( 5 & 6 on this meme in some combination for the both of them. )
[ She's no stranger to things going awry. Her entire life has been rolling with the punches, improvising until she comes out on top every single time. It's what she does, what she's good at, what's earned her a shelf full of trophies and medals and certificates. Hana Song navigates out of terrible odds for breakfast. It wouldn't be a stretch to say she's got an ego about it, just a little.
Surprisingly though, that's not the problem here ( or maybe it's not surprising — again, she's good at this, with or without an ego ). MEKA's headquarters are located in Busan because the Gwishin have come from the oceanfront. Something about the depth of the ocean right at the south of the peninsula picking up a different radiation signature than the rest of the coasts. The program succeeds because the mechs shines in the open air where it has room to maneuver. She's good enough of a pilot to navigate through the city, sure, but the odds of something going wrong skyrockets.
Exhibit A: they get the call while they're about to leave for dinner ( less a date and more just a quick bite to eat along the boardwalk, in a conscious effort to take a breather ). Radars have picked up something traveling underwater at unprecedented speeds, too fast for their mechs to catch. The plan is to have D.VA intercept it to herd it towards a developmental area, and have Red Robin meet them there to be able to cover her. It works because that's the easy part. Outside of its speed, it's not even the most dangerous Gwishin it's faced.
Which is exactly why something has to go wrong, of course.
The streets are just narrow enough with all the construction going on that Tokki can't get through it without scraping some parts of it, here and there. The foundations of some of the buildings in the area are set up, but most of them are just half-built metal beams and scaffolding. She's forced to go on the defensive; try to stay in its face to give Tim the opening he needs to take it down. They're almost there, she thinks, except the thing fires above Tim, instead of at Tim, and she's caught so off guard that she doesn't block it in time and she sees the blast hit the framework of a building and— ]
Tim—! [ A civilian tackled directly by her mech won't come out of it unscathed, but he's armored and she knows he can take it. It makes the most sense, then, that the person piloting giant armored hunk of metal shoves the armored-but-still-very-human vigilante out of the way before an entire building falls on them. So that's what she does. She'll be fine ( probably, hopefully, maybe— ). She trusts him to do what he needs to do ( take the thing down ). ]
[ Failure to prepare is preparing to fail. Dick's words, surely a synthesis of something else or other he's picked up in his career as Nightwing, and now Batman. Words, of course, that Tim's internalized long before his own tenure as Red Robin. Yet all the preparation in the world can't brace you for everything. Just look at Bruce, who couldn't outplan a lethal dose of Darkseid's Omega Beam. Look at Jack Drake, Tim's father, who he and Bruce failed to protect from assassination. The best-laid plans are as limited in foresight as the planners, mere mortals that they are. And a crisis like the Gwishins' proves this increasingly right, given the constant devastation in their wake. How much has Hana lost to this conflict, to the regular terror that follows the Gwishins' path of destruction?
A fateful shove puts Tim off-course from that path, armor more than enough to take the force of Hana's mech - controlled, of course, as it is. Launched away from the falling debris of an entire building, Tim receives the clearance needed to spread his cape to either side of him, the shape splitting and solidifying into mechanical wings. Repulsors on his feet elevate him, sending him into the sky and away from the source of the destruction: a Gwishin that was supposed to be fodder for another Tuesday, a foe whose difficulty is tantamount to another training exercise. But the real world is far from a controlled environment - he and Hana know this - and he's seen where uncontrolled environments lead, what those have taken from him.
Perhaps what this has taken. Because it's hard not to look at several tons of rubble with no distinct pink mecha in sight, and not imagine the worst. Heart starting to beat a mile a minute at the sight, Tim grits his teeth inside his helmet, eyes flaring with anger even as the Gwishin below him gives pursuit, rising steadily to meet him. He breaks past the Busan skyline, leading the Gwishin in an ascent to the clouds, not quite losing all his wherewithal. Directly charging at the thing would be suicide, after all, and he still has yet to fully process what he just saw.
