Hearing tell of the true bustle of Aku's city from her early years, she imagined bustle had meant more glamorous. Earlier, the street with Eli's bar had a large variety of people, races, and other, but this area was much more populated. There were no cars in the streets, in fact, some areas of the streets were actually inhabited. Tents and makeshift homes littered the area while people on rustic scooters and makeshift hoverboards weaved through when they could get past. The people commuting on a barricaded sidewalk, however, looked wealthy, to say the least. Street vendors took to both sides, slinging heavenly smells around and drawing in paying customers, most staring down at glowing boxes. Ashi couldn't see what was on them, but each passerby held it close to their chests, so she assumed they must have been important. Their walk was silent between the two of them. With the cluster of noise going on around them, they couldn't exactly hold up a conversation anyways. Ashi looked up beside her and saw Jack's face pointed forward. He looked peaceful, with a relaxed face she hadn't seen on him before. The air was ripe with mostly tantalizing smells, tinged with filth. The food smelled unlike any familiar scent that had met her nose. The night sky was positively beautiful, at least what she could see of it. Only a few gleaming specks of light scattered the open canvas above, wrapped in a wreath of artificial glow from the rooftops.
Jack kept trudging through the streets, clicking on the sidewalk in his heavy boots just trying to get to the destination. He's been through this road so many times, this was the red-light district. Everybody was nice enough, even though they could barely afford the least expensive food even the street vendors put out. Who was this mysterious girl that came from God knows where and knows so much about him? His mind retraced any possibilities of shouting his life story when he was on a bender. His cybernetic eye dropped a file within the lens and scanned through; It was a long walk after all. He began scanning as they walked in tandem silence.
Among the distractions around her, Ashi was entranced by the lights most. The vague humming that ran through the atmosphere and the small flickering that each line of radiance carried. One stand in the distance stood out to her as the sign flickered, and it was either the flashing neon or what the man behind the counter was shouting. Jack spoke to her of a dish served from his home that was heavenly.
"Jack", Ashi's eyes lit up, "how do you feel about the sushi here?"
He kept his icy glare forward as if he didn't hear her. She nudged his shoulder lightly, which brought him out of his trance with a flicker of his Cybernetic eye. He tilted his head and looked down towards her. Ashi's eyes were furrowed as if she was trying to read him.
Oh hell, what did she ask?
"Oh, yeah. Absolutely." Jack stammered, hoping he staved off the question. From her confused expression, he didn't make any sort of sense.
"The sushi here is 'yeah, absolutely?'" Ashi pointed to the stand with a snicker in her voice.
"Only part of town I trust to get sushi," Jack recovered, pointing from the stand to the open ravine down an alleyway, "It's closest to the canal. Always has premium slots for catching whatever's alive."
"It smells amazing."
"We just had bar food."
"You had the bar food," she said with a raise of her eyebrows, "if you recall, the only thing left at the end of the night was a bag of salted bread."
"Pretzels, and now that you mention it, yes." He stopped for a moment, with a brief hesitation, and then cut diagonally through the crowd. Ashi felt a tug on her arm and before she knew it she was moving through a crowd of people, only having brief instances and flashes of each face along the way. They were lit by dimly vibrant boxes held near their heads, or burning sticks hanging out of their mouths. It seemed further than it was, but I was probably due to the people flocking together and making the resistance even harder to go against. She was pulled out into the open and greeted with Jack's smiling face towards an equally smiling face of the man running the stand.
"What's on the menu today? Your ex-wife?" Jack chuckled.
"She'd be just as fishy as anything else on this table," the chef smiled back, "what'll it be, Jack?"
This was how Jack bantered. At this point I should give it up, this absolutely could not be Jack. The madman was greeting everybody with insults, it was insane.
As they parted the crowd, holding their food to go, their silence continued, with Jack's eye flickering through more patterns.
"Why did you address that man the way that you did?" Ashi broke their silent streak once more.
Jack broke away from his trance, a little annoyed, "I was just busting his balls a little, some people like to joke around." His eye flickered again.
She raised an eyebrow, "Do you think that you may have busted the balls of too many council members?"
He did not respond.
Once they got past the crowds of people, the buildings got taller and slightly more streamlined. Reflective walls bounced the ambient sparks that lit the bouncing maize of noise and mirrored images of a light-speckled skyline. Jack stopped in front of a doorway, underneath a fulgurating light.
"Home sweet home," Jack spoke, punching in numbers on a keypad, "just keep the volume down when you're heading down the halls."
