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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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 Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:34 pm
Hey, it was recognized! Viatrix put her hands on her hips and grinned. Must've been close enough if it was recognized as the right lingo– “No problem bro!” Michelangelo– “Yeah that's Abzu, he's talking to Cybele over there,” confirmed Viatrix, freely, as Mystras kept filling in the blanks for what she did remember.
Sad plant hair? Viatrix had heard Michelangelo vent about him to both Richard and Luke, but she hadn't met him, herself. Sounded like she was likely due to. She might need to add that to the list. Later–
Okay, so being in the Negaverse got to be more like a fever dream for her. That was good! That was honestly the result Viatrix wanted for most people. They shouldn't have to give up most of their lives because they wanted to leave that garbage place that tried to steal their soul. “Sounds like you maintained a lot of the important pieces honestly.”
Which was good. That was what had both the siblings happy and Abzu and Cybele looking pretty content. Encke, she wasn't so sure of, but … Encke was their own can of worms.
Encke rubbed his neck when it was mentioned it had been a while. It had, hadn't it? He wasn't trying to avoid anyone, not on purpose. “It has,” came the quiet confirmation, even as Abzu quirked a brow at him. Was he– “Think I've gotten a lot of my socialite moments out when I've been a civilian, honestly.”
“What, feeling good about the interview?”
Encke swatted at a cackling Abzu. “Not the first time I've been on TV eh?” Abzu quirked a brow at him as he cleared his throat. “Anyway. Yeah, no. We should catch up. Not sure how much senshi wise exciting I have to say, though–” his voice cut for a brief moment when Pendour's hand brushed his shoulder.
And then Pendour's eyes met Encke's when she looked to him. His eyes looked bright. They might have betrayed the fact that he had just about had another panic episode in front of all of them.
He was fine.
She was happy. Pendour's family was safe.
“Thank you,” confirmed Encke, looking to Cybele. “You saved … Mystras.”
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Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:46 pm
Oh, that was Michelangelo, wasn’t it? Mystras could’ve sworn that he’d looked entirely different few seconds ago.
“Michel!” she called out. “Abzu!” She pointed to herself with two thumbs. “Look at me! I’m not in a cult! I’m a Jupiter knight!” Of course everyone had watched it happen, but with everything he’d been doing for her, it felt extra important to show off the results to him once Sadie had backed off and everyone could see her outfit. Although, with all the commotion, she wouldn’t have minded having a mirror so that she could see.
“...And now it’s all hitting me,” she said. “I’m sitting down now. Okay.” With a tired exhale, she sat cross-legged right on the forest floor. A firefly fluttered up to her face. She looked at it curiously.
“I’ll watch your interview,” said Cybele, tilting her head with curiosity from the way Encke was reacting to Abzu, but not about to poke fun. “There’s more to life than just the war. I wouldn’t mind hearing about those things, too.” She wondered what it was that he was being interviewed for, exactly.
“If you want to see something people might not expect, coming from the Huntress Princess,” she paused for a moment, her smile edging towards the side, “I can show you some of my modeling photos.”
She was more proud of her theater performances, honestly, but those were more sporadic and harder to just show to someone on a whim. Video didn’t do it justice.
“And of course,” she told Sadie, and Encke.
Sadie was happy to let the others do most of the talking in the buzz of the immediate aftermath. She put her hand into Encke’s again, went back to rubbing his knuckles, but more out of habit than anxiety. He felt warm. Maybe he didn’t look completely comfortable, but he didn’t seem like he was spiraling.
“It wasn’t bad,” she told him. “The interview, I mean.”
She glanced over her shoulder. “Also, we might need to get Mystras.”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:46 pm
“You look fierce!” shouted Abzu across the way, shooting her a grin. “Jupiter suits you I think!”
The outfit honestly looked really good on Mystras. He'd wax poetic about all the ways, but he figured that Sadie would probably rather him pass over that part. Telling her that she looked good, though? That was certainly on the table–
Encke's expression was sheepish, and to some degree, it was hard to tell if it was a practiced sheepish or a legitimate sheepishness– “Ah, thank you. Honestly, I'm not as used to later night appearances-” which probably had something to do with his surprise even if most of those games were legitimately just silly-
Modeling? That caught Abzu's attention, too, admittedly, though perhaps he was expecting it a bit more from the huntress princess than she thought people would expect it from her- “I bet those shoots look fierce too, honestly.” Might that be a way to promote more purifications? Knight photoshoots-
Encke, for their part, held onto Pendour's hand and squeezed it gently in turn. “I’d be curious.” His expression was still sheepish, but there was a hint of pride in the addition of, “I think I'm doing pretty well for myself on the big screen, though–”
“Pretty well!” shouted Viatrix, from where she was already bending in front of Mystras, offering an icy cloth to pat her on the neck to cool her down. “That's all you got!”
