Forums → Art, Music, and Writing → The Way of Moderation has ended (page 566)
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Sorry about the delays, job applications suck and so does having to fulfill criteria so I don't have to repeat the year lol. Also admittedly this is starting to be a struggle as we're having to tie up some ends that, frankly, contain plot points that we're going to eliminate entirely from the rebuild of this thing.
Yes, there will be a rebuild. More on that later.
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Rebuild
With uplifting music and stuff!
With everything else finally out of the way, the work could begin. Hammers flew, knocking the crumbling bits of ruins down to the very ground with the sound of steel on brick. Everybody moved with great gusto, for it was their living quarters, their shops, their livelihoods that they had to break down and build up again, and while it was incomplete their lives were on hold, confined to the great swathes of tents in the camps that had sprung up over parts of the Park, and the fields surrounding the burnt out shell of the Academy.
Elsewhere, business was starting to return to normal, in the environment of activity there was opportunity for trade, for argument, for the creation of wild and whacky edifices that turned upon themselves and collapsed only to be reborn again. And in among this mix, many of the veterans remained, working to restore the city they had lived in and battled for.
For this Strop was glad, for the unique spirit that this city held was not entirely lost. How it might change later, was another matter. And for that matter, some things never did change, such as his inability to find any of the other mods. It was as if they had vanished, once more, just like they seemingly did just before the beginning of the entire affair. He half-thought that he almost missed it, and imagined a characteristically grumpy Dank telling him that he ought to "stop playing dress-up and start working", but perhaps those days were truly left in the long past era that only a yearning nostalgia could evoke.
Now though, through all the clangs and the thuds and the noise of industry, he was content in the moment, with that feeling that all was once again right with the world.
Except it wasn't quite. There was something that had been nagging him, and he suspected that he knew what it was. Or maybe not exactly what it was, otherwise surely he would have said it by now, but rather he knew that he would have to chase the feeling down, and maybe it might become clearer when he got closer.
Yes, that was the way to do it. Like always he'd run down whatever bothered him until it could run no more! With this resolution, Strop trotted off, mallet slung over his shoulder, towards the yet unrepaired residential blocks.
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Friendship is Mudfighting
Cen wrote this segment, but Strop takes responsibility for the title, hehehe
The rain was pouring down in metaphorical buckets as Strop made his way over the muddy mess of soaked dirt and the grass that didn't seem quite attached to the earth anymore. The ground was slippery, even to a person with his ninja agility, and his clothes clinging to his limps made his movement no better. When this realisation started to dawn with two hours' delay, he trotted to a halt, looked around the deserted park and took off his ninja mask to properly gulp in the fresh, albeit quite humid, air. Soon after, the unremarkable sound of his fellow running partner could be heard, an unremarkable sound therein that it has been the main sound he had been making since their treck started. Rather than the usual huffing and puffing, it was more of a gasping-for-breath flavour, similar to the sound of someone throwing up their lungs.
At this, Strop turned around and watched the other, obviously less fit, runner get close enough for it to be acceptable to rest. Strop snorted, waiting impatiently for Cen to catch some resemblance of breath.
See, there was something that had been nagging him...
"Something has been nagging me," Strop said. "Ever since I apologised, you have barely spoken a word to me! I thought I had trained you to be better than holding grudges, but apparently not. And then there was those written complaints among the reports, what was that about? Why didn't you come to me about those concerns, then we might not even be standing here right now, in the rain, cold and homeless and without a place with to live that is warm and..." He trailed off, for a moment feeling somewhat redundant somehow, though there should be no reason to.
Cen just stared at him with a mix of dumbfound amusement and a growing urge to violently strangle the life out of the ninja horse in front of him, though the latter was less clear from his expression. "What?" He simply replied, without much vigor.
"I mean..." Strop hesitated, not quite knowing what he actually meant. "I meant you shouldn't hold grudges. It's childish." A nod punctuated this little known fact.
Cen straightened, continuing his stare for a few moments longer, with his hand resting against his chin. "I am not holding a grudge against you."
"You haven't even said anything for the last two hours!" Strop protested, somehow deeming this to be the perfect evidence of his theory.
"You elbowed me in the stitches and then you ran like someone had put your *** on fire." The reply was followed with Cen's entire face moving into an annoyed squint.
"That's not true!"
"It's not incorrect either." Cen paused for a moment, but continued before Strop was able to come up with a witty reply. "I am not holding a grudge against you. I'm just tired, and having a really crappy few days. I'm just not letting it out on little ponies dressing up as ninjas."
"I am not dressed up as a ninja!" Strop snorted. "I am an actual licensed ninja!"
"Then why can I see you?"
"I am letting you."
"A real ninja wouldn't."
"Well, a real FRIEND would."
