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 Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 9:59 pm
Gunn caught the punch, threw Megiddo’s hand aside and got up in her face. Which would be a perfect opportunity, if the page reacted fast enough to make a substantial hit happen, but Gunn doubted it. She hooked Megiddo’s feet out from under her again, watched Megiddo’s back hit the ground with a solid thwump.
“You can do better than that,” she said, hopping backwards. “I thought you ‘almost killed’ a Negaverser.”
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:00 pm
Megiddo gritted her teeth. After falling once already, hitting the asphalt a second time the exact same way hardly made a difference: she felt sort of numb to it. The page pushed herself back up and took a few deep breaths as she watched Gunn hop backwards. Maybe, she thought, she shouldn’t have exaggerated quite so much about her exploits, but she had had that captain on the ropes as far as she was concerned. It was just that she’d had her pitcher-
And that gave her an idea. She’d sparred with Gunn with her weapon before, and after being flipped onto her back twice in three minutes, Megiddo thought it was more than time to give herself a leg up. “I did,” she replied. s**t, her ribs hurt. “But I didn’t do it with my ******** fists.”
She was a knight. The rules of combat were different for her than they were for senshi, and they always would be. Megiddo charged at Gunn, swinging her arm, calling her pitcher into her hand on the draw, and slamming the butt toward Gunn’s side. “Hyaah!” she shouted.
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:00 pm
Gunn saw it coming, but that didn’t mean she managed to dodge. She got her arms out of the way and took the brunt of the hit on her hip, which hurt, but not too badly that she fell. Still--Megiddo had met the basics of Gunn’s demand. And she was pleased that the page had stopped pussyfooting around and actually used her weapon without being specifically told to.
“Well, alright,” she said, and her tone was mild and that was all the approval Megiddo was gonna get. She reached out and pushed Megiddo back towards the fountain. “Take a seat, this might take a while.”
Just thinking about the brand on the back of her neck made the scarred skin tingle, as if reminding Gunn that it was there. She shuddered and pulled off her capelet, unclasping her flame-shaped brooch and turning away from Megiddo so the page could see the shiny white scar just over Gunn’s cervical vertebrae. “See that? A year before you realized senshi were a real thing, this brand was one of the most frightening things the Negaverse could see. It symbolized the Blood Moon Court, a group of senshi who were willing to do anything to see the Negaverse defeated.”
She pulled her capelet back on, clicked her brooch shut and settled herself on the edge of the fountain, her back as straight as a ruler. “It was run by Ares… and myself. Oh, there were others in the Inner Sanctum--our leading council--Zirconia, Birhan Isat, Laocoon. Gaia. But I was the first inducted, and I am the most powerful remnant of that Court.” Gunn arched an eyebrow at Megiddo, gestured vaguely. “Do you see where this is going?”
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:00 pm
Megiddo let out a little “Ha!” as her pitcher connected, pleased that she’d managed to land a hit, and that Gunn seemed at least mildly pleased that she’d done so. Well, alright, was faint praise, but, well, Megiddo was okay with that. Completely so. Practically vibrating with excitement, she sat beside the senshi, and watched Gunn intently as she took her caplet off and lifted her hair. The scar, a crescent moon, stood stark against her skin.
“Ares wasn’t always evil,” she said slowly, trying to grasp at what Gunn was suggesting. The page knew- she knew you could fall, although the details were vague. She’d been offered the option to switch sides enough that she knew it was possible. “You knew her before. You know how she became what she is.”
And what she was was an absolute nightmare hell-demon, so, uh.
Past that, Megiddo wasn’t sure she followed. “Sorry,” she said, “I’m not sure I know where this is going.” And she’d rather not pretend she did and wind up being made a fool of, because she sort of - well, at this point she rather expected Gunn to pull something like that.
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:00 pm
Gunn sighed. “Ares wasn’t always evil. She was always controlling, but… the White Moon I knew then was so disorganized, so utterly consumed with infighting. It hasn’t really changed, but it seemed worse to me, then, because I was alone. I didn’t know how to fight. Ares saved me.”
