31_days | [August 6][Kamen Rider Ryuki] Playing Cassandra

Title: Playing Cassandra
Day/Theme: August 6 / Plan Number Six: Wage A War of Attrition
Series: Kamen Rider Ryuki
Characters: Tezuka Miyuki introspection, mentions the other riders
Rating: G
Warning: spoilers - references events from episode 13-25

Akiyama Ren was doomed. Tezuka Miyuki saw it as clearly as if he were there the day the Knight burned, a day that has yet to pass.The first time he fought with Akiyama, Miyuki knew the man was going full speed, fully knowing what lay ahead. It wasn't a desire to die---quite the opposite. Even in his despair to win, a part of him has already resigned to this doom. The other half refused to even consider the thought losing and still raced on, wrenching the man apart with each second of the imbalance. Miyuki followed him after that first fight because he wanted to know how such a determined Rider was
doing its best to don the detachment of a sociopath like Asakura Takeshi. Something had disrupted Akiyama's singleminded rush to his goal.

As a high school student, Tezuka Miyuki remembered reading the Iliad, about the "wrath of Peleus' son," about the choice given to the demi-god's mother---a long quiet life or a short glorious one that generations would sing about for centuries. The story was fraught with unheeded warnings, or for those who did listen, of twisting circumstances that returned those who fought their preordained spaces. Who knew that years later, prophecy would become entwined with Miyuki's own fate? That he would find himself playing the role of the various prophets and seers who failed to stop the destruction of an entire civilization.

Playing Cassandra was a hobby that took various forms. By coins or by crystals, he has been entertaining classmates and passersby with impressions on their love life and what-not even as a fifth-grader. Who knew that years later he would be foretelling people's dooms instead, that he would be Cassandra?

When Miyuki met Kido Shinji, he knew he found the key to decipher Akiyama Ren. Kido was the man who appeared out of nowhere to derail Akiyama's resolve, to derail Kanzaki Shirou's game. Discovering the reason for Akiyama's despair was tragic but not unexpected---every rider had something at stake. So this is Akiyama's, balanced between his love and life, and a morality he should be striving for, that he himself recognized was something his beloved would want for him. Kido was the paragon, the better man that Eri would have wanted Akiyama to become. Miyuki guesses doing at straws, but this much he knew: there was something about Kido that has triggered Akiyama to remember that, yes, he did think he could be a better person once, before all this happened.

Cassandra had displeased the god Apollo, so the Lightbringer had cursed her so that no one should believe any of what she said. Miyuki didn't fancy himself displeasing gods and whatnot but maybe he could learn from her mistake. There was an ally in Kido and a weakness in Akiyama. If Miyuki continued to worry them, if need be, mercilessly rub their wounds deeper so they couldn't look away anymore, they would remember that they were human. They can choose to diminish and accept their lot in life, what had been already lost and beyond their grasp.

Truth be told, Miyuki would not be able to provide proof that stopping the Rider War was the right thing to do, but it was his truth and his justice. So he would help them, he would wear them down till they realize, there was nothing was worth giving up one's soul for.

1814 08062012

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