logsinthenight | EVENT LOG: AULD LANG SYNE

Entry tags:

EVENT LOG: AULD LANG SYNE

characters: everyone.
location: Everywhere
date/time: December 31-January 1
content: Another year gone by, and a sunny future ahead
warnings: n/a

Most of a year has passed since the World Eater was defeated and light began to trickle its way back in to the world. Spring brought new green growth, summer brought the first few pale flowers, and fall saw ever-longer days even as the crispness of frost returned to the air. Now, the longest nights of winter have passed (which still were shorter than those in that first spring), and as the sun rises on the new year, it does so with reassuring warmth that cuts through the ice and snow.

we've wandered far beneath the stars

Many left in those early days, lured by the chances to take the portal home, or to new worlds - and hopefully they made it successfully. The few who stayed behind in Beacon have worked hard on making the place into a home, or at least a solid base of operations for future work, whatever that might entail. Exploring has become easier thanks to the longer, brighter days, revealing a seemingly endless expanse of forest pockmarked by ruined, overgrown cities. Beacon stands at the center of it all, somehow harbors the brightest light, and so out at the edges of the explored areas, forest spirits still linger. They're generally friendly and curious, encouraged by stories spread by the spirits who fled Beacon and its sunlight in order to carry news of the lantern-folk and their success at bringing the aurora to the ground.

All right, so the story may not always be accurate, but it has been told.

And given the spirits still understand the emotional meaning to the start of a new year, counted not on a calendar they follow but on one they barely remember, they begin a strange sort of pilgrimage in those long winter nights. On the night of December 31 they swarm the darkened town of Beacon with whoops and hollers and gifts of ancient decayed (but possibly still viable) seed packets looted from broken cities, crude jewelry made of bones and shards of pottery, and something that looks a bit like it was probably modeled after bread, but are actually buns of baked clay. Before the sun rises, they depart again, leaving Beacon quiet in the snow except for the strange, eerie noises of ice breaking around the edges of the lake.

Should anyone, intentionally or by mistake, break one of these clay buns, they'll find there was something inside. Is your luck good or bad, or will their token object be too obscure to decipher?

and we ran into the night

You probably have your own way of celebrating, too. The portal works, and experimenting with it and the old lighthouse keeper's notes have provided a means to bring in gifts, food and drinks, and even sometimes living creatures, plants, or fungi, though things don't always go intended (an order for goats one day instead brought in a pair of these).

Those who live in Beacon have generally agreed not to bring in new people, but accidents sometimes happen. If you're new on the new year, this must all be awfully confusing, but if you've been here a month or so, maybe you've had time to settle in. It's certainly been made easier by those studying lantern repair over the last many months, as small dents and cracks can often be patched back up, usually with good success (but sometimes with temporary side effects).

Enjoy the new year from the shore of the lake, the warmth of The Invincible, or wherever you like - you've chosen to stay, at least for now, and Beacon isn't a bad place to call home.

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"Paramecia," he says briefly as he shakes his head, amused. Maybe he never really got around to explaining all that to Will, though. Anyway, trying to picture becoming the embodiment of silence itself is both funny and nearly impossible.

And it's also not that important compared to what Will is suggesting. He furrows his brows a little as he thinks about it - because no, obviously he's never become powerless or weak or anything of the sort in high humidity, and he's not sure what there is to test.

"Humid air's still mostly air," he points out. "Not an actual body of water. Why, what were you thinking of?"

"Paramecia? What do they have to do with this?" Do these fruit powers have something to do with protozoa? Because that's the definition that immediately comes to Will's mind. Tiny, single-celled organisms, often one of the first things they introduce to a newly terraformed environment to test its livability.

"I was just thinking it would be smart to know your exact limits. How much water it takes, how still is 'still', things like that. Unless you already happen to know." It's not something they've talked about extensively.

"Maybe. Hold that thought, though," he says with a finger raised to ask him to pause as he finishes off his cigarette, then snuffs it out and drops the butt in his ashtray before continuing.

"Paramecia's the type of fruit I have. I guess I never really explained all that." So little from home carries over to how things work here that some topics just never once came up.

