agoge | >>@ENTERTHEDRAGON

[There's some natural order to things that's supposed to happen. It was no doubt about it- the message from gramps to everyone was crystal clear. A sequence, loosely built, but an important set of events set to happen in chain reaction.

Look. Ryuji's not the brightest crayon in the box, but he gets that in order to save the world, they have to secure time the way it was meant to be in its original form. He's seen manga with time travel stuff going on in it. Every tiny thing could be a catalyst for things that happen down the road that no one has a grasp of understanding. The only thing he can do is try to keep the actors playing their parts. He's not that great at doing much else.]

I'm sorry you had to find out this way, man. But it's not like what you're doin' doesn't have purpose.

You being there is still important.

Maybe it's because you don't know what happens is why you're there. I dunno.

[But it does make him think a little bit.

Like... back home, him and the rest of the gang had done absolutely everything in their path to stop people from dying. This is a moral grey zone, at best. Is it really just what they're doing? How do you rationalize two lives over the needs of millions to come?

Ryuji, parallel to Ashitaka, miles away in their locations, groans as well.]

No. If it was destined to happen, it is best that I know, and before when I might have had the chance to make a mistake.

[Ryuji's further comments give him pause, though. He had never really thought of it that way. Back home, his involvement had been an impediment to the goals of everyone he faced; even if they had no quarrel with him, they had a quarrel with what he planned to do. He didn't allow himself to feel self-important, only scrambling to do what he felt was right (in the off chance that would absolve him of his curse). Much of him had been wondering if there was even much purpose to the COST agents being here, if all they were meant to do was preserve what was already set in motion.

But no, Ryuji is right. They did still have purpose here, and surely the width and breadth of the different recruits had its purpose also. He nods.]

If we are to continue, we must all believe in the good that we can do here. Even if something terrible is meant to happen, surely there are things that we can do to safeguard others.

[If the timeline only looked at the figures history regarded, such as the king and those writing the magazines and pamphlets inspiring the people to action, certainly they could help those that history forgot. Even if it was just a salve to their consciences, it was still something.]

[These are some serious implications to make to someone who's only 17- someone whose deeds had saved a lot of other people who were enslaved to people who hoarded power over them. Never once did they have to resort to killing. Never once did they do something they regretted, because the truth that they sought existed entirely in their abilities to change the minds of shitty adults.

But this? This is history. This is stuff that's already happened as far as Ryuji knows. And as far as Ashitaka knows, this is the future. Stuff that hasn't happened yet.

So here's the moral conundrum that they're both faced with. If they both know what the course and outcome looks like, is it their jobs to make sure that it goes according to plan, simply because they're both COST agents? Or is there an alternate route? What if they do something that makes the future entirely unstable? Funny, that's exactly what they're supposed to be doing, for a future that hasn't come to fruition yet.

Ryuji feels ridiculously heavy when he talks to Ashitaka. It's like a weight on his own heart, because honestly? He doesn't know the answer. He wants to do right by the world- wants to do things like help him purge the curse inside him, set things toward the right course of action and leave a positive impact on the world.]

Let's do our best, then.

We might not know what the hell's gonna happen by trying, but I gotta believe that what we're doing is right.

We are, right?

[It all exists in a different abstract for Ashitaka than it would for others like Ryuji. For Ashitaka, it seemed a strange path of thought to doggedly keep to a line of history that eventually lead to something wrong enough to require them to be here in the first place. To him, he wonders if deviation would be for the best. But COST assured them that it was not, that that was what the Regency sought out and what endangered them all, so he tentatively believed them. He didn't have the knowledge or the understanding to do anything but do what they commanded, regardless of what he wished.

Regardless, speaking to Ashitaka had that sort of effect on people. He was a very deep-thinking young man, a man with a fate and a destiny. Even separated from those things, he couldn't help but read meaning into what he saw and what he planned to do, for he was not separated from the curse that still clung to his soul (declawed as it was, for the time being).]

It is difficult to know sometimes. I wondered the same myself, often enough.

I believe that there is truth to a gut feeling you have of something. It is an instinct, or an impulse of the heart. I have usually followed that, though I cannot tell you if it was the correct thing to do or not.

Then time will tell us the answer.

Edited (html...) 2017-11-27 06:18 (UTC)

[Ryuji's never sat well with the idea of blindly following and not asking questions, but those questions were never really to the level of purpose or being. Ashitaka's definitely pulling something out of him, and Ryuji is both calmed and unnerved talking to him, paradoxically, at the same time. It's rare for the punk to get the feeling that someone is listening to him, really paying attention to what he's saying and reflecting on it. When you've dealt with so much dismissal in your life around that sort of thing, it's just... unexpected.

He sighs, leaning his head against the back of a crate that he's been using as a headboard. Regardless of what the implications are, or the philosophy behind everything, when the sun rises the next day, he's going to get up, dress himself again, and begin the same day that he has for the past few weeks: sweeping up the bar below, washing down the tables, and getting ready for the first crowd of people to start hammering in. There's no rhyme or reason to the way life goes- it's just as chaotic as the distribution of the people who walk through those doors.]

