Welcome to Gaia! ::

As unpresentable and ungodly as he looked in his increasingly ragged mortal hand-me-downs, Glaucon could not ignore his need to get out of his quarters and attend to the mental list of things he needed done. Fixing his wardrobe was one of them, but matters more important to him came first: namely, getting back into contact with acquaintances and colleagues he had made before his disappearance. Some he felt he owed a favor to, while others he was genuinely interested in reestablishing communications with.

The highest on his list were Glyph of Forest, Cosine of Numbers and the mortal refugees of Baadris. Jin Huang came to mind as well, as he was still owed a gift for facilitating Glaucon's rebirth. He was not entirely sure where he would be able to find Cosine, but the nature diety was a different story -- no doubt he'd be somewhere he could surround himself with greenery. So his path took him quickly to the gardens, eyes and ears and godly awareness in search of a familiar divine presence.

It was not a familiar face or voice that ended up catching attention, but the delicate sound of hooves creeping through the grass accompanied by the substantially less delicate sound of a small, dense object being dropped to the ground. Pressing his cane into the soft soil, he turned around to see what was making a noise, and was met with a sight that definitely would have gotten a string of exasperated wisecracks out of his host.

Things just got stranger and stranger around the Pantheon. But many were long since used to this fact, and as such the thing that caught his attention was not the purple stalk-eyed centaur-scorpion who was gracing the gardens with her alien presence. Instead, his eyes and thoughts were more focused on how she was plucking those perfectly good pears out of those trees, tossing them to the ground and stomping on them as if they were some sort of vermin.

Brows furrowed in befuddlement, he slowly made to close the distance between himself and the alien, hoping it would end up being as civilized as the humanoid features of its appearance would imply. With his cane and slow movements he figured he was not much of a threatening presence, in spite of the bladelike wings fanning out from his shoulderblades.

"Is this some sort of ritual for your kind, or are you just purposefully being wasteful?"

Exalla's voice made a sudden appearance in the Judge's head, and he found himself flinching and blinking with surprise. It had been a long time since he had a mental companion. However, this was markedly different; this being was injecting thoughts from her mind into his, instead of opinions percolating up from the depths of a shared one. Interesting. As interesting as the response.

"Ah, a telepath," he remarked, with noted intrigue. A hand rose up to stroke his chin, as he considered the Andalite. "And you... eat things by stepping on them?" That had... interesting implications, for the social structure of her species as a whole, granted there were more of her kind left in the aftermath of Gehenna. He waved the thoughts aside for the moment, though. "But now all I'm doing is pointing out the tired obvious to you. I extend my apologies. It was unwise to accuse."

However, the first impressions weren't done being made yet. While the alien had proven to have a reason for throwing good food around... she still hadn't turned around to look at him face to face. And the disdain in her voice was difficult to miss, the extra pair of eyes regarding him with a strange but clearly judgmental gaze.

"Wounded is not the most accurate word for it," he began to explain. "This body was damaged by a disease of the nerves. I... am still recovering." And then, it was time for Glaucon's gaze to narrow. "But it is nothing contagious. And no reason to turn your back on a stranger."

"What?"

The utterance was a bit loud, louder than he had intended, and had he time to think about it more he would have been shocked by it. As it were, though, he was too busy being shocked by the words slipping forth from the alien's mind. It was an unfamiliar word she was using, but the venom behind it was clear all the same. No one ever had any problems with David's disabilities, he had been able to make himself useful in other ways. Meeting someone who apparently thought of his condition as some sort of offense on par with being a criminal deserving of exile was an unpleasant surprise that made his features curdle to a scowl.

"You speak terribly naive words, mortal," said Glaucon, a scornful darkening around the edges of his tone.

It was not that he felt personally hurt by her accusations, so much as the principles, the cultural ideas behind them, that was allowing her to make them in the first place.

Rhetoric exploded into Glaucon's thoughts, the mental voice musical with femininity but also bold and fiercely arrogant. As the words tumbled forth his scowl turned into a grimace, then a sneer; a clearly hot-tempered demeanor revealed itself in the face of a god normally cold and analytical. It had been a long time -- ages -- since someone challenged him to a battle of words. And while he would normally approach such a thing with the enthused practicality of a seasoned chess player about to play a new game, this opponent had managed to genuinely anger him. And so, his opening argument:

"What a bunch of bullshit."

