THE AMAZING BASE.

[agogemod]

WHO? Everybody!
WHAT? Welcome home, nerds.
WHEN? Outside time and space, in the aether between dimensions.
ANYTHING ELSE? There is also a fish. Please warn in subject lines for anything beyond physical violence and move to a personal journal if things go beyond PG-13.

MYSTERY FISH;

question the mystery fish

DEPARTING GALLIPOLI

The order comes the day after the Marie Antoinette sets sail:

PACK UP AND GET READY TO MOVE OUT. WE'VE DONE ALL WE CAN HERE.

DEPLOYMENT: BASE.

WE NEED TO RESTOCK. BE PREPARED FOR MORE TRANSFERS ON ARRIVAL.

STAY SAFE. TIME-STEP EXPECTED TO BEGIN WITHIN THE HOUR.

FOR THOSE OF YOU NEW TO COST: FIND A SECLUDED SPOT AND TRY NOT TO EAT ANYTHING BEFORE THE JUMP.

The Time-Step

The transfer begins like a vibrating heat on the collar bone, just a hum of sensation.

But the vibration spreads. Veteran COST soldiers often refer to this phenomenon as "the buzz". The feeling builds, not unlike standing near a great engine or the wind-rattled branches of a massive tree. There is a long moment of motion sickness and you can't be sure if the world is shaking you from the inside out or the outside in. It may be better to close your eyes against the growing nausea, as the world blurs out of focus.

A star shines in the distance. You may hear the faint rustling of leaves. Some swear they hear voices in this moment, indistinct words echoing off nothingness. Others say they feel a touch of the divine, that the eyes of the eternal look down upon you. Ancient bones rattle just out of earshot, cold and brittle and nothing more than the suggestion of sound. Or maybe it's only an illusion, brought on by the powerful technology grafted into your skin.

One thing is for sure: One moment you are here and the next you are not.

The shift takes you from whatever solitude you could find aboard the Marie Antoinette to the temperature-regulated hallway of what looks like a very poorly put together space station. Droids rush up and down the long hallway, fixing broken bits of machinery or just chattering with each other. A few crows sit on high ledges, looking down and watching. Someone mutters something about a centaur around the corner.

And you might just notice, provided you were in Gallipoli long enough to acquire stowaways, that the parasites lurking on your skin are mercifully gone.

For new arrivals who didn't experience Gallipoli: You, too, will appear in this long hallway, filled with droids and crows and humans (still filthy and clad in ANZAC uniforms, carrying battered equipment from the first World War). And you'll be wearing the minimal COST-issued athletic underwear and holding whatever one item you were allowed to bring. Surprise!

READ THE BASE INFOPAGE.

home away from home

Those who have been to BASE before may find a strangeness to it all: BASE seems...still. The windows show a verdant world instead of the usual aether (though with the typical paranoia), and the halls are bereft of all but a few crows. A man stands at the end of the long hallway you arrived in, waiting for you to get your bearings before he speaks.

Except, you know, he's not a man. He's a centaur.

"It's been barely a week since you left, by my reckoning. But for you, I'm sure, it's been much longer. Still, much has changed. You may have noticed we are...becalmed. This is due, it seems, to an error in our ways. We kept something that does not belong to us, several wild creatures that are meant to be free. They seem to have psychically called out to their home, and their home responded; we are now somewhat stranded.

"But let me explain—the Aether is the nexus between worlds and times, but it is not a dead thing. Creatures live in it. We have crashed onto the back of one such creature, a mighty beast, as large as a small country and entirely undiscovered. We have found why the creature has intercepted us: we have accidentally taken captive some of its children. Shapers, the wild creatures I mentioned, it seems they form a symbiotic bond with the creature, and live happily within its stomach."

He frowns, considering this.

"Shapers, I should mention, are creatures that briefly infested our fair BASE. The issue was dealt with, though we kept some for experimentation. The coelacanth took issue with this, it seems. It can speak, of course; we are stranded very near its head, and if you wish to ask it a question, I implore you to do so. The creature is older than creation—older than me—and only speaks once to any creature it encounters. It's said its wisdom brings kings to their knees."

His eyes crinkle in humor.

"My name is Chiron and I am the caretaker of this place, for those of you whom I have not had the pleasure of meeting. More importantly, I am a trainer and a teacher of some experience; if you wish training or schooling of any sort, do summon me. I will be happy to assist."

He's easy to contact, often found in the library, the training area, his capsule, or elsewhere in the station, attempting to fix what he understands and arguing with crows.

"We intended to spend this time exploring, for this is a rare opportunity to discover more of an entirely uncharted world. I hasten you to see if anything on the coelacanth can be of use, but be careful. Take only what you need, not what you may want. I intend to learn my lessons well; these creatures are not pets. Takes food, water, and any materials of use to us for our survival and perseverance, but no more. We task you with this: explore the coelacanth, and see what of it can be understood. Bring us back samples, but do try to interrupt the natural habitat as little as possible. We are guests here."

He bows and the action shows a slight limp in one of his back legs.

