2025-12-21: Othersuch Affairs of the Blade
- Log: Othersuch Affairs of the Blade
- Cast: Kanae Fuyuki, Shiryuu Ryouhara
- Where: Shinjuku, Tokyo
- OOC Date: 2025-12-21
- IC Date: Aug 28 2012
- Summary: No. None of us are very normal, I think.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The world is static and still, bent in strange ways not normally physically possible, with a wild, sick moon and fountains that appear all too readily to overflow with blood.
He was unusually tepid tonight, an injured man with a computer folded under his injured arm. He's gotten out of the sling, luckily, due to no longer needing to hold his hand perfectly still, but his hand is still bound in snug white linen as he less handles and more paws the black case to his side, the motion dragging up the edges of his haori until it rests in the crook of his elbow instead of hanging freely.
It didn't take much effort to fore the affair at Haruyama Memorial, even when the charge nurse was of no help to him when he politely asked for the healthcare admission records belonging to Ryouhara Kurou and their cousin, Akabane Umie. Obviously, she was resistant, even when he noted that the delivery of this information was sanctioned by the family patriarch. (He carefully did not note that he was the one who made such sanction, nor several other salient details not needed.)
Of course, she refused. APPI law forbids it.
Unfortunately, the nascent law of shihaisha supersedes the Diet's regulation for sublunary citizen, and he had been careful to make his polite request a half hour before....
...well. At least he didn't make a mess in the server room, nor did he directly steal her thinclient. That would have been pointless, anyway...
The onmitsu is careful. The entire exchange was an attempt to exercise restraint, and to conserve his power. Unfortunately, he had to. And now, further, he has to take the serve to be analyzed for the authentication to access the healthcare database. So, the onmitsu is currently walking down the street, amidst the crimson pools, in an attempt to -not- overdo it in what is supposed to be a leisurely stroll.
Ah, the shadows have a different idea of these things, unfortunately.
The onmitsu's black sword gleams obsidian grey under the stained, mad light; he's already had to cut into one or two to make his way.
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Shinjuku, a district of government and of the semi-legal: Kanae is here tonight, avoiding until the Dark hour the scrutiny of most people around. She was in a movie earlier; now, this late, she sees the coffins of those who would make a victim of her and those like her. Barkers at hostess clubs; representatives of other, less savory jobs. All in their little (big) coffins, and all away for now.
Kanae, instead, is walking the street in her gray hunter's garbs--a mage's robes under a long gray duster, without a hat. Her black hair hangs down her back; her dark skin reflects less of the light than her dark gray clothes.
But her gunblade--a ruby-edged weapon of firearm and sword both--catches the moonlight.
This place is weird. And now--
Kanae sees an injured man...
She lifts her gunblade and /fires/, taking out another of the Shadows in front of him with the ranged portion of her weapon.
"Nice sword. Weird look to be using it."
Ah. A teenager.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
Silver hair tilts as the boy catches sight of her, two different tones of brown eye fixing on the girl in the hunter's garb. Limned in an unhealthy haze where normally a red glow would illuminate, the fact that the boy is dominated by a wild, black thing is less of a concern to him than the weapon that blasts the monstrous silhouette into pieces.
A creature notices his presence at the same time as he notices her.
"This is no place to be out alone," he tells her in no uncertain terms. Her ancestry is hard to place. Is she Okinawan?
A winged thing dives for his throat -- and never manages to reach him. He never quite strikes, and never -truly- appears to move. He's just in one place, then is beneath black -- then he's stepping into the next.
"What an interesting weapon, worthy of attention from our 'shokunin,'" Ryohara observes. "Will cognitive wonders never cease.."
The fittings of his sword click lightly as he changes his hand's position, lifting the blackened blade loosely in his hand. "...but. The steelcraft of a realized idea must be twice as strong to match the idea of real steelcraft."
'Weird look to be using it.'
"....Tell me," Shiryuu proposes a question, mildly.
"Do you fancy that that lovely weapon of yours bears greater than the weight of history that rests upon this sword, Bankasoujin?"
