IZOU'S PALACE

[goei]

KYOTO BAKUMATSU PALACE
You find yourself in historical Kyoto at night. The city is shadowy and beautiful, elegant but hostile. It's a sophisticated city, but you don't belong there and it knows it. Everyone knows it. You are being watched.

Worst of all, a terrible demon haunts the streets of this powerful capital city.

Eli Walsh, Kirumi Tojo, Still Sunrise, Argenti, Yi Sang, Celeste, Mafuyu Asahina, and McGillis Fareed, do you dare journey into hell?

 

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Comments

[vogelfrei]

[ Well. That is... anticlimactic. McGillis feels kind of deflated as he steps back into the main room to get a good look at Izou - the thing that is part of Izou, the crying adult child.

You just weren't strong enough part of him wants to say, but that's not going to be helpful and he knows it.

Instead, let's try for this. ]

What was the use of waiting for their approval? If you want something, you'll have to admit it openly and carve the path to it yourself. Obediently listening to what others demand of you is only going to hold you back.

[goei]

... All I wanted was to be useful. I wanted to help. I never understood all the complicated stuff they were talkin' about with the revolution.

[He curls up even tighter.]

You don't gotta tell me I'm pathetic 'cause I already know.

[vogelfrei]

[ It is genuinely pathetic. Izou won't hear any disagreement from McGillis here. The self-pity almost makes him feel sick.

But everything the others are saying gets to him a little because he was the person to do all this to someone else before. And he knows what that man did about it.

He died at his hands after all. He died trying to wipe his tears away. And as such, being the man who betrayed a friend and the man who still died looking at him like he's the sun in the sky-- He has some idea of this situation, of what Izou can be. He thinks. ]

And what do you want now? Do you want to forget about the people you once chased after, or do you want to chase even harder, until they have no choice but to look at you with the eyes they've been averting all this time?

[goei]

I...

[When was the last time someone asked him what he wanted and didn't just mean dinner? What he was actually trying to make of himself?]

I don't wanna do either of those things. I don't think that hard about things like that, s'probably why I ended up like this.

[vogelfrei]

Then don't think hard. Wanting something is easy - every human being craves. It's an inescapable part of living.

[ But then, Izou is not really alive. And neither is McGillis, who also doesn't know what he wants right now and has avoided thinking about it.

The hypocrisy of it is not lost on him, but he is pushing it down. ]

Find that desire and follows its scent like the beast that you are. Your chains came off long ago, you don't need to hold onto them anymore.

[goei]

[He snorts.]
I'm more chained now than I ever was, bein' a heroic spirit. And I ain't alive neither.

[But...]
All I ever wanted was ta do a good job. Fer someone ta tell me I did. Maybe I really am just an animal fer that.

[vogelfrei]

We're all animals. The question is whether or not we can bare our teeth.

[ Izou is failing that miserably right now, unfortunately. ]

[goei]

[Wow he literally stabbed you??]

Ain't that all I've been doing before now?

[vogelfrei]

[ And then you just broke down crying!!

Well, not just. McGillis is still very much bleeding and hurting - he just doesn't really care about all that yet. He's had worse anyway.]

And you weren't honest about it, were you? It was posturing, barking. 'Punishing sinners'? That's not you, that's not your bare self. That is not the power you believe in.

[goei]

... No. Though I sure as shit don't care if this entire city and all the damn pretentious rich people who live here burns down. That I meant.

[He is angry it's just more directionless.]

[vogelfrei]

[ Well, that actually gets a thin smile out of McGillis? ]

I'm not about to try and change your mind on that matter.

[goei]

... I don't wanna be a demon. I just thought maybe it'd be easier than bein' me.

[vogelfrei]

It's impossible to truly escape yourself. One's past will always be etched into one's being.

Thus the path you took seems to be the harder one to me... and futile too.

Progress as yourself instead.

[ Even if he does still think it's a waste of a good moniker. ]

[goei]

Don't tell me what ta do. Yer all pompous and stuff but I bet you got plenty wrong with you too.

[But he does seem more resolved and less pathetic now.]

[vogelfrei]

I do.

[ After he just saw absolutely all your dirty laundry, he'll give you that much. ]

But you're going to have to try harder to find out.