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Most of March and April, Thraen's patrols had turned up almost nothing but Youma. When he found them, he dusted them without mercy or hesitation. The few times he caught the edges of a more substantial aura of Chaos, it fled. The tendency had been towards basic levels, so they'd probably powered down to avoid the approach of an eternal. Tonight had been the same- the feel of a Lieutenant near the University Botanical Gardens had quickly vanished as he'd powered up not far away and immediately moved to intercept the offending presence.

Maybe it will serve to teach the source not to appear on the grounds of the University. Would that the presence and guardianship of eternal senshi was enough to safeguard more than a single location of a single city for a single night. Thraen crouched to scoop up a handful of cherry blossoms from one of the flagged walkways towards the experimental greenhouses. They matched, the way any bloom or plant tended to match his uniform. The coming of spring was a boon for visual camouflage in the parks and gardens.

The eternal stood, suddenly and straight, some of the petals from his own headress floating past his face. There was an aura come near enough to feel. That. Is a general.

Flame eyes narrowed then widened in the dim to scan for any glimpse of the new target- glimmer of weapon or fold of uniform.

A moment more proved the other was moving, and gave a trajectory. The Eternal of Gardens shifted from still as the near trees to movement rapid and fluid as the small waterway beyond the cedar fence in the alumni-donated tea garden. The cherry blossoms faded to the dark, replaced with less ornamental trees in the starts of spring bud, the close of other buildings full of classrooms. The gardens were sad to leave, but hunt reserved no sentimentality. What he lacked, with the stone soles of his boots, was much of any stealth- Thraen's footfalls were sure and swift, but not stealthy.

Stealth only avails so much in a game of auras and enemies who can teleport. Still no visual. But he'd closed the distance. The Chaos aura hadn't vanished, hadn't retreated, and the epicenter was near enough that they were both overlapped. Thraen stopped on the pedestal to some mostly ignored equestian statue, putting his hand to the proud cast-bronze neck of the charger. He called, expression stoney, to the dark at a volume projected as though at a madrigal dinner for many tens of guests, "Make yourself known, General!"

They may do so with a swift stroke of attack. Muscles twitched lightly, ready to dodge.

I remember this one The General that emerged, answering the call, was certainly smaller than what he'd been expecting. Smaller, younger, slighter- even with all the volume that a uniform with epaulets and a cape could add to a body. There was no weapon immediately apparent, nor youma. It was the Youma that immediately came to mind, one blue and with a mouth that split his face. And roared. From a distance of throwing an industrial barrel and the creature protected him. It was hard to gauge his size from that distance.

Thraen hopped down from the statuary, still towering with his own natural height and that of his boots. My eye hurts.

The same eye that had gone vessel red with burst blood the first night of surrendering to the dreams. His skin crawled under his own uniform, ghosting scars of burns and that General's blue-clad breast gone dark with staining blood. The scent of smoke. I know you. There was something important in that- it's half gone....half mad. Half death and exhaustion and half again the final sorrows swallowing of corpses. A General .... here and now. "Unwelcomed the parasite, lurking in shadows and thief of hope, dreams, and progress. You walk as willing slave to prurient consumption only, and profaned. It is not Chaos, but plague that lives in the Negaverse, and that has no place in any wholesome standing. "

" 'Wasted Breath'. Fair enough. You offer no meaningful rhetoric. In pretenses to cheat yourself and all others of life and claim righteous or free, you show Dogmatist to position than investigating your own fallacies. You take the coin of another's manufacture, reasonable enough were it not at the expense of All. Worse then, you reckon it your own make, Master Minter. Spend then. "

Thraen's own stance shifted more battle ready than before, and he started a slow slide to flank. "Words be done by your own wish. I will have the price of every trespass in the stead of the fallen. "

And your unrepentant sins be told the stones I bury you under. That ...what were the words then, worlds away? Still indifferent. Still in belief of control, and a General King. One more cog in the machine, rather than tearing it down. Cannot foul already poisoned water. Delusional. Words filtered into his ears, half covered in a roar-rush of adrenaline and blood from dream-fears with no place in the waking world.

'You will win nothing wielding her blade against her. It will not cut her. '

"Find your weapon."

"Fallacy."
"Hiding behind claims of 'you don't know me' is self-centric hubris and no actual reason that you stand on moral, ethical or any ground of reason. The war, the magic, and the results of the actions are not limited to the singular. You give excuses, not reason. 'Lack of rhetoric', formal persuasion offering reasons, justifications and postulates supported by facts. What I speak of the Negaverse and it's aims is objective. If some measure of your personal aims differ from their great whole, it doesn't change that you still serve their aims patrolling the city, using your abilities, the wearing of their uniform. Doing nothing, or doing little, and you take the side of the oppressor. So much is easily learned from Elie Wiesel- 'Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented.' "

The eye role didn't improve the impression this General made- Here stands a boy trying to fill the empty coat of a soldier.

