tushanshu_logs | in the middle of the night

Emily-Helen doesn't fully trust Bakura's seeming 180° from thinking roasting hot was a great thing to allowing her to go swimming. But she was happy to see Solomon and even happier to see Marcelon so she was ignoring any oddity of the situation and instead chattering happily about beaches and water creatures and asking questions.

By contrast, Bakura looks like he really is enjoying the soaring temperatures, though he's not immune to their effects and is still keeping hydrated and shaded when appropriate.

"Hopefully you don't sigh like that the whole day," he scoffed.

"I'm taking advantage now," says Solomon dryly, "so there's no need to do so later." He's got a large thermos under his arm, which explains the reason for his 'moment' being 'minutes'. If they're to go to the beach, at least they'll have something cool to drink.

Emily-Helen's excitement has the happy side-effect of helping Marcelon to perk up as well, enough that she lifted herself up and gave Solomon's toes some respite. She still wanted a giant floatie. Solomon telling her that he had no idea where to get a giant floatie had not deterred the demand.

"If we're all prepared ..." He doesn't finish and doesn't give much opportunity for answer, because the shadows swell around them, take hold and deposit them on one of the beaches Solomon had explored while testing his shadow-walking range after the duel with Bakura.

Emily-Helen made a brief woozy noise but quickly recovered from the transport, taking in the beach scenery with excited squeals of delight. Bakura hadn't been out to the shell's edge more than a few times since the problem with the lanterns' existence had been revealed and a quick glance around proved that this wasn't a section he'd seen before. Which wasn't unusual given the hundreds of miles of shoreline formed by the gentle curvature of Tu Vishan's shell down into the water. She barreled towards the surfline with Bakura ambling at a slower pace behind, though not with a speculative glance over his shoulder at Solomon, who didn't seem like he'd be that comfortable in such a setting.

Marcelon had been shadow-walked before, so her only response was a squeal very like her sister's and to make fast turtle-tracks for the water's edge. Solomon declined to move at speed, but this was an area with some shade in the lee of what seemed to be rocks (but could well have been barnacles, or broken shell, or any number of other things).

Bakura's speculation was correct. Solomon had only seen the ocean once when he was a boy, and that had been from a cliff-side view. His second view of the ocean, at fifteen, had involved being thrown into the freezing storm-lashed water when Skulduggery, the idiot, crashed the boat they were on. Honestly, Solomon wasn't much of a swimmer. He'd never learned properly as a child, nor had reason to, and many other things to consider besides; he could swim enough not to drown, but that was about it.

But Solomon was nothing if not adept at pretending comfort in any situation, and he'd worn some of his older clothes in the event he got wet. He left his shoes and socks, waistcoat and thermos, in the shadow of the rocks and wandered down the shoreline, staying to the foamy surf.

Come swim with us! Marcy demanded, surging up over a wave and gliding along the sand beside him.

Solomon gave a short laugh. "No." Absolutely not.

Emily-Helen playfully headbutted Marcelon and then used her flipper to splash a spray of water in Bakura's direction. Come in, come in! she implored, even as he was kicking off his sneakers. Like Solomon, he'd forgone his usual attire for something lighter than his usual outfit and shed his shirt to leave it in a much messier heap than the other man's effects before wading out up to his waist.

"I should learn that shadow travel," he commented, glancing over at Solomon. "Certainly easier for moving around."

"That depends on your range," Solomon said dryly, kicking sand off his toes and stopping to watch Marcelon squeal and throw herself at her sister, trying to push Emily-Helen deeper into the surf. "Most Necromancers can't accomplish more than between five and ten kilometers, depending on resources. My range at home would have been on the upper end of that, but here it's much greater."

For obvious reasons. Ever since Asti's boon and the loss of his cane, Solomon's power had grown. It was still limited in some ways, of course--ways he didn't intend to pursue.

He glanced at Bakura, half wry, half wary. "Of course, you could probably walk the whole of the shell." Given the darkness to which Bakura was connected.

Bakura shook his head. "I can't travel through the Shadow Realm like you do in actual shadows," he replied. "Travel within part of it, yes. If I could have done that, I would never have needed Diabound to--"

He stops for a moment, as if only just realizing what he was saying. Then he shakes his head slightly, cupping water from the ocean to splash over his arms, finishing his sentence. "To move through walls."

