Description: Dr. Tran follows up on a promise he doesn't remember making, or maybe even never made, even though it's dangerous and insane. But that's all the more reason to go through with it, because at least /something/ happens. It might even be positive! Depending on your view. If you're an optomist, or something. I guess.
Wintertime approaches. Even though it's only November, the chill is setting in earlier at night. That, combined with it getting dark earlier, means that the normally high foot traffic of Southtown Village is a little diminished. Street lamps in the old school Parisian style cast a prettier, pale gold glow compared to the harsh orange or pale green of normal fluorescent street lamps. A few people hunch up their shoulders and pull the collars of their jackets up against the cold, waving to each other before stepping inside cafes to enjoy coffee or drinks together, or bustling from shop to shop, preparing for the holidays, even so early in the month. It's one of those nearly-Norman Rockwell scenes that one expects to see in the first 10 minutes of a Christmas movie.
Frei has lived in Southtown Village for some time now, and while the 'occupation' of the city by hostile crime lords has been some time passed by now, he's lucky in that his loft apartment above a bookstore was untouched in the fighting. He's always enjoyed living in this part of the city, perhaps because it's a different feel than the highly urban center of a modern city like Southtown, or maybe because it's conveniently close to places he needs to be, such as the YFCC. Either way, that would probably explain why he's walking these streets right now, heading back home from some location or another.
Appearance-wise, he is little different... the same shirt and jeans combo he typically wears, though with comfortable shoes rather than wooden sandals. The differences are twofold, however. The first is his hair; though for the most part it remains bleached white, a shock of it over his right temple has, against all logic, regained the deep red color it had before the accident that deprived him of his chi senses. The second is the object in his hands: a saya, the traditional wood and lacquer scabbard for a katana. The color is the deep blue of the ocean, decorated at the edges with silver filigree, a silver cord wrapped around the end as well. Normally, it would be attached to his belt; for now, though, it looks as if Frei's carrying it instead.
The days growing darker and the diminished streets suit some people just fine. It's not everyday that you want to go out and deal with people; Dr. Tran has not felt sociable for months.
And yet even he manages to get out and about, sometimes. After a certain point, his surprisingly modest apartment starts to feel cramped, and it's with a manic energy welling up from deep inside that Tran hits the streets. That doesn't mean he has to go far, though.
"Hey. Hey! Hey, you!" Frei isn't very hard to spot, especially with a sword and some hair. The doctor isn't, either, but that can more be attributed to being loud and more than a little obnoxious. "Hey! He-wait a minute."
Tran stops just short of putting a hand on Frei's shoulder, pausing and squinting. "Frei? What the hell, is that you?" He stops for a beat, studying his long-time acquaintance.
"...What'd you do to your hair?"
Loud it may be, but 'hey you!' could be lots of people. Thus at first, Frei doesn't turn around; instead he keeps walking, whistling a little bit of a tune (if you're interested: it's Grand Papillon's theme, because Frei is a God-fearing man and thus loves Shadow Hearts). After a while, though, it becomes clear there's few people it could really be, and the sound is coming closer besides. Thus he stops, and turns just as Tran's hand is about to reach his shoulder, a look of surprise in his eyes. He blinks a few times at Tran's question, then smiles despite himself. "Your memory's about as good as ever, looks like," he says lightly.
For a second, he thinks back to the other times he's run into Tran, in the past few years. The American doctor has a way of showing up when things are at a crux point: the need to go find his mother, the need to find some way to deal with his lack of chi. Briefly, the young sage wonders if this is destiny, in a way... as if Tran's... unique... way of looking at the world is, in its own way, a well-timed catalyst to spur a wavering Frei into action, one way or the other.
Briefly, he wonders what Tran would think of recent events, and his smile widens a little bit.
Turning his half-turn into a full one, Frei faces Tran and lets the hand holding the sword drop down and behind his back, waving with his other, free hand. "Been a while. How've you been?" He appears to be, amusingly enough, carefully avoiding the issue of his hair.
For several long moments, Dr. Tran doesn't respond to Frei. He's too busy staring, suspicion written clear as day across his face. Something is /wrong/ here. Nobody just smiles and asks how he's been, nobody. Not even Frei. They smack their head or get all exasperated or start pass-agging or something.
Clearly, this is a trick.
"My memory's a saint, thank you very much." Gotta keep on guard, wait for the other foot to drop. "Why do you--no, nevermind. I'm fine. Just fine. One hundred percent. Top form. Unassailable, if you're wondering."
Tran pauses, carefully considering his next move. "Seriously though, it looks stupid as hell. What are you, fifteen?"
It's not as if Frei gets self-conscious. He'd have to have actual shame for that to be applicable and realistically speaking, he's just not high on the shame meter. Overall, he doesn't care much if people have a problem with him. That said, Tran's scrutiny is enough to draw his attention to the point at hand. Appropriately enough, he turns his eyes up, blinks a few times, and then grips the errantly red lock with his free hand, squinting at it critically. After a moment or two of what must seem like exaggerated amounts of examination, he lets it go, then shrugs and looks back at Tran. "I didn't dye it, if that's what you mean. I guess it's changing back on its own."
