gameofmana | ♪ Our house ♪ in middle of this tree ♪ our house

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♪ Our house ♪ in middle of this tree ♪ our house

Who: Everyone
What: The first morning of an adventure begins.
Where: Home
When: Day 1
Other: Be courteous and warn for any of the usuals in your thread subject title if it gets to that point.

You wake up to a serene and idyllic morning.

Outside, a pleasant glow from the sun fills the room including the small crannies in which the beds are tucked. All windows have been latched close, but it's easy to see a gentle breeze ruffling the leaves of branches which loom overhead. Faintly, bird song can be heard from outside. In this place, it'd be a simple matter to close your eyes again and drift back to sleep.

There's simply one problem: this is not where you last went to sleep.

Waking up properly will display not only how the picturesque and cozy little room stands out in stark contrast to where you should be, but that you are sharing this space with someone else. Depending on things, they might be very mundane or very... unusual. Either way, they seem just as bewildered as you are. The good news is that at least all the things you immediately had on you at the time are right nearby the foot of your bed along with what seems like a small gift- a small pouch of some sort of coin. (500 Lucre, although that might not be immediately realized anytime soon.)

Exploring the rest of the house shows it to be otherwise quite empty, except for some writing utensils and paper in what appears to be the study along with basic kitchen tools in, well, the kitchen. There's no food, however, and no decoration. Venturing outside onto the grounds reveals an expansive but not particularly well tended estate including another building that is fairly run down. Attempting to venture down the path from the front door out into the world reveals... well. Nothing. It's a fruitless endeavor.

However, not for long.

Hajime Iwaizumi will be the one to find what appear to be a few discarded children's toy blocks. The Colorblocks immediately seem off in some way, strange even as they should seem inconspicuous. Something about them will compel him to pick them up. The nature of this apparent toy will not be obvious until he ventures near the edge of Home himself. A sound, almost like distant bellchimes, will start to emit from the Colorblocks.

When exposed to the air, suddenly they emit a glow and shoot off into the sky with all the brilliance of a falling star. Its trail is both noticeable and easy to follow, curving an arc through the sky until it falls some distance away... and its impact bursts an aurora of colors through the distant and dimmer sky, encircling the site. As the whirlwind of color fades, what appears to be a town can be just made out...

That is the town of Domina.

Some OOC notes:
➸ Prior to the activation of the Colorblocks, the only books which will be filled out in the Study will be "Artifacts" and "Visitors".
➸ After Domina has been unlocked and some characters have explored the town, "People" and "Locations" will be filled out in the Study as well.
➸ To see who your character is initially rooming with, check the Home page. These rooming assignments are not permanent or mandatory by any means, and characters can change them whenever. Officially letting me know will be present and explained in the next mod post coming in a week's time, but for now we can play it relaxed and loose. Just don't burn down the tree in the meantime.

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"So we should go look around?" Ken seems to be feeling better already at the prospect of doing something...which is probably the exact opposite reaction Chikusa's having at the prospect of having to do something. Oh well. That's how they've always worked.

"I could channel, byon. See if anything smells off." He pauses, then scowls. "Well...if anything doesn't seem like it belongs to the illusion, byon." To Ken's nose, everything seems off around here.

“It’s for the best.” If anything will sense a disturbance in this place, it’ll be one of Ken’s senses. Chikusa doesn’t doubt that. On the off-chance he can’t find anything… Well, Chikusa supposes they’ll get to that when they do. They’ll definitely be in trouble…

“If you find anything, let me know. We’ll meet in a few hours…” That should be enough time.

"Oh." Ken loses some of his enthusiasm when he realizes Chikusa means for them to split up. He's been sticking this close so far for a reason. But he shrugs off the discomfort with the ease of someone who, frankly, is used to life being less than ideal. There's times he can get away with whining for attention or accommodation - generally, when nothing pressing is weighing on them. But nothing could be more necessary than getting back to Mukuro, so he resigns himself to the idea of Chikusa leaving him for this readily.

In a way, it's always a relief when there's a solid, logical reason for Chikusa or Mukuro to leave him behind. There's plenty of times they do it that don't make sense to him, or where the reasons seem unimportant. That always feels worse.

He doesn't ask where they'll meet. That kind of thing isn't necessary. Ken will just follow his nose back to Chikusa. "Guess I'll see you in a few hours, byon." And he lopes off without waiting for a reply that, since it's Chikusa, probably isn't coming anyway.

It's easier to leave than be left.

Quietly, Chikusa watches Ken bound off. Sometimes it feels like Ken is surging ahead of him, even when they’re close together, and that one day he’ll disappear out of sight. It’s not an uncommon feeling. Mukuro and Ken got something powerful out of surviving the Estraneo experiments, something that makes them seem almost inhuman at sometimes- powerful and ethereal, vicious and animalistic.

In contrast… he’s nothing.

Such a regular feeling, Chikusa is used to brushing it away. Sighing to himself, he starts to shuffle down the stairs. Maybe he shouldn’t have sent Ken off.

After all, now he has to actually talk with people.

