I ᴀᴍ﹣﹣

I-6, BB gun, [citizen] citta-alveare

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

Did she flinch?

That false witch, the witch who had surrendered all of her power over life, over death, that witch-who-wasn’t, who never had been—did she really, ...flinch?

Pathetic, pathetic, Beatrice, pathetic. Look at him reaching out to you! Look at you, standing stunned in the street, oblivious to the stares, to the—no. Wasn’t the world supposed to be ending? So that’s it. Is that what made this possible? This, this miracle, this magic—wasn’t this as close to a winning sequence as she could have gotten…?

Stay like that. Could he…

“How long… is a while?”

Kneel, Ushiromiya Battler, and kiss my shoes. Become my furniture! Hahahahahahahaha!

It was strange. It was beautiful, but it was also, …empty…

[xamnesiac-blog]

“...T-This’ll do.”

  It was peaceful, but he had to get up. Tohya did-- thank goodness, he did, yet something over his face changed. It was as if he had never felt such an inhuman amount of peace before, as if she had opened up fresh possibilities for him just by merely existing.

This Beatrice...she was a miracle.

  He didn’t know how she came about-- how they met so abruptly like this; he must’ve known her from a long, long time, long ago, so she must’ve been someone special to him. But eventually, Tohya smiled at her; it was a smile that conveyed his utmost gratitude and admiration towards her.

“...I...might have known you from before,” Tohya began, “and we could’ve met before, but...”

He decided to let her know how he felt at that very moment.

“...Just with you being here, I feel so peaceful and happy.”

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

She should help him.

(She wasn’t going to lie for his benefit, even if ‘lying’ meant ‘telling the truth’.)

He was lying there (and he was pathetic, miserably coiled and crumpled just like that furniture) and she should help him, should pull him up and prop him against her and find help for him, because he might need it. (He recognized her, he remembered, he knew, he—) He was lying there, and then he was looking up.

(The mask, the mask.)

She pulled herself together only with difficulty, clenching her teeth, looking down at him through harsh eyes and smiling.

“Beatrice,” she said. “I’m the Golden Witch, Beatrice.”

(She was lying.)

The way he looked at her, with those eyes, those familiar eyes as if he’d been waiting for this, as if he expected it to be so easy! She could melt in those eyes—she could melt that body down, watch the flesh and cartilage bubble, not fast and painless, no, she’d already been denied that luxury, but slow, laborious, luxurious in a different way. It wasn’t going to be that easy. She wasn’t going to tell him that easily, memory or not.

[xamnesiac-blog]

Beatrice.

The name sounded so funny to him somehow; not in a humorous way, but in such a way that it sounded like the most beautiful thing he’s ever heard, or the most horrible thing that his ears would allow him to listen. Tohya could only stare, and repeat that name in his head again and again, again and again...

His hand reached out to touch the fabric of her dress.

 As if he would remember if he recalled how the fabric felt like! As if he would remember if he repeated her name a quadrillion times! As if--

...He was breathing slowly now. Normally. He should be apologizing, but just staying there made him calmer to a degree.

“....I’m sorry, but....may I stay like this for a while...?”

[didsomethingwrong-deactivated20]

xamnesiac

[didsomethingwrong-deactivated20]

Sat near a flower garden with a cat mesmerizing alongside her, the woman pledged admiration towards the calming view and found it necessary to opt herself by the by. Her fingers played with the thin stems of the plants and due to this harmless curiosity did she strike herself with the unexpected and the tip of her index bled. This made her jaw lower and lips jar in surprise. Instead of thinking of it as a disappointment of some sort, she lingered towards the memory of it also happening to the man she have spent her younger years with and the thought itself made her giggle. "Oh, he’d scold me if he was here."

[xamnesiac-blog]

  He would. He would actually scold her with the air of a nagging parent,  but he could only imagine doing so since she was so very far away, and since he missed her very much so. They were nothing but bouts of loneliness, yet,  Tohya allowed himself to think of her, to dream of her, to promise and will  himself to come back. She might think him boring if he was the type to keep promises, but yes, he was that type.

  However, his eyes gazed upon a very familiar figure, a figure that gave him much peace and silent happiness throughout his seemingly meaningless life. For a second, he gaped, and then his legs broke into a run, and yet, he had the sense to stop right in front of her.

