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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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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
After he worked up the nerve to get in here? After he just broke down like some kind of lunatic in the market, on the front walk, inside your stupid house? With his back and neck muscles so tense you could probably snap rebar if you wedge on between the fibers? Cloud is standing here, sweating out his body weight because you have to have it eighty-six degrees in this house in the dead of winter, arguing back and forth with a teenager who apparently both despises him and admires him simultaneously, meticulously picking apart his fight-or-flight response because he's finally decided to try and unravel the irritatingly complex knot of yarn that is his feelings on the man he hates most in the entire world, and you want him to please go?
Cloud straight up ignores the request.]
And that answer is? [Cloud assumes 'kill myself,' because that just seems like that's the direction this is going. It's the idea he would've had. Has had.]
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[There's a little flash of fury again, there and squashed in the space of one hissed sentence. It's not fair, he has to struggle to not lay bare everything that pops into his head and Cloud's apparently completely unaffected!
Or not as badly affected as himself, at least, there were some moments earlier that might have counted but all of this was too close to normal to qualify. Everything about this is bullshit, and he needed this man to go before he said something that he'd never be allowed to recover from. Weaknesses were too easy to lay bare when he couldn't pretend.]
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But, other than that, Sephiroth's accusation startles him. Is he? He takes a moment to very pointedly not answer Sephiroth's question and, when he doesn't feel like he has to, that settles it.] ...must be a time limit on that curse, [Cloud murmurs, more to himself than for Sephiroth, though he doesn't lower his voice specifically to keep it secret. The kid will hear.
Doesn't matter. He has an advantage. Time to press it.] Stop trying to talk around it, [Cloud says lightly, tilting his head as he regards the kid coolly.] Divine intervention to do what? Just straight up kill you?
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Only one of them has their belly bared to the knife. His expression darkens. Of course there's no mercy, why would there be?]
It's not the goal, but a necessary side effect. Removing my alien mother from the planet completely requires removing the infection from all living things, including myself. As it is half my genome this does kill me.
[And it had been ... gentle. Warm. Welcoming in a way he could barely comprehend. He could have stayed in that warm embrace forever.
And then Cad brought him back. Back to this, this miserable life where the only way out is through dying.]
Convenient for you, I can hardly burn down your little town if I'm dead ten years early.
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What about the Planet? Will it tolerate some other god or whatever showing up to try and clean it up? [Look, Cloud will be the first to admit that humans have really fucked things up for the world, almost irreparably so, but on the flipside the Planet is a pissed off motherfucker sometimes. It didn't like Jenova and maybe it won't like this other alien intervention.] If you really think this'll work...you'll need Aerith to hear about it first.
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The Planet had it's chance to cleanse the infection. It couldn't, and chose to isolate and freeze it instead. Ice melts. So long as She does nothing else, I don't anticipate a protest, save that I may be rejected by the Lifestream and may never meet my human mother even in death.
[The sullenness is creeping back in by degrees, and he's not bothering to hide how upset he is about any of this conversation now that he's aware he's the only victim of the truth. There are things he didn't say to anyone willingly, any and all thoughts and worries about his mothers being one of them. One a monster, the other dead, and all the dreams of love and acceptance so much ash. He knew he could physically oust Cloud if he wanted to, and he very much did, but had to weigh if it'd be worth it.
But Aerith.. the tension the name alone causes is immediate. He had no idea who she was, beyond a future victim that Cloud ... And to him, more importantly, Zack cared about a great deal.]
Absolutely not. I said I would not trouble her further, and I will not. It isn't her timeline besides.
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How old would she be in nineteen ninety two? She's about your age now, isn't she? That'd imply ... perhaps six or seven in mine?
[Cetra. Another word for the Ancients.
That did explain how her prayers supposedly helped stop the 'ultimate summon'.]
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[This is...yes, directly opposite of the 'stay the hell away from her' threats Cloud gave the kid ages ago, but times change. And Aerith's a much stronger person than he is; the threats to stay away from Aerith had been more for Cloud's own nerves than hers.]
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