[Center][H1]In Memoriam[/h1][/center]

Hannya
Day 1, Morning
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Umemoto Eiishii did not have ‘friends’.

Not in the way that most people would mean it, at least, and with good reason. He was not afraid of losing people or hurting them so much as people were understandably hesitant to put themselves in a position to be hurt or lost. Everything in Eiishii’s life was expendable in his pursuit of excellence and, almost by definition, that precluded most forms of significant social relationships. That Alexander Temple, who had long ago assumed a cheery ‘Fuck it!’ sentiment towards his own mortality, had managed something remarkably close with the master swordsman was both surprising and unexpectedly pleasant. It helped that the two worked in very different fields and had avoided any sense of competition, but more importantly the gunner was the social butterfly that Eiishii would never be. Having shared a local haunt and bonded over an appreciation for fine whiskey, their meetings were infrequent but pleasant occasions of compromise between their two very different temperaments.

It was fitting that their last would be far more to Alex’s preference than Eiishii’s. It was, after all, his funeral.

Revelry was not a natural expression for Eiishii, let alone one so fueled and inebriated as this. Brightlance, as he had been known professionally, had been well loved by many. Having started late last night and continued early into the morning, the funerary hall was filled with the lingering remnants of Alex Temple's wake. The ground was sticky with poured out liquor, the air thick with smoke that even the filters of the room couldn’t quite choke down, and someone was throwing up behind one of the exotic-but-tasteful Korvanian Mourning Lilies ( which only bloomed in the presence of a corpse) that had been placed there in the false expectation of a more subdued affair. The funerary hall of the Temple of Stars had seen wilder parties but not by much, its otherwise sterile expanse well and trashed, but this was the first rager that Eiishii had deigned to attend. He was largely ignored as could be expected of a wallflower in such company, taking residence in a corner with a folding chair and a bottle of whiskey late last night. He indulged in neither the weeping recollection of (exaggerated) daring deeds or in the forced exuberance (also exaggerated) that many of the man’s comrades seemed to insist was the proper affirmation of life in the face of death. Dressed in black without even his usual splash of red or white, the master had instead worked his way without haste through his aged liquor one cooled tumbler at a time until a bit more than half remained. Willing to call Alex well and mourned, by this point, he set the remains of the bottle neatly to the floor beside him and ground out what was left of his cigar into the moist earth around the mourning lily.

“Hey,” the woman with the half-shaved head who had just relieved the contents of her stomach behind said flower growled, wiping her chin with her non-prosthetic arm, “you better finish that, motherfucker! Alex never walked away from anything halfway through, he lived life—“

“To the fullest, yes.” Eiishii was already on his feet as he finished the platitude, synthetic fingers rubbing themselves free of any lingering particulates of tobacco. He resisted the urge to roll his eyes. Perhaps she really had known the man, cared about him intimately and deeply, but Eiishii doubted it. It wasn’t particularly important either way, and certainly not to her—he doubted she would remember their conversation, given the sounds of expulsion and dry heaving she had returned to making.

Alex and Eiishii had maintained their good standing with one another by compromise, a carefully struck balance. With every intention of honoring that agreement in their final interaction, Eiishii had mourned Alex as he would like to have been mourned. As he left the hall with a final tug of his cuffs into place, it was time to do things his way. 

Revenge was a much better parting gift than vomit behind a lily.