afraid to shoot strangers [ homura ]

[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]FINISH WHAT'S TO BE DONE

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]WHEN IT COMES TO THE TIME, ARE WE PARTNERS IN CRIME?

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]WHEN IT COMES TO THE TIME, WE'LL BE READY TO DIE

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It occurred to earlier in the week, upon tripping over one and falling face-first into another dozen, that perhaps the number of fire arms littered across the floor of the apartment had gotten a bit out of hand.[break][break]

Why they were there in the first place (regardless of the fact that it would be a bizarre sight in just about anyone else's home and punishable by the council... probably) was of little surprise. The two occupants of this place had a surprisingly number of things in common, despite what a lot of people, himself included at first, would think at a first glance. One was that they both took to guns. A lot. Nikki loved his more than he loved most all of society, and from the looks of things, she had her own personal art gallery full of 'em stashed away in some pocket space he'd never be able to wrap his infantile mind around. They both shared the same line of work on the island; well, they differed in the specifics, but the fact that they were partnered up more than a handful of times in a month put them at about equals in his eyes. Neither one of them spent too much time in this drab old place, either, unless it was to sleep, to restock, or strictly out of circumstantial necessity. When they'd agreed to share their personal armories with each other, it had ended in a neatly kept pile of guns and explosives of every variety under the sun stacked in one corner. As that number of fire arms increased, however, and jobs called for a quick “grab and run” from their pile, it found itself... migrating. Right out into the middle of the floor. Where an idiot man with bad vision and a knack for ditching his glasses could go toppling straight first into an unforgiving cushion of hard plastic.[break][break]

Normally, Nikki wouldn't even care. Not that he thought he had any grounds to boss Akemi Homura, the teenaged girl of all people the island had decided at some undetermined point to be his roommate, around. His age didn't give him authority over the household. If he didn't have such a jail bird complex, he'd probably admit that he'd rather it be in her hands, anyway. But the fact of the matter was that, as their apartment was, getting in without anyone from the hall seeing what they had stored away in here. When joining Omega Five, they hadn't ever been explicitly told to keep their means of work hidden – just the work itself – but he knew enough about making a living off the murder of criminals (as well as about the island at this point, he liked to think) to figure that letting this... mess be seen by a civilian would probably stir up a fit. At best, they'd both be kicked out of the team. At worst... Well, he didn't care to see if they'd make good on those “detonating a bomb in your neck” threats. Yikes.[break][break]

“Okay, kid,” the hitman said as he pushed his way through the door, partner just behind as they returned from the evening's mission. The moment the lights were flicked on, the guilty pile stretched before them was made clear, and he found himself grimacing at the thought of what he was about to propose alone. Heck no, he wasn't going to be getting any sleep tonight, but there were still better ways of spending the earliest hours of the morning than organizing a mountain of fire arms. “Yer probably not gonna like this, but neither do I, so I'll just get it out there. I've been thinking -” That was dangerous - “- and I think it's time we, uh... sat down and tried ta' clean this up.” He kicked the nearest handgun with the toe of his boot, watched it skitter across wood flooring for a single second before friction and the giant wall of black and brown forced it to a stop. Was that rifle on the top in the back the one he thought it was? The one that had been warped beyond function by a target who could manipulate heat? It was hard to tell from this distance (again, without glasses, most of his world was a blur), but he'd almost bet money. Ugh, why hadn't he just tossed that piece of garbage from the get go?[break][break]

“Now, probably. Before one of us ends up with a broken neck.”

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[music]https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/s/tuljhetg0j75c9x/Afraid%20To%20Shoot%20Strangers.mp3?dl=0[/music]

[attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 750 WORDS

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] Akemi Homura

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HE'S NOT. THREATENING TO BREAK HER NECK. he's more like, "i tripped once, please don't let it happen again. ;~;"

[Akemi Homura]

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That night had been a long one. She had gone directly with Nikki on a trip, to assist with... delicate matters. Her "fixing" could often require doing the dirty work herself, and she was damn good backup, if she said so herself. [break][break]

