Revivivivivivification!
Mature themes ahead, if you haven't noticed, the rating's changed from PG 13+ to PG 15+. OMG, those 2 years make so much difference lolololol. It's actually quite ironic really, seeing as I'm younger than 15 o_o
Anyways, I've abbreviated some swear words (so those are intentional, or they could just be Internet-speakers, whatever catches your drift.
So here it is, there probably isn't much relevance to Pokemon here, but whatever...
The Barbarians 蛮族
Hueteon I: Original
Alas the dawn breaks!
Alas the midnight ends!
Alas the false idol emerges!
Alas the land rends!
Alas the dawn crashes!
Alas the midnight lights!
Alas the false idol reclaims!
Alas the land writhes!
Alas the dawn spreads!
Alas the midnight fires!
Alas the false idol razes!
Alas the land spires!
Alas, the dawn molten,
Alas, the midnight agitated,
Alas, the false idol crowned,
Alas, the land regimented.
Alas, the dawn true rises;
Alas, the midnight rests.
Alas, the false idol reveals,
Alas, the land of Evil’s Nest.
Alas, the dawn sees,
Alas, the midnight distorted,
Alas, the false idol smirks,
Alas, the land, dead and thwarted.
Hallelujah.
by Yonowaru in Chaos
Hueteon II: Report
Let thy trumpets of Amduscias fill the sky with false praise,
Let thy wings of Abaddon beat with destruction and pestilence,
Let thy sword of Andras declare a war to end all wars,
Let thy ceremony of Adramalech greet thou recklessness.
For the beginning ever since,
Never through to end,
Never time when blessed,
Never those been wiser.
For a play of fools ever since,
All the unpractised staging,
All the stringed ensemble,
All the humorous enraging.
To sever the ties that bond,
From power to nil.
To ever the strings that restrict,
From life to their will.
To sever the strands that remain,
From grudges to grief.
To sever them all at once,
And bless them all at once.
Burden of the heart,
Burden of the soul;
Those without either,
Those like a doll,
Kill your envies,
Kill your dreams;
Their futile escapes,
Repair their seams.
The forgiver of all,
The pinnacle of power,
Reduce them to a crawl,
And repent.
For the trumpets,
The wings,
The sword,
The ceremony.
Hallelujah.
by Yonowaru in Chaos
Hueteon III: Manual
At one ancient cost,
Revenge is taking,
If the cradle is lost,
We face no remaking.
Pressure the angel,
Pressure the demon,
Insanity wages,
Angers the wyvern.
Confronts the wyvern,
Destroys the abode,
Where he severs,
Where he corrodes.
Sand in to ash,
Ash in to marrow,
The Badlands are washed,
With anger and sorrow.
The wyvern protects,
And yet he destroys,
One cannot detect
The Exile’s employ.
Mock the deities,
With modest arrogance,
Kick dirt in to their eyes,
And watch your assurance.
Know your intentions,
And feel no regret,
Wage national contention
And lest we forget.
When a scroll in this hand,
Repeats in reality,
Then turn to the sands
And wage brand new vanity.
Given a reason,
The Valkyries return,
At whichever season,
Ready to burn.
When raising the sword,
Know your plot well,
For at the same words,
Differently tell.
Watch no omen, outside
Before your demise,
Approach overdrive,
Let the future surmise.
by Yonowaru in Chaos
‘This poem...’ Keyakku reiterated contemplatively, ‘is this a Prophetic Poem?’
His voice was youthful, almost too much so, yet it was obvious that he had made too much of an effort to make it sound professional, or at least, sensible. His accent had been tamed, too much, by the hardships of lower than lower-class society, of plundering and dog-eat-dog food chains. His skin had also been tamed by the usual exiles from the various towns and villages that he and his gang had received so much ever since they had stolen a loaf of bread when they were mere children. Now, after thirteen years, you could say they were professional. From loaves of bread to possessed refrigerators, from angry, spoilt electric sheep to complete Pokemon skeletons with flat ugly faces claiming to be docile, Keyakku’s gang was almost unstoppable. They were employed by various companies whom didn’t want to get involved first-hand with the situation, and evaded capture for most of the decade up to now, aided mostly by the uncouthly lavish environment that was the Underground.
A Don among the subterranean, Keyakku was one you could not trust too well, even though his gullible childhood had landed him in several not-very-thought-out situations up to recent times. Those unaccustomed to it sometimes wondered where he had obtained his accent from; all the unconventional words were accented, most of the time superfluously. Raised by thieves, Keyakku’s talents as a thief could not have been better nurtured, by the time he was seven, he had gathered around a gang of four (including himself), and were totally independent. It was easy being a thief ten years ago; the war only made survival easier, with most of the police forces taken off the streets for conscription and daily food handouts. Even when the war ended five years ago, peacekeeping practices failed to keep Keyakku (and the majority of other thieves) from their loot; the nation was in ruin and few politicians bothered to do anything about it. Half had resigned their post, and the other half had been assassinated, so while there were no politicians left to rule, Team Destrague, an organization pretty much unheard of beforehand, took up the post. Very little change occurred under Destrague’s rule, except that the general population seemed less paranoid about what would happen to their superannuation.
