Scene #8605: I'm Totally Fine

Owner	Pose
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Newland City Newland Desert Region Rubi-Ka The planet's two suns are down. The soft, dim paleness of moonlight rests upon the dunes of the vast Newland Desert, and the walled city of the same name. A gentle wind blows across the dunes, enough to visibly affect the large lake outside the city's wall--reflections of the massive moon and countless stars are broken into a field of shimmering diamonds upon the surface of the lake, as is the reflection of a large holographic advertisement for some sort of vehicle dealership set up on the shore of the lake. Inside the city walls, things are decidedly less tranquil. The glow of many more advertisements, neon and hologram alike, sees a polychromatic corona rising from the city into the night sky. Guards in distinctive lime-green plated armor keep a watchful eye on the vibrant nightlife, as all manner of vehicles, private, public, and commercial, flit overhead from landing pad to landing pad. The naturally defensible city rests against a cliff, grown over with alien grasses and sporting two guard outposts to keep an eye on approaches from every direction. Sandstone bricks form orderly, generously sized walkways , which flank paved paths for groundbound vehicles. Buildings, square and squat, seem mostly confined to one or two stories, until one notices that many of them descend belowground. Down the city's busiest street, up a slight hill, there is an outdoor dining area affixed to a popular nightclub. 'Ours,' it's called--and the music (an up-tempo house beat) can be heard pumping in a chest-rattling rhythm as one approaches. It's here that Phreak is said to spend his evenings, according to the Watch contact that Kukuru unsubtly asked. Sure enough, there he is. Seated near a waist-high wall, facing the street that leads up to the hill upon which the club is built. Looks like they probably let him know. His keyboard-print white hoodie and red tank top are visible above that waist-high wall, as his is expectant frown.
Kukuru	So far, so good! Kukuru's been working pretty hard at trying to find Phreak, keeping his name and her task in mind at all times. She's been tasked with stopping his evil operations by one of her precious family members, after all, so any injuries inflicted on Watch elements on the way towards finding him are completely justified! She's just not subtle about it at all, since trying to triangulate positioning data only really works for people that know what that means at all. After a couple of wasted afternoons trying to isolate his position based off skirmish reports and hearsay, Kukuru's finally opted for the next best thing: Beating up Watch operatives until someone finally gives her a location. Just her luck, then, that someone finally does point Kukuru in the right direction! It's in largely unfamiliar territory, but she doesn't have the luxury of trying super hard to blend in or ambush Phreak in his own backyard. No, she'll just have to catch him in the act before he realizes she's here for him in... ... Oh, this place is loud. It's bright, too, and it's even worse since the suns are already down, so she has to contend with trying to adjust to the light as well. At least Kukuru's somewhat dressed for the location as, instead of wearing her usuall blouse and dress, she's wearing... A jacket! A lot of grays and dark purples, too, with outdoorsy-shorts to really try and get that 'not old people' feel. If nothing else, maybe it'll help him feel safer around a trusted face that's also hip and cool with the times. "Phreeeeeak." She calls out with the tone of someone that's bracing for the worst, but also vaguely hopeful. "There's something we gotta talk about. Do you know why I'm here?" She's definitely mentioned needing to 'stop him from making more mistakes' while beating up Watch agents for info before. Heck, she's probably even done that once before coming here.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Phreak knocks back an on-the-rocks glass full of something amber in color and medicinal in scent. His golden eyes flick up and down. "Yeah, I might have heard a thing or two from the guys you beat up on," he says sourly. "You too good for the radio, now, huh? I would have answered if you'd asked. Especially if it was to settle a score 'cause you felt some type of way about me." He slams the glass down and the ice cubes jostle briefly upwards. "Not to mention now I have to set you straight. I can't have my contacts thinking that they're gonna get beat on by every gold-plated jabroni that blows in from the Great Pyramid of Fuckoffistan for helping me out. So what is it?" he asks. "What 'mistake' did I make, huh?" He all but spits, golden eyes glaring. "Was it the drinking? The stims? What about the blackmail? Grand theft? Cyber crime? Conspiracy to commit murder? What's so goddamned important," he says, punctuating the expletive with a pound of his fist on the table, "That you can't ask for me like the rest of these idiots do, when they got a problem with each other?"
