Description: A horrible crisis may not have been averted, so much as postponed... the world's situation does not grow any brighter, as one Howard Rust tours the largely abandoned, volcanic ash-covered Southtown to try and gather his thoughts. As he may be on the verge of giving up the ghost, he is visited by one such individual that has become just that, who intends to make good on the time everyone has left.
Well, it was a narrow scrape... it might be best to leave it at that, for now, with the whole nuclear bomb in Southtown business. (OOC NOTE: There was actually no RP'd resolution to this, for any confused log archive readers. Apologies for the abrupt transition.)
This leaves one Howard Rust, who has not slept since then, feeling especially drained and hollow in the wake of it all. Day, night, dusk, dawn, it's all started to bleed together - or maybe it's just the influence of the vortex of the Ise Grand Shrine beginning to reach out and envelop the entire world. Could just be delirium, but there's something about the... orange? Yellow? In the sky that just makes it hard for him to even get a sense of where he even is in time and space any more, even as he idly walks along a largely abandoned commercial strip in Southtown that is still drenched in volcanic ash, soot, and who knows what else might have survived the intense heat of a volcanic eruption to go throw itself all over the map.
Howard's hand caresses the brick and mortar buildings of more Westernized fare that Southtown has become famous for being - something of an Americatown. All the staples of American convenience, now reduced to dust-covered husks that have had the fortune to not be turned to flat irradiated glass. No one's doing business now, of course, what with how much chaos it took to get just about everyone to flee the city to begin with. How much is it going to take for everyone to come back when nothing is certain any more?
Every so often, his head tilts as though thinking he's seeing people he spoke with for his years in being here in Southtown, thinking... yeah, I met this troublesome student's father here by this street light and we talked about how one could actually engage him. He spoke with this weird old martial arts master guy with boots on his hands for some reason who really wanted to bum some money from him for a sandwich just outside of this now defunct, abandoned Subway. He went shopping for some batteries when he and a friend he made at the docks were trying to put together a radio for some nefarious purpose he no longer remembers (but was pretty certain both were drunk beyond belief at the time).
Even if the nuke didn't eliminate every trace of these sorts of things happening, well... that pervasive, chilling feeling in the air of things no longer being quite... there, quite right, remains. The world is said to be ending, and all the unnatural phenomena that have left such incredible ecological and even physical destruction (Italy, destroyed?! say it ain't so) has made it ever the more clear for a man who wants to resolve to keep things... going.
Finally settling on a bench, he doesn't even brush the ash off. He just sits down on the soot-smothered seat without a second thought, a little creak in one of its hind legs not even enough to elicit a frown of the time-honored tradition of someone, somewhere, asking for him to fix some random bench. Leaning forward where he sits, the aging American man slumps forward, head bowed slightly, under a flickering street light.
He exhales loudly.
Then he coughs, because the stirred-up ash in the air has never quite played nice with his lungs.
His apartment was right here, give or take.
The places fighters live can often be strange and marvelous... and sometimes they can be relatively prosaic. The Sakazaki family, for example, live in a dojo, which is somewhat old fashioned but at least practical. Sakura Kasugano lives with her parents. Hotaru Futaba lives in an old mansion on a hill, which if you think about it is pretty weird. And then there's working stiffs like Rust, who lives in a somewhat run-down apartment, and Frei, who lived in a small but nice loft above an ice cream store in the middle of Southtown Village.
Of course, who knows what any of those places are like, now. Is Hotaru's mansion abandoned? Sakura's parents fled, their house empty? Certainly, Frei's apartment was empty and accumulating dust well before anything bad happened to him. There's a sort of bizarre peace in moments like this, where everything is teetering on the brink of disaster -- perhaps more literally than people thought, given Rust's most recent experiences -- but stillness is the order of the moment. The eye of the hurricane. That moment of peace when there's the faintest hope that things won't go horribly, irrevocably wrong at the last minute.
He might not be able to tell, given the coughing fit, but the air around Rust and his bench suddenly grows cooler and cleaner, some unseen zephyr directing the worst of the ash away, and a mist with the lightest of touches draining the heat, at least for a little while.
If and when he recovers and turns to look, Frei's sitting hext to him, leaning back on the bench, staring up at the ash-filled sky.
"Barely even seems real, doesn't it?"
