log; complete; don't reach out, don't reach out

[antimafioso]

When; (backdated) April 12, evening
Rating; PG-13
Characters; Arthur (specifics) & Mukuro (antimafioso)
Summary; Mukuro arrives and plays a game. Arthur is helpful, if unimpressed.
Log;

Are you going to let her die? An obvious trap, laughably so. Insultingly so. With such an invitation, how can he refuse? The barrier disappears and her distress radiates to his ready, reaching mind. And he reaches--
his knees bang against what feels like concrete, his body a buoy, for the first time Mukuro knows the water on his skin, the chafing of the cuffs on his wrists and neck. The tubing fixed to his eye sags, floats, fills with water; behind his eyelid his pupil spins. A toss of his head detaches it, a toss as he casts his mind about (Chrome-- unharmed, a mystery but satisfactory to look elsewhere, them, but where is this?), eyes cracking open beneath the water and above it, his head surfacing, spraying water. Shallow depths; water sprays down from spouts, a fountain. Setting sun, surrounding buildings, and -- ah. All within a second, if two.

Pronged metal materializes between his chained hands. It has been sometime since using his physical voice, his rusted vocal chords, but that serves; no illusion improves the strangled, rasping cry as Mukuro surges to his feet, scrambling over the rim and staggering, tipping precarious then hard into a passing man. Water, in upheaval, follows, slow to settle. He feels the blade pierce, just below the curve of an elbow, and lets out a small, panicked gasp.

"Aah, aah--" the blade clatters to the ground; water wrinkled, thin hands scramble, pushing off a shoulder as if it means him harm, and he follows the trident's tip to the ground, a clumsy, bruising tumble. "No--" His voice remains muffled by the mask covering it, until now, the varying wires and tubes attached weighing it down, his fingers coming up like claws, scratching around his mouth and prying it off. A gasping breath. He looks up, only his left eye visible through the sopping hair clinging to his face. Help me, it begs. Please. "Where am... who are you?"

Chalk it up to being dead, or chalk it up to not being quite settled enough in the City to just expect creatures (people) to rise out of the fountain (see bad sci fi mini series) and stab him (see actual Real Life but that's another story), or chalk it up to something else, maybe a combination; but Arthur is not prepared to deal with this. On the one hand, he feels himself startle more than anything, the memory of quickened breath rather than the actuality since he doesn't need to breathe, what with that whole Being Dead thing. As for the slice on his forearm, he gives it a glance, but it too takes shotgun to assessing the mess at his feet. It would be nice to claim he had had the forethought to put a bullet through his own head, so as to render himself comparatively invulnerable to accidental and failed shanking, but as it is, Arthur has never been clairvoyant and his entry into the City had not changed this about him. He stares.

The boy is maybe sixteen though it is something Arthur learned a while back through personal experience - that age reflected is not necessarily age realized, but the literally bound nature of the body throws him off enough - since, evidently, the stabbing had not so much. Kneeling next to the stranger, it occurs to Arthur that he made the mistake the other day of thinking: what other way could be weirder than showing up in a fountain and getting chased by a stray harpy? Clearly he needs to make a note of not thinking such things, else this would be a recurrence, whatever this is. Still staring but not reaching out to help with the tubes or anything else just yet - he figures there is an equal chance this person was jacketed for a reason as much as not - his brow arches slightly in acknowledgment and something just this side of concern. Again, the boy looks sixteen, and his state seems entitled to descriptors such as potentially torturous, and cruel and unusual. There remains the matter of sussing out whether or not he deserved it but if he is as young as he looks Arthur doubts it, not that he is any expert at being good of course, at least not for quite some time.

"Arthur," he says, simple, his voice careful but calm, as he'd used when Ariadne had woken after meeting Mal's distorted memory, as he tends to use in a way that serves as an arm's breadth of distance without being an asshole about it from the get go. New to this whole state of being dead, he can't be sure if the discomfort in his arm is a phantom feeling or something real either, but that alone keeps it as secondary, so he reaches out this time, a tentative hand to some of the remaining straps tangled on the figure. "If you don't want help with this, say so," he decides after a moment, rather than ask, and sets about it, adding without looking up from the bonds, "You hurt, or...?"

