Dimitri
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Listen to the wind blow, Down comes the night. Break the silence, d**n the dark, d**n the light...
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Post by Dimitri on Mar 21, 2005 18:25:11 GMT -5
As Dimitri puts a few logs on the weakening fire, he simply replies to Kimato's query with blank "I dunno... I voluntered. I'm out of practice when it comes to fighting. I honestly was hoping that you would sleep until they returned. I've never been an expert when it came to handling girls."
I bet I sound pathetic. Dimitri miserably thinks.
"Spit and hades. Kimato, what have I gotten into? I know i said that I thought this was right before, but it's not like when I was alone. These people actually are depending on me. What if I screw something up?" Dimitri quitely asks.
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Kimato
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the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return
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Post by Kimato on Mar 22, 2005 9:16:50 GMT -5
Kimato can only stare for a moment as she considers Dimitri's question. Suddenly, the cheerful, optimistic man whom she had always considered as somewhat conceited and ridiculous seemed instead very uncertain and vulnerable...like herself.
This cheerful front you put on hides you very well, Dimitri... Her eyes shining with compassion for her new friend, she smiles a genuine smile, and gives him the only comfort she can...her empathy.
"Do any of us really know what we have gotten ourselves into, Dimitri? I wonder sometimes if I should have gone on wandering alone, and left these brave people to save the world. But I cannot do that. My conscience will not let me leave this mission, as it will not let me do many other things that would be...easier. None of us REALLY know what we are doing. Thanatos, even, for all his mechanical precision, has to take this journey one day at a time, making plans but never able to guarantee they will work." A shadow of some fear or nightmare long buried fills her eyes.
"What if you mess up? What if I mess up? What if we all die tomorrow in a fiery apocalypse? These are the frightening questions that we do not have answers for. Yes, people are depending on you. They are depending on me, too. We cannot say for sure that we will not disappoint them all. But we cannot say anything for sure, except what we know about our own hearts. And..." she smiled ruefully, "in my case, I am not certain I know even that anymore."
Looking down at her hands, Kimato falls silent, feeling perhaps she talks too much, yet hoping that something she said will quiet the fear in Dimitri's spirit. Absently, she fidgets with the black bottle around her neck, thinking of her own words...trying to comfort herself with them as well.
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Dimitri
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Listen to the wind blow, Down comes the night. Break the silence, d**n the dark, d**n the light...
Posts: 235
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Post by Dimitri on Mar 22, 2005 17:22:26 GMT -5
Dimitri looks up toward Kimato with a spacey look in his eyes. She looks back toward him with a comforting look in her eyes.
She's gotta point. The only thing we can do is go one day at a time. I'm not the only one with doubts. The only way I'm going to get around them though is if start to act mature and responsible. I've got a long road ahead.
"Thanks, Kimato. I guess you're my first friend since... well, ever. I guess I put on the facade to hide my fears." Dimitri softly speaks. "Thank you for giving me a bit of reasurance."
But there's always going to be your fear, Dimitri. You can't run forever.
"I'll settle that problem when I get to the Second Continent." Dimitri laughs, his old smile creeping back to his face.
His eyes look over to Kimato, who seems puzzled at his last statement.
"Don't worry, Kimato. It's something personal. Let's just say I have a few demons I need to battle. But I'll cross that bridge when I get there, but I may need some help." he softly chuckles. " Anyway, thanks again."
As he begins to put away his small book, he notices a glint of light from the bottle around Kimato's neck. Although his tries to resist the urge to ask her anymore questions, he soon falls prey to his curiosity.
"Um, excuse me, Kimato, but, do you mind telling me what's in the bottle?"
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Kimato
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the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return
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Post by Kimato on Mar 22, 2005 21:44:01 GMT -5
Kimato clutches the bottle impulsively, a nervous habit she developed as a very young child, protecting her prized posession from wicked little village boys.
Loosening her grip a bit, Kimato looks down at the shiny little bottle.
"I...do not really know, Dimitri. My mother and father were deeply religious. They believed that pure hearts and intentions never attracted the Sickness...er...the MASS. That was what they called it...The Sickness."
Turning it over and over in her hand, she gazes into its ebony depths as if entranced.
"My mother gave it to me. It is supposed to be a token of the religion they followed. I never quite grasped the basic beliefs. I was too busy playing and watching my..." her voice catches and tears fill her eyes, but she lowers her head so that Dimitri will not see, clearing her throat.