"There's three types. Zoan fruit lets people take on animal-like features, and even transform completely. Logia fruit lets someone control or become a natural non-animal material, like fire, or ice, or light. Then the rest of us have what's called Paramecia fruits, which... don't fall into neat categories like those, though some people call it being 'superhuman'. So the guy who can become ice, he has a different type of devil fruit. So that's what I was saying, it'd be interesting to talk to someone like that, because I bet he thinks about water differently than how you or I do."

At least he didn't drop the cigarette on the paper.

Will listens with a puzzled expression on his face. He knows these words, he knows what they mean, but put together like this they're a completely new idea. "-zoan", like the classification suffix? "Logia", like something to do with words? And "Paramecia", other than the organism, he's pretty sure is just a reference to shape. Once again, he's fascinated by how things exist in other worlds as completely different concepts.

"I— hm. Back home, paramecia are tiny, microscopic creatures, only one cell. They're easy to reproduce, so we use them in various applications." A sudden thought occurs to him that makes him feel uneasy. "Those names wouldn't happen to have anything to do with the way the fruit changes you, would they? The way it gives you your abilities?"

Who knows what Zoan and Logia would mean, but the idea of single-celled organisms giving Rosinante powers like some kind of supernatural parasites is... unpleasant.

"I... don't know. Don't think so. Not sure how a one-celled creature would be involved. Can they change the genetics of other things?"

At least that word, "genetics", has become more familiar to him as a sort of intercultural translation for the "lineage factor" he'd normally use. The rest of Will's confusion isn't something he thinks he can help with. It's all just the words he's known for those fruits forever, they just mean what they mean, right?

"I always thought Zoan just means animal, like in zoo," he says as he folds his arms across the table and tries to think of explanations. "I don't know what language that comes from, though. Must be old. Could pre-date the Void Century. Same with Paramecia and Logia, since I don't recognize them as meaning anything else. But Zoan, at least, doesn't seem like it's related to the way people get abilities. More like the type of abilities they get."

"Not those ones, no." But they're not here to talk about bacteria. "Zoan, I think it means something like that, we use it to talk about classes of animals. Types of animals. Like the paramecia, they're protozoans. Proto-animals." That's simplifying it a bit, but how else is he supposed to explain that?

"In my world, those words come from... Latin, or Greek or something. Usually Latin. A very old language, thousands of years old, no one speaks it anymore. Logia is something to do with words, I think. Paramecia just means... oblong, roughly." But words and oblong-ness have nothing to do with those powers, so his hypothesis is moot. Still, very interesting that they have one word in common.

"I've wondered sometimes if our worlds don't share some common background. If they might be different versions of the same place. Perhaps their history is much the same until some event or other diverts it."

"I've been wondering that too," he admits, though he says it cautiously, like he's not supposed to. It's another one of those things that just doesn't matter here and he knows it, but talking openly about the Void Century and the lost history of the world just isn't done back home, except as passing mentions that it happened and is best left forgotten.

He even glances around the room to make sure nobody is listening in. Old habits. But to his credit, he's lost enough of his old paranoia where he doesn't bubble off the conversation at the table so that nobody could even accidentally hear them talk. Thinks about it, though.

"There are old stories told by... some people, that we came from the moon. Or the stars, depending on whose version you listen to. And I'd always just passed it off as meaningless creation myths, since every tribe, every race has their own. Because, you know, obviously people couldn't come from stars. Except now I know about space travel, and how some of the things in my world are shared with yours and others here. Fragments of languages and religions. But any actual records have been gone a long time, because they were gathered up and burned a long time ago."

"It almost seems too convenient to be pure coincidence." He notes how Rosinante looks around before continuing, as if he's about to say something seditious. Are they not allowed to talk about this where he's from? If all the information was lost, then why not?

"So your history is just... gone? No one knows about the distant past?" Extremely suspicious. "There has to be something interesting to know, otherwise it wouldn't have been suppressed. And surely whoever was responsible for suppressing it, they must still know what that is."

Will knows quite a bit about the suppression of information, given he's been complicit in it his entire adult life. But that doesn't mean he likes it that there are things he's not allowed to know.

"In my world that sort of thing happens all the time, but there's always some remaining record, some person who remembers, something. And no one has ever been successful in erasing an entire era of history."

"If they were completely successful, I wouldn't even know that much," he replies with a shake of his head. "There was a group of scholars who had operated quietly for centuries, gathering artifacts and scraps of knowledge to preserve it. But... let's see. Nine? Nine years ago, they were found out. The whole island was bombed back into dust."

