~ Tнє Pαяα∂σχ Hσυѕє ~ now back to regularly scheduled chaos

Juuzou | Fireworks Room | <Raintalon>

Juuzou was the very last person to be taken aback by a question like that. He didn’t understand his own emotions, either. Or…he hadn’t. He had a better grasp on them now, but it had taken a lot of time and support, and even now, he struggled sometimes. He wondered, briefly, whether Asami had a similar past to himself. He so rarely thought of it, nowadays, but the memories didn’t ever go away,
“Can you feel pain?” He asked her, tone genuine. “Physical pain?”

Juuzou | Fireworks Room | <Raintalon>

Juuzou nodded a little, following along as she explained, in somewhat confusing terms, how she worked. He was curious about that, but he didn’t launch into an interrogation just yet…he hoped to be able to, at some point, but her questions were more interesting for the time being.
He considered. Did she mean the physical pain, or the common reaction to it?
“Pain and I don’t get along very well,” he told her after a moment. “I’m like you. But it’s not a flaw. It helps make sure humans don’t die when they get hurt.”

Juuzou | Fireworks Room | <Raintalon>

Juuzou didn’t move as her eyestalk came closer, didn’t flinch, because she wasn’t going to hurt him. He didn’t fear her. He didn’t fear much, anymore. But she wasn’t a monster.
She wasn’t human. She wasn’t a ghoul. She wasn’t a monster.
He hesitated, the word sinking deep into his chest. Irregularity. Different. Disturbed. Problem. Freak. Monster.
Irregularity. Irregularity. Irregularity.
“Yes,” he agreed finally, his usually upbeat voice lower, more serious than it probably ever had been in the House before. “I am also an irregularity. Just like you.”

Juuzou | Fireworks Room | <Raintalon>

Juuzou watched as Asami withdrew, his eyes wide with interest as she reverted back into a humanoid shape. That didn’t look particularly possible to him, but what did he know?
He hesitated, blinking at the question. “I don’t know that human,” he told her after a moment, shaking his head. “But I’m not afraid of you.”

Zuko appeared, fire burning against his fist as he aimed at an opponent who was no longer there. Fortunately, he had learned the hard way that there was a right way and a wrong way to react to blinking in while training. The wrong way had a tendency to light the whole place on fire, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. The fire went out as though it had never been there, and Zuko looked around as though expecting to see someone familiar. There was only one person, though, and Zuko had definitely never seen him before.
Suddenly, Zuko wished he hadn’t decided to train shirtless. It wasn’t the best impression to make on someone he had never seen before, but there was nothing he could do about it now. It wasn’t his fault that it was hot near the Fire Nation… if they had been searching near either of the Water Tribes it wouldn’t have been an issue, but… he frowned, crossing his arms over his chest as though to mimic propriety.
“Hi,” he said, voice a bit rougher than he meant it to be. The assumption he made was that most people who blinked in knew what the House was. He had only ever had to explain it a handful of times, so it was easier to just assume that anyone there already had their bearings. Besides, it wasn’t as though he could read Sal’s expression. The prosthetic was cool, though he didn’t say that. He figured it was probably better to let the stranger reply first.

While Zuko had explained the House to newbies before, he was well aware that he wasn’t the best one to do it. He tended to be a little bit too blunt and a little bit too terse, and others didn’t tend to like that. He didn’t know how to explain the Paradox House without being honest of what could be inside its doors, though, so he shifted a little bit awkwardly as he regarded the newbie, trying to formulate the right words.
“First time?” he asked after a moment, though that was obvious from the way the boy was looking at him. Nobody would be looking at him like that if they had been here before… they would understand that people just appeared and disappeared. That was how it worked.
“This is the Paradox House,” he added, crossing his arms and casting a glance around the room as though seeing it for the first time. “This is the Living Room. This is the safest room in the whole place… nothing can get you here unless it’s someone else who appears here. Another blinker – that’s what we’re all called. Blinkers, ‘cause we appear here in the blink of an eye. We go back to our worlds just as quickly, so don’t worry about being missing or anything.”