As they meandered through the door, a little tired after a night of fighting, Homura pushed it shut and went immediately to her room to transform out of magical girl mode and into something more comfortable. She pulled on an old christmas sweater she'd had lying around, a pair of leggings, and put her hair back, ready for food and maybe a night spent watching Tomoflix™ before kicking back and getting to work the next day. What was not expected, was leaving her room to find Nikki talking to her and thinking. It was probably about rent, or something; they definitely made enough this month, so Homura was confused as to why he'd want to discuss it now, when they were both a little tired. [break][break]

She listened with some form of confusion as he called her kid and continued on before she could butt in. As he kicked a gun across the floor and suggested they clean up, the magical girl stepped back into the doorway of her room. For safety's sake, of course. That gun could've been loaded, and with Nikki's rotten luck, would've gone off and shot one of them and gotten the authorities involved. That would've been a clusterfuck of enormous proportions. As was the current pile of advanced firearms in the middle of the floor; if someone saw that, it would probably be a problem. They could do it in the morning - there wasn't any hit lined up for tomorrow, was there? [break][break]

Clad in a disgustingly bright sweater, Homura was ready to turn around and climb into bed, but then her truly wonderful roommate suggested that they do it then and there. She could've protested, but instead she figured she might as well assent to the idea and get it over with. "Fine, but I'm making coffee first. If you want any, come and make your own," she said, moving into the kitchen area and putting a pod of instant coffee into the machine. Less than a minute later, it was done, and she added some milk to make it palatable before returning to sit on the floor in front of the pile of danger. [break][break]

The magical girl sipped her coffee before speaking up again. "I think we should organize them based on who owns which weapon. We can put all of yours in one box, and mine in another. It'd probably be prudent to make sure they're all in working order, so we should probably clean them and take them for test runs before actually putting them away." Homura gestured to a gun near the top of the pile, warped beyond disbelief. "At least, mine are all working, unless you've used any of them lately. I happen to take proper care of my weapons, at least." She began the arduous process of pulling out her guns from the pile, gently picking up guns and checking whether they were loaded, before shaking out any bullets into a pile on the floor. [break][break]

"I don't suppose you had any plans for tomorrow, did you? We'll probably need to organize the ammunition, as well, and come up with a storage system for that. Maybe we should just build a gun rack, or buy something of the sort. That'd ease a lot of our... problems."

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Nikki

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[Nikki]

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric"]FINISH WHAT'S TO BE DONE

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[attr="class","nikkipostlyric3"]WHEN IT COMES TO THE TIME, ARE WE PARTNERS IN CRIME?

[attr="class","nikkipostlyrics4"]WHEN IT COMES TO THE TIME, WE'LL BE READY TO DIE

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“Fine, but I'm making coffee first. If you want any, come and make your own.”[break][break]

The quick reply caught him off guard for more than a single reason. For one thing, he hadn't been expecting her to comply, and not so readily. She spoke with the dignity of a senator most times (like she'd said some of these lines a thousand times, rehearsed and repeated until they lost any of what made them real and meaningful in the first place), sometimes even tossing around words that he'd never understand the meaning of, but at her core, Homura was still a kid, seventeen years old and pissy like she should be. He might have had it in him to hold it against her if he couldn't relate. For another, coffee didn't strike him as the go to drink at this time of night – or ever, when it came to his case and caffeine's lost cause on his brain – but a second thought did instruct that he'd just requested of her a time-consuming project as so late an hour of the night. He, himself, was tired, yes, but the workload of the day had been significantly less than usual, and while “awake” wasn't the word he'd used, he definitely had more spare energy to do extra tasks with than he had at all in the week prior. Perhaps he should have paid closer attention to his partner to make sure she wasn't falling over from exhaustion, herself. Then again, she was pretty good at communicating her limits. At least, when it came to the menial things. In the field, the girl was somewhat of a nightmare in a way that... well, again only reminded him of himself. The last thing, though, that had him taking a double glance was the outfit that she'd changed in. Not because it was fancy. Not because it looked good on her. Because it was, quite frankly, disgusting, dyed with what only good have been the vomit of a man who ate three dozen boxes of Gushers in less than half an hour's time. Christmas wasn't even for another four months, what the hell?[break][break]

