Post #2748039 in The Weight of Soul, a roleplay on RPG

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The morning and scenery both pass by in a fitful alternation of sturm and drang, the window permitting view of a colorless scene through fogged glass and heavy rain. Crushed raindrops gather and flood the remnants of the French countryside. There’s nothing to be admired beyond the glass, Miyoshi thinks. Its canvas creates no impression that the world can change at all.

He hasn’t told his companions, but a month ago, he’d boarded a commandeered French train not unlike the Joffre. While the train was engineered as a luxury experience, it was not any more beautiful. The food situation was pathetic -- passengers were allowed 1200 calories a day, very little bread, and a suspicious amount of tobacco and wine. All of it to feed the occupying forces, and to reassure the French that they were cared for. The Joffre is hardly dire, but Miyoshi dislikes it equally much. So far, the cohabitation is bearable due to the good discipline of the occupying forces and his own country being allied with Germany. Regardless, all false benevolence comes to an end. After some time, the Germans will become more reluctant and aggressive, and be more vocal of their suspicions. Miyoshi remembers how Neumann looked at them.

Silent and watchful and unblinking.

Yes, he thinks. We must tolerate the Germans for a night longer, although France must endure them for many more.

The door swings open, and the women emerge, snapping him out of his thoughts. There, enhanced by the glow of natural light, Helene settles across from him, Amelia sitting beside her. Even in the bleak morning, Helene’s delicate countenance remains unruffled.

“Well,” the singer starts, some intrigue in her tone. “This is the officer’s table.”

Amelia looks on in mild bemusement while Claire flushes to match his hair. Miyoshi smothers the urge to glower at Claire’s embarrassment. That fool, of course this is all intentional. Instead of answering, Miyoshi pushes the women cigars before leaning into his inhale. It is a slow, oppressive morning, and he expects things to follow suit.

“Well, Herr Kazetani?” Amelia questions, critically examining the cigar, before choosing to light it.

“I didn’t make a reservation.” Miyoshi parries, keeping his aplomb in place. “This conversation is not long enough to warrant one. That is, if Ms. Renard will cooperate.”

At the sound of her name, their eyes meet. The Frenchwoman warily studies him as if to say, Well, go on.

Miyoshi doesn’t mind her scrutiny, and scrutinizes her right back, brown eyes with a touch of frost. In truth, his genteel guise prefers silence, but Amelia’s provocation compels a reply. He breaks the tension and removes his pipe.

“It’s a setup,” says Miyoshi, releasing a rank cloud. “We are three members short and Gammond has yet to be killed. Is this not a strange affair? Were the Australians planted by the enemy? Can we even trust either of you?”

It isn’t unlike the Germans to arrest without apparent reason. In fact, Miyoshi is positive that the Australians had been sent to an unknown destination, or shot without explanation, accused or suspected of being communist collaborators or saboteurs. His own kind would have done the same. There is no room for clemency in the kempeitai.

A hand tensely wraps around his wrist. Claire’s fingers are ice cold.

“Hey Mouse, don’t go around assuming thin-” Claire breaks in, but his companion barely flinches.

“Wrong. We need to assume that anyone could betray us. I need to be sure, is all.” Miyoshi sharply remarks. “For all we know, this could be sabotage.” Every nerve in his body has lost its patience, earlier from Claire’s carelessness, and now from having to repeat his knowledge. However, he’d been taught how to curb his own tells. His pale face betrays a smile, but his eyes and brows cease all activity and become rigid.

“It’s all just given me a great deal to think about,” he says after a moment. “And I’d reckon the two of you know something that I could not. I felt an otherworldly presence at dinner. It was in the room after Claire and I left.” Curiosity wins over his impatience. He keeps his gaze turned towards the women. “And so? Did you see anyone? If you lie, I will know.”

There is a brief silence. Then, a flicker of annoyance crosses Helene’s Aryan features, only to be replaced by a calm tilt of her head. The quieter of the two chooses to speak.

