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 Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2014 8:55 am
"Oh my God," Hvergelmir said with enthusiastic certainty, "you have no idea. I've actually fallen on my butt in battles more times than I even want to tell you. It's not even funny, except it is, a little." She waved a hand dismissively. "Most people tend to think -- well, for obvious reasons -- that being a knight's all about fighting and all that. Even if I was good at talking, which is kind of debatable, most people still just want to know if I can throw a decent right hook or not. The answer, by the way, is no, according to my personal trainer." Hvergelmir folded her hands behind her back, feet straying back and forth a little. "I've been a squire for about three months, almost," she said, counting back to Mistral. It still felt painfully recent. "Before that, I was a page for -- more than a year. One day, I ran into some youma and things weren't looking too hot, and suddenly a distaff's floating in the air in front of me -- and bam, the minute I touched it, here I was." Keeping to a casual tit-for-tat, she came back with, "And how about you? How'd you wind up with the Negaverse?"
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Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2014 1:05 pm
Astrophyllite shook her head in disbelief. That couldn't be right! Hvergelmir was smart and pretty and perfect, practically. She'd be more perfect if she were filled with Chaos,but getting corrupted hurt a lot and Astrophyllite didn't want to put anyone else through that if they weren't interested. Some people liked being imperfect! Go figure. "So it just - it just appeared?" she asked, a bit uncertainly. Knights could just appear out of thin air? Well, that was kind of weird, and definitely magical! Maybe it was a portkey kind of thing. Or... who knew, really. Astrophyllite almost certainly didn't. She'd been asked a question, though, and so Astrophyllite turned her attention to that topic at hand. "Um, kind of accidentally," she said. "I was taking out the trash after dinner and Zinkenite and Bischofite were in the alley being all mad at each other, and Zinkenite was going to kill me for overhearing but I begged him not to and then he made me strong and perfect and gave me to Bischofite so that I'd be his problem to deal with and he couldn't be all up in Zinkenite's business anymore." There were contradictions in that statement that she was full aware of. But hey, maybe it had been fate that she'd been in the alley that night! Blessings in disguise were still blessings.
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Posted: Tue Sep 30, 2014 6:53 pm
Beautiful and perfect and strong. That was a line straight out of Avalon's playbook, and Astrophyllite kept repeating it in rehashed fragments. What this young lieutenant seemed to want most was guidance -- people whose word she could trust, people who could tell her things in absolutes and be right about them. Little wonder, for someone so young. Hvergelmir hoped, for her sake, that Astrophyllite's attachment to Chaos really did turn out to boil down to things like that. "Yikes," she said. "Well, I'm sorry you got dragged into all this mess. I hope . . . " She paused. "I hope they don't ask you to do a lot of bad stuff."
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Posted: Thu Oct 02, 2014 7:51 pm
Astrophyllite looked around uncertainly, and then she scooted a little bit closer to Hvergelmir. She had done a bad thing, Melanite had said so! And she was doing better now, but she felt like she needed to confess to this nice squire lady. She could never tell the priest at confessional about what she did at night, and it weigh heavily on her conscience. "When I first got started," she said quietly, "Everyone said to take energy from homeless people who weren't contributing to society any, but then I showed Melanite how we're supposed to get energy for our quotas, and he said I was taking life force from people who didn't have anything else and that was wrong. I feel really bad! I didn't know that they couldn't get the energy back just by sleeping or, like, eating a donut! I took little pieces of people's lives!" Well, she was still taking parts of their lives, but from people who could spare it. "Melanite says I should only take from people who can spare the energy. Rich people who've got other things going for them. That's okay, right? I... I don't know if that's any better. I don't wanna be taking parts of people's lives that they can't get back! But we need the energy so that we can protect the earth! They've all gotta pay their taxes." Being an officer of intergalactic law was hard sometimes.
