Mirage 22-23
Then again I don't have an icon for Mirage either. ^^;
Important bits I omitted in the last post, inevitably: Takaya forgot Yuzuru's name. ^^;;; Apparently Alzheimer-like symptoms are one of the signs of a soul reaching the limit of its lifespan (not that cabbages haven't been falling out of Takaya's memory since day 1 almost). To his credit at least he realised something was very wrong.
Also, Nakagawa learns quite accidentally from a Whales spy/intelligence gatherer named Heishirou that "Ougi Takaya" is the present-day name of Uesugi Kagetora. He keeps his suspicions to himself and a watch on Takaya for a while, but by the time Heishirou manages to confirm his information Nakagawa has already decided that Takaya's "true" identity doesn't matter, for reasons we will arrive at. >_> Heishirou also informs the Whales (and the reader) of various national events, such as the fact that the Takeda have turned on their putative allies and are now demanding vassalhood instead. Matsunaga Hisahide may or may not have gone over to the Oda, no one knows where Akechi Mitsuhide is at, and so forth.
I left off with the Whales's "discovery" that Chousokabe Motochika must have been exorcised by the Uesugi. Takaya of course is freaked out, convinced Naoe is hot on his trail. That annoying Yoshimura dude conceives of a cunning plan to discredit Takaya by casting suspicion on him as an Uesugi spy - after all his "white light" attack was not unlike the described exorcism - not knowing of course that he'd hit upon the heart of the matter unawares. Takaya is assigned by Reijirou to guard the Palantir Retsumyousei hidden on Mt. Tsurugi, an important if secretive task. Takaya quite likes it up there as Mt. Tsurugi is spiritually cleansing and helps with his poison, and there is an interlude where Ushio climbs the mountain expressly so he can sit and slurp cup ramen with Takaya and clumsily make up to him by err telling him that he sent the picture of Takaya bathing naked in the river to his adoptive dad Mutou-sensei. XD
Takaya: What?
Ushio: It came out really well! I had to show it to somebody, and I was afraid to show you because you'd've just told me to tear it up, right?
Takaya: ...
Ushio: Don't worry, it's just sensei, it's not like it's going to be exhibited in public or anything. [1]
(Yoshimura also climbs the mountain, expressly to taunt Takaya with dark adumbrations. To do this he had to apply to Reijirou, who was the head of personnel, to be reassigned to Mt. Tsurugi under Takaya's command. Upon hearing of this Reijirou said - quote - "How interesting," and signed off on Yoshimura's request. This may be taken as illustrative of Reijirou's general approach to Takaya during this period.)
Then Nagahide and Shikanosuke attack, attempting to steal the Star away.
Everything goes down as one might well imagine. Nagahide is astonished to discover upon staking out the mountain top that Kagetora is still alive let alone stationed as officer among a ragtag troupe of Tosa irregulars, but doesn't let that deter him from his objective. Takaya drives off the unknown assailants almost single-handedly, but when he pursues them into the woods he discovers to his great surprise and no small relief that Chiaki is still alive. He gets to be glad of this for about fifteen seconds before Nagahide says "Aren't you forgetting something important?" and informs him of his - Nagahide's - defection to the Oda and intention to pick up his deathmatch with Kagetora where they last left off. Kagetora, he says, is a shinigami whose power reserve passes human comprehension: the harder he's pressed, the harder he fights back. By nature he is the most dangerous individual in Yami Sengoku, and thus if Nagahide is to fight he should fight Kagetora (it's a bit of a shounen manga antihero justification =_=). They do so, and Nagahide nearly wins, but Takaya in desperation uses his newfound Kihachi powers to uhh set Nagahide on fire. XD; Then Date Kojirou joins the fight unexpectedly and nearly kills Takaya before Nagahide forces him to lay off, snarling that Kagetora is his prey - and then Shikanosuke appears and all three Oda escape in the general confusion.
Takaya returns a hero three times over, and full of piss and vinegar where there had been none before. Reijirou watches and realises that in their Motochika-losing doldrums, many Whales have begun performing an odd dance: they sidle up to Takaya, hang around moaning until he gets annoyed by their wangst and tells them to STFU, upon which they sidle off again much cheered. Eventually Takaya is made to dispense advice on completely unrelated issues. It becomes the fashion to address him in keigo. Reijirou resolves to take full advantage of the situation. He makes Takaya the permanent captain of a permanent guerrilla unit, and fills his ranks with inveterate semes and horizontally promoted ass pirates. [2] A diamond in the rough is all very well, runs Reijirou's train of thought, but a diamond that's undergone a touch of polish...
