#steeleidolon

[wingsdreamt]

@steeleidolon--

People don’t just disappear.

He shouldn’t feel thankful for the distraction, but he is. Everything is slipping away from him. Careening out of control with no chance of recovery, that’s how it feels. Like the moon pulling the tides. Like sand slipping between his fingers. Or maybe the word is ‘overwhelming.’ A torrent of too much. Relentless; a raging current. Wondering what happened to the light at the end of the tunnel. 

As if he has the words to describe the quagmire that life has been for the past four years.

Does he look like a fucking poet?

Zack digs in his heels, shoulders against a deathball of concrete and rebar and throws his full weight into it with a grunt-hiss between clenched teeth. The missing chunk of building moves, slowly, begrudgingly at first, and then teeters off a few feet all at once thanks to the miracle of geometry.

“Hey, I’ll help with the heavy lifting and you guys point me to the heavy stuff,” Zack says with a smile that doesn’t fully light up his face, that feels more like tired obligation than reassurance. But he smiles anyway, angles his head towards the next area and rests a hand firmly on the drywall dust-covered shoulder of a weary rescue worker. “No stone unturned, we got this.”

He’s standing a couple days out from nothing short of a disaster. Maybe even less time has passed than that. An entire plate, dropped onto the heads of thousands of people. Eco-terrorists, they said. AVALANCHE. Wutaian sympathizers. Presently, he doesn’t really care about the why. 

Tunnel vision can be a form of avoidance. Not that there's anyone left to chastise him about bad habits. 

An objective to fulfill, survivors to find, obstacles to clear. His reasons might be wrong, selfish even, but the end result is the same. Help people now, the ones who truly need it, solve all the other problems later. 

Even if they were his own.

Maybe Shinra will show up at some point to do their jobs. Until then, the residents must make do with a lone ex-SOLDIER.

A number of Sector 7's neighborhood watch begins to gather around him in semicircle while he scratches out lines and circles in the dirt with a bent metal pipe. "Before we push farther, watch out for these, these, and these areas. I can only guess, but based on what I scouted out, these sections are the oldest parts of Sector 7. Structural integrity in these places are bound to be the worst, which means they'll also be the most dangerous to search. I can clear a path through here so you guys can safely increase the search radius up to this boundary line."

[carnivalfair]

@steeleidolon / @crimson-elegy‘s take on Chaos givin’ me an excuse to practice some painting today c:

[villagerain]

@steeleidolon --

It is as public as a public venue can be -- more or less. Not precisely the highest class of bars, End of the Line resides in the sliver between the transit station and the corkscrew tunnel vehicle access, and serves grounders who may need to wait for the train until last call as much as it serves Plate-dwellers looking for a taste of the underbelly without the grime of Wall Market.

It may as well be a speakeasy lifted from fifty years ago and deposited three hundred meters above the ground. Nicotine-stained brick and amber lights, wrought iron cup-stools, plush leather benches worn to a patina, a dark hardwood bar, real wood and brass in an age of synthetics, all paint a picture of run-down opulence.

And then there's the karaoke setup. Kunsel descends to whistles, the odd catcall, a tossed-crumpled gil note (with a phone number, it looks like), and then jeers as he cedes the stage and the microphone to an unsteady salaryman who is ruddy-faced and eager for the next song. Must be a regular. It's early yet as these places go and the crowd isn't that large.

Kunsel is mostly out of regs, not that over-knee boots and fitted trousers are terribly uncommon. The hug of long-sleeved mesh and angle-patterned dark fabric draw attention away from the lambent gleam of eyes in the dark. Not to say he did not bring the other half of his uniform--it's within sight in the clear-paneled gun cabinet behind the bar. Swords and coat, right next to someone's shotgun. Maybe the barkeep's. Maybe not.

Playing by the rules and all.

Kunsel helps himself to a perch on a stool right nearby with an air of sprezzatura he may not feel at the eerily familiar face.

"Oof. Why are you looking at me in that tone of voice?" He manages wry as he orders something strong and citrus-forward. Maybe he'll even get to finish it. "Was it that bad?"

