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 Posted: Sat Feb 23, 2013 2:29 pm
Most nights, Ganymede kept to himself.
He was still, after all this time, something of a solitary senshi, even with the addition of allies. The Jovians were his friends, his comrades; they were his reason—or one of his reasons—for continuing on this dangerous path and giving something of himself to this war he bore no love for. Without them, he would be as lost as he’d been for much of that initial year following his awakening, trying to find some meaning in something that seemed so meaningless.
That didn’t mean he was entirely comfortable with what he’d become, or that he enjoyed it. That would, of course, be far from the truth, but he was growing and learning, and with each new step he managed to find a level of acceptance, some means of reconciling himself to the life of a senshi.
There were, however, some nights when the solitude became too much, and he sought the companionship of others like him. This was usually one of the Jovians, of course, most notably Valhalla, but there were also occasions in which he followed those little waves of energy that alerted him to another friendly force in the area, and he found himself in the presence of another senshi or knight he did not know quite as well—or at all, as the case may be.
“Oh, hey,” he said, when he came across a particular senshi that night, “I actually think I’ve seen you before.”
Christmas came to mind for some reason, and though he couldn’t say he knew this senshi’s name—or didn’t remember it if he was supposed to know it—he thought he’d seen her fuku somewhere before.
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Posted: Wed Feb 27, 2013 4:26 pm
Hunting. That was what she was supposed to be doing. Hunting the darkness, monsters, Chaos, and answers. Cybele wasn't sure what her questions even were, but the truth was what she was trying to find more than anything. Not that she was having any luck with that. She'd been stumbling upon people, but each encounter was just making her more confused. It would have been a lovely time to give up, to just stop putting herself in the paths of all the fighting people and sleep safely instead. Instead, though, she trekked down a street looking for anyone to talk to. Her ability to sense auras had gotten better. She knew there was somebody behind her before she heard the voice, giving her enough time to swap out her sullen expression for a smooth smile. "Hello." She glanced at the senshi's outfit and tried to remember if she'd seen her before. "Hmm... Have we met? Maybe... I haven't really met that many people, though, so..." She distinctly remembered a fight at Christmas. Cybele had screamed in a panicked way at a few people before running off, but she wasn't sure if this senshi had been one of them. Either way, she wasn't going to relive that embarrassing... event. "I'm Sailor Cybele, Senshi of the Hunt." She smiled even wider and curtsied gracefully. "Whatever that means." Her smile faltered for a split second. Of course she'd managed to say something dumb right away. She was so confused and angry at her lack of answers that it was hard to even pretend to be cheerful.
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Posted: Sun Mar 03, 2013 10:54 am
“Whatever what means?” Ganymede wondered, made curious by the comment.
He realized he should have introduced himself perhaps a bit too late, but then he’d never been very good at introductions. He forgot them often, or else fumbled through them. Before now, remembering names had never been very important to him, and so he tended to not pay much attention to them.
But he made sure he paid attention these days, particularly when it came to Senshi, Knights, and agents of Chaos, and he smiled in response to the familiar looking Senshi whose name he was fairly certain he was hearing for the first time.
“Ganymede, Senshi of Lust,” he said, and lifted a hand to tip his miniature top-hat in greeting.
He made no effort to denote his rank. To Ganymede, it’d always seemed pretty pointless to advertise it when the useless pair of fluffy white wings behind him should make it obvious enough to anyone who cared to look his way. That, and rank had never been of particular importance to him. A Senshi was a Senshi, no matter what rank they’d attained.
“So what do you mean ‘whatever that means’?” he asked, cocking his head in confusion. “Are you new? I could wear I’ve seen you at least once before. Not too long ago, I don’t think. I know it’s kind of a big adjustment to make, being a Senshi, but you’ll…”
He didn’t want to say “you’ll get used to it,” so he trailed off momentarily. He didn’t think he was completely used to it yet, and it’d been two years.
“Well, you’ll find a way to make the most of it, I guess. Or… do what you can with it,” he finished.
