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 Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 12:59 pm
Things were starting to look up. Things were starting to get more and more sorted, evened out, routine. Tony was more than glad for that, as he was getting a bit worn out with the long hours at work and the long hours at patrol. Once all the backed up library work was done, he might be able to go back to more 'normal' hours.
He put the last of the books he had just put into the system, the last of the overdue stock from his 'trip', onto the shelf for resorting and reshelving, grinning. He was very proud of how much he had gotten done, and knew he wouldn't have been able to do it without the help of his volunteer and paid student workers.
Sighing, stretching, he glanced at the clock. Well passed closing, and everything was already locked up. He turned off the lights and made his way up to the roof, as per usual. He powered up after making sure he had his keys on him, as he had a very bad habit of locking himself out when he came to the roof for lunch and he was training himself to always check.
He powered up, all traces of the cane wielding librarian gone and replaced by a knight in shining armor, but only because the stars were out in force that night. He looked up at the sky as he closed the door behind him, stepping out onto the roof and sighing.
The fresh air of the night, coupled with his good attitude, made him hopeful that things would be good. Safe. No one in danger, no one being hurt. A man could dream. He moved to the edge of the roof, looking out over the city and feeling for any auras that might mean trouble.
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Posted: Thu Nov 03, 2011 1:13 pm
Things were good, least for the Dark Moon Senshi as she recalled her wraith into the shard of mirror she was holding before tucking it back into the safety of the pouch hidden in the cuff of her boot. It had been a fabulous night for gathering energy, Navi herself had managed to subdue a two targets(a pimp and a hustler respectively) thus far, and the night was still young. "Ares will be very pleased with me." She was grinning as she turned away from the motionless figure in the shadows of the alley behind the Library.
It was then she felt it, a familiar and instantly infuriating aura radiating from the top of the grand building beside her. It set her teeth on edge, and she snapped her head up to search the edge of the building for any sign of brassy armor. "Camelot.." It was barely above a hiss, but the anger that game with it seemed hot enough to scald.
And then she smiled, a wholly unpleasant twist of pale lips as she recalled the end of their last fateful meeting. She'd been cheated of a proper ending, or her prize, and now it seemed a second chance was provided for her.
With a dark little chuckle the senshi bounded up the fire escape of the neighboring building, then across the gap and onto the roof of the library. She crouched in the shadows, wide eyes eagerly scanning the for any sign of the knight she knew was close. Not seeing him, she finally straightened, voice raising to fill the quiet night. "Come out come out where ever you are!"
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Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 10:16 am
Camelot felt the energy of chaos in the air, and felt a shudder move through him. He knew this feeling, and remembered the moment very clearly amid the hectic battlefield. He turned when he heard a familiar voice calling to him, tucked out of sight behind the outcropping from which he had just emerged from the library. It was a door sized little box, which led into the stairwell.
He wasn't scared, but he did not know how to handle this situation. He had known everyone had come back to earth: everyone. Not just the civilians and the senshi, but their enemies as well. Not that he considered her his enemy, not yet, even with their rivalry still very much in place. He was going to help her, come hell or high water.
He stepped out from behind the stairwell, looking at her with his hands lifted slightly passively.
"Pretending you're one of the negaverse, I see," he said calmly, shaking his head. Why senshi were hurting civilians he could never begin to guess, nor did he want to. It was the chaos that was his enemy, in its truest form, and that was what he needed to drive out. "I don't want to fight you, I just want to talk."
He was hoping he had made a little progress in the Surrounding, that his words and actions had left some impression on her. From the look on her face, though, he wasn't thinking it had been a good one now.
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Posted: Fri Nov 04, 2011 3:44 pm
Movement drew her attention the edge of the stairwell, and the cold little grin only widened as her eyes settled on the squire. Chin lifting in defiant pride as he compared her to another agent of chaos. "Pretending?" It was technically true that she, as a Dark Mirror Senshi, was not a part of the negaverse, but they were allies, they did work together, and some of their methods were similar.
Energy gathering, for one. Though for different reasons.
If he knew the truth of it perhaps his opinion would be a little different. Yes, Navi did hunt the humans to steal their energy, but she was picky in her choices. Thugs, gangsters, criminals. The scum of the earth were her prey, people she believed deserved a little roughing up and fear. In her own way the girl was a crusader. Least in her own mind.
"Again with that pacifist bullshit?" She chuckled, striding out from the shadows to face him across the roof of the library. Fingertips twitching at her side.