“I hadn’t assumed there was any trust, Kazetani.” Amelia begins. “We cannot sabotage a mission we know nothing about. However, Ms. Kohler did mention seeing a particular gentleman.”

The Frenchwoman’s features remain unreadable, but Miyoshi detects her control. She remains utterly still, and Helene blossoms and animates.

Helene says, “I saw a red-eyed man at supper. Rather peculiar, and only for a moment. He arrived after you left, and departed as soon as he'd come.”

“I saw him late last night,” Claire interrupts, “White hair, fiddling with somethin’. He had Spiritual energy. You wouldn’t have to be a Kazetani to feel it. Those glowin’ red eyes looked straight at me when I asked if he wanted a light. There’s trouble coming.”

He seems to read Miyoshi’s mind, and adds, “The women could take care of him.”

“Yes.” Miyoshi agrees. “In the East Wind, we quite like them, because they have the ability to pass unnoticed where a man would be stopped and suspected. If Claire and I were anywhere near the others, we would be likely be detained. But the two of you are special. You could simply be ‘lost.’”

“You imply that Ms. Kohler, Germany’s darling, would escape notice on this train?”

“Of course not. I’d never have you go fishing without bait. What did you think Ms. Kohler was here for?”

At this, Amelia smiles, but she neither agrees or disagrees.

Why isn’t she proposing her own plan? Why does she continue to divert attention to Ms. Kohler? Miyoshi wonders, watching. Europe is her domain — she should have advanced intelligence on these men. Following the events of last night, we’re hardly in proper shape to be without a plan. We’re inventing a fire, not building it. Did Nikolai put her up to anything? Or was she offered as a rogue element?

No, that he cannot believe. The war had not changed the Head Priest’s conservative proclivities. The people of Moscow responded to the initial German attack with a flood of volunteers to join the North Wind. Volunteers came from the intelligentsia, from factories, and from schools. Most did not have adequate training, and were little worse off than soldiers in the regular army, who were equally poorly equipped and trained. It is in his nature to assign high-ranking Saniwa sparingly, so Amelia and Cyril could be considered generous, and even superfluous. Perhaps then Miyoshi measured Amelia incorrectly. Just what is her purpose?

Helene, on the contrary, seems keenly aware of hers.

“I’ll be of no use to anyone if I can’t be myself. I’ll do it.” Helene curtly says, though Miyoshi isn’t convinced she dislikes the prospect.

“Not a bad idea,” Claire nods. “last night everyone was all over you. I’m for it, Mouse.”

Miyoshi does not have to fake a smile. The words come easily. “Very good, it’s decided then.”

A pause. The blowing of smoke.

“And by the by, were any of you aware that the Australians are missing? Detained, perhaps. Shot, I think.”

The quiet is fretful, unnatural. But created for Helene.

Other than himself and Maria, Amelia would be the first to discover the Australians’ disappearance. But would she tell Helene? He watches the singer for confirmation, and takes pleasure in the fruits of his labor. He sees it in the way the color drains out of her cheeks. The skin around her eyes stretches wide. She’s consumed by the revelation’s gravitas.

“Nien!” She gasps, posture rigid with distress. She goes on with strained agitation: “But— it’s only been a single night!”

This hardly seems to bother Claire, and he looks inquiringly at Miyoshi, but the latter is preoccupied. Swirling his contraband tea leaves, he’s reminded that duplicity lives everywhere. Good. Amelia does not trust Helene. The women share an empty bond.

Setting down his pipe, he exhales and rests his eyes. Very softly, he speaks without sympathy.

“Well, now you know.”

A worn smile rests around his eyes, but disappears at the sound of Claire’s voice.

“So Helene wasn’t told.” Claire, accustomed to the machinations of spies, pushes his hands through his thick, red hair. “That Ms. Austerlitz is next.”

This interjection gives Miyoshi pause; he reflects on Amelia's vulnerability. If her Australian accessories were detained, she would not be far behind. The winds are favorable, and the Germans are on his side. Surely, Richter would be glad to drive a bullet into her brain. Perhaps the Frenchwoman should fear him most. Miyoshi could expose her. As kempeitai. Or better, as a tool of Japanese foreign policy.

