paixaorpg | A Shadow Falls Upon the City [active]

Entry tags:

A Shadow Falls Upon the City [active]

Character(s): Ansem, anyone he runs into
Content: Ansem staking his claim in the city
Setting: City Hall
Time: Twilight
Warnings: ~~...Ansem~~ Creeper party :|b
Thus far, Ansem had to admit that he was not in the slightest bit impressed by the city at large. True, there were people enough, and a good deal of suitable hearts. But the light lurked here too. It was in the streets, and in the people who seemed to belong to this world. Still, there was no need to dwell on it, and no sooner had he arrived in the city proper he had left the streets and taken to the darkness. What need had he for light in any world? No, better he would stick to the shadows. It would make for a better impression when he let his presence be known.

He hadn't been expecting to find the deepest darkness in the center of the city, but he was hardly about to complain. It was a suitable stronghold. More to the point, it would be his, and he stepped out of the darkness just behind the great barrier of thorns that separated city hall from the outside world with the slightest care for who might see his arrival or what they would think of it. What should he care after all? Either they would prove useful or they would be nothing more than a hitch in his plans, and he couldn't quite keep the smile that thought brought off his face as he strode towards the front doors of City Hall proper.

Let them come, if they would.

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Darkness lends itself to so many things. When in complete darkness, everything becomes amplified. The tiniest twinge in the most still of nights can feel like the hardest strain. The landing of a fly would transform from a minor inconvenience into a cacophony of fluttering chaos. The slightest shifts in your sight could be something like the wind blowing a tree's shadow or the one who intends on ending your life.

In Paixao's darkness, there was silence interrupted by the gnawing of sharp teeth on scraped bones. There was stillness disturbed by the flight of a skeleton-thin figure that glowed in the moonlight. There was solitude distorted by unease that would parch your mouth and leave your insides hollow. In Paixao's darkness, there was a dying legend among the natives, the citizens, and the would-be gods. And he recognized darkness when he saw it.

He pulled his black hoodie over his head of stark-white hair and observed from the trees. It was his own form of flattery for someone who would be seen as "unpredictable." Still, his impulses were burning at his fingertips. He began to drum. tap tap tap tap...tap tap tap tap...

Darkness always recognized its own, and just as the Master recognized Ansem for what he was, so too did Ansem recognize the darkness that lurked inside the Master. A deep, angry darkness full of sound and fury and rage, all the more powerful for the amount of time his heart had been steeping in it. No doubt he would make for an excellent Heartless, should Ansem need a strong ally at his side. But as of yet, that would saved for the far off day when his foes grew too many for his own abilities proved to much.

Ansem made no indication that he'd noticed the man however, continuing on his way just as calmly as he'd begun. It was only as an afterthought that one might notice the Shadow that had crawled up out of the darkness near Ansem's feet, antennae twitching as it searched for the source of the darkness and the heart that bore it before skittering haphazardly towards the treeline.

It was time to see how this stranger would react - and Ansem was watching carefully, for all that seemed not to be.

Edited 2011-09-08 04:50 (UTC)

The Master relished the opportunity to put on an exhibition, especially for a stranger as enticing as Ansem. The Master watched as the shadow at the figure's feet leaked a Hartless that twitched and staggered over like a skittish predator. The Master's eyes looked back to the darkened figure and noticed no change in the posture or behavior.

A quick drop and swing and The Master flipped to the ground with his feet firmly planted. He began wringing his palms together and smiling as the Heartless' expressionless face stared back at him. The Master did not change his pace and almost looked to be walking directly to Ansem's location, ignoring the dark creature. As he was about to pass by the Heartless, he shoved a palm that wrapped around the top of the enemy's head. A quick burst of light later, the creature dissipated into the air.

"Got more? I'd prefer if you put them all out at once so I don't have to bother with each, one by one. Otherwise, you can go ahead and introduce yourself. I'm a man on a tight schedule and an empty stomach," he spoke coolly.