It was unfortunate really, how much hate the dark senshi held for the man across from her, and not all of it justified. He'd never lifted a hand against her, not even when they'd fought, and yet few among the white court were a bigger target for the girl's rage. It wasn't his fault, it was a matter of circumstance. The wrong side, the wrong place, and the wrong time. He hadn't saved them, any of them.
"So talk, but I would make it quick. There's no telling how long I'll be willing to listen." Not long, in all honesty. She didn't care what he had to say.
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Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 11:03 am
"It's not pacifism, and it's not bullshit," Camelot countered, shaking his head. "Fighting is necessary, but not in every case. Not against someone who isn't your enemy, though not your ally either."
He looked at her and felt sadness stirring in him. It pained him to see her corrupted, her mind poisoned by Chaos and those that put it inside her. He knew there had to be a way to purify those corrupted by that evil power, but how to even begin to find it was far beyond his thought processes at the moment. He had only just begun to consider this idea, and would have to talk to some of those he knew had been in the fight for far longer to see if it were truly possible. His ideals and strong will could only get him so far, and he didn't think it would do much against Chaos itself.
When she told him to talk his face gave him away. He didn't know what to say. His eyes grew wide and he looked like a deer in headlights, blinking stupidly.
"I... well. I... I think you're fighting for the wrong reasons. I... well. I don't know why you're fighting, but hurting civilians, stealing their energy, and holding this dangerous grudge against the white moon... it's not worth it. You don't have to spend your life in darkness and hate. Can you tell me this is what you envisioned for yourself, when you were young and dreaming of what you would be when you grew up? Something the world considers a villain, and does things out of malice and bitterness? Is this the life you want to live now? You only have one chance, do you really want this to be how you spend your time on earth?"
He cleared his throat, worrying about his lead in. He really needed to start preparing and practicing speeches, but then he feared he would sound like one of those preeching extremists on the soap boxes whenever there's some big legal issue dithering on.
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Posted: Sat Nov 05, 2011 11:58 am
"Am I not? The other pages certainly seem to think I am." She snorted, mind rolling back to when she had first been awakened and Ceslus had wasted no time in trying to attack her. There had been no provocation, only his foot driving towards her stomach.
She grinned as he stared at her, pleased that she'd called his bluff and garnered such an entertaining reaction from him. Of course knowing him, he'd find something to say, and she actually listened as he recovered from his initial, stuttered ramblings and started preaching at her about good, evil, and her childhood dreams. It earned him a very sorry, exasperated sort of look from the dark senshi.
"Come off it, you know nothing of me." The casual amusement to her voice had faded, replaced by disgust. "Nothing of me, my life, or my court. How dare you speak to what you have no true knowledge of."
Patient evaporating, Navi stalked forward. "These civilians I hurt? Criminals and thieves." Spiked heels snapped angrily against the roof with every furious step she took. "What I envisioned for myself was not an unwilling trip into space. It was not the pain and fear of the constant monster attacks and casualties around me, and it sure as hell was not sight of watching each and every one of my friends killed before my very eyes or sacrificed so your precious white moon could cower behind a barrier!" She was screaming by the time she reached him, rushing forward with one pretty little hand cocked back.
"Those villians are the only thing that kept me from dying with the rest of them. The chaos gave me a life, where order would have given me oblivion."
All her anger, her bitter rage, was put into the force of her fist cranking forward. She wasn't aiming for his face, she was aiming for a point six inches beyond it. If anyone needed to wake up and smell the roses, it was him and his obvious blind faith in the holy white moon.
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Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 9:59 am
"Well, maybe I'm not like the other knights," he said, though her words bothered him. He had this idea about knights, like they were somehow above the fighting, like they would all follow his ideas of finding peace and avoiding attacking others. That they wouldn't be out there starting fights. But that wasn't fair, and it certainly wasn't right. He knew that each one of them conducted themselves by their own rules, their own ideals.
Still, he couldn't help but feel ruffled.
"So it's okay to hurt them because they're bad guys?" He asked her in return, shaking his head, "but that's how many of us see you, so how can you get angry and hold bitterness toward us for applying the same logic you use for your victims?"
He listened as she walked toward him, though, standing his ground. He grimaced as she began yelling, seeing how deep her pain and anger really ran. And what could he say? It wasn't like they had controlled what happened to the civilians, and they had done what they could to save them.
"All the civilians survived! And did you fail to see the profound efforts we were making to save each and every one of them, or does your chaos blind you to only what you want to see, to justify what you're doing now? The white moon had no control over them being there, or what they were there to do: and those of us there to defend the civilians did every thing we could! YOUR allies broke in through the mirrors, YOUR allies allowed that evil into the Surrounding. Those people only died because Chaos attacked! How can you blame us for something the people you now defend caused?!"
