The night air held extra energy, full of the tension of possibilities, and for some, heavy with responsibility. One of the few working lights in the park strobed slowly, creating an almost stop-motion tableau of a scene most knew to avoid.
A massive, hulking figure of a man loomed over a petite, doll-like woman.
A huge, clumsy fellow approached a solemn woman in a maid uniform.
A boy, big for his age but still a child around the edges, staggered toward the woman, who simply stared at his struggle with a polite smile.
The victim fell to her feet, the light of the park lamp briefly casting a winged shadow behind her.
When it strobed once more, she was facing a new direction, smile widening. An expression that belied the solemnity with which she intoned, "You should avoid this."
rejam
Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2025 12:35 am
lizbot
It had occurred to her more than once and fleetingly that she would probably enjoy this more if she worked on her one-liners, her snappy comebacks. But she, at the end of the day, had an honesty that overrode even her arrogance.
So she didn't have anything to say but what she always had: the truth. It came out of her with a bit of a tremble around the edges.
"I know," she said. She didn't, really - she thought she did - but she only knew the truth as much as the shadow had been the true shape of the senshi's victim. Whatever was in front of her felt large, and powerful, and frightening.
But it was not nearly as frightening as the idea of having to live with herself if she turned tail and ran, leaving that person - she did not mentally use the word body, resisting the easy out it would have provided - on the ground.
For this reason her voice trembled when she said it. Her useless little scrap of ribbon was wound around her hand; she had nothing but the whistle that was seeking out with her fingers and that she knew instinctively would do nothing but buy her time. But what else could she do, but buy time, and hope for the tell-tale flare of some Order signature near her, and large enough to do something?
"I am sure that you're aware of the inherent weakness of a page," Hestia replied, conversational as she picked the body up off the ground with one daintily gloved hand. The boy moved sluggishly, clearly still alive.
"And yet here you are, alone." Her other hand plunged into the boy's chest and the his slow struggle stilled. The barest hunt of the ride and fall of his chest was illuminated by the glow of what she'd removed from him. Something very small, and clearly very precious.
"You're very brave, but do you think that's enough?"
rejam
Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2025 12:54 am
lizbot
She would have said "no," compelled by the same confessional spirit, but she didn't have time to.
Later, she would look back on this exact moment with a sort of wonder at herself, equal parts horrified and cocky. But it would be hard to feel pride, exactly, for what she did out of pure and unqualified instinct, without taking even a breath to weigh the consequences. It would be hard to be proud of what her body did without her input. She had once, when barely a teenager, run directly towards a car crash under the same thoughtless need, not even to be useful, but to desperately attempt to circumvent the worst of some disaster.
She moved faster now than a petty little human, which was an advantage. Having already crept quite close was another still. She threw herself towards the boy's attacker shoulder-first, putting her full weight and desperate effort into a graceless attempt at a tackle.
There was contact in the fleeting brush of hair much too long to ever be considered practical. The senshi simply wasn't there anymore, leaving the page with the boy's body.
"You didn't pause to think. Not bad."
The voice came from behind, and was followed by a quiet, incongruous phrase, "The Sparkling Finish." There was a sense of violent, scouring movement moving toward Joy, but not hitting her. It moved past both her and the body, hitting the area around them, picking up that strobing light and turning it into a glaring spotlight, flashing into her eyes. The ground at her feet was suddenly, impossibly slick.
"But if you can do better, you really should."
rejam
Super Sailor Scout Attack: The Sparkling Finish!
(debuff) A person-sized scouring blast hits a surface, giving it the appearance of highly polished metal. It causes an eye-searing glare and makes everything within its circle dangerously slick and difficult to maneuver in.
effect duration: 35 seconds attack range: 15 feet size: circle with a 15 foot radius optional after effects: those in the affected area feel extremely fresh and clean afterward uses: 2 - Hestia is immune to this effect -
Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2025 1:17 am
lizbot
She couldn't do better, and if she could have, she probably wouldn't have been able to anyway at that moment of blindly groping, her feet sliding under her like a newborn fawn's. But her only thought was an instinctive need to put herself between Hestia and her victim, and she managed to do it, barely and mostly by feel, although she was on the ground by the time she did.
