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GRAVEYARD 2.0
GRAVEYARD Well, that sucked. But no matter what your death was like—whether it was something peaceful or traumatic, you'll find yourself waking in a completely white room on the floor. Small and empty, there isn't anything else there besides an open door to walk through. But before you do that, you'll probably notice that whatever injuries you may have had, including whatever may have been the death blow, are now gone. That's exciting. Stepping out of the room, it seems that you're in a large... house? with three different floors. Everything from floor, ceiling to furniture is completely white, except for the drawings that are plastered to the walls in each room. These are all colorful, drawn in colored pencils and crayon, and resemble a child's drawing. The other notable thing are the windows. While they're present all around the building, looking out of them only shows TV static. Besides that, everything is furnished with the absolute bare minimum of each room. The first floor is all typical common areas one would find in a house. There's a kitchen, living room area, laundry room, dining room, and a main hallway where the stairs are. There are also helpful drawings in these rooms that show the rooms much more lavishly decorated than they actually are. There's a door that appears to be the way to exit the building, it's locked. The second floor consists of nothing but twenty bedrooms. Each room has one queen sized bed, an empty dresser, and an attached bathroom with only a sink, toilet, and shower. Like the first floor, each bedroom has drawn pictures that show it looking much more lavish than it actually does. Thanks for nothing, artist! The third floor only has two rooms. One appears to be a home office with nothing but a desk and two chairs, one behind it and one in front of it. While there's blank pieces of paper and crayons on the desk, the note that was previously there is gone. The other room is much larger, and it's completely empty save for the many drawings lining its walls— in fact, the walls are covered in them, much more than in any other room. On closer inspection, though, it seems like these aren't actually drawings? The papers seem to be showing scenes from the living area. Everything from inside the hotel to the areas beyond the bridge are visible here. However, when curfew hits on Thursday nights, they revert to being normal drawings! Except for the fact that they're all drawings of stick figures being murdered in various ways. Well. At least there's plenty of things to draw with, if you get bored. Also, a handy link to the previous post. |
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But the people he faces are his family. He only has eyes and ears for his mother, both his mom and dad, Kido and Seto too, Ayano...
His parents blame him for their deaths. Ayano asks him why he didn't save her. Kido tears into him the most viciously, never one to hold back on her words- or her fist, which slams into his stomach hard enough for a wave of nausea to pass over him. Seto doesn't even look at him, says he's ashamed, and somehow that hurts even worse.
Kano stands there and takes it. None of this is new, there is nothing he hasn't heard before, hasn't imagined being said by the very people standing before him now.
So what? Nobody hates him more than he hates himself, and that is something he can always take comfort it. ]
So what... I'm stupid, useless, defective... but I'm trying. I'm doing what I can with what I have.
cw: suicidal ideation and the like probably for a little bit
If he's trying, then what was he doing? Did he even try, when Ayano flung herself into the mouth of the beast? Did he even try, when Cater's killer walked free? When Elsa was attacked, when Izumo lost loved one after loved one, when Swan had to vanish into the depths of a portal that she might never emerge from.
Where was he? What was he doing? Who is he even kidding???
Why couldn't he just give up and vanish?
...
Windom watches on, silent.]
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He's so tired.
Nothing ever comes out of his efforts. He tries so hard, burns himself out, works from the shadows late into the night and for what?
What's the point?
He's a burden to everybody around him, all he does is cause trouble, not a single good comes out of his being alive—-
but that's a lie too, isn't it? If he really believed that, he would have taken his own life when he was six, having lost his mother, his world, his entire reason for being. He chose to live, so the neighbors would not talk about his mother being murdered and her young child's suicide, he would not make her a point of gossip, he would not have her memory tarnished by slander. He would have taken his life when he was twelve, when his mom died and the happiness he'd thought he'd finally attained was irreparably shattered. But he'd chose to live, because his siblings had already lost so much, and back then- back when he was younger, more foolish, more hopeful- he did not want to give them any more reason to grieve. He did not want to be reason his siblings stopped smiling. He would have taken his life when he was fifteen, when he lost his sister, when his heart was torn to shreds and there was nothing left, no love no hope no time to grieve before the snake laid down its terms.
It's funny, in a way. The guillotine hangs over his head day by day but it's because of the snake that he's still alive, why he can think these thoughts and still smile, just a little, and hang on.
It's because he exists, that his siblings are allowed to. No matter how terrible and unforgiveable a monster he is, his existence means his family is safe for one more day. For him, that's enough. He lives to give them one more day. They're the reason he's alive, as he is to them. He never doubts this. ]
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Windom's voice echoes.
You know there are falsehoods, and yet you let them persist. You allow a mountain to loom over these that you care about rather than dealing with the pebbles as they fall.
You may not have both truth and falsehoods in your heart, Magic Knight. Vulnerability will cause suffering. Conviction will cause suffering. Inaction will cause suffering.
Rid the compassion from your heart, Magic Knight, and fight back, before you truly empty out to nothing.
It's a test. And he needs to provide an answer.]
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I will not. I will hold the mountain upon my shoulders, and suffer so they don't have to. That compassion is all I have. I will not throw it away.
[ His lies stem from kindness, his actions are to protect. The weakness and the contradiction is what makes him him. They are not things he can let go of, because if he does, he will truly then be nothing.