At the sound of the Master landing on the ground, Ansem turned towards him, with a slow laziness that implied that he was mild curiosity and best, and at worst a near-total indifference. The Heartless he'd called up was one of the least of his kindred; he would have been quite worried if such an interesting person had fallen to such a threat. As a result, he didn't even flinch when the Master neatly destroyed the Shadow.

What was one Heartless, when he could call thousands out of the darkness? Besides, the man's words were far more interesting. They spoke of a person who was used to being in control of a situation. An innate, unconscious sort of pride, the sort that Ansem knew best because that very same pride lurked within him, tempting him to not answer the demand for a name. But no, such a thing would not yet prove beneficial. He hardly wished for a fight just yet.

"It's Ansem," he answered in a tone that implied that while he was willing to answer the man's demands for now, he was no toy to be ordered thither and yon, much less at the hands of such an unknown.

The Master stared over the tall stranger when he stopped walking within a short range of him. "Your parents hated you, too?" he replied sarcastically. "Ansem. Given how you set the little ant-man on me, I can take it you're from this place? Or, better yet, maybe you're one of the big head behind the scenes. If that's the case, you have an awful lot of angry visitors looking for answers."

His wagging fingers still clicked with energy while he stood his ground. Even with a single his kind of opponent would not be easy to stop without the element of surprise. "And if you're one of those long talkers, I'd prefer we go get something to eat first as I really am so hungry."

Under other circumstances, Ansem might have laughed to hear his smaller brethren described as 'ant-men,' if only for the sheer ridiculousness of it. As it was, he simply let it pass unnoticed. The man was already making assumptions; he didn't need to add fuel to the fire. Besides, he could hardly remember his own parents and the man who had first owned the name had never mentioned his parents in the first place.

"They answer me because we're alike," he answered simply, appearing to not take any insult at the Master's suggestion that he was behind this. "Their presence here may have called me to this world, but I'm hardly the one responsible for it."

He hadn't even stopped to learn much of the lay out of the world. He hadn't thought it necessary just at the moment. It would keep until he had more time.

"But I'm sure we can find a place where you may eat while we speak."

The Master wasn't one for the florid explanation from Ansem. He got enough of it from his equivalents. In an ironically casual tone, the Master rebutted, "Alike? As far as I can tell, the only thing that's alike is that you both don't have the manners to tell us who you are or what you're about." He wanted to cut to the chase and know what everybody else was digging so hard to find out.

"Well, I can talk here if you have anything on you I can sink my teeth into," he said with a wicked smile.

Manners. What were manners to a Heartless? All he and his kind cared for was how susceptible a person was. He was merely one of the few who still remembered enough to pretend to bow to social graces. He'd leave the more uncouth variant of what they did to his lesser kindred. They could better get away with it under most circumstances.

"I was unaware it was being asked of me," he answered with the verbal equivalent of a shrug, "and I have already offered my name." What he was up to could wait for a little longer. He was still to new for it to be of much worth as it was.

"As for your hunger, I rather doubt you would find the darkness satiating, but if you meant to try I could perhaps arrange for it."

Edited 2011-09-19 00:41 (UTC)

"Thank you for introducing your name, but if you called yourself Mr. Smith, I wouldn't really know who you are, would I?" he inquired.

"I don't eat because I want to. I eat because I must. Because I'm hungry and I won't stop being hungry until I eat but," he continued in a relapse of his raging insanity, "I eat again and again all of the wonderful meats and nothing fills around my bones so I gnaw and tear and bite until-"

He stopped himself before he could continue any longer into his incoherence. "Just give one to me now."

Ansem still wasn't in the slightest bit amused at the other man's insistence on making arch demands instead of holding a conversation and not just because he'd never taken well to orders. No, what he took offense at was the fact that it meant that the only way to continue something at least approximating normal conversation he had to bend to those demands.

