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Entry tags:
- !ic,
- *action,
- *video,
- @carter blake,
- @chiaki nanami,
- @jimmy two-shoes,
- @kyouko kirigiri,
- @maka albarn,
- @makoto naegi,
- @parker,
- @walter,
- also the fuzzball legion,
- attempting to unbreak himself,
- come poke him or something,
- eevee drill squad,
- flawless social skills,
- honey do you talk to humans,
- honor student failed feelings 101,
- inspiring the masses,
- ishimaru please stop talking,
- lots of feelings about justice,
- oh honey no,
- prayer circle for johto,
- really now,
- someone make him stop,
- we are yelling!!,
- you tried
012. Video/Action for Goldenrod City
[VIDEO]
[Ishimaru is outside again today, seeming to be taking advantage of the nice weather while it holds; at least he's looking at the camera today, and his gaze is shifting...a little less, maybe. He still seems a bit tired but at least he's calm; the view behind him is, once again, that square in Goldenrod near the Center.]
The place I came from put a lot of emphasis on punishment...both for what we did, and what we didn't do. Failure to act in a certain way, to do as we were told, was punished; failure to not act in the way that we were expected to was likewise punished. Rules and laws and "justice" were used to control us, not to guide or help us; instead of keeping us safe, they were used to tear us down.
No matter what we did, we were going to be wrong.
[His voice remains firm but calm through all that; he's not shouting, but he doesn't seem about to cry, either. Just...working through it, really.]
When situations are hard like that, and seem unwinnable, it's easy to forget what justice is intended for. It's meant to protect people, and most importantly, it's meant to give people hope - for themselves, and for the future!
So even if...even if you haven't always done what's right, even if you've made mistakes or taken punishment - if you choose to do right afterwards, the wrong you've done doesn't have to define you!
I think there comes a time when you deserve to be considered good again!
[...yep, there's the shouting.]
It's not going to be easy - it's something I'm still working on, too. But if we're willing to work hard and not lose hope, I think we'll all be all right, in the end! We just have to do our best.
I hope today is both good and productive for you, and if not, I know that tomorrow will be better!
[ACTION]
[Returning to Goldenrod City has been...strange.
It's not strange in the way that coming to a new place tends to be strange, or perhaps returning to an old place that's changed drastically in your absence; there's no lack of familiarity, and if anything the strangeness is caused by just the opposite - there's a weird sense of returning home to it, and Ishimaru isn't entirely sure what to do with that. He hasn't felt that way since before Hope's Peak; it's weird to experience it now, but it's not altogether unwelcome.
...granted, it's not something he has long to dwell on; he finishes the video and takes a while to just...collect himself, but eventually he heads back to the house. And as soon as he manages to get the front door opened there's a sudden sharp skittering of nails against the floor and the vibrations of twenty-odd Eevees hup-hup-hupping their way down the stairs, and he flinches a little and braces for the moment where the swarm hits -
And then there's a thud, and there is quite simply nothing.
...
... ... ...
Huh.
It takes him a moment to open his eyes, given that they'd slid closed while he was in the middle of preparing for impact; apparently the thud was the fuzzball legion all sitting in unison, and now they're just kind of parked on the floor and headtilting like confused pugs because grandpa's home and we sat and why is he just standing there.
He's clearly going to be spending some time playing with the fuzzballs today, because oh my god they did so well. c: ]
[Ishimaru is outside again today, seeming to be taking advantage of the nice weather while it holds; at least he's looking at the camera today, and his gaze is shifting...a little less, maybe. He still seems a bit tired but at least he's calm; the view behind him is, once again, that square in Goldenrod near the Center.]
The place I came from put a lot of emphasis on punishment...both for what we did, and what we didn't do. Failure to act in a certain way, to do as we were told, was punished; failure to not act in the way that we were expected to was likewise punished. Rules and laws and "justice" were used to control us, not to guide or help us; instead of keeping us safe, they were used to tear us down.
No matter what we did, we were going to be wrong.
[His voice remains firm but calm through all that; he's not shouting, but he doesn't seem about to cry, either. Just...working through it, really.]
When situations are hard like that, and seem unwinnable, it's easy to forget what justice is intended for. It's meant to protect people, and most importantly, it's meant to give people hope - for themselves, and for the future!
So even if...even if you haven't always done what's right, even if you've made mistakes or taken punishment - if you choose to do right afterwards, the wrong you've done doesn't have to define you!
I think there comes a time when you deserve to be considered good again!
[...yep, there's the shouting.]
It's not going to be easy - it's something I'm still working on, too. But if we're willing to work hard and not lose hope, I think we'll all be all right, in the end! We just have to do our best.
I hope today is both good and productive for you, and if not, I know that tomorrow will be better!
[ACTION]
[Returning to Goldenrod City has been...strange.
It's not strange in the way that coming to a new place tends to be strange, or perhaps returning to an old place that's changed drastically in your absence; there's no lack of familiarity, and if anything the strangeness is caused by just the opposite - there's a weird sense of returning home to it, and Ishimaru isn't entirely sure what to do with that. He hasn't felt that way since before Hope's Peak; it's weird to experience it now, but it's not altogether unwelcome.
...granted, it's not something he has long to dwell on; he finishes the video and takes a while to just...collect himself, but eventually he heads back to the house. And as soon as he manages to get the front door opened there's a sudden sharp skittering of nails against the floor and the vibrations of twenty-odd Eevees hup-hup-hupping their way down the stairs, and he flinches a little and braces for the moment where the swarm hits -
And then there's a thud, and there is quite simply nothing.
