inbox.

[pse]

Inbox

822 - 2762

Voice — Text

"You've reached [ 822 - 2762 ]. Leave a message after the tone."

Note: She will never pick up the phone for calls and all voicemails will only be answered by texts.

CONTACTS

Amos

375 – 3135

@churnback

Astarion

537 - 8661

@sanguineus

Bucky

222 – 7637

@freakymagoo

Charles

478 - 2238

@thetruefocus

Cid

799 - 3797

@judgmentbolts

Furiosa

610 – 2077

@imperatour

Jinu

569 - 8987

@idolatrized

John

986 - 4434

@adrenalines

Laura

678 – 9829

@valle

Logan

326 – 5587

@carcajous

Lucy

[number here]

@sunnygoose

Lune

538 - 7763

@savante

Steve

987 - 6543

@americassed

Verso

222 – 1879

@recreatable

Yelena

612 – 3341

@resplendents

Code Source

Comments

roomie vignettes

[imperatour]

[ It's the exceedingly odd night where they're both in. Between the Dome, Assets Management, and shacking up with Frank, Furiosa and Kimiko can sometimes be a bit like ships passing in the night. It's not in her nature, but Furiosa is at least trying to keep Kimiko appraised of her schedule, a paper schedule with her hours appearing on the fridge without comment one day. Slowly and surely, Furiosa started volunteering information in text if she would or wouldn't be back that night.

The threat of the murderer is part of it. Truthfully, Furiosa is more afraid of what else Kimiko might do to her car.

But even with those busy schedules, they've inexplicably found a night in together. Furiosa is eating a very practical fortified breakfast cereal by the handful right out of the box. ]

Do you want to watch a movie?

[ She never got to finish Jurassic Park!! ]

[pse]

[ Kimiko is sitting on the couch that will, in a handful of hours now, become Furiosa's bed... and painting her toenails. It's rather rude, all things considered, but her toes did get eaten off by an eldritch hitchhiker the other day so she needs to redo the colour. Leaning her chin into her knee, she nods, and signs one-handed. ]

You can pick.

[ The remote is... around here somewhere. The basic cable package comes as part of the rent for the unit, and includes a small scattering of movie channels. Kimiko, for her part, doesn't own any tapes or DVDs.

She adds, after a moment — ]

No talking animals.

[ Those movies give her nightmares. :( ]

[imperatour]

[ So... not the sweet looking one about with a pig on the titled something like Baby. Got it.

Furiosa scrolls past it with the remote, settling on My Uncle Vincent, which she finds a fascinating look into a society that apparently settled their questions of justice in courtrooms. They watch for awhile, but she's unimpressed when no one seems to realize thirty minutes into the movie: ]

There's no way a 64 Buick Skylark made those skid marks. [ Kimiko did not ask and probably does not care, but literally the slightest hint of any indication that she's wondering how Furiosa knows this prompts her to continue. ] The rear axle on a Skylark is solid, so with one up on the curb you'd be riding the side. Those marks are flat and even.

[ Furiosa is indignant. Really, do they pay such little attention to the important details when making a film? Especially when a supposed car expert is supposed to be testifying to assert guilt.

Please find something else, Kimiko, unless you want he to start talking about tire sizes next. ]

sometime during the night of his and Rumi's 'date' night

[idolatrized]

[On the night of the big event he told Kimiko about, she gets an important message:]

👍🎉🥳👍🎉🥳👍

[pse]

[ And it is, indeed, the most important message she's ever received! ]

😘 ??

[idolatrized]

💏!!!

I'll let you know if I screw the rest up later.

We can still do a pub crawl later either way
But a celebratory one hopefully

Delivered Anonymously Around Christmas

[idolatrized]

[Delivered to Kimiko is a small giftbox wrapped impeccably with red handkerchief.

It's a little old-fashioned, but he thinks it looks nice!]

Click to unwrap!

A Tiny Music Box that plays Waltz No. 2!

[It's small enough to fit in her palm comfortably. The wooden material is a bit flimsy, so be careful! It does in fact play a version of Waltz No. 2 by Dmirtri Shostakovich. A small piece of paper inside reads: 'The box isn't very fancy, but the music is. Since you like waltzing music.']

toyotathon gifts

[imperatour]

[ Furiosa will not be with Kimiko on Christmas day, but she leaves a gift for her on the counter. The gift is besides the fact that Fury ran a wire from someone else's satellite dish on the roof to their TV to get the premium movie channels. It was icy, and Furiosa almost slipped off the roof in the process, but Kimiko doesn't need to know that.

