It's the man that actually speaks. "Oh, we are not putting that in the house."
"We should put it in our house."
"Hell no."
"You wouldn't let me buy the barbie doll face rings, and now not even this?"
"So, can we not say anything on what I will and won't let you do, because we both know that you do whatever you want anyway, because I don't have the power of mind control? I'm just reminding you of the budget we have, which is a thing that exists. If you want to spend it on weird bone glitter jewelry, by all means, be my guest, but you're going to have to make some sacrifices here."
There's a certain tilt to the woman's head that hints she's enjoying the entire spiel, and Chrome can't help but wonder if she's a little like Mukuro in that aspect: purposefully asking about things she knows she's not supposed to do if only to get a rise out of the people around her. There doesn't seem to be any particular broken heart evident in the way she lets the pendant swing back into place, although she does at least... blow a kiss from her pinkie towards it. "So later, then."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Slowly, he casts his lens over the rest of the shops, taking it all in, before it pauses a little above Chrome's head. "Oh, yeah, wait, someone works here?"
Now that she's been spotted, Chrome straightens up from her position as, indeed, someone who works here. "Someone has to," she answers bluntly. She guesses that's a little bit of a fudge. No one has to work here. Mukuro doesn't have to do a lot of the things that he does, for example. This could just be an empty building full of ordinary empty building things, like dust and rats. There might still be rats. However, in order for it to exist as Kokuyo Land, there do indeed have to be workers here. At the very bare minimum, there has to be electricity and workers. She thinks. Sometimes she worries about the legality of just how Mukuro keeps everything running, but she thinks it's better no to ask. It's definitely better to not start on all of it with some random hipster.
"I mean, I guess...?" Before he has a chance to really say anything else on that, the woman is already coming forward. Chrome isn't entirely certain what she does, or why she does it, but the pose she ends up in is with one leg crossed with part of it balanced against the edge of the counter. Her arms wind together, almost snakelike, and she flicks one finger in Chrome's direction.
"Composite, octagonal, pentagonal pyramidal-" She unwinds her arms and pulls them back, snapping one set of fingers. "All things that describe the essence of me perfectly. My name is Shitt P., but please call me Shittopi-chan."
Chrome blinks up at her. "Okay, Shittoppi-chan," she says simply, because it's not the weirdest thing she's had to say in her life. From the corner of her eye, she can see where the cameraman has turned the camera to make a face at it before he pauses to look at her. Shitt P. herself doesn't seem to emote beyond a simply raise of her chin. It might be in approval. "You said you were on a budget for something in particular...?"
"We need a relic from the time when Batsquatch was first born," Shitt P. says airily, and her cameraman sighs.
"A disco ball," he tells her. "We need a disco ball."
"To skin."
"Why do you have to phrase shit like that?"
"We have that," Chrome says, vaguely reminded of the way Chikusa and Ken bicker. The subject matter is different, but the feeling is still the same. Just dumb bickering to fill the silence. "They're a little hard to find, however." Most things are. "Hold on..." Stepping to the side, she hefts herself up onto the counter surface and scoots over to the other side. In a show of politeness, Shitt P. moves out of the way with a graceful spin that ends with one heel clacking against the floor. That means there's more than enough room for Chrome to plop down on the opposite side, and she dusts her skirt off. "Follow me."
Kokuyo Land might be a bizarre maze for most people. Actually, Chrome is pretty sure the only people who can reliably navigate the space are Mukuro and Ken, the latter which she suspects cheats. Chikusa is smart and probably knows their finances, but he also rarely ventures in this area. It could be 50/50. Still, Chrome likes to think she has a fairly decent grasp on the intricate ins and outs of the store. If nothing else, she has a few notable landmarks of things that have yet to sell for a while now, and a rough idea of what kinds of things are stored where. So she leads the pair through the winding store, only pausing occasionally.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" the cameraman asks, looking awkwardly at one of many taxidermy creatures that are scattered around the shop no matter the location.
"Mhm," she says, pausing to reorient herself by a small basket of tiny crystal penises. They never seem to run out. She supposes she should be worried about where Mukuro gets these kinds of things. "Who are you?" "I didn't introduce myself? Yeesh." He shakes his head, but she doesn't really blame him. A lot of people are thrown off by Kokuyo Land, for a variety of reasons. "Just call me Julie."
