Description: Armed with more information than before, Elle reveals more of her theories about Jinchuu and the motivations behind it to Hotaru. She also tasks the girl with an important assignment, drawing the young fighter further into her world.
Long day.
Let it be known that anyone who thinks running a squadron of maniacs is easy is obviously not doing it correctly. Anyone that has tme to sit, brood, or gloat while petting a cat is delegating too much and not working enough. Between spelling out the intricacies of a Byzantine plot to Katana and Birdie, to dealing with absentee teammates to prying information out of the staff ninja so that everything doesn't come out vieled and cryptic, Elle's exhausted.
And she hasn't even had her match yet with Luc and Tenma.
More chirpy little bastards with tragic stories, she's sure. As stupendously uninteresting as she finds the prospect of being dropped into an atomic hold surrounded by hyper-hormonal teenage boys with too much energy, she finds the prospect of what she's learned even less than settling.
But now it's time to return to the cabin, where her ace in the hole sits, just in case everything goes absolutely wrong. Heavy boots drag acorss the floor as the woman sits heavily onto the bottom bunk and rubs her eyes. It's like grad school exams all over again. Except this time, she might die.
Literally.
The entrance on the part of Hotaru moments later is sheer coincidence. It's pretty hard to guess it's her, as the door handle is rattled back and forth several times. Whatever the deal is, the girl seems just have a problem getting it to work reliably for her. The shaking goes on for several seconds, until there's a blunt 'thunk' of shoulder against the wooden panel and the door swings open followed by Hotaru stumbling in a little off balance.
Catching her footing, she reaches behind her with her toe to swing the door shut with enough pressure to make sure it catches before looking around the room a bit more. Unlike Elle, she seems to move with a fair amount of energy right now. She has no minions to drain her patience, no thugs to explain intricate nuances to... nope, in comparison she has it easy. Though she has spent the entire day approaching familiar faces, establishing or renewing ties with the various participants in the tournament. Some noteworthy, others coming up as dead ends in terms of seeming useful.
"Oh, hello," she speaks in Elle's direction before slipping over to her blue travel bag to heft it up onto the room's chair and star riffling through it. "You ever heard of Soma? Looks like he might be from the Middle East or thereabouts?" she asks casually as she digs through her stuff.
The mercenary pats her back pocket looking for cigarettes, and then makes an annoyed sound. That's right, she gave up smoking. With an almost grumpy look on her otherwised washed out features, she jams her hand into her pack for another tootsie roll pop. The paper is discarded, crumpled and tossed aside as she shoves it into her mouth, and immediately bites down.
Bleh. Blueberry.
"Soma?" Her fingertips go to her eyebrows, rubbing. "He's the ultimate in metaphysical paradoxes. Is he a writer that's pretending to be an investigator, or an investigator that's pretending to be a writer?"
The candy fragments crumble as she chews on the center. "Yeah. I know him. Apparently he doesn't like my attitude. I'm arrogant or something."
Extracting her pajamas from the bag, Hotaru lays them out on the table next to the chair. It looks like little miss muppet is going to get ready for bed time. She pauses, however, taking two steps over to swing down and snap up the discarded blue paper wrapper and carry over to drop it off in the dainty little plastic trash receptacle in the corner of the room before she goes back to shuffling through her dufflebag. The entire process was so smooth as to look like some rote ritual that she wasn't even conscious of doing.
At Elle's summary of Soma, Hotaru glances up, her mouth twisted into a grin in spite effort to the contrary. "Ah, so you already know about that. Yeah... I thought maybe he would have some kind of insights as to what is going on around here, but I think I ended up telling him more about this whole affair than he was either able or willing to tell me." she mentions with a shrug. As to Elle being arrogant? For all the vices the girl believes the woman has, that doesn't quite fit the persona quite right.
"He hadn't noticed the reactive lines in the wall yet. But he knows about 'em now," she states as she digs up her toothbrush and a tube of toothpaste.
The mercenary is frankly not surprised. Were Elle on the side of the angels, she'd have led the charge against this boat a long time ago. 'Good guys', for all their bluster, know frighteningly very little about evil, which is why they tend to get the wool pulled over their eyes so often. Elle... well, a bad guy knows another one from a mile away.
