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 Posted: Sun Jan 07, 2024 8:02 pm
The old man had left a bad taste in Preston’s mouth almost immediately. Sure, he presumably had every right to stand around on a street-corner and hawk his Evangelical nonsense pamphlets. Strictly speaking, nobody could stop him from putting Chick tracts into people’s windshield wipers, advertising the evils of Dungeons and Dragons, or how anybody who repented genuinely could be redeemed through Christ. But Preston had had to listen to the old man proselytize while waiting for a crosswalk, and something about the arrogance with which he’d verbally assaulted other passersby had felt achingly familiar in the worst possible way.
It had felt like listening to Brother Horace. The difference between American Evangelical ranting and American Catholic ranting had seemed entirely superficial, because at this man’s core, he reeked of the same hypocrisy and hunger for power that Preston knew all too well. Even the man’s choice of specific targets for ranting at spoke to his concern with power: Preston, with his pale white skin and intellectual look, had gotten thoroughly ignored despite plenty of people in his life since leaving Our Lady of Sorrows telling him that he had an off-putting demeanor, but some shorter, slighter, pink-haired and darker-skinned person in a leather jacket with pride flag patches? Oh, the old man had been happy to rip into them as a sinner who needed Christ’s love in their life, even as they’d been perfectly pleasant and helpful about giving directions to some out-of-town visitors who were regrettably lost.
When Cryptomelane came back and relocated the old man, it was not over by the street corner he’d occupied before. Several blocks away from there, actually, and worse for the old man’s chances of survival, Cryptomelane noticed him staggering out of a night-club. As with all night-clubs in town, Cryptomelane recognized the place not from personal experience but from having heard others around the university campus speak about it. As he understood, The Cherry Pit’s reputation was even more unsavory than rumors of people getting food poisoning after visiting Cut My Life In Two Pizzas.
From his perch atop the used bookstore beside The Cherry Pit, Cryptomelane focused on draining the old man’s energy, as General Amazonite had taught him. This made the old man stumble even more inelegantly, until he finally collapsed, just outside the nearby streetlamp-halo and its radius of illumination. As he went down, Cryptomelane abandoned his perch. Perhaps he wouldn’t be able to afford such a personal touch all the time, but this old man truly had surrendered all right to the glimmering, magical crystal that lay inside his chest. In perfect silence, Cryptomelane knelt beside the old man and narrowed his eyes. He focused hard on what he could do, on doing what he knew he could, on how much more he and General Amazonite could have used that starseed.
Then, he plunged his hand into the old man’s chest.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 11:57 am
Sonora was not a fighter. Sonora did not like violence. Hated it, actually--and she was never more clear on that than when she was powered up as a Page and violence seemed to insistently stalk her. She did not want this. she did not want any of what was presented to her. But she rarely had a choice, and so she accepted that some degree of Bad Things were probably going to happen to her on any given Knight patrol.
And the thing was, for all she hated violence, she couldn't really ignore it when it was happening in front of her. It wasn't really her instinct to start a fight, but a Negaverse Lieutenant--she was pretty sure--with his....
With his hand in an old man's chest?
Yeah, that was totally not okay, and Sonora couldn't just ignore it. It sent a spike of adrenaline throguh her to go running over, and her heart was racing in her chest, and oh, she hated this so much, but that looked really painful and she wasn't gonna just stand around and watch someone die.
Briefly, her wisp popped into existence and pressed up against her cheek, and that felt like just that little extra bit of encouragement she needed.
She could totally do this.
"Hey! Hey, you! Let him go!"
She felt very brave as she said it. And wasn't that the essence of bravery? Doing it scared, or whatever? Because she was definitely very scared. If he could do that to some random old man, he could do it to her, and she did not want to risk that. But she wanted to risk standing around and watching someone die even lest, so c'est la vie. At least she knew what she was getting into.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 12:21 pm
Cryptomelane felt the approaching White Moon aura before they actually arrived on the scene, but he didn’t think much of it. They matched his own power-level, if he was reading things correctly, and as he understood, there wasn’t much to fear from them. If they were a senshi, then their magic might not be anything to write home about. If they were a Knight, then their own weapon wouldn’t be much more impressive than Cryptomelane’s own candy-bucket shaped like a jack-o-lantern.
The only thing that made this intrepid little interloper stand out at all was their nerve: when she closed in on Cryptomelane, she plucked up enough courage to yell at him. After seeing so many people in this town look the other way in the face of danger, pretending that they didn’t see the youma or the gargoyles or the feral penguin causing any given round of havoc, Cryptomelane had to respect the fact that somebody elected not to be like that. Without removing his hand from the old man’s chest, Cryptomelane paid back that show of nerve by turning his head to look up at the……Page, apparently.
