...I don't know the state of your world, Shuuya. All I know is Cefiro, and that's... that's falling apart in a way only I can fix right now, because the Creator decided it just had to be that way.
[Which she sounds a little bitter about, but, not the point.]
It doesn't change that you don't deserve it. Even if we want to help and tear down this place and make things right, none of us deserve this.
It makes me wish that maybe there weren't a Creator, or a God, or anything, if they can't show any kind of mercy. What kind of life could you even live without it?
[ Both their creators suck, but the sounds of it. He feels like such a child, sometimes, scorning God just because he isn't getting his way, but then he feels justified in it. All he ever asks of God is to let him and his family be happy for once, and his prayers go unanswered. ]
A life where everything is controlled isn't a life.
Whether it's by a cruel god or another person or by something that you can't even explain... it's not a life if it can't be yours. It would be nicer, if people could just talk things out, but... if people are complicated, then whatever made them... is it any better or worse?
...
Is that how your life is, Shuuya? Just being controlled by those gods you hate?
[ Things are complicated and sometimes can't be talked out, especially when whatever made them is something very simple, with very simple wants, and that goes against everything you stand for. ]
I guess.
[ If by god she means a snake demon who is set on ruining his life and those of every person in his family. Then yeah. ]
This is the first time he's actually asked her something like that, and she has to take a second, as though she expects him to throw some sort of joke or insult with the question. But no, he just looks tired, dead, the face of a boy too incredibly sad.
...
Her hands fold in her lap, wringing together as her words come carefully.]
It's hard to say. I don't remember a lot anymore. Maybe, um... a year, maybe a little more... that's all I have left. [She just taps her head for emphasis. The Realm's been ripping her apart, and she wishes she weren't so vividly aware.]
My life before was just being a Magic Knight. It was making a lot of choices to protect a world I really I cared about, but for prices I didn't really understand until it was too late. And I had to deal with the consequences of that.
Now... I guess it depends what I still remember if I go home, but... [Her hands drift against the fading scars against her neck, the ones that mirror the scars all over her hands, her limbs, a ghost of something horrible.]
I might die, I suppose. Or I might not, but... have to bear the burden of it, by being the Pillar. I know what I'd like, but... I don't know what will truly happen.
[ A year of memories... Though, a lot happens in a year. Look at everything that happened in this past month. And back home, where everything got kicked into motion in the span of two or three days... ]
As a Knight, who are you sworn to protect? The world? The world's turned its back. Why can't you?
All I was sworn to do was to save Cefiro from what was putting it in danger. I did that. What I do now... it comes from my own desires, not some oath I took.
[She smiles, but for once, it doesn't reach her eyes.]
The Pillar can't do that, anyway. They can't do anything, except pray for the world, or else the world will be reshaped and the peopld will suffer. To turn their back entirely means to let the world fall apart, just like our worlds will fall apart if we don't fix the Realm. If I do that... all that will happen is a repeat of the same cycle, of more knights summoned, and of my heart being torn apart.
[ ...he doesn't get it, not without everything explained from the start, and he hesitates in asking because how much does Hikaru even remember about the reasons why, instead of just things being how they are? ]
Prayer cannot save the world. Your job as a knight is done. Let other people have the job. Who cares?
Cefiro is powered by belief. The Creator made its first world and gave all things free will, but watched them destroy it with their own selfishness. So they made Cefiro as a... a second try, I guess, where only one person had to hold the responsibility of keeping the world at peace and correcting its ills. Without their prayers, the fear and anger of everyone in Cefiro makes the world a dangerous place. Monsters are created from bad will alone, storms destroy the world, and even the very land itself can crumble without their Pillar.
Even so... it's not a fair system. The last Pillar lost herself and nearly destroyed the world in her hatred. To have one person hold all that responsibility, to have them be alone forever for the sake of everyone else... to bear all that pain alone, and never be able to talk to anyone...
That's too much.
Even after my role as a Knight was finished... all that was left was a dying world with people who didn't deserve what they'd been left with, and I'd had my own part in it. I couldn't sit back and watch. I still can't.
