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extramortem) wrote2023-12-31 12:44 pm
golden peacock | inbox
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17 / male / interested in: men / 6♠
Details
Prior to arriving here, I was a new demon applying myself to learn everything I could about Hell and its rules as well as demons and the games that they play among one another. Prior to that, I was human—a student in school.
Anything else you want to know about me, you will have to ask me yourself.
Regardless of whether I’m here or in Hell, my goal is the same: I want to learn everything I can about this place and its people, and then I want to utilize the rules and rewards of the Game to best benefit myself. I want to discover what it means to become “powerful” in this place, and I plan on collecting cards and climbing ranks in order to do so—and on my own terms.
Determination and adaptability.
I’m interested in anything thrilling, frightening, or mysterious. Beyond that, I’m willing to try any number of new things, though I typically tend to focus on whatever is capturing my interest at the time. As for food, I would say that my sweet tooth is comparatively underdeveloped—I tend to prefer savory food, though I would be happy to share sweets with another.
What’s most important to me is that it’s someone who accepts me and loves me for everything that I am.
…Though, if he’s attractive, that would certainly be a bonus.
Wine
.02 CLOWNS OR MIMES
…Neither
.03 SHOWER OR BATH
Bath
.04 PIRATES OR NINJAS
Seriously? Neither. This is kind of childish…
.05 TITS OR ASS
Depends
.06 COFFEE OR TEA
Either
.07 SPICY OR SWEET
Spicy
.08 SUMMER OR WINTER
Winter
.09 LEATHER OR LACE
Lace
10. ROUGH SEX OR GENTLE SEX
Both have their place, I think…
INTJ-T
no subject
I like your spirit, Makoto. Call me Pinocchio, if you please.
[ For a moment or two, he sits here basking in the unique experience of feeling like he's come to a mutual understanding. That, for a change, he can truly relate with someone in a meaningful way. He doesn't have to try to shave off his strange edges to fit in with someone else's expectations, to make himself more appealing and convenient.
They're different. Their lives could be so easy if they conformed to the shapes that slotted in effortlessly with the gaps around them. Makoto is uncompromising.
He likes that. ]
You need not decide right away, but I have a request to make of you.
[ He thinks of the message carved into the withered trunk of a tree, standing alone in a park clotted full of the decaying dead. ]
Would you like to try being... friends?
no subject
“pinocchio”… he recognizes the name as any young man from earth might, as interwoven into the fabric of international folklore as it has become. but, beyond that vague familiarity, makoto doesn’t think much of it. names are important, yes; they can also be symbolic, thematic. but he won’t allow himself to jump to any conclusions based on a name and only a name. )
Of course.
( he could be content to leave it there, thinking it one of the more interesting interactions he’s had through this system, though, as the other continues—
they are perhaps some of the few in this strange place for whom such a question might hold an odd sense of gravity. makoto had never really had what he would call “friends” prior to his death. the first friend he had ever made had been fjord, a relationship bartered with leveraging his “good behavior” after he had lost the last scrap of humanity he had to the selfsame demon. but fjord had offered him heartfelt advice when other demons would be hard-pressed to find such magnanimity, and he had been happy to think of him as such. in a place like hell, where kindness is never a guarantee and almost always a trick (or at the very least, a mirage), a friend is perhaps one of the most valuable things one can be.
others treat it so easily, so casually, so thoughtlessly. kazuya had been eager to call him a “friend” after half a conversation, all upon assumption, not even thinking to ask.
pinocchio seems to understand better. that flickering sense of kinship grows stronger. )
“Try”? ( it’s the choice of that word that stands out to him. ) Yes. Perhaps we could try.
What exactly is a “friend” to you, Pinocchio?
no subject
[ It spreads, dark and viscous, crimson turned black under the pall of night, crawling slowly in the gaps between the cobbles at his feet. The blood dripping from his blade falls in fat drops on the paving stones, steam rising into the cold evening air from the Stalker that has finally breathed their last. All the weasel-masked girl had wanted was to sleep with a full belly, she had said.
If she had only asked instead of attacked, the puppet might have given her something. He doesn't tell himself this was a kindness. She was in his way, that's all.
She was in his way.
'Maybe it's time to take a break, yeah?' chirped his friend, his guide, his conscience, from the lamp glowing furtively from the belt around his hips. Gemini was the only one who was never afraid of his readiness to kill while never wanting to exploit it. ]
All of it. Even the parts that aren't... easy to like.
A "friend" shares your path, for a little while, or a long while. Sometimes, in its fruits.
[ "Hello, my only friend. What have you to show me today?"
A broken, malfunctioning puppet lying in a lonely cave on the outskirts of the polluted swamp that serves as a landfill for discarded homomachina. Singularly rare among his kind, he wants only to understand humans, praying for the day when he can be their "friend". Heart-breaking his gratitude, when shown a pantomime of emotion he may never fully understand by someone who straddles the boundary between man and machine.
