Iris-Iven-Ibis
Interested-Idiot-Immortal
- Location
- You know
[X] What have they been doing to him down here? You don't call just any prisoner a 'Project'.
[X] She lost herself and started cackling madly.
"Oh, now I get it!" Koyomi said as a nigh Glaswegian grin started to cover her face. She then lost herself in a fit of uncontrollable cackling and looked Yumemi right in the eyes to ask, "So that's you wanted to show me? That every last thing I ever fought for, ever suffered for, was all for nothing? That the Dandelionhearts are gone, gone because of me even, but the Frost Fair, they get to live?"
"Koyomi, calm yourself!" Yumemi barked, a tinge of fear present behind her authoritative tone. "While we can't speak for the wider cosmos, on Earth RUNE knows for a fact that this is the last Frostfarer alive. I did not bring you here to ever make you think all our efforts were in vain-"
"How can I even trust you anymore?" Koyomi said, still grinning and cackling, "How do I have any way to know you're telling the truth, that there aren't a thousand more Frostfarers all underground somewhere? And those guns had to be some sick joke, you know full well bullets will just bounce off a Frostfarer."
"If you still won't be convinced, then past a certain point that's your problem," Yumemi said, then clamped her hand down on Koyomi's shoulder. "For starters, those guns were Cup- and Pentacle-enchanted. And thanks to Project Lazarus, what we've accomplished as Hanazakari can be more than just saving humanity. It can be making humanity better. If we can grow our own Heart Leeches, we can make trauma and other painful emotions a thing of the past, let alone if we can reverse engineer Frost Fair immortality."
"Oh, just twist the knife in further, like I even care anymore!" Koyomi said, before she slowly sank to her knees and had to bury her face. "The woman I fought alongside wants to turn all us humans into another Frost Fair, turn us into the same enemy the Dandelionhearts died protecting us from! Answer me Yumemi, what was the point of me even picking up a sword? Of saving Asahi, Tsukasa, hell even Kazuya from Heart Leeches?"
Miyako could see Kazuya tense up on hearing Koyomi say such a thing, even if he said nothing in return. All she wanted to say to Koyomi was something like 'You were, you are, a Hanazakari. Nothing you did was in vain' but she had no idea how Koyomi would even respond to that anymore.
Gazing at the cackling wreck in front of her, Miyako could only think, This- this isn't the Arisugawa-sama I know, it can't be!
"Is this what Namie died for?!" Koyomi couldn't help bursting out with.
With one line, Yumemi stopped bothering with damage control. "Don't. You. Dare…" she spat out, "use her name against me!"
"Arisugawa-san," Hachiro said on having to step in, "Project Lazarus was formulated by RUNE's High Command, Brigadier Hoshizora is not its ringmaster. If you wish to protest, you'll have to take it to the Netherlands, not out on her!"
"Well, aren't you precious?" Koyomi was reduced to giggling at him, "Whoever's the 'ringmaster', you're still just as complicit in this and whatever else RUNE has planned as she is, so quite the nice guy act!"
"If you're saying we should step down," Hachiro then said, "then think, please, what would we accomplish? If I go, if she goes even, all that will accomplish is RUNE replacing us with someone else, likely someone worse, and Project Lazarus won't be stopped."
"So do nothing? That's your solution?" Koyomi said, tears now streaking down her face. "Might as well I suppose, since RUNE's so determined to make all our efforts be for nought."
As she watched Koyomi be reduced to… this, Miyako felt the already cold air in the room drop even lower, right on the back of her neck.
<Young girl, can you hear me?> a voice like breath on a frozen morning echoed in her mind. <We- no, just I now I suppose, I not only hear you, I feel you. Shock, Fear, but above all Abandonment, I can sense the iron grip all these emotions now have on you. Please, come closer…>
Miyako did find herself moving forward, like something invisible was willing her, yet kept trembling all the while. "W-what you do want from me?" she whispered, quickly looking back to make sure the three Hanazakari hadn't heard her, "Have you been trapped here since the end of the Frost Decade? Have they… done anything to you?"
<More than you can imagine,> the Frostfarer answered. <To imagine this world, this universe, without us, that I am where everything we strove for ends. That I am King Frost by mere default. Is this what it takes to make me feel anything anymore?
