitimate nervous signal. Seriously? The answer, of course, was forthcoming.
The door was in pieces, a black suited body moving through. Mamushi was running--since when, a moronic part of his brain was already snorting sardonically, did he run?--for the bedroom, scrabbling over empty and full plastic cases, magazines, old pairs of sweat pants. Did he have a gun? He had to have a gun, he was a fucking mobster. Mobsters had guns.
Except he didn’t. Why, really, would he? He wasn't muscle, he didn't do wet work. He was protected, dammit, anyone who knew where he lived wanted him there doing what he did. His apartment wasn't pent-house but it was close--gated community, new place, upscale. This sort of thing didn't happen here. The silenced bullet impacting the wall just to the left of his head, as he dived into the bedroom and scrabbled to his feet across the plush white carpet, said otherwise.
He had seconds. Three, if he was lucky, probably less, and he was already spending one of them stumbling to his feet. The shitty plywood of the door sprouted a trio of holes--Sergeant Asshole was apparently not taking any chances--and Mamushi looked for the first thing that could possibly be interpreted as useful for self-defense.
'twas nerdery that saved the beast.
Mamushi, like any good geek worth his salt, had an unused daisho set sitting on top of his equally unused dresser. He'd gotten them for himself as a present when he was a teenager and had, at the time, been very proud that he'd gone through the trouble of making sure they were full-tang, 'combat ready' implements of murder. That he'd never actually done anything with them was beside the point--having them had instantly given him the sense of cred he'd desired, and they were summarily ignored for the remainder of his live-long days.
There was no reason it should have worked. He was not a trained and lethal fighting machine, some ancient master of his heritage's long-lost samurai traditions. His hours of video-gaming did not prepare him for the probable trajectory or give him any insight as to how the hit-man was going to enter the room. The only thing working in his favor was very likely the fact that said hit-man realized just how stupid an idea it was, and as such was dumb-founded by kicking open the door to a wiry Asian punk with a katana.
The wild swing caught the man's hand at the wrist of his gun hand…and took it off.
Literally.
There was…so much blood. So much more blood than Mamushi was expecting that he actually took a few steps back, shocked and wet from the arterial burst. More than the assassin was expecting as well, from the blank look on his face--he didn't really seem to process it, and for an awkward moment neither of the pair really knew what to do. They stared, dumbly, to the hand on the floor before all of a sudden the bond was broken. The man lunged for him, Mamushi fell backwards with a strangled yell--
It took him a moment to realize several things. One was that he was still alive; how he would have died in that time was anyone's guess, but somehow it was surprising enough on its own. Two, he couldn't breathe; falling backwards with about a hundred and eighty pounds of assassin on top of him seemed to have knocked the wind out of him. Three, he was soaking, and this more than anything else made him realize just how fucked things were.
Somehow he'd managed to put the sword between them, and it was currently lodged surprisingly firmly in the man's solar plexus. Sticking out like a red crescent from his back, the blade itself hung quivering in the air above them as Mamushi struggled to push the weakly shuddering body off of himself. His head was spinning, he could barely get his breath back, he couldn't even think. What the Hell was going on?
The timer went off again. Impossibly, the fact that his ribs were burning did not escape him.
---
One shower, two cigarettes and three text-messages later, Mamushi had the good sense to check his stupid phone.
Hope it's still safe. Omw.
Name: Warawasa Mamushi
Nickname: Habs
Age: 21
Physical Description:
Mamushi would look more punk if he could muster the effort of a high-maintenance hair-style.
In many ways the prototypical hacker, Mamushi is a bit short and the kind of skinny that screams 'eat a damn sandwich'. With jet black hair worn shaggy to his shoulders and anywhere between one to five days of facial pubes on his jaw, it's apparent from moment one that he couldn't give less of a shit about what he looks like. In perhaps surprising contrast, underneath the massive black hoodies and sweat pants he wears one might be surprised by the artwork he's had scrawled onto his thin frame. A tattoo and body-mod enthusiast, he sports a number of visible piercings on his face and tattoos in the weirdest places--the inside of his lips, the backs of his ears. In between his finger. Rumors have it that his whole damn scalp is covered, though nobody's managed to shave him to find out.
His affect at the best of times is flat but for his wide, thin lips, which are alarmingly expressive considering how little he moves the rest of his face.
Syndicate Class: Security/Eraser (Digital)
Warawasa Mamushi is a special kind of idiot that shows up every once and a blue moon. The kind of idiot with a list of prescriptions longer than most people's groceries and an IQ higher than most people think IQs can go. The kind of idiot who was scouted by MIT when he was fourteen and quit on day one when his teacher wouldn't let him smoke in class. The kind of idiot who made the last surveillance expert the Syndicate in Regalia had look like a fucking joke when he started emailing him the videos of Syndicate HQ when he cracked the best security in the city to see if he could.
The kind of idiot who got hired on and told to do better after said fuck-up was dealt with in front of him.
Nowadays he's the kind of idiot who knows everything you never wanted him to. He's the one who reads your text messages and listens to you lie to your girlfriend about where you'll be tonight. The one that watches you leave Xerxes on a Friday night at 10:48pm and stop in for some taquitos at 11:09pm while your gas is filling. That binge watches what Liv White does to people when she's having a bad day.
And is paid very, very well to make sure he's the only one who does.
Nickname: Habs
Age: 21
Physical Description:
Mamushi would look more punk if he could muster the effort of a high-maintenance hair-style.
In many ways the prototypical hacker, Mamushi is a bit short and the kind of skinny that screams 'eat a damn sandwich'. With jet black hair worn shaggy to his shoulders and anywhere between one to five days of facial pubes on his jaw, it's apparent from moment one that he couldn't give less of a shit about what he looks like. In perhaps surprising contrast, underneath the massive black hoodies and sweat pants he wears one might be surprised by the artwork he's had scrawled onto his thin frame. A tattoo and body-mod enthusiast, he sports a number of visible piercings on his face and tattoos in the weirdest places--the inside of his lips, the backs of his ears. In between his finger. Rumors have it that his whole damn scalp is covered, though nobody's managed to shave him to find out.
His affect at the best of times is flat but for his wide, thin lips, which are alarmingly expressive considering how little he moves the rest of his face.
Syndicate Class: Security/Eraser (Digital)
Warawasa Mamushi is a special kind of idiot that shows up every once and a blue moon. The kind of idiot with a list of prescriptions longer than most people's groceries and an IQ higher than most people think IQs can go. The kind of idiot who was scouted by MIT when he was fourteen and quit on day one when his teacher wouldn't let him smoke in class. The kind of idiot who made the last surveillance expert the Syndicate in Regalia had look like a fucking joke when he started emailing him the videos of Syndicate HQ when he cracked the best security in the city to see if he could.
The kind of idiot who got hired on and told to do better after said fuck-up was dealt with in front of him.
Nowadays he's the kind of idiot who knows everything you never wanted him to. He's the one who reads your text messages and listens to you lie to your girlfriend about where you'll be tonight. The one that watches you leave Xerxes on a Friday night at 10:48pm and stop in for some taquitos at 11:09pm while your gas is filling. That binge watches what Liv White does to people when she's having a bad day.
And is paid very, very well to make sure he's the only one who does.
HAPPY FRIDAY BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE!
I'll get around to reading and posting sometime this weekend.
Myself as well.
Also, hi. My character will be up, but looking forward to playing with you lot.
Don't suppose anyone has seen @Howler have they?
Edit: And the thing is did!
Good Lord, I hadn't realized anything was still afoot with all this.
Have things been going on the entire time I've been gone? Am I still welcome and all that?
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