Fear and Loathing in the Moon Country [Shiroi]

At long last the two were here among the graveyard that had been the once tall village of Tenga. Nothing bu rusted debris, scorched earth and jutted remains of metal surrounding the area which made him blink for a moment. This was all that stood of this village, and its people? Fuck if he knew. The village wasn't here so obviously there would be no people here.

He turned to look at Shiroi to see if she had showed something physical at least with them being here and yet he waited to see her reaction. Good or bad he would continue to move forward until he had stopped near a large piece of metal laid his hands on it. The cold steel had cut into his skin causing him to wince only for a moment before looking at his hand. The cut had already been healing which caused him to sigh. Could this get better or worse for him? Jin looked onward in the direction of where the compound had once been knowing he needed to head there at some point, but for now he would stick with Shiroi just in case.

Shiroi was actually in awe. This place had been completely dismantled but.... it was still massive.

They stood on a pile of rubble at least half a kilometer high at its highest. At LEAST! Just how much material had been in this village? How big was it REALLY? The building must have been absolutely monumental. And with buildings that tall, how many people lived here? It had to be... well, a lot. It would be a ghost town in here if it only had the population of an average village.

Hell, it'd be a ghost town with two, three, maybe even forty times the average village's population. If all of this rubble was from buildings, which is certainly how it appeared, then, well. It was hard to imagine.

Unfortunately, that also meant that any chance she had of finding anything worthwhile was...

Being optimistic, it was only the limit of x as x approaches zero.

Her thumb approached her mouth as she began chewing on her nail.

"There's... not going to be much I can find out here. Not in any reasonable amount of time, at least. Unless you've got an idea of where to dig..."

The question had came at a surprising time as he looked over to her at the conclusion of his hand being cut, his mind elsewhere for a moment before he could even firmly grasp the context of her query. Within a moment or two he snapped back into his usual self and shrugged for a moment before looking around, his right hand slowly being placed against his forehead to shield himself from the rays of the sun. It was nothingness as far as he could see and yet something about this situation made him thing," We should head to where most of the buildings converge or look to be grouped together. Might be a living section or a building you might find familiar among the rubble," as if he had been on a simple minded beat he began to walk in the direction of what he assumed was the center of the village.

What was funny was for someone who had never stepped foot in a village to his knowledge, he knew some small things about this one. Maybe those nutjobs had secretly snatched him from here or perhaps he listened to the workers describe a place of magnitude often like this one. Who knew to be honest, however at the moment the answers would not come to him without trying to seek them first. Whenever Shiroi had caught up to him he would begin to look through the rubble of the village though he knew that he would find nothing major or of importance. Maybe a charred photo album but nothing else of the sort.

"That... is a good idea," she said aloud, even though she knew nothing would look familiar.

What little time she had spent in this village would have been spent before she was even cognizant of herself as a thing rather than as reality. There was no way she would have memories from back then.

But she followed the man, and eventually decided to start looking around. It took... a lot of digging, actually. There were a lot of different materials in this area, which she assumed meant different buildings, and luckily it was not stacked super high. Even so, it took a long time to get to anything that seemed even halfway non-architectural.

Sofas and other furniture was the first thing she found, as well as a lot of broken glass. In nooks and cranies she saw some pictures, shards of broken pottery or plates, and other such things. But nothing seemed... important.

She did find one torn up photograph. Well, two. Their frame was missing a large part of its middle, but was barely being held together by some string.

One of the pictures showed two adults and a young boy. The other showed one adult, one of the original two, the same small boy, though older, and a young girl. Shiroi stared at it a moment longer than some others, but she had been doing that every time she noticed blond hair.

But blond hair on a baby did not mean anything, hair color could change in infants.

Even more unfortunate was that the adult's face in both pictures was obscured, though she felt confident in assuming it was a he.

She kept searching for awhile longer, but never found anything that really interested her.

That made sense, the only thing that would have really been worthwhile was newspapers, and there was no way she could find the old library, assuming they had one (they had to, right?) Then assuming they kept old newspapers for almost twenty years.

Or well, about 15 years, seeing as... yeah.

"Have you found anything interesting? I'm giving up," she would say if Mu-jin had also been searching. Otherwise, she would merely comment "Alright, that's enough."

His search wasn't...as fruitful as the females. He often found bones, whether they were animal or otherwise he didn't want to say, but the cross haired pupils told the story. Putting the rubble where he had gotten it he continued to move forward until he arrived to a simple broken building. Pieces of it laid scattered among the ground but the one here had to be the main portion of it and thus he walked inside of it to take a gander. The sweet sunlight shined through the top as he sifted through broken items, some looking like a form of bench and others simple things he could not discern. Of course there would be nothing that told him of the high life of this village, but it had shown how...they lived in a sense. In the building there had been something akin to a family portrait-  a mother, father, two kids and what looked to be a pet. His eyes looked a it for a moment to make out figures, looks and anything he could get but time had claimed the picture.

He sat it down for a moment as he looked at the rest of the building before hearing her voice ring out. Walking out of the broken building he shrugged to her and began to walk closer," Just broken buildings, pictures and so on. Nothing on your end?," he didn't wait too long for a response before going back to his searching. Each step lead him closer and closer to the beginning of the compounds remains slowly came into sight. Shiori would be able to hear the sigh as he stopped and stared for a moments at a time, the pupils changing from cross hairs to circles before he simply closed them. It was almost time to confront the past and set the terms straight.

