Description: Pás, left injured and tormented by her painful loss to Wellington Sr., takes some time away from her team to deal with old ghosts. There, she is stumbled upon by none other than the leader the rival team: Tenma Kiryuu. He is treated to witnessing a rare, uncharacteristic side of the mysterious Brazilian girl, and in turn, Pacific Resistance are now treated to unexpected allies in the fight against Preston's father.
Winter night or not, Southtown never gets THAT cold; sure, it snows now and again, but the island on which the metropolis sits is very nearly subtropical, keeping it from knowing the truly frigid seasons of many other Japanese cities. Regardless, the water is a bit too cold for swimmers, and it's nighttime besides, leaving the beach pretty much empty. At least, that is, for one figure.
Tenma Kiryuu is out on patrol, if you want to get technical about it... It's a major responsibility for members of the Gedo Gang, to ensure that an ever-increasing stretch of Southtown remains free of obvious criminal elements, and so babies keep their candy, and little old grannies don't get their purses snatched out from under them. Vigilatism as extracurricular activity: It beats sitting at home watching variety shows, anyway.
So, in his 'winter' school uniform - his old school's uniform with Gedo pins attached to the high collar - Tenma trudges along the cold beach, by himself. There's other members of the gang not /too/ far away, but the leader of the Guardian Kings is generally seen as someone who can take care of himself. Wrapped in its blue cloth sheath, his bokken rests against his shoulder, held loosely in his right hand as he walks, kicking up sand now and again.
It's been a boring night, so far.
The winter night leaves the beach silent as most graveyards. However animated and alive it seems in the summer months, crowned by the fiery horizon meeting the blue waters, tonight this place resembles the moon, cold and bone-dry, silent and airless and dead. The air is too cold to smell distantly of the sea, and the little light casts down on dead, unmoving waters.
Boring doesn't even begin it.
So boring that it takes more than a bland eye to notice that the Gedo protector isn't the only person here. Far across the expanse of bleached sands, almost glowing in the soft, diffuse light, there is a second figure occupying the beach. It seems to be sitting far down where the sand meets the water, so far out that if the tide were in, it would no doubt be enjoying tonight immersed in waist-deep water.
For one to journey closer, or maybe even squint in a patient way, it is really a she, a lone girl seated on the white sand as she hugs one bent leg, her chin nestled against her own knee. Blandly, she stares at the water, her body as still as the sea is tonight. Maybe they're having a staring contest.
It's funny too; not far from here is where Tenma first met that mysterious Brazilian girl, what seems like forever ago. But then, for a teenager, a few months is practically a lifetime, isn't it? A long-suffering sigh escapes Tenma as he stands there, slouching a little. "What a waste of time," he grumbles, the beach being pretty vacant of /anyone/, much less anyone that might be causing trouble.
And then, he notices someone, dark blue eyes widening faintly.
As he draws closer, Tenma realises just who it is that he sees sitting on the beach, down by the water, and he frowns slightly to himself before continuing.
"Ain't you lookin' gloomy," remarks the familiar voice of the leader of the Guardian Kings as he steps up behind Pás, doffing the bluish-grey, high-collared uniform jacket he wears and, without so much as asking or anything, dropping it on her shoulders. It's cold, a girl might freeze or something, especially the capoeirista who doesn't seem to own any actually covering clothes.
But the only reason Tenma performs an act of consideration like that is because there's nobody else around to witness it.
And it is Pás, familiar and unchanged... except for that look on her face. There are no secret, promising smiles playing across her lips. There is no sleepy mystery veiling her heavily-lidded eyes. They are open now, staring at the world with anything but her usual dismissal, staring harshly out on the soundless water. Even more strangely, she isn't wearing as little as she usually wears, but her choice of a simple, flimsy tank top and a clothy skirt are sure testing the winter weather.
But, as bothered as Pás looks, it looks unlikely that it's because she's cold. She hooks her arm around her right leg and hunches forward, her long hair moving when the icy breeze carries in off the ocean, and she just stares and frowns. She's thinking about something, and hard, so much that she doesn't even hear footsteps, doesn't even see the flicker of movement at the edges of her peripherals.
Pás doesn't even realize she's alone until Tenma speaks up. And she doesn't even realize it's him until she turns her head to look. By the look on her face, he's caught her entirely by surprise. She stares up at him, her expression honest and unarmed where it's not smudged with old bruises and half-healed gashes. Her upper arms wear a matching pattern. But even that pales in comparison to the way her left leg looks, laid out carefully along the sand and braced meticulously at the knee.
