[Open Class] Cave-In (Barth + Zar)

[Toshihiko Two]

Barth struggled with sudden amount of air pushed out of him. "No-" he wheezed, "it doesn't."

The contact, as always, came mixed with feelings, and Barth was surprised at the sudden burst of anger. It certainly wasn't his.

Barth started to prop himself up, then gave up.

The path was cool, at least, and covered in mud, which was a plus, and Barth had landed next to some very dark water. "An...underground lake?" he hazarded.

"Did you...try the other answer on the paper?"  

[Baneful]

Zar's irritation and underneath it always that vein of genuine hurt was intense even through the involuntary contact, swirling around a void of self loathing that could rival even the rose for its pull. But it didn't last long, he got up off of Barth, helping him to his feet with his tail more out of reflex than anything else and then let go. The sensations snapped back like elastic.

He eyed where they found themselves with suspicion. He didn't much like water, his wings were large and cumbersome and it pulled him down very easily, it didn't help there were other residual fears from before, from paper and order and slime. His father had never been very keen on bodies of water either, for the most part.

"No." Zar stated coolly. "Why would I do that?"

 

[Toshihiko Two]

"Yes," Barth repeatedly tiredly, "why would you." Zar's sense of curiosity was on the repressed side. He walked just behind Zar at his usual pace, which was at a snails crawl.

The path seemed to split again.

Everything was accented by the heavy drip of water, and the disturbing slosh of something stirring in the background.

"Listen, are you, err, upset. About something. You weren't upset before-"  

[Baneful]

Zar was even more slighted by Barth's tone, narrowing his eyes.

"Nothing important." he said, not about to even try and explain why he'd gotten upset from the note. "I'll be fine. Lets just. Move on."

Life 2/3 (reroll) Round 2
 

[Toshihiko Two]

Why Zar's moods always seemed to sour, Barth couldn't fathom. He was so...capricious.

They had been, well, relying on each other, sort of, and as comfortable as you could be while walking through a labyrinth that felt like it was sucking the life out of you. It had been, walking aside, nice.

Right up until the moment when it wasn't. Barth would have liked to remain oblivious to it, but the sensing thing didn't specify why-

"R-right. This way, I think. Listen, if, err, if it's something I've done..."  

[Baneful]

Zar started to move the direction Barth indicated, and once again snaked out his tail to steady the other demon. It was something he found himself doing out of instinct lately and the sudden jolt of the link again almost made him recoil apologetically as Barth got too much of a hint of the hopefulness and strange touched gratitude at his comment.

Instead he didn't let go, but locked down on the link itself, cutting it off again.

"It was me." he said. "I find myself frequently affected by things in a fashion unbecoming of a demon."

Life 1/3 (reroll) Round 2

 

[Toshihiko Two]

"Well, in that respect I...know what you mean, at least." Barth sighed, embarrassed.

Unbecoming. And it was, and Barth knew he could be on the idiotic side when it came to, well, the other sins. Some sins more than others. Which were fine, you know, completely respectable. It would just be nice not to be weak and get himself into these situations.

It had not been really a super-calculated move, giving Zar his Name. He'd thought it was clever, at the time, and had some long-term goals in mind...he was a planner, after all, but if he was honest he had also been in an influenced haze by what a master of his craft. Barth's plans felt more like hopes half the time, like he was throwing in some dice down an unfathomable hole.

Zar had that advantage over him, and if it didn't drive him completely mad every time...

Previously, he'd had it figured out. It was sorted. Calder could manage all that, with the occasional affair, boxes checked. Career, Lo- well. That. That word again, It was very strong. Especially for demons. What did he want? He didn't know. He didn't know what he was doing in the least.

He didn't even notice how the path had repeated, and he barely noticed the way out at all- he just sort of went uppish, as best he could, in the middle of his ruminations. The mix for Zar (who was holding on with his tail) was about as complicated as it was for Barth.  