A pause follows after his words where he's clearly expecting her to do the polite thing of introducing herself, but Chrome doesn't. Instead, she keeps moving on through the Kokuyo labyrinth. With a place like this, it generally needs at least 80% of her attention, and that doesn't lend itself well to casual small talk. The good news is that Julie doesn't really seem to bother broaching it, instead letting the awkward moment pass as he instead films the various strange things they pass. To Chrome's surprise, it's actually Shitt P. that speaks up to fill the silence. "The pastel is super cute."
Chrome doesn't answer that for a second, because it almost doesn't seem like it really needs to be answered... except then she realizes that they're wandering through junkyard hallways composed mostly of brilliantly glaring red neon, punctured occasionally by sharp blues or ill greens. In this kind of eerie haunted Vegas strip club lighting, it's hard to tell the colors of almost anything. The soft pastels of her bomber jacket, the pink of her skirt inlaid with various card suites and skulls on the bottom border- those should be impossible to discern. Surprise hits her, belated, and she looks suddenly up at the other woman. Unlike Julie, however, Shitt P. hasn't bothered to let any sort of silence stretch out, or to wait for anything. She seems to have already moved on through the moment, looking straight ahead and running her fingers along the surface of a guitar whose body is Pacman with his mouth wide open. Befuddled but sort of used to it, Chrome turns her attention back towards her path as well.
Finding the disco ball section ends up being pretty easy, considering how the reflective shards interact with the nonstop neon signs. The refracted colors can be seen shimmering strangely over some of the shelves, and their pace speeds up a little after that, with Chrome allowing the two to forge ahead after a little bit. It's not just disco balls, of course. There are other strange hanging things, placed along the shelves or dangling from certain places, but all the disco balls that Mukuro thought would have made the biggest impression are dangling low from the ceiling where they would just barely avoid brushing against Chikusa's head if he ever dared to stand up to his full height. Some are just regular, circular, and the kind anyone would imagine.
Then there are other kinds.
Faster than a commandment from God, Shitt P. shoots out her arm to point up at one that is shapes liked the dismembered upper torso of a person with perky breasts. "That one."
Julie groans. "That's not even for the project, you just want that because, don't you?"
"It's perfect," Shitt P. says, not denying the accusation. With disregard for safety in any way, she hefts herself up onto the shelves and reaches up to try and find what's hooking it to the ceiling. Chrome should probably stop her. She doesn't. "How much is it?"
"It's perfect," Shitt P. says, not denying the accusation. With disregard for safety in any way, she hefts herself up onto the shelves and reaches up to try and find what's hooking it to the ceiling. Chrome should probably stop her. She doesn't. "How much is it? Maybe we could get it with our budget."
"We almost definitely can't."
Chrome finally shuffles in closer. Usually she doesn't really get too involved with visitors, or even potential customers. However, for this, she can't help but be fascinated. "What's your budget?" she asks, and Julie blinks at her from behind his glasses.
"It's- hold on, I have it written down in my phone-" Finding a spot to put down his camera is a little difficult in glitter fuck hell, but somehow he manages to nudge it securely between a bedazzled football and an empty whiskey bottle full of lit Christmas lights. He seems to fiddle with it for a second, constantly glancing back at her, before he stops, satisfied. "Alright, here-"
The shopping list they have prepared is... definitely a shopping list. A lot of it has to do with constructing something, although Chrome can't entirely figure out what. Besides each entry of the things they need, a rough estimate of how much they could spend is placed, from probably the cheapest things they could find on the internet to how much they could spend if they really needed to. After a few seconds of wondering and reading, Chrome finally looks up from the screen. If nothing else, she has some good news. "You could buy two disco balls here if you really wanted."
When Shitt P. clicks her lips twice and whistles, it somehow sounds like a foreign language. Julie stares at her for a second, brows crumpled together. "That's, like... at least half off for each of them."
"Mhm."
"And you're serious."
"Mm."
"...How does this place stay running?"