That much is the truth. He noticed it around the time he heard the voice of the... well. He assumed it was the Spirit of Flame, but conventional wisdom says such things don't exist. Regardless, when his fire chi reawakened, the hair followed suit a few days later. And now he's meeting with Tran. Coincidence?
Well.
A brief look of... resolve?... passes across Frei's features, possibly confusing Tran, but no more so than the words that actually come out of his mouth afterwards. "Tran, have you ever heard... voices?" he asks, warily. After a moment, he adds, solemnly, "While sober?"
"What." Sometimes, Dr. Tran gets the feeling that he's missing obvious things, some piece of the puzzle of life that will make everything make sense if only he can find it. This conversation with Frei has already reinforced this, and made finding the answer feel like a lost, hopeless dream.
"I...what? You...what?" Tran holds up a his hand to stop Frei in case he feels like talking more, rubbing at his temples to assuage the sudden stress he feels building. "Why would you...OK, OK, wait, I get it now."
"First," states the doctor, holding a single finger up. "First, I am not crazy. Second, even if I was, and I'm not, there is no way in hell I am letting you drag me away and throw me in the crazy bin, and so help me if you try I will ruin you." Tran tilts the finger threateningly. "You hear me? RUIN YOU."
The nice thing about Frei's face, from a narrative perspective, is that he is the emotive type. The person without a poker face since even small feelings and concerns play themselves out on his expression with greater-than-average levels of intensity. Thus, when one were to say that after Tran's response to that question, Frei's expression, which could most effectively be summed up as...
( ._.)
...is not necessarily a flippant use of an emoticon to avoid rich description but rather a relatively accurate read of the actual way he looks, viz: his pupils dilate and his vision is focused in Tran's direction but, perhaps because he knows he can't keep in his visceral responses were to do so, not actually looking *at Tran*. This goes on for several seconds, before he seems to come back to 'normal,' blinking a few times, and then shaking his head. "One, I didn't mean you. Two, what makes you think that hearing voices would be enough to have you committed in comparison to your *everyday behavior*?"
Having delivered that response, however, Frei shakes his head and looks into the street for a moment, taking a breath before continuing. "Anyhow, it might be nothing. Just... lately some strange things have been happening. I wanted some reassurance they weren't all just in my head."
"Oh." Dr. Tran remains tight-lipped, but even that cannot conceal a slight edge of disappointment after his declaration of intent to go down fighting. "I'll have you know that my everyday behavior is impeccable." He says it, but it's lackluster, clearly not with his heart in it.
"So...goin' crazy, huh?" Tran scuffs his foot on the sidewalk, looking around awkwardly. "How's that treating you? I tried it once for a couple of months, wasn't so bad. Kinda nice, except for how I kept eating bugs."
Again, Tran seems to have a rare quality that few other people in the world seem to have: the ability to take Frei's normally unassailable even calm and derail it into a large object at speed. It might be the way the good doctor has of speaking an entirely intelligble, reasonably easy to follow sentence followed by a single detached clause which, even in context, makes about as much sense as a glass hammer. The sort of thing that makes people go, 'I follow you... I follow you... you believe what is called what?' And because he is an emotive sort of guy, Frei has little ability to keep the sudden, churning change of direction his thoughts take from their normal path hidden from others.
That said, the idea of SD Tran pulling a Charlie Chaplin from 'The Gold Rush' but with a large beetle instead of a shoe may be worth the price of that derailment.
"I'm not going crazy," the white-haired man says slowly and carefully, as if Tran were a bomb activated by occasional misstatements which, let's be honest, he kind of is. "At least I don't think so. I just... I'm wondering if all... this..." he says, pointing at his 90% white hair, "...didn't... I don't know. I thought I heard people talking to me, Tran, during fights recently. The same voices I heard when I was drugged out of my mind and controlled by Shadaloo."
It takes a surprising amount of effort for Tran to avoid repeating the word 'what' over and over again. His actual internal monologue goes something like this:
(Okay, so Frei's...got some kind of drug PTSD and it's making him hear voices and dye his hair. So he did go crazy. I need to break it to him softly, ease him into maybe getting some professional help, some kind of doctor or something. Alright. One, two, three.)
"Wow, you are crazy as fuck."
(Good try, anyway.)
Tran lets that hang there before going on, "Uh...well, yeah. You wanna...talk? About it? If it helps, I'm pretty sure I qualify as a shaman."
Thankfully, Frei is oblivious to narration and cannot see into Tran's inner monologue. This is for the best, since even his verbalized response is enough to make Frei slump his shoulders and breathe out slowly, eyes closed, in the universal sign for You Are Clearly Not Listening To Me, You Hopeless Bastard. Still, other than Mizuki he hasn't really seen or talked to many people he knows lately, and the priestess had enough on her mind of her own issues to handle something like this. Bringing his hand to his chin, Frei considers that thought to himself. If you're going to ask someone about something that does indeed sound at least a little crazy, you might as well ask someone who doesn't appear to be burdened by useless things like 'logic' or 'Euclidian geometry'. "A shaman, huh... I could use one, frankly." Shrugging, Frei walks a few feet to his left, where the bottom edge of a brick building's foundation juts out enough to sit on, which he does, laying the sheathed sword in his lap.