Kukuru	"The radio...?" Actually, why didn't Kukuru just try and get in touch with him that way first? She doesn't answer right away as she tries to recall her reasons. It's pretty apparent from the vacant stare on her face that the thought simply didn't occur to her, but the reasons soon come back to her. 'I'm much more concerned for the public's health if these forgeries were to enter the public...' 'Well, if you could 'discipline' him, so to speak, I think it would deter him from doing anything he'd come to regret... It'd also be a good way to test my work.' "That's right...! It's because I can't let you keep doing what you're doing with Danny's work." Kukuru affirms with a long frown of her own, crossing her arms over her chest while looking Phreak over once to see if he has any strange belts visible on his person. "It's dangerous to you and everyone else to keep messing with that stuff if you don't know what you're doing." Her hands go into her pockets. "It's not wrong to drink or have fun with things as long as it doesn't hurt good people. But what you're doing with the bootlegs is wrong, and I can't let you do something you'll regret with all that! So please, give it up and hand it all over. If you don't..." There's a small bit of gray sticking out of one of her pockets. She's packing something in there, but what?!
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	The fixer's face screws up into momentary, beligerrent confusion at the mention of 'Danny.' "Who the fuck is--" It's dangerous to you and everyone else to keep messing with that stuff if you don't know what you're doing. "Shut the FUCK up," he says, rising to his feet so quickly that the chair he'd sat on a moment before clatters to the ground. A few people are starting to look. "Fuck you, I don't know what I'm doing. My whole life," he says, raising his voice, gesticulating angrily with one hand and listing out with his fingers, "I worked programming, B&E, DRM bypass, for you to come here and tell me that." The ice cubes fly forward, along with a bit of melted ice and the last dregs of his liquor, as he snatches the glass and splashes Kukuru with it. A chorus of shocked gasps rises from the onlookers, even above the thump of the music from the club's interior. "You want the fucking bootleg, huh? HUH?!" A grey finger juts through the air in accusation of her. At this point, he's forgotten about the bluff he'd made to Dan--that he'd disseminated it. His explosive anger is simply too present, the insult felt at the implied challenge of his competence too much in control. "Then you fight me for it. And we'll see just how goddamn fucking much I know what I'm doing." It comes out, gripped firmly in his hand. The other hand brings up a hardlight interface. "Outside," he says, as Kukuru receives a hardlight notification. A dialog box she can navigate simply by looking at the prompts--giving directions to a location nearby. "You're not there in five fucking minutes, I'm getting on the radio and telling everybody exactly what the fuck I did to make this thing." Phreak slams an enter key only he can see, harder than he has any need to--and then, with a steadily louder buzz and a pop for punctuation, he's gone, his physical form briefly a hollow, blue wireframe simulacrum before vanishing altoghther.
