The only think on your mind is your hat! [job]
Nov 30, 2017 4:21:28 GMT
Post by Hiroyo Oda on Nov 30, 2017 4:21:28 GMT
Job: Where's my Hat at?
Jobs Taken this month: 1
Suggested listening: Fake Happy by Paramore
Word count: 1929
===============
The bruise on Hiroyo’s upper arm looks like a bracelet with the way it wraps all the way around. It doesn’t look like a bracelet in that it is blobby at the edges and indistinct in a way no self-respecting jeweller would ever allow their merchandise to be. It also causes pain when touched, as proven when she prods it while studying herself in the mirror. It’s day two of Whitewater City: Beach Ruler Trials and her plan for the day had been to wear a strapless white dress with sunflowers over her climbing outfit but concealer can only do so much.
“The colors would show through anyways.” She consoles herself as she dips her sponge in foundation much darker than what she normally wears. The brush moves in smudging motions over the dark blue mass. She only winces twice.
Faint fragments of sound drift in under the bathroom door from the tv and she knows that means the twins are still asleep. They can’t sleep without the noise, they claim, and on this the vote is two to one so she has bags under her eyes and an early morning fatigue she had to wash away in the shower.
She’ll have to be generous with the concealer and hope she has enough.
Still, she finds herself glad they’re still asleep because it means she has the hotel bathroom to herself and there’s already enough stacked against her with constantly flickering, orange-tinted light above the sink. It isn’t like she’s truly trying to hide her injuries from them but she’s not going to point them out either. If they figure out she came out of yesterday’s matches of ‘destroy the enemies’ hats!’ game bruised and banged up then the ‘I told you so’s will never end.
So Hiroyo is glad for the quiet and peace, and ignores the faint...something that twinges in her chest. If she doesn’t put a name to it she doesn’t have to acknowledge it. And if she doesn’t acknowledge it then it must not exist!
Yeah...that’s how it works!
Digging around in her makeup bag yields two different concealers with the same color name and she chews on her lower lip as she considers them. Her eyes catch the difference in color but will it be more or less noticeable in the sunlight? It might not be what a human would consider an ordinary beach competition, but points can still be won or lost based on appearance as well as performance in the over all trials.
She releases her lower lip when she picks the waterproof concealer and trusts in her memory as she begins applying it to her bruise. She’ll wear her swimsuit under her navy and white sundress, she decides. The sundress is a cotton and polyester blend and it should hold up better than her previous outfit had. A smug smile spreads across her face. Yet another point in favor of bringing ‘way too many clothes’, which were proving to not be such an ‘insufficient waste of space’.
Suck it, bug brothers!
It was a pity her outfit wasn’t salvageable, but her Beach Ruler Headpiece of Participation now had a pink flower ripped from the competition! Almost literally ripped. Well, really it was a symbol of the piece of petal she had accidentally ripped off when trying to throw her opponent out of the ring during the Beach Battle contest. Man was she glad she hadn’t been disqualified for that!
The mini brawl afterwards had been so bad she'd been all but manhandled to the first aid tent.
A smile cracks across her face. Does walking alone out of the med tent count as a walk of shame in the digital world when your opponent isn't in there? Probably!
She puts down the concealer and leans closer to the mirror, her eyes narrowing as she judges her arm. Eventually she pulls back, a satisfied smile on her face. Her work is done, and it is Good!
At least Hiroyo hopes so. She would probably give her pinky fingers for decent lighting if there was anyone around who would take them!
Or maybe not. She can think of a couple times she has needed her pinky fingers for climbing. Maybe her pinky toes instead? Those are, significantly less important when it comes to climbing.
She normally wears shoes after all.
There’s a click and no more noise from the tv and she knows the twins are up. There is a stiffen of her shoulders and spine and the look on her face goes carefully neutral. Her quiet humming stops and she moves the foundation brush away. Who woke up first? How awfully is her day going to start?
“Oiii, stupid open up! I need to use the toilet!” Her lips tighten at the corners at the tone but her hands starts moving again.
“Use the one down the hall if that’s all you need. I’m preparing for the next round of the Beach Ruler competition.” She keeps her voice carefully neutral.
“Ugggh, no. Why are you even getting ready? How much are you going to be able to do from the sidelines?” Roger whines. Her eyebrow twitches.
“I’m still in the competition.” She had left her competition hat on the dresser. The starting ribbon intact, the flower sewn into the side. All carefully arranged to be perfectly on display whenever anyone entered the hotel room. Even if you were less than three feet tall and not fond of walking across walls.
