Description: After four years without contact, Aranha and Amy meet up once again. While both have changed, Amy's changes have been significantly more striking. With Amy touched by madness, Aranha finds himself sifting through her words in the off chance that there might be some truth to them. Meanwhile Amy prepares to either be a martyr or villain.
The duties and rigours of an ordained knight have not, traditionally, been easy. Times change, but the ancient and truest warriors were beset by constant trials that tested them to the very limit - and sometimes, beyond. Failure would at best lead to death and glory, at worst to crippling madness. Many a brave swordsman in myth has been relegated to outcast or hermitage; when blood, for a cause, is one's trade... to misstep can be to break the very laws one has sworn to uphold. Such has been the path of Amy Johnson.
The youngest and last-sworn of the Order of Knights Templar, the young British woman has flown from the flock. Shattered by her inability to protect a mere child, freely bonding herself to the serpent wiser men know as Orochi, and then summarily abandoned by her newfound allegiance, she has dipped through depression to insanity. Worse, she now flees the site of a bloody massacre, leaving the rolling vestiges of her own obedient chi-mist behind to scatter from the Asian convent of Lazi, chasing black wings upon the horizon. Chasing a promise.
Chasing freedom from herself. A desperate quest and the fetters of her will have led her to this city.
But it's not easy to penetrate the heart of the sun, when you approach from darkness.
Amy breathes hard now as she pulls herself onto a shattered metal signalling bridge, leaving behind the rattling, rusty bulk of the railcar she'd snuck herself aboard some few hundred miles off. Her long, black hair hangs in salt-encrusted knots to her waist, and her oceanic eyes are wild as they stare ever forward. Beneath her, men work and others sit despondent, as broken as she would be if she lost this final quest. A dragon calls to her. It's not the first time-- but she prays, to the god who has forsaken her, that it be the last.
The simple cloth shifts she wore in her flight from the convent has been torn into uselessness by her trip across the wilderness - across the very ocean, even - and she now wears a long, filthy trenchcoat to maintain her modesty and offer at least a semblance of warmth. She's shivering anyway, head to toe as she half-dashes and half-stumbles across the stricken structure, striving for the opposite side where the old utility sheds line up haphazardly; forming a sort of uncoordinated bridge leading into the city proper.
At least, she thinks in her panicked reasoning, nobody civilized is likely to find her up here. It's safety of a perilous sort.
Aranha's civilized nature is questionable depending on who you talk to. Considering how he's capable of bounding through an environment be it the man made stretches of the concrete jungle or the jungle of a natural kind, one could even say he has one foot in the civilized and uncivilized domains each.
Every since he had touched down in Sunshine City for the first time since the Asahishoubu event in Sunshine City, he had been attempting to get a feel for the lay of the land. Doing parkour runs as it were to figure out what locations were safe, what locations were seedy, which ones offered the most in the way of physical challenges to step his game up as it were.
One of those same parkour runs lead him to the rooftop of one of those sheds leads him to the sight of the fallen templar. With light footfalls, he makes his approach. It's not with stealth in mind that he moves. Instead it's with self preservation in mind. Light footfalls equal less damage to the body as whole which in turn mean that it allows him to practice longer.
He comes to a stop, just slightly outside of the range of his leg length and then he asks the disheveled form, "Are you ok?"
He doesn't recognize her yet. It's been years and in the time between, it doesn't look as though she had been taking care of herself.
Perhaps a great number of fighters walk that same line-- though in a less abandoned sense than men like Aranha; his particular and unique art has developed from activities most would consider borderline suicidal. The caution and stealth he exhibits can only be honed through daring, and many mistakes. To be 'civilized' is to play within a set of careful restraints and rules, to do what's expected. To be... normal.
Much like Mason, Amy was never truly that. Even in her perfect middle-class world, she had a wildness both inherited and imitated from those nearest to her; in the saddest, most resigned fashion possible, the eventuality of her appearance now might almost be called inevitable. She lacked expectation herself, as she lacks the wherewithal to detect Aranha's approach. To live in ignorance is to miss what should be obvious.
Her rushed steps halt with a heavy clatter as he appears in her peripherals, an intake of breath becoming a gasp that's startled if far from scared. Partly obscured by the over-long sleeves of her stolen trenchcoat, a hand rises, fingers forming a calloused claw against the air. Her aura bristles, gentle tendrils of mist already beginning to dimly apparate in the air around her. It doesn't take much. It never did.
