Love is not a Word

Red listens to the woman with absolute silence. What is she thinking behind those diamond-hard eyes, ones that barely show the slightest crack, the slightest glimpse of vulnerability? Red listens to the woman, giving no physical gesture, not even the smallest one; no outward hints of what is stirring in her head, nothing. It’s as though she’s learned how to build a house of bricks, how to live in it, how to stop even a Big Bad Wolf from huffing and puffing and blowing it down.

Then, finally, she gives a chuckle, a very light one. “Well then,” she says, pulling up the hood of her wolf coat, “I guess I don’t belong in a land like this. Farewell, and…”

The slightest shift in facial features,

Reveal sunken eyes

And a grieving soul, that,

Over time, has grown cold.

Thank you.

“Wait-!”

Ashley can’t help but pity her. Somehow she’s lived her life without knowing Japan is a place, and that murder isn’t just something you can go out and do without huge consequences --

Oh.

Oh, God. What if there’s more to this than Ashley knows?

Think... think about it realistically. What if she’s been drugged?

“Wait, don’t go yet. For one thing, you don’t even know where you are -- you can’t just walk out of Japan...”

i t ’ s  n o t  w o r t h  d e a t h

that phrase

( W A S  THE  D E A T H  O F  T H E  W O L F  W H O  K I L L E D  H E R           G R A N D M O T H E R  A P P A R E N T L Y  N O T  W O R T H  I T )

THAT PHRASE

Red’s fingers slide down her knickers, ready to grasp the end of her gun. She feels the sudden need to shoot at something. Not the woman, no, that’d create a big scene. Then it quickly dawns upon Red that shooting in general would create a big scene, especially in a place where murder is considered illegal. So she takes a deep breath instead.

She says, eyes hard as diamond, “Tell me - if something had the power to come back and torment you and those you love, would you take its life?”

The situation has switched over violently from confusion to something... uncomfortable The question that has been raised, after all, cuts a little more deep than Ashley would care to say. But why should she say anything, anyway? Who does she have to answer to? This girl is overreacting when all she did was imply that you’re not supposed to slaughter everyone that gives you a funny look.

If everyone followed that way of life, after all, soon there’d be no-one left.

But in terms of actual torment... coming back and tormenting...

Her body shakes for a moment, her own stare tragically wavering as she tries to find the words to say.

“It’s... not like that. I didn’t mean to imply you shouldn’t defend yourself if your life or someone else’s is on the line. But you should only do it in that case. Otherwise, it’s just -- it’s just wrong. You can’t kill everyone who rubs you the wrong way.”

“There... there are many people in my life that I’d rather do without. I’d even go as far as to say I wouldn’t care if they dropped off the face of the planet. But killing them has never crossed my mind. If I did that without a damn well huge reason, I’d be more violent and malicious than the people I loathe. I’d be worse than them.”

Ah, Red thinks, so they have pigs here too. She does find them to be nuisances, although she can make one exception to the rule: her little piggy banker, who lives in a house made up of brick, has been very friendly towards her since the age of eight, when she first started selling flowers on the street, way before she became the Wolf Killer.

“Murder is bad,” Red murmurs.

The phrase rolls ‘round in her mind,

She gazes at the woman with far-off eyes.

“But wouldn’t you say,

“There are circumstances where it’s necessary?”

“Holy shit,” Ashley says aloud, not even attempting to hide it this time, though her cheeks fluster for just a moment.

“What’s an ID?”

An unfamiliar girl in an unfamiliar land -

Is there anywhere a fish out of water can stand?

“I… Anyway, I’m sure I’ll find some way out of here,” she said. “Thank you for trying to help, it’s much appreciated, especially since the people here seem rather cold towards strangers who don’t reside here. Nobody else would tell me where I was! They all just gave me funny looks and snickered behind my back. I probably would have killed them all, but I’m not sure how well murder is tolerated in your land.” She ran her hand up and down her pistol, which was concealed by her wolfskin coat. And hidden in her knickers.

Oh my God, she doesn’t even have an ID.

“What the f... I-I mean...” Ashley’s just speechless right now. This woman isn’t just lost, she’s hopelessly lost. And if she ends up in the more... unpleasant parts of Ikebukuro--

Wait, did she just say she’d have probably killed the people in the store?

And she didn’t even seem to say so  jokingly, that was the most serious way she’d ever heard something like this said.

What the fuck.

She stares at the woman,

Her head to the side.

Then she answers, voice a bit shy:

“Kind stranger, I have to say…

“I didn’t know Japan was a place until today.”

“You... what?”

How does one--

How do you even get to Japan from somewhere else if you don’t know it’s a--

Should she contact the police to try and help her?

But... how would they even be able to help her if--

Ashley is just... stunned. Just completely stunned.

“Ike-bu-kuro,” Red repeated softly. She stared at the woman with far-off eyes that soon wandered about.

Strange, unfamiliar people in a strange, unfamiliar land.

Bustling, busy,

Crowded, smelly.

Not exactly the best place to be.

“I have never heard of this place before,” she said.

“What?”

That came out a little more bluntly than Ashley had intended. But... she couldn’t have come here on accident, right? Who travels to a foreign country on accident?

