Welcome to Adventu, your final fantasy rp haven. adventu focuses on both canon and original characters from different worlds and timelines that have all been pulled to the world of zephon: a familiar final fantasy-styled land where all adventurers will fight, explore, and make new personal connections.
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year 5, quarter 3
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Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Jan 20, 2024 18:57:32 GMT -6
Out of the warrior’s mouth fell words and ideas most mysterious, and their mystery lay in their meanings as much as it did in their relation to their question and to their surrounding reality. At first they only fell in droplets, but it was always droplets that portended the deluge, and it was indeed a deluge that followed, one of races against time and labyrinths and coiffeurs and hourglasses and puppets, goblin puppets, goblin puppets that talked. Grudge stood still as they absorbed it in its full brunt. One droplet at a time, they would address each and every one of their doubts.
“I did not, for I could not have known that. I did not know that, therefore I asked you.”
And the warrior had answered: he was not to blame. It stood thus to reason that there was no motive for him to appear before them. More to that, the warrior appeared to be in the same predicament as them: a wanderer within the forest, a victim of the forest. If the forest shifted around them to prevent their exit, it must have also traced a path for them to follow unwittingly: their crossing roads could not have possibly been coincidental. Still, that was not the same as saying that it was meaningful either. The conclusion: the reason or lack thereof for their meeting was ultimately both unknowable and irrelevant.
Grudge made to open their mouth, but acquiesced to the warrior’s request and stood still as they waited. The warrior then turned his back to them, pulled at their trousers and shoved down a rummaging hand, as if – though it might have actually been the case – somebody had designed them with the pockets only on the inside. Such was the jangle that followed that Grudge went through two distinct emotions during their observation: marvel, at first, at the sheer capacity of those trousers; confusion when the noise became noises and their intensity and variety too great for anything that any pair of pants that size could have possibly contained. Surely there must have been magic.
All kinds of items began to be strewn all over the path. The “Devil’s Triangle”, which interestingly did not carry any distinguishing features pertaining to its diabolical nature; “Pandora’s Lunchbox”, which suggested at least that the warrior’s name was not “Pandora” and was made with a material that they had never seen or felt or heard of before and that felt like neither wood nor metal; a “Double Dice Monsters set”, a small, frail-looking box where two “Dice Monsters” must have been sealed a long time ago; an empty chargeable magic wand; a book; a “Science Fair Project”, which was a cube of rotten flesh beyond all possibility of identification and gelatine; a colourful bag; a small piece of string. Before Grudge could try to make sense of the rest, a sharp, machine-like sound brought their attention back to the warrior. And once you brought your attention back to the warrior, it was difficult to get it anywhere else, as Grudge was beginning to notice much to their own personal fascination.
“A gee-pee-es?” Grudge craned their neck towards a small, egg-shaped metallic object. Somewhere in its centre was a glass-covered square hole not unlike what they had seen some time ago in Sonora. “You know many things that I do not, warrior-flamingo. You mentioned ‘movies’, and I do not know what that word refers to. You did not know me yet you had a plan over what you would do to me if you could exert control over the forest, and I could never even fathom your motivation for doing that. Though maybe you knew about me.”
Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Jan 9, 2024 14:15:44 GMT -6
A change.
A warrior, in red armour clad. Its face was of an unnatural white, with red strips that seemed to claw at it and endowed its expression with a beastly, almost leonine quality. It was also massively built, too big to be a human even if it had the general shape of one. Still, that did not exclude a fundamentally human nature either, for aberrations were as much of a part of the World as the norm from which they aberrated.
Human, then, perhaps, though that would have made it a giant at that, as well as a “he”, rather than an “it”, while the complexion indicated either albinism or undeath, or both, or perhaps it was nothing more than yet another layer of body paint. “Perhaps,” twice more, for now that the flame in the lamp burned no longer, all that was left was guesswork and a knife.
Nevertheless, that was a warrior. Some truths were as self-evident as one’s own essence, sometimes to such an extent that the self-evident truth overlapped with the essence itself. He existed, therefore he was a warrior.
