citynet | text | un: rico.dredd

[The one Ichigo’s holding is a margarita mix. Lime-yellow, a woman sunbathing in the tropics printed on the label. Just one brightly-colored bottle amongst what is basically a small horde of alcohol. A couple cases stacked on top of each other, against the wall, by the arm of the couch… looks like he cleared the whole damn shelf out.]

Nothing to deserve it here [he says, like a joke. Which is all it is. But the smile fades pretty quickly.] Seriously. I’m not lying to save face. I didn’t do anything yesterday I hadn’t before.

[Which makes this stupid, and there’s the rub.]

（ ahhhh okay but why is his entire life being scandalized by scantily clad women!!

this is the story of how, upon recognizing the sunbathing figure, he hastily turns the bottle back around while a persistent blush creeps up his neck.

ask him to face off against the highest known power in the universe and he will gladly punch that motherfucker straight in the face. ask him to flirt with a girl? the harder sell. in fact he'd gladly march off to uncertain battle to avoid it, actually. ）

Okay, so maybe it's not a first-time offense. Maybe it's something you did enough to hit their threshold of... strikes, or whatever. （ maybe he's talking a little quicker than normal in a frantic attempt to hide his embarrassment and Move On. yoruichi whomst, tbqh? ）

[Rico notices the flush - what's got him hot and bothered? He gets his answer pretty quickly when Kurosaki turns the label back around, and Rico laughs. Aren't you precious? That's fine, he'll appreciate the view instead.]

Yeah, maybe. [he says, dismissively.] Wouldn't it be nice if it was all written up somewhere? But as always... ignorantia juris non excusat.

[It'd sound a lot more dignified if he didn't take a bite out of his onigiri at the same time.]

（ he squints at the segment that doesn't get auto-filtered into japanese. some romance language, maybe? almost, he asks about it — but after a moment he just tucks the phrase away. there's more pressing shit going on. ）

Even if it was, none of the books are readable anyway.

（ he'd chanced to crack one open, been confronted with gibberish that seemed to shift even between pages. ）

So whether this is the afterlife, or some alien science experiment... maybe the point is just keeping us on our toes.

[~~I forgot how translation mechanics work~~. Also it's Latin, you philistine.]

Can't be the afterlife. [Rico says, with a conviction bordering on certainty. The reason is as simple as this;] I've still got scores to settle.

[A different kind of smile graces them, this time. An edge of viciousness and pride, hard determination. Rico appreciates the break, but he's got things to do and he's not dying until he's done with them. Doesn't matter if it'll take twenty years to get there. If he has to figure out what's behind this mystery of a snowglobe city, why he's in handcuffs or how to get out of them - he'll get there. Suddenly animated by a fresh wave of energy, he says in a voice like he's sharing a secret;]

If all of this is to make a point, I'll just have to make one right back. [He pauses briefly for dramatic effect. Also, because he's starting to feel a little woozy.] With a little bit of your help.

[Rico winks. Be a dear and help him out with the demonstration.]

Pick up the hammer, I'll show you something.

（ latin schmatin, this boy only cares about shakespearean anglais!!

also, the specific drive of certainty behind those words make ichigo go briefly still, his thumb shifting against the lip of his soda. not the afterlife, huh...? it's funny — for all he's readily accepted that there are people coming from different universes, and all that tangle entails... ichigo is on the fence about it. because if it was some normal plane of existence that's adjacent to earth, no one should be able to see him. it's just a fact of reishi and human awareness.

but that certainty doesn't solve anything, or give way to anything but the possibility of despair. instead of voicing it, he just shakes his head.

and picks up that hammer. ）

Okay. （ flatly. ） Now what?

You see this part of my hand right here? If tools don't work, usually a dislocation's good enough to get you out of a pinch. Usually.

[Rico awkwardly maneuvers to rotate his hands inwards in the cuffs, lightly tapping a ugly-looking area of his left hand.]

Look right here, that's important. If you ever find yourself in a fight, it's a good place to grab and pull back in a way nature never intended. Anyway, I'm not a brute-force kind of guy, of course. I know when it's time for a delicate touch. But if you hit it hard enough, you could break it. And if you break it...

[Rico snaps the fingers on his good hand, a click in the air between them. Neat, tidy. Absolutely the way it's going to go, obviously.]

