883/Listen To Your Heart

Listen To Your Heart
Date of Scene:	14 December 2023
Location:	The Forgotten District
Synopsis:	Endymion goes to find his adoptive sister in the abyss.
Cast of Characters:	Pyrite, Mamoru Chiba

---

Pyrite has posed:
    Himeko the Ocean has been drained down to the dregs of herself. Even if outwardly empty-seeming, she still has enormous interiority, much like the girl she overflowed from. 'Kuudere', someone might call her, if they watch anime. Mostly, she just considers herself to be a hollow shell of what she used to be, let alone what she could have been. No more ghosts dwell within her, no more souls wait for her to bring them the paradise she promised. She is just a girl larger than herself, who has taken on a burden even bigger than that.
    Yet, even as big as all that, she is running out of herself. She is also running out of time.
    Ghosts and spirits may still wander the Forgotten District, but she has no influence over them anymore. She just waits. She waits like Himeko Soryuu, once again floating in the darkness. They are both waiting for a Diver to dive into them again.
    The Soryuu Shrine no longer has a kami. It isn't just that Himeko isn't it anymore. The role no longer exists. The dead don't change, and since she has changed so much, she is no longer dead. She is something Other, even if what that is exactly remains unclear.
    So she sits in the darkness at the very bottom of her existence, on an abyssal shelf overlooking the Final Death that has been open in her soul ever since her mother made a deal with Yomi to give its goddess back. Having a door to Yomi open like this is bad. Very, very bad.
    Something extra always slips through. This underwater ravine has been open to the underworld for five-hundred years and counting. So, now Himeko sits there. Guarding the hole in her soul, and sitting across from a Monster.
    All black and red, jagged lines and scribbles, smoldering pits of flame and hate in Her face, the most aberrant possible version of Himeko likewise sits, and stares back at Himeko.
    Himeko keeps killing the darkness, speeding up the drain, and making hitodama out of the murdered soul fragments. The bobbing flames try to head up to the surface, to try to get help, or pass along a message, or just lead someone to her.
    She keeps snuffing them out before they can do so. She can kill too, and She is so much better at it.
    There is no longer a Kami for the Soryuu Shrine.
    But that doesn't mean there's no longer a Kami of Murder.
    The approach to the Soryuu Shrine is the same as usual. THe carpet of dead bugs has decayed to nothing but dust. No more dead birds lie strewn about. New plant life appears to be growing further down the slope, and even some of the long-sterilized trees seem to be spreading out their branches into space previously Forbidden.
    This is still a place of Death, as it always will be, the stains running far too deep to scrub out (like that crypt at the Nezu Shrine, but not really there, it is a view of Yomi, and the souls that wait, withered and surrounded by bone-insects and hand-things, waiting for salvation that will never come, not ever ever ever ever ever ever).
    But it is no longer a place where life cannot co-exist with that Death.
    Except in the case of that pitch-black void that gobbles up even darkness that touches it, and gives back nothing in return.
    That really needs to go.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Nothing crunches underfoot except the memory of empty carapaces and sloughed off exoskeletons, the memory of bones. Mamoru, in his Hematite transformation, is nearly distracted by the new growth-- it's heartening, but it's a danger of a different sort. If this place comes back to life without Himeko, where will she be?

Maybe he's arrogant to think he can defeat death, even with help. Maybe he's deluded instead, or maybe he's both. Arrogant delusion is certainly a state that runs in dark energy wielding circles-- but he has to believe he can do it. 'Tell him it's not his fault,' she had said.

He knows it's not his fault, but Himeko is much more than a self-imposed responsibility or a reflection of loneliness and loss and fear. Nobody's forcing him to be here, but he's here because family is important, and the blood of the covenant is thicker than the water of the womb. He doesn't need to be related to Himeko to be her brother.

That's what he leans on as his steps take him up the stairs at the top of the hill, past the new growth and past the still-dead trees, the rocks on which no moss grows, the tiny bones of things that died here before the curse on the scorched earth was lessened, diminished.

That's what he leans on when he passes into the courtyard, when he goes up the straight walk, when he stops in front of the door leading to one room-- or that would, if it didn't currently lead to death.

Facing the void, he puts one hand on either side of the door, gripping the doorframe at arms' length for a moment and glaring at the nothing. Like he did six months ago, Mamoru asserts himself, but now he does it with memory and a firmness of self that weren't there then. And he does it with a name that he read in Nephrite's book, a name that he hasn't spoken aloud before, that he hasn't told anyone else.

