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Post by Deleted on Mar 30, 2018 10:21:07 GMT -5
For a world on the very brink and edge of Light and Darkness, teetering on the slippery edge of Twilight, this place was dazzlingly bright. From the orange and red beating down from up above, to the peachy tiles baking in the sun and reflecting said light back up up up. Beautiful, vibrant, and peaceful. So much so that no one cared to note of minor, silly details in their everyday lives. A sudden darkening of the sky, only to return to a bright sunny day as if on a whim. A shop owner tending his stall, only to be in the plaza seconds later, and back in his shop in the turn of a head.
But what was there to question? There was sun, there was fun. What more could you want? A trip to the beach? Well...it had always been like that, hadn't it? Everything and everyone was in it's proper place....literally. The flapping, flutter of wings seemed to slooooow, the steps of a passerby grinding down before everything sat in stone, a perfect and eerie frozen picture. Mouths open mid sentence, the melted drop of an ice cream still mid air, unable to continue its plummet.
Everything stayed in its proper place...save for two. And only one seemed out of place in that overtly, blinding light.
The bouncing, bouncy beats of a ball echoed down an alley steadily, over and over. All it would take is a peer in this frozen world to see a black coated man sitting by himself in that dead end alley, steadily bouncing a meager palm sized ball. Twice it would bounce before being caught, only to repeat the process. Once on the tiles on the ground, before arcing up to the wall, and then back to a gloved hand. Over...and over....and over...the only sound in this soundless, frozen paradise....
....save for the telltale steps of the other.
Bingo.
Still, on and on the coated man went. Bounce, bounce, catch. Bounce, bounce, catch....bouncing...catching....
Waiting.
@tapir
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Post by Deleted on Mar 31, 2018 21:09:37 GMT -5
Roxas’ steps had slowed from their previous frantic sprint through this seaside stasis, but were nevertheless thunderous in the deathly hush.
It was as if the great Watchmaker who’d wound the universe into its comic pendulum of perpetuity had returned at last. Examining his work, its grinding gears caked with waning hopes and healing tears, the Grand Architect had provided fully satisfied. Unscrewing the spring that kept time itself taut and motion greased enough to overcome friction, the Creator left creation upon a dusty shelf, evocative but nonfunctional.
As a thing born from no mother’s womb, sired by sacrifice rather then seed, Roxas seemed doomed to exist outside this graceful multiversal death, a scurrying rat in the world’s tomb.
Panic had succumbed to bewilderment, observing his friends, warm, living, statues, from every angle. Time and no response caused confusion to birth despair, a shuddering rage at the surreality that’d swept up everything within seconds. But it hurts to shake in a world now devoid of motion. It’s unnerving to shout, curse, and demand answers from unyielding visages when not even the once eternal surf answers. Whelmed panicked breaths and yawning quietus leeched Roxas down to numbness, just another long shadow wandering in the wake of twilight.
So complete was this existential enervation that it took time to register that elastic bounce, a pin drop in the void, as something outside his own thoughts. A dash around the corner of an alley later, Roxas beheld another specter in purgatory.
“Hey…” What could he say? ’Hey nice not-weather we’re having huh!’ ‘So the Armageddon leave you behind too?’ Roxas settled for the purest essence of what he really wanted to know.
“Are you real?”
@masterofmasters
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Post by Deleted on Apr 1, 2018 8:43:40 GMT -5
Bounce. Bounce. Catch. Bounce. Bounce....
A single laugh managed to force its way out from a hidden mouth, as that ball froze in its mid-air spot like the rest of the world. "Real. Fake. Phoney? Is there a difference anymore?" He asked nonchalantly to the already confused boy. After all, in a world of Somebodies, Replicas, and Nobodies....terrible, terrible word by the way. Oxymoron much? But yes...in a world with all these 'classifications', what was real anymore? Before the 'Keyblade's Chosen One' could muster a reply however, a single finger casually rose to shush any utterance. "Ah ah, wait for it...."
The air seemed to electrify ever so slightly, like a power source trying to spark desperately back to life. Flickers of movement could be made out all around, before refreezing right back to their previous spots over and over until, like the rust shaken off ancient gears, all was well and returned to 'normal.'
Normal...aside from the missing hooded figure and his ball. The alleyway was empty, vacant, unoccupied, WITHOUT A STRANGER! A few moments were allowed to let the shock sink in, before a gloved finger tapped the boy's shoulder intently from behind a few times, back arched forward ever so slightly so his voice could reach the youth's ear with better projection and...surprise. "Didn't your mother tell you not to talk to strangers?"
Hands calmly went and clasped behind him as his back straightened up, standing in one place for the moment as he allowed Ven--...nooooo nooo....Roxas to react. "Didya forget? I wouldn't blame ya. Memory's a funny thing. Without it things start to get...screwy." He said with an outstretched arm beholding the all around that was once frozen in time. Both minds and data relied on memory to live functional lives. When you don't have enough, things get...complicated.