That was a name Solomon had never heard before, and it was obviously one that Bakura hadn't meant to use. He considered letting the slip pass, but Bakura finished his sentence anyway, and given the thief's current good-will Solomon might not get another opportunity.

"Friend of yours?" he asked, watching the turtles. Bakura had spoken in past-tense, so likely a dead friend. But the name didn't sound Egyptian, either; perhaps a transliteration of some sort.

"Friend," Bakura echoed and while there was little outward reaction to cross his features, there was still still enough of one internally to make Emily-Helen temporarily stop splashing and look over in his direction curiously.

"It seems strange to call a part of yourself a friend but... yes, he was. Diabound is the name of my kaa."

... Ah. Solomon stilled and resisted the urge to look at Bakura. He still found it difficult to grasp all facets of the Egyptian belief, given its complexities and the fact he hadn't lived the culture; but from what Bakura had explained about the connections to a person's being and the khajbit, the ka was something able to be manifested outright. Like their innermost, or possibly divine, representation.

Bakura wasn't the sort to have friends, let alone admit it when he did. And Solomon did not like, at all, the consistent use of past-tense--particularly not so soon after learning that Bakura had apparently made a deal with an almost literal Devil.

If one sells one's soul to the Devil, he wondered, which part of it does one lose? Marcelon looked up as she caught the vibe of the wondering, and Solomon thought quickly at her, Don't try to answer that. Or ask. At all.

"What happened to him?" he asked quietly.

Solomon's reasoning was right on the money in this case, for better or worse.

"You can't win the master's game unless you're willing to sacrifice every piece in play," Bakura answered. Then, perhaps in good timing or just to buy himself a moment of reprieve from the question, he ducked his head beneath the water and swam a few yards, surfacing with lazy strokes a short distance away.

Game? Marcelon asked, her head lifting. What game?

"Never mind," said Solomon.

But I want to know! It's rude to keep secrets!

"It's also rude to demand information others aren't prepared to give."

He gave it to YOU, the turtle grumbled, and ducked her head to dive under the water, moving along the sandy floor.

Bakura had said something similar to his words now during the duel, just before the khajbit had turned on Solomon. The comment had almost been prescient, in fact. Anyone else and Solomon would have thought the person remarkably self-centred, but Bakura had already proven that he considered himself as expendable a piece as any others. And it was equally obvious that he didn't consider the ghosts in the same light.

Had he realised? It was the same hypocrisy, the same double-standard, the khajbit had revealed in Solomon himself. Perhaps the fact that it didn't throw that fact in Bakura's face revealed that he did know and accepted it. Or it meant that the darkness inside the Ring concealed it from him, and removed the threat of the conflict. He had called that darkness 'master', after all--at least, that was who Solomon was assuming the appellation indicated.

That didn't bode well. It implied that Bakura's care for the ghosts was an echo, of a sort--a remnant of a soul that the darkness was using as a host in the same way Bakura apparently was another. If that was ever subsumed, what would happen to Bakura himself? How many parts of him were already lost, if his kaa had already been sacrificed in some fashion?

Either way, the thief was far enough now that it was difficult to pursue the conversation immediately. Solomon watched him from the edge of the surf, his brow furrowed and hands clasped behind his back.

He was deep enough in thought that he didn't have time to dodge when Marcy came zooming up on a large wave, squealing and large and quite capable of bowling him over into the surf. Told you you should swim with us! she said gleefully as he spluttered and tried to pick himself up out of the water, clothes dripping everywhere. Now you have no excuse! You're as wet as the rest of us!

For as much as he enjoyed the heat, the refreshing cool of the ocean was just as welcome. Emily-Helen comes up to Bakura under the water and headbutted him lightly, spilling pleased feelings into his mind that he was out here with them. This papa of hers confused her often, being sometimes mean or sharp in his dealings with her and other times indulgent, like now.

Bakura swam for about ten minutes, the lack of practiced or proper technique not seeming to hinder his confidence even when he pushed out past the sandbars where the bottom dropped off. Then he made his way back to the shore, snorting in amusement at Solomon's bedraggled and wet appearance as he wrung some of the water from his hair with a grimace; for the most part he didn't mind how long his host kept it (and what he'd adopted, subsequently) but it wasn't nearly as forgiving wet as dry, and he missed when it was short.