Kukuru	Phreak's anger isn't unexpected, even for someone as generally dense as Kukuru. She /did/ just question his competence, after all, and it's not as if she hasn't seen that kind of reaction even from family members at lesser provocations. Part of her even feels kind of bad resorting to this kind of tactic, but being asked to test his invention means using such tactics. Besides, Dan suggested it, so whatever mild discomfort she might have is going to be worth it. Staring right at Phreak as he shouts all two kinds of acronyms she doesn't recognize, Kukuru keeps her face stuck in neutral, although she does let out an inadvertent yelp at getting blasted with the cold remains of his drink. Again, a somewhat expected reaction, but it's still jarring enough to get her own heart racing a bit. "That's right. I was just going to take it back, but you behaving like this..." She picks a piece of ice off her shirt with the back of her finger, then swipes it off with her tongue before placing her palm against her cheek. "... I think I'm gonna have to punish you a little, too." That's not how she normally talks, but it didn't feel wrong. Seeing the notification, she takes those coordinates in (and takes a little longer to map it out) before pursing her lips and nodding. "Of course. Let's go, then. I won't be late, so don't you be late either~" As Pherak disappears, she takes a moment to reach back into her pocket and wipe her face off with a handkerchief, and then the onlookers are treated with the sight of the green-haired lady promptly falling through the floor right in front of them. --- FURTHER AWAY Kukuru appears at the identified location, popping up out of the ground like she's falling upwards for a moment before settling back down on solid ground. Once again, she has her hands in her pockets, and that gray belt is sticking out of it again, but she seems to be waiting for Phreak to show up before she actually pulls it out all the way.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Outside the oasis city, on the side opposite the large lake, is a field of tall grass. Phreak is already there and waiting, with a scowl on his face. The jailbroken Gamer Driver is around his waist--the usual branding sanded off. The whine of a small turbine engine is heard through the night air, and one leg is lifted, resting upon the deck tape of his powered hoverboard. The bootleg Gashat is in his hands. "Go ahead and put on whatever shit that goddamn giamoke gave you. I'm not waiting forever." Phreak's right hand twirls the Gashat deftly. Its label is clearly sporting stolen art; a very familiar character jumping through an obstacle strewn field to shoot at another, from a completely different franchise. The label reads (and the belt announces, as he slots it in) POWERFUL EFFORT Y. The diegetic callout of the belt is clearly ripped from some old electronic chessboard. The armor itself is clearly modeled after the king in chess, but the black and white checkerboard coloring all over the bodysuit beneath the armor plates doesn't fit at all with the completely edged-up red-and-black transformation device. The same kind of cross that would top off a traditional piece isn't blended into the design at all; it's obnoxiously sticking off of not only the top of the helmet, but also both of the oversized shoulder pads as if the point really needed to be hammered in. The cape attached to them would almost look sort of regal otherwise. But only almost. Even that huge, bulky collar flared out at the top looks like it's trying too hard to emulate its inspiration, leaving the noticeably too big eyes plastered onto its mask to barely peer over it. It's almost like this was designed to deliberately frustrate a perfectionist like Dan, especially with the spikes and angular edges completely at odds with the design of the other Gamer Driver suits. Phreak doesn't wait for Kukuru's transformation, any longer than he absolutely has to, before divebombing her with the hoverboard. Tall grass parts and forms a trail, not yet returned to its original position before he's upon her. He whirls around at breakneck speed, the lip of the hoverboard weaponized to pummel her with every revolution. The final revolution tests her armor by grinding the reinforced turbine against her.
Kukuru	There's Phreak! Noticing the Gamer Driver on his waist, Kukuru purses her lips again in moderate distaste at the presence of the bootleg. "If you're not careful with those... Mmn. Do you care about who could get hurt if there's an outbreak? That's why..." Sighing lightly, Kukuru finally withdraws the gray belt, slapping it onto her waist as the rest of it slides around her waist on its own. Once it's attached, she struggles a bit more to attach a black and purple Bugvisor with red bits to it, apparently havinga bit of trouble seeing where to aim what. She resorts to tugging the belt to the side to get a better look, making sure everything's where it should be before taking out an unlabeled yellow Gashat out. "What's a giam... What?" She asks with confusion apparent in her tone, still not looking up as she finally manages to slide the piece into the belt. It takes until after Phreak's transformation with the Gashat is nearly complete before she finally remembers to actually press the button on her own. She flinches briefly as a digitized voice screams right at her from the device, but she recovers soon enough to stick it in the belt properly/finally. She