How kind, how curious. Mukuro stares, his eye a touch wild and his breathing irregular. He stares at the man beside him, whose arm he's gouged (but did not bleed), who witnessed his doubtless disconcerting eruption from a city fountain, yet stolid, yet impassive, kneeling at his side. How kind humans are. How curious this one, in this place. "Arthur?" he echoes, voice that faint, and when Arthur reaches, he winces. He shakes his head (metal restricting, pulling at his skin), hesitates, and nods (sticking, tearing). "Sorry, I... please."

Please, help. Be his guest. "You aren't one of... they aren't here?" His look jolts into mania, but the attempt to jerk his head from side to side, to search, leaves him cringing, a low hiss as his neck rubs raw. (It doesn't. But, he lets it be real enough to sting). For a moment, he goes still, allowing the kind Samaritan to tug on his chains, to assist in the unraveling. His eyes fall, then, to the abandoned trident's edge, a touch of stagnant red coloring it, easy to miss. "Did I... I did, I," his bound hands do not extend toward the wound, but he leans into the gaze, searching through the torn fabric, fair emanating guilt-ridden concern. Shifting with wonder. "Unless I missed?" Unless, Arthur, you're dead. (Before the crash and thrust, he knew). "I thought you were..." he trails off, words heavy, resistant, quaking.

"Either way," Mukuro tries a smile, weak and wavering, "I'm sorry about your suit." It is a very nice jacket, a coordinated, fitted set. His body shivers, his exposed eye still wide; beneath it, behind it, he admires the aesthetic. Perhaps it's time to expand beyond Japanese school uniforms. Perhaps.

"Oh... I'm Sora," his smile pained but earnest amidst the backdrop of heavy linked chain clanking, clinking. "Thank you."

Removing the straps and chains (what in the fuck), Arthur has a deft hand with it for the most part, conscientious, polite, efficient. He wonders how much of a waste of time it would be to ask this person why he came to be confined as such and what the deal with the trident is, but he doesn't actually make good on asking, occupied with the restraints for a while longer. At the next utterance, however, he has to glance at the boy directly again, his own visage closer to neutral than anything else until he blinks once - inquiring.

"Who's not here?" As with the movement of his hands and the progressive dropping of chains and so forth to the ground, there's a method here, an almost business-like decorum which is not, by any means, what one might suggest for finding a young stranger bound and half drowned but he's holding himself together pretty damn well as far as Arthur can tell. So panic, which isn't in Arthur's dictionary anyway, would be more than a waste. His inflection keeps casual, keeps attentive but not prying; he's not got the people skills Eames can shape-shift himself into, but Arthur has taken jobs on his own, has more than gotten by when he would, sometimes, separate from Dominick Cobb. His own reputation exists, and it is built first and foremost on his tendency toward composure and efficiency in all things. The fact that he is dead, which means he is more likely insane and stuffed under God knows where, well, he's been trying to responsibly shelve that since shooting himself and waking up from it. To call the effect sobering would not be far off.

When eyes stray to the grounded weapon, to the blood there, Arthur speaks at the same time the boy does, says, "Yeah, you did, and no you didn't." Some people would offer explanation as to why they are not currently running the other direction or, even, just why the blood isn't sloping down Arthur's arm and steeping itself into his suit arm, great. Arthur, however, just continues with the bindings, and when the bulk of it has been dropped to the concrete, he eyes the collar, letting his gaze flick back to direct eye-contact at the mention of his suit. "It was a lost cause anyway," he shrugs off the apology because it's true; his own dalliance with the fountain days ago was not remedied in a timely fashion, so the suit was wearable but not the way it had been, to Arthur's anticipatory disappointment. At the name, his own fingers just then releasing the last chain he can get at that doesn't seem to be outright locked to the other apparatus, he pauses, hands falling to his sides, the injured arm slightly askew without him even thinking about it - the memory of what it should do.

"You're welcome." Understated but not flippant, his lips thin as he surveys the discarded everything and 'Sora' again. He's not sure of the protocol here, or if there even is one, but it seems wrong to just leave him like this, and it's not like Arthur has anything else to lose, so he doesn't make to leave just yet. Another once over of the 'attire' tells him that the likelihood of a device being in a convenient pocket is slim, but people keep telling him they tend to 'show up' with one, as he himself had, tucked in this very jacket. "Check yourself for a small, black box." Mild wryness slips through there, as if to say: it's the house warming gift nobody asks for.

