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 Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 2:37 pm
Another knight. This one, they said, was Kairatos of Mars. The Bull of Mars, they called him -- Quartz wasn't sure if that was supposed to be reverent or disparaging. But what they said, also, was that he had once been Captain Realgar, of the Negaverse, and had left. That was interesting and repulsive all the same. He supposed Schörl had made sure he wasn't being sent around on his water bottle rounds with this one until she'd already been there to have her say. He wasn't wrong, either: the man in the room had legs that were partly hamburger in the middle, and blood from there on down -- with marks along the broken skin that he recognized as belonging to her rattan cane. An object lesson for Quartz in the drawbacks of running away, plainly spelled out. If Kairatos had been a Hallmark greeting card about defecting from the Negaverse, he would've been in the "Simply Stated" section. Quartz didn't want to get too close to this one. He didn't look like he could pose much danger at the moment, it wasn't that -- it was just that he had the notion that if he did, Schörl would be able to smell the Mars knight on him, and he'd be in trouble for something. "Hello, brother," he said coolly. "You'll be thirsty by now. I brought you some water." Ryuthulhu just keep your traitor cooties to yourself ok, he doesn't need any trouble
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 3:15 pm
"Fantastic. Not your brother." Kairatos muttered, without bothering to open his eyes this time. It required more effort than he cared to give someone who he was pretty sure was just there to ******** with him some more, if not in a physical way. Seriously. 'Brother'. Did this guy know how creepy that sounded? He heaved an annoyed sigh and finally spared Quartz a glance, and it was every bit as put out and weary as his tone. Something like a cat who has found themselves on a lone, tiny island surrounded by bubble bath and examines you with a fatalistic contemt and a faint promise of revenge. Which he sort of realized might not be fair. Some of these idiots were just doing their job. Some of them were realizing just how ******** horrifying their job actually was. Some of them would also however be discovering how much they enjoyed it. "What the ********." He snorted with a sort of bitter amusement.He'd seen some unique uniforms in his time but this one was a special sort of... special. He was pretty sure Hvergelmer sported fewer ornaments, albeit maybe only a few less. He couldn't for the life of him figure out a point, only a list of Sigfried and Roy jokes. But he had water. Which, provided it wasn't poisoned, probably made it worth sitting on the 'where's your white tiger' cracks until after he had gotten some.
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 4:03 pm
Quartz brushed off the insults as harmless. Sticks and stones may break my bones, and are worth more fear than names. Names are worthless and arbitrary, and can be taken away from you. "Oh, I was a knight like you, once," he clarified. "Well, not like you. Like I am, but in white and stars. It was a short tenure, but I made an effort while it lasted." They were brief memories, the last dregs of his time before corruption, but they were there -- and all the more precious because they were so few, and they were all he had. The rest of his life -- a family, a job, probably friends -- had been wiped out soul-deep in an instant. Gone. "She did a number on you." He approached, held up the Aquafina so Kairatos could see him opening it, trust that it was safe. "Try to stretch your legs every so often. That'll be painful, but better than letting the wounds clot narrow and breaking them open the next time you get a chance to move."
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 4:32 pm
"...Cosmos. You were a Cosmos knight." Kairatos ventured a guess, based on the coloration, which seemed to be pretty unique to Cosmos' select, and suddenly felt a bit worse for his lack of charity. "Did she corrupt you?" He asked, with a sudden frown, curious now. There but for the grace of... ********/> It would certainly make it much more clear why he seemed to have such informed advice on recovering from that ******** cane. "...She did." He agreed, grudgingly. He would not say he had had worse. The crash had done more damage physically he was pretty sure, but it was a different sort of harm. This had been entirely personal. Was this guy part of the reason she seemed particularly interested in Cosmos at the start? Cosmos knights seemed so rare... If he was another one of Schorl's stunts he was ******** brilliant, because the urge to offer him more information was strong. He complied gingerly, just to show he wasn't entirely a mule, and because he guessed it wasn't awful advice, shifting his legs with an grimace of pain drawing lines on his face, and glanced at the water again. If they planned to corrupt them, they'd best also have plans to help their new recruits recover, because otherwise they were damn well going to have a stack of corpses or near corpses on their hands.
