Ashes and Alleyways {Aya}

[Sherlock is real.]

THINKING//SPEAKING

Tank's cigarette was almost done, the ash dropping to the ground, falling on a pair of green army boots. The ash was the worst part of the cigarette; it made everything stink like trash, not to mention it stained her hands.

Tank kicked the black residue off her shoes and flicked the butt at the garbage bin across from her. She recently found herself smoking in the same alleyway every day, watching the same, poor citizens of district three rush to their jobs through the small opening. She hated the industry of district three, mostly because the Capitol didn’t appreciate the work that goes into making those weapons. Even if the firearms made in those factories were shoddy. If Tank wasn’t labelled a clinical ‘retard’, she could show those workers a thing or two about quality workmanship.

Tank pulled out a second smoke from her jacket pocket and pulled off the paper cover. She always had to check these homemade cigs for gunpowder. Gunpowder got into everything in District three; Tank learned this after lighting the first one she was given. She almost blew off her hand, though she was smart enough to drop it before it exploded.

As soon as Tank confirmed there was no gunpowder; she rolled it back up, lit it with a match and fixed it between her lips. Tank only had enough pocket change to get a pack a day, one pack of bitter weed sold at the outer edges of the district. She heard that some kid dug under the fence and found a field of weed, freshly grown weed. He was shot when the Peacekeepers found him, of course, but a gang of men made a deal with the Peacekeepers. Tank didn’t know the details, she was happy enough getting an adequate amount smokes to quench her cravings using the money she had. The matches didn’t come as cheap, though. For that reason, Tank took the matchbook from the drawer beside the hearth. They never lit fires anyway.

Tank inhaled deeply, ensuring the smoke reached the back of her throat. Smoking was painful; it hurt her gums and the top of her mouth, Tank figured the inside of her mouth was rotting from the years of smoking cigarette after cigarette. She didn’t care much; she’d rather die slowly and naturally than having your life selfishly taken away from you without your permission.

Tank scowled, she pulled the cigarette out of her mouth and let the smoke pour from between her teeth. It curled in an uncanny way, desperately pushing itself away from the earth. Her helmet blocked her view of the smoke; she almost wished she could look up and watch it fly away. She longed to be as light as the smoke, free to curl whichever way she wanted, free to leave like her mother wanted her to.
“Barrel, trigger, receiver, pintle...” she recited before drawing in another breath of pungent smoke

[gm bourgeois decadence [aya]]

Cerise Mephistopheles —

A small portfolio of forged documents — all her own handiwork — tucked under her arm, Cerise Mephistopheles pushed her way through the busy streets of the industrial district she called home. She did have a drop to make, a client that had needed a permit from the technology administrator in the Justice Building so that he could… well, to be honest, she couldn't remember, and it wasn't her place to ask. To put a magnet on his roof or something. Didn't matter to Cerise; she was getting payed a healthy amount for the falsified documents and in the event that some peacekeeper actually cared enough to check up on all of the mad scientists that were found around Three, they'd find her fake satisfactory. And if they didn't, well, she'd learned years ago that the law enforcers liked to execute those they deemed 'wrong-doers' first and ask questions later. Seeing as corpses were unlikely to rat her out — and if they did, the authorities would be after her alias — she figured her odds of getting in any sort of trouble for her activities based on this one job were about sixteen thousandths of a percent.

She moved the documents to her front, where they were less likely to get battered by the crowds of people moving to and from their jobs, even though the maneuver made the twelve-year-old actually seem childish — an appearance that she greatly resented. It counteracted her steely gaze and regal stride, which usually did enough to add a year or two to her countenance, despite her youthful lankiness. Even so, her unfortunate age brought about limitations in her business; she was forced to adopt an alias and fabricate a persona, pretending she was merely the messenger for a much more authoritative and secretive figure known as The Fist. Who would trust documents that had been forged by a twelve-year-old; who wouldn't try to muscle away her goods before payment was delivered? She didn't always deal with the most scrupulous people — the illicit nature of her line of work basically mandated that most of her clients were the shady sort.

And this, in turn, dictated that a good number of her dealings take place in equally shady places, generally alleys or warehouses or the back rooms of factories. Neither Cerise nor her customers wanted to give away their places of residence; for security purposes, it was best that both entities knew as little about the other as possible. And, of course, nobody wanted to make under the table exchanges in a public place where anyone could be snooping and eager to report back to the Capitol for a pat on the head and a small sum of cash. The last thing the forger needed was to be ratted out by some random, and she was certain that the feeling was shared by those that required her services.

