[Akemi]

Ameki walked through the city, her shoes in her hand as she walked through the soft grass. She'd been here for a year, and the vine plants were starting to reclaim some of the places that had been deemed inhospitable. The tomatoes and grapes, specifically. The strawberry plants were getting big too, and there were plenty of people that had stopped in and grabbed some of each crop to take with them to other places. If it was under the protection of the life tree, anything would grow. Even in the desert of the Dried. 

She plucked a ripe strawberry from the bush and bit down on it. These ones were especially good. She didn't like ones that were too sour, and these ones weren't. The melons were good too, once they got big enough. And people hadn't been taking the whole plant either, just the foods. Which was good. Other people could enjoy the foods too. 

She stopped next to a small tree. This was the one that she'd found in that house the first few months after the Rebirth. She still didn't completely understand what was going on, but she felt that the world would be helped best by cleaning the air the natural way. Humankind had broken the earth because they tried to conform it to their will. It was time to let nature take back what the humans had destroyed. 

She found herself at the base of the life tree. This one was even bigger than the one she'd woken up next to. It made sense that a bigger tree would protect a larger area. She went over to a stack of empty wooden crates and used them like steps to get to the lowest branches. She threw her leg over, then swung the other one over, and sat there, legs swinging. It was nice to come here every once in a while. She could get away from everyone else, from the realization that she just might live forever. Up here, in the life tree's branches, she could be herself again. 

"I know you can't talk, but I'm glad you life trees were made," she said quietly, one hand on the tree's trunk. "Without you, none of us Reborn would be able to live here... I wonder what everyone else thinks about fixing the Earth? What do other people think we should be doing? Maybe if we got all our ideas together, we could figure out the best way to repair what we broke." She paused for a moment. "Of course, it's our problem, so we should fix it."

[Prince Piper]

Word Count: 628
Sanity: 40%

One rat. Then two. Then three. Each of them poked their noses through cracks in the walls of the once-sleek building that housed the Miracle Yggdrasil, one that people had come to hail as the Great Yggdrasil. With indiscretion, the troupe of rodents scurried through the blue-green grass, dodging footstep after footstep in their mission to reach the life tree. They sniffed the air once in a while, as if sidetracked by the different scents of cooking meat just outside of the Tower, where a vendor was selling braised wyvern. How they had managed to catch those flying beasts, no one knew. Perhaps it wasn't even braised wyvern at all; perhaps it was burnt human, since the braise seemed a little too dark and too deep and the smell was nauseating to most. Aside from the rats, of course. Prince took control of his friends, guiding them along through the stalks of grass until they reached the sprawling network of roots that comprised the Yggdrasil's base. There was a little girl nearby but the rats paid her no heed. Under the spell of the Piper, they had only one goal in mind; secure food.

Prince was occasionally partial to the gruel the rats were fond of; a half-eaten apple in a trashcan, still somewhat edible because the Yggdrasil produced only the finest fruit; some other animal's rotting corpse that, when cooked, tasted remarkably like chicken. Everyone in Miracle wanted the fruit that grew at the top of the Yggdrasil though, the delicious, citrusy goodness that only the most daring climbers would ever see. Sure, one could peruse the stores of a small Yggdrasil and pick off the fruit before it was ready to be eaten, out of convenience, but with all the time in the world in his hands and a pack of friends that could secure him any hard to reach spoils, Prince was willing to wait for food fit for royalty. The rats scurried up the tree, three more of them appearing at the base and scattering up a maze of wooden crates stacked up that led them to scale the legs of the little girl and hurry on up after. They were too quick to be repelled by any jerking she might cause.

There was a whistling heard. Not a melodic whistling, not even a high-pitched, irritating whistling. It was simply airblowing through a compressed space. Prince crept out from behind the gaping entryway to the Tower, a short length of jagged pipe to his mouth in the style of a flute, his legs prancing away to an inaudible sound. People around jumped up as he approached, yelling for him to get out of their way, that this was their home, or some other false statement making claims to the Yggdrasil. It was the gift of Gaia, sent down from above to grow up from below and provide all the necessities a person could need. How dare these swine stick their poorly-chosen names on the bark of the life tree. Prince would yell at them if he could but, being mute, he merely gave a pantomimed cackle and danced along his way. His friends were hellbent on reaching the topmost fruit and hopefully no one would notice with Prince putting on his performance below. To think they could tell him what was rightfully his and what was not. They would give him the sewers and the streets like everyone else. These faux-exalted few who had the political status to call the Yggdrasil their home, in their upper level penthouse-type residences amidst the boughs of a tree meant to serve everyone. It was disgusting, and Prince would take his piece of life's fruit like anyone deserved. Only he had the means, so he deserved it more.

