notabluesbro | 1st Confession [Voice]

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1st Confession [Voice]

[Waking up dazed and confused in a desert with wings on your back... after thinking you're dead... never really helps a situation. Last he checked he was inking out his last bit of life on a church floor. And now he's in a shitty pile of sand with black wings on his shoulders. He was either alive and tripping back home in Gunsmoke, or he was on the road to a less than impressive Hell. But... that's a forest in the distance? He must've been seeing things. Worth a shot, at least?

So he staggers for an hour like a confused drunk and finally makes it to this green, wondrous land, were he just... collapses near the closest stream and drinks until his poor lungs feel a little better. Of course, after taking a short nap under a tree, he wakes up to a fat drop of rain smacking him in the forehead.]

Wha...?

[Is that... rain? Really? That's... sort of a miracle. Lots of miracles lately, eh? The journal falls open and voices trickle out of it. So after staring at it for a few minutes, he... speaks at it. After all, looking crazy is better than sitting out in a rainstorm--

He can't believe he's actually in rain. Real rain, none of that feigned sprinkler crap. And the desert's so goddamn tiny...]

Hello...?

Why in God's name am I talking to a book...

Can anyone tell me where the heck this place is? I'd also be really grateful if anyone could point me to the nearest food stand... Mainly if it has a nice, sturdy roof and something either warm or alcoholic to drink...

[A thoughtful pause. His back did feel too light...]

...And, uh... if you've seen a giant cross sitting around, let me know, huh?

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[snerk. A grin-] Oh, you'll find no shortage of idiots.

... but are you talking about a man named Vash?

[He laughs.]

That's the one. The goofy lanky guy who prances around eating donuts and conveying his message of love and peace. That numbskull!

[He notes his Mushigarette is running low. Should've told Vash to buy some on the way... Not that he would've anyway, the cruel bastard.]

He and I are pretty good friends, I guess you can say. Had a lot of fights between us and some of the usual scary characters back home. Lord knows how many times we've gotten into spats over food.

[a chuckle] Sounds about right.

Heh. [he's further amused by how much that description resembles another of Vash's friendships-- and it has him wondering if you're a man of violence, stranger. But that's not a question for first meetings.] I'm sure he'll be glad to see you here, in that case. I think he's managed to get on the bad-tempered side of quite a few scary characters in this place, too.

[faint grin] But fortunately, the food's free for the taking.

[Oh, wait 'til you see the really awesome cross he has, then—it's probably a good answer to your unspoken question.

Wolfwood's eyebrow perches up a liiittle higher on his forehead. Get on their bad-tempered sides, huh? Same ol' Vash all right. He only hoped that idiot didn't get into any major problems, because they couldn't just migrate like they did back home. They were stuck here.

He wraps two fingers about the cigarette hanging on his lips, taking the last possible drag from it.]

I'm sure. He doesn't really understand that he flounces around the idea of love and peace around those who don't desire or allow it to begin with.

...But... That's just something about him people have to come to accept—it's just the way he is, always been.

Hn. Tends to work the same way in this place, from the little I've seen. [but even Ginko is tactful enough to steer an acre wide of revealing that those beliefs got Vash killed, once]

Nothing wrong with an ideal like that, as far as I'm concerned.
[so says the man reticent to take even inhuman lives, in his own line of work. Though he can't help adding, a little wryly-] Even when it extends to flesh-eating butterflies.

[Small world, those beliefs got Wolfwood killed once as well, not that he's too bitter about that. Even with death, the idea of not killing when you've got the chance...]

It's not so bad, the whole 'thou shall not kill' thing—after all, as a man of the cloth it's one of the rules I'm supposed to be living by.

[Supposed to be. Chapel sort of messed that all up when he was little.]

[He stops, looks at the white-haired man incredulously.]

Flesh-eating butterflies?

....of the cloth? [he tilts his head a little to the side-- his inexplicable clothes might contradict it, but Ginko's had no contact with the West in his Japan]

Heh-- like I said. Some scary things. Vash wouldn't do more than swat them. And that's when our keepers aren't playing tricks with our minds.

Yeah, you know! Man of the cloth, preacher, holy man, priest, and so on!

[Surprisingly, Wolfwood has had the synonym mantra for a while now—another quirk about his job, he'd come to find. Of course, there was more of a reason for priests back where he came from. Lots of last rites and funerals, you know.

He figures that maybe Ginko would maybe recognize one of those, anyway.]

[But of course, he sombers up pretty quickly.]

...They play tricks with minds, huh? Sounds like I'll have plenty to get used to, then.

[BUT SOMETHING FAR MORE PRESSING—]

So, what exactly does a butterfly look like again?

[Aha, do we have desert butterflies? IDK...]

