1923/Eve

Eve
Date of Scene:	31 March 2015
Location:	A Quiet World
Synopsis:	Arthur and Apathy speak on the eve of the story's end.
Cast of Characters:	Arthur Lowell, 183
Tinyplot:	A Chime at the Precipice

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Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Everything pans out exactly as Apathy says. Mizuki greets Arthur at the door, likely with some trepidation if he does not make an effort to conceal his natural expression, but not enough to give her more than a moment's pause when he asks to traverse the Path of Candles. She would nod in silence and lead him to the elevator, which would begin to move deeper into the ground.

    Everything in their view would be obscured by darkness as they descend. Slowly, any warmth that would bleed from the Clock Tower's liveliness would give way to a certain frigidity of absence that would make Arthur feels as though he was being held constantly in the embrace of a corpse. The fabric of space itself would seem to abandon him after he's traveled a certain distance, and he would feel a stirring disconnection from all those physics he so often relies upon for guidance. If Mizuki were not here, it feels likely, even if it in reality is not, that he would never find his way back to the entrance.

    Eventually, the elevator comes to a halt. Mizuki pull a lone lantern from a 'wall' of darkness off to her left, holding it aloft to illuminate the ground. She would choose her steps slowly, carefully, as panels of what would appear to be glass begin to appear beneath her. After every fifth step, a blue candle would flicker into existence on to translucent rails that begin to appear. At that point, it's evident that the pair is on an infinitely long bridge aloft of an infinite, dark ocean. The gentle churning sound of shifting tides would tickle at their ears. This would be their only comfort for the next five hundred-some steps before, at last, the darkness all around them begins to relent.

    When it does, though, it somehow manages to feel even more empty than the blackness of before. The walls would be stained a perfect white in moments -- there would be no transition between the colors so gentle as to spare Arthur's senses. A monochoromatic door would appear with the blinking of an eye, as though it had emerged from an infinite mist. Of its own accord, it would slide open.

    The landscape would begin to change long before the pair can breach its sides. The black would join with the white to become a swirl of gray which glides to the roof of the world, soon extrapolating itself over its entire expanse to fashion clouds, and some poor mimic of light. The ground, too, would be monopolized by that fused color, and suddenly their feet would be submerged by a shallow pool of water which seems to dominate the entire realm. Mizuki would blow out the light in the lantern, now, casting it aside where it happily dissipates into the environment. In the distance, a similar haze clear to reveal a mountain of destroyed televisions, a forest where the leafless trees are draped in blankets, and a section of the sky where dark black lines pierce reality itself to create schisms in the atmosphere.

    Then, at the end, Apathy would appear. Her person is flanked by a massive monolith -- a tower which would appear to be constructed of an endless quantity of flattened spheres which become thinner at every level as they reach toward the heavens. She herself looks quite the same as she always has: like Mizuki's perfect photo-negative, hair a stark ivory, eyes an infinitely deep, shimmering aqua.

    She and her twin would exchange words, all of which are irrelevant. Then Mizuki would nod her acceptance, and her form would promptly lose its color. Two stools wrought of the plainest wood would appear between the pair of them, and Sophia would take a seat. Her hands would fold neatly in her lap, and her expressionless face would lock on the Arthur's. It would not stray afterwards.

    "Greetings, Arthur." She would bow her head faintly. "You will be glad to know that your offshoots have not accompanied me today. They are tending to things. But before we begin: do you have any questions? About what to expect, perhaps?"

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur's arrival comes with his usual way of concealing his emotions: Pretending he's got the utmost confidence and that he's not here for anything substantial. Mizuki's known him more than long enough to realize how much of that is a sham, but also how essentially harmless it is; what it means isn't anything harmful. And of course, when the mood changes, so does Arthur. The corpse-like cold makes him more reserved, swiftly flipping his mood to a more somber one. He's the kind of guy who doesn't seem to resist mood changes that way.