He opened the door and walked across the tiled floor to the elevator doors placed between two ferns. She followed en route, with food in hand, passing by the wood-paneled front desk and overhearing the light melodic tones coming from the speakers on the ceiling. They entered the elevator and on the wall, one of the moving boxes that she had seen earlier was placed in the wall.
"And today, Rob, the belligerent onslaught on Chamisa and Booth resulted in an explosion, taking upwards of thirty lives. Control squadrons are still trying to narrow down the source of the terrorists, and please have been made towards anyone that may have information on their whereabouts."
Ashi gazed at the people carving symbols into the street as they ran from the cameras. Many looked like the insignia on Jack's back, shimmering under the long tubes of light within the elevator.
The room came to a halt and the doors slowly opened to a dimly lit hallway full of doors. A shuttered window let in segmented light from the streets. A lonely fern sat in the corner of the hallway. Jack approached one of the cookie cutter doors and pulled a key from his jacket.
"I'm sorry for the cramped quarters," Jack mumbled, focusing more on the lock giving him problems, "you can take the couch. It folds out and it's closer to the bathroom." The lock tumbled open and just like that, she was home.
Rain pattered down alongside the awning as they enjoyed their meal, but not before Jack introduced Ashi to the modern amenities that graced his place. She was floored by actually seeing the tv up close, and when he explained to her that the person on the news was somewhere else entirely, it blew her mind. After a quick mishap with metal silverware in the microwave, Jack decided to give her an in-depth tutorial on how to work the kitchen. Once Ashi got a handle on how things worked in the kitchen, Jack paused and thought it best to show her how the bathroom worked as well. Ashi had made herself comfortable on the couch while Jack sat in his tattered la-z-boy.
Jack didn't think he would have company anytime soon, especially under the conditions of undetermined extended stays. He wished he had more entertainment but all she had seemed to enjoy television a great deal. She was even enthralled by it, he found it refreshingly comfortable that he didn't have to entertain, but a little guilty for not jumping at the chance to. After all, he didn't get a lot of company.
It was not because Ashi felt uncomfortable there, not at all, but something felt amiss. She was sitting on an extra-cushioned couch in oversized pajamas, eating hot food and with Jack no less. But if it wasn't the atmosphere that was clouding her judgment to lean in and give him a kiss, it was the underlying shift and a dynamic that they shared. Not the jack sat across from her, but her Jack; the one that had an undying awkwardness to the way they felt. How each thing that he did was equally in mind of her safety and his. She missed when she knew what Jack stood for, and not having a version of who she loved, of whom she could read nothing.
"This is the kind of fine dining you'll find around here," Jack said as he stuffed noodles into his face, "it may be bad for you, but it's good as hell."
Ashi looked over, and even though he looked recognizably different, his disheveled look after getting out of the shower was defiantly warm to her. She denied the thoughts of what she wanted to do with that body with discretion and only a slight blush.
"With good food, compact living, and things like this," Ashi shrugged motioning to the TV, "you seem comfortable. That's something I never saw from you."
"Oh yeah?" Jack took a sip from his beer, "for the most part, I guess. Once you make life simple, you don't have to worry about much."
She nodded and smiled faintly. The show on T.V. flickered along with the lights. The sound of distant gunfire rang through the windows. Ashi inched closer to her gun beside the couch, placing her hand on the charging handle and racking it back slowly. At the sound of the bending spring being pulled closer, Jack placed his free hand on her knee. She turned her head with a glance towards his fingers extending across her leg with a delicate touch. Ashi looked up to see his head turned blankly towards the television, only lightly nodding in disagreement, and promptly removed his hand.
"Don't worry about it. Probably just the cultists," He furrowed his brow and chuckled, "fucking nuts would sell their firstborn for a new gun. Hell, I think a bunch of them may have done that in the first place."
Ashi's eyes sank to the reflection of the television light on the coffee table. The glimmering reflection flickered off of the shining black surface.
Her hand recoiled from the gun, "how do you live from day to day, Jack?"
"I get up every morning like the last," he sighed, "then I do what I need to where it needs to be done."
"I noticed you're doing it all without your sword, as well." as soon as it was out, she wondered if she had crossed the line. Making it about the sword would have been a stretch, but the reactions that Jack expressed at the bar proved he might not see it as such a far-off offense.