It's his lap he looks into when he starts the story. "You know how in Chinese myth, the world was made up of five agents, right? Water, fire, earth, metal, and wood. Well, the agents had guardian gods that represented them." Now, he looks up at Tran, as if mentally ticking off the list. "You know, the white tiger, the red phoenix... sound familiar? Well... well." Here he takes a deep breath, then turns and looks into the street. "A while back, while I was fighting Mizuki in the League, I swear to you that I heard Byakko the white tiger speak to me."
Tran inhales deeply, eyes closed, as he prepares for what he is certain is a great trial approaching. Unconciously, he reaches up to the top of his head, gently fingering a spot at the very top. "Alright, alright. Let's get this over with."
Settling down on the brick next to Frei, Tran patiently listens, nodding his head occasionally even though he has only the faintest idea of Chinese anything except maybe food, and the only thing he knows about that is that it's made with panda meat.
"Okay, so that one's ice, right? And you were fighting Mizu-OH I GET IT. I GET IT NOW! Because she, right! Right!" Tran slaps a fist into his open hand, /clearly/ on to something here. His elated expression quickly fades, however. "Wait, wait, tigers live in the jungle, so that's probably tree, right? Except then why is it white? That doesn't make any sense at all."
He pauses a beat. "Also, tigers don't talk."
"Metal," Frei says absently, not even looking back in Tran's direction, and the distracted way he says it makes it seem as if the sword-sage is reciting the information from memory on auto-pilot. "Metal and the west. Seiryuu is wood and the east, Suzaku is fire and the south, Genbu is water and the north. Earth is the 'center' and doesn't have a guardian god." There's a pause, and then Frei leans forward and pinches the bridge of his nose for a second, realizing what he just did, before mumbling, "Thank you, wikipedia, you're a great help."
Sitting back up, he turns and looks at Tran with a bit of surprise on his face, mostly because the way Tran worked through that was actually quite logical, even if he came to the wrong conclusion. And no, tigers can't talk, except Tony, and the voice did not tell Frei to enjoy delicious Frosted Flakes because they are grrreat, or so one hears. "Good guess, though. And no, tigers can't talk. And there aren't *really* guardian gods or spirits or whatever... they just represent stuff. Abstract. Like, the fangs of the tiger are like the sharpness of a metal sword or something, I don't know, I didn't live in ancient freakin' China."
Pausing, Frei shakes his head and holds the sword out in front of him, one hand gripping the scabbard crosswise around the middle so that the blade is parallel to the ground, as he looks at Tran. "But after I heard it, I was able to strike with chi again. It's not like my senses have come back, but... I dunno. So no, I don't believe in wacky animal gods, but *something* happened, right?"
"Oh." Tran's disappointment runs much the same course as before. Despite how he has never done anything even slightly spiritual, at least not that he can remember, he thought he was doing pretty well for a minute. Then Frei lays it all out and it's like whoa, /knowledge bomb/. Oh well.
"Okay, so something happened with a robot cat, which by the way makes it okay for it to talk if you were wondering, and then you got your chi back." Tran hunches forward in the classic thinker pose, chin nuzzled atop fist, and considers this. His brow furrows in concentration. Something's itching the back of his mind...he can almost feel it, something almost in his grasp, if only Tran can reach out to it...there! That's it!
"Wait, back? What? What the hell are you talking about?"
Tran's comment really does make Frei's head swivel toward him, slowly, with a look of complete disbelief on it. Because... okay, maybe he had been joking the first time, about the hair, but this? The truth is if Frei thought more about what people thought he'd remember that the last time these two met and this subject come up, Tran's response to learning about Frei's sudden loss of chi senses resulted in what can only be called "raucous laughter." As it is, all the white-haired man remembers is the two parting ways relatively peacefully for once and that was that.
Curse his calm mind!
Taking a deep breath, Frei lets it out slowly and gives Tran a weary expression before he continues. "Back when... the whatever went down, people invading Southtown. Whatever they did to me ended up... burning me out, I guess. For a long while I couldn't use chi at all. I still can't, really... except for two times, and they were both after hearing those voices. Can't sense it, can't feel it."
"Huh. Well, I guess that puts it in another light, kinda." To say Tran's reaction this time is different than the last time he was told about Frei's condition is sort of an understatement. As soon as he hears the truth of it, he relaxes a bit, or at least as much as you can when you're sitting next to someone who's just told you that they hear voices which possibly grant them superhuman power.
"So...is that what this is all about? Too scared to use chi without an excuse, or something? Look, if you've got issues, there are better ways to work them out than imaginary creatures from another country." Tran shakes his head dismissively, with a smile. Oh, that wacky Frei, he's done it again! Ho ho ho! "I mean, China, really. Who would even goes there? Although I guess I can't blame anyone who would want to leave, mystical demigod or no."
