tushanshu_logs | [OPEN] Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall

Entry tags:

[OPEN] Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall

Characters: Pepper Potts, Yami no Bakura, Gene Khan, Tony Stark, and you!
Date: Throughout September
Location: All over de place
Situation: Pepper is learning how to fight, investigating things both nefarious and merely frustrating, and rebuilding some bridges
Warnings/Rating: Mention of explosions, trauma, and death/executions. Sparring. More details warnings will be added as needed.

A. Jade Dojo | Mid September | Closed to Bakura

As he promised, Bakura has been teaching Pepper how to fight with a staff. She's also learned that taking care of weapons isn't quite as glamorous as she might have thought. It's still a neat skill to learn, and it's also nice to have something to focus on that's so totally alien to her, and something that she probably would never get the chance to do back home. Whenever she arrives at the dojo, she never really knows what she's going to be doing that day. The Egyptian seems to like keeping her on her toes.

B. Sky Sector | Right after the Chihuelan executions | Closed to Tony

This is bad. This is very, very bad. Okay, sure, the Chihuelans who had been executed had kind of tried to invade Tu Vushan but executions were all different kinds of no. This is what Team Iron Man was supposed to stop. Pepper has half a mind to fly in stealth mode up to the Justicar and knock a few teeth out, but she'd rather not start a war. Tony might not be so wary. She knows him; the Chihuelans were executed on College grounds, and Tony is probably going to take that really, really badly. She needs to find him. The suit is seeing a lot of use lately, and Pepper is really hoping she won't have to use it on him.

C. Jade Dojo | September 6 | Closed to Bakura

Pepper wanted to go straight to the summoning, do not stop, do not collect 200 juulan, go directly to Shadow Monsters, but Bakura wouldn't let her. There had been some pouting and wheedling, but he didn't budge. She hadn't really expected him to, but it was worth a try, right? Since she now has closer to what would legally be considered a full deck, they can play the card game well enough for her to learn the rules. And she's even been doing her homework! Pepper dutifully flips through the cards at least once a day, and it's a regular part of her routine now.

D. Throughout Keeliai and outside the city | During the Chihuelans 'visit' | Open

Brave Vesperia members had been commissioned to follow the Chihuelans - sneakily - and Pepper is happy to do what she's told. The stealth mode of her suit is endlessly useful, and it means she can move around almost entirely undetected. She isn't totally silent, however, so she has to keep an eye on the noise the armor makes in order to avoid alerting the people she's stalking. There had been others who had volunteered to monitor the Chihuelans as well, and she's been partnered with a few. Being outside the city would be a lot more fun if there wasn't the hint of a threat everywhere they went.

E. Sky Sector | September 27 | Open

A letter arrived for Pepper at the house, which is weird in and of itself. What is even weirder is what the letter says. She's heard about the Dreaming and some of the weird things that come out of it, but she's wary of believing this one. If she didn't write it to herself though, it's a seriously scary thing. She's sitting in one of the public areas of Sky Sector, reading the letter over and over, trying to wrap her head around it in a way that makes sense.

OOC: If you want a starter hit me up at plurk or PM me!

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Pepper had spent a lot of time trying to imagine what summoning would be like. She has a pretty wild imagination, but even this was something beyond her expectations.

For a moment, it seems like there is a huge bubble in her chest, and she feels powerful, almost like when she fights in the armor, and then its gone, leaving her gasping at the emptiness that follows. Pepper hardly has time to think about it before the Milus appears, and then she isn't 't just standing here, she's standing over there, but that couldn't be right. It takes a little while for Pepper to figure out what she was feeling was the Milus, and not some sort of failure of her senses. The creature is entangled with her, not just her energy, like someone was sucking some of the color out of her personality. Its an awful, incredible sort of feeling unlike anything she has experienced before.

She tries to pull away from the feeling, but she's never had training in this, and instead she ends up taking a physical step back and stumbles a little as a wave of dizziness hits her.

"Holy wow," Pepper says quietly, blinking hard to clear her vision. She realizes she sweating, and not just because of the heat of the day.

The fact that the summon hadn't snapped back out of existence was testament to her willpower, and that bode very well for future attempts.

"Don't let it only take from you," Bakura's voice will hopefully break through Pepper's disorientation, calm and even. He's nearby enough that he can grab her if she seems like she'll fall, but not touching her yet. "Make it give back its attributes too. This creature is small, but it bolsters others. Its purpose is support, rooted in the strength of the earth. It is loyal, and doesn't cower."

Edited (Typo) 2015-09-20 19:16 (UTC)

For a moment, she had forgotten that Bakura was there, but his presence is something Pepper can rely on. Instructions. Instructions are good. She doesn't really know how to do what he's saying other than just thinking it, but thinking it with everything she is, rather than just her head.

