[ Entrance Post ]
Method: Action/Prose
Who: Kaite, Cassidy, and all newcomers
Where: Ash-Vacuum, Generic Hut #5
When: January 23, Morning
What: Two members of Whispers of Loki come to greet their new guild members and welcome them to Midgard ( Read more... )
Who: Kaite, Cassidy, and all newcomers
Where: Ash-Vacuum, Generic Hut #5
When: January 23, Morning
What: Two members of Whispers of Loki come to greet their new guild members and welcome them to Midgard ( Read more... )
In the end, Allen could do nothing for any one of them.
He remembered the Earl’s chilling parting words, the promise that he would return to collect the one that had broken their rules-the Noah residing beneath Allen’s skin-and reminding him that he could no longer call the Black Order home.
Allen had glared up furiously from where he lay on the floor, bloodied and bounded by Link’s CROW seals as he Earl had vanished. The anger remained fresh and bright inside him, but as the battle became the aftermath he knew it would bring only exhaustion. He was aware of movement around him, of discussion of what to do next and of the members of the Black Order starting to tend to their wounds. Allen’s eyes closed with a deep sigh through his nose, the fury still remaining but feeling very helpless. As he had suspected, the fatigue from his mind acknowledging that the battle was over began to descend upon him. When the arms came to lift him he did not protest-he would likely wake up in a cell in the Order awaiting trial for heresy. It was becoming a habit, he thought with cynical amusement.
When the area around him was enveloped in blue light his eyes half-opened for a moment, but he did not panic or feel distress. He was too tired still, so much so that he didn’t even feel much difference between the rocky cold floor of the Black Order’s shattered American branch and this new, warmer area. He was, indeed, too tired to move, and once again when the hands came to lift him, Allen did not protest.
It took him a while to shake the tired fog around his head and stare around. It took a moment for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the area. He could tell he was not alone, there were voices and bodies and movement. But that wasn’t right... Why were others in a cell with him? Why wasn’t his left arm magically bound? Was this a temporary confinement of the Order’s? He quickly realised that he did not know these people at all and it was around then that he felt something really was not right.
As Allen dragged himself shakily to a stand his gaze fell upon someone in particular-someone he did know. A breath hitched in his throat and he hurried over (likely seeming very rude to anyone else in the area but at this point not caring) to lay his hands upon Kanda’s shoulders. There was no mistaking it: it really was Kanda. What the hell was going on?
“Kanda? Kanda! Can you hear me? Kanda!”
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He hadn't so much heard the words spoken to him as his body had registered the weight of hands on his skin, and even then the touch reached him only distantly, as though through an intervening buffer of sackcloth.
It might have been strange that it didn't hurt more--not the touch, but his skin itself. Blown apart and battered, the stubborn repair of Kanda's flesh had never granted him an immunity to pain. He had suffered (how long had it been?--scarcely an hour at best, though the time had no meaning to him) the skin to be blasted from his bones. He had suffered his body shattering to pieces like so much broken granite.
And because it was what it had always done, his body had mended, leaving only hairline fractures, a map of tributary cracks that had dripped beads of blood like magma beneath a too-thin crust of earth, split just enough for the fire to seep through. Only somehow, the terrain had cooled, leaving merely the telltale lines of dried blood etched in fine creases that would themselves fade with time.
Now, he felt nothing. And he heard almost as little: the words that were spoken, in a voice some part of him recognized that he must recognize, were so foreign that he barely even registered his own name. But yes, there was something in that muffled calling which filtered down to him as though through breaching the surface of the inky black pool of his consciousness, something that hailed him.
His head swiveled round towards Allen. And yet his eyes did not see him; he neither registered nor recognized the familiar face. He didn't even focus on it, but instead seemed to look right through him, like he'd been called by a ghost he could neither see nor place.
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He held his breath as the other exorcist both looked at him and didn't at the same time, trying to read something in him in that moment that didn't just say loud and clear that Kanda Yuu was broken on many levels.
Allen swallowed thickly, his throat feeling dry and his senses whirling. He didn't know what to say or do, and it was about that point that the two figures had wandered in. Allen's eyes moved swiftly toward them as they stood in the hut with the rest of the supposed prisoners, an odd sense of protectiveness washing over him as his grip tightened on Kanda's shoulder just a little.
"What's going on here?" He demanded, not caring which of the two took it upon themselves to hear his questions "Why are we being detained here like this? What is this place? And what has this guild you're talking about got to do with any of us?"
