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 Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 4:07 pm
You enter Will's room slowly to make sure that yes, he did mention something about going to Barton for a few days and no, he wasn't lying. There still was the chance that he may have gotten distracted reading again in the library but, after a check of the P.A.D, it's evident that he isn't in the general vicinity of the Library. Dodging a few hanging plants and making sure you don't knock over any of his odd collection of candelabras or precariously piled books, you make your way to the large writing desk.
The top to the desk has been closed. Tentatively, you make sure that there aren't any pieces of tape or bits of hair to make it evident that someone had opened it. There are none, so you open the desk after finding it surprisingly unlocked. A laptop computer sits behind the rolling top, closed and off, the cord connected to it glowing to signify it charging.
Opening it, you find that it is still on, a music program on. You minimize the program so as to not arouse suspicion from Will later and take a look at his desktop. There are only two folders on it, one which says simply, "Musings," the other being the computer's main folder. The mouse moves with your finger over to "Musings," the folder opening to show a variety of what appear to be dated journal entries as your thumb presses twice on the button below the scroll pad.
After reading a few of these "Musings," you become unamused. All of them are either little blurbs about how the day was or short comments about how certain people were acting. These "Musings" seemed more like a teenage girl's diary than an adult's reactions to life.
Unhappy with this finding, you close the folder and open the main one. Scanning the contents, you become less and less entertained, only finding basic tools and programs normally found on a computer, but then you stop.
There is one folder who's name seems abnormally out of place. You reread the title before opening it. There are a few files inside of the folder, but the one that reads "Will, Read me First!" calls to you. Without hesitation, you double click on the icon and it opens.
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Posted: Tue May 13, 2008 4:32 pm
Quote: Will, read me First! Hey, Will. If you're reading this for the first time, that means you've probably faded out again. If so, then it means something like Mika had to happen again, and I'm sorry. Unfortunately, it also means that because it wasn't someone like Mika, you've managed to forget everything this time instead of you before you died or you ten minutes ago. It also means that you went through the fading again and no one managed to catch what was wrong with you until it was too late. In which case, shame on you, William Starr, for not telling your friends about it! I can't believe that you'd be so untrusting to not tell people who you probably trust with your... Okay, bad choice of words, but still, you know what I mean. But enough badgering. Hopefully by the time this happens to you again, I'll be long dead and gone. It was horrible seeing you go through it the first time and not knowing what was wrong, not knowing how to help or make things right. Gah, I'm getting off track, Will, and you need to know what the heck I'm writing about. These are stories, Will. Stories you told me about who you are before I met you, stories you told me about how you met Mika, how you got your sword, how you managed to maintain a new form, everything that you've told me about you I've written down so you can read them and, hopefully, remember. But you're probably wondering who I am, aren't you? That's okay, if you really have forgotten, but you've also probably caught the almost scolding older sibling tone, huh? Well, I'm not your older sister (and I'll get to that), but I am like an older sister to you. And I'm an ascended witch, but we'll get to that later also. The point is, we probably need to tell the story of how you met us. Us as in Sekkmah, Kira Jhedoliaer, and myself. Hikaru Tigerfeather of the Lace. You stop reading the short document and c**k your head to one side, the words repeating themselves. Fading. Forgetting who you were. And why did those names sound oddly familiar? Will suddenly got a whole lot more interesting, and not just because he was friends with an Ascended Witch. What exactly was Fading and why could it happen to Will? Why could he remember himself after the first time he faded completely, whatever that meant? Who exactly was Mika? An angry sigh rushes through you. You shouldn't be getting so worked up about this, the answers were right in front of you, and the document entitled "How we Met," seemed to be calling to you.
