"Why doesn't she travel continually with us?"
Before losing his mind from the antagonizing heat with his soles numbed like the shoes had been melting by the scorching ground they walked on or something, Hyacinth tried to concentrate on his retrospective journal while the twin suns poked a million of their intangible needles of high temperature on his skin and almost made him forget what he was curious about all the time but had never asked until then. Apollo - as if the suns had favored him, as if he was one of the sun himself - stepped nonchalantly on the sandy layer full of their slowly forgotten footsteps running in trails, attitude unchanged when facing this vast desert with no end to it like all the lands on this planet were stuffed within a hourglass, and without turning back to look at his servant, answered the question coldly. "She has her own life."
Being unable to find any reply, the boy silently plodded after his boss as a loyal pet he always was, eyes lowered to the miniscule particles dripping into the inside of his footwear and the tiny bits pierced into his feet sorely, and he could not help but decrease his speed. Usually if the girly companion was together with them, she would taunt him with a mockery calling him 'weakkk' or roll her eyes several times while blaming him to slow them down (in fact she rolled her eyes a lot it could be considered eye abuse), but then they always stopped and had a rest afterwards. It just how they got used to each other, and when comparing to most, people he had spent time together before meeting this familiar 'association', she was actually kind of decent, just had a bad habit of spitting gall as remarks in verbal communication. Obviously, her honeyed tongue was only preserved for the superiors or ones that she could exploit effectively.
At the same time when Hyacinth thought about Clytie, her mind was also loitering on the regret of her sudden departure, in a place faraway from them on her expensive mid-engined SUV soiled with dust that created a sandstorm behind its rolling wheels, shiny metallic bumper reflecting the sunlight and created a mobile radiance flickering on the meandering waves of arenaceous bits, fenders painted white while most of the body painted blue the same color as Apollo's irises, hot white steam buffeted from the exhaust pipe like a chainsmoker on his daily routine of polluting the air, and the way it surfed on the desert resembled an expert predator meticulously aiming at its prey - 40 mph until it reached the destination. When she bought this car and decided to redesign it with the suggestion of her 'friend', she had an attempt to make its appearance echoed the exquisiteness of her idol, but not because she wanted to ride him or something (neither to drive him; it was merely because he was pretty suitable as an icon for everything, alright?). This baby of her had a 31-gallon fuel tank that she drained quickly with her self-pleasuring habit; she wished it could have been more but Hyacinth said it was a car, not a truck. 120 horsepower, a fulltime 4-wheel-drive system, locking differentials, 2-speed transfer case, power steering, central tire inflation system - best designated traits for the sake of a majestic baby; everything was for a splendid usage on offroad terrain.
She was heading home, or at least where could be called a home with her lovely mother in it. The concept of family was quite ambiguous to Clytie since a young age since she learned that her parents entered a marriage of convenience for financial and proprietary purpose, but it could not be said that they did not get engaged out of love - rather an instantaneous attraction that in a fashion of a thunderbolt striked father and mother during a business meeting back in the newly successful days. With the connection of two corporation and their CEOs concurring each other's mindsets (on a sidenote, her grandparents were chairmen), a longterm joint venture soon proceeded to an espousal, hence 'she' was born with a silver spoon in her mouth. All that happened before the splitup between The Great Gasby of a dad and Jane Eyre of a mom that resulted in Clytie being torn apart by confusion of inability to choose who to follow, in which she picked the option of staying with her mom but secretly harbored a lingering repentance for her dad, thus later on ended up lurking around Apollo for his daddyish vibe reminding of her old man (and while people might find him acting immature, he was actually quite a man of hidden maturity - just an incredibly bold one in term of outward manner).
The enchanting vocables on the tip of his tongue...
"I know what I'm doing."
...lured her into a phantasmagoria...
"Shut... "
...with no escape.
"...up."
And she loved it.
