Description: Her aim was to be a shining star, a light of hope. For so long, it wavered in the face of extremely challenging questions and uncertainties. She faced down those of truly hateful paths - even those who wield the same power as herself. Now, in what may seem like an odd chance encounter with the problem-riddled Howard Rust... she may now embody the star she has always wished to be for people. This light, however, may end up shining for far more than one person.
Howard Rust is having an ordinary day. One can tell you it is ordinary because it is absolutely horrible in today's chaotic climate. Especially with the whole 'another student rioting and managing to destroy more than a few classrooms' bit. It's gotten so bad now that they're halting classes for the indefinite future.
Guess whose job it is to start fixing things up?
Rust's.
Guess who isn't getting paid in the interim?
...Well, for once, pretty much everyone. For sake of continuing his personal misery, though, let's just say Rust.
A certain someone he met by chance some time back illustrated to him how his friends maybe, just maybe, need some more down to earth help that he could provide - something that's proving difficult. He can't find Antoine, Quon is still a wreck and living in fear, he doesn't know what to do about Zach... etcetera, etcetera.
Least he's glad he restocked on coffee at home and actually bothered to wash the coffee pot. He's going to need like two pots tonight, he gathers, as he tries to figure out where the hell to start looking tonight for Antoine again - soon as he can get back into his apartment, at least, plodding along the parking lot at a rather lethargic pace with the usual joint pop or crack as if to serve as a beacon for his continued presence.
It's late in the afternoon and there's a general disquiet in the air - not just here in Southtown, but virtually worldwide. Something's going wrong, something's going down. Instinctively, every human likely holds a primal fear of what's about to transpire... even if they can't put their fingers on it.
There's been a lot of things for Howard to try and get a finger on and sadly, he only has ten to work with.
What to do, what to do...
The global nature of what's been going on started to settle in when Farah got a call from her father, about her mother the reporter now being fielded by the network she is a reporter _for_ has now been sent to wander the Middle East to report on the things that are going on in the world. The news catches her by surprise; after all, her mother is the hard-hitting critical journalism type, not so much the 'hay fighting world!' type. In short, things are officially Serious Business.
Not that Farah needed that to make this sort of assertion. She can feel it in her gut, every day, getting worse and worse... a sense of dark foreboding, now overwhelming her. At one point she felt like it was something she could do something about, a force she could fight back against. But now? Now, she feels overwhelmed, cowed by the darkness... not the least reason being, she has felt quite alone lately as well. Where are the members of her team? Where are her friends and colleagues? Are they safe? One by one students are being pulled home from her college, fleeing back to their home countries. Only Farah has had the fortitude to stay, perhaps because her father encouraged her to. The city feels empty, and the sky is grey and flat, the wind all the more terrifying and sorrowful for its weakness.
As she walks the street, hands in her jacket pockets, the Egyptian's memories travel, for some reason, back to sunny summers on the shores of the Mediterranean, walking barefoot in the sand under a burning warm sun. Will those days ever come back...?
Up to the front door the man goes... and, surprise, surprise! It doesn't budge. A low frustrated grunt escapes his throat as he gives it a couple more useless tugs. Goddamn door has to be stuck again, it's--
Oh wait, there's a note.
'Due to violence, locking access to apartments except by tenants - see landlord's office to receive key.'
The older man snarls. God damn it, the office is /inside the building/, why the hell didn't he know this before he left for work at like 5 AM today? A part of him thinks, hey, you know, maybe he should just force it open... until his eyes fall upon the bottom of the note.
'P.S. Howard you break down one more door, swear to God you're evicted.'
Still sore about the time he kicked down the door after that thing with Brian Battler, huh. The older man grumbles and rests his forehead on the door. Son of a bitch, he was waiting to come home to some of that really good coffee stuff he bought.
He knows that dock worker Jack comes home in a few hours, maybe he'll just swing by just before he comes back... if he even has the key to get inside now. Or he could just hope someone else just coming home does. Someone, anyone.
