Difference between revisions of "Artisanquest: Answers"

Latest revision as of 05:18, 7 May 2013

Shiki Misaki's eyes snapped open.

She awoke in one of the many inn rooms in Daguerreo, replete with its own running water feature, a bed, cabinet, door, and not much else. Immediately, she forewent the comfort of thinking what had happened last in her memory was a dream.

It came back to her in a rush, followed by everything else- Priel accepting Hades' contract, Neku dragging himself away from her- and then everything else besides, including his cold dismissal of her, Sho and everything he said, and more.

She pulled herself out of bed and staggered over to the water feature. It was a basin which remained mostly full, water flowing out of it more slowly than it flowed in through an opening in the wall. The reflection in it was wobbly and indistinct, but she knew one thing for sure-

It wasn't hers.

She stood there, leaning against the wall with one arm, for a few minutes. As she did, she became intimately aware with the sound of her breathing, the pounding in her head, the gurgling in her stomach and the feel of the stone wall against her hand. She stepped away and ran one fingernail against one another- touched her face, and her hair.

She was alive. And yet, she was Eri.

This was, she realized, something she hadn't done for days. Even though there was water everywhere on the forgotten island, she had never looked at herself in a pool ever since Sho broke the news to her. Something had been holding her back, something she didn't want to put a name to. But things had gotten about as bad for her as they could possibly get, so she obviously wasn't filtering things through properly.

It was something she had never expected to happen. She always had Eri's appearance, yes, but this- to be alive, and yet to still look like her- began to fill her with a crawling unpleasantness. Eri was gone, lost to the darkness: and now here she was, a bodysnatcher, alive and well and bound in her lost friend's bones.

A creaking of the door interrupted her from her thoughts. She turned around to see that woman that had accompanied them- the white-haired woman with one eye obscured.

"Oh, good, you are still awake. I heard you moving around and then you didn't make a lot of noise, so I wondered what had happened."

"How long was I asleep?" Shiki asked, throat dry and morning voice in full effect.

"About ten hours, maybe eleven? Yeah, eleven hours. You want breakfast? Brunchfast?"

Shiki mentally darted back to Neku's counter. She deducted the amount of time he showed her less the amount of time she'd been asleep, and came up with negative numbers. A high of fear immediately electrified her entire body, and she moved out of the room.

"No," she said, already walking down the corridor. "No, sorry. I have to find Neku."

Shiki didn't find Neku.

She immediately left Daguerreo and went out on her own, which was a stupid thing to do. She searched the area for a mile around the library's cave-like entrance, evading adamantoises as she went, skipping past the odd worm hydra, looking for signs of a conflict. Lily had left the area around scorched when they fought Sho, right?

But she didn't find anything. Or at least, anything much. There were small scabs of conflict here and there, but nothing lasting. No clear indication of a winner or loser, and more importantly, no clear indication of where Neku had gone. She doubled back and searched in Daguerreo, but nobody mentioned noticing the unusual spiky-hair's return.

And so Shiki sat down again in front of the dragon god's shrine, exhausted, hungry and sore-legged. She covered her face with her hat and closed out the world, just as Neku tended to do.

Unfortunately, the world came to her much more quickly. Kumoto's apprentice walked up a few minutes later, asking after her. By this time, even lunch had passed.

"You manage to find him?"
"No."
"I'm sorry to hear it. I understand he wanted to find a rival of his or something?" "More than that. He was after the Game Master. That guy... holds Neku's life in his hands. If he found him, then he either fulfilled whatever task he was given or got in a fight... maybe he got in a fight with him anyway. Without a partner... without anyone else there, I don't know how he could have fought him. We took him on as a group before and you saw how much it took just to drive him off."
"So maybe he didn't find him. Maybe he just got fed up and left the island."
"No, that's worse. If Neku didn't find him, then his counter would have run out. And then he'd just... go up in a puff of white noise... I guess. That's what happens when you don't finish whatever task a reaper gives you before your counter runs out."
"...I'm sorry. I didn't know. If I did then I would have gone with him myself."
"...it's my fault. I should have gone..."
"He rejected you. He didn't want to have anything to do with you, from what I overheard. He probably wouldn't have gotten on any better... maybe worse. Who can say?"

