2025-12-02: LA CLINIC
- Log: LA CLINIC
- Cast: Joyous Lovelace, Ryuzaki Kurama
- Where: LA CLINIC, Kagurazaka
- OOC Date: December 02, 2025
- IC Date: August 19, 2012
- Summary: Ryuzaki comes to LA CLINIC for his weekly cleaning ritual of Joyous Lovelace's abode, and finds, perhaps, more rice crispies than he bargained for, and less burger.
<Pose Tracker> Joyous Lovelace has posed.
LA CLINIC is technically not open yet.
You can tell by the sign out on front of the old but sturdy building that says
CLOSED
And, if that isn't clear enough, someone has also written in permanent market beneath:
NO, SERIOUSLY, FUCK OFF
The writing is obscenely sloppy kanji. It's still (barely) legible.
The inside of LA CLINIC is undergoing renovations for its grand opening. Technically. What this amounts to is a bunch of ladders, hammers, and other renovation equipment tossed this way and that, a half-painted wall, and a stack of unpaid billing invoices pilled up on the back room's lounge table, apparently having been assembled to use as an extremely inadvisable ash tray.
The front rooms are... fine. Serviceable, at least. They're where the (medical) magic happen, and there's at least a sense of (cheap) professionalism to them. The door to the back room on the right remains heavily locked. Anyone with a Persona can sense something tremulous behind that door, not unlike the wax-wane of a Safe Room in a Palace.
The other back room, well.
It looks like a disaster hit.
The personal living space of LA CLINIC's owner and operator is the kind of thing that makes you question the meaning of life. There is, of course, the bill-pile ash tray. There is a sofa, a chair, a television that does /not/ look cheap that also looks like it might be cracked in the far right corner and is currently playing old episodes of the reality-romance show AINORI to an indifferent audience. Trash is strewn across the entire place, and it reeks of old junk food, stale beer, weed, and other scents that should never have made a cocktail of each other. There's a pair of shoes hanging from the fan blades of the main living space by their shoe strings, whipping about dangerously with every rotation. It's unclear how or why they're up there. The personal office/bedroom is currently closed and unoccupied...
... because LA CLINIC's owner and operator is currently passed out on the sole, ratty couch of the living area, one arm flopped across her face and the other sleep-scratching her belly, currently dressed in a far-too-large white tank top and a pair of boxers that are emblazoned with pictures of Kirby eating various, improbable things.
She was apparently eating before she passed out, judging by the box of KELLOGG'S GENMAI BROWN RICE FLAKES currently precariously perched on her stomach just below her hand, rising and falling dangerously with her every snoring breath. It's a miracle - and a baffling mystery - how it hasn't toppled over yet.
It certainly wouldn't be the first time.
And so, behold:
"snnnrrrrr that's my fucking gummy eve snrrrr"
Joyous Lovelace, in all her glory.
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
Your mission today, Ryuzaki Kurama, as it is every week, is to clean the interiors of LA CLINIC.
Cleaning through the front rooms is an effortless enough job -- at this point Ryuzaki is deft enough with a mop and microfibre cloth that they can just swan through and sweep down every surface imaginable and dust and vacuum off anything that isn't, but that's just the warm-up. No, it's beyond that the true challenge lies, much like how one shouldn't go all out before the main event.
(They do organise the bills and invoices into a pile, though it's not up to them to answer it because they're also broke.)
Ryuzaki is always questioning the meaning of life. He's done this before he's even invented Ryuzaki -- something that happened quite a while ago, after one of their more tragic visits to the worst pits of hell on Earth, seemingly out of the blue. It's unclear whether it's a coping mechanism or a trauma response or something else, but now it's become, seemingly, one of their school cover identities... though the insistence in which they wear the name and the clothing and also hide their hair inside Ruza's baker boy casquette to pretend to have short hair doesn't really feel like just an identity.
But it is Ryuzaki cleaning today.
