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graveyardsmash2016-09-08 10:56 pm
ryslighelpers) wrote in graveyardsmash2016-09-08 10:56 pm
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TEST DRIVE MEME
Welcome to the Ryslig Test Drive Meme! Below are a few prompts to get you started, but you may make up any prompt you desire! Please take a look at the navigation page for rules, setting information, and links to reserves and apps. Have fun!
SCENARIO ONE
You wake up on the beach thoroughly drenched with your mouth full of sand. The salt water causes various cuts and scrapes on your skin to sting and the sand isn't helping. The air is slightly humid, ruining any feeling of refreshment you might have gotten from your dip in the ocean. There are lights in the distance but the unfriendly scent of gunpowder fills the air. If you're lucky, you're alone. If not, you might find yourself staring up into a pair of monstrous eyes or down the barrel of a local's shotgun.SCENARIO TWO
So you've just arrived, and already SOME the natives are trying to get on your good side. Offers of food, shelter and other luxuries in return for hoping you don't eat them. They even have some helpful pamphlets to share with you. "How To Deal With Changes", "Alternatives to Human Flesh", "What to Expect When You're Expecting (to turn into a monster)" are all great pamphlets. There's even some detailing certain monsters, and the changes they go through. Some of these seem to have been passed down from one monster to the next.Among these however, are some... not so helpful ones. "Bunnyipyips And You", "Axe Thief Axehounds," and "So you're becoming a Fur Bearing Trout" among others. Sometimes they have marks on them from previous people who had them saying they are lies, or pointing out good "jokes." Then there's the people who aren't happy to see you at all. Glares and silent, judging stares if you're lucky. Torches and pitchforks attempting to drive you out of the town if you're not. You may need a friend to help you.
SCENARIO THREE
"Seek us out," the voice whispers in your head, and before you have time to question it you've found yourself in someplace entirely alien. Maybe it's the Fog God's ghostly town of Dyster, where exultant followers dance around bonfires and sing their praises to the skies above. Maybe it's the Fourth God's arcade, with small robots wheeling about amidst the lights and colors of old pinball machines. Only one thing is certain: you are not alone, in this sacred place.SCENARIO FOUR
The time has come and you've found yourself becoming a monster. Is the change instant, or gradual? Are you familiar enough with monsters to know what's happening, or is it a complete shock? NOTE: Feel free to pick any monster type for this prompt, but note that you may not get the same one in game.
Shisui Uchiha | Naruto
What a fool. What an overconfident fool to have made a promise like that when he knew what the odds were. (They hadn’t been too much in his favor.) He’d had one shot, had just the one thing to do—just one. And he’d failed.
The memory of pain and betrayal still throbbed acutely in his right socket. If the poison still coursed through his veins, Shisui barely felt anything. Because really, he could care less about physical pain than what he was leaving behind unfinished. And he’d thought that impact against the rocks under the Nakano would finish him off. He remembered smashing up against a particularly jagged one when the current ripped him away downriver and he distinctly remembered tasting not only water but copper as well – a slurry of stuff that tasted like death. He’d thought it was all over when he’d finally blacked out after his lungs had burned and filled up with the river and the body’s instincts had kicked in and his muscles had exhausted themselves thrashing about in a desperate attempt to stay afloat despite his every intention to just… drown.
He’d thought it was over but—
Here he was again, consciousness ebbing back to lay on the guilt once more; the guilt of having failed, once again, to protect those that meant the most to him. In the grand scheme of trying to redeem himself from the unforgivable crime of murdering his friend, he’d gone and dropped the weight of the world on his best friend’s shoulders. He’d promised to walk beside him, promised to help him realize his dream; but the only thing he’d ended up doing was leaving things a bigger mess than they’d started out with.
And it’s this realization that makes him want to spit out the bad taste in his mouth, the leftover guilt that didn’t look like it had any plans of ever going away.
Shisui is somewhat surprised that guilt tastes a lot like sand and seawater. It makes absolutely no sense and tastes ridiculously real that despite everything, Shisui opens his eyes fully expecting to see. And he does, and it hurtles a good dose of shock his way when he remembers he’d fallen to his death without his eyes. No eyes at all. Just bare sockets: one still bleeding, the other cradling congealed blood.
What.
How—
And when his eyes finally focus and he sees more than just the shore he’d been washed up on… a face? He has to wonder who?
