BZPRPG: Ga-Wahi

IC:

"I doubted her resolve was true." Sinshi stated in answer to Tarkus before, after a moment's pause, shaking Solvi's hand. "Interesting choice of words, Lady Soter. I am Umbraline Sinshi, part of the Lady Hanako's guard."

IC:

My brain had started to regain a little color at that point, rebooting after that little switch to safe mode for some debugging.

I'm sorry Miss Sinshi, but you doubted her resolve? Were we even looking at the same person here? I know you don't have my Rau, but it should be noted that her name means 'Resolve'.

"I thought reading people was a big part of how life was over there. Play with fire like that more often and you may not actually get the chance to get somewhere on that backwards system of yours." 

I muttered it low, but clear. I was, as we all knew by now, a normal guy. And as a normal guy, I was at the end of my rope, ######. There's no way someone who had as much access to the political theatre, even as a bystander, wouldn't have caught that Miss Soter's resolve was true. It just didn't happen like that!

Was she seriously about to play a game of "get the last word in" with Soter?

I was going to be there for hours. I felt it in the newly-formed pit in my stomach.

Excellent.

IC: Vilda Mako (Ga-Koro)

"It's considered offensive in our culture to poke around in each other's heads without permission," I spoke up, "our basic mental conversation is no different from physical conversation with the mouth, someone "talks", everyone else "hears", we don't get more insight into someone's head than what we hear 'em say."

"And Sinshi is not a Willhammer anyway, so she couldn't "read" people even if she wanted to, least not in that way"

"I'm a Willhammer, but I can't just barge into someone's head without their permission, they notice that stuff. There's punishment for that sort of thing"

IC (Dakte)

"I believe," Dakte observed, standing calmly nearby, "the Toa meant 'read' in the social sense."

IC:

Yes. That was in fact what I meant. I thanked this third Dasaka to show up, for he had restored my waning hopes in his people with that line. Thankfully, I was saved from having to do further explanation of my mythical, long-lost superpower called using your brain to a pair of psychics. 

If I seemed bitter, you should put yourself in my shoes and try not to come out frustrated. If you do, I'd be delighted to have a dose of some of your patience, Holy Father. 2 milligrams would suffice. Thank you.

"Yeah."

OOC:

-IC:-

Sand, gritted fingers; the texture of sandpaper abrasing itself. Skin coarse and adust, slowly burnt darker; chaoyant and vivid. Spine digging into sand, each particle of silicon embedding itself into the skin, prickling, needling.

Eyes closed, sunlight filtering through shades of darkness. The sound of sea, softly crashing on aeolian shores of off-white, sky darkened with storm.

I'd like to get you on a slow boat to china

All by myself, alone

Her arms were powerful, almost primal, their grip tense and unbreakable. She had rowed for hours, but still could hold her with an unearthly robustness, as vehement as a tempest and as unassailable as stone. Thoughts passed through her mind as uncaringly as ash carried by zephyrs, satisfied with nothing and passionate about entirety.

It was like a summer daydream, the sea reflecting the sky's rising lights, turning waters a discrepant blue-orange, making cresting waves shimmer with unnatural chroma. Reality unfocused in the tranquility of her arms and the waves. The sight of sea, endless; recursive lapping at the side of their boat, asking, pleading.

Get you and keep in my arms, evermore

Leave all your lovelies, weeping on the far away shore

Uncertain, unfounded; movements imprecise, locomotion disrupted. But mentally, mentally... For the mind, an entire new dimension, a realm of honesty and happiness in intercourse with deceit and poignant sorrow. Enhancement of reality, including faults. That's how someone described it to her once, under the market arcade, as she sipped something without name or equal.

It wasn't a good time to be talkative. The afternoon waters were restless, as if the unseen excitement of aquatic night was driving them restless. Massive, nameless creatures moved beneath them occasionally, sending the schools of fish flickering into confused darkness. They were adrift on the waves, the power of her arms finally extinguished. They sat in silence and watched as the fishing ships abandoned their spots and moved back to shore, coerced by setting sun and hesitant prey. The feeling of sea, cool water caressing fingers dangled cautiously over the boat's edge, the spray of sea foam with each wave.

