( mini-plot post: open to all )

[jawdacity]

Who: jawdacity & all of cerealia!
When: towards the end of the event (so this won't conflict with any event threads you may already have going). 2-3pm.
Where: Abandoned village + surrounding jungle
What: THERE ARE EXPLOSIONS. And mushrooms.
Rating/Warning: Possible NSFW for gore?

Details about this mini-plot HERE

"World of Loudening Screams" (Watch on YouTube)

(theme song of this post, courtesy of moribound.)



[ it's another muggy, meandering day in the jungle; nothing seems to be out of the ordinary. ]

IN THE VILLAGE

[ if your character is near the center of the village, they'll bear witness to the curious sight of a herd of shuffling mushroom beasts. in terms of threat level, to the experienced hunter they may have ranked low on the scale: slow, lacking an external fang or claw, they seem to be interested only in their endless march forward.

but, if your character is close enough, they may catch sight of a red-haired young man, a manifesto of anger written across his face. one breathless moment, the calm before the storm, and then he hurls a metallic pair of gloves at the closest beast, the gloves trailing arcs of flame.

what may strike your character first is the searing heat, the thrum of the earth below their feet. the whole village is demolished in a moment, the dying cries of the beasts rising above the din. the explosion lasts much longer than it should, the line of mushrooms going up one after another.

if you're too close, you might be torn in two. you might lose a limb, or two, or three. you might go deaf, you might lose your sight. you might lose all your eyelashes, your clothes. maybe the bag of mushrooms you'd collected for dinner is now little more than ash.

keep running. the smoke trails into the air. someone is screaming. the smell of charred meat follows you even after you disappear into the jungle. ]

IN THE SURROUNDING JUNGLE

[ if your character is close enough to the village, they'll feel the blasts, one after the other. the jungle is on fire, quickly spreading. maybe you'll hear the screaming, too; maybe your lungs will fill with smoke. maybe you'll run into one of the last mushroom beasts, fleeing from the explosion only to trigger a lesser one in the depths of the jungle.

it came from the village, didn't it? maybe someone you love was swept up in the explosion.

if you manage to escape the stampede of terrified jungle beasts (some of which may stop to crunch you up as a quick meal as they dash away from the blast), maybe you can venture closer to see what's happened.

or maybe you should get as far away as possible. ]

Comments

b!

[covenantal]

[ To his dismay, Yu had been far away from the blast by the time it had gone off. Dismay, because he'd been too far to do anything to help. By the time he arrives, the immediate carnage is over. The wounded have been tended to and the fires are out. All he finds is the blast crater - and the boy he met before. The one he'd fallen asleep on. That moment seems especially cute now, in the midst of all this destruction and pain. Rin is ... his arm.

Without any hesitation he'll walk up to sit beside Rin, careful in his movements so as not to startle the other boy.

The gloves... he was barely awake at the time, but he seems to remember seeing something like those when they met. Rin had put them in a bag, but... are those the same? He isn't sure. He wishes he hadn't been so out of it. But that can wait. Rin is hurt. And obviously upset. ]

Rin-san.

[jawdacity]

[ there are a few fires that still flicker in the periphery, more smoke than flame. rin nonsensically, is thinking about the effect of secondhand smoke on an athlete's lungs. especially for a swimmer, for a freestyle swimmer, smoke is deadly. lung capacity can be increased, genetics overcome by hard work, but how easily all of that could be cut down. a few too many carbonated drinks. a few too many cigarettes. and then you're taking last place, not making the national cut, stuck to teaching five-year-olds how to swim in some old city natatorium. where the paint's peeling from the walls, where the metal fixtures in the locker rooms are all rusting over.

no one gets to the olympics without an arm, too. maybe he can get a new one installed. something in chrome and plexiglass, stronger and more efficient than skin and bone. maybe he'll be the first in the world to win the gold after killing a handful of his friends.

how's that for setting records.

he doesn't look up when yu draws near, though the shock of gray brings to mind a certain timid junior before rin remembers where he is. no samezuka rice porridge in the morning. just a breakfast of ash and ash. ]

Finally woke up, huh?