And thus Hyoudou Hayato, of whom more later.
ON CHIAKI'S MOTIVES
ayatsujik: confirm I wasn't being a total idiot who missed out one or two vital lines or paragraphs that EXPLAIN CHIAKI'S DAMN MOTIVES FOR JOINING THE ODA.
petronia: Hmm.
ayatsujik: because I was speedreading so intensely I really might have done that.
petronia: I think there are a bunch of factors at play here.
petronia: And why he joined the Oda and what goes on between him and Kagetora are really two separate issues.
petronia: I mean, I think he really thought Kagetora and Naoe died at Aso.
petronia: And as far as he was concerned the Uesugi totally fucked him over.
ayatsujik: ooh yeah, I'd forgotten he didn't know
petronia: Like Nagahide is just the type to take the whole change organisation and keep you in the dark bit as a gigantic fuck you.
petronia: So it was sort of like hey, to hell with you too, no worries
petronia: except he's smart enough to know at this point he can't just walk away from Yami Sengoku and go sip a pina colada on a beach somewhere.
petronia: Because it's reached the point where no one can.
petronia: So he picks a side.
petronia: The Oda save him and give him a body and presumably express that they wish him to join, and he does because he doesn't like to owe anyone anything.
ayatsujik: <3 concurred
petronia: Nagahide is a Nietzschean, not to put too fine a point on it.
petronia: The only and most relevant "moral value" he has is his own Will.
petronia: If he decides he's going to do it, then by gum he's going to do it.
petronia: He won't let anyone decide *for* him.
petronia: There's that very telling point when the whole Aso crisis was going down,
petronia: when he's about to step right into it, and he kind of stops and thinks to himself, "Do I really want to do this?"
petronia: "Yes, I really want to do this."
petronia: And then he goes for it.
petronia: So if he joins the Oda, he's not going to do it half-assedly, and it certainly doesn't matter to him what Haruie or the rest of the Uesugi think.
ayatsujik: eeee that makes so much sense! TT thank you.
petronia: He's an odd one, that. XD
petronia: And Kagetora is something of a special case for him.
ayatsujik: I'm seriously looking forward to the prequels where the second is concerned. XD
ayatsujik: "Do I want to help that bastard? .......Yes no maybe argh DAMNIT I WILL SWEAR AT HIM EVERY STEP OF THE WAY THOUGH."
petronia: Insofar as Nagahide is working from a Nietzschean the-individual's-will-is-all-to-wit-me perspective,
petronia: Kagetora is the only external measuring stick he has.
petronia: He doesn't have anything else he's able or willing to compare himself against, you get the impression.
petronia: And to a certain extent he has to have that, or I dunno, it gets a bit too existentialist. XD
petronia: But it's like this is both more important and completely separate from any consideration of "friendship" they might have.
petronia: It's like he was willing to die as *Chiaki*, as *Takaya's* friend, but once "Chiaki" is dead they're back to being Nagahide and Kagetora,
petronia: and what Kagetora is to Nagahide is someone he never fought because what he decided to do with his life-after-death precluded it.
petronia: So he measured himself against Kagetora by fighting alongside him, not against him.
petronia: Kagetora doesn't think of it remotely like this but then it's not really about what Kagetora thinks. ^^;
ayatsujik: and he didn't have a choice anyway, where fighting with not against him was concerned? I can't recall what he thinks of Kenshin, but IIRC it was respectful enough.
petronia: And of course, if someone *else* is going to try to kill Kagetora it's a whole 'nother barrel of oats.
petronia: Well, yeah. If he was going to be a member of the Yashashuu then obviously he wasn't going to fight Kagetora.
petronia: But similarly, if he was going to be an Oda general then obviously he'd have to.
...But what of Naoe during all this? Stay tuned! :0
[1] By a stunning coincidence, at that very moment Naoe was standing in a Kouchi City art gallery with a poleaxed expression on his face, staring at a photograph.
[2] After handing down the list Reijirou was heard to remark that if anyone wanted him, he would be in the kitchen making popcorn.
I finally realised what it was about the Red Whales that niggled at me: they're like a fantasy AU fanfic of a non-existent shounen sports manga.