Was this hell…?
don't mind me quietly screaming in the background
Still, he isn't expecting this. Isn't expecting the sight of sodden, unruly black hair, still trying to pull itself into the riotous waves that differ so strongly from the sleek, straight tresses more common in their clan -- for those familiar, dark-lined eyes and that all-too-familiar face.
The eyes, yes, those catch his attention, both because he knows they shouldn't be there and he's so quietly, profoundly glad they are.
"Shisui," he says quickly, gliding forward -- and realizes just as quickly that he needs to use caution. The cousin he has mourned so profoundly since his death in the Nakano river, falling a distance no one should be able to survive, a distance Itachi is all too certain he didn't survive -- and this confirms it, to his way of thinking. Ryslig is a land of death, a land of the dead -- he died before coming here, Sasuke did, and now Shisui, long-dead Shisui...
Who won't recognize him. He isn't Itachi, visually: he's a dark, vaguely human-shaped cloud of darkness that steams and smokes with an otherworldly aura, with blankly glowing white eyes and a voice that perhaps hearkens back to the startlingly deep tones that an adolescent Itachi had already begun to develop when Shisui died, but is now significantly far removed from it. Smoother, deeper, older -- and now hollow, a deep sigh of the wind with human speech intertwined.
How will his cousin know him?
He stops a little way out of arm's reach, just looking at him -- feasting his eyes on a face he never expected to see again.
ehehehe ;)
And sometimes, when he'd go and sit in a corner of his big old empty house after a long mission, he'd hear voices. Voices and screams and pleas for mercy. And thanks to his sharingan, he could always replay every memory he'd wanted to forget, over and over and over again until he nearly went crazy.
But Shisui's never seen a ghost.
He's felt the ominous presence of an enemy, he's felt an opponent's killing intent. He's read fear off of his enemy's eyes and he's gone into situations knowing that he had a 'bad feeling' about something. But....
But Shisui's never seen a ghost...
It wasn't even that he didn't believe in them (he did; he found time to be spiritual) it was just--
It was just instinct kicking in. He instantly reads that something's not quite right, that something is totally off with the dark mass looming right in front of him. The hair on his neck, though still damp, bristles. Every nerve ending goes into high alert, into a sense of hyper vigilance.
...And yet there's an eerie familiarity that he can't quite put his finger on (perhaps the fact that the entity just said his name has something to do with it).
But it seems absurd to think, to hope, that the living would be here among the dead because... because this was the other world, wasn't it? And although it looked so much like him, so much like... Itachi--
What?
No.
That was impossible.
So this must be--
"Shinigami...?"
Shisui scrambles to his knees, sand and salt cutting into already open skin, and looks the being right in the eyes about the same time he realizes that he can feel and hear his heart beat once more.
How painful is death going to be this time around, he wonders. How much punishment did he deserve for the things he'd done, and for the things he'd failed to do? As bizarre as everything sounded in his head just then, whoever it was that was in front of him looked so much like the friend he'd made empty promises to, and the rational part of him immediately tells him that he's only making it up, that it was the guilt talking. But all the same, there's a lump in his throat that threatens to spill, threatens to try and explain himself. But he stops there.
He stops himself because he decides that he doesn't deserve it. There is nothing left to say, nothing left to explain. Was this a shinigami before him, about to take him to the other world? Or was he already there and was this a cruel joke meant to punish him for things he's done, and the things he's failed to do?
Come what may, he has no choice now.
"Are you... a shinigami?" The ragged breath that he takes then makes it harder to ignore the lump in his throat and his lips-- they move before he can stop himself: "You remind me of someone I know..." Knew, he corrects himself. Knew.
And he can't bear to look him in the eye anymore, so he shifts his gaze to the shore and watches the foamy tide eddy around his knees before receding back into the ocean.
no subject
He kneels, putting himself on a level with Shisui, not looming over him, and shakes his head. "I am someone you know. Not Shinigami, not any sort of kami. Just a..." Failure, he wants to fill in, but no -- he'll not introduce himself to Shisui with that sort of self-pitying vulnerability. "Just a man." A boy, the last Shisui remembers of him. But how swiftly boyhood ends!
He looks just like he did in Itachi's cherished memories, whole and strong (though bedraggled as Itachi has not seen him before). Both eyes where they belong, though Itachi remembers well that Sasuke arrived with the death-wound still piercing his chest, and he himself arrived still coughing deep and wet. Shisui, though -- there appears to be no crush of rocks, and his eyes.