When she was younger she wondered why her parents did not get a divorce already, the truth was they did not have spare time for that, especially when the whole situation became much more complex to deal since there was no prenuptial agreement in the beginning. At least the alimony was unnecessary since both of them were rich, but the division of property, and most significantly - child custody, were deemed no more than a mess that needed to handle professionally, and when they said 'professionally', it meant avoiding those potential complications by not divorcing but separating with statuses of spouses kept. Clytie still had to choose one among them as they agreed to divide into different households, and inside her selfish mind of a child the desire for living with both of them rolled around persistently, 'anyone was fine, godamnit, why can't I have both?'. Needy, but that was who she was, that was how she was aspired to climb higher - because she was needy, and greedy. How ridiculous those avarice tendencies even affected her loves for her parents; 'but everyone want to possess what they cherish', or at least she did. 'Papa and mama are independent adults, they don't need to cling on each other', this starting as the simplest explanation of their circumstance (that could be comprehended by the silly-silly tiny missy) developed into a conditioned series of growing into a maverick, and one day the little sunflower would turn into someone like that too - aloof and individualistic with great expectations of self to fulfill.
"Damn it." She spat her shriek curse into the hot air densed around her sweating body as her dainty fingers tightened around the driver wheel, drop and drop and drop of saltiness within the liquid and within her psyche soaked into the gainsboro seat. Clytie tried to adjust her thermal comfort but as she checked the mini air conditioner had been turned to its lowest possible temperature, well fuck this. 'Summertime, an' the livin' is NOT easy. Please excuse me Mr. George Gershwin, but I hate summer, and anyone who has 'summer' in his name.' She could have mumbled those loitering thoughts, but focusing on driving was more important, and even though she was desperate of getting to a snowland where she could enjoy her fancy winter dresses (which was unfortunately nonexistent on this globe), going back to home was still more important, but she gotta reached her private garage in the nearby town to switch her vehicle to an all-wheel-drive before that - the next road she would be driving on was an asphalt-covered one. Safety first, and she could increase the travelling speed.
Hey, a 4wd-low like the one she was driving could operate on snow as well as sand, both surfaces had low traction anyway.
.
Enough of this tomfoolery, Apollo would have someone to manage those delinquents for him instead.
Perhaps some people did not realize how permissive he was until they started to work with Hyacinth, as back then the tacit rules were to toil with their best efforts in order to survive, not to mention they could do whatever they enjoyed outside their jobs and even try to escape from such occupation - as a boss he didn't care much about them to be honest. Why the hell did those employees have to make their working conditions more unnecessarily stressful?
The blue hair guy's facial expression remained unchanged when Apollo informed to those workers that Hyacinth would be in charge of them semidirectly (of course without explaining the reason for such assignment), and almost immediately after finishing his brief notification he could hear someone whispered, "That guy?" Yes, this guy. Hello, Apollo adopted him as a young age, and although the man's child rearing ability was a joke in which he never bothered to make it better, as least he was attentive enough to nurture a pseudo-Marty Stue that could act as his deputy. This secretary of him was a produce of multiple parenting styles he studied from materials on developmental psychology (see, at least he tried), with neither of them applied probably nor strictly enough to fully affect the kid (in which Hyacinth's manner was docile in any of those methods anyway so somehow the outcome was still preserved, yeah?). One day the lunatic 'dad' could be all attentive and so on because he had nothing else more interesting to do - but mostly he stayed authoritarian because he was the fucking boss here, another day he went completely uninvolved with not a single interaction performed - as he needed to rest and sleep for this deteriorated body to be healed before it got worse (and it did, hah).
"So, why is your hair blue?" Out of curiosity, Orpheus - a saxophonist in Apollo's personal army - asked the menial of the lord; he had better try to get friendly with this guy just in case.
"None of your business. I'm here to monitor your progressions, not to answer your trivial questions." Ok, the musician's attempt didn't work. Behind Orpheus, an one-eyed gunslinger and an odd-looking man in an outfit similar to a spiky sphere eyed at each other suggestively for a silent exchange of agreement on how they disliked their manager since the first impression, 'cocky brat'. Hyacinth caught the sight of that interaction, but the only thing in his mind in regard of such moment was how that man looked like a high dimensional hypercube of probably at least seven units, or maybe a puffer ball if only that armor somehow turned soft (he had never known what puffer balls were created for, perhaps as toys to throw into people's faces without actually hurting them, which seemed kinda useless).
