thearena | (no subject)

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Who| Adachi and OPEN~
What| So just how has the detective been surviving this arena?
Where| Candy Otaku Hell
When| Week 3
Warnings/Notes| None yet?

Next to Milkshake Lake, a fair distance from the Cornucopia and facing Melody Meadows, was a small makeshift encampment. It wasn't actually much of an encampment, just what was a cape from the costume a certain detective got stuck in before being shoved into the bright pink hell. Said detective was curled up on the ground underneath, an arm draped over his stomach like it was holding everything together.

Adachi had made the mistake of trying to eat some of the landscape not long after he had made off with his loot from the Cornucopia. Definitely not one of his better ideas he'd ever had; he had the runs and throwing up for most of that week and the next, and how the hell he managed to keep low and out sight while heaving up anything in his stomach was anyone's guess. The heat and the sticky sweet and everything else wasn't helping any, which was probably why it took forever for him to recover.

After a moment, Adachi rolled over to where he kept the pack of goods, having only eaten sparse amounts of food from it over the past two weeks. The only problem was keeping hydrated, which... the lake sort of, kind of helped with... it was liquid, at the very least. Again, another thing contributing to how long it took for him to recover.

At least now he could move without heaving, and after a moment he popped a mango piece into his mouth before rolling up to his knees, grabbing the sword and sunglasses he managed to swipe. Well... he needed to find actual water, and maybe much more healthy food to eat.

Only one way to do that, no matter how much he hated the thought.

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Howard's walking normally again, mostly because his balance has returned after his head injury. The same can't be said for the sight in his right eye, and as such he still occasionally stumbles as depth perception trips him up. He periodically rubs at the eyepatch, which has worn a red rash onto his cheekbone.

But overall, he looks as capable as he usually does. He has a bright neon backpack filled with weapons and containers of carefully rationed food. His eyes are bright and clear and constantly scanning the horizon. He's made a habit of singing Green Day songs under his breath to keep the animals away, and has gone through 'Basketcase' approximately four thousand times in the last few days.

He sees a glimpse of black against the pink landscape and sneaks forward. His own clothes, burned and stained with blood, blend in even less now than they did in the past. He has to sneak to get close.

When he sees a face, he throws his voice. "Adachi?"

For a moment, it didn't seem like it was Adachi down there; the detective suddenly went rigid at that voice, his thumb flicking at the guard of the kitana in his hand. He looked more like something out of a really bad samurai flick... or at least he did until he realized who belong to that voice.

"Eh... Howard?" he asked, dropping the badass look for his usual dorky confused expression. He paused, looking around. "Where are you?"

"Over here." Howard pops from behind the ridge of taffy like a bloody, bandaged gopher. He doesn't think Adachi will hurt him, but he has one of his arrows in his hand anyway as a makeshift shank. "Jesus, man. You look dehydrated as shit."

Adachi's expression fell, as did his shoulders. "C-can we not mention the s-word?" he grumbled, glancing up at him with what could only be described as puppy eyes. "You wouldn't happen to have any water on you, would you?"

"Are you giving me shit for swearing?" Howard asks, purposefully using a turn of phrase to use the term again. He meets Adachi's puppy eyes with a pitiless smirk. "Who's asking?"

"Not funny kid," Adachi shot back at him. "And me! I've been trying not to die from a serious case of the shits!"

"Oh. You drank the milkshake, didn't you?" Howard grins. "Sounds like a shitty idea."

Oh that was it.

"You are so getting a wedgie when I get over there, kid!" he bellowed, tossing his sword onto his sleeping bag before rolling up his sleeves, stalking over toward him.

Howard's tone suddenly changes. He tightens his hand around his shank and backs up. "Don't get any closer."

It may not be obvious to Adachi, but it's starkly clear to Howard that even with Adachi weakened, the detective is twice his size. Easily capable of overpowering him.

Adachi stopped at that, raising an eyebrow, before he finally let out an annoyed noise.

"Kid, how many times do I have to say, 'I'm not out to kill anyone,' before it finally sinks in?" he asked.

