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So now, like, everybody is awake -
And Rosey's made of noise. And even though discussing what exactly was done to Riskbreakers makes Thaeron Very Irritated (forcing one's way into hearts = very annoyed naïb in the house) - albeit not at Rosey - yeah. He wants to, and so forth - so he gets the keys.
***
first of all your humble servant would like to clarify that LeSait was just as big a raving jackass as Batistum. only difference between them is their position in the social pecking order. they had equal power over our lives and our hearts. oh, yes, you did hear right. the latter is not an exaggeration.
i have to digress a moment to say that in spite of all this nonsense/tomfoolery/rigmarole/what-have-you i do NOT, thank you, harbour any mistrust or hatred of the Light. that would be missing the point on a grand scale and that was what got me bisected in the first place and brought me back as some sort of a halfarsed revenant thing. i used to fear it and dislike it on account of it was the principal monkey wrench that back of ham-handed idiots wielded against myself and the others. shadow is not the only thing that can slip underneath a door and (prepare for freud) penetrate (told you - sorry, but it's the best verb for the situation, Roméo, stop giving me The Eye already) what lies beyond.
which they did. with vigour and candor. often. there's a young man up in here named Argent who's a sort of a mechanical homunculus (android is the word if i recall right - it's early and we're still a touch bleary) who experienced similar treatment to that which myself and messire Riot went through on a regular basis. it's a simple process when it comes to the number of steps gone through to achieve the end.
1) take your operative
2) get him or her unconscious or at least compliant
3) dig around in their heart/mind (Wutain, as i hear, uses the same character for both in this sense; it's 心)
4) rearrange things in there to your taste
5) send your operative back out into the field when he or she is no longer staggering with a spiritual migraine and feeling as if they're going to toss lunch all over your office.
6) profit! sorry.
it was much less elegant, much more invasive, much more painful version of that which the young lady Namine is capable of. (Lord knows what state i'd be in if Xenos hadn't introduced us and told her of my Issues; the notion that she can only affect Sora's memory is patently untrue and was one of the falsehoods she was told to keep her from fiddling aorund with the memories of those who were mistreating her yes Alarium I know you realize you were a dick go drink your thrice damned herb tea and stop dithering at me thanks yer kindly.) there are ways, as some of you know, to create fake or temporary keys from available materials. alchemy is one versatile art, and one creepy art if misuses, like it was here. they made keys from the hearts of criminals whom they'd 'purified' with far too much light.
it's imbalance that causes heart/body-soul separation. too much light and too much dark have the same result - you're half the man you used to be. (ow. agent Vartan dislikes my puns. and rightly. they're horrible.) so labouring under the mistaken impression that dark = evil and therefore the root of particularly awful criminals' actions, they exposed these men to far too much light, threw the balance off, and wound up with nobodies and whatever the hell one calls light-saturated hearts running around by themselves. in the base of particularly nasty criminals whom they thought couldn't be rehabilitated, they supersaturated the hearts with light and took them to make fake keys, which they then beat our hearts and minds into line with.
(Thaeron's making this - face. i know he's not pissed off with your humble servnt but fucked if i'm not wary of motile statues over here, now.)
it's one of these fake keys that was used against the prince years ago and thus gave us two princes. mind, it wasn't an officially sanctioned group that did this - rather a group of former 'breakers who'd lost their minds and had only the conditioning and the scriptures to cling to (and specifically the warped versions we were familiar with). they took a key and decided that since he prince stood to inherit the Wellspring, he needed to be purified.
the really repulsive thing is (get a drink ready NOW of you're inclined, I mean it - but don't drink until i'm done this sentence, drink AFTERWARD, with enthusiasm) that while OFFICIALLY the church and Batistum denounced the actions of their rogue operatives and apologized, they didn't mean a fucking bit of it. secretly they were harbouring the same malicious thoughts as their broken 'breakers and it's those thoughts and that rhetoric that led to the violence. it's happening in your world, too. words have power. WORDS. HAVE. POWER. i don't know what led people to abandon that wisdom, but gods, do words ever have power. that's why you can emotionally batter the hell out of someone. that's why people were terrified of my landlady before she started healing heart-wise. she had the most acid tongue i've ever encountered aside mine own (i know i can be an asshole) and that coupled with having been an unconscious but adept Heart-Seer a la milady Merlose? bad combination. it was like a one-two punch to the sensitive parts of one's emotional seat. that she didn't remember what was said after probably scared people more, but really that's not uncommon in cases of consuming anger. not GREAT for either the tongue-lasher or the tongue-lash-ee (...Laforeze's giggling back there, i can hear him), but not rare.
so, yes, the obvious has been stated! words ave power! furthermore, water is wet and the sky appears to us to be blue! ...well, to me it looks indigo even in the full daylight. the Dark changed me some. i don't mind it. but damn, now i'm the one dithering.
i've been trying to avoid the confession i'm about to make, even though i know Riot knows what i'm about to say to be true.
