1971/Quitting Time

Quitting Time
Date of Scene:	26 September 2024
Location:	Cram School
Synopsis:	Set During Scene 1749 (B-Point: Black Roses). The Back Street Slasher realizes he wants to quit, even if he's not quite ready to finalize it.
Cast of Characters:	Taro Yamada, Fuyuko Yuuhi

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Taro Yamada has posed:
He'd baked Mamoru a cake with roses in it. Taro had done it because Tuxedo Kamen used roses, because his energy tasted of them, and in celebration of Mamoru's recent engagement.

It feels hollow now, with Tokyo covered in thorny vines. So this was the result of his fuck up, huh? Mamoru's powers going wild, and everyone getting wrecked by it.

Not that he's got time to complain - he's climbing yet another shitty vine and slicing through it before it can slam it's way through the second story window of the cram school. The kids behind the window shriek as the nine foot tall hooded vampire launches himself off the falling vine and extends his blades to slide another in twain, only stopping once the vine hits the ground and he rolls on the concrete next to it.

He's taken enough landings on hard surfaces to make sure he's not going to bruise too badly if he's jumping around like this. It still sucks.

The door of the cram school opens, and an eight year old girl runs out and hugs his leg. "Doll-san!"

"Woah woah woah, you brat, get back indoors - " and he fails to shake the kid off. "Mika, I'm telling you, the vines aren't gone yet. I told you to stay inside and take care of my dolls for me."

"But you're hurt!" Mika says, eyes huge.

The Back Street Slasher licks his split and bloody palm, willing his flesh to knit back together faster. "It's nothing. It's fine. Look," and he crouches down with some difficulty, since the girl isn't super willing to stop hugging him, "You texted me because I helped you when that weird lady took you away from your parents for two days,right? Because I'm the strongest."

Mika nods.

"So I need you to believe me that I'm the strongest, and stay inside until the vines go away. It's easier to fight if I just have to watch the doors. Ok?"

Mika nods again,then hands him a band aid. The Slasher sighs and puts it on his palm; Mika nods decisively and runs back inside the cram school.

The Slasher makes sure the doors are firmly closed, then turns back to the twitching rose vines with a scowl. "You fuckers have the worst taste," he rumbles, and looks around for more signs of attack.

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
There are vines spreading across the city, a result of a Mahou gone rogue - or rather, a director gone rogue, as far as Lacuna can tell. The Directors are looking for Beryl - they hadn't cared, before, that she'd taken a Mahou, because that was normal behavior. But having a magical battle wreck havoc, openly, across the city like this?

Not the kind of thing anyone liked. Including Lacuna, who is not in the hero business, but is in the keeping an eye on magical disasters business, is onsite for that reason, making her way through the city, keeping an eye on things.

Not wasting time, rescuing people from drains that aren't yet fatal, because that's not her concern.

Mamoru is, slightly, her concern. She owes him a favor - a couple, even. So she's out, looking, sweeping closer and closer to the hospital.

And then she spies her errant student, landing on the roof just in time to hear his words.

"I'd say they have good taste, considering they're looking for energy."

Taro Yamada has posed:
The Slasher looks up to Lacuna and grimaces, pushing his hair out of his face. He's not bloody or anything, but there's a good amount of both concrete dust and sap sticking to his face.

"Yeah, mindless tentacles want to eat people, whatever. It's what they do," he grumbles. "But I figure a cram school full of dead kindergardeners isn't a great look for us."

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Kids bounce back faster than you'd think; they're practically ideal for draining energy," Lacuna says with a bored shrug. "If you're heroing around now, you might as well join in on the fight where it actually matters; it's looking like the hospital is the centerstage."

She doesn't actually think he's heroing. She thinks he's being soft about kids and draining, which she, personally, finds hilarious - a guy who spends decades hunting people while terrorizing them is going to draw the lines at a few kids getting exhausted? But it's about what she's come to expect.

Taro Yamada has posed:
"Shit, are the monsters holding back these days? They were meaner when I was a kid."

