It'd be a hell of a lot of effort for it just to be a lie.
[His breathing still isn't steady, and he's making no move to dry his face, still a mask of horror.]
Naoya, I... to be honest I don't want to believe you, I don't want to believe you have to carry all that by yourself, but everything you've said, what you wrote, where we are - even human cruelty is almost too much to believe in sometimes.
[He pauses, and bows his head for a few moments, tangling his hands in his hair as though he's trying to pull the thoughts from his brain.]
Before I came here I was in a place that can be drawn out of Chaos by two things: the return of its ruler, or by suffering on a scale humanity is only starting to figure out how to inflict on itself, which... also calls that bastard out of whatever piece of Hell he sleeps in. The anguish of every murdered soul, the terror of the people on the ships my country turned away, the rage of those who died fighting, the horror of people who welcomed the Red Army and then watched their cities fall all over again... they prayed to a God I was told was loving to save them, and instead their rage called forth one of those absolutes you told me don't exist. All because we've figured out how to do this to ourselves. Why should the Divine kind of cruelty be any different, if we're made in that image?
It's not that Akira believed you that's got me agreeing with him. It's my own doubts, and it's your anger. You don't have a reason to lie about something like this.
[He shakes his head, then.]
So... yes. I believe you. But I can't give up my faith for it. Even with everything I've just said, everything I saw as the Church smuggled us through Europe to investigate that place... even if it's just an excuse for people to treat each other decently, I saw enough good people working under the aegis of the Church that I didn't lose hope when I came close to it. Even if it's calling out to an empty throne, aspiring towards something that never existed, I don't want to leave behind people united in trying to set the world to rights. I don't want to stop hoping that maybe there's a reason for all the good in the world, somewhere, even though I know that's childish. I'm not as strong as I should be, probably.
[the narration would just like to say that for the record, Jonathan's obliquely referring to and looking at Pius XII's efforts to stop genocide with contemporary eyes and the historical community's "could have done a lot more" came afterwards, and the narration's own opinions are not her character's.]
... You have no idea what kind of horrors humanity can inflict. Just wait until you get home...
[But that's not the main point, even if that life was painfully short in every meaning of the phrase imaginable.]
It would be nice if there was a God who wasn't the sort of being as the one in my world. If I could believe that like I did a long time ago. ... I can't imagine one existing, though. But I'll grant that I don't know every other world.
Still... heh. Sometimes the Church can do good. Occasionally, when it gets its head out of its ass and starts living by the ideals that it claims. And when it goes far enough, which isn't often.
The war's ending next year, there's... there're books in here that say so, enough that I don't think it's going to go different where I'm from....
[He's focusing on the wrong part of this and he knows it, but there was that phrase neither he nor Rosenkreuz could make sense of, that just went unexplained like everyone would know what it meant. Two bombs ended the war, somehow, and the book had just carried on after that like everyone knew how and why....]
I'll tell you about the Castle if you'll... there was something Rosenkreuz and I couldn't figure out, things were written like everyone ever would know what it meant but he's from fifteen-seventy-something and the last calendar I saw said September 1944 on it. They wrote that Hitler went out first, and then later that year two cities being bombed ended the war in Japan.
Just two. One bomb each. Naoya... what the hell did we do?
[He lets out a soft sigh, physically steeling himself.]
Right. You should know what an atom is... well. When you split one, it releases energy. Sometimes it's a little, and sometimes it's a lot - it depends on the element. If you fill a bomb with radioactive material and then set it to explode and split those atoms, you can release a huge amount of energy.
Do that over a city... and you can kill a huge amount of people. Even now they still don't know how many died directly from the bomb, because there was widespread structural damage. And right near the blast zone, some people were simply... vaporized. The first bomb in Hiroshima killed about twenty thousand soldiers... and between seventy and a hundred twenty six thousand civilians, including the injuries and sickness after the first few weeks. In Nagasaki there were between thirty nine and eighty thousand killed.
... But the long term damage was much worse. Cancer rates spiked - especially in children - in addition to birth defects. Radiation sickness was widespread - and deaths from those are absolutely agonizing. Not to mention that a good portion of the cities were destroyed. All in all it was a... an awful thing.
[He's familiar with how victors' histories will downplay deaths. The range of those numbers is dizzying. There's a heavy pause while the color drains almost completely from Jonathan's face.]
How could they - how could they justify that?
[He's from a few months before the incendiary raids on Tokyo began in earnest, too, after all. March Tenth is months away. He doesn't have a frame of reference for "the good guys" killing and leaving homeless hundreds of thousands of civilians. Then he freezes, some of the things Naoya said finally snapping horribly into place.]
You were there, too, weren't you. My - I'm sorry. I know I keep saying that, but....
[He is helpless in the face of that scale of atrocity.]
