Between Dark and Twilight

Between Dark and Twilight
Date of Scene:	10 May 2013
Location:	Alexander - Balcony
Synopsis:	After a bad little spar accident, a conversation is held on the Balcony between Gabranth and Riku.
Cast of Characters:	Riku, Gabranth

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Gabranth has posed:

It was a rough day yesterday. It was yesterday wasn't it? Honestly Gabranth was not sure, but he did know things went rather poorly. It was only further proof that even with this necklace, it was not a chain to hold back what was within, but only a means to collar it.

He have to make those chains with control. Once again learning to refocus and bind down what was this curse. Some /gift/. Some /GIFT/ indeed. If he could punch that ADAM he would!

Either way his own troubles were not his problems this night. Instead the Judge Magister found himself walking the halls with rather basic clothing. A black button shirt and a pair of dark denim pants. With a pair of boots and oddly, no swords at his sides.

He should be resting, but his mind would not let him.

So he managed to find himself walking onto the balcony on the side of the ship. That is where his little jot had lead him. He does find Riku there, but doesn't approach yet. Instead he just leans on the railing, clasping his hands together and his shirt being blown by the cool breeze as he stares out into the wide open sky with the world seeming so small down below.

They were like giants in the sky. It was sometimes a small wonder why so many loved it up here.

Riku has posed:
Riku stood with his fingers clenched on the railing and his eyes closed, wind filtering through his hair and pulling at the short sleeved green shirt. His duster lay on a seat not too far away and he leaned hard into the railing, head tilted as if he was trying to make out some distant sound lost in the hollow echo of the wind.

Riku takes in a short breath inbetween gritted teeth and coughed faintly, a spasm of discomfort from a number of fading bruises causing him to frown abstractly. He shook his head in frustrated defeat, opening his eyes and blinking once or twice as his eyes seek the horizon. A black boot bumps against the floor, the toe thumping twice before coming to rest. He runs a hand over tan pants, taking the coin out of his pocket and looking at it for a minute before putting it away again.

It's only then that he seems to acknowledge Gabranth's presence. His gaze slides over in that direction and he nods before turning his back to the spectacular vista, leaning up against the railing with his elbows up against it as he squints into the piercing and almost unbearable blue of the sky.

"..You alright?"

Gabranth has posed:

"I was about to ask you the same." Gabranth says calmly, not even looking at Riku yet. His eyes just staring off into the distance still. "..but aye, I am alright. Just tired of staring at the same walls."

He inhales the cool air before he looks over to Riku. "So, the fresh air does me well." He tilts his head as his eyes look at the youth, giving him a quick once over, before his view goes back off into the distance. His hands freeing themselves before they tap on the railing a bit.

"What about yourself, hm?" His hands come to stop their nervous tapping. "You doing alright?"

Riku has posed:
"Yeah. Being in one place used to drive me crazy but I don't know anymore." Riku says with a shrug of his shoulders.

"I.. feel like I am going insane a lot faster than I did the last time. Maybe.. since I already have treaded this ground, it's a lot easier this time." he laughs as he says this, his tone light hearted and casual as he shakes his head.

"Other than that? I got my ass kicked, but I'm okay. I'm just.. trying to get used to that again." he smirks and looks up at the sky again.

Gabranth has posed:

Gabranth laughs softly and nods his head a bit. "Mm. I sadly don't recall much of it, I admit. Though perhaps for the best. I was told I did a slight number on you, something I am sorry for." The Judge of Ambition frowns deeply then, looking down at his hands as they go to clasp once more.

"And you are not going insane. Not yet." He smirks ever so softly, but it was a sad one. "..insanity here is when you actually just laugh and laugh... and well... you become like Doctor Cid. He is the true face of insanity." He then looks over to Riku and almost gives him a playful wink. "..just don't tell him I said that."

"Yet I do wonder though.." Gabranth looks away once again as he shifts his weight. "..what is bothering you?" He then looks back over. "You seem like a great deal of weight is on your shoulders and you are trying to bare it without allowing any other to see it. So what is it?"

Riku has posed:
"I'll just keep it on file, your honor. Like any good information, you never know when something will turn out to be useful." Riku gives him a teasing smile but it turns frustrated as the conversation shifts. He grinds a hand into his face.

