[Eren nods. It may shock the audience, but they continue eating stew. Once they both appear to be done with their meal, Eren merely stands, waiting to be shown outside.]
What a deja stew vu this is. He leads Eren out and around the back of the castle, exactly the same path he and Akechi walked a few nights ago, to a little clearing in the yard partially obscured by the hill that Vash likes to stargaze from. It's difficult to tell where one property ends and another begins with these castles, but for all intents and purposes, this is still in their yard, and relatively secluded.
Maruki folds his arms loosely over his chest and grins at Eren. ]
[Eren's not sure that it will surprise him, given everything he knows, but he's not out to impress, just to share; that, and he's found that he...missed these transformations more than he realized.
[Eren walks several yards away from Maruki. The size and heat of the transformation could very well kill him if Eren does it too close.]
Stay back there until it's done. [He raises his voice just barely enough to be heard. As for Maruki's view, he'll have no problem.
[Eren lifts his hand to his mouth and sharply bites down. It's a vicious, violent action that tears flesh, causes blood to spurt out in different directions. For a moment, nothing happens; then, crackles of electric energy, sizzling and popping all over his body.
[The transformation is grotesque; flesh, bone, and muscle, forming up around and consuming Eren. It only takes seconds. The grizzly tangle of sinew and skin shapes itself into a 5-meter-tall beast with a roar that makes the leaves in the trees quiver, some falling to the ground, birds flying off from the branches and far away. Steam, oppressively hot, pours from Eren, rising high into the sky, clouding the air all around them.
[He can't speak, but his eyes, monstrous as they are, are still the same shade of Eren green. He sets them on Maruki, watching.]
Maruki saw a flash of this, just briefly, in dreams. Seeing it in reality–
He cranes his neck back to look up and meet Eren's eyes in this new form, shielding his own eyes against the sun. He doesn't look frightened, or panicked, or anything of the sort– mostly just fascinated. He knows Eren well enough to not feel fear for his life. He can afford to just watch, observe. It's grotesque... but he'd be lying heavily to himself if he didn't find it interesting as well.
He raises his voice a bit to be sure Eren can hear him all the way up there. ]
And you weren't able to simply stomp the Green Knight down into the ground?
[With one nightmarish finger, roughly the size of a four-door sedan, Eren veeeeery lightly - feather-lightly - touches the top of Maruki's head.
[Sit down, idiot, or you're going to fall as soon as he stands back up.
[Hopefully, Maruki gets the message; either way, Eren will protectively curl his fingers up into a little Takuto Maruki reservoir. He slowly stands up, and Maruki is higher than the trees.]
[ He gets the message, okay! He gets it! He's sitting! What the fuck is going on!!!
Even for as slow as Eren's clearly trying to go, it's still being lifted five meters off the ground. Like a plane taking off, there's no denying how anathema it is to the human condition to suddenly be up in the air.
Maruki laughs, breathless, peeking out over the treeline, over Somnius, and it's–
Hiking with Venat up the cliffside, being told that she'd like to show him the world from on high one day, even higher than this – that such a view would undoubtedly alter his perspective on human life, would aid in his journey, would give him the perspective of the woods that he's been missing for so long in a life spent in the trees.
She wasn't wrong. This is like being at the top of the cliff with her, getting a taste of that ability to see a place in all its splendor of a bird's eye view. It takes his breath away now just as it did then. He has little affection for Somnius on his best days and almost none for it at the moment, but even then, there's no denying the beauty of it from up so high.
He looks to Eren again – much closer now, yikes! – and he's grinning, bright and wide, that exhaustion dropped away for the moment. ]
You must usually be taller than this, right?
[ Another thing he knows because of Venat. Vaeros has a way of sizing things down to suit his needs. And from the stories Eren has told, he's sure that five meters is nothing. ]
[Ha. Well. Yes, he was typically quite a bit taller than this at an average of 15-meters, but when you take into account The Founding Titan, numbers start to become meaningless. For the sake of brevity, he nods.
[They won't really be able to continue talking, this way. Part of Eren doesn't mind that - it's easier when he can't, he thinks - but this was, after all, only a demonstration (honestly, it's a lot of energy to waste on something so frivolous, but since things do appear to be more peaceful now...).
[Aside from all that, the worst part hasn't even come yet.