But then she takes in his appearance, reaches into the depth of memory. Her mind still functions, at least.
Then, she almost laughs, feels it bubbling out at the sheer ludicrous nature of that question. It's suppressed with a ragged shake of her head, knotted hair slapping against her face, the raised hand lowering suddenly, as though it were simply dropped to hang listless at her side. The summoned mist drifts free from her controlling instincts, carried unthreateningly on an invisible breeze between them.
"No," she answers simply, matter-of-factly, as though through the derangement she were still very much the quirky if forthright young woman who encountered the capoerista in the YFCC four years prior. A smile tugs on her lips, wry and cynical, before her mouth downturns and she half-turns away. "But how do you define a feeling like that? What may appear comforting and warm one day can abandon you the next." It's a familiar confession, and jarringly so. He may not recall her, but she remembers him-- that's the agony of this, that she remembers every moment. "I might never be okay again, unless I can find him... wrap myself in those coils..."
That hangs a moment before she lifts her chin, skin pale beneath the smearing of old sweat and trail dirt, beneath ingrained sea-salt and gathered dust. Though her pupils dance with a disturbing, unhinged fire, they still hold some of her inner strength as they fixate upon the cityscape rolling past the railyard. A shiver runs down her spine, shaking her frame as she stands there, her knees almost buckling. She wouldn't have come this far without both reason and resolve; but there's more at work here.
"The dragon calls to me."
She sounds certain of it, at least as proud as she is broken.
In Aranha's case the question was more towards the physical state seeing as when he saw her. She was stumbling. And seeing the disheveled condition, even though the trenchcoat covers her form from observation, he's inclined to believe a no on that front. He's given reason to believe that she's malnourished at the very least.
The mist coming out is the first clue to her identity. When she opens her mouth however, all doubt is removed. Her psychological condition is also revealed in addition to the reasons. It's something he can somewhat identify with though only with the replacement of 'abandoned' with 'betrayed.' He has no desire to think about the broken relationship with his deceased parents. That's just an invitation to slash open an old scar in his mind.
Aranha instead chooses to latch on to the remaining words. "Find who? The dragon?" Confusion marks his face as he questions the sanity of the person he's standing near. He attempts to at the very least humor her. He has after all seen things he knows would have people questioning his sanity. Exhibit A: Kill Lasers in Taizhou. Exhibit B: Elderly Woman being turned youthful featured, tree-like creature.
The Templar hasn't considered her physical state for nigh-on six months, and hasn't eaten for at least a week or two now-- only seeking what scraps she could when the body demanded it. It accounts for a portion of her shuddering, the cramping in her muscles and the unnatural chill subsuming her; though there's something deeper there, too, a corruption in the core of her being. A missing piece, a twisted void.
She's not been considering that either, the time since Orochi's denial spent wracked by doubt and guilt, absorbed in a self-flagellation of the type only one with her abilities could attempt. She's turned her own chi against herself, leaving that mysterious hole bloody and frayed, while bizarrely driving her even closer to mastery over the energy she's instinctively summoned since her troubled childhood. On a base level, she understands more than she ever has-- but madness prevents a higher awareness.
"Mm," she answers with pitifully little immediate insight as Aranha presses her, tipping her head to regard him askance past overgrown, entangled raven bangs. "That which was lost, located within the spiral." Her words turn dreamy, until rapidly she blinks, her voice shifting back to its usual crisp, clear tone, with that peculiar authority of the well-spoken British. "Can't you feel it? This place, it plays host and sentry. Like an eggshell waiting to crack. The very earth /screams/ it, if you stop to listen."
That smile returns, though it's less self-aware now, not self-effacing in the least. Almost smugly knowing.
As though she were judging /him/. Madness perceiving foolishness.
"Why else would anyone come here?"
Aranha is not exactly what one would call a chi sensitive. And it was the one thing that kept him from feeling the full effects of the temple during his fight with Gen. Aranha's team mate Frei on the other hand was incredibly so. So where Aranha was only slightly nauseated by the temple, Frei was, as Aranha would put it, 'Going through it.'
