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 Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 8:36 pm
Starseeds.
The days surrounding the White Phoenix project had all blurred together in Zia's exhausted mind. Part of her wondered in the Negaverse contacts she had with their fingers in that pie were alive and then part of her was entirely unconcerned, convincing herself she was better off with them gone.
No more Wolframite trying to remove limbs, no more Bischofite holding her and threatening to murder-suicide the two of them for a chance at mirrorwalking, and her commitments to Labyrinthite could go entirely unfulfilled. Really, if she just convinced herself everything would be peachy until she believed it then it would cease to matter.
But mostly she was just tired. She hadn't slept since the slaughter and now she found herself eschewing her usual energy leaking expeditions to find a place to sit, almost nest, as a civilian on a bench and just hold one of her delicate trophies, staring at the mirrorplated gem as if looking at it hard enough was going to yield answers. Patrol had been forgotten.
Her obsessive nature was getting the better of her again.
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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 8:55 pm
Europa was trying to cover up for her own failings the night of operation white phoenix by throwing herself back into patrol and running herself just a little bit ragged. Paul might fuss over her and her tiredness, but she knew how she'd handled failure in the past - by buckling down and being better.
But she never forgot. And she never forgave herself. So that was rough.
She was crossing back through the park, tired and heading home, when she spotted the purple-haired girl on the bench. A civilian alone this time of night was unusual, and maybe even a little bit (or a lot) dangerous, but what really drew Europa's attention was the crystal in the girl's hand, one of those curious mirror-plated starseeds they'd all gotten a look at during the battle.
"Excuse me," she called tentatively, not wanting to scare the other young woman away. "But where did you get that?"
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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 10:20 pm
Zia was tired, rattled, and a little more than irritated because of the last several sleepless days.
So when she saw Europa, a senshi who she had withdrawn away from years back when she saw the eternal making roads with the likes of ChibiMoon, she did not react pleasantly. While they had never been close, she still took the alliance as an egregious offense, considering the amount of turmoil she felt could be traced back to the pink haired senshi, one of which being the complete and total annihilation of what had been Zia's relatively normal personal life.
"Oh, ******** off, Europa," She muttered with an eye roll, but protectively closed her had on the starseed shaped mirror-thing.
She was obviously possessive of it.
And then she petulantly scooted to the opposite side of the bench like that was going to help at all with a 'hmph'.
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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 10:32 pm
Clearly, she had interrupted someone, and the civilian form was just a glamour hiding... well, she wasn't exactly sure, but with that much acid in a voice, Europa wasn't going to stick around and find out. She had her own misery to deal with, and they could just go and suffer separately. "Okay," she said, shrugging. Like, most nights? She would have totally gone over and tried to get a look at that starseed for herself, or found out who this girl was, or, like, anything. But tonight she'd been told to ******** off and she was in no mood to contest that. Europa spun on her heels."Okay, fine," she called, "I am ******** right off."
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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:10 pm
"Good!" Zia shouted at her back and went back to hunching over her little trophy and with a troll-like expression that must've served as a pout.
And then after a second she had gotten up to walk after her.
"Hey!" She shouted for her attention, not caring or even seeming to register that she had told her to ******** off literally half a second ago and she was complying with the demand.
"What do you know about these?" She asked, holding up the starseed between her forefinger and thumb to fully show off it's reflective properties.
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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:22 pm
It was sort of like a scene from a sitcom, and Europa might have laughed a little bit if it weren't just so out-of-place in her life, which was more like a one-hour drama. She turned around and rejoined the girl, who had gotten up to follow her, and leaned in to investigate the starseed. Close up, the starseed looked like it was made of tiny mirrors, painstakingly pieced together. "It's a dark mirror senshi's starseed," she said, squinting at it. "A normal one should be crystalline, but it's been turned metallic." She hadn't gotten a good look at Leto's when Wolframite had it out of her chest, but she thought it had looked the same way, and she said so. "Leto's was similar." She looked up, meeting the eyes of the mysterious girl. "Who's asking, exactly?" she asked, wracking her brain. She didn't think they'd ever met before, and approaching her in civilian form was just - it raised some eyebrows.
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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:31 pm
"Yes, but why isn't it normal? That doesn't make sense," She complained, huffing at the incorrect answer.
Not that that had been a winnable question, but still.
Her brow raised and she looked at Europa, a combination of tired and unamused before she shifted up to her humanoid Mauvian form, gaining her pretty dress and cat ears and letting loose the full aura.
"Told you I had to steal a human to cross barriers," She deadpanned, referencing how she had teased Sess during the WP meeting.
Although at this point she was just being a brat. Zia was in control of her own actions and Zirconia proper had been dormant for ages.