He pays the hunting creatures seething in their periphery no real, true sum of his interest, if not his mind.
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
She is not Okinawan; looking more closely, there's a foreign cast to some of her features, the product of a mix of heritages. But he may or may not recognized Algerian-French enough to recognize the other half of her features.
But then--
No place to be out alone. "Duh," Kanae answers, but he never... moves. She tilts her head slowly, an eyebrow lifting as her mind tries to comprehend what she is seeing.
Click. "It's a pretty strong weapon," she says. "It's got the bits of a monster that reflected attacks in it."
But Shiryuu proposes a question.
Kanae quirks a smile. "Well, yeah," she says. "Mine's a lot heavier than yours. Look at it. Yours is all cool and sleek and light, and mine has a gun in it."
She seems very pleased with this answer.
She hasn't let go her weapon, though. Maybe it's because of Isabeau, but she feels more comfortable with her weapon out, in the Dark Hour...
"...Cool name," she admits. "Still not as heavy."
If the Shadows aren't attacking anymore, they aren't that important.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"A superior way of forging a weapon," Ryouhara remarks, a spark of familiarity in his tone when she reflects on the construction of her weapon. Or more appropriately... parts of it.
"Ahab would approve."
The onmitsu's sword is low, and he takes one careful step to the side, testing his new shoes -- brand new Nikes, she might notice -- against the cobble, tapping a toe against the darkened road before that single step. She might notice that the motion keeps him out of the eyeline of the evil shadow that attacked him only a second or two prior, as it turns towards him -- and finds nothing. Infuriatingly, the boy seems to be a dancing thing just barely outside of the peripheral vision, stepping first once, then hopping back as it whirls towards the sound of his voice.
It's not a unique treatment -- the boy doesn't seem to like staying in the center of an eyeline. He has the nature of birds -- always in the periphery of the eye, and only when stared at directly is actually beheld.
"An earnest nature, straightforward and without guile," Shiryuu surmises.
A shake; his sword is dripping black, and the creature hunting him is already dead. He moves fast.
"I have other business to attend to," Shiryuu points out, his eyes half-lidding. "I can't waste my 'power' here, in case it's needed."
"...but..."
Shiryuu does not at all trouble her with any more leadup. His approach is immediate. The next sound, a breath later, is going to be his sword crossing with hers. Or worse. She will see him approach. She will have warning. Just only just so.
A boy who strikes immediately at a thought, without hesitation.
AS: Block Worst! Kanae Fuyuki takes 86 Slash damage from Shiryuu Ryouhara's Shurengiri.
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Superior? "Yeah, it works for me." Pause. Ahab. "What are you, an English class?" She understood that reference.
Kanae /does/ notice his very nice shoes. She also notices that the Shadow that attached him finds... nothing. He continues to be hard to look at, and Kanae's eyes water slightly trying to keep track. Birds..
She is not so sure that she is that straightforward, but he might mean someone else. His sword drips, though. "You should get that checked out," she starts to suggest, wary as he approaches her but still sassing to make herself more comfortable.
But?
His sword comes up, and hers clashes with it. "What the--"
Steel and alloyed stone ring out, and her blade clashes long enough to make what would've been a bloody blow take a chunk of her duster instead of a chunk of her flesh. Just enough warning.
"Hey!" she calls. "That's--"
She narrows her eyes. "That's how you want it?" she says, and jumps back, wrist rolling before she puts both hands on the hilt of her weapon again. "That's how you want it? Then I'm in."
She /rushes/, slashing down for him just like he slashed up for her. "Haah--!"
Her approach is heavier; she doesn't have grace or elegance on her side, but raw power.
AS: Block Best! Shiryuu Ryouhara takes 46 Slash damage from Kanae Fuyuki's Keen Edge. Critical Hit!
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
"There's much to be known in the written legends of men about the weapons they dream," he replies easily.
