IRAF Fic 1: Castle in the Sky [ Save Us-- Cartel]
I’m terribly sorry about the lateness of this. Today was my graduation, so everything got held up tremendously. Here is the first fic of the IchiRuki Anthology FST. I hope you like it. :)
Title: Castle in the Sky
Featuring:Save Us- Cartel
Rating: G
Release Date: June 14, 2007
Word Count: 1,694
Genre: Fairytale
Read Only Version
I knew I wanted this song to be the starting song from the very beginning. Not because I heard it and thought: omgichiruki, but more like the ending of the song had a part where you hear the sound of the tape player being rewound before being played. I thought that’d made a pretty good intro for an FST, where we turn back time and start over with a new what if. Thus I was left with the ugly task of incorporating it into a fic. It was hard. The lyrics are not the story inducing type, it’s more didactic than anything, and songs with didactic lyrics are not meant for songfics.
This story is told in a fairy-tale fashion, and deals with the scary possibility of what if Rukia never came back for Ichigo? Cartel is an amazing band that has a singer with a beautiful voice; I find it suites this story very nicely.
So here is the fic, the first installment of the IRAF project. I hope you guys enjoy it, and I hope that it’ll be a refreshing style to read.
♥
Jazzy
PS. No, I don’t know where Rukia went, and it hurts my head to try to come up with something. By the way, no one said she didn’t come back. The narration’s intentionally blurry for that reason.
PPS. Thank you to all of my betas.♥~!!!
Simple words we never knew, the power behind what they put us through.
Now it's all begun.
There once was a castle in the sky made of electric walls that tinged green at night.
A beast lived there; people told each other this as they shied far, far away.
The castle hovered high above the ground in the distant meadow, its static making the grass shiver on its end every time it passed. At night, it was like a green orb, dancing with sparklets that were, up close, only the crackling energy of electricity and light.
No one had ever seen the beast. No one had ever heard it. But on rainy nights, when the thunderous pitter-patters of the rain made even the shadows vibrate with sound, strange noises would travel through the darkness.
Some said it was only the wind blowing through the trees and over the rooftops, its whistles and groans blurred by the distant rumbling of rainfall.
Others believed them to belong to the beast.
At times, the sounds would resemble roars and hisses, high pitched chords struck from a gnarled throat; and at times they would resemble shrill, echoing rasps, like teetering vibrations on a metal thread.
Usually, however, they would only be low, strangled cries. Moans that carried with it the isolating sorrow of a thousand drowned men, echoing and echoing.
What it takes to make it real. We're standing on the edge of this.
When our soul is gone what will we miss?
It was said that once upon a time, the beast had been an ordinary boy living an ordinary life in an ordinary town in a world not too far from here.
He had had friends and had gone to school, had gotten good grades and had liked eating sweet things. He had gotten into fights a lot, too, but only because he had liked to stand up for other people.
In other words, he had been a good boy, a good boy who would have lived a happy life surrounded by his loved ones. He would have grown up, gotten a job, and started a family. He would have fallen in love the silly, awkward way, and gotten married. He could have even had children.
And finally, after all of this, he would die.
Then he would enter this world to carry on, like every other soul that walked into Soul Society.
But instead, the boy met a girl. It was that kind of story.
We lost what it takes to really make it feel, but the better days behind us now.
We all need someone to tell us how to save the state of where we are.
She was a shinigami, they said, one with tremendous powers. But for some mysterious reasons, she lost them. And then one night, while patrolling an area of the boy’s town, she disappeared.
Even great warriors make careless mistakes, people say, but this is a fairytale.
In fairytales, there is no such thing as an accident; especially not by a protagonist.
So instead, we tell a different story. We say that she had to give the boy her powers to save them both; we say that she had to remain in the human realm to recover from her devastating wounds.
From what, we do not know. For what, we can only guess.
All we know is that something did happen that night. And because of what happened, the girl disappeared, breaking Seireitei law and was sentenced to death.
Coincidences are strange things. One careless mistake and suddenly, two peoples’ lives are changed forever.
But this is a fairytale, and there are no coincidences.
There is only fate.
It keeps demanding more and more and more and who will save us?
This can't go on, without the meaning in the rhyming.
In these stories, there must always be a hero. So there was the boy with his calloused hands and bandaged body, his blade shining in his hand.
In these stories, there must always be someone in need of saving. It’s usually a girl. It’s more romantic that way. So there was the shinigami girl in a tower the color of ivory.
