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 Posted: Tue Dec 24, 2013 11:16 pm
Her legs ached for her to remain stationary, to simply lean against the conveyor and reclaim what little energy still ebbed lethargically through her body, but Leda couldn't afford that luxury anymore. The officer that saved her stirred slowly, pulling himself to his feet in a haphazard endeavor that consistently ended in failure, but he repeated the process with such devotion that Leda could not wrench her eyes off of him. Instead the Steam Senshi rose to her own shaky, amorphous feet with the help of the raised conveyor. "Please..." She started, without knowing whether she pleaded or offered a polite response to his initial question.
But as she edged along the conveyor, not quite trusting enough to let go of her safety support, the answer soon became clear. The Negaverse officer approached her with unreadable intent - with all her experience as a target of their misgivings, Leda found this more worrying and disconcerting than any moment she spent under direct attack. He hadn't drawn his weapon - in fact, it looked as though he was every bit as spent as she was. But with the manner in which he approached... Leda visibly shuddered, and continued sidling along the belt in hopes of reaching some way out - even if it meant breaking through a window.
The man raised his voice, and she found herself shrinking against the belt with every rising, repeated phrase. She trembled, and whimpered aloud while he continued that disturbingly slow pursuit, but even with the help of her crutch, she continued to lose ground to him. Now that she visibly cowered in recognition of his approach, her legs slowed to a sluggish pace and she found herself drifting to the times when she dreamt of running through molasses while varying nightmare creatures hunted her with unnerving speed.
The captain was no bogeyman - he was something worse.
But he finally seized her, and Leda instinctively raised her arms to bar her chest from him. She audibly yelped in response to his words, and flinched away from his features, as if he intended to spit on her. Her face contorted into a desperate wince while she tried to shy away from his onslaught of senseless repetition. Roses in the snow... Fallen petals pooling out toward faceless admirers. Mink coats frozen into sticky ichor, and expensive sandals submerged in their own shallow graves. He screamed into her ear, and wilted petals touched her cheek.
Spit. Desperate words. Seething hate. Regret. Shame. Dismay. Vociferous retaliation. She didn't know what it was. It didn't matter. Finally she mustered what shaky resolve she still possessed, and flattened her hands onto his chest with a solid push, largely fueled by her own desperation. "Get away from me!" She cried out in a mix of terror and revulsion. Tears filled her eyes, and she glared at his hazy visage before continuing her backpedal toward the door. She leaned forward as she spoke in some meager attempt to sharpen her words. "Something's wrong with you! You killed that poor woman, and I tried to help you!" Instantly she felt disgusted with herself - irrevocably dirtied by preserving the life of a murderer. Someone who should've faced his own act through the building mob. "And you teleported us here just to kill me too? You monster!" Her voice quaked with her final damnation of the officer, and the brimming anger fueling her words provided enough energy to ready a fist should he try to approach once more.
"I always tried to give you guys the benefit of the doubt, but now I realize I was stupidly naive! I thought that maybe, just maybe, you guys wanted to protect other people too, just to preserve life, but you've proven that you'll kill anyone who crosses your path, for no ******** reason!" Rose petals of innocence, cast onto the filmy floor. An homage to the days when the sun shone brighter on cold winter nights. The snow proved bedazzling in its brilliant gleam, but it numbed the hand that touched it. Her legs still quaked, though anger replaced the previous cause.
Leda never thought it would come to this point. "You stay away from me! You stay away or I'll let everyone know that you killed that poor old woman! I'll let them know that you threw her off the building, and that I regret saving you from suffering the same fate!" Finally she raised an arm to wipe away the tears that formed a steady stream down her face, and in turn she smudged a great filmy streak across her cheek. Green eyes settled on her adversary in tired, ebbing anger. "If corruption doesn't kill you, I hope the guilt does..." After turning her back on the officer, she approached the door with what little energy she still possessed after that outburst.chibigingi leda's never sworn before in her life, wtf buddy!