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Posted: Wed May 14, 2008 12:57 pm
Quote: How we Met Since I'm hoping that I'm long dead by the time you faded again, it'd be pointless to say how long it's been since you, Sekkmah, Kira, and myself met. I can tell you that it was before the Aliens came, before the Tower of Gambino fell, before the Grunny invasion, even before the infestation of Zombies on the Isle of Gambino. I'm hoping that at least one of those world changing events was large enough to warrant themselves in the history books. Kira Jhedoliaer was just Kira then, Sekkmah went by the pseudonym Neko, and I was just Hikaru Tigerfeather. The three of us had known each other for some time, Kira and myself even longer. I had grown up an orphan, and she was placed in my orphanage when she was five. I was eight with the mental capacity of a twenty year old and seeing this tiny little girl who's parents had just died and had no recollection of who they were brought me out of my antisocial "No one understands me" angst and put me in an almost maternal mode. Kira became like a little sister to me, and I taught her most of the things I knew, though trying to teach a hyperactive five year old is a lot harder than people make it seem, let me tell you. There as one thing odd about her, though. She had a large hat that she vehemently refused to take off and always wore pants five sizes larger than normal. It was a few months after I met her before she revealed to me that she had tiny fluffy wolf ears instead of normal human ones and an even fluffier tail to boot. I think my initial reaction was completely opposite to what she was expecting because I was smitten with cute. I mean, she's still adorable, but her at five was diabetes inducing. Anyway, we grew up together (I just realized I'm reminiscing instead of telling you your past, sorry), and eventually we met Sekkmah, though as I said, she called herself Neko. I was sixteen, Kira thirteen. Neko refused to reveal her age which made sense. See, Neko is a Lion demon, one of the forms of demonic entity that live in the savannas past Akea. She refused to reveal why she was in Barton, nor anything else about her life, but she still took the two of us in as her own. I had no idea why until the three of us were attacked by some thugs one night and she, quite literally, ripped them to shreds. There was good reason, but I'd rather not talk about it... Anyway, after she made sure we were okay and got us away from the area, she called us offhandedly her pack. She had taken us in as her pack, essentially as her family. This confused me, as I thought that lion demons only formed packs with creatures that were strong or powerful. She responded by saying that although we weren't now, we would be. I hadn't believed her, but she was right. A short time after that, I got into magic. One can't help but dabble in it in this world once or twice, but I soon realized that it seemed to come to me naturally. After I had used a few spells, the energy that is magic seemed to flow into me naturally. It was as if I had somehow unlocked something deep within myself that let the Ether know I was there... And the Ether liked me. I soon was capable of using the four major arcana (Fire, Water, Earth, and Air) magics to their basic degree, something that most magically based people could only dream of. Kira, on the other hand, as she grew older, became the opposite of her younger self. Once she had realized that she was attractive, she started using it to get on people's good sides to get what she wanted. She wasn't spoiled, though, far from it. She just knew how to charm warmth out of people that seemed to be nothing but icebergs of hate. She also realized that she was fast and agile and became enamored with doing gymnastics at odd times just for the fun of it. Gah, sorry, rambling again. It was four years later when we met you. You were still alive then, and look much different than you do know... That is assuming of course that you still have a love of flowing black capes, long hair, and boots, of course. Back then, at sixteen, you were pale, but not deathly pale, scared, and had soft brown hair. You were brought into the group almost immediately after we saw you, but not by Neko. By me. I suppose it was leftover maternal instinct from taking care of Kira, but it may have been because the ether in me seemed to pull me towards you. When you met us, you seemed frightened, but not because Neko had fangs, claws, and a lion's tail or because Kira was smiling from ear to ear, showing her own sharp teeth, hair wild around her now proudly visible ears. You were scared because we were new. We were people who seemed to be wanting you after you hadn't been. It was when Neko embraced you that I knew you belonged with us. You slowly warmed up to us, Neko teaching you how to protect yourself, Kira being like a sister to you (you were the same age, after all), and me... I held you when you woke up from whatever nightmares you were having. I knew something had happened to you to leave