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 Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2013 12:03 pm
Columba deeply inhaled and exhaled, dramatically puffing out her chest and raising her shoulders in the process.
She had a bad reaction to the carnival, but it was amazing how being met with Tara's negativity had totally pushed in the opposite direction. She was slowly regaining her comfort powering up, and this time, she was going to face her fears head on.
The gangly chibi senshi lurked, mostly. Skulking around the carnival grounds and wondering where she was going.
She didn't know what answers she was going to get by poking around, but the location had been weighing on her mind lately, so she figured it was best to just face her fears and go for it. She certainly wasn't going to be a coward like Eunomia.
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Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2013 1:45 pm
"What are you doing here?"
The voice cut through the dead silence of the spooky and broken down Carnival like a warm knife through butter. He was not aiming to scare, though any sound coming out of no where was probably startling. He had just been working around the grounds far too late for his own health, but he had not been expecting company. So he'd been in a good place to catch sight of someone sneaking on to his grounds.
A senshi, but a small one. He did not know they went so young, though he may have seen them before at the meetings. He wasn't sure, he had been so wrapped up in everything else going on at the time, and even during the large fight at the Carnival he had been too busy to really pay attention.
He watched her now, standing like a statue, tall and with his arms down at his sides. Not menacing, but barely patient. His expression was bland and difficult to read.
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Posted: Sat Jul 20, 2013 10:09 pm
"Lookin' for stuff," Columba answered, almost completely unsurprised at the figure she had disturbed into speaking up. She also hadn't looked directly at it, kicking a small stone and watching it land instead.
"Maybe. I dunno." She couldn't exactly place what she was looking for, when it got down to it. "Lotsa people died here, huh?"
A vague start to what was obviously going to be a painfully awkward conversation.
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Posted: Sun Jul 21, 2013 1:47 pm
Chester frowned and watched her, her words stinging a bit and digging up memories he wished he did not have. He shook his head, as if to put them out of his mind, but the images remained and he could not escape them. He could not just avoid talking about it, and thus live happily. No, he generally spent every night now, thinking, working, trying to make amends.
But it was not going to be enough. How could he ever atone for the horror that had befallen his carnival?
"yes, they did. The Negaverse killed them. This is my carnival, and they were my responsibility. I let them be down, and many people suffered because of it. Why are you here? Looking for clues? Or just curious about the tragedy?" He watched her, eyes soft those his tone was sharp.
It was hard to think people as young as this were soldiers in this battle. She couldn't have been a teen, and if she was she hadn't been one long, though he was very inexperienced with children directly and had a hard time guessing ages.
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Posted: Mon Jul 22, 2013 5:27 am
"No, I was there," Columba murmured, deciding looking down and kicking another pebble would add to the conversation, apparently, since she kept doing that every so often.
"The SWAT teams came to rescue people," She stated. The end of that statement, however, about how ineffective and utterly crushed they were, was left hanging behind unsaid.
There were lots of things she didn't bother to say. Columba was only thirteen, and couldn't unpack such complicated emotions like someone older, and so she was content with creating awkward silences to take her hat off and inspect its inner seams.
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Posted: Tue Jul 23, 2013 3:38 pm
"You were there," Chester echoed. He sighed, looking around the grounds and wondering how a place that was meant to be so fun and friendly had turned into such a horror show. He took a breath and let it out slowly, to keep his calm.
"I'm sorry for what happened. This is my place, and I know about Chaos all too well. I am like you, though not exactly the same. Still, I fight them, or I'm supposed to, and then this happened..."
He had a new resolve, at least, and he was ready to destroy those that had hurt so many others.
"I don't want anything like what happened here to ever happen again. I can promise, at least, that if I can, I'll do everything I can to stop Chaos."
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Posted: Sat Jul 27, 2013 3:08 pm
"But what about the rescue teams?!" Columba's outburst was sudden and completely unprompted. At least from the perspective of anyone outside of her head.
