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 Posted: Tue Apr 19, 2011 7:20 pm
The mind of the Decay Senshi was in turmoil. It was filled to the brim with memories of the past, of victory and of loss. There was resignation, determination, anger, and sadness pulsing through her body and mind. Nemesis was not really back on her own two feet - she still struggled with the decision to keep fighting. But, really, there was nothing else for her. Nemesis could not go back to a normal life, even if she wanted to. She could try, but it was just something that she would ever achieve again - normalcy. She was a warrior now, a soldier, whether that cause be for good or bad. With time she thought this life would get easier, but the more she tangled herself in this hidden world, the deeper, more intricate things became.
She was someone else before, someone who had faced some sort of injustice and was still able to find happiness. She was someone else then, and a completely different person now. Yet, it was becoming more and more difficult to separate the parts of herself from one another. It was impossible to be Delphine Amary, Sailor Nemesis, and a Sailor Nemesis from before. They were merging, little by little, and she wasn't quite sure she liked the way it was turning out. Her civilian life was on the back burner, all future plans, all desires, tossed to the wayside. Sailor Nemesis was more important.
The future of this planet was far more important than the life of one person. The lives of her family and friends far outweighed the value of her own life, and that was the only truth of it.
The mind of Sailor Nemesis was definitely a place where one could lose themselves. "******** it," she growled softly. Nemesis wasn't really into what she was doing tonight. She was supposed to be fighting youma, protecting the weak, avoiding the BMC a little until she came to terms with her loss. But really, she was going through the motions - it was routine now, what she did. The patterns of her movements and plans were ingrained into her mind, and she did not so much have to think as she had to do. It meant weaker youma were easy to dust, but come up against something she had to use her brain for, she wasn't sure if she would fight or avoid it tonight.
She sat down on a park bench, rubbing her temples with an irritated sigh. Nemesis was not in the right mindset for this, but she had spent too much time idling about. It was time for action. It was easier when she didn't think about all the little things, and instead focused on the main goal: kill every Negaverser before they killed her, or anyone she cared about.
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Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 6:03 am
Alkaid's plan since the night of the rescue had essentially been avoid, avoid, avoid. She had been busy from the very first moment she woke up the next day (after a short, unsatisfying sleep) and hadn't stopped for anything since. She'd been playing nurse, doing her rounds, and chatting with Khaldun and Hiro any other time that was free. Until now she hadn't stopped for anything, especially not to think or reflect on everything that had happened.
It was hard to ignore something when it was right in front of your face, though.
The park had always been a hunting ground of hers, even before she had signed her name to a negaverse contract. From time to time there were others around, albeit rarely, and though she had seen the senshi of decay on one previous occasion, she thought it had been enough to drive her out of the area for good. Apparently not.
For a long moment she stood in the shadows of nearby trees, conflicted. At first she had decided to march out and throw down the gauntlet, but the moment she'd tried to take the first step out of her shadowy camouflage, a sharp pain shot through her back to the center of her chest. It was a dark, grim reminder of what had happened - and of how she'd almost sacrificed everything again.
When Alkaid finally drew up the courage to step out of her concealment (after all, her energy signature would give her away sooner or later) it was not with a challenge in mind. Her face was stoic except for the tiniest downward pull at the corners of her lips and her movements were slow. She wanted Nemesis to know that there was no threat in her, not tonight.
"Can you afford to let your guard down?" It was surprisingly empty of any kind of mocking tone, coming off more as a statement. It was true - if she'd been any other nega, she could have called Tanzanite to the scene before Nemesis even knew. Except Alkaid wasn't just any nega and Nemesis wasn't just some random BMC member to be squashed under her foot or anyone else's for the night.
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Posted: Wed Apr 20, 2011 11:10 am
That she didn't feel the power of a corrupted senshi sooner disturbed her. If she had paid attention, she would have known what was coming her way. Alkaid. She was the only corrupted senshi who would not be attacking her already, though Alkaid had every reason to. How close had Nemesis come to killing her the last time they fought? Very close. She would have killed her too, if time had allowed for it. Since that point, it was not a question of whether she would or would not try to kill Alkaid. It was a question of when. The answer was 'not tonight'.
