[indent][center][img]https://i.imgur.com/CY84i9T.png[/img]
[hider=Mood Music][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jp5a3ksuDUU&pp=ygURYmVjYW1lIGF0bW9zcGhlcmU%3D[/youtube][/hider][/center][right][h1][color=7B81B3]Kenshiro[/color][/h1][/right][right][sub][hr][color=7B81B3]Mentions: [color=ffffff]Anyone not coming to the basement.[/color] |[/color] [color=7B81B3]Direct Dialogue: [color=ffffff]Anyone coming to the basement.[/color] |[/color] [color=7B81B3]Location: [color=ffffff]]Kari's House[/color][/color] [/sub][/right][hr]
[/indent] Ken's hand was rising to his lips, hardly waiting for the group to gather before he sucked the noble liquor from the disposable cup, when the Recollection crashed like a wave across the attendents. He saw Kari, and his body reactively wept at the sight of her smile. The way she held Elsa... But she was talking to Lionel about 8th Street... He knew they'd been pestering her for some time, so he never missed a chance to give Emily G. Reed a hard time just like he had at the Festival. He thought maybe he could protect her...

And he was a fool. A fool who was too selfish to stick around and actually help her.

There was a bit about Sloane, but he hadn't realized they were speaking again. Typical. He didn't ever know much; he felt it straining their relationship more and more everytime he came back. She was less and less inclined to let him stick around for long periods, and more insistant that he [i] get back on the road.[/i] He hated that, and the feeling like she was rejecting him, even when she apologized later and let him back. He understood, he always thought. He figured she was just stressed about all the things she could see, and he didn't blame her for the strong reactions.
But by that point in his thinking, the world was already coming back to each of them in full color. He felt the tears leaking down his face and the alcohol leaking down his chin as it had been emptied out into his mouth but never swallowed. It was pain again, and guilt. And anger directed at the same woman who thought it was nice and cool to kick down Kari's door. 

But he wouldn't bother the group with his words or his fury. Those who were truly together had to stay that way, or they would die one by one in a slow, miserable pattern of weakest to strongest, most opportune to least. And if that dead Kari wasn't their Kari, then she wasn't really dead... But where the fuck was she?
Classic Linqian was yapping away; he hadn't even heard her laying into Sloane the way he wanted to, rather hearing his name specifically. He wiped the wasted alcohol off his face with his sleeve and nodded before making his way to her refridgerator. Opening the freezer compartment, Ken pulled a small wooden box out and popped it open. Within, a row of shimmering, frozen gold coins were laid in a half-cylinder case upon a velvet bed. The stack was about twenty coins deep, and he pulled a single one from the box before sliding it into his utility pack strapped to his waist. He thought about how she'd once used the thing so many times he had to upgrade her carrying case so she could keep more coins safely. 

It was dishonorable to keep them laying out, and she seemed to respect whenever he gave her some strange snippit of culture. She was even good about adopting things like that. It was part of what he liked about her so much.
[color=7B81B3]"Alright, alright. Come with me, and be sure to keep an ear out for Brother Drake. Some should stay up here."[/color]
And then he made way for the basement door. Some people had already meandered down, and he lightly thumped down the rickety wooden stairs until he was standing in the dusty haze of the basement. He looked at all the shelving units and workshopping spaces; places she used to be able to keep projects and different plot graphs for areas she was exploring or info she was gathering. There were different rooms in various states of finished and unfinished, mostly done with Ken's help as his trade in the Village had been carpenting. 
He stepped up to what looked like some sort of filled-in dumbweight elevator door that had been painted over and sealed shut. It was big; probably the size of an old-school television, or one of those wall safes you'd see rich people having in the movies. As the assorted procession filed in behind him, he turned to face them.

[color=7B81B3]"I don't suspect the Murasaki's ancient technique of Dark Drops to have been compromised by our enemies... But that doesn't mean I wouldn't recommend being on guard when I open this. My intuitions aren't what they used to be..."[/color]
He waited for everyone who was gathered to ready themselves as they saw fit... Then, with a smooth movement, Ken slipped the coin he'd grabbed into an inconspicuous gap between the plaster of the wall and the actual structure of the dumbweighter. At once, there was a burst of Purple Lux that formed hundreds of Kanji characters scrolling across the surface of the wall. With a slightly wet separating noise. the painted over door to the dumbweighter split in the middle, descending and ascending into slots in the wall. 

There was a rush of air, and then it opened fully. Anyone who had traveled with Ken, somewhere between the realms in a place that skirted along the void, the great Master Kai had carved a path in the darkest forest. There, he hid many things, and kept weapons of war and peace. The Forest of Doors: A true Pocket-dimension. And here was a three foot cubed space of it juxtaposed into Kari's wall locked behind a secret door opened with some kind of secret mechanism. The pocket itself was full of possessions and nick-knacks that Kari thought were special.
And like clockwork, the grief-stricken Kenshiro let loose like a man who had truly lost a spouse. Bellowing through tears, his hands immediately reached into the space and started pulling out things to organize them on the table. He started with several hard-covered albums, and opening them would reveal a myriad of incredibly shaped and colored bird feathers. There were also half a dozen glass-topped boxes of the strangest kind of stones and jewels, some luminescent under their own power while others shone in colors that shouldn't exist in the Shimmer. Small albums of picures and drawings that Kari and Ken had shared while she experienced travels of her own. 

And pictures of the Coven. Happy and sad days. Memories.
There was also a box labled "Lisa" which contained some of her own personal belongings as well as a diary; probably some kind of safety deposit box agreement. Ken loved how thoughtful Kari could be about her friends...

But panic quickly joined Kenshiro's sniffling. His arms moved away the little privacy cloths, looking around the space thoroughly and at one point hanging his entire body into the hole.
[color=7B81B3]"No... No! [b]NO![/b]-"[/color] Ken finally grunted out, pulling himself away from the pocket dimension. [color=7B81B3]"-Her notes! Her notebooks! None of them are here, and the seal wasn't tampered with, there were no breaks in the scripture: Nothing! And her... Her fucking books aren't-"[/color]
In a fit of rage, Kenshiro's fist hauled back and drove itself through the drywall above the door. When he did so, the pocket dimension began to flicker in and out of existence until all that remained was a smooth, blank wall behind false doors. His hand pulling out of the wall caused half a dozen of those same coins to fall from the spot he punched.
[color=7B81B3]"-there... The books weren't fucking in there..."[/color]

Ken's hands came up and gripped at his head. Reeling, he spun and dropped his hands to the table, staring at the hundreds of little bits of otherworldly materials he'd brought back for Kari to catalogue and retrace whenever she wanted. Like her own exploratory atlas. His legs gave out, and on his knees he once again wept in opposition to being helpful. Frankly, he didn't feel helpful. He felt lost and in agony, and he wanted to make it the problem of those who'd done this, but he had no way of directing such aggression.

It was all just pain and loneliness again.
[color=7B81B3][h1]"Fuck!"[/h1][/color]