[Eren lets Maruki enjoy the view for a few more minutes before grunting a warning and then setting him gently back down on the ground. After that, the show has one final act. With another oppressive burst of steam, the Attack Titan slumps to the ground, head and limbs hung, limp. There's a fleshy, sickening sound as the nape of the neck splits open, the top half of Eren's body (still fully clothed in the same outfit, for the record) bursting out with a little gasp. Red strips of muscle cling to his face, arms, and legs. He rips his hands out first, using them to tear the rest of the muscle away. With that, he climbs out of the titan and slides off of it. Approaching Maruki again, the carcass rapidly decays, flesh rotting, falling, steaming, then disappearing. It's a slow process. The corpse will probably be here for at least 10 minutes before it completely disappears.]
That's basically it. [Deep red grooves paint strips under Eren's eyes, branching down over his cheeks and behind his ears.] My body can heal itself, too, even in this form. Any injury you can think of, pretty much.
Oh, so gross. More than ever, Maruki appreciates the simplicity of summoning and dispelling a persona, even one as unsubtle as his. He watches the horror show, mouth slightly agape in the way it wasn't for the Titan's appearance. What a visceral, bloody thing, made even worse once the thing begins to decompose.
Maruki tears his eyes away from it to look at Eren, brows knitting together in sympathetic concern at the marks beneath his eyes. ]
Do those hurt...?
[ Yes, he heard what Eren said about healing. He still has to ask. ]
[ Maruki recognizes that given how much time Eren and Akechi spend together, there is a nonzero chance that he's seen Robin Hood.
Even if he has, the connection between the two beyond Akechi and Maruki's shared home may not be obvious at all, because there is nothing similar about the ways they appear.
No blue flames coiling around his legs, licking his face. No dramatic shout of a name. Just his left hand briefly extended before him, his voice quiet and calm, almost fond. ]
Azathoth.
[ The air around them wavers, at first colorlessly like a hot day, then with streaks of green, blue, purple, until an aurora forms around Maruki. It lingers faintly even when Azathoth appears at his side, towering over him. Not quite as tall as the Titan was, but when out in the open air like this, it's almost double Maruki's height.
The mass of tentacles stay docile beneath where it hovers off the ground, the three largest swaying toward Maruki at first – and then, as if sensing that there is nothing that needs to be done for him at the moment, their clawed hands back off.
In the high afternoon sun, Azathoth's body is almost blindingly brilliant and the pulsing glow of its tentacles is subdued, and it stares down at Eren with its neon eyes. There's nothing threatening about its stance, as it clearly knows it isn't in battle and in the presence of a friend at that, but it cuts an imposing figure regardless.
Maruki glances up at it, smiles, presses a hand to the warm golden chassis. ]
I suppose I don't have to ask you to keep this a secret.
Edited (when i get my azathoth pronouns wrong) 2024-06-27 05:59 (UTC)
[It's like nothing Eren has ever seen, of course. He's seen a lot of things since coming here, so he doesn't react with outright fear or shock, but his eyes do, indeed, go wide, and he stares, mouth agape, head tilting just slightly to the side.
[ What or who really is a great question. The figure is nothing like the spectral form of Robin Hood, and Maruki feels a much more personal connection to it than Akechi does. It feels more like a who than a what more often than not. ]
Thank you, I appreciate it. And, ah– Azathoth is its name. I know it's a bit of a mouthful...
[ He drops the hand resting on Azathoth's body to gesture vaguely as he speaks. It's fun, because he's still learning what the hell a persona is himself. Explaining it to someone else is probably good practice. ]
It's sort of like... A literal representation of my spirit. Or my will power, rather. I'm still very new to it – it only manifested physically to me right before I arrived here, and I just regained the ability right before– you know, before everything happened.
[ With one last look over at Azathoth, Maruki lifts his hand again, and it dissipates until nothing is left but that aurora – and then, nothing at all.
The Titan's carcass is still decaying behind Eren.
See? Things are much neater this way.
Maruki looks at Eren again and smiles bashfully, shrugs. ]
I didn't want to keep up the ruse around you any longer. You deserved to know the truth.
[It's just one or two seconds before Maruki recalls Azathoth that Eren reaches a hand toward it. When the aurora appears again, Eren upturns his palm like he might catch it as it falls, but...it never does.
Yes. Please keep that a secret as well. Although Night Sky has already insinuated it on the network, but she didn't know at the time that I wanted to stay out of it.
[ Hands in his pockets now, he looks at Eren with an expression that's plainly open and honest. ]
I value your friendship, Eren. I want you to know these things about me that few do.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
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I might. Or I might just tell you about it instead. It depends on what you end up showing me.