Thinking about all of that made her want to go to her comet. It was really looking a lot better, with a few months of tender loving care and backbreaking labor put into it. She still wasn’t sure if it’d ever be livable, but it was neater now than it was. “A recruit of ours died. Rota. I watched her die, and I couldn’t save her. So we decided to get revenge, Megiddo. We captured six Negaverse agents. We tortured them, learned their secrets, and we killed three of them.”
She shrugged. “It was monstrous of us to do that. We should have killed them cleanly. They’re murderers. There’s no redemption for them, but it didn’t have to end the way it did.”
Gunn was silent for a time, slouching for the first time in a long time, there on the rim of the fountain with the ribbons of her fuku trailing in the water behind her. “Because we were too weak to just get it over with, people died. We couldn’t see past our own pain at losing one of ours. One of the most horrific General-Queens ever, Tanzanite, came out of our lust for revenge.” She bit her thumbnail through the thin fabric of her glove. The streets before her were quiet and peaceful, empty of any youma that she could sense.
“And that’s why, when someone ******** interrupts your fight, you incapacitate them and go for the kill. If a civilian gets in the way, that’s too bad. Your priority isn’t saving that civilian, Megiddo, it’s saving the one after that and the one after that. Killing a Negaverser is taking a murderer off the streets and a pawn of Chaos off the board.
“Tanzanite, that flea-bitten whore, waged a one-woman war on Ares. She drove Ares insane. I really believe that, that Tanzanite just wanted to see when Ares would break. When Ares killed a civilian--I’ve never understood why--the Inner Sanctum of the Blood Moon Court intervened. We took her henshin pen, to give her time to cool down.”
The memory of Ares, upset, beautiful in her civilian form but outraged, fighting to keep her pen--that was something Gunn would not ever forget. She wasn’t sure she could forgive herself for what she viewed as her part in Ares’ meltdown, that she could ever overlook the possibility that Ares could have been saved even then.
“The next time I saw her, she was the Dark Mirror Queen. She corrupted most of the Blood Moon Court. Zirconia, Birhan Isat, that senshi of Echoes… maybe one or two others… me. That’s all that were left.”
Gunn exhaled, long, and slow. “And all of that because we didn’t just kill the bitches and get it over with. When you ******** around and let Negaversers get away, you plant the seeds for another Ares, whether you know it or not.”
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:01 pm
Megiddo nodded solemnly. She’d never known any of this, never even heard the hushed whispers with which most order-aligned combatants referred to the blood moon court, and it was fascinating but also horrifying. She’d known she shouldn’t have let that knight get in her way - she’d been taller than him. Stronger, maybe. She could have shoved him aside and finished braining that captain for what he did to the homeless man and she hadn’t and that was her failure to live with. “Right,” she said, after considering it for a while.
“Thank you,” she said, after a moment longer. “I know I’m still learning. Thank you for your patience. For teaching me. No one else has the patience like you do, to really teach me anything. I’m trying my best to figure it out, but-”
She flicked her pitcher away, back into whatever interdimensional pocket it hung out in when she wasn’t using it. “All I’ve really learned, besides what you’ve taught me, is silly parlor tricks.” And that was unacceptable. The negaverse knew how to kill, and she should know how, too. Megiddo balled her hands into fists against her legs, nails digging into the flesh of her palms. “I’ll get stronger, Gunn. I promise. I don’t want to let you down.”
She didn’t expect comfort or praise, but she wanted to speak her piece anyway. “Next time I come across one of them,” she said. “I’ll kill them. I won’t let anything get in my way. Not even if they beg me for mercy. I’ll turn them into a bloody streak.”
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Posted: Sat Mar 29, 2014 10:01 pm
“Talk to me when you’ve actually turned one of them into a bloody streak,” said Gunn, getting back up. She dusted off her hands, grabbed the base of the orange ribbons from her wing-bow and yanked them off--she left them on the ground, to get ground into the dirt or to vanish where-ever ribbons went after you henshined down. “I believe you will get stronger, or else I wouldn’t be wasting my time on you. Now get up. We’re going to go through that hold until you can break out of it.”
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