—|WARFRAME|—
Earth: the progenitor of mankind. It had been left barren through the seventeen "Radiation Wars" that had engulfed the world. It had then been left to rot as a lifeless husk by the Orokin, who abandoned it for gilded Lua.
Soaring above the gigantic, hundreds of meters wide canopy of the forest were a pack of Condrocs. Scavenger birds that feasted on small prey and carrion. The Kuaka huddled within the roots of the trees emerged from their burrows to scavenge the fallen fruits and Kubrow-maimed carcasses of Grineer left unattended that littered the undergrowth. Their festering bodies nurturing the gray weeds they loathed and so wished to conquer.
Nearby, a waterfall roared. It supplied a unique, crystalline-glinting waters to a lake that flowed into another stream, submerging old Orokin constructs that remained sparkling and were entangled in vines, coated in thick patches of earthen moss. It was a serene image of nature retaking what the golden lords had stolen and destroyed. The world once left barren and dead by the "Radiation Wars", alive and thriving — consuming the garish structures of the dead Orokin.
"Hey, ▇▇▇▇▇," a young man's voice called out as a pair soundlessly crunched the dirt beneath them. One was light in its step, whilst the other was callous in its tread. Despite those differences, none would be capable of discerning it.
The voice belonged to a human... almost. Their form had the essentials of a human form, though it lacked a face and was more akin to a symmetrical automaton. Its skin was a slightly dirtied bleach-white, while their shoulders, neck, back, palms, the sides of their torso, and various other portions of their body was painted a gleaming black. Red lines ran across from the front of their thighs to their hands and their horned head. And speaking of their horned head, it was the most prominent piece of their visual inhumanity.
A smooth faceless, white plate of organic, curved design, with a pair of tiny dots of blue light that one would mistake as eyes, a wave-like horizontal line that ran through the face that made it appear as if it had a mouth, and the single white horn extending shortly from the front of the head.
It was the Excalibur Warframe. The first of the line. And walking beside them was ▇▇▇▇▇, a figure a tad over two meters in height, garbed in a dirtied beige, hooded cloak that veiled every feature. The stance of the hooded figure was decrepit, hunched in a malignant and monstrous manner, as if to tower over others with malice.
"What's that song you're listening to?" the Excalibur - Hayden - asked ▇▇▇▇▇, who turned his indiscernible head toward Hayden. The simple turn was exaggerated with an almost snake-like swerve of their neck and head, with his back following suit.
"Hm? I shall promptly review it and inform you," ▇▇▇▇▇ spoke with a wise-man cadence that contradicted the venomous motions of his form, extending his dialogue via unnecessary usage of lexicon. He reached his golden-fingered hand into his beige, hooded cloak and pulled out an old relic. It was small, flat, rectangular, bore a dark frame, and had a black screen which refracted the light shining through the circular canopy above. It was an old and outdated item from before the Orokin. ▇▇▇▇▇ depressed the power button on the side of the apparatus with his golden thumb, "It is "Nisennen Moshiku wa Nimannen Go no Kimi e.""
"That's a mouthful," Hayden remarked before crossing his arms behind his head.
"That is to be expected, Hayden. It is pre-Orokin music after all. And I am most presumably butchering the pronunciation," ▇▇▇▇▇ replied in turn before pocketing the old pre-Orokin era device.
A pause came as ▇▇▇▇▇ and Hayden ceased their trek before a palace of marred pearly-white marrow walls lined with gold filigree and ornamental rings of patterned gold that told a tale. A tale of a Dax cavalry-woman that had fended off a horde of Infested in defense of the golden masters, with her name hewn into a copper plate littered with Nikanas around it like gravestones: Junas The Amber Flash.
"This place is beautiful..." Hayden remarked aloud, twirling on his heel to take in the forest's majesty. "What's the name of this part of the forest?"
▇▇▇▇▇ raised an indiscernible brow before responding, "It bears no name; it is a nameless ruin reclaimed by nature. And it shall remain so for the foreseeable future..." ▇▇▇▇▇ refrained himself with a significant modicum of effort from bashing Hayden's question. ▇▇▇▇▇ questioned the need to name such the place. It was uninhabited and unfriendly to civilians, in addition, the bugs were an annoyance.
