[OPEN] You tell me of our future that you planned...

[denyamenti]

Characters: Bakura & OPEN
Date: February catch-all log
Location: Various around Khatronma for the first half of the month, then Keeliai and outside the city.
Situation: Assorted run ins. Open starters in the log, closed starters in the comments. Or add your own!
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings if needed in subject headers.


A. KHATRONMA DOCKS, LANDFALL, EVIDET
He's spent almost the entire visit to the continent in Khatronma, having not realized he was desperate to get away from Keeliai for a while until he was actually way from it. Once he was, the air seemed less heavy around him, and he began taking interest in the things he saw. The massive shipyards were fascinating, and the temperature controlled dome let him spend hours walking up and down the berths to examine them.

At the moment, he's stopped his wandering in favour of sitting on the edge of a personal boat shed, the door propped open and an older Bresilykian man inside, working on the overturned hull of a sailboat, or something like it. The Evidet native is keeping up a steady chatter of conversation, and seems to be mid-story about a sailing race that his parents met during.

For the sentimental content, Bakura doesn't even look like he minds. He's even listening, at least well enough to interject with observations and questions during pauses, but he's not carrying the prickly aura he normally projects.

B. WATER SECTOR, KEELIAI
back in Keeliai however, the weather was still bitterly cold. Unfortunately, he still had to go out in order to buy food and necessities, and the hassle of walking all over to find kedan who were willing to sell to Foreigners without ripping them off left him distinctly frozen. He would have been glad to return back to his accommodations had he not been stopped on the street by a crowd of kedan partly blocking the street that ran alongside the canal. They were pulling on skates and venturing out tentatively onto the frozen waterway, and one of them offers a pair of rudimentary skates to the thief.

"No," Bakura said, shaking his head. "Not interested. I don't know how, anyway."

C. JADE SCHOOL OF KUNG FU DOJO, WOOD SECTOR, KEELIAI
Bakura hadn't been here in almost a year (almost two years, if one counted the year that had passed in the Dreaming, and while he was away) and he'd only stopped because he'd been passing by while on his way to something else. But the something else wasn't pressing, and the dojo looked once again abandoned, and so he'd let himself past the low gate and onto the property. He wasn't sure what he expected to happen -- no angry elements came crashing down on his head -- and he touched the clean metal lock on the door.

Ryou must have put that on there. He knew that the dojo had been deeded to the teen when Korra had left the turtle. Now, with Ryou gone as well, it seemed as though it would slip back into disuse.

The lock takes only a moment to pick, and he leaves the door open to step inside. It's immediately obvious that efforts were already made to clean it, but that they hadn't gone very far. Bakura takes a quick tour around the building, making mental notes about what he finds, until he ends up back outside of the dojo's front entrance, staring up at the building with a contemplative frown.

"Hmm..."

Comments

C.

[unetrustworthy]

She had wandered there almost by accident.

A leisure stroll, or as leisure as her strolls were. Revisiting old landmarks. The dojo, from what she remembered, had once belonged to Ryou. Or had he worked there? She couldn't quite remember. All she knew was that it was a familiar sight to see him exiting the main entrance and--

...

...except...that...wasn't Ryou. It couldn't be.

Which meant...

"What are you doing?"

[denyamenti]

"Hemuiket," Bakura replied without turning around, as though Midii had offered a greeting rather than going straight for interrogation. "Deciding if the work needing to be put into this place is worth it. You?"

[unetrustworthy]

"Don't call me that."

Not as harsh as it had been before, but there was definitely a lack of pleasure in his continued insistence upon using the nickname.

"This place isn't yours. You have no right to be deciding anything about it."

[denyamenti]

Bakura rolled his eyes at her request. "Fine, what would you have me call you instead?"

He did turn around to face her at her firm statement refuting his ownership, mahogany eyes glinting with a cold sarcasm that matched his words. "No, you're right. Let's ask the owner what he should like to do with it. Oh, that's right, he's gone now. So with that plan of yours a clear failure, how about I go with mine?"

C!

[jinzhong]

Jackie has found himself in the Wood Sector on a Snake errand, but it's not so pressing he can't notice some movement in the abandoned-looking dojo. He remembers, a little guiltily, that Raine had asked him to keep an eye on Ryou - but Ryou had disappeared scant days after their conversation, and Snake business had kept him from checking up on Bakura either.

And judging by that shock of white hair - there was Bakura now. "Hey!" he said cheerfully, waving at his friend. "Didn't expect to see you here."

