Post by Seven on Sept 2, 2008 23:35:06 GMT -5
I remember a while ago, Rojo asked me to post something I've written. Usually, I don't like to, since all my writing is awful, but I decided to comply since I've been suggesting we write some of our random characters' bios/profiles. So this is the story of Mikaki, the Soul Eating Demon (actually, he's a Devil, but that's how he's generally referred to.) There aren't really going to be chapters, but since I didn't finish (and probably won't for a while), I'm just going to post what I can and feign continuity. So, please enjoy!
________________________________________________________________
Soul Eater
Why it is you’ve come looking for my story, even I am unsure. Perhaps you liken yourself to some kind of a savior or a missionary, and of course, thinking yourself noble and good, you feel it necessary to try and redeem me and make me a better person for your crude societies. Maybe you even wish to pull my name out of the mud, throw needless sympathy at me, and try to say the things I’ve done weren’t my fault. Unfortunately, you will soon see that your little fairy tale of redemption is quite impossible. Normally I wouldn’t waste my time of day entertaining these ideas or simpletons like you, but being that the days are long here and I am now with infinite time, I shall relate to you some tidbits of my unfathomably long existence, not just for your own sense of achievement, but for my own amusement as well. So feel happy, mortal, for this is a great moment of amusement indeed, when a soul eater in their right mind chooses to tell you a story rather than erase yours.
Being a soul eater, I have fed off your kind’s single most precious thing for more than two billion. This may sicken you yes, but I’m sure one as intelligent as you are must know that I don’t have to justify these actions, just as you don’t justify eating a plant or an animal weaker than yourself. We could begin a lengthy discussion of the morality of feeding, and you might try to defend me once again, trying to deduce with your common knowledge that unless suicide is on the agenda, one has to eat to survive—but I don’t think we should waste time on such frivolous topics. After all, if you wanted such a story, you could read some surly tale about the woes and plights of vampires. You must remember dear, I am not here to complain of my existence, nor cry to the heavens how my primal needs have cursed me and turned me into the creature I am now.
However, not all of my existence has been one of darkness; actually, many times over I have had the delight to uncover things that I could not have learned without being what I am. Being a soul eater, I have had the chance to learn more of the nature of souls through the study of children. Children are indeed fascinating subjects, people taken for granted by the world, still greatly connected with their “source.” You see, a young child’s soul is still incorrupt, the soul as just entered it and hasn’t yet had time to change. In other words, the truest a person’s personality can be to their eternal self is when they’re a child, before the world hasn’t gotten a chance to leave its imprints. Once the change begins, personality will bow before the mind instead of spirit, making a person subject to rules and laws of their culture. It is an inevitable change; it is impossible not to be changed for anything that does or doesn’t happen to you will change your mental structure. Whenever I have met a man of many years, I can only wonder what his true personality must have been like, since the person he has become is almost always an entirely different one than he was born, who he would be reborn as (in the case of reincarnation), and who he truly had intended to be. You could say I am a living example of such a thing; though on normal days I wouldn’t admit it, being over 2 billion years of experience has changed me into my own exact opposite.
Perhaps you’ll understand if I tell my story chronologically (though one could claim the order is not important, as all things are cyclical). Do not worry that my story should have any discrepancies (since time usually makes us forgetful), these are stories I doubt I could ever forget. Even 2 billion years later, through all my trials and the time when my mind was supposed to have been wiped clean, I was still there, a small and cynical voice that still remembered all.
To begin, this story does not begin with me. It begins with an angel, the Morning Star, the first to fall from the heavens. Even though he brought down a third of the stars in the skies with him, I can only imagine the immense emptiness he must have felt wandering the mortal realms in his early days. No other angel could ever be quite like him, as no other hand ever been the first to fall, and no other had such a strong pull of opposites within himself, true beauty yet true monstrosity. I think that is why he decided to create my kind’s forefathers, the original soul eaters. They were a beautiful people, tall, thin, creatures that seemed to be made of the clouds and air. But they were more than that, and you could tell the moment you looked into their eyes. Each iris of theirs was a hot and burning red, the sacred fire of heaven sealed within their bodies. And at times that fire would break through, transforming them into beings of power, beings that would invoke terror into others in forms you might think are monstrous. They were supposedly emotionally blank, incapable of goodness or kind feelings for another living being.