[ That first world sounds a lot like Earth, and they sure are destroying each other with their own selfishness. Somehow, this second Earth sounds even worse. ]
So you're free to do what you want. What is it you want to do? Tell God to try again?
[She looks at her hands. She knows that, once, she felt so strongly about this that she could answer this question no matter what. Her hesitancy alone fills her gut with fear. But she swallows it down.]
I want to live.
Cefiro doesn't choose its Pillar. The Creator does. I... never wanted it. To be the Pillar just caused so many people a lot of pain.
But invaders came from a lot of different places to try to make Cefiro into something else. To destroy the Road that led to the Pillar's test, or to make it a paradise for themselves, or to make it a conquest for their own lands... or even just to empty it and have it be nothing but their own gravestone as a final wish.
All anyone needs is a strong heart. I guess the Creator decided mine was one of the ones fit to do what it wanted. And to say no, when I'd already been pulled into the test... it would have meant handing the whole world over to someone that wanted so badly to just let the entire world fall into a sleep and die. And it would have meant I would die, too.
I don't know about physics, but... I want to think the same thing. If Cefiro really is a world of belief, then why can't the people of Cefiro support the world as a whole, instead of letting one person have such immense power and no one to share it with?
To be alone, and to have no one to share your pain with... to not be able to want anything, or to like anything... [Or to... to...
Her eyes glaze for a moment, Hikaru shaking her head to clear it.]
I don't think the idea of it came from a bad place. But... if something doesn't change, it's doomed to fail. And only the Pillar has the power, and the protection, to try something like that.
[She hesitates, like she wants to say something else... but her tongue catches in her throat, tracing at the scars against her hands.]
[ Why can't God just do his fucking job in the first place and stop creating messes. There is no benevolence behind the idea at all, not how Kano sees it- and what he sees is a sacrificial lamb, somebody to get thrown under the bus and so long as everybody else isn't affected, everybody else will turn a blind eye. The only person who would care to change the system is the person affected, and in this case... ]
[A soft sound in the back of her throat, almost a laugh, but not quite.]
Maybe.
[...]
I passed the Test. And when the Creator told me that my opponent, Eagle, couldn't come back with me - that the loser of the Test had to disappear... I defied them. I tried to bring him back anyway. I wanted him to have a chance to live for himself, instead of just dying alone, because to be thrown into that position for the people he loved to be happy... he didn't deserve to die.
Eagle was fine, so long as I held him by the hand. It started just like... like walking through a horrible storm filled with ice, but so sharp that every blow cuts you open, and every step forward only made it worse. By the time I blacked out and woke up here... it felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. I remember... looking down at my arms, and they were just disappearing into spirals of nothing. Like I was vanishing.
[...
Her hands wring a little harder, leaving raw red lines against her skin from her nails.]
If I do die... then so will Eagle, and someone else will need to be the Pillar. And if I don't, then I don't know if I will remember enough, to make the choices I need. I don't... remember how I won, or what I told Eagle. And if I can't remember what my heart yearned for so much that the Creator thought I could support the whole world...
[Then she was doomed. A dragon in the making under the eyes of an almost impassive Creator, bound to a heart that could well falter and bring her to misery.]
[ What about any of this is there even to laugh at? Maybe it's how stupid it all is, how incomprehensible, how could any of this be real? If he laughed here, it would be in the face of despair, the same reason he always...
Either way. She's doomed, isn't she? Nothing short of a miracle could fix this. A miracle isn't impossible, but they're running out of time. ]
It's not over yet. You're not on your own here either. Our team could still win. You could still get a wish.
[ It's not impossible???? Who knows, Kano isn't doing any math, but maybe if the last two teams make their kills and Goat Team somehow pulls together and, idk, murders everybody else afterwards and comes out as the last people standing, the dead could come back and the Goats could win and Hikaru could wish all of this away?
It's stupid, and desperate, and the irony isn't lost on Kano that the only thing he can think of to make this any better is a prayer to some cruel, nonexistent God whose fault it was in the first place. ]
I don't. But sometimes you have to make choices without knowing what to do. I know what I want. I know neither option I'll have will give me what I want.
