Facing East

Anything you might want to try out that doesn't temporally or thematically fit the serial should go here. This is an ideal space for all your what-ifs and might-have-beens, as well as for your average silliness.
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IamLEAM1983
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Re: Facing East

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Archie looked both touched by Crystal's offering, and a tad reluctant. 

"That you would sacrifice your well-being on my account is... humbling, darling," he told Crystal. "I have no right to ask you to do so, and am powerless to stop you."

He looked back to Aspasia. "Thank you, miss Robertson. As is the case with Crystal, I have no right to object. Do remember to take this old girl out for a few walks, however," he said, chuckling. "You're not the ones in need of alternative therapy, after all. That goes without mentioning how I believe an old fussock has taken a shine to the both of you."

Eiji snorted. "How could I not? I always knew it would take a woman to drag you, kicking and screaming, into the modern world!"
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TennyoCeres84
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Re: Facing East

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Crystal grinned wryly. "Women are often the ones to bring progress around and do end up dragging the men along by their coattails," she chuckled.
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Re: Facing East

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Contemplating this led Archie to ignore his partially gutted status to try and sit up. As per Japanese custom, the blacksmith didn't exactly bother trying to pin the spy down, instead acting as though he were impeding him - curt bows and rapid-fire sumimasens included. It took Katsumoto's wrinkled, if firm hand to pin him back down.

"Say your piece, boy," he said, "and don't bother posturing. The sooner you're patched up, the sooner you'll be out of the old bird's feathers, alright?"

Reluctantly, Holden laid his head back down, while Katsumoto informed Inoue that he could keep working. Holden's partially-stripped right hand tried to form a fist.

"I should have called you the moment we allowed the Goat into the manor," he said, looking back to Crystal. "I shouldn't have attempted to field the trauma of these old memories on my own; but God knows you had your own work to tend to!"

He gripped Lowell's hand. "I should've asked Tom to push your inner wolf into the astral plane, so it could've had a shot at tearing that Infernal gnat off of this poor old man's back! Man alive, is this really what two hundred years of Colonial self-reliance does to you? You were there, you are as reliable and dependable as they come, and I never so much as thought to ask for your help!"

He scoffed, the sound containing a bit of a strangled edge. "I should hold a séance sometime, tell Father's spirit to ask for a refund from Eton... They prepared me for war, they prepared me for Buckingham, Saint Petersburg and the White House and I even was sufficiently prepared for Hope, to a degree - but never for this. As if failure and weakness could never have touched me or those I love."

Holden tsked. "Sophia noticed something was wrong the last time I stopped for tea, and I lied to her face. Lady Eirean invites me over for sandwiches and I fib my way past my new tics and fidgets. Shamus notices I've been rattling more than usual, and I dismiss it. Young Aidan thought I looked morose the other day, and I sent him off to feed the copier paper. Every single time, I catch myself in the act, wince internally and scold myself for it. People are open, today! These are no mere coworkers or associates; they are your friends! If anything, they stand the best chances of understanding the Goat's effect on you!"

He looked back to Crystal. "I conquered my dating apprehensions and my romantic hang-ups, Crystal. It's taken some doing but thanks to you and Andrea, by George, I've done it! The last few times I visited you were hours I spent being open and honest, with both myself and the two of you. You saw how things unfolded, didn't you? Wasn't I rather comfortable? If so, why can I not feel the same way in my own home and workplace?!"

Kurama had walked away for now, seeing as he had no opportunity to begin dispensing advice or techniques. Eiji, however, stayed to listen.

"I'm not your girlfriend," he said, "but you keep some distance at home because it allows you to cope like any other damned Englishman from the eighteen-hundreds might. It works fine over a single mortal lifetime, but you've had three times as much life to go through. Most people die before their earliest hang-ups catch up to them and play havoc with their sanity, but Clanks and Fae are different. I've seen plenty of Fae samurai make that mistake and end up falling to the one guy with the ability to make the truth hurt well enough."

He eyed Crystal. "Werewolves tend to live a mite longer than your average mundane, right? That means you can't just put off what's ticked you off. You have to cope, somehow. Digest what's happened. The local mortals integrated the old ideas of martial numbness into their daily lives, right? Look where that's led Japan: subway suicides, overflowing stress help lines, and obesity and stress eating problems in the corporate sphere - plus a modern culture that can't choose between sterile perfection and zany nonsense!"

The old swordsman scoffed. "Kurama might blow most Americans or Europeans off, but at least they're adjusted. They cope, they feel what they feel and trust themselves to moderate emotional inputs in professional settings - and they don't go through a goddamn neurosis if they realize a trip to the therapist's office would do them good!

