[background for Imperial Saga]
Mar. 8th, 2012 07:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forged_miracleOff the coast of Suo-Oshima, there once existed an island. Its chief attraction was the academy it housed, which attracted the children of elite families from all across the empire. Ohtori Academy, it was called.
Going farther back than middle school, Ruka's memories get hazy. Clearly he must have had parents, ones rich enough to send him to this academy. He does not remember what they looked or sounded like. This is a disturbing fact but one he's come to accept. He has few memories of his childhood and all of them are at school.
His memory becomes clearer at around age eleven. He was a brash and confident student, instantly liked. He stood out as a fencer, and by the time he was fourteen he had become a phenom with the sword, a bold young fencer with ambition to spare. He fought many an honor duel (a frequent pasttime among the academy students).
In his fifteenth year he met Juri Arisugawa, the female fencer. She was seeking something in fencing, a way to purge some earlier heartache. Ruka took her under his wing and taught her everything he knew about the use of a sword. He was immediately impressed with her bravery, ability to pick up technique and work ethic. The two became close and Ruka began to realize he was falling for her. And yet he was also realizing another hard fact: she was as gay as a spring day. There was no way she could possibly return his feelings.
With that heavy on his mind, he was approached by the school's mysterious headmaster, to offer him the ultimate challenge as a fencer: win the Rose Bride (Anthy Himemiya, the headmaster's sister) in a series of duels fought with both swords and magic on an architecturally impossible and secret platform. He'd heard rumors of this: the Rose Bride was supposed to be able to grant whatever her 'owner' wished and furthermore whoever ultimately won the duel game would become a legendary hero, revered throughout not just the empire but the entire world. Though suspicious, Ruka accepted Akio Ohtori's invitation to join the game. Duels in the secret arena would become a regular occurence for him from then on.
Yet he could not contain his suspicions, and spent many long nights in the academy library, searching for clues. Eventually two junior shadow-magicians he knew did him the favor of hiding him from the chairman's defensive magic and he snuck into his private study. There he found the truth: AKio Ohtori and Anthy Himemiya were natives of the faerie realms who had been set with the task of protecting humanity during ancient times. At that time Akio was known as Dios, the Prince Of The World. Yet at that time humanity was becoming more corrupt and the first rift monsters were starting to crawl out of Hook Bay. Dios's efforts to protect human civilization, both from the Rift and its own excesses, were slowly killing him.
Anthy, a powerful magician herself, took action while Dios lay convalescing, exhausted by his fights. Outside, a mob had formed, demanding he come out and set this or that wrong right. Anthy sealed away Dios's power, so that humanity could not use it and thus not kill him. None could get to it, not even herself.
Anthy went outside and confronted the mob with this knowledge. Outraged, they cursed her, and as she was still in a liminal state from such a powerful spell, the curses became literal: she would suffer the pain of being stabbed with swords for all eternity.
Anthy did not know that by sealing away most of Dios's power, she'd also taken his innocence and most that was good about him. The remainder called itself Akio, and he'd been engaged in the work of trying to regain his lost power and return to Faery (who had barred him access for his failure) for some time now. The duel game was only one of many such schemes, its methodology being to mold a champion who was both mighty and pure of heart enough to regain the lost power of Dios. Anthy was kept by him as his virtual slave and mistress, silently suffering her curse.
Ruka kept this knowledge to himself until the final duel, when he was to fight a mystery opponent. He'd guessed who that opponent was to be immediately: Akio himself. As they fought, Ruka confronted Akio with his life story, hoping to throw him off and persuade Anthy to rebel against him. Akio in turn revealed that Ruka would never be able to access the power of Dios anyway: he was not pure of heart enough. Too cynical, too manipulative, too much like Akio himself. As for Anthy, he had no real connection to her and thus his appeal fell on deaf ears. She bound him in place with a spell and Akio cut him with the tip of his sword. The poison in that sword went straight to his heart and Ruka collapsed there.
"A real battle is not like a duel game, boy." Were the last words he remembered before losing consciousness. He woke up in a hospital, his bills mysteriously paid. He would spend a year there, his heart in continual pain. Juri thought he'd ran away and hated him for it.
