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As far as I know, the only particular difference is that the Japanese variant tends to be considerably more liberal with its fruit and decor. The French looks like a dessert; the Japanese looks like a meal all in and of itself.

At the apartment, yes. Are you bringing Punnett with you? I ask only because he's the sort of thing one likes to prepare for, not because he's unwelcome in any way.

No, he's at home. I set him in the tub, that tends to occupy him for a great deal of time.

[And oh, there she is: slipping in through the flower shop, pointedly ignoring Parappa, and coming up the stairs to his apartment.]

Kurama--?

In here, Rosalind.

[And indeed, there he is, standing at the counter with his hair pinned back and an assortment of fresh fruits in front of him, with baking needs piled in a cluster at one corner and a rapidly-growing mound of chopped apples on a cutting board in front of him beneath his knife.]

Parappa didn't give you any trouble?

We've reached an accord. I ignore him, and in exchange, I don't actually harm him in any way.

[That's not an accord so much as a vague threat, but it seems to be working for them. Rosalind finishes unlacing her boots, steps out of them, and comes to lean against the counter, watching him with interest.]

Can you control the type of apple you produce? Or is it a gamble?

I suspect you could pull his arms off to render him obedient, if you really wanted to. Apparently they're...some form of detachable.

[BAFFLING. But in any event, he makes room for her and smiles as he picks up a larger piece of peeled apple and offers it to her between two fingers.]

Would you believe I've never put that much thought into it? I suppose I could change one variant into another if I set my mind to it — they're all apples, after all, and it's only characteristics like sweetness and color that really differ. It's not so different than turning a rose into a whip, or a petal into a razor, I suppose.

[WOW, there's a lot to react to in those few sentences. First and foremost is the fact that kappas can apparently just straight up detach bits of themselves, a fact both fascinating and utterly disgusting. Rosalind's mouth opens to ask him how precisely he's found that out, and then he starts answering her apple question, and she decides she doesn't want to know that badly after all.

After all, she thinks as she takes that bit of apple and pops it into her mouth, the answer is likely to be disgusting. And while she still wants to know, perhaps not while they're preparing food.

Besides: she's got something far more fascinating to focus on.]

You can-- I'm sorry, you can turn a rose into a whip?

...Oh. Yes, I suppose that wouldn't have really come up before now, would it...

[I mean, it's so easy for something like that to slip through the cracks, between the Sinning Tree and peach-blossom daggers and throwing dart sunflowers and miniature pet ojigi.]

Yes, I suppose you could say it's my weapon of choice. Not much unlike your dagger, really.

Will you show me?

[A beat, and then she waves a hand and clarifies:]

Not now. One wondrous task at a time. But I'd be interested in watching the transformation sometime.

[She supposes he does the same thing with the whip that he had with the sunflower: changed the properties in order to make it into a weapon. Making the stem longer, yes, but also thicker and harder, getting rid of the blossoms, perhaps, but not the thorns, no . . .

Odd. And yet she can see the benefits, she supposes. It seems a great deal of effort when one might just buy a whip, but what does she know.

She waits until he's stopped chopping before darting her fingers forward to steal another piece of apple, because they're sweet and she can be childish, on occasion, especially in front of him.]

Of course. It goes rather fast, typically — ah. That's right, you don't normally see me grow plants in haste, do you? Generally I slow them down when you're around, so that you can watch.

[Which is, really, a sort of offhand but incredibly significant thing to admit, isn't it.]

Normally it's one smooth motion. From a seed in my hair to a weapon in my hand in a matter of seconds, one draw and snap of the wrist.

[God, he can do it that quickly? Rosalind blinks, a little taken aback despite herself. And though she'd just thought that they ought to concentrate on the pie instead of more unsavory things, well. She can't ever help but be curious about the demonic world.]

Was it always like that? Or was that something that came with age?

I suppose it's a little of both, really. Certainly it's a technique I've refined, to hone it to its peak efficiency. But I don't know that it's really something that I had to work up to from a baseline of zero, either.

[He shrugs a little, chopping another apple in half and beginning to cube it; as he does, he makes sure to trim off one particularly good-sized piece and leave it at the edge of the cutting board for her to sneak again.]

Would it surprise you to know that as demons go, an acquaintance of mine can kill at speeds that make my own technique with the whip look positively glacial?