It's that lack of sensitivity that keeps Aranha from sensing that corruption, that missing piece, that twisting void inside of her. As a result, he can only identify the symptom of raving madness but he's definitely not equipped to sense, let alone, deal with the actual disease. But however in her madness, Amy triggers those same thoughts of Asahishoubu. Of that abandoned temple with that energy that gave off a sense of wrongness. He can't sense it but he could remember hearing those same screams in a location where it was screaming so loud that even he could sense it.
He doesn't voice those thoughts considering it prudent not to do so but he does respond to her final question with complete an utter honesty. "Happenstance."
Crazed she may be, but not entirely paranoid. Those oceanic eyes hold some measure of the man she beholds, her memory's surface ever reminding her why he can probably be trusted-- she felt an element of kindred, then, even ironically in the deceptive nature of his style. It's her experience that those who mean harm, or hold beliefs that would currently oppose Amy's own, are far more direct in their brutality. His response; so short, so unlaboured, just contributes further to her judgement.
"A curious coincidence."
She eases the words out slowly, as though tasting them rolling over her tongue, gaze slipping from Aranha back to the skyline. She takes a step forward as though bidden, somewhat hunching within her trenchcoat as she comes to a halt. Her feet are covered only by a rather forlorn pair of sandals-- almost slippers, clearly designed for indoor use and barely usable in this environment. A faint hiss leaves her lips, as though resuming a forward pace hurts, as though once going she needs to /keep/ going. And it's true.
Something in the Templar is driving her to depart this conversation. She's aware of it, and finally she laughs.
"You just... happen to be on the rooftop in the precise moment I arrive here? Of all the people in the world, it's the first warrior I ever faced on reasonable terms, the first to match me without arrogance. Do you believe anything ever occurs for no reason, Aranha?" His name sounds curiously unfamiliar on her lips. It's the first time in months she's even addressed a named individual. Now she does it as the sensation coiling beneath Sunshine winds through her gut, makes her shiver and shake, increases her desperation to carry forward.
Perhaps it's a survival instinct that keeps her. Perhaps it's just curiosity. Or perhaps the simple fact that even the most solitary being craves company. It's a part of humanity, that each person seeks others to feel safe, and to keep evolving. Amy needs it as much as anyone, especially when...
"I think I'm a murderer."
It comes out softly, too softly, a frown marring her brow as she whips her gaze back to Aranha. There's a flare of mounting panic as she confesses it, her pulse quickening and breathing coming hard-- because she's not sure why she felt the need to say it, and immediately regrets doing so. Her wild eyes narrow, trying to gauge his reaction in the instant before she continues on, suppressing another violent shudder from her worn frame.
"I... I have to find what I'm seeking, before /I'm/ found. Maybe... maybe you can help me?"
When she explains why the coincidence seems to be so curious, his lips turn upward in a smile. "Without arrogance? It could be because I've had all of the arrogance beaten out of me. Or it could be the fact that I'm 23 going on 54. I honestly wasn't compelled here by anything I felt other than a desire to train." And maybe a desire to explore he mentally adds afterwards.
As she moves closer he doesn't quite move back or recoil even though the scent of her surely does make him want to do so. It's an exercise in self-control. He doesn't want to make any sudden movements. He doesn't want her scare her away and doesn't exactly want to spook her into a fight if it isn't necessary.
And then the confession comes. A moment is spent stunned at the fact that she felt the need to communicate that need to him. He eventually gathers himself enough to make his response. "Before I can offer my help, I want to know why you think you're a murderer."
This whole thing is hitting entirely too close to home for the one who had murdered his own parents.
As the former catburglar speaks, she realizes he's referring to something more direct than she is-- to this place, where they stand. She's barely even noticed, save that she's a step closer to the location she seeks. It almost makes her laugh again, though only a faint, faintly hysterical emerges, quickly bitten off, her teeth sinking into the pale flesh of her lower lip. It tastes like iron.
"Age is meaningless," she says in a near-whisper, blinking at the skyline. "Experience, power, destiny; these are the aspects of our existence that hold meaning, for good or for ill." Considering for a second or four, she almost seems to be ignoring his final statement, before suddenly she speaks, as clear and steady as she can under the circumstance. Halting and quavering, she nonetheless keeps that queer strength about her.
