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 Posted: Sun May 29, 2011 7:37 am
Night had fallen a long time ago, and the streets of Destiny City had all but emptied - save for those with the power to linger in it without much trouble, each for their own reasons. It would likely remain so until the bars closed.
Alunite was sitting on top of a roof, as he often did in this weird, silent time - carefully combing for auras around himself as he looked up to the sky. It was clear tonight, not even a cloud on the horizon.
It hit him, while looking at those stars, that he had no idea which one of these was his. And for some reason, it hit... hard. But why ? He was Alunite. He fought for Earth. He had no need for a star.
And yet....
And yet. He couldn't look away. Had it been this one ? Or this one ? The brilliant one over there ? Or had it been a moon, an asteroid, something he would never see ?
He didn't know. He probably would never know.
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Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:26 am
Alkaid was always aware of her surroundings and the energy signatures that surrounded her, like she was walking through an electric storm. She could sense civilians in apartments, bars, clubs and she could vaguely sense other things in the distance. The most prominent of these was something she knew well, an aura like no other and one very close to her heart.
This particular one, though familiar, was also new. It read like others she had felt before, like her own in fact, but she could hazard a guess who she would find as she closed in on it. Finally, leaping across buildings finally put her in plain view of the boy - purple hair, stars and novas on a robe-like fuku.
This was Alunite.
She crossed the last gap between her building and his, her heels making a loud click as she landed and softer ones as she approached him slowly. Her gaze followed his up to the sky once she realized he was staring at the stars and she didn't even have to wonder why. They were senshi, they were people of the stars, and yet their sacrifice bound them to earth. Was it harder to know and forget, or to never know?
"You'll only frustrate yourself that way," she said softly, tasting the hypocrisy in it even as she spoke. Still, her own troubles paled in comparison to others and she had told Ashley she would help him. Right? If she had to give him advice she couldn't follow herself, so be it. How would he know that she was just as lost as he was? It was her duty to be sturdy for others.
"You're Alunite, right?" It was polite to ask, even if she was already sure.
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Posted: Tue May 31, 2011 12:47 pm
The initial click of her heels made him tense a bit, though he knew very well at least what had been coming his way. Both their auras were quite particular, and rather hard to overlook.
He just hoped that by their powers combined, they wouldn't lure in an eternal, or something equally as nasty. This wasn't some ******** up version of Captain Planet, after all.
"I know." He knew, indeed. "But yet I... I just..." Most days it was easy enough not to think about it, to pretend the longing didn't exist. Clear nights like this one were the worse. "I know it shouldn't matter, but at the same time..."
He hadn't talked about this to Fluorite. How could she understand ? He really didn't think she would. It was hard enough for even him to understand. He dusted the side of his legs and moved to rise, finally looking at Alkaid proper.
That hair... damn. He really didn't think he could b***h about his own, now.
"I am." He nodded. "And you would be... ?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 1:36 am
She nodded her head slowly as he tried to find the words to express what he felt. There were none that he would ever find to truly explain it, she knew that. She'd been searching for them for months and hadn't found them yet herself. Their situations were different, but somehow very much the same.
As he stood, she took a few steps closer until she could stand at his side. She didn't look at him, but instead she stopped at his side and let her eyes rise to the sky. It took only seconds to find it, she could always find it in the cluttered map of lights overhead.
"Alkaid," she said softly and, as she did so, she brought up her hand slowly and pointed at a star in the distance. Her star. He wouldn't have been able to pick it out from the cluster of others around it, but she showed him all the same. She dropped her hand finally and turned to look at him, leveling her bright eyes on his.
In some ways she envied his lack of knowledge, his unfamiliarity with their lifestyle and the 'other side'. Yet, in some ways, she thought he must have felt just as disconnected from a part of his life as she felt from her own. In the end, the thoughts in her head simply formed as a sad smile on her lips.
"It will always matter, and you shouldn't feel ashamed about it." She began to reach out with one gloved hand, hesitated for a moment over the unfamiliarity, but finally overcame her second guessing to let her hand hover just above his chest - over the crack that mirrored her own. "Your starseed will always call out for what was, even if you're bound to the Earth."
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 5:37 pm
Alunite hadn't been doing this long enough to truly realize that trying to put the way they both felt into words - especially words that those not in their shoes actually understood - was a rather useless endeavor. He seemed to struggle with it some more before finally letting go. Alkaid seemed to understand him well enough, after all.
They were both disconnected with a part of who they were - it just so happened that they were two different parts - he to anything that wasn't the most direct, unconscious connection to a celestial being he would never know, and her to the very core of who she had once been, before her correction to her own star had been revealed.
Different wounds, but similar aches.
He followed her hand with his gaze, looking back up to the sky once more. He could not tell which of the glowing dots she was pointing at, exactly, through he expected that she knew exactly which one of those far-away dots was hers.
And then, he asked himself the exact same question that she had - was it better to have never known, or to have known and forgot ?
