Three Years Gone

[Hashi]

((Well I honestly don’t remember some of the events between the last thread I saved (Devotion to the Curse (http://www.failureverification.net/Hashi/DttC.html)) and when I stopped RPing, luckily everything before that I had saved to disc. So for argument’s sake she’s on [Summon 10.00] and has managed to avoid death in the interim. Since I want her long absence to be IC as well, this is my explanation of where she’s been this whole time. Part of this will re-cover ground from the thread Summon 04, which I never had a chance to finish to my satisfaction, though it will be considered a new summon and will in fact feature a different character. This quest also refers to events from The Devil's Revolt (http://www.failureverification.net/Hashi/TDR.html), with Valentina Snow, which unfortunately I don't have in it's entirety

[/end anal ooc explination]
[Solo]))


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Blackfield, Nighttime.
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Hashi was on the good side of Little Hell and she was wearing a tux. It was uniquely tailored to her curves and there would be no mistaking her for a man in it. It had been a gift from Kuro Jin’ichi, leader of the Black Dragons gang, after a gang uprising she’d been involved in quelling. Though, she’d spent most of it camped on her stomach on a rooftop, sniping runners while Valentina Snow had been a one woman army, wreaking havoc wherever she went. Not a fun memory for Hashi, she had no stomach for that kind of killing.

For once the djinn was stone sober and didn’t reek of beer or sweat. In fact, anyone close enough to noticed would have detected a faint scent of lilac and sakura. Her hair was meticulously brushed and styled and the djinn had actually taken care to wear appropriate make-up. She had even slipped a cosmetic case in her pocket to touch it up later in the evening. She actually stood straight with her hands folded behind her back; for once behave like a decent human being. Though she did rock form her toes to her heels a bit impatiently.

This was probably the craziest thing she’d ever done. More than fighting the Great Beast of the Abyss. More than becoming legal guardian of a half-tiger grand daughter she didn’t even know she had. More than ki… that thought faltered. No, that was still the craziest thing she’d ever done. So this was the second most absurd situation she’d ever found herself in.

It had all started when she’d returned to her apartment after her last summon. It had taken her a whole day to remember to go downstairs and check her mail. In the pile of fliers and junk mail and overdue bills had been a crisply folded, gold leafed invitation to a formal dinner, from Lileal Snow. Hashi and the assassin has a checkered history, mostly involving Hashi being a bitch to protect her own interests while Lilael got drunk and angry and threatened to shoot her in the face, or elsewhere, next time she showed her face at the assassin’s door.

There had been nothing personalized on the invitation, besides the name. It wasn’t the kind of place that Lilael frequented and the only reason that Hashi could think of for the assassin to be there was if she’d been hired to be there. Why she had invited Hashi, the djinn couldn’t even begin to guess. Still, she hadn’t seen Lilael since that whole mess with Valentina and the gangs. They hadn’t parted on good terms. Especially since Valentina had threatened to rip her throat out with her bare hands if the blue haired girl dared to hurt the assassin again, physically or emotionally. Though, Hashi hadn’t been around Blackfield much over the past six months or so, there had been a flurry of summons that had kept her away from Little Hell for any decent length of time.

So Hashi had decided to accept the invitation. She’d dug out the tux Jin’ichi had given her, actually gone to a salon to have her hair cut. Invested in some make up that wasn’t years old and crusted over, the djinn didn’t usually bother with cosmetics much. She had even bought some new black dress boots with three inch heels, for once leaving her well-worn combat boots in her apartment. It was probably the most dressed up she’d been since her wedding night.

The dinner was in one of the dining rooms of the famously expensive Breckenridge Family Hotel and Convention Center. The main building was cavernous, with glass ceilings that allowed plants to grow inside, two whole wings of the building were devoted to tranquil indoor gardens that had more greenery that just about the rest of the city combined. A single night’s stay cost more than what the average Joe in Blackfield made in a month and a half. The absolutely palatial presidential suite cost something closer to a year’s salary. Just this dinner was going to set Hashi back more than she cared to admit.

Standing just inside the richly carpeted room, beneath the brightly shining golden chandeliers, the djinn felt horribly out of place. It didn’t help that it seemed most of the severs bustling back and forth were better dressed than she was, and carried themselves easier. They belonged here. A tattoo artist from outskirts of Satan’s Circus did not. But she was not going to leave. She had come down here to apologize to Lilael for treating her so badly the last time they had met. And that was what she was going to do. She was not going to leave.

