omegafriends

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a; anywhere and everywhere

There is a man with a camera around his neck sitting somewhere discreet and snapping photos. Whether those photos are of you or of someone else is entirely up to you! But he sure is snapping them. Every third photo or so he shifts and looks at the display screen to check the photos, deleting them if they didn't turn out like he liked or going right back to it. Apart from his camera, there is only him and a short can of black coffee, which he periodically raises to his lips and tips backward in a short gesture to take a swig.

Please, someone come tell him to stop being a creep.

b; a van, down some side street in the city

And down this particular side street, there is a van, the words "Pleasure Way" emblazoned across the front of it just above the passenger's side tire, and a man that keeps exiting and re-entering the van from its open side doors. From the sound of it, he is having some kind of conversation, though there doesn't appear to be anyone with him.

"Why don't you just look it up yourself?" There was a woman's voice from inside the van, quiet and consoling in tone. The man stepping out of the vehicle did not match the sound at all. As he stepped to the ground, his posture changed drastically and he tossed his head, snarling a touch.

"Isn't that what you do? Find things, learn? You're always tacking away at your computer." This voice was much deeper, harsher. He sounded angry, this time. His posture shifted again, then, his shoulders slumping and his right hand pushing his left from where it had been waving wildly.

"Have neither of you considered that I don't want to?"

Oh. It appeared this guy was having a conversation with himself. Do with that as you will, Venture City.

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Okay, Tomoki, not cool. Rei didn't so much care about the eavesdropping, but don't sneak up on a guy like that, seriously. He jolted, spinning with his arms raised to defend himself if needbe, and then sighed, relaxing when he saw it was just Tomoki.

"Oi, Tomoki!! Don't sneak up on me like that, I was about to punch your face in!!" Naturally, Jin was aiming for violence. He waved an arm like usual, and Rei promptly nudged it aside.

"You really should be more careful, you know he'd hit you." Artfully avoiding the question? Possibly.

Tomoki huffs a quiet laugh before pushing away from the van and approaching him. "If he would have hit me, I probably would have deserved it."

He slides his hands into his pockets. "Is everything okay? It sounded like you guys were having an argument."

His smile got a little funny when Tomoki didn't drop the question, and he didn't quite meet the reporter's eyes. Of course he was going to keep asking, he was a reporter. Sometimes Rei's luck was damnable.

"It's fine," he said with a faint shrug. Sorry, Tomoki, he doesn't quite know how to explain to you that he doesn't really want to know what you're looking up on his behalf.

Ah, see. Now Tomoki was starting to get worried. And a little suspicious. He's pretty good at figuring out when people are bullshitting him. Rei was definitely bullshitting him right now.

"Obviously something isn't. What's going on?"

Yeah, he's not backing down. Sorry, Rei. Your friend is kind of an unyielding brick wall.

Dammit Tomoki why can't you be a slightly-yielding wall of some other kind of building material. He closed his eyes and rolled his head on his neck for a moment, his posture straightening. It was Ken who spoke next.

"It seems he's afraid of learning what you may find about him in your searching, Chino Tomoki," he offered astutely, turning to step back into the van. Rei didn't reclaim control, then, letting Ken lead them back to the small room in the back of the van without a word. When he sat in the swiveling desk chair in front of the computers, Yuu spun the chair and turned to grin broadly at Tomoki.

"But I wanna know!! So you'll still tell me, right??"

Tomoki followed without hesitation. This wouldn't be the first time he's been inside the van, obviously. He takes his usually seat in the corner and frowns. He hadn't considered a thing like that. For someone to run from the truth, when he was always vehemently pursuing it, was a strange concept and it didn't even occur to him.

He sighs.

"Is that what it is, then. I had no idea. Sorry, Yuu, but I don't think that's my call to make."

Too bad, too. He was also mind-numbingly curious about Rei's past.

"Everyone? Could you ask if Rei minds speaking with me?"

His posture changed again and he leaned back in the chair to stare at the roof of the van.

"I don't mind," he said. "And I'm not... scared." Yes, he was. He had been trying to find leads on who he was for upwards of three years now. When you spent so much time looking for something fruitlessly and coming up with nothing, suddenly being given a possible something was jarring and frightening. He wanted to know-- he desperately wanted to know. But the knowledge also scared him to the point of more sleeplessness than was already common for him.

