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 Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 8:17 am
A week passed, days passed, Roch finally was getting around the school campus again--and as such he was making his rounds. Riyo was near the top of the list--he really should have seen her right after the last trial, he thought, but things had happened so jackin' fast--
He sighed and ran a hand over his face, stopping in front of her dorm room and lifting a hand. He needed to knock. He would, he thought, as soon as he figured out what to say. This was almost WORSE than Edel--at least with Edel he'd been there--
He groaned and let his knuckle drop on the door, rapping once to get her attention. If she was even there.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 9:54 am
Nothing but a lot of silence met the sound of knocking in the seconds that followed. There was no indication that anything was moving inside, but the door swung open unannounced nonetheless, as if the ghoul had somehow ghosted over to it.
Riyo stood in the doorway wearily, her hair pulled up in a lazy ponytail, though strands of her bangs had managed to escape. Her clothing seemed equally as lazy, consisting of nothing more than pants and a long-sleeved black top. "Hey." The ghoul practically yawned out. Like most Halloweeners, it looked as if she hadn't been sleeping.
"You need something?" It didn't seem Riyo was on her usual defensive side. The ghoul was a little more placid. Instead of playing 20 questions, she simply stepped aside to allow the reaper entry. Company had become something she looked forward to instead of dreading. Company meant she could focus on someone else instead of herself.
Her room seemed to compliment her current state of dress: lazy. Unmade bed, dirty laundry stacked in one corner of the room, and lint covering her usually spotless floor. Someone hadn't been keeping up with their chores.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 9:57 am
"Yeah, I ah--wanted to talk," Roch said as he looked around the room a bit blankly. This definitely didn't seem like Riyo's room. The ghoul that had freaked out over trash? Living in this dump? He looked at her with a frown, abruptly remembering a scene from his past. "How you doin?" he asked her, torn between looking at her and looking at the mess.
He probably needed to get her out of there... maybe get some cleaning gnomes in here, or something... as much as he hated the little jackers.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 10:54 am
"Ah. Talking." Riyo nodded as if the answer didn't surprise her in the least. "Everybody has been wanting to talk recently." Her tail flicked from side to side as she shut the door gently behind him, her feet silently swaying back over to the chair parked at her desk. There were so many papers, as per usual... But none of them looked official or business oriented. They were just... Full of words and drawings.
Apparently this was what Riyo had been spending her time with. Writing and drawing. None of the drawings were particularly great. Mostly just stick figures a scareling could do. "That's a good question, Roch." The ghoul mumbled as one of her hazcats jumped up on her lap and made itself at home. The demoness reclaimed her pen and seemed to continue where she left off. Writing some incoherent babble. "It's hard to say. The past few weeks have been devastating. I've had dreams-- no, nightmares about better worlds I could've lived in. And I'm almost certain if I'd let myself remain blissfully ignorant, I would've just stayed there. But instead, I came back here to a world full of conflict and problems I've spent years ignoring."
Riyo's eyes stayed glued to the paper, only stopping to dip her quill pen in more ink. "You would think I'd say I'm doing pretty awful, but that's the thing." Abruptly, her hand stopped moving, and her red eyes slowly lifted to look up at him. "I've always been awful. It just seems that I've finally hit the bottom so I can't sink any lower."
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 11:03 am
He thought about it. He seriously sat there and thought about her comment, examining it thoroughly for a long moment before saying, "So basically--wait, did you even go to the horsemen's place?" he asked her, looking for a place to sit down. He finally settled on leaning against her desk.
"Cuz I dunno if you can say you hit rock bottom until you're partially responsible for blowin' all four of the islands up," he said, calmly. "That's probably right up there on my list of s**t I probably shouldn'ta done. But hell, there's a key, there's a lock--" he shrugged. "And there's an idiot," he finished. "But hell, that's only going to get me killed if people find out about it before the hunters do it to Halloween, too," he added, in a very morbid bout of logic.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 11:30 am
"No." She answered simply to his question regarding the four isles. "I know about what happened." Or at least, she knew a good chuck of what happened through everyone else who had spoken on the subject. Whatever Roch was talking about seemed to be a new piece to the puzzle, however.
It looked like she was prepared to say something on the subject, but his last comment made her mouth close.
Xiu had helped to sedate her mind of such thoughts. It looked like Roch was trying to undo that. "You shut your whoreish mouth before I shut it for you." The quill in her hand was immediately snapped in half, her face turning to rage for the first time since before the trials.
"Did you come here to talk or to spread hearsay to an already paranoid person?" Her cats, sensing the immediate change in emotion, seemed to move away from the area. "Because if this was the conversation you had in mind, you can march your a** right back the way you came."
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 11:41 am
"No," he said, shaking his head. "Sorry. The last week and a half I've been hearin' voices--but that ain't why I came here. I wanna apologize," he said straight-forwardly. "I wasn't there. But even if I had been there, I couldn't have stopped it. I can't fulfill my promise." He looked away from her, crossing his arms over his chest in a strangely vulnerable move.
