tushanshu_logs | Let Your Plans be as Dark and Impenetrable as Night (Catch All)

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Let Your Plans be as Dark and Impenetrable as Night (Catch All)

Characters: Valdis and YOU!
Date: September 2015 (2016 in game)
Location: Throughout Keeliai
Situation: Various
Warnings/Rating: In headers if necessary.

Compared to last month, August had been uneventful. Not that she was complaining, because there had been plenty to do. Working overtime at the dojo due to the increased number of students had taken up most of her time, limiting the energy she could spend on hunting down the Cultists and whoever was controlling them. She hadn't even found the time to speak with Milyn about her involvement with Dardul. It was frustrating to feel so trapped, even if she realized the importance of teaching the Kedan to defend themselves. At least the Kedan seemed to have accepted them and it did feel good to actually be a part of something.

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It was finally the end of the day, but some of the Kedan were hesitant to leave because it was the last day before the Chihuelans were due to arrive.

"The chances of there actually being a fight are slim," she said, trying to reassure one of the younger siblings of one of the students, "And if there is, then you know what to do, right?"

The girl nodded, but continued to cling to her brother until he picked her up and carried her out the door. Valdis wished that her words hadn't felt like a lie, wished that part of her didn't want a fight, but being a creature of chaos, she wasn't certain if that desire would ever go away.

She continued ushering the stragglers out the door and then set about putting a few practice weapons that had been left out away. She wasn't looking forward to tomorrow, but all knowledge indicated that there wouldn't be a battle right away. There was still time.

As for the past few weeks since attendance had upsurged, Bakura had also been on the floor during the busiest parts of the day, although he gave less directed instruction than Valdis; less teaching, more sideline advice. The method seemed to suit him better, and he still watched more than he spoke. He overheard Valdis' reassurance toward the kedan siblings, raising an eyebrow to himself.

That's optimistic, he thought. She was putting the other weapons away, which he was fine with. He'd go through the dojo later tonight and properly clean all the ones that needed it. It was something of a nightly habit for him now, and he found it relaxing. (Not to mention, as Pepper had accurately pointed out, it was something he preferred to do himself, as he liked it done a specific way.)

"When you are done," he said to her, not needing to raise his voice much to carry through the now-quiet dojo, "your pay is in the office."

That was really about the extent they spoke to each other on a daily basis, unless a situation regarding the clientele arose. They hadn't had any disagreements since their last clash, but neither did Bakura go out of his way to interact with her much, not eager to touch off another contest of wills.

The thief returned to the office himself, leaving her bag of juulan strings on the desk as usual, attached with a brief note of pay raise due to increased workload. He passed through the back wall door and went into the kitchen, though he left the door open to watch.

She usually vanished soon after the kedan left, it was easier to maintain a relative peace between herself and Bakura if they rarely interacted. She didn't hope that there wouldn't be another conflict between them. Eventually they would butt heads again. She simply nodded and continued to clean up. Once everything was put away, she went into the office to collect her pay, raising a brow as she read the note. It wasn't as if the raise didn't make sense, she just hadn't been expecting it.

She almost left without a word, but something shifted in her awareness and she turned to look in the direction where Bakura had disappeared into the kitchen. The feeling was odd, but somehow familiar, although she had no idea why. She left the office and headed toward the kitchen. Sure enough, the strange shift was centered on Bakura, evidenced by the strength of the feeling as she drew closer.

"There's something there," she said softly, leaning against the doorway and watching him, letting the colors of the world fade. His soul lit up, broken and in tatters as it had been since his return, but around its edge, there was a disturbance, a weak and moving mass, hovering just barely beyond her sight. "Around your soul."

Bakura had just poured himself some coffee; he drank it regularly, but in the last month with his non-existent restful sleep, the amount had increased exponentially. At Valdis' words however, he raised his gaze above the edge of the mug at the uninvited observation. Something there?

"Oh?" His voice was mild, but there was a tinge of suspicion there. "Did the waheh-maw finally do what he threatened, and put a bell on it? He doesn't like that there's not enough of me to sense, I keep startling him when I get close."

So Solomon Wreath's death magic couldn't sense Bakura...that was interesting information, though she wasn't certain how useful it was.

"No," she replied, catching the suspicion in his voice. She didn't let the soul sight fade, trying to focus on the blur that continued to move around Bakura's soul. It was like a memory that drifted within the subconscious, inaccessible to conscious though, but still there.

