The Arrival [closed]

[thekohakuriver]

WHO: Haku and Bartimaeus, aka the spirit squad
WHAT: Haku enters the world
WHEN: Now
WHERE: a somewhat remote and lonely rift
NOTES: TBD

Things had been going so well, for once.

It had been a long time since Haku had defied his mistress, really defied her, gone against what she had ordered rather than simply doing a little more, or a little less. Sometimes he had even stubbornly done as he'd been told, that much and not an ounce more, which was often much better than outright insolence, in it's own way. But this time, this time he'd really done it. He'd even claimed responsibility for Zeniba's hostage, though that had been Chihiro's cleverness, and no real fault of his. He'd flown away, without reporting in, which he excused to his sense of honor because she'd treated him as dead when he'd only been dying. She'd thrown him in the trash, the actual trash.

And she hadn't been able to stop him, this time. It had seemed, just for a few hours, with the clean sea below him and the clean sky above, that he was, if not free, then the very next thing to it. And, more importantly, he was for once in the service of someone he actually wanted to help. There are worse things than death; not being able to choose your own master, for example.

Then... And then...

And now, this.

One moment he'd been flying, dreaming of freedom, daydreaming really. And then he'd been crashing chaotically through trees that hadn't been there a moment before, snarled up and scratched. The light had gone acid-green, and the air as close and oppressive as the depths of the bathhouse steamworks, as if the very veil of reality were somehow too heavy, too solid and real. That was when the screaming started, the outraged, hateful shrieks of black, broken things. And when Haku turned and saw the rift, he knew that he was among their number; Spirits, twisted and broken, somehow wrested by force and flung down here, outside of the Spirit World.

He didn't know where he was. But he knew where he wasn't, and he knew what pain was. Everything else was an unknown. And so it was when Bartimaeus found him; a long white snake of a spirit dragon, snapping and snarling, keeping the demons at bay with only reluctant violence, and a shining green shard in the palm of one talon.

Comments

[thekohakuriver]

Haku's body dances a pensive, waiting curve, an oddly stern and vicious expression. Or maybe that's just the teeth; there are quite a lot of them, after all, most on display. He mimics Bartimaeus' gesture with his own talon, feeling around the strange magic, a tongue probing at a broken tooth. It's a strange, ugly magic in that same way, like a pain that almost feels more of nausea than agony, unignorable in any case, a rent in his essence. He shifts focus, abrupt, snakelike, and scribes an affirmative circle with his serpent's length, and the green of the anchor leaps out at the precise moment Bartimaeus' does. It's almost as if they planned it.

The Rift... screams.

There's not another word for it, that rising, grating squeal of two realities grinding against one another. The dissonance increases again and again, climbing towards the limit of tolerance hand-over-hand until it finally breaks, and falls. There is a burst of light which, against the burst of silence seems only anti-climax. Haku stares at where it had been with a sense of betrayal and discomfort; he didn't know what he had expected, here, but it wasn't that.

It wasn't to be trapped. It wasn't... to be cut off, not from the spirit world. Not from Chihiro. Think fast, Bartimaeus, before he thinks to be actually angry, or remembers at whom to point that anger.

[reshapes]

The shapes of the spirits there in the clearing go jagged and strange and briefly awful in the wake of the Rift's closure. There's weakness there, as if by slamming the door shut behind them they've severed a particularly vital limb or two for the corrupted entities. Looking at them, he is struck briefly with an unpleasant and oily feeling. Someone more prone to the indulgence of sentimentality might call it sympathy or pity, but Bartimeaus chooses not to give the sensation much examination past the point of revulsion.

He has other things to worry about. Namely, his own skin¹. By the estimate of his superior consciousness, he has roughly five seconds to make a case for why his new compatriot should follow him as opposed to turning those teeth to bear and simply devouring him. And yes, usually, he'd use those five seconds to get a running head start. Let's face it - he's outrun worse. But this kind of work (the flying and the holding a winged shape and the snapping flashy detonations off sort of thing) really is work these days, and he's not so proud as to pretend a quick escape might not be a little dicier than he'd like.

So: diplomacy. Yuck.

The falcon rides an air current upward, spiraling around the twisting shape of the second spirit like an oxpecker orbiting a rhino's back. It says, in his most flattering tones, "Not too shabby! With a few more pointers from yours truly, you'll have the hang of that thing in no time."

1. Metaphorically speaking.

[thekohakuriver]

Haku gives this all the consideration it is due, and a weather eye to its purpose. He watches Bartimaeus' idle grace with one mud-green eye and the, at the appropriate instant, shifts the turning of his coils in a decisive whip-crack. Should it connect, such a blow would send a bird of his size not just tumbling, but directly down to the ground.

If he'd been a bird, really a bird, such a maneouver might easily kill him. But you aren't a bird, are you bartimaeus? You're a Djinni.

And one easily sat upon and pinned down, whether by a dragon, or a boy who looks no older than sixteen at oldest. An elf, rather, which accounts for the size of his eyes and the narrowness of his wrists.

"What is this?" It's really not the tone a boy usually takes with a dead bird, "Talk, Djinni. Or else."