Despite it all, that gets a laugh from Frei. It's decidedly practical advice, and the fact that it's the question he's been asking himself over and over since this first happened. Even if they WERE mystical spirits from beyond space and time, would Frei want to rely on them to get his abilities back? True, both of them had suggested they would 'lend' him their strength in return for his following his nature, but on a deep level, Frei doesn't want 'someone else's power'... he wants to be able to stand on his own two feet. In his own weird way, Tran is much the same, in Frei's recollection. "Too scared, huh..." Frei says quietly, thinking it over. "I don't know. I'll be honest, I'm more scared of the opposite. I'm not entirely sure what I'd do with myself if I didn't find a solution..."
Shaking his head, Frei looks up at the sky, studying the stars... or he would, if this weren't a city. Instead he tries in vain to see them through the haze of orange from light pollution. "I used to live in China. That was where I learned all this stuff, actually. I wonder if that's the connection. I'm not sure."
"Ah, I'm sorry." The rarest of words come out of Dr. Tran's mouthparts, a genuine Event. Regret for his actions? Further, reaching out and apologizing? It's unheard of. "That you lived there, that is. AWful." Or maybe not.
Pushing onward after his joke(?), the good doctor continues. "Anyway, we're sure that you've still got the ability to use chi, so it's not like it's a physical thing. So it sounds like there's got to be some subconcious reasoning you've got deep down in your brain-cockles that's keeping you from doing your thing unless you've got permission from a magic space dog or something."
Tran leans back a bit, arms folded behind his head, a poorly concealed grin on his face. "I bet with a good, patient therapist to help you out, you could beat this in a few months, easy. Or..." The grin widens, cracking out despite Tran's best efforts. "Maybe I could help you out. Y'know. If you wanted."
Frei does not allow himself to be too thrilled about the 'sorry,' because fool me once, shame on me; fool me twice, shame on you. Or something like that. With a shrug, he doesn't seem to be too bothered by the intimation that China, you know, sucks. He draws a finger across the scabbard he's holding in his lap, furrowing his brow. "I didn't mind it. It was different from Japan, and my mom is... _very_ Japanese. I had a _very_ Japanese upbringing. I didn't mind seeing a different side of things." For a moment, he lets that hang in the hair, thinking about what Tran had said. Again, it's logical; it's not like he's cut off from chi entirely. Is it merely a mental block? But if all you needed to do was BELIEVE it into being, then Frei could probably have accomplished that right now. So what's the probl--
'Maybe I could help you out.'
That makes Frei turn to Tran with a raised eyebrow of... if not incredulity, then at least surprise. He doesn't think the American is a 'real' doctor, not for a minute. But he does know Tran's abilities with chi rise to the level of idiot savant, in a way... and that he has some of the same healing touch that Mizuki shares, even if it's a slightly different take than hers. "How so?" he asks... guardedly.
It's good to see that Frei still possesses a measure of ever-valuable self-preservation instinct. It's just as the old saying goes, 'beware of wooden doctors in glass houses'. However, Tran is generally used to that sort of reaction, so he manages to press on without getting too butt-hurt about it.
"Well, I don't really want to drag anything out, so I could try for a quick, easy solution. So there's a barrier of some kind, right, and what's the best way to deal with a barrier?" The doctor begins to gesture vaguely, avoiding making any kind of eye contact at all, as he looks for the right way to put things.
"In this case, I think you ask you a couple of questions, get a little alcohol in you to loosen you up a bit, and...y'know." Tran shrugs, as if it wasn't any big deal, then plunges forward, talking abnormally quickly. "Pump as much chi as I can manage directly through a circuit formed between me your heart and your brain until one of us is dead or you're cured. Cough."
Tran beams. "C'mon! Let's try it out, see if it works. It'll be fun!"
Somehow, Frei manages to vocalize the following:
"..."
You see video game characters do it all the time but in this case it is Actual Reality Happening For Reals. His mouth opens, and he somehow, using his vocal cords alone, *removes sound from the environment*. Then it shuts, with a slightly audible *click* as his teeth meet. Part of that made complete sense. Probably the part with alcohol, and about breaking down barriers. Sometimes you DO sort of need to knock a wall down, and if you're going to hurl yourself at a brick wall, being a little drunk is not exactly hurtful to that process. At the very least you're probably not going to feel as much of the result in the end. That part at least is kind of halfway sort of reasonable.
The rest, however...
Closing his eyes for a second, Frei takes a breath, then opens his eyes again. "Did I ever tell you what the... whatever... they gave me did?" he says, quietly, trying to avert his gaze from Tran's. He MIGHT have meant well there. He really might have. But there's one important piece of information here that, well... "I... overloaded," Frei explains, voice going a little quiet. "As in, it did something to amp up whatever ability I had. I think it was like getting your hearing blown after you stand between two speakers playing super loud bass, or something like that."
He pauses, having delivered that, then stares up at the sky again. "Then again, you never know."
"So you don't have any problem with it, then!" It's almost like Tran is somehow seeing some sort of Frei from another dimension, who only acts like the doctor wants him to. "I mean, don't get me wrong, I'm sure you have some lingering reservations, but let me just put them right to rest."
