栗鼠．Risu (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
risukybusiness) wrote2021-06-12 04:17 am
risukybusiness) wrote2021-06-12 04:17 am
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   DEATH CALLED MY POWER FANTASTIC. WHAT THE HELL DOES THAT MEAN? | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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BACKGROUNDPerhaps the first thing to know about Risu, loudly announced by the red crosses tattooed over his eyes, is that he sits in one of the lowest castes of a class-divided society, and he is fucking bitter about it. Unable to produce smoke, Risu and his fellow poor souls occupy the bottom rung of the social ladder in the Sorcerer's Realm, and they are harshly treated for their shortcomings. In a world where the only thing resembling the law of the land are the desires of a crime lord, enduring physical beatings and bullying nearly qualify as light punishment. Even so, Risu didn't take his portion of torment lying down, and his act of rebellion led him to the Cross-Eyes organization—origin of his tattoos—and there he was initiated into the gang's business of beheading elites and peddling drugs. The nonchalance toward this butchery may come as a shock to anyone raised in a less ultraviolent world, but for Risu, it's business as usual. This could earn him a number of descriptors, for instance: callous, amoral, self-serving, and they wouldn't be wrong, but hardly remarkable in the midst such a dodgy cast. By the standards of his story, Risu is no villain, and in fact much of his first spin around the carousel of life seems instead to be ruled by victimhood. As an ex-punching bag for more privileged sorcerers, Risu carries all the incurred chips on his shoulders. Over that first spin of 24 years, he counts among them a negative outlook on his prospects, a strong resentment for elites, a membership to a rabble-rousing gang, enough money scraped together for rent and to put himself through school, a couple cacti for the windowsill, and one, singular friend. If misery loves company, Risu sure did not, though the solitude never was quite the result of a bad disposition—he socialized casually and plenty, and never lacked for drinking buddies in his schoolmates nor working relationships with his fellow Cross-Eyes. The matter is, the shunning Risu endured imprinted the message that it was him against the world, and he carried those feelings with him across his life. He's slow to make connections, wary of taking the first step, prickly defensive to the point of sensitivity, and his loyalties are changeable in the face of perceived betrayal. His worries root him to a kind of self-centeredness, and he tends to base his decisions around himself, his well-being, and his self-perceptions—a damning trait, but the implications aren't wholly negative. After all, Risu can see himself in others, and therefore he mostly rests his sympathies with the exploited and shows himself to be willing to defy authority, though he's rather unsentimental about it. Not always true, as it turns out. His singular friend cut a swathe of exceptions to Risu's isolationist lifestyle, and once the ice broke, they became—well—partners. Shadows, nearly. Whereas the friend played his cards close to his chest, Risu told him everything, trusted him completely and utterly. Perhaps a bit naïve for someone supposedly as world-weary as Risu, but everything seemed so genuine while he held it in his hands, and friends are worth going to extremes for. Perhaps even dying for? By the closing chapter—all mysteries unravelled, secrets revealed, and feelings aired—he probably doesn't even regret it. But before the cathartic wrap-up, Risu's first spin around the carousel is cut short via knife to the jugular. His chance at a second spin is honestly the result of a lucky chain of events, which leaves him with a new lease on life and completely wound up in solving his own murder case. Whodunnit? The answer wasn't the only thing that mattered. What mattered was the vengeance, what mattered was stripping his murderer of everything, just as his murderer had done to him. There's an idea Risu held constant throughout his life, an idea he's built himself around: Those who mean him harm are the enemy. He is, in essence, the perfect vessel for the magic he would eventually come to discover. The brush with death was all it took—it released a unique type of smoke that came with its own terms and conditions, the key being his own untimely end. Finally being able to wield magic certainly boosted Risu's confidence in the respective areas, and his willingness to antagonize whoever stood in his way rose by several degrees. Magic, Risu felt, made him powerful, nigh-unstoppable, and certainly more impressive than whatever he had been before. But a more objective assessment of the matter yields a rather more complicated picture. The truth is, Risu and Curse are something like a self-perpetuating ouroboros—they feed off each other through their own rage and hate, they encourage, stoke, and indulge it. Risu almost struggles to remember what he was before those emotions consumed him. At one point, he had merely been frightened and desperate. An alien truth to face for someone who sank so much time and effort into distancing himself from these vulnerabilities, and yet undeniably familiar. After all, the miserable, lonesome boy in some corner of his memories had been him—as much part of him as Curse. Risu has a long way to go for checking the marks of self-acceptance, but even reaching for the most battered parts of himself is a beginning to reconciling the troubled, buried, fractured pieces of his own personhood. ABILITIESUnable to produce smoke (the vector through which magic is wielded), Risu had to learn to fend for himself on purely physical terms. While he can't rival the top ranks of the Cross-Eyes gang, he can hold his own fairly comfortably in a brawl, and was shown to be capable of eliminating a number of elite sorcerers while working with a more senior member. His weapons of choice are an array of metal spikes. Risu's most unique ability is Curse, the magic that was activated after his murder. Curse's condition for activation is also the explanation for Risu's previously smokeless existence: Curse exists to exact revenge on Risu's behalf, and it does this by first devouring all of its target's valuables and then by taking their life. It takes the form of a semi-sentient, levitating apparition made out of smoke, and while it usually appears vaguely in Risu's likeness, Curse is able to transform and shapeshift according to its will; for example, dispersing into a wisp that can drift through a keyhole or enlarging parts of its body. While not entirely its own entity, Curse is capable of independent action when Risu isn't around (read: dead), and has its own personality, which is intensely mocking and hostile towards its prey. Curse rejoins with Risu after the latter is revived, and does not separate from him thereafter. It adopts the form of a cloaked humanoid, wearing a skull-like mask, while in an active state. From this point on, Curse more-or-less becomes an extension of Risu, though Risu is also influenced by some of Curse's mannerisms and instincts (such as a single-minded fixation on tracking down their target, including the ability to detect where their target is), which can be especially dependent on his emotional state. There is a degree of knowledge-sharing that can occur between both parties as well, though Risu has difficulty accessing Curse's knowledge. Both of these aspects stabilize as Risu improves his control over his own magic, and he eventually begins to exert increased agency over his transformations and becomes capable of relating Curse's memories. Curse's primary means of offense are the metal spikes it's capable of freely manipulating in its transformed state, but another ability makes it one of the most powerful types of magic in the series: Curse is able to repel any attack (physical or magical) directed at Risu with the intent to harm, and to reflect the attack back at the opponent. It is, however, not invincible, and Curse has been shown to be harmed by a devil's song, repelled by defensive magic, and held captive by bindings stronger than magic. Hell, you can even bean him over the head if you want, as long as you don't do it with killing intent. By series end, Curse is dispelled when its objective is accomplished. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