a young kid like you alone, but I didn't pry. I always assumed you would tell us in time... But... Then that night happened. The one where you died. See, Kira was a party animal. She was the only thing that kept us from becoming complete introverts so quite commonly she would force us to go to a club. It was a large place, having been transformed from a cathedral into a club, and the bell tower was the most interesting thing about it. The bells had been taken out but the large square spiral staircase leading up to where they were was still intact, the place up there having been converted into a lounge area to relax in. The four of us were up there hanging out before Neko and myself left to go get a few drinks (non alchoholic for you two, of course). We didn't take notice of the guys walking up, and I've hated myself since for not paying attention to them. They, however, noticed us. Well, more like one in particular noticed us. You remember those guys from earlier? The ones that Neko ripped to shreds? I forgot to mention that one of them got away. He got new friends. One that were with him as he walked up the steps past us and saw Neko. If we had stayed up there, then what happened next would have never... They got up there and only saw the third girl from years ago and a boy who seemed to know her. They wanted to hurt the three of us and anyone that knew us so they started with Kira. You tried to stop them, I know you did, Kira told me you did, but you couldn't... They pushed you. They pushed you over the railing and... It was a good thing you were falling at an angle thanks to the fact that they had pushed you. You hit the railing on the other side of the staircase which knocked you out before you hit the side of the bar. I... I wasn't there to get to you to heal you, Will. As soon as I heard Kira yelling at them a few minutes before you fell, Neko and I started running back up the stairs. Not that magic would have been enough to heal a skull broken open like a shattered clay bowl. Neko continued running up. I ran down. Not that Neko did anything, though. As soon as you fell, something in Kira snapped. She changed into her true form, something that made it evident what exactly she was- Garou. Part of the wolven shapeshifting tribe. Seven feet tall, all fangs and claws and anger and grief bared down on the men and by the time Neko got up there, all that was left was Kira, clothes ripped and red and wet, crying in a puddle of... I need to... Hold on... Okay, I'm better. By the time I got to you, you had gone past the point of no return. There was no healing you, no keeping you alive, but I had to do something. Not only was all of me screaming to save you, but the ether in me, the magic coursing through my veins was screaming as well. I collected your soul. Somehow, and I still don't know how I did it, I pulled out the remnants of your heart and your soul, what hadn't passed into whatever is beyond yet, into a ball of magic and then into a crystal wrapped around my neck. Then we went home. Ran home. Neko collected your body and we ran. Three months passed. Three months the crystal was passed between the three of us. I cremated your body and placed the ashes into a vial. Kira couldn't stop crying. Then I heard you... Did you know that ghosts are essentially memories of a person? Memories of a person clinging to whatever is left of their heart? You had become that, though your form, your body now consisted of the crystal. Unfortunately, too, we soon realized that the only memories you had were memories we had of you. You were still the same person you were before you died, but everything about your life not having to do with us had been forgotten. I've pondered long and hard as to if I had somehow forced you to stay. That maybe what I had done was wrong. I don't care, though. We still had you, and you needed a body. Something we could see. The longer we talked to you, the longer we held the crystal, the more of our energy, our aura, was absorbed by you. I feel that I had some part in your disturbing aura vampirism, but the amounts that you were taking were nothing compared to how much a human, let alone a demon or shapeshifter, has normally. Eventually, you gained enough to move on your own, the crystal shifting on it's own, floating with a transparent form of your body around you. Only problem is, it looked like you... After you died. The story stopped there. You were slightly dumbstruck. Will obviously was not a normal ghost. He was a ghost born of magic, born of instinct, not someone who had willingly stayed in this world because there was something left to do. He had been kept here by a friend, someone that cared for him, and his entire self was those broken remnants of his former self glued together by pieces of his friends. Aura Vampirism, though? And how did he change his looks so drastically? You still wanted to know what "fading" was, too... There was another file next to the one you just read named "How you changed/Mika" and you clicked on it, now uncharacteristically eager to read it.