"Den Nár-reiða is not behind this." Her head was beginning to hurt, the sight was not designed to be used in this fashion and forcing it was apparently not a good idea, so she let it fade, wincing at the suddenly colorful world. "It's moving just beyond comprehension, too quiet to sense when there are so many other souls wandering around."

As far as she knew, nothing should have changed, he was the same as he was before he disappeared into the ring, his soul hadn't changed color, there wasn't a foreign presence within it, only around it.

Automatically, Bakura's gaze flicked down to the gold gemmed ring that was his soul jewelry, before back up to regard Valdis. But he hadn't had any issues with the container for his soul (either of them, insofar as he knew) and so his shoulders rolled in a slow shrug.

"I don't know," he replied. "I haven't done anything differently. Perhaps the shadow magic is reacting to Kaiba being here."

"It's not shadow magic, its," It wasn't easy to explain what she had seen or was sensing, if only she could actually show people what she could see, but that would just make everything too easy. "Like a mirage, shifting and shimmering."

It hadn't been there before Bakura had taken the brunt of her sword's magical purge, she was certain of that much...and then he had vanished into the ring and Revelations had gone dark. Whatever darkness lived inside Bakura, inside that Ring, it had been strong enough to silence the holy blade for days. Then the rest of his sentence registered.

"Why would the shadow magic react to Kaiba?"

Bakura pursed his lips briefly, but shook his head and took a sip of his coffee, barely wincing at the high temperature. He didn't know what could be causing whatever it was that Valdis was seeing, and he felt no different than he did, only more tired... but that was hardly something that would register on his soul.

Instead, he swallowed and then answered her other question. "Seto Kaiba is the reincarnation of the High Priest Set, part of the Pharaoh's court of my time, and who was one of the strongest users of shadow magic to live."

Which was not an inconsiderable nod to the level of talent, from Bakura. The thief scoffed a moment later, however. "Not that Kaiba will admit it, of course. He's ready to deny it to his dying breath, in fact. As I'm sure you noticed from his introduction on the network, he'd sooner yatet im-maseheh than acknowledge magic exists, or whose soul his resembles."

A faint curl of a scowl. "He even goes so far as to persist in saying I'm nothing but a splinter personality of Ryou's, and the same for the Pharaoh of Yuugi."

Edited 2015-09-09 03:06 (UTC)

"Interesting," she said, hiding her surprise at the realization that Kaiba and Bakura were from the same world. She had noticed that Kaiba took denial to the next level, but she didn't think that the strange man could be capable of such power as Bakura seemed to believe he possessed. What she thought of Kaiba didn't matter because she knew that the man wasn't responsible for what she was seeing and her curiosity about him could wait. Reincarnation was unsurprising, it was a facet of Wan and Aang's world as well, but how Kaiba could think of Bakura and Ryou as the same person was just...wrong.

She was watching him carefully, tempted to ask more about his world and what had happened to him there, but hesitant to prolong the conversation. After a few moments of silence she decided to push for a little more information. She stood up straight, crossing her arms, careful to keep her hand away from the hilt of her sword, "Shadow magic," she said, "Is it connected to the Ring?"

That question seemed to come out of left field, although no more than the remark about his soul had been -- had Bakura been anyone else, he might have actually considered both questions to be rather prying -- but he slowly shook his head.

"It would be more accurate to say that the Ring is connected to shadow magic," he replied, and he only made the distinction because it made a difference depending on the context. "Why?"

"I'm just certain that whatever is affecting your aura wasn't there before you went into the Ring. I would think that perhaps the darkness inside the Ring might have affected your soul, but this doesn't feel evil."

She was obsessing and she knew it, but the shift was strange and her mind was wandering. At this point, she was almost thinking out loud.

"The evil inside the Ring was potent enough to silence Revelations for several days, so I'm surprised that it didn't affect your soul."

In hindsight, it was probably a good thing that the Void had been dormant during the time she was in possession of the strange item.

It's a strange echo of the conversation he had with Raine, Bakura thinks. For a moment he's silent, sipping his coffee as though intending not to answer her at all, before he finally does.

"The thing inside the Ring affects my soul plenty, khapshemet, and has for a long time. You've just never seen it without, to have a frame of reference."

"Perhaps." She was quite relieved that he responded, the last thing she needed was to offend Bakura by accident, "But the darkness within your soul is different than whatever is in the Ring. The Ring felt...almost evil at times, and your soul does not."

She was uncertain if she should continue, Bakura had been level so far, but they had a way of irritating each other without trying.

