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 Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 10:30 am
Nighttime walks were a habit Zirconia still hadn't managed to suppress, no matter how many unfavorable situations she'd gotten into since her arrival on Earth, but today she had plans so she thought, maybe, she could avoid that cooped up feeling by getting a run in early before she met up with a friend.
She wasn't exactly on high alert. She was more focused on occasionally pulling out the last remnants of her shed winter coat and then skulking along windowsills and walls like an alleycat, and then ruminating over the mild amusement that came from slumming it. Old Zirconia of the Black Moon pretending to be an alleycat. Ha!
She skulked along, stopping to flick dirt off her paws and groom her whiskers before she felt a faint energy signature. It was a type she'd come to classify as negaverse, and it made her stop and ponder. She'd never gone near a negaverser without a senshi by her side. Elysion, Operation Rota... she'd been close by but those did crap for her own burning and even slightly childish curiosities about the silly humans who chose to serve chaos. She remembered turning to chaos herself quite well. They were not pleasant memories.
It wouldn't hurt to just take a peek, right? She could look from a distance and if they attacked she could always run. That had been her number one battle strategy when facing youma and not wanting to waste her energy, she figured she was pretty good at it.
Slowly, she tried to get closer to the signature without making herself obvious to whoever it belonged to. Even going so far as to creep along on her belly, Zirconia slowly rounded a corner, paused, and hopped up on someone's fire escape, scanning the area to try and see if she could visually spot the negaverser. She didn't recognize the signature, so hopefully they wouldn't know her as the Blood Moon Court's cat. Still, she had this lingering fear that she had just not memorized the prisoners very well and this pushing her luck would end up in a very dead cat.
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 4:50 pm
The Negaverse Captain was having a good night, by most standards. The only thing bothering her was the distinct lack of Knights she had been running into lately. Or tonight, at least. She really wanted to find one, to mess with them or find the two she really hated.
But there really weren't that many running around. At least not when compared to the Senshi populating the place.
She was sitting in an alley, atop a closed dumpster, her javelin in her lap. Fiddling with the grip, she was trying to tighten a bit that had come loose, but was making a bigger deal of it than it needed. It was an easy fix, but she was bored and hadn't felt anything dangerous or fun in the area to keep her mind occupied.
So fiddling she was.
She sensed something in the area. A blink of an energy source, but it was not something she could easily pinpoint or recognize. She looked around, wondering if her senses were acting up, like she was feeling something that wasn't really there. A flickering light in a closet, or something like that.
She wasn't that old, she thought ruefully, to be going on the blink already.
Then she noticed the cat and hopped down from her perch.
"Hello there, beautiful!" Normally when she said those kinds of lines she was being cruel or mocking, and there was always an edge to her tone. But at the moment it was very sincere. She was, after all, talking to a very pretty cat. One that had an energy signature, and had to be like Hiro or, more likely, one of the good ones.
But so what? It was still a cat. And she loved those.
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Posted: Wed May 25, 2011 9:02 pm
Zirconia stopped and pulled her head back so it sat square over her shoulders at the compliment. Was she serious? She sounded serious, as she well should be, being in the presence of the silky, rare kitty Zirconia prided herself to be.
But still, negaversers. Can't be trusted, nope. She felt a bit comfortable, though. If her collar wasn't a dead giveaway as far as past opposition that would make her a potential target, she figured her neutral-gray sort of aura ********* said she radiated would keep her safe from the less informed, and she crept a little closer.
"Hello," She kept her voice calm and deliberate, but both eyes were still cautiously trained on that javelin, still very aware of the possibility she could end up as a kitty shish kabob.
"So you're... a negaverse soldier?" Duh, but she was a little dumbfounded on what to say. They were so interesting. Maybe it was because she secretly found a little bit of sympathy in their cause and methods. Sympathy overridden by deaths on her own team, but such was war. But still, their rigid military formation and desire to kick the senshi off their Earth... even she had to recognize that if she had pledged her loyalty to Alexandros's father instead of Nehelenia's, she might've ended up playing a similar role back in the parallel world.
The slightest, most innocent movement from Painite would bring a snap dodge backwards from Zirconia. It didn't hurt to be overly cautious when she could easily just be messing with her.