The image of ordinary citizens, hopes crushed like black velvet, lie bare for him to see. His mentor’s voice fills his head. Yakumo’s baton is marked with brutality, his eyes rimmed with an impression of invincibility.

Give them oxygen to burn, Kazetani. Yakumo says. Give them enough oxygen to burn, and they’ll snuff themselves out.

Allowing someone like Amelia to flame unchecked, watched with concern only by that which she was tasked, would be sufficient. If she betrays them, Nikolai would assassinate her, and if she survives the Nazis, she would create her own undoing. He could wait to see what she will not show him.

His fingers dig into his knees.

This is good. This is excellent.

Miyoshi keeps his voice polite. Patiently, as if time is a faraway concept, he pours himself tea.

“Well. Then isn’t there somewhere,” he says. “she needs to be? It’s almost time for our hosts to join us.”

When he finishes, he wipes his mouth. He folds his napkin and places it beside the window. His hands are flat on the table. Neither of the women say anything. Even Claire is silent. No one is smiling now.

Had he expected them to be openly informative?

Of course not.

With the slip of his tongue, Miyoshi rearranges the glyphs of power. A lone camellia doesn’t wait for opportunities to bloom. One might think him frustrated, but his true opponent is time. Now, seconds slip beneath his feet. A vault of darkness hangs overhead; the combined efforts of himself and Kimura must not go wasted. The Germans must be pleased. All light would be snuffed out.

The decade-old knots inside Miyoshi begin to loosen. Some unexpected steel emerges in his voice. “I’ll have Kimura transferred to the Maria Calag.”

He looks up, some gland within him leaking fatalistic abandon.

“I’m sorry?” Claire chokes.

“Yes. I insist. Kimura shall be of better use there. Report nothing to my father.”

He smooths his face into porcelain dispassion.

Each time he faced his father, Miyoshi could not help feeling that the man was a dissimulating demon or a kami efficient in judgement. In the space of time Miyoshi had joined the East Wind, he had of his own accord as good as destroyed half his life. Always, the absence of personal freedom separated him from a life without neurotic suffering. But the past is only a ghost that cannot be exorcised, drifting, wailing, and vulgar when given attention. And so, Miyoshi cannot help but feel as if a stage in his life has ended. A fog has lifted. He will be thrillingly alone.

Tapping the bowl of his pipe, Miyoshi says without hesitation, “Kimura, you’re dismissed.”

“Now? Are you certain?”

Kimura’s surprise comes across perfectly natural. If he dislikes the arrangements at all, he hides it masterfully.

“Yes.” Miyoshi says with iron certainty. ”Postponing the inevitable bores me.” Then transitioning into Japanese, “Issun saki wa yami.”

A pregnant pause fills the air. Kimura looks knowingly at Amelia. Then, he solemnly answers, “Very well.”

The Artifact rises, his defiance well-masked, and begins to shift, stone turning to flesh. He bows gracefully at his Saniwa superiors and briefly pauses before his master. There is a faint glint to the Artifact’s eyes, a ghost-light disappearing as quickly as it appeared. Miyoshi does not look at him. He already knows what Kimura sees. What Kimura feels is always the same: sadness, bitterness, but never resentment. The insolence that Kimura thinks, however, comes as a start.

It’s too early, master. You know this.

Their eyes meet, but Kimura doesn’t linger for long.

The Artifact retreats; the Saniwa mentally paces.

Miyoshi tugs at his collar and tries to swallow. He can feel the lymph nodes on either side of his neck compressing in consequence to Kimura’s distance. He rights his tie. In a few minutes, he is standing.

Saying that he has business to attend to, the Spiritualist curtly makes his leave. A constant stream of officers pass him, nodding as they come. He makes to the empty sleeping car before the first cough erupts.

Wiping his mouth, he thinks, Tonight will be the beginning.

Ikuzo.

