broji | Eighth Crash [Action/Voice]

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Eighth Crash [Action/Voice]

{In today's episode Ginji can be found refilling a metal dish suspended from a tree with seed and peanuts. If you guessed "bird feeder", give yourself ten points! After making sure the feeder's still attached securely to its branch, Ginji will make himself comfortable on the lawn and pull out his journal. He'll sit there for a while, enjoying the fresh air and the milder weather, before starting a new entry.]

Hey everyone. So...what's it like for you back home? Do you come from a large family or a small one? Have you set out on your own or still live with your parents? Got any siblings? Kids?

I'd like to know.

[After the voice post is finished, he'll spend the next few hours watching any animals that might wander over to the feeder and run through a few sketches of different wing shapes.]

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Yes, that's exactly it! None of my prototype motors have worked out, so it's got to be something carried along by the wind.

[Asch glowers quietly for a long moment, debating the idea of ignoring the question and going back inside to sulk some more, but the sunshine is nice and oddly drawing, so he'll endure. Ginji's put up with a lot of bull the last several days - maybe even weeks - so it's the least he can do.]

...Guy's back. It's been- ...it's just awkward.

You sound like a very handy person!

[Ginji lowers his hands after a little while; an unfocused glare isn't nearly as intimidating as one full of accurately directed fire. But seriously, if this sort of atmosphere keeps up, Ginji's not sure he'll be able to weather it all without finally snapping. Even he has his limits.]

[So when Asch actually does answer, it's pretty unexpected.]

Ah? ...No, I think I understand. Even though he doesn't remember what happened, you haven't forgotten.

[And he thinks there's another part to it too. If it's "awkward" then there can't just be anger involved. Either Asch is afraid or worried or confused or... well, who knows? Maybe he thinks more highly of Guy than he lets on.]

Ah right... I've been all right, I think. I've made some nice friend here. I'm still a little homesick, but that's probably to be expected. I don't think that's something that goes away easily. I haven't nearly tackled anyone over from practicing gymnastics lately, at least.

[Eheh. Unless she counts herself when she launched herself into the lake, whoops. But no one else got caught in that!]

He is... but you would have to be careful of him because of that. [She is all too familiar with how twisted Van was, ever since she was young and he would tell her of his hatred for the people of the Outer Lands and the Order.]

The others? I... suppose, with some of them I do. Time in Luceti has granted us more opportunities than we had in Auldrant.

[Go on and yell at him, Ginji, sometimes he forgets that you have a spine.]

It's just complicated.

[In more ways than one. He sounds bitter this time, but not as angry. He hates how frustrating the whole situation makes him feel, and that tends to show at the forefront much more than the misery that comes hand in hand with it.]

[One day. One day he will.]

[Ginji heaves a sigh, crossing both of his arms and studying the redhead with a mixture of sympathy and exasperation. With Asch, everything is "just complicated".]

You know, Mr. Asch, it might be just a little less complicated if you worked it out instead of shutting yourself off for hours at a time. Doesn't it make you feel even worse when you finally come out of there?

Why do you think I don't like coming out?

[It's said a bit sharply again, and it takes Asch a moment to realize it, glancing away. He really should have just stayed inside, he just drags down the people around him.]

[Ginji doesn't reply for a long moment. When he does, his tone is completely serious, though not cold.]

'Honestly couldn't tell you. It doesn't make much sense to me - being cooped up with all those complicated feelings whirling around. Maybe if you came out a little more often and tried to relax you wouldn't be so cranky, and you wouldn't keep snapping at Arietta and me.

We're with you, you know. Not the opposite.

[Honestly, he wouldn't have put up with all this for so long if it wasn't to help out a good friend. Even if Ginji's the only one who looks at it like that. It may even be a little sad to say, but Asch is the closest thing he's got to a family member here. Sometimes it even feels like Ginji's taking care of them - of Asch and Arietta. Sometimes. Even if it's a stretch. Even if it's the furthest thing from what his family back home is like.]

[Hang ten, Ikkisis. Ginji's trying to sort all this out. There's a lot of new concepts involved; he'll be going over it aloud out of habit.]

So what this fire lord wanted was to kill off any Avatars born outside the Fire Nation. And because they knew the next in the cycle would be an air nomad, they went after all of them not only to make sure they got him but to wipe out a phase of the cycle? That really is awful.

But you said the Avatar balances everything out. And without air nomads... Wouldn't a united Fire Nation throw things out of whack and cause even more problems for everyone - including the fire people?

And yet the Avatar managed to get away in the end. That sure is good news.

He was really stuck in ice for a whole century? [And he thawed out okay? Whoah... Wait til he tells Jack about this. Ice preserves stuff way better than he imagined it could.]

Thank you, I try. [He'll take that as a compliment.]

My grandfather used to tell me that any man who's not handy with a mallet, a wrench, and a shovel is a waste of a body.

