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(no subject)

Characters: Eiji, OTA
Date: Feb 22 - 24
Location: Around Aifaran and the Dreaming Bridge
Situation: Friendship knots, sensory loss, and talents
Warnings/Rating: None yet

1 - Arts 5

Eiji's spent quite a bit of time learning the different knots from the Tifaut's booths around the city, and he's gotten good enough that a couple of people around have commissioned him to make some--partly because it's more personal than buying them at a stall, and partly because he can't bring himself to charge very much other than what someone wants to donate.

Come to pick one up? Come to help and make some money yourself? Or just want to talk? He's mostly at the beach.

2 - Vision

It happens as he walks back to the Dreaming Bridge--his eyes suddenly turn purple, and as he looks ahead at the city, he can barely make it out. Everything has lost its detail, like he's getting poor TV reception, and the colors he's picking up are distorted.

"Not again," he whispers, stumbling backwards in fear. There's no way he can find his way back on his own.

3 - Talent: Restoration

The moments of vision loss have gone away for now, but nothing's changed about Eiji's sense of taste being gone. Still, he tries to help out in the Dreaming Bridge's kitchen, and even if he can't taste anything that's being made, he can at least sort out the vegetables that are starting to go bad.

He sniffs some kind of milk-like liquid and makes a face.

"Okay, I think that's starting to go."

Except...no, it's not, all of a sudden. He feels some kind of weird sensation, and he thinks he's about to have another bout of sensory loss, but...no. The milk, or whatever it is, suddenly seems to smell right.

He looks over to someone else there.

"Uh, can you smell this for me? I thought it might be going bad, but now I'm not sure."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

As someone whose own eyes glow at times, Chase stares unmoving for a second before he approaches.

"Eiji."

Eiji's stumbling is enough of a clue that something might be wrong. But getting too close might also become a problem. Some people lash out when they're in trouble.

"It's me."

That's a voice Eiji recognizes, and he stops, turning to face the blur it's coming from.

"Chase?"

Well, so much for pretending everything's okay.

Chase tilts his head. Eiji sounds relatively fine, at least.

"Yeah."

He stops in front of him. "You can't see me?"

Eiji blushes a little, embarrassed.

"I can see a little. It's just...blurry."

It's a stupid thing to get defensive about, but he's scared more than he is angry.

"Is it related to your other problem?"

There is no reason for a human's eyes to start glowing. He has met other people who look like humans who are not, though.

"Eiji. What are you?"

Eiji's turning away from Chase, his breathing rapid and shallow as he nods.

"I'm...I'm not really sure anymore."

...Identity crisis? Or...

"What were you?"

It seems like Eiji is having an unfavorable physiological reaction, though, so he reaches out to grab his shoulder. "I am not a medic. Do you need one?"

"I'm human. Or...or I was. Until these Medals got into my body. I'm turning into a Greeed now."

He's sure this sounds like gibberish, but he doesn't know how to explain it any better right now, when he's half-panicked.

One question at a time. He can get through it.

"No. I...I'm scared, more than anything. I know I'm losing my senses, but I didn't think..."

That it would be this bad. That his vision would become so terrible. That it would terrify him so much.

And especially that he would regret losing his humanity this much, whether it had been forced on him or not.

Chase does not, in fact, understand, but from talking to other species of people here, that's actually commonplace for him now.

A human turning into something else is something he knows a thing or two about, but...not like this.

"What didn't you think?"

As he says so, he increases the pressure on his arm, to get Eiji to sit down. He doesn't know much about the sensory loss, but what he does know is that Eiji probably shouldn't remain standing.

Eiji does sit. It's better. He doesn't feel any pain, like he did the first time it happened, but having a panic attack while standing is not going to do him any favors.

"I lost my taste all of a sudden one day. Nothing led up to it--it just happened. I had the Medals for months before it happened. I guess I thought if I was going to lose any more senses, it would take just as long, but my vision started going out just before I came here. It comes back after a while, but I..."

He draws up his knees and wraps his arms around them.

"I don't want to become a Greeed. But I don't know how to stop it."

From that reaction...he supposes it's not a process that can be undone.

"If the Medals are what is causing it...you can leave them aside for now."

It isn't really a solution, he knows. From the way Eiji has talked about his fight back home, Chase knows how concerned he is about them. But if it turns out not to be true that they return to the moment they left...then Eiji would be all the worse off if he lost more of his senses.

"...You have gone to the hospitals here?" With all the races that they see, maybe they could have done something.

