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 Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 3:51 pm
He knew her on sight... the way he knew a number of the agents of Chaos, though only a handful of them actually evoked anything but the urge to draw his lips back in an irritated snarl. Zircon was one of those people. He'd met her briefly at best, but he just kind of... liked something about her at the time, and instead of a snarl, he felt... vaguely wistful, since they were standing on the opposite sides of the battle tonight, and he wasn't sure his loud boasts of having escaped chaos had reached her ears, and if they had, what aspect of the claims would have brought here out. He wasn't even sure she was looking for him, or if she just happened to be in the area and was collecting information. He supposed the least he could do was present himself anyway. She was a full rank lower than him, though he knew that didn't mean quite as much as people necessarily thought it did. Rank wasn't an express ticket to an easy win. Sometimes it was just a fast trip to an bloated ego and an embarrassing stalema... fine. Call it a loss. He'd basically lost to Titan except for his magic scarring the goddamn giant off. No idea how, or if the huge man had reported that situation. "Zircon." He called out, by way of a greeting, and to clear his thoughts of the uncomfortable topic of not winning. "I see you ditched the paper airplane. And the Aviators. Shame. I really liked the shades." He wouldn't attack her if he didn't have to. He didn't remember her as being among the murderously zealot spectrum, but then... people changed. Chaos frequently changed them for the worse.
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Posted: Wed Aug 06, 2014 8:42 pm
Summer nights in Destiny City were a dangerous time, the air crackling with the low energy of multiple auras lit in the dark. Something about the stagnant heat seemed to draw soldiers from Order and Chaos alike, wafting about like moths to a flame. Their increased presence never seemed to give traction to one side or the other, but it nevertheless turned the streets into a warzone if you weren't careful.
Captain Zircon had been doing this for years, in the summers that cooked up demon trees and dark comas that crippled the entire city. She knew how to be careful.
She stood watch in the Warehouse District, her hands in her pockets and curled around the day's catch. What had been generous overflow as a lieutenant was now barely meeting quotas as a captain, but there were generous trade offs, new strengths and powers and a connection to Chaos that she would have never believed she could feel. Once the pain had ebbed away, there was a certain relief to the warmth that bubbled around her starseed, but something about it felt...incomplete. There was still so much work to be done.
She'd felt the energy before she heard the Knight, and out of instinct she called for her weapon, testing the feeling of weight in her hands. It was a heavy thing, and awkward to throw, but it was hers, and she would make do until it felt natural again. More familiar was the voice, and her shoulders tensed as she turned, holding on to the hilt of her boomerang for support. The man was differently dressed, but not so different to keep his name from rolling off her tongue.
"Realgar." She acknowledged his presence by slipping her weapon back into subspace, taking cautious steps towards the knight. Her expression was muddled by many things, dominated mostly by curiosity as she eyed his uniform. She felt the power rolling from his aura in waves, every bit as dangerous as the summer air. But dangerous to her? They'd been allies at some point, they'd fought for the same cause. "Paper airplanes, sunglasses, they're both so fragile. The Aviators in particular, I lost those in a fight with a windowpane." She lifted up her ruffle of bangs, tracing her fingers across the spiderweb of scars that draped across her forehead from when Bischofite had pinned to the glass.
"Though I'm not the only one who's changed," she remarked, gesturing to...well, all of him. "I read the reports about your disappearance, your...decision." There might have been notes of disappointment in her voice, though it was hard to discern whether her feelings were personal or simply professional.
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Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 6:01 am
"Oh so there are actual reports?" He sounded genuinely surprised, maybe a little amused by this. "I'm surprised to her Zinkenite didn't make something up, like saying I was dead, or just that I'm lying because even the 'stupid and useless' would never dream of cutting the leash, it's been pretty damn quiet for all those stories about how I'd die within days." He snorted, though the corners of his eyes crinkled in a half disguised wince at the scars, not sure who had done it to her, or if she'd deserved it or not. "Who did that?" He didn't miss the disappointment, but she wasn't throwing her weapon either, which was good. He wasn't sure yet if he could actually intercept it with his net anyway, or if he'd just look extra foolish right before he got hit. "And it's Kairatos these days."
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Posted: Thu Aug 07, 2014 9:36 pm
"General-King Zinkenite never gave an official report," Zircon said flatly, threading her bangs back into place with a careful brush of her fingers. "I make it a habit to read the records, though. At first, you were missing. Then, you were...this." Her lips pulled thin, still eyeing the uniform warily. He'd been a good officer, a comfort to have in a fight full of White Mooners, and to see him brought so low nearly made her feel ill. Arguing semantics wasn't going to put her queasiness to rest, however, and she wasn't a recruitment officer anyway. Zircon was Intelligence, and the only thing she could do to shield herself from feeling betrayed was to fall back on her primary directive. Observe. Analyze. Understand.
