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 Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:25 pm
Finding a Templar at the Library was mind-blowing. It was also enough of an impetus to push Titan, who usually tried to avoid hunting near any of the schools or the university, to considering approaching the Destiny City University campus. But not for hunting. He was good about meeting his quotas, and already had done so much and made his turn in. He was curious if at such a high place there might not more high nobles found. He wasn't sure what he would do if he found them. That realization brought him to a pause at the edge of the North Oval, looking out over the expanse of lawn and crisscrossing sidewalks. What can a sword say to a king or queen? But even just seeing one would be fine...to look on and feel...whatever it was. To feel drive and wanted purpose. To not feel dread that I'm loosing all I hold dear, I guess. To try to understand more, and bring pleasure of information, maybe, to those I would serve. I wish for smiles, more and more as it all closes in. I wish I was not so dumb....but wishing will never make that so. I must settle for being useful. It must be enough.He started slowly across the night-dark, quiet swath, distracted by thought and worry now well tilled, sown and grown in his heart.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 5:52 pm
Babylon... was something less than a Templar. Theoretically he was a Knight, although he knew his ancestor would disagree vehemently on that point. Having never lit the lamps, his rank seemed to be up in the air - at least as far as his ancestor was concerned. Everyone else saw the cape and said Knight and didn't care about shitty silver millennium rites of passage. So he was a Knight, with the scars to prove it. Or whatever. He'd taken it upon himself to patrol the DCU campus, hopefully to keep it just a bit safer after dark. With the semester starting back up - and himself, regrettably, re-enrolled as a student, with Alaska firmly off the possibility horizon - it seemed like a more important route than ever. Sensing a chaos signature moving his way, Babylon moved into an intercept course. Even with the strength differential between knights and negaversers, he felt confident in his ability to handle a lieutenant. Until he leapt firmly into the lieutenant's path and realized, holy s**t, this guy was huge. Like seriously, twice his size, what the ******** did he eat - whole cows? "Okay," said the knight, backing up. "I'm not going to fight you." Because that would be dumb. "But I am going to ask you very nicely to turn around and go gather energy somewhere else that isn't an institute of higher learning. Please." Babylon rather liked having teeth. He hoped that this was not the moment he would be parted from them.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:22 pm
"Jävlar! ***" He had most certainly been in Not-Paying-Attention land, and there was a Order Signature RIGHT THERE. Thank the luck that existed for both of them the guy knew his business and had already backstepped, or Titan probably wouldn't have unspace-zoned in time and walked right into him. It was a level of not-smooth he would rather never court, Lieutenant or ever otherwise. Titan lifted a hand palm up, "I am not gathering!" "Just walking. Just walking, I ..." Well. Here was his wish granted. Having stalled out in speech, the big guy quirked his head as he looked the Knight up and down. Well-knit, impressive cape, the visor was strange. "I don't like to hurt students. I've never...been to the University before. I thought...maybe I could see someone inspiring here. " To be honest, I don't like to hurt anyone. It is just a necessity of battle. Hurting students hurts the throne of earth, though- I would not weaken the best and brightest."You are a knight, ja?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 6:59 pm
Well, that was unexpected. Babylon raised his lantern, trying to shed some more light on this situation, but the hulking giant in front of him refused to resolve into anything other than the largest lieutenant he'd ever seen. In fact, one of the largest people he'd ever seen, period. "Okay," he said, laughing awkwardly at the lieutenant's proclamation that he wasn't gathering and wasn't looking for a fight. "That's a relief, because I really didn't want to fight you, big guy." "Looking for someone inspiring, huh," said the knight, raising an eyebrow. Well, that just had him plain stumped. "I know there's some pretty renowned faculty, but you're not gonna find them holding office hours at this time of night." He was pretty sure even the late-night dining hall would be mopping up at this hour. "So, uh, so, yeah," he said awkwardly. "As you were, I guess. Can't stop you from just being here if you're not hurting anyone. And it's not like I blame you for walking around all powered up, it comes with some cool powers. Like leaping high buildings in a single bound." But then Big Guy decided to continue the conversation, and Babylon, despite thinking he'd gone and made this horrifically awkward for the both of them, was obliged to continue. But first he was going to lower his lantern, because it wasn't doing anything the street light wasn't. "I am," he said. "Babylon Knight of Mercury. And you are...?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 7:29 pm
Being called 'big guy' by someone of such majesty was unusual as it was pleasant- Titan shifted his weight from surprised alarm to a casual stand with his thumb hooked into the double looped belt on his hip. "You fit the inspiration." "You feel great of among your kind, " The lieutenant admitted. He motioned his other hand on his own face- tracing finger along where a mirror of Babylon's face would put the scar. "Not so overwhelming as the Templar, but still very great?" "I'm...just Titanlåvenite. Or Titan."