But Keyakku cared not for assassinations that he had absolutely nothing to do with (seriously) nor aging workers and their superannuation. Keyakku was a very youth-driven person, he cared not for the pleasures that he was going to experience at old age anyway, and this was a strongpoint he held as a Don of Thieves.
‘So young...and yet so knowledgeable...’ the professor answered. He coughed rather loudly, meaning to shake up some loose vocal cords, and that drowned out the words beside his pauses. It took quite the ear to listen to a coughing speaker, especially when Sariyus had his other ear not attached to the door amongst the putrid breaths of his two other brothers. Presumably, the reply was positive-intentioned, because Keyakku continued on.
‘Taking advantage of your youth is my motto,’ Keyakku replied.
‘I wish...thoughtful...were,’ the Professor wheezed. ‘Anyway...yes this...Poem, and...’
‘Well obviously, a Prophetic Poem implies that the treasure is also Prophetic in nature,’ Keyakku said, ‘given the structure and content of the Poem, I’d say that the loot would be Revelational.’
‘Indeed...is.’
‘If you are asking for us to steal this treasure, then I’m afraid I’ll have to pass.’ Keyakku’s tone became more serious, despite his accent.
‘Excuse me, gentlemen, but you three are blocking the door.’
A smooth female voice inquired from Sariyus’ back. Her request was superfluously accented where a keyword stood, giving the impression that the female voice was rancorous than it should’ve been. Nevertheless, the sole fact that it was a female voice was enough to make Sariyus and his brothers stumble incautiously away from the door. Before they could recover though, the female had ignored their predicament and knocked on the door to inquire within.
‘Excuse me, Professor Kinougras, this is Libby,’ she said.
She met a reply, and she opened the door. Before Sariyus can stickybeak further, though, Libby had slammed the door behind her, the brass doorknob meeting with Sariyus’ right temple.
‘Ow...that Liby sure is rough...’ Sariyus commented, ‘...I like her.’
The other two, expecting little else from whatever Sariyus ever commented on, quickly pushed him back to assume their stickybeaking position.
‘Hey, WTF, Bakura! I was there!’
‘Well too bad,’ Bakura dismissed.
Sariyus looked at him with an annoyed glance, but Bakura didn’t catch it. When it did not prove effective, he stood up and briefly brushed off the dust from his shirt, a simple grey Singlet, and his sandy jeans, belted with snakeskin. He massaged both his temples and scratched through his short, splinter-like red hair, with a few shocks of white. After this ritual, he began pacing around the corridor. The walls were plain, painted off-white, and although spacious, the openings of either side were rather small in perspective view, giving the impression of the walls closing in. There were few other doors dotted around the corridors, besides two, one that led to all three varieties of toilets, and the other that led to a second office.
‘I’ll go wait in the lobby then,’ Sariyus said after a minute or two of pacing.
The other two, one whose vivid blue hair formed a crater shape on the edges of the top of his head, and a shorter one, fresh in to adolescence with his brunette hair uniformly cropped like a helmet over his head, absent-mindedly waved Sariyus off, while keeping their ears both on the door.
Before long, Sariyus’ footsteps on soft carpet had diminished with a thud of a closing door and a silence fuzzily rambled with the going-ons inside the room, refreshed with Libby’s additional part of the conversation refilling the scene.
‘...to meet you, Mr. Atakama,’ she filled in. ‘I’m Professor Libby Tanami, an expert on the southern deserts. I have heard about your interests on archaeological treasures on quite a few...umm...documentaries. We sincerely hope that you and your friends can help us retrieve an artefact stolen from our museum.’
‘Why...surely, but Professor Kinougras has yet to connect his collection of poems with the stolen artefact in question,’ Sariyus replied, again trying to diminish his accent as much as possible, ‘if it even was stolen from the first place.’
There was a brief silence.
‘You haven’t told him, Professor?’ asked Libby.
Frustrated, the other two squinted as much as possible to allow their ears to hear what Professor Kinougras had to say, but even though they did hear it, they could not distinguish between the coughing and the speech.
‘Did you get that, Bakura?’ the smaller one asked.
‘No, Furante, the door’s too thick, I reckon,’ Bakura replied. ‘We’ll just wait what Keyakku has to say when he comes out; there’s no point hearing only two-thirds of the conversation.’
‘Good point, to the lobby then?’