Elle watches Hotaru get ready for bed for a moment in silence. It's about as fascinating as watching a National Geographic special on the wonders of linoleum. Nevertheless, Hotaru's adherence to schedule is familiar to her at least.
"Let's put it like this. If Soma knew what he was supposed to know, he'd be anywhere but on this boat." She slides the gloves off her hands, revealing a dragon tattoo which coils down the left side of her arm. The mouth of the intricate design is open by her wrist, as if her hand was protruding from it's throat.
"There's three people on this boat that have answers. Seishirou, Riku, and Hiretsu," Elle informs Hotaru, "If you're looking to fool people into tipping their hand, you go to them."
Her fingers flex slowly as she stares at them. "Tell your friends to stop their chi use. Or at least slow it down." She says suddenly, her voice creaking under the fatigue she's feeling.
At the comment about Soma, Hotaru glances up as she unscrews the tube of toothpaste, squeezing it from the end with meticulous precision to get just the right amount on the toothbrush held in place by her other hand. "I'm not sure what that says about us," she replies, kidding, except not really.
The lid of the tube replaced and the toothpaste returned to the side pouch in her bag, the girl catches a glimpse of the tattoo on Elle's arm and her attention fixates on that for a long moment. She can't help but wonder at the story behind the marking. Were Elle a friend rather than someone mildly creepy, cranky, and at this moment, the most important person to her on the boat, she'd probably ask. She doesn't.
The three names are noted. Riko she knows of course. Sei she's heard off... incessantly from Riko, but Hiretsu is a new name out of the mix. She'll remember it. "Okay." As Elle begins to move her fingers, Hotaru finally turns away, leaning into the small bathroom long enough to wet the top of her toothbrush in the sink. "I can do that." she comments at the instruction, stepping back out into the open. At the warning, she's glad that she has yet to draw upon chi at all during her entire time aboard the boat, even in the spars the various contestants have asked of her. "Why? Is it building up to something?"
She pauses for another moment before voicing a question that went unasked the last time they spoke. "Why are you doing all this? Is it business or personal?"
"I don't have a personality. It's hard to be personal when you don't have a personality," Elle says flatly. "Let's just say that there are a lot of interested parties, and they're not willing to commit anyone that they might actually feel bad about if they die."
"As for the other question, you're sitting on what might be the biggest chi capacitator ever created. This boat is conducting every single erg of personal energy you and your hyperactive little pals throw around like buckets of water, and storing it in a chamber in the lower decks."
"Why they're doing it, I'm not sure. But the mere fact that nobody said /why/ theyre doing this should be a pretty good indication that they're not going to sail this crate down to India and solve world hunger."
She leans back on the bed, unable to close her eyes. Insomnia, especially chronic insomnia, is a difficult thing to thwart. "Every time you use any of your power, you're furthering someone else's goal. The more power you give them, the better they like it."
She pauses again, growing silent for a while. "You don't do a lot of question asking, do you? Am I the only person that took one look at this Godforsaken thing, crawling with writings straight out of the Necronomicon scribbled all over it and thought something was wrong?"
Hotaru would beg to differ on the personality part. That Elle denies having one at all actually speaks volumes about her, but the girl isn't here to psychoanalyze the woman. Maybe she should though. The idea of charging up some kind of giant chi battery isn't hard for her to understand, however, and the girl pauses then, toothbrush inches from entering her mouth before she lowers it.
"I see," she states, the tone of her voice suggesting that she is trying to picture the implications of something like that. What would be the point? Aren't there other, more practical, just as capable methods of gathering and producing power out there? Then again, she isn't an electrical engineer, so she's hardly qualified to conjecture about such things. "Do you think I should tell people that part? Or keep the details scarce?" the girl asks when the brief pause allows.
At the statement about whether she noticed things amiss here, she rolls her eyes a little. She doesn't even know what the Necronomicon reference is, but she still understands the accusation. "Plenty of questions, just not a lot of answers. I don't know how you've put together everything you know, but I'd be willing to bet you didn't do it all yourself," she retorts, finally plunging the toothbrush into her mouth.