The uninformed observer might consider 'Sora' a frail, pathetic, water-logged thing. Those immense chains must surely have threatened to crush what look to be delicate bones in a thin frame. His clothing, white and sopping, both clinging and loose; wet transparency lends to the sickly, if not ghostly look. Which might, to the soft-hearted, erase the legitimate question of his circumstances, of the how and why. This man remains collected, helpful but wary. Mukuro wants to smile in an entirely different way at this, a way sharp and curious and unkind.

Instead, his teeth chatter. 'Sora' seems to fold in on himself, chin dipping over the thick color, his voice a scratchy whisper. "The... the mafia." His eye darts up, to each and every side as if in seizure, seeking, seeking, at any corner, in any shadow. His eye drops again. "My... father couldn't..." There follows a long beat, in which his head begins to shake, indicating his inability to finish, until once again, a hiss of pain stops him. It wheezes into a gathering exhale, ending in a watery laugh. "I thought I was going to die."

'Sora''s gaze holds steady, dry, as he makes eye contact, allowing another pause, now contemplative. "Maybe I did."

The obvious follow-up: Where are we? Not this, affecting distraction by the mess, or lack thereof, of Arthur's arm. "Shouldn't it be... worse? Aah... I knew I wasn't any good with it. I-I mean, I'm sorry! I didn't mean, I don't mean...!" He attempts to gesture in a frantic, apologetic wave, restricted by the cuffs; hoarse words stumble over one another, shuddering as his teeth shiver with the rest of him. The man brushes away his initial apology, and Mukuro can little help but test the limits of Arthur's dismissive aplomb. "R-really?" chattering, "T-then... can I have it?" Without the set, it won't have near the same appeal, but the water damage will be simple to handle.

Mukuro appreciates the subtlety of the man's expressions, the hint of emotion in otherwise stoic statements. That doesn't stop him from having a bit more fun. When his attention is drawn to the welcome gift, the device currently hooked behind his ear, he does his part in "checking", movements still limited. He wriggles, as if to dislodge something from somewhere -- and abruptly bends over, heaving and hacking, until he spits up that small, black box. It lands neatly in his palm. "Fo--," Sora chokes out, eye watering, "Found it."

'Sora' choking up the device should shock Arthur but mostly he's just glad that he's not coughing up a harpy instead, or a unicorn, as it were.

Right.

The Mafia. Well that's the second time Arthur has heard mention of it here, though this association seems decidedly less congenial - understatement, again, but whatever. Not soft hearted in strict terms but not an unfeeling cad - unless he wants to be or chooses to be or the situation elicits the sort of obliviousness where he cannot help but be - he slides the jacket off of himself with a nearly imperceptible snag in the motion concerning the offended arm. Then he walks the couple of steps nearer and hands it over. This is far less charity and more a detachment for a ruined article of clothing, but Arthur figures they aren't going to mince particulars over it when 'Sora' hasn't got any immediate alternatives and even a damaged suit jacket is better than dripping dry to wherever the boy decides to head.

He doesn't know what to say about the brief mention of the father, and though calming someone down isn't new to him, the whole situation is so out of left field despite the font of other things to choose from and compare it to. He pauses before letting a hand stray to the boy's elbow, in a steadying gesture, and as with the other behaviors it smacks of control born from not being overly given to trusting anyone without some good evidence as to why he ought to do so. Better than nothing, maybe, and he muses with self-defeating logic that it's not the best idea to reply with:well you're not, but I am. Assistance from a dead guy may not be the recipe for staying calm, and even if the conclusion has been drawn - as he half suspects it has, no need to draw it out into the light further. This isn't about him and his trigger-insistent impulses.

"You're not dead," he clarifies, able to tell that this much is true from proximity, from all the ways he can contrast with his own present circumstances. It could be faulty, but not knowing how else to gauge it, he just goes with it, rolling his shirt sleeves up out of habit more than anything, which also camouflages the tear in the one arm. "One, this place is called 'the City'," a punctuated look that says yeah I know before he moves on, "Two, apparently, we're all stuck here." His previous look gets reprised. "And three, that thing," a nod to the device, "lets you communicate City-wide." The world's most generous walkie talkie. He could mention a number of other things, but he leaves the list as is for the moment, his hand still at 'Sora's' elbow as his focus slides to the collar again. One figures the boy didn't get locked up and then given a key, but they seem to have 'everything' here. Granted, Arthur could try picking it himself, but looking at the modest armory's worth of restraints at their feet, he doubts a simple slick pin will do the trick.