“Uh... Where did you even get that?” he asked, dumbstruck, as she settled down near him in the face of their mountain of guns. Either way, it didn't really matter to the task at hand. Leave it to her to start coming up with a detailed game plan of how to sort out this whole mess when he was the one to have suggested that it be sorted out in the first place. In truth, despite being the one to bring it up, he hadn't had the foggiest idea of how to start going about it; he'd always been a “do or say first, think later” sort of man, and while that worked fine in his field of work, it certainly made downtime and its chores like this a nightmare by itself. “I think we should organize them based on who owns which weapon. We can put all of yours in one box and mine in another.” Sort them by owner? Oh dear. While the hitman had always figured that he had a wide arsenal of weapons to his name – enough, at least, to ensure that he was never caught without one, even after being disarmed a number of times repeatedly – he'd found that his still paled in comparison to her's. And sure, most of them were locked up in their secret little pocket space, but he still had the feeling that most of these wouldn't end up belonging to him (even if he was probably the last one to use them). “Only if we're only sortin' the ones that belong to us.” He shrugged out of his coat and forced a smile (faked, an attempt at humor that couldn't tug at his lips right; nothing could, and nothing had for years now), hoping it'd get the message across that he was only teasing. He'd been the one to suggest this whole endeavor. Might as well pull his weight in it.[break][break]

The magical girl pressed on with her plan, making a show of that same gun he'd noticed earlier that had taken a bad hit a few days prior, before accusing: “At least, mine are all working, unless you've used any of them lately. I happen to take proper care of my weapons.” The line was enough to get him to scoff, not out of disbelief that she could take care of her own, but out of offense that she'd think he didn't baby his. “Hey, kid, shut it, I take good fucking care of my stuff. The other guys, though, they couldn't care less.” From the corner of his eyes, he watched her haphazardly unload the ammunition of her nearest gun onto the floor, and couldn't help but think to himself, What a hypocrite. Well, not like she didn't have the right idea. Better to make sure the clips were empty before cleaning the guns they were attached to, and best to check which ones were empty and needed to be reloaded now than when in the middle of combat. Still, part of him ached just thinking about having to resort these all later. He took the warped fire arm from the very top of the pile only to find it empty and useless. What a pain.[break][break]

“Ya' don't think the council'd pay for somethin' like that, do you?” Nikki asked, mind on her suggestion of a gun rack while his hands busied themselves with the sorting she'd proposed just minutes earlier. “I mean, they expect us to pack our own guns, but they haven't done shit when it comes to helping us hide 'em. You'd think that'd be pretty high pri... pre... Fuck. High on their list of things to do.”[break][break]

There was a lapse of silence, tainted only by the clatter of hard plastic against similar material and ammunition hitting flesh and the floor, and Nikki tried to lose himself in his work. Unfortunately for him, however, his mind was as runaway as ever. It hadn't exactly been a long time since he and the teenager at his side had been roomed together (something he had protested almost immediately, convinced that people, the girl included, would get the wrong idea about a minor being stuck with an adult stranger), but it hadn't exactly been that short of a time either. Even so, he felt like he didn't know much about her beyond the surface. Well enough to trust her during work, but not well enough to know what to talk about during times like these. Heck, he hadn't even known she was the type to own a Christmas sweater until she walked out in one tonight. The image still seemed so surreal, even if he could twist his head a bit and see it in the periphery of his vision. He could ask her to spill some life story, though, and knew he wouldn't get it. His own was locked up tight, words only meant to be heard by those who had earned it, and the only one who had in his lifetime was buried six feet under in a world he'd long lost. People didn't end up in Omega Five for leading normal, healthy lives. If she'd been offered the job, especially at such a young age, something had to have happened.[break][break]

“... Where'd you get all these guns, anyway?” he tried to ask nonchalantly (failing horribly at it), pulling another gun from off the mound like it was an infant in his arms. He couldn't ask for the whole thing, no, but maybe if he kept his questions small, they could sate a fraction of his curiosity. “Most teenagers from where I am wouldn't be caught runnin' around with one, but you've been runnin' around with... what, hundreds?”

