2025-09-04: Bus Stop Vent Sesh
- Log: Bus Stop Vent Sesh
- Cast: Tsubasa Seki, Niko Kirisaki
- Where: Hirasaka Ward, Sumaru City
- OOC Date: September 04, 2025
- IC Date: July 06, 2012
- Summary: Tsubasa's bad mood following their arrest is exacerbated by a passing Niko, who finds her usual efforts to be friendly backfiring. At least initially, until a misunderstanding is cleared up, and the two find some common ground.
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
The school week's almost over. Tsubasa... hasn't been to therapy, even though the school heard that the dastardly villain got picked up by the police earlier in the week. They skipped school the day after, but they've been attending ever since, so... it's fine.
It's fine.
School's over now, though, and Tsubasa sits at a Hirasakan bus stop as their Tosa Inu lies on the ground beside them. There's no bus coming by anytime soon, so they're scrawling something on the glass side of the shelter with permanent marker. (Of course it's permanent marker.)
Bad blood builds bad men
Comin' out from the lion's den
Can't be thinkin' what's begun
Fuck it, man, just call me Satan
They're in a boy's uniform -- though the bottom half of their top is unbuttoned and tied around their waist, with their sleeves rolled up and their pants low on their hips, in a combination of both male and female student rebellion. And, of course, their fake tan remains remarkably orange, their present wig loudly purple and yellow and white. What a mysterious person...
<Pose Tracker> Niko Kirisaki has posed.
Naturally, Julian Marlowe has already decided that some bullshit happened that they pinned on Tsubasa. He'll always be on the side of the students unless he see evidence to the contrary. All he's seen so far is someone with severe trust issues, severe enough to make him convinced they aren't commonly given much reason to have faith in people.
However, counseling can only happen at school, so that's not who gets to talk right now. For better or for worse, there's someone else loitering in the area, looking for something to do.
Niko stands out a little less here than she does in most places, what with the whole punk look she's got going on. Standard operating procedure for her to go around with arms, legs, and midriff uncovered, the studded mini-jacket covering her crop top left casually unzipped, freyed denim shorts, beat-up sneakers... all as dark as the eyeshadow surrounding her green eyes, the main spots of color aside from the side-swept hair, dyed bright pink. What stands out more in these parts is probably the 'lifetime of training'-level muscle on her.
Might be a bit gutsy for her to be casually strolling around, given that it hasn't been that long since the Joker Killer incident at Kasugayama. She never went inside, only involved with the brawl at the gates, but decent chance there'd be people about who'd have seen her. Not that she cares. Totally unconcerned about what might happen, arms parked behind her head, walking right down the middle of the sidewalk like she owns it.
One might think she's just going to pass on by. But when she catches the writing out of the corner of her eye, she abruptly stops, turns, and bends forward to inspect them more closely. The corners of her lips slowly curl up.
"Well holy shit, looks like we've got ourselves a big ol' poet here! Inspirational, really, no foolin', you get two thumbs up!" She does, in fact, give Tsubasa two thumbs up. And, with a quick glance down, an addition of, "Cool dog."
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
It is gutsy for Niko to just be walking around in public like this -- but luckily for her, Tsubasa was rather much occupied inside the school.
(They threw a chair at Chidori. It didn't do all that much.)
And so, when Niko ambles up...
... Tsubasa has no clue.
"It's whatever," they shrug, capping their pen and turning to Niko. "Got sick of just goin' 'FUCK THE PIGS'." (Niko may note that kanji, a touch more faded, scrawled elsewhere on the shelter. In the bad part of Hirasaka, people don't get out to clean graffiti off as quick.)
Lance picks herself up to amble over to Niko, wagging her tail with a friendly 'bouf???' Tsubasa glances down to her, and explains: "That's Lance. It's cool, she's friendly." The dog... does NOT eat strangers. She might lick the hell out of Niko's hand if she hands it over, though.
"Catch," they toss the pen over to her, and mercifully, it's capped, so it won't ruin her look. "Go ahead, knock yourself out." Because of course Niko's the kind of scrappy youth to deface public property. Like, duh?
"Name's Seki, by the way," they add, a beat later. And after the sound of that last name, they add one which sounds like a first: "Tsubasa."
<Pose Tracker> Niko Kirisaki has posed.