If you're a good person, then your gut feeling about things is kinda like a moral compass of sorts. When it feels off, you know something ain't right.

I pretty much run on that.

I guess we're kinda the same then, huh?

In this way, yes, I think that we are.

[He thinks on it, though, untangling a web of thoughts before continuing.]

I am unsure it is as simple as a person being good or bad.
I met a woman intent on ruling the world with strength of arms and the wealth of iron. Her ambition was what injured and corrupted the god that would eventually give me my curse. Part of me wanted to hate her for this, and part of me wanted to strike her down, but in speaking to her I realized that nothing would come of it. The world she envisioned was one that was a better one for peoples that society threw aside, peoples that she had welcomed and given homes and purpose.
She probably also followed the impulses of her heart, and saw the people living well who would have suffered otherwise. I do not know where the line is, only that it was overstepped at one point, leading to me one day arriving to explain to her the ramifications of her actions.

[She had seemed apologetic and sympathetic to his fate, but not remorseful. No, morality was not so simple, and he saw it even more clearly here. If history could be set down a worse path of wider-spread ruin if blood was not spilled here and now, was that bloodshed justified? Had Lady Eboshi's actions been justified by her lofty intentions, and Ashitaka and the creatures of the forest merely unfortunate side-effects? He still did not understand, and in a way he thought that was why the curse still plagued him.]

[He wants to explain Akechi and Akira to Ashitaka so badly, but, it's not really his story to tell.]

People who do messed up things, even for the right reasons, are still messed up people.

Like... I knew a dude who thought that way, and in the end, I dunno. I can't forgive him for what he did, but it's sad to kinda think that he was doin' all this horrible shit

And, I mean, really fuckin' horrible stuff

Just 'cus it was all he had left, and it's what he believed to be right. You don't get a free pass for that sort of stuff. Justice is justice in the end.

[And it sucks- he died long before he could've seen the ramifications of what he did, too.

Ryuji sighs.

He hasn't thought about Akechi in months.]

Edited (lol html) 2017-11-29 05:54 (UTC)

[Part of him resists what Ryuji says. The memory of Eboshi and San scrabbling at one another with blades in hand, driven by separate impetus to kill the other. The woman that had, in despair for the loss of someone she had loved, shot Ashitaka through the chest as he left in as much peace as he could muster. In a way, raising one's hand to violence was always wrong, but Ashitaka had bloodied his own, leaving corpses in his path that had attacked him rather than let him pass. Heavier still, the weight of the death of a god that he had caused himself, though that god had succumbed to the corruption of conflict that had been directed towards it. To where did the blame go? Could one even attribute justice of the same to the divine?

An absolutist route of thought is difficult for him. It didn't seem to fit the world that he had seen so far.

He considers it for a bit.]

Then who is the one that judges what is right and what is not?

[There would be many who saw his mortal curse as just, as killing a god was a foul act - one that encouraged some charged to do so to have another do their dirty work for them.]

[Vigilante justice... man, it's something they've debated as a group so many times now. Was it right to go around forcing peoples' hands by stealing their desires away from them? What ends justified the means, and what ends were too much for any one person to be able to enact on anyone? It's not something he ever became completely okay with. The first time they stole a heart was the hardest. Ryuji didn't want to do it until it was way too damn late, where a girl who was sexually abused, tried to take her own life.

Maybe he should be judged for what he did, but he knows what they were doing was messed up. And he could live with that guilt.]

It sure as hell ain't a god.

Look, I'm not gonna lie. I've done some sketchy shit too, stuff that if the police knew about me woulda gotten me thrown in juvie and jail for the rest of my life.

So I'm not innocent of it either. I'm a messed up person, too.

But when you can't sit around watchin' people do things just for the sake of hurting others, and you watch as the rest of society ain't gonna do shit to help them, I'd rather be a vigilante than a bystander. I'd do it all over again in a goddamn heartbeat.

[So, Ashitaka.

Would you do it all over again?]

[What is a "juvie"...

But it was a question he was plagued with. He feels a difference between the gods as Ryuji understands them and the ones that he had seen. The minor gods, beast lords of the forest, had been manifestations of the nobility and savagery of the wilds. He need only remember his conversations with Noro on the peak that acted as the wolf clan's den to think of that. The gods were not like men. Their actions, whether in mercy or devastation, were unrestrained by earthly morality. They were like a storm. The storm did not sin in sinking a ship at sea, leaving scores to drown. The river did not sin when the raging waters rose suddenly and swept an entire village away. Nature simply was, it simply did. So did the gods, living fragments of that essence.

The Great Forest Spirit was, of course, different. Ashitaka had been transfixed the first time he had glimpsed it, knowing intrinsically that it would be tied up in the mess that he had found himself in. It was a being of deep and profound power. He had already subjected himself to its judgment, albeit unwittingly, as San had offered him on the banks of the innermost forest. The Spirit had healed his mortal gunshot wound, but it had left him with Nago's curse. What, then, did that mean?

He still didn't understand.]

We must merely make sure we do more good than bad in this world, regardless of what time or place we find ourselves.
Anything beyond that does not seem to be within our power.

