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 Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 3:35 pm
... Wait. Wait he what now? Holes in the walls? Trashed the place? His imediate, defensive urge was to find out the guys name and go beat him stupid... his second was to feel guilt, because he'd been that guy. He remembered the yelling, remembered how low he'd been, accusing her of only staying to get pitty points, and why didn't she just go out with one of the other guys she'd 'clearly' been eyeballing. Until she did. And he'd deserved it, which had taken some time to get into his head... People had paid for that since then, while he got his head space together. "You don't look like psychobait." He answered. "...But you don't have to be psycho-bait to fall into the trap were you think your fuzzy feelings give you an obligation to stick to it..." He grimaced, trying to pick apart the way he remembered things. "His issues were his issues, and he took advantage of you trying to be the good guy. People get judgy when other people break up, so generally.... who the ******** wants to? I mean who wants the she-said, he said s**t? The "What friends are still talking to me" game? Then you've got like... every movie that comes out of Hollywood telling us that if we just stick to it things will magically become better. Sometimes they don't get better." He paused, frowning at his burger and finally reaching for the ketchup. "If he tries any more threats you should report him to the cops." He had no idea her now ex was one of Destiny City's 'terrorists'. That reporting him was something like trying to stick an wide load warning onto a T-rex's tail, but it was a more civilized option than 'tell me and I'll rip his star seed out while I still can'. "You are a person, you do deserve to be treated like one, even if you go jump over the bar and try and bone the bartender. Although I'm pretty sure someone might get you on indecency charges for that. Or maybe they'd tip you for the floor show. Not too sure." He assured her, half joking. "I think the Dominating freak show types actually get a bigger kick from breaking down people who are strong, I mean...isn't it all about them getting their rocks off on how powerful they are?" He didn't think he'd ever qualified as Domineering. Just angry, jealous... and full of self hatred he'd taken out on everyone else for daring to be happy in his presence.
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Posted: Wed Oct 16, 2013 4:53 pm
Zia crossed her arms and leaned against the back of her seat now that she was officially out of food. "You think way too much of my nonexistent moral fiber, bro," She snorted. "He didn't really threaten me, either," because no matter how much intimidation or implied stuff there was, Zia didn't seem to register anything not explicitly verbalized.
"He stuck with me through some pretty horrible s**t. Especially early on. I used to get completely wasted and he was always there to drag my blackout drunk a** home. He tried to get it in my head being smart was worth something, and I was not exactly girlfriend of the year. And the sex was mindblowing. I mean, we were friends with benefits before it became this thing, yanno?" She drummed her manicured nails on the table. "No one's ever made me feel that intelligent, or pretty, or wanted... And conversely no one's ever made me feel so ugly and horrible and used up."
But she heaved a heavy shrug. "All the controlling stuff kind of crept in slowly. It always does, though. Even before Ares-- ********, especially Ares herself. My dad did it to my mom. To me. I mean obviously there's a pattern, but it never really seems like it's going down that road until you need to patch holes in the drywall. Maybe I just destroy everyone I touch?" Though the last bit was said more like a suggestive joke than anything, rather than genuine lamentation if it was true. "People shouldn't tell me what to do, it never ends well. Especially or them. Alas, I am a force of nature and trying to contain me is bad for one's health."
She did quirk one eyebrow at his predictions about any attempts to jump the bartender's bones, but shrugged it off. "Naaaah. Not tonight."
She waved down a server hoping for a refill on fries and sunk in her seat a little as she waited. "Soooo, that happened. Back to the whole trying not to die thing and other more important topics that make me look like a lovesick crybaby in comparison."
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Posted: Fri Oct 18, 2013 9:31 am
"You've got plenty of moral fiber, and you're going to find someone who can give you all the good parts without the bad." Realgar assured. "You're strong enough to work it out. I mean s**t, how many people in this city climb up on roof tops to people watch just for fun?" He chuckled softly and agreed. "You are definitely a force of nature." He took another drink of soda, since he wasn't working on the same drive to drown his feelings with food (however tasty) and looked thoughtful. "Not much so far, chatted with Camelot a little, but I guess there's still the whole inconvenience of needing a Senshi royal, so... we're see where that goes. Did meet someone for your records though." He scowled, wary of this part of the conversation. "You met a little twerp called Avior yet? Makes some kind of wall. Brown curly hair, dopey face. Preachy?"
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Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2013 2:46 am
The wheels turning in Zia's head were almost visible as she shifted her jaw and watched the server deposit more fries and refill her drink.
She shifted and sat up, but seems to be avoiding looking at Realgar directly. Her eyes stayed downcast, or oogling someone, or interested in doing absolutely anything but make solid eye contact since he brought up that night they met on the rooftop.