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Posted: Mon Mar 04, 2013 5:08 pm
Lust? Perhaps it was not the most important thing to think about, but it was the easiest. Cybele held her smile as she tried to distract herself from the abrupt turn the conversation was turning by studying the other senshi's clothes. Ruffles and lace were very pretty, and maybe lusty, she dint' know. But something seemed just a bit off about the whole thing. Unless... "It's nice to meet you, Mister Ganymede." No, it wasn't just that. It really didn't have anything to do with the other senshi and had a lot to do with the fact that Cybele couldn't hide behind formalities forever. She dropped the smile suddenly and turned away, sighing. "Am I new? I've been taking this seriously for a few months now." She shrugged. She really didn't feel less new than before, because everyone seemed to know about everything. "I'm newer than you, obviously." The wings, and of course her lack of them, were painfully obvious. "But I still don't know what it means. I have magic. I'm part of the White Moon Court, not that I even see them around that much. I don't know what I'm supposed to do. Fight Chaos? They don't even seem so bad to me..." Her eyes were glued to her silver shoes. "They think I'd be better off joining them. And who am I to tell them otherwise?" She straightened and turned to him, realizing the seriousness of what she'd said. "I... I'm sorry. I can..." She considered. She could spin a million fragile promises, she could leave, but neither of those would really make up for her words. Instead, she just smiled weakly again.
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Posted: Tue Mar 12, 2013 2:08 pm
A year ago a different Senshi had said similar things to him, or else had seemed to imply them. A year ago he’d snapped and perhaps been rather mean about it, reacting in a way he’d later come to regret.
He could sympathize, in a way. While he’d never felt any need to question his place within the White Moon Court, whether or not he had any particular fondness for many of them, he had at least questioned his place in the war countless times. He’d questioned its worth, his worth, the motives, the reasoning, and he hadn’t always been able to find an acceptable answer to anything. It still seemed like a pointless war to him. There was merit in defending the innocent, but the rest of it? Some dumb love story and a Moon Queen? That was a load of crap.
Today, he was a year older and a year wiser, and though his expression turned slightly more serious than it’d been in greeting Cybele, his first reaction was not to start ranting.
“That’s probably exactly what they want you to think,” he said, his voice low but kind. “In their defense, they probably believe it themselves, though I don’t know how much of what they say is genuine concern and how much is manipulation.”
Ganymede paused to consider how he wanted to handle this. He would readily admit he was not the best spokesperson for the White Moon cause, and he was rather proud of that in certain respects, but he also didn’t want to give this girl any more reason to think she didn’t belong, if that was indeed the path her thoughts were taking.
“It’s pretty unlikely you’ll see very many White Mooners around at one time,” he admitted, “which works out for me, since I don’t like a lot of ‘em very much, but I can see how it can get… lonely, I guess. I was on my own a lot when I first started out. Ran into one or two people here and there, saw a whole lot more of them during big battles, pissed off a couple, might have questioned some of their intelligence, ran my mouth at a Prince, that sort of thing. I don’t really make it a point to endear myself to anyone, or put myself out there enough to have my name recognized, but… well…”
He wanted to finish off with “try not to let any of it discourage you,” but he knew well how easy it was to feel discouraged.
“Look,” he tried again, “I know sometimes it seems like… I mean, I know it’s pretty crazy, and there’s an awful lot of crap that comes along with being… well… this…” he said, making a motion between them with one of his hands, “but you wouldn’t be standing here right now if you weren’t meant to, and maybe that seems really lame and tripe and it probably is, especially coming from me, and it’s probably hard to believe sometimes, but if there’s one thing being like this has taught me it’s that all that bullshit people say about fate and destiny might not be as much bullshit after all. I’ve told a couple of others before, but we all have our reasons for doing this. Maybe the reasons we awaken are the same, but the reasons we keep going with it? Some of them are the same, some of them are different. You just… have to find yours…”
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Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 11:52 am
Cybele didn't run away like she could have. She stayed and listened like she was supposed to, but she didn't nod or smile. She didn't even feel encouraged, really. After he was done talking and she was done being ashamed, she stopped looking at her shoes and started looking into Ganymede's eyes. "So, you think I should disregard the 'bad guys' as wrong, if not evil, do my best to be nice to whatever senshi decide to show up, and trust in fate and destiny to make everything all right?" She sighed deeply. It was fine, nice even, that he was trying to help her, but it wasn't working. Maybe it was her fault, because she wasn't even sure what she wanted to hear. It was also that she didn't trust him, though his words was the first thing anyone had said to her in a long time that hadn't made her more confused. This time, the getting more confused was her own fault. Cybele spoke again, her voice cold. "Of course, that's what you want me to think. You want me on your side, too. I don't think you're heartless. I think you have our best interests in mind, but you could be wrong, and since the best you can offer is fate and destiny, which you just called bullshit, I'm not exactly filled with hope." She paused. "I like being a senshi because it lets me protect people. That's what the cat that gave me this," she motioned to her clothes, "said, and I was thrilled. But when I talked to people from Chaos, they said the White Moon was doing the wrong thing and they were protecting people. If that's true... it's what I want, and if there are people supporting me there, then that's even better. I'm sure our people are wonderful, too. I just haven't been the nicest, either, so... " She trailed off, not feeling angry. She was sad. "Of course, there's no way for me to find out who's right. That's what I really hate." She sighed again, this time not for dramatic effect.