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He wanted to ask what was up with Kanda's condition, but luckily wasn't stupid enough to do so yet. If Allen was that protective of him, then he wasn't very likely to trust divulging any information to Cassidy, Kaite, or anyone else for that matter yet.
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The hand squeezing his shoulder though--it was a strange foreign touch, and though the movement might have been slight, its resonance was not. Like a sudden chink in a line of wire where its insulation had been stripped away and the raw copper exposed beneath, the press of Allen's fingers finally--belatedly--connected with something in Kanda's mind, and in a sudden breath-stealing woosh of air and sound, time and his surroundings seemed to rush back towards him, crashing over him with the force of a speeding train.
Kanda didn't speak. His mind reeled, but his eyes refocused--the young man, the wolf, the hut, the people nearby...and Allen Walker. There were words being spoken, questions asked, a din of sound. But save for a tiny furrowing of his brow, Kanda didn't move, silently allowing whatever conversation was taking place to do so above and around him.
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However he did notice the young man's apparent discomfort and attempted--with limited success--to calm himself and his tone. He drew in a breath slowly through his nose and as he exhaled he tried to make sense of what was being presented. But so far, there wasn't much to go on.
"Portal?" he repeated, a look of confusion falling across his face. The only portal he'd known of was the kind he could create using the Ark, but he was certain that was not what had happened here. He shook his head, it had to be something else.
His eyes fell briefly upon the wolf sitting at the archer's side, seeming rather unphased by the creature for the moment--it was sitting rather calmly after all--before looking back at the hunter.
"And what about this guild we're supposed to be taken to? We didn't agree to this, nor have we been any information on this situation so far."
He made a brief mental note to perhaps apologise to this person for his curt attitude at a later date.
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"The portal outside," he continued, addressing Allen again. "They said some of you were conscious when you came through - that was the blue glow you may have seen. As for the guild bit, well..." He scratched the underside of his chin, then sighed. "As of this morning, you - and everyone else here - are officially members of his guild." 'His' being Kaite. Cassidy hadn't yet adjusted to the fact that he was a part of the guild as well, abrupt as it had been. In that sense, he supposed he could sympathize with Allen and company. "UMA delegated the task of housing you folks to them, at least until the scientists can figure out why you suddenly showed up and how to send you back. This isn't a particularly good time to visit," he added, more to himself.
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As the hunter spoke again, Allen shifted his attention once more but didn't exactly relax just yet. A look of confusion fell across his face as the warping process was described. He definitely remembered something to do with a light, but it didn't explain why or how. For the moment though he was distracted further.
"We did not consent to being entered into any guild," he repeated firmly "And who, or what, is UMA that has apparently deemed this motion appropriate?"
He paused, still looking somewhat uncertain before continuing "'The scientists'? They're really looking for a way to send us back? Wait--" There were so many questions that Allen was losing track of what was important "Er... Where are we?"
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Unfortunately, Cassidy did not possess a great deal of tact and he knew it. He tried to put on a friendly smile for Allen, but it quickly dropped. "I'm sorry. This is going to sound harsh, but this is what I know: currently, you are registered with Whispers. You have no choice in the matter. The state of the world right now is highly distressed, the capitol of a prominent kingdom has been leveled by Baphomet, and monsters have been attacking travelers with increasing aggressiveness. Right now we're in a place known as Ash Vacuum. Researches from the United Midgard Alliance - UMA - have been here for...about a year, after a great demon fled here. Normally, that portal is a direct connection between our world - Midgard - and Ash Vacuum. Of course, you're obviously not from Midgard, so..."
He shrugged, a helpless gesture. "We're winging this whole thing, honestly."
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In truth though, Kanda didn't feel he could be bothered with asking any questions of his own. It didn't seem to him that the answers made much difference, and if he spoke or moved he would likely have to deal with questions being turned towards him. It was too much trouble, and anyway there was nothing that made him want to move, since he didn't feel that he cared much where he was.
So the vague and distant expression remained. Only now, albeit disinterestedly, he was listening to what they said, and some part of his mind was storing it all away.
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"...'winging this whole thing'?" he repeated vacantly "So...what you're saying is that all these questions...are at least in part questions that you're all asking too?"
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"I'm sure we can have plenty of accusatory yelling fits later, but for right now will you let me try and heal your friend there?" He let his gaze fix on Allen now, the other's protective posture not lost on him. "I'll tell you now that I have no idea if it'll work since it seems like you're not from Midgard, but unless your friend is a member of the undead, it won't hurt him."
