#t5h

[snowlikeash]

(t5h canon) paz versus cecile

here's an example of the aforementioned fantasy elements, a battle between a shadowmancer and a storyteller. this is fairly old (there are obviously some new developments in my paz canon, heh) but i think it stands the test of time. paz versus cecile, during the end of the game. (please forgive my poor french.)

The horse had already died, Chico knew. The commendante had shot her. But there she was, her grey hide blue in the winter night, her rider bareback and clutching to her mane. The animal was very much alive. They came to a halt with a pluming dust cloud obscuring them: Chico shoved his sleeve in his mouth to stiffle a cough, trying to obscure himself further under the porch.

"Paz!" bellowed Cecile."Paz! Salido -- ¡Salido!" She dismounted, her hair in an unkempt mane around her head. She shrugged her mantle over the horse's back and watched as the beast took off into the bushes as if watching a commrade's back. 

She mounted the station's steps, adjusting the sleeves of her violet body suit. She banged on the door, repeating herself, clearly furious. Chico shrunk back as he saw her eyes more plainly in the light. There were no whites. It was just blue color with a pinned black pupil, like an animal's eye. 

He did not get to appraise the strangeness of her eyes nor her embroidered suit because Cecile leapt away with a flourish. The porch light shattered, the only light now cast from the moon.

Chico shut his eyes tightly to acclimate them. When he opened them again, Paz was outside, facing off against Cecile. She was dressed in only her bathing suit, shivering in the cold. With her trailed two black, smoky tendrils, curling around arms and legs like eels. 

"I heard you were Named," said Cecile, her voice drained of her usual kindness. "I knew what to watch for."

"La Cuentista," said Paz, spitting the title like a curse. "You should go back to the base and cower there. You might still live, if you do!"

"Not while you plan to bring him down." 

There was shout in a foreign tongue far from Chico's understanding and light burst forth like a sunrise. Paz shrieked and tried to cover her eyes as the smoke surrounding her shattered. 

"The little birds, the storyteller's dear friends, came flying to her side." Cecile sang in a trilling, playful tone, "Venez ici, venez ici, venez-moi ici!" 

What seemed like thousands of birds suddenly surged from the treetops, day and night species both, and decended in the artificial light.

"La petite serpente," Cecile continued singing, the birds now pulling and picking at Paz's hair and garments, "elle croit qu'elle est forte. Mais je sais, je sais, son histoire! Je la connais, connais!"

"Stop!" Paz screamed. She crossed her arms and threw them in front of her, shoving black, silty smoke around her like a magician's trick.

"The little snake tried to hide," sang Cecile, circling in the new darkness with flickering animal eyes, "but her old friend could still see her. Even in the darkness, she could see her, the little snake could not hide!"

Paz let out a shriek as the shadow she'd cloaked herself in was ripped like paper. She fumbled wildly with another gesture, but was suddenly caught up from behind. Another woman had the girl firmly held under the armpits. Chico knew her: she was the Asian woman that had long since been recovering her broken legs in the sick bay. She was wearing the mantle Cecile had been wearing, its loose sleeves catching Paz's wild, futile kicks. 

"The horse general caught the little snake," Cecile said, edging forward now, "and the lights of the seaside shack blinked on light the scene."

Chico almost gave his place away, muffling a frightened scream in his jacket again as the door to the station flew open, all the lights inside flickering on in a great hum of electricity.

"What will we do?" said the other woman. "If she was Named, we have no immediate recourse."

"Recourse enough, Myungroh," said Cecile, digging in the body suit's tight pocket for a small, folded mess of papers. "She is trying to foil one of Them, after all."

"It's politics," said Myungroh, jerking Paz up roughly, causing the girl to curse and kick backwards. "The families don't do politics."

"It's the only way we can restore things, Myungroh, you know that!" said Cecile. "He's the only one--"

"And what would you do if you win," said Paz. She went limp in Myungroh's arms. "What would you do, Cecile? Go home to that husband of yours?"

Cecile practically dropped the paper she was holding, stepping backwards. "How did you--"

"You ran away in the first place, ran away from him. Do you think if you're kind to this /Snake/, that he will help you? Maybe let you see your Beast again?" She slammed her foot behind her and hit one of Myungroh's legs; the woman went down with a curse of pain, gripping the purpling bruise. 

Paz kicked dirt forward as the smoke extended from her again. Cecile had noticed too late the slithering thing gripping her ankle; she tried to kick it off.

"The little snake had caught the rabbit," she began, trying to add music to her words, "and pulled out her saddest secrets, but--"

"But?" Paz lifted her hand and the smoke twisted around Cecile like a net. "Stay out of my way. This has nothing to do with clans or family. The clans can go to hell."