Ashley, i don't know how to apologize for this, and i don't think anything i could say would be enough. it's my fault they're dead. i was breaking down at that time, but that's still no excuse, and i don't want to be pardoned. it was my hand and my sword and they were innocent people. i could have questioned my orders or even said no, but i was a snivelling wreck of a manchild and at that time i would do - and did - almost anything to avoid the pain of another erase-and-rewind session. if you wouldn't do what they wanted they'd find a way to strongarm you into it one way or the other. so i went off, got drunk, came out of the pub, swaggered up that hill, kicked the shit out of you (i don't know HOW to this day i did that, you were always better than me - i must have got the drop on you) and murdered your family.
i'm sorry. yes, it was me under that glamour leading those asses. i'm sorry. i can't ever atone for that.
you were drifting away from them and they wanted you back, since you were their best. so they sent me in to take care of that.
it was my fault.
you were married to her, and you had a son. Losstarot's weird little song-and-dance number was intended to break the lock on your memory and get it back into order. my claiming a true memory to be false, he got you questioning all the rest, and there you have it. really elegant method. he knew that eventually you'd catch on to the fact that you knew who that man behind the curtain was, and if you kicked the piss out of me then so much the better, perhaps i wouldn't have found myself with Kali-Ma annoyed with my face if you'd done that and i'd got a damned clue. but that's unlikely. my having gotten a clue and thus avoided Kali. i was in poor shape then. i think i needed to get broken down and rebuilt.
i remember more now than i did, and sometimes it's painful. remembering what i did to your family, Ash, is like pouring brandy over a gash in my arm - burns like all hell but keeps it from festering -
...okay, i'm more than a bit miserable now but it feels better to confess that even if it means you're going to kick the shit out of me.
but anyhow, yeah. my memory is coming back together. some parts are lost for good, gone out the window like my fuck-right-off resignation paperwork and the awkward silence, but that's to be expected. Namine's done a great deal to help me in healing myself (she's a very capable Sorceress as is, and she's only going to get better at it, and yes, i do mean you, milady, and I thank you from the bottom of my strange little somewhat-beat-up heart) and when she's unable to deal with a particular factor simply by merit of a difference in power influence, Losstarot - I owe you BIG ONES, sayyadin! - takes over for her.
demoiselle Greene handles the nightmares by teaching me to handle them.
(we don't have a lot of walls between 'native' and 'immigrant' tenants here - i can and do talk to anyone and everyone here, at least until i start driving them completely damned crackers and they tell me to fuck off already. which doesn't happen as often as i thought it might.)
so i'm healing. this place is good for that. i mean, Iocus on a penny farthing bike, the damned Scion of Chaos lives in here and he's MELLOW much of the time (even as he radiates amorousness all over and disrupts the sensitive). and - good gods what do I call you. Ukoku. him. the sexy mysterious easterner who's going to kill me with his sandal right about now. he's relaxed and according to him and to his teacher that just doesn't happen and isn't normal in the least.
my typist is going to turn red and start denying things with enthusiasm in a bit, but i only speak the truth. for once!
...this as gotten obnoxiously long, hasn't it. anyhow i've said what i need to, and any questions about what i haven't covered can be tossed my way. i'll answer to the best of my ability. and now, we're going to have instant chocolate coffee.
-j. r.
***
first of all your humble servant would like to clarify that LeSait was just as big a raving jackass as Batistum. only difference between them is their position in the social pecking order. they had equal power over our lives and our hearts. oh, yes, you did hear right. the latter is not an exaggeration.
i have to digress a moment to say that in spite of all this nonsense/tomfoolery/rigmarole/what-have-you i do NOT, thank you, harbour any mistrust or hatred of the Light. that would be missing the point on a grand scale and that was what got me bisected in the first place and brought me back as some sort of a halfarsed revenant thing. i used to fear it and dislike it on account of it was the principal monkey wrench that back of ham-handed idiots wielded against myself and the others. shadow is not the only thing that can slip underneath a door and (prepare for freud) penetrate (told you - sorry, but it's the best verb for the situation, Roméo, stop giving me The Eye already) what lies beyond.
which they did. with vigour and candor. often. there's a young man up in here named Argent who's a sort of a mechanical homunculus (android is the word if i recall right - it's early and we're still a touch bleary) who experienced similar treatment to that which myself and messire Riot went through on a regular basis. it's a simple process when it comes to the number of steps gone through to achieve the end.