"I don't know," she says. Chrome has never bothered to ask Mukuro or Chikusa about the finer business workings of Kokuyo Land, and she never plans to. In case this all ends up highly illegal somehow, she'd like the ability to plead ignorance to the whole thing. At least there might be a Patreon involved, she thinks. That would be nice if true.
Apparently, that works out just fine for Shitt P. too, because she gently hands over the torso disco ball to Chrome for holding. "I'm getting another," she informs Julie before turning around back towards the shelves. Julie grabs her and, with some doing, convinces her for them to find a ladder. It takes around fifteen minutes for them to find one, and then another ten minutes to not get lost on the way back to the register. There aren't really any bags in the store for her to put the disco balls in. Not only Chrome unsure of how one would even pack a disco ball, they just don't have them in general. People either have to bring their own, carry things in their hands, or buy one of the many regular and not regular bags that are in the store.
Fortunately, Shitt P. seems perfectly happy to carry her strange haul, and Julie only pauses long enough to run out the store to get things he apparently prepared ahead of time for some additional things that they happen to carry. Just the strange little things, like hammers, vegetable peelers, and even some basic groceries. "We're running out of food," he informs Shitt P. casually. Chrome isn't expecting him to speak to her any further, but, surprisingly, he does. "Hey, so I tried to avoid filming your face too much, or anything like that, but there are probably some shots in there anyway. Do you have a problem with us if it stays in there, or would you want us to blur it...? We do videos on Youtube."
Somehow, that really explains a lot. It feels like it could also explain things about Shitt P., maybe, possibly, only that doesn't feel entirely right. Chrome has seen people be overly dramatic or ostentatious before; she knows Mukuro after all. This feels a little more... genuine. Either way, Chrome shrugs and finishes putting some of the nails into the rough canvas tote that Julie brought in. "I don't care," she says, handing over the totebag, before she realizes she might have to be a little more clear. "I mean, I'm fine with it. If I'm in a shot... I'm in a shot." She's almost definitely been in people's pictures of Kokuyo Land before, most often by accident. (Sometimes not by accident, in ways that are very creepily not by accident, but it's amazing how quickly those types delete the pictures when M.M. is twisting their arm or Ken is breathing down their neck.)
"Perfect." This time, Shitt P. kisses her ring finger and flicks it towards Chrome. "Then we'll see you later."
And they actually do.
One day, Chikusa actually slinks out from his hole in the ground, a fact Chrome only realizes when she looks up from her lunch to find him standing on the opposite side of the counter. She can't even bring it in her to be shocked or surprised. Instead, she blinks and slurps up some more leftover noodles. "Hi," she says.
Chikusa blinks at her. "Hey," he deadpans.
"...Did Ken steal your phone again?"
Sometimes Chikusa doesn't verbally answer things. Instead, he makes minute facial expressions or gestures that take a whole other language degree to understand. With how rarely he comes to see most other people, there haven't been a lot of chances for her to pick up on most of his tells. Fortunately, she's still learned one or two, and one of those she's learned is for times like this when his mouth twitches downwards just a little bit and he reaches up to adjust glasses that don't really need adjusting. It's the same thing he does everytime Ken bugs him like this, or steals one of his things. Chrome is pretty sure that the blond only does it to get Chikusa's attention out from dubstep hell, because he never learned how to get that attention of people he likes beyond grade school. "Do you follow any Youtubers?" he asks instead of answering her question, which is sometimes normal with Chikusa.
She shrugs. "Not really. I just listen to music and watch cat videos." Something about the whole youtube famous thing bewilders her to some degree. "The people who follow those types...." For a brief second, she considers being delicate in her speech, and then immediately decides not to bother. It's only her and Chikusa besides. "They're weird and obsessive."
Chikusa doesn't disagree or dispute her claims, which isn't surprising to her in the slightest. They can't imagine feeling like someone's friend and being devoted to them just because it's a friendly personality put in front of a camera. "Either way," he says, "look up S.P.C Boost's recent video." That's all he says before turning around to slink back into the miasma of weird objects that is Kokuyo Land. Chrome quietly notes that he's heading in the direction of Ken's food hoarding corner before she goes to pull out her laptop.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
2
"We should put it in our house."
