What's keeping you awake at night ...

[netrunnerzero]

There's a man sitting in bench in the nexus with medium length length sliver hair and hard eyes of a blue-gray hue.  He leans forward in the seat with his hands clasped together in front of him.  He looks as though he's trying to crack his knuckles, but they won't crack.  His fingers are the right shape.  Joints in all in the right place, at a glance, but the hands are entirely formed of stain resistant metal.

Zero looks as if he's not looking at his surroundings, but through them and through you too, if you're approaching him.  He feels a question like an inch in the back of his mind and it's apparently one that he can't help, but to scratch.

"What's keeping you awake at night?"

Comments

[stark_ravingmad]

"Good question. A whole load of stuff, pal. Nice arms by the way. Titanium or---something else? Steel alloy?"

Tony couldn't help but notice the man's metal arms which piques his interest being an engineer. The question had him thinking as he adjusted his sunglasses, placing them atop his head so he could see the man properly.

"Nightmares, mostly. Past events."

[netrunnerzero]

"It's mostly chromium. Not quite top of the line, where I come from, but a better modification than most can afford."

Zero's voice is low and has a certain grit about it that isn't a put on. It might make someone wonder if he was a smoker or spent a lot of time breathing harsh air.

His hands move with almost a flourish when he pulls the sleeve of his white trenchcoat down to the forearm. The hardware ends only just above the wrist and the other man will see that most of his arm is organic. He has reasonably good muscle tone for a middle-aged guy, but it's doubtful that he'd impress a superhero. His skin is just beginning to lighten from age.

"The other is like that too." Zero assures and positions himself back more or less the way he was.

"Your dreams and mine sound like they'd be old chooms."

[ministryproject5]

Dominic was wandering aimlessly. After spending most of his life in only two buildings Dominic was facinated with simply being outside and seeing other places. He looks like everyone else until he makes eye contact with the man who is speaking. Dominic's eyes are unnaturally, bright yellow.

"Training...and genetics." It was the most direct answer. He still couldn't get on the 24 hour days after existing on years of 40 hours awake and 8 asleep. There were other things that kept him up now but not as much as that habit and his genetics.

[netrunnerzero]

It's fashionable in his time and place for persons to have color changing features. You see it most often with the hair, of course. Young people love being able to change their brightly colored locks, at an instant, to match their wardrobe. The same tech exists for the eyes and even skin color.

The thing is, though, that even in a place where people can modify the color of their eyes at will ... you don't see yellow very much. It's rare enough that Zero takes notice of those bright eyes looking at him. 'They're somewhat predatory looking in a human', he muses to himself.

"Your answer ... c'est terriblement littérale, non?"

Zero is wrapping his mechanical index and pointer finger around a mid-knuckle joint that will never pop again. He's only ever trying to crack his mechanical hands because it still feels good in a way that he can't explain.

"Speaking on your genetics, though, have your eyes always been yellow?"

[ministryproject5]

French is not a language he knows so it gives him pause, brow furrowed, as he puts the sounds to words he knows. This isn't the first time he's run into a language he doesn't know. In fact, it is happening all the time now.

"I don't know. I've always been this way." Dominic often heard from others that aspects of his life have, or were, terrible but it has been all he has ever known. He doesn't see it that way.. yet.

"All of the breeding project offspring have golden eyes but my generation and our children have yellow eyes. The gene is linked to the one that gives use better hearing and sight than those who were not bred." Dominic could have explained more but he had learned lately that not everyone understood or wanted him to go into detail.

[netrunnerzero]

Zero didn't speak French growning up, but he deals with creole speakers often enough that it slips into his own language now and then. And then there is his last name, which, suggests that maybe it's in his genes somehow. Night City is an amalgam of people and cultures, it all bleeds together after a while. It bleeds on you too.

"Always been that way is fair enough."

He listens to the specifics of the yellow eyes being offered to him. He isn't particularly literate in the health sciences, but he has the gist. He comes from a place where population is declining too, though they haven't needed to go as far as breeding projects.

"So then, it sounds like there's an authority in your life that you have to submit to. Or that you did at one time, anyway."

[ministryproject5]

Dominic noticed this person's hands and frowned slightly. It wasnt that he was put off by them. No, he was thinking about how his government would kill off anyone who needed a prosthetic or had one at all. He had quickly come to understand that part of his government, prior government, was wrong.

"Our government is.. was...is but not mine any longer.. is totalitarian with thought crime and mental reprogramming for transgression." Dominic still got caught up on the feelings if being part of his society and yet no longer being part of it. "You don't submit to the Ministry exactly. You, I, was born to it."

