Lost Souls

[shimmershimmer]

[You don't wake up, exactly, but at some point you come to. There's something wrong with you, a numbness and translucency. Should you try to touch something, your hand will pass through it. Why, it's as if you were a ghost. So that's the bad news. Sorry about that. The good news is that mentally, you've woken up entirely. You remember the real truth of who you are, your relationship to your so-called "family," and all the other lies you've been fed by the Shimmering Lady.

You can move freely around what you will soon realize to be the village. The reason why it may take moment of realization is simply because it doesn't look anything like you remember it. The sky is black, the grass is dead, and the cottages are run-down and shoddy concrete buildings. The pond is dirty, and there are no animals whatsoever, anywhere.

And the temple. It's more like a storehouse than a temple. The Shimmering Lady is there, or that mass of flesh and tendrils that calls itself the Shimmering Lady...

She doesn't seem to see or hear you. When the others exit their "homes," neither will they. And there's some strange force keeping you within the walls...]

((Popcorn, mingle, curse the Lady, etc! Also! There will be a special thing for you to do here once Night 01 starts. Watch for it~ :>))

Comments

[irenicly]

[He tenses noticeably.

There's really nothing he can do about it, especially if Tsukiyama has his ghoul skills here in deadland, but...]

If you think I'm going to stand here and take it, you're mistaken.

[lasuaspada]

Is that so.

[Oh, now he's amused, good lord.]

Tell me what you intend to do about it, Banjou-san. I could use the amusement right now.

[irenicly]

[HE'S GOING TO BACK AWAY FROM YOU, THAT'S WHAT

Banjou is... look, he doesn't even have a rating because the CCG are barely aware of his existence. He's not exactly willing to get into a fistfight with Tsukiyama until he has proof he's not going to be torn in half by Tsukiyama's kagune.]

[lasuaspada]

...How laughable.

[Oh, if he had access to his kagune at the moment, Banjou would have been torn in half already. There wouldn't have been any leadup, he wouldn't have bothered with the greeting. If he were feeling generous he would have alerted him to his presence just so he could see his face before ripping into him.

As it stands, he's not sure he could use his kagune even if he wasn't feeling strangely out of sync with it; he'd forced himself to eat in front of Siebold immediately before "dying" and he hasn't exactly been right physically ever since. That seems to be less of a concern here, but still...

As it stands, he simply palms his closed fist, not hard enough to crack knuckles but enough to make it plain that if he's capable of harming you here, your face is going to be the first thing to go.]

Anything to say to me before I ensure you can't say anything, brother dearest?

[irenicly]

[It's suicide to go up against Tsukiyama, but if he's dead anyway maybe it won't be so bad. He'll be a crumpled heap on the ground in about five seconds flat, but if he's lucky maybe he'll get one dodge in first.

Banjou's fists clench. He's hopelessly outmatched here, but he doesn't care now.]

I wonder how that thing made you care about someone other than yourself, Tsukiyama-san.

[lasuaspada]

Please. You've been mourning me all day - if I didn't know better, I'd say you'd been spending too much time among the humans. Beginning to feel like one, were you?

Or were you just too pathetic to be able to live with the consequences of what you'd done?!

[And even if Tsukiyama doesn't have access to his kagune he's still obscenely fast; he seems to have change his mind about going for Banjou's face, so at least that's...arguably good.

...He seems to have shifted his focus into trying to knock the wind out of him instead, which is probably less good.]

[irenicly]

You should have been the demon. You would have enjoyed it.

[...what's wrong with mourning someone, anyway? Banjou had spent time mourning his followers for dying because of something he'd done, why wouldn't he--

Well, he wouldn't mourn Tsukiyama now.

Banjou is also an idiot. He's not exactly capable of dodging the attacks of an S-Rank ghoul at all.]

[lasuaspada]

[No. No, he really is not.

That said, Tsukiyama draws up just before hitting him, his fist stopping barely before making contact; rather than indicating that he's decided to feel merciful today for god only knows what reason, he just looks incredibly annoyed.]

Would it kill you to try to intercept me? Fight. Back.

[irenicly]

[He tenses.

Banjou hadn't been expecting Tsukiyama to give him a chance to fight back, honestly.

But he does raise his fists finally, at least looking like he's ready to defend himself. It's stupid and going to end with him severely injured, but if he's being given the opportunity to fight back before ending up in a heap on the ground, he's going to take it.

Actually successfully hitting Tsukiyama, however, is only going to happen if he deliberately takes the hit. Banjou's just too slow to fight effectively.]

[lasuaspada]

[...Good. He'll write off his hesitation to just beat the shit out of the guy with no resistance as lingering effects of the brainwashing earlier; for the time being he's not sure what's wrong with him mentally, he just knows it's making him angry as hell and he has absolutely no direction for it.

Of course, the fact that he can't fucking hit you in any sort of meaningful way isn't going to really help matters. I mean it connects, but it's in a strange, disconnected-feeling way that he's not sure he trusts, and he backs off immediately once he's done it.]

...Ah.