Niko likewise didn't hear any mention of Tsubasa. The chair clearly didn't impress. Though if Niko heard about that she'd just give Tsubasa extra thumbs up for having the guts to try and pick a fight with the axe murderer.
...She'd have to get some additional thumbs from somewhere, but don't worry about that.
This leaves Niko fairly calm by her standards - amicable too, but when it's Niko, that's the less notable part. She's always friendly by default, even towards people who should be her enemies. Unless it's personal. Best not make it personal.
"Right on," she readily agrees. "Same thing over and over gets boring, gotta get creative, I know how that is." That's as far as she gets before SCENE-INTERRUPTING DOG
Niko's already bent through her knees before hearing about whether it's a friendly dog or not. "Hey there doggy! Come say hi to Niko-chan!" Weird forms of self-address aside, she'll give that pupper a proper petting when she gets close. She just laughs at the licks, it's cool, she clearly loves animals.
That important business handled, she raises a hand to catch as instructed. "Nah, I already took a nap. I'll write a thing though!" ...That was a joke, right? Why would actually take 'knock yourself out' literally like that? It's not important. What's important is coming up with what to write. She has to take a moment to think about that, tapping the pen against her lips. "Hm. Hmmm, let's see now..."
She interrupts her thinking to point out, "Already know my name, I just said! Good to meetcha, Basa-chan!"
Yeah, she just does that with everyone, right from the get-go. From a wing to a fish, just like that.
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
Just ask the axe murderer if she can give her a hand. She'll probably find someone's.
(Tsubasa would think these kinds of terribly uncharitable thoughts about Chidori, you see, because Chidori scares the living daylights out of them.)
"Get borin' otherwise," Tsubasa nods, before DOG --
Lick lick lick! Lance at least doesn't lick Niko's face (having been carefully trained out of that habit to spare Tsubasa's complex makeup), but her hands are fair game. She wriggles and borks happily, understanding intuitively what the happy tones of Niko-chan! means even if she doesn't understand the words.
Lance made a friend!!!
"Heh," Tsubasa chuffs, cracking a grin for 1.5 seconds before their face defaults back to its usual scowl. "Fair 'nuff." If Niko's kind of a literal girl, that's whatever, too; Tsubasa knows a lot of people like that. No shade.
Their humour wipes away, though, as Niko comes out with that nickname. "Don't fuckin' -chan me!" They snap, straightening up, a hand coming down on the metal bench beside them with a resounding GONGGGG. "Do I look like a chick to you?!"
There's a right and a wrong answer to this one.
<Pose Tracker> Niko Kirisaki has posed.
It's a good thing there's nothing to be scared of when it's Niko. She's so friendly! Really just... too friendly. Especially for someone who looks the way she does. She'd be intimidating if she ever scowled.
Or, you know, if she didn't do stuff like openly enjoy a Moment with, well, any random dog she'd see on the street, really. Or cat. She's not picky. She is, however, very easily bored, so these moments don't tend to last very long. Dog met, dog petted, hands licked, aaaand she's over it. Next order of business: writing a thing!
This kind of thing's more important. This is one of Niko's more secret interests, and one of the few things she does get self-conscious about. It wouldn't do to be made fun of here. It has to be something good, something that goes with what Tsubasa wrote, like a second verse to it. Hmmmmmm.
Her musings are interrupted by a tantrum that she really didn't see coming, but doesn't impress her one bit, it seems to bounce right off of her. She doesn't even spare Tsubasa a glance, continuing to stare slightly up at a fixed point while she's thinking.
"Oh come now. -chan isn't just for chicks, silly. It's just what you do to be friendly. I -chan everyone I see, it's my secret trick to getting close with people."
A secret trick which she doesn't mind just saying out loud, apparently. It's no biggie, none of this is any biggie. What matters is that she's come up with something! She quickly moves to write it down now that she has the whole thing in her head, spaced so that it's properly aligned with Tsubasa's the way a second verse might be.
Ashes fall where angels fled
Wearing wrath like a crown of lead
No redemption, no amen
Just echoes in the lion's den
She backs off after to re-read it, then nods in approval, before holding the pen out to be taken back. "There ya go. How's that?"
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
"Lay it on me again and see what fuckin' happens," Tsubasa snarls, when Niko insists on -chan. "I'm not a fuckin' girl. I'm 'X', fuckwit. I opted out. Put me back in that box and I'll put you in one."