Heels turned swiftly as a hand waved casually before going straight back behind his back once more, black boots making their march away from the youth. "Anyways, remember to listen to your folks. Stay in school. Don't do drugs. Have fun, Roxas."
@tapir
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The Master blinked behind Roxas once the simulation unfroze due to Low Memory. Cooldown 0/1.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 2, 2018 22:15:37 GMT -5
Roxas whirled at the touch, eyes heated with instinctive frustration, tumbling on the heels of wonder, bewilderment, and a child-like relief that everything had regained animation. This raw heady alchemy congealed into a primal turbulence. The ache for catharsis pulled in all directions at once, but this Unmoved Mover was the obvious center of that compass rose.
The trite response brought on a blink. “W…what are you even talking about?” Though the strangers question was clearly rhetorical there came a dizzying slam of inner emptiness, like a door slamming open to arctic cold outside.
His mother…what was his mother’s name? Wait that was stupid, this wasn’t about her! Nevertheless what should’ve been an effortless evocation of memory elicited nothing, not even an yawning absence where’d a face and voice once been.. Who saw him off in the morning? Who’d he talk to about his day at school at dinner? Why could he could remember his answers but none of her questions? The stranger’s comment concerning memory seemed a direct reply to this revelation, however obviously impossible both notions were.
The hell was going on!?
“Wh…Where did you come from?” Able to feasibly expect any answer from ‘Happy Hour ish every hour!” to ‘your nightmares’, Roxas attempted to get better look at the face within the hood…
The Other stood in a cove inscribed with generations of pictograms, backing away from a shrouded Stranger. Children’s scribbles and oracular portent mingled together in swirls of white chalk upon cold volcanic stone. The Other looked up into the folds of ragged brown sackcloth and beheld only the darkness beyond his horizons, the amorphous form of questions that stirred in nascency but only now sought a voice.
"There is so very much to learn. You understand so little."
Just like that, the sphinx in a flasher coat was walking away. There came a second of hesitation, an internal seizing the went beyond cognition, an animalistic instinct to just be content with the fixed present and leave enigmatic coyness to its own devices. But the need to fill in the blanks is insatiable. The primal sin of Eve is ever the death of paradise.
“Hey wait!”
The steady paces of black boots were followed by a stumble of sneakers.
“How’d you even know my name?”
@masterofmasters
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Post by Deleted on Apr 3, 2018 15:02:07 GMT -5
Questions and more questions that were only left unanswered as boots made their steady march away. Back was a perfect straight, shoulders calm and relaxed, as if the weight of the worlds and the apocalypse itself couldn't make a mark on that posture. Despite the renewed hustle and bustle of the day to day Twilight Towners, it was the sounds of one curious and confused boys shoes that mattered the most to the hooded master.
His pace didn't change, forcing the boy to keep up if he wanted to get answers. And 'answers' he'd get...though that was quite a strong choice of words.
"Mom and Dad already gave you 'the talk', right? Man I hope so, I really, really hope so. Didn't come all this way just to have to tell you the birds and bees." As if on cue, the march ceased for but a moment as a bumble bee buzz buzz buzzed away from a potted flower nestled outside a window that the rambling stranger decided to leisurely bend over to sniff, before suddenly restarting that walk. "Though you'd be better off asking when I come from. But that there noodle's scrambled enough as it is. Better save that for another time. You've got a very important role, would be a shame to not see to it because your head went KABLAM!" Arms flailed wildly at that last word, narrowly missing a passerby or two. Disgusted looks and mutters under ones breath galore. Still, on he walked.
"If you reeeeeeeaally wanna know, I'll let you in on a little secret. I came from out there." The march ceased, as arm outstretched itself without warning, a single gloved finger pointing out to the beautiful orange sky. "The real there. Sorry to say buddy, but everything you think you know, everything around you...the cereal you eat for breakfast, the friends you hang out with, the air you breath..." Heels turned as arms rested behind once more, steps being taken closer and closer to the boy before he hunched down eeeeverrrr so slightly. "It's all just an illusion."
And there was that rare seriousness, followed by a silence to let it all sink in...before heels turned once more, arms moving about every so often as the casualness returned to squash the moment. "A trick. A fake. One big ol' fat phoney. Bummer, huh? Buuut...someone had to burst the bubble eventually...even if it is the second time."
As if nothing had happened at all, on went his leisure walk, confidence oozing as he fully expected to have the boy's undivided attention...for now. Was now really the best time for a change of subject? Probably not, but there was another question unanswered. "Now as for how I know about you weeell....you could say I have an eye on a lot of things. You, just happened to be one of them."