Howard might've been content - or, well, permissive is a better term here, maybe even submissive? - to let the odd change in air pass over him. Physically and emotionally speaking, he's about had it. What's one more odd, cool breeze passing by and around him after... everything? Well, it is worth a brief turn of his head in the direction of that breeze, remembering vaguely who it was the last time that similar sensation came to pass, his right hand twitching and starting to move across his lap--
Frei.
"Fred?"
...
"N-No... sorry, uh, Frei," Howard gets out, relief unable to be discerned from overwhelming fatigue and even dread just looking out at these city streets that almost never would be again in anyone's lifetime, leveling his gaze back forward with the confirmation that he's not... someone else.
Shouldn't be he wondering as to when Frei showed up? Perhaps complacency plays a role here as he lifts his head slightly, nodding without words to punctuate the gesture. It... barely even seems real, a lot of what he's seen. Even before now, it's been something of an emotional rollercoaster with Southtown.
Never a dull moment.
His face doesn't move, but a tiny part of Frei grimaces when Rust appears to have forgotten his name. Like a cloud over the sun, it passes when Rust manages to dredge out Frei's real name from his memory. Not too long ago, the former chi sage had appeared elsewhere, trying to convince Alma and Tran to surrender their Time Sphere to the representatives of Kagero... including Seishirou Ryouhara, the man who killed him. But at the time, he knew it was the right thing to do. He knew that sending Alma and Tran toward the Grand Shrine at Ise was... something he should do, though unfortunately right know he doesn't know WHY.
And then he vanished, and had time to think about his next move.
"I'm glad to see nothing too horrible has happened to know," Frei says carefully. It probably seems fantastically insensitive to say to someone who is crashing from the adrenaline high of talking someone down from literally blowing their current location off the map. In truth, it's all a bit relative right now, anyway. Now, finally, Frei turns to the man sitting next to him, letting his placid, green-eyed gaze sweep over Rust, taking him in. This man has paid his dues. This man has suffered. This man deserves a rest.
Delivering the bad news is going to suck.
"I, uh..." Uncharacteristically, Frei seems like he's stumbling over the words, unable to get at what he needs to say. That can't be a good sign.
In all fairness, with how many blows to the head Howard here often takes, it's sometimes a wonder he can even remember his own name clearly any more - but such self-deprecating humor ill suits the scenario that has been set. The middle-aged mess of a man attempts, visibly, to find some level of ease in being alongside a friend who... he would guess, has been through just as much, seen just as much...
"Mmmphghrhgl," comes his completely incomprehensible grunted reply, which is still, at least by Rust standards, standard in conversations as he wipes a dirty gloved hand against his face, wiping downward. Still bound by aging, injured, weary flesh that screams to not be abused like he does to it with every forceful strike, with every nasty lock-up as he solidifies his defensive postures... worn down with the rest of the world.
"I, I don't even know where... where, 'everyday' ends and... and, uh, aaaa... 'atrocity' begins, now," Howard narrates, muffled by his hand as he lowers it away from his face to look Frei in those... those eyes. Something about those eyes looking at him, but, it's not a thought he dwells upon long.
"You, ah... you look... all right, for, uh, all this," he limply flings his left arm out towards the landscape before them, breaking into a cough once again.
"'scuse me, sorry," he pats his chest, "all the... all the ash, 'n... 'n everything..."
"Don't let the good looks fool you," Frei says, with a smile that is far too honest for what it is he follows up with: "I'm still dead."
So that happened.
He has to turn away from Rust, after saying that. He HAS to. It is, weirdly, the first time he's actually uttered that line since it happened. Whenever he's talked to the living, it's been circumlocution and implication rather than saying anything outright, partly because Frei himself didn't really know what his status was for a very long time.
Then he encountered Honoka on her way out the door, as it were, and that experience made it pretty clear cut in the end: he's dead. Just... bizarrely attached to the living world, for a dead person.
"I'm sorry to drop that on you, but the truth is, I've come to give you a lot more bad news, Mr. Rust," Frei says, continuing in a guarded tone after giving the American some time to process what he just said. His hands are in his lap, fidgeting, but the ghostly sage's eyes are on the sky, as if he were examining some far-away point of light for the answers. "I wish I could tell you that you'd have time to rest soon."
He's dead?