I guess it does make sense, but wow, messing up a complicated item and then having to start all over from scratch. Must be pretty rough. [It's kind of like a failed airship design, but at least with those you can scrap the metal and some of the other parts for your next shot at it.]

So that's actually happened before, has it? [Catching the workshop on fire...]

Yeah... I'm not too sure the homesickness really goes away for good. [That's what he's dealing with right now.] But I think it won't be so bad as you get to meet even more people.

[He can't help but chuckle lightly at the mention of gymnastics, though.] It happens sometimes. At least no one got hurt. So, you're still doing gymnastics, huh? Are there competitions for that sort of thing?

Mhm... He never missed a beat. Not once.

[Ginji's thoughts drift to Ion. And what Ion said about Dist.] There's that, too. I just thought, maybe, since a lot of you live together that it might feel that way from time to time.

A waste? Well, it would be a shame not to exercise your talent.

I wish you the best of luck with that kite!

[Asch gives himself a moment or so to let those words sink in. A part of him wants to argue, complain about how Ginji couldn't possibly understand, how he hasn't been through what Asch has, how he has too much to be giving Asch such a lecture.

But Ginji's lost people too- just like him, just like Arietta. They've gathered together in a surreal little family of mismatched outcasts, and Ginji's with them, even though he's certain that the replica's friends would welcome him far more easily than he or Arietta. He's chosen this, accepted Asch's awkward and halfhearted invitation and stayed. For that, Asch owes him something. What, he's not sure, but it sure as hell isn't grief.]

...I know.

[He does know. He doesn't know what else to say, though, so he leaves it alone, stepping away from the house to approach until his hands hit the bark of the tree, and he turns slowly to lean against it. It's nice. Sturdy. Van picked a nice place to live, even if he's never really appreciated it.]

What kind of birds have been coming here? I can never tell by the sounds.

Okay. Thanks, Mr. Asch.

[As long as he knows he has people who're there for him, it'll have to be enough. After all, that's pretty much why Ginji chose this to begin with. Because Asch should know there are people who won't double-cross or abandon him, or so the pilot thinks. At least that's what he told Luke. Saying what he did may not solve much, it might not help in any large way or encourage Asch to be any less grumpy or closed-off, but at least he's said it.]

[And at least Asch has decided to stay and get some fresh air. A modest success, in Ginji's book. So he won't keep bothering him with so-called lectures. But. But, then again, this is the creature-challenged Ginji he's asking to identify animals here.]

Well, the soft-spoken red ones are the cardinals. They cheep every now and then, just one note at a time. Mhm...I'm honestly not too familiar with the names of the others. There's some fluffy little black and white birds with raspy voices, and there're gray ones with crests on their heads. And then we've got a bunch of brown songbirds with different markings all over them.

But this one brown looks like a different species. Sings real loudly and stands around kind of U-shaped with a longer beak than the rest. He's almost always out here. Occasionally there'll be some yellow and black birds out, too. They look similar to the ones people keep as pets.

No blue jays today, though. You can tell them by their voices; they sound like rusty old springs.

[[Complimentary Bird Identification Key: What Ginji would be seeing are cardinals, black-capped chickadees, tufted titmouse, a variety of sparrows, a house wren, and maybe some goldfinches.]]

Fair enough. It would be pretty unfortunate for someone not to get to do what they're best at, wouldn't it?

Thanks, Platina. And good luck exploring. Hope you find something that interests you.

Exactly. And thank you, too, Mr. Ginji!

I think he might've wanted to break the cycle. So that there would be no more Avatar.

Umm, yep. See, the Fire Lord thought that uniting everyone would make them able to do more things, or would spread the peace of the Fire Nation outwards. He was...not right, about that, and somehow he got everyone in his nation to agree to doing it, anyway.

He was! He was caught in a storm, and fell into the ocean, and the water froze him and Appa - his sky bison - and a century later my grangran found him and cracked the ice open and then they went and saved the world!

A few times ... or maaaaybe a little more than just a few. [ ... ] But it's better that it catches on fire than anything else! It's really terrible to end up with a hole in the ceiling! ... Or um ... no ceiling at all, ehehe.

...I know the jays. They used to flock the garden back in Daath, always fighting each other. I always thought they were smarter than they looked- like they knew exactly where they lived. I suppose that's just behaviour, though.

[Not that he's an expert by any means, but Daath is a bland place to live when you're not interested in the church at all. And after everything he'd learned, there wasn't a thing in the world that interested him less.]

On occasion... Did you ever hear of the Shift that had everyone in the village believing we had always lived here, in this world?

[It was both comforting and painful to think about that time, given the ideas it placed in her mind for a while afterward.]

[Okaaaay, that's dangerous. She definitely wasn't kidding.]

But you do at least wear goggles and protective clothing, right? Or ah...you know, take other safety precautions?

Fire's one thing, but explosions are something else!

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Eighth Crash [Action/Voice]

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