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Posted: Tue May 20, 2008 1:12 pm
Quote: How you changed/Mika This is a story that you told me, so pardon if I get the specifics wrong. So you looked like you did when you died, right? Yeah. Truthfully, it was horrifying. Your eyes were partially out of their sockets, blood was on your face frozen running downward, you had to concentrate to talk because your jaw had popped out of socket when you fell... But that was nothing compared to how you looked from behind. All of the back of you, save the very bottom of your pants, was a sickly red and the back of your head... I don't even want to have to describe it. Eventually you decided that you needed to leave. We didn't want you to, but you just got tired of seeing Kira with a permanent sad look on her face and have to hear all three of us wince and cringe every time you turned around. You only traveled at night, hiding during the day so that no one would be scared by your appearance. A few people did see you during the night, and in a few places there are still campfire horror stories about the "Splattered Camper." I would have laughed more at them if it hadn't been you and hadn't felt like it was my fault. You apparently, even though you had said you would come back, were looking for a new place to live. You were a bit cliched in your choice of living places, though, listening to people gossip about supposedly haunted houses or mansions or graveyards and going there the following night. Some of the stories you've told me are comical. Not only in the fact that over half of the supposedly haunted places weren't haunted at all, but the fact that those that were had ghosts who didn't even think they were ghosts and were scared by you. I still laugh at the irony of that. Hm. Or is it irony? I dunno, I'm no wordsmith. There were a few places that cued us in to the nature of real ghosts, however, showing us that in most cases, ghosts eroded over time. We didn't really understand how it worked, though, so we didn't think much of it-- Big mistake later. One place, in particular, almost destroyed you. It wasn't haunted, no, it was possessed. A very nasty demonic ghost inhabited the house and as soon as you entered it, it almost turned you into one of it's thrall of spirits. You promptly warned a demon hunter about the house, your first real heroic deed, and the demon was soon banished to another plane. We never heard much of the demon hunter after that, thankfully. They tend to be indiscriminate towards all forms of demonic life, and that wouldn't have gone over well with Sekkmah. Eventually you got to the end of your rope. There were no more stories of haunted houses or any other such thing, so you wandered into a forest, not wanting to come back to us. It was there that everything started changing for the better. You see, there is a tribe of cat demon, not humanoid cat, but more housecat demon that live for centuries and are raised to find the one being in the world who shares the same life force as they do. Once they have, they merge their soul with the others, keeping the two individual, but sharing power between the two. Sometimes they wait for hundreds of years, other times they only have to wait a few months after they are born. Mika was somewhere near the beginning of her life, but certainly not newborn. She hadn't been looking long, in any case, as your death had alerted her to your presence. When she found you, you were unfortunately only a fraction of what you had been. This did not bother her, and she almost immediately after meeting you merged her life force with yours, making you complete. At least, your heart was complete. Your personality, your moods, what made you who you are became what they were before you died. Your memory, however, still remained being only a short period before you died up till you met Mika. Perhaps due to the demonic nature of Mika's life force, you managed to gain a few new skills. Your form suddenly looked alive, the back of your head normal, your eyes back in their sockets, jaw no longer crooked, blood vanished. Your hair had turned to the color of Mika's fur (black) and the crystal that floated around inside of you had disappeared. When you focused on it, it would appear which indicated that if something was with you for long enough, it would eventually become part of you. You came home shortly after that with Mika in tow on your shoulder. Ah, yes, I forgot to mention. Mika's power also gave you the ability to solidify your aura and make you tangible. That was how you got new clothes, by the way, solidification plus the aura dissipation. It allowed you to change clothes just by thinking about it. You stayed with us for a rather long time, satisfied that we no longer cringed or cried when you were around. Eventually, though, your newfound sense of adventure and desire to help got the better of you and one day, you disappeared again, this time leaving a note saying you'd be back in a year or so. So. Will was a ghost created by magic and altered by demonic energy. The plot just seemed to thicken with every entry. The bit about ghosts eroding over time caught your attention, though, especially what was said about how bad it had been to ignore it. Was that what fading out was? "Your Adventure." A few mouse clicks opened it.