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Posted: Sat May 28, 2011 10:13 am
Painite seemed to notice the cat was uncomfortable with the weapon. She looked at the Spirit of Mister Saddles and decided she didn't need it. What could a cat do? And if it was an ambush, she would feel any senshi coming her way. No, at the moment things were perfectly calm and she sent her javelin away.
She smiled, stooping so she was closer to the cat on ground level.
"I am indeed," she said, keeping in mind that cats were close to senshi, just like Nega cats were close to... Nega senshi. Corrupted. While others might have mixed feelings about the word, Painite thought it was something to be proud of. A scary word, for strong allies. She didn't care if she knew that they were on the right side of things at last, it was all a matter of how their enemies perceived them. The word Corrupt brought fear to the hearts of Senshi and their crew. Painite liked that.
Remembering, as well, that Hiro had Painite earn her right to pet him, she didn't reach out to pet what looked like very soft fur on the kitty before her. She smiled pleasantly, without a hint of having to fake it.
"A Captain, in fact," she boasted, "and you're one of those senshi cats. Obviously, since you're talking. What are you doing out here all alone? Shouldn't you be with a senshi?" It almost sounded like Painite was actually concerned for the cat's well being. But why shouldn't she be? Cats were meant to be pampered and protected.
And most of them knew it.
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Posted: Mon May 30, 2011 5:20 pm
"...Interesting," Was all Zirconia had to say at the boast. Did the negaverse have many captains? They had captured captains in Operation Rota. She was starting to suspect maybe their structure was different even from the militant style of the Black Moon, where there was only one captain and a vice-captain. She did relax when the javelin was sent away, but not entirely. It wouldn't be very wise to forget it could just be summoned back again.
"Hm. Maybe I don't have any more senshi," Zirconia said with a shrug. "Cats missing their team seems to be another sign of White Moon incompetence." She couldn't resist getting a shot in. It had been a while since her open bigotry against anything in this universe was allowed to slip out, besides the usual hatred of the youma nuisance. Either way, it was something she looked down on when she first heard ********* couldn't find all of her team. Zirconia was missing her team back then too, but hey, she had an excuse! One couldn't be expected to know where everything was when they were freshly transported from another universe.
She took a few steps in a quarter circle around the captain, eyes trailing over her uniform. Practical. Not especially graceful or elegant like the parallel senshi but it was definitely a war appropriate way to dress. The Negaverse definitely had some points in their favor towards Zirconia's admiration, save for one very big issue.
"Captain, why do you choose corruption?" Did they all have extreme reasons? Zirconia's own past had it's own experiences with Chaos and corruption, but the Negaverse was on such a massive scale with passionate soldiers. What did they even think they were fighting for? She hadn't ever been able to process this.
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Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:36 pm
Painite looked at the cat in surprise, looking thoughtful. She hadn't been asked that kind of question before, at least not by someone who didn't agree with her. Her eyebrows furrowed in thought, and she looked pensive for a long moment.
Then a grin spread across her face.
"Because it's fun," she said flippantly. Not the real answer, maybe, but certainly the reason she loved it so much now. She was, of course, dedicated to her cause and a loyal soldier to the Negaverse, but there was no reason in her mind that a loyal, and talented, soldier could not also have fun with their duties. And she certainly strove to do just that.
Painite didn't mind the way they were viewed. She didn't care if others though she was a bad guy. Hell, she'd help them come to that conclusion. It wasn't what they thought that mattered in the slightest. The only people she truly cared about were her fellows in arms, and it was f or them that she constantly strove to better herself.
And for herself, of course.
She wanted to be strong, wanted to be devious, wanted to be feared. She hated Senshi and, new though the feeling might be it was no less sincere, despised Knights. She found it an honor and a thrill to put them in their proper places, make them cower or run away. It was very much like a game to her, and she wanted to defeat them all.
"I'm not a very complicated person," she went on, waving her hand. "I chose this life because it suits me. What about you, kitty? You seem like a very serious sort, but if you had a chance to be a normal cat, who could talk, but still got pampered and lived a luxuriously lazy life, would you do it? Be normal? Or did you choose this life, too, in your way? You wouldn't think about joining us, right?"
She couldn't help but flood some questions in, a tactic she had picked up from a specific brand of journalism. She wasn't conducting an interview, she was information gathering. Even if that information was born in that moment, of this particular cat, and would be of no real interest to anyone but herself.