The fittings of Bankasoujin rattle against the composite. Brown eyes rest on the construction of the gunblade as Bonds of Black crosses with it. Steel hisses like a riled viper, and she breaks the bind, leaping back.
Noticeably, the onmitsu is turned very slightly -- the computer he carries is still slung under one of his arms, and it's that side that turns away from Kanae, carefully keeping the equipment away from her. She'll be able to tell that his featherlight landings and the like are more for the computer's benefit than his own.
Even now, when she barrels towards him with that massive blade, the boy lowers himself into a whirling crouch, following the trajectory of her approach with one squealing (with a grimace; fuck, they're still new, that's annoying) sneaker over another to twist him away from the attack, his blade set across his shoulder to bridge and violently catch the oncoming blade, head ducked below the drop to just barely avoid having his head staved in.
A pump of the hilt tilts the black blade, moving the oncoming truck of a sword's momentum from shattering his shoulder and leaving it to slide behind him. A slice, straight down, enforces the space between them as he turns, firing off the quick cut, the flash of the blade trailing a split second laserline of light in an arc between them.
The boy is quick, efficient with that thing. His hand flips, wrist turning so his thumb is pointed out as he takes a step forward. She might realize that it's less the blade she has to worry about, but his position relative to it.
A straight-ended thrust cannons from the boy's shoulder as he follows the line of her gunblade. Is he trying to keep pressure on it to stay out of the firing line? In an instant, he chases down the line of her attack with a straight thrust aimed towards her shoulder.
It's hard to tell. Certainly, like that phoenix in Mementos hose blade was more of an oncoming freight train, this must be cognitive steel. But...
A sword never lies.
AS: Counter Neutral! Kanae Fuyuki takes 104 Pierce damage from Shiryuu Ryouhara's Menretsu.
AS: COUNTER! Shiryuu Ryouhara takes 63 Pierce damage in return for his attack!
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
The written legends of men about the weapons they dream...
Kanae does not have a quip for him this time. The gunblade's construction is smooth, mechanical; the gun mechanism is integrated into the hilt, the barrel parallel to and flush with the blade. The girl holding it should not be as strong as she is, strong enough to clash with him. But the Persona does a great deal. She notices his work with the equipment...
She isn't spiteful enough (yet) to go for it specifically to piss him off, though. Instead, the black blade tilts and the sword slashes past. The space between them is enforced; Kanae slashes down and the asphalt, the ground itself cut by the force of her blade. "Tch," the girl says. He does keep pressure on it--
"Aah--" His blade hits her shoulder, but she /tilts/ her gunblade at just the right time, despite her new injury--
And FIRES straight into the ground, the resultant explosion knocking her backward and giving her space from the boy and his blade.
From there, she hefts up the gunblade, raising it in one hand above her head. "Fine," she says, and then focuses--there is a tink of broken glass as Kanae shifts the face she shows the world.
But this will be the first Persona he sees her summon. "KINNARA!" Kanae calls out, her free hand suddenly holding a vial of golden dust. She /crushes/ it, and it shatters, sending blue light and sparkling gold all through her space. A teal horse-man appears, strumming his harp--
And healing light flashes over her injured shoulder.
"What's with you, anyway?" Kanae finally asks. "Legends? Weapons?"
"You're not just a sword enthusiast, right?"
"...No. You're not 'normal.'"
GAME: Kanae Fuyuki has assumed form 2, Kinnara!
AS: Take! Kanae Fuyuki takes 129 Recovery healing from Kanae Fuyuki's Diarama.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The exchange is a quick one, of pacing, of speed, of spacing. The grey-haired boy is fast and precise, his curiosity driving his moves more than anything else. The shadows on their periphery are certainly present; but the ones dispatched were the only ones interested. Who would really want to be reduced to little more than a prop between two true blades?
The gunblade drops to the ground, outside of his parry influence in the middle of his ruining thrust. Hand tightens on hilt --
And the explosive answer drives a wedge between them, the shockwave of the gun blast in the tight quarters taking Ryouhara off of his feet. A kick, a flip in the air keeps him from landing on his ass, alighting with a harsh breath on the ground, skidding back with newly built space between them. His lower half bears the scars of that blast, soot and sear rippling across his pants, across his middle. He can feel his wound reopen.