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 7:54 pm
Inspirational was not something Babylon had ever been called, and he nodded, smiling just a little bit - he could get used to that. "I don't know anything about any Templars," he said, and wondered if he should. "But I, ah, I worked hard to get to where I am." Hard enough, though? The unlit lamps of his wonder taunted him, just out of sight. He'd come back to them later, he swore he would. Self-consciously, he reached his free hand up to trace the scar on his face, mirroring Titan's gesture. What could the lieutenant mean by that, he wondered - was the scar part of his greatness? If that was the case, then Babylon had mixed feelings. If anything, the scar was a sign of his greatest failure, his inability to help his best friend when she needed him and letting her become warped into something she was never meant to be as a result. "That's, uh, a bit of a mouthful," he said. "I'll go with Titan." The scar thing was just making him too curious. "What do you mean by tracing my scar?" he asked uncertainly.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 8:25 pm
"He was named Camelot. At the library. " Titan looked away into the evening, briefly, in the direction of the Metropolitan Main Branch. There was a wistfulness to the tone of the words indicative of admiration. He was drawn back by a noble near, however, and asking him question that was dangerous to neither of them. "Great men wear their history as a map of marks. You have that, and you do not hide it. It is ..." He struggled for words- vocabulary was not his strong part. "Like Beowolf. " "Like Ibn." Ibn was more elegant. Silverah 13th Warrior reference, its his favorite movie.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 8:39 pm
Babylon knew Beowolf but not Ibn, and it pained him exactly how wrong Titan had gotten his scar. It wasn't a mark of victory or of pride. It was shame. "I couldn't hide this if I wanted to," he said. Avalon had cut to scar. Cut to mar, to mark. So that every Negaverser he met knew that he'd been claimed. He'd be hers or he'd be no one's. (Camelot, he thought briefly, but he was past that now: oh, huh, that guy.) "I did something awful and cowardly," he said. "And when I came back to face what I'd done, my failure cut me open." He'd deserved it, for letting Tate slip away the way she did. For letting her darker impulses kill her. "So it's not really - it's not greatness. It's shame." Perhaps that was too much to tell a Negaverser, even just a lieutenant. Maybe Titan would decide him easy pickings. "It's Avalon's mark," he added. Maybe the name would mean something. Maybe she'd made her intentions clear to her subordinates.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 9:03 pm
Titan's brow furrowed in great lines, but it wasn't a troubling of scorn or pity. Simple empathy and hope to convey some view outside of pain that might offer something- "Not all Beowolf did was good. Good and Great are different. A scar of shame shapes us, too. You sound like you have learned from the wound, if you can make it healing. " "You have been in this war long?" Titan hadn't heard of Avalon, but that wasn't very surprising. Or...maybe he had and he'd forgotten. He didn't write down the names of the other agents in any place he kept permanently, so he forgot some sometimes. He could remember them when he was actively writing them down and testing himself on them, though. But he always burned the little folded sheets of paper of roster names afterwards. His chances were best with specOps, and he didn't remember that name among his own branch. Was Avalon a senshi? Maybe one of the Dark Mirror? "I do not know Avalon. I have not been around long. " Titan shrugged his shoulder a little, "I am sorry. But if you are marked, then you must face it, ja? "
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 9:24 pm
Babylon was going to have to reread Beowolf, he decided, if he stood any chance of getting the full intended meaning here. But sympathy was nice, and it was true that he had learned from the wound. "I've been-" He had to stop and count, try to figure out what was going on in his life then and where he was now. "Three years, almost," he said, feeling grossly old. Three years ago, he'd been climbing around on the roofs at Sovereign Heights, using his super-powers for juvenile mischief. Those days were long gone. And he wasn't going to mention that he'd spent nearly half that time hiding from responsibility in Fairbanks. "She was a squire and my best friend," he said. "Now she's a captain of the Negaverse. Heck, maybe she's even a general by now." He hadn't seen her again since the night she'd cut him, and telling Titan that Avalon wanted him to switch sides as well, to fall the way she'd fallen - well, he doubted that would earn him much sympathy. They had entirely different perspectives. "I'll be facing it for the rest of my life," he said, feeling a knot thick in his throat. "She told me she joined the Negaverse because she was alone," he added, and the thought still made him burn with shame because even if he told himself he'd been just a phone call away, that couldn't make up for physical proximity. Even if she'd called that she needed him, it would have taken him a day to get there. And that put the blame squarely on his shoulders. "Why did you join? Has it given you what you wanted?"
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 10:29 pm
Lonliness...it seems so simple a reason. Simple, human, youthful. It was a little sad, reminding him of the reasoning he'd heard so recently out of Avior. It was choosing sides based wholly in emotions, not on what they thought was right or wrong really- and that made it feel like suspect loyalty that could change as quickly as their young emotions. "I joined first because my lord gave me answers and gave me a place in the war. I swore my life and fealty to him. " " I grew in love for him, the longer that I have known him. And I love the Earth. The longer I have served, the more I learned- that we protect the Earth especially. The methods are strange, but I believe that our nobles have reasons for the orders they give and the way they train us. I try to be worthy to learn and understand what those reasons are. " "It is a hard thing."