    He's matched Mizuki's funeral-esque silence with his own, going so far as to drift weightlessly behind her to not break the sound of the tide with his footsteps, except when it's time to slip into the shallow water, and then less when it's time to take a seat, which he does. There's a level of irreverence that can't be taken away, but he does speak a lot more somberly than normal, as he tends to in these private talks.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Hey, Sophia. Yeah. Thanks for keeping them out. I know you need your insurance but Tweedledum and Tweedledee kinda stress me out." Arthur rubs his forehead a little bit, somberly. "Good to hear you're getting use out of them. I know they're kinda jerks. Hope you're not thinking too little of me, dealing with my bad side so often."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Then he leans forward, propping his chin up on his hand, hand on the elbow, elbow on the knee. "Jeeze. I honestly don't know what to expect, and I don't think I even have the questions. I guess I gotta ask the most important one. You know, about the results." He's looking down at the foot of her stool now, a bit concerned.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Hearing that this is gonna wipe out Mizuki's memories, part of... Shiori's experiment. What we're doing here, I mean, is gonna do that. Look, I've only known her, what, less than a year? But, still." Arthur gestures to her frozen form. "She's a /really/ good friend. Is all this really gonna make all that start over? Hell, it wouldn't just be friendship square one, that sort of thing puts her back to square one of identity, I know how much experiences change a person. I need to hear it from the source, straight on. What's going on with that?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Any company is refreshing in my position," Apathy would state in preservation of her monotone, "even theirs. Earnestly, though, the quiet one has made for some nice communication at points. I've come to enjoy their company. And after all this is over, I... believe I will miss them. I've long since forgotten if what I feel is an emotion in earnest or just some facsimile of a genuine one, but nevertheless, imagining them gone makes me feel a stubborn pang of loneliness." Her gaze wanders off to the side a moment before she adds, "I can see why Mizuki likes you. You're troubled, but in a very different way from her. She enjoys knowing people whom she believes she can help. It gives her a sense of purpose in a world where she has none. Just like all her nonsense about creating 'heaven' -- it's her way of giving her own life meaning."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Apathy would hesitate as Arthur asks the most obvious question... and the one she doesn't know the answer to. Or, well, she has a pretty good -idea-, but she isn't absolutely certain. And that's virtually the same thing. Still, she would offer, "While I cannot say for sure since I've obviously never seen this end... 'well' before, I would assume that her memory of -you- will carry over. I'm sure she has done a good job of hiding it, but certainly you've realized her becoming more even-tempered? Lethargic? Somewhat like an aging person on their deathbed? She has already begun to lose her memories. Suffice it to say, she's likely lost most of them."

    "However," She would raise a finger, "these losses work in inverse order. That's to say, she loses the eldest memories first. If all goes well in these final stages, I would have to assume that her newest memories, at least, will be retained. That means she will remember you and all she's learned since coming to the Multiverse... even if she forgets who Callia and Palora are."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur doesn't too much address the issue of why Mizuki might want to be his friend, or the talk of the Shades. "If you think you're feeling, you're feeling. That's all there is to it." But, then, "I'd hoped it was just... Something else, I guess. I'd hoped she was losing the need to pretend. I have the feeling she does that a lot. It's charming, but... Mmmhhh." Another rub of his face. His hands go to fidgeting with his hood.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "People are who they are 'cause of what they remember. So we rush the Clocktower, we burn the Prognostics, that solves it. But it still leaves her full of holes. She remembers a year or two?" He hangs his head a bit, in a moment of distress. "God damn it. We both know her well enough to know that's not good enough. Her whole fucking identity's built all around remembering people. That's who she is, forgetting all this stuff she remembers is beyond wrong. I don't... Ghhhh. There's no way to even get 'em back now? As in, anything we can do, in the world now, to bring back a bit more of Mizuki from this cycle? When this goes over?"

