Description: Well, 'never' may be a strong word. When Howard Rust - famed for his stand against Shadaloo's warmongering efforts - continues onward with another loss in his struggling fighting career, a young woman he had previously greatly inspired expresses a greater displeasure at seeing him not entirely live up to those lofty standards that such admiration tends to set.
A downtown subway closed down for repairs... an unlikely host for a pay-per-view fight with one of those many unforgettable promoters with a three-letter acronym name. The lights they set up are perhaps too bright for the small space of the venue. They make no grandiose expectations of the turnouts - there's really no 'seats' outside of any number of steel fold-out chairs in front of low-quality plexiglass. It's not exactly the greatest makeshift stadium for the bout. The reasons for any of this taking place here are mired in mystery, beyond perhaps this place was among the cheapest to rent.
Howard Rust, brown belt in Kyokugen and unlikely hero against Vega's mad aims. Lucia Morgan, damn fine Metro City cop. Both circle one another, each one bruised, battered, and beaten while a fight commentator goes through the usual motions about how he sees things unfolding between them.
Howard makes the first move, leading with his left fist in one of the traditional Kyokugen hopping uppercuts to take her up. Leaping up after her, the commentator knows what he's about to do but forgets the name. Taking Ol' Rusty in both of his hands, he moves to hook the pipe against an article of her clot--
Lucia doesn't let that sentence finish, throwing a few higher-angled kicks in mid-air with such speed she leaves behind the bright blue streaks of her shoes, striking Howard hard enough in his stomach that his pipe flies out of his hands to the ground. She takes immediate control of the match's momentum, striking him with a final flaming kick that brings him crashing down onto the ground hard enough to make the ground at his impact form spider cracks.
He raises one arm into the air with a loud exhale, the flame chi enveloping him disappearing before going limp. He's called out on the spot, Lucia stoically maintaining her fighting stance and casually walking away after her win is declared. It's the usual niceties of fights from here - medical attention, maybe an interview if any of them are (un)lucky.
The crowds more or less clear up and disperse into the night while the set crew are all still packing up. Howard Rust, the evening's complete opposite of a victor, has no less than two towels (one a fair bit bloodied) draped around him as he sits around a bench. Most give him a wide berth - a few come up and ask for autographs, which he more or less silently complies with even as the few people actually working security give such people the serious stink eye.
His injuries are already cleaned up and bandaged where appropriate, though he looks the part of a man defeated through and through. Given he's still sitting around, he's probably waiting for someone...? He's not sure where Lucia walked off to, maybe she had a flight to catch back to the US and had to split.
As for his... hair, well, it doesn't look any worse than it usually does. (Is that even possible?)
Low-rent as this particular district may be, budget the organization and generic the ministrations made to both host and close off the bout, at least one pair of eyes watched keenly from the half-hearted throng gathered behind shaking plexiglass. A rather untidy fringe of dark brown adds further shade to a pair of hazel eyes already dimmed by the weight of a jaunty, if rather dishevelled cap. It's fitting that the lights flooding Asuka Kazama's view of the action are relatively dim...
It's been a while since she felt particularly illuminated.
Nobody's paying the Osakan tomboy any attention, esconced as she is within baggy jeans and a loose, cosy sweater of deep scarlet hue. But she's paying plenty to the final motions of Lucia's leg, to the blaze that encompasses that striking limb - and, most of all, to the poor, creak-backed creature exposed to it. Where others may see a loser, or a lost bet, she sees something else. Something, in spite of the feeling drawing her mouth to a hard line and her hazel eyes to savage glinting, bright. Perhaps even illuminating, in its unenviable, nay humble fashion.
In spite of this, she's not there asking for autographs. Doesn't even appear to be there at all until Rust is alone in the gloom, the echoes of the departed just barely lingering in the repurposed confines of the subway. Asuka's not there at all, until she suddenly and adamantly *is*, a rather large set of fingers reaching out to close on a hideously-adorned skull.