Out of the countless glances into the future, something really stuck out about this little fireball. No no no, the whole carbon copy of a certain Dandelion was obvious. Neato. But that wasn't what caught the enigmatic master's attention. It wasn't the two blades. Freakin' sweet but....nope. There was a fire in him. A drive that even made the other two boys seem less...ferocious?
At last, it seemed he had reached his destination, for the time being anyway. A simple ice cream vendor's cart, with a tad few people in line ahead of him. With a casual streeeetch of his arms and back as he waited, a lightbulb went off inside beneath that shadowy hood. "Now then, I know it's all quite a lot to take in, but it wasn't easy pinning you down. So you can imagine I'd be pretty peeved if I came all the way out here for nothing, so I'm only gonna ask this once. That way, I know there's still something salvageable in that noggin."
With the rate he was going, one might expect the next words out of that unseen mouth to be what ice cream the boy wanted. But instead...the seriousness crept back up. "Can you feel Sora?"
@tapir
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Blink Cooldown: 1/1
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 1:22:46 GMT -5
The Stranger had Roxas blushing and fumbling all down Market Street. Pointed stares followed the nexus of expansion gestures and erratic diversions. Roxas was led on rhetorical roller coaster of fey drollness through sex-ed, his destiny, claims of time travel, extraterrestrial origins, a Cartesian thought experiment, all culminating in the rather troubling revelation that this cloaked stranger had him under surveillance. If Roxas hadn’t seen this dude within the locomotive eyes of the storm in a world slumbering in stillness, he’d have jetted away from the intoxicated tramp like yesterday. Yet, just when he was almost sure that this dude was a basket-case in the wrong place at the right time, Noodle Arms would say something that just…clicked. It’d be sudden, a phrase, or even just something implied. It was that feeling you get when someone speaks aloud what you’d never dared even to think to ask, and your soul rejoices, straining against its chains. But, strange as it might seem, it wasn’t questions concerning adult mysteries, repeated claims of him being lobotomized, everyone he loved being an illusion, or even that Fast-talking Flasher was stalking him that burned the last Roxas’ patience. Rather it was just a name, an innocent question, that made the boy see red. “Stop screwing with my head!” Roxas grabbed at the front of the man’s coat, something half-remembered burning in the base of his skull, its searing pain the ember of terror. "I swear if you….”Forthcoming threats were buried in wings, showered in soft white feathers as if very sun-kissed stones of Market Street had become a magician’s hat trick. Doves, thousands of them, a flock so thick there was no room for sight, blurred around Roxas until dizziness likened them to the sudden anger of angels. He tumbled into an infinity of softness, wingbeats muffling shouts of inquiring alarm from what’d previously been calm confections column ---------------------- Roxas. Do you remember …Roxas looked down at the luminous glass beneath his fingers. Cool pastels depicted a placid island, its sloped trees and bright waters like acupuncture needles up his spine, a stabbing sagittal release of anamnesis. “What…no”…what I said to you? “No!” Fists slammed down on the mural, leaving a spider web of cracks across the an all-familiar, recumbent in amnesiac slumber. Shards sliced his fingers, dug in the dripping red beneath the skin. But the blows only slowed when exhaustion began to kick in. “Please…please no” Do you remember that dream?“Who are you!?” Roxas demanded of the yawning void beyond the Station of Serenity, but it was gentle hand on his shoulder, not the endless night, that answered. Eyes tinged with compassion and pain lifted from the riven floor to stare into Roxas, a completely identical gaze reflected in upon itself like a broken prism My heart is... aching.Our… heart is aching ---------------------------- Roxas coughed, a thick hacking ache that shook his small frame. Passerby had paused into provincial bustling, milling about in uncertain throngs as what’d started as raucous gesticulation devolved into provoked delirium. Whispers and cautious queries about the neighborhood watch continued as a local High Schooler just hung his head in silence where he knelt at a cloaked stranger's feet. There was a time of silent uncertainty, as so often follows where the specter of madness reminds blind habit that they are just one misstep away. Roxas just starred down at his bleeding hands, scraped deep on street stones. In time his choked answer came, the single sound a requiem for a life that’d once seemed so safe and sane. “Yes.” @masterofmasters (OOC: Sora's dialogue is from Shattered Gnosis and belongs to Dungeon, not myself)
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Post by Deleted on Apr 5, 2018 23:18:01 GMT -5
Catharsis, partial or not, was a powerful force. It ebbed through bodies and hearts like a rushing river after desolation, rain after drought. Painful it may be, it allowed for release, reprieve, and regrowth. And the one who sparked this chain and flood of emotions and memories did so perhaps like...a parent. A father, stern but caring, having to rip and tear the band-aid off an infected wound so that it may heal fully, and not fester any longer. A merciful father....