"I spoke out of turn in the presence of General Bischofite," she responded, her shoulders visibly tensing as she fumbled out the name. "He is...quick to correct undesirable behaviors, but I consider myself lucky that the only think he broke permanently were my glasses." Zircon thought about the General, broken and Rift-bound, and she shivered deep in her bones.
"Kairatos, then." The foreign syllables left a sour taste in her mouth, twisting it downwards, but it would be inaccurate to keep to Realgar for the sake of antiquity. Denying the Knight his new name would not make his aura any less sickly clean. With a sigh, she glanced out at the skyline, her brow furrowed as she fought her mind for the words to say. "...So, how does it feel to leave cleansing the city's senshi to the rest of us?" She tried to offer a joking smile, but it felt strained, her eyes scanning the street so she wouldn't have to linger on his appearance any longer.
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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 6:54 am
"I've met Bishophiote." He wasn't wrong then, about Zinkenite, and he wasn't sure if he should feel triumphant, annoyed, or both. He was a little surprised, but only a little, to find out it was Bishophite that had given her the scars. "Guy has..." How to put this. "...Issues." That seemed vague enough. "But I suppose I would too in his situation." Did she know he hadn't chosen to merge with a Youma? Or was that one of the dirty little secrets of the Negaverse? "Call me whatever you want." He waved a dismissive hand. "Doesn't matter." But the 'clense' did. "...Never struck you as odd that it was us who had to kill people to get rid of the bad guys? People that weren't even involved?" He asked, tilting his head slightly. "Zinkenite had me rip the starseeds out of two stupid a** civilian kids my first night." He didn't wait for an answer, turning his head to frown into the night as he debated the question he'd been asked, rubbing the thumb of one hand against the series of pink scars across the finger pads and palm of the other. They were still new and angry looking, and the memories that went with them still raw. "It feels..." He paused, trying to figure it out. "It feels free. My actions are my choice. If I fight or don't fight it's on me. No one will come for me if I quit tonight. No one will punish me for saying I don't agree. And sometimes we don't." He glanced back, his eyes hard. "I've been lied to once. But only once. And not out of malice, not for Zinkenite's reasons. Just by a couple of dumb ********. One made a lie of omission because she didn't think things were as dangerous as they were. One just a dumb a** who honestly thought he was making a better choice for the group by not doing what we agreed on. Neither of them are likely to do it again." He wouldn't lie. He wouldn't tell her the white moon was only for the pure and the noble. But they were... more... more human than the Negaverse had to offer. It might be harder to have to decide your own purpose, but... but it was a choice he was proud of. "And the fact I can say I've been to Mars is more than most can boast of." He added, trying to lighten the mood. Trying to push back thoughts of Degrasse's face, terrified. Cove's last smile before he was suddenly gone.
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Posted: Fri Aug 08, 2014 8:52 pm
"Every war has it's sacrifices," Zircon recited, but the sentence lacked luster, tired and overused, and something in her face grimaced when he said 'starseed'. She listened to him speak to distract herself from her own recent adventures in fetching starseeds for superior officers, and watched him with a steady gaze as he answered.
"I couldn't imagine quitting," she commented, folding her hands into her pockets. To Zircon, quitting meant an acceptance of defeat, which was intolerable, especially when it still felt like there was so much work to be done. Hers was a dark calling, corruptive and dangerous, but the duty fell on her all the same, and the concept of leaving everything behind felt so foreign that it twisted up her expression, staring out into the darkness again with a crinkled nose. "I could, however, imagine the--what was the word--dumb ********? That you must have to work with now." When she glanced back to him, her smile was wry but not unkind.
Zircon let out a wistful sigh, settling into her posture. "There was a time when I thought I might be chosen to go to Mars..." she admitted, crossing her arms. "Ah, but that was years ago, before there were even Knights or Senshi..."
She let out a bark of a laugh, bitter on the tongue. "Not that it matters anymore."
