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Entry tags:
Truth Meme
Truth Meme
Somehow, there is kirin on you.
Most likely, it is the fur of the kirin that was caught in the environment of wherever you’ve been; there is a stray hair on you because one was on the seat you sat on upon the train or because it blew onto the brim of your hat in the wind.
Or it may be because you met the kirin—a playful ungulate moose-sized spirit who prefers not to speak—and engaged with him and gave him a pat, or a scratch behind an ear. Maybe the kirin nosed or licked your hand because you made him laugh (it’s an adorable ‘keh keh keh’ sound).
Unfortunately for both you and the kirin (who had not meant to trouble your day like this, truly), this exposure to his dander has only one reaction, and it happens to 100% of Star Children: you are compelled to tell the entire truth. About what is less specific; you are compelled simply to announce things about yourself—your life, experiences, thoughts, opinions, feelings. No matter if it’s something silly and inconsequential, deep or secretive, life-altering or commonplace. Some may choose to do this by employing Foxi and their relic; others by finding people to exchange truth with to face to face.
When you have met the kirin’s subconscious desire for four hours, you will be free from the truth telling and the recipient of 24 hours of good luck. The good luck will be sometime in the next year rather than in the next day, and you may have no idea where it came from, but you’ll know a lucky day when you have it!
- This meme is game canon unless marked otherwise at the start of threads! Threads can be used for spoons and application samples.
- Assume all characters involved on this meme are affected.
- Characters will compulsively state truths about themselves/their feelings on the network or in-person. Top-levels may include either/both options.
- Please include prompts in your top level.
- All questions will be answered with complete and total honesty. No special abilities, half-truths, or omissions can avoid sharing all of the truth.
- Meme is open until the next truth meme!
- After one month, you may use the kirin mechanic generally in game. It can be one-sided! All truth-telling characters must consent.
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[Cloud's control even over this compulsion to truth is better than his, Cloud's able to maintain better quiet, keep SOMETHING to himself. It's more proof of how much stronger the man was.
The small golden object is instantly assessed to be the wrong size and shape for a weapon, so it is indeed caught.. and immediately recognized as the missing locket and picture. It brought him great comfort once, the idea alone that she might be out there.
Now.. now it's still carefully put away, with all the gentleness the fragility that bit of delicate metal required.]
... Thank you for not destroying it. I'm not supposed to still have it, it should be at the bottom of a mako fissure.
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You're apparently doin' all kinds of shit you shouldn't, so what's one more? [You know what though? Now Cloud's going to take advantage of this truth curse thing. He's going to get some fuckin' answers while he still can, when he knows that Sephiroth is compelled to be truthful against his will. Maybe he should get Aerith to cast Zone of Truth on his ass, too.] Why didn't you fight back?
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[Asking Aerith to cast anything would mean having her in range. He's here to pick up things, so it's those things he goes looking for. Something with a lot of spiciness. Soup maybe? Fine, if Cloud wanted the truth, he'll get it.]
What would keeping on fighting have done? I wasn't there to try to hurt you, I wanted your help. I thought you were there to help, Mr. Valentine's stories always paint you to be a real hero who does the right thing no matter what. I guess he's as biased about you as he is about Mother.
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Cloud stares for a few seconds before clapping a hand over his mouth and ducking his head, shoulders hunched. He shakes, almost as if he's crying until the hand over his mouth moves to hold his gut, his other hand propping himself up against a nearby food stall (much to the chagrin of the spirit running it) as he laughs. Not even just a small chuckle or a snort; no, it's a steady, low, sardonic thing, out of place and grating. The spirit at the stall is now eyeballing Cloud with concern instead of just irritation.
Of course Vincent's been painting Cloud as some kind of- bedtime story hero, to Sephiroth of all people. Of course he has.]
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It's not the first time he's been laughed at, but it stings anyway, no matter how much he deserved it. He shouldn't listen to stories, especially ones like that. Heros weren't real.