So while buying himself time, letting the Gwishin follow him, Tim opens communications. Hopes for a signal of some kind. ]
Hana? Hana, are you there?
Hana, speak to me!
[ Nothing. She's either buried beneath so much rubble she has no reception...
Or she's dead.
Dead like his father. Dead like Bruce. Dead like Conner once. Stephanie. Bart.
Taken, like everyone else. Like everything else that mattered to Tim.
And so, at just enough elevation, Tim shuts off the repulsors on his feet, lets the momentum of his ascent stop as instead, he plummets down.
Down towards the Gwishin giving chase, down as a dense polymer bo staff protracts in his hand, poised and pointed towards the closest thing the Gwishin has to an eye.
The impact shatters it, pierces its red glow, as Tim finds his footing on its face. As the staff ignites with an electric current that surges through the Gwishin's internals, Tim twisting into it with a fury, like it's not enough just to impale the thing, but to spite it. And he hasn't stopped screaming in a rage, crying out at the very thing he's destroying, as if in revenge for what it has destroyed.
But the Gwishin doesn't slow its ascent. It keeps flying upward, closer and closer to the upper atmosphere. Turbulence causes Tim to loose his footing, to fall flat on the Gwishin's face, dropping his staff that rolls off into the sky. Taking out a shuriken, he stabs the surface behind it and grips the blade to remain stable on its surface. Head turned to his other side, he conjures a holographic screen from his wrist, watches as he initiates a program to hack the Gwishin through its exposed itnernals. He manages to shut off all its boosters, slowing its ascent, though the momentum has yet to drift to halt. With enough strength to right himself, powered slightly the mechanisms of his own suit, Tim pulls out a few more shurikens from his utility belt.
Explosive ones.
Slipping them into the hole he's made, he leaves them be, knowing they're timed. He rolls sideways off the surface of the Gwishin's face, letting gravity pull him downward, to skydive back into Busan and towards the ruins where he left Hana. He leaves behind an explosion that tears the Gwishin apart from the inside, scattered debris following him in his fall.
Wings expand back into a full cape that slow his descent, Tim gliding down towards concrete in front of a massive pile of rubble. Wasting no time, he charges towards the disarray, haphazardly lifting and tossing aside chunks and pieces of the wreckage. Finding, with every passing minute, an increased sense of dreadful urgency, the longer it takes to actually find Hana. To know for a fact she's alive. That she didn't just die meaninglessly, senselessly, needlessly.
Tim can't even help yanking his helmet off his face, forgoing readouts and intel and analytics to see what he's seeing with his own eyes.
Enough bullshit, he thinks to himself. Where is she?
He dreads the answer to that question, to see his worst fears once again realized. ]
Please be alive, Hana... please.
PLEASE!
[ His final cry comes when a boulder of rubble proves too much to budge, even with the amplified strength his armor gives him. Eyes welling with tears, Tim blinds himself in anticipatory grief, stopping short of another pull - another attempt to lift what's in his way - before falling to his knees, uncaring as to the jagged and uneven debris on which his legs fall. His head against the flat surface of his obstacle, he pounds against it impotently with a closed fist, every blow weaker than the last.
All the former Boy Wonder can do, that the World's Greatest Detective can muster, is cry. Mourn. Dwell on the fact that Hana didn't even die triumphantly, go out in some kind of blaze of glory befitting her valor, her talent, her heart. That the war with the Gwishin is far from over, and she won't even live to see its end.
That she won't even get to actually live, and know a life outside of this stupid war. ]
I can't do this again. I can't go through this again.
[ What a way to go it'd be — just a series of bad coincidences during a fight that shouldn't have meant anything. All her resilience and training and accomplishments can't win against bad luck. She can't go and master that like the rest of them ( but then it wouldn't really be luck anymore, would it? ). She'd hate it, hates that it's even a possibility, that every fight against whoever stands in her way is also a fight against entropy.
