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TEST DRIVE MEME #10
a. that's where we both belong
[you wake up.
it doesn't matter where you were before. going to bed? dying? opening the door to face a great evil? same result. you wake up in a soft bed with starched sheets in a cool, darkened room, sunlight peeking out from behind thick curtains. maybe you're alone; maybe you aren't. maybe you immediately notice the folded paper on the bedside table near your head. if you don't, you better fix that real quick: you won't be able to even open the door before you read it.
the note itself is written in a neat hand on white card stock; there is a stylized logo of a ship with the words SERENA ETERNA printed underneath. the note reads as follows:
Dear Passenger(s),
As your cruise director, it is my great honor to welcome you aboard the Serena Eterna, your destination for fun and adventure! We know you could have chosen any cruise line for your vacation, and we're very grateful you chose ours! On behalf of the Captain, I would like to assure each and every passenger that will we do whatever it takes to fulfill all your needs and desires during your journey with us.
At your earliest possible convenience, please attend the mandatory lifeboat drill by the end of the day. I'm sure everyone is very eager to get started on all the fun and sun, but safety always comes first! You can find your life jacket in your cabin's closet; carry it to your assigned muster station on deck one, where I will take you through the drill. If you can't find me in the crowd, just look for the gal with the winning smile!
See You Real Soon!
Sincerely,
Gal Friday
you walk to deck one. you have no other choice: every time you try to step in a direction some unseen being considers "not towards deck one," you find your legs no longer move, staying stock still, frozen. whether compelled quickly by curiosity, or delayed by pure stubbornness, the result is the same, and you are left milling around with other similarly curious or stubborn people.
you see someone in uniform near the front of the crowd. she seems to be a gal, but is missing the winning smile, along with most of her other features. she seems to see you, though, rushing to your side and placing a lei around your neck with great formality. a voice, cheery but artificial, sees to come from nowhere and everywhere.]
Welcome aboard! I'm so happy you could join us!
[you touch the lei. rooster feathers, lotus seeds, and a carved circle of something white and hard, linked onto a silk string.
after the drill is completed, you are seemingly free to go. or, well, your legs work, now. and maybe that's as good as it's gonna get.]
b. and there's plenty of that down by the sea
[it’s strange to think about, isn’t it? how all those new passengers, the ones grumbling or shouting their way through the forced muster drill, have absolutely no idea what happened just last month. no idea about the labyrinth. no concept of why anyone around them would be a bit more hesitant around shadows.
they’ll learn.
sometimes a shadow is darker than it’s supposed to be. very rarely does anything come of that; just a vague sense that someone is watching you, and little more. sometimes, though, the shadows move. sometimes they grab at your ankles as you walk. sometimes they give you a shove as you go down the stairs. sometimes they pull your hair, or pinch your arm.
sometimes you feel something sharp cut into your lower leg.
that’s not a shadow, though. that’s a fiddler crab. you see the crab, sometimes. the cut isn’t from its claws, which don’t look very intimating; it’s not a very large crab. the cut is from the large kitchen knife crudely taped onto its back. it’s probably fine. it's not chasing you. there isn't evil in its heart. probably.]
c. think I'll go back to the Keys
[one day, in the atrium, two pedestals suddenly appear. on each is a large button: one green, and one blue. pressing the blue button gives you a little treat, popping out of thin air next to you. pressing the green button sends a small electric shock through your body. weird, but, hey, pretty avoidable, right?
except, it seems to be spreading. to every other button on board.
in the elevator. on the soda machine. the arcade. your phone. the bell on Friday’s desk.]
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Speaking of which, Nobunaga just laughs evilly, and loudly. "BWAHAHAHAH!" He's genuinely delighted at being called out on that, because it's too funny to him. "I know I'm a demon king! Not just any Demon King, the ultimate maou of 6th Heaven! None worse. But I never tell those I'm hurting it's for their own good! And I never lie to myself or do things to hate myself. How truly weak," he shakes his head again, actually kind of pitying Erik again. "You're not without potential, you know this, yet you waste it." A head tilt. "Why?"
