[It isn't as much a disadvantage for Frühling to figure out the origin of his power as it is irritating, but then, she's a different level than most he's come across in Zodion. Even when their interaction has been so minimal, so impersonal, driven by fact and intel.]
The animals seem to correspond with the particular element. [Not unexpected.] They also begin at lesser stages; I was told it is possible for one to summon puppies until graduating to a more useful species for combat. As for manipulation, it is the same -- graduation to greater control over the element involved. I know significantly less about the aspects of healing.
[He's quiet a moment, an interruption to the low and level, almost smoky, quality of his voice.]
There are also incidents involving birthday cards, given by the patron gods. They can affect power level.
[ irritating is good. nothing like unnerving a man with armoured skin and piercing through him with words alone. it's been an engaging experience. frühling's human interaction had never truly involved such level of cunning and intellect and investigation. always it had been a do-this-do-that with baseline of sacrifice and slaughter, and even her smartest dogs did little more than accomplish her commands for destruction.
at least these conversations stave off her hunger for blood. itachi's doing the natives a favour. ]
Mm. [ and this is where consistent worship benefits them. there's a sound of clicking as frühling sets the device aside on a table; then she continues speaking, her voice husky and increasingly tired, as she begins preparations for her daytime slumber. sheets rustle; books are more or less dropped onto the floor. ] I almost forgot about those. The birthday cards are a trade-off. I don't suppose we are given a choice in the upgrade upon completing the task?
[If only he knew the sort of favor he was unwittingly providing.
Itachi's attention sharpens on the background noise, mostly inaudible but for brief clips of sound, indistinguishable without picture to lend sight. He'll have to imagine the rest.]
If we are, I am not aware. It seems unlikely.
[Recalling personal experience with the cards, Itachi's lips thin, invisible to his current (distant) company.]
[ if only he knew, then what? would he try to cage the wolf? tsk tsk. crows would be hard pressed trying to subdue a specimen like her.
dawn's light is beginning to glimmer between the blinds. frühling cannot stifle a yawn as she takes hold of the device and stretches across her bed, haphazardly and unknowingly enabling the VIDEO function. what appears is hardly a dazzling image, but one blue-hued and speckled with the indefinition of dim lightning. frühling's face is covered by layers of silk-black hair and an arm crossed over her eyes in an almost ninety-degree angle, a long, thin hand hanging over her bare shoulder. oblivious, she divulges an answer. ]
No. It isn't. [ she shifts again, pulling her arm beneath her head and sweeping angled bangs beneath it. her eyes remain closed, consciousness on the borders of darkness, but slowly... ] Wish it was; then I wouldn't have to wait so long for something... [ her eyes open, though only one visible shines through the lens, steel gray and immediately awake. her expression goes blank. ] ...stimulating.
[ she stares a moment, dazed by her clumsiness and drowsiness combined. what a careless move—yet she smiles, not at all enchanting but corrosive, before she turns her face into her pillow and flips the device, covering his view. a dark chuckle is more or less muffled in the process.
[There's a continuation of the conversation formulating slowly in his mind, steeped underneath black layers of deep thought. When the screen flickers to life in his hand like a small window, looking where it shouldn't look, Itachi stills. He can't say he isn't guilty of imagining the woman's face in his mind's eye; he pictured black, sleek angles and weariness of experience, something streamlined and powerful like steel with a serrated edge.
What Itachi does see is surprisingly softer with fatigue and less put-together, but still shadowed, and he can easily read the ruthless shade of that single gray eye, the way her hair falls like a cut sheet to obscure part of her face. There is nothing on Itachi's end but a blank screen and silence made potent by lack of a response.
He sees the tail-end of a smile, hears the humorless laughter. It does nothing but blur Itachi's focus on her words as the device switches primarily to audio. With that last image in mind -- the woman's curved lips and the hardness of her gaze -- Itachi's answer is slow and meditative. For once, he doesn't pry beyond basic curiosity.]
