Description: "The Nephilim were on the earth in those days, and also afterwards, when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown." Genesis 6:4
A pocketwatch snaps open.
Placid, absent, a single eye fixes on the time. "How troubling," Hiretsu murmurs. "We should have been underway a few hours ago," murmurs coldly, at that.
The Suiryuu's sailing schedule is a cryptic, arcane thing. One night, it's in port. Other nights, it's at sea. It comes and goes almost as it pleases, and it has proven for many a potential fight fan to be an infuriating thing to guess where it will appear next. It is possible to be told--but that would imply a ticket aboard. And tickets aboard the great people's fighting ship are quite costly.
Unfortunately, with an entire tractor trailer lodged in the ship's hull, sailing will be slow going for a bit. At least until they ..handle it appropriately.
Standing next to the gangplank, the director abruptly shuts the pocketwatch and tucks it away somewhere inside his jacket. Shifting most of his weight to the cane underneath him, he simply waits. He needs to say nothing else.
After all, patience was always the director's strong suit.
Certainly it would be a difficult prospect to set sail with such a massive obstruction lodged into the hull. Safety concerns alone.. Of course, one can question how many rules of safety are obeyed on this mighty vessel. But it would seem that such delays are fortuitous indeed for those who linger and wish a better look at the exotic vessel. On the periphery of the docks, there are those who happened to be in the neighborhood at the right time to witness and watch. The ship has begun to earn something of a reputation with the locals after all.
Fog has begun to roll in as the sun has long-since escaped from the world. The wooden pier almost seems to float upon the pouring tendrils of mist, occasionally offering glimpses of the churning black tide beneath. A cool crispness of the sea begins to dominate the air, subduing all. Even the birds and sealife have begun to retreat in the face of the encroaching darkness.
After all.. This is the time when the predators come out to play.
True to the bearer of the note, its author is one for.. punctuality. It is a matter of respect, after all.
At once, Hiretsu knows he is no longer alone. Should he glance down the gangplank and a little further along the pier.. he will see a shape. A darkness amidst the swirling mists. An indistinct spectre, hidden beneath an ebon parasol. The silouette of a kimono can be identified, if one looks closely enough. But no sound escapes this figure.. no immediate words, no greetings.
Only... possibly.. familiarity?
Silence clashes with silence.
As may have been expected, the Suiryuu has a distinct feeling of its own. Even wounded now as she is, the great water dragon still causes the senses to tingle with sheer presence. Here, at this midnight meeting, it is very difficult to discern the man from the machine.
At least, until he steps off the boat.
Once a keen sense spots .. what can only be the originator of the delicately penned message he holds now in his hand, folded between fingers preoccupied with the grip of his cane even as he steps down the plank, Hiretsu will meet her at the edge of the ship. After all--he can only surmise it is not her intent to set a foot upon the people's ship, with such methods.
"Our illustrious fan, I presume," Hiretsu greets evenly, with a cold,sterile friendliness in his voice. "I don't suppose you've a reason for keeping this ship in port?" he lies facetiously. Both can tell it would take a little more than a letter to stall the ship's disembark. A truck counts. It is still a good a greeting as any.
However, most humble though he may be, it might be for good reason. As everything seems wrong about the .. creature .. under that ebon parasol, Hiretsu seems.. distinctly normal. Simply an elderly man. In fact, the first thing that one might notice about him as he steps off the ship is that he is utterly nondescript.
No chi. He exudes no presence at all.
It is as if he doesn't exist.
Well now.
As the congenial old man carefully steps a little further along the gangplank, the shadowed figure hardly stirs. So motionless is she, the evening breeze seems to disturb the edges of her kimono not at all. An ethereal presense, untouched by the living world one may surmise. Ghostly, even. As if this feminine thing does not belong in this day and age at all.
"Ooh." A soft feminine murmur carries across the distance. The words themselves somehow.. warping ever so slightly, gaining a cadence at once sultry.. but could raise the hair on the back of anyone's neck. That is.. for those who still have their souls. "..Once I had heard that this mighty vessel was in port.. I simply had to see for myself." The parasol shifts very faintly. Suggesting the hidden visage beneath is getting a better look at the elderly man before her.
