awashlogs | Event Eleven.

Entry tags:

Event Eleven.

"Four ducks on a pond,
A grass-bank beyond,
A blue sky of spring,
White clouds on the wing;
What a little thing
To remember for years --
To remember with tears!"

he day is normal. It's a bit chillier than it's been, the nip of fall in the air, but as the new people in the Town settle in... things have gotten peaceful.

And yet. When everyone goes out to greet their neighbors, to hug their friends, to shake hands or make eye contact or who knows what -- they'll realize very, very quickly that nothing about today is normal at all, actually.

Hopefully nobody minds a little extra sharing today.

Welcome to Awash's eleventh event log, everyone! Further information on this event can be found here at the OOC post.

You are welcome to start your own posts or logs for this event as well. If there are any questions, please ask them here. Thank you!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

You thought you'd share memories with a pendant?

[He's trying to understand this, he really is. In the meantime, he extends his hand to Reim, if he'd like help standing up again.]

Yes. [Thank you, Guren, for saying the obvious weird thing out loud. Reim hesitates before gingerly reaching up to take his hand, just in case... but when the memory thing doesn't happen, he takes it more certainly to get back up.

So, anyway, this is fun.]

I suppose it wouldn't work, considering I've had it for such a long time...

[He's spared! Guren pulls him up and then lets him go, watching him to make sure that he still has his balance. Passing out like that...? Was it from the memory, or that weird pendant?]

You probably have to do it with someone living. More than that, with someone assigned a color. I assume it has to do with restoring the color to this place, like everything else.

Why would you want to cause them, though?

[Hmm, is this a lecture? Could it be this is what getting a lecture feels like? It's somewhat comparable... Reim dusts himself off with a hum, not disputing anything Guren says. Yeah, that all tracks.]

To see definitively how it works. [duh] If the necessary factors— for example, the "color" assignment— have any bearing on the memory type, or content, and so on. Understanding something like this goes beyond simply knowing the causes.

[It is approaching a lecture, but not quite there. He'll be spared, because... Guren can see the logic in that. It's crazy and weird, but, it makes sense?]

I guess. Are your memories all things you're fine with sharing, even to strangers?

[Thanks for supporting his turbonerd ways. Reim's eyebrows go up, considering - are they going to talk about how he got mauled, because that's up there in his list of most dramatically uncomfortable memories. Hmm.]

That's a risk I have to be willing to take in order to make any progress. Call it... a gamble.

[Honestly... a gamble. Well, it's not like Guren is hiding away from all of this either, but—]

Then you probably had "people asking me questions about my memories" as part of your gamble, right? So what was up with that?

[What was he doing that got him MAULED when he's such a secretary? He normally doesn't ask directly, but Reim brought this on himself.]

[He's making a wager!! He learned this particular bad decisions lifestyle from his spare dad, so please blame all decisions on Duke Barma. Now then, how much can he actually say about... this.]

Well, I have an eccentric social circle.

[audience laughs]

She and I had a bit of a miscommunication surrounding how beneficial it would be for her to kill a very good friend of mine, and as you already know how useful I am in any kind of physical altercation, [he gestures at his own head, now] you can see how that went.

And you just call that "eccentric?"

[A nice way of putting that he runs with crazy troublemakers!! Not like Guren can talk. He laughs, as short as it is.]

Are you really okay now? Is it healing steady? Any other wounds you need treating?

Hmm.

[He knows what they're like!! No need to discuss his dramatic plans to adopt that crazy child as soon as he can find her again, no sir.]

All of a sudden, you say that with such concern... [don't mom him, little boy, he'll have to be endeared] I am-- sore, but functional. I'm alright.

There's stuff to help with that, too. If you'd just—

[Stop being stubborn and go see a weird healer, is what he wants to say, but as he reaches to touch Reim's shoulder carefully, another memory springs up.