[ frühling hasn't decided whether to feel infuriated or relieved he has that little (or rather nothing) to say. relieved, because she can understand he'll keep this to himself, but infuriated, because she knows he's already formed opinions she can't extract without giving the impression of vanity. (a sin which she has committed, but not for the sake of physical appearance.)
or, really, she's just pissed off his first sight of her is vulnerable, half-naked, and soft.
her silence lasts a while as she composes herself. it might even be suspected as a submission to sleep—but this is frühling, and after itachi's learned about her, he should be able to tell she's anything but unconscious.
the next moment she speaks, it's after a creak in the mattress as she lifts herself to sit against a dark red wall and after she takes hold of her device once more, this time purposely turning the camera to face her.
with a voice saturated with the same unforgiving belligerence that she used the day she arrived and tinted with predatory guile, her sickle-like smile has never been clearer and her menace, further misshapen in the intensifying sunlight, never more identified (for now). ]
I would be at a greater disadvantage if I told you what turns me on, wouldn't I, Itachi? All this while I've been persistent on facing the facts. Shall we face a little more? Of course, you can surprise me, say you're shy, or lie to me, say that you haven't been curious about me at all.
[ show me yours and i'll show you mine—frühling knows the same way she's been clawing to get under his skin the same way he's wondered about hers. he has to have. the curiosity is human, and don't the twelve make sure they're all human. ]
[It's true, isn't it. The level of humanity he's devolved to, in these recent months; he's lowered himself into unforgiving pits of vulnerability he never would have imagined prior to his death and subsequent resurrection. Itachi isn't disillusioned enough to believe he is unaffected by the world around him, but his objective has always been clear. His existence has always been arbitrary next to a greater goal.
Here, in this world, words like purpose and objective only stagnate.
He isn't overly tired, though he hasn't slept all night. The fatigue does creep in at the peripheral and threaten to weigh him down, but at least in this moment, Itachi feels very awake.
Yet his screen stays black.]
I'm not certain any of those excuses would convince you, Frühling.
[Despite the seemingly toneless words, Itachi's voice is deep enough to bear some inflection -- though there's no way to distinguish whether he's serious or merely intent on aggravating her. Seeing if it's possible to press any buttons, should they be there to press.
When her name slips off his tongue, deliberately sharp, the video flickers to life at the initiation of an open connection. He's seated facing the screen, one long leg pulled up against his chest and arms draped around it, dressed in dark-neutral shades. Black hair coiling over a shoulder, Itachi's physical image is best portrayed by a significant amount of control and detachment: he appears to be a force completely unmoved.
Perhaps most noteworthy of all are the bright, carmine color of his eyes, gleaming in the relative dimness of his apartment bedroom.]
It was your decision to avoid face from the beginning.
[ it would be an exaggeration to say she bordered feeling cheated while the screen remained dark and silent, frühling knows she only has to wait. after all, to some degree, she believes she's the colder one between them, bound by no noble causes or feminine virtues. and her waiting pays off—but she doesn't give him the pleasure of a smile, even if she is riveted by a sense of triumph, of obtaining a sight specially given for her and her alone.
inside, frühling is enjoying seeing more than just a stolen glimpse of his face, and naturally, her attention fixes onto his most prominent feature. red so vivid she could almost imagine them beating—entirely unnatural yet entirely expected. statuesque as he seems, those eyes remind her of torture and suffering and of glowing fire and fresh blood and most distinctly of disembodied cruelty and the relish of cutting into so many child-bodied monsters to prove she was greater than they.
on the other hand, the weariness around them shows her ages lived beyond his body, perhaps more that what could be considered fair, if talking in terms of humanity. and finally seeing all of him, even if it's merely digital, she sees a person sculpted to be an ultimate weapon, a predator caged and humiliated by kidnapping and indomitable circumstance.
this, for her, is stimulating.
he certainly presses a few buttons, though perhaps none he'd been intent on. her only visible response is twitch at the corners of her lips. ]
With reason, Itachi. You should already know how I like to test others. And you should already know that I am a woman of secrecy as you are a man with things [ skeletons? ] to hide.