At the end of that year, he recieved a prognosis: his heart condition was fatal. He had a few more months left to live. Then he recieved a visitor: Touga Kiryuu, Akio's right hand man in more ways than one. He made him a simple offer: the game was being retried, with a new candidate for victor. Persuade Juri to duel the current victor, Utena Tenjou and she might be able to win, with the caveat that if he spoke of Akio's true nature, Ohtori's defenses would activate and he would be killed right there.
Ruka accepted. He intended to beat Akio at his own game and free Juri from his clutches, instead of persuading her to try to become AKio's champion. Upon arriving back at Ohtori again, he knew he had his work cut out for him: Akio kept a hold on Juri through her hopeless love for Shiori Takatsuki, a spiteful girl who was perpetually jealous of Juri and used Juri's love for her to feed her own ego. Locked in this Bad Unrequited Romance , she was trapped within the duel game too, to be used as fodder for the current victor.
His first step was to seduce Shiori. As predicted, Shiori immediately began using her new relationship with Ruka as a way to inflict further pain on Juri, publicly proclaiming how she was glad to have someone like Ruka around to keep a 'pervert' (her word) like Juri away. He then dumped her in front of the entire academy. When confronted, he acted as much like a cad as he could, in order to destroy any lingering attachment she might have to him, somthing he knew Akio could use to keep her in Ohtori after he died. Thus angered, she agreed to duel, with Ruka acting as her substitute Rose Bride. She beat Utena Tenjou back viciously, but Anthy secretly used her magic to shatter the locket Juri wore that contained Shiori's portrait. Thus offbalanced, she was disarmed by Tenjou.
Hoping to die in the arena as a final spite to Akio, he agreed to duel Utena next. As he thought, his heart gave out during their duel and he collapsed, seemingly fatally. His last thoughts that time were I hope it worked...
Whether his plan worked or not isn't clear, but what is known is this: Utena Tenjou rebelled against Akio Ohtori more effectively than Ruka had and freed Anthy Himemiya both from him and her curse. Juri was instrumental in helping her in this task.
Ruka saw none of it. He woke up on the beach, with his possesions, on Suo-Oshima, watching Ohtori sink into the sea as the magic holding it up gave out. Someone had almost completely healed his heart while he slept, or perhaps his condition had been tied to Akio.
Going farther back than middle school, Ruka's memories get hazy. Clearly he must have had parents, ones rich enough to send him to this academy. He does not remember what they looked or sounded like. This is a disturbing fact but one he's come to accept. He has few memories of his childhood and all of them are at school.
His memory becomes clearer at around age eleven. He was a brash and confident student, instantly liked. He stood out as a fencer, and by the time he was fourteen he had become a phenom with the sword, a bold young fencer with ambition to spare. He fought many an honor duel (a frequent pasttime among the academy students).
In his fifteenth year he met Juri Arisugawa, the female fencer. She was seeking something in fencing, a way to purge some earlier heartache. Ruka took her under his wing and taught her everything he knew about the use of a sword. He was immediately impressed with her bravery, ability to pick up technique and work ethic. The two became close and Ruka began to realize he was falling for her. And yet he was also realizing another hard fact: she was as gay as a spring day. There was no way she could possibly return his feelings.
With that heavy on his mind, he was approached by the school's mysterious headmaster, to offer him the ultimate challenge as a fencer: win the Rose Bride (Anthy Himemiya, the headmaster's sister) in a series of duels fought with both swords and magic on an architecturally impossible and secret platform. He'd heard rumors of this: the Rose Bride was supposed to be able to grant whatever her 'owner' wished and furthermore whoever ultimately won the duel game would become a legendary hero, revered throughout not just the empire but the entire world. Though suspicious, Ruka accepted Akio Ohtori's invitation to join the game. Duels in the secret arena would become a regular occurence for him from then on.
Yet he could not contain his suspicions, and spent many long nights in the academy library, searching for clues. Eventually two junior shadow-magicians he knew did him the favor of hiding him from the chairman's defensive magic and he snuck into his private study. There he found the truth: AKio Ohtori and Anthy Himemiya were natives of the faerie realms who had been set with the task of protecting humanity during ancient times. At that time Akio was known as Dios, the Prince Of The World. Yet at that time humanity was becoming more corrupt and the first rift monsters were starting to crawl out of Hook Bay. Dios's efforts to protect human civilization, both from the Rift and its own excesses, were slowly killing him.