A Turk outside of uniform is still a Turk. Balto has eschewed the usual suit jacket and white shirt for a satin, navy blue shirt buttoned up to his collarbone and white slacks, but he is not here without purpose. That delineation between profession and personal does not exist for him anymore. The higher you climb, the older you get, the smaller the view out that window becomes. 

SOLDIER First Class, Kunsel. Newly promoted. Not his usual type, but that hardly matters. 

Balto keeps his head bowed, providing his undivided attention as his companion’s rich baritenor shares space with the warmth from old-fashioned, power hungry incandescents and exposed brickwork walls. 

He's already nursing a drink by the time Kunsel snakes his way back through the rounded tables with their glossy, vinyl black marble finish. The ball of ice in his glass bobs on its amber bed as he sets it down and leans against the bartop on one elbow with his body angled towards Kunsel.

"You could benefit from vocal training." There's something resembling a grin on his face, more in his eyes than the line of his mouth as he meets Kunsel’s gaze over the top of his glasses. "It wasn't bad, objectively speaking."

Good enough to impress the crowd, although the reception of most any performance always improves with a pretty face.  

“I can’t complain anyway.” If not for a direct invitation to attend, he’d be sitting out in the cold on the rooftop right about now, half-asleep with a headset on. Good to know the brutal honesty approach isn’t a total wash. “So, why the change of heart?”

Balto breaks eye contact briefly to glance at the bartender as she slides an eye wateringly bright, orange cocktail across the way.

“Sector Eight Cocktail.” She looks between the two men beneath a fringe of brown bangs, guessing at their association perhaps, before the curiosity drowns somewhere in the need to address the demands of the bar’s other patrons. Attractive in the conventional sense, despite the fake lashes and dramatic winged liner. Balto catches her attention before she can turn away by wiggling his fingers ‘hello.’ 

“Hey pretty miss, I’ll have one too, please.”

[primalvessel]

@steeleidolon continued from here: xx

Despite the quiet of the stranger’s approach, one furry ear still turned in the aspiring First’s direction but the feline didn’t tear his gaze away from the view beyond the glass. It meant that it surprised him some when he felt the warm weight of the arm settle around his shoulders and his gaze focused on their reflections rather than drifting into the middle distance.

His ears lowered at the comment but he sank in against the stranger’s side nonetheless, seeming to melt in against the freely offered comfort, something he wasn’t typically gifted.

He seemed to shrink in on himself a little, afraid of accepting the comfort in case it came at a cost but craving it so desperately all the same. Even when the sharp stink of the labs and the chemicals therein clung to the man, the Miqo’te found himself too exhausted just existing to even consider denying himself the rare comfort.

“Of course it wouldn’t be that easy,” he finally replied, though it was unclear whether he’d seriously considered it or if he was remarking more on things in general - because when was it ever that easy?

He rubbed absently at his arms, devoid of the tubes or electrodes he was sometimes hooked up to but still baring the evidence of their use in red marks left behind, a bruise here, a scratch there. Such was the life of a lab rat.

“You should be resting, no?” he observed, finally having torn his gaze away from the speckle of rain against the window to take in the stranger and having already noted from the sound of his voice and the scents that clung to him that he likely wasn’t long out of the medbay or the labs. Subject FE03 was no stranger to it.

“Unless the labs have driven you too to consider your own mortality...”

[saengjonja]

Happy Birthday @steeleidolon!!!

[theomachst]

[Continued from HERE.]

“What- me? Moi? How dare you insinuate such a thing, attempting to besmirch my honor...” he tsks, hands coming to rest on Kunsel’s hips as he’s backpedaled.

“This is harassment and I will not stand for it, do you hear? Help, I need Human Resources right now- Immediately.” 

As if his fingers aren’t currently hiking up the knit fabric of the other SOLDIER’s turtleneck, exposing a tantalizing amount of skin to grope, fondle, and mark as he pleased.

[expendablc]

@steeleidolon replied:

The vending machine. Sort of like a water cooler for banter, except less refreshing, more expensive, and oftentimes broken. This one is between the levels that see occasional SOLDIER and Infantry traffic--one of the floors that is brutalist and grey, largely windowless with metal walls, all unfit for civilian eyes.