If Mukuro could (better) read minds, the source of Arthur's gratitude would have prompted him to make a note: next time, make it a harpy. However, he is not able to read minds, and merely observes the absolute lack of reaction. Charming. Or dull. Something like that, one of the two, both, neither; what place is this, that dead men walk impervious to absurdity? This game hasn't run its course, but even having ascertained Chrome's health, he itches to see her. Only, only to watch her face change on seeing him. only to hear from her lips that she has been well, only to sustain her.

Sora, of course, expresses none of this. His mouth parts with surprise, not having actually expected to be given the jacket. His face shifts, eyebrows tilting with a spot of uncertainty, as if unprepared to handle generosity in any form. His cheeks flush as he clutches it, fabric bunching in his mostly dry hands. The chains sound as he moves, unable to put his arms through the sleeves but managing to shrug it over his shoulders. He could have waited to dry before doing even that much, but it doesn't matter. Sora flinches, surprised, when Arthur's hand grips his elbow. In the next moment, he's leaning into the support, not hard but no less clinging to a lifeline once given up on, now found. (A well-dressed one, at that.) Sora breathes warm, his long-submerged skin cold, as cold as Arthur's hand. Those comforting words, that assurance; his eye is wide and trusting.

(Mukuro is tempted, was tempted, to shroud his heartbeat, still his breath, to walk the death Arthur walked. By now, he can anticipate what Arthur's nonreaction would be. He lets 'Sora''s heart beat.)

The City (amusing), stuck, city-wide communication. Sora accepts the enumerated explanation without protest, with naught but a furrowed brow. His arrival, one might speculate, had prepared or stunned his mind enough to accept anything after. (More interesting: the minute alterations in Arthur's look). Or, it is too much. He cannot wrap his mind around it, so his attention follows Arthur's, and speaks on a beat one too slow to follow cue.

"I don't... understand how it's possible... but if there's an entire city, maybe someone could..." Lifting his wrists, then gesturing to his neck, Sora's mouth sprains into a smile that, at its strongest, doesn't pass "queasy".

This time, Arthur sighs and moves to adjust the jacket absently across Sora's shoulders - something he almost can't help since he knows how the jacket should fall even with shoulders having sort of tricked their way into the sleeve caps. Then he raises a hand to one of Sora's, half a bracing quality and half a support so that the other, drawing a pin from the inside of his waistcoat, investigates the complexity of the lock and precisely how much of a lost effort this might be.

He has questions for Sora, but they are not questions he requires answers to, which is the defining line for Arthur more often than not, as to whether he actually asks them. Acute in his perception, there exists the blueness of one eye, chains out of the corner of his own vision, and the warmth from a living, breathing body - even one just so recently dunked into a fountain at night. Having caught, moments before, another look at the trident-like offender, he has it pinned as more of an elaborate dagger than anything else, though that is very much not the point concerning a torn set of sleeves, and a wound that won't close. Mouth thinning again, he realizes that attempting to unlock the restraints remaining without any kind of preamble could still be taken the wrong way, so he clears his throat slightly, and decidedly does not frown.

"I don't know..." his expression twitches, his mouth not accustomed to saying these words and having to mean them as he continues, "what world you're from, but if you have anything like the internet, then think of it like that - except audible," unfortunately, "though you can submit entries that are written, if you want," though people don't, not nearly as much, he's already noticed. "And if you don't know what the internet is," he pauses, lucky for you, maybe on the tip of his tongue before he replaces it with, "Then forget how it's possible and just know that it works."

These are, borderline sacriligeous words for Arthur - Arthur who does not 'go with the flow', Arthur who very much lets his life be dictated by possible and not possible when out of the dream, which is why this must be a dream because in real life dead people do not walk around assisting recently arrived adolescent boys from fountains and picking the locks of their heavy duty handcuffs. Real life does not require this much assembly, last Arthur checked and he's more skittish on the matter of reality versus the dream than he likes to let on, so he checks every day. Or, he did. Since getting City-side, checking is not so simple a task, what with totems that lie to you and bullets through the head that don't keep you under or wake you up. Yes, it's possible he is not the first person to be giving pointers on adjusting, considering the less than bang up job he's done for himself, but he doesn't have anything else to say. He won't tell the boy to go without the network, because it's clear the network is the one through-line the City has, a constant evidence of someone on the other line, and that's prevalent.