"I... broke from a wicker cage, the illusion of control in my step. I dreamed of a man who soared on black wings, whose promises pulled me from a tumultuous stupor. I ran; aware that I was running. Then as I fled, the whispers reached me... my footprints tracked through blood. They found... dozens of bodies, women and children, people who'd bound me. Misguided but," she wets her lips, realizing for the first time how dry her tongue and throat are, how long it's been since she felt refreshed, "Good people, Aranha. Not like me."
A hand drifts upward, the movement laboured as she hooks a finger beneath the neckline of her torn smock, pulling free a glint of sterling silver. A small crucifix, still shining in spite of her ordeal as her gaze shifts to meet Aranha's. Her hand tightens around the relic, until her knuckles whiten.
"But I'm trying to be. I'm trying to be free, I'm trying to... save them. Always have been."
Aranha is silent as Amy speaks not certain if her meaning is figurative or if it's literally what she saw in the ravings of the mad. But while one part of him wants to dismiss what she's saying as the mutterings of someone touched in the head he still has to remember that there's sometimes is truth to the words of the insane. He only had to look to his former team mate Naerose by find confirmation to that. And in Aranha's gut he can't help but feel there's a truth to what Amy's saying as distorted as it is by the lens of her perception.
He lowers his chin in a slight nod. "Trying to save who?"
In the back of his mind he's wondering why is he getting involved? He's having a hard enough time saving himself. Saving himself from the guilt of what he has stolen from people who had never wronged him, from the pain of having killed. Besides, he was never cut out for this hero gig but fate just seems to like putting him in a position to do so. It's as if fate recognizes that white hats sometimes need help from someone a bit more gray to maintain something approaching balance in the world.
Were Amy able to read minds, rather than being merely perceptive - insofar as her capabilities extend to even that, in the current time - she'd taste bitter irony indeed in the usage of the term 'hero'. Confronted by another who assumed that destiny, and sought to draw her into his circle, she denied it thricewise; on no level could she claim to occupy such a lofty state. Hailed as a messiah on two individual occasions, though, she does accept some greater fate... but the difference between hero and messiah can be vast, indeed.
"Everybody."
Even as she says it, she frowns, parched lips pursing. The hand untightens from her crucifix to drift up to her face, the backs of clammy fingertips brushing her cheek en route to her tangled hair. Like a nest of vipers, it shifts reluctantly at her touch, her digits catching on snags as she tries listlessly to smooth it, as though the gesture were one recalled as so simple, so natural. Frustration sears in her breast, and she releases a brisk, hard sigh, her body quivering as she resists the urge - again - to simply run.
"It... it's complicated," she elaborates, eyes closing and head bowing forward as thoughts assail her. Doubts and reluctances blending with the dawning realization of her very real circumstances-- practicalities tend to surface in the company of others that are easily missed alone. She remains unseeing as she forces herself to continue, clarity seeping into her tone. The words remain ridiculous, even open and true as they are. It becomes a litany, reeled off from the depth of her being - instinct controlling what a broken mind cannot. "I'm the last of the Knights Templar, travelling on a quest to find the Cup of Christ. I found answers in the coils of the serpent, and I gave of myself that I might receive the gift of truth. My Lord forsook me, abandoned me to drift in the currents of confusion, and I was tested... tested by my own drive and ambition. By my fear."
Her eyes open, and she looks across to Aranha, whites bloodshot and lips suddenly quivering.
"I'm afraid I failed. But if I can find it again, if I can become one with the dragon, I could fly..."
Slipping her stare again to the horizon, she clenches a fist at her side. She's trembling all over now.
"If you can't help me, at least promise... you never saw me, Aranha. I don't exist. I-- I can't."
Aranha remains silent as she speaks on both her complications and her actual role. Even if he knows that sometimes even the ravings of the mad can contain truth, it still has to be taken with a grain of salt. Once again, one only needs to look at Naerose for a confirmation of that but hearing that clarity in Amy's voice still gives the capoeirista/traceur/gambler a bit of a pause. But things don't quite add up in his mind though such as finding truth from a serpent when the serpent was a deceiver in biblical works.
Even after Amy is finished, there's a long pause. If there was one thing that Aranha has learned in his life through his dealings with Ayame, his dealings with Wing, and his dealings with a multitude of others, words have power. It's his hope that Amy even in her current state realizes that he's taking the time to consider what he says next and the fact that he's considering his words carefully give it power that it may not have had if he had just rattled off any old thing.