"None of them just... speak to me." He had imagined, in his mind, that it was how it was - that senshi could all sense their stars in the sky, knew that it was theirs. But none of these where his. His star, if it was even a star at all, did not speak.
"But... That is alright." He sounded more like he was trying to convince himself at this point. "I know that I am doing the right thing. What is a war without sacrifices ? I just hope that I can... Stay, after this is all over."
This was, admittedly, one of the things he feared the most. He was a senshi, an invader. Yet he did not want to be separated from his sister, had no where else to go even if he had wanted to leave. "...Is it wrong that I want to stay here, even though I know I probably shouldn't be here to begin with ?"
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Posted: Wed Jun 01, 2011 9:14 pm
"That's.. normal, if you can call it normal, I guess." Briefly, her eyes swept back up to the sky and stared for a long moment at the star she knew was her own, and then they swept out across the thousands of lights hanging overhead. Her hand withdrew from where it hovered over his chest and came to touch her own, covering the dark crack. Then she dropped her eyes back to his with a sad half smile.
"This power binds us to Earth. Even I can't feel the connection to my star, for all that it's the only identity I have left." Then he said the words she had said a thousand times to others, the words she repeated to herself every time she stared up into the sky and realized she might never go to the only place that still felt like home to her. It choked off her words to hear someone else say it out loud and she just nodded at him, silenced by the glimpse of herself she saw in him. Different but the same.
"It's not wrong, this is the only home you know." Her words came back as she saw an opening to dissuade some of his fears and she shook her head to emphasize what she was saying. "I can't speak for our leaders, or guess what their plans would be for the end of this war, but they've bound us here with their will. I'd like to think that fighting for their home means something to them." She blew out a deep, long breath as the tangled politics of Senshi and the war found their way into her conversations once again. At least this time she was talking with a like-minded soldier.
"At the very least, I think the Negaverse takes care of their own."
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Posted: Thu Jun 02, 2011 4:37 pm
It was relieving to hear her say those things. It was relieving to have someone who actually understood what he meant by these words. He did not want to sound like a traitor, because he wasn't - he knew that what he was doing was the right thing. This was where he needed to be.
But Fluorite wouldn't understand - not for lack of trying, of course, but she simply could not. They were different yet alike, siblings yet... well.
It did make him wonder how the whole process of rebirth worked out.
"That probably won't even be a true factor for quite awhile, even." There was still so much to do. Many battles ahead, with the senshi and even those pages in the way. Maybe he should just not worry about it until then ? "But they do take care of each other." Fluorite had told him that much, how after the battle, she was brought back in a space he had seen only once to make sure she wasn't wounded too badly, and whatever wounds she had cared for.
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 1:12 am
It was sad, in a way, to look at him and know the things he felt and feared. They were fears she lived with every day, uncertainties that haunted her, and yet.. she knew that what he said was true. The negaverse showed them the utmost care now, why would they ever turn their back on them? In the back of her mind she thought of Tanzanite and the careful way she'd carried her home after the enormous battle. She knew that her General Queen would never let her suffer for anything.
He, however, had to learn these things on his own. Trust could only be earned through action and no matter how many people told him about the Negaverse, he had to experience it for himself.
"That's true. I've had more compassion and caring from this family than I ever had at the hands of the moon kingdom." There were so many people she could rely on now but, looking back, she realized how disorganized and free-for-all the Senshi were. Sure, there had been some support, but in the end everyone was looking out for themselves.
That was a dark, dreary road she didn't want to walk down right now though. So, instead, she looked back at him and studied him for a long few moments.
"Are you doing alright, otherwise, apart from.." She trailed off and waved her hand absent mindedly at the sky, not willing to say the words again.
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Posted: Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:58 am
"I am doing fine." Mostly. Beside when he'd gotten his head almost bashed in by a shield. Little of that encounter remained now, thankfully - a small shadow right under his nose, which was nothing next to the rather nasty bruising that had been right there a week or so ago. This whole rapid-healing thing was rather handy, really.
"People overall are rather accepting of me." He hadn't run in one negative opinion, which was rather surprising in itself. Fluorite lacked the rank and leadership to be able to just have it happen that way, so he doubted she had much influence in that. Some, perhaps...
His starseed was floating in between his hands, floating from one to another idly. This was a bit of a nervous tick he had acquired, one that he sister loathed. She would just get tense and tell him to stop playing around with his freaking life force already.
But yet there was something utterly fascinating with holding what amounted to your soul in the palm of your hand. To think that everything that made you 'you' was laying in this little crystal right next to your heart. His was a deep purple, much like his hair, but blackened near the edges.
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Posted: Mon Jun 06, 2011 6:16 pm
She nodded slowly as he spoke and let her eyes drop to the starseed he was fidgeting with. She had never liked to play around with her own, but she knew the fascination it held for some others. Perhaps it was just a trait of his specific branch? Playing with a life force that they had only just learned about. Alkaid, on the other hand, was far too cautious to do so.