"How many times do I have to remind you that people usually say that right before they stab me to death before that sinks in?" He doesn't relax.

"Look, I got a no-killing-roommates policy. It makes things awkward. But that ain't the same as trust, and I've broken the rule before."

"What the hell do I have to do to prove to you that I--"

Adachi cut himself off with a frustrated growl, already knowing the answer to that one. He took a breath, holding out his hands, before turning around and pacing back and forth. Finally, he turned to face Howard, a bit calmer as he made him an offer:

"Look, c'mon down, out of the sun. I'll take a look at your eye, we can share a snack, and I'll tell you a little story. All right?"

Adachi held up his hands, as if to say, I have no weapons on me see? Also to give him an idea of how rail thin he was after being sick for so long. He may have been taller than Howard, but he was built like a stick even before he got sick; he could bowl him over with almost no effort.

"Nothing to look at with my eye. It's brain damage," he says factually, coldly. He doesn't want to look weak, and displays of aggression are threatening, no matter how they're meant. "But I'm game for stories."

Howard sneaks forward, not showing his hands. That's the best part of wearing a hoodie; he doesn't have to display how armed he is, what he has and doesn't have. He tilts his head to a shadow in the ridge of taffy, showing off an arm that's bandaged from wrist to bicep. "You can check out my burn, though."

Adachi rolled his eyes, turning his back on the kid and going to plop down onto of his makeshift bed. He shoved the katana out of reach, before grabbing for the suit jacket he had been using as a pillow and tearing it up to make some bandages.

He waited until Howard took a seat, before he started speaking:

"I've killed someone before."

Howard's shoulders untense ever so slightly at the distance between Adachi's katana and his hand. He gingerly takes a seat.

His voice is all serious. "Yeah? Me too."

Adachi paused a moment, looking around. "Seriously, d'ya have any water at all?"

He waited for Howard to say yes or no, before continuing. "And I mean before I came here," he explained. "I was originally working out of the ci-- out of Tokyo. Had a pretty serious case; guy was a murderer and a rapist. He was going to end up dead no matter what happened to him... so I didn't care that I was the one to kill him."

"What'll you give me for it?"

He rests a hand on his knee and bounces the other one. He knows fidgeting is bad, it burns calories, but he's nervous. "Sounds like it wasn't too big a loss. You used a gun?'

He shot him a look. "A cleaned out burn," he replied dryly, holding up one of the strips. "I just need to get it wet enough to clean it out."

Adachi fell quiet at the question. "Yeah, my service pistol," he finally answered. "It was a clean shoot; internal investigation cleared me and all, but even a scumbag like that has someone to raise a stink about 'wrongful death' and all that. They packed me up, shipped me to Inaba. Just a quiet place for me to stay out of the way."

"Only sugarwater. I don't think real water exists here. I'll take my risks with infection."

He listens intently, studying Adachi's face and the hesitation before the answer.

"That's so...procedural." Howard shakes his head. "Where I'm from, criminals got executed in the public square by the king, dropped ten stories."

Adachi made a face at that; he was fairly certain that infection would be a guarantee if he used sugarwater to clean it out. "Yeah... point taken; no water."

He still tried to clean up the burn as best he could, trying to get chocolate and candy bits out of the wound at least.

"Yeah, well that's how 'normal' society works," he replied, before he let out a humorless laugh. "Inaba didn't turn out to be nice and quiet though. Ended up in the middle of a big murder case; gristly stuff, took the whole year to find the culprit."

Howard cringes not from pain, but from contact, but from having to open up his circle of personal space to include Adachi and allow him to touch.

"Serial killer? I knew a serial killer once. They're fucking wackos."

Adachi had a faraway look on his face, falling very quiet. It was a moment before he continued, almost finished with cleaning out the burn.

"Yeah... this guy, he left people strung up on utility poles or roof antennae," he continued quietly. "There was no discernible cause of death... we still don't know how he did that."

Well, that was a lie; he had to at the moment. There was no way Howard would believe him about alternate worlds beyond television screens, even with ending up on another world.