There was silence for a few moments, only backgrounded by the sound of the running water. By this point, more familiar faces had begun to make their way over. Shiki sighed.

"The last time I saw him... we were friends. Good friends. I even liked him a... a lot. We'd only known one another for a week, but I got him to open up to me for the first time... maybe the first friend he had. He changed from... I managed to turn him around, you know?"

She sighs.

"But now I met him again in these worlds and everything got reset to factory settings. He's as cold and impenetrable as he was the day I met him... maybe even more so. I couldn't get through to him... he didn't even want to know. He just rubbed up the wrong way against everyone, and I don't know what happened to him... he wouldn't let me in and tell me what he was thinking."

"And now he might be gone."
"And now he might be gone."

Again, silence. Shiki spent a minute looking around the area they were in, the voluminous central area of the hermit's library which branched out into many other directions.

"Why did you and your friends come here?" the woman asked, her question genuine and free of accusation.

"We wanted to become..." Shiki says. She stops to think. "I don't know what the word is. Self sufficient? Better? ....Strong?"

She continues. "We only had our magic and our more skilled friends to protect us, and sometimes not even that. None of us could use a weapon or defend ourselves with our own two hands. And I-- not just for my sake, but for theirs... I mean, you saw us fighting Sho. We torched half the landscape just swinging around, big kabooms and icicles that never even hit sometimes... no control at all. We only got out of it by hitting him with all the overkill we had. That's not... that's not going to work forever, especially..."

She thought of Priel. Priel, who had lived under the same roof as them for months. Priel, who had once chased her across the Fluorgian desert with her talons and fangs out, insisting she was going to eat her (how would that have worked if she wasn't technically alive then? Heck, what distinction really was there between the Shiki she was then and the Shiki she is now?). Priel, who had now disappeared with Hades and become a Harrier Reaper- and wouldn't, would still be somewhere in Fluorgis doing whatever stupid dumb stupid stuff she did if Shiki didn't insist on her coming along to 'keep an eye on her'.

"Especially since I have an enemy now that knows all about me. I gotta change."

Shiki stands up and walks over to a shelf of books. They're the ones Lily looked at on transmogrification.

"Not like this, of course, but still. Heeh... as it is, I'm still way too weak."

"But your heart is strong," the woman said. Shiki looked back. "All of you have strong hearts, in fact. If you didn't, you wouldn't have come here. You wouldn't have paid any attention to me when I was strung up on that tree. You wouldn't have fought your best to protect me, a person you never met before. You wouldn't have stuck your hand out to that boy even though he was cold and cruel to you."

"I still fainted," Shiki replied miserably. "If I hadn't, then maybe I could have gone-"

"Don't think about maybes," she fired back. "Even as you were, it's not impossible to think it could have happened. That man with the burning hair had all the presence and power of the dragon god. Plus you were exhausted, emotionally worn out, and worse- that person betrayed you for her own devices. She never lifted a finger to help when you fought the black monsters, either- her heart is just like so many others who came to Daguerreo and were turned away."
"By Kumoto?"
"-yes, by Kumoto. If you came here to train with him, and you were accepted, then all you can do from now on is steel yourself. You won't be changed around in a day, or even a week, but this will help you. All of you," she says, looking around for a moment. "Your hearts have the potential to withstand what training will do to you, and your bodies, your minds, your reflexes- all of those have to improve. You might not be able to withstand fainting after four days of trekking, but it'll be a start."

Shiki looks around, as well. She looks at her new friend, at the people around her, and nods.

"I swear," she says. "For the sake of the people who will allow themselves the chance to be friends with me, I'll be strong. I'll become a better person than I was before today. I'll do my best to not let things like this happen again. I'll overcome the darkness and find answers, and I'll do it together with my friends."