Bingo, bango, bongo - my hand squeezes through. I'm out. Any questions?

（ nani the fuck. ）

（ why does he know so many people like this? no, seriously. why? who the hell did he piss off in the last cycle of samsara who clearly finds it fucking hilarious to keep chucking him at these zaraki-esque lunatics??

(he's one of them. kinda. didn't he tell someone to cut his arm off once to make a fight more fair? yeah, well —)

ichigo looks at the guy. and then at the hammer. and then at the guy. and then he puts the hammer down very, very gingerly (and far enough away that it's not within easy reach.)

deep breath.

possibly, he closes his eyes for a moment. whether it's to steel himself or offer a silent prayer to the souls of his ancestors is anyone's guess. masaki kurosaki, look on your eldest son and give him strength. ）

I think there's a few things we can try between now and breaking your hand. I'm not saying I'm against it, but there's only one doctor in town and if you ask me he seems like a quack, so...

Uh huh. Of course you’d think that.

[Rico does not suppress his smile very well. He saw your network spat, Kurosaki.]

I’ve tried a lot of things, Kurosaki. So you’d better have a fresher idea. [What really is the point of putting the hammer just out of reach? It’s not like Rico would have the leverage to do it to himself. But really, that's why he asked for the blowtorch. He is quickly running out of ideas, and options.] Do you know how to put on a hand splint?

（ he twitches faintly — and draws back into his own space to rub his left hand against the opposite wrist. ）

Yeah.

（ he's punched enough people. he fixed chad up once or twice, when the two of them were just stupid punks at mashiba. it wouldn't be a boxer's fracture, but he's reasonably certain he could figure it out.

(and he's no stranger to enduring pain just to get out of a situation. the human equivalent of gnawing off a leg in a trap.)

but — there's something else he can do first. didn't he already promise, he wouldn't keep his secrets just to keep them? he looks down at his hands for a long moment, and then flexes his fingers. they coil in against his palms, and then flatten outward with a breathy exhale. ）

Let's try one other thing. It's — safe. Don't get weird.

（ he's never quite forgotten inoue's fear.

he doubts dredd would be the same, and ichigo's made his peace with shiro, but it's damned unsettling for someone even in soul society, much less unaware of it altogether. he drags a hand up near his face. black energy uncoils from his hand, and it leaves a visible off-white mask in its wake, solidifying over and obscuring his features.

he can't hold the hollow form for long. it feels almost like it did in the beginning — a few seconds to make or break a fight. so, rather than waste his breath explaining it, he reaches out to coil his hand around the short chain between the cuffs.

a gran rey cero is just will and blood. a quick drag of one clawed hand against the bare palm of the other, and what follows is a miniature detonation. it's infinitesimal, localized to the chain, but there's an awful, vivid pressure to it — like detonating a star the size of an atom. almost immediately, the mask splinters and cracks, fragments falling away and dissipating as they do — leaving no physical material behind.

the cuffs, alas, persist. ）

Edited (how badly can i screw up html tho) 2023-07-23 03:48 (UTC)

[A spasm of darkness at Kurosaki's fingertips, lashed with red - the light playing over the bone-white mask and throwing glimmering reflections in the glass bottles around them. He says it's safe, but it doesn't feel safe. Rico’s eyes briefly widen in surprise… and then narrow in thought.

He could write it off as a parlor trick, the same way he wrote off Liu and his flashy red eyes - but he won't. That, he knows. It feels like - feels like the day the bombs fell. Something terrible compressed into a space too small to contain it, feeling the wave of pressure washing over him through the nuclear screens. That was how he knew what happened, even before he saw the red swallowing up the sky. He'd looked up. So did Joe.

He doesn’t blink when the sphere detonates and leaves spots in his eyes - but the chain spotless. Neither of them turned away, after all. His gaze immediately flickers to Ichigo's face, just a juve again. Plain-faced, ordinary. A walking psi-power in disguise.]

Mister Ichi-go, [Rico drawls, dragging down a mask of his own. There's no fancy lightshow here to show it. Doesn't give him access to a weapon no one can see, but it disguises the prickling agitation that's buzzing with increasing intensity. It looks like this: a quirk to his mouth, impressed despite himself. He doesn't get weird, the way he assumes it's happened before with Kurosaki.] You've been keeping secrets behind that dye-job! But I should've known - I knew there was something special about you.