The onmitsu stands as she crushes that vial in the air, channeling her cognitive energy into a Persona focus. Lips press in a thin line as he raises his chin against the aquamarine visage, tilting his eyes up slightly before he returns to her.
"I am the new one, the one charged to be the 'ruler of the steel dark.'"
The blade of Bankasoujin raises slowly, flat of the blade even with the ground. At this distance, with that weapon, she could aggress against him openly, and there wouldn't be much he could do.
'You're not normal.'
"No," he confirms grimly.
"Far from it."
Then Shiryuu slits the throat of the wan light.
That black blade cuts into 'visibility,' and the throes of information are nigh immediate. The air pulses as if convulsing. Ink spills out in a great, grand wave, blooming vast and open into the congealed space. Puddles of crimson near her run cloudy black with ink, and the haunting cackle of birds that don't exist fills the air. The boy cuts into the space of 'everything,' drowning out the concept of background, of noise, of sound, suppressing it all like a black pillow laid down. The moon dies in the sky, replaced by black, and soon, there's not much more than the haunting roll of reflected light from nowhere at all.
It's hard even for a Persona user to see through the haze, to pierce through and find the importance. The only light that appears is the light cast from the self, the impossible reflection of rubies in the dark, the shining light of self. It's the only protection.
The only warning, when Shiryuu drops down on her, a whirling ghost in a grey haori, dropping onto her blade-first.
AS: Counter Neutral! Kanae Fuyuki takes 143 Slash damage from Shiryuu Ryouhara's Bankasoujin. Critical Hit!
AS: Paralyze added!
AS: COUNTER! Shiryuu Ryouhara takes 86 Slash damage in return for his attack!
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Kanae is not slow; she has the reflexes of a tennis player, and more burst force in her muscles than she has a right to possess. She slashes down, and the shadows on the periphery aren't her problem. /He/ is.
And he's off his feet, briefly. Flipping in the air, he lands, and Kanae stands with her Persona. As the boy tilts up his chin, Kanae smiles grimly. "Kinnara," she explains. "A spirit being from Hinduism. He sings praises to the gods."
A beat, "He also heals. He's good at that."
But the boy? He is the new one.
"Do you mean dark steel, or is there a steely darkness, or--"
Kanae /could/ start firing at this distance, and it might be a good idea. But she doesn't. He confirms that he is not normal. And the light dies, not fitfully but all at once.
"Wh--" Kanae feels it. The ink blooming into too-thick space, like the air around her is so much water unlit. There are birds...
Kanae can't see through it. But suddenly--there /is/ light. It is /her/ light.
Blood spatters the ground as Kanae is hit and counterattacks in the same breath, /slashing/ not-quite-blindly upward as his blade tears through her sleeve and gets at the dark flesh beneath.
"GAH!"
Then, there's another /tink/, a hammer against the glass that does not break it, as once more, Kanae shifts the face she presents towards the world. "SILKY!" she calls, and a fairy woman with green skin and hair wearing a beautiful orange dress swirls into existence.
"She cuts things," Kanae explains. "Not her original purpose--I made her this way to /prepare/."
She floats forward--and then /lashes out/, slashing with her sharp nails in a poisonous strike that leaves terrible rents in the air and the ink.
"I'm training for a war. ...I don't think it's against you. But I could be wrong."
GAME: Kanae Fuyuki has assumed form 3, Silky!
AS: Avoid Best! Shiryuu Ryouhara takes 11 Slash damage from Kanae Fuyuki's Poison Claw.
AS: Poison added!
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The whirling moments slide natural stopgaps into the conversation, the tumult, the moments of graceful, casual, vicious violence that is the testing of one hand against the other.