Turning back to the parking lot with both defeat and desperation, the aging man with a combover that increasingly seems to be gaining traction to looking in better shape than the man it rests upon heads back to the colorful rows of cars, across the sidewalk, being ever-so-hopeful to just see someone leaving their car so he could ask them--
He looks up again as a certain young woman just reappears, once again. Is that her? The one from... yeah, it's her, he thinks. He doubts she's moved in or anything of the sort, but... maybe, just maybe, no matter how silly the idea is that she'd be able to get inside...
"Uh... hey," the older man clears his throat, raising his right hand up a ways towards Farah. "Farah?" That was her name, wasn't it? He hasn't had a great track record with names lately.
For a moment, in her wind, Farah really is back in the beach walks of her youth, caught between the hazy white brightness of sand and the endless sapphire blue of the sea. It's probably not the safest reverie, at the moment; the last time she just went out for a walk, she got assaulted by someone and almost ended up in the hospital. But this vision is, perhaps, her one little ray of hope and sunshine in a world more or less devoid of it at the moment. 'Farah!' yells a friend, in the distance, and she pauses, twirling around, opening her eyes to wave at the speaker...
She finds herself on the cold grey sidewalk of Southtown, having turned toward Rust almost on instinct at that point, either subconsciously -- or perhaps via sixth sense -- reacting to the Pacific teacher's hail from inside her little trip down memory lane. The result might be a little disconcerting for poor Rust, too; Farah at first seems quite happy, then undisguisedly disappointed, and then considerably embarrassed, all in one sequence. Her waving arm slowly pulls itself back down to more shoulder height than 'wave across a beach height,' but to her credit, she waves her fingers at Rust in greeting once reality sets in.
"I was having," she says quietly, "a nostalgia attack of better days. Sorry, Mr. Rust. It's nice to see you up and around and well, after the last time we met."
When met with that weird mix of facial features, Howard's own face expresses plain, easily read confusion - this isn't who he thinks it is, is it? He's about to say 'uhh, sorry, thought you were someone else,' though further confusion applies to the continued wave.
"Yeah?" He asks, as though wondering on the spot if he really truly /has/ seen better days. His time in Southtown has been met with one problem after another for the most part... but it remained, all in all, a better alternative than staying in that small hometown of his.
So he'd like to think.
"For a, uh, for a manner of... speaking, I, I guess," he rubs the back of his head. His left arm's out of a sling and his nose may be slightly more crooked after Cammy nearly killed him outright with that single kick. Clearing his throat as he realizes that his voice is beginning to trail off to mumbling, he pats his chest. "'scuse me. Uh... how you holdin' up? Just... just gettin' back after the work day, findin' out that, that... well, they locked the goddamn building down."
He's irritated and inconvenienced, indubitably.
That news surprises her, until she remembers where Rust works. Pacific High... where wealthy children of diplomats and captains of industry attend, among many others. The idea that those parents would call their children home doesn't surprise her, once she gives it some thought, and thought she doesn't speak, Rust can again watch the parade of expressions wash across her face like a newsreel: surprise, then realization, then acceptance. In the end, she can only nod dully, bringing a hand up to her cheek in a gesture of contemplation.
"It's not just the high schools," she adds carefully, trying to make him feel a little bit better, though there's probably not a lot that's going to help when it comes to the sort of day Rust has had. "Colleges, too... I even saw a few stores in Southtown Village boarded up. It doesn't surprise me that people would be thinking of their own safety right about now..."
There's a pause, and for a moment it seems like Farah has come to realize something else... but this is a less 'happy' realization, and her gaze drops down to the cracks in the sidewalk, the corners of her eyes pinched with frustration. "I suppose only people like us who can defend ourselves bother to do things like take walks, anymore..."
"'s a real mess," the shop teacher slash handyman slash man of an ailing fighting career sighs out loud as he rubs his own neck a bit out of habit. There's another obnoxious pop to go with it as he gives it a nice, vigorous rub.
A stiff breeze picks up, debris rustling along the sidewalk and roads. Newspapers, cups, bottles... a shopping cart with a stray cat trying to take a nap inside of it, all of which just adds to the emptiness. The way how society just has seemed to, for the most part, stop.
"Every night, been... been lookin' out for a friend," he says in a low voice as he straightens himself out. "I dunno... dunno where the hell he's been, but, but he's gotta be out there somewhere."