Jack hadn't held back, long ago, when he'd fed on him. He'd felt his blood and energy alike draining, draining, draining, even as he screamed and tried to pry the monster off. All the doctors could tell after was anemia and bruising, but he had known.

"Ah, yes, let me go where there's a dozen mahous and possibly Thetis hanging around, I would love to get my head blown off by both sides," he says sarcistically. "I'm sure that's going to end well for me."

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"They go after live prey, usually. Once someone's unconscious, an active monster will usually look for something else, unless they're eating, too. But these are clearly directed by someone; probably that Mask boy."

She says it idly, because while he had met Chiba the day they opened that godforesaken hell door, who knows if he's kept up? Besides, it's not like she cares.

Which is why she snorts.

"If you want to get shit done, yeah, you have to go where the fight is."

Taro Yamada has posed:
"So these low level things don't actively try and kill people? They just mess 'em up real good." He kicks at one of the fallen vines. "Tuxedo Guy would be pickier if he was in his right mind, so he's either going off instinct or got brainwashed. I guess it's better for him he's not waking up to find out his powers offed half the city, they're just trashing it."

And he steps on the vine, rolling it under his boot.

"Is this what working for Obsidian's gonna be like all the time? Every moron and their mother blowing up Tokyo because they're pissy a 16 year old boy wasn't nice enough to them?"

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Meh, they'd probably kill if there wasn't a school full of mmm," she glances at the building, guestimating size, and then says, "Seven hundred or so. It'd take a while to get through this many."

Another series of vines lash out, seeking to get into the building. Lacuna doesn't move to intercept, utterly uninterested.

"Yes. That's what villainy is, after all; destroying, enslaving, and or stealing. That's what it means to be evil."

Taro Yamada has posed:
A flash of red - the Slasher's hands swipe out with long, long blades extended, near nine feet, which shear all the vines incoming; they drop on the ground around him.

"This is stupid," he bites out. "Everyone at Obsideon is a loser except for you. You'd have an actually interesting quest of destruction or - or something! Not a bunch of rich adults beating on a bunch of teens to slap a bandaid on their egos! If I wanted to do that with my life, I could've kept working retail! This is stupid! A normie could recreate the shit they're doing with a bomb and only spend about a third of the time and effort doing it! I - "

Another vine tries to slither past him; he grows a blade from his foot and kicks the vine apart.

"I can do better than this and so can you!"

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Of course it's stupid," Lacuna says dismissively, "They're supervillains. They're doing whatever the hell they want, acting on ego, and ego is, often, stupid. So what?"

And she snorts, at what he says, because it's funny, because it's -

"When I was a supervillain, I tried to blow up all of Tokyo Bay. I tried to leave this city a smoking crater." Her voice is cool and calm, with nothing so humanizing as regret or sorrow. "Stellar stopped me; I didn't stop myself. I'm exactly where I need to be."

To keep her magic, to keep her memories, to do what she wants, because she of all people could never be a mentor to a hero of all things.

"They're just doing on a large scale what you've been doing for years. Terrorizing. Robbing. Haunting. Anything to keep ourselves going, right?"

Taro Yamada has posed:
"I think I saw you one time. I was passing through Tokyo and you and that other girl had blown up a street. Looked like my Ma's hometown," he says grimly,and he had been too young to see his mother's home in that time directly after World War II, but there had been photos, and it had been enough. It was enough now, looking at the damage on the street, the screaming civilians, the kids terrified in the school behind him, to fill his insides up with acid. "There was a reason I thought you all were yokai."

She'd tried to blow up Tokyo Bay. It is a terrible thing. He is sure she was justified. Those two thoughts rest in his head, side by side, and he knows that they ought to be cancelling each other out. But she's his sensei and she'd taught him, and she'd spent a lifetime saving people; even Izanami had been pure once.

(The slow realization that evil sucks has been creeping up on him, but he can admit he's not good. A good person would be more upset about that.)

"If I quit, do you start trying to kill me now or does that wait until after I do my two weeks?" is what he says. "I'm gonna be too pissed to go on to watching this shitass villainy from our coworkers."