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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 8:30 pm
Quote: I didn't go with you on your little adventure, Will, but a lot of things happened. ...Okay, so you never really told me all of it. I know it involved a group of people in the forest, and one of them was married to a man who ended up turning into a time demon. Or something. I don't know, you only told me the basics and didn't want to delve into the whole situation. I think you never did because the adventure had a tragic ending, as you never told me what happened to the wife after you and the group defeated the husband. What you did tell me in detail is that there was a necromancer on the team who you got to know... Well. He ended up taking your ashes and the crystal(that you had absorbed into your aura, remember) and forged them with a very strong steel into a sword. Because of this, the sword literally became part of you and could become stronger by fueling your aura into it. You can also shoot out said energy in an empathic wave if you want. It's kinda neat, but doesn't do bodily damage to the opponent. All it does is make the opponent open for a hit, really, but you can decide which emotion. Yes, you're empathic. You're a ghost, you're naturally empathic. You can only affect peoples emotions by using the sword, however. It's the only real "projectile" you can make. Anyway, you came home and the only thing you could talk about was the sword. "Sword this, sword that, blah blah blah." It got worse when Neko came back and she started training you to use your sword. Then it became "Technique this, technique that, blah blah blah." Gah, it was impossible to live with you two. I suffered though it, however, and your fighting skills got quite impressive. You soon learned how to effectively fight between your pysical (damage causing) and immaterial (unhurtable) forms as well as using your sword's sheath in your other hand to block. Oh, by the way, in case you're wondering, I had your sword classified as to what it was. It isn't a Katana. It is a Wakisashi. Your sword is only 20 inches long and to be a Katana it has to be over two feet long. So stop calling it a Katana. I was right. You were wrong. Ha ha ha ha ha ha. Ahem. That's it for this part. Sorry there isn't more, hon. This woman was an ascended witch? This woman, who was being petty about being right was an ascended witch? You shook your head as you remembered that power and wisdom had nothing to do with maturity, especially if said immaturity was towards people thought of as family. The next file read "Our Adventure." Maybe now there would be an actual story.
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Posted: Sun Jul 13, 2008 9:36 pm
Quote: After you came back, something incredibly major happened. See, the three of us had built our house out on the field approximately halfway between the three major towns so that if one of us needed something, we wouldn't have to go overly far to get to any one. The inside of the house was charmed by my magic to be the size of a mansion even though the outside was only that of a three room house. I was very proud of myself for creating it, and the four of us lived quite happily. The one day, the ONE day that all four of us (five if you include Mika) were out of the house was the day the Tower of Gambino fell. On our house. Thanks to the convinient location (halfway between all towns) it was right in the line of fire of the Tower. We were homeless. Thankfully, due to my magic, all of our valuables were safe but we still had to find a new place to live. Thanks to a special commission from Josie (and Kira's charming abilities) we were given special permission to find a new place away from the towns to build. Southward bound, we traveled into the deep forests. There, we saved a tribe of Amazonians from being wiped out, fought a few major demons, and discovered a few interesting things about Kira, Neko, and myself. We encountered Neko's old prides. Yes, prides. It appeared as if she was the illigitimate daughter of the Patriarch and Matriarch of two rival Lion demon prides. She had originally been a child of an affair between the two, but after the husband of her mother died in a fight between the two tribes, their "affair" turned into a peace treaty. A very short lived peace treaty as her mother's pride rejected and killed her for betraying her husband and her father's tribe tried to kill her for being of mixed blood. Her father, thankfully, sent his baby away to be raised by an exiled Lioness named Niaosu. The lioness raised the baby to adulthood, telling her about her true heratige and teaching her in the art of the sword before casting the child off to start her own pride. Neko revealed to us that her name was originally Sekkmah, a name given to her by Niaosu. We fought both tribes and took both down, forcing peace between the two, unwittingly fulfilling Sekkmah's destiny. We ended up meeting a tribe of elves who, surprisingly, embraced Kira as one of