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[attr="class","nikkipostbot2"]NOTES

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] 1314 WORDS

[attr="class","nikkipostbot3"] Akemi Homura

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This post was boring when I wrote it (not your fault at all, your post was great, all my replies were just 0/10), so I'm like, "LET'S DO SOMETHING I NEVER DO AND ACTUALLY ADD INTERESTING CONTENT TO THE POST!"

[Akemi Homura]

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The sweater. Why was Nikki going on about her sweater? It was just a sweater, Homura reasoned; it served a purpose, it was comfortable, and left over from her days trying to attend school. She had made an effort to try to get to know her peers, and wore it to some Christmas party their class had. Inevitably, she didn't get along with them - it was hard to relate to your classmates, even if you'd mostly all been pulled from different universes. (Harder still when you went to clean up crime scenes at night, and were mentally twice their age.) Still, it didn't bother her, her current life, and if Nikki was concerned about her wearing a garish sweater, he could take it up with her guns. [break][break]

She would take no shits either, if he was going to say that other people had damaged their guns and that it wasn't his fault. That melted rifle had been from her private stock, and her wonderful partner had taken it and gotten it promptly ruined. "I apologize; are we making reparations for damaged artillery? If so, I would require a stipend of roughly a hundred thousand dollars to work with." Homura would not say that she enjoyed collecting weapons, but there was a certain pleasure she took from liberating weapons from those who would do them wrong. Many a military post had lost its entire stock to her artillery needs, and it was only out of the goodness of her heart that she had agreed to share them with Nikki. [break][break]

One thing that did bring a type of schadenfreude, though, was listening to her wonderful roommate struggle with his vocabulary. Homura would have supposed that he had a better chance of getting an education than she did. Throughout her many years, much of her time in school had been spent solving the same equations, writing the same papers, and going through the same curriculum. Considering that he most likely had a better shot an education than she did, it was quite hilarious to listen to him struggle picking words when she had the rough equivalent of a middle school education, yet had no issue sourcing her vernacular from all sections of the dictionary. [break][break]

"Do you mean priority? While 'high on their list of things to do' would work depending on the situation, 'priority' is a better term to use," Homura said, lifting her chin up and cleaning the pistol in her hands by the sense of touch. It was an action she was used to, certainly, and the magical girl was very efficient at what she did. For years now, she tried to take some decent care of her weapons, to allow for less time spent every timeline stealing new ones, time that might've been better spent saving Madoka. It was a common, comforting ritual, and as she put the pistol in the pile of tools that belonged to her, she was harkened back to the late nights she would spend doing the exact same chore they were doing now. But Nikki had more questions to ask, as per usual, and she was obliged to give them answers, if only to make the night more bearable. [break][break]

Taking a long sip of her coffee, she placed it gently in a small clearing amongst the plastic that had appeared and tried to remember what was asked of her. Right, council funding and the source of her stock. "The only funding I think we would receive would be for cremation," she said, picking up a machine gun and removing the magazine. It fluttered down into the pile of cold metal around her. But how to broach the topic of her weapons source? It was something that she had been thinking of minutes earlier, but it was hard for Homura to decide what was worth telling the hitman and what wasn't. [break][break]

In the end, she decided to throw caution to the wind and see how he reacted. "Well, I tend to get my smaller artillery from criminal organizations, whether it be from a cleanup job or a scout and run. It's simpler to get pistols and the like from there. For the larger guns, I just raid military bases. They're surprisingly easy to get into, and it doesn't take too particularly long to clear them out." Was she forgetting something? Bombs, yes, her bombs. "As for bombs, I usually just take them when I go to the bases or make them myself. They're not very hard to make, especially in large quantities." [break][break]

It probably would have been unwise, though, to mention that many of the bombs were made in the apartment, or that the military bases were becoming increasingly harder to find, what with the state of the island and what it was. Was she forgetting anything else? The total number, yes, her total number of weapons. "I believe I had something around fifteen hundred at my last count, but it should probably be less after we finish organizing this."

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Nikki // 841 words ouo