He doesn't look at Cloud again as grinding laughter rolls on like poisonous thunder. He just sets the items back down, pulling in on himself, humiliation bitter and unpleasant and all the encouragement he needed to leave. He didn't try to throw off Cloud strangling him, and he doesn't try to stop this either.]
I'm sorry for scaring you.
[It's quiet, pitched to not interrupt the amusement. Maybe Cloud should have tried derision on the older one, it seems remarkably effective at warding this one off.]
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Thankfully Cloud doesn't drag it out for much longer; he straightens, dragging a hand across his eyes as if wiping away tears, an arm still pressed against his stomach as a brace.] Not a goddamn thing's changed, has it? [he asks aloud, tone amused but...not. Something off about it.
Cloud marches forward after catching his breath and picks up Sephiroth's shopping, continuing past him.] Come on. I dunno where you live.
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It didn't matter to them who he was or what he was, save the enhanced reputation of being a known Legend. But the concern is waved off, however subtly, with a murmur of It's okay, he has the right to.
Showing Cloud where he lives strikes him as a terrible idea. But it was fair, wasn't it? Sephiroth knew where he lived, so he could better avoid it. He hesitates, grip briefly tightening on the locket that had been tossed back to him, briefly painfully obviously anxious at Cloud's turned back. This is a bad idea.]
... Not far.
[The locket is carefully put away once more, relic briefly taken out, but that too doesn't last long before he moves to overtake Cloud. Not far is true, it's only ten minutes or so away on foot, faster yet if he flew.
Quiet side streets, in winter. No plowing, no shoveling. Neighbors that take note and watch, but won't interrupt usually, and one more nondescript Lapine bolt-hole is apparently the one chosen. The front garden is overgrown with winter-dead flowers, but the path to it is clear.]
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I had...a poster on my wall of you. Him. [Cloud gestures with one bag-laden hand at the air to the side, expression almost fond, still faraway. His eyes burn mako-bright cerulean blue.] 'bout that big. Nibelheim got newspapers almost a week late, but I'd still cut out all the articles and stuff about him and pin them up around the poster. A whole wall of it. ...the great General Sephiroth saved another town. Sephiroth killed a ruby dragon with just two strikes. Stuff like that.
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And winces. He knew the posters that were already out.]
I don't know what happens in the future, but based on the past, most of the stories they've claimed are ... just that. Aside from the dragon, that's true.
[Depending on the red dragon, two sounded right. The rest? The rest was nonsense, and it's something he's long found bitterly contemptuous. He was just a face on a poster. And Cloud did what Shinra wanted every kid to do.
I wasn't fighting in Wutai since I was ten, my first deployment was Rhadore just before I came here, and Shinra was already making me out to be some epic war hero. I'm not. I'm just their trained pet killer. I don't have any rank in the army at all, a private fresh-enlisted has more authority than a First Class. All it's ever been ... probably all it ever will be..
[Sephiroth hated it. But what choice did he have? He stops at his own door, plain and brown and unadorned.]
... is made up. Do you want to come in?
cw: gore imagery
[Things like that. Things he doesn't even want to say to himself, falling out of his mouth, like guts from a stomach wound, plop on the ground in a pile of blood and viscera.] And I don't want to not be scared of you.
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[Something in his bearing, in his tone says he already knows the answer.
That's what it's about, isn't it? That's what the picture he'd been putting together suggests. He didn't know, but the sound of it was right.]
I.. found a way to die. It looks like I shouldn't be able to return from it on my own, too. But if it'll kill me, maybe it'll just ... cure you. You're still human.
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The boy that's here is a victim too.
It's so fucking unfair that he can't get away from that. He'd known it, when he'd been strangling the man who killed his mom, because the eyes had been different. Sephiroth had never looked at Cloud like that, not even when he was still sane; with regret. Apology.Guilt.