[Akemi]

Akemi shrieked quietly when the rats ran up her legs, and she jumped away from the stream. She watched as they moved, not really bothered as long as they weren't climbing on her. She looked down and saw the boy at the base of the tree. "You know, there are other plants around that grow fruits," she told him. "I planted some strawberries when I first came to the city last year." She went down to a lower branch, then jumped off, landing in the grass with her knees bent.

"My name is Akemi, by the way. I don't think I've met you yet." She held out her hand. "It's nice to meet you." She looked at the rats. "Oh, you're a Patentia, aren't you?" She turned back to him with a smile on her face. It was nice to meet people from different Virtues. She herself was a Caritas, a hired ager for people who didn't like the fact that they didn't age.

There were a few grapevines around the edge of the tower, and she thought that it made the Tower look more natural. She reached over to one and pulled off a grape, popping it in her mouth. She loved the fact that they had more natural food sources. And, of course, that they helped clear the air.

"Hey, what do you think about the fact that we've got to fix the world?" she asked suddenly, genuinely curious. "I think the best way is to return it to nature, even if we may not have the same plants now that we did back then... What do you think should be done first?" She liked to know what everyone else thought.

[Morgan]

It was only fitting that the once 'tallest building in the world' housed what was yet the tallest Yggdrasil tree in Miracle. Hm... Yet? There wouldn't be another, so perhaps it was safer to say that this was the tallest Yggdrasil tree in the entire city. The way it had grown was a rather forceful form of nature expressing its goal. The branches snaked their way through the space once occupied by offices and suites, and at some point did away with there being walls at all. From the outside, nature wore the constructs of man like an accessory. How fortunate that it took root in the center of Willis Tower; having it in bare open space wouldn't have been nearly as entertaining as the setup now. In absence of functioning stairs, the residents of Miracle fashioned rope bridges to connect one place to another for easier access to the Great Tree's branches and the fruit it bore. Also in absence of those stairs, one particular skilled courier decided to test his reflexes instead, for the bridges were too tedious. To scale the broken staircases required either a firm resolve or a lack of self preservation, and Morgan was fairly certain he carried both as he took his chances and somersaulted over spaces where the flooring had fallen out. Where the Fall's destruction had been generous enough to leave the railings intact, he closed the gap by balancing upon those and vaulting to the next floor. Then the next, and the next. The only pause in his continued ascent came a good dozen floors up, far enough from the distractions below to take in the view of the horizon, the city that lay beyond the walls of the tower. And it all looked rather depressing. While the Corps had done their best, whatever part of the city hadn't been cleaned out and rehabilitated as part of the colonization process looked rotted out to contrast. Empty buildings sat as if barely alive, slouching under their own weight in piles of debris left behind by the Fall. There was still the question of how long they could last in the place before the beastkin roaming around tried to reclaim what they thought was theirs, Yggdrasil or not. The blond shook his head and took his attention away from the outside, focused again on making it as far up the tower's remains as he could. A few minutes later, he found that he could not, unless he happened to be in possession of a chainsaw to hack off the branch that was blocking his path. But barring that, he climbed upon the bough and carefully made his way along it, toward the center of the tree. He paused and blinked, watching small colored masses scrambling their way up and up. It took him a while to register the squeaking and discern that they were mice rats, really, and he visually traced the path they had come from. It was hard to tell. The rodents were emerging from whatever opening was available to them, but still Morgan looked towards the ground as if there'd be an answer there. There was a boy at the base of the tree, probably ignorant of his surroundings if Morgan were allowed an opinion on that. He was with a girl, and the girl looked slightly familiar. He might have passed by her once or twice on the way to deliver a message. Everyone else around them was less helpful to look at, as they all seemed desperate to get back to what they were doing but were predominantly annoyed by something. At that first guy? He certainly didn't look like he cared about much. But did they all really not notice these mice climbing up the tree? That was hard to believe. These things were large in size but small in number, yet it would be foolish to doubt that there were more. Possibly a swarm somewhere. Such a concentrated infestation was trouble even in more civilized times. Now, when food was scarce and only the best was good enough, it just wouldn't make do to let a potential swarm nibble and gnaw through the fresh fruits and ruin them. Ruining things was kind of what they did. He swiped at the trio in an effort to slow their progress and watched as they fell off of the tree. People would really, really mind the fact that it would be raining rats, but it was better than potentially rotten fruit half-eaten by rats.

WORDS: 700+ NOTES: N/A TAGS: N/A

[Prince Piper]

Word Count: 1377
Sanity: 30%

The girl looked young. Emphatically so. Her body screamed, 'rape me, pedophiles of Miracle,' of which there was certainly no dearth in these trying times. Trying, in that everyone, man, woman, child, old, young, was trying their best to exercise what petty power they had managed to scrape up after dying in blazes of fire and engulfed in their earthen tombs. Not trying to make a living. Not trying, even, to restore the Earth, as prescribed their duty from some broad in the sky that Prince personally considered as fanciful as the previous sky God. That wasn't to say he didn't absolutely adore the idea that there was, proven, a lady somewhere who had created all this and made magical, life-sustaining trees and give her children the most interesting abilities to help them get by. This girl was another user, though. A user like the rest of them, taking her abilities for granted and employing them in the most self-serving way possible. How human of her. She wasn't serving herself necessarily, for the self in this usage of the hyphenated phrase referred to 'humanity.' Prince didn't know that about her, yet. He only knew how selfish the first Caritas he met had been, and how every Caritas since then had been the type to make a living actually primping others. In a time like this, worrying about feeling youthful or feeling more experienced. How ridiculous.