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This man was veritably talking about him like he wasn't there, asking Allen for permissions as though Allen, of all people, had some kind of decision making authority where Kanda was concerned--maybe now he did, or would assume he did, but Kanda didn't give a damn.
His mind, instead, was on Alma, on Martel and the things he'd seen and heard there. He was remembering the sounds of Alma's voice (coming in more than one timbre and pitch, it had changed with his body, never quite the same as the voice of memories) and the weight of the broken flesh as he'd held it in his arms. Already the sensation was beginning to grow thin, too ephemeral an impression to hold now that the materiality of Alma's body had gone. But the remembrance of the touch departed differently than the answer which had, in the end, been Alma's name.
The tactile body he'd held had been a presence of minutes, a contact he'd not had before in his adult life: Kanda never consented to embrace anyone. And it was true that something had changed within him as he cradled Alma's crumbling body to his chest, the dark face against his neck so that Kanda could feel his breaths growing shallow. But the mark left by that touch was nowhere near so indelible. Like the wounds of his body which had already mended, its trace was a residue--grit and dirt and dried blood in the creases of his skin. The caress of Alma's body was not what seeped into his pores or ate away at his thoughts.
Somewhere behind that flickering fading memory of Alma's weight, was the vacuum. A sudden cataclysmic hollowness, not swirling or ravenous but merely empty, still. It was the silence that rang out in answer to the question which had driven Kanda's steps and hounded his mind since his first childhood vision of the sky and the garden of dying lotuses, which he knew he knew without knowing why or how.
The answer, of course, had been coming in fragments for a long time: fragments which had haunted him, diaphanous and obscure; hallucinatory visions that were always only a semi-awakening to the memories his psyche refused to return.
He had poured it all--all that he did not know, and all he dreamed as fulfillment, all the shapeless nameless wants and wishes for a different kind of world that he dared not to wish--into the gossamer-thin image of her face. "That person" who, for him, came to mean things completely removed from any person alive, any person who had ever lived.
It should have been impossible to find a ghost, to do what he set out to do. It should have been a quest that could drive him forever, an eternal horizon.
Because in the end, she (Alma) was him--his ideal Other, the mirror into which he placed all that he wanted. She had been, for Kanda, the site of meaning of his self. And in finding her, he had lost the part of himself--all the possibilities and dreams--that she could no longer be.
He couldn't have said these things. They were beyond him. What he knew was that this man who stood above him now could work his laying on of hands, could bandage or treat him, or do as he liked. There was no healer or doctor who could replace the bottom that had dropped from his world. For the wound that ailed him, there was no salve, and still Kanda did not move.
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He had never in position to make choices for or about Kanda; Allen would never claim to know him that well, nor that he was that important to make executive decisions on his behalf. But Kanda was clearly not going to be deciding anything for himself right now, and Allen could see that. He couldn't profess to understand it, at least not the literal sensation of what Kanda was going through, but as a concept, the catatonia made sense to him.
The silence continued for a few moments as he watched the other exorcist, trying to get some kind of sense of how much of Kanda still reminded, if any remained at all. At this point, Allen genuinely didn't know and he found that made his insides shudder. The recent events had shown him Kanda's past and all that had made him into the strong, hardened person that Allen had come to know, someone with little time for perceived weakness or sentimentality and who had been subject to The Black Order's brutality.
Allen swallowed thickly, shaking his head to try and clear his mind and focus. There was so much that he could let wash over and consume him that Allen had to really force his mind of track. He didn't have time or the luxury to get pulled under the surface of everything that had happened and was happening.
It dawned on him then that he must have been quiet for sometime and he cleared his throat.
"Heal him? I...don't think this is a physical kind of wound. But you can try, I think. He isn't undead..." What an odd remark.
He frowned then as another thought came to his mind quite suddenly and he glanced up.
"Your method of healing here, will you need to touch him for it?"
It wasn't that Allen was that protective of his teammate, it was just that if Kanda was going to snap unexpectedly and physically damage someone for making contact with him, Allen would prefer it was him over a stranger. He figured Kanda couldn't actually do much worse to Allen now, but he wasn't so sure about this robed man and the other with the wolf.
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"And no, not necessarily," he murmured as he made a slow circle around the pair, examining Kanda as best he could without getting too close, "I'd like to cast a full body heal and that doesn't require any touching at all. I could heal you as well if you'd like to experience the effects first, but honestly there wouldn't be enough of a difference to be noticeable."
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