Fortunately — she's not dead. She does get knocked out cold though, when one particularly large piece of a building knocks her into her mech in a bad way. Stays like that for a while, even through the begging in her — still very much functional — ear piece. Then just a little longer as Tim seems to come to terms with her dying. As if she'd go this easily ( as if this was up to her ).
But if he hasn't ripped his comms off his ear yet, he'll hear her — eventually. A faint groan, at first. Then a too-long beat of nothing later— ] Tim?
[ If she sounds distracted or far away, it's probably because she is. She's more than likely a little concussed. Her head's pounding something fierce and the lights on Tokki's panels are a touch too bright. She closes her eyes again, slumping against the headrest.
But more importantly: ] What— did y'get it? [ Priorities. ]
[ It's something Tim feels in his bones. For all his own training and experience, all it takes to end him is a punk with a gun getting lucky. One gunshot is literally all it takes, and sometimes it doesn't even have to be that. One misplaced footfall while swinging through the city, a failure to stick the landing while gliding between buildings, hitting any object hard enough on accident during parkour. So much could go wrong that he, a mere mortal, couldn't withstand, yet here he is.
Alive to be weeping in front of rubble he can't move, alive long enough for the tears to eventually stop as he meditates in silence. In mourning. Running calculations through his head, the cleanup efforts he has to lead, how exactly he plans to talk about and deal with all this with MEKA. Every logistical quandary under the sun occurs to him, fills his thoughts, clutters them utterly...
Till he hears his own name.
Through his comms, no less.
A godsend that compels him to stand quickly and get back on his feet, looking around, searching for any sign. ]
Yes, Hana, I got it. It's down.
Now where are you?
[ Straight to business, it seems. Tim remains so focused on this new search, on the prospect of salvaging Hana from beneath some rubble, that he doesn't notice the flow of his own tears. The way his voice chokes as he speaks, a struggle barely attempted to hold his breath steady, also escapes his notice. ]
Give me a sign, Hana. Anything.
Make your mech shove some rubble around, I don't know. Blast stuff.
[ He starts walking around, unable to stand still. Restlessly, he drags more rubble out of his path, thinking it'll help him stumble upon her somewhere.
But really, the ball's in Hana's court. Will she be able to free herself? And if she can't, does she have enough signal to send coordinates? ]
realising just now you actually used this as your icon incredible
I don't— [ Frustration colors her tone pretty much immediately. It's not the first time she's heard the urgency in someone's voice and had it raise her hackles in turn. She's fine, she's breathing, squinting her eyes open to look through the cracked windshields of her mech reveals that she's just... stuck under some rubble is all. Really could be worse.
It's hard to let the near-death experience sink in when she was out for most of it. When she's ruled by recklessness and instinct when she's on the field — spends hours upon hours training to have her body keep up with it — her own mortality tends become secondary. She's not dead. Therefore the possibility that she could have died isn't worth thinking about ( Tim's voice losing sound prickles at her nerves and makes her stomach churn even more than her head does ).
So, for now: ] You gotta— Tim. Tim. [ Half way through his rambling. There's light peeking through just a head of her, as small as it is. Blindly, she reaches out to the panel in front of her, and feels it respond in turn. Hana wants so badly to be relieved that Tokki's functional, but Tim's still begging her to do something over comms and her chest is only getting tighter and— ]
Tim! [ For how animated she is, she doesn't actually raise her voice often. At least not like this — sharp enough to hopefully cut through his attention. Desperate in her own way, her own breathing shallow. ] I need you to — get back, Tim. [ Her brows furrow as she reads through the screen in front of her. The boosters are down. Ejecting here is basically suicide, right beside blowing her core up.
She breathes, deep and shuddering. ] Far back. I'm giving you ten seconds. [ She's counting down internally while reading the rest of the output. Weapons are up. She tucks her head in as she counts down the last three seconds and pushes the button at the top of her yoke. Feels the missiles fire from the top of her mech more than she hears it, as it blasts through the rubble directly above her ( hard to think about how fragile she is when she's all impulse ).
