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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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[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.
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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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Cloud shifts his weight in the chair; slowly, so as not to raise any concerns, because there's enough tension in this room that a spoiled Platie could pick up on it. Despite the fact that Cloud has actively decided that he's going to belive this kid version of his enemy isn't...innately evil or manipulative or terrible, convincing himself of that is an entirely different manner.] I don't know how to do that.
[And that's part of the problem, part of why he wants to give Sephiroth the real story. Is Jenova gone back home? Vincent would have a better answer to that than Cloud would, but for as long as Cloud is alive, then at least some pieces of Jenova will survive. Maybe when they killed that last beast of Her deep in the Northern Crater, that was the last substantial chunk large enough to have its own will aside from Sephiroth, but maybe it wasn't. Maybe her cells are still lying strewn across the Planet, lingering in corpses, waiting to seep into the waters or be consumed by other beasts and slowly, achingly, make their own way together again for the great Reunion.
Cloud reaches up and touches his forehead, gently.]
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Slowly he lets out the breath he didn't know he was holding in a soft sigh, and with it seems to deflate a little. There never was an easy way out of any of it, was there?
Nothing's said this time; it takes effort to mask the storm of negative thought it touches off and keep his bearing and expression carefully neutral, but it's a tenuous thing. He's not as good at it now as he would be with another decade of practice, something is obviously wrong, but what, be it anger or fear or despair, is impossible to tell.
Maybe he'll find something else he can use in Cloud's version of events. He already had Zack's and Vincent's.]
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After a moment of contemplative silence, Cloud slouching a little further in his chair, he resumes,] Sephiroth would use chunks of Her corpse as roadblocks or attack dogs. I don't know if that was Jenova working Her will through him, or him deciding to use Her like that. Every single time, even if it was just a little piece of Her merged with one of Hojo's test subject clones, it was a bitch and a half for all of us to kill Her.
[Scratches his nose with the side of his thumb, staring at the fire (resentfully, it's too fucking hot and getting worse by the minute).] Got allies?
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The fire crackles pleasantly. Maybe it can be turned down for a while, just because Sephiroth liked it a comfortable furnace didn't mean everyone did.
Allies.
He'd had allies for a while, in Rhadore. It digs the melancholy deeper. Even if he were willing to put his team on the line, they wouldn't go. Not for him, not anymore.]
No. I've .. begun negotiations with the Turks but they are in the end loyal to each other and the Company. It'll be a long time before anyone else begins to reach the level of my training, if I were willing to sacrifice them to begin with. Which I am not.
[All active-type SOLDIERs are based on the experiments run on him, after all. And no-one ever will quite be on his level. Ever.
Except Cloud.]
Whether I succeed or fail, it must be on my own. Too many have already died because of me.
[Everything inevitably circled back to him being alone; sometimes he didn't really have to guess why his future self clings to the only mother who would stand by his side.]
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Then you'll fail.
[Matter of fact.]
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[Were it not for enhanced hearing, it'd be quiet enough to miss over the pop of the fireplace.
He has a role to play, and it isn't saving anyone. It made him bitterly ashamed to stand there in the presence of a man who had succeeded ... because he'd failed.
Because it would be fifteen years before there were enough people strong enough to repeatedly put Jenova down.]
But I have to try. Why else would Thirteen let me remember when everyone else forgets? There's a way to save everyone. There has to be.
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[Nothing stops Cloud from moving around as he pleases; the windows even unopened are noticeably cooler. Insulation isn't really a thing here.
He continues to watch, but not directly.]
Too bad.
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[He almost hisses it, anger briefly sparking sharply upward.]
Even if I wanted to, there's nobody in my time that could do anything! Nobody! I can tear through the P0s like they're paper, what will she do to them? You and your friends are CHILDREN. Deepground's SOLDIERs are also children!
[Months of frustration boil over, and if that pleasantly burning fire in the hearth intensifies gradually, it's incidental.]
Who exactly am I supposed to rely on? Who is there?! Who has EVER been there? I do it myself because I don't have a choice! There's nobody, don't you get it?
[His voice cracks, sharp and splintery, the way any stressed out teen's might, and immediately he falls silent, strangling back the frustration by degrees.]
