used to care, but times have changed. [ catch-all ]

[insertdadjoke]

Who When Where What Warn

"Jacob Kane" (Cain) & You Catch-all for the rest of August Various places in Keeliai Cain reacclimatizes to life on a a turtle floating through the Dreaming. Basically just make something up and I bet you Cain is there somewhere. The thread with Gene delves into imagery of torture and child abuse. (If you could take a moment, consider filling this out!)

There was a whole lot that hadn't actually changed in the city. Small things, different businesses here and there, maybe a few more houses in one district and some converted or otherwise gone in another. It was familiar in the way any city was after a time lapse, although Cain would be the first to admit that it was a significant enough change for hardly a year's time since his last visit. At least that meant it was easy to catch up on old ground.

However, now he found himself staying at and working at the Hotel however temporarily until he got his feet truly underneath him. That was good, a simple task to keep an eye on people and make himself comfortable again. Working with the Metalworkers on his own projects kept the rest of the time occupied. The vast majority of Cain's free time, however, was spent exploring the city and feeling out the atmosphere, talking to kedan and foreigners alike. He had cleaned himself up and changed his wardrobe just enough to look older than his usual early-twenties for a change of pace. Usually, this wasn't the sort of thing Cain would care about; usually, this was the sort of bed the city could make and lie in all on its own for the denial of taking responsibility they'd dragged in themselves; usually, he wasn't stuck here forced to be a part of it with a bunch of others who were in much the same situation.

Usually, it sucked to have a sense of responsibility for those he felt close to.

Most of his days consisted of hitting up local businesses, making himself known to the locals as someone helpful and harmless and getting whatever gossip he could. Cain checked in on the few friends he had, and looked to make any more to improve his own situation. It never hurt to make use of a specifically positive image, after all. He might as well have a bit of fun with it.

Comments

Wood Sector; mid-late August (lmk if this is too vague)

[denyamenti]

Bakura did his daily errands early in the morning, when there were a minimum of people on the streets. Not because he had any particular aversion to people, just that he dealt with enough of them while running the dojo, that he preferred his quiet times when and where he could take them.

There were several shops he was a frequent patron of (some by virtue of simply opening earlier than their neighbours) and he liked buying his foods in short term supply, something common both in his own habits and ones he'd adopted masquerading as Ryou.

The thief frowned a little as he exited a bakery with a new loaf of bread. He still thought about the teen with uncommon regularity, despite it having been nearly eight months since his disappearance. that struck Bakura as strange, and those thoughts occupied his attention so that he didn't notice anyone else in the area.

[insertdadjoke]

Waking early and sleeping late was a particular habit of Cain's that was hard to break. Every couple of days he would sleep longer than the rest, then go the rest of the week without pause. Nerves, perhaps, or just being used to having so much going on that time for proper rest was practically a myth. Regardless of the reason why, it wasn't rare to see Cain up and about earlier than most, either.

It was easy to see someone else going about their business earlier than was common. He had been going to use the early morning time to take note of kedan habits and where, precisely, everything was located, but this man drew his attention like nothing else. It was his clock. That long time, the silver numbers, everything about it was just not correct. Did no one on this turtle know how to die properly?

The other man looked distracted, and Cain was not the type to sit back and simply watch the entire time when his curiosity was piqued. "Hey, excuse me. You go to this place very often? They good?" Cain asked as he approached. He wasn't going for startling him here, but a measure of where to even begin.

[denyamenti]

(Spoilers: no, they didn't.)

Bakura stopped at being addressed without pretext, the heel-pivot to face Cain a little too quick to be pure surprise; someone who was used to reacting on instinct, who's reflexes were more geared for fight than flight. It's gone a hair second later though, and Bakura tilted his head, not recognizing the other beyond a vague recollection of scrolling past a network post. A Foreigner then, but not one he'd spoken to.

"Every few days for the last couple of months," he answered. He'd gone to a Fire Sector one when he'd taken an apartment there, but since taking over the Dojo five months prior and it being in the Wood Sector, he'd changed his route accordingly, except when he needed something specific from Fire's marketplaces.