VRRRRRRRMMMMMMM
That's the annoying sound of the vacuum cleaner threatening to devour everything that might be considered filth, as Ryuzaki sweeps through the living space with a certain keen eye and deft hand, having lifted everything off the floor into his second-- no, third thoroughly-packed black bin bag, dutifully and faithfully tied off to minimise the stink from all the substances that've met and formed an unholy union within this back room.
It's true what they say -- life finds a way.
Should it, in this case?
Ryuzaki is in just a white shirt and black skinny denim pants today, though he's slapped on a heavy-duty apron and has surgical gloves very conveniently sourced from nearby as well as a mask for their cleaning. He's stopped by Joy a few times as they snnnrrr, but then it's come time, a little past three quarters of the way to the living space looking like something respectable, that he dares to pick up the box of rice flakes from her hand so they can probably tidy it back up into the pantry...
It's ironic, perhaps. Ruza was a bit of a slob. Not massively so, but she wasn't Laurent, who was meticulous and fastidious -- a bit of a scatterbrain at times, she too would do unfashionable things like stuff cereal straight from the box while lounged on the couch, guffawing all the while at her favourite une Série d'animation. (we don't call it ANIME in French.)
Ruzica is fastidious, cold and clinical in turn... she sucks at being Ruza, quite frankly, despite having the exact appearance as she would have back in 1992.
<Pose Tracker> Joyous Lovelace has posed.
There are many reasons Joy Lovelace knew fairly instantly that Ruzica - Ryuzaki - was not really Ruza, early on.
One of them was that she could bully Ruzica into cleaning up her messes for her with minimal effort whereas Ruza just helped add on to her mess like two stellar bodies merging to create something even greater and more horrifying.
It's not the MAIN reason; but it is A reason.
Their relationship has evolved quite a bit since those early days thanks to the immutable and unstoppable charge of time and the events that take place within it, but some things remain evergreen. Like the evergreen way Ryuzaki comes by once a week to clean the never-evergreen span of Joy's living and professional but mostly living areas. Sometimes, Joy manages to sleep right through the entire thing, even the heavy sound of the vacuum cleaner sucking up chunks of things that should never have to be sucked up into a vacuum cleaner. She's just that mighty a sleeper.
Other times, though...
"NO!"
It's sudden, the way Joy jolts up, bright amber eyes wide and voice gasping out alarm. It's not unfamiliar, probably - Joy, as Ryuzaki well knows, has a lot of things to haunt her dreams nowadays, things they've both witnessed - but it's always an open question of when or if it might happen.
Today, it happens on a day that Joy passed out with a box of cereal on her stomach, which means,
PAFF
with a shout and a jolt, that box just goes airborne, rice flakes flying every which way across the floors Ryuzaki -just- cleaned. And not just rice flakes. Is that -- sugar? And -- whipped cream?? Did Joy just mix a bunch of whipped cream and sugar into her entire box of cereal?
WHAT WAS EVEN THE POINT OF GETTING BROWN RICE FLAKES?
Regardless, the situation as we know it: cereal and cream, going everywhere. Joy, shouting, "WHO SCREWED WITH MY CEREAL?!" as if someone not her had just exploded her precious unholy abomination masquerading as cereal all over the place. And Ryuzaki--
Ryuzaki--
Joy blinks dumbly, her hair coated with a dollop of whipped cream and rice flakes. Her expression flattens.
"Oh. It's you," she flatlines out, which in Joy speak means, 'Hey!'
"... Nnh... You couldn't vacuum any louder? Maybe ratchet that thing up to 'run and hide the world is ending' alarm levels?"
This means 'how're you, Ryuzaki?'
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
It's quite true, Joy and Ruza were two halves of some kind of devastatingly, uniquely terrible demon core of slobbiness only propped apart by the proverbial screwdriver which is... uh... the more responsible team members, in this prolongedly torturous analogy, before they slam together to inflict a unique and everlasting kind of pain.
Ryuzaki was wondering if he'd get through cleaning unimpeded this time.
NO!
