Categories > Games > Kingdom Hearts > Questions, Quandaries and Quarry
Here and Now: Justice's Hue
0 reviewsNow: The time after the War. When the light won. Despite declairations of victory there was one little thing the masses missed. Dark, Light, both were reflections of intensity.
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Questions, Quandaries, and Quarry
Chapter 1
Here and now: Justice's Hue
He recalls bits and pieces, fragmentations of a while. And like any intellectual, missing half the pieces of the problem is enough to rile his temper.
The fact that some niggling bit of truth insists that this lapse is his own fault stirs the rarely risen to vicious forum.
Slamming the door as he went, he stormed out. Quitting vocation and sense for a while. Fisted hands were shoved into black jean pockets, he loosed one fist to zip his hoodie tight never mind there was no chill. Errand done it clenches, and to better hide this he shoves it back into a pocket with its kin.
He's never cold, ever. The motion's a habit. Why, the why behind it is mad, barking, still if pressed he'll admit through grit teeth the following.
To ward their eyes…
Whose eyes, he never knew. The truth was likely a dated one. Considering the oddity of his apparel and carriage of the moment, it was more than likely he would draw any and all eyes to him. Actually the guarded glance of some woman across the street assures that he's right.
Like always.
Still, addressing the logic of the here and now verses the logic of the then and there… It's insane, he'd be first to admit it, inane even, but it's still there. An insurmountable impulse. And no matter how much he knows it's wrong, that it doesn't fit, all is eclipsed by the insidious hiss of the Before.
So he endures the odd look from the passerby across the street as he rips his hood over his face. His frame is quaking with near homicidal fury –the only thing that makes it near is the fact that there is now no one about to serve as a body- he tackles paved streets with stomping feet and storms into the night.
It is dark, night, the eternal moment that no one but him remembers has long passed. For this world (there are others, don't ask how, or even why he knows, he just does) while striking and beautiful in sunset and its attendant twilight, neither are eternal. While that monotony is broken the blockish, ho-hum, saneness of the buildings about him remains. Nothing could save those. Save razing.
But he wasn't the one for arson, they had… someone… for that. Roman numerals flicker through his mind like the dying edges of a fire he wishes he could use. Words akin to a child's rhyme, all disjointed and nonsense, save someone’s' striped the words of childishness, twiddle through his brain. Fire for nine, One superior…
One should have been mine. Was meant to be…
There and gone. Incensed now, he wishes for a dog to kick, not finding any he settles for a sizable chunk of pavement. The cements broken here. Fancy and a small crater with spider webbed jags indicate some mammoth's fist has done the damage. Gossip indicates the tenant above the shop –Frivolities Incorporated, his name, not the one that adorns the sign. Their specialty is shoes and accessories and how it all comes together to fill a shop no matter how small is a wonder of wonders- threw something heavy and dear to her husband out the window and let gravity work its wonders.
Good for her, so murmur the righteous busybodies.
Better for him, he doesn't have to deface someone's property to get a rock to kick. Vengeance done (spite indulged) foot hurting (expected) he crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at nothing at all.
And he hates getting his hands dirty, his hurting foot tells why without words.
And that, the last, is a wonder and mercy and worry all in one.
He's never without words, either his or other's to peruse. He's never without a book in hand. Legally obtained or not he has to have a book, and now that his rage had dulled to a more sane level –the red's receded- that lack is coming back.
Clamoring silently, his brain is informing him that right now, this ever moment, he is without a book. Redundant beyond redundant, it chatters that he's never ever without, and that span of Before murmurs in his ear with grating urgency that he's unarmed.
No not that.
Whispers are too tame, orders too concise. It drives him to correct his flaw via punishment. Setting an itchy emptiness over his hands that though fisted and pocketed and is insistent enough to encourage rubbing. Tracing seam, least his thumb feel left out, his other digits begin to twitch. Desperate to sooth a sensation that's, as his Shrink calls it, "all in his head".
As itch swells to an ache -to be open, to hold the edges, the comforting weight, save none of them are right, none of them at all- the sensations hijack his mind. With obsession's sincerity it avows that he doesn't have to resolve his dilemma now, just soon.