Her 'secret trick', unfortunately, is having the precise opposite effect. It's the biggest biggie. It means that Tsubasa stands from the bench, about ready to throw a punch or bolt.
So she asks what they think, and they just kind of glance over to it before fixing their attention on her again.
"It's cool. But first, we need to know if we got a problem."
They do not close into her space to take the pen back.
<Pose Tracker> Niko Kirisaki has posed.
"So noisyyyy," Niko complains as Tsubasa keeps yelling while she's thinking. These are two people with extremely different priorities. Niko doesn't even understand why this is such a big deal. She does care about correcting things that are clearly wrong though.
"Never called you one," in regards to referring to Tsubasa as a girl. She can see that this isn't going anywhere though. That's fine, she knows how to compromise. "If you wanna be called something else, fine. But then you have to call ME 'Niko-chan', otherwise no deal."
Since calling her names or threatening her is having absolutely no effect, that deal would be an easy way to fix this, she reckons. It's absolutely easier than throwing that punch would make things, Niko is in fact very ready for that possibility. She's just wholly uninterested in making a fight out of it.
She only frowns when Tsubasa only takes a brief glance at what she wrote. "Hey, I tried hard on that. Least you could do is actually read it. Only problem I see is that you're super cranky. I know life sucks for you right now - I read what you wrote - but you don't gotta take it out on me."
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
Tsubasa isn't actually yelling, strangely enough; their gruff, gravelly tone remains quite low, despite their clear anger.
The reason for this, of course, is that when they yell their voice gets much higher in pitch, and it becomes more obvious they're AFAB, which is -- as they're trying their level best to communicate -- hell.
"Sure," they glare, "Niko-chan. That's your gender and your business. But you call me Seki-kun."
(Normally, they'd be calling Niko by her last name, too... but she never gave them one.)
"You wanna know why I'm cranky?" Tsubasa scowls, hand to their hip. "My dipshit father dragged me out of holding a couple days ago hollerin' a name that makes me wanna drive hot pokers through my eyes and callin' me his fuckin' daughter and all I could do was eat shit. Now you come out here and talk to me like that. So yeah, fuck you very much, I'm cranky."
They spit, off to the side, and they rub the back of their neck with a hand. "But I read it," they say, still quietly cantankerous. Just because they weren't looking at it long didn't mean they didn't absorb what they saw, apparently; it just wasn't a priority for them in the moment. "And it sure is somethin' tellin' me my life sucks when you're writin' 'bout wearin' bullets and scorched earth. What, you drop out already?"
<Pose Tracker> Niko Kirisaki has posed.
Yelling's not about volume, it's about intent. Did you know it's possible to be yelling without even opening your mouth? No? Oh, Niko could tell you stories. She won't, though. Not those stories.
However... the deal is agreed upon, and Niko responds to the glare with a lopsided smile. "Alright then. Seki-kun~" It's not ideal, but she still considers it a win, getting people to use that form of address. She may sing-song that name every time, though. Gotta inject the extra friendliness somehow.
Niko crosses her arms when listening to what's made Tsubasa so cranky, and the first words out of her mouth are, "Geez, you too? Were they passing out 'get into jail free' cards or something?" She's not actually talking about herself, even though it might sound like that. She shakes her head. "Well, what can I say? Sorry won't fix nothing." Plus she didn't do anything wrong. She's never done anything wrong. "Though I might know some ways to get even if that'll make it better. Just sayin'." Just... sayin'.
She cants her head with Tsubasa's claim that they did in fact read what she wrote, questioning, "Really?" And then when it does sound like they got the gist of it, her eyebrows raise. "Dang. You're some kinda speedreader, huh? No wonder they still want you in school."
No need to ask what that's supposed to mean, as she casually shrugs, "They wouldn't want me there, not anymore. But that's fine, doesn't matter. Wasn't writing about me, not really. Just seemed like something you might appreciate." She scratches her head, wondering aloud, "Why's it so hard sometimes for people to believe I'm just trying to be friendly?"
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
Those stories...
"... look, it's whatever," Tsubasa sighs, when Niko seems to struggle with how to actually apologise. "It's cool. Just... I really don't like bein' put in that tribe. If you gotta throw me in with one, put me with the guys, but like, I use 'they'."
They bite at the inside of their cheek, as they wonder: "Gettin' even... like, what you mean?" Of course they don't think of murder first up; they're bad, but they're not, like, bad. And oh, the people who would celebrate them even considering the possibility--!!