"They're good," he added. "If you go regularly, they start having your order done in advance."

[insertdadjoke]

That reaction was quick, sharp. Cain took note of it, didn't react in turn, tucked it away as something not too odd in a place like Keeliai. Safe or protected, especially for foreigners? This place was not. Which really made Cain approaching people so suddenly not the smartest of moves, but with no malicious intent in him and enough reflexes to take care of himself should it go unexpectedly south ridiculously fast, he wasn't particularly worried about it.

Instead, he allowed a light grin for the detailed answer. That was actually rather pleasant information had even if it had been a question of convenience, he was glad to have asked it. "Someplace that doesn't mind where the business comes from, then," he said summarily. It was better than it had been. That didn't mean Cain wasn't watching for more welcome places to go in the meanwhile. "You live in this sector? I haven't been around in... well, a while. Still trying to get my bearings all over again."

[denyamenti]

"Most places don't mind now," Bakura replied. "Juulan is juulan, after all. The ones who are still being asses about it are easily avoided."

He nodded in response to being asked if he lived in the area, in the direction of the dojo. "At the Jade Dojo. You were here before?"

[insertdadjoke]

That was more information than Bakura probably realized. Mostly because Raine had already spoken of him as the current proprietor of the place. Not that there couldn't other dojos in the city, but foreigner-run? Unlikely. He nodded to the information. "Does that make you Bakura? Raine mentioned you," he explained, before it started to sound creepy or something.

To the other question, he nodded, shrugging along with it. "Not for very long unless you count the year we spent asleep, but yes. Back around December."

[denyamenti]

While ordinarily that might have been cause for suspicion to be recognized in such a way, that Cain preemptively mentioned it was Raine who'd given his name seemed to be the tipping point, and he grinned a bit. Beckoning Cain to walk with him as he headed to his last stop.

"Did she? Then you've either got a very good or very bad impression of me already, and I can't decide which one sounds more entertaining."

[insertdadjoke]

Following the motion, Cain walked alongside Bakura with hands in his pockets at the pace the other set. Although it was a pretty common thing to say when meeting a friend of a friend, he tucked that reaction away for later.

"Actually, I've got a singular impression that you speak ancient Egyptian," he answered. It was hard to tell with people here, but perhaps the man in front of him was not nearly as modern as he appeared. He knew blips in time were possible, as were existences of things in one place that didn't occur in another thanks to Skulduggery and everyone he had dragged in alongside him. "I mentioned the Rosetta Stone to her, if you know what that is, and you came up from that."

not gonna bother with the hover text for this.

[denyamenti]

"Yes," Bakura answered, before switching into the language effortlessly to add, "although it was not called such when I originally spoke it."

Keeping the phrase short kept the translation magic of Tu Vishan from altering it, but then Bakura went back to normal speech. "And yes, I know what the Rosetta Stone is. Hieroglyphics, then hieratic, then Greek."

Sounds like a plan.

[insertdadjoke]

"Been a while," Cain replied in Latin. It was quick, simple, and not his still-rusty Egyptian. He understood it well enough after a moment of running over it in his head, but speaking was going to take a bit more familiarization.

He nodded and tilted his head to regard the man, and his annoyingly wrong clock, once more. "So you have been around the block. It's been too long since I've actually spoken it myself."

[denyamenti]

Bakura's expression is puzzled, and his lack of understanding at Cain's reply evident. He could have perhaps made a guess at what language it was, dug deeply from wisps of memories imparted by Ryou, of church hymns sung by an English mother, but nothing beyond that.

"Here and there," he answered. "And you're not the only one. Wreath's the only other one here whose world it isn't lost in."

[insertdadjoke]

Seeing the lack of understanding, Cain offered a grin in apology. "Latin. Nothing important, just testing the language barrier," he explained. It was interesting, almost like the translation had to catch up before the whole thing would be translated. If phrases were small enough... they could sneak it in.

