multiversallogs | there is a community of the spirit.

Entry tags:

there is a community of the spirit.

Who: ~~Bruce Wayne~~ Tom and you.
What: Creeping out from the fringes and the shadows, investigating the city through a closer lens.
Where: Various areas in Baedal, mostly the central districts, and along the river.
When: Coardi (Wednesday), or any day this week after that, I'm easy.
Notes: OPEN LIKE AN OPEN THING. I want your cr and I want your revenge, tag in under whatever scenario your dark heart desires.
→ new note: if you'd like to start a new thread please come up with a new setting on another day, Coardi has hit critical mass of things Mr Hermit BatCrab would put up with before vanishing back into the shadows. :E
Warnings: TBA. (Swearing? Not much else.)

Bruce doesn't want to admit it at first, but after he gets a decent night's sleep and has a real conversation with someone, he feels a lot better. It took him an hour of silent reflection on Hasi's little balcony to come to terms with having felt awful to begin with - it's not being here, it's everything else, being here is a strange misstep but it isn't enough to throw him, not really - and to accept that attempting to remain a ghost in the machine wasn't an acceptable plan of action. For a whole armful of reasons. Also on that balcony, struck by the view at night, with oddly-powered lights set into strange buildings like scattered candles and gems, Baedal reminded him of Baku, maybe Lahore, and the inoffensive memories chided at him from quiet corners about his aseptic behavior.

He still isn't social when he goes out. He's quiet, unassuming, and spends hours wandering, watching without truly interacting. He keeps to the edges of the river, then, walking alongside it off the roads, going under bridges where he can. There are people washing the dye out of great, bright reams of fabric in the still shallows, speaking a language he guesses must have once been of Earth; he practices with them for a time, talking of the river's current and temperament and the goddess that lives within instead of about the tenure of their citizenship.

He walks up into the city proper when he comes to the water's split, skirting the arena - there are men and women practicing familiar-but-not-quite movements in a great lined rectangle. It's an experience on a scale Bruce never had even during his own time as a student, and so he sits and watches for a while. A woman speaks to him about a guild that trains and dispatches warriors to serve as private guardians; he keeps the paper she gives him, but invests in nothing further. It isn't anything he'd truly consider, but he's curious in an academic way about what lies inside their doors.

There's a library he'd like to see, but a group of children with wildly varying ages (and genetic markers) end up kicking multicolored rocks into the cobblestone street - he kicks one back, artfully, and ends up engrossed for the next hour learning a game with rules he suspects are not actually written down anywhere. With few words, he teaches one of them how to hold his arm to balance anything on his hand, and laughs a little, privately.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Fighting in the arena isn't anything like what Seoraj is used to, but it keeps his hand in and his reflexes sharp - sharp and getting sharper, when he makes a point of punching above his weight, dealing mainly with opponents who can take a hammer-blow without it ending the bout. (Expressly for that reason; he's not here to dance, but he'd rather not kill a sparring partner by accident.) He worries about getting soft here, sometimes, about losing sight of- something. It's a strange life that he leads, halfway in and halfway out. Without his community, his context, his life and what he is. The stillness, much as it suits him, leaves him more restless than he'd have thought.

As he walks back out into the city - hammer in hand and a coat on loose over his thin shirt, tacky with sweat and some of his own blood - he watches the practise, too, letting it quiet his own thoughts as he slows to a stop by the other man observing them. Not close enough to be invading his space uninvited, but near enough that it could be said he was joining him in said observation.

It's difficult to ignore a six-foot-four medieval-looking warrior sporting a giant hammer and bits of his own blood, and so Bruce doesn't; he doesn't stare, either, just notes the fact that he's been joined.

And while ignoring is difficult, it's not impossible, so for a spell, Bruce forgets - absorbed as he is in watching what he's watching, when the tone of the routine shifts, he tilts his head, unconsciously drumming his hand against his bicep, arms crossed. (There's still that funny awareness to him, even then, taken in for a bit by his interest.)

The cadence is familiar in degrees, the orthodoxy alien. It's fascinating, and already being spun into his memory.

After a time, when the sounds of unified shouts and sandals sliding over stone have begun to dull, edging on the break-up of levels and other activities, Bruce looks over at his mysterious companion. It's a little odd; there's not a moment when he seems to stop paying attention to what's before them and start in on the other man. He just is, now, like some shadowed footnote.