In the package is silver hair tinsel — Furiosa only vaguely understands the purpose of this from the pictures on the packaging, but even then she's not totally sure. There's also a handful of butterfly hair clips scattered on top of a speak and spell, modified only to have the dictation functions. At the bottom is a sturdy looking VCR and a VHS tape of a musical called Detroit!, which isn't one that they've watched, but is apparently about a bunch of women who committed murder according to the summary on the back. ]

xmas

[carcajous]

[ The paper bag is nondescript, the box an old candy tin emptied out. Inside is a round gold-foiled "coin," the kind she once gave to him at the end of their first real talk. It's identical, actually, so he must've snagged another from Sophie. This one's chocolate-free. Rather, a hard material's carved to fit inside so the shell holds its shape, the foil glued around it and a hole poked through the top.

It dangles from a silver ball chain—long enough for her to hang it on her rear view mirror, or wherever she feels like.

He hasn't signed his name, but. It's probably not hard to guess. And the box smells faintly of cigar smoke. ]

[pse]

[ In response, a quick text. ]

Thank you.

[thetruefocus]

Kimiko, it's Charles. I plan on having our first superpowered club get together this weekend, and I would like you to consider coming. I know it is asking a lot, but I assure you, it is very informal and you can leave any time you want.

[pse]

[ It's a long time before she responds. At least an hour. ]

It's important to you that I go?

[thetruefocus]

I would be happy if you would come, but I understand if it's too much.

texts, undeliverable.

[savante]

[ The pulse rolls through the city and leaves chaos behind. Broken glass, the scream of wheels and impact, distant car alarms whining. Lune is trapped indoors, and on kneejerk instinct, she reaches for her telephone — these magical, eternally useful devices — and instantly tries to check on her loved ones.

There's not that many people outside the Expedition who she feels close enough to reach out to, but Kimiko is the first. ]

Did you hear that? Are you alright?

[ The network has usually been stable within the stronghold. Reliable. But this time, there's a different cryptic icon sitting in the corner of her screen, and she stares at it through a long frustrating pause, a furious impatience, waiting for a reply. Until the telephone makes another noise and she seizes it to read Kimiko's response— ]


MESSAGE UNDELIVERABLE

[ Her heart falls in her chest. Palms starting to go slippery with nerves. She tries again, stubbornly hammering out an identical message and jabbing SEND. It has to work. She's taken it for granted that this technology works.

(It doesn't work.)

Once she gets out of the building and out onto the streets again, with a clearer access to open air and hopefully better reception outside tangled metal and concrete, she tries once more. ]

I'm around the Pavilion; uninjured. Report in, please.


MESSAGE UNDELIVERABLE


[ This might have been what Expedition 64 felt like: their radio frequencies being used against them, the relays being sabotaged and going down, their voices going silent. In the end, Lune has to give up, shoving the useless lump of plastic back into her coat and keeping on the move, her heartbeat pounding a thump-thump of anxiety in her throat. ]

[pse]

[ It's nearly twelve hours before Kimiko is in a position to start checking on people. Retrieving her phone, charging it — all of this takes time, takes effort, takes resources that flicker in and out of immediate reach. And, as it turns out, a super-strong meat shield is a valuable commodity in the aftermath of a citywide emergency.

Her phone tells her—
ZERO (O) NEW MESSAGE(S)
and
NO SERVICE
Not necessarily in that order.

Kimiko hates this part. Hates being separated from the people who matter; the family she's been slowly building, now not knowing if they're dead or alive. She isn't emotionally equipped for the uncertainty. She trusts them, yes. Trusts their intelligence, their abilities. But the worry in the pit of her stomach grows and grows and calcifies into something hard and ugly and unimpeachable. She tries to focus. Helps out where she can. ]

Checking in. Are you okay?

[ The answer she gets is underwhelming, to say the least.

MESSAGE NOT SENT.
MESSAGE NOT SENT. Resend?
MESSAGE NOT SENT. Resend?
MESSAGE NOT SENT. Resend?

Sending.........

MESSAGE NOT SENT.
Try again in a few minutes.

She keeps trying, of course. But she parcels the attempts around everything else, such as being riddled with bullets and having her vehicle stolen by raiders while she's bleeding on the tarmac. ]

Just checking in. Rough out there. Stay safe, okay?
My apartment still has running water.
Go there if you need to.

[ By some miracle, the last line — and only the last line — gets delivered. ]

Text

[freakymagoo]

[It's a couple days after, she's probably not who she wants to hear from, but his message goes through eventually although he probably wasn't nearly so frantic or obsessed with his phone and just tried to resend a couple of times whenever Steve told him he remembered to check his phone.]

are you ok

((EDIT: I know you're busy this month, feel free to leave him on read!!))

[pse]

Good. Surviving.

[ It's sucked a bit, but — ]

You?