"Right." The connection isn't one-way. From his description, the Milus is a lot like her, so this shouldn't be that hard, right?

Pepper tries to get a mental hold on the thread that connects her to the Milus, concentrating on what's over there, on what the creature is feeling. Her legs are shaking, she can feel that, so she tries to pull on that thread to give her back some strength. There's hesitation, and she's pretty sure that's on her end, because this is more than a little bit scary, too.

Stubbornly, Pepper persists, sweeping aside her fear as much as possible. The Milus is loyal to the summoner, which means her as much as Bakura. She frowns, her hands balling into fists, and pulls on the thread again, this time focusing on what can only be described as some sort of mental pillar that seems to be coming from the Milus.

Her legs stop shaking. It's a minor victory, because her hands have started shaking even balled as they are, and she's still sweating.

"This is mega weird," Pepper says, glancing at Bakura with a shaky smile. "Am I supposed to feel like I'm going to pass out?"

Bakura has no way of knowing whether Pepper is able to draw from the Milus correctly or not; it's different for everyone, what is taken in return. He does note that the shaking starts and stops a bit, but she's obviously aware enough to speak to him, so that's fine. Pepper's done much better already than he was expecting.

"Don't pass out," he says, amused more than worried. "Let it return to where it's from when you're ready. Nothing happens to it, and it'll be there the next time it's called upon. This is a muscle memory, it will get easier with time and practice."

"O-kaaay," Pepper replies slowly. She's probably not going to pass out. Scratch that, she refuses to because that would be embarrassing and she will not do embarrassing in front of Bakura.

That being said, Pepper doesn't really know how to let the Milus go. Sure, she's been able to pull on the 'thread' tying them together, so to speak, but - well, she didn't know how to do any of the other things she did, but she still did something along the lines of what Bakura was telling her.

Well. There's a thread. And Bakura said to let the Milus go back where it came from. Release it, so to speak. She might be tied to the creature, but she sure as heck doesn't have to hold on to it. Pepper had tried running from that connection before, and it hadn't worked. Letting it go is different - it's not a sign of fear, but one of respect. Not something she's been doing up until now, she realizes. She's been mocking some of the cards, or at least what they look like.

Pepper doesn't have much time for existential lessons right now, though, so she does her level best to simply let the 'thread' dissolve. No running, no fighting, no mocking. It goes against just about all of her instincts, and she feels suddenly very vulnerable. No running.

And then the Milus fades to nothingness, and Pepper loses the thread.

"Whoa." Her legs feel like jelly, and her chest feels hollow. "I'm just - I'm gonna sit," she declares weakly, and plops down on the grass.

Bakura sat as well, one leg folded carelessly under him, and a murmur of "Blue Medicine" before a cup containing a deep blue, slightly viscous liquid is held out to her.

"Here," he said. "It'll replenish some of the energy you expended. But you did very well... much better than my first attempt."

Pepper had closed her eyes and covered her face with her hands for a moment to try to will the dizziness away, but she opens them again and peers through her fingers at the cup Bakura is offering her. She looks at it, and then him, rather dubiously, but takes the cup anyway.

"Cheers." After a moment of sniffing and hesitation, she drinks. Immediately, she feels better. Not fully recovered, but better, and the liquid didn't even taste that bad.

"Thanks," she replies tiredly, both for the medicine and the compliment, although that second one is moderately unexpected. "I have a good teacher. You should meet him sometime, you might like him." Pepper puts the cup down on the grass between them and smiles a little. "What happened the first time you tried to summon something?"

"I passed out," he said dryly. "Woke up with a face full of river mud. I had no idea what I was doing, or what to expect. My ka--" He hesitated a moment, mid-word, then decided there wasn't a more convenient way to explain things.

"Calling out Diabound was natural as breathing. The first time, I didn't even realize I had summoned him, I'd merely assumed he was just there. I foolishly thought that all summons would be that easy, and was very quickly proven wrong."

"I guess I have you to thank for not having a face full of grass," Pepper replies. "Passing out was definitely an appealing option a moment ago."

She remembers him mentioning his ka only once before, and how it had seemed a delicate subject. More than that, she recalls, Bakura had referred to his ka in past tense. Oh dear.

"That sounds totally amazing. Diabound, I mean." About the closest she can compare is when the Makluans attacked - and all of a sudden the suit of armor became an extension of herself. "How long did it take you to reach, like, expert level? Can a summon go wrong? You said the creatures obey the summoner, but what if they don't? Is that even a thing?"

Now that she's feeling better, the questions have come roaring back.

Bakura leaned back, resting his weight on his hands behind him in the grass. "He was," he replied about Diabound, and that was all he intended to say about the serpent. "And as for how long, it took years, and a lot of it was trial and error. But for better or worse, I have a lot more heka -- hm, there's no exact word in English for it -- but magical 'potential', I suppose, would work. I have more than most people. That quite offended the Priests, by the way."