He grunts again at the apparent futility of a lot of it. "He got, he got the same kinda madness that... that guy did. From, uh, some time back."
Just the mention of that particular brand of crazy is enough to jar Farah, perhaps because even her brief psychic link with Brian Battler was enough to drive home the intense, mind-warping qualities of that darkness... never mind the more extensive one she shared with the fire-wielding African who ambushed Farah lo so many months ago, looking to kill her. The Egyptian visibly shakes when that topic comes up, caught up in memories as momentary and as vivid as her reverie about the beach a few moments before.
"At least..." she starts, then falters. Does she really have the right to console Rust about this? She hasn't heard from Wang, or Denji, or even Makari for some time now. Maybe they fell victim to this darkness? The idea that might be true sits like a lump of cold lead in the pit of her stomach, before she decides to forge ahead. If she can give him a little hope then what's the harm? "At least it seems as if they are alright, other than... their behavior," she finishes carefully. "At risk, obviously, but it's not as if that power is hurting them."
As the breeze cuts through the air, the Egyptian huddles inside her jacket a little more, pulling it closed a bit. It's a light jacket, of course, but the idea that she might be chilly in the middle of summer in what is probably daylight is absurd. "It's all making my heart restless," she says finally. "I don't blame you for being anxious. I think it's brave of you to keep looking."
Hope... who has any left, these days? A lot of people seem ready to just throw in their lot with that cult that seems to know most about what's going on. Others are just silently whimpering in the corner, awaiting what they may think the inevitable.
Others, like many who can fight, seem to be lost and looking for answers that can be obtained through their meaty, powerful fists.
"No, no, it's gotta," he starts to trail off in a sharp response to the idea about the power not hurting them. He saw how Antoine strained in that drug rehab place that couldn't do anything at all for him - how he fought so hard to keep that corrupted chi in check. He slumps his shoulders a bit as Farah shivers.
A newspaper flies up behind his head, largely unnoticed (but probably highly amusing) at Farah's admission of his personal bravery.
"I, I remember what you told me," he tells Farah as he takes stock of the fact there's a newspaper on the back of his head, bringing his right hand behind his head to pull it away. Pages flap in the breeze, one or two escaping his grasp from another strong wind that goes by.
"Then there's... there's another friend of mine, and... and I dunno how to explain it," though, a part of him wonders if he's broached the subject with her before, "but... but he says that, that... that he couldn't control his power, power that's... that's different from, uh, from most people," despite the breeze, there is the stink of sweat - he thinks to wipe some of that off with the newspaper, grasping it in both hands as he starts to fold it up. "And... and I just don't know where to start wi--"
His eyes catch something. The newspaper slowly unfolds, holding it up closer to his face.
"...Hold on a sec," he starts to mumble. Based on his head movements, it doesn't look like he's looking at the words as he starts to turn his body around - as if that'd give him a better look.
He is definitely looking at a picture! It's one of Zach Glen and Yuri Sakazaki during their battle in a Las Vegas casino from some time back.
One of his hands rise from the paper, and rubs at his neck as though stroking some sort of neckwear that isn't there. "No way."
Of all the things to jump out at her in the conversation, Rust timed his bombshell particularly well. After all, right before the King of Fighters tournament began, Farah closed a particularly dark chapter in her life... one where she let herself get lost in the power that is her birthright, acting on dark whims and driving away the people who wanted to help her most. Having come to grips with it at last, she is receptive when Rust says, almost casually, 'different from most people.'
With a look of surprise, but then a faint smile, Farah tilts her head at Rust as he starts folding up the newspaper. "If you mean what I think you mean," the Egyptian says, glancing at the American sidelong, "then I can say I have some experience with power that's 'diff--'"
But then he cuts her off, going right to the newspaper, clearly having found something that catches his interest. Out of respect and politeness, Farah backs off, expecting that if Rust wants her to know what's on his mind he'll tell her. Still, that 'No way' does not seem like a positive reaction, and the girl's violet eyes come up to scan across Rust's face, looking for some hint of an answer. "Something wrong?"
