[F11-PP] Through Dark Waters (Training Your Friend)

[Setsuna 0]

A shift of the blade beneath the surface, drawing a slit of frost that floats helplessly upon the black water. It films and builds up, swaying outward as the flakes that carry it. "A fish, knows only water because it is what is needed to survive. It may not dream of something beyond its scope, its world is that water. It's air, it's home." She looks to a flickering flounder that disappears to the whispers inventory.

"A decision can be undone, a wrong corrected. It's that choice that defines us. I will not pretend to understand love, for I do not believe I have felt it. The fact that such a small thing remained dormant proves that whatever choice was made that forced it into hiding could not cure it. You would speak to me about rekindling passions, that the burning I bare was proof that all was not lost. That confusion you feel, my master. Is all to be expected."

A subtle swerve of the small wisp as it attempts to follow her slight shifts, as she spoke with wisdom well beyond her age. Pain brought maturity, and isolation brought reflection. She had nothing but time in sleepless hours of the night, as she hunted prey after prey to an eerie yellow lantern light across a myriad of landscapes. A close of her eyes, the ones given to her and allowed her to see where she could not normally.

"So I would ask of you, what is your water? What is it that you need to survive, that builds your world. Mine is my duty, my oath and my vengeance. I will have it seen to the end, but past that I cannot see anything. That is my mountain. Even if it did make you as bad as those I hate, as bad as myself. I will never make that sacrifice again, I have done it once. it will cost me my life if it should come to that and I can make the difference." As her senses absorbed the world around her, forcing it to become her own after so long she was starting to hear it again.

[Freyd 0]

"What is my water?  Huh.  Well put."  A crooked smile bent the Whisper's lips as he admired the turn of phrase.  "I always knew I liked you, Setsuna.  Your insight is inspiring."  Kicking his boot to scuff the water's surface, Freyd released a single laugh as exclamation of epiphany.

Pulling back his caging cowl, he let the cool breeze flow against unruly locks of mousy brown.  Pale skin that once looked sickly actually showed a hint of life and color.  Warmth had gradually been returning to his frozen soul, all thanks to his copper rose.  It was a gift and debt unparalleled, and worthy of the choice Setsuna had been urging him to make.  He hadn't grasped how he could reconcile it with his promise to Raidou, until now.  That commitment had been made on the assumption that the outcome must be incompatible with all other considerations.  What if that was false?  His brow furrowed and jaw set with determination. 

"I am such a fool.  It isn't a matter of permutation or analysis.  My water has always been my will, and I choose to wield it to make the impossible false."

Vanity Tag: @Elora

 

[Setsuna 0]

The small light twists to the impacted water, before dropping below its surface. That faint red glow showed beneath their reflection in ripples. Setsuna eyes it as if it was lost. A sudden lock of the water as it drops to freezing, a crack, and a burst. A single construct, one of the very wolf she believed herself to be. It had taken shape, a form of mobile ice choosing this above all else. "Fitting." Setsuna quips as it fakes breathing, that red light acting in pulses within the slightly opaque window that created its skin.

It was as if it was growing with her, feeding on her motivations and her spoken words. Listening and waiting for some sort of queue. Having seen her master's true face for the first time "It suits you, I know what it's like to hide oneself from the world. To not want eyes upon you." Her demeanor still felt as cold as it had always, but it was softer. Unlike others, it was hard to discern what she was feeling, a careful force of it away. "This is more than I have ever shared with anyone, its easy to see the flaws in others, but not your own. I chose to ignore them, continue to hate myself, and use that as an excuse to drive forward."

A twist of her head cascades long silver hair down her right shoulder "So my master, an oath to use one's will to not accept impossible. What is undeniable." Setsuna lifts her hand and jams it through the ridged plates of the beast, removing the glowing red heart from its chest. She did not appreciate the form it had taken, and despite the newly formed abrasions on her hands she had plucked it clean. The shape fades and within her hands was that little globule of light, she'd changed it.