"In the down time, it's hard to see where the ranks fall. It's in the middle of wars and battles that we have to learn our place and accept it for the sake of everyone else." She shrugged her shoulders at that though, as if being a rankless weapon didn't bother her. It probably didn't, not after she knew how important weapons were to the Negaverse.
"Otherwise they're usually accepting and willing to help, just don't try to give an order to the wrong person." Though she smiled a bit at that, her tone was very serious. Most lieutenants would not accept their orders, let alone a captain or general.
Then her eyes dropped to the starseed again and she frowned, finally unnerved enough to say something about it. "You should be more careful. If a senshi from the moon kingdom caught us off guard, that could be the end of you." She brought her hand up and tapped lightly against the crack in her chest. "They can't take a starseed like we can, they can't reach into the chamber that holds it. It's our only security."
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Posted: Tue Jun 07, 2011 11:54 am
"Yeah, I gathered that already..." Through, really, the idea of him giving orders to anyone was kind of an odd one. He would much rather have followed than lead - and the only times he got somewhat forceful was when he was upset.
He would fit in his role just fine, given a little more time to get used to it.
Alunite nodded at her warning, and the starseed went right back where it had came from. It hadn't ever hit him as unnerving, really. "I do wonder why we have these, through..." He tapped at his own chest hole. No one had explained him why - no normal agents had holes right over their starseeds. It made him wonder if anyone even knew the reason why.
It was just idle curiosity. Nothing more. "Have you... been doing this for long ?" Not all of the negaverse senshi had been so from the start. And the fact that Alkaid knew her star... He just hoped he wasn't sounding thoughtless. He'd never been the best with words - that was more his sister's area of expertise - and the last thing he wanted to do was make Alkaid upset.
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 2:50 am
She glanced at his chest as he replaced the starseed, then away as he asked a question that she had been pondering for months. She'd actually just spoken with Ashley about it and, so, she was a little more easy about opening her mouth to explain her theory.
"Humans are more receptive to the energy, I think, than we are. We're born to be something else, so our bodies.. don't take it as well." She traced the scar with her finger lightly, staring absently up at the stars that stretched across the sky. Then she dropped it, mindful of her own obsession with reasoning everything out. "It's a battle wound, like anything else."
Then he surprised her with a question that no one else had ever asked her. Not Zinkenite, not Tanzanite, not anyone. For a long moment she didn't answer him, she just thought about it, trying to reason out a timeline in her head. It was hard, considering it was all spotty and.. she was missing so much of life.
"I was awakened more than a year and a half ago," she pursed her lips as she finished speaking, as if she were not entirely sure, but after a moment added, "it's been just over six months since I came to the Negaverse." She still seemed a little troubled but in the end just shrugged very lightly and looked back at him. "It's hard for me to know exactly, so much of that time is.. missing in my head."
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Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2011 6:53 pm
A battle wound. It made sense. "It... certainly hurt enough to feel like it." And for a moment, it was him that suddenly looked like he had seen a ghost - through not the same ones that haunted Alkaid. He had no idea if she remembered the time of her purification... But he did. Not the whole thing, but he remembered enough. Hell, some might say he remembered too much.
No living being should ever be put through what he had lived. What they had all lived - he wasn't the first, and certainly wouldn't be the last. But it was necessary. It was needed.
He caught his hand shaking - tried to cover it by putting his other hand on top of it, through it wasn't faring much better.
"I understand. And... Im sorry if the question made you uncomfortable. I didn't mean to."
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 5:19 pm
"No," she shook her head as he began to apologize for the question, wanting to make it absolutely clear that it had not hurt her to answer. "It's just that it's not something people ask me, because it's not something they care to know." She paused for a moment then, as if she were not really sure how to go on without making the Negaverse seem completely ungrateful, but it seemed like the dead silence between them was waiting for an answer.
"They like to know when I came to the Negaverse, who they can thank for it," she smiled, but it was grim. She didn't have to tell him that there was nothing pleasant about the gift and that even if they were brought to the light and chosen for something more, they very rarely felt thankful for the experience itself.
"Who I was, who you were, it matters to very few of them. Your sister, of course, but others?" She shook her head to answer herself and finally just crossed her arms behind her back, lacing her fingers together and keeping herself from dwelling on her scar. "We are weapons and most weapons don't have a history."
She wasn't upset, or ungrateful. Her tone simply suggested truth. She knew who she was, where she belonged, and could point at half a dozen soldiers that had helped her along the way. She simply knew her place.
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Posted: Sun Jun 12, 2011 7:48 pm
He couldn't help but frown a bit, but he shook his head, sending his ponytail swinging back and forth. "I understand." He didn't feel the same, through perhaps this was only because, in a way, he was the same as she was.
If they didn't take the steps to try and support, and understand each other, who would ?
He stretched a bit - standing still was started to cramp him up a bit. "Walk with me ?" He offered. Well, more like hopping around the rooftops - Alunite avoided the streets like the plague when powered up, as there was no way in hell he could simply blend in. Alkaid probably knew exactly what he meant.
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