[HH] [PRP] Practical viewpoints (Jordan & Zar)

[prolixity]

Quote:

Status effect roll: STUDENTS/ HUNTERS DO NOT TAKE RECOIL DAMAGE FROM ANY ATTACKS.

The last time Jordan had been in the Haunted House, he'd been effectively five years old. The time before that, he and his teammates had fought on a glass floor that cracked unpredictably. It was a variable and changing battleground with unknown factors. Caution was a watchword on any mission or duty, and it was all the more important here, where anything might be encountered.

Nevertheless, Jordan hadn't expected the Escher room. He wasn't entirely sure how gravity worked here; to be safe, he moved cautiously along a single plane, picking his way between paths and staircases, uncertain as to whether gravity would reorient if he attempted to step onto a perpendicular surface.

Weird, Ferros commented, sounding nervous.

That's really not comforting, Jordan shot back, and stared across the underside of an arch. If he jumped down into it, would he be able to walk on the underside of the curve? Or would the frame of reference reorient and deposit him upside-down on the wall - or floor - beneath it?  

[Baneful]

Zar prowled the haunted house fairly often of late. Since his run in with Rin, he'd hopefully come back time and again in the hopes she'd be there. But she never had. He wasn't sure why, perhaps she'd wised up to him, perhaps she just couldn't reach the places he had been in. But the hope remained.

It had been fairly quiet for a time in the house, the humans were few and far between, he wasn't sure what it had meant, coincidence or a stepped down guard on the place. He wasn't entirely sure if it mattered. He hadn't seen too many students in his time, that was a bonus. Running into SEEDs or some other student group would be hard to explain away.

Opening one of the many doors, he stepped inside, the chaos of the place didn't bother him, to a demon so grounded in paperwork and logic, there was very little that was entirely surprising. The main reliable factor in the haunted house was its unpredictability.

He stepped out onto one of the many staircases, tail curling lazily behind him, looking unphased by the strange geometry of the room, confident that even if things shifted, he had wings good enough for at least a glide to safety. What did catch his attention however, was the fact that he was evidently not alone. He froze dead in his tracks, slitted eyes narrowing as he realised it wasn't another student in his company but a hunter.

He donned his human illusion as soon as he realised, but probably moments too late for it to conceal him in time, instead laying bare his defence mechanism. "Jack." He sighed, glad at the very least, there still lay an expanse of twisting room between them.

 

[prolixity]

The soft creak of a door and the sound of footsteps caught Jordan's attention; he dropped into a ready stance immediately, Ferros held slightly back, ready to strike, as his eyes scanned rapidly across the chaotic confusion of the room. He spotted the intruder just as the intruder spotted him; half an instant of realization, and then the creature had transformed itself into an illusion of humanity, but not before Jordan had seen its true shape.

It was familiar, and Jordan's memory lagged for a few seconds as he searched his mind. There. Yes. The Apocalypse mission, and two freaks who hadn't wanted to fight. Interesting. He conferred briefly with Ferros, coming to a swift and mutual consensus.

Jordan straightened deliberately out of battle-readiness, watching the creature sharply, and desummoned his weapon. "I see you survived," he called across the room.  

[Baneful]

He blinked. He'd been expecting to be attacked, expecting another net, he hadn't been expecting to be recognised. It took a few moments to even realise why there had been a niggling sense of familiarity. The nets. This was the hunter he'd met in the four clans lands. The one who hadn't actually hurt him, despite being entirely positioned to do so.

As he desummoned his weapon, Zar gave him a curious look. Was it a trick? He remained on guard but replied.

"We always survive, its hard to kill us. You didn't blow up my world." he shrugged. It was hard to kill them indeed but t didn't mean he hadn't dissipated more times than he was strictly pleased with over the events. He resented the horsemen more than the ones who had apparently destroyed them, at least the hunters hadn't patronised him and tried to make him fight in their name.

He crossed his arms. "I see you survived too. I hear that's harder for humans."

 

[prolixity]

"Takes a little doing," Jordan replied. He glanced around, found a nearby staircase, and seated himself on the steps. "Some of us specialize. What's it like, re-forming after an agonizing death? Get a hangover or anything?"

He had his own experiences with death, jolting awake while elsewhere a golem crumbled to pieces, but he saw no reason to share that information. At any rate, he couldn't assume it was the same thing. Being naturally capable of recovering from death was undoubtedly a different experience than the simulations that Hunters went through.  

