#;;response.

[thedravanianhorde]

"Someone’s been asking about you." sami to v

V's head drops to her chest with a bitter laugh. Riskit burns hot under her arm, and she shakes her head in mild disbelief.

"Yeah? Tell 'em I'm dead, choomba," she spits, earrings swinging as she turns halfway around to look at him, "'specially if the gonk that's asking is who I think he is. An' quit being his bitch while you're at it, and tell him to find me himself."

It's not that V doesn't want to talk about Kenshin beating her ass last week, it's that she... Okay, you got her. Whoop-de-doo, she doesn't want to talk about Kenshin beating her ass last week. She's already said it all to herself anyways, the whole should've could've would've, all amounting to it being just a gonk fucking fight to pick. Stupid of her to have even taken the datashard from the guy, let alone throw a suckerpunch aimed in his direction.

[thedravanianhorde]

have you been doing alright since i saw you? / @neuroslayyer for Val

Kenshin's grin has been in the background of V's nightmares for the last four days.

In fact, he's been the primary focus of them since that gonk-ass knife fight she should never have started. When he's not wandering around her dreams banging on the walls, begging for Kepler to come back out and come home, he's kicking his feet up in the corner of her vision. Her shoulder is still sore, black and blue and hard to lift, and it's only thanks to Mina's damn ripper that it didn't get infected. It's also thanks to Mina's ripper that she was treated in the first place - Vik probably would've kicked her out like everyone else if she was just some random face.

She's not, though. V has connections. Those connections are the only reason she's alive.

First Taehee, now Kenshin. Two men, two government entities she is now tied to; undoubtedly not for better, and only for the worse. Taehee's grip continues to tighten, and while V is learning much and more from it, she also continues to dig up shovels full of dirt from her own grave. At this rate, someone's going to wake up Kepler.

Kepler.

The looming figure in the corner of her room, most recently. Kenshin revived him out of anger and desperation, but hands on that charred chest cavity and started applying first aid - some would have said to no avail. V thinks he might've really gotten up, right as rain, just to call her naïve. Maybe she is. Maybe that's how she got stuck under men like Kenshin and Taehee, because she left herself wide fucking open and is now reaping the consequences, bruised, bloody, and sore as hell.

There's a knock at her door. It's V, all long hair and legs and a great rack and great personality V struggles to keep up with. They'd been planning to talk, just hang out, just talk because everything is hard and real friends are rare, but Mina asks a question and V can't keep her shit together anymore.

"Have you been doing alright since I saw you?"

V, sat at her desktop's chair and pointed in the direction of her bed, wants to pull her knees up to her chest. She fucking can't, though, because she is so sore from taking that knife to the thigh that only one leg will move. At least it's the attempt that kickstarts the tears, a cry session that is direly overdue. She buries her face in her hands, leaning forward against the arms and already trembling.

"I'm so fucked, choom," V whispers into her hands, pulling herself up with a shuddering inhale, Kiroshis aimed at the ceiling as she tries to wipe tears coming too quick, "I'm so so fucked."

V swallows, trying and failing not to cry as her optics finally meet Mina's from across this shoebox of an apartment. "Got served a C&D a couple weeks ago. Guy from Arasaka, fuckin'.... Ji Taehee, think his name is? I was— Look, I was doing shit I wasn't supposed to be, but I swear to God the guy's either not a real lawyer or... I don't know, okay, but he keeps asking me to do shit for him and not ask any questions in return. Some of it's fine, just shut off some cameras, but some of it... If I get tied back to that, I'm goin' to fuckin' prison, V."

Kenshin, and then there's Kenshin, and Kepler. A thick swallow, a half sob, chest heaving against her will as she tries to turn it into a steady inhale. It continues to shake. "I got fuckin' jumped by my old mentor's... Something," she shrugs, and she would both scream at the top of her lungs in rage and sob in relief to hear Kepler tell her to take a breath, "His way-old situationship or some other scop, I dunno. I dunno. Sorry, h-hang on—"

V draws in another breath, trying to stop her crying as she continues to wipe at her face. She glances at Mina one more time, shame written across her, and looks away again. "Sorry. 'S not a fun update."

[thedravanianhorde]

Fighting style. // For Kepler!

one word: versatile.

his having been maxtac - and not just maxtac, he wasn't just an operator, he was a lieutenant senior officer - means that he is ready and willing to meet his opponents where they are, provided they are not netrunners*. he is a brick shithouse, he can tank injuries like you wouldn't believe. which means he is absolutely never stuck in a room with someone else; YOU ARE ALWAYS STUCK IN THE ROOM WITH MARCUS KEPLER.

that being said he absolutely has preferences. he is a sniper by favor, which means that he likes to crack enemies once from afar and pack it up. he doesn't mind waiting people out, either, he'll do it for days. but he will also draw people out, and if he can't get you at distance he'll come to you.

that sandy gets OVERUSED. kepler's body can take it to a degree, but even he starts bleeding from the nose/ears semi-regularly from the amount of abuse he puts it through. when he was militech/maxtac, they helped him combat the side effects from overuse, but now that he's been severed and his original implants were removed or reprogrammed, it takes a harder toll on him. still, he uses it as often as he deems necessary, and backs up that speed with electrified gorilla fists.

his style could be closely compared to john wick's close quarters combat plays also for the more visual!

