diademlogs | [ CLOSED ] june.

[ Even Kimiko isn't sure why she decided to check out the murder at the barbershop. It isn't like she was some keen investigator back home. She was the muscle, a crutch for men otherwise surviving on ordinary genes, their wits, and a bloody crusade. Maybe it was because of the cruelty of it all. Factions warring for a payout or, worse, ideology tend to leave more dead bystanders than anything.

For most of her life, she's seen it, by being on one side or the other. Never in the middle.

It's an emotion to pick through. She's had a lot of those lately, so left alone with her thoughts.

What was it detectives on TV always say? The guilty can't help but return to the scene of the crime. They want to admire their handiwork. Having tucked herself away in a little nook when she heard the back door being pried open, she studies the silhouette of broad shoulders, the cloying scents lingering on him hours or weeks after they should be relevant — pine needles, booze, metal. The mirrors lining the walls of the barbershop give her an even better angle. He looks like any other fluxdrift: weathered by poverty and desperation, built back up to survive. Hasn't she seen coats similar to his on local gang affiliates? When he starts to rifle through the desk, her eyes widen.

She's cracked the case, she thinks. Either he did it or he knows something. One of the two.

Across the floor, she moves as silently as the Shining Light taught her, her body kept low and her movements animalistic. If she can get close, she'll aim to bring him down with a single punch to the side; but pulled, her impossible strength held in reserve, because she wants to incapacitate and question. Not blow his intestines out through the other side. ]

[ His phone buzzes just before she moves. He glances down at it; not a lot of people have his number, and chances are high it's Charles or Rogue who need him. That's where his eyes are—on his phone—when it happens. She's practically silent aside from her steady heartbeat. He does smell her, though. Smells someone nearby, at least, buried beneath the stench of blood and rot in the summer heat. But she skitters up behind him quick. When he spins around to catch her fist in his hand, he's nearly taken aback by how fast she is—but he's fast, too, and maybe she can feel, through his grip, that his strength is...not exactly normal.

Jesus. Guess that goes both ways.

For a second, he hesitates—'cause he's realizing she is just a girl, a damn tiny one, too, and he's got no idea what the hell she's doing jumping him like that. If he stopped to think about it for a second, he'd figure out how this looks, but the problem is, he's not thinking. At least, not right now.

If she doesn't move through that split-second pause, he'll shove her back, hard enough to send her across the floor. Either way, his claws slide out, more reactive than anything. A beat where a part of his brain goes: probably shouldn't have done that, but it's a little too late. They're out, six long blades that glint in the dim light. ]

[ She doesn't expect him to catch her arm. His grip folds around her wrist, dwarfing it in a way that would be intimidating if she was anyone else, and holds it still with a strangely cold grip. Not because his skin is cold, but—

The last time she felt anything similar, Soldier Boy had his hands around her throat.

Looking up at him, there's a brief flicker of fear in her eyes. The shove breaks through, sending her skidding back a foot. She's mentally preparing to jump him again when the schikt of metal claws, of all thing, draws her gaze. Kimiko doesn't hide her puzzlement, the furrow in her brow vivid and pronounced and halfway down the bridge of her nose. He's like Popclaw, she thinks. That makes him even more likely to be involved in this murder somehow. The logic falls together like Tetris pieces.

On a foot, she's lunging forward. She gains the air, her own fingers curled into claws, and comes at him like a feral cat.

An extremely telegraphed feral cat. ]

[ That is fear. Flashes by in a blink, and if you ask him later, he won't able to pinpoint what he picked up on. It's not conscious—just a prick in the back of his head that makes him peer at her through the dark, feeling like something's not right.

She barrels at him. He plants his feet, takes her square to the chest with a grunt. They roll together. A mirror cracks against his back, scissors and combs flying. If she scratches him, the marks don't last—but he does bleed, and it does fucking hurt. Instinct nearly has him swiping back. He can see all the ways he can end this in a second. She's strong, but she's still flesh and blood.

Instead, all he does is try to grab her hands and get his legs under her so he can flip her over.

Fuck. This isn't—

The claws retract. ] Wait. Wait.

[ He speaks reason to a wall. Her blood starts roaring the moment he has her on her back. She's past the point of being able to collect herself, to think, to wait like he's insisting. She's in that basement after escaping from her cage; she's back in Shining Light's compounds, massacring children to stay alive. She's barely in the moment and his words go in one ear and out the other.