For a moment, she looks as immobile as her leg is, unable to do much but peek up at her new company with nothing short of confusion. "Pescador?" Pás stammers. "...Why are you--"
Her words snuff out when his coat drapes over her shoulders. The Brazilian girl just looks like that doesn't happen too often to her. She's usually encouraged to undress, not cover up. She looks away in time as colour rises faintly in her cheeks. "You should not be here. It is too late for the beach."
Hmm, that would explain it, wouldn't it? Tenma's eyes narrow a bit at the sight of Pás' injuries, all the more reason for her to keep covered. Catching a cold won't help her heal up! The knee brace, though... "Hmph," he mutters, hunkering down to sit on the sand beside the Brazilian, setting his cloth-wrapped bokken down beside him. Without his jacket on, it's clear that the sleeves of his pristine white dress shirt are rolled up to his elbows, the top two buttons of the collar undone... But he still looks markedly more formal than he usually would. "Could say the same t' you, Dakini," is Tenma's ultimate response, glancing over at her again.
Seeing her like that, injured - crippled even, if not too grievously - and looking like all that mystery and joie de vivre has gone right out of her, seems... Wrong, to Tenma. He can't quite put his finger on why, but it bothers him. Deeply. He turns to look out at the water as well, and for a long time, he's absolutely silent, letting the girl have her space.
"I ain't gonna press you or nothin'," Tenma says, suddenly breaking the silence again. "But if you wanna talk about it, I'll listen." Whatever 'it' is, he doesn't know... But it's clear that something serious, perhaps even traumatic, has happened. "Otherwise, I'll just sit here with you." Because it beats walking around. He has no other reason!
Leave it to Pás, while wearing the most clothes Tenma has ever seen her in, is now left feeling at her most exposed. She had come here neither for the view nor the foreboding scenery best left to backdrop brooding, but because she was sure that right here, on the surf at low tide, she would be left alone. She wanted to be alone very badly, away from her teammates, the school, and the rest of the world. She needed to be alone in order to think the dangerous thoughts she has now in her head. It only works that way.
And her mind had been in a horrible place when Tenma's coat fell onto her shoulders. She was remembering a day, over and over again, that she had not really let herself think about in a long time. Or maybe not at all. But even if she's dismissed it for so long, she can still remember it as clearly as yesterday. Guilt has a way of making you remember the little things.
But it changes the moment he sits down and declares himself her company for tonight. Pás just looks unnerved. Here she is, alone on a dark beach with only her thoughts, and for all her famous immodesty and televised undressing, she is looking very much like someone who is hiding. And very, very much like someone who would never have expected /him/, of all people, to catch her here and looking like this. Normal people feel naked like this for wearing less clothes in front of others. Pás feels naked for other reasons.
Still flushed in the face, feeling vaguely uncertain, and biting her lip when she hears him sit down, Pás takes a moment to compose herself before she finally turns her eyes back towards Tenma. His implication gives her pause. She considers immediately brushing it, and him off, acting like she always does, playing the part of the terminally unconcerned, but she can't seem to work up the heart. She feels too tired.
Instead, she just exhales, letting his coat remain draped over her, tiredly returning her chin back to nestle against her knee. After a long stretch of silence, her murmury voice returns in a windy, ragged sigh. "Shiu... talk... I am lousy at talking," she admits suddenly, humoured in a sad way. Her eyes turn back out on the water. "I don't think I've ever talked once in my life the way people do. I am not a very good person. Maybe you can help fix this, Tenma. It has been a bad week."
Helping people with words really isn't something Tenma considers himself particularly skilled at; for all his cleverness and cunning, for all his seeing himself as generally super awesome, he knows he's a man of action first and foremost. When it comes to running his mouth, well, he's usually better at being an offensive smartass than he is at other things. "Yeah, well, I ain't no great shakes at talkin' either," he allows, with a slight shrug of his shoulders. "But s'never too late t' start somethin' new, I'm told."
His head tilts to one side, away from Pás, looking at her sidelong with his dark blue eyes. "Why d'you think you ain't a good person? People gettin' on your case 'bout not dressin' like a nun or somethin'?" The bad week mention though, that draws his eyes to her knee again, to her other injuries. Well, it sure looks like she's had a bad time, yeah. "I'll help if I can," he says a moment or two later, quietly but seriously, turning his gaze back away from her a bit awkwardly.
Looking away, his remark about her usual fashion sense makes her smile, however one that brings a sad slant to her eyes. She brushes a palm along her white skirt amusedly, her fingers playing with its hem in a detached good-humour. But Pás doesn't answer that initial question on purpose. Instead, she seems to marinate in a deliberate silence, watching the ocean while Tenma gives her injuries another appraisal. She seems inclined to start doing an impression of some marble statue, stepped off its mantle and roughed up around the edges... at least until he speaks again, the marked difference in his voice earning her eyes.