Daniel Bird's eyes opened for the first time in the body of their new inhabitant, with which they would spend the rest of eternity enjoying a land of his dreams in which he had full reign and ability and, friends, of all material possessions, to spend it with. The Caritas who 'cared' for him was collateral to the realization of his new dream. The idea that everything was possible and time was not an issue, something he had felt but knew to be untrue in his past life, and now felt and knew to be true, every bit of his fantasies more realistic than he had ever dared to imagine... Exhilarating. Flying through side streets and eventually skipping down the main ones once the beastkind had gone to sleep. Skipping stones down the length of what was probably not supposed to be a bond, but had become one ever since the infrequent weather phenomena in this new world. Scavenging for food, which doesn't sound nearly as fun as it actually is. Life had been dreamlike, a welcome departure from a damaged existence in a home of substantial value with parents of substantial value and a life that had so much 'value' to live up to. A charmed life, if such a thing could be said. A life he could not have chosen. Children were the most unlucky beings in the world, for they could feel the unfairness of being trapped with their lot in life, but having not the means to change the fact nor the presence to make their worries known for the important impact they would have. No one listened to children. And somewhere along the line of that mythical 'growing-up,' a person was liable to lose all remembrance of the child-cage, in lieu of a million different daily tasks, a job, a spouse, other children who they would maybe see a glimmer of themselves in, but would not remember to tell them, "Dream, please."

I don't care. Prince intoned rather plaintively for his usual spunk. Even in mental speak, which he rarely shared with another person since he so feared being around them, Prince could adopt some semblance of the whimsical being he aspired to. The Pied Piper. It was all that a name could bestow him, those sought after characteristics of the storybook man himself. The girl brought him out of his musical reverie. The beautiful sounds that filled the air around his ears was but a passing dream and the realization of all those dirty stares and disapproving people... It was all too much. The discomfort shone out through his eyes and he lost his grip. Why bother? There was a detectable agitation radiating from him that the girl would surely have the capacity to understand. She was a child. The world had been ripped from her before she could even try to make something out of the first one. Cruel as it was, this one managed to exceed it. Aren't you angry?He lost his attention of the rats in that moment and without his guidance, most of them stopped in their trek to the top of the Yggdrasil, electing instead to go off on their own adventures; the bane of having friends with such short attention spans. Then, there was the falling.

A piercing sound, a squealing that racked the inside of Prince's mindspace like a high-pitched funeral dirge. It was chaotic and sad. A coffin falling into its grave haphazardly in the middle of a thunderstorm. The rats rained down from the Heavens like a plague and the people gathered around the roots, religious fanatics, petty thieves, and hopeful mothers praying for their children, all scattered at once. What was no more than a slight bump against the ground as each of the three rats touched down to the earth was a crack of thunder to the Piper. He frantically rushed around, much too late, to prevent any of his friends from hitting the ground in such an unceremonious manner. What horror was this?! Prince dropped to the ground and cradled one of his friends, bring its face up to his and inspecting its eyes with the slightest glimmer of hope that perhaps, they had survived. It was the same childish notions that had betrayed him again and again; why he clung to hope like this, he did not know. Loss prefaced by wistful thinking was worse than just loss.

His eyes welled up and his fingerless gloved- hands shook as he delicately scratched the belly of his rat, the inside of him exploding in a million different ways. A light bulb bursting with each small death, a pang of pain in his lower abdomen as the breaths came out, labored, from his dying friends all around. The other two, barely alive, sent his insides into a rush. Prince was dying again and again as his Bond with each rat was ripped from him. Very rarely did was he forced to mourn the death of one of his friends. Once in a while, he would wake up on the bed of dirty hay that he had constructed as his cot down in the sewers and feeling the rapid beating of his heart and banging on the inside of his head. Rarely did his rats venture off to dangerous parts of the city without his guidance, and even rarer was it that he suffered a casualty when out in the field with them. If he could cry out, he would, but the tears streamed down his face regardless of noise. Some onlookers stared with disgust and made comments.

"Look at that boy. He's touching the rat, he's gonna catch a disease."
My friends aren't diseased.
"Get outta here kid, we got enough sick!
You're all sick, watching an animal die and thinking only about what diseases it may carry. What about people, with contagious diseases! When they die, do you watch on with your frowns and disapproval and isolate them to save yourselves?! Are you this selfish always, or only when it comes to the suffering of strangers?! I am not so strange!