It would have been nice to pop out with something bitter, something cool. Instead her defiance manifested in what was almost a howl that was as much desperate as it was angry, and came out like a beggar cry.
"Leave him alone." It wasn't a command. It was a plea.
It was probably normal to feel a bit disembodied in moments like these. She wouldn't know. But she wasn't sure if that strange, buzzing sensation in the back of her head and her lungs was normal too. It felt like all the little animals in her body and brain were falling silent in advance of an explosion that she herself could not sense coming.
"You're very persistent. Perhaps even resilient enough to survive. Is that why you came out here alone? You're only a little stronger, page. A little faster. You are by yourself and all you have to offer is yourself and your powerless determination." The senshi's voice remained the same, polite and even, seemingly unmoved by the struggle in front of her. At most, under the praise, was a certain sort of disappointment.
As the blinding light faded, she went on, "So I'm sorry to say, that you'll have to try and make me."
She started saying something else, but it was quickly and literally, drown out by a sudden and scalding cascade of water. The park light continued to strobe, lighting up the red, red world that suddenly surrounded the struggling page.
rejam
Eternal Sailor Attack: Scrubbing Bubbles!
(offensive) A scalding, soapy avalanche of deep red water smashes down upon the target. For the duration of this magic it can cause the sensation of third degree burns.
effect duration: 45 seconds attack range: 20 feet size: circle with a 10 foot radius optional after effects: those in the affected area feel extremely fresh and clean afterward; players can choose to take lasting damage if they prefer. uses: 1
Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2025 5:20 pm
Hers had, on the whole, been a very soft life. She had been made aware of it when Gouvernail had dispassionately sketched out the outline of his own, and it had weighed on her since, haunting her every time she saw a little boy on the sidewalk and imagined putting a weapon into his hands. She had never really had any moments of memorable pain, unless the week after her entirely elective surgery had counted. Which, compared to this, it decidedly did not.
It wouldn't have been possible for her to know how long it lasted. If told it had been under a minute she would have said it was a lie. She only knew that she was screaming by the fact that her throat hurt afterwards.
But maybe pain was a necessary aspect of personal transformation, from the shallow banality of the plastic surgery clinic to whatever this was. Her ribbon was already wrapped around her hand, but somehow she found herself desperately in some internal way reaching towards it, and closing her heart around it like a fist.
Maybe she imagined it. But as the wave of burning subsided, she thought she smelled the sort of air that you only get where a river runs into the ocean, chilly and fresh and healthy and blue-green, and it ruffled the hair at her temples like a soothing hand.
Still on the ground, she closed her hand around the handle of a whip, which felt like an old friend to both Joy and to Elaine, and lashed it against the ground.
"Fine," she managed hoarsely. The artificial perfume of soap subsided, replaced by the real and inimitable thing, the cheap shadow succeeded by the truth, spilling forth from a sudden cascade of night-blooming flowers. "I will."
lizbot
A short riding whip with a red silk handle, incapable of breaking the skin and causing only blunt force damage. Flowering vines erupt from the ground and reach to about knee-high in a ten foot radius, wrapping around the opponent's legs to slow them down. Although the vines are breakable, the scent of the flowers induces an urge to seek Joy's approval, praise, or affection, although the urge can be fought with active focus. Joy can channel for approximately 35 seconds at this stage.
Joy was greeted with a look of astonishment that maybe the appearance of a whip didn't quite merit. Perhaps she had yet to notice the whole of her changes as she emerged from those waters, new and strong. After a long moment, Hestia's gaze dropped to the thicket of flowering vines, green and needy as they clambered up her legs, tugged at the long ribbons of her hair.
