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 Posted: Sun Apr 17, 2011 10:30 pm
It had been a while since Marcella had walked through her old neighborhood. Driven through, sure, but not walked. There was really no reason to; the whole area was still as runned down as she remembered it, though there were different arrays of boarded and barred windows and doors. The little elementary school she had attended as a very young girl had prospered briefly with her parents' donation, but the playground equipment had had a good decade or so to dull and weather.
Had it really been that long?
Still, it seemed best to make her visit as Asclepius, since the area remained an even less ideal place to be after dark.
The bus stop she had waited at with her mother for shopping trips looked like it had not been replaced, or even cleaned, since the Palomo family had moved to a nicer part of town. Remains of stickers and bills clung to the glass from the outside, while years of hands, shoulders, and heads had accumulated grime on the inside. A few cracks snaked jaggedly over one of the panes.
But... was there someone inside? The bus had not run this late before, and she doubted that the Destiny City transit authority had expanded the hours in the last ten years. Asclepius studied the figure inside the bus shelter from a rooftop for a few moments, concern growing as it did not move. He could always just be asleep, but she figured it could not hurt to hop down and at least take a look anyway. She had mostly expected to look about for senshi in need of help, but her bandages would work just as well on anyone.
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Posted: Mon Apr 18, 2011 6:33 pm
The body was still -- tipped sideways into the corner of the bus stop like it was dozing, limp, hoodie gone crooked and tumbled off the poor girl's shoulders, legs at an awkward, sideways angle. The little pieces of posturing, the angle of her hanging arm, the impossibly still way she sat, would all add up for the senshi. Eventually Asclepius would put two and two together: if she was sleeping she wasn't sleeping naturally. And perhaps it was more than sleeping.
As she watched the bus stop, the first glimmers of recognition would creep in: an energy signature, dark instead of senshi, roughly the same power level as her. The Negaverse officer was moving away from the scene of the crime slowly, casually. A glimpse of green rounding the corner into an alleyway, and then it froze.
Ilmenite would probably notice her around the same time she noticed him.
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 11:09 am
Asclepius approached carefully, frowning with concern as she studied the person slumped uncomfortably in the corner. She hesitated once, looking around over her shoulder, before entering the bus shelter. She slipped her small backpack first aid kit off of her shoulder and crouched by the girl, then shook her gently, asking quietly, then louder, to wake up.
Then the brown-haired girl noticed the feeling of dark energy nearby. Suppressing a small thrill of fear, she moved so her back was no longer to the open side of the shelter. Maybe her little first aid kit would not help whatever was wrong with this girl after all.
She moved to the entrance again, looking around the edge, since seeing out the grimy glass was out of the question.
And she caught sight of a familiar face. The plastic box that held Asclepius' first aid supplies still had a crack in it from this guy's head. It looked like he had seen her, too, so there was no use trying to keep hiding. Shouldering her little backpack, she stood up.
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Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 5:00 pm
There was a long moment of quiet, Ilmenite hesitating at the end of the road, peering down the street in front of him and then back at her and then back down the street and finally....
...finally he turned to blink back at her, huffing out a frustrated breath and smoothing hands through his hair, some part of him not wanting them to make him out as some kind of monster. Again. He was getting really tired of that.
"She's fine for Christ's sake." He raised his voice to say it, and as he spoke, he produced that roll of duct tape from nowhere, winding out a length of it the way Zink had shown him. Just in case. Dark eyes danced over her bag, uncomfortable. "Just tired."
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Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 11:41 am
Asclepius stepped out to stand just outside the bus shelter, keeping one hand on the strap of her little first aid kit. It looked like there would probably be enough space between them for her to get the bag ready and swinging if he tried something.
"Maybe," she shot back. "But what did she ever do to you?" 'Just tired', like it was okay he had robbed her of energy?
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Posted: Thu Apr 21, 2011 1:06 pm
Yes, that was exactly what he seemed to be staying. Ilmenite toyed with the ende of his duct tape, pondering answers. Fayalite had told him he was supposed to be clever, snarky, something that seemed to come easily to him when he was human -- and slipped right out of his fingers the second he was in uniform.
"That's not the point. The point is, she'll be fine." He huffed out a breath, eyes locking onto the girl, her bag, his shoulders lifting in a jerky shrug...and he finally found his retort, expression going sharper. "Anyway, it's not like I tortured her to death, right?"
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Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 11:07 am
"Well, I guess I'll just have to take your word on that," the Senshi of Medicine replied, quirking a brow. She had not had much opportunity to examine the girl, but there were no massively obvious wounds, at least.
Asclepius was calm and collected, usually pretty difficult to ruffle. This whole senshi thing had ruffled her considerably, though, which was her explanation for why it was so easy for that Sailor Chaonis to get her into arguments all the time. Lately, she had been starting to feel a bit better about it overall but well ... it had also been several days since she had seen Chaonis. Either way, this Negaverse guy's jabs were not upsetting her.
If he got too annoying, Asclepius figured she could always smack him with her plastic box full of bandages again. Perhaps a bit savage, but if she really needed to shut him up, it would do the job.