their own. Apparantly, her mother had been elven and had fallen in love with a Garou. She had been exiled, something those elves did not do lightly. They eventually extended a hand of apology to her, only to find the place where the Garou had been empty. They had searched for years to find her, always coming up fruitless. Kira, now spurred into finding out who her parents were and why they had abandoned her, drug us along in trying to find them. Unfortunately, it lead us to a grim discovery; Her father's tribe had wandered too close to major cities and had been discovered by Werewolf hunters who mistook the Garou for diseased humans. Unwilling to listen to the elf who tried to protect them, they slaughtered all of the tribe including the elf. The tiny babe with wolven ears and tail however, was spared. As they debated what to do with the baby, they found that the pendant around the child's neck read "Kira." Curious, they tested the babe's blood, only to find she had absolutely no lycanthropy in her. To their horror, none of the blood from the tribe had lycanthropy in it either. Horrified at what they had done, they threw Kira into an orphanage. After years of being passed from orphanage to orphanage after each found her ears and tail to be "cursed" or "ill omens," she found her way to mine. Unwilling to attack the hunters, we started to leave. Before we did, they gave Kira an amulet and dress, the two things that her mother had been wearing when she died. When we got back to the elves, they delcared her a true part of their tribe and gave her a name, one that meant "Lupine Elf;" Jhedoliaer. Yes, I know, it's kind of simple, but it's a symbolic name, as Kira was her true name and possibly Garou in nature. As for myself, well... I died. I intended to die, and, frankly, was ready to die. See, one of those major demons who we defeated followed us and, with an army of demons, attacked our group of four (or five, whatever). Kind of overkill, I know. There was no way the four of us could have taken down all of them, so I did the unthinkable, something witches and wizards and sorcerors and warlocks and all other magic users are told never ever to do: I cast an ultimate quad-elemental spell. A spell composed of all four major arcana, crackling at the edges with the six minor arcana, one that destroyed every demon in the army including the big bad, one that used up all of my manna and then drained my of my life energy. I saved all of you. Then I died. I saw Death. I know Death saw me. He didn't seem happy to see me, and I assume it was because of what I did to you. But then there was a third. A third entity, one that was rushing towards the two of us at breakneck speed. I clearly heard Death say "Goddammit, not you again," before he spun around and met the third entity with it's scythe. They fought. The third entity won, and Death dissapeared with a loud "********." The third then turned to me and, here's the funny part, it was me. It was me, but glowing and made of delicate lace. We talked for quite a long while. Then we became one, and I was born. I woke up to see you three very visibly upset. After you realized I was alive, you helped me up, Kira hugged me, and Sekkmah slapped me and told me never to do that again. After a few more minor adventures, we found a nice little spot in the forests a few miles north of where Kira's tribe lives. We still are living there, currently. Wow. So the Garou was part elf, the Lioness was technically royalty, and the witch really was ascended. Huh. There was one last document that read "You left us." Unsure as to what that meant, you clicked on it.
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Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 2:22 pm
Quote: Fading. That's what we ended up calling it. It's the worst thing to happen to a ghost, to a spectre, to a spirit, to any form of earthbound soul, good or evil, born from force of sheer will power or born from the magics of a friend... I thought that you were immune to the mere idea of eroding due to your nature. I mean, I technically helped make you. The very base of your soul was partially magic enforced by demonic energy from Mika. Frankly, only a few threads of your being were you to begin with. It was hard for you to accept, but once you did it was all okay. But I thought you were immune. After you had found ghosts who were eroding, I did a little research of my own. It seemed that if a soul refused to pass on, to go with Death or whatever being takes you to the afterlife, the soul immediately starts to decompose. It rots. Even if it has been reinforced by the love and memories of the people who loved them in life, it starts to dissapear. Eventually, it turns from a ghost that you usually can't see even though they're there(usually normal ghosts can only be seen by trained professionals or people born with the ability, you're unique in that right) into... Well, the only way I can describe it is a cloud of emotions. Strip away what makes a soul a person and all you get