2026-03-06: Shades of White
- Cutscene: Shades of White
- Cast: Shiryuu Ryouhara
- Where: The Morimoto Sanitarium Atop Mt. Katatsumuri
- OOC Date: 2026-03-06
- IC Date: Oct 6th, 2012
- Summary: Shirogarasu, with his attendants, also ascended the mountain during that tumultuous time. He sentthem away, before proceeding onward alone. He is not a creature accustomed to standing idly by.
His shadow casts long against the halls of the sanitarium.
The movements of the Taiwanese had drawn him out, but as expected, the attack did not go well. But that's not a concern for him. The flash of the black blade is swift, merciless, with no quarter given or consideration to the souls that once inhabited the flesh.
But these beasts-once-men are so very noxious, and they are so very undeserving of his steel. The scent of rot pollutes every corner, the intense scent of both filth and kegare causing both his sinuses and his eye to ache. A tiny sniff as a body joins the pile, the shihaisha's white silk sleeve raising over his nose and mouth as he turns derisive eyes upon the carnage, the blood in the halls, the empty eyes, the cyanotic skin.
"Ugh." the boy is fastidious, as he wipes off his sword with a cloth, not even wanting one droplet of the inimitable, unbearable stench to cling. The door ahead is the slightest bit ajar, and he knows that somewhere ahead are several groups of children going all the way into the maw of a place that may as well be Hell.
Even now, the onmitsu can feel the trickle of sensory Resonance, pawing at the fine edges of his own. They were skilled, he recognizes, and moving across those searchlight rays wouldn't have been possible for most.
Yet, they do not have his consent, and as long as they don't...
Fingertips dripping with ink close over the open candleflame, quelling the glow and painting the entire candle black, cutting open the way with unheard, unfelt resonance darker than the new moon. It is as if the shihaisha never existed.
Even despite everything, he still had a 'task' to complete, here.
Neither demons nor monsters nor men impede the boy as he walks the halls in the wake of those children. Those bodies, the rotting heaps, bear little fascination by the shihaisha, his silent step treading past open cells and miserable environs.
It was easier than seeing their blood in imagined grass. "Is this... the fate of all dead," he wonders. To be piled high like trash?
No, there were survivors, he realizes, and they are not alone.
He spends a long time watching them from afar, from just around every corner, a whisper behind a door, an extra bit of shadow inside of a room. The children ought not see him until he consents -- if he ever does. It wasn't part of his 'mission' to hurt them. And therefore...
Instead, he allows the menace to settle into his bones.
The onmitsu appears silently in room #303, exactly according to his intelligence. The mission...
Shiryuu's eyes trace over the clippings and scrawls of 'that madman' until every part of his lost years hurt, like a phantom limb. That chant ... it burns as familiar to him, and the menace everywhere is clear. It reawakens a primal fear, bile rising in the back of his throat.
"...it is the duty of those who are strong," he reflects quietly, taking a single photo from the wall to tuck into his haori, "... to be the bulwark for those who can't be..."
There, in the baleful furnace of that malevolent resonance, the boy crouches, sighing quietly as he sets his sword across his knees. He hears the distant sound of children, trying to remain strong despite the madness. Slowly, he reaches into nowhere, and draws out a single card that spins into the conjured wind and becomes nothing.
The illusion of a white crow with ice blue eyes flickers into view before him. His left eye glows that same bright blue as he folds his arms over his knees, cradling his black blade as he takes up his sleeves to keep them off the ground. He breathes in, forcing the quiver from his voice.
He dictates thus to the crow:
"You are far braver than you know. You are stronger than you know. Despite everything, you've come so far. And ... even if everything goes wrong ... we should be the ones to shepherd this generation into the shining future."
"Show everyone know how proud the future will be of them. Of you."
By the time anyone hears him, by the time anyone feels his illusory crow take flight in the halls, the Shirogarasu is already gone away, to the rest of his mission.