The natural limitation of Bankasoujin, like many ninkou, is that it cannot quell supralunar illumination -- the light of pure identity is the only beacon that can grant any succor against being completely blinded to cognitive danger, though there is nary a shadow in these lands that can pierce the shadow of the shihaisha.
His resonance was hard to pin down before, a subtle, muted thing. Now, it is nigh impossible. She makes due.
The onmitsu's renge cut is countered, the viciously fast whirling guillotine answered with a violent upswell of might. The boy only just so manages to escape being cut in half by bracing a shoe against the spine of his own blade, using the momentum of that huge response to kick off the edge, a ruby-crusted edge finding his thighline before he can flip away.
When he lands, it's with a light whirl, his haori fluttering to catch the wind before the man almost crashes, knocked onto the back foot before he can recover. It's only when he hears the crack of glass again, and she begins talking anew that the young man looks up away from the black haze to see an entirely different spotlight illuminating his dark. "!"
The flash of deep, almost blood-red pink nails cut through the air. It's too soon, too fast to completely outpace. Not as he is now, not even given the onmitsu's speed. He is almost a blur as the Persona whips her hands at him, instinctively recognizing the danger..!
Even that smallest cut, flashing unbidden through his layers of dense wool, can be deadly. He can feel his blood burn, almost immediately. Cognitive poisons can be the worst is his thinking, as he breathes hard.
A moment, a second passes, as the onmitsu get space between them, as he looks from beneath his brow at the user in the background, and the entire paradigm shift she summons. "Persona... change?" he wonders absently. Persona.. modification? He's heard of exactly one percent of this, and it beggared disbelief then, as it does now.
A sanguine moment passes, as the shihaisha breathes, taking stock of the blood soaking into his pant leg, the crimson shreds in his woolen turtleneck. It would make movement harder. "Che."
Brown eyes turn hard, dispassionate.
"In this, the blackest of dark, it is my burden to lay authority over every ounce of steel," he finally points out, pointing one fingertip from over the hilt of his sword. That blade slowly turns, flipping through his fingers easily as he spins it at his hip, the katana flipping end over end until he catches it by the blade. The spine rolls into the cradle of his fingertips, until he holds his sword just underneath the guard, lifting it up as if he were holding it in the saya still, which still hangs off of the pack at his back. His thumb presses down against the edge.
"Dominion over the forge is the heritage of my clan. I, with purest blood of all, am the only one without sin. Tell me, young one."
He cuts his thumb on the edge, drawing his own blood.
"....what war do you fight?"
His sword has already left the sheath. His Persona has always been here, just waiting his call.
Sarutahiko Okami awakens with the rattle of brass and the snap of paper in the sky, far and distant and away from the two of them, a shining mechanical kami with a staff longer and taller than a tree. A cloud of shide charms follows in that longstaff's wake, and it takes only one jab in the sky to stir the wind to howling. Black and surging through the ink-stained air, ephemeral blades of gale force pull at Shiryuu's jacket, snapping silk in the wind as the air surges through in cutting headwinds. Except the gale he conjures is not normal, not natural. It slices with every motion, every move. And where it cuts, electric music bleeds, jangling bites of flaring, glowing neon light following the stormtrail and incomprehensible bass.
Kanji spray the ground where blades of air carve, and in those scars, the intense amperage of neon-painted power thrives.
AS: Take! Kanae Fuyuki takes 0 Wind damage from Shiryuu Ryouhara's Track 4: Arashi-giri Divination. Resist!
AS: Poison added!
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Kanae's hands are not so battle-tested as the boy's, but not wholly clean of monsters, either. She has Hunted, in her time. She will yet hunt again. But resonance is not her best trait; she does not work with other Persona-users habitually, has gone it alone for some time now.
Counter. And those damnable shoes again--still nice. She actually catches /bod/ though, and when he whirls, she seems to surprise him. He recognizes the danger--but he recognizes something else, it would seem. The space between them expands, and Kanae keeps her weapon up, tilted diagonal to herself, both hands on the hilt. "I've got a few surprises in me," Kanae agrees about Persona Change. "Igor calls it the 'Wild Card'."