"I told you," she mutters, in that crude native dialect of hers, slurring her speech as only an ornery teenager can, "We'd have words about this, old man!" The last becomes a hiss, as she seeks to close tight on the toupee and just unceremoniously tear it away from his head, taking a step forward rather than back as she does so, leaning forward to meet his attention with a snarl.
"You're a *hero*, you goddamn idiot!"
She doesn't quite shout, but she doesn't need to; there's an intensity in the words that may just seek to tear the last vestiges of attention away from her *other* hand. The one not snatching. The one that's clutching far more tenderly a little book, bearing a single-word legend on the cover.
'Autographs'. For what it's worth, it's empty right now.
"Mmmrghllgsaglhbljgdrt." So he grunts completely incomprehensibly when he's sure he's on his own. He might be saying something that really only makes sense to himself, filtered through a sore jaw that has had its fair share of Lucia's bright blue shoes. Elbows on his knees, head bowed, he gingerly rubs at the side of his head with a towel.
There's a girl's voice. Something he probably recognizes from the far reaches of his battered head, too punch (...kick) drunk to put two and two together. There's that sudden sensation at the back of his head, a deeply ingrained sense of danger eliciting a wince, but his body too sore to go through the proper reflexes.
Then the top of his head feels naked. That combover, somehow still meticulously kept underneath the dark purple... thing! He drops the towel in such haste to bring both hands atop his head with a surprised squeal of distress to the tune of her declaration as he sits up suddenly.
"H-Hey, give that... give that back, that's my," Howard pathetically wheezes out as he tries to reach out with one hand towards it, with only a brief pause as his mouth goes a bit agape. Is this who he's reasonably sure it is? The girl from...
"...Airport?" That's about all he can form out of his mouth between injury, surprise, and sudden emotional distress.
There's a sharply resonant, if not actually painful, slap as the brash little Kazama brings her autograph book rapidly up then down upon Rust's grasping fingertips. Her furrowed brow and the pursing of unpainted lips expresses the 'NO!' she doesn't enunicate verbally, her sneakers skidding backward across the litter-strewn floor as added insurance lest he not obey; and then she's holding the hideous mauve monstrosity out at her opposing flank, glaring at it sidelong as though to wipe it from the face of the Earth with her piercing laser vision...
"Ugh!" ...which, to her endless frustration, she sadly lacks. Large, calloused fingers bunching, she scrunches the thing up instead, trying not to think about what it is - exactly - that she's *touching*, and waving the little book again. This time it's under Rust's nose, threatening further violence.
"Damn right 'airport'," she confirms in the scolding tone of a harsh teacher who also happens to be his very disappointed mother, "You saved my life, remember?" He doesn't have much time to begin a reply before she flaps the book again and adds a fierce, "Huh? Then I wake up and you're *gone* and I'm bein' detained and answerin' questions about that stupid bear and-- and..." She flags abruptly, all the fight sinking along with a heaving sigh from her ample, sweater-shielded chest.
Suddenly there's a deep conflict and the unharmonious song of pain within those hazel eyes, which dart askance quickly to hide it. A moment later she's back upon Rust, gaze hard and mouth a drawn line that threatens to become a pout.
"You're a hero *again*, an' I'm *nothing*, but I'm the only one who sees that you can't--" Her voice, calmed until now like the coming storm, suddenly gains a steep, piercing, whining inflection as she hurls the toupee to the ground between them, eyes remaining upon Rust. Her tossing hand remains down, a single finger extended to indicate the sad, discarded monstrosity.
"You can't keep on like this, Howard Rust! I won't let you!"
His hand gives slight way to the book slap, which probably says all about his current physical condition if this is going to become a game of keep-away. His eyes read almost like that of a scolded puppy. From the face of a weathered, aging man who stood and faced Vega, multiple times, and lived. It's... a hell of a cognitive dissonance for anyone looking on, really.
