01 - Week 4 (November)

[hongtian]

[ The Murmur flares to life with the sensation of flint and steel, sparks catching on dry tinder that leaps rather than eases its way into existence. Ruhong does not hesitate: there is a point to this, and she does not much like riding the waves of a connection that she does not control. ]

I have news of One, and an important warning to go along with it.

What has happened this month cannot be allowed to repeat itself—not in any form. Not just for our own lives or for the world here, but for the very places we call our homes.

Our gracious host may choose to listen, or She may not, but I will be waiting to speak of it near the fountain terrace in the park should you wish to know more. The crucial thing is this: She cannot be allowed to have him. And we must find the other numbers before it is too late.

[ She will respond to questions, but she will also be waiting as promised at the location she mentioned in Central Park. Her presence reduces to the low embers of a dying fire, but it does not fade. ]

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[hongtian]

[ She peers at it, then pulls back, then looks closer. Even if she hadn't spent plenty of time staring at One's blood on the altar not long ago, Ruhong has both bled and spilled enough of it herself that the sight evokes more curiosity within her than disgust. ]

I believe I understand now why Sleep might want this.

[ She looks back up to his face, and there's something searching there in her own expression, a scrutiny that she doesn't bother to hide. ]

But what about you? Will you simply keep it to deny her? Or is there something else you want with it?

[hallowedly]

( To deny her, as if Sleep's a child, and he her bully, and here they lie, bloodying the schoolyard. As if it is not she who instigated a war he would be woefully remiss not to finish.

His gaze lingers long and leaden and horribly impractically dead on the porcelain of her cheek, that pretty, thin neck. Such a thing to snap, how accidents happen. )

I'm afraid someone abusing divinity for personal gain conflicts with my professional obligations. ( A beat. ) It can't be helped.

[hongtian]

[ She places her palms on the cool stone of the fountain's edge behind her and leans, patiently waiting for him to answer while she studies him in turn. Despite it being a futile effort—her mask at her hip, her magic locked away, the Murmur not bound and tethered between them—Ruhong half believes that she just might reach his thoughts if she really tries. The air between them shimmers like a heatwave, warming briefly around him, but—of course it is not that easy. ]

And veterinarians have always been responsible for the conflicts among man and gods, have they?

[ Lightly, wryly, but not exactly accusingly. She fiddles with the thin chain around her neck, feels the cool stone pendant symbol of her faith against her skin. ]

It is more of a personal obligation, for me.

[hallowedly]

( He's tired, so very tired and gaunt and hunched down by this war of attrition where Sleep suckles like a revenant at resources purgatory has never quite replenished for him. His head hangs, hands crossed at the wrist where the balustrade divides the haves and have-nots of lush shrubbery and gravel.

His cigarette drips down, each mote worth a shaving of gold. )

Because you're in love with One? Or the notion of him. Or the idea of freedom. ( Shut up. Really. These are the moments when genial veterinarian Sakurazuka Seishirou might wish to — ) You're in love with something. Women always are.

( But is so tired. Bargains another half-hearted drag of his cigarette, belatedly. )

Just speak plainly.

[hongtian]

[ If he is looking to get a reaction out of her, he is successful. If he isn't, he gets one anyway. It's a near thing, too: she is ready to brush it off, the suggestion that she is in love with One, and he is not entirely wrong that the notion of One or the thought of freedom are easy ideals in her mind. She could have moved past that. It's the follow up that does it.

You're in love with something. Women always are.

Just like that, a snap. Her anger, always tightly controlled until it isn't. She doesn't lunge at him—but she nearly does, and the look she gives him is full of flame. ]

As plainly as you? [ She nearly spits this at him, their momentary peace now broken. She understands this immediately, yet she cannot now hold herself back. ] Do not speak to me of what I love. I swore an oath: to sever the bridges between the realm of nightmares and the realms of mortals, to fight for peace and balance no matter the cost. To be a light. This will end for me either when she dies or I do first; there is no other way for me.

[hallowedly]

( Sentiment, outburst, a supernova of indignation. If his head weren't on the cusp of collapse, ache spreading malignantly, he might point out she's the light casting an incandescently bright shadow, looming over him.

A few more puffs, candid. Then, he returns the handkerchief carefully in his breast pocket's arsenal. )

All right, then. ( Plain, collegial. Golden star for team unity and collaboration. Project management at its finest. ) How are you killing her?

( Since he's following the leader on this one. )

[hongtian]

[ Ah. Well. She was hoping he wouldn't ask that.