Her blue eyes swept to the approaching corrupted senshi. If there had been signs of a threat she would have been up on her feet, ready to obliterate anything and anyone in her path. Alkaid was posing no threat, Nemesis could tell already... and she wasn't in the mood to fight. Dear god, she wasn't even in the mood to interact with Alkaid after her trip to planet Nemesis. She was one of the last people she wanted to see tonight, but s**t happens, and Nemesis would have to deal with it.
"You're no threat to me," she commented lightly, though it was unclear if she was referring to Alkaid's strength or to Alkaid's current disposition. "But, you're right," it was as much of a temporary peace treaty as Alkaid was going to get, "I shouldn't be letting my guard down." That was the truth. Nemesis had a small target on her back now, after what had happened with the Blood Moon Court. There were people who would be very happy to have caught her off her guard. Thankfully, tonight for some reason, Alkaid was not one of them.
"I've had a lot of my mind, I get... caught up in it." She sat up straight, lifting her hand to make a sign that was the b*****d child of spirit fingers and 'crazy'. Alkaid was the last person she would confide in, but at the moment she didn't desire fighting. She wasn't sure she could attack Alkaid so soon after what had happened with the BMC and her trip back home.
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Posted: Sun Apr 24, 2011 10:50 pm
Normally, such an easy dismissal on Nemesis' behalf would have riled her. Tonight, though, Alkaid was not so easy to agitate. The swelling loneliness that tried to take over every part of her being was a shield in its own right, beating down her pride as it tried to swell and snare her.
Then, of course, there was also the memory of Nemesis' hand trying to rip her still beating heart right out of her body. That was a pain she would never forget, no matter how she tried. With that memory came the knowledge that she had all but asked for it and that, itself, was almost harder to remember than the pain.
"There's no time to think about yourself in a war," her face was still a sad blankness, her eyes still watched Nemesis without a reaction to her words or flamboyant gestures. She knew it was hypocrisy that she was preaching, though, because her own thoughts had been about nothing but herself and her problems. They will continue to be about herself and her problems long after this conversation was over.
She frowned and took the last few steps to be within a comfortable talking distance while keeping a safe span of ground between them in case Nemesis decided to revoke their temporary truce. Then she crossed her arms behind her back and laced her fingers together, standing in a position that was both comforting and non threatening.
"Even if you're not fighting, everyone else is still out there in battle. I could have easily been someone else that is a threat to you - there are enough people with a score to settle, you know." Just facts and meaningless babble, things that Nemesis probably needed to hear even if she already knew.
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Posted: Mon Apr 25, 2011 9:54 am
This was strange, almost nostalgic how they were now talking together. They should be at each other's throats - Nemesis had nearly killed Alkaid but a few days earlier. But, perhaps that battle had worn both of the warriors out. Nemesis had no will to attack Alkaid, not if Alkaid posed her no threat. There were other Negaversers that Nemesis was more keen to attack. Right now, she was just on the defensive. She shouldn't have been out patrolling, but she was. Nemesis had decided already that it was time to stop running and hiding from her problems. A few days to herself was more than she should have taken, and yet she still wasn't back on her game.
"You're right," Nemesis admitted with an aggravated sigh. It said a lot about her mental status if she was agreeing with the enemy. "I shouldn't be lounging about like this when other senshi are still fighting. I have no doubts that what I did was right, as you doubtlessly think that what you're doing is right. I was right, that's all that matters, up until s**t got out of control." s**t had gotten out of control, and Nemesis had now set herself up as a target. If she hadn't pissed the Negaverse off before, she certainly had pissed them beyond belief now.
She glanced over to Alkaid again, observing her idly. The corrupted senshi really was posing no threat... But, <********>, there was no denying that the Alkaid now was also the Alkaid of the past. Seeing Alkaid again only confirmed those distant memories, awakened by her visit to planet Nemesis. "Do you remember the time when I took you to my home world with me? You were a literal flashlight." Why was she even going down this path of conversation? She knew better. She was setting herself up to get even more tangled up in past relationships. It would be better not to, because in the end, one day, she would give Alkaid the gift of death.