"I would join you, but I am far too old for such activities. Still, do pepper me with any questions you should encounter. I am always available on the network, or in person, within this hulking mass we call home."

And then he leaves you to find your capsules and rest.

CAPSULE ASSIGNMENTS

Once you've found your room and settled in—perhaps taken a shower, collected clothes, and eaten—a droid will approach you with camping equipment and give you a brief explanation of how to access and use the database. It's time to get your gear and go.

Of course, you can decline. You can stay and tend to the fort, maybe try and clean up this patchwork jumble of metal and machinery. But seeing the sights on the back of a giant fish flying through non-space? Who can say no to that?


the undiscovered country.

BASE's airlocks open into a lush valley, vibrant with color and rustling with life that has thrived on the coelacanth's back for millennia. It's a striking shift from the rot and gunfire of Gallipoli, unmarked by shrapnel, bombshells, and never-fresh air.

No, the air here is clean in a way that can leave you breathless, untouched by pollutants and stirred into a gentle breeze. It's a marked departure for anyone used to a more modern Earth or rough equivalent; letting the air sit on your tongue leaves a crisp, unsullied taste behind. And the whole forest feels alive, in a way that reminds you of how small you really are.

A white crow perches in a tree near BASE's exit, too high up to properly engage but a stark contrast to the bright leaves around her. She merely watches recruits come and go with a shrewd eye, feathers fluffed against the light chill. There are other crows scattered throughout the wilderness, some easier to find than others as they flit through the trees, sit on camping equipment, or hitch rides on the hoverbikes.

Besides those brief flashes of black feathers, however, you're left unsupervised.

Try not to fuck up anything too badly.

EXPLORE:INFOPAGE|DATABASE
talk to a fish | destruction report

NAV. NETWORK LOGS OOC MEMES PLURK

Comments

someone's gotta serve it on this fish

[reillumination]

[ There was no peace for Ryo Asuka.

Since he could recall, he had felt at odds with himself — with his own body. The world was at once too small and too large, too comprehensible and too incomprehensible. His memory, as fragmented and foggy as it was to him now, brings to the surface moments of isolation and overwhelming emotion like fish beneath a frozen pond. It was easier to watch, to not burn his palms against its surface in an attempt to connect with it all, to know the spring from which it was fed at all. Even now, as far as he could be from the source.

But, it does not stifle him from knowing, innately, that humans were never meant to be here. That humans, their visitation, would change the surface of this microcosm irreparably. No matter how careful Ryo himself is, how careful he's noted Ashitaka to be as well — contact, no matter how brief and kind, can destroy a living thing entirely. Ryo's mouth downturns, in time enough to catch Ashitaka's look. He knows that familiar bite of a challenge, he's seen it in Akira more than once. Cynical, is how Akira had placed. Ryo Asuka, in all his desires to save humanity, was a cynic.

How odd that was.

Still, Ryo absorbs the glance with a moment's consideration. He knows that it is possible for many things to live harmoniously, but — ]

It might be, [ he concedes, but there's something else in him that grows nauseous and resentful at the thought of it, that twists against the admission that tastes more like a lie. And so, he does his best to quell it: ]

But, this place has developed its own system, [ Ryo starts, voice thoughtful and quiet. He stares out over the landscape before them, how untouched and unblemished it is by their noise. ] We have no idea how long it's existed before we came upon it or whether or not there's anything like us. [ The apex predator, that is. No matter where they roamed, animals relied on instinct. He's seen it even here. But, the conversation is... Nostalgic. Ryo's chest, for a moment, inexplicably tightens. ] All these creatures and plants have grown to defend themselves against their natural predators. If we decided to stay, their ability to adapt would never be enough to accommodate.

[ There's almost like a longing there, something Ryo ] Even if we were cautious, we're a new variable in the chain they never accounted for. [ Extinction was rampant back home. He recalls absently the dodo, how humans scrubbed the Earth of them for no more than pleasure because they weren't quick enough to save themselves. And, in lesser examples, how even the presence of humanity had cleansed the environment indirectly — a testament to human obliviousness and strength. ]

[lonelywar]

[This place was not Earth. He knows this logically, though when he is racing along riverbanks and through woods and across rocky outcroppings, he feels as though he is closer to home than he has been since his recruitment. He doesn't miss the irony; here upon the back of the coelacanth, he is perhaps the furthest away he has ever been, divided by time and space and reality. But it is the spirit of the unbridled wilderness, the sense of adventure and danger inherent in creatures lurking in the woods they could only hypothesize with myths and legends. It was his childhood memories of the woods, far away from civilization by necessity, making the line of communication between the village and everything around them seem far clearer, more singular, entirely essential.

In the end, in this and in many things, Ashitaka simply isn't cognizant of it. Though in certain very specific instances he could scrape past something which might seem wise by proxy, he had grown up among people isolated within a country already known throughout the world for its isolation. Concepts of the invasiveness of foreign species brought to near shores were not something he would immediately grasp, though perhaps a short history lesson (in that the designs for firearms were brought to them from foreign lands, aboard Dutch ships) would make him realize far more sharply the truth of what Ryo said.

