It wasn’t the first portal Aoba had fallen through. Technically, it was his second, so he was hardly anything like a veteran on the matter, but he could at least imagine he knew what was waiting for him when he finally saw a swirl of light hanging in the air awaiting his egress. He might not know where it would lead, but he’d never get home again if he didn’t follow the portals, right? That’s what he’d been told about a month back, right after one of Ren’s shortcuts led him straight through his first portal, right?
He’d been stuck for about a month in a city called Steelport, somehow falling in with a gang called The Deckers…though long story short, it hadn’t exactly been his choice. Being forced to work with a bunch of cyber-punks in a crime-ridden city slowly falling under military jurisdiction…yeah, it had reached the point where Aoba half didn’t care where that portal was going to take him. At least it was out of here. He’d even finally give in and take Mizuki’s offer to join Dry Juice if it meant he’d be back with friends and away from these Decker punks!
Too much to hope for, right? Right. He didn’t even have a chance to check his landing. All Aoba knew was that the first thing he did after passing through the portal was stumble, tripping hard right into someone’s back. That “someone” happened to be a guy taking at a dirty urinal, drunk enough not to realize that the person in bold black and neon blue attire had not in fact come out of a stall behind him and (understandably, really) only be pissed that he’d been tackled in the middle of a piss.
So, there wasn’t anything for Declan to see so much as to hear: furious drunken shouting and the thud of a body, namely Aoba’s, getting flung back against wall. Red flashed through Aoba’s vision as his head struck metal, but he didn’t even have a moment to get his bearings before he was being hauled up by the front of his hoodie.
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He’d been stuck for about a month in a city called Steelport, somehow falling in with a gang called The Deckers…though long story short, it hadn’t exactly been his choice. Being forced to work with a bunch of cyber-punks in a crime-ridden city slowly falling under military jurisdiction…yeah, it had reached the point where Aoba half didn’t care where that portal was going to take him. At least it was out of here. He’d even finally give in and take Mizuki’s offer to join Dry Juice if it meant he’d be back with friends and away from these Decker punks!
Too much to hope for, right? Right. He didn’t even have a chance to check his landing. All Aoba knew was that the first thing he did after passing through the portal was stumble, tripping hard right into someone’s back. That “someone” happened to be a guy taking at a dirty urinal, drunk enough not to realize that the person in bold black and neon blue attire had not in fact come out of a stall behind him and (understandably, really) only be pissed that he’d been tackled in the middle of a piss.
So, there wasn’t anything for Declan to see so much as to hear: furious drunken shouting and the thud of a body, namely Aoba’s, getting flung back against wall. Red flashed through Aoba’s vision as his head struck metal, but he didn’t even have a moment to get his bearings before he was being hauled up by the front of his hoodie.