video | call out to the afterlife

[inuko]

[ Shino gets the camera rolling, and backs up, leaning forward and looking to where the light is, leaving him looking off camera. ]

The blinking light means it's on, right? [ He breathes out in a huff, straightening up and reaching for the table at his side. His fingers linger there, pressed against barely visible pieces of paper. ] Okay, so I don't know how to show pictures I've drawn except like this, and I have a few people that aren't here but might show up sometime, so if anyone sees them, I'd appreciate you letting me know.

[ He picks up the first, then shows each of them, one after another. ]


This is my little sister, Hamaji. And this is my older brother, Sousuke. They're the most important that I know about right away. Hamaji wears black dresses with lace and sturdy heeled shoes, and Sousuke is usually dressed like he's part of the church. You can find him in buttondown shirts, too, like this. [ He lets the drawings be lowered to show the white buttondown he's wearing. The pictures are set on the table, and he gathers up the next few. ] Then there might be one of these guys...


This is Kobungo, Genpachi, and Keno. They're the people who'd most likely want to find me. Genpachi might be in or out of military uniform? Kobungo is sometimes in his inn uniform. Keno always tends to dress traditionally.

[ These are set back on the table, his hand lingering on the surface. He looks to his last drawing, seems to frown, then picks it up to show the camera anyway. Once there, the dog is clearly given more depth to their eyes than literally any of the people, and that's... for reasons! ]


Then there's this guy, Rio Satomi, who'll probably be frowning and angry, because if I can't stand being here, he's going to hate it even more. I guess you could tell me if you see him, too.

[ All the pictures are now back on the table, and a crow, who had been off camera for most this, hops in camera and starts prodding at the drawings while Shino addresses the camera. ]

My name's Inuzuka Shino, and you can contact me on this weird phone if you see any of them in the future. Thanks!

[ He smiles, waving at the camera, as the crow picks up a drawing and attempts to fly away, over the camera, leading to Shino darting forward, hitting his comm, sending it flopped flat to film darkness as he calls out for Murasame to drop that, don't eat the drawing, you stupid bird, and then a fumbling click as the feed finally ends. ]

Comments

[inuko]

[ go away!!! ]

No, but I'm worried at least a few of them will be too stubborn to ask directly and insist on doing things the hard way.

[ his drawings are going to save them all time and effort, OKAY. ]

[hauhra]

If they want to do things the hard way, that's their prerogative, not ours. [ What an unhelpful asshole. He's not even that invested, but he also can't keep his opinions to himself because his ego is probably bigger than this entire planet. ]

Besides, knowing that they have someone that'll always save their ass will only encourage them to keep on being stubborn.

[ Do it. Throw them to the wolves -- wait, you mean normal human beings with a shred of empathy don't do that?? ]

[inuko]

Or it's mine because I want to help find them faster. Why are you even arguing about this? It's not like you care.

And that's stupid. Knowing you have someone to help save you gives you the strength to keep fighting. If they're being stubborn, you handle that. The two don't have to be related.

[ No but really! Why is he arguing this! He can't possibly care!

... And won't be helping, but Shino doesn't pause to consider if he should argue back. Whoops. ]

[hauhra]

I was only responding to a favor that you were asking of the entire network... I didn't think that declining your invitation even if I did happen to see your friends would be such a problem.

[ Except he absolutely does; he just wants someone to pick on because he's been growing bored with pretending to be nice to everyone, and Shino had seemed like the perfect target. Sorry, Shino, that's just the way the cookie crumbles. ]

And what if you don't have someone to help save you? Are you supposed to just give up?

[ He might be projecting a little.

Or a lot, actually. Admittedly, he's jealous; anyone who would have done that for him died horrifically a long time ago, and now he's taking it out on everyone else who's lucky enough to have that. ]

[inuko]

What I don't get is why you bothered responding to confirm what you won't do!

As for that, why just give up? People can't always be there for you, sure, but it doesn't mean they won't be at some point, and you're never entirely alone if you can remember your important people. Not that it's enough, because I don't think it is, but it's better than nothing. Not caring or remembering what it felt like to be cared about and not alone.

[ mister this is going to be a problem when most people have that okay!!! okay!!! ]

[hauhra]

Wait long enough and "at some point" just becomes another excuse.

And all right, then, allow me to simplify that for you: you asked me a question, and you got an answer... just because you didn't like the answer you got doesn't mean that it shouldn't be posted at all. It's an open forum, after all. Or is that not how social media is supposed to work?

[ He's That forum troll and I'm Sorry. He thinks he's Cool and Edgy. ]

[inuko]

I have no idea what social media is, just like I have no idea why you'd waste time writing this whole response! Or keep arguing how it was somehow worth your time to say you didn't want to do this? It's just weird! Really weird! There's hundreds who read this and didn't have to say anything about not wanting to do it!

[hauhra]

On the contrary, I'm writing this whole response precisely because this planet is giving me plenty of time to waste while they figure out how to send us all back home. If you've got a problem with that, then you'd better tell their government that they really should get their deportation plan moving along.

