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 Posted: Wed May 11, 2016 3:45 pm
Despite the need for making quota on his energy gatherings, Jet refused to take the energy of the homeless. Even though they were the easiest targets, it touched too close to home for him. Instead, he simply looked among those sleeping in the streets for those that might be strong enough to be of use. Those that might benefit more from being part of the negaverse than just another nameless face.
It was difficult, if only because he didn’t want things to be worse for them. He hated the idea of being called thoughtful or kind. On the contrary, he just realized how close he could have been to being on the streets, and felt as though he could relate.
Still, skulking around in dark alleys where others were sleeping was always difficult to explain when he ended up running into the White Moon. An aura flickered to life close by, and Jet quickly went on the defensive, drawing his two knives from subspace to protect himself. A knight?
“You’re outmatched,” Jet called quietly, gripping tightly to the knives. “Better back off while you can.”
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Posted: Wed May 11, 2016 4:13 pm
Months in, and Baikal was still on unsure footing when it came to what exactly he should be doing on his nightly patrolling. This, along with having a perfectly good reason to stay at home--Desdemona was such a wonderful distraction--meant he really didn't spend that much time powered up. At least not solo. He went out with Babylon, or when called upon by whatever force allowed them to change into their knightly forms, but otherwise...he wasn't really a model member of his court. And that wasn't even counting his grey view of the Negaverse and it's soldiers. He was out tonight, mostly because his evening had been free of other distractions, but also because there was a certain sense of guilty obligation and loyalty. At the very least, he really didn't want to disappoint Babylon, not after the elder knight had put his faith in him, even going so far as to give him what he imagined to be some kind of magical keepsake. It glowed faintly, peeking from under the edge of his coat near his left hip, and every so often gloved fingers sought it out, just to make sure it was still there. It meant something, though he wasn't sure yet what. Chaos flickered into life on the edge of his senses, piquing his curiosity, and with a certain measure of caution he headed in that direction. Only a few steps closer, he paused as a voice called out to him in warning. I know that voice/. "Is that anyway to repay kindness?" Now where was the young captain lurking?
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Posted: Wed May 11, 2016 8:50 pm
For a moment, the voice made him freeze in place, his eyes widening in realization. He recognized that voice. The voice of a knight who’d visited him in his cell.
Jet felt his face heat up, his jaw clenched tight, and his heart pound. It was from anger, he told himself. Anger at the knights and senshi who did those horrible things to him and the others, and anger at himself for being unable to stop it or save himself.
“Kindness?” he choked out, not bothering to take the time to slowly approach the other, but instead teleporting from the alley to directly in front of the knight. Face still red from embarrassment or anger or whatever it was, Jet swung one of his blades at the knight in warning.
“That’s what you’d consider kindness? Having us left there to rot? Like animals? Worse than animals?? Is that what we are to you and your kind?” Jet spat, holding one of his knives in front of him in a defensive stance.
Had he forgotten what the knight had done for him? Of course not, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t still angry or upset or frustrated or embarrassed for being so weak and pathetic.
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Posted: Fri May 13, 2016 5:02 am
The aura vanished, flickering out briefly before popping back into existence a whole hell of a lot closer. Baikal had time to blink, to register the bitter question and the matching tone, then a knife was flashing out in the space between them, and the page had the jerk back, dipping into uncertain, defensive lines. "Woah, hey-!" A thoughtless, lackluster protest that was quickly cut off as the captain continued on. Spitting venom with every word. And her would have liked to argue, to defend himself at the very least, but he couldn't. His own guilt stopped him, had him standing straight again, pale features melting into something resigned and a little sad. "I should have gotten you out of there when I could." Sooner, before the Negaverse had rode to the rescue. I should have done more.Repercussions be damned, if he could do it all again. Despite is inability to help, the captain looked immensely better this time around. His arm was healed, there was color to his complexion, and he seemed to be swimming in energy. Good.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 7:23 am
There was a part of him that was surprised that the knight didn't try to fight back, or put more of an effort into defending himself. Jet wasn't dumb enough to let his guard down, though. He knew how these people worked. They did what they could to gain trust, and then they would turn around and kill them. It was the classic tale of White Moon versus the negaverse.
"That's all you've got to say?" Jet spat, wishing the heat in his cheeks would die down. He could understand the anger he felt towards the knights and Senshi who kept him and his fellow officers locked up, but it was more than that. He felt flustered and uncomfortable in the face of this seemingly kind knight.
Almost to the point where he wanted to attack him and wipe the look of pity and shame from his face.
Jet wanted to yell at him, tell him that the White moon was no better than the negaverse, and that if they thought they could get away with what they did, they were wrong.