Out on the briny, moon big and shiny

Melting your heart of stone

Night came and brought with it curses and violence. It started with a subtle discontent, sending shivers of hostility arcing through her spine. They ran out of cocoroco with frightening speed, watching the sunset while playing meaninglessly with the tin flasks. That was when she first spoke of going back; the response was less than cordial. A shifted gaze, cheeks flushed with anger, but nothing more. Instantaneous regret. An hour later, the last rays of light drowning in distant waters, a bark of displeasure, a roar in return.

It reached climax only after the first few drunken blows drew blood. She tried to disconnect one of the oars, use it as a bludgeon; no time. Tin flask in hand, smashing, crushing into face; teeth disconnected, nose broken, eyes watering. No elements; no time to think, no time at all. Her return blow was confused, imperfect. An opening, if there ever was one.

The sound of sea, as predators, silent and gleaming, hunt their skittish prey, blood flowing through fingers and filling the mouth with that salt-copper taste of ions dissolving.

I'd like to get you on a slow boat to China
All to myself, alone

Gouging, crushing, bludgeoning; nothing precise, acute. Vague strokes of violence painting an expressionist landscape of blood, mucus, and lymph. Her strength had left her, abandoned her in the disorientation of bloodloss. Sensory organs were damaged, ripped, torn shamelessly, with unnatural ferocity, far exceeding animalism. She stepped back, attempting to raise hands in self-defense, and then the fall, the push.

Reaching into water, grabbing, wringing; holding, caressing. Trying to recover. Trying to strangle. Blood coalescing with salted tears turned the night-waves insidious. Witnesses gathered, their glassy eyes hidden beneath the lustrous surface. She was screaming, roaring, weeping. Trying to pull, to hold and save; playing saviour. Blood trickled from her cut brow, ran down her face and clouded one eye. Fingers clenched involuntarily, held gently and kindly while crushing and ending.

The sight of sea, holding aloft the tragedy, the melodrama, suspending it on a podium of salt and blood. Witnesses myriad, but unspeaking, frozen in the silence of the abyss. Midnight blues and silvers play on a surface and then: nothing. All swept away by waves of mourning black.

* * *

She let the sand fall through her fingers, piling up on an infinity of similar particles, interrupted only by monoliths of driftwood. The sun played gently on her half-closed eyelids, setting her skin ablaze and turning her vision into a clouded radiance. An imperfect harmony with nature, a feeling of empty, nihilistic freedom. The sound of sea playing gently with children of mild shores of offwhite. And beyond that; a darkness infinite, bloodstained and phlegmatic.

She stood up slowly, head still tender, as if she were newborn. It took her a moment to remember her name, too preoccupied with the flashing remnants of memory that surged through her mind, but in time she remembered. Moana; Moana Huamo. She had always detested the name, but didn't care to change it. Calling herself Tenebrae or anything so pretentious would just elicit laughter.

For a moment, Moana thought she saw the face of the rower in the oncoming wave, teetering above the scrambling crabs, but it vanished on contact, transforming into the shell fragments and seaweed she had seen a thousand times over. It had been years since she had thought of the incident, having so many other moments of regret and pain to consider, but the vision haunted her none the less. As she staggered off of the beach, remembering only by luck to grab all of her meager possessions, she whispered the final words of the nameless rower's song, repeated so often that day with inane sentiment.

I'd like to get you on a slow boat to China
All to myself, alone

OOC: Moana Huamo open for interaction.

OOC: dibs

IC: Ekko

She was, for the most part, following the conversation at hand. But with said conversation came, unsurprisingly, sound. And with sound came echoes. And for the De-toa, echoes painted an image in her mind's eye, for her own did not work.

And so, the conversation had the added benefit of allowing her to feel the world around, without herself putting out an ultrasonic beat every few seconds. That took elemental energy, and being without her power was understandably uncomfortable given her sensitive hearing. The conversation was rather localized, too, not a headache-inducing cacophony that was most crowds. Navigatinging through that with echolocation was not the most comfortable experience.

