Empty hallowed ground -> [OPEN LOG]

[wafflewood]

Who: Gopher, anyone
Where: Basilica di Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari
When: Backdated to Thursday
Summary: Gopher is having attachment issues.
Rating: PG-15, language and minor violence

Comments

and by "after lunch" i obviously mean "after dinner".

[clowninmyhead]

Justin was drawn by some invisible force, or maybe the mental guiding of the Clown (aware of the presence of someone familiar in the city), or maybe simply that odd sort of instinct that always unerringly directs him eventually to churches. Whatever it was, there is now a guillotine-priest standing silently in the west entryway, studying the interior of the church.

so. uh. this could get messy.

[clowninmyhead]

"Insanity fusion." A snap of his fingers, signaling the Clown.

The insanity wavelength attack that's released when the fusion happens? Well, that's entirely unintentional (not that he didn't know it would happen).

[wafflewood]

Wait what, whoa wait - the Clown - whoa whoa whoa whoa -

And then suddenly -

Suddenly - amidst Justin's insane smile and the disintegration of the clown -

Suddenly - Gopher is overcome with a most curious sensation.

He hears, sees, and feels this... thing, this feeling that's a mixture of a lot of things - like a thousands of nails scraping against rock, a mirror reflecting the whispers of bony cadavers with wide open ghost-like eyes, the screams when bayonets are skewered through a woman's womb, and a philharmonic orchestra playing 'O fortuna' in a concert venue, and a lone bugle call blown on the deserted battlefield all at the same time - it's a good and bad feeling -

- and Gopher stumbles back, gritting his teeth and pressing his fingers to his head, unable to put a finger on this sensation. He doesn't even know what half of these things are, but when he saw them, he just felt like he knew their existence.

"Tch...!"

[clowninmyhead]

Justin laughs, low and pleased and twisted, and suddenly there's a lunette clamping around Gopher's waist, twitching forwards on the end of a chain and slamming the smaller boy down against the floor, and the insanity isn't letting up, the wavelength still pouring off of Justin, and there's a blade, held ready and poised snakelike and hovering ready to strike strike strike and glinting in the light and Justin is laughing and it's all very wrong and all very broken, pieces of the world splintering and fragmenting like they're caught in a crackedshattered mirror.

... ...

[wafflewood]

...

Had Gopher known any connotations about religion, other than disregarding it as nonsense because everybody in the world was a fool for not worshiping Noah-sama - he would have found some strange irony in the fact that he was getting mentally and physically ravaged by a priest inside one of the greatest churches in all of Venice.

The carcan clamped tightly around his waist wasn't just a coincidence. Justin knew of his stomach cannon, and knew he couldn't fire it now that he was constrained like this, and -

- he stares at the blade looming directly over his neck.

...

If Gopher hadn't known what fear was in the past (but he did; he had a fear of letting down Noah-sama, he had a fear of getting rejected by Noah-sama, he had a fear that Noah-sama would love someone else more than him - but this was a different type of fear -), then he just learned it right now

❤ ?

[clowninmyhead]

He waits. Waits and holds everything frozen like it is no motion no movement nothing but poised blades and he can feel everything, his soul perception crawling down his invisible spine like a million shards of nothingness and he just holds everything there for a moment and lets it all try to sink in, if Gopher will see it.

A whisper, the sort of thing that carries harshly through the almost-silence.

"You're not laughing, Gopher."

And then he forces the Clown away, and in less time than it takes to think (but who knows how long that is, the way everything warps in breaking colors around them), Justin looks fully human again, and he is standing out of Gopher's reach, and the Clown is waiting silently behind him and the overpowering wavelength has left Gopher and is back to where it belongs, locked inside the Clown and its host.

❤ x a billion

[wafflewood]

.............

....................

...........................

Under other circumstance, Gopher would have just burst into screaming and pry open his stomach and fire a ginormous mammoth ball of energy fueled by uncontrollable rage and all encompassing hatred - HOW DARE YOU DO THIS TO ME, YOU PIECE OF FUCKING SHITTY PRIEEEEST~ -

But - ... just... no. Not this time. Just...

Gopher remains laying the ground for a moment before slowly rising into a sitting position and staying there - trembling, shaking, quivering in a wonderful rhythm broken by occasional odd twitches. The queerest expression is glued to his face; he seems to be grinning out of fear (hateANGER). Saliva trickles out of the corner of his mouth and the edge of his hand comes up to wipe it away, before it moves up and covers half of his face from view.

❤ x a billion trillion

[clowninmyhead]

The smile twists its way across Justin's face again

this is the madness of god this is the fate of the world this is everything can't you see it Gopher, can't you see it?

before he gets himself under control, fights the madness back just the slightest bit.

"Was that idiotic-looking, Gopher?"

Laugh at me now, laugh at me mock me tell me how useless I am tell me

EVERYBODY IS SO MENTALLY FUCKED UP HERE

[wafflewood]

Noah-sama Noah-sama Noah-sama

- thoughts of Noah-sama, his master's face, his eyes that gazed into his very soul, his voice that uttered commands (because he was the only one who could please him), the beautiful hands that crafted his body - they were replacing the sensations of insanity one by one -

Eventually, he stops grinning, and stops shaking -- it's so much easier to pull away from Asura's insane wavelength when you're already insane by your own merit. Gopher rises from the ground, but instead of looking at Justin, he turns to the altar in front of the church.

"... without a fraction of a doubt..." he trails off into an unsettling chuckle, and there's a genuine mocking in his voice this time.

"Tell me something, Justin-san."

"You can't go into your full weapon form without the clown, can you."

AND IT'S GREAT

[clowninmyhead]

"Not like that." It's not even an admission, it's obvious he can't do it without the Clown. Without the Clown he's useless. The Clown gives him the strength he would never have on his own, the ability to fight to his fullest potential. Unaugmented by insanity he can do nothing (nothing worthwhile, nothing that leaves him able to fight) but split his forms into parts, turn himself into a chimeric sort of half-weapon and fight in desperate pieces.

"But I have the Clown with me."

*showers love and headcanon onto this thread*

[wafflewood]

A slight twitch, but then Gopher straightens up again, his back still facing away from Justin, his eyes glued to the chair (Noah-sama's throne) on the high altar as he speaks.

"For now you do. But your pet goes away once we return to F1... and then you'll return to your pale, sickly self that rejects insanity with every fiber of your shitty being."

ALL THE LOVE. ALL OF IT.

[clowninmyhead]

"Will I?"

By the end of last week, he'd nearly given up. There was nothing for him on Shibusen's side, no reason to attempt to rejoin Shinigami's pets. He had been uselessly fighting an uphill battle, and they would never accept him again.

*officially ships this in a strange nonromantic manner*

[wafflewood]

There's nothing better in the world for Gopher than getting to say "I told you so" and it's the gleeful thought he'll be able to do just that when all of this is over that keeps Gopher grinning.

"I predict it. Priest."

"You're not even on Noah-sama's side anymore, are you?"

Though the correct thing to say was Were you ever on our side?

*officially agrees*

[clowninmyhead]

"I am on the side of my god." That is all that matters, all that has ever mattered.

[wafflewood]

And for the first time, he glances back.

"Who is your God, Justin?"

[clowninmyhead]

"My god is the Kishin. You know that, Gopher."