"Chotto matte. That means we are going to discuss our business with you instead of our boss from now on?" The samurai stepped up and voiced out his question, and secretly he was hopeful of smoother interpersonal interactions among fellow humans with this new dude in charge (assuming that blue-haired weirdo was a human) yet half of him found it would be disappointing if their supervisor was actually the same kind as them. More familiarity, less challenges; more pent-up ennui, less excitement of continuing this stressful job - that would summarize the Japanese's attitude.
Hyacinth knew the Asian said "chotto matte", but somehow he intentionally bent the words as 'choco latte' and had two second drifting his thoughts to food and beverages before he could speak about the current topic. "You people will still have your symposia with Midvalley as usual and have him reporting your results after missions to me. Since he's already your spokesman it'll be more convenient to have him talk with you."
"Wait, I am?" It could not be helped that Orpheus perceived that statement as suprising, for unknown reason he suddenly found himself in a position he did not even know he was in.
"Aren't you? Master Knives said you're the most representative of all Guns."
"Uhm... Sure, I'll look over us employees." As a realist he adapted to the situation just fine; positively speaking this could be an opportunity to gain certain advantages, so why not?
.
With his mini-military being watched by someone else, Apollo got back to his bulb to rest and think, because he had to have something in his mind otherwise he would go insane with boredom or worse - a feeling of vanity about his existence. Cogito, ergo sum; and the cozy atmosphere of this container was suitable for such activity of having oneself drown in notions. Sometimes he thought of how to control those vermin he kept in his domain as drudges more effectively, sometimes about how those human sinners sabotaged their own living conditions, sometimes about a new scientific publications, but mostly it was about several incremental approaches to his ambition. For this time he would share a bit of his concerns for one of his minion.
Elendira. In their first conversation outside an overly embellished plaza where her parents held a business conference in which Apollo got involved in that aristocratic circle with his distribution of lost technologies, he asked her, "Why 'l' instead of 'r'? Why not Erendira? Too casual of a name for you?", and she answered, "Because people would call me 'Eren' short for 'Erendira', that's a Turkish name for a boy, not my favourite Spanish name for a girl." Apollo almost chuckled, a girl, okay... "Besides, 'Elen' sounds close to 'Elena' in case somebody gets mistaken of my moniker, which is also a very lovely feminine name."
"What does 'Erendira' mean in Spanish?"
"It means 'she who smiles'." No wonder, she surely smiled a lot, with her usual confident demeanor.
Back in that day, the great yonder was as tall as ever with lazy clouds floated languorously in their daily siesta and the breezes blew in a relaxing manner with no tiny obnoxious particles getting lifted from the earthy ground by Zephyrus's magic and fly right into their eyes like how it usually occurred, flamboyant ornamental walls had their complex patterns reflected in the pellucid gems of sapphire when Apollo tracked how far those details would reach, and Clytie followed him as they chattered on random topics while strolling down the fancy halls continuing one another. He could not recall well what they talked about in that colloquy - something about the frequent protests of disturbed citizens, post-truth politics where even politicians threw emotions into one another's faces too habitually, ludicrous propaganda all over the media, failed application of Keynesian economy leading into recession, violence came to be a norm among the whole scene of social degradation, jails slowly becoming more vastly constructed than schools and churches thus those beneficial infrastructures in due course evolved into orphanages,... Their planet was really a jar of kodoku practice where strongest insects ravished one another to become the best. "I find myself having no difference to those athirst psychos." she said, which was not one bit suprising considering how she was raised by a family among those elite super-rich - those who were most successful of their routinely commited tax evasion, those who pursued advantages from this state of crony capitalism, those who cherished lies as petrol for their collusion to function effectively. '1% stands against the 99%, go on and ignore them or hate them with your best bitterness', that would be how opulent jerks typically behaved, and while hanging around with them for financial gains Apollo often sniggered at that common deportment of his collaborators (and he was aware that many of them would betray their own species to conserve their heydays), forasmuch as he never identified with the 100% of population on this globe, except for that only one. Getting along with humans was acceptable though, particularly with exceptional libertines such as this 'lady' who was rambling to him how much she was into investment; hey, maybe he should suggest her about money laundering through stock exchanges, the not-too-bad-of-a-spider adolescent seemed potential for such activities, and the AML laws on Gunsmoke in general were quite defective anyway.