[He didn't.]

So there's more to you than teacups and rude words. [He tsks, jangles the chain.] Shame it didn't do squat. What was it supposed to do?

It's not dyed.

（ it's said tiredly, as he gets up and goes to the sink to wash blood from his hand. the cut is shallow, just a faint incision pressed along the lifeline. he watches as the water runs pink.

as to the comment about being special, well. he's got nothing to say to that, and frankly it just makes him grimace. it's not like he could even deny it if he was inclined to modesty — he's the only one of his kind. a patchwork of things, stitched together by fate or circumstance until it became the sum of him. what he is has been a source of endless anxiety, fear and pain for those he loves most in the world. how many fights has chad lost just to buy him time? how many times has orihime worked herself exhausted healing him? even ishida defied his own father to stand at his side. he'd never do them the disservice of wishing now to be normal, it would be too much like spitting on their sacrifices.

instead, as he turns off the tap and inspects the tiny injury — satisfied it won't continue to bleed — he continues, ）

It should've blown the chain apart. A cero at close range can vaporize pretty much anything.

（ he debates how much of the mechanics of reishi and reiatsu he wants to explain, and finally decides none for the time being. it's one thing if dredd asks. it's another to just volunteer information. ）

[Ichigo isn't the only one carefully watching blood dribble from the papercut on his palm. There’s a cost, Rico realizes. Nice of him to chuck a couple creds into the ‘get me free’ fund. There's obviously a long story behind his weariness, and he can guess at half of it. If Kurosaki was from Rico’s time, he’d have been hiding it for a long time. He'd need to keep it a secret if he hadn’t been picked up by the department young enough. Unregistered psi-talent carries one to five years in the cubes, let alone the use of it. Not to mention gangs, crime lords, enterprising individuals, "friends" with wild schemes and get-rich-quick pipe dreams... A resource forever, a person second.

If he's confident it can vaporize “pretty much anything", you gotta wonder how the guy came to find that out.]

Cero? You mean granola? [Rico says, in an innocent tone of voice. He winks. He can keep a secret. I can try throwing granola at it, he said. The little liar. Now - is Cero a cutesy nickname Kurosaki came up with in isolation for his own power, or specific, learned terminology?] Don't worry. I can keep my mouth shut.

[He cranes his neck at the sink.]

You need a bandage for that boo-boo, little buddy?

[Rico, he's only like. 5. years younger than you.]

（ the joke about granola gets some of the tension to bleed out of his rigid posture. he exhales like someone centering themselves in the moment, and then — ）

Why, you gonna kiss it better, old man?

（ look, two can play that punk-ass game, and ichigo has zero compunctions against weaponizing that age difference in his favour.

he is, certifiably, a Little Shit. he shakes the remaining water off in the sink, and then turns back around. grabs a hand towel just to finish the job. ）

But, uh, I'll be honest — if the substance it's made out of is that strong, that's... getting into a whole new problem. Even if we do your plan, if the cuff has some mechanism to tighten, you could lose the hand.

（ the time on irreversible limb death varies, but the agreed upon average isn't exactly generous. a few hours, maybe, and then the only real fix they'd have outside a highly skilled and staffed OR is amputation. ）

[The idea does give Rico some pause. But not enough. No speed-heal machines here. If there’s an hospital around here they don’t have access to yet, there’s no one to figure out how the more complicated medical equipment works anyway. No vat-grown replacements, no cybernetics… An old-school recovery, all the way.

Oh well. You’ve got to spend money to make money.]

I’ll risk it. [Cavalier, dismissive. One might say - who needs to look before you leap?] The thing comes off in a day. And besides - [Rico wiggles a finger underneath the cold metal cuff, demonstrating the slight space it leaves him.] Couldn’t get my hand through, but it didn’t stay any smaller when I stopped trying. If it really doesn’t work, I’ll back out and figure something else out.

[For an Dredd, it really is as simple as that. And enjoy the four weeks of recovery time, I guess.]

（ well, it's not any more insane than urahara severing his soul chain.

and he kinda gets the feeling that if he says no, dredd will just do it himself. and quite possibly get more fucked up, on account of it.