"...watching my brother and sister. Mother told me that it would always remind me to keep a pure heart and pure intentions, and thus protect me from The Sickness. So I kept it. It is the only thing that survived of my mother or father after MASS struck our village. I do not keep it so much for its religious value as in honor of them. Honestly, I do not know what is in it. I have never opened it."
She forces herself to divert her dark eyes from the hypnotizing, dark depths of the little trinket.
"I used to pretend it had all my dreams and my love in it. But as I grew older, I lost my dreams, and my...my love. So now I really have no reason other than my parents to carry it."
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Dimitri
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Listen to the wind blow, Down comes the night. Break the silence, d**n the dark, d**n the light...
Posts: 235
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Post by Dimitri on Mar 24, 2005 18:49:02 GMT -5
"Oh, sorry Kimato..."
Something tells me I hit a painful nerve. I knew I should have just kept my mouth shut.
Dimitri looks over toward Kimato, who is trying to hide her tears from his eyes. Smiling kindly at her, he takes a small piece of cloth out of his bag and offers it to her.
"Here, you can have this." he says as kindly as he can to his weeping friend. She takes the cloth from him and dries her eyes. Dimitri stretches out and yawns loudly and cracks his knuckles.
"Kimato, I think we should try to get some rest. Something tells me that we're going to have to hit the road fast as possible when the others return."
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Kimato
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the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return
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Post by Kimato on Mar 24, 2005 22:09:14 GMT -5
"I believe you are right, Dimitri."
Standing up, Kimato says, "I only hope that I will have an opportunity to...speak...with Thanatos." Her tone clearly states that she is still furious at the android.
Turning away from Dimitri, she speaks again. "I am sorry for my weakness, Dimitri. You did not upset me...I am just not accustomed to talking about my past. It has been years since I have had someone to talk to about anything at all."
Walking over to Whitakker's car, she opens the door and climbs in the back seat, covering up once again with the red and white kimono and turning on her side to stare at the blank backs of the seats.
Thanatos...you presumptious cretan. Did you even consider that by leaving myself and Dimitri here, you could have placed us in danger anyway? What if we are attacked this very night? Dimitri is out of practice, and though I am much better than I was, we are only two people.
Sighing, Kimato rolls over to stare again at the sky, piling ephithets upon Thanatos' name and trying to block out the paranoid fear that beats in her heart. The effort is in vain, and so she lays there, staring angrily into the night sky, wishing fervently for morning.
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Dimitri
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Listen to the wind blow, Down comes the night. Break the silence, d**n the dark, d**n the light...
Posts: 235
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Post by Dimitri on Mar 26, 2005 21:18:12 GMT -5
Dimitri puts enough logs on the fire to keep it burning and loads his pistol. As he wraps himself in a thick blanket, he begins to sink into a hazy, deep sleep. Soon, his mind begins to fill with images long repressed.
"Wake now, Specialist. Your audience awaits your next performance." speaks a large man with a grotesque smile spanning the entire length of his face. He sits atop a tower made entirly of monitors, wires, and keyboards on a throne. Surrounding him are three others: one is busily calculating numbers and debts, one is looking down at Dimitri with a irredescant glow of sadistic glee, and one is simply there. The second one jumps down from the tower and shakes Dimitri violently. As Dimitri wakes, the being looks up toward the grinning man.
"The Dimitri-Specialist doesn't want to perform, oh, malevolent rhapsody. Maybe we should let Dancer take his soul?" he laughs.
"A wonderful plot line to explore, my twisted sword-servant, but it seems our audienc love this pet for his tortured soul," the man speaks. "Drop him onto the stage for today's show."
"NOOO!! I'M NOT A SLAVE ANYMORE!!" Dimitri screams, waking himself from his night-terror. His trembling hand reaches up and wipes cold sweat from his brow. He rises from the ground. He knew he wouldn't be able to sleep tonight. He sits upright and prays his shout didn't wake Kimato.
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Kimato
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the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return
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Post by Kimato on Mar 26, 2005 22:48:20 GMT -5
Kimato sits bolt upright, looking around frantically for the source of the scream that woke her.
"Dimitri!?" Her own voice sounds very high-pitched and frightened, and she scrambles frantically to disentangle herself from the kimono, reaching for her chakram and handgun in the floorboard. Her hand closes around the gun, and her other hand, now free of the kimono, grasps the chakram Nicholi gave her.
Opening the door, she practically falls out of the vehicle, and begins running as soon as her feet are solid on the ground. In seconds she is at the fireside, looking around fearfully.