If the Sephiroth standing right here really isn't capable of the atrocities he committed (will commit) back home, then the same is true of the Sephiroth Cloud once admired. The Sephiroth standing just over there in front of the little round door of his little woodsy burrow home, offering to die, is the most unassuming, unthreatening little thing Cloud's ever seen, and the only things that change him into a monster are time and Jenova.
Just like him.
Just like Cloud.
Pain lances hot and sharp through Cloud's head and he hisses, actually dropping Sephiroth's bags this time as he clutches at his head. This is your first time back home in a while, isn't it? floats through his mind, soft and unassuming; detached, maybe, but a kind of awkward kindness in there that shows in the fact that he'd even thought to ask. That he'd even bothered to read about the little trooper's file before the mission, bothered to retain the info that the scrawniest little runt of a private had come from this nowhere town and might want to see his mother again.
Fucking Jenova.
It means that because Jenova put her claws into Sephiroth and squeezed at the moment he was most vulnerable, it means that because nobody had been around Sephiroth to help him or talk him down (like Cloud had, like all of Cloud's friends had done for him), that he'd been put down like a rabid dog not just once, but three times. That Cloud had killed his hero three times because Sephiroth had been, in comparison, just so goddamned unlucky.
This is what Vincent had been trying to tell him, however gently, however abstractly. This is what Cloud already knew deep inside and hadn't wanted to even begin to consider the second he saw the scrawny teenager, awkward and muted, pacing around as Cloud flew overhead and looking hopefully upward trying to spot a pretty bird. Just a sad kid with no friends.
Just like him.]
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Nobody deserved to live like that. What must it do, to question every thought or action and wonder if it was his own? Or if some other, outside force was pulling his strings?
Maybe he'd be standing there laughing at the audacity too. Except the laughter cuts off with a hiss.
... This isn't the first time he's seen Cloud react to sudden intense headaches, but it is the first time he hadn't done it - at least, as far as he knew; training wars with impulse, starts him forward a few steps, reaching almost on autopilot in case Cloud fell entirely the way he had before but stops before he can actually get within reach.
If he caused this then touch might make it worse. He didn't think he did, a frantic review of the past few minutes didn't have any of the usual focus he required to use that particular skillset, but that didn't mean accidents couldn't happen. Accidents were almost guaranteed, like the path of destruction he'd left as a small child learning to control his incredible strength. He hadn't meant it then, either, but children that young didn't understand.
Sephiroth's plenty old enough now to understand. And hesitates, just outside of reach. Part of him was reasonably sure if he caused it he could stop it, but he didn't dare actually reach out and touch. He thought he was getting better with this!]
I .. didn't .. [Not meaning to meant exactly shit, what's done is done.] ... Do you need me to call Zack?
[cw: suicide mention]
[-god damn it, he'd dropped the bags.
The high pitched ringing is leaving his ears slowly and taking that slicing, sharp pain with it, but it's taking its sweet time. Like the lingering ache after the brutal twinge of using a muscle wrong, whenever he tries to reach for those memories in any tangible sort of way. Trying to pull forward anything he can recall of the limited interactions he'd had with Sephiroth before the Nibelheim incident. All that comes to him are flashes of black and silver, the great General in the Shinra halls, there and gone in an instant.
The echoing emptiness of memories no longer there rebounds off the inside of his skull as Cloud's trembling breaths begin to even out. With telling slowness he unfolds, bent but no longer hunched, and he reaches to gather up the dropped bags and check to see if he just smashed a dozen eggs or something.
...if I find a way to become human? They've both got Jenova cells. What makes Sephiroth less human than Cloud or Zack? Because he's had them longer? I.. found a way to die. And Cloud found a way to kill him. A few ways, actually, and still it didn't do anything. But the thought of this soft-spoken kid (monster, murderer) looking for the most effective suicide is one of the most desolate, despairing things Cloud's ever heard. He can't help but relate.
He wants to speak, but not a single word seems willing to sit in his mouth. The rustle of the shopping bags as he rummages through sounds deafening.]