As it is, however, he isn't as sure. Yes, it is true that this place is completely removed from what they might know, and it was also true that they, as human beings (and... other assorted sentient beings in COST's ranks), were strangers here. He doesn't necessarily think that their very presence is poison, however (though this might be true for some of them, but not all). His opinion seems to be one where nature is fairly toothless. In Ashitaka's experience, that is very much not the case.]

I think it might be foolish to underestimate the nature that we find here. You are correct; mankind has never existed here, so we are a completely new link to this chain. But it is presumptive to think that we are the final one.

[Until recently, men had not been apex predators where he was from. Armed with spears or swords, men could still be overwhelmed by a pack of wolves, gored to death upon the tusks of a wild boar. Not even to consider the great beasts that made up the gods of the forest. Firearms had changed that, but that was within the rules of Earth as they knew it. Perhaps here, somewhere where they had not yet found it, there were beasts that were already by the merit of their own evolution invulnerable to whatever threat they as humans might pose.

They simply didn't know.]

I believe I understand your concerns, however. I do not doubt that some people among us would cause problems to this place, should we stay. But...

[The jaybear by the bank of the river calls out in the silence of his drifting statement, having seen another emerge from the treeline on the other side of the swiftly-moving water. The two now regard one another in a stalemate, the electricity of the confrontation oddly dull from such a distance.]

It was merely a thought.

[A brief pause. The jaybears continue their stand-off.]

I think I might simply be missing home.

[reillumination]

I rarely think humans are the last of any chain anymore.

[ It comes with the catch of laugh – the odd twitch of a smile, sharp and uncontrolled. Ryo had learned that humor was just as much a mechanism as any to deal with fear, with the creeping sense of inevitability that there was nothing more anyone could do. Where vices were scarce, in the absence of where his worries would usually find rest – what else was there? Ryo tips his head up, traces the aimless and infinite patterns of the aether above them. For a moment, his stomach lurches at the emptiness.

This isn’t a place where he can map his way home. There is no moon, no constant spin of the sun and stars – there’s just nothing. Nothing, for all he knows, for millions and millions of miles. ] A predator is never a predator for long. Nature has a way of equalizing us all. [ Evolution, disease – humanity’s own destructive weapons. Ashitaka might not be aware of how much humanity’s come to hate itself, how much nature has come to hate them even more. How much, in the end, their own ignorance to their biggest threat is somehow deserved because of their own hubris. But, no – it’d come to light eventually. Or not at all, in enough time to save themselves. Ryo takes a breath. ] Even the strongest can’t survive when it grows tired of the damage we inflict. [ Even if that means systematically dismantling the whole thing or tugging the whole thing up from roots. Like a weed in the garden, Eve’s fingers stained with blood of the Earth. This little microcosm was something close, something primal – the ache he felt must have been instinctual, something born into humans since before they even there at all. ] There’s no need to bring that struggle here too.

[ It’s an admission and an implication. There’s much that he knows, that he no longer cares to know – but, that’s his burden. That’s his burden, as much as it is now Akira’s. But, eventually, the void compels him to glance away from it. Like any self-respecting human, he does. Instead, he follows the call of the jaybears, the continuous glow that comes up from the ground beneath them, spreading out like a halo. ] Either way, there’s bound to be others who feel the same.

[ He does. Nothing back home would ever be the same again. It’s peculiar, to miss something so profoundly that hasn’t disappeared yet. That may not disappear, if there’s success for them. But, it’s just as peculiar when his heart provides conflict – that argues his home isn’t the world, the town, the house he’s grown up in.
Home can be anywhere, they’ve said. But, his home isn’t here. His home isn’t there. It isn't a structure, a settlement.

His home is – his jaw tightens. ]

[lonelywar]

[He is wise in thinking this, then.

Men, as they were, were weak. This was true by all counts in the laws of beasts: they had no fur or toughened skin to protect themselves from attack, no sharpened teeth or claws to wield in attack or defense, no incredible size or great skill with stealth. By all means, they should be negligible in the grand scheme of things, but they had discovered a law that superseded that of beasts: that a creature could be as powerful as what they equipped themselves with. They built armor harder than stone, weapons which could deal death from a great distance with relatively little skill needed, encircled themselves in encampments and fortifications. All of this done because men knew something that beasts did not: they knew that they could use their hands and minds to bend the world around them to give them the advantages that their nature did not.

Though, with his own interactions with the gods ruling the forests and the mountains, perhaps he was wrong. That the beasts did know that, with their own effort, they could fell trees, move rocks, rend the earth. They were simply too wise to do such a thing, respectful of the earth which supported their very lives.]

Life's only goal is to continue. Given enough time, a method of survival will be found, and it will persist until it can be overcome. It is always in motion.

[Would the gods of the forest find a way to resist the bullets of men, to turn upon them? Or perhaps they would take them willingly. Perhaps Nago was an envoy of that, a scion of their wrath and feeling of betrayal. If mankind poisoned the gods into turning on them as demons, he feels as though it would be something they deserved.]

...But you are correct in saying that men tend to upset that balance in a way that is more irreparable.

[And they did so with such smug satisfaction.]

We must be as cautious as possible, while we are here.