It's both unnerving and oddly liberating to be able to actually talk about this sort of thing with someone, and a sort of spiteful, cautious enthusiasm lights up his eyes. Ohara and its destruction isn't itself taboo, but it was tiny and unknown, and if he hadn't already been enlisted, if he hadn't been raised by Sengoku, he might never have heard it happened. Most people in the world likely never will.

"That's why it's hard. I'd bet that wasn't the first time something like that had happened, either. The government has had nearly a thousand years now to keep suppressing it. That's a long time for the world to forget what it lost. I - all I do know for sure was there was a war between some prosperous civilization and a coalition of twenty other kingdoms. The coalition won, vowed to stamp out all traces of the ones who lost, and labeled the survivors the 'enemies of the gods'. ... And then," he shakes his head and digs for his lighter. Not too soon for another cigarette, not with all this talk about this subject in particular.

"...Then they named themselves gods, because who else would come from the stars and win big wars and rule the world, right?" A brief history of the world, a mix of old legends and old bullshit and new bullshit too, with a bunch of omissions he doesn't have the ability to fill because he was too young to know the secrets told to the eldest son, another truly bullshit tradition.

Anyway, poor Will probably has even more questions after all this, and for once he feels eager to clarify, because truly, really and truly, fuck his kin and all his ancestors.

He sure does have a lot of questions.

"So they thoroughly destroyed them, just so they could become them." Typical politics. Except typical politics doesn't span generations of cover-ups and violently-enforced secrecy. "Are there still survivors? Well, descendants of survivors." Probably not, but it would be interesting to know what stories they tell.

Talking about all this, about powerful government conspiracies and secret cabals of scholars who were subsequently destroyed— it makes him think just a little about the situation he left behind in his own world. They'd been hired on to assist in the investigation of something very, very old. And then they'd started dying. It's not too much of a stretch to think that someone might not have wanted something found.

Did he really die for such a stupid reason? Didn't they know how easy he was to pay off? Or maybe they took the "no chances" approach. Whatever happened, it's a discussion for a time that isn't right now.

"Maybe," he says, though he sounds less certain now, and far less full of buried anger. He retrieves the pack of cigarettes to take another from it while he decides how to answer.

"Where I'm from, there are stories about those people still. They're treated like, you know, the monster under the bed, a warning to kids that the enemies of the gods are still out there, waiting to snatch them off the streets and gobble them up," he says with a snort, then lights the cigarette and takes a draw. "But these days they're just people like anyone else. They don't remember any better. It's been too long. If there are any who managed to keep their old traditions and knowledge alive for all this time I've never heard of it, but I'd guess if they're that good at hiding what they know, they wouldn't want anyone else to know."

He debates a moment whether he should give names or not. After all, thirteen (no, fifteen, now?) years ago, he's the one who had urged secrecy, but that was because of Doflamingo. Otherwise, most people in their world don't know the significance of that lone initial. There's no threat like that here, and most of the D clan go about their lives openly with their full names on display, because it doesn't mean a damn thing to anyone else who hasn't been privy to a few secrets here and there.

"You could ask Law about it if you want, but like I said. They're no different from anyone else," he says with a shrug.

That's also probably not true, but there's only so much he's willing to say about someone who isn't at the table.

"Is he one of them?" It surprises him that, without the continuous tradition, they might even know who is and who isn't. He hasn't got the slightest clue where his family comes from, they left Earth behind generations ago. He can only make vague guesses based on his name.

But then he doubts his people, whoever they were, were nearly so infamous.

"To be blunt, I'm surprised your government allowed any of them to survive." They seemed rather hell-bent on removing any traces of their enemies, and yet they left the enemies themselves alone?

"He is." And he'll leave it at that, just a simple acknowledgment, made unfortunate by Will's next statement. With Law's whole family dead, Law now included, that's another one of those surviving families wiped from the seas.

"I don't know how any of them did," he says with a shake of his head. "These days, it usually doesn't matter. There's the one who was a notorious pirate who was executed, but there's another who's a Vice Admiral. Back around the time of the war, though, it must have been really hard. I'm guessing they probably scattered, got good at hiding and assimilating."

He can only speculate, but that's what he did after all, right? He hid, and he assimilated. And outside the Red Line, his family name isn't recognized as anything more or less than just another name, so he doesn't bother concealing it.