Until she felt a familiar pull…

Fuck! Not now, not now! Of all the horrible timing. Turning to a nearby empty table, the djinn snatched up a napkin and pulled a pen from a pocket inside her jacket pocket. She hastily scribbled out a note on it; in English, which was unfortunately her weakest written language. She knew what she wanted to say to the other woman’s face but she had no idea how to phrase or spell the things that came to mind, so she kept it simple. She agonized for a long moment on how to sign it but she could already feel herself growing thin as her new master handled her bottle. She didn’t know how long she could hold out. So she went for quick. Unfortuantly in her hurry she signed her name in kanji. She didn't have to to rewrite the note, so she had to quickly mark it out and put the roman spelling down.




Lilael,

I came here to say I’m sorry for acting very badly. Sadly I have no time to tell you this myself. So this note will have to do. I am sorry. Forgive me, Lilael. I do not know when I will see you again. I miss you.

Love,
http://www.failureverification.net/Hashi/sig.jpg
~Akai Hashi



Shoving her pen back in her pocket she walked up to the maître d', interrupting a sycophantic conversation he was having with a woman in a ermine coat. The grey haired man with eyes of steel looked angry but his manners were too deeply engrained for him to outright insult, not that Hashi gave a damn at this point.

“Lilael Snow is expecting me give her this with my apologies.” Hashi said, rushing the words into a single breathless sentence. She shoved the napkin note at him and almost ran out of the room. She hurried down the opulent corridor, her face pinched into a look of concentration as she fought the call of the summon. It didn’t take her long to find a door marked Employees Only and duck inside. She pressed her back to the wall and closed her eyes, unconsciously holding her breath as she lost her battle with the curse and faded out of existence.

[Hashi]

Sometimes, Hashi was almost convinced that her bottle was alive. It seemed to have a will. And a grudge. Against her. Always, when summoned, the djinn found herself facing away from her new master. Sometimes it didn’t bother her. Sometimes she didn’t notice. Such an instinctive thing, to turn to face a voice expressing consternation. Other times, it was different. Other times, it cost her a life. Sometimes, the cost was even higher than that. Reflecting on that one second, that single heartbeat, she would later in her life even wonder if perhaps maybe that time, it had cost her a piece of her soul.

Her eyes had been closed when she was ripped from Blackfield and she didn’t open them right away when she realized she existed once more. She’d also been holding her breath, but the reconstituting of her form forced her to breathe involuntarily. Her teeth clenched in frustration, she inhaled through her nose. And exhaled in a soft cry of surprise. The scent of jasmine was overpowering. Not a derivative, not a perfume, not a scented candle, not incense, not even a single blossom pinned to a woman’s blouse. But the overwhelming scent that staggers the unprepared. The smell of a garden of jasmine of blossoms. Of a countryside dotted with white flowers. The smell of a small, poor country that struggled to survive on the exports of bright cloth and strong perfume. The smell of a home that the blue haired girl had not seen in nearly two hundred yeas. A fragrance that ripped away the veil of immortality, the tore away adulthood’s maturity, or lack thereof, and sent her tumbling back to her knees. A child. A teen. A runaway and a thief. A girl who thought she had nothing to lose, and lost it all and more. A reminder of a name spoken by no lips since the last time her wife had uttered it in their marriage bed. Of a life long lost.

“It is generally accepted that if you are going to kneel before your mistress, you should be facing her.” The voice was smooth. The syllables unhurried and carefully enunciated. The tone both amused and slightly puzzled. The pitch a crisp, clear alto. The accent? Unmistakably Verdantian.

“Strange.” The voice continued, shifting to the djinn’s side. Hashi felt a hand in her hair, at first lightly caressing it. Fingers threaded through the luxurious strands, so carefully prepared for the night that would never happen. The fingers in her hair curled into a first, she felt them pull and pricks of pain flashed along her scalp. Her head was tilted back, face turned upwards. She kept her eyes stubbornly closed. “Show me your eyes, Djinni.”