Edited 2011-11-09 11:15 (UTC)

At proper examination, Seoraj is an odd blend of the modern (the coat, the boots) and the archaic (the kilt, the hammer - the hair could really go either way) but his manner is squarely the latter when he offers Bruce a hand to clasp at the wrist in greeting. "Seoraj," he says, friendly without being forward; he has an easy confidence, a curiosity about the world around him that doesn't leave room for there to be any hesitation.

Why not watch a fascinating display of a style he's never seen before, in a method he's never witnessed? Why not introduce himself to a stranger watching, too? Something interesting might happen next.

He isn't surprised by the friendly way he's approached there - Bruce isn't nearly so small-minded to find an incongruity between size and demeanor - but he wasn't really expecting it, all the same. His slowness to reciprocate doesn't read quite as hesitation, but more like it takes him a second to process and acknowledge what Seoraj just did as what it was.

When he does return the gesture, hands still a little bruised and grip firmer than one might expect from someone his size (...compared to Seoraj), he seems at ease, but no less guarded. A little curious. "Tom."

(It takes him a minute to pinpoint that it's the lack of mania in the other man's friendliness that's throwing him off.)

Other people have found that incongruity - or simply not seen it, looked at him and read Arum warrior and made their own assumptions that he's handled as seemed best in each case (...sometimes this meant trolling, in other words) - but less, he finds, in Baedal than any other place he's been. And he's been around, at least in his own world. Seoraj thinks sometimes he's spent more of his life walking (marching) than anything else. Enough, at least, that he knows an educated eye when he sees one; Tom knows what he's looking at. That's interesting.

"Haven't seen the like of that before," he remarks when he lets go, indicating the dispersing crowd of practitioners. "It's a warrior's art, though, isn't it?" This may be the politest way someone has ever called Bruce out on his particular extracurriculars, but - and it's evident - that's not really what Seoraj is doing. 'Tom' seems to know more about this than he does, and he's genuinely curious. When you want to know something, you ask.

Edited 2011-11-09 12:03 (UTC)

Just a few short years ago and Bruce would have skittered away from a line like that out of pure paranoia; the idea of being so transparent, especially when he hadn't quite gotten all his (violent, calculating, militant) ducks in a row yet was enough to trigger a full treat in him. Now he's relaxed about it - as much as he can be, anyway. He still seems wary, but it's in a way that says that's how he is about everything. If people in Gotham were used to seeing warriors, then they'd see him plainly, celebrity act be damned.

As such, that assumption doesn't bother him. It's not the blood that marks Seoraj for what he is; Bruce certainly doesn't need any.

So he nods. "I know the track pattern, but the strikes are new to me."

Edited 2011-11-09 12:20 (UTC)

Honestly, the most remarkable thing about Bruce's implied competence is the most remarkable thing about everyone in this city-- Seoraj has just never been accustomed, before Baedal, to the notion that foreigners are really all that...well, competent. He's had his horizons expanded, but when all your travels reflect the fact that no one wants to fight their own wars...

Some prejudices go unquestioned for longer than others, that's all.

"It's a training form, then." He sounds satisfied; that's what he thought, and while he's not deeply invested in being right about things, it's a good assurance of his own ability to keep up with the world that his reasoning isn't twelve steps behind everybody else's. "A bit more decorative than I'm used to." If this is deprecating in any direction, it's his own- he's not criticizing them for their elegance. He admires it, even if it's not something he consciously thinks of cultivating.

(But you don't live as long in his line of work if you don't have a certain amount of finesse.)

If Bruce has learned anything about multidimensional settings, it's that trying to lie about his inclinations to people who know better is not only useless, but stupid, and tempting of bigger problems than being known as someone who might know a thing or two about how to throw a punch. He's not an accountant this time, he's a computer engineer, and he's just got some hobbies - ones that aren't golf. That's fine.

"It's..."

A lapse; brief. Again there's no hesitation, but something else. Like he's floating on some current only he can feel.

"Katas are like oral tradition for this art. Patterns that are proven to be effective are collected like this, made into precise routine, taught to everyone and passed down, so that the system is preserved through generations."

Context, suddenly, for why he's so taken with the fact that he only recognizes parts of these.

'Katas' is a word he hasn't heard it before; Seoraj contextualizes it and commits it to memory with the ease of having done this before, and it's there in his manner, how accustomed he is to learning like this. Just by approaching someone, asking, listening, then remembering what he's told - he seems like someone who passes through.