[ as i am testing you. she tilts her head slightly to the side, and it's almost provocative with the way it shifts strands of silky hair towards her mouth. ]
[At that unfiltered gaze, the crude proposal he can read in the pressed line of her mouth and every subtle movement, Itachi exhales thinly. His chest depresses with a loss of air, then draws it in again by lungfuls -- a visceral action that further reveals how tethered Itachi still is to mortality. It seems easy to forget he's human, but perhaps Frühling already sees beneath that guise.
Perhaps she's already sunk into her own preconceptions based strictly on his appearance. And perhaps some are even right.
Test or not, the man tilts his head in kind, the faintest mirrored movement rippling through that unshaken image he portrays. He is intuitive enough to read the situation on levels deeper than what the surfaces offers in plain sight, or else they wouldn't be where they are now, having this conversation. Itachi's lips are thin and shape into a crescent edge, far from a smile, the expression foreign and ambiguous.]
I was born with the potential.
[Not an answer, but he has a feeling Frühling did not really expect one.]
Do you have an ability from home, or were you provided from the preset list?
she resists a laugh but doesn't care to conceal a roll of her eyes and a deploring glare towards the shuttered sunlight. ]
I believe that I have been stripped.
[ intentionally non-specific, as he is being with her, but with a little punch of humour. a short pause; then she snaps back with a lolling, sultry look as she decides to recline, leaning forward and twisting onto her back, raising her left arm up beside her head and the right above her face with the device, continuing her answer all the while. ]
I have yet to discover what powers I've been given, but after a few experiments - [ note the patch of gauze around the middle of her left forearm and bandages on three left hand fingers. ] - I suspect it is summoning.
[ she tried to manipulate fire, but it did not work the same way it did for the man that showed her the trick, neither could she heal the cut in methods she both guessed and inferred from others. if she could not use her body or sword the same way she could back home, then there was only one thing left.
however, frühling really had no clue where to start with animals, as the only one she's seen and dealt with have been her troops and stray dogs or cats. the rest died or were eaten or used in vanity projects.
pretentiously noncommittal: ] Thus, I felt a little troubled and decided to ask you.
[Troubled is not a word he would associate with her out of careless inclination. There's no denying Frühling's proclivity for mind games, or at least her talent at twisting words into knots; he wonders if it extends to a proclivity for violence, a deep-seated and genuine lust of bloodshed, as he suspects. Kin recognizes kin, even if their motivations might vary.
It isn't more than he anticipated from this world. Itachi has encountered enough violent shinobi to last himself a lifetime; what is one more from another world, shrouded in black mystique and teeth finely sharpened? He's dealt with worse.
In the silent interim of her final comment, Itachi's eyes lower, then lift again. It's a cursory flicker of observation -- inventorying the gauze wrapped over skin, bandaged fingers, the way silken hair pools where she lays like a black halo.]
Summoning? Which element?
[It isn't the first time he's asked a question to which he already knows the answer. There's no way to be completely certain without Frühling's admission, but he can infer enough. And before she finds a curt-tongued reply -- ]
Perhaps practice against an opponent. These powers were given for defense, after all.
[ wouldn't she among the worse, if she was to have been born a shinobi? haha. luckily for both of them, that is not the case. wars and intrigue aside, the twelve give them whole other creatures to fry, so to speak, and despite her initial displeasure, frühling isn't so averse to following the lifestyle, especially when it gives her an edge above others.
it's great to be a (powerful) woman. now if only she could get his eyes to move a little more... ]
Fire.
[ she says with a ghostly smirk, more humoured by the question than by the satisfaction of her answer, of an element with which she can harmonize. like a dagger singing through air, feigning a blow, his suggestion ignites heat in her blood. she raises her brows in both thought and a show of interest. ]
Practice?
[ then she really smirks, fully and challengingly, as she swiftly rolls herself onto her hands and knees, device left face up while sheets of hair fall over her like a cape of darkness and her weight shifts like a panther ready to pounce. not foreshadowing at all. ]
[Fire. It rings with anticipated unsurprise; isn't that an element which suits this creature, this woman he can't say he fully understands, yet draws him in like an animal to slaughter. Itachi knows himself to find attraction to dangerous, magnetic individuals, as much as he denies himself the indulgence of their company.
