[week 12 - day 6] - video
[The hitomi blinks, resolving into a picture with a flutter of static. When it clears, a face is peering out, framed in a loose track jacket and some unnaturally-pleased bamboo. It's a face some might recognise; it looks like it could be nice enough if it tried-or more than nice: brown eyes, brown hair, fine, sharp features like a clever bird's.
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Marco feels equally split on this - on one hand, Marco's glad this guy doesn't seem to have any memories of this place. On the other hand, L isn't here to make sure this guy doesn't do something crazy or stupid or dangerous or all of the above. As far as Marco knows, the only people aware of the real deal with Light is Matt and M. And what of the notebook? When the first - old - whatever Light and L came, there was a notebook. When they disappear, did the notebook disappear as well?
More importantly, does Light have the notebook with him?
But the other question is should Marco even bother be involved with this at all? Marco is now not even sure what he was thinking when he agreed to be part of that entire Birthday Boy fuck-up. Either way, Marco needs to reconsider how he actually stands on this. Because if he gets involved or not, the fact remains is that Light can resemble some kind of threat to the few people he finds as friends. Maybe even more so than Joker all those months ago.]
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You've taken a wrong turn, alright. By the pan-dimensional sort of turn.
[There. See if he can take it.]
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[The small huff as he looks away sounds as impressed as you'd expect. Other than that, he takes it quite well. It's the second theory that had sprung to his mind; if a world like the shinigami realm Ryuk's described can exist, why not others? (Why he'd be in one of them, on the other hand...)]
Huh. You're real. How about that. [He's looked back at the hitomi, focused, attentive, but not all that hostile; why wouldn't I know? Or perhaps... He almost ( ... )
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Some people were already dead when they came here. I'm not one of them.
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[ Another positively banal introduction. Mukuro does wish these new arrivals could learn how to make a proper entrance. Showmanship is a dying art, apparently. ]
I don't suppose you're going to ask after a certain yellow bricked pathway, next.
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[Perhaps it's all those months with Ryuk's backchat that make his unbothered response automatic; almost automatic. He even manages a laugh in response, quick and surprised like a tap on a wineglass.]
Heh. You know, I could almost be tempted. It would make as much sense as any of the rest of this.
[In reality, his situation makes a lot of sense; more than he'd like.]
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[ Mukuro has to laugh. Ah, yes. Stepping into an alternate world would raise questions for most of humanity, he supposes. ]
Sense is the greatest illusion.
What your eyes and ears and fingers tell you that you experience. What they relay to your brain to interpret. What it insists to you as factual. Nothing more.
Only these subjective concepts.
Reality is, therefore, what you make of it.
[ And Mukuro should know, considering he is in the habit of regularly constructing his own realities out of the flotsam and jetsam of his turbulent memories, dreams, and desires. The irony is that so long as you go around investigating meaning for the sum of the parts, you will never find the end of everything, and so true meaning will never be achieved.
It is only once you accept and internalize that all is chaos --
It is only then that meaning writes itself. For then reality has the stark simplicity of purposelessness. And you need never trouble your mind again. ]
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[He raises a tired eyebrow before he speaks to the hitomi again.]
But that's all sense is. Consensus reality. Get enough people to believe the same things, and they can change the world, right? [It's not a slip; it's said dispassionately, more as if the concept unsettles him. But out of sight on the voice recording, the corner of his mouth pulls.]
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They call this place Kannagara, I think. Place of the gods, or whatever.
[The idea of pan-dimensional beings creating stuff out of space and time is a bit beyond Jessica's mental capabilities. It honestly scares her, to be honest. Such vastness.]
What's your name?
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[The girl, he thinks, is pretty. Her recordings made impressions, here and there, for reasons he's not sure of. There was nothing special about her.]
Light. That's my name. [He blinks again, and refocuses on her; he can't be doing with the aren't-I-rare-and-unusual talk tonight. Not that he isn't rare and unusual, he reminds himself, but he's acknowledged his odd name so many times that the cheerful speech has long been a parody of itself.] Yes, I heard. You'd think the gods would have better things to do. Quite hands-on of them.
