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[knifemonopoly]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, PLAYER1. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 10.11.0.0.01 *** PLAYER1 has joined 10.11.0.0.01 <PLAYER1> If you're looking for someone you knew as Yugi before June, you've found him! It's Atem, leave a message.

Main handle: < Player1 > Anon: < turtleluck >, < actuallydied >, < burner >

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[softspokenlandlord]

[Within half a minute, the water's at a full boil, and Ryou can't do anything but cry out in pain. He's not sure if it's the impossibly hot water that shouldn't have heated up so fast, or if it's the fact that the sun is eating away at his skin, but it hurts, as he expected it to.

But it's not just dissipating his shadowy form, even though he's long since lost control of his corporeality and has begun to thrash. Instead, it's causing the blackish gray to recede, to change into a more human skintone. It's a slow, subtle process punctuated by his agonized yells, but it's clear after a while that he's changing.

The water continues to boil, dissipating itself into steam a bit at a time. By the time a fourth of it has evaporated, Ryou no longer has claws, and his tail has become a tan color, with a tawny tip.

Something's happening, and he has no idea it is, or even if he did, what.]

Why...! Why does it have to hurt? I'm sorry, I'm sorry!!

[knifemonopoly]

[If he can, he's going to get hold of one of Ryou's hands.

He doesn't have a monster type that can borrow pain. Only the Nephilim stigmata ability, and he won't change into that monster, absolutely not, not even for this. Maybe one day, he should get shade under his belt, so that he'll be able to help, if not heal...

...but, for now, all he can do is grip Ryou's hand.]

It's not your fault! It's going to be okay -- keep breathing! It's working!

cw; blood, body horror, just the ryslig staples

[softspokenlandlord]

[Ryou's skin aches under the light of the sun, even moreso as it rises and seems to heat the water even more. He knows it's magic, and that it's just another trial Mana's putting him through for what he paid for, but it doesn't make it hurt less.

It takes him a moment to realize that Atem's fingers have curled around his, and despite the pain addling his thoughts, it occurs to him that Atem's hand feels...bigger. Or is his hand just smaller? That's the barest warning he receives that something big is about to happen, before a very different pain strikes him, causing him to throw his head back and kick against the wall of the basin just to somehow offset it.

If it's visible enough through the steam, Atem will have a pretty good view of a pair of brownish-gray horns with golden markings bursting forth from the top of Ryou's head, dripping in blood which has become a deep red as he's transitioned from shade to something else. The horns are then followed by a pair of diminutive winglike growths sprouting from just above his temples. The feathers are soft and delicate, gray on the right side, white on the left, but stained in blood just as the horns were. Then, as if that weren't enough, more blood weeps from his throat and down the bridge of his nose, splitting into twin rivulets. Something's clearly going on where the eye does not see, there.]

It hurts...!!

[And yet he does try to breathe evenly (it doesn't work) because he wants to be strong, to prove that he can be, even as the markers for his new monster type rip him open, make him into something that never needed to hide from the light in the first place.

The water is nearly gone now...but Ryou has a sinking feeling that, whatever's going on, isn't finished yet. There's an ache below his shoulders, a burn that's nothing like the heat of the boiling water as it evaporates or the light of the sun that's actually hurting less and less.]