"My antisocial muse." Clytie called him so and he reacted sardonically, 'you can't be antisocial if you're not a part of society in the first place'. It was not like did not care of how mankind operated - as he had better understand them if he desired to obliterate them, Apollo just got sick of their hypocrisy, however fairly speaking eveyone including him were more or less hypocrites, so in the end it was about people with certain flaws detesting ones with different flaws from them due to the varieties of standards. Sometimes he tried to reason, what made him more deserving of owning this sandy sphere than those high-functioning parasites? Evolutionary advancements? Excessive physical and mental abilities? Overpowered capabilities? And apart from those, what else?
Egocentrically saying he Apollo did not care that much about whether he was above anyone or anyone above him (oftentimes he eliminated them quickly to avert future hindrances, better took notices to such eventualities), everyone made a position of oneself in which he excluded himself from the rest regularly. The maniacs had their own places, he made his own place, peculiarly the others tended to incorporate him in their hierarchical system - usually at somewhere on top even though he did not request them to give him reverence or even respect, they just automatically did it. Pitiful humans deluded themselves with the belief that their positions were assigned by his influences while Apollo gave no fuck about the evaluations of any individual's self-worth, he just found them significant or insignificant, invaluable or dispensable. Was that an inferiority complex they were having to feel insecure by his impact on them? Lame; undeniably capable people did not need to get admited to maintain their abilities, conversely people feeling secured of their own positions did not mean they were already adept (not to consider ones who were too assured of themselves tended to omit acknowledging their limits, thus it got harder for them to progress). Apollo simpered and recall the time a spy quitting on assassinating him even before a try, because the sneaky spider was scared, because his intuition screamed 'danger' when he approached the interdimensional creature near enough, because he erased himself from their game with his intrinsic timidity (which kept him alive; really, Apollo could have spare the poor thing if he entertained him with any speck of courage he could sense of, in which there was none). Boring, fucking boring. Thankfully they were also too unconfident to drag him into a mess of tall poppy syndrome, as he did not give a damn or have time for that shit. Quite a practical obliviousness he had, actually.
"I like how you set your principles to yourself before others." Clytie commented on his pragmatic ignorance, perhaps that was why he was interested in her. What she told her make him admitted about deliberately blending the contrasting characteristics within his management of everything with simplistic foundations so he could control his hired assassins easier - to all his workers, it was either living or dying, getting their jobs done or having their heads decapitated. Initially they could do anything they wanted, he did not care about the comings and goings of lower pests, they could even run away and never come back without his recognition, since with their limited knowledge and restricted awarenesses of his region's inner system they would not make any use for those who wished to hunt him down anyway. Ironically with that basic rules he was also acting as an indirect dictator of an employer; he picked criminals because they had no other place to go except for prison or death so they crawled to him for welfare with a bonus of their private information erased from citizen database, when they chose to escape he just had them getting hunted by letting their identities spread around for the police or bounty hunters to track or had them killed by his reliable agents who dealt with stuff he did not have time to do - especially Hyacinth with his paranoia of betrayals to Apollo by the personal army, which made him a retentive freak. So, did that make him a totalitarian or a liberal leader? Well that was a rhetorical question; the answer was 'definitely a Machiavellian' even though Pharisaically he denied to be one, or at least he was a frank opportunist, excuse anyone who discerned otherwise. Every single person was a composition of paradoxes and he was fine with accommodating such antinomies.
From sticking to those favored principles he somehow attained an outstandingly useful supporter. When Clytie offered herself "Seems interesting. I want to try being in your team." he went "What?", not really because he was suprised but rather amused although he could read her true nature clearly, still it was quite an abrupt confession. Apollo grinned, "I'll think about that.", and of course she accepted cheerfully his invitation of her to his crew in an another day.