If he fails this test, he does not care. If this world falls apart, it does not matter. It is not his world. This is not his life. His love is for his brother and sister back in Kashiwa, for Seto wandering the streets trying to find him because he's late coming home, for Kido at the stove keeping a pot of curry warm in case he comes home. And he's going to go home to them. He does not need to die here, nor stay here and save a world which is not real. ]
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Time warps.
He's back with his siblings. Both are fussing over him, asking where he's been. In front of them stands the robots, with a third joining them. It has no weapon, and Kano will find that his bow has vanished entirely.
As soon as Kano has regained clarity, the three of them are swallowed up in light, reappearing in what feels like a bubble of protection, now hovering many feet off the ground. They can all still see one another and interact as normal, but they will have an inherent knowledge that they are now inside their Mashin.
They have only one objective left. To storm the castle, find the Pillar, save them, and thus save this husk of a world.
Then they can go home.]
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Kano takes extra special care to damage the castle itself as much as he can because fuck that, while Kido charges straight ahead and has to be gently redirected by Seto who is good at keeping his eyes and ears out for where to go and how best to do it. ]
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For being a place for someone that was supposed to have something guarding them or something that had captured them against their will, this castle seems completely empty. For a brief moment, Kano's mind flickers elsewhere - to a fight outside this same castle, to a man who refused to give the Pillar away to the Knights, who demanded to know why the Pillar needed to pray only for Cefiro, before being cut down and destroyed on those very same steps.
...
They're in what appears to be an audience hall, a round glass floor surrounded by waterfalls, open to the sky.
The Pillar is trapped here somewhere, right? So... where are they?]
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Hey, Seto. I know you don't like to, but maybe you could do the thing?
[ The mind reading thing, he means, to see if Seto can pick up on any thoughts floating around that aren't his or Kido's. But Seto is also water and if he takes it to meaning parting the waterfalls to peek at what might behind there, that works too. ]
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All three of them immediately black out.
...
Kano will awaken, his mashin gone, to a sunny image of a grassy park. His family sits near the top of a hill, relaxed, together, happy. Nearby sits Hikaru, the same outfit as before, surrounded by three older boys and her own parents.
She turns to him, and smiles.]
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Is this your family, Shuuya?
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Um, hm. No, they're not. But they're probably supposed to be?
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I tried the best I could. I... guess you could call it a selfish moment.
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A lie for the sake of somebody else's happiness, huh? That sort of thing isn't terrible.
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I wanted to see them one more time. I... wanted you three to have something nice, at least for a little bit, before you do what you need to do.
Seto-kun and Kido-chan can't see me. I think, right now, they just think they're having a dream.
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What a dream to have! You make this sound like a last meal, you know? Something nice to have, because we won't have that chance in the future. Aren't you faithless?
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Not at all. I have faith you'll do what you have to do. You all earned the Mashin by knowing exactly what it was that was most important to you, and not wavering from it.
[It's all very nice. The nostalgia and the sense of belonging, even though there is a part of it that feels distant and untouchable, like dwelling in a memory that had long since passed, almost bittersweet.]
A long time ago, about a month after we met... we told each other a story, didn't we? Do you remember how it went?
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Was it so long ago... Ah, something about a boy locked up in a tower, and a little girl tearing herself apart to save him, wasn't it? You're gonna have to remind me how it ended.
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The girl told the one who led her that she needed to remember, or else she would fall to the boy's same cruel fate. That she didn't care that he was a dragon.
She was told to leave, and she said she wouldn't. When she was presented to the boy and could not talk, she didn't move. He said all he would do was scar the world, and scar everything he touched, and she didn't move. So he took her by the hand, and they left the tower, that they might burn it to the ground and face God himself.
[A tired look towards him.]
Or... something like that.
Shuuya, what do you think the boy would have done, had their positions were reversed? If the boy was standing in front of the dragon, to the girl who never remembered... what do you think he would do?
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That's easy. He would have taken her hand and left the tower. What does he care if they scar the world? If everything else falls into ruin?
[ The choice would have been easy if their positions were reversed. The girl loved the world. The boy's heart was for his people. ]
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What if she couldn't leave with him, after all? What if she was nothing but a dragon, and the world had already crumbled at her feet, no matter what she tried? The boy would still do what he had to and find his path without her, wouldn't he?
You spoke to me once about your fate. About "tenmei". About... having your head pulled from your body, and not remembering.
This... isn't a fate I remember, Shuuya. But... someone will have to walk the path you're walking, and do what you have to do, if I can't...
[...
The scenery rumbles under their feet. Hikaru takes in a shaking breath, taking a step away from him.]
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He steps forward when she steps back, makes a grab for her wrist, not wanting it to be a repeat of the last time the world crumbled away beneath their feet. ]
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I'm sorry. I really have to ask you to do something cruel.
But I want you to be happy... and I can't accept this fate I've doomed everyone to.
[A strong heart, once filled with nothing but stubborn kindness, now clawing with only regret and despair, trying so desperately to restore a dead world devoid of anything, of anyone, but herself.]
My Magic Knight, you have been summoned to this world because Cefiro is in great danger. The Pillar may not harm themselves, and no one from Cefiro may harm them either. But if the Pillar should find themselves falling to ruin, that their hearts would turn to nothing but disaster...
[She's crying. But she takes another step back.]
Then they may summon their Knights from another land, so that the Pillar may be killed, and that their world might continue on under someone else.
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