[denyamenti]

Bakura turns, and Jackie gets probably the closet thing to a smile, tired though it may be, that anyone's probably gotten from him since his return. "Akhekhu," he greeted, taking in the other man's expression and body language.

"You look like you're doing well."

[jinzhong]

Jackie smiles, actually looking happy for the first time in a while. "Yeah, things aren't going so bad these days. What about you?" Bakura looks a little tired, but it'd be rude to say so. Which is why he says it anyway. "You look rough, man."

[denyamenti]

That remark earns Jackie a smack, not gentle but not intended to hurt either. He appreciated the candor, and that Jackie didn't mince words. It was refreshing.

"Still better than last month," he answered, and he was. With the return of the Ring, he was slowly untangling the mental blocks that had kept him from using his shadow magic. It wasn't back to full strength yet, but it gave him something to focus on.

B

[wrathfulkhan]

Gene. Is. Fucking. Done. With. This. Fucking. Cold. Full stop!

He's been walking around on errands of his own, generating a little aura of ambient heat from the red ring - nothing too noticeable, but it's enough to keep him warm in this bitter cold. Doesn't stop him from running into the same skating snarl as Bakura, nor of being briefly annoyed by it.

"Good call," he says to Bakura. "I wouldn't attempt it either."

[denyamenti]

Bakura's got his head sunk down into the neckline of his coat, so that the collar came almost up to his nose. "It's like they're just looking for an excuse to get frostbite," he said grouchily. "I swear to Apis, if we ever landfall on the coast of a desert, I'm colonizing."

[wrathfulkhan]

"Hm, I might join you," Gene says, eying the kedan as they made their way out onto the frozen canal. "It'd be better than this nonsense. I hope we drift into a warmer current soon." Granted, a desert might be differently awful, but at least it wouldn't be this damnable cold.

[denyamenti]

Bakura was never happier in Keeliai than during that heat wave the last summer they'd been here for. On the frozen canal, the gaggle of kedan were starting to spread out on the icy surface, although when one slipped, the automatic instinct was to grab the nearest neighbour for support, which turned into a chain reaction on the ice. It was comical, and the longer they watched, the more amused Bakura seemed to get, even letting out a few restrained scoffs of laughter.

C - before landfall ends

[raavashing]

Wan had been through the Wood Sector only a few times since his return to the Great Turtle. As much as he liked the area, he wasn't usually treated as being welcomed by the Kedan and it tended to sour his mood pretty quickly if he was anywhere even mildly populated. He'd managed to get back to his old 'assigned' house and found it occupied by a family of Kedan. He'd chosen not to try and sneak in to get anything. The only possession of his he'd been remotely worried about was his teapot and Valdis had already been given it by Dante at that point.

But with the Kedan being friendlier following the race and landfall, Wan had started making his way back through his old haunts in the sector he felt most at 'home' in. Which had, in turn, unintentionally let him to the place he'd met Korra. The dojo where she'd told him of his future and her past and all the important things that were to come.

He didn't really notice Bakura at first while he stared up at the building, which looked pretty well abandoned. But when he did, he found himself surprised by that. ...or was it Ryou he was looking at? They looked so much alike it was hard to tell at a glance. But Ryou had never really shown an interest in martial arts as far as he knew. He was going to go out on a limb and guess it was Bakura, if he was wrong, and it was Ryou, then he could apologize.

"Bakura?"

[denyamenti]

It turns out that an apology will not be needed, as the Avatar has guessed correctly. Bakura regarded Wan in surprised silence for a moment, like he couldn't fathom why he was being addressed, before he inclined his head.

"Hello," he returned, before glancing back at the dojo. It had been Korra's originally, and the latter Avatar had loathed Bakura after his identity had been revealed for tricking her. The thief wasn't actually sure if Wan knew any of that, but he did know that Korra and Wan were from the same world, and thus assumed they'd talked about the dojo at some point.

"Come to make sure I don't burn the place down?" he added dryly.

[raavashing]

"No," Wan shook his head, surprised at the question. "I mean, unless that's what you're planning to do, then yeah, I'd want to stop you. At least until I had a chance to get anything of Korra's out of there. Otherwise..."

He shrugged, then hopped the low gate to join Bakura on the other side, closer to the entrance.

"I met Korra here. I didn't realize it had been abandoned entirely when she left."

[denyamenti]

"Relax, I'm not actually going to," Bakura said, rolling his eyes. "Abandoned... no, it hasn't been. It was left to Ryou when Korra left, but now..."

Now the teen had joined the ranks of those who'd vanished from Keeliai. It was ironic, that Ryou had been so upset when Bakura had chosen to leave... and then the teen himself had vanished. Ironic, and fitting, even if it had left a bitter taste.