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Posted: Mon Mar 25, 2013 3:18 pm
Somehow Ganymede’s patience for people must have increased over the last year, because instead of reacting as he had with Acubens and launching into a rant full of insults, he did little more than lift his eyes skyward in a half complete roll.
“Well, I can tell you a couple of things the so called bad guys are wrong about, namely their delusions that we destroyed our own planets,” Ganymede began, continuing with a note of sarcasm in his voice, “because we are totally strong enough to do something like that. You’d think the fact that we haven’t done the same thing to Earth yet would be enough proof for them to realize their information sources are bogus, but whatever. I don’t pretend to understand what’s going through their minds.”
He wondered occasionally if they had anything going through their minds at all. For the most part the ones he’d run into all spouted off the same things. Perhaps they acted different on occasion, some more passionate, bloodthirsty, or violent than others, but a lot of their thought processes seemed to align pretty well with one another.
He often couldn’t look at them as individuals, though he tried. Sometimes he wondered how much of it was their own opinions and how much of it might be controlled, fed to them during and after corruption, when they were vulnerable enough to believe anything, whether there was sufficient proof for it or not.
“But I never said anything about them being bad or evil. Some of them’re probably alright. There’ve been a couple that haven’t been quite so… you know… insane and murderous, but that’s not to say the Senshi haven’t ever done bad things, either,” Ganymede explained, looking at her again when he felt he’d done a decent enough job rejuvenating his patience and finding more to say that was hopefully a bit less ambiguous.
“A group of Senshi went… bad, I guess you could say,” he told her. “The Blood Moon Court. I don’t know if you’ve heard of them. Whoever’s left of them haven’t really been around much lately as far as I’m aware. I know one of them, though. Sort of. I don’t know how heavily she was involved in it. Well, I know she didn’t do any of the really bad stuff… or at least I don’t think she did. I’m pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to look me in the face if she did, so… But anyway, the Blood Moon Court kidnapped some Negaverse agents and tortured them, might have killed one or two, I’m a little hazy on the details, but I know there was definitely some torture going on. Either way, they did some shitty things and then what happened? Chaos happened. Their leader became some crazy-a** Chaos princess, and some of the others were thrown through mirrors and corrupted. Now they’re the Dark Mirror Court.”
Ganymede shrugged when he was through, half-expecting the story to have little to no effect, but it seemed like a pretty powerful message to him. “So I’ve always looked at it like evil breeds evil. Do something bad and you’re one step closer to Chaos. Don’t let them fool you. Maybe some of them protect people, but they also drain energy from people and rip out starseeds and… God, I think they eat them,” he said, his expression turning a bit disgusted as a very vague memory of Benitoite taking a starseed from his pocket during the ambush resurfaced. He shivered as the memory coalesced further in his mind. “Anyone who tries to rip out my starseed and eat my soul, or anyone’s starseed or soul for that matter, is pretty creepy in my book.”