"Stuff, huh? Well, that's quite the accusation, my man." Natural as breathing, Kunsel adopts a conversational tone a hair's breadth from laughter. Even if he does not feel it, he does not let it show.

Nevermind how he is paler than he ought to be, nevermind the ropes of veins visible on his forearms, the signs of violent intensity or intense violence - or something more sinister, difficult to tell. The aubergine uniform and shell helmet conceal much, and that is fine by him.

"It's mostly things these days, honestly."

A clink of gil coinage, a tap-tap on the menu, and he squats down with a 'hup' to retrieve his prize. Prizes, even. A bonus seems unexpected given his sound of discovery, or maybe he is disguising some trickery with the input codes. Either way, he retrieves his bottle of HYDRATE-XD and processed chocolate protein brick bar - and an extra bottle of something electrolyte-forward and colorful.

He stands, then passes the luminous blue drink the infantryman's way while inviting himself to a seat on the unoccupied part of the bench. Nothing strange about sitting in a spot to recover, for whatever reason.

"Mentioning what, exactly? Besides, uh, stuff and things."

He’d never done anything remotely like this, maybe when he was twelve he’d stolen a candy bar because boys are impressively dumb at that age (he also cried and returned it almost immediately afterwards, but he wasn’t about to relay that little trip down memory lane). 

“Oh, for me? Thank you.”

That was Brandr in a nutshell, always minding his P’s and Q’s. Mild-mannered, a dime-a-dozen, and rather forgettable: a bit like watered down milk or tuna noodle casserole. You knew it existed, had probably encountered it at some point in your life, but nothing to write home about.

“Well, that’s... Nothing bad,” he outright lies.

Kunsel Too-cool-for-a-last-name, apparently. Tech-head and a veritable Costa del Sol’s Triangle of clandestine dealings. Word was he could dig up dirt on just about anyone or anything and had managed to suspiciously survive most missions with a near 100% mortality rate. Smart, but a little too smart for comfort.

“Just that if you want to know stuff that’s off record, you’re the go-to guy.”

So, exactly the type of person he needed to talk to.

“You’ve been in SOLDIER since the war, right? Did you ever hear about a guy named Samson? He would have been 3rd Class, applied during that big push for new candidates. We got a letter saying he was KIA, but it felt like a lot of info had been redacted, if you get my drift.”

[makoblue]

@steeleidolon -- from x

A small piece of freedom; a strange kind, one he never knew possible. Freedom from expectations, assumptions, and lingering suspicions. Empathy. Remnants of an old regime, still hanging on desperately for power and control over this Planet, its lifeforce, and the lives of its inhabitants.

That’s what they are. Remnants.

Two pairs of eyes, glittered with a spark of mako, stare up at the night sky together. Brilliant, burning, bright balls of gas look back at them from hundreds of thousands of light years away. The same sky of his childhood, a sky free from the light pollution that pervades concrete jungles. 

When was the last time I really looked at the sky?

A clink of metal gauntlets striking glass and gliding fingers drawing new lines through a blanket of condensation. His hand wraps around the proffered bottle and the dark amber liquid inside sloshes around as he tips the mouth of the bottle against his lips and stymies a grimace at the fuzzy-hot trail a single gulp leaves in the column of his throat.

Cloud rolls over onto his side and feels the compacted dirt underneath pushing back against a jutted, bony hip even through the woolen warps and wefts of his own mat. 

The profile of Kunsel’s face is silhouetted by a warm firelight. If he stares long enough, letting his vision blur into a scattering of oranges, yellows, and ambient red dust in the air, Cloud can see a trio of golden halos over Kunsel’s shock of auburn brown hair. 

There’s a blank spot, fathomless, in the corner of his mind that arrests him with some emotion begging to be named when he looks at that face and the burnished, flame-glint of the well-worn helmet sitting besides Kunsel. 

Something. Someone. Missing, gone. 

Bracing on an elbow, Cloud leans over far enough to push the drink back into the other man’s hand before flopping onto his back once more. “No problem. Nice to have another ex-SOLDIER around…someone who gets it.”