Preferably immediately.
Then the sadistic thing, the thing of Before ups ache to eye watering agony. Gnashing his teeth, least he scream, he closes his eyes, tries to push the need back.
And when he opens his eyes, finds that he's pushed everything else back. Confused by the unfamiliar open air, open sky, little facts flick into being. No roof, no walls, mean outside. Smooth grey stone, poured stone, cement! Beside a bit behind, broken, crater, jag… Numbers flash into his mind, then his aching foot somehow gives enough stimuli to shove the numbers and their elusive errant conclusion back. Broken, fragments, his, more than. He shifts on his aching foot, affirming that they are his, his to get back at. Lukewarm spite pushed back the chill running up his spine, so it's with clear, befuddled blue eyes he looks both about and inward. Sign, text, his lips curl as he reads its inanity. The whole is blockish, underscored with shoelaces, pink shoelaces… Irritating, the contents within are more so than the text, that fact bubbles to the front of his mind without much of a battle.
Behind, unseen but known, (reaching, he's reaching, good, a good thing, stretching the world past it's square and up) back, black, rough where the other is smoothed, white stripes, all straight, all chasing each other –save when it curves, but only at intersections- tidbits rustle about. Mind the red, save when it's green, words congeal into dialogue.
From Before, last week, never, who knew?
"When the little person is in the box abutting the pole with the three lights on it, it means to not turn! Not turn. As in, do not hit the accelerator and run the pedestrians over!"
Brutishly unrepentant, the other, as always, rumbled a surly
"Next time, you drive then!"
Footsteps, not behind but beyond his range of vision.
He'd heard those before. Swagger to the step, his heart raced and he whirled about, eyes wide, haunted by things that shouldn't be
Couldn't be.
"Don't you… want to be real…"
"What are you telling him!"
"You know… too much… Sorry Z-"
Pain, heart he didn't have wasn't beating, not anymore…
"Ienzo?"
Concern. One difference. Brown striped with silver flat, not red hair spikes. He grips each difference, and the madness in his gaze eases back bit by bit. Brown, apron, pants, white shirt, a hand warm (not scalding) reach for him. Reaching done, the one claps his shoulder. No black robes, on either of them. Truth pushed through Before and remembrance and fragments. Holy help him if it hadn't, help them both.
He snatches up the significant truth then, the closest one to the left and holds it tight.
This wasn't then.
One breath.
His mind is a puzzle see, save someone's swiped all the pieces and jumbled three sets into the same box and said here, live with this. And
Another breath.
His knees are knocking, bad, fear of things that had come and were nightmarish to boot. The whole tasted rancid and dark. He snorted, trying to dislodge the scent and failed. Failing, he fell, supported by…
Once more
Nothing at all. Else it wouldn't be a fall.
Back clacking against a white pole with enough force to cause the faulty light atop to flicker. While logic was his specialty, wiring was not, nor the logistics attached. He nearly sobbed, checking back the weakness, ever aware of eyes (no matter how kindly they were eyes, on him, and he must act accordingly) he slid down the pole.
Shivering, eyes scrunched, least he start crying, he wrapped arms around his chest. Now cold, more than.
"Bad one?" the hand retracted. Fabric on air, the subtle sounds of both interacting alluded to that.
He daren't open his eyes to check, the pieces were tumbling, eyes wide, he might see something. Something that alluded to illusions.
That'd destroyed him,
One handed, his Master, employer, both. Both were inflicted by mercy, had that bright blade put to their throats. Or in the older man's case, his hand. Put and pressed, and the pressure of a blade was quite cutting indeed.
It had been a petty thing. Whenever the older man had drunk he became violent, he hadn't stopped drinking, and thus had inflicted an act of violence upon some somebody of no importance. Permanent violence, permanent harm, a numbing really.
Not all that bad, at least the first victim's arm was still attached and stuffily mobile.
As for the second victim, the perpetrator of the wrong he was, but he was made a victim by the events thereafter… Well the evidence of what had happened was obvious to any with eyes, the ability to count, and a passing knowledge of the human body.