"It's not as we do, in Arum," he says, reflectively, like he has to remember that 'not like Arum' is not 'inherently a bit crap and sad' - which he does, sometimes, but he does consistently catch himself and explore beyond that. The learning process here is visible in a way he's evidently unembarrassed by. "But we make wars; maybe that's the difference. To fight in the arena is not much like soldiering, either."

But valuable enough to him that this isn't the first or the last time he's walked out flexing the hand holding the hammer.

"It's teaching discipline, not combat."

Which can be a funny concept even for the great unfocused modern masses who have no understanding of martial arts (to say nothing of war) deeper than bad action movies. Whether or not Bruce thinks Seoraj should be impressed by that notion is unknown; he doesn't sound like he's saying it to be lofty, merely informative. For his own practices, he very much sees the value of discipline concerning schools of thought that require it. But such schools were not his only instructors.

(Crane style. Tiger style. Ripping your opponent's face off with a broken beer bottle style. It's good to know all the angles.)

Impressed, no, but not in a way that suggests he's somehow unimpressed. The idea of seeking out this kind of discipline for any other reason is alien, is the thing, and while he's vaguely acquainted with the notion he's never really given it much thought before. Now seems like as good a time as any to do so and he wonders what drives that, what reasons there are. Violence has defined his life without ever really being something that appeals to him - he's really, really good at it, grown into a role that he doesn't know how to put aside or if he wants to - and it's just an odd thought.

His world and his life aren't much like most here, though; he should look into this a little more. Maybe there's something in it worth knowing. (Or maybe it'll just make him uncomfortable and confused, that's always possible - being openminded doesn't mean not having any of his own hangups.)

"What for, then, if not combat?" Arum training has adapted over generations, because the world changes around them and they've needed new ways to rip parts of it down. A holding pattern doesn't make sense to him, but he's already acknowledged the kind of context he comes from when he approaches it.

Edited 2011-11-09 14:20 (UTC)

He shrugs one shoulder, slight. "Soldiering." Which is different from combat, despite the relation - as surely Seoraj knows. "There are schools of thought that believe if you're not focused and disciplined enough to do that, you aren't going to be able to hold a line, or follow orders."

A textbook answer, of course. Bruce may be fighting his own personal 'war', but it's a far different ballgame than trenches and phalanxes. (He is assuming, for the record, that reasons like 'practice' and 'focus' are self-evident.)

"Some people just like the exercise. Others equate it to meditation."

And then it veers off into spiritualism, which Bruce attempts to avoid like a cat ducking from water.

"'Meditation'," he echoes, amused in a way that's half-disbelieving - he can accept that textbook response about discipline, that's something that he can make sense of, but with war and violence and its forms tied so seemingly close together in something like this, he doesn't quite see where the relaxation comes in. In the focus, maybe, but the suggested method unsettles him in a way he leaves aside for now. "Discipline, I see that. Maybe some people should just take up running, though, aye?"

More of a joke than a real argument, that.

He smiles a little at that, small and half-private; it feels rare.

"Most people do."

"I can't knock them trying these things without the soldiering," Seoraj observes, scratching the edge of his small beard with his free hand and then testing the weight of the hammer demonstratively with the other- "I might start running to fat in this damn city otherwise." He speaks of Baedal with an odd fondness, unlike some of the other recent arrivals- but considering most of his time is spent on hard physical labour (both at work at a home), it seems likely he's going to turn into an unexercised labrador in the near future.

(But he might slow down and it just seems- wrong.)

"Yeah..."

One word, a slightly distracted tone - Tom (Bruce) doesn't quite look like he's staring off into the middle distance of vague internal panic, but there's definitely a sense there that he is in no way ready to actually think about what the fuck he's going to do here yet. He remembers Taxon (quite vividly, in fact) and the various absurd obstacles that were thrown at them to keep the rats in the maze busy, and thinks if that happens again he might just ... well, that's not going to happen again, basically.

So far, at least, this feels like a far more advanced experiment. He's going to have to do a lot more than try to electrocute a wall or wonder about psychic interference from stuff portals; there's a whole host of bizarre things and a real, functioning culture to pick through, but he's going to have to because he can't stay here, he can't just acclimate unless it's for the purpose of subterfuge. And there's a fully functioning economy here, and people he knows, so he actually has to participate in society and figure out how to pretend to fit in and get by and, hey, at least he won't be knocked for never finishing his degree at Princeton because it's not like there's a computer science industry here, and -

- He's visibly spiraling off in his own head, isn't he.