.........except no such moment occurred, for the Master of Masters had his back turned towards the crumbling youth shortly after his coat was gripped and grabbed. For here was what really transpired. It was fleeting, but for one of the few times in his eccentric life, the Master was...surprised, even for the tiniest fractions of a second, as rage-filled fingers gripped tight into the black material of his coat, threats starting to seethe through gritted teeth, only for said grip to loosen as the child went on a literal trip down memory lane. The whole incident earned the scornful glares of parents and grandparents alike, who shielded their false children away from the shrugging, not entirely innocent man. Instead, his attention went straight back to the ice cream vendor as the line got shorter and shorter in that short span of time...
...no attention was paid to that answer, no gaze was given to stare at the broken former XIII as he bled on the false stone. Instead the hooded man was seemingly too focused on his ice cream, the slightest of gasps escaping him as he temporarily ceased a discussion with the jolly fat ice cream man. "Didya say something? Sorry, wasn't listening. You're gonna have to speak up." He said with almost cold casualness despite the gravity of the situation, and his seeming desire mere moments before FOR said answer. "Yeah that's right, two. Heeere ya go, thaaank you." Munny was exchanged as the first of two cyan ice cream sticks was withdrawn, before being handed to the black coated man.
"Here's one-one-one-one, heh."
.....a single tilt of his head soon lead to a swift dismissal of that odd stutter, gloved fingers gripping the wood beneath the sea salt ice cream tight, before spinning around and hunching over, reaching his arm out to give the delicious treat to the poor, poor boy. "You look like you could use this. Hold this for me, will ya? Good boy." He said with a overly-casual rub of the boy's spikey hair, before spinning back for his own ice cream.
"And here's two-two-two-twooooooooooooooo---" And just like that, with a shudder that seemed to spread across the entire world around them like stones falling into a pond, the world refroze...even worse, his ice cream was still stuck in the man's hands. "No....no no NO NO!!!" Gloved digits dug into frozen flesh, trying to wedge the stick free to no avail, as a single leg was planted against the car, boot bracing itself to gain more leverage as he pulled and pulled and PULLED! "I paid good munny for this!" The frustration was beyond evident. On and on he went until he finally managed to force the wood up up up out of the frozen fat man's fist...the coated stranger audibly panting heavily as he spun around once more, placing a hand on the boy's shoulder as it seemed like the man was ready to, for lack of a better term, pass out.
"Gaaaah....gaaaah....gaaaaaah........now where were we?" He asked, his breath 'coincidentally' already caught back as his tone returned to its usual unusualness. "How bout a change of scenery?" He said as fingers warmly gripped that shoulder ever so slightly tighter, like a parent keeping their child safe. "You're confused. You're angry. But I know just the place. Stay close---"
The very world seemed to rush around at many...many times the speed of light. For the untrained mind, the world was still spinning...rapidly, oh so very, VERY rapidly. Even 'great' masters like Xehanort could only use this technique for a few feet at most. But this was...far more distance. Gone was the market, replaced with somewhere very high. Where the sun beat down just right. Where two sets of memories coalesced into one happy friendship stew.
The usual place.
"...ok now you don't need to stay close." He said as fingers released that firm yet oddly warm grip, boots casually making their way to the edge before plopping down, legs dangling over the edge...and a hand pat pat patting the empty space next to him, all of Twilight Town beneath them.
"Something you wanna talk about?" He asked genuinely as he began to get to work on nibbling at that delectable desert. Was this another trick? Another ploy? Another moment where he'd just ignore everything said? Did he even care?
....did it even matter?
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Master of Masters blinked both himself and Roxas to the Twilight Town Clock Tower. Cooldown: 0/1
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2018 0:58:54 GMT -5
“Been havin’ dreams,”
The first words had taken their time to come out. The preceding period of silence had started out shell-shocked, just a numb thousand yard stare down at tram lines weaving like aqueducts above a cheery hodgepodge of rooftops and alleyways that achieved charm despite hopeless disorder. Roxas had stirred to life eventually, downing ice-cream more for the comfort of its familiarity then anything. Roxas didn’t really know what this faceless wizard was asking about, but his Heart supplied the words without his mind’s input. “Not sure when they started,” he continued softly, “Other worlds, knights, castles, monsters, that sorta thing," Blue eyes out onto the rolling hills beyond twilight town, their illumined lime slopes losing definition in the distance until they faded into the Occident horizon of scarlet and amber. "Normal dream stuff y’know?"
A long exhalation didn’t delay the inevitable for long. “But bout a month ago they started comin while I was awake,” The ever-evening sun cast the boy’s face in a bifurcation of illumination and shade. “I’d wake up in some random place in town, bruises and such all over me.” Battered abrasion-covered fingers folded over the smooth wood of the popsicle stick.
“Just ignored it at first,” Roxas admitted with a shrug of adolescent diffidence. “Mean like, what could I say y’know?” He looked at his own feet dangling over the ledge, perspective giving the illusion of walking above sleepy rooftops, a precarious edge between wonder and doom.