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Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:48 pm
Mystras did not exactly feel fierce anymore, sitting down with Viatrix patting at her with a damp cloth, but she managed to shoot Abzu a pair of finger guns anyway.
“It’s nothing so famous,” she said, “But I did make it onto the cover of one of those historical romance novels.” The book itself was terribly written, although Cybele had felt obligated to read all the way through it, but the cover made her look interesting and mysterious enough that she could live with it, and the photoshoot had been fun.
“And I do some theater. Workshops. Shows. Still, if you’re on the big screen, you’re doing far better than me.” There were people who said that film acting didn’t take as much discipline, but Cybele had never seen a need to get caught in all that. It took skill and hard work. She knew that.
While she was talking, she was making quick work of the food and water.
Pendour squeezed Encke’s hand again, this time trying to get him to stop being too social.
“I think we need to, um, get everyone some rest,” she said, looking to Abzu, too, and Cybele. Mystras was clearly crashing, and she could see the way that Cybele looked a little pale under the smile she was putting on for the crowd.
“Right,” said Cybele, getting to her feet again. “Let’s circle back up.”
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:53 pm
Encke couldn't quite help the sheepish expression cropping back up again when she reinforced the so famous. He wanted to say it wasn't that big of a deal. And it wasn't! … Well. To him. And to the fact that he was used to comparing himself to people like Diego Luna–
Abzu shot Mystras the finger guns back. Maybe she didn't feel fierce now, but she was. To be willing to embrace such a huge change in her life was a huge deal, even if she had her sister supporting her through it. That was big!
He was going to make sure she knew that.
“All of those are huge, too,” Encke offered, to Cybele, as Pendour tried to encourage them to stop chattering so much. Was it nerves, eagerness to talk about something else, to talk about their interest? It was hard to say. Still–
“Maybe once everyone is rested?”
“Plenty of time for that, Encke.” Abzu slapped him on the back as he moved to circle up with Cybele. “Go support Mystras up, though? You're way stronger than me.”
“Ah, right–”
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Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:54 pm
“I told you, I can get you plenty strong if you want,” said Mystras to Abzu, pushing herself up to her own feet. She did feel a little like she’d gotten hit by a truck, but she could still walk and stuff, until she found something sufficiently soft to collapse on for the next several hours. “Tuba workouts. Regular workouts. Yoga? You got this, bro.”
Pendour walked over to take her sister’s hand, smiling gently to see that for everything that had shifted in the last few minutes, the things that made Mystras herself hadn’t changed a bit. “Yoga’s nice, sometimes,” she said. “Even I like that one.”
“We’ll have time,” Cybele said, pulling herself to her own feet and sending her trash off to subspace. Victories against Chaos like this, however small, made her hopeful that there might be a little more time to just talk about simple things like that.
“For now, we’re ready?”
Once everyone was circled, she closed her eyes shut for a moment, and the deep forest faded away to the park where they’d started the evening. As soon as their feet touched the ground, Cybele’s Princess form shifted back to the Eternal.
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Codebreaking Conversationalist
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Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:54 pm
And Viatrix was back to being a cat as if she was never a humanoid in the first place.
“Mm. I wanna go back to having legs.” Unfair. When Encke shot her a glance, she scrunched her cat nose up at him and grumbled, “you know what I mean. Not these four tiny legs. Two longer ones. I can get so much less done this way–”
“Everyone will snuggle you that way, though,” noted Abzu, who quickly found himself supporting more weight than he had been. … Not by much, though. He could carry around not even ten pounds. Would this count as enough of an exercise routine-
“Then you can first!!”
Encke rolled their eyes, glancing toward Cybele. “You good to make it back?” The Purification had actually worked, which meant that it had no doubt taken a lot out of her. A protein bar and some water would work temporarily but would it work long enough to get her home-
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Posted: Thu Aug 15, 2024 8:56 pm
“I’ll snuggle you no matter what you look like, Viatrix,” said Sadie, gently, and everyone should know that was a threat that they were more than willing to follow through on. They were more than ready to sit around and hold some people, now that the tension from the last few days was released and replaced by a heavy but satisfied tiredness.
“I will to, but I have to admit you look really fuzzy like that,” said Mystras, leaning more heavily on Sadie than she might have under other circumstances. She’d make it, but it was time to get some snacks and then sleep.
“I’ll be fine,” said Cybele, thinking that she could always call an Uber or something if it came down to that. She thought she would be fine to walk, though, and then just take it easy for the day after, letting her own loved ones take care of her a bit.
“Take care, all right?”
“We will,” said Sadie, and there was a lightness to the way that they all walked as they went their separate ways.
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