Once the smoke and the rubble clears, he'll at least see the ( dusty, dented ) pink hull. Hear Hana coughing in his earpiece before she finally pipes up. ] See? All fine. [ For a given definition of fine. ]
when i find an excuse to drop the arkham tim icons >>>
[ He had to hear his name out of Hana's voice maybe four times before remembering where he was and what he was doing. That his entire world hadn't just been upended once again, unmooring him from any sense of place. Of self. Because frankly, Hana has become his world, and losing that would be like losing the meaning of things - the fundamental logic of living - that Tim's already struggled so hard to hold onto. He had the wherewithal to ask her where she was, to give directions without stammering... but he feels like he's wading through a dream.
Like he's been presented with conflicting realities and can't choose where he'll land. Fortunately, the noise in his head clears just enough to understand that he has to move. That if Hana's giving him ten seconds to get back, she surely has the heavy artillery to back it up. ]
Yeah, no. I hear you.
All clear!
[ Grapnel gun fired, the wire pulls him out of harm's way. Sufficient distance permits him to watch as rubble haphazardly flies in the type of blast he knows all too well - the familiar firepower of Hana's mech being what frees of her from a grisly fate. Yet as the smoke clears before her, Hana will already find Tim gliding down - cape spread - towards the cockpit. When he lands, he inspects the windshield with his hands, visibly relieved as he is to find Hana inside it. Helmetless, every nuance of anguish and grief is easily perceptible in his tired eyes, his anxious grimace. Anger, almost, about what he thought was going to be taken from him. What the Gwishin was going to take from him. ]
You're alive.
[ His expression finally softens, smile almost comical like he's beside himself in disbelief. ]
You're really, truly alive.
...What the hell, man?
[ It's unclear who he directs that towards, palm on his forehead obscuring his eyes. Part of him does feel like he's been punk'd, that the universe chose to play a trick on him without truly subjecting him to another tragedy. But above all else, his body's weak with relief. Relief to see Hana inside that thing, alive and breathing and ready to escape whenever she opens the hatch. ]
will beg for work to overwork me again if that happens (this is a joke, probably)
[ The little bit of silence between the rubble settling and Tim's voice — through her own ears this time, as opposed to the comms device — makes her antsy all over again. The throbbing pain at the base of her skull and light filtering through her windshield makes her close her eyes and slump against her body rest, arms hanging limp over the edge, controls slipping from her grip. Fuck, that was a lot. There's plenty of sound proofing in her mech to help avoid the worst of the explosive weapons blowing up in her ear, but she can still hear a faint, high-pitched screech.
The guilt and the over-analysis will come later, when her nerves have settled and adrenaline seeps from her veins. For now it's just a heady sense of relief and a swell of triumph at the fact that they're both alright ( ish; she can still hear the way his voice wavers every time she thinks she can ignore it ). ]
Yeah. 'Course I am. [ She pushes her torso up ( tipping her head back feels terrible, no thanks ) to shoot him a wink, cocksure and cheeky, before it turns into a grimace and she slams a fist to the side of the mech to pop the hatch open. No move to get up, though. That's gonna have to wait a second while her vertigo clears. The easy sing-song quality to her voice is back, technically, if he can hear it through the fact that half her words are being mumbled. ]
... Tokki's stronger than that. [ Built like a tank in multiple senses of the word ( ha, ha ). It's about all she has the wherewithal to respond to; trying to explain why she felt like what she did was the right move feels like a monumental task. Honestly, a lot of things feel monumental right now, including remembering how to get out of her now-damaged mech.
( Give her a second; she'll catch up to what he's gone through in just a minute. ) ] Hey. Help me up?