Seeing the stare, ascribing the aqua hued glower to more of the usual, confusion and the like, the brunette and his incriminating grey set one arm to rub his stump.
Rumor had it the detached could be visited in a museum of judicial curiosities nowadays.
Lips quirking at the faux pas that teased his tongue the fallen uncrossed his arms and let a glimmer of humor light his eyes.
"How long was I out?'
While not "out" exactly it was the word they'd decided upon.
"Not long Ienzo."
Blankly the young man stared up; not recognizing what was inherently his. He'd never react to it, after all his name was part of what had been stolen from him in good driven retribution.
The last gift from a mother and father he didn't know, never met, was no longer his.
Language had been twisted in his head, a wonder more wasn't, littler wonder that he had mood swings and was edgy ever after.
"Ready?" Arm offered, muscular but not as much as perhaps another he'd known, was offered.
"Client…." Before his temper… there'd been someone, pink haired, frizzled yet feminine despite being a male. Perfume and lip gloss were the two tells to that last judgment. "Did he…"
"Your exact words,-" finger interlaced he was pulled up; younger unsteadily toddled until balance was found. Once equilibrium was assured, the older carried on. "-were, "Traitor or not at least I think you pompous ignoramus!", when the pretty boy went to me and spotted my arm he up and vamoosed. Squeamish little thing he was. Gardeners always are."
"Tall little thing, he was." The Traitor drawled. "He topped you by half a foot."
And the speaker in question was topped by his retriever by almost a foot atop that. Growth genes, hormones, and the like, were devilishly selective. Much like intelligence.
"And what's got you grinning?"
"Something both impolitic and sadistic, you know, the usual."
"Don't I?" Thick older man's brows puckering in thought, perhaps thinking of a few uncensored 'comments' he'd had inflicted upon himself for asking the redundant "what". Taking the course of wisdom, thus living up to cliché around the edges, he said instead of the expected. "Well… Traitor, better now?"
A snort and a wry "Never," was both truth and answer for the two of them.
But this was the shade of justice in the land of Light. Be good, adhere, question not, and be but another rose upon back of Radiant Garden. Question, cause discontent, be discontent, and to the Twilight you were banished. Evermore, redemption was a fantasy never fulfilled, always offered, but never met.
"So, head back on?"
"As much as it ever is." Long hands smoothed over hoodie front, the silver zipper twinkled as it swayed.
"To work then!" Arm swatted the younger's back, causing him to stagger and dislodging a few long silver tinged blue locks to stab at one eye. Closing the assaulted, he slipped out of the over familiar embrace and shoveled the locks under his hood with one twitchy hand.
When his eyes were clear and his face hard –the scowl he was shooting was a rough thing, making the muscles that held it up to ache- he was set upon by.. by Ronald Ospray's sheepish expression.
Fact recalled, last fact he was missing in this moment, the younger sighed. Relaxed. Thick as ever Ronald saw it and thought he'd caused pain.
"Sorry kiddo."
"Don't "kiddo" me." The Traitor hissed.
"Well I can't bleeding call you "Traitor" can I? Not for something no one, not even you, knows what you did. And you don't know your real name, so what's left?"
To that more than reasonable rebuttal the Traitor opened his mouth, closed it, then all accidental twitched his fingers. The burning had abated, but was coming back. For that to stop, more than anything else, he nodded and after a quick look at the nearest sign –Pandora Ave intersected Finite street- was more than ready to pick his way back.
Past jags, and flaws, lines and monotony you see there was an office. A boxish span where he worked, surrounded by grey green bookshelves and gloom in equal measure. Before that little fiasco during his break with boys to be pretty to be sane or straight, he'd been working that was, well breaking for a bite, but still…. Work was where he belonged. Surrounded by books with numbers, the first he loved the second he loathed. Both offered a means to ease the agony crawling across his fingers. And for that more than anything, he was ready to move.
"I'd prefer Traitor."
"I don't. Grow up, and not the growth spurt way." Ronald grumped.
