triggerhappytraitor | Prisma Inbox/index

"Him?" That has him frowning immediately. It's ridiculous, they spend all their time fighting! And he's jealous, that Tachibana's not building him something. It's quite the burst of offended emotion. The rest barely even registers with him. "Him, of all people?"

Tachibana paused, eyebrow raising. "Who the hell else would I be making it for?" Other than Kenzaki, but Kenzaki had vanished again... ... not that it didn't mean he hadn't been sourcing parts for him anyway.

"...The hell do you have against him, anyway?"

"I don't know. Yourself?" It is not the swiftest of answers, but he is not feeling like the swiftest of Undead right now. Especially faced with a question that's been long overdue to be asked. What does he have against Joker these days, anyway? He pulls a face and looks away, trying to actually figure that out.

"...he's an asshole." There we go. That's a start.

"...I finished building my bike before you even showed up," Tachibana pointed out, jerking his head over to the tarp-covered bike in the other half of the shop.

He shifts slightly, crossing his arms to lean back against his work bench slightly. A small snort escaped at Isaka's answer. "So are you," he pointed out.

"Maybe you wanted a second one." Isaka shrugs and tries to make it seem as though he doesn't actually care. He does still feel somewhat foolish, though. And no less sour and irritable than before.

"I'm the sort of asshole that won't leave you alone. He's the sort of asshole that won't shut up and listen."

"Shutting up isn't the problem," Tachibana countered, almost amused. Hajime? Talkative? That would be the day...

"You're both stubborn idiots who think you know the best way to handle everything and can't deal with it when you're wrong. The only difference is that he thinks every answer is to punch something and you have more varied tactics."

"If he's not shouting threats, he's trying to pick a fight." Tell him he's wrong, Tachibana. Go right ahead.

"Hmph." The man has a point, though. One that's wrapped up in enough almost-flattery that Isaka is willing to accept it. "I have tactics, at least."

"Hajime's version of tactics is just punch if until it stops being a threat," Tachibana agreed with an almost fond hint of amusement. And yet, he was the one with the reputation for shooting without provocation, go figure.

"I would have thought it would take a bit more than just something like that to get under your skin, however."

If he were feeling generous, he might argue that a surprise attack was a valid sort of tactic... but mostly, he's feeling grumpy. "I'm also more prone to being on the receiving end of those tactics." They are driven to fight each other, after all. It makes things a little awkward.

"...I'd have thought so, too." And now he's feeling grumpy about feeling grumpy. Great.

Tachibana was quiet a moment, looking over at Isaka.

"... has he been targeting you?"

Hajime was supposed to be used to ignoring that fighting impulse... but he also might just be using Isaka for stress relief.

He shakes his head immediately. "Targeting would imply he's bothering to make plans. If get within his field of vision, it's a half and half chance that he'll try and pick a fight."

Not that he's working on a very large sample size for this sort of thing. Or samples that were reliable. Them both being drunk, or both being under weird moon influence tips the scales towards violence.

"Surprised it's not every time. He's improved a bit, in that respect at least," Tachibana reflected.

Still, something like that wouldn't be enough for Hajime to get under Isaka's normally unflappable skin...

"Encourage him to improve some more, then, if you have such a good relationship with him." He looks away, feeling restless to go with all of that irritability, and his eyes fall on that cloth-covered bike of Tachibana's. He'd had that since before he had even got here, hadn't he...?

"Is it so important for the both of you to still be 'Riders', that you need those things?"

Tachibana's eyebrow rose again. "Like he listens to me any more than he listens to anyone else?" he returned, a touch incredulous before pushing off the wall to follow over to his bike.

"I like riding," he pointed out. "Especially now that we're in a world with actual roads that go places." The most frustrating part of Limal... "It has nothing to do with being a Rider."

.... if you ignored the fact that he had basically replicated Red Rhombus with the new bike's aesthetic.

Isaka shrugs. They live together, so don't they have some sort of peace agreement? He's willing to let the matter go, at this point, though. Instead, he watches as Tachibana moves to his own bike.

"...there weren't any roads?" He will call Tachibana on just how damn similar this bike looks to his old one later, probably. There are strange Liminal things to ask about.

Tachibana nodded, one hand resting on the handlebars of the bike. "The entire fabric of Liminal would change on a whim basically every week. It almost never had roads, or even spaces open enough to ride. Hell, sometimes it didn't even have proper gravity," he scowled before shaking his head. "You could make almost anything you could think of out of energy, but it didn't mean a damned thing."

His mouth flattens out into a line at the idea of there being no gravity. Here he is, just trying to get used to the idea of his whole existence being useless here, and there are places where even something as simple as that doesn't work anymore? "How... long were you in that place, again? It sounds miserable."

"About two years," Tachibana half shrugged. "Most the time we were in other worlds, so it wasn't as bad as all that," he pointed out, expression growing a touch distant. "That part, I liked. Getting to live out different lives, even if briefly."

"It's funny, really. Even without the fight in those other worlds, the same group of us still came together, just for different reasons."

"The possibility of other worlds sounds like it might get even worse." He's not feeling very optimistic and adventurous right now, hence all the negativity. All the frowning he's doing, too. He doesn't want to live a different life. This is different enough. He'd like his normal one back.

"...when you say 'the same group', you mean... BOARD's Riders?" So he'll focus on that, instead. Just who kept getting brought back together?

"Yeah," Tachibana nodded. "One world, the four of us were a music group, if you can believe it," he added with a small snort of amusement, shaking his head. "One that became government agents tracking interdimensional ninja. Not sure if that's more or less ridiculous than the idea of becoming transforming fighters in a war of immortals...."

"...that's more ridiculous." He has made that decision here and now. He can't possibly say that Tachibana is lying, after all. He's pretty sure that he'd know if the man was lying. "A scientist using science to fight immortal monsters is less far-fetched than musicians doing... that."

It occurs to him, though, that there's still something he's curious about. "...did I ever show up?"

"... a few times," Tachibana acknowledged. "You were Hajime's cousin, in at least one world." He hesitated a moment. "... killed Sayoko in at least two others," he added, voice softening as he didn't make eye contact.

He's about to say something else sour about Hajime, but.... then comes the rest. He's awkwardly silent for a moment, before giving a soft "Ah," of discomfort. He seeks eye contact for a moment, but then averts his own gaze.

"...how many were there where she was fine?"

"There were a few where she was fine. And at least one other where she lived... but where her version of me didn't. And she was even more destroyed than I was, since there was nothing else there to force her to keep moving forward."

He reached up, fiddling with the diamond pendant he was wearing, thinking of the one Pink Fluorite had given him in return. "Talking with her... I think was the first time I realized that it wouldn't have solved anything, if it had been me who died then."

That last thing, he hadn't expected. It's surprising enough to make him look to Tachibana again, and to catch him toying with his pendant. There are so many things that he wasn't party to, that he missed, and he finds himself wanting to know more about them because... is it entirely because they have to do with Tachibana? It can't be all that...

"I'm beginning to come to the conclusion that most beings don't do well in the long term, when they've suffered a significant loss." Obvious a thing as it may seem to anyone else, it feels like an actual, honest realization to Isaka. He's not sure how well he's doing, and Tachibana.... well.

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