iattractmushi | ❦ 13th Record

❦ 13th Record

Valeth-san, Target-san - I'm fit for duty again. Hope nothing dire happened while I was [slight pause] unavailable.

Sniper, Youth, Smoke, Snake, [pause] Silvar [little ink blot] you guys ok?

Lea, Castor, Pollux - [long, long pause] thanks.

[[Yeah, he pretty much booked it out of the Spa as soon as he regained his sight, lol. Now somewhere on Melee island, possibly up a tree.]]

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[Cloud fiddled with the hair over his left eye, his gaze drifting away from Sniper a little to skim over the bookshelves. Briefly, he wondered how long this place would stay. He wouldn't mind spending some time here, later... but back to the matter at hand.

Bugs, huh... when Prince had told him that the creatures he drew in the journal looked like some kind of insect, for a moment Cloud had thought he had written mushi. On second glance, he realized the man had... but it had been written in a way that meant 'insect' instead of... well, mushi seemed to be something fundamentally different, that much was clear, but the fact that they were pronounced the same way was something. Cloud had no idea what, but even an unclear something was better than nothing at all.] Sounds about right... [He sighed, wishing for a cigarette... the voice from his first dream echoed in his ears, briefly. On second thought maybe it was better he didn't have one in this place.] The one I learned about in the memory I got had a pretty interesting ability. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say 'interesting eating habits'..."

[Sniper took a few steps backward until he ran into a table and settled himself on top, his skinny legs swinging idly as he listened, fiddling with the corner of a page in the book all the while.] So what did it do?

[As flighty as he could be, Sniper was often the perfect listener--he had a tendency to sit quietly and attentively stare at whoever happened to be talking at the moment. This instance was no exception.]

It was... [He didn't really need to tell Sniper where it had apparently been living. This story was a bit to close to their own situation... Cloud himself felt somewhat unsettled when he thought about it.] ...eating her memories, slowly. Bit by bit.

[He leaned back against a nearby bookshelf, idly flipping through the pages of his new book for lack of anything to do with his hands.] Apparently, it was a kind of mushi that liked living in the shadows of trees until it found a host.

Eating her... memories? [The story was clearly an unsettling one, and its similarities to their current home was uncanny. He shut the book entirely this time around, not even bothering to mask his unease with his incessant fiddling and placed the book neatly off to the side.]

I guess you don't have to say what that reminded you of, [he said, the corners of his mouth turning up briefly in an uncomfortable smirk. Sniper looked down at his hand for a moment, running his nail down the hardened callous on the tip of his thumb that he was born with. He realized now that it had been from using his weapon, and practicing with his slingshot was starting to wear down at his skin again but it had softened considerably during his idle months. What else had they forgotten? What else had the tree... eaten? That was as good a word as any, but it did make him wonder.]

I wonder if that memory eating mushi is here?

[What if the cocoons were covered in that stuff, and they were stuck there until the mushi had had their fill? Was that possible? It probably was. How long were they in the cocoons for?]

Do you think that that mushi was in the--

[He cut himself off abruptly, wrinkling his nose and glanced quickly around the library, as if checking for some mysterious force that would suddenly come and whisk them away for even daring to think about it.]

[Cloud flipped the pages a few more times then stuck the book under his arm.] I don't know... I haven't seen any of the... symptoms I was describing in the memory. [Not yet, anyway.] ...but the memory crystals seem to work exactly the opposite way that mushi does.

[He looked over sharply at Sniper's half-asked question, his mind completing the sentence--'in the cocoons'.] I... heh. I have no idea. [A half-swallowed sigh.] ...it's one theory. Not exactly a comforting one...

[Sniper looked relieved when Cloud appeared to be able to finish his thought for him--maybe it wasn't safe to say out loud, but it was certainly an idea he'd like to discuss, even if it was only speculation. At this point, it didn't seem entirely inconceivable that it was the cocoons doing this to them.]

But it's still a possibility, right? I mean, nobody knows how long we were inside those things for.

[He shut his eyes, tapping his finger thoughtfully against his chin.] There's no way to tell for sure. So if memory crystals give us specific memories, then that mushi stuff you were talking about takes specific things away?

[Sniper did agree that the theory wasn't a very comforting one; after all, what could be scarier than lying motionless in an encasing that was slowly sucking your memories away? But the truth was often a frightening thing, and in this sort of place he craved answers.

But not enough to get killed. The running commentary going on in his head argued that going out to find the truth and save everybody in the process even if it meant going into danger was what a true man would do, but Sniper found that he valued his own skin more than that. He'd leave that stuff up to reckless people like King.]

[Cloud shook his head, not because he disagreed but because he didn't have any answers to give Sniper.] Specific things, yeah, but random ones. From what I was saying, the kagedama--that's the mushi's name--chooses something like the memory of a sneeze, or dango, and eats that. The woman would have lost all memory of what a sneeze was if that happened. The memory crystals seem to be... a lot broader than the mushi in their effects, returning entire pieces of our memories instead of just one specific thing.

[Cloud stopped talking for a second. He hadn't meant to go on like that... he cleared his throat, and muttered,] Anyway... there's no way to tell if that particular mushi is in the cocoon or not, but I don't think it is. According to my memory there's no way to remove that one... and we're gaining memories, not still losing them.

Edited 2010-09-27 03:46 (UTC)

The kagedama... [Sniper repeated slowly as to keep it preserved in his mind. Anything to do with memories was important in this place, and he would spend ages berating himself if he forgot something through sheer incompetence alone.] So that can't be it, but that doesn't mean it's not here somewhere.

If there's one that eats memories, then could there be one that restores them? [He wondered aloud, then gave a reassuring smile to Cloud.] This stuff's pretty creepy, but the more we know, the more likely we are to actually figure out what's going on here, right?

[Assuming that they did, in fact, want to know.] It sounds like your memories are pretty useful.

[Cloud shrugged.] I'm not ruling anything out. [Though he still had the nagging feeling that if there was any kind of mushi in Edensphere, he would know about them by now...]

...I guess there might be? [Cloud sighed, a touch exasperated, and rubbed his hand through his hair.] I just don't know enough about... yeah. Yeah, every little thing helps. [He shook his head, smiling slightly.] Sorry. It's kind of frustrating... I should know this stuff.

[He chuckled.] Now if I only had a few more, it might let me put the pieces together... or maybe not, but at least I'd have other pieces then.

[Sniper shrugged, and gave Cloud a reassuring half-smile, more helpless than happy but more wistful than sad.] We should know a lot of things. But maybe you'll get more memories about it, especially if it was that big of a part of your life.

[He knocked his heels together.] And I'll get more memories of that ship. [He hopped off the table in a smooth motion and clapped Cloud on the back in a friendly sort of way.] What are we doing sitting around here talking about such gloomy things when we've still got a huge castle to explore? You like learning about things, I can tell--so let's look around here. Maybe we'll even find a book on mushi.

[He nodded, certain that he would--it wasn't just important, it felt like it was his life.] The one you drew in your journal? [He smiled as Sniper hopped off the table, straightening up from his slouch against the bookshelves just in time for Sniper to clap him on the back.]

Heh. Sounds like a plan to me. There are so many books here, I'm sure we'll find a few worth bringing back to Edensphere. [Hopefully they wouldn't run into that crazy painted knight again, but if they did, oh well.]

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❦ 13th Record

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