"It would seem.. Hiretsu.. That time has been unusually kind to you.."
For this much, the operations director's eyes open. Very slightly. But even in the moonlight, its enough to give a simple taste of something very not mundane. An infinite depth of will, behind the facade. After all. What mere humility would afford a man such a grandiose position aboard the greatest fighting ship ever built?
In the end, this glare is fixed solidly on the wraith. The unnatural chill in the air seems to spike with the shift. It would seem that this one has his full attention. A gift not often given.
But just like that, the taste of that sharp glare evaporates like water off the ship's hull. The old man chuckles softly, humbly. A step is taken towards her, allowing him to shift weight--it's enough to allow him the convenience of adjusting his sanctioned cap.
"Well, don't you seem familiar..." the empty man wonders aloud, though in his voice, the question buried there is only half genuine. His eyes hidden again but now beneath the brim of his cap, he punctuates his next elegantly. A mongoose having evening tea with a viper.
"You must excuse my terrible memory...it's not often I meet kunoichi. Real kunoichi, that is..." This much should simply be known at a glance between the two. After all.. Mai Shiranui? ..hmph. Pretty, but foolish. "To what.." he pauses. ".. To whom .. should I extend the greeting of my time?"
He is almost unnaturally accomodating, for history's taste.
Almost.
The ghostly one stirs not at all. To any other observer, one may even begin to assume her symmetry was mere illusion. False to all God-given senses save those one crafts for oneself. But no, to a descriminating eye. To one possessing the faculties of decades.. Her existance is not quite so mysterious.
Save, perhaps, for how it has continued.
A question that, indeed, the ghost is forced to ask of her cordial host in turn. Some of her mystery, however, is pierced as he rightly identifies her vocation. Which confirms what her own initial thoughts had denied.
At his approach, more details begin to present themselves. The proper arrangement of her ebon kimono, such a rarity in this day and age. The lower half of her face somewhat visible beneath the shadows of the parasol.. violet-painted, plush lips held closed in something approaching neutrality.
To one who knows little of the old ways, the Parasol may seem rather.. out of place on a cool evening such as this. To those who know of certain ancient clans, it is.. superstition. To hide from the courts above, always watchful for things such as she.
Of course, this ghost is still polite. Her head inclines forth in a chillingly graceful gesture of a bow. Answering the question he doubtlessly seeks to confirm in his thoughts, "Nonsense. One cannot be expected to remember a acquaintance from so long ago. I believe.. we had only met in passing on regrettably few occassions. Surely honored Hiretsu remembers the Academy, yes?"
The parasol slips to the side. Revealing ebon bangs mostly veiling staring eyes beneath.. What her face, somehow frozen in time from long ago, does not confirm.. the glints of gold beneath would all but confirm, "Remembers the 'good old days'.. yes?"
"....."
It is a grimace as cold and ancient as the clan itself. His eyes still cannot be seen, though to see and to understand are two different things entirely. Hiretsu doesn't move, regardless.
"The Leaf Academy," he repeats once, in full recognition and humor. "Woe be unto Hiretsu's poor, embittered students.."
He is familiar with the intent. The formality. Her kimono is properly and methodically arranged. For a corpse. ".. You have me mistaken for someone who died a long time ago," he finally answers. "A kunoichi who emits such an evil and ancient feeling should know well of curses... know well about the curse of the Ryouhara's blood, a burden borne since the time of Ikou..know well that none, not even the foolish son of Hiretsu, can outlive it." He is not bitter, not in the slightest, about this epithet.
The director grins. Even against this devil in comparison, it hardly can be construed as a pleasant thing. Especially not from a man whom doesn't exist. It is nothing less than predatory.
"Ryouhara Hiretsu has long since been dead. I am all that's left."
Words with many meanings.
"...Then it would seem.. We have much in common."