Ah. It's the second case, this time -- which isn't something Ryuzaki is not unaccustomed to, but it still somehow is a little surprising each time. That vacuum cleaner is also, somehow, still in functioning order, perhaps because Ryuzaki is similarly fastidious with keeping it in shape and also it dies an unholy death every four months and needs its guts replaced.
La Clinic isn't somewhere cleaning appliances go to thrive -- it's where they go to die.
Cold, golden eyes, slightly wide, stare in sharp contrast against Joy as she sits up, peeking from behind those jet-black bangs. The casquette with the fat chicken pin is still on. He's not unaccustomed to the nightmares...
Joy knows that even today, Ruzica refuses to sleep without the lights, and is similarly plagued with nightmares. She's confided this in only a few people, but in her words: "When I turn off the lights, I see their faces in the dark... first one, then another... then Clerval says... 'hey Ruzica... you doing all right?'"
However, it isn't just the sudden menace of brown rice flakes flying everywhere. No, there was whipped cream and sugar inside the box!! Cream is naturally heavier than cereal, and where the flakes go everywhere, the sudden force of the box going up means--
SPLAT
Yeah, most of the whipped cream and sugar is on Ryuzaki's face now.
"Good afternoon," Ryuzaki quietly monotones, as if they didn't just get a faceful of dairy and sugar. He runs his finger slowly and slurps some of it. Free calories shouldn't be wasted.
"No. This is as loud as it runs," they point matter-of-factly, as if the joke just flew right over their head. (they also don't say JOKE in France.)
"I'm nearly done with the cleaning. ... do you want lunch?"
<Pose Tracker> Joyous Lovelace has posed.
A huff of breath. A grimace.
Joy lifts a hand, palming her forehead to wipe away a slick of cold sweat from her skin and through her messy mop of hair--
which is just about when she ends up rummaging through the glob of whip cream congealing sweetly around clusters of brown rice flakes, and makes just the most Warhead Sour face an adult woman can make.
"Ugh, what the--" she begins, pulls her hand back, eyes the whipped cream smearing it that she really should have noticed in her hair before, and just blanches. "For fuck's -- I just showered, too! What a goddamn waste."
Yes. That's what she's mad about.
The prospect of having to shower again in the near(...ish...) future.
And so, in a study of contrasts, as Ryuzaki slurps whipped cream so as not to waste it, Joy just kind of --
flings it to the ground with a few errant snap-shakes of her wrist until she's satisfied.
"Tt," is Joy's irritated grunt as she slumps forward in her sofa seat, flopping arms over her bent knees and perching her chin on her forearms. Those bland-yet-intense amber eyes glide towards Ryuzaki, eyeing him incredulously as he informs her that the vacuum cleaner cannot be any louder than this.
Joy knows a lot about Ruzica, just like Ruzica knows a lot about her. Spend enough time together, and it's inevitable, especially when one party is very intentionally poking and prodding at the latter to understand what makes them tick. Joy knows about the nightmares; she helps how she can, in that disastrously Joy way of hers. She knows, too, that Ryuzaki is entirely serious when he makes that observation and probably does not even register the joke for a singular second.
Which absolutely does not stop her from staring for three whole seconds of silence before continuing, "Then it's shit. Find a better one. And maybe while you're at it, you could find some firecrackers to light off right next to my ears. Really work that tinnitus."
She knows Ryuzaki isn't responsible for waking her up, but: Joy is petty and doesn't want to acknowledge that she might have nightmares of her own, so here we are.
With that, Joy just kind of... tilts her body to the side until she can grope at her table. "You didn't mess with the stuff on the table, yeah? I've got everything exactly where I want it so don't touch it," she says, which is not even remotely close to true or accurate or even good sense because look at those bills, they're like 50% ash by volume at this point. Eventually (after knocking off some of said bills) she finds what she's looking for: a mostly-empty carton of cigarettes.
She's slumping forward, bare feet thumping on the ground (the right landing on that box of cereal with a wet squelch-crunch) and fumbling groggily for her zippo as she grunts out,
"You're done now. So let's get something to eat. I'm so fucking famished I'd sell my firstborn for a good burger." Not literally. Probably.
