paixaorpg | For Sanity's Sake [active, completed]

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For Sanity's Sake [active, completed]

Character(s): Mao and Yorda
Content: Mao and Yorda. I... think that may be all that needs to be said.
Setting: Jogo da Crianca
Time: Afternoon, Week 17
Warnings: Copious amounts of Mao. Possible hilarity ensuing.

He just didn't understand how someone could be so stupid. That girl asked so many obvious questions and said so many stupid, creepy things. "Liking him?" Seriously, what kind of an answer was that? Who said things like that? No one, that was who! No one except her, anyway. How could he have ever thought she'd try to kill him the moment his back was turned? How could he have ever thought she was planning anything? The more he listened to her talk, the more Mao got the feeling she couldn't plan her way out of a paper bag.

Mao half expected to find she'd wandered off to some other part of the city by the time he got there.

Pft, whatever. If he got there and she wasn't there, he could still tell her to stop saying all that stupid crap, couldn't he? He'd kept up his end of the deal. It wasn't his fault if she was too distracted to stay in one place for more than an hour.

"Liked him..." Ugh, she had better have a better reason than that by the time he got there (even if it didn't sound half--what was he thinking?!).

Mao came to a stop in the middle of the park, crossing his arms in front of him and scowling. "Oi, Flashlight! You here or not?!"

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Yorda didn't understand how someone could have so much trouble with being liked. It made absolutely no sense to her. The princess liked most people in Paixao (with a few exceptions, of course) and it surprised her to no end to see how Mao reacted to being liked. Still, she waited faithfully in the park (after hearing Urd's reaction to the girl's wanderings, she didn't want to upset anyone else), and when she saw Mao pass her, muttering to himself about something or other, she opened her mouth to greet him - only to blink, surprised, as he walked right by her. Was he angry at her? Did he have somewhere else to go? She was still pondering all this when he addressed someone. Who was Flashlight? She didn't know anyone by that name.

Yorda tapped Mao hesitantly on the shoulder, tilting her head quizzically at him. "Who are you looking for?"

Of course it wouldn't make any sense to her. A lot of things didn't make sense to her, least of all a demon's ways, and even then Mao's ways were a little different from those.

He leaped away at Yorda's touch, whirling around and shouting as he whipped out his sword. "Don't sneak up on me like that!" he snapped at her as he put his weapon away. "Ugh, I'm looking for you. Flashlight. It fits." He knew he would have to explain it anyway, so why not get that part over it now.

"So, did you find a better reason, or what?"

Yorda jumped as Mao drew his sword, looking wide-eyed at him in shock. She had never seen a sword that did not glow, but it didn't stop her from recognizing the weapon (which meant that Mao wouldn't have to explain what a sword was, thankfully). She got over her fright quickly, as he clearly didn't mean her any harm and put the sword away upon seeing it was her. "I am sorry," she told him, looking down for a brief moment. "You did not see me before."

The girl stepped closer. "What does 'flashlight' mean?" she asked him. Was it a term for a person one didn't know very well? But her other questions were forgotten (at least for the moment) when he asked her about her reasons. She thought. "You are very nice," she decided with a smile.

Mao stared at her incredulously. Was she seriously apologizing? Ugh, human worlds were sickening. Never before had he been surrounded by this much delinquent behavior. He was sort of used to human behavior anymore, having been around Ex-Fake Hero and Princess for so long, but seeing this many around and so many people acting that way was almost too much to bear.

Didn't make it any better than the only other demon he'd seen around here was that damn pool-pushing Cockroach Overlord.

He decided to ignore Yorda's apology for now in order to answer her question. "Something that makes light. You use it in the dark." He could go into more detail than that, but he would just end up having to answer more questions anyway, so why bother?

"N-Nice?!" Mao stammered, mouth hanging open in horror. He had chills now! She gave him goosebumps! Ugh, he felt like he was going to be sick! "What about me screams 'nice?!' I'm a demon! I'm not 'nice' in any way!"

