concoursec | that's not the sound of desperation or anything (closed)

Characters: Maria Cyphert, Yosuke Hanamura
Location: Training Centre
Rating: Let's say PG-13; probable eventual warnings for language, weapons and Yosuke
Open/Closed/Finished: Closed!
Summary: If she asked to see him again, that means she likes him, right?

The idea of being the one to decide when and how to train, of needing to do it at all, is a weird one to Yosuke. Even if he was back home, he's not sure it would sit any better with him. He's settled in pretty well, or at least he thinks so, but there's too much of the past year tangled up with it in his mind for stuff like this to be completely comfortable - or something like that, except harder to put a finger on.

He has to get used to it sometime, though, and he's already put it off for a little while. That's why he's here, trying not to let the humidity make him lose his grip on his weapons before he finds anything to whale on, kicking up the leaves underfoot as he walks because it's an improvement on the silence.

Now that he thinks about it, he could have come down here earlier, huh? That girl he ran into that one time... Sure, it hadn't been his idea of a date, but maybe he should have taken her up on the offer, pushed himself a little. He hadn't been certain that she was completely off her rocker and just going to use him as target practice, after all.

Well, what's done is done. He wonders for a moment if she's around here anyway, and then laughs a self-mocking laugh aloud to himself. "Yeah, what are the chances? There's nobody in here..."

...But never mind that. Time to focus.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Yosuke pulled a face. "How am I not manly!?" The indignant little squeak in his voice there might not have helped his case, though. "And I've totally had practice! I'm... just a little rusty, that's all."

At some point, he figured he'd have to admit that he had no idea where the exit was and was picking his way through the trees and bushes more or less blindly in the hopes of tripping over a landmark he recognised before the end of the year. Right now, however, didn't seem like a good one. A man had to have some semblance of pride, dammit.

"Still... if I can summon it normally in this world too, I wonder what was stopping it before..."

"The wobbling," she pointed out. Which, don't get her wrong, she totally understood, but there was a huge gap between wobbling away from a battle, and confidently striding away from it. As the two of them were demonstrating just now.

Luckily, the Training Center is a big circle, and Maria had guided him down the shorter circuit back. The entrance branched off before them and she headed for it.

"Your Limit Break? What do you mean?"

Yosuke jumped. He'd been a bit too lost in his own thoughts, not to mention literally lost until a second ago, to have realised that he'd said that last part out loud.

"Umm... how do I explain it?" He frowned a little, trying to think. "The way people seem to talk about it, everyone from off-world who ends up studying here has some freaky power and a story to tell, yeah?" Not that he'd ever gone out of his way to listen. Sure he hadn't.

With the exit in sight, he figured they were basically home free, so he gave his kunai one last wipe down on the front of his clothes - eh, he'd have to go get changed the moment he was out of here anyway - and carefully began to tuck them away.

"That thing I summoned, that was mine, I'm sure of it. It's not really like your mystical kung fu or whatever - it's just another me. But normally, either it works or it doesn't... It doesn't switch on and off by itself like that. Hell if I know what's going on there." Hesitant as he sounded, he didn't look particularly unhappy as he shrugged. "Then again, that goes for a lot of things..."

But he still had one hand in his pocket when his attention was drawn to something else. He stopped short. From his expression alone, Maria could have been forgiven for thinking he'd just spotted a whole vengeful horde of T-Rexaurs behind her or something.

"Shit, my wallet!"

She probably could have offered some insight or helpful questions directed towards his musings on his summon... but all her thoughts were chased out of her head by his plaintive cry and her ensuing epic facepalm.

"Not manly." She pried her fingers away from her eyes to look at him and judge his current status. It promised nothing good, she decided, and she wasn't even sure she wanted to send him up against a grat right now.

"...Hey, you're sure you brought it in, right?"

"I know I brought it in! Sheesh..." He'd landed on it when the T-Rexaur first hit him, for god's sake! ...And he definitely wasn't going to say that part out loud!

Cursing his failure to take the stupid thing out of his pocket before marching in here under his breath, he was already moving as if ready to dash straight back into the trees for it, but as he took the first step, yet another twinge of realisation hit him. Actually, it was a literal twinge in his side, and a minor one, but the kind that threatened to become decidedly worse decidedly quickly if he tried to ignore it for now. He thought he could recognise the type.

The look on his face was one of pure torment - until, taking a deep breath, he mustered the energy for the brightest possible smile in all existence.

"Say... Maria-san? I, uh, don't suppose you could maybe think about doing me a really, really, really huge favour...?"

"You get out of here," she said, a step ahead of him both mentally and literally. She gave him a small push towards the door -- really small, so he didn't fall over or anything. "I'll go find it."

She'd assumed she'd be doing that from the moment he said he lost it.

"Really!? Um, it's black, but the zipper's kind of orange..."

She may not have pushed him over this time, but the bow he threw himself into as he shuffled backwards out the exit was low enough to achieve basically the same thing.

"I'm really sorry! I'll... buy you lunch later, I swear! ...Somewhere!" he added hastily, remembering a second too late both that the cafeteria here existed and that, partly as a result, he still didn't have much of a clue where else to go.

"I have expensive tastes!" she called back, not really serious at all as she turned to head back into the Training Center once again.

Strange guy. Nice enough, but he sure wanted to be cooler than he was...

that's not the sound of desperation or anything (closed)

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