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.

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"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."

Enjolras frowned, rather thoughtfully as Iroh spoke, letting the words slide over him for a moment. "That may have been a part of my own problems, there." he mused. "I spoke of love, and I believed in it, and I knew that we all died as an expression of our love for our country and people, but I did not...

Perhaps it was something that one may have been freer with than I dared once. That I should have been freer with. It's a good thing I must remember, thank you."

"There can be a lot of constraints on love that seem important," Iroh said. "There are places in my world that practice arranged marriage among the upper classes, or at least insist that youth marry quickly and start families."

"There are at that." Enjolras was not unfamiliar with the concepts Iroh spoke of there. He had avoided such a fate as that, mostly by virtue of his gender, he supposed, and took a moment to be glad for that.

"It was not so unheard of for that to be a case at home. But love, other than the romantic sort, had its constraints as well. Or I assigned them to myself in the hopes of avoiding distraction. It seems so ridiculous now." he added, laughing a little.

"I tried to help my people, out of my love for them, but I avoided professing, or using it in some of the places that I might have used it. I suppose one lives and learns." But it was surprising, staring into that face of his idiocy now.

"That is the nature of maturity," Iroh agreed. "One often realizes that one was a bit ridiculous as a young person. With luck, it also gives you patience for those younger than you."

Enjolras supposed, that really, it was true. He had become...easier in his skin here, more able to see the points of others, even those who stood opposed to everything that he had held dear. Perhaps he had matured a little, learned to let things go when they did not truly matter in the scheme of what was important, but there was more than that.

"I have had good teachers here as well. And, yes, I suppose I've gained a little patience. Not only for those younger, but for those who I would disagree with. There are still ways to unite, even when two people have an opposing belief. It's helped to come to terms with that idea, here."

Iroh nodded. "When it comes down to basics, we all want certain things. Safety. Community. Feeling valued. The ability to do what we love. We just believe different things will get us to those goals."

And some of those were different concepts; Iroh suspected his brother couldn't form a community without it being a hierarchy with him on top. What that said about Ozai was... interesting.

"Certainly." Enjolras agreed, nodding. "It is odd. I still love my own people and my country, and I always shall protect France and her people, and fight for them as I am able, but...my definition of such things has expanded again. I belong here, too, as well."

And then he smiled at the words.

"I have been lucky. Whatever comes of this, I have had two homes to love more than my life, and to love with with my life. There is something that makes me content in that."

For Enjolras, and those concepts, well, his version was forged rather in a socialist context, the sort of socialism fed by idealism, where everyone's share truly was equal. Moreover, he truly believed that it could, and would come, and that no one would abuse such things. It was the belief of a man who had come through the nineteenth century and who had not wavered on the important factors, though the key players, places, and world itself had changed.

What he would do if he met a man like Ozai was also an interesting, and fairly terrifying concept, probably.

"I find travel broadens the mind," Iroh noted. "Living in a place all the more than visiting."

"I am seeing that more now." Enjolras had never had the time to think about things like travel outside of the country, that being reserved for people who had the time, along with the money for it, but he could see the value in it more now than he had before.

"I had a friend who took an interest in everything outside of home, who cared more about the events in other places which passed most of us by. I think traveling may have given me a bit more of that then, but well, at least I will have had it here."

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ENDPLOT | ROLL THE BONES, PART 1

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