[ The moment the hatch opens, Tim can finally breathe. Find his footing. Feel the surrounding world come back to him, like his senses have been dulled by Hana's absence-- or, more precisely, the paralyzing possibility of her death. Confirmation of her voice was one thing, seeing her blast her way out of the rubble another... but seeing her move inside the cockpit, winking up at him like the ordeal's no different from any regular Tuesday? It might as well be a regular Tuesday, because so suddenly and so quickly, everything feels right again. Like everything moments ago was the denouement of a waking nightmare Tim merely had to snap himself out of.
Proving, instead, to be nothing like the nightmares he has had to live with. His own equilibrium returning to him, he has to fight off his own vertigo as he looks down at Hana, who struggles to ascend. Without hestitating, Tim leaps into the small chasm to plant his feet on the outer edges of the cockpit. Crouching, he shoots his arm down in Hana's direction, offering her a hand. ]
It's not just Tokki that's strong.
It's you.
[ Should her hand clasp around his, it just takes one pull to lift her up to his level, where her footing can find some purchase on the same edge. ]
I-- can you-- oh, you know what?
[ He's still holding her hand, and she's still definitely alive. So he pulls her into his arms, which circle the small of her back as he holds her in his embrace. With Tim's face nuzzled against the side of her head, Hana can't help but hear a sniffle or two as the hug tightens. Tim, before long, separates enough to look at Hana with a relieved smile. A smile goofier than he realizes, teeth showing and concealing nothing about what's going on inside him.
So is it really a shock when he cranes his neck, pressing his lips to hers? Drawing his own body nearer till they're inseparable, united once more - like many a stolen moment they've shared - in a kiss? ]
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christens the post with a bunch of random set up for drama
[ She's no stranger to things going awry. Her entire life has been rolling with the punches, improvising until she comes out on top every single time. It's what she does, what she's good at, what's earned her a shelf full of trophies and medals and certificates. Hana Song navigates out of terrible odds for breakfast. It wouldn't be a stretch to say she's got an ego about it, just a little.
Surprisingly though, that's not the problem here ( or maybe it's not surprising — again, she's good at this, with or without an ego ). MEKA's headquarters are located in Busan because the Gwishin have come from the oceanfront. Something about the depth of the ocean right at the south of the peninsula picking up a different radiation signature than the rest of the coasts. The program succeeds because the mechs shines in the open air where it has room to maneuver. She's good enough of a pilot to navigate through the city, sure, but the odds of something going wrong skyrockets.
Exhibit A: they get the call while they're about to leave for dinner ( less a date and more just a quick bite to eat along the boardwalk, in a conscious effort to take a breather ). Radars have picked up something traveling underwater at unprecedented speeds, too fast for their mechs to catch. The plan is to have D.VA intercept it to herd it towards a developmental area, and have Red Robin meet them there to be able to cover her. It works because that's the easy part. Outside of its speed, it's not even the most dangerous Gwishin it's faced.
Which is exactly why something has to go wrong, of course.
The streets are just narrow enough with all the construction going on that Tokki can't get through it without scraping some parts of it, here and there. The foundations of some of the buildings in the area are set up, but most of them are just half-built metal beams and scaffolding. She's forced to go on the defensive; try to stay in its face to give Tim the opening he needs to take it down. They're almost there, she thinks, except the thing fires above Tim, instead of at Tim, and she's caught so off guard that she doesn't block it in time and she sees the blast hit the framework of a building and— ]
Tim—! [ A civilian tackled directly by her mech won't come out of it unscathed, but he's armored and she knows he can take it. It makes the most sense, then, that the person piloting giant armored hunk of metal shoves the armored-but-still-very-human vigilante out of the way before an entire building falls on them. So that's what she does. She'll be fine ( probably, hopefully, maybe— ). She trusts him to do what he needs to do ( take the thing down ). ]
no subject
A fateful shove puts Tim off-course from that path, armor more than enough to take the force of Hana's mech - controlled, of course, as it is. Launched away from the falling debris of an entire building, Tim receives the clearance needed to spread his cape to either side of him, the shape splitting and solidifying into mechanical wings. Repulsors on his feet elevate him, sending him into the sky and away from the source of the destruction: a Gwishin that was supposed to be fodder for another Tuesday, a foe whose difficulty is tantamount to another training exercise. But the real world is far from a controlled environment - he and Hana know this - and he's seen where uncontrolled environments lead, what those have taken from him.
