Like the spectre of Christmases past, Cyanna appeared during his dark musings. Was she a delusion, brought forth by Rex to torment him?
No. Even in such a stage of uncertainty, he knew better. She had returned, but why?
"Forget to tell your frog friend something?" He asked, in a tone that was pettier than he had intended. Biting his tongue, he took in a deep breath before correcting himself,
"I'm sorry, you're right. We do need to talk."
Scooching to the side, the boy eventually managed to sit upright on the ground.
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That was a good question. Was he really himself anymore? Even now, with the last remaining effects of the soul-erosion fading, he still felt like an impostor in his own skin. Honestly, he probably couldn't handle many more possessions before the results grew damaging.
"I... I think so."
It felt like he had taken two steps back right as soon as he had taken a step forward since his breakdown. How many more would he have to endure before he could truly progress.
"I'm not in a good place, Cyanna... I haven't been in some time."
Sasheem offered a smirk. "Sasheem is Sasheem. Not even that stupid do-gooder he absorbed can change what he's about," the Majin smirked, turning to face the task ahead of them. "And if you losers can't deal with that, despite all the assistance he provides, all the better to show you up even more."
This was new. Finally stopped one of those Saiyan sisters from flipping a lid at him. It wouldn't last, but then again what did? He was no hero after all. This while savior of the Earth thing was only temporary....until he found a better way to proceed with whatever came next.
But even so, he was going out of his way to stuck his neck out for these fools....a little respect wouldn't hurt.
Sasheem exhaled deeply, putting his hands behind his head and stretching. "Dunno about the rest of you, but this is pretty relaxing, don'tcha think? Way better place to collect one's thoughts than that other Namek, right?"
" Looking at this nightmarish scene I wonder if there's even still a Capsule Corp here ?" Even if there is , there probably isn't enough time to search the place for information ," Praxat said. Praxat takes out her Jobox and activates it ," Get in and get out right, yeah there's no time to waste," Praxat said.
Praxat follows Wilhelm and Parsley
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Pyrus and Pike had been returned to their homeworlds, and the disorder left in their wake had been restored. Because Zuvan had glanced and known for a fact that there was something familiar in the Divergence to return to, he viewed these paths as a simple matter.
Yet now as had been the case twice before, they had no escort - and therefore, no guide. Still with all that had passed, it seemed that it was not only among themselves or their alternates, that the Doctor's victims had struck up rapport.
Clearly, something Zurvan had shown Wilhelm had stirred Terra's last man to action. Even though he smiled, Ochazuke found the glaze that fell over the man's eyes was the same as it was the first time they found him wandering the shadows of his own, doomed world.
"The burden?" His silence broke at the end of a long, terse sigh. "Of what? Seeing firsthand all we stand to lose?"
Ochazuke's teeth audibly ground against each other. His words strained, coarse, barely concealed. His grip on Nail's dark sphere tightened, arm trembling up to the shoulder, and a long, hard blink fell over his face with a dull mutter. Yet he moved to Wilhelm's side anyway.
For it was not for the sake of the horrible truth they stood to find, but the shadow of things to come still so near to memory.
"Agreed. Examining what the Doctor has left behind him, it may be the first step to claiming some ground from him."
Every time they were attacked by some interloper, the Doctor set the stage; the chaff locked the battleground, his children seized any moment. This would be the first time they engaged this alternate Pantaloon outside of his own terms.
"An alternate Jinzi standing outside of time, however, he is anything but negligent." He took a place between the two. "Let's see just how deep the parallels run where the legacy of the First Race is concerned."
Ochazuke lowered his head with a long, slow sigh. Ever since its creation, the dark sphere had never left his hand, and Nail had stated the purpose behind its design in no uncertain terms. He paid no mind to the emergent theoretical discussion that immediately surrounded the explicit, quantifiable fruit of his final magical conjuring - Charco and Erosa saw to that - but it seems that Praxat had become so fixated on creating something, that observation had become secondary.
