The Ties That Bind
| The Ties That Bind | |
|---|---|
| Date of Scene: | 09 November 2012 |
| Location: | Balamb Garden |
| Synopsis: | On her way from Garden's safe room to steal Zell Dincht's T-Board, Jasmine runs into Riku. They 'save' each other from Heartless, but neither of them emerge unmarked from the experience... |
| Cast of Characters: | Jasmine, Riku |
Jasmine has posed:
Balamb Garden is in chaos.
Airships scream overhead, raining fiery death on each other, on the facility, and especially on the plains of Balamb itself, Xanatos' Steel Clan bombarding the troops of Baron and the immense army of Heartless with impunity. The Red Wings fight back mightily, and shrapnel from both sides plummets to the ground.
The red sand visage of Jafar barks orders to the Heartless to seize his Princess, while tearing a path of pain and terror across the battlefield. He's been stalled by Celes Chere, but for how long?
Heartless swarm up the walls, slaughtered by the hundreds, thousands, against the gates. Some manage to teleport past them and trickle through the hallways, scimitars slashing at everyone they can see.
Jasmine, tucked away in a safe room by Jean Faraven, decides it's time to leave. Most of these Heartless are obviously from Agrabah; their turbans and vests are unmistakably those of her people, and so it is that casualties on /both sides/ feel like blood on her hands. If she can get far enough away from Garden, then reveal herself, she knows Jafar will have no choice but to pull back and pursue her.
Pulling her brown veil more tightly around herself, she hurries, swiftly and silently, down a passageway that will lead her to her means of swift egress: the dorm room of Zell Dincht, T-Board enthusiast. Despite the swirling battle, she finds herself very much alone; the refugees remain in their bunker, and most of the fighting is happening near the perimeter. There is no one to see her keeping to the shadows, but she does so anyway.
Her eyes are huge in her face; frightened and full of grief. But behind them is a fiery determination to do what's right, to protect everyone here. Even if it means giving up her freedom.
Glancing at Jafar's sneering face on a wall-mounted vidscreen, she really hopes it doesn't come to that.
Riku has posed:
Raids are what happen to your life when you're away making other plans.
Riku has been detangling other parts of his life and not paying enough attention to things he perhaps SHOULD be paying attention to.
Diablo bails him out, perhaps out of pity or perhaps just to see him scramble for an opportunity to get his Mistress off his back for awhile. The raven familiar abandons him soon after the jump, sneaking away to watch the fun while Riku makes his way through the corridors.
As always-- when things go wrong or unexpectedly, the teenager tends to throw things out the window and make things up as he goes along.
Riku cautiously moves down the corridor, sword in hand as he rubs his chest gingerly. He tries to keep in the shadows when possible, dodging the other heartless when possible as he tries to piece out where Jasmine could be. The buzzing roar of the armies of heartless provides a constant background to his thoughts.
If, and when, he encounters her-- and that's a somewhat big IF at this point, he'll think of something. He slides up to another corner, peering around it at the quiet hallway.
Jasmine has posed:
Anyone with the faintest sense of the cosmological balance between Darkness and Light has no problem feeling Jasmine's presence. Until today, it was hidden in part by her own lack of awareness of the primal force that dwells within her. As of two hours ago, that is no longer true. It surges and roars within her, screaming to be set free -- despite being a holy power, it is no less fierce. The princess has no idea what it is, but can barely keep it from streaming out of her eyes, her mouth, her fingertips... she'd only barely gotten it under control earlier.
She is a walking, talking pillar of the universe, even if she doesn't understand it yet. The Darkness has always been able to find her before for exactly that reason, but it's never been easier.
Conversely, though, her own senses are refined. Every breath digs a thousand knives of corruption into her skin; her very being is battered by the cloying, toxic existence of thousands and thousands of Heartless, and it's all she can do to keep from throwing up. She can feel Jafar on the very edge of her perception, as though he was breathing on the back of her neck.
