Description: Sonia Romanenko tracks down one Howard Rust in Metro City as part of a job... a thing made entirely too easy by her target. Flirting, banter, revelations, and mild annoyance ensues as Sonia slowly unravels Vega's twisted skein for the rather dense Hero of Nepal. The two then part ways... for now.
Vega's back.
That's the primary headliner on just about any newspaper one can find, for those print publications that still manage to circulate - especially given the power situation here in Metro City. Every spare generator that could be brought to muster has been, but it is a temporary fix at best for the arduous process of getting a highly damaged power plant back online.
Metro City has always been one of the roughest places to live, and this is even rougher still. One Howard Rust does not want to make an internal competition out of guessing what was worse between Southtown's invasion of 2009 and this, now having had to experience both - to say nothing of when he had to go all over Shadaloo-occupied mainland Asia. He sits listlessly on a street bench at a bus stop, an uneaten sandwich on his lap in quiet contemplation after having helped an emergency crew with a few power lines.
It's a hot and humid afternoon, with nasty thunderstorms looming over the horizon that threaten to delay any sort of reconstructive work. The bustling streets are almost silent, ghostly even, with the sounds of construction vehicles rumbling in the distance as the only real ambience. Little to none of the cursing, the shouting, the bad traffic...
The forty-something man just can't bring himself to eat the sandwich, even knowing how hungry he is now. Vega's back, having made complete sport of his so-called death... they may have beaten him back, but the implications remain as utterly terrifying as the color of the ambitions and emotions turned into raw power by the would-be dictator of Shadaloo.
The sandwich is probably not a good substitution for a shrink. (To be fair, the sandwich is likely also much less expensive.)
It was afternoon's like this one that made one woman feel right at home. This city, in its near completely wrecked and powerless state, was the very image of a once living place turned utterly dead. It was the aftermath of a successful campaign of causing chaos. It was far more than she or Johann had managed to accomplish through their own means on Sunshine City. She could certainly learn a thing or two from Shadaloo... though she'd be loathe to admit it. It isn't the hopelessness that makes it though, it's the accomplishment itself. After all, Sunshine had /nothing/ akin to the Fighting Mayor and his Metro Three defending it. To have done something like this so well... it spoke volumes about what Shadaloo was capable of.
...And that is exactly why she has allowed herself to be hired out to do yet another job for them. This one had turned out to be cake. Howard Rust had actually stuck around to help alleviate the city's woes. And he stuck out like a sore thumb... it's not every day you see a middle aged man wearing a disgustingly gaudy-looking purple toupee /anywhere/. Easiest tracking job /ever/ really.
"...Having a bad day, Howard Rust?" A husky, sensual, voice comes from somewhere behind the bench suddenly. Were he to turn around... he would see a tanned, vivacious, vixen with boyishly short, violet, shag leaning against the backside of his bench. She's wearing wine-colored leathers that daringly expose an almost illegal amount of her naked body. It's her usuals, but it's what she's most comfortable in. One would have to question why she would show up here as herself... but being that she is just delivering a message she saw no harm in it. "...Not the kind of bread you wanted...?" She chuckles, softly... "...Or is it... something else? It's not safe to be zoning out here regardless... that /man/ might still be lurking around." That, or one of his lackeys...
There are very few people in this world who would be so daft as to consider whatever it is that man has put on his head hair, and fewer yet people who would actually want to seek it out to take a peek at such a spectacle.
He's starting to think that maybe he should just hurry up and eat lunch, shouldn't work on an empty stomach, even if it's already hard to stomach the fact that, yes, Vega is back. Vega's alive. This fact alone could very well serve to stave off hunger out of fear for weeks on end. So hard to stomach, there is almost no room for actual food on his person.
The voice startles the man out of contemplation with such a fright that the sandwich flies up out of his hand, to be clumsily juggled between two hands. Inexplicably, the whole thing not separating into a series of free-falling foodstuffs. (Could industrial strength glue be involved? This is America, after all, what sorts of things won't they put in food?)
"Dgghk, d-don't sneak up on," his head slowly turns towards the mostly-exposed woman at a particularly beneficial vantage point (...for whom?), a highly awkward pause following suit as he looks up to meet the eyes as the lady teases in all the wrong ways.
"Don't... don't joke a-about that," he stammers as he uncomfortably shifts his seating position, one of his elbows popping loudly as he turns away and looks to make sure the uneaten sandwich is still okay and not a splattered mess on the dirty, damaged concrete.
He's too startled (or embarrassed) to think to ask her to shoo, from the looks of things.