"Then why don't we name it?" Hayden asked ▇▇▇▇▇, which prompted ▇▇▇▇▇ to tilt his head down at Hayden. "You have any good names?"
▇▇▇▇▇ turned to face the blue sky above in pondering. ▇▇▇▇▇ racked his mind to conjure a moniker of some significance for the forests. ▇▇▇▇▇ briefly wondered why he was directing so much focus upon naming a forest he wouldn't ever revisit. ▇▇▇▇▇ was then stumped, "I am unable to fathom a title fit for this portion of Earth's jungle."
"Ah, no worries, ▇▇▇▇▇. We can just ask Junas or Ordis later," Hayden said jovially. ▇▇▇▇▇ could conjure the image of Hayden's honest smile from behind his transference pod with ridiculous ease, and it brought a sensation of melancholy to ▇▇▇▇▇.
▇▇▇▇▇ felt his cloaked hands quake on his sides, desiring to reach out to Hayden, but he halted himself. It wasn't because he hated himself, believed himself undeserving of companionship. Nothing so dramatic. He stopped himself because he knew he bore no love for his student, so jovial and deluded in ▇▇▇▇▇'s veneer of practiced benignity.
—|WARFRAME|—
—|ATTACK ON TITAN|—
"Was that... a dream...?" Mikazuki mumbled. It hadn't felt like a dream... but rather instead... a memory.
Mikazuki briefly felt the bed beneath him before he sat up and eyed his surroundings with bemusement. "I don't recognize any of this..." he remarked internally before looking to his right to see a sleeping Mikasa.
She was sat on a small stool and resting on Mikazuki's bedside, her closed eyes twitched in intermittently, indicating her to be in a dream. Though it was more a nightmare if his eyes discerned the tight grip she had on his blanket correctly.
He didn't know how to feel about her affection... and that made Mikazuki feel conflicted.
Mikazuki soon heard plodding originate from a set of stairs at the other end of the room he was in. Kempt hair poked up from the staircase first, and then a man dressed in casual brown and white attire. It was Dr. Jaeger. In his hands were two plates. Both had some manner of vegetable soup and each a whole loaf of bread.
"I see you're awake," Dr. Jaeger said as Mikazuki gave him an indifferent stare accompanied by long intervals of slow blinking. "How are you feeling?" the doctor asked Mikazuki, who took his arm out from underneath the blanket to massage his neck.
"I feel... fine. Though my eyes feel heavy..." when had he developed bags under his eyes? "What?" Mikazuki questioned aloud in response to his own thoughts.
"Is something wrong?" Grisha Jaeger asked, "Are you sure you feel alright?"
Mikazuki shook his head, "I'm fine. Just tired is all..." Mikazuki and Dr. Jaeger were then interrupted by Mikasa stirring to lucidity.
"Mika... what are you doing? You need to rest more," Mikasa groggily said – her black hair a mess and her eyes half-lidded due to sleep inertia – and then gently pushed Mikazuki back onto the bed, with Mikazuki providing no resistance toward her action whatsoever.
Mikazuki then noticed the cheer and gleam Mikasa's eyes once had had dimmed beyond recognition, and it made him feel odd.
It was neither pleasant nor unpleasant.
Mikasa's affectionate act of sisterly love brought a soft, benign smile on Dr. Jaeger's face before he grabbed a bowl of the soup and sauntered toward Mikazuki. The doctor then grabbed a stool nearby and placed it beside the bed Mikazuki was laying on, "You're probably hungry. Could you lay your back against the headboard? I'll help you eat."
Mikazuki promptly shuffled himself out of the black and laid his stiff back against the headboard before abruptly asking the doctor, "Can't I just eat it myself?"
To which Dr. Jaeger hesitated for a short second before nodding, "Of course," handing the bowl to Mikazuki who – with a slightly shaky hand – took it. Dr. Jaeger turned to Mikasa and made a small request, "Mikasa, could you oversee your brother's needs for the time being? I have an appointment today, and I'll be returning this afternoon."
"I will, Dr. Jaeger," she nodded with a tired, neutral stare before Dr. Jaeger got up from the stool and proceeded toward the stairs.