“...I...Ikuko....!”

It was her. It was her.

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

He kept talking.

And what he was saying, no, no, no—she backed up, backed away, dropping the gun. She nearly tripped over those heels (Beatrice’s heels, as if making herself any taller would help, as if that would fix those fundamental problems) in her haste to escape—no, not to escape… to distance herself. To change something. (To apologize?)

She hadn’t expected this.

She hadn’t expected the way her eyes stung, her vision blurred, head buzzing and spinning like a top. She stopped walking. She would fall, she would fall, fall, fall, fall—

"You used to play," she said distantly, "on an island." She tried, through her spinning head, to focus—to watch his shock of white hair, his crumpled form, without superimposing someone else above him. (That wasn’t Beatrice that he was talking about.)

"Of course you’re not crazy," that person muttered. He was kneeling, and she was standing, and she was so far away. "Hachijo Tohya… are you alright?"

[xamnesiac-blog]

No. He wasn't alright. He was incredibly far from being alright. 

  A girl, a woman...? The figure was so blurred, so faded, so messed up, but he could distinctly remember. He was remembering more than he should; he should really stop, he must stop there, he has to tell himself to stop and stop--

  But he remembers. He keeps remembering. It will stop only when it wants to stop; his memory. Tohya remained a pathetic heap on the floor, cowering before the beautiful woman before him, until there was one thing that he was certain.

It wasn't a girl. It was a woman. 

With her voice.

  Slowly, Tohya looked up at her, as if he was a blind man who was seeing for the very first time. He looked at her intently; her blue eyes, her startled  expression, and spoke slowly, very slowly, in awe.

"...She has your voice...Who are you?"

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

He was saying something.

He was saying something wrong.

She wasn’t picky. He had so many options, didn’t he? The obvious—Beatrice—or the less obvious, Beato. The hidden. She would have only given full points for one, of course, one very specific, very careful answer, but she would have taken any of them—he had 3, 5, 7, 16, 19, hundreds of options and none of them started with the letter R.

Carefully, with cold and hollow eyes, she raised her own gun once again.

She said, “Is that your final answer?”

She wouldn’t shoot, and it was clear, by now, that he wouldn’t, either. Not unless she pushed him. She could be far more cruel than that. Or, …maybe, it wouldn’t be cruel at all… Maybe he wouldn’t weep and wonder. Maybe he would be glad to see her go.

Maybe she would be glad to leave.

[xamnesiac-blog]

It wasn't his final answer.

  "There was....a girl..." he murmured-- he murmured so quickly that it was as if he didn't want to let go of the memory, as if he slowly wanted to hold onto the very first memory that he was about to receive at that very moment. Tohya was on his knees-- oh, it would've been such a  sight to see this young man kneeling before this classily-dressed woman, but this was different.

Being with this woman showed him a small revelation.

  "...No, no, please, listen, I'm not crazy," he frantically said.    "There....was a girl....I...I can't see her face, but we...    we used to play on an island--"

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no.

He felt nauseous.

[blackbattlers-deactivated201506]

There he was thinking that the other would begin crumbling and clutching his awful head and wonder where the fuck did he go wrong. He held some defiance within his being. Well, such quality had always been that easy to break and be replaced with a better one: desperation. Escape? Perhaps. The culprit would choose to run away too if he was in the shoes of the other. However, he was granted this specific role and there’s nothing else to do but to resume tormenting this lost little pet that quietly appeared before him.

"It’s his name. Yours too. The both of you are the two sides of the same coin; you and Battler. Did you honestly content yourself with your Hachijo Tohya farce? Beato would be sad. Hey, what else did you choose to forget?"

[xamnesiac-blog]

Hang on, what?

  What the hell is this guy talking about? The man in front of him was  undoubtedly, certainly, unmistakably Ushiromiya Battler himself, and now Ushiromiya Battler was telling him, Hachijo Tohya, that he is in fact--

"Farce-- listen, I am Hachijo Tohya. That is my name, and that is who I am,  so please do not confuse me for yourself. I'm not sure how you know that I'm a recovering  amnesiac, but--"

...But what?

  Beato? What name was that? He didn't choose to forget anything. He  didn't choose to lose his own memories. He didn't choose to be washed up ashore like some lousy bloated whale.

