april catch-all!

[feintofhart]

Who: Claude & Various
Where: Around Aldrip!
What: Claude and his encounters around town.
Warnings: None anticipated! If you'd like to hop in on a log, however, please feel free to PM/DM me or hit me up on plurk (here!), and I'd be happy to whip up a starter for you, or you can just wildcard me in here! Claude will be going about his business exploring the new Aldrip, fumbling around with new technology, running the apothecary, training, riding his wyvern, etc., etc., so if any of those appeal, feel free to jump on in. :)

Comments

[feintofhart]

[ Claude shakes his head in protest, a laugh on his lips; he can fight, really, he can! But he'll be the first to admit his hand-to-hand has gotten a bit shoddy. He could use a little more practice, and maybe he will go down to the dojo one of these days.

Even if it'll be a blow to his pride to get his ass kicked. It's fine. Manjiro's already bruised his pride enough, what with the talks of prudishness and -- everything else. But there are more interesting things to discuss, and he listens with rapt attention as Manjiro lays out his circumstances, as different to Claude's own privileged upbringing as they can be.

Claude didn't just grow up rich. He grew up ridiculously, extravangantly, mind-blowingly rich. The Palaces back home had been as large as a town, and had accommodated just about as many people, hundreds of staffers who he outranked from birth, the only sex-workers being the concubines of his father, his brothers, who had an entire Palace of their very own. To be a concubine was an enviable position back home, insurance that you would be kept for the rest of your days, housed and fed and showered with riches.

Far, far from the sort of brothels that Manjiro's talking about. ]

So it's economic marginalization, for the most part, [ Claude says, nodding. He had wondered. He's met a few others who claimed they were from the same place as Manjiro, but they had different features from the kid in front of him -- darker hair, for one. ]

So without any opportunities that were going to be given to, you took your destiny into your own hands. That makes sense. [ He should probably disapprove of this sort of thing on principle alone. He finds that prospect to be a difficult one. ]

And... most of you are kids, huh?

[ With the emphasis on parents and school, he can't imagine many of them are full-fledged adults. ]

Do the officials give you much trouble?

[invinciblemikey]

(it's a little gloomy, back home. they don't fit in, be it in economic means, or simply because they just can't be a part of that hegemonic work culture that takes their country by storm. none of them could survive in an office, those long work hours, expectations, and the salary-man life that is so envied is something all of them couldn't achieve, and neither would they.

that said, criminality is a thing. be in the streets too long, go into a territory you shouldn't go, mess with the wrong person, wrong time. that's what toman has always been about - protecting all of them with an iron fist, to allow the people manjiro loves to have some future, whatever future they'd like. mitsuya can be a fashion designer, the twins can open a restaurant, so forth. as for himself, who the fuck knows. he can't imagine any other life other than this one.)

Yeah, bosozoku tend to be around my age, early 20s at most. We started the gang I preside when we were 11.

... And, yeah. They usually get around when there are gang wars, and they try to crack down on us, too. Usually, what we do? The Tokyo Manji is around 100 people right now, we got to 400 at some point - so when we all ride the bikes, it's in formation. There's a line of people who stay in the back to fuck traffic so the police can't get to the uppermen.

[feintofhart]

[ Claude is talking to another person right now. This is more than a hypothetical for Manjiro; this is his whole life. But a part of him is observing this from his position of relative privilege too, his knowledge of uprisings, unrest among the commoners, the things that need to be changed if...

Well, if they don't want an army of furious young people taking over their cities after suffering through undue amounts of economic disparity. It's not something he can focus on now, but he files it away in the back of his mind, on his rapidly mounting to-do list. That things could be so bad in Manjiro's home for so long, enough for there to be organized gangs of young people without a future...

It makes Claude think that perhaps war is even simpler. ]

So your lot is organized with, ideally, a code of honour in place for you to protect each other. With ties that go way, way back. [ A small army of people who are in their early twenties at most. ]

You'll have to tell me if my questions are insensitive - [ the sort of thing someone says before being insensitive; Claude has learned to at least disclaim it, especially when he knows damn well he's talking about Manjiro's brother in an off-hand way ] - but I imagine a reason that most of you are so young is because it's a dangerous way of life. Is it rare to survive beyond it, or do people tend to leave at a certain age?

[invinciblemikey]

(it's actually a pleasure. the way he sees it, idealized, honorable, isn't one too many people share nowadays. it's got a bad rep, and manjiro gets it, it's not supposed to be a good thing, it is criminality regardless of how he put it or spins it, but he doesn't deny that part. they are criminals, several friends have been in prison, himself could definitely be behind bars for all the times he tried to take the fall for his comrades.

still. there's an art, a reason, an honor.)

Basically - and, no worries. You're not being insensitive, you just don't know. Even people from my own nation in this place don't really know how our lives really are like.

(... he does get why claude is asking, though.)

Deaths do happen, yeah, but it wasn't Shinichiro's case. He was a civilian by that time, and people tend to leave at a certain age and give way to the next generation of that gang, but they never really leave. My brother's gang, the Black Dragons, is at the 10th or 11th generation - and even when he had already left it, all delinquents used to flock around our place, or his store. You're looked up to, regardless of what you end up doing.