... I was. Abel - or a person who inherited some of his essence, since his soul basically shattered when he was killed - was my uncle that life. He shielded me from the blast, but died from falling debris. I lasted... eight or nine months? Considering how I was relatively close, it was fairly impressive.
[Anyway... the other question.]
They've justified it in a number of ways. Do any of them really matter, though? People always find ways to be more and more horrific.
[He takes a deep breath, in the manner of someone about to begin telling a story they've heard many, many times.]
So we don't know which came first, the Castle or Dracula. What we do know is that the Castle is alive, and a creature of chaos. That description came straight from the son of its master. It's never reappeared with the same interior twice, though the layout is always roughly the same. When its master is defeated, it... the exterior usually partially collapses, sometimes completely. Knowing what we do now, I think it's safe to say that's the chaos creature leaving the way a snake wiggles out of an old skin.
I don't know where to start talking about the one I've seen myself. It's not a normal manifestation, there are monsters the old stories definitely didn't describe, and with Brauner in charge it's... he's running his own power through it to control it.
[He's not quite bristling - after all, he's used to people recognizing the book.]
We're not sure if he's resurrected or not, Brauner's got the Castle's power so bound up with his own that for all we know he could be sealed off somewhere. As to the Harkers... who d'you think I'm named for?
[He heaves a sigh. He's not going to touch that "generic" remark, wouldn't even if he didn't have the kind of post-cry headache he hasn't had in years starting to clang around behind his eyes.]
Brauner is... we aren't totally sure. He was a painter when he was human, we know that much... the way he's got the Castle contained is running power through pieces of his work. He's taking its power for himself. He thinks of Dracula as a failure, since he's never managed to conquer humanity... he thinks he can do better.
... Ah, one of those types. So he's some sort of demonic mage or some sort? Do you have anyone searching for his paintings? Destroying those sounds like it would cut him off...
"Or some sort", yeah. Rumors were that he got himself turned on purpose, or did it to himself... and yeah, my partner and I were working on that. Not destroying, but neutralizing them, she'd match her power to the... I guess you'd call it current? Frequency? The way the paintings were real. We'd go in and fight through to the embodiment of his will in the painting, kill it, and that'd take care of that. Problem is we don't know how many he's got linked in. Could be eight, could be eighty....
Ah, like the Harmonizer. I understand. Somewhat similar to how Kazuya and his friends went inside of Kuzuryu's mind... but heh. Don't give up. Even if it takes forever, there's at least a solution.
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i just couldn't go in on the war crimes stuff after all, sorry.
[His breathing still isn't steady, and he's making no move to dry his face, still a mask of horror.]
Naoya, I... to be honest I don't want to believe you, I don't want to believe you have to carry all that by yourself, but everything you've said, what you wrote, where we are - even human cruelty is almost too much to believe in sometimes.
[He pauses, and bows his head for a few moments, tangling his hands in his hair as though he's trying to pull the thoughts from his brain.]
Before I came here I was in a place that can be drawn out of Chaos by two things: the return of its ruler, or by suffering on a scale humanity is only starting to figure out how to inflict on itself, which... also calls that bastard out of whatever piece of Hell he sleeps in. The anguish of every murdered soul, the terror of the people on the ships my country turned away, the rage of those who died fighting, the horror of people who welcomed the Red Army and then watched their cities fall all over again... they prayed to a God I was told was loving to save them, and instead their rage called forth one of those absolutes you told me don't exist. All because we've figured out how to do this to ourselves. Why should the Divine kind of cruelty be any different, if we're made in that image?
It's not that Akira believed you that's got me agreeing with him. It's my own doubts, and it's your anger. You don't have a reason to lie about something like this.
[He shakes his head, then.]
So... yes. I believe you. But I can't give up my faith for it. Even with everything I've just said, everything I saw as the Church smuggled us through Europe to investigate that place... even if it's just an excuse for people to treat each other decently, I saw enough good people working under the aegis of the Church that I didn't lose hope when I came close to it. Even if it's calling out to an empty throne, aspiring towards something that never existed, I don't want to leave behind people united in trying to set the world to rights. I don't want to stop hoping that maybe there's a reason for all the good in the world, somewhere, even though I know that's childish. I'm not as strong as I should be, probably.
[the narration would just like to say that for the record, Jonathan's obliquely referring to and looking at Pius XII's efforts to stop genocide with contemporary eyes and the historical community's "could have done a lot more" came afterwards, and the narration's own opinions are not her character's.]
(no subject)
[But that's not the main point, even if that life was painfully short in every meaning of the phrase imaginable.]
It would be nice if there was a God who wasn't the sort of being as the one in my world. If I could believe that like I did a long time ago. ... I can't imagine one existing, though. But I'll grant that I don't know every other world.
