voidbreaker | MINAKO

Ash-san-!

[ the pokes make her shriek in uncontrollable laughter and dance away, back into the chilly rain. grinning, she looks at Ash, and-

first, there is heat. and then, there is the sound - of something crackling, whirring away.

he looks up, and sees the car door. it's upside down, the top of the window touching the road, because everything is upside down. he's lying on the roof and his seatbelt is dangling somewhere above him.

out. he needs to get out, so mom and dad can find him. so he crawls, heading for the only way out, carefully picking his way through the shattered glass. through the streaks of red.

he makes it out, and pushes himself to his feet and there is-

there are

he sees-

the Moon is so F U L L

he pulls his eyes down from the moon, and his eyes land on the jacket his dad was wearing. he's still wearing it. it's been stained a deep, dark color. he can see the stain spreading, even from here.

he turns and looks back at the front of the car, and can see hair, dangling from the passenger's seat.

can see a single hand lying limp against the car's roof.

can see more and more red.

(it's so quiet now. where did all the sound go?)

he looks back up again. the moon looms, swollen and yellow and full.

he doesn't look down again until he hears the sirens.

]

[ well... ash might be getting one memory, but minako will be getting one as well -- at the same time that minako's memory starts playing for ash, the world as minako sees it will shift as well and

There's fear, and pain and confusion that lasts for a good few minutes as awareness slowly filters back into her mind. There's panic too, slowly creeping up from her stomach, and it's overwhelming, making it hard to breathe.

There's a smell as well - smokey, and ashy. Like something's been burning. A lot of things have been burning. It's overwhelming, a mix of burnt wood and -- something else. Sweet, like decay and overwhelmingly like burnt... something else. She starts to scrabble to her feet, through broken wood and shattered pieces of what was once a home. From the first person point of view Minako's seeing, her hands look much smaller than they are normally. They're child's hands, not the older ones she has now, and they're covered with scratches and marks from her attempt to escape. The air when she scrambles free is fresher than beneath that debris, but it's heavy, and thick with smoke and haze.

Wherever Minako was had been beautiful once. Surrounded by trees, and beautiful views of nature. Small and quaint stone buildings, in an equally small and quaint village. It looks like the sort of thing you'd see in a picture book - so few houses, a small community, with views into the distance out over a clifftop.

Or... it was all this, at some point.

It doesn't look that way anymore. ]

[ Minako blinks slowly, the faint memory of ash lingering in the air. it's strange, to look at the camp grounds and see uncharred trees. shouldn't they have be burning? ]

... Ash? Did you...

[ 'see that?' ]

[ HNNNNNFFFFGGG... ]

Nice to see they don't give a crap about privacy here either.

[ that's a yes. ]

Hmmm... It sounded like this happened on the ship too... I wonder if the residuals from those places are effecting the camp?

[ haha, y'all brought the memories of sharing memories, so it happened again ]

... What was its name?

.... You didn’t have any of this happen on the island? It happened back at the mansion as well.

[ haha terrible. ]

What was what’s name? [ avoid and dodge. ]

[ she shakes her head ]

No, we just had weird altars that killed crabs and dyed your hands with blood for a day.

[ gosh, wonder how that crab ended up on the altar

anyways, she knows a dodge when she sees one, and this is something she's willing to push on ]

Your hometown. What was your hometown's name before it... burned?

[ he just looks... maybe a bit disbelieving by the crabs thing. but the blood hands sounds about right for a place full of murder. ]

Hamel.

[ one word answers are fine. ]

[ are they? ]

Hamel... I see. And you were... you were pretty young when it happened. That must have been hard.

[ yes. ]

At the time? Probably. It was 14 years ago.

Probably?

[ she thinks back to the boarding passes ]

Oh, I see... You were really young, weren't you. For me... it was 10 years ago.

[ old enough to remember more, it seems ]

[ hm... yeah, she'd looked a little older than he was in his own memory, hadn't she? ]

And... it was some kind of vehicle accident?

[ she nods silently ]

I found out later that there'd been... an experiment going on, in the area. But it went wrong. As a result, our car crashed...

[ ... ]

I was the only survivor.

... An experiment that had the reach to cause a crash? [ ... that sounds like grade A ouroboros esq crap right there. ]

Sure. It effected the whole world, after all. A bridge a few miles away from the epicenter is nothing.

-- Wait, the whole world? What the hell were they trying to pull?

Oh, you know, the death of all things on the planet. Thankfully, someone sabotaged it, but there were side effects.

...

D'ya ever wonder who hurt these people that they think "y'know what I should do today? Destroy the world"?

Oh, it was less about destroying the world and, uh...

[ hmmm, how did they phrase it again ]

Embracing the eternal slumber of Death, the Almighty?

[ ... ]

They were really nihilistic people.

...

[ excuse me ]

Embracing "the eternal slumber of Death, the Almighty" sure sounds like an "end of the world" kind of scenario, just dolled up differently.

Edited 2020-07-12 14:44 (UTC)

[ she just. shrugs ]

It wasn't the world that would die - just all of humanity.

[ ... ]

I guess we could have asked if that would include plant life and animals, but we were more concerned with figuring out how to stop it. And then only guy we could question got shot and fell off the roof.

...

I mean, literally that would be the end of things for you. And like every other person. [ potato, poh-tah-to? ]

...

Would he have answered those questions before, y'know--[ he mimes a shooting motion with his hand. pew pew. ]

Ummm... He was a little preoccupied ranting about he was going to be the Prince or something and trying to sacrifice us on the roof of the school. It was a little weird.

[ you know, in retrospect it's almost impressive how well Ikutsuki held it together for 6 months! ]

Cults and the end of the world all in one bow. That’s some crappy as all hell luck you got there.

It was pretty terrible, but we managed to get through it.

[ ... ]

Did you ever find out what happened to Hamel?

(no subject)

voidbreaker - 2020-07-16 08:19 (UTC) - Expand