|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 11:35 am
When she could lift her arms over her head without wanting to promptly die, Avalon wrote a note to Zinkenite. It went like this: Hypothetically speaking, if I were to try to switch sides, how would that go?
I'd like to talk to you about it. Same time, same place?She signed it, pressed her seal into the piece of printer paper, and watched it vanish without a trace. It would appear to Zinkenite, she knew, because that was how things worked--you could send such notes to anyone, anywhere. Useless in a fight, of course, but brilliant for setting up meetings, brilliant for getting ready to subvert whatever heritage and history had been passed down your line for ages-- Avalon inhaled, exhaled. It was going to be fine. Nothing would happen unless she wanted it to--nothing was set in stone. She still had to talk to people about the Blood Moon Court. She still had to find out what the plan in the end of everything was--what the Negaverse really wanted. Getting the senshi off their soil, maybe that made sense. (She remembered the Surrounding, uneasily.) And maybe she could wander patrol while waiting? No, she'd said same place. So she sat on the edge of the roof and chewed her fingernails, waiting.
|
 |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 11:51 am
The appearance of the note was, startling to say the least. He picked it up, examined it carefully, the paper, the color of the ink…silly things that he made notes in the margins of a slip of paper about. When he finally opened the note, his eyebrows rose in interest. He closed it again, folding it carefully and sat for a long time gazing out over the rift. A view well afforded to him from the ‘War Room’. He tucked the note into one of his pockets, stood, and vanished without a word to his companion, the youma named Locke who simply yawned, and moved to lay in front of the door until he was summoned, or the General-King returned. -- The displacement of air might have been a gust of wind, but there was nothing that could mask his power signature, not anymore. Unlike the senshi he could not masquerade as anything less than he was. He found it strangely honest, perhaps refreshing. The note was pulled out again, held up between two fingers, a casual but curious tilt to his head as he regarded her. “Hypothetically speaking, are you interested in the method one would have to go through in order to ‘corrupt’, or…” he trailed off, letting the idea that there might be more questions, or perhaps simply details unsaid. “Sorry, normally I bring tea to such meetings, seems polite. I was running rather close today though.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 11:58 am
Avalon dropped her hands as soon as the massive Chaotic signature bloomed behind her. Unless she missed her guess, it was probably Zinkenite, so she just steeled herself before she turned around, pulling her feet up from the great drop and standing. "That, yeah," she said. "What happens when you corrupt from… my side of things. What does it do to you. I've never met anyone who's done it." Leto and Requiem had done it, she thought she'd heard through the grape vine. And there'd been a knight, but she'd never met Lina either, and couldn't remember if there were any others. The attitude of the Zodiac senshi so long ago had implied such things happened, but were not to be admired. She took a deep breath. "What does the Negaverse want? Is it join you, or die?" The second question weighed heaviest upon her. If she stayed as she was--on the side of Order, if not the side of good--would she die? That was the end she wanted to avoid most of all. Avalon was not a martyr, had never wanted to be a martyr. Would avoid martyrdom if she possibly could. "Won't people who know both of me now know both of me later? Isn't that dangerous?"
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 12:35 pm
“No, they will not know you, not if you are in your civilian guise, Order isn’t the only one who can protect those who, chose to ally themselves with someone else, willingly or non. “ He paused a moment considering the rest of her questions.
“Please pardon, if I go back and forth a little on what you asked. I would rather follow my train of thought, as I feel it will be more, complete.”
“I have never been order, so I don’t know personally how to relate to the feeling, I’ve never been offered …salvation by Order either. I’m uncertain how they chose the handful of people they, you pursue, but I think we’re a bit more…open to recruitment.” He paused to let the words soak in, to let her make her own thoughts on what he said before he continued.
“I know that there are consequences, you will forget things. I do not know what triggers the forgetting, civilian life, or powered life, either can be forgotten and I have found no way to predict it. Lina, she’s a special case in that…I’ll warn that she lost a great deal, but I think she’s happier now. As good a soldier as she is, I’d rather you not press her with questions because she has forgotten so much. It’s because I think she was dragged to the side of order, and then I brought her back, rather than kill her. Anyone else you can find, even with the Dark Moon Court would be good to speak to I feel, Leto for example, Requiem, I would send you to speak to those who were in the hands of the Blood Moon court if I thought that questioning them on the subject would not go badly. What happened to them…” He rolled his shoulder in something like a shrug. Traumatic was the least of the implications.
“I can warn you it hurts, but I feel, personally, that perhaps it should. Who should have power such as we do, without some cost. I wonder at times if that is why the side of order is so…chaotic. Power without price, children playing at war, doing quite well, even if it is more due to numbers than their ability to cooperate.”
