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 Posted: Sat Dec 15, 2012 3:12 pm
Zia felt notably less disturbed after she had the chance to talk out, and argue, her analysis of her clash with Sailor Orpheus. The initial adrenaline of it all had her in a frenzied panic, but now she had a grip on the situation. Sort of. Valhalla wanted him beaten or avoided, Zia wanted him pinned down for damage control. Because he had still been following her, and she had a list.
It was a list of everyone she'd seen power down in the time frame since she first broke that stupid senshi's face, and she was checking it off one at a time. Even if she didn't expect him to run to Ares, the fact she may have been responsible for people risking their identity was sickening and she figured the least she could do was give a heads up.
And now the only one left was Camelot, who she needed to seriously jog her memory about being the librarian. Memory wasn't her strong suit, but she figured it out eventually. Which was how she found herself standing awkwardly in the library having a serious case of deja vu back to a weird time when her life revolved around textbooks and studies. And now she was glancing around feeling like a foreigner in a far away place forgetting she was here to talk to Tony.
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Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 11:36 am
Tony was balancing an arm full of books and was walking back toward the front desk when he saw Zia and lifted his eyebrows in surprise. Dogby was at his feet, as she always was, waddling along beside him and, for the most part, not getting underfoot.
She always seemed to notice when he was looking at someone, or when he recognized a friend. It didn't matter if she knew the person or not. She barked and padded over to Zia, waggling her butt because he tail was just a stump at the top of it.
Tony followed her, though he was decisively less wiggly.
"Zia! What are you doing here? Studying?" The library was in full finals mode, and he was working more than he was patrolling now, just to cover the extra hours and the mess of the students.
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Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:05 pm
Zia was trying her best to focus, but just when Tony caught her attention, Dogby stole it. Zia had always been a dog person, but just in the recent months of having to get rid of her own mutt, might've become way too clingy to the canine species as a whole.
"Hi, puppy!" She almost squealed, dropping to her knees to enthusiastically scratch behind both ears. Tony's approach led to more mental orders to stay focused, even though this did not deter the gushing all over the corgi.
Though, asking her if she was here studying made Zia's mouth twist in a weird way before she tried to casually shrug it off with a flippant, "I don't go to school." More specifically because she had dropped out a year and a half ago.
"Um, I came here to talk to you, actually," She said, standing back up and adjusting her jacket that didn't really need adjusting and looking an odd combination of grim and guilty. "It's... kind of important."
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Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:33 pm
"Important? Ah. Oh. Well." He caught her tone and imagined she meant that they should go somewhere private. That meant the back room, behind the front counter. It was a break room, but there was a much nicer one upstairs so no one really used that one except Tony himself.
He nodded toward the desk.
"This way," he said, knowing Dogby would just follow where the petting went. She was in heaven, yipping excitedly, though not too loud. Because this was a library, after all, and people were studying.
Tony put the books down on the desk, stacking them neatly enough so he did not have to deal with an avalanche later.
"Let's go in the break room," he said, letting her come behind the counter with him. He put up a little 'be right back' sign and waited for her. Once the door was closed, it was just the two of them. And Dogby, but as far as Tony knew, she was not a spy.
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Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 12:45 pm
Zia followed, and after she spent so much time convincing herself that it wasn't a big deal, somehow felt like she was on her way to the principal's office. Dogby provided a nice distraction from all the guilt of feeling like the entire subject she wanted to discuss was a product of her own wrongdoing, though.
"Um..." She glanced around the break room and back to Dogby, and she decided that petting her was a much better thing to do than fidget incessantly and make uncomfortable eye contact.
"So, uh... You remember that night you powered down in front of me and all?" She started and then cringed, "Are you absolutely sure no one was around? Like... a... Dark Mirror someone?"
She cringed, "Because... I mean, how can you be sure? Like, one hundred percent positive?"
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Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 1:48 pm
"I do remember, and I was sure I did a sweep. It is very difficult to sneak up on an Earth knight, and I was pushing my senses out as far as I could to make sure there were no auras in the area."
