Welcome to Gaia! ::

Once upon a time, Irinei had shown paintings in European galleries, all white-washed walls and perfectly hung corners. He'd been a Name--a small name, but still a name, and worthy of notice--and now he was... not, and...

It was okay, really. Sure, these pop-up galleries didn't have the amenities he was used to, but there was a certain atmosphere to the pounding bass of whatever band was playing from the stereo. Something to be said for the lack of sterilized walls, too--it gave everything the proper context. And the location, in the basement of a co-ed's home, was certainly much safer than any real gallery for the kind of work being shown.

Art these days was as sterile as the halls it was shown in. Painters, sculptors, performance artists, they all refined and refined and refined until there was no meaning left. The Negaverse had cracked down on almost all modes of self-expression, to be sure; there was no art, no movies. He was familiar with the state of things from tales his parents had told him, but he had never thought he'd see this autocracy come to life. Not here. Not... anywhere. It had. Nothing he could do, except watch, and do what he could to look like he wasn't watching.

On the far wall, a shaky camcorder video played a six-second loop of a Negaverse Captain beating a senshi sympathizer in the street--over and over and over. Irinei wasn't sure what the point of it was, but he was staring at it over his bottle of beer anyway, black eyes narrowed. "Unsubtle as hell," he said, the Russian accent he'd once struggled to hide gone entirely now. "I give them ten days, tops, before the Negaverse finds them and breaks their hands."

Irinei didn't take the pale-haired woman's hand. He didn't touch people, that just--wasn't his thing. The body was just that, the body, a suit to house the mind and enable it to accomplish its goals, but he'd long ago stopped treating himself as public property that way. It seemed sacrilegious, when his feelings lay elsewhere. "I know who you are," he said. It was hard to not know anything about Stroud Marinus; he heard her name from other artists, spoken with a sort of reverence. Were he not already in a stable enough place, he too would probably daydream about catching her eye. As it was, she caught his, more often than not.

She didn't look like anyone else, for one thing. She walked differently, which on its basest level could be attributed to the cane and limp, but... that wasn't precisely what he meant. It was a certain economy and grace of movement. Different from the kind of obnoxiously cultivated, cat-like grace her imitators had. "Irinei Valentinevich."

Introductions out of the way, he turned back to the video. "I believe the artist's gone to this well too many times," he said. "Last time we showed work together, she had a video of one of them... stealing... some small crystalline thing. Maybe a necklace. But there was some sort of. Distortion? I'm not sure." He paused. "The video was dark."

He looked over at Stroud Marinus again, crossing his arms over his chest. "There is better work here," he concluded. "More thought-provoking work."

One thing he didn't hold against any of his fellows was a lack of thought. It took courage to even think about producing artwork that could get any of them corrupted or killed, and all of them had seen firsthand the results of attracting too much attention. There was a fine line to be walked between protestor and martyr; Irinei himself had no strong desire to end up on the wrong side of that barrier. "I suppose you're not as worried about the censors as the rest of us," he said. It made sense. Money and reputation was ever a tool used by the powerful to maintain their status. He'd done it himself, once.

"Andrej Ivanovich is performing his new piece this evening," he said, carefully selecting one of the more midline members of the commune. With luck, Andrej would be transgressive enough to be titillating, but not enough to be suspicious. "Isadana's updated her wall." He pointed with a lift of his finger at a sprawling collaged message that ran above and around the works of other artists--IF SEEING IS BELIEVING GOD DAMN ARE WE IN TROUBLE--cut from photos of the missing and the... executed.

He shrugged. "I have a painting, but it's in the back."

"Everyone cares for money, status, and power," corrected Irinei. "Why else have they come out to destroy this world? They have put effort, much effort, into controlling the economy, the means of travel, when they could have simply achieved their goals in silence." But they had wanted recognition, hadn't they? Unsatisfied with silence, they had taken the risk, stepped out of the shadows and into the light, insofar as they dared. Speeches were made, fanciful uniforms worn... it was a desire for attention, to rule, to have those they opposed know they ruled. "All of this, it is about control. They aren't confident in their strength, so they must ensure it through abuse of the people."

That was all very well and good, and he didn't think he had said too much; it was only what a true civilian would have summarized from what they had seen. It was a commonplace theory that the Negaverse had been in higher government positions even before they came out, so to speak, especially in this circle. This group was supposed to be trusted... but not with anything that might reveal him as he was, as a Knight.

Caution had never been Irinei's strong suit. "If they were confident in their ability to rule, they wouldn't fear what it is we have to say," he said.