But then, as she approaches a junction, she feels another black spot in a sea of the void. She can't go over it, can't go under it, can't go around it... Her steps slow, then stop, until, suddenly, she LEAPS around the corner, arms raised to defend herself if she must. The element of surprise is a joke here, but SeeD's taught her that it's always worth /trying/.
Riku has posed:
Having a pillar of the universe leap out at you from around a corner is an experience Riku hasn't really been exposed to just yet.
Talking animals? A thousand different peoples and stories and experiences? Falling out of trees in three different worlds? Sure these things are confusing but eventually you can get used to them. This was magic, fierce and barely constrained and pretty much in feeling like how one would imagine being hit like a siege train would be. That is, a sudden abrupt pain, a terrible instant of tearing pressure followed by a merciful blackout.
Riku thought he had been prepared. He had also shielded himself and realizes a bit too late that his practice was somewhat in vain. He stays on his feet perhaps from earlier experience with not falling down even under intense mental duress but does nothing else. He blankly stares at Jasmine as if not really seeing her, but rather seeing into her down to that core of light and being so dazzled by it he can't help but continue staring.
It's a complicated nest of feelings, something between terror and longing. Riku has the impression he should be flinching away, but he is entranced. He wants that light so badly the feeling has a taste in his mouth. The crossed wires trigger off another moment in his head, reaching into Reize for his heart and that moment before extuinguishing that light.
All of this passes across Riku's face in the stolen five seconds or so of Jasmine leaping out around the corner. Finally, the sparking wires connect with something resembling Riku's primary consciousness and he reanimates with perhaps a less than dignified yelp of surprise.
He flips backwards by reflect, sliding into a crouch with the sword held in a ready position as he draws in several heaving breaths of air and slams down on his control, drawing everything into himself and shielding until the light is at least somewhat bearable and he can gather his thoughts together.
"Jasmine.." he breathes with chagrin. Slowly getting back to his feet. "Don't startle me like that. You almost gave me a heart attack."
Jasmine has posed:
Five seconds. Five heartbeats. One blink of an eye.
Around the corner, the feeling of Darkness is unmistakable intensified, but Jasmine is absolutely astounded to be faced with Riku. One would think that she would leap to dire conclusions, especially after arresting one enemy agent 'student' today, but... no. She simply stares at him, frozen in place, shell-shocked.
One.
The Light within her burns ever more brightly -- wanting to embrace the Darkness, contain it within itself, that it can do no more harm. That together, they can be a universe in balance.
Two.
The princess that is Its vessel comprendeth it not; to her, the pangs she feels, the dreadful sense of urgency and regret, come from the newfound knowledge that she's brought terrible danger to Riku as well. That, and a wholehearted temptation to throw herself into his arms and onto his mercy... what she's about to do will leave her very much alone in the world, after her first few months of being a remotely regular person. Having /friends/.
Three.
To pour herself out to him now, to allow anyone to try to talk her out of this, much less 'rescue' her, would only put more people in danger. Soldiers are dying while she hesitates, but her heart is pounding in her throat, her breath won't come.
Four.
She locks eyes with him, hers warm, dark, mysterious and, at the moment, full to bursting with melancholy. They seem to look past him, through his flesh to something deeper. Then, at the last second, they flicker away, behind him and off to the right.
They widen.
Five.
In the same instant that Riku draws his sword and flies backward, Jasmine lunges forward, taking a knee and pulling something out of her voluminous brown robe. Something Quistis Trepe encouraged her to take with her on her journey, though the ex-Instructor had no idea that journey would be starting now. "Riku!" she screams, "Get down!"
She swings the item into position, looks down the scope, and with stunning precision unloads the magazine of the SeeD Special Forces Assault Rifle into the pack of Heartless sneaking up behind him, in short, controlled bursts. RATATAT! RATATAT! RATAT!! She puts up a valiant fight against the recoil but still winds up hitting the floor, but not before the majority of the Heartless are put down, the immediate threat to her friend dispersed.
There's an ear-ringing silence, afterwards.
Riku has posed:
Riku slams flat with such force that it knocks the breath out of his lungs. That Jasmine has done this more or less metaphorically coincides with the physical to leave him on the ground for a moment stunned. The attacking heartless rally as they sense this moment of weakness. They lunge to the attack even as waves of them dissolve in the Surprise Attack of the Action Princess.