"Doesn't have that... thing." He mumbles unhelpfully. He thinks to hand her the newspaper and ask her the million dollar question as to whether or not there's something wrong with that picture, but he can see it - and he can see it extremely clearly. It is a credit to the photographer that took the picture for this paper.
Simultaneously, a part of him really wishes he hasn't just seen what he has, but there's something else that crosses his mind a lot more slowly than it ought to.
The paper drops on the sidewalk. The breeze, cruelly, does not return to sweep the ghastly visage out of his sight as he brings a hand to his face. "The... the hell are you doing, Zach."
A loud exahle later, it is back to acknowledging Farah's existence. "I, uh... what did you say before," he stammers, pace of his voice picking up, "somethin' 'bout... experience with, with..."
Doesn't take empathic abilities to know something is very wrong, here, indeed, and so Farah watches Rust's reaction to whatever is in the paper get progressively worse, until the handing off of the paper she wasn't prepared for sends it drifting toward the ground in an awkward, disjointed spiral, landing on top of Rust's shoes. Farah doesn't bother to hide her confusion, this time, giving Rust a look of contemplation before stepping back to take this all in, hugging herself underneath the light jacket.
"You may have noticed before now," she says carefully, taking a deep breath, "that my abilities are a little... different than the norm." That's the understatement of the year, the young Egyptian thinks to herself, but perhaps now isn't the time to think about that. Her fingers interlock as she not-quite wrings both hands. "But I am still learning the deeper secrets and finer points. What's wrong?"
Nothing these days is ever /right/, it seems.
The American man promptly goes back to wiping one of his hands all over his face as he thinks to himself as to the hows and whys of what's going on there. This, as Farah mentions him noticing something before... if he did, it might've been lost in the heat of the fact that he fought someone who basically broke his left hand with a single punch.
"Like... his?" He asks, hand away from his face as if thinking for a moment she'd understand what he's saying - at least, until he thinks to continue. Zach has been guarded in the past talking about it... is it really all right to tell her?
To tell anyone, at all?
Lowering his head once more, he thinks about - once again - what he was witness to that day. That massive explosion that killed a number of people. How much of it was the choker? How much of it was Zach?
"I don't... I don't got anyone else I can... I can talk with this about." It's the truth - it's not the sort of thing you can walk up and talk to about with anyone.
Less so, when you effectively witnessed the event first-hand.
"Zach... guy on the paper. Really short guy, purple hair... fights a lot." Zach Glen is a fairly well-known name for his explosive displays of power. The older man visibly swallows a lump, shaken. "The, the stuff he uses, he called it, he called it psychic."
The older man begins to pace, accompanied by another pop in his knee. "He, he has trouble controlling it."
Rust is losing his calm, and so Farah downshifts, switching gears to maintain her calm and support him. It is the most natural thing for her to do, yet it is remarkable in its own way for how quickly it happens. Still, she might be trying to comfort and calm him, but that doesn't mean she's going to lie. "I don't know," she says, looking thoughtful. "There are lots of names for it, and it's a very personal thing... it has a lot to do with your vision of yourself and what's in your heart. Two people could have the same 'psychic power' but it will feel and look entirely different." Much like chi, an inner voice adds, though she keeps it to herself.
The idea that Zach has trouble controlling his power doesn't seem to surprise her, either. Soul Power, or Psycho power, or whatever it's called... it's the raw stuff of a person's spirit, and who can entirely control and manipulate their own heart? Even people with strong hearts and iron will can have trouble managing their abilities. "If he doubts himself, I would imagine that's the case... or at least, it was in my experience. When I was at a point where I hated and doubted my every action, I lost all control over my powers... I was a danger to myself and to others.
That makes the two of us, he's ready to shout when she mentions she doesn't know. Pace, pace, pace. The paper remains in place on the ground, the offending shot of Zach fighting Yuri faced upwards as if to taunt the man should he start back in that direction. Unless the wind feels remorseful for bringing it to his attention in the first place...
Sometimes it feels like the world really does have feelings, these days. Very cruel, hateful feelings.
He stops pacing as Farah's words display an amount of 'knowing' that contradicts what she just says - something that might be a bit of a relief, were it not for the tension over how delicate a subject this is. A subject so delicate that even a man so hard to physically break looks like he might fall apart with a single tap, in some moments.
