PRE-GAME CATCHALL.

[chakushi]

Who: Hanzo Shimada and anyone who would have pre-game CR with him!
Where: Probably on Leith, but hmu for any deets here.
When: Anytime in the past 4 years, let's roll.
Summary: Pre-game CR establishment with an asshole, tbh
Restrictions/Warnings: None atm! Will add if necessary.

Comments

3 works! \o/

[tousei]

[ And the job must be held to importance above all else. It's a shame how many people don't understand that. ]

Right away.

[ Julius stands out from most employees in that his preferred weapon isn't a gun but a longsword - black blade trimmed with gold, belted to his waist for easy retrieval. It might also make him seem a bit more harmless, something he tries to put to use as he approaches the scavengers.

The lot of them, trying to profit off the dead - they're despicable, but he has to be polite. ]

sweet sweet 8')

[chakushi]

[ Hanzo respects the adherence to an antiquated weapon of choice— after all, he usually travels around with a bow and arrow. He's without it today, wakizashi at his hip and missing the trademark firearm that most Company Enforcers wear.

(maybe this makes them squares??? Hanzo doesn't listen to the gossip much.)

As Hanzo attempts to move the crowd away, the remaining scavengers ask them for some sort of assurance, some sort of security in the sea of uncertainty. Someone is missing their child, another one is missing their mother. That's why they're digging through the corpses— honest.

Hanzo doesn't bat an eye. ]

Only fools prefer the company of the dead to the living. Step aside.

[ Directed to a particularly obstinate onlooker, who moves on to Julius to see if the younger of the two will be marginally friendlier. Or willing to level, at any rate.

Hanzo watches from a few steps away, head tipped and brow raised. ]

[tousei]

[ A sword can be deadly in the hands of an adept, even in an age of firearms and electricity. Even more deadly if the latter two were combined with it - Volitional houses a plasma gun hidden in its hilt, and it often catches many people unawares. ]

If you are looking for your relatives, the Genetic Registry can help. Everyone dead has been updated in the database.

[ Julius did some of the keying himself, even. While he's polite, he's also as firm as his colleague. ]

Stay any longer and you put yourself at the risk of infection.

[ It's a half-truth. He's immune himself and Hanzo has a vaccine, but these people don't. Do they also have a death wish? ]

[chakushi]

[ People are fearless in grief and desperation: just ask all the corpses why they ended up being there in the first place. They're not paid to deal in empathy, though, and Hanzo watches as the last of their onlookers shuffle by with hunched shoulders and dirty looks, accusation clear in their gaunt faces.

Tools, is the prevailing sentiment being beamed their way. Hanzo can't exactly blame them.

He waits until the both of them are left to the silence of the dead. It's probably a little fucked up that he finds some comfort in the quiet. ]

It will be a while until the citizens of this area will find it in themselves to trust those that are in uniform.

[tousei]

[ He has been a tool since childhood, raised to be the perfect obedient killing machine - his mother's plans were not run to completion, but it had almost been. So he takes the sentiment without as much as a blink, grey gaze unfaltering and emotionless, letting the silence rebuild itself around the two of them.

The dead cannot speak, the dead cannot act. Whatever sins they have are frozen, or dropped on the backs of those they have burdened. The dead...

... well, at least they weren't by his hands. ]

A common sentiment, I find. We are not well liked.

[ His tone implies that he doesn't care. He does, but he has to keep up impressions. Duty above all else. ]

[chakushi]

[ There's a pervasiveness about Julius's stillness that Hanzo had found almost convenient when they first met. Unquestioning, resolute— the kind of fortitude that's built upon years of practice and is, consequently, easy to build upon.

(It makes one wonder about what could make a young man look so dead behind the eyes sometimes.)

He breathes through his teeth, a sound that borders on vaguely self-deprecating if one is paying enough attention. ]

And yet many live because of our graces.

[ Is that really so true, though? It's an exhausting thought to linger on, so he proceeds with the process of organizing the corpses for incineration; bow-and-arrow-callused fingers sifting through clothing, making sure that any identifying documents have been retrieved for filing and bureaucratic procedures. ]

So many are so easily guided by their sentiment.

[tousei]

[ Few people give thought to the maturity that Julius displays despite his age. Some would know that he has been serving the Company since he was fifteen, which provided a partial explanation - the other half was a secret, of course; the secret that he was raised in total isolation by a woman who instilled her ideals into him, a perfect child.

But perfect only in her eyes. Her curse will forever shadow him even after her death. ]

Emotions blind people to the truth at hand.

[ His voice is even, betraying no hint of emotion. He busies himself with the task at hand as a way to avoid eye contact. ]

[chakushi]

[ Hanzo only knows what he knows on paper: Julius's history begins and ends, to him, from what the documentations have of him. From age 15 onwards.

But Hanzo's background is fairly common knowledge, on the other hand— the eldest son of nobility, born and bred in affluence. That he chose to be an Enforcer is perhaps the only strange thing about him; the fact that he cares enough to punish himself as just another bureaucrat.

Julius is capable, but Hanzo knos the costs of that capability. One doesn't cultivate that kind of stillness for nothing, which is why he asks: ]

A question, then. What is your truth?

[ Take it or leave it, really. Hanzo doesn't need an answer; Julius's refusal would be answer enough, if he chooses that route. ]

[tousei]

[ What is his truth? That he's a monster, of course.

But that's not something to be easily told. Better to resort to something else that was ingrained into his mind much like how the curse was ingrained into his body, something much more acceptable. ]

Duty above all else.

[ Duty to his mother, duty to his role, duty to his superiors. Duty that would give him relative safety if conducted well enough, provide him with the medicine that would stave off the transformation. For now.

And dedication to duty is something he knows Hanzo can appreciate. ]

[chakushi]

[ There's something to be said about this, talking about truth as they're about to set fire to a respectable hill of corpses. It seems empty at best and insulting at worst— Hanzo doesn't miss the ultimate futility of debating philosophies when they have people to turn into ash, but it's not as if they have anything better to be discussing.

He passes along whatever identification he's happened upon in the pockets of the dead, because he trusts Julius to catalog everything as neatly as anyone can manage. ]

An honorable pursuit.

[ And really, that's all any of them ever have in the end. A way to convince themselves that they did well.

Hanzo rolls his shoulders, and looks out onto the streets. ]

I will contact the team responsible for incineration. That should conclude our duties for the day, unless they ask us to do the burning ourselves.

[tousei]

[ The cards are taken with care, surprising gentleness as he examines each and moves to the terminal where he had left the data entry tablet. Julius operates the touchscreen with practiced ease, each name cross-checked and referenced with the data sheets already within. These documents will have to be destroyed at the appropriate centres, but that's out of their scope. ]

Alright.

[ He's already burned bodies before with Sion, and Hanzo's words bring back the memory of dancing flames. He had gained a friend that day, though it only deepens his conviction to distance himself from them.

Better to die alone than drag others down with him.

Uncharacteristically he fumbles with the tablet, a card falling to the ground in his distracted state. He makes a faint sound of displeasure before picking it up. ]