If he didn't expect better, he might think the other was doing it intentionally. Especially in light of that rather unfortunate tirade he'd begun for just a moment. Still, he refused to be swayed over much.

"I've said all I mean to without have something offered in return," he answered, although he did call up another Heartless in answer to the request. This time, however, it was no mere Shadow, but instead a Large Body. He had no inclination of wasting some of the more valuable varieties of Heartless on a man he hardly knew. Not when these would do well enough to see if darkness alone could sate his hunger.

The Master had thought of replying to Ansem's question, but seeing the tremendous heartless before him was like presenting The Master a feast on a silver platter.

When the Large Body appeared before The Master, his mouth sagged at the cheeks from the salivation. It looked like a strange gothic balloon, but he could care less. It was mass that he could ingest. Instead of wondering how many different Heartless forms there were or how this near stranger Ansem could actually summon them, his hunger overtook his capacities. He immediately charged the large Heartless and started tearing into it with his teeth. The heartless seemed dumbfounded by the shredding attack, but in the end, The Master was too fast and too hungry to be stopped.

A short time later, he was picked at his teeth and slurping the last bits of the heartless out of the gaps. "In return, you said? What do you have in mind?" he asked much more politely, given that his hunger had finally been tamed.

It was, perhaps unfortunately, a mass that would eventually deteriorate into nothing more than the darkness that had first given it life, but as it seemed to sate the insatiable hunger of the other man, Ansem chose to not mention it just yet. It was hardly his place to warn people of what the darkness could and would do to claim a foothold. That duty 'belonged' to the bringers of light and they were nowhere near this conversation. Thus, Ansem was quite content to simply wait and watch as the Heartless was devoured - by his expression, he cared no more that this one was gone than he'd cared for the death of the first.

He was far more interested in the change in the man's demeanor. Where he'd once been demanding, now he seemed willing to engage in civil conversation. No doubt his hunger was a strange master, and an unfortunate one. Even the gnawing hunger of his own nature, insistent as it was, didn't bring him down to a state where he would stop at nothing to claim what it was that by right ought to have been his.

"A name would be a suitable place to start," he begin, with a faint smile. He could hardly keep referring to him as a number of relatively unflattering epithets, fitting as they might have been under the circumstances.

Only moments after finishing the humongous Heartless he relentlessly picked apart, The Master's hunger grew again as though he had eaten a mass of empty shadow. He looked over Ansem and sized him up once again, wondering just what produced the Heartless in this strange person.

He decided to entertain Ansem a little. At least this way, he could exchange a spot of information from himself for a healthy meal of inexplicable darkness. "My name is The Master," he said, smiling in anticipation of the possibilities before him.

Nothing produced it. The Heartless had already been present within Paixao. He had merely requested that it arrive here as opposed to any other place it might have come. The only way he could have actually created a Heartless was through a method he was not yet prepared to use. Increasing the darkness of the city could wait.

Not to mention he'd finally gotten the stranger's name. True, it was a name that bore more of a resemblance to his own title than a name, but it was better than nothing. "A pleasure to meet you," Ansem answered with a smile of his own, not even batting an eye at the introduction, just as he ignored the fact that it might not be anything of the sort.

The Master watched cautiously as Ansem appeared all too satisfied to only learn a single name. "Pleasure's all yours," he retorted while dropping his smug grin out of spite, "Pleasantries aside, what exactly is it that you do? If you're curious about me, well, look no further than my name." He held out his arms as the situation was making him impatient. Really, the idea of Heartless and Ansem having more answers than he did about his environment was excruciating to his sense of genius.

Ansem's lips curled up at the question of what he did in what was, if not directly a laugh, the suggestion of one, or the emotion that might have led to the same. He had no real job, and what he did was hardly something to be spoken of to company, be it polite or no. But there were still ways to answer, and he supposed he owed the Master that much.

"I am Ansem," he answered, much like before. "Seeker of Darkness, although you might do better by asking what I am, over what I seek to do."

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A Shadow Falls Upon the City [active]

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