via Docs
Backdated to mid-September 2015


It'd been days since, but Dominic still looked pretty worse for wear. Thank goodness for Krav Maga training else he wouldn't have anything to use as an explanation for all the cuts and scrapes and bruises. Until recently he never truly appreciated the difference in strength between a civilian and those of the powered variety, but now it was pretty clear to him how absolutely screwed this whole city was if there was no one to stop, or at the very least deter, those lunatic Negaverse agents or the ones otherwise aligned with chaos.

Darren was right. If they didn't do this, who would?

Dom winced at the sudden sharp pain that shot through his left flank as he brought his latte up to his lips. Moving still hurt, so for his own sanity he was well stocked with pain relievers and sleeping pills to get him through the night. It wouldn't be for much longer, but even still he certainly wasn't doing his liver any favors. He had to if he wanted to keep up with his homework, though, so far as he was concerned it was a small and very temporary sacrifice. Much like the decision to walk to school today for the sake of saving gas (because damnit, his mom forgot to wire over his monthly dues so he was a sitting duck until she gave him a call). He was only now regretting that because it was cold, his bag was heavy, and he was still significantly injured and going at a snail's pace.

"If I remember right, as Ashur I had the luxury of superhuman speed," he muttered to himself. The man chanced a glance up toward the rooftops of the buildings he was passing by, wondering if he'd catch any signs of a cape or a dark figure dashing across in the other direction toward some nasty happenings in the park or something. And if he did, with any luck it wouldn't be another chaos agent out for energy.

He wasn't sure how much more of a beating he could take in his condition, never mind the possibility of getting burnt if they carelessly knocked his latte into his face.

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If he had an outfit that resembled -pants- instead of one that tended to encourage civilians to try and get an… compromising shot of him leaping between buildings (not that they’d have been able to get as much as they were hoping for… the bastards…) he’d have been more than happy to take advantage of combining a cape and dark rooftops to pull off the ‘batman’ look… but normally he didn’t.

He was, however, kind of fond of not being in a spot that tended to be easy to reach when someone decided that maybe you WERE a terrorist and tried to send a well intentioned civil servant after you. Besides, it was a good view, and the rooftops in DC might as well have been the Highway of Powered individuals, to the point he was half surprised no frustrating business owners, fed up with battles happening over their heads, had attempted to do much in the way of discouraging people from lingering. Motion lights were few, and he hadn’t seen too many other innovations. Then again, he supposed most of them would have been thinking in terms of locks or high fences, and that wouldn’t do a damn lot to discourage someone who could leap two stories either.


The vantage point from the street was lousy though, no matter how he craned his neck, so after a quick look around he managed to find a building with fire-escape access to the roof. In his state it'd be hell to get up there, but luckily he knew how to grit and bear it so up he went, all to satisfy some curiosity about the powered crowd he used to run with.

The climb up the ladder was the worst part about it, but once he made it to the first landing it was stairs the rest of the way up. Of course, he was sore by the time he got to the roof but otherwise alive and intact, and he saw a figure not too far off from where he stood.

"Evening," he greeted as he slow-walked over to them. Dom was also silently praying it wasn't someone out for blood.

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Kairatos started slightly, if only because he’d been more expecting the clanging feet on the fire escape to be someone about to yell at him, not Dom, who honestly could have looked better.

“Oh, hey…. Sorry I didn’t spot you down there.”

To be fair he hadn’t really been looking closely at civilians, it was power signatures that he’d been looking for, so realizing he’d entirely missed civilian-Ashur was a bit embarrassing. “How’s the coffee?” He asked, and added. “And for that matter you?”

Ashur… DOM had been through a hell of a lot recently.

“Having someone manhandle your starseed isn’t exactly a walk in the park at the best of times. I should know.”


Ah, Kai. He could quite tell in the dark, but his approach became more lax until finally he was standing beside the armor-clad man. A side glance got a bit of a smirk out of him, thoughts of making smartass comments about his armor style and winter floating through his mind before he shoved them aside. The tone in the Mars knight's voice suggested less jokes and more...real talk.

"Eh, no worries," he started, then paused to take a sip of his coffee again before he offered it to the other guy. He could probably use a bit of warmth right then and there.