Still... heh. Sometimes the Church can do good. Occasionally, when it gets its head out of its ass and starts living by the ideals that it claims. And when it goes far enough, which isn't often.
... Tell me more about this place you were in.
(no subject)
[He's focusing on the wrong part of this and he knows it, but there was that phrase neither he nor Rosenkreuz could make sense of, that just went unexplained like everyone would know what it meant. Two bombs ended the war, somehow, and the book had just carried on after that like everyone knew how and why....]
I'll tell you about the Castle if you'll... there was something Rosenkreuz and I couldn't figure out, things were written like everyone ever would know what it meant but he's from fifteen-seventy-something and the last calendar I saw said September 1944 on it. They wrote that Hitler went out first, and then later that year two cities being bombed ended the war in Japan.
Just two. One bomb each. Naoya... what the hell did we do?
cw: ... nagasaki and hiroshima, cancer, awful things, etc.
[He lets out a soft sigh, physically steeling himself.]
Right. You should know what an atom is... well. When you split one, it releases energy. Sometimes it's a little, and sometimes it's a lot - it depends on the element. If you fill a bomb with radioactive material and then set it to explode and split those atoms, you can release a huge amount of energy.
Do that over a city... and you can kill a huge amount of people. Even now they still don't know how many died directly from the bomb, because there was widespread structural damage. And right near the blast zone, some people were simply... vaporized. The first bomb in Hiroshima killed about twenty thousand soldiers... and between seventy and a hundred twenty six thousand civilians, including the injuries and sickness after the first few weeks. In Nagasaki there were between thirty nine and eighty thousand killed.
... But the long term damage was much worse. Cancer rates spiked - especially in children - in addition to birth defects. Radiation sickness was widespread - and deaths from those are absolutely agonizing. Not to mention that a good portion of the cities were destroyed. All in all it was a... an awful thing.
cw: mass civilian casualties?
How could they - how could they justify that?
[He's from a few months before the incendiary raids on Tokyo began in earnest, too, after all. March Tenth is months away. He doesn't have a frame of reference for "the good guys" killing and leaving homeless hundreds of thousands of civilians. Then he freezes, some of the things Naoya said finally snapping horribly into place.]
You were there, too, weren't you. My - I'm sorry. I know I keep saying that, but....
[He is helpless in the face of that scale of atrocity.]
cw: death mention
[Anyway... the other question.]
They've justified it in a number of ways. Do any of them really matter, though? People always find ways to be more and more horrific.
(no subject)
"Who needs a Dark Lord when we can do this to ourselves"....
[He shakes his head, eyes clearing.]
I didn't... it was cruel of me to make you answer that, even if I didn't know. I said I'd tell you about the Castle if you did, though, didn't I?
(no subject)
(no subject)
So we don't know which came first, the Castle or Dracula. What we do know is that the Castle is alive, and a creature of chaos. That description came straight from the son of its master. It's never reappeared with the same interior twice, though the layout is always roughly the same. When its master is defeated, it... the exterior usually partially collapses, sometimes completely. Knowing what we do now, I think it's safe to say that's the chaos creature leaving the way a snake wiggles out of an old skin.
I don't know where to start talking about the one I've seen myself. It's not a normal manifestation, there are monsters the old stories definitely didn't describe, and with Brauner in charge it's... he's running his own power through it to control it.
[He shakes his head.]
Give me somethin' I can focus on to answer?
(no subject)
Dracula's castle? So he's not dead? No Harker to k -
[He stares at Jonathan for a moment before laughing.]
Of course. Morris. That makes sense.
(no subject)
[He's not quite bristling - after all, he's used to people recognizing the book.]
We're not sure if he's resurrected or not, Brauner's got the Castle's power so bound up with his own that for all we know he could be sealed off somewhere. As to the Harkers... who d'you think I'm named for?
(no subject)
In any case, I suppose I should ask... who's Brauner?
(no subject)
Brauner is... we aren't totally sure. He was a painter when he was human, we know that much... the way he's got the Castle contained is running power through pieces of his work. He's taking its power for himself. He thinks of Dracula as a failure, since he's never managed to conquer humanity... he thinks he can do better.
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
(no subject)
[He makes a noise that's not quite a laugh or a sigh, somewhere between the two.]
Of all the people... but you've been kind to me. Thank you. I just... I wish there was something I could do.
(no subject)
Unless you have the sort of power that can help beat up the future King of Demons - or God Himself - there's not much you can do.
[He'll... ignore that 'kind' comment.]
(no subject)
My father did. He didn't pass it on before he passed on. I'm sorry.
(no subject)
I was being sarcastic, Jonathan. I didn't expect you to. It's fine - there's no need to beat yourself up over it.
... Though what kind of power did he have, out of curiosity?