lieutenantantichrist | [17] [Text/Action for Mahogany] - "Whenever You Get Involved, Someone Gets Hurt."

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[17] [Text/Action for Mahogany] - "Whenever You Get Involved, Someone Gets Hurt."

[ACTION]

[In a low-rent corner of Mahogany, there's a real gym. No mazes, no boss trying to fight you in exchange for something they call a badge, no lackeys, just weight machines and a floor covered with rubber mats, the way it should be. Open twenty-four hours, and this late there's no human in this room but Blake. He's in a sweatsuit, gray in contrast to the brown of the Hitmonlee holding pads for him in its upraised paws. The only sound is his harsh breaths and the thump of his fists on the canvas. His shoulders are hunched like a boxer's. His eyes look straight ahead. Judging from the sweat darkening the back of his shirt, he's been here a while.

On the other side of the room, a Snubbull is sitting on the floor, looking at a Gear that's resting on the mats. A Musharna floats beside her. Fifteen minutes of frustration proved that claws are no good for texting with, but she wants to talk to someone. She really wants to.

She snubs softly, so as not to make her trainer angry. The Musharna's eyes show no reaction, but the buttons on the Gear depress. The text that Steve watches appear seems to be accurate, more or less. The transcription might come strange through the dreaming creature. It's close enough for what she needs.]

[TEXT]

Hello lo low hello

Please talk to me.
I want to talk.
I will tell you my favorite story.
He told it to me when I couldn't sleep. His eyes were closed for some of it but I shook his knee and got to hear the end. Without the end it isn't a story.

Once
upon a time there was a girl. She was poor and alone because her parents were dead, and child services didn't exist then, so she had to go to live with her wicked stepmother and do work for her. Hard work, the kind that nearly killed her, but in time she got used to it.

Then one day she heard the prince was giving a big ball. She asked to go, but her stepmother wouldn't let her. So she tried to run off and get a ride to the castle from a knight, but her wicked stepmother had tailled her, and she found her and dragged her off the horse. While she was going, the wicked stepmother threw the knight a gold coin. He held onto it, and he kept looking at it all the time. He kept thinking about the girl.
He wanted to help her, but he couldn't.

The knight went to the ball, and he was going to kill the prince, but there were too many guards around watching him, so he ran away.

Then the knight went to find the girl and save her. The wicked stepmother grazed him in the neck with an evil spell, but he killed her and all the other guys too, even though he got hurt bad. At first the girl was scared, but then she was free and she was okay. She got to go back home to her real parents. The knight was a hero. All the papers said so.

And everyone lived happily ever after.

..........
..........
..........

Tell me your favorite story.
Voice or video if you can.
The words alone are lonely.

Tell me please.

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I do, actually.

And if you tell me and I change my mind after hearin' it, that's my problem.

_{[Reaching down, she plants a hand on the floor and settles herself back into a sitting position, chin once more on her fist.]}

[he doesn't look at her. Couldn't if he wanted to.]

You ever met a kid named Shaun Mars?

[Blake takes in a breath to snap back that the kid doesn't know what he's talking about.

Then, just for a change, he tries listening.]

I....shit.

[Just breathing in slow and letting it be possible that somebody besides him might be right.

Riku says he doesn't hate him, and for some damn reason, he believes him. His shoulders sag as the mad, violent energy drains out of him. He doesn't notice the little Snubbull creeping closer.]

It wasn't me. But it was me. Or, it could've been.

It wasn't supposed to be like that.

[It's a good thing he isn't looking at the screen. He wouldn't want to see this.]

o r e h e h t e b o t d e s o p p u s s a w I

Yeah, I know him.

Sweet kid.

... Did something happen to him?

_{[She tries to keep any alarm out of her voice, lest that... be exactly what he's talking about.]}

[That's the answer he was afraid of. He can't look at her.]

Nah. He's fine.

[Abruptly, he asks something else.]

Do you believe there's such thing as alternate worlds? Not only totally crazy planets like here, but copies of the real one, with one thing different.