Pás looks over at the Guardian King as he looks away, her face blank of anything but its encroaching confusion, an expression she seems to be wearing more and more in his company. For those moments, she's half-stunned, torn between feeling touched and trying to tell him what's happened. Looking away again to center herself, she exhales, the incoming explanation already bringing a strange darkness into her face. "Preston is gone," she admits, her voice low and toneless, with no fuss and no preamble. "It is his father... he is here and took him back. But it's all wrong. His father hurt Marisol. I tried... I could not touch him. They need help. I'm..." Pausing, the Brazilian narrows her eyes, focusing them at nowhere as she tries to think of the word. "...Useless to them now."
Well, see, Tenma is more complicated than most people think. He has layers, like an onion. Also like an onion, he's good at irritating people. Nevertheless, like he said he would, he simply listens to what Pás has to say, remaining silent until she finishes her train of thought. Fathers, huh? What is it with adults, always thinking that kids don't know anything at all. Sure, it's their job to raise the younger generation, but sooner or later people have to start making their own mistakes and learning their own lessons.
A strange feeling forms at the pit of Tenma's stomach, as he thinks about this father of Preston's, whoever he is - and clearly, he must be strong to take the hulking Brit away against, much less to have hurt Marisol badly and the Brazilian besides - doing what he's done. In a way, Tenma realises he shouldn't care; Pacific Resistance are his enemies. Would they think twice if it was Tenma himself, or one of his teammates who got hurt? But, nevertheless, there's that sickened, heavy feeling in his gut.
He doesn't like it.
"Yeah, you are," Tenma agrees, nodding once. That's a pretty harsh thing to say, Kiryuu. But gentle words aren't his specialty, coddling people against his nature. "Some guy beats you up, an' suddenly you're no good for anythin'? Bullshit. Everybody loses once in a while, don't matter how strong y'are. Part that matters is what'cha do afterwards. Think you can protect your friends sittin' out here feelin' sorry for yourself?" He turns to face her now, challengingly, his expression fierce and focused. "You get beat, you get back up again, an' you get stronger'n before. You get beat again, just means y' gotta keep gettin' up an' gettin' stronger. Anythin' else, you might as well lie down an' die." He pauses, and for a moment his expression almost softens. A little bit. "An' I wouldn't like if if you did."
There is some part of Pás aware of, or respectful enough of Tenma Kiryuu not to expect any sort of comforting, consoling words out of him. It's simply not his style.
However, his choice of words manage to gain her immediate and full attention. Pás apparently has some pride left to look surprised. She turns on him, her moonlit, ambery eyes alert and wide, their incredulous edge the only emotion sharpening the dulled, blunted set of her face, and all its finely-honed blankness. She looks as though she must have put hours into making her face look the way it does, allowing only room for a cool anger and nothing else. And then Tenma had to come along and ruin it.
Her eyes try to narrow, her eyebrows try to knot, her mouth manages to tic on one corner, but Pás never manages to finish an entire expression while Tenma speaks to her, otherwise finding herself force-fed his sudden lecture out of nowhere. Even for someone as easy-natured as her, it's hard to digest. As he speaks on, she starts to get spirited about it. Pás especially flinches when he accuses her of being out her to pity herself, her eyes flaring and her jaw steeling, her back even straightening against the challenge she can read in his eyes. Her expression twists between injured defiance and despair, the two emotions engaged in bloody war across her face, until it becomes so much she has to rub along one cheekbone to break up the brawl.
Not even saying a single word, the Brazilian emphatically turns her eyes off Tenma, looking back out on the empty ocean and its unmoving, mirroring water that looks anything like what she feels inside. At her side, one long-fingered hand into a patient fist, but she does nothing else. She seems content to remain sitting there, staring, and doing everything it takes not to ruminate over Tenma's harsh words.
She fails miserably.
Without any sort of warning, not even a whisper of it, that mysterious, unconcerned Brazilian suddenly pushes herself fiercely to her feet, Tenma's jacket falling away from her shoulders as she limps, half-dragging her left leg to get upright. The moment she has her balance, she turns on him, facing the young man urgently, the look on her face one he, nor anyone else, has ever seen before.
Pás looks winded, flushed in places and pale in others, her dark eyes a little too bright, and her lips dried by her quick, shallowed breathing. She looks afraid.
"What I do afterwards? What if there's no afterwards?!" she asks breathlessly of him, that careful, toneless voice of hers louder, higher. "What if it's too late? This is not a competition, Tenma. This is not a game where you get your rematch!" She pauses, turning away and forking one hand through her hair, pushing it back, needing to take a moment like she'd forgotten how to breathe. But Pás always recovers quick. She turns back. "What happens if you fail and it means that someone dies? How do you get stronger after that? How does that make you strong--?!"
