On the sixth day of Christmas
Dec. 31st, 2013 05:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tallulahgsmy true love sent to me
six building blocks
[Title] Vacation
[Fandom] Battle Royale (manga)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Noriko feels awkward around Shuuya and his friends, but likes hanging out with them anyway.
The sun pouring in through the windows and across the dusty carpet. Shuuya sitting with his back against the wall, striking guitar chords. They don't turn into a song, into any sort of real music, but Noriko doesn't mind; it sort of fits the day, the tarnishing of the light as the sun sets. Yoshitoki's drinking lemonade, slurping it up through a straw and then glancing at Noriko as if he's embarrassed. She wants to tell him it's okay, she's got a younger brother, slurping is really no big deal, but she's still sort of shy around these guys herself, so she smiles and glances away at the same time. Mimura's sprawled on his stomach - he always seems to be sprawled when they're in the children's home living room - building a tower with toy blocks. Two of the little kids are watching him, seemingly fascinated. Most kids would get bored, or knock the tower over, but they haven't yet - maybe because Mimura's just wanting a distraction, not looking to amuse them. Perhaps they're curious why this big kid is playing with their toys, what he's going to do next. Noriko thinks if she did it, it would look like she was playing cute, or trying to be teacher. Yoshitoki would be embarrassed, nervous. Shuuya... she can't tell about Shuuya. Everything he does at the moment seems to be about them, her and Yoshi and Mim, how they saw his welcome-back-to-the-land-of-the-living and so they've got to feel he's sincere about it. Not that she thinks he isn't sincere. It's just that he - remembers they're there, he cares what they think.
Mimura probably doesn't care what anyone thinks. Noriko knows he's got a bit of a reputation for messing girls around, and she was all set to watch herself around him: keep an eye out for him trying to look up her skirt, field aggressively flirty comments. But he hasn't done that - there's been the odd wink or reference to Shuuya being terrible at serenading, but mostly he's just been there, rolling his eyes and laughing whenever Shuuya starts acting too dorky. He balances the last block on the tower now: predictably, it falls over. The little girl giggles; the little boy says sternly It all fell over. Bang! Mimura shakes his head: Tell me about it - and Shuuya laughs: Shooting for the moon again, Mim. When're you gonna learn? Noriko finds herself smiling, and picks up the blocks that landed nearest to her. She's going to hand them back to Mimura, but then she thinks it'll look like she thinks he really cares about a dumb tower, and so she starts building her own. The little girl crawls around picking up the other blocks, brings them over to her. Story of my life, Mim says, and Yoshitoki snorts: She starts off being fascinated and then works out what the other girls are doing and runs a mile? Mimura strikes a mournful pose: That's hurtful, Yoshitoki, m'man - and Shuuya chimes in, But true, and punctuates it with another chord. Noriko finishes her tower and wonders if it's really dorky to enjoy doing nothing in summer vacation this much.
[Title] Myths
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Doug Rattmann builds walls to keep GlaDOS out. It doesn't work. (mayfic gave me a prompt about GlaDOS knowing every detail of the lives of anyone who visits Aperture Science, which sort of inspired this, but I then wrote another fic later which is more directly derived from it.)
Every so often, he finds himself building walls. The storage cubes were designed to be stackable, after all. Well. More or less. Like everything else Aperture Science has created, they are durable and work very well for a specific purpose, yet the levels of risk involved in using them are too high to allow successful marketing to the general public. There was a short-lived initiative to sell the storage cubes as build-your-own-fort kits to children, quashed after one too many high-profile cases of three-year-olds crushed under large metal objects...
These memories are like myths. There's only him and the cubes and dull red light – his hands are shaking in it, he can see – and her voice and that's why he's building today, because he wants to pretend that if he can build his own walls, that will keep her out. This place is nothing but walls but most of them are hers and all he can do is find the gaps.
“I'm glad to see one of us has the time to waste on pointless activities. Just so you know, it's been logged on your permanent record that you've avoided a mandatory testing session in order to play with blocks. It's going right into your file. Unauthorised absence from work spent building pointless wall.”
He places the last cube and slumps down between the real wall and the built one. He can see specks of light through the gaps between the cubes. His breath catches in his throat. If he breathes too hard, he'll send everything flying. He clicks the cap off the marker pen, starts tracing squares on the real wall. If he can't build his own, maybe he can weaken hers. Of course, he knows that's stupid, but humans have always told myths to try and make sense of the irrational cruelty of the world, haven't they?