_{[She tips her head just slightly to the side. It's not a DIFFICULT answer for her but it is one she has to think about her wording of, just by virtue of the question.]}

... Yeah, I guess.

I mean, I've met different versions of the same person before. It's weird, but... after this place, I think you'd have to be dumb not to think alternate worlds're possible.

[Blake sighs out. It seems to take all the air in him, and everything holding him up. He can't lift his head, or move his eyes from the scuffed pads with their indents of his own feet.

His voice is dull. Just a mechanical process.]

If those exist, I killed his dad.

_{[Heather's silent for a moment.]

[If she'd found this out any other way, she'd have been angry. Furious, even. Ever since she'd watched a pair of uniformed cops stuff her own father into a police car right after being terrorized by a home invader, a wicked contempt for the badge had been cemented in her mind and it had never really gone away.]

[Her fondness for Blake is practically a fluke-- his fleeting similarities to Douglas, his affability when not being grumpy.]

[But well, if he's telling the truth, he's right. That's something she'd rather not have known.]

[At the same time, though... she literally just saw firsthand how worked-up he is about it. How angry and upset. So, with nothing but a slightly-furrowed brow to indicate how troubling the news is, she asks:]}

How'd it happen?

[This time he's expecting the punch to the head.

She's drawing in breath for it now. She'll hit him, and call him a sick lying son of a bitch. You were a murderer all along, and you let me think you were my friend.

Sitting on the floor with the sweat turning cold and clammy on his back, he's ready for it.

Instead, she just asks.]

You wanna know the funny thing? I don't really know.

[His arms are draped over his knees. His bones are leaden.]

...not "ha ha" funny.

[He tries to collect it all and trace it back to the beginning. It takes a while, a few long breaths. Maybe she'll get sick of waiting.]

Eight little boys, drowned in rainwater. All around the same age, all the same way.

I've seen worse. Kids get killed all the time. Nobody likes to talk about it much, but that's life. But they just kept coming.

[The file photos were usually school pictures, kids who'd had a comb dragged through their hair before being shoved in front of one of those flimsy backdrops.]

Shaun Mars would've been the ninth.

[His fingers laced together, making the sore knuckles twinge.]

Then we got the first solid lead we'd had after months of dead ends. It had to be his father. Every single time a kid was killed, he'd had some kind of blackout. Never once had an alibi. Each time he woke up, he'd be clutching origami, just like the dead kids did. He'd lost his other kid in a car accident a while before the murders started. According to everybody around him, he'd lost his mind, too. We had him in custody for a while and he wouldn't even deny it himself, no matter how hard I hit him.

[Usually "I didn't do it" was the refrain they kept up for a while, but Ethan Mars, he hadn't said anything at all. He'd just taken it. There was still satisfaction to it, like there always was, but his silence had made Blake uneasy and confused until rage rose to cover it up, and it'd made him throw in a little extra. Mars hadn't stayed conscious long anyway. He'd already had all those injuries he'd refused to explain.

Blake hears his own voice keep going, like a cassette tape hooked up inside him that was going to keep on until it hit the end with that little snapping click.]

We finally tracked him down again and had him surrounded at an old warehouse. This newspaper hack, she showed up and kept yelling about how he was innocent, and did some crazy damn stunts to break through and get in to him. We had snipers around, but shit, if you've got the balls to motorcycle through a bunch of armed guys for the opportunity to get yourself killed by a serial murderer, you deserve the chance.

It was quiet, for a long time. Waiting.

[The fluorescent lights cast a steady glow, nothing like floodlights smeared by rain.]

Then Mars came out with the newspaper hack on one side and the kid in his arms. First kid picked up by the killer who was ever seen alive again.

[And he'd had nothing to do with it.]

So I told everybody to stand down, and there you go. Happily ever after.

But the kid--

[His eyes close. His hands are gripping tight to each other, short nails digging into the skin. Hard effort makes his voice steady.]

Shaun says different.

_{[Four years ago? She probably would have.]

[But hey, maybe she's done a bit of growing up since she first got here. ... As hard as that could be to believe, given some of the crap she gets up to.]