The thief plopped down on the sandy edge of the waterline. The swim had cooled him and given him a breather to reorder his thoughts about his kaa, whose mention had prompted that twisting, cold feeling in the pit of his stomach. When he spoke this time though, there was no trace of it in his tone, only an odd pensiveness.

"Diabound was like no other kaa," he said quietly. "He could evolve, gain new forms, new abilities. Not even the three god ka could do that. The Priests thought it was some kind of trick when I fought them, they didn't accept that someone like me could have a powerful kaa, let alone one who could do things like that."

While Bakura was swimming, Solomon was having trouble talking Marcelon into enjoying her own swim instead of pestering him about his. He finally resorted to picking her up using her own shadow and dumping her into the water past the sandbar. She bombed the water with a squeal, sending up a wave that caught Solomon up to the waist.

He was still wringing out his clothes when Bakura came back, and quite the last thing Solomon expected was for Bakura to volunteer that information. For a moment he processed that.

"If I'm not mistaken, a kaa is a reflection of the man," he said finally. It certainly made sense that the kaa belonging to a thief, a shadow in society, would be so adaptable. "Gods are mighty. They have a tendency to know power, not cunning--unless, of course, they are themselves the shadows of their 'betters'." He smiled grimly, brushing sand off his rapidly drying shirt. "Why would the priests and leaders of a nation, those who have never had to hide, know anything of the strength in that?"

They're wise words though Bakura doesn't think the plain statement of them isn't designed, at least in small part, to mollify him. Solomon is hard to get a read on, especially since their initial falling out.

"You could have been put on trial for saying things like that," he scoffed. "Even if you hadn't said them aloud. With the Items' power, they could look into the heart of a person and decide whether they were evil or not -- that's the ability of the Ankh. The Eye to see their thoughts, the Rod to control them, the Scales to judge them. If the Priests didn't like what they found, they could pull a person's kaa right out of them and duel against it. If the criminal lost -- and they nearly always did -- their kaa would be sealed in a stone tablet where it could be retrieved by Item holders for future battles. That became the new justice after the Shadow Games began."

"I was," Solomon said simply. He'd had to be very, very careful none of the King's Guard recognised him as Ailbe ó Maolomhnaigh's son for several years after his father's death. They'd have executed him on the spot at thirteen, if he hadn't killed them first.

He snorted. "Whyever would you want to overturn such a dynasty, I wonder?" He shook his head. "That gives the phrase 'history is written by the winners' new meaning. How does one fight a system designed to make the common people fail?"

By making a deal with a worse threat, apparently. It was like fighting the Faceless Ones using real demons: it could only ever result in a pyrrhic victory. The problem was that Solomon didn't think Bakura would care, and if he would have, that part of him might already be lost. It wasn't only his ghosts who needed knitting together on a metaphysical level.

But Solomon didn't particularly want to dwell on old bitterness; not when it risked Bakura losing any sense of good-humour with which he'd begun the day. Their conversation over the consoles had been the least edged in weeks. "How did you discover Diabound?"

Why do you think I'm trying to rewrite that history? Bakura thought, yet said nothing to that effect aloud. If -- when -- the Memory RPG succeeded, it would literally correct the flow of history.

The thief pulled one leg up to rest his chin on it, looking out over the two turtle hatchlings still playing in the shallows, his gaze distant as if watching the scene replay as he described it.

"The first time I was able to get back to Kul Elna after the massacre," he said lowly, as his hands indicated a creature a couple of feet long. "He was there. His first form was that of a white snake. But I didn't know what he was, just that he was strange so I tried to chase him off."

The corners of his mouth turned faintly upward. "I hit him with a stick so he bit me."

Solomon couldn't help but laugh. "That sounds fair. You probably gave him a headache. I wonder," he mused, "does that translate back to you?"

If kaa could have manifested bodies, were they physical enough for injuries and feelings to be separate from the rest of them, or would they translate back to the physical form of the person?

And what happened to all those who lost their kaa to those meant to protect them?