ID# 181930 results: Craft: 6+1=7, Success [2/3]

Edited February 2, 2021 by Setsuna

[Freyd 0]

"I promised Raidou that I would lead Firm Anima if he fell.  Or, when he fell, to place it properly in his mindset.  It is the fate of all tanks to be the ones who eventually falter and fall."  Red eyes watched as her slender hands pierced the wolf's frozen form.

She's be fun on a date, wouldn't she?

Someone may yet melt her heart, one day.  Though I suspect that it could only be done by her own choice.

"It was also my commitment to ensure that the guild would endure long enough to escape this world, at any cost.  The tethers of love complicate that.  It led to calculus that could not be resolved, until I realized just now that math is malleable, even in this world.  Some might have thought your own introspection to fall within the same unachievable range.  I'm glad to see that it's not, though I prefer to think that you've just reached beyond your previous limits.  Keep blowing them away, Setsuna.  You'll be amazed by what you'll find."

He glanced again at the stone, this time more sympathetically.

"So, what shape would you accept?"

[Setsuna 0]

A twist of her head, looking down at the small lantern. "I would assume none better, and Raidou is smart enough to understand that he is the most likely to die." A shift casts free some shard stuck in her skin, the game's passive regeneration causing it to close up. "But is that commitment to the guild itself, the title or the flag? Or is it the people beneath it, that you're tasked with saving?" Showing the light to Freyd, as it hums and glows. "It is an important distinction, that even Raidou fails to see. He may not like it, but beneath the banner, he has sworn you to protect. He is underneath that title, you are beneath it, my master. So if it is the people beneath it, then the moment you choose to make that sacrifice. You choose to die to protect it. You've failed." She spoke holding her heart in her hands, showing it to the whisper.

"That is the very reason why my oath has changed, to protect them, I must protect myself. Else I am lying to myself if I were to believe that my death was a service, that if it was to come willingly. There is no shape I would accept, all or none. There will not be one, but multiple. That is the point, my master."

Edited February 2, 2021 by Setsuna

[Freyd 0]

"Firm Anima is meant to be more than an amalgam of random people and symbols.  It is an idea, marshalling all of the talents and resources available to us to overwhelm and bring down the cage thinks it governs our behaviour.  Within that framework, all of us are expendable, and none of us are.  Raidou is a mad genius afflicted by equal measures of caring and ennui.  I was the opposite face of that coin, callous and reasoning." 

Freyd flicked a small leaf into the water, as if its placement offended his sense of order.  Setsuna could picture him setting sand and stones in a zen garden, or better yet as a gardener trimming and nurturing the plants around him towards a singular purpose.  His actions, past and present, were suddenly cast in stark relief against that analogy.  Was he tending now?  Or was he looking after himself for a change?

"Success will be measured by how many escape, and perhaps also those who did and didn't.  In that light, I have never had objections to your cullings, but some remain worth the effort to salvage.  It is another point of distinction between he and I.  He would save them all, if he could.  I will save the ones I can, and so become the last resort.  As to the shape of your pet, I suspect that we imbue them with the forms we wish, and more than most people realize.  Tell it what you want to be able to do.  Perhaps it will agree?"

[Setsuna 0]

"Then it is an ideal, not a flag or a banner. Both of my masters are conniving and underhanded in their motives. So the goal of you both is to create something greater than the sum of its parts. As commendable as it is clever." The girl shifts and slides the heart in her hand for a moment, allowing it to greedily peel more moisture from the pond. A single piece of foliage removed creates a serene and pristine lake.

It begins to take shape, a new form in a line of ice. It forms a serpent like a snake, another shape taught. "Another." Setsuna tells it with a mutter, and in response, it fades into droplets. A look to the whisper in a cascade of water. "Noted, and I assume Raidou would not approve. Where Raidou holds hope in all, is a fally. Not all are worth saving, not all are redeemable. I will allow it its own definition. I need not something that cannot activate its own, It wants to be a tool then it will do so of its own accord."

[Freyd 0]

Freyd watched and listened, as he so often did, forming silent opinions and keeping them to himself.  He'd already shared more with her than he did with others, save very rare exceptions.  They were of kindred spirits, and he saw much of himself reflected in the girl, just clad in a frostier skin.  

