♫ 2nd Solo ♫

[ikenai]

who: Mikumo and you!
what: Self-promotion is fun!
when: The entire month of August
where: Around the Quarantine
warnings: Nothing really, except for Mikumo being a troll



Ever since her announcement over the Quarantine's version of social media, Mikumo has been busy with her agent. In the past few weeks, she's been taking photos and meeting as many people as she can. There have been trips to venues, a baseball field, and certain stores to throw together a wardrobe worthy of Riverview's first idol.

In the week leading up to the River festival, posters for her appearances start popping up all over the place. (Samples are here: One, two, three, four, five, and six.) Dates and times are splashed across the posters, drawing attention to her best assets artistically. Of course, she is the one responsible for where they're all placed. She has final say on these sorts of things, agent or not.

After the festival, it's more performing in the clubs at night and plastering the town with her face.

When she's not out promoting herself, she's in her apartment, singing, writing and working on dance moves. To everyone on the third through fifth floors of the communal housing buildings, she's not sorry that her voice carries. However, she does take requests, so that's something.

However, she's so determined to get out there that she's not paying attention to where she's going. On more than one occasion, she bumps into a stranger and sends her papers flying. "Oh, I'm sorry! Are you hurt?"

Comments

[ikenai]

She's really good at ignoring things that have no real effect on her. She's just grateful she doesn't have to dirty her new vintage outfit in trying to retrieve all the posters again.

"I don't think it's the dancing I need to work on." Her smile is a little embarrassed. "It's my walking and texting ability. I seem to have failed in doing both at the same time. But you're right that being strong-willed helps. I don't think I'd survive fourteen hour days without it."

[mutant_messiah]

"Don't think most people would." Cable agrees, content to stay put or move on--depending on what Mikumo wanted to do. "Is by yourself usually how you do things?" He sounds about as close to being impressed as the mutant could; to be honest Cable didn't know much about the world of pop.

It seemed like one of those genres where the less he knew, the better. Then again, he felt that way about a lot of music.

[ikenai]

"You might be right about that, but working hard is the only way to go if you want to be successful." She makes that sound like it's the only option. Because it is.

"What do you mean? I was in a group before, but I've always been responsible for carrying my own weight as the lead vocalist."

When you're the face of the group, everything you do is watched. So, maximum effort is required all the time.

[mutant_messiah]

He won't be telling her any different so long as she works smarter than harder when it's necessary. "Didn't know you were the lead. Like I said, pop isn't my genre." Music in general wasn't his thing; save for the huge names no one could escape.

Cable pauses just long enough to add, "But I should have figured you were."

[ikenai]

Oh, Cable, you're so cute. Mikumo works as hard as she needs to and rests when she can. She's no martyr or idiot. "Well, I wasn't the actual leader of the group. That was someone else. She was the old lead vocalist, but when I joined, she was happy to let me take over."

The rest, as they say, is history. "What makes you think it's only natural?"

[mutant_messiah]

"Your strength of will." Or, more accurately, what he's noticed of Mikumo outside of just being a pretty face. Cable was a pretty solid judge of character, and thus far saw plenty of potential from the pop singer.

She seems content overall with playing some small part for the public, but gave enough of her own thoughts for Cable to be able to start putting it together.

[ikenai]

"Strength of will." No one has ever said that about her. She is strong-willed, certainly, but they've always made it seem like a bad thing. Of course, she's only really asserted it in refusing to follow the arbitrary rules the rest of Walküre and the Detla squad all lived by.

She's her own woman.

"I'll have to keep that in mind. But I should probably apologize for not paying attention where I'm going. It seems to be a theme this month."

[mutant_messiah]

"No big deal. Just keep your eyes peeled better if you go further out. Lot of things out there that won't be nearly so understanding..or helpful." He thought he'd seen it all until he ventured outside the Quarantine.

There were a lot of strange creatures out there. "Need help with those?" He asks, nodding to the stack of flyers in Mikumo's grasp.

[ikenai]

"I don't do a lot of venturing outside of the Quarantine. There hasn't really been much call for idols out there. And while I'm sure that I can handle myself in hand-to-hand combat, I've never fought monsters before."

So, you know, she just stays close to home.

She blinks at the question before smiling. "Well, I won't say no, but I wouldn't want anyone to go out of their way to help me either."

[mutant_messiah]

"It's fine. I already said that I would before." A few days ago on the network and all that jazz. Motioning for Mikumo to lead the way, Cable resumes the previous part of this little conversation they were having.

"Have you thought about learning to defend against the different types of monsters here? Hand-to-hand only gets you so far. The same goes for weapons." In case she thought that he was maybe talking down to her while he looked like the walking armory that he was.

[ikenai]

"So you did. I haven't forgotten."

Leaving himself to her whims and all that. She just hadn't found a way to really put that offer to good use until today. Although, having company and some help as she decorates the town with posters of her face and the like is welcome. It's not a fun part of her new job.

"Can you work a stapler?" Because she sure is handing over an industrial stapler and a box of staples so that she doesn't have to deal with it. Her knuckles are a little bruised from a few of the brick walls.