The time it takes realization to sink in, for your own ears to hear the words you've said... that's about where Pás suddenly stops, limping a little and looking disturbed. Whatever that was... simply wasn't her style.
It doesn't take a genius to realise there's something more going on here than just the whole 'Preston's dad beats people up' thing. Tenma's eyes narrow faintly in realisation, and the corners of his mouth turn down slightly in a frown. Not that he's less than frowny about the rest of it; Pás with an injured leg seems wrong somehow, like a bird with clipped wings. All that freedom that seems so essential to who and what she is, stolen away from her.
Worse still, she has a good point.
Slowly, in turn, Tenma rises to his feet, not bothering to pick up his cloth-wrapped bokken, or his uniform jacket laying forgotten on the sandy beach. He's starting to realise just how little he really knows about the Brazilian girl, and that makes trying to help her even more difficult than it already is. But of course, he's Tenma Kiryuu. If he puts his mind to it, he can do anything, right?
"I dunno," he admits, a bit helplessly. He's never seen anyone die before. It was a close thing perhaps, during Jinchuu, with all the many and sundry things that happened, but... "But they aren't dead, are they? An' neither are you. So it ain't over yet."
For a long time, that strange Brazilian girl is silent, whether it be because she's humiliated over her outburst or that she's contemplating Tenma's last words. Maybe it's a little of both. There she stands, favouring one leg with her arms crossed tightly, though the gesture seems little like she's trying to ward out the cold, but to hang onto something and keep it in. Perhaps whatever it is that keeps her eyes dry.
Sobered, with her hair moving in the chilly sea air, with wet sand clinging to her white skirt, Pás seems to take great effort in looking anywhere that isn't Tenma Kiryuu, her own face turned away, her eyes lowered to watch her bare feet. But she hasn't forgotten about him there, because she speaks again, her voice a little raw. With little warning, she suddenly asks of him, "Why do you do this, Tenma? Why do you fight? What's your reason?"
"Only thing I'm any good at," is Tenma's immediate response. "S'how I was raised, with my family's martial arts an' all. But..." He has a lot of reasons, really. It's fun. He wants to get stronger. And, truth be told, he does try to protect people. He's really taken to the goals of the Gedo Gang since he started going to the school, though perhaps he doesn't always seem the type. "Maybe I got a better reason now, huh? I got friends who need my help sometimes, an' there's all kinda bad guys 'round town who could use some cleanin' up."
But is that a good enough reason? So far, it has been for Tenma, though he's never really faced a true crisis of self like the one Pás is in the middle of right now.
So he steps closer to the Brazilian girl, his eyes studying her face. It... Hurts him, kind of, to see her this way. "Why do you, Estella?" Oh snap, he used that name again!
As he speaks, she listens, gazing down at the white sand that clumps damply between her bare toes. She likes his reasons. They're good ones. They're not too different than hers. And hers...
That name hasn't yet lost its effect on her; as soon as it's spoken, Pás casts a bemused look back on Tenma, watching his eyes with that legendary patience of hers. She's trying to decide whether she should answer his question. Whether she wants to. After a pause, her arms slowly uncross, lowering to hang quietly at her sides. She turns, dragging that leg of hers that's been braced against bending, finally willing herself to face him. Even then, her eyes still divert. "I do it for my mother," she replies, slowly, steadily, but in a voice that is so very small. She has never told anyone this. She has never wanted to. "She was the only person who ever loved me. She was murdered, and I did not stop it. I do this so it cannot happen again."
Sympathy is not a sensation Tenma is used to feeling. Feeling bad for another person... It's something that doesn't mesh with his whole 'abrasive delinquent' persona, so he tries to keep it forced away, to not let himself experience it. But Pás, though some sort of warlock powers or something, seems to have an uncanny ability to do weird things to Tenma's head, to break down carefully constructed barriers. And when the Brazilian relates the tale of why she fights, those barriers get crashed through headlong, with the sort of recklessness Pás always shows the world.
Tenma doesn't know what to do. He doesn't know what do say.
So he just does the first thing that comes into his head. Stepping closer to Pás, Tenma rather awkwardly reaches out and tries to pull her into a hug. Many times, they've touched; fighting, or the Brazilian's various acts of ignorance towards personal space, or the time in the hospital where he ended up supporting her, but this is different. This is simple human contact, an attempt by the primeval part of Tenma's brain to show a connection to another person, to show that they're not alone in the universe. "That ain't true," he says, regardless of the relative success or failure of his hug attempt. "Your friends love you. Red an' the rest." How does he know? Because that's how it works! Shut up!