…Yes, I did see your look. The slight rolling of eyes when I mention “emotionally blank.” I can tell what you’re thinking. You’re looking at me and your subconscious is saying, “That explains everything…though it’s hard to imagine someone more apathetic than you, Mikaki.” But then again, maybe you’re right. In any case, let us continue.
Just as God had created man in his image, giving you lucky fools a part of his own essence (something angels everywhere had envied to the point of rebellion), the Morning Star had created my forefathers in his own image. We were modeled after his fall, so that he would no longer be lonely. And of course what better to feed his new beloved creations that that which had invoked jealousy in the angels to begin with? Feeding God’s precious mortals to his new beings was the ultimate declaration of war, proof that what God forsaking the angels had been unforgivable.
But as time would tell, there were flaws in our forefathers. Actually, the flaw was not so much in our forefathers. The flaw was in us, the offspring. For some ungodly reason, we were not born like them. We were tall and thin like they were, but we did not possess neither their beautiful form, nor their monstrous one. Some of us were just angular, awkward in comparison to them. And while we did hunger for the same souls our parents did, we also enjoyed feasting on the flesh and blood of our victims as well. And once again, though that may seem perfectly evil and hideous to you, it was a disappointment to them. Perhaps the degree of our parents perfection was just too great to be replicated by such primitive tactics as intercourse; maybe only the Morning Star could create more such as they. In either case, it did not matter. We did not live up to their status quo, not one of us, and thus, we and all of our sub-sequential offspring were abandoned.
Please, save your sympathetic looks. I prefer you didn’t start pitying me on account of this. I can tell you’re already formulating that everything “wrong” and “evil” I’ve done in my villainous career stemmed from abandonment issues. You should have seen it coming though, I had mentioned that our parents did not feel kind emotions towards anything, you should have seen that foreshadowing. Besides, we might have been discarded by our parents, but we had all been discarded together. And ironically, it was our “flaws” that allowed our society to live as long as it did. You’re wondering what became of the original soul eaters, aren’t you? It’s an ironic story, actually. You see, the Morning Star created beings that were too similar to himself… and that was the problem. They were too powerful, too rebellious. In the end, he feared for himself, feared just as he had betrayed his creator, his creations would betray him as well. In his foolish attempt to show God up, he was potentially creating his own downfall. And perhaps if he hadn’t caught his mistake when he did, there would be three planes right now instead of two, a Heaven, a Hell, and the realm of Soul Eaters. But when he had this sudden realization, he destroyed his unsuspecting creations. We however, the discarded ones, were spared. After all, we were flawed, and thus could not stand a chance against our parents’ creator. But we were still strong…strong and dark enough to cause even Seraphims to fly in fear.
Yes, our parents must have underestimated us, for we were a cruel and deadly people. Even darkness made way for our kind. We caused all sorts of destruction in our wake, regardless of the fact that the remains of our species were practically near extinction. All of us together must have been less than 1,000 people. But then again, that was probably for the best. Heaven knows what might have happened had there been more of us.
Amazingly enough, even being forsaken by the ones who bore us, we as a people still held this incredible loyalty to our forefathers. We prided ourselves from coming from their genes, prided ourselves that they had been so powerful that the “Dark God” (as we knew him) had feared them and cowardly destroyed them when they were unsuspecting and still followed him loyally. And with all this pride for our ancestry, our deepest aspiration was always to try to recreate our spirits and bodies in their likeness. The center of our culture, our myths, was that someday, one of us would rise up, reborn into the same figure as parents, and then lead the others into their rebirths. Lead them to a glorious new dawn. And for that reason, all of my kind named themselves after their parents, as if we hoped to someday replace them.