He stood quietly and walked into his room. From the couch, Ashi heard metal clattering. She stretched across the couch to catch a glimpse of what he was rustling through. On looking into the room, a rustic footlocker with pictures and trinkets. Jack waded through the contents with his arm and retrieved a long wrapping. His eyes were fixed longingly at the casing. Before he could stand, Ashi leaped back to her side of the couch.
"I had almost forgotten about this thing," Jack's voice carried from his room, "whatever magic this thing was made from definitely wasn't meant to stay sharp."
He sat down beside her and began to unwrap the sword, "the day after I used it, the thing couldn't hold an edge to save my life." He handed the blade over to her, "yeah I thought about pawning this thing a while back, but something about it stuck with me. I don't know, I guess I just like to look. The idea of a sword to kick ass with."
Ashi held it in awe, it was Jack's sword alright. The yellow diamonds within the handle visually shot out of the comfortable grip. The blade was far from dull, but its sheen had been lost for what looked to be decades. She held it up underneath the light, drawing her focus more on how it reflected blue from seemingly nowhere, rather than what Jack had been saying. She glared at the reflection of her eyes gleamed in the blades reflection. As Jack went on about where he was given the sword, he turned to notice Ashi brimming with amazement. He nudged her side with his knuckles.
Their eyes met, and a silence crept across them; one that spoke volumes of its own, trebles of admiration and overtones of fascination. The connection was settled for a strong minute. Ashi glanced back towards the blade and held it, blade downwards, beside Jack.
"Your heroic look was definitely more convincing by having a sword, but you gave me compassion without it," she leaned in and kissed him on the cheek, "always fighting for the good of others because no one else would, that's what I saw in you."
The tension could be cut with that sword, had it been sharp enough. Jack reached out and placed his hand on hers. She didn't take her eyes off of his for a second. He leaned in and kissed her. It was spur of the moment, and all she found herself leaning into his kiss. That sweet embrace that she longed for, the feeling of painstaking passion caught her by surprise as she grabbed him by the back of his hair and pulled herself deeper into his advance. Jack wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her closer and one around her upper back. To Ashi, his technique was amazing. It was the way he fervidly grasped her, or how he ran his tongue along the inside of her mouth and danced with hers. To Jack, her embrace was unbelievable. It could have been the alcohol or too many T.V dinners, but the only thing that mattered at that second was that he was feeling vulnerable and she seemed strong enough to hold him as well. It had been too long since a moment of affection like this graced him.
Their embrace seemed to feel like an hour when in reality, it was a few minutes. The moment was ended almost at the same time by a faraway explosion, with both of them opening their eyes in a realization of what was happening. They broke apart and separated to separate ends of the couch with separate expressions. Ashi leaned on the side, collecting herself and in shock after realizing what they just did. Bringing up her arm, she wiped the saliva from her lips, not in an act of disgust, but one of qualm. Jack faced her with an insecure affliction, have pings of consciousness ring in his head. He worried that he may have come off as desperate for company, especially company that something in him, or some version of him. He got up from the couch and picked up his scraps of food, striding into the kitchen.
"You, uhh… you should get some sleep," Jack stumbled on his words as he shoveled the remnants of food into the trash and placing his utensils in the sink, "we've got to check up on what made that explosion tomorrow, see if we can help around."
Ashi shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Sure, that's probably for the best." She sat cross-legged, resting her hands on her knees.
Jack walked towards his doorway but stopped barely short of entering.
"Ashi?" she turned to meet his eyes, "I hope you're right about me."
Jack walked into his room and it of sight.
Ashi tried to stay comfortable on her makeshift bed. Jack was right, it had very comfortable pillows. Bullets rang out in the distance as the tucked herself underneath quilted blankets. In a civilized city where everyday life could keep up, it seemed out of pace to have cordoned off areas where there was constant battle. The sounds of war, however, were almost calming; from as far as they were, it almost sounded like music. Exhausted and pensive, she fell asleep the moment her head hit the pillow.
Captains Log:
66 days
It's been more than two months since I've updated this and I've been kicking myself every day. On a positive note, the hump should be over with now that the life-consuming musical is finished and the holidays are coming up! I may have mentioned before that I have detailed plans for this story, but my plotting doesn't seem to be working out so well for me. I'm drawing out an outline for this next chapter as a sort of reference in order to better organize some of these ideas, so we'll see how that turns out soon!
As always, I love you all, Jashimonth is going on and I'll be putting up some artwork in catch up for there as well, and many apologies for not keeping you all updated!
This is a captain, signing out for now!