"No. But if I wasn't seeing a profit margin here, I'd be just about anywhere else," comes the even reply. "There's a dozen contestants on this boat, and a few spectators. Only a few of them are here for a good reason. The rest? They just got on the boat like brain damaged sheep, out of boredom, for prize money, or to cheer on their 'friends'."
She spits out the lollipop stick, and tosses it at the trash can, where it falls in. Even she doesn't want a nasty saliva covered stick laying all over the place. "Everyone wants to charge on board. 'Oh hey look, something new and exciting!'. Nobody thinks about what heppens when the Ryuohara juice your soul and use it to grow roses on the polar ice caps or whatever they're trying to do here."
Unfortunately, thanks to Marise, Elle's got a better sense of what's going on here. Hopefully, some of it will finally become crystal clear when she talks to the Russian mobster on board. "Tell me," Elle says finally. "What would you do if you knew a way to make things right again? How many strangers would you be willing to give up in order to satisfy your need to make your heart whole again?"
Bunking with Elle is a treat. She must be a real joy to have around the house, or warehouse, or wherever it is she lives when not aboard this boat. Charming personality, uplifting topics to chat about, confidence building insults... Oh yeah. If she has anyone in the world who considers her a friend, Hotaru would be surprised.
The annoying thing, though, is that she can't really refute what she's saying. She got on board herself out of curiosity as to what the whole todo was. She's only slowly become aware of people she's known being participants, but it was far from her primary purpose in being here. She just wanted to see it all happen for herself, and the ironic invitation for all recognized fighters to come aboard for free suited her perfectly. Only now does she see why they would be so hospitable to anyone who wanted to come aboard...
Her eyes follow the trajectory of the lollipop stick to watch it sink into the trashcan before looking back toward Elle. Turning around again she leans into the bathroom, finishing up with her teefbrushing and washing the toothbrush off in the sink. "I guess not everyone is as paranoid as you are," the girl replies, stepping back out to return the toothbrush to its nifty plastic container.
Then comes the questions at the end and Hotaru pauses, glancing up toward Elle, eyes searching hers as if trying to figure out if she's even serious about what she's asking. "I-... I couldn't do that to someone else, stranger or no." Her hand comes up to rest against her chest, as if weighing the wholeness of her heart against the lives of others, face lowered in quiet contemplation before she shakes her head, "Why? I guess you're going to tell me that you'd sacrifice any number of people for whatever you wanted. That's how you are, right?" she replies, remembering vividly the words they exchanged when she was once a bound and captive audience.
"No. I have my limits. Don't get me wrong. If someone told me that I could take, say, I don't know... Jiro for example, and jam his hands into a chipper shredder for ten thousand dollars and a case of soda, well, then your boyfriend would be learning to write with his teeth," Elle admits, sitting up again with a shrug. "But I don't give two shits about Jiro. People have relative value."
The mercenary reaches into her bag, and pulls out another candy. This time, it's a box of jujyfruits. "Let's say that this boat is about to explode. You only have enough time to save one person. Just one. Are you going to come looking for /me/ to save, or are you going to rescue your little blonde friend that dresses like a cheap hooker?"
The candy is chewed on, which muffles her voice slightly. "You don't have to answer, because we both already know the answer. No hard feelings there. I'd roll over half of you to save something I thought was important. But that's not really the point."
"The point," she elaborates finally, "is that in all cases, there's a price to everything, even if we don't like to admit it. And some of us don't see a problem in sacrificing people that they don't love in an emergency... or when they seen an opportunity to get back something they've lost."
There is a flash of something when Jiro is brought up. Maybe a bit of ire, old injuries remembered, or perhaps just a reaction at the grotesque image of someone's hands being driven into a woodchipper. It isn't the kind of imagery the girl has been exposed to much, and it shows in her paling complexion. In fact, the whole entire conversation has just taken a sharp turn into the 'stuff someone like her isn't supposed to have to think about because the world can't possibly be that vile, wicked, or cruel', and she's growing increasingly uncomfortable. As if being around Elle could ever actually be described as comfortable.