"I am Endymion," he says in a low voice, "and I am coming for you, Himeko Soryuu."

He steps to one side of the door and puts his hand on his chest where it bled out his lifeblood in the nightmares; he closes his eyes and concentrates on his power, on the dark energy coating it and keeping it separate, on the place where it's still thin from where he chipped at it to let out enough gold to give Himeko the Curse something to hold on to, and he cracks his heart open again.

His gloves are gone, and he keeps his dark energy to himself, and he opens his eyes and the blue is the blue of the oceans; his uncovered hand pulls at the memory of the shrine's walls and at the memory of Himeko stepping in and leaving her clothes behind, and at the memory of their own fights here, and at the memory of fire and fire and fire--

--and he anchors himself to this world and opens his mind and cracked heart to where he swam before, and he doesn't hold his breath when he dives in: his breathing is deep and even and firm, and he has his name held fast and wielded like a sword. I'm coming for you.

Pyrite has posed:
    The connection is instantaneous, even if they couldn't be more far apart. The bond they share now is indisputably stronger than ever before. It takes nothing, staring into that nothing, to create a Bridge of Many Things. Memories, feelings, hopes, dreams, pasts remembered and not, futures destined or possible, and versions of themselves that they have not acknowledged before.
    Himeko looks up into the darkness. She sees Shiro, her mother, and her brother, standing above her, looking down at her, smiling, before turning into quick little fish made of light and swimming away to the horizon that only exists because they disappear beyond it.
    A dream of her own. A projection of her wishes. How she would rather they part if they must. They ahead of her, and then she catching up after them. She has sacrificed herself first too many times. It's always her first instinct to hurt in place of someone else. It's a ruinous trait she shares with her adoptive brother. Funny, that. Though nothing connects them, everything bonds them, and Many Things forge a Bridge back to each other.
    Himeko rises up from where she sits, and looks into the abyss that is also below and all around her. Too far down for light to reach, even if she has been practicing self-mutilation one hitodama at a time to shallow herself out and bring the surface down to her.
    The bobbing flames floating around, the only source of light, show only the expansive shelf that she and She rest upon. Her eyes are caustic, her gaze volcanic in its intensity. Himeko has felt pressure from the presence of others before. Her brother's for example, though she loved that crushing presence, because it was never directed at her, not to hurt her, only to embrace her and keep her safe. Not even when she was confused and angry at him and almost attacked him to keep him from saving her.
    But Her gaze is different. Perhaps because She is a version of Himeko -- or all of the worst versions put together -- that bond, that intimacy, is very much like that with Mamoru, Hematite, Darien, Endymion, Nii-chan, Senpai, All Of Him that she Loves so much.
    But this gaze scours her, scars her, burns out everything but the capacity for pain, overwhelms her with rivers of molten hate that pour directly into her core, coating everything and poisoning everything with acidic fumes, trying to override her, contaminate her, bury her with the sheer volume of the Bad that She is made of.
    Himeko hearing her brother accept Endymion as himself has no choice but to accept all of herself as well... As well as to acknowledge what isn't.
    "The Princess of Light." Himeko says. "You're her, aren't you?" she asks Her.
    She just bares a dripping magma mouth, a condescending sneer, and says, "Could have been. Am not."
    Himeko tilts her head, trying to puzzle that out. "Is there a Princess of Light?"
    "There is only Me. I am the true Himeko."
    "I am Himeko. All of me is together now."
    "No."
    Himeko pauses. She looks back up. She needs to meet her brother half-way. Otherwise he will stop breathing before he reaches her. And she can no longer create ghosts. Then she looks Her again. "Who else is there?"
    Hair like rotten snakes, flesh broken and scarred by squirming lines of madness, She stands up. Then She speaks. "You. Only one Himeko goes up." She steps forwards.
    Himeko sighs. This is a fight she doesn't want to have. It's unnecessary. "We can both go."
    "NO MORE TALKING." She yells as she rushes towards Himeko.
    Himeko can only focus on Her now, cannot answer her brother's call. She can only meet Her half-way. Otherwise, one of them is going to drown.
    The impact of two very powerful spirits of identical strength reverberating upwards makes the Nothing in the Shrine entrance... Ripple.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru's eyes are wide open, and he frowns at the ripple, his attention split. He keeps swimming down, breathing one breath at a time, measured and metrical like a poem; he says out loud, "Don't wake it up." It's out loud above; it's out loud in the not-water of Himeko the Ocean. He keeps swimming. He keeps moving. But his other hand comes away from his chest red, and reaches for one of the pillars holding the porch together, and he steps away from the door but maintains contact with the building that way.

