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 Posted: Sun Sep 11, 2022 8:14 pm
It was still uncomfortable, to be -- to be in a place that was alive. A world full of civilians, untested, untried, unknowing of the universe that could swallow them. Even before everything that'd happened, it'd been a long time since they'd even heard of a world so isolated; but even taking that into account, the bustle of the metropolis that was Destiny City was almost overwhelming. It was good that they were mostly as agile as they'd been; there were plenty of tall trees and tall buildings Roka could scurry to the top of, and sit far enough away from the world it wasn't choking.
And Roka had this unerring certainty under the skin that someone was - going to look at them, and know what they were, what they had become -- but it seemed to just be paranoia, at least for now. Certainly they hadn't seen anyone they recognized, yet. Who knew? They hadn't tried, but surely they could pretend to some of that old, foolish self.
Not all. But some. Until it got boring, at least. But that all depended on if they ran into anyone who'd know that old self, anyway, and that was unreliable. Better to hammer out an easy pattern of behavior to normally act within, that they could keep as a baseline here. Having nothing was disconcerting to people.
Roka was woefully undertuned when it came to sensing auras, but they were good at spotting movement, and this figure was all in dark colors. That sounded about right. It was what they'd been looking for -- something, someone, of this world's Chaos. They'd figure out details as they got to them, mayhaps; in the meantime, they got closer to her, closer, closer -- slow enough it shouldn't be construed as an assault, but fast enough it wasn't meandering.
"I was given to believe you worked in teams," Roka said, conversational, as they approached her, "but that seems like an inaccuracy." Which was entirely a lie, of course, but that wasn't relevant to the conversation.
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2022 1:55 pm
Energy draining was a necessity and a nuisance. It was a distraction from what really mattered, and yet, she hadn't any subordinates to whom she could entrust the task. Even now, it was still only her and Sapphirine. They'd begun trading off, and this week, it was Psilomelane's turn.
So she did venture out alone. It was easier to go alone, knowing that she could teleport long before any potential battles got ugly. She hadn't thought much of it — what was there to think about?
Until she heard a voice behind her. Psilomelane slowed, stopped on the cusp of a globe of light, and turned to identify who spoke to her. She had no particular expectations in mind, but she was taken aback by the stranger's silhouette. Pursing her lips, she faced the stranger in full. They had framed a peculiar observation — was she being threatened? Strange way to start a conversation with anyone. Or an ambush.
"We do and don't," Psilomelane corrected. "When we're alone, our teammates are always a quick call away."
She approached, then stopped at a neat conversational distance. She'd heard of aliens, but she never imagined them to look like this; the reports mentioned periwinkles and pinks, with weapons made of energy.
"I'm Pavo," she said, extending a hand under the dark of night. "May I have your name?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 13, 2022 8:22 pm
"So they'll come when you call," Roka said, half an observation and half a dig, voice trending downwards at the end just enough to sound slightly inquisitive. "I'm envious, really." That could have been any twenty shades of mockery to genuine; their slightly raised eyebrows and the flick of their fins didn't do much to give it away to any onlooker. They didn't even mean anything by it, in the end; that was for her to interpret, and draw her own conclusions, and her own beliefs.
"A lovely name, to be certain. But where are my manners? Of course." They took her hand and shook it, lightly, easily. Their grip was a little tight, at first, but it corrected quickly -- noticing, altering, fixing. It was tempting to tell her Alexis, but, ah... with how things were on Earth, Roka understood, that might be unwise, given they weren't going by any false names yet. "Roka." And that might as well have been a false name, anyway. It was a title. It wasn't their name. It had never been their name.
...it still felt strange. Even under all the disconnect, there was still the impulse, long-buried and long-useless, to add the correction of but that's pretentious, really, just call me Alexis; it's my name, after all. They'd thought they'd killed that as collateral damage, or it'd withered from neglect, after hundreds of years with nobody. But no - apparently the impulse was still alive in their mental reflexes, but it was useless in this maelstrom of a war-situation.