"Would what?"
"Wo-..." Strop shook his raised index finger with an uncertain certainty, waiting for the cartoon gods to bless him with a witty one-liner, that would end this argument to his advantage.
Any minute now.
Right on the tip of his tongue.
Moments later, he was hit. Not by inspiration, but instead a rather physical fist had jabbed at his shoulder, bringing him back to the very soaked reality he was actually in. He looked at his shoulder, then at the fist Cen had raised with a mostly bored expression, expertly ignoring the implications of what had just happened. Then Cen jabbed at him again.
"What are you doing?" Strop asked.
"This."
Strop recieved another push against his shoulder.
"Would you stop that?!" Strop raised his hands and moved away a bit, a frown appearing on his face.
Cen paused for a moment, appearing to be deeply speculating about this order he had been given, before raising his head. "Nope." He jabbed him again.
A sudden wild spark appeared in Strop's baby-blues, something that could probably be compared to that of a wild horse moments before it starts bucking wildly, if it hadn't been because Strop was neither a wild horse, nor accustomed to bucking. Instead, he did the next best thing, which was pushing Cen hard in the chest. Cen stumbled back for a moment, then straightened himself with the silent composure of a man, who had been carrying the dead weight of a freight train for far too long. Strop mused for a moment on this thought, much too poetic for the situation, but before he could make any remark on the irony, he was shoved equally hard by the metaphorical dead weight of the other. Which, as he managed to contemplate, was easily translated to being tackled in the chest.
He lost his footing entirely, hooves slipping in the muddy mess of grass and dirty, and with as much graceful ninja technique he could muster, he flipped backwards to land hard on his butt.
Cen stared at him with a blank expression. Strop stared back in much the same manner.
A sound made him perk up his ears, surprising and unreal as it seemed. It was a snorting giggle, soon to evolve to a roaring laughter. Not that laughter tended to be surprising, let alone unreal, but in this case, coming from Cen, it was the most surreal moment in the entire history of Strop wrecking stuff. He stared wide-eyed at the bizarre sight as Cen doubled over, gasping for breath, before he finally understood the most important part: He was laughing at him.
"Hey!" Strop exclaimed, getting the prompt response of Cen pausing for a moment to look at him, and then continuing much louder than before.
Strop grunted, insulted with this humiliation - somehow he couldn't see the fun in it all - and rose with all glory and grace of a ninja, before continuing where he left off from the previous attempt to stand, hooves finding absolutely no sturdy foundation. In a last manic effort to save face, he moved the entire kinetic energy of the slipping sliding into returning the unwelcomed tackle from Cen. However, as his face at this point was dangerously close to the ground, it wasn't as much a tackle as a mudslide accidentally aimed at knee height.
They both fell onto the ground, a splatter of mud shooting up just to rain down on the squirming pile of arms and legs, all of which seemingly finding a new purpose, a better purpose. That of chocking the owner of the other pair in mud (no homo).
Shoving, pushing and failed attempts to hold the other down followed, neither of the two getting the upper hand in what looked like the wrestling champion ship for hobos, or alternately something that could have looked hot, had the participants been scandily clad women. 
"Is this what you do around here for fun?"
Strop turned his head to face a sight that made him catapult Cen off his chest as he sat up from the rather undignified position at the bottom of the two-man pile. This very sight was surprising, curious, frightening and unusual, not to forget chocking, peculiar, terrifying and odd. Or, at the very least, it did take him off guard.
A huge man in a coat, suit (and rather nice shoes, Strop noted) was standing before them, looking something like the mafia boss and the mooks surrounding him. And with that, Strop turned his head just to see something that looked oddly like the stereotypical bodyguard, shaved head, ear piece and everything. What the he-
"Nah, just your regular fisticuffs. Good to see you, though I wouldn't have believed it would be here." Cen rose to his feet and stretched out a muddy hand for the man to shake. The man in return gave him a glare, wrinkling his nose in disgust when a droplet of wet dirt fell on his remarkably shiny shoes.
"No thanks, no today."
Cen shrugged and dried his hand in his equally dirty shirt.
"No, I thought I would repay your last visit." The man adjusted his black umbrella a bit.
"Reminds me, how did you like the new table?"
"I think you scratched it when you delivered it."
"Professional delivery was expensive, and I think it was scratched when I bought it."
"I don't think it makes it much better."
Cen crossed his arms. "Then you should have gotten it yourself. Besides, pre-owned stuff is modern these days."
"Whatever you say." The man rolled his eyes and shook his head a little.
Up until this point, Strop had been sitting in dumbfound silence in the mud, staring wide-eyed at the strange occurrence before him, and neither of the participants had seemed to notice him. So, as a small pause in the odd conversation occurred, he managed to collect as much focus of mind to get to his feet, this time without slipping and falling with ninja stealth. This movement caught the eye of both the humans.