Let me explain. Soul eaters, unlike you, do not possess multiple names. We do not have nicknames, surnames, or anything else. We simply do not believe in them. The male names are sharp and hard, mostly consonants, while the female names were softer, flowing, and comprised of mostly vowels. Also, we did not take our parents exact name, we used our parents name as a root. From there, another character (usually an ending character) would be added onto some part of the name to distinguish you and your placement on the family tree. Boys were named after their forefather and girls after their foremother. Because of this system, surnames were unnecessary (as just your single name could tell another soul eater everything they needed to know about your “family”) and nicknames or any other alterations of your given name was considered disrespectful, a mockery of your great and powerful ancestor.
But even our supposed loyalty was ironic and contradictory. We could easily be loyal to the idea, live in a village as a society, even create rites and events such as a coming of age, yet our nature remained barbaric to its core and the semblance of life hung on a thing string. We were a hostile people who had no remorse; like trained killers, we might spear a neighbor to death not only at night, but in broad daylight in the midst of a crowd. What were almost ritualistic killings of each other were perfectly normal in the society. Suspect someone of calling you weak? Spear them to death and amend that fallacy. Was the one murdered in the streets your betrothed? Go get your machete and seek revenge. The bodies of the slaughtered would be turned into Sunday brunch while the head or other miscellaneous body parts might become decoration or an accessory for the murderer. It was amazing that we managed not to go extinct at our own hands, since there were so few of us to begin with. One always had to be wary in our primitive lands, unless you wanted to be a cannibal’s lunch.
I was lucky. Despite being considered a bad omen and generally held in contempt, if not hate, by my fellow soul eaters, I never truly had to deal with any of these problems. I was told it a thousand times, and heard it repeating over in my head another ten thousand. My brother, Mikaku, was that thin and weak string that I mentioned earlier—the one that held us soul eaters together. It was not that he was particularly good (no, not at all, as that would be blasphemous), clever, or even that great of a leader, yet he was the “Chief” of our people, and everywhere he went, he was respected and obeyed. True, he was quite powerful, amongst the top ten, but that wasn’t the full extent of it. No, had someone even threatened to raise a mere hand against Mikaku, that man would face punishments more gruesome that being feasted upon alive (as was another of the society’s hobbies). It was ordained that the son and sole heir of Mika would become like his forefathers, terrible and great, and lead the others to their golden dawn. And me—I was along for the ride.
________________________________________________________________
Soul Eater
Why it is you’ve come looking for my story, even I am unsure. Perhaps you liken yourself to some kind of a savior or a missionary, and of course, thinking yourself noble and good, you feel it necessary to try and redeem me and make me a better person for your crude societies. Maybe you even wish to pull my name out of the mud, throw needless sympathy at me, and try to say the things I’ve done weren’t my fault. Unfortunately, you will soon see that your little fairy tale of redemption is quite impossible. Normally I wouldn’t waste my time of day entertaining these ideas or simpletons like you, but being that the days are long here and I am now with infinite time, I shall relate to you some tidbits of my unfathomably long existence, not just for your own sense of achievement, but for my own amusement as well. So feel happy, mortal, for this is a great moment of amusement indeed, when a soul eater in their right mind chooses to tell you a story rather than erase yours.
Being a soul eater, I have fed off your kind’s single most precious thing for more than two billion. This may sicken you yes, but I’m sure one as intelligent as you are must know that I don’t have to justify these actions, just as you don’t justify eating a plant or an animal weaker than yourself. We could begin a lengthy discussion of the morality of feeding, and you might try to defend me once again, trying to deduce with your common knowledge that unless suicide is on the agenda, one has to eat to survive—but I don’t think we should waste time on such frivolous topics. After all, if you wanted such a story, you could read some surly tale about the woes and plights of vampires. You must remember dear, I am not here to complain of my existence, nor cry to the heavens how my primal needs have cursed me and turned me into the creature I am now.