"I.." He sighs and lays it out very plainly. "There's a story for you. I didn't teach myself. Not in the beginning. There is a sorceress by the name of Maleficient. An evil faery who rules a hollow and echoing kingdom far from here." he gestures as his talks and eventually moves back to sit on his duster on a seat not too far away, elbows on his knees.

"--She originally taught me to use dark magic. At the time.. that's what I thought it was. I believed it because the thought that it was ME.. that it was some monstrous fragment I brought back from the darkness was something I couldn't handle." he sighs and spasms his hands. "Even when I accepted that. When I just /accepted/ that I was a monster and just.. was so hungry all the time, enter Archadian Judge Magisters and their tendancy to mess with my life."

He laughs at this sudden turn of the tone and he smirks at Gabranth before returning his gaze to the floor. "It was a miracle, that magicite. It hurt. It hurt /a lot/ to use those crystals, but I could see having a life like that. When the darkness wasn't beating at my head all the time for me to eat, I .. almost understood. I felt--- uuurgh!" he makes a sound of profound exasperation and throws his hands up into the air. "And then I say stupid things. Then I start /believing/ stupid things.. and I'm somehow okay with this. And the MOMENT I give myself over to.. this.. suddenly everything I have known and fought with and suffered for evaporates like fog. And I think. Okay. That's it. I'm-- I'm back at the islands again. I have a chance to start over. But-- that's not all of it.."

Riku shakes his head, clenching his fists again before letting them relax.

Gabranth has posed:

Gabranth turns his back to the railing as Riku goes to sit down. His arms crossing over his chest as he goes to listen to Riku explain his story. His problems and his troubles. How a woman of some kind tricked him into beliefs and how they showed him, what seemed like, another side to his life tale.

Gabranth made no statement and watched Riku with no judgment in his eyes. He just simply listened like an older brother listening his younger talk about his epic adventures far from home. Yes, he had interest in what Riku said. He was very interested, but he knew it was no place to speak.

Not yet at least.

The Judge of Ambition tilts his head slightly as Riku gets to the last part. About the island, about his original home. Gabranth-- no.. Noah.. could relate with this. To sometimes yearn for the old days. For the old home that would never be. It was gone now. Forever gone. Yet perhaps for Riku, it could be returned. Maybe.

He still stays quiet though, his eye brow only slightly lifting as he waits for Riku to continue on.

Riku has posed:
"I thought I would be happy to see it gone." Riku continues after a small pause. "But it's NOT gone. Just.." he searches for a word and eventually picks 'asleep' "it's.. asleep. Fine. I can handle this. And--there's always trouble happening somewhere and Scary Armor the Sequel shows up." he makes a height indictation. "Big guy. Asks a lot of weird questions. Completely sheathed in armor and leaking darkness so much it's just pouring off him in waves. I look at them and.. see nothing. I've only seen that once before and.." his jaw works and he skips that part.

"And that's a tale for another day, I think. And I'm so.. weakened by that darkness that I've come to rely on that I can barely lay a scratch on the guy, even though he's tries to /pound/ more than half a dozen or more heroes into paste in the process." Riku rakes both his hands through his hair and shrugs as if completely flummoxed.

"I can't.. do anything. I can't even fight back and my resistance has evaporated, like I'm sensitized now and don't even get the benefits of that curse." Riku slams a hand into a closed fist over and over as he talks. "--And he lays down an attack and I think. That's it. I'm.. I'm going to die. Right now. Because I am calling and calling, and I need the darkness to help me because he's just ripping the hearts out of people like he's some sort of heartless and feeding on them, feeding on their light."

The teenager gets up because he can't stand staying still anymore and just continues to pace, looking at Gabranth occasionally but completely lost in the recounting. "And this blade comes down at me. Some red.. crystal sword magic I've never seen and the sword comes up. I'm not going to go down without a fight and suddenly I feel like.." Riku loses all the steam he's built up in this conversation. He trails off and stares into the distance, words failing him.

"I reach down.. and grab something that isn't darkness. And it /pulls/ me along with it, like a comet streaking across the sky. And the blade just /explodes/-- and I'm not surprised. It's like.. not fire. Not the searing heat and blinding purpose of light. Not the unnatural cold of darkness. Like.. like seeing a sunset reflected on cool water and you plunge your hands in and it seeps into you and starts.. changing something."

