fracturarpg | [mingle] the space (april).

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[mingle] the space (april).

interim mingle

( WELCOME BACK, TRAVELERS. )

There's nothing but the clatter of train tracks, and the odd feeling of almost floating.

When you wake, it's hard to tell exactly what it is that you're missing - only that you are. There are pieces that aren't quite right, even if you're not sure where those pieces would normally be. Pieces of what, exactly....? Well, if you had to put a word to it, it would be - yourself, probably. Or did you get something back recently? In addition, characters will find that they've been allowed to bring back souvenirs from this most recent trip - trinkets, nothing violent, but items that can fit in your character's pockets, whether that be sentimental or otherwise.

The place you've found yourself in is strange, certainly. It's probably worth exploring a bit. For those who have been here a while, they might notice some expansions. Though it just as easily seems that the only form of welcome or explanation that you have, comes from nothing more than a slab of marble.

It might've changed since the last time you saw it. Today it reads:

(*´ω｀)o That wasn't so bad, was it?
Hey, you know how that old song goes?
Do you believe in magic? (☆▽☆) Do ya?

Hope you found what you were looking for!

You might have changed since the last time you saw yourself too - perhaps with a new emblem on your clothes, or a portrait on your skin. In addition to that, it seems like Home Base is on the fritz again…?

It seems that suddenly and at random, characters will be able to suddenly see visions of memories that aren't their own flash before their eyes. Pieces of your lives or where you were before this will suddenly slam into other's heads, as clearly as if they experienced the event and the feelings themselves. You might have an inkling of where your memory went and what it was - but you'll need to talk it out with that person in order to recollect it in all its strength back to yourself. Don't you want to keep those precious parts of yourself? It's best if you don't fall more to pieces while you're here. (Memories that have been lost in fragments cannot be sent to others - that's more fun for the future!)

There's no need to fret that much though. You've already gone through the ordeal once, and you might be able to see results from it. Or maybe you'll get a glimpse of where you're going next. Even so, it's best that you don't get too comfortable, because there is still the unshakeable feeling:

There's still much more ahead of you.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[He doesn't remember much after the fact, but it doesn't mean he's unaware of what happened. Three months did pass between that massacre and his own death, after all...

At least he's better able to pinpoint where Shinobu might be, in those last blurry moments of his first life. It fills him with a grim sort of feeling; his hand tenses, like he's ready to pull away.]

Mm, well. Seems to be that way anywhere you go, doesn't it? [There's a tiny quirk of a smile, though it seems more reflexive than genuine.] You'd think learning that lesson once would be enough.

[It's part of why he was so upset upon returning from Montevallo. He'd already learned once what happens when you try to take everything onto your own shoulders and solve the problems of the world single-handedly. He'd already lost everything because of foolish arrogance.]

[ Shinobu doesn't know the circumstances in what led to what happened in the memory, but with those words, it clicks, at least a little. She won't try to keep his hand, giving it a gentle squeeze before relaxing her hold. As long as he doesn't completely run away from her, she won't protest him trying to disengage. ]

One of your greatest strengths is also one of your greatest flaws. Truly, you are human.

[ She won't smile even as a reflex. ]

I can't say I don't understand, but I also can't say I completely approve. At least you know better now.

[ She hopes. She assumes. She wishes. She doesn't want to have to think of any sort of plan just in case. ]

[He won't run away, at least, and even keeps his hand in her loose hold for a few seconds longer than he should really allow himself to indulge for. But eventually, he lets his slip away, coming to rest between them.]

You aren't the first person to say as much to me here, but here's probably the first time I've heard it in a while.

[A tiny laugh with less of an edge than before. He doesn't hide it from her. If she's seen that blurry memory, she has a taste of why his reputation was so monstrous. He sees no need to hide the rest either, leaning back and crossing his arms over his chest.]

Rest assured that as long as my memories are intact, there won't be a repeat - I remember those lessons well. The old scores of that life ended with my death. Even a hundred wouldn't settle my debts or satisfy the ones who hate me, but there's nothing else to be done for it.

It's futile to try to satisfy hatred. Very little can overturn it.

[ After all, it would take something close to a miracle for her to let go of her hatred. She rests her hands in her lap. ]

But from what I understand, your potential is near limitless. For better or for worse. [ Her kindness does not include shying away from the truth of his history, and as he acknowledges his past, so does she. ]

I've said it before, and I'll say it again: I want to believe in you.

[ For all the murder he's done, she should scorn and spurn him, but she's not all logic and reason. How much of Montevallo still echoes within her, and how much of this is solely her?