Important bits I omitted in the last post, inevitably: Takaya forgot Yuzuru's name. ^^;;; Apparently Alzheimer-like symptoms are one of the signs of a soul reaching the limit of its lifespan (not that cabbages haven't been falling out of Takaya's memory since day 1 almost). To his credit at least he realised something was very wrong.
Also, Nakagawa learns quite accidentally from a Whales spy/intelligence gatherer named Heishirou that "Ougi Takaya" is the present-day name of Uesugi Kagetora. He keeps his suspicions to himself and a watch on Takaya for a while, but by the time Heishirou manages to confirm his information Nakagawa has already decided that Takaya's "true" identity doesn't matter, for reasons we will arrive at. >_> Heishirou also informs the Whales (and the reader) of various national events, such as the fact that the Takeda have turned on their putative allies and are now demanding vassalhood instead. Matsunaga Hisahide may or may not have gone over to the Oda, no one knows where Akechi Mitsuhide is at, and so forth.
I left off with the Whales's "discovery" that Chousokabe Motochika must have been exorcised by the Uesugi. Takaya of course is freaked out, convinced Naoe is hot on his trail. That annoying Yoshimura dude conceives of a cunning plan to discredit Takaya by casting suspicion on him as an Uesugi spy - after all his "white light" attack was not unlike the described exorcism - not knowing of course that he'd hit upon the heart of the matter unawares. Takaya is assigned by Reijirou to guard the Palantir Retsumyousei hidden on Mt. Tsurugi, an important if secretive task. Takaya quite likes it up there as Mt. Tsurugi is spiritually cleansing and helps with his poison, and there is an interlude where Ushio climbs the mountain expressly so he can sit and slurp cup ramen with Takaya and clumsily make up to him by err telling him that he sent the picture of Takaya bathing naked in the river to his adoptive dad Mutou-sensei. XD
Takaya: What?
Ushio: It came out really well! I had to show it to somebody, and I was afraid to show you because you'd've just told me to tear it up, right?
Takaya: ...
Ushio: Don't worry, it's just sensei, it's not like it's going to be exhibited in public or anything. [1]
(Yoshimura also climbs the mountain, expressly to taunt Takaya with dark adumbrations. To do this he had to apply to Reijirou, who was the head of personnel, to be reassigned to Mt. Tsurugi under Takaya's command. Upon hearing of this Reijirou said - quote - "How interesting," and signed off on Yoshimura's request. This may be taken as illustrative of Reijirou's general approach to Takaya during this period.)
Then Nagahide and Shikanosuke attack, attempting to steal the Star away.
Everything goes down as one might well imagine. Nagahide is astonished to discover upon staking out the mountain top that Kagetora is still alive let alone stationed as officer among a ragtag troupe of Tosa irregulars, but doesn't let that deter him from his objective. Takaya drives off the unknown assailants almost single-handedly, but when he pursues them into the woods he discovers to his great surprise and no small relief that Chiaki is still alive. He gets to be glad of this for about fifteen seconds before Nagahide says "Aren't you forgetting something important?" and informs him of his - Nagahide's - defection to the Oda and intention to pick up his deathmatch with Kagetora where they last left off. Kagetora, he says, is a shinigami whose power reserve passes human comprehension: the harder he's pressed, the harder he fights back. By nature he is the most dangerous individual in Yami Sengoku, and thus if Nagahide is to fight he should fight Kagetora (it's a bit of a shounen manga antihero justification =_=). They do so, and Nagahide nearly wins, but Takaya in desperation uses his newfound Kihachi powers to uhh set Nagahide on fire. XD; Then Date Kojirou joins the fight unexpectedly and nearly kills Takaya before Nagahide forces him to lay off, snarling that Kagetora is his prey - and then Shikanosuke appears and all three Oda escape in the general confusion.
Takaya returns a hero three times over, and full of piss and vinegar where there had been none before. Reijirou watches and realises that in their Motochika-losing doldrums, many Whales have begun performing an odd dance: they sidle up to Takaya, hang around moaning until he gets annoyed by their wangst and tells them to STFU, upon which they sidle off again much cheered. Eventually Takaya is made to dispense advice on completely unrelated issues. It becomes the fashion to address him in keigo. Reijirou resolves to take full advantage of the situation. He makes Takaya the permanent captain of a permanent guerrilla unit, and fills his ranks with inveterate semes and horizontally promoted ass pirates. [2] A diamond in the rough is all very well, runs Reijirou's train of thought, but a diamond that's undergone a touch of polish...