@uselesslxve (continued from here)

One moment she was exiting out from a clothing shop (“Could you tell me where this is?” she had asked the cashier, for she was in a strange, new land; but she was only met with funny gazes and snickers all around her). Next thing she knew, she was on the ground, looking up at a frantically apologizing woman.

“Oh. You’re fine,” she said. Red stood up without taking the offered hand. She pulled up the hood of her furry wolf coat and started to head off. Abruptly she stopped. Then she turned back to the woman and she said, her statement terse, “I’d like to know where this is.”

The way she so quickly stood up like that -- oh, God, she must have been frustrated with her. Ashley felt mortified. She probably ruined this woman’s day and everything and now she was going to go the rest of her life remembering that stupid girl that tripped her walking out of a store and --

“Where.. are you? Uh--”

Well, she did appear to be a fellow newcomer. Travelling between places was easily understandable, though... forgetting the name of your own destination was a bit odd...

♗ - one Muse trips the other

“Oh my God!”

More panicked than she’d been in weeks, Ashley rushed over to the fallen girl and frantically began reaching out for her hand.

“I am so, so sorry. Oh my God -- I really didn’t mean to do that, I should have watched where I was going. I guess I was kind of rushing myself and I wasn’t paying attention and -- are you hurt? Oh, please don’t be hurt. I cannot apologize enough.”

“Sure! I mean you don’t have to, but I’d love that.” Eleonore grinned happily, accepting her marshmallow offer. Her short tail wagged a little.

“Speaking of that, I could actually go for some hot chocolate. It’ll go great with the marshmallows.” For dogs, chocolate wasn’t very good. In fact, it was deadly. However, the Granbull didn’t know this. After all, she’d had it before on several occasions, and remained completely fine. Maybe it was thanks to her being a Pokemon.

“Well, if something as big and sweet as you would love it, that’s all the more reason to, huh? Here, just a second!” 

Ashley happily ran back into her apartment to grab an unopened bag of marshmallows. She’d... hold off on the hot chocolate, though. The poor thing, as she saw it, was probably some species of dog she’d never seen before -- and just so happened to be blissfully unaware of the fact that dogs and chocolate did not get along.

“I agree with you one hundred percent. The more marshmallows, the better.”

Well, this was an unexpected agreement. That’s to say she didn’t expect one coming from something like...

This big and cute animal friend!

Even dressed in three layers of clothing, Ashley is not quite ready to go into the great outdoors, with its... coldness.

☺: Do you prefer memes, or plots?

//I know it might not be the best answer. I feel kind of guilty, but I’ve always preferred memes. ^^; I don’t know why. Whenever I’m given a plot that’s too specific, I get nervous about doing anything that wasn’t previously discussed and am too much of a shy muffin to ask about it most of the time. And I feel that the more planned out a plot is, the more it restricts my writing or creative process -- I promise I’m not shaming anyone else who prefers planned-out plots. Besides, I know that other people flourish more when they do so, so feel free! Everyone should do what flows best with them.

And it’s not that I’ve never successfully written something more planned out, I’ve just always preferred memes. To me it feels like they allow the most freedom to go wherever you want with a story and I’ve always enjoyed improvising. I feel like it helps a lot with my storytelling and character development.

☻: Which genres do you find the easiest to play? (angst, fluff, smut, etc.)

//That would depend on the character! Generally for all things I RP, though, I have noted I do angst the most often so I suppose I’m getting better at it. The issue is that if I write or portray too much angst at one time, it begins impacting me personally and I begin to feel emotionally and mentally exhausted.

With Ashley here, I have done a lot of angst. It’s understandable. She has undergone great pain before and has built very strong walls as a result. She’s a no-nonsense girl that isn’t afraid to say she doesn’t like you (even if her reasons for such feelings aren’t the most rational at times), and there are a lot of others who won’t put up with being insulted and confronted so harshly, so she’ll clash with a lot of people. I knew that when I made her she was going to face a lot of conflict. She’s stubborn to the end and also hates it if she doesn’t get the last word.

However, this has made quite a few of her threads conflict and angst-based -- that’s not to say I don’t understand why, however, the more aggressive encounters can tire me out if I can’t find her a friend or something more easygoing in the meantime to balance out all the aggressiveness and, in some cases, terror.

Other characters, I’ve done a lot more light and fun stuff with -- which is a lot of fun to do as well! Again, it really depends on who I’m portraying.

☼: Which tropes do you find overused/boring?

//This one, I’m having a bit of trouble thinking of. I try to be very open and receptive to all things in stories.

I’ll try to be very careful with how I explain this, though: the angsty backstory trope. I don’t know if there’s a specific name for this. I don’t mean literally every character with a tragic backstory is abusing the trope, I promise, a lot of my characters (like Ashley) have tragic pasts. But it needs to be done and incorporated correctly. The subjects brought up in these pasts need to be handled carefully, and written well in order to work. You can’t under-do it, as in never showing any indication of why a character is acting a certain way and never even showing hints of their reasoning, but at the same time you can’t over-do it and have the character loudly announcing to literally every stranger they meet their entire life’s story off the bat before running off in slow-motion to “Hello darkness my old friiiiend...”