[It did not seem as though they were here long, and the occasional flutter of dark wings overhead heralded Young's supervision. Hopefully nothing was harmed, inadvertent or otherwise.

Ryo's reply holds within it enough negative space to cast certain presumptions in doubt, and Ashitaka is feeling just the right mixture of pensive and inquisitive to ask, similarly to how he did upon their first meeting:]

And yourself?

[There's such a cutting earnestness to Ashitaka that almost seems to undermine needling questions such as these when he asks them. As if the complicated web of masks and layers of truth and obfuscation people put on for one another per person and per situation were all simply too much to deal with.

All in hypocrisy, as there's plenty of things he prefers keep to himself.

Such as the primary points of home he himself yearned for, certainly not geographical locations; the place of his birth was lost to him forever, and Irontown was on one hand partially his enemy until he figured out a way to deal with its arrogance and avarice levied against the forest and its inhabitants. No, he had perhaps felt most at home in a place that had been largely hostile to his being there, though the feeling had only been enabled by the person he had been next to -

And here he runs into a similar wall, waving away the thoughts, dismantling whatever guilt or worry could begin to build itself around them.]

[reillumination]

[ Humans, as he knew them, would always find ways to better defend themselves from what they feared most. Whether it be to improve their own bodies, to make by themselves weapons that were beyond even his comprehension – he’s known these wars. He knows the shape of his own, mapped out to two sets of eyes while the rest of humanity lay in the dark. He wonders how much longer it will be until it is beyond them, inevitably. He wonders how much time he has left.

And it is thoughts like these, that breed a divide within him. It is that darkness that drags its nails through him, catches at his temples and at the backs of his eyes. It seethes there, like a knot he can’t untangle or a wound he cannot stitch. It’s been there all his life. ]

I wonder about that too, [ he breathes out, words heavy and strange as they tumble from his mouth. His eyes don’t flicker up. He has to wonder about it, with mankind. How much could anything take? Something in him loves the thought, but he meets it with immediate and impossible disgust. His mouth twists, uncertain. ] Would others care as much as we do?

[ No. No, likely not. That cynicism in him, that humor he finds from it all – it coils tight in his gut, seeps into his expression. But, it doesn’t for long. It isn’t allowed, because Ashitaka offers that question to him and Ryo, for the life of him, starts his struggle with the words to answer it.

The truth sits at the tip of his tongue, but his eyes are hard beneath the dark sweep of his lashes. He leans back against the hoverbike behind him, hand coming up to pull his trench coat tighter across his chest. Like men who shield their skins from searching arrows, Ryo keeps his heart hidden beneath the heavy fabric. His knuckles go whiter, paler beneath the sudden stress. ]

My world is beautiful, [ he says, after a long and silent moment. He presses his tongue against the inner corner of his lip, the meat of his thumb dug up against the hard curve of a button. He almost wants to laugh, but everything in him can’t seem to fix. The luminescent earth beneath him gives him nothing familiar to moor himself with. And to think of something that would – the ache in him threatens to overwhelm him suddenly, like a well after a storm. ] But, there’s no time for me to appreciate it.

[ There’s no time here. There’s no time back on his own soil. There’s no way to string together words – useless and unspoken – against the current of their possible and potential extermination. He can’t find how to say it, if he can even say it – and it makes no difference here, where confronting it is ever more impossible than before.

His world is beautiful. There’s so much in it, so much that had been stripped and soiled. But, it thrived around humanity, in mirror of what it could have been. And it thrived within him. It took roots, like the steady thrum of music through the steering wheel of his father’s car – like Akira’s laugh beside him.

Yes, that place too was a world beautiful enough. ]

[lonelywar]

[It was an entirely natural thing to fear the unknown - it was this type of thing that was encoded into their instincts down to a molecular level, over hundreds of thousands of years of the most cautious of a certain species being the ones who survived when the foolhardy perished. But it was one thing to avoid something potentially dangerous and still another to arm oneself to the point where they could entirely destroy it if given the slightest provocation. That had been the greatest shift, when mankind had realized that what they could forge and build with their hands could do something so monumental. He has relatively little understanding of how it worked so far into the future, but he has seen the very advent of it. When humanity, holding weapons that could breathe fire and kill with impunity from a great distance, turned them on the gods themselves, poisoning and killing them.

He is quiet for a moment, considering the question. He wishes the answer he could give was better than it was.]

No. Many do not.

[It was one of the reasons they were here, after all. It wasn't the shapers that were killed in their original infestation that brought them here, apparently. No, it had been the ones kept as "pets" that had called out to the coelacanth. But Ashitaka himself had gotten into an altercation with someone who took it into his own hands to destroy them, without the go-ahead from anyone else, and that confrontation had put him quite close to death's door (not that he was any stranger to such a place). He is certain many COST agents didn't care even a fraction of what they did.

He is careful with the weight of his gaze, not wanting Ryo to feel as though he were being put on the spot or otherwise scrutinized. He gives him time, though he can tell that this is no easy question for him - it wasn't an easy question in general, though Ashitaka is clearly the type of person that doesn't avoid such things in lieu of easy, largely useless conversation.