[As it is, she just listens, an inscrutable look on her face.]

[She's been on the side of viciously hating police for hurting innocent people, but hearing it from the OTHER side is at least a new experience. She's no fan of him beating on this guy if he was innocent, but if he really did think it was to stop a serial killer from murdering children...]}

So you didn't do it, but Shaun says you did.

_{[... Well, she doesn't think Blake's lying. It took too much to get him to talk to begin with, and the fact that he's telling her at all makes it unlikely that he'd spew a bunch of incriminating details before slapping a 'But I remember something different!' disclaimer at the end if he actually didn't. He'd be accusing the kid of lying, not pondering the nature of the Multiverse.]

[She still squints at him, though, brows furrowed. Not just for reasons of suspicion... this is the first time she's heard that Shaun was kidnapped. And it sends an ache of sympathy for the kid through her chest.]}

... I'll be honest, Blake, that sounds horrific. What you did is horrific.

... But I don't think you'd be telling me you told people to stand down if you didn't.

You wouldn't be so torn up about this if you didn't.

[There's more hesitance on Riku's end. It's good that Blake's calmed down. That's a start, but what's he supposed to say now?

It's... tough. Riku may be nineteen now, but in many ways he is still a kid. He lacks the hard life experience of a full-grown adult-- especially someone like Blake, who's served on the police force. A job fraught with danger.

Is Riku too idealistic? Maybe Sora's rubbed off on him more than he expected, because his gut instinct's to say something like, "It'll be okay." He raises his index finger, then lowers it, once again hit with hesitation.

After a while, he finally starts speaking.]

...Well, there's still time to turn it around. You could look at this place like a second chance. But even if you don't, just... everyone has their screw-ups every now and then. I've heard that I make some pretty lousy mistakes myself, so you're not alone.

[Because even if Riku didn't shoot somebody, he still ends up destroying his home in the future, a fact that's haunted him for years.]

...But the monster had reasons to believe that the hero was another monster, right? It's not like the monster just decided to act like that for the fun of it. Both had perceived shades of grey, at the very least. Clear cut stories of black and white, of good and evil, don't happen in real life.

[He means for it to come out rationally; if anything, it comes out sadly.]

You don't know who the Grim Reaper is?

[Yusuke looks and sounds surprised. Well. That's kinda strange. Then again, he is talking to a dog right now (albeit a pretty smart one), so maybe he shouldn't expect her to understand everything he's talking about. It probably doesn't help that nobody seems to die around here in the first place.]

Okay, basically, the Grim Reaper's kinda like the personification of death. When you die, the Grim Reaper comes to collect your soul and take you to the afterlife. He's usually depicted as this skeleton in black robes who carries a bigass scythe around, so, y'know, it's pretty understandable that the guy was surprised to find out that the Reaper's actually a girl with an annoying voice and a huge rack.

[Yusuke didn't expect Steve to get so fired up, but he waits until she's gotten it out of her system before he goes on. It would've been nice to have someone tell him something like that, he thinks. Back then, that is, before he ended up on the wrong end of somebody's bumper. Would've saved him a lot of grief.]

Like I said, the Spirit World's where you go after you die. And Enma's the one in charge of running the place, as well as the guy responsible for deciding whether you go to Hell or Heaven. He's kinda like the Grim Reaper in that you see him all the time in paintings and movies and video games and stuff, so when the Reaper took the guy to Spirit World to talk to him about the resurrection trial, he was expecting to meet this big, ugly, corrupt rat bastard with long pointy teeth and huge beady eyes who thinks just because he's got a lot of power that means he can screw over whoever he wants!

[Yusuke's tone of voice becomes progressively louder and more vehement the more he describes King Enma. By the time he's done, he looks irritated as hell. Does he have some, uh... strong feelings about Enma? You better believe he does. That guy has earned himself a permanent slot on Yusuke's shit list, which is a more difficult feat than one might expect.

That said, it does occur to him a second or two later than it really ought to've that he probably shouldn't be letting it get to him right now, and so he forces himself to calm down, proceeding a bit sheepishly afterwards.]