"Hell no."
"You wouldn't let me buy the barbie doll face rings, and now not even this?"
"So, can we not say anything on what I will and won't let you do, because we both know that you do whatever you want anyway, because I don't have the power of mind control? I'm just reminding you of the budget we have, which is a thing that exists. If you want to spend it on weird bone glitter jewelry, by all means, be my guest, but you're going to have to make some sacrifices here."
There's a certain tilt to the woman's head that hints she's enjoying the entire spiel, and Chrome can't help but wonder if she's a little like Mukuro in that aspect: purposefully asking about things she knows she's not supposed to do if only to get a rise out of the people around her. There doesn't seem to be any particular broken heart evident in the way she lets the pendant swing back into place, although she does at least... blow a kiss from her pinkie towards it. "So later, then."
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Slowly, he casts his lens over the rest of the shops, taking it all in, before it pauses a little above Chrome's head. "Oh, yeah, wait, someone works here?"
Now that she's been spotted, Chrome straightens up from her position as, indeed, someone who works here. "Someone has to," she answers bluntly. She guesses that's a little bit of a fudge. No one has to work here. Mukuro doesn't have to do a lot of the things that he does, for example. This could just be an empty building full of ordinary empty building things, like dust and rats. There might still be rats. However, in order for it to exist as Kokuyo Land, there do indeed have to be workers here. At the very bare minimum, there has to be electricity and workers. She thinks. Sometimes she worries about the legality of just how Mukuro keeps everything running, but she thinks it's better no to ask. It's definitely better to not start on all of it with some random hipster.
"I mean, I guess...?" Before he has a chance to really say anything else on that, the woman is already coming forward. Chrome isn't entirely certain what she does, or why she does it, but the pose she ends up in is with one leg crossed with part of it balanced against the edge of the counter. Her arms wind together, almost snakelike, and she flicks one finger in Chrome's direction.
"Composite, octagonal, pentagonal pyramidal-" She unwinds her arms and pulls them back, snapping one set of fingers. "All things that describe the essence of me perfectly. My name is Shitt P., but please call me Shittopi-chan."
Chrome blinks up at her. "Okay, Shittoppi-chan," she says simply, because it's not the weirdest thing she's had to say in her life. From the corner of her eye, she can see where the cameraman has turned the camera to make a face at it before he pauses to look at her. Shitt P. herself doesn't seem to emote beyond a simply raise of her chin. It might be in approval. "You said you were on a budget for something in particular...?"
"We need a relic from the time when Batsquatch was first born," Shitt P. says airily, and her cameraman sighs.
"A disco ball," he tells her. "We need a disco ball."
"To skin."
"Why do you have to phrase shit like that?"
"We have that," Chrome says, vaguely reminded of the way Chikusa and Ken bicker. The subject matter is different, but the feeling is still the same. Just dumb bickering to fill the silence. "They're a little hard to find, however." Most things are. "Hold on..." Stepping to the side, she hefts herself up onto the counter surface and scoots over to the other side. In a show of politeness, Shitt P. moves out of the way with a graceful spin that ends with one heel clacking against the floor. That means there's more than enough room for Chrome to plop down on the opposite side, and she dusts her skirt off. "Follow me."
Kokuyo Land might be a bizarre maze for most people. Actually, Chrome is pretty sure the only people who can reliably navigate the space are Mukuro and Ken, the latter which she suspects cheats. Chikusa is smart and probably knows their finances, but he also rarely ventures in this area. It could be 50/50. Still, Chrome likes to think she has a fairly decent grasp on the intricate ins and outs of the store. If nothing else, she has a few notable landmarks of things that have yet to sell for a while now, and a rough idea of what kinds of things are stored where. So she leads the pair through the winding store, only pausing occasionally.
"Are you sure you know where you're going?" the cameraman asks, looking awkwardly at one of many taxidermy creatures that are scattered around the shop no matter the location.
"Mhm," she says, pausing to reorient herself by a small basket of tiny crystal penises. They never seem to run out. She supposes she should be worried about where Mukuro gets these kinds of things. "Who are you?"