Hearing something click after another few moments of jimmying the pin around in the keyhole, Arthur pauses, dubious that anything so low-tech would honestly have done much for the cuffs, but he pulls at one experimentally anyway. It either worked or it didn't, and only one way to find out.

The lie: (well, one of them): from the start, when Mukuro knelt in the fountain, he could have shucked his multiple restraints. He watches Arthur take hold of the cuff and procure a pin as if at a distance, his lips curving, charmed by the simplicity of it. At a distance his mouth opens and wonders, "Really, can you...?" his tone lifting with hope, hope with a ceiling; he daren't believe. It is self-evident that Arthur is not the sort of man to make assurances for the sake of them, not the sort for empty promises. Not, he thinks, out of a noble character, but a disinclination to squander time with such things.

Arthur, like most humans, possesses a simple definition, accessible and easy to read. He won't speak something without purpose, which doesn't guarantee the truth, but Mukuro has no difficulty believing in what is suggested as the pin jabs (deft; nowhere near enough for locks of this caliber; Mukuro pushes and nudges the mechanism along, fills space). Even before the Vongola vacation to the future (one he did not receive an invitation to, but in partial thanks to someone he feels in this very city, he remembers), it would not have been too much to believe. Not after travelling the Six Paths. Sora gapes, unable to consider what the Internet is like, stumbling over what world you're from, but most lost in tracking Arthur's fingers, thin and nimble, handling the pin. "What world?" he repeats, dumbfounded, but it's clear he's in no position to listen and comprehend. Not when freedom, freedom he won't dare to dream of tasting, but can't help but want. "I know," meaning, what the Internet is, but the clarification never comes.

Something clicks, Arthur pulls, and the cuff separates, heavy in his hand as 'Sora''s arm falls free, wrist (appearing) a bright, scabbed red. Skin looks to have pulled off with it, leaving blood oozing in its wake. His pained cry can't compete with sheer euphoria, with the expanse of his smile as he beams up at Arthur. "I-Incredible! You did it! If you," his hand twisting expectant in the air, "please, I... I owe you so much already, Mr. Arthur."

The next will free quicker. Mukuro has yet to bore of this, but more pressing things to attend.

More than anything, Arthur feels slightly unsettled by the gratitude. He's not complete shit at spotting an act but this place has turned all kinds of conclusions he would normally draw on their heads, so yes, fine, it's harder for him to tell at the bottom line. A new arrival has no reason to lie upon lie to him, as far as he can see (people were almost unnervingly kind when he got here), but then maybe he's wrong about that too and sometimes people can be terrible to new additions. He has no way of knowing. Considering the state 'Sora' is in, Arthur still finds it hard to believe many people would simply pass him by, and then - because he has to weigh all the sides - he acknowledges however briefly that this might not be played up at all, that being bound and almost drowned is reason enough to be unnecessarily grateful to the first helping hand.

Again, again he is struck with the plain faced truth: this is ridiculous. Never in his life has he had any dream even remotely this fucked up and it's enough for him to entertain how much easier it would be if he himself was a projection, but that dies out fast too. His remaining fibers of sense of self are all but welded to his consciousness and said sense is offended by the implication that he's not real, even if there is in fact no conceivable way any of all this is to begin with.

Sometimes Arthur thinks he should have gone into another field of work. Pottery maybe.

The weight of the cuff in his hand is definitive despite his own dubiousness concerning the shakedown of straight pin versus complex locking mechanism; heavy, he turns it over in his hand and there's a flash of sympathy for the injury on 'Sora's' wrist there, something he doesn't bother to curtail - no point.

"You don't owe me anything," is what he decides on, working on the second wrist because if it worked on the first he's going to assume it will work on the second, and if there are harpies and unicorns and fountain entries here, well, it's entirely possible the mechanical sciences are up for grabs too. Considering his own situation, it's clear that the physical ones are. "Look, I can show you to the hospital, or the welcome center - your choice," he continues, finishing much more quickly with the second restraint and pulling it away with the added touch of gravity, which means it more or less falls into his grasp, not having anything to wrap around any more. Not typically one to litter, but not knowing what to do with the mess of chains and aught else at their feet, Arthur drops the secures onto the rest with a flicker of distaste. There remains the one around the neck, but he'll leave that to 'Sora' to point out or not. Addressing the network again, or anything else, seems like it might be overload for him by now, so he leaves out returning to those subjects as well, watching 'Sora' with a quiet, even stare that serves the purpose of keeping a connection open without having to fill it up with reassurances that would be less than truthful anyway.