Perhaps someone else would find the instinct of flight and take to it. He feels neither that nor the instinct to fight. Yet he's resilient, and the challenge presented is one accepted. Itachi does not destroy, in fact he hates conflict; he fights passionless and as a honed tool, not a beloved instrument.
That he has become as powerful as he is speaks enough. It's a necessity. He can't match her bloodlust, but he can curb it. He can give himself to it.]
If you wish.
[Itachi's eyes scour her image, kneeling over the device, her fangs theoritically bared. No fear enters his system; his face stays fixed with impassivity.]
[ "if you wish"? she wonders if he's decided to play with words like she does. they may share a lot in common, but frühling can tell he doesn't live with the same hunger she has for malice, for dominance. with frühling, the keen ones can sense her sadistic delight at another's expense, they can hear it in her sharp words and see it in knife-like expressions, threateningly glinting for attention. in the case of this man, he just might be the bear trap inconspicuously stretched apart until the strongest blindly step right into his snare.
though, despite her suspicion, she lets her doubt pass over. she's got a snag on him; she won't relinquish it until she's satisfied.
expression dissolving into a mirror of his dispassion, frühling rolls back onto her legs, back to how she sat when this began. smoothly: ]
At midnight a week from now.
[ she won't let herself seem that desperate. it's predictable. besides, she'll have to acquire a few tools to make the meeting worthwhile. ]
I will scout out an adequate area; then send you the coordinates.
[ frühling leaves him with one final, steady gaze before disabling the video function and continues the audio for a few more seconds. ]
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
no subject
The animals seem to correspond with the particular element. [Not unexpected.] They also begin at lesser stages; I was told it is possible for one to summon puppies until graduating to a more useful species for combat. As for manipulation, it is the same -- graduation to greater control over the element involved. I know significantly less about the aspects of healing.
[He's quiet a moment, an interruption to the low and level, almost smoky, quality of his voice.]
There are also incidents involving birthday cards, given by the patron gods. They can affect power level.
no subject
at least these conversations stave off her hunger for blood. itachi's doing the natives a favour. ]
Mm. [ and this is where consistent worship benefits them. there's a sound of clicking as frühling sets the device aside on a table; then she continues speaking, her voice husky and increasingly tired, as she begins preparations for her daytime slumber. sheets rustle; books are more or less dropped onto the floor. ] I almost forgot about those. The birthday cards are a trade-off. I don't suppose we are given a choice in the upgrade upon completing the task?
no subject
Itachi's attention sharpens on the background noise, mostly inaudible but for brief clips of sound, indistinguishable without picture to lend sight. He'll have to imagine the rest.]
If we are, I am not aware. It seems unlikely.
[Recalling personal experience with the cards, Itachi's lips thin, invisible to his current (distant) company.]
Is yours soon?
[Birthday, that is.]
no subject
dawn's light is beginning to glimmer between the blinds. frühling cannot stifle a yawn as she takes hold of the device and stretches across her bed, haphazardly and unknowingly enabling the VIDEO function. what appears is hardly a dazzling image, but one blue-hued and speckled with the indefinition of dim lightning. frühling's face is covered by layers of silk-black hair and an arm crossed over her eyes in an almost ninety-degree angle, a long, thin hand hanging over her bare shoulder. oblivious, she divulges an answer. ]
No. It isn't. [ she shifts again, pulling her arm beneath her head and sweeping angled bangs beneath it. her eyes remain closed, consciousness on the borders of darkness, but slowly... ] Wish it was; then I wouldn't have to wait so long for something... [ her eyes open, though only one visible shines through the lens, steel gray and immediately awake. her expression goes blank. ] ...stimulating.
[ she stares a moment, dazed by her clumsiness and drowsiness combined. what a careless move—yet she smiles, not at all enchanting but corrosive, before she turns her face into her pillow and flips the device, covering his view. a dark chuckle is more or less muffled in the process.
what can she say to a premature uncovering? ]
no subject
What Itachi does see is surprisingly softer with fatigue and less put-together, but still shadowed, and he can easily read the ruthless shade of that single gray eye, the way her hair falls like a cut sheet to obscure part of her face. There is nothing on Itachi's end but a blank screen and silence made potent by lack of a response.