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Rubbing his forehead, he mutters, "Didn't even wanna bring this shit up. Sophia, what if the Prognostics were different? Like, rewritten. Revised to make an exception for this one cycle, you know?" It sounds like he's referring to revising them NOW, but there's an unsettled element to the statement. "Maybe fool the rest of the system, make it look like everything's messing up like the proper one, but..." He does a light wringing of one hand. "God damn it, I'm really sick of these necessary evils and obligatory losses and shit like that. I've had enough of 'em killing worlds, cutting Mizuki's whole core identity down to a handful of months is shit I'm not gonna be able to handle."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "She'll not lose the desire to pretend so long as she retains her desire to reshape the world as she sees fit. That desire casts her mind adrift in such ways that she will never be able to form close relationships in the same way as humans can. Her thoughts are far too fixated on eternity. If she does not feel that something will last forever, it loses its meaning entirely. Ergo, if she does not feel that she will be friends you from now until forever, if she can not feel like nothing will ever come between you, if she can not believe that something will not take your life, she will eternally remain distant."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "You see," She continues, "this is where her problem begins. She does not wish to change the world to improve it -- she wishes to change the world to satisfy her state of mind. As much as she talks about an idealistic union of changed mind and a utopian universe, all she's spouting are reiterations of her own mindset. She is unwilling to accept any change whatsoever. Find some way for her to place more prevalence on the present moment, some cure for her trepidation of the future, and you'll have found a way to fuse all the fragments of her person into one. And a way to make her lies cease."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Apathy would softly shake her head as Arthur's anxiety mounts into frustration. "You will notice that she retains some important fractions of memories from lives that took place tens of thousands of years ago. This is because, while Mizuki's persona itself is transient, her world is elastic. All her memories are contained here in some form just as they would be in an amnesiac. And if you follow the proper paths, they may be found. This may become your new task once all the affairs of her world are sorted.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Or," She would continue, "they might all return to her after you've burned the prognostics. In fact, if you accomplish this, the Mizuki of the past and the Mizuki of the present may cease to be distinct entities alltogether. She may regain all her memories since the first cycle, which may... likewise fundamentally change her character. Truly, I cannot say. I can only wish that you achieve what you hope to in all this."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Damn it, Soph, I don't wanna put humpty dumpty back together, I just don't want him tumbling his dumb ass off the wall in the first place." Arthur says, in a brief moment of very visceral distress, a hand going over his face for a moment. "And I sure as hell don't want Shiori back. Whatever she was, she committed suicide to make this happen. Mizuki's a different person. She's... Look, when you're like me, you save what's now, in the moment. I can't go around burning all my todays for brighter tomorrows here, I'm sure you liked some of those past cycles but..."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    He hunches over a bit, looking a bit distressed. "Look. I don't do this shit ever. I'm space-aspect, I'm not time-aspect, not like you. I want this stuff fixed. I've burned enough todays that I don't give a shit how bright tomorrow is anymore. I don't care about the old cycles, I just want her safe, just one little thing to not involve... Sacrificing so much that's not asking to be sacrificed here." He holds out a hand and, abruptly, a brass broomstick flickers into it. The bristles tick and turn silently, and exposed gears constantly churn far from the handle's end.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Everything you have done thus far has shaken her core identity." Apathy would pause a moment to allow Arthur to better understand the gravity of this. "With each section of her world you destroyed, she lost at least five years of her life. Everything you have done here has altered her personality in some form or another, so you had best not begin to feel hesitation over doing so now." Though it's meant to sound perfectly matter-of-fact, her tone might still manage to sound somewhat harsh here due to the content.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "But," Apathy would add, "I am fairly confident that you could have the Prognostics rewritten in any way you saw fit. You could have them rewritten to prevent my death. You could have them rewritten so that a new Sentinel is brought into existence. You could have them rewritten to have virtually any effect on this world that you could possibly imagine -- they are the fundamental law which substantiates this realm's existence. If their text states that the cycle will end on a specific date, it will."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Yes, the issue is not 'what' we can do and never has been. The issue is time. Temporum in this condensed reality is non-linear -- even if you transport yourself to the past to change things, 'time' here will continue to move. The past can 'feel' the present, and if the world ends in the present, you will be thrust out of the past. Or far, far worse. I do not know what would happen to foreign entities present in this world when it collapses."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "I know I've messed her up!" Arthur says, making another distressed noise and shaking a bit. "I know I'm doing some horrible world-lobotomy and I hate it. I don't like slicing up her brain-universe to try to fix her. It hurts and I hate it. I know it hurts her more but god /damn/ this is not right. I just... I'm so sick of the necessary evils."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "When this is done, I want Mizuki -- the Mizuki I know, the Mizuki I made friends with -- whole and how she was when we met. That's what I want at the end of this. I need to try. I fuck up, fine, that's on me, but I need to try." Arthur looks sick with worry here, while he gestures with that ticking broom. "I've got enough backup we can figure this out. Hedge the bets. Productively."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "This thing can channel that. All that power. Hell if I know if I can, but it doesn't matter. I need you to tell me where I go to get at that, and I need you to give me another hit of the info. I need to know the time to aim for. Because this thing is a piece of true time travel, and I want to fix that stuff." He plants it bristles-down in the shallow water. "/And/ I need to know how we buy more time. You're the lady with all the data here. Please, just... Can't we try? Is there really not any room in the plan for this?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "And all these 'necessary evils' will end soon." Her eyes remain fixed on Arthur eternally. "Even if the outcome is worse than the sum of all their tribulation, you may rest easy knowing that the pain of this scenario will never plague you again. Whatever happens, after the events to come, this will no longer be your problem. You may continue to help her in whatever way you see fit, but you will not be uniquely saddled with the burden of knowledge anymore. Take heart in that."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Do not misunderstand -- there never was any set 'plan'. If I had anything so organized, I would not still be trapped as I am now. If anything, I know even less than all of you about prospective solutions. But." Pause. "... but the time you are searching for is easily found. When the way to the Prognostics is open, the clock's face will churn with energy. In that moment, you will be able to resonate with that energy to send yourself to the precise moment before the world was destroyed the first time. The moment when the prognostics were fully written and Shiori cast the die."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "The moment we saw in that book." Arthur says, narrowing his eyes. It's not an aggressive sort of narrow. It's a very somber one. "With the machine. I go there and I can deal with this at the start of things." He... Gulps nervously. "Jesus. Kid just breaks the whole world, and..." He shakes his head. "Okay. So I need to get to the clockface. I need to get there, and break through to the old world. And then I..." He looks conflicted for a moment. "Try to get Shiori to do what I'm after here." There's an extremely conflicted look he has, the grim kind.