Clytie soon became one in the pair of his most treasured 'possessions' but he kept her quite distant, mostly due to the winter princess's background that required recurrent participation in order to work out and mask her secretive association with him, and also due to the efficiency of her wickedness making that breathing sunflower a perfect hidden Guns to watch over his low-level laborers from within the dark, but most of all he could not objectify her officially with such status she obtained - unlike that Mediterranean ventilating apotropaic talisman, her self-esteem was quite towering. Their codes of honors might collide for such egos to be adjacent, they could be fatal to each other as much as they were toward everyone else. Treating Clytie appropriately was a new degree of challenge comparing to the general Guns, but originally in any circumstance he always had to evaluate elements of his system to prevent personal principles of each fighter being unduly diminished by the codes of conducts (so their proficiencies would not drop out of uncertainties) and also to make sure those hitmen being unable to step on the rules without making those regulations too radically. To what extent should freedom be allowed? That was a concernment dated back to the Age of Enlightenment when the philosophers were worried of freedom getting misunderstood and turning disorganized. When personal principles were trivialized by the stiffness of administration, the absoluteness of one's ideals also got reduced and what was left of such curtailment would be the resignation of oneself into a blind obedience of so-called 'conformity', resulting in several troubles such as deindividuation or majoritarianism - in the long run either people synchronized themselves or held their heads high with dissidence and became targets of hostilities like how Socrates was a victim of Athens. From another point of view, if everyone put too many idiosyncratic values into the already constrained ethics, they would go back to the original state of anarchic that needed to be resolved for the minimal stability - even lawless people had their own difficulties. This was so repetitive he did not even want to discuss it again.
Laws and ethics - hang on a second. To mention the loose enforcement of laws and ethics in his group, it should be noted that not the entire soldiery he collected was lax toward disciplines. It was a fucking hotpot anyway, and sometimes he wondered how the hell did he even gathered those creeps with such diverse characteristics - definitely powers of all types, gladly he worked hard. One way or another his system had to lean toward a state of pseudo-dictatorship in order to keep them from ruining his plans (that most of them did not even knew about) with their egotistical arrogances and extinguish any possibly upcoming coup d'état (which would not work well with such obvious difference in puissances). The ones with most restrictions (funnily, made by themselves) were members of a cult called Eye of Michael which was based on a theocracy that worshipped his species (and Apollo did not care why the hell they did that), they were a perfect example of how a system was drastically moralized; he could imagine the way they turned against one another with alternative opinions and individualistic ideologies started to develop within such manipulative network of religious fanaticism. How ridiculous, but then Apollo who put faith in himself the most and barely shared it for anyone would not comprehend fully such mindsets to objectively judge them, he just found them ludicrous - and useful. Humanity was truly a fuckload of chaos.
The more he wandered in thoughts the more he found himself small compared to this universe, and rather unrealistic, howbeit everyone is a bit of a realist and a dreamer - he put his mentality in between them and never leaned into any side nor had them mingled, to be honest. Everyone had a subjective reality for themselves, but the objective reality belonged to nobody, maybe except for 'god' if such one was real; it was just it, axiomatically existed without the descriptions by any adjectives. Red - ones who ascertained the world to be a playground full of potentials as toys probably had not seen much the abominable sides of it; blue - ones who ferreted out its repugnant attributes and got engulfed in them probably had dismissed how frabjous of a Wonderland it could be. He was in favor of pessimistic, truthfully saying, but he defied it as much as he defied how the current era was worthy of living. Well, every era would undergo its own problems though, hence all zeitgeister eventually have multifarious issues to whine about from their arisen moments to eternity. Farcically he felt excited with that mess, either one would asphyxiate himself in the intersections of such forces of contradictions or die at once and discard everything. One of the things he was enthusiastic during his prolonged lifespan was to appease his inquisitiveness, to seek for something out of his empirical limitations despite of being able to perform logical reasoning procedures to predict and presume entities.