Up close, it was easier to see the holes in her chest and her forehead; an interesting manifestation of Chaos, if nothing else. Not too close to any of the ways Roka knew it to be.
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Posted: Mon Sep 19, 2022 12:26 pm
She heard the response, then filed its characteristics away. "Yours don't? Do you have allies?" She wasn't sure how the White Moon worked; she had heard that she was once a part of them, but remembered nothing of those times. Did they operate as a collective? Were they lone operatives? Did they have a horizontal power structure where they came together only in times of necessity? Psilomelane could only guess.
"Roka. Nice to meet you." Pavo nodded, then released her grip.
Roka was a strange-looking fellow, whom she guessed was one of the off-worlders. Were they calling them aliens, just like the other ones? Aliens with magic versus aliens with weapons? That was a question better asked of someone else. But if this one thought it acceptable to stare at the holes in her head and chest, then she saw no reason to avoid staring at the fins on their head, or the skin color that was unusual for anyone of earth lineage.
She wasn't sure if they were using any assistive devices to translate and communicate, but they seemed to understand each other. And this one had some knowledge of human customs. Were they more like the half-youma, then? She'd have to consult the database.
"May I ask where you're from? I've never met anyone like you before." That seemed a benign enough topic to start. Certainly less intrusive than asking what they were doing out here at this time of night.daekie mood, having those headache feels rn
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Posted: Mon Sep 26, 2022 9:54 pm
Roka made a noncommittal little noise, hmm, and didn't answer Pavo's question one way or the other. (Allies? She was amusing, although she wouldn't have any way of knowing it. Why would they waste their trust on something they knew would never work out? Now, connections they could pull on -- that was something they were working on. It was why they were here, talking to her, even.)
"I hail from my namesake, unfortunately," Roka scoffed, scornful and sharp, and realigned their expression into something that spoke of vague irritation, mostly stifled but leaking through at the edges. That seemed like it would be an appropriate emotion for this, or at least one appropriate enough that Pavo wouldn't detect any inherent wrongness from it. "Hardly much to look at, it is; I wouldn't recommend spending weeks there, let alone decades."
But, again, they hadn't wanted to be there for hundreds of years, either. This was a more digestible option for the unknowing.
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Posted: Fri Oct 14, 2022 8:31 am
That tracked with what she understood of senshi worlds — desolate places, with not much there to sustain life. Which led her to wonder — how did this one survive? Were they cryogenically frozen, like those old sci-fis she watched in the early hours when she couldn't sleep? Were they resurrected? Cloned? It would've been nice if she could convince them to come back with her to the Negaverse, maybe find one of the more qualified researchers to look into Roka and learn what they could about them.
She didn't pause to think about what that would entail. Her mind kept turning, looking for new angles here.
"How do you like Earth?" She asked next. "If you haven't seen much of it yet, I can give you a tour." She couldn't claim to be much good at it, having so few memories of her own, but she was leaning on the hope that a little goodwill would get somewhere.
Anywhere was better than stuck.
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Posted: Tue Oct 18, 2022 4:22 pm
They hadn't been quite expecting that angle to the conversation, but it was easy enough to work with. "...There are too many people." That was true -- Roka was slowly relearning their old reflexes and impulses step by step, day by day, but as of yet they didn't dare to venture near more crowded locales. Too many warm bodies for it to leave their mind at rest. "But it isn't so dissimilar from worlds I've visited, ages ago. I've yet to see too much of it to say more."
Others of their ilk who had visited less worlds, before everything had crumbled and fallen -- Roka had no sympathy for that sort of fool. Not that they were a particularly sympathetic sort of person in the first place. But they had spent their adolescent and adult years, Senshi or not, finding passage world-to-world and seeing what they'd find there; with enough to draw from, little of Earth was surprising, except the aspects dulled by time and loss.Strickenized i respect her desire to put them under a microscope so much. the answer is 'they would consent but only if they got something out of it', for the record
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Posted: Fri Oct 21, 2022 3:19 pm
She couldn't argue that. There were too many people, and their civilizations didn't have enough resources to support the people living here who needed help, let alone the ones that came from across the stars. As it was, she imagined the Negaverse had its hands full trying to sustain Lyndin and his Vanguard on top of sustaining themselves. She often wondered if they would overstretch their resources and collapse under the weight of the many needy extraterrestrials, or if they would start to neglect their own in order to benefit from some of the Vanguardians' technologies.