In these stories, the someone in need of saving must be saved by the hero. And so the boy did, training hard to fight harder.
He became a shinigami, somehow, to enter Soul Society. But becoming a Shinigami was no easy feat. Even the most powerful ones in Soul Society have had to go through intense training in the Shinigami Academy to attain their positions and power. The boy, pressed by the time of the girl’s execution, had to achieve all of this in three days.
Now, this is just a fairytale.
But even so, those three days must have been unimaginably brutal. No one knew what the boy had to go through in those three days, but in the end, he emerged from the earth and fell into sky, a Shinigami.
We hold these truths self evident, the lies we used to represent who we are, because it was never meant to be.
His sword was as big as he was tall, they said, and he had hair the brilliance of the sun. He charged into Soul Society, fighting taichous and fukutaichous, falling and getting up again and again. The taichous were strong, but his will was stronger. His determination to save the girl drove him repeatedly against his enemy’s blade and each time he emerged victorious.
Remember the great Kuchiki Byakuya-sama of the cherry blossom sword? He fought against this boy, fought and lost.
He saved the girl though, this boy did. No one is quite sure how and no one is quite sure why. Some said he had stolen into the prisoner cells at night, disguised as a Fourth division healer, and had sneaked her away. Some said that he had a monstrous reiatsu that drove fear into the hearts of all that opposed him and when he fought, his opponents quivered as their sword grew weak in their hands. Some said that he really was a god with business in the lower world, and when he came to Seireitei, everyone had to obey.
Between you and me, though, maybe the boy was just a boy who saved a girl, connecting heaven and earth with his strength and pride.
And all the songs we used to sing, they used to tell us everything.
All about how it was never meant to be.
But the boy wasn’t the only thing that emerged after those three days. Even heroes have to pay a price for power, and for the boy it was the beast.
No one knew where the beast had come from, but the beast lived in the boy. Some said the beast was a part of him, others said that the beast was him. But the boy was strong, and the beast was silenced.
The boy grew up and the beast grew with him. The boy continued fighting and the beast grew stronger within him. One day, the boy discovered the beast that was growing stronger in him and became afraid. He stopped fighting so that the beast would stop increasing in strength, but the beast was already too strong now.
Instead, the boy became weaker and weaker until finally, he began to fade away.
And that was how the boy became the beast.
Say the words, give it all the time you need. Let it out, oh, just say anything.
Say the words and make them count, say them loud without a doubt.
They came in large groups, the Shinigami that the boy had once fought with and against, and together-for it was no easy feat-they subdued the beast.
They pressed his face into the course, sandy ground and prepared to sever his head to kill him, for that is what is done with all souls that have become dark. But the taichou of the Thirteenth Division appeared. He released the powers of a containment chamber passed down through the department of defense and encaged the beast in this orb of green light, trapping it within. The beast screeched and rammed against the sizzling barriers, snarling in anger but to no avail. The chamber was bound by powerful ancient magic, the taichou said, and the beast was to be kept there, because unlike other Hollows, a part of the boy still lived within it, fighting, and that they, the Soul Society, owed it to him to allow him to finish.
So they brought the orb-like cage back to Soul Society, setting it out into the meadows, and allowing it float into the sky and drift freely within the barriers.
Give us truth and nothing more, leave us wanting more and more.
We're out of rhythm with our time.
As for the Shinigami girl, she disappeared, vanishing somewhere between the human world and here.
No one knew where she had gone to, although they had certainly tried to find her. Powerful beings have powerful reiatsu, so it must have been quite difficult to lose all traces of her.
But she was gone like the sand in the wind, disappearing into the invisible passage of time, and that was all.
Can you save, and can you save us?
I can't go on out of rhythm with our time.
The story ends here. In its wake, wars are fought and peaces are kept, houses are built and crumbled before being built again, people live and die and are reborn.
Life goes on.
Until one day, there are no more castles in the sky.
Some said they saw the girl in the meadows the day it disappeared, but that was impossible, because the girl was gone.
But now at night, everything is quiet, and when it rains, there are no crackles of eerie green light.
No one knows where it had gone to, and no one asks.
No one talks about the beast.
Time goes on.
But those who remember know that one day the castle in the sky disappeared, taking with it all its voices and memories.
end.