“I’m sick in the brain,” Roxas concluded, low tenor coming out a little thick. The words tumbled out quicker and rougher, things kept clenched on the inside out of the fear that their utterance would grant the ugly truth an unbearable immediacy. “Cancer or …maybe just crazy,” the boy delivered the self-diagnosis unflinchingly, continuing on his ice cream with a morbid stoicism, the deathly serenity that comes when one’s finally accepted the sky is falling on your insignificant patch of time.
“It feels so real,… you, time stopping, those dreams.” Roxas confessed his true fear to the jovial specter of his own madness. “Was afraid I’d give in to it, start believin I’m that Sora guy or whatever, Nobodies, Keys…” He shook his head, dismissing the saga of parallel existence.
“But with everything today…” the boy glanced at his still slightly bleeding hands, the surreal delirium of the past hour still fresh. After watching time itself unwind, Roxas couldn’t really muster the incredulity to contemplate how they’d gotten up here. His sense of time and place were steadily unraveling, perhaps a sign of this last fever dream running its deadly course. “…and you being here.” Roxas looked up into the darkness of the stranger’s hood again, swallowing in an attempt to stay strong. “Guess its almost over huh?”
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Post by Deleted on Apr 10, 2018 15:19:30 GMT -5
"Daaah aaahp, that's where you're wrong kiddo." The hooded man retorted swiftly, easing himself to his feet, popsicle already finished as the wooden stick was twirled between fingers like a minuscule baton, boots both carelessly and carefully keeping him from falling off the edge as he waltzed step after step. "It's only JUST starting!" He exclaimed as hands and arms 'exploded' up and out to over-emphasize his point, heels turning to start the slow walk along the edge back to the doubting boy.
"Ya see, I told you, that you have a role. And I don't mean to brag but, I'm kinda never wrong about this sorta thing. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it a prophecy, doesn't matter what you call it. There are some biiiig things coming up champ, and you're gonna be part of it." He said with a index finger pointed straight at the blondie.
Yes.
You.
"Looook look look look look...I get it. I do. Strange guy walks in to your life and goes, you! You're the chosen one! You're thinking the guys a loon, or you're going crazy. You're dreaming, you'll go to sleep, and wake up the next day same old same old. Right? But that's just because of the ol' hat rack. Thinker's on the fritz, but the heart knows what's going on. It's just like what I always tell people. Listen to your heart above all else. Logic, memories, senses, all good things....buuut they don't always work the way you want them to. I get it."
Heels turned halfway out towards the sun, the featureless hood repelling the rays trying to reveal that mysterious face.
"It's easier to live in a world like this where everything makes sense...most of the time. You'd rather things be easy. But if everything was easy then there'd be no need for people like you and me, right? Things can't always be simple and clean cut, not everyone gets a sanctuary from all the bad bad things. But you can't think twice about this. Think once, and only once. Long and hard if you have to, and then listen to your heart. Otherwise you'll always be doubting, always questioning."
Heels turned once more, this time to steadier ground and stone, away from the edge, before gloved fingers snapped, a chill hissing through the air as churning violet and dreadful black swirled and swirled into existence away from the duo. A Corridor of Darkness. "Honestly wish there was some pill I could give you, really something to just wake you up from all this. But like I said. It's never easy for us champ. Doesn't matter what you say or do today, you're leaving this place someday. What I'm offering..."
Another snap of fingers, and a warmth wormed its way through the chilled breeze, white and light violet begot a more bright and harmonious portal opposite of the Dark. A Corridor of Light.
"Is a shortcut. Don't think of it as cheating more like...another path to the same destination. Just quicker."
Hands retreated and rested behind his coat, as he allowed his lengthy speech to settle in as the portals hummed in opposition to each other in their idle states.
"Way I see it, you got two choices. Option A, I walk on out of here, you forget all of this, and eventually you get out of here one day." He said as he pointed towards the darker, more sinister of the two portals.
"Orrrr Choice Two. You crawl out of the rabbit hole and see what you've been missing out on." He said as he beheld the Corridor of Light.
Heels sloooowly turned back towards the boy, a single foot raised up off the ground ever so slightly, tilting upwards. Arms folded, and hooded head tilted. "Weeeeeell?"
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Master of Masters conjured up both a Corridor of Darkness and a Corridor of Light
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2018 0:55:00 GMT -5
I've been having these weird thoughts lately...
A confession of existential doubt had suddenly become an philosopher’s ultimatum. A Stranger had sliced open the very air with a wager on the future, weighing Roxas with the jackal-joviality of Anubis. The choice was simple even if the churning vortices of bright and void defied all explanation. Roxas abandoned all he knew to the possibly delusional allure of the impossible, or spent the rest of his fever-dream plagued life wondering what would happened if he'd had the guts to take the plunge. (probably literally)
“Like” Roxas sighed looking forlornly at the surreal ruin of Saturday, but feeling the question stretch out into the dark waters of an impossible past beyond his own. “…is any of this real or not?"