But the hardening of his eyes is startling itself. The blackest of dark... the Dark Hour. And his steel. He points, turning his sword, and he does a fancy trick with it to her mind; just so...
His blood spills from his hand.
"Tch," Kanae replies first, and the girl hears the Persona in the distance. "?" she vocalizes, and there is /music/. Silky's dominion is over wind, her natural inclinations towards the howling zephyrs. So the wind doesn't hurt. The music intrigues, though. The ninja gets his information. ...For the moment, at least. "Music?" she wonders.
"...Huh. Never seen that before," she admits. It's kind of cool. But, this is a serious battle, and he asked her a serious question.
"I don't know," she answers first. Then--tink! Once more.
"You really aren't normal," she adds.
"...But I just know it's coming," she says. "I'm told it will consume everything. ...Everything, if it isn't stopped."
"And so..."
Another Persona rises in a shower of blue light, cracking glass, and glittering gold dust. This one is cross-legged, dark wings rising from its back where it sits, a goat's head on feathered shoulders. In its lap is a crown; in its hands is a flame. Baphomet rises.
"I'm gonna be ready. And until then, I'm going to treat /every/ fight like it matters."
She throws forth a hand. "Come forth, power!"
A large ball of flame /erupts/ from her hand, crashing towards Shiryuu, as the shadows themselves rise to drag him down in violet violence.
...She still isn't aiming for the server. She doesn't know him well enough to spite him.
But she knows enough to be trying her best now, despite the way those lingering beats sap her strength...
Not cool, man.
GAME: Kanae Fuyuki has assumed form 4, Baphomet!
AS: Shiryuu Ryouhara spends Limit on Brace!
AS: Avoid Neutral! Shiryuu Ryouhara takes 51 Fire damage from Kanae Fuyuki's Dynamic Agilao. Resist!
AS: Haze added!
AS: Avoid Best! Shiryuu Ryouhara takes 43 Dark damage from Kanae Fuyuki's Eiha.
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
With a harsh snap, and rap of old, ancient wood, the world sounds like a grand fall of pick-up sticks as boards porcupine into existence, weathered wood stabbing out in great lazy arcs and spires piercing into the dark. At his will, each flattens, old hemp rope creaking as it cinches tight around those boards. Collectively, they form rope bridges swaying in the breeze generated by the whirlwind storm, a tumbling bassline forcing the weather into higher inclement.
HE flips his blade's hilt back into his hand. The onmitsu contractor watches her move impassively as she recovers, as his neon-painted universe threads into her every bone. His eyes, cold and brown, lower to the kanji sprayed about the girl. It would be almost impossible for anyone else to really read them -- to actually understand what it is they're saying, to keep track of the neon visualizations long enough to perceive them. But Shiryuu can, when they shift, when they move... when they change.
"Igor," Shiryuu echoes flatly, as if speaking the name of an old acquaintance he hasn't seen in ages. A Wild Card, hm..
His eyes trail down slowly, as threads of night erupt from the black to capture him, as a new Persona inspires her to launch pure flame at him. He blinks, as the threads cinch tight around his legs, as the flame descends. "..... hm."
His eye flares blue, in that last moment.
"Then... you shouldn't throw your life away so needlessly."
She can feel the heat from her own fireball. He's only by her for an instant, flanking the hunter in the space of an eyeblink, with no indicator that he'd ever moved at all, a featherlight motion leaving him to take a tiny, single leap up onto a nearby bridge, surmounting the battlefield, and its tattered shreds of black.
A still-injured hand cradles the server as the shihaisha sways on that bridge slowly, the sound of creaking rope flanging and chopping into discrete breakpoints, trickling away into a remixed sound aligning to the steady 143 BPM tempo surging through the neon underglow.
"...." A Nike raises, setting into a board on the swaying bridge as he feels the rhythm underneath him, locking in idly. The mechanical kami circles in the distance. The boy slowly raises his sword, black blade shimmering, the ink effect widening... before a sharp pang of pain registers in his off hand, the weight of that server at his hip. The boy's mouth sets in a grim line.
