payback | (no subject)

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(no subject)

I...

[There's a long pause here, where she fidgits with her hands and looks down at her knees, at her fingers and her fingernails, avoiding eye contact. This is painful to start even a few years removed from the original event - getting stronger every day, but still raw and oozing and wet under where it's scabbed over. Nothing's hurting right now, of course, but there are... these little flutters of sensation that could so easily become pain. Later. Soon. Once they start digging around.]

So. [She swallows.] How... exactly... did you want me to start?

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[Glare.]

So I wandered around for a couple years after that. I'd decided I would kill all of them. Except then I realized I'd need help to do it, someone to back me up, and that was sort of how I ended up finding Manji.

One teenaged girl on a death mission, turning to whoever she can find to help. Why did Manji agree to follow along?

[Calming again. Relaxing the slightest bit. Ow it hurts.]

He said I looked like his little sister.

And such a thing would spur him to becoming your personal hitman?

...She's dead. [Shrugs a bit.] The whole thing... it's more his story then mine. So... I think he maybe wanted to look after me the way he couldn't look after her.

Fair enough.

[Steeples her fingers and considers the next bit for a second, glancing over at him.]

I needed someone who was the best, because the Itto-ryu... those men who destroyed so many dojo... they were the best too. And Manji was definitely the best. [An awkward sort of shrug.] He's immortal.

Interesting. [And it is.] How?

Creatures called kessen-chu. Bloodworms. If he gets hurt, limbs can be reattached... just stick 'em back on. Spiked through the head... it'll be repaired. It's a good thing, too. If he hadn't had that immortality, we'd both have died right away.

Interesting. If he ever comes to Paradisa, I'd like a sample.

You could take a sample, I guess. You can't detain him.

If I chose to detain him, I wouldn't ask your permission, Rin.

I busted - I'm on my way on busting - him out of one prison already. All right?

Go on. That sounds like an interesting story.

[Pauses slightly, but hey. If he wants to skip around, that's all right.]

That's how I met Doa and Isaku actually. Sort of. Anyway, it's mostly because you're not the only person who wanted to know more about what made Manji immortal... although these people were mostly trying to work out how to transfer it. I think.

Hmm. Immortality is useful to the individual, but if giving it to more people can be avoided, it should be. Immortality is a crime.

[Distracted -] A crime? How so?

Imagine an immortal society. Progress, as a whole, would stop. Imagine the same people maintaining positions of power for centuries without change. The dregs would be dregs for eternity. There would be no reason to reproduce, no reason to change power... an immortal in the presence of mortals, in uncivilized cultures, would be revered as a god and ruin everything.

[Listens attentively, chewing on her lip a little as he goes, and then nods.]

Okay. Yeah. So... it was more than that too, I think. The techniques they were using - hundreds of people died in just a few weeks. They had a few of what you could call... semi-successes, I guess, but they were nothing like the other true immortals I met. They were just... I don't know. Destroyed mentally, or something. They lost their minds and became no better than animals that couldn't tell the difference between friend or foe.

Beserkers. I suppose the semi-successes were used as weapons?

I don't know if they were meant to be used for anything - Doa and I just got under the castle where Manji and Isaku were being held, and... we blew up some stuff on the way, they got out of their cells. There was one... quicker success that we fought near the end, us four. It was terrible. Terrifying.

Oh? Howso?

[Sits back and thinks for a moment.]

You have to understand... the situation here was really bad. Manji had been imprisoned for weeks, Isaku for a long while too. Doa and I had already fought our way through a lot... we even thought Isaku was really dead for a while. We were underground, and some of the explosions breached the moat walls, so freezing water was rushing in from every direction. And they turned this thing loose... he must have suffered terribly, but he was out of his mind by then, I think. He looked like a demon... these long limbs, longer than any regular human would have, that just sliced through the water, faster than any of us, and these long blades on his hands, a better reach than any of us, and. Um.

Even though they're immortal, they're not unkillable. If you cut off the head, it really takes them out, and there are other things... but anyway, the head is the fastest way. And this guy... his head and his neck... they were reinforced. So the one way we knew to take him out just... wouldn't work. The others fought and fought, and other guards were coming in, and I just tried to help, and it was all insane, and that creature was completely mindless. It just... was there to kill.

Sounds like a weapon if I ever heard of one. Or perhaps just a tool, an obstacle –– we've had many. They're like dogs. They're so simpleminded that when they suffer, they don't understand why they're suffering or why we let them. They just know they're in pain.

As unattractive in practice as it is in concept, if not more so, but as long as they don't have faces, I couldn't care less.

[he pauses]

They're better off dead anyway.

That one was made as a weapon -

[She pauses.]

...Maybe by that point. You're probably right - better dead than... that. But that creature was a person, once. I can't forget that.