I'm disappointed by the lack of things to do on this ship. So to entertain myself, I have dug out from my few possessions my deck of tarot cards. It's been a long time since I've done readings, but I never leave the home without them.

I'll do as many readings as any of you like.

But please avoid questions that ask for a time-related answer, a name, a yes or no or a specific choice between one thing and another.

Examples of good questions are like these.
( Read more... )

[OOC: in the few hours after kazuma and reina had taken residence on this new ship with the scientist dudes, but before wyther was rebuilt, and before people on the other ship had discovered reina's and kazuma's absence.]

Dear Journal.

Hi.

We're having some silent alone time right now to try and get used to our new home, this ship, which the E.E.s managed to build up out of nothing within a half-hour. They're pretty smart. And not too long ago, SeriOS departed from my brain, and soon after that I laughed more genuinely than I have in years. I laughed until I was crying. It was a good feeling. I think Reina liked it a lot too.

It happened without me noticing, but I'm taller than Reina now. We were the same height not too long ago. I guess this is what the sex-ed teacher meant by a "growth spurt". Maybe it means I'm getting closer to being a man. When I'm a man, I can marry her, so that's exciting. But Jack told me "you're not a man until your voice cracks and you suddenly grow a penis the size of a baseball bat" so I guess I've still got awhile to go. I don't think that guy will ever stop hating me though.

Still, I like being taller than her. This means I can comfort her better when she's sad, and I bet I can properly slow-dance with her too if I tried. She would like that, I think.

Now that I'm not in a position of importance anymore, and SeriOS is out of my brain, I'm going to have more free time. I was thinking of learning a musical instrument. Maybe it would be cool if I could play the trumpet like Louis Armstrong. I like him. "A Kiss To Build A Dream On" is mainly a trumpet song. Trumpets have a really powerful and high-energy sound...they're really different from me as a person. I don't know if that's a bad or good thing when choosing an instrument.

Or maybe I should pick up the violin instead. I heard Ramsey can play the fiddle. The violin and the fiddle are the same instrument, just played differently, so I kind of like the idea of being the dark serious violin guy while our enemy Ramsey plays the light-hearted fiddle. Musical rivalry is kind of exciting. But I bet Oliver already plays the violin and fiddle perfectly so I don't know if I should even make the effort.

Reina, if you see this, please comment with your vote. I'll play whatever you want me to play. Even if it's just a kazoo.

Okay, no. I won't play the kazoo. That one's out. You can't make me.

-Kazuma

Sometimes I feel like my mind is erupting. When you see those videos of old volcanoes blowing half their mountainside off in an explosive fury, or dribbling out that harmless-looking orange liquid that kills all the dinosaurs on TV, or puffing out toxic gas that causes anything nearby to drop like flies--that's me. I'm one of those volcanoes in the videos. I periodically erupt, and I periodically hurt people. I know I'm going to kill an entire species with it someday; it's only a matter of time.

My volcanic eruptions happen when I'm angry. Frustration affects me differently than it affects most people, I think. Boys tend to punch walls. Girls usually cry. Me though, I explode.

I always know when it's about to happen. My whole head starts feeling hot, and my vision gets a little cloudy. I start to hear some static in my ears, and my own thoughts become very loud in my head, amplified, making it hard to hear when someone's talking to me. Not too long after that, the first little eruption occurs, which tends to be some hazy purple fog stuff. I don't know where it comes from....Oliver always jokes that I fart it out but I really don't think that's the case. Luckily, Reina usually notices when I start getting all purpley, and she comes to calm me down. She holds me and pets me and tells me it's okay and that she's there.

And then I'm happy again. I'm always happy when she's holding me like that, as I burrow as close to her body as I physically can. But I don't know if she's happy herself, because she knows that if I'm erupting, it was probably because of her. All of my eruptions are because of her. And I'm sure that's stressful for her, knowing that the fate of the universe is in her hands whenever I'm upset.

When I'm asked what is important to me, the only thing that comes to mind is Reina. Shinigami Reina--I stole her last name. She's simultaneously the most beautiful and the most disgusting person that exists, and for that I love her deeply. I love her more than anyone loves anyone else in the entire universe, and I'm sure of that. Recently I learned that she loves me back, in the way that I wanted to be loved, and I erupted in a different way. Maybe you saw the sky at that moment--Oliver told me it flashed a bright and sparkling lavender, like a zoomed-in snapshot of the Milky Way. I'd never been so happy before...no, that feeling deserves a stronger word than happy, stronger than ecstatic, stronger than overjoyed. It was an emotion nobody else can experience except me, I know it, because nobody else loves anyone as much as I love Reina. So nobody's invented a word for it yet. Only me and Reina can invent that word.

