carcajous: (167)
𝑳𝑶𝑮𝑨𝑵. ([personal profile] carcajous) wrote in [community profile] diademlogs2025-06-09 11:56 am

[ CLOSED ] june.

Who: Logan + Kimiko, Scott, Jesse
Where: Panorama
When: June
What: Catch-all for the month, including a little misunderstanding at the barbershop (oops)

Warnings: A bit of violence, probably!
pse: (pic#17904208)

[personal profile] pse 2025-06-14 06:12 pm (UTC)(link)
[ 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. ]
pse: (pic#17701306)

[personal profile] pse 2025-06-14 11:25 pm (UTC)(link)
[ 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. ]
pse: (pic#17904211)

[personal profile] pse 2025-06-15 12:20 am (UTC)(link)
[ 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. ]
pse: (pic#17652806)

[personal profile] pse 2025-06-15 12:40 am (UTC)(link)
[ 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.
pse: (pic#17787383)

[personal profile] pse 2025-06-15 01:13 am (UTC)(link)
[ 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. ]
pse: (pic#17787393)

[personal profile] pse 2025-06-15 02:36 am (UTC)(link)
[ 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. ]
pse: (pic#17904213)

[personal profile] pse 2025-06-15 04:38 am (UTC)(link)
[ 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)
pse: (pic#17787409)

[personal profile] pse 2025-06-15 04:07 pm (UTC)(link)
[ 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)