2/21/2003
03:12
AM
Logfile
from Ichijin.
Royal
Elizabeth-Penthouse 1
It is a
penthouse, a swanky penthouse at that. Plenty of windows, wood flooring,
elegant lines and a modern look. You've got your sunken living area, long and
dark dining table close to the windows that overlook a balcony decorated with
topiary and such. Off to some side is the way towards the bedroom, double-doors
left open just enough to get a hint of a large bed and more expensive
furniture. All in all, it looks like a place that could use a far better
description.
Obvious
exits:
Reese
walks in, slams the door behind her firmly, then beats as hard as she can
against the hard wood. There's something between a growl and a roar there,
oblivious to the room and cursing the world. At best feeble, her hands alone
could barely damage the wood; thankfully, she's not pulled out any guns, or any
of her personal big guns.
Sebastian
emerges from the office space, a series of papers in his hands. Naturally,
banging is going to tear him away from the mundane of his day job. He drops his
arm to peer after Reese, watching her with a cool stare. "Reese?"
Reese
nearly swings a punch at Sebastian, but draws back, putting her wrath into a
pillow instead, before collapsing firmly into the couch. "Hi Seb,"
she mutters, the words barely audible - she hasn't bothered to lift her head,
and it turns out that Italian silk makes for a decent silencer. The girl
finally lifts her head for a moment, glaring at the man. "They treat us like
monsters, you know. They look at us as if we kill and kill and kill, and love
it."
Sebastian
draws back a pace at the sight of that almost-punch, but then follows her
towards the couch. Setting his papers carefully aside, he instead rests his
hands on the back of the sofa to look down at her, "Our miko freely shoots
anyone who looks cross at her with her gun. The Leviathan freely took two of
their own, one of which shamelessly used torture for his /gods'/ means. Our
gods revere corruption, trickery, destruction, all that is the antithesis to
the warm and fluffly goodness that they think that they represent. I am not
surprised. Even I have killed." He draws in a breath, "Who did you
see?"
"Byakko
no miko," Reese replies glumly, scowling magnificently. "And Suzaku
no miko." We'll just leave the small frisk/grope out of there, hmm?
"Rathan was giving her all these gooshy looks, and was totally hitting on
her. I ask her about Dylan and Minai, and she goes all ballistic, ditches
everyone, and Rathan gets all pissy." No, it was not a good day for Reese.
"It's like they think that if we're not here to kill them, kidnap them, or
torture them, we're here to ruin their miserable, pathetic little lives."
With that, she flounces and buries her face firmly back into the pillow.
Sebastian
frowns down at her, dragging fingers through his hair before coming around to
take a seat on the couch as well. "I am not entirely surprised. After all,
they /were/ her seishi, and she is bound to be a bit possessive of them.
Especially considering that if we ever catch sight of Dylan again... he'll be a
dead man." He sighs deeply before continuing, "What did Rathan
say?"
Well,
not exactly. You see, Reese already did run into Dylan, but he also happened to
be surrounded by three other sei. Under any circumstances, however, she
probably would have been persuaded to be nice. That's just how the poor girl
is. "Well, she didn't know it at the time. Frickin' bitch isn't even my
goddess," she says, flipping tiredly onto her back. Let's just hope she's
not going to swing punches any time soon. "Rathan? He didn't say anything.
He just gave me that 'I'm a jaded loner and you just took away my last friend'
look."
Sebastian
peers down at her, blinking somewhat as she speaks. "I'll have to have a
talk with Rathan then. I think that the boy might be forgetting some of who he
is, and who he is playing with." The man looks introspective moment, and
then nods to Reese, "Was it just the Byakko no miko that was saying these
things?"
"She
didn't actually say anything," Reese murmurs, her face clouding. "But
I could feel it, you know? They start out happy to see me, all bright and
chipper and stuff, like I'm a real human being. And then, something snaps. They
give me this look, these vibes, and it's all, 'Oh. You're one of /them/.' And
then they just give me this look, like I'm going to bite out their jugular now
that they've found out that I'm not normal. At least I existed in this world
first," she mutters, glowering at the ceiling.
Sebastian
sits back on the sofa, not so much looking at Reese anymore, but actually just
out into the living area. A vague sort of look. "Are you looking for more
from them, Reese? Are you trying for friendship or possibly some sort of...
connection with them? What are you expecting from the Yang?"
Reese
sighs and shrugs, wrinkling her nose. "Contrary to popular opinion, I do
like to make friends. My chi sense only extends to people who feel bad - if
they're nice, then I don't get a glimmer. A couple I thought were just normal people
- really nice, normal people, like my friends in school. I want them to
understand," she admits cautiously, "that I'm not trying to harm
them. That if they got out of our way, everything could be happy. I don't want
nice people to give me that look."
Sebastian
finally looks back over to her, a flicker of confusion showing, but that is
erased as he speaks, "Then you should act yourself if that is what you
wish. You... cannot force them to believe who you are, Reese. They have to come
to those conclusions all on their own."