"Doubt?" He murmurs quietly. Is it really doubt? As Farah highlights the consequences of doubt, the older man's heart sinks a bit more. Is this a common problem for all of the people like him? And yet... it is Zach who goes down as being incredibly explosive.
Maybe these kinds of people really /are/ rare.
"I... I don't know, I think, I think there might be... there might be more to it than, than doubt," he starts waving a finger out of idle habit, continuing to pace. "Zach... Zach had somethin' on his neck that, that really put his power out of control. He... he caused a real big explosion, some time back."
He doesn't want to say it is what it is - but if Farah were in Southtown at all during that explosion, she probably felt it. It was a huge psionic explosion, all right.
"And yet... and yet, he got it off, seems like, and... if that paper ain't lying..."
He goes down to pick it up, but at last, the breeze kicks up again and scoops the paper away. He decides not to give it chase, just acknowledging this change with another low grunt.
"He's... he's still fightin' like nothing happened." Without looking to face Farah, he stares off towards the apartment complex he'd like to be inside right now, but it doesn't seem like anyone else has come along yet. "I dunno, what... what would that say 'bout him, I mean, in your... in your opinion, if... if any of that means anything?"
Was that...? Apparently, it was.
A person taken less by surprise, more adept at hiding her feelings, would be better suited for this, now. At Rust's mention of the explosion in Southtown not that long ago, the girl pales, though with her dusky complexion it is difficult to see. A hand comes up in front of her mouth with its 'o' of surprise. It had been sudden, violent, and brief; what little of it Farah got coincidences with what Rust is telling her, right here and right now.
"I..." What do you say to THAT? The answer is that Farah fumbles for something to offer, and finds that process difficult. "Perhaps he has simply shut it out to deal with the pain," Farah says quietly, hoping this not to be true, but knowing it is possible. "One of the many steps of grieving is denial, after all. Or maybe he doesn't feel like he has anywhere to go, and is acting out. Or... it may be nothing at all. Perhaps it is just the nature of his power to be abrupt and rough around the edeges. It's hard to say without knowing him... and I'm loathe to judge a stranger's actions."
There's another pause, before she swaps pictures and eyes the space where the choker should be, as Rust puts it. "The idea of this necklace you mention is troubling, however. When the Cult found about my powers, they wanted to kill me... yet it sounds as if whoever gave him that choker wanted much the opposite..."
If only he were aware that she was, on some other level he cannot comprehend, aware of what exactly it is he's describing. That he's facing away from Farah makes it easy to get away with such facial language.
Shutting it out to deal with the pain...? Howard thinks to himself, Zach makes a big deal about not wanting to hurt people with his power, supposedly, and yet... he's fighting again. Even after the whole episode with the choker, which seems to be gone now.
Slowly, he turns back towards Farah, face looking no less worried as she continues with her theory about his behavior. The nature of his power to be... abrupt and rough around the edges? Of course, there's the polite admission of not being able to - or perhaps not wanting to? - judge someone she doesn't know too well.
"Uhh... if, if I remember, it was... some kinda trick one of 'em pulled on him." The details are a bit fuzzy because that whole trip was just one bad thing after another. That first round loss in the biggest name in tournament fighting seems, less and less, the worst thing to have happened in comparison to... everything, really.
"Dunno why they'd, they'd have done that for him over... over anyone else, but." His voice trails off before he clears his throat again, eyes wandering as he pats his chest. "I, I couldn't get it off." Maybe if Zach let him use the friggin' chainsaw it'd be a different story. "I got no idea how he did, but... but he got it off."
He saw the date on the paper, it's no distant back issue before King of Fighters. The shop teacher takes a couple steps back towards Farah, posture still a bit slumped. His right elbow is still in top form, though - by which one means it's popping just fine. "I dunno, I guess it's... it's like, based on stuff he's said, that... that, despite what he's sayin', it's like... he's embracing it, like there's... nothin' else he can do? I'm, I'm just shooting out thoughts, I just got no idea..."
