Papers, Please

Dirt clutches his face and falls out of his chair, bracing himself on his hands and knees. He had to stop this. He had to fight. People were dying. The hole blasted in the first guard's side flashes in his mind. Dirt took a shallow, labored breath and swallowed hard. He HAD to do something. At least one man's life was at stake, and there'd likely be more to come.

He curses and rubs at his eyes with one hand, reaching out with the other. Searching for what? He didn't know. He couldn't fight if he couldn't see, damnit! He balled his claws into fists. They didn't teach him that at the academy.

Maybe that's a good thing though. Maybe even if he could fight in the dark, maybe he shouldn't. This is not a training exercise. These men would kill him. Worse, they could kill civilians because of him. If he wasn't careful, he'd end up getting more people hurt than if he'd done nothing at all. He had to try something though. Had to get some small edge without ruffling too many feathers.

Dirt cowered and shied away from the birds in genuine fear. He slowly crawled his way back from the action, and toward the first injured guard in whatever roundabout way called the least attention to him. .

Dirt hesitates over the man's body. Was that a--? He shakes the image from his mind. Focus, damnit.

He squints, and somehow, his vision clears momentarily, like a shaft of sunlight peaking through a cloudy sky. Thank god.

He pulls off his jacket and wraps it around the wound, letting the palms of his hands press into the security guard's side.

Dirt closes his eyes and racks his brain to remember what he did before, how he'd done it. It had all happened so fast before. He tries to pull an image of the security guard's wound through the blackness of his mind to focus on it, but instead, a figure of a cowering boy comes forward. It was his younger brother, Christian. He shields his mother with his body as a curved, electric blue sword sears through the flesh between his neck and shoulder and out the other side of his ribs. Dirt can smell his brother's burning flesh, even now, and the sound of his mother's cries nearly break him. "Please," he mutters. "Please, stop..."

His heart fills with anguish and fury. Pain presses out against his ribcage, desperate to burst from his chest. That feeling pools into the pit of his stomach and down into his legs. Fills his arms and wrists and hands with a red hot torrent of grief. That feeling that consumes his heart wants something. Wants revenge. Wants justice and destruction and--

Dirt's mother, Hellene, catches his mind's eye. The last true memory he had was of her screaming and clawing at the ground as pirates drug her away from her boys, from her family, from her beautiful life on Cybele Station. But in this moment, now, in his hollowness of mind, she smiled. Not a photo-perfect white-toothed grin, but a resting smile of ease, as if she were sleeping through a pleasant dream, only her eyes were open and staring at him--staring through him if felt like. She's at peace, and in that smile, Dirt found a sort of peace of his own. He let that feeling wash over him.

The tempest in the pit of his heart loosens and his anger gives way to a different kind of ache. An ache that he'd only ever felt twice in his life before: on the day of his high school sweetheart's wedding to another man and the day he'd shipped off to the academy and left his father all alone. It broke his heart to feel such love. To feel so close to them, as if he were holding his mother and brother in his arms at this very moment, and yet, to know they could not be together. That feeling radiates through him until he thinks it might very well consume him, and he almost welcomes such a release. But at the core of it all, he could feel that spark and knew then that he would carry it with him wherever he went—that he would carry them with him—and with that knowledge, he felt that brilliant golden light pour out of him and into the security guard's body.

A tear rolls down Dirt's cheek as he opens his eyes. He whispered, "I'm sorry," only loud enough to be heard by his brother, his mother, and his god. He brushes the tear from his cheek with his shoulder and pulls the jacket tight before tying it in a knot over the wound. He'd just have to hope whatever he did was enough to save the man's life.

Yoshi curses under his breath. Too faded to recognize fancy-pants and shabby, and now too faded to get a read on cyber gull? "I can't go out like this."

He studies the birds as they squawk back and forth. "Who are they? Just randos? They must rep something."Just as he's beginning to wonder where Dirt went, he sees his old friend beside the body of the now seemingly not fatally wounded guard. Again, he wonders if the moss is getting to him. "I might need to toss that sack."

As far as what he ought to do, his mind is made up by the announcement that they will be changing locations. "Just going to move in silence and wait for my opportunity." He follows behind "Poindexter." "Then I'm going to make these birds regret the day they dropped a flashbang on a real ass shinobi."

Dirt hadn't even breathed a sigh of relief yet when his patient was ripped out from under him and thrown across the room, likely concussing them even further. He was alive though. That's what matters.

He quickly thought of the look in the man's eyes. Like he'd witnessed something... otherworldly. Not good. Maybe he could talk to him after all this? Convince him his wounds weren't actually that bad?

Dirt blinks and tries to focus on the crumpled security guard. He narrows his eyes through the glare and looks for a name tag or maybe a badge number.Either way, one down. One to go. Please be alive.

Dirt raises his hands as he turns to the corner of the counter where he'd heard the second figure fall.

He didn't want to cause trouble though. These guys were nuts. He could get someone killed if he did something stupid. And more than likely, that someone would be him. He couldn't allow them to kill him. He'd made a vow to protect people, and he couldn't do that if he was dead. He had to try to get to the other person though.

Dirt couches with his hands in the air and carefully makes his way away from the vulture who'd scolded the lizard, and makes his way towards the second fallen security guard. He moves swiftly, but calmly.

If anyone tries to stop him, Dirt says, "I'm a surgeon! And right now, this whole thing is just petty theft. I can prevent it from being murder. Please just steal whatever you're stealing. No one will stop you."

"Ruby Sun," Yoshi thinks. He spits. Flashbang me? Racist ass birds..."