[Baneful]

Zar gave him a somewhat tired look. "Painful. And sort of residual memories of the dissipation. Tired and weak for a while. Worse if it hasn't been long since the last horrific death."

He eyed him thoughtfully, figuring there was no real point in pretending to be human now, dropping the illusion back to his normal form, leaning against the wall. "We don't enjoy it." he said. "But since the horsemen came on the scene, since the hunter gossip started, its been far too frequent. Far too often for my liking, and often for no reason at all. Often at the hands of would-be allies."

He pushed his glasses up his nose with a perfectly sharp talon. "I don't share their rabid enthusiasm for their respective causes."

 

[prolixity]

"I wasn't expecting to hear it was fun," Jordan said. "Horrifying agony is horrifying agony, no real way around that." He eyed Zar thoughtfully. "I admit that I can see why some would choose to throw their lot in with a cause. It polarizes points of view and makes the world simpler to interpret. You're with them, or you're against them. I feel that's a bit simplistic, though. The range of personal viewpoints and morality has a lot of gradations."

Syllables, Ferros complained.

Don't grump, you can hear me thinking the meanings of all of that. He doesn't seem the type to fight physically, so his strengths must lie elsewhere. I'm trying the intellectual approach.  

[Baneful]

"The factions at home are very polar indeed. Politics, racial tensions and frictions, manoeuvrings for maximum gain. I've never been to the human world, but I presume its similar, our worlds are a mirror of sorts, no?" It was an assumption based on fragments he'd heard from his father, from classes, from the solitary field trip he'd been on. "I don't side with them. Many of them are intentionally deluding the populace at large. Propaganda. Even within the school grounds, nothing but propaganda designed to elicit maximum fear of the hunters."

He smiled, revealing row upon row of razor sharp teeth. "Your kind, whatever you actually are, humans or otherwise, are barely even acknowledged as real. Hushed whispers. Hunter tales. The horsemen tried to use you, tried to make us fight for them using the fear of your unknown menace."

A curl of the tail at his hooves and he went on. "I know you aren't all that the stories make out. I've been close, close enough to hear the pulse of one of your kind. She was vulnerable, she was foolish. And I let her walk away. Because I am curious."

"I want to know if your faction, as polarised as its views may also be, has more of a handle on the truth than the lies we are fed."

 

[prolixity]

"Sounds like some things stay the same no matter what world you live in. Politics, manipulation, facts skewed by whatever group is presenting them to paint themselves in the most positive light." Jordan shrugged. "Most humans don't believe in you either. For the unknown monsters, they generally use some other group of humans. Make them look bad enough, different enough, and the leadership can point at them and say this is the enemy, this is the other side, the embodiment of what we hate."

He touched the red stone in the ring on his finger. "We're still humans. Just people. Set apart by what we can see that others can't and scarred by what's been done to us by your people and our own."  

[Baneful]

It certainly sounded like the two worlds weren't so different at all. The human world sounded appealing, a world that didn't believe, wasn't prepared for what they were. Halloween at least knew humans existed, an advantage of sorts he supposed.

"The parts change but the overall machines appear to be the same." he said, idly drumming his claws on his chin. "The key difference I can see is that in our world we are supposed to be inherently dangerous, we are supposed to be optimal at being, for want of a better word, bad. But we are protected by our inherent persistence. We do not die. Not easily. There is no urgency of mortality. Or there was not."

He pointed, narrowing his eyes. "Suddenly your kind appear and there are whispers of weapons. Of students gone and never returned to the grounds. The four clans fuelled it. They took us out of ourselves and even showed some individuals a world without them. A world where there was nothing but you. There was a fear suddenly, a fear that we are at risk, that we are suddenly acutely mortal." So many students traumatised over what Zar considered to be little more than fabricated lies.

"Halloween is in an upheaval at the moment over a lie, a slow, driving change which most people refuse to even believe, I do not know what the people in charge have planned but I want no part of it. Fear should never be utilised against creatures such an intrinsic part of what it is."

"And so I am here now. I am here blindly seeking in the dark for a way to stop that change. To be the spanner in the machine. And I require knowledge to do so."

 

[prolixity]

"Mortality is a considerably more pressing concern for humans. It's something we live with, the knowledge that our lives are finite and easily ended. A natural human life lasts seventy years, eighty or ninety for luckier individuals; in advanced age our bodies simply start shutting down. And our lives can be ended much sooner, by accident or illness or murder. It's only logical that we cling all the more tightly to our survival. We only get one chance."