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Posted: Wed Mar 27, 2013 4:51 pm
"Torture?" A look of disgust flicked across Cybele's face, but she managed to pull her mind from screaming, mutilated negaversers fairly quickly. Not that Her other thoughts were much better. The conversation was, predictably, turning to confusing things. At least mostly they were things she'd heard before. "That's my choice? Being a torturer or insane and murderous?" She rolled her eyes right back at him and frowned. "I know that's not what you mean, but... it doesn't make me trust the White Moon Court, since the nice story you told is about us doing something wrong. So they became Chaos, you said. They did.. torture and whatever when they were with us. It doesn't really prove anything, except human nature maybe. Well, the nature of whatever we are." She shrugged and turned away, beginning to feel far more disgusted. "It doesn't even matter. If and I protect people, I'm good. If I kill them, I'm bad. Why do you all even care so much what call myself? Order or Chaos... it doesn't matter!" She stomped in exasperation and turned back to him. "But no, instead of just telling me to be a good person you have to beg and plead and tell me ridiculous stories just so I don't get misguided or... I don't even know. Apparently we kidnapped a lot of people and killed them in space! Apparently we destroyed our planets! Those are pretty far fetched, since we don't have rocket ships and the Earth is our planet, but so is whatever you said about eating souls!" She took a moment to calm down before she totally lost it and found herself on the brink of tears. She took a deep breath and continued, "I... I just want to do the right thing, but I can't trust anyone, because all anyone cares about is what side they're on."
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Posted: Sun Apr 07, 2013 2:12 pm
“When have I begged and pleaded?” Ganymede wondered. “If you want to think these are ridiculous stories, fine. Think whatever you want. Everything’s pretty insane to begin with. But don’t think for a minute that I’m trying to mislead you. One, I’m not that clever at that kind of deception, and I learned my lesson a while ago that lying and deceiving people tends to end badly, and two, I have absolutely no motive whatsoever. I don’t care about the White Moon Court. Not on a whole. I care about my friends. I care about my family. I care about the innocent people who end up getting involved in this. I used to be one of them.”
Somehow things always seemed to devolve into this. He didn’t even know why he bothered sometimes, except that he hoped someone at some point might actually listen, but then he wasn’t so full of himself as to think that what he had to say was worth listening to. He didn’t have all of the information other people might need—he barely had all of the information he needed. There was still a lot he was in the dark on, even these two years later.
But it was all the more frustrating to encounter someone like this, and he wondered if what he felt now was how other senshi felt when he first came around. He’d been argumentative then; he was still argumentative now, but at least now he’d found some means of direction. He knew why he was doing what he was doing, whether or not he agreed with anyone else.
Ganymede was fairly certain, however, that he hadn’t been exactly like this girl. He’d never been confused about what he was, or which side of the battle he was supposed to be on. He’d been angry and bitter and alone, frustrated that his old life had been disrupted for something that never made much sense.
“I’m a Senshi,” he said, “not the Senshi. I don’t have to be a part of them if I don’t want to. Neither do you, but that doesn't mean you have to run to the other side either. I choose who and what I fight for, and if that happens to coincide with some of the others, great. If it doesn’t, oh well. I have no problem doing it on my own. Whichever cat awakened you gave you your pen because this is who you are. You were born a Senshi. The cat and the pen just help that part of you come out. But the Negaverse, the DMC, and all the corrupted Senshi… they’re not born to Chaos. Sometimes they’re manipulated into it, sometimes they really believe they’re doing the right thing, and sometimes they’re forced to become what they are.
“And those kidnappings you mentioned,” Ganymede continued, trying to keep his voice calm even as the memories of the Surrounding arose to feed his frustrations. “You want to talk about the Surrounding?” he asked. “Okay, sure, let’s talk about the Surrounding, but I’d be careful bringing up something you don’t seem to know anything about. Yes, a bunch of civilians somehow ended up in space. That’s where the Surrounding is. Zodiac Territory. We didn’t kidnap them. We had no idea how they got there, but we gave them shelter and we brought food and supplies and we tried to keep them safe. If you ask me, it was all a big plot of Chaos. Youma showing up in space, things like that. Clearly we didn’t call the youma there. We don’t control them. We have no power over them. All we can do is dust them. It wasn’t us who killed those people, it was the youma. And then the Negaverse and the DMC rode up on a big a** dragon youma and we were barely able to come through it alive. Yes, a lot of people died. Civilians died, Senshi and Knights died, and yeah, some with the Negaverse and the DMC probably died, too, but if you think for one second that they weren’t in the wrong, then I honestly have no idea where you’re getting your information from except from someone who’s trying to deceive you, because I was there. Ares forced people through her mirrors and turned them into her little puppets, not because they wanted to become that but because she could, because they were there in front of her and I guess she felt she needed more minions, because what she took from the Blood Moon Court clearly wasn’t enough for her.