“Graffiti on Enrichment Centre property is also forbidden. I would note that down in your file, but the space allocated for misdemeanours is full. I'm going to have to create an additional section, just for you.”
The pen squeaks on the wall. It's all right. It's all right. Threats of disciplinary action are manageable. Threats of death are manageable.
“The evidence base for art therapy indicates that, as treatment for your condition, it's only slightly more effective than banging your head against a wall. I just thought you should know that. If you did think this would help. I wouldn't want you to waste your time. Clearly, you have many valuable projects to work on.
“It isn't as if it worked last time, did it? Or the time before that.”
The drawn wall is half the height of the wall of blocks and of course it's nowhere near the height of the real wall. There's a message there. A circle, four corners. A circle, four corners. He doesn't have to listen to her.
“Your parents were so ashamed. Their A-grade son repeating a grade after a mental breakdown. Just so you know? When you thought they liked your sister better? You were right. It must feel good to be right about something. You've been wrong about everything else. I just thought I'd mention it.”
It might not even be real. Of course she'd have access to his school records, his year of graduation – his family's names – but all the emotional stuff? All the stories you tell yourself? How the hell would she know about that? And she's a computer, for god's sake, who programmed her to detect emotional weak spots? Wait, that's a ridiculous question. An algorithm for detecting childhood traumas sounds like just the sort of thing his co-workers would have been assigned to build.
“The department still talks about you, you know. They're awed by how... well... average you turned out to be. They expected more from you, given your application. And at least schizophrenia is interesting. Well, that's what psychologists think. Personally, I'm finding it extremely boring. Watching you, that is. Because you have schizophrenia. You seem to be forgetting that none of this is real.”
He's drawn the wall as high as it can go. He starts shading in the lines behind the cubes. The grass. The sun. He would reach out and push the cubes over and walk out into the daylight but he knows that myth would flip itself over and there'd only be darkness, or people he once knew coughing blood, or nothing. Maybe, if he waits long enough, he'll break so free from reality that none of what she says will mean anything to him any more.
“Remember Caitlin? In the Research and Development team? You should have told her how you felt. Of course, she would have rejected you, but you still should have told her. She would have found it amusing. Especially after the Christmas party. Everyone was looking at you. I just thought you'd like to know. You really shouldn't drink on an empty stomach, by the way.”
She's telling him his own myths, as if he's already just a story.
Or perhaps she's not saying anything at all, and this is his own head. Oh, well. He's constructed the walls; maybe in one reality they'll be enough to keep her out.
[Title] In Soviet Russia, Game Plays You
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Mello is infiltrating the Mafia. Matt would much rather play Tetris.
Matt is playing a lot more Tetris these days. Which is pretty pathetic when you're in Los Angeles and pretty much living the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Or your mate is living it, anyway. Matt keeps his head down and keeps out of it, just like he did as a child. The apartment he's lurking in, rent-free, probably illegally, isn't a complete dump but the air-conditioning breaks down every so often and Los Angeles that's actually a big deal. He lies on his bed wearing as few clothes as possible and tries to beat his latest high-score. The chip tune bleeps over and over, drowning out the rush of traffic. His fingers are sweaty on the keys. When the sun starts to go down, he reaches for another cigarette, plays the game with it jammed in the corner of his mouth. Maybe he wants to pretend smoking makes him cool. Mello drops by every so often, in black leather and spiked bracelets. Often, his pupils are almost invisible in his eyes, which are suddenly the coldest thing in the room. Matt was sometimes twitchy around Mello, but he was never scared. The blocks fall from top to bottom and he lines them up just like that and it feels like he's actually getting something done. Mello doesn't bother to complain about him not helping out. Mello probably knows Matt's, like, the least useful acquaintance he has for whatever it is he thinks he's doing. Matt doesn't want to think too much about what Mello's doing. If the guy ever needs him to infiltrate a retro gaming tournament, he will be on it. In the meantime, he plays Tetris from morning to night and sees blocks tumbling when he closes his eyes. It was a Russian game, right? Soviet music and pixellated Kremlin domes in the heart of the City of Angels. He tells himself it counts as a subversion of whatever it is they've got themselves caught up in.
[Title] DNA
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] From humble beginnings, terrifying beings grow. Or, three instances of blocks in the Akira-verse.