"Coffee's good, have some. I'm also...good, I guess." It wasn't so much a lie as it was not the whole truth. He wasn't exactly bad, either, but like the man said getting your starseed manhandled was no little ordeal.

"Yeah, and neither is getting your a** handed to you by some nega." With his free hand he pointed at the cut over his left brow.

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“Ha… yeah I guess not. I never really thought about that part when I was one. Or about getting punched either… but I’m… not going to pretend that I was exactly being a healthy example to follow either.”

“Schorl used chaos on my starseed over newyears…” He added, more quietly as he gratefully took the coffee and mooched a sip, enjoying the heat of it before offering it back. They lived in one house. Cooties weren’t exactly an intimidating thing. “Not enough to actually corrupt me, but enough to remind me that she could.” He frowned off into the darkness. “It’s easy to forget how bad they can really ******** you up until they do something like that. Broken bones and bruises are one thing but when someone reaches in and threatens the… the fault lines in who you are...” He let it trail off, not sure how to describe it or where he was going with it. “You sure you’re alright, I mean? You just look… off. I mean I’ve had my damn starseed ripped out because someone thought it would be funny to see what color it was and I bounced back faster than this…"


Dom let the knight talk as he stared off into the distance, though he did glance back long enough to take the coffee back and grab a sip of his own. It was comforting in its own way to know that he wasn't the only one to ever have his starseed messed with like that. Of course, he didn't think that was a good thing but it made him feel...less alone in a way?

"Yeah, broken bones and bruises I can handle, but that…" he said, then let his own sentence trail off as well. There wasn't a whole lot to say as far as explaining how it felt when it was happening. And hell, Kai's had his manhandled more than him so the knight obviously knew how it felt.

Dom heaved a sigh and shook his head lightly in reply to the last question. "You know…" he tried to say, then hesitated and instead took another sip of the coffee before offering him some more.

"I mean... it was more than getting my starseed manhandled. Like.. you know, it really got messed up. I really got messed up, so bouncing back…" and then he paused and sighed again. "It doesn't seem like it'll happen anytime soon. Maybe I need more time? Until I can power up again, you know, maybe my starseed just needs to rest some more or something. I dunno…"

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The last time he had heard about someone having trouble with their powers it had been Babylon, who had been literally dying after stuffing a second starseed into his chest for reasons that Kairatos still struggled to fathom. (Surely there must have been another way to take an ancestors starseed to the Cauldron…) but as far as he knew, that wasn’t what had happened to Dom. No glowing eyes, no eerie glowing marks on the skin… but something was wrong. There wasn’t any getting around that if he couldn’t power up. He didn’t know what was wrong, but what it was was beyond his reach. He couldn’t just reach in and yank someone’s starseed to check for damage, not that he’d want to, but there were times he almost missed that power.

“I… don’t know that I’d wait this one out. Last time someone had a starseed not behaving the way it should it took an royal to sort out the damage. I mean… it was Babylon and he decided to put his ancestors in their with his for a matched set but it was pretty serious s**t.” He frowned in concern. There was a gadget they could use, something that could check the health of a starseed without removing it, but he wasn’t sure who would be able to create such an item. “If you can’t power up, I don’t think it’s going to hurt to see if one of them can help you.”


"Man," he sighed, the sipped his coffee again. "This starseed s**t sucks." A soft laugh followed the statement, and then more sipping of the warm drink.

Ever since that attack he'd really been contemplating the whole "waiting out" solution that he just shared with Kairatos, but in truth he was hoping it was something else. Something more certain than just waiting an indefinite amount of time and not even knowing that it'd worked. On his own he couldn't figure out any such solution, so when Kai offered at least an idea for one he felt his faint glimmer of hope to power up again surging back to life.

"He turn out okay? This royal fixed 'im up and he's been good to go ever since?" It made sense that someone on equal footing as Laurelite would be able to fix the kind of damage that she wrought on his starseed, but he didn't even know what was wrong to begin with.

"And more importantly, I feel like just going up to one of these royals with a general 'yeah I can't power up fix me' isn't gonna do a whole lotta good. Can't help me if I don't know what's wrong, right?"