And thus Hyoudou Hayato, of whom more later.
ON CHIAKI'S MOTIVES
ayatsujik: confirm I wasn't being a total idiot who missed out one or two vital lines or paragraphs that EXPLAIN CHIAKI'S DAMN MOTIVES FOR JOINING THE ODA.
petronia: Hmm.
ayatsujik: because I was speedreading so intensely I really might have done that.
petronia: I think there are a bunch of factors at play here.
petronia: And why he joined the Oda and what goes on between him and Kagetora are really two separate issues.
petronia: I mean, I think he really thought Kagetora and Naoe died at Aso.
petronia: And as far as he was concerned the Uesugi totally fucked him over.
ayatsujik: ooh yeah, I'd forgotten he didn't know
petronia: Like Nagahide is just the type to take the whole change organisation and keep you in the dark bit as a gigantic fuck you.
petronia: So it was sort of like hey, to hell with you too, no worries
petronia: except he's smart enough to know at this point he can't just walk away from Yami Sengoku and go sip a pina colada on a beach somewhere.
petronia: Because it's reached the point where no one can.
petronia: So he picks a side.
petronia: The Oda save him and give him a body and presumably express that they wish him to join, and he does because he doesn't like to owe anyone anything.
ayatsujik: <3 concurred
petronia: Nagahide is a Nietzschean, not to put too fine a point on it.
petronia: The only and most relevant "moral value" he has is his own Will.
petronia: If he decides he's going to do it, then by gum he's going to do it.
petronia: He won't let anyone decide *for* him.
petronia: There's that very telling point when the whole Aso crisis was going down,
petronia: when he's about to step right into it, and he kind of stops and thinks to himself, "Do I really want to do this?"
petronia: "Yes, I really want to do this."
petronia: And then he goes for it.
petronia: So if he joins the Oda, he's not going to do it half-assedly, and it certainly doesn't matter to him what Haruie or the rest of the Uesugi think.
ayatsujik: eeee that makes so much sense! TT thank you.
petronia: He's an odd one, that. XD
petronia: And Kagetora is something of a special case for him.
ayatsujik: I'm seriously looking forward to the prequels where the second is concerned. XD
ayatsujik: "Do I want to help that bastard? .......Yes no maybe argh DAMNIT I WILL SWEAR AT HIM EVERY STEP OF THE WAY THOUGH."
petronia: Insofar as Nagahide is working from a Nietzschean the-individual's-will-is-all-to-wit-me perspective,
petronia: Kagetora is the only external measuring stick he has.
petronia: He doesn't have anything else he's able or willing to compare himself against, you get the impression.
petronia: And to a certain extent he has to have that, or I dunno, it gets a bit too existentialist. XD
petronia: But it's like this is both more important and completely separate from any consideration of "friendship" they might have.
petronia: It's like he was willing to die as *Chiaki*, as *Takaya's* friend, but once "Chiaki" is dead they're back to being Nagahide and Kagetora,
petronia: and what Kagetora is to Nagahide is someone he never fought because what he decided to do with his life-after-death precluded it.
petronia: So he measured himself against Kagetora by fighting alongside him, not against him.
petronia: Kagetora doesn't think of it remotely like this but then it's not really about what Kagetora thinks. ^^;
ayatsujik: and he didn't have a choice anyway, where fighting with not against him was concerned? I can't recall what he thinks of Kenshin, but IIRC it was respectful enough.
petronia: And of course, if someone *else* is going to try to kill Kagetora it's a whole 'nother barrel of oats.
petronia: Well, yeah. If he was going to be a member of the Yashashuu then obviously he wasn't going to fight Kagetora.
petronia: But similarly, if he was going to be an Oda general then obviously he'd have to.
...But what of Naoe during all this? Stay tuned! :0
[1] By a stunning coincidence, at that very moment Naoe was standing in a Kouchi City art gallery with a poleaxed expression on his face, staring at a photograph.
[2] After handing down the list Reijirou was heard to remark that if anyone wanted him, he would be in the kitchen making popcorn.
I finally realised what it was about the Red Whales that niggled at me: they're like a fantasy AU fanfic of a non-existent shounen sports manga.