"As similar as Raidou and I are, there are notable and important differences, some of which may one day prove incompatible.  No two people agree in all things over all of time.  Far more often we are of the same mind, which is a precious gift in an ally.  I value his judgment and his company.  He is a friend.  Those things have great value.  If he wants to throw himself upon the flame to save everyone, that is his call.  I would sooner wield the fire and burn my way out, even at collateral cost.  There, you and I are much more in sync.  And yet,"  He pointed over his head to where the crystal spun, still green.  "Plans within plans, and actions weighed against consequences.  Even with all that has happened, I have no regrets.  They are wasteful."

He raised an eyebrow in response to her earlier praise.

"And... conniving?  Perhaps.  Cunning might be more accurate. At least, I hope."

[Setsuna 0]

A drop of the small stone plunks in the water and begins to stir beneath it. A rough shape as it takes new shapes all its own, eager to please a girl who could not be sated. Nothing was good enough, but it would not know it. "It is another question that holds no answer. If given the opportunity which would I choose?" Simply milling the thought through her mind. "If given the chance, At that moment if Raidou told me to flee but you told me to fight. I would choose to stand against the flame. He would not agree, but I would not give him an answer. He suffers from treating others like china, there is something within him that forces him to do so. Eager to hold the world on his back. I have regrets."

She pauses at the sudden drop in opposition, tapping the flats of her shoes to water to see how it would react. "But I do not try and solve them, erase them. My master's motives are toward an end. They are not wasteful if they are used as a reason to keep moving forward. My only hope, with all due respect. Is that the plans you stack upon others are not so opaque that you cannot see where you started. Cunning and Conniving, it makes no difference. Two words with the same meaning from different perspectives. Chase is an example, he believes you ill. but simply because he is too ignorant to see the whole picture. An animal."

ID# 181982 results: Battle: 10, Craft: 4 (Such is familiar training q.q)

Edited February 3, 2021 by Setsuna

[Freyd 0]

Freyd gave no outward reaction to her assessment of the blue boi.  Raidou would not want to abandon hope in him, and could not leave him behind.  Freyd just hated to see potential wasted.  Plans within plans remained at work on that particular front, and he was playing long odds.  The Whisper's goals were rarely founded on short term gains, not truly at the least.  There was always some bigger, more complicated scheme, layered with contingencies if some lesser plan failed to manifest the desired result.  Where Raidou wanted to save every piece, Freyd was callously judicious about when and how he would be willing to sacrifice them. 

'Setsuna could appreciate that,' he thought.  There was no value in that particular exchange.  Not here and now, at least.  Some things had to be saved for later days.  Choosing a different tack, he re-engaged in another direction.

"How many of us have become beasts in here?  How many have cracked?"  Tilting his head as he turned.  "How many by your hand?  I read the wall regularly.  It's no small number.  How many might have been redeemed, and how were truly many worthy of the effort?  You can lose yourself in such questions, I suppose."

[Setsuna 0]

Fish scatter from beneath it, avoiding the bubbling of air desperate to escape the forming familiar. The shadows visible show them fleeing its origin, as her thing was taking shape. Setsuna shared an expectant gaze toward it, waiting for the display she would undoubtedly reject. "I do not imagine the odds are many, the question is how many more will cross that line. I hate the cursor yes. But that is not all I hate, there is a smell on them."

A strange comparison, and within company despite the attachments the captains had to these things. She would speak her mind.

"You can see it, the ones that are willing to skin another for their own salvation. Deliberately attempt to save their own skin by the removal of another's. I do what I must, they are cancer and once that line has been crossed it is hardly but once. There would be those foolish enough to assume that maybe this was the exception, that maybe this one is different. It is my job as a scalpel to remove cancer, quickly cleanly." The acknowledgment was placid, free, and undeniable. There was no spite, no remorse, nothing but distilled honesty. "I am to see it for what it is, not what it can be. Could some of them be saved? Maybe, but how many? How much damage is too great, how long before you find them unable to be redeemed. Those would mistake me for a reaper, someone that could be compared to the monsters I face. But no my master, I am not a question of if. I am a consequence, a preventative. Fear is a powerful tool, one that breeds a second look by those that would cross that line. So my answer is none because it has to be."