A holy man, ehhh? ....wouldn't have been my first guess.

[a little gravely, himself] Mm. Some more serious than others. We're just test subjects, to them-- valuable or no.

[....heh. A raised eye brow at that, and he thinks for a moment-- before glancing around where they're sitting until he spots a a certain flower. He touches it-] Hmm. Something like this-- but flying. I'm sure you'll see some when the rain clears.

But these were black-- and came from the bodies of the dead. [...dryly] And had sharp teeth.

Sheesh, they sound horrible; anything with sharp teeth is always on my list of things to worry about. [Sure they came from dead bodies, but sharp teeth? That's even worse. Guessing that's, ah, one of the ways they escape a dead body to begin with...]

[He pauses for a moment, leaning back.]

Mmm, well, I guess I'm not all that holy looking, am I? I guess you can say I'm a black sheep of the herd; not really much of a good preacher, either. My talking skills don't do too well outside of a simple conversation.

[He smiles and points playfully at Ginko.]

And you got me curious, now—what kind of holy men are yours like? Probably not the kind that smoke and drink on a regular basis, huh?

[a quiet chuckle] Not so clear a line in my world, either, I suppose-- at least in my country. You'll find that some abstain from drink- [but he handwaves the smoking] but it depends on the path they've chosen.

[he raises an eyebrow, with a smirk] And I've yet to meet a mountain god who'd spurn good wine.

[The path they've choosen, huh...? Wolfwood's smile softens a little.]

Aah, I suppose every world'll be like that—even when a man's job has a rulebook, the walk of life sort of rewrites a few of those lines.

[He one-ups your eyebrow with both, good sir.]

...Mountain gods, hn? Different worlds indeed.

Hm. [...he'll mark that quietly away. Then nods-- amused at the strange pleasantness of talking to someone for whom this is all still new]

That's right. I've encountered quite a few in my line of work. [which might account for why he'd give you quite a different description of dear Moro and her daughter. And that after being on the unpleasant side of her teeth.] I'm a mushishi-- a mushi-master.

[His head tilts just a bit and he holds his chin between his fingers.]

Mushishi?

[The strangeness of the word makes it all the more easy to store away.]

May I ask what 'mushi' is?

[Aw, hell-- he sort of missed this.]

Mushi are a variety of life, in my world-- very few people can see them at all, but they come in myriad forms.

They exist on a plane somewhere between truly living, and dead-- more like pure energy than anything. But they interact with everything in the world around them, sometimes in the manner of viruses or pestilence.

[Now that's a real head-itcher.]

...So they're like a sort of a mix between a spiritual being and a form of bug? Or something like that?

And they infect people.

Something like that. [a rather rueful smile] --some species. There was a huge influx of them, into this place-- a few months back. Your friend Vash managed to catch himself a Mizukagami-- a mushi that steals the reflection, and will eventually replace its host's body.

It was fortunate that the cure didn't involve killing the mushi-- or I don't know what I would have done. [...probably lied to him. ]

[Wolfwood glances at the man, and then focuses his sights on the rainy forest life beyond them with forearms rested at his thighs. Comfortable-looking, though he felt a little worry about such strange creatures...]

Then you have my gratitude; I'm guessing you're a man much like him then?

[He looks back, smiling a little. Come to think of it—his hands were still really calloused, weren't they? Dying didn't change those little details... And he quietly adds to his question:]

...Not much of a killer?

Edited 2010-08-30 10:08 (UTC)

[Ginko's a little surprised-- he often is, by gratitude-- then he smiles a little strangely.]

Ahh, I don't know about that. [there's something about Vash that he finds so curiously innocent-- even though it's clear that the man isn't naive. Ginko gives Wolfwood a thoughtful look.] Mushi aren't good or evil-- their lives are like those of plants, or animals-- driven just to survive.

I don't have to make the choices that some have to make.

[then he shakes his head a little, with a soft exhale] So not much of one-- no. I can afford to only take life when I have to.

[Wolfwood weighs the man's words carefully, piecing together some sort of earnest first opinion. And then it suddenly occurs to him... and he chuckles at the realization—]

Edited 2010-08-30 10:29 (UTC)

All this talk and I don't even know your name.

[And he extends one hand out as he says it; old-fashioned handshake was always his first instinct when it came to names.]

Th'name's Wolfwood.

[Ginko's been around enough to recognize the purpose of the outstretched hand by now, and meets it with his own-- inclining his head a little out of habit]

Ginko. Heh- nice to meet you.

Nice t'meet you, too. Hell, thanks for meeting me; I probably would've wandered around like an idiot and gotten myself into trouble. Giant wolf and whatnot, right? Or so Vash warns me.

That, or I'd walk myself right off a cliff.

[Okay, maybe a little exaggerated, but.]

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