Ascendant

"Ascendant" is a BOTGD 2 Act II thread started on [IRL DATE] and finished on [IRL DATE].
==Summary ==
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==Full Text==
Jin Juro: It was fairly late when Juro returned to Haligan, after having recorded all his findings that day directly into the Library, then surrendering whatever he had taken to Jari with a cheeky grin, as indirectly ordered by the Commander in a twist of loopholes and varied interpretations of instructions. He hinted at being kept in the know of things, but he was undemanding at the request. He knew who the gossips were amongst the ranks, after all. He can manage.
His step started off light before dragging slightly as he headed to the healer’s hut, but he persevered. Despite his reservations about the entire situation, he felt the need to check up on Milae and Dario’s well being at least once that night. He just had to make himself as inconspicuous and invisible as possible, for the time being. 
Yun: A sudden silhouette that had been sitting in the night’s shade of the hut sat up, and though it was quite dark, there was a small, liquid reflection of torchlight on a pair of glasses as they looked in Juro’s direction. “Who’s that?” they called out, a few markings on their hands pulsing with light when they did. As quiet as Juro was being, it was a bit inconceivable that he had been spotted so quickly.
Juro: A slender hand had come up to his scarf to hide his face, almost slipping back into the shadows to escape the sudden discovery, but immediately relaxed when he realized who it was. Juro continued forward, a slightly guilty smirk on his face at the hour he was returning, “Did you gain psychic vision or something the few hours I was gone?” His voice was soft.
Yun: Yun leaned back against the hut in relief, wearily rubbing under an eye and pushing his glasses askew. “Nah, sorry, I was…meditating, I think. Whatever Milae calls it. Resonating?” He thought hard for a moment, and then shrugged, giving up. “I was looking at threads and I saw you moving them. That’s it.” Foresight was the last thing he needed to be added to the pile of insane powers he was discovering lately.
He tilted his head at Juro, regarding him. “That took a minute,” he prodded. “Did everything go okay?”
Juro: “Well… yes?” he nodded with a brow raised at the uncertainty, “The Commander was leading an expedition to the underground when we arrived, and I wasn’t about to miss that. Which I’m glad I didn’t–a full system of tunnels to High Central, a sleeping demon, mysterious experiments that I didn’t understand–” The Bookkeeper bit his bottom lip in glee. Something told him that all of this wasn’t quite finished yet, and the next day would bring unconventional entries.
He kept his voice low as he peeked around the entryway, cracking the door open only slightly in case they were still awake. He was slow to ask, “Are they… alright?”
Yun: “Ehm…I mean, Dario’s fairly burned. Pretty sure Milae has a concussion. But they’ve both been up and talking. Just shaken, I think.” His eyes followed Juro as he leaned into the door. “They’ve been asleep for a while now. I’ve been here since…” Realizing it had probably been too long, he hastily shrugged again. “Ah, just…just keeping an eye on things. You know.”
Juro: He nodded, delicate in the motion. It was quiet for a few moments as Juro continued to look despite not really seeing anything. He turned his gaze slowly towards Yun, eyes thoughtful, observant, but refraining from saying anything beyond his initial question. He turned on a heel and sat on the other side of the door, one long boot crossed over the other as he tucked hands within sleeves. Virion flickered to life in its smaller bird form, zig-zagging in the air before landing almost weightlessly on Yun’s knee. The Bookkeeper squinted slightly as he followed the golem’s movements. He had never seen it act like that. It liked getting the attention it did when in that shape.
“Like your threads?” he asked, ignoring the golem that was chittering at the dark haired man. He realized he really didn’t know much about how Milae’s… well, now Yun’s powers worked, “Does it have something to do with what happened last night?”
Yun: Yun had tucked his knee a little closer and started scratching Virion under its chin with a finger, smiling, but when Juro mentioned the power surge, he started like he had been caught doing something wrong. His cheeks flushed intensely and he rubbed behind his neck, half-heartedly trying to hide his face. “Ahh, you saw that? It wasn’t–I mean–well, I don’t–I don’t know, exactly. Milae taught me how to sense threads. But I never saw anything like…like that in his memories.” His apprehension bled through his words. He held out his hands in front of him, examining them front to back, expecting to see a blinding teal light again. “I still don’t know what caused it, exactly. We were just arguing about…stuff. And then it was almost like I blacked out, or something, except I could still tell what was going on.”