He smiles at Dirt's Deception. "Surgeon? Bold."

The chatter from the lizards makes him kick himself again. How does he not at least recognize the one?

Once he enters the hallway with the security doors, he takes a good look at Con. "Ok this better work this time. What's on your mind?"

Yoshi pauses, reeling from the experiences he just witnessed. The ability to read someone came with its advantages and disadvantages. Information was advantageous. A secret, a weakness that can be exploited, the enemy's next move. But information could also be a real burden. Knowing what messed somebody up. Knowing how someone really feels about you. Knowing what made you their enemy.

Granny Modo called Yoshi's ability to read, "Empathy." He didn't feel like it made him any more empathetic. Just content in the knowledge that everyone and everything is broken and whoever can scrape together the most pieces wins.

He watches as Jermiah carries out his mission, waiting for the right chance to use his past against him. To break him with one of his own shards.

Yoshi runs through the scenario in his head. He'll activate "The Dreaming," then take out the stunned Jeremiah with a quick wind god fist. Grab the bird's weapon, rush back into the hallway, blast the other two birds' weapons out of their hands, hurricane kick Tross, dragon punch Cardi-

His strategizing comes to a quick halt when he overhears the identity of the fancy lizard. "Dr. Wesley Scales! Ba-duh!" He slaps himself in the head. "Dude is all over the news."

He frowns. Nevermind the plan. There's too many hostages that could end up zapped too quickly. And for what, really? So far it had only been security getting blasted. Yoshi had no love for security. The flashbang was annoying and felt on the verge of personally disrespectful. But to be fair how could they have known that he was him when they pulled up? Plus Orochi and Talon don't have beef to speak of. "They trying to start their lives over? With a life like that, how could you blame them?"

One thing still nags at Yoshi, though. This is clearly just a step on the path to something bigger. What are they planning? "Hey. Con, right?" He takes a step forward, but keeps his hands up, maintaining a non-threatening look. "What do y'all have planned? Like after this? Why shoot two security guards just to delete some names from a registry?"

Dirt stews in his juices, embarrassed by his outburst. But it had worked, hadn’t it? Whether they believed him or not, they’d disregarded him as a threat. And he could use that to his advantage.

Not now though. Now, he was just glad the man was still alive to defend. When he’d heard the heavy thump and nothing else, he'd been sure the man was dead. He’d happily take a pie to the face for that trade any day.

He doesn’t look up as the northside ducky with the fancy necklace crouches next to him. He’d seen the bling and dismissed her as a stuck-up yuppy, but she’d volunteered to help so she must not be too bad. After all, his own mom had been a bit of a… And she'd...

No.

Dirt gives the woman an appreciative nod. "Grab that," he says, pointing to his wingboard wedged between Yoshi’s chair and his own. "We can use it to carry him."

With effort, they heft the unconscious body onto the wingboard and Dirt folds the man's arms across his chest so they don’t drag behind, then Dirt and Aythya slowly guide the makeshift hover-gurney down the hall, following the rest of the hostages.

Dirt avoids Aythya’s eye when he admits, "I’m not a surgeon." He purses his lips and stares straight ahead. "My dad shouted that out at a restaurant once and everyone listened, so I just…" He trails off, then just shrugs.

He lets the pyromaniac’s rhetoric fill the silence between them.

"I wonder what their deal is?" Dirt whispers, and he's surprised to find that there’s no judgement in his own voice. He did actually want to know why they were doing this. Why go to all the trouble? "Like, what would make someone want to delete their whole life?"

He steals a glance at her. "My father says they’re thieves and savages," Dirt says, "mindless murderers." He shakes his head, surveying the scene ahead of them. "But this…" He couldn’t make sense of it. "It crazy, what they're doing here, it definitely is—" He can't put his finger on it. "But it just doesn’t seem like... that, you know?" He considers all he's seen. "Nothing about all this seems 'mindless' to me."

Against his better judgement, Dirt listens to Con’s tirade and would be ashamed to admit that some of it made the tiniest bit of sense. It was the word ‘occupation’ that hit him harder than any of the rest. He’d certainly never considered his home 'under occupation' before.

"He loves the humans, my dad," Dirt continues, soft. "He’s proud to live in a—what’d that guy call it?—a hominid colony?" He laughs, mirthless. "I’d never really thought of it like that. It’s just… home." There was a sadness to his voice, as if the old familiar word had fallen out of his mouth wrong somehow. A sheen dulled from the rubbing.

And, if what the man was saying were true, then that would make Dirt, what? Some kind of prisoner? A refugee? Some blind, dumb, little sheepy? He rejected the idea out of hand. His father was right. What the fuck did these batshit crazy assholes know about his home? About his friends? About his life?

Dirt finds himself standing and shouting, "And what does Thoth-Suroh think of attempted murder, huh?" as the crowd parts in front of him. "How about kidnapping? How about arson? How about scaring the shit out of innocent people who have nothing to do with any of this, huh?"

Yoshi folds the card up and slips it into his pocket.

"I mean, you're not wrong, wrong," he says. He himself is a part of what many would consider to be an abhorrent organization. But people who live cushy, safe lives can't truly understand the necessity of actions that might not be so nice, when you have no other option. Still, he couldn't shake the feeling that by letting them go along with their plan, he was dooming some innocent person to a horrible death. Possibly lots of innocent people.

He glances over at Tross. She seems smart. Perhaps too smart to get a good read on. But he needed to know those names. Just in case."And what about me," he says, hoping that keeping them talking will take their minds off of the prying he's doing. "Where do I fit into this? Does Thoth-Suroh want me dead?"