Those amber eyes stay fixed on the table as she asks, after a moment, "Which one are you today?"
It's a question she's been asking every time Ryuzaki wakes her up, since he took up his new, school-bound identity. When she started, she didn't pick up the cue of the hat, for example. And she was too busy explaining to him why he was "crazier than fucking Alain may that asshole rest in as little peace as humanly possible" to want to voluntarily attend school.
Now? It's just habit.
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
Ryuzaki understands that when Joy says 'I just showered, too', the alloted timespan can be anywhere from 1 to 72 hours, if he's being generous. Perhaps even more, if he's being even more charitable. He does, however, dutifully have a facecloth that he silently passes to Joy when she realises she's just got cream and sweets all over her face and hair.
And then kneels to lift the bit of cream Joy's dolloped onto the ground effortlessly, because keeping carpet clean is a matter of vigilance.
...
...
There's a moment where Ryuzaki isn't sure if they should apply the three second rule here. They may be mighty and experienced as a Hunter, but they're not sure if they're immunised enough to eat cream that's been on Joy's floor for even a moment.
"We don't have money to buy a new one..." is Ryuzaki's sotto voce as to why they don't have a better, more silent vacuum. This one's definitely due to be retired, and yet, it must continue on, taking lumps of sugar and other unspeakable globules of Thing into it until its machinery whispers the sweet goodbye in the midst of the night.
This, too, is the worst of humanity.
"I read you could reduce the effects of tinnitus by cupping your ears and drumming the back of your head with your fingers..." Ryuzaki remarks. "But... I do not know if there is medical basis for that."
He's still trying. Some days, he's here, at La Clinic, going through medical flashcards borrowed from Joy even though his one attempt at med school turned out disastrous when the lecturers and residents got really suspicious about how young he was. And even if he did get a license, that same suspicion would always carry across the patients he supposedly was going to help.
Can you help someone disinclined to trust you?
"I tidied the bills," Ryuzaki does admit. He does not, however, move to help Joy with the cigarettes, in part because they're distracted by the squelch of the cereal (tactical cleaning action happens here)--
But then Joy calls his work done. She desires a burger, and Joy's familiar enough with Ryuzaki that she can spot the slight glimmer in their large, golden eyes at the sheer mention of the food item. It's always burgers with this one, for some reason.
But then they realise there's no burger present, just the desire for one.
Now they're desiring burger too.
Their Guts are hungry...
"... I'm Ryuzaki Kurama. Nice to meet you," Ryuzaki answers, putting their hands behind their back and shuffling their feet gently, which is a kind of cute, almost bashful gesture they picked up... somewhere... that seems unique and more lifelike than anything they've done as Ruzica. Perhaps it's the natural bias of Ruzica handling topics of the Hunt and fighting, but she's a lot more cold and calculated than he is -- like he's trying to shunt a measure of humanity and softness in this presence.
As to why Ryuzaki'd like to attend school, despite Joy saying that he'd be crazier than Alain to do that voluntarily?
("Almost everyone I have met says high school is one of the most miserable periods of their life," she said. "Therefore, I must investigate high school as part of my delve into the worst of humanity.")
<Pose Tracker> Joyous Lovelace has posed.
We don't have money to buy a new one...
"Just get a loan from someone," is Joy's advice. "You can pay it off whenever you want, or not. What're they gonna do about it? Sit and spin, that's what. Legally, they're responsible for lending you money."
LESSON NUMBER ONE: NEVER TAKE FINANCIAL ADVICE FROM JOYOUS LOVELACE
LESSON NUMBER TWO: NEVER TAKE LEGAL ADVICE FROM JOYOUS LOVELACE
Shaking loose one of the few remaining cigarettes left in her pack (WINSTON Sparkling Menthol), she draws it to her lips, and then finally amber eyes roll upward to peer at Ryuzaki from Joy's head-drooped position as he talks about a method of relieving symptoms of tinnitus. She's silent after, as she finally snags her zippo and flicks it open with an ignition of flame. But by the time she lights up the tip of that tobacco stick...