"Solomon Wreath," Cain said with a tip of his head to show understanding. "They aren't really old enough to have been around during the heyday, though. I'm guessing you're a different story?"

[denyamenti]

"I was there for it," Bakura replied succinctly, glancing sidelong at Cain. "Is there a reason this is of such interest to you?"

[insertdadjoke]

Seeing that glance, Cain resisted the urge to roll his eyes. If someone spoke ancient Egyptian but knew of the Rosetta Stone, there was a story to be told there. Anyone with a drop of interest in history or regular ol' curiosity would be prodding at it, but he supposed his own poking was rather pointed. After all...

"Well, it's not often I get to meet anyone of comparable age to myself," he explained. And by not often, he meant completely impossible back home. There was Abel, but Abel was always the exception to the rule. Cain himself was incredibly interested in what such a long existence was like for someone else; he'd never met someone with whom he could share notes.

[denyamenti]

Bakura stopped in front of another store and pushed the door open, letting it linger so Cain could follow within. The heady scent of dozens of spices from bins all along the walls permeated the air hit them immediately, but for Bakura it was a welcome sense.

"There's probably more here than anywhere else," he remarked, meaning the Foreigners. "But no, it's not common where I'm from either."

He moved around the store with a familiarity that spoke of many previous visits, filling bags with the local equivalents of cumin and coriander, among others. They'd be weighed up at the counter on the scale, once he was finished his selections, meanwhile he kept up the conversation.

"If you're looking for a century by century comparison though, you'd be better off talking to one of the immortals around here. I don't have anything from between Egypt and about fifteen years ago. You still, by the way, haven't introduced yourself."

[insertdadjoke]

Cain wandered with Bakura, stopping to check a few things for himself as they went. It was a sensation he'd become unfamiliar with in ages past but that didn't mean he couldn't appreciate the store for what it was. He was definitely going to need a return trip later down the road to better appreciate what was on offer.

"Right, sorry about that," he said with a proper amount of contrition. He set down what he had been considering and moved back. Hiding the disappointment was easy; because while it was nice to meet someone who could appreciate the past in a way no historian could, there would be something missing. Either way, he would take what he could get. "Jacob Kane, nowadays. That doesn't mean there isn't anything to talk about, though. What immortals?"

[denyamenti]

"There are a few of them here," Bakura replied. "Valdis. That angel girl, I think. If centuries are good enough than the rest of the group from Wreath's world."

He stopped to study Cain for a moment, sending a barely-there tendril of power through the Ring, hidden beneath his shirt, but nothing overtly magical registered against the Item's sense.

But someone else who knew... who's known Egypt in its time?

"Talk about what?"

[insertdadjoke]

"All right, that's somewhere to start," Cain said with a slight duck of his head. It was still weird. Weird and hard to comprehend, but that merely meant he needed to get closer to see it better and understand what it was all about. No matter how long his lifetime was, this was a one shot chance while he was here.

Unfortunately for Bakura, Cain's own brand of immortality was truly nature at work. Nothing to notice aside from the laws of his own universe having a spot just for him in its workings.

"Well, Egypt is a good springboard. You own a dojo and know Raine, so there's other things to talk about too," he offered. What? It wasn't odd to appreciate the company of someone else who had similar experiences to your own. The others either weren't old enough or Cain had yet to establish they were even from earth.

[denyamenti]

The conversation was strange, Bakura would give it that; moreso than even he usually had with other people. But there was a strange earnestness to Cain's pressing questions, like he was trying intensively to make a connection.

"All right," he said, seeming to relent from some of his standoffishness. Perhaps it was the second mention of Raine, perhaps it was the lure of being able to speak freely about Egypt with someone else who had context, but there wasn't any harm he could see in indulging this guy for the moment.

"We can talk about Egypt," he allowed. "You were there as well?"

[insertdadjoke]

Connections were about all Cain had at this point in his life. Without them, he didn't have any sort of purpose or guidance or anything to keep him from wandering around at a total loss for the rest of his life. No matter how brief his stay in this dimension would be overall, that didn't mean he could go without trying to forge something to keep away the distress of isolation.

