Description: Honoka's spending a lot of time looking at the Golden Palace. Like, a lot of time. Looks awful suspicious. But don't you DARE accuse her of anything, gosh!
Kinkaku-ji. If you read the tour brochure it says this place is an excellent example of the classical Muromachi age of Japanese garden design. It doesn't take a brochure to appreciate the brilliant beauty of a temple covered literally in gold, perched precariously close to a rather large pond. Heck, if you've seen postcards of Kyoto, this palace is probably the one in them.
Honoka stands alone on the stone-paved walkway leading to the palace. She seems to be particularly focused on the third floor, an introspective expression on her face. Can she actually see in through the windows on the top floor?
The only thing showing that she's even awake is the idle flick, retract, flick, retract of a small yo-yo. She's... thinking about something, and it's a fairly stark contrast to the others milling about -- purchasing knick-knacks from the souvenir cart a dozen or so feet behind her, or just walking around to get a closer view of the literally golden palace.
A slight frown begins appear on her usually-smiling lips though. But really... who would recognize the diabolo star out here in Kyoto, of all places?
Who indeed?
It almost feels weird that this place is full of tourists, when the world is going to hell. Shouldn't these people be at home preparing for the end? But in fact, socially, people feel a sort of reassurance in going about the routines of everyday life. It's as if changing your plans in the face of a big, abstract looming disaster is like giving in and admitting it's going to happen. And let's face it: the brave face is not solely a British invention. The people of Japan are pretty good at looking stoically at impending doom and acting as if nothing is wrong. Hence, the crowds of tourists milling about... 'typical' tourists or otherwise.
Honoka is no typical tourist.
There's probably a prickling of her neck well in advance of what happens after she's been idly flicking that yoyo for a while. It's not bad, like a sense of danger. If anything, it has a sort of... peaceful feel to it. "In the wu xing," comes a potentially familiar voice from behind her, "gold is associated with the metal element. Emotionally, our metal soul vacillates between courage and sadness, especially grief."
If Honoka turns to see who it is: there indeed is Frei. He doesn't LOOK all that different, but... something is definitely not the same as the last time these two fighters met. That's for damn sure.
Honoka noticed. But she doesn't think anything particularly odd about it. While she is harboring some particularly inauspicious thoughts right now, as the frown may indicate... Part of her actually wants to be found.
All it takes for Honoka to confirm identity is the words that come out. Kyoto-ben. Soft-spoken, and yet... the faint remnants of someone who has not lived in Kyoto all his life. Someone with the humility to use the deferent affectations of the accent and actually -mean- it. She knows.
Flick. Return. Flick. Return. For a moment it looks like she didn't register anything at all. But it was more of a consideration for her audience than anything else. "Frei-san, " she states, her voice crisp against the blurry, humid air one can practically stab with a fork. "... If I didn't know better, I'd say you were reading my mind right now."
She doesn't turn -- indeed, the yo-yo has been a perfect metronome for as long as Frei's been watching the young performer. "It is... unusual to see a palace coated in metal. Ostentatious, a show of power." Flick. Return. "You're from here, I'm guessing. How... much does the gold impress you, really? Does it change the material value of a place, to add gold to a place already purpose-built to show off?" Flick. Return.
And as quickly as the yo-yo stops, Honoka turns around to face Frei. For most, the suddenness of her movement might be perceived as abrupt, but Honoka's pirouette is, instead, graceful... measured.
She holds her composure for just about two seconds before raising an eyebrow. "... How rude of me. Were you speaking of me... or yourself?"
"Gold is... just a thing," Frei says carefully, watching Honoka as she turns. Considering the last place he met this young woman was Hiroshima, in the shadow of destruction, that their next meeting should be in a shiny building covered in actual gold full of tourists is certainly... different. And really, there's something different about her too. Not that Frei can quite put his finger on it; he's not a mind-reader, and while he has an uncommonly sharp insight into humans in general, the yoyo-flicking young lady is almost supernaturally guarded and even-keeled.
Still, warming to the theoretical and philosophical implicatons of her question, Frei steps forward so that he's standing side by side with Honoka, then turns around and looks at the building's interior, and the people walking inside it. "I mean, it's a shiny metal that keeps its lustre for a long time. But it's just a rock. It doesn't have any more meaning than we, as people, invest in it." He'd been looking away as he babbled on about this, and then turns back to Honoka with a curious expression. "I suspect whoever decided to gild this place hasn't ever read the poem 'Ozymandias', though."