 The people around backed off as they felt the anger pulsating from Prince. Prince turned his eyes up to the ceiling of the building, expecting to see some figure of judgment. She, who had come to give him his punishment. All he saw was a blonde. A blonde he knew well. And for a moment, he felt a lift. But the trauma of breaking a Bond was too distracting. He opened his mouth to cry out and cursed himself for resorting to such, knowing he couldn't make sounds. It was suffocating, not being able to make his feelings audible. He crouched over his dead friend and waited, desperately, for the pain to go away, and the people to go away or die, one.

[Akemi]

She hadn't seen the boy above. But the Patentia boy didn't really seem to want to speak. She saw the pain in his eyes, though, when the three rats fell to the ground. And she realized what the scourning onlookers did not. All life is prescious. Especially in a devastated world like this one.

She stepped up, next to him, and put a hand on his shoulder. She put the other hand out in front, and the air around one rat began to shimmer. It twitched. Then the next one, and the last. She wasn't good at turning back the clock, but she could still do it. It only took a few minutes to reverse time on the rats enough to bring them back. She could hasten for hours, but she could only reverse for just a few minutes.

She saw how angry he was at the spectator's words, and she turned around, glaring at the people watching. "Oh, so you think he's wrong for mourning the fact that his friends died?" she asked loudly. "How many of you know that you had loved ones before the Destruction?" Silence. "And how many of you found them in the last three years since Rebirth?" Again silence. "I thought so." She turned her back.

"I'm glad that you have friends in this world," she told him with a small smile. It was a sad smile, though, one that didn't reach her eyes. "Me... I'm all alone. Oh, I'm sure my brother's out there somewhere, but in three years, we haven't met once. He's the only one I'm looking for." She turned to glance at the people behind them. "Good, they're finally starting to go away. I wonder if they realize that nothing's going to get better until we fix this broken world..."

[Morgan]

One, two, all three of them fell, but Morgan couldn't help but think that there was something yet to be done. There was something missing in this. He noted that a part of the horde scattered for a moment before he knocked them down, but there wasn't an immediate distraction anywhere in sight. They seemed so focused before. Ah, what did that mean, then? He cast his gaze back down as if in search of an answer, maybe someone down there had noticed and could tell him what went on. One had, and Morgan felt a vague pang of something called regret in his chest at seeing the boy he'd judged before. He'd abandoned his playing and was on the ground, holding one of the rats. Were those...? The people around the boy looked and sounded disgusted at the contact, but the boy said nothing in response. The girl spoke for him-- "Oh, so you think he's wrong for mourning the fact that his friends died?" His friends. That bit of information changed everything. Morgan was wrong in his assumptions, having thought they invaded the tower of their own volition. Being the boy's friends gave them a more benevolent purpose. They were only trying to secure food for him, and he certainly couldn't be expected to scale the tree on his own to get it. Not a lot of people could. I have to make it up to him, then. Morgan nodded to himself, and began to climb the tree on his own. He swung from one branch to another. Jumped the next. Scaled the trunk until reaching the next branch up. He'd get the fruit himself, as much as he could from the top and from wherever else. It was the right thing to do. Eventually he got to the sturdiest branch there was and stood on it, then surveyed his surroundings. There was plenty of fleshy fruits hanging from the spurs he'd passed by on his way up, but he would pick those up later during his descent. It would be enough for now if he pulled off his jacket to use as a makeshift sack. The zipper to it was pulled all the way up to seal the jacket and hood shut, then he tied the sleeves to each other in a knot. With the makeshift pouch made, he reached for the nearest spur, weighed down by a particularly ripe fruit. Careful. He detached the fruit from the spur it held to, and gently placed it into his new jacket-sack. He followed that with the next one, and the next. There was one he found with a few bruises and holes where insects made their home of it. That wouldn't do. He picked that one too but let it drop to the ground. When there were no more ripe fruits to pick or rotten ones to discard, he made his way down to one of the branches just below and did the same to the fruits there. On and on, he continued his descent and his little harvest until his jacket was almost full. With the results of his work in tow, he made his way down the same way he'd gotten up: awesomely. Oops, we mean, to keep the fruit intact he took his time on the way down, timing his jumps and putting more precision in his footwork. He took the opportunity to descend the rest of the way by ladder, and once on the ground he made his way over to the boy and girl. The rats showed signs of life. That didn't mean that Morgan felt less bad for what he'd done to them, and he opened his mouth to say something to find that the words weren't yet ready to come out. Not on that particular subject. Was it right to incur the boy's anger only moments after he'd experienced grief? It would be enough to try and make amends without that kind of suffering. The blond took a breath. "Listen, I... saw what your friends were trying to do for you, so-- uh, hm, I... got you some fruit." A lot of it. He presented the jacket (sack? thing....) to the boy. "I picked the ones from the top of the tree first, so they're at the bottom. You can unzip the hood to get them. Still, take as much as you want. "You can take some too, I guess," he added for the girl.