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[He'll wait, the one word tinged in something like disbelief. Of course it was him. But if it takes longer than a minute, or two or three, then ... Vincent would be nearby, and it wouldn't take Zack long to arrive either if necessary; airborne and with the speed born of worry, even Garm wasn't really far. And so he watches and waits, not quite ever watching Cloud directly, though that's nothing unusual. Peripheral did just fine outside of combat.
It wouldn't be much of a fight right now, and after the last one .. he's pretty sure he could escape without doing any harm. The last time he'd been so determined to try to impress someone who'd saved the world over and over, thinking the fury Cloud brought to bear was simply to push him hard and not because of terror or hatred. Finally he didn't have to hold back, someone could keep up. Could even actually win, and probably easily.
In retrospect it was obvious.
No eggs have fallen this day, but there's a number of apples and pears that are likely to be bruised now, and several small packets of individually wrapped meat that probably couldn't be harmed if hit with a hammer. The unfortunate fruit may now have to have a destiny of sauce.]
I don't think you could damage any of it. Don't worry. It's just things.
[Objects are impermanent and irrelevant. If those failed, Lore could simply make more anyway, even though he would swear ones grown on a tree tasted different. Maybe it was his own lack of imagination in their creation.]
It's kind of funny, in a vicious kind of way. [He is never petting another deer. Ever. No matter how friendly and gentle they are. Maybe, if his voice is low, Cloud won't pick it up over the rustle of bag and lingering pain in his head.] You believed the stories of heroism about a grown me, when you were younger. And here I'm the younger one. I never thought real heroes were possible until I came here. They had to all be fakes, like me. Until Zack told me what you did, and Mr. Valentine confirmed it. And I thought, if you could do it. If heroes were real, and you could save all those people, maybe I could find a way to be like you. ...Maybe it's just cruel, and not funny at all.
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The problem with those two, [he answers lowly, bringing the bags of bruised fruit and wrapped meats over to Sephiroth, eyes soft in a way he hasn't allowed the kid to see before as he talks about his friends,] is that they're biased. And they like me too much. [Of course Cloud is still sometimes of the opinion that he doesn't deserve to be liked at all, but he's been (slowly) working on that.] ...that offer to come in still good?
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And Zack was that way about everyone, as near as Sephiroth could tell. .. Nearly everyone.] I don't think they lied to me though.
[So: hero. Everything Shinra claimed he was but wasn't, except for the relentless killer part. He didn't know what to do about it now, emulating someone who feared and hated him seemed ... willfully nasty.
Especially with this gentler edge when discussing Cloud's friends. It's obvious how much he cared about them, even in front of an enemy; someone like that certainly could save everyone. He reaches almost absently to take his bags back from Cloud, hesitating for a moment before giving a short nod.]
I don't have much, but it'll be warmer than outside.
[By a lot, evidenced when he does finally nudge the round door open and heat billows out immediately; his comfortable range is apparently, somewhere in the low eighties. And when he steps inside, the door's left open; Cloud can follow easily enough.
It's. Not much. Three rooms, one of which is a bathroom. A 'bedroom' to one side mostly a good place to collect schoolbooks, the main room a kitchen, dining room, sitting room and everything else, its only furnishings a homework-covered table with two chairs, an extremely fluffy dog bed, a cot with a blanket on it, a space heater roaring away determinedly, and a lone painting of Lucrecia Crescent against the fireplace- not exactly a location of prominence, it's easy to miss, but it's still there. Unsurprisingly, there's little signs that a teenager lived there. No knicknacks, no toys, no frivolous things that didn't serve a purpose.
But it is in fact, very comfortably warm if someone likes it way above freezing.]
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After a moment of deliberation (whether to bolt instead of stay), Cloud finally shuts the door and resigns himself to being too warm for his liking. He'll just like. Lay down in a snow drift somewhere later or whatever.