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Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 3:09 pm
"As far as I'm concerned, my team's failure to torture teenagers to death gets us one up on yours....and makes our word a bit more valuable." Oh, yes, wonderful, he'd finally got the snide tone of voice right, the flash of a grin inserted perfectly in there to add a bit of bite to his bark, his shoulders tense. He was trying to provoke her. Or maybe that was just how Ilmenite was.
"You might think otherwise, except -- aren't you some kind of medic?" He shifted his weight on the balls of his feet and made a noise that gave his clear opinion of her title as 'medic'.
"Hippocratic oath, and all that." One step forward, and then he thought better, squaring his shoulders and just rolling a hand. "Though, maybe they don't teach that to self-righteous teenagers playing at war."
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Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2011 11:50 am
What was this guy on about? Asclepius could recall her desire to show Labyrinthite a thing or two in order to exact revenge for the humiliation and the bruises, and well ... that was less than noble, but torture? A fair fight was one thing, but the Senshi of Medicine would not dream of torturing the creepy agent with the flamingo. Or anyone else for that matter.
And she let him know that: "That sort of thing is sick. I'll knock you out with this plastic case to defend myself, but I would never go out of my way to hurt someone." Asclepius shifted her weight to one foot. "I'm not playing at war, either. Little angry that it looks like I'm late to help this poor girl out, but I'm not going to throw punches unless you start something."
Maybe she was still a little scared, but who wouldn't be? They were all teenagers still, fighting with or against the monsters. And each other. And really, the brown-haired girl was not about to go out of her way to risk getting beaten up.
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Posted: Tue Apr 26, 2011 7:31 pm
"Are you that good of an actress, or do they just keep their soldiers in the dark?" It held an edge of sarcasm, Ilmenite toying with his duct tape and creeping in just a step closer -- probably too close, actually, well within arm's reach, which meant either of them could likely hurt the other. Mostly, he wanted to get a look at her face, and like this he definitely could.
"...holy s**t, they do, don't they? You don't even..." He blinked, shifting gears, some of the hostile edge going out of his expresson. "Well, that trumps all. We were there to rescue our people, you know?"
He leaned forward a little more, shaking his head at Asclepius. "The people your team was torturing and killing."
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Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 2:40 pm
She let her arms fall to her sides, turning her head slightly to once side as she lifted an eyebrow. He had to be kidding.
"I was part of no team, there, myself," Asclepius told him hesitantly after a moment. She had to defend herself from the accusations, without revealing too much information. fortunately, the latter was made a bit easier by the fact that the senshi of Medicine really honestly did have no knowledge of what the Blood Moon Court had done. But she also did not want to appear so ignorant now. What else had ********* not told her?
"I just felt a great gathering of energy and figured that the senshi might need my help," she went on, frowning but raising her chin slightly. "I would not have had any part in any torture."
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Posted: Fri Apr 29, 2011 3:18 pm
"Ah, no, see, that's where you're wrong." He circled a little, tucking the duct tape back into his pocket, apparently convinced that they weren't, in fact, going to start tumbling into a fight again. Ilmenite wanted to move to get a look at the girl's face, to make sure she was alright.
She didn't look that bad. Bruised around the eyes. Tired. He shrugged. She'd survive.
"What you mean to say is 'I would not knowingly have had any part in torture.' Which is a very different thing, mind you." Ilmenite thought, perhaps, that he was getting the hang of this super-hero-banter thing. One hand came up in an almost dismissive way. "But you did."
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 12:25 pm
She had definitely not known that. And she was definitely not going to tell him that.
"How can I trust you?" Asclepius asked, trying to keep up the appearance of confidence and control, even though she was definitely faltering inside. She knew there were various teams of senshi, but had not yet joined up with any of them. The fact that she seemed to continually partner up with that jerk Chaonis did not count.
She also considered him too straightforward for torture, though. But that did not mean that there could be other bad eggs among the ranks of the senshi. They were all supposed to be 'as numerous as the stars' ... but then could that also mean that not all of the agents of the Negaverse were evil?
The senshi of Medicine was confused, but attempted to make this show more like contemplation on her face.
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 7:36 am
That was a good question, and it threw him off his game, left Ilmenite hesitating and shifting for a moment before he recovered, expression solidifying.
"Ask someone." It was so straight forward. He shrugged, smoothing thumbs over still-tender palms. A nervous gesture, it might have come across as clenching his fists, whether that was intent or not.
"Ask them about the body count. And about young people kept in rooms with rats or torn to shreds by shrapnel-filled breezes." A hesitation and then he cleared his throat. "And young senshi thrown on the front lines too, I imagine, assaulting the rescue party."
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Posted: Mon May 02, 2011 12:27 pm
The brown-haired girl recoiled slightly, either at the Lieutenant's gesture or at the thought of rats and egregious bodily harm.
Then she clenched her own fits, and made a sweeping motion with her arm, as though throwing something away in frustration. "Is it really fair for any of us to be involved in this?" she demanded. "What's this war over? Earth? Or is it more than that?" Asclepius knew he was hardly the most reliable source of information on these matters, but she just wanted to hear an answer. Maybe it would be some comfort just knowing that he knew.
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