lu bixing

[preordain]

whee

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week 0, friday

[preordain]

[ well, a little bit after they all wake up to the news that hunter was hunted, they can run into each other outside.

ryo is looking at his phone while walking, like a teenager. ]

[engineers]

[ lu bixing is running around today like a chicken with its head cut off out of sheer!!! worry!!! so it is probably just a straight up miracle that he doesn't run into ryo. actually, it's more like he manages to skid himself to a stop like three seconds before he walks into him and lifts his hands, immediately. ]

Oh, I'm sorry - Ryo, hello. [ a pause, frowning a little. :< ] Are you okay? After everything yesterday...?

[preordain]

I'm fine. Just... surprised.

[ he glances down at his phone. ]

Although considering where we are, I probably shouldn't be.

week 1, thursday

[preordain]

[ they can run into each other in the... dormitory hall... ryo is going to head upstairs, and he stops when he sees lbx. ]

How is your arm?

[ as it was on fire earlier. ]

[engineers]

[ sh...rug... he lifts his hand in greeting? he's got a bandage on like a good boy. ]

It's fine - it doesn't really hurt. Have you eaten...? How're you feeling?

week 1, saturday

[preordain]

[ where is lbx...

either way, ryo is walking by, looking at his phone. he has to pause and look around every now and then, and then he stops completely when he notices lu bixing. hi. ]

[engineers]

[ lu bixing is like sitting outside of the weedy's. legs crossed, holding... a weed...

he sees ryo! and gives him a little sup nod. he just looks very tired but can you blame him. ]

...Hi, Ryo. What're you up to?

week 2, monday

[preordain]

[ at the music store, ryo is going through the some stacks of cds. every now and then he lifts one up, before putting it back down and moving on and moving on to the next one.

hmmmm. ]

[engineers]

[ O:

lu bixing is entering the music store on this monday just to explore when he spots ryo! he'll give him a bit of doing his... examination of music before the curiosity eventually gets to him, and where he's parked it over at the little download station, he calls out - ]

What're you looking for, Ryo?

week 2, sunday

[preordain]

[ throws dart for location

but ryo is sitting on the dock, his legs dangling over the edge of it. like many other times, he's on his phone, but this time he's typing very quickly as he mutters to himself. ]

[engineers]

[ wow the curiosity

anyway this is lbx's like favorite place to hang out so it's okay. he is coming to find ryo after today's terrible mess, his hands stuffed in his pockets, a little bit like a very sheepish puppy. ]

...hey, Ryo.

[ they're both in depth perception hell so he will be nice even if he really wants to know what the fuck ryo is doing but he will at least announce his presence. ] Do you have a minute?

week 3, monday

[preordain]

[ sometimes, you are having a nice stroll in a cute neighborhood? does ryo think it's cute? probably not

but sometimes you are having a nice stroll, and then you are very suddenly falling down a hole together. this is fine. ]

[engineers]

[ truly hate holes. too many holes

anyway they were probably talking about nerdy shit and hell and theory whatever but now... there is a hole. at this point, lu bixing has been through enough of these that he knows what's coming, and he mumbles ] Please don't be stupid. [ at the screen as it flickers to life... ]

[ the takeover of the not-so-affectionately named "trash space station" was quick and efficient, and frankly, kind of amazing, at least in your eyes. lin jingheng is incredible - that you've always known - and between him and your father, a 'self defense force' of sixty crappy mechs are told to stand down, and the corrupt arms merchant called the 'old fart' is tossed directly into prison as you and lin take on control of the station itself.

the place is a mess. there's hardly any electricity, and the people who live on it are refugees or ragtag smugglers who worked for the old fart. they're rough and tumble and peak eighth galaxy, and when you get off of your mech and start to get to know them, you realize you can solve some of their problems, with a little time. in the background, you and lin discover the entire space station is powered by an old, old mach 3 mech - and the mysteries on mysteries continue. you start to fall in love with the people here the way you fall in love with the eighth all the time, and they start to love you, as you fix their video screens and you work day and night to build a thermonuclear power station with your students at your side. two weeks pass by smoothly.

but then, the rumblings of something strange start to happen. more specifically, the sixty mech 'self defense force' starts to get angry and rebellious - not at lin and you, but instead at their old leader, who is currently hidden deep in the depths of an underground prison for lin and your dad to question, because he took so long to surrender that people got hurt. (because, truthfully, operating a mech when you aren't trained to is terrifying. it's against human nature, to be knocked around in the vacuum of space.)