Yorda thought for a moment. If what Mao said was true (and Yorda had no doubts that he was telling her the truth), and that was what 'flashlight' meant, then perhaps the glowing sword on the island had been a sort of flashlight. It was an interesting thing to consider, and Yorda pondered the thought for a few moments - only to look back at Mao upon hearing his reaction.

"What is wrong with being nice?" she asked him, wholly puzzled. "And what is a demon?" Yorda may have heard the term before, but right now, she didn't remember. Although she knew that she was a shadow, like her mother, and she knew what humans were, she didn't recall hearing anything about demons before. Why couldn't they be nice?

With that, Mao was rendered completely speechless. She didn't even know what a demon was? Just how sheltered was this girl? "You don't...?" He shook his head, disgust plain on his face. "I'm a demon. And there's at least one other one here, too. Didn't you see my eyes? The fangs? The ears? What human has all those?" Although now that he got another look at her, her ears were kind of different too, weren't they? And humans generally didn't glow without some sort of assistance (or radioactivity)...

"What are you, anyway?" he asked, his previous indignation steamrolled over by his curiosity.

Yorda shook her head. "I saw them," she explained, "but I did not think of them as unusual." After all, the very first person she had ever seen besides her mother had horns. How was Yorda to know what was unusual and what was not, especially considering her own (rather lacking) upbringing? The girl stared back at Mao as he almost seemed to be examining her. Had something happened to her while she had been out, and had she simply not noticed?

She smiled at Mao's question. "I am a shadow," she replied. She didn't know what her kind were really called, especially considering she was the last of her kind - at least as far as she knew.

Mao crossed his arms again, his foot tapping impatiently against the grass. "Nothing unusual..." Tch. Of course it was unusual. She didn't even know what a demon was. Obviously someone needed to teach the girl about demons so she wouldn't make such a horrible mistake ever again. He briefly wondered if teaching Yorda about it would count as a good deed. It was definitely a self-serving one, but would it take away some of his Honor Student cred?

He could think about it while he questioned her further. "A shadow?" he asked, his foot stilling as he gazed at her inquisitively. He looked her up and down. The word "shadow" didn't generally apply to someone who glowed as brightly as she did. "What do you mean by that?"

Had she said the wrong thing again? To Yorda, Mao didn't seem terribly odd - but then, nobody really did. Everyone was perfectly normal, as far as she was concerned. The princess nodded at Mao's question, and never mind that she wasn't in her shadow form. She had shown it only once in this place, to Neirenn, and that had been in an attempt to allow Neirenn a better light. She wasn't eager to take that form again, and she wouldn't if she could help it.

"I was born of the shadows," came the explanation. "My mother commanded them." Enslaved, really, but it gave Yorda a shiver to think about it.

Mao gazed at Yorda for a long while as he thought on what she had said. Born of the shadows? What sort of shadows? Living or nonliving? The only "living" shadows he could think of were the Heartless this place seemed to be swarming with, and he couldn't think of any way actual shadows could create a living, breathing organism (unless that was what the Heartless were, but because they kept disappearing on him he wasn't even sure he could count those as living and breathing--and weren't they made from darkness anyway? Were darkness and shadows any different?). Although it could be possible that she was created from some sort of magic. She only mentioned a mother and didn't know before what a dad was, so could it have been this "mother" of Yorda's who created her? Or was it, somehow, a sort of asexual reproduction?

The young demon drew closer to Yorda, a distance that most would consider to be incredibly, uncomfortably close. His glasses reflected light, though he carried an air that was more curious than sinister. "What kind of shadows?"

Yorda honestly didn't know how she had been born. Her mother had never been one for friendly conversation, even with her own daughter, and the shadows on the island had never spoken. She looked back at Mao steadily, not at all bothered by the lack of personal space, and thought to herself. "I do not know, but I am not the same as the Heartless," she replied. It was true; even after what had occurred on the island, Yorda still didn't know very much about herself. Although she didn't mind, she did get curious from time to time.

The princess noted the unusual shine on Mao's glasses, but decided not to ask. She did, however, lean closer, trying to peer behind them and see Mao's eyes.