Too late Will realizes that Law didn't exactly survive, now did he? Poor choice of words on his part.

"Perhaps they're not seen as a threat anymore, without... whatever it is that was destroyed." Whatever dangerous ideas or knowledge was lost. "Or perhaps the government doesn't want to bring any further attention to it by hunting them down." Or Rosinante's idea, which is probably most likely. "Could be a bit of all three."

And now for the awkward question: "The ones who won, who declared themselves to be gods... were those... ?"

A bit of all three is probably right, he agrees, but who can say. Actually, no, he knows there are people who can say, but Sengoku never did divulge secrets beyond what was necessary, probably for Rosinante's own safety. And the elders surely know, but that's knowledge that will only be passed to their successors.

He appreciates that Will doesn't voice the rest of that question. It's enough to go off of, left as it is, and so he nods and focuses on the cigarette in his hand, smoldering away.

Well, so much for overcoming paranoia. With a snap of his fingers, he seals their conversation to the two of them, just in case anyone else were to walk by. It feels safer that way.

"That's actually the reason I broke some of my cover, back then. Hadn't said a word in years except to call back in to base, make sure Sengoku knew I was still alive. But I found out what Law was because I overheard him talking to the other kids, and had to tell him to keep quiet about it, hide that part of his history and name so Doflamingo wouldn't find out. My brother would've killed him. He'd take it as a direct threat to his own aspirations, knowing there was a kid like that around."

But why? Aren't they just normal people, like everyone else? Apparently some people are still holding on to very, very old grudges. Not that he can't sort of relate to that, but still. A child? Everything he's learned about Doflamingo leads him to believe the man is a massive asshole of the highest order, so maybe it makes sense to him... but still.

"Why would he bother to continue that—" you don't normally call murder a "tradition"... "Why continue that way of thinking if most people don't even know of it?"

"Two reasons," he starts, but boy he's starting to think he needs something stronger than a cigarette if this conversation continues down this particular direction.

"One is that, you have to remember, he's not one of most people. I remember hearing this stuff as a kid, it's still repeated all the time. He's two years older than me, and he had more time to hear more of it and internalize it. He's smart, I'm sure he doesn't literally believe every detail, and we may not be nobility anymore, but he'd have no problem killing a kid just to make sure there won't be problems down the line. Especially because part of the myth is that some day they're going to rise back up and take revenge."

And as much as Rosinante doesn't want to believe in stories, he not-so-secretly hopes that part is actually true. Vengeance isn't necessarily justice, and he's no revolutionary, but the world would be a lot better off without Marie Geoise and its people, and that's simple fact.

"Two. My brother is a psychopath. That part's important. His goals, which it sounds like were all thankfully thwarted, involved rearranging all of the underground trade networks to supply him with unlimited funds and power, taking over the kingdom our ancestors used to rule just because he wants it back but also because it would give him a legitimate position in the government, and beyond that I'm certain he was hoping to position himself to go even higher than that on some vengeance quest of his own. So a minor risk, like Law? He wouldn't even flinch at having him killed, or even doing it personally, partly just to not have to worry about it later, and partly because he probably gets off on the notion that one of them would have died at his hands in defiance of the myths, like that proves anything."

For a moment, Will regrets taking the conversation down this road. There's a lot of anger here, and while he normally wouldn't mind, it's uncomfortable to see it in someone he cares about. But maybe it's important that Rosinante gets some of this out of his system. Maybe it'll help. Somehow.

Or maybe it'll make things worse.

"We don't have to keep talking about him if you'd prefer not to." He at least wants to give Rosinante an out, if he wants it. "I know he's not a topic you're especially fond of. He sounds like, quite honestly, one of the worst people I've ever heard about." A psychopath, Rosinante said. Will's been called that himself before; psychopath, sociopath, an antisocial personality. There were times when he thought that might be accurate, but in his defense, Rosinante's brother is on an entirely different level.

Will reaches a hand across the table for one of Rosinante's. "I'm... sorry you had a monster for a brother." He isn't sure what else to say. He's gotten a little bit better at displaying his own emotions, but he's still far from an expert on dealing with these situations. How do you comfort someone about this? When not only was it all real, but they had to spend a while pretending to be alright with it? Hell, he doesn't know how to properly deal with his own anger, let alone anyone else's.