Tran pushes himself up against the wall, slowly standing up. "Now, keeping in mind I just thought this up like two minutes ago, there are a couple key points that this would address. First, the possibility that you really did burn out your chi parts somehow, which by the way doesn't make a lick of sense to me. I mean, it's not like you do the whole chi thing with an organ, or a chi gland, or something, your entire body is the system. The only way it should be able to stop is if you're dead. And you're pretty clearly still kickin'."
Tran pauses and frowns, turning and crouching to face Frei head-on. He jams a finger out toward the taller man's heart."Tangent, my bad, anyway. If it is somehow physical, I'd say your irregular chi flow is causing poor health. Resulting in, maybe I dunno.../hallucinations/. This should flush the system. Make sure it's clear and that the body is healthy. If there's blockage, I'll clear it out." The finger spirals away and outward, tracing a line around the monk's chest until with a farty noise, Tran snaps his finger downward, dropping away.
"Sound good so far?"
What a loaded question... 'sound good so far'. It's the sort of question that actually demands a complex answer, like: 'well, some of what you say makes logical sense but the rest is so ridiculous I'm not even sure you're speaking English' but in fact, social convention says that there are only two real answers to this: 'yes' and 'no,' though there is the occasional distantly observable third, 'maybe' or 'what?'. Baffled by the rambling argument about chi circulation, flow, and what might be a smidgen of gastroenterology, a somewhat baffled Frei can only sort of tilt his head with a stunned expression and go: "...what?"
After that it's all about breaking down the actual verbiage. Tran's assertion that there's not exactly a chi-controlling body part is, of course, something Frei agrees with and knows. The closest one comes are the electrochemical impulses responsible for thought, and if those were damaged, weird things would likely be happening.
Like hearing the voices of non-existent spirit beasts.
Hmm.
For a second, Frei thinks back to his battle against Kula, and against his very own clone. A battle where, in order to make success a possibility, he quite literally ripped a chunk of his own life force free in an exquisitely painful process. Granted, that was *after* his apparent burnout, but... one never knows if there's lingering scars.
"I... uh..." Yes, you uh. You definitely uh.
"Speechless, huh? I can't really blame you." That alone should tell Frei that Dr. Tran is definately not great at reading his inner thought processes, considering the long list of what the man will blame someone for.
Stretching up, Dr. Tran prepares to wrap things up. "Now the second part, and the important one since I'm pretty sure that's what the big deal is, is the psychological effect. Uh...long story short, if you almost die, something might happen? Stressful situation, like a fight except more, yadda yadda?" And thus, Tran's loose grasp on modern psychology is finally revealed. He shrugs, helplessly. "Can't know 'till we try, and what have we got to lose?"
He pauses, then amends. "I mean, besides your life. But hey! It'll be fun! I told you that already, right?"
Finally, in the dark recesses of Frei's mind, the... melange of all this information and supposition and in a few cases outright lies comes down to a sort of synthesis. Scattered facts, having had time to stew in a combination of confusion, interest, and wariness from out of the darkness have produced something of a coherent whole. That Tran basically has no idea what the hell he's really talking about is sort of a given, and that there is not exactly the purest of altruistic impulses behind this offer, also a given. The key piece of information that is missing from that analysis, however, is that this is Tran we are talking about. Frustrated and angry, the good doctor -- in Frei's eyes -- is like the man who needs an excuse to cry when he's sad. Take a generous impulse, wrap it up in selfish reasons, give it a nasty name, and he just might do it.
What do you have to lose except your life? Well... you already kind of gave that up, didn't you, Frei? If this thing with the sword didn't work out, where were you going to go?
The entire time this stew of thought and emotion is whirling around in the white-haired fighter's head, he sits against the stone of the building, head tilted back and spine straight, so that his closed eyes look up toward the heavens. A curse, or a blessing in disguise...
Rather unexpectedly, and with awkward timing, his head drops back to Tran's eye level and Frei's green eyes open. He says: "...okay."
"Wait, what?" Despite the hefty chunk of discourse immediately preceding this moment, Dr. Tran seems both floored /and/ baffled. Frei...Frei said yes? Maybe he doesn't really understand what Tran was suggesting. No sane man would accept, and it would be kind of a dick move to actually do this to a crazy. Tran's barely functioning moral compass twinges a bit, propelling him to new heights of generosity. In this instance: the chance to back out.
"Really? Are you sure?" The doctor and sometimes-shaman-if-you-believe-him pauses, what could pass for a worried look on his face. "I mean, really sure? Seriously, if this screws up, either of us could die. Probably you, but I guess that depends on how well you hold out."
"But, I mean, if you're really sure..."
Frei studies Tran's face for a moment, then closes his eyes a little and leans forward, so that the angle of his head is as if he were looking into his lap. "Well..." he says carefully, drawing out the 'e' a little long as if he's about to change his mind, before continuing. "I don't... necessarily think you were 100% doing it to help me. But then, would you be doing it to help... you?" And here he looks up, tilting his head to the side, and regards Tran with an inquisitve expression, one that's well-suited to the child-like curvature of his face. "I don't know. Maybe there's something you want to understand better and this is your way of doing it? Or maybe you want to test a theory. Or it could be deep down you want to help and this is the only way to get that desire past your, you know, actual personality."