1) take your operative
2) get him or her unconscious or at least compliant
3) dig around in their heart/mind (Wutain, as i hear, uses the same character for both in this sense; it's 心)
4) rearrange things in there to your taste
5) send your operative back out into the field when he or she is no longer staggering with a spiritual migraine and feeling as if they're going to toss lunch all over your office.
it was much less elegant, much more invasive, much more painful version of that which the young lady Namine is capable of. (Lord knows what state i'd be in if Xenos hadn't introduced us and told her of my Issues; the notion that she can only affect Sora's memory is patently untrue and was one of the falsehoods she was told to keep her from fiddling aorund with the memories of those who were mistreating her yes Alarium I know you realize you were a dick go drink your thrice damned herb tea and stop dithering at me thanks yer kindly.) there are ways, as some of you know, to create fake or temporary keys from available materials. alchemy is one versatile art, and one creepy art if misuses, like it was here. they made keys from the hearts of criminals whom they'd 'purified' with far too much light.
it's imbalance that causes heart/body-soul separation. too much light and too much dark have the same result - you're half the man you used to be. (ow. agent Vartan dislikes my puns. and rightly. they're horrible.) so labouring under the mistaken impression that dark = evil and therefore the root of particularly awful criminals' actions, they exposed these men to far too much light, threw the balance off, and wound up with nobodies and whatever the hell one calls light-saturated hearts running around by themselves. in the base of particularly nasty criminals whom they thought couldn't be rehabilitated, they supersaturated the hearts with light and took them to make fake keys, which they then beat our hearts and minds into line with.
(Thaeron's making this - face. i know he's not pissed off with your humble servnt but fucked if i'm not wary of motile statues over here, now.)
it's one of these fake keys that was used against the prince years ago and thus gave us two princes. mind, it wasn't an officially sanctioned group that did this - rather a group of former 'breakers who'd lost their minds and had only the conditioning and the scriptures to cling to (and specifically the warped versions we were familiar with). they took a key and decided that since he prince stood to inherit the Wellspring, he needed to be purified.
the really repulsive thing is (get a drink ready NOW of you're inclined, I mean it - but don't drink until i'm done this sentence, drink AFTERWARD, with enthusiasm) that while OFFICIALLY the church and Batistum denounced the actions of their rogue operatives and apologized, they didn't mean a fucking bit of it. secretly they were harbouring the same malicious thoughts as their broken 'breakers and it's those thoughts and that rhetoric that led to the violence. it's happening in your world, too. words have power. WORDS. HAVE. POWER. i don't know what led people to abandon that wisdom, but gods, do words ever have power. that's why you can emotionally batter the hell out of someone. that's why people were terrified of my landlady before she started healing heart-wise. she had the most acid tongue i've ever encountered aside mine own (i know i can be an asshole) and that coupled with having been an unconscious but adept Heart-Seer a la milady Merlose? bad combination. it was like a one-two punch to the sensitive parts of one's emotional seat. that she didn't remember what was said after probably scared people more, but really that's not uncommon in cases of consuming anger. not GREAT for either the tongue-lasher or the tongue-lash-ee (...Laforeze's giggling back there, i can hear him), but not rare.
so, yes, the obvious has been stated! words ave power! furthermore, water is wet and the sky appears to us to be blue! ...well, to me it looks indigo even in the full daylight. the Dark changed me some. i don't mind it. but damn, now i'm the one dithering.
i've been trying to avoid the confession i'm about to make, even though i know Riot knows what i'm about to say to be true.
Ashley, i don't know how to apologize for this, and i don't think anything i could say would be enough. it's my fault they're dead. i was breaking down at that time, but that's still no excuse, and i don't want to be pardoned. it was my hand and my sword and they were innocent people. i could have questioned my orders or even said no, but i was a snivelling wreck of a manchild and at that time i would do - and did - almost anything to avoid the pain of another erase-and-rewind session. if you wouldn't do what they wanted they'd find a way to strongarm you into it one way or the other. so i went off, got drunk, came out of the pub, swaggered up that hill, kicked the shit out of you (i don't know HOW to this day i did that, you were always better than me - i must have got the drop on you) and murdered your family.
