旅客:新創
"And what do poets behold but in essence nothingness? Surely their drivel is simply a self-righteous waste of ink!"
"But if that were true, why do they not write about golden coins?"
"Pearls before swine. They cannot appreciate that which means anything in this world."
"Or trash before nobles. Perhaps because they lack such a thing, they are poets."
~*~
1st Order
'Serenity; Goal of the Darkness'
~1.40k~
"And what do poets behold but in essence nothingness? Surely their drivel is simply a self-righteous waste of ink!"
"But if that were true, why do they not write about golden coins?"
"Pearls before swine. They cannot appreciate that which means anything in this world."
"Or trash before nobles. Perhaps because they lack such a thing, they are poets."
~*~
1st Order
'Serenity; Goal of the Darkness'
~1.40k~
"Senzaikyuu..."
It was a pillar of white vindication, that much she knew. What more else could they have told her? Leon undoubtedly knew more than those stupid sunglasses allowed others to see, and Tenkyuu's antenna probably gave him access to restricted shinigami airwaves. And Shinshi? Well...
...anyone that obsessed with 'justice' probably didn't care about the Senzaikyuu.
But it captivated her attention, though the phallic imagery concerning the towering white pillar was slightly disgusting. She didn't quite know how to explain it, nor would she ever, but if forced to she would say 'it was a type of connection between reality itself and my power to change it'. Nobody would quite know what she meant, so she would eventually sigh and explain;
"I knew that I had to know it, because otherwise, how would I destroy it?"
The ancient motto of 'know your enemy' didn't quite extend to their buildings or works, but the Senzaikyuu itself seemed to be a living testament to shinigami dictatorship. A type of prison, wasn't it? Made out of special materials to keep high-level criminals at bay, or something of the sort. The obsidian Vizard had said a few things about it offhand...but had never quite committed to any type of explanation.
Committing to something...
It brought a pang of pain to Namiko's throat, eliciting a small noise from the girl. The sun was starting to rise and she was starting to plan her day. How would she continue? Though her course had been a little off, the idea of heading straight North seemed more and more appealing.
She felt Tenkyuu and Leon in their pair, and Shinshi seemed to be fine. She frowned slightly; splitting up hadn't been part of the plan. Really, she should have put up more of a fight to keep within Shinshi's range so they could meet up again...but he seemed so glad to be alone again.
"After all that time being an 'outsider'...you really don't like being an 'insider', do you?" she asked the memories of the boy. Gaijin, they had called him, though she never knew what it meant until he told her. She had only called him Shinshi, really, and that's all she ever would.
...well, she could always call him 'stupid', 'idiot', 'loser', 'screw-up', but those were simply the most endearing of terms from the womanly woman of womanhood-filled woman-ness.
A smile was brought to her roundish face as her eyes sparkled at the sunrise. Ever since she had started doing track she would run in the morning; never at night. Always in the morning, because...it was good to wake up the world? Perhaps. She simply wanted to race the sun, that's what her mother had said. Racing the sun towards the end of the day, and winning. Kobayashi Namiko, that's her.
"The air here is a lot thicker, it's different than that at home, even on Earth in general." Namiko tilted her head, "This is like...the opposite of high-altitude training. My coach probably won't be happy about this...
"...any of this."
She paused for a moment; was any really going to understand what they were doing? Was anyone going to really sympathize. Hell, were they even going to understand what they, themselves, were doing? Sure, as Ryoka, they were given objectives and reasoning. But greater implications, the scale on which they would effect efforts...all of this was beyond them.
All of them.
But that obsidian man, the Vizard with a second mask of lies...he gave off such a feeling.
She felt a spine run up, and then back down, her spine. Trailing through her nerves and destroying all other feelings for the briefest instant. She frowned...such a feeling indeed.
"All of this thinking...is it really necessa-."
"But - all of this attacking - is it really necessary?"
"Necessary? What defines necessary? Necessity itself? Well then, whose necessity?! You can't expect any action to be necessary or not, really. Murder may be necessary, but in the eyes of the victim, it's certainly not necessary. I wouldn't expect someone to say that my death is a necessity, because it's not something I need."
"So, let me guess, you go by the greater good? What more people will benefit from? That kind of thing?"
"I suppose if you were a lawyer." Namiko almost laughed, but for some reason the statement seemed eerily serious, "If you were a man who bargained away the lives of others for a living, then perhaps. But as a warrior, as someone who holds the power of life or death in your hands, in your sword, you cannot go by that. Because, like necessity, what defines 'good'."
"...so why am I even doing this?" she stopped her rhythmic movements, hands frozen in place before they flopped to her sides in defeat, "Why am I practicing martial arts to kill others?"
"Because you define 'good', above all else. You decide what your 'good' is, and you act upon it. Nothing else, nothing more. If you define 'good' as a person, you follow that person's orders or you attempt to become that person. If you define 'good' as an ideal, then you follow that ideal until you are stripped bare. If you define 'good' as an action, do not hesitate to do that action. And if you define 'good' as others define 'evil', then know that you will do what humans do best; kill."
She paused, "But isn't humanity greater than beings because we know how to reserve? Isn't that what makes us 'human', our 'humanity'?"
"We have humanity, but make no mistake." The man shook his head, "Humans are, were, and shall forever be, animals. We know how to kill, and why one would kill, and it is emblazoned upon our palms, the very blood-stained palms that you have yourself."
There was silence before Namiko looked at her hands, which were suddenly shaking. Shaking so fast that they lost their sense of boundary, become an undefined characteristic of amorphous pastels.
"So with these hands...I define good?" She frowned, "What if...I hate these hands?"
"Then you're in luck." This had earned one of the few smiles she had ever seen, "Because I will teach you to throw away your hands and take up the weapons of reality itself."
There was an awkward pause; one usually shared between fledgling lovers before the climax, or let-down, of the evening. But the two lovers, in this case, weren't so much lovers as those going on a blind date. Seireitei itself and Kobayashi Namiko found themselves oddly paired in a most odd, yet distinct way.
"I suppose so." She answered her own question with nothing more than what came to mind; it deserved no great though, anyways. It wasn't some epiphany, but instead, a simple recollection. A recollection of...a murderer.
She really hated being blunt.
The towering white behemoth before her quivered in anticipation; perhaps it was happy to see her? She frowned; she certainly wasn't happy to see it. Then, though, the most curious sensation trickled up her spine as it wasn't the Senzaikyuu that quivered but inste-
Loosing her footing, Namiko's hand shot to the nearby roof of the closest house. It found nothing. She cursed audibly as the ground beneath her was suddenly destroyed, presumably by some shinigami patrol. As her reiryoku swirled in anticipation of a fight, the seals seemed to restrict her very breathing itself. What pitiful inventions, that which held her back.
Her hands eventually found something rather strong, digging in, she looked up to see it was the arm of a shinigami. The man quickly lost his own footing and was pulled out of a window as Namiko's mind went into overdrive.
...dark...
Her eyes opened to see what she had done. Blood. Blood. Before her, around her, above her, below her, permeating her very core. The smell would be impossible to erase for months, perhaps even years.
Was he dead? No, but he wasn't alone either. Four other shinigami, all of them pitifully weak, were now bleeding from their jaws and body with a handful of fractures in their skeletal support system.
She didn't hate the darkness.
She just didn't understand it.
She found, with a curious smile, that she was facing directly north. To the Senzaikyuu.
No blood had fallen upon the Senzaikyuu.
Lucky.
"...I suppose...that's it, then."
She took two steps forward, and never looked back.
Because that's what she thought was...