*netrunners can fry his shit pretty easily once they get past his fairly normie-amount of counterice. any netrunner worth their salt can get past it.

[thedravanianhorde]

something that gives your muse hope. / kep

...woof. this is a hard question because the concept of hope for kepler is complicated. there's several points in his life where the thing that would've given him some hope or happiness shifts.

when he was young, like really young, it was stealing his uncle's car and driving it into downtown just to get the fuck out of pacifica and look at all those lights. all those skyscrapers, and figure he'll be out of here the second he can join the NCPD because they'll take him at 18 no problem.

when that finally happened it was the idea of rank climbing that gave him hope. he does well in the PD, but the PD can be soul-crushing by itself. being a beat cop is grunt work, and half the time you're dealing with drug use and domestics and speeding tickets and handing corpos parking tickets. but the idea of doing something ACTUALLY IMPORTANT FOR THE CITY. actually saving people, not just throwing someone's wasted boyfriend in the drunktank for 24 and hoping it works.

once in maxtac, helene. period. everything he did he did for her, everything he bought was for her, every fucking spare minute of his time was dedicated to the one woman he felt was keeping him sane. <- guy who's about to be in for a world of hurt

after that, honestly? probably not a whole hell of a lot. i don't think that anything after the events of city center do much for this guy's brain, i genuinely think that was his nail in the coffin. eris over @neur0cursed and kenshin are about the closest people that can give him comfort, but hope is something he lost years ago. hope is something you have in night city before you realize you will never fully escape the things that hurt you.

tl;dr [kepler voice] the oceans are rotting, the desert's burnt and lifeless, and every animal on earth needs to be cloned or is permanently extinct and i'm supposed to want to wake up tomorrow. pass me the lace

[thedravanianhorde]

what calms your muse down after a bad day? / basically val's every day routine with this one

depends largely on her era but if we're going by game's start she just goes and gets elbow deep in her car. something about taking it apart, maint, and putting it back together is really relaxing. she's also very much a manicures girl so she will go drop a stupid amount of eddies at really nice salons.

V's actually generally pretty good at doing this kind of thing, it also just depends on the time of day. so like if it's late she'll shower and watch watson whore (ironically after s4, she thinks it fell off HARD and is getting the greys kill-the-cast treatment), and set up her heatless curls for the next day.

also go drinking. honestly she's a functional alcoholic so it'd be go get a drink, go smoke a cig/smoke a blunt or both, do nails, another drink. sleep it off/rub some dirt in it/ect. there's a lot of ways she handles a bad day but it boils down to maintain the car, maintain the flesh suit, or repress it entirely with some tequila. hair maint is ESPECIALLY important to her considering the 80's feathered blowout style she does

[thedravanianhorde]

what items can be found in your muse’s pockets? // For Akira!

A LOT OF THINGS . my guy jingles when he walks both because of his fashion choices and the sheer amount of shit he collects like a little magpie.

his inner jacket pocket carries a pack of cigarettes and probably a joint - i'm still not wholly sure on the drugs available in night city (and i'd love a workup) so it's sort of whatevers the equivalent if not that.

regular jacket pockets are empty and reserved for extra space.

cargo pants main pockets are a lighter, some kind of palm-sized fidget toy (quiet clicker?), a pack of gum and probably a spare shard with all his music downloaded onto it in case he ever spontaneously runs into a celebrity. and that celebrity cares about his hobbyist producer career . 🫥

cargo pants secondary pockets have a small rubik's cube that has been unsolved for ~two years, another lighter, a couple bandaids all rubber-banded together, a shot-sized bottle of vodka (50/50 on this, sometimes he does, sometimes its been had) and another shard with like. nintendogs on it .

bro's ready for any and everything but mostly he's ready to not pay attention.

[thedravanianhorde]

𝐨𝐧𝐞 : overgrown cemetery at the end of a dirt road - half sunken gravestones. / grimm!ww

Long, long whistle. Steady in the first half, a dropped note in the last four seconds. The tight-packed gravel grass fights to weave 'round holds many bodies, mountains of dirt, and gravestones long forgotten. The church, too, is eaten away but the kudzu so thick it must hold generations of little beasts.

The moon is high, the dirt is wet, the dead are silent. Again, Solana whistles loud and high. That great beast of burden will come, and when he does, he will lumber his tired body to his own plot and rest atop it. Solana, in reverent and wordless apology, will pet the space between his ears. What a burden he holds, carrying the souls of everyone he's ever loved in between those gentle jaws. He waits for Vash, she knows. He always will, but Vash can only ever hide. In a great wasteland, if it came to it, Vash would make himself small enough to hide in the cracks of the desert crust.

Poor creature, Wolfwood. When his smothered-coal eyes appear, still smouldering despite being mourning embodied, Solana will do her duty as Watcher and Guide. A lap to rest on. A firm hand to push forward.

Another whistle.

"You know he's not here," Solana calls gently, sighing through her nose, "It's not time yet. Don't be so stubborn."