“And the ambush,” he rambled, unable to stop himself now that he was going, his voice growing progressively more restless and disturbed. “Were you around then? Last summer? The White Moon tried to get together for a little meeting, tried to come up with a way to turn the tide of the war ‘cause for one reason or another we’re always losing, and what did Chaos decide to do? We weren’t hurting anyone, mind you, we were minding our own business, trying to figure out how to save lives and protect people, and Chaos busted their way in… why? We weren’t hurting them. We weren’t even talking about hurting them. We were throwing around ideas to save people and trying to make sense of all the confusing bullshit we hear, and then suddenly we had to fight for our lives again, not because we’re a threat, not because we’re out causing trouble, but because Chaos felt like it, because they saw it as this grand, opportune moment to crush us. They’ve hurt my friends, tried to kill my fiancé, whipped my fiancé’s little brother, tried to take my starseed, stolen energy from civilians, attacked public places where civilians were inevitably hurt or killed, and overall done enough to earn their bad reputation, no matter what lies they manage to spread around to make themselves look better.
“You can sympathize with them all you want,” he told her. “Yeah, the White Moon’s done some bad things, too, and you can get technical with the Blood Moon Court thing and say they were still on our side when they did it, but the reality is that they lost sight of themselves and became something they were never meant to be. Yeah, I feel you, there’s a lot of confusing stuff thrown around, and there aren’t a lot of answers for the questions we all end up having, but that doesn’t make the other side better just because one or two of them happened to be nice to you. I mean, they reek of bad vibes. There can’t be any confusion there. You feel them, I feel them, and maybe there are some of them that aren’t as lost to it as others, but that doesn’t mean they’re any more right than we are.
“But you can stop talking to me like I’m this great spokesperson for the White Moon,” he finished. He paused to take a breath in an attempt to calm himself, putting a lopsided smile back onto his face. “I’m not the White Moon. I’m just Ganymede. That’s all I care to be.”stari_maga Gany talks too much, I am so sorry. ;;
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Posted: Thu Apr 11, 2013 5:02 pm
She barely blinked during his speech. He was trying to be nice, maybe, but... the way he talked, especially about the ambush, set her on edge. "Ganymede?" she asked after a few seconds, her voice fairly calm. "It's probably more fair to call you that than 'you all', but you are the closest thing I have to the White Moon Court at the moment, and I'm sorry, but you don't seem to be speaking about all this with apathy." She paused, shrugging, then continued. "Do you want to be mad at me?" It seemed like everybody did, or some reason or another. Her voice turned a bit bitter as she thought back to his two stories. They cut deep. One had sounded very similar the first time she'd heard it, the other quite different. The thoughts they brought to mind were rather unpleasant, but she knew she had to tell someone, at least. "Let me give you a reason, at least." "I wasn't at the ambush. It was my fault- I ignored my senshi powers for a while. The first senshi I met told me about it, and it was enough to get me to take this seriously. So I've already heard that whole story. I've already been affected by it. It's already done something good for me. But yes, people died, and yes, it was sort of my fault and I'm sorry!" "The worst part was the day after. The other story you told me? The one I told first? About kidnapping or maybe helping people, I don't know? This Dark Mirror senshi told it to me, very convincingly, and told me you all... I mean, the White Moon Court, was misguided, and..." She paused, cringing slightly and turning away, but there was no going back. After a moment, she spoke, her voice just above a whisper. "I... promised I'd join the Dark Mirror Court." It was then that the anger came back in a rush. She turned back to him, eyes blazing, fists clenched. "I don't care! I want to be just Cybele, but I want to be Cybele, not just Fleur, the other part of me. I like helping people, and I love having magic. That's allowed, right? For that I do have to pick a side, because we have to belong to something. I'm not giving this up!" Maybe she sounded selfish but she didn't care. "And you're Ganymede, but they're all just Chaos? That's fair! Some of them are nice, just like some of us might be crazy!" Cybele paused, calming a bit. "I don't care about sides! I just hate being alone." Sunshine Alouette I am simply in awe of that post. Please don't feel bad.
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Posted: Mon Apr 15, 2013 3:35 pm
“I’m not mad at you,” Ganymede said.