Honoka is pleased that Frei seems to hold as little value for the shiny metal as she. But while she is not a student of Percy Bysshe Shelley, she knows the history of the Land of the Rising Sun. ... But less sure is she of what -exactly- is wrong with Frei. And he's calmly deflecting her indirect question, which she takes in good stride. Honoka may not be as well-read, but she knows better than to be outright rude to someone as ... curiously unusual as Frei is right now.
She still feels... cold. One should not feel cold when the humidity is well over 90 percent in the peak of summer, but she nonetheless does. Curling one arm about her shoulder, she keeps a firm grip on her yo-yo. Her body is tensed... but her countenance is calm as she assents, "Gold is... " Honoka shakes her head. "You know, the story of this place always amused me, Frei-san. You probably know this, but the first version of this building was built in the fourteenth century. Was your... Ozymandias before this?" An amused laugh escapes her. "A monk... decided he was sick of the worldliness expressed therein and set it aflame." A small laugh escapes her lips. "Japan could not bear to exist without its Golden Pavilion, so it was rebuilt... minus the gold. Guess they didn't want to chance fate so soon."
Still, that =cold=. What is it with Frei and the atmosphere acting so funny, anyway? Honoka takes a step to the side, exhaling slowly. "... Forgive me, but... there is... something different about you now. I haven't been able to figure it out. Is it... this place?"
Yo-yo snaps out again, as does a slight, crooked smile. "I mean, it's not me, is it?"
The first question gets a smile. "Oh, no. 'Ozymandias' was a mere 200 years ago or so. It's a Western poem about an idea that is actually quite dear to us Japanese: transience." He leans back slightly, crossing his arms behind his head. As long as things are taking a more or less entirely theoretical turn, he seems much more at ease than he was in Hiroshima, this much is for certain. "It's about a king who builds a great statue of himself and carves on it a message: 'Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!'."
Here he turns to look at Honoka, their eyes almost level considering the redhead's less than impressive stature. There is a placidity in the green stare that is both emblematic of his public appearances, but also slightly unnerving... the closest word is 'sad', but without the impression of negativity that 'sad' implies. Perhaps, 'resigned'? "Of course, in the poem, someone finds just the leg and the inscription of this statue out in the desert somewhere, surrounded by hundreds of miles of sand. The point, you see, is that the great king Ozymandias built his empire and created massive, impressive worldly works... yet in the end, time and tide claimed him too. Nothing lasts forever. Everything eventually... ends."
And there's Honoka's first clue, really. Frei lingers on 'ends' too long; his gaze averts, his body language changes. But he doesn't stop smiling, even if it's less bright and more wan now, more taunt. "It's not this place or you. And yes, there is something different."
He holds out his hand, palm up, and stares into his open palm distractedly. "To be honest, I don't really KNOW what's happened. But yes... something has definitely changed."
Now, though... now the grin he offers is genuine, unproblematically. "But change is, paradoxically, the world's only constant. I've never been fazed by change."
Under typical circumstances, Honoka might welcome the directness of Frei's stare. But not in Hiroshima, and not here. It's not unusual for those in Japan to look down when met with such a look, and so Honoka's momentary discomfort might not be -that- out of place.
But it is a mite rude, she chides herself, and looks back up to Frei, her chin remaining in its lowered position. And when he leaves that pregnant, inviting pause at the end of his recounting of the poem, her lips move to say the word 'ends,' in perfect consonance.
Or at least, it would have been consonance, if not for Frei's change of body language. Honoka frowns remorsefully: she was almost in phase with him for that moment. Almost.
And then a palm is offered to her. She knows the gesture. She sees his distracted gaze, listens to him talk.
And, with a faint smirk, she notes, "And in this case... the place changed." And, just as impulsively, she reaches out to snatch the metaphorical pebble from the sage's hand -- and just as nimbly, she leaps back, yo-yo swinging at her side like a bola, regardless of the sage's response. Smile broadened to its greatest extent.
COMBATSYS: Honoka has started a fight here.