For someone with no concept of personal space, Pás sure notices when Tenma invades hers. She never even had a chance. Swiftly evicted from that dark place her mind was in, where old memories where giving her dark eyes a gentled, faraway look, reality hits her hard, returned to her in the form of two arms hooked around her body. Her limbs stiffen, her weight teetering on her lame leg. Her spine goes straighter than a rifle. Her hands splay their fingers uselessly at her sides, flexing as though they were suffering electric shock.
This is different.
For many moments, she doesn't know what to do. Her eyes look over Tenma's shoulder, staring mindlessly up at nowhere as though she were begging the dark skies for help. Pás has been on the giving and receiving end of so many touches, the most torrid of them, but never ones like this, and never when she was at her most disarmed.
For someone who prides herself on her fearlessness, she's too scared to move. She swallows thickly.
Then he speaks to her. Her eyes crease. And then he gives her something she has never had for years, not since she was small, not since she had her mother... it's reassurance. It's all too much. For a moment, she can't think. She can't breathe. She doesn't even really know what it is, but it comes out of nowhere and it hits her hard. Suddenly, she's fiercely returning Tenma's hug, her fingers grabbing fistfuls of his clothes like someone trying to hang on. She doesn't say a word, doesn't make a sound, but her tears are hot against his neck.
It's funny how these things happen; nobody is ever going to accuse Tenma Kiryuu of being good with people. Particularly members of the fairer sex; he's simply too abrasive, too inconsiderate, too insensitive... Except for right now. Right now, Pás has too strongly touched the more caring and, well, /human/ core that he keeps tightly wrapped underneath layers of his carefully-created persona for him to turn her away, or leave her alone to her grief. So he holds her close, and he tries to be exactly what he thinks she needs right now.
Tenma never lost his mother, after all. He never stopped getting reassuring hugs when he needed them, however cold and distant and generally disapproving his father might have been of him needing them at all.
So he's kind of surprised actually when the Brazilian returns the hug with such ferocity, and when he feels the wetness of her tears against his neck. He doesn't say anything, or try to reassure her or calm her with more words. He just hugs her tight, and lets her cry herself out if that's what she needs to do.
And if she ever tells anyone about this, he'll probably die of embarassment on the spot.
Reanimated like a lightning bolt, Pás loses track of the time she spends simply clinging to Tenma, her fists wringing shivering handfuls out of his dress shirt. She is disturbingly silent as she hugs desperately onto him, crying without any sort of a fuss. It's only how she buries her face against his neck and those hot tears that would ever give her away.
Pás doesn't know when was the last she ever cried. Sometimes it is hard to remember, and sometimes it's all a blur, but she's never been sure if she even cried for her own mother. She's not a crier. She just doesn't do it. She's not built for it, not ever. But here she is, crippled and hugging onto a boy who should by all means be her enemy, and unable to think about anything but that sudden, strangling sensation that makes her feel like she's going to choke on her own insides unless she gets this out.
She spends a long time like this, moving little, saying nothing, not even letting herself shift away long after those messy tears have stopped. The fact that she is crying is a secret only for him; she gives no evidence it may have ever happened except for the dampness at Tenma's collar.
Soon enough, her hands slowly relax, letting him go finger by finger, her clinging arms loosening little by little. Finally, she shifts backward enough to free his neck of her weepy face, turning it aside and away to smear discreetly at her eyes. The death by embarassment seems to have already started on her. Breathing unsteadily, and thankful of her long, wavy hair to help hide her face away, Pás takes a moment to find her voice before she even tries using it. "Perdão," she blurts without thinking the instant she can, only realizing her wrong language a heartbeat later. "--I'm sorry, Tenma."
It's probably for the best she's not a wailing crier or anything. Wouldn't that just be really awkward? Loud sobbing and caterwauling? But honestly, he doesn't seem to mind letting Pás cry it out, and who knows how long it takes... Tenma just stands there, holding her close. It's weird for him, he's never done anything like this before... Usually if he makes somebody cry it's not somebody he wants to comfort afterwards. Especially somebody he shouldn't want to, somebody who should be his rival, his enemy. Somebody who at least two of her friends would try to send her to an exorcist or something for having even touched Tenma, much less cried against him.
But, for various reasons, he'll never tell anyone about that.
"Tch... The hell are you apologisin' for?" Tenma wonders, doing his best to sound like his normal self and not like some genuinely caring individual. "Said I'd help if I could, didn't I, Estella? Said I'd listen." And he means what he says. "Wasn't expectin' a wet shirt collar out of it, but I'll live."
