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"Okay, Rei, seriously. What's up with you? You're never this gloom and doom, you never take a break this fast, and you always react to my stupid little quips! Something’s up with you."
Rei looks up at her, bags almost as visible as the girls resting underneath his glazed eyes. His blonde hair unkempt and ruffled like a hobo who's been sleeping on the sidewalk for too long, "It's nothing, Ciara."
"I know a guy that's stuck in his thoughts when I see one, Rei-man. You can't fool these tired green eyes."
"I'm fine.” Rei’s tone darkens slightly, aggravation and sadness meshing together with his voice, “Seriously."
Ciara groans to herself, facepalming, "Ugh... fuckin’..."
After giving up, Ciara chooses to just let Rei stay there and deal with his self-pitying attitude for the moment until she either goes on her break to drink a quick Beer, or he leaves... But, she thought that leaving the poor guy alone in his thoughts would be kind of fucked up, even for her. She looks at him and then muses to herself, trying to figure out how to get the blonde boy to not be strangled by his thoughts anymore.
A hug? Nah.
A beer? Nope, he can't drink alcohol. Can barely handle the stuff, apparently.
A drink? Jill always makes a drink whenever she notices someone stressed outta their mind. What was it again...? Oh yeah!
She takes a few seconds to scan the Calicomp for the recipe before gathering all of her supplies ready—cocktail shaker, barspoon, jigger, recipe, etc. She takes her time to avoid spilling ingredients onto the cabinet so she’ll have less to clean up, and to also avoid making a mistake and creating a deadly combination that would have the opposite effect of soothing someone. Eventually...
"Here, somethin' to relax your face."
Rei stares down at the beverage before looking back at Ciara. A simple, fuchsia-colored drink swirling around in a cylindrical glass: A Sugar Rush. He continues to look at the sweet drink for a few more seconds, letting its fragrant smell faintly reach his nose, before taking a sip and replying, "...Thank you."
Ciara places her hands onto the counter and leans down, "Don't mention it. Now talk, what's got you so down in the dumps?"
Rei sets his drink down to process his thoughts. He places an elbow onto the counter and rests his knuckles on his face, "I just... You... you know that I'm from another world, right?"
"Yeah, you've mentioned it to me and the others a few times. What about where you come from?"
"Well, I've been thinking: 'What if I don't end up finding a way to get back home? What if I'm just stuck here? What if I'm stuck living in a world where I still barely have any idea on how to survive? How am I going to adapt to life here if that’s ends up being the case?’"
Ciara hums. She takes a couple of seconds to process everything that she's heard. Her body automatically makes her yawn, "Oof, yeah. Sounds rough, not knowin' if you're gonna make it back to your family or friends when you’re stuck in a pickle with no way out in sight. Guess I can relate, kinda. *cough* Hm..."
"...You can?"
Ciara's heart stops as she realizes what she just said. She should've just kept her mouth shut. She could just lie and leave it at that... but she decides not to. She looks away from Rei for a couple seconds, agitated, contemplating, aggressively ruffling her hair to have any idea come to her head to not talk about herself. Rei notices that the girl is starting to get a bit uncomfortable, “S-sorry, I shouldn’t have asked...” he apologizes, “You know you don’t hav-”
"Aggghhhhh... just...” Ciara sighs, giving in and accepting her fate. “Just... finish your fuckin’ drink and come out with me, will you?"
"Huh? S-Sure?"
Rei takes a few more sips of the Sugar Rush. The sweetness of the drink helps him calm down and keeps his brain and all of those thoughts of his away from him, at least for the time being.
Ciara grabs a white sweatshirt from the empty coat rack beside the door, a big, puffy one with the words "Neon District" embroidered in the middle. Before leaving the bar, she puts it on, shaking her body to fit the cotton to her body, "CHIEEEEEEEEEF! I’m going on my break now!" She shouts, “Gil, watch over the fort for us, would you?”
"Okaaaay!" Dana shouts from her office.
Gil, slightly zoned out, gives her a thumbs up, “Mm.”
Ciara slips her hands into the cotton-lined pockets of her sweatshirt to shelter them from the chilly air outdoors. She turns around to face Rei, shifting her head in the direction of the doorway, "C'mon."
Rei sighs and simply caves, going in the Cat Boomers' direction, unsure of what’ll happen. He knew certain that she would ultimately lure him outside and divert his focus from his slump. Her approach to doing it, though? He has no idea; all he can do is hope that it won't be anything crazy.
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The two proceed outside, where there is a typical area where people go to relax, chat with one another, smoke, etc. Along with a number of empty crates and cardboard boxes that were just laying on the cold ground next to the hobo that’s always resting outside of the bar, wiring and lighting were sitting on the external walls next to a pair of vending machines. Rei steps outside and sees Ciara leaning on the wall, waiting for him while taking a few deep breaths of the nanomachine-infested air. Over the sounds of cars, colleagues talking to one another, and cats passing by and meowing loudly, Ciara lets out a cough, awkwardness surrounding the pair...