"Power-play to demand an enemy follow your demands, and they be 'child' to disagree. No, General. I will not go anywhere with you. We are enemies. If you want words with me, it will be in the open in this neutral ground of chance. Ambushes are far too common by your ilk. Best you speak quickly." I've seen you involved in the Negaverse operations. Enough to have earned rank and retribution enough, whether feel like drawing your blade or not is no stain on that judgement.

"Reticence, and such declarations of personal armistice, is not repentance. Nor act of contrition. " Would that the nearness of detail, the stitching and embroider of jacket or cape, buttons and waistcoat, were not so clear to my mind. Half clear. Always halves, distorted by a lost eye and lost depth. those moments made worse by blood drowning the sight of the second from more scars that would never have a chance to set. I remember the fire under my skin got worse. All sound became white noise roar after the twisted feel of his teleportation. Acrucis was there. She was helping him. Does she know him already? Or is that stupidity yet to come? She mentioned that she knew officers long ago.

'you do not care'
It is thrown around so easily. Often I have heard it, even from Alois at the beginning. 'The real tragedy of life is when men are afraid of the light.'

"If I cared not, I would not trouble to speak. Life is precious; the broken cup may be repaired with gold, but still it bears those lines forever more. Conviction is not tender, but it cares. " The man's quickened breath and careful swallows flashed the skin of his throat, showed the taut lines of strain and muscle there just at the crest of high collars. Lines tugged at the edges of the porcelain mouth, a bow of color with too much clarity to Thraen's mind. It was a thought that would not step out from the veils of dream- why should that mouth be familiar, the curve of jaw and lines from clean cheekbones as though he'd studied them hours long and with affection. It felt old, sorrowed, lost to the quiet ache of regret never acquitted.


"I ask of others no more than I ask of myself- the truth of working out the ethical principles for each to themselves and not rob them of individual responsibility . Purification is not absolution. Staying as you are, even hating your sins and orders, is not absolution. It frees your will and mind to clarity and choice unpolluted by all the indigence, rage, despair, and worse that chaos pollutes into its victims to ensure their continuance. Purification alone, or your putting down arms alone, will not bring justice to those maimed or slain, will not return to the victims of this war what has been torn from them. Victims on all sides, even as yourself. "

"There is atonement- working to limit the death, destruction, maiming of minds and hopes and lives. I do ask that you end your engagement with the growth of chaos. It does have high cost, but high reward- you will not lose all that you are, but what Metallia has made you into. What is you would be allowed to flourish. The march of protections does cost identity, the loss of family and friends- but have you not said to yourself in the quiet hours how you would die to protect them? Yet now you bring that suing against their protection. "

"Family..... Consider this truth...." It was unwise, but Thraen's eyes closed in dizziness. It felt like blood, liquid heat, was running down his cheek- memory. Pooling at his collar. "If you remember me, bloodied, cradled against your breast, whether dream or vision that comes in the night. You stood within chaos then, calling what I suggest too high a price. You thought to work from within as some mole, and there was no avail to it. All families then were hopeless beneath the dark. All families broken, maimed to more dark or maimed to madness. Chaos cannot swallow chaos. Service to the Mouth of Darkness does not protect doves from slaughter- it only puts off their swallowing, or turns them into black vultures themselves with no memory of what color was. "

Thraen opened his eyes again, the throb behind the left sharp as a needle. "You would not be alone to face life as it came, if you chose to seek your own power from within, with true name and true Wonder. "

I stood by Bischofite time and again, by death and by life.

The gesture of the reach was overblown drama when accompanied by the words it was. "Your answer is intending to continue, boiled down, the same angle and expect a different result? You are throwing away all logic...or ignoring it? Points for not recognizing reason-
Misunderstood or not understood at all the points given.
Incapable of hearing or understanding. Relatedly, Mad, Incompetent, or Impaired.
Disingenous, and more interested in manipulation of the situation to an end other than truth. Relatedly, lacking care about actual reasoning and selfishly inclined to own ends."

Thraen's eyes narrowed where the rest of his expression remained stone. "A general has no influence. A General is only a slightly improved weapon and errand runner for the Kings and Queens. All husks worn hollow and disposable as puppets, discarded and new replacements made at need. "

"Whichever of these is yours, you make the lack of road between us clear. You choose to remain, to buy your life at the expense of others, your time on the theft of energy, pain of the masses, and subjugation of all futures for your own lack. You are profane, General, and fitting to all that title claims. I leave you this night in hope that words may sink in given time. When we meet again, if it is ever so- "

"Your indifference is but subterfuge for your conscience and succor for self-undulgence. In time between, I hope you better it. " The eternal of garden's backed with careful grace born from madrigal practices, walking with rolled steps without needing to turn vulnerable to an enemy. If I find, hear, learn or know of any complacency or contrivance of yours in matters of lives, corruptions, thefts and destruction I will visit them to you without hesitation. Either stupid or a snake, but no kind of ally. Not now, and not in any future dream as he is. Whoever he is.