Wait, young girl, I sense there are four men you feel quite strongly about. A boy in this room who could have been part of our army, a boy of your human theatre, a boy contemplating us beneath the moonlight, and…> he went on, with Miyako wondering who the fourth could even be, her barely knowing Ryoichi or Hachiro, <a character from your Earth fiction> he vaguely concluded.
Kazuya-kun, Reiji-kun, Hayato-kun, and… well the last one could be whoever, Miyako thought on instinct. "What do you want with them?"
<Just to feel what you feel about them, about anything,> the Frostfarer replied, <for they may torture me down here, but I can no longer feel anything from even that. I am the first, and of course last, of my kind you have seen for yourself, right? Had you the power, young girl, would you have sentenced me to this same fate?>
"I am sick and tired of your little Yoshitsune complex!" Yumemi snapped at Koyomi, their argument of course still going with Yumemi cutting through Hachiro's good cop attempt, "Acting like you're the one persecuted by the big, bad government for doing what you delude yourself into thinking is right! Why else would you take your penname for the mountain he was taught under?"
<You see her, reduced to Hate? When you are like us, Hate and Love are emotions all the same, the strength is all that matters. But you feel different don't you, young girl? If you can still Love when surrounded by Hate, then it must be stronger than any other emotion,> the Frostfarer mused.
Miyako now found she'd walked right up to the railing and was staring straight up at the Frostfarer. She heard Kazuya gasped from far behind and realised too late it was from being all too familiar.
One of the Frostfarer's Heart Leeches shot out of his skin, right from where his 'heart' would be. Miyako shrieked like in Hell as it latched on with its icicle fangs over her own heart, then began to burrow deeper. Everything she felt for Kazuya, Reiji, Hayato, Asahi, and Koyomi grew fainter and fainter, replaced with only the cold.
Her emotions draining back into him, the Frostfarer then broke his chains and landed in front of her. "It wasn't that I lacked the strength to shatter them, it was the willpower I need. I thank you, young girl," he said, and indeed said, evolving beyond speaking through thoughts.
With the light glimmering off his ice crystal self, he then wrapped himself in illusion to appear far more humanoid. His hair was now blue like Kazuya's if glossier, tied in a ponytail longer than Reiji's, and an expression as serene as Hayato's. Like on the ring however, he was still clad in mostly a pair of tight black trousers.
Koyomi was snapped out of her mania by seeing Miyako becoming a Frost Pawn right before her. Calling out "Henshin!", she rushed forward and hacked that Heart Leech in two.
Miyako collapsed, feeling more freezing than ever, her stolen emotions still not back but her desperately wanting them.
Trying not to have any possible reaction to… what had just happened, Yumemi in turn proclaimed "The world sleeps, the mind wakes. Blossom, White Egret!"
"Heed your master's call," Hachiro wasted no time in saying, even as his face showed less confidence, "Blossom, Cornus!" He now wore a uniform edged with a stark pink, epaulettes that looked like Cerberus heads, and bones on the outside of his clothes to match his Bone Wand.
"Ah, all your Hanazakari names? Hmhm, I think I shall do likewise; aliases are all we Frostfarers have. Red Spider Lily? No, that is taken. Oh, I know," the Frostfarer said as he concentrated the cold towards the wound Koyomi had left on Miyako when she tore out the Heart Leech. A flower made of ice was conjured there, Miyako reeling in worse pain than if it'd been simply salted.
"Call me Blue Lotus," the Frostfarer finished with a smile. He then spread his arms and said, "Well, go on. I sense you three strongly desire to prove you are heroes, so take your best shot. Be the ones who inspired this little girl, just like old times."
Article: Koyomi responded by:
[ ] Charging right at him, anything to have the Frost Fair gone for good, assuming what RUNE said was true.
[ ] Hesitating for a moment, if staying in the fight, to see what this 'Blue Lotus' was planning.
[ ] Getting Miyako and Kazuya to safety. RUNE had gotten into this, RUNE could get themselves out.
[ ] Getting Miyako and Kazuya to safety, then coming right back to the fight.
[ ] Ask some questions of this 'Blue Lotus' herself:
- [ ] Write-in
[ ] Write-in
Born too late to become a magical girl born just right to become a Kamen Rider