"Well, I do know how to use projectile weapons like guns, but in my line of work, most of the heavy fighting was taken care of by our accompanying fighter pilot squad. Although, I have jumped into battles to help pilots in need."

[mutant_messiah]

"More to you than meets the eye." Cable confidently summed up, taking hold of the stapler. He always low-key appreciated those types of people. Right when you think you know them, have them figured out, they pull a fast one on you.

They made for incredible allies at times, and pesky enemies any other. "All right boss, you point and I'll click." So to speak.

[ikenai]

"Isn't there always? I never claimed to only be an idol."

Besides, it's not as if she's gone into full detail about what actually happened back in the Globular System. No one needs to know that, if she's honest.

No one.

"Boss, hm. I like that sound of that." She's going to make you work. But she's a kindly slave driver.

[mutant_messiah]

Cable nods and waits for the "Boss" to point the way. "Anything else you feel like divulging about yourself?" He may as well make small talk as they move about; this wouldn't be unlike a mission really.

Not his usual beat for sure, but Cable felt fairly certain Mikumo made for good company.

[ikenai]

Mikumo heads off in the direction she'd wanted to go before bumping into Cable. She's sure that he'll keep up. He's that type.

"Well, I'm 165cm, have red eyes, my birthday is August 17th. I began singing almost four years ago when I joined my former group. My hair is real." She turns and looks at him playfully. "But that's all public knowledge. Anything else and.... well, you'll just have to earn that."

[mutant_messiah]

He is that type, and so does easily keeps up with the pop idol. Cable offers a smirk to Mikumo. "So just like my first wife, then." A beat and then he adds, "The part about having to earn the rest." The first couple things Cable could tell by looking at her, but he didn't mind that she liked to keep things close to the chest.

He did too, even when he seemed to tell everything that needed to be known. "Anything or anyone that needs to be earned tends to be worth it."

[ikenai]

"First wife? Now that sounds like a story." And, honestly, there's still a lot about herself that she just doesn't know, hasn't been allowed to experience, that unless questions are specifically asked she isn't sure what she should be trying to answer.

It's been that way for a long time. And it adds to her mystery back home, or so she's been told.

"I'm not sure about worth to you, but I happen to think that I might be worth a lot of things." Healthy sense of self-worth? Maybe, maybe not.

[mutant_messiah]

"The younger me wouldn't have given the time to find what your worth was to him past what you could do in a fight. Fortunately I'm older and wiser, so let's just call it a gut feeling." Cable clearly has no issue with feeding Mikumo's sense of self-worth either way; no matter which way it went for him, it could end heads up as far as he was concerned.

"As for my first wife: her name was Aliya. She was beautiful. Strong. Capable. She saved me in more than just one way back where we're from."

[ikenai]

"There is something to be said for an older man, I've heard. Nice to see there's some truth to that."

Of course, everyone is older than her sometimes, but that doesn't matter.

"She sounds lovely, but you know that a first wife implies there is more than one."

[mutant_messiah]

Cable is going to circle back to the benefits of an older man somewhere down the line; for now he focuses on the part about his first wife. "In the time that I'm from, war is pretty common." He pauses in his words, finding it strange that he would open up like this to someone else. There's something to be said about being in a place such as the Quarantine. It wasn't unlike the times Cable has found himself displaced in some sort of far off or alternate future.

That was probably why he didn't have a problem divulging this stuff to Mikumo. There was something to her that he liked--or maybe appreciated. Knowing him, it was probably both. "She was killed."

[ikenai]

Is he now? She's okay with having that conversation. It would be a first for her.

"War is common everywhere, unfortunately." She should know, she's just survived a war with a group that kidnapped her. Messer's death is still rather raw for all of the Delta Squadron and Walküre, so she has some idea of what it's like, though not that of a partner.

"However, I am sorry to hear that she's passed away. Were you together for a long time?"

[mutant_messiah]

"Long enough for it to matter." The response could come off as gruff, or maybe even short--but Cable manages to make it sound like nothing more than actual fact. It was also a long, long time ago. Even without hopping around through time it felt like an entire life ago for the mutant.

"War is everywhere...and not always what you think it will or should be." He basically says this in agreement with Mikumo and adds on to the thought, "It's up to us to do what we can on all fronts."

[ikenai]

"Any amount of time matters if you loved one another." What a stupid thing to say. She might not have any experience in romantic love, but she's seen the effects its had on all of the other members of Walküre and knows that wars have been started for love.

It's the strongest emotion for good and evil.

"So long as people are doing what they can for those who can't fight back, wars can be stopped."

[mutant_messiah]

"Took the words right out of my mouth. All of em. You sure you're not a mind reader?" He could try figuring it out if he had to, but the mutant is just doing a bit of joking.

Mostly.

"We have a few of those types back home." Why, even Cable himself...

[ikenai]

"If I was, do you think I would tell you?"

He can think on that while she continues to use him for manual labor and easy company.

"I suppose stubborn do-gooders exist everywhere. Perhaps if they didn't the world, universe, what-have-you would cease to exist."