A paintbrush slowly traces a silhouette, black marring white.
He is.
Slowly. There is no hurry. Line, after line, after line.
But what is he?
First draw the outline, just as the basis.
A human? What... is a human?
Then shade it, and make it stand out.
He is not they. He is himself. This he knows.
Start from the head, the gentle curves of the cranium.
And he thinks. Ergo he is?
Continue with the limbs, draw the tension of the muscles.
He spasms, moving for the first time, taking action. What is happening?
The face, the eyes, the mouth. His expression.
He sees, tastes, feels the not-he for the first time, getting lost in the deluge of information.
We are almost there, just a few more touches. Draw the heart. Hmm. It's always tricky deciding the ratio of colors for this. Ugh. Too much panic.
He laughs and screams, and laughs, and he has no idea what's happening.
Just a few more... Draw the brain, with all that boring thoughts and logic. It always takes so long, but it's that or use an animal, so, stuff it, me.
He takes control of himself, trying to make sense of everything else. He...was born? No, he is being born. It'aall so confusing.
And tie it together by drawing the soul. Always the hardest part. Needs to keep it balanced, aaand... done!
He suddenly feels whole. Everything working in harmony, a single being made of hundred of pieces, all working in concert, to... to...
Now... where did I put the pen?
To... what?
I swear it was around here.
He... does he as a purpose?
Goddammit.
He... doesn't have one?
Did someone fucking move it?
He is just to be? Oh god, no, will he be here forever, without -
There it is! My bad. my bad. And to close it all, write it with a flourish.
BE WITNESS
And the whole world becomes right.
And done! For real this time. There you go, buddy, you can go. Have fun wherever you go. Hope we meet again, it's always interesting when it happens. Okay, onto the next one...
He understands. He witnesses himself. For eons, he does.
But it's not enough. He knows himself perfectly, and does its purpose without end or error.
Until, in the distance, something appears.
It's a light, almost invisible, but to him, it's enough. It's something new. Something to witness.
He moves there, swimming in the not-he, until he sees-
[] A city of glass and steel, a giant game of masked cop and robber
[] The light of thousands of souls, slowly fading in between grimm tidings
[] A lonely castle full of dangerous knowledge and wonderful danger, a golden trio in the middle of all
[] A fairy tale turned grim, where the wizard takes the place of the knight, and the fairy herself is the dragon
[] A boundless sea, a crew full of dreams and black flags waving
Since there was practically one vote for every option, I'm the one who's gonna decide. And my decision is... drum rolls...
[x] A city of glass and steel, a giant game of masked cop and robber
Let's go with a classic. Don't worry people, it won't be the only world, or even the main one if you decide so.
... Until he sees a city of glass and steel, a giant game of masked cop and robber being played, again and again, again and again. After an eternity spent knowing only himself, all these new stimuli are just - intoxicating. So he swims, desperate to reach the light, to see, taste, witness whatever is on the other-
His face is suddenly kissing damp concrete.
"Oww. It hurts."
It sucks. It really sucks. This was, without question, the most miserable moment of his existence. Not that there was much competition. But still.
"It hurts. Huh."
He hasn't ever been hurt before. He hasn't ever witnessed it.
"This decision is already paying off," he mumbles as he struggles to stand, trying to catalog every single cry of pain coming from his body. All deeply unpleasant, but well. It's something new and interesting.
There was very little of new and interesting in the Before.
Now, time to see where he is. Looking around, it seems he is in the middle of a deserted road. Hmm. He looks around the grimy walls and the overflowing garbage cans. They smell pretty rank. More of a forgotten alleyway really.
Nodding with satisfaction at all the new, even if maybe not stellar, experiences, he starts walking around the alleyway, observing every single detail he can find. Who knows, it could be an incredibly important alleyway. He doesn't know if it is. That means that he gets to find out!
Mortar, broken brick. Wet concrete - oh, I think that's my spit from when I fell there. The more you know. A stuck iron door. More a rust door, really. More broken down bricks, detritus, detritus...
Yeah. Maybe it isn't that important of an alleyway.
But now he knows that! Pride blooms in his chest. Ah, work well done is really its own reward.
Well. Time to do it for every other single thing he finds. He has a job to do, after all!
He starts exiting the dirty alley - thank God he had on a pair of sneakers, touching the damp trash once was more than enough -
He has sneakers.
What?
He looks down at his feet, flabbergasted.
There, looking at him as if they were innocent, were his feet. With sneakers on.
Sneakers he was sure he did not have in the Before.
"Oh, man. This is weird." Probably looking like a complete madman, he starts bending around, looking at himself at every angle he can.
The results are as baffling as they are exciting.
He is completely dressed. Somehow, entering that light gave him not only some clothes but dressed him in a manner appropriate for the climate and the place, counting that he's not shivering even if it's night in an alley. But the most exciting thing was his skin.