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...not...alarming.
It's almost startling how unafraid Cloud is after that outburst; shouldn't he be tense, braced for some kind of attack, physical or mental? Shouldn't he have his guard up, ready to fight his way out of this stifling, blank little house? But- no. Sephiroth's never attacked Cloud like this. Even at his ends, near his many deaths, Sephiroth's never run hot with his fury. Every emotion, even his disbelief, has been terrifyingly ice-cold.
Cloud gives the kid a moment to cool off before he replies, his own attitude having since slid away from his tone at the revelation of yet another difference he can latch onto,] I didn't say your allies had to fight for you. Or fight with you.
I meant you need people who know you, and are smart enough to tell when you're acting off. [Turns back to face the outdoors, closing his eyes again.] Who you can trust to knock you upside the head if you start to get lost. People you're willing to trust.
You're not gonna do this on your own. Jenova- [Cloud's lip curls, just a touch.] She works on people who think they're alone.
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If you tell your allies that you're concerned that you might get mind controlled by outside forces and wish them to keep tabs on your behavior to tell if anything changed, do you really think that's all they're going to do?
[There's a sharp edge of resentment to every word, and not all of it is directed at this subject or Cloud. He didn't want to be talking about this, saying any of it at all, but the compulsion remains.
And if he needed something to focus fury on, that'll do. This shouldn't be happening.]
I don't know much about friendships. But if I had allies and they told me something like that I know I wouldn't be sitting idly on my hands just watching and hoping things work out. I would assume normal people would be even more inclined to help. Besides which.
[It's not thinking he's alone. It's knowing. There's nobody at all who can be relied on, trusted at Shinra HQ. The Turks could be relied on to look after their own. He was not one of them.]
Telling me I'm being controlled isn't likely to suddenly break me free, will it?
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(It hadn't occurred to him before that just as Cloud was never quite anti-social, just awkward and lonely, that it could be the same for Sephiroth as well.)
-but that doesn't solve the core issue of this conversation right here and now. That nasty, wounded part of him still doesn't want to help, doesn't want to go through the headache of trying to reason with this deranged super soldier, and just wants to revel in the frustrated fear in his voice. Serves you right, thinks that bleeding wreck of a man still very much at the forefront of Cloud's personality, I hope you fucking wake up screaming. Bastard.
Thank goodness there's still something better than that left of him. Thank Tifa, anyway, for digging it out of him down in the Lifestream.
Either way, telling the kid to go out and make friends when he's convinced of his inability to do such a thing (whatever the reasons, however legitimate) is just going to continue to piss him off. Shiva's tits. What a fucking conundrum.
Cloud turns around finally, spreading his arms in a helpless shrug before leaning his back against the windowsill to get some of that cold air on the back of his neck instead.] Okay. So. My method was persistence and having friends stronger than me to help. Since I don't have advice beyond that, and since I know jack shit about your situation beyond you being unbeatable in a fight, what d'you want me to tell you?
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[It's not smug, or satisfied, or even angry, frustration bleeds back out like water from a holed bucket, leaving less pleasant things in its wake. Almost absently, the locket on the thin gold chain is withdrawn from the pocket he'd put it in, turned over in his hands for a moment before being opened .. but not for long, closing it again, he turns for a closed cabinet to put it inside. There's a scant number of other things in there, a sphere of green materia, a vaguely neat looking rock. Out of sight, out of the way of temptation.
He'd hoped there was an answer he'd missed. That it was more than having a lot of extraordinary friends, that Cloud had found a way to undermine Jenova and himself in ways that might be duplicated.
Hoped there was something, anything he could use to try to replicate the feats he'd been told of.
Instead it was just badgering a man deeply traumatized by his future self, wasn't it? For all his words and insistence, all he really did was bring trouble.]
Mr. Valentine was right. You don't deserve dealing with this, you already have too many times. I have an answer, I'm just afraid to use it.
[He found a way to remove himself from the equation. If the Planet was able to seal Jenova away successfully for thousands of years, all he had to do was kill the people tampering with her and let the Planet handle the rest.
Maybe the Wildmother would answer, from entire worlds away. If he was lucky, it wouldn't hurt that time either.]
...Please go.
cw: suicide mention
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