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 2:40 am
Alkaid didn't talk about her problems, not like this, not the way Nemesis was just spilling her words out. She was a silent thinker, a brooder. She thought she was right, yes, but if she opened her mouth to tell Nemesis that then they would have been in an instant argument. Then, perhaps, worse memories would surface.
She didn't really want Nemesis bragging to her face about almost ripping her heart out. That was a nightmare she had revisited on her own plenty of times before. It was like the dreams where you envision your best friend as a killer, only in Alkaid's reality, it didn't stop when she opened her eyes and Nemesis was not nearly so close to her as that to begin with.
"Yes," she said hesitantly as Nemesis brought up their long, dreadful night. "I remember, it was a very.. long night." She had no idea what Nemesis was reaching for with that, so she simply answered in the most simple way possible. There was curiosity on her face now, however, breaking that awful blankness of before. She was genuinely interested in why Nemesis was asking - the girl didn't seem like the type to reminisce about something trivial.
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Posted: Sun May 01, 2011 2:09 pm
Nemesis couldn't tell the difference in an interested Alkaid and a disinterested one. She was going to naturally assume the girl didn't really care, but she was going to tell her what was on her mind anyways. The senshi couldn't push the thoughts away now, and since Alkaid was involved in recent events... she might as well tell her what had happened. Maybe it'd ******** with her mind just as much as it was ******** with Nemesis' own. "We left suddenly, because I got irritated.
Which you can't blame me, you didn't have to go through the psychedelic mind ******** that I experienced." Again came that exaggerated gesture, fingers wiggling in the air around her head. "I hear it happens to everyone who visits their home world, but I don't know of anyone else's specific experiences. But, I was taken to a memory of what must have been the past, in that hallway there. Everything changed, I mean, not drastically, it just didn't look as dead." It seemed like Alkaid was going to have to suffer through this rambling to even get to the climax of this story.
"And I saw you there, not you you. You were standing behind me, but I saw the you then standing in front of me, holding the door leading upstairs open for me. I didn't think it was you - for one, she had a tan, and she was a whole lot prettier. Her hair wasn't in those stupid dreads too. But, when I saw her I thought it was you. Same demeanor and s**t. Well, it properly freaked me the ******** out. What are you doing on my planet? So, we bailed." That was the end of the tale, right? Wrong.
"And then I went back to my planet, and I saw you again."
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Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 4:01 pm
Maybe Nemesis couldn't tell what the difference between interested and disinterested Alkaid looked like, but Alkaid could feel her hunger for this information surging the moment Nemesis said she had once been on the planet before.
"You saw me? You can do that just from going home?" She was stuck between disbelief and relief. She couldn't go home to her planet, she couldn't tap into these memories that Nemesis was telling her about. Yet here Nemesis was, telling her without the slightest prompting. It was a confirmation that Alkaid had been alive once before, that she had someone and meant something, that she wasn't wrong to feel a greater familiarity with the stars millions of light years away than she did to the ground just beneath her feet. She had been Alkaid and only Alkaid once before.
In her sudden joy she had forgotten Nemesis and the struggle on her face. As she looked back down at her the eagerness in her eyes faded and her mouth set itself into a grim frown. Nemesis wasn't telling her these things to make her feel better - she knew that. There was some other goal here.
"So tell me, then, what was I doing on your planet?" She managed to make it as aloof as possible, as if she didn't care, but she did. The hungriness in her eyes was a dead giveaway. She just didn't want Nemesis to know that it meant so much to her - that was not something she wanted her holding over her head.
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Posted: Wed May 11, 2011 4:34 pm
"I couldn't see you if you were chilling anywhere else in the universe but my planet, but you were there as a recollection of my past, so I saw you." Nemesis didn't quite know why she had to see Alkaid instead of her own past actions. Perhaps it was because Alkaid had such an influence on her past life, but Nemesis didn't quite want to contemplate that. She was trying to write off that kiss she saw between herself and the Senshi of Guidance as a small thing, a fling. Her gut feeling was telling her otherwise.