...
... ... ...
Huh.
It takes him a moment to open his eyes, given that they'd slid closed while he was in the middle of preparing for impact; apparently the thud was the fuzzball legion all sitting in unison, and now they're just kind of parked on the floor and headtilting like confused pugs because grandpa's home and we sat and why is he just standing there.
He's clearly going to be spending some time playing with the fuzzballs today, because oh my god they did so well. c: ]
[locked]
[...]
I don't think you're a bad person - maybe you'll just call me naive again, but I think there's a difference between being a terrible person and being someone who's done terrible things.
[locked]
[He wants to protest that he knows Ishimaru wouldn't kill anybody. Then again, he knows he'd never shoot an innocent man, either. Look how that turned out.
He's expecting horror. A How could you, or a How could you hide this at the very least.
He's not expecting understanding, and the shock is stark on his face.]
You think so?
[locked]
[He doesn't miss that look; he isn't altogether sure what to do with it, or how he feels about it, but he's not changing his mind, either.
He hesitates just the same, though.]
I told you some things about the situation in the school, correct? About how we're all locked in there and can't get out or contact the outside, and the person who did it is making us kill each other? That's the condition for if we want to leave - we have to kill one of our classmates and get away with it. We were given things that could be used as weapons, and goaded once in a while by the person responsible.
One of the girls tried to kill someone and ended up stabbed to death in a shower with her own knife; the boy who did it tried to say that it was self-defense, but there was a lot of evidence that says that probably wasn't the case.
One of the boys had problems that the person responsible used to their advantage and manipulated; he ended up having an episode and bludgeoning a smaller boy to death. He didn't even remember doing it.
According to people who are from further in the timeline than me, I'm going to lose my mind in about twelve hours. I become violent and unstable to a point where someone believes I hurt someone else and smashes my head in - I've seen the weapon he's going to use to do it, this last time in the school. He's going to get killed by the girl who told him to kill me shortly after.
Another girl is going to commit suicide. Another boy is nearly going to be crushed, and the only thing that saves him is a mechanical failure. One of the other girls thought she was safe, but her sister set up a trap for her and she was impaled on something.
[His voice is strange, when he recounts all that; it's almost alarmingly empty, devoid of the usual emotion behind his words. He's reciting it like he would facts from a textbook; his gaze is going a bit distant, but he's still there.
He's just very, very tired. Maybe not physically, but the sort that takes everything out of you mentally.]
Every time someone dies, we have a trial. During that trial, we're supposed to find out who the culprit is; we talk about the evidence we found, because we're allowed a few hours to investigate the body, and then we have to vote on who we're handing over to the person running the game. If we're right and hand over the murderer, they get executed; if we're wrong, we're all killed and the murderer is allowed to leave the school.
I handed over one of my classmates to die, and deliberately affected the vote of another trial - I didn't want to see the culprit executed for personal reasons, and we thought the vote had to be unanimous. So I voted for someone else and hoped that in the best case scenario I would be killed for voting incorrectly, and in the worst that everyone else would die but the culprit would be spared.
[locked]
He's done a lot of hearing this kind of story. Usually it takes coaxing and questions, leading them on, trying to get it all straight and calling them back when they break down crying or stare into nowhere. It would have made his job a lot easier if there were more like Ishimaru who just listed off the facts.
Of all the sick shit he's seen in his life - and there's a list that'd take days to read down - this is something special. Something elaborate. Usually the nasty shit gets its special oomph from the makeshift brutality that comes in the heat of the moment. A head smashed in a freezer door, a nailfile through somebody's hand. The rarest thing is a plan.
What Ishimaru is talking about is orchestrated. Meticulous pre-fucking-meditation. Most murders don't actually have that many moving parts. Guy shoots a guy with a gun. Maybe if he's the real intellectual type, he thought about it first. The real world's messy and unpredictable. You don't really see elaborate horror-movie mad-scientist set-ups.
He can think of one exception.]
Christ. That is a special kind of sick. Making you into a part of the machine.
[Don't even do the dirty work yourself - give them no choice but to do it for you.
Conviction darkens Blake's eyes.]
It was never you. Any of you. You get that, right? There was one murderer there. They just used some of you as the fucking weapons. No real court in the god damn world would hold you responsible.
Now, the other way around, if I was up on one of those trials of yours... [There'd be some kind of weird justice in that. In front of a court of kids, for a crime that a kid suffered for.
It's a total honesty that he looks at Ishimaru with. In a way, it's kind of comforting. Bright and certain as headlights when you're standing in the middle of the road.]
I wouldn't give a lot for my chances.
[locked]
Well. There's a sense of relief to it, one that runs deep.
He shuts it away for now, though, and focuses on the rest.]
Whatever would have happened in one of our trials wouldn't have meant anything, though - they didn't determine whether someone was a good or a bad person, and they didn't determine whether someone actually deserved to die for what they did. They were murder, too.
[locked]
This kid has to know that it's not his fault. That's important. He can't do a damn thing to hurt the son of a bitch who did this to him, but maybe he can point his hate in the right direction.
Blake shakes his head.] A real court wouldn't be kind, either. I wouldn't be put under for it, but...yeah, if I didn't have people on my side, I'd get put away for a long time.
[He's always known that. It's different to say, though.
The kid should know the truth.]
I've hurt a lot of people bad, Ishimaru. And there wasn't any gun to my head.