He seems to recoil in pain when she even compresses it in her fist, leaning forward only to be parried by the book. His other hand moves up towards it - he leans forward as if going through the motions to stand up, but doesn't quite get there as she confirms his memories, his elbow creaking silently as if to say 'oh yeah, that.'
"Gkh!" She's flapping the book at mention about saving her life. This alone brings up some very chilling, unpleasant memories of that woman with the weird look in one of her eyes, those kicks... being half-conscious at the end of her raised foot, held upside-down...
"L-Look, I'm sorry, it was dif--" It's never hard to talk over Rust, his tired and gravelly voice at such a low volume as to be completely inaudible. It's when she relents ever so briefly that he moves to lower the book with his hand, to really look at her eye to eye-- well, no, he's eyeing that very important thing she has in her other hand that he'd really like bac--
And she throws it right down to the ground between them. Despite his injuries, despite the statement she's working up about him, he's already going down to a kneel to pick it up as she illustrates her point as he reaches down with an eager, hurried hand to the thing on the ground. Almost like his life depends on it!
'You can't keep on like this, Howard Rust!'
Knelt on the ground, on his knees, one hand supporting his weight as he moves to pick up the other, turning his head as she talks about not letting him. There's a slower, more deliberate retrieval of the... horrible, awful thing on the ground as he just shakes his head in exasperation.
"L-Look, I'm just... just having a bad... day." Beat. "Week." Beat. Pondering if it's been a month? "M-More than one bad week, uh, y'know, back to... back, 's been hard for, for a lot of fighters," he stammers as he moves to set the thing back on his head and hide the gateway to the shame that pretty much the entire world has already ever known - the world has seen that combover plenty of times before.
"Things just, just, y'know, don't... don't always go our way, and..."
"...an' we feel weak, then begin to wonder if--"
Asuka's stopped yelling again, her brash tones almost alarmingly quiet, falling dead in the air as she drags hard enamel across her lower lip. It swiftly reddens, spat out in the moment that her passions are held aloft upon another wave, her stance shifting minutely in the suppression of sudden energy. The boisterous, mouthy tomboy doesn't *want* to keep shouting; all this feeling, all this complexity, it makes her want to do something else. Instead of nag, instead of scold...
"If we're doin' the right thing. If it's even worth it. To keep on trainin', to keep pushin', to save the world from itself. Why pick up what wants to stay down, right? Why should we care?"
She simply wants to understand. Yet grasping for answers finds them never far away - she's young, still set in the ultimate belief that she knows all there is to know. That she can. That she will. Her whispered conviction holds the answer now.
"We should care," she half-hisses, looking away from Rust with a pained disdain in her frustration, sidling toward the abandoned stage with her previously-pointing finger swinging inward and upward. Her bare knuckles find the plexiglass with a muted smack that soon breeds contained cracks, the pop and snap of yielding material remaining like the gurgle of a forgotten breakfast in her wake as she spins back toward the fallen hero.
"We should *care* because nobody else does! You're havin' a bad day? A bad week?" She scoffs, folding her arms across her chest and tossing her hair - an effect hindered by the cap pulled across her gaze, succeeding only in further tousling her cramped fringe. "A bad *life*? So goddamn deal with it, old man! Don't hide behind stupid..." Her lip curls, hazel eyes slipping to the hated toupee with undisguised loathing. "What I mean is..."
It's hard to get past it, it really is. Just seeing it makes *her* want to quit. But then she's shaking her head again, with the ferocity of a lioness on the hunt, wetting her lips with animal abandon before she speaks again, just shy of a yell.
"Y'can't just make yourself look stupid and hope people don't notice! Because they notice, old man! *I* noticed, didn't I? Things don't go our way, yeah, and that's why we have to force them to; we don't hide, we fight! And people like you? People like you give the rest of us the goddamn hope we need to keep on doin' that. You inspired me, you idiot!!"