She had been in a bad place then, physically and mentally on the edge of something either horrible or wonderful. Zirconia had only recently gone dormant and she had looked on at the task of learning to be human again after having her body and mind hijacked for two years as an impossible task. She had been lost but desperately pretending she wasn't.
In hindsight this not giving up and staying alive thing proved to be a very good decision, since she realized that she liked sitting here roughly a year later later, even if she had no idea it would be sitting in a dive with a Negaverse captain gorging on cheeseburgers. Normalcy seemed so out of reach when faced with the fact her own body didn't feel like it belonged to her, and yet somehow she'd managed to have a year long romance, break up, and cry over it and compared to political moon court intrigue and mass scale wars, it was hilariously mundane. Look at how normal she was doing this normal thing, like a real girl and everything.
Reaching this conclusion in mental silence made her draw what must've seemed like the most random laugh in the world.
"Yeah! Royals are hard. I only know about Sailor Iris and Sailor Polaris, if there even are anymore," She said, still riding on that chuckle. She did seriously pity your plight, Realgar, honest, this chuckle was completely irrelevant.
"You prolly don't want to meet either of them through me, though," She added while decorating her fresh fry basket with ketchup. "I dun know Polaris that well but I've clocked her boyfriend a few times and once I left him for dead when Ares slashed his throat. And Iris uh..." She snorted and made a weird 'phbblt' sound before stuffing a handful of fries in her mouth. "Blondie's a real b***h."
The question about someone named 'Avior' made her furrow her brow and pull her phone from her purse. A few quick taps to sign onto her cloud sever where most of her databank was stored and-- nope. Nothing. Google just brought up a bunch of arilines and computer companies. "Uh... It's not ringing a bell. Should I? Is he a knight or something? He got any useful info?"
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Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2013 5:09 am
Maybe this wasn't such a good time to bring up Avior? But he was kind of in for a penny, in for a pound at this point. "So far I've mostly 'met' Castor, who made an ridiculous number of comments about my junk...but I've glimpsed some of the others.... Anyway he was tough but I feel like I've dealt with worse." Royals. Not so special, right? Wait had he told her about the Castor thing before? He couldn't remember. "....Well... I don't know how useful but... definitely a little creeper. He's Order aligned for now... but he came waltzing on up, preached at me about the evils of fermented beverage, and then told me we oughta be friends because he's signing on with..." He cleared his throat and decided to dance around the title of the group in question. "Your favorite set." He poked around at his own plate and added. "...I don't know if it makes you feel any better about that bit but I mightakinda lit into him a bit for being a moron." Kind of. In a disjointed or broken elbow kind of way.
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Posted: Sun Oct 20, 2013 6:05 pm
Zia was in mid chug when Realgar elaborated on his experiences with Castor and ended up making a snorting laugh that ended with coughing, wheezing and trying to blow beer out of her nose.
"Sounds accurate!" She coughed out, but when she calmed down and she thought on it a bit, she got a little mopey.
"Castor... seems to be MIA," Which was a sad thing but not enough to derail her into grief. "I didn't know him that well," She clarified and took a much more cautious sip before continuing. "But... it's still sad I guess. He was a paranoid a*****e who had sex on the brain pretty much 24/7 but I think when it came to helping people his heart was in the right place? But also if I remember right he had a sort of 'kill them all' attitude towards the corrupt so even if you do manage to find him you might want to avoid that s**t."
She tapped her fingers in thought. "Polaris is very diplomatic but I've only seen her twice. She's romantically involved with the Saturn knight Niflhel, who, uh, again, I can't introduce you to. Ares... throat slash... ugliness. Oh, and also I crashed his couch and stole his cash. Third option is Sasquatch-- I mean Iris. She is like," Zia stopped to lift her hands over her head to emphasize this next point, "Monster tall with flashy spiky blonde hair and a bad attitude. She is usually running around in eternal senshi form because senshi are tricky bitches, but she has a team of senshi called the Asteroids, which is led by the guardian cat *********. If you want to get to Iris ********* is probably your best bet since she's a lot more nicer."
She realized her speech sounded almost kiddish when it came to the grammar usage, but didn't seemed too concerned since she shrugged it off and sipped at her beer.
"And that's alls I know!" She chirped like she'd just given him half assed directions to a house party.
She listened to his bit about Avior, even childishly stopping her drinking to give her mug a flouncy little wave through the air to mock the creeper in question's apparent hate of alcohol. But hearing he was planning on corrupting made her stop and frown, taking all the flounce right out of her mannerisms. "Oh, senshi."
And then, "Well if the little b***h is suicidal, who the ******** cares? We're not a hotline. We don't take calls like 'Hi, I'm thinking of accepting some mirror skank's offer' and we don't go, 'No, you have so much to live for. Please don't let her implant her youma doll thing in your skull so it can gradually eat you from the inside out and take you over, absorbing all your memories and wearing your face like a meatsuit in the process. Things might seem hard now, but it gets better! Mirrorworld parasites are not the answer!"