He was so busy trying to defend himself verbally he failed to defend himself physically. He pulled his head back at the last minute, but her fist still connected and sent him stumbling backwards.
"No, wait!" he yelped in an effort to keep her from attacking again, struggling to regain his footing.
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Posted: Sun Nov 06, 2011 10:28 pm
He was shouting at her, but a lot of it was lost in her fist flying forward and connecting with his jaw. Pain shooting up from her knuckles and along the whole of her arm. She ignored it though, fueled by her anger and the satisfaction of hitting him.
He stumbled and she stalked forward, dainty hand snapping out to grab the tabard the covered his chest, yanking him forward in a way that actually made it easier for him to regain his footing. She didn't want him on the ground, that would have cheapened things. No, she wanted him on his feet.
Using her grip on him she pulled him closer until their faces were inches away, voice an angry hiss. "You didn't do enough!" The words were spat at him, rage filled and bitter. "The attack would have happened regardless, we weren't a part of your war until we were dropped into the middle of it."
Wait? Why wait? She didn't want to talk about the righteous follies of the white moon court or their bumbling attempts to protect them. They were larger in numbers, it was their domain, they should have protected them. And that didn't even scratch the surface of the ideals of the Dark Mirror Court. The anger Camelot was facing was purely her own.
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Posted: Mon Nov 07, 2011 12:37 am
"I did everything I could!" He yelled back at her, almost letting her pull him around like he was a stuffed doll. He stared at her, green eyes trying to find something that understood him, something that he could reach out for, in her own gaze. But all he could see was how angry she was, how hurt.
"This isn't my war! I don't want this any more than you do, though our reasons are different. I don't believe in this fighting! I don't believe this earth belongs to anyone, that anyone needs to fight or kill or die. I told you before, I want you to have that life you lost, the life we all want to live, and did live before any of us were dragged into this fight. Don't you understand? I'm not your enemy!"
He gripped her arms, steady now and staying close. Something in her sparked a will to defend, to fight for her, more than he even usually felt. Maybe it was because he did feel like he had failed her, in the Surrounding. She had fallen to Chaos, and watched her friends die. Even if they did return, it didn't undo the damage. Damage he hadn't been able to prevent, though he tried.
With everything he was, he had tried.
"I can't undo what happened in space. I can't and won't apologize for doing everything in my power to save you, to bring you home. It you refuse to see how much I, we, would sacrifice to protect you, that's fine. But I won't stop, either. Hate me all you want. I'm going to find a way to end this war, and purge the corruption in you."
He realized how preachy he was sounding, how very much like everything he thought he was fighting against he was becoming. Did that make him a bad guy? Just another side of a war with far too many combatants already, causing more damage? But he still felt he was doing the right thing, what he had to do.
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Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:38 am
"And you failed!" She hissed at him, faces almost close enough to touch. Almost oblivious to his grip on her arms.
She was furious at him, but not yet to the point where all reason or logic fell to the way side. She might have been hitting him, but his words still reached her. Least til he made the mistake of mentioning the life she'd had to give up. It made her freeze where she stood, hazel eyes widening as if he'd actually struck her. How dare he. How dare he!
"Don't you," she began levelly, but her voice was raising, pain and rage seeping out with every word. "Dare talk about lost lives as if you know anything about it!" She lifted her arms, tearing them from his grasp, one slider leg raising to drive the heel of her boot into his stomach to drive him away from her "I lost everything!"
While he shouted his defense at her, she slide one foot back, palms coming up to mirror each other at her side. "You're so righteous," she snapped. "A selfless crusader. What right or authority do you have to call me corrupted?"
"Whiplash Blast!" Wind, fierce and power swirled up around her, sent her hair flying and fuku fluttering wildly. It didn't stay wild though. She called that power to her hands and it condensed and sharped, a swirling ball of wind made razor bramble. She didn't didn't want to talk anymore, she didn't want to listen to him defend himself or preach at her. She just wanted him to shut up.
Thrusting her arms out, she sent that swirling attack at him with a furious cry.
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Posted: Wed Nov 09, 2011 9:46 am
Camelot grunted when her heel hit him in the stomach, stumbling back. His armor and chain mail certainly helped him, but he was not particularly glad to be kicked at any time, protected or not. He instinctively put his arm over his gut, taking a deep breath in to replace the air that was pushed out.