Riku has his own problems. He rolls over onto one side as reaching claws slash towards him, smashing a bandit across the turbaned brow with the handle of the sword in hand. He rolls onto his feet cutting and slashing in small contained arcs, shifting to one side to let a scimitar pass through thin air, shifting to the other side to dodge the bolt of a miniature viviesque spell caster.
Slash.
The bandit and two of it's cohorts fall in tatters of bandages, released into sleep and peaceful darkness.
A crack of sudden lightning pierces a spellweaver, it's small body exploding in little green orbs and health as the arc chains to several others in the throng. It might well have continued this way if not for the dark portal.
Riku lets out another surprised cry as the floor opens up underneath him in the midst of another combat, sinking towards the floor as he struggles to pull himself away from the inexorable pull. It felt-- safe, like a promise to shed all the cares in the world and sleep. But perhaps Riku is the wrong sort of target for this sort of Trap. Riku has been more than sensitized that that poisonous kind of 'safety'.
He throws himself to the side, managing somehow to slam into the 'edge' of the void where it becomes floor again. As he clings to it with half of his body still visible, he knows it will buy him, at most, only a few more seconds from the ill tempered pool of void. Riku grits his teeth against the strength of the hungry dark magic, certain that he /really/ doesn't want to know what will happen to him if he slips all the way and vowing with a calm mental certainty to punch Jafar straight in the face if they ever crossed paths in an official capacity.
From this vantage point however he can see more heartless coming from the other end of the hallway and were now coming behind Jasmine to catch the both of them in a vicious set of pincers. He could free himself, or he could help her. Decisions. Decisions. What was that again about what happens when things go wrong?
"Jasmine, watch out!" he throws out a hand, a pillar of storm pressure and lightning knocking Heartless flying down the corridor and exploding one after another as they strike the walls and any obstruction along the way.
This momentary slip causes him to lose his grip for a moment, and he sinks deeper before getting another even less certain handhold. "Run." Riku commands in an angry voice, head jerking towards another hallway that heartless haven't yet started to spill from. If she waited any longer glowing like a gigantic beacon like that, every Heartless in the compound will surely descend. Then? --Oh, all bets were off.
The command comes off more as pleading as he strains to pull himself from the void. He slashes at any heartless that gets close and reaffirms his vow.
Jasmine has posed:
As the junction descends into chaos, Jasmine keeps a reasonably cool head. Shouldering the rifle, she spin-kicks the next Heartless who dives for her, and the next, and the next, in a swirl of blue silk and brown burlap. Forced to dive out of the way to avoid another pack of spellweavers' fireballs, she rolls gracefully across the hallway, then comes up punching.
It's then that Riku's warning comes, and the storm follows, and it becomes her turn to go flat to avoid the apocalyptic fury of a cheesed off teenager. Awe quickly darkens into concern as the princess notices her friend's plight. It's one she recognizes, all too well, from a trap laid for her in Traverse Town.
And she remembers how her friends and allies got her out of it. In her experience, such portals are virtually always powered by a nearby Heartless... usually huge... but sometimes very small indeed.
"No," she whispers, when he orders her away. Clearing her throat, dry with exertion and the heady brew of terror mixed with sheer adrenaline, she adds, with that curious combination of a soft voice and iron-firm determination, "I'm not going to leave you like this. Don't ask again."
His show of incredible arcane force has created a reprieve in the battle, and she seems to waste it by, of all things, closing her eyes. With an expression of fierce concentration, she casts her senses out. Riku's aura is indistinguishable from the void he's being sucked into; he's off the hook, though absolutely correct that every Heartless in the facility is making for them right now. There's very little time. Minutes, perhaps. /A/ minute, more likely. Maybe less.
But there's a closer signal -- a tiny but especially strong spellweaver, through which this Dark magic is being channeled. It's on the far side of a wall. Her mind whirls through her tactical options at lightning speed. The gun can't possibly penetrate it. By the time she reaches it on foot, Riku will already be gone.