It was all completely crazy! Roxas was crazy! But the brain is a stubborn thing, and just deciding things don’t make sense is seldom enough to stop neurons from attempting impose meaning upon seeming disorder. Some of it did click, tugged at him in ways gripped and wouldn’t let go. On the other hand, wasn't all this a bit convenient? Everything seems to say you’re sick, seriously so. But instead of having to tough it out and face what’s coming, magical stranger shows up, says the bruises are fine, and the schizophrenia is just the noise that means your special.
Sounds like something a guy might make up because he’s terrified of going crazy y’know?
But like, if Roxas really was losing it, what’d good would being right do him? Blue eyes looked up into the stranger’s hood, lips moving to voice a question…
The Other looked up into obscurity within the cryptic mendicant’s ragged cassock. Words of defiant quest rang out in the cramped cove, dissonant reverberations echoing around the painted walls like breath rasping through the gullet of a great inscribed serpent.
"A meaningless effort,” was the Stranger’s verdict on the Light of aspirant reason, the lofty ambition of the mankind’s empirical ascent. ”One who knows nothing can understand nothing."
Roxas tucked his legs up and stood up to his full height on the ledge, steadying himself against a wave of vertigo and pressure of the breeze against him. Not a tall guy even by a generous reckoning, that small jump in height nevertheless created the gut impression of increased danger, a heightened sense of a single slip’s deadly consequences. Twilight Town stretched out below him, familiar and picturesque in an eternal perfect evening by the sea, a living breathing post-card. It was perfect, Roxas affirmed to himself with a glance to the swirling inky vortex a few feet away. This was what was real. This was everything.
When’d everything get so small?
“Y’know… the sun never sets here,” Roxas said sofly, pointing out the obvious in a way a true Twilight Towner’d never have phrased it. “Never rises, no sunrise, no night, none of that,” he shook his head and chuckled ruefully, wind tossing blond hair about in a decidedly canine fashion. “Shouldn’t even know what those even mean.” Roxas glanced down at the edges of his sneakers peaking over belltower’s ledge, tempting fate, yearning for anything to break the stasis.
“Talked bout it in class once... asked why the Sun never moved,” Roxas grinned at the memory, the expression was boyish and rare, and made his kinship to warriors of greater renown momentarily unmistakable. “They all looked at me like I was nuts…” He said with a glance down the terminal velocity of the tower’s length, of the forward momentum of his own Heart, unable to accept the gentle surrender his mind had deemed wise.
Things felt most right when they made the least sense….
Yup, he was freakin goner!
“I want ... I want to see a sunrise,” Roxas declared softly after a time, Dionysian abandonment troubling in its simplicity, and elating in a way that made the veins come alive. His heart was pounding, every ache in his bleeding hands, crick in his shoulders, and salt-tinged lick of the wind on his cheek made crystalline in clarity by rising adrenaline. The boy tensed at the knees. Forlorn rationality screamed that it wasn’t too late! He could back up, calm down! But Roxas realized then he’d been right along. He had been dying …but pills couldn’t cure him, couldn’t wake him up…
Roxas closed his eyes, and took his leap of faith with a running start, the rush of evening air and screams of passerby below echoing in his ears.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 13, 2018 9:31:01 GMT -5
It was just too tantalizing to resist. Seeing the boy not walk but run towards his promise of venturing out into the real. The coated master would stare silently, letting youthful feet carry themselves with haste, letting them get as close as possible to the glittering, glistening portal of light, letting fingers just barely graze the ethereal glow...before dissipating both Corridors abruptly with a snap of his finger, allowing the eager child to meet stone and brick that awaited him immediately behind his vanished path to freedom.
There was a brief moment of silence that was soon cut short by repressed laughter. The kind that starts in your nose as you desperately hold back what's trying to escape, getting louder and louder before the Master could hold it in no more, erupting into a fit of crying hysteria, arms folding and holding his sides tight. "BAHAHAHHAHAAHAahaha ohh ohhhhahaha, ohhh I'm sorry I'm sorhahaha, I just couldnt helhahahaha, OHH my sides, OHHHHAHAHAAHA--"
What interrupted the laughter was the slip from the ledge from the backpedaling boots. With a flip on over, it seemed the male had met his untimely end from a careless mistake...only for his voice to pop up behind the boy's ear.
"You're eager. I like that. But I need something a little more tangible than eagerness champ. I said this was an offer, not a freebie." Hands rested calmly behind his back with relaxed shoulders as he heel turned away as always, slowly stepping to add some distance between the duo. "Not asking for much. Don't want Munny. Not the clothes off your back. Your immortal soul. Yada yada blah blah blah. What I want from you is simple."