Jordan rested his elbows on his knees. "There are Hunters who feel that Halloween should be wiped out. I can't see it succeeding. Aside the massive expenditure of resources and loss of life that would be involved, the essence of Halloween itself is fueled by human Fear. Fear isn't going to stop being produced. It has to go somewhere. Even if the world could be destroyed, what would prevent it from just reforming?"

He shrugged. "It's a dangerous viewpoint for me to hold. I imagine your opinions aren't too popular with the people around you, either."  

[Baneful]

The information on human lifespans was interesting and on some level almost shocking. Such a brief span of time in which to squeeze all the important things. No wonder fear lay so heavy upon them, they were born to fear their own inevitable ends.

As his admission he didn't see the feasibility of complete eradication, Zar nodded. "It seems doubtful, yes. Doubtful, but perhaps not impossible."

He didn't sound concerned as he added. "Do you know that explosion at the tower destroyed the horsemen? Their very world. Some survived, but it does not seem to me like it will be reappearing any time soon. I do not think that worlds are subject to the same laws of dissipation. But perhaps we are essential to your world, as you are to ours, without us, maybe there would be nothing but that fog.." He trailed off thoughtfully, his foray into the dream world of the trials had ended not in the hands of hunters but of that all enveloping fog. Just the desire for home and the dissolution of being.

"As for my peers, If they knew, no. Not popular at all. My schoolmates seem to mostly think the right thing to do is to militarise themselves haphazardly in an attempt to take you on. I don't see it having much clout. Or, in the case of others, to ignore things completely. A very small radical minority want peace between both worlds and co-operation. With their numbers I cannot say I have much optimism for their cause either." again that smile.

"Not popular, but all geniuses are thought madmen."

 

[prolixity]

"The explosion destroyed the horsemen's world and many of their people," Jordan said. "Eventually they will rebuild and regroup, but what happened at the tower has delayed the threat of their rising by decades, at least." The corners of his mouth pulled down sadly. "While I personally regret that there had to be so much destruction and death, I believe it was necessary. I don't know how much the clans told you, or if they told you at all, but they were gathering their forces and preparing to begin the Apocalypse. They would have taken over the human world by force and reduced humanity to nothing more than caged animals, kept barely alive and milked for Fear."

He watched Zar steadily. "I'm not just repeating what I've been told, either," he added. "I've seen records, seen Lairs in the human world. I've seen human remains covering the floor of an abandoned Lair, and I've walked in a literal sea of rotting human corpses killed by the Horsemen. I'm not particularly important. My rank is low. But I could easily find plenty of information that pointed to that conclusion. In the simplest possible terms, it was us or them. And at that, we've only set them back for a while."

He summoned Ferros, laying the huge hammer across his lap. "I have no problem with Halloween itself. It's when Fear creatures come to the human world to use humans as prey that the intersection becomes a problem. I'm not such an idealist that I believe that all Halloween creatures can be convinced of the cause of peaceful coexistence. But I do think that Hunters and Halloween can work for common goals. There will always be outlaws and killers who must be hunted down."  

[Baneful]

He was genuinely surprised to hear about the intent of the horsemen to mobilise. "They kept us in the dark about that. We were there by happenstance, an exchange trip of sorts. An assessment if we were somehow deigned worthy of their protection. They already ran us through trials, it seemed excessive to me." his smile was cruel. "I do not mourn their passing. I do not appreciate being used as a pawn, and they tried to use all of us, on both sides of the divide. They got entirely what was coming to them. "

"I can't say I'm a bleeding heart as far as humans are concerned, your kind are essentially prey. Required for existence. But I think things were relatively fine as they were, and I agree. We have law enforcers of a sort. Boogeymen. One would think they could work with human enforcement to curtail law breaking either sides of the divide."

He shrugged. "Perhaps more communication is what's needed. And less wanton savagery."

 

[prolixity]

"I wonder if it was really coincidence. The timing seems convenient. Why introduce a random element into the equation when a long-planned and world-changing event was about to occur? Perhaps they wanted witnesses. Or, if there was backlash from Halloween, perhaps they wanted hostages." Jordan laughed humorlessly. "Their machinations have been in place for longer than anyone knows."

"Communication is difficult when both sides remain militant," he said. "It would be a slow process of change. Swaying public opinion is difficult in either world, I would imagine. But it always starts with a small group determined to make a difference."