compyuutah | standing in the middle of roads upon arrival is becoming tradition

[Funny, how your life can change in an instant. Baroona had already experienced it enough. Twice recently–both arrivals to the City. But after a year he had assumed he was stuck there. A permanent fixture in a futuristic city he had only just started to get used to.

He was wrong.

From laying in the park to sitting up in a dirtied alleyway, the change was instantaneous. A quick look around guarantees that he's alone, allows for a moment of panic. Check to make sure everything is still here: knives, cigarettes, lighter, clothes... translator? Baroona stares down at it curiously, it's presence oddly comforting in his hand. He keeps it there and stands, listening and looking.

It looks like the City. There's a thick crowd at the end of the alleyway and brightly colored balloons passing by overhead. He recognizes it from the City. A parade? Maybe. It's certainly noisy enough.

This isn't going to be fun.

With a sigh, he presses forward anyway, slipping through and around people, taking himself to the front. People glare as he pushes past but get distracted before there's any issues. A float passes by. Baroona regards it plainly. Definitely a parade. What a pain.

Looking past the floats and balloons, Baroona studies the buildings, looks for something familiar. But familiarity is hard to spot when everything looked foreign in the first place. It's hard to tell. A quirk of a frown pulls at his lips as he moves towards another tactic. He fits the translator into his ear, and pushes it on.

At first, all goes well. The strange language being spoken around him gets translated. Yeah, I'm– and then cut off. Static fills his ears instead, loud and merciless. Baroona bows forward, clutching his ear with a wince. The people around him notice and give him space but he can't tell. The static changes to feedback-a high-pitched scream drilling into his head. He winces again and stumbles forward, into the parade and in front of the float. Still, Baroona doesn't notice. Not until the translator is out of his ear and thrown on the ground does he even look up, shoulders slumping.

The people on the float look down at him, shocked. The parade comes to a temporary halt. Security closes in on him from all sides and people shout foreign words from the sidelines. But all Baroona can hear is his own breath as he looks over the float as a thought occurs to him.

He has no idea where he is.]

Threaded | Flat

[It still hasn't quite hit her yet. Being back home. Sure, it was nice---being able to see Kuroko, Uiharu, and Saten again, seeing all of the familiar stores and landmarks, just generally settling back into her daily grind: attend school, beat up punks, hang out, investigate strange goings-on...

...Actually, it's been pretty quiet on that last front. And yet Mikoto's feeling oddly..wistful, as she steps out from the veiled, glittering booth at the top of the float that Baroona is about to block off, dressed up in an ornate (read: heavy, near-suffocating, pain the ass) red-and-gold kimono, with an equally elaborate hairpin set in her long black, princess-style wig---the float's theme being the legend of Amaterasu.

She hears the squeals and cheers of her Tokiwadai peers through the already-bustling crowd. She takes out a fan and daintily waves it around, inviting more cries of adoration (Kuroko could out-fangirl them all, though).

She misses the City. Misses the crazy things that happened there; the constant thrill and excitement. Misses the friends she made there: Bart, Keiko, Lyra, Johnny, Terra, Lavi, Ares, Blue...

...Baroona.

Mikoto briefly 'tsks' as she waves the fan in front of her face. She's getting sentimental---

---And suddenly everything stops. She frowns, hearing shouts and yells.]

What's going on?

[Her one classmate squints. "Uh, some guy's trying to crash the parade. I think security's got it, though."

Mikoto raises an eyebrow. Kuroko would definitely jump in on this if it got worse, being a member of Judgment, but she has to keep on her toes, too. The Level Upper case had been rough on the city. If someone decided to pull a copycat of the Graviton Bomber...

She leans forward to get a better look.

Gapes.]

.....Baroona?!

[And immediately facefaults.

Somehow, she's not surprised.]

["Parents weekend" was a godsend, if Baroona believed in gods. After months of only skirts, forced smiles, and silence a weekend off was a welcome change. Exchanging his skirt for pants was the happiest moment he'd experienced in Academy City and the weekend was still young.

Mikoto was off in a hotel with her mother and Kuroko–though watchful–was easily distracted. It wasn't hard to slip away. All he needed to do was be back in the dorms before Mikoto returned and stay out of them until then. It was easy enough in a city this huge and it would be nice, sleeping under the stars again (what little he could see).

He waits until late Friday to set out–past curfew. It's risky but no more than an earlier time. The amount of students in the city make anything hard to do without his "disguise".

The dorm is hard to escape but he manages, sticking to alleyways and dark streets until finally making his way to one of the parks–a welcome quiet amongst the bustle of the city. His pace slows, his posture relaxes and for the first time in a long while he breathes in deep and smiles, head tipped towards the sky.

For once, he's alone. It's just him, the trees and the stars.

And... the obnoxiously loud drunken stumbling multiple yards away. It ruins Baroona's serenity with the clang of a trash can and begrudgingly, he looks towards the sound.

It's a woman, definitely drunk. He considers leaving her be but obligation gets the best of him and he sets towards her after a belabored sigh.]

Hey.

unfashionably late

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