That news is... disconcerting, if only because from the way that Rust has described it, it really does sound like this friend of his just given upon on controlling his abilities. Of course, she has no idea what the choker that was thrust on Zach for the longest time actually did, nor does she even have the ability to guess. To be honest, she's met so few users of the same power as she, there's no way the young woman could generalize. What is there in common between herself and Rose? Herself and Juri the Spider? Herself and Alma Towazu?
The Egyptian wears an expression of quiet sadness, the more she thinks about it, looking down into her own hands, helm palm up and fingers curled, as if holding something delicate in the palms of her hands. In her mind's eye, of course, lines and whorls of cobalt blue swim there, tendrils of her aura, the 'her' of 'her' in this case. And it is this thought that makes her look at Rust with perhaps a more steady look on her face.
"There have to be wiser people than I to consult," she says at last, deferring realistically to make her lack of experience here known, "but I can tell you that the power I have... it's a part of me. When... when my heart was weak, and when I lost sight of myself, I know that my power... changed. I don't understand the chi that most people who can fight use very well. I wish that I did. I only know that it isn't some external force I am summoning up, on the battlefield. It's a part of myself, and it reflects my thoughts and feelings."
A pause, and then a sigh and shake of the head. "If your friend... if he thinks of himself as out of control, or is convinced his power is beyond him, then perhaps that is why his power persists in being so."
It may very well be the same way as to how it is difficult to generalize the powers of those fighters who use the far, far, far more common energy. Between elemental blasts, bizarre bodily adjustments, or even outright breaking the various laws of the universe as humans typically understand it... there typically doesn't seem to be a deeper symbolic reason for any of it.
Where Farah focuses on her mind's eye, Rust is - on the inside - a swirling mass of half-formed thoughts and frustrations he can't quite connect two and two with on his own, gaze wandering at the sky - it really does seem kind of dead these days, doesn't it - and also looking back over at the apartment building again.
There have to be wiser people, Farah says. Inwardly, the man thinks... who? How, and where the hell would they be? It took this long to find someone else! This long! He looks back to her steadier face with his mouth half open as if to plead, as if to suggest there /has/ to be something to work with.
It is to his benefit - and maybe even the benefit of so many more people on a global level - that he doesn't talk over Farah. Doesn't shout, doesn't scream, doesn't protest about a lack of apparent help when she delves into how it feels to her.
He mouths a few words, though it is hard to tell which words he may be saying. He might be repeating a few things Farah's saying.
"Huh," he mumbles out loud legibly (for however legible a mere exhaled word really is), bringing up his right hand and shaking a finger, turning his head away. Eyes closed, he brings the hand towards his chin and strokes it.
First of all, now that he thinks of it, he ought to shave.
But second of all - and far more importantly - he nods a few times. The silence may be disconcerting, but it is a thoughtful silence that, to an observer, may communicate that something is going somewhere.
"I think... I think I get it." He looks back to Farah. "Y'know, he's... he's told me 'bout a few things before, but... but I never really... never really just... strung 'em together, boom, boom, boom," gesticulating broadly with his left hand as if making points on an invisible, horizontal graph chart.
The calm fades away to a four letter word as he throws his hands up. "How the hell didn't I... well shit! I get it."
Which gives way to a low chortle. That gesture wasn't the one of giving it all up in frustration.
"Well," Farah says in an earnest tone, bringing a hand up to the back of her head and running her fingers through her dark black hair in a gesture of either displacement or embarrassment (hard to tell the difference, at this stage), "I'm glad SOMEONE gets something. I'm still not quite sure I understand." That much is true, but she is genuinely glad if the things she's said -- words that sound half-formed and ill-suited to describing what's really on her mind when Rust questions her -- have helped him.
This kid, Zach... it's a surprise to Farah that she's never met him. And whatever that explosion was that she felt however long ago, there was a certain... despair to it. Closing her eyes, the young Soul Star places one hand palm-down against her chest, bowing her head. "I suppose we can never be more than we let ourselves be, in the end," she opines, before opening her eyes and smiling at Rust. "And that doesn't just mean someone with psychic abilities. I guess when you say, 'I could never do x', you've already decided that you can't. Maybe it's more important to say, 'Someday, I will make x happen'... but that's hard."