She smiles. ]

The you I know can do so much good despite all the bedlam you sow.

[A near-limitless potential, for better or for worse... He supposes that's fair. He supposes that's true. When you stand with them, you're an eccentric genius, a valued asset. When you stand against them, you're immoral, corrupt, evil to the core.

All he ever does is try his best and do what he feels is right, for better or worse. He wishes he could feel worthy of the consideration she's showing him just by refusing to shirk away, to look at him with disgust. "The you I know can do so much good despite all the bedlam you sow".

His smile shifts, just barely.]

This is why I said what I said, back then - that you remind me a little of my shijie.

[Only she would show him this sort of unwarranted kindness and desire to keep believing in the good he may hold, even after seeing him at his worst.]

I seem to have the strangest luck.

I'm honored.

[ To be even a little like someone so lovely and kind is a compliment. She only saw Jiang Yangli in her last moments, but she thinks she and her older sister were similar, two kind souls who were too good for both their worlds.

She pats his hand once. ]

You should push your luck less.

[ She knows he won't. That's just not in his character, but it still needs to be said. ]

[They do seem similar - he wishes they could have know more than just a final handful of moments, but it's really telling, how one spends their last breath.

He laughs, light and chiming, and lets some of the tension leave his shoulders when she pats his hand.]

I know. [He does, despite what his reckless actions may otherwise say.] Believe it or not, I push my luck much less often in this life.

If I ask you about that, will you tell me? It doesn't have to be now or today.

[ Since they have a lot to digest about each other, but it's not like she's missed him mentioning different lives.

It seems a little important, if not also a little confounding. ]

[Stupidly, being reincarnated is one of the things he's most open about, partially because he had no say in it. Sometimes things just do wild shit while you're dead?? It's fine.]

If you ask about it, I'll tell you, yes. You can even ask today, if you'd like! It's not a very complicated story.

[On the surface, anyway.]

No, no matter how I think about it, it's going to be a complicated story, but it's not like we don't have time on our hands here.

[ Until they get whisked away to some other world to live different lives. ]

Won't you tell me your story?

[Ah, that transmigration life... Wei Wuxian hums a little, tilting his head from one side to the other as though considering. His story ain't a great one, and he's not sure he wants to give Shinobu more reasons than she already has to think he's a one braincelled idiot who leaps into action without thinking and leaves Mass Destruction in his wake...

All the same:]

Would you indulge me with yours in return?

[ Shinobu thinks he has many brain cells but chooses to ignore their output. Or input. As she's said, his potential for brilliance is reflected in his potential for chaos. ]

Yes, of course. It would only be fair.

[ He's already seen the end of her story, so what's the harm in filling in the rest of it? ]

[It's not an incorrect observation... Sometimes you have braincells and all they do is come up with curses and then self-sabotage when common sense tries to join the party.

ANYWAY.]

Kind of you. [With a quirking little grin. He leans forward a little then, resting his folded arms against his knees instead of over his chest.]

As for me - I've said my memory isn't the best, and it isn't! The only thing I know about my parents is that they died in a nighthunt. A friend of my father's took me in - that Uncle Jiang. What you saw there was the start of a sect's attempt to take over the cultivation world. They had the power and number to do it - wiped out our sect overnight, which was unheard of before then. The ones on the platform were the second son of that sect's leader, his mistress and his bodyguard. Never got along well with any of them! They were quite tyrannical, enjoyed bullying the weak and sent out the order to kill countless people for reasons as foolish as "they shot an arrow at the wrong type of kite". I made sure they suffered for the misery they brought.

[STATED SO SIMPLY. Well. She already knows he's capable of bloodshed and violence, so he doesn't bother hiding that... She knew even before seeing his memories, from back when they had lived parallel lives in a town worlds away. A bit more quietly, as if tempered by memories of that time:]

I've never been able to tolerate people like that. What I did in Montevallo would be considered kind by comparison, I think.

[He was more in control of himself then, after all, even with his wicked temper and vengeful streak.]

[ One day, she'll ask and find out what a nighthunt is, but for now, she doesn't think that's quite as important as the rest of his story. What he did in Montevallo was kind in comparison, is it?

That's heavy, and she's not quite sure how to feel about that. The way it sounds, those sect members were just as bad as demons, and she'd never forgive or forget someone who'd kill people so easily like that, just for their whims and for their self-serving satisfaction. She knows she'd hate those people as much as she does demons, especially if they killed her family (her second family).

How much can she judge? How much should she judge? There's no hint of her ever present smile, a reflection of her conflicting thoughts. He's learned and grown, but she knows her anger. How different is his? ]

You took justice into your own hands but to the extreme.