Just like that she deflates again, her fury as quick to dissipate as it was to rise. Ruhong sinks back, shoulders drooping, and crosses her arms over her chest as she looks away from him. ]

I have... theories. [ Much of the basis of her religion, after all. ] For now, I will focus on what may weaken her. But I will find a way. I must.

[hallowedly]

( ...theories. How wonderful. Questions, accusations, daggers of well-sharpened glares, a predictably mean set of repartees. And no solutions.

Well, don't let Seishirou's increasingly loud incredulity stop this wonderful, futile venture. At least his cigarette's cooperating to surrender a few more puffs. In between them, finally rescuing himself long enough from bonelessness to lift himself, elbows supported on the rail: )

Let's aim smaller and accomplish more. She wants all of One. I have a piece. To hear Ironeye, there are a handful of others. ( At the very least, three more. ) We'll have to ensure she can't absorb them, either wholly or at all. Choose one of them to look after.

[hongtian]

[ She is a finely-sharpened sword by design, after all: eager to kill, quick to strike, but better suited for a bloody and violent clash with any target than deciding who the target should be—and how to reach it.

She knows her deficiencies, even if she is ever loathe to admit them.

Seishirou has, Ruhong must admit, a solid plan. As much as she would like to do so, she cannot argue with the logic. She does, however, watch him settle back against the railing, his last few puffs of smoke curling away into the winter air. ]

As we search for the pieces of his fallen friends to make them once more whole and hale, we scatter him amongst us for his own protection—and ours.

[ She says this without any hint of umbrage at the idea: merely resignation. Ruhong examines the irony of it, whether he intended it to be taken that way or not, and then narrows her eyes at Seishirou. ]

What will you do if she comes for yours?

[hallowedly]

( He breathes at her largesse, in and out and in and out and faster, faster. Devil's in the fine print of their invisibly inked arrangement. He doesn't ask if Sleep even signed on the bottom line.

There are worse yokes than corporate resurrection.

In the end, his cigarette concedes first, a finite resource amid infinite question marks. He lets the ashes drip, the stick waltz down. Pulls himself away to look her, two knives considering how to inhabit the space between the same mark's ribs. )

What men have always done: learn to kill monsters.

[hongtian]

What men have always done. What women have always done.

[ She tilts her head back, looking at the trees behind him, at the cloudy grey of the winter sky above as she considers this statement. Frankly, she is uncertain if she takes offense or not; there is a dryness in her voice that is somewhere between dismissive and amused. ]

What do you know of killing monsters and gods?

[hallowedly]

Absolutely nothing of value.

( And everything of unusable precedent and inapplicable knowledge. They've a treasury of granular understanding of the distant occult at his fingertips, and not an inkling, an opportunity, a thought to use it.

How delightfully typical. How he smiles through it, at once predatory and serene, like every corporate worker entrapped in courtesy, who will take bitter pleasure in his eventual malicious compliance. )

But it's not so different, is it? Learning where bellies are soft. ( Plunging a knife in and in and in, and twisting. ) You're about to tell me there's an art to it, are you?

[hongtian]

Of course I am. Of course there is an art to it.

[ There is no hesitation in her response, and for a moment the air around her flickers and shimmers in heat as she imagines it: the feeling of her sword slicing neatly through sinew and bone, the splatter of blood, the taste of it on her lips. ]

Simply knowing where to stab will get the job done, though, and that is the most important art of it—a knife in the gut will still kill. The trick is not getting stabbed back.

[ She looks back at him, sharp-eyed and trying, with all her might, to understand what thoughts run just behind his eyes. There is more to him than she had first thought, she has realized; but what that more is, precisely, Ruhong is no clearer than ever. ]

Do you think you can avoid that? The strikes of a god?

[hallowedly]

( Chills, bloodlust, cigarette ashes. A slate-skied afternoon bleeding into evening long, Seishirou's eyes stinging with the saturated, rich want of it all. Does he think he can avoid that?

He watches her petulantly, biding his time, wasting her own. Holds out his hand in silent, pale invitation, because a woman scorned is still a woman due her courtesies, and his mother (never) raised a gentleman. )

I don't lie. ( Not often, and mostly by omission. The world has its way of filling gaps innocently, in ways mundane. He does not fight it. ) Why should I start now? It's untested. I might. I might not.

[hongtian]

[ She looks at his hand, and maybe she was just looking for a reason to provoke someone. Maybe she's just bored; maybe it's stress. Maybe that creature inside her soul is stirring, restless, desperate to make itself known.

This is where she should count to seven and pace her breaths, still the flow of her river of energy. Regain control of herself, project a confident and collected demeanor. Ruhong does not. She draws her sword.