(why are so many of his male acquaintances made on the heels of doing grievous bodily harm to one-another? maybe she's born with it, maybe it's shō(nen)belline.)

so he sighs as he sits back down, already halfly resigned to the lunatic plan. but he's not really any more convinced it'll work — or maybe whoever slapped him in cuffs is convinced no one would go that far? hard to say. hell, maybe he'll wind up in cuffs for the act of causing bodily harm to someone else. seems like the city's got some weird-ass rules he can't say he cares to follow at the best of times. ）

Fine. But take some of the nerve blockers first and let them kick in. I already worked out you're tough — you don't need to prove it.

[Grievous bodily harm is probably just a male bonding thing, honestly.

And yes, Ichigo would be right. He would've bashed his hand against the very convenient, very immobile edge of the marble counter right there. Rico rolls his eyes, and gropes at the table for a marker pen, lying between several bottles. Uncaps it with a loud pop, and while he's scrawling a messy purple ink target on his left hand - ]

Try to get it right the first time. We're trying to get a clean break here, not play whack-a-mole.

[The only thing worse than having a bone broken is having a bone broken in several places. There's a word of wisdom for you. Rico flips the pen around in his hand. Taps the other bottle Kurosaki brought with the end of it, and the clear liquid inside wibbles invitingly. Must be the nerve blockers. That looks heavy duty.]

Alright, nurse. You know where to stick it?

More or less.

（ his dad would literally murder him if he happened to show up now, hollering about doing this shit without the proper training. straight up dropkick him through a wall. ichigo's never exactly had a yen for healing the same way as his old man. but he's watched him do more than a few injections for carpal tunnel sufferers.

but he takes a breath, and tries to visualize the anatomy involved.

if inoue were here, they could just cut the damn hand off and have her fix it. it'd be the easier (and frankly, probably less worrisome) procedure. he's got a lot more experience lopping off limbs than doing impromptu medical procedures.

after a moment's consideration, he lifts one shoulder in a shrug. ）

Median nerve. Give me your hand.

（ he rummages through the bag, coming up with a syringe still in its pack. he rips it open, pulls it out of the sterile packaging, scans the pamphlet on the nerve blocker itself. all he needs is the dosage per kilo. rico's probably got twenty on him, so that's an easy calculation to make, and then he draws the plunger back to fill it, needle jabbed through the little rubber filter at the bottle's top. ）

Don't — squirm or anything.

（ but there's not exactly any hesitation to his doing it. once he identifies the proper spot, it'll be done and dusted asap so long as rico doesn't have any strenuous objections. ）

[More or less is good enough. Rico gives him his hand. Lays his arm out, palm up and fingers curled loosely. Doesn’t tense up when the syringe approaches, watches the needle push in past his skin with the bored look of someone who’s entirely too used to having this particular medical procedure performed on him. A little pinch, and - there it goes. All in.

If Kurosaki really wanted to screw with him, this would be a good opportunity. He could withdraw just a bit more of that liquid than he should, and Rico would never know.]

It’d take more to make me squirm. [He can feel it working as he twitches his swollen thumb, the warmth working its way down. Or - not feel it, to be technical.] So what have you done since our last chat? Get up to anything fun?

Edited 2023-07-27 01:45 (UTC)

（ he snorts as he leans back, capping the needle out of inherited habit and setting it aside. well, the fact he didn't immediately yelp and haul away is probably a good sign he did it properly. but ichigo's watching him just the same. just in case. not that he really knows what he'd do if he just caused a medical crisis, but. you know. something. ）

You seriously don't have to make small talk, Dredd.

（ look, ichigo's pretty self-aware. he doesn't think anyone's looking for an answer to that question that boils down to wallowing in depression. he knows, too, that it's a weakness and a habit of his — succumbing to that backslide that feels almost inevitable and has, historically, required one of his friends to (literally) kick him out of it.

he's fine with not having much purpose or direction, as long as he has people around him. in lieu of that, he needs something to strive for. but in an immutable city where all the power at his fingertips amounts to nothing and he doesn't know anyone? yeah. let's just say he's not at his best.

but it's no one else's problem but his, which is why he gets up out of the chair and sidesteps around the counter to put an extra bottle of the asked-for juice and the rest of the onigiri away in the fridge. ）

For the record, though, I'm pretty sure I can't do a liver transplant.