"A few questions." He starts off with. "How will finding the dragon and the ability to fly, help you in achieving your goals? When and where did you become aware of the dragon?"
He then glances to the horizon following her gaze. "I can't help you quite yet because I don't know exactly how. So at the very least I can forget you until I can figure out how to help you. When that time comes, I'll remember you once more. That said, I can't promise you that the help I can give is help you'll want."
A few questions, well chosen and directed, but to Amy they are one. She shares his uncertainty though, gnawing upon her lip as she waits to make her reply. An intake of breath inflates her lungs, sents a hot quiver through her heart - weak from malnutrition, beating fast from the dizzying import of her own actions. None of this felt real, truly, until she confessed it, and Aranha is almost a stranger still.
She releases her breath, calming herself. With her thoughts assembled, the answer comes unbidden.
"The dragon's always been with me," she answers simply, easily, without further hesitance. There's a similar ease in the sudden flick of her raised hand, knotted hair flapping as her fingertips pull away to curl at the air, pressing against an unseen net. With the faintest of background hisses, almost a resonant hum, those fronds of dissipating mist reform, shifting in the air around the Templar within moments. "Source of my power, strength of my spirit. But... like God, there is always a way closer. The Grail isn't a... thing, it's a way of being, a way of thinking, a way of looking at the world. The closer I can come to Christ..."
She doesn't finish the sentence, letting it tail off with a shuddering sigh. It makes sense, to her; it's made sense from the moment she realized it, when she unravelled the pieces of her theological puzzle to understand. The serpent is the deceiver, the betrayer, yes. And to find what she seeks she must betray her humanity. Yield to temptation, be the sacrifice that yields understanding. There is one form of 'flight' greater than them all.
"To fly," she adds quietly, taking a step away, the scuffed and dirty back of her purloined trenchcoat now presented to Aranha, the mist following her with a buoyant, gently mutual swoop. "Is to ascend to heaven. No man or woman can do that, without taking a necessary step."
Time and again throughout history, it's been true, that a martyr leads the way.
"They can't cage me again, Aranha, because I have to find my fate. Because I have to die."
Through it all, Aranha is silent. He doesn't know whether the lines battle are being drawn or if she's letting him know that she's releasing her grip on life. Either way, he's now certain that any help he gives is the type of help that will be working against her. And one thing that Amy has in her favor, is the fact that Aranha doesn't know exactly what to do.
All he can say though is, "Don't be in such a rush to go to heaven. There's way too much that needs to be done on earth." It seems so hypocritical coming from him as someone who almost needs to be provoked into involvement as far as dealing with world endangering situations. But then again, he's also the same person who has seen a lot of what has gone wrong in the world. For someone who claims that they are out to save everybody, he felt he should at least point out the fact that they should address the ills of the world instead of seeking out their death.
"A rush?" In a moment of clarity she actually barks with laughter at that, shoulders twitching as she reaches the mist-drawn hand to her brow, pressing the palm flat as she shakes her head. It's the most unexpected thing she could have heard-- that the agony of the past year, the tribulations she's been through, failure heaped upon revelation, has somehow not been long enough. But he's right, at the same time, and she recovers with a breathless shake of her head. "No. There's everything left to be done, that's..."
She frowns, and takes another step away, before turning to face him. Her hands both fall to her side and spread outward, a wide shrug of concession, and at the same time an invitation to look around. The place in which they stand is a wreck, the city beyond it no better - a fact she can judge by the darkness of what lies beneath, one he could surmise from the newspapers or the murmurings of simple rumour. Sunshine is in trouble.
Has the world been much better, of late?
"That's the point. People need strength, to change and evolve. Someone has to provide that, even if the cost is high, even if it means doing horrible things--" She almost stops talking, the bitter bile and shock of her earlier confession finally striking her between the eyes. Even if it means murder? She shivers and twists away, quick and unruly steps already carrying her away from Aranha before she can fully find her mental footing once more. Her hands both clench to fists now, barely hidden by the overlong sleeves of her trenchcoat.
"They've stopped me before, Aranha," she calls back, "Tell nobody, and don't follow me. That's how you help."
Not 'how you help me'. Because it's bigger than her, those spreading wings on the horizon...
At least now it seems real enough, to Amy, that she can step into the throes of her fate without regret.
Log created on 12:44:38 06/07/2012 by Aranha, and last modified on 23:27:47 06/07/2012.