It's an old thing, lifted from a museum display and pitted with the passing of time despite her best attempts at sharpening it. Certainly no magical item like the armory she's used to having stashed on her hip. But it's the next best thing, and she tilts her head at him with it extended before her, steady and even. ]

Test it, then. Perhaps I can give you tips. If you've a chance of dodging Her, surely you can dodge me.

[hallowedly]

( Well, then. Let this be the last time he lets etiquette dictate that he should kiss a woman's hand. No, no, certain gestures of performance should only be devoted to one's beautiful wife.

Others seem intent on rewarding them petulantly, with blood and steel, and though Seishirou recovers the dregs of decency not to withdraw himself, he spares a heartbeat to take the measure of her pose, the blade's balance. Both, he supposes, would strike.

None would fail.

Two fingers climb the sword's tip, tap it in a clean, patient arc. )

Only moments ago, you thought I needed medical attention. ( And now she'd deepen his wounds, whatever his wounds. For shame. ) You're not my enemy. Don't become it.

[hongtian]

[ Even Ruhong is uncertain whether she is disappointed that he did not take the bait, though she must be disappointed at least a little, for there are few better ways of understanding a person than by crossing blades (metaphorical or otherwise) with them. A pause, a silence—what would he do if she struck anyway?—but he speaks first, and only a moment passes again before she clicks her tongue against the roof of her mouth and lowers her sword. ]

I know my sword well enough to ensure I do not truly harm you, [ is what she says with only a semblance of petulance, and she means it—

—but sometimes, her subconscious whispers, what she doesn't know well enough is herself. It's hubris to think she might understand someone else first.

Ruhong breathes in and sheathes her sword. ]

I am not trying to make you one. Forgive me.

[ And so, she knows, she finds herself apologizing to him yet again.

She is going to have to work harder on her control. ]

[hallowedly]

( De-escalation, a storm undone. Survival belongs to the smoothest tongue. He would congratulate himself, if diplomacy didn't itch like a sickness, like failure sprawling. In his mouth, his tongue feels slack.

His fingers glide off the sword, and in their wake the fantasy of cherry blossom petals, illusionary, rains down in soft deluge. A gift, superfluous. )

Phew. ( And another: the most bashful, ill contained smile. ) For a moment, I thought I was done for.

[hongtian]

[ It is an excellent distraction. She has always been a lover of beautiful things—evidenced, among many other things, in the way she paints her lips and decorates her face, wears jewels in her hair—and the illusory petals are not only beautiful but familiar. Her grandmother's tree: full bloom at the top of the hill in the center of their village, plum blossoms just as pink as the cherry that seems to rain about her now, and for a split second Ruhong is nine years old and staring up at a memory that she will never relive.

The spell breaks. The petals fade. Her eyes are too bright. ]

I would not have...

[ She begins to repeat her reassurance (perhaps for herself as much as for him) but trails off, still staring where the illusion had been. ]

Was that your magic?

[hallowedly]

( Sound, weight, tactility. Novice illusionists always lead with confusing sight, overrely on visuals. Appearance sketches out the wares; movement sells them. He isn't satisfied until whatever scarcity of petals was summoned disperse in a perfectly agreeable, gravity-miming whirlwind.

No blink-and-miss-it disappearance, no blunt vanishing act. Nature, pulling back into itself, reality absorbing. There's an art to these things.

And he's a butcher, gaze steeled, something piqued. )

No. Not magic. Mine. ( A difference: not ability, birthright. Plebeians always mistake it. ) That was mine.

( Before it was Sleep's, independent of her. )

[hongtian]

[ Her favorite word, spoken with all the right sort of conviction. By the time this conversation finishes she may well have experienced the full range of human emotion: from uncertainty to provocation to surprise to grief and now, here, with—admiration.

She understands the difference. As the petals fade and her memories with it, the creature that is half her soul hisses an approving echo. Mine.

And—a smile. Like something has flipped a switch inside her as the hunger takes over, sees strength and steel and someone who knows what it is to possess. ]

It was beautiful. [ Honest and human, then less so again. ] Sleep will learn what it means to covet something that was never Hers to take. How far are its limits?

[hallowedly]

( ...ah. There. She thinks she's won an ally against her nemesis. The enemy of my enemy —

Is still the Sakurazukamori, marionette and master, smile thin, receding. Every tide pulls back. )

Let's keep our minds on matter. ( There's no energy, no time for a haphazard revolution. ) There are others, beyond One. If she was — displeased with... debris removed from him, she'll be hindered if she can't enjoy the others wholly. I'm willing to cooperate toward getting those samples.

( And little past that point. )