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Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2014 5:58 am
He thought about retorting sharply to her comment bout sacrifice, but maybe it was something about the way she said it that stopped him short, made him draw the line of his mouth to a thin and thoughtful line. "It wasn't on purpose it was just... " Avoidable. It had been avoidable. And yet he had been unable to stop it. But she didn't need to deal with that. She had her own pain, and he could hear it, and it resonated with the bitter ghosts that lingered in tatters where the memories of his old life used to be. "So you wanna go now?" He asked, offering her a hand, and an impulse decision. "To Mars?" He liked the idea as soon as he had it, and flashed her an grin as his eyes brightened. "I'll show you Mars like they never dreamed."
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Posted: Sat Aug 09, 2014 10:46 pm
Zircon blinked.
And then she blinked again.
"Mars?" Her voice wavered.
When Suri was six years old, her aunt took her to the museum on a rainy day, to an exhibit on the planets. She'd gaped, slack-jawed, at strange orbs floating in dimly lit rooms, at consoles that made robot noises, at grainy videos of rockets powering for the stars. One room in particular was nearly pitch black, except for pinpricks of light that dotted the ceilings and the walls, a women's voice above them introducing the planets in sequence. In the gift shop, Suri begged her aunt for a book about space, and for months she wouldn't put it down.
When Suri was twelve years old, she got to go on a hunting trip with her father, way out past the electricity and the lights of the city. The camping party was mostly concerned with the type of game you could shoot in November, but Suri was only interested in what happened when the sun went down. While her father and his friends exchanged stories by the fire, she set up roost in a nearby tree, tracing constellations with her hands and whispering their names. That night, she'd dreamed she was floating in stars.
When Suri was twenty, she stared blankly at fuzzy letters on a poster that seemed too far away. The recruiter had let her down gently, but it didn't keep her from screaming into her pillows the moment she drove home. He'd given her a number of pamphlets to read, but she threw them all away out of spite. She cursed the sky, the stars, and everything else that she could never have.
Zircon had known about the senshi being a part of space, but it took a moment of surprised stupor to connect what the Knights meant when they said 'Kairatos of Mars'.
"You--you can't--can you?--" said the Captain, staring down at his outstretched hand like it was radioactive. Finally, something of her composure snapped back into place, and with it she stepped backwards, her eyes narrowing cautiously.
"What kind of trick is this?" she accused, her posture bristling as she crossed her arms. It was wrong of her to assume that he was telling her the truth, or that he'd actually take her, or that she would be safe when they got there. Just because he wore the face of someone who had once been her ally didn't mean he had her best interests at heart.
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Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 5:12 am
"I can. My wonder is on Mars." He lowered his hand slightly, but didn't retract it, letting her know the offer still stood. "It's not a trick. If I wanted to pick a fight I'd do it right here, no pretenses. You know damn well that's not my style. I'm just offering you a chance to see Mars." He understood why she was anxious, he would have been too. He honestly wasn't sure he'd have taken any offers to go to space before he'd been purified, but since he could legitimately offer her something that meant a lot to her right now... he kind of wanted to. "No strings attached. I'm not going to drag you out there and tell you you have to purify before I'll let you go home or something. Couldn't anyway. Not in my skill set. Promise. If that's something you want to do and I can do it, why shouldn't I? I mean I'm pretty sure as far as breaking the rules I've already done bigger."
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Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 12:10 pm
The White Moon was not to be trusted. Zircon had heard this about a half a million times. She knew it to be true. And yet...there was something to be learned here, wasn't there? If Kairatos was willing to show her Mars, as an agent of Chaos, then that was a piece of knowledge she might not have been able to glean otherwise. She could make observations, take records later, and through her experience she would help her cause. These were all entirely legitimate reasons to take Kairatos's hand, and the reason she began to reach out her hand had nothing to do with the fact that at some point in the past, Zircon had been a child with a cardboard box fashioned into a space helmet on her head.
Her shoulders relaxed, and slowly she closed the distance between them, as if moving too fast would cause the offer to crumble beneath her. Zircon hesitated about an inch above actually clasping hands, looking to Kairatos with a conflicted bite of her lower lip. She tried to smile. "Well, in the name of breaking rules...how does this work?"
This was an experiment, for scientific purposes. It had nothing to do with the fact that her heart was doing backflips. Clearly.
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Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 12:37 pm
"It's... hard to explain." He admitted. "It's a little like teleporting I guess, well, maybe more than a little. But less free range." Which was a shame. He missed that one aspect of being an agent, even if he'd almost never used it. Maybe they could because they were detached from their wonder, and something in them was searching for it? Or was that being a bit too poetic? He was a warrior, not a writer. "Just relax, all the work is on me." He promised, reaching to gently take her hand. Time to break all the rules. AMItotic I solemnly swear they are up to no good...
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