But those were questions that should concern someone above her. A General or Eternal, maybe, or even a Sovereign. She was none of these. Psilomelane was on no one's short promotion list, so she needn't consider these topics.
In a way, that was comforting.
"You're right, there are," she agreed at last. There was little harm in it, she supposed. She hadn't gotten the impression of limitless destructive power from this senshi; she doubted they would start destroying the world for its overpopulation problem solely on her agreement. "Would you tell me about the worlds you've visited? I haven't been off of Earth before; I would like to know what other places are like."
Like Roka itself, for example. What could have happened for its clearly inhuman senshi to leave it?daekie i'm sure something like that could be arranged
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Posted: Tue Oct 25, 2022 9:06 pm
"Dead," Roka said, instantly, and then amended with "now, anyways." They said it matter-of-factly more than anything; perhaps there were still living worlds out there, but communications had gone dark (when they could be transmitted at all) long ago. Whatever had happened to Roka, something of its ilk had taken root in so many other worlds, they had suspected then -- and with others who hadn't been reborn also being on this planet, in this city, it seemed likely. Certainly Basiluzzo and Encke had possessed ideas - correct ones - about the state of things. "Wouldn't be much to look at, these days; rot's set in."
Perhaps that was stretching it. Rot had set in, and then died for lack of anything to feed on, eventually. Even scavengers died if given enough time.
"If you've only ever known one culture, it's difficult to compare; people live a million other unfamiliar ways. Often, learning the languages was difficult enough." A short little intake of breath. "You don't remember?"Strickenized it ought to be arranged. for the sake of furthering scientific understanding and the negaverse
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Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2022 4:31 am
That wasn't anything more than she had already surmised. If there was something out there, then she imagined more senshi would migrate back to their original worlds. If there were creatures, cultures, anything — would they see so many senshi on Earth? Especially these ones, who weren't born here? Psilomelane didn't think so.
"That makes sense," she mused back. "Senshi had killed their own worlds." Now they were here, on the only live one. She didn't believe that they were necessarily looking for another world to destroy, like the manuals had said, but she did suspect that they killed their worlds out of neglect or ineptitude. Now they were here, trying to survive, trying to flourish, and they just so happened to tangle with the Negaverse. They just so happened to interfere with that which wasn't their business.
Psilomelane knew she was one of them, once. She knew she went by the name Pavo — still did, sometimes. But there was no way to ask herself why she came here.
"No," she answered readily. "I don't remember. I started off as one of you, but the Negaverse saved me from that life."
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Posted: Wed Oct 26, 2022 2:44 pm
Her assumption might have hurt, if Roka had been something more like they'd once been; as it was, it sparked a brief flicker of something. It was different when they said it, was all. The guilt of killing their own world -- as it was, as they were certain enough it was -- had been too weighty to hold; they had their own ways of dealing with it now, in the hollowed-out space they had made of their heart.
"Love," they said, almost breezily, "I am the only reason mine lasted so long at all." If Sailor Roka had given up before they had, what little had survived wouldn't have been even that. But their world had still managed enough agonized breath to keep them safe for fifty years at the end. That was -- "Doubt the others brought that rot unto themselves, also. Don't speak about things you don't remember and don't understand." Nothing about their tone was malicious - but as they reached back over their shoulders to push their braid into place again, there was something dead and cold in their eyes, in their smile that didn't reach quite far enough.
"And was what they gave you worthwhile?" She looked human, but that didn't mean she was born here. Then again, asking those questions, it was a safe enough bet. Roka had never been to Pavo, not that they remembered; they had nothing for her in that way.
It was easy to hook and hurt with pointed jabs about the end of the world. It didn't mean that Alexis meant it as a truthful thing. What had Dagon, for example, had to do with the fall of her own world? Very little, likely. But if they wanted to hurt her, it was the easiest way they knew.