It's the middle of the night, and Guren is considerably younger. A teenager, wearing night vision goggles, in full uniform, watching men in suits from a distance. They all appear to be waiting for something, but out of nowhere, they begin yelling and fall into what Guren's thoughts recognize as a battle formation. Now, Guren is thinking to himself that he and his ally in the tree beside him might have been spotted, but that quickly is proven wrong. Something comes out from the shadows in an instant and flies towards the men. Chains sprout from one of their bodies, clearly altered and unnatural, but it's not enough to stop the attacker from simply plucking his head off. One by one, they're taken out...

Guren recognizes the creature as a vampire. They're so far away that he doubts that they're seen— at least until she turns and looks straight at them. "Guren!" Shinya yells out from beside him, but Guren is moving the second he realizes.

"I see her!" He leaps from the tree, and once he's on the ground, decides that his goggles are blocking his peripheral vision too much. He tosses them aside, running as fast as he can to his motorcycle. Pulling the key from his pocket, he jumps onto it, shoves the key in and starts it, but the vampire jumps out ahead. Guren tries to drive full force into her, but she grabs his front tire so hard that her claws pierce the wheel. Guren falls back and off of it, drawing his katana and swinging at her, but she dodges every strike so easily. Then, she lifted up the motorcycle high and threw it at him.

There's nowhere to go! I'm going to die—

"Guren, give me your hand!" But there's Shinya, and Guren flings his arm out blindly in the direction of the voice. He's dragged along behind Shinya's motorcycle for a bit, kicking a few times before he's able to hop onto the seat behind him, facing the wrong way. Guren tries throwing a bunch of paper tags at the ground to slow the vampire down, and they explode as intended and even set her leg on fire, but she regenerates faster than they can do any damage. She doesn't even try to put it out, chasing them down.

"I think she's going to catch up to us." Guren calls over his shoulder.

"You're kidding! We're going almost fifty miles per hour..."

"Here she comes!" The vampire jumps to launch herself at them, but with them going at 65 mph, she's not as lightning quick as she would have been with them staying still. Guren's thoughts are pure analysis. If he can ward off the first attack, they might be able to get away. If she hit the ground, she'd have to make another jump, and that would cause her to lose some momentum. One blow was all he had to evade.

So, as the vampire stretches her hand out to him, he swings his blade at her. She tries to catch it, and he knows he has to avoid her claws and carry the swing through, not let her catch it, or they'd both die.

"Eat metal!" He arced the blade down hard, the vampire misses grabbing for it, and he cleaves her arm straight off. "I got her! Go, Shinya, go!" Shinya yells back that he's going, and Guren watches as the vampire stops, staring at her severed arm like she isn't even bothered. She's no longer chasing them. Guren is still holding onto Shinya's shoulder, and turns to look ahead. They're speeding along, there's a red traffic light, but they speed into the intersection anyway. A truck was pulling out to make a right turn, a taxi was blocking the other lane— Guren turns completely and hugs Shinya's body with his left arm. The bike's side mirror hits the truck, breaks off, and Guren uses the sword to block his eyes, but the thing still strikes his forehead and slices it open.

From there, the two banter that they need to slow down or they'll be arrested. Shinya argues that they might be anyway, since they're two boys without helmets on a motorcycle wielding blades, and they laugh about it, but eventually they do slow down and come to a stop. When Shinya points out Guren's bleeding forehead, his thoughts spike in a different direction. He's worried about his blood being cursed, thinking of how it had turned a woman's arm into a monster when she'd injected herself with it, and how he didn't know how much could cause that problem. Shinya could be in danger. His blood might be a danger. So he swats away Shinya's helping hand and persistence, holding a piece of gauze against it himself.

"Quit being such a tough guy. If you don't bandage it properly it'll scar."

"Will it? Your concern is appreciated."

"No man's gonna wanna marry you if you've got scars all over your face."

"Haha, very funny. Just shut up, already."