And then he crouches down and reaches his other hand into the ashy dusty dirt next to the building.

He tries pulling energy up into himself, but what comes up is grey, tainted, sifted and filtered through the dark energy coating his cracked-open heart. He tries pulling up the dark energy that soaks the ground, and that's much easier, and maybe it's even a good idea to get it away from the morass of negative energies that pollutes the site.

Anything he can do to calm the door without touching the door.

And still, he swims determinedly down through the inky depths, leaving daylight further and further away, holding only the light he's bringing with him.

"Himeko," he says, "All of you this time, please. How am I supposed to promote you if you're not all there?"

Pyrite has posed:
    Himeko is distracted. She wants to go up to her brother, but She keeps delivering terrible blows any time her gaze or attention wander. Strikes that Himeko returns as well. As they grapple, fingers interlaced, foreheads smashed together, glowing red half-circles glaring into burning sockets, they continue to try to gain dominance over each other. But they are equally matched. Himeko should be whole now, but here is someone just as powerful, just as complete, just as much Himeko as Himeko herself is.
    She doesn't understand. She was supposed to be the 'dark' half. Her Light, her Hope, her Dream, was supposed to be down here, keeping Her contained. "What did you do with her!? Where is my other half!?"
    She grins that sneering grin again, ashes falling from her face, swirling all around like sharks in a feeding frenzy, as she hisses out, "Ate her."
    A palm strike shoots up from below, hitting Himeko under the chin. A length of rot connects her face to Her palm, and their fight stops being one of bodies striking bodies, but of imagination, abstraction, displacement. They duplicate, split, merge, hurl thoughts like daggers, release emotions at each other as walls and atomic explosions, and the abyssal shelf is shaken, torn, damage by the fury of them. The power that Hematite sealed, that he has never let Himeko use, is now turned inwards, destructive, self-annihilating, incomprehensible as it becomes all concepts and feelings without words and the grating of a soul at war with itself.
    Finally, they split apart, and Himeko tries to surge upwards as fast as she can, a silver arrow loosed from a bow that breaks from the force of its own shot, streaking up towards her brother, arm extended, self reaching, existence stretching to its utmost to make contact in the realm of the soul.
    The death all around swirls faster and faster, and that turbulence is all the warning Himeko gets as a burning mass of murderous desire, rejection, and cruelty blasts upwards, a sphere of ghostly Madness given a face and name.
    Himeko snaps back to herself and forges a shield of peace, acceptance, and compassion as best she can. It is an ill-fitting defense, rushed and un-solid, but she manages at least to curve it to send the Madness Ball away.
    It tears out the side of the Ocean. Himeko begins to leak out into Nothing. The vortex grows stronger and stronger, as the dead girl screams in agony. Her eyes are gone, metaphysically, conceptually. She is blind. So she doesn't see Her shooting up at her, a javelin of darkness, thrown to strike at a vulnerable place, and kill.
    A leviathan trying to eat Himeko and Endymion whole.
    Himeko can only give up on escaping and try to push her brother back up to the surface, casting away his protection and salvation, like she did once upon a time, when she was a Curse.
    Nothing has truly changed since then.
    If her brother dies here, then perhaps she fulfilled the Death Curse's mission after all.
    The death void is spinning. Faster and faster. A whirlpool on the surface that wends deeper and deeper. At the bottom of it, Himeko drifting on her back, limbs and the upperhalf of her face still covered in Nothingness, is visible within the Shrine.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
--and incoming.

Mamoru's attention by necessity splits again; Hematite has to defend the shrine, now, against what he was certain wouldn't be a problem, not when he'd said...

--- @};--',--'-,-- ---

For a breath, a moment, that split attention nearly kills them both, because Mamoru struggles against the pushing away, not understanding, and then he sees the leviathan and he gets what she's trying to do, what she's doing, and he screams in frustration.

"She kept telling me you couldn't come out!" he yells into the flickering red and black, into the connections and broken glass and frozen breaths and flies in amber, into the rot and endless hair and grasping skeletal hands, into the wide wild death that prowls the vasty deeps. "I'm here to get you out, but I'll fucking let them get you if you don't let her up too! They're coming here to purify! They're bringing shrine maidens! Do you honestly think you'll survive that? Don't you know she'll be fine and you'll be gone, UNLESS YOU ALL COME WITH ME?"