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It's not the Ozarks Nobunaga has a problem with. Not at all. It's why he thought it was like himself! Owari was the least desirable location of all of Japan. Barren, crossroads, chronically underestimated, and doomed by being surrounded by bigger wealthier daimyo.
Youngest elder vampire.
Nobunaga has a soft smile at that, and debates emptying the Tanegashima, but instead, merely keeps it handy, carefully moving to try to see what he can do about making garlic bread on his own before remembering -- "I know garlic doesn't affect you, I'm making this for my partner. I was going to ask Max's help. Just know I'm not doing this to be antagonistic. It's Klaus' favorite."
Let's see, to make the compound butter, he need garlic (obviously), the sage, etc. Nobunaga never completely removes a hand from his gun as he cautiously moves about getting the ingredients.
It's a complicated question, and doesn't deserve to be ignored, but too complicated of an answer was more wasteful than Nobunaga was willing to engage in immediately.
"What did you have to do to gain your position? Not as a vampire, but as Lord I mean." Carefully, Nobunaga slices the bread, one-handed, eyes on Erik, but almost giving away how much love he's putting into his actions. He's copying Max, and then using his own overwhelming affection for Klaus, and he doesn't care what anyone thinks of it.
"It's wasteful, because..." the red eyes narrow on the vampire. His size reminds him of 5 now. The time traveling assassin stuck in his teenage body. Slowly and carefully with voice, very carefully choosing each word. "I know you know humans could give you more power if you would only utilize them. Do you think you're protecting them, or do you truly fear them more than the other vampires?" He tilts his head. Obviously, Oda doesn't think that he's wrong.
Finally, finally Nobunaga lifts his hand off the gun and holds it up to show the vampire. Both hands are off the gun, now, see? "I've agonized over this. How Max's words, his praise," a slight contemptuous bite to that, because Nobunaga knows better than to trust words, or people, only motivations, and Valdis herself pointed out that Max's motivation was appeasing, even pleasing others, but for so long, Nobunaga couldn't match everything up. Praise from a servant means everything to Nobunaga. If the Emperor praised you, you were an idiot to value it, if you praised the Emperor when you could gain nothing from it? He was more worthwhile than he knew. "Doesn't match up to what I saw in person. He's not capable of lying to me, only to himself. Klaus seemed to think you think of humans as weak, but no, clearly not with Maximum." Ugh weird to still call him that.
Nobunaga tilts his head again, thinking it over, and leans his chin into his hand, elbow on the counter. So much he can't put into words!
The youngest thing doesn't particularly speak to Nobunaga the same, because Nobunaga made others the youngest or first or only of their kind. Ranmaru was the youngest to ever own a castle and fiefdom. The first to ever break the rules about not being allowed to be his page after their young teens. Yasuke was the first African, first foreign samurai, given swords and land as well. Surely Erik himself knew how many it times it happened in human history, and while that hardly had the gravity of elder vampires with their longer lifespans, it's all the more reason it irks Nobunaga. If the vampires are worse than humans at adapting, at changing, at being stronger in their techniques? Then it would take a truly ambitious, and the strongest vampire of all time, to change it around them without asking for their permission or waiting for them to learn better. While he's not disappointed that's not Erik's aim, he does think it's still so very far to go.
Red eyes just gaze on Erik as if he can see every ounce of him, 'soul' and lack thereof and measure it on an internal Hell's scales of justice.
"I think if you grew your ambition, you could do more than you already have. Much more. And you wouldn't be wasting Max." That's probably far FAR too forward, it's CERTAINLY too revealing for Nobunaga to say, but this is his exact point. Perhaps, it's because he's not a vampire, and that's why. He's a Demon King, however metaphorical that title is, it's specifically because Nobunaga's specialty is seeing the barriers that prevent people from reaching their highest potential, and more importantly, how to utterly destroy them.