She interrupts the noises with her cat ears twitching with the wind blowing onto them, the clamps on her right ear jingle. She looks towards Rei, "Now, I trust you with this, alright? Don’t go around telling anyone about anything you’re about to lay your eyes on."
Shuffle, shuffle, rustle, rustle...
She stands next to one of the empty cardboard boxes and undoes her tie before tossing it there. Then, she takes a few deep breaths to compose herself for what she is about to do as she unbuttons the button of her vest and the dress shirt beneath as much as she can without needing to take off her warm sweater.
Ruffle, ruffle...
Because everything is happening so quickly, it takes a couple of seconds for Rei to realize what's happening. He swiftly puts his hands over his eyes, startled by the implications of what Ciara is trying to do, "W-what are you-?!"
"Eaaaaasy, choom." Ciara interrupts, "I'm not naked. Just... look."
Rei slooooowly pulls down his hands from his flustered face. And what he sees surprises him: A painfully visible scar resting on Ciara's neck, gross and rotating around most of the front of her neck. The ends of the mostly healed incision not even reaching to the back of her neck and connecting to one another.
"...W-woah."
Ciara fans her neck with her hand, almost as if the appendage underneath the uniform wasn't there. "That uniform can get super stuffy..." She notices Rei’s eyes stuck on her as she cools it down. She stops and gives him a very smug smirk, "Pfft, weirdo. You got a thing for people's necks or something?"
Her cat ears flicker as a way to show that she's messing around with him, but cracks, anxieties, and vulnerabilities are showing all over her cocky face, albeit very slightly.
"S-sorry! I... um... w-what happened?" Rei stutters, "How did you... get that?"
Ciara's lungs take in yet another big breath of air. Her cat ears droop as she exhales, "*ahem* Well, a few years ago, some..."
She pulls herself back, almost getting absorbed by her own thoughts as she tries to explain the event. She isn't really used to talking about herself or what she’s been through with anyone, she never wanted to. Especially when it involves something so awful, tragic, traumatizing, and horrific, something no one would ever want to relive the memories of. However, she feels comfortable enough to talk about it with Rei, she trusts him enough to tell him. Regaining a bit of her usual bravado, she takes another deep breath, in and out.
"So, during my late teens, I grew up with some crazy people; people I thought I could trust, thought I could consider them as a family of sorts after I kinda... left the foster family I was living with at the time for stupid reasons.” Ciara reminisces for a bit, laughing quietly to herself, “One day, those said crazies woke me up for no reason, lead me into a coooold, dusty alleyway like this...”
She spins around showing off the alley as if she owns it, then stops before she reaches the edge of falling asleep. She considers going right back to spinning solely to fall asleep and leave the story at that. Though, something inside of her compels her to press on and resume. “Someone I fully put my trust into, this crazy-as-fuck ex-boyfriend of mine—along with a bunch of other people from our little group of streetpunks—just... shoved me on top of a pile of trash bags without warning. I didn’t know what the hell was going on. ‘Till I saw knives and this fuckin’... weird, bloodthirsty look in all of their eyes.”
As Ciara frantically rushes through her memories to escape the horrible memory again, she stops again, and shakes her head. Her brows creased as she gazed at the cold, trash-covered concrete, which kept on reminding and reminding her of the whole ordeal. Now she’s the one stuck in her head this time and wanted to get out of there as quickly as possible...
“*ahem* I’ll... I’ll just get to the point. I thought it was another one of their sick and twisted jokes that they’d always pull, but they kept getting closer to me. I started freaking out, wondering if I’m gonna be okay, if I’m gonna be able to make it out of there. But... before… *ahem* before I could even get myself up...”
Ciara nonchalantly points to her scar, "Sllllice."
Rei feels nothing but complete shock hitting him after the reveal. He would've assumed that the wound came from some kind of freak accident, not from anything like this. "O-oh my god... t-that's... I'm so-"
"But!" Ciara places a hand to his face to shush Rei, "Fortunately for me, a few Valkyries came and managed to get my head glued back onto my neck before I flatlined, easy peasy!"
She tries to lighten the mood with that, mostly hers, but her head droops down and all of her vulnerabilities are officially written and seen on her face again. "Problem is, I had to be stuck with this little guy on my neck, a crapload of trauma in my head, a lonely life on the streets, trust issues that are still lingering around, and trauma suppressants running through my bloodstream for the past couple of god-knows-how-long. But, hey, I'm still here, right? Managed to find a new place to live, met and reunited with people that I’d gladly consider as family, had my brain given me the choice to."