Apollo smirked, he believed he should build a new realm in replacement of this one. Delusional much, but for decades that raison d'être had been the ultimate source of novelty - he could not let it go. And again in his vivid lucidity that vision appeared to be more vivid, Apollo was in a world of lonely series of dreams of which he was the bystander as he had always been; he would be there gazing down the mutual demolitions of pathetic Homo sapiens struggling to trample on one another by the excuse of survival, pushing themselves toward a hellish stage of barbarism down the lowest level of Maslow hierarchies and suffering while being controlled by such primitive physiological needs, choking and sputtering with shames stuffed into their garrulous mouths which ranted too much about moralities yet could not embrace them properly. The shapes, colors, sounds, sensations were rolling around like ideasthesia linking from one piece of mind to another, from one imaginary tragedy to another. No need to understand, just let him go insane; just another recreational fantasy, say bye bye to logic and say hi to irrationality. Disgusting enough, the similar element of him to humans was that both were not completely rational beings, rather emotional and impulsive at certain points.
.
Apollo felt into his lengthened slumber again, as always. Predictably the boss would swim in abstractions before his mind got consumed by fading consciousness.
With a portion of his chest to head rested on the cold layer of a metal table in a room lacking of illumination except a honeyed luminosity from a dimly glowing lamp, Hyacinth sat quietly and sighed while trying to estimate the hours that had passed since he entered such sickeningly solitary zone and stayed there. Blinking his eyes only to switch between instant junctures of darkness when the lids closed and opened, he guessed the time by then maybe was about 1 A.M. in the morning or later than that. Within the amorphous vastness of the unfathomable universe where rays of starlight took forever to reach earth, one could not stand but compare how short his lifetime was to the interlude between Big Bang and Big Crunch. Tired and bored, everything was engulfed in a clueless vacancy where time dilation affected his (supposed-to-be) youthful mind to sense the acceleration of every moment. He needed to bear his own patience, and got anxious of still being unable to know what he had missed or might have missed during his burial of cognition in the expectation of his master waking up. The only thing that he could do to chase away the boredom and have a sense of existence in this pitch black space was observing tiny dots of lights twinkling from afar, and since they were still visible from all those distances, each of them might be an unsurprisingly giant celestial object if someone came close enough to behold its ginormous size.
How unrelated, Hyacinth cut the insipid analogy to astronomy and glanced at his cup of sweetness that had transmogrified into smoothie or so. About five minutes ago he was still irritated by how his ice cream had melted too quickly but shortly later he could not bother to care a bit of what would happen next. Whatever - even when his dessert turned into a desert he would not flinch any bit. He tried to shift his mind onto the the upcoming plans yet was incapable to run away from random lingering thoughts, besides the comfortable and cool atmosphere of the room also distracted him from systemizing his reports of the Guns' finished tasks. Comically, the lack of stimuli might have given him an experience of Ganzfeld effect on his perception, with reminiscing images appeared from nowhere like lengthened strings pulled out from an invisible loom and started interlacing one another to weave a tapestry depicting his unexpected apprehensions - ones which in the past might have been too ambiguous to be unsettled by them.
Hyacinth listened to his own heartbeats getting faster when time seemed to stop running and so did everything else. He was trapped in the empire of nihility. Eptiness. Nothingness. There is no hope there, not a single touch of liveliness coming from outside reached the place he was in, and he crazed for some kind of magic to happen, even when he did not believe in wonders - not then, not before, maybe except for that one special time and never again - but the only solution that seemed available was to wait. This was not something recently happened, as isolation and loneliness had become an incurable disease a long time ago. He tried to talk, to laugh, to listen to his own voice getting devoured by silence dominating everything; he provoked himself so much and felt so much on insipid matters, to feel alive, to conserve his sanity waiting for a chance to get out of this bottomless abyss, but still got stuck no matter what he did. The indigo lily desperately hoped Apollo would pull him out of this void, unfortunately that angel kept sleeping so elongatedly through the colliding remains of tedious days.
Please help me...