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“Offhand… I’m gonna say it’s something with your starseed. I mean… it’s who we are… and it’s ********’ fragile.” He’d seen Bischophite’s, warped with nodules and shaded with strange impurities, he’d heard about Babylon’s…

“And Babs? Well.. he lived. He was an idiot but he lived. Apparently he’s still kind of… glowing… but some other people have turned up doing that without trying to ******** kill themselves by pretending to be soul-tupperware first so…”

He rubbed the back of his neck awkwardly. “I mean… IDK. It took Cosmos to sort out Babylon, I’d assume you’d need something like that here too. I mean I’ve never seen someone stop being able to power up after a failed corruption… but then I haven’t seen too many fails either, you know? This is kinda new on me. I mean what’s the worst they can say? ‘Sorry you’re retired, try again next… incarnation or whatever? Unless you’re a bloodline thing, in which case I’d wonder if we wouldn’t see a new Ashur if the universe actually -wanted- you to pass the title along… I think. I mean… ******** if I know.”


Fragile seemed putting it lightly, especially if it was a life or death type of thing, but he knew what Kai meant so he didn't comment. Instead he finished up the last of the coffee before tossing the cup aside; he had other worries besides being a litterbug, and frankly this rooftop was nowhere near pristine so it wasn't like one empty cup would make it that much worse.

"Probably is the worst they can say," he said with a smirk. Dom didn't exactly have an answer to the last bit about bloodlines and such (basically because he didn't know either) so he only shrugged before he shoved his hands into his jacket pockets.

"I've tried powering up before, and since the pain's coming from my chest where Laurelite stuck her hand in then it probably is a starseed issue. Were you there when Babylon," he didn't know the guy well enough to shorten the name to "Babs" so he didn't, "got fixed? Any idea if a royal can see or sense my starseed or something?" At the very least he was hoping Kai could point him in a more specific direction since apparently the knight did have some experience with starseed trouble, otherwise he'd keep on looking until he found someone that could.

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“I wasn’t there, but he was happy enough to give me a run down on it. That was before Mistral, so we were still kind of more or less talking, so he gave me a pretty good run down on the whole thing, and how he ended up freaking glowing. Apparently he still glows even when he powers down, but that acts more like an abundance of power than a… problem with it. I don’t… know if they can see it but… I mean… Iris cleaned out mine, and Cosmos fixed Babylon’s problem. As far as I’ve seen… Chaos breaks…. Order fixes. I haven’t seen what happened to you, but an Order Royal would still be the first place I’d go.”


He decided against making any comments about the incident in Mistral; he had bits and pieces of it, and none of it was pretty. Much like the rest of what memories he'd recovered over the past few months. So instead he gave a nod; it made sense, even the names were some sort of indication in a way.

"Order Royal, gotcha," he said with yet another nod and an added sigh. "Guess all I gotta do now is track one down. You wouldn't happen to have their contact numbers, would you?" Dom gave a chuckle, figuring it couldn't hurt to ask.

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“If I had one, I’d try my damndest to get one on speed dial for you. I’ll keep my eye out though, their power signatures are hard to miss when they power up but the senshi can drop a level. I mean hey, worst comes to worse, park your butt in the park with Hvergelmer. She could get the word to Cosmos… or … well it’s the park. Who doesn’t go through there?” He smiled wryly, since he wasn’t sure what else he could do… for now. “She likes doughnuts and coffee.” What else could he even do for now other than try and make sure he had good company until they found a solution.


The man gave another chuckle and another shrug.

"Figured. No problem, dude. You pointed me in the right direction, and honestly that's already one hell of a thing. Can't expect you to get it all done for me, huh?" Dom gave Kairatos a clap on the back, careful to avoid anything pointy on his armor so he didn't go and stab his hand--he needed that for homework and projects and things.

"Hvergelmir, the park, coffee and donuts. I think I can swing those things," he said with a click of his tongue as he turned around. "Alright, well. Guess I'll get outta your way. I'm less than useless if something crops up, wouldn't wanna slow you down." He made his way back to the fire escape before turning to face the armor-clad knight that looked particularly cool--comic book cool, of course--in the distance with all the shadows and lighting. He wondered briefly if he'd looked nearly as cool as a knight in a similar setting, then pushed the thought aside.

"Thanks again, Kai. Gonna grab some pizza on my way home from that one spot we all like. Keep yourself hungry, dude."

Ryuthulhu