As Yorda drew closer, Mao immediately drew back, staring at her suspiciously. As much as the demon liked studying others, he didn't really much care for others studying him. He opened his mouth to tell her to knock it off, but frowned instead, knowing that it would be useless to even try.

But she had at least managed to answer a couple of her questions, even if some of them were unsaid ones. So her shadows were different from darkness somehow... Mao didn't entirely understand that, but it was just another mystery to be solved, wasn't it? If he could get her to come with him, maybe he'd be able to take a few samples and explore a little further, but, at the same time, there seemed to be more people than just him who had taken an interest in the girl. Maybe he would wait for a little while and then take his chance. And while he had her kidnapped, he's make sure she knew more about demons so she never made the mistake of calling him "nice" or "good" ever again.

It also gave him some time to think of a way to keep her from wandering off in the middle of things.

In the meantime, he would ask a few more questions. "How are the Heartless different?"

When Mao drew back, Yorda leaned forward a bit more, not understanding why he was suddenly backing up. She wouldn't mind coming with Mao, even though she didn't know him very well. Yorda was still a very trusting person, and as her trust had never yet been betrayed, she didn't realize how foolish it was to go around with others on a whim.

The girl shuddered. "The Heartless tried to reach me," she explained, lowering her eyes, upset at the memory. "They chased me, but they were not like the other shadows. They tried to take something from me, but I ran away." She had to stop for a moment and compose herself before continuing. "The shadows are beings composed of darkness. THey obeyed Mother."

"Well, yeah. They were after your heart. Why do you think they're called the Heartless? That's what they do." Not that he had known that on arrival, but he knew it now. She'd been here for longer than he had, hadn't she? He would have figured she'd know that by now with all the questions she usually asked.

That only confused him. If shadows were beings of darkness and the Heartless were made of darkness, why weren't they the same? It didn't make sense. Ugh, he'd probably have to take samples after all.

Yorda had been too frightened after her ordeal with the Heartless to ask about them, so despite her run-in with them, she was still rather oblivious as to what they had been after. Of course, it had crossed her mind that they were without hearts (given their name, what else could they be?), but Yorda was unsure as to how they could even live without one, much less go chasing other people about and attacking them.

Lost in thought, the girl stared at the ground beneath her feet, wondering silently about things she didn't want to ask.

Mao waited a moment to see if she would say anything else, but after a few moments of silence, the demon was left feeling irritated... and a little confused. Wasn't she going to say something? Where were all her stupid questions now? She could at least do something like that instead of staring at the ground uselessly like that.

"What's with the silence? Are you going to say anything or not?"

Yorda shook her head, still silent for the moment, but looked back up at Mao. Confusion and fear were in the girl's eyes, her memories of people asking about the Heartless (including herself) racing through her mind. The boy in front of her seemed perplexed (and with good reason; few people in Paixao had heard Yorda reman silent for very long). "I do not like the Heartless," she finally admitted, her eyes downcast again. "They do bad things." It was an obvious statement, to be sure, but Yorda didn't want to elaborate on the subject - and besides, her companion already seemed to know plenty about the strange creatures who popped up occasionally in the city.

Did she always feel the need to point out the obvious? Of course the Heartless did "bad things," they took people's hearts. That was generally bad. Though he guessed he couldn't really blame her too much for not liking the things. There was just something about them that Mao didn't like either. He couldn't put his finger on exactly what it was, maybe it was just that there seemed to be something wrong about them. And maybe that's why they were so fascinating. An enigma, a puzzle to tear apart and dissect, if one that got a little boring to do so with all the disappearing. But, as was Mao's nature, he still wanted to know more, even if he had to look at the glowing white creatures too to do it.

"At least you still have a voice," he finally decided on saying after a moment of deliberation.

Yorda looked at Mao curiously. "Do the Heartless steal voices, too?" she asked, tilting her head to one side. Stealing hearts sounded terrible enough to the girl, but to steal their voices so the victims couldn't even call for help sounded nothing short of monstrous. Not even her mother had done that to people (and although she had done worse, much worse, it was hard for Yorda not to forgive her now that she was dead, and holding grudges simply wasn't in her nature, being that she didn't even know what one was). She stepped closer to Mao and leaned in, looking at the boy's face, curious again. "Do you know anything about them?"