For a little while he didn’t know how else to respond. He stood there through her little tirade and let her get it all out, even though there was a very big part of him that would have liked to interrupt and set her straight. He squashed that part down since it never seemed to do him any good, except make him jump to conclusions and turn people away from him due to the overbearing response that inevitably came with it. He’d made quite a few mistakes in the last two years, and most of them were a direct result of him caving to his temper.
When Cybele was done, Ganymede closed his eyes and took a deep breath, held it in, and released it, trying to ease up the tension that had come over him and control all the emotions he was never quite able to suppress. He allowed himself a moment to feel angry, frustrated, a little nervous and afraid, before steeling himself and opening his eyes to meet her gaze again.
His smile remained a little lopsided, a little wobbly, but there was still something very genuine about it as he said, “It’s not a bad thing, you know. That you ignored all this.”
Ganymede motioned between them with one of his hands, trying to encompass the outfits, the magic, and the war in a single gesture.
“Just because you’re a Senshi doesn’t mean you have to be completely comfortable with it from the start,” he told her. “It’s… it’s a lot to take in. A lot to get used to. A lot of… stumbling around and figuring things out, making mistakes and learning from them. No one died just because you didn’t happen to be there. None of that was your fault. People died because they were attacked by people who had every intention of hurting or killing them. You can’t control that, even with magic, and you’re not the only one who’s ever tried to ignore what you are. It took me a long time to come to terms with it. I denied it, I ran from it. Even now I pretend that Ganymede is someone else, like there’s another part of me that takes over so that the part of me that’s just a normal person doesn’t have to face all this. There isn’t any shame in being afraid, or confused, or feeling… lost or lonely, or having doubts.”
He paused, shifting from foot to foot in an effort to compose himself, before glancing around him to examine the area. “Do you want to find a place to sit down?” he suddenly asked. “I feel like standing here facing one another down makes it easy to be argumentative or get defensive. We should try to relax. Chill out a little bit, right? I’ll tell you about some of the stuff I’ve seen if you tell me more about this Dark Mirror Senshi who got you to promise to join them.”
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Posted: Tue Apr 23, 2013 4:12 pm
Genuine kindness was really the last thing Cybele was expecting. Her confession was still hanging in the air around her, and she's thought Ganymede would respond to it with anger, calling her a traitor, or useless, or maybe even both. Then she'd respond to whatever he said defensively and probably harshly until it all turned into a mess of meaningless yelling. Possibly violent, even. She was ready for any of that, just not what what was really happening. She didn't know how to react at all, so she just stood there as the words came, not even bothering to smile back at him or hide her puzzled expression. Even once he stopped talking, she didn't know what to say. "Chill out?" she murmured at last, looking around. "Um..." He was right, of course. Though screaming at each other sounded strangely appealing for a reason that Cybele suddenly realized with a twinge of disgust, she also realized it wouldn't help. So after failing to see any conveniently placed benches nearby, she sat down against the closest building's wall and slipped her poker face back on, complete with a polite smile. "I like your hat, Ganymede." Did the little compliments matter? She wasn't sure, but saying it made her feel a bit better before she had to think more about the promise she'd rather forget. "Umm... The Dark Mirror Senshi I promised I'd join? His name was Remarque... He was an eternal, with blonde hair and green clothes, I think. He talked a lot about the... Surrounding I guess? He didn't call it that, though, he just talked about how we kidnapped so many people and left them to die in space. It sounded really sad... He also said the White Moon Court was misguided and, uh, falling apart or something... and uh... oh, yeah, that the Dark Mirror Court would take care of me. "She ran a hand through her bangs thoughtfully as she tried to remember anything else important. "That's mostly it. Looking back, it sounds dumb, but I did promise at the time... and I meant it." "Are you sure you're not mad?" She asked after a second. "I guess I kind of... wanted you to be." A second confession, but it wasn't like hiding it would make anything better. "It would have made everything easier. I could have felt abandoned, and not have felt bad about doing something stupid, maybe even followed up on my promise. But it's not that easy, is it? Thank you for showing me, and for caring." Mostly when people said confusing things, which happened a lot, she just felt weird , but this was different and her smile widened a bit. "What were you going to tell me?" She asked after another moment. Sunshine Alouette Ok, I'm just going to mention that this RP is ver aptly named, and it's also been really really fun, and I also want to hug Ganymede for being sweet.