A very petite page, with long, sunset-colored hair, decked out in purple robes with a golden symbol that Cryptomelane didn’t recognize offhand. He’d learned that the Knights of the White Moon came in different flavors, with nine corresponding to the planets of the solar system and marked by the symbols that had represented them in Classical alchemy. Another Knightly flavor corresponded to Earth’s Moon, marked out by an upward-facing crescent, and yet another corresponded to the Cosmos themselves, marked by a five-pointed star. Other Knightly factions had cropped up at various turns in the intelligence database—Ganymede, Polaris, Lysithea, Castor, Chronos, Cybele, and Ida—but Cryptomelane didn’t recall seeing any mentions of those factions’ symbols.
Narrowed the candidates for this Page’s planet down to eight names, then. But Cryptomelane could run the deductions later.
“How do you plan to enforce your will upon me,” he asked her, cucumber calm, “Page Whom of Where, Exactly?”
By way of emphasizing his point, Cryptomelane curled his hand around the old man’s starseed. Yanking it from his chest and holding it up toward the light, he still didn’t look away from the intrepid little Page.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 12:52 pm
Okay, so, honestly, Sonora was sort of expecting that the Lieutenant would put the gentleman's starseed back and retreat in shame as soon as he was called out in his nefarious actions. Well, maybe not expecting, but definitely hoping really hard--because, well, she did not want to actually have to..."enforce her will, as he said.
She was not only a reluctant fighter, she was a bad one, as every encounter with a monster she'd stumbled into could very loudly attest. But this was fine! Everything was fine! She could totally do this. she could get back that poor man's soul and all would be well, she just...had to...convince this man to put it back.
"Page Sonora of Ida," she said, and she crossed her arms and drew herself up. "And I'm not going to enforce my will. I don't need to use violence to make you comply. That would make me no better than you. But you should put that back, because that's a human person, and you have absolutely no right to decide that he should die just because....what? What has this man done to you?"
Maybe there was a good reason. Not a good enough reason, that could not possibly exist in her opinion, but a good reason, so this Lieutenant wasn't a total violent monster who was ripping out people's souls for no reason.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 1:18 pm
“To me, personally? Nothing,” Cryptomelane admitted freely and willingly, as he pushed himself up off the ground. Getting to his feet was more a matter of personal comfort than anything, and once he was stood up, he didn’t bother pulling himself up to his full height. Maybe he would have if Page Sonora of Ida had been taller or more powerful than Cryptomelane himself, but as it stood, she seemed all the more petite, now that he was on his own feet. Moreover, she seemed quite young and more than a bit naïve.
Bullying a little girl—even the mere thought of doing so—didn’t satisfy him. It didn’t feel like a victory. It felt like one step closer to the one thing above all else that Cryptomelane could not endure: becoming like Brother Horace.
“The real question you should ask, Page Sonora, is what this man did to other people,” Cryptomelane explained calmly, fixing his gaze on Page Sonora’s face and holding the starseed where she could easily see it. Not grab at it, not without some likely trouble caused by the discrepancy in their heights, but perfectly see it. “I dealt with him earlier today, before I embarked on this night’s patrol, while he was street-corner preaching. The social position afforded to me by certain aspects of my visible identity shielded me from any of his nonsense. Yet, despite my lack of good vibes as a civilian, this old man targeted someone who had only been pleasant and helpful toward others, all because they had dark brown skin and pride flag patches on their jacket. In and of itself, that would have been despicable, but to have found him here, of all places……”
Arching a brow quite pointedly, Cryptomelane looked from Page Sonora over to the bar. Silently, he allowed its deliberately salacious name and the general everything of its existence to hang in the air between them for a moment.
As he looked back to Sonora, though, he shrugged. “If you still believe that such a life is worth saving, though, I welcome you to try.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 2:26 pm
Ah. Okay. Good. At least this wasn't some total monster who was just...stealing souls for no reason. Even of Sonora didn't think it was a very good reason. Like, no, it sounded like she wouldn't have liked this guy. He was clearly a jerk and a hypocrite, and people like that totally sucked.
But they didn't deserve to die.
"Okay, but that doesn't make killing him right. He's a terrible person, sure. But it's not your right--not anybody's right--to just decide that someone gets to die for the crime of being a terrible person. That's not how the world works. Or it shouldn't be. So put that starseed back, or....or I'll make you."
How? She had no idea. She'd figure it out, though, because nobody got to die.
And maybe, when she put that shiny little soul back, she'd rub it in this dude's face hat he got saved by a queer little manic pixie dream girl. Sonora was not above being just a little bit petty to crappy people.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 3:03 pm
Tilting his head, Cryptomelane regarded Page Sonora of Ida and her arguments with careful consideration. Not that he particularly agreed with her (obviously, it was his right to decide that this man got to die for the crime of being a terrible person; General Amazonite had given him that power on behalf of Queen Metallia, and should they not have put effort into making sure they saved a world that was worth saving?), or that he intended to let her dissuade him (he did not).
But enemy though she was, she had so far displayed several qualities that he admired: nerve, determination, passion for her work (misguided though it was), earnestness.…… Meeting him with such pluck deserved to be met in kind with respect and consideration.