Download song here:Save Us- Cartel
View lyrics here: http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/cartel/saveus.html
All comments are screened until unscreened. Please do not hesitate to point out any awkwardness or errors that I have missed.
Title: Castle in the Sky
Featuring:Save Us- Cartel
Rating: G
Release Date: June 14, 2007
Word Count: 1,694
Genre: Fairytale
Read Only Version
I knew I wanted this song to be the starting song from the very beginning. Not because I heard it and thought: omgichiruki, but more like the ending of the song had a part where you hear the sound of the tape player being rewound before being played. I thought that’d made a pretty good intro for an FST, where we turn back time and start over with a new what if. Thus I was left with the ugly task of incorporating it into a fic. It was hard. The lyrics are not the story inducing type, it’s more didactic than anything, and songs with didactic lyrics are not meant for songfics.
This story is told in a fairy-tale fashion, and deals with the scary possibility of what if Rukia never came back for Ichigo? Cartel is an amazing band that has a singer with a beautiful voice; I find it suites this story very nicely.
So here is the fic, the first installment of the IRAF project. I hope you guys enjoy it, and I hope that it’ll be a refreshing style to read.
♥
Jazzy
PS. No, I don’t know where Rukia went, and it hurts my head to try to come up with something. By the way, no one said she didn’t come back. The narration’s intentionally blurry for that reason.
PPS. Thank you to all of my betas.♥~!!!
Simple words we never knew, the power behind what they put us through.
Now it's all begun.
There once was a castle in the sky made of electric walls that tinged green at night.
A beast lived there; people told each other this as they shied far, far away.
The castle hovered high above the ground in the distant meadow, its static making the grass shiver on its end every time it passed. At night, it was like a green orb, dancing with sparklets that were, up close, only the crackling energy of electricity and light.
No one had ever seen the beast. No one had ever heard it. But on rainy nights, when the thunderous pitter-patters of the rain made even the shadows vibrate with sound, strange noises would travel through the darkness.
Some said it was only the wind blowing through the trees and over the rooftops, its whistles and groans blurred by the distant rumbling of rainfall.
Others believed them to belong to the beast.
At times, the sounds would resemble roars and hisses, high pitched chords struck from a gnarled throat; and at times they would resemble shrill, echoing rasps, like teetering vibrations on a metal thread.
Usually, however, they would only be low, strangled cries. Moans that carried with it the isolating sorrow of a thousand drowned men, echoing and echoing.
What it takes to make it real. We're standing on the edge of this.
When our soul is gone what will we miss?
It was said that once upon a time, the beast had been an ordinary boy living an ordinary life in an ordinary town in a world not too far from here.
He had had friends and had gone to school, had gotten good grades and had liked eating sweet things. He had gotten into fights a lot, too, but only because he had liked to stand up for other people.
In other words, he had been a good boy, a good boy who would have lived a happy life surrounded by his loved ones. He would have grown up, gotten a job, and started a family. He would have fallen in love the silly, awkward way, and gotten married. He could have even had children.
And finally, after all of this, he would die.
Then he would enter this world to carry on, like every other soul that walked into Soul Society.
But instead, the boy met a girl. It was that kind of story.
We lost what it takes to really make it feel, but the better days behind us now.
We all need someone to tell us how to save the state of where we are.
She was a shinigami, they said, one with tremendous powers. But for some mysterious reasons, she lost them. And then one night, while patrolling an area of the boy’s town, she disappeared.
Even great warriors make careless mistakes, people say, but this is a fairytale.
In fairytales, there is no such thing as an accident; especially not by a protagonist.
So instead, we tell a different story. We say that she had to give the boy her powers to save them both; we say that she had to remain in the human realm to recover from her devastating wounds.
From what, we do not know. For what, we can only guess.
All we know is that something did happen that night. And because of what happened, the girl disappeared, breaking Seireitei law and was sentenced to death.
Coincidences are strange things. One careless mistake and suddenly, two peoples’ lives are changed forever.
But this is a fairytale, and there are no coincidences.
There is only fate.
It keeps demanding more and more and more and who will save us?
This can't go on, without the meaning in the rhyming.
In these stories, there must always be a hero. So there was the boy with his calloused hands and bandaged body, his blade shining in his hand.
In these stories, there must always be someone in need of saving. It’s usually a girl. It’s more romantic that way. So there was the shinigami girl in a tower the color of ivory.
In these stories, the someone in need of saving must be saved by the hero. And so the boy did, training hard to fight harder.