WORDS: 700+ NOTES: N/A TAGS: N/A

[Prince Piper]

Word Count: 677
Sanity: 50%

Words were nothing more than words. There were too many people who felt the need to pretend again and again, to keep up some appearance of indifference or in some cases, extreme opposition; it gave them their character and it gave them their identity. This girl was just another of the people who now surrounded the two of them, saying all these things that sounded great on the surface, but beget a deeper hatred inside. What did she want from him? What did she need? He was no longer unwell but that didn't make valuable. It made him average, plain, simple. Not easy to understand, that was for sure, but something in the realm of a figure in the background. Prince shook her hand off his shoulder and went around to gather his rats, planning to take them back to their proper home and mourn for them there. It was what they would have wanted, could they process and experience human emotions. He would never believed that his mind still played tricks on him, made him think his rats were more capable of interaction and connection than they were. That would mean nothing had changed and he was still a freak. He would be a freak on his own terms.

Then, she did something that surprised him. As a Caritas, she possessed the ability to turn back time, but Prince had never witnessed anyone do anything that wasn't self-serving. Proving one theory of his after another, the girl mentioned something to him about fixing this world, more nonsense about the state of things. She exalted herself by putting the others, those that now backed away after her scrappy little tell-off, down a few rungs of the ladder. No one held responsibility for the way things had turned out and it was no one's job in particular to cure the world. Why wouldn't she understand something as simple as that? Even if there were those who genuinely felt regret for the way they may have contributed to the downfall of the earth, what could they possibly do in a world where rebellion was an en masse phenomena? Prince could never word any of his thoughts nearly as eloquently, and it was too much work to try communicating with others, and the girl wouldn't listen and would probably try to guilt trip him. This his life and his time to use what he had been given how he wanted. Too bad for the bitch in the sky.

The angel descended, then, as Prince frantically gathered his children. Each rat croaked up and bit at him, forcing him to let his friends free. They scurried off in all different directions and it wasn't long before the others, still scouring the Yggdrasil on their own accord, would return home. Prince's attention was entirely on the glowing figure before him, offering a wrapped up jacket that he claimed to be filled with fruit. Was this the one that had caused his friends to fall in the first place? Could this guy, now offering reconciliation, be deserving of the hate Prince felt he could spill over with at any moment? 'Deserving' was one matter. The will was not there and what remained ebbed away as Prince's eyes darted around the man's features. It was him. The one he had watched all these months. One of the first to enter Prince's Castle, before it became the First City.

A stare. Nothing more than a stare could he offer. A moistness swelled on the dam of his eyes, not quite threatening to flood, yet. Control was his for now. In one split-second movement, Prince grabbed the jacket and took off in the opposite direction. The grass crunched under his feet and revitalized itself magically. The sun showered upon him with a blazing passion and the few clouds spared him burn, but did not provoke any feelings of sadness. He paused at the gaping doorway, where some people who he now could not see backed away from him. A shy smile, and then he was off.

[Akemi]

She couldn't tell if he appreciated what she did or not, but she knew what it felt like to have no one to count on. Even the nice man who taught her how to use the bow he gave her didn't stick around for long. In this world, people had to learn to care for themselves, even the youngest of Reborn. He shook her hand away, and she moved it to her side. Just because he was a Patentia didn't mean that he wouldn't get angry at her if she overstayed her welcome. She stepped back, startled, when the other boy fell, jumped really, out of the tree, holding what looked like a jacket full of fruit out to the boy with the rats. She just watched, knowing there wasn't much, if anything, that she could do. She had never been what one would call athletic, though she was decently good at climbing trees. The rats ran off, but Akemi still found herself watching the boys. She did have her bow with her, but it did little good at such close range. The rat boy grabbed the jacket and ran off. Akemi reached out with one hand, turning toward him, and opened her mouth to speak. But before she could say more than a sound, he was gone.

"I didn't even catch his name..." she muttered softly. She sighed, then looked at one of the strangers. His hair was the same color as hers! For a moment, her heart jumped excitedly. But she sighed again in disappointment when the stranger turned around. No, that wasn't her brother... This man was too old to be him. She turned back to the boy that jumped out of the tree. She wasn't sure what to say, so instead she turned away and started walking. It had started out so nice, peaceful, unlike most days. And then people had to go and ruin it with their selfishness... They were all just trying to survive in this new world... Why were there some people that couldn't understand?

Well, she'd already been here for a year. Maybe it was time for her to move on and look for other places to plant the seeds from the plants she'd grown. It wasn't like she was helpless. She could use her bow to defend herself, and she knew how to cook, decently at least. But here, she was safe. For the most part. Safe from Beastkind, at least. There were the people here, though... And most of these people didn't leave the city.