Abruptly (but still with that uncanny inherent grace, while awkward, it's a skill), Bruce refocuses on Seoraj, like a rubber band snapping back into place. Ehhem. He points - with one finger, semi-politely - in the direction of that hammer.

"You're a-" blacksmith? Builder? Spiritually opposed to blades? Help.

Edited 2011-11-10 00:44 (UTC)

The temporary vagueness reminds him of what he persists in thinking of as those so clever they can't be entirely trusted to mind themselves, which is mostly entertaining for the sake of how incongruous it is with the impression he's already been given. ('Not that'.) He thinks briefly of the clever little woman from Hellsing who knew his cousin, and his mouth quirks in something that's very like a smile at the edge.

"That'd be a soldier." A quick pause, here, turning the hammer's handle in his hand, "Blacksmith, by trade." So not an officer, then. (Just his little joke.) "'Master Stoneshell' being the title I seem to have inherited down Stoneshell way for the forge."

With a testing heft of the hammer, he shrugs. "If I fight above my level, I can hit harder, not worry so much about it. Wouldn't want to take the axe to someone, though." Yes. This is his non-lethal sparring weapon.

As Seoraj may come to learn in time, that is a fairly accurate summary of this man. (Sigh.)

Bruce still has a little cognitive dissonance when it comes to hearing people talking about what amounts to killing over war and ... just going along with it, but even he in all his self-imposed fanaticism is aware enough to contextualize things. Things like, 'actual war', and ... 'Enfys*'.

So he doesn't really blink, at the mention of the axe. One follows the other.

"That makes sense." It's what Bruce does almost as a rule, out there in the dark as that monster. When he engages something, someone, he knows he can't kill by simple accident, it's easier (better).

* = doesn't mean he has a thing for people with particular weaponry, shush.

Edited 2011-11-10 11:21 (UTC)

"Makes me faster, gets 'em a mark-down if they come by the forge," Seoraj shrugs, with his usual slightly creative business sense. (He doesn't need to work, he could afford not to, but he doesn't know what he'd do with his time if he didn't and in quantities such as he currently has at his disposal, he's honestly not entirely sure what all this money is for. What does it do? Mostly, slowly accumulates more of itself in a bank in Gidd.) "Not such a bad way of doing. Funny place, though."

After a beat, candidly, he concedes, "I never did live in a city before."

Bruce actually finds that to be a wonderfully neighborly business sense, as if he ever got hit in the head with a damned hammer that size, he'd certainly appreciate a discount on whatever the hell hammering he'd need later. (He'll probably pass on hammer sparring. ... For now.)

As for cities - Bruce seems to go a little pensive at that again, and his gaze meanders out at the courtyard.

"It can be all right."

Perhaps he just hasn't decided about this one just yet.

"Passed through 'em often enough," Seoraj observes, easily conversational- aware of that moment and not pretending not to be, but easy company that lets Bruce do what he'd like to with it, in his own time. "None quite like this on the whole of things, but I can see bits and pieces here and there. We get around, when the lowlanders can't be fighting their own wars."

It's been an interesting life, put it that way.

It's only through the grace of being utterly ignorant to most popular (or cult, let's face it) media that Bruce does not then inquire Does that make you a highlander?

Instead: "Where are you from?"

Open-ended question; there's a sense he knows what he's getting into by asking something like that in a place like this.

"That'd be Arum, up in the highlands." So yes, actually, that does make him a highlander and it's very, very sad that neither of these men would understand why that's funny. He does look wryly aware of the fact that it's incredibly unlikely Bruce is going to recognize any of this - there's been one person in Baedal thus far to pick it, and that had been strange in itself. (He wonders what happened to that woman.) "My clan's got a settlement not far from the Valdis ruins- funny old place, now the castle's starting to properly go back to the land. Cats bloody everywhere."

And lo and behold, something like genuine, if uncertain, recognition flickers into his gaze at the mention of Valdis. It's not concrete familiarity, but he does look like he's trying to place it. He doesn't quite like that - Bruce hates it when he can't remember something, anything, especially when he can't chase after it without looking like a total crazy person.

"...Cats?"

...all right, he wasn't expecting that.

"Aye- mountain cats, the big fat bastards with the angry faces." They do just always look mad, it's kind of a thing; Seoraj has long debated (usually over a drink or several) whether this is just how they're built or if they are, in fact, pissed off all the time. Them being cats, he can't quite rule out the possibility that both things are true.

there is a community of the spirit.

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