"This isn't right, starseeds from the Black Moon are crystalline like everyone else's," She muttered, taking advantage of the powered form to attempt to push her finger through the surface like any other mirrorwalk, and was only met with the liquidizing ripple effect like earlier. "And if even Leto's is the same... it doesn't really make any sense."
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Posted: Sat Apr 12, 2014 11:45 pm
Well, thought Europa mildly, as the girl in front of her transformed into Zirconia, whom she definitely recognized. That certainly explained basically everything. She put her thinking cap on (metaphorically, of course) on the topic of the strange star seed, and once she really thought about it for a good minute or so, the answer seemed fairly obvious. "They're not Black Moon," she said, tilting her head to one side. "They're Dark Mirror. They're not the same court. The Dark Mirror is corrupt. The Black Moon - it wasn't. It was just opposite the White Moon. That wasn't corrupt - just different." She'd trade the existence of the Dark Mirror for a full house of Black Moon senshi in this dimension and running the show, to be honest. Like, besides setting off a coma wave, they hadn't been that bad. Which didn't really explain what the mirror coating was or where it had come from, but it made the difference make some kind of sense, she thought, watching ripples race across the starseed's surface like it was made of quicksilver. "You said it yourself," she said, trying to reason through the hypothesis she was forming. "They're parasitic. Why should their starseeds look the same as the Black Moon's if they're not the Black Moon?"
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 12:13 am
As logical as the conclusion was, the ponderous raised brow look shifted from the starseed to Europa's person and soured instantly.
She pulled the trophy away and concealed it in her fist again and shifted down to her civilian form once more.
"Starseeds don't change composite make up on corruption, in my experience. But we could always rip out a corrupted senshi's starseed and compare it to a White Mooner."
She didn't make much of an attempt to hide the toxicity.
"All mirrorwalkers are parasitic. Did you miss the part about how I stole this body? And now I'm stuck here like this thanks to your precious Chibimoon."
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 12:28 am
Well, s**t, thought Europa. Was that was this otherwise-mysterious malice was about? This was about Chibimoon? Her stomach rolled. "Yeah, well Chibimoon abandoned us all and ran off to do who knows what," she said sourly, "So I feel like a pretty big idiot right now. I mean, on top of everything else I feel like a massive moron for." Like not properly killing Leto. "I was young. I was stupid. I was scared," she said. "I wanted someone to believe in, so I put all my faith in some princess from an alternate timeline where things all turned out okay, and that got all of us exactly nowhere or worse." Europa remembered that conversation well. She remembered begging Chibimoon not to turn out to be a false messiah like Ares had been. And really, the only thing positive that could be said for the girl was that she'd left quietly and hadn't dragged the rest of the white moon behind her. "I'm sorry for whatever Chibimoon did to you," she said. "I didn't have any part in it, besides being some silly little girl who just wanted to be right about something for once." Being a senshi was one big game of accepting you didn't know anything, and Europa had less trouble with that now than she once had. But the damage was done. "I don't know why the starseeds look the way they do," she said, shrugging helplessly. "I don't know anything lately." Or ever, really.
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 4:24 pm
"Oh boo hoo, my genocidal pink princess left to go terrorize another universe in another timeline," Was Zia's exhausted snap at the information, even though the thought that Chibimoon was out of the game was a piece of information she was gleeful to hear confirmation of.
"If everything was so great in her timeline, why'd she go steal a royal crystal from a kingdom that was doing just fine, lure us all here, and then try to kill us off when we were trapped? She wasn't corrupted when she was calling for the deaths of the soldiers she had cornered and trapped. She wasn't corrupted when she was screeching for the mass slaughter of an entire corrupted court she birthed into existence. She was just evil. And she ruined my ******** life."
She lifted her hands in a tense, frustrated gestured before letting them go limp with a whimpering groan. More than anything she sounded frustrated and desperate, especially when one hand frantically pushed her hair out of her eyes as she glanced anywhere but Europa as she took a step backwards.
"Why would you believe that? You're supposed to be the good guys."