‘Yeah, why not...I’m so thirsty...I’ll go buy a can.’
‘I want one too!’ Furante said, his relative infancy more obvious in his voice.
While it was not obvious from outside Professor Kinougras’ office door, the electronically protected door gradually focused in to view when Bakura and Furante reached it. The heavy metal door opened and led them both to a less dull ambience, with the huge skeleton of a sea-going reptile perched in front of them. From their level, there was some five to six levels before it reached the bottom floor, and all floors, including the two floors above them were designed to be centred around the skeleton, as well as another, a winged pterosaur that took up much less space than the reptile, at the other end. There was a busy midday buzz of daily museum activity that echoed all around the entrance hall, typical of a museum that was neither extremely famous, but was quite exclusive in the region. Bakura and Furante both retrieved black-tinted lenses from their pockets and put them on, cautiously looking around for possible onlookers.
‘The lift’s over there,’ Bakura pointed out, ‘and look, Sariyus is still waiting.’
Furante signalled to Sariyus, who had his arms crossed, staring quite impatiently at the electronic dial above the nearer of the two lifts. He noticed Furante’s call, and relieved his eyes of something else to wait for while Bakura and Furante approached his waiting post. Sariyus, too, was wearing tinted lenses.
‘You
still waiting?’ Furante asked.
‘In all obviousness, ignorant child, what gave that away?’ Sariyus asked.
After a few more minutes of tense waiting, a lift had arrived on their floor. A few visitors poked their heads out to see what exhibits they could photograph and fewer disembarked. The three of them entered when the flow of visitors ceased and the lift doors were just about to close.
‘Going up,’ the electronic voice sounded.
‘Dammit!’ Sariyus exclaimed, loud enough to intimidate a mother behind them, who was hushing a baby, near the brink to burst in to a tantrum, in her arms.
Furante approached the back of the lift, which was transparent and gave a shifting view of the centre of the museum, as well as different perspectives of the two centrepiece skeletons.
‘Seventh floor, History of Technology and Science, Museum Café,’ the electronic voice sounded. The mother and her child hurried out, the mother making an effort to hush her baby back to sleep.
The lift continued to ascend, and Sariyus assumed that the last visitor, a bald man in a business suit and darkened lenses holding a leather briefcase, was heading for the eighth floor.
‘Eighth floor, Atmospheric Sciences and the Astronomy Tower,’ sounded the voice, and the man walked out. Above the other floors, the Eighth Floor seemed to pose little interest to visitors, for it was much quieter.
Sariyus impatiently pressed the ‘Close’ button and then the button that led to the Ground floor Lobby. He put his hands in to his pockets and hummed at the dial. Furante continued to scan the museum, staring through his tinted lenses, in to the reptile’s hollow eyes. Bakura stood coolly by the back corner of the lift, his glances shifting (although not apparent behind the tinted lenses) around the interior of the lift.
‘Sixth floor, Ancient History, Skeleton Room and Exhibition Room C.’
A few typical-looking tourists sporting digital cameras clambered in noisily, conversing excitedly and quite oblivious to the presence of the three of them. A blonde woman laughed hysterically at the mention of a “Teraclope nu”, but apart from that, their intangible languages failed to make any sense.
‘Fifth floor, Insectarium and Botany Room.’
A few of the tourists left, but more of them came in; the lift was beginning to get a bit crowded. They too, were quite oblivious of the load limit of the lift. One was complaining about an Ariados that kept on staring at her and another complained about the lack of being able to touch the exhibits. Soon, the lift was full of complaints. Furante moved forward when three boys younger than him with started fighting over the view.
‘Fourth floor, Fossil Hall, History of Music and Exhibition Room B.’
No one exited the lift, but a few more ignorant visitors clambered in, until the limit overload alarm sounded. No one wanted to leave, but Furante caught two tourists in front of him unawares and poked them out of the lift. No one reacted and everyone resumed their own conversations when the alarm button stopped.
‘Third floor, Auditorium, History of Religion and Cults and Mummy Hall.’
Everyone but three gentlemanly-looking men from the Fourth Floor left, carrying their conversations with them. When all of them left, they began their own.
‘Now I say, Burgundy, how did you like that 13th Century maple harpsichord? From what I know about your obsession with harpsichords, I’d say that it’d be in your Quetherin Mansion by this afternoon!’
‘Now, now, Navvy, I’m not that tenacious as you think I am. I’ve seen better and far more valuable harpsichords around, and at any rate, I imagine that Bergeaud’s French horn would already be arriving at your Atlain Collection as we speak!’
‘A fine eye, Burgundy! I have fallen in love with that horn, I admit, as I have always done with Bergeaud’s compositions, but certainly not without reason! Now Limesworth, you’ve been oddly quiet! I’m sure you would have been interested in that 17th Pipe Organ once played by Raiz de Monte herself?’