In all this talk of the different terrorists versus other terrorists and Chaos and Order, there was paltry mention of the SWAT teams that were mowed down like paper dolls. At least not enough to satisfy Columba, who found herself being bothered by old family skeletons she didn't realized even bothered her.
"No one cares. They just care about their side of the war," She muttered, sounded inappropriately bitter for her age.
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Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 11:36 am
Chester frowned at her.
"I never cared about any of this, not even after becoming a knight," he grunted, folding his arms over his chest. He was appropriately bitter for a man his age, who had been through what he'd suffered. He watched her with his dull, but contemplative eyes, his expression difficult to read even with his furrowed eyebrows and obvious frown. He didn't look angry, or even disapproving.
In his own way, he didn't even know what he was feeling.
"I didn't want anyone to get hurt. Not the innocent people who were at the carnival, not the White Moon who had to defend it, and not the people who came to chase the terrorists away. I just wanted to have my business succeed, and for people to enjoy themselves. I'm sorry if what happened here upsets you, as well, but we can only move forward. Make sure it doesn't happen again. That's what I'm going to do."
There was a slight growl to the end of his words.
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Posted: Tue Jul 30, 2013 8:52 pm
Columba stomped one tiny sneaker against the ground, and the angry preteen didn't seem to soften much at his words. "You should've known better," She stated. It was unfair, and speaking to a subject she knew little about. But she was immature, and angry, and she had found an easy target to take all of that anger and blame and push it on.
"People like you who don't think are the reason my mom is dead, you know," She added. She obsessed over the fallen rescue teams and authorities for a reason, and it was deeply personal. But that didn't make it any more right or justified.
"You can't answer me. No one can answer me," She huffed without giving much of a chance or clarifying whatever answers she wanted.
She did, mercifully, stop and consider other possibilities beside the entire collapse of the planet being solely his fault, which caused a small, silent pause, followed by, "...Could you have? Done anything, I mean. To prevent it all?"
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Posted: Wed Jul 31, 2013 11:17 am
Chester watched her, surprised by her anger at him. He had a lot of guilt about that whole night, and he did blame himself for not doing more to prevent it. Still, there were some moments, when he was not totally drunk, that he understood it was not entirely possible for him to know what was coming.
He watched her, saddened by her anger, and trying not to let his temper flare up like it wanted to.
"I don't think I could have done anything. I did not know the Negaverse did things like that. I am not very experienced in this war, and I was only thinking of... of normal problems." He frowned and then looked at her, feeling guilty. He didn't think her mother had died at the Carnival, but it didn't help ease his guilt to think that.
"I thought I was doing everything I could. When they attacked... no one feels more guilty about it than I do. Every death and injury is on my shoulders. And I will somehow find a way to make amends... some how."
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Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 5:26 am
Columba twisted her hat in her hands and scowled. Various moving parts of her brain tried to reason the fact he was not logically responsible. That things just happened to him the way they happened to everyone else. But the rest was needing someone to blame, and being faced with the easy out of having someone freely admitting the deaths were on his shoulders.
"Okay," She said with a small, curt nod.
And walked away.
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Posted: Thu Aug 01, 2013 12:17 pm
Chester watched her go, and he felt his knees buckle a little bit. When she was out of sight he sat down heavily on the ground, taking a deep breath.
He was miserable about what had happened, and her comments and questions had only made him feel that guilt that much more acutely. He could never bring back the lives that were lost, or change the memories of those that had survived, so that they were not as haunted as he was. If he could bear it all, if he could take all the pain, he would do so.
But for now, all he could do was focus on those that had been hurt, see what they were going through, and harness that guilt and care he felt for them into his anger. He would continue on his path of revenge, for their sakes, and he would do some good for this world by stopping the forces of Chaos.
Not at the moment, though. At the moment he just sat on the floor, until the need for a drink overwhelmed him and he moved back toward his office to get one.
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