hadriel_logs | [OPEN] The Misadventures of the Monkey King

[ ooc: Feel free to respond in story or script format and I will follow suit! ]

It was becoming sort of a game to find a way to escape Gojyo (or maybe, the other guy didn't care and just let him run off so he didn't have to deal with him), but regardless, Goku found excitement and fun outside. After playing with the Rodents of Unusual Size, he found he was pretty hungry. At first, he wondered if he should go and find Hakkai at the clinic... but he wouldn't be able to cook him anything there. So with that, Goku found himself heading over to the orchard, in search of something to snack on.

It was there that he found a tree that had ripe-looking peaches. They looked really good, so he immediately began pulling off his bright yellow Crocs in order to better climb up the tree (those things were hard to run in). With some momentum, Goku leapt up, grabbing hold a branch. He shimmied up the tree, settling himself on a branch. He picked a ripe peach right off the tree, taking a big, juicy bite out of it. Huh. It didn't taste... quite like a peach. Oh well. Still good.

Goku continued munching on his fruit. The small boy looked out towards the rest of the orchard, taking in his surroundings.

He had come to visit Hakkai, but he had gotten the hours wrong and had no idea that Hakkai was already gone and on his way back. He was armed to the elbows with fruit he had picked from Sorrow's orchard, a lot of them. He had peach-looking fruit that didn't taste like peaches (but they were still yummy), apples that were red and heart shaped and crunchy but not apples, so they were napples. He didn't know what the other stuff was, but they tasted good (and Hakkai tested the new vegetation out on him, so they knew what was okay to eat).

With that, Goku bumped his back and bottom against the clinic door, opening it up. He looked inside, not seeing Hakkai immediately. So he made his presence known.

"HELLOOOOOOOOOOO!" He called out into the clinic. "Hakkai, I'm here!"

Unsurprisingly, Kate is here. Because to be anywhere else implies she has a life. And she doesn't. Unless making calls at 2am counts as a life and really.

No. It doesn't.

She's just about done refreshing the sensor wards on one of the windows when a very familiar voice carries down the hall.

"Hey, kid." Popping her head round the door to the office first, Kate eventually steps out to the front door. "He's gone home already."

Goku's gold eyes widened when he saw his favorite pink-haired person.

"Kate!" He exclaimed with a big grin. He waddled his way over to her, arms full of fruit. He looked up at her. "I brought a lotta fruit! I always get hungry waiting for Hakkai t' finish so I thought..." But he trailed off.

"I didn't know he want home already." There's a moment of contemplation, but Goku's expression lights up. An epiphany. "Oh! I know!

"You're here all the time workin', right? You probably need a snack! We should eat some fruit together!"

She should probably be more shocked or worried that Goku says she's always here, but... well, it's hardly untrue, is it? At the very least, she offers him a curl of her lips that is almost a smile. Well, it's about as close as she gets. Vaguely pleased, we'll call it. Gesturing down the hall, Kate pushes a loose strand of hair back towards a plait and lets Goku bound ahread of her. "The office is free." And has a nice selection of chairs to use. And less important equipment. Although let's try and keep the papers in order if we can, hmm?

Once they're in the office, he unloads the fresh fruit on the desk. The small boy hops into a chair, on his knees. He starts separating out the different types, counting them.

"Hakkai is teachin' me uh, multiplication!" Which, for someone who looks his age, he should already know this. "And colors n' stuff. Like when I was talkin' about your pink hair." Napples here. Things that looked like oranges there. Not-peaches but kinda over there. And bananas. Well. They looked like bananas. Only they were reverse in color--green with yellow ends. "Sooo... four times... four..." He started counting on his fingers for a moment.

"...That's... sixteen! Right? N' there's you n' me so we each get eight!"

Blinking, Kate lets those comments about teaching slide. Different worlds, Galloway. Think like that. It's not like she can say she was exactly a genius as a kid either. Hell she's not even one now. Instead, she nods at the calculation.

"Aye," she answers, picking up one of the napples and examining it. "You've been eating these?" She's had minimal involvement with the garden project, even if there is burning curiosity to see what medical purposes they might be able to scrounge up from them. That's probably a good thing because her knowledge of plants extends to identifying the things you'd find in a salad.

A shrug, and she takes a bite. Sweet, which isn't really her taste, but fresh and edible. And after months of cave meat and tinned food, that is a blessing.

