Exposition Soup

Exposition Soup
Date of Scene:	11 December 2012
Location:	Castle Oblivion
Synopsis:	The Second part of Hobo with a Shotgun. In this episode, plot happens. Also, everything goes to Hel.
Cast of Characters:	Will Sherman, Riku
Tinyplot:	Hobo With A Shotgun

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Riku has posed:
No sky. Just a ceiling of unbroken black. The black seeps down to the horizon, purple highlights tinging the farthest edges of sight. The broken city seemed somehpow small in the second story window. Diminished by ruin and a sense of incompletion.

Bringing it down to this small and more immediate scale made it fit more completely in Riku's head as an actual place. Destiny Island was a small world with a small population, and to a boy from it's placid shores the big city of Manhattan was incomprehensible.

A shadow populated by shadows, all of it blurring into snapshots he could understand. Riku looked out of the window at the displaced remains of Central Park, all of Manhattan seemingly torn apart and squeezed carelessly together to make this vista.

He opened his hand again, dark flame dancing across his palm and the tips of his fingers in a movement he has repeated a hundred times now. Sometimes he feels the urge to set the building he was in on fire. To laugh and laugh until it all burnt away. Riku waited until the feeling passed as he stared out the window, one knee pulled up to his chest.

A swarm of heartless erupted from a building and swarmed across the surface into a broken window. The flight reminded him of a startled flock of birds. Riku closed his hand, the flame extuinguishing itself with the same identical hiss as all the times before.

Will Sherman has posed:
Will had slept, he needed to, he had to...

His mind needed the rest, from everything that he had experienced the previous day. So many things had happened, so much suffering had transpired...even now, he finds little comfort, but the rest, even disturbed, is something he can use and needs. Slowly, very slowly, he rises, looking through the place for some sort of food. There is...something, the majority of the food is worthless, the fridge going out, but he manages to get a can of tuna out, mash it between some bread, and eats the dry sandwich.

It was delicious.

Will moves slowly to another window, not even bothering to say anything to Riku. The heartless were swarming...it was only a matter of time before they came here. However...

There was a figure walking through the streets. Standing easily taller than both Riku and Will standing on the other. Her hair was whisps of smokey black strands, her eyes red, piercing things...

The heartless do not swarm her, they know she is there, but her sheer majesty keeps them at bay, rather she can control them or not is immeterial. This was a creature of the dark...but if she was a heartless it was hard to say. However, whatever she was, she was tall and powerful, a commanding presence...

Will pauses, unable to look away from the sight. There was familarity in his eyes. And then...

She looked right up towards their position on the TDA second story, and was gone, as if she was never there. The heartless turn back to their rampage, as if nothing happened.

Riku has posed:
Riku had not slept. He had not dared.

He was hungry but he was very afraid that it was not for food. He used to know things. No.

Riku opens his hand again. Flames.

He /used/ to think he knew things.

Riku closes his eyes tightly , head lowering slightly before jerking up again and his eyes flying wide. He felt her before seeing her, looking out of the window again to see the approaching woman. The needling edge of that panicky terror gripped his mind again and was extuinguished like the flame when Riku closed his hand again.

Riku slowly turns half lidded yellow eyes on Will, his face not even expressing the dull question in his eyes. He lowers his eyes slowly to the floor after a minute or so, mouth set into a grim line as he pulls his leg down from the creaking chair he was sitting in.

Now he could move more easily in any direction should he need to. Riku opens his hand and stares distantly at the walls and the entrances to the room, he closes his hand and gently drums his fingers on the arm of the chair.

Will Sherman has posed:
Will staggers back as if struck...

He looks at Riku, meeting his own expression with one of concern. Not for him, you big jackass, but for the fact that /what is that/. However, to Riku's senses...it wasn't the same malicious presence that he had felt inside Will. Similar, perhaps...related defintely. Malicious...? No. Will shrugs, "Maybe it didn't se-"

"I did." says a very normal female voice from the middle of the room. Did you really expect her to just walk in Riku? If you did...

The woman was not the impressive thing of darkness they saw earlier, but a normal looking woman...older, maybe in her mid thirties, but very sharp features. She was dressed in what might be considered gothic attire. Lots of black, a short dress and a tasteful amount of frills. Her eyes, impassive but not dead as they look at Riku for a moment, sensing the darkness inside him...

And then to Will. "Well, we have not seen each other in years, container, would you at least do me the honor of letting me sit down? I know Manhattan was not always a place of great manners, but I had hoped your time here had not corroded you so much."

Will looks taken aback by this, addressed as something he was not sure was completely wrong...and also afraid that the heartless were going to jump them at any moment. But the feeling of...familiarity could not be shaken.