Perhaps, if she learned enough about them, she could help others.

"Steal voices?" Mao parroted. Wait, did she mean...? "That's not what I meant by that! And before you ask, nevermind what I meant by that. It doesn't matter." The more she went on, the more convinced Mao became that she needed some serious schooling. And, just maybe, if he played his cards right, he could have a willing lab assistant.

He looked over Yorda carefully, weighing his chances, only snapping out of his thoughts once she spoke up again. "Of course I do," Mao replied. "They're beings of pure darkness, steal people's hearts, are attracted to darkness, and disappear when you cause enough damage," he recited proudly. he still had so much more that he wanted to learn, but that would come in time. He just would have to catch more samples.

Yorda obediently fell silent, looking at Mao as he explained the Heartless to her. She nodded thoughtfully to herself as the boy spoke and committed the information to memory before speaking again. "Where do they come from?" she asked. Surely something had to have created them (just as her mother had made the shadows), and maybe the Heartless came from a source. If they were only beings of darkness, why weren't they leaping out of every shadow in the city?

The girl nodded again. Now that she knew they could be hurt, she didn't have to be as afraid of them as before - then again, Yorda was no fighter, better suited to running away and hiding rather than doing battle.

Mao's usual frown faded into a more neutral expression at first and then into one of thought. Had he found that out yet?

...Yeah. Yeah, he had. What that guy had said before...

Mao gaze dropped to the ground. "From hearts consumed by darkness," he said. "That's what that guy said, anyway."

((Sorry for shortness! DX))

Hearts consumed by darkness... Yorda wondered what could cause such a thing, and whether it had happened to her mother, even though the Queen had been different from the Heartless. She hurriedly pushed those thoughts away - it was over, and besides, it wasn't a good idea to dwell on such things when she had never known much about her mother to begin with. The princess smiled at Mao. "I would like to learn more about them," she confessed. "If I am able to, perhaps I can help others with it."

Ico had protected her, and now Urd was doing so; the least Yorda could do, she thought, was try and help, too.

Help? How the heck did she plan to do that? From what he could tell, it didn't look like there was a finite amount of these Heartless things, and they reproduced asexually, making more of themselves by using the darkness in the hearts of others. They could easily replenish their number as long there was some speck of darkness out there somewhere, even if they'd end up about as weak as a speck.

So how could she help people with them? Any solution he could come up with was a temporary one, unless they somehow locked them all away and even that was near impossible. Why even bother?

Knowledge, however... That he could get behind. And, since she was offering... "Hmph, fine. I'll call you if I need a lab assistant. You can work out an agreement with the Ex-Fake Hero."

Yorda knew that, should she manage to find a door of light and go near it, all shadows in the area would be destroyed. She had no way of controlling that power, however, and besides, it hurt her to use it. Despite that, the princess wanted to help in any way she could, especially if it meant she could stop more Heartless from being created. She may not have been able to fight in the normal sense of the word, but she could heal, at least, and light the way in the dark. Perhaps that would be enough.

Yorda smiled brightly at Mao. "Thank you," she told him sincerely. "But what is a lab assistant?"

...What was she smiling like that for? She didn't think he was doing this out of the "goodness" of his heart, did she? He just didn't want her to ask so many stupid questions or start telling everyone how "good" and "nice" he was just because she didn't know what demons were. It was all for his own selfish reasons!

"You help me with stuff in my lab and do whatever I say," Mao answered simply, a cocky grin appearing on his face. "You get what I want you to get, shine that body of yours where I ask you to shine it, and basically follow all my commands."

Yorda nodded. "I would be able to do that," she told him, still smiling. Despite Mao's insisting that he was not nice in the least (and for all that he always seemed to be in a terrible mood), the princess was rather fond of him. She thought him interesting - and yes, nice (but she knew better than to say that to him now). Even if he acted that way, Yorda was sure that Mao was a good person on the inside.

"When would I be able to start helping you?" she asked, her head tilting to one side like a bird's.