... but uh, that's not how it worked out. Instead, when the Reaper took him into King Enma's palace, he met this little kid. Like, this really, really little kid. Couldn't've been more than two years old, or so the guy thought, which was why he totally laughed his ass off when he found out that that was the person he was supposed to be meeting. I mean, c'mon, how the hell could the Spirit World be run by a toddler? The kid hadn't even stopped teething. 'Course, when he said that, the Reaper slapped the hell out of him, and then the kid said...

[Yusuke pinches his nose and pitches his voice up high again. Looks like the Reaper's not the only one getting a goofy voice. This one's just more nasal and annoying. ~~You're welcome, Koenma.~~]

"Actually, I'm the son of King Enma, and I'm about a gajillion years old, so WEEEH."

[Yusuke lowers his hand and gives the camera a dry look.]

Now, why in the hell it takes a gajillion years for somebody to graduate to a booster seat, I've got no frickin' clue, and neither did the guy, but before he could ask, the, uh...

[... what does he call Koenma. He can't keep saying "kid", because that was the little boy. "The Prince", maybe? It feels weird as hell to call him that, but for the sake of the story, he'll roll with it. It's not like Koenma's here to find this and give him shit for it.]

The Prince of the Spirit World said, "So you're here to ask about your trial, right? Well, here--"

"TAKE THIS EGG!"

What could you have done? You're barely out of high school. [For once, it's not dismissive. Just remembering a time when problems and mistakes were on a whole different scale.

Riku's phrasing takes a second to catch up to him as he looks down at his hand, turning it over and back again.] You've heard? So it's some other universe shit for you too, huh.

[Blake should be the wise one, here. The one with the answers.]

Hell. I don't know. Second chances are a damn nice idea, but there's shit you can't make up for.

That's why people get locked away.

And then he handed him a golden egg.

And then the guy was like, "what the hell."

[... okay, that isn't exactly how that conversation went. It's damn well close enough, though, if you ask Yusuke. He goes on.]

Turns out, the trial - or ordeal, or whatever you wanna call it - he was supposed to go through to come back to life involved hatching what's called a Spirit Beast - kinda like a Pokemon, except the form it takes is determined by what sorta energy you've got emitting from your soul. Sorta like a reflection of your inner self. The Prince of the Spirit World told him that it was a test of character - if he did good things and hatched a good beast, he'd pass the trial, and the beast'd guide him back to his body. If he kept bein' a stupid asshole and he hatched somethin' ugly and evil, then he'd fail the trial, and the beast'd eat him, soul and all, and he'd be lost forever.

So, y'know. No pressure, right?

[INSERT ONE DIRECTION LAUGH TRACK HERE... god, that deal was such bullshit. Why is half of everything related to Spirit World bullshit. This is the question that will plague Yusuke until the end of his days.]

Anyway, the guy wasn't exactly buying what the Prince was selling, but before he could think too much about it, he took the egg. Then he and the Reaper went back to the living world, and the Reaper was like, "Oh yeah, by the way, we should probably make sure your body doesn't get cremated. Can't return to your body if it's burnt to a crisp, can you, NYEHEHE."

[... Yusuke, Botan doesn't laugh like that and you know it. Geez.]

How about plunge an entire world into darkness? Hasn't happened yet, but...

[He gulps and shudders, a grimace crawling across his face. It probably sounds stupid. Abstract or even unbelievable. Riku was shocked when he first heard, but after everything that's happened here, it's become a bit harder to deny, even if everything turns out right.

Maybe he oughta focus on something a little easier to grasp for now.]

But sometimes people can change. They don't always, but there's always a chance that they can turn things around. They just have to be willing to try.

Edited 2014-07-26 06:06 (UTC)

For a long time, I thought the kid was hallucinating or something. He'd been standing in a fucking well for four days, starved, tired, scared--

[Steve's face lifts into the air with an alerted "Snub?". She sniffs, and wrinkles her nose at the sharp scent. Blake's nails have drawn blood from his palms. Blake loosens his hands.]