And Ushiromiya Battler was force-feeding mockeries to him.

"You don't even know me."

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

She watched.

She watched his face change, his hand shake, the way he clenched and contorted, as if in pain—and it must be a very great pain, to seize up like that even when it could kill her. And as she watched, the smug smile dropped from her own face without her even noticing.

Was he hurt? Had she hurt him by pressing it, by digging up the past—her present—when it (when she) should have stayed dead? Yes. He was hurt. He was being hurt. Did she object to that? Weren’t you the one who decided that the best way to gain his interest was through hurt and fear and anger? It’s too late to take it back now, isn’t it? And you’re the witch! Don’t you want to laugh at his suffering? Isn’t it tempting, my dear Beatrice, to throw your head back, and cackle?

Did he remember?

Had he remembered anything—everything? Or was it preliminary, the pains, the shocks—she wasn’t a doctor. She hardly knew a thing about this man. (Maybe it was serious. Maybe he needed to go to the hospital. Well, that was his loss, then.)

She ran it through her head, once, and then again, but all she could do in that moment was wait, and watch.

[xamnesiac-blog]

  Her hair. Her eyes. Her dress. Her voice. Her concern. Her expectations. Her Western-like appeal. Her dangerous charm. Her sneers her laughter her smiles her questions her questions her questions--

  His eyes would not blink. His hands would not stop shaking. His tears-- no, he must not cry, he mustn't give in to this stupid petty pity show that he had shown a certain woman behind closed doors, and only that woman can help him, only that woman wanted to help him. He was  convulsing--convulsing like some sick cocoon that wouldn't stop trying to restrain the living creature that was inside, trying so desperately to break free.

But he will not give into his own madness--

Rᴇᴅ﹗ Sᴀʏ ɪᴛ ɪɴ RED﹗

".....R....R...."

[blackbattlers-deactivated201506]

Would you look at that.

It’s him and he didn’t even bother hiding. He loves being a damn masochist, huh? That head of his will probably throb so painfully, enough to bring him forth to his knees and collapse which… the murderer will gladly entertain himself with. There was no need for introductions and formalities. They know each other enough to consider disregarding that bullshit and just say hello to one another, like what good friends do. The manifested forgery smirked in amusement and circled around the survivor with a menacing stare. Tohya, huh? He can fool himself all he wants.

"Hello there, Ushiromiya Battler."

xamnesiac

[xamnesiac-blog]

He subconsciously turned around-- mainly because he thought that he found another survivor.

  But the poor man was sorely mistaken; he did see someone, but that particular someone was apparently saying his own name. Tohya stared at that familiar red hair, that cocky smile that graced the newspapers once upon a time, and he found it odd, so odd that this guy was even walking the streets of Hive City.

  But instead of asking himself whether the entire Ushiromiya family was here, Tohya was asking himself the most important question of all, to which he decided to be a little more vocal on it.

"...Isn't that...your name?"

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

To end his life? Here and now?!

She’d lost her grip, she’d lost control, and now, the barrel of a gun pointed towards her, Beatrice started laughing. It wasn’t a high laugh, or a cackling laugh—it was slow, and breathy, and it rose to a strange sort of crescendo.

The hand holding her gun dropped, and, casual, she began to move closer. Her eyes were steady on his face. (If he could recognize her, he would. If there were any substance to that wild, fleeting hope, it was now or never.) She walked one step, and then another, until the cold barrel of that gun touched skin.

The neck. That was hardly a bad place to do it. There were important arteries there, and if he wanted, he could angle the shot to hit the brain, instead.

"In that case," she said, "go ahead. Kill me. But—

—you have to tell me who I am, first.”

There was nothing, nothing that would force him to follow that simple rule. He could shoot. He could aim, and pull the trigger, and fire—maybe she would die, maybe she wouldn’t. It would hurt. She would bleed.

But if she knew this person, and she thought she did, he would at least be intrigued. He would, if nothing else, think about it. And wasn’t that all she had wanted, really?

[xamnesiac-blog]

Tell her who she is?

 He was about to say how ridiculous the notion was, all the way until he saw how the woman looked like. Blonde hair, blue eyes; the epitome of a stereotypical Western beauty, to some person's perspective--

－－Ｉ ｃａｎ＇ｔ ｇｏ ｏｎ ａｎｙｍｏｒｅ－－

"--?!"