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Posted: Sat Dec 28, 2013 5:00 pm
Buddingtonite never fooled himself into thinking that he was a strong individual- in an arm wrestling contest with his brother, or anyone, really, he always lost and it had little to do with his desire to let them win to boost their confidence and perhaps gain their affections. Even with the strength granted to him from the Negaverse, the senshi was successful in pushing him away, and added with her cry, it was enough to put the well wanted distance between them she desired, and Buddingtonite, unable to stand, fell to his knees and grew silent once more. With her shouts and her venomous words echoing in the building, how could he think to reply? How could he think to talk? He couldn't talk. He couldn't fight back.
Because she was right. Everything she said was right, wasn't it?
He could have tried to defend himself. He could have explained that he only intended to take Victoria's energy and then carry her back to her hotel. As despicable as a woman as she was, she was family. She was his mother, for all the good and the bad that entailed with that. For all the horrible things she had done to him, Daran, and his father, to everyone she ever met, she was still the woman that brought him into this world… and he had killed her. But there was a reason, but what reason could Buddingtonite give to the senshi? Who was she to judge? The thought was enough to cause the tiniest of flames within his heart, and that alone should have given him the strength and fuel he needed to bring her down to reality. She had an equal part in Victoria Moreau's death. She, a senshi who claimed to be good and savior to the people, failed to save her. She had chosen to save the Negaverse officer but did nothing to save the victim! She had allowed Victoria to fall to her death...
But then the senshi brought about the threat of blackmail to the plate, and this confused Buddingtonite. Why? Why would she stay silent? Why wouldn't she tell everyone what had happened? It would have exposed the Negaverse in the public's eyes and all of Osumilite's hard work and those that assisted him would have crumbled before his eyes, and he'd be the one to blame. Yet, she was offering a chance that she'd keep quiet, and the only one that could possibly benefit from that was himself. It was confusing… too confusing.
Her final words only drove the stake deeper, and without moving towards her, without striking against her, he called to her softly. He didn't look at her to see if she stopped or even if she had heard him, but that didn't stop the words from escaping his lips, as any form of control he once had was simply gone. He spoke words he never imagined he'd hear himself saying, but with no one there to hear him besides the one he saved without knowing why, what did he have to lose? "Why… don't you just kill me then? Rid this world of the monster, Buddingtonite?"
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Posted: Mon Dec 30, 2013 9:26 pm
Leda froze in the doorway upon hearing the officer's soft words. He sounded every bit as broken as she felt - as the skull of the older woman who lay lifeless in the snow. Red and white, against blue sky. A long silence followed, where she balled her fists to stymie the quaking just enough to feign calm nerves. She closed her eyes; her head pounded. Her eyelids felt heavy. Her legs shivered and shook with some combination of too-hot and too-cold. "Because I'm not like you." The words came in the same soft tones of her antagonist. Like petals, she remembered thinking.
Like buds closed shut for the night.
Too tired to stand on her own, Leda leaned against the doorframe heavily. Her hip rested against the rusted metal bar as her legs stiffened to continue supporting her weight. She remembered looking at her feet, wondering when the blood stains would appear. Darkened stains flourished on her brown heels, but she never figured out their origin. "I wouldn't kill you. I wouldn't even say that it's so you can live with the guilt of killing that poor woman. This war... All it's doing is killing everyone involved. If I kill you, then the war won. If I let you live, then maybe it's a stalemate for a little while longer. I know it's not going to stop the death. It won't stop the suffering. It won't stop worried parents from wondering where their kids disappear to, and it won't stop husbands or wives from cringing whenever they see a new bruise or black eye on their loved one. I guess it's just stupid sentimentality." She swallowed hard; her tongue hitched in her throat like sticky molasses.
She once had an eyeshadow called Lost. She always paired it with Shattered. Only now did she realize the bitter significance in those choices. Feeling colors, maybe. "There's bound to be someone who loves you. Dead or alive, someone loves you, whoever Buddingtonite is without the ugly hat and the weird coat. If I kill you, all I'm doing is hurting them too, and what if they're someone I know? What if you're someone I know? It's never worth killing somebody, no matter what they did. Not with stakes like these." Leda liked to think that Ida and Pasiphae would've supported her decision, that they'd stand by her for allowing this agent to keep going.