Self-conscious about how foolish she looked with the portfolio clutched to her chest and unable to take it any longer, Cerise readjusted the folder, moving it back to under her arm. Almost immediately, the portfolio was unceremoniously sent spinning away from the girl, thanks to some rogue elbow that had clipped her. The wind took it a short distance and another two pairs of feet knocked her work further away, into the entrance of some ally. Growling curses at those that had buffeted her — even though they were long since out of earshot — she stooped to pick up the document portfolio, which was now covered in the same soot that coated much of District Three. She righted herself, brushed off the ash to the best of her ability, and was about to move along to meet her client — even though she was half an hour early and the factory was two blocks over — when something caught her eye.

It was the helmet and neither the girl who wore it nor the trail of cigarette smoke that she emitted that caught Cerise's attention for more than a fleeting second. What was that, some sort of turtle shell? No, too smooth. Too rounded to be fashioned out of a bucket or a pot. Curiosity got the best of her, and though she normally avoided those who spent their days smoking and muttering to themselves in alleyways, Cerise couldn't help but move a little closer. But she wasn't about to strike up a conversation about the headgear; that would be weird and too straightforward. Instead, she brought up the thing she knew how to talk about best: "You got a license for those?" she gestured at the cigarette in the girl's mouth, knowing full well that there wasn't such a thing. But if she could sell the girl a forged paper that didn't exist and figure out what the deal was with her helmet in the meantime, then she'd score twice talking to this strange girl.

ooc — sorry it took so long!

[/blockquote]

[Sherlock is real.]

A breeze picked up, not strong enough to move her heavy hair, but strong enough to make the falling ashes circle around her boots. Tank watched the ashes as the danced around her feet, some flying as high as her knees, some hid under the trash bin across from her. They were somewhat beautiful, the way they moved. Some cinders were still lit; Tank kicked those sparks away from her. Becoming a human torch didn’t sound very appealing.

Before she could stop herself, a paper flew by Tanks feet, fluttering into the cloud of embers and ash. She kicked it by accident, and it slipped under the waste bin; settling itself among the dirt. She bent down and looked under the bin. The sheet was far back, folded against the underside of the container. Tank hoped the paper wasn’t important, there was no way she could reach that far, especially between that thin of an opening.

She stayed squatting beside the bin for awhile, staring at the sheet as if it mocked her. She noticed some markings on the paper, but that was it. Just markings. There might have been words, of course. It was too dark to simply read what was written, not to mention it was folded in an awkward pose. Tank filled her lungs with another breath of smoke, and stood up from her uncomfortable position. Her knees cracked as she did so; she didn’t crouch like that very often.

Just then, another paper fluttered by, picking up dust from the ground with its corners. Another sheet broke that veil of dust and trailing behind was another sheet. A single sheet followed, soiled by the polluted ground as much as the others. Tank wondered where all these papers were coming from; she picked the four sheets up, wiping off the residue that clung to their exterior. In truth, she enjoyed watching them fly away as she did with most inanimate objects that could take to the air. She liked seeing their startling white pages become sullied, it reminded Tank much of herself. However, she felt like these pages were important, even without understanding the information written on them.

She stared at the pages, trying to read what was written. Tank didn’t pay much attention in class and she forgot everything she learned a day or two after it was taught. Words and numbers blurred when she looked at them, Tank could hardly write her name without messing up a letter or four. It didn’t take long for her to label school ‘hopeless’ just as her parents labelled Tank ‘useless.’ So, as a result, she was unable to read the documents, or what she assumed to be documents. After a little more than two minutes of flipping through the pages, she gave up trying. Dropping her left hand to her side, which was still clutching the four papers, she resumed staring at the swirling smoke drifting from her puckered lips.

"You got a license for those?" a small, yet commanding, voice broke Tank’s daze. A license, for what? She looked to her right, the direction from which the voice came, and saw a small girl. The girl was small in the fact that she looked young, but Tank knew better. She was short, shorter than Tank, and had a childish face. Her expression, though, was not childish in the least; the girl seemed mature for her age. She looked at Tank with amazing confidence, such confidence that Tank had to look away. She felt the urge to cover her eyes; to run from the alley where she wouldn’t have to confront a girl with such terrifying self-assurance.

“I-I um...” She wasn’t supposed to speak, she wasn’t supposed to speak, but she already broke one rule. It was a situation she had to get out of with words, Tank knew that, she just didn’t know how. She stole another two-second glance at the girl. She was holding, what looked like, a dirty stack of papers. Tank looked in her left hand at the, now crumpled, pages. They must be hers. She spoke as politely as she could, and whisked up the arm that held the folded papers. “Um... are these yours?... Sorry about the cigarette.” She grinned, which turned out to be more of a grimace. Her voice was dry and cracking, but she didn’t bother to clear her itching throat, Tank was much too nervous to do anything but stand there ‘smiling’.

((OOC: That's ok :D))