With a huff of a sigh, Rosinante nods his quiet thanks and takes Will's hand, then stuffs his cigarette back into his mouth so he can scratch at the side of his head, more out of frustration than any actual itch. It's been a long time since he's taken an opportunity to vent about much of anything, but this is one of those topics that will for sure get that anger flaring. A trip to the old gym and its punching bags might do him some good later today, that always helps in the rare times it's needed.

"Thanks. It's... fine. It's probably good for you to know these things, for context." If nothing else, it continues to fill in for Will why he and Law are so close and always will be, because he knows that probably has the potential to be awkward. Any life with him inevitably involves accepting that Law will be a part of that life too.

But Will has been good about that and so far the three of them have found some kind of balance, which he's constantly thankful for.

"I don't have much else to say about him, I guess. There's always more, but it's not important now. He's in prison with a sentence that should keep him there for life. And Impel Down is very secure. It's underwater and in one of the calm belts, so even if he somehow broke out, he's stuck."

Boy does he hope that's true, anyway. His sanity probably depends on it. But if that changes, at this point he may never know.

Will's honestly surprised to hear that Doflamingo didn't get a death sentence. They executed some pirate, why not him? It's a little disappointing, but not something that seems wise to draw attention to right now.

"Good. Let him rot." He guesses a high-security underwater prison is a close enough second.

It is helpful to get more context, though. He's only really heard Law's story in bits and pieces, and the more he hears the more concerning it gets. He's had his moments of jealousy, but it's gotten much better, and he can't exactly begrudge them their relationship. It sounds like they've been through a hell of a lot together.

"There's nothing you can't tell me at this point. We know the worst about each other already. If you want to talk about something, I'll be here. But there's nothing you have to tell me, either." Is that going too far? People are supposed to share just about everything with their partners, aren't they? But surely not if the only way to share it is to make yourself miserable.

"Thanks. And, believe me. If I didn't want to tell you something, I wouldn't. I'm really good at not talking." He's even feeling well enough for some very dry humor, apparently. The anger will always be there, but he can shove it aside for now.

"Same goes to you, by the way. If there's anything that ever comes up and you want to talk about it, I'll listen. If you'd rather not, then that's fine also." He has a feeling that Will doesn't need to hear this, because he always seems so self-assured, always speaks his mind when he wants to, but he wouldn't want to neglect making it clear and making him wonder.

He doesn't need to hear it, not really, but the sentiment doesn't go unappreciated. It's nice to be told.

"I'll probably say whatever it is regardless of my feelings on it. I'm not especially good at not talking." As if Rosinante doesn't already know that. Their back and forth teasing takes some of the tension out of the air, though it was already beginning to dissipate.

"But it's good to hear, at any rate."

"It's refreshing to have someone around who always just speaks his mind, after too many years as one more liar in a group of them," he says with a shake of his head and the slight hint of a smile. "You really start to miss being able to just have a normal conversation with someone when every word or gesture has to be calculated."

Which actually brings a funny sort of thought to mind, as he looks over at Will. "I'm gonna lose all my practice, aren't I? All I've got left now are people I'm honest with. That's... weird."

"Glad to be of service." He might leave out details here and there on subjects he'd rather avoid, but the one sin he is not very guilty of is deception. Cultivating his manner of speech doesn't count. Probably.

"You could practice by making up extravagant lies, but I can't promise I'll believe them." Could be a hilarious exercise, though. "Though really, anything you've said today could be a lie and I wouldn't know. You're free to try and sneak them into conversations, as long as it's nothing important. Keep us all alert."

He might be joking, but he also might not be.

"It would sure keep you guessing," he says with a smile as he finally lets go of Will's hand, drops their bubble of silence with a snap of his fingers, and leans back comfortably, having successfully come back to a more casual tone of conversation.

And immediately falls to the floor with his limbs sprawled everywhere, but given his habit here of sitting on a pillow on account of the too-low tables, he's right back up in a moment. It does leave him rubbing the back of his head, though.

"Oof. Uh. No, as funny as that would be, I'll pass. Doesn't seem right," he says, because even if it sounds harmless, he can already see possibilities where it could go wrong. After all, he doesn't want to betray anyone's trust for a dumb joke. "Though I guess we could always make a game of it somehow. Some kind of true or false thing. Maybe you could even pick up a new skill in case we end up meeting people from the portal who are more trouble than the truth's worth."

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