However, not all of my existence has been one of darkness; actually, many times over I have had the delight to uncover things that I could not have learned without being what I am. Being a soul eater, I have had the chance to learn more of the nature of souls through the study of children. Children are indeed fascinating subjects, people taken for granted by the world, still greatly connected with their “source.” You see, a young child’s soul is still incorrupt, the soul as just entered it and hasn’t yet had time to change. In other words, the truest a person’s personality can be to their eternal self is when they’re a child, before the world hasn’t gotten a chance to leave its imprints. Once the change begins, personality will bow before the mind instead of spirit, making a person subject to rules and laws of their culture. It is an inevitable change; it is impossible not to be changed for anything that does or doesn’t happen to you will change your mental structure. Whenever I have met a man of many years, I can only wonder what his true personality must have been like, since the person he has become is almost always an entirely different one than he was born, who he would be reborn as (in the case of reincarnation), and who he truly had intended to be. You could say I am a living example of such a thing; though on normal days I wouldn’t admit it, being over 2 billion years of experience has changed me into my own exact opposite.
Perhaps you’ll understand if I tell my story chronologically (though one could claim the order is not important, as all things are cyclical). Do not worry that my story should have any discrepancies (since time usually makes us forgetful), these are stories I doubt I could ever forget. Even 2 billion years later, through all my trials and the time when my mind was supposed to have been wiped clean, I was still there, a small and cynical voice that still remembered all.
To begin, this story does not begin with me. It begins with an angel, the Morning Star, the first to fall from the heavens. Even though he brought down a third of the stars in the skies with him, I can only imagine the immense emptiness he must have felt wandering the mortal realms in his early days. No other angel could ever be quite like him, as no other hand ever been the first to fall, and no other had such a strong pull of opposites within himself, true beauty yet true monstrosity. I think that is why he decided to create my kind’s forefathers, the original soul eaters. They were a beautiful people, tall, thin, creatures that seemed to be made of the clouds and air. But they were more than that, and you could tell the moment you looked into their eyes. Each iris of theirs was a hot and burning red, the sacred fire of heaven sealed within their bodies. And at times that fire would break through, transforming them into beings of power, beings that would invoke terror into others in forms you might think are monstrous. They were supposedly emotionally blank, incapable of goodness or kind feelings for another living being.
…Yes, I did see your look. The slight rolling of eyes when I mention “emotionally blank.” I can tell what you’re thinking. You’re looking at me and your subconscious is saying, “That explains everything…though it’s hard to imagine someone more apathetic than you, Mikaki.” But then again, maybe you’re right. In any case, let us continue.
Just as God had created man in his image, giving you lucky fools a part of his own essence (something angels everywhere had envied to the point of rebellion), the Morning Star had created my forefathers in his own image. We were modeled after his fall, so that he would no longer be lonely. And of course what better to feed his new beloved creations that that which had invoked jealousy in the angels to begin with? Feeding God’s precious mortals to his new beings was the ultimate declaration of war, proof that what God forsaking the angels had been unforgivable.
But as time would tell, there were flaws in our forefathers. Actually, the flaw was not so much in our forefathers. The flaw was in us, the offspring. For some ungodly reason, we were not born like them. We were tall and thin like they were, but we did not possess neither their beautiful form, nor their monstrous one. Some of us were just angular, awkward in comparison to them. And while we did hunger for the same souls our parents did, we also enjoyed feasting on the flesh and blood of our victims as well. And once again, though that may seem perfectly evil and hideous to you, it was a disappointment to them. Perhaps the degree of our parents perfection was just too great to be replicated by such primitive tactics as intercourse; maybe only the Morning Star could create more such as they. In either case, it did not matter. We did not live up to their status quo, not one of us, and thus, we and all of our sub-sequential offspring were abandoned.