Heels turned around once more, as the man made his slow, intent filled steps back towards Roxas. "Just one, teeny tiny, iiiitsy bitsy....favor." A gloved thumb and index finger got closer and closer towards eachother to hammer down home his point. "That's all. An IOU to cash in. Just one and done. No fine print, no catch. Promise me that, and you're out of here. Lickety-split."
Two steps were taken back as he kept his front to the boy, an arm outstretching itself, along with a balled fist...and then a pinkie.
A pinkie promise.
"Whaddya say?"
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Master of Masters evaporated the Corridors
Master of Masters blinked behind Roxas after falling off the Clocktower. Cooldown: 0/1
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2018 2:43:43 GMT -5
Narrowed blue eyes glanced from the proffered pinky to the mad Mephistopheles on the other end. He had said offer. The retrospective did little ease the scowl from Roxas’ rather scuffed up face. Head first wasn’t just a metaphor for Roxas, whose mouth now mixed the tang of warm brick dust and bleeding lips in with the ice cream.
As any kid whose been enslaved to a vindictive buddy by a poorly phrased promise knows, the favor game was a dangerous one. You get what you want in the heat of the moment sure, but the other guy gets as long as they want to milk that sucker for all they can get. It was kina like loan interest, but vaguer. Never a good idea, but sometimes it’s all could you give in exchange for what you needed. Just how much it bit you in the ass depended on the person really. Owe a favor to Pence, and it’ll probably go down pretty painlessly after he had time to think on it. Hayner though? Watch the hell out!
Weird warping wizards who ran you into walls?
Multiply that off the skeevy charts.
On the other hand, it wasn’t like he had a whole lot of other options. Roxas still wasn’t entirely sure what part of all this was real and what was his brain turning to cancer soup. This guy may have been dodgy on giving his name, but he was also the only other person (figure?) that seemed aware of the crazy-ass stuff going down. Roxas shouldn’t trust a guy he knew less then nothing about. But when everything you know’s gone all screwy, the unknown proves the only refuge.
Besides, his Heart had made its choice, every second since then was delaying the inevitable.
“Deal,” Roxas hooked pinkies with the spatial sorcerer in that most august of schoolyard oaths.
“But I swear, if y’ slam me into more bricks…”
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2018 9:42:59 GMT -5
A single soft and mirthful laugh, while a gloved pinkie curled and hooked back tightly and firmly, belying his harmless appearance and giving a glimpse at untold strength and power beneath that coat.
"Noooo backsies." The strange man forewarned, unhooked his pinkie from the boy and resting his hands behind his back as he waltzed back over to the edge of the clocktower, staring out into the distance. Out at the hustle and bustle of the false town below, out at the glistening, ever shining imitation that was the sun. One might assume they were about to be bombarded by more jokes and nonsense...but the next words out of the coated man's mouth carried a far different tone. There was a seriousness and wisdom to them that much befitted someone of his supposed standing.
"The world you're about to enter is going to look a lot like this one. You're going to see a lot of familiar faces, people that you think are your friends or rivals. But they're not going to know you. Don't ever forget. This world was never what you thought it was. Everything that's ever happened here, only happened to you."
Heels slowly turned back around as the man made his march back to the youth, a hand placing it's reassuringly on his shoulder. "You're going to be more confused than you've ever been. You might even doubt which memories are real, and which aren't." That same hand gripped ever so slightly. "Find Namine. She'll get this sorted out. Just like last time."
Ever cryptic, the man left it at that, as he released the child and made his way back to the edge again. "This isn't the only world either. There're others. Dotting the night sky as far as the eye can see. Each world brings new faces, and new dangers. You hold a power that's going to attract that danger, no matter how hard try to avoid it. Some will come from the darkest depths, others will walk in the light..."
The hooded head idly turned back to glance at the boy, before a tiny jolt of surprise shook that coated body.
"Oh right."
With a casual snap of his fingers, the warm portal was reopened, the swirls and churns of light almost singing harmoniously as the man turned to face the boy one final time, a gloved hand placing itself on his coated chest.
"May your heart be your guiding key. Best of luck, Roxas."
The age-old saying that was no doubt lost on the boy, the farewell seemed to shift back to his usual unusualness towards the end.
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Master of Masters reopened the Corridor of Light.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2018 20:30:32 GMT -5
Roxas inwardly reeled from the deluge of information, somehow more disorienting than anything the Stranger had implied thus far, despite being far more cogently delivered. No one would know him? This world was some kind of personal illusion? Why just him? Had he been like…imprisoned here? If so, then by whom? Who’d he tick off? Or, had he just been born into this solipsist trompe l’oeil?
His thoughts raced. Questions exploded into conjecture before doubling back in on themselves, the frantic protestations of the mind when the sea of freedom ushers one far from sight of safe harbors.