[Freyd 0]

She will lose herself in this endeavor, and become the thing she hates.

Probably. 

Freyd's face remained passive, his voice ready to hold true to neutral, had he any replies to offer.  IN his mind, Setsuna remained trapped in a boundary she had willingly defined from her own past grief.  It was a condition he knew well, first hand, and enough to know that only she could dislodge herself from within.  Hatred also made her Raidou's opposite, in her own way.    Killing every orange-tagged player was just another, though morbidly-obsessed, absolute.  His heart churned with sudden and unexpected sympathy.  To have fallen into this state, so young, was tragic on so many fronts and would inevitably foster more of the same.  But, where Raidou's nemesis was failure, hers would be success.  With every person Setsuna killed, she ensured her own reckoning.  If not here in Aincrad, then surely in the real beyond.  They would be unlikely to appreciate her reasoning.

"I came to terms with the cost and consequences of my decisions long before I made them.  Have you considered what will happen if the world outside will do when they finally, successfully remove your nerve gear?  Are you prepared to pay whatever toll they will exact?"  He was leading her towards another test, curious to hear her response, though he was certain that he already knew the answer.  The one that followed would be more interesting.

[Setsuna 0]

"I wonder what the cost you will pay, when the time comes, My master." The girl swelled still stuck in the ice age, forever frozen at that moment. Freyd had picked up on it, but there would be none better. The man was perceptive enough to see through it, the first to glean through deliberate obscurity. A softness shared through philosophy, through bounds in captivity. Like two prisoners awaiting the gallows, the epiphany before being hung.

"Considered it, as if that place even still exists for me. No, they cannot take from me what I have already lost. They may believe that some punishment is due, that it is something that I would fear, but outside this place, I cease to exist. Only now I exist as a figment, there is some honesty to being referred to in the way that I am. The ghost of floor 4, The creature in the mist. The truth is I have already paid for everything I own, and if they can see me now. Bind me to what must be done, and assume that they can exact some price from me. So be it, but it will only be for their sake." A still bubbling twist forming small cubes in odd shapes that float on the ripples. In a way, her answer more than reflected one an orange player might give. She knew that and accepted it.

@Mari (Cough may find it interesting)

Edited February 4, 2021 by Setsuna

[Freyd 0]

She didn't know, and couldn't understand, could she?.  Freyd's crime and guilt existed long before he'd even donned the nerve gear.  But, he sensed that she had reached the same state of resolve: the outside world was gone, and didn't matter any longer.  It was a tether, whose only reason for being was to provide an outlet for a plug that bound them here and could be pulled on a whim at any moment.  That wasn't really different from 'real' life, was it?  Yet he'd found life more real than 'real' in here, and people that actually meant something to him.  The admission was disquieting.  He'd long since resigned himself to a death in SAO, but committed to finding the means of escape for others.  Now he had to ask himself: if he wouldn't follow them back to the 'real,' would he even have the strength to let them go?

"My price was earned and deserved before I even donned the nerve gear."  He choked on something and coughed it loose.  "Maybe we're already dead?  Wouldn't that be a lark?  Maybe Kayaba fried our brains ages ago and we're all in some form of purgatory, taunting ourselves with the imagined possibility of escape?  I suppose that none of it matters, save what we choose.  Now, if I could only figure out how that adds up to forty-two."

[Setsuna 0]

Silence washed over the place as she weighed what was spoken, her tool still boiled out of sight and she had all but forgotten its presence. It was forming itself without her input, out of sight and influence. Setsuna offered her insight, weighing the possibility unsure if Freyd was serious or not. To her, it couldn't have been sarcasm no and she was much too young to understand that last bit. "I believe this is very real, but it's like a dream you cannot wake up from. There is a dial on it, and I believe that some of us may have already been condemned. Who knows what my master's body would look like outside of here, but It cannot be much worse than my own." A pause once her statement rolled out, completely devoid of humor. A bit confused and perplexed, that last bit rang through her head on repeat as she attempted to process it: Forty-two...? as wise as she was, a 14 year old girl could hardly understand the answer to everything.