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Honoka 0/-------/-======|
She wanted to fight him, last time. They both agreed, though, that it wasn't the place, or even the time. Frei was distracted; Honoka seemed positively grief-stricken. And while he has no idea what's happened to this rather singular young woman since then, Frei himself has only gone through what he would roughly term a 'change of state.' If Honoka knows anything at all about the fighter, or about his style, then she also knows the invocation of the wu xing when he spoke up is no idle comment. The ability to command such a wide range of elemental force is rare, even among fighters; for whatever reason, the redhead has always had that gift. Certainly, there are plenty stronger than he, but ability is not always measured in raw power.
'It is painful as nothing else could be.' This was Seishirou's parting comment about love, a force Frei claimed created miracles. And while he couldn't express it at the time, he would have agreed with the ninja. Love is frequently the thing that can hurt us most.
But it is love that created the miracle that is Frei, in his own estimation.
For a moment, he examines Honoka with the eyes of a fighter, rather than a scholar. He is no martial arts master, not _really_... but Frei has been at this a while, and he comes from a long line of not just swordsmen, but iaijutsu masters. Yet looking at Honoka is like staring at a blank sheet of paper.
Curious.
"Indulge one request," he says, one foot sliding quietly behind him. Are they about to destroy a Japanese national monument? Will it matter if they do?
"Why are you here?"
COMBATSYS: Frei has joined the fight here.
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Frei 0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0 Honoka
Honoka had heard him invoke the wu xing earlier, but it never really stuck in the performer's mind. As much as she claims to know Frei... it was a superficial study at best. She knows he changed, undoubtedly, but any subtle changes in mannerism flew completely past the young woman's head.
Much as any sense that Frei was actually connecting the lines between the two very, VERY disparate parts of the country that he's found her in, within a very short period of time.
Narrowing her eyes, she draws her left hand to her backpack, fiddling about with the zippered pouch on the lower side. Her right hand stays in front, wagging a finger in a taunting gesture. "Tsk. You let the grasshopper get the pebble." Broad, overeager smile... not unlike the many upstart fighters Frei has to have encountered.
Two slender sticks slide out from her backpack, and just as casually, two large red diabolos. One stick is tossed lazily to her other hand, the string between them going taut to catch the diabolos before they land. A tug of her wrist shuffles the diabolos into a smooth orbit, a practiced measure not unlike the young woman's ready stance.
"That makes -me- the master now, doesn't it?"
COMBATSYS: Honoka focuses on her next action.
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Frei 0/-------/-------|======-\-------\0 Honoka
The shoe, as it were, drops.
If anything, though, it doesn't faze Frei TOO much. After all, no matter how mysterious, obtuse, or even aggressive Honoka gets, there is about a 0% chance she's going to top Seishirou Ryouhara in that department. Or so Frei thinks, anyway. To his eyes, he mainly sees a young fighter wrapped up in the... fighterness of the career. The diabolos appearing does get a briefly raised eyebrow. After all, that's pretty unusual, fighting style-wise. But it's not the weirdest thing he's seen.
No... instead, he thinks carefully about the 'That makes -me- the master now' comment. A slight smile crosses the sage's face, in spite of himself. "I was never a big David Carradine fan," he says blithely, watching the movements of the seemingly-harmless toys carefully. To get to where she is in terms of skill, Honoka needs to make controlling those second nature, basically instinct. Her opponent, meanwhile, has to think about not where just Honoka is, but also where the diabolos are too, at all times.
Challenging, to be sure.
"But if you want the title of 'master', take it. Like all things gilded, nothing gold can stay."
With one swift movement, Frei brings both of his arms down to his sides, elbows bent, fists clenched. When he does, there is a literal shockwave that bursts outward from him. Not enough to harm anything; at best, it's like a strong spring breeze. But it gives the impression of a seal broken, a power unleashed.
He won't be goaded.
"Might as well enjoy the title while it lasts... 'master'."
COMBATSYS: Frei gathers his will.
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Frei 0/-------/---====|======-\-------\0 Honoka
Is that where it comes from? The circus watches a lot of movies under the big top when nothing else is going on, and... well, that's something she picked up. So the reference to some white dude just flies past her. "Is he a poet too?" quips the upstart "master" fighter.
The shockwave erupting from Frei isn't enough to scare Honoka, but it is enough to startle the birds. And some of the customers from the souvenir stand nearby. And... well, it's enough to put some fear back into the tourists that thought they were safe from the cataclysms here!
Honoka, though, just stretches her arms over her head, yawning. It's... exactly like she was waking up from a restful nap, except for the wands waved about by her wrists, sending the two red diabolos spinning upon a vertical axis. "Oh... *yawn* Uhm... What do you guys -do-, anyway, just sit up there on a mountain and say 'ohm' a lot?"