Regardless, the conversation allowed her to "see" a rather familar shape close by, one that she had not expected to encounter here of all places. Focusing on that, Ekko turned to the shape as she slowly began to fit together the finer details, and waved.

"Hi Moana," she chirped.

-IC:-

The De-Toa's twittering speech seemed to fall on deaf ears; Moana continued her slow, painful walk, pausing only to check her satchel. Apparently unsatisfied with the search, she closed the flap with a grunt, before finally looking behind her at the expectant De-Toa.

“Do I know you?” Normally Moana would have at least tried to combine the face with a name, but in her current state, she didn't feel like even acknowledging the face's existence. Momentarily driven by cynical clarity, she added: “I don't have any money, so don't bother asking for favors.”

IC: Ekko

Ekko frowned, alright mistaking someone for someone else was something that she had done before, but at least she has a good excuse. No, that voice was the same, if slightly slurr-

Oh.

"Moana are you drunk?"

-IC:-

“Was,” Moana stared at Ekko with unceremonious interest, still unable to recognise the Toa. “Hopefully will be shortly.” A flicker of self-motivated intelligence glimmered in Moana's otherwise dead eyes. “Say, what if we were to go reminisce over some spirits?”

IC: Ekko

Ekko tilted her head up towards the sky slightly, which could have easily been her equivalent of rolling her eyes. That, or she was asking Artahka to lend her a hand down here.

"Yeah, how about no. More alcohol is not what you need. Moana, listen, Ekko, okay?"

"Don't make me pull you back together."

"Again."

IC: Wherya (Southern Charm)

"Hey Ekko"

The new gal looked like a bad case of the perpetual monday's, but I was willing to bet money on the appearance being deceptive, for now at least.

"Who's your friend?"

-IC:-

"You care to tell me when exactly you did that?" the possibility of free alcohol extingushed, Moana quickly turned back to her abrasive brusqueness. "As far I as I know and/or remember, you're just another face." 

At Wherya's arrival and question, Moana's uncongenial phlegm continued. "I'm no one of interest. Your friend here thinks she knows me," a flicker of a insidious smile, a gleam in Moana's eyes, invisible to Ekko. "But if she really did, I doubt she'd have bothered."

IC: Ekko

"Wherya, Moana. Moana, Wherya," Ekko replied, seeming to have not heard the Ga-toa's question or followup remarks. Given the fact that she herself had control over their very words, it was entirely possible that was true.

She turned to Moana after a second, a smirk playing across her Kanohi.

"And last time I think you fell on me. Regardless, what brings you here, Moana-who-I-most-certainly-don't-know?"

IC:

I had a bad feeling about this.

IC: Darien

IC:

I chuckled.

"Has your island ever had such visitors before?"

-Void

-IC:-

"I was leaving the beach. Excess sunlight, I guess?" Moana seemed slightly guarded, as if Ekko's question implied that she had some reason to account for her location. She hadn't lived beneath bridges and under abandoned, capsized ships to just trust anyone who knew her name and asked her why she was doing something. 

IC: Darien

Darien paused. "Can't say that we have, this is a first I think."

IC: "So," Aine said as she continued walking. "You're telling me that if we can convince someone with a ship and a Kaukau to take us out onto the sea, you can lead them back to where the pirate vessel went down and we can salvage what they had stored away on it?"

Shu nodded as he maintained his pace.

"Sounds like a good plan to me," the Cy-Lesterin agreed. "Then again, it's not like we currently have any others to compare it to."

IC Fekoro:

The Fe-Toa walked off toward Ga-Koro. He was hoping to find something to eat there, if not a map.

OOC: Open for interaction.

IC (Dakte)

 

"I believe," Dakte observed, standing calmly nearby, "the Toa meant 'read' in the social sense."

IC: Vilda Mako (Ga-Koro)

"Oh..."

The realization hit me like the hind leg of a Soko to the head. I really should've been able to pick up on that.Was being in a foreign land making me subconsciously assume a more stereotypical "eccentric elder" role? Zuto Nui forbid.