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Light? That's a neat name. My name's all boring and from dead relatives I've never met. I'm Jessica. Jessica Hamby.
[She pauses and thinks about the gods that she tries to avoid thinking about in the first place.] I guess so? I haven't really thought about it much, really - I've never been good at that whole god-theological stuff, you know? I'm just trying to live here and be as well off as I can.
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[His sigh's a bit exaggerated. She seems dim at best mentally, and visually she's blinding, but that doesn't mean she has no information. Trying for concern, he draws his knees up, bringing the hitomi closer, watching her.]
That does sound as if you're about to tell me nobody gets home either.
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(And you would know, wouldn't you? How to hide thoughts and intention behind the false vaneer of a friendly smile and innocent questions.)
And more importantly, whatever his 'verse...he understands the technology the Hitomi is based off of, because one simply doesn't guess the names of places in Kannagara, after all...
So he smiles, curious, and decides to amuse himself by seeing if this one will reveal any other information about himself, for researches sake.]
Good evening, Light-san. I trust you've managed to find your way around well enough on your first day? It's a bit disorienting, isn't it? Kind of like bing slung back to Edo, I imagine...
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[What he remembers of this one is, of course, the hair-and a certain air, as if (pink! his hair is pink! nobody has pink hair!) everything about him was hidden, and nothing put in its place. Nothing but simple conversations so far, with odd explosions of interest here and there. Like the one that's facing Light now, in fact - are you all right? It's the same slippery sort of many-sided question he might throw out himself, to see which of its hundred faces it would land on.]
[He doesn't quite return the smile. Let's see what he does with something interesting.Well, you know what they say. The Edo period was fun to read about, but I wouldn't want to live there ( ... )
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[Raikou's smile never waivers - it remains the same friendly calm mask as ever as he props his chin lightly on his knuckles and arches a brow.]
But then again, whether you will it or not, I suppose you get to try regardless. I hope you paid attention in history class my friend, or you'll have a time of it, adjusting to such a basic lifestyle.
[A pause and a slight nod of the head, polite.]
Ah but forgive me - I've been remiss. My name is Shimizu Raikou and it's a pleasure to meet yet another person from modern Japan. We're so few, really.
[Just a guess, but it'll be interesting to see if this man confirms it or not. Just a game to pass a bit of time, collect a little data.]
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Pleased to meet you, Shimizu-san. I'd say it's good to speak to someone from home, but - [his eyes flick off-camera] - somehow I'm not sure any of us should be here to begin with.
[The guess is noted, but it doesn't hurt to confirm it. Light doesn't, however, come close to obliging with his own family name. His patter of conversation is as immaculately polite as Raikou's own.]
As for the Edo period, I doubt we would have lived to tell, as a nation. You could take out a lot of fortifications with a rocket launcher or two, don't you think? Better things be left as they were.
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[It's possible that that man had left this place and then come back, or perhaps he had been here the whole time and she simply hadn't seen him. They had only talked that one time, after all. But the lack of accidental dreams or anything makes her think that he's probably arriving here after a long absence. Maybe it isn't him at all, but she thinks that it's that same voice that comforted her after a nightmare a long time ago.]
[Would he remember her, even if it is?]
I think that I know you.
[She gives him a pleasant, but puzzled smile.]
Do you know who I am?
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[The first time he watched a dream, he'd almost dropped the hitomi, before laying it down on Himorogi's grass. The second and third dreams, he'd watched from above, hands defiantly folded in his lap. By the time he got to the fourth one, his own timidity had begun to revolt him.]
[Light realises, on an intellectual level, that he can't know everything. He learns what he can, when he can; he pays attention to what goes on around him, which is really all you need. But he's used to understanding in advance. He's used to trusting his instincts, because they're based on an ocean of facts he's been assembling since before he could stand. He understands his own world (his world) and its people, but this new world - ( ... )
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