I'm nearly human look at me

[unobtainableredemption]

Characters: Kaine and OPEN
Date: Sometime after the bottle event
Location: Various
Situation: Various
Warnings/Rating: PG-13 to be safe (for Kaine's mouth)


Option 1 - Fire Sector
[Kaine’s standing in front of a storefront, looking through the window at the mantle displayed on the other side and debating whether or not he wants to buy one. Not for the fashion, mind you, but for something he could temporarily wear to cover his face and conceal the giant shiner surrounding his left eye. It’s a cliché, but you should really see the other guy.]


Option 2 - Water Sector
[He had intended to go right home, but now that his face was concealed by the hood of his newly bought mantle, Kaine finds himself walking right past the door to his suite, eventually winding up in a park in the water sector. It's clear by the path of destruction as he enters that one of the baby turtles had been through recently--the rubble had not yet been pushed to the side. He found himself smiling despite himself. When were they going to learn that they couldn't destroy everything?

Kaine sits on one of the benches and pulls the hood low as to cover his black eye, and just stares out at the mess. He could head home some other time.]


Option 3 - Metal Sector (Wearing this costume, though he still has short hair)
[He had forgotten how heavy the outfit was. It was the complete opposite of his Scarlet Spider costume—bulky with ridges and angles that have angles. Then there was the cape. What was he thinking when he added a cape to this thing? There was no reason for it whatsoever. Not like the raised “veins” of the costume, which had once pressed upon the scars of his degeneration to slow its progress, but now just serve to remind him of where the scars used to be. It was perfect.

He couldn't be the Scarlet Spider anymore. Not after what had happened in the bottle. It only served to remind him just how different he was from the others, and just how far he had fallen from what he could have been. And then he found this, his old outfit that once kept him alive, the outfit he wore during the year he spent terrorizing both Reilly and Parker, as well as anyone they might have cared about… and if that wasn't divine intervention, he didn't know what was.

Kaine leaps to the next building, never losing a stride in his step. He’s trying to get used to the suit’s bulk by doing something he’d done hundreds of times in it before... but if he bothered to stop and think about it, he’d realize just how suspicious he looks dressed like that leaping across rooftops at a sprint.]

OOC: If you want to roll with something other than those, feel free to either PM me, reach out to me at redconfession, or just start a thread, your choice.

Comments

[burnseternal]

[That description is enough to elicit a laugh out of Saint Walker, a curiously bright, airy sound when compared to the deep resonance of his voice.] In that case, no, it most certainly does not mean the same thing. It is a title, nothing more.

[An important title, certainly, but simply a title nevertheless. It is as much a part of him as his name is, but he has no particular attachment to making anyone else refer to him as such.]

[unobtainableredemption]

[Man, just when he thinks this guy--guy?--can't get any weirder.]

A title for what? [Kaine isn't sure why he's curious, only that he is. He guesses it's because it's not every day you run into an alien on the top of a building.]

[burnseternal]

Simply speaking, it is a title given to me by my people for my role as a religious guide and mentor.

[Of course it's not as simple as that, but as an explanation, it works well enough.]

[unobtainableredemption]

So you're like some kind of alien monk?

[burnseternal]

Rest assured, I am no alien to my own people. But from what I understand, yes, our roles may be somewhat similar.

[unobtainableredemption]

[Uh... crap, right.]

You seem to know a bit about humanity.

[burnseternal]

Not as much as I should like, though I am learning more every day. There are quite a lot of you here.

[The abundance of humans here is something that clearly puzzles him; if they are capable of pulling people from all over the universe, then why rely so heavily on Earth?]

[unobtainableredemption]

We're not that hard to figure out. [Okay, that's a lie. Humans are a mass of contradictions.]

I've never noticed.

[burnseternal]

[He shoots Kaine a skeptical look.] Do you truly believe that?

[unobtainableredemption]

When you expect the worst from people you can only be surprised for the better.

[burnseternal]

I did not mean expecting the worst from people. I merely meant that people are not so easy to understand whether you assume that they are good or otherwise, [he says mildly, though he privately disagrees with Kaine's pessimistic philosophy.]