A beat passes, before Frei shrugs and puts a hand, palm down, against his stomach. A faint twitch of the expression suggests that maybe he's feeling a little nausea? Or something of the sort. It passes in an instant, though, a cloud moving in front of the sun. "I'm not 'really sure.' I'd rather you not kill me or yourself. And... I don't want to get my power back 'at any cost' either. To be honest I have a lot of doubts. In the end what it comes down to is: do I trust you, or do I not? And I know you might think it's insane, but I trust you."
For a long, drawn out moment, Dr. Tran stares at Frei, face impassive, taking in what the abruptly talkative monk has to say. Gears are turning, trying to come to terms with the words that are coming out of Frei's mouth.
"I liked it better when you were too stunned to talk. Asshole." Tran sighs, making it sound like he is both vastly annoyed and horribly put upon by not just Frei, but the entire universe. It's impressive, for just one breath.
"In fact, just for that, you're doing this sober." While it's intended as punishment, Frei may be glad to realize that this also means that Tran will be sober, no doubt a reassuring thought.
The doctor reaches forward, one hand moving to the top of Frei's forehead, the other toward the center of his chest. Tran only hesitates a little bit, before resolutely pressing firmly, making sure the contact is solid.
"Just remember, if you really do die, you probably deserve it for pulling crap like that."
Even as the good(?) doctor lays hands upon Frei, invoking a 15 minute cooldown before talents and glyphs, the white-haired man tilts his head to the side and gives Tran a sort of distracted, maybe even weary, smile. The American is giving his typical response to things, which is to make anything even remotely like acceptance, trust, or friendship seem like the most terrible burden in the universe. It must be hard, Frei thinks to himself, for a person to want something so badly that he is willing -- and indeed, eager -- to decry that those things are of use or worth to ANYBODY, and that you'd be wasting your time giving them to him because that's just stupid anyway. Jerks.
He really just needs a hug. Instead, Frei simply says: "You're welcome."
Despite all that, though, the realization that Tran really is going to do this, and that neither of these individuals really knows what's going to happen, and that the potential for it to all go horribly awry and result in something truly terrible, takes grip in Frei's heart at last. His pulse does quicken, his breath slows down as if he's preparing for each one to be his last. But he doesn't pull away and he doesn't change his mind.
What he does do, however, is hear a voice.
'Do you fear death?'
Tran would obviously notice the sudden furrowing of Frei's brow, the twist of the corners of his mouth into a frown. But none of that confusion or dismay stops what's going on in his head. He even mouths the words a very tiny bit, as if asking the question back to himself. 'Do you fear death?' the voice repeats, lazily curious, slow and deep.
Should he ever learn of how well Frei actually understands him, Dr. Tran might be slightly put off. Then he would start to quibble over details, like how anything even remotely like acceptance, trust, or friendship really is the most terrible burden in the universe after all and how Frei is stupid for thinking for even a second that it is not.
But that is neither here nor there. While Tran does notice Frei begin to freak out just a little, he doesn't make much of it. It's normal for people to get nervous at a time like this. Even the doctor himself might feel nervous is he wasn't in the habit of flinging himself head-first into life-threatening situations whenever the fancy takes him. Certainly, he's not going to feel nervous for Frei, after that jerk actually agreed to this and made it seem like it was all Tran's shoulders.
"It's too late to pray, we're doing this." Frei's faint lip movement is given notice but completely misinterpreted, and Dr. Tran does not give time for an answer. It's an effect a lot like a big guy pushing on a locked door, which suddenly opens and sends him sprawling forward. In one moment, all is still; in the next, Tran is pushing all the power he can channel through his right hand, driving it in and through Frei as hard as he can.
It's an invisible, oppressive force, making it leagues more subtle than anything Dr. Tran normally employs, pressing against the very essence of Frei itself. The doctor does break out into a sweat now, concentrating with all of his willpower, trying to do what he can to make all of that energy flow in a general 'up' direction, to where his other hand is waiting to draw it out again.
Of course, this is all done in relative silence, the only real indication to the casual observer that anything is happening a few stray wisps of steaming rising from Tran's hands, near invisible bleed-off that he can't quite manage to keep under control.
Steam's pretty amazing stuff.
It seems like it shouldn't be, right? It's water vapor, heated to the evaporation point. But consider that steam pushed explorers into the American west. It's made much of the Industrial Revolution possible. In many countries, steam is used medically or culturally as therapy for both body and mind; like the element of water from which it emerges, steam is both passive and active, force and release. People underestimate it at their peril.
Although it's not *literal* steam that's flowing between Tran's hands and through Frei's body, it might as well be; in terms of the yin and yang, steam is yin power -- water -- given yang properties. The physical feeling is a lot like having liquid flame poured through your own veins, not the least of which because what Tran is doing is, in many ways, piercing through Frei's aura as well. At first Frei bears it as best he can, gritting his teeth, but the honest truth is that it hurts like hell and it shows. His fingertips curl inward as he grips the ledge he's sitting on. His mouth opens and he sounds like he wants to scream but in fact, the result is more of a... strangled squeaking sort of sound, intermittently.
