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Characters present: Alexandros, Kunzite, Chronos, Selene, Helios, Zue. Hector, Aries, and Aphrodite also present, can tag in if you wish. <3 To request the next post, just shoot me a PM -- otherwise please make sure and tag someone at the bottom of your post.



The twin empires of the Marcasite Millenium and the Pyrite Imperium were, in many ways, far behind the technological advances of the White Earth. For all that the planet represented the last, faint remains of two once-great empires of long ago, those remains had lasted centuries up to the modern age -- and in their wake, had progressed. The Golden Imperium that no longer was was a place of iPods, and Blackberries, and Tamiflu. The Black Earth and the Black Moon had none of these things.

What they did have were traditions and long knowledge. What the people of the Black Courts knew was that the Earth itself was old, the soil saturated with deep magic indeed -- and deep enough beneath layers of that soil, it was hard to sense magic. When you didn't want someone to find you, you went underground as far as you could.

That made Plymouth Square Station an excellent place to hold a meeting -- all except for the difficulty of getting to it. The old subway station had been taken out of service in 1988, when they'd cemented over all the street-level entrances to it, and put in metal grating to block the underground walkway. Now it was mostly accessible strictly by breaking some rules -- which Dylan Rasmussen had certainly been doing when he'd first gone there on one of his illicit sojourns. There were three ways to get to Plymouth Square Station, in all, the first and most obvious of which was by hopping off another platform without getting caught and making your way down the tracks till you reached it. The second was by being a teleporter. The third, and the one which had most recently been added, was by way of the the five-dollar closet door mirror propped against one wall.

It was a tight squeeze, as those cheap mirrors always were, but turning sideways made it easily passable. Cavalier Alexandros stepped out first, then held out his hand to guide Sailor Selene as she stepped out behind him, after which followed Sailor Aphrodite, and finally, Cavalier Hector.

The station hadn't been cleaned out since 1988, but a blue plastic broom near the mirror was evidence of their efforts to make it slightly less carpeted in dust -- they'd brought through a collapsible card table and some chairs when they were cleaning, and there was a nicely swept clearing where that was set up, as well as a few swept walkways. Otherwise, it was all thoroughly old, slightly in disrepair, and noticeably, well, dark: most of the light was thin, filtering down the tunnels from the other stations and, farther on, the outside world. The Black Courts' members partly disappeared in the failing light, or else seemed to glow by contrast; they fanned out around the space to wait for their guests.

"Aphrodite," Sailor Selene said uneasily, pacing in the dust, "mind your manners." This was somewhat akin to a wolf spider advising a mouse not to eat its own young. Selene didn't notice.

{TAG: codalion}

Two princes was an oddity. Hector simply said, "'Captain,'" and his boots tapped together on the echoing concrete as he made a fractionally less sweeping bow to the white Cavalier. He himself looked like a shadow-version of the pale-haired, almost insubstantial prince that Alexandros made, white gold in the colour-sucking darkness. As she rose he offered her hand. The black Cavalier did not shake it, but gripped her wrist and smiled at her. It was rare to meet somebody who was the exact same rank as you were, on the exact same level and held the exact same responsibility, and maybe his smile carried a self-deprecating hint of that.

In fact, Jesse and Hector's curiosity combined meant his overriding thought was, hey, is their prince a woman too? which did not bear repeating.

But all he remarked was, "As my lord said," and bowed to Helios. A little more appropriate. His eyes flickered over to Alexandros, and therein was a brief conversation carried out in facial expressions. Only another Black Earth cavalier could have translated it directly: -- you know, my puissant brotherliness, I can serve as your herald. Probable reply: -- Yes, but this is public relations.

Before Kunzite could do anything, loud steps echoed through the tunnels of Plymouth Square Station. Sailor Aries' step was a cannon shot on the dusty concrete. She looked as fierce and red-headed as ever, and next to her was the much slighter form of a delicate young woman with peppermint-green hair. Obviously the princess Chronos, with her Captain.

"Princess Chronos of the Zodiac Guard," said Aries immediately, who was obviously much more interested in wrangling her princess' introduction than Hector had been in interrupting. "Future queen of the Outer Reaches, Lady of the Seasons, holder of the Opal Crystal. Apologies for my tardiness."

She bowed in what was a weighty remount of respect towards Sailor Selene and the blonde girl next to her, then towards Alexandros and his Captain. She did not bow to Kunzite and Helios: she turned to Kunzite and saluted as crisply as a bite into fresh apple. "Aries, First of Twelve," was all she said of herself.

[tag: nata]

Chronos had been ready for this meeting for quite a while. Ever since Aries had announced at the Zodiac meeting that she had met another royal who too had their Great Crystal stolen, it was inevitable that both sides would request to meet each other. After all, it was an alliance that would benefit both sides; they had a common goal, which was to take down Wiseman to get back what they both had lost. Nehelenia too had felt the pain when her Great Crystal was ripped out of her chest, an emotion that only both of them had suffered, and Chronos felt a connection to the other, even if she did not exactly know who she was.

When introduced, Princess Chronos curtsied towards the blue-haired girl and the one next to her, and then to the Prince and his Captain, and then turned to Kunzite and Helios to give them the same amount of respect. Whether they were royals or not was not an issue, they were their allies and Chronos appreciated that greatly. The Princess smiled down at Helios as she took her hand, hoping that the Dream Priest was still not acting cold towards her Handmaiden. But that was another matter for later.

"Queen Nehelenia." She addressed the other royal as Zue bounded in behind the two and seating himself besides the feet of his Princess. He was in his cat form, finding it much easier to reach Plymouth Station that way, since they had tried before, and Chronos was revealed to have difficulty summoning him with the loss of the Opal Crystal. “This is Zue, the Guardian Cat of the Zodiacs.”

Sailor Selene held up one hand at her side, an obvious halting motion for silence -- this was not the usual sort of 'thank you' that a more gracious person might have employed in response to her captain's well-executed introduction. Selene, in the end, had always been a woman who valued strength and purpose -- particularly her own. She didn't always remember to think of other people's.

Her eyes kept their own inner light, even in the murky darkness of the dusty, abandoned platform -- and they stayed trained on Sailor Pegasus.

"This is Helios," she said to the group at large. "The Dream Priest of Elysion. Formerly the lover of the moon princess who now bends knee to Chaos." It was hard to read the tone behind this statement; it might have been cold and bitterly rancorous, or else neutral as a flagless Wikipedia article. Perhaps this was a tone better understood by her fellow off-worlders, her placid prince. Her default tone seemed to be a fierce and joyless one anyway.

"I don't know you," she said to the cavalier standing adjacent to Sailor Pegasus. She cast a glance downward to the gleaming sword, which was unlike the elegant rapiers universally sported by all of Alexandros's cavaliers.

[tag: coda]

If Selene's face were compared to a Youtube video, it would probably have the title Charged by a Porcupine, and basically do what it said on the tin. Her joylessly neutral expression shifted as surely as though an anchor had been hooked to either end of her mouth, drawing her lips down into a glowering frown. "Nor is it your place to dictate material or appropriate conversation to me, cavalier," she said archly, every inch the daughter of ice-brittle Tyndareus before her. There was no capacity in her for paying lip service to anything she didn't believe in -- and this extended to times when such disregard was costly. She was no politician.

"I tell my kinsmen whatever they need to know to understand the resources at our disposal." It was definitely not good politics to refer to anyone as a 'resource' at your 'disposal.' "I'm quite certain your High Priest has weathered worse crudeness and disrespect from me than that, and survived it all in one piece." She folded her arms over her rib cage. "Isn't that so?"

[tag: nata]