He cracks his heart open further, and hovers there above the fight, and stares down at Himeko at the bottom of the ocean. There's blood in the water, and there's light coming from between his fingers, and the heat is Her lava and his fury and hope, entangled. "I am Endymion, and you are mine. My sister, all of you together. Come with me! Come with me! I'm Mamoru! Let me keep you safe, defend you, it's what I'm for--"

Pyrite has posed:
    Himeko, despite all of the pain she has suffered, all the wounds, all the frustration, rejection, and the fact that She is endangering Himeko's chances of getting back to her brother, doesn't hate the monster that hunts her even now. But she can feel Her hate contaminating her, spreading, weakening her by taking her over. If only one of them can go up, and they are both in danger of being destroyed, then perhaps it would be better to consolidate again. Does it matter if it's Her absorbing Himeko or Himeko absorbing Her?
    "I GOT US THIS FAR! MY HATE! MY RAGE! MY STRENGTH! MY REFUSAL TO BACK DOWN! ME! YOU WOULD STILL BE STUCK HERE, ROTTING AWAY, IF I HADN'T PUSHED US TO TRY SOMETHING, ANYTHING!" She screams up, the reverberations of her psychic voice bouncing off the canyon walls of the bottom of the Ocean as the Ocean continues to bleed out into Nothing, draining that overflowed soul far faster than anything else could've.
    Himeko is blind, like a star fell out of Her heart and tore through her eyes. But she can still feel the beating of a heart of flame, a desire to live, a darkness that serves a purpose if channeled properly.
    She focuses on that sound, that sensation, gathers her strength, and unleashes a beam like the sun exploding, aimed DOWN.
    The bottom of her soul falls out. The abyssal shelf crumbles and trumbles into that gate to Yomi. The Ocean drains even faster, pouring down into the Underworld, giving Yomi what it wants, by giving up everything extra that Himeko has hoarded and held onto for far too long.
    The sound of the heart beat goes silent.
    It stops.
    But the hate and darkness doesn't stop.
    It continues to spread and contaminate her, replacing, rewriting, filling up her empty self with a purpose, concentrated rage, and vile sadistic desires, and so she finds herself becoming the Darkness itself.
    She looks up with sightless sockets, sinking as the water level decreases, searching for a way out.
    Her brother is still up there somewhere, trying to hold out a hand, but he's running out of Ocean to Dive into.
    'We can't both disappear.' she thinks. 'But I want to return to the world of the living, even if it means sacrificing him. I honestly would do that, even though I don't want to. I'm a bad girl. I'm no sister at all. What kind of sister would want that? But it is my honest desire. My selfishness. The part of me I hate, but which is undoubtedly part of me.'
    Then she starts swimming up again, the shattered stars of Her heart torn out of her face and scattered all around, lighting up the Darkness with constellations, like Nephrite-senpai loves. Connecting the dots.
    Like this, she has a map.
    She can find her way back without sacrificing anyone.
    The guilt of admitting and accepting her selfishness does not weigh her down as she thought it would. Because...
    Because she's only human after all.
    She follows the lights back up to the Prince of Lost & Found almost touching. Her pale fingertips just barely out of range.
    Then she hears Her heart beat again. Still beating. Down there, at the bottom, about to flow into Yomi and be trapped there forever with whatever horrible dead things lurk there, waiting to crown a new goddess.
    Her Other Half is in the Darkness too.
    Himeko's fingers curl against her palm. With regret, and loathing, and hesitation, and love, and hate, and forgiveness, she Dives all the way back down.
    If she has to... She'll stay in the Darkness too.

Mamoru Chiba has posed:
Mamoru's silent now, watching, swimming up just to stay in one place as the bottom drops out. He still holds his hand out-- still-- until Himeko's closes and pulls away from him, and he grimaces when he realizes the same thing she does. He, too, is tempted -- tempted to take her and run, tempted to grab her and make sure that at least something of her manages to come out, but he was serious, and so is she.

All of her.

The one thing he does, matching her broken crystalline light constellations, is touch them and tether them, making sure that she doesn't lose anything more on her way out. But still, he keeps his dark energy so carefully to himself. He won't fling it in here, and he'll do his best not to let it touch the ground out there, not to let it soak in any further.

And he swims up, trusting fiercely that Himeko can do it, that Himeko can follow her own map.

It'll be great to stop debuffing himself in this wild fight against like a sixth of all the mahous in the damn school.