Did she really want to tell Alkaid more than what she had shared? Nemesis couldn't begin to fathom the effect that it would have on the other party... ********, Nemesis was going to say it and she was going to say it quickly so it wouldn't plague her mind for any longer than it had to. "You were offering to help me, I think. I had to go to the moon for something important, and you wanted to come with." Nemesis knew that the support Alkaid had offered in her past life was needed. She had been worried about something, though Nemesis couldn't recall it from that memory. Her past life was coming together in bits and pieces, and she suspected it would be a while yet before she understood everything.
"I needed you back then, I think, because I am becoming convinced that the past me was a p***y." Nemesis was drifting a little bit away from the piece of information she wanted to share, and with a sigh she reeled her thoughts back in. "So, I agreed to let you come with me, and then we kissed." Yeaaahhh... this was the part where even Nemesis felt awkward.
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Posted: Fri May 13, 2011 5:48 pm
Alkaid digested the information in silence as Nemesis spoke. Now, more than ever, she wished that she could go home to her planet and investigate these things on her own. Who had she been? What had she done? Why was she so important that Nem's memory had showed her not once, but twice? She was beginning to think that, in the past, she had been something much more than she was in the present.
"The moon, hmph," she made a small noise of disapproval and crossed her arms over her chest. Then, slowly, she let her bias die down so she could understand the bigger picture here. Nemesis had needed her, and so she had been there to help. In the past, when Earth was nothing but a distant planet, she and Nemesis had been close.
Then Nemesis had to go out of her way to explain just how close they'd been.
"Wh.." She tried to speak, but her throat closed around the words almost instantly and a bright, burning blush lit up the apples of her cheeks. She could feel the blush, which only made her stuttering worse, and finally she just turned her back to Nemesis and looked up at the sky overhead. The stars were easier to face than Nemesis was in that moment. She felt even more disconnected from her past self, her home, and her legacy. Who had she been, this other Alkaid? Knowing that she would never know who she was or the things she'd done hurt, even more than knowing she had once had a life on Earth.
"Just because you need help doesn't mean you're weak, it just means you're intelligent enough to know when someone can be used to your advantage." When she finally spoke, she chose to answer the part of the tale that hadn't been about her locking lips with the enemy. It gave her the courage to face her, though, and when she was done speaking she turned around to look at Nemesis again. She was still blushing, but her words were steady.
"It was a different time, we were different people." She frowned as she tried to study Nemesis. She was trying to see what about her could possibly make her feel.. that way. There was nothing, though. "We didn't care about this planet."
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Posted: Fri May 13, 2011 6:07 pm
It was strange, seeing the tell-tale blush on Alkaid's cheeks yet feeling nothing in the way of love. She had certainly loved Alkaid in the past. It felt as if Alkaid had been one of the few people that were there for her. No other faces plagued her memories, and more feeling than actual images haunted her when she visited planet Nemesis. There was something grim about her planet, and Alkaid had been the only bit of light that she had allowed through in the past. Things had been... vastly different than what they were now, and was she supposed to feel bad for that? Was she obligated to love Alkaid because of the past?
No. She could not love Alkaid. She harbored no love for the corrupted senshi. Her feelings for the other senshi were far too complex to be described by one word, but even so, feelings of love were not part of it and never would be. It was something to reminisce about, perhaps. The information had certainly done its job by unsettling Alkaid a little bit. Nemesis could tell by the blush that thoughts had to be whirling around in the other senshi's head.
"I don't think I was using you. Again, I don't know. It was like I was in a movie, following a script, feeling what the me back then was feeling. I..." Her nose crinkled with discomfort. She had loved Alkaid. "I think I'll go back to Nemesis, I am not getting the full picture. If you like, I can tell you that I saw you again the next time I try to kill you." A flicker of grim humor darkened her face, but eventually it settled out into a defensive blankness. Nemesis had far more time to think about her past life's connection to Alkaid than the corrupted senshi had.