What he ends up saying pierces through Ashitaka's expectations, creating in Ryo someone he felt he could understand and even sympathize with to a surprising degree. He's certain it is presumptuous to assume too much similarity, for Ryo's world probably looked very different from the one Ashitaka left behind, and it could be any number of things behind the meaning of his cryptic final statement.

But, still...]

The world I left behind is beautiful as well. [He looks out over the boreal forest, the mountains, the group of rivers that cut a pattern into the land.] Much of it is like this place. Untouched by man, still the territory of great beasts and gods. These are the most beautiful places; they feel sacred to a point where you feel cautious to tread upon them.

[He remembers the heart of the forest, trees so massive they could be pillars holding up the sky, all surrounded by ponds and streams flowing around dozens of islands. He remembers first seeing the great forest spirit through a gap in some of those trees. Everyone remembers their first brush with divinity.

He finally looks back to Ryo. His expression has lost some of its wistfulness, drug painfully back down to reality.]

Do you bear a curse?

[He might as well come out and say it. It is his only frame of reference for feeling so short on time, at such an age, with so much reason to stay.]

[reillumination]

[ Ashitaka had a certain way of speaking that Ryo finds familiar – a separated, parceled sort of cadence. Ryo had not long ago adopted it, after the advent of his father’s death, the legacy he left behind. He doesn’t sleep as much these days, as much as he dreams restlessly and finds himself half-awake in bed, the scent of gasoline and charred skin permeating the thoughts he has in-and-out of consciousness. If there’s any interruption, it’s rarely kind to him – any pleasant dreams have become sore in profound absence and the ones that have haunted him since he could remember, those bright and full of light, left him even less likely to sleep than before.

But still, there’s a sharpness that resembles his own in structure – the blade different, but the composition seems a curious parallel, one that he notices when Ashitaka confirms his suspicions that no one else would likely care as much as they chose to. It’s something that comes only with an understanding of the true nature of humanity, of all living things.

Yet, as Ashitaka reveals more about his own home, there’s something Ryo’s expression that comes through at the edges. It’s something unknown, untouched. He has no cognizance of it while Ashitaka talks, but the distance between where he is and where he seems to be is almost incalculable. Whatever it is in what Ashitaka says, it hooked in him something almost instinctual, primal. He’s always felt at home amongst the nature that spanned on around him, but he never understood why it was that he did. It was something ineffable, ingrained deep into his skin – into his flesh and bones, the very chemical structure of him. There was something to be said for the concept of “genetic memory” – individual ontogenesis. There were some things he was not capable of understanding, some things that were bound to destroy him if he did. But, the appeal in the knowledge and the odd feeling of being bereft seems to go as soon as it floods in. Like stars dotting out under sunlight, too dim to be seen whenever it rose to the forefront again.

And Ryo, as he becomes more present, is just like that.

In an odd pause, Ryo's knuckles go whiter, only briefly, before he lets out a laugh. Unable to keep it in, it’s a tight, nervous sound – painful in its origin. He can’t look up, but under the dark of his lashes, his eyes are almost too blue against the dim. It’s almost too on the nose, he thinks. It’s something that he probably should have thought a long time ago. ]

If that’s what you’d like to call it, [ he says, at once soft and sardonic. A terrible inheritance would have been more apt, but – finally, he lifts his gaze from the ground beneath their feet. He doesn’t look so much at Ashitaka as much as he looks past him, unseeing. ] A curse, an inheritance, ill fortune – what do you name something that inevitably touches everyone? [ Whether he means it is something exclusive to his world or not – himself or not – he doesn’t specify. He doesn’t even let go of the lapel of his coat, only breathes out after a long moment. ] There’s a reason you’re asking me this.

[ Ryo might not care for many, but there’s something to be said for what he does know about humans and how they work. He doesn’t form a question around what it is he says, but the question exists in the speculation. It does not expect, but it lingers nonetheless. ]

[lonelywar]

[Ashitaka was a person of discipline. After a great deal of time and effort the practice of putting forth much mindfulness into one's words and actions became as easy as one might breathe — an act of meditation, though one extended beyond oneself and to others. He still finds the marks and mannerisms of many of the others difficult to parse. The words were so crowded in their words that they seemed to lose meaning by principle of dilution, and accurate understanding was so linked to tone that sometimes he focused so much he lost the context. He is grateful for those that seem to speak in a similar pace and timbre. They are, each of them, out of time and an area of comfort, but he often feels himself lagging behind further, struggling to catch up to concepts otherwise naturally understood.

Ryo's single strident laugh is a reaction that causes Ashitaka's eyes to flutter closed in a half-startled blink. He thinks in that moment that it was a defensive mechanism; something that the other young man used to separate himself from something else that must have occurred to him without forewarning. He isn't one to hold remorse for something he did or said, however; the conversation might seem to be one held on a knife's edge, but it's not one Ryo seems ready to back away from. So neither will he.

The words he uses paints a different picture. What Ashitaka bore was something that had been inflicted upon him like a wound, as payment for wrongdoing. This sounded something deeper than that, less a factor of culpability and more one of fate.

