come_sailaway | Are you on the square? Are you on the level?

Entry tags:

Are you on the square? Are you on the level?

Who: Deputy Pratt & You
What: A reckoning is upon you (He's storming the halls looking for Sharky)
Where: Everywhere!
When: Mid-October
Warnings: Violence. Cult stuff. Cannibalism. Skinning. Gore. The standard Pratt warning buffet.
Notes: Bracket or prose, live your truth.

1. The World Is Weak - Laundry Room
It's already been well established that the best place to have a breakdown on the ship is in the Laundry Room, so that's where Pratt is. Though he's not crying, he's not yelling or throwing things or freaking out over a jacket like last time. No, he's pacing. Back and forth and back and forth, again and again while staring at the ground. He has his arms folded, clutching across his chest, which is an awkward position while walking but he doesn't move them.

He doesn't know what to do. Well, he knows what he wants to do, but he also knows that he is the master of terrible decisions so maybe he should think about it?

Back and forth. Back and forth.

Enjoying yourself?

"Shut the fuck up."

2. Eviction Notice - Decks

When Deputy Pratt leaves his room in the morning, he's wearing his full uniform, his belt jangling with every step, along with the dog tags around his neck. Idly he trails his fingers along the wall as he goes, dragging through some of those bloody notes left on doors without even seeming to react to it.

"Sharky! Shaaaaarkkkkyyyy..."

For all that people have seen him sobbing into mashed potatoes, enjoying himself in the arcade, or just generally being a morose but kind of endearing dork, there's another side to him that even Clarke hasn't seen. The last time he was walking like this he was losing himself to the conditioning and barely knew what he was doing. This is different. Pratt is in absolute control of himself and that is so much worse.

"It's been a day and we had a deal. A pact even." Pratt normally sounds like a raven with laryngitis, but right now his voice is so low and controlled when he talks that it could probably be used to grind glass. If it's not obvious Pratt is pissed. He's fucking furious. And that cold fury is being bottled up, saving it for later, for when he needs to act.

"It's okay, you can come out. We just need to talk. We're going to have a little chat. That's all."

He gets to the end of the hall of cabins, blood trailing from his fingers across all the doors from the loving notes left to Ebalon. He reaches up to his forehead, using the blood to draw a cross down his nose and across his forehead.

"Did you think you were finally free?"

This is probably fine.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

"Poisons take too long, and are a pain the ass if you want to make someone join you instead. You should always give them that option. Then their strength is an addition to yours."

A head tilt. "Screaming huh? Usually I have to save my breath." Breath control in battle is very important. It's one of the few times Nobunaga actually shuts the fuck up. Probably why he overcompensates all the rest of the time however. "I really want to try auto at some point, but can't waste it. I'll just keep waiting for the right moment. That's all that strategy seems to be, truthfully."

"Yeah, if you can recruit them to your side by force then..." He looks away, "That's what we did back home, to make the army stronger. Kidnapped people and forced them into it against their will. Which worked but..."

He makes a disgusted sound, because of everything he needs to atone for, that's probably the worst. Everything he did to Rook.. what he helped Jacob do to others. He chokes down another awkward noise and tries to not think about it right now.

"Yelling is good stress relief. Makes you feel better."

Nobunaga stops dead in his tracks. What the fuck?

"No!" A little hoarsely. "Not like that." A double facepalm. Did he fuck up history with an over-correction? But how could that be? Importantly, "Is that what happened with Vietnam?!" Fuuuuuuuuuuuck.

He'll have to rethink how he's been seeing Klaus in the best possible light as an ex-soldier, but wow that explains a lot about why Klaus wouldn't want to ever talk about Vietnam.

"How can that possibly work? Even if soldiers are at their strongest with their backs to a wall, that just means they'd fight you. So would the entire country, all their family and the rest. What absolute fucking dipshit moron decided to implement those tactics? And to have the audacity to call it strategy..."

"No. Well.. uh.. actually yes but that was different?" He blinks because he's not sure where the Vietnam connection came from since unlike Nobunaga he occasionally thinks about things other than Klaus.