‘Why surely, Navvy! Considering that she only played...’
‘Second Floor, Freshwater Aquarium, Rocks and Minerals Hall and Exhibition Room A.’
The group of gentlemen carried their conversation beyond the lift door, leaving Sariyus, Bakura and Furante in peace-filled quietness.
‘Rich *******s,’ Bakura commented.
‘You know we’re going to end up like them sooner or later if we continue on like this,’ added Sariyus, ‘Keyakku’s going to break someday.’
‘I hope not, I’m going to spend it all on travel and adventure, not just on collectibles and all that sh*t.’
‘Yeah!’ inserted Furante, ‘Who needs a mansion when you can go dig for treasure?’
‘You’re still young, Furante,
too young in fact, you won’t satisfy yourself with just digging holes around the place. You’ll get tired, you’ll have children and your children will have children, then you’ll want lots and lots of women, and you’ll need fortunes and good looks to draw the ladies in. I mean, you’ll be relying on your grandchildren’s’ money by the time your thirty?’
‘Are you serious, Sariyus? Is that what you’re planning to blow your money on?’ asked Bakura. ‘You seriously looking forward to having grandchildren by the time you’re thirty? You’re only twenty right now and still don’t have a girlfriend. Don’t tell me you want to have your nine-year-old daughter diagnosed with advanced puberty and get raped.’
‘Of course not. I’ll somehow diagnose my son with advanced puberty and have him-’
‘First floor, Art Gallery and History of Art.’
A group of about ten schoolchildren all younger and much shorter than Furante accompanied by a female teacher all entered the lift, carrying sketchpads of badly mimicked art captioned with wrongly spelt words that were clearly meant to imply some degree of intelligence. Apparently, it seemed that they had been introduced to the concept of abstract art at a far too early age. The children all looked whiny and bored, with their teacher trying to hush them up and calm them down. Sariyus did not continue further.
‘Ground floor, Ocean Aquarium, Lobby, Gift Shop and Museum Café.’
The lift emptied itself and Sariyus, Bakura and Furante all headed towards the Café vending machine while the teacher did a roll call of her groaning students. When the vending machine proved to be out of order, especially after a few rampant kicks from Sariyus, they got themselves a bottle of water each instead from the café counter (‘We don’t sell alcohol here, Sir.’).
While Furante enjoyed himself poking fun at curious Pokemon in the Aquarium, Sariyus continued his conversation with Bakura about how he planned to have great-grandchildren by the time he was forty-five, expecting himself to have around twenty-five to fifty million dollars by the time he was sixty and still be impervious to hair loss, wrinkling and sexual degeneration in general.
‘You know, we can’t be thieves all our lives,’ admitted Sariyus. ‘I think I’ll retire when I’m twenty-one.’
‘You think you’ve got all the time you have in your hands, don’t you, Sariyus?’ questioned Bakura. ‘Just because you have everything planned out, doesn’t mean that things will just magically follow your timetable ‘til the day you die. For one, you still have us.’
‘What does that have to do with anything?’ asked Sariyus.
‘For one, we’re not letting you get a girlfriend that easily.’
After a few more discussions, that ranged from sex, to politics, to sex in politics, to politics in sex, Keyakku arrived after what seemed three hours. As the lift doors opened, Keyakku’s prominent features consisting of thick eyebrows, lightly cropped black hair and a camel brown unbuttoned shirt, exposing a white T-shirt beneath, quickly set in stone how boyishly charming he could be, until he opened his mouth. He carried a rather bulky-looking leather bag around his left shoulder, but Keyakku did not seem to mind the weight. Following him, was, Sariyus assumed, Professor Tanami, a young tanned woman, probably in her mid-twenties, in a white lab coat long black hair tied elaborately with hairpins and clamps, and rather thin, almost to the point of malnutrition. Her face wore a charmed smile and the eyes behind her black-rimmed rectangle-framed glasses did not reach further than Keyakku.
‘We’ll meet again when we hear of your discoveries then, Mr. Atakama.’ She shook her hand with Keyakku, who left his unused hand in his pockets. Her voice sounded less harsh than the tone she had used to scoff at Sariyus, or it sounded more worn out- Sariyus could not tell, because her accent seemed to run completely parallel to normal English speech. After a farewell, Professor Tanami headed back towards the lift, while Keyakku found Sariyus and Bakura standing by the railing that protected a giant Mamoswine skeleton from ambitious tourists from getting too close.
Both Sariyus and Bakura didn’t complain, for they have had longer briefing times, and as usual, Bakura was the one who asked the question.
‘So, what’s set in store for Mission #1546?’
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Meh, I don't like this particularly well, even though it's the longest I've ever written yet.
For the record, it's longer than the last prologue *looks at otaku-dono*