Tetsuo never liked playing with building blocks. Well, maybe he did when he was really little, but he can't remember that. As long as he can remember, he's thought they're really boring. Who wants to just put one brick on top of another? But in the playroom they've got some scuffed wooden blocks painted glossy bright colours. No one else was playing with them, so he started building a house, 'cause hopefully no one would come along and try and take them off him. He felt like a baby, but it was better than sitting around not playing with anything 'cause you're too scared. The house wasn't a proper house. There were gaps in the walls and he couldn't do a roof because the triangle blocks weren't long enough. But he built it anyway and then he imagined being tiny enough to be inside. It'd be empty and the walls would seem even more colourful and, okay, if you leant against a wall it'd all fall down but perhaps you could just not do that, just sit in the middle. It'd be cosy, sort of. The lights above gleamed off the paint of the blocks, but apart from that it was kind of dark, like a secret den.
Probably it'd stop feeling cosy pretty soon, though. It'd just feel cold and empty. And no bed or anything. He thought about putting a block down to pretend it was one, but you wouldn't want to sleep on hard painted wood, right?
A crash. The blocks sent flying. Tetsuo leapt back, heart thudding. Someone else gonna be mean and he didn't even like the stupid blocks
But it was that boy from yesterday. Kaneda. He was holding a plastic Godzilla toy which he'd made knock over the house and now it was running over the blocks, going Roar! Roar! Kaneda grinned, held out an Optimus Prime with one arm missing. "Come on. If Optimus doesn't stop Godzilla, no one will.”
***
Takashi could make the blocks float quite high, like properly off the table. Masaru couldn't get them as high as him and Kiyoko couldn't do it at all but she could see what was on a picture even when it was in a box, and her dreams told her stuff that was going to happen, which neither of them could do at all. Takashi wasn't sure he wanted to have dreams that came true. He dreamt a lot about stuff like robots and fighting. (And sometimes Mum and Dad. But also Kiyoko had to tell the doctors about all her dreams and Takashi didn't want to tell about some of his, the sad ones, so it was probably better.)
Akira could make the blocks float really high, like up to the ceiling. And he just did it without even thinking. Takashi had to really look at them and sometimes he got a bad headache after. Akira never seemed to get headaches at all. Sometimes, when he'd been moving stuff around for a while, the air crackled and Takashi's hair tingled.
The day everything broke was like that. Like the air broke. And there was just white sky, and lots of dust, and silence except for crying. Masaru and Kiyoko cried a lot. Takashi wanted to pretend he wasn't, but he was. Akira didn't cry at all.
Afterwards, Akira wasn't there any more, and even though that meant Takashi was the best at making the blocks float, it didn't feel like much. They weren't allowed to go outside, like all the white sky had been too much for them, too scary. The nursery walls were painted with like fairy tales and stuff, like the doctors thought they'd believe things like that were true. Takashi's head hurt more, and his hair started going white. After a while, they stopped asking him to do things like play with toys. Like they knew he and Masaru and Kiyoko were never going to be as good at it as Akira was. Takashi wanted to pretend he minded, but he kept thinking about all the sky outside, and blocks didn't seem important any more.
***
Akira sits on the ground, holding stones in his hands, and flicks them up into the air. They don't fall down; they twist around each other, making spirals, and they keep on going round and round as he adds more stones to the pattern. Kaori watches, and smiles, but only because she feels she should. It should be pretty; it should be cute; but Akira's face is blank and set, and Tetsuo, leaning against the wall, scowls.
"Showoff," he says to her, and jerks his head towards Akira. "You know what it is?"
She shakes her head.
"DNA. Building blocks of life. Know why he's doing it?"
"I... he must be pretty clever, to know about -”
Tetsuo pushes himself off the wall like he can't stand still when someone's being so dumb. "He gets it. What they did. What's going on. Him and me, it's like... it's written into us, you know? We were never going to be normal kids. Those bastards saw that and they used us. DNA screwed us over." A quick smile. "We showed them, though, right?" Kaori doesn't know what to answer. She smiles back, glances again at the rising and falling stones. Tiny little pebbles all in a line. She guesses if Akira stopped doing whatever it is he's doing, they'd just all fall. She thinks about the crowds thronging the cliffs to watch him. She wonders what he's thinking when he looks at the spirals.
six building blocks
[Title] Vacation
[Fandom] Battle Royale (manga)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Noriko feels awkward around Shuuya and his friends, but likes hanging out with them anyway.