[ TLDR being trapped on this planet is boring him to tears and shino is just going to have to deal with it until they're finally free, sorry buddy. ]

[inuko]

[ he reads this and concludes: ]

I can't freaking believe this is all because you're bored and couldn't think of anything else to do.

[ so of course he'll stop responding now, right?

...................... wrong. ]

What are you so eager to get deported back to, anyway?

[hauhra]

Duat. Or at least, my journey there. As much as this planet resembles how I'd imagine some of the worst parts of it to look, it's obviously something else entirely.

And it's looking like somebody never learned to not feed the trolls. You truly don't know a thing about online forums, do you?

[inuko]

Duat? What's that? I'd guess some kind of hell or afterlife, but I haven't read that word before.

... What trolls?! What feeding? When did trolls get involved in the first place?

[hauhra]

Seriously? You don't know what an Internet troll is?

[ Bakura might literally be old as dirt, but even he's learned a thing or two about modern Internet culture courtesy of his host. Of course, that knowledge is still a little outdated even by today's standards because he's coming from the late 1990s - the early 2000s, but it's better than nothing at all. ]

Just what kind of world do you come from?

And Duat is the word that we Egyptians once used to describe our Underworld, yes. However, the language has apparently been dead for a very long time. I can't say I'm surprised that you've never heard it before... in fact, I'd probably be more surprised if you had.

[inuko]

One that doesn't have this internet you're talking about!

[ he says, failing to grasp right now that's... another term for what he's on. ]

I only know a little about Egypt... history wasn't interesting to me as a kid when I had so little time as it was. And I only know Japanese, and some Latin, for the Church hymns. Well... modern Japanese. Anything too much of a dialect from another island or too old and classic and I wouldn't get it as easily. I'm guessing Egyptian had to have changed over thousands of years, but is there really none of it still in use at all?

[hauhra]

I've heard that some Churches in Egypt still speak bits and pieces of it.

Unfortunately, I'm a long ways from Egypt even back on my own world... an old, Japanese man had come to Egypt in search of the treasure that had been housing my soul since I died. He found it in the village where I was born, and brought it back to Japan with him for his son. Needless to say, I've learned enough Japanese from the two of them to get by, but I still hold out hope that one day, his son will be able to release my Spirit from the treasure so that I, too, can join my ancestors in Duat.

[ While Bakura has no intentions of being cordial with everyone on this planet, he is going to keep telling half-truths to save some face even to the people he's been less than kind to. That way, the Pharaoh and his friends will look like fools if they show up and attempt to spill the beans. After all, it's not like he's done anything that could be considered morally questionable yet. They'd have no leg to stand on. ]

[inuko]

Wait, back up, why was your soul bound to an object in the first place? Plus it sounds like a whole afterlife for you, not just a rebirth cycle or something like that. What could possibly be binding you so strongly to the world of the living? Or who did that to you?

[hauhra]

I was cursed by a power-hungry Pharaoh. He thought nothing of performing magical rituals that required mass human sacrifices so long as the end result strengthened his rule over the land. His son was no different, and I was trying to bring his bloodline to justice before I was brought here.

[inuko]

So... that bloodline is still alive. Thousands of years later?

Who even keeps track of a pedigree like that?

[hauhra]

The son's soul was still wandering the Earth back on my world. I felt that I couldn't in good conscience allow him to roam free after what he did to me, and to my people.

[inuko]

Why is his soul still around?

[hauhra]

He had also bound his soul to a treasure. One just like mine, in fact.

However, unlike me, he actually wanted to live forever so that he could continue his tyrannical reign. I was merely being punished in the cruelest way possible for standing up to him.

[ shut up bakura ]

[inuko]

[ lmfasdf Bakura really

as it is Shino reads all this and concludes: ]

And how did you end up in a body again? Because frankly, that sounds even creepier than reincarnating and following past life memories to make everyone's life shitty.

[hauhra]

Because the technology of this world was somehow able to give me one. I don't exactly understand all of the logistics of it myself just yet. But I was never able to interact with the mortal world on my own before I came here, so they obviously tampered with my soul even further.

[ And admittedly, Bakura doesn't like that thought one bit. His soul is enough of a mess already without someone that isn't him meddling with it. ]

[inuko]

... Okay. So... what are you doing with the time you have to, I don't know. Live your own less terrible life for a while?

Thousands of years worth of vengeance doesn't seem like it's going to have a happy ending, no matter what happens, but while you're stuck here and have a body as tampered with as the rest of us... what are you going to get up to?

[hauhra]

You don't have to worry.

I'll bide my time just as I did when I was still bound to my treasure... at least until they're able to send us all back to our home worlds

My plan can't be completed without all of the pieces, and none of them are in this world, unfortunately.

[inuko]

So you're going to haunt places while bored because you can't get around to destroying people.

That's so not an answer for what you're going to do while you're alive, in a body, and you know, capable of having a life because you're not going on to your afterlife yet.