Mao thought on that for a bit. He could take her now, but if she was staying with someone else, they would notice pretty quickly. Not to mention that if he did just suddenly decide to let her stay there would be questions. No, he would have to be more careful about this. There was a specific way this would have to be done.

"...Soon enough. Give me some time and I'll get back to you on that," he finally said. He would have to come up with how he wanted to kidnap her first. "Where did you say you were staying again?"

Yorda nodded, not realizing that he was planning on having her live with him. "I am staying with Urd," she replied, still unsure as to what the place she was staying at was called. "Where do you live?" If she was going to help him, she could walk to where he was staying and bring him things he needed along the way. Yorda knew she could contact him through the journals if she needed to, but she didn't know how to protect her entries over the system - at least, not without Urd's help. She would need the goddess to teach her more about that.

Urd... He knew that name. "The goddess? Where's she staying?" he asked. Why would she want to stay with that woman? "Hmph. My lab is in the St. Destino Hospital." Mao figured she was just asking because he'd asked the same thing. "You got that?"

"We are staying near the Havasu Medical Center," replied Yorda, after a few moments of thought. She was oblivious to Mao's thoughts towards Urd, as she liked Urd quite a bit and would have thought of her as a combination of an elder sister and a mother-figure - or would, if she knew what a sister was. The girl nodded to Mao. "Very well. Would you like me to visit you?"

Near another hospital... Or a walk-in clinic. He was pretty sure it was the latter, but either way it was convenient. Wonderfully convenient. When he decided to kidnap her, he could break into the clinic and see if he could gather a few extra supplies for himself. The thought brought a grin to Mao's face. "Visit? Heh, sure. You'll probably need some training to make sure you don't screw anything up when I need you to do things in the lab anyway. This will just help cut down on time."

Yorda nodded, happy that Mao seemed pleased. Of course, she had no way of knowing that he intended to kidnap her and steal supplies, but seeing someone she considered a friend smiling made her smile in return. She blinked at the unfamiliar phrases, however - while she was slowly learning the ways of this strange and beautiful world, she still didn't understand a lot of the language. "What is 'screw up'," she asked, "and what is training?" Maybe her questions would annoy Mao, as they had some others, but she would never learn if she didn't ask.

Luckily, Mao was in a good enough mood that her questions didn't bother him this time. "You won't have to worry about the first one if everything goes well. As for 'training,' that just means I'm going to show you how to do what I want you to do. You'll listen to me and do whatever I tell you to."

Yorda nodded. How exciting! No one had ever taught her anything before; Yorda had mostly picked up things on her own, even with Ico with her, although that had mostly been because of the language barrier between them. "I will," she told him. The princess had never been one to go against the tides, so to speak, unless something important was at stake. As for helping Mao, she didn't mind. Yorda considered the scientist to be a friend of hers, and whether Mao liked it or not, she liked him very much.

As long as Yorda didn't say anything about Mao being her friend, Mao was just fine with the situation. It made it a lot easier for him to get what he wanted. "Good. You had just better be ready for when I finally come."

Yorda nodded. "I will be," she replied. She was not one to dawdle around when she was truly needed, even if she had a tendency to wander about the rest of the time - and besides, the thought of being able to help someone else made her happy. She liked to be useful.

"Don't forget," Mao said, just to make sure. Considering how many questions Yorda asked, it was--in Mao's mind--entirely reasonable that she would. Hmm... Speaking of that... "And don't tell anyone about this, got it? If anyone asks, just say you went for a walk. And don't ask why you shouldn't tell anyone, either. I know exactly what I'm doing."

"I will not forget," came the reply. For all her questions and naïveté, Yorda was good at remembering what she'd already been told. She blinked, however, in response to Mao's demand that she not tell anyone; why shouldn't she? But he didn't want to be asked about it, and thanks to Hades, Yorda knew that was a sign to not ask. She trusted Mao, and as foolish as that may have been, she believed him. The girl smiled at her companion, nodding to show she understood.

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For Sanity's Sake [active, completed]

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Argh, sorry it took me so long to get back to this. DX

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