It was hard to know what they had done, even now, but it was still the only thing that made sense. Alexis had invited something in, with that blood on their hands, and they had reaped the consequences for what their senseless self had done. It wasn't as if any living being could prove otherwise.
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Posted: Tue Nov 08, 2022 11:00 am
"What do you mean?" It was a simple, if naïve, question. Psilomelane hadn't known the first thing about visiting a world, hadn't known hers, hadn't wondered about it. She didn't understand a senshi's relation to its planet beyond being a bodily stand-in for that planet's manifested power. If a senshi had any place in the hierarchy of a long-dead world, she couldn't begin to fathom it.
So the simple fact that this one stated they were the reason theirs lasted so long was itself intriguing. What did they do to prolong their planet's life? And what killed that planet, if not them?
Her lips pursed at the admonishment. "Don't confuse my lack of memory with misunderstanding," she returned, though her response lacked heat. Even if they insulted her, they were something new — something worth passing on to the rest of the Negaverse, and she'd have liked to hear more about this world, Roka, and what happened to it. The thought of digging deeper was such an achingly familiar one, though no matter how she reached to grasp that feeling, she couldn't begin to place it. Like she held a key to a box, but the box no longer existed, and all she had was a story that would go unanswered eternally.
She laid a finger on her chin in thought, then shifted her hips when she answered. "I never thought of it like that. I don't remember being part of the White Moon, so it would be illogical to assign worth to those experiences. But, to answer your implication, I like where I am now. The Negaverse provides for me, and doesn't ask much in return."
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Posted: Sun Nov 20, 2022 8:23 pm
"Apologies." It might have sounded sincere. They thought it sounded sincere, at least, even if they really couldn't care less about Pavo's feelings; she still had considerable potential uses. She'd hit a nerve they didn't know they still had, and it'd set off a feeling they didn't know they still had; something that had survived and that they hadn't cut away, some misplaced pride. Almost something that had budded off at some point; it was hard to trace back the feeling to its root and tell if it had been there before they'd become like this.
That was fine. Roka would simply have to ensure it didn't happen again; it made their behavior unpredictable, even to them, and that was unacceptable.
"We're not all so terribly inhuman as I," Roka said, and they were back to that slightly-lighter tone, a little irritated but still within reasonable grounds; one fin flicked, slightly. In the hazy light of dusk, barely visible under the streetlights, their freckles held a slight luminescence. "There was always the chance you could have come from away. But all in all, it seems an interesting enough arrangement."
Their voice dipped up at the end, just a fraction; enough of a question to leave the space open.
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Posted: Tue Nov 22, 2022 8:26 am
Their statement carried some implications that Psilomelane found troublesome. If senshi from other worlds could blend into regular society, if they could go undetected, then how would the Negaverse know who's who? And what bearing did they have on the war? This one was cooperative enough and hadn't attacked her, but Psilomelane couldn't assume that they would all be this way.
And she certainly didn't want to think about being a creature from beyond the stars, herself. It was unsettling — concerning. She knew nothing of her origins, which meant she couldn't prove them wrong, and with that lack of assurance —
She had to push away her uncertainties. Steady herself. Steady her voice.
"… If you'd like to discuss that arrangement, we could meet again. You'll have to give me some time to gather some more information, but I could help you learn more. We could even meet here, in… How about two weeks?" That should give her enough time to get digging into some of what the Negaverse offered new members.
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Posted: Thu Nov 24, 2022 8:04 pm
Their smile was a small-building thing, almost missable, but there. There was something uncertain to it; this was new territory to them, too.
(All lies, or mostly so. But if she believed the story that smile told, that was a false trail laid; not for any particular purpose, of course, Roka just didn't like the idea of telling the truth. That was a commodity to be doled out only to those who worked for it, or who had them at such a disadvantage they had to tell it regardless -- not to mention how boring it was, to be honest.)
"I've no objections. Two weeks from now, at the same time, then?"Strickenized fin on yours, or on my reply to yours?
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