One step sends the spinning cups left, another in the other swings the axis right, but with no further delay, one wand leaves Honoka's hand. Fully intentional, though, as she's lashing the wand like a whip at Frei, more than compensating for her short reach. Stepping forward into a pirouette, she hopes to continue with her momentum for another lash, hoping to crack that wand at his shoulder for another strike.
Where the diabolos went... well, that depends on whether Frei notices them sailing downward at him or not, and what he plans to do about it.
COMBATSYS: Frei endures Honoka's Meteor Shower.
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Frei 0/-------/-======|======-\-------\0 Honoka
Frei is roughly 5'6" and looks like he weighs about 70 pounds soaking wet (okay, maybe a little more; sometimes, there is plumpness). Still, he is certainly not the hulking meat wall that is not exactly an uncommon sight in the fighting world. Which is why it's all the most confusing when he does things like his response to Honoka's attack no matter how often it happens: he sets his forward foot into the floor and basically *leans in* to Honoka's attack. Those balancing wands slap rather heavily into Frei's body, twice. And indeed, he does grimace at the sudden arc of pain from the strike, but problematically for Honoka, this does not actually arrest his forward momentum.
Perhaps if she looks down, she'll see why he shouldered into the attack in the first place: his other hand, the one behind him, was trailing down at his side, now gathering a shimmering, pearlescent silver-gold aura of chi.
"Sun Tzu warned us not to despise our enemies," he says in response, in the fraction of a second available to him. In a swift step, he pushes forward and swings the chi-empowered arm up and around in a wide, horizontal parabolic arc, fingers extended in a knife hand, looking to slice right across Honoka's midline while she's engaged smacking Frei in the face.
Above the possible sound of impact -- a ringing like a struck tuning fork, the chi of Metal in action -- Frei continues: "To do so is to underestimate them at our peril."
COMBATSYS: Honoka interrupts Houken from Frei with Quick Throw.
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Frei 1/-------/=======|=======\-------\1 Honoka
Honoka has learned long ago that size has nothing to do with how much pain can be visited on an opponent. She's seen plenty of fight videos, and spent a great deal of time figuring out just how it is that fighting is more popular than her circus. What could beat out seeing people perform death-defying feats of balance and performance? ... Oh right, tossing the script out and just sticking to defying death in person.
Sun Tzu... now -that- is a name the young star knows about. And while she isn't sure of the -immediate- relevance of despising one's enemies -- though she makes a mental note to reread that passage -- she doesn't let it distract her from her goal of making herself a worthy challenger. She's still in motion, after all -- a fact not lost upon Frei, who's suddenly right up in her grill. Her diabolos had been aimed with every intent of slamming into Frei as he was standing there looking all buff, but here he is... and here =she= is with an empty string.
And there is his arm, extending in a knife hand, right for her midsection.
It reaches her, of course. But he might have trouble feeling it for an instant, as the cord of her diabolo wands wraps taut about his forearm, ensnaring it. And as she steps back away from him with a pirouette, she aims to bring that arm down sharply, keeping pressure on it as she flits away.
"... What an odd thing to bring up," notes Honoka with a bemused air.
There's a rickety, wooden crackling sound as Frei rolls across the temple floor and then straightens to one knee before rising, bringing a hand up and rubbing it along the side of his neck. "Is it?" he asks Honoka distractedly, getting back into stance, imposing his will on a... is it a protesting body? Is it even really a BODY anymore? It certainly feels real enough, when it impacts things, or more precisely is impacted by things.
Still. There's... something. Like an object at the very edge of one's vision that can't be focused on.
"It's not much different than 'know thy enemy, know thyself' in the end. Maybe 'despise' is a loaded word, but pick basically any similar word out of the thesaurus and the phrase makes sense. Once you've stopped thinking of your opponent as a person, you've made an error."
There's a flash of blue-white, as Frei brings up his right hand. The air around Honoka, despite the summer heat, suddenly grows QUITE chill, which is her only clue that perhaps she shouldn't be where she is, as the chi sage effectively flash-freezes everything around her into glittering, piercing ice. "Perhaps not an error with IMMEDIATE consequences. But still an error."
COMBATSYS: Honoka fails to reflect Hatsuyuki from Frei with Over the Moon.