Whatever she did next coated the area in black. There was nothing that Chico could see, and for a moment he panicked that he'd gone blind, eyes aching to find light again. Slowly, the cloud of ink lifted, and only Cecile was visible now, collapsed at the foot of the radio shack's steps.

He wanted to move, to help Cecile, to run and tell someone what he'd seen Paz do in the first place, but he was frozen.

Cecile's back was to him. She moved, like it pained her, and slumped forward again.

"A little mouse was watching," she said, her voice sounding faint, "while the snake fought the rabbit. And though he was very small, he could feel very brave."

A sudden wash of relief flooded through Chico, an almost drunken euphoria. He was so taken aback, he barely knew that Cecile had begun to narrate him outside, weaving each step with her words.

"She was calling someone," he explained when he knelt beside her, checking her for bleeding wounds. "She's going to take Zeke."

"The little mouse must go back to his nest," said Cecile, reaching out to grip his hand. Her fingers were hot to the touch, "and warn the others. So he takes a ride on the general horse, fast as she can run."

He was at Myungroh's side as the last of her body transformed back again, and on her back a moment later. When he looked back for Cecile, he could not find her: the lights had gone back off in the shack, and he could not hear her sobs for the hooffalls on the earth.

[persisting]

It was twenty years ago today Sgt. Pepper taught the band to play.

♣♥♠♦

JANUARY 1ST, 1969 BAC HA, NORTH VIETNAM

Monsoon season had been over for three months, but it didn't seem to matter. Frigid rain had been pouring down across the early morning darkness, soaking the mountains in a consistent, impenetrable mist. It pounded the rotting thatched roof of the abandoned hut, soaking through the cracks in the old, water soaked wooden walls, and pooled in the corners, raising the putrid scent of must from the already disintegrating straw on the floor.

The front room's three occupants were silent, for the most part, save for the occasional scrape of a boot sole shifting across the floor or the gentle rattle of a rifle brushing against coat buttons. Two of them wore hooded jackets of the same mottled navy color and matching trousers and boots, completely indistinguishable from each other in the dim. The third, seated across the room, was strangely gray, like all the color had been drained away, leaving only the shadow. Unlike the other two, it had no rifle across its lap.

Beneath its hood, there was a faint glow of red.

"These kinds of things don't last forever," one of the first figures said in gruff English, with an air of continuing a conversation that had already been going on too long. "That's all I'm saying."

His twin did not reply.

"I mean when you have four people in one place, and they're all geniuses at what they do but they've all got different ideas about what's going to work, you're definitely gonna get some conflict. You can't have a leader in a group like that, and if one of them thinks he's the one in charge then you're really fucked. It's all going to pull in different directions. That's what's going on. It's not going to last much longer," he concluded, peering sideways from under his hood at his companion. "You don't have any deep thoughts on that? Even a 'shut up, Jack' for me? Anything?"

"Zatknis vali otsyuda," said the other, sounding bored. Across the room the third figure made a slow, dusty sound that might have been a chuckle.

Jack grunted, and pulled the hood from his head. He ran heavily gloved fingers through his rain darkened brown hair. "You don't have to encourage him," he said to the third figure, glaring up at the ceiling and squinting as his vision adjusted to the light. It hadn't been the same since he'd lost his eye, he knew. His visual reflex time was less than it had ever been, and was only bound to get worse as he got older. He was thirty-four, now, and the first few silver hairs had started appearing on his head and in his beard, the lines across his forehead only getting deeper with each passing year. That was stress for you.

"It's better than waiting in silence," he said finally. His companion lifted his head from the bundle of dry blanket in his lap. Beneath his hood, Ivan Raikov's face was utterly colorless. Silvery strands of wet blond were still stuck to his cheeks and his mouth was twisted in a faint sneer.

"We could have noise," he said in English, "If you would enjoy that." He gestured at the bundle, which he was jiggling gently against one knee. "It would not be difficult, but I think you would be very sorry."

Jack made a face, but it was half hearted. His eyes lingered on the bundle before he looked away again. "Who knew you'd have a talent for that," he muttered.

They had been friends now for three years and had known each other even longer, ever since Raikov had attempted to kill him in a South African back alley, and he knew very well that Raikov's patience for other people was slim at best. On the other hand, he had to admit, the man had a certain talent for improvisation.

The baby in Raikov's arms went on sleeping peacefully, untouched by the outside cold.

"Did she say what his name was?" Jack went on, leaning over to peer at it thoughtfully. "I don't think she did."

"She did not."

"He looks like a Franklin to me, then," said Jack. "Was my dad's name. Major Franklin Dwight Sears."