Inside, though, he floats in a world of silent black. His senses are reacting on autopilot, but this is something else entirely.
The voice returns, and with it the feeling of dark blue and black. 'Do you fear death? If you do, you must stop.'
But the 'dream' Frei -- the one in his mind, in his consciousness somewhere -- opens his eyes and looks into the darkness, like staring into the bottom of a deep lake. "Of course I'm afraid," he replies. "But... but I have to move forward every day, regardless. Even if... even if things never change. Being afraid of them doesn't accomplish anything."
There is a pause, and then a rich laughing sound. 'It is inevitable. What is so important to you that you would risk destroying yourself? Power?'
And now, probably to Tran's surprise, Frei starts saying his answers out loud, so that the good doctor can hear them too. "No. I just... I don't want it all to end without having done everything I can. Without having tried everything I can try."
Silence, once again, longer this time, before the voice speaks again. 'You who risk death in the pursuit of life... perhaps I can lend you some of my power, for a time.'
And that's when Tran feels it: resistance. Until this point there really was none, for Frei's inability to do more than subconsciously draw on a few scattered sources of energy wasn't enough to fight off Tran's overwhelming natural talent and power. And even now, it is merely enough to make him take notice, not enough to make him stop. But it is much like the sudden growl of an engine you're trying to jump start; a recognition that something changed.
As Tran keeps pouring the power on, it begins to feel like an eternity; the manipulation of chi, no matter how good you are at it or how powerfully you can draw it out, is tiring. Doubly so when you it turns into an endurance test, without even the slightest pause to recharge your batteries.
Luckily, it's not a thing that Tran is unused to; he's poured out nearly everything he has on more than one occasion, to the point where it is physically unhealthy, where he barely has enough left in him to even continue breathing.
It still requires every ounce of focus he can muster, which is why he almost misses it when Frei interrupts his own writhing and agonized cries with actual, legible words. By the time they really sink at all, the doctor feels something far more noticeable; a jump, a little leap that signals /something/ is happening.
Suddenly, it's decision time. Has it been enough? Is that the desired, if mysterious, effect? Should Tran just stop now, declare mission accomplished? It's tempting, certainly; there might not be any reason for going on anymore, he's already tired, and nobody's dead. They gave it a shot, and if it's worked out then hey, great.
But...if it hasn't worked yet? What if Frei needs a few more revs, so to speak? They've already gone this far, and it's certainly not much of a payoff; a little pushback, not even enough to stand up to Tran's onslaught of energy? It's something, but it's nowhere near Frei's old level, his capability.
In the end, it's not really a difficult decision at all. Dr. Tran is stubborn, foolhardy, and has a strange affinity for flirting with danger; Frei, despite what anyone including Tran may say, is his friend. The gentle (if sometimes irritating) monk deserves more, probably.
"Come on, Frei," Tran starts through tightly clenched teeth. "If you don't give me a little more to work with then so help me I'm going to kill us both! If you're going to push, then push, you god damned pussy!"
The last few times this happened, the resultant burst of chi was immediate, ephemeral, and typically tied to an attack of some form. This is something different. Why? Because the truth is, whatever sparked Frei's inner monologue, and whoever it was he speaking to, it wasn't necessarily Tran's jumper cable-like plan that did it on its own merits. It was the fact that this plan is putting his life in actual danger. And probably Tran's if he doesn't do something. Frei might have claimed he wasn't necessarily concerned with dying, but if he or Tran doesn't do something that... actually is probably what's on the table. And while the white-haired sage might be able to handle it, he somehow doubts that Tran is really interested in that outcome.
Reasonably sure, anyway.
Probably.
Unfortunately, no part of his body really wants to move; it's about as much as he can manage to open his eyes and look up. In the slow-mo of thought-time, he considers Tran for a moment. A long time ago Frei wondered if Tran's steam chi -- a type so uncommon that it's probably unique -- had something to do with his fiery temper. That somewhere in the good doctor's soul his own emotional turmoil and sensitivity, 'water' traits, were churned into steam through the boil of his anger. Water and fire together... yin and yang, emotion and action.
Oh, right. Steam.
The bleed-off from Tran's tremendous power is the answer. Frei only has a few seconds to actually respond, and even then his control is neither fine nor graceful, but it's enough: the steam pouring out from Tran's hands stops, gathers together into a roughly spherical shape... and then explodes outwards, uncontained, with the same force that drove the pistons of factories and trains of yesteryear. The blast causes Frei's torso to swing backwards so hard he cracks the brick of the wall from the impact; as for what that would do to Tran, who is facing the *other* direction, is anyone's guess.
In some distant corner of his own mind, strangely seperate from the majority of it desperately trying to maintain both control and power, Tran wonders if Frei is actually going to do anything else or if he should drop the bluff or even if it is a bluff. Tran sure doesn't know; he's just kind of going and hoping it'll work out, somehow, some way.