[Morgan]

At first, the boy didn't respond. His eyes threatened to spill their tears, and Morgan patiently waited for what would happen next; if the stranger were to cry, he would have put the jacket down to comfort the boy in whatever way he could. That didn't happen. Instead the boy took the jacket right out of Morgan's hands, fruit and all, and ran off with it. Morgan tapped a finger to his lips in thought, and looked around him. No one else had been in the position to 'donate' a bushel basket to handle all the fruit in lieu of his makeshift jacket, so it was for the best that the boy took that with him. It was the only secure space to store it in, after all! So, the blond shrugged and smiled. He didn't have the time to say it aloud before the stranger had run off, but if he ever felt in need he could wear the thing too, since that was the intended purpose of a jacket and all. "I didn't even catch his name..." the girl muttered, and Morgan realized much the same thing. He didn't catch the stranger's name. But he had been pla-- ...... playing an instrument .... and guiding mice? Had the stranger fashioned himself after the Pied Piper of Hamelin? That smile broke out into a grin. That was amazing! Everyone else was so glum and blah about this Rebirth thing, but there was still a person in this town versed enough in legends to shape themselves after such a figure. Sure, the story the original Pied Piper was featured in wasn't very uplifting (kids died, that's always terrible), but this Piper didn't seem so bad. He had enough heart to mourn his friends when they died, so surely he wouldn't use his powers to take lives. That would be counterproductive. The thought of it gave him a strange hope. When next he paid attention, the girl was walking away. "Hey, wait! I didn't catch your name either, and you didn't get mine," he said. "I guess the question here is whether you want it? Oh, and if you wanted some fruit from the tree, I could get you some. The Piper took all of it before you could get any, after all."

WORDS: 381 NOTES: N/A TAGS: N/A

[Incursio]

The trail seems to dwindle here.

But she felt it; it was this close and yet he managed to slip away from her grasp once more.

She didn't really have to do much. Walking along her course she heard rumors, nay-sayers, and gossips spewing lip about a boy with a particular fetish toward rats throwing a rather womanly hissy-fit because one or some of his pets got killed through some nondescript manner. If that wasn't him than there was yet another rat obsessed pedophile roaming these streets and that didn't sit particularly well with her. It had to be him, it simply had to be, and the very fact that this road stank of his stench was enough solid evidence to guide her but once she got there, she found nothing at all but a few stragglers, a blondie, and a small girl not too far off.

They were irrelevant quite simply because she, being unable to speak audibly, was unable to interrogate them.

"The rat bastard," she thought to herself as she slipped along the shadows of this hallowed and seemingly sacred interior. This, of course, didn't mean the end of her pursuit, it simply meant she'd have to work harder to uncover more and more of the pieces of this particular puzzle. If she had more to go on, she'd have ended the reign of the prince of rats some time ago but he was as elusive as the winds, it seemed.

Picking up a piece of fruit that had fallen to the ground not long ago, she looked around and listened to the conversations. It seemed unusual to hear such bright sparks of vibrant life in a lifeless world such as this and she couldn't help but to smile subtly from her place not too close to them. Still, the more lifeless lot left to live unchecked the more lifeless the lot of life grew and therefore she couldn't' simply idle about, she had a job to do, a responsibility, a god-given duty.

A Piper.

Is that what his newly given name?

It didn't matter at this point.

Wiping the surface of the fruit with the tattered rags she wore as a cloak, she sunk her teeth into it. The sweetness of it's flesh almost shocked her system as the bitterness of Wild Root Tea and Dried Bark had left an almost permanent taste of dirt and mire in her mouth. It was pleasant but she didn't have time to indulge.

She stood in the shadows;

She looked;

She listened.

[Rennat]

King of the First City enters...

Barely middle-aged, no more than 32 years old. Aging too soon, his hair graying, the skin around his neck sagging, clear blue eyes glassy with a wear of years that could not possibly have past. Is this the visage of a hard working man or a man whose sins have wearied him? A gray suit hugs close to a body that might have been fit before the Fall. A smile that pleads to be perceived as genuine. Everyone is suffering. Who needs to be reminded?

He climbed down a rope ladder from his 'penthouse suite'. The few that had remained near the base of the Yggdrasil scrambled over themselves to greet him, pushing past one another in a manner that would seem rude if the world weren't so tired and people had the right to care about such things. They didn't care that another person was getting to be closer to the self-proclaimed King of the First City; they only cared that they got as close as they could. They were husks, barely shells of former selves on the brink of dying, holding on if only to exact some sense of importance in this insignificant world. He graced them with his presence, placing his heads weakly over as many people as he could, like he may have seen religious leaders do once before on television. Pawns did their job as well as they could. Eyes fluttering, hands meekly reaching for him, a shudder if a hand happened to graze His own. A God amongst the broken. A politician.