"I am sure she will find that a good reasoning for a name," Raikov said, tone dripping with sarcasm.

"Yeah, yeah, everybody hates me, I know," Jack said, sounding more sullen than he meant to. "You know, I was serious about wanting your opinions. It's sort of related to this stupid plan of ours."

Raikov sighed.

"I think," he said, "That so long as all parties in a partnership are understanding that each party will be doing a thing in their own way, then the mature thing to do is to allow for a..." he paused, searching for the English word, "...a harmonious agreement." He looked at Jack, faint confusion written on his young face. "The problem is, ah, angliskij, ego?"

"Probably," said Jack, decidedly less evangelical now that he was receiving some attention. "Well they've all four of them got ego problems. Anybody in that profession's kind of got to." He slipped a finger beneath his eye patch and scratched the ridge of the empty socket. "Honestly I don't know how bands stick together in the first place."

"Perhaps if they lived in military fashion together," Raikov said, "And understood that as much as they must perform together, they must also live in harmony." He shrugged, careful not to jostle the baby. "A barracks does not function if one soldier thinks himself better than the others."

"It's John fucking Lennon, is what it is," Jack said darkly. "Man. I wish they'd get their shit together."

Raikov only shrugged, pulling off his own hood and brushing the wet hair off his face. "This man--"

"Heo Dang," said the shadow figure in his soft, whispery voice.

"This man, Heo Dang," Raikov continued, apparently unbothered by the correction, "You believe you can trust him?"

It was Jack's turn to shrug, but he nodded as he did so. "I told him what we were doing in Hanoi," he said. "I told him who I was, and he said, 'The Boar are always pleased to assist the children of the Blood Woman.' It was pretty obvious who he meant by that," he added, frowning.

"The Boar?"

"They call themselves that," Jack said. "That's 'heo.' Dang's the family name. They're a clan of some kind, that's all I know. And that's why we're safe over the creek border, because this is their land. All he asked in return was that we don't hunt while we're here. I get the impression it's kind of a pride thing. A lot of old clans in this part of the world are tied pretty heavily to the land. China, Korea, Vietnam, Thailand..."

"The tribes of China, very much," Raikov said.

Jack grinned a little. "That Nanai contact of yours is scary as hell. I read your papers on her. Why do they call her the Willow?"

"Her grace with knives is unparalleled." Raikov almost smiled. "She has been of great help to me in the past. How do you think I tracked you to Johannesburg?"

"They're coming back," said the shadow figure quietly, and both men turned to the crumbling stone arch doorway, alert.

The woman who came in was red-haired, unarmed, and just as soaked as everyone else was, though she seemed much less pathetic about it. She was dressed the same as they were, her hood flopping against her back. "Hey, you guys, we're back," she said, shaking the rain out of her hair. "The old man's wife says she's okay to be upright now. We can head out tomorrow. He says the piglets--" She scrunched her nose in confused distaste at Heo Dang's name for his children, "--Will keep a lookout for us if we want to get some sleep."

"Thank you, Jane," Raikov said quietly, and she beamed.

Jack stood up, his gun clutched against his shoulder. Raikov followed his movements with only a slight motion of his eyes. In the corner, the shadow figure slowly faded until it had disappeared completely from sight. No one seemed to notice.

"Eva," said Jack, and he didn't disguise the faint tremble in his voice at all.

In the doorway, the blond woman smiled faintly.

"Hello, Jack."

She was bandaged from the neck down across both shoulders and her midsection, wearing someone's old fatigues. She was thin enough that the shadowlight cast dark smudges across her cheek bones and under her eyes, and her hair had been recently cut to remove snarls and knots. Her eyes were nervous, and they wandered from him to Raikov, still sitting on the floor. The two of them exchanged a momentary look, and only then did Eva seem to relax.

"Well," she said, allowing Jane to button up her camo top for her, "I can't really say I understand why you're here, but I'm grateful you freed me--"

"I have a proposal for you," Jack said, his voice making her jump slightly. There was a weight to it she'd clearly never heard before, that the other two had only recently become acquainted with. "We all do."

Eva looked at him, her blue eyes wide and a little afraid. Her lower lip was healing from a recent split and it was clear she was not and would never be again the impetuous triple agent she'd been years ago. Jane squeezed her hand. Raikov got carefully to his feet, the baby braced against his shoulder.

"Tell me," Eva said, at last, looking between the three of them with a sudden expression of genuine curiosity. (here's an old bit of writing from our personal mgs canon.)