Anthy, a powerful magician herself, took action while Dios lay convalescing, exhausted by his fights. Outside, a mob had formed, demanding he come out and set this or that wrong right. Anthy sealed away Dios's power, so that humanity could not use it and thus not kill him. None could get to it, not even herself.
Anthy went outside and confronted the mob with this knowledge. Outraged, they cursed her, and as she was still in a liminal state from such a powerful spell, the curses became literal: she would suffer the pain of being stabbed with swords for all eternity.
Anthy did not know that by sealing away most of Dios's power, she'd also taken his innocence and most that was good about him. The remainder called itself Akio, and he'd been engaged in the work of trying to regain his lost power and return to Faery (who had barred him access for his failure) for some time now. The duel game was only one of many such schemes, its methodology being to mold a champion who was both mighty and pure of heart enough to regain the lost power of Dios. Anthy was kept by him as his virtual slave and mistress, silently suffering her curse.
Ruka kept this knowledge to himself until the final duel, when he was to fight a mystery opponent. He'd guessed who that opponent was to be immediately: Akio himself. As they fought, Ruka confronted Akio with his life story, hoping to throw him off and persuade Anthy to rebel against him. Akio in turn revealed that Ruka would never be able to access the power of Dios anyway: he was not pure of heart enough. Too cynical, too manipulative, too much like Akio himself. As for Anthy, he had no real connection to her and thus his appeal fell on deaf ears. She bound him in place with a spell and Akio cut him with the tip of his sword. The poison in that sword went straight to his heart and Ruka collapsed there.
"A real battle is not like a duel game, boy." Were the last words he remembered before losing consciousness. He woke up in a hospital, his bills mysteriously paid. He would spend a year there, his heart in continual pain. Juri thought he'd ran away and hated him for it.
At the end of that year, he recieved a prognosis: his heart condition was fatal. He had a few more months left to live. Then he recieved a visitor: Touga Kiryuu, Akio's right hand man in more ways than one. He made him a simple offer: the game was being retried, with a new candidate for victor. Persuade Juri to duel the current victor, Utena Tenjou and she might be able to win, with the caveat that if he spoke of Akio's true nature, Ohtori's defenses would activate and he would be killed right there.
Ruka accepted. He intended to beat Akio at his own game and free Juri from his clutches, instead of persuading her to try to become AKio's champion. Upon arriving back at Ohtori again, he knew he had his work cut out for him: Akio kept a hold on Juri through her hopeless love for Shiori Takatsuki, a spiteful girl who was perpetually jealous of Juri and used Juri's love for her to feed her own ego. Locked in this Bad Unrequited Romance , she was trapped within the duel game too, to be used as fodder for the current victor.
His first step was to seduce Shiori. As predicted, Shiori immediately began using her new relationship with Ruka as a way to inflict further pain on Juri, publicly proclaiming how she was glad to have someone like Ruka around to keep a 'pervert' (her word) like Juri away. He then dumped her in front of the entire academy. When confronted, he acted as much like a cad as he could, in order to destroy any lingering attachment she might have to him, somthing he knew Akio could use to keep her in Ohtori after he died. Thus angered, she agreed to duel, with Ruka acting as her substitute Rose Bride. She beat Utena Tenjou back viciously, but Anthy secretly used her magic to shatter the locket Juri wore that contained Shiori's portrait. Thus offbalanced, she was disarmed by Tenjou.
Hoping to die in the arena as a final spite to Akio, he agreed to duel Utena next. As he thought, his heart gave out during their duel and he collapsed, seemingly fatally. His last thoughts that time were I hope it worked...
Whether his plan worked or not isn't clear, but what is known is this: Utena Tenjou rebelled against Akio Ohtori more effectively than Ruka had and freed Anthy Himemiya both from him and her curse. Juri was instrumental in helping her in this task.
Ruka saw none of it. He woke up on the beach, with his possesions, on Suo-Oshima, watching Ohtori sink into the sea as the magic holding it up gave out. Someone had almost completely healed his heart while he slept, or perhaps his condition had been tied to Akio.