A number of conclusions can be readily drawn from the limited information thus gleaned. If many of those walking this city called City had originally been from different worlds, only to now be stuck here, and if Mukuro had arrived with an inexplicable abruptness, without a sense of travel or a shred of elegance in the method, then logically, so had the rest. In whatever condition they were last in -- dead or alive, though he isn't assuming Arthur died outside of this place. If this place could take even one such as himself, from a prison as formidable as the Vendicare, then all types of people (and otherwise; worlds might contain anything) are stuck here. People with power, power they've doubtless used in attempts to escape. By no means has he resigned himself, by no means will he not test the boundaries of what has trapped the populace. But, attempts to feel, to reach beyond it have met with dead air (while playing fragile with Arthur, tremulous limbs and scarred eye, wrecked wrists), reminiscent of the barrier around that cursed island, where Chrome had been held.

There is all that, and also this: with those probabilities, some number of the newly stolen must have plunged in with a dramatic, absurd entrance. Sora (and his moral-of-the-week story; children, the mafia is bad) might be excessive, yet perhaps no more than the rest of it. If more so, if alarm bells were beginning to chime for Arthur --

Oh well. Any outcome holds entertainment value; though, he isn't about to launch into something worthy of a Korean drama. Fine -- not anymore so.

"But," Sora protests, or tries, knowing that what the man has said is patently untrue. After what he has done how could it be otherwise? He isn't from a world where people are so kind-- they ignore anything inconvenient, avoid trouble, steer clear of that which reeks of mafia. Sora's world. The second cuff opens as Arthur speaks again, and Sora sucks in breath, his eye wet with relief and that tearing pain. His attention falls to his hands, freed of their burdens, and at first the boy doesn't answer, transfixed; not by the raw wounds but by the absence of chains. (One thing Mukuro shares with Arthur: distaste for heap sprawled below them, more than a flicker, it nearly burns through his eye, through the act. He has far more interest in the Welcome Center, but the Hospital may be a stop Sora needs, so this--). Sora's breath catches once the choice reaches him, and he shakes his head, wary. "I don't... like Hospitals. I'm--I'll be fine..." An easy extrapolation: in Sora's world, the mafia controlled those as well.

The movement "reminds" of his neck still bound, but Arthur hasn't offered, and Sora hesitates before pushing it, meeting his stare with difficulty. "U-um sorry, but could you try to... um..." A beat, a weak laugh, clumsily changing the topic, to not push (a touch incongruous with his request for the jacket), "Do some people come from the same world?" Sora's inquiry threaded with hope. (He's counted more than a few).

The way Arthur fixes 'Sora' with a look can be likened to the way other people say yeah, right, but he refrains from that much, simply moving to see to the keyhole-equivalent on the boy's collar. For the umpteenth time he thinks this must be the weirdest dream he has ever had, beyond all doubt, reason or anything else. If he doesn't want to go to a hospital, Arthur will not be the one to make him go; there is quite a difference between not being an asshole and actually being compassionate, and it's not that Arthur lacks compassion but he remains wary of everything he does here. Granted, this only in hindsight, and that hindsight largely obscured by the glaring neon inflicted on his retinas that reads out: only a dream.

Still.

Here is the picture - in his throat, the memory of a tired sigh; in the back of his mind, some circulating thought about what kind of mafia the boy refers to; in something like a heart, a hollowed out sense, like being turned upside-down minus the trust of anything to compensate for the shift. This is not a corridor without gravity where Arthur knew the rules even when they changed, and it is not a river he crawls out of to ask Ariadne what happened to Dom - why he isn't there with them, why Arthur had to do what Arthur had long since promised not to, to leave him behind. Even in a dream - or especially, considering Mal - it had the effect of something raw and unprecedented. That they all made it out of that mess is owed in differing amounts to different people.