And the warrior was talking to himself. At first he surrendered to somebody or something, and Grudge could only imagine it was them, for theirs alone was the power to bring death swift and painless, for there was nothing around the warrior except for themselves and the forest, and the forest must have been a killer most slow, if it even bothered to kill its prey at all: the resources it could provide to any wanderer were nearly as plentiful as the confusion it brought about.
But no, the warrior had not lost all hope: he was now exploring the art of invisibility, with an approach opposite that of those who strived to be as fast as lightning or even more – certainly too fast for most eyes to follow. No, theirs was the path of patience, of moving too slow for the brain to register him as anything but furniture, or possibly a lawn ornament. It was an approach that complemented mimicry and camouflage, themselves arts of deception, of making oneself perceived as something else and of blending with one’s own background. It was the art mastered by the butterfly and by the stick bug. It was remarkably unusual to see a creature that massive and colourful follow such tiny footsteps.
It was like watching a flamingo at a funeral. “Dinosaurs do exist on this planet. I am unsure if they can become invisible or not, though I believe it to be unnecessary for most of them. I do know that some of those from the place where I originated can indeed become invisible, if either they or something or somebody else wished them to be.”
Grudge watched them relax their stance. Where fists were once raised, and their knife tightened in their hand in response, now the warrior’s stance suggested nothing but contemplation. “However, I am no dinosaur, therefore I can see you. You fear my knife, therefore you are tangible. You are tangible, therefore I can stab you. Invisibility alone would never change that.”
Their grip tightened as, slowly, they drew closer. Slowly enough, in fact, that no dinosaur would have ever detected them. “Answer me then, warrior-flamingo: are you the cause of this? Are you the reason for which I can never seem to leave this forest?” Grudge felt the tears still running down their cheeks, yet their voice remained unbroken. “Why did you appear before me?”
Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Jan 5, 2024 16:56:24 GMT -6
It had been two weeks and four days.
The Tonberry raised their head to a tree branch they had already seen way more than once. Unchanged and unchanging, the forest envelopped them the same way a serpent would envelop a rabbit. It stayed immobile, yet they felt that it had been coiling and snaking around them, changing at every twist on the path and bending at every fork as they looked for a way out. A way out that had yet to appear.
And that should not have happened. It was within the natural order of the World for some woods to undergo transmogrification. The Tonberry knew that, for the World had imparted that knowledge on them upon their creation. It was also part of the Tonberry’s nature to find the way forward, always, because there was the Quest, and the Quest’s nature – a nature most imperative – was to be fulfilled. What importance could thus the teleology of a forest’s transmogrification hold before the teleology of the Quest, and therefore of their own teleology as well?
On the tree’s trunk, two small, yet deep nicks drew short parallel lines. The Tonberry recognised them too: it was them who made them, by stabbing the trunk twice. Just not that trunk. Or, depending on one’s point of view, not those nicks.
Even that had long ceased being an unfamiliar view. It did stay a rather puzzling one, but if the teleology of the transmogrification was of no consequence, then its etiology should not have been any different, if the only way that nature admitted for the Tonberry was indeed forward, and forward meant out.
Marking the trees was the first thing the Tonberry had attempted after understanding that simply choosing different paths did not work. But every time, the marks would become scrambled, switching places with others or disappearing altogether. Accepting that, the Tonberry abandoned the path altogether, and walked a straight line on dirt and mud and undergrowth, cutting down every tree that stood in their way, only to find themselves back once again where they started, or in some other location along the way that they could recognise – in that forest, it did not matter. In that forest, they were sometimes the same thing.
So they tried to burn a path open.
After all, one could not be misled by the forest if there was no longer any forest to mislead them. And with this fixed thought in mind, the Tonberry opened their lantern, and let the flames devour the bushes and the oaks and the poplars and the beeches, until nothing but ashes and scorched earth remained around them once the last ember fizzled out before their eyes. Then they would repeat the process, over and over again, for their flames were not so intense to make it to the end of the forest, and so they had to do one piece at a time, until they could no longer create so much as a spark…
…and in front of them were the two parallel lines on the tree at which they had now been staring for the better part of a quarter of an hour. The very first one they burned.
Perhaps, they thought, this was a puzzle, and the World meant them for the puzzle to only have one solution, and for the forest to offer no shortcuts. Perhaps, at that moment, their purpose was to solve that puzzle.