    His head. His head. His head. His head. His head. His head, his head, his head his head hiS hEAd HIs hEAD--

 Tohya's hand shook-- it trembled, and so did the gun. Looking at the woman's face made his head hurt, and to think of telling her who she was, what's her name, what she does...

"....A-Ah....."

His vision was blurring.

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

The pause was enough to demonstrate the depth of his feelings—and when he spoke, his words were so gentle. She wanted to recoil, to melt in that softness, to spill his blood across the ground before she could let her hopes take flight. 

She didn’t.

He would have recognized you, that rational part said, if it was you. Someone else, it’s someone else! A replacement! Isn’t that cute? He’s found his type. Someone else. It has to be someone else.

She said in her sweetest voice, “Ah, the young lovers. How lovely… Tell me, how did you two meet? I’m sure she must mean the world to you…?”

She didn’t remove the gun’s cold barrel from his back. She didn’t tell him how the witch had found some of her greatest glee in tearing apart pairs of lovers like that. She didn’t tell him about furniture and witches. She didn’t ask him about mystery novels.

As an afterthought, she added, “And tell me your name, sir.”

[xamnesiac-blog]

    "Hachijo. Hachijo Tohya."

  Was this the joy of his last moments? Was this the joy that most people feel whenever they were about to go? He didn't know; he was smiling at the very thought of his name, like some stupid, sentimental idiot, completely oblivious and unknowing of his previous life.

  How did they meet? Not exactly ideal. His skin was sunburnt all over, she had told him, and she had to spend days in the hospital looking after him. Washed up to shore! He was never a good swimmer, it seemed.

  "It's...a funny story, really...I won't trouble you.    But to go like this-- I'm very sorry, miss.     If you want to end my life here and now, I regret...

         and with this, he brought out the gun from his pocket--

       "that I will have to fight you, whether I like it or not!"

  The end could be brought out with a bang, yes? Tohya had escaped the woman's grasp, and in a moment, he pointed the useless gun towards her direction.

Her dark hair. Her laughter. Her smiles.

He remembered it all.

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

She saw the way he shook. She saw it, and she thought, Good. Let him be afraid. Let him remember me, and shake, and scream, and cry. Beg for my forgiveness! Or condemn me, hate me, spit fire and vitriol until I’m left weeping, apologizing for crimes I never had a chance to commit! But remember me, at least…!

His voice, when he spoke, was soft—and that was the worst of all.

"It’s not my place to kill you," she spat, "and it’s not your place to die. No, my friend, you’re going to live to the end. Maybe you’ll live past the end, maybe you’ll forget everything—" But her words were distant, as if intended for a different target entirely. 

A woman. 

Her heart raced. She spoke casually, though only with great effort. She said, “Oh?” She said, “And who might that be? That woman that makes you want to live. She must be wonderful, hm…?”

[xamnesiac-blog]

How was he to describe her?

  To describe her was the simplest thing Tohya can attempt, as well as the most difficult feat that he could ever try. He had to live past the end, he had to get through this, he had to at least think like most people who would just scoff at the idea that the end of the world would be near anytime soon.

  It was true; she makes him want to live. She gave him his life. She gave him his name, as well as hers, and helped him when all was lost to him. That eccentric, odd, intelligent woman makes him want to live.

"...You can say that," he smiled softly to himself. "She's...quite odd; she writes a lot, and she has quite a few mannerisms that..."

Tohya felt a lump in his throat. His voice faltered.

He needed to survive.

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

[ikeatrice-blog]

That man could barely even speak. Terrified, ha! Was he shaking in his boots? That man, that survivor, frightened of something this pitiful, of someone this pitiful. No. She was a witch.

"Yes," she said gleefully. "Yes, final. Did you know~? Death is impermanent in this place. So you die! So your body’s ripped and torn and blown to bits! And the next day, you wake up. You wake up in a body that’s been ripped, torn, blown to bits, and put back together as if nothing happened. And it hurts," Beatrice added, gritting her teeth. "It hurts as if every nerve ending, every inch of skin, every bone and muscle were stretched to their limit and put through hell and back and then forced back into place like nothing ever happened.

But this, this apocalypse, this could end that.”