That last comes loud indeed, harsh and shrill as she takes an inadvertent step forward, arms unfolding and fists punching at her side. There are tears in those hazel eyes now, hot and furious, her mouth a momentary rictus before she finds control. One hand pushes the autograph book forward again, now rather beaten and rumpled from her ministrations.
"Take that *thing* off your head, and sign this, huh?"
Somehow, it's the quiet that speaks a bit louder than the accented yelling as the horrendous hairpiece gets set on his head. It is as though the inanimate... thing that pretends it is hair is looking back to Asuka with a sort of smug satisfaction of finding itself back in its nice, comfy(?) seat of Howard's increasingly barren scalp. It is triumphant. Its owner feels, for the moment, whole again.
As though the sole comfort of an evening fraught with frustration and disappointment, as narrated by a young lady talking about whether they're doing the right thing, and so forth as he struggles to rise. He winces briefly as he forgets just how nasty a kick he took to the side early on in the bout. His ribcage has not been getting off lightly in general, lately, a bit of a wheeze in place of a question as to what she's getting on about. A cough intercepts this next, as he pats his chest gently while all but staggering to stay on his feet. He ends up having to rest a hand on a pillar as she decides that they should care.
"Uh, well, I'd like to s--" He stops when she cracks that plexiglass. Inwardly, he winces - part of the contract signed stated that damages to the 'protective measures' would come out of the fighters' pockets. That, and holy hell that's a heck of a punch there. She'd spin back to see the face of a man whose head suddenly hangs sheepishly, other hand atop his scalp as though he were ready to protect what was apparently truly important in all this. A man who is tired, injured, and... well, tired. And injured. You could probably say those things thrice and it wouldn't convey it enough, in the face of a fresh, young face who looks ready to probably just tear down all the plexiglass with her own fists.
"What'm I, what'm I hiding," is he even paying attention? He leaves the sentence fragment hanging, removing his hand from his scalp to start pointing a finger. The beginnings of some sort of counterpoint, all but shouted down when she talks about looking stupid. His mouth is moving. He is probably saying something that just does not get out as she speaks the virtues of things that she feels life is all about. God, she sounds almost like... what's-her-name, Marisol, now, and...
'You inspired me, you idiot!!'
The old man seems like he hasn't much to say when she's at the verge of tears. That sneer. Sure, he's had people go up and give him thanks and say nice things about how he's influenced their lives, but... almost nothing, nothing like this.
"Look, I," he clears his throat again, god damn this place needs a dusting, "'scuse me, I, what was I going to... say, uh," crap, I had a pen, where did I put it, he thinks as he pats around the toolbelt pockets.
"I'm... I'm sorry," I'm sorry I am letting you down? I'm sorry you are seeing me like this? I'm sorry that my battle with the realities of advancing age is going to have inevitable losses? He breaks eye contact to search himself over, even removing a hand from the pillar support as he tries to find where that stupid pen went. His head throbs with momentary pain - should he even really still be standing up?
The autograph book is eventually taken when he thinks he's found it. Asuka will notice right away that in his infinite wisdom, he has somehow confused a screwdriver for a pen in what will probably be one of the single most defining moments of her time with him.
"I'll... I'll sign, sure," but what of the other request? "Just, once I, uh... does this, does this thing have..." he squints. "...ink."
No, no it doesn't.
She doesn't even care about the signature at this point; it's just easy, isn't it? To cling to that single crag of prior significance in an ocean awash with the rageful conflict of being. A bitter comfort for the screaming soul, a touchstone for the prideful, undying anger of the young confronted by the downward spiral of the old and inevitably tired. But even were she truthfully aware of her own inadequacies, her own lack of wisdom, Asuka would maintain that hard stare...
She'd keep the pressure on. She'd do it for herself, for the world, and for the cracked and broken figure of a hero before her, for the befuddled coot who could most likely break *her* in half - let alone the comparably weak and brittle plexiglass. He may not know a pen from a screwdriver, but, she reasons he knows too well the pen from the sword. It's what frustrates her.
