[OPEN]

[harassing]

Who: Anyone, everyone, whoever feels like putting open or closed stuff in here tbh, no need to ask permission.
When: Feb 7-Feb 10, during the First Bloom Festival
Where: Various
What: A group catch-all log for lazy people
Rating: Individual threads will be labeled with warnings as needed, for now, PG


[ do yo thang ]

Comments

[powerdriven]

[ Perhaps he hadn't shown up under circumstances quite as strange. Still, there was nothing particularly average to be said about the arrival of any of Blanc's "heroes," and in times like this, the change is surreal to them each in its own ways. Walking along the coastline is one such way for Levi—a feature of his own home kept highly unspoken of, only to the pages of scholars who risked their very lives to pass on the memories of the outside world.

The first sight of it was devastating, like it were their freedom rendered meaningless before his eyes. But since, he's settled his disbelief in the only way he can. He prioritizes. He comes on behalf of a citizen he's accepted a job from, and intends to wade through the shallows to find their belongings.

Only, for yet another occurrence of the same, he's realized now he might not be the only one on the job. Somehow, that's what he thinks of first, when he makes eye contact with another man on the shore who piques his familiarity. Another recruited as a hero, dressed in their clothes—had he seen him in the Hall, when he'd watched the others file by during training?

He doesn't know, and he doesn't get much of a chance to mull it over. There are cries, a splash further out on the water, and when the need for action sets in accordingly, they catch each other's eyes for just a moment more.

The guy runs, and Levi follows him, stopping at the boardwalk's edge where his clothes have quickly piled. ]

Oi— [ Levi calls out. Too late. Too useless.

He doesn't struggle with the decision long. Tearing his jacket off for the pile, he dives in next, pushed on by adrenaline to meet Graham at the site of the struggle. To bring the citizen back to land. ]

[outbrave]

[ Part of the training for a piloting license requires excess amount of in-pool exercises to simulate space's absence of gravity. It isn't much of a hassle to retrieve the citizen with his learned skills, but another problem arises: the icy waters is punishing. It proves more difficult to shove the idea that his skin feels pricked by thousands upon thousands of icicles to the back-burner than he initially had hoped, relying solely on willpower and adrenaline to carry himself toward the panicked man.

The height of the struggle comes from the citizen himself; rather than allowing Graham to drag his ass to shore, the Caissan is more inclined to use him as a defunct float. He suffers a mouthful of cold water as his head gets shoved down beneath the surface by the other person, kicking and screaming all the while. If he had just a second to think, perhaps he would have come up with a better solution than to yank the man down, maneuvering his arm over his neck into a chokehold to subjugate him. And perhaps there's a part of him that wishes he would pass out to make the process a little easier. ] C, Calm down! I am not an enemy!

[ Graham's nearly out of energy (or is it mana?) though - lack of proper rest in wake of his arrival, from the vivid image of his own passing to being alive again in a much slower-paced lifestyle, has left him restless at best. Tirelessly wasting time with little regard for tomorrow. He has promised the young man that he would continue fighting, but because he hasn't had much of an opportunity to do so, his overexertion becomes clear when he's using all his might to rescue this man.

With the citizen calmed, Graham begins to drag him toward the boardwalk, spotting the small jewelry box the man had probably sent himself after. Just as a second panic begins to stir at his chest, he sees the other hero swim after them. Perfect. If he's here, perhaps he's equipped with the same job, as well. No time to express relief, but he cants his head toward the floating box -- ]

He was going after that!

[powerdriven]

[ He's not a trained swimmer. Nonetheless, it isn't his first time braving icy waters like these. Instances of less than ideal escape, crossing riverbeds on horseback underestimated by spotters—those things were among the numerous markers of the unexpected for those used to life outside civilized settlements. That was where the army based their training and headquartered their squads while they took inside survey of the walls. And more than once, it was sure to be a punishing test of strength for Training Corps cadets.

But Levi has always had qualities to make him an exception to the strictly trained majority. He never entered as some fresh-faced kid. Instead he struggled elsewhere in his youth, and he defied certain human odds when he was instated into the Corps. While, to himself, he described it as a sense of "knowing what to do," the reason didn't matter. Withstanding conditions like this was only one facet of it.

The cold is instantly embedded in his skin no less, and yet the prickling of it, the fatigue of being weighed down by it—they may as well not effect him. He can't stop to watch, but he hears the struggle, muffled in the water's groan, and he has to move. So his limbs bat the water, stinging at his eyes as he squints ahead towards the two suns. Graham calls out when he's close enough, and perhaps it's that determination he'd already settled on earlier, but Levi doesn't doubt himself.

Even when this world's insistence of how his body no longer works the way it once did begins to catch up to him, tight in his chest. ]

Forget that!

[ It's the goal of this job to retrieve it, but for fuck's sake. He'll come back for it. Right now, he's adamant to help with the rescue instead. He offers his arm, forcibly if he has to, beneath that of the Caissan who appears to struggle to stay afloat without pulling Graham down along with him—and attempts to settle the distribution of weight.

They don't stop struggling, but he has no qualms about using the same force to get the man to behave for his own sake. The same applies verbally to his distraught insistence about the floating crate. Levi's voice carries, immovable above the splashing. ]

Would you chase it over your own life? [ Pushing ahead, he looks to Graham for assistance. ] Come on!