He became a shinigami, somehow, to enter Soul Society. But becoming a Shinigami was no easy feat. Even the most powerful ones in Soul Society have had to go through intense training in the Shinigami Academy to attain their positions and power. The boy, pressed by the time of the girl’s execution, had to achieve all of this in three days.
Now, this is just a fairytale.
But even so, those three days must have been unimaginably brutal. No one knew what the boy had to go through in those three days, but in the end, he emerged from the earth and fell into sky, a Shinigami.
We hold these truths self evident, the lies we used to represent who we are, because it was never meant to be.
His sword was as big as he was tall, they said, and he had hair the brilliance of the sun. He charged into Soul Society, fighting taichous and fukutaichous, falling and getting up again and again. The taichous were strong, but his will was stronger. His determination to save the girl drove him repeatedly against his enemy’s blade and each time he emerged victorious.
Remember the great Kuchiki Byakuya-sama of the cherry blossom sword? He fought against this boy, fought and lost.
He saved the girl though, this boy did. No one is quite sure how and no one is quite sure why. Some said he had stolen into the prisoner cells at night, disguised as a Fourth division healer, and had sneaked her away. Some said that he had a monstrous reiatsu that drove fear into the hearts of all that opposed him and when he fought, his opponents quivered as their sword grew weak in their hands. Some said that he really was a god with business in the lower world, and when he came to Seireitei, everyone had to obey.
Between you and me, though, maybe the boy was just a boy who saved a girl, connecting heaven and earth with his strength and pride.
And all the songs we used to sing, they used to tell us everything.
All about how it was never meant to be.
But the boy wasn’t the only thing that emerged after those three days. Even heroes have to pay a price for power, and for the boy it was the beast.
No one knew where the beast had come from, but the beast lived in the boy. Some said the beast was a part of him, others said that the beast was him. But the boy was strong, and the beast was silenced.
The boy grew up and the beast grew with him. The boy continued fighting and the beast grew stronger within him. One day, the boy discovered the beast that was growing stronger in him and became afraid. He stopped fighting so that the beast would stop increasing in strength, but the beast was already too strong now.
Instead, the boy became weaker and weaker until finally, he began to fade away.
And that was how the boy became the beast.
Say the words, give it all the time you need. Let it out, oh, just say anything.
Say the words and make them count, say them loud without a doubt.
They came in large groups, the Shinigami that the boy had once fought with and against, and together-for it was no easy feat-they subdued the beast.
They pressed his face into the course, sandy ground and prepared to sever his head to kill him, for that is what is done with all souls that have become dark. But the taichou of the Thirteenth Division appeared. He released the powers of a containment chamber passed down through the department of defense and encaged the beast in this orb of green light, trapping it within. The beast screeched and rammed against the sizzling barriers, snarling in anger but to no avail. The chamber was bound by powerful ancient magic, the taichou said, and the beast was to be kept there, because unlike other Hollows, a part of the boy still lived within it, fighting, and that they, the Soul Society, owed it to him to allow him to finish.
So they brought the orb-like cage back to Soul Society, setting it out into the meadows, and allowing it float into the sky and drift freely within the barriers.
Give us truth and nothing more, leave us wanting more and more.
We're out of rhythm with our time.
As for the Shinigami girl, she disappeared, vanishing somewhere between the human world and here.
No one knew where she had gone to, although they had certainly tried to find her. Powerful beings have powerful reiatsu, so it must have been quite difficult to lose all traces of her.
But she was gone like the sand in the wind, disappearing into the invisible passage of time, and that was all.
Can you save, and can you save us?
I can't go on out of rhythm with our time.
The story ends here. In its wake, wars are fought and peaces are kept, houses are built and crumbled before being built again, people live and die and are reborn.
Life goes on.
Until one day, there are no more castles in the sky.
Some said they saw the girl in the meadows the day it disappeared, but that was impossible, because the girl was gone.
But now at night, everything is quiet, and when it rains, there are no crackles of eerie green light.
No one knows where it had gone to, and no one asks.
No one talks about the beast.
Time goes on.
But those who remember know that one day the castle in the sky disappeared, taking with it all its voices and memories.
end.
Download song here:Save Us- Cartel
View lyrics here: http://www.plyrics.com/lyrics/cartel/saveus.html
All comments are screened until unscreened. Please do not hesitate to point out any awkwardness or errors that I have missed.