By the time a couple of hours pass, it won’t be hard to find Chikusa again. All this interaction and walking away has exhausted his already poor energy levels. Thus, he’s retreated to the room he awoke in, now blissfully empty and perfect for laying facedown in a bed. He’s alive, just absolutely exhausted.

In contrast, when Ken trots into Chikusa's room, he drops onto the bed next to him hard enough to make the mattress jump a little. "Hey, Kakipi." He sounds...off. Disturbed by something. Not quite scared, not quite angry, not even fully confused. That's a bit alarming. Anything that goes beyond anger or bafflement in Ken is something significant. "Didja find anything?"

Well, that’s enough to get him to slowly turn his head so that he’s actually looking at Ken. "No… If they’re real, the other people don’t seem to have any idea what this place is either…"

"I found something...weird outside, byon." Ken is shifting restlessly, clearly unsettled. "I think it's the edge of the illusion, byon. The world just...stops."

“I saw that.” It had been kind of hard not to. Chikusa shifts, arms crossing beneath his head so that he can look at Ken properly. “...Did you try to go past it?” He hadn’t, obviously, but that’s because Ken hadn’t been there with him. Maybe if they’d been together, Chikusa would have felt more daring.

"Of course I did, byon. I thought it was the edge of the illusion." Ken huffs and stretches out half on top of Chikusa, resting his chin on Chikusa's chest. He looks uneasy still, restless. "...it's not just that you can't see anything past there, Kakipi. There's no smell past there. There's no world past there. It just...stops. And whenever I went out there, I wound up coming back right where I left!"

That's concerning. Ken's not the brightest, but his animal senses are sharp, and he's usually quite good at navigating as a result. His intellect notwithstanding, he wouldn't just get confused and turned around.

As Ken speaks, the corners of Chikusa’s mouth twitch down. It means more than the little it shows- he doesn’t particularly emote and even the slightest bit means tons. That’s not right. For a normal person, maybe they wouldn’t smell anything in particular, but Ken isn’t like that. His nose can pick up anything. For him to say there’s no scent… And to get turned around...

If it’s actually concerning him, then he can’t even imagine how Ken is feeling. Perhaps that’s the reason why his fingers slip up, running through messy blond hair. In the meantime, Chikusa tries to think. An illusion could do this sort of thing, but it’d be easier, wouldn’t it, to just keep them trapped in a building or something like that? Why have an illusion just end instead of pretending to go on forever?

“Ken… What if… this isn’t an illusion?”

Ken relaxes slightly as Chikusa's fingers run through his hair. There's not even the usual preemptively defensive tension he gets when Chikusa does this when he's dirty, and Ken is halfway on edge waiting for Chikusa to complain about his needing a ~bath~. This is partly because he really needs the reassurance right now, too much to think about anything else, and also because in the back of his mind he knows he did bathe recently and is therefore safe.

Ken doesn't care about being clean for himself, but he's very aware of his own cleanliness level purely through anticipating complaints from other people.

At Chikusa's suggestion, however, Ken's whole body jerks as his head snaps up. "It can't be real, right? Nobody could just - take us from Mukuro-sama and drop us in a weird place like this!" There's his kneejerk anger at anything he doesn't want to hear, but there's a very real undercurrent of fear to it. The part about being taken away from Mukuro-sama is the operative thought in his alarm, and no doubt it is for Chikusa too.

It's a lot easier to cling to the idea that it's an illusion, that Mukuro is waiting for them not far outside its boundaries, than it is to accept the possibility that they may be untold miles - untold worlds - from the center of their universe.

He never should have said anything at all, because Ken jerking up with his voice heavy with anger and fear reflects back into him. It’s not obvious, because very little about Chikusa is, but it’s there- vibrating and echoing down his throat into his heart until he feels like he’s going to choke. All this time, he’s been doing his best to actively stay calm instead of drowning in apathy like he usually does, but…

Chikusa is scared too.

His fingers slip out of Ken’s hair, instead curling tightly into his jacket. “Ken. Stop it.” Taking a breath, he pushes himself up onto his elbows. His heart has made the move from his chest into his throat. Chikusa doesn’t know how he manages to speak around it.

“You said… you couldn’t smell the illusion…”

"Yeah, but..." The tension is all but quivering through Ken's frame, anxiety with no outlet. He'd probably go tearing around the place, trashing things or people, if he didn't need the reassurance of being close to Chikusa right now. As it is, though, it feels like his muscles are trying to tear themselves off his bones.

He shifts when Chikusa sits up, arms wrapping around him and digging fingers into his back as he buries his face against Chikusa's stomach, like he wants to burrow away from the world. If all he can see, smell, think of is Chikusa, maybe everything else can not be happening.

He doesn't have an argument. He knows that there are only a few illusionists in the world they know if with the skill to make an illusion this extensive and convincing, and out of them only Fran, Mukuro, and maybe Mammon would ever consider making the illusion convincing to the nose. And even they might be hard-pressed to replicate, or flat out fabricate, so many smells. Ken's known this all along. He just doesn't want to believe in any other possibility.