（ like,,,, sir, are you a dragon of all things dionysian? ）

[A smirk quirks up the corner of his mouth. Small talk, guilty as charged. Thought he'd call it gathering information. He is genuinely curious as to what the juve is doing, how he's handling the circumstances. Not everyone's a former judge, after all. And he's never met a cit who impressed him with their backbone or intelligence. Still, the people here are... different. As evidenced.]

Don't have to, [Rico agrees mildly, flexing his hand.] But I was just curious.

[Nothing to do but wait for it to finish kicking in. If it hasn't been made clear by now, he's always up to something. Sitting still and getting bored isn't for him. And you've only got so many hours in the day when you've got to sleep for at least five of them to function. No rest for the wicked, or something like that. And just because of that remark about liver transplants that he's going to politely ignore -]

I'm sure you've got a lot of worries locked away. [Just like his powers. What else is in there?] Isn't there someone at home who's missing you? Like your daddy doctor?

（ said with a snort as he closes the fridge — ）

Ah, my old man's pretty casual about the whole parenting thing.

（ he has never doubted his father loves him, not once — but the guy's way of expressing love was more kick to the head than home-cooked meal. by now, isshin has to know he's gone — but whether or not that's translated into missing him is hard to say.

he leans against the countertop, arms folded. ）

I've got kid sisters, though. They'll worry.

（ in wildly different ways. yuzu will stress-bake and karin will go beat up jerks at the soccer fields or something, and that'll be that. ）

There's casual, and there's casual, Ichigo. [he drawls heavily, with an only slightly mocking attitude of 'really?'.] You've been missing for weeks without a word. Your sisters are, but he's not worried you've been kidnapped for your 'talent', or chopped up into itty bitty pieces by some psycho and buried in a pit?

[Unless he has a habit of taking off without a word on a regular basis. For all Rico knows, maybe he does. Psi-talent must make things complicated. He must be a daddy's boy. That's judging by the way he accepts his father being "casual" about parenting easily - sounds more like a way to excuse his father than an easy, breezy 'no big deal' - and how he ran here to play nursemaid, and blew his carrot-top on the network about the sanctity of the medical profession or whatever. Rico lifts one shoulder in a shrug. Joking, wry. Entirely constructed.]

Absent fathers, right? Sorry to hear that, buddy. [And as if throwing him a bone;] Guess he thinks you can handle yourself.

[ Maybe not physically absent if he helps out at the clinic and has clearly picked up a few things, but maybe in other ways. The smile he gives is supposed to be sympathetic, commiserating - but the one that actually comes out is as bitter as used caf grounds, underlaid with sourness and the glimpse of a foundation driven into something deeper. Not envy, never envy. Who needs family, anyway? Who needs siblings that worry? All they did was betray you. Never understand you either, but worst of all - never even try to.

Also, who's projecting on the motives and attitudes of father figures? Not Rico, surely.]

（ it's funny, how sometimes people give things away without meaning to. there's a long moment where he just looks at the guy, reaching up idly to scratch at his cheek — and then ichigo makes a sort of tche sound as he pushes himself away from the counter and comes back over to where rico's got his hand laid out on the countertop like a science project. ）

It's not what you think, （ he says finally. it's contemplative more than defensive. like he's trying to work out for himself how much he's going to give away.

rico's the first person that's seen him use his powers. but that doesn't mean that he wants the guy to have a free peep show into his entire life, either. ） and I didn't say he wouldn't worry. I'm sure he will. But he's not going to put his life on hold for it.

（ the clinic was closed exactly one day after his mom died, before isshin flung the doors back open and ushered one and sundry inside. ichigo remembers that people had put flowers on the front step, and how his father had taken all of them and put them in vases around the clinic, strange bright spots amidst the maelstrom of howling grief he felt. yet, he never really saw his father raise his voice, or cry, or do any of the usual things that followed loss. at the time, it was like having a foot in two worlds. one world where his father seemed and acted normal and it was like nothing had ever changed, and the other, in which his mother's absence could have sucked all the oxygen out of a room, and he lost hours staring at the fast-moving water at the river's edge, wondering if the monster would come back for him.

(and it did. but that's a story for another day.) ）

He's got people to look after, and he'll put his focus there. My sisters are just kids. （ said in the tone of one who surely does not lump himself in that selfsame category. ） You're right, though, that he knows I can look after myself.

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1/2

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💥🔨 just man up

i mean, would not be the weirdest thing he's done to an ally

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cw: medical/needle chatter

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