"Oh, right. Max, this is Strop. Strop, Max." Cen said nonchalant, as if Strop should already know this man.
"You are saying that like I should already know him." Strop replied with a pout.
"Well, you should."
The man, Max, looked at Strop with a sceptical expression, nodding at him in a distanced greeting, and turned to Cen again. "He actually wears that regularly? I thought you were joking."
"I rarely do." And such, the conversation carried away from Strop once again, leaving him dripping with mud and rain, and with an stupid expression on his face.
"So, any luck with Sai?"
"No, not really. You know how she can be."
Max nodded knowingly, and neither spoke for a while, caught in deep thoughts. Cen was the one to break the growing awkward silence:
"You were bringing me my glasses?"
As Max made his way back to the bodyguards through the thick mud, Strop was watching Cen silently, until he decided said silence wouldn't achieve anything, and broke it with a hammer.
"Who was that?!"
Cen turned to look at him. "Max."
"I got that. But who is he?" He gestured wildly.
"Sai's ex."
"Wha-"
"The guy that punched me in the face, and the reason you have stitches to elbow." Cen tilted his head slightly to look at him over the rim of his new glasses. "You know, that guy."
Strop's expression was without recognition.
"Nevermind." Cen shook his head in defeat, and began walking towards the more firmly grounded part of the city.
"Nevermind what??" Strop exclaimed, following after.
"This?"
"W-" Strop was cut short by a push to his chest, once against threatening to bring him to actions more alike those of a young colt, and not a ninja-rock-star-mod. He managed to hold still for long enough to see Cen grin at him and accelerate into a sprint.
"Later, loser!"
"Hey!"
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NEXT: A few miscellaneous things. The WoM tournament is finally formally closed. Some people we're waiting on to get their stuff together so I can get that going should get going!
I'm not sure what that last post was. It looks a lot like a bump.
Well that's okay. But today I have something much better than that for you...
THAT'S RIGHT, I HAVE A FREAKING UPDATE!
Yeah sorry, I know this is now ballooning way past 3 years, and I could have probably taken a whole year off the time if we didn't count all the time delayed due to me, but (and there's always a but) I had job applications and I have a literature review to do and this really important presentation about a patient so complicated I think I killed an entire Indonesian rainforest printing out all her documentation...
Anyway here's the update. Step by step we march towards the conclusion!
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Just When Everything Was Starting to Make Sense
A shapely, alabaster leg slipped out from under the still water's surface, sending barely a ripple as it extended high into the air, languidly waving around. Through the thick haze of the steam rising from the water, it was nearly impossible to see past a single arm's length, but the total silence, save for the occasional drip and trickle of water that echoed around the tiled walls was testament to the absolute serenity of the baths.
Nill allowed herself the indulgence of a long sigh as she slipped further into the water, right to the point where her lips barely stayed above the level. In this position of exquisite slothfulness she ran her fingers over her suspended leg, revelling in its smoothness. She couldn't decide whether the vastness of the hair removal market for ladies was a good thing or the symptoms of a chauvinistic society, but in the thought-sapping environment she was in, she didn't have to care for now. This felt darn good, and that's all that mattered.
The relative coolness of the air around her leg was starting to send shivers up her spine, so Nill finally lowered it back into the bath, whereupon the sudden warmth radiating right down to her bones sent another shiver up her spine. Heaven! In the process she had involuntarily sat up, so she brushed the stray hair from her eyes, put on an imaginary thoughtful pout (she still didn't know if she had the hang of it yet), and pondered.
Nill was in that place of her life where she was really just beginning to discover herself. Despite not knowing what she was going to do next, after the topsy-turvy times of discovering and getting used to those strange bumps and curves, after struggling to get away from the horrid confines of power and authority and abusing it in various inadvertant ways, and the chaos that was the events of the Way of Moderation, she was now in a place of serenity, having come to terms with her new self. And it was empowering. Maybe this was just the ticket to her happiness.
Nill stretched out her hand (she noticed her skin was starting to wrinkle, and wondered whether too much Rose-scented bath salts in the water could do her skin a disservice), and peered between the spaces of her fingers. "I am Nill." She said, experimentally.
"I am Nill," she said again, louder, more confident. "I am Nill, a regular citizen of Armor City." The misty air swirled around, stirred up by her speech. "And I will live my life in this way, enabling freedom in others from the ground up."
It had a reall nice ring to it. Yes, this could work. Nill took a bigger breath, and spoke to the empty baths: "I resovle to go from day to day working with my fellow folk to make the most of our opportunity, without exerting authority or interfering in the purest process of liberty. Because that is what I, Nill, the regular girl, believe in!"