It's quiet, for one vertiginous moment. "....no."
He lifts his teeth to his sleeve, and plucks loose the shimmering cardboard of a card. It seems to react with a similar silhouette near the base of his kami's staff. The gohei is positioned straight in the air, as the card Shiryuu holds breaks apart into pieces. And when he spins his sword, the bass... drops.
Like cracked glass, the path before her kaleidoscopes, neon bleeding from every bassline beat as a flutter of -- feathers? -- spread through the ground beneath her. Harsh, sharp cawing breaks into the space between 'there' and 'here,' and it slowly becomes clear from the vertigo-inducing neon sound, the bridges, and the crippling black how -much- of the area the onmitsu is currently painting in his color entirely. It's starting to get hard to determine what direction is up.
"You've done well... but ... you're not my target today," Shiryuu tells her in no uncertain terms. "There are important people at the end of my path, instead." Before her, a bridge offers a slow ascent into the sky. Another leads to him, and his. There is no physical rhyme or reason to these bridges, and may simply go upside-down, for all of the rational sense they make.
"Walk away freely, with the steel that I hold in my responsibility. Practice that magnificent power of yours. And hope, one day, that you don't find that I'm your enemy.."
AS: Take! Shiryuu Ryouhara takes 0 Recovery healing from Shiryuu Ryouhara's Track 5: Bridge of Shinra.
AS: Eclipse and Regen added!
AS: Shiryuu Ryouhara spends Limit on Shock Noise! Def_Dn applied to Kanae Fuyuki!
AS: Take! Kanae Fuyuki takes 0 Almighty damage from Shiryuu Ryouhara's Illuzone.
AS: Charm and Rage added!
<Pose Tracker> Kanae Fuyuki has posed.
Rope bridges swaying in the breeze... Kanae doesn't really know what this is. She knows that she's seeing and hearing strange things. The kanji change, and she doesn't look back at them. Instead, she hears Shiryuu speak of Igor, too. And when his eye flashes blue--
"Yeah," Kanae answers about her life, "I feel the same w--"
An instant, he's by her without having moved, and then he leaps up, up, up. Or is it up? Is it down? Is it sideways? She can't... /tell/.
But rope creaks, and the sound keeps pumping. Kanae turns towards the boy, tilting her head in confusion. "No?" she starts.
Her mind races; she can't match his weirdness, but if she heals herself again, she might be able to wear him down. But then it is /quiet/, and...
Hm.
The bass drops. Feathers and paths move, move, move. She can't really tell what is where...
But he has offered her a way out. "Uh..."
Done well. "...Fair enough," Kanae says of not being his target. "You're not mine, either. "
In his responsibility? "Well, if you're gonna look out for my sword, I guess I'll make sure I do something interesting with it. But one thing..." She puts a foot on the path 'away', and turns towards... wherever he is.
"'Pure blood' doesn't impress me. It's never been anything but used against me."
"...But your music's cool. Later, stranger."
She'll walk the path offered to her, this time.
But maybe, one day again...
<Pose Tracker> Shiryuu Ryouhara has posed.
The bridge is long, but as long as she enjoys Shiryuu's protection, it's safe. There, at the far side, the shihaisha watches her go, a picture of silence. There is a thousand layers of lies between the two, but enough of the real remains that her words can carry.
Certainly, the one so grandly calling himself the 'ruler of the steel dark' would have something more to say? No... not at all. He just shifts the bundle underneath his arm, still safe. If he'd overdone it..
The boy's face screws up, after the girl is gone. His music is cool. "Thanks... I think," he remarks to no one in particular.
But that last little note, about pure blood being used as a weapon, sticks in the back of the onmitsu contractor's mind.
The curve of Bankasoujin rests in the crook of his arm as he presses a hand to his face, rubbing it. He really does have a deathgrip on that server. 'It's never been anything but used against me.'
"...yeah," he says, still talking to no one.
"Me too.."