[Baneful]

"I doubt you do." Zar said coolly. Barth was, in his eyes the very picture of what a demon should be. He was refined, debonaire and gave the appearance of always being entirely in control of what he was doing at any given time. The vulnerability, from what Zar could tell was simply an exceptionally effective act, he had his limitations certainly, but he also had those thorns. Himself on the other hand, was genuinely weak and pitiable. Whenever he tried to exert some measure of control over his life, everything slipped through his claws, and when he tried to control his emotions - a skill which was supposed to come naturally to him - they simmered over and leaked beyond the bounds of where he should have drawn a line.

His father would have hired Barth, he'd have accepted him as a replacement, he could tell. Even completely workshy and mortified of offices, his skills in delegation were what he'd really wanted to cultivate. Zar had no ambition, no ability to delegate, he'd stayed at the bottom of the heap until even that was too much for him.

"You know what you are doing." he said, confused by the mingled cocktail of emotional feedback he was receiving from Barth (maybe it was intentional too, to throw him off, he thought). "And you have a lot of people helping you achieve whatever you want. When was the last time you didn't get exactly what you aimed for?"

Round 3
 

[Toshihiko Two]

"I've run for Student Council President," Barth offered, "twice. ...I was mainly trying to impress Christof. I don't think he takes me very seriously. I still don't know if..."

There, the emotions did clamp down, very hard. Anger, longing, a brew of everything will be ruined. It was something he didn't even like to admit to himself, in case that somehow jinxed it and he did lose him. He couldn't. But there were a variety of ways he could, which is why he had been so careful for so many years. He would bargain with or even fight his creator, if that was what it took, but in the end...

"Lisssten, I'm a demon that deals in temptation. I...don't make choices for anyone. I can't. Everything I do...it doesn't hinge on me. Everyone, even if it involves...if it's, you know, if it's someone...it doesn't matter. How much I put into something, if I care-" and the word care was hard, he nearly choked on it, and moved on quickly, "they to decide on their own."  

[Baneful]

Zar couldn't help the involuntary quirk of his brow at the very idea Barth would ever expend effort to impress anyone. After all, effort was such a strictly controlled and meted out thing when he was only capable of such limited quantities of it. It stung to think about it, that he would go out of his way for someone. Someone else of course. Zar didn't like Christof, and fundamentally was nothing like the Igor, he had none of his intelligence or practicality and was when you got right down to it, good for only one thing. And that thing wasn't useful, it was an indulgence and a luxury, especially to a sloth demon who needed things to help him, not to self indulgently sap his already contested pool of effort.

And it was sad to think of it, but for Zar it was simply a fact of his life and for the first time in what felt like months he found himself back in that bottomless, unfathomable well of hopelessness. It made the water in this cave seem like nothing at all, not a threat, of no consequence. And the way Barth pulled back from his own emotions, pulled back from giving him any solid shape of his feelings - other than some flash of determination's fins under the surface - made him sure that it was where his real loyalties lay. It was basic self defense, protecting a weakness.

"People still fall into the voids you leave for them." he said. "Even if you didn't get to be some student council president - and most people would not elect a sloth demon on principle - you still get so much that goes your way while you don't seem to have to lift a finger. You might fail sometimes, but there are almost always rewards."

And for a moment he let down the walls between the link and his own emotions surged forth, clear and dark and terrible, the sheer and complete hopelessness which had pushed him almost to the point of no return, the anguish that beset everything he tried to do and the raw painful hurt that was like a foot pressing into his chest.

He cut it off, more out of mercy than anything else. "With me, nothing ever works out. Not ever. And it seems melodramatic to say it, childish, cowardly. But I don't want sympathy I don't want to one up you, but everything I do takes effort, and I expend all of it, without sleep or rest, without stopping even when I am knocked down a hundred times. And no one. No one ever chooses me. I'm never good enough."

He took a shallow breath, licked his dry lips with his long black tongue and added. "Effort and investment doesn't change anything. You are fortunate you don't have to specialize in hunting and serving rather than temptation because let me tell you its an even less thankful job."