"Yeah! All this fruit is good! I tried all of it first." Goku picked up one of the banana things. When he peeled it, the inside was a pale green. He easily took a bite. "Mm--these aren't as sweet as real bananas though, but they're still tasty." He looked up at Kate.

"Why do you work here so much? Is this your place? Do ya sleep here?"

"Can't say it looks all that appetising," she comments, flicking her eyes towards the greenish flesh and back to Goku.

... It isn't that bad, is it?

~~Yes, Kate. It is.~~

She swallows a mouthful of napple and taps the base of it against her chin. "Like working. Always worked a lot." Which is true, once she left school, anyway. "And no, I don't sleep here." She has her own place... about ten minutes from here.

But that was actually a coincidence.

"Do ya sleep?" Goku kicked his legs in his seat.

"I used t' sleep with Gojyo but then I got my own room." He paused thoughtfully. "I don't like sleepin' alone, though.

"Back home, I used ta sleep with Sanzo at th' temple." But he wasn't there. "...I miss him."

Edited 2016-07-15 19:54 (UTC)

Okay, Goku, you got her to smile. And snort a little. "Yes, I sleep." Not much, but enough for her to survive and that is what's important.

"Sanzo?" Her head tilts, the name lilted as a question. Who is that? "Your brother, or...?"

"Sanzo is th' one that saved me." And a flood of words follow, far different than how he's spoken. "He said he heard me callin' to him, n' he came to me when I was trapped in... in a cave..." Like this one, but not like this one.

"He reached his hand out to me and he saved me. He's really beautiful. His hair is gold, like th' sun. Like freedom."

He glimpsed down to the fruit.

"...But there's no Sanzo here. And there's no sun..." And no freedom, not true freedom, anyway. "If I call out t' him...

"Do ya think he'll come for me?"

She's no therapist. Not even close. It's people like Bruce and Dagny and Faith who are better at listening to things like this, better at empathising and making someone feel better. She's... generally better at being straight with someone.

But still. Goku is a kid. At least, he looks like one. Acts like one. And she's trying to channel the kind of people who are good in situations like this. Trying to be better.

... She might not succeed, but she'll try.

(She never succeeds. Not really.)

"Maybe." Her voice is softer than usual, but not slurred and quick like it is when she speaks a lot of the time. "Maybe not. Dunno if anyone can affect the flow of this place like that. But-" she sucks in a breath, because she's pretty sure this is going all wrong, and she doesn't really know what someone like Faith would say here... someone who's good at this. A guess isn't the same thing, and it doesn't always - doesn't usually - sound right from her lips anyway. "You've got other people who'll come for you. Hakkai. Gojyo." She catches her tongue before adding Hell, even me.

What. He's a nice kid. She isn't that cold.

"I know." He knows that Hakkai and Gojyo would come for him... at least, he's pretty sure they would. "But Gojyo is th' one that needs protection. That's why he's wit' Hakkai all th' time." Makes perfect sense to him.

"...Sanzo would probably hit me on th' head and call me a stupid monkey for thinkin' about him all sad. So..."

And then he got excited. "Oh! I know! Since Hakkai n' Gojyo got a house with four rooms, the other one has gotta be for when Sanzo comes! I should decorate it, that way it's all neat for when he comes."

Near finds neither of these things outside. He finds fun in excitement in entirely different things and leaving the house is not a requirement for them. In fact, leaving the house is more along the lines of a necessary chore for the time being. He's been forced to fend for himself for weeks, and contrary to what some have believed about him, Near is not in fact a robot. He needs food.

And while he's not tremendously picky about what he eats, the shops can only provide so much and he heads out to the orchard for fresher product when he feels like it. Which happens to be today.

As usual, he's got his tremendously oversized coat on, the collar covering up the bottom half of his face, and the hem more than halfway to his knees. But above that high collar, his mess of white hair is blatantly visible; the coat doesn't have a hood.

He seems to be alone at first, but his eyes sweep over the area for a moment, checking for other people like a properly paranoid person should. And he believes that he notes someone up in a peach tree, but no one else. Well. That's fine. Not being a social sort, he opts to mostly ignore the figure and heads over to a pear tree instead.

Well, Hakkai is a good fighter. He'd be someone worth having around for protection if you did need it. But Goku's mood is like whiplash and maybe that's a good thing?

She's not sure, but it is easier to deal with. "How would you decorate it?"