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Posted: Sun Apr 13, 2014 6:24 pm
Europa wanted to be basically anywhere but here. She'd never known the full details of how Chibimoon came to be part of their timeline, and now she felt like a fool for never investigating it more fully before jumping after what she'd thought would be the moon princess. "I don't know what to believe anymore," she shrugged. "I don't know why anyone does anything. I don't know what the point of anything is. Maybe we're all trapped in some stupid ******** galactic cycle run by a god that doesn't care, and maybe it's gone completely off the rails and maybe tomorrow a meteorite's gonna come and wipe us all out." Chibimoon's betrayal was just one event in a series of cosmic disappointments, and having Zirconia's malice hurled at her just wasn't something Europa had a good comeback to tonight. "I was young," she repeated. "I was scared. I was so ******** stupid that I saw moon princess, and I saw a way to end this and get on with my life, and right then in time, I wanted that more than anything. I didn't know the history. I didn't know the whole story. I made a hasty conclusion and I did some dumb s**t and hindsight's twenty-twenty but that's not going to do me any good." She'd meant to leave. She should have left. The only reason she could see for Zirconia getting up and following her was wanting someone to abuse. "What do you want from me?" she asked, voice catching in her throat. "Do you want me to say that you were right, and I was wrong? Because yes, okay, I'll say that. You were right, Zirconia. You were so right and you can lord that over me all you want. You earned it. Chibimoon was a ******** c**t whose only skill was ruining things and I was wrong to follow her. There." It was easier to swear after her fight with Leto. She'd found her anger and her frustration and she was still trying to burn it off.
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Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 5:46 am
Zia exhaled what felt like a metric ton of pressure, with a ghost of an abandoned roar just barely lingering.
She had imagined herself saying a million things to Europa, every time she felt outrage. She wanted to express the disgust she'd felt at the meeting when Europa stood by Chibimoon and spoke out against the DMC. She wanted to scream at her frustration with the White Moon and it's lack of responsibility it held itself to in the creation of the dark mirror court, and the destruction of the parallels.
But it was gone, because it wouldn't have been right. Europa was an ignorant participant but not the mastermind of the situation or knowledgeable co-conspirator she wanted her to be, and so she couldn't be an avatar for all of her rage and frustration any longer now that Europa had made that more than clear with her own words.
The weight of this led to the most incredulous facial expression from Zia as she shook her head and looked elsewhere, running her fingers through her bangs in the process.
"Okay."
Well that fell flat.
A small detail created a massive change in dynamic, and Europa was no longer perceived as an enemy, she wasn't a dangerous individual seemingly agreeing with Chibimoon's atrocities. And they were both just incredibly tired.
Her body language relaxed immensely, her expression looked more like exhaustion than righteous rage, and the fire had completely left her eyes. "I'm sorry," She said with moderate effort to keep the tired murmur out of her tone and only half succeeding. "And I'm sorry you didn't get to kill Leto, too."
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Posted: Thu Apr 17, 2014 10:47 pm
"Okay," said Europa, sighing tiredly. All she could think was that she was glad Zirconia had stopped her onslaught - she almost completely missed the apology. "It's- it's-" she stammered, and shrugged helplessly. What was there left to say? "I thought I'd done it," she said. "We were so close. I felt her fingers go slack and I thought - yes. This is it. It's over." She should have-- thought Europa. She should have-- "And then everything went to s**t, so, like, whatever." It wasn't her proudest moment, but then - nothing really ever went the way she planned. She was good at plans, but execution? Not so much. "I'll get another chance," she said. "Just maybe not with Wolframite." That alliance had been very much a one-time thing - she wasn't even sure Wolframite was still alive. "And next time I get a chance, I'll finish the job." She could do it. Europa was sure of that much. After all, she'd done it once already, more or less. Leto'd gotten a lucky break, but sooner or later - her luck would have to run out. "God damn did that whole battle go pear-shaped," she sighed. "At least you got that weird starseed to play with, so I guess it's not a total loss."
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Posted: Thu Apr 24, 2014 6:14 am
The way Zee looked away with her eyes suddenly lidded and brow raised seemed to indicate some skepticism or at least something critical going through her mind.
She had been present for Leto's corruption, and been slowly weaving her way around court politics. Leto had stood there blank faced and mute as Ares grabbed her and tossed her through the mirror. She had never considered her dangerous or smart, only a cheap substitute for Ares' Albali who she had always considered a cheap substitute for Ouranos.
She had heard stories of Remarque's persuasion and his interference, and the White Phoenix battle was the only anecdotal evidence she had of Leto doing much besides hunting knights. She didn't consider her a leader they needed and while the war would be better off without her presence, she was unconvinced her elimination would end anything for anyone. The court wouldn't crumble, and the standings would be unchanged.
She had been musing on this until she realized she was being entirely unsympathetic to Europa's personal situation, and the fact that Leto's death might've offered the eternal senshi some peace.
Suddenly appearing sympathetic, Zia reached out to the stammering senshi with a coddling, "Oh, baby, it'll be okay. You'll get another chance."
Reminded of the starseed, it seemed to distract her from trying to invade Europa's space and she stopped with an, "Oh!" and looked at it in her other hand before nodding. "Yeah. It's uh. It's a thing I guess."
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