just_muse_me 2.1.5
"Life is really simple, but we insist on making it complicated." - Confucius
The irony of waking up was that he remembered the impact so clearly. What he didn't remember was the fall. That in itself was concerning. Not half so concerning as where he found himself when he opened his eyes though.
Someone had once told Kanda that life was simple but that people insisted on complicating it. Probably it had been General Tiedoll. It sounded like something he'd say. The old man had a way of summing troubles up in words that were really too small. Exaggerated understatement-that was, Kanda had thought on more than one occasion, his General's specialty. He liked to believe that he found it exceedingly irritating, which didn't quite explain why, at times like this, he always seemed to think of Tiedoll's little aphorisms which were, of course, completely useless to him.
After all, he wasn't the one making this complicated, and he was absolutely fucking sure it wasn't simple.
There were tall stone walls stretching up on either side of him above something like a metal rim. In the split second before the pain caught up with him, he registered them as not the stone walls of the Order-these were more like brick but stained and-
Kanda gasped as the edges of his vision blurred. His back, his shoulders, and-oh fuck-his left arm. It wasn't just the pain of landing on them Something was wrong.
There was a smell of copper and burned flesh, momentarily strong enough to cut through air heavy with decay, and he knew with a certainty that it was his own skin he was smelling.
"Fuck," he hissed, panting through clenched teeth and willing the pain away. It would pass. His body would heal whatever injury it was. He just had to hold on. It would pass.
Fucking pass, god damn it.
But it didn't. It wasn't. Why the fuck wasn't it?
Kanda forced his eyes open, not sure when he'd closed them. Shit fucking fuck. He was surrounded by black bags, lumpy and uneven and made of a material he didn't recognize. He'd landed in them in this big metal bin that reeked of rotting food. Garbage.
But not the Order's garbage.
He grit his teeth against the pain and tried to move. His right fist was clenched around something-a sword hilt, but it wasn't Mugen.
What the fuck had happened?
He had been at Headquarters, he thought as he struggled, gasping, to haul himself out of the metal bin. He had been at Headquarters and-
But the trouble was he couldn't remember. And why did he not have Mugen?
…The Noah. He'd fought that Noah in the Ark. Mugen had been damaged, and then the room…the room had collapsed around him, but…something must have come after because he remembered that he had been back at Headquarters.
There was a dull thud when he made it to the ground, the sound of him staggering forward off-balance and hitting his knees. Fuck.
There had to be an explanation for all this, something that was making him forget, making him imagine…. Something.
He was in an alleyway and it was night. At least he thought it must be, though the sky was a dull, uniform, starless gray. There were lights everywhere-not the familiar flickering of gaslit streetlamps. These lights hummed yellow above, and ahead there was the glow of red and green. They even bent into shapes, followed lines of letters. (Towards the end of the alley there was one that spelled out M-o-l-s-o-n, whatever the hell that was.) And then there were the sounds-dozens and dozens of voices, laughing, talking, too far off to make out words, and the stray notes of music played on instruments he couldn't recognize or place. There was something else too-a noise like machines, only it seemed to come from everywhere, a baseline as omnipresent as air, as much a feel of electricity, industry, oil, as a sound.
Clutching his left arm against his chest and trying not to look at it (when he did for just a moment, he'd glimpsed something white-he thought it might be bone) he staggered towards the alley's mouth.
Life was really simple: find out where you are, find out if there's a good reason to be here (likely, No), leave. And if there was anything that needed destroying on the way, then maybe he'd do that too. Simple.
Simple. Especially if he ignored the lights, the sounds, the strange brick buildings…the pain.
He stepped out of the alleyway, made it half a dozen steps. There was an awful screeching to his left, two blinding white lights like eyes in a metal face bearing down on him out of the night, the dissonant blare of a horn. Kanda faced it head-on. (An Akuma? He'd never seen one that looked like this, but what else could it be?)
There was a flurry of motion, a woman's scream and people shouting. Kanda jumped, landed with the sound of denting metal, and drove his sword down and through. It sunk in, then jarred in his hand stopped short by something harder than the blade. He felt the vibration as it shattered leaving him holding the hilt and a jagged shard.
Damn fucking inferior weapon. Not worth-
Life was simple.
Simple. Like the people pouring out of doors onto the street to stare, the pointing fingers, the wide eyes, the man who had stepped out of the Akuma's face with his jaw agape.
Life was simple. So long as you didn't insist on making it complicated.