The sudden footsteps echoed from the caliginous hall outside like irregular paces of sluggishly arriving death hit right into his awareness, sounds of determination from those heels stepped harshly onto the white ceramic floor tiles that looked like bars of somber mirrors under the moonlight, shadow reflected on the creamy walls with flowery patterns extended on their lengths in which Apollo liked to track such lines of evenly continued decorations for fun. He forcefully stopped his sentimentality as someone was approaching, and could have attack that person but decided not to after realizing who that was.
"Elendira." The crimson nail.
He voiced out her appellation, how strange that he called her directly like that instead of referring to her tittle. Well, no one was around, and nothing awkward actually mattered within this familiarity between them. He looked up, there were some identifiable droplets falling down on her face blurred by the dark that seemed to get crystallized into liquid pearls within the suffocating density of this morose atmosphere, heavier than water pressure in the bottom of a trench. Was she crying?
Why?
"When Knives... master Knives..." Clytie coughed softly as she added the appellative, secretly she preferred to indicate him intimately by his name. "When he wakes up, please inform that I have to go back to my personal life and can't hang around as often as before, if not seldom from now on."
"You're leaving?"
"Yes, for a long time."
"And let him here unconsciously, in this threatening condition?"
"I'm sorry."
Clytie chuckled in multiple emotions compressing her calmness into a bloody pulp of disappointment, questioning herself where her coolness had gone within this mass of suffocating difficulties in subsistence. Hyacinth would take care of him just fine anyway; Apollo did not indirectly declare that boy to be his most favourite out of no contemplation.
"Good bye."
Her final words were as light as a breath, and within this vague duskiness, she was gone with no explanation.
Author's note: 3-in-1 fic, yay. Representing the trio's perspectives all in one story is quite a game. This is now officially my longest derivative series with this chapter, and I have a load of HxH, Monster, Barbara, Q.E.D., etc. drafts that I don't have the time to write because the Trigun ones are still plentiful I could not leave them there... I feel guilty with my original works too.
Lately I'm too indulged in updating on the Hongkong protest I forgot to write anything decent... Sorry not sorry. I thought it could have been longer; I know it was originally about extradition law growing into further goals but perhaps there is a chance of it developing into something like a yellow vests movement in the future, then to mention it's China that Hongkong is facing. (OK I'll shut up on this topic now it was crazily severe, there were actually suicides during this protest and although I can't concur with how those deaths happened, their last statements were really admirable; I don't want their deaths to become some kind of propaganda but the effects were strong in those cases. Hm, too many mingled pessimism and optimism these chaotic days it feels suffocating.)
Well put aside that severe issue for now and get into the recreational aspects of this chapter. You may ask wtf that backstory of Elendira's family was about and why there was a missing part of how she decided to stay departed from the other two, it's because I still have no idea why she was devout to Knives so I picked the easiest option of possible stories as a base of explanation for her perspective, and had to divide it into at least two chapters in order to reassess about the whole scenerio better. Shameee, and there is no excuse to that since candidly saying I'm currently not into any writing challenge so a slowly revealed one is the best to execute for its multiple possibilities, as there's time to think of an excuse for what happened.
Anyway, Elendira's winter suits made sense in contrast with Legato's 'summer-ism' (how the fuck was that edgy clothing summerish though?), thankfully her dresses were pretty, sadly I didn't describe her closets in the previous chapter because I forgot... Yeah spare me I dismissed a lot of things. Her closet will be represented another time assuming I don't forget about that.
It's funny. Although writing Knives's psyche is entertaining I can't really understand his servants (still want a crew like that though, in my dreams not in reality because that'll be cringey, imagine introducing them as depraved murders who needed to be removed from normal society lmao). I don't want to portray an obvious maniac as someone morally acceptable but I don't concur with having a twisted ideology merely on sadistic impulses like 'she's just a sick fuck' either (yes, that chapter about her was fucking boring it won't be appropriate without any updates), so yeah, this may temporarily work as her background until there's another solution. Elendira was so difficult to writeeeee and I thought Legato's representation was already hard, damn I'm getting back to Knives whining on trivialities, at least his edginess was understandable. The attribute of her that I could feel the most is the 'senpai notice me syndrome', because I have one but much more subtle, lol. Apart from their depravities I have acceptable reasons to like having Elendira and Legato as my kouhai, they're so dedicated.