you find out about it from saturday, the young leader of the self defense squad, who has absolutely nothing to do with the loud protest itself. he comes to talk to you instead - the so called 'revolt' is just a protest, at the moment - but as you're talking to saturday, things start to get dicey. the men and women and refugees are getting angrier and louder and angrier, and they start to call for violence. they turn from where they're in the tiny city square towards the administration building where lin, your father, your students, the mech core and the prisoner himself all are.

shoot.

truthfully, you're less worried about the damage an angry mob can do, and more worried about lin. you already had to beg him to give you some time to keep this station from becoming bait for the warring prince cayley in order to save the people who live on it, and he will not be happy if a bunch of hooligans start banging down his door and calling him insults. you gather up your personal device and start to hack into the base itself, pulling up cameras of the networks of the base's road, finding a roadblock mechanic and throwing up a iron fence roadblock in the path of the now growing, angry mob. saturday cheers beside you, and you're pleased, but you don't even get enough time to smile.

the mob, which couldn't fight together to save its life barely a week ago, coordinates into one giant force like a battering ram. it'd be impressive if it wasn't horrible - they start ramming into the iron fence, which is rusty and old like everything else on this base. screaming, shouting for blood, for their old leader to come out, why did he abandon them, why would he treat them like this, why, why, why --

you make it on the scene just in time for your device, hacked into the network, to pop up a warning. Warning. High Energy Particle Concentration. Warning.

your eyes widen; your breath catches, as you realize in horror that lin's summoned the particle cannons on the side of the building, and he's going to fire.

the fence comes down. the mob screams in delight.

the blossom of heat starts from the particle cannon and you slam your fingers into your device and start to type, furiously - in the spare seconds before an entire group of people is turned to ashes you grab onto the base's tiny self defense shield and you throw a programming command and the entire shield concentrates in one spot like a wall in front of the shrieking, angry mob, and lin's fired particle cannons slam into it with the force of the IUS's best technology. the defense net shatters into pieces, and the entire base shakes like an earthquake, as the shrieks of rage turn to confusion and horror.

you exhale.

when the smoke clears, the defense net is gone, but the mob remains. and you know lin could fire again, if he wanted to, but you have no way of stopping it, a second time. your head whips up to the administration building like you could see him, like you could beg him not to, but you're too far away and that won't work. you have a golden chance in this moment of confusion, and you seize it.

you summon two medical robots. saturday makes a confused noise but you ignore him, as one finds your arm, places an antiseptic, creates a sanitized safe zone and then injects something into your arm. there's no time for anesthesia, and the pain is violent enough to drop you to your knees, but you feel the familiarity of power go down your spine like lightning, and that's all you need.

opium biochip activated.

you turn up the features as it changes your mental capacities. camoflauge. invisibility. and you push them outwards, out to your surroundings and the network you've created. you create the illusion - the slight, soft hum sound that echoes through the brain of every person in the mob. the camoflauge sweeps over a row of houses, so they suddenly vanish in a sweep of bright light white, and the logo of the cayley pirates appears in their place, and the tiny, useless mechs in the mech bay change too, into the illusion of massive, terrifying cayley mechs with all of their guns pointed directly at the planet.

you switch your attention - blood drips out of your nose - to the massive multimedia screens in the center of the space station that you fixed a few days ago, and you reach into your own files, and the people of the trash space station see it.

they see the sky filling with mechs and then, missiles. hundreds and hundreds of every side, unflinchingly, dropping down, down, down - the anger turns to shrieks of fright and terror, people trying to scramble away from doom and despair and misery and -

the video turns off, and you straighten.

the crowd is silent, dead silent. several of the members of the self defense force have fallen to the ground. others are crying. horrified, shocked by the fact that what they saw wasn't real, relieved, and - stopped.

you clear your throat. ]

I'm sorry for what you saw just now. I was debugging the terminal and unintentionally turned on the footage from the news of the bombing of Beijing Beta. [ this is a lie, but that's alright. there's silence. the crowd looks to you for answers, shocked and stunned.

in the middle of the crowd, a young man starts to sob. it takes your attention - you realize that he's next to a wall, and he's having a hysteria reaction, that he's balled his fists up and is punching the concrete, enough that the startled mob members turn to look at him. you rush over to the man, unable to bear watching, and use the super strength afforded to you by the biochip to take his hands. ]

Listen to me. [ you coax, to the screaming, crying man - ] Listen. To. Me.