"...your intention is to make a compass...to place a compass inside?" The exacting way Praxat had recollected Nail's words made the task seem...redundant, under the circumstances. "Beyond aesthetics, what purpose will this serve?"
All inquiries are derived from observation. From cause and effect, relation and correlation, there in the observable phenomena of the universe mortal eyes had a history of discovering a means to an end. The philosopher's pursuit of the good in all its forms; the artist's pursuit of truth and beauty. In the engineered design he'd seen it through Jinzi's work a clear purpose and focused intention to his theory.Praxat points at The Quantum Ambient Toxin Collector device on her chest, " From my understanding that device which Ochazuke is holding and the device on my chest have one thing in common. They both work on the principle of Quantum Mechanics!" Praxat said.
But the connection between a Toadian's breastplate and the resonating sphere in his hand...
"...explain."
The dry ground broke beneath their feet, and the long road before them was barren.
Ochazuke took a place near Wilhelm, casting his meditational field wide around the group.
The insights of Zxu'ro's Spider and Bear yielded nothing; there was a planet, its lifeblood cracked and dried. The previous divergences had twist the Earth from its current fate, but whether held ransom to overflowing fire or the Vitalmancer's appetites, there was always something, someone, who emerged to resist what had befallen the planet.
Here. the palpable silence about them was the most oppressive. Knowing the members of their group were perhaps the only things left alive on the surface held them all in a marooned intimacy. Ochazuke followed in the wake of Wilhelm's solemn march.
No living presence upon or below the surface. One did not need any more than to feel the hanging air looming around them. All that remains...is structure.
Long ago, the Old Turtle had taught him the skill of mindful awareness, that even the silence cultivated in stillness held something within it, if one was willing to find it without distraction. Reaching through the long, endless, shadows that stretched all around them, he found the reach of his pursuit disturbingly unimpeded.If there was something to divest his attention as he reached with Kyokushin Keihatsu, he'd have welcomed it as he scanned the surface of this Alternate Earth feeling for some shape in the darkness.
In the darkness of this world, Nail's artifact hung suspended around his neck by a tether. He lift a hand and pulled his cloak over his gi, the unseen compass pressed into his chest as they pursued the Doctor's path.
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"I could tell something was wrong, but I didn't know what to do." She placed her hand gently on top of his, "Chroma be damned, I'm not going to leave you. You're very important to me, Charco." She then took her hand away and looked at him directly, "Can you tell me what's going on? If I knew more, maybe I can help you somehow. I...want to help, I just need to know how." Her eyes were getting moist, despite her attempts to remain calm.
Last edited by Tami; 05-25-2019 at 04:17 PM.
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Aleka had decided she ultimately she was going as she couldn't sit idle after what she had learned not to mention she had more then enough energy to spare. Why sit in the side lines when she was able and wasn't doing anything else? Of course others had also joined, mainly Ochazuke, Parsley and the majin. The later was a bit inconvenient but nothing major and he was useful despite his more abrasive personality.
Likability had nothing to do with usefulness sadly.
The man, Wilhelm had been through a lot. In the way he spoke, his mannerisms and everything else it was obvious even without knowing their background.
She couldn't help but ask something; the eerie silence and stillness would drive her mad otherwise. "How..how did it end up like this?"
No sound but the crunching of their feet, no light but the one that kept the monsters in the dark of the imagination at bay. For a Elemental Way user, there was a fundamental wrongness about the whole place. It was like the entireity of nature had completely died down to the stars which made her more uncomfortable. Aleka wasn't an easy person to rattle but she wasn't invincible mentally. She knew that well enough.
Through the silence and the technique her fellow martial artist used she prompted a question as she was pretty sure the unnatural silence was oppressive even for those who found it otherwise comforting.
Save for Sasheem. But it was Sasheem.
"What is that technique you're using? You used it before earlier." Normally chatter was a bit easier to break the silence but she still felt very ill at ease at the moment.