The sun pouring in through the windows and across the dusty carpet. Shuuya sitting with his back against the wall, striking guitar chords. They don't turn into a song, into any sort of real music, but Noriko doesn't mind; it sort of fits the day, the tarnishing of the light as the sun sets. Yoshitoki's drinking lemonade, slurping it up through a straw and then glancing at Noriko as if he's embarrassed. She wants to tell him it's okay, she's got a younger brother, slurping is really no big deal, but she's still sort of shy around these guys herself, so she smiles and glances away at the same time. Mimura's sprawled on his stomach - he always seems to be sprawled when they're in the children's home living room - building a tower with toy blocks. Two of the little kids are watching him, seemingly fascinated. Most kids would get bored, or knock the tower over, but they haven't yet - maybe because Mimura's just wanting a distraction, not looking to amuse them. Perhaps they're curious why this big kid is playing with their toys, what he's going to do next. Noriko thinks if she did it, it would look like she was playing cute, or trying to be teacher. Yoshitoki would be embarrassed, nervous. Shuuya... she can't tell about Shuuya. Everything he does at the moment seems to be about them, her and Yoshi and Mim, how they saw his welcome-back-to-the-land-of-the-living and so they've got to feel he's sincere about it. Not that she thinks he isn't sincere. It's just that he - remembers they're there, he cares what they think.
Mimura probably doesn't care what anyone thinks. Noriko knows he's got a bit of a reputation for messing girls around, and she was all set to watch herself around him: keep an eye out for him trying to look up her skirt, field aggressively flirty comments. But he hasn't done that - there's been the odd wink or reference to Shuuya being terrible at serenading, but mostly he's just been there, rolling his eyes and laughing whenever Shuuya starts acting too dorky. He balances the last block on the tower now: predictably, it falls over. The little girl giggles; the little boy says sternly It all fell over. Bang! Mimura shakes his head: Tell me about it - and Shuuya laughs: Shooting for the moon again, Mim. When're you gonna learn? Noriko finds herself smiling, and picks up the blocks that landed nearest to her. She's going to hand them back to Mimura, but then she thinks it'll look like she thinks he really cares about a dumb tower, and so she starts building her own. The little girl crawls around picking up the other blocks, brings them over to her. Story of my life, Mim says, and Yoshitoki snorts: She starts off being fascinated and then works out what the other girls are doing and runs a mile? Mimura strikes a mournful pose: That's hurtful, Yoshitoki, m'man - and Shuuya chimes in, But true, and punctuates it with another chord. Noriko finishes her tower and wonders if it's really dorky to enjoy doing nothing in summer vacation this much.
[Title] Myths
[Fandom] Portal
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Doug Rattmann builds walls to keep GlaDOS out. It doesn't work. (
mayfic gave me a prompt about GlaDOS knowing every detail of the lives of anyone who visits Aperture Science, which sort of inspired this, but I then wrote another fic later which is more directly derived from it.)Every so often, he finds himself building walls. The storage cubes were designed to be stackable, after all. Well. More or less. Like everything else Aperture Science has created, they are durable and work very well for a specific purpose, yet the levels of risk involved in using them are too high to allow successful marketing to the general public. There was a short-lived initiative to sell the storage cubes as build-your-own-fort kits to children, quashed after one too many high-profile cases of three-year-olds crushed under large metal objects...
These memories are like myths. There's only him and the cubes and dull red light – his hands are shaking in it, he can see – and her voice and that's why he's building today, because he wants to pretend that if he can build his own walls, that will keep her out. This place is nothing but walls but most of them are hers and all he can do is find the gaps.
“I'm glad to see one of us has the time to waste on pointless activities. Just so you know, it's been logged on your permanent record that you've avoided a mandatory testing session in order to play with blocks. It's going right into your file. Unauthorised absence from work spent building pointless wall.”
He places the last cube and slumps down between the real wall and the built one. He can see specks of light through the gaps between the cubes. His breath catches in his throat. If he breathes too hard, he'll send everything flying. He clicks the cap off the marker pen, starts tracing squares on the real wall. If he can't build his own, maybe he can weaken hers. Of course, he knows that's stupid, but humans have always told myths to try and make sense of the irrational cruelty of the world, haven't they?