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What a deja
stewvu this is. He leads Eren out and around the back of the castle, exactly the same path he and Akechi walked a few nights ago, to a little clearing in the yard partially obscured by the hill that Vash likes to stargaze from. It's difficult to tell where one property ends and another begins with these castles, but for all intents and purposes, this is still in their yard, and relatively secluded.Maruki folds his arms loosely over his chest and grins at Eren. ]
Surprise me.
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[Eren walks several yards away from Maruki. The size and heat of the transformation could very well kill him if Eren does it too close.]
Stay back there until it's done. [He raises his voice just barely enough to be heard. As for Maruki's view, he'll have no problem.
[Eren lifts his hand to his mouth and sharply bites down. It's a vicious, violent action that tears flesh, causes blood to spurt out in different directions. For a moment, nothing happens; then, crackles of electric energy, sizzling and popping all over his body.
[The transformation is grotesque; flesh, bone, and muscle, forming up around and consuming Eren. It only takes seconds. The grizzly tangle of sinew and skin shapes itself into a 5-meter-tall beast with a roar that makes the leaves in the trees quiver, some falling to the ground, birds flying off from the branches and far away. Steam, oppressively hot, pours from Eren, rising high into the sky, clouding the air all around them.
[He can't speak, but his eyes, monstrous as they are, are still the same shade of Eren green. He sets them on Maruki, watching.]
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Maruki saw a flash of this, just briefly, in dreams. Seeing it in reality–
He cranes his neck back to look up and meet Eren's eyes in this new form, shielding his own eyes against the sun. He doesn't look frightened, or panicked, or anything of the sort– mostly just fascinated. He knows Eren well enough to not feel fear for his life. He can afford to just watch, observe. It's grotesque... but he'd be lying heavily to himself if he didn't find it interesting as well.
He raises his voice a bit to be sure Eren can hear him all the way up there. ]
And you weren't able to simply stomp the Green Knight down into the ground?
I'm never a double icon bitch but what can you do
[Eren lays down a hand. He'll be able to hear him easier up close.]
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[ –at the fuck?? ]
Are you going to pick me up?
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Ah. Okay. Be gentle, please.
[ And then, sure, he fucking guesses he will step? up?? into Eren's palm??? ]
This is so weird...
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[Sit down, idiot, or you're going to fall as soon as he stands back up.
[Hopefully, Maruki gets the message; either way, Eren will protectively curl his fingers up into a little Takuto Maruki reservoir. He slowly stands up, and Maruki is higher than the trees.]
no subject
Even for as slow as Eren's clearly trying to go, it's still being lifted five meters off the ground. Like a plane taking off, there's no denying how anathema it is to the human condition to suddenly be up in the air.
Maruki laughs, breathless, peeking out over the treeline, over Somnius, and it's–
Hiking with Venat up the cliffside, being told that she'd like to show him the world from on high one day, even higher than this – that such a view would undoubtedly alter his perspective on human life, would aid in his journey, would give him the perspective of the woods that he's been missing for so long in a life spent in the trees.
She wasn't wrong. This is like being at the top of the cliff with her, getting a taste of that ability to see a place in all its splendor of a bird's eye view. It takes his breath away now just as it did then. He has little affection for Somnius on his best days and almost none for it at the moment, but even then, there's no denying the beauty of it from up so high.
He looks to Eren again – much closer now, yikes! – and he's grinning, bright and wide, that exhaustion dropped away for the moment. ]
You must usually be taller than this, right?
[ Another thing he knows because of Venat. Vaeros has a way of sizing things down to suit his needs. And from the stories Eren has told, he's sure that five meters is nothing. ]
rare baby icon for u again
[They won't really be able to continue talking, this way. Part of Eren doesn't mind that - it's easier when he can't, he thinks - but this was, after all, only a demonstration (honestly, it's a lot of energy to waste on something so frivolous, but since things do appear to be more peaceful now...).
[Aside from all that, the worst part hasn't even come yet.
[Eren lets Maruki enjoy the view for a few more minutes before grunting a warning and then setting him gently back down on the ground. After that, the show has one final act. With another oppressive burst of steam, the Attack Titan slumps to the ground, head and limbs hung, limp. There's a fleshy, sickening sound as the nape of the neck splits open, the top half of Eren's body (still fully clothed in the same outfit, for the record) bursting out with a little gasp. Red strips of muscle cling to his face, arms, and legs. He rips his hands out first, using them to tear the rest of the muscle away. With that, he climbs out of the titan and slides off of it. Approaching Maruki again, the carcass rapidly decays, flesh rotting, falling, steaming, then disappearing. It's a slow process. The corpse will probably be here for at least 10 minutes before it completely disappears.]