"I didn't introduce myself? Yeesh." He shakes his head, but she doesn't really blame him. A lot of people are thrown off by Kokuyo Land, for a variety of reasons. "Just call me Julie."
A pause follows after his words where he's clearly expecting her to do the polite thing of introducing herself, but Chrome doesn't. Instead, she keeps moving on through the Kokuyo labyrinth. With a place like this, it generally needs at least 80% of her attention, and that doesn't lend itself well to casual small talk. The good news is that Julie doesn't really seem to bother broaching it, instead letting the awkward moment pass as he instead films the various strange things they pass. To Chrome's surprise, it's actually Shitt P. that speaks up to fill the silence. "The pastel is super cute."
Chrome doesn't answer that for a second, because it almost doesn't seem like it really needs to be answered... except then she realizes that they're wandering through junkyard hallways composed mostly of brilliantly glaring red neon, punctured occasionally by sharp blues or ill greens. In this kind of eerie haunted Vegas strip club lighting, it's hard to tell the colors of almost anything. The soft pastels of her bomber jacket, the pink of her skirt inlaid with various card suites and skulls on the bottom border- those should be impossible to discern. Surprise hits her, belated, and she looks suddenly up at the other woman. Unlike Julie, however, Shitt P. hasn't bothered to let any sort of silence stretch out, or to wait for anything. She seems to have already moved on through the moment, looking straight ahead and running her fingers along the surface of a guitar whose body is Pacman with his mouth wide open. Befuddled but sort of used to it, Chrome turns her attention back towards her path as well.
Finding the disco ball section ends up being pretty easy, considering how the reflective shards interact with the nonstop neon signs. The refracted colors can be seen shimmering strangely over some of the shelves, and their pace speeds up a little after that, with Chrome allowing the two to forge ahead after a little bit. It's not just disco balls, of course. There are other strange hanging things, placed along the shelves or dangling from certain places, but all the disco balls that Mukuro thought would have made the biggest impression are dangling low from the ceiling where they would just barely avoid brushing against Chikusa's head if he ever dared to stand up to his full height. Some are just regular, circular, and the kind anyone would imagine.
Then there are other kinds.
Faster than a commandment from God, Shitt P. shoots out her arm to point up at one that is shapes liked the dismembered upper torso of a person with perky breasts. "That one."
Julie groans. "That's not even for the project, you just want that because, don't you?"
"It's perfect," Shitt P. says, not denying the accusation. With disregard for safety in any way, she hefts herself up onto the shelves and reaches up to try and find what's hooking it to the ceiling. Chrome should probably stop her. She doesn't. "How much is it?"
"It's perfect," Shitt P. says, not denying the accusation. With disregard for safety in any way, she hefts herself up onto the shelves and reaches up to try and find what's hooking it to the ceiling. Chrome should probably stop her. She doesn't. "How much is it? Maybe we could get it with our budget."
"We almost definitely can't."
Chrome finally shuffles in closer. Usually she doesn't really get too involved with visitors, or even potential customers. However, for this, she can't help but be fascinated. "What's your budget?" she asks, and Julie blinks at her from behind his glasses.
"It's- hold on, I have it written down in my phone-" Finding a spot to put down his camera is a little difficult in glitter fuck hell, but somehow he manages to nudge it securely between a bedazzled football and an empty whiskey bottle full of lit Christmas lights. He seems to fiddle with it for a second, constantly glancing back at her, before he stops, satisfied. "Alright, here-"
The shopping list they have prepared is... definitely a shopping list. A lot of it has to do with constructing something, although Chrome can't entirely figure out what. Besides each entry of the things they need, a rough estimate of how much they could spend is placed, from probably the cheapest things they could find on the internet to how much they could spend if they really needed to. After a few seconds of wondering and reading, Chrome finally looks up from the screen. If nothing else, she has some good news. "You could buy two disco balls here if you really wanted."
When Shitt P. clicks her lips twice and whistles, it somehow sounds like a foreign language. Julie stares at her for a second, brows crumpled together. "That's, like... at least half off for each of them."
"Mhm."
"And you're serious."
"Mm."
"...How does this place stay running?"