-IC:-

 

"I was leaving the beach. Excess sunlight, I guess?" Moana seemed slightly guarded, as if Ekko's question implied that she had some reason to account for her location. She hadn't lived beneath bridges and under abandoned, capsized ships to just trust anyone who knew her name and asked her why she was doing something. 

IC: Wherya (Southern Charm)

I dropped down from the ship and landed on ground near the newcomer.

"I usually don't shake hands..." I began, and did not offer my hand.

Most of my greeting methods were probably not the best route to go here anyway.

"So um... hi"

IC:

A little part of me died as I watched Wherya attempt to introduce herself.

"Do you actually know this person?" I whispered to Ekko.

IC:

I gave him a smile.

"I bet you say that to all the foreign delegations."

-Void

IC: Asa

Asa watched Daijuno converse with the "Marines". She then asked " I've noticed that this island is quite a bit more diverse in species of sapient life than our archipelago. Are all of them native to here?"

IC Fekoro:

Once on Ga-Koro's lilypads, Fekoro decided something. He did not like this Koro. Scary, especially for someone attuned to a heavy element. Iron didn't really float, and neither did Fekoro. Looking about, he saw someplace called the Great Takea. Shrugging to himself, Fekoro went inside.

OOC: Open for interaction.

IC: Ekko

"Yeah, but either she was a lot more drunk than I thought or-" Ekko whispered back, a considerably easier feat given her element.

"Wait, did she smile? Tell me if she smiled or not. Be careful not to confuse it with a frown, I've been told they look very similar."

IC: "No, I didn't see one." Sudo mentioned, sharing the Angler's stance on this particular subject.

So one party seems to believe they know eachother, but the other's completely clueless. This isn't one of those "I AM YOUR RIVAL"/"Literally who" moments either, Ekko seems to think they're friends.

Hmm...

Maybe this Moana person's from another dimension where she DOESN'T know Ekko? No, that's not right either. It's always the people who DO know everyone that get transplanted to a time or space where nobody knows them, I've read that book.

Well crud

I got nothing.
 

-IC:-

Moana felt herself growing tense as the De-Toa's friends multiplied, whispering amongst themselves with visible concern. Despite her attempt at impassivity, a darkness clouded Moana's face, making her eyes balefully empty, and her jaw clench; she was being scrutinised. At Wherya's attempt at greeting, she merely nodded and grunted a hey.

"Listen," Moana kept her voice level and calm, despite the growing anxiety. "You say you've met me before, when I was," she paused momentarily, posture rigid and militaristic, searching for a polite word. "Inebriated. If I threatened you or something, I didn't mean it; ####, I don't even remember who you are. Same goes for anything else I might have done. It wasn't personal."

Statement made, Moana paused uneasily, prepared to turn around and leave.

IC: "Are you sure you haven't mistaken her for someone else?" The question had to be breached, as dictated by decorum.

Never mind the fact that he wasn't sure how a blind person would go about it, but let's assume it a possibility.

Made life easier.

IC Solvi

Her sword is unsheathed in a flash, cutting down the mouthy foreigner and the strange little turaga. Tarkus was unfortunately unnoticed and between them and was thus cleaved in twain

At least, that was her first thought. The foreigner's words were true in a sense, perhaps the dreadful slowness she was realizing her goal with was an issue of resolve. She feels foolish and weak for a short moment, her conversation with this stranger had led to her being trapped in a cage of words and embarrassed for it, she could never let this happen again

It was clear the dasaka thought her no threat, starting a fight would be foolish and only lead to further dishonor. It was clear there was no way out but to prove her resolve. Not now, mind you. But in time... In time she would make true to her words, the island's bloated leadership would be cut down and disposed. Causing harm? That truly was of no concern to her, things had to break to be rebuilt. And breaking could be painful

Pain was necessary to harden people

So, against her impulses, she does not respond to the foreigner's words. She can get the last word in. For now

IC:

What was that just then? I felt an inexplicable sense of dread wash over me. Had I just narrowly avoided death? Did I barely escaped getting bisected down the middle as unfortunate collateral damage? Whatever the case was, there was no two ways about it: Solvi Soter was dangerous. I almost wanted to cower behind Miss Sinshi, but thankfully I had enough manly pride to only freeze in place, instead.