I mostly run my businesses from California, and we have Japanese transplants on occasion. Most of them end up begging for a chance to transfer their work visas into citizenship applications, as freeing as the West Coast is, compared to Tokyo. Remember that I'm Japanese, and imagine how some of my local associates feel, when I mention that!"
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Re: Facing East

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Crystal hummed pensively. "I am not sure if my being there would have been anything I could actually do to have prevented the Goat from claiming him. He's groomed him in his own twisted way and specifically desired his body. The Goat is obviously petty enough to curse anybody in his way, which would've included me. He took advantage of Ephesian's good intentions and the downside of them."

"As for why you didn't call me sooner, I think it's because you haven't gotten used to having a wide circle of support from others, even if you know that you can. Besides Shamus, no one else knows what it's like to be put every so often and then you especially have to play catch up."

Aspasia then addressed Archibald, "This is only my observation, but you do have some experience fighting someone else who bears arrogance as a keystone of his personality. Rendell has never loved anybody but himself, but he has droves of followers who feed on his every word, just as the Goat does. They're both equally alone in a sea of many, but their pride keeps them trapped in their illusions and conceals reality from them. So, you should try to apply the same approach as you did during the Battle of Hope or any other conceited bastard you've come across."
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Re: Facing East

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Archie seemed to take both Eiji's denouncing of his repressive tendencies and Crystal's more empathetic approach to heart. He looked away for a moment, perhaps focusing on the noise that still followed in the attack's wake. The wives and relatives of the two deceased guards were alternating between shock, anger and anguished weeping, while efforts at cleanup and repair had already begun in the farther edges of the courtyard. He then laid his head back down, his one good hand and arm coming up to grasp at his forehead.

"I need to let go of the past. I need to embrace what is here for me, for us, to claim. I may never see the family's old Canterbury estate again, but my family is in America, now. My family is both yourself and Andrea, and also Aidan, Aislinn and the others. God only knows I love Shamus like a brother, as well!"

He scoffed. "I have a few other walls to knock down, and I must trust you and the others, trust in the notion that I shall both evolve, follow with these strange new times, and still remain the man I am..."

The Clank sighed. "As for Rendell, the man remained satisfyingly mortal, and his hubris was something I could chart, something I could navigate for myself, having seen its ilk before. Had he been less fortunate, he would have ended in the walls of a different institution - and one better-equipped to keep him locked in. There is something to the Goat that smacks of the..."

The spy floundered, looking for words, and then snapped his eyes back on Aspasia's as he found a fitting one. "Of the ineffable, precisely. Rendell might be cured or at least managed by a course of anti-psychotics and sustained therapy if only there were someone on staff in Chimera Row with the ability to resist his silver tongue; but the Goat feels to me as though he was born evil; made of evil. Whatever goodness could have been in his heart that the Creator would have placed there has withered and decayed, and what stands in its place is a... gaping maw of pure, unrestrained Ego."

He looked back to Crystal. "Give our friend a few billion years and he may just very well turn into another, well, Other. Vanity expressed as the most exquisite of all black holes, self-sustaining nuclear chaos endlessly churning, gnawing at its own reflection. Had you been there, you would have seen that thrusting your chin at him and exercising your wit or your skill at rhetoric meant nothing. We may have to strike down his legions, but the only form of aggression to be used against someone like him is non-aggression."

Holden then chuckled, the still-mobile thumb of his immobilized left arm and hand hooking Crystal's. "I guess you'd make a better immortal than I, sweetheart, all things considered!"

The spy shifted to a self-derogatory and mocking American dialect, perhaps a bit close to the Jersey shore. "How's your spy beau goin', sweetie? Oh, he's fine, you know... He's down to two existential crises a year. One hundred years and we'll have paid off the mortgage on the house and he'll be all good and adjusted."
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Re: Facing East

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Aspasia seemed somewhat skeptical of Rendell being theoretically released of his egotistic tendencies through therapy or through medication, but she had to agree that the Goat's own identity was that of an inhuman Id. "Even so, I think the principle still stands. Treating the Goat with a certain amount of blitheness could work in your favor, Holden."

As for the werewolf, Crystal chuckled. "I'm content to be a long-lived mortal. However, I do think that the existential crises will lessen even more after we're done here," she mused.
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Re: Facing East

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Some time passed, Archie's arm was mended and his spine was put back in working order, and the first night to have followed the attack now stretched out. Archie's new components still feeling relatively alien, his arm had been placed in a sling for now. For each minute that passed, his sense of control and ownership of his limb returned by degrees.

They'd eaten, gabbed some more and then gone to bed on traditional mats and thin pillows. Archie woke up in Crystal's arms and gently pried himself from her, so as to not disturb her sleep. Finding his kimono and hakama at the ready, he removed the rest of his old clothes and shucked the new ones on. He headed into the inner courtyard, listening to the cicadas singing in the outer borders of the eternal summertime rice paddies and vegetable gardens. Looking down at the village, you could see where Oberon's demesne gently encircled Titania's small boons of fertility and sustenance, a fine and silent sheen of snow falling down from the skies and gyrating around the fields as if they were encircled by pillars.