“Graffiti on Enrichment Centre property is also forbidden. I would note that down in your file, but the space allocated for misdemeanours is full. I'm going to have to create an additional section, just for you.”
The pen squeaks on the wall. It's all right. It's all right. Threats of disciplinary action are manageable. Threats of death are manageable.
“The evidence base for art therapy indicates that, as treatment for your condition, it's only slightly more effective than banging your head against a wall. I just thought you should know that. If you did think this would help. I wouldn't want you to waste your time. Clearly, you have many valuable projects to work on.
“It isn't as if it worked last time, did it? Or the time before that.”
The drawn wall is half the height of the wall of blocks and of course it's nowhere near the height of the real wall. There's a message there. A circle, four corners. A circle, four corners. He doesn't have to listen to her.
“Your parents were so ashamed. Their A-grade son repeating a grade after a mental breakdown. Just so you know? When you thought they liked your sister better? You were right. It must feel good to be right about something. You've been wrong about everything else. I just thought I'd mention it.”
It might not even be real. Of course she'd have access to his school records, his year of graduation – his family's names – but all the emotional stuff? All the stories you tell yourself? How the hell would she know about that? And she's a computer, for god's sake, who programmed her to detect emotional weak spots? Wait, that's a ridiculous question. An algorithm for detecting childhood traumas sounds like just the sort of thing his co-workers would have been assigned to build.
“The department still talks about you, you know. They're awed by how... well... average you turned out to be. They expected more from you, given your application. And at least schizophrenia is interesting. Well, that's what psychologists think. Personally, I'm finding it extremely boring. Watching you, that is. Because you have schizophrenia. You seem to be forgetting that none of this is real.”
He's drawn the wall as high as it can go. He starts shading in the lines behind the cubes. The grass. The sun. He would reach out and push the cubes over and walk out into the daylight but he knows that myth would flip itself over and there'd only be darkness, or people he once knew coughing blood, or nothing. Maybe, if he waits long enough, he'll break so free from reality that none of what she says will mean anything to him any more.
“Remember Caitlin? In the Research and Development team? You should have told her how you felt. Of course, she would have rejected you, but you still should have told her. She would have found it amusing. Especially after the Christmas party. Everyone was looking at you. I just thought you'd like to know. You really shouldn't drink on an empty stomach, by the way.”
She's telling him his own myths, as if he's already just a story.
Or perhaps she's not saying anything at all, and this is his own head. Oh, well. He's constructed the walls; maybe in one reality they'll be enough to keep her out.
[Title] In Soviet Russia, Game Plays You
[Fandom] Death Note
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] Mello is infiltrating the Mafia. Matt would much rather play Tetris.
Matt is playing a lot more Tetris these days. Which is pretty pathetic when you're in Los Angeles and pretty much living the Grand Theft Auto franchise. Or your mate is living it, anyway. Matt keeps his head down and keeps out of it, just like he did as a child. The apartment he's lurking in, rent-free, probably illegally, isn't a complete dump but the air-conditioning breaks down every so often and Los Angeles that's actually a big deal. He lies on his bed wearing as few clothes as possible and tries to beat his latest high-score. The chip tune bleeps over and over, drowning out the rush of traffic. His fingers are sweaty on the keys. When the sun starts to go down, he reaches for another cigarette, plays the game with it jammed in the corner of his mouth. Maybe he wants to pretend smoking makes him cool. Mello drops by every so often, in black leather and spiked bracelets. Often, his pupils are almost invisible in his eyes, which are suddenly the coldest thing in the room. Matt was sometimes twitchy around Mello, but he was never scared. The blocks fall from top to bottom and he lines them up just like that and it feels like he's actually getting something done. Mello doesn't bother to complain about him not helping out. Mello probably knows Matt's, like, the least useful acquaintance he has for whatever it is he thinks he's doing. Matt doesn't want to think too much about what Mello's doing. If the guy ever needs him to infiltrate a retro gaming tournament, he will be on it. In the meantime, he plays Tetris from morning to night and sees blocks tumbling when he closes his eyes. It was a Russian game, right? Soviet music and pixellated Kremlin domes in the heart of the City of Angels. He tells himself it counts as a subversion of whatever it is they've got themselves caught up in.
[Title] DNA
[Fandom] Akira (manga)
[Rating] PG
[Notes/Summary] From humble beginnings, terrifying beings grow. Or, three instances of blocks in the Akira-verse.