She's back on her feet the moment his claws retract, flipping up with impressive speed and control. She sees them through a haze of bloodlust.

The good thing about a barber shop? It's no garden shop, but it has plenty of handheld items of destruction just lying about. She's turned less likely things into weapons of death. When she grabs a pair of scissors off of a haircutting station and flips them so the sharp corners are pointed in the right direction, it's with a keen, brutal sense of purpose. She's losing grip on why she came here in the first place — to investigate a murder. All she sees is a dangerous man who won't go down. All she hears is a stream of cajoling Tagalog, the cruel commands that turned her into a weapon, and Butcher's throaty, exaggerated accent voice above it all. Kill him. Kill them. Kill anyone with superpowers.

With the scissors in hand, she lashes out toward any point of egress he gives her. He's not a small man. She has plenty of room to aim, plenty of flesh to strike. ]

[ Logan's got just enough time to register the lights in her head aren't on before she's back on her feet. He rolls to his at the same time. Glass crunches under his boots. She takes a swing, then another, but if she's expecting him to avoid being struck, well.

He doesn't.

What he does do is charge forward, swinging scissors and all. They bury into his arm, tearing through leather and cotton. It's not like he can't feel it—he sure as hell can, blood spurting from a nicked artery—but it doesn't slow him down. If anything, the pain shoots through him, a red hot lance that wakes him up and drags a snarl from his throat.

Either it's her turn to get out of his way or he's about to ram right into her with a shoulder that's too hard, too dense, for bone. Maybe it'll send her reeling, maybe it won't; he can't tell her mutation—and she's gotta be one or something close enough—but she's sturdy, that much is obvious. (Sturdy, strong, fights like a damn animal. Yeah, that'll give him something to think about.)

Just doesn't explain what she wants from him other than dead. And he can't find out until she's actually down. ]

[ The blow reverberates down her shoulder, her chest, her sternum. Pain blossoms in her arm as she's thrown back several feet. A barber's chair is knocked to the side by her trajectory; it's shoved violently into a mirror, cracking it noisily with slits as thin as spider silk. Kimiko collides with the far wall, her body crumpling. For a moment, she's on her knees.

Her shoulder is dislocated. Without a second's hesitation, she reaches over with the opposite hand and pushes it back into place. The crack of bone cuts through the stale air.

Strangely, sense is beginning to reassert itself as the pain in her arm subsides. Kimiko looks at the scissors half-buried in his arm and she can't quite remember putting them there.

Breathing heavily, Kimiko climbs back to her feet. A single finger is held up, attempting to tell him what he had told her a second ago— wait.

She looks around for a pen and paper. ]

[ Second mirror shatters under her. Logan stops himself from following through to finish things off. He waits, tension thick in the air, unsure if she's gonna dive at him again or what.

Then her finger goes up. He frowns. Okay. Logan doesn't relax, exactly, but he finally takes a second to yank out those damn scissors. They're buried deeper than most would be able to get on him, sunk practically to the hilt. The second it's out, the wound starts to close.

He drops it with a clatter. Just in case she thinks he might turn it on her. Part of him's aware of how much noise they've made, too. A toss up if somebody will come investigate or not. So far, he can't hear anyone outside, but.

His eyes track the girl across the shop. What's she...? The hell is going on. He spins around while she rummages. Jesus Christ, this is giving him whiplash. ]

What? What is it, what're you looking for?

[ She finds a small yellow notepad after a moment, but finding a pen proves to be a lot harder. She flips over magazines, gel bottles, opens and closes drawers until she finds a stub of a pencil. Leaning over the notepad, she writes something down in big, sloppy letters before ripping off the top slice of paper and holding it out at him. It's held at arm's length, her body language still quite defensive. ]

Why did you kill him?

[ Truly, she is the Miss Marple of her generation. ]

[ Truth is, she doesn't take that long to find what she needs. It's just that Logan's total patience amounts to a drying puddle in the middle of summer. He's opening his mouth to say something again when she finally shoves a piece of paper in his face. He blinks.

His eyebrow arches. One, because he's catching on that while she hasn't said a word—and either won't or can't—she obviously understands him; and two, that's not. What. You gotta be kidding him. That's what this is about?