It's all over his eyes. To clarify, his eyelids. The way they come up and down several times in sequence, the slightly agape mouth that quickly closes, the sitting up straighter - the obvious protest to this idea is clearly about to fall right out of his mouth, and in fact, he actually gets out that first word when Frei starts to clarify what he means, exactly, by that.
"But" you're still here, uh, what the hell do you mean you're dead, dead people don't... get up and--
"Jiro Kasagi," he murmurs almost inaudibly as answering a question aloud that was never actually fully asked, but never speaks loudly enough to go over Frei's apologetic tone of voice. This seems to satisfy this particular conundrum of 'how,' or maybe he's become that much more accepting of the outright impossible.
More bad news, that he wouldn't have time to rest s--
He raises the hand closer to Frei up high, with a speed that suggests familiarity on a level that may or may not be actually to Frei's comfort level as he reaches out to try and lay a hand on Frei's shoulder... if he can, out of some level of sympathy, as though less concerned about asking what the bad news can possibly be now.
He feels solid enough. That's probably the weird part, because if Rust actually looks at Frei for any length of time there are tiny tells, little ways to notice that something is Not Right about this individual. But actually touching him, he has the resistance, the weight, even the warmth of a living person... or something close to it, anyway. The touch on his shoulder catches him by surprise, but he picks it back up swiftly enough. In fact, he even laughs a little, a genuine laughter which is probably a rare commodity nowadays. "Not exactly. You're probably not going to believe me when I tell you that it's not Jiro come back from the dead. It's Jiro from another time, brought here somehow. Whatever happened to me isn't the same."
There's a long pause before he adds, apologetically, "It makes sense if you've got the time to think about it."
The moment of levity is brief and ephemeral, however; there's a marked and abrupt shift in Frei's demeanor and gravitas once the joke has been told, the laugh had. He turns his head and glances at Rust, looking over the line of the American's arm extending back to his torso from Frei's shoulder. "I don't know where to start. There's... so much that's going on right now, it's all pretty overwhelming."
Howard winces at the correction - of course, Jiro would complain about how it was a different, earlier year than 2014... he's been given a lot of heavy details over a far shorter time than anyone has to really parse any of this in full, just clumsily groping towards attempting to comprehend it all and figure out where exactly he fits in in trying to put things right.
The best he's come up with is 'get everyone together here.' He wonders if Frei had seen, uh, the thing he did, which in retrospect is probably the best way to phrase what he did - he'd have been the first person he'd have asked for help from if he could find him, and, here he is... dead... still feeling like he's... there.
He lowers his hand from Frei's shoulder even with the warmth and invitation of laughter, as though the elevation of the self-professed dead guy's mood is seeing his own sink further into the weight of having to comprehend... all of it.
In a mind that seems to have trouble remembering the single simple syllable of Frei's given name.
"T-Tell me 'bout it," is the eventual spoken consensus as he rolls his shoulder while retracting that arm to get one of those stiff joints to pop, "best case... best case scenario, nothin'... nothin' else goin' on," he mutters, speaking up slightly, "nothin' else going on," he reiterates so Frei can better hear him, catching his mumbling habit, "Metro's... gone, Italy's... gone, buncha.... buncha starvin' people, huge, ah, parts of the ocean's dead... Rolento's got friggin' nukes, 's... not gonna be easy to clean up after that."
But will there be an 'after that'?
The man beside Rust heaves a heavy sigh. "Do you want the good news, or...?"
He doesn't finish that sentence. There's no real need to. Plus, the truth is, there really ISN'T any good news, not anymore. There's just... neutral news where things MIGHT not get IMMEDIATELY worse compared the situation as it is right this second.
"This world is dying, Mr. Rust," Frei says at last, turning to his conversational partner by twisting his torso, rather than simply turning his head. This is not the sort of situation you can just offhandedly discuss. "I wish I had a way to sugarcoat that, but I don't. Everyone here..." he says, sweeping a hand out to encompass Southtown and, by extension, those heroes who've gathered here to do things like stop Rolento. "They're fighting so hard to save the world. I'm sure they think that if they can just... take back the sphere things, fight off Mukai and that... that purple guy, then they can reverse all this. Stop it."
The redhead gives a heavy sigh and a shake of the head. "That's not going to happen. I've been... I've been listening to the deep places. Everything is... rotting, from the inside out."