He sees the tail-end of a smile, hears the humorless laughter. It does nothing but blur Itachi's focus on her words as the device switches primarily to audio. With that last image in mind -- the woman's curved lips and the hardness of her gaze -- Itachi's answer is slow and meditative. For once, he doesn't pry beyond basic curiosity.]
What do you consider stimulating?
no subject
or, really, she's just pissed off his first sight of her is vulnerable, half-naked, and soft.
her silence lasts a while as she composes herself. it might even be suspected as a submission to sleep—but this is frühling, and after itachi's learned about her, he should be able to tell she's anything but unconscious.
the next moment she speaks, it's after a creak in the mattress as she lifts herself to sit against a dark red wall and after she takes hold of her device once more, this time purposely turning the camera to face her.
with a voice saturated with the same unforgiving belligerence that she used the day she arrived and tinted with predatory guile, her sickle-like smile has never been clearer and her menace, further misshapen in the intensifying sunlight, never more identified (for now). ]
I would be at a greater disadvantage if I told you what turns me on, wouldn't I, Itachi? All this while I've been persistent on facing the facts. Shall we face a little more? Of course, you can surprise me, say you're shy, or lie to me, say that you haven't been curious about me at all.
[ show me yours and i'll show you mine—frühling knows the same way she's been clawing to get under his skin the same way he's wondered about hers. he has to have. the curiosity is human, and don't the twelve make sure they're all human. ]
no subject
Here, in this world, words like purpose and objective only stagnate.
He isn't overly tired, though he hasn't slept all night. The fatigue does creep in at the peripheral and threaten to weigh him down, but at least in this moment, Itachi feels very awake.
Yet his screen stays black.]
I'm not certain any of those excuses would convince you, Frühling.
[Despite the seemingly toneless words, Itachi's voice is deep enough to bear some inflection -- though there's no way to distinguish whether he's serious or merely intent on aggravating her. Seeing if it's possible to press any buttons, should they be there to press.
When her name slips off his tongue, deliberately sharp, the video flickers to life at the initiation of an open connection. He's seated facing the screen, one long leg pulled up against his chest and arms draped around it, dressed in dark-neutral shades. Black hair coiling over a shoulder, Itachi's physical image is best portrayed by a significant amount of control and detachment: he appears to be a force completely unmoved.
Perhaps most noteworthy of all are the bright, carmine color of his eyes, gleaming in the relative dimness of his apartment bedroom.]
It was your decision to avoid face from the beginning.
no subject
inside, frühling is enjoying seeing more than just a stolen glimpse of his face, and naturally, her attention fixes onto his most prominent feature. red so vivid she could almost imagine them beating—entirely unnatural yet entirely expected. statuesque as he seems, those eyes remind her of torture and suffering and of glowing fire and fresh blood and most distinctly of disembodied cruelty and the relish of cutting into so many child-bodied monsters to prove she was greater than they.
on the other hand, the weariness around them shows her ages lived beyond his body, perhaps more that what could be considered fair, if talking in terms of humanity. and finally seeing all of him, even if it's merely digital, she sees a person sculpted to be an ultimate weapon, a predator caged and humiliated by kidnapping and indomitable circumstance.
this, for her, is stimulating.
he certainly presses a few buttons, though perhaps none he'd been intent on. her only visible response is twitch at the corners of her lips. ]
With reason, Itachi. You should already know how I like to test others. And you should already know that I am a woman of secrecy as you are a man with things [ skeletons? ] to hide.
[ as i am testing you. she tilts her head slightly to the side, and it's almost provocative with the way it shifts strands of silky hair towards her mouth. ]
Were you born with those eyes?
no subject
Perhaps she's already sunk into her own preconceptions based strictly on his appearance. And perhaps some are even right.
