Something's not right... [OPEN]

[sandnsky]

Who: Daisya Barry and anyone else
What: Daisya is outside trying to figure out why his Innocence isn't working at full power.
Where: Behind the house- as far from it as he dares to get, really, so he doesn't break anything.
When: October 2, Late afternoon, 1928
Rating and Warnings: PG? Daisya swears a lot.

Comments

[sandnsky]

Daisya frowned as he watched Kanda working with Mugen, and that frown deepened when he resheathed it and seemed so damn nonchalant about the whole thing. For Daisya, his life revolved around his Innocence; his job as an Exorcist was quite literally all he had. He'd left his home and his family behind in search of adventure, and while he'd certainly found it, being without his main source of defense was rather unsettling. Still, it was good to know that the Charity Bell wasn't rejecting him out of hand simply because he'd lost to Tyki Mikk.

"I'm not worried about it workin' differently," he finally said with a shrug. "I'm worried about it not workin' at all when we need it. ... an' for all you know there are Akuma an' there is an Earl, we just haven't seen 'em yet."

He was fairly sure Kanda was right, but part of Daisya wanted him to be wrong. Part of him wanted that war to keep going on so that he would have something to fight for, something to live for. Something to be useful for that wasn't settling for a horrible existence in the shithole of a town he'd been born in. Having no direction, no sense of purpose- and having everyone say hey, aren't you supposed to be dead?- was really starting to get to him.

"Doesn't matter," he finally muttered, shaking his head. "We'll find out when we're meant to. ... but I don't wanna sit around on my ass, so if you can come down off your high horse t'spar with me in th' mornin', that'd be nice."

[kandescence]

If Kanda had intuited just why it mattered so much to Daisya, he might have been somewhat softer in what he had to say. But as it was, his mind was already too distracted, too overwhelmed. And so what he felt most was irritation at Daisya's unwillingness to take him at his word. He turned back to face him again, answering the frown with one of his own.

"Tch. Weren't you listening? I've been in this world for a damn month and I've come nearly three thousand miles across this stupid country to get here. There were dozens of towns I passed through or stopped at. And there wasn't a single akuma, not in one of them. The Church here has never heard of the Black Order and they've never heard of us. And even if the damn war had just ended, they should have a record. They should know. This isn't our world Daisya."

He huffed in frustration. This wasn't how he wanted this reunion to be going, but it was doing so in spite of him, and he couldn't see a way around it. Anyway, Kanda wasn't in the reassurance business. The best he could do was acquiesce to the latter request without complaint, and he'd have done that anyway since training with Daisya in the mornings was something he'd actually want to do.

That didn't make his tone particularly gentle though, but some of the irritation did melt away when he answered. "I'll be there. Could ask the others too, if you want. Lenalee," a pause and then as a rather discontented afterthought, "and the Beansprout."

[sandnsky]

Daisya wasn't entirely sure how to respond to that, so he decided not to. He'd always known there were a lot of things he didn't understand, and for Kanda- Kanda, his best friend, to be saying this- it had to be true. No Vatican, no Black Order, no war... no real purpose as of the moment. He fell silent, contemplating the very idea of having no set goals and destinations- and then finally coming to the most logical conclusion his brain could produce.

"So we're both dead, then," he said flatly. "May as well be for all th' good we can do in our world, which- in case you've forgotten- is where our war is goin' on without us. " He sighed and shook his head, the Charity Bell chiming softly and reminding him of home. "You, me, Allen, Lenalee- all of us are fuckin' dead so far as we can make any difference. Maybe we've got no purpose here, but 'm not gonna sit on my ass 'til I find out. I'm gonna keep trainin' an' keep gettin' stronger, so- 'm glad you'll be there."

He didn't have any particular idea as to when things had started getting awkward between him and Kanda; perhapsit had been the miles Kanda claimed to have traveled or perhaps the years Daisya had spent away from the Order. Either way, he wasn't going to take any chances that would involve losing his best friend, so he decided then and there not to mention home again until or unless Kanda brought it up.

[kandescence]

It was not news to Kanda that Daisya's logic was sometimes...strange. The way that he reasoned and the conclusions that he drew often seemed to Kanda to be the most convoluted and illogical that he could imagine, jumping from reasonable evidence to decide the most outrageous things. So it wasn't so much that Kanda was surprised by Daisya's reasoning now, nor that he was shocked at his leap to the conclusion he'd drawn.

It was simply, to Kanda's mind, wrong.

"We're not dead." And it was a mark of their friendship that Kanda didn't call him an idiot for saying so. "I didn't die. And if you're here then you must not have either. The only way dead people get up and walk around is if they're not people anymore."

It almost surprised Kanda to discover not just how firm he was on the course of action that must lie ahead or how clear it all was in his mind, the product of a month's focused motivation, perhaps, but something he'd taken for granted up until that moment. "While we're here our purpose is to find a way home, and those two professors are the way to do it. Heine and I traveled all the way here because some priest said he'd heard one of their names, and we get here to find all of you turning up not a week later. That's no damn coincidence." The swordsman hadn't even noticed that he'd named his traveling companion in what he'd said; he simply wasn't paying attention to that.

That they would keep training was, to Kanda, such a foregone conclusion that he didn't even bother to comment on it further. Of course they would train, just like they would breathe and eat and sleep. It wasn't even a question.

[sandnsky]

"Yeah, whatever," Daisya replied, shaking his head. He wanted to be done with this topic- he didn't like the feeling of increasing distance between himself and Kanda, and he had a feeling it was because of that exact thing. "Anyway, we'll figure it out an' get home an'... yeah. I dunno what."

'cept I wasn't s'posed t'live this long. That thought came out of nowhere and made Daisya frown a little, then he shook his head. Now's not th' time t'be superstitious. ... but I've seen so many little signs- tch! No. None of that. It's stupid an' not for an Exorcist t'even think of.

[kandescence]

Kanda, for his part, was willing to let it go at that as well. He felt no less overwhelmed now than he had when he first stepped outside, and his desire for time alone hadn't diminished either. If he noticed anything off or strained between himself and Daisya, to him it wasn't any more strained than every other interactions he'd had with his fellow exorcists since he walked through the front door of the house that morning.

He needed some time. Probably they all needed some time. And hopefully then they'd all be content not to talk about it, to leave all of these complications and confusions aside. To Kanda's mind, that would be the best thing that could happen. Just box it up and slide it off into a corner somewhere so it wouldn't get in the way of the work they needed to do. If he could just do that, this would be fine.

And so, with a final, "Yeah. Fine," he turned and made to walk off down the path, to find some place out in the grounds where he could really be alone.