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "No." Apathy shakes her head. "Not the machine. Think of the other time -- the memory within the Book of the Past only you were privy to. If you recall, there should have been some recollection where there were many people around Mizuki. Where she was not alone. This is the one you are looking for. Take heed, though, that the Prognostics are simply an extremely volatile, immutable clause of a much larger document. The Prognostics are the final few sentences of the Decalogue, a much longer document contained beneath the fountain in Silent Night. Neither series of statements can be changed now because they were locked into place at the moment of their conception. This is why you will go back to when the Prognostics, specifically, were written."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Same quill. Different time. I remember that now. Was about to do something with the Clocktower." Arthur frowns, deeply. "Worse than the kid. Kid just blew up a world, at least they'd be thinking about the consequences. I go after her, she's in the thick of it, standing up to all her friends. That's... That's heavy." He shudders a bit. He's really quite intellectual about this, considering heavily the probable psychology of this. "...Gonna need backup."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "The moment when Shiori's homeworld was destroyed is one we can likely no longer access in any form. It's been wholly obfuscated -- it's the only memory and date which even the Book of the Past cannot recall. Put simply, we've no marker to trace to arrive there. Further, the world in which all that transpired no longer exists. It would be simplest to say that is buried deep, deep beneath this world, but even that would no fully encapsulate how wholly that realm has been destroyed. It was..." Apathy closes her eye, briefly. "... it was equivalent exchange. It was the physical sacrifice which to this day allows Mizuki's thoughtscape to occupy such a large portion of physical space."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Yeah, I get you. I know all about... Exchanges like that." He trembles a bit, gently, unconsciously. "...Alright. So, we get here, everything falls apart. You said so yourself, we bring the group in, the whole powderkeg gets set off. That leaves us... How long?" He stops himself. "No, don't answer that. 'How long' doesn't matter, I know how this works. All concept, all narrative. How do we buy more time? Keep the world together a little longer? Can we? Or do I just gotta... Rush it, and hope I don't get tossed into the unspace here before Mizuki d--" He stops himself. "...Resets."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Best not to mince words. It is equivalent to death, and you are right to observe it as such." Apathy can't show facial expressions, but Arthur might -swear- he could notice a narrowing of her eyes. Just the faintest hint of anguish. It could be be his imagination, but it's equally likely he's getting better at reading the minute, specific nuances of her expression to understand her. She wouldn't leave him to ruminate on them for long, though, and would continue, "But there are several ways. The first and most obvious is to maintain the pretense that I am her enemy. For this reason, it would be best to break your number into two groups: one to fight me, and another to travel with you to the past. Try to make the divide... realistic, but you will likely need more help on your side of things. As you've seen, Shiori will have backup."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Otherwise, there is not much that can be done. The world will likely respond to the presence of heroics, however, which will buy you time in and of itself. Play to the drama of the moment. Indulge it -- allow your every motion to bleed your concern and encourage others to do the same. The 'climax' is a fleeting thing in literature, but through sheer exertion of will you can inspire it to last for a more sizable period. Beyond -that-..." Apathy inclines her head and rests her eyes in thought. "... I do not know."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Look, if you're gonna help me, you know I'll back you on this. I'll whip 'em into as much of a furor as you need, you just tell me how, or have me come up with it, or whatever you need." Arthur says, seriously. There's a grim, intense energy to his words. He seems... Really intense, about anything that could possibly be saving Mizuki as he knows her. For, uh, whatever reason. "I'll take anyone I can really trust to have Mimi's best interests. The people just in it 'cause it's the 'good thing' are the ones who're gonna be picking the necessary evils. They'll focus on you instead."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    He then pauses. "I know you wanna help her. In your own way. And, I know we've not known each other much, and I don't agree with a lotta the stuff you do, but, I'm not leaving you in the lurch here. You tell me what you need done to help you, too. I want you pulling through this." He says, staring back up at her now, intently. "I need this done, but everything else is up for grabs. You said... I could stop you dying. Like you were planning on dying."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Faruja. Priscilla. Psyber. Riva. Eryl. You." Apathy nods her head gently. "These are the people Mizuki has come to acknowledge and trust as friends. The rest of them would likely be better served elsewhere. I will trust you to share what information you will with them, but this knowledge would likely be better off withheld from those who remain with me." There is a momentary pause before she adds, "Ah, and it might do to come up with some reasonable explanation to appease Mizuki's curiosity. Or some suitably convincing display, otherwise. The Arthurs could 'fight' you, and lead you and any who wish to accompany you to the Clock Tower whilst the rest stay to fight me. I've no doubt Mizuki will wish to fight me, specifically, so this should not be difficult."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    At the suggestion that she could be 'saved', though, Apathy draws in a deep, deep breath. Her eyes close, and there's a lengthy delay before she finally replies. "... in earnest, I do not know if I wish to continue to live, and the reasoning I was following to suggest my survival might've been... flawed. Theoretically, any future event can be planned to happen with the Prognostics. Even their own destruction. However." She exhales. "... my existence is necessarily tied to the Prognostics. I -am- the physical embodiment of them in much the same way as Mizuki herself embodies the world, and by extension, the larger Decalogue. If they are destroyed, I do not know if I can be preserved. If you edit them in any way, I may be changed wholesale."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "If you a truly so eager to try, I would recommend that you attempt to find some way for the Prognostics to cancel themselves without interfering with any presently existent component of them. For example, ensure that you make no change that would impact any moment before this time, now. You could, say, tell the Prognostics to spontaneously create a Sun, but ensure that Sun will appear at the correct moment. If it appears any sooner, it will have a butterfly effect upon Mizuki and I alike."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "And if you do wish to help me..." Apathy's eyes close, and she hesitates another moment. Suddenly, she seems very reticent. "... please attempt to find some way for the Prognostics to permit me the ability to express myself. And to do away with these awful skeletal appendages. I... would very much like to be able to experience the full panoply of communication with the rest of you. And to not look such a monstrosity."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Faruja. Riva." Arthur says, thinking. "Those are the ones who know time and writing best. They can help. I'll find a way to... To try." Arthur shakes his head, somberly. "Won't promise you'll pull through this, whole or partway. Promise doesn't mean it'll happen, it just means more pain if it doesn't. But I'm gonna try. I'm gonna do what I can." He looks up now, at nothing in particular, far and distant. "I dunno how. I'll figure it out. If it's supposed to happen, if... You know, it's meant to be, there'll be a way and I'll take it. I'll make one if there's not, and give that a shot too. I can't change the past, you're right. But I'll try to make the future a little less..." He sighs again. "Necessary evil."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "And the skeleton look?" Arthur chuckles briefly, one of the sparse few instances of good humor he's had tonight. "I'll figure something out a lot less like that, yeah. I'm gonna try, yeah. We'll see what I can do. Or, I guess, at this stage, what I already did a long time ago, hopefully. Either this fails wholesale or I've already got /something/ workable. Maybe Shiori kills me or something, though, I dunno."