"Dimitri? What is it?" He is sitting upright, still half-wrapped in a blanket, his face slowly reddening. Lowering her gun, her own face reddens. Sighing, she comes toward the fire and sits down once again.
"We might as well give up, Dimitri. Fate has not delegated that you should sleep tonight, nor I." Placing her gun and her chakram on the ground beside her, she looks over her shoulder.
"Why did you scream?"
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Dimitri
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Listen to the wind blow, Down comes the night. Break the silence, d**n the dark, d**n the light...
Posts: 235
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Post by Dimitri on Mar 27, 2005 13:39:52 GMT -5
Dimitri looks at Kimato and sighs heavily.
"Sit down."
As Kimato sits down next to Dimitri, he begins to calm his shattered nerves. After staring into space for awhile, he begins to slowly speak.
"I had a night terror. No... more like it was a repressed memory bobbing to the surface. Four years ago, I lived with my parents on the Second Continent. We were quite wealthy, much like Nicholi's family, but the money was gained by different methods. One night, I went to sleep and woke up to the sounds of screaming in terror and to the sight of my family being taken over by the mass. I managed to run away, but I couldn't get the images out of my head. My mother, father, my uncle, all being possessed. The screams, the panic, the fire burning the house... It nearly drove me over the edge. One day as I wandered through a town, penniless, paranoid, and half insane, a odd woman asked if I would like to find a way to make everything like it was before that night. I was suprised she knew about that, but I didn't care. I wanted to be normal again, sane, and I wanted to go home. So I said yes. She took me by the hand and began to dance. Then I blacked out. At first I thought I was dead, but I was soon rudely awakened by the true cruelty of some humans." Dimitri manages to calmly say. But as he says the last sentence, he begins to fill with such a fundamental and emotional mixture of fear, rage, and humiliation that he begins to shake. He tries to settle his nerves by looking over at Kimato, wondering what she thinks of him for opening up so suddenly.
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Kimato
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the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return
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Post by Kimato on Mar 28, 2005 22:20:56 GMT -5
"A nightmare." Smiling ruefully, she stares into Dimitri's eyes, reading the confused emotions there, and identifying with each one in turn.
"We all have them. Dreaming is the mind's way of dealing with our memories. A storage system, if you will. The mind goes through the dreams and remakes them, interpretting them by what was seen, heard, done, and felt. And then, the mind plays for us its little masterpiece: pieces of our lives in all their completeness, with all the emotions felt with a clarity that the moment itself missed."
Tracing her finger in the dirt, she lowers her voice ever so slightly.
"Your past will continue to torture you until you learn from it. I have not yet learned from mine, apparently, for it wakes me every night. Do not fear your past, Dimitri. It is only your past. It cannot hurt you unless you let it control you."
Idly, Kimato picks up the chakram and turns it over in her hands, marvelling, as she had in Anhelo Manor, at how well it really did suit the size and shape of her hand.
"The past is like this, Dimitri. Do you remember when Nicholi gave me this?"
Dimitri nods, but looks a bit bewildered. Kimato smiles and runs her hands over the unfamiliar letters on the weapon's surface.
Dreamily, she says, "The past is like this chakram. It is useful...it is beautiful, but it can still be used to shed your blood. It may be bestowed by a friend, in hopes that it will aid you, but if you do not learn how to use it, you knock your own head off with it." Laughing softly, she places it back on the ground beside her.
"Sometimes I wonder if that is what the others see when they look at me; a tragic little girl whose past is always pushing her around. I suppose my unwillingness to share with anyone does not help. But I am not the kind of person who wears her every thought on her sleeve...if you can believe that."
Staring out into the night, her brown eyes seem like black holes...two spiralling, endless voids that even light cannot escape. The light from the fire and the moon, golden and silver, is reflected onto her face, but never seems to fill her eyes or warm her expression. When she speaks again, a wistful sort of sadness is clear in her voice.
"What did they do to hurt you so, Dimitri?"
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Dimitri
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Listen to the wind blow, Down comes the night. Break the silence, d**n the dark, d**n the light...
Posts: 235
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Post by Dimitri on Mar 31, 2005 23:10:42 GMT -5
"I don't even remember. I don't even know how I escaped. Maybe they did something to me, or maybe I just didn't want to accept what they did. I only get flashbacks every now and them in my dreams." Dimitri sighs. He stands up and looks up toward the shining full moon peeking out from behind dark clouds.
"Kimato, I'm not afraid of my past. As far as I'm concerned, I don't have one. That's what I learned from my experiences. But something you said tonight must have triggered something. Kimato, you're the only person who knows my story, so as a friend, I ask you to not tell the others." Dimitri says as he turns to face Kimato.