"Rats... Rats again..." It was an older woman, well over sixty years old and faring worse than a well woman of her age. Her wrists were stick thin and her fingers were bony like a witch's and her eyelids were heavy with looming death. "He has taken." With what strength the old woman could muster, she took in the full glory of the lackluster King, and watched as his own weary eyes glistened at her words. A nod. A nod that spoke of how much effort it took and how so very lucky the old woman was to have had the King grace him with such a draining gesture. "Taken care of." It was final. Hardly reassuring but final. The old woman would have to trust that King Crown had things under control. Perhaps the stolen fruit were exactly why he had descended from his throne to rub elbows with the dregs of society. "Excuse me," he spoke, curtly, and lead the way over to the blonde and the little girl, who were not endangering his personal bubble and therefore much more appealing conversational partners. 

The girl, he had seen around before. Her cause was 'admirable' but such was foolish in today's world. Take what you can. Trying to fix things could quickly turn into meddling, especially when the success of the few required the failure of the whole. As long as there was subjugation, the King and others could reign freely. He seemed to consider addressing her fondly but, in his tire, he decided not to bother and what was going to be a warm smile turned into a grimace. He turned from her to face the blonde. The dregs had reached him by this point, crowding him incessantly. People in need were people who knew no boundaries. As always, they would take as much as they could, and people would allow the needy to take because they 'needed' everything they wanted. False entitlement, rampant in the First City.

"I saw you." There was a threat to the few words, but the sigh with which they were expounded spoke of that same drudging tire, the kind that took aggression out of verbal threats. It was no use. No use in mincing words any longer. His reputation was sealed by his position in the community, as one of the first citizens. King was familiar with Morgan, having been among the same ranks in the reclaiming of what was once Chicago. It was his air of calm and control that won him his lofty spot in the penthouse suite of the Tower; that, and the execution of multiple sickly, heralded as a selfless endeavor to rescue what remained of the world. Back in those days, the future first citizens of Miracle believed themselves to be the chosen few left on the planet. There were many that knew this to be ridiculous, but without the degree of responsibility embraced by the 'chosen ones,' Miracle might never have been reclaimed. King was, naturally, one of those chosen few, but unlike those, his belief in his own importance to the grand scheme of things didn't die with the discovery of "other life" out in the Wilds. Those people were barely surviving. Rebels without a cause, denying the one grace left in the world that was Miracle. Then, there were those who remained that King wished would leave.

"You were not hired to steal fruit from the People. Nor were you placed on this earth for such a purpose, Gaia smite me if I lie." With people like Morgan dabbling in Miracle's substantial stores of Yggdrasil fruit, where was the control? How were the desires of the People quelled, without rations? The People were an elite group with power, to be sure. Power to overwhelm, but betrayed by a common need for food. "You have a reputation to uphold. You've made yourself quite a mascot for the MCC, Morgan. That puts both of us in a tricky position. We don't feed those that steal." His words were accusatory, but he covered the lapse of kindness with a correction. "I refer to the rogue rat child. But, you already knew that." He nodded with a smile and turned away, like a father proud of himself for reprimanding his child. It so hurt him to do so.

"We all know that boy is a menace to us all. His so called 'friends' spread sickness and I suspect he is to blame for the disappearances of your children. Our children." He was smooth, that was for sure. His weariness was very nearly endearing, even to the keen. "I have let the matter slide for much too long." How humble. "The matter will be taken care of shortly, on behalf of the Miracle Colonization Corps. We thank you for your support." King Crown turned away and neared his ladder, motioning for one of the dregs to assist him up. His tire truly fought against his own self-pride. It was an interesting struggle to witness, though few would notice. Too many associated fatigue with the elderly, and the elderly with wisdom. Such was, unfortunately, not the case here.

[Akemi]

The girl turned to the boy. "Akemi," she told him flatly. "And... I'm pretty sure it was you that caused that whole scene. If you had just waited, none of that would have happened." She stopped and turned, shuddering slightly. She could've sworn that someone was watching... But, well, a good number of people had stopped and looked up, while others were scrambling in the same direction. Akemi looked toward the thing that had caught their attention and gasped softly. She got to her knees as he drew closer, but said nothing, keeping her head down even when he looked at her. Had he greeted her with words, of course, she would have responded. But she would not speak until he had.

Or, so she intended. They were accusing the boy of taking children?! She stood quickly. "How can you be so sure if you have no proof?" she asked suddenly. "And he wasn't stealing, the fruit from the life tree belongs to everyone!" Yes, due to her position as an ager, she had more money than most, but she didn't flaunt it like the others did. "This is why there's still so many issues in this world, even after three years of being here, of being like this... Because nothing has changed. Even though the world was basically destroyed, nothing changed. Still, the people in power try to take every last drop from those who have none." She narrowed her eyes, unafraid of this so called king who had aged too soon. There was little that frightened her now, after spending two full years wandering the Wilds.