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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 8:19 am
Melanite, rank unknown. Another name to stow in one of the carefully kept boxes of her memory, alongside the other new one -- Natron, a general. Another one who seemed to maintain standards of some kind. Another potential positive influence for Astrophyllite? But even he wasn't advocating not taking energy -- just taking it from people who had wealth in other ways. And even she could sense that that was still wrong. "I can't say what you do or don't need to wage your war," she said, as gently -- as carefully -- as sympathetic-soundingly as she could. "Wars are complicated, terrible affairs, and I'd just as soon see this one resolved without taking energy, or starseeds, or shedding blood on either side. But other people will feel differently, and some of them will probably try to hurt you if you don't behave how they want you to. But you're still figuring things out, I think, right? And it's okay to make some mistakes while you're still working stuff out, as long as you don't give up on trying to be better." She was afraid to push too hard, so soon. But Astrophyllite seemed to unsure already . . . "But remember -- life isn't taxable. You have a right to be free, and to live. Your life is yours, you don't owe anyone for the right to keep it -- not even the Negaverse."
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Posted: Fri Oct 03, 2014 6:01 pm
Astrophyllite frowned. She'd been following Hvergelmir's line of thought for the most part, but the bit about life not being taxable didn't quite land right with her. That went against her earliest lessons with the Negaverse! We protect them, so they've got to pay us back. And yeah, she'd taken a starseed or two, but they were from bad people who were trying to hurt her bad... "I thought everyone had to chip in and do their part," she said, trying to get her head around Hvergelmir's claims to the contrary. She was worthless without the Negaverse, thought Astrophyllite desperately. Even if she didn't go to Boston with Trixilite, the Negaverse had already made her so much more than she was. It had given her purpose! It had given her power! "If I don't keep meeting my quotas," she said nervously - even the suggestion was sacrilege - "then I'll be in trouble, and when you get in trouble, they turn you into a monster, or they take away your powers, and if they take away my powers, I'll be weak again. I know that it's bad to steal from people, even people who can afford to be stolen from, but I don't want to be weak."
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Posted: Sat Oct 04, 2014 7:01 pm
There were a lot of things wrong with the impression of things that Astrophyllite seemed to have. Unfortunately, there were some right things in there, too. Whatever her misgivings, if she didn't do her work for the Negaverse, they'd certainly take it out of her hide. Hvergelmir frowned, looking at the other girl sympathetically. "There's a balance somewhere, between what's okay to do because other people might hurt you and what isn't. No one can say for sure what that line is -- it's not my place to tell you. It's... it's okay to be scared, you know? It's okay to want to live -- your life is worth preserving. Right and wrong are actually so hard to work out that the world still can't agree on them."
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Posted: Sun Oct 05, 2014 8:51 pm
Astrophyllite nodded carefully, trying to emulate some of Hvergelmir's grace. "I'll try to find that balance," she said, and reflected on her total failure to do so thus far. Every time she thought she'd found some kind of equilibrium, some new information was revealed to her and the world spun out of control once more. "I think I'd better be heading home," she said quietly. "Miss Hvergelmir? Can I talk to you again sometime? About finding balance? You seem like you're really good at it."
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Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 10:10 am
'Miss Hvergelmir' . . . this dress really does have an effect on people, I guess. People keep treating me like they have to be on their best manners."You don't have to call me 'miss,'" she assured the lieutenant. "Just Hvergelmir -- or Hver, if you want, or any other name you like. And if you want to talk again, you can always find me at North End Park on Wednesdays, Fridays, and Sundays at night. We can talk about anything you want." She looked off into the night, wondering. "Will you be okay to get home? Do you want to call someone?"
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Posted: Mon Oct 06, 2014 10:37 am
Calling for help would mean admitting she'd had a rough night on the job, and Astrophyllite didn't want to bother Kerberos or Melanite, or god forbid Natron with that information. "No," she said carefully. "I can make it myself." As long as she didn't see that very angry senshi again - and she didn't think she would. "I'll come find you, Miss Hvergelmir," she added brightly. It just felt weird to call her anything else! The squire was practically old enough to be a teacher. She was an adult and everything! "Good night." She turned and hurried away, and sort of wished she knew how to teleport the way captains and generals did. Because man, that would be so cool!
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