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Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 1:59 pm
"Hm," Zirconia almost grunted, rolling her eyes at the flippant answer. Then, Painite's questions made her narrow her eyes and stare for a long while before she broke into some mixture of confusion and curiosity.
"Hmn," She pondered, and then settled down into a sitting position and curled her tail around to groom and contemplatively fluff it up as she went on. "Well, the thing is, Captain, that I'm very old," She started. "When I was young, I was a normal, albeit talking, cat. But that was nearly a century ago. I didn't make one large choice to end up here, in this war. Rather, I suppose I just ended up here on a long series of smaller, seemingly less inconsequential choices. Life is funny like that."
And then she shook her head, not even lending the question of joining them the seriousness of making eye contact as she played with the fur tufts between her toes. "I'm afraid I fail to see your organization as little more than disposable chess pieces on Chaos's game board. I have been corrupted once already, and the results were not as promising as the temptation made it sound."
A wistful sigh escaped as she pondered her own opinions on corruption. To say she avoided it due to morals or conviction would be a lie. She turned to Chaos because Nehelenia did. She rejected it when Nehelenia did. Everything she had ever done had been because of a deep love for Nehelenia, and before that, Neheleneia's father Tyndarius, and after, Ares and Gaia.
"Ultimately, my only loyalty is to my family. Not to your dead moon, and not to Chaos. And quite frankly I don't really care about this world and it's senshi or it's war. Oh, I'm rude," She got up to her feet to make a little bow. "I shouldn't ramble on such things when I haven't even introduced myself. My name is Zirconia."
She hadn't really planned on introducing herself, but since the conversation had turned to a rather interesting and decidedly less outraged one than she was expecting, she figured it would've been better to put a casual spin on it. And at least get the officer's name.
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Posted: Sat Jun 04, 2011 12:41 pm
The Negaverse Captain listened with interest, trying very hard not to get distracted by the fact that she was talking to a cat that she could very beautiful. Of course, her favorite cat would always be Hiro, but she could still admire the ones the Senshi had, couldn't she?
She had no qualms with cats. Sure, they awakened Senshi and that was really freaking annoying, but without them then there would be no newbies to scare the s**t out of, or steal energy and starseeds from to make powerful points with. And where would the fun in that be?
As far as she knew, they couldn't do anything else.
"Right, you can totally ramble about it after you've introduced yourself, though." She grinned teasingly, but couldn't help and nod her head in return to the kitty bow. "Painite. It's nice to meet you."
And in many ways, it was. This cat didn't sound very enthusiastic about Senshi, any more than Painite was. Of course, she sounded equally unenthusiastic about the Negaverse. That meant they could just talk, without veiled threats or pompousness. Painite knew many people hated the Negaverse, and they had every right to. She didn't care, and it wouldn't change how she did things, but it was impossible to talk to most Senshi without them being pompous about it.
"Loyalty to family is important. So is finding the thing you believe in to fight for. I happen to believe in this, in myself and the things I do. That's enough to me, you know? The fun of it and the thrills are just bonuses. And when it gets tough or scary, that's just life. You think of it as being corrupted, but for me... it's the same as being awakened as a senshi. It's my true path."
She dropped her tone for a moment, giggling.
"I'm sorry, I'm trying really hard not to pet you because I know some talking cats don't like it. Would you mind, though?" She had a fleeting attention span, sometimes, and while she was definitely dedicated to the conversation she couldn't help but give in to her need to pet cute fluffy things.
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 5:25 pm
Zirconia listened, head tilting at an increasing angle as Painite went on before she righted herself and frowned. "What exactly do you think you're fighting for?" The way she understood it, the Negaverse was the side that was threatening to destroy their own home and the senshi were constantly on the defensive. What could possibly be their cause?
"No, you may not," She huffed, sounding almost offended that it had even been brought up. Had she been completely raised out of any sort fear or respect? The forest cat did consider herself to still be something of a regal, wild animal. Maybe it was just that all the size and claws in the world couldn't negate the fluffy factor, especially since size-wise she was no lioness anyway.
That and she rather liked to be pet, despite all protests and self-perception of some majestically terrifying, feral beast.
"...Just a little," She conceded in an embarrassingly short amount of time after her little outburst.