He doesn't seem to have any intention to answer the question Ryo posed, for he feels it's one that has no answer except the obvious: an end.

There is a reason. It's something that, while not a secret, Ashitaka tends to keep to himself, for it was his own burden to bear. But more and more it seems that obfuscation was endangerment, and beyond that there was — something. He, too, has come across something in Ryo that feels strangely similar and yet dissimilar to himself, though in a way that made him vaguely aware of some natural caution within him, a preternatural sense towards a friction he could not yet place. Still, he found he had no qualms as he unties some drawstrings at the wrist of the sleeve pulled down his right arm, releasing them and pushing the blue cloth up to his elbow to bare the skin beneath.

From up close one could not mistake the mark for a bruise. A bruise was a memory of something, the body recovering from something long-past, but this was different. The mottled blue and purple of the demon's mark seemed to still have some breath to it, a seething intent, a presence that was entirely bereft some lingering echo of a week-old contusion. Coiled around his arm like a snake, it extended into his palm and past where the clothing was bunched at his elbow.]

Because I bear one of my own. [He gives the information in a soft tone of voice, his right fist clenching as if around the origin of the thing.] And because it has caused me to feel the same way. Living upon borrowed time.

[reillumination]

[ It is not to say that he misses Ashitaka’s surprise, the way his reaction falls across Ashitaka’s conversational customs, but Ryo is attentive when Ashitaka moves to the bindings that travel up his arm, something off in the gesture alone. As he pulls free the strings at his wrist, something instinctual catches at Ryo’s gut, at the short hairs at the back of his neck. He feels its impression before he sees it and –

There is no amorphous twisting of blood and bone – no malevolence in the way that Ryo typically felt it, but insidious all the same. Fear creeps in slow steps up his spine, ledged on each vertebra until it comes up unrecognizable in shape: laughter. It’s not quite the same as before, the sound dragging through something ancient, primal. It’s soft, almost breathless. It’s as if Ashitaka had shared with him something that someone would whisper to another in the dark, hands cupped about the shell of his ear. He too was marked.

His mouth twitches at the corners, the echo of a smile caught in the peculiar dip of it. There’s no name that comes to rest across his tongue, no knowledge of the creature’s shape – because the impression comes that Ashitaka himself does not house it. Not in full. It swung against him like an axe stroke, a pass of a pendulum. Where Ryo would have once went for his gun, it’s that realization that restrains him. It is as Ashitaka had said: a curse. A thing without consciousness, a life of its own – fused into human flesh as though any demon would, but this is not the same. This is not what he knows. This thing is a poison. It is not a manipulation of the heart, the soul. It is not the presence that burned through his father’s body. It is not the presence that lived on inside of Akira. This is not at all like Amon, Sirene. Kaim.

The tension is slow to work out of muscle, slower to work from his expression. In the gloaming, Ryo’s fingers slacken. The fabric of his trench coat as he lets his hand fall is hopelessly crumpled. For a moment, there’s only the residual echo of his own heartbeat in his ears, fever-quick. The coming rush of adrenaline brings up a secondary huff, just as soft and breathless as the first time. There’s almost something liquid in the way Ryo steps back to sit side-saddle the hoverbike he’s had with him all this time, as if grounding himself here would serve him any better in the end.

From here, he could do nothing at all. From here, had his initial presumptions served him, it would have not have been him gave the finishing blow. There was no being here that could have shielded him from that. Not this time. And that, too, weighs on him. It doesn’t matter what he knows about COST, the way this organization works. It doesn’t matter at all.

His expression is quiet, almost too still when he looks back up. The fearful animal housed within gone beneath a peculiar bitterness, both at odds with the Ryo Asuka that Ashitaka has encountered in the past and Ryo Asuka himself, fingers dug at his own tumult in efforts to keep himself above the current of his own labyrinthine emotions across the subject. ]

Ah. [ It’s a breath, but a breath enough to unspool something more. ] You’re right, of course. [ He idly slips his hand into the right pocket of his trench coat, comes up with a loose cigarette and their appointed lighter. He doesn’t need to pause as he places it between his lips, words muffled only just about the filter as he strikes the igniter. The flame is brief, but sharp against the blue of his eyes – almost too blue in any retrospect. The cigarette, thankfully, needs only one pass to be successfully lit. ] My time may be limited, just like yours.

[ He takes a long drag. It seems to almost steady him, though his eyes don’t stray far from the mark that Ashitaka’s revealed to him. It reminds him of bright, red scars. But, that’s not the same. He reminds himself of that. When he speaks again, the words shape themselves against gray smoke. His mouth quirks up, but the cynicism that typically pervades it is replaced by something more difficult to define – to crystallize into a singular and solid emotion. Within him, something roils and rages against the idea that there may be hope left. That humanity might prevail. That – ] It looks more likely, these days.