Her eyes fly open.
"Take my hand!" she pleads, leaning over the edge of the pit and reaching with all her might. She's put on some muscle while in SeeD's care, but she's still not strong enough to pull him out of a sucking Dark Portal. She is, however, strong enough to buy him the time he needs to save himself. Even if he can only reach her with his sword, she'd risk her fingers to the blade and pull without hesitation. "Riku, I need you to trust me... please, your strongest magic, aim it right /there/!" Her other arm points at a very precise angle behind her, right at a wall, indicating something they cannot see but she can very much sense. "Do it now!"
There is simple, pure, raw faith in his abilities, ingrained in every fibre her being, backed by the full force of her personality and everything that comes with it. She /believes/ in him, with her entire heart. It's written across her face -- in the solidity of her chin, set at a stubborn, willful angle; the urgent but oddly serene gaze as she stares straight at him; the way her mouth, even at its most severe, in the heat of a moment of what she believes to be life and death, still has a tiny shining, shimmering, splendid smile tucked into one corner. A smile all for him. You can do this, it says. You don't need to be afraid. There's still hope.
Riku has posed:
Sometimes, even when things go the way you expect, you get surprised. What he doesn't count on is slipping. He flails for purchase again, sinking under the surface for a single terrible heartbeat. There is a scream somewhere in his head, the scream of shouting at the darkness. Shouting defiance at the voice. There is a moment of fatalism, as the dark crashes down inexorably to twist him into another one of the lost--but he's pulled, yanked really back across the surface by Jasmine grabbing for him. Riku's train of thought is somewhat derailed by Jasmine again.
Riku grips her hand tightly, only feeling a little like a slab of meat alternatively frozen on one side and thrown into the fire at the other. The soul numbing cold was battered away by the strength of his anger and the long echoes of his defiance still ringing in his head from that endless instant. Since it only /felt/ like his skin was beginning to char, he pushes the thoughts away as he struggles to gather up enough of the elemental fakery he usually displayed to comply with her earnest request.
That complete and unflinching faith, that hope and resolve cause his stunned and still reeling brain to shortcircuit again. He finds himself thinking of Kairi, and the ashes of something like profound guilt stir to life right alongside the hunger and despair that he has come to accept into the far dark corners of his mind.
Riku wanted nothing more than to take that light for himself, but a small voice and the greater part of him who is still the boy who sought adventure and desinty far from an isolated world wrenches control back from the abyss. At least for today.
There was still time to somehow salvage this wreck, but it was going to be a tricky moment of timing. His body shudders, wracked by a sudden dread as his subconscious picks up on what the rest of planning on and screams in terror. Cue gigantic bolt of arcane energies. The red flash was much more powerful than perhaps was strictly neccessary, but the cataclysmic BOOM is followed by a pulse of darkness as the void starts to collapse.
Jasmine finds it abruptly all too easy to pull Riku up from the floor, heartless in all directions bowled over along possibly with Jasmine. In the echoes of the arcane surge, he tries to scrape an X of dark energy across her shoulder and side in a move quick and distracted by Riku slamming into her, a moment of intensely painful contact followed by another as he tries to help her up.
"Come on!" he hears himself yelling, head still ringing and sounds muffled and distorted and yet he finds himself smirking lopsidely in his punch-drunk pain. "Can we go /now/?"
Jasmine has posed:
Jasmine doesn't have a prayer.
Well, that's inaccurate.
Her prayers are first answered when she finds Riku's hand in the darkness; her heart had stopped, completely, when he disappeared into the pit. Her life had flashed before her eyes ... or, more accurately, the life of another boy entirely, who had only shared his with hers briefly, so briefly... then paid the ultimate price.
Not this time.
She holds on for dear life -- his and hers, for if she lets him slip through her fingers, she knows she wouldn't be able to live with herself. Today holds enough grief for her already. Her pulse pounds in her wrist, pressed up against his, as her muscles strain and her shoulder screams with pain. She brings down her second hand, trusting Riku's memory when it comes to target practice, and holds his between them both. A single tear trickles through them, fallen upon their hands without her realizing it, a diamond that spun down her cheek when her back was wrenched a little too hard.
