[Video] un: foxtales

[byanyother_name]

[The initial video opening just displays a new sign on the wall of the common room. It looks like someone managed to find a piece of whiteboard and an erasable marker to incorporate into the sign. What does the sign say?

10 weeks without murder

Yes, you read that right. The whiteboard part is where the 10 is written with marker. It's clearly been made to be regularly updated. Kurama's voice when he speaks is...close to his usual calm tones but a little tense.]

Many of the people here will wonder why this sign is needed. The people who need it know why. I am one of the first group to fall through the Fissures, so this encompasses the entire history we know of of outsiders in this world.

I'm going to keep it updated appropriately, since...there might be more of us, apparently.

I would like to ask that no one tamper with the sign except for accurate updates. This is not a prank and it is not for pranks. It's for people that have suffered.

Comments

[have_hat_will_travel]

I guess in some cases that's all you *can* do...

[daughterofthemark]

Perhaps not, but in this case you would assume correctly. The two of us were part of the same group.

[byanyother_name]

[Friends. It's not untrue, but it's still pretty far from the actual truth of the matter. But Kurama is not going to out Goro to the father he hates, when Shido finds out any of that is Goro's choice.]

I am. Goro is important to me.

[Kurama's green eyes are sharp and searching on the other end of the video feed. There's something very unemotionally calculating about it, no matter how out of place it may seem on an apparent teenager.]

If I may ask a question. How much of that is because it is your blood, and how much because it is his hands?

[makejapangreat]

[Those eyes seem to pierce right into his soul, but he matches the gaze quietly, evenly.]

I do not want to see him with blood on his hands for a murder he was not forced to commit.

[Does that answer your question, Kurama?]

[thoroff]

He is rather good at that, isn't he?

[Gods know she would have drowned under the pressures of her work long ago if she didn't have his shoulder to lean on.]

shhhh

[beguiledcard]

Me? Go too crazy?

[ He actually has the gall to appear affronted. After a couple of seconds, he grins and kisses Kurama's cheek. ]

I wouldn't want to take away from this, actually. It should be the center of attention.

[byanyother_name]

No solution will ever be perfect. People are too individual for that. Really, all anyone can ever do is the best they can.

[have_hat_will_travel]

True that, of course.

[byanyother_name]

I appreciate that. I'm sure you're aware how difficult it can be for us to talk about...

[byanyother_name]

Ah. I see. As good a means as any other, really.

And probably less risky than interfering with an execution.

[nojohnyouare]

Probably. A lot of things are. Someone did? ...Understandable.

[byanyother_name]

...There wasn't technically a rule against it yet at the time we did it.

[Which was probably the only reason they survived doing it, honestly.]

Though I'm not sure it would have stopped either of us if there was.

[byanyother_name]

[He'll take it, honestly. It's close enough.]

I do tend to prefer self-reliance where at all possible anyway.

[cyclicalconcept]

Yes, it...it can definitely be difficult.

Ah, but...do you need anything else right now?

[nojohnyouare]

...Someone important, then. [nod] Ours had a glass wall. Or I'm sure they would have done it for each other, too.

[byanyother_name]

I came very close to violence, despite knowing that it was not our fight. Despite being perhaps the only one of us who knows what made her as she is. Watching the survivors struggle against her was a special kind of torture.

[Kurama shakes his head, lips pressed into a tight line for a moment. He rinses his pot under the spray and sets it aside.]

It is over. And yet sometimes I wonder how many decades, how many centuries, will it take before it is truly in the past...

[byanyother_name]

Believe me, I agree. I am...slightly horrified to discover that this has happened in multiple places for different reasons.

[Yeah but it's not something he wants to get into since it's not his place to disclose to her that Akira and Goro went through it, too.]

Moreso than I would have expected, honestly.

[seafoamgreen]

Yeah! Charging in, getting stuff done, working with your own hands... that's the life.

[byanyother_name]

That damned television show Ardyn told me about. And two others?

...may I ask, if you know, what were the reasons behind the others you went through? Ours at least had some kind of decent cause behind it all, however deplorable the methods.

[byanyother_name]

I gave up on exact numbers a long time ago, I just approximate by number of tails. Though that will also stop working by the time I reach your age.

When I'm dealing with people I can't tell the truth, I just give seventeen, but honestly, it's much less convenient to be an apparent minor than to be apparently thirty-five.

[byanyother_name]

I'm sorry you went through that. I find it personally revolting that someone would set up one of these for something as inane as a television show.

[byanyother_name]

[Given that the look fades into something more neutral, it would seem that it does.]

Good. That's something we have in common, then. As long as your intentions remain non-harmful, so will I.

My only stake in this is Goro and Akira's well-being.

[burninglight]

Good heavens, did you stop aging as a teenager? That sounds horribly troublesome.

Sorry, hold on, what do you mean number of tails?

[misanthropicprinciple]

[A pause.]

"Decent" depends on your point of view.

The first was an attempt to save a young girl's life and punish those who otherwise would have killed her. They put nine young children in mortal danger; the nine of us also ran the risk of death, but ultimately, eight of us escaped physically unharmed.

The second was designed with a few different goals in mind, one of which was the release of a deadly virus that would wipe three fourths of humanity off the face of the Earth - six billion deaths. On the other hand, one of the other goals was to raise and strengthen powerful espers to save all eight billion humans from an omnicidal fanatic. Some of the mastermind's other motivations were more selfish and less globally relevant.

private

[makejapangreat]

... then perhaps you can tell me something.

How do you think I can best help him?