Thread: //.ghost/ECHO::Murphy_Was_Right:// [ClockworkCadence x Ryees]

Hours turned into days that turned into weeks. Kirin's naturally sharp wit and penchant for sarcasm earned him some fast friends among the more rowdy soldiersjust the kind of people he detested spending time with, normally, but their disposition towards physical humor and a general physical lifestyle made them particularly helpful for physical therapy. He took full advantage of that, using them for their knowledge when necessary under the guise of friendship and immediately leaving them be as soon as he finished what he came for. He came to hang out and left because his shoulder was getting sore. They did not seem to notice the correlation, and that was absolutely fine by Kirin's mind. Interacting with Lyra had become a strangely normalized affair. They met up most mornings for breakfast, parted ways, met back up to mock some drill or generally cause trouble, then parted again. Like a bizarre roommate, they shared the camp space amicably, shared jokes with enthusiasm, and coexisted in the sort of peace that balanced atop eggshells laced in C4. He liked her. She seemed to like him. He had helped pull her out of the quarantine zone. She had severed the most important muscle group in his shoulder. Their affections were understandably asymmetrically reciprocated. Some part of him wanted to accept those smiles and laughs as normal the new normal that his life was to become, anyway, as it did not seem like he was going to be back to his quiet apartment life any time soon. But the bubble of that new normal was pricked by the pins and needles his shoulder never quite relinquished. Life did, in fact, find a way, though, as time ticked ever onward. They found their groove, and Kirin found himself able to be much more relaxed once he had turned the entire compound into a functioning atelier. Spreading the plasm had taken the better part of a week, but in his mind, well worth the effort. A swiped plasm capsule had been all the surplus plasm he needed to refill his own tank, and once the atelier was set, the drain was self-sustaining, his natural plasm tick well enough to keep up with the upkeep costs of the field. Living five seconds in the future had always been a good way to calm his nerves. It kept him alive. Finally came the day when the call rang out. Kirin had been lounging back in his bed nursing his arm after an unwitting physical therapy session when .GORGON 's boots clopped into the doorway to the small bunkroom he had claimed for himself. One bed and one desk and one bedside stand, it was defintionally minimalist in a way that made him acutely miss his apartment, and Meda's presence made it feels suddenly all the more confining. He sat up, and she said nothing, but the look in her eyes was clear. She jerked her head. He sighed. She walked away. He followed. His eyes had to adjust to the light of day, his room normally kept fairly dim. Sunlight reflecting off the patches of snow made a fantastic version of a laser beam that seemed to somehow auto-focus on his retinas, and it made his expression all the more sour as he floated along behind Meda. That had been commented on more than once even when just moving normally, Kirin had a way of stepping that seemed to barely disturb the air he walked through. The raiders often accused him of sneaking up on them, to which he frequently made a jest regarding incompetence. They never quite caught on that it was not a jest. Kirin almost tuned out Meda as she spoke. He knew the drill here. Find the loot, leave it to them, you owe us so don't disappear anywhere, and so forth. He was a touch surprised to find that he was much more focused on Lyra, and that in his mind, this was her expedition. That spoke volumes, truthfully, but he silenced those voices before they could pipe up with any volume. He did not need or want any more reason to like her, yet. They were given a paltry set of geara fixed-blade tactical knife, a worn handgun that might have once been a 1911, and a bulletproof vest a size too bigand stuffed into a Vibrating Hatemobile. Their journey seemed to last forever, and Kirin was annoyed by how much of it he spent staring at Lyra out of the corner of his eye. Their trek up into the hills was easy enough, no ghouls jumping from the shadows to feast on their entails or men emerging from the rocks like Tuscan Raiders. And then their landmark came into view, which Kirin immediately dubbed the Man-Eater Stone. His vision flickered green, and matching text came above it. He would have no atelier, here, but he could still use his mods for what they could do on the fly. This way sounded a lot to him like, I promise I'm not leading you to die. With a sigh, he drew his knife in an ice-pick grip, crossed his gun hand over it, and lined up behind Lyra.