Something inside her rebelled. Some painful memory wielded her eyes shut. This was something long past. A pain long forgotten. Yet, she couldn’t. Wouldn’t. It had been so long, decades – nearly two centuries, yet the pain rushed back as fresh as a new struck wound. It could not be. This wasn’t happening. And yet…

“I said, show me your eyes.”

There is no mistaking the green eyes of someone from Verdant. Though many humans claim to have green eyes, most are not truly and exclusively green. If you were to look, to stare into those depths for a time you would begin to see. Starting at the pupil is not clear and vibrant green but in most cases a crust of brown. It mingles with the black pool at the center, the darkness indistinguishable from a distance. From there is a starburst of drab olive that clings to the so-called green orb. Thin as a spider’s web, it stands out only as the veins of a leaf. As the iris expands, the backdrop is truly green but it is muddled and sullied, barely distinguishable. Encircling this island iris is a shore of sea-green. This traitorous blue laps at the edges of the orb, eroding the true blue as it slips inwards with cold fingers, grasping with greedy fingers.

These eyes they call green. Obviously they have never been to Verdant. Land of the Matched. Where any color of the rainbow is normal coloration. Purple hair is not out of place, so long as the eyes follow hue. The eyes of one of the Matched are breathtaking to study. No brown as an anchor but a ruddy forest green. A true and bright jade fills the shading of the orb as it expands outwards. No blue fills out the edges, but the liquid border that contains these eyes is a shimmering emerald. They sparkle with an energy and brightness unknown to any but those of colorful Verdant, land of bright colors and breathtaking scents. Of flowers whose blossoms are a shade that defines naming and fragrance that can make a man lose himself for hours.

There was no question that her new mistress would recognize her eyes for what they are. For when Hashi finally relented to the buzzing in the back of her skull, the battering imperative of her curse to obey the one who owns her body and soul until that debt is discharged… she found herself looking into orbs of the same hue. The hair that fell freely from her mistress’s shoulders was slightly less vibrant, for though there are shades of hair so green it makes the eyes ache to see; not so with her. It edged towards a more stately forest green, though in the low yellow light of the room the highlights were as emerald as her eyes; the shadows were a silken dark green of the jasmine vine. She was breathtakingly beautiful in a way that Hashi knew she could never be.

“Now this is irony.” Hashi wanted to look away from the eyes that sparkled with a merriment she knew was at her expense but her new mistress didn’t release the grip on her hair. “I spend years hunting down the bottle of the mysterious djinni, only to find her a Mismatched bastard from my own city.”

For once Hashi was silent. There was no quip for this situation. No verbal jab to retaliate. Nothing irreverent she could use to counter the stinging insult. One would think that perhaps, after nearly two hundred years, that a single insulting word would lose much of its impact. But often times, people don’t truly deal with their pain. They just learn to hide it.

“No matter.” Hashi’s mistress walked away from her, back to wherever she had been standing when she’d summoned her from the bottle. The djinn glanced up, noticing the building she was in for the first time. Its construction reminded her vaguely of Nihon, mostly because the door was designed to slide sideways rather than back and forth. The walls were a pale white, the door trim a radiant red. The plush carpet beneath her knees was an enveloping black with glitters of blue and silver that put the starry sky to shame. There were two lights by the door, rounded with conical covers. They reminded Hashi of the lamps of Nihon. If it wasn’t for the irrepressible scent of jasmine she wouldn’t know she was home. But then, things had surely changed over the past two hundred years.

Two guards stood waiting by the door wearing breeches and tunics of the same fathomless black, a shade never captured by any but the craftsmen of Verdant. One was of red coloring, his eyes and hair giving the paint of the doorway a fair contest for brilliance. The other was a brown much like the coloring of her father, the color of fresh soil after the spring rains. Nothing so mundane as mud, the bark of the trees envy the vitality of the shade. They looked at her with interest. She met the eyes of first one, then the other. They glanced away from her to trade judgmental looks. Then, as if on some unspoken cue they turned their heads and mimed spitting on the ground; though nether dared to degrade the carpeting in such a matter. Their disgust properly portrayed they stared straight ahead, the Mismatch djinn still kneeling on the ground utterly beneath their notice.

“Stand up, face me.” The Matched green beauty commanded. “My name is Daniela Lumiance and I am your new mistress. You will obey me.”