His voice paused in the night, and had his presence not already been revealed, it might have seemed like he wasn’t there at all. “I think I scared him,” Yun said in awe, like he didn’t believe it.
Juro: Pretty hard to miss, if you ask me… “I.. get it…” he said, understanding where the goat was coming from, “Well… perhaps not completely. I still don’t know the exact mechanics of that–” he motioned towards Yun’s arms with a slender finger and a wry smirk laced with obvious interest, “–but still, I don’t blame him. That was one Hel of a hike in magic. Even Vir got startled enough to run and disappear into the Library,” he added, tilting his head slightly towards the golem.
“What incredible power… is it not, darling?” His mouth hung open slightly as he suddenly remembered the odd experience that came immediately after, but he shook it off as a sleep deprived vision.
The Bookkeeper met his gaze, the darkness drowning both of them out into mere hazy, stringy silhouettes save for the faint light in their eyes. His was muted in its intensity, staring into Yun’s deeper than his lazy demeanor normally would, “An energy surge like that doesn’t come from nothing. It has to be something distinct, like a high stress situation, or extreme change in emotional or mental state…” His lashes were low, almost hypnotic in how he talked; it wasn’t a foreign concept to him after all. That was his very being spoken in a few sentences.
Juro blinked, a little taken aback at how much he was willingly contributing to the conversation unprompted.
Yun: It didn’t go unnoticed, but it went unmentioned. Yun was drawn into his words, his eyes unfocused as his attention delved inward, searching. “Milae thought it was because got mad at him,” he replied. “But it wasn’t. It was…” He clicked with the same feelings again, but he still couldn’t describe them, no matter how hard he tried. The only conclusion he could come to was that the trigger was something foreign to him, if he couldn’t identify it.
“You know how,” he started, his tone low and analytical, “if something happens to Liam, and Nala is nearby?” Yun spread his hands wide around the tiny bird on his leg, as though trying to visualize an expanding aura around it. “And she gets really…big. And kind of, like…surrounds him. You can sense it. And you can literally feel their connection, and you know that she’d tear you apart if you even scratched him?”
Yun’s gaze reconnected with Juro’s, and as his eyes flicked upwards, something gleamed in them. A familiar phenomenon with nocturnal animals and their derivative half-breeds, but something that had never been inherent in humans. The flash of light on the back of his pupils. He stayed like that for several long seconds, face neutral, like he was locked in a trance. A faint, deep frequency shivered through the air.
Then he shrugged and cleared his throat, huddling self-consciously back up against the hut. “I don’t know. Maybe something like that. But if it’s an emotion…I don’t know how to control it. Or even if I want to…”
Juro: A physical shiver went down his spine when their eyes locked. There was something both disparate yet dauntingly similar about Yun then, like looking in a mirror that reflected him only for the slightest of microseconds before morphing into something completely foreign that the Bookkeeper couldn’t possibly ever understand. It was an eerie sensation.
But his face split into a dry grin, small lines creasing his brow, as the seidkonur thought hard to himself. He leaned his cheek on a palm in amusement, watching Yun struggle. Such a simple concept; one that the young man couldn’t put into a single word–Juro would’ve found it endearing in another lifetime. He twisted his smile further instead, “What did Milae say afterwards?”
Yun: “Um…he said I ‘found my center,’ whatever that means.” He went back to stroking Virion, finding comfort in the repetitive movement. “Said he’d been trying to get me do that the whole time. But neither of us really wanted to get into it that night, cause it was a long day yesterday. So he just told me to think about it.”
Yun glanced back at Juro, squinting a playfully suspicious eye at his big smile. “I have been thinking about it so hard my head hurts,” he stated flatly. “I don’t know how to–” He pushed his hands forward, from fists into flat palms, signaling an expression of the energy he’d released last night. The sleeves of his kimono swayed with the motion. “But I really don’t want to hurt anyone while doing it, so I feel like I can’t even try. I’m kind of…stuck.” He curled up one of his hands into half of his activation pose, making the tattoos glow fiercely, but it was brief, as it stuttered out, and his face darkened once more. He sighed, mist steaming from his mouth.
Juro: “Stuck? Or already there?”
Juro kept regarding him, characteristic smile quirked crookedly, “Both of you think too much. You’re hyperfixating on the little details when you already have your answer.”