[ She keeps her voice and expression neutral. ]

Were you applauded, or were you scorned?

[ She knows it the end, he wasn't seen in a good light. ]

[By comparison, he laughs, and there seems to be some genuine mirth in it - a bit on the dry side, maybe, but still there.]

Do you need to ask? It was a time of war, and humans do seem to be the same everywhere you go.

[He doesn't blame them, really. The people who scorned him, the people who hated him, the people who spread rumors until fact and fiction blended together and his true acts and deeds were buried under a mountain of embellished wrongs. He's never been one to run from the blame that rightfully belongs to him, though he also refuses to take on more than his share.

He sighs, shifting so he can prop his chin up. It's a lazy, comfortable pose, at odds with the topic at hand. But to him, these aren't things to be mourned or reviled. They just exist as they are, unchanged and unchangeable.]

I was applauded when I stood by the Sunshot Campaign's alliance and shared the same goals - an easy thing to do when we were all united against one enemy. When we didn't see eye to eye anymore, I was scorned. Ended up with quite the reputation! You could probably travel to the other side of the country decades after the Burial Mounds were sieged and still hear a farmer curse the Yiling Patriarch for their broken wagon wheel, haha.

[Haha! Ah, Yiling. Not just a name in Montevallo, apparently.]

Does laughing about it make you feel better, or do you laugh because you're so used to it that you've accepted it?

[ That there is something genuine to his laughter... She doesn't like it. To accept that, to find it somehow funny— it may be easier in the long run, but what it means is a little disheartening.

Demons were humans once. Humans can be as terrible as demons That's not something she forgets.

She smiles, but there's no mirth. ]

You will do what you feel is right. That's what I can tell remains true to you across every world we go to. [ No matter what backgrounds make them change on the surface. Underneath, she knows he'll do what he feels is right, no matter what other people feel about it.

She doesn't miss the Yiling reference. ]

They made you a convenient scapegoat. Even if objectively, the things you did were terrible, that they would go so far to malign you, to call you as a monster when they weren't so different...

[ And she can say that, can't she? Humans in a time of a war aren't so different. What makes them righteous, what righteous claims people make—

Doesn't she know those, too? Slaying demons is still killing. She knows that, but it's better they die than innocents do. ]

Hm... Both, maybe?

[Does it make him feel better? Is it what he expects and accepts now? He doesn't typically look that closely at his own reactions - certainly nowhere near as closely as Shinobu is, in this moment. His shoulders raise a little in a sloping gesture, and the smile fades.]

That'll keep being true of me wherever we go and whatever life I end up in, I think. [Because he has a strong sense of justice, of what's right and wrong, and he can't ever mind his own damn business and leave well enough alone.

He hums a little as she continues talking.]

Can't say that I didn't deserve some of what I got, of course! [His life had been a pale price to pay, compared to the loved ones he'd tormented and killed through well-meaning choices that spiraled so far out of his control.] I did do terrible things. But they also liked to pin even the things I didn't do on me - it's convenient, you know? [WAVING A HAND.]

Well, this and that happened, and the sects decided to siege the Burial Mounds in Yiling. It's where I lived with the Wen sect remnants - the elderly, women, children. People who had nothing to do with the bloodshed but were persecuted unfairly by all sides anyway. [The wry smile he gives her seems to say sound familiar?] That's where I was later, busy interrupted their pledge conference where they were making promises to kill every last one of us and raze that place to the ground, hah. That Jin Guangshan had promised to spare the lives of the other remnants if two turned themselves in, but killed one and captured the other and still had no mercy to spare.

[Nothing about his tone or posture changes, but his hand curls just a little into a loose fist.]

[ He does seem to be speaking about all this cavalierly even if she notices his loose fist. It's a lot to take and digest, and she wants to give it the due consideration. It's his history, and it's what shaped him, and more and more, she can see how the disaster in Montevallo occurred. ]

It was horrible enough that you took vengeance.

[ She can see it. She does see it. Even if they're different in all those lives, they are still the same. ]

Your cultivation world sounds like it's based on a flimsy foundation of morals and justice.

[ She says that as lightly as he does, talking about all these terrible things that's happened to him. For as merciless as Ubuyashiki Kagaya can be, his care has a fairness that these sects don't seem to have. ]

[There's the tiniest quirk of a smile. He doesn't go into detail about their meager farming life, the homes they built from the ground up, the meals they shared together. He doesn't mention Wen Ning and Wen Qing, backs to him as they marched with sure steps to their demise. He doesn't talk about how all fifty remnants were killed and tossed into a pool of blood after he was too dead to do anything about it. He doesn't speak of little A-yuan, who he tucked into the trunk of a burnt tree before leaving, telling him to stay there no matter what happened.]