Ah crisis adverted, callousness returned. More than pleased with that, the man with no name took the lead, sure of his mind at that moment to find his way back to the familiar. Back where, inflicted impulse dictated, he belonged.
Chapter 1
Here and now: Justice's Hue
He recalls bits and pieces, fragmentations of a while. And like any intellectual, missing half the pieces of the problem is enough to rile his temper.
The fact that some niggling bit of truth insists that this lapse is his own fault stirs the rarely risen to vicious forum.
Slamming the door as he went, he stormed out. Quitting vocation and sense for a while. Fisted hands were shoved into black jean pockets, he loosed one fist to zip his hoodie tight never mind there was no chill. Errand done it clenches, and to better hide this he shoves it back into a pocket with its kin.
He's never cold, ever. The motion's a habit. Why, the why behind it is mad, barking, still if pressed he'll admit through grit teeth the following.
To ward their eyes…
Whose eyes, he never knew. The truth was likely a dated one. Considering the oddity of his apparel and carriage of the moment, it was more than likely he would draw any and all eyes to him. Actually the guarded glance of some woman across the street assures that he's right.
Like always.
Still, addressing the logic of the here and now verses the logic of the then and there… It's insane, he'd be first to admit it, inane even, but it's still there. An insurmountable impulse. And no matter how much he knows it's wrong, that it doesn't fit, all is eclipsed by the insidious hiss of the Before.
So he endures the odd look from the passerby across the street as he rips his hood over his face. His frame is quaking with near homicidal fury –the only thing that makes it near is the fact that there is now no one about to serve as a body- he tackles paved streets with stomping feet and storms into the night.
It is dark, night, the eternal moment that no one but him remembers has long passed. For this world (there are others, don't ask how, or even why he knows, he just does) while striking and beautiful in sunset and its attendant twilight, neither are eternal. While that monotony is broken the blockish, ho-hum, saneness of the buildings about him remains. Nothing could save those. Save razing.
But he wasn't the one for arson, they had… someone… for that. Roman numerals flicker through his mind like the dying edges of a fire he wishes he could use. Words akin to a child's rhyme, all disjointed and nonsense, save someone’s' striped the words of childishness, twiddle through his brain. Fire for nine, One superior…
One should have been mine. Was meant to be…
There and gone. Incensed now, he wishes for a dog to kick, not finding any he settles for a sizable chunk of pavement. The cements broken here. Fancy and a small crater with spider webbed jags indicate some mammoth's fist has done the damage. Gossip indicates the tenant above the shop –Frivolities Incorporated, his name, not the one that adorns the sign. Their specialty is shoes and accessories and how it all comes together to fill a shop no matter how small is a wonder of wonders- threw something heavy and dear to her husband out the window and let gravity work its wonders.
Good for her, so murmur the righteous busybodies.
Better for him, he doesn't have to deface someone's property to get a rock to kick. Vengeance done (spite indulged) foot hurting (expected) he crossed his arms over his chest and glowered at nothing at all.
And he hates getting his hands dirty, his hurting foot tells why without words.
And that, the last, is a wonder and mercy and worry all in one.
He's never without words, either his or other's to peruse. He's never without a book in hand. Legally obtained or not he has to have a book, and now that his rage had dulled to a more sane level –the red's receded- that lack is coming back.
Clamoring silently, his brain is informing him that right now, this ever moment, he is without a book. Redundant beyond redundant, it chatters that he's never ever without, and that span of Before murmurs in his ear with grating urgency that he's unarmed.
No not that.
Whispers are too tame, orders too concise. It drives him to correct his flaw via punishment. Setting an itchy emptiness over his hands that though fisted and pocketed and is insistent enough to encourage rubbing. Tracing seam, least his thumb feel left out, his other digits begin to twitch. Desperate to sooth a sensation that's, as his Shrink calls it, "all in his head".
As itch swells to an ache -to be open, to hold the edges, the comforting weight, save none of them are right, none of them at all- the sensations hijack his mind. With obsession's sincerity it avows that he doesn't have to resolve his dilemma now, just soon.
Preferably immediately.
