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 Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 9:55 pm
Mikhail hesitated, trying to decide if he should tell the taotie what Mortimer had told him, soon after he'd come to Gaia. Could that have been what 'Edel' meant? But...he trusted Airi, didn't he? He wanted to.
At the same time, Tzao had been very open with him, and it felt wrong to withhold things, in light of that. "Someone told me once that Airi...made us so that she could use us, once we regained our power, but...I don't know if I believe it."
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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:03 pm
"Is that so?" The news didn't seem to particularly shock Tzao. Rather, he nodded his understanding, unperturbed by the thought of his existence being a part of someone else's agenda. "Perhaps it is, perhaps it isn't. It would make sense that Edel were speaking of her, if so."
The Taotie's tea cup had ran empty without his noticing. He set the empty mug on the table and laid his hands on his knees, leaning inward slightly. "If it were true, though - do you think that you would do it?"
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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:20 pm
"According to Mortimer, she wants us to free Chaos, because she's in love with him." Which was disturbing on a number of levels, especially considering that Airi looked like a child. "She said herself that she considered it, but she can't, because she's given her power to us. But I've spoken with her, but I don't think she'd try to make us do it." He shook his head. "Or maybe that's what I want to think."
"Either way, I wouldn't do it. I couldn't do something like that, no matter who wanted me to."
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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 10:41 pm
Again, Tzao did not seem entirely surprised by this story, though he noted carefully the details that Mikhail told him of it. "I do not think it's something that I could do, either," the teen murmured. "But that isn't to say another Fa'e wouldn't. If you think about it, she doesn't have to make anyone do anything, really. She just needs to be patient and wait for the one that she can persuade to her cause, doesn't she?"
It was another scrap on a hefty pile of distrust for Tzao. There would be much to think about later, in his own company. Not things that he would unload on Mikhail, though - not until he'd gotten the chance to share those papers, at least.
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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:03 pm
He hadn't thought about it like that, but now that Tzao mentioned it...it was entirely too possible. There was no shortage of Fa'e Airi might have a chance to mold - who, unlike the angel and taotie, were born here. Would it be so hard to groom just one of them to do what she wanted? It was chilling, and a serious blow to his hope that maybe Morty had been wrong. He stared down into what was left of his tea.
"I want to see those documents," he determined. As suspicious as Edel and the gems sounded, he wanted to know more. Anything that could shed light on...anything.
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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:15 pm
Tzao set a new smile on his face - less pleasant, more resolute. "They are at my residence. It's just half a mile away, not a long walk at all. If you are not busy, you could come to read them now." The Taotie was already rising, in fact, gathering up the mugs and pot to whisk back to the kitchen. Once his mind was set on a course of action, the calm teenager was quick to follow the path - and he would be rather surprised if Mikhail declined his offer anyway, given the seriousness of his decision.
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Posted: Thu Sep 03, 2009 11:24 pm
"No, I'm not busy," Mik replied gravely, mirroring Tzao's resolute smile. He wanted answers, and not just the ones to his questions about himself. He'd pushed the bigger questions away, assuming he would get no answers, but now...maybe that wasn't the case. Maybe he shouldn't have been so quick to give Airi a second chance. But then again, it was always possible that Edel hadn't been referring to her. He could hope.
It still tore at him that their creator might not be so benevolent as her appearance might suggest; and in a strange way, it tore at him to doubt her.
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Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:28 pm
The Taotie's home, as promised, was not a great distance away. In the very same city, very nearly on the same street as the Fa'e HQ, even; just a single side street off the main road and there it was, a cozy five-story apartment house. The grounds were kept well and the building was in perfect repair, save for a few damaged shingles on the slanting. The street outside tasted of ill repute and potential crime scenes, but those insecurities seemed to disappear beyond the iron-barred front gate of the building.
"Mari lives in the flat above me," he revealed by way of conversation, unlocking the gate for the both of them and leading the way up toward the second floor. "My Guardian, that is. We should avoid making too much noise, in case she is involved in her studies." The door to the flat opened. Tzao slipped his shoes off and tucked them just inside of the door before entering.
The room inside was almost shockingly austere. It opened up almost immediately from the door, taking a step down into a dining area, with staging areas for what were presumably living areas near the windows beyond it and to the right - but there was no furniture to speak of in either of these places, only clean carpet and a single standing lamp in one corner. A low-lying square table was the centerpiece of the dining area, with four barely-used pillows lined up, one per side. A kitchen took up the near-left corner of the room that was spotless and devoid of anything except a tea kettle and a few porcelain cups - no dirty plates or silverware in the sink, no boxes of cereal or bags of flour stored neatly in the corners, not even a toaster anywhere to be found. Other than a few pieces of paper set onto an end table near the door - old letters by the look of them, hand-written - there was little to suggest that anyone lived here at all.
But Tzao entered the room with a sense of lightening familiarity, and there could be little doubt that this was truly where he lived. "If you would please make yourself comfortable, Mikhail, I will go fetch the documents for you," the teenager suggested politely, disappearing quickly into an adjacent room to the right.
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Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 6:46 pm
The street on which Tzao lived was less than appealing, but Mikhail said nothing, and didn't let it onto his expression. The taotie was someone he liked and didn't want to offend, especially given the circumstances. He might un-invite himself if he were rude, and so he was a little more careful than he might normally be.