[No seriously WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT

WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU

...WHAT THE HELL SHOULD HE BE DOING WITH HIS FACE RIGHT NOW]

[irenicly]

[Banjou braces himself for a blow that will land him crumpled on the ground. It's not like he can die like this, he doesn't think, but he could be wrong. He'd spent the entire day waiting to be burned to death, after all.

And he'd spent a lot of the day feeling actual grief for someone he can't stand, and that... it shouldn't still bother him.]

I...

[Banjou moves to touch the spot where Tsukiyama has punched him. At full strength, that would be an injury to worry about, but apparently that all goes out the window when you're a ghost.

He really... doesn't know what to do so he just sort of stares, wondering if maybe he should go be around the rest of the group, but not wanting to turn his back to Tsukiyama.]

[lasuaspada]

[You know, there is absolutely no way to just...catlike-grace his way out of this, but like hell if he doesn't seem determined to try at first; he just...steps back, and rakes one of his hands through his hair in the most flamboyant way he can manage, and he rolls his eyes so hard that he's liable to sprain something if he's not careful.]

You're fortunate.

[irenicly]

I know.

[Banjou doesn't doubt that at all.

So now what? They can't exactly hurt each other, not that Banjou stood a chance to begin with. They've spent a few days having their skulls fucked with, and while he doesn't want to even attempt to discuss it with Tsukiyama, he still has some amount of lingering feelings. It makes him uncomfortable.]

I don't know about you, but I'm going to help figure out what's happening here. The sooner we get back to Kaneki, the better.

[lasuaspada]

[And something about that - maybe the mention of Kaneki, maybe something else entirely, he can't really say for sure - seems to kick something in his head into gear; the shift is visible, his expression leaving some of the annoyance behind and slipping easily into something slightly more neutral, or at least less like he's going to rip your face off with extreme prejudice.]

I've already been working on it; I've spoken to McDougal-san, to try to get his perspective on what the entire ridiculous lot of you thought you were doing. I've also been watching everything that's happened today - or at least, as much as I can, I am still only one person - and trying to ascertain how much is true and how much is the result of brainwashing.

It's ugly, to put it very gently.

[irenicly]

[If they can have this discussion without another fight, he'll be grateful. Working with Tsukiyama isn't easy, but they do need to get back to Kaneki.]

I can't speak for Kimblee-san, but I thought we were helping. Get the numbers down and then we "win." It sounded simple enough at the time, but that was probably the brainwashing, wasn't it?

...When the option of taking us to the barn came up at the trial, Kimblee-san looked disturbed. He probably knows something I don't. That's where the real temple is, but I don't want to go anywhere near it.

[He really doesn't want to know what the Gentleman looks like among other things.]

At least, it looked like the real temple whenever I saw it.

[lasuaspada]

...The real temple...

[He mulls that over for a moment.]

We ought to talk to Kimblee-san about that, then, because I saw that too. He was fine when the discussion centered around burning, but he seemed...a little upset about being sent into the barn. I wasn't sure why, other than the obvious "If the Lady wants to put him in there, it probably isn't safe."

What was in this "real temple" of yours?

[irenicly]

An entity who called himself the Gentleman.

I saw this in my dreams, so I don't know how real any of it was, and he didn't look like something out of a horror movie when I saw him. He claimed that the Lady had imprisoned him in the temple.

You know the vague threat we had knowledge about? He talked about it, too. Nothing specific, just that it's a "threat."

[....]

I wouldn't be surprised if he was a lie made up by the Lady, but in those dreams, I could see the village for what it really is.

[lasuaspada]

...I don't know about that, Banjou-san, if you legitimately saw no threat in that barn - but at the same time, I don't know why Kimblee-san seems to have, either.

[irenicly]

[He has this feeling he's missing vital information.]

Kimblee-san probably knows something I don't.

[lasuaspada]

That's not particularly difficult.

[Tsukiyama...]

[irenicly]

[That's a low blow.]

Says the man who honestly believed I was possessed.

[lasuaspada]

[...You tried it.]

That wasn't my fault and you know it.

[irenicly]

[You know, he's pretty aware of his whole doesn't know anything problem. That being said, he isn't... really in the mood to go back to bickering or having Tsukiyama trying to kill him.]

I don't think anyone should approach the barn until we know more.

[He's just... going to wish he could ask someone besides Kimblee about this. Banjou has honestly tried to avoid knowingly killing everyone. Except for when it came to the dove where he....

...you know what, let's not think about that right now.]

Unless you want to risk possibly getting eaten by a horror novel monster.

[It's sarcastic, but he's also not going to say no if Tsukiyama wants to see what the barn actually looks like.]

[lasuaspada]

[...]

You know, I wouldn't be surprised if that's exactly what's in there...?

[That's...huh.]

Now that we know what the Lady looks like, who's to say that your Gentleman...

[But at the same time, there's something wrong with that, isn't there?]

How in the world would Kimblee-san know about that, however?

[irenicly]

I don't know.

[It's possible Kimblee doesn't know for certain, and to be honest Banjou barely knows him so he can only tell the bullshit when it's extremely obvious, but assuming the Gentleman is actually something horrible is the safest bet.]

The only way to find out is to ask him.