That wasn’t the question Zuko had been expecting. Usually people seemed to latch onto the idea of other worlds, but perhaps that was commonplace where Sal was from. He certainly didn’t look like anyone Zuko had ever met, so maybe he was from someplace equally as unfathomable as the strange face covering he wore. Zuko was tempted to ask, but that felt like giving Sal an invitation to ask Zuko about his scar, and that was the last thing he wanted to try to explain to a stranger. That was the last thing he wanted to explain to anyone, even if he had known them for a while. It was a source of shame. It was the source of his dishonor, a constant reminder of everything he had failed to be. A reminder that he had failed. That he wasn’t enough. He pushed the thought away, gaze narrowing as he looked over at Sal.
“Arlo, probably. I don’t know. She’s the first person who ever blinked, as far as anyone knows.”

Logically, Zuko knew the House likely wasn’t in the Spirit World, but… it made more sense than anything else. If the House was a part of the Spirit World, then there was nothing in what people knew of the House that conflicted with Zuko knew of the Spirit World. But most people seemed to think that the Spirit World was only for dead people, so Zuko had learned fairly quickly not to tell other people his theory. He didn’t want to have to explain how spirits worked in his world, especially since he didn’t really know how it worked himself. He just believed what Iroh told him. He’d needed to get more comfortable with the idea of the Spirit Realm to find the Avatar, but so far it had been a dead end.
“I don’t think there’s really a reason,” Zuko replied after a moment, sounding rather uncertain. “At least… if there is, nobody I’ve ever met knows what it is. But yeah, I’m a blinker. Anyone you meet in the living room is probably a blinker, but that’s… not a guarantee if you go into any rooms. Which you shouldn’t do alone, because a lot of them are pretty dangerous.”

Now they were getting into the more complicated questions. The questions that Zuko had expected. He breathed out, crossing his arms as he regarded Sal, trying to formulate answers that would be at least partially satisfactory.
“This place is… sort of alive.” Another reason Zuko couldn’t help thinking that it had to do with the Spirit Realm. It didn’t seem unlikely that the House was a spirit itself, just… not the sort that wanted to help the Avatar. At the very least, Zuko had never seen the Avatar here. He had never seen any signs of the Avatar here. It was frustrating, but he had come to admit at some point that he wasn’t blinked in because the spirits wanted to help him. He didn’t know why he kept blinking, but more often than not it was a nice reprieve.
“Anyway, it can create people who seem like people but who aren’t from any world at all, so they’re not really alive in the traditional sense. Those are the sorts of people you run into in rooms a lot. And… and by dangerous I mean… people have died dangerous. But there are some that are fun, so it’s a bit of a risk you just have to take.

Asami | Fireworks room | ®Hawkpath® |

"How do you tell if a human is lying?"  Asami's head split again a little as she said this - half human, half eyesockets and muscle and bone.  "Orihara-human said that if a humans says they do not fear me, they are lying.  So, are you lying?"

Asami | Fireworks room | ®Hawkpath® |

Asami moved a tendril to her chin, tapping it in an imitation of what she'd seen her caretakers do when they were deep in thought about something.

She did not know if he seemed afraid. She thought he didn't, because when humans were afraid, they tended to scream, or run. Or, their heart rate went up. And Juuzou's heart rate had remained steady at a healthy 67 beats per minute, which did not seem indicative of psychological distress.

"I do not know why he would lie to me," she said at last, still staring at Juuzou with one eye human, one not so much. "Humans must have a motivation to lie. Most humans lie because they are afraid, so it would make more sense for you to be lying, if he said humans are afraid of me. And I know humans are afraid, because Grandmother said 'if you go out looking like that, you will frighten people'. That is why I am not allowed to go outside unless I am correctly arranged."

Asami | Fireworks room | ®Hawkpath® |

He was watching her, she noted. Quite intently. Was he attempting to learn about her the same way she was attempting to learn about him? The thought occurred to her that humans might be curious about her kind as well, similar to how she was to theirs.

"I see," she said at last, turning back to watch the fireworks, though Juuzou was still in her line of sight. It did not occur to her that he didn't know that. "Perhaps Orihara-human's observation was incomplete? Commonly, it is posited that my kind always kills humans. However, due to my injury, I have no desire to hunt or kill. And you do not seem to be afraid."

She paused, thinking this over.

"I have observed that like things congregate to one another," she said, twisting two of her tendrils together as she spoke to illustrate what she was saying. "Crows seek out other crows. Mice seek out other mice. Humans seek out other humans. Social bonds are most commonly developed among things that are the same. I have considered....that irregularities may have the potential to be similar."