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Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2011 10:37 am
Painite waited until Zirconia gave in to her need to be petted before she said anything by way of answers to the new question on the table. She couldn't help but giggle when the cat went from a very stern no, coupled with an adorable scowl that could easily have resulted in a lost finger for Painite, to allowing 'a little' petting.
She moved her hand to gently rub the guardian cat's cheek, knowing now (after a little research) that cats liked to be pet on their heads more than their backs and bodies. Their cheeks were particularly receptive, as were their ears and the top of their head or between their eyes.
But that was for a regular cat.
"So," she said, smiling like she had just been allowed to steal all the energy in the universe despite only just asking a cat if she could pet it, "you want to know what we're fighting for, as in all the Negas, or what I'm fighting for? They're similar, and the old school ideas that fuel the Negaverse will always be with me, but I always like to add my own spin on things. Still, shouldn't you know why we're fighting your senshi? Why do you think we're doing it, is the better question, I think."
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Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 11:59 pm
Zirconia visibly enjoyed Painite's petting, but her expression shortly after was all that needed to transpire to communicate 'never speak of this'.
Her answer was an interesting one. Or at least the question she answered with provoked some interesting thought. "I really don't know," She said honestly. "I can only think of my own motivations for corruption and that was, ha, to kill your version of the moon princess and take over, and generally reign in control over your entire universe." There was bit of a flat laugh ringing out through her words and punctuated with a long, wistful sigh. "Of course I'm over that now. Drunk on corruption sure leads to silly things, doesn't it? Anyway, considering I'm fairly sure you were born here on White Earth I'm quite certain I can't view your path to corruption with my usual overlay of my personal experiences. But now I'm really curious. Tell me, what is your spin on things?" She asked, smiling and chatting as if it was shifting to a pleasant conversation about nostalgia.
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Posted: Thu Jun 09, 2011 10:09 pm
Painite, despite looking at a kitty, recognized that look. She smiled and chuckled, but didn't say anything. Who would she tell about petting a senshi's cat? That wasn't exactly vital news for the negaverse, as far as Painite was concerned.
She was learning a lot about the cat, but only in a vague way. Cats just weren't her target as it stood.
Painite's eyebrows lifted at Zirconia's answer, not sure if she was being honest or not. It was difficult to remind herself that alien cats were aliens, just like senshi. They didn't just talk: they had other strange things about them.
Things to worry about, surely.
"I don't think I've gotten that drunk yet," she said with a grin, smoothing her hand over Zirconia's head, then scratching her ear. "My spin on the whole war thing? I think senshi should go back where they came from, and stop invading our home, I guess. But in the end, I just know where my loyalties are, and I know how to have fun. Those are the only things I really care about."
She shrugged, knowing it was a pathetic answer, but not caring too much.
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 12:44 pm
Zirconia let out a little, happy purr and nodded at Painite's answer. "Well, that's what's important," She agreed. She also agreed everyone should just go back to where they came from, but only because that was what she wanted more than anything; To just go back. Until then, her contempt for this rock and this whole universe it resided in would only grow. "It's shame our respective loyalties ended up on opposite sides of the chess board. I think I would've enjoyed working with you."
She backed up, reluctantly separating Painite's hand from her ear, doing a quick scan to make sure there were no senshi signatures near. Surely if a BMC member had saw her cozying up to a negaverser she'd get a reprimand to remember.
"Well, Captain Painite, it was a pleasure but this is the end of our amicable encounter," She announced. Oh! And she almost forgot she had plans to meet Gently that she was probably late for. With that she turned tail and ran, hoping she could make it in time if she took a few shortcuts.
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Posted: Mon Jun 13, 2011 6:23 pm
"I was just thinking the same thing," she said, shaking her head. If all senshi cats were this cool, she would definitely not be hurting any of them any time soon. Why would anyone want to hurt a cat, anyway? Especially one like Zirconia.
She smiled as the cat backed up, nodding her head and standing. She needed to get going as well, of course. She sighed.
"Well! It was very nice talking to you. Stay safe, and keep that fur beautiful." With a smile she opted to teleport away, though it would make her tired. She could just power down and rest, which was the nice thing. She didn't want to be exhausted or give any indication that she had been out doing anything.
She always found it harder to lie when she was tired, and she didn't think she would get away with saying she was distracted by a talking cat.
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