Perhaps.
It was not a word that the Tonberry used often, not with the Quest: their purpose, after all, had always been well-known to them. On these lands, suddenly they could no longer find it.
Perhaps (that word once again!) they had exhausted it. The Void held at bay once again, there was no longer anything for them left to do, not until the next crisis, and even then there had always been chosen ones for the World to puppeteer through the crystals. The Tonberry only came to exist because, in their time, there were none. All who fought beside them were chosen by their people or by themselves, and they were all part of the World, but they were not the crystals.
The Tonberry – though the others had been calling them “Grudge” instead – resumed their march forward, for there was nothing else they could do, and there was nothing else they would do. Until the World told them otherwise, there was no way for them but forward, and forward meant out.
Their Quest was complete, and their purpose fulfilled. So why, then, had the World not yet erased them from existence? Why, instead, would it abandon them in a forest, condemned to walk it for eternity?
What was the purpose, and was there a purpose?
As they walked, they became aware of their eyes swelling up with tears, and Grudge knew that they were tears and that Tonberries could cry like humans could and goblins could and dwarves could and even dogs could, and if Grudge was a Tonberry, then they could cry like one. What they did not quite expect was to find one day a reason to.
Still, they did not stop, for there was no way for them but forward, and forward meant out.
Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Aug 26, 2023 4:14:01 GMT -6
They gave the woman a small nod. It was indeed an intuitive name, descriptive rather than evocative, and it was clear even for one from another World entirely. Clear enough, in fact, that they decided not to make any further inquiries on that subject. Nothing the young woman herself could have said at that point would have been of any value. Focusing now on her own question instead, they tilted their head and stared in the distance at nothing in particular, as if in a trance, pondering in complete silence for several moments. “I do not know what you are talking about,” they said simply in the end. “To my knowledge, no Tonberry in my world has a star floating over its head. It is not in its nature.” Spells, they mused, sounded like the most plausible explanation, even if Grudge themselves did not know of any spell that could be the cause of that, though it was just as true that Grudge did not know of many spells to begin with. At the same time, it was also true that the nature of a Tonberry could change significantly between Worlds. Somewhere, somebody told to them, a Tonberry was something some people had turned into, rather than creatures that came into the world as nothing but Tonberries themselves much like the goblins and the dwarves and the humes did. Tonberries not as creatures like any others, but as the perversion of other creatures, brought about by a plague. Sometimes, Grudge wondered if that would have made Tonberries themselves an abomination in the collective eyes of the World, or if such an unusual plague was itself part of it, and its consequences with it. But that was not a question for them to answer, for that was not a problem of their World, or this one. “It is a simple choice,” they explained apropos of Tonberries’ proclivity towards silence. “Most Tonberries live among other Tonberries, and thus there is no need for them to learn languages other than their own, much less those of those they set out to stab.” In most other circumstances, Grudge would have said “kill,” but the woman standing before them came with no less than twenty-seven arguments against such a word choice. “Yes, that would be the Shiva I met too.” Although they never questioned her choice of garments. They had neither the time nor the reason to. “I do not know what this Materia you speak of is. Still, I do not expect to need to summon Shiva more than once.” And with that, they set off towards the Temple of Ice… …for all of a few yards, before the young woman stopped again to check in on them. “It is not necessary. I will reach you.” They looked down at her feet. “You are also not using your oblong board anymore. Your appearance and demeanour both resemble that of one of my travelling companions. With my former companion as a yardstick, I estimate that I should be able to keep up with your walking pace.”
Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Jul 6, 2023 16:03:03 GMT -6
Grudge considered the young woman’s words, rolling them about their mind like one would with a morsel of exotic food in their mouth, and concluded that they were the party to blame for the misunderstanding. Moreover, they realised, the woman never said it was twenty-seven times in a row, though that would have simply turned a testament of incredible – nay, unworldly resilience into one of mistifying thoughtlessness.
“I do not know of any place called as such. Nevertheless, there is always a reason if a creature can thrive in the most inhospitable places, no matter their place in the food chain.”