"Yes," Bakura confirmed curtly, that there was indeed a difference and that it was evil all with a single word. "I'm well aware of what it is, and its name. This isn't unfamiliar to me, nor is it new. Whatever disturbance you are seeing, it is not likely the cause."

"Very well."

Perhaps it was best to stop pushing, it seemed the man was finished with the conversation.

"I just thought you might want to know."

Bakura exhaled, shoving the heel of one hand into his eye for a moment, and set the coffee mug down on the counter. "I'm not angry with you for bringing it up," he stated flatly, because he assumed that sort of thing needed to be explicitly stated, when it was between the two of them.

"I've not been able to sleep well since returning, and the Chihuelans are not likely to bring the air of humble guests when they're here. An extra, unexplained change in the works is not something I'd be excited to investigate. You said that it silenced your blade for days, and the being inside -- Zorc -- is, to best of my knowledge, fairly dormant at the moment. If that changes, well..."

This darkness had a name, not as menacing a sound as Malicant, but the way Bakura spoke of it gave the name weight.

"Two days," she replied, "But it had to fight both my darkness and yours, so no wonder it was exhausted."

His logic was clear as usual, but his lack of sleep disturbed her, not because she worried for his health, but because she worried about the darkness and what it could mean for them if it woke up.

"Nightmares?"

She and Bakura were not the same, but there were enough similarities between them that she suspected that that was the case. For her, nightmares often came hand in hand with the powers of the Void, so she hoped to God that it didn't work the same way for Bakura and this Zorc.

"Nightmares, memories, there's little difference," he sighed. "I've not had them so persistent in a long time, is all."

He was used to one or two a week, not one or two a night. He could function on small grabs of sleep, but after a month it was starting to wear thin.

"Maybe your subconscious is trying to tell you something."

That might not be reassuring, but if it was true then, no matter that he didn't want to think about it, he would have to think about it. This Zorc didn't sound like something you could simply ignore.

"One day you'll remember that trite and condescending advice does not make you particularly endeared to me," Bakura said thinly. "Or do you think that I simply hadn't considered looking for the source of this? Thank you, for the brilliant deduction that I'm not doing this consciously."

She held back a sigh. As usual, the man was taking everything the wrong way, but she supposed that that was partly her fault. Their arrangement had nothing to do with friendship, they were simply two overly-powerful, near immortal, antagonistic people who worked together because it was more beneficial than working against each other.

"Nothing I am capable of could ever endear me to you," she replied, completely unoffended, "That is simply the nature of the beast."

Now she sighed, "All I meant was that that when I ignored nightmares, it almost cost me my soul, because they were a warning from my subconscious that the barrier was failing.

"I don't know much about this Zorc, but if he has been affecting your soul for so long...," she wasn't entirely sure where she was going with this, "You may not want or need my concern, but it is still concerning."

Edited (muse) 2015-09-15 19:33 (UTC)

"I'm not ignoring them," he sighed. "If I were capable of that, I'd be getting sleep that I sorely miss. Believe me, no one understands the concern of Zorc awakening better than I. But if you wish to look further into this... whatever discrepancy with my soul, that you can see or sense, you may."

He really didn't know what to make of Valdis' statement of concern, that she was right to be worried about Zorc, but she had merely phrased it like it pertained also to him.

"Thank you, I suppose. For telling me of it."

She did wish to look more closely into the matter of Zorc and Bakura's soul, yet at the same time, the prospect was frightening for all the things that could go wrong. His permission was the least of her worries, it was control, precision, timing and Zorc that were worrying, not to mention the potential harm to Bakura.

She shook her head, "You don't have to thank me."

She would need time to think and plan, but with the Chihuelans soon arriving, the matter of Bakura's soul would have to wait. Hopefully whatever was going on wouldn't cause problems before she was ready to counter them.

"Just, please let me know if anything changes."

Bakura answered with a non-committal noise, because he wasn't sure that he wanted to inform her of anything if it changed, but he'd address that issue if it arose, and not before -- too much tended to change in this place, between one incident and the next.

She took the grunt for what it was, a lack of answer due to indecisiveness. She knew that their relationship was rocky at best, but she hoped that he wasn't foolish enough to ignore a change. As far as she knew, she was the only one who could see and interact with souls on the three planes. Both a blessing and a curse.

"I'll see you tomorrow," she replied, turning to leave. She'd keep a close eye on him, but not so close as to irritate him. She simply had to trust that if he decided he needed her help, he would ask.

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Let Your Plans be as Dark and Impenetrable as Night (Catch All)

Bakura | The Dojo |Day before Chihuelan arrival | CW: none

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