"Sometimes," she says, and her voice - while groggy - is briefly free from her wealth of seemingly natural acidity. "Depends on the tinnitus. The percussion from your fingers, if you place it right, can relax the suboccipitals," smoke spilling from her lips, stands up and approaches Ryuzaki with a calm-if-shambling step that make or may not bump into the table and knock a few things off it in the process. She reaches up and around his neck --
until rough fingers can tap once, twice at small cluster of muscles and tendons at the base of his skull.
"... those, right there."
With that she pulls away, plucking up her cigarette, exhaling smoke and waving that stick around dismissively as she goes.
"Tension in those muscle groups can lead to ringing in the ears. It's a common cause of tinnitus. A lot more now that all you mush-brain children spend most of your life curled up gawking at your phones like the world's largest shrimp."
Aww. She's acknowledging Ryuzaki Kurama as a shitty youth!
"Anyway, tapping makes the muscle contract and relieves symptoms for a bit. It's like when we test reflexes by hitting a tendon with a reflex hammer. And don't touch my fucking bills. They don't deserve to be tidy."
This, apparently, is the limit of Joy Lovelace's Sensei Mode.
Joy, however, has said the magic word. And just as planned, it makes Ryuzaki instantly forget further cleaning, thus preventing them from hassling her (is it a hassle when they're literally doing free work for her though--??) further with weird concepts like 'tidy bills'. She regards Ryuzaki as he introduces himself, cigarette in hand, free pinky finger scratching the inside of her ear, expression bland. But thoughtful.
It's an interesting thing, the shift in demeanor. Because Ruzica saw it somewhere? Or is it an expression of something they'd like to be? Or...
Joy's lost in thought for a second before she just mutters, "Yeah, yeah, okay. Great. Fancy meeting you, hope we'll get along, whatever. I'm not your teacher. God help me if I had to teach children. What's even the point? You're gonna fuck it all up anyway. You should tell yours to quit while they still can."
And with that, Joy shambles off to her extremely old fridge that she likely just bummed off someone looking to get rid of it, and cracks the thing open, shoving her upper half inside.
"Hey! Where's the ground beef?! How are we gonna burg if there's no fucking beef??"
Joy did not buy ground beef.
Joy does not shop for ingredients.
She just gets mad when she doesn't have them.
She's rifling through irritably for a while, before she suddenly asks:
"How's it been?" And, a second later, elucidates:
"Your little schoolyard muckabout. Anything unusual happen? Or interesting?"
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
"..."
"..."
"... mom told me to not get financial or legal advice from you, sorry," is Ryuzaki's extremely tepid answer, as if they were answering 'what colour is the sky?' 'blue.' They wipe the rest of the cream off their face, listening intently and with some amount of hidden vigour within them as Joy starts dropping medical knowledge, and they grow a little antsy because they don't have a pen and paper to write this all down and save it to another flashcard of theirs.
"Percussive pressure from the fingers... relax suboccupitals..." Ryuzaki is making such an endearing attempt to memorise it.
Joy reaches to tap at exactly where she was explaining. Got it memorised?
"... got it."
His eyes look so overjoyed (something Joy's probably learnt to do over the years), at learning a new medical fact, which is to them as important as learning a new snail fact.
o/~ o/~ o/~ (they're so easy to raise Bond level with...)
It's an important bridge, to them, to Ruzica. Because that was one of the strongest and clearest desires that they expressed to the doctor, at a very bad point in their lives, when they'd lost people to horrendous and unfathomable violence from the air.
("I don't want to turn my back on saving lives anymore," Ruzica begged Joy on that day, many years ago, covered in mud and sweat and fresh blood and gunsmoke, still with that eerily expressionless voice -- but the hurt in her voice was real. "Please... teach me how to be someone who can save lives.")