Be them self-evident or impenetrable, extremely simple or extremely complex, there were always principles according to which the World operated. A Tonberry was not so small as to be comparable to a mouse or a fly: at least in their World, very few monsters were so large that they would lead their lives simply ignoring its existence even if their paths did cross. A Tonberry thus had to be at the very least strong enough to defend itself. That might not have been the only possible way, of course. But it was the way that eventually came to be.
“Yes, I can. No, they do not, though that is not the same as saying they cannot,” they explained. Tonberries, Grudge had known since their creation, were indeed not very talkative creatures, but they did have a language – several of them, actually – though not all endeavoured to learn that of other creatures.
But before they could decide whether or not they were to explain more, the topic had already shifted. Grudge paused to collect their thoughts, listened to the young woman, and then paused some more in an attempt to decipher her words and her intentions, an effort that resulted in a painful sensation not unlike a cramp, but localised entirely within his skull. It took the best part of a minute for realisation to dawn on them that this was what the humes and the goblins called a headache.
“You talk of treasure hunting,” they said. “I did not say that this was my reason for venturing to the Temple of Ice. It is, in fact, not. What I seek is my purpose to be here, and my companions. For this, I intend to invoke the assistance of Shiva. If she is not to give me an answer, then I will have gained a vantage point.”
Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Jun 5, 2023 9:44:22 GMT -6
Quiet was the mountain now, and all that was audible was the soft and wet crunch of tiny feet sinking ever so slightly into the snow, Grudge’s own faint breath, and the wind’s distant whistle. But then not a minute turned before a voice, then a silhouette, then the noise of something sliding on the snow very quickly, and then an entire person came dashing in their general direction, lost their balance, half-zoomed and half-rolled past them, and finally – though the more correct descriptor might have been “inevitably” – cannoned into a snowbank by the treeline.
Against what they had always assumed to be their own nature, Grudge turned to see the aftermath. What they saw were a pair of human limbs attached to a flat, oblong board. They still twitched. Soon enough their owner emerged from the snow, only for a falling tree branch to hit them to hit her on the head, though even that did not seem to truly faze her. Overall, Grudge found that, despite the difference in species, her countenance greatly reminded them of Yunyuq. Down to the fact that, upon their first meeting, she had also prepared to engage them in battle.
And just like that time, Grudge did not immediately feel the urge to reach for their own knife. Although White Pest told them that cornered creatures are the most dangerous, this was only true for those that hunted them down. Unless, they remembered him adding, you were a truly daft son of a bitch.
“You are mistaken,” they said calmly. “We have never met before. Thus, it is impossible for me to have stabbed you twenty-seven times in the past. I believe you can find further confirmation of that in the fact that you are still alive.”
They turned the rest of their body to face her.
“I am heading to the Temple of Ice. If you are not here to stop me from doing so, then I do not have a reason to fight you, unless you attack me first. Nevertheless, I do have a query for you: what is it that you would like me to bring on?”
Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Apr 23, 2023 15:50:04 GMT -6
It was a rare occurrence for Grudge to notice hesitance in their own steps. Hesitance itself was not, by and large, a common emotion for them, though that was not to say that Grudge struggled to identify it. On the contrary, they found it remarkably easy, for hesitance stood polarly opposite to their very nature, and definition came thus through antithesis. Yet, this begged the question of whether or not something could embody its own antithesis without being at the same time the very idea of "everything" – which they believed they were not. Grudge's conclusion was then that they must not have been “the opposite of hesitance” per se, but something else for which hesitance was possible, yet so marginal that the distinction between the words “marginal” and “uncharacteristic” became so subtle that it became functionally non-existent.
And that left them with only the second, harder conundrum: was it a good idea to concede to part ways with Yunyuq in Sonora, after they spent so much time looking for any of their previous comrades-in-arms? She had argued that while their meeting again was fortuitous, there was nowhere for the two of them to go next, and if there was, neither had any way to know exactly where and why, though she had at least agreed with them that there must have been a why to find somewhere (somehow) or there would be no real explanation for the two of them to have been tossed into the same world at similar times, and if the two of them were there, then that most likely meant that the other two were out there somewhere, or they were going to appear at some time in the near future. However, once again...