One hand falls off his hip to gesture at the puddle of blood, sans body. He decides not to point out that he never bothers hiding a body if he's the one who made the corpse. Also, there's usually...more than one. Body.

Listen, anyway— (he needs a drink) ] Does it look like I killed him?

[ Alright, he's realizing that it doesn't not look like he didn't kill a man. ]

Well, I didn't. Unless you bashed somebody's brains in, I'm guessing we're here for the same reason.

[ Saw the blood, walked on in. Right? He's pretty sure if she was the culprit with nothing to lose, she'd be halfway trying to rip his head off still. Something made her stop. Just like something made him stop. ]

[ Lips thinning, Kimiko studies him. There's no sign of wounds between his knuckles. The blood-tipped scissors clatter to the floor and Mr Popclaw seems none the worse for wear. She had pulled her punches and she hadn't needed to. Even though the hits she took were minor, her head feels fuzzy. This no longer feels like Tetris pieces — a game she's barely figured out — falling discordantly together but some lumpy, pulsing tangle of yarn like that week she wanted to take up knitting before getting frustrated by her lack of progress and breaking her needles in half.

She writes down something else, rips out that piece of paper, and shakes it pointedly and emphatically once it's held out. ]

You came back to the scene of the crime!

[ Her expert interrogation technique, ladies and gentlemen. ]

[ Okay, now he's just exasperated. Logan sighs. ] I can't come back when I was never at it, kid.

[ He moves away from her, sliding further into the shadows and out of sight of the front window. He might not have cared who saw him earlier, but now she's here, and adding a third (or fourth or tenth) party to the mix is only gonna give him a bigger headache.

He hasn't got a whole lot to defend himself with, though. Technically, he is at the scene of the crime. In the end, he leans one shoulder against the door labeled STAFF ONLY underlined twice in sharpie. ]

You can believe me or not. Your choice. But I didn't come here to fight you.

[ Either he's an exceptionally good liar or he's telling the truth. She can decide that, too. ]

[ Her features scrunch together in a sullen little frown. More leaning. More writing. More ripping off the top slice of paper and showing him what might be her most important message.

Of all time. ]

I'm not a kid.

[ Really. Fair enough.

Since she's stopped accusing him of murder, Logan digs out a cigar from his pocket and sticks it between his lips. He points at her notepad with the lighter in his hand. ]

You wanna scribble down your name? [ He's gotta call her something. Or he's giving her a name, and she's probably gonna love that. ] It's Logan, by the way.

[ In case she's wondering who she stabbed tonight. Which, he's on his last shirt, so he'll have to figure that out tomorrow. ]

[ Scribble down, tear, show — ]

Kimiko.

[ Making another face at the sudden appearance of the cigar, skin around her lips wrinkling slightly, she waves off the worst of the smell and glances around the barbershop. Even if it is currently a crime scene, it's also someone's business, and—

They really took a sledgehammer to it, didn't they? And, well, her more than him.

While he stands there and smokes, she brings over a small wastebasket and starts to toss out the shattered fragments of the mirror. She cuts herself once or twice, but they heal up almost instantly, the seams of her broken skin closing back up like a zipper. ]

[ Kimiko, huh?

His gaze on her is curious. More than curious. She isn't the first he's met like him. Thought you were one of a kind, said Stryker. Nah, he's not. But he's close. Real close. The number of people who regenerate as fast as him, he can count on one hand over the years.

After a second, he cracks open the staff only door and emerges with a broom and dustpan. He shows up wordlessly behind her, thrusting it into her hands. If she wants. Or she can keep stubbornly scooping with her bare hands, which he's half-expecting her to do.

In the meantime, he picks up the scissors and shit that spilled over. Seeing as they've gone from wrestling to playing housemaid, he might as well. Speed this up so they can get the hell outta here. He's even got the decency to wipe his own blood off the blades. ]

Your abilities, you're a mutant, too?

[ A question, but it isn't. He's not sure, though. Things here aren't exactly how he knows them. ]

[ You're a mutant, too?

That word again. It slips in and out of her vocabulary, leaving a furrowed brow in its wake. She shakes her head, but it isn't meant to be a no so much as an indication of confusion. Is that the word for it? Did the Shining Light mutate her when she had the poor sense to survive her dose of V?