Mikazuki shifted the bowl in his hand onto his left and began to partake in the soup. It was hot and tasted good... was that the only descriptor he could give it? "It was good" was all he could describe it as? Why was Mikazuki questioning his dull sense of taste?
Mikazuki drank another spoonful of the soup, with Mikasa quietly and awkwardly leering over him like a Condroc eyeing carrion. His ears were, somehow, able to pick up the sounds of a door hinging open and close, indicating that Dr. Jaeger had just left the house.
Mikazuki briefly wondered whether his sense of time had detereorated, too.
He glanced at her for a second before returning to the soup — to his musing... Mikazuki questioned whether referring to things simply as... "good" was natural or not. It was, was it not? He was just being weird, wasn't he? But what if it wasn't natural?
Mikazuki cast his eyes aside in thought as the warm soup and softened vegetable slid down his throat, briefly distracting him from the unnatural musing—or was it natural to question everything? Or was it wrong to question everything, desire an answer for everything? He wouldn't question the meaning of life, never. But he would question what constituted as genuine emotional action and what counted as a physiological reaction—"Gah!"
A jolt of pain rang through his mind, causing him to involuntarily drop the half-empty bowl of soup onto the wooden floor. The bowl only clattered rather than shattered, but the thud emitted from the drop was enough to alert any individual below the floorboards.
"Mika!" Mikasa swiftly stood up from her seat to dash toward Mikazuki's side, hurriedly asking him, "What's wrong? Is it the neck wound?"
Mikasa scanned Mikazuki's body with narrowed eyes while soft steps came from the staircase behind her.
"Did something happen, Mikasa? I heard something fall," a median-height woman asked as she ascended the stairs onto the floorboards. She bore a dark shade of brown hair, golden-brown eyes, had fair skin, and was donned in a beige-brown dress appropriate to the common folk of the era and a white apron atop it.
She was the most stereotypical "housewife" an individual could appear to be.
Mikazuki felt a slight jolt pang across his skull. What was a housewife?
"I don't know, Mrs. Jaeger, I'm still checking on Mika," was Mikasa's punctual response.
"Let me help," the woman, Dr. Jaeger's wife – if Mikazuki's conclusion was correct – sauntered toward Mikazuki's bedside. "I'm not as good as my husband, but I've seen him do checkups on patients he sheltered in our house."
"That's better than nothing, Mrs. Jaeger," Mikasa murmured out before finishing it off with a low, "Thank you, Mrs. Jaeger."
He would state it to be odd, but to have something "be odd" would entail an emotional weight, no matter how small. It was so difficult for Mikazuki to form coherent inner dialogue when he had to forgo lexicon indicating emotional reaction—another jolt of pain.
Mikazuki quietly shook his head before turning to eye his attentive elder sister, who had definitely noticed the pain on his head.
Now that Mikazuki was staring back at Mikasa, he just noticed her characteristic joy completely gone. He would have stated it to be depressing, to see the joviality of his older sibling eroded into nonexistence, but he would be lying wholesale.
Mikazuki was entirely neutral in regard to Mikasa's change in demeanor. He found it neither pleasing nor displeasing. It was something, and that was it. And it made him feel conflicted.
Mikazuki turned his attention back to Mrs. Jaeger as she finished her amateur autopsy on him, "The wound hasn't reopened, and I don't know enough to diagnose anything more," she informed Mikasa, which caused Mikazuki's sister to cast her eyes faintly down. Seeing her reaction, Mrs. Jaeger said placatingly, "But I'm sure my husband will be able to help. He said he was coming back this afternoon before he left, so you only have to wait a few hours."
Mikazuki could see the rapid pondering going on behind Mikasa's grey eyes before she politely responded, "Thank you, Mrs. Jaeger,"
The mature woman took on a kindly smile – something prompted no emotional reaction reaction from Mikazuki – and said back, "No need for Mrs. Jaeger, Mikasa, you can just call me Carla."
Mikasa made a small grunt of affirmation to Mrs. Jaeger's request.
The stereotypical housewife turned to Mikazuki, "You can call me that too, Mikazuki."