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:13 pm
Babylon blinked slowly at Titan. He'd heard many reasons for serving the Negaverse. Most of them were selfish or delusional, at least as well as he could tell. This giant seemed utterly earnest - that he served from love, and loyalty, and to protect the earth. Protect it from what, Babylon wondered. How did Titan justify stealing energy from civilians as protecting the earth? "What are those reasons?" he asked. "I've fought this war from my side long enough to see the results of the Negaverse's actions. And I know that everyone wants to believe that they're on the right side in a fight. But I've always wondered how you justify draining energy and collecting starseeds." He'd first thought to say stealing, then thought better of it - he'd struck a delicate truce with Titan, he thought. Push too hard, and it might shatter. "But it brings you satisfaction? Your service makes you feel - fulfilled?" he asked, and then asked himself - did his knighthood make him feel fulfilled? He thought so. Even if his ancestor set an impossible standard.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:30 pm
Titan considered, scratching a paw in his braid. "That is a harder question. I do not know all the details, and I am not so smart..." Babylon probably noticed that a while back. "As I understand it....it is like High Hrothgar...or like other old tales. The Senshi- they are the rulers of far away places. They even are named them- Lady Ida has a place called Ida. It is her place, her king-no...queendom. The senshi are foreign nobles. Whether they intended it or not, they are trespassing on the land of the native nobles here on Earth. In old tales, a foriegn noble would buy passage, or bribe it, or do something to be allowed on another's land. Or there was war. And so there is. They're presence is enough to be offensive to the nobles who rule Earth. " "Maybe there are other reasons. But I don't know them. " " The other options would be to leave- to go where they are rulers. None have offered to do that, and seem stubborn to say that they were born here so they belong here. It does not work that way in old stories...there have been some that have done what was right and said they gave up their old planets as payment to the sovereign rule of Earth's nobles in trade to be part of ours. They're very fine nobles, the ones in black. " The energy draining and starseeding was the stickiest part of it. "As for the method of the war, I do not know exactly why that either. I do not like the toll on civilians. I was one, not long ago. " "But because of that, I know the difference between the senshi and anyone else- how does a mouse fight a lion? Maybe what we gather is what is used to give us strength? I don't know where or how the generals make us what we are, except that I was just a person before. I could not have done much for my lord. I could not have faced the magic at a senshi or knight's command if he'd asked me to get one of you to leave and go home. Now...I am a little more able. " Doesn't he miss Mercury? He said he was from Mercury, right? Isn't mercury the one that's really hot and close to the sun? That uniform looks like it would be too hot.
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Posted: Sun Jan 19, 2014 11:57 pm
It made sense, sort of, thought Babylon, in the way that if an argument had enough flawed logic in it, it could become round under its own gravity. "I don't know if they tell you guys this in Negaverse basic training," said Babylon, "But there was a war a thousand years ago that wiped out all those other planets. Like, I've been to Mercury, and I've been to like an asteroid or two or whatever and the thing about them is there's nothing there. Just ruins." He didn't know if that would make a difference or not. Titan grasped that the senshi he fought were born on Earth and only had starseeds that came from somewhere else. But knowing there was nowhere else to return to, that something had happened to leave Earth the only habitable planet in a once-sprawling civilization - that seemed to count for something to Babylon. "Secondly, Knights - my order? We're what officers of the Negaverse are meant to be. What you'd awaken to naturally if you weren't corrupted. What you become when you have chaos purged from you. And you're not all of Earth. I mean, Avalon was, and she's one of you now, but Linarite - she was a knight for a while. Lina. Of Mercury." "So," he continued, "It seems less to me like it's Earth's True Guardians versus a bunch of alien invaders and more two armies of ferociously powerful beings, smashed into a pressure cooker and fighting over the only planet left, not because it's rightfully theirs, but because it's the only one." The knight shrugged. "Just some food for thought," he said.
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Posted: Mon Jan 20, 2014 12:14 am
"I was no knight before. But I knew senshi, and they said I had no place in the war except to hid in a hole and maybe be killed in the crossfire for my trouble. I was no knight. " I am no knight. Pomona or Ida or Aegir...one of them, any of them...some should have seen if I was, right? "Why do you call it 'corrupted'? Without the power of my betters, I expect I'll just be a person again, if that is even possible. I could say you are meant to all be us as truthfully if we're all just mixed in? " "That last bit..." Titan crossed his arms, rubbing the forearm of each with the opposing hand, "I think that is nearer the truth, really. It is grim. " His grey-blue eyes dropped to the ground between them, "I have been to some places far away with some scouts. It would be better if they worked out an alliance with Earth for supply and tried to recreate their kingdoms. Wouldn't it be better if suddenly NASA could help them? Then everyone could go to the stars and there would be colonies and ships like space trek. " "If it is just a war over territory between nobles, which I think is the best answer, then it is going to be very long and very bloody. " Titan drew a long, dreary breath. "You know something about how it happens? The 'purification' and 'corruption'? What do you know?" Silverah It's called Star Trek, Titan.
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