Then the sadistic thing, the thing of Before ups ache to eye watering agony. Gnashing his teeth, least he scream, he closes his eyes, tries to push the need back.
And when he opens his eyes, finds that he's pushed everything else back. Confused by the unfamiliar open air, open sky, little facts flick into being. No roof, no walls, mean outside. Smooth grey stone, poured stone, cement! Beside a bit behind, broken, crater, jag… Numbers flash into his mind, then his aching foot somehow gives enough stimuli to shove the numbers and their elusive errant conclusion back. Broken, fragments, his, more than. He shifts on his aching foot, affirming that they are his, his to get back at. Lukewarm spite pushed back the chill running up his spine, so it's with clear, befuddled blue eyes he looks both about and inward. Sign, text, his lips curl as he reads its inanity. The whole is blockish, underscored with shoelaces, pink shoelaces… Irritating, the contents within are more so than the text, that fact bubbles to the front of his mind without much of a battle.
Behind, unseen but known, (reaching, he's reaching, good, a good thing, stretching the world past it's square and up) back, black, rough where the other is smoothed, white stripes, all straight, all chasing each other –save when it curves, but only at intersections- tidbits rustle about. Mind the red, save when it's green, words congeal into dialogue.
From Before, last week, never, who knew?
"When the little person is in the box abutting the pole with the three lights on it, it means to not turn! Not turn. As in, do not hit the accelerator and run the pedestrians over!"
Brutishly unrepentant, the other, as always, rumbled a surly
"Next time, you drive then!"
Footsteps, not behind but beyond his range of vision.
He'd heard those before. Swagger to the step, his heart raced and he whirled about, eyes wide, haunted by things that shouldn't be
Couldn't be.
"Don't you… want to be real…"
"What are you telling him!"
"You know… too much… Sorry Z-"
Pain, heart he didn't have wasn't beating, not anymore…
"Ienzo?"
Concern. One difference. Brown striped with silver flat, not red hair spikes. He grips each difference, and the madness in his gaze eases back bit by bit. Brown, apron, pants, white shirt, a hand warm (not scalding) reach for him. Reaching done, the one claps his shoulder. No black robes, on either of them. Truth pushed through Before and remembrance and fragments. Holy help him if it hadn't, help them both.
He snatches up the significant truth then, the closest one to the left and holds it tight.
This wasn't then.
One breath.
His mind is a puzzle see, save someone's swiped all the pieces and jumbled three sets into the same box and said here, live with this. And
Another breath.
His knees are knocking, bad, fear of things that had come and were nightmarish to boot. The whole tasted rancid and dark. He snorted, trying to dislodge the scent and failed. Failing, he fell, supported by…
Once more
Nothing at all. Else it wouldn't be a fall.
Back clacking against a white pole with enough force to cause the faulty light atop to flicker. While logic was his specialty, wiring was not, nor the logistics attached. He nearly sobbed, checking back the weakness, ever aware of eyes (no matter how kindly they were eyes, on him, and he must act accordingly) he slid down the pole.
Shivering, eyes scrunched, least he start crying, he wrapped arms around his chest. Now cold, more than.
"Bad one?" the hand retracted. Fabric on air, the subtle sounds of both interacting alluded to that.
He daren't open his eyes to check, the pieces were tumbling, eyes wide, he might see something. Something that alluded to illusions.
That'd destroyed him,
One handed, his Master, employer, both. Both were inflicted by mercy, had that bright blade put to their throats. Or in the older man's case, his hand. Put and pressed, and the pressure of a blade was quite cutting indeed.
It had been a petty thing. Whenever the older man had drunk he became violent, he hadn't stopped drinking, and thus had inflicted an act of violence upon some somebody of no importance. Permanent violence, permanent harm, a numbing really.
Not all that bad, at least the first victim's arm was still attached and stuffily mobile.
As for the second victim, the perpetrator of the wrong he was, but he was made a victim by the events thereafter… Well the evidence of what had happened was obvious to any with eyes, the ability to count, and a passing knowledge of the human body.
Seeing the stare, ascribing the aqua hued glower to more of the usual, confusion and the like, the brunette and his incriminating grey set one arm to rub his stump.