Even as he addresses (and eyes) her, the tanned russian vixen is sashaying her way around the side of the bench toward the front. The black snake tattoos winding their way around her smallish, exposed, waistline appear almost to slither as she accentuates her walk with a subtle swaying of her hips. She moves toward the front of the bench, on the side opposite where he was sitting, and takes a seat on the metal arm of the bench... gingerly crossing her smooth, leather clad, legs and letting her heeled feet just dangle. Her leanly muscular arms wrap around her own body, almost as if to hug herself, pushing up the more than ample bossom barely contained by skimpy leather halter top not too subtly.
%Half-lidded, violet, eyes watch him from there... filled with amusement at the spectacle of his awkwardness and surprise. She /did/ think it odd that the sandwhich didn't fall apart when it should have... and it may caused an eyebrow to raise at some point in her walking over... but she was well past that now.
She purrs, deeply, again in her usually teasing manner... "It's quite alright, darling. Your reaction is not an unusual one. A lot of men get excited when they see me..." ... She chuckles, then... "...But, I am not joking." ... She allows for a purposeful silence to follow before saying anything else. "That man really seemed to have it in for you. I doubt very much he' just let you be..."
She leans back then, slowly, leaning toward the bench a bit and purposefully leaning in such a manner that the fullness of her cleavage is pointed directly at him. Her right hand then snakes upwards to play with an emerald earring, made almost entirely out of platinum, gemstone aside. "...If you want my opinion though, I don't think he gave so much as a damn about this city. ... After all, why would a man hell bent on world domination... with doubtlessly exhausted resources after his last attempt... squander them all here? Seems kind of suspicious..." A smirk winds its way into her features then. Clearly this woman knows a lot for some random dame, doesn't she...?
It's hard not to try and take another peek at her, given the way she presents herself. A lot of women on the fighting circuit tend to be very open about the way they dress, which... well, at that point there doesn't really need to be much further elaboration on the hows and whys of catching eyes.
"I, uh," 'imagine,' he never gets around to finishing that sentence as things go from kind of scary to alienating to a little scary again as he finds himself making room for her to sit. It's really easy for him to be lost for words given everything going on, when the man you helped take down so readily transcends the boundaries of life and death.
The older man clears his throat a bit, patting his chest with his free hand as if intending to interrupt, but never quite does as she goes on to elaborate that, no, she's not joking. It's a song and dance that's familiar, but yet is no less worrying every time - a lady comes by with confident knowledge of things, delivering their opinion with a certain predatory aggression as if wanting them to know that, yes, what they know is true.
Every time, he's always at a loss for words, idly holding the sandwich in both hands as he just stares blankly (at what?), face devoid of a smile or frown. The very picture of insecurity and discomfort at every potential thought related to... that guy. That guy who made his dramatic return announcement to the people of Metro City and the world as a whole.
With the pause that passes it's kind of a wonder he remembers that he is basically being asked a question.
"Uh... maybe, well, they did seem to, kind of, uh," he gestures uselessly with his left hand, "...back off, how do I put it, just... one moment, had my, my head bashed in a wall," he remembers dealing with that squad. Much better trained than the joint Chinese/Shadaloo armies in dealing with powerful fighters by far, "next moment... they just, all... all backed off."
Yet, he's heard of extensive military hardware being put to use. Tanks! Helicopters! It still chills him to think how they managed to get them on or inside American soil.
"Vega... look, I, I don't know about you," the man starts to regain some semblance of composure, "but, I've... I've fought him. I don't get the idea that, that... that he was holding back." If anything, the blows he took felt just as hard - even harder, perhaps - than in comparison to those encounters in Asia, or so perhaps his worries and fears and doubts just magnify the negativity of the entire situation.
"If it weren't for... y'know, everyone there," if it weren't for everyone who was there being there when they were, he means to finish the sentence but never quite does, he's not sure Vega would have pulled back.
But... is she hinting at some deeper possibility?
...As he makes room or her to sit, her eyes fall upon the suddenly empty space and she seems to contemplate something for a moment or so. ... But she finally gives in, allowing herself to sit next to the middle-aged man and old war hero. The metal arm rest wasn't entirely comfortable for a lady's posterior after all.
After taking a seated position once more, elbow coming to rest on the backside of the bench as she continues to toy with that earring... still facing him in that somewhat sexually intimidating manner. Her violet eyes seem practically locked with his whenever he allowed them to be. Yet from her perspective, she was taking the whole of him in... using her peripheral vision to watch for things out of her focus. The eyes are a window to tthe soul they say... but this had little to do with being /sexy/. More to do with attempting to read into the subtleties of his body language.