"I...uh...sure?" he says looking to the couch near the TV...which now lay on it's side. Will looks entirely too tired for this bullcrap.

Riku has posed:
Riku has very little on the plate of 'expecting' after everything that has happened. A few scraps of what he would now laughably call reality and the bones of something like common sense that more closely resembles foolish ego. Ah yes. There is still some shreds of that.

Riku slowly rises to his feet, wincing as he has not moved from that spot in... how.. how long was it now? He blinks once or twice, rubbing his fingers along the sleeve of his hooded longcoat. The fingers gently dig into the leather as he takes in several calming breaths. They come in and out and the urge to scream when she looks at him starts to fade with no active malice behind the darkness. He looks towards Will as the conversation continues, braving one step and then another and his shaky muscles continue to hold him upright although not without stiff complaint to the management.

The words fall like stones. They clatter on the floor and he searches the wooden planks as if he could trace a pattern of them with his eyes. Something catches his attention, head ticking to the side very slightly. Riku narrows his eyes-- and remembers Will fighting for him, screaming at him when all he wanted to do was give in. In a surly, harsh rasp he says what most likely is the stupidest thing in his life and looks straight at the woman while the urge to scream and bolt from the building bubbles at a low simmer under the surface of his thoughts. "His name is Will."

Will Sherman has posed:
"What he said." Will says, with a nod. Will feels about the same as Riku at this point, but there was a strange fascination with her. Something was there, right on the edge of his thoughts. A name, half remembered floats into his head as she speaks it...

"Of course. Will." she says, passively, "I appologize for insulting your friend." she says to Riku. However, Will tenses at that, but she lets it pass without saying anything. "However, I was calling him by his function, rather than what his name is...he was not given a name when I last saw him. When the Aesir under Odin decided what his fate was." she speaks, to both of them. "You see, I was drawn to this location, from my never ending journey through the darkness by the scream I felt of my father." she says, turning to Will.

"I suppose, now that the last pieces of our world have fallen, that Oberon shall have little issue...if he continues to exist at all, with speaking on what you are." she says, looking to both of them, "This is compounded by the fact that it was released...for a short period was it not? Was this the reason why the place known as Manhattan fell into darkness?"

She does not cast judgement, but rather asks, "I am Hel, daughter of Loki, the Aesir of death and darkness. I was tasked with control of the underworld...but it too has fallen into darkness, or control by the shadow lord known as Hades...I have him to thank for my current state." she continues, not upset...not happy either. She is a perfectly calm person, almost deadpan.

Riku has posed:
Riku scans the floor again, tracing another pattern around on the floor with his eyes. He blinks several times. Every time he does so the next takes a longer time. His face is impassive but more slack, like the nerves in his face have been cut rather than the smooth and eternal calm of the.. the speaker.

Riku takes another shaky step as he neatly pivots around a sneakered foot and limps back into the chair he occupied for so long. He steadies himself down into it as if every joint ached. He needed the chair for this. Attentively, in the same matter that a mouse numbly watches the approach of a snake, Riku stares towards her and listens to her dry accounting.

The names slide off his mind like so many leaves but the fragments of his mind that still clung to being a storyteller began casting a wide net around the woman and Will and the names and drawing connections between them.

Riku blinks at Will very slowly, then again very slowly as his brow furrows. "He was.. testing Will." He feels the shuddering passage of alien thoughts like icy slime crawling down his neck. It had not felt like he had been possessed, not at first. It had simply felt like his own thoughts had been twisted around into a pretzel. His curiosity hijacked.

"He hasn't seen many of you before." A flickering image, thought, something left behind. Riku frowns as his mind tries to puzzle it out. All he gets are two words. "The fae."

Will Sherman has posed:
Will looks at Riku, who speaks the name of what they are. "The what now? I thought that they were..."

"Fairies? No." she says, "We are the first race, as the thing inside you are...and you yourself are." she speaks, again, slowly and impassive, speaking to the both of them to make you undertand, "He?" she asks Riku, and Will shakes his head... "You mean the presence that attempted to break the container...?" she looks at Riku for a long time.

"While the container, Will, lives...my father remains sealed. It is, perhaps for the best that this happens. You have both no doubt felt the malice from him...a malice so strong...so pure..." she pauses, "Not without warrent either. The whole affair was tragic, the punishment handed down was worse.."

"But you are here now, in a place of never ending darkness, and without a home. Such things are trivial...but one fact does remain."

"You can not stay here. To do so would be to destroy you, cont-Will. Worse, the thing you mentioned, will no doubt continue to try and release him...a fool, he is. Loki cares not for light and darkness...nor whatever plans this darkness may have..."