Reese
wrinkles her nose and glares. "They're preconditioned to be clueless and
hate us," she replies, shaking her head solemnly and finally sitting up.
"They're okay as long as I'm a person, they're people, and we can drink
coffee someplace and have a chat about schoolwork. But as soon as the cards are
on the table, the point and hate and go, 'Ooooh, you're oni.' I try to be
friends, they say, 'But you hurt me!' Like racial discrimination, but deeper
than skin," she sighs, hunching her shoulders.
Sebastian
listens quietly before replying, "Reese, they are seishi. I don't quite
understand why you would want to actually try to befriend them, except if you
plan on using that relationship to our advantage later? You have an idea in
mind?" She is clearly talking to the wrong oni about this. She should have
found Lexie first instead of the one that was 'programmed' to think mostly in
terms of the business of being an oni.
Reese's
jaw drops, her expression one of pure, horrified disbelief. "You
didn't," she whispers, eyes welling a little bit. With a firm swallow, she
forces the angst back down into her bile duct from whence it came. "Are
you not human at all? Do you really have no need for any relationships
whatsoever? I mean, honestly, stop fooling yourself, Sebastian. You're not like
them, so absorbed by those damned personas of theirs. You've got some emotion
in you." Here, she cringes, then looks both skeptically and hopefully at
the man. "Right?"
Sebastian
can only blink back to her in confusion, not quite sure about what she is
asking from him. "Of course I am, Reese. How can you ask that? My
relationship with you and the rest of our people. Those that I've been working
on with the seishi." All with a specific point in mind. Notice no mention
of emotion, Homasubi helped to lock that away a very long time ago.
Reese
frowns and can only think to do one thing; she reaches her hand back quickly
and smacks Sebastian across the face. "If I get mad at you, Sebastian, if
I get really, really mad at you, but still do my job as an onisenshi... will
you care? Honestly, now." Chi gathers into her, and it looks and feels as
if it might not be an idle threat that she's making.
Sebastian
rocks back with the slap, his hand immediately coming up to try to grab her
wrist to forestall anything further like that. "I don't want you mad at
me, Reese. I've done everything to try to make you comfortable, to see to you
and the rest. I need what you can give me, and knowing the fallibility of human
emotions, if you are angry at me..." He seems to frown, "Why are you
angry at me now?"
"What
you need from me?" Reese demands, her voice lowering to a rather dangerous
quiet as her wrist is caught firmly. "So you want me to deliver a god into
your hands, and that's it, is it? You want us to win the war, so what? What
will you do when it's all over, when Homasubi comes, when Lexie's made her
wishes. What happens after the gods find that their use for you is gone, and
take back all that makes you senshi?"
Sebastian
seems honestly lost about her sudden anger, and frowns even more so at the
questions. In one breath though his face is a blank slate and in the next with
is a wry grin on his lips, "It doesn't matter to me what happens
afterwards, that is not in my hands. I am working for what we need now, and I
am doing something to further the release of Homasubi. That is all that
matters. I know that you know this, Reese. When he came to me, showed me what
was possible, I..." But he trails off, blinking for a long moment. "I
know what needs to be done. We will win."
Reese
sees the grin and turns very quickly silent, her eyes holding an odd mixture of
sadness, pity, and something deep within. She draws her hand from Sebastian's
grasp, shaking her head slowly at the idea of winning or losing, then blinks at
the man. "What has happened to Sebastian?" she asks, brows furrowing
in distress. A hand waves any answer to the question off - she has asked
before, with no great result. "If you were in Lexie's position, what would
you wish for?"
"Reese,
don't..." Seb murmurs, watching her cautiously for a moment, a warning
hardness building steadily in his gaze. At her last question though, he
hesitates for a very, very long moment before answering, "I would not presume
to take one of those wishes for myself. But if I was in her place.... I really
do not know what I would wish for. That is something I haven't thought about
all that closely."
"Don't
what?" Reese asks too quickly, her eyes seeking out Sebastian's face with
a pathetically hopeful glance. "People have been keeping many secrets from
me recently. Maybe I shouldn't press, but it makes me confused as to what your
motivations are. Maybe I'm just being... stupid," she says, though the
word is quite obviously not what she's looking for. "Or maybe I'm jealous,
since mine are so obvious. But I want to know, Sebastian."
Sebastian
hesitates, a brief frown addressing his brows until it is schooled away.
"I wish that you would not try to pry. There is nothing of import here.
My... What it is about me that I cannot say should not concern you at all. It
has no baring on anything that is important now." He draws in another
carefully calculated breath, "My motivation is to do as I am bid. To do
what needs to be done. He came to me when I was very young, and I will not
forget to do what I have to."
Reese's
expression doesn't waver, rather, softens. "It does concern me, Sebastian,
and it is important. Because you're important to me," she says, casting
her gaze firmly to her lap, and folding her hands there, clasping them between
her knees. "If I find that some traumatic force of personality draws
severe past emotional pains up to the surface and you revert to Yang, it'll
break my heart. Really," she adds, as if confirmation makes it more true.