So... I'll just have to make my own path, even if I have to let myself be torn apart to do it. I don't need a wish to give me the strength to do that.
[ What else can he say? He can't imagine living like that, walking forward in the darkness not knowing anything of what's out there- it's too much like being beholden to a prayer ]
[Mmm. It's becoming a quick tell now that Shuuya's growing upset when all he can throw out is that single insult and nothing else. She stares at the single word, holding the paper in her lap for a long while.
...]
Once there was a girl who climbed all the way to the top of a tower, at the risk of giving up her entire self, to make sure someone she loved dearly could have a chance to be happy, so that she could have a chance to be alive, and that they wouldn't be alone. She could turn away, or she could fight, but both would lead into anguish.
[She lifts her head to just barely face him, her eyes tired but hopeful.]
Remind me again how we decided that story would end, Shuuya?
[ It's just a story. One he'd woven so he could... he doesn't even know anymore. To prove a point, or to get her to consider something, or just because, for all the lies that he tells, he's never been good at making things up completely from scratch without dipping into his own life.
It's just a story, and they don't get to dictate how things work in real life- they're not gods. Just a kid, who picks up his crayon, and finishes the story. ]
The girl decided to fight, and approached the boy who had isolated himself in that tower, as he would destroy everything that he touches. Such is a dragon's curse, but the little girl paid no heed and took him by the hand all the same, both knowing that if they stayed together, she would have gotten torn apart. He would have torn her apart, for he is a dragon, and she is a little girl.
Neither could find happiness in a world that needed a dragon. So they decided
[ ... ]
that the world did not need a dragon. They decided to destroy the tower that held calamity at bay, and in doing so, fire and brimstone fell upon the land which they loved so. The little girl and the stupid boy were weak and hurt, but they got to their feet nevertheless, and once more they took up arms to fight.
Suffering spread across the world, divine retribution for their defiance against the world's order. God does not love the world. Not like they do. God who is merciless, who punishes instead of forgives, who only knows how to shift happiness and not how to create it—
The world does not need such a God. The world does not need a dragon.
All a world needs is its people.
And so the girl would die for the world, and the boy would die for its people, hand in hand, turned to face God and walk backwards into Hell.
[She waits as he writes, and stays quiet as she reads. It's a bleak and almost horrific side of things... but it isn't entirely untrue. What would Mokona do, if she were to be torn apart? What would they do, if she were to become the pillar and fail? Would they approve? Or would they do what they had always done and only observe, no matter how much she thought of them as a friend?
It's a question she's never bothered to ask herself, a dark path she's never bothered to let her mind wander down, and even stepping foot on it makes something inside her revolt immediately.
...]
Stories can have all sorts of endings for a reason, you know?
What if the girl and boy could have a chance to live, regardless of what their god decided? That they could take their fate into their own hands, so long as they had another by their side.
That's the ending I'd like to see. Not to die in spite of God, or to abandon everything they love to wrath and destruction, but... to live in defiance.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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[Which she sounds a little bitter about, but, not the point.]
It doesn't change that you don't deserve it. Even if we want to help and tear down this place and make things right, none of us deserve this.
It makes me wish that maybe there weren't a Creator, or a God, or anything, if they can't show any kind of mercy. What kind of life could you even live without it?
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A life where everything is controlled isn't a life.
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Whether it's by a cruel god or another person or by something that you can't even explain... it's not a life if it can't be yours. It would be nicer, if people could just talk things out, but... if people are complicated, then whatever made them... is it any better or worse?
...
Is that how your life is, Shuuya? Just being controlled by those gods you hate?
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I guess.
[ If by god she means a snake demon who is set on ruining his life and those of every person in his family. Then yeah. ]
What about yours?
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This is the first time he's actually asked her something like that, and she has to take a second, as though she expects him to throw some sort of joke or insult with the question. But no, he just looks tired, dead, the face of a boy too incredibly sad.
...
Her hands fold in her lap, wringing together as her words come carefully.]
