2025-12-06: Lock
- Cutscene: Lock
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara
- Where: Club Harai
- OOC Date: Dec 06 2025
- IC Date: Aug 22 2025
- Summary: One last song before the storm.
- TW for language
"Those names are not so dissimilar as you think."
what's the matter? you can't LOCK IN? The heavily synthesized voice taunted the crowd below to the rhythm. Somewhere far above, a young man jostled from his dissociative trance. In front of him, the waveform wobbled intermittently in time to the music on a visualizer. The pulse of the rhythm shot levels upward in colors spanning cerulean blue to burning orange, stabbing the peak bars high into the top end of the display, a demented LED circus.
The grey-haired boy blinked once, to banish the reverie. He was wearing a massive fur-lined coat, a monstrosity of a thing wound through with glowing bright reflective striping and symbols. At a glance in the day the patterns would be nigh invisible, but the ultraviolet light spraying across him illuminates the whole of the design, appearing in kanji made of neon paint graffiti, dried dripping over his coat. There is a theme to the kanji scrawl. RESIST. RISE. FAIR. FIGHT.
"I'm not going back to that cell I built for myself."
what did I say? you'd better LOCK IN. Inside the booth and behind the screen, he was little more than a black silhouette in the sky, the camera trained on his hands, on his coat, on his chest. His face was never important to the revolution. His mask lay off in a tantalizing corner of the camera's view, on the side of the control station.
The mix cantered off like a stallion at gallop. The track is a revolving beat, a cyclical rhythm that takes harsh and angry root deep in the spine.
"Life comes from death."
get lost loser, if you can't LOCK IN. "The crows won't be happy with you," she noted whimsically. He was reminded Kiria was here tonight, the kunoichi folded against the entry as if having appeared out of nowhere. Almost immediately, the young man starts, stabbing a button with a finger on reflex. A pre-organized filter applies over the video stream piping the booth to the floor below, flooding it with static. Rolling sprays of news footage overruns the stream, vandalized with more symbolism, in dripping stylized text, in English. CORRUPT. UNJUST. RESIST. The derisive glare Kiria gets in response from the Shirogarasu elicits a scandalous titter. "Jus' saying."
"They'd be less so if they tried to stop me," Shiryuu murmured darkly, a notion to which Kiria tilted her chin up at him, taking the route of the imperious.
"Mmm," she acknowledges. "But if you couldn't defeat Ijuuin and Ooshiro, what makes you think someone like 'him' is going to be within your ability? Just because you killed a few shinobi, doesn't mean..."
".... watch what you say to me," Shiryuu interjects, his voice trickling down to a dangerous level. "Remember what the dawn of Akita represents..."
She smiles behind her hand, amusement dancing in her eyes as she watches him, closely. The notion distracts him, as she unshoulders the bag she carries. "Well, then." The closure on the bag sags open, revealing stacked cases. 'CAUTION: HIGH EXPLOSIVE,' they're stamped. "You'll make a cute corpse, at least~"
The young man frowns, looking back in annoyance. His lips part.
"-- Gin-sama," he's interrupted. "The track audio endpoint is soon."
The tinny reminder echoed over his in-ear monitor. It was recorded by one of his assistants at least a year or so ago by now, cueing his attention when easily distracted. A harsh scythe of rhythm cut through the meandering cycle like hapless wheat, fractally cutting one cycle into another. For one sick, vertiginal moment, everyone was at the table, waiting for him to serve. And despite everything, he looks away from Kiria, from the bag, looks down.
His hand is shaking. His eyes narrow.
"I'll rely on you from now on, okay?"
"Aa," he confirms, his voice ice cold.
BITCH. I SAID...
His fingertips still, returning to a deadly calm.
"Put it down," he tells her. "... get to the floor."
He turns away. "The next song is coming up.."
He sets the crossfader, turns the camera filter off, and picks up the phone.