[ wry, softer than rin usually is. ]

[covenantal]

[ He's unhurried as he arranges himself on the ground, one leg curled against his body, the other knee bent with foot planted against the ground. He leans against that knee as he watches the other boy, gray eyes clear and inscrutable. If there's one thing Yu has learned from a year of becoming all things to all people in his life, it's that listening is more powerful than any other action one can take. Listening isn't just about words, about what's said or how it's said or even why it's said. It's about the silences. What's not said, or why it's not said. Rin's so quiet now. He'd been chatty before, bright like a lit flame and quick to curse, coarse and uncaring and laughing. He'd been sound and light. Listening to him had been what had gotten Yu to wake up.

He's silence now. Snuffed out to only a thin column of trailing, silent smoke, threatened by the merest breeze. Whether to go out entirely or to erupt into new flame, Yu isn't sure.

For a moment, he keeps his eyes trained on the other boy's face. Then he drops his gaze to the crater and nods once. ]

Thanks to you.

[ His eyes crinkle in an expression that would be a smile under other circumstances. ]

Why are you here?

[ It's a loaded question. Here beside the crater; here at all; it's open to Rin to interpret how he pleases. ]

[jawdacity]

Mm.

[ a non-answer. maybe it says more than a true answer might have.

rin might have protested at the scrutiny, any other day: his confidence comes with too many caveats to name. they barely know each other, strangers fastforwarded into friendship by circumstance, but still yu is the sort that rin might have wanted to impress, had they been classmates or teammates or anything with an underscore of normalcy.

rin manages half of a shrug before wincing - violently, his bones shivering under the fine shroud of skin - and dropping back into the absence of motion.

it's not about atoning, because rin - for all of his bravado - doesn't have the grandiloquence of self that would allow him to take responsibility for all that has transpired. it had been an accident. caused by his hands, singular now in recompense, but an accident nonetheless.

--still, death is no easy burden. neither is hurt, or anger, or fear. somewhere in the passing from then to now, rin has become less of a victim and more of an accessory, and that's why he sits now with his gloves in his hands, unable to look back or to move forward. ]

You look like you'd be a good swimmer.

[ is what rin says instead. he's picking idly at the grooves in the metal gloves, iron flaking like paper under the pressure. yu's a careful presence, body tucked in with neat precision. he moves like zack does, like heine does; it's more than the awareness of an athlete. there's more to it. the focus of a fighter.

--maybe rin does want to impress him. even after all of this. ]

Butterfly, maybe. You look like you've got the flexion and the strength for it. Or the crawl, maybe — with your build, you might even give me a run for the money.

[ finally, a glance askance. ]

How 'bout that? Once we get out of here, you repay me with a race.

[covenantal]

[ Something about Rin now makes him want to fold inwards, a magnetism he almost finds difficult to resist. It's instinctual to want to comfort him, like they've known each other for a longer piece of time than the space of a few days. He's not sure why, other than Rin's space is now a vacuum where before it was a bubble, and he feels pulled into it in a way he wants naturally to fill, like he always does with people he meets. He can't fill spaces with air or light or sound, because that's not how he is. He's coolness and grounding and constancy, the mirror to reflect light back, the wick of the candle; he doesn't really light the flame himself. He helps nurture it.

Yu wants to help Rin, despite what his mind is putting together here in slow but inexorable pieces. Rin's injury, the gloves, his quiet, the crater; it's all too strange, too indicative of a single answer that's horrible to contemplate. He knows it without having to be told, mostly because Rin's body is telling him. Rin's mouth is telling him without actually saying the words of admission. What would other people be saying in this situation? Different things; they'd be helping, worrying, reacting; but Rin is talking about swimming. Not about who could have done this, or why.

His glance moves to meet Rin's at the same time. Without a single beat of hesitancy, he nods. ]

Yeah. I'm not sure I'll be any match for you, but I don't mind a race.

[ He's not much of a swimmer, after all. As if Rin's arm won't be an issue at all.

A beat. ]

Have you seen a healer?

[jawdacity]

[ there goes that. might've been nice to have a conversation about swimming, instead — the truth's a quiet little humming thing at the back of his mind, a street cleaner working across the neighborhood roads when he's trying to sleep. too much noise. he's always been a light sleeper, too -- in contrast, perhaps, to yu. had the insect poison acted only to enhance an intrinsic predilection to sleeping deep? if rin had been bitten instead, would he be sleeping still in the middle of the jungle, proudly possessing all four limbs all street-sweepers banished to a different neighborhood entirely? ]

Nah. Didn't even bleed.