Glancing off in the distance, Farah feels the sting of her own words hit her conscience and her own thoughts, even as she says them, and the realization of that shows on her face too. "It's hard to believe in things when there's no proof, but maybe that just means we have to look harder to find the proof we need."
The laughter that's forming stops pretty quickly as the man surmises... uh, maybe this really isn't all this funny, he's thinking to himself. His King of Fighters teammates are all suffering in one form or another - it's only now, after so much time, that he's finally found the key to helping one of them. After so long, there's a light at the end of the tunnel - a small one for what may be an insignificant part of the bigger picture, and yet...
Farah's seeming admission of not getting it doesn't slow him down too much beyond these sobering thoughts going through his head, there to serve him to not get too carried away as opposed to being factors that hold him back. So many things seem to want to keep holding him back, and now, he just might have a shot.
What Farah says remains, in the end, perhaps true - going back down to earth for matters of humanity in general. How many times has he run into this, when people wanted to try and encourage him to chase his dream even in the face of so many things that suggest he really shouldn't bother at his current age?
Where Farah's smiling, Howard goes back to being a bit thoughtful. The idea that he could never do something... or that someday he might make something happen. He knows how hard /that's/ been. Those few small victories he's had were, thus far, hard earned.
"Yeah... somethin' like that," he concurs with a nod, albeit maybe a bit thoughtlessly as his head drifts elsewhere. Not back to the building.
To the parking lot.
"L-Listen," he coughs once, "'scuse me. Now... now I gotta go find him." There's no 'I should,' there's no 'I will,' it's 'I got to.' Well, 'I gotta,' but let's not split hairs here. "I think... I think what you told me, that's, that's got to be the best way to, to fix that mess." Something to at last deliver Zach from those years of torment of being at the mercy of his own power - he's finally surmised it at last, he thinks.
His body language suggests that, yes, he wants to go, he wants to disengage, he needs to go. But, he still holds enough restraint in him to face Farah and nod his head once. He might've lost a good year or two on his face by now, at least some spark of life again despite the rigors his body has suffered from fighting and working.
"I... I, uh, thanks, I mean it," he says slowly, perhaps as his means of trying to give gravity to this vocalized piece of appreciation, "this, this ain't going to solve everything... I mean, I still haven't, haven't finished that letter."
That letter to a very famous pop idol that, at first, he thought might've led to a solution when they first met during and shortly after that little brush with Brian.
"I, I dunno if it's gonna count as a wish or not, but... ah, the hell am I standin' here for?! I mean... I gotta go find him now." The older man nods, turns, and waves his hand back at Farah. "Just, just stay safe too, all right?"
If Farah had to characterize Rust's aura, the way she sees it via Soul Power, she would call it 'wobbly'. Well, perhaps, in fact, she would describe it in more specific terms like so:
Underneath is a fine mesh, a consistent mesh, like armor, and it never goes away. And overlaid on top of it is a shine, a sort of radiant glow... but the glow is wobbly, and inconsistent. It wavers back and forth, and it's when it seems like it's going to shine its brightest, that suddenly the glow can wink out, leaving only the mesh behind.
She's not a fool, either; she's the daughter of a judo champion and an award-winning journalist. The girl NOTICES things. The uneasiness, the nervous ticks, the halting speech, the way that his glances move from place to place when he talks, as if he's not even sure that basic conversation is inside his purview. But she also noticed, when the man was willing to take on a shadow-possessed wall of meat just to fold some origami cranes, that there was something there.
And now she sees it in the aura, and in the way he reacts, and in the way that Rust almost seems apologetic of his certainty, his need to move. The spark brightens, moves over the mesh, blinks in and out frantically. Like a star in the heavens above, flaring constantly, sending some sort of code to a viewer on a distant world.
From such resolve are miracles crafted.
This may be why the Egyptian simply smiles, and leans in to kiss Rust on the cheek once -- in the friendly, European greeting sort of way -- and then give him a wave, saying: "Godspeed."
She needs say nothing else.
Log created on 19:16:58 06/29/2011 by Rust, and last modified on 21:42:43 06/30/2011.