Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-29 03:42 am (UTC)(link)
The door opens, and you’re greeted with……



……an outpouring of yams tsum tsums. You’re rich!!!!
Most of the tsums are of different BAD END members or of Shrike Avanteengarde, but everyone in Imeeji has at least one little yam-self somewhere in there.



There’s still a bedroom beyond all this. At least, uh, theoretically.
Edited 2021-01-29 03:43 (UTC)

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-29 03:49 am (UTC)(link)
[ just like home!!! hellfire knows what's up.

venturing deeper into the tsumlands. ]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-29 03:52 am (UTC)(link)
She knows what's up.

Once you clear away enough of Tsum Mountain, you see that, though there are indeed more tsums in the bedroom, the space is dominated by the forest of tall crescent scythes which jut from the ground like a moonsilver forest. Many of the blades are streaked with blood.

Amidst it all—tsums and scythes alike—are swaying lotuses, growing from little pools of water, along with clusters of purple aconite.
beautifulend: (15)

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-29 03:57 am (UTC)(link)
...Hah.

[ can they take a scythe. ]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-29 04:03 am (UTC)(link)
Absolutely.

After all, it was already theirs, as much a part of them as their own tail.
beautifulend: (28)

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-29 04:12 am (UTC)(link)
[ sweet. they're leaving here and heading into Hope's. ]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-29 04:19 am (UTC)(link)
Don't you mean ATTACK AND DETHRONE GOD?
Hellfire evidently seems to think you should, judging by the way the name on Hope's profile has been written in exuberantly large katakana, with a single begrudging line through them to cross them out. "Hope" is written beneath them.

....In any event:
This door seems to be locked. When you push against it, though, there's a kind of feeling—of simmering rebelliousness, and a love so fierce it could be called violent.

There are stems of aconite escaping out from beneath the edge of the door.
beautifulend: (61)

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-29 04:27 am (UTC)(link)
[ hm.

normally they'd just break it open, but maybe that's bad here? they'll try Hardcore's next. ]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-29 04:37 am (UTC)(link)
There are a few boards of plywood next to this door, still spiked with nails: like it had been sealed off, and whoever was doing the unsealing was so eager that they couldn't be bothered to clean up after themselves. The door itself opens easily enough, though.

Inside, it's a fairly standard BAD END=DEAD END room—or at least it would be, if it weren't for the carpet of aconite on the floor, and the clambering wild roses beginning to cover the walls.

...Besides the flowers, though, there are all sorts of empty shelves and photo frames, as if waiting to be filled.
beautifulend: (54)

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-29 04:44 am (UTC)(link)
[ hm. they make a note of that, and then move on to Kohime's. ]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-29 04:52 am (UTC)(link)
This door is.... tricky.

Not locked, you're fairly sure, but touching it feels like a thorn-sharp mix of love and rejection.

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-29 05:11 am (UTC)(link)
[ sad...

now to Jason's. ]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-29 05:21 am (UTC)(link)
For a moment, you think this one might actually be locked, but you give it one more push, and it opens.

Another flood of memory—
—that Heaven would have rejected you; said you were impure things, worthy of loathing—
that it would hurt you, break you; just like b̫̝͘ẹ̡̪̣͓̝͙f̥̬͓͡o͙̖͈͘ṛ͈̜̟e͉̩̬̰͔ͅ—!

His hand was on was on your hilt then, though, and together you shouted that it was a Lie! Violence, like love, could not be denied.


...They took you away from him too, of course. But all it took was a moment to know: he is a blade, too.

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-29 05:22 am (UTC)(link)
Mm.

[ and finally they're going to go to Hellfire's. ]

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-29 05:24 am (UTC)(link)
Up close, you can see that there is quite a bit of extra detail on and around this door. In fact, the whole doorframe is surrounded with photos and knickknacks, like some kind of magpie’s scrapbook: there are various photos of BAD END members, of pep!pep! at the beach, of the garden at ☆ZRAEL; there are snack wrappers from the conbini; a dangling tsum tsum of Scythe; a neat-looking leaf from the park; a handprint in what looks like old blood.

Beneath the name “HELLFIRE” (the katakana are enthusiastically oversized) are many other names:
“Kiri,” “Cut Through All Foes,” “Khrysaor, Temptation of Angels,” and—written like an addendum to that last one—a fourth, which is not in katakana but rather some strange script that makes your vision blur at the edges: “Khysael.”

Most prominent of all, though, is the carved crest on the door: a detailed lotus and aconite, twining together into one whole. And you understand, intuitively, that this is as much a name as all the others.

Re: CHARACTER ROOMS

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-29 02:47 pm (UTC)(link)
[ oh, that's cute. these are all cute things.

they trace each name with a finger, before opening the door. ]

1/2

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-30 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
You trace over Hellfire, and Kiri, and Cut Through All Foes, and Khrysaor, Temptation of Angels, and feel how perfectly clean the cuts were that carved them in the door—parting the industrial hardwood with the ease of soft butter.
Talk about Superior Attribute: Cutting (5), right?

When you trace over Khysael—that name in some λ-language—the shape of the letters feels almost like a poem, or a tiny fragment of one:
Thousand-cutting soul;
a thousand ways of ending

Finally, you run your fingers over the grooves of the floral crest, and with that comes with a kind of certainty: that these are your (her) flowers, as much a part of you as your cutting edge:

Lotus, Key of the Descending Angel.
Aconite, Key of Rage.


(In fact, if Sashay has read Hellfire's profile before, they may recall that it says exactly that.)
Edited 2021-01-30 02:24 (UTC)

2/2

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-30 02:06 am (UTC)(link)
...And you push open the door.


There is blood on the wind.
The rest of the dorm falls away, and you find yourself on the battlefield.

…Or the remnants of one, in any event. It’s not just blood on the breeze, but the sickening smell of spilled entrails, and the groans of dying men: You really did it! You slew them all. The one who wielded lays in the blood-soaked soil beside you—and it is his own blood which has soaked it. His lamellar has broken apart around the head of the spear that pierced through his gut, but his face is still set in a howl of triumph.



It isn’t any particular battlefield, or any particular warrior. You loved them all, but there were so many, and you were wielded again and again and again.



In the distance, past the tattered flags and corpses of men and horses, is the sheen of what looks like a pond.

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-30 02:22 am (UTC)(link)
[ the pond! they remember that. it's kiri's!

they also remember everything else, but not in the same way. everything else is just what life was back then, so they're making a beeline straight for the pond, ignoring everything else. ]

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-30 02:25 am (UTC)(link)
The surface of the pond is mirror-smooth, and reflects velvet-dark night sky, moonless and glimmering with stars—and each and every one of those stars is falling.


It is peaceful here. And you know: here, in the water, is the way home.

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-30 02:47 am (UTC)(link)
[ hmm hmm

what if they put their hand into the pond. ]

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-30 02:50 am (UTC)(link)
The water is pleasantly cool to the touch. And you know: to find her, drown yourself in a circle of stars.

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-30 02:59 am (UTC)(link)
[ welp

time to dive into pond ]

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] ninuanni 2021-01-30 03:02 am (UTC)(link)
It is dark, in the deeps, like the dark of the sky had come down into the water itself. In fact, it is too dark to see anything; you can only feel how far the dark stretches: a welcoming void.


...But you haven't found anything yet, and your lungs are starting to strain.

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] beautifulend 2021-01-30 03:24 am (UTC)(link)
[ They keep going. ]

Re: 2/2

[personal profile] ninuanni - 2021-01-30 03:31 (UTC) - Expand