Just within the topic of Reina, I can think of two other things I find important:
1) Our future together
and 2) Matching.

It's very important to me that Reina and I are together for the rest of our lives. We're going to get married, too. I often have nightmares of her abandoning me, disappearing into the endless reaches of space while I'm asleep, because she doesn't want to drag me around anymore. I'm just a clingy kid ruining her life after all. She could be doing so much more with her twenties but she has to house me, and calm me down, and accept my love, all at the same time. She also has to raise me, which isn't something that most people have to do with their future spouses. I'm afraid that she wants to run and run and run and not look back.

If she did that, I would die, and so would you, and her, and everybody else, because I would destroy the universe.

The other point I mentioned was matching. That's because I want to be just like Reina. Not only do I love her, I idolize her. I still feel like we are pretty different in a lot of ways though, and it makes me feel like I'm still failing. I haven't told Reina this, but the reason I want to be like her is because I noticed Reina tends not to keep friends as she goes throughout her life, but always retains a high self-esteem about herself. She has an ego despite not having many friends to share it with. This makes me thing that she doesn't really enjoy the company of others, and that she gets sick of them, but she never gets sick of her own personality and likes and dislikes. Meaning, she would never get sick of someone who was just like her. I want her to love me like she loves herself so much, and the only way to do that is to become like her. Then maybe she won't move on from me like she does from the others. I also think that I want to be like her because of a lingering dread to be punished for not doing things the way she likes, from back when I was 10--back when she used to hurt me and punish me.

But I think you want me to tell you about other things that are important to me, things that aren't related to Reina, like grades or sports or pop culture or girls my age. I'm sorry to disappoint you, but even at the deepest core of my personality, I think everything I find important is related to her. Those brief moments when I care about grades, they're only when I want her to praise me. I would only do a sport if she wanted me to. Pop culture is a waste of time. And girls are idiots.

I have other minor interests as well. Like reading and writing and drawing and video games. But none of these have any importance to me. If I had to throw them away, I would in an instant. If I had to throw Reina away, I'd throw myself away with her. (And cuddle her in the garbage can.)

Thinking more about it though....I think I'd like to rule the world. Not because I crave power, but because I want to know what's going on at the top, so I always know what I need to protect Reina from. If someone else is in charge, everything is a lie, a big political coverup. Nobody really knows what's going on. But if I'm in charge, then we make the choices, we decide the wars.

Protecting her gives me a lot of satisfaction. She claims she can defend herself, and in physical combat I'd say I believe her....but there are a lot scarier things out there. Things like SeriOS. I have to keep her safe from SeriOS.

In conclusion, I am a very one-dimensional person and I don't know why you had me write this. All I care about is Reina. Maybe someday I'll have less redundant things to write about, but probably not. The end.

----

There's my stupid homework. You can comment on it if you want. I might read it.

Mail's here! I'll just throw it all right here....a pile of letters!

Respond to each one as you like, I will gladly deliver them to their destination.

And feel free to write your own to a different recipient, of course!

YAIBA-GUMI:

Purpose: To investigate and protect against the dangerous supernatural forces that plague Haddow.

MEMBERS:

Name: Uehara Kojiro
Age: 37
Position: Leader
Weapon: Katana
Outside: Salaryman

Name: Hanazawa Tomoyo
Age: 18
Position: Medic
Weapon: Bow
Outside: Waitress

Name: Shinigami Shinya
Age: 13
Position: Support
Weapon: Shinai
Outside: Student

Name: Wada "Granny" Sumire
Age: 80
Position: Medium
Weapon: Needles
Outside: Retired

Name: Hashimoto Yuunosuke
Age: 25
Position: Stealth
Weapon: Katana, Caltrops, Kunai, Shuriken
Outside: Art History Museum Staff

Name: Yamashita Tarou
Age: 45
Position: Blacksmith
Weapon: Any he chooses to make
Outside: Blacksmith in the Touristy Pseudo-Historical Part of Haddow


-- former members

Name: Shinigami Takahiro
Age: 21
Position: Strategist
Weapon: Katana
Outside: Cafe Staff
[DECEASED]

Name: Wada Kenzo
Age: 82
Position: Founder
Weapon: Martial Arts, Needles
Outside: Martial Arts Instructor
[DECEASED]

PRESENT:
-kazuma is feeling a sense of rage
-oliver is growing more and more popular
-?????