Perhaps what this has taken. Because it's hard not to look at several tons of rubble with no distinct pink mecha in sight, and not imagine the worst. Heart starting to beat a mile a minute at the sight, Tim grits his teeth inside his helmet, eyes flaring with anger even as the Gwishin below him gives pursuit, rising steadily to meet him. He breaks past the Busan skyline, leading the Gwishin in an ascent to the clouds, not quite losing all his wherewithal. Directly charging at the thing would be suicide, after all, and he still has yet to fully process what he just saw.
So while buying himself time, letting the Gwishin follow him, Tim opens communications. Hopes for a signal of some kind. ]
Hana? Hana, are you there?
Hana, speak to me!
[ Nothing. She's either buried beneath so much rubble she has no reception...
Or she's dead.
Dead like his father. Dead like Bruce. Dead like Conner once. Stephanie. Bart.
Taken, like everyone else. Like everything else that mattered to Tim.
And so, at just enough elevation, Tim shuts off the repulsors on his feet, lets the momentum of his ascent stop as instead, he plummets down.
Down towards the Gwishin giving chase, down as a dense polymer bo staff protracts in his hand, poised and pointed towards the closest thing the Gwishin has to an eye.
The impact shatters it, pierces its red glow, as Tim finds his footing on its face. As the staff ignites with an electric current that surges through the Gwishin's internals, Tim twisting into it with a fury, like it's not enough just to impale the thing, but to spite it. And he hasn't stopped screaming in a rage, crying out at the very thing he's destroying, as if in revenge for what it has destroyed.
But the Gwishin doesn't slow its ascent. It keeps flying upward, closer and closer to the upper atmosphere. Turbulence causes Tim to loose his footing, to fall flat on the Gwishin's face, dropping his staff that rolls off into the sky. Taking out a shuriken, he stabs the surface behind it and grips the blade to remain stable on its surface. Head turned to his other side, he conjures a holographic screen from his wrist, watches as he initiates a program to hack the Gwishin through its exposed itnernals. He manages to shut off all its boosters, slowing its ascent, though the momentum has yet to drift to halt. With enough strength to right himself, powered slightly the mechanisms of his own suit, Tim pulls out a few more shurikens from his utility belt.
Explosive ones.
Slipping them into the hole he's made, he leaves them be, knowing they're timed. He rolls sideways off the surface of the Gwishin's face, letting gravity pull him downward, to skydive back into Busan and towards the ruins where he left Hana. He leaves behind an explosion that tears the Gwishin apart from the inside, scattered debris following him in his fall.
Wings expand back into a full cape that slow his descent, Tim gliding down towards concrete in front of a massive pile of rubble. Wasting no time, he charges towards the disarray, haphazardly lifting and tossing aside chunks and pieces of the wreckage. Finding, with every passing minute, an increased sense of dreadful urgency, the longer it takes to actually find Hana. To know for a fact she's alive. That she didn't just die meaninglessly, senselessly, needlessly.
Tim can't even help yanking his helmet off his face, forgoing readouts and intel and analytics to see what he's seeing with his own eyes.
Enough bullshit, he thinks to himself. Where is she?
He dreads the answer to that question, to see his worst fears once again realized. ]
Please be alive, Hana... please.
PLEASE!
[ His final cry comes when a boulder of rubble proves too much to budge, even with the amplified strength his armor gives him. Eyes welling with tears, Tim blinds himself in anticipatory grief, stopping short of another pull - another attempt to lift what's in his way - before falling to his knees, uncaring as to the jagged and uneven debris on which his legs fall. His head against the flat surface of his obstacle, he pounds against it impotently with a closed fist, every blow weaker than the last.