Pás has no problem bearing any last inch of herself for all the world to see. But Estella de Santo is taking her time before letting Tenma see her face. Unwilling to meet his eyes just yet, her head unsurely turned away, she absently leans her chin on his shoulder and listens to him speak, his gruff voice doing wonders to center her.
When he mentions the wet spot on his shirt, her hoarse voice exhales out a papery laugh, and she smiles, half-amused, half-apologetic. "Ufa," the Brazilian sighs with good-humour as she finally turns her head back, her smiling going crooked as one of her hands catches his damp collar to dry it earnestly with her thumb. "Ai, Tenma," she jokes, with just a tinge of self-deprecation, "I leave a mess wherever I go."
Finally, she gathers the will to look up at him, shifting backward to try to meet the Guardian Kings' leader's eyes. There's a reason why Pás was hesitating. Hers are red-rimmed and raw, her face tear-streaked, puffy, and pretty much looking like anything but that grinning Brazilian who fights fearlessly for the world to see. She just looks like some girl who's been crying. After a shy moment of staring, she finally lets herself get weighed again with seriousness, admitting suddenly and tiredly, "I don't know what to do. I don't know how to fix this."
It continues to amaze Tenma just how strange it is to see Pás like this; but when someone works to hard to compose a specific persona for the rest of the world to see, seeing them without it has got to be jarring. Imagine what will happen when and if someone sees Tenma without /his/ 'game face' on. Cats and dogs, living together. Mass hysteria! His dark blue eyes look into the Brazilian's red-rimmed brown, and he frowns a little, looking more serious than he usually does. Estella's sudden admission doesn't really surprise him, so he has a response pretty well prepared ahead of time.
"Like I said, you kick that guy's ass," Tenma explains, as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. Which, of course, to him it IS. "Get the rest of your friends together and jump the son of a bitch. Don't fight fair, don't play nice. Beat him down 'til he's crawlin' on the ground on his belly, an' then spit on him an' get that giant British freak back. Hell, if you want I'll get Hakuya an' Ashima an' Voronkova together, an' we'll help out." Did he... Did he just offer to HELP Pacific Resistance? Is he high or something? "Or you can sit here an' feel sorry for yourself. But that seems pretty dumb, if you ask me; ain't it always better to do somethin' than nothin' at all?"
He speaks and she listens, her teary face forced to tenant a grim look. Pás watches Tenma like she's listening intently to every last word, because she needs all the advice she can get. And, boy, does she get it. He returns wielding his familiar words of before, the blunt ones that call for action, call for all the rage and intensity her heart may no longer be feeling. Or so she thought.
...Did she just hear him right?
He did. He just offered, not only his own help, but assistance from his team -- Pacific Resistance's own enemies. And however dismissive Pás is to the concepts of ambition and competition, is not blind to the rivalry that binds these two teams. Too many times she has been the front row audience in witnessing Tenma and Marisol's mutual dislike. Not even Estella herself is too sure if the two leaders' shared animosity even goes as far as contempt, but even then... what he's offered is really special.
It's enough to change the expression on her face. The Brazilian leans backward, tucking her jaw so she can look Tenma dead-on, her normally heavily-lidded eyes watching him widely. She stares at him, blinking owlishly, as her forehead slowly, bemusedly tightens into little furrows and her full lips draw pensively at the corners. Her face weighs with pointed confusion. She doesn't know who he's doing this for, if it's for herself, for her team, for preserving that burning competition between them, but she decides she doesn't care about that. She's touched.
She's also suddenly leaning forward, before she's even realizing it herself, to steal Tenma's mouth in a fierce kiss -- a quick, violent one that tastes equal parts passion and appreciation.
She breaks free, one hand idly twining her fingers into his collar to tug on it, the side still damp from her tears. Even though her eyes are a little red, Pás' familiar grinning has come home. "Thank you, Tenma Kiryuu."
Intensity. That's a good word. It's an important trait for a fighter, too, even one who prefers to be laid-back and easygoing, at least on the surface; without intensity how can you give anything your full effort? And if you don't give your full effort, why even bother showing up? Tenma has no idea just what effect his words, so seemingly uncharacteristic of him, might have had on the mysterious Brazilian - she's someone he simply can't get a read on, no matter how he tries - leaving him caught totally offguard when Pás up and kisses him. It's weird how this keeps happening; at least this time she isn't doing it just to shut him up, though.
The Gedo swordsman remains pretty much poleaxed throughout, and looks thoroughly confused once the girl breaks away from the kiss, dark blue eyes wide. "Whu..." he starts, furrowing his brow, before he finally finds actual words. "Hmph," Tenma mutters, glancing away, embarassed by the thanks. "Just don't tell anybody, they might start gettin' ideas 'bout me bein' all nice or somethin'," he says, playing the delinquent to the hilt.