"It," she opines as smoothly as one so brash can, "Doesn't."
Her foot taps, just once, the plastic of her sneaker grinding the edge of a paper cup into its component molecules against the filthy concrete. A hand finds her hip, the other reaching to grab the end of the screwdriver and flip it with a sideward swipe, end-over-end, until it hammers into the pillar used to steady the aging hero of so many terrible conflicts.
"Don't be sorry," she continues with the clipped tones of a mother once more, clucking her tongue as she reaches into the back pocket of her jeans and presents a biro. It's pink and glittery. She's probably not too proud of this fact. Ka-click, she pops the nib out and offers it up to the creak-backed warrior. "Be *better*. Be the man I've seen on T.V., the man I've read about and strive to be like. You wanna know what you're hiding?"
Leaning back, she tosses her head a second time - then realizes it's just not working and swipes the cap from her head, making a third toss that sets her silky hat hair to a reasonably apt swish.
"You're hidin' *you*, Howard Rust! Like you don't matter! Like all of this," she waves her cap wildly, taking in the subway, then pointing a finger across it right beneath his nose. Whether he's mid-signing or not. "Like it's all there is! Y'know why I came here? Huh? Huh?" Again, she's not waiting for an answer...
"I came here to say thank you, because that... that *woman* made me want to give up, just lie down and stay there like nothin' I ever said or did meant a thing. An' you stood up to her." Her voice lowers now, as she leans in, throwing her arms to either side in a gesture of unveiled exasperation. "YOU, Howard Rust! So why're you losin'? Why're you wearin' that-- that thing?!"
She seethes, leans back again, tosses her head again. Folds her arms.
"I'll tell ya why. Because you're scared. Because you're weak. Well, I'm here to change that!!"
There's a hesitation, before she twists at the waist, glancing sidelong and suddenly gnawing her lip like a little, nervous girl. "Um..."
"...it's, uh, A-S-U-K-A, with two ah's... th-thanks..."
"D-Did I just," yes you did, you just tried to write something with a /screwdriver/. He visibly sinks a little further - how much has this man sunk? Perhaps that's why he's such a big fan of sub sandwiches (zing). Everything about this man speaks of not being entirely... a hundred percent, but this one probably cements his place at the low thirties. A man continually pushed by the weight of the mundane dragging him down, among his own personal foibles and follies.
A far, far cry from the man built up as something of a world savior when he triumphed after who knows how many hardships in both wars.
The screwdriver is easily removed from his right hand, where it is left to roll in its personal amusement at being confused for a pen (inanimate objects don't take amusement in anything, but if they could, this one would be).
"Pen, uh, yeah, that, that, that'll... that'll do," he takes the pink glittery pen thing as he clears his throat once again. How many times does it make it in this dust-ridden hellhole of a makeshift fighting venue? It's a respiratory hazard here, in some ways! He taps the pen against the page a few times as he tries to remember what it is he wants to write, lips pressed together as though this is a mentally laborious process for him (after those hard knocks, it probably is).
Be better, she says. To be the man she saw on TV, the one she read about so much... he kind of hopes she hasn't seen his Wikipedia article recently, considering it's become an editing war about how he's in the center of a hotly contested about US policies on benefits for military actions, unenlisted combatants, and whether or not there should be a legal 'fighter' designation that may or may not be privacy invasive - all this after being denied certain benefits following both major conflicts he's famed for.
"How'm I hiding--" He doesn't get to speak up over her as he seems to struggle to remember what it is he was writing with that screwdriver prior, something so compelling to his short term memory that he forgot in the heat of the moment of her lectures and his headaches and his everything. Either way, he writes noticeably slowly with his right hand as she recalls that heroic moment at the airport.
That woman.
Why is he still losing today? Why is he still wearing that...
"Wish I could, uh, tell y--" she drops those accusations again, and his right hand clenches that much more tightly. Why doesn't the biro snap?