To those who can sense outwards, sense structure, they do sense distant man made shapes and one in the direction they are moving.
Wilhelm's lights as their only real illumination, he speaks in the empty air to keep their focus off the stillness.
“The silence...gets to you first. Eventually your ears...become sensitive to sound. Anything, even...cloth scraping across a surface...sounds decibels louder. Your normal breathing....like ragged panting. This place is worse. Something...in the atmosphere here. Dimming the light. According...to my sensor, it should be....daylight out.”
He shakes his head.
“Zurvan.....he said this world....was dead. Terra was dead, but not like this. This is......a tomb. A mausoleum. And if the Doctor.......stayed here long, then he is not just evil. He’s truly...mad.”
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Each footfall echoing in the silence twist and lingered with every breath of the thin air. Though he felt himself moving forward into the veil of black, there seemed to be nothing before the glare of Wilhelm's great Terran lights as they tread the path of the dead frontier.
"...that would be the difference between the Doctor and Jinzi Pantaloon, wouldn't it?" A Flash Cutter formed in his right hand, its sudden spark a white-hot flash that flooded the near total darkness.
"But if the world is a tomb, perhaps there will be the shape of some memory upon it." There in the distance, a mile or so out was a monument, a building of some sort. Throwing out his arm, the gleaming sphere glided upon its razor-edge, spinning off and carrying its light towards the horizon to create a beacon. The light of his ki broke through the darkness, illuminating - for a time, at least - a destination to reach. "We shall extract from it before he can make all others like it."
Thumbing his nose as he awaited the effect of his attempt, Ochazuke's silhouette shrugged in the darkness, and his boots continued to scrape the unseen ground. Other than the acute feeling of proximity, their voices were the only other indications they remained in company at all.
"Mindfulness and observation, nothing more," he said to Aleka. "Awareness, after all, is not a thing to be practiced in isolation..."
Their footsteps echoed through the silence as if they were made at the bottom of an endless cave. The only sounds in the immediate area were their footfalls, their breathing, and the deafening rustle of their clothing. Other than that, nothing. It was maddening, and Parsley had only been there for a few minutes at best. To have spent years in this hell, with nothing but himself and the memories of his greatest failure and worst loss, it was easier to understand The Doctor's mindset, and his supposed idiocy.
It wasn't idiocy. It was madness. He had been driven insane by this place. While sympathy was still something she was bereft of in his case, her thirst to end his life as a means of justice was waning. In its stead was the feeling that killing him was a mercy. He had lost everything; and while his attempts to gain it back were condemned from the start, it was only then that she realized what he had suffered.
"It seems we were wrong about him," she intoned. Despite it only being them, her voice lowered to near a whisper. A byproduct of being in complete silence. "What I originally thought was idiocy is actually insanity. This place is Hell. That will drive anyone free of their wits." It spoke to his genius that he was even able to act still, and do all things he had accomplished thus far.
Her keen sense of observation picked up several buildings all around, and one in the direction of the time pool. That would be the site of their investigation. She had a feeling it was Capsule Corp, but only time would tell for sure.
“Yes. Jinzi....is manic. Genius. Crazy, but...in a good way.” Wilhelm smiles a bit at that. It dies down as they keep walking, the Flash Cutter illuminating more of the darkened ground.
“Terra.....made me.....near mad. Almost...enough to...do something...terrible. Without Karis, without...duty and faith....I dislike thinking about what I might have done. The Doctor.....if he stayed here for years, then he is mad. Not just mad.....”
He looks at Ochazuke.
“He thinks himself......dead, already, Ochazuke. I can...feel it. This place...drove him...insane. He doesn’t...think like Jinzi anymore. He thinks like a man with no restraint. No faith....but to himself. No duty...but what he deems necessary for...his task.”
He shakes his head.
“I do not.....think any reasoning, pleading, or......negotiation will work...with him.”
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