Even from as early as driving to the YFCC to make sure their air filters would be repaired and running while people (at the time) thought to hunker down and just let the volcanic ash spewing pass when it never really did, Howard saw it in the streets. People throwing up signs saying 'end of the world!'
All the naysayers, the panic. He even made fun of it all off-hand, although the situation wasn't funny in the least. Especially when he got to be in the heart of at least two of the extreme natural disasters... the great super-ultra-mega-hurricane-storms of Metro City, the volcanic eruptions of Mt. Fuji (even being coaxed, somehow, to make his way up the volatile mountain on a wild goose chase), even getting to be a part of a displaced area in time and space. To say nothing of individual misadventures that are not directly related, but no less worrying...
He still believed, wholeheartedly, there had to be some way to sort this out. People had expressed some sort of hope he'd think of something, stumble onto some solution, all but trip luckily into some magic solution like some sort of deus ex machina just by /being/. He was already mentally preparing for a world after this, where idyllic pursuits like mastery of one's martial arts in hopes of attaining organized fighting superstardom would have to take a backseat to rebuilding and working hard just to scrape by in the wake of world-changing disaster.
When Frei Tsukitomi-Renard tells you that it is, in fact, the end of the world - Frei Tsukitomi-Renard, easily one of the foremost scholars of chi and the flow of such energy throughout the planet itself.
Frei tries to look Rust in the face. Rust can't look him back, looking down to the ash-covered floor, in ash-decorated boots, in his ash-smothered strange middle ground between a martial arts uniform and something more appropriate for a blue collar worker on the clock.
One would expect for him to be breaking down to tears, working so hard and suffering as much as he has through circumstance to have his dreams constantly pushed back or even shattered, to be told it's all about to come to just that... the very end of the world.
His motionlessness may be disconcerting, but what's more shocking might be what just comes out of his mouth instead of anything he might do. Is he about to furiously lash out like a toddler being told no for what good it does, to scream and defy what's being said from the voice of someone who absolutely knows, most of all, what he's talking about?
"I don't care."
...That is his answer. No shaking of his head as if to say no, no nodding in any sort of acknowledgement, just those words as a preface.
"I don't care," he repeats. Denial, then, or... he straightens up, though he doesn't yet dare face Frei. "I... I don't, I don't, ah, dis... disbelieve what you're, you're tellin' me. The... the signs're... all there, they've, they've been there," he stammers as per normal, but his tone of voice remains remarkably composed all things considered.
Could be shock.
"I got... I got nothin' else other than... than my livelihood, and... and a buncha people who, who're countin' on me... Frei. I, I dunno if... if there's much I, I can do, other than... wade in, swing Ol' Rusty... dunno if, if the planet's gonna feel better I'm, ah, there to do that."
He takes in a deep, clear breath, at long last taking advantage of the cleaner air that Frei has helpfully provided to the two of them, exhaling loudly through the nostrils as his posture sinks in his bench.
"All... all I know is... this, this Saiki guy, along with... uh, that... that Mukai, or... purple guy," he snaps his fingers, "his name's, uh, Magaki--"
So why the hell does he remember that guy's name and not Frei's, a long time friend of his?! That might sting!
"All... all I know, Frei, is... wh-whatever happens, I, I can't let 'em get away with... with what they're... doin'... did... 'bout to do? What, what we think they might be doin'? I, I dunno," he says, at last shaking his head.
"I was... I was just hopin' to... to get everyone together, y'know? Everyone I... we met, over the years, I mean... there's, there's a lot, all the... the stuff we shared, fists... gettin' hurt, bleeding, and... all that, but, the, the last thing I'm gonna do, Frei, I mean... you know this, 'bout me."
Howard finally looks the dead man in the eyes, pointing a thumb at himself.
"I'm a fighter. For, for fat lotta good that... that got me any, uh, steady income," Takuma basically does not pay him in anything other than free lessons, all the soba noodles he can eat, and being a member of the Sakazaki family in almost all ways save blood, "or... somethin' like a, a stable life to... settle down, have a, a family, or... look. Point is... point is."
Howard stretches one of his legs out. His knee pops, probably in agreement about what he's about to say. Or because it's a stiff joint.
"I'm a fighter, 'n... worse come to worse, I'm not gonna... gonna take the end of it all layin' down."