Once inside, he did as the teen did and took off his shoes, which involved a little more than just slipping them off, since they were boots. That done, he surveyed his surroundings with curiosity. Sparse living places were rather foreign to him, as Stefan not only liked to be comfortable, but had a lot of stuff. It was amazing how much one person could acquire over the course of several hundred years. Mik just wished his guardian were a little tidier.
"Right," the angel said quietly, nodding.
...only to wonder where he was supposed to make himself comfortable. There didn't seem to be any chairs.
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Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 7:29 pm
Tzao wasn't long in fetching the documents he'd promised, at least. Of course, if the other rooms of the apartment were anywhere as bare as the first, it probably wasn't very difficult at all to find them.
"Mikhail, come, sit," Tzao urged the youth, taking a spot of his own upon one of the pillows at the low table. The papers he held were protected with some flat pieces of red cloth on the top and bottom, bound primitively by means of a few loops of string at the right-hand corners. He laid the makeshift book on the center of the table.
"This is it, you see. I've kept them for the past year. Reading them is... strange," the teenager had to admit, "somewhat voyeuristic. But I'd hoped to find out more about Edel in them, and besides, I thought it best to know what was in them, in case they should ever be lost." It was not something he liked to think about falling into hands other than his own, truth to tell. It was too easy to imagine pieces of what were transcribed in there being used against himself or one of the other Fa'e.((The documents can be found here, and all of the documents on the shelves and table are in the manuscript Tzao has. The only difference is his own transcription - over time, the words of his own thoughts ICly will have faded into nothing, leaving only Edel's words available for Mik to read. I'd edit them out, but I uh. Forgot the password for the Edel mule forever ago. |D; ))
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Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:28 pm
He had to sit on the floor? Really? Not that there was anything wrong with that, ordinarily, but doing much of any kind of bending wasn't very pleasant at the moment. Still, he couldn't just stand here. He schooled his expression as he sat, trying not to let the discomfort show. He reached to slide the book closer to himself, puzzled for a moment that it was bound on the right side.
Well, whatever. Mik opened it carefully, at first flipping through it for a cursory look. Almost all of the papers bore the names of people he knew. Dustin, Keir, Sati, Guelherme, Lethe, Silver, Tzao-Hyung, Sofi, Naolin, Seung. Seung? Seung had been involved with this? The very thought made him angry. He should have been there!
But he should start at the beginning, with Dusty. Except he only got so far before confusion clouded his features. "Princess? Dusty's a boy."
Way to pick out the important stuff.
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Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 8:43 pm
"Ah, yes, I'd noted that as well. Interesting, isn't it? Dustin thinks of himself as male, but," Tzao reached over to point to where Callix had been speaking of Dustin's 'bijoux', "here, where I presume he was younger, he was seen as female. Not simply called 'princess', which might be insulting to either gender, but feminine pronoun. When I met Dustin, he seemed very masculine... but I doubt that anything in here is a lie, to tell truth. So there must have been some change, somewhere between the time these memories were formed and Dustin today." Whether that was a physical change - well within the boundaries of what a Fa'e could do, Tzao suspected, if their powers related somehow - or merely a mental one... well, Dustin was likely the only one to know that, wasn't he?
But to tell the truth, details such as that weren't much to Tzao's interest, aside from what they spoke about the individual Fa'e. What really interested him were the patterns. "One thing I noticed, reading through these, is how each Fa'e reacted after discovering Edel's trick," Tzao pointed out. "The older Fa'e accepted their loss and left, each of them in turn. The younger Fa'e, though, tried to recover what they'd lost." With one exception. Sofi had left the tent, and he remembered too well what he'd met with when she had. That had been the moment when he'd gone in for her, to try and recover what she'd lost.
... And failed....
But that was aside from the point. "It's a very... prominent split in generations, isn't it?" Tzao commented, glancing to see if Mikhail had been following his train of thought.
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Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 9:19 pm
'Dustin thinks of himself as male.' So Dusty...wasn't really a boy? Or hadn't been, but was now? Despite the seriousness of the reason he was actually here, it was difficult for Mik to get past that one, should-be-trivial bit of information. He couldn't wrap his brain around it.
...although Rionne had mentioned that he could change genders, because of what he was. Maybe it was something like that? The angel pushed it from his mind. There were more important things to focus on right now!
As he listened to Tzao, he studied several more pages. "Might not be so bad, if it makes Keir less crazy," he muttered, reading on. Assertiveness traded for Ambition, Veneer for Axiom (note to self: look that up), Link for Self, Paradigm for Chaos.
The last got him back on track with things that actually mattered. "Chaos? A Chaos gem?"
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Posted: Sat Sep 05, 2009 9:49 pm
"Chaos... ah! That was Lethe, wasn't it?" Tzao bent over to look at what Mikhail had been reading. Had she been one of the ones who had recovered their gems, and kept both? It was difficult to recall....
Ah! That was right! "I recall. Paradigm had been found," Tzao mused, "so Lethe must still have Chaos. I don't know much of its nature, however, or if it has any power at all. Still, it's a very interesting choice for her to make, isn't it?" The Taotie leaned back, and delivered a very cautious, but firm, opinion:
"If any of the Fa'e were to be thinking of freeing Chaos, I would expect it to be Lethe." Which wasn't a damning statement, merely an observation. Tzao had met Lethe, and found the girl enjoyable. She had curiosity and ambition, and was well-mannered besides. And besides that... her reasoning was interesting. She wanted to change, the documents had revealed. Turn into something more than she was, the River of Oblivion. She wanted, in her own words, "to grow."
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