Test or not, the man tilts his head in kind, the faintest mirrored movement rippling through that unshaken image he portrays. He is intuitive enough to read the situation on levels deeper than what the surfaces offers in plain sight, or else they wouldn't be where they are now, having this conversation. Itachi's lips are thin and shape into a crescent edge, far from a smile, the expression foreign and ambiguous.]
I was born with the potential.
[Not an answer, but he has a feeling Frühling did not really expect one.]
Do you have an ability from home, or were you provided from the preset list?
no subject
she resists a laugh but doesn't care to conceal a roll of her eyes and a deploring glare towards the shuttered sunlight. ]
I believe that I have been stripped.
[ intentionally non-specific, as he is being with her, but with a little punch of humour. a short pause; then she snaps back with a lolling, sultry look as she decides to recline, leaning forward and twisting onto her back, raising her left arm up beside her head and the right above her face with the device, continuing her answer all the while. ]
I have yet to discover what powers I've been given, but after a few experiments - [ note the patch of gauze around the middle of her left forearm and bandages on three left hand fingers. ] - I suspect it is summoning.
[ she tried to manipulate fire, but it did not work the same way it did for the man that showed her the trick, neither could she heal the cut in methods she both guessed and inferred from others. if she could not use her body or sword the same way she could back home, then there was only one thing left.
however, frühling really had no clue where to start with animals, as the only one she's seen and dealt with have been her troops and stray dogs or cats. the rest died or were eaten or used in vanity projects.
pretentiously noncommittal: ] Thus, I felt a little troubled and decided to ask you.
no subject
It isn't more than he anticipated from this world. Itachi has encountered enough violent shinobi to last himself a lifetime; what is one more from another world, shrouded in black mystique and teeth finely sharpened? He's dealt with worse.
In the silent interim of her final comment, Itachi's eyes lower, then lift again. It's a cursory flicker of observation -- inventorying the gauze wrapped over skin, bandaged fingers, the way silken hair pools where she lays like a black halo.]
Summoning? Which element?
[It isn't the first time he's asked a question to which he already knows the answer. There's no way to be completely certain without Frühling's admission, but he can infer enough. And before she finds a curt-tongued reply -- ]
Perhaps practice against an opponent. These powers were given for defense, after all.
no subject
it's great to be a (powerful) woman. now if only she could get his eyes to move a little more... ]
Fire.
[ she says with a ghostly smirk, more humoured by the question than by the satisfaction of her answer, of an element with which she can harmonize. like a dagger singing through air, feigning a blow, his suggestion ignites heat in her blood. she raises her brows in both thought and a show of interest. ]
Practice?
[ then she really smirks, fully and challengingly, as she swiftly rolls herself onto her hands and knees, device left face up while sheets of hair fall over her like a cape of darkness and her weight shifts like a panther ready to pounce.
not foreshadowing at all.]Would you like to be my first, Uchiha Itachi?
no subject
Perhaps someone else would find the instinct of flight and take to it. He feels neither that nor the instinct to fight. Yet he's resilient, and the challenge presented is one accepted. Itachi does not destroy, in fact he hates conflict; he fights passionless and as a honed tool, not a beloved instrument.
That he has become as powerful as he is speaks enough. It's a necessity. He can't match her bloodlust, but he can curb it. He can give himself to it.]
If you wish.
[Itachi's eyes scour her image, kneeling over the device, her fangs theoritically bared. No fear enters his system; his face stays fixed with impassivity.]
Where and when?
no subject
though, despite her suspicion, she lets her doubt pass over. she's got a snag on him; she won't relinquish it until she's satisfied.
expression dissolving into a mirror of his dispassion, frühling rolls back onto her legs, back to how she sat when this began. smoothly: ]
At midnight a week from now.
[ she won't let herself seem that desperate. it's predictable. besides, she'll have to acquire a few tools to make the meeting worthwhile. ]
I will scout out an adequate area; then send you the coordinates.
[ frühling leaves him with one final, steady gaze before disabling the video function and continues the audio for a few more seconds. ]
Make sure you're not out of practice.
[ blip. see you next week, uchiha. ]