"Looking for something in specific that I could perhaps help you with?" she asked, striding over towards where Mu-jin was. He was strong enough to handle this mountain of rubble, that much was obvious and not terribly surprising.

What was a bit more surprising was his obvious... direction. There was something he wanted, and he obviously had some idea about where it might be. But the specifics possibly eluded him.

This intrigued Shiroi.

His eyes never left the direction in which he had been looking at not even when he had heard the words that had came from Shiroi. In fact the more he walked the less he responded until he stopped dead in his tracks and looked back to her with such a lost expression until it had finally clicked. He didn't speak and only pointed to a small direction some 15 meters from them but the female could easily see it in the distance if she just looked for a moment," That is what i was looking for. The place that caused all of this...for me. So it wasn't far from here at all, but you didn't come here to help me seek answers...Yours first and then mine," the smile was less half hearten and more to the point as he stopped and turned to face her.

If she didn't mind he would continue to walk toward the compound until the two were within the shattered walls, well beyond the Tenga village borders. An immense feeling of nostalgia ran over him as he continued to walk around, stopping at minor places until he reached it. The area in which he had been housed...and the area in which he had began and ended," So this is it...The lab huh?," his hands had ran over a defunct and broken table that had at one point housed him. By now she might have had some questions so he sat on the table, breaking it in the process and shrugged," This place here took kids from places and used them for something. Still don't know what exactly, but i'm the only survivor. The "Heaven" as some retarded code name. Funny how this isn't heaven sent...more like a dissected pit of acid from hell."

He didn't know why he had came here but...closure maybe? There had been so much on his mind and now it seemed to have closed off a fair bit. In his meanderings after getting off the floor he stumbled upon a case, funny how this was the one thing in this entire place not razed or at least marred to all hell and back. Encased (lol) in it was something...rather ordinary. His hands slowly touched the case before it hissed open, revealing a small grey staff like object and he tilted his head. Why was this here? He didn't quite care honestly for one simple reason. He and this thing were the last remnants of this place. An unlikely success and some odd thing. Quite a pair. He pocketed the staff resting it on his shoulders as he walked over to Shiroi in the event she had been looking around and shrugged," There was nothing here after all but this and closure...So let's get back to finding what you needed eh?," his part here was done, but there was so much more to come from this...now he just needed to piece together everything.

Shiroi shrugged to his first words. "I did come here for something, but it's becoming obvious to me that I'll need to find an actual, breathing person to figure this out. Unless I plan to spend a year here on the off chance I find something. If you've gotta check that place out, go right ahead."

And so they walked. Shiroi placed her hands in her pocket, fiddling with her fingers as the entrance slowly came into view.

It was obviously a laboratory.

And Mu-jin's story was...

Well at least that explained the letters a little more, as she took one out to reread it.

It was better that we take you away than others.

There was no information on who the 'others' were, and Shiroi doubted that the writers of the letter had known anything beyond hearsay, but... it certainly made more sense now. One mystery solved, way too many remained.

"So, if you don't mind me asking, what actually happened here?" She was looking around, still somewhat awestruck by the apparent pristineess this place would have had before achieving its current dilapidated state.

At least, she assumed it was pristine. Maybe at one point the walls were covered in gore and feces.

She just would not have known.

She was inspecting some glyphs on the wall. They were very familiar to her. Like, super familiar. They were glyphs from her surgical technique. But... way more detailed. Way more advanced. And from the looks of it, there had been a lot more of them. And more of a type she had never seen. What... even was this place?

She was still inspecting these as Mu-jin called out. She decided to just take a mental note and head out after him. This placed deserved a thorough inspection... but not right now.

The question had finally been asked which caused him to lean against something, of course he would answer his after retrieving the staff and resting it onto his shoulder," This place was used to experiment on people...to find a source that would give someone 'eternal' life in a sense, or make a weapon that would be immortal or something like that. Apparently children had a higher aptitude for this experiment so they took batches at a time. Rarely adopting and often taking children from their homes...or paying them off. I was sent here as a child after being taken from my family...and I can't even remember their faces," in a nutshell he had pretty much given what had happened to him, though the real question would be was it successful?

He knew the answer to that most simplistic of questions though it would be up to her to figure out if it was or not. Now that he had thought about it, maybe she had been asking what had actually happened to have the place in this state. If that were the case he would turn around and shrug for a moment," I think they were attacked heavily by someone...and they ended up blowing the place to hell and back. Killed all of the other subjects, the scientist that i know of a more people leaving only me and this staff," he nudged his head in its general direction as he walked over to her or rather past her, out the door and then stopped until she had caught up to him. The next step was in her hands as he tapped the staff on his back lightly and with no force to think.

"Huh.." she said.

That was all she could think to say.

Had they succeeded? That thought raced through her mind. It was hard to believe that they could succeed at such an... incredible task. But then she thought about her own technique. How it makes someone immortal, kinda. But her jutsu was limited.

But the stuff there... that seemed to have been so much more developed.

And that was just one of many. Maybe that method had failed. There were probably several others they tried.

Shiroi just... could not even.

Well, she could, but did not really want to.

And so came the next part, once they had exited the cavernous thing.

"Nightfall is soon, and as much as I'm fine sleeping in the wild, I'd rather a bed to think over what's happened today. There's a town not far from here. Shall we go?"


[1078]
[Exit]
[Will do claims in a bit]