THE FOLLOWING FUTURE EVENTS ARE IN AN UNKNOWN ORDER:
-builder dies...or is killed?
-kazuma screws 90-P and kills him
-kazuma kills wyther
-wyfer tries to kill reina
-kazuma kills stork
-reina joins oliver
-kazuma becomes head of decadia
-reina returns to kazuma
-seriOS becomes a big purple sun
-z-50 is put in kazuma/reina's room

A lot of knowledge tends to come my way, by the mystical pool of wisdom that is "old women's gossip".  I end up learning about a great deal of things that I probably won't get the chance to see again, at least not for awhile, just by overhearing the Mistress's chats with her elderly friends.  Most of it is bland. Redundant.  A former, less cynical version of myself might have called it cute.  But not this time, no! What I heard this time was far from cute.

I tend to listen closely whenever Wyther's wife comes over. After all, she is Wyther's wife.  I have to keep alert to the things that journalists must keep alert to, even if my audience is dead.  I have to pay attention, for the sake of those that have survived.  However few their numbers, I know they're out there. I certainly survived, after all.

Wyther's wife (I'm beginning to sound like Dr. Seuss; before we know it we'll be having beetles battle beetles in a puddle paddle battle) danced around a few topics this evening--one of the more interesting ones being some suspicion of an affair between her husband and a lower-ranked soldier, how quaint--but for the most part they were typical.  That is, until she mentions the ambitious attitude of Organoids these days, a topic which may or may not have stemmed directly from the conversation about affairs.  Naturally, I listen, because I like hearing the words "ambitious" and "Organoids" in the same sentence.  It tends to give me hope.

Except when I realize that any time a Millennian uses those two words together, they mean it in a tongue-in-cheek sort of way.  This time was no exception.  Before I knew it, I was hearing all about how one Organoid vice-captain in Wyther's division volunteered to have a hostage of her own, who she has decided to torture on a daily basis, and has already ripped the eye out of. 

Thank goodness for pronouns! What a problem it would have been if Wyther's wife had left me wondering which soldier it could have been!  Thanks to the use of a feminine pronoun, all my questions have been answered!

And frankly, I am utterly disgusted with you.  More than that though, I am disgusted with myself, for ever saying what I said back then...what was it? That I could tell you were a good person? Something along those lines. What a fool I've been.

 "Being in this place, Millennia, has been a very unusual adapting experience. It's been years since I've lived in a place where an organoid species wasn't the one in power.

And it's strange.

Not a bad strange, of course, don't get me wrong. All hail our Millennian overlords and all that, but it's really placing me back out of my element. The last time I was in a place like this was back in my old world invasion days when I needed to cooperate with Neo Arcadia.

I've been spending a lot of time with the hostages lately. Wyther has been really allowing me to branch out. I think he enjoys my enthusiasm. A regular person might be taken aback by seeing members of their own species strung up on the walls, but it's something you just have to get used to. "

Just thought I'd let you know that I found this.  You shouldn't leave your private thoughts lying around unless you want me to read them.  Well, maybe you did.  Perhaps it's your way of letting me know I haven't told you that I hate you enough lately.

Not that your excerpt had anything to do with that at all. Don't mind me.

Anyways, it's a little hard to believe that I have my own office now, and more importantly that I'm a third-class colonel for an army that I'm not even the same species as.  The Millennians sure are progressive.

Our mission to Decadia somehow left us trapped in the tower of the Centurians, possibly the most robotic of all the local robot types.  I wonder if they've noticed we're gone?  To be honest I'm going to miss that uniform of theirs, it was actually kinda cute.  But other than that, I'm glad to be out of there.  Not only were we going to be forced to work mindless cleaning jobs for the rest of our lives, but also I was reminded of how much I hate being around other people my age.  Somehow we ended up taking a few of them with us.  I can't recall why. The reason was probably stupid.

I'm working hard not to use my psychic stuff impulsively.  I'm also trying to be more confident around other people, especially Wyther.  It's hard.  I'm not very socially adept.

Axel is at least trying to teach me to open up a little.  Despite his childish tendencies I can usually tolerate his presence.  He wants to be my friend, but I don't think he realizes what that means.  I don't even know what that means. I just know it's not going to be easy. 

How important is it to have friends anyways? Do I really have to have them?