The clouds shifted then, revealing the moon hung in the night sky, casting its glow on the island. The light caught the Bookkeeper’s face at the right angles–there was an anxious crease in his brow that wasn’t there before. The soft yet unmistakable sounds of rattling chains reached only their ears. Virion had stopped hopping in its place and turned its body to watch its master, suddenly still.
“It had something to do with me, didn’t it?” It was silent when he said that, save for the low chink of metal. He got to his feet abruptly, “Or your Bookkeeper. Last night, when your magic spiked. There was a threat to his life, and you reacted without thinking, and it caused all of… that.”
He turned towards Yun, one hand coming up to trace from the bottom of his sternum outwards in an invisible line, “What if these snapped right now? What if I broke this seal and hurt your Bookkeeper in the process? What would you do? Wait and do nothing until you lose him? Because you don’t know if you even want to try in the first place? Is your fear and doubt that much greater than the consequences?” Juro wasn’t going to follow through, that much was obvious, but the hypothetical thought was enough to make him falter a little. There was another scrape of chains.
“No help, no harm. That’s the Bookkeeper code. But not for you. You have the choice to help, to save. It’s called protecting the people you hold dearest to you,” his voice was regretful. It was a luxury he could no longer afford, “Embrace it. Channel that need to help others, and it will continuously become your greatest strength…”
Yun: Upon hearing the ominous rattling, Yun’s fingers blazed teal. His wide eyes fixed on the Bookkeeper, unable to break away. The more Juro talked, the further the light climbed up his forearms, and he felt far too energized and shaky, like he had an unhealthy amount of caffeine injected straight into him.
Yun got to his feet to face Juro, taking a deep breath to try and keep himself under control. But he was starting to understand in the heat of the moment. Protect. Protect. Protect Jin from Juro… He looked down at the diffused light of his arms, and when his weight shifted, he saw flashes of the same light in the ground under his shoes, brief scatters of teal that winked out like sparks. And in harmony with metal link moving against link, a thread stretched and echoed, like a long wire being scratched. It wasn’t the same as last night, but it was close. More controlled.
An unsteady exhale exploded sharply from his chest, and he met Juro’s gaze again. The gleam from before was flickering like weak candlelight threatening to snuff out in a high wind. He opened his mouth to say something, but what came out instead, with full confidence, was, “They won’t break. I won’t let them.”
Juro: He followed the pulses of light as Yun organized his thoughts, coming to his conclusions, and finally realizing his center. Chain tensed against thread, weaving in and out of each other in certain spaces and times, and Juro found himself feeling simultaneously in danger and in safety at the dark haired man’s declaration, hazel bearing into amber. The contrast of it was unprecedented.
Virion crooned softly at both of them, changing into his larger form and positioning itself beside them, three eyes trained on each. It ruffled its wings once in concern. Juro sighed, then slowly pulled his suspended hand towards his chest again, covering that particular spot almost protectively, as if the motion would strengthen the lock back to normal. The sounds disappeared, and it was quiet again, the Bookkeeper clutching the fabric of his shirt.
He glanced up at Yun, crease lines remaining on his brow. He found himself unable to say anything in return, like he wasn’t allowed to, but there was hesitant hope the peeked through his eyes. He smiled, the corners of his mouth shaking slightly.
Yun: Of course he knew that smile. 
Yun snapped out of it at the sight. All of the light died around him, leaving him the average and very tired person he was from before. He wobbled in place and put a hand up against the wall behind him to steady himself. “Whoa…what…” He slowly blinked back to awareness, and looked around at the full-sized Virion in concern. But he was also painted with the utter relief and awe that was filling the anxious cavity in his chest. 
He did it. He did something at least. And that…was huge.
“Oh my god.” Yun patted himself down in shock, and exhaled in an uncontrollable moment of excitement, dancing slightly in place. Then his hands froze. “Wait, are you okay? You didn’t…?”
Juro: For a moment when he looked, Juro was nowhere in sight. But the familiar low voice called out in reassurance, “I’m fine. We’re good.” He stepped out lightly from behind the outer feathers of the golem’s wing. It had unfurled itself to catch both of them on each side when they cleared their heads. Virion pulled in slightly, and the Bookkeeper had to take a few steps closer, otherwise he would’ve been knocked over.
“He’s fine,” the crooked grin was back on his face, as he did a mental check on the sniper across timelines, “You figured something out.” It was an observation rather than a question.