Sebastian
shakes, quite literally shakes at her words. Tentatively, a hand reaches
towards her face as if to lightly rub her cheek with his fingers, but in the
next moment that hand is bawling into a fist. He clenches his eyes shut for a
moment to try to bring whatever began back under the surface. "I am not
Yang, Reese. In that you can trust."
Reese
reaches out a careful finger touch the hand, her expression torn between worry
and woe. Leaning forward towards the man, she balances herself precariously,
not touching, but close enough to Sebastian that he could at least feel her
presence, the line of heat telling him that there's someone nearby. "Now
you begin to see my problem, Sebastian," she murmurs quietly. "It
wouldn't break my heart that you were my enemy. It would tear me in two,
because I wouldn't care."
Sebastian
shivers once more, drawing in a shaky breath as he tries his hardest to repress
those 'demons', lock up that actual passion that threatened to actually show
itself once more. The very moment she says 'I wouldn't care' and it registers,
he frowns, lifting his gaze to her in confusion, "I don't understand. What
do you mean?"
Reese
hovers frozen, watching the man's face, monitoring his emotions as she feels
something stirring in her magic. "If you were Yang," she elaborates,
"I wouldn't know what to do with myself. On the one hand, there is
Homasubi, the job, everything I owe Lexie and Yin. On the other hand," she
says, and here is where she nibbles her lip gently, with a touch of anxiety,
"there would be hope. For me and you, that one of us would understand that
we were wrong. See?" she asks, carefully dodging any poignant and
potentially hurtful words.
"I
am /not/ Yang!" Seb bellows, nearly stumbling off of the couch. The
distinctive reddish-orange of his kanji even manages to glow rather vibrantly
through the fabric of his sleeves. And not just there, but it begins to conjure
almost violently around his hands. Provoking the passion within and his power
grows mightily. He watches her, practically shivering, not quite sure to take
the easy route and simply blast a hole through the apartment or what.
Reese's
eyes snap wide open, and she instinctively presses back into the couch, raising
her hands over her face in a protective cower. "I know," she blurts,
her words muffled but choked out with great effort between
near-hyperventilating breaths. "I'm so sorry," the girl murmurs,
then, in a swoop of motion, rights herself and stands, facing Sebastian and carefully
approaching him, with the slow speed of one who is terrified of scaring off a
rare but dangerous creature. She holds her hands around the outer boundaries of
the magic, eyes wide but determined. And slowly, surely, she begins to close
her hands around his, as if daring the man to lose control.
See
now, this is why it is so hard for him to do those tiny little chi blasts at
livers and balls. This is why he disappears to go send a tenement into dust
when I wee bit aggravated. Seb shakes considering just how wonderful it would
be to tear this entire building to pieces and take out everyone inside, Reese
included. If he was truly and completely given to his emotions, he would have
already begun, but apparently there is a shred of restraint still there. The
chi flares as she approaches him, slowly he shakes his head from side to side.
And when his hands are touched it flares brighter as if in rebellion. He glares
at her for a very, very long moment. A shaky breath later and he shudders, the
effort to slowly release his grip on that energy causing the man to actually
waver and stumble before collapsing to his knees. Damn, he is gonna have a heck
of a headache tomorrow.
Reese
breathes at an awkward, syncopated rhythm during the infinity that is that terrible
glare. As he falls, however, the girl flies, dropping down to meet him, her
arms wrapped around his shoulders quite possibly before he hits the ground.
Holding him gently, she strokes a hand matronly over his hair, her crying given
away only by a loud sniff. "Oh god, Sebastian," the girl murmurs,
taking slow control of his weight. Her words are soft, a fraction away from
unspoken altogether, and even with their faces so close, even Reese can barely
hear them. "I love you," is breathed slowly on the exhale, a stroke
of the slightest wind, then gone.
Sebastian
keeps his eyes on her as he collapses, unable to steady himself in the wake of
his near explosion. Drawing in one ragged breath after another, he continues to
watch Reese with an almost weary fascination. "Thank you for stopping
me," he murmurs, his eyes searching her face, looking for something and
apparently finding it as just the faintest of smiles, weary, draws over his
lips. A hand moves up to try to brush her cheek, frowning as he comes across
evidence of her crying. "I'll try to be better for you." And in the
next breath he finally lets the fatigue settle over him, and down he goes.
Completely useless tomorrow too *as will his player*
Reese
bites her lip at the touch, but remains silent, nodding her head and gripping
Sebastian's body like life support, floatation in a sea of unidentified
emotion. As the man collapses, she slowly suspends his body into the air, then
lifts it behind her, slipping him into bed with a minimal amount of effort. The
thought of shoving a couple aspirin into his system crosses her mind, but as
tension drains out of her, she quickly falls asleep beside him.