Starring:
Date: June 28, 2012
Summary:
None given.
"Strings Of The Heart"
Unknown location
Song to go with this cutscene:
Okumo Ra, the First Okumo, stood near a bridge in the Land of Fire where
a battle had been fought several days prior. He had been attempting to
repair the bridge. He had always been the sort to not be content to let a
broken thing remain broken. He had to at least TRY to fix it, whether he
succeeded or not. But then a young man had come from elsewhere and sought
conflict.
Rankoro Akuro sought his own death. Why he hadn't just killed himself if
he desired it that badly, instead of hurting and killing others until he
received what he wanted, was not something that Ra could claim to know.
But the ancient warrior knew that the pain that the boy had possessed in
his heart had a certain… Resonance. Ra did not possess most of the more
sophisticated capabilities and techniques that had been developed within
the Okumo Clan he had been crucial in founding during the Clan Wars. By
the same token, however, he had mastered the experimental powers he had
been granted to a level that no other had been able to. Perhaps this was
due to having survived where others had not.
Ultimately, he could sense things that many others could not. The strings
of the heart were a literal thing to Ra. Strands of emotion that connected
the muscular organ known as the heart to other hearts in other places. It
all spread out like a web before his eight eyes, and when his own heart
made a connection to another's, he could 'tap into' that other's emotional
'network'.
It had been a long time since Ra had made such a connection. The last had
been Lady-Spinner Ryoko, also known as 'Datura'. Before that, Digumo, a
black widow Huntress of Fukaizan — the Spider Kingdom.
Before that… He couldn't remember. The others of the Progenitors. The
other survivors of the experiments. They had all died out, one by one, but
for a time he had connected to them. Now, here, he connected to a stranger
whose pain was so similar to his own all those decades prior, that it took
less than 5 minutes to understand each other.
He gave Rankoro Akuro the choice he had been given by Digumo. 'Serve or
vanish into the maw of death.' Akuro had chosen the latter option.
Kyodaigumo, the giant spider he had summoned to his aid, had been quite
unhappy she had not been permitted to eat the corpse of the human that she
had helped slay. But Ra had been quite clear that he would give her food
for her broodlings later on. This boy was to be buried only.
And he was. There, on the banks of the Great River Bridge, Akuro was laid
to rest in the earth. The grave looked out upon the river, the grassy
slopes, the peaceful surrounding forests…
…And the bridge that Okumo Ra had just finished repairing.