He answered assuredly, though by the end of his sentence he wasn't feeling as reassured as he had been, and was trying to pass on to her.
"Was there someone there? I am almost certain that I... no, I mean, I am certain, I did not feel anyone there, I wouldn't have powered down if I had any inclination that anyone was able to see us, I'm sure of it. ...was someone there?"
He was bouncing between confidence and a complete lack of it, not sure what to think from her behavior and words. He was more than a little nervous now, his frayed nerves picking up on some stored paranoia that needed a bit of air.
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Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2012 2:09 pm
His uncertainty didn't help Zia's sinking feeling. She was trying her best to bring back her logic from earlier, but her knotted stomach didn't seem to care too much about logic.
"Um... there's this guy. Senshi. He's been following me. For at least... well... um, the first time I caught a glimpse of him was in September. And he knows a lot of things. Like... a lot of... um... personal things. So... I mean," She was trying to get enough of a grip to form a complete sentence, but she was fighting the urge to just go hide under the table or something.
"You powered down in front of me in that time frame, and if your identity's compromised, I just... I mean, the odds are pretty low, because..." What were her reasons the odds were so low again? Her mind had gone blank. "I just wanted to check on you, I guess," She ended up mumbling the least self incriminating thing she could think of.
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Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 12:54 pm
None of this sounded like things Camelot wanted to hear.
The very idea that she was being followed by someone who knew her identity was infuriating and more than a little alarming. He watched her with his keen, wise green eyes that were now edged with a very serious concern.
"I don't care about my identity, Zia," he said, making sure the door was closed and secure even though he had done so a few times already. "I care about yours, and your safety. If this Senshi means harm to you, if he's making you so worried for others, then something needs to be done about it."
He moved closer to her, stooping a bit so he could look her in the eyes.
"Are you in danger?" Because if she was, she had a knight in shining armor who would do almost anything to protect her standing right there.
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Posted: Sun Jan 06, 2013 7:13 pm
Concern made Zia squirm, but maybe it was because when she had this conversation with Valhalla and Shang, it had been her job to be the mature one and that hadn't been easy when she wasn't that much older than them. She wasn't really equipped to be the reassuring adult, but thrown out of that role was so unsettling, just because it was a familiar place, even if was a place she usually failed.
She stood up straight and crossed her arms as she shifted her weight from hip to hip, avoiding eye contact as best she could. Until he moved closer and ended up looking him in the face, and gritting her teeth in a cringe.
"How can you say that? How can you not care?" And then with a small whimper it all came out like a dam breaking. "Oh god, Tony, I ******** up so bad," She half sobbed. "I should've done something about it sooner, but then he left on his own and then I kept antagonizing him and then he had me on my back in that alley and he knew so much and I let it get so bad and I don't even know how bad it is and he works for Ares and I don't know what I'm going to do," It all poured out in a rapidly rambled ******** of syllables and half anecdotes that probably didn't make epic sense in that mash up. But Zia felt guilty. Which, she probably should've, considering how blatantly she flounced around daring the magical world to come at her. And when it did it was actually surprising, for some reason.
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2013 1:54 am
Tony watched her and felt fear gripping his chest. He moved to her as he fought his panic off, wrapping his arms around her and tugging her to him and taking a slow breath.
"Calm down," he said softly. "Everything that's wrong, we can set right, okay? Whatever he knows, we'll make sure he doesn't share, and he doesn't put you in danger."
There was a streak in Tony that he fought hard to keep hidden. A flare up from his youth, when he was young and wild and he didn't care about the world around him or anyone in it. He was a dangerous young man and he had caused a lot of hell for a few people, just because he wanted to. It was a rough patch in his history that sometimes poked up. Usually when he was drunk.
Or, in this case, very angry and very scared. He wanted to protect her, because the idea that anyone would put her in such danger was horrifying to him. Like someone threatening Nathan or Harmony, or the baby he had on the way.
And he would do anything to make sure she stayed safe. Even if it was something he did not want to do.