All the former Boy Wonder can do, that the World's Greatest Detective can muster, is cry. Mourn. Dwell on the fact that Hana didn't even die triumphantly, go out in some kind of blaze of glory befitting her valor, her talent, her heart. That the war with the Gwishin is far from over, and she won't even live to see its end.
That she won't even get to actually live, and know a life outside of this stupid war. ]
I can't do this again. I can't go through this again.
Please, Hana...
no subject
Fortunately — she's not dead. She does get knocked out cold though, when one particularly large piece of a building knocks her into her mech in a bad way. Stays like that for a while, even through the begging in her — still very much functional — ear piece. Then just a little longer as Tim seems to come to terms with her dying. As if she'd go this easily ( as if this was up to her ).
But if he hasn't ripped his comms off his ear yet, he'll hear her — eventually. A faint groan, at first. Then a too-long beat of nothing later— ] Tim?
[ If she sounds distracted or far away, it's probably because she is. She's more than likely a little concussed. Her head's pounding something fierce and the lights on Tokki's panels are a touch too bright. She closes her eyes again, slumping against the headrest.
But more importantly: ] What— did y'get it? [ Priorities. ]
no subject
Alive to be weeping in front of rubble he can't move, alive long enough for the tears to eventually stop as he meditates in silence. In mourning. Running calculations through his head, the cleanup efforts he has to lead, how exactly he plans to talk about and deal with all this with MEKA. Every logistical quandary under the sun occurs to him, fills his thoughts, clutters them utterly...
Till he hears his own name.
Through his comms, no less.
A godsend that compels him to stand quickly and get back on his feet, looking around, searching for any sign. ]
Yes, Hana, I got it. It's down.
Now where are you?
[ Straight to business, it seems. Tim remains so focused on this new search, on the prospect of salvaging Hana from beneath some rubble, that he doesn't notice the flow of his own tears. The way his voice chokes as he speaks, a struggle barely attempted to hold his breath steady, also escapes his notice. ]
Give me a sign, Hana. Anything.
Make your mech shove some rubble around, I don't know. Blast stuff.
[ He starts walking around, unable to stand still. Restlessly, he drags more rubble out of his path, thinking it'll help him stumble upon her somewhere.
But really, the ball's in Hana's court. Will she be able to free herself? And if she can't, does she have enough signal to send coordinates? ]
realising just now you actually used this as your icon incredible
It's hard to let the near-death experience sink in when she was out for most of it. When she's ruled by recklessness and instinct when she's on the field — spends hours upon hours training to have her body keep up with it — her own mortality tends become secondary. She's not dead. Therefore the possibility that she could have died isn't worth thinking about ( Tim's voice losing sound prickles at her nerves and makes her stomach churn even more than her head does ).
So, for now: ] You gotta— Tim. Tim. [ Half way through his rambling. There's light peeking through just a head of her, as small as it is. Blindly, she reaches out to the panel in front of her, and feels it respond in turn. Hana wants so badly to be relieved that Tokki's functional, but Tim's still begging her to do something over comms and her chest is only getting tighter and— ]
Tim! [ For how animated she is, she doesn't actually raise her voice often. At least not like this — sharp enough to hopefully cut through his attention. Desperate in her own way, her own breathing shallow. ] I need you to — get back, Tim. [ Her brows furrow as she reads through the screen in front of her. The boosters are down. Ejecting here is basically suicide, right beside blowing her core up.
She breathes, deep and shuddering. ] Far back. I'm giving you ten seconds. [ She's counting down internally while reading the rest of the output. Weapons are up. She tucks her head in as she counts down the last three seconds and pushes the button at the top of her yoke. Feels the missiles fire from the top of her mech more than she hears it, as it blasts through the rubble directly above her ( hard to think about how fragile she is when she's all impulse ).