He extends his hand toward Kimato. She looks at it suspiciously. Dimitri seeing her apprehension, simply laughs.
"I just wanted to be a gentleman and help you stand up, thats all. After all, you don't expect me to go after Thanatos and the others alone, do you?" he chuckles as a devious grin sweeps across his face.
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Kimato
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the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return
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Post by Kimato on Mar 31, 2005 23:41:23 GMT -5
Comprehension dawns slowly on Kimato's face, and she smiles. Taking his offered hand, Kimato is hoisted to her feet.
"Now, Dimitri...let's not be rash about this." Her tone belies her words, and her smile is growing more devious by the second, matching his and then surpassing it. "Let us consider how afronted Thanatos will be if we disobey him." The two appear in deep thought for a space of about five seconds.
"Do you have an affronted Thanatos clearly pictured in your mind?" Dimitri nods, still grinning.
"Good. Let's go, then." Bending down, she grabs her chakram and handgun, placing them in their respective pockets. Then, as an afterthought, she withdraws a ribbon from the hem of her sleeve, pulling her hair back out of her face with it.
Looking at Dimitri, Kimato bows dramatically.
"Lead the way."
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Dimitri
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Listen to the wind blow, Down comes the night. Break the silence, d**n the dark, d**n the light...
Posts: 235
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Post by Dimitri on Apr 5, 2005 17:32:12 GMT -5
"I don't know the meaning of the word rash, Kimato"
Dimitri laughs wildly as he climbs onto the seat of his motorcycle. As the engine roars to life like a great beast that's been unleashed for a long period of captivity, he looks over to Kimato and cries over the monsterous rour:
"Hop on! We've got an android to follow!"
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Kimato
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the greatest thing you will ever learn is just to love and be loved in return
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Post by Kimato on Apr 6, 2005 12:47:50 GMT -5
Running to climb behind Dimitri onto the motorcycle, Kimato finds that she is also laughing. She has never felt like this before...what is this feeling?
Recklessness, you stupid girl. Thanatos is going to be so angry with you when you find him. You ought to be the sensible one. Kimato swats the thoughts away impatiently.
I am tired of always being sensible. The time for being sensible has long since passed, for a sensible person would have left these crazy people and their crazy, hopeless mission. But I did not.
Holding tight to Dimitri so she won't fall of, Kimato squints her eyes against the cold-coming wind as they speed off into the night.
OOC: Dimitri, I have placed the rest of my post on the Bloodying of Blades thread, since we will be joining Thanatos and the others shortly.
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Post by Thanatos on Apr 30, 2005 0:19:49 GMT -5
---------------------------------------------------------------- It is well into the sixth day of the expedition.
Ever since the fiasco concerning aquisition of fuel two days earlier, the caravan has made steady progress, covering an estimated six-hundred kilometers in record time. Terrain has mostly consisted of a wide Traderoad flanked on both sides by endless flat prairie. Slowly but surely, however, even the sparse grasslands have been growing notably thinner as progress continues northward. The Traderoad has also been growing narrower and less maintained; any markings of civilization are now far and few between.
The land the expedition travels through now reeks of desolation--despite occasional forest groves and plots of rich soil, the entire area still feels ominiously devoid of life. Every possible indicator suggests that the Ruined City is not far ahead.
Vehicles of the caravan have been afforded a great deal more space than they were in earlier environments; currently the group is traveling through a barren, brown plain, mundanity broken only by the occasional tuft of grass. Syrant and Whitakker each drive their respective automobiles, with Kimato and Dimitri sharing the inventor's motorbike. Thanatos rides his own motorcycle, tending to stay as much as half a kilometer ahead of the rest of the party as he searches for possible danger...
Thanatos keeps his vehicle at a steady rate of about fifty kilometers per hour, accomodating the slower transports of the caravan. Nevertheless, the odd motorcycle strains to go pick up the pace--two times, five times, ten times, fifteen times faster, it is all within the strange vehicle's capacity. He currently travels several hundred meters ahead of the next vehicle in line, scanning terrain in every direction, all too aware of the expedition's vulnerability in this open plain.
Suddenly, he spots something. A black shape is quickly detaching itself from a distant forest grove, building up speed as it begins to bear down on Thanatos' position. The android is instantly alert and battle-ready, gunning the engines of his own motorcycle as he speeds towards the distant object, visor focusing as he identifies what is surely a would-be ambusher...
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