tushanshu_logs | ENDPLOT | ROLL THE BONES, PART 1

Entry tags:

ENDPLOT | ROLL THE BONES, PART 1

Characters: ALL!
Date: Early/Mid November
Location: Under the shell
Situation: It's either Malicant or the Foreigners... and their worlds.
Warnings/Rating: Add warnings as needed.

The Foreigners had begun their counterattack by trying to possess the Great Turtle whom Malicant had taken, and although the movement had failed, some vital information had been uncovered. Under the shell lay Malicant's weakness, and inside the Dreaming was where he could be fought.

Any help from the kedan is uncommon. They're wary, watching, as a group beginning to lose sight of the community. Their family groups are more tightly-knit than ever, and any approach from the Foreigners is answered by suspicion at best and violence at worst. That makes daily life difficult, when the majority of the city refuses to have much to do with them. Why aren't you doing anything? they seem to say. What good are any of you? All you've done is make things worse. We'd be better if you'd never come.

The Foreigners are unwelcome in Keeliai. The cultists are becoming a majority. Now is the time.

There aren't many left of the Foreigners left, but inside the Dreaming the limitations of the waking world no longer exist. For every Foreigner and their worlds, their loved ones, this is the chance to make themselves safe for good. And all of them will be needed.

LINKS
Beneath The Shell/Midnight Hotel | Malicant’s Tools/The Vilii Stone | OOC Plot Post

OOC
There are two main headers, one for preparation at the Hotel where Milyn and Eva will be available to speak with The second section where they will be able to search the caves beneath the Shell inside the Dreaming to find the Vilii Stone, and where the boon'd characters will be affected. If you are threading something that doesn't fit one of those categories, just add it to the bottom of the post. Questions go to the plotting post, please! Once the Stone has been acquired the second half of the plot will go live in the logs comm.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"it will. I and my nephew are also firebenders," Iroh explained. "A bit more dangerous than just light, since it will burn."

"And potentially useful if there are problems, I should think."

Enjolras has seen Korra working, and has spoken with Wan, so he knows a little of how all of those things work. Or well, he knows what they look like anyway, and that there are people who can use the elements effectively.

"Granted, I do hate to borrow trouble, but this is hardly the time to worry about something like that."

Iroh nodded. "Part of learning to work with fire is knowing when it is helpful and when it will do more harm than good." It was a delicate balance, and one Iroh noticed many firebenders failed at. "With so many non-benders around, I do need to consider that."

"I could well imagine it takes quite a bit of practice, there."

The balances involved with that were, well. Delicate did seem to be as good a description as any ever was. "And yes, far more of us than any of you in that. I can see where a less than effective use would spell disaster."

"Thankfully, I trust those who are trained here," Iroh said. Himself. His nephew. Korra. He recalled Aang hadn't started his training yet before arriving, which meant he should check with Zuko about the matter.

"Ah yes, trust." Enjolras knows the importance of that, even when it comes to matters that are not those of wielding fire. "I must say that I agree. In general, that is. Among all of us here, it certainly has been forged by now. And a good thing that it has. Trust can carry a people far by its nature alone, I'd think."

"Perhaps waiting has helped us," Iroh agreed. "We have become more than a group of individuals."

"You have a point." Enjolras agreed. "The longer we have shared the experience, the more we've come together, after all."

He thought to this point last year, realizing things had certainly not been like this, then. He's glad the time has come to see this through, for those who are not here for reasons of being pulled back home, or, for those other reasons he hates to think too closely about now.

"We've come together, haven't we? I am relieved in that."

"We have," Iroh said. "At least, I believe we all share the same goal, regardless of our opinions on those that brought us here."

He knows that people didn't like Evandu, and hadn't always cared for Eshai before him. People weren't fond of being snatched away to this war. But now that Malicant had been openly trying to kill them, and kill the turtle-children -- had killed five children -- people found they could work together against him.

"Rather. Mine were not always the best, but..." Enjolras offered a small smile as things were. "It is more about all of us than the powers that be, I should think."

Eshai had won him over when she pointed out Malicant's threat to their worlds at home, if they were true, and Evandau never had. Even when Enjolras had not suspected the man of being influenced by Malicant, he had thought him a bad ruler, but they were two people in the scheme of this. Two people who were now gone, and who the fight had moved beyond. Maybe it had never belonged to the Empress or her successor, but to all of them instead.

"I would rather we had not...our recent tragedy could have been done without, but I think that because of it, we've learned how best to forge ahead into the rest of this, yes? There will never be right in what happened, but this way, we can ensure, at least, that they did not go in vain. It gives us all a strength of will, I think."

"And the past is not something we can change, only learn from and make the best of," Iroh said. he had a lot of his own past mistakes, and he sometimes wondered if he should have been taking things more seriously here. But what is done, is done.

"Certainly that." Enjolras had needed to learn that one in rather the hard way. It was not that he had not tried to make the best of where he had come from, or that he had not learned some of the things he felt like he had needed to learn, but when it had come to putting them into action, he had not always done the best. It was a mistake that he had learned that he was prone to here, that he could even catch himself making sometimes. While he regretted that, for all of his resolve to voice those thoughts, losing his friends without all of them knowing it, he had taken something away from it that had managed to work here.

"Never forget, of course." He added, "But in addition, we must use it to shape our next steps, I would think."