He flashes a grin, wicked and sly, and says, "Too bad for them, right?" before continuing his explanation.

"A summon can go wrong, yes. It could be as simple as failing to go through, or it could be more complicated. If it's a Spell or Trap, which is a ways off for you yet, there is the possibility of it not having the intended effect, or backfiring completely. Remember when I mentioned I accidentally blew up a part of the dojo? I was trying to bend a Trap to something it wasn't meant to do."

"For the monsters themselves, there's two parts to it. First, you have to possess enough willpower to summon them. But after that, they have to respect your position as a Duelist before they'll listen. If you're strong enough, you can force their obedience, but they have a long memory and that may come back on you down the road."

And there's that past tense again. She hadn't been imagining it.

The grin distracts her attention from Diabound, stunned as she is by its appearance. It's a marked difference in his usual demeanor, and sharp around the edges just like his laughter.

"You're not a big fan of authority, are you?" Pepper asks, returning the grin. "So... I get, or at least I sort of get, that the creatures come from somewhere else, so they exist in some sense and the Duelist has to bring them here, but how does that work for Spells and Traps? I mean, they aren't living things. Did we create them out of magic? This is like a chicken and egg problem, I swear."

"I've found most authority in the world either lacking to share my goals, or incompetent. Sometimes both. I've never been the type to delegate," he replied.

"That, I don't know," Bakura admits. "There were a school of priests that set about studying the shadow monsters, after they were discovered. Experimented with them, even. They had the great temple built to hold all the stone tablets, in which kaa could be sealed. But it's possible that Spells and Traps simply arose from a need of them, and just stayed."

"Huh. That's not all that different than why we started Team Iron Man. At least later. It was kind of an accident at first, actually," Pepper recalls.

"Wait, wait, back up," she says, sitting up straight. "They took people's kaa and put them in tablets? But you said a person's ka is a reflection of them, it's like a piece of their soul. That's a horrible thing to do, why would they do that? What happened to the people, what happens if you lose your ka?"

Curiosity about Bakura's mysterious and apparently absent ka aside, that just sounds plain wrong. It's not as though Pepper can do anything about it, but it certainly gives her another peek into the world he was born in.

Bakura made a noise of assent. "Mostly those of criminals," he replied. "After the Priests gained the Items, they had the means to pull out people's kaa. If they weren't judged virtuous," and the sarcasm practically dripped from the word, "then their kaa were sealed. Sealed kaa could then be called by the priests to do battle, in addition to their own personal ka."

He scowled for a moment. "A person whose ka was removed like that... a lot of times, they died. Some of them lived, but so damaged that they might as well have been dead; they became like husks, emptied out. That was the justice the Priests dispensed," he finished bitterly.

Edited (tenses oops) 2015-10-03 05:49 (UTC)

"So they kept people's kaa just to use them to hurt more people? That is horrific and super evil," Pepper says, bristling. The sheer injustice of it all is weighing on her like a ton of bricks. She wants to armor up and deal with these priests, but unfortunately Tony hadn't added a time traveling feature to the suits yet.

As for what happened when you lost your ka, Bakura isn't dead (as far as she knows) and he doesn't seem to be the shell of a person, so she's still unclear on that point.

"I can see why you don't think some people should have this kind of power," she adds grimly. "Did anyone ever stop them? Or did they just keep going until the dynasty fell apart?"

"To 'protect' Egypt," Bakura corrected, the sarcasm heavy in the phrase. "But an empire protected on murder of its citizens should not be tolerated."

He looks away briefly, as if intentionally making sure Pepper knows that the anger in his next answer is not directed at her. "I tried," he said. "For my whole life, I tried. But at least the dynasty died with Atem. Erased from history... every record of it. At least that was deserved."

Barely a consolation, but better than a kick in the teeth.

"That's a mega lame excuse," Pepper agrees. She sighs. "You think people would have stopped using it a long time ago."

Egypt, after all, was not the only empire, or government, or whatever generic leadership structure you wanted to call it, that had ever done such heinous things. It still happened in her own time; killing was seen as a solution to a problem. And that problem, ostensibly, was freedom. Not just patriotic 'MERICA freedom, but freedom of thought, freedom to disagree and call attention to wrongs. The presence of the Chihuelans echoed this kind of cruelty.

"Not quite every record, though," Pepper points out. "You're still around." She tilts her head slightly, trying to interpret his anger. Was it personal? Bakura didn't seem the type to lead an assault on an empire for the cause of freedom alone, but maybe he had once. "That's a seriously amazing thing to spend your life doing. Probably a little crazy, too, but amazing. Was Atem the pharaoh?"