But instead, he heard himself ask, "Why did you bother with me? Or is that what you do to torture us? Did you do it on purpose to make us hopeful?" He hated the few who helped him more than those who hurt him. He'd been resigned to his fate, but they made him question the certainty of dying to the point where he felt broken.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 3:43 pm
That's all you've got to say?!It was, at least in that moment. Baikal didn't know what else he could possibly say that would make up for what Jet, Amphitrite, and the other's had had to endure. It wasn't right, and no amount of apologizing was going to make it right. The page might not have participated, but he definitely could have done more to try to stop it, to try to help them. So he let Jet yell at him, if that was what Jet wanted to do. If that could, in some way, make up for it. It looked like it was taking everything in him not to just lash out and attack him, and Baikal wasn't even sure he could have blamed him for it. The question, while not unexpected, were followed by a small sigh, and the page turned away then, looking anywhere but at the captain. One hand coming up to run through the hair at the back of his head. "I didn't do it to torture you." Even if he'd had some grudge against the Negaverse, that would have been crossing a line. "Your people were going to come for you, it was inevitable. I wanted to make sure you stayed alive until then." Because you helped me before, you just don't know it. "I don't hate the Negaverse like the rest of them do. I don't even know why they do." It didn't make any sense to him, not with the weight of his own experiences swaying his opinion.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 3:59 pm
Jet gripped tightly to the blade handles, his teeth gnashed together as the knight spoke. This guy assumed so much, and Jet had to wonder if he even realised what it was like to be ready to die and then can’t.
“You should hate us,” he growled. It would make things easier for everyone if they all hated each other. “We’ve done horrible things, you know,” he egged, a small smirk being forced onto his face, a wild look in his eyes. It was almost like the crazed look of a suddenly cornered animal, despite Jet’s ability to quickly escape. If he had the energy left.
“We’ve tortured your kind too. Kept them locked up for information. Forced them to corrupt. Turned them into youma. Civilians, too. I’ve helped kidnap and torture them, too,” he said with a forced laugh, almost like a bark. He didn’t know why he was saying these things, if only to get a reaction out of the knight other than that sad, sympathetic, pathetic look.
“Doesn’t that make you angry? Enough to want to kill us? Kill me? To stop me from doing horrible things to the civilians your kind claims to protect?”
The knight had no need to know that Jet had never actually managed to kill anyone, despite his attempts on senshi lives, and had never actually harmed a civilian. But the change in reaction was what he wanted. He didn’t care if he was hated.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 4:11 pm
Pale eyes flicked, narrowing just slightly as Jet spoke, listing the reasons he believed the page should hate him for. Maybe he should have, but he just couldn't wrap his head around it. None of these things had happened to him. The most his life had ever been in danger had been when under attack by youma. It wasn't the same. "We've tortured your's. Kept you prisoners, interrogated you for information. I'm sure there are those on our side that have killed people on your's." He shook his head, blowing out a heavy breath and letting his hand drop back to his side. Still doing nothing to defend himself against the knives that were still being brandished at him. "We're the same," he went on, a little more conviction to his voice now. "We want the same things." Order, or chaos, they all had very similar goals. Or that's how it seemed. "I don't choose to be this. I don't have anything against the Negaverse, and I don't know enough of my "allies" to have a whole lot of loyalty to a cause I know nothing about." He just wanted to live, let live, and go about his days as normally as possible.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 4:19 pm
“Then why are you out here?” Jet couldn’t help but ask. If he didn’t have anything against the negaverse, then why bother powering up and coming out here like he was? “I could kill you easily, you know. Take your starseed and crush it so it’ll never be reborn. Aren’t you afraid to die?”
Some of these questions bothered himself more than it seemed to bother the knight, but he hoped it wasn’t as obvious as he felt it was.
“And unlike you, I chose to be what I am. It was my decision.” He had his reasons, of course, and he told himself he would never regret it. Even if the one responsible for his brother’s death was out of reach, he would still do whatever he could to help the Negaverse reach their goals.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 4:31 pm
Baikal shrugged a little helplessly. "Sense of obligation." And maybe he did want to protect people, but it was from the threat he was well aware existed, not the one he was being told to fear. "And you have to admit, being able to leap tall buildings in a single bound is pretty bad a**." He grinned, but he wasn't sure if his attempt at humor landed. Jet was asking questions that Baiakl had never really stopped to ask himself. Answers didn't come immediately. He had to consider them, and even then, he wasn't sure if he could explain it. "No? I mean I'd rather no, but civilian or this, does it make a whole lot of difference? If what you say is true, everyone's got a target painted on their back these days."