Something similar to rage burned through Hades, though it burned much hotter. His eyes narrowed as he regarded Kelsier, only removing his gaze from him for a second to look at Nico. He had chosen the wrong side. He had made the wrong decision. To think he had once praised his son for loyalty. When he wasn’t on the verge of a fight, there would be punishment. From the way Nico was looking at him, it was obvious that the boy could tell. Hades should have felt satisfied at that, but he only felt anger, flooding through him as though it ran in his veins instead of golden ichor. If Nico had just been loyal, there would be no need to be afraid. Unless, of course, the man in front of Hades decided to punish Nico instead. Annoyance flickered through Hades as he turned his full attention back to Hades.
“You’re bluffing,” he said, voice deadpan as he stared at him. “I don’t care how many lives you’ve taken. You will be judged in a world I have no bearing on. I don’t care if you believe you had a noble reason to end those lives. You say I am not innocent, but I do not take lives. I manage them. I watch over them, I make sure the system is in order. It is not my business to take lives. It is my job to weigh them and do with souls as they deserve.” He would, of course, have killed Sam, but in his eyes, Sam wasn’t a human being. He didn’t have a soul. He had… whatever it was monsters had that made them reform after they died. They couldn’t be killed permanently, and they couldn’t be managed as easily as the rest of the Underworld. Hades had no say in which monsters came back and which got stuck in Tartarus. If the legends were to be believed, all monsters eventually reemerged. It just took time, sometimes. With a monster as inexperienced as Sam, Hades believed it would take a good long while. He risked a glance at Nico, wondering how upset the boy would be if he was truly friends with this monster. Would he be angry to have Sam sent to Tartarus? The thought didn’t matter.
“I believe myself to be superior because of who I am and what I do. Eventually, all souls bow to me. You may not, as you’re from a different world, but I believe there will be a god you are forced to bow to eventually. I would prefer to make it be now.” His eyes narrowed and the temperature of the room dropped drastically. He spread his aura out further, imposing himself on every corner of the room. There was nowhere to escape the freezing cold anger. Nowhere that was safe from the invasive feeling of death.
“Survivor of Hathsin,” Hades spat out, looking Kelsier over once, up and down. “That title may have bearing where you’re from, but it means nothing to me. Titles are stripped with death. You will be just the same as everyone else when you die. And you will die.”
It was a good point that he didn’t know where he was, but Hades did his best not to let it show on his face. It didn’t matter. He would still outlive this impudent mortal man.
And then the room returned to room temperature. It was no longer filled with anger and death, except the small amount leaking from Nico. Hades’ eyes narrowed as he tried to get the cold to return. As he tried to make the ground shake. As he tried to pull weapons from the stone beneath their feet… no.
“Do you wish for the weight of a world on your shoulders?” Hades hissed, eyes narrowed. “Be my guest. Take charge of my Underworld. You won’t last even forty-five minutes.”

Nico didn’t want to see this fight. He didn’t want to see what Kelsier would do with Hades’ powers. He didn’t want to see what sort of damage Hades might cause if he managed to wrench them back from Kelsier. Gods were stronger than demigods, after all… it was possible that Kelsier wouldn’t be able to hold Hades at bay. It was possible that this was about to become a bloodbath, and that was the last thing Nico wanted. He needed to get Sam out of here.
“We’re leaving,” he told Sam after a long moment, swallowing some of his uncertainty and bitterness. He hadn’t wanted to make a choice, but the choice was clear to him. Hades had tried to care, but only after Nico had proven that he was worth caring for. Kelsier cared no matter what Nico did. Kelsier cared regardless of the things he could do right, not because of them. Between the two of them, Kelsier was the better father. He had hurt Nico once, but it had been a misunderstanding. It had been born of a disagreement caused by the House, so Nico couldn’t hold it against Kelsier. Hades was still his father, though. He couldn’t just forget that. He couldn’t just replace him, even if Kelsier was his dad. Even if he would choose Kelsier every time.
“Do you see anything in the darkness?” Nico asked, squeezing Sam’s hand and pressing back towards the shattered glass he and Kelsier had been locked behind. If there was a way out, it seemed likely it would be there, not out in the open.

Touka | Living room | mintedstar/fur |

Touka blinked into the House and stopped dead in the middle of whatever she had been doing, realizing immediately that her surroundings had changed from the table she'd been eating at to the familiar dim lighting and musty carpet she'd grown so familiar with over the years.

She let out a short breath and closed her eyes, letting the peace of it sink in a little while it was still empty. She frowned, thinking, and almost right away, the number clicked into place. Two months since her last blink...it had felt like longer, though.