"Once or twice while it was still... well, ancient," Cain said with a wry look on his face. "To be honest, I mostly stayed around Europe in that time. Etruria. Rome, more specifically, but I had dealings all over."

[denyamenti]

"Life started there," Bakura shrugged, yet there was a bit of quiet sadness in the words. "It had always been ancient." That was, in fact, something that had been very central to Egyptian life, that the land itself was immortal, unchanging. No matter what kings came or went, Egypt itself endured.

Until it didn't, and Bakura had awoken to find a dozen other countries' kings had ruled there (including and most notably Rome, which was now portrayed as the cumulative death of the Ancient Egyptian empire), its monuments were now ruins, its language dead, and some idiots about a hundred years ago had went and relocated part of the Nile.

Carrying his spice selections to the counter, he waited for them to be weighed out and continued speaking.

"Etruria, I don't know. Rome didn't exist yet. Greece barely existed. I'm from well before the New Kingdom," he added, if that helped Cain at all, although Bakura couldn't have given him an exact date since the era had been wiped from history and all. Ironic, that he'd have considered that fitting for Akhenamkhanen's dynasty, since they didn't deserve to be remembered.

The shopkeeper named an amount, and Bakura set the juulan on the counter.

[insertdadjoke]

Cain stayed silent while Bakura spoke, thoughtful and obviously not interested in interrupting. There was a lot to be said for having someone with an even earlier perspective on culture than Cain himself, and while he understood the ideas of Egyptian thought and religion, he had never really grasped it. By the time he had gotten old enough to truly take it in, the world have moved, changed, and his priorities had been elsewhere.

"Then you'd have the advantage," Cain allowed after a moment. It was weird to admit that. Not that someone knew something better than he did, but that someone knew it better because they had lived it while it was still relevant and that Cain hadn't even had the chance. "Rome was founded just shortly after I was born—" By himself, which he felt no need to mention yet, "—so I never got the opportunity to appreciate it for what it was on its own."

[denyamenti]

"I'm not sure how much advantage it is," Bakura replied dryly. "Hasn't made much of a difference for me while I've been here. But Egypt would have had much foreign influence by then. That was the biggest threat, when I lived. Invaders from the north, from the east. The Hyskos, the Asiatics, the Sea People. Everyone wanted a piece of Egypt's wealth, and rather than trade, they just wanted to take. And it wasn't just outsiders... Upper and Lower were united at the time, but it was strained. The damned Priests controlled a lot. Nobles were corrupt, and bought themselves out of the laws."

A wry shake of his head, pushing loose strands of white hair from his face. "It makes it sound horrible, doesn't it? But at the same time..."

[insertdadjoke]

That merely got a grin from Cain. It sounded all par for the course in politics back then, and yet there were plenty of things left unsaid in the lines between intrigue and takeover and unrest. For any struggle, there was always something that made it worth it to the people that lived through them.

"At the same time, it was home," he said with a nod. "That's natural. You said you lived back then but only have the last fifteen years or so of experience. I... was around for the whole time. It makes more sense than you might think. Even if all that was going on, it doesn't tell anyone what life was like or how the people felt despite it all."

[denyamenti]

At the same time, it was home.

That basically summed it up, for Bakura. For as much as he had loathed its rulers, he had just as fiercely loved what Egypt was supposed to be. Had the massacre at Kul Elna not had happened, Akhenamkhanen's dynasty may actually have gained a powerful ally. Not, of course, that that was a path his mind wandered down. There was nothing to be gained by pondering a lifetime of what-if.

"Yes," he said simply instead, agreeing to Cain's assessment. "It was."

He'd often wondered what it would have been like, not to have been trapped inside the Ring for the intervening millennia. How much of the world he'd have seen change, and whether that would have changed the way he approached things when he finally did locate the Puzzle and the rest of the Items. But that, again, was a type of second guessing that was dangerous, especially to a person like him.

"Do people normally live that long, in your world?"