Rumor had it the detached could be visited in a museum of judicial curiosities nowadays.
Lips quirking at the faux pas that teased his tongue the fallen uncrossed his arms and let a glimmer of humor light his eyes.
"How long was I out?'
While not "out" exactly it was the word they'd decided upon.
"Not long Ienzo."
Blankly the young man stared up; not recognizing what was inherently his. He'd never react to it, after all his name was part of what had been stolen from him in good driven retribution.
The last gift from a mother and father he didn't know, never met, was no longer his.
Language had been twisted in his head, a wonder more wasn't, littler wonder that he had mood swings and was edgy ever after.
"Ready?" Arm offered, muscular but not as much as perhaps another he'd known, was offered.
"Client…." Before his temper… there'd been someone, pink haired, frizzled yet feminine despite being a male. Perfume and lip gloss were the two tells to that last judgment. "Did he…"
"Your exact words,-" finger interlaced he was pulled up; younger unsteadily toddled until balance was found. Once equilibrium was assured, the older carried on. "-were, "Traitor or not at least I think you pompous ignoramus!", when the pretty boy went to me and spotted my arm he up and vamoosed. Squeamish little thing he was. Gardeners always are."
"Tall little thing, he was." The Traitor drawled. "He topped you by half a foot."
And the speaker in question was topped by his retriever by almost a foot atop that. Growth genes, hormones, and the like, were devilishly selective. Much like intelligence.
"And what's got you grinning?"
"Something both impolitic and sadistic, you know, the usual."
"Don't I?" Thick older man's brows puckering in thought, perhaps thinking of a few uncensored 'comments' he'd had inflicted upon himself for asking the redundant "what". Taking the course of wisdom, thus living up to cliché around the edges, he said instead of the expected. "Well… Traitor, better now?"
A snort and a wry "Never," was both truth and answer for the two of them.
But this was the shade of justice in the land of Light. Be good, adhere, question not, and be but another rose upon back of Radiant Garden. Question, cause discontent, be discontent, and to the Twilight you were banished. Evermore, redemption was a fantasy never fulfilled, always offered, but never met.
"So, head back on?"
"As much as it ever is." Long hands smoothed over hoodie front, the silver zipper twinkled as it swayed.
"To work then!" Arm swatted the younger's back, causing him to stagger and dislodging a few long silver tinged blue locks to stab at one eye. Closing the assaulted, he slipped out of the over familiar embrace and shoveled the locks under his hood with one twitchy hand.
When his eyes were clear and his face hard –the scowl he was shooting was a rough thing, making the muscles that held it up to ache- he was set upon by.. by Ronald Ospray's sheepish expression.
Fact recalled, last fact he was missing in this moment, the younger sighed. Relaxed. Thick as ever Ronald saw it and thought he'd caused pain.
"Sorry kiddo."
"Don't "kiddo" me." The Traitor hissed.
"Well I can't bleeding call you "Traitor" can I? Not for something no one, not even you, knows what you did. And you don't know your real name, so what's left?"
To that more than reasonable rebuttal the Traitor opened his mouth, closed it, then all accidental twitched his fingers. The burning had abated, but was coming back. For that to stop, more than anything else, he nodded and after a quick look at the nearest sign –Pandora Ave intersected Finite street- was more than ready to pick his way back.
Past jags, and flaws, lines and monotony you see there was an office. A boxish span where he worked, surrounded by grey green bookshelves and gloom in equal measure. Before that little fiasco during his break with boys to be pretty to be sane or straight, he'd been working that was, well breaking for a bite, but still…. Work was where he belonged. Surrounded by books with numbers, the first he loved the second he loathed. Both offered a means to ease the agony crawling across his fingers. And for that more than anything, he was ready to move.
"I'd prefer Traitor."
"I don't. Grow up, and not the growth spurt way." Ronald grumped.
Ah crisis adverted, callousness returned. More than pleased with that, the man with no name took the lead, sure of his mind at that moment to find his way back to the familiar. Back where, inflicted impulse dictated, he belonged.
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