flinches again when flashing image boxes swirl around her and a scanline covered screen appears behind her, displaying a stylized older figure smiling with a steaming pot of nondescript food. Kukuru settles down just in time for that screen and the image boxes to explode all over her. Good job! Keep going! Now for the final results: I'll fix this! GOURMET GRANDMA! The Kamen Rider that appears from the barrage of lights looks somewhat softer than the usual sort, looking less like a cape-bearing hero and more like an innkeeper or homemaker between the pastel pink armor with eggshell-white trim, and a bright white and yellow apron that almost doubles as an armored skirt. "That's why I have to stop this, before you get anyone hurt!" The battle begins, and Phreak's already rushing right at Kukuru with the massive speed advantage granted by his hoverboard. Without much/anything in the way of visible mobility aids, Kukuru's best defence in this experimental armor is to... Take the hit head on! Trusting in the power of Dan's inventions, she claps her forearms together to brace herself against what's sure to be a terrible impact from the corner/edge of the board and... Wait. He's still right on her. The impact is bad enough, but he's grinding it into her limbs, too, with an ear-drilling noise of rapid HITS echoing around her! She staggers back somewhat clumsily at first, too, trying to find her footing with the new armor, but she soon kicks a foot upwards to try and disrupt Phreak's sustained attack before throwing her arms out to her sides suddenly to try and turn this into a trade of blows rather than a hit and run. "How long have you been using this...? Have you been infected with the virus? Has anyone else? Tell me!" As she tries to get some answers, an oversized (and cartoonishly stylized) pot and lid appear in each of Kukuru's gloved hands. She slams both of them together in an effort to catch Phreak inside the giant cooking tools, shaking them around almost to a rhythm and slamming them around with the bootleg Rider ideally clamped in her hold!
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	"There's not gonna be an outbreak, you dumb motherfucker," Phreak spits back, as Kukuru's foot strikes the bottom of the hoverboard. His left foot guns the accelerator at the rear of the board, funneling momentum from her strike into a backflip and tucking his right knee to tighten the loop. A twist at the waist pulls the flip into a spin, his natural stance reversed as he levels out-- Just in time to be captured in Kukuru's pot and lid. A flash of blue light emerges from within the pot. In a move that's deeply emblematic of Phreak when he's this upset, the pot is soon riddled with automatic weapons fire. Contained in its confines, Phreak shoots himself more than a few times, owing to the sturdiness of the pot--but the weaponized intangibility and self-repairing capabilities of his 'Grid Armor' program make this a relative non-issue. "I made this fucking thing to help Hibiki get one over on that son of a bitch, not to fight Bugsters. It won't even work on 'em. You think I'd stick one of ours with a virus? Fuck that," comes the Fixer's venomous answer, before his large, bulky SMG starts slamming against the lid to force himself out.
Kukuru	"How are you so sure? I know you wouldn't hurt your friends with it on purpose, but...!" Trembling as the pot clangs and clatters with so many shots going off inside of it, Kukuru keeps ducking and shifting around the closed pot as she struggles to avoid getting shot right in the face with all those bullets punching through the pot and into her suit. Just because she's got fancy new armor doesn't mean that she's keen on testing how well it can protect her from getting shot in the face, after all! All that jumping around from the continued blasts, combined with the banging from the inside, the constant hitsparks and scorched markings, and the dark red splotches on the black parts of her suit mounting up the longer this fight drags on means that Kukuru can't maintain her hold for long. The sheer volume of things coming out at her forces her to release her hold on Phreak, tumbling backwards out of habit and releasing the fixer from that stylized and oversized cooking tool. "He's the only one that knows how to work with the virus in these things safely. How long can you be sure you won't hurt yourself or Hibiki just to get to him?" She goes quiet as she says that last part, just staring at the floor dully for several moments to let it really sink in for herself. "... It /is/ just to get to him, isn't it?" Kukuru's voice takes on a lower, cooler tone as she rises back to her full standing height of 5'5"/still-shorter-than-Phreak. Even with the hard mask covering her face, there's something distinctly colder about her posture as she raises a palm to cup her cheek softly (the lid is with the pot). "You really do need to be punished, don't you? Naughty boy..." Stepping forward, one of Kukuru's usual teleportation clouds appears in front of her. From around the cloud, she flings the stylized lid at Phreak like she's some kind of American hero! She steps into the cloud and reappears from another one behind Phreak moments later, trying to catch him in a pincer attack with the flung cooking tool on one side and herself on the other. This time, though, she's got a handle on the pot (literally), letting her aim a huge golf swing at him like it was some kind of club! For golfing!