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 5:33 pm
The knight grinned, but Jet frowned, not thinking his joke was all that amusing. There was more at stake than being able to jump around and have fun. Or maybe that was because Jet’s life had been so devoted to his work that he didn’t know how to have fun any more.
Jet lowered his eyes, glaring angrily at the cement below his feet. No. No one was safe. Negaverse, Senshi, Knight, civilian. They were all caught in a war with no escape until one won over the other. Who knew how long that would last, or how many years or months or weeks he would have left.
“You’re going to end up killed,” he reiterated, although he made no step to fill the gap between them. “You want to make up for what you couldn’t do to help me or the others? Then don’t waste your life walking around as a knight. You’re safer with us not knowing,” he said without really thinking, and then once the absently spoken words clicked in his head, Jet was disgusted with himself.
He felt as though he was giving away a secret. But it was true. They were less likely to harm civilians. But that only made him wonder how many civilians he drained energy from were really senshi or knights he could have killed.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 6:38 pm
Baikal's head tilted, arms coming up in a loose fold as she looked down at the captain. It would have been so easy for the young man to finish him of. He'd had the upper hand, still had it, but he didn't seem willing to cross that line. Which was exactly why the page didn't think the war was as black and white as he was being lead to believe. Regardless, they were all still people, with morals, and flaws, and good traits. "You going to be the one to do it? Tonight?" Pale brows rose as he flicked his chin towards the blades still in Jet's hands. If he wasn't going to kill him, then he didn't need to keep swinging those around. Baikal didn't find them nearly as threatening as the captain probably would have liked. That last comment had hims smiling again, but it wasn't happy. "Not really. I've been attacked more as a civilian than I have as a page." Twice by youma, once...well, he wasn't sure. He'd woken up at the carnival, bound, but his supposed captives had been trying to help him. Help them. It would have been so much easier if he could have just told Jet that they'd met before.
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Posted: Mon May 23, 2016 7:27 pm
Jet flinched when the knight asked if he was going to be the one to kill him.
“That would be a waste of resources,” Jet mumbled lamely, realizing by this point that his knives were doing nothing but giving him something to hold onto. The knight didn’t look all that concerned for his life. If anything, he probably thought Jet was a joke. He’d seen him cry like a pathetic baby already.
“It’d be better for everyone if you just joi--” but Jet quickly closed his mouth before he said something he would regret. It wasn’t the fact that he didn’t want there to be more recruits, and think of the recognition he would get if he convinced someone to switch sides. But the thought of being rejected just didn’t sit well with him.
Eventually, the knives faded from Jet’s hands and back into subspace.
“I’ll spare you tonight. To repay my debt,” he said to the ground and stood there for a long moment before picking his head up to frown at the knight, but his eyes shone with desperation, and he was sure his cheeks filled with color once more.
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 9:17 am
Pale brows rose at the captain, curious it's flickering across his features. A waste of resources? How was he a resource? He almost asked, the question there at the tip of his tongue, but the second comment, the one Jwt but off before finishing, that one distracted him. Again that curious look. "If I just, what?" He wasn't sure if he'd get an answer though, Jet was talking again, declaring he'd spare his life to repay the debt, but he was staring rather adamantly at the ground as he said it. When he did look up, Baikal wasn't sure what to do with the expression Jet was showing him. He looked lost, but that wasn't quite it. What ever he wanted, the page wasn't sure how to give it to him. Asking if he was alright was a bit of a p***k to the young man's pride, but how else was Baikal going to understand the heavy thoughts weighing so heavily on the captain's mind. "What's wrong?"
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2016 11:30 am
Jet scowled when the knight decided to continue talking instead of taking the hint to leave and escape with his life. His face was still warm, although he didn't understand why he reacted the way he did, or why he felt so anxious and flustered and uncomfortable. His own reaction confused him.
"If you just joined the Negaverse," he spat out before he could think better of it. His stomach twisted with anxiety the moment he said it and Jet thought he might end up being sick. He knew how unlikely it was that a knight would switch sides, despite it happening on rare occasions, but this knight seemed too kindly to even consider it. Which made Jet even more flustered and angry with himself. <********. Just shut up and go home," he quickly said instead. "Before I change my mind."
This was a bad idea, and Jet was already taking an awkward step backwards, away from the knight. As if being close to him would give him more bad ideas that would set him up for failure.
And yet. This knight had actually helped him with apparently no intention of getting something in return. He could have hurt him or worse, but he didn't.
"You probably wouldn't last long, anyway. You suck at fighting. You didn't even try to defend yourself," he pointed out, as if that change in subject would be enough to hide his own insecurities.Beejoux phone tag! Sorry about any weird spelling.
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