He started pacing around the courtyard's outer grounds, eyes half-lidded. The Kori clan wouldn't attack again for tonight; they'd left a sizable mark already. The charred and blown-off limbs of the closest cherry tries still smoked, driving Holden to mentally whisper a small prayer of forgiveness towards the local spirits.

Soon, avian feet followed him and then paced alongside him. "Have you sufficiently commiserated?" asked Kurama in Edo's dialect.

Holden sighed and nodded his head. "I have forgiven what could be forgiven.
- Then you are no ready. Tell me, Englishman - have you ever been ready for anything?"

The Clank felt tempted to consider the tengu's words at face value. He'd trained in espionage for longer than some spies had lived! Of course, he was ready! But then, taken from another angle, Archie realized he'd never honestly been doubtless of his odds in parlous times. He'd always considered some amount of doubt to be a healthy thing to keep.

"You would strike our foes with your mind prepared for all other incoming attacks. This is madness. Only one event must consume the samurai's attention: the blow to be dealt, or the blow to be blocked."

Holden watched the snow fall. "The Kori will strike again. They cannot be defeated in a single strike.
- What is a strike, then, if not a series of movements? Think as one, move as many.
- And I am to train as well."

Kurama nodded. "Yes. Yes, you are. Excellence will bring the most exquisite reward, Englishman: your continued existence."

Archie sighed, spotted the window of the room he and Crystal shared, and stared longingly at it.
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Re: Facing East

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It wasn't long before Aspasia departed from her respective room. Clad in her kimono and hakama, the fauness approached them with a tranquil and focused demeanor, seeing as she was here to help Holden improve his overall state of mind.

"I take it we're ready to begin?" Aspasia inquired, eying both men.
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Re: Facing East

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"I have been since you arrived," replied Kurama in his halting English. "Englishman has needed more time."

Kurama started towards the dojo, a long and rice panel-lined edifice in the back of the compound, with its own fenced-off garden. His avian feet pitter-pattered as he walked inside and recovered three wooden katanas from a corner rack. He returned, and tossed one blade to Aspasia. With one arm kept loose, he outstretched the other one. Archie took it as an invitation to grasp the blade, and did so.

Kurama tsked. "Your fingers are mine, now. Your hand is gone.
- What are you talking about? You offered me a blade, and I reached out to take it! I-
- Is a sword's tsuba sharp, in America? Can it draw blood or end lives?"

Annoyance touched Archie's features. "I didn't come here to be lectured, Kurama-san.
- And I have no patience for fools," flatly replied the tengu. "Grab your sword."

Archie hesitated, the "blade" of the wooden sword still being outstretched. Kurama's beady eyes furrowed and blinked. "Grab your sword," he insisted.

Holden considered his weakened arm, tested his balance, and jumped upwards with a cry. He swung a leg down, hoping it would suffice in jostling Kurama. It didn't help. The blade came up, Archie managing to turn his kick into a flip-kick that pushed Kurama away. Conserving momentum, his only option involved hitting the tengu's left trapeze bone, in hopes of forcing him to drop the sword. Sojubo whipped around, however. Archie had enough presence of mind to dodge the incoming leg sweep by hopping over it, but completely missed the hard, solid missile of black feathers and nearly-exposed knuckles that connected with the side of his face. Crying out, he managed to turn his stumble into a balance-recovering flip. A grunt of exasperation then escaped his lips, his one good hand lashing out in what would've been a throat punch. Kurama had his arm in a vice and locked behind him in an instant, the heat-treated length of wood of the practice sword pressing against the inside of his left armpit.

"Your arm," groused the tengu, "is mine. I have cut it off. You are dead."

Again, Archie grunted. He first flipped his feet upwards and then forced Kurama to allow him to slide between his legs, even as his good hand kept Kurama's sword-wielding grip in a vice. Both men cried out, this time, as the tengu was forced into a forwards flip that sent him sprawling on his back, his sword-wielding arm twisted to the point of pain. His mechanical heart clattering, Holden scuttled on top of the weapon-wielding arm and pried the shaft of wood free. A single twirl of his arm ended with the tip of the false blade resting close to Kurama's throat.

"It'll take more than that to kill me," he replied, panting. 

Kurama sent the spy a death glare. "But you have failed still," he groused. "Had this been a true blade, your sword arm would decorate my mantle for the next ten generations!"

He shifted back to English. "You talk too much - think too much! No think, no mind! Mushin!"

Kicking his feet upwards, Kurama put himself back upright and attacked Aspasia with absolutely no warning.
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Re: Facing East

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Kurama's sudden attack didn't fluster the satyress, as she had formed a solid stance with the sword. Fluid reflexes had her bring her wooden sword upwards in a diagonal arc directed toward his chest, while Aspasia let out a sharp cry.
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