[ God must hate us, he thinks. It’s fleeting. ]

[lonelywar]

[Ashitaka cannot find it in himself to be off-put or offended by the reaction. If pressed, he might admit that he found it more natural than most he has seen, that most other people had their mindsets of things outside the natural world of humans so diluted by their own experiences or situations that his own curse was something banal in comparison. In his own time it was something he had kept quiet from the vast majority of people, knowing that a mortal curse given by a god or a demon was something normal peasantry would want nothing to do with, having enough problems merely providing for themselves that they did not wish to help shoulder those of someone who had done something so unforgivable as kill a god.

In a way he is foolish. He feels less trepidation now, trusting in two things: that laissez-faire attitude so many others seemed to have towards such matters and also the fact that the mark itself would react towards intentions of violence and goodwill, giving him at least a second to prepare himself if someone's perception of him transmogrified enough to cause them to lash out. Regardless of the mark's (currently foiled, stayed, stopped) intention to claim the life of its host, it did not want to allow anyone else the pleasure; it would not allow Ashitaka to die so easily by other means. It would give him the strength to defend himself, the tenacity and stamina to continue onward for some time even after having been shot through the chest, all because it itself selfishly wanted to tear his soul from his body and would have it no other way.

Laughter is a strange response that the body often has, often coming up with such a thing when nothing else seems to fit; he decides to not be fazed, instead watching cautiously, knowing exactly where his sword and his bow were, how long it would take to get to either or to get Yakul to his feet, swing onto his back, and get moving. He keeps all of this information like a hand of cards close to the chest, and to his merit he lets little away, still but to a trained or keen eye visibly tense, the line of his shoulder like the string of a bow drawn back.

One that is slowly relaxed as the moment itself passes, the fleeting electricity of alarm easing away into nothingness. By the time Ryo speaks up and reaches for the cigarette, Ashitaka finds himself free enough to move as well, pulling the sleeve back over his arm and beginning to fasten the ties that keep it in place.

Ashitaka does not often speculate. It is not in his nature. The words described to him as the quest that might lead to an absolution of his curse did not allot for such a thing. He had merely been asked to see, to travel and to watch and to learn, to piece together the full picture of something in a way that was free of his own preconceptions and biases, unclouded by the hatred that they might bring. Perhaps after that point, he would feel called to make a judgment and to act upon it. But until that point, he does not guess, he does not judge. He merely watches, listens, and attempts to understand.

If it is not something Ryo will give away willingly, he will not force it from him, and he will not draw his own conclusions. He merely thinks to himself that they might share more than he lets on, simply because his reaction was strong enough to allude to such a thing.

"May be." Uncertainty is, in itself, a curse unto itself.

He thinks this, and he moves on.]

I was told once by a man that the world itself is cursed. [He says this as he moves a bit from Yakul's side, to where he'd placed a small pile of gathered firewood. He begins to set up the fire once more, giving it at least an hour or two more to burn.] And a monk upon the road told me the same, that I should not feel so unique even with this mark upon my body. I have thought a great deal about this, about what it could mean, what it could be cursed by. A cynic might say that it is cursed by mankind, for they are the only creatures on its surface that think themselves important enough to change it for their own benefit. [He grows silent for a moment, seeing reflected in the fire the forges kept stoked all hours of day and night by the women of Irontown. They found freedom in the metal they pulled from the earth - freedom from the emperor, from cruel feudal lords and their samurai, from societies of men that would seek to control them. He didn't know the answer. To seek control of the forest for its resources, to kill its gods to assert such a thing, these were evil in the eyes of many, but was it the same when it was done for such a reason?

He continues.] I think it is closer to the truth that the curse is something we all bear: that what is best is often more difficult than easier paths that might lead to outcomes we did not intend. [He's usually not so open and free with such things, but he's very rarely around people more close-lipped than himself. He spares a single glance for Ryo's expression before he finishes what he was doing with the fire, returning to Yakul's side. The elk lifts his head for a moment to nudge him, nose snuffling at his hair.] If that is the case, there is no cure for it. It is just the way of things.

[reillumination]

[ The scent of fire never really leaves a person.

It is a strange thing, to find comfort in what can burn. His lungs are embittered to the smoke, but his body craves the calm it brings him. If there is nothing in this world — on this fish left to provide him comfort, then it was the familiarity of something warm and almost alive in his hands that chanced at it. It brushed down harsh edges, kept his thoughts in tidier rows against the madness that had been imbued into every inch of living, its once improbability spilling into every corner of his life like blood seeping into lines of fortune fanned across his palms. But, Ryo was never fortunate. Down to his foundations, down to what lay beneath that huddled in the darkest corners of his memory, he had no concept at all what ill luck was. He had no insight into what would come, what would be done — what he even was at the end of all things, waiting patient and quiet against all his fissuring.

Ryo listens as Ashitaka conceals the mark, reminiscent of the bruising Ryo’s never gained for more than scant moments — a handful of days against the span of weeks for most his age. Despite the danger it seems to radiate, there’s something nervous and hungry in him that wants to know more of it. There’s something in him that itches and writhes, something that he ignores as he knows better than to look into the face of it. He’s lived like this for months — knowing what could kill him would also bring him fascination, strange and inadvertent. He wrenches himself from the edge of it, shuddering once as Ashitaka turns back to the fire.