Rei just... stares, his eyes widened by what he's just heard. He has nothing more to say and is at a loss for words. He's never seen Ciara so... vulnerable, but also so grateful. A girl who lost so much—her trust in others, people to consider as family, a place to call home, and much, much more—but ended up getting some, if not most, or all of it back through various means. He is kind of reminded of Sei, who expressed her gratitude for her being alive following her conversation with Jill, despite everything that she had seen in that bank and everything that had happened to her before.
The girl analyzes Rei’s face for a bit, simply assuming that she hasn't gotten through to him yet through the surprise written all over his face. She groans quietly, she doesn't do well in these types of situations... not when it comes to actually conversing and talking herself. She's only given friends hugs without fully understanding what was going on, and that's it. But... she doesn't feel a hug is necessary, at least not right now.
Rei is startled out of his trance by the sound of Ciara's heels clicking and the jingling of her ear clamps sliding towards him. The drowsy girl puts a hand on his shoulder as well as rubs his shoulder softly with her thumb in an attempt to bring some kind of relief or relaxation. She yawns and gives him a thumbs up, "C'mon, cheer up. My point is: nothing's impossible. If I could survive with my head dangling off of my neck for 2 hours, then you can find your way back home. And if not, you'll find your way to live life here with Chief and some of the others helping you out. Plain and simple. “Anything can happen,” my favorite foster Dad would always say."
She gives out a gentle, toothy smile, before yawning again and looking away to think, "...Or was it, “anything is possible?”"
Her cat ears swing back and forth in time along with the wave of the wind and her sluggish thoughts. She squints her eyes and stares down at the cold ground, resting her hands behind her head. Sighing, she puts the question to the side for now, she'll think about it later and ask Kieran what the phrase was. She looks up to Rei again and... Hey, he's smiling!
"Heyyyyy, there's a smil-"
Rei hastily pulls Ciara into his arms in the blink of an eye, grasping and squeezing onto her tightly.
"ACK! Hugging!" Ciara sputters.
Rei clings himself tightly onto his cat-eared companion. Tears well up and begin to fall out of his eyes and onto Ciara's hair. He gives her a tiiiight squeeze out of concern that she'll believe her speech wasn't effective when it's the polar opposite, it worked. He mumbles, "Thank you," resting his cheek on top of her head.
He repeats it again, "Thank you..." And again, "Thank you..." growing more and more silent with each thank you. His arms grow tighter and tighter with each passing second as the cat boomer struggles to free herself from the arm prison. She groans loudly and wriggles around like a worm in an attempt to break free and breathe. "OKAAAAY! Let go, dude!"
After this, it takes Rei a little longer to understand that he has been holding onto her for far too long than she's comfortable with. "S-sorry!" He lets go of her, allowing Ciara to take a brief breather of the air and to straighten out her already messy clothes.
"U-um, thank you, again. I... *sniff* I mean it."
"Sheesh... some kinda warning would’ve been nice. *sigh* Don't mention it." Ciara coughs. She stretches and pats herself to make sure Rei didn't already break any bones in that hug, then puts her outfit back together. She grabs her tie, and decides to loosely wrap it around her neck instead.
"Do you need help with that, or...?" Rei asks.
"Nah," Ciara responds, "I'll have Kieran sort it out whenever he gets back with the others. 'Sides, the whole "cozy and lazy” bartender look suits me, don't you think?"
Rei shrugs, "Hehehe, yeah."
"Heh." Ciara puts her hands back inside the pockets of her hoodie, embracing the warmth as she makes her way back to the inside of the bar. Her heels' clicking stops after taking one step. She turns back to Rei to get a couple more words in.
"And hey, if you need a pair of ears to listen: I am not the person to go to for this type of thing. Go to Victoria, or maybe Dillon? They're probably wayyyy better at this stuff than I am,” she shrugs, “Maybe Erik can play a motivational song for you or something."
Rei chuckles a bit at the cat boomer’s honesty, "I'll be sure to keep that in mind. Even though you did a pretty good job yourself."
"Pffft, thanks, I guess?"
“The same goes to you too, you know? If you need anyone to listen to you vent, then, I’m here as well.”
“Can’t guarantee I’ll talk about my life or whatever’s taken place in it ever again, because holy FUCK, that was brutal; but I’ll keep that in mind. If it ever comes to it, haaaard if." Ciara says, chuckling. "Anyway, let’s get a move on, those on-break Beer’s are callin’ my name and are in dire need of a new liver to take over. Mine.”
Ciara makes her way back inside, and Rei watches as she does so. Despite the fact that she did most of the talking, he will always be thankful for their small conversation. Even if he never gets back home, he'll be glad that he’s not alone and that he’ll be able to live in a world with people that he gladly calls friends.