[ and, slowly, he does. he takes a deep, hiccuping breath, snot trailing down his face, and you exhale too, some of the tension in your shoulders finally starting to break. you're talking not just to him, but to the entire crowd, turning your voice from gentle and soothing to delivering facts. ]

You guys have mechs. That makes you militant in the eyes of those people. [ of the ones on the video - the very same people who destroyed your home. why would you have that footage? because beijing beta is where you lived. it's where your school was. your friends lived. it's a place that you called home, and in the blink of an eye, ares von and the cayley pirates destroyed it.

you won't have that again. ] If you all try and destroy the mechs in the storeroom like you're thinking right now, you'll blow up your entire planet, and the energy of the explosion will draw the Cayley pirates here like you're throwing them a dinner party. Right now, we're safe, but the first time Prince Cayley was kicked out of the Eighth Galaxy, it was because he ignored these underground channels. He's not going to make that mistake again, and when he comes here, it will be a matter of time before he kills us all.

[ silence ripples across this crowd of haggard faces - some old, some young, crying, scared, silent. your heart aches for them, but you have to be firm in the words you deliver for this exact reason. you look across the crowd as you stand, finally releasing the hands of the man who was beating himself up on the wall, who wipes his face and makes a squeaky sob noise like a conch.

you take a deep breath. ] If you don't want to die like that, then put your Self Defense Squadron uniform on tomorrow, and report to the mech bay, and come see me tomorrow. Roger that.

[ the silence passes, again, slowly. you rub the man beside you's back, and watch, as one by one, the angry, furious mob starts to disperse, silent, heavy with the weight of what their future can hold. you saved them from lin's irritation.

now, you can only hope they can save themselves. ]

week 4, sunday

[preordain]

[ hello, lbx.

a little while after execution, ryo is at the docks, sitting down and scrolling absentmindedly through his phone. every now and then he glances up to look at the lava sea before going back to his phone. ]

[engineers]

[ oh deja vu ]

I thought I might find you out here, Ryo.

[ my fellow one eyed executioner... lu bixing says this by way of greeting, and then: ] Do you mind if I join you for a little bit?

w5, monday

[engineers]

[ time to be stupid

on this fine and fancy free confident monday, lu bixing is out and about looking at the descrptions on the little zoo exhibit that has all of their names on it. it was time for a to go experiment so he's brought a couple drinks with him. one for ryo, one for himself! and with his personal device floating absently over his hand, he's taking his science On The Road today. you can pick whatever drink u want. whatever is the funniest.

peering at the descriptions ]

...Do you think I have bad taste? [ local man who has been close to every single murderer so far ]

[preordain]

[ he squints at what lbx is reading and then, without any hesitation, ]

Yes. Extremely.

week 5, friday

[engineers]

[ hey it's!! lu bixing's turn to be sitting on the edge of the docks, feet hanging over the edge, hands folded in his lap and just. staring up at the sky.

it's. fine. he's fine probably. he's definitely disassociating. it's fine? he doesn't even really notice if anyone else is there, at first... but, he's also not taking up a lot of space at the dock. it's not really his spot, it's ryo's, so. even upset like this, he's cognizant like that. ]

[preordain]

[ SORRY I. TOOK A NAP AND JUST NEVER WOKE UP

but ryo pauses as he spots him, looking over at him for a few seconds before finally walking over. he doesn't sit down immediately, instead just standing next to him as he looks over at the lava. ]

Another one you're close with?

week 6, monday

[preordain]

[ they can be at the resort. but ryo is opening a door and sees the bdsm chain room, and closes it again. ]

There's nothing in this one.

[engineers]

[ HELP ]

Wait, what? What was it?

[ bixing is attempting to peer over his shoulder....??? ] Was that a planet?

week 6, friday

[preordain]

[ well

ryo is walking, looking at his phone as he goes... he pauses when he passes by lbx. ]

Two again.

[engineers]

[ two again

he's horizontal on a couch somewhere probably. banned from moving and still breathing like the dog from howl's moving castle mostly, but he raises a hand in greeting, anyway. ]

Two again. [ blegh. ] Hey, Ryo. What do you think... the likelihood of us solving both is?

week 7, friday

[engineers]

[ it's so nice not to have to wake up to a corpse right

on this fine friday in the arcade, lu bixing is here playing one of the claw games! truly, just vibing. he's trying to win some kind of plush dinosaur? who knows. but when he spots ryo in the reflection of the glass, he gives him a grin! ]

[preordain]

[ a plush!!!

anyway i am very sorry to say that

ryo smiles back! brightly!! ]