They rub at the back of their neck. "I got good at memorisin' shit so I wouldn't forget somethin' important," they say, though it's too fraught to mention the details to a stranger. "An', uh... I just always been good at pickin' shit up at a glance." That's the trauma, Tsubasa. It's all trauma! "Thanks," they add, because they were just complimented.
Still, they wouldn't want her in school. "Damn," Tsubasa folds their arms. "Sucks, Niko-chan." Wow, they used her cute name!! Well, of course they did; the least they can do is respect an explicit preference. "But I bet you got a lot more time to do cool shit now." Sure, it might be tanking her future, but who cares about that?
And... she was writing something they'd appreciate. "Huh," Tsubasa says, looking back to the second stanza, their caution standing down another notch. "Hadn't figured it was like that. But..." They frown in thought, looking back to Niko. "I think I get it?" They say, a touch uncertain. "You're kinda weird, but you're tryin' to connect with people 'round ya. Like... goin' by the type I know... you didn't mean to piss me off, yeah? You just, like, straight didn't get it."
They sigh, spreading their hand out as they shift on a foot. "Look, I don't always get that kinda style, but... you're cool. Don't worry about it. We can be friends."
<Pose Tracker> Niko Kirisaki has posed.
Niko just nods along, because yeah, it's totally whatever. "It's cool," she agrees. "Dunno anyone else who uses 'they', didn't even know that was a thing." No problem with admitting that much. Right now it only really makes a difference to her for the sake of getting along, but, it's something.
She just as casually explains, "You know, like revenge. There's this whole website, called Revenge Request? It's hidden so you can only get there if you know the address, but it's totally real. And if you can find it, you can ask to take revenge on anyone you want, in any way you want. Costs a bit of cash, but it really works!"
Couldn't be the weirdest thing Tsubasa's ever heard. Who in Sumaru doesn't like rumors like that? Ah, Jin's going to be so proud of Niko for spreading word of mouth like this. (he totally won't care)
And casual compliments, too! Niko just grins as it feels like she's being understood better now. "Right, right, you should play to your strengths! Good memory's good for lots of things, trust me, I know." Niko your memory is extremely selective.
She positively beams at hearing Niko-chan, looks as if that's not just a minor preference. "It does suck sometimes!" she says, happily. "But you're right, I do whatever I want, whenever I want. I can still learn shit, if that's what I feel like. Mostly I just wanna go out and have fun, so, that's what I'm doing!" Right now, as can be inferred. They may not have started off on the right foot, but hey. Would've been worse if the interaction was boring, it hasn't been that.
Do they get what she was trying to express with that writing? Maybe. It may be a little clearer from what she was talking about just now. Perhaps they said it best in that videogame that came out last year.
When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back. Get mad! I don't want your damn lemons, what am I supposed to do with these?!
Though you should get mad at the right people, and obviously Niko is never the right people to get mad at. "Guess I didn't," get it, that is. "If I know something'll make people mad, I just don't do it. Obviously? Why would anyone do that? It's much better to be friends." Which Tsubasa appears to agree with, hurray! "Hurray!" Yeah she actually just literally yells that, possibly a bit louder than Tsubasa would've wanted.
And then right out of nowhere, she suddenly throws the pen back at Tsubasa. "Catch!" And she just looks innocently cheerful about it. She didn't mean to do anything bad that time, either.
Simple-minded, perhaps. Harmless, hardly. She's just straight up on a different wavelength from most people.
<Pose Tracker> Tsubasa Seki has posed.
"It's still pretty underground," Tsubasa admits. "It's called 'X-gender'. And like, you got different types of X, too, like... I'm musei, because I opted out." They pause. "I ain't no museiai, though." The first term was talking about being without gender-sexuality; the second, with -ai as a suffix, much more clearly refers to being without sexuality. "I'm bi."
Tsubasa's kind of touchy about people assuming they're asexual just because they're agender, apparently. The language is too ambiguous!!
Also, please clap, they actually said they're bi without choking on it this time. ... tragically, Niko might be completely oblivious as to how much of a milestone that is.
Niko explains Revenge Request to them, though, and Tsubasa blinks. "Huh," they remark, turning it around in their head. "So... what's the address?" Because of course Niko knows it; why would she be telling people if she didn't?
... not that they have much cash to their name right now, but it wouldn't hurt to check it out.