She said, “You’re a survivor, aren’t you? You look like someone who’s been through a lot. But you and I, we’ll both be gone if all this succeeds. How do you feel about that, sir…?”

And she jabbed that cold barrel into the small of his back, as if to prove a point.

[xamnesiac-blog]

No.

No, no, no, no, no.

  His blood ran cold. His arms shook. He didn't even dare turn around and confront this sweet-voiced stranger. His head hurt. His imagination-- oh, God forbid his imagination; it would ultimately kill him before this apocalypse even could.

  But he had to steel himself. Tohya knew that was the least that he could do, and that was the most that he could do too. What can a BB gun do? What's the worst damage that it could inflict?

"I...I have a gun too, miss. I'm not sure if you'd prefer to end my life right now, or whether you'd like a spectacle. But I have a home to go back to; a woman whom I want to reunite with, and a  life to live-- I'm not ready for death."

[ikeatrice-blog]

towards zero : open / the fall

All of us will die, and there’s no escape.

The words circled in her head as a dizzy, drunken lilt. It had been inevitable…! Of course it had been, and here it was! The end, the fall, the closing of the catbox. It would be beautiful, it would be terrible, it would be painful, abominable, despicable, and, behind it, that sharpest shard of hope.

This time, it wasn’t her fault. This time, wasn’t she entirely powerless? To stop, to start, creation or destruction. Why, Beatrice! You’re hardly the endless witch any longer! No, no, that title belongs to someone very different. Someone whose eyes you met on the train, isn’t that right? Life could be so funny! Funny. Hilarious!

But there were no guarantees.

Wasn’t it nice that that BB gun so closely resembled a real one? The lights were out, the moon was high! No one could tell the difference. And if she meandered gracefully behind that person (like that), and pressed the barrel cold and sharp against their back, it only made sense for the unknowing victim to panic.

Slinging an arm around that person’s neck, Beatrice said, “It’s beautiful, isn’t it? The end of the world! Do you believe it? They say this time will be final.”

[xamnesiac-blog]

  But the end of the world really seemed to give Tohya the jeebies, and a sense of false hope.

  The end of the world in Hive City would just be the end of the world in the enclosure of a social experiment, and maybe, just maybe, this was something that would do just right. They could all get out. Everyone could get out.

  His hope was cut short, however, as he felt the cold object press against his back, and a slender arm wrapped around his neck. Tohya's eyes widened; who could it be? What did he do? What should he do? Where should he run? Should he talk? Keep silent? Answer calmly, beg for his life...

"....Fi...nal...?" was all he could say.

He couldn't die now.

[xamnesiac-blog]

➹

There was something odd about that boy.

There’s got to be a connection somewhere; he had seen that same insignia on Miss Rosa Ushiromiya and Miss Eva Ushiromiya, however,he didn’t seem to have a last name. If he were to try and get moreinformation about the Ushiromiyas in general, and as to why thescientists got them there in the first place…

Oh god, his head….

He certainly can’t be a reporter at this rate.

[xamnesiac-blog]

➹

He wanted to return home to see her.

Tohya wanted to tell her that he had seen one of the family members, that he had spoken to one of them, that he missed her so much thathe was just barely functioning in this city. Of course, she, in all herairs and graces, would berate Tohya and probably make fun of himin all her witty glory, probably with a: ‘Oh, Tohya, you really shouldn’tbe this glum— why, it sounds as if you’ve been dying without me!’

Figuratively, he was.

And as he feared for his own memory, the one thing that he wasscared for the most wasn’t the fact that he might forget that hehad ever met anyone from the Ushiromiya family, or this city, orhis own name.

If he forgot the very name of Ikuko Hachijo, he’d be at a complete loss.

[miko-kagome-higurashi]

For every ➹ I get, I'll put up my muse's current thought

[xamnesiac-blog]

kigennomajo

  "You are the witch, Maria, right?"

   Pure astonishment laced the youth's voice, especially when the giver of such a wonderful gift that he had received the month before was a little girl no more than nine. All he had heard of the girl was that she was a rather powerful witch, of sorts, and when he finally got to meet her, this was  quite a shock.

Nevertheless, he was happy to see her. 

  "H-Hello! I'm Tohya Hachijo-- you had sent me a present earlier    last month! I would like to thank you!"