It makes her think of Butcher, again. Too much about this place makes her feel like she should be looking over her shoulder to make sure he's coming up the path behind, aiming her in the right direction. Fuck, she doesn't even like him, but—

I'm not your fucking gun, she had said.
That's exactly what you are, he had said. She's still waiting for him to squeeze her trigger, isn't she?

Once the mirror shards are off the floor, Kimiko writes something else down for Logan to read. ]

No. I'm a human being.

[ The stub of the pencil seems to have pressed the graphite on the paper defensively hard. The tip breaks as soon as she's drawn the dangling curve on the g. ]

[ Their word for it, anyhow. Logan leans over her shoulder, smoke drifting into the air. His expression shifts, quieter. ]

Hey, it's not like that. [ He wanders off, picking up what's left of the shit on the ground. His boots trail bloody prints across the filthy tiles. No one's looking into the murder—hell, he saw a cop walk right by it this morning, didn't even flinch—so his guess is, that's it. Owner will have to mop up the blood and move on. ] Humans like to call us freaks. We prefer something else.

[ It's not that deep. Shouldn't be, at any rate. It's almost...actually, it's strange to see somebody want to be aligned with the humans. That divide's been so fucking clear in his world. Has been for years. You're either human or you're not. And if you're not—nothing you can do about it except turn yourself over, according to the people in charge.

But she's more than that. He can't stop thinking about the way she came at him without a single thought. How she seemed surprised she'd stabbed him at all. He keeps playing it in his head. Maybe that's the reason he's still around, helping her sweep instead of taking off. 'Cause he remembers as much as he doesn't, all the times he woke up with his claws in somebody else.

His gaze sweeps over her for a moment. ] You've got anybody else here? Somebody you know?

[ Is she just alone? ]

[ Humans call them — us — one thing. We — they — prefer a different title.

As he does... what? Mr Popclaw is strong, resilient, with his weapons grafted to him. What damage can he do? He's talking to her gently, but it's only getting her back up further. She rubs at the back of her neck and tries to get her thoughts together. It's hard not to be tense. She's spent the last three years of her life being pit against Supes, being an asset of convenience, being reassured that her existence is as unacceptable as the rest of them.

He says he didn't kill the victim, but she has no proof.

He talks to her as if he's like her, but—

Over her shoulder, she gives him an uncertain look. The broken pencil stub is tossed aside. She's out of words. Turning around, she shakes her head. One finger up, one, and then she gestures to herself. She's alone. No Serge, no Hughie or Annie, no Butcher. No idea what to think or do. ]

Edited 2025-06-15 04:51 (UTC)

[ What damage can he do is a good fucking question. Annoyance aside, Logan's already moved past the accusation, doesn't appear interested in defending himself once she finally stops pushing him for answers he hasn't got. There's a scenario where she might've walked in on a worse picture, with a hell of a lot more blood and bodies, and it would've been him.

He doesn't need her to believe he's innocent. He's not.

And she doesn't owe him an answer, either. She's got every reason to be wary. He's still asking. He's asking because she is one of them in his eyes. However she might think of it, he can't see her as anything else. Different. The type of different that gets you captured and killed for no reason except that you exist.

They're out of pencils. Now he needs one. Damn it. He pulls open a drawer and scrounges up a shitty dried-out pen, figures it'll leave an imprint on the notepad. He scratches in seven digits: his number. The notepad spins around to face her.

Then he's halfway toward the exit. The offer's there. She can take it or leave it. Professor needs him back, anyhow. ]

Just no detective questions, you hear?

[ He ain't answering more of those. ]

Edited 2025-06-15 05:58 (UTC)

[ Standing over the notepad with its ghost of a phone number impressed down into the paper, she doesn't take it right away. He's moving toward the door and she doesn't want him to go, she realises. She wants him to explain that word — mutant — until she can pry apart the scant syllables into discrete, malleable bits and hold them with both hands.

But that's another vague, creeping feeling she doesn't have the words in her vocabulary to express.

No detective questions. A slight frown, and then a nod.

It isn't until the bells above the door have stopped jangling and he's halfway down the sidewalk that she rips the piece of paper with his number off the pad and shoves it into her pocket. ]

Edited 2025-06-15 16:10 (UTC)

[ CLOSED ] june.

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