"The one good thing..." he started out slowly, "the one good thing that came from the trials and the isles and all that--is that they're the ones that got stuck with the killer phoenix," he told her, grinning a bit wickedly. "This huge insanity giving phoenix went with them instead of us. I'd forgotten all about that till just now."
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 1:00 pm
Ah. Voices. That was another one Riyo had been hearing about. It didn't really excuse the disgusting comment, but for now she would put that to the side.
When Roch apologized, Riyo's hands relaxed and her face grew tired. So that's what had been weighing heavy on him. It made sense now. "Roch..." Riyo started with a sigh, looking at the spilled ink from the quill pen. "It was a promise only a god could've been able to keep. You're only one person, and as much as I hate to admit it even to myself, it was a dream. The only part of me that's gone... Is the part that needed to go." The part that was content to live a miserable life. In that way, the dream had been a blessing in disguise.
"... P-phoenix?" The comment caught her off guard. Caused her brows to furrow. She hadn't heard about the outbreak of insanity. Just the fact that the islands were gone and everyone was acting strangely as a side-effect. "Insanity? What are you talking about?" She was obviously hesitant to ask, because the more questions she asked, the worse the picture painted in her mind got.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 1:08 pm
He thought for a moment, idly scratching the side of his head. "Okay, there were four islands, and on each of the islands there was this room that the hunters snuck in--or at least I thinks that's what happened. I saw the one on War when I was there, and wound up fighting in one on Death, but they wound up getting destroyed, then we were on the entrance island somehow--it floated in the sky, see? And I was fighting more hunters, but then the island dropped out of the sky and into the ocean when all the islands blew up."
It was confusing, he thought, trying to fit it all together. But he was sort of sure he knew what had happened. "Then this giant gray bird appeared and started flying at us--it was HUGE," he said. "And when you looked at it closer it had faces and voices and--it uh... well, it was made up of the dead horsemen. They'd become insanity, like the teddy scares and other things from Christmastival, see? So everyone started FREAKING out angry and started attacking everyone else, while we were tryin' to escape through these two portals--one to here and one to wherever the hunters go--but so was the phoenix."
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 3:18 pm
Riyo propped her head up on the desk with her arm as Roch began to explain the details she hadn't known about. Following his descriptions was... A little difficult, but she managed with what she was given.
"So... It wasn't just hunters." Riyo thought back to the Christmastival incident, brow furrowing in thought. "I didn't think... We'd have to deal with that anymore." What disturbed her more though, was the fact that it was made up of the dead horseman.
Did that mean they were at risk of such a thing too? "Do you think this insanity thing is contagious?" Oh boy. Another thing for her to worry about.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 3:30 pm
"I... don't know," he said after a second of thinking. "I don't got it anymore, the voices stopped and I started thinking straight again, so it was good," he said.
"But there we were tryin' to get back here and the hunters were tryin' to go through the other door, and we're all jackin' insane, hitting enemies, friends, all this sort of stuff--and then the phoenix went through the hunter's door. So maybe if we're real lucky they've all gone crazy by now and are killing each other," he summed up.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 4:09 pm
"... Skeleton Jack." Why couldn't anything be a clean cut operation for them? Did everything have to be a huge fiasco?
"Yeah. At least it went with the hunters... But what's to stop it from coming back to us once it finishes up with them?"
The feline began to rub her head. "Whatever the case.. I can't really give my full attention to this. I have other problems that need to be taken care of first." It wasn't that she didn't want to. The thought that her friends could potentially be in danger scared her, but it would be best if she waited until it could have her full attention.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 4:43 pm
"... Like what?" Roch asked blankly, looking at her stick figure doodles. "Does it have something to do with drawing?" he went on, picking up a sheet and looking at it, "Cuz I ain't gonna lie, I think it might be a bit too late for you to become a prodigy."
And impossible, but he didn't mention that one.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 4:57 pm
The drawing Roch had picked up was of a mildly familiar demon with horns and a jagged, sharp teethed mouth. The fact that the reaper had commented on it made Riyo feel a little embarrassed, but it also made her smile. "I'm quite aware that I lack the necessary skills to be good at art." At the very least, her handwriting was pretty.
"Actually... I have to go... Visit my mother." Her tone grew quiet and grave. "I've been putting it off for a long time. Haven't seen her since I was 12."
Riyo's fingers twiddled nervously as she relayed that fact. "It's not as easy as it sounds. I'm sure you've heard that before. After that... I'm not sure what's going to happen." What if she had to stay there? What if... She ended up with the same fate as her mother? Stuck in that asylum forever. It was her worst fear. One she had been forced to face in the dream. Being alone... for the rest of her days.
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Posted: Tue May 08, 2012 5:10 pm
Roch looked at her. "Yeah," he said abruptly. "I can understand that. I mean, I don't got that great of a past with my old lady, either. Hell, haven't seen her since I was six... then again I doubt she's expecting me to come home, seein' as I got no idea where she is or what she's doin'... Or even her name, for that matter. I don't think I ever asked. But... you'll come back, right?"
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