You have a keen eye.

[He agrees entirely, which is why he'd never been able to stand with them after the war ended.]

--I think you saw what happened next. I was quite arrogant back then! Thought I could handle anything, no matter how powerful it was. I thought I had everything under control. [MONTEVALLO REALLY WAS JUST A SPEEDRUN OF HIS YILING ARC.] I don't remember much about the time between then and dying - the siege happened a few months later, which was a success. Died then and there and would've stayed dead if a certain someone hadn't used my old manuscripts to drag my soul back. Haha, isn't that ridiculous?

[He raises his hands after that, like a storyteller presenting their final chapter.]

And here I am today!

[There is so much happening in his cursedass life story, god.]

[ He recounts this with such a careless manner that it makes her worry a little.

He didn't have it easy, but do any of them do? Isn't that something fundamental that she and he agree on even if the lengths she goes to are different from his?

She nods, after a time. ]

Here you are today. Ridiculous as ever and blamed for things you didn't do and blamed for things you did do.

I'm sorry you had to endure so much, even as the result of your own mistakes.

[ Does she approve of everything Wei Wuxian did or does? No. Does she think he's someone who can't be forgiven? Also no. The world is such a murky, grey place that they both want to be a better place. ]

That's just life, isn't it? The best we can do is learn from our mistakes and move forward.

[Which is why he'd been so deeply unsettled by his time in Montevallo, even if he didn't ever sit down to dissect and discuss that with anyone. Knowing you're prone to making the same mistakes over and over again without the knowledge you gain from it is... hm.

Well, that's neither here nor there. He's grateful for the fact that Shinobu isn't disgusted enough to cut ties with him immediately, having seen what she's seen. Even if she doesn't know the extent of it, the years of bloodshed he's responsible for, the horrific torture, dipping his hands into resentful energy until he couldn't tell where he began and it ended - she's still seen some of what he's capable of. Him at his worst, responsible for the fall of the best person he's ever known.

He doesn't know how to put his gratitude into words easily though, so he just flashes her a smile and moves on.]

I've talked more than enough about myself! [Waving a hand! He sits upright again, gaining a little more exuberance back into his gestures.] Won't you tell me a little about yourself?

[ Shinobu is logical enough to be brutal, but at the end of the day, she is moved by her heart. She is resolved to cut down the guilty, the terrible, and the horrible, but motives hold weight.

She smiles because even if her story isn't quite as tumultuous, it's not happy. He knows enough. She's content for how it ends, but isn't that just life? ]

The first time I found out demons existed was the night my parents died. After my sister and I laid them to rest, we sought out the man who saved us, Himejima-san. We asked him how we could be stronger and become demon slayers just like him. He first turned us away, but my sister and I persisted until he gave us a test.

It took us a while, but we passed.

[ It's obvious since she's dressed as she is with a weapon at her side. She puts a hand on her sword hilt. ]

My sister was stronger than I was.

[ And he saw what happened to her. ]

[It's not happy.

He closes his eyes for a second while she talks, just listening to her words, taking them in. Losing your parents young is awful, especially at the tender age where you're too old to forget and too young to not be shaped by it. Losing them in a traumatic incident is even worse.]

You've been angry for a long time.

[It's what he settles on eventually, more of a passive observation than a question.]

But you've had a strong heart for just as long. One demon killed is tens of people saved, hm?

I can't remember the last time I wasn't angry.

[ Isn't that a sad thing to admit? But it's one of the emotions that keeps her going. She acknowledges it and doesn't think she's wrong for it. ]

I focused it towards saving people, yes. After my sister died, I tried to fill in for what she left behind. I took in as many orphans as I could that wanted to stay with me. I pushed until I became a Pillar myself. I came up with as many variations of wisteria poison I could.

[ She threw her entire life into helping others and murdering demons. They're not mutually exclusive, but she can't deny that she's unkind to demons. Murder is still murder, as justified as it is, as righteous as she can be about it. ]

[Maybe it's a sad thing to admit, but he feels more understanding than more adjusted people than them probably would. Anger is an emotion he gets. It's been a long time since he's been angry in any notable way, but when it's with you once, it's hard to forget.]

Sounds like you were quite busy for all the years you were without your sister. [Made a new family, forged a new path, continued on in spite of - or maybe because of - the hurts she'd faced. His head cants a little to the side. After a beat of thoughtful consideration:]

Are you satisfied with what you were able to do?

[mingle] the space (april).

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