[unobtainableredemption]

Men are selfish creatures. At the end of the day, they'll take what they want without a second thought, crushing anyone that stands in their way like ants. There may be exceptions, but they're simply that--exceptions. That's why I prefer to think that everyone will betray me in the end, because that is human nature.

[Oh my god he hasn't talked like that in years. Is it the damn suit bringing out the melodrama in him?]

[burnseternal]

[Saint Walker is suddenly and vividly reminded of a certain Red Lantern he knows - and though he's fond of him, it's not a compliment.]

That is an... extreme way of thinking about such matters. I do not agree that humans are so simple - or that any being, capable of sentient thought and emotion, can be that simple.

[He rests his hands loosely in his lap, contemplating the horizon.] Just as people are capable of great evil, they are capable of great good as well.

[unobtainableredemption]

There's an old philosopher named Hobbes who basically said that all men were driven by self-preservation, that good only comes from the benefits you can receive by performing the task.

At the end of the day, that's all "good" is. A justification for people to sleep at night, or to make themselves look better, or to improve some aspect of their lives.

Men are selfish.

[burnseternal]

[That is a troubling statement, stemming from a troubled mind. That philosophy of life could not be further from the truth from Saint Walker, but he cannot muster up even the slightest feelings of contempt for it; instead he feels pity, pity for those who believe it, pity for the fact that their lives must have been wracked by ruin and despair to get to that point.]

Hobbes, was it? He must have led a very lonely life. As do all who follow that path.

[His head swivels, and he locks his gaze onto Kaine. He cannot see the man's eyes, but that changes very little in his expression.] Then what of great acts done out of love? What of great acts done out of hope?

[unobtainableredemption]

I doubt he saw it that way.

Isn't that all selfishness in the end? You want to believe in something, so you do it. You believe hope makes you happy or brings you peace. You want to be happy and at peace. That's why you do it, not because of hope itself.

[He looks down at his hands.] And love... love is the most selfish desire of all.

[burnseternal]

You contradict yourself. Hope supersedes mere want, my friend. It is a belief in the future, and want does not factor into belief. You believe, or you do not.

[He knows this too well - and the ring in his pocket is the manifestation of this knowledge, of hope in the face of the impossible.]

But please, tell me more of your thoughts on the world.

[It's a genuine invitation, and it's said as such. He knows in his heart that Kaine's words are wrong, but it's the first step in understanding him.]

[unobtainableredemption]

Keep telling yourself that. There's nothing real at all about hope. [Because if it was real, it just means he was meant to suffer.]

Why, so you can keep nitpicking?

[burnseternal]

So we can continue talking. [He spreads his hands in front of him, fingers spread.] What you call nitpicking, I call conversation.

[unobtainableredemption]

Well I don't feel like sharing. So why don't you talk if you're so insistent on a conversation.

[burnseternal]

That is what I have been doing, [he says lightly, then appears to think on it for a moment. He rather enjoys talking, but has grown unused to idle conversation over the past year or so. The trials of the life of a hermit, he supposes.]

If you don't feel like sharing, then is there anything you wish to hear?

[The alternative is sitting here in silence - which, frankly, Saint Walker tends to find more peaceful than awkward. Others do not seem to feel the same way, more often than not.]

[unobtainableredemption]

[What he should do is just leave. Frankly, there's no reason for him to even still be here. He's already gone out of his way to talk to this guy in the first place, and as an added fun bonus, argued philosophy.

Instead, he finds himself asking:]

So what the hell are you, anyway? [Tactful? Probably not. But at least it's honest?]

[burnseternal]

[The look Saint Walker shoots Kaine is level, but deeply unimpressed.]

You mean to ask from where I hail? [He says delicately, then continues.] I, and others like me, are from the planet of Astonia. You would not have heard of it.

[unobtainableredemption]

[Okay, he might have been able to phrase that better.]

I... can't say I do. I'm not exactly sure what's "out there."

[burnseternal]

Even for those for which space travel is an everyday occurrence, we are considered to be... a bit out of the way, [he says, which is frankly putting it lightly. Few had deigned to so much as visit before their untimely destruction, and now that it was gone, few noticed their absence.] And Earth, as I understand it, has not yet developed the technology necessary to travel very far at all.