Arthur doesn't realize his teeth have taken to gritting until the clumsy loosing of gears makes itself audible, and he takes more care with the collar than he did with the handcuffs, taking as much of the weight it as his hands can account for without brushing 'Sora's' neck, presumably also worse for the wear. The sight of it is enough to make him feel less willing to question the story presented to him, as if what he has seen so far wasn't enough; though in light of everything else, this seems to qualify as mere par for the course. Suppose he's telling the truth, well, Arthur still perceives him as being too complex for a projection. He has seen enough of them to assess and it's different than a projection Arthur might have of, say, Dom or Mal or Eames even. These would beg some questioning only because Arthur knows - or knew - them so well. A stranger like this, someone who at most could only be someone Arthur or Eames had seen in passing, doesn't make sense. Factor in the potential of duality, of ulterior motive, and that's another mess of Something That Doesn't Line Up, no matter how they look at it.

"Some do," he confirms about people sharing worlds. Giving an example seems both unnecessary and like giving too much information, more information than Arthur prefers to give to any stranger, whether they're nine or ninety.

Once he's sure that the collar has not in any unfortunate and hospital-mandating way glued itself to the flesh, Arthur angles his hands enough that rather than it being pulled away, it simply seems to fall or shift into the frame of his palms and fingers. Being dead makes sudden movements awkward and a liability, but his dexterity, especially in acute situations, seems none the worse for having done himself in, the kind of thing that has him thinking: well at least there's that. With the collar removed, he does not chuck it at the pile, though it gets dropped and sounds a bit louder than the other things. They can as soon attribute this to the pile of chains having grown as anything else.

"Could be someone here you know," he muses without really thinking too much about it, or else it wouldn't get verbalized at all. His eyes pinpoint the device again, waiting long enough to be clear before he lets them stray to the wrists again. No hospitals.

At this hour, there aren't many other people around, busy as the City seems to be, fluctuating from as dense as midtown Manhattan on a Friday night to dispersed and quiet as certain parts of Chicago after eight in the P.M. Spring here reflects a chilliness that still seems appropriate this late in the evening, not that Arthur feels it. With his jacket across 'Sora's' shoulders, a tangle of chains and straps and cuffs at their feet, and the juxtaposition of lost and tolerant, he knows it would only two of those to set someone stopping just to stare, the way people do on the highway at traffic accidents and the like.

But it has already become the fast and well tried hallmark of this metropolis that, whatever you do, whoever you are, however it's happening, no one does.

If he was in a better mood, Arthur might laugh.

As expected, this man is not the type to insist on seeing him treated. A fear of hospitals may have been unnecessary; no matter. It is settled and a muscle has moved in Arthur's jaw, possibly with his teeth, and Mukuro wonders (idly, as his chin tips and Sora swallows and bites his chapped lip and the pin makes small noises in the mechanism) what the reticent man thinks of, what this has brought to his mind, if anything. His eye is fixed to the man's face; for Sora, the sentiment trusting. He lets the collar give quickest, though it takes more from him. The illusive pushing, the illusory key; surely, as an illusion, it could not affect a real object, (but a girl lives and breathes with the power of illusory organs; ask her, then, how real is the illusion?) yet the lock opens and with measured care, Arthur removes the metal. Curious, how agile and light the man's touch, without blood flowing fresh and envigorating through him.

The heavy noise of the collar hitting the pile does not resound, muffled by the rest of it. His focus drops then, for longer than an instant but not by much, from Arthur and the possibility of familiar faces (for Sora, father or mother or) to the sheddings. Sora's fingers press, tentative and tasting, against his newly exposed neck. In deference to the man's attention to it, the illusion shows no ripped flesh, but emphasizes red, ragged color. But this is true: with this pretense discarded, it would mean another illusion for his skin to look untouched and well. And this: a quiver that is not, may not be all show runs from his elbow, hitches at the wrist, bumps over his fingers, to their experimental tips. Mukuro would smile, his lips thin and shaping into something utterly without humor (but not, in this, cruel and toying; not, in this, for Arthur). That face might serve to dispel how young he looks in this moment that has a hint of real in it. Might, only--

Through his haze, Sora finds Arthur's words and lowers his hands. His words come steadier now, bolstered by the weightlessness of his limbs, of his ability to roll his shoulders forward and back and forward again (and he does, and again) without that restrictive weight. "Then... Then I'd like to, um... use? use the network. They might be... I guess I shouldn't get my hopes up, huh."