That's basically it. [Deep red grooves paint strips under Eren's eyes, branching down over his cheeks and behind his ears.] My body can heal itself, too, even in this form. Any injury you can think of, pretty much.
I'M SO BLESSED BABYREN
Oh, so gross. More than ever, Maruki appreciates the simplicity of summoning and dispelling a persona, even one as unsubtle as his. He watches the horror show, mouth slightly agape in the way it wasn't for the Titan's appearance. What a visceral, bloody thing, made even worse once the thing begins to decompose.
Maruki tears his eyes away from it to look at Eren, brows knitting together in sympathetic concern at the marks beneath his eyes. ]
Do those hurt...?
[ Yes, he heard what Eren said about healing. He still has to ask. ]
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They're kind of sore, I guess. I don't really notice much.
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Well, that's good.
[ His question from before still stands. ]
So even with that, you weren't able to defeat the Green Knight, huh... Were you alone in that fight?
[ You think Akechi has told him shit? lmao of course not ]
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I'd rather not talk about that.
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That's okay, I was just curious.
[ He tips his head, evaluates Eren carefully before smiling again. ]
Yeah, alright. Do you want to see what I was going to show you?
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[Eren nods.] Alright. Show me.
can't believe both erens have been subjected to this recently
Even if he has, the connection between the two beyond Akechi and Maruki's shared home may not be obvious at all, because there is nothing similar about the ways they appear.
No blue flames coiling around his legs, licking his face. No dramatic shout of a name. Just his left hand briefly extended before him, his voice quiet and calm, almost fond. ]
Azathoth.
[ The air around them wavers, at first colorlessly like a hot day, then with streaks of green, blue, purple, until an aurora forms around Maruki. It lingers faintly even when Azathoth appears at his side, towering over him. Not quite as tall as the Titan was, but when out in the open air like this, it's almost double Maruki's height.
The mass of tentacles stay docile beneath where it hovers off the ground, the three largest swaying toward Maruki at first – and then, as if sensing that there is nothing that needs to be done for him at the moment, their clawed hands back off.
In the high afternoon sun, Azathoth's body is almost blindingly brilliant and the pulsing glow of its tentacles is subdued, and it stares down at Eren with its neon eyes. There's nothing threatening about its stance, as it clearly knows it isn't in battle and in the presence of a friend at that, but it cuts an imposing figure regardless.
Maruki glances up at it, smiles, presses a hand to the warm golden chassis. ]
I suppose I don't have to ask you to keep this a secret.
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[It's nothing like a titan...]
What...
Or...who?
[Oh--]
No, I. I won't tell.
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Thank you, I appreciate it. And, ah– Azathoth is its name. I know it's a bit of a mouthful...
[ He drops the hand resting on Azathoth's body to gesture vaguely as he speaks. It's fun, because he's still learning what the hell a persona is himself. Explaining it to someone else is probably good practice. ]
It's sort of like... A literal representation of my spirit. Or my will power, rather. I'm still very new to it – it only manifested physically to me right before I arrived here, and I just regained the ability right before– you know, before everything happened.
[ With one last look over at Azathoth, Maruki lifts his hand again, and it dissipates until nothing is left but that aurora – and then, nothing at all.
The Titan's carcass is still decaying behind Eren.
See? Things are much neater this way.
Maruki looks at Eren again and smiles bashfully, shrugs. ]
I didn't want to keep up the ruse around you any longer. You deserved to know the truth.
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[He looks to Maruki.]
What can it do?
Can it keep you safe?
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Sorry– we're secluded, but not entirely safe. I worry about others seeing it.
[ And as for that question... Well. ]
Yes, it can battle. Quite well, as it turns out. It can heal me, or others... I'm sure there's more that it can do. I'm still learning.
[ ..................................... : ) ]
It does keep me safe. I would have easily died against the Green Knight if Azathoth hadn't been so hellbent on protecting me.
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[ Hands in his pockets now, he looks at Eren with an expression that's plainly open and honest. ]
I value your friendship, Eren. I want you to know these things about me that few do.
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hehe we can wrap here or on yr reply.... i'm sob....... THEM...............