"You'll come through this in your own way, and so will I. I have to believe that." Shattered and Lost. Red, white, and blue. Stains on her shoe. "But if corruption demands that you kill people, that you hurt them and drain them and ruin their lives, then what is it doing to the people you love? If you're draining a stranger, then what comes next? What price are you willing to pay to appease the Negaverse? Because she wouldn't have died tonight if you didn't try to drain her." Her voice petered out to a volume barely above a whisper before she finished her sentence. Her body defaulted to autopilot, and her pained throat, likely swollen from shock and incredulity, balked at the chance of a continued lecture.
Tired green eyes cast toward her feet once more, and she breathed a sigh in an attempt to disperse the growing knot of self-doubt and uncertainty. What if he forced her hand? Could she truly go through with explaining the entirety of the situation to anyone who would listen? Could she live with implicating herself in an older woman's death? She didn't know. She didn't want to think about it.
Her eyes hurt, and she wanted to go home before the blood dried.
Waking daylight was only a step away.
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Posted: Wed Jan 01, 2014 3:30 pm
Because I'm not like you.
Was that it? Was it really that simple of an explanation? She, who knew him to be a murderer, a predator, a monster, was willing to let him live so that she would not be brought down to his level. She, who failed to save Victoria from the predator she saw before him, who had just as much a hand in that woman's death as he did for getting her involved, didn't want to get her hands dirty? Because she wasn't like him?
Leda was speaking, but Buddingtonite was having trouble hearing her. Was it the distance between them? Or was it the maelstrom of thoughts swirling faster and faster in the small confines of his skull that drowned her out? He caught bits and pieces, but whatever stuck wouldn't stick for long, and yet, all he could think about was the woman that laid dead in the snow halfway across the city. The stupid, foolish woman that had thrown insults and snow at him when all he asked of her was to stay quiet, the same woman that chose the wrong moment to grow a spine, to assault her assailant with her fists rather than her tongue or wallet. That's why he picked her. Because she wouldn't have fought back. She wasn't suppose to fight back.
Why did she fight back? Why did she act so vehemently against him? Had the senshi not interfered, Buddingtonite could have taken her energy and the woman wouldn't have been the wiser! Had Leda never shown up and fought with him, Victoria Moreau would have never found the courage to strike back…
"Someone… that loves me?" Buddingtonite spoke the words, but they were so soft that they might not have been worth speaking at all. His mind may have been churning with a million thoughts a second but whatever stuck, for however short they clung, it stuck nevertheless, and of all the things that Leda said that broke through, it would figure that'd have to be it. Maybe it was the irony of the situation that he had killed his own blood, or maybe it was the insult to his hat, but either way, it was enough to penetrate his defenses and force him to speak. "After this… after they know of this… who would love me? Who would dare love someone…"
Who's killed their own mother?
What would his father think? Would would Daran think? Was Daran at her side now, swearing revenge? His head hurt. His mind wanted so desperately to shut down, but something kept him awake, thinking, suddenly aware. Was it the senshi's doing? Why was she still talking? Why couldn't she just shut up and leave him alone? What was she going on about now?
If corruption demands that you kill people, that you hurt them and drain them and ruin their lives…
Corruption. The word… terrified him, even when it shouldn't have. He had willingly joined the Negaverse- he knew what they were capable of. He knew what they were willing to do. One officer tried to kill him, without thought or care of letting him join or defend himself. Corruption… he allowed Chaos into his body to save himself, and yet, here he was, sitting on the ground of an abandoned factory, reeling from the very thing that drew him into this conflict.
This was corruption's fault, then. This was Zinkenite's fault, for granting him request. This was Serpentine's fault for not trying to talk him out of it, when he knew exactly who he was. This was the Negaverse' doing! Not his! They were the ones that demanded an energy quota, they were the ones that pushed him to using his own mother… they were the ones that killed Victoria Moreau, not him!
This wasn't his fault. It was a relief, if only a hollow one. Even if it was the Negaverse's fault, that didn't change the fact that Victoria Moreau was dead…
His strength left him and he crumbled back on the floor, burying his head in his arms and not caring if the poisonous dust decorated his body and the walls of his lungs. Sunlight may have been creeping in over the horizon, but this flower wouldn't bloom in its warmth. How could it when all of its pedals wilted away and melted with the blood stained snow that haloed Victoria Moreau?Strickenized Calling this a wrap… thank you so much for the RP!
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