"Vietnam was a draft, like they made everyone of age go fight whether they wanted to or not, or they got thrown in jail. That's ... not what I'm talking about. You know uh.. how I'm ... Like I'm all fucked up right and sometimes talk crazy shit? That's from the conditioning." He snorts, because fuck that shit. "Torture. Drugging. Sleep deprivation. Starvation. Til you forget who you are and you're only what the cult wants you to be. After a while people stop fighting back because they can't, you can only fight so long before your body gives out or your mind breaks, one of 'em will get you in the end."

Hey now, Nobunaga thinks about more than Klaus. But yes, 99% of his brain is wars and stuff.

"The cult," Nobunaga nods. Because the Ikkou Ikki and a lot of the varying degrees of Buddhist monks were like that too. Though they preferred raising children into it, and with broader social outreach than what Joseph Seed did (presumably.)

"Wait, drugging?"

"Yeah. Lots of it. Ketamine and sedatives and fucking Bliss. Weapons grade meth bullshit, it's ..." Suddenly his eyes go wide.

"Oh fuck. I can't still do the thing can I? Oh shit, I didn't even think about that." He backs away from Nobunaga, not explaining whatsoever. "Nevermind uh, that's just.. well that's something horrible for me to find out later."

He laughs nervously running his hands through his hair. Fuck.

"Starvation and Bliss, makes people go crazy. S'why I'm so fucked cuz my brain had been rewired too many times and not all of 'em are in the places where they're supposed to be anymore. I'm just constantly short circuiting all the time."

"Deputy..." Nobunaga is mentally taking notes to add to his dictionary for later. "I'm from 1582. What is...? We only just refined sake by using only polished rice. I did that. We've imported tobacco, because it is one of the few things that grows in Hell, but I don't understand. What is..." a head tilt. "Long slow acting poisons? Like being constantly drunk, but worse? What is short circuiting? What is the purpose of it? There's an actual method to cultists starvation? Not just religiosity and weakening people's resistance and strength? This is what... ketamine and Bliss or.... meth does? What is meth? Like a method? But a physical ingestion instead of solely technique?"

Oh god.

"Uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh..." That sound will persist for a solid minute while he tries to figure out how to explain literally any of that to someone from the 1500's.

"Poisons would be close but not.. right. Okay hold on. One thing at a time. Ketamine is a drug that makes people hallucinate, and it's a sedative, numbs pain. But you go fucking nuts with enough of it because you don't know where you are or who you are and can't really understand people talking to you, and it fucks with your brain and how it works. Pretty sure that's why my memory is so garbage, my brain just doesn't function anymore. And Bliss is some shit the cult cooked up that made people super susceptible to being told what to do, and what to think. The uh.. Power of Suggestion I think is what Faith called it. Brainwashing people."

He's getting kinda twitchy the longer he talks about this.

"They'd uhm, strap people to chairs, drug 'em up, and make them think they're someone else. Make them think their friends are enemies and the only way to save them is to kill them. Jacob could make people do whatever he wants. Conditioning is uh.. It's called Classical Conditioning. You repeat something enough and it becomes muscle memory, your mind just does shit without your control."

"Jesus fucking Christ."

In his own head, Luis Frois frowns at him for that, but his mental Luis Frois has done a lot of that to Nobunaga on the ship.

Nobunaga sees the twitching, and half debates setting Klaus down and holding him there.

"Fucking cults." A double face palm. Give him a few seconds. "I know what conditioning is. I've been fighting cults for the last two decades." Give or take. "And army does it too. It's why I cannot, will not ever teach swords. It is conditioning done by the monks, and even if I hadn't declared war on religion in the most tangible way I knew how, I don't enjoy it in the least, and I don't think I ever could."

All right, give him a bit. "This is how Sharky and I became acquainted in the first place. Our mutual desire to set cults on fire. Literally." He forgets how they went from marshmallows to that, but yes.