Once the smoke and the rubble clears, he'll at least see the ( dusty, dented ) pink hull. Hear Hana coughing in his earpiece before she finally pipes up. ] See? All fine. [ For a given definition of fine. ]
when i find an excuse to drop the arkham tim icons >>>
Like he's been presented with conflicting realities and can't choose where he'll land. Fortunately, the noise in his head clears just enough to understand that he has to move. That if Hana's giving him ten seconds to get back, she surely has the heavy artillery to back it up. ]
Yeah, no. I hear you.
All clear!
[ Grapnel gun fired, the wire pulls him out of harm's way. Sufficient distance permits him to watch as rubble haphazardly flies in the type of blast he knows all too well - the familiar firepower of Hana's mech being what frees of her from a grisly fate. Yet as the smoke clears before her, Hana will already find Tim gliding down - cape spread - towards the cockpit. When he lands, he inspects the windshield with his hands, visibly relieved as he is to find Hana inside it. Helmetless, every nuance of anguish and grief is easily perceptible in his tired eyes, his anxious grimace. Anger, almost, about what he thought was going to be taken from him. What the Gwishin was going to take from him. ]
You're alive.
[ His expression finally softens, smile almost comical like he's beside himself in disbelief. ]
You're really, truly alive.
...What the hell, man?
[ It's unclear who he directs that towards, palm on his forehead obscuring his eyes. Part of him does feel like he's been punk'd, that the universe chose to play a trick on him without truly subjecting him to another tragedy. But above all else, his body's weak with relief. Relief to see Hana inside that thing, alive and breathing and ready to escape whenever she opens the hatch. ]
will beg for work to overwork me again if that happens (this is a joke, probably)
The guilt and the over-analysis will come later, when her nerves have settled and adrenaline seeps from her veins. For now it's just a heady sense of relief and a swell of triumph at the fact that they're both alright ( ish; she can still hear the way his voice wavers every time she thinks she can ignore it ). ]
Yeah. 'Course I am. [ She pushes her torso up ( tipping her head back feels terrible, no thanks ) to shoot him a wink, cocksure and cheeky, before it turns into a grimace and she slams a fist to the side of the mech to pop the hatch open. No move to get up, though. That's gonna have to wait a second while her vertigo clears. The easy sing-song quality to her voice is back, technically, if he can hear it through the fact that half her words are being mumbled. ]
... Tokki's stronger than that. [ Built like a tank in multiple senses of the word ( ha, ha ). It's about all she has the wherewithal to respond to; trying to explain why she felt like what she did was the right move feels like a monumental task. Honestly, a lot of things feel monumental right now, including remembering how to get out of her now-damaged mech.
( Give her a second; she'll catch up to what he's gone through in just a minute. ) ] Hey. Help me up?
normal tim icon jumpscare
Proving, instead, to be nothing like the nightmares he has had to live with. His own equilibrium returning to him, he has to fight off his own vertigo as he looks down at Hana, who struggles to ascend. Without hestitating, Tim leaps into the small chasm to plant his feet on the outer edges of the cockpit. Crouching, he shoots his arm down in Hana's direction, offering her a hand. ]
It's not just Tokki that's strong.
It's you.
[ Should her hand clasp around his, it just takes one pull to lift her up to his level, where her footing can find some purchase on the same edge. ]
I-- can you-- oh, you know what?
[ He's still holding her hand, and she's still definitely alive. So he pulls her into his arms, which circle the small of her back as he holds her in his embrace. With Tim's face nuzzled against the side of her head, Hana can't help but hear a sniffle or two as the hug tightens. Tim, before long, separates enough to look at Hana with a relieved smile. A smile goofier than he realizes, teeth showing and concealing nothing about what's going on inside him.
So is it really a shock when he cranes his neck, pressing his lips to hers? Drawing his own body nearer till they're inseparable, united once more - like many a stolen moment they've shared - in a kiss? ]