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Frei 1/-----==/=======|=======\==-----\1 Honoka
Clack, clack. Honoka narrows her eyes slghtly, taking careful note of where her diabolos had landed. One moment is spared, and with the snap of a wrist, both diabolo spring back to life, circling about at her side as she cautiously strides around to change her view of Frei. She can still tell -something- is different about Frei, but she's stopped letting it bother her in the heat of the battle. "Mmm. It's true, I don't know you that well..." she says, rolling along with the verbal punch without true comprehension.
But she understands that he can throw his chi at her. And that's troublesome. The diabolo swirl to life at one side, and she twists her body, stepping into the blaze -- but it would seem that her reaction was a smidge too late to correct for the flash freeze. That's not... something she can deflect, is it? Her diabolos freeze in place for an instant, throwing her off her rhythm and causing her to stagger to the side. Wincing in extreme pain, she raps a wand at her now-frozen left arm, finding ice there... and then, incredulously, takes another step back from Frei. That... stung.
"I... just wanted to see the place before some crazy disaster took it away. World's not the same." It's an answer to Frei's earlier question -- she feels she needs to say -something-, and she's ill-equipped to quote The Art of War at the moment.
There is still a faint glow of blue-white trailing Frei's fingertips as he draws his hand back, letting it fall back to his side. For a moment, he watches Honoka's reaction to being attacked, studying her, thinking about her responses. The redhead is sort of inherently trusting, but he's not an idiot. A part of him is always watching for the unspoken angles of the situation, the things that aren't obvious and are lying just below the surface. But it's hard to say if Honoka's reason for being here -- seeing it before something 'bad happens' -- is just another blithe turn of words she spins as deftly as her weapons, or is it the truth?
And as he heaves a sigh, the sage is forced to ask himself: does it matter? "Despise your enemy at your peril," he mutters under his breath, just barely audible.
"That was a wise decision," the redhead finally says, making no offensive moves, merely watching his opponent. He hasn't told anyone this, not yet; truthfully, until Seishirou forced this... unclear change of state on him, he didn't REALLY know. Now he does, and, well...
That knowledge is a burden.
"This world is... dying," Frei says quietly, but intensely, so that ideally only Honoka can hear. "Or if not dying, then headed for something terrible. And not just what we already know about. The lines of life... the marrow of things, deep below where most people can't feel or see it... it's corrupting, and getting worse every day."
He watches her face for her reaction, putting the lie to that Kyoto-bred politeness for a moment. But this is important.
COMBATSYS: Frei takes no action.
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Frei 1/-----==/=======|=======\==-----\1 Honoka
Honoka frowns. The expression is not unlike the frown she wore when Frei first got here -- an honest expression, not couched by her usual need to present a happy face.
Rolling one's eyes -- that's another honest expression Honoka demonstrates, upon hearing the words coming out of Frei's mouth. Here she's been trying to have a sparring match with someone she purportedly looked up to, "... And there you go, passing judgment on me again. First time I could've just wrote it off, second time got annoying -- /now/ you're just preaching." Frustrated, the young woman gives her left arm another sharp rap with her wand, shattering the rest of the ice. She looks down at the fragments of ice, shattering upon the floor, and shakes her head.
"It's dying, yes. What was your first clue?"
So much for Honoka's politeness.
"Look, sorry for wasting your time. Ain't much in the mood now, though." Clasping her wands close, she bows properly, but it's rushed. Rude! Much like how she kicks her diabolos into a burst of life, snagging them out of the air and stuffing them into her backpack. "Thanks for the history lesson."
She starts a turn to leave. Truth be said, she started a fight to avoid conversation, not indulge it.
COMBATSYS: Honoka takes no action.
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Frei 1/-----==/=======|=======\==-----\1 Honoka
"Then what did you REALLY want?" the redhead says in response. Despite his best efforts, there IS a sharpness to it, a certain degree of... 'tone'. But the truth is, comparatively speaking Frei is OLD when measured against the younger fighters starting out right now, regardless of their innate abilities. He's Seen Some Shit and perhaps now, unbound from the necessities of mundane existence, he's simply letting that happen instead of repressing it, hiding it.
"If you don't want to be preached at, do me the favor of not treating me like an idiot," he follows, more calmly, gaining some mastery over his reaction at last... perhaps even visibly. "What is it you want from me, exactly? You clearly don't think much of me, or what I have to say. Although really, I don't know why I'm asking. You're not going to say either way."