Mikazuki – in a similar vein to his elder sibling – gave a mere nod in return.
The kindly housewife soon rose from Mikazuki's bedside and made way toward the bowl on the floorboards, where nearby, a young boy with dark brown hair and green-blue... Mikazuki lowered his brows slightly. The lighting from the window nearby made the boy's eyes out as a greenish blue, but the next moment they were a sparkling deep blue.
"Oh, Eren?" the housewife called the boy, who proceeded to saunter his way over to Mikasa.
The boy's presence caused Mikasa to tug a red scarf that Mikazuki had failed to notice for an absurd amount of time due to apathy. Covering the lower portion of her face, she silently stared at the boy – Eren – who simply raised an eye in response to Mikasa's awkward silence.
"How are you two feeling?" he bluntly asked as he stepped onto the boards of the second floor of the house.
Mikazuki found the boy's mannerisms akin to a mallet. Not that it was a demerit or anything of the sort.
Mikasa was first to respond, mumbling out from behind the red scarf, "I'm okay..."
Eren then turned toward Mikazuki, who answered, "I am fine."
The boy glanced toward the dropped bowl on the floorboards. The skepticism was horrendously blatant — and Mikasa shared the same look, too.
"I'm fine. It's certain that my condition could be better, but that's why I'm in this bed, am I not?" was Mikazuki's long-winded retort to the skeptic gazes of the Jaeger boy and Mikasa, which just earned him confused stares instead.
"Oh, where did you learn to speak like that, Mikazuki?" Mrs. Jaeger asked Mikazuki as she picked up the bowl and placed it on its tray.
Mikazuki attempted to dredge up whatever scrap of memory revolving around his Papa teaching him language. Throughout the rapid rifling through the recesses of his mind, Mikazuki came up stumped numerous times, and it vexed him. He felt his body heat up more and more as he continued trying to recall where and how his manner of speech had begun, but yet again, Mikazuki came up stumped. And it vexed him even further.
It was a new sensation... or rather, it was a familiar one. Mikazuki had felt it before, though he now felt it with a clarity he never before had. Mikazuki had felt that frustration boil frequently before. He'd felt it when he once tripped on a fallen tree, when he had waded through the prickly bramble of dense shrubbery, when he forgot to bring his gear on hunting trips, and whenever he had failed a task given to him by his Papa.
Having noticed the frustration on Mikazuki's face, Mrs. Jaeger retracted her query, saying, "You don't need to try and remember if you can't. It's okay." Her words were kind, but Mikazuki felt more inadequate due to them, and it made him clench his grip on the hem of his blanket as his body imperceptibly shook in contained anger.
Desiring a distraction, ▇▇▇—Mikazuki – he felt a small jolt run up his spine – sat straight and reached out for the loaf of bread on the tray where his bowl of soup was. He hunched over to reach, but Mikasa was swift to gently push him back down onto the bed.
"Don't," she evenly said, "I'll help you, so just rest." Mikasa then took the loaf and tore a piece off before hovering it over Mikazuki's face.
The stifling frustration flickering within his gut was kindled slightly by Mikasa's act of sisterly love, causing him to respond with an annoyed, "I said I can eat by myself."
"What if you suffer that headache again while eating? You'll choke," was Mikasa's swift and dry response, which caused Mikazuki to gawk as he attempted to conjure a counter to placate his sibling's fretting.
"Mikasa?" it was then that Mrs. Jaeger opted to chime into the conversation. "Don't you think you're a little overbearing on Mikazuki?" the housewife asked.
Forlorn, Mikasa tilted her head down and cast her eyes aside, "He's the only family I have left... I have to protect him..."
Her response garnered a pitying expression from Mrs. Jaeger. And the sight of it... made Mikazuki feel ill, completely snuffing out whatever prior anger he had.
Mikazuki turned away from Mrs. Jaeger and Mikasa to blankly stare out the window. Mikazuki began to envelope himself in his own confused, jumbled thoughts. Questioning briefly: What was happening to him? Because what else had he to do other than rest?
—|ATTACK ON TITAN|—
—|WARFRAME|—
Beyond the walls of Paradis, in the coming evening of the day...