"He did it because he was empty inside," Adachi plowed on. "He lost his sister when he was younger and never really recovered from it. Killing people? It was the only time he felt anything. It was... well, I never thought I'd look at another person and be able to see real Emptiness."

He fell quiet again, using one of the straps of cloth to wrap around Howard's arm, tying it off securely, before he finally finished, his voice as hollow as the Emptiness he just described:

"He was only two years older than you."

This doesn't really surprise Howard. Maybe once upon a time, he'd be surprised that people so young did such horrible things, but that innocence has long been dashed.

But he's good at listening, good at picking up on the glaze in Adachi's eyes, the intentional disconnect people put up to protect themselves from horrible things.

With an emptiness similar to Adachi's, he answers "so was the first serial killer I ever met, two years older than me. Less. Maybe a year."

Adachi let out a heavy sigh, reaching up to scratch at the back of his head.

"It's not right, man..." he muttered. "Kids your age shouldn't have to deal with stuff like this. They need to be worried about getting a girl, getting good grades in school... not scouting out who they're going to murder next."

He shook his head bitterly. "So, you get it now? You understand why I'm not out to kill anybody?"

"You're telling me." Howard frowns and sighs. He wishes he could go back to that time, when worrying about getting his driver's permit in a few years was the worst of his trouble. "But no, I don't get it. Unless you're afraid that killing means you'll be just as empty inside."

"Well, yeah. I mean, I could've…"

Adachi trailed off, an uncomfortable knot settling in his stomach. It could have been him that killed everyone. It wasn't even a "what if," he already knew it was true. Gabriel's existance was proof of that; in other realities he was a murderer, he was the one using the TV world to kill people. It wasn't just a handful of different realities either, judging from how shocked everyone seemed to be at his Hope. He was meant to be a killer, that's what other worldly people expected him to be.

And like hell he was ever going to meet that expectation.

"Well, for what it's worth - and I don't want you to take this as, uh," he loses the word in a slur of speech, in the head injury that rears its head mid-conversation. "I don't want you to take this like I'm asking to be killed. But it's different, killing out there than it is in here. It's...not permanent."

His voice gets small and almost childlike. "And that makes it different, right?"

Adachi eyed his head injury, wanting to reach out and make sure he was okay, but he knew already that Howard wouldn't like that. He tapped his fingers against his knee instead.

"It doesn't," Adachi replied. "I died here once already; it's the same as really dying. It's the same as if it were the real world; you're putting someone through feeling their life going away. Only here, you're free to do it multiple times! That's worse than just taking one person's life once!"

He let out a breath, deflating.

"I'm not going to do it, and they can't make me," he finished.

"Oh, great, it's worse." Howard's eyes shutter, as if a light behind them has just been snuffed. "Maybe that's why the four people I killed don't like me."

Mercy. Self-defense. Apathy. An accident. The last one's a little up in the air.

"Way to do me a solid, man."

A lopsided smile worked it's way onto his face. "If you want someone to lie to you, there's a gas station attendant I can introduce you to."

Badum tish.

After a moment, he shook his head. "I'm not faulting you, Howard. We all have ways we try to cope and try to survive, but I know you're still a good kid. You don't enjoy it, that much is obvious. That's what makes you different from people that are okay with this place."

"Huh?" Howard doesn't get the joke. He drives, but there's no attendant at the gas stations. Mostly to get around FAYZ kids just siphon gas out of abandoned cars, although even that was running low.

He ducks his eyes down for a moment, then looks with a hardened expression at Adachi. "I think you're a shitty detective if you think I'm a good kid."

Adachi grinned at that, waving a finger.

"Ah... don't sell yourself short," he replied. "Sometimes the truth is hard to see, but if you know where to look, you can find it easily."

Howard shakes his head, very slowly so as not to hurt his head, at Adachi.

"I think, unless you're done being a moron, we're done here."

"Man, no one ever gives me any respect," Adachi replied with a sigh. Still, he gave Howard a small smile.

"Hey, take it easy out there," he said.

"You too. Don't die," he says, giving Adachi a bit of a mock salute. "Especially not by trusting the 'good kids'. That'd just be ironic."

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