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "...Thanks, Sophia. Whatever happens to you after this, you were a huge help. Maybe you're not a... Person in the same way I'm a person, but whatever you are, you're a good one." Arthur hunches over a bit, wrapping his arms around himself in an insecure, self-conscious gesture. "Honestly, probably better than me. Least you had the guts to go through this constantly, doing all those necessary evils. I wouldn't have been strong enough for any of that shit."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Apathy's eyes close. Again, Arthur might get the feeling she's trying to smile here and can't. "... indeed, that's the paradox. Even if all this happened eons ago, we still cannot know until the moment the relevant consequences have their impact." As he lauds her for having 'courage', though, she would seem to grow almost wistful. Her eyes would turn to the sky and she would stare off in that direction for a long, long time before she finally murmurs, just within the realm of audibility, "I have been a coward. I have been brave. I have been all these things... and so, so many more. You should understand this well," She would give him a meaningful look, "having lived as long as you have. People are not static -- they change. Constantly. But lectures are Mizuki's domain, not mine. I'll spare you."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    When Apathy finally acknowledges the 'thank-you', though, she would just shake her head again. "You've nothing to thank me for. If anything, I should be thanking you. You are the one who stepped out of your story and into this one. You are the one who has found it within himself to care about Mizuki's fate, and in so doing, you have ended a cycle that is... too old to properly comprehend. If you were like those others you speak of -- if you were simply doing this because it was the 'right thing' -- you would simply have followed along with Mizuki's initial words. You would have retrieved the numbers, and the key, and in the end, nothing would have changed."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "But instead," She continues, "you care. You consider Mizuki your friend. You have seen how cowardly she is, how frail, and yet you still consider her worth your time. You do not judge her. In this way, you have undone the first aspect of what made Shiori cloister herself within this matrix of imagination in the first place: loneliness."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Whatever you've been, I'm thanking what you are now, and I'm giving some due respect to the strength." Arthur says, firmly, as if refusing to budge. The next part is done a bit uncertainly, but with a palpable strength of conviction. "And you're right. I'm not doing this 'cause it's right, and hell, it might be wrong in some grand scheme of things. But first thing I said I'd be when I became a god, was that I wouldn't be the kind of god that kills for the greater good if I can help it. Especially not friends. Whatever Mizuki is, whatever she used to be, she's one of my friends, one of the best ones. Maybe there's some super ideal grand ending where a million Shioris are redeemed and come back, but they're not my friend and that will never be what I'm after. My friends are the greatest good I've got."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "Maybe you're not human, but Mizuki's still got a bit of humanity in there under the pretending. She'll know why I did it." Arthur grins wide, almost sheepishly. "I think she'll understand. At least, she'll think it's pretty damn interesting. Least I can do for her is be a good story worth remembering." Then a heavy sigh. "Man. I hope you're right. That we can be friends 'cause of the... Eternal thing. I've been grappling with immortality a long time. A good friendship is the only thing that makes it not drive you nuts."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Apathy would narrow her eyes at Arthur again and sit for a long, long time in silence. Eventually, though, "... that is precisely what Mizuki - any of them throughout history - would have wanted to hear. And if you succeed, it will be solely because you care so much for her. Mizuki is not a person of morals. Of principle, perhaps, if a very strange iteration, but not morals. She does not care who lives or who dies. She does not care who 'wins' the Multiversal conflict. All that matters to her is that she finds some relationship to be secure in, and for that relationship to endure forever. She wishes to find 'traveling partners' as she makes her sojourn through eternity, and curses the frailty and transience of the human heart for being incapable of such things."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur's expression takes on a bit of a swaggering confidence here. "Well." He grins, and there's his trademark toothgleam. "We get done here? I'll show her it's the only thing that /is/ capable of that. I'll prove it by demonstrating." He seems very intent on this; humanity, as that elusive spiritual property, seems to be a particular point of much opinion for him.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Apathy's whole being seems -suffused- in a conceptual desire to smile. Her form remains still as stone and her expression likewise, but this is a certain energy in the air that suggests this without any question. "If you can do that indeed, Arthur, then you may do more than just solve this present crisis: you will forestall the next. If you can show her the worth of the human condition as it currently is, if you can endear her to it even beyond that idea she sanctifies in her aperture of ideals... then you will have the key to her soul." That aura of happiness quiets soon, though, and her pseudo-countenance evens out again in preparation for counterstatement.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "But do not underestimate how tenacious her desire to 'improve' people truly is. She has been raised many times over in a world of pure convenience where any idea can become reality, and the -sole- feat she has not been able to accomplish is the insurmountable task of changing her own mind. Mizuki is inescapably human -- that is the crux of this whole issue. She is human, and she scorns herself for that humanity. She loathes herself for her fickleness. She despises her own tendency to become bored. Simply put, she sees no reason -not- to edit things so that people can experience more perfectly, and so that certain forms of conflict - and certain sorts of people - can't exist."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    And more than that, she is a child. She was never able to move past a desire for 'higher purpose'. Ever since Shiori abandoned the idea of an almighty, all-seeing God or other global presence, she has been searching for some sort of meaning inherent. In the absence of that, she can not be satisfied finding a goal of her own; she must extrapolate that goal to the whole of Creation. She wants to reshape reality itself so that reality can proclaim an ideal. So that the world itself, traditionally unfeeling, can recognize, absolutely, unequivocally, a hierarchy of thought and feeling. And then she wants to dedicate all spirits to the purpose emitted by the world, and guide everyone in that same direction. She does not want to /find/ a purpose -- she wants to embody the very idea of purpose. This is why her ideas are so stubborn, and so insipid."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "And more than that, she is a child. She was never able to move past a desire for 'higher purpose'. Ever since Shiori abandoned the idea of an almighty, all-seeing God or other global presence, she has been searching for some sort of meaning inherent. In the absence of that, she can not be satisfied finding a goal of her own; she must extrapolate that goal to the whole of Creation. She wants to reshape reality itself so that reality can proclaim an ideal. So that the world itself, traditionally unfeeling, can recognize, absolutely, unequivocally, a hierarchy of thought and feeling. And then she wants to dedicate all spirits to the purpose emitted by the world, and guide everyone in that same direction. She does not want to /find/ a purpose -- she wants to embody the very idea of purpose. This is why her ideas are so stubborn, and so insipid."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Find a solution to -that-," Apathy concludes, "and surmounting the challenge of the coming days will be a trifle to you."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    Arthur takes a moment to smile, and it's like Apathy's desire crept right into him. It's soft, and subtle, and it has the kind of warmth that's liable to set this whole corpse-like coldness in recession until the end of this whole disaster. "Trust me." He says. "I ain't underestimating shit." He looks her dead on now. "I'll try as long as it takes and as many times as it takes. Because you're right, the problem here was convenience, kind of. When there's nothing that separates thought and gratification, you've got all that humanity and nothing to do with it." He leans forward, but still keeps looking dead on.

