Asch the Bloody (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
dissonates) wrote2012-07-08 10:21 pm
dissonates) wrote2012-07-08 10:21 pm
Entry tags:
[Voice]
[Silence.
There's too much of it. It burns into his mind, the echo of emptiness in the corner of it, that ache he can't seem to brush aside no matter how he tries to distract himself. He's tried going outside, he's tried burying himself in that braille stuff Xion gave him, he's tried striking up conversations with his housemates (even the animals), but he runs out of things to say far too quickly and in the back of his mind it's always there. The silence, the echo. The fact that something is missing.
Dead.
And then he's had enough.
The journal's camera is partially obscured when the feed flickers on, and what it does show is his face - eyes, a flash of red hair, his bangs down - just enough to make it seem like he's not quite himself. His voice, too, is softened; it's not as open and friendly as Luke would have been when greeting the village, but it lacks the usual anger or pent-up frustrations of the socially-awkward soldier. If anything it sounds... hushed, weary, tinged with a bit of desperation. He needs this. Whether or not he wants to do it is irrelevant.
It hurts. The silence hurts, more than last time when Luke had been sent home, and he honestly hadn't thought it would.]
Tell me about your day. Tell me a story. Talk about anything. Today I'm listening.
[He might not care. He might not be nice about it. He might not even remember it later. But he'll listen.
He just needs to hear something, so he can forget about the nothing in his head for a while.]
((Asch is blind, so all tags must be voice/action or he cannot respond to them!))
There's too much of it. It burns into his mind, the echo of emptiness in the corner of it, that ache he can't seem to brush aside no matter how he tries to distract himself. He's tried going outside, he's tried burying himself in that braille stuff Xion gave him, he's tried striking up conversations with his housemates (even the animals), but he runs out of things to say far too quickly and in the back of his mind it's always there. The silence, the echo. The fact that something is missing.
Dead.
And then he's had enough.
The journal's camera is partially obscured when the feed flickers on, and what it does show is his face - eyes, a flash of red hair, his bangs down - just enough to make it seem like he's not quite himself. His voice, too, is softened; it's not as open and friendly as Luke would have been when greeting the village, but it lacks the usual anger or pent-up frustrations of the socially-awkward soldier. If anything it sounds... hushed, weary, tinged with a bit of desperation. He needs this. Whether or not he wants to do it is irrelevant.
It hurts. The silence hurts, more than last time when Luke had been sent home, and he honestly hadn't thought it would.]
Tell me about your day. Tell me a story. Talk about anything. Today I'm listening.
[He might not care. He might not be nice about it. He might not even remember it later. But he'll listen.
He just needs to hear something, so he can forget about the nothing in his head for a while.]
((Asch is blind, so all tags must be voice/action or he cannot respond to them!))
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[When his father noticed enough to say something, that is.]
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I read plenty of books, actually. I'm not illiterate.
[Just... unimaginative.]
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What kind of books?
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Ancient historical texts, mostly. Occasionally old legends, war stories, fonic arte books...
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I don't have a lot of old legends and war stories under my belt. Know a lot of pirate stories.
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[Don't really have many of those on Auldrant.]
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Whatever you think is better.
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...hmm.]
...there once was a girl who lived all her life on the run from the marines for crimes she didn't commit. The marines put a bounty on her head for 77 million when she was eight years old, and so she found no safe haven anywhere she looked. She grew up hardened by her inability to trust those around her, and she escaped the law again and again by counting only on herself. When you're willing to cast aside anybody at all to keep yourself from harm, it's easy enough to stay ahead of the law, right?
She eventually found shelter working as the right hand of a man who was intent on causing a bloody revolution so that he could take control of a powerful desert country. The kingdom was saved in the end by pirates-- which is another story entirely-- and to escape from the desert kingdom herself, the woman stowed away on the pirates' ship and then asked to join the crew.
The captain agreed, despite the protests of this crew. He said that he believed she was a good person at heart. And so grudgingly, the rest of them accepted her presence but watched their backs.