It's hard to say. I don't remember a lot anymore. Maybe, um... a year, maybe a little more... that's all I have left. [She just taps her head for emphasis. The Realm's been ripping her apart, and she wishes she weren't so vividly aware.]
My life before was just being a Magic Knight. It was making a lot of choices to protect a world I really I cared about, but for prices I didn't really understand until it was too late. And I had to deal with the consequences of that.
Now... I guess it depends what I still remember if I go home, but... [Her hands drift against the fading scars against her neck, the ones that mirror the scars all over her hands, her limbs, a ghost of something horrible.]
I might die, I suppose. Or I might not, but... have to bear the burden of it, by being the Pillar. I know what I'd like, but... I don't know what will truly happen.
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As a Knight, who are you sworn to protect? The world?
The world's turned its back.
Why can't you?
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[She smiles, but for once, it doesn't reach her eyes.]
The Pillar can't do that, anyway. They can't do anything, except pray for the world, or else the world will be reshaped and the peopld will suffer. To turn their back entirely means to let the world fall apart, just like our worlds will fall apart if we don't fix the Realm. If I do that... all that will happen is a repeat of the same cycle, of more knights summoned, and of my heart being torn apart.
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Prayer cannot save the world.
Your job as a knight is done.
Let other people have the job.
Who cares?
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[It's a simple response.]
Cefiro is powered by belief. The Creator made its first world and gave all things free will, but watched them destroy it with their own selfishness. So they made Cefiro as a... a second try, I guess, where only one person had to hold the responsibility of keeping the world at peace and correcting its ills. Without their prayers, the fear and anger of everyone in Cefiro makes the world a dangerous place. Monsters are created from bad will alone, storms destroy the world, and even the very land itself can crumble without their Pillar.
Even so... it's not a fair system. The last Pillar lost herself and nearly destroyed the world in her hatred. To have one person hold all that responsibility, to have them be alone forever for the sake of everyone else... to bear all that pain alone, and never be able to talk to anyone...
That's too much.
Even after my role as a Knight was finished... all that was left was a dying world with people who didn't deserve what they'd been left with, and I'd had my own part in it. I couldn't sit back and watch. I still can't.
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So you're free to do what you want.
What is it you want to do?
Tell God to try again?
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I want to live.
Cefiro doesn't choose its Pillar. The Creator does. I... never wanted it. To be the Pillar just caused so many people a lot of pain.
But invaders came from a lot of different places to try to make Cefiro into something else. To destroy the Road that led to the Pillar's test, or to make it a paradise for themselves, or to make it a conquest for their own lands... or even just to empty it and have it be nothing but their own gravestone as a final wish.
All anyone needs is a strong heart. I guess the Creator decided mine was one of the ones fit to do what it wanted. And to say no, when I'd already been pulled into the test... it would have meant handing the whole world over to someone that wanted so badly to just let the entire world fall into a sleep and die. And it would have meant I would die, too.
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[ That's RUDE but... stupid. Hikaru, the world, the system that binds it. Stupid stupid stupid ]
Of course a pillar of one person is going to break.
Isn't there strength in numbers?
It's a physics thing.
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To be alone, and to have no one to share your pain with... to not be able to want anything, or to like anything... [Or to... to...
Her eyes glaze for a moment, Hikaru shaking her head to clear it.]
I don't think the idea of it came from a bad place. But... if something doesn't change, it's doomed to fail. And only the Pillar has the power, and the protection, to try something like that.
[She hesitates, like she wants to say something else... but her tongue catches in her throat, tracing at the scars against her hands.]
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What's the last thing you remember?
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Not looking up.]
Will you promise not to laugh?
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If I laugh, you can punch me in the throat.
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Maybe.
[...]
I passed the Test. And when the Creator told me that my opponent, Eagle, couldn't come back with me - that the loser of the Test had to disappear... I defied them. I tried to bring him back anyway. I wanted him to have a chance to live for himself, instead of just dying alone, because to be thrown into that position for the people he loved to be happy... he didn't deserve to die.