[feintofhart]

Let's just say I'm aware of my position here, [ Claude says dryly, but not without humour. Being here has been a humbling affair in more ways than one. Yes, he'd had to consider the plight of the commoner back home - especially after hearing Cyril's dreadful story - but he hasn't had to live it before now. And even here, he was given a leg up; a place to stay, food to eat, a community to fall back on.

And here he is, Duke von Riegan, trying to talk to someone enmeshed in a community so impoverished that they chose to strike out against the laws of the land because of it. He's fully aware that the reality is probably less romantic than what Manjiro is painting, but he feels no need to question it either. You can learn a lot about someone, about something, if you let people tell you what they think something could be, not just what something is. It's helping him understand Manjiro better too. What's really important to him, at the end of the day. ]

So he retired. [ That's fascinating. A group meant for youths, kept that way actively and intentionally. He wonders how Shinichiro died. He chooses not to ask. ]

Sounds like he was some leader. What kind of store did he run?

[invinciblemikey]

(which brings the question - there's not just the position issue, but the fact that they're from entirely different worlds. he has to wonder if in claude's world, the streets are darker where the eye doesn't tend to look, if the struggles of fitting in are as sharp and harmful - if to live by their own rules, they have to go against way too much.

then again, he also has to wonder if claude has ever seen it. it's something he'll ask about soon, what kind of life did claude really live? did he ever take a glimpse beyond the gold? does this make him wonder anything else?)

He was the leader. Everyone, friend or foe, looked up to him. He had a bike shop, it's part of the bosozoku culture.

... You're going to be one, too, one day, right, or you're one? I mean, no idea how the hierarchy works. What do you want to do with your title, Claude? What do you want your legacy to be?

[feintofhart]

Hah, you don't dance around the subject, do you? [ Claude's eyes dance with guarded amusement. His goals as a leader are the one thing that he can't afford to be transparent about. The more people know about him, the less he'll be able to achieve what he sets his mind to. He knows that his dreams are things that others would call improbable, impossible, nothing more than the fancies of a little boy and now a full-fledged leader.

They may be right. But he still intends to try. ]

I'm the leader of the Leicester Alliance, yes, though it's largely ruled by roundtable. [ It's more challenging than being the sole leader in the same way that Edelgard or Dimitri had afforded to them by their birth, the only feasible heir to their respective positions. There's a court filled with angry old men who hate him, dogging his every step, blocking his every move. ]

Right now? What I want from my legacy is peace. Our lands have been at war for years, and it's a war I intend to stop -- intended to stop, before I was brought here.

[ It is not the truth of his greater dreams. But short-term, it's all that consumes him. He cannot end the discrimination between the two halves of his soul if everyone in Fodlan is either dead or have bowed in deference to Edelgard's rule. ]

The Leicester Alliance is the youngest of the nations of Fodlan, and arguably the weakest, but I don't intend to allow us to be crushed underneath the Empire's thumb. [ He glances out at the peaceful street outside of his Apothecary, so different from the world he'd once known. ] There are troops to rally, an army to overcome, what ought to be our greatest ally in shambles and in dire need of assistance. When we win, there will need to be a rebuilding effort for the villages razed to the ground, for all of the crops gone scorched-earth.

[ Claude rubs his forehead. When he thinks about all of the people going unhoused and hungry, it makes his heart ache, but it makes his head ache too, trying to think up logistics as to how to house them all. ]

Getting everyone safe and fed takes precedence. Everything else I might want to do has to come after.

[invinciblemikey]

Why would I dance around anything? Sounds stupid not to ask what I want to know.

(but if claude doesn't tell him, there's no worries there. it's his damn legacy, after all. this is a conversation. of course, it would bring perspective and newly understanding about the man in front of him - war does things to people, responsibility over it even more so.)

So you're going on a last journey for freedom. I like the 'when', I'll tell you that. Sounds simple, but it definitely ain't.

... But you know? You're great. I think you'll get it done. Just ain't gon be easy, from what you're telling me.

[feintofhart]

If you fight a war thinking you're bound for failure, you've already lost. The troops need to see that the person leading them believes in them for them to believe in you too. I think you know a thing or two about that.

[ At Manjiro's vote of confidence, though, he gives him a little grin. Manjiro doesn't know him well enough to say all that. He doesn't know him very much at all, he thinks, but nobody does. Not in this world, not in his own, not in the next. It's by design.

But it doesn't feel so bad to hear it anyway. ]

But... thanks. I appreciate that. It may take years to come, but we will be victorious in the end. I just wish I could be there instead of here. No crime I could be deemed guilty of is worth jeopardizing a whole nation over. And not to go bragging about my own successes -- but if we're going to win, they need me there, front and centre.

[invinciblemikey]

... I think you just won me a little bit more. Good answer.

(because that's exactly it. manjiro is the type to arrive, look at a sea of people, and offer them a fair fight - him versus all of them. 20? 200? manjiro stands tall in front of his people. it's the way to be, if you want them to move forward, you can't falter yourself. he's rather content with the answer.)

You're right. All we can hope is that time moves differently, or whatever bullshit, and that can still pick it up from where we left off. Otherwise, with all the hero types in this place, ain't we all ruined everywhere?