Her eyes gained a vague glaze and she, very briefly, bent her head, "Miss."
rejam
Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2025 5:50 pm
Her knees were still trembling, but she felt shockingly graceful as she attained her feet again, stepping closer to Hestia, only dimly aware of all the superficial differences, distracted as she was by the sudden and intuitive knowledge that she had sudden power in her hands to do something to help the limp little figure on the ground next to her, or at least to dole out punishment if help was no longer an option. The sensation was bolstered by seeing the senshi do what people ought, in her own estimation, to do every time she addressed them - submit - and the attitude of demure diffidence awakened her confidence as it always had.
"Good girl. Better. See?" She cracked the whip viciously. "Humiliating people is my job."
lizbot
Forgotten Spell: By cracking her whip, Joy can unleash a spectral blast that takes the shape of the end of a lance made of light, aimed at an opponent's chest within a 15 foot radius. The resulting impact has an effect similar to a blunt force blow as if from a capped jousting lance. This can be used three times per battle.
The senshi's head cocked to the side, a small smile appearing at the phrase, good girl. There was a calm moment, as the two settled into their suddenly reversed roles. The park once again framing an odd tableau, features two figures in strange conflict. Then the whip cracked and bolt of pure light shot out, striking Hestia in the chest hard enough to send her flying off her feet, back striking against that flickering lamp post.
And with that light suddenly went out, leaving their little corner of the park in darkness. Until Joy felt a sudden presence next to her, once again the sweeping touch of long, long hair, and the soft glow of a starseed, now held out to her.
The corrupt senshi's voice was still as polite and solemn as ever, "Then do a good job, squire."
A heartbeat later and Joy found herself alone with that starseed and the boy that was its home.
rejam
Posted: Sun Mar 02, 2025 7:43 pm
lizbot
It took her a moment to register that she was, truly, alone. It had felt too easy somehow - the adrenaline from the pain was still surging and distorting her ideas of time, and it felt like a half a second had blinked past between the touch of cool air and this moment.
She held the starseed in her hand, and looked at it with a numb lack of comprehension. She knew, of course, what it was - she had been thoroughly educated in this short time - and even somehow intuitively knew what had to be done with it. But for a moment all she could do was simply look at it with an almost childish fascination. Somewhere in this little shining thing was some element of Fate, written in words that no one could read and that some could only dimly hear: the tiny, infinitely powerful thread of meaning that determined who the person around it was.
Something like this lived in the chest of the woman who had just left her standing here shaking, and once - as far as she knew - it had been scrawled with words that had called her up to protect a world and the people on it. It had given her the power to do it, and she had turned it on its head.
Somewhere, scrawled on her own, were similar words. Some little bright thing in her chest, that had the name of a long-fallen castle written inside it, forcing her into a certain channel of life that she had no say over.
Maybe there was a certain allure in seizing control of your fate in that way. Maybe there was a certain draw, to Elaine as she stood there under another name, in taking what was forced on you and making it your own by sheer brute willpower. To hold this little star in your mind and squeeze it until it assumed another shape, one of your own making.
And then there was this one, in her fingers, which might have anything written on it, or perhaps nothing at all. All the spooled-up potential of a human life and all the little ripples around it, bound up into this little trinket. But it was not hers. It didn't belong to anyone but the body at her feet. With creeping horror she understood, for the first time, the sort of detachment from humanity it must require to hold such a thing in your hand, and to eat it like it was a bit of candy. Maybe, by crushing your Life into a new shape, you had to relinquish any ideas of reverence for the thing at all.
Her head buzzing, her thoughts sluggish, she looked down at the boy on the ground, whose life she literally held in her hands. She could do anything with it - could do more with it, in fact, than she could do with her own. She was a little God, in that moment. She could choose his Fate.
But for her - for Elaine, who was Joy and was not - there was never a real choice in a moment like this. Whatever was written in her was stronger than the language even of the Fate in her chest, and could not be crushed and reshaped. She bent over him, and with reverence, sent the starseed home.
