2025-08-11: Neon. Mirrorshades. Noodles.
- Cutscene: Neon. Mirrorshades. Noodles.
- Cast:Mio Kazama
- Where: Rengedai Ward, Sumaru City
- OOC Date: 2025-08-11
- IC Date: 2012-06-21
- Summary: Mio Kazama sounds cool in her sports car despite doing nothing more than driving a priest to do crimes.
[RENGEDAI WARD, SUMARU CITY]
[11:32 PM]
The pale sickle in the night sky scarcely glows bright enough to read by, and the chorus of the stars is all but drowned out by the bland static filtering upwards from Sumaru towards the heavens. In the dead of the night, if seen from afar, the city seems to sit amidst a great, grey Limbo. Even that doesn't reach here, to the cavernous concrete belly of the underground carpark. All life and light is gone, quashed, banished. This circle of Hell is known as Lotus, crown jewel of the city's retail kingdom, and between its cold, grey ribs waits a lonesome, glossy chariot of charcoal with a single rider.
The screen of a smartphone comes to life. The blinding blue-white pierces both the darkness and this tortured metaphor, revealing a bored-looking young woman in a black, Sumaru City Devils ballcap and matching tracksuit jacket. She's slouched in the bucket seat of her car, looking especially pale in the electronic light. In search of distraction, a flick of the thumb sends another report sliding to one side of the screen. Weather: clear. Temperature: too hot. Traffic: crappy. Contact: late. A typical Thursday job. Fighting the urge to turn the stereo on, she snakes another piece of gum from the cup-holder and tries to distract herself with the pincer-assault of sugar and chewing. It's good for ten, maybe fifteen seconds.
Mio's gaze wanders to the darkness outside. With the lights cut, her phone is the only thing glowing for what feels like miles. Catching sight of her own reflection, she averts her gaze quickly. The ponytailed getaway driver chic once didn't sit well with her, but like so many things in life, she realized it's just another mask to cycle through as the need arises. And so, here she is. Wasting away in the stale air, mentally treading water. Keeping her mind from wandering to places too distant and too *violent* takes work. Some days, it takes more work than others.
A momentary gleam of cherry and hot coals outside of Mio's window draws her attention. The first sign of life from outside in hours. Her body remains still, even as her eyes track the cigarette's trail. The lit tip swishes to and fro like the tail of some great, smoke-wreathed beast. In slow arcs, it leaves glimmering afterimages in Mio's eyes that form letters. 3. . . S. . .
With the click of a button, the window beside her slides down with the ghostly whirr of machinery, and Mio makes a point of turning the air conditioning on full blast. "Gross." is her greeting, nose wrinkling at the smell of smoke. "And late. Come on, Ryo, I'm dyin' here."
The wielder of the cigarette is a man who looks like the stressful end of his 30's are hitting all at once. His face is lean, though not cruel, and his fashionably unkempt hair and sideburns are at odds with the silver crucifix and stiff white collar at his neck. "Don't play with your phone down here." his voice is taut, but his tone patient. A one-time velvet rumble pulled tight by years of living at society's fringes. "The security guards here are bored, too. Don't give them a reason." he lectures, but does so gently, moving to the car's trunk with steps echoing loudly against the concrete.
"Fine... ugh, you're right."
"Mio, I'm sorry for being late. Our client was getting second thoughts, of getting out of the game. It took time to reassure him."
"That he's safe with us?"
"That he stands to become very wealthy."
The car barely sags with the weight of its new cargo: one tanned leather suitcase, and one middle-aged man in the backseat. The 1989 NSX is hardly a cargo carrier, but then, the kind of cargo the two move around is usually dense in information, not in mass. Being well-behaved, and well-trained, the priest gingerly drops his cigarette into a small tin and seals it shut. Mio's nose remains wrinkled, and she irritably flicks an air freshener affixed to the rear-view mirror. It spins, knowing no answers for either of them.
"Why's everyone talking about the Port Island lately, anyway? Are you mixed up in something dangerous again, Ryo?" she asks, as if she didn't already know the answer. Keeping the charade up, that she's got less of a foot wedged in the door of this strange and surreal world than he does, seems a kindness of sorts. Even if they both know better. "Are we getting closer to the kinda shit that got mom k--"
Mio is cut off suddenly as the man leans forward. But there's no admonishment, there's no cuff or blow, there's just the crinkling of plastic as Ryosuke produces a cup of instant ramen and places it in the car's cup holder. The lid is peeled backwards just a touch, a promising whisper of steam rising from the gap between cup and film like a scrumptious ghost.
"Drop me off at the GS without spilling a drop from that cup." he concludes, reclining into his seat with his finest old-man sigh.
Mio stares blankly, even as she turns the key in the ignition and the beast in which the two sit thrums to life. "What is this? Some kind of zen lesson on driving method?"
"No."
The man in the back slides the sunglasses from his pocket, unable to resist, placing them on before continuing his answer. Despite it being almost midnight.
"It's a snack."