I'm still confused about the processes in engagement and divorce so the whole manifestation of her parents' marriage seemed quite vague, spare me but I don't plan on getting married anyway so a limited amount of knowledge about it is still fine.
The car Elendira drove was a mimic of one I used to fantasize to own, but with different appearance. One cool thing about Trigun was its representations of vehicles, which were much more attractive than the clothing (sorry Nightow). Don't know if the common technologies (not the 'lost' ones) were advanced enough for such car or not but let's assume she got it modified by her companion if the state of engineering field on the planet wasn't that progressive. Too be honest I was about to flaunt a flashy supercar like a Jesko of 1600 hp but it won't match the theme of sandy land (quite superficial but damn those specifications of supercars are admirable, still impractical though - or at least to ones that can't afford them like me hahaha).
Rambling a little bit more unrelated issue, as I tried to describe it but failed due to the simplicity - the trashy socioeconomical conditions on No Man's Land was despicable, and it was quite perfect to exploit ideas from such states of negativity (wild and rampant of failures in citizens' security) that is totally unique compared to totalitarian settings of fictions I tend to read (which is suitable for a playground of imagination). Ay this attribute of the Gunsmoke planet might be used furthermore later on, I'm thinking of utilizing it as an excuse to whine hahaha although that's annoying but since I easily got provoked by debates my mind kinda shifts to such notions sometimes which tend to end up as recreational fictions somehow...
Also unrelated but somehow I found a Les Misérables fanfic that somehow was more like a gay fiction in which I was enthusiastic with the author's composition of words yet abhor the bizarre characterizations (ay, a beautiful manifestation won't be enough to compensate other elements of the contents). Maybe I was too stiff about seeking close relevance to the authentic work but I'll just stick with Victor Hugo... Make me recall the time someone suddenly said she paired up George and Lennie when I introduced Of mice and men and I secretly wanted to pat on her shoulder and told her 'that's not what's to be focused about...' because come on people forget about the trivial 'shipping' stuff. I also encountered quite an elegantly written Monster's fanfic yet with bent characterizations of Tenma and Johan and somehow realized people love to make normal relationships awkward (they're still like father and son ay ay ay). Not everyone gotta fall romantically for one another, oi; and acting actively affectionate toward someone doesn't mean falling for them, oi. And it's Naoki's Monster not Tezuka's MW, sadly MW is quite unpopular in the current time.
(Now to mention, pairing up real-life characters is even more cringey especially when some have their own families. Some people are like 'no A loves B not C' but who gives a fuckkkkk let they decide for themselves. Just make an original couple out of imagination for that recreational habit or perhaps one could go and write Plato and Socrates fanfic if they like pairing up famous people, lol. Ok I was joking forget it but Plato did write as Socrates persistently).
By the way, since Dororo became popular the fanbase turned ridiculous, for example the lame HyakkiMio and HyakkiDoro war (well at a side note Tezuka did make Hyakkimaru and Mio lovers continually in his star system so why are those two sides fighting, just enjoy your ships personally) and the 'Dororo is tran' blog, wtf give me holy wataaa. This is why it's better not to actually join in any fandom because many people prefer elaborating on irrelevant topics than the actually significant authentic contents (transgenderism is not what Dororo is about so don't dig on it you fucking weirdooooo). Also, call me a bigot but I'm still irked about the oddities in defining 'transgenderism' scientifically (no I don't disagree with APA or WHO, I'm just curious whether their conditions and involvements have anything to do with political correctness suggested by the government or organizations, I don't know...). There was a small detail in chapter 3 and I still can't make up my mind whether I should fix it or not but I'll keep the detail of 'gender dysphoria' though. Damn the LGBT+ movement is making everything unnecessary complicated, please don't even bring chromosomal abnormalities in since we're refering to the general population...
Using the author's note for insipid rants seems to have grown into a bad habit... It still involves a further elaboration on details of the work so sure. Final words, go Hongkong!