[persisting]

You have a story about supernatural kpop idols, right? That sounds interesting! What powers do the snsd members have? You seem like a really cool person, btw

wah, thanks! #^^# it's mine and tumblr user nikiya's story/world thing and it's sadly totally unfinished, but yeah! it basically revolves around dragons as supreme beings, only they're all gone now save one, and a lot of different factions are warring for control of it and of each other. the snsd members are really varied!taeyeon is a nine-tailed kumiho (korean fox spirit). she's pretty old and doesn't like to get involved in the conflict, but she loves her band, and long ago bestowed eight of her nine tails on each other member, granting them her eternal protection at a really high cost to herself.jessica is a princess of the mal jung shapeshifter clan. (there are 13 clans, each representing one of the zodiac animals.) they're horse shapeshifters! she's heavily trained in the traditional dueling style that the clans engage in to settle disputes and show power (it's called godfighting.) she's tiffany's Beast as well. (several of the shapeshifter clans align with the various magician clans with betrothals and something called "bonding" wherein the magician places a kind of magical connection on the shapeshifter. it's a very spiritual and emotional connection, and represents a great deal of trust between Master and Beast. godfighting is traditionally done as a pair with your Beast or your Master.)sunny is a trained secret agent working for an international organization called the house of cards. she's the queen of hearts, the second highest ranked in heart house, which is the branch of agents devoted to medical and support. always good to count on sunny in a crisis!tiffany is the current head of horangi hwang clan. hwang represents the tiger of the zodiac, and is traditionally the judge and head of the council of clans. hwang is a magician clan, of a type called void magic -- this means that they cannot cast magic themselves, but can absorb and control it from other magicians. tiffany is an exceptionally well trained void magician and generally very well liked as a clanhead. jessica is her Beast.hyoyeon is a Lioness, one of a group of women who follow the teachings of the goddess of cats (who is hyori, lol). they're neutral parties in the fighting, but they are devoted to protecting and supporting women in need, in any number of ways.yuri is a exorcist. she has no particular powers, but she does have extensive training in summoning and paper magic, and she generally spends her time dealing with malevolent buntings and banishments.sooyoung is gifted with super strength, one of a number of naturally occurring "enhancements" that can happen to ordinary humans in this universe. yoochun of tvxq, who is a non clan feline shapeshifter, is her Beast. they stay out of the power struggles unless tiffany needs backup.yoona is the former heir to rat im clan. rat im clan are magicians who can change their human shapes in a number of alarming ways. they're pretty scary! (they're not like other shapeshifters, as other shapeshifters have one set human form, and one set animal form they move backhand forth between. the im can twist and change their bodies into monstrous shapes.) yoona abdicated her position as clanhead to her cousin seulong, as snsd is her priority.seohyun is a bit of a mystery to us still! she's pretty important, whatever she is. :)

[persisting]

taeyeon's semi-permanent detachable fox penis; jaejoong (use of semi-colon instead of comma bc i was afraid you would think i thought taeyeon's semi-permanent detachable fox penis was named jaejoong)

TAEYEON's s-pdfp1) it likes tiffany.2) it really really likes tiffany.3) it lives in a hat box on taeyeon's closet shelf.4) it dreams of one day trying out for sm itself.5) it secretly resents taeyeon for taking all the spotlight for herself. they're in this together, you know.JAJOOG1) eternally neutral power in all the struggling and infighting going on between the clans, the shields, and the wolves. he owes allegiance to no one and will do any "favor" for anybody, provided they can pay his price. a few have, and have regretted it. (except hyunjoong, probably, but what he gave up was memory in return for jungmin's life -- hard to regret what you don't remember.) even people he likes or loves are held to this standard. he can't help it, it's just his nature.2) he's attracted to the more powerful beings involved in the fighting, because power corrupts, and he is corruption. he has gently offered jay his power several times, and has always been refused. tiffany has received similar offers. she, unlike jay, has considered it, because keeping council power under her thumb has become more and more difficult as snsd has gotten more and more busy. having the shadow on her side would be greatly beneficial, and she suspects she'd have an easier time controlling him than others would, as her own power is the ability to control and own OTHER peoples' powers. 3) the only people who fully know what jaejoong is are hyunjoong and changmin; hyunjoong because they're not dissimilar creatures (he has a touch of shadow himself) and changmin because he's a massively powerful and expertly trained psychic, and he pinpoints all potential threats in his immediate vicinity immediately. changmin and jaejoong love each other deeply, but changmin would not hesitate to wrestle jaejoong under control if he had to to prevent an apocalypse. jaejoong knows this, and loves him for it. 4) he's a submissive masochist. "submissive" does not mean what most people think it does. 5) he knows what taeyeon is, and he generally stays out of her way, because the idea of giving up parts of oneself entirely to one's band to protect them, even if one's power is lessened, is not unfamiliar to him at all.