There's a pause, and then Frei shakes his head and turns away; in truth, he probably won't even know if Honoka is there to hear the last of what he has to say. "I don't know you. I hope you can find what you're seeking before it's too late."
What did Honoka want? It's a question that stops her from walking away -- rather, she stands on the stone walkway, next to the pond, just... listening.
After some deliberation, she turns back to face Frei. Anger knits her brow, but she's still holding some back when she speaks. "So, let's get one thing straight. /You're/ the one saying I despise you. Not me, but if you keep saying that it's bound to come true. And hey, guess what." Honoka shrugs her shoulders.
She hesitates for a moment, but the words come spilling out, along with a fair rise in her tone. "Do you think I'm your enemy, Tsukitomi-Renaado Furei-san? If so that's all on you. I just wanted a good fight, to maybe learn how to take a few hits, but then you start razzing me and blaming it on Sun Tzu? C'mon, now it's -you- not giving -me- credit here."
And immediately after she says that, she closes her eyes, holding up one hand as a sign to wait. The young performer draws in a long, deep breath. It's a good three, four seconds before she exhales through barely-parted lips, and finally openes those eyes again. Giving Frei a level gaze, she states calmly, "Look. I'm sorry for blowing up, I got a lot on my mind. It's just hard to take all that's going on right now."
Did he misjudge her? For a second, Frei wonders if he was spoiled by a student like Kentou, or the kids that are regulars at the YFCC: youths who are just beginning their careers, ready and eager to learn, and not -- this is important -- full of sass. Maybe he's misinterpreted what was, maybe, a throwaway joke on Honoka's part. Maybe he should have just kept his mouth shut and punched and let the diabolo-using fighter work through her upset-ness.
"Try to forgive your elders," the redhead says, risking a faint smile that he hopes conveys the more or less joking intent of the comment. "You can't really know: is this young fighter gonna challenge me to sate their curiosity, or are they here to put a syringe in my arm full of a mystery drug that will turn me into a murderous psychopath? Even a little joke can trigger some... buried responses." NOW the humor is somewhat absent from his tone, and there's every implication that this is not a scenario he just made up to be funny.
The pause that follows is 1.) almost certainly too long and 2.) incredibly awkward, until Frei heaves out a breath, meeting Honoka's gaze. "I know. Trust me, I know." 'How could you?' 'Well for starters I'm probably dead.' "Anyhow, don't worry. I bounce back pretty fast from everything. But if you can stand a few more moments of me, I might be able to help you."
It's a hot day. And Honoka recalls just how much cooler it was nearer to Frei, because it's freaking sweltering where she's standing. Wiping a forearm across her forehead, she notes, "Eh. Forgiven. Apparently I make my trainers mad too." She thinks for a moment, then feigns scribbling on a notepad: "And... syringes..." she mumbles under her breath, with an impish smile darting across her lips.
But then she remembers: it's still freakin' hot. The young performer drops her backpack to the stone path and begins to remove her jacket, turning her back to Frei (now that the mood isn't so heavy)
At which point the reason for her stopping, uh, /cold/ when she was frozen with ice becomes a bit more apprarent -- sickly purple bruises running all down her back and left arm. It looks like--
"Stone pillars kind of hurt, too, just for the record." She pauses for just a moment longer, before donning the jacket again. "When you say the world's dying, I'd call that a symptom. The cause, if we believe it, is this guy who looks like a living statue made out of obsidian. Got a bad case of varicose veins too, they glow white or somethin'." She shrugs faintly, though that makes her wince. "Sakura was there too. Seemed you two know each other."
She looks down at her backpack for a moment, considering the diabolos now tucked inside it. Hrm.
That gets a raised eyebrow, for sure. The bruises and the mention of Sakura both; perhaps more than that, though, the 'stone pillar' thing piques his interest. It's a fighting style he's never heard of before and that's rare in and of itself. Presuming that both Honoka and Sakura fought this person together, that means he's got to be someone of... let's say 'no small ability'. Then we hear 'living statue' and 'glowing veins' and things head off the rails, fast.
"We've met," Frei says distractedly, mind wandering, before he snaps back to awareness and processes what's going on a little more fully. "I've known her a long time, actually. She taught me a great number of things once upon a time." Which is true; the Sakura Frei knows is a fierce fighter indeed, most significantly because of her intense resolve and never-say-die spirit.