A pause as he thought, “If I wanted you dead, and nothing else I would have killed you, wouldn’t I? I’d be as content to see the senshi trying to recolonize their own destroyed worlds as I would to see them exterminated. I find it… unsettling to know that they are somehow reincarnated, that people like Lyra remember worlds that were dead long before they took some body on earth. If you knights do as well, I’m not sure what I would think of that… uneasy I suppose, but isn’t it curious to think perhaps they are living again to learn from past mistakes, but perhaps they are making them again. That’s not fact mind you…just my thoughts on it.
“…you could talk to Eos perhaps.” He added thoughtfully. “Albiero perhaps, though…” He frowned slightly. “Hmm… I’d prefer not to hear you did this because you were in love with one of us, imagine the risk of forgetting that, Alkaid…she’s one of our GENERALS now of a sort.”
He shifted and pursed his lips. “I’m afraid we haven’t converted many knights, though there are many I would admit I admire.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 1:35 pm
That was one concern done away with. They wouldn't know her--not like she had any family to protect, or many friends. There was Parker, but they barely talked anymore. It was really sad, actually. Finn had gone off to Alaska to do some kind of fellowship for wildlife protection, Ladon had vanished… she really only socialized with Kess anymore. Avalon sighed quietly. How had she acquired so many friends and then… abandoned them all? It had to be something wrong with her. "As you will," she said, setting her hands on her knees and listening attentively.
The consequences sounded… surmountable: Forgetting things. Civilian life or powered life… well, she knew she'd rather keep her civilian life. It had the most memories she attached to good things. Ladon and Wolframite, before he'd become… however he was. Lina… the knight? She'd returned to the Negaverse, then. At least she knew she could probably go back if this turned out to be an awful idea. (Avalon wanted to live, more than anything.) "I'll leave Lina alone," she said. Best not to antagonize the forces of Chaos if she didn't have to, at least until she decided where she stood on the lot of them. Pain? Well, that she could handle. If she could live through getting brutally stabbed, and her arms getting all slashed up, and a giant fight against an evil dragon monster, a little pain wouldn't stop her.
"Yeah," she said, when he told her the truth: if Zinkenite wanted her dead, she would be dead. The worlds of the senshi… she'd seen Taranis's once, hidden with him through a sandstorm. She wondered what had happened to him, too… "We have places like that," she said. "Our Wonders. We take our name from them, like senshi." She paused, tipped her head just a bit. "But I'm not reincarnated. I'm descended from the line of Knights that guarded Avalon." A new soul, she guessed.
She wrote the names he gave her down: Eos. Albiero. Alkaid, now a General. "Us Knights are generally an admirable sort," she said, a little wryly. "Also, I can promise you I'm not particularly in love with any of you." She might have once been… but getting stabbed with a serrated blade as wide as your hand tended to kill most romantic feeling pretty successfully. "I want to be where things make sense," she told him. "Everything with Order is ego, and argument, and we don't get anywhere because there's no structure. It sucks."
Well, there you go. It sucks. A concise summation of why she'd even begun to consider the side of Chaos in more depth.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:05 pm
“What else can I think of…mmm.” He tilted his head in thought. “Well, obviously we haven’t been ripping star seeds out like we once did. Energy collection is a great deal safer for everyone involved, and more productive in the long run I believe.” He shuddered, perhaps a surprising reaction from a ‘mass murderer’, always hated collecting them anyhow.” He waved a hand. “Rather…intimate if you think about it.”
He shook his head clearing the thought. “What else… most of your victory’s are, with no offence…DUMB luck in the favor of Order. Frustrating let me just say, but sooner or later, luck WILL run out and we’ll have another victory like the one we had in Elysion. We do…obviously have our run-ins with Ego, but I doubt very much as many as the side of order does. We did crash one of your meetings after all.”
“We train hard, we are focused, we are…specialized, we function in teams as well as we do solo. We have to.”
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Posted: Wed Jan 30, 2013 7:24 pm
She had noticed the assault victims who later died had dropped sharply, but hadn't really… noticed it. Concern for her own life and focus on her petty worries had sort of overcome her concern for others at some point. "Noticed that myself," she said.
And he kept talking, but her eyes had gone narrow and her lips thin at the statement rather… intimate if you think about it. She never would have guessed, considering how eager he'd once been to shove his hand into her chest. (Do not sass the General-King, she thought. It will end badly. Remember the time he slammed you into a wall?" "So, wait," she said, unable to help herself. "You get squeamish around boobs?" Or, well, chests in general, but it seemed like the thing to ask. She reached out and grabbed his hand, catching her letter between them. "It's just anatomy, dude," she said, which was totally ignoring the fact that she got prudish faster than lightning could crack.
Except it was a really bad idea to sass a General-King. She did the one thing she could think of to throw him off enough that he'd maybe consider not force-corrupting her right there: "I pledge my life and loyalty to Earth, and to Avalon. I humbly request your aid that in return, I may give you mine!"
And the two of them vanished into the ether.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