"Hmmm..." There was a pause as he tried to think. What could he decorate the room with? "There's a lotta junk lyin' around... not a lot of pretty stuff...

"Oh! But th' trees in the orchard hafta bloom as flowers before they make fruit. I know th' monks used to hang them upside down and they'd dry and be really pretty n' stuff.

"Sanzo's really pretty, so flowers might be good." It was best he occupied his mind with other things. Too much mental duress was... incredibly bad, in concerns to him.

Goku was munching on fruit... but he pulled it away from his face when a person he hadn't seen before came into view. For a moment, his heart gave a weird pound. Snow. The hair looked like snow. He thought it was snow at first, as it looked soft and fluffy, but upon further inspection... well. It was just hair... right?

Once he finished with his fruit, he began to shimmy through branches, closer and closr, quieter towards Near. He was by pears. The tiny monkey king slipped through the branches until...

He made the leap, hopping into the pear tree. Several leaves shook down.

"Hi!" And then he was hanging upside down, knees hooking onto a branch, looking over at Near.

Well, he isn't wrong there. Her place hasn't had a stitch of decoration in the months she's been here- just the occasional pieces of clothing that she doesn't pick up and notebooks used for mindless scribbling when she isn't running somewhere or the other.

"What kind of flowers?" And is drying flowers really that easy? That she did not know.

"I'm not sure... all th' fruit n' stuff is weird, so I'll hafta watch t' see what kinda flowers they make.

"And if there's cloth lyin' around, I could make streamers and tie them together! But they have to be nice colors. And I gotta wash them first too, cuz they'd be icky otherwise." He seemed to truly be considering decorating the room with whatever he can get his hands on--whatever he deems nice for Sanzo's arrival. But then...

"Do you have someone thatcha miss real bad?"

Point taken. The streamers could be an interesting touch, that's for sure. "Maybe you could ask Delight for some stuff." And there's always that.

The question catches her off guard, and is enough to make Kate slow down her chewing even futher. Yes. Quite simply, she misses everyone. "Got no one from home here," she answers as a beginning to the explanation. "Miss-" Hm. Carl, Faith, Jon, Alicia and Diana. Dagny... God, she couldn't even decide. "Pretty much everyone."

It might say something in Near's favour that he doesn't startle at the leaves shaking down. He'd heard movement prior to that, but nothing significant. Still. Getting visible reactions is difficult.

He spares a glance out of the corner of his eye at the boy . . . hanging upside-down from the branch. Perhaps he should be surprised. But after the all the turns Near's life has taken lately, this actually rates very low on the weirdness meter.

And the glance is all the boy gets before Near turns his attention back to the tree. But he will acknowledge the greeting at least. "Hello."

Goku grinned brightly at the greeting. He swings a little on the branch, his long brown hair fluttering in little chocolate ribbons.

"My name's Goku!" He swug up, grasping to the branch with his hands. He swung one leg around with agile ease, until he was swinging like a sloth. "What's your name?

"Are ya tryin' to get fruit? The good fruit is waaaaay up high! It gets all th' light." Even though there was no sun, and weird lighting, well. It still held true, even in a cave.

Edited 2016-07-17 03:46 (UTC)

"That's a lotta people. I don't know that many people. Just Sanzo, Hakkai, n' Gojyo." There's a thoughtful pause. "I'm glad they're here with me.

"But I made a friend! His name is Kougaiji. He knows Hakkai and Gojyo n' I think they were friends. So...

"Even if I miss Sanzo, I'll just make more friends." He doesn't realize yet that people can just disappear from here too. "And I have you now, too. So if you miss your friends, I'll make you happy." He smiled up at her.

"Okay?"

There is no answering grin on Near's face, and even if there were, it would have been hidden by the high collar. He certainly notes Goku's though. Someone gregarious, easily pleased. Near admittedly has not met a great deal of people like this.

The swinging earns him another glance. What a strange child. (As if Near has any room to think somebody is strange.)

"I am called Near." Going along with standard conversation costs him nothing, in his estimation. He's learned how to be slightly better with people, so he can manage this much. "And that may be true, but it isn't something I can reach."

Because he is most certainly not climbing any trees.

Edited 2016-07-17 05:34 (UTC)

[OPEN] The Misadventures of the Monkey King

Closed to Near

Closed to Kate

cute chiiiild

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Let's say . . . the 15th

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Works for me!

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