How do you smile, genuinely, after telling someone the world is coming to an end? How do you bring to your face an expression of actual levity, of joy, of any sort of response other than grief, anger, or both?
Somehow, Rust accomplishes it.
A slow smile spreads across Frei's face as he hears the former Pacific instructor give this entire speech. And it is a speech, there's no doubt about that. It's filled with the tiny pauses, errors, and self-corrections that are symptoms of Rust's longtime struggle with self-esteem -- as Frei saw it, anyway -- but the content, the MEAT, is there.
The redhead COULD say a lot of things right now. He COULD say: you've always been a champion. He COULD say: I hoped it would be you. He COULD say: if people are looking to you, it's because you have ALWAYS stood in defense of the people around you. They look because they BELIEVE in you, a thing you have never been quite able to do for yourself in any overt kind of way. He COULD say a lot of these things, but here at the end of days, what would be the point of that?
The phrase 'I'm going to do [x] before I die' is predicated on the idea that before we depart this world forever, we should make sure to do things we would regret not doing. Frei COULD say all these things to Rust in the hope that they would... what. Reassure him? Motivate him? What good is it to say them now, when it's too late? And as it appears now, Rust needs no such convincing, needs no buttressing. He's already made his choice.
But for a moment, a BRIEF moment, a shadowed look flashes across Frei's features. He regrets not saying these things when they COULD have made a difference. He regrets that he could have done more, and didn't, and that it's Rust who paid the price of that mistake.
But this is about now.
So instead of all the things he COULD have said, Frei simply nods, and says: "Good."
There's a pause, and then Frei clears his throat before continuing. "I haven't heard of Saiki. But the others... they don't want to destroy the world. Actually, that's not true. 'Destroying' the world is just the first step, to them. What they want to destroy is *history*. They want to erase the very MEMORY of us."
'We shall rewrite history,' Magaki had said, 'and undo this world.'
"But we can stop them. We can prevent that."
Good. There is agreement. The feeling is mutual with that one word, for what little good can be derived from just how bad everything has gotten, but there is at least that one thing that they can both agree is good.
"One guy... one guy said he was, he was the one makin' the call 'bout... well, this," Howard explains best he can, in that confusing slurry of information and sometimes conflicting statements from a variety of people as to the hows and whys, "so, so he's... whoever he is," Howard's voice wanders as much as his mind does, not even knowing what to expect of a guy like that. Something even more humongous and frightening to behold than, say, Mukai? A very small child (given his track record here in Southtown, just about any young man or woman is close to the most terrifying thing imaginable to piss off)?
"That's... that's the, the best I know, aside from, uh... 'the place time forgot,' which I guess, uh, is... the, the Grand Ise Shrine," the vortex probably clued everyone of that slice of Japan's importance to this whole mess, as Howard clumsily compares notes with Frei. There is at least the relief in confirmation of something that made Brett's words make sense - the whole phenomena was an unintended side effect of the use of those spheres, then...
All this mumbling might seem to undercut the heavy point Frei is trying to make about the very scope of what Those From The Past - not that it's the name he'd know them by, in fact come to think of it neither he or his associates have really come up with a consensus as to what to call that enigmatic bunch of people who stand as single names with amazing, awe-inspiring strength who want to... do what they're doing.
It all makes sense with what Ayame herself had mentioned, the possibility of time resetting - that is what they're shooting for, with Frei's confirmation. To remove... everything, from existence, to what end? To bring something back? To change how an event transpired? For the sake of an ancient civilization that fell? The scope seems to be all over Howard's head, as just about every situation he's ever been in tends to.
"Stoppin' 'em... preventing that," Howard finally addresses the crux of Frei's confidence in being able to affect /something/, after being told in no uncertain terms that the world is absolutely ending...
Howard extends a hand towards Frei, looking him in the eye once again.
"I, I dunno how much time we got," if he's looking at 'can I get a quick nap in' or 'I should break into Pacific High and see if they still got a brewed pot of days old coffee and just have all of it,' "and, uh, I, I guess... I dunno what the, uh, the rules are for, for being dead now," it doesn't cross him to ask about what it's like or what comes after, what with so much more pressing matters like the continued existence of everything they've lived, loved, fought, and shed tears over.
"But, ah, while you're here, Frei, think you got, ah... one more good fight left in you, for... for when we go in there?" Beat. "The, uh, the vortex, I mean, not... not the, the ice cream place there, y-you know what I mean."
