[Network] - WEEKLY BULLETIN - open

[inthenightmods]

WEEKLY BULLETIN

announcements

• What do you get when you combine a Catholic and a spirit child? I don't know, it's not a joke, it's just an announcement that one of the spirits-- a baby, it looks like-- has been adopted.


• What an awful week, though. Both the exploration group and the distraction group did so well, and honestly? It made a difference. You guys should be proud.


• On a lighter note, autumn is just around the corner! Look for temp drops and gusty weather cropping up in the next week or so.

classifieds

• None.


• If you wish to submit an advertisement, please drop them by the post office.

obituaries

• Capt. Ben Winters: at least he died as he lived: doing something worthwhile. Thank you, Winters.


• Number Five: clever right to the end.


• A whole host of people have gone missing since the party... We haven't found their bodies or their lanterns yet, but I think it's safe to assume they're probably gone. Here's the list: Melisandre, Yaeris, Gene Hicks, Ahven Sychantus, Scott Ryder, Nathan Drake, Brienne of Tarth, Raylen Givens, John Constantine, Chloe Frazier, Irwin Wade, Elisha Harper, Dick Grayson, Aragorn, Rafe Adler, Billy Russo, Ben Hargreeves, Kyna Midha, Washington, Sam Drake, Daniel Riordan, Replica Riku Dawn, Eleven, Shadow Moon

[Worthy of note: this bulletin comes to you not via a newspaper, but by the network, now that Robin's connected with you guys once more!]

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Comments

[equinoctials]

[ They fought at different sides of the same war, but that war is over. Vanitas pits himself at odds with them because he seems to believe that's where he belongs - the darkness kept in the prison of Sora's heart.

There isn't much that view of Vanitas's back can tell him. Riku hasn't exactly made every effort to understand Vanitas, his motivations, but he can guess at some things. Like what the clenched fists at his sides might mean in this context of recent loss, knowing that beneath what war hardened in him, Gene had a certain soft compassion.

How lonely the Darkness is. How powerful and how painful its desolation, ever-hungry. ]

...

[ Riku's slow and silent approach ends. They're not friends. There's no trust or bond built up in between them that this should be any of his business. Yet he's connected to Dawn. And Sora, each of them in ways that remain mysterious to him. Riku knows this: Mickey hated the Darkness, and then they met. That changed the King's mind, and changed Riku's life.

So he takes a chance, his fingers touching the other boy's shoulder. ]

Maybe he'll come back.

[evulsed]

[ That was being comforted, he knows it, even if he doesn't have any sort of barometer for what it's meant to look like. His Master never showed him an ounce of compassion, and whatever he saw between Ventus and his friends, that stuff had only ever been a weakness. Vanitas isn't convinced that whatever he might have felt about Gene was just the same— something soft to be exploited and snuffed out.

Riku comes close. Vanitas can feel him even before he touches him, that hyper-vigilance a constant thrum under his skin. It's strange, to feel the heavy weight of his palm on his shoulder, to hear his voice go low when barely a week ago it had been full of hatred and rage.

Maybe he'll come back.

Vanitas shakes the hand off his shoulder and slinks away from that feeling, the one coming from Riku that isn't caustic and dark, the one that brushes up against him with the same feather-light sensation he's gotten from Sora, the one he got from Gene. He ducks back into the shadow under one of the support beams. ]

Don't you have somewhere else to be?

[equinoctials]

[ It's IS strange. They had been injured, exhausted, strung out on too much strain and too little relief. Too long with their worlds being turned inside out with little control over when and how and what happened after. Vanitas always acts like everything has the potential to exploit him, or be a thing he can exploit.

Sometimes, Riku wonders if Vanitas knows how to be anything but aggressive, a bared blade at all times.

Can he really talk? He might have sometimes had a better handle on it, but Riku's aware of his own temper. It had flared up that day, the two of them taking swings at each other like bloodying their own knuckles could bring back anything of value.

On the other side of that temper is this: a soft and quiet compassion, understated, rarely laid so bare.

Does Vanitas, as something so dark, even know what it is to care about anything enough to miss it when it's gone? Is that why he's here, haunting this place like a ghost, because he doesn't know what else to do with that feeling of loss? ]

I came here for you.

[ He turns up his hands, for no other reason than to expose his empty half-gloved palms. ]

Don't get me wrong. I'm not here to apologize for kicking your tail.

[evulsed]

[ He snorts, openly derisive, and doesn't turn around right away. Without his gaze turned outward, the only suggestion of his shape is the understated, dim glow of his black lantern. He almost disappears into the shadows because of it. ]

I would've wiped the floor with you if that guy hadn't showed up.

[ The fight had been cut short by that other kid's interference, but the truth is Vanitas isn't entirely sure how it would have ended. He hadn't even really cared at the time. All he'd been interested in is the darkness Riku was giving off, and the impact of flesh on flesh.

In the black the skittering sound of Unversed bounce back, the only other sound in the church beyond their talking. Vanitas looks over his shoulder. ]

What do you want?

[equinoctials]

Asking for a rematch?

[ Is that what he's supposed to read there, a challenge over the forced truce between them? The show of derision is more in line of what he expects, that or something combative, looking to fight. Not vulnerability, not from someone who sees that as weakness. Vanitas almost sinks into the dark backdrop.

To Riku, it seems a little like hiding. ]

That won't bring anybody back. It's just a distraction.

[ Riku places a hand against his own hip, the other brushing a knuckle against his nose as he turns his glance away. ]

Sometimes those are alright, too.

[evulsed]

You're not worth the effort.

[ What he's really saying is I'm not in the mood, and that alone would be a red flag if anyone knew him well enough to understand it. But where Vanitas can't help provoking, that antagonism is only a part of the culmination of his darkness. He isn't just anger and greed; fear and sadness and that empty ache of wanting are just as prevalent.

Maybe more so, now, that he knows what it's like to lose something he's decided to covet.

Either way, he's not here to fight. He's here to wait for Gene. And Riku has already said that isn't what he came here for. ]

You have something else you want to add? Or are you done?