There was a weird, long pause. "Wow, what was I getting at? Oh right. You know that's why they don't have the holes like the nega senshi, right? Cuz they're like youma in cute little human suits?"
She sounded like she got some of the chipper back and went back to drinking and gorging on fries.
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Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 7:33 am
"Well... some of those Youma seem to have gotten a bit stronger. One of the things Dipwad mentioned was "Prince" Remarque. I dunno if he's just decided to crown himself or if he has legitimately sprouted giant a** wings, but there you have it." He grimaced. Polaris and Iris huh? Limited options there. The Negaverse had more top rankers than the Senshi did apparently, which made him wonder why. He didn't know enough about Senshi to even hazard a guess what caused them to suddenly become that powerful. "Cats I can handle." He noted, jokingly. "Well... normal cats are easy. Guardian cats are probably a bit more hit or miss." He thought of Dahlia, who he hadn't seen in a while, her unusual contrast of bedroom voice and cat body. Just like there was a sharp contrast between Avior's idea of the DMC and their reality. It was a real information game this, no wonder a diligent note taker like Zink had gotten ahead. HMPH. "Between Avior and Media, the senshi really have me wondering how they manage to hang on at all. I mean hell, my leathers actually say Nega and she pulled almost the same "lets be friends" thing. Is anyone telling these dumb kids what they're up against? Hell, I got a better idea of what I was in for and I got told about Jack all, so the fact they're going into this with even less clue is pretty impressive."
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Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 4:30 pm
Zia was clearly getting more tipsy by the second. Or at the very least more giggly since she was laughing quietly to herself as she drank and listened to him.
But something managed to sink in to her brain and it was enough to stop her from talking about ********* or Medea or the nature of incompetent senshi. And she loved complaining about incompetent senshi.
Instead, she set her glass down and stared at Realgar like he'd just stabbed her in the heart. "...W-what?"
She didn't have a face to go with his name, but boy did she have that name. That was a Dark Mirror Court captain, but worse, he was the one who took Orpheus from her. Or at least pulled him a little farther away from her with the forcible upgrading.
And he was a prince?
"He replaced her," She ended up whispering in a murmuring whine. "He was her captain and she left and he replaced her."
She had barely had time to celebrate the fact Ares had abandoned her court and already the leadership filled the void. An overwhelming wave of hopelessness and futility hit her like a wall. First her head hit the table and she covered it with her arms, desperately trying to get a grip in her clouded state of mind.
It took a long moment before she lifted it and revealed she'd been crying. She'd been crying a lot lately. She didn't like that. And especially now with the sudden relapse into heavy dread she desperately wanted to go back in time and stop herself at whatever point she decided to be more human and care about things again.
"I..." She exhaled out and stopped, shaking her head as she tried to think. "I need to... I can't breathe in here, I need to get outside."
Unfortunately all the drinking of the night made storming off on her own an impossibility and she managed the feat of standing up before she needed to rest a hand against the wall and steady herself, which turned into leaning against the wall and covering her face, or pinching the bridge of her nose to vainly try to relieve the feeling that her brain was kicking against the back of her eyes.
"I want to go hom--" she only barely stopped herself from completing that wholly depressing sentence. She wasn't allowed at home, she didn't really have one right now.
Kicked lower than she'd been in ages and didn't even have a place to go hide and lick her wounds.
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Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 5:16 pm
Realgar didn't have anything to say to even try and hold back the weighted, awkward silence that fell over them in that crushing revelation. He hadn't meant it that way. He'd just meant to give her more information, stuff she could use, in this vast game of information collection. She'd been kicked out by her s**t-heeled ex, he couldn't take her there. She didn't know his civilian identity... he wasn't sure he could spot her a hotel... "Let me get the bill, then I'll come back and you can take my arm. Let's take this one step at a time, ok?" He reached across the table to offer her his hand, speaking quietly and as reassuringly as he could manage. He wanted to apologize, but how did you apologize for something that was someone else's, or something else's, doing? He couldn't just let her crash in the park... even in a normal city he couldn't do it. Wait... cell phone. He could try and get her cell phone, there had to be someone in contacts he could call... And if nothing else worked he'd deal with the fall out of bringing her home to meet the ki... er... cats. "Can you hang on for that long? Just so I can get the bill."
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Posted: Mon Oct 21, 2013 9:33 pm
In a context other than her personal one, Zia might've taken the shred of information and run off to celebrate some more, sort of like she did when she got Zink's stats down. But this was different. It was too personal and she wasn't equipped to handle it.