A pressure on his shoulder beckoned from Roxas from the formless stormfronts of the future back to the tangible. Why should the touch of Stranger, especially one who’d plunged his world into chaos for a price, prove comforting? Why did his oblique urging to seek out Naminé, feel right, the fulfillment of a promise? It didn’t make sense, but as a leather glove tightened with gentle insistence, that somehow seemed ok. Not safe, not planned, but rather a mystery intrinsic to true freedom, as love begat dread, and sorrow sired strength.
The shrouded sage performed what seemed his favorite pirouetting motion, and took another crapshoot with gravity on the ledge. He spoke of Roxas’ Everything as merely something, a piece in a greater puzzle, a single star festooning Nyx’s endless wedding train. Roxas was to walk a tightrope above the void ever buffeted by wings both white and black. Not long ago this had all sounded like the ravings of a madman, but repeated now more gently merely an hour later; Roxas’ knew it to be true.
Certainly is so fragile.
His interlocutor stood there, cloak billowing out as the sea breathed a warm breeze over a town of petrified perfection. Evening light softened the hue of his leather duster to something like more akin to a healing bruise, but left the interior ever-veiled. As he said a silent goodbye to home and the illusion of natural birth, Roxas found himself wondering less about this man’s identity then about his role. Some gut instinct told him that all this saving, instructing, comforting, sending off into the great unknown…Roxas wasn’t Charon's first go at this.
Should that reassuring or concerning?
Why pretend to be anywhere but the point of no return?
The door to Elsewhere opened again, shining with the light of promise and the sun that melts waxen wings. Then the Stranger saluted him with a motion that seemed uncharacteristically formal, yet bore none of his usual flippancy.
The simple blessing stirred something deep, a call through fathomless years to better brighter time. Roxas remembered standing in another great clocktower, one that noted the hours of Dawn rather then Twilight, when the world was young and unstained by the ravenous fire of war.
As the Light embraced him in warmth, casting astray his atoms like seeds to the wind, Roxas raised a fist to his own heart. The motion was impossibly familiar, the remembrance of sacred purpose, a return to vital strength after centuries of sleep.
“…And you Master”
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Post by Deleted on Apr 22, 2018 22:57:48 GMT -5
Beneath the shadow, beneath the hood, the mischievous Master of Masters was grinning such a smile, it would make the Cheshire himself jealous. Or was he? Such was the ever numerous layers of shrouded mystery that coated the man in more ways than one. Across the countless, countless centuries, both before and after the greatest strife, and the dark one that seeks its secrets, memories long lost clicked and resurfaced in the strangest places it seemed, lining up like chains reconnected. "What's written in the last page of the book is gonna happen...""You really think that...I'm the right person for this?"
"Ava, you're the only person for this."
"Please don't do this Master, I'm not strong enough!"
"I swore I would survive, and be there to see what awaited beyond the Keyblade War!""You would risk an apocalypse out of sheer curiosity!?"
"Take care of her..."
"Riku!""May my heart..."
"May your heart..."
"May your heart..."
"May your hearts..."
"May my heart be my guiding key...."The words from the boy though did not take him aback. There was no jolt, no over-expressed gasp. Just the silence and his featureless hood masking his identity in darkness as he waited for the youth to take his plunge into the world outside. With another, casual always, snap of his fingers, the humming portal fizzled and disintegrated after the Master was left alone on the clock tower. Step by step, heels planted themselves firmly as the tips of his boots threatened to tilt onward and over the edge...before skidding and shuffling as he crouched and veritably plopped himself down on his rear, legs dangling and the heels of his boots idly kicking against and bouncing off dusty and aged virtual brick. Gloved fingers reached up...before throwing that hood back and exposing his face to the illusive sun. An arm raised itself up, flowing like water as fingers danced, a tiny ember crackling into a stronger flame...before darkening with a muffled howl into hues and shades of violet and cyan. The immediate air felt icy despite the magic flame, even in this simulated world, one could sense the unease. Without warning, the ball of flame seemed to spin and rotate rapidly, the tiniest black spot starting to form dead center...before elongating into a cat-like iris. A terrifying screech accompanied this transition as countless images were played within that orb....countless things that came before, that were happening.... ...and would happen. "Hrrmmmm....so who's next?"Blades clashed. Threats were exchanged. Friendships broken. Deeper still...he could see silvery hair, golden orbs that didn't belong, hearts of three in a struggle. Silver and white again, only far, far younger. Out of place, out of time. Silver once more...only instead...there was blue. Round ears and joyful laughs. "Heh......perfect."
And just like that, darkness seemed to spawn beneath his dangling feet before surging up to swallow him like a whale, traversing him to only he knew where, leaving naught the flaming Eye nor even a trace of his intrusion into the Sage King's simulation. Things were going to keep moving forward. ________________________________________________________ Roxas exited the thread via Corridor of Light Master of Masters exited the thread via Corridor of Darkness THREAD END
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