"Exactly so," Iroh said. "We have been here for some time, and we haev learned what we can of this place, and our friends and enemies."

"And I have learned, beyond that, to trust in the skills of everyone here." Enjolras agreed, nodding. "I may not know everyone personally, but I do know that I trust you. We shall have to be all right. We've brought all of ourselves to this."

Iroh nodded. And it was not like they could ask for more than their best. "There are so many worlds. It means that there are skills I never knew about here."

"Rather." Enjolras nodded quite enthusiastically. "My home has none of the powers or abilities that I have learned about here. No one wields the elements, or can heal with simply a touch, or fly or...surely combined with all of that...we are formidable. And we have learned much. I am quite glad for that."

"Yes. Power does not amount to much without the ability to learn and adapt it," Iroh said. "Even someone without the ability to weird the elements can best someone who doesn't have any ability to adapt."

Some of Iroh's own most powerful techniques were based on concepts from other bending arts, or just plain things people didn't expect of a Firebender.

"Oh, certainly." Enjolras agreed. "I have seen unarmed men, desperate ones, take on better equipped soldiers and come out on top. There are so many other techniques to be employed, so many non conventional methods that can help in any sort of a fight. I do see what you mean there."

The July Revolution had been like that, in a way. Enjolras had watched the people, workers, and those who were not even workers rise and strike against soldiers and the Guard itself, and win the day. And he had known Eponine here, and that her tricks, never taught in any honorable style of fighting, could have very well helped her in fights, even if she had not struck in a traditional sort of way.

"All sorts of tactics should be considered, after all, I think. I have come to learn that, now."

"Considered, yes," Iroh said. "But do remember we will hopefully have to live with the aftermath of those tactics."

"Certainly that."

Enjolras had not lived to see a world torn apart at the seams by the use of magic or technology, so for him the idea is more theoretical, at least until the General mentions that point, and then he finds himself frowning, more thoughtful than anything else, as some of those things become clear.

"It would not do, would it, to be overzealous enough that we create a world much like the one he would have preferred that we remain in. I had not given that enough thought, but you are right. There are many reasons to take care here, too."

Even soldiers with swords could do damage, albeit on a smaller scale. "Yes. Let us remember to work towards a world we would like to live in afterward. And people we can live with."

So they can, at that. Enjolras knows enough by now to to know that most of the men at home were killed by bayonet, an effective statement about swords if nothing else. And there is the matter of guns to be considered too, of course. Some deaths, even those of loved ones, or oneself, are necessary sacrifices, but much better to clamp down on damage where they can.

"People we can live with." He echoes that part of the words, smiling a little, "Then we must remember to be those people as well."

"Naturally," Iroh said. "I've met a lot of old soldiers back home. It is not a profession that rests easy on a good man, no matter how many stories they hear of the war's justness."

Granted, it didn't help that the Fire Nation's propaganda conflicted with field observations. The colonists had always done better, since they could honestly believe the Earth Kingdom would drive their families out of the home their ancestors had conquered. But Iroh had met people from the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes as well, and they could be just as drained by the war to defend their homes.

Lu Ten's death had severed any wish of Iroh's to continue his father and grandfather's war, but it had been the capstone of observations Iroh had been making since he was a young officer and he'd tried to ignore.

"Indeed not." Enjolras had not been a soldier, in the strictest sense of the term, and would never have called himself such a thing. He had been a Priest, of the Republic, and of Justice, and that had been quite enough. His experiences with Justice, both upholding and dispensing it, had brought enough of a weight. Even now, with over a year here. it still sat on his shoulders like the heaviest of mantles, a burden he bore proudly enough, but could never deny feeling either.

"Justice should never be the sort of thing that one takes lightly. There is a satisfaction in it, in knowing that those who are wronged will have their day, and those who have committed wrongs will be brought to pay for them, but even so. It has its weight, and it is never something one takes joy in, or ought to take joy in. I have committed many deeds necessary to upholding the justice that my land and people deserve, and I will do so here again, of course, but never blindly. One must do horrible, terrible things in its pursuit, and it would be wrong to forget them."

Enjolras thought first of the insurrectionist he had shot for killing a civilian, and his brother countryman from the army, and the others whom he had noted there, and could have been as dear to him as Courfeyrac, or Joly, or even Combeferre. He had done right, of course, but even so, in the process, he had lost a large portion of his very soul. He'd given up his own assurance of a heaven or any sort of peace in the afterlife to do those things, and he accepted it, even as he had done so then, but he would not deny there was a weight, and it was one that would remain forever, righteous actions or not.

"Justice has its weight, and true, we must not forget that, or let it overtake us so completely we are become monsters instead of men." He bowed his head a moment, taking the time to let that sink in for his own benefit, then slid a hand over to one of his hoops, thinking for the moment, on those matters.

"The man I wear these for, forgot that much, at times, I think. I must do better than his example, and the Justice I enact must be at least a little tempered. I do not wish to be a martyr who took even his own cause too far, to the point it claimed even him, but the wiser man who sees the good in his heroes, and combats the bad in them with something else. I once told my men that love must belong to our future. Perhaps now is the time to exercise it alongside our gathered strengths here."

It felt right enough, anyway.

Edited 2014-11-28 07:33 (UTC)

"If you let love belong to the future only, it will never come," Iroh added. "Best to let it belong to the present."

ENDPLOT | ROLL THE BONES, PART 1

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