Souvenir Shopping [Traverse Town, open]

[signalcrossed]

'odd,' he thought simply. Aloud he said, "Lets see just what you have found, my dear Stream, err...River."She turned back to him for a small moment, her uncertain expression making her seem far younger than her teenage years. River stepped to the door and pushed it forward, away from his hand, then stepped into the musty scent and dim light of the

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[madkefka]

Kefka was slightly taken aback that the girl would just go by him, and he followed with a disgruntled expression on his face. The inside was far too musty, and Kefka was pretty sure that any item that was in this pawnshop for too long was sure to grow mold on it.

'why exactly do all pawn shops look alike?' he pondered as he looked around the room. His eyes and senses found the object of his desire just as the girl pointed out with her words the existance of the sword.

The Sword. Souleater...Riku's sword.

There was, of course, that moment of initial shock, before the overwhelming giddiness took hold. Kefka threw back his head and laughed, so excited by the find that he began to do a little dance of celebration around the room. And with that smile still on his face, he addressed the cashier: "Touch her again, and its the lasts thing your hand will touch." Again not waiting a responce, his thoughts flowed like quicksilver.

"If the sword is here, He is here." he said, but then his tone and face turned somber. "But why hasn't he summoned it to him? He must be hurt." again, his face sprang to zealotish joy. "But this could mean the perfect opportunity! Yes, indeed it could. To free within what the without would keep chained." He laughed again, making his was to the register and the now startled cashier, taking note that there were no other costumers in the shop. Who would want to go into a musty ol'claptrap like this shop anyways?

"excuse me, sir? I would like that sword right there." He motioned in a graceful manner to Souleater, his skin prickling with anticipation. "Heres the thing: there is no good reason for you to have the sword in the first place. So, i fully intend to not pay a single munni for it, as i will be using it to find its rightful owner."

The cashier gave him a somewhat bemused look, opening his mouth to respond - but Kefka overrode him. "Now, let me anticipate your objections to this course of action and say that i have a very convincing argument as to why my course of action is the wisest." A wary look came over the cashier's face, and hishand drifted slowly, almost casually, beneath the counter.

Towards a weapon, Kefka figured. Well, time to put a stop to that.

Kefka simply raised his hand in a claw like motion, blue energy quickly attatching to the innocent cashier and raising him several feet into the air, his arms restrained to his sides.

"It goes something like this: i want what i want, and its far healthier for you to not interfere. But alas," kefka sighed dramatically, "you already tried to do that, so you only give me one course to follow. And its a fun one, for me of course." Kefka stepped back, his heart full in its hate, and whistled merrily as he summoned the flames to turn the man to ash.

[signalcrossed]

As panic gripped the man his mind broke open, pouring memories into ether as he fought for the strength to cry for help.

He thought of a sport in summertime, somthing she had never played. As a child, green grass and blue sky, chasing a red ball, skin slick with sweat and laughter. His first job on this world, cleaning the pawnshop for the elderly owner. He'd been so proud. River smiled. Above her, the man gasped and struggled for the words to beg for mercy, but she could not hear him over the beauty of his memories. A dog, scraggly small animal that he'd smuggled aboard the refugee ship when he was twelve. Marie, tanned and slender in a white dress, now wandering the shops in search of food for dinner. She was pregnant. They hadn't told anyone yet.

River's eyes were focused on something far away, and her body remained still as the room grew orange and wet with fire.

[madkefka]

Kefka, of course, had no access in such a simple manner to these memories. Guilt was, of course, an alien concept to Kefka now, and so he felt none; only the dark, burning triumph within that the snuffing of an insignificant life gave to the coiled vileness within him.

Kefka took a step or so forward, trodding on the ashen remains of the clerk. In stark contrast to this irreverance, he bowed his head in a highly respectful manner as he held forth his hands, the colors of his clothes folding in a strangely graceful way, and he gently requested the air to bring him Soul Eater. Oddly hesitant, in almost jerky motions, the sword seemed to detatch itself from the wall and float towards Kefka.

A shiver ran thru his body as the blade made contact with his white hands; Darkness coming to Darkness to complete a part of itself, two instruments recognizing one another for what they were, and the common soul-body they served - and indeed the similar fashion in which they served.