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"We blew up a lot of streets," Lacuna says dismissively, "Before and after I came to my senses. What's a street to a life?"

They'd always been carefree when it came to damage. What did it matter, if you were getting your life saved? Sure, there was control, and there was the ability to rein herself in - but why would she want to?

And after. Well, after, she'd never cared about the pitiful lives of blind civilians ever again.

"I don't need to start killing you," she says, and there's something sour in her gut about the thought of losing another student to Kyouka, but she'd never thought this one would hack it, in the end. "HR goes through plenty of newbies. Who's going to care if one more wipes out? It's not like the Slasher is on payroll."

Taro Yamada has posed:
"I was more thinking about someone getting hit with a slab of concrete, but betters roads than people," the Slasher says with a shrug. "Japan was still rebuilding when I was growing up and some areas were death by shitty repair job."

Her face is sour. His is scrunched with regret. He's not going to change his mind, but he still - he wanted -

He's not sure if he's relieved or frustrated they don't have to duke it out for him to leave. "Exactly. I kept the Slasher off the books so I had options."

And he opens his mouth, closes it. Steps forward and offers his hand. "If you do end up with a job off the books that needs a lot of stabbing and isn't so puppy-kicky, let me know. I guess I'm shit at being evil, but I don't think I'm good."

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
There had been plenty of damage. But she'd never managed to kill anyone with her own hands - not with Stellar dogging her steps, determined to get in her way. She might have beaten a girl and then a woman who was more than her sister bloody as often as she herself was beaten bloody, but where it mattered, she always won - she'd never let anyone die at Lacuna's hands.

They'd both let plenty die, for the lack of those hands, though. Caught up in themselves, in each other, they'd both all but abandoned fighting monsters, and those left floundering in their wake weren't enough.

People had died. Again, and again, at the hands of monsters, without a hero to jump in the fray.

"You are, but you might manage to be basic enough at being good."

She considers it, and after a moment, grimacingly, offers her hand.

Taro Yamada has posed:
"Ugh, don't remind me. I don't want to be Godzilla but I don't think I have a choice at this point."

He scrubs his hand off on his coat, then shakes hers, firm without squeezing - and when he's done, he bows to her, a full 90 degrees.

"Thanks for helping me out. Seriously, ask me if you need stabbing done, you're the only valid fucker at Obsidian." He will kill. Ask him to kill. Please.

Another vine starts to creep up on them - the Slasher lashes out with his free hand, a blade near ten feet long lancing out to bisect and destroy it. "Honestly, I'm not going risking a potential Thetis rematch until I'm fully healed from her last stunt, and I am serious about not wanting the mahous to blow my head off on accident. If I'm going to do this do-gooding bullshit, it'll be when I'm decently sure I won't be collateral damage. I'm glad the vines aren't actually going to kill anyone, probably, but getting attacked at ten didn't kill me but I am a serial stabbing monster man now, so I figure this is better than sitting on my ass at home. If nothing else, it's good practice?"

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"Godzilla is great," Lacuna says, fully aware of how he feels and the controversy of it and deeply amused already. Even with the sour disappointment in her gut, which she won't let touch her face. "You'd be a pretty good short Godzilla."

Oh, that's probably worse than trying to shoot him. So much worse!

"If I need a stabbing, I'll remember that - if you don't go full sugar and spice."

She looks around, shakes her head, and shrugs.

"Might as well. Your problem with Thetis was being solo at your power level."

Taro Yamada has posed:
You're killing him. This is killing the man. You can't do this to him. You can't godzilla him! Oh he is most wretched and crushed! "Ugh. At least say I'm Jason Vorhees or the Predator or something."

And he nods. "If she had internal organs, I'd have won. Next time I know to go for an immediate decapitation."

Fuyuko Yuuhi has posed:
"I can't express enough how much I lack familiarity with those Americans," Lacuna says dryly. "You brought up Godzilla. Have fun."

And she's going to go - because she does still need to catch up with Mamoru, to see how that ends.