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Who the hell would put that kind of reward for a kid? That's just asking to be bankrupt. And what kind of crimes would even merit it?
[Unless 77 million is randomly a tiny amount on her world, but he'd hate to see an economy like that.]
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But honestly, the girl's only crime was to come from an island that had angered the government, and the government had wiped it off the face of the map. She was the only survivor.
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[Just seems like a huge waste of citizens, otherwise.]
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It isn't what I'd call the best government in the world. [Which is laughable, given it's called the World Government for a reason.]
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[Corrupted governments are hardly a new concept. His world's history is full of them.]
So what about the girl? She joined with the pirates, and then what?
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And then while they were visiting another island, agents of the government finally caught up with again, and this time they gave her an ultimatum: help them with a job and then turn herself in, or they'd bring an entire war force against that one lone pirate ship. And even though the sensible thing to do would be just to abandon them and run again, she found she couldn't, because she'd grown to care for them too much.
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[It's really, really weird to imagine pirates as the heroes of the story, but compared to the alternative - that is, the corrupt government - it sounds like a much better choice.]
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The girl accepted the government's bargain, and would do their dirty work and turn herself in providing the pirates were allowed to leave the island safely. The pirates knew she was up to something sinister, and she visited them one last time in order to tell them she was leaving and they would never see her again.
At first, they felt betrayed and abandoned, because no pirate leaves the crew without the captain's permission. And so they demanded answers, which she refused to give. It was only the following night that they discovered the bargain she'd made with the government, and though they were upset and angry they had been used as a bargaining chip and that she hadn't trusted in them to protect her, they were also happy. Because she hadn't betrayed and abandoned them, and that meant that they knew what they had to do next.
But by that time, the girl had already left the island under guard, on her way to government headquarters at Enies Lobby, and they had no hope of overtaking them.
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Sounds like a suicidal rescue mission waiting to happen.
[He's been there, they're super-fun.]
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Oh, sure. The pirate crew jumped on a sea train and rode it through a tsunami in order to give chase, arrived at government headquarters and didn't bother to knock, because their captain was a little headstrong at times. {Read: suicidally stupid, yup.] And they fought their way to the building and called out to her over the rooftops, and she yelled at them to go away, which they wouldn't. And she told them that to keep harbouring her was a death sentence and she wasn't going to be a burden to them and she'd rather die now than have them curse her name later, all that sacrificial stuff.
So the captain nodded in one of his few wise moments and ordered his crew to shoot down the flag of the World Government, which they did with great flare. And the woman realised that, in essence, the pirate crew had just declared war on the good 600 nations that flew that flag, all for her sake, and maybe she was moved by that or maybe she realised it now didn't really matter if she was part of their crew or not, they were the world's enemy either way.
Everyone was very shocked. Well... the marines were, anyway.
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[And a little familiar, really. He and the citizens of Kimlasca had all but waged war on the crown to save Natalia, so...]
I can understand why they would do it, though.
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[She's a little surprised, but actually quite happy to hear that Asch understands it though, so she favours him with a grin. Whiiich Asch won't see because Asch is blind and Nami is dense, but she continues on.]
Anyway, the pirates ran amok through the whole government building and kind of fought their way through the castle to rescue the princess, as it were. The officials tried to stop them, and there were a lot of injuries on both sides, but in the end they fought their way to her side, and then all of them fought together, even when the marines finally decided to call in the warships and just blow the entire place up, pirates and all. They only managed to get out by the skin of their teeth and their well-loved ship. [...okay so she can't resist--] And their damn fine navigator.
Their collective bounties went up astronomically after that attack, but none of them gave a damn.
[That last part is a lie. Nami had a total freakout, but DETAILS.]
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[Sounds exciting. Or it would be for someone who liked that kind of thing.
Still, overall? Not a bad story. She told it well, so his tone shows some improvement from what it had been at the start.]
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[Though that sort of goes against the whole freedom business that draws people to become pirates, as far as he understands it.]
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