Precisely how fast do you mean?

[She can't say she's surprised, precisely, if only because demons seem to sharply exceed any limitations she normally thinks of. Why shouldn't his friend be able to achieve such speeds? He can take the seed of a rose and turn it into a whip, so why not?]

And is it the demon you've mentioned before?

Yusuke, a friend, and I witnessed him kill a foe — he uses a sword as his weapon of choice, I should mention. I asked him afterwards how many times he'd slashed his enemy, when he'd lunged at him.

Yusuke counted seven or eight discrete strikes. I'd perceived the first two, and then afterward had only followed the flashes of light. Our third friend hadn't been able to account for any of his slashes at all.

[There's no need for a dramatic pause, and so he doesn't bother with one; he simply returns calmly to his cutting with a hint of a fond smile on his face.]

He'd struck sixteen times. So yes — Hiei is quite fast.

[Hiei, she notes to herself. Hiei the demon, who has a sister and dislikes the fact his friend has an attraction to said sister, who is so fast as to simply surpass what the eye can follow.]

To say the least.

[She finally grabs for that bit of apple, though she doesn't yet eat it.]

There was . . . you remember, the first time we met, I told you of those vigours Fink made? He was developing one once that would make you that fast, right up until I pointed out that giving people the ability to zip about on a flying city likely wouldn't end well.

Then again, the man had already made a vigour that let you throw fire from your fingertips.

[His lip curls at the mention of the name Fink, but he says nothing about it, choosing instead to focus in on the point of what she's saying rather than the trappings it comes in. A human being who makes scientific advancements that mimic the abilities of demons...

Well, it's hardly unheard of, certainly, but humans with unusual interests in demons and their abilities have historically never been...wonderful, have they.]

Do you know how he did it? Certainly he was distilling the energy for it from...somewhere?

Mm, it never got past the planning stages. I think the general idea was to suck the energy from the earth itself, though. He used the same method for another vigor.

[She pops the apple into her mouth and then adds:]

Bucking Bronco, he so cleverly named it. If consumed, one could-- [She gestures upwards with two fingers.] --simply lift a person off the ground. The ground beneath one's victim would rupture. It was intended to be used solely by the police force, as was--

[She wrinkles her nose.]

--Devil's Kiss, but that hardly lasted.

What a positively absurd man.

[That's a polite way of putting it, probably. Certainly there are other words he could use.

He finishes up with his chopping, then picks up the apples and transfers them into a mixing bowl, to which he begins to add sugar and cinnamon to coat them.]

...There were humans like him back home, I suspect. Notorious ones. I suppose you might say, just brilliant enough to be dangerous, and amoral enough to use that brilliance ruthlessly.

There always are.

[It would be easy to fall into the trap of thinking she's one of those humans. Certainly she's brilliant, and they'd discussed her lack of morality during all that mirror madness. But while she lacks in morality, it isn't that kind. Rosalind has her limits, and Fink had always happily skipped past them.]

. . . how aware were humans of demons, in your world?

The majority remain blissfully unaware of them. That's Spirit World's doing, in large part; I believe it's a standing aspect of Yusuke's job description to operate on behalf of Spirit World in the human realm to maintain that status quo, actually.

[He pauses, as much to reflect on his thought as to dig around for a pair of spoons to use toward tossing the apples in their sweet coating.]

I think I've also mentioned the Kekkai Barrier — it's a net, essentially, erected by Spirit World between Makai and the human realm. It only catches the most powerful of demons, preventing the most heinous of threats from reaching the humans. Lesser demons, however, have a way of slipping through.

Envision it as a...tunnel, of sorts. A narrow space through which a demon might slip through, and emerge in the human realm.

[His hands tighten slightly on the handles of the spoons.]

A small subgroup of very rich humans, however, have been known to stake out those tunnel entrances and capture unsuspecting demons who slip through. Those ones are aware. So I suppose I'll ask you: what do you suppose Fink would do, if he were to find himself in that same situation?

[She knows, of course. Not just because that sort of person is so terribly predictable, but because she knows Fink so well. Spend nearly twenty years in the general company of a man, and soon you start knowing how he works, whether you'd like to or not.]

Profit from them.