[freakymagoo]

Yeah

[Although to be fair he's the type to have a bone sticking out of his limb and still say he's fine and will just walk it off, so. 'Surviving' is a flexible metric.]

Still in town?

after the pulse.

[savante]

[ The only message Lune received from Kimiko during the blackout had been a cryptic single line: Go there if you need to.

But go fucking where, was the issue. Lune had tried messaging her friend off-and-on, but nothing made it through; and then it’s been a little over a week of sleep deprivation, moving between makeshift crisis centers, trying to help maintain order in chaotic districts. How quickly it all fell apart, the moment people lost sight of the social contract. Lune had stood in the hospital room of the very woman who kept it all running, and had the distinct impression that it was all far more fragile than she’d ever known.

Even after the power comes back on, her telephone still doesn’t work quite right. She keeps trying to message Kimiko and it doesn’t go through; nothing else comes back.

Go there if you need to.

So, after a couple days of this aggravation, and after sorting out her own room and retrieving her now-dented car from where it had been stuck (although thankfully not wrecked) in the Pavilion— Lune just drives over to Kimiko’s place.

First she knocks politely on the door, then pounds on it with a fist, more insistent. Waits, head cocked, listening for any sound of the other woman or her roommates inside. The door hasn’t been broken down, so their home seems intact. They’re all tough and capable. They’re fine. It’s probably fine.

After a few minutes of bobbing on her heels, impatient, fretful, Lune settles down in the hallway to wait for the other woman to (presumably, hopefully) return from errands or emergencies or work or whatever else has been occupying any of them now that the power’s back. She sits on the floor with her head tipped back against the wall, long legs outstretched, then eventually tucked under herself when the first annoyed neighbour has to walk past her.

She tries to read (you should always keep a book in your bag), but her attention span drifts and she finds herself going over the same sentence over and over. In the end, she gives up and simply waits in an anxious half-doze. By any pragmatic measure, it’s a waste of her time — she has better things to do, she could’ve simply slipped a note under the door and called it a day — but she waits anyway, like some forlorn abandoned dog haunting the doorstep. She wants the immediate confirmation, to lay her eyes on Kimiko herself or be able to interrogate the roommates. It’s been a shitty week filled with the unknown, no confirmation, unable to find her people for so long. She’s tired of it.

Lune wants to know, concretely and definitively, that Kimiko is alright.

So. She waits. ]

[pse]

[ It's a long, rough week. The apartment is cold without power, even when she burrows under her blankets. There's running water, thankfully, but no functioning hot water tank — so showers are freezing cold, even though she swore to herself that ended when her time with the Shining Light did. She's gunned down, her car is stolen, she gets it back. She gains a trusty friend in the form of Bat-san, an iron Louisville slugger that now permanently rides passenger princess in her SUV. There's more fights, more injuries, more work, more concerns, more sleepless nights. Half the time, she doesn't make it home to sleep in her own bed.

One day, she does make it back. Her vehicle is still parked in Amos and Cassian's shop, waiting for repair now that the lights have come back on, but it isn't hard for her to find a ride to and 'fro. In the liminal, dinner-shaped space between afternoon and evening, burnished by a half-set sun, Kimiko exits the stairwell, enters her hallway, and —

Sees Lune, sitting outside her unit, feet planted, expression... unreadable. Unsurprising, and almost welcome. Familiar, if nothing else.

With a grocery bag under her arm, Kimiko smiles. Sits down next to her friend, mimicking Lune's posture in a companionable sort of way. Reaches into the bag of sundries, pulls out an offering of a soft cinnamon pretzel. ]

[savante]

[ Lune’s never been particularly physically demonstrative — you typically have to catch her on a truly bad, awful, no-good day to shake past those defenses — and so where someone else might have instantly pounced on their friend with a hug, Lune simply turns to look at her instead. Holds out a hand and obligingly accepts the cinnamon pretzel, and takes a bite of warm crunchy dough, the sugar-crystals melting on her tongue.

What she does do, however, is knock the tip of her boot (still Kimiko’s old boots, in fact) into the other woman’s ankle by way of greeting. Lune breaks into a smile then: bright, helplessly relieved. ]

Hello, [ she signs with a quick flash of her free hand, and: ] Fuck, I’m glad you’re alright.

[ Not as if there was much chance of something in the blackout taking down the indestructible regenerating supe, but… Still. She worried. Emotions were so often irrational; that was Lune’s whole issue with them. ]

text

[imperatour]

Proof of life. Sorry for going dark.

[pse]

You okay?
I was worried.

text; 007 - 8719

[searingbond]

[ The day after the party — ]

so!

[pse]

[ Guess who is Not Getting The Intent? Kimiko, that's who. She waits a few seconds for a follow-up and, when none comes, hazards a reply. ]

Good morning!