“Buuwah? Even you managed to hang in? I heard there was a human who had to beat off a Palmon who became enraged after its loss.” The pressure on her heart eases and she swaps out her foundation brush for the blush. “Sounds like at some point they ripped off the Palmon’s entire flower and it became enraged! Even if it was only in the Child level they have to be a spirit user! You humans just can’t handle that kind of power!” There was enough smugness for all the inhabitants of the Digital World packed into his voice.
“Well actually, it wasn’t a spirit user at all. And not the whole flower either!” There’s excitement in her words. She’s fond of sharing her experiences. “It was -”
“Yeah yeah, everyone knows that the judges had to step in but a basic human just couldn’t survive a beating like that. It was definitely a spirit user. You’d better be careful about running into them! They’d kick your butt in a heartbeat.” There’s a note of admiration in Roger’s voice and Hiroyo has smashed the brush against her cheek and now there’s a giant splotch of red on her cheek.
She feels like a thin sheet of ice lifted from a window frame. There’s fragments of glass lodged in her heart and a bar of steel running down her spine. ‘Why bother?’ She thinks, because he doesn’t-won’t care.
“So you understand why I need to prepare, right.” Her voice is Friendly! So Friendly! A Friendly so fine that her stepmother would recognize it as the ‘I would so dearly love to see how many of these tiny shrimps we could shove up your nose’ from dinner parties past. Easy to miss the hidden meaning if one isn't looking for it. “If the competition is like that I’ve gotta appeal with my looks as much as I can!”
“Fine! Hog the bathroom if you want!” There’s a groan of annoyance from outside the bathroom and what sounds like someone using a bunch of tiny small plungers on the wall repeatedly. It’s heading away though so she thinks Roger got the message. And she didn’t even have to rent a billboard! Amazing. "I bet your fights are boring and you running away ninety percent of the time!"
The look on her face switches to something petty and victorious but she doesn’t care. When she’d accidentally torn out She had to walk her way back from the first aid tent alone yesterday. He can handle a stroll down the hall.
It’s tricky to wipe off only a portion of her cheek and re-apply everything so it matches the rest of her face. She can’t be positive she’s got it perfectly right but honestly, she can’t say much for the Digital World’s sense of style. She might have insinuated she could pull off a pity placing on looks but honestly she almost wouldn’t be surprised if a literal garbage monster won.
She sure would be hella pissed, especially if something like that actually existed. At least if it did exist it probably wouldn’t be Child level right? It’d be in a garbage can so it’d probably be Adult.
She sighs because she's an adult but the sole human seated at the sign-up table had only given her a dead fish eye stare when she had tried to argue for being put in that level of competition then marked her down as child anyways. It was pretty frustrating, she was old enough she’d been drinking legally for years now!
Later in the week there will be an awkwardly edited ‘best of’ video mashup of the competition and she’ll mute the sound but the sight of an Allomon punting a Gekomon out of the arena will leave her contemplating if she should send a ‘thank you for saving me from myself’ letter to that organiser.
For now she paints her lipstick wider than her mouth and flashes her teeth and it’s easy enough to pull out the ‘how nice to meet important people from the company’ smile from her youth that no one will be able to tell how she’s feeling.
When she participates today - in some awful brawl that barely masquerades as a game of capture the flag on a course that was thrown together overnight so haphazardly it doubles as an obstacle course - she does so feeling like the ground beneath her isn’t enough to hold her up.
It can’t support her the way she needs. No, she wants something in the audience even as she berates herself for wanting it. The relationship is too new, too rocky too unsteady she can’t expect - her eyes scan the crowd constantly when she’s not busy dodging or running or twisting her body into ridiculous poses. Her ears are attuned to two voices she’s familiar with.
She doesn’t find them.
As the week progresses and she goes to greater and greater lengths to protect her hat. She has enjoyed it all along for the challenge, but there’s a pit of something heavy and bitter that she doesn’t recognize in her gut (she stopped looking for the twins in the crowd on day four) and the collection of bruises and scrapes on her body has grown bigger.
She barely manages to keep herself from limping up the steps to receive the last piece of her hat from the same human who kept her in the Child Levels.
When she resumes her seat in the stands with the twins there’s a certain fierce glee that pounds in her chest at their flabbergasted faces.
---
In the future the hat gets pulled out some days when she gets home from the digital world and she’s so frustrated that she can’t even enjoy eating a gallon of Bargain Dash by herself. It’s a reminder and a promise and it hurts but it also soothes and she considers trashing it more than once.