He continued to stand, almost looking like he was in silent prayer, a joyfully calm look written upon his face, perhaps with something of triumph mingling with other meaningless emotions.

[signalcrossed]

The man's shrieking had produced no reaction in River: after all, screams were just sounds, vibrations of atoms. But when his screaming stopped, when the memories stopped, everything stopped.

The room was no longer the pawnshop. It was no longer any room. It was the empty space that had hit like a tsunami when the screaming stopped, wiping out existence and pulling the refuse into an endless sea. River felt nothing, saw nothing, and understood nothing except that something was being torn away.

She did not see Kefka's movements. She'd pulled into a corner, her body folded into itself as sharply as a newly-written letter. Her head tucked between her knees, arms over her head, eyes wide but seeing nothing.

Seconds after the man had fallen to silent ash, the screaming resumed. This time, it had a different source.

[madkefka]

The sudden return of noise made Kefka jump, his hands instictfully gripping tighter. A moment passed before he relaxed a little and allowed the red haze of pain clouded his eyes; he withdrew his left hand from the blade and looked at the slash of blood-red across his palm. Almost casually, he continued to let the girl scream - the sound was not unplesant to him. In fact, he found that he missed the sounds of screams. There was something so...alive about screams, something fearful and painfully aware of its own existance. Its own mortality.

Still in a blood haze, riding the high of death and screams and pain, Kefka could only toss back his head and laugh. All at once, he threw out his bloodied hand, spraying a nearby wall with a bit of blood, and bellowed.

"SILENCE!"

It was a sound that never left the room, of course, for when the blood had touched the wall, so to had kefka's magic, cloaking the room in a silent barrier. A surreal and unnatural silence filled the room, and nothing made a sound. Not Kefka's footsteps as he approached River, not the sound of a sword hitting his side every step or so, and certainly not the girl's screams. It was an amusing sight, then, for kefka to continue to watch the girl move her mouth in soundless screams.

So kefka stood in this commanding silence, waiting for the girl to stop.

[signalcrossed]

River did not hear the sound vanish from her lips. In fact, she had never heard her sound at all. The room still screeched with nothingness echoing into nothingness as she clamped her hands over her ears and rocked violently. The psychic repercussions of the clerk's death ripped through the delicate web stitched across her neurons and the room was incomplete, insubstantial. She did not exist, the man did not exist. Nothing existed except for the silent scream.

[madkefka]

everything, of course, gets boring. Other than death...and life. Kefka had a short attention span for non-magical things, and so his attention soon wavered. Heaving a rather silent sigh, he left the Soul Eater hanging in midair and knelt before the girl. He then grabbed both of her shoulders, and delivered a ringing slap to her face with his right hand.

he quickly took hold of her shoulders again, shaking her a bit, attempting to gain her attention, focus her attention onto him and his existance, and to the existance of all things around them.

[signalcrossed]

The shaking had little effect. The girl's body was responding to something far beyond the physical world, and though her muscles relaxed and her hands fell from her ears, she seemed no closer to reality than she had when she'd been shrieking. If anything, she seemed even farther away.

[madkefka]

Kefka was beginning to grow slightly irritated.

"You fall apart at the most inconvienient of times, you know this?" he said silently.

Kefka was surely no healer, but he did knoow from his research many things about the human condition. So, he took both his hands, ignorning the blood that still oozed from the left, and, rather uncharacteristicly, gently took hold of River's head. Summoning the magic within him, he held it back, so the torrent of its power was there, but kept at bay. He was simply letting his presance be known - something he usually kept close and cloaked.

It was something on the order of mentally and psychically standing up in the middle of a field and shouting "look at me!" and then blowing a conch shell...only less rediculous.

[signalcrossed]

For several seconds, there was nothing. River did not respond as the man's hands cupped her head: her eyes remained wide and unfocused, her mouth remained slightly ajar. Inside of her, there was an ocean with no waves and no shore, reflecting no stars, carrying no current. Like black glass in the dark.

The slow gathering of power felt like a wind with no source, and something inside of her moved in response, becoming aware of its own mass. As the force grew stronger she moved with it, letting it push her towards something real.

The girl's eyes closed and a thin breath crossed her lips, something that might have carried sound were it not for the spell of silence.