Crossing his arms over his chest, Frei thinks carefully about the matter while Honoka considers... whatever it is she's considering. "This isn't the first time that fighters with strange elemental powers and the apparent end of the world has happened before, actually," he says, without thinking for an instant how insane that sounds. "I don't know if you were part of the fighting world the last time it happened or not, but we were lucky to get out of it in one piece, or so I've been told." Rust had stories about the last King of Fighters tournament, as did many, many others. Frei has a few of his own, including learning some very unusual truths about the world indeed from some very unlikely sources.
When parents tell tall tales, kids can tell. They have a certain look about them. That's the look on Honoka's face when Frei talks about elemental powers and ending the world. Yeah. Right.
It doesn't last long, she's already played her Disrespecting Elders card enough this session. Softening, she grants Frei the benefit of the doubt and shakes her head: she was probably just starting with the circus around the time which Frei speaks of. "... No, I wasn't. Sounds, uh... nerve-wracking?"
Honoka kicks idly at her backpack. Wants to do something with her hands, but she also wants to talk about this weird guy. "So, anyway. This guy... somehow... can change things. Make things happen as some sort of illusion. And yet, y'know, stone pillar -- obviously -some- of it wasn't illusion. He started talking like he actually -was- responsible for all the storms and volcanoes and junk."
The circus performer rubs the back of her neck. "And supposedly he gave us a chance to stop it. To show him our fighting spirit or something." Another light shrug. "Eh. Maybe if he fought you or someone stronger, there'd be a chance."
Backpack is kicked upwards about a foot, and from the ease with which Honoka slips her arm into the strap, it's pretty clear she's done this before.
Even if he were trying to hide things from Honoka, Frei probably wouldn't be very good at it, because he basically has no poker face whatsoever. It's that cursed 'honesty is the best policy' thing; sometimes that upper class upbringing with a rigidly moral parent can hurt you later in life. So the circus performer can easily tell when the continued details of Honoka's story make Frei's lack of composure get progressively worse with each new fact.
"Let me ask you a serious question, Honoka. Do you believe him?" He knows what he's asking, here, buried under the seemingly simple question: do YOU think a human being exists that has rock skin, can summon stone pillars from the ether, and impact the very functioning of the earth through manipulating elemental powers? Frei is effectively asking, 'do you think magic is real?' in a world where people who can throw fire from their hands are not exactly commonplace, but there's probably at least one in any given country.
And he is totally, utterly serious about it, too.
"I do." No hesitation, no unclear emotion on her face -- just plain, simple honesty.
"No one's ever tapped into my own brain and pulled images from it -- let alone images someone else can -see-." Honoka's eyes cast downward at the memory, but it's temporary only: "Sakura's, too. And when I went back to the park a day or two ago, they still hadn't cleaned up the rubble, just put some caution tape around it. So he's not just..."
Honoka looks -really- uncomfortable for a moment.
"A-anyway. Yes. Pretty sure he could move a mountain if he wanted to." Looks up for a moment. "M-maybe only a little exaggerated."
Adjusting her backpack straps for a moment, she adds, "I should probably get goin'. Friends are s'posed to meet me at Kiyomizu in a little while and that's halfway across town."
Maybe it shouldn't, but that gets a smile from Frei, even a nod of... not approval, but acceptance? "Good," he says quietly. "That's the sad truth of things. Monsters are actually real. People who can do all this stuff aren't a myth. But I think they get a little worse with every person who thinks 'this can't really be what's happening'."
For a moment, he turns to the tourists who, having seen the fight that was about to emerge die down and sputter out, are cautiously returning to the temple, resuming their tour and, if they can hear Frei and Honoka speaking, carefully ignoring them. "It's not always willful. It's hard to accept painful truths about things, I think. But in the end I'd always rather see things for how they are, than the alternative."
He turns back to Honoka and, for whatever reason, bows, hands clasped in front of him. When he stands, some semblance of calm has returned to his expression. "I won't keep you, then. Take care of yourself."
As long as Honoka is there to look at him, Frei is visible, will even meet her gaze with a smile if she looks his way directly, but the moment her gaze is off him long enough, he's effectively gone, and not in the 'distantly visible through the crowd' way; he's REALLY gone without a trace.
Log created on 20:48:35 09/03/2014 by Honoka, and last modified on 00:02:15 09/05/2014.