Eagle was fine, so long as I held him by the hand. It started just like... like walking through a horrible storm filled with ice, but so sharp that every blow cuts you open, and every step forward only made it worse. By the time I blacked out and woke up here... it felt like I was being ripped apart from the inside out. I remember... looking down at my arms, and they were just disappearing into spirals of nothing. Like I was vanishing.
[...
Her hands wring a little harder, leaving raw red lines against her skin from her nails.]
If I do die... then so will Eagle, and someone else will need to be the Pillar. And if I don't, then I don't know if I will remember enough, to make the choices I need. I don't... remember how I won, or what I told Eagle. And if I can't remember what my heart yearned for so much that the Creator thought I could support the whole world...
[Then she was doomed. A dragon in the making under the eyes of an almost impassive Creator, bound to a heart that could well falter and bring her to misery.]
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Either way. She's doomed, isn't she? Nothing short of a miracle could fix this. A miracle isn't impossible, but they're running out of time. ]
It's not over yet.
You're not on your own here either.
Our team could still win.
You could still get a wish.
[ It's not impossible???? Who knows, Kano isn't doing any math, but maybe if the last two teams make their kills and Goat Team somehow pulls together and, idk, murders everybody else afterwards and comes out as the last people standing, the dead could come back and the Goats could win and Hikaru could wish all of this away?
It's stupid, and desperate, and the irony isn't lost on Kano that the only thing he can think of to make this any better is a prayer to some cruel, nonexistent God whose fault it was in the first place. ]
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I'll do whatever I can. But even if we win... I don't need a wish.
This is just something I have to do.
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[ Stop refusing help! There's no reason to be stubborn over it, is how he sees it. If she has a wish and it's legit, then use it. ]
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I don't. But sometimes you have to make choices without knowing what to do. I know what I want. I know neither option I'll have will give me what I want.
So... I'll just have to make my own path, even if I have to let myself be torn apart to do it. I don't need a wish to give me the strength to do that.
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[ What else can he say? He can't imagine living like that, walking forward in the darkness not knowing anything of what's out there- it's too much like being beholden to a prayer ]
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...]
Once there was a girl who climbed all the way to the top of a tower, at the risk of giving up her entire self, to make sure someone she loved dearly could have a chance to be happy, so that she could have a chance to be alive, and that they wouldn't be alone. She could turn away, or she could fight, but both would lead into anguish.
[She lifts her head to just barely face him, her eyes tired but hopeful.]
Remind me again how we decided that story would end, Shuuya?
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It's just a story, and they don't get to dictate how things work in real life- they're not gods. Just a kid, who picks up his crayon, and finishes the story. ]
The girl decided to fight, and approached the boy who had isolated himself in that tower, as he would destroy everything that he touches. Such is a dragon's curse, but the little girl paid no heed and took him by the hand all the same, both knowing that if they stayed together, she would have gotten torn apart. He would have torn her apart, for he is a dragon, and she is a little girl.
Neither could find happiness in a world that needed a dragon. So they decided
[ ... ]
that the world did not need a dragon. They decided to destroy the tower that held calamity at bay, and in doing so, fire and brimstone fell upon the land which they loved so. The little girl and the stupid boy were weak and hurt, but they got to their feet nevertheless, and once more they took up arms to fight.
Suffering spread across the world, divine retribution for their defiance against the world's order. God does not love the world. Not like they do. God who is merciless, who punishes instead of forgives, who only knows how to shift happiness and not how to create it—
The world does not need such a God. The world does not need a dragon.
All a world needs is its people.
And so the girl would die for the world, and the boy would die for its people, hand in hand, turned to face God and walk backwards into Hell.
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It's a question she's never bothered to ask herself, a dark path she's never bothered to let her mind wander down, and even stepping foot on it makes something inside her revolt immediately.
...]
Stories can have all sorts of endings for a reason, you know?
What if the girl and boy could have a chance to live, regardless of what their god decided? That they could take their fate into their own hands, so long as they had another by their side.
That's the ending I'd like to see. Not to die in spite of God, or to abandon everything they love to wrath and destruction, but... to live in defiance.
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