It was fear that made humans survive. It was fear that kept them struggling to clamber to the top, that would always and inevitably make them turn their weapons to the throats of their neighbors. It was fear that was alive in Ryo’s heart, in the hearts of mankind when faced with what could tear and rend — could deconstruct all that there was or ever is, just with knowledge of its existence.

It is funny how it follows him even here, even now. It is funny how the idea only changed in meaning, in shape. The loss of control was still a loss. The loss of ability to live in some capacity was still the loss of the ability to live. ]

What is best? [ Ryo asks, eventually and at length. As the fire too distracts Ashitaka, Ryo also watches it. What Ryo remembers is still is the gasoline, the murmur of needing more. Those last and fleeting words, carved out against accelerant. Smoke spools out from between his fingertips, thin and dark. Against the glow beneath them, the cherry of the cigarette is a bright and burning point — strange and artificial in its peculiar confinement. ] If my curse was handed to another, who could say what they'd do? To them, it could look like another possibility entirely. [ Who is to say what anyone would do? Would they turn to the public? Would they tell the world? Would chaos have swept over already? He doesn't wish to wonder. To Ryo, this was what was best and he would fight for it until the death. Even if he knew it, it didn't mean that others wouldn't see it differently. But, they did not know what Ryo knew. ] You're right to say almost everything carries it somehow.

[ Almost everything. The exclusion is clear to him as he says it. Humanity was cursed by the presence of something that they knew nothing about, the world and its creatures too would suffer in face of it. But, the world too had suffered humanity. Even still — to protect one's own is what was always inevitable. It was always what would be inevitable.

For a long time, Ryo thinks of home. He thinks of thick ichor, the bright flash of teeth against fur and flesh. He thinks of the rumble of inhuman roars, the sound of laughter instead. He thinks of the scent of ash, of brimstone. He thinks of the smell of convenience food grabbed in the earliest hours of the morning, the purr of music felt through his steering wheel of his father's old car. He thinks of how much he had asked of him.

Absence sets down roots in his heart, digs past muscle to bone and marrow. He breathes around its tangled edges, eyelashes fluttering against the ache it brings. ]

What if that curse, [ Ryo says, sudden and deceptively soft: ] the responsibility of what the world could become, was handed to one person?

[ Millions of miles from home, millions of miles away from his inheritance — this burden is still his. Still Akira's. ]

[lonelywar]

[Beasts ran from what they feared. Sometimes, when they could not run or when they felt they had something they needed to protect, they would face that object of their fear and bare claws, teeth, tusks, whatever could be used to defend them against something they could not anticipate either victory or loss over. Men were strange creatures. In many ways they reacted the same to what they feared as an animal might; these were the simplest situations. Others grew entranced with the power that that thing had over them, perhaps wishing to wield it themselves so that they could gain control over others. And still others more grew fascinated, as men were both blessed and cursed with the capacity to do such a thing: to seek out what was unknown, whether it was wise or foolish to do so. They sought out demons. They struck down gods.

Ryo's question is a difficult one. He knew it would be. The young man was keen, perceptive, and their conversations were never simple landscapes to navigate. His position shifts a little bit, his elbows coming to rest on his knees, back bowed as if the weight of the question itself was pressing down upon it. His brows furrow, simulating the stormcloud of his considerations.]

It is difficult to say. [His left hand crosses over to grasp his right forearm, at first perhaps in remembrance, though there's a tension there as well - as if to hold it in place.] This mark gives me great strength, for it wants something from me: to kill and destroy, as it once did, and especially the root of its corruption. Another might give in to its sway, and there would be nothing gained from it but more suffering.

[Instead Ashitaka decides to be the one that suffers, bearing the agony of the mark and keeping it leashed and caged as best to his ability. COST's intervention helped, but it was not perfect; it still snarled and snapped at the scent of violent intent, little more than a shark drawn to blood in the water.]

Regardless of who bears the curse, we all bear its effects.

[He sighs, weary, and moves yet again, this time coming to rest leaning up against Yakul's flank. The elk's eyes flicker open for a moment, taking note of him before sinking closed yet again. Ashitaka is silent for a long moment, allowing the unsettling final question to sink in, feeling it like a piece of lead in his stomach. He looks troubled, expression growing severe again; clearly the type of young man that weighs his words very carefully, for one misplaced here could perhaps end up costly.]

I would say, [he eventually begins, to answer such an impossible question,] that it would be truly a terrible thing, to rest upon one given person.

[Its existence is a mere hypothetical for him, but it is one that makes the burden of the curse written onto his body and tangled in his soul feel comparatively lighter. It only desired his own life and, barring that, whatever lives he could take before it was finally snuffed out. In the grand scheme of things, it was a small and petty grudge, one that would only ever effect Ashitaka and the people he encountered on his quest to find some way to rid himself of it.

But the entire world? Ashitaka's understanding of the world had been so small, back home - just seeing the lands beyond the territory surrounding his village had seemed like something so large he couldn't grasp it. COST had changed his perceptions, modified his perspective.

He has been silent for a few more moments.]

Beyond this, I am unsure what else I could say.

[He has always acknowledged his own limitations.]