"So these drugs... they were invented by doctors for healing, or were they invented by the cults?" Nobunaga pinches the bridge between his eyes, ready to grab Pratt with a pincher hold to the neck or the scruff like he did with Clarke when she tried to run off with his gun. "And they made you immune to pain, I assume?"

"That sounds just like Sharky." A little wistful because he misses him so damn much, and right now has no idea if he'll ever get him back.

"Ketamine is for uh.. Like surgery? It's a sedative and they mix it with something else to knock you out so you don't feel it. Bliss the cult cooked up, their chemist, Fenney, he made it for them specifically do do their creepy brainwashing shit. Like it's geared to that."

He flexes his fingers and looks down at his hands, wanting to look at anything that isn't another person right now. "Sorta. Kinda numbed it more so. Well when I'm like this and I'm uhm.. me. There's a... state I can get into where I don't feel pain at all, but I'm also not me anymore and I'll just attack everything so I don't even get the benefit of the whole pain immunity thing. Well sorta, I mean you could stab me right now and I might not react, but it'll hurt eventually."

"Makes sense."

Oh good, Pratt's in control and not running away. Improvement.

"Soka." A quiet hum. "I see where that'd be useful for soldiers, but only in the very immediate short term. I'm sure it would get untenable quickly." For obvious fucking reasons. "Try to avoid that here. I'll take responsibility for trying to help you manage. To make you stronger without going so far as to completely break yourself constantly. Do you miss it? Or are you just worried about your skills without it?"

"I ... miss it because I've been trained to? But it was fucking miserable, so I really don't. When I died here... few months ago. I woke up with a knife still in me, like right in my shoulder, and after that Sharky found me some straight up opium shit at the infirmary and I fucking drugged myself to oblivion for like three days. Like I was probably straight up drooling and if I rolled over in my sleep would have suffocated cuz I couldn't even raise my head. But man.. I woke up feeling fucking amazing." He sets his jaw and looks away, "Totally see how people get addicted to that shit. But I'm good. Don't need it. Especially don't need the torture and shit."

Nobunaga moves his assessment of Pratt's pain tolerance on a slider in his head to an extreme direction, closer to where it is on his Klaus scale, with a few little red warning flags for Oda himself because wow, that too was something of an addiction and incredibly dangerous for someone like him.

"There's a difference between torture and --"

Oh. He shouldn't talk about that out loud.

Yeah. No.

Nobunaga's court fan comes out, out of habit, cooling his heated head. Distraction action.

It's extremely hard not to think of Mitsuhide then, torture and how useful and needed Mitsuhide was, and Nobunaga snaps the fan shut, back up the sleeve, stretching both arms above his head and behind his back.

As with Mitsuhide, no torturing Pratt, he needs them perfectly unbroken and functional, and the world was too intent on breaking them as often as possible anyway.

He rolls his head on his neck without touching it focuses back on cleaning. It's easier. And he needs the motion to just yeet all the thoughts in his head so he can figure out which ones were even worth examining for a second!

"Basic bare minimums, samurai. Anyone would get addicted to feeling invincible." Wasn't Nobunaga? Almost definitely. He was paranoid, sure, but every failed assassination attempt increased that. It's all very memento mori vs. Jade Emperor and Buddhist shit.

"Rather than invincible, immortal, remember to be human." EASIER SAID THAN DONE. Nobunaga... couldn't. Literally couldn't. Struggled so deeply with it, that it was why he was here cleaning. And indeed he knocks the stick side of the mop to the wall to make an obvious sound of demonstration. Hahaha DEMONS-stration. No no, that's another useless thought.

"An immortal... doesn't do things like dig for treasure," a nod. "Or for others. They forget to share their peaches with anyone they consider lesser than them." Don't ask. It's a Wukong thing. Heavily filtered through Nobunaga lens. "They don't see the point in living at all, because to them it's just that interim between the high of dying. Like life is punishment instead of something to seize and enjoy. So you must focus on what you enjoy. Sometimes that's hard. When you're in hell. When a broken society says you mustn't. Or the suffering of those around you seems like you'll be insulting their pain. In those moments, you must become so clever you can figure out how to help them through their pain. This, I know to be true, because it's not even unique to Japan, but for all the world in my time."

