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 Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2014 5:43 pm
He didn’t even want to be out that night. Stopping at a bar on the way home was only even more of a disappointment, because even though he could have had his pick of whichever other lonely person there, it just didn’t feel right.
Maybe he was outgrowing his bachelorness, if that was even possible. Or just growing older…? He was already twenty-eight and not exactly a young, wannabe-frat boy any more. He’d seen more of life and death than he’d wanted to see, already.
And yet, there he was, all decked out in green and brown and fancy-a** armor that didn’t really mean anything because the Negaverse was still capable of sticking their filthy hands into his chest.
Sessrumnir told himself it was because he would get home faster powered up. He would know where to avoid and when to slip behind some building and duck out of harm’s way… So why did he not change direction when he felt the energy in a nearby park? He even rolled his eyes at himself as he heaved out a sigh, heading towards it against his better judgement.
What was a cat doing, letting off that much power in the park…? Trying to attract the wrong kind of attention??
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Posted: Thu Feb 06, 2014 8:06 pm
The Mauvian's hands were folded behind her back as she paced back and forth on the park bench to keep her bare toes out of the damp winter ground, not even seeming to bother about the purple overlay of her costume dragging and dangling behind her.
A knight's aura came onto her radar and she just kept on, until she saw who it was and jumped down to run to him.
"You! You're already in my index, grumpypants!"
And under than name, unfortunately. She hadn't gotten much out of him at the training session other than a photo that was distant enough it came off as a creepy stalker photographer people against their will.
Mostly because that's what it was but she was certain she could think of better terms for the practice herself.
"Hello, my name is Zirconia, and I need to finish your entry!" She didn't mean to sound so rehearsed, but there was only so many ways one could make the sales pitch.
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Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 5:11 pm
The grumpypants in question arched a brow and immediately crossed his arms over his chest to look down at the half-feline girl. “Zirconia,” he said thoughtfully, pursing his lips as if he was thinking about something, and then after a moment, “Ah yes, I remember you.” It was difficult not to remember such a display.
“Last I recall seeing you, you were throwing a tantrum at a large meeting and, oh right, conveniently peaced out right before the rest of us were attacked. Lucky you,” he practically scoffed. It wasn’t that he was bitter that she wasn’t there — he just didn’t see the reason behind the 180º turn around.
“What’s in it for me?” Sessrumnir wondered, his eyes narrowing a bit. He didn’t trust her, especially since he had no knowledge of who she was other than the one incident during that large meeting. Or if he met her on some other occasion, she must not have made enough of an impact for him to remember.
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Posted: Sun Feb 16, 2014 6:21 pm
There was a weird moment where her brow raised and her smile didn't falter as he brought up one of the meetings where Zirconia had made a scene. "Yes! That was lucky, wasn't it? I mean, ha, man I saw Niflhel's neck after Ares had her way with him, do not want, bro."
The ineloquent and casual speech was a big, disappointing hint for anyone expecting the guardian cat who took herself too seriously to call anyone a bro with a straight face. If Zirconia herself had been active and and conscious she would've been seething at improper use of that face.
"Anyway, that was the last place you saw Zirconia, but this was the last place I saw you," She said, turning the smartphone screen to show him the photo she had taken at the training senshi, immediately following his spar with Sailor Irene.
"Remember that? I just need you to fill in the blanks for me, I mean, I can't keep calling you by your nickname, it kind of demeans the quality of the index, yanno?"
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Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 2:36 pm
There were plenty of things in the war that left Sessrumnir unimpressed and wondering why he even bothered. His eyes narrowed at the cat woman, her flippant attitude in response to his comment had him sorely tempted to just turn around and walk away, lest he make her think this was worth his time.
“Lucky…” he repeated slowly, as if he was taking a few moments to really settle on the word. Right, it was lucky for her when people were dying. People were fighting to survive and she was being apathetic about it, which again made him note the complete change in her demeanor from before — a change of opinions perhaps, or maybe her alliances had changed like so many others.
After what he hoped was an uncomfortably long moment of silence, his expression cracked with a facetious grin, his head cocking slightly to the side as he looked her over. “Why should I help you?” he wondered, apparently finding it amusing that she would even think he’d help