Round 4
 

[Toshihiko Two]

"You know better than anyone else that I'm not useless. You are perhaps the only one who knows it. But I don't keep what strengths I do possess downplayed out of some whim. I am not some powerful, limitless demon. I am on par with the rest of the creatures graduating from this academy, and in addition to my complete mediocrity, my energy reserves are...small. Those are the cards I have to play. And while I might have impressed you as a second year, I'm on the slow side when it comes to...everything, and you've...changed since then. Our Fear has evened. You still see yourself as the creature you were when we first-" Barth finished, "Got to know each other. But I have never liked hard labor, and you were only a workaholic because you were, well, firstly being taken advantage of, and second didn't know better."

Barth moved past the guardian this time, their gym teacher in all her threatening, post-ressurective glory, and to the podium.

He circled Yes firmly.

"I've chosen you. I've put quite a bit of effort in. I've enjoyed the...the back and forth, and being around the only demon I can stand, and seeing the changes that some relaxation can stimulate. But you, too, are your own creature. With your own choices."  

[Baneful]

"You impress me all the time." Zar stated. "But you are wrong in this. I haven't changed. I am the same creature I was then, the same broken obedient underling that I have always been. No good at being a demon, good only at the skill that is written into my fear itself. I have only gotten better at covering it up and deluding myself that I can ever stand toe to toe with you."

The anger in his words seemed to fade away. "And you are wrong. I don't have my own choices. My choices are made for me before I even realise they are. Long before." And that too was a weakness, emotions going ahead of him, bypassing logic and sense, bypassing everything that would let him steer rather than forever being drawn by forces he didn't comprehend.

He thought of the letter he'd been forwarded from an address he didn't recognize, offering him a place to stay, money to sustain him (though not as much as it might have been as - like the letter stated - his indiscretions were documented) and it didn't feel like a choice either. It kept coming down to following his heart or his head.

"You've mostly chosen me the way you choose your clothes though. Convenient because I am there. Because I don't know better as you put it." He hadn't given up anything other than money and sometimes time. He'd never done anything simply to impress him. "I don't want to be your fixer-upper and I don't need your pity."

Round 4  

[Toshihiko Two]

Nothing seemed to happen.

Barth's quill hesitated over the No, but he sighed, and put down the quill instead. He would wait. In the background, the figure of Red, who had been stationary, spread its wings and...was it creeping closer?

Barth folded his arms, crossed his ankles, and leaned against the podium, irregardless of the trap door that had been there earlier. Was this the same podium? It hadn't been the same path. He thought they'd fallen...deeper, somehow.

"You keep putting yourself in some kind of...lower position. Not me."  

[Baneful]

The anger took the place of the hurt again and pushed it back, making him feel capable of dealing with this, keeping him on his feet, keeping the lockdown on he link. He tried to ignore the figure, to keep his focus on Barth. He wanted to shapeshift, he wanted to roar and attack, to challenge him for even daring to throw all of this at his feet, to blame him for the way the world had time and time treated him. It was the dog's fault for being kicked and learning to flinch in advance to guard itself.

He wanted to be all anger, fire and brimstone, but instead he managed only to weakly say. "I wasn't... blaming you." his voice more broken than the iron he wanted it to be, folding, as always. He put himself at the bottom of the heap always, if it wasn't his father's business it was here and now. Unequal and unable to face up to his own weaknesses, he wasn't fit to ever consider himself an equal with anyone.

Closing his eyes he drew the rage up into his chest and said levelly. "You simply are what you are."

 

[Toshihiko Two]

Barth watched him very evenly. His expression was cooler. He was somewhat past the usual bluster. They were being watched, he was sure, but Desu-chan was the one running this course, and she had a different set of priorities than many of the other instructors. Red continued to advance.

"Someone who can't, or won't, love you? That's not necessarily true. But it is a very dangerous business for me. I am open to a formal arrangement, but- hrk!"

Barth made a strangled noise as Desu-chan jumped him from behind, throwing her arms around his neck.

(✿≧∇≦)/ "You did it!!! Ganbatte!!!!"

"Isn't...isn't that for before-" he barely managed.

"OMEDETOU GOZAIMASU!" ☆*:.｡. o(✿≧▽≦)o .｡.:*☆

The Red...whatever it was, disappeared, as Barth struggled not to be dragged to the floor. He was in a losing battle against suffocating.