"I can't! The Medals are inside my body!"

Eiji doesn't mean to yell, really, but he's getting more and more worked up. He takes a breath and tries to calm himself back down, shaking his head.

"I did at home, though. They didn't see anything in the X-rays, so they couldn't figure out how to remove them."

"That is a problem..."

Understatement, probably. But if a hospital from Eiji's home didn't pick up on it, he supposes the surgical option isn't available, either.

"For now...you must calm down."

He nods, giving it his best shot as he starts taking deep breaths.

"Sorry. If I worried you."

"Worry will not kill me."

He watches Eiji's inhalations.

Humans...can be fragile.

After another moment, he speaks up again. "The Medals seem to be the problem... How did they get in you?"

Eiji nods slowly. It's...well, it's logical. It's something he can handle hearing. Chase isn't telling him that it's okay, that of course he's going to worry...but that Eiji's not hurting him by putting this burden on him right now. It's something he hasn't heard, or had any reason to think he'd hear.

"It's...hard to explain."

A full explanation requires going into explanation of desire, the Greeed and Yummies, and OOO itself, but he doesn't have the brainpower to handle that.

Another breath later and he's able to explain, "They feed off of...well, the lack of desire in my heart. They want everything to stop existing. I don't have anything that can stop them."

His expression changes slightly when Eiji does explain. Lack of desire isn't a quality of humans at large that he's seen... but maybe that's only a result of consorting with police detectives. And, of course, Banno Tenjuro's malice in inserting the Roidmudes with negative human emotion is a completely separate thing.

...Still. "Something must have happened to make you like that... What was it?"

Eiji, of course, misses that change of expression. But he starts getting a little less comfortable with this line of questioning.

"It...it's hard to go into."

[Just a quick head's up about his permissions! Probably not going to be too much trouble, since they're from the same franchise, but I don't want to assume anything for anyone]

That'll make it harder to come up with something, but Chase has seen firsthand how mental injury can cause someone to act. Forcing the issue wouldn't do any good.

"I will not force you."

As someone who wasn't programmed for certain things, though—if the parameter of "lack of desire" can't be addressed, then it'll just have to be worked around.

"What makes it worse?" Maybe removing that would slow it down. "...You can still see?"

"I don't know. Everyone said if I could just figure out what I wanted, that should probably fix everything, but I don't know where to start."

He shrugs. "A little? I can't make out details or color very well, and I don't have much depth perception."

If 'everyone' is saying that, and they were from Eiji's homeworld, then stands to reason that they know better than Chase what is going on.

"Start with wanting your sight back."

...Which may be slightly literal. But sometimes unconventional things do work.

"It's not really that easy. There has to be a strong personal desire."

Which doesn't always make sense to him, but he's been figuring it out as he goes.

"Just this, or just wanting to be with my friends doesn't seem to do it."

"You do not strongly desire your sight back?"

Because that seems like it would be one of those things that are extremely frustrating, especially given how Eiji had panicked, before. Chase has experienced a Complicated Emotion (tm), but only in regards to his purpose and split loyalties. Not having desire was not his problem; in fact, it's not a problem that he's seen, and so he can't quite connect to what Eiji's saying.

"...You have had strong personal desires before?"

Edited (whoops formatting) 2018-03-21 22:34 (UTC)

"It's not that. It's just..."

It's just that there's still some part of him that thinks he could live with the consequences, as long as it meant nobody else was hurt. That it's really, really hard to think about his own safety and comfort because other people always come to mind first.

He gets quiet and starts thinking.

"I think so. Well, I'm not sure how personal it was. But it was strong."

Someone who doesn't seem to have noticed his own desires... Logically, that means to Chase that it couldn't have been that strong, if Eiji doesn't know how personal it was. But there's something else, something that he can't seem to pin down in words. Medic...had achieved her Super Evolution with her feelings that, as far as he is aware, were selfless by nature.

"You cannot force yourself to desire something." Which is as far as he can get to determining why the 'just desire something' method isn't going to work. Roidmudes didn't achieve their Super Evolutions by simply wanting it, after all. And as far as Shinnosuke and the others had told him, Chase had been given human emotions at a cost; being human is simply not possible for him. He'd come to accept it. But he also had not been losing his senses.

"If you could have figured it out by thinking, you would have done so...is that correct?" In other words, Chase...would only barely be helping. Maybe he'd even be actively detrimental by saying things that show how little he understands of the situation. He knows well that words can wound, regardless of intent—and he's known a contradictory person or two.

"Does talking it through...help?"

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