Riku thuds a hand into a wall so hard that he winces from the bruising pain. "And I don't even think I really even remember much else. Just grabbing hold takes everything that I have and I do.. something. Lash out. Strike out and it takes everything with it. That feeling goes away. Pops like a soap bubble. Leaves a space behind that you can't even define, then fades like a hazy recollection." Riku stalks back to his duster and throws himself down on the seat.

"I accepted being a monster because I never felt it. It was already done, already past when I figured it all out. But this? I don't know if this is different or not. I'm..." he trails off and then rocks back on the seat. "I felt it again in the hangar. Cold and precise and that seeping feeling like someone is changing around the furniture in my head, and I don't know if I'm turning into something else now or.. just a different version of the same monster. And all of this sounds /ridiculous/ because how can any of it be REAL!?" he slowly looks up at Gabranth

"..and then I look at that necklace.. and remember.. that anything is possible here. Good.. or bad."

Gabranth has posed:

Gabranth listens to the long story. The details, the events that unfold, the information laid out like a woven cloth. There was a great deal of detail to take in. Though due to his lack of full recovery, some of it sadly also goes lost on him.

Yet he tries to pick apart what he can from the fine cloth. Grasp the details he can of the image laid out before him. It was such a strange story. Such a surreal one really. It was hard for him to just-- see it clearly.

The Judge Magister shifted his weight as he closed his eyes at the end of Riku's tale, his foot kicked back on the bar of the bottom rail as he seem to be off in now thought on all what Riku said-- including all his actions.

"It sounds as if you are changing." Gabranth says calmly. "Perhaps-- even evolving." He then opens his eyes, he looks directly at Riku. "Perhaps what the woman did to you awoken something in you. It was caught early enough in your life that as you continue to age and grow, such a.. power is growing with you. Maybe these-- changes are just like the changes we experience as start to hit the last strands between being a child and being an adult."

The Judge of Ambition then shrugs his shoulders. "Yet-- I can not say for curtain as none of us have the depth of powers you display, but either way..." Gabranth then gives a nod of his head. "..either way, no matter how the winds may guide us, I am sure that Judge Magister Zargabaath and I will both be here for you. The two of us-- I am rather sure on to the point I could nearly promise on our names."

He then chuckles. "..Though I admit, I can not speak for his Judge of Reason, but knowing that old warrior, he would agree with me."

"But yes. Anything is possible. Good or for ill and like family, we will get through it all together." Gabranth gives another odd before he cringes a little. The lack of strength starting to slowly catch up with him. "..and as for me.. I am a promise to keep to you." He smiles. "..I will do everything still in my power, no matter what happens to you, to keep it."

Riku has posed:
Riku's face twitched with incredulity from time to time as Gabranth talks and there are a couple of places where it is obvious that he wants to either snort in frustration or roll his eyes but he does neither.

He drums his fingers once towards the end and lets out a quiet sigh when silence falls again. He crosses his arms and winces as he brushes some particularly nasty bruise or other and stares into the middle distance as if trying to figure out if this was enough.

Finally he seems to decide that it is because he nods softly, murmuring. "I guess that's that best I can hope for." he snorts faintly. "hope." and murmurs it very softly to himself. "Although.. some times I wish magic as a little bit less terrifying and a little more like a fairy tale. But nothing is going to happen just wishing something away."

Riku slowly stands up and picks up his duster, shrugging it over his shoulders and digging his hands into the pockets. "..Thank you, Gabranth. I.. guess I needed to get that all out at once."

Gabranth has posed:

Gabranth gives a faint nod of his head to Riku. "I am always here to listen if you need someone to speak to, Riku." He smiles faintly, but the tiredness was starting to form in his eyes once more. "After all, I still see you as my little brother."

He then goes to stand up once more, giving the youth a gentle pat on the shoulder before he goes to walk back inside. "..don't stay up late, Riku. You may be asked to take part in the PE jog or if your lucky, early morning emergency drill." That last part had to be sarcasm.

Riku has posed:
"At least /THAT/ would make sense!" Riku calls over his shoulder as Gabranth moves away, throwing a hand up in exasperation as he goes back to the balcony and leans on the railing.

"..family" He murmurs with a faint sigh, shaking his head. He then looks out at the horizon longingly and closes his eyes again, turning his head as if listening or searching for some sound in the hollow echo of the wind.