"Trust your instincts," he adds quietly, wanting to simply say it and yet feeling the need to be indirect. Shisui, it's me... a ghost, a memory of me, twisted and yet more evil than I have ever been before. But at the same time... so much more free.
no subject
And now...?
It still made no sense. It made no sense at all and he sits there there trying to salvage any sort of logic from the situation at hand.
Trust your instincts.
He doesn't want to. And yet he does...
He can't make up his mind between dismissing all of this as impossible, and reaching out to tell him how sorry he was for everything he couldn't do, for everything he left him with that should have been his job, his burden to bear.
"I don't want to," he whispers, fingers curling in wet sand.
But guilt and regret are too strong to ignore and Shisui shakes his head at a desperate attempt to make things go away. It's childish and futile and... looking back up at the whispy mass in front of him lets him know that the 'ghost' was still there.
Like a cruel reminder of everything he should have done. --Everything he should have done so that Itachi wouldn't become this. The darkness didn't suit him.
"I don't want to." And his voice is small, shaking-- like it was on the cliff...
no subject
Almost, he stands and walks away, acceeding to Shisui's whispered denial. But he can't turn his back on his beloved cousin, his childhood idol.
(Shisui looks so young now, to Itachi's older eyes.)
"The truth is what it is," he says instead, quietly. "You aren't the type to blind yourself to it. You know me."
no subject
Because...
"You shouldn't be here." Where is here, by the way? "I don't even know where here is, but if I'm here now, then you shouldn't be." He was dead, so why was Itachi here?
"I failed you, didn't I?" Because it wasn't Itachi he was rejecting, it was himself-- his incompetence to see that one thing through to the very end that could have saved them all. "I failed you." And his voice breaks again. Shisui swallows thickly, forcing that lump back down.
It's only fitting that he's on his knees before Itachi, because he ends up bowing his head to the sand, hands clawing in it while he struggled to get words out at all.
"I'm so... I'm so, so sorry. I'm so sorry... Itachi..."
And saying his name now, acknowledging Itachi-- it threatens to burst that dam inside. There's a hitch in his voice that hints at it.
"I'm sorry, Itachio...I'm sorry...I--!"
He cannot say it enough.
no subject
It is not Shisui who failed.
"It wasn't you," he said quietly. "None of it was your fault. That's my burden to carry."
He can't answer Shisui's denial, Shisui saying you shouldn't be here. It's too much to take on all at once. Right now, here, with Shisui soaked and bedraggled on the beach, Itachi nothing more than a looming shadow... no.
did I promise you a bird or did I promise you a bird? | second week in September, just for reference
It's been a while since he hit the beach. He's mostly been avoiding Vandare lately, what with all the political unrest, and he's not particularly keen on the idea of walking into any of it, but he does have wings now. He's barely even aware of making the decision to go before he's packing up a bag, hitting the roof and taking to the air.
When the salt breeze hits his face, he immediately feels himself relax. This is what he needed--exactly what he needed, and he scans the beach for an empty stretch of sand to touch down on.
Before he can find one, he hones in on a dark shape by the edge of the water, not moving.
Instinct kicks in, and with a shot of adrenaline he dives, the wind whipping his face. He plucks the person from the water with his talons, like a real osprey grabbing a fish, and sets his cargo down as gently as he can on dry ground. He lands, drops to his knees, and looks for signs of consciousness--which, thankfully, he gets in a minute, and he exhales with relief. He'd have done mouth to mouth, but if he can avoid it, it's less traumatic for everyone involved.
"Hey, you're okay," he says, quietly so as not to spook the guy when he's fresh out of the water. "I'm Percy. I'm not going to hurt you. What's the last thing you remember?"
BIRB!
He'd barely seen it coming, but from what little he did see, Shisui could make out that this wasn't you average bird. It wore pants for one...
And right now, instead of being deposited on some cliff and being torn to pieces, he was watching lips – instead of a beak— moving and they were saying words he could understand. I'm not going to hurt you. Not yet, maybe! he thinks, but nevertheless dares to study the being that had just pulled him out of the water and dropped him on dryer land. He’s glad for there being no beak, though a fleeting glance over at the talons has him reconsidering that thought almost immediately.
He’s less concerned for himself, however, when the bird-man asks him what the last thing he remembered was. It’s the one question that has him staying put, throwing caution to the wind, curling fingers in sand but never really lifting a hand to toss it at the other.