ID# 182097 results: Craft: 5+1=6, Oh boy its never going to end

Edited February 5, 2021 by Setsuna

[Freyd 0]

"Eh?  What is that supposed to mean?  I thought everyone's form mirrored that from the other world." 

Looking her over, he found no obvious indication of trauma or malformity, though he'd always struggled a bit with the notion that everyone's true appearances had been revealed.  He knew gamers, being an avid one himself, and they weren't as universally pretty people as so many appeared to be in SAO.  Maybe they were just idealized versions of themselves?  That seemed to make more sense, and he'd have to admit that it was true of himself.  That, or maybe it was possible to improve one's own appearance with assorted methods in-game.  It wasn't something he typically dwelled upon, but might be worth further consideration.

"I'm not much different than my true self, though my eyes seem to bring out a more reddish hue in here, especially if I'm on edge... which is admittedly pretty much always.  What are you trying not to say?"  Red eyes scanned them once again, to ensure that they were still alone.

[Setsuna 0]

"Stuck to a mattress, unable to move. I am sure we look frail and clinging to life." Setsuna offered bluntly, rolling hair that had since slid to her eyes behind her shoulder. Such was long hair, that before she didn't know it existed. Perhaps she'd prefer it shorter, but could not change it now. "I don't know if I reflect myself, I've never seen my own face outside of this place." She offered honestly. "Outside of this place I am blind." She dumped in the air as if it was an order at a fast food restaurant, no special care taken to its delivery. "This place does change us, force some ideal version of ourselves into its confines. I am confused at how or what would make that equal forty-two, I am unsure as to what that means." Her eyes stay locked to the water, feeling almost inferior at her ability to understand the sentiment.

[Freyd 0]

"According to the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, forty-two is the answer to the ultimate question, which no one has been able to divine.  It's supposed to connect the dots between life, the universe and everything.  My grandfather read it to me when I was a boy.  It's a bunch of nonsensical pseudo-scientific fiction meant only to be humorous, but it also lends perspective to the absurdity of our existence."  He looked up and around at the surrounding landscape, taking in the richness and authenticity of the detail.  

"Being here must have come as quite a shock." 

There didn't seem to be any point in apologizing for her condition, though he sympathized.  

"It must also be very liberating. I think I better understand the context of your perspective and the reasons for your previous answers."

Silence followed.

"Is that thing done trying to twist itself into an everything pretzel for you yet, or has it just melted into the pond?"

[Setsuna 0]

"Never heard of it. But a fitting comparison. Your grandfather..." She eyes the water, wondering how much of the man's influence held to the whisper's actions. She didn't have someone like that to reflect back on. "It is, a whole new sense that I have had to adjust to." Setsuna blinks and looks to Freyd as if claiming his face for a memory that she'd soon forget. It was as if the girl was looking through him, her stare seeming unfocused. "Must be an interesting story." Unsure if it was a book or something along those lines. A silence played between them, allowing the words to settle before a defer of the objective. "I am not entirely sure. It has been down there a while. It may just be confused as It tries to seek reward or praise from me." The girl eyes the water, to which it was still bubbling, and small lumps of eyes in obtuse shapes float away from where it sunk.

Edited February 6, 2021 by Setsuna

[Freyd 0]

"Try offering it some guidance.  You've done a pretty good job during your practice run with me, little sister."  Freyd chose his words deliberately, letting the last two hang with purpose. 

The nature of the relationship between them had been altered by their exchange, and transmuted into something different.  She needed connection to something, and to be shocked out of the ruts created by absolutes.  Her new vow was a start.  Melting an icy heart had to be more than symbolic here.  She needed to do the same with hers, though it wouldn't happen overnight.  Exposure therapy had done him wonders, even if he hadn't realized at the time that life was irradiating him with feels.  Grappling with the rod once more, he set a worm upon his hook then cast it far beyond where her little experiment was bubbling away.

"Who'd ever have thought that fishing could be so, damned, cathartic?"

Freyd 'hrumpfed' in exactly the same manner as his grandfather used to do.