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 Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 1:28 pm
Acubens was going to get whiplash from Ganymede's reactions. First she was supportive, answering questions and tolerating Acubens' fear. Then he lashed out at her, condeming her for wanting a leader. Now he was trying to appeal to her again. Acubens wasn't sure what she should do with this strange girl. She turned back to her, keeping her distance agains this time. If she got too close, and Ganymede attacked her again, Acubens was afraid she'd lash out herself, physically, and regret it.
She didn't need to alienate those on her own side.
And so, with that in mind, she listened. Arms crossed over her chest, face set in some angry grimace, she listened. And the more she listened, the more selfish she felt for feeling so alone. The more she listened, the more foolish she felt for needing anything more than those around her.
Take strength from those that need you.
A song lyric form her childhood that Acubens could feel revirberating, not only in her mind, but in her body. It buzzed along her nerves, making her arms drop to her sides and her face calm into quiet reflection.
Peace. That seemed to be all anyone wanted. And not just in this war, they wanted it at home, among each other, everywhere. And they wanted to protect what was theirs. They wanted to keep evil at bay and make sure everyone possible was happy. So many common goals... in fact... the common goals. Hell, the goals. Not just that. It was the reason for fighting. The reason for getting up every morning, evening, and afternoon, powering up, and going out into what could be thier last day. Peace and love.
Take strength from those that need you.
Like when Acubens was working on a puzzle at home, and a piece fit perfectly after hours of trying, she felt something well up inside her. Pride, satisfaction, relief. Something made sense. She didn't really know what, but it did, and if she could just find it...
"It's not about following orders to a T. I have a problem with that kind of authority. I want to know that I'm on the right path. Someone with a little authority to tell me that, yes, you're doing well. Yes, I'm proud of your sacrifices. Maybe not a princess... but someone who knows what they're talking about."
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Posted: Tue May 22, 2012 5:50 pm
Ganymede didn’t think he was being too harsh. He wasn’t screaming, or cursing, though his voice had been a bit raised and he was perhaps being quite blunt. Either way, he was surprised when Acubens actually stuck around. He couldn’t say he would have done the same when he was a new senshi. In fact, there were a lot of people he’d blown off back then. There were people he’d blown off even after the newness had worn off and he’d gotten his bearings a bit, but then he thought those were the sort of people who deserved it—the ones who expected too much of people and thought each senshi should fit into a perfect cookie-cutter mold.
If he expected anything, Ganymede expected fairness and teamwork, and while some of what he’d said so far might have been mean, he also thought they were fair comments. He regretted his tone at points. He could have been nicer in the initial turn around, but the point he was making would still have been the same, and he thought that was the most important part.
“Why should someone in authority be the one to tell you you’re on the right path?” he asked, trying to encourage the conversation into less tense territory. “Their word isn’t any more valid that someone else’s. Honestly, some of the people who think they have authority don’t deserve it. As far as I’m concerned, they just got lucky. A little extra power doesn’t mean automatic respect.”
What did extra power matter anyway if it wasn’t even being put to good use? He’d yet to see anything to prove to him that the royals were worth all the fuss. It was all the other senshi, Ganymede thought, that made the real difference in the war.
“My opinion, for what it’s worth, is this: If you’ve made it this far without lowering yourself to murder and torture or being corrupted, then you’re on the right path,” he said with conviction. “If your reasons for fighting are for the good of others, not just for yourself, then you’re on the right path. And if you’ve made some mistakes, but you can acknowledge them for what they are and work hard to make up for them, and if you intend to do good and be just, then, yeah, you’re on the right path.”
He could understand the confusion, the need to question, to make sure, and he didn’t necessarily think it was a bad thing, but he wasn’t about to walk away from a senshi letting them think a royal was their only way to figure things out when that was far from the truth—and, as far as he was concerned, not advisable.
“It’s okay to have doubts and fears,” he reassured her. “We all do. A hierarchy isn’t going to change that. If you want to get over them in a positive way, then work with people who’ll look at you as an equal, who think you’re worth more than just another minion.”