The hand at her chest lifts, now resting at the back of her neck as she tries to take all of that in. What if she could only save one person on the boat? Elle offers one binary choice, but it isn't even that simple. There's several people on the boat she would want to save. Pick one? Would she just be so paralized by indecision that she'd pick no one and all would be lost instead of all but one? Isn't that just about as deplorable as being able to distinguish between those she'd save and those she'd let go? Her eyes move back and forth as she reflects on the scenario proposed by the dark mind of Elle.
"Are you warning me about how this is all going to play out?" the girl asks, not sure why the woman has seen fit to inflict the doubt-causing questions on her like this. "That the end that approaches to this whole event will be costly in one way or another?" The girl takes a step toward the door then, suddenly not feeling like lying down to sleep is going to work out for her right now. Her hand comes to rest on the handle as she pauses, not looking over her shoulder. "I don't know how to make decisions like that. All I can do is try my best to help keep it from reaching that point. After that..." She shakes her head, releasing a slow sigh of resignation. "I don't know. I don't know what I would do."
The mercenary shakes her head. "No. I don't know what the end of this looks like. Don't be so dramatic," she says, rattling the box of candy and peering inside. Only two peices left. Better save them for tomorrow morning's cravings. The box is stuffed back into the bag.
"I know my limitations. I'm not a very senstive or emotional human being, obviously. So the mindset of someone that is willing to do whatever it takes to get something that's gone escapes me."
"I beleive," Elle says, "that the Ryuohara are trying to finish something that they lost track of a while ago, or are trying to bring back something they've lost. They're not afraid to hurt people they don't know or care about in order to get that job done."
Elle's deadened eyes lock onto Hotaru's lively ones. "Seishirou addresses everyone as 'agents of Jinchuu'. You're Japanese. The fact that he's going around saying that we're all agents of 'heavenly justice' means that he's using us to satsify whatever his diseased little brain has concocted as 'justice'."
Elle turns away again, leaning back onto the bed. She puts both hands behind her head before she speaks again. "Seishirou's lost something. Something's done this clan wrong, and he means to get it back. And he's going to use you, and me, and anything else that he can get his grubby little hands on to get it back."
Once again the girl is introduced to another look at just how Elle's mind turns things over. It is at once nerve-wracking yet also provides a certain sense of... completeness. The gaping holes in her own understanding of this entire mystery begin to get filled in, and that's comforting on many levels, even if the truth slowly being revealed is far from a relief.
Hotaru stays next to the door, her hand resting lightly against the handle as she looks back at Elle, comprehension reflected there as the big picture slowly spreads across the canvas of her mind. Agents. Jinchuu. Revenge or justice - one and the same when looked at in a certain way... "I wonder what it is they lost," the girl muses out loud at last. "What would require something this huge to recover... To hurt so many..."
Her hand tightens around the handle, her eyes fixing again on Elle as she studies the woman again. Just what makes her tick? Is she putting this all together for money? Following a profit trail that she expects to reap from whatever plan she is plotting? "I don't know why you're here. But... I'm glad." comes the quiet admission before the clacking of the door handle that she turns and pulls open. Sleep can wait. She needs to pace the decks a little and think this over. She lingers at the threshold for several seconds, perhaps weighing another question or statement she might make. But eventually she leaves, pulling the door closed behind her.
"Tell your friends to slow down on the chi," Elle reminds her as she steps out the door. For Elle, this is just another day. Every single second of her life is occupied by bizzare situations and crazy people, to the point where it's become the norm. Mundanity is defined by what you see each day, isn't it?
But to answer Hotaru's final lingering question...
"Think about something or someone /you've/ lost, and ask yourself what you'd do to erase those lost years and start all over again."
"We can all talk morality and honor... but when it comes down to it, who would you save from death at the expense of people you don't know or care about?"
She shrugs, more to herself than anyone else before contiuing to star, her mind continuing to work as the door shuts. There's still many things left open.
Time to fill those gaps.
Log created on 03:13:28 09/10/2007 by Hotaru, and last modified on 05:52:19 09/12/2007.