All Realgar got was a mumbled 'no', but what was she going to do? Leave? She could barely walk. She gave him a light shove to go do whatever he needed to do and obediently waited for him to pick up the tab while desperately trying to pull together enough thoughts to string together a way out of this night.
Where had she been staying before? She realized the obvious question to herself. She was couch surfing at Chester's, but that little glimmer of hope was erased instantly. Yes, being carried back to a knight's place by a negaverse captain was a fantastic idea, especially when it was a knight who saw red whenever an officer crossed his path.
But that hopelessness felt like it was choking her. What was the point, anyway? Why wait? What was she waiting for?
After a second to swallow the nausea and let the dizziness subside, she found she was still somewhat capable of standing, even if a little wobbly on her heels.
She grabbed her phone off the table and dug some cash out of her purse, not even bothering to count it, and rudely set it down as she passed Realgar attempting to pay the bill and only offered a bitter, "Keep the change," before picking up her pace and pushing out the door.
She would just walk. Er... somewhere." She hadn't gotten that far in her head yet.
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Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 6:30 am
"Zee? Damnit..." Well this was going just fantastically well. "I got this..." He sighed at the cashier, hastilly checking the amount that had just been tossed down to make sure everything was covered before chasing after her. "Wait up, blast it!" He called, striding after the wobbly woman. "Stop, listen to me." He demanded, though he was half sure it was only going to make her dig in her heels and attempt something stubborn. He was pretty sure he'd have done the same. "Zee you can't just storm off right now. Well you can, but I'm asking you not to. Is there someplace you know? Someone I should call?" He hated to ask, he was afraid she'd feel worse, but he had to ask.
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Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 7:20 am
Zia stopped, if only because that was physically more in her grasp of doing than pushing on. She tried to look angry, even though her face was already tinged with red flush and tear streaks. Angry, at least, didn't seem as weak as sad or depressed or hopeless.
"Call someone?" She echoed like it was a riddle and then scoffed at the concept. "Who? My family hates me, the guy I've been living with for the last year calls me a whore every other sentence and my friends are a mix of unavailable, too judgemental, or just..." Just a result of systematically pushing them away for one reason or another.
She slid out of her heels and picked them up, finding staying upright much easier with a flat foundation on the ground. "I'll just walk to a hotel or something," she decided before she started taking steps again. "Maybe the universe will have the mercy to let me get hit by a car. Or something."
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Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 7:38 am
********. Realgar couldn't help but feel a little hopeless himself listening to her, falling into step and offering her his arm. "Look, I... know someplace you can crash. No strings attached." He offered. "I don't have a lot of people I call friends right now and I really don't want one of them to get picked off by an idiot driver or an even bigger idiot youma or... something." "If you'd prefer a hotel that's fine, but this will save you a few bucks, and Asshat can't find you even if he checks your friends list. Either way, let me drive you, ok?" He wasn't sure her ex would do that, but you just... didn't always know with people. In this city, he was kind of prepared for the worst option to always be the one that would happen.
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Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 8:03 am
Zia stopped and ended up laughing. Not a happy laugh, but some bitter, sarcastic cackle punctuated by a sob. "Right. I'm totally worried about him."
She threw one arm out to the city. "Super powered terrorists with the maturity of teenagers and you think I'm worried about a some nineteen year old punk with anger issues? I just... I..." She shook her head. "I just thought... She's gone so I thought... Maybe that whole diseased infection that passes for a senshi court might actually hurt for once. But they just rush to fill in the wound with more of the same. They have all this power and potential and I am just..."
She had made a sincere effort to keep tears at bay, and had a nauseating headache as a result. And now the tears came back too. "They can do whatever the ******** they want. They'll never pay for what they did, they'll always be on top of the food chain. And I'm just always going to be weak and usless and here to be toyed with and used by someone destiny favored more whenever they want."
Everything was swimming in her vision as she forcibly tried to rub away traces of tear streaks with her fist. "Nothing matters. There's no point. There's no happy ending and justice never wins. There's no point to anything."
And as if she wasn't disgusted enough with her own weakness, she wobbled forward and took his arm, just to avoid faceplanting on the ground, and slumped against him. "I just want to sleep," She murmured, but at this point she was just rambling as thoughts came into her head.
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Posted: Tue Oct 22, 2013 10:04 am
He wanted to say that everything would work out, that he'd complete his change of sides, that he would make it his business to seek out justice against the Dark Moon Court on her behalf, but even to a drunk woman he couldn't bring himself to make promises he might yet forget, or be unable to actually complete. He couldn't even really promise that he'd live more than a week past Uncorruption. He couldn't even promise her an day. An hour. He just couldn't. He could only promise her someplace safe for the night. "Let's get you to bed then. I can take you someplace safe." Carneli T-th-th-that's all folks?
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