The bills don't deserve to be tidy. He's been told this before and yet... well, maybe it's just Ryuzaki's own brand of concern. Fortunately, Joy does know how to ply Ryuzaki, and as thus...
It's burger time...
There's almost a blink-and-you'll-miss it lilt to his step as he follows Joy to the fridge, and... and...
No!! There's no beef... you can't even do a none burger with left beef if you don't even have any burg, now can you?
This seems to dishearten him. Bond level gains are at risk. Fortunately, Joy distracts him with a question. "Oh... ... it's all right. I've shared numbers with a few friends... Ryuji Sakamoto enjoys running, so I wanted to ask him about more tips on running... I appear to share a part-time job with that delinquent everyone talks about, Ren Amamiya... and there's a girl who likes the arcade, Hazuki Nakao..."
A pause, as they glance to the side. It doesn't show on their face, but their eyes quiver a bit. "There's a bully, I suppose... Kazusa Motojima. It seems I'm not the only one, though, according to Nakao-san."
<Pose Tracker> Joyous Lovelace has posed.
Ryuzaki's mom said...
Joy Lovelace squints.
"Yeah? Well, you tell your mom she should keep her outrageous ass out of my business and stick to her hobbies, like ruling over the demonic legions of Satan's sulfur-stuffed shithole with an iron fist."
That advice is in no way Joy's business. It's just good business when around Joy. It's a critical difference that Joy--
"You tell her that exactly. Got it? Verbatim."
-- refuses to acknowledge in any way.
Because that's what it means to be an adult!
And yet still, despite her colorful language and her less-than-sunny disposition and her brusque way with Ryuzaki, she still takes the time to teach him exactly what he was musing about, and why it's a thing. And even if she may append it with,
"Or you can just chuck a fistful of valium down their throat and let 'er rip. It's about as useful long-term and three times as fun."
... she's still very likely going to write out what she taught Ryuzaki and discreetly pass it on to him before he leaves today. (possibly with 'DON'T OVERDOSE PEOPLE ON VALIUM' written in the margins). Because...
Before
"Hey. ... Hey. Look at me, Ru," Joy had said, trying her best to put on a brave face, even as she could taste the lingering acidity of vomit in her throat -- and how much she wished it covered all the more awful, atrocious scents in the world.
"I don't... I don't know how much good any of this is at saving lives in the end. I don't. But... everything I know, you'll know.
"I promise."
Now
... she gave her word.
The scowl on Joy's lips just deepens as she finds nothing but old leftovers and milk that may or may not be expired in her fridge, and a whipped cream can that she definitely used the rest of literally today before ambivalently shoving said empty can right back into the fridge. Retreating from the fridge, she irritably slams the door shut (it rocks, precariously, because the thing is over well over two decades old and its structural integrity is not a guarantee anymore), grumbling something about "stupid cows can't just come here and shred themselves up for me then what fucking good are they" before she stalks off towards some forgotten corner of the living area.
Her interest levels in things like 'track with friends,' and 'part-time jobs with criminals,' and 'the ultimate gamer queen' don't seem to interest her especially ("that second one sounds more interesting than the other two, be friends with them" is about the sum whole of her contribution to that part of the conversation); she's rummaging through a big pile of clothes that are likely hamper that may or may not have been gathered in one place by Ryuzaki, when...
There's a bully, I suppose...
Joy, in the middle of hopping a pair of sleet gray sweatpants up her legs, pauses, holding the pants loosely aloft and considering Ryuzaki, and the way their eyes quiver.
"... Yeah? Tell me about that brat a bit."
<Pose Tracker> Ryuzaki Kurama has posed.
'Mom', in this case as Joy would know, is Eveline Deschamps, because they fled Laurent's household in a vain attempt to keep Isabeau pacified and instead started living with Eve instead. It's kind of complicated. At least he hasn't started calling her auntie like he has Vivienne.
"Sulfur... stuffed... ..." A pause, as they think about this for a while, as if also trying to jot this down in the exact same memo space as the percussive suboccupitals, but only have 128 kilobytes of memory. That's pretty dismal these days, Ryuzaki.