"I don't know," she says. Chrome has never bothered to ask Mukuro or Chikusa about the finer business workings of Kokuyo Land, and she never plans to. In case this all ends up highly illegal somehow, she'd like the ability to plead ignorance to the whole thing. At least there might be a Patreon involved, she thinks. That would be nice if true.
Apparently, that works out just fine for Shitt P. too, because she gently hands over the torso disco ball to Chrome for holding. "I'm getting another," she informs Julie before turning around back towards the shelves. Julie grabs her and, with some doing, convinces her for them to find a ladder. It takes around fifteen minutes for them to find one, and then another ten minutes to not get lost on the way back to the register. There aren't really any bags in the store for her to put the disco balls in. Not only Chrome unsure of how one would even pack a disco ball, they just don't have them in general. People either have to bring their own, carry things in their hands, or buy one of the many regular and not regular bags that are in the store.
Fortunately, Shitt P. seems perfectly happy to carry her strange haul, and Julie only pauses long enough to run out the store to get things he apparently prepared ahead of time for some additional things that they happen to carry. Just the strange little things, like hammers, vegetable peelers, and even some basic groceries. "We're running out of food," he informs Shitt P. casually. Chrome isn't expecting him to speak to her any further, but, surprisingly, he does. "Hey, so I tried to avoid filming your face too much, or anything like that, but there are probably some shots in there anyway. Do you have a problem with us if it stays in there, or would you want us to blur it...? We do videos on Youtube."
Somehow, that really explains a lot. It feels like it could also explain things about Shitt P., maybe, possibly, only that doesn't feel entirely right. Chrome has seen people be overly dramatic or ostentatious before; she knows Mukuro after all. This feels a little more... genuine. Either way, Chrome shrugs and finishes putting some of the nails into the rough canvas tote that Julie brought in. "I don't care," she says, handing over the totebag, before she realizes she might have to be a little more clear. "I mean, I'm fine with it. If I'm in a shot... I'm in a shot." She's almost definitely been in people's pictures of Kokuyo Land before, most often by accident. (Sometimes not by accident, in ways that are very creepily not by accident, but it's amazing how quickly those types delete the pictures when M.M. is twisting their arm or Ken is breathing down their neck.)
"Perfect." This time, Shitt P. kisses her ring finger and flicks it towards Chrome. "Then we'll see you later."
And they actually do.
One day, Chikusa actually slinks out from his hole in the ground, a fact Chrome only realizes when she looks up from her lunch to find him standing on the opposite side of the counter. She can't even bring it in her to be shocked or surprised. Instead, she blinks and slurps up some more leftover noodles. "Hi," she says.
Chikusa blinks at her. "Hey," he deadpans.
"...Did Ken steal your phone again?"
Sometimes Chikusa doesn't verbally answer things. Instead, he makes minute facial expressions or gestures that take a whole other language degree to understand. With how rarely he comes to see most other people, there haven't been a lot of chances for her to pick up on most of his tells. Fortunately, she's still learned one or two, and one of those she's learned is for times like this when his mouth twitches downwards just a little bit and he reaches up to adjust glasses that don't really need adjusting. It's the same thing he does everytime Ken bugs him like this, or steals one of his things. Chrome is pretty sure that the blond only does it to get Chikusa's attention out from dubstep hell, because he never learned how to get that attention of people he likes beyond grade school. "Do you follow any Youtubers?" he asks instead of answering her question, which is sometimes normal with Chikusa.
She shrugs. "Not really. I just listen to music and watch cat videos." Something about the whole youtube famous thing bewilders her to some degree. "The people who follow those types...." For a brief second, she considers being delicate in her speech, and then immediately decides not to bother. It's only her and Chikusa besides. "They're weird and obsessive."
Chikusa doesn't disagree or dispute her claims, which isn't surprising to her in the slightest. They can't imagine feeling like someone's friend and being devoted to them just because it's a friendly personality put in front of a camera. "Either way," he says, "look up S.P.C Boost's recent video." That's all he says before turning around to slink back into the miasma of weird objects that is Kokuyo Land. Chrome quietly notes that he's heading in the direction of Ken's food hoarding corner before she goes to pull out her laptop.