(It would hurt very much, Tsubasa.)
"My father would probably tell who was to blame if I got some dudes to jack his car and wreck it... but that fuck Officer Ishiba deserves someone hangin' him out to dry for what he did. Fuck," they grasp at the side of their head, half-muttering, "can't believe they did Aragaki-san for drugs just for tryin' to stop him from beatin' her... bet they planted 'em on him to start with."
Aragaki... like Shinjiro Aragaki?! Drugs... like the drugs Shinjiro specifically gets from Strega?!
Tsubasa, of course, doesn't know that connection in the slightest. They're just, you know, a bit traumatised.
It's fine.
"Yeah," they nod, affirmatively, when Niko speaks well of memory. "Though you gotta be able to put the shit you remember together, too. Like, y'know -- how you were talkin' 'bout angels fleein' 'cuz Satan was in the house and all was lost and it was the lion's hour now."
Wow!! They really did think through her efforts!!! ... though, do they really get it?
"Yeah, you don't seem like a bad person or nothin'," Tsubasa says, a touch awkwardly. Oh, wow, she's loud. "Uh, sorry for bitin' your head off a bit... it's just a big deal to me."
But -- pen!!!
Tsubasa grabs it out of the air, because their Proficiency score is surprisingly high for someone who doesn't go to the gym. (They're more of a fine motor skills kind of guy.) "Damn," they exclaim, as they pocket it. "Nice throw."
They look down the street, thoughtfully.
"... you wanna go get somethin' to eat, Niko-chan?" They offer, casually. Being friends seems like a big deal to her, so... "I ain't busy or nothin', we can grab somethin'. Jus' so long as there's outdoor seatin'... people get weird if I bring Lance in places."
Niko has secured... a Friendship Activity.
... Tsubasa doesn't get just how weird she is by half, but they think that's the nicest thing they can do right now.
<Pose Tracker> Niko Kirisaki has posed.
Niko's mostly blank expression kind of already gives away that she's not really following the gender conversation. The reason why being pretty simple: "Don't even know how you figured all that stuff out, never thought about any of that." Sadly, chances are low of much more of that happening any time soon, now that she is aware. Hard to feel like it matters when she's Different Now, in a way she absolutely doesn't want to talk to anybody about.
So yes, that milestone went completely over Niko's head, by a mile.
Does she know the Revenge Request address though. Niko suddenly seems to be considering something really hard for a moment, closing her eyes as she goes 'hmmm', moving her head this way and that, before finally looking back to Tsubasa. "You're asking for some real hush-hush stuff, you get that, right? People normally have to pay good money for that kinda info, you know." A shady guy who hangs out at Club Escapade is selling the info for literally 500 yen to anyone who knows to ask him about it, but never mind that. "If you can keep a secret, though... I'll text it to you later."
It takes a second before the obvious shoe drops. "Oh, that is, if you wanna exchange numbers?" Easy to think that's something that would've slipped Niko's mind, but yeah that was totally a ploy. She will keep her word though, if those conditions are agreed upon.
Though she could only encourage Tsubasa airing their woes, it's not until the words 'Aragaki-san' are spoken that her personal interest is piqued. So, that's how that happened, Shin-chan...?
It doesn't really show in Niko's unchanging expression. She's not letting on that she knows Shinjiro's out already, and these drugs are currently sitting in her own pocket. She isn't always running her mouth like someone who doesn't know when to keep it shut. No need to complicate things needlessly, she does so hate it when things get complicated. Instead...
"Well. Maybe check out that website later, if you happen to get any ideas about exactly what they deserve."
This sounds like it could end up something very fun. She's all for making things more fun.
She's more than pleased about her work being appreciated, even if it's not entirely what she was thinking. So where it comes to apologies, "C'mon, it's fine, don't worry about it! I've basically forgotten all about it already!" Perhaps Tsubasa will learn exactly how quickly Niko can forget about little things like 'a minor disagreement', 'almost coming to blows', or 'actually coming to blows'. You just get over these things in like minutes, that's normal, right? And as for food...
"Sure, I can eat! I've got some money on me," she says in that tell-tale way that makes it obvious this isn't always the case. Sometimes her kind of business is slower than others. But never mind any of that, either. This is about a Friend Hang-Out, she's not gonna say no to that. Especially not when it's asked of 'Niko-chan'. That mode of address is magic like that.