[With the mystery to lifting his curse still up in the air, he still doesn't know the answer to that question.]

[You're talking to one right now, Ashitaka.

Point aside, it still brings into question who determines whether or not what they're doing is right or wrong. For Ryuji, that person is himself- and deference to anything else would be contingent upon the circumstances of what he wants out of life. Friends, trust, approval and recognition. He agrees with Ashitaka. There's not much he can do to determine whether or not he's a good person, but he wants to believe he is by the merits of his actions.

And if told the story of his curse, he'd believe, too, with some sort of mysticism, that his life was saved for a reason. Nothing happens that's not connected.]

Yo, don't say "merely." Doin' good's a lot of work, yeah? You know how many tables I've cleaned since I got here?

Tch, what I'd give for a nice, soft bed. Sleeping on crates sucks.

Unless of course...

That's my curse.

Guess we're both doomed, buddy.

[Fuck...

He would most likely agree. The morality of man was a tenuous thing, but there was no greater judge for it than themselves. Though some might become twisted and bring it into question, the compass that was shared between the vast majority of humans would provide enough guidance without resorting to relying in higher powers that could very well end up being capricious in their own intentions.

Wait, what... what kind of life are you living right now, Ryuji...]

Are you not able to find a room with a bed?

[Suddenly concerned... Ashitaka had been given lodging with the other guards, so that had never been an issue for him. For someone used to sleeping on the ground (or on a mattress so thin he might as well be sleeping on the ground), the fairly plain cot was very nice.]

Well, you are probably right.

But we can at least hope the next place we go has beds for everyone.

[A bar wench's life.

Listen, it put him exactly where he wanted to be: in the middle of a bunch of rough, down to earth people who cursed when they spoke and liked to get rowdy.]

I struck a deal with the owner. Kinda burly old dude, but pretty nice. I guess I kinda got that young, out on the street thug look about me or somethin'. Took me in and let me work here for food and a place to put my head at night. I guess it could be worse.

And blankets.

Oh man.

[Don't make him homesick, Ashitaka :(]

[Ryuji... he is so concerned rn...

But I guess... if that's you wanted all along...]

I suppose it is preferable to the street.

[(unsure)]

I would appreciate a better change in the food.
And the clothing.

[too late he's already thinking about how much French cuisine and fashion of this time upset him]

[It's about 3 seconds later after he gets that text, that Ashitaka receives a reply:]

Dude. I miss rice so much.

[Ashitaka's response is pretty fuckin' fast too.]

I agree, I would really just like to be able to eat rice again.

The bread still makes me feel ill occasionally.

[i mean what the fuck even is it anyway. Ashitaka doesn't trust it.]

Bread's pretty effin' awesome when it actually doesn't taste like it's been swabbed under a hairy guy's armpits.

But... rice...

You're killin' me here.

And, uh, sorry you're gettin' ill from eating that crap.

[Would they both fight over the burnt rice at the bottom of the pot?]

I had never eaten anything like it before. Though, admittedly, the place where I grew up was fairly secluded.

I would have never expected a place completely without rice, though.

[It's... a cultural dietary staple...

And yes, of course.]

And nori...

And sashimi.

People cook all their fish here. I like some grilled stuff too, but man, sinking my teeth into a juicy piece of the raw stuff would be heaven right now.

[AND DON'T EVEN MENTION ONIGIRI TO HIM RIGHT NOW.

A wave of homesickness is starting to ebb over him.]

I dunno. Rice feels like... the symbol of our nation kinda.

Edited (sorry, html :() 2017-12-04 05:17 (UTC)

[Ryuji... plz... stop...

He had tried not to think too often about the atrocities that the French people performed upon fish. Usually he was too hungry to care, but... when reminiscing like this, it was far more difficult to stave off thoughts of home.]

Yes, I suppose so.

[He didn't really have a very global view of nations, considering the fact that his mental map extended purely from the Emishi village to Irontown, but —

ugh.]

Maybe we should talk of something else. I am hungry enough.

[he could probably go get a heel of bread or something but what was the fucking point......]

[CAN'T STOP, WON'T STOP.]

Oh shit, dude. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to activate your homesickness too.

[Earnest as ever, he guesses by the way Ashitaka changes direction in the conversation that it wasn't pleasant to talk about. And since he knows how he feels about the subject, he just assumes it naturally extends to those he talks with. Emotional empathy, or something like that. Sometimes it pays off, other times it gets him in a shitload of trouble.]

Yeah. Bread and fish don't really belong in the same sentence anyway.

Get some food in ya, it'll do you good.

[🍞🐟]

[Except you just did...]

It is strange. I had never experienced something like "homesickness" until very recently, and since that point I have felt it in two distinct ways.
The one here is a bit worse, though.

[Probably because the culture shock here was more like being flung into a frigid ocean versus the splash of cool water to the face that other villages in Japan had been in his own time.

He is right, though; bread and fish did not deserve to remain within together within the same thought.]

Be sure to do the same.

[As he now has concerns with you sleeping on boxes and barrels and the like.]

>>@ENTERTHEDRAGON | @ALL

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i can't believe what im writing