Her immaculate, inviting, smile would never show it, but she felt inwardly disgusted at the insecurity and awkwardness. The /toupee/ didn't help uch either. What in the world would possess a man to wear such an awful thing, she wondered. Better to just go bald than to be seen with such an eldritch horror...
When he finishes though, she chuckles again.. shaking her head subtly... those expensive earrings dancing with every movement. "You're missing the bigger picture." She did so tire of having to explain what to her was the obvious to these dense men she keeps getting sent to. First Daniel, now Rust. "...Any good director knows, there is no better way to get an audience's rapt attention than with explosive drama.." She taps her right index finger quickly in time to so unheard rhythm against her earlobe as she continues to gaze at him... her eyes mostly /avoiding/ coming into contact with the top of his head... "...And this has been quite some drama. An entire army was brought over, and even the mighty Master himself came all this way. But for what...? To destroy one city utterly, lose half of his own forces, and hang an old man naked in Metro City square...?" She laughs, suddenly, almost mockingly at the very idea... "...Sounds like a complete waste of time and resources to me. For one so cconcerned with controlling entire continents to concern himself with a single city... was it a grudge? OR..." A smike winds its way into her features again. "A ruse. ... An amusing little show to take people's eyes off of an intended target and focus it right where he wanted it...?"
She then stands up, walking across the way toward a news paper stand suddenly...
*CLINK* ... *CLINK* ... *KERTHUNK*
Two coins go in the slot, and the door opens with a loud mechanical rumbling. She fetches a local paper from it, dated to just before the Metro City chaos started. It was the last time the paper office was funtional. ... She then gives the newspaper a toss toward him... fall where it may. On the front page is a story about the war brewing in Korea and the trouble in the UN with reaching a consensus on what to do about it. "My money's on 'ruse'. How about you, handsome?"
It must be a step beyond amusing, or perhaps hilarious, to see a man so solidly built appear to be on the losing end emotionally. A man who accomplished so much despite having plenty attempting to hold him back, now visibly almost like putty. Putty with unpleasant little rough bits picked up from age, maybe a bit dried out, but putty nonetheless.
Sonia's disarming - maybe disturbing - chuckle and bold declaration puts the man further on the visible defensive as he leans back, glove-clad fingers lightly rubbing the sandwich. (Why is he still wearing gloves that have most certainly seen unpleasant and unclean things to touch his food?)
Wher her violet eyes want to keep a lock on his, his largely ordinary brown eyes seem to be looking for any excuse to not look back (or perhaps look somewhere else), though his face seems to go somewhere between discomfort and maybe the barest hints of offense at just how she takes apart his thoughts to add in her own little theories... or, perhaps with the swagger she is delivering them, facts.
The laughter at hanging someone naked sees him flinch. That could've been Haggar! If Metro City lost an icon of its moral and physical strength like him, well...
When she gets up to walk off to a newspaper stand, the man seems to be thinking of maybe getting up and walking off. His knees betray any stealth of this idea, one of them popping as he puts some weight on one leg leaning forward, and deciding soon after that this blows his ability to get up and walk off with his neglected lunch.
The tossed newspaper is almost caught with his left hand raised. It instead slips just past and slaps him in the face comically, sliding down onto his lap in a messy spread of loose coupons and advertisements as he grunts unenthusiastically.
The war going on. He's known about it - he's had full trust in Kim Kaphwan and especially the emergent young heroine May Lee to be able to handle things, but right before he left he heard that Seoul got taken - a very worrying thing indeed, and yet...
He scratches the side of his head, turning once towards Sonia, then to the paper, then to Sonia, then to the sandwich, then to a distant telephone pole, then back to the paper, and he frowns. Surely, the horrible thing on his head is not restricting blood flow to his brain...?
"Son of a bitch," he murmurs aloud as he throws the paper on the ground (littering!) and stands up, "is that, that why they went for... shit."
...Sonia seems mildly delighted, not only at his attempt to escape from her (audibly made apparent by that traitorous knee) but at the manner in which he 'receives' the paper. Watching it bounce comically off his face and flutter in the air - blown open messily by the breeze - before falling into his lap, another smile creeps into her features... scarlet painted lips going wide slowly and exposing her immaculate teeth once more. This one was genuine... she was quite bored today... and whether it was unintentional or not her target was proving to be an amusing one.
Even as the reality is dawning on him finally... blooming suddenly and all at once like an awkwardly mistimed rose in a garden of ideas... she's swaying ever so subtly back toward the bench he's seated on. Her heels click audibly, slowly, as she walks at a measured pace toward the middle aged man with her hands upon those wide set hips of hers. Her thumbs tuck neatly into her wine-colored leather bottoms... fingers tapping idly at her side.