"Hah..." The memory ends there, with both of the boys finally taking deep breaths to let the tension out. That was a close call.]

[Oh-- alright. Well, at least Reim doesn't wobble and black out this time. He understands barely any of this memory, if only because there are so many things in it he's never seen in his life - night vision goggles? Motorcycles? It's like having a bunch of new words dumped into his vocabulary with two seconds of context, because Guren understood them in the memory, and boy.

He is not going to spiral away into wondering how that works, or what kind of dangerous psychopath invented the motorcycle, a terrible and frightening machine.

Instead, he blinks a few times before looking at Guren, eyebrows lightly raised. He'll address some of that insanity in a moment if Guren doesn't forcibly change the subject, buuut first--]

Hypocrisy is unbecoming, you know.

[let him scar in Peace]

Shut up. You heard my thoughts; I had a perfectly good reason to refuse help.

[He doesn't always, but details. He puts his hands on his hips, glancing at Reim's face with a small frown.]

Anyway, I didn't scar. Guess you won't be a good wife, now.

Hmm.

[Hypocrite!! Now he knows for sure! You can practically see the Telltale "Reim will remember this" pop up in the corner of the frame above his head from the way he just looks at Guren for a second. Sure, okay, hypocrite boy.]

I will never understand the obsession the people here have with instantaneous healing. [He's seen that kind of thing at work, when he shot someone in the head and she got back up, and it was somewhat stressful, so if everyone would please pardon him for keeping his distance from strange magic...!!] A scar or two doesn't bother me.

Not everyone's a masochist like you.

[Said with a twitch of his lips into a smirk. More hypocrisy, but shh.] They don't want to hurt, and they don't want the people who care about them to worry.

For me... it just happens automatically. [His hand curls over the pommel of his blade.] There are others like that here, too.

I imagine that kind of thing invites more recklessness, rather than more caution.

[You know, because why be careful if you can heal yourself instantly!! He's thinking again of his darling little girl, who may have had the value of her life warped by the fact that it's hard to actually make end.

But,] Not that it's my place to say anything, that is.

I don't want to hear anything from the bookworm who somehow got into a situation that got him mauled.

[Bookworm...]

Did I say something? If you'd like to share something with me, I'd be happy to listen.

[Sensitive!! yeah he is a bookworm though, good eye, but who says bookworm.]

Shut up, or I'll smack those glasses right off your smug face.

[He says, huffing and doing absolutely nothing of the sort. He does take a step away, though, back turned on Reim as he considers this all.]

You haven't explained what that pendant is, anyway. You were holding it with more purpose than just some trinket.

[Truly, this is the natural state of the tsundere...]

I wanted to see if it would share a memory with me. You could call it a medium for the contract I have with... another being.

[It's not something weird, like, a demon or something, but it's still a fucking bunny and he doesn't want to just call it that.]

[Something about that interests him, since he turns immediately to look back at Reim again.]

What kind of contract?

[That's not suspicious at all, Guren. Reim looks at him, then tugs the chain of his pendant to hold it up again. Behold... it's red.]

Not one with a tidy signature. As long as I take care of this seal, the two of us are bonded, more or less.

I have a contract with something, too. In this sword.

[His hand covers the pommel now, even if his eyes stay on the pendant.]

A demon. What kind of being is yours? And what do each of you get out of it?

[demons are fake]

Well, it's called a Chain, but I suppose a "spirit" would be the closest comparison. It's— frankly, mine is more of a companion than anything else, but most of them have some kind of combat ability.

[He's a bookworm, Guren, he doesn't fight!! He just hangs out with this bunny, very fun.]

[BOOKWORM... But Guren is the ridiculously observant type, so thinking back on that scene—]

And yours just has some sort of ability that got you out of that situation alive. Right? [Defensive, illusionary, something like that?] Most contracts go two ways. What does the Chain get out of this?

Event Eleven.

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)

(no subject)