Such language is not unfamiliar with her. The Devil too exists in a fashion that is.. not as she once was. A curse less by accident of birth.. but by accident of fate. Neither, it would seem, are so easy to escape.
The Devil tilts her head a fraction. Her smile not growing to match the man's own. Perhaps, if anything, a gesture of respect. She does not mock this man's fate. To do so would make light of her own. There are few that yet walk the Earth who could understand such things. And fewer still she would not murder given a fraction of a chance.
"So it is true then." The Devil lowers her head just a fraction more, almost seeming to see.. beyond him, never quite focusing her attentions directly upon what would seem to be.. a hollow thing playing at being alive, "I had wondered how one such a thing could be avoided..." Her head tilting just so, the golden needles within her hair glinting in the moonlight, "..I see it was not."
Only then her attention drifts to the mighty vessel. Attentions drifting along it's symmetry as she intones, "..The question then is.. Can Hiretsu's grandson succeed.. where his forebears failed?"
At the mention of his grandson, Hiretsu blinks. "Heheheheh.."
The director raises a hand to his mouth. "Hehehe..."
And barks laughter to the sky. "..HAaaaaaaaaaaahahahahAHAHAHAHAHhahahahah!!"
It is the unnerving fanged cackle of a man almost.. /almost/ fully insane, laughing at his own destiny, clear up to the heavens and beyond. It is as if he challenges them from the depths of his spirit, in ways words never could convey.
It takes him a moment to again catch his breath. ".. Ohh .. excuse .. he may die yet. But, the Ryouhara clan will survive that boy, as it has the ministrations of every other soul foolish enough to be born of its blood. Though its minds pass on, the clan cannot die. Existing as it has, a blight of terrible intellect upon the world. How can it? When jutsu such as this still exist..."
As the nothing man indicates Suiryuu with his cane to follow the devil mistress' attention, one glance from this close will afford Marise more information than a hundred, a thousand, a /million/ photographs. The energy from the fighting ship spirals inward, across every etched line in the core, pulsing not only into the deepest heart of the ship, but outward. Tens of different types of chi flow through it. But... it is /not/ just composed of the chi of those who have been fighting.
Such could not account for the sheer mass of energy collected there. Energy that was there long before the ship even took on its agents of Jinchuu.
Against that empty man who stands before it, it is a mammoth standing behind a mite.
A spectacle the Devil truly would like to see. However, at the gesture of the cane.. The woman's head hardly moves. The Devil has seen the incredible depth of living breath endowed to this vessel.. Glanced at it from far away. To her.. It is not unlike staring into the sun.
To her golden eyes, the only reason Marise has been able to see this cackling old man at all.. Is his silouette against this vessel's blinding radiance. For her.. This man may as well be invisible. But that invisibility, compared to the living world around him, gives him definition.
She may be unseeing.. but she is hardly blind.
"An impressive achievement.. to be sure." The Devil murmurs with a measured nod, "Clearly, the Ryouhara have long engineered this feat. Is this how your Clan seeks to live beyond your curse? ..An immortality of thought? Of deed?"
A level of curiousity not often see from such an all-knowing creature as she. But then.. This ghost is certainly intrigued. Lasting legacies is.. of high importance to herself as well. How the Ryouhara seek their own is certainly something she finds herself.. most intrigued about.
"Hmmm?" It's a curious sound the eclipsing shadow gives to the wraith. And the only favor he'll offer her.
"Come now. Even the most base of our number know Ryouhara shinobi better than that."
The compliment, of all things, might as well been a breath of air for all Hiretsu acknolwedges it. Putting his weight back on his cane, the ninja moves towards the devil ghost with impunity. The chill suffuses him, but for someone who doesn't exist... one would think he had no fear. The Ryouhara have little vanity to appeal to. Nor lust for power, political or otherwise. There is only the mindless advancement of their art. That is the way of their clan. They are brutally efficient.
"Though your appearance here is enough for me to discern much, you should know better than any other involved in this grand fighting tournament.. knowledge is power. Once known, weapons can be taken. Once known, defenses can be circumvented. Once known, plans can be undermined. Anything I'd tell you of our goals.. would only be lies." He smirks. "... Unless sufficiently compelled otherwise."