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Posted: Wed Apr 24, 2013 9:02 am
“Nope, not really very mad,” Ganymede said as he joined her on the ground against the wall, failing to mention that it wasn’t because he truly wasn’t angry but more because he was trying his best not to be.
“Oh, and this thing?” he wondered, pulling his miniature top-hat off with a laugh, twirling it around one of his fingers before passing it to Cybele. “It always ends up falling off,” he said.
He made sure to pay attention to her story about the Dark Mirror Senshi, and filed the information away with all the rest he’d tried to memorize. Remarque… Remarque… why did that name sound so familiar? Blond hair and green clothes he thought he might recognize. He’d met a male Dark Mirror Senshi with blond hair and green adorning his attire. Had he heard that name then? That must be it. He knew he’d heard that name during the White Moon meeting last summer, too. Valhalla knew him. Some of the others seemed to know of him, too.
Well… it seemed this Remarque had made a bit of a name for himself. The problem was whether or not he was genuine in his interactions with people or if he was purposefully lying and selecting which information to share for his own ends.
Considering this very same Dark Mirror Senshi had once attempted to bring harm to a Chibi Senshi, Ganymede was much more inclined to believe he had some sort of ulterior motive up his sleeve.
“Well, I can tell you whatever you want to hear about, really,” he continued and shrugged, making another mental note to talk to Val about this Remarque guy at some point in the future. “But since we’re on the Dark Mirror Court and the Surrounding… I can tell you something about the Surrounding that I guess can sort of be twisted around to make it seem like what Remarque told you was true. We were trying to help the civilians that got stuck there, and we did bring food and supplies, and we did give them shelter, and we did try to save them from the youma that found their way in, even if we weren’t always as successful as we wanted to be.
“But at one point… we found out some of the Dark Mirror Senshi were getting into the Surrounding,” Ganymede said, as his memories took him back to a confrontation that still rankled him to this day, though he was getting better at putting it behind him. “They travel through mirrors, you know, and I guess they were using the mirrors at the Surrounding to get in. My… I mean, Valhalla…,” he hastily corrected himself, for although he had already mentioned he had a fiancé, he was not quite comfortable naming exactly who that fiancé was, for safety concerns if nothing else.
“He’s one of my teammates… a Knight of Jupiter…” he explained instead. “He was there and saw it, and he got everyone together so we could try to figure out what to do about it. I was there, he was there, some of my other teammates were there, and there were other Senshi, too, and a Prince, and the Zodiac’s Princess. They decided,” he said, putting heavy emphasis on ‘they,’ though it was unclear whether he meant the rest of the gathering or the Prince and Princess alone, “that they wanted to preserve their mirrors. They didn’t want to break them, even if it meant the Dark Mirror Senshi couldn’t get in through them if we did. They were so attached to that place and it’s past that… right then… the mirrors seemed more important than the people who got stuck there. I didn’t agree with them. I don’t think Val did, either. And there were some others… but we lost that argument. I think the end result was that the bigger mirrors were brought to Earth somewhere, but the rest were just… left there and covered up.”
Ganymede tipped his head back with a sigh, then turned to look at Cybele again with something that looked like a tired smile. “Sometimes I regret that I didn’t just smash their mirrors anyway,” he said. “I don’t think it would have stopped what happened, but I never really agreed with the message not destroying the mirrors sent. I did what they wanted at the time because I didn’t feel like it was my place to do anything else, but… if I could do it over… I’d do what I thought at the time was right.
“So you see… we all have regrets,” he finished. “In the beginning, when I first became a Senshi, I didn’t always help as much as I should have. I didn’t want to be a Senshi. I just wanted to be… just a normal person… and then the Surrounding… obviously that’s still a big thing to people, and there’s at least one Dark Mirror Senshi going around lying about it… or at least picking and choosing what information he gives…”stari_maga Awww, he is trying so hard to be nice and understanding! XD He's been mean to people about similar things before so he's learned that that's probably not the way to go!