She never does, but she doesn't know why she still holds on.
Jobs Taken this month: 1
Suggested listening: Fake Happy by Paramore
Word count: 1929
===============
The bruise on Hiroyo’s upper arm looks like a bracelet with the way it wraps all the way around. It doesn’t look like a bracelet in that it is blobby at the edges and indistinct in a way no self-respecting jeweller would ever allow their merchandise to be. It also causes pain when touched, as proven when she prods it while studying herself in the mirror. It’s day two of Whitewater City: Beach Ruler Trials and her plan for the day had been to wear a strapless white dress with sunflowers over her climbing outfit but concealer can only do so much.
“The colors would show through anyways.” She consoles herself as she dips her sponge in foundation much darker than what she normally wears. The brush moves in smudging motions over the dark blue mass. She only winces twice.
Faint fragments of sound drift in under the bathroom door from the tv and she knows that means the twins are still asleep. They can’t sleep without the noise, they claim, and on this the vote is two to one so she has bags under her eyes and an early morning fatigue she had to wash away in the shower.
She’ll have to be generous with the concealer and hope she has enough.
Still, she finds herself glad they’re still asleep because it means she has the hotel bathroom to herself and there’s already enough stacked against her with constantly flickering, orange-tinted light above the sink. It isn’t like she’s truly trying to hide her injuries from them but she’s not going to point them out either. If they figure out she came out of yesterday’s matches of ‘destroy the enemies’ hats!’ game bruised and banged up then the ‘I told you so’s will never end.
So Hiroyo is glad for the quiet and peace, and ignores the faint...something that twinges in her chest. If she doesn’t put a name to it she doesn’t have to acknowledge it. And if she doesn’t acknowledge it then it must not exist!
Yeah...that’s how it works!
Digging around in her makeup bag yields two different concealers with the same color name and she chews on her lower lip as she considers them. Her eyes catch the difference in color but will it be more or less noticeable in the sunlight? It might not be what a human would consider an ordinary beach competition, but points can still be won or lost based on appearance as well as performance in the over all trials.
She releases her lower lip when she picks the waterproof concealer and trusts in her memory as she begins applying it to her bruise. She’ll wear her swimsuit under her navy and white sundress, she decides. The sundress is a cotton and polyester blend and it should hold up better than her previous outfit had. A smug smile spreads across her face. Yet another point in favor of bringing ‘way too many clothes’, which were proving to not be such an ‘insufficient waste of space’.
Suck it, bug brothers!
It was a pity her outfit wasn’t salvageable, but her Beach Ruler Headpiece of Participation now had a pink flower ripped from the competition! Almost literally ripped. Well, really it was a symbol of the piece of petal she had accidentally ripped off when trying to throw her opponent out of the ring during the Beach Battle contest. Man was she glad she hadn’t been disqualified for that!
The mini brawl afterwards had been so bad she'd been all but manhandled to the first aid tent.
A smile cracks across her face. Does walking alone out of the med tent count as a walk of shame in the digital world when your opponent isn't in there? Probably!
She puts down the concealer and leans closer to the mirror, her eyes narrowing as she judges her arm. Eventually she pulls back, a satisfied smile on her face. Her work is done, and it is Good!
At least Hiroyo hopes so. She would probably give her pinky fingers for decent lighting if there was anyone around who would take them!
Or maybe not. She can think of a couple times she has needed her pinky fingers for climbing. Maybe her pinky toes instead? Those are, significantly less important when it comes to climbing.
She normally wears shoes after all.
There’s a click and no more noise from the tv and she knows the twins are up. There is a stiffen of her shoulders and spine and the look on her face goes carefully neutral. Her quiet humming stops and she moves the foundation brush away. Who woke up first? How awfully is her day going to start?
“Oiii, stupid open up! I need to use the toilet!” Her lips tighten at the corners at the tone but her hands starts moving again.
“Use the one down the hall if that’s all you need. I’m preparing for the next round of the Beach Ruler competition.” She keeps her voice carefully neutral.
“Ugggh, no. Why are you even getting ready? How much are you going to be able to do from the sidelines?” Roger whines. Her eyebrow twitches.
“I’m still in the competition.” She had left her competition hat on the dresser. The starting ribbon intact, the flower sewn into the side. All carefully arranged to be perfectly on display whenever anyone entered the hotel room. Even if you were less than three feet tall and not fond of walking across walls.