Or else life was very fucking complicated, and trying to call it simple simply didn't fucking cut it.
The irony of waking up was that he remembered the impact so clearly. What he didn't remember was the fall. That in itself was concerning. Not half so concerning as where he found himself when he opened his eyes though.
Someone had once told Kanda that life was simple but that people insisted on complicating it. Probably it had been General Tiedoll. It sounded like something he'd say. The old man had a way of summing troubles up in words that were really too small. Exaggerated understatement-that was, Kanda had thought on more than one occasion, his General's specialty. He liked to believe that he found it exceedingly irritating, which didn't quite explain why, at times like this, he always seemed to think of Tiedoll's little aphorisms which were, of course, completely useless to him.
After all, he wasn't the one making this complicated, and he was absolutely fucking sure it wasn't simple.
There were tall stone walls stretching up on either side of him above something like a metal rim. In the split second before the pain caught up with him, he registered them as not the stone walls of the Order-these were more like brick but stained and-
Kanda gasped as the edges of his vision blurred. His back, his shoulders, and-oh fuck-his left arm. It wasn't just the pain of landing on them Something was wrong.
There was a smell of copper and burned flesh, momentarily strong enough to cut through air heavy with decay, and he knew with a certainty that it was his own skin he was smelling.
"Fuck," he hissed, panting through clenched teeth and willing the pain away. It would pass. His body would heal whatever injury it was. He just had to hold on. It would pass.
Fucking pass, god damn it.
But it didn't. It wasn't. Why the fuck wasn't it?
Kanda forced his eyes open, not sure when he'd closed them. Shit fucking fuck. He was surrounded by black bags, lumpy and uneven and made of a material he didn't recognize. He'd landed in them in this big metal bin that reeked of rotting food. Garbage.
But not the Order's garbage.
He grit his teeth against the pain and tried to move. His right fist was clenched around something-a sword hilt, but it wasn't Mugen.
What the fuck had happened?
He had been at Headquarters, he thought as he struggled, gasping, to haul himself out of the metal bin. He had been at Headquarters and-
But the trouble was he couldn't remember. And why did he not have Mugen?
…The Noah. He'd fought that Noah in the Ark. Mugen had been damaged, and then the room…the room had collapsed around him, but…something must have come after because he remembered that he had been back at Headquarters.
There was a dull thud when he made it to the ground, the sound of him staggering forward off-balance and hitting his knees. Fuck.
There had to be an explanation for all this, something that was making him forget, making him imagine…. Something.
He was in an alleyway and it was night. At least he thought it must be, though the sky was a dull, uniform, starless gray. There were lights everywhere-not the familiar flickering of gaslit streetlamps. These lights hummed yellow above, and ahead there was the glow of red and green. They even bent into shapes, followed lines of letters. (Towards the end of the alley there was one that spelled out M-o-l-s-o-n, whatever the hell that was.) And then there were the sounds-dozens and dozens of voices, laughing, talking, too far off to make out words, and the stray notes of music played on instruments he couldn't recognize or place. There was something else too-a noise like machines, only it seemed to come from everywhere, a baseline as omnipresent as air, as much a feel of electricity, industry, oil, as a sound.
Clutching his left arm against his chest and trying not to look at it (when he did for just a moment, he'd glimpsed something white-he thought it might be bone) he staggered towards the alley's mouth.
Life was really simple: find out where you are, find out if there's a good reason to be here (likely, No), leave. And if there was anything that needed destroying on the way, then maybe he'd do that too. Simple.
Simple. Especially if he ignored the lights, the sounds, the strange brick buildings…the pain.
He stepped out of the alleyway, made it half a dozen steps. There was an awful screeching to his left, two blinding white lights like eyes in a metal face bearing down on him out of the night, the dissonant blare of a horn. Kanda faced it head-on. (An Akuma? He'd never seen one that looked like this, but what else could it be?)
There was a flurry of motion, a woman's scream and people shouting. Kanda jumped, landed with the sound of denting metal, and drove his sword down and through. It sunk in, then jarred in his hand stopped short by something harder than the blade. He felt the vibration as it shattered leaving him holding the hilt and a jagged shard.
Damn fucking inferior weapon. Not worth-
Life was simple.
Simple. Like the people pouring out of doors onto the street to stare, the pointing fingers, the wide eyes, the man who had stepped out of the Akuma's face with his jaw agape.
Life was simple. So long as you didn't insist on making it complicated.
Or else life was very fucking complicated, and trying to call it simple simply didn't fucking cut it.