A good, dramatic moment to form a promise, with one outstretched hand in hopes of taking one of Frei's in it... ruined by his verbal stuttering and meandering around the subject.
"The Grand Ise Shrine. Where the goddess descended to earth," Frei murmurs. He called it that when he directed Alma and Tran there. Ise's grand shrine is dedicated to Amaterasu-omikami, the goddess of the sun who is in many ways the patron kami of the nation of Japan. The imperial family is said to be descended from her, carrying divine blood, and the three sacred treasures -- a thing Frei now knows to not be a metaphor, after meeting with Kyo during the last King of Fighters -- were gifts from her to the nation. It's unlikely that Ise is where Amaterasu emerged from the cave to bring light back to the world. But there's no doubt that her shrine is a place of power.
"Every twenty years they tear it down and rebuild it. Have been doing that for over a century. So I guess that's fitting." Rust's words trouble him, somewhat; unlike him, Frei didn't have any sort of factual or empirical thing driving him toward Ise. All he had was a 'feeling'... a sense that power was gathering there, and so that's where he needed to be. Of course reflecting on that feeds right into Rust's unasked question about the afterlife.
"Do you know a girl named Honoka? Or, I guess I should say, the late Empress Honoka?" Frei asks Rust, suddenly, out of the blue. A strange question, indeed, especially given the American's reaching out of a hand.
He doesn't give Rust much time to answer, especially since his answer is mostly for Frei's own edification. The redhead looks to the side, now, actively avoiding Rust's gaze. "She... I know she's gone. She 'passed through' where I was on her... ah, her way home." That wording seems bizarrely specific, but as far as Frei's concerned, the specifics of Honoka's experience on her way to the next world are hers alone. "But that was all it was: a passing through. She's gone, yet here I stay. I don't know what that means for me."
For the first time in any moment that he's spoken with anyone since his death, Frei lets his actual fear about the situation seep into his voice. He's had to be strong and be reasonable for others' sake, and out of his own sense of duty. Presumably he's still tethered to this world for a reason, though damned if he knows what it is. If this world's really going to end... what's going to happen to HIM?
'I don't know if it'll work for someone in your... condition,' Ayame had said.
But Frei does take Rust's hand. "Let me put it this way. If you need me... I'll be there. I promise."
He can, at least, feel good about that.
Howard nods his head a long to Frei's murmuring and clarification on the whole traditions regarding the place - it doesn't sound very much like a time-forgotten place when put in that light, but then again, who quite knows the fullest scope beyond what's been made clear across several different people, in interlocking parts that don't always come together smoothly? For all anyone knows, 'erasing current history' could be the very tip of the iceberg of what is being attempted.
"I, I knew her," he confirms. When they last spoke, she gave him a great boon, but the true atmosphere between them remained tense in the face of both impending disaster and a man who remained confident at the time there'd be an after, for things to clean up after and help take care of... like her takeover of Japan. Her untimely assassination after the fact... might have seen him wish they parted on slightly less firm words on his part, but any regrets or thoughts about their brief time knowing one another takes a backseat to Frei's worries about... how his existence works, of which he only has that one answer to give.
Taking Frei's hand as firmly as he can manage given how transient and temporary their existences may now be from here on out, Howard's hand-taking is about as good a show of confidence as can truly be communicated beyond shaky words and tired movements sometimes dictated and limited by the demands of aching, overworked joints that scream for some level of relief from their continued abuse by this very man. In this moment, he chooses to be - not attempt, be - some pillar of confidence that someone, somehow, is trying.
The world may not be receptive. The world may continue to sputter and die in its downward spiral to oblivion, as time and space twist and turn...
"I... shit, I, I gotta drop this 'I' business, 'cause... we're gonna need... everyone we can get, everyone that, that can stand up to this." They may be few in number, and even fewer among that number might actually be strong enough to stand against them. Even he, humbly, as a single fighter, does not measure to the caliber of those he did encounter... from the strange man of unparalleled chi manipulation Magaki, to the man of unbreakable stone Mukai... to the mysterious unknown that is the seeming ringleader, Saiki.
"'n I mean... everyone." It was always everyone even in the events where Howard Rust himself was given the biggest, first-listed name as credit for helping save the world from the likes of Vega. He's never done it on his own before, he's not doing it on his own now.