It was white. What a day for self-discovery.
"Now, since when did my skin have a color?"
He was pretty sure that in the before colors never even existed. He grins. Oh, he really made the right choice heading for the light. He could spend days just in that alleyway, he knows -
A flash appears in the distance, and suddenly he has to lean against a wall so that he doesn't collapse. Goosebumps and cold flashes wrack his seemingly new body as something brand itself into his mind. He knows it's true. He does not know how, or why, but he know it's the truth.
Something is happening. Something IMPORTANT. His heart seems to want to explode from how much it's beating. Something IMPORTANT is happening, and he is not there, witnessing.
He stumbles out into the surrounding streets, swaying like a drunkard as the whole world just vibrates, pushing its whole attention in the distance. It's starting. He does not know what, but it's starting, and he needs to see it. Know it.
Witness it.
A... something roars in the distance, and the streets become completely still before inexorably tilting towards the sound, slowly falling into what right now seems the center of the universe.
He falls down, rolling down a street you could have sworn was completely flat, before you manage to scramble to a broken light pole, glass still littering around it.
What is happening? He- another roar brands itself in your mind. Something IMPORTANT is happening. Go there, screams the world. He needs to go there, whisper the wind. He needs to-
His grips slips and he is suddenly free-falling, confused and sure that he has to go there to witness now now-
He suddenly crashes against a crumples mail box, the blow taking the air from him but clearing his senses, at least momentarily.
He is at a crossroads. The world is still screaming at him, but now that he has the time to listen to it, there is not a single scream. Oh, god, it's becoming louder again. He has to choose, he has to-
[] Go towards the fire and the roars of rage. The world is screaming in that direction. The start of something IMPORTANT is happening there, and he needs to WITNESS it.
[] Go towards the rumbling of a motorcycle. It is also moving towards the flame, so you have to hurry if you want to reach it alone. The world is not as loud in that direction, which may or may not be a good thing, but it is still where someone IMPORTANT is, and he needs to WITNESS it.
[] Go towards where those huge shadows you glimpsed were. It also is not moving and does not seem in any hurry to do so, so you have time if you want to go there. The world is not as loud in that direction, which may or may not be a good thing, but it is still where someone IMPORTANT is, and he needs to WITNESS it.
[] Wait, this is crazy. What is this? You want to witness and know, but... not like this. Take a breather, hug the mail box like your life depends on it - it may very well be - and stay put. You need to understand what is going on before making decisions.
Not relevant anymore but this was 100% Harry Potter
[X] Wait, this is crazy. What is this? You want to witness and know, but... not like this. Take a breather, hug the mail box like your life depends on it - it may very well be - and stay put. You need to understand what is going on before making decisions.
[X] Wait, this is crazy. What is this? You want to witness and know, but... not like this. Take a breather, hug the mail box like your life depends on it - it may very well be - and stay put. You need to understand what is going on before making decisions.
[X] Go towards the fire and the roars of rage. The world is screaming in that direction. The start of something IMPORTANT is happening there, and he needs to WITNESS it.
[X] Go towards the fire and the roars of rage. The world is screaming in that direction. The start of something IMPORTANT is happening there, and he needs to WITNESS it.
[X] Go towards the fire and the roars of rage. The world is screaming in that direction. The start of something IMPORTANT is happening there, and he needs to WITNESS it.
And here, the true quest begins.
At the end, it really wasn't even a choice at all.
Trying or not, the world itself was rushing towards the fire. It just picked him along like a pebble stuck in a shoe. Not very flattering, he mused as he rolled for the umpteenth time on the suddenly not-flat ground, but weirdly accurate.
He'd been forced to move by that strange force for almost ten minutes now, and even if the sensation of something IMPORTANT happening wsnìt lessening in the slightest (HAVETOWITNESSHAVETOWITNESS), the road did not seem in the mood to bring him straight to the action. He was pretty sure he saw that boarded up window at least once before.
That said, repetition is the mother of understanding, and as an unwilling victim of this kidnapping force...
[ 1d100 for insight into the nature of ??? = 30; Minor insight gained ]
he still had no idea about what it was or what it wanted. Screaming at it did not help in the slightest, and trying to escape the current just slammed it back towards the still growing fire with almost childish, vindictive glee.
The only thing it was sure of was that even if it hated him, at least it hated everyone else too, since he had yet to see or hear anyone else around. And in a city as big as this, slum or no slum, that was essentially impossible given how much he had moved when in its grasp. It was avoiding people deliberately, moving towards the fire without touching another soul, and he really had no idea why. What a joy.