Today was definitely the strangest day I had ever had. Probably the worst too. Now of all times, why did I succumb to the "waking up late" cliche? Could I not trust my little sister to bug me anymore? I never liked it when she woke me up early, but at least she kept me up on my daily routine! I know there's little to be said about the merits of being stuck in one, but there's even less to be said about being stuck between Miss Sinshi, who can create fire swords with her mind, and Miss Soter, who I was pretty sure might be styled after Genghis Khan in some cruel, painful joke by the Great Spirit.

I prayed her day was going better.

IC: Darien

"Nah, this is the first time anyone's ever arrived on a...underwater vessel...or didn't suffer from some form of amnesia..." 

"I've noticed that this island is quite a bit more diverse in species of sapient life than our archipelago. Are all of them native to here?" 

Darien turned to Asa. "No, while Toa, Turaga, and Matoran have been here as long as anyone can remember, a lot of other species like the Skakdi and Vortixx washed up on these shores, and oddly enough...they never remember how they got here, or where they came from. Sometimes they don't remember who they even are." Darien paused, no one really thought about it, but why did nearly everyone who came to this island suffer amnesia? It was rather ominous. 

"I myself wasn't born on this island...where I originally came from, I don't even remember." 

IC: Eleen (Ga-koro Marines HQ, dungeons)

Orku, a Skakdi private who was part of Eleen's squad, opened the cell door while Eleen herself dragged the maskless Toa named Haarnak. "Here's your new home, criminal" Eleen explained to him with an unfriendly tone as they reached the entrance of the empty cell. She then pushed the Toa inside. "Enjoy your stay." Eleen had always hated terrorists and troublemakers with religious fervour, for she believed that they disrupted the Virtue of Unity. This Haarnak disgusted her even more than usual, for he had attacked the submarine of the foreigners. She hoped that they didn't think that Mata Nui was full of nutjobs like this Ta-Toa. She slammed the door, which was made out of metal bars, shut and locked it.

OOC: Mobile post.

IC: Haarnak (Ga-Koro, Marines HQ, Dungeons)

"Oh, I'm sure I will, Little Miss Justice," the Ta-Toa said with a dazzling grin.

"Say, did you know that lily pads are flammable?" He continued, running a finger down the concave inner surface of the plant-based building.

IC: Londar

"Nnngh..."

Londar groaned (in his sleep?).

" Echelon, Makuta Worshipers, Ko-Koro, everything..."

IC: Treize

"It's a pretty weird thing," explained Treize. "Nobody remembers how they got here."

IC: Asa

"... Perhaps I help some of them with that?" Asa thought for a bit. "If it's just lost memories, I could help recover them..."

IC: Treize

"Can you guys actually do that?"

IC: Asa

"Users of the Willhammer discipline like myself can enter into the minds of others. One of the things they can do is access and tamper with the memories of other people. I'm only an artisan, so I can only do basic memory manipulation, but some of our strongest warriors... Actually, I don't know just how much they can do. If it's just lost memories..."

IC: Londar

"Nnngh..."

 

Londar groaned (in his sleep?).

 

"###### Echelon, ###### Makuta Worshipers, ###### Ko-Koro, ###### everything..."

IC: Ashala

She continued to rub healing creams made from various healing herbs onto Londar's wounds before bandaging him. Makuta Worshipers? Ko-Koro? Oh no sounds like something awful has happened... Ashala thought bitterly.

"Okay, this might wake you up... should give you some strength..." Ashala said before she pulled out a flask, inside was a special tea made from a healing herb that replenished energy and was good to wake someone up who has passed or blacked out. She gently cupped the flask to Londar's mouth, elevating his head as she poured some down his throat.

IC: Treize

"So what could happen if the procedure goes wrong?"

IC: Asa

"Uh... Whatever changes are made stay changed. I have to consciously make an effort to change things though, so there shouldn't be any risk of accidentally messing with stuff. Unless the recipient resists particularly strongly..."