Please, save your sympathetic looks. I prefer you didn’t start pitying me on account of this. I can tell you’re already formulating that everything “wrong” and “evil” I’ve done in my villainous career stemmed from abandonment issues. You should have seen it coming though, I had mentioned that our parents did not feel kind emotions towards anything, you should have seen that foreshadowing. Besides, we might have been discarded by our parents, but we had all been discarded together. And ironically, it was our “flaws” that allowed our society to live as long as it did. You’re wondering what became of the original soul eaters, aren’t you? It’s an ironic story, actually. You see, the Morning Star created beings that were too similar to himself… and that was the problem. They were too powerful, too rebellious. In the end, he feared for himself, feared just as he had betrayed his creator, his creations would betray him as well. In his foolish attempt to show God up, he was potentially creating his own downfall. And perhaps if he hadn’t caught his mistake when he did, there would be three planes right now instead of two, a Heaven, a Hell, and the realm of Soul Eaters. But when he had this sudden realization, he destroyed his unsuspecting creations. We however, the discarded ones, were spared. After all, we were flawed, and thus could not stand a chance against our parents’ creator. But we were still strong…strong and dark enough to cause even Seraphims to fly in fear.
Yes, our parents must have underestimated us, for we were a cruel and deadly people. Even darkness made way for our kind. We caused all sorts of destruction in our wake, regardless of the fact that the remains of our species were practically near extinction. All of us together must have been less than 1,000 people. But then again, that was probably for the best. Heaven knows what might have happened had there been more of us.
Amazingly enough, even being forsaken by the ones who bore us, we as a people still held this incredible loyalty to our forefathers. We prided ourselves from coming from their genes, prided ourselves that they had been so powerful that the “Dark God” (as we knew him) had feared them and cowardly destroyed them when they were unsuspecting and still followed him loyally. And with all this pride for our ancestry, our deepest aspiration was always to try to recreate our spirits and bodies in their likeness. The center of our culture, our myths, was that someday, one of us would rise up, reborn into the same figure as parents, and then lead the others into their rebirths. Lead them to a glorious new dawn. And for that reason, all of my kind named themselves after their parents, as if we hoped to someday replace them.
Let me explain. Soul eaters, unlike you, do not possess multiple names. We do not have nicknames, surnames, or anything else. We simply do not believe in them. The male names are sharp and hard, mostly consonants, while the female names were softer, flowing, and comprised of mostly vowels. Also, we did not take our parents exact name, we used our parents name as a root. From there, another character (usually an ending character) would be added onto some part of the name to distinguish you and your placement on the family tree. Boys were named after their forefather and girls after their foremother. Because of this system, surnames were unnecessary (as just your single name could tell another soul eater everything they needed to know about your “family”) and nicknames or any other alterations of your given name was considered disrespectful, a mockery of your great and powerful ancestor.
But even our supposed loyalty was ironic and contradictory. We could easily be loyal to the idea, live in a village as a society, even create rites and events such as a coming of age, yet our nature remained barbaric to its core and the semblance of life hung on a thing string. We were a hostile people who had no remorse; like trained killers, we might spear a neighbor to death not only at night, but in broad daylight in the midst of a crowd. What were almost ritualistic killings of each other were perfectly normal in the society. Suspect someone of calling you weak? Spear them to death and amend that fallacy. Was the one murdered in the streets your betrothed? Go get your machete and seek revenge. The bodies of the slaughtered would be turned into Sunday brunch while the head or other miscellaneous body parts might become decoration or an accessory for the murderer. It was amazing that we managed not to go extinct at our own hands, since there were so few of us to begin with. One always had to be wary in our primitive lands, unless you wanted to be a cannibal’s lunch.
I was lucky. Despite being considered a bad omen and generally held in contempt, if not hate, by my fellow soul eaters, I never truly had to deal with any of these problems. I was told it a thousand times, and heard it repeating over in my head another ten thousand. My brother, Mikaku, was that thin and weak string that I mentioned earlier—the one that held us soul eaters together. It was not that he was particularly good (no, not at all, as that would be blasphemous), clever, or even that great of a leader, yet he was the “Chief” of our people, and everywhere he went, he was respected and obeyed. True, he was quite powerful, amongst the top ten, but that wasn’t the full extent of it. No, had someone even threatened to raise a mere hand against Mikaku, that man would face punishments more gruesome that being feasted upon alive (as was another of the society’s hobbies). It was ordained that the son and sole heir of Mika would become like his forefathers, terrible and great, and lead the others to their golden dawn. And me—I was along for the ride.