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Everything Kukuru says seems to make Phreak more upset, and less controlled in how he fights her. "YEAH?! IS THAT WHAT I NEED?" the faceless blue wireframe silhouette bellows at her as he breaks free from the pot, his chest heaving with equal parts exertion and anger. The polygonal armor flickers from existence and disintegrates, leaving the Rider armor in its place. Phreak leaps over the flung lid from a standstill, twisting in midair to put the turbine of the hoverboard against it, sending up a shower of sparks as he deflects it with a forceful kickflip. The board disappears, sent back into his cloud storage in a wave of encroaching blue light, and he falls to the ground just in time to catch her haymaker swing from behind. The pot makes a loud HIT notification, the force of the blow knocking him off his feet and sending him tumbling through the tall grass. Phreak howls with rage, an elbow struck out to both halt his skidding and to propel himself into the air. A lateral flip has both massive SMGs pointed her way, and he holds down both triggers, the outsized things bucking wildly but held in check by his practiced grip and augmented strength. Streams of hot lead race angrily through the air, great in quantity for the relatively short airtime before Phreak is back on his feet. The HP bar on his armor ticks up a concerning amount every few seconds. "That's what it ALWAYS is, huh?! I poked my head up too far, and YOU pieces of shit gotta come back around and 'put me in my place,' huh?!" He isn't even talking about this specific fight anymore, or even the Concord--this is something much older, that runs much deeper, and his usual level of control is utterly absent where this feeling is dredged up. "FUCK YOU!" In an instant, Phreak has crossed the space between them, his finesse-focused fighting style gone as he instead tries to make a superspeed-bolstered shoulder check and take Kukuru to the ground.
Kukuru	Kukuru's own anger, in comparison to Phreak's, seems to be on the colder, slower side as she reels from her big swing and hoists the pot over her shoulder, not bothering to pick up the pot. Instead, she keeps on approaching him at a steady, vaguely menacing pace while nodding slowly with each step. "That's right. If you were doing this to help your friends make things better, this would be different." Kukuru answers with a brief choking noise, clutching her free hand against her chest while looking off to the side in contemplation. "I've seen you and Bercy fighting before. I know what you could do if you have the right people with you." Alas, talking is still something that takes Kukuru more time to do than most others, and that time she needs to think and come up with what to say to Phreak gives him a fair bit of time to start firing right at her. The SMGs batter against Kukuru's suit with another array of visible HIT effects and yet more of those flashing sparks. For a moment, it looks like it's even finally wearing her down as she drops to a knee, bracing her pot against the ground to keep herself from falling over entirely as more of those impacts keep her pinned down. "Ghn...! B-but you said it yourself. This isn't about making anything better. You just wanna hurt Danny... My family!" Pressing her hand against the Bugvisor at her side, Kukuru fumbles with the buttons and bits and bobs on it until she manages to figure out which ones to release, push back in, and press so it can sufficiently scream CRITICAL COOKOUT as she starts sinking into an inky cloud beneath her. Reappearing in the sky, Kukuru falls straight down while righting herself, falling through another cloud and reappearing higher up once again. "That's why... Yes, I am gonna put you in your place. You need to be timed out, Phreaky!" She shouts while repeating that falling process and building up speed, eventually culminating in another teleportation cloud launching her at him at a downwards angle, giant cooking pot raised in both hands. As she comes closer, she slams it down at Phreak, both in an explosive attempt to clobber him with the pot while also dumping all of its explosively sludgy liquid right onto him!