"What do you call that energy in you?!" Okay, maybe he had used the wrong word there. He would have to avoid pointing out to corrupted members of the powered up scene that they were, in fact, corrupted by chaos. It hadn't won him any points.
He had just recovered from her kick when the wind picked up. His eyes narrowed as she controlled that wind and threw the ball of it at him, lifting his shield to defend against it. The crystal embedded in the wood hummed with life, glowing against the wood grain as Camelot ducked behind his shield and braced himself for the hit.
"Terra Viridis Crystal Power!" He heard himself yell on instinct, just as he had with the dragon. He imagined it would just push her attack, and her, away from him. He had never used it on a person before, though, and didn't realize that the pulse of light and energy did knock an opponent back, driving forward from the shield, but it also caused injury free pain while doing it.
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Posted: Thu Nov 10, 2011 10:11 am
"Salvation!" She hadn't been corrupted, she had been saved, reborn. That dark smile she'd worn on the midst of their first battle was returning, wide and not the least bit friendly. Something of her had broken up on that battlefield, something beyond the repair of kindness or time.
The corners of her lips twitched as she watched his shield deflect her attack, narrowed eyes widening as the ball dissipated and swept out around them, their hair and clothing flying wildly before settling.
She hadn't expected that. He'd never really tried to defend himself before, so why should she have thought it'd be any different now?
He was shouting again, and she had half a second to realize it was an attack before the force of it slammed into her and drove her back. Body impacting solidly with the stairwell with enough force to knock the air from her lungs so there was nothing left to scream with when the sudden pain flared through her. Not from hitting the wall, but as if every nerve in her body were trying to tear itself free.
A gasping breath broke the short silence, and finally she could scream, long and loud, wide eyes staring across at the knight and his shield. She dropped to her knees, then collapsed forward onto to her stomach with all the grace of a broken doll.
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Posted: Fri Nov 11, 2011 12:14 pm
Camelot stared. He had never used his crystal's attack on a person before, and had only done so now because the crystal had been thrumming in the same way it had at the Surrounding. He blinked, looking at his shield, then at the dark senshi on the floor.
It had hurt her.
The knight's first instinct was to run to her side. He generally gave in to his first instinct, and he was there in short order, kneeling next to her and checking her pulse first, just to make sure he hadn't managed to kill her somehow. How did he know what it might do? He at least discovered that she was alive, and she didn't look like she had any injuries on her.
Now he had to decide what to do. Leave her? He didn't have it in him to abandon her, in case something less caring than he was came around and found her. She was defenseless, and that was his fault. He really wasn't doing a very good job convincing her he was looking out for her.
She'd be better off, he imagined, if he was her enemy. He'd probably mess that up and help her that way.
He picked her up and looked around, moving her to the stoop of the library. He put her down carefully against the wall, sitting her on the floor just in front of the doors, hoping she was comfortable. He then hurried away and powered down, slipping into the side door of the library and keeping watch over her from inside. He couldn't just leave her there, but he couldn't hang out as Camelot for her to wake up or she would attack him again. So Tony was pulling a late shift at the library, which was completely dark, making sure she woke up and went on her way safely.
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Posted: Sat Nov 12, 2011 10:43 am
She wasn't entirely out, not yet, but she couldn't seem to move when she heard his boots pounding across the roof towards her. Not even to curl her lip up in disgust as she felt his fingers on her neck. She wanted to scream at him not to touch her, but the words wouldn't form. Nothing wanted to work right.
So much for all his talk of not wanting to hurt her. She hadn't entirely bought it to begin with, but any ground he might had originally was crumbling now. He'd lied, just as he'd lied out in the Surrounding, him and all his White Moon allies.
He picked her up and the world seemed to spin just a little. It made her groan, but she didn't stir in his arms as he carried her off the roof. Her head was throbbing, her body ached, but there wasn't a single wound on her body to show for it. One cheap shot had been enough to knock her out of commission, it was worst then embarrassing, it was shameful. Worst yet, now she was helpless and in his tender care.
She was placed on the library stairs, arranged in what she had to assume was meant to be comfortable, then left. It was kind of surprising. She wasn't sure what exactly she was expecting, but it hadn't been that.
After a few minutes she slumped forward, palms smacking against the concrete to catch herself. She could move again, that was a plus. The headache was subsiding, marginally, another plus. She wanted away from there. Camelot's aura had faded, but she didn't trust it, or him.
With a pained groan she pushed herself to her feet, using the wall for support, then made her slow, unsteady way down the stairs. All she had to do was get to a mirror, then she could go home. There was one close, they'd set one up, she just had to get to it.. Easier said then done.
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