Yun: “Yeah, I think so.” Yun stroked one of Virion’s feathers gratefully, and then shook his hands out, flexing his fingers one more time. He didn’t feel terribly different, but his thoughts felt less like a spaghetti mess of indescribable emotion and more like straight and clear goals. “I just have to focus on…protecting?” A single flash ran up both his arms, and a brief circle lit up across his chest as he grew lightheaded. “Whoa. Okay, yeah. I guess I was being kind of complicated about it.” Yun grinned sheepishly, and his chest swelled, but he knew he had to tamp it down, looking over at Virion, then back at Juro, wreathed in white.
“Hey, am I…am I allowed to hug him instead?” he asked quietly. 
Juro: It was Virion who replied for the Bookkeeper, contracting both wings towards it and closing off the outside from them without warning. Juro stumbled a few more steps, but it was Yun who was pulled closest to the golem as it created a curious tent made of blue and white feathers and magic, secluding just the three of them. The shorter man could feel the same security and calm that Juro relied on.
The tall man was trembling under the crook of the inner plumes, and for a worrying moment it was like the lock could break again, but upon closer observation it revealed that the Bookkeeper was actually… laughing. A lot.
A short chuckle escaped him as he struggled not to lose it completely. After all, the seal applied to both extreme sides of the emotional spectrum where neutrality was the rule.
“H-he says he’ll give you one,” Juro‘s shoulders shook before glancing towards the seidkonur, eyes upturned as the grin widened, “If you go to sleep immediately after.” The golem’s croon echoed a little louder in their personal space, leaning down to bring its head closer to Yun, all six eyes regarding him wordlessly. 
Yun: Yun bit his lips to try not to beam as he looked up at the bird, nodding firmly. “Okay,” he said seriously. “I promise.” The thought of getting rest finally brought him relief instead of dread, for once. He crossed his heart over his armor and held up his hand in a pledge. “I will try my best.”
Juro: Virion chirped after a moment, seemingly satisfied with the vow, before dipping down completely to rest around Yun’s shoulders, allowing for the man to wrap his arms around its long neck, simultaneously scooping him up from the ground so he was engulfed much better in feathery embrace. Yun’s boots leaned against where wing met back to steady himself as Juro watched with an unreadable, lazy smirk, moonlight reflecting against white and blue.
Yun: Yun giggled a bit and squeezed tightly around Virion’s neck, first amused, and then extremely emotional. He buried his face in the down across its neck and curled up his fingers, soaking in the temporary intimacy. If he closed his eyes, he could pretend that he had his arms wrapped around the middle of the man on the ground that he so desperately wanted to be close to.
“Thank you,” he mumbled into Virion’s feathers. “Thank you for taking care of him.”
Juro: A soft rumble came from the bird’s throat, emanating comforting energy in reply. It held him for a bit longer, before gently setting him back onto the ground, warmth disappearing from all over as the cold wind brushed their skin once more. But before they separated, Virion trained its eyes at Yun’s, boring all six into his like dark, bottomless marbles, sentient but still very inhuman and very magical. Yun could have sworn he heard… no, felt words when their eyes connected.
“He’s lost his way. Please find him. Lead him home.”
A chilly breeze broke the gaze and Virion cawed, warping again into its familiar bend of space. Juro tilted his head, still grinning, unaware of any of the words exchanged in the past few minutes as his golem nestled itself in his scarf once more, “Time for bed.”
Yun: “Uhhh…” Yun stared after Virion for a second, mouth open, completely forgetting what he’d just agreed to as the ethereal words continued to swirl in his head. Then he blinked rapidly and nodded. “Right, yeah. Are you staying here or going back to the Jaw?” It would buy him time hunting the Bookkeeper down later, if he had to. 
Juro: “I’m staying here for the night, Vir’s tired,” he said, “I might return tomorrow and see what’s going on with the investigation, but I’ll be back and forth until they’re better.” He motioned with his chin towards the darkened hut, before tucking it back in his scarf. 
“I’ll let you know before I leave,” he turned on a heel, loose fabric fluttering in the wind, grin turning into something teasing.
Yun: “Okay.” Yun lifted his hand in a wave goodbye, which was a bit pointless as Juro was already striding away. But he still had a wistful grin lingering on his face as his arm lowered, and he looked back at the hut, listening for any sounds of stirring. When he was sure it was quiet, he activated away, leaving the night still once more.
And inside the hut, a goat half-breed stared straight up at the dark ceiling, eyes moving minutely while his mind moved much faster.