He brought his cane in closer to his feet, readying his stance and stabilizing his balance. "Is that what your people really believe? That only the perfect have anything to offer society?" Arrogance was meeting arrogance, as the god's own voice became something befitting a larger audience than the single listener present. "If you lost sight in one of your eyes, would that also erase the gifts of your mind? If one is born with a mind unsuited for leadership, would you then dismiss their potential as a follower? Or a laborer?"

He would realize in retrospect that this alien's attitudes had bothered him on a personal level.

"You no doubt felt the effects of Gehenna's destructive influence, ready to indiscriminately devour all that Is... war and strife indeed, along with every other terror your narrow mind could possibly imagine. And you can credit the continuation of your existence to those you can find here, the heroes of the Pantheon. How many of us have you met? Would they be ideal for the 'herd' in your eyes? Most likely not."

His fire-colored gaze stayed fixed on her main pair of eyes, defiant.

"Many of them were flawed. Plagued, starved, injured... young and inexperienced, troubled of the mind, incomplete... and yes, disabled. I was among them. And the vecols of our Pantheon contributed just as much to the halting of the apocalypse as the whole. Some did even more than their supposedly superior counterparts did.

"I belong here. So do the others here you may call vecol. And it is not your place to determine who does and does not deserve to live here. How sheltered must you be, to be able to believe that every society in existence must exist by your kind's rules?"

"I may have misjudged on the semantics," the god admitted, with a stiff and hesitant but still polite incline of his head. "And I can understand the drive to create a more perfect civilization, and to promote those individuals who do their part to contribute to it. But I still see no Justice in exiling those you refer to as 'invalid.' They have committed no injustice themselves, and I do not believe that a disability would completely erase one's usefulness."

"I judge such things because that is what I embody," he explained, a proud but somewhat weary sense of duty creeping in to the words. "I am Glaucon, Judgment. I exist to guide and enforce the social contracts between the members of a community, and in doing so ensure a just society. This has been the core of my existence for Ages beyond the centuries you claim for your people. But beyond that--"

He was interrupted by the Andalite's arrogant outburst. It visibly ruffled his feathers, but he gritted his teeth and pressed on.

"Beyond that... you are Andalite. And proud to be one, which is not a bad thing in and of itself. However, at this Pantheon you do not live among Andalites, and what customs have come to exist here have nothing to do with the rules and traditions of your people. Therefore, your perceived superiority is meaningless here. The stewardship of your race over other stars does not exist here. I know my place in the Pantheon. However, you need to learn yours."

Glaucon gave a slow nod. "You are correct. And your confusion is not misplaced. It is common to people new to the Pantheon... even those less skeptical about the existence of gods." His tone at that was, almost, a smidgen more lighthearted, possibly a bit of a joke drawn from personal experience. "To put it briefly: I, like other gods, am in the process of being reborn, and my power is limited until I come fully into it. I will explain in greater detail later."

And 'later' meant that he was forming a plan for the visitor. He clearly intended to extend this improptu meeting a while longer.

The conversation turned to less contentious, but more confusing grounds as Exalla opened up to it with a small line of questions. Acquiring him? Princes? Glaucon furrowed his brow as he tried to process the information, but ultimately settled on saying, "You would do well to explain things a little more thoroughly while you are here, even if things seem obvious. I will attempt to do the same... but I am afraid I do not understand what you wish to 'acquire' from me."

Even so, he did not flinch or falter as the Andalite approached closer. It did not seem like things would turn violent -- and if they did, he had the power to halt it by speaking the right words, though he was uncertain on how well it would work outdoors. The fingers of Exalla's left hand would end up brushing against the smooth, round gem that contained Glaucon's once-dormant essence, otherwise hidden beneath his gold-tinted lock of hair.

"I believe the word 'Prince' must have a different meaning for an Andalite than for others you will find here. Many races have a concept of royalty, but I would not use that term to describe Lord Harmodius."

Color the god intrigued by the Andalite's explanation. He listened with interest, albeit with a bit of hidden amusement at her continued desire to box the nature of gods into her race's rules of the universe. "At full power, we are one and the same with our domain..." he politely countered. Having his host's DNA pulled out of him was having somewhat of a calming effect, though his mind remained sharp. "Lady Echo, whom you have met, is literally Music. And in time, I will literally be Judgment." He did not know what Z-Space was, but felt it unnecessary to probe on that further.

Instead, he watched with a mix of curiosity, concern, and complete and utter baffled surprise as the alien's form noisily twisted and contorted, stretching and squishing into a new form that was highly familiar. Too familiar for comfort.

"David...?"

He took a concerned step forward. "How did you... are you in pain?"