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Posted: Tue Jun 05, 2012 2:47 pm
"Because I'm not as independent as you." The words were spat with more venom than Acubens had meant. Maybe it was the fact that she was being compared to someone who didn't know her. Maybe it was that this new girl accused her beloved Dark Mirror Court of murder. Maybe it was his belittling of her needs that made her angry. Maybe it was a little of all three of the possibilities that did it. But for whatever the reason she felt the uncontrollable urge to lash out. She clenched her fists at her side, lips set in a thin line as she considered her next words carefully. "You're comparing my needs to your own. You don't need guidance and you don't need anyone to tell you what to do. Fine. But I need someone to tell me what I'm doing is right, and not just some vague idea. Maybe you never had a teacher, maybe you never had anyone, but I need that." Her voice was a bit softer than before, but still held that angry edge. "It's not fair that you do that. It's like saying wanting to know what I got shoved in here for is stupid. But it's not about a hierarchy. It's about a chain of command. Knowing what we're doing and not just blindly running around." Acubens rubbed her stomach, not at all liking the unhappy bubbling within. "This is me finding out how to get over them. If the royals are shitty leaders then fine. I rebel against them like I do every unfair authority. But... on the off chance they earned their status... I want that insight, that direction. Is that really so bad?"
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Posted: Thu Jun 07, 2012 12:19 pm
“Um, excuse me, I do need guidance,” Ganymede countered, his eyes narrowing with a vague sense of annoyance. “If you would kindly stop putting words into my mouth, this conversation would go a hell of a lot easier. I know I might not have been very nice when the royal line of talk first started here, and I’m sorry for that, but you haven’t exactly been the best listener. Believe whatever the hell you want to about the Dark Mirror Court, Acubens, but don’t try to turn me into the bad guy when I’m trying to offer a little guidance and advice.”
That was not something he would ever pretend he was the best at. He had an attitude and it tended to get in the way, even when he tried to move beyond it and grow some more patience. It was a defensive mechanism he’d picked up a long time ago, and being a senshi had only exacerbated the problem—especially in the beginning, when no one had bothered to try and explain things to him and reassure him about his path like he was trying to do for Acubens now.
“No, I don’t need anyone to tell me what to do,” he agreed. “That’s not what guidance is. It doesn’t matter how independent someone is. Everyone needs a little guidance every once in a while. I wanted to know the hows and whys, too, and then when I didn’t get the sort of answer I wanted I made up my own reason to stick with it, because I give a damn about the people in my life. I give a damn about the kind of world they live in, and we’re not going to get that world by letting the Negaverse or the Dark Mirror Court do whatever the hell they want to it.”
Part of him was tempted to turn around and leave. He likely would if she tried to shove words into his mouth again, but stubbornness compelled him to see this confrontation through at least a little longer.
“That’s the whole reason I joined the Jovians,” he explained. “Looking for an answer, needing guidance… That’s the reason I have so much respect for Europa, because she actually gave a damn about helping me improve. That doesn’t mean I’m her little doe-eyed minion ready to do everything she tells me to do. That’s wouldn’t solve anything. A chain of command, that is a hierarchy, Acubens. I might not have made the best grades in school, but even I know the two are synonymous. Both mean there’s someone on top controlling the masses. You can’t have one or the other because they’re both the same.”
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 1:37 pm
Acubens thought she'd been a perfectly good listener. Good in that she'd stayed, anyway. It was Ganymede who'd been abrasive and mean. He'd gone sour the moment she'd mentioned anything about wanting to see a royal. It felt like he was trying to intimidate her. If there was one thing Acubens did not like, it was being intimidated. It made her feel strange, all squeamish and ill.
"So you think that if I meet a royal, I'll end up being their b***h?" Acubens crossed her arms over her chest defensively, cocking an eyebrow at Ganymede. "Because that's what you've made it sound like you think will happen. that I'll meet a royal and be so over taken with their title that i'll turn into some vapid fan girl." Acubens scoffed and tossed a braid over her shoulder.