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 4:51 pm
Did she corrupt you?In a manner of speaking. "She was only a captain, then -- this is General-Queen Laurelite's handiwork. But she made her promotion to General delivering me to Laurelite, so the credit's still to her." He brought the bottle up to the knight's lips, careful -- superstitious -- not to touch the rest of him more than he had to, and gave it a slow tip to get him started. "Easy," he reminded, in a voice that might've been soothing if it didn't sound a little dead. "You're special to her now," Quartz warned. "The moment she put any personal effort into you, you became special. Sorry."
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 5:26 pm
That failed to be comforting in such a degree that Kairatos almost choked on his first sip of water, grimacing as part of it went up his nose instead. "Oh well...That's... great." He "Define 'special'..." Forewarned was Forearmed, and he could use all the anything-armed he could get right now.
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Posted: Fri Jan 09, 2015 9:10 pm
As with Ganymede, Quartz lifted the edge of his sleeve to swab away the drippy water off of Kairatos's nose a little fussily. He was more careful when he tried again with the water. "She's not the sort of person who'll get bored of you and pass you off to someone else eventually, no matter how frustrating you try to be. She takes personal pride in . . . everything. She'll see things through with you to the end."
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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 8:18 am
"How nice for her I'm not interested in being frustrating on her behalf." he grumbled, after gratefully swallowing more water, and added with an thin lipped smile. "But I've always been a bit bull-headed." He didn't even bother to laugh at his own pale joke.
Such an odd bird this one. He wondered if he'd attended Hvergelmer, and tried not to picture her white gown turned to black like Quartz's.
It was a terrible thought, and he doubted there was a world in which Hver would approve, but he really, achingly wanted to hear Schorl scream with the kind of agony she had inflicted on the people around her.
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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 4:40 pm
What a young, stubborn boy. How fresh and warm and naive. Quartz would have pitied him immensely, if he weren't busy being terrified of him and all that he represented. Quartz did not want freedom; freedom was for people, and Quartz was not a person. People wanted freedom; Quartz wanted to live. People wanted agency; Quartz wanted do to his chores properly and get his weekly allowance. People wanted lives and dreams; Quartz wanted to be allowed to sit at the table for dinner and have a chair. He had learned to have small goals now. He had learned to earn things. She had taught him with slow patience and care. Captain Realgar -- probably Lieutenant Realgar, soon -- would also learn to earn things. "You won't be bull-headed after she remakes you," he mused quietly, still helping the knight drink. "It's a weak trait. You'll learn to moo on command like the rest of the herd. It's a real blast."
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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 5:04 pm
"Didn't work the first time, not gonna work now." Kairatos tone dropped to a raspy rumble. "Refusing to bow to something you know is wrong is not weak, no matter how you sell it. Given that you fought back once, I'm guessing you used to know that." If She killed or corrupted him, it was one life, but if he gave her more names, more people to seek out... It wasn't so much martyrdom as it was damage control. Damn though, if he got out of here, he was going to let Asterion burn through every damn drop of magical energy he had to have his way with this place... at least once they were relatively sure everyone important was loose. Maybe he'd just find his way back here with a pack of matches. Maybe less sorry for the guy than he thought. Maybe he was just highly unsettled by his eerie complacency. "Tell ya what, if I get my way, I'll send you her head in a gift box and you can... I don't know... make a creepy-shrine or something."
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Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2015 5:24 pm
"Or something," Quartz agreed, stepping away. He re-capped the empty bottle and slid it back in the plastic bag. "But you do that, and I'll bake you a three-layer cake."
You won't, he thought. Which is a shame. It turns out I'm pretty good at baking."Rest well, brother." He left the way he'd come in: unnerved.
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