"You'd think," Bakura agreed, offering her a humourless smile. "I'm here, yes. Little good that it does, but I haven't been snuffed out in this plane yet."

Her observation made him shake his head wryly. "Crazy was the kinder of things that I'd been called," he answered. "Never amazing, that's for sure. The pharaoh who ordered the Items made was called Akhenamkhanen, and he died when I was around fifteen. I only wish I'd gotten to kill the bastard myself. Atem was his son, a few years younger than myself. He was the one who was sealed in the Puzzle, like I was in the Ring."

"Why do you do that?" Pepper asks, "And what do you mean by 'this' plane?"

Bakura's aggression and his desire to kill is startling, but strangely unsurprising. Like the way he handles weapons, such an admission seems a natural part of him. It's not pretty, but it makes sense.

"Do all the Items have people sealed in them? It's starting to sound like a trend."

"Why do I do what?" he asked, and rolled his shoulders in a purposefully languid shrug when she seemed to latch onto the phrasing that he'd used. He should really be more careful with his word choices; she had a way of getting him to say exactly what was on his mind, without the usual carefulness that he often weighted his responses to.

"Ha, no," he snorted. "Only the two of us became spirits, as filthy a company that is to be in for me. It was a side effect of the pharaoh's spell when he sealed the shadow magic and his memories away. There are other people who are connected to certain Items -- who are echoes of people in Egypt, in some cases, you'd think twins. Not reincarnations, but... similar."

"Talk about yourself like you don't matter when you do," she explains. "Like no one would care if you were gone."

His lack of an answer to her second question is almost an answer in and of itself. At the very least, it's one of the few - if not the only - times that he hasn't directly answered a question she's asked.

"And those people are usually more powerful Duelists?" There was something odd about the Items, something that wasn't being brought to the surface, but she couldn't pinpoint what was bothering her to ask a question about.

Bakura shook his head, and as it turns out, he planned to answer both questions neatly in one fell swoop. "Biahbenat," he said, sighing and offering her a lopsided smile. "I only say it because it's true. I made myself matter, in my world. I wouldn't let them ignore me. I wouldn't allow them to erase me like they did my kin. But that's not the same as being mourned or missed. There's no one grieving for me. It's not an exaggeration, and it's not self-pity, only a fact. Every living person who knew me in the past was three millennia dead and dust. There were perhaps a dozen people who knew I existed as a spirit, and I'm not stretching the truth to say the only emotion they'd have felt was relief."

He's silent for a moment, letting that sink in. The whole thing was delivered calmly, even objectively... but then he relented slightly. " I know it's not the same here," he replied. "I know there are people here who'd I'd upset if I died. It's been drilled into me well enough now. But I had to learn it here, it was new."

And then his smile turned faintly depreciating. "I didn't lie when I said I wouldn't have to share a body with Ryou anymore."

He considered the guess. "I think they usually are, but I don't know if that's the reason for it."

Pepper listens. Quietly. Unmoving except in her expression, which shifts slowly to reveal the sadness she's feeling. She's silent for a moment after he stops speaking, watching him. No tears this time.

"You died, back home," she says almost tonelessly. "Didn't you? I wondered... some of the things you said..." Just like she thought, she hates the idea of him being less than solid. But it's worse, because he'll be something less than a spirit, should he be snatched back to his reality. "At least you know it's different. Maybe that'll keep you here longer."

Pepper caught the comment about Bakura's family, but she decides not to say anything. Bakura's past needs to be taken in small doses.

"And... all this Shadow magic, Duel Monsters... all of that is tied to what happened to you?"

"Yes," he answered with a shrug, seeing no point now in not being plain about it. He'd never explicitly lied about being dead, but he'd purposely chosen to phrase some things that obscured it, for Pepper. "I fought the pharaoh again, in a shadow game designed to change the past. It did... but instead of being sealed in the Ring, I was killed in the last attack."

He doesn't address her hopeful remark about being able to stay here longer, but he's quick to counter the last part.

"The game we played used Shadow magic and Duel Monsters, but they didn't cause what happened. Nothing like that will happen to you, Pepper."

"Huh? Oh, no, that's not really what I meant," Pepper says, momentarily flustered. He hasn't used her name, her real name, since they first met over the network, months ago. It strikes her that he's actually reassuring her, that he's concerned. "But thanks. I trust you." She looks down at her hands. "I just meant... well, between the summoning and everything else... I wasn't taking this super seriously before. Not really seriously, anyway."

Pepper glances as the spot where the Milus had appeared.

"It's a lot different watching you than actually being part of it. Scary different. I don't want you to think I'm not totally into this because I am." She turns to him again, curiosity blooming in her eyes. "Did you seriously change history? You're that powerful?"

[OPEN] Summer move forward and stitch me the fabric of fall

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