"It was the same before, it will be the same again," she muttered. "And the children like me get nothing because the rest of you assume that we can give nothing! Well, sir, I ask you, what have you done these three years? I spent two of them wandering the Wilds, forced to fend for myself. And the people out there know what it's like to have nothing. You sir, you don't seem to know that... How it is to have everything taken away from you..." She closed her eyes and looked away, hands balled into fists.

"I don't care anymore," she finally said. "I don't care if you throw me out of the city, that'll only mean that you have something to hide!" She glared at him. "Yes, I reversed time on that boy's rat friends. I did it because I know how it feels to be completely alone! And, honestly, I'm wondering if you've ever had to deal with that... You always up there in your penthouse, looking down on all of us who aren't as lucky as you... You're just a man who's afraid of giving his position up, who doesn't want to acknowledge the crumbling world around you!" She turned away, hands still in fists, and slipped her feet into the little white flats.

"It's not like it matters, no one else wants to fix this broken world..." she muttered. "It's not like anyone else believes that we could actually fix it if we worked together." She started slowly, walking, then it turned into a run, as she turned her back on the tree. She wasn't sorry for what she'd said, that was how she felt. But she knew it might get her banished from the city because of her honesty.

[Morgan]

Morgan blinked, taken aback by her tone of voice. She was blaming him? For... feeding the boy? Or had she seen the mistake he made in killing the mice? He agreed on that, he shouldn't have been so hasty. But then, the mice were still alive somehow so the Piper's grief was put to rest for the time being. Morgan would make sure that he didn't kill one of those things again, whether they really belonged to the Piper or not. Akemi stopped and turned, and Morgan looked around to take note of anything that would've caused that. He saw much the same that she did-- people stopping and looking up, scrambling around in an effort to give themselves something to do and someplace to be. That kind of panic always gripped the less fortunate at the sight of their 'ruler'. Morgan took a glance to Akemi and saw her kneel as the supposed old man drew closer, but to that gesture the old man replied with a half-done smile that turned into a grim and tired expression. What, he wasn't going to use words? The man turned from her and faced the blond instead. If this was supposed to be the part where Morgan gulped and prostrated himself in front of the ruler of Miracle, you'd note that such a thing is entirely absent. "I saw you." "I'd hope so; everyone does." It was an incredibly obvious statement to make, but there was a thin line between 'sounding like a dumbass' and 'sounding like a smartass', and Morgan was dancing all over it. The threat was completely lost on him. "You were not hired to steal fruit from the People. Nor were you placed on this earth for such a purpose, Gaia smite me if I lie." "The Piper counts as one of the People in this city, and I was Reborn to help those in need and deliver them the things that they can't get for themselves. Whether that's messages or cargo. And don't bring Gaia into this, she smote us all before once already. This is pretty minor in comparison." 'Stealing'? What a ridiculous assertion to make, even if he was technically Morgan's boss! "[...] We don't feed those that steal." So does this mean you're not feeding me, or...? "I refer to the rogue rat child. But, you already knew that." He turned around to walk away, and Morgan should have just left it at that. But there was a lot of things Morgan could do that were in his best interest. Lying or sucking up to cover his ass was not one of them. He just couldn't keep his mouth shut. "You don't feed 'those that steal', but I do!" He said. What ever could make the Piper less deserving of food than everyone else who was just as poor, just as miserable? "We all know that boy is a menace to us all. His so called 'friends' spread sickness and I suspect he is to blame for the disappearances of your children. Our children." That ... that was interesting. Just a mere suspect, yet the old man was willing to casually toss in 'thief' accusations? The man continued to speak, but it looked like Akemi had had enough of listening to him. She was right. How could they determine the Piper was stealing children with no proof? Morgan had heard of the disappearances, but he was no comic book superhero; to draw such a conclusion out of all the other potential have-nots (and there were many) capable of spiriting away the children of the city (questionable!) was absurd! This was simple scapegoating, from the sound of it. The adults needed someone to blame, and no better than the boy with seemingly no one protecting him. Awful! To be honest, Morgan wondered if Gaia could have shaved a few people off of her resurrection count. The girl continued to say her piece, and it was a pretty sizable piece if Morgan was allowed an opinion on that. He listened and gave slight nods in agreement. His body wasn't as tense as hers, and he opted for crossing his arms rather than balling his hands into fists. At the mention of being thrown out of the city, Morgan opened his mouth to say something-- 'No one would be stupid enough to do that just for your opinion'-- but then she confessed to having reversed time on the rats and -- 'Yeah he'd probably be stupid enough to do that now considering his real obvious hate-on for the Piper'. Whatever happened, she was the reason the boy hadn't still been mourning the loss of his friends. She was a good person. Maybe a little presumptuous, but forget that, he found himself following her out. "'Apologies'," he said to the rest of the spectators, hooking his fingers into quotation marks, "for the scene y'all just witnessed, but we're out. You guys can feel free to impose boundaries on the tree you didn't plant your own selves." That was still ridiculous as hell.

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