He'll only stop very close to the epicentre of that ancient, evil chill. Only when the eerie floating fabric could only but drift around him. Only then can he utter the next. Only then can his voice he quiet enough to carry. As seductive as the devil might be, for those who stare death in the face every day... wiles may simply not be enough.
"Perhaps you'd care to favor me with your connection to all this.. your interest, first. Have you been hired? Ah... perhaps you are after our jutsu?" He chuckles. "It has been some time since that supreme blade has last tasted blood.." A simple guess, but he gauges her reaction carefully. He gauges it even as he draws his hand behind him, a trickle of energy drawing across his cane, from an energy wave called from the ship itself. As the energy flows across his body, one can even see his beating heart, fast though it is. A small trickle collects there, in his hand. It is hardly enough to be a threat to anyone.
But, for a skilled hand, it is more than enough for a summoning jutsu.
"I find that interest in our simple, lowly endeavors.. /fascinating,/" Hiretsu all but hisses. "Tell me more. Call it a secret lost to a dead man. With that, I'll give you the favor of this clan's goal." The Ryouhara are brutally efficient, blind to politics save in how they are best used. But they are also brutally /practical/.
As the old man approaches the apparition, the Devil slowly tilts her gaze to follow him. Taller than he, if only due to the decrepitude of age, the Devil's eyes descent to remain suffixed to his own. As hidden as those all-seeing golden orbs may be.. Their presense is impossible to ignore. The chill of the night are holds no meaning for either of them. The mists swirling cooly about his shifting feet part readily to another denizen of mystery. The woman herself? Speaks nothing. If this ghostly thing is slighted at his mild rebuke, she does not show it. If she is intimidated by the prospect of that sacred weapon's emergence, she does not reveal it. If she is ignorant of any other secret this once-man has yet to reveal, she does not speak it.
"Because.." The Devil finally answers. Leaning just a fraction forth to better accomodate the small space between them. Alluring she well is, such closeness is not an instrument of seduction. Simply, all secrets are best whispered.. are they not? "..I had thought our calling had grown weak."
These words are not a threat, not a hiss of anguish. The emotion that carries behind those words is one of.. Relief. Excitement. Glory.
"..I had thought all those who would call themselves Ninja had devolved into Western puppets. I had thought.. the old ways were dead and none yet walk the Earth who would endeavor the great ambitions of old. My interest.."
The Devil's appraising gaze moving over the ship once more. Squinting in spite of herself, "... Is simply to know that there are those who yet live. Worthy of our calling."
A slow exhale then, a contented sigh.. as if a vague attempt at remembering what such a living gesture would feel like, "My interest?"
Veiled eyes returning to her polite host, "Is hoping that the people's ship stabs the heart of the western bourgeoisie."
The chi is extinguished in his hand with the snap of leather closing rapidly on skin, then the eventual creaking as his fist tightens. Though her eyes remain veiled by her long raven tresses, his only by the favor of that simple sanction cap. In that proximity, one can even feel the heat of his breath.
The man whom does not exist makes a low sound of recognition deep in his throat. If he is satisfied by her revelation, he does not show it. If he surprised by her lack of reaction--he too.. does not show it. Consider it the true.. the real greeting, between two shinobi. The only greeting that can exist between those who walk with lies and break bread with shadow.
Truth can veil lies as easily as lies can veil truth. And to that end.. what more can even be said?
"Then you should sit back.. and enjoy the show," Hiretsu finally states, that close. He looks up, so slight, to meet her own gaze. Of all the chill that those shinobi fill the air with, it is those eyes--and those eyes only--that even begin to concern one such as him.
"... This ship is only an egg. It was built as a fleeting vision of what ninjutsu is capable of, born only to die. But in that sacrifice... true weapons will be created. We will cut the bonds that bind us to the banal world and realize a true future. This Jinchuu.. is only the foreword. It isn't Ryouhara's goal merely to circumvent the curse of fools."