The lack of decor doesn't register, his own room at the cottage largely devoid of his own knickknacks despite his two years in Folkmore. It's normal, isn't it? It is kind of weird that he's decided to just put a cot in the open area rather than the bedroom where like. The bed is supposed to go. Having a weirdly arranged house is the least of the crimes a teenager living alone could commit though, and honestly Cloud is trying to stop judging this kid for a whole lot of other things so he's not about to start nitpicking over things that don't actually matter.
He'll take one of those chairs out, though. The sword's on his back and it's staying there, so he has to angle himself and the blade both to avoid getting stuck against the chair's back, but he manages.] No, [Cloud continues the conversation from outside without preamble,] they probably didn't lie. But they probably didn't tell the whole truth. You should hear it.
no subject
Cloud's the third person he'd ever allowed inside, and Vincent never breathed a word about physical discomfort.. ever. About anything. Surely this is how everyone kept their homes (except Caduceus).]
... If you want. But what I know hasn't been pleasant, and you don't owe me a story.
[Another retelling of how much trouble he causes in the future won't be enjoyable, especially from one of his foremost victims..]
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Before he stops. Switches tacks. It's...Sephiroth over there, sort of; same pale skin, same cat-slit eyes, same delicate silver hair...same unnerving, unnatural stillness. Like he's waiting for a breath in order to cut it in half. Everything else, though, is so...removed. The kind of awkward, uncomfortable consideration from Nibelheim is the closest Cloud can liken it to without inviting another headache, but at the same time maybe he shouldn't liken him to anything Cloud can remember.
Cloud folds his arms over his chest, looking at Sephiroth carefully before recalling Caduceus's advice. Ground yourself. He turns his boot, taps the toe of it against the ground.] ...I wanna call you something else.
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He's determined to let it happen if it does, the two swords on their rack against the wall left there deliberately, the cool green gleam of Cure likewise out of reach. Leaning slightly back against the countertop to what worked as a kitchen, he almost crosses his arms too nearly in the same move Cloud does, but catches it before he can and freezes, then just puts his hands in his pockets. Any effort to seem less threatening may be pointless.]
... You may call me whatever you wish..? I'd prefer not 'specimen S' though, and I don't have a surname to make use of.
[Even in the midst of the compulsion of truth, Sephiroth can't help but be baffled over it, for all that he's willing enough. He's been called plenty of things before, what's one more? He'd respond to anything, once he knew it was meant for him. But what was the point? Usually he could at least guess at a train of thought but what did this have to do with anything?]
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Okay. Fine. Yes. Sephiroth- the kid has issues connecting with people. Right. Vincent's implied as much and Cloud's very, very shaky memory supports it. Cloud takes a deep breath and rubs a hand down his face, thinking. He honestly cannot imagine another name for the kid in front of him, at least not right now, so,] I'm gonna stick with just 'kid,' then. I'm...if I'm calling you by your full name all the time, it's gonna be harder to not...look at you the same as- as him. Make sense?
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And after a long, long moment, he nods.]
It's sensible.
['Kid' is pretty neutral, and if he wanted to not be blamed for things he hadn't even gotten to do yet, then it was a small price to pay. Neutral was better than he could hope for given the circumstances.]
Even though I'm not a kid. I'm fifteen.
[That's thoroughly unnecessary and has the grudging tone of something he really didn't intend to say at all.]
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But the insistence earns a brief glower before he schools himself back to neutrality, a flash of sullenness that any teenager might wear.]
As you wish, then.
[He's not sulking. He isn't.]
All I ... really need to know is what to do to kill my alien mother, for good. If she can do to me what I can do to you then I think it's inevitable I'm going to fail as I am. Anything else.. you don't need to tell me anything, but the rest can be kept private and I won't complain.
[Cloud's terrified of him, and he's ... terrified of facing Jenova, the thought left a cold sweat threatening to break out in spite of the heat he kept his home at. Cloud only had some cells. He was half alien disease. What if it made it that much harder to resist? What if he was only risking the world a decade too soon?]
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cw: suicide mention
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