[ mr. overachiever, here's another bit of trivia for you: stand too close to an explosion, and the heat is enough to cauterize even the loss of a limb.

it's kind of cool, even. says ten-year-old rin, who'd watched all of card captor sakura with his younger sister, who'd loved meiling's directed fire the best of all.

a battle scar, or something like.

maybe rin's no fighter, maybe he doesn't move with the precision of the fighters of cerealia, but now he's earned his place amongst them.

--on some shallow level, at least. a red badge of honor. his hair's already uneven as shit; maybe he'll ask yu to even it out. or to shave it all off, opening up severe cheekbones and temples to appraisal. ]

You got a pair of scissors on you?

[ he doesn't want to talk about it. not the arm, not the fire, not anything. and the gravel in his question, the sudden sharpness of his gaze, should make that clear. ]

[covenantal]

[ The truth is something he's built to seek. He's got calluses on his hands from countless hours of swordplay. Scars on his skin from monsters, scars on his soul from nightmares, indelible marks he could never regret because every single one is a way sign that showed him the path he needed to take. He couldn't have let the truth of this situation go for long, even if it meant scraping himself against Rin's rougher edges. If he cuts himself, if both of them bleed because of it, that's fine. That's what needs to be. Sometimes that's what has to happen for healing.

Yu leans forward, not towards Rin, but against his knee, peering at the other boy. Not inspecting, just looking, thoughtful. ]

No.

[ A beat. ]

I might have something sharp. [ Somewhat mysteriously. Another beat. ] What do you need them for?

[ There's already, he thinks, another question he has an answer to in his mind: why Rin started the fire. There probably isn't a why, other than he didn't mean to. He'll see for himself if Rin is that kind of person, honest enough for this to have all been an accident and not an act of malice. He can't know yet. They're still practically strangers. But he's willing to find out. ]

[jawdacity]

[ rin might have been uncomfortable under the scrutiny if this had happened any other day; now, after the explosion still ringing in his ears, everything else seems muted. bearable in comparison.

besides, this is nice -- in its own way. talking without the expectation of anything more. eventually he'll have to get to his feet, find something to bind his stump of an arm with. find his little sister. straighten out the tangle that his decisions - deliberately or otherwise - have caused.

rin bows his head. it's not to escape yu's gaze, but as a point of reference: his hair falls into his face, blackened and burned at the ends, the left side nearly brushing his shoulders, the right ending just above his earlobe.

(one thing he'd learned in australia: sometimes it's all about appearances. keep your room clean, keep your face washed, your hair trimmed. even if you're a wasteland on the inside, it helps.)

something sharp. rin slides a glance at yu through the shroud of his hair; its color dyes yu's face with its violent shade. ]

My hair's a mess.

[ awkward, suddenly. ]

You look like you have steady hands.

[covenantal]

[ Yu thinks of how they met, the way Rin had fearlessly touched his face without knowing him at all. (The way he'd smiled, how his barking laugh had harmonized with the hum of the jungle. It's quiet now.) It's why he reaches out without hesitance now, fingers brushing gently through the hair still unburnt. It's a brief touch, there and gone, but when he pulls his hand away, it lingers somewhere halfway between both boys, like he doesn't quite want to leave Rin entirely alone.

He doesn't ask Rin if he's sure. Only nods. ]

I'll do my best.

[ Between gathering fruits from the jungle with Korra and having downtime with Yosuke and Hiro while resting, Yu'd needed to fashion himself something sharp to cut through leaves and tougher plants and the like with. Found items from the jungle - stones from the side of the river, leaves, stripped fibers from a vine - and an hour or two of diligence late the first night had paid off fairly well. It could hardly be called a knife, and the sharp "edge" isn't even, but what parts of it are sharp are keen enough to nick his skin on, and that had been enough for him. Hopefully it will be up to this task.

Yu pulls the makeshift, make-do item out of his belt now and rubs a thumb idly over the leaf-bound hilt. Then he adjusts the way he's sitting, twisting to actually face Rin and sit cross-legged. ]

Lean towards me.