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "But out there? Out there there's a big ol' Multiverse." He says, gesturing up. "And it's full of so many worlds that it's full to bursting with problems. The thing I don't tell many people is what separates me from the loud offshoot you've got working for you. What I'm doing now, that's what the humanity's for. I'm not fickle or bored or anything like that. 'Cause from here until the end of time, I'm gonna be making new friends and slamming painfully into adventures like this."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "That's what this is about. That's what I'll show her. So many goddamn adventures, I swear, she'll never /want/ to give up the humanity or change her mind or tear out that part of her heart. Maybe she'll find a higher purpose, but I'll tell you, no shortage of lower ones, and you find enough of those?" He grins as if at a personal joke. "One of them's gotta be high enough, right?"

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    And then he stands, crossing his arms confidently "But I've learned you can't sacrifice other people to that kind of thing. That's why I only wanna go through with this because /you're/ okay with it. And that's what I'll teach her. Humanity's not some cancerous tumor, it's a fountain. Pull some out, it just fills back up. Humanity's endless. You can't tear it out. So you put it to its use. I'll take her on enough adventures she's gotta find it out." He has an optimistic tone to his voice, the first of the night. "And if she's like me? That'll be good enough. I've got more humanity than I know what to do with, just like her. It won't matter when we find a higher purpose. Like I said before. Friends are the greatest good I've got. We make enough friends, we've got enough purpose to get by, from here to eternity. Sound like a plan?"