His words are simple. Dispassionate. Cold. Factual. "It is to erase all evidence that it ever existed.."
%As the old master nears, so too does The Devil hold firm. Her own descent pausing close enough to continue their conspiracy. Unlike his warm breath.. what passes for exhalation from those alluring lips is as cool as the night air around him. Unlike the Ryouhara.. This Devil is not known for her dispassion. Far from it. In some ways.. she needs passion. Requires it.
It is what Marise devours so that she too can continue this nature-mocking existance.
As they have now both exchanged lies.. and exchanged truths.. the ceremony is complete. Those ebon locks seem to part of their own accord, revealing the depth of Marise's inhuman eyes. Those golden orbs with so little humanity left glittering within them. Black slits focusing a fraction as she spies the darkened silouette before her.
The Devil's Kinmagan is said to be a weapon rivaling any sacred treasure. For indeed, what defense can there be against a thing that offers truth at a glance? Of course, it would seem, this old wily one has uncovered it. But, it would seem, not willingly.
At her old acquaintance's statement, she inclines her head with a small smile. Yes.. She indeed will enjoy this. If this truly is an endeavor as the man describes.. She whole-heartedly approves.
"Mmn Yessss.. A fitting fate for a vessel crafted of our kind."
For the warmth of Hiretsu's breath belying the coldness of his words.. So too does the chill of the Devil's hushed exhalation bely the heat behind her reply, "Yesss.. A future fools had once tried to deny us. A future we had long earned through superiority of our blood and skill.. I see it now yess.." Beginning to get the picture as her lips curl upwards, unshealthing the pearlescent glint of fang, "..Our goals are as one, then." The Devil decides, finding this assessment to meet with her own satisfaction.
"A boon then.." She asks in a low, humble tone. A plain, simple request, "..Where may I watch this unfold?"
She wants to be there. She wants to know where this shining future will blossom and see it with her own, dead eyes. She wants to see the look of horror and dismay upon those who thought they could stand above their kind. A gratification long, long since denied her.
"..Hm."
The director of operations gives a gentle smile at that. In the face of the forbidden devil's eye, there is onlythe peace of a man humbled. At once, coldness, dispassion and reverence evaporate as if they had never existed. At once, a facade returns. Only one facet of a greater crystal, the result of long, arduous training, a lifetime that knew little else.
"Oh, quite far at sea.. but you'll be able to see it from any peak in Japan..."
Assurance comes strangely, a gentle man giving confidence to a child, such is his tone.
Hiretsu turns, and begins to walk back to the ship, his cane ringing woodenly against the planks. "... Or you could simply join us aboard. There are still a few .. problems aboard the vessel," he admits. "But they're inconsequential. In the end, all are agents of Jinchuu. Whether they know it or not. ... Of course, those of your talents shouldn't be troubled significantly."
A wry smile to none in particular. Hiretsu adjusts his cap one last.
"Miss," he bids. His cane touches the gangplank.
And then the man that doesn't exist.. ceases to be.
Aaaah.
The Devil inclines her head then as the old master tips his hat. Her eyes veil themselves once more as the warmth returns to him. The casual gesture of two things that should not be, playing at being yet still. Parasol rises, once again shielding her pale continence from the watchful eyes of Tsukuyomi above.
Answer is given with a formal bow. Politely bending at the waist, the most animation this forsaken thing has displayed since this fateful encounter.
%Hiretsu's offer is met with a demure response, "Your generousity humbles this grateful one. However.." The Devil then similarly turns. Movements so graceful, she nearly seems to float through the mists slithering over the pier. Her image silently fading within the evening fog, "..There are those whom Jinchuu is best delivered to.. in person."
No, The Devil's path is not aboard that vessel. Its fate.. is in good hands. There are other matters which the Devil must attend.
And with that.. The quiet sloshing of the waves fills the air once more. The night itself quietly reasserting itself in the wake of the dark assembly's dissolution. No trace of them at all lingers.. that they had ever been.
Log created on 15:17:13 09/15/2007 by Marise, and last modified on 06:14:51 09/19/2007.