is emotions. Eventually that too dissapears and there is absolutely nothing more left of the spirit. It ceases to be. After our little adventure, you started to show your decomposition. You started doing things over and over again, you became more emotional, you became violent. It confused the hell out of Kira and Sekkmah, but Mika and I... We didn't know how to stop it. She could feel you dissapearing. She was part of you, Will. As you were dissapearing, she could feel the part of her she placed in you coming back to her. I could feel the magic that created you dissipating. I was horrified. It only got worse as the weeks went on. It got to the point where there was no more demonic energy left in you. Mika now was only Mika. You were just... You. And what magics I could fuel into you. At this point, I didn't care that what I was doing could be considered "selfish." Everyone was behind me in what I was doing, and dammit, I wasn't about to let family die! I am Hikaru Tigerfeather of the Lace. I am ascended. My friends fuel my power and that power can move mountains if needed. I was not about to lose a friend, a brother, a son to something as trivial as this. Mika was just as adamant as I was, but she left to find her wandering pack. She left to find a perminant solution for your problem and the other two went with her. I was left with the fragments of you, but every day they were gone I had to pour more and more magics into you... Every day another small bit of you dissapeared. If I hadn't been fueling you, you would have dissapeared much quicker. Mika found her pack. She found a way to keep you from nonexistance. She was willing to do it, even if... But she was too late when she got back. You had gone. Nothing was left. You had evaporated into nothing and there was nothing I could have done about it. Except. Mika knew where you had gone. She said that even though there was nothing left of you here, there was still a tiny grain of what you had once been where you were. I had no idea what she was talking about until she explained to me that the price souls eventually pay for staying in this realm is denial of an afterlife. Neither good nor bad, just nothing. And that nothing was a place. In that nothing, ghosts and spectres and spirits and souls existed, but only in the barest of sences. Denied anything, they lost who and what they were, completely aware that they were nothing but unable to do anything about it. Complete and total sensory deprivation for eternity. Worse than any hell. She told me how to get you back. A sacrifice was needed to bring a soul back from that state of nonexistance, one from someone who was connected to the soul. In order to bring back a soul, it would need to be exchanged for another. Not only would that ensure that the soul of the departed would exist again, but also that the life energy from the one who gave theirs to bring back the one lost would become the one brought back's life energy. Am I making any sence? It's so hard to describe, Will. Not just because it's a confusing process, but because... Mika... She was a demon. Her type of demon live for centuries to ensure that they eventually find the one who matches them. She still had centuries of life to live, so even though I tried to convince her to let me replace you, she took your place. She gave up existance to let you exist. It took a few months before you became coherent again. A few days where you had been was enough to make you lose your mind. The three of us helped you regain it, but you never really got over the loss of Mika. After all, now most of you is her. Thanks to how much I bathed your soul with magic, the rest of your life force was mystical in nature. Once you regained your sanity, you revealed to us a major upside of Mika's sacrifice: You remembered everything. You were no longer a few threads of a soul that a friend had stopped from passing. You were (and are) a complete soul now. You always will have a large part of my magical influence in you, as well as the fact that your basic life force is now demonic, but that aside, you are a complete human soul. I'm now not quite sure that's a good thing, as it's made you a little more... Downcast. Depressed. Something... Well, that something that happened before we met you is back on your mind. You still won't tell me... I'm not sure I want you to, and that's okay. You've left us again, but you keep in contact and visit every once in a while, and that's okay too. Just live. Be. For Kira. For Sekkmah. For me. Okay? You suddenly felt guilty. This whole thing, this description of who Will was had gotten incredibly personal. A part of you wished you hadn't snooped around on his computer and you reached up to close the screen before your eyes noticed that there was one final document entitled "From me to me." You decided not to open it and closed the computer down. Making your way out of the room, you looked back at the computer and a sad grin made your way across your face. Perhaps it would have just been easier to ask Will.