"It's fine, whatever the reason is. It doesn't matter. I should have asked if you even wanted me to look into it instead of just assuming."

Tomoki huffs a sigh and offers him a smile.

"If you want me to stop, I will. You just have to tell me."

He was so lucky for Tomoki. He really, really was. It took him a long time to drop his eyes back from the ceiling to the reporter, and when he did he just looked at him in silence for a long time. Sure, he was adamant and a recovering alcoholic and so headstrong it gave Rei headaches sometimes, but he was the only friend Rei had ever had, and even without anyone to compare him to he knew Tomoki would always be the best of them. He quirked a smile, briefly, but it faded into a slightly shaken expression fairly quickly.

"...I don't want you to stop," he admitted, shaking his head. "I'm just apprehensive of the outcome."

He waits patiently for him to respond. He leans back when Rei gives him his answer. He's a little surprised, but not a lot. Then again, when it came to something like this, Tomoki had a hard time understanding why someone wouldn't want to know something like this. He nods.

"Understandable. It could potentially change a lot of things- or nothing at all, we just don't know."

He adverts his eyes for a moment, shrugging.

"I can sort of understand. It's a little like what I have you looking into for me. I've never had family before, and then suddenly I take a walk in the park and bump into some guy who has my face." He looks back over at Rei.

"I think I'm just too set in my ways to not turn the cards up," He adds with a grin. "For better or for worse."

Tomoki could say a lot of the same about Rei. In fact, probably one of the greater reasons he appreciated Rei so much, was that the guy just didn't care about his past. He knew- Tomoki was sure that Rei had done a full background check on him when they met- but it's never once come up. Rei took him as he was, not as the stumbling alcoholic he was a few months ago. It was refreshing.

Of course he didn't care about Tomoki's past. Who was he to? He didn't have a past. At least not one he knew. For all either of them knew, he could have been a serial killer or a drug lord or someone that ran a sweat shop in the dark underbelly of Venture City or God only knows where else. He certainly wasn't going to judge Tomoki for handling the loss of a loved one poorly by stumbling around drunkenly in public for almost a year. Jin liked to drink, he could see the appeal in losing yourself in it.

His mouth quirked sideways into a brief smile again, a typical gesture.

"I want to know," he said. "But I also don't know what it is that I want to know, and that's a very dangerous curiosity. I suppose I never really thought I'd actually come upon something that would lead me somewhere, with as long as I've looked." He chuckled at Tomoki's card analogy. "You ought to give playing poker a go sometime."

Tomoki shakes his head. "I know better than to dip my hands in something like that. I already broke one terrible habit, I don't need another one." Despite the admission, Tomoki says it with a good-natured smile.

"As far as information on this 'Ankh' guy goes, I haven't had any luck locating Hino lately. It appears he doesn't actually have one specific place he calls home. He just lives around."

Which was troubling, really.

"So what about you? Have you found anything?"

A quiet chuckle, and Rei spun in his computer chair to boot up the desktop.

"I know the feeling," he says, clicking around. "I haven't found anything conclusive, yet, no. I may have a name, but I still need time to cross-reference my sources before I give it to you." He turns to grin faintly over his shoulder. "If I know you, any name I give you you'll chase the person down and interrogate them when it could turn up to be irrelevant."

Tomoki frowns.

"Maybe- but I could also just ask Hino if he recognizes the name. That would be enough, I think." Well. For now.

He might be peering over Rei's shoulder to see if he can see said name.

Rei tsked softly at him, wagging a finger.

"You know better," he tutted, pushing at Tomoki's shoulder. His writing was all in Japanese, anyway, because so few people were fluent enough in it in Venture City that it faired as a decent encryption system. And, you know, Tomoki couldn't read it for shit and was nosy.

Edited 2014-07-20 01:43 (UTC)

Rude. Tomoki sits back with a sigh.

"You do that on purpose. I could be sensitive about not being able to read Japanese, you know."

"And I am reasonably sensitive about encrypting my files. This has proven very effective." He waves a hand dismissively, turning back to his computer and minimizing the document.

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