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Posted: Sun Apr 28, 2013 3:52 pm
Receiving the hat was good. It gave Cybele something to turn around a few times and examine with feigned interest as Ganymede told a bit more of the story. She wasn't feeling as emotional, though. A bit disgusted with herself, still, and fighting to keep her head clear of the images of the Surrounding her other conversation about it had made, filled with high pitched screams and dead bodies like some horror movie, and probabally not even very accurate, yes, but she wasn't exactly sure what she was supposed to think about how the senshi wouldn't smash the mirrors. That the royal senshi were useless, maybe, but she thought that already. If it was the fact that being imperfect was okay, well, she was still feeling guilty. "I wasn't there to smash mirrors either," she pointed out, thought she knew that wasn't what he was saying. "Or protect people, or give them food, or anything. I wish I could have. I don't think I was even a senshi then, but I still wish I could have." At least then she wouldn't have had to deal with everyone telling her stories and her not knowing who to believe. She stopped staring at the hat and actually looked up at him with a small sigh. "It's ridiculous. I'm being ridiculous, I know. I couldn't have done anything then, I can't redo anything differently now." She paused, then turned back to the hat, still keeping her face calm. "The Surrounding... it matters, maybe, but I'll never know what happened there for sure. I do trust you," she said sincerely, though at first she'd only been admitting her doubts to him because she'd felt she had nothing left to lose, "But everyone has different stories. You're saying they killed all those people, right? That's why you wanted to break the mirrors. It's the opposite of what he said, so I have to either choose a side or not think about it." Not thinking about it probabally wouldn't work in the long run, but for now at least that was the option she was choosing. "So..." she put the hat on her head carefully and looked at Ganymede with a little smile. It was better than being so serious about things she wasn't even sure about. "How do I look?" She struck a somewhat silly, very dramatic pose, with one hand tipping the hat while the other was off to the side in a flourish, then dropped her arms to the ground again, smiling wider. "It doesn't match my outfit, does it? " Her smile didn't fade at all. "Oh well." She rarely looked good in darker red. Not that it mattered at all, which was the point. Talking ridiculously about hats was better than talking ridiculously about serious things.
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Posted: Sat May 11, 2013 8:32 am
“Very smashing,” he said when Cybele put on his hat, stifling any laughter the amusing image might have otherwise caused. “At least your outfit looks better with your coloring than mine does with mine. No one this pale should wear suntan hose. Actually, no one should wear suntan hose ever, but whatever, right?”
Settling back against the wall again, Ganymede tried to make himself more comfortable as he mulled over a few of her statements. He was pleased to note the change in tone of their conversation that had come about after they’d sat down; now it was simply a matter of… well, he didn’t no. He had no idea what he was trying to accomplish with this or if he was trying to accomplish anything at all. Help her, yes. Turn her away from Chaos, if he could, since that line of thinking was probably pretty dangerous.
He wasn’t too interested in changing her opinions of them, though. She could keep those if she wanted to. There were bad Senshi just as surely as there were good people on the other side of the divide, and vice versa.
“I think… the fact that you wish you could have been there … the fact that you want to help people… that you regret that you couldn’t before… I think that means that you’re right where you need to be,” Ganymede said.
He had nothing to do with his hands as he sat there and wasn’t particularly good at sitting still in the first place, so after another moment or two he leaned forward over his legs stretched out in front of him and proceeded to reach for his toes. He was never very good with all this serious stuff, and though he wanted to help her he wasn’t too sure what she wanted from him, what he could say or do to help her most. But then he didn’t want her to know that. It wouldn’t help either of them if he showed too many of his own uncertainties and insecurities, so finding something to do, something to distract himself or cover up any of his lingering discomfort seemed to him a good idea.
“You have the power to do all that just as you are,” he told her. “Chaos isn’t going to give you something you don't already have. You don’t have to choose a side. You can make one of your own. Being a Senshi doesn't mean you have to agree with the other Senshi, or believe everything we say. I’m not going to lie to you about what I’ve seen, but that doesn’t mean some of the others wouldn’t if they thought it would help you or get them what they wanted. It’s good to question things, I think. It shows we still have our own free will. The Negaverse, the Dark Mirror Senshi… I’ve never been sure they really have that. Talk to a bunch of random Senshi and you’ll hear a lot of different opinions, but talk to a bunch of random Negaverse officers or Dark Mirror Senshi… well, maybe there are some out there who think differently than most, but I’ve never met them.”
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