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Posted: Tue Jul 22, 2008 2:58 pm
Quote: From me to me From the time Mika replaced me to now, I will be continuously writing details of my week and sending them to Hikaru if she notices anything like what happened when I faded, she'll let me know. If she's gone by the time I fade again... No. That won't happen. Once she's gone, once Kira and Sekkmah are gone, once everyone who I care about have passed, I go. Karu can never know about that. Never. She can never know... Alright, listen, if for some reason I end up fading again, I need to let you know this, me. You need to die. You need to pass on. You have to because... A long time ago, there was a woman and she fell in love with a man. They were happy and content with each other for many years, but like everything in this world, he died. Before he died, however, he left something behind. That something grew and eventually became you. Now the woman loved her child, but with every passing day he looked more and more like her lost love. This did not affect how she raised her child, but when the child grew to understand such things, he began to notice times when she would look at him with a sad, tearful expression and he would know that it was because he looked like his father. He hated it. He despised that he could make his mother get that sad expression in her eyes, that sometimes he could hear her crying in her bed that used to be their bed. He wished more than anything that she would find new happiness, someone who could make her forget about his father. She did find someone. Unfortunately, it was someone who could see that sadness in her eyes as well and instead of wanting to get rid of it, he wanted to utilize it. He wooed her and gained her trust and wed her. He knew you looked like the one before him and hated you for it, treated you horribly. He knew she still though about the one before him and in turn treated her horribly as well. Instead of getting better, day by day she just got worse. She would stare out the window. You tried to cheer her up, but she would just look at you and see him. It hurt to see her like that so you tried again and again, but every time it was the same sad look behind a smile and a forced laugh. And then he had enough. He started hurting her. You tried to stop, but he hurt you if you got in the way. She grew cold and you knew it was to push you away so you wouldn't try and take the violence away from her. She grew cold to protect you. She died. The doctors couldn't explain it, they said her heart just stopped. You and he knew that he wasn't to blame technically, nor were you to blame, but both of you knew it was your faults. He didn't care. You did. He tried to kick you out, but it was too late. You had already left. You found a new family by accident. You started to know how to feel warmth again, to feel how it feels to have a home. Then you died. And she was there. She looked like she did before him. She looked like the memories of her encased in the picture frames with your father. She held you to her and laughed. She was happy... But she still had that sad look in her eyes. You asked what was wrong in that place that was neither dark nor light, where a third person stood a few feet away though you couldn't quite tell if they were a shadow or if they wore a robe. She smiled, a genuine smile, and said something that made you sad and happy at the same time. And then... You were a crystal and had this feeling that something was missing. Someone was missing. Someone who had held you and made you happy and warm. There were people there. People who remembered someone and, after a few minutes you came to realize that the person they remembered was you. So you became him. And you lived as him. And then, when a cat gave you part of herself, you remembered that yes, you were this person. You were Will, there was no doubt about it. You helped people and liked to make people happy. You loved to make people smile and it made you feel warm. Years passed and you started to doubt you were really Will. Perhaps Will was some other person, perhaps you weren't really him, maybe you were some completely different person... And then the days started repeating themselves and you tried every day to do something different but you couldn't and everything was exactly the same and then the hours started becoming the same and then the minutes and then the minutes and then the minutes and then... Sadness. Guilt. Horror. Nothing. You were nothing. You were suspended in nothing, nothing surrounded you, there was no light, there was no darkness, there was no Will, no Hikaru, no Mika, no Sekkmah, no Kira, no Durem, no Barton, no Gaia, no universe, nothing. But there was you. And you knew you were there. And you were nothing. And then. You know the rest of the story. You now have Mika's life. If you want, you could live for centuries, hundreds of years, but then you'd start fading again. There is one thing you can do. One thing no one else knows about. Even if you fade again and come back with someone else's life, know this. You can go. You can will yourself to go. The only thing stopping you is knowing that you'll be leaving everyone you love behind. That's one thing that you are never going to do because you know, we know, how it feels to be left. How it feels to have someone leave you when you still want them around. So. If you were brought back, that means someone loves you again. Someone cares for you again. Wait until they go before you and then, before anyone else can care about you follow them. Grab onto their retreating life force and ride the slipstream to the afterlife. They'll be there. She'll be there.
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