[netrunnerzero]

"Sounds intolerable."

He can see the way the man is staring at his hands. The augmented person is common enough where he comes from that nobody would think twice about his hands in Night City, so it's been a while since he's caught anyone looking.

"They don't put you off, do they?" He said, clanking his metal fingertips together for emphasis.

[ministryproject5]

Dominic shrugged. He was not yet far enough removed in time to have that opinion though his humanity would catch up eventually.

"I've never seen anyone with prosthetics." Dominic was matter if fact about it. "People who would need them are eliminated at birth or later in life. The Ministry seeks perfection of body." He meant killed but the language of the Ministry was still deeply ingrained in his mind.

[netrunnerzero]

"Oh. You think I had some kind of accident or a birth defect, don't you?"

Zero nodded his head slowly, a faint smirk drifting over his lips.

"These hands do more than the hands I was born with ever could. I payed to have a ripper doc take off the flesh I was born with for these. I can interface with machines in a way I couldn't before, bypass security that exists in my world, shoot straighter and punch harder."

He flexed the fingers open and closed. "It's the better, faster and stronger of my home. It extends to parts other than the hands, too."

[tielle_mortevus]

She takes a seat on the bench across from him, pulling out a small pewter flask. She takes a quick swig before popping the cap back on and tucking it away.

"Regrets, mistakes, the endless musings of how things might have played out differently..."

She lets out a soft sigh, her head lilting back over the back of the bench.

"... and the fact none of it matters. What's done is done, there's no bringing him back... well not the way he was anyway..."

She leans forward again, giving him a grin just wide enough to reveal a pair of sharp fangs.

"Though that's not to say I wouldn't be awake all night regardless."

[netrunnerzero]

Zero can't help himself. He's been grown old in a place full of dangers for the entirety of his life and in Night City ... you didn't reach your sixties without some wise defensiveness and a bit of luck.

She doesn't read to him as an immediate threat, but the presence of a flask strikes him as a little odd. He presumes alcohol, of course, and that makes anyone harder to predict. The teeth would be calculated as dangerous if he understood what they were. Vampires were stories from a forgotten age in his world and as such, he takes them as a fashion choice he doesn't understand. (He doesn't understand what young people think is trendy quite often.)

She is also noted by Zero as 'pretty', but it's about the last thing he's noticed while he was taking the stranger in. That sort of thing is inventoried in his mind, but hadn't been acted upon in quite a long time.

"What might have been ..."

He said the phrase with a fondness that wasn't normally heard in his voice. It was terrible to miss someone (or someones), but he had come around to the notion that the fact that he still had feelings of the loss decades later kept him 'human'. Still feeling things acutely was a priority to Zero.

"Could you see your life being different? If you knew then what you know now?"

[tielle_mortevus]

"Perhaps... though untangling those threads of fate that led me to where I am now is... difficult..."

She takes another sip of her flask, licking the trail of crimson dribbling from the corner of her lip.

"Saving him one way would simply force me to lose him another... be it dying from his wounds and going peacefully had I chose not to turn him.. or him resenting me for leaving his traitorous little companion to fend for themselves in the wilderness."

She let out a sigh.

"I could certainly see things being different... but for the better, that's something I don't think I'll ever be able to say for sure."

[netrunnerzero]

Zero knows the sight of blood when he's looking at it. Its blood in her flask and she's ... drinking it? It makes his stomach just a little uneasy to think about. Sure, he's tasted blood. He's been punched and knocked around before. It's just that tasting it in your spit a little is one thing and drinking it is quite another.

"I don't think my case is so complicated. I'd do anything to have kept them with me a little longer."

He closes his eyes and shrugs.

"I know that doesn't mean that something differently tragic could have happened anyway, but I'd roll the dice."

[tielle_mortevus]

"Oh as would I, but unfortunately one can't change the past. We simply push forward and learn from our mistakes, however tragic they may be."

She gives him a bit of a shrug, leaning back on the bench.

"Though that's not to say nothing good came of things... It's just a shame she had to grow up never meeting her father."

Her voice lowered a bit, more an idle musing than speaking to Zero directly. She cast a melancholic gaze towards the ground as her mind wandered to what could have been.

[netrunnerzero]

Zero winces when he hears the mention of a girl growing up without a father. In his case, he was the would-be father who got old with the passing of a daughter, but he understands the pain of familial loss. It has defined him in a number of ways.

He opens his eyes again.

"A family torn apart by loss is sadly common where I come from." He said after a slow breath. "Everyone's lost someone, it seems like."