Remember to be human.

It's such simple advice, and so needed, that Pratt stands there staring at him. Stunned. In a cult based on weakness and strength and culling and reducing people to simply being animals, or worse, meat, it's been far too long since someone reminded him to just... be a person.

"I... yeah. That's.. That's a good point. I should kinda be human occasionally huh?" He asks as though this isn't an obvious thing for him.

There's a wry glance at the peaches comment, "I'm not going to tell you why that's ironic as shit, but just know that it is."

Peaches. Hmf.

"Yeah that's what a lot of religious nutjobs think. And like... why live at all then if there's some great heavenly afterlife? Which there fucking isn't. I died, there wasn't shit. No heaven. No hell. All a goddamn lie."

"And enjoy yourself. Are you familiar with the Jade Emperor and Wukong, or Peach Boy? Or something else entirely?" Wait. Dirty emojis? "Eggplants?" A headshake. "Did Seed want to run around planting peach trees? Or just ban everyone from his own private grove? Thats what the Jade Empeeor did, because hes a dickfuck. Sorry, I'm thinking way too much about this." And peach butts always remind him of Ranmaru, and if he wasn't trying to focus on the very serious shit, he'd hunt down Klaus for general frustration relief.

"Since there's no nirvana or afterlife, this is as good as it gets. Ergo, make this life better and the better than anyone could have ever imagined. That's the true Demon King of 6th Heaven way mufufufu." He wants a peach.

"No no no. Also no. Just no." But he does seize on one part of that, "Wukong? Like.. the monkey king right? Have you talked to Sharky about his cousin Hurk? Cuz uh, he was all about some monkey god, and I dunno if that's the same thing - but he was always praying to him."

He's never explaining the peach thing. Never ever.

"Yeah, gotta make the best of it, because being dead sucks - being alive rules. Which is why I need to get this fucker out of Sharky, so he can live his best life here. Be the happy dude in the head to toe Tommy Bahama he was meant to be."

"Right. Wukong was in charge of the Jade Emperor's holy golden peaches so he ate them in protest because the Jade Emperor sucks and didn't share his peaches, even though he had the strongest king of all the monkeys and didn't invite him to parties and just generally was shitty. Gods suck. I have not discussed Hurk. I don't really understand religion well." In case the 'Jade Emperor and all gods suck' thing wasn't a tipoff.

A nod. "We'll get him back, and I'll ask about Hurk."

Aren't you kinda a God as a Demon King? Like... sorta? Like king of demons seems sorta... supernatural and godly and shit.

[PRATT YES.]

[Just really making Nobunaga a million kinds of debating how far he can fuck Pratt without breaking him, and/or fucking HIMSELF up here.]

Yes.

In the loosest sense, sure. It's more like I declared war on the gods for ignoring me. And because I assumed they don't -- didn't exist. I did tell people they could worship me instead if they were so desperate for someone to believe in.

Having met Amaterasu, I believe my baby sister Oichi, when she said Amaterasu was surely on my side helping me. But I didn't grow into the Demon King of 6th Heaven for many years after my foolish brazen start.

That's not... really how it works. Like if you find out gods are fake you don't just start worshiping some guy because he's there.

Right?

Or did people actually do that?

Oh! Amaterasu, they're my neighbor. Which is fucking awesome. [More big doggy neighbors for the mental well being of the ship.]

Except I actually talk to people directly instead of using false prophets who can claim whatever they want in the name of something that might not exist. Furthermore I fulfilled my obligations, unlike gods, who demand much and deliver either ambiguously, or not at all.

Did anyone worship me as a god? [Laughs! No.] Would you?

It would be quite an undertaking to change their conditioning. To go from believing I am literally the personification of true evil in the truest ultimate form to accepting that not only had their whole lives been a lie, but the man they quite literally demonized was the only one doing the impossible, even though it wasn't by means of miracles. Whatever the demonic version is.