"You weren't that different. Prettier, but I think it was I that was... more different. It makes me wonder what happens to a person to make them so different from one life to the next. You'd think in this whole rebirth thing I'd remain pretty much the same as the last life I had led." Why was she being so open about this, anyways? It was about time they started trying to kill each other again. Her muscles were limp, though, and there was nothing in her posture that indicated she wanted to strangle Alkaid's neck.
Sighing softly, she rose onto her feet. "Don't you think it's about time we try to end one another?" Nemesis didn't feel like it, but wasn't it what they were supposed to do? They were supposed to fight to the death. "Or is there another choice I'm not seeing here?"
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Posted: Tue May 17, 2011 6:51 pm
Alkaid turned to look down the long, winding path of the park, then glanced up to stare at Nemesis through a sidelong glance. The conversation at hand was a hard one for her. Part of her felt like she should feel something for Nemesis, but she was as cut off from her past life as she was from the rest of her current one.
"We can't all possibly be the exact same as we once were." She brought her arms up as she turned back to face Nemesis, spreading them out as if silently imploring Nemesis to take a look at her. She had certainly not been corrupted before, not if she was trying to help the darker senshi. "We grew up different, we made different choices, we had different families." Alkaid has watched enough documentaries to know the whole nature versus nurture argument like the back of her hand. Of course, that didn't take into account reborn starseeds.
"Then again, you said I was helping you with something you needed to do at the moon court." She sighed and glanced up at the pale moon hanging low and full in the sky overhead, narrowing her eyes on it like it were a sight she would rather put out of her mind forever. She would have. "Maybe something went wrong. It wouldn't be the first time, would it?"
Her gaze fell from the sky and watched Nemesis, set the sight of the lost senshi of decay into her mind like she was taking a picture to remember her just that way. Nemesis could feel lost, she could feel confused, and it was that human part of her that Alkaid wanted to remember. One day, far from now, maybe it would be the only thing that would quell the growing anger in her heart.
"There is always another answer, Nemesis," her voice was surprisingly soft as she spoke, "but it's not one that you would want to hear, let alone consider." She blew out one long breath and took a step backwards, back towards the shadows she had appeared from. "We aren't really so different, you know, not now."
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Posted: Thu May 26, 2011 1:42 pm
"I'm beginning to see that," Nemesis commented softly. The reasoning was sound, they clearly could not be the same that they had once been. Nemesis was nothing like she had been in her past life, and it seemed like the environment had been... different. There had been a weight on her shoulders in the past that could never exist with such an intensity today. Nemesis had been far more mature in the past, a far cry from where she stood at today. She understood what needed to be done to win this battle, but she was quick to anger, quick to lose sight of her goal if she didn't keep her eyes pinned on it constantly.
"You know, I was told that most senshi feel a certain amount of loyalty to the moon, to Queen Serenity. I've never felt that, so perhaps... something did go wrong. Maybe I never held any sort of kinship with the Moon Kingdom. Who knows, I'd have to go back to try and figure it all out..." Did she really want to go back? A part of her was hesitant over the idea, because it was a distraction. Finding out what her past life was like diverted her attention from the troubles in the here and now. But... she needed to know. She had been given a small glimmer of information, and she demanded more. Nemesis wanted to know about her past.
Her expression was dark, the troubles of the past and the present haunting her thoughts. She was in no mood to really fight, but it seemed like the only thing she could do, the only way to push through this funk was through a pile of bodies. "Saying s**t like that only makes me curious." What other option could there be? Perhaps Alkaid had been hit on the head during the BMC battle. It wouldn't surprise her--
But, what did surprise her was the final words Alkaid tried to reason with. Nemesis froze, blue eyes widening in surprise before she hardened them. No, they weren't alike. Why couldn't she say that out loud? There was something holding her back, and even Nemesis didn't quite know what that meant, that she could not protest to what Alkaid was telling her. In those precious moments of silence, Nemesis watched Alkaid fade into the black background, and soon enough her energy signature disappeared.
This was not what Nemesis had intended. She had wanted to plague Alkaid's thoughts, not have the girl's own words and reasons tormenting her own.
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