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Posted: Tue Jan 08, 2013 6:14 am
"How?" Zia's childishness was showing. Her age in years didn't match up with the fact she had become timeless as a guardian cat, or that she could hide from the world for years on end in the back of her own mind. She was immature, but right now, she was also guilty and horrified at herself and the circumstances she had put herself in because she couldn't take anything seriously. Actually, her own circumstances weren't so much her problem as the possibility they could mess up other people.
"I... I'm just sorry," She stammered. "I think-- I mean I just came here to tell you to be careful."
And after an awkward pause, "You... You should care." She didn't know why him saying he didn't care about his identity bothered her so much. Maybe it would've been easier to brush off if she just knew him as a Camelot. A detached figure in her mind tenuously connected to other knights in her database. But she had to go and meet Shalott face to face and suddenly his personal life was not a faceless afterthought. And it was something she might've compromised by not being careful. She hadn't, but she didn't know that for sure, and the guilt was crushing.
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Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 12:50 am
"I'll take care of you. I'll protect you. That's my duty, and more than that I just want to make sure that nothing hurts you. I care about you, you know. Whatever I have to do to make sure that this senshi doesn't bring any danger to you, I will."
And he meant it.
The knight/librarian smiled softly and shook his head. His hair was getting a little long now, and it got in his eyes when he moved his head from side to side, which just resulted in more head shaking in an effort to move it back out of his sight line. He just gave up after a moment, before he made himself dizzy.
"I've been in this fight a very long time. Longer, it feels, than it really is. I haven't experienced everything, but I know how to protect my family and my friends. And I intend to do just that, either way." He was growing more and more fearless in his experience, a far cry from the civilian that had often found himself helplessly begging for help whenever he was attacked by a youma.
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Posted: Wed Jan 09, 2013 9:14 pm
Zia opened her mouth to argue and quickly closed it. Because in spite of all the seriousness and tightness in her chest from how terribly she reacted to seriousness, she had to cover her mouth with both hands in a feeble attempt to hide the fact she was holding in a laugh at his hair flipping.
When she finally dropped her hands she just sort of glanced at her feet shifting, trying to will herself into a reality where she believed him. That he could protect anyone he wanted and everything was going to work out and she wasn't going to spend sleepless night thinking about all the terrible things that could happen to him and everyone else she worried over.
With a deep breath, trying to force all of her doubt to a dark pit to be dealt with later and she nodded, having fully assured herself that he could handle some sparkley DMC fairy if he caused trouble, and wondering why she worried in the first place at all.
Well, because she always worried.
"Okay," She said in a shaky attempt to sound like that was final. And swallowed. "So... so what now?" Apparently forcing yourself to stop being a paranoid, emotional retard results in a brain off mode. Plus she hadn't stopped moving in two weeks, her brain was eager to turn off.
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Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 12:02 pm
"Now, you relax," he said, with a smile.
He would gather information about everything later. Find out who and what this Senshi was, and see if he could make sure things didn't get any worse. At least, these days, he did not feel fear for himself, or about specific enemies. He feared for his friends and family, and that just fueled him to fight harder and find a way to bring peace faster.
"Would you like to come over to my place later, for dinner? I'm sure Kyndall would like having you, and it might be good to get away from everything for a little bit."
He would offer Nate as a possible new friend, but he imagined that was just a straight up lie. Nate would never be nice, Tony decided, though maybe Harmony would like to see her.
And Dogby certainly would.
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Posted: Sat Jan 12, 2013 4:16 pm
"Heh," Zia said flatly at the concept of her relaxing. And then he invited her to dinner which was downright stupefying and needed some processing. Dinner sounded fantastic, especially since she hadn't realized she'd been basically a homeless stray for the last two weeks and dinner that wasn't compiled of take out or frozen food was foreign to her besides.
"...Dinner." Zia was social retardation at it's finest, sometimes.
"Who's Kyndall?" It was the closest thing her brain could think to do besides mull it over in awkward silence. Even though logic probably should've told her it had something to do with that squire she met who spent half their conversation talking about how she was Camelot's wife. But that connection wasn't being made at all.
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