She stops, perhaps only a foot or two from him. She purrs, again, then... in that sensual manner... "So... he finally gets it." ... Her body then extends slowly skyward as she stands there, arms going above her head as her curvaceous form streeeeetches... ample bossom barely constrained by that wine-colored halter jutting out proudly... almost threatening to explode forth. ... My, wouldn't that be /sexy/?
But, perhaps disappointingly, it doesn't... and she lets ehr arms fall to her side once more... fingers tucking back into the lip of her form-hugging pants. "...I guess that means my job here is done." She chuckles, softly, and starts to walk away... but not too quickly... giving him time to get her attention again should he require it... "...By the way... you really should consider a new hairstyle... it isn't very becoming of such a celebrated hero."
There's a whole lot of curses running through the man's head that just beg to jump right off the tongue and out into the wide, open, dirty air of Metro City over the sorts of connected thoughts that make everything fit together, if true.
It'd be hard for it not to be true, given all the circumstances lining up with one another.
As Sonia walks up to the older man with the same confidence and wicked playfulness as before, as she comes ever closer, there is a marked difference in the man she's approaching. The sandwich now held in his left hand is held tightly enough that it's more a wonder it doesn't completely fall apart... is it that stale?
Those eyes, which previously had been wandering, lock back into hers as she looks away. It is when she comments - maybe because she comments? - on his hair that he speaks back with a voice notably more firm, speech more focused compared to the man whose mind was wandering on the implications of something that was once unthinkable.
"Who are you?" He asks, even as her back may now be turned. Is she a friend of that woman with the scar going down her eye that made off with his truck? Maybe a mischievous sort from the same background as the equally mysterious Munin? Someone... else?
The newspaper is picked up by a breeze to slap against his heel, of which he takes little note of.
"Who are you?"
As that firm, suddenly collected, voice comes from behind she stops... a ways away... and turns back to face him. Her previous, inviting, smile having become something of a smirk again in the space of those few moments her curvaceous backside was turned to him. Her violet eyes are alight with dangerous mischief, "I am not a friend, but I am not an enemy." She speaks, suddenly, in vague riddles... and half-truths... "I'm just a spectator to an amusing little drama. And you... are the leading man." Her eyes narrow a bit more than her usual, lazy, half-lidded gaze... but it's not a dangerous expression by any means... "...A veteran knight in rusted, battered, and broken armor who will soon be rushing to defeat the evil overlord and save the land. Of that, I have no doubt. ... I am merely the meager courier, delivering unto you news of the death of your king." She chuckles, softly, hands going up behind her hand as she stands there across from him and relaxed... wide legged... stance. "...In less flowery terms, I came to tell you... Korea is burning and that man is involved. If you're really the hero everyone hails you to be... then I expect you'll be going." Exactly as Vega desires, no doubt. "...And I will be watching. Amused. ... How exactly does one kill a man who claims to transcend life and death?"
She turns around again, this time fully intending to walk away. "You'd best figure out it." ... And with that, she proceeds to head away in the direction of Metro City Square. She'd done her job, and delivering Vega's message... now the ball was in the Hero of Nepal's court. She could do little more...
As she begins to narrate, her riddling is joined by a cacophony of rustling papers as the older man decides it's enough, crouching down with another pop in one knee as he picks the thing up with his one free hand and tucking it underneath his shoulder. Every little motion on his end suggests impatience... aggravation, as he's hoping for her to really spit out what her deal is. I really have to get going, he is all but muttering as he considers every person he'd need to call. Sagat, Munin... should tell the Sakazakis of course... shit, what about May Lee, how is she? Zach, naturally...
"I, I don't have time for this," the man visibly loses his patience as she turns around again, and it seems they are both of like mind in terms of parting from one another's company. Both of his arms occupied, he can't really throw his hands up, "'m goin'."
He should have figured there was something fishy from the start if the Kaphwan clan couldn't beat back North Korea's military, he grumbles to himself as he meanders off with a purpose in his every step, even if his posture does not reflect a man who needs to be able to stand tall and capable in a time of need.
A man who walks into one thing after another, weathering through every obstacle that comes in his way or (occasionally) gets slammed right into him. An aging man with an awful hairpiece, a rusted length of pipe, and increasingly troubling responsibilities that continue to threaten to pull him out of the ability to find at least a moment of peace.
Perhaps there can never actually be any sort of peace with Vega around, as... a late friend of Rust's had seemed to come and let encompass their entire existence.
Log created on 15:25:37 08/24/2012 by Sonia, and last modified on 16:51:58 08/25/2012.