Amaterasu is the mother of Japan. She is well before sending her descendants to rule over us, however, before giving them her sword. I believe that is about 600 BC by European calendar? A very strange thing, wormholes. But she wants the best for Nippon, maybe even more than I do, so I can only hope she would not disapprove of everything I've done in the name of unification. [Not that it would have stopped him though...]

I'm in a whole ass cult and I'm not worshipping anyone. Fuck that noise.

[ He's only there because he's a captive getting the shit beaten out of him, not that he's a believer.]

She's a .... wait what? The dog? Is the mother of Japan.

[ Blink. ]

You know what, that sounds awesome so I'm just gonna go with that. Better than all the shitty stories about America. Why can't we be founded by a dog...

[Laughs so hard!] See? This is why I said you do not seem religious! I could torture Kennyo for the rest of eternity if he still lived, [He did, Nobunaga is unaware!] simply by enjoying myself, but nothing would shake his faith! No matter how much you torture the Jobs of the world, they keep insisting it's all according to plan!

Specifically, Amaterasu is a kitsune dragon. Fox dragon. And that means... a wolf. But a tricky one who can disguise herself! Also... the sun. We always say she favors us, because we're the first one she sees each day. Luiz Frois kept trying to tell me, the sun cannot be a God, because God made the sun, but I always thought it just existed. No will or guiding reason.

Okami means wolf, but also, great goddess. Like how four means death. My family was pretty devout, so all women in our family have names beginning with O. Oinu is a normal name, that'd be O-dog, beautiful dog, or like the northern Ainu people. But Oichi is sort of like beautiful one, O-one, it just depends how you write it. And you can't write 4 as shi, death, because it's that taboo, it becomes yon instead.

Instead of how Amaterasu came to found Nippon, because it's kind if embarrassing, I shall tell you about the samurai my mother is named after! Gozen was the strongest samurai despite being a woman. In my time, katana is taught by the monks, so I can never teach it. And they will not teach women. But three centuries before my time, at the start of the Genpei civil war, she learned from watching her father. In the Genpei War, Amaterasu's descendants couldn't decide who should rule Japan. Supposedly, Amaterasu divinely inspired Gozen to fight on the correct side, so she was completely fearless herself, and struck intimdation into everyone with her katana! She was a better horseback rider than everyone, and could break an entire army. And she fought two hundred vs. two thousand. Another reason Oichi said Amaterasu must be on my side too.

All that's way after Amaterau's time though. She doesnt even remember sending the first emperor to look after Japan, nevermind constantly having to clean up after their whole line's fuck ups. So don't bother with asking questions. She even has the grass-cutter sacred sword still. I half want to touch it... and half worry it would turn me to ash! She's a lot more good humored than I would have expected. I thought I was at war with her, but maybe we were always on the same side like Oichi wanted? Hideyoshi would love that. He's a big believer in all the folklore myths. Mitsuhide is the opposite. Very skeptical. But Mitsuhude is called a kitsune himself, so people always say he's very tricky, and could just be trying to throw everyone off the scent by pretending it's all fakey fake.

What stories about America's founding are there? I know of Amerigo Vespucci, because the Portuguese funded his trip, but I have no idea how it came to speak English, or ban gay marriage. Or all of Billy Joel's stuff. New York City seems fascinating, but do we have anyone from there? Crichton's from Florida. Jeff from California. Ahhhh I wish I could see it for myself!

[You know he's in a good mood when he starts rambling the tldr! Theres a brief dip when he mentions Crichton and Jeff, but talking about history, and female samurai does cheer him up, even if hes supposed to be steeling Pratt's resolve.]

[If Pratt had a better memory he'd be fucking owning pub quizzes on random Japanese history right now.]

Oh fuck, do I have to remember your sisters' names? I'm still struggling with all of Klaus' family, there's like a Five.. and a Diego, a Viktor.. maybe an Alison? [There were about twelve of them or something and Pratt can barely remember the other passengers names he sees daily, remembering everyone else's family is gonna be impossible.]

Wait why are katanas only taught by monks? That seems... weird

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