Sora tries to smile, to look less nauseous with balancing hope and despondence, If I am here, if I am alive, then-- and Everything else has been hell, don't let what seems to be reprieve tell me otherwise. He's dropped the device through Arthur's lengthy assist; he bends to scoop it up and to reach, feeling the muscles in his back, arms, calves, neck, everywhere protest, until he takes hold of the trident-knife's handle and he straightens, hugging it to his chest with one arm. His eye darts unintentionally (deliberately) to Arthur's arm, then away. "...I should ask at the Welcome Center. I don't want to take anymore of your time..."

"No, but it'd also be a waste to not try, so," Arthur points out, ever practical. If the kid has friends here, then great and if not, then too bad but at least 'Sora' will know which it is. From his standpoint, Arthur deems this preferable to not knowing. This City is dense and not at all unlike cities in a dream as far as structure. It's the 'curses' and the citizens themselves that make it altogether a bigger problem - too complex and yet, what other explanation there might be, Arthur hasn't been able to come to it and, from what he can tell, neither has Eames. Given the immediate context of 'Sora', if he is a projection (and Arthur, being dead but walking honestly can't rule this out despite the other offensive implications), Arthur supposes he should take some comfort in the posited truth that he comes from some ill conceived part of Eames' subconscious, and not Arthur's own.

The distinct insistence on the boy's part to be no more of a deterrent than he already has been sticks out to Arthur the way lies tend to, but even lies might not read the same way here, and more than that, Arthur simply can't be bothered to care enough to figure out which it is. Helping thus far as he has, it's not that he feels as though he has put in a quota and so can continue on his merry way. That has nothing to do with it, if he's honest, and Arthur has no reason to be dishonest about this. He could stay or walk, and he stayed but he doesn't expect anything out of it because he doesn't feel what he has done is particularly noteworthy. Based on the populace's reaction to his own arrival, someone would have happened along sooner than later to do the same. Perhaps someone else still will and then exercise the extra effort required to coerce 'Sora' into the mechanical arms of the hospital (well, that's not entirely fair, Arthur did see supposedly ordinary people in there too, just, interspersed). Perhaps not.

It's not really any of his business either way.

"Like this," he instructs - indicating the basic switches for power, for volume, for video and audio. He's not unkind at all, but still measured - polite might be the word, though this tends to get cattled together with implications of just tolerating these days, and that would be inaccurate. "Got it?"

A reasonable response, and Sora nods, allowing the movement a dramatic reach as he appreciates how far his chin can go without the metal impediment. Unless empty-headed, which Arthur clearly is not, he is a man of deep thought, all of which Mukuro cannot gauge. The man's actions thus far tell a certain perspective, provide for a certain degree of speculated reasoning, but depth remains that keeps him in all his patient inexpression from being dull. It's almost too bad that the time has come to end this, but what he's gleaned indicates that this first time won't also be the last. Next time, it may be without this particular mask; will anything interesting come of that? Perhaps not; there's a deliberately self-deceiving, or determinedly accepting air (befitting, well, an illusionist) to the man that doubtless will extend to Sora not being Sora at all. His blade provided another venue, one he may not take advantage of.

Though curious, Arthur is far from a priority. His priority: again he feels for Chrome, and now, he allows the girl to know it.

Sora might also have the skill to trick himself, at least to compartmentalize, to put aside his wretched condition and grasp for a bright side. Unable to change the life from which he's come, now free of the burdens that chained him to it, he can or will look at the device with a light-hearted interest that stands at odds to his attitude not long before. (Something like that, whichever; Mukuro's not over-concerned with the depiction of this short-lived, fool persona). He minds Arthur's instructions, tapping each switch when highlighted. "I think so," he answers, before fiddling with the audio. "So this one... turns on the..." holding the device close to his face, squinting at the controls, and hitting the video. "Oh, a light's on!"

After recording his marveling post, with input from Arthur, Sora leans back, closing his hand around the device. To think, an entire city may have just heard that, will hear it! His skin flushed with the thought, with hope, he thanks Arthur again and elicits directions to the Welcome Center. Once they part, once out of sight, Mukuro shifts the illusions. No need to walk into a charity geared toward new "citizens" with his wrists bleeding, his neck a violent red, his clothes still more wet than damp. He tosses in a pair of sandals for good measure. They will suffice until she arrives, until he procures real clothes.

He'll be keeping the jacket.