Tetsuo never liked playing with building blocks. Well, maybe he did when he was really little, but he can't remember that. As long as he can remember, he's thought they're really boring. Who wants to just put one brick on top of another? But in the playroom they've got some scuffed wooden blocks painted glossy bright colours. No one else was playing with them, so he started building a house, 'cause hopefully no one would come along and try and take them off him. He felt like a baby, but it was better than sitting around not playing with anything 'cause you're too scared. The house wasn't a proper house. There were gaps in the walls and he couldn't do a roof because the triangle blocks weren't long enough. But he built it anyway and then he imagined being tiny enough to be inside. It'd be empty and the walls would seem even more colourful and, okay, if you leant against a wall it'd all fall down but perhaps you could just not do that, just sit in the middle. It'd be cosy, sort of. The lights above gleamed off the paint of the blocks, but apart from that it was kind of dark, like a secret den.
Probably it'd stop feeling cosy pretty soon, though. It'd just feel cold and empty. And no bed or anything. He thought about putting a block down to pretend it was one, but you wouldn't want to sleep on hard painted wood, right?
A crash. The blocks sent flying. Tetsuo leapt back, heart thudding. Someone else gonna be mean and he didn't even like the stupid blocks
But it was that boy from yesterday. Kaneda. He was holding a plastic Godzilla toy which he'd made knock over the house and now it was running over the blocks, going Roar! Roar! Kaneda grinned, held out an Optimus Prime with one arm missing. "Come on. If Optimus doesn't stop Godzilla, no one will.”
***
Takashi could make the blocks float quite high, like properly off the table. Masaru couldn't get them as high as him and Kiyoko couldn't do it at all but she could see what was on a picture even when it was in a box, and her dreams told her stuff that was going to happen, which neither of them could do at all. Takashi wasn't sure he wanted to have dreams that came true. He dreamt a lot about stuff like robots and fighting. (And sometimes Mum and Dad. But also Kiyoko had to tell the doctors about all her dreams and Takashi didn't want to tell about some of his, the sad ones, so it was probably better.)
Akira could make the blocks float really high, like up to the ceiling. And he just did it without even thinking. Takashi had to really look at them and sometimes he got a bad headache after. Akira never seemed to get headaches at all. Sometimes, when he'd been moving stuff around for a while, the air crackled and Takashi's hair tingled.
The day everything broke was like that. Like the air broke. And there was just white sky, and lots of dust, and silence except for crying. Masaru and Kiyoko cried a lot. Takashi wanted to pretend he wasn't, but he was. Akira didn't cry at all.
Afterwards, Akira wasn't there any more, and even though that meant Takashi was the best at making the blocks float, it didn't feel like much. They weren't allowed to go outside, like all the white sky had been too much for them, too scary. The nursery walls were painted with like fairy tales and stuff, like the doctors thought they'd believe things like that were true. Takashi's head hurt more, and his hair started going white. After a while, they stopped asking him to do things like play with toys. Like they knew he and Masaru and Kiyoko were never going to be as good at it as Akira was. Takashi wanted to pretend he minded, but he kept thinking about all the sky outside, and blocks didn't seem important any more.
***
Akira sits on the ground, holding stones in his hands, and flicks them up into the air. They don't fall down; they twist around each other, making spirals, and they keep on going round and round as he adds more stones to the pattern. Kaori watches, and smiles, but only because she feels she should. It should be pretty; it should be cute; but Akira's face is blank and set, and Tetsuo, leaning against the wall, scowls.
"Showoff," he says to her, and jerks his head towards Akira. "You know what it is?"
She shakes her head.
"DNA. Building blocks of life. Know why he's doing it?"
"I... he must be pretty clever, to know about -”
Tetsuo pushes himself off the wall like he can't stand still when someone's being so dumb. "He gets it. What they did. What's going on. Him and me, it's like... it's written into us, you know? We were never going to be normal kids. Those bastards saw that and they used us. DNA screwed us over." A quick smile. "We showed them, though, right?" Kaori doesn't know what to answer. She smiles back, glances again at the rising and falling stones. Tiny little pebbles all in a line. She guesses if Akira stopped doing whatever it is he's doing, they'd just all fall. She thinks about the crowds thronging the cliffs to watch him. She wonders what he's thinking when he looks at the spirals.