“Buuwah? Even you managed to hang in? I heard there was a human who had to beat off a Palmon who became enraged after its loss.” The pressure on her heart eases and she swaps out her foundation brush for the blush. “Sounds like at some point they ripped off the Palmon’s entire flower and it became enraged! Even if it was only in the Child level they have to be a spirit user! You humans just can’t handle that kind of power!” There was enough smugness for all the inhabitants of the Digital World packed into his voice.
“Well actually, it wasn’t a spirit user at all. And not the whole flower either!” There’s excitement in her words. She’s fond of sharing her experiences. “It was -”
“Yeah yeah, everyone knows that the judges had to step in but a basic human just couldn’t survive a beating like that. It was definitely a spirit user. You’d better be careful about running into them! They’d kick your butt in a heartbeat.” There’s a note of admiration in Roger’s voice and Hiroyo has smashed the brush against her cheek and now there’s a giant splotch of red on her cheek.
She feels like a thin sheet of ice lifted from a window frame. There’s fragments of glass lodged in her heart and a bar of steel running down her spine. ‘Why bother?’ She thinks, because he doesn’t-won’t care.
“So you understand why I need to prepare, right.” Her voice is Friendly! So Friendly! A Friendly so fine that her stepmother would recognize it as the ‘I would so dearly love to see how many of these tiny shrimps we could shove up your nose’ from dinner parties past. Easy to miss the hidden meaning if one isn't looking for it. “If the competition is like that I’ve gotta appeal with my looks as much as I can!”
“Fine! Hog the bathroom if you want!” There’s a groan of annoyance from outside the bathroom and what sounds like someone using a bunch of tiny small plungers on the wall repeatedly. It’s heading away though so she thinks Roger got the message. And she didn’t even have to rent a billboard! Amazing. "I bet your fights are boring and you running away ninety percent of the time!"
The look on her face switches to something petty and victorious but she doesn’t care. When she’d accidentally torn out She had to walk her way back from the first aid tent alone yesterday. He can handle a stroll down the hall.
It’s tricky to wipe off only a portion of her cheek and re-apply everything so it matches the rest of her face. She can’t be positive she’s got it perfectly right but honestly, she can’t say much for the Digital World’s sense of style. She might have insinuated she could pull off a pity placing on looks but honestly she almost wouldn’t be surprised if a literal garbage monster won.
She sure would be hella pissed, especially if something like that actually existed. At least if it did exist it probably wouldn’t be Child level right? It’d be in a garbage can so it’d probably be Adult.
She sighs because she's an adult but the sole human seated at the sign-up table had only given her a dead fish eye stare when she had tried to argue for being put in that level of competition then marked her down as child anyways. It was pretty frustrating, she was old enough she’d been drinking legally for years now!
Later in the week there will be an awkwardly edited ‘best of’ video mashup of the competition and she’ll mute the sound but the sight of an Allomon punting a Gekomon out of the arena will leave her contemplating if she should send a ‘thank you for saving me from myself’ letter to that organiser.
For now she paints her lipstick wider than her mouth and flashes her teeth and it’s easy enough to pull out the ‘how nice to meet important people from the company’ smile from her youth that no one will be able to tell how she’s feeling.
When she participates today - in some awful brawl that barely masquerades as a game of capture the flag on a course that was thrown together overnight so haphazardly it doubles as an obstacle course - she does so feeling like the ground beneath her isn’t enough to hold her up.
It can’t support her the way she needs. No, she wants something in the audience even as she berates herself for wanting it. The relationship is too new, too rocky too unsteady she can’t expect - her eyes scan the crowd constantly when she’s not busy dodging or running or twisting her body into ridiculous poses. Her ears are attuned to two voices she’s familiar with.
She doesn’t find them.
As the week progresses and she goes to greater and greater lengths to protect her hat. She has enjoyed it all along for the challenge, but there’s a pit of something heavy and bitter that she doesn’t recognize in her gut (she stopped looking for the twins in the crowd on day four) and the collection of bruises and scrapes on her body has grown bigger.
She barely manages to keep herself from limping up the steps to receive the last piece of her hat from the same human who kept her in the Child Levels.
When she resumes her seat in the stands with the twins there’s a certain fierce glee that pounds in her chest at their flabbergasted faces.
---
In the future the hat gets pulled out some days when she gets home from the digital world and she’s so frustrated that she can’t even enjoy eating a gallon of Bargain Dash by herself. It’s a reminder and a promise and it hurts but it also soothes and she considers trashing it more than once.
She never does, but she doesn't know why she still holds on.