A - Feb 6th

[highprofilerichkid]

Tony hadn't really wanted to leave the lab, but the kedan he'd been working with had started to look a little alarmed about how much work he'd been doing without taking any significant breaks for food or sleep. Though he has no interest in sleeping, maybe a walk and some lunch is a good idea.

Khatronma is a nice change of pace from Keeliai, and there's all sorts of new foods to try, so that's where he goes.

He's not looking for Bakura, but the man is certainly at the forefront of his mind, and when Tony sees him sitting on the docks talking to a Bresilykian man, he gives a start.

He stops. "Bakura?"

[denyamenti]

The Bresilykian man pauses in his tale after Tony speaks, nodding agreeably to show he does not mind being temporarily interrupted -- he has, after all, been bending Bakura's ear for the better part of an hour already -- and the thief turns to the younger teen.

"Hello herset," he answered. "Here to buy a boat?"

[highprofilerichkid]

"Uh. No." And what does 'herset' mean? "I was actually... Gene and I were talking about some... stuff."

He looks awkwardly at Bakura for a couple seconds. "...Can I buy you lunch?"

Translation: he's having dumb boy feelings and he wants to inflict them on you, Bakura. Quick! Run while you still can!

C; 9 FEBRUARY

[peacefullywreathed]

After Solomon's rather disastrous first meeting with Genis, he wound up going for a walk. He hadn't been lying about the errands--but a number of them were rather easily done and didn't occupy him for nearly the length of time he could wish. Others involved significantly more investigative work, which he had put off in the hope the weather might be more accommodating. Since he had the opportunity, however, he may as well get them done in spite of the cold.

At least, that was the plan. In the end he wound up wandering far more than he meant, frowning with thought while he tried to figure out exactly how he was meant to approach this situation. The late-onset irritation wasn't particularly helping, since he wasn't sure where it was coming from. Maybe it was just because this situation was so wholly unfamiliar that Solomon didn't immediately know what to do with it.

It had gotten colder, but Solomon didn't notice until he shivered violently and then looked with vague surprise into the sky. The wind blasted unexpectedly and he stepped into the eaves of the nearest building for some cover.

[denyamenti]

"It's a good thing," Bakura said through the doorway, loud enough to be heard over the keening of the wind, "that this is to be a public venue, else I might consider that trespassing."

But there's no note of threat in the statement; it's not said to chase Solomon away. It's not inviting, but it is acceptably neutral.

[peacefullywreathed]

The unexpectedness of Bakura's voice made Solomon jerk and turn, and then he huffed with exasperation at himself and the situation both. "I hadn't realised," he said, glancing up at the sign. He'd just been looking for cover.

But Bakura hadn't actually told him to leave, which the thief would have done in an instant if he fully objected to Solomon's presence. Still, it was nearly as awkward as walking into his and Raine's room to find Genis there--Solomon hadn't spoken to Bakura since Bakura left the Hotel, and while Solomon had done his best not to follow up on the man, the whole situation had left him feeling uneasy. As though there was something he was neglecting to do.

Well, Solomon had never claimed to be a very good friend. Maybe that was the problem; he was trying to be, without realising it. He wasn't, however, very eager to replace one problem with another equally frustrating problem, and had no intention of bringing up anything that risked so many emotions.

"I don't suppose you have any foils or other blades in there?" Solomon asked impulsively instead. "I'm due for a refresher. Assuming you're open, of course."

B.

[theideaguy]

It just so happens that Sokka is one of the people offering Bakura ice skates. He's just managed to finish a number of lengths of the canal, which means that Sokka will look a little bit cold. But he's still smiling about it despite how cold it is. "Oh come on, it's loads of fun! You gotta try it at last once. Besides, it's not hard."

[denyamenti]

"It's cold, the snow is wet, and if all doesn't go according to plan, there is the side possibility of drowning. What could possibly be fun about it?"

Truthfully, the kedan who were out on the ice did seem like they were having a good time, but they had shapeshifted themselves far former physical features than their norm.

[theideaguy]

Okay, this guy's an absolute party pooper. "Hey, that ice isn't going to crack and break easily," Sokka says matter-of-factly. "It's deep enough that it's not going to crack unless a two-ton elephant mandrill jumped up and down upon it at least a dozen times." And having lived at the South Pole for most his life, he's good at knowing. "The absolute worst that can happen is that you're going to fall down a couple of times and have some unfortunate bruises in the morning. Believe me, I know." He rub his legs rather tenderly at that.