[OPEN] you're on your own, kid

[ghostmoder]

WHO: Yusuke and... you?!
WHAT: May Catchall
WHEN: anytime and all times
WHERE: Highstorm, Old Springstar, elsewhere?!
WARNINGS: shitty teen behavior




Prompts in comments! Feel free to wildcard me if you feel like riffing on any of them, or hit me up with a PM or on Discord (@ pineappamatic) if you wanna plot out something specific!

Comments

DOWNTOWN

[zauneyete]

[ It's hard to miss new bearers, with his true sight able to pick out different shard bearers and which faction they've signed their fates to. Silco cannot help but use it whenever he sees new faces. Of course, sometimes it is nothing — especially after the repose, it is difficult to not encounter new faces — but Silco still checks the new ones time and time again.

Which is how Yusuke catches him staring from one of the other little pop up, a small shop with an array of illicit substances, though he doesn't seem to be purchasing for himself. Instead, it's a much more casual affair, the short, reedy man leaning against a counter, chatting up with some measure of charm, though his half-unblinking gaze certainly does flick often enough to Yusuke at the counter next to him.

His lips curl, slightly, over scarred tissue, though the smile isn't... pleasant. Not hostile, either, but Silco was never a pleasant man. ]

A few, but don't we all these days?

[ He waved a hand to one of the muscle, who started to dole out coin to the shopkeeper, the other taking a crate from behind the counter. They were ready to move when Silco was, but he waved a hand, to get them to start moving. He stayed. ]

Especially for new arrivals, I think. Decisions on decisions, and a choice to make. [ A beat. ] Interesting that you've already chosen, though I suppose Zenith looks a touch more welcoming these days, hm?

[ Says the man who personally drove several from Zenith. Oopsie! ]

[ghostmoder]

[literally why are all old people like this!! Can't even just be kind of a bitch to someone without getting a whole bunch of blah blah blah in return.

Silco's picked at a nerve, though. Setting aside how he even knows all this stuff in the first place, Yusuke doesn't like the notion that he's allowed something to get its claws into him quickly or easily. He trusts his own logic, and he knows that to play a long game sometimes you gotta let the other guy get a hit in, but that doesn't mean he wants to take the slug.]

And? What's it to you? [He holds his ground, fists deep in his pockets.] I was supposed to keep sitting on my ass in case some idiot wanted to blow more hot air at me? No thanks.

[There's curiosity, though, in the way he eyes all the satellite activity going on, money and product changing hands. Silco reminds him of the guys he'd see his mom hanging around with sometimes. Not her loser boyfriends, but the severe-looking men in sleek black suits, the same ones who parked their sleek black cars all around his school the day she met with the principal to... convince him to let Yusuke re-enroll.]

[zauneyete]

[ There's the ghost of a smile, like a flash of something knowing, but it's swallowed back down, as if it bursts to life, only to be drowned immediately after it's acknowledged. ]

Hm. Few have conviction enough to make that decision.

[ He states it like it's fact, though it's true. Some do hem and haw, trying on one side or the other until they feel as if it fits, or as if its settled. Silco had not felt such a thing, no. He'd harmonized nearly immediately, and not because of the matron, like amos, but because of something else.

Revenge, mostly, but he knows that is an ill-fitting suit to most, and even he can bite his tongue from time to time. ]

Didn't like the way the topsiders went on and on about bringing things back, I take it? You're not wrong, of course. They can hardly see their own futures, blinded by the light of Meridian, to see that they are being foolish.

[ Fooled, perhaps, he thinks. There's only one path forward, and what good could bringing back the dead do? ]

[ghostmoder]

[For a moment he seems unsure how to react; this wasn't the direction he expected the conversation to go in. It's strange. The defensiveness in his body language relaxes, if just a smidge.]

Dig somebody out of a shallow grave and tell 'em everything they know and love is gone, you can't be surprised when they grab the first lifeline that gets flung at them.

[Grief and guilt are helluva drugs. He's seen the kind of havoc they can wreak on people's lives, if they let them. That's part of what he resents about Agapitos, and Meridian in general: the dogpiling rhetoric, the notion that theirs is the only hope to offer, and that anything less is a betrayal of your world's memory.]

Zenith's got its own blowhards. [A reminder, to Silco and maybe also a little to himself, that just because he chose doesn't mean he's all-in just yet.] But I'm not stupid. Doing nothing gets me nothing. So I'll do what I gotta do.

[To survive, first and foremost. To get his people through to the other side. The rest... he'll figure it out.]

[zauneyete]

[ A touch of a mean, slightly sarcastic laugh. ]

Does it?

[ Yusuke probably doesn't see the irony, but Silco knows who the blowhard is in Zenith. Mostly because never shuts up during the information gathering posts, and nobody ever listens.

(Silco. It's actually Silco.)

However, it does cause him to keep his approach a touch more... restrained, which really, one could say is remarkable for one of the more fervent Zenites. Especially one that rarely stilled his tongue from proclaiming the sins of their foes. ]

That's what being part of a cause comes with, I'm afraid. Every single one has them, just as much as they have their own weakly associated types, that would leave as soon as things became inconvenient. [ Not that. He's ever Encountered Something Like That. ]

We all must find our own reasons for belief, in the end, don't we? Clearly the past's light was not so blinding that you looked only at that, yes? There must be more reason than simply "less blowhards", I gather.

[ghostmoder]

'Course there is. I told you, I'm not stupid. If somebody wants me on their side, they better be able to pony up for it.

[It's a bold presumption to have this early in, that he's that valuable a piece to have on the board. But he's got the resume to back it up, as far as he's concerned.]

But why should you care? Last I heard you guys needed numbers. That not good enough?

[The truth is, he has a lot of reasons: some logical, some philosophical, and one buried deep, deep down in the little metaphorical bottle where he's keeping all his feelings about what happened before he woke up with a mouth full of dirt, locked up tight even from himself.

Silco doesn't need all of them. Yusuke wants to know which ones he wants.]

[zauneyete]

Some may be interested in any that come, the numbers you speak of. I am not.

[ He shrugged, and it looked... bitchy, in some way. Like the thought of that being the primary objective was foolish. ]

Numbers are fair-weather, and if you have ever been involved with a cause before, you would understand. Those "numbers" are readily diminished. I do not trust them, and have no interest in simply bolstering our field with those that would readily leave once their fortune has passed.

[ It's frank, but perhaps there's a logic to it. This was world-shattering, after all. Important. A cause worth fighting meant that those who signed on should believe in it, not simply just be there to fill a slot. Though, Silco was probably one of the few that had been burned by such fair-weather loyalty to a cause. ]

That being said, few of us are here to pay for your loyalty either. [ A single eye blinked. ] Did you join on thinking we would... "pony up" for it?

[ghostmoder]

[Quality over quantity, huh? Yusuke doesn't even disagree necessarily, it's just interesting; he thought a guy like this would be more bought-in to the idea of number-crunching, even if just as cannon fodder.]

I don't care about money. But I'm not an attack dog for you to sic on whoever you want. I'm saying I better be getting something out of it, too.

[And he is. In more ways than just the one, but the little shard he's doing his best to keep sequestered and safe feels especially like payment for early loyalty. To pretend otherwise seems delusional.]

What, you want me to be bought-in on day one? Be a "champion" for your "cause"? Loyalty doesn't work like that, old man.

[He's used to being a weapon, but he's always insisted on being the one aiming the barrel, whether his "handlers" liked it or not.]