He scrambled back, narrowly missing getting brained by a loose brick that was suddenly in his trajectory, and resigned to the wild ride to the fire. Incapability of moving straight or not, there was no denying he was getting dragged ever nearer the fire, his consent notwithstanding. And once he got there, he hoped to at least get some answers.
--
If you wanted to describe humans with one word, call the adaptable.
Now, jury was still out if he was a human or not (before moving towards the light the answer would have been a 'what are humans?', but what does he know), but in the end he was still in the body of one. Maybe. At least his skin color made sense and he was dressed like one, he did not have any hurry to cut himself open to check it he bled red or not, there were a lot of things in the world to witness that did not end with a likely infection.
All of this was mostly to say that after a subjective eternity getting dragged through thrash face first, with a sometimes-euclidean geometry and gravity going through a strike, a person get used to it. Get squeezed through a keyhole and develop empathy for toothpaste? While extremely interesting, it was a breeding ground for a new whole cloth phobia. Having to dodge several pieces of trash that had no business flying like they were? Good for the instinct, bad for the nose. Ending up walking up a skyscraper while trying all your hardest not to look behind you? A strong cure for acrophobia. So choking on a fly while upside down was not anything worth writing home. Not pleasant, but not even in the top 10 most painful or embarrassing things that happened to him in the last few minutes.
The world suddenly skipping back to order like a broken record the moment he ate that insect leaving him wheezing on the (blessedly) flat, not-moving ground?
That shook him a little, he had to admit.
"彼を助けなきゃ!"
He got back to his feet, hacking and coughing, smarting all over from probably hundreds of bruises and little cuts, but still somewhat functional. The force - he really needed a better name for that - that before was rushing towards the inferno in the distance was suddenly firm as steel, almost smothering in how much it blanketed the whole area. It felt downright restrictive, as if it was pushing him down, pressing him back uncomfortably.
"くそ... く-it..."
Of course, all of that fell away the moment he looked upon the painting that was the battlefield.
Honestly, to a bystander, it was not all that impressive to look upon. In the end it was just a masked teenager in a dark costume running away from a 9-foot-tall man covered in red-hot flames and scales. Surely notable for the novelty, but not something to be forever immortalized in photography, to be seen for generations to come.
But to him, at that moment... it was his everything. At that moment, he understood why that mysterious force was so reckless and hurried to reach those two - because it had to be those two that force was interested in. At that moment, he forgot all the little and big pains ailing his body. He ignored the constantly increasing insect biting and poisoning repeatedly.
"We have got to get out of here, man. We can do shit in a cape fight"
Because what he saw, was the beginning of a story - THE story, as far as the mysterious force was concerned. He was watching history in the making. He was WITNESSING it.
He could not have been happier.
"Are you a fucking idiot? Stay down! Do you want to get eaten alive by insects? Look at that dumb motherfucker!"
It did not matter that the man - a dragon in the guise of man, equal of the leviathan - was trying to kill the fleeing teen - she who will kill the worm, killer and savior and victim -.
It did not matter who was in the wrong or right - it's all a game of cop and robber! They need us, don't you get it? - or how they got the power they had - [TRAJECTORY]. [AGREEMENT] -. All it mattered was that beginning the history of a whole world, and he was WITNESSING.
He was almost in a state of rapture, which did not diminish any when the teenager - did you cry to sleep for a week straight, Taylor? - glanced at him, standing in the middle of moaning gangbangers - since when had they been there? Wait, not important.
His sight was getting fainter, the sounds harder to understand, but one thing he knew.
He had found his purpose.
As he blacked out, body full of an improbable amount of spider venom, he focused all his being on the scene he was seeing. It was not enough witnessing it. He had to record it, the tale of -
[] The Dragon of the Bay - Character Card lv 1. An eastern dragon lay on a pile of treasure, glutting himself on wines and fine meats while a ruined city burned below him.
[] Lesser Dragonfire - Moment Card. A western dragon breathing a cone of red-hot fire against a cowering peasant, green farmland all around him.
[] The Desperate Hero - Character Card lv 1. A caped girl with a black, unfinished costume, long black hair fluttering behind her. She is fleeing from some undistinguished figure glancing behind herself, right into an ominous alleyway.
[] Meaningless Sacrifice - Moment Card. A woman holding a door closed, grim determination on her face, while the house around her burns.
[X] The Desperate Hero - Character Card lv 1. A caped girl with a black, unfinished costume, long black hair fluttering behind her. She is fleeing from some undistinguished figure glancing behind herself, right into an ominous alleyway.
[X] The Dragon of the Bay - Character Card lv 1. An eastern dragon lay on a pile of treasure, glutting himself on wines and fine meats while a ruined city burned below him.
[X] The Dragon of the Bay - Character Card lv 1. An eastern dragon lay on a pile of treasure, glutting himself on wines and fine meats while a ruined city burned below him.
