Originally Posted by
Monstrous Bird of Qin, Ou Ki
Totoma stood up and dusted himself off. "Miss Kami, before I go, I... understand that you've made tremendous sacrifices to do your duty. During your spar with Karine, I saw in your fists pain and loss that you've been dealing with for... far longer than I've been alive. And believe me, I hope your efforts pay off in the end. But..."
He closed his eyes and took a deep breath. "...you must have lived a full life before you become Kami, right? You were an adult, with friends, perhaps family, dreams, hopes, goals... all that great stuff, am I right? And then it was ripped away, but... you could deal, because you had a purpose, a goal, as well as maturity and experience to draw upon."
"...I was nine." he yelled, his rage suddenly exploding, and with it his power. "Nine when my mother was taken from me, Nine when I was tortured in unspeakable ways and left to feed the vultures. I didn't have the maturity and experience to cope. All I fucking had was a broken family, stubborness, and one friend--ONE FRIEND--that I was deathly afraid to burden, to confide in, because she almost worried herself to death trying to bring me out of the state I was in after the battle."
He slammed his foot on the lookout and sent cracks snaking across the surface. "And you expect me to be okay? You expect me to be stable when my father, who should have been there for me instead worked himself to death, and in the rare cases we were in the same room, looked at me with a "why was it you that survived" look? You expect me to not feel guilty that Aiden, Karine's father, may very well have gone after Jagam and gotten himself killed?"
With tears in his eyes, he clenched his fists, and an aura flared into existence around him. "I spent ten years pretending to be okay, while suffering almost completely alone, reliving that goddamned battle again and again and again, all while slowly, I thought, rebuilding myself."
The aura flared and the entire lookout shook. "And then in two goddamned days all that crumbled, leaving nothing but the scared, lonely, selfish, and angry child within. And you, you fucking think something like that isn't gonna lash out or be difficult!? I've had to fucking start rebuilding my identity from the ground up, while training to save the world from some unknown threat... and hope that whatever I manage to build just doesn't crumble again."
He met Kami's gaze with a venomous glare. "Sorry, but I'm not a fucking miracle worker. I am sick and fucking tired of people like you and my mother expecting me to pull off the impossible."
His aura and power died down, and his shoulders slumped. "I'm... I'm sorry, I know I'm being selfish, that all this I've been dragged into is way beyond me, way more important, and I want to help, but... I can only do so much in a few days. If I had long... a few months, a year, maybe I could build myself up so that I'd be useful, but right now, I'm a burden. Like always."
He sighed, turned, and began walking towards the edge of the lookout.