A figure cloaked in darkness stalked with smearing speed, dashing across to and from the bark humongous trees of a forest of gigantic trees. The immense pressure imparted with each dash created gigantic fissures within each tree as the figure leaped, before latching onto another tree with sinking digits that caused the tree to creak and moan and crack. The figure's golden fingers were illuminated in its marred detail by the limited amount of light seeping through the forest canopies.
The figure turned its imperceivable head down to gaze at the forest floor. Small quakes traveled up the tree, alerting the figure to a presence.
The cloaked figure scoured the forest floor with rapid, jittering head movements, darting up, down, left, and right in search of the source, which it soon quickly found. It was a Titan. Ten meters in height and obese in structure with stubby ligaments.
The cloaked figure silently stared at the Titan as it moved on through the forest, uncaring for the figure's presence. Then suddenly, the figure unlatched its golden claws – dug deep into tree flesh – and dashed toward the Titan with a silent burst of air and a succeeding crack of tree bark.
In a fell swoop — in a mere second, the figure tore the nape of the Titan clean off with but a single arm.
The figure fell onto the floor with a roll, steaming from the blood and Titan gore coating them. As if by divine machinations, shoddy light from the falling sun beamed through the inconsistent canopies above, revealing the figure in spotty detail.
The figure was humanoid in posture though was as tall as two meters and had a large, protective protrusion behind its head. The figure was missing its right arm from the elbow down, and grey liquids dribbled from the open wound, in addition to fleshy tendrils that squelched and stretched out from it. A jagged, amorphous spike of solid liquid steel was embedded in the left rib of the figure, seeping out from the wound like virulent tendrils as wisps of grey emerged in intermittent intervals. And the figure's skin was a sleek, gritty black primary, with a maroon tertiary, and a smooth, craggy purple secondary. Gold filigree and bits – chipped from some crash – gleamed despite its diminished luster in the light.
Whispers of eldritch tongue emanated from the figure as it moved the evaporating piece of nape-flesh toward its right stump. The fleshy tendrils emerging from the open wound squealed in delight and began to feast with ravenous screeching.
Upon consuming the piece of Titan meat, the figure's stump gestated a new portion of its limb, though it was not matching the rest of its form. The extended stump was fleshy, spewing glowing spores from a single, thick tube at the bottom, with the same tendrils from prior – now donned with sharp, bony extrusions – glowing a malicious, sickly green-red.
The sudden gallop of horse caused the figure to begin dashing across the forest soundlessly, with the Titan body decaying into steam behind it. The figure broke the bark of each tree it sprung off of as it surged toward the source of the galloping.
—|WARFRAME|—
MAKYR: Been some time, aye? This chapter is, again, chock full of writing problems that I can't fully put a finger on. I can understand how wishy-washy I made Mikazuki in this, at least that's how I feel about how I wrote him. Also, I don't like how I wrote the ending segment of his part of this chapter, like, if you aren't me – which you aren't – then I feel like you won't understand why he suddenly got so angry. If you want to know, it's because I based Mikazuki on a lot of my own characteristics, so getting angry over seemingly nothing is just normal. Dropping a bowl? Anger. Being tapped on the shoulder? Anger. Also initially, this chapter was meant to be longer, but I decided to split it into another chapter because I was moving from the normal pace of time into a time-skip, which would be weird unless I started with a time-skip, no?
MAKYR: And the biggest reason for why this chapter took so long – Cough cough, Procrastination, cough cough – was due me playing a bit too much Warframe. And it was also due to how I write and how scatterbrain I am. I write in a way that would make a person think I'm using a Thesaurus, which I'm not but I definitely once did. And it's due to this habit of overcomplicating my dialogue and descriptors that causes me to dumb things down, and then try to complexify it again.
MAKYR: I spent like half a month playing Warframe trying to get Khora so I could do things like Steel Path Interception with greater ease – haven't tried it yet – and it took me about 30 Radiant Relics to get her blueprints, so it consumed a great chunk of my time. I also tried my first Solo Tridolon about a week ago. It went decently well, though Harry was annoying. I also got all of Hildryn Prime's parts without really trying, so I'm now constructing her.
MAKYR: Anyway, that's all from me. Cya next time, Tenno.