It's everyone's fight, living, dead, or in some odd limbo in-between.
For a while, Frei simply digests that statement in silence. The truth is, even when Rust, or Frei himself, or any of their contemporaries has been forced to take solo action, the sage would argue that they've _never_ been 'alone'. The whole point of bonds is that they persist across time and space, connecting people regardless of the 'real world' distance. In that regard, this crisis is little different. Perhaps what's really at stake is the issue of scale. Maybe now it's important that the 'everyone' here really IS everyone, and not just being there in spirit.
Not that Frei can do more than be there 'in spirit' now, it would seem.
As if on cue with him having that thought, the sage glances down at his hand and sees the same effect occur that happened when he appeared before Alma, Ayame, Seishirou, and Tran; the solidity of his form wanes, a sort of misty transparency taking its place. He holds up his hand and looks at it, or rather THROUGH it, as if studying a curious phenomenon rather than finding he's actually fading away.
Sensing he has little time left, the redhead turns to Rust with a solemn expression. "I think it's in your nature to demur when I say this, but there's no one else I'd rather have marching into the end of the world representing humanity than you. You've always, always cared so much about others, usually at cost to yourself. You are probably the most *humane* person I've ever met. And I think... that's what's going to be needed when this is all said and done. Not 'power', though you have enough of that. It's humanity that's going to see us through."
Standing up and walking forward a bit, Frei turns and lets the rather serious expression on his face turn into his more customary smile, the scattering of freckles on his youthful face still vaguely visible even as his form continues to fade. "I'm not sure I'll be there 'in person' when it all goes down," he says, in a slow and careful tone. "But trust me: if you need help, then I'll provide it, even if it's not apparent how. Honest."
There's a pause, and Frei looks to the side for a moment. "I wish I could--"
He doesn't finish the sentence. In the span of a breath, he's gone again.
Frei starts to fade... look a lot less alive. This seems to have the opposite effect on Rust. Not so much as appearing more solid, but in how his eyes widen, how he sits up with a start as though startled. He is startled! Someone who has professed to be dead, yet still being here in person to talk to them... if anything it should seem almost normal for the dead to fade, in a sense, but here he is completely taken by surprise that their time together is quickly coming to an end (when in a sense it already has).
"Frei!" He calls the name correctly. "Y-You're--" He doesn't really need to spell it out, given that Frei's already staring into his increasingly translucent hand. He extends a hand to that fading hand, as Frei leaves his parting words to him in that final vote of confidence. To be considered an apt a choice as any to represent humanity as a whole against whatever forces seek to destroy them... to be their best chance in somehow surviving or rebuilding this, if at all possible...
It's not a new concept for him to be praised as such, when over the years so many had professed gratitude for his sacrifices and selflessness. It all takes a sadder edge to know that yet another thing is slipping through his grasp to be lost forever, even with Frei's reassurance that he'll do what he can when it comes to it...
Frei wishes he could... and then he's gone.
Rust, similarly, probably thought the exact same sentence fragment to himself as he lowers his hand away from the nothingness that Frei has sank into... and that hand slowly lowers down to the side, as he gets up from the bench with the appropriate stress and duress from his joints, standing up as if to see if he could still see Frei somewhere. He's... nowhere to be found, as he starts to walk aimlessly.
The burly ex-high school teacher left alone... tired. The sandman is at this point not just tapping his shoulder, but trying to bludgeon them over the head with the bag of magical sleep sand. It takes everything, from the overbearing melancholy with only the tiniest modicum of hope for inflicting any change, to keep himself awake as he rests against a deactivated street light.
..
What he needs is coffee.
There is only one place with coffee good enough to keep him going. It physically pains him to think this as he is stretched to the very limit, especially after Frei's observation of his character, but now it is an emergency if he is to be anywhere approaching alert (or, uh, not asleep) for the final hours this world has to make its stand against forces beyond its reach, in whatever form it may take.
His legs carrying him with head not quite held high, but at least not staring at the ground... there is one last detour to make in preparation. Frei's counting on him - a lot of people are.
He's counting on a lot of people in turn... and that rusted length of pipe by his hip to carry him through for the last fights that await him.
Log created on 20:27:16 10/08/2014 by Rust, and last modified on 14:59:02 10/21/2014.