[This is horrid, perhaps, but she thinks Kurama, caught in such a trap. What would Fink do to him? Ah, but the better question is: what wouldn't he do?]

Exploit them for their abilities. Force them into some kind of service. [. . .] Sell them to other wealthy elites, for both their exotic quality and the sheer novelty of owning a demon. And I think . . .

[She hesitates, then, her eyes lingering on the way his fingers have gone tight around the handles of the spoons.]

I've told you of some of his misdeeds, but they largely concerned myself and Robert. What he did to those he employed-- [she emphasizes the word in distaste, because quite frankly owned was the far better term for those wretched souls in Finkton,] was far worse. There are few cruelties he did not inflict upon them. And I know, because he did not hesitate to brag about it later on.

...Rosalind. There's something I want to tell you, before I go on, and I hope you'll take it to heart.

[He glances up at her, all green eyes and a solemn expression, but in a way that for once actually makes him look young from its earnest sincerity, as opposed to old beyond his apparent years.]

You are brilliant. And you are ruthless. But never forget that whatever evils you may or may not embody, necessary or otherwise, you are nowhere close to comparable to the worst that humanity has to offer.

[Her breath catches, and she stares back at him, her eyes widening in surprise.

It isn't as if she'd believed that about herself, of course. She's aware of her crimes, but that awareness is just that: knowledge of a fact, unburdened by an inordinate amount of guilt or self-loathing. She and Robert have atoned, and so while nothing can make up for the fact they committed those crimes to begin with, they at least have made things right.

No. It's not some absolution of guilt that has her pausing. It's just--

It's the sincerity in his voice, maybe. It's the underscoring of the fact that they're on the other side of her confession, and he still cares for her. This is an assurance, and the raw honesty of it is what leaves her a little stunned.

But there's an implication there, woven between his words, one she'd be a fool not to see.]

What did they do?

They sold the thrill of murder.

[He says, quietly and simply.]

The experience of torturing and slaughtering the exotic novelties that came through the tunnel. They didn't keep them or exploit them. They held parties and reveled in murdering them in increasingly elaborate and creative ways.

. . . ah.

[Her expression doesn't change a bit, but the color drains from her cheeks. Her fingers curl and uncurl, and she stares at the counter as she thinks about all the implications of that. They unfold one by one, a little layer of horror that she realizes and then pushes away, only to reveal yet another beneath it.

Parties, first of all. Parties, plural. Suppose the demonic population is as numerous as humanity is. Kurama had once told her lesser demons were far, far more common than powerful ones, so surely there was a steady stream of them emerging from the tunnel. So how many had been killed, then? How many-- hundreds, surely. Hundreds, tortured and slaughtered for the amusement of the elites of--

Not Columbia. But it's their faces that fill her mind as she imagines this. Fink and Saltonstall and Marlowe, all those pompous, wealthy men who'd made up Columbia's upper crust, all those Founders, this would be precisely up their alley. The slaughter of creatures so beneath them they didn't even register as people anymore. Just things. Things that lived and died for their amusement.

Another layer: Kurama somehow knows of this, and yet that such practices must have been a relative secret, or else no demon would ever leave Makai. How precisely had he learned of it? But there's only two real options available there. Either Kurama had known of a person who had escaped, and listened to their tale. Unlikely, given that she imagines such a tale would spread. Which leaves her with the other option: that Kurama had, at some point in his long life, experienced such an event firsthand.

She looks over at him. His expression is as still as hers, but there's something deadened in his gaze that chills Rosalind.]

. . . your friend's sister. The one who cried gems. They coerced her to cry, you said. Were these the same people?

[But Urameshi had rescued her. And it's absurd, really, that such a thought is comforting, when hundreds have already died, but perhaps it's because she has more of a connection to the girl than some anonymous demon.]

Edited 2017-03-16 01:11 (UTC)

I believe it's very likely. The one who had her was something of a collector, and housed a menagerie of demons on the premises of his estate. But he was one member of a group.

[He hums under his breath, turning his attention back to his bowl of work and stabbing at it with the spoons a little more forcefully than necessary.]

That group of people comprises a group of men so wealthy that normal entertainments have lost all meaning to them. So they gamble, or engage in black market crimes, because the only things left to them in the world are the prospect of increasing their income, and the thrill of victory.

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