"I, I ain't weak, scared, or... or, ugh." He's about ready to throw his hands up, but he's got a book and a pen. "A-S-U-K-A, two ah's? Oh, right, uh, ay's, uh, sure, it's... just, um, one... sec."
He sure takes a long time to write whatever it is he's going to. He taps at the page a bit. The page already has a few conspicuous dots of ink around what he writes. Is there anything he could really say on paper?
He closes up the book with the pen inside as he internally debates this (despite the gesture more or less cementing the idea that no, probably not) and points the book back towards her.
"I'm, I'm glad that I was, y'know... able to stand up, I mean, all those times I did," he says as he sways a bit from side to side in handing it back to her. He's trying to figure out which foot hurts less to put weight on. "It, it just doesn't... guarantee it's all gonna, gonna go my way, Asuka, and... and, and you can say to, to just force things your way, but... but sometimes, you just... don't get what you want." Or, in some cases, what you need.
Clearing his throat one more time, he leans forward to put a hand on her shoulder in something that is either reassurance or him trying to get support to stay standing. It's very difficult to tell which. "I, I don't want to live off of that alone, I mean... something's... gotta, gotta come after all that, all the... uh, heroic stuff. I mean, life's not... not always exciting, or fair, but, s-sometimes you just gotta endure, and, well, push with it. Even through, well... that kind of loss."
He puts a pointer finger up. He's hoping this stops her from talking over him as he mentally tries to put the words together, taking his hand off her shoulder unless she has removed it prior (there would probably be funny stumbling involved). He lowers it soon after without really saying anything. Especially not about that dreaded hairpiece.
"Next time I, I get on TV, I'll... I'll make sure to, to do it better, all right?" He thinks to say as he takes his hand to his head. "'m sorry, just, really kinda... took... some bad hits there."
So much runs through a person's head when they finally behold their heroes, and watch them devolve into something lesser-than; the inevitable decline of greatness, perhaps merely making room for others, but leaving a cruel aftertaste that's not easy to accept. For Asuka Kazama, it just might be impossible.
Besides, there's always the possibility that she's completely right.
A dark brow arches above a hardened hazel stare as Rust goes through his pantomime of uncertain deliberation, as he feeds her the excuses she's heard a hundred thousand times from those younger even than she. She's a teacher, too, in her own swaggering, cocksure way; and she likes to think she's a good one. What she doesn't do is feed her students platitudes. They work hard because they have to. They don't quit because she drags them upright if they do. Drags or throws. Throws or punches.
Where there's a will, for Asuka, there is a way. It was the hardest thing about facing Juri, that she felt no will - no desire to make her way at any cost, to keep pushing. As though her very soul were hollowed, and - she knows - a part of her came here to find the answer to why. It quickly becomes clear she won't find it, at least upon face value. Perhaps, deeper...
"No..."
Her outbreath carries the syllable with a gentility she certainly doesn't experience, eyes briefly closing as her head shakes. She reaches out for the autographed article, keeping the pen inside, her grip firm as it draws the proferred book back.
"You'll do better," she mutters, slipping the book underneath her sweater and into some unspecified fold of clothing or otherwise-- shut up she isn't fat-- then drawing herself up with a less-than-gentle 'hmph' as she rejoins, "Tomorrow. Y'train at that karate place, right?" Her brow knits faintly, each syllable phrased from careful recollection of the world's fighters and those whom train beneath them. "Kyo-ku-gen?"
A smile twists her lips, her gaze glinting in a display that's momentarily almost pretty before she brashly bears her teeth, knuckles cracking as they're raised before her ready in a fist.
"I'll *make* you do better, Howard Rust. Coz you're wrong. Anyone gets what they want if they try-- and if the cause is just; that's science, okay? It's the science of Kazama style, and if you don't believe me then I'll just have to show you." That's rather gabbled, a dismissive wave of her hand bringing back some semblance of control in a sighing rush. "I'm stayin' across town, but I'll be there at eight a.m. *sharp*. You better be too."