"You may not be my only friend," his voice box crackled, "But you'll always be my first friend." ]
I'm interested in what yours looks like, Makoto. [ Whether he means his heart or his path, he does not elaborate. Perhaps he doesn't bother to distinguish one from the other, his self-awareness too new and too young to know how to live in any way that isn't terrifyingly authentic. ] What does it mean to you?
no subject
sometimes he wishes he didn’t care as much. he could just bare his teeth and show the world who and what he is, and damn all the rest—his ears would be deaf to the disgust in their words, his eyes would be blind to the horror in their eyes, his skin would be stone to the intensity of their stares. but he’s not. he’s soft, and he’s vulnerable—such things only too sharply remind him of how he gave up hope at life on earth in the first place.
they have only shared a short conversation, but its track gives makoto the impression that pinocchio (perhaps similar to his namesake) is not so simple in his relationship to humanity as many others he’s met here. but that doesn’t mean he isn’t still worried. his answer is something so tantalizing in its essence to him that it almost aches to consider, but he’s afraid to reach out his hand, unsure if it might be snatched away.
there’s a long pause before makoto answers, his voice tremulous and apprehensive. he has a question of his own before he moves on to ask the one pinocchio has posed. ) …And what if you don’t like what you find? ( unseen, unheard, he gnaws on his lip. ) What if there’s—more that isn’t, “easy to like” than there is the rest of it?
( he scares himself sometimes, with the things he thinks. the things he says. since contracting with J and becoming a demon, the things he does. he wonders if his control is slipping. there is much about himself that makoto doesn’t like, going so far as to hate it sometimes, when he’s entrenched most deeply in thoughts that J would belittlingly call “human.” and yet, with as self-secured demons seem to be with their cruelty and their morbid wantonness, he’s likely right—such a thing likely is uniquely “human.” )
no subject
So he's learned to covet with long claws and sharper teeth. He has left a horrible, bloody trail behind, and there are still citizens alive in Krat who whisper with trembling lips about the puppet of Geppetto, the way they used to shudder to speak of the riddle-loving specter who would steal away the lives of their children. He did it because he wanted a father's love.
It was never for him.
What if you don't like what you find?
What if there's—more that isn't "easy to like" than there is the rest of it?
As easily as the fragile eggshell fractures, he feels his mechanical heart laboriously churn, gears creaking as they process the swell of recognition. It's loud only to him, but his metal hand fans out over his chest like he means to smother its muted chatter. Oh, his throat feels tight. It's only happened once before, when the thing that once drew breath lay cold in his arms.
He manages to clear it with a bitter sound: ha. ] They become disappointments to their fathers who wish for good sons.
...This conversation— [ He almost laughs, but it sounds like a gasp. ] —took a surprising direction, didn't it? What a strange week it's been.
no subject
for makoto, however, it had been a question he hadn’t been able to get himself to voice: how did you know?
having put up with J’s mind games as much as he has, his immediate paranoid instinct is to think somehow he did know. but—just a few seconds’ thought makes him realize that’s ridiculous, that he doubts even J had picked up on all of the broken shards of emotional glass that lie as a field between himself and his father. he hates thinking of him, and for a split second, he hates pinocchio for making him think of him, but he knows that it was ridiculous to blame him for such a thing. “they become disappointments to their fathers who wish for good sons.” the words echo in his ear, blotting out whatever pinocchio is saying further; instead he is once again seated uncomfortably in the family room, his hands clasped on his knees, the knuckles white through thin skin. his mother stands conspiratorially close to his father, who has just arrived home from work—he can’t hear what she says over the sibilant whispers, but he knows what she’s telling him, because she can only take away and scold him for the books and things he brings home to try to satisfy his morbid fascinations so many times before she makes good on her threats to tell his father.
terrified, he stares at his hands. but some sort of ill instinct causes him to look up, and in that instant he sees it—his father’s gaze cutting through the air between them, ice cold, nothing but black hate behind his eyes.
“he’s going to kill me.” it was the first time makoto had ever thought it, but it stuck with him. even as he thinks of it now, he feels certain that he was right. )
…Yes. ( he had fallen silent for a long moment, but he rejoins the conversation with this word, shaky and quiet—it’s hard to say whether or not it answered pinocchio’s reply or his comment about the timbre of this exchange between them.
he’s quiet for a moment longer. then he clears his throat, speaking up again with a little more strength behind his words. )
To answer your question… Someone who will accept you for everything you are, who will see you for everything you are. Someone—who will offer advice, even when they don’t need to, ( he thinks of fjord for a moment; that conversation between them in the cold of the balcony had been a lifeline he’d clung to for a long time, ) who will be honest with you, when you’re making a mistake. But not cruel. Someone who won’t just throw you aside, even if it might be the easiest thing to do.
I… think that’s what a friend is, to me.
( he’s not sure he’s ever had one like that. it would be expecting a lot from someone. even fjord. )