Nill basked in the resounding silence following her declaration. There, she said it, and nothing was going to stop her now.
Suddenly, the surface water barely six feet away from her exploded in a spray of droplets and noise, and two dark figures burst upwards and towards her. In a split second of uncanny clarity, Nill could have sworn she saw a big fat bronze diver's helmet.
Instinctively, she reached to her right, but she didn't have a staff, because that staff was Nemo's, and not Nill's. She would have taken a moment to reflect on every single event of her life and maybe even regretted her lifestyle choices, but it was already too late, and she was grabbed and promptly dunked underwater.
"But you're not even a hitman, silly," a muffled voice from somewhere inside the diver's helmet chided Strop. The ninja horse tried to keep as straight a face as he could for as long as he could, but barely lasted a second.
In between fits of hysterical laughter, he shouted "Right you are, now quick, drop the salts before she drowns!"
Nill managed to twist free of Strop's grip just enough to burst clear of the water. "What the hell guys!" She choked out between frantic breathes. "What are you do-"
That was as far as she got before Strop readjusted his grip and promptly dunked Nill back in the water. "Looks like we were just in time! We heard you were getting adjusted to your new way of life. Can't have that!" he quipped.
"I don't think she can hear you now," the diver reminded Strop.
"You were supposed to be dropping the bath salts in the water!" Strop reminded the diver.
"Oh! Right!" The diver clumsily fished around before producing a sinister looking blue ball, which slipped right through her fingers and fell into the water.
Immediately there was a hissing and a furious frothing, and bubbles quickly obscured everybody's vision. The water turned the same shade of blue as the ball had been as it fizzed and sputtered. Strop suddenly found himself up against a new burst of vigour from the head and shoulders he had been holding down, and he threw himself forward, trying to cover and restrict bodily motion. But as Nill's actions became more and more frenzied, Strop found himself jinking harder than a cowboy on a bucking bronco, and eventually he lost grip as Nill emerged with an almighty roar:
"STOP GRABBING MY BOOOOOOOOBS!"
Everyone fell back, shocked. The hair still sat, wet and limp, upon the head, obscuring the face, but the voice had come out at least an octave lower than they had grown accustomed to. Gingerly, Strop reached out and pulled some of the hair aside, and gasped.
"Zophia, I feel stubble!"
Nill stiffened. "What!?"
The diver grasped her oversized helmet and yanked it off, and indeed, revealing Zophia's head. "It worked!?"
Strop nodded vigorously. "Yeah! Feel for yourself, Nill is Nemo again!"
Zophia was about to grope Nemo's stubbly chin when the penny dropped for Nemo, and he jumped up, causing Strop to recoil as he was hit with a sudden exposure-induced blindness. "What the hell guys!!! Explain yourselves!"
"You're a guy again, Nemo, isn't that wonderful?" Zophia clapped her hands together.
"No!" Nemo shouted, still unaware of the implications of the water in the bath only coming up to about his knees. "I mean, maybe... I mean NO! Goddarnit I was just getting used to the changes and not being a mod and thinking that this kind of life would make sense after all and... why? Just why?" He slumped back down into the water and began to sulk.
"I promised I'd tie up every loose end from the Way of Moderation before I resigned as a moderator, Nemo," Strop informed him with a cheesy thumbs up. "And this includes the damage caused by the F-bomb incident."
"Loose end? Is that all I was then?" Nemo pouted.
"Aww don't take it like that," Strop simpered. "You see, since the Way of Moderation hasn't exactly found any new mods and I'm going to be leaving soon, we need as many moderators as we can get right now."
"But I don't WANT to be a-"
"Even if you don't want to be a mod, Nemo, AG needs you, and that's that. And besides, this was an admin decision. Here, I believe you might be needing this." From an unseen pocket, Strop produced Nemo's trousers and shirt, a wolfskin, and a long wooden staff, complete with duct-tape liberally applied to the middle. Nemo stared at it, before tentatively grabbing the staff and wordlessly turning it over.
"Right that's that then!" Strop and Zophia stood and hauled themselves out of the bath and started walking off. "Now that we know that this works, let's go try it on Moe!"
"You were testing it on me!?" Nemo exclaimed, outraged, but was summarily ignored by the other two. "Hey! Hey! WELL SCREW YOU TOO!" After hurling a couple more choice invectives and a bar of soap at Strop and Zophia, he realised that they had already left the baths.
Another two seconds passed.
Nemo stood there, his arms slumped. His brow furrowed for a moment, and then it set. "Hey! You're going to see Moe, right?" Nemo called out, clambering out of the bath and slamming the wolf cap on his head. He donned the rest of his garments as best as he could be bothered, and stumbled back onto the streets of Armor City, one leg still stubbornly refusing to fit into the leg of his trousers.
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