"Where's Mukuro-sama?" The words are so muffled against Chikusa's clothes that Chikusa may not even be able to understand them. But the plaintive, almost agonized quality of the words is unmistakable. This is even worse than Mukuro being in Vendicare Prison; at least they knew where that was, could have gone to it if it had been what Mukuro wanted. This...this is being completely cut off from him. "Where's Chrome?"

Like the moon tugging at the tide, Ken’s actions earn an instant reaction from Chikusa. It’s slow, but instant, his arms folding around Ken in turn to dig against his back and into the dirty golden brilliance of his hair. As he curls over him, body daring anything in the world to separate them, Chikusa tries to tell himself things will be fine. This is not the first time it has only been him and Ken. They started out this way, the last of the Estraneo experiments to survive it all, and they’ve been alone together when Mukuro was in prison as well. They can survive this. They can overcome it.

Again and again, Chikusa tells himself this. It’s the only thing he can do to keep himself right there, in the bed with Ken clinging to him, instead of his sense of self trying to make a run for it like it’s so prone to do. He can’t do that right now. Ken needs him. Usually, Ken can take care of himself, so it’s fine, but right now Ken needs him.

While his partner’s words are almost indistinguishable, Chikusa can guess what they are easily enough. What’s harder is coming up with an answer. “He’s…. Back home, Ken.” He has to be. He has to be. Back in Namimori, in the ruins they’ve claimed as their home and base. Chikusa won’t hear otherwise. “So…. We have to get back.” Right. Slowly, he’s starting to puzzle out some sort of plan. “We have to find out where we are and get back home.”

Ken relaxes, by the tiniest fraction, when Chikusa comes up with a plan - even if it's more stating the obvious, with no actual ideas of how to accomplish it. If Mukuro isn't here, then yes, all they really need to do is find their way back to him. This separation is temporary; if Mukuro doesn't come to fetch him, then there's certainly no force on this world or any other that could stop Chikusa and Ken in their efforts to get back to him.

The only thing that stops Ken from relaxing any further is the fact that even he knows just how massive the obstacles between them are, if they really on some other world with weird rules he doesn't understand. Still, he lifts his head enough that he can speak into air instead of Chikusa's stomach. "How do we get back home from here, Kakipi?" He peers up at Chikusa. The bleak, aching look in his eyes says, very clearly, that - for once - he doesn't actually expect Chikusa to be able to answer these questions. He wants him to, but he doesn't think he can. "Where is home from here?"

"...We'll find out." That's the only answer he can think to supply. They don't know anything about this place. Obviously, that's going to have to change. They're going to have to dig for information and learn more. If they were transported here, obviously it stands to reason that they can be transported back. The knowledge soothes him.

"Something got us to this place for a reason... So it has to be important." Meeting Ken's eyes, Chikusa digs his fingers into his hair to make sure he can't look away. "...So no fighting anyone here, Ken."

Ken tenses, initially, looking at Chikusa with something like dismay. "No fighting anyone?" Chikusa may need to specify that he means people in Home, because Ken thinks Chikusa means anyone in this world.

That said, however...some of the tension has seeped out of Ken again, even in the face of this unreasonable demand. Chikusa hasn't promised anything, hasn't suggested any way they can accomplish the impossible obstacles in their path...but he's suggested it as a way forward. If Chikusa thinks they can do it - or even simply states that they have to - then Ken trusts it can and will get done by them. It's the path back to Mukuro-sama, and both of them are equally determined to walk it. Just knowing that there is a path, however insane, is calming.

Right, of course. Chikusa sighs. “Anyone who lives here,” he clarifies, fingers idly stroking and tugging through Ken’s hair. “We have to have been brought here for some sort of reason… And maybe finding out that reason will help get us back to Mukuro-sama. If we start fighting with the others who’ve been brought here… They might keep us out of this place.”

They can’t let that happen. Not until they find out more information and a lead on how to go back to Mukuro.

That relaxes Ken again, although he still doesn't seem thrilled. But he rests his forehead against Chikusa's chest again, closing his eyes. "Okay," he agrees, and if it's somewhat grudging it is at least still agreement. Ken's not deceptive; he basically never agrees to anything unless he plans on going through with it. So Chikusa can trust that Ken intends to behave himself - although, of course, this being Ken, one never knows when something might throw him off-course.

Chikusa doesn’t say ‘good’, but it’s in the nod of his head and the curl of his fingers. Then that’s that. All they can do for now is keep investigating this strange new place, learn what they can… And, one way or another, they’ll get back to Mukuro. He won’t consider any other option.

But for now… It’s been a long day. He’s talked to too many people than he really cares for. So, as day shifts seamlessly into night, Chikusa stays where he is for as long as Ken is willing to be still, finding what comfort he can in his partner’s weight.

Chikusa gets lucky today. Ken stays still long enough, simply listening to the sound of Chikusa's heartbeat, that after awhile his body relaxes, limbs going slack, as he dozes off in his partner's arms. Which means Chikusa gets some peace for awhile, too - not to mention the opportunity to sleep.

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♪ Our house ♪ in middle of this tree ♪ our house

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