Who first taught Ruzica her first swear word?
"Joy, I think you've said that on thirteen different other occasions, and you also told me that benzodiazepenes are addictive and not recommended for long-term usage..." Ryuzaki points out in turn, because for as much of a goldfish he has for a short-term memory, some other things sure last a long time.
...
How good is it all at saving lives? Any of it? Medical knowledge, first aid, Personas... did their Personas save anyone there, on that day? Ruzica hasn't forgotten Joy's face on that day -- she was younger, then, and looked different... but Ruzica still looks as if she could've come from that fresh-torn hellhole and cleaned up. But it isn't just them that bears those scars, as evidenced by Joy's fitful sleep.
And she hasn't forgotten her promise either... and neither has Joy.
And that means a lot. Even with the enormous setbacks Ruzica's experienced since then that's made her much more discouraged to actively pursue it.
While Joy's ranking Ryuzaki's new friends (and the way Ren reassured him over his shoulder was... good...), he does peer quietly towards the fridge and wonders about the miracles that make milk into yoghurt. And also, perhaps, has quietly traced a line as to why there was whipped cream inside the cereal box: because there wasn't much of anything else to eat. He should go grocery-shopping before the day is out.
They can have beef as a treat... if it's half-off.
"I first met her while serving at Fleur de Lis, then I ran into her again when I was jogging... she seemed quite suspicious of me and..." He searches the word he used with Kanae, "... scary."
It's a somewhat new word, perhaps, for someone who's so disconnected to their emotions as Ruzica -- but they seem to be trying, so very slowly, at this whole emotion deal, especially as Ryuzaki. "But she hasn't done anything... direct to me. I think she's the heir of a large electronics company."
+ooc since i know its getting late we can move to a fade anytime
<Pose Tracker> Joyous Lovelace has posed.
Who taught Ruzica her first swear word?
"Of course you can't remember when I tell you to tell anyone who comes looking for me I died of fuckoffitis but you can remember not to cock up benzos! You need to find a place in your long-term for the stuff that keeps my tits out of the fire, alright?"
Truly, it's a mystery.
Of course, foul-mouthed as she is, this is a well-traveled road for them. She doesn't expect Ryuzaki to remember any of the menial, misanthropic nonsense she spouts (though she DOES hope in her heart of hearts her message arrives on Eve's doorstep more or less intact; she has so little, universe, let her have this): it's why she is always ready to accommodate him, in ways that don't actually draw attention to the fact that she is.
Because she has her acerbic pride, and all, you know?
Joy's older now. She's less sure that there's any point to what she's doing - any meaning in prolonging life in a world that seems fit to spit on it.
And yet it still doesn't stop her from looking after Ryuzaki, just like she did - tried to do - so many years ago.
So she listens to Ryuzaki's explanation on Kazusa, hooded amber eyes searching their features as they evoke that single, telling, two-syllable word. 'Scary.' A new word. A new sentiment. ... Something worth keeping an eye on, she thinks; worth studying to see what the effects of all this are, Ryuzaki attending this school. Because she can't help but think about those things, even now.
Any more than she, as she finally finishes hiking that waistband up over her hips, can help but tell Ryuzaki, "Bullies like that love their plausible deniability. They think they're invincible. My experience? You just gotta prove they're not. The second you draw blood, they back off with their tail between their legs, like the pissants they are."
She pauses. Clarifies: "Proverbial blood."
She pauses again. Amends: "Though if that doesn't work you can just pop her one, too. Wait. You're a guy at school right? ... Ah, fuck it. Do what you like. The point is: fuck kids. Don't let them get away with their bullshit."
And she also can't help the way she follows all of this up by shaking her head to remove the rest of the whipped cream (she doesn't; it's a terrible way to do anything), and then makes her way toward the door, patting Ryuzaki on the shoulder and then gesturing for him to follow.
"C'mon, Ryu. We're gonna shoryuken our asses to a burger joint. I know a good one."
...
"You brought money, yeah?"