And even if it doesn't, there are stupider ways to die, so at least Tran wouldn't go out with too many regrets. None really related to the matter at hand, at least.
It's as Tran is really truly just about done anyway (one way or another) that his patient finally does something other than sit there and think and take it. Again, it takes the doctor a moment to realize; by the time he does, the rough sphere is already basically exploding right in his face.
The concussion lifts the doctor (not a big man by any stretch) off his feet, sending him hurtling in a low arc directly into a parked car, which fares no better than the brick wall did. Naturally, it starts making an awful racket immediately.
Tran is slow to push himself up, but when he does he's staring at the car in loathing. He gives it a light punch, partly out of petulance, partly because he's pretty sure he can't manage anything better right now, like exploding it.
"I think that went about as well as we could've hoped." Despite everything, the doctor seems optomistic. He raises a fist and coughs, giving his hand a quick look afterward before shoving it in his coat pocket. "You are still kicking, right?"
Initial visual analysis suggests... possibly not. Frei's in that crazy dramatic pose you see in anime when the hero has just been Force Pushed into a wall at high speed by the villain and effectively bounces off it, head thrown back and exposing a lot of his throat, hands limply at his side, shortly before his entire torso slumps forward bonelessly. He doesn't say anything and that stance makes it difficult to see if he's even breathing. He misses Tran enacting BONUS STAGE in retribution to the car's daring to be in his way.
Eventually, however, he manages to bring his head up and stare at Tran blankly, before putting his hand to his face, holding it and grumbling at Tran, between his splayed fingers, "You... have to do everything... the HARD way..."
After that, he's silent. Tran will want to call him ungrateful, for example, which he might deserve a little bit. But the fact remains that... actually, that kind of worked. It's not where he was, but somehow, going to the brink of death and back will do amazing things for your supernatural senses. Head into the light, Frei.
"Oooh, look at me, I'm Frei and I can't do anything except whine about how much cooler and more manly and tough the amazing Doctor Tran is, sob sob sob." Tran's tone is not as mocking as it might otherwise be. Instead it mostly sounds worn out, something said because it's expected and not because of any actual feeling behind it. Tran has an image to maintain, after all. Even if that image is a strange one.
With that out of the way, however, the doctor becomes slightly more civil. "So what's the verdict?" Tran pushes himself away from the car with a groan, standing up despite how much he feels like just passing out in the street. "Did almost dying do anything for you, besides make you look like ass?" Pots and kettles.
There's a question.
'Well, Tran. Other than the searing pain of having chi forcibly circulated through my body, I had a brief out of body experience where an otherworldly voice that I *think* was the water spirit Genbu ask me if I was afraid of death, and after considering that I decided I just wanted to do my best and stop worrying about what I'm giving up for power, so I told him that and he agreed to loan me some of his power and I instinctively took some of that chi you were using and turned it into a steam-powered bomb that is why the back of my head is bleeding and you just crushed a car, so if you consider that having "done" something for me then yes, all in all I'd say that this mission was a success in full parody of Final Fantasy Tactics.'
Hmmm.
Groaning a bit in pain, Frei does NOT say the above, despite it being a reasonable analysis of what actually happened. Instead, he realizes that for the third time, Tran has in his own way pushed Frei to the limits with his unique worldview, and as a result, it's helped the chi sage see a little bit of the way forward that had been hidden from him. "...yeah," he says at last, smiling at Tran. "It did, Tran. Thank you."
"Nice to see this wasn't a huge waste of time, then." Tran exhales slowly, then rubs his own back. Painful. It sucks, but it could've been worse; certainly, Tran's been worse off.
"So, uh." Tran returns the focus of his attention to Frei. "Don't take this the wrong way, but I'm kind of tired of looking at you right now." Tran chokes back another cough, swallowing afterward. "We'll just say you owe me one and call it a day, okay? Okay."
Not interested in further conversation, and unaware of what he /actually/ just did for Frei, Tran turns, gives a half-hearted wave with the back of his hand, and begins to walk away, much less vigorously than when he initially approached the sword-slinging monk.
It takes some effort for Frei to stand, but once Tran decides that he's going to get going, the sword-sage realizes just much the doctor might have sacrificed for Frei's benefit. He didn't mean to be selfish, but he was; Tran might not have made it. He COULD have just given up his life for Frei's sake, perhaps without even meaning to. Pausing a moment, his eyes get downcast, and he starts talking in a low tone. "Tran, I..."
By the time he looks up, the doctor is walking away.
There's not much left to do after that. He takes out a slip of paper with his own contact info and slips it under the remains of the totaled car's windshield wipers, takes a deep breath, and then turns to go home. 'Show me the same dedication your foe has shown to you.' 'Or are you joyous, testing your strength against those whose power you respect?' 'You who risk death in the pursuit of life...' It's as if those voices ask for promises, promises not only to themselves but to the people whose actions have invoked them. Even if it's just as repayment... move on. Live. Don't wallow.
He gives one last look back at the angle of Tran's departure, and then Frei too turns to go.
Log created on 22:51:58 11/13/2009 by Tran, and last modified on 07:27:50 12/08/2009.