...they had no way of knowing where or when. So, Yunyuq made the choice to stay in Sonora for a while longer, and agreed to meet Grudge within half a year from now. Any longer than that without anything happening in-between, she had said, would have meant that their presence there might have been a coincidence after all, for their original mission had already been completed, and there might have been other people from their world out there, too, people who did not participate in their quest at all, people they had never met... As unlikely as it was.
Grudge stepped aside to let the yeti's corpe roll down the ridge and away into the forest they had just walked through. For its size, it barely made a sound even as it crashed into a fir. They cleaned their knife into some snow by their feet, and resumed walking as more snow fell from the branches and buried the creature from its head to its torso. It was the second one of that morning. Grudge did hear from Yunyuq that some areas of those mountains were infested with monsters. They wondered for a moment if their presence alone boosted their numbers by one, and squinted to the horizon. On the other end of the crest was a single dark grey blot in a world of pure white: their destination.
Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Dec 12, 2022 16:51:45 GMT -6
“Mindless barbarism.” Grudge weighed those words on the tip of their tongue, pulled them into their mouth, tasted them. Yet, after a while, and not unusually, they simply felt the syllables melt away without leaving so much as a smack. Although Grudge could appreciate the value judgement behind that word choice, they found that it still could not rouse so much as an ‘I care’ within them. Perhaps it was truly a biological difference. Perhaps it was a mere difference in definitions – or perceptions, for there was the slightest of differences between calling a behaviour mindless barbarism and calling a creature devoid of self-awareness. All that was certain to differ was, as the man said, how they came to be. In fact, “I have never heard of such creatures where I come from,” they said, only to consider their own statement for a moment, and amend it to: “At the very least, I have never heard of the name Lalafell being used for any creature that I know of.”
And that was it, as far as they were concerned. Whatever Tonberries were in other lands, it was not all that important. Whatever their stories were, whatever their actions, whatever their importance, none of that was ever going to be likely to have an influence on their mission there, whatever that mission was. Their experience would never touch Grudge's, and vice versa.
“Void is all that is Not. A Non-Force that erases All. What is Not should have neither agency nor power, precisely because it is Not. Yet, there is always somebody who would attempt to pervert that very logic, with consequences most severe. Sometimes, it is the Void itself that tries to Be. Except that it never Is, and all such attempts would always end in more things that already Are Be no longer,” they said calmly. “I do not know if this is a satisfactory answer.”
Post by The Nameless Tonberry on Oct 14, 2022 16:29:38 GMT -6
“So I have heard. At the same time, I have lived for entirely too little to develop a sense of what is mundane and what is not.” And even then, there was scarcely a reason to draw a distinction the mundane and the fantastic, when the distinction was a line arbitrarily drawn by one's perceptions, and all that one truly needed was to understand what was meant to Be and what was not. “What I know is that most things just Are, and are meant to Be.”
What Grudge did not understand anymore was whether or not they themselves were still meant to Be. Yet, that was a question they could never answer without first clarifying why they still Were – and within that why was also the how. Chance, maybe, was indeed the answer. Chance needed no why per se, if one were to believe in Chance to begin with, it still called for a how, or at the very least a what, neither of which Grudge had at the moment. “My experience has always been that it's the World itself that pulls the strings of the World.” They paused to ponder their own statement, as if they found something missing in their own reasoning. Eventually, in fact, they added: “But I should not think it pulls all of them. The Void pulls strings too. And some creatures pull their own strings, or at least some of them. But not I, which is why I do not know how I am here.”
Grudge paused to look out of the window. Outside, the yellow light of a lamppost flickered in the darkness. Melted snow slid down the glass in small droplets. From their position, that was all they could see. “You make a mistake. I have interest, some of which vested, in the workings of this world, and of the laws that govern connections between worlds.” Still, it did not seem to them that the man knew much more than he had just said, and even what he had indeed said was but a collection of considerations and pieces of personal experience. “You have described their nature, but you did not say why you chose not to talk to them. Even in the World where I was born, Tonberries are associated with Rancor. I, myself, am no exception. Yet, you force me to guess. Are Tonberries in your world beasts without reason or self-awareness, beasts that you have never had an opportunity or a reason to talk to, or beasts that you fear?”
And to the last question, Grudge simply shook their head.