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Apathy's eyes close. Her warmth has fled from her, for the most part, but some still lingers as a sort of restfulness. "I suppose time will tell if that philosophy simply means running from a greater truth for all eternity... or if that running is, in itself, the part worth living for. But." She would nod her head a few times. "There is truth in what you say. Perhaps... perhaps Mizuki only needed to be told that by someone who understands what she does. Perhaps she only needed to have it confirmed for her that it is alright to throw away her pretense of 'responsibility' and to live in a more carefree way. After all, it's always been the greatest conundrum for her that, even though she is so firmly attached to the idea of eternity, that she so adores those tales of death and dying. And that she so aspires to the station of Grim Reaper."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "Though... she has never viewed humanity as a 'cancer' either. Quite the opposite -- she views humanity as a single glimmer of light in a universe of infinite black. She views people, especially her friends, as beacons that are able to apply meaning, emotion, and feeling to everything they witness. The mere existence of a human, or humanity, means the substantiation of a world that would otherwise have no meaning. People give consciousness to a world of sleep. In this way, humanity is as a God to Mizuki. It is the end all, the be all. The thing that she truly loathes is the nature that limits it so."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    "She loathes the biological inclinations of man. She divorces that entirely from the spiritual essence of humanity. Mizuki loves 'humanity' more than anything else in Creation; it's 'humans' that she hates. She segregates them very cleanly and has long wished to separate one from the other. And yet, as you speak, it almost sounds like a non-issue. It almost sounds as though there's no great evil to be fought after all. And if that is so, if you can convince Mizuki of this, then... there is little more to be said."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Again, Sophia shakes her head. "Once, I was doubtful that any living creatures in all time and space would be fit to inherit this world from my observation. But now, I see, I can entrust it to you. If her other friends are as bold as you are, and as thoughtful, then I have no doubts. Whatever happens, I will have no regrets. Carry the mantle well, Arthur. I have kept it from any other creature for many, many years, but you have passed my test." She would bow her head to him briefly before adding, almost sternly, "Do not disappoint me."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "I'm never disappointing." Arthur says. "We're not gonna be running away from anything. You know what I'm like." He plants a thumb on his chest. "I run head-on into this. I face my problems direct. If they slam me, I take it. That's not the Mizuki way, maybe, but it's a start, and she'll figure something out. If there's a higher cause out there? That's the only way to find it. You headbutt every lower cause 'till you find the one that doesn't back down. You find a cause bigger than you and all the friends you can put together? That's your higher cause. That's why I said that. 'My friends are the greatest good there is'. It's because there's not a cause I've ever seen that can get greater than they do."