[tielle_mortevus]

She sighs, nodding in agreement.

"Thankfully she was young enough to not remember the horrid event... and had the heart to forgive this old bat for handling things as poorly as I did when she eventually learned the truth..."

She gave him an empathetic smile as she looked him over.

"I take it you've suffered something similar?"

[netrunnerzero]

"The old bat." He said with a brow raised and smile that could pass for charming. Considering the subject matter they'd been discussing, he couldn't summon a broad one for the moment. "Surely, you're not talking about yourself."

Zero took a breath and shrugged. He had spent enough years telling himself that everyone lost someone that he more or less believed it. Bringing himself to talk about it still hurt even now, yet, not talking about it made his loved one's seem even more gone than they were.

"The love of my life." He said, which was the only phrase he'd been able to come up with that did his feelings justice. "... and our girl."

late to the party damn werk

[poorgirlsarcee]

Mira quirked a brow, because okay metal hands, yeah... that's gonna catch the tinker's attention.

Question, right he asked a question...

"I'm a night owl for the most part. Well, became one because of the friends I hang out with at least." She leaned against one of the nearby trees. "That and well the town I live in, seems safer in the dark. Day time people are annoyingly unproductive."

Don't apologize. I'm glad you made it.

[netrunnerzero]

Being from Night City, where danger can come at you from every direction, Zero has a tendency to be wary of strangers. It's just pragmatic, isn't it? At least until you get to know someone for a while (and even then, there's no guarantee they won't turn out to be scum or have an psychotic break). He's gotten pretty good at juding people without overly looking like he is.

Mira puts him somewhat at ease, just looking at her. She might not be from his world, but there's something about her visually that makes him feel like he could see her in it. Or maybe it's the unspoken bond of one tech minded person with another. He smiles faintly.

"It's nice to hear someone imply they just prefer the dark." Though safer at night? That seems unusual.

Re: Don't apologize. I'm glad you made it.

[poorgirlsarcee]

"I think it comes with night being quieter, comes in handy when I'm trying to fix a troublesome engine when I can actually hear what needs fine tuning." She grinned a little. Or trying not to worry too much because your on again off again vigilante boyfriend is doing something stupid to spite his adopted dad, but hey... Not something she'd say out loud, even to Jay.

"I'm Mira." She held out her hand.

[netrunnerzero]

He finds it moving that she's willing to take his hand. He'd run into plenty of people that didn't trust that he wouldn't crush their fragile digits or were otherwise just off put by the cold looking devices present where flesh should be.

"Mira." He says, taking her hand for a gentle shake and offering a slight bow over it. "Charmed. Truly. I'm Zero."

[poorgirlsarcee]

Well, she is friends on her world with a Kryptonian, besides she's curious to know if it's warm, or cold like metal.

Her grip is more manly, and if he has any tactile ability, he'd probably note her hands are rough, and slightly stained with oils, though it won't rub off on anyone. "Okay, you must have an amazing mechanic, because I wasn't expecting a full grip. Nice." She smiled brightly. "Nice to meet you Zero. And sorry, I'm a bit of a techy. that is when I'm not playing my guitar."

[netrunnerzero]

She will note that his hands seem like she might expect in this climate, given that she works with metals. Warmed by being out in the light, but not overly hot. It seemed as if maybe they would be hot if he splayed his hands out in the direct sun and didn't move for a long time.

However, Zero's tech is preem in the world that he comes from. His cyberware is Kiroshi and capable of feeding information to him (nearly) all the time, as well as working together. So his optic implants can tell him when his hands are too hot to work with something and they can initate cooling. Similarly, he has readings that measure like 'touch' he can tell a pressure that she's gripping with, (in a measurement more fine than PSI) and that her hands are not precisely dry. (He would have to hold her hand for a while to tell what's on them.)

You wouldn't hear him describe it as a substitute for being able to feel things, though. Bottom line is, he has more hardware that is not easy to see - unless she had some kind of implants or special vision of her own.

"I'm a hobbyist when it comes to taking things apart and putting them back together. Better at manipulating software and operating systems than hardware."

Zero releases her hands.

"I don't mind showing them off. They've been this way longer than they were skin and bones, at this point."

[poorgirlsarcee]

Mira laughs at that. "See, I'm horrible with the software, though... being me has it's good quirks." A mechanical Meta after all. "I can usually hear the machines, like little tunes in my head. Though I can't seem to separate it with you, as in I can't seem to tell where the organics end and the cybernetics begin." She was grinning though. "It's been a while since I've been confused like that. It's kind of fun."