A question, Solomon decided, he wasn't sure he wanted answered.

"You don't know how you manifested him that first time, then?" he asked instead. He was curious, but it was a topic he hadn't been able to ask after until now. He'd used the khajbit himself, but now that he could open a portal--however small--would he be able to summon monsters himself? Or, if he had one, find his own kaa?

"That much didn't, though more serious injuries did," Bakura answered. "With other summoned monsters, when your ba ran too low, the summons just disappeared. But with your kaa, the wounds could stay with you."

The ghosts, which until this point had been so quiet they may as well have been asleep, murmured faintly at that. They remembered very well the day that Bakura and Diabound had met, the day he'd first returned to Kul Elna. How furious they'd been to discover a survivor and yet conversely, how relieved: they were not entirely forgotten.

The thief had paused to listen briefly, as if making sure they did not want something, before continuing to speak. "No. I didn't even realize he was part of me, at first. There was... a lot to take in, at the time and I wasn't very old."

That made far more sense than either-or; that level of connection couldn't go without some sort of feedback between the two. Again, Solomon wondered what the priests had done with the people they'd crippled in the name of national security, and then wondered why he was even surprised. Governments had been playing secret games and punishments all through history.

Solomon also chose to say nothing until the ghosts had said their piece, whatever it might be. "Understandable." But that did make it difficult to tell whether it was something Solomon might be able to utilise himself. He glanced out at the ocean, considering. "I have been wondering whether or not I'd have a kaa of my own."

And whether it would be wise to seek it out.

"By rights everyone who has a soul should have one," Bakura replied. "Just because they're from somewhere that doesn't think of things the same way doesn't change that. It's like believing in a different set of gods-- they still exist, acknowledged or not. Now that you've started dabbling with the khajbit," and that was something they hadn't fully discussed either, "there's little reason to think you couldn't also manifest your kaa."

The last time that had even been remotely mentioned it had been used as ammunition, so Solomon wasn't adverse to seeing how Bakura had taken that news now the man had calmed down.

"I've not been able to manifest a portal much larger than a pot," he said, "but as you've summoned creatures without any apparent need for a portal at all, I assume the skill is less in the portal and more in the summoning."

Bakura stretched his legs out so that his feet were in the surf, pushing them down under the sand and then leaning back, resting his weight on his hands. "You shouldn't go around opening large tears without having some way of stopping what might want to come through," the thief said bluntly. "Until you think of yourself as a duelist, and the creatures that live there view you as the same, there's no obligation for them to obey you if they decide they want to tear up this place and you tell them no."

To a certain extent; they couldn't exist indefinitely in this realm and in any case, the Ring would alert Bakura to any instances of that, but it was still something that Solomon should be aware of.

"Summoning here is a different skill than what you did inside the khajbit," he explained. "There, it's straight up strength of will. Will to call them, to get them to follow your commands, carry out your attacks. You can call on something there that might be useless, but it will still happen. That's how you got into trouble with those spawning skeletons, there was no direction. You just called and that's what you got. Here, outside of the khajbit, there's structure. The summon needs to fit the situation and while yes, you can stretch that a little with some creativity, using something like a Spell or Trap where it doesn't fit not only doesn't work, it backfires and sometimes, messily."

No obligation to obey him, Solomon noted, but that didn't reject the possibility that he could still defend against them using shadows in the event anything went untoward. Of course, using his shadows against them could well only make them angrier, rather than proving his worth.

"And here I thought it was because the khajbit objected to being controlled," Solomon said dryly. That was certainly what it had felt like: as though he was under scrutiny and the khajbit had sought any chink in his armour to strike back. How much of that had been the khajbit alone? How much the darkness in the Ring?

"How does one go about being accepted by the beings there?" he asked. It made sense, but it wasn't something that had occurred to him as necessary, though it should have. The khajbit seemed to depend on a distinct set of rules, most of which were bounded by willpower and respect.

"The khajbit is a contract with the duelist," Bakura stated matter of factly. "That's why it tests those who enter-- think of it as collateral. You don't lend someone ten times the amount of money than what they can pay back. Power works the same way."

He blew a few strands of white hair out of his eyes; the hot sun had him almost dry already. "I don't know that there's any single answer for that."

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