But, deep down, he's glad to see her grin like that. Tenma just won't admit it aloud, beyond a muttered: "...You're welcome."
Leaning back and tilting her head, her features paused in curious amusement, the Brazilian looks on when it's Tenma's turn to glance away. Nonetheless, much of the underlying tension exhales out of her body, and she mollifies visibly in its place. It's been a long time since Pás has let herself cry, and because of it, she's all the more sensitized to the physical fatigue that usually follows a good emotional release. She's too drained to even stay miserable. It might not be any solution, but it's sure a relief.
He's also got her smiling again, and that's definitely a start.
When Tenma, so very quietly, answers her sincere thank-you, Pás just grins crookedly, acknowledging it with a characteristic wink of her left eye. Finally, she starts to step backward, limping against her injured leg, lingering nearby in the white sand. Not too far away, the sleeping sea has begun to reanimate, the tide slowly lapping inward, while a chilly breeze picks up from the water, ruffling the girl's long hair and playing with her white skirt. Half-heartedly, she lifts an arm to pull her wavy hair from her face, long tresses of it getting in the way of her devilish grin.
Much more playfully, she replies, "I cannot tell? Oh... but I am already thinking of having it written on a shirt that I wear everywhere. What do you think?"
Pás gestures along her white tank top, blocking imaginary words as she teases. She even starts laughing half-way through. "Guardian King Tenma Kiryuu Pescador Is So Very Nice And Soft To Hug!"
There's no way all of that would fit on a shirt, the text would have to be tiny! And any girl with a chest large enough to wear that shirt and have all the words be legible would probably have some really severe back trouble! Tenma, however, isn't thinking about the logistics of it so much as he is huffing in embarassment and colouring faintly. If he weren't already looking away, well, he would be now.
"Yeah, yeah, sure... An' I'll be sure t' tell everyone how Estella Maria de Santo, who calls herself Pás, is deep down a big ol' crybaby. In fact," Tenma adds at a sudden thought, a supremely self-satisfied smirk suddenly replacing his embarassed look of mere moments before. "I think I'll be sure t' say that before my next SNF match. I mean they broadcast that stuff live, all over the world..." So, turnabout is fair play, right?
That is so not fair. That's playing dirty! Pás, who had been quite enjoying herself to laugh at the priceless look on Tenma's face, suddenly rearranges her own when he comes back with a threat of his own. And his is so much worse! She just gapes at him, her eyes wide but still good-natured, her amused outrage trying to make up for all that seriousness it had to endure. "Psiu!" she says at that, crossing her arms pointedly, refusing to fall under duress. "Then you could not sleep again! Because," the girl explains loftily, pointing a threatening finger, "I would get you when you're sleeping. Right in your bed, Pescador." The warning is low, grave, and dangerous, but her grinning lips speaking them are not.
Backing up again on her half-hitched step, and feeling so desperately thankful to have her spirits back, it's not long before Pás starts laughing again, fixing Tenma with the most yielding and innocent of looks. "But I know you would never do that," she intones, grinning rakishly as she threads her fingers together theatrically, "and do you know why? Sim, my friend Pescador, he is much too nice! He is biggest sweetheart in all of Southtown! Awwwww!"
"Ha, like you'd go anywhere /near/ my bed," Tenma says, challengingly. Of course, she wouldn't! Pás might be rather risque and all, but she'd never go into some strange boy's bedroom, right? Much less do anything in his bed. ...Right? Not to mention she doesn't have any idea where he lives, at least so far as he knows. It's probably for the best if he doesn't linger too long on this line of thought, because it can only lead to extreme paranoia.
Instead, Tenma just snorts at that 'innocent' look from the Brazilian, about as convincing as a politician's protests of honesty, before he finds himself on the receiving end of the most slanderous lies that ever were uttered by human lips. "I AM NO SUCH THING!!" Tenma protests loudly, getting huffy and embarassed again. "I just thought I could cop a feel if I played all sympathetic an' supportive," he lies, because he's a lying liar. But a lying liar trying desperately to protect his image.
Simple things like unknown addresses and locked doors are meaningless to Pás. She's like water. She gets into everything, leaving messes in her wake.
In the wake of Tenma's vehement denial, the Brazilian girl only laughs all the harder, covering her mouth with one hand to try to stifle her incessant giggles. Soon enough, it dies away into her usual smiling, and glancing away, the young capoeistira lets herself relax, shifting her weight and idly letting the foot of her injured leg press toeprints into the wet sand. "Humm," she says in the meanwhile, feigning hurt, "is that right?"