Then her prayers are again answered when he rises to the occasion and brings forth an arcane fury that, unlike the first one that elicited awe, brings out a little actual honest-to-goodness /concern/. Not fear, exactly; but what has Riku been doing, that has him throwing blasts around like this? Bit of a pot kettle black situation, with her own newfound powers, but in a way that informs her worry even more.
But he doesn't even get a glimpse of that expression, with was mingled with genuine relief, anyway, because by then she's been blasted back by the shockwave, tumbling head over heels to land in a pool of rough fabric, silken hair, and pain. The Recusant's Sigil sinks into her side, and she doesn't feel it at all -- in that moment, her head was reeling from the concussive force of the arcane surge, while her soul could feel nothing but the pulse of Darkness from the disrupted portal, blended with the destruction of the nearby Heartless. She really didn't have a prayer.
She staggers to her feet, dazed. "I... no. We can't... you mustn't..." Shaking her head, her own personal darkness, that spectacular mane of hair, swirls over her shoulders. In that moment, she is tiny and forlorn.
'I'm not going to leave you like this.' And she didn't; even as her eyes snap back into focus, blinking back the red and black miasma overtaking her consciousness -- it would be so incredible to be able to collapse right now, but there's still no time, no time at all -- she sees that Riku's all right, he's no longer in any particular danger above and beyond that of anyone else unfortunate enough to be in the same facility as her.
Deep breath. Let it out. Now, go. "Go now. Find your friends. /Be safe/," she begs him, pointing down one of the three paths of the T-junction... not the one she came from, and not the one he came from, but the third, which happens to not be the one she needs. What follows is less pleading and more a statement of fact, a force of nature; it cannot be argued with. "I have something that I have to do alone."
That smile of hers returns, full force this time, not limited to being tucked into one cheek. Forget the phenomenal cosmic powers of a Princess of Heart; that expression alone could save the worlds, and may yet do so, someday. "Thanks for everything, Riku."
And without so much as waiting for a reply, she grabs her rifle up off the ground and sprints off, her hair flowing like a banner behind her.
Riku has posed:
And, like the fish from the children's tales, the princess gets away, slipping out of the reach of the heartless as she bolts down the corridor and out of sight. Riku takes in a shaky breath, cracking his knuckles as he stands staring at the wall. He closes his eyes, surrounding by the heartless as he tracks that flare of brilliance as it recedes farther and farther away.
In the echoes of that pulse of darkness, the one that ostensibly was the result of the portal collapsing but was in fact of Riku's creation, none of the Heartless around him dare approach. Riku reins himself in carefully, squashing the impulse to find more things to burn, more things to use the wild and exhilarating powers on. As he crushes the impulse, it is replaced by a moment of profound loss that flickers over his mind.
It is disturbing but no moreso than the sense that he has tied himself somehow to that retreating star. It surfaces only as a vague awareness of warmth, a ripple of that warmth stirring his thoughts into a dark place.
Riku opens his eyes, gesturing down the corridor away from the princess. "Go." At first, they do not comply. They are not his to command and they were so hungry.. so very hungry for the light that may someday, somehow save them. Riku glowers, resolved to make some use of this situation and unwilling to simply hand Jasmine over to Jafar and his goons. If it was going to be anyone, it was going to be him.
The thought that just crossed his mind causes Riku to swallow hard, crushing his hands into fists as he fought against the impulse to lunge after the princess.
It was the same need, he realized this with the dull THUD of the last shreds of his self delusion starting to crack and fall away.
Riku's shoulders slumped very slowly as he stared after the princess, feeling that same need, that same hunger.. as any of the other shadows surrounding him. Riku closes his eyes again, his voice even quieter.
Defeated.
"Go." The shadows do not balk him a second time. They flee in droves. Eventually they will remember their purpose and throw themselves at finding the princess. The corridor is empty when the last ones file away, the last shadow remaining stepping back through a portal and vanishing from the scene.