Arthur Lowell has posed:
    "So I'll be making damn sure your trust landed on a good person. I'll work as long as I've gotta to help Mizuki accept herself. I'll take her on a tour of causes 'till we find one bigger than us or 'till all the clocks get tired of ticking. Long as we still have a friend to do it with, that's a high enough cause for me. I'll make sure I can make a high enough one for her too." He says, firmly nodding. And then there's a thoughtful pause. "...Thanks for thinking so well of me, Sophia. You've got more time than even I can really fathom behind you. If you believe in me? I'm not ever giving up." His voice has that strength of conviction again. "I'll try as long as I need to."

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    Arthur may be so enraptured by his own willful riposte that he won't notice as Apathy calls the color to fade back into Mizuki's form, and that young woman's view slowly cants in his direction. Even without any context at all, a reticent smile would slowly begin to form on her face. Suffice it to say, this wasn't what she was expecting out of this night. It's almost enough to make her forget Apathy, who is staring directly at her with the same, blank, emotionless look as ever. Even if she looks so serious, though, and even if her arms are wrapped behind her back in that businesslike fashion they both prefer, something about the atmosphere would inspire a quirk of Mizuki's brow. She might frown, even go so far as to open her mouth in questioning --

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    -- but ultimately, nothing comes of it. She would take a breath and allow the query to passs unnoticed. And Apathy would be sure to pre-empt any silly ideas; she locks eyes with Mizuki as soon as she can, saying, "Farewell, Mizuki. I pray that we are both ready when next we meet. For I am sure that meeting will be our last." The woman being addressed would nod, if a bit gravely. "Yes," Then a bit more quietly, "and may the best of us win." For a moment, their eyes would lock. There would be a long, long period in which they stare into one another with a certain ferocity, but also a dangerous degree of understanding. Before anything can come of that, though, they both turn to leave simultaneously, Mizuki walking back to the Path of Candles, and Sophia to the Mimic of Babel.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    And that's that. On the way back, Mizuki would be silent as before, though he would inevitably feel a certain warmth that wasn't present on the journey in. And all of it seems to radiate from Mizuki. She would be careful to hide it, of course, but at those times when he doesn't happen to be looking her way, and when he finally turns to leave, she might sneak a few furtive smiles.

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    To think she has such loyal friends, even when she is as fickle and as uncertain as she is wont to be. To think anyone could care so much. For a fleeting moment she might wonder if she had been unfrozen in that moment on purpose -- whether Apathy had intended for her to hear Arthur saying all that. She would eventually decide, though, that is must be coincidence; after all, what interest could the villain have in fostering relationships between her and others? Why would she have any reason to show her the better sides of Arthur?

Mizuki (183) has posed:
    For all our sakes, it's better that she doesn't know. And yet, there's such a curious hesitation behind her eyes all the same.