Unfortunately for Page Sonora, respect did not mean giving her everything that she wanted. The other side of respect was that Cryptomelane needed to respect her enough to let her meet the consequences of her actions—or in this case, her inaction. Meeting her gaze with a nod, he told her, “You care very much for saving the souls of people who, in all likelihood, would condemn you to death and worse without a second thought.” He lowered the starseed somewhat, bringing it in front of his own face. “You have a good heart—but you act too slowly.”
Without another word, Cryptomelane slipped the starseed between his teeth and crunched down on it.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 3:22 pm
Sonora gaped. For a moment, she couldn't believe what she was seeing--it seemed too completely unreal, for someone to just--just eat a soul, like that. So she stared, in open shock, and when she was finally able to move again, she reacted on an instinct she didn't know she had.
She chucked her fan, right at his face, as hard as she could.
"What is wrong with you? That's a person's soul!" Blinded by fury, she didn't even really realized that she'd yelled for a moment, that the words had leapt out of her like she'd hurled her fan. "I'm sorry, I didn't want to hurt you, but you--that--you just--you killed him! Like that! For no reason! Why would you do that?"
There was nothing she could do for the poor man on the ground. And maybe--she didn't like thinking this--but maybe, the world was a little better with one less shitty, mean hypocrite in it. Butt hat didn't mean she had to like it. She stormed forward, scooping her fan up off the ground and waving it in the Lieutenant's face, and it didn't matter that he was taller than her. Her anger made her feel big.
"You don't just get to--it's not right!"
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 3:40 pm
Biting down on the starseed hit Cryptomelane with a rush like nothing he had ever felt before. Although he worked, as Preston, to grow the best marijuana that Lavender Haze was capable of dispensing, he hadn’t used drugs in his life, nor had he drank anything alcoholic since giving up Communion wine when he’d gotten away from Our Lady of Sorrows and from Brother Horace. But if starseeds would always provide a rush like this, then he might have considered suspending his overall avoidance of intoxication. Warmth flooded his body now, and energy, and—and power. Oh, did Cryptomelane ever feel powerful.
And then Page Sonora’s fan hit him in the face.
Which did not, overall, disturb the rush, much less end it. Entranced by the feeling of it, he thought to grab the fan off the ground himself—only to find that his intrepid opponent had picked it up herself and started brandishing it at his face.
“Would you prefer the list of my damages alphabetically, chronologically, or in order of relative severity,” Cryptomelane deadpanned with a slight snarl to his voice, without moving away from the fan at all, sounding (in his own opinion) more than perfectly reasonable and not even remotely dramatic. For all he believed his General about the Negaverse’s mission and generally thought that they had the most sensible approach to the problems infesting this broken world, he also knew himself too well to pretend that Page Sonora was anything but entirely correct to accuse him of having something wrong with him. Indeed, several somethings were exceptionally wrong with him; Brother Horace had made dead certain of that.
With a pensive huff, he finally reached up to grab Page Sonora’s fan before it could hit him again. Snatching it away, however, immediately led to him handing it back.
“Throw it again,” he told her bluntly. “With more conviction this time. I know you can do better than that.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 3:47 pm
Sonora absolutely could not believe this guy. He killed someone, got hit in the face, and had the absolute audacity to be deadpan about it. She almost couldn't believe it--it felt too audacious, too ridiculous to be real. No one talked like that, right?
But here he was, talking like that. Grabbing her fan. Insisting she hit him.
And that was what made Sonora take a sharp breath.
"No," she said, firmly, and she stepped back from him. "No, I won't throw it again. I don't want to hit you. I don't want to be the kind of person who solves problems with violence. I'm not going to do it. but you--you're going to regret the kind of person this is going to make you into."
She said it with certainty. Surely, there was no way someone couldn't regret becoming a soul-chomping murderer.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2024 4:05 pm
“Perhaps I will,” Cryptomelane conceded with a slight shrug and no particular emotion in his voice. “Perhaps I won’t. But whatever happens, my choices and my fate will be up to me, not the heavens, or the Fates, or to anyone else’s ideas about what I must do.”
The sentiment was one that he had, as Preston, learned from studying various Daoist texts at the university. In several stories, when faced with insurmountable odds that seemed to never be in their favor, many Daoist protagonists had stared them down with conviction and insisted Wǒ mìng yóu wǒ bù yóu tiān…… “My fate is up to me, and not the heavens.” Cryptomelane could not help but admire the sentiment and work to internalize it, to live it out in his own life.
Perhaps, as Preston, he would seek out a tattoo sometime. But for the moment, he slipped around Page Sonora, making to slink away down the alley. He could drain more energy elsewhere, perhaps find more starseeds to claim so he could build up his supply.
“You should leave before someone notices the body and alerts the police,” he said, pausing to glance back at her. “Take care, Page Sonora of Ida. Mind that your good heart doesn’t get you killed—especially not in the name of protecting someone unworthy of your efforts.”
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