Perhaps a more skeptical, insecure person might be led on by Tenma's fierce redirection, and then go as far as trivilize the last few minutes as something much less than it was. But Pás doesn't believe him for a second. Still, she ends up pretending she does, because that's probably best for them both, and their collective pride. Folding her arms contentedly, looking over her shoulder, she angles the Gedo fighter a coy look. "Then that was a very smooth move. You had me fooled, Pescador."
Yes, it's probably for the best for both of them if they just pretend like this never happened. They both have too much pride in the version of themselves they present to the rest of the world to rest easily knowing that someone saw so clearly through it to something else - something more vulnerable and sensitive - underneath. Their soft, ill-defended emotional underbellies, as it were.
Still, Tenma isn't entirely sure what to say as the capoeira girl plays along with his charade, after everything that happened in the past few minutes. Life is strange that way. "Yeah, well, I'm a better actor'n people think," the Gedo swordsman says finally, which is a statement that works on more levels than he was really intending it to, but there you go. Casually, he stoops to retrieve his cloth-wrapped bokken, not yet taking back his uniform jacket. "'course all the cryin' ruined the mood," he adds a moment later, with a firm nod.
Slowly, pensively biting down onto her bottom lip, her heavily-lidded eyes only deceptively raw at their corners, Pás watches Tenma a few moments longer than necessary. She only looks away with her face starts to colour. Whatever is going on in that wily head of hers, it keeps her quiet for the next few moments. She glances over again when she sees movement out of her peripherals, noticing as Tenma takes back his trademark weapon. She notices his jacket nearby, left forgotten along the damp sand, and with her half-hitched pace, slowly steps towards it, favouring one leg visibly as she bends down to scoop it up.
Stepping back towards Tenma, Pás extends her arms, appearing to be giving him back his jacket -- until she shoulders it on, herself, adjusting the collar to her liking. It's hers now.
Still, she tries to leer in close, tilting her head and slanting the warmth of her body close to his, her dark eyes peeking up to catch Tenma's blues as Pás reaches out to draw a lazy finger down his chest. "Shiiiu, Pescador," she retorts, not quite letting his last remark go so easily. "Wait until you are no longer the virgins. You will be used to girls crying all the time."
Hey, Tenma needs that jacket! The tall young man starts to open his mouth and say something when, once again, there's a Pás all up in his personal space, dark eyes peering into his. "Tch, shows what you know." Yeah, he totally is a virgin, but he can't admit something like that. It wouldn't be cool at all! Not in the least bit! "The only cryin' girls would do then is with joy," he adds, boastful as ever. He might actually be incapable of thinking himself as less than super awesome at anything.
"I'd offer t' demonstrate, but I think you're probably more innocent than you're lettin' on anyway, so..." Gesturing vaguely, Tenma grins the smuggest grin that has ever been seen in this or any other lifetime, and shrugs his shoulders as he rests his bokken against them, starting to back away from the Pacific High girl. "Ah, the coat looks better on you anyway," he declares, as if it were in any way up to him whether he gets it back.
Crossing her arms one more, and giving her head a shake in a long-suffering way, the newly-jacketed Pás replies Tenma's perpetual arrogance with her perpetual amusement. When the mystery of her innocence (or possibly lack thereof) is called into question, she exhales a sharp, half-shocked laugh, lifting one hand to her mouth, either to cover the crooked grin there or to mask the blush that begins to rise in her cheeks. It's not every day she's accused of being decent, and it catches her off-guard.
Peeking back up in time to watch him begin to linger away, she too relaxes her body, her sloppy grinning training itself back to her sleepy smiling, as her hands absently slide into her new jacket's pockets. His compliment makes her eyes lower briefly, almost nervously, and looking back up with her face flushed because of the cold and for absolutely no other reason, the Brazilian girl lets herself go solemn one last time. "Thanks, Tenma," she says simply, and for more reasons than telling her she's pretty.
Well, Tenma is unconventional. He's just like that. "I meant what I said 'bout helping," he replies a moment after the Brazilian's simple, solemn offer of thanks, shrugging his shoulders slightly again. "You know where to find me," he adds, before his serious look fades back into that cocky grin of his, and he turns on a heel. "Oh yeah, an' you better hurry up an' get better, 'cause I'm gonna beat your ass next time we fight, an' I don't want you usin' your leg as an excuse!" Tenma declares without looking back, loud and strident and arrogant as ever, as he trudges away across the beach, back to the other Gedo students patrolling elsewhere along the beach and boardwalk. After all, he was technically here on /business/.
Log created on 21:35:43 01/17/2008 by Pas, and last modified on 00:15:59 01/31/2008.