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	You just wanna hurt Danny... My family! "FUCK YOUR FAMILY! FUCK YOU!" With Kukuru thus pinned, only for a moment, Phreak clubs her with the butt of one of his guns. Phreak isn't a Kamen Rider. He doesn't have near the level of empathy or self-introspection that would imply or require. In this moment, he's neither that, nor wholly a Fixer relying on speed and wit. Fighting over a perceived slight, he's become nothing. The gun doesn't hit her--instead impacting the ground a moment after she sinks into it. That's why... Yes, I am gonna put you in your place. You need to be timed out, Phreaky! The finisher--the cooking pot and its explosive content--slams into him and hurls him so forcefully into the ground that it craters around him. His ears ring, and whatever diegetic callout he'd programmed into his mockery of an armor, he isn't able to hear in that moment. The armor fades in a wash of red and grey, leaving him lying there, just lucid enough to be scowling. It comes to him, coldly, a pit in the stomach--Dan, or Kukuru, or the both of them, had read him like a map. Either she'd gleaned exactly what to do to bring out the worst in him, and make him fight stupid--or Dan had told her. Either way, it doesn't matter. Now the both of them have exactly what they want. As much as he wants to put it back on, the damage is already done. "You want this fucking thing so badly?" He snorts, drawing up spit and blood. "Take it." He unclasps the belt and spits on it, shoving it upwards at Kukuru before forcefully kneeing her off of him and crawling out of the crater. "I'd tell you 'hope it kills you,' but my shit doesn't need you to have a fucking disease to use it. I'm sure 'Danny' is gonna be right as fucking rain, as much as he uses that thing."
Kukuru	Panting heavily as she comes down from that high-momentum finisher, Kukuru looks like she's ready to buckle again as she uses the pot to prop herself up once more. She braces for a counterattack initially as she wobbles a bit even while on a knee, reeling from the head wounds and trying to shake it off before Phreak can start blasting her again. Instead of getting blasted, though, his armor fades, and he still looks and sounds just as angry as ever. It's not an unexpected reaction, but it still has her flinching a bit inwardly, even if the colorful armor hides the conflict on her face. He did say he really wanted to hurt Dan, after all, and nothing else he said made it sound like he had any intent to take any of it back. Still, for someone like Phreak to be so angry... Could there be something else involved? She'll have to ask Dan for more details later, as Phreak is still in front of her and... Giving up the belt? There's a moment of hesitation before Kukuru approaches him slowly, releasing the Gashat from her own belt and letting her own armor dissipate. She's not in much better shape herself from the looks of it, and there's a fair bit of blood on her head from where she was struck and shot in so many places, but it's already looking a little dryer than it should by now. "It won't kill me. I'm using his work, and I don't have-" Taking the belt with a slight frown, she gets caught off guard by the knee and stumbles back, but makes no effort to approach Phreak again afterwards. "Nnh... Phreaky. He's just worried about you and everyone else, too. If you two would just..." Biting back a light noise from the back of her throat, Kukuru pulls herself back out of the crater and starts shuffling towards a cloud that'll take her back home. She doesn't say anything else, though, as she's just focusing on suppressing the pain in her chest. If nothing else, though, maybe she's gotten some good data to bring back! The feeling still sucks.
Rubi-Kan Vagrants	Nnh... Phreaky. He's just worried about you and everyone else, too. So that's the angle. Okay. That's where my runback comes from. Phreak looks over his shoulder at Kukuru. "You're not my mother and he's not my -fucking father,-" he quietly spits, his golden eyes searing holes into her. "My father is dead. He loved me. And I kinda-sorta loved him. But he was a piece of shit, and my whole life he dangled the key to my cage in front of my face. Told me I could have it, if I just worked a little harder. It's better for the whole planet that he's gone. That's why I helped kill him. How'd'ya feel about -that- one, huh? Does that make you feel warm and fuzzy inside?" "I stood up for you. For your real family. Not no more," he says, looking forward once more and resuming his typing. "You're gonna learn real soon where 'my place' is. And you're not gonna fucking like it. Have fun with my bootleg, asshole." His index strikes an enter key only he can see. That same warbling buzz from before, a pop to punctuate it, and he's gone.