A feeling of infernal responsibility stirs inside him. Always, the weight in his soul swings pendulously. Slowly. Impossibly. His heart scrambles to deliver oxygenated blood as he recalls an excerpt from the American Naturalist: Even the heart, which in higher animals, when agitated, pulsates with increasing energy, in a snail, under similar excitement, throbs with a slower motion. . .

But this agitation is preternatural: going beyond nerves and stimuli. It’s the deep rush of a rising concerto, the rills and crescendo of something with an unstoppable desire to burn. If his body is a shrine, his heart is the pale fire of mokurō candles, singed through the wick. The pulsing in his ears resurrects an abyssal feeling he thought was dead. Like a man possessed, he can only breathe, hear, and listen.

Listen to this, Miyoshi thinks. This is me.

The rhythm plays on, blood continues to build within his throat, and the cough that inevitably comes feels like a joyful spring. Seizing his breath, he swells with life. A feverish fit of hacking explodes from inside his chest. His face remains pallid, but there’s a crimson mess on his handkerchief. No, a red camellia. An imperious symbol. One that can be destroyed.

Vengeance begins with expulsion. It’s born from immortal hate, and sponsored by the study of revenge. It flushes a wronged soul with the blood of its bloom and makes him new again. Violently. Obsessively. Makes him whole.

Suddenly, Gammond’s death feels unimportant. Something else has become bigger.

Maybe the diviners were wrong.

He was perhaps more like samurai than priest.

. . . .

Without his conscience, he’s left with only his nerves. But oh, how strange it was to see himself now, standing absolutely rigid before his own death throes.

Before him, the door to his room swings open, the lights blink on, yet he hesitates before stepping in. To ease his headache, he focuses his gaze on an alabaster Madonna -- Claire’s religious aid -- lying idly by the gramophone. Was it there before? Something is off.

Concentrate. Look for clues. What’s different about the room from before we left it? Claire’s belongings have been moved. No. That’s not it. Searched? No. Perhaps. What?

The blood pooling in his veins violently quivers.

Sending Kimura Asagi away prematurely was a poor gamble. He feels a stabbing, paralyzing pain in his skull, and an intense buildup in his throat. The absence of his Artifact feels more significant with each ragged breath. He’s quick to clamp his hand over his mouth. When he peels his hand away, his lips are freckled with blood, and red discharge swings between his tongue and palm.

His hand is now stained with old, congealed blood, and the new signs of the fresh.

It isn’t supposed to be so soon, he thinks. But I have my bodyguard. He will follow.

A large hand presses into the small of his back, catching his fall. The rain outside spills so softly, almost soundlessly, but to Miyoshi, it begins to roar.

When Miyoshi’s vision returns, he finds that his throat is dry, and that he is not alone in his room. A presence unlike any he’d encountered tugs at his soul. Playfully, almost. His blood burns like an open fire.

Looking up from the floor, he sees an unfamiliar shadow. “Where is your companion, Herr Kazetani?” comes a voice that does not belong to Claire. Deeper. With a purr. Thickly accented English. Rain hums loudly against the roof and walls.

Despite his dread, Miyoshi’s blood boils with adrenaline. His facial expression, his eyes, the power concentrated in the depths of his thoughts, everything that fuels him to this point -- fills him with euphoria, and perhaps, savage joy.

Slowly lifting his head, he meets the eyes of a beaming Karl Neumann.

Yes. This could be it. He could kill me here, but would that truly be interesting?

“The bloody hell should I know,” the Kazetani grins, and spits a mouthful of clot and cuor. This time, if he does not reveal his true self, he will not get away at all.

What follows next can only be described as a blur. Five bashes and leaking liquid. Karl Neumann stifles a scream.

Outside, the rain tumbles like laughter, the sun bleeds through, and the clouds fold in rapture.

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xA/N: I was fed some lines by Eva, Alligot, and Sophie; they allowed me moderate control over their characters for this scene. Therefore, this doesn't count as a collaboration post.

Snippet #2748039

located in The Joffre, a part of The Weight of Soul, one of the many universes on RPG.

Setting

Characters Present

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