Her upraised hand extends a digit with that, the punctuation a narrowing of hazel eyes - a stare that practically burns the oxygen from the air. She's not taking 'no' for an answer.
"I, I just said I--" would do better. The older man goes back to holding an arm back out towards the pillar he's been using. One hand goes to his face, hiding it as he gently rubs his forehead. Simultaneously at a loss as to how to really communicate his way of things to someone who idolizes him, knowing he's been letting /them/ down... on top of being battered and beaten low tonight.
"Kyokugen, y-yeah, that's, that's my school," he clears his throat again as he stands up a little straighter. Well, as straight as one of his knees allow, lifting up one leg to really flex out a kink in that knee. It's probably really disconcerting. He knows they don't take too well to sudden intrusions and challenges.
"Kazama, huh," he mutters aloud, he knows he's heard the name somewhere before. Someone else bearing that name, too, saw them a lot in the news some months back, who was it? He shakes his head again, more to keep himself conscious and focused than anything. He really ought to go lay down.
He almost gets a laugh out, he's usually at the dojo way earlier than that. Well, except for that sudden surge of pain in his neck, wow did Lucia work his head over too. "Sure, you can, you can come on by, I'll... I'll just let 'em know tomorrow, tomorrow morning you're coming... hey, 'm sorry, I know, you, you got a lot to say," he holds his hand out, "but, but I really... kinda just, you saw, me get the, well, get the shit beat out of me, so... 'm really gonna need to, to go lie down, okay, we'll just... tomorrow. All right?"
He takes in a deep breath. He doesn't have the outright vim and vigor the young girl does, but his voice - despite it being gravelly and laden with stutters and repeating himself on top of a fairly low volume, there's a certainty to his voice on all of that. A nod, as he pats the pillar and reaches down to pick up the discarded screwdriver which he immediately regrets going for with the surge of pain going through his abdomen.
"Really should just, just lie down," he grumbles out again as he looks out beyond the station. Where the hell are they? (Who is they? Good question.) "And, uh, thanks for... for coming by and, and, and cheering for, well, that fight, I'll... I'll see you tomorrow."
Incidentally, if Asuka looks in the book she'll notice that in his infinite wisdom in contemplating what she was saying and trying to think of what to say back given his injuries and fatigue, he forgot to sign his name and instead ended up writing 'Asuka' twice instead of his own.
Asuka's a great deal more emotionally-fluent than her bolshy exterior tends to suggest, and those hazel eyes survey Rust with not just conviction - but a good deal of lingering intelligence as Rust stammers out his response. Perhaps she does detect that underlying strength, the strength she knows is there; maybe, even, she catches the beginnings of that laugh...
She certainly doesn't stop looking frustrated, beneath her own mask.
"I didn't cheer," is what she says when all, by him, is said, lifting a shoulder lazily upward and letting to flop down before releasing a tightly-constrained little sigh. Her head shakes slowly in the aftermath. "Too busy watching. I came here to thank you, but-- I..." Clearing her throat rather gruffly, she lets one hand fall to her hip as the other waves vaguely, "I came to learn. She didn't beat you that badly, y'know, if you'd just pivoted left and leaned back when she--..."
Ahem. Her throat clears again, and a second shake of the head comes with renewed ferocity. There are no tears in those hazel eyes, but she acts almost as if there are, half-turning away and raising her voice to cover for something.
"Whatever. I'll see you tomorrow. Don't..."
She pauses, looks back over her shoulder, eyes narrowing and then widening as she tries something different. A smile. It's quick, faint, and rather distant in the other emotions at play; but it's well-intentioned somewhere in that brash mess.
"Don't be late."
A twist of the heels, the creak of plastic sole, and she's gone in brisk strides, taking the steps from the subway two at a time before disappearing into the streets of Southtown. Just another teenager who thinks they know best...
Log created on 21:14:50 06/04/2013 by Rust, and last modified on 02:20:25 06/05/2013.