The last thing…?
Itachi. The last thing he remembered was Itachi, expression twisted in concern and confusion. The last thing he remembered was failing. The last thing he remembered was asking the person he’d loved the most to help him get to the edge of the cliff. The last thing he remembered was Itachi’s hands as they held on to the back of his shirt, how he’d spoken volumes in the silence but Shisui had refused to listen. ’Don’t stop me Itachi, if you’re my friend…’
The memory of his dying body hitting the water and then smashing itself up against the rocks has him flinching, reliving that moment of impact once more. Had it been the right decision…?
Shisui doesn’t realize that he’s gone from staring Percy in the eye to letting his gaze wander off to nowhere in particular. But he does realize that it’s been a good few seconds since the bird-man had asked him the question.
“I…" Obvious hesitation. "Enough.” He remembers enough to want to forget. “Percy.” Saying it out loud, he figures the name suits the bird-man. “Shisui,” he offers, with the slightest of nods. “Where am I?”
chirpchirpfuss~
Grimacing, he watches as his question seems to sink in, and the man in front of him crumples a little, breaking eye contact to stare at something that Percy can't see.
Enough. Okay. That doesn't tell him a lot--is this a new arrival, or did he show up somewhere else on the peninsula and end up in the ocean some other way? Regardless, at least he's answering the question instead of flinging his sand in Percy's eyes and running for it.
He even gives his name and asks a question of his own, and Percy keeps his movements slow but lowers his hands to rest on his legs. The wings are heavy, and his shoulders have been getting sore lately and giving him blinding headaches.
He offers the man--Shisui, he said?--a wan smile. "You're on a beach in Vandare, a town on the Ryslig peninsula. Does that sound familiar, or am I the first person you've seen since you got here?"
he's gonna start missing his feathered friends tbh
But Percy's talking again and Shisui pulls his focus back to the situation at hand-- and almost immediately finds himself rather confused. He's never heard of a Vandare or a Ryslig peninsula before, and he's been over maps of the world so often thanks to all those missions that there was no way he'd have missed something as significant as an entire peninsula. It made no sense. To know the map of the world like the back of your hand but not know where he was now... Land masses didn't magically appear and even if they did, Konoha intelligence would have gathered news about it and have relayed information to them already. So amidst this confusion a part of him suddenly wonders if he'd actually survived that fall and drifted off to--
You know what? That was impossible.
"It doesn't sound familiar, no," he admits.
(Even if the geography was weird, it didn't really explain why he had his eyes back.)
But putting two and two together, he figures that maybe this sort of confusion was normal, if Percy's directed questions were anything to go by.
"But I take it this is normal? Not knowing where you are?"
He's already let go of those fistfuls of sand.
well now he has a new feathered friend!
Well, so much for a day at the beach.
"Unfortunately, yes," he says, frowning. "Listen, there's something I need to explain to you, but it's not going to be easy to hear, so I want to make sure you're okay first. Does anything hurt or feel numb? I know some basic field medicine, which should get you as far as an actual doctor."
Nothing looks obviously broken or anything, the guy at least isn't missing an eye or bleeding profusely, but he's probably also full of adrenaline and was just doused in cold water and might not be feeling anything yet.
"If you can't walk, I can carry you on my back instead of in my talons," he adds with a sheepish smile. "Sorry if I made you feel like a trout, by the way. I wasn't really thinking about it, I just didn't want you to drown."
\o/ !
"You probably wouldn't have been able to avoid it even if you tried," he says, making to stand and immediately feeling a sort of run-over-twice-by-a-large-bus sort of pain in places he's almost forgotten he had. "I believe I drowned before I got here." He's quite sure he was still alive by the time he hit the water, so it wasn't the poison that killed him. "It's sort of like my destiny or something. I really don't know what my parents were thinking when they named me."
It was easier to make light of a situation. He'd found that that approach seemed to always work calm him down enough to process everything objectively.
And right now, as he proceeds to demonstrate, Shisui discovers that he is quite able to walk.
Re: \o/ !
"I kind of know what you mean," he offers, giving a weak smile. "I was the hero of a prophecy back home. Very long story. But if it helps any, I have known people who say they came here after their death. That's not what happened to me, but it's not unheard of."
When Shisui takes a step, Percy follows, arm still extended to catch him if he loses his footing. "Are you still feeling it? Your death, I mean. You can lean on me if you need to."