i'm sorry. yes, it was me under that glamour leading those asses. i'm sorry. i can't ever atone for that.
you were drifting away from them and they wanted you back, since you were their best. so they sent me in to take care of that.
it was my fault.
you were married to her, and you had a son. Losstarot's weird little song-and-dance number was intended to break the lock on your memory and get it back into order. my claiming a true memory to be false, he got you questioning all the rest, and there you have it. really elegant method. he knew that eventually you'd catch on to the fact that you knew who that man behind the curtain was, and if you kicked the piss out of me then so much the better, perhaps i wouldn't have found myself with Kali-Ma annoyed with my face if you'd done that and i'd got a damned clue. but that's unlikely. my having gotten a clue and thus avoided Kali. i was in poor shape then. i think i needed to get broken down and rebuilt.
i remember more now than i did, and sometimes it's painful. remembering what i did to your family, Ash, is like pouring brandy over a gash in my arm - burns like all hell but keeps it from festering -
...okay, i'm more than a bit miserable now but it feels better to confess that even if it means you're going to kick the shit out of me.
but anyhow, yeah. my memory is coming back together. some parts are lost for good, gone out the window like my fuck-right-off resignation paperwork and the awkward silence, but that's to be expected. Namine's done a great deal to help me in healing myself (she's a very capable Sorceress as is, and she's only going to get better at it, and yes, i do mean you, milady, and I thank you from the bottom of my strange little somewhat-beat-up heart) and when she's unable to deal with a particular factor simply by merit of a difference in power influence, Losstarot - I owe you BIG ONES, sayyadin! - takes over for her.
demoiselle Greene handles the nightmares by teaching me to handle them.
(we don't have a lot of walls between 'native' and 'immigrant' tenants here - i can and do talk to anyone and everyone here, at least until i start driving them completely damned crackers and they tell me to fuck off already. which doesn't happen as often as i thought it might.)
so i'm healing. this place is good for that. i mean, Iocus on a penny farthing bike, the damned Scion of Chaos lives in here and he's MELLOW much of the time (even as he radiates amorousness all over and disrupts the sensitive). and - good gods what do I call you. Ukoku. him. the sexy mysterious easterner who's going to kill me with his sandal right about now. he's relaxed and according to him and to his teacher that just doesn't happen and isn't normal in the least.
my typist is going to turn red and start denying things with enthusiasm in a bit, but i only speak the truth. for once!
...this as gotten obnoxiously long, hasn't it. anyhow i've said what i need to, and any questions about what i haven't covered can be tossed my way. i'll answer to the best of my ability. and now, we're going to have instant chocolate coffee.
-j. r.
no subject
Sydney has helped me come to terms with what happened, even if I won't ever be able to forget. My own heart was so damaged that he was right when he said I'd locked it away. Better to become an unfeeling...Nobody is what I was, I believe. I'm better now. I can trust Sydney with my heart and know that he won't abuse that power or authority. As I can the Prince that resides with you.
Speaking of--we have Doors in this system. Our security is such that residents of other systems can't just walk in so easily (I should know, I helped design it). There are less than five people who have keys. Two of them are still in the western desert. I can't underscore the importance of that. We see Laforeze here a lot, and sometimes the Seekers, and Miss Greene. There are only three other people in this entire world that our own "landlady" trusts enough to give access to our system, and yours is one of them. You and your comrades are welcome here at any time. That says a lot.
--A.
no subject
the landlady's going eee, and i'm - honestly touched. (not just in the head.) that level of trust is - well, we both have this nonsense going on wherein we labour under the impression that we're so loathsome and broken in the head that love isn't something we can ever rightfully have. which is, of course, shit. the Lady seems curiously fond of me - probably because i responded so well to such a skilled clue-whacking. i'm a lucky son of a bitch, and i'm a grateful one.
Laforeze has that thing too but he's recovering. he and i are a lot like, though - fuck. i never thought i'd say this - i'd rather LeSait and Batistum than the Scion in his full out raving looniness. they just handed down orders from on high, they didn't effing snuggle up to people's souls and whisper in their mind's ears and wow i feel like i want a shower after having written that. eurgugh.
either way.
thank you. i don't know what else to say. you were my best friend, and more even and i know it can't ever be precisely the same as it was at the beginning, but i want to make amends as best i can. that you trust me's enough to get me doing these twitly little happy dances. i am a man easy to please!
thanks, though. from the botom fo my heart. i mean that.
-jan
no subject
-Xehan
no subject
and you're welcome. thank you, too for putting up with my endless tangent running, and my navel gazing.
-j.r.