He could've seen anything. That's what I kept telling myself.

But...it didn't sound like a hallucination that went away. He talked like it was a long time ago. Like he'd spent a long time with a dead dad.

If it was a nightmare, he would've woken up by then.

[Horrific. Yeah, that's about the word for it.

He dares to look at Heather out of the corner of his eye.] You believe me?

[He says it like a report, not an argument.] I didn't kill him. He's alive and well. Had his picture in the paper for weeks.

[He breathes in deep, and out again.]

But for that kid he's dead, and it's because of me.

[Suddenly he looks at her, and his voice is full of urgency, imploring.]

How am I supposed to deal with that? How can I man up and take responsibility when I'm not the one who pulled the trigger?

There's supposed to be, damn it! The good guys do whatever it takes to fight the bad guys! It's supposed to be fuckin' simple!

[His face crumples. Instead of accusatory, it comes out plaintive.]

How would you know?

Not exactly, but it's close enough fo--

[To his credit, Ocelot smiles politely when Blake comes on screen.]

Call me Adamska. Your Pokemon had a question so I was answering it for her. Nothing else happened, I assure you.

_{[She doesn't look away or avert her eyes. This is far from the worst story she's ever heard, although her heart still aches for Blake and Shaun both. It's hard to know exactly WHAT to make of this clusterfuck, but the only reasonable explanation she can think of is that Blake is onto something with that 'alternate universe' idea he mentioned.]}

... I don't know if I have an answer for you there. I'm sorry.

But yeah.

I believe you.

... I think... I think all you can do is... you know you're not the guy who pulled the trigger.

So keep being the guy who didn't pull the trigger.

Maybe that'll never be enough to make it better for Shaun, but that's what you can do here and now.

Does that make any sense?

[It sounds insane, but the look on the kid's face stops him dead. Obviously he takes it seriously, and it has a kind of fairy tale nightmare logic to it. Blake's heard of weirder things. Seen them, too, lately.]

Getting dark doesn't kill anybody.

Makes me think of something I told another kid a long time ago. You can't arrest somebody on fortune-telling. Conspiracy, plots drawn up, that's one thing, but you can't blame somebody for a crime that's not even in their head. Whether or no to do it is still up to you.

But this...

[He takes a long, long breath.]

This is done. No taking it back.

[Change. Small word, big, big idea.]

You got your whole life ahead of you. Me...

I've done a lot of nasty shit, kid. I always had a good reason. There was pressure, shit to take care of, no time to go around wearing kid gloves or second-guessing your gut.

Here, I got nothing but time.

[Steve stays near Heather, watching Blake. He reaches over and rests her paw on Heather's leg.

Blake is quiet for a long, long time. There's no sound but the hum of the gym's ventilation, and a napping Musharna's soft sighs of mist.]

Yeah.

Yeah, it does.

[He shakes his head heavily, causing a drop of cold sweat to run down his temple.] It wasn't that I made the wrong choice. I didn't make a choice at all. It's like a fuckin' coin flip, you know? Didn't have anything to do with me. Things fell one way, I killed him. Things fell another, I didn't. Pure fucking luck.

But you're right.

I don't know why I ended up the one I am, but that's...

[His eyes go up to the long bars of the fluorescent lights. Falling steady on him, not on a warehouse door.]

...that's the one I'd rather be.

[Blake doesn't like the guy's smile. Right now, he doesn't like much of anything.

Steve is barely visible at the edge of the screen, crouched low to the floor, ears pulled back.

It doesn't sound like any name he's ever heard. He echoes it flatly.] Adamska.

[He looks from the Snubbull to the phone. Behind him, the Hitmonlee is running through a regimen of kicks to the air.]

I don't see what my dog has to talk to you about.

[He shrugs. He doesn't exactly want to get the Pokemon in trouble. She's intelligent and sentient and more than likely capable of feeling humiliation. Ocelot's a jerk, but he's not that much of one.]

She asked for people to tell her a story.

I obliged.

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[17] [Text/Action for Mahogany] - "Whenever You Get Involved, Someone Gets Hurt."

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