Is it because Oichi was a sweet princess almost a daughter given her age difference and how young Nobunaga had to become lord? Vs. Erik's twin sister who preyed on humans, the opposite of Oichi who wanted to save Nobunaga's (nonexistent, or very frayed) soul. Is it because Nobunaga didn't want to be lord, he wanted to be free, and the only way to do that was to free everyone else? Is it because Hideyoshi, Ieyasu, Masamune, and Mitsuhide always kept Nobunaga on track? No. The only reason they allied with him so stubbornly, helped him so greatly was the same reason Nobunaga is trying to stress this to the vampire. It's because of Nobunaga's grand ambition, unlike anything the world had seen, willing to do anything to achieve it, that the others signed up for it.
"Even in chess, you must know when to accept losses, Lord Osbourne." He's using the title now, and meaning it, because it was earned, hard fought for. But still not enough yet. No one in all of time or even alternate universes could ever say Nobunaga wasted Hideyoshi or Ieyasu's potential. No one else could have brought them 1/100000th as far as Nobunaga did. "No piece is irreplaceable." That headtilt again, even leaning on a fist. "But if don't aim even beyond the king-" The player. Nobunaga never aimed for the King, it was just one more piece. His head never lost sight of the real enemy. In war, beyond Kennyo the monk, beyond the shogun Yoshiaki, beyond even the Emperor, beyond gods, and whether they're real or not; Nobunaga was the fearless ruthless commander who would defy reality and fight wormholes and change humanity's destiny to how he wanted it. "You'll just wind up being a piece in someone else's game board."
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"As a lord? Not that it's any of your business to know, but one must first reach the age of a thousand years and then they must claim a territory for themselves, declare and defend it. I have done this." That type of system should sound very familiar.
"As for humans? What makes you think that I fear them? I work with them, and quite often. I do business with them, I entertain them in my home, I am policed by them. You really do not seem to know much about how my kind operate at all. You should stop pretending that you do. Life is not a chess board. I tire of that metaphor. But I do agree with you that Max is irreplaceable, which should explain why I am so eager to locate him now."
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It is pretty similar to warlords, yes, except the daimyo were granted territory by the emperor and inherited it.
"Policed by?" a small laugh and a headshake.
"I too, hate that metaphor. Valdis is overly fond of it, and it makes me think she'd do poorly at Shogi or Go. I simply assumed you were more familiar with it as a Westerner." A quiet hum. "You were scared of Klaus. Though he is not wholly human. If you're not scared of humans, are you scared for them?" A head tilt and Nobunaga's eyes search Erik out. "As I said, you should consider growing your ambition. Not everyone has to try to take over the world by force, but if you consider this your peak, you'll always just stay afraid of losing what you've gained." The eyes narrow and he goes back to the bread, setting it inside the oven finally.
"And I don't think you're that weak." He thinks everything over. The dissonance between Max's words and what Nobunaga saw himself and then again Valdis and Klaus' words. Maybe the vampire was, really. "Seek bigger and you'll lose the fear of losing what you already have. Until then, mada mada dane. Still a long way to go."
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"Yes, policed by. We have an Accord with them and there are consequences for breaking it. The consequences go both ways." If a human provokes, a vampire is allowed to defend himself.
"I find your preoccupation on fear and power to be more indicative of your own attitudes than any reflection on mine. I have plenty to occupy myself with. The running of a territory does come with responsibilities and duties like any position of power. I, unlike some, am committed to performing those duties in order to solidify my base rather than to be shirking the concerns of my people in order to chase more power. My ambition is not only to rule but to rule well."
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"I understand," about the human accords. "The first thing I ascertained about Max's relationship with you was that he is, in fact, allowed weapons. He told me you trained him in knives. I know very little about the nature of slavery," it's basically an anathema to him, strangely enough, "But I know they are not allowed weapons ever. Nor were the lowest caste, before me." He takes pride in that, but there's none in his tone, because he only mentions it to denote the timeline explanation, despite the context in mentioning this and the rest.
???
Is Nobunaga preoccupied with fear and power?
Oh, yes. Definitely.
He's a Demon King. He has to be. He thinks back to Saito Dosan though, and Reginald Hargreaves. Is it corrupting himself? Oda's not sure. It's something to examine later though, definitely.
"As you should," quietly, "But part of that is making sure you forward the goals of those in your power. Do you know what Max's goals are?"