"He seeks to destroy, to take his madness and anger on everything. That is why he was not allowed to remain intact after we abandoned Avalon. To do so would invite possible destruction on the world if he broke free. So, a spell was made to take Loki, and force him into a human form. During the ritual...Oberon interfeared, disrupting the spell forcefully, and instead sealing him into the form of a mortal...you Conta-Will." she stumbles again. "Of course...you're not entirely human either. Three hundred years of channeling the power...your unique creation also is not something that is human either." she says, an nounce of pity in her voice.

Will, just looks down, she had confirmed everything he feared all of these years. The realization that...he wasn't real...

Riku has posed:
Riku shakes his head. He hangs his head very slowly until it is pointing towards the floor again. He leans his elbows on his knees and just sags the rest of his aching body over until he is nearly folded in half. He didn't even know their name.

He had been haunted for years and he knew Will better than he knew the voice. Riku presses his hands into his face as though pain will release him from having to hear this anymore. He takes in deep and demanding breaths of air, body shivering as he expects any moment to hear the sound of echoing footsteps.

Riku slowly drops his hands from his face, sitting back in the chair as he realizes what he had to do. He looks over to Will and stares at him for a long time. The urge to burn and burn and laugh rises in his throat again, is almost released, and dies as Riku uses the energy instead to lunge onto his feet. His sigh is an explosive rush of air, the first life he has shown in many hours. "Alright."

Everything was for nothing. It was all.. all just a shadow, on a shadow and he was right. It was just an excuse. It was all just an excuse. Riku shook his head. NO. No.. no.. Time for this later. Riku wonders if there will be any pieces of him left after-- but the storyteller pulls himself along. He knows how this bit goes. "Okay." he coughs, his voice rasping and thick as he tries to speak through his fear and uncertainty. He would spite the nameless voice. That at least, was still left to him. "What do we have to do to get out of here?"

Will Sherman has posed:
Will has kinda shut down for a while, one kinda does this when you think that your life is a lie. He doesn't look up, it's hard to really tell if he was listening to either of them anymore, he just kinda sits there, half shock and half despair.

Hel turns to look at Riku, who has stood up and asked a very important question.

"I have seen to it that a boat has been placed in Central park, near the water, one that can take you from here, and to where you need to go...but sadly, only takes you where you need to be....as opposed to where you want to go."

She stands, slowly, and turns towards something. Then she looks at the two of them, "This is a trip I can not go with you on. I will remain here, for the day I can return to my duties." she says, unbothered, "Or until the world of light recieves me again."

Slowly she moves, standing over Will and places a hand on his head. "I am sorry I could not act sooner, my hands were tied by Oberon." she says, as gently as she could...Riku might notice the twinge of sympathy...perhaps caring in her.

"I can provide you a veil, it should last but a small time, so make use of it. However, once on the boat my powers will no longer work....but the Heartless would be hardpressed to find you there.

A rhymic set of words escape her words, as a small wave of shadow washes out...

Riku nor Will can detect anything offensive, save a slight distortion at the end of their field of vision. Like looking through glass.

Will at this point, was looking at the coatrack again. Sitting ontop it, as always, was the tophat.

Riku has posed:
Riku shudders again as his body tries to reject the orders of his mind. No more. Just.. no more. The teenager would growl at himself if he thought it would do any good. His hands tremble as he pulls his hands through his hair, mouthing the words that Hel speaks to him in storytelling cadence. Emphasizing some words, shortening the pauses or lengthening them on others.

If he told himself this story, then he could pay attention long enough not to fall apart. So he tells himself the story of a journey. A journey that he must take to a far away land, past the land of shadows, in a boat that only takes you where you needed to be. And on that trip-- "Thank you." he looks up at Hel, nodding to her gratefully as his hands continue to shake. He holds them against his sides, crossing his arms as he moves quickly across the room to the coat track.

Riku stares at the hat and then follows the line of Will staring back to him. Abruptly he snaps, his voice quivering with tension. "Are you coming or not, Will? We have to GO before he comes back."

Will Sherman has posed:
Hel nods softly, seemingly giving Riku a look of pity.

Riku shakes Will from his staring, he looks at Riku, and pulls up the shotgun of leadership. "Yeah." he says, half heartedly. Then he looks back towards He-...

Who is gone. Only the presence of the magic laid with him now...and those eyes on him.

Will sighs, this was all depressing, and he can't help but feel even worse. The answers he wanted to all of his life...and they were what he feared most. He wasn't even supposed to be a person, was he even really that? Were what he felt even real feelings, or just things he got from the memories of Loki? Whatever the answer is, he had to survive for the moment.

"Lets go.."