"Isn't a chain of command what you have in your team? Europa as a leader and the rest of you following her lead? Perhaps not order, but definitely looking to her for the next move some time or another? That's all I want. I don't have a team, though, so I need to go somewhere else, and all the older senshi seem to be part of a team already. Everyone who might give two shits about an orphan senshi like me is already wrapped up in their own s**t to even care." Her eyes felt too hot again. Faceless senshi who she'd asked for help, too many to count, had cited team business to avoid helping her at all.
"And now that I have a lead to something that might make me feel a little less lost where I am, you depreciate it. You take valid needs to make me seem brainless. I don't have what you have, Ganymede. I don't have a stable support base where I am. I'm falling through space with nothing to hold onto but my own self and I can't see the ground yet." the poet was showing it's ugly head again, clouding over any normal through and putting verse on Acubens' tonue. "All I can hear is the wind past my ears so loud that I can't even make out my own screams for help, so how the hell can I expect anyone else to hear me? It's not fair. It's not fair that you get to stand there and tell me that the royals don't know what their doing when you don't even know for a fact. Have you met a royal? Can you tell me without a shadow of a doubt that they haven't earned their title?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 4:02 pm
“You clearly have not been listening to me at all,” Ganymede observed. “Maybe instead of blaming other people and harping at me for being Mean Mr. Ganymede you should take a moment to look at yourself and figure out what’ll it take to open your ears and pay attention to the words that are actually coming out of my mouth instead of making assumptions and living in your little world of make-believe.”
This entire conversation was grating on his nerves, and it was one of the major reasons he never stopped to give much advice to people—one, because he wasn’t usually confident enough in himself to do it; and two, because he didn’t expect very many people would actually listen. They always believed what they wanted. He had for a time, but of course his situation had been a little different.
There had been Elysion back then. He might have tried to pretend as if it weren’t happening, he might have tried to let himself believe it was all a dream when he woke up, but he’d never forgotten what some of the other senshi had said to him even if he’d tried his best to forget the battles themselves. He’d never overlooked it. He’d used it to try and make himself better. It still lingered heavily in the back of his mind, pushing him forward and making him fight for respect—and if not respect than at least tolerance and acceptance.
“I’ve already told you I’ve met some of the royals,” he reminded her. “I met them months ago, and before that I met one of them when I first became a senshi, but I don’t think he was a royal back then. He was an a*****e who thought he was superior to everyone else because of a set of wings on his back, and the Zodiac princess with him at the Surrounding was a useless fool who cared more about some stupid mirrors than the safety of civilian lives. None of that is deserving of respect. I don’t care what anyone says. We fought for the Surrounding, and we fought for the civilians who were trapped there. All the royals cared about was protecting a past that’s already long dead.”
Those weren’t the sort of people they needed as their leaders. They didn’t need leaders at all, in his opinion, but they needed ones like that even less. As soon as they lost sight of the present, as soon as they put more worth in the past than the future, then the battle was done and the Earth gone with it.
“Europa is not my leader,” Ganymede continued. “Just because I actually like her and have respect for her does not mean she is the be all and end all of the Jovians. I have respect for all of them. Valhalla, Kallichore,” and that he said a bit grudgingly, but it was there nonetheless, “Pasiphae, Babylon, Cyllene, all of them. We don’t depend on Europa to tell us what to do every step of the way. We depend on each other. Europa is one of us. She just happens to have been around the longest and therefore has more answers than some of the rest of you. You’re the one who keeps bringing ‘leader’ and ‘royal’ into this, Acubens, when it isn’t anything like that. So, no, I don’t necessarily think you’ll become their b***h, but you’re definitely sounding like the vapid fan-girl you claim you’re not.”
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Posted: Mon Jun 18, 2012 8:29 pm
The mention of the surrounding made Acubens twitch almost violently. "And a damn good job you did keeping everyone up there alive," she spat, recalling in striking clarity what Lesath had said to her. "I heard every last civilian died, and that the senshi did nothing to save them. It was by the grace of god that they came back to earth at all." Acubens stuck her hip out stubbornly, lips pursed as her temper flared past her control at the mention of her being simple. She was. There was no doubt in her mind about that. She was a stupid child. But she didn't like that anyone else might know about it.
"And maybe I'm defining teams incorrectly then. In my mind there is a team leader and a team. Someone holds authority. They have to. Or else you're all just a microcosm of what is already happening. A small band of blind mice in a larger band of blind mice. What is your goal? What steps do you plan to take towards that goal?"
Finally Acubens let out a sound like a wounded cat, throwing her hands in the air. This was going no where. Neither one was listening to the other, and the angrier they both got, the less they heard. "I'm going to find a royal, and I'm going to ask them my questions, and I'm going to decide for myself if they're worth following or not." Whether she was outlining a vague plan for herself or to prove a point to Ganymede was lost to her. Her eyes were warming up again and she could feel her chin wobbling.
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Posted: Thu Jun 21, 2012 12:37 pm
Ganymede’s face went red—not in embarrassment, but in anger. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been quite so livid, but he expected it might have been the result of a confrontation with a certain ******** you, Acubens,” he spat. A little voice in his head told him he should control himself better, but after her comment about the Surrounding he didn’t particularly care about keeping the peace anymore. “Some of us actually gave it our all. Not that I would expect you to even be able to imagine what it was like since I don’t believe you were even there. Instead of throwing accusations at me when I did all I could, why don’t you grow up and stop living in your little delusional fairytale world where princes and princess save the day, because they did absolutely nothing.”
He would never try to make his contributions seem any greater than they really were, as he had no desire for glory or notoriety. He did what he had to in order to keep people safe. But he would never let anyone try to make it seem as if the contributions of a few people with a royal title were in any way greater than those of the people he fought alongside, because that was far from the case. Pasiphae, Valhalla, Europa, Babylon, and all the other senshi and knights who’d fought for the Surrounding and the hapless civilians who’d been stuck there… they were the ones deserving of praise, not an arrogant prince or a princess who hid behind her overzealous followers.
“If you want someone to hold your hand so badly, fine, go subjugate yourself to them. If you want to moon over a pretty pretty princess in a pretty white dress like a five-year-old at Disney World, by all means, do so,” Ganymede said, and then grew steadily more sarcastic. “Maybe they’ll sign you an autograph and you can have it framed and stick it above your bed so you can look at it before you sleep every night and imagine them protecting you with the power of their divine grace. And maybe if you kiss their a** enough they’ll give you special membership into their fan club and you can go to super special meetings and have tea parties while the rest of us are out here trying to make a difference.”
The super senshi looked Acubens over, but only as long as it took to sneer at her. “I hope you run into the prince,” he decided. “I expect he’d either use your hero-worship as an ego boost or rip you apart for being worse than me. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have more important things to be doing than humoring you in this pointless debate.”
And with that, Ganymede turned on his heel to make his exit, stomping angrily down the street.
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Posted: Fri Jun 22, 2012 9:22 am
Acubens roared. Like, maybe she thought she was a lion for a moment, or maybe that was the only thing she knew she could do at that moment. But for whatever reason, Acubens raised her hands to her head to bury them in her curls and, finding none, made them into great fists and loosed a roar. It wrinkled her nose, it bore her teeth, and it leaned her forward with the force of it all. She was just... She was just so angry! This little b***h wasn't listening to her at all! Acubens' search wasn't about heroes! Her search wouldn't end in her joining up in some mindless army! That wasn't how she operated at all! It was about finding answers the only way she knew how, at what she thought might be the very top of whatever they were.
"Fine!" Acubens shouted when she finally was able to speak again. "Leave, just like that damned cat." She spat the word with necessary venom. God, she wanted Lesath more than anything right now. At least she gave her the answers she sought. But there was no way to contact her. They could not call upon one another, at least not that Acubens was aware of. And the idea of not having someone so dear to her near to understand what she needed... it hurt. More than hurt, it was enough to douse her temper, make her knees weak, and her eyes hot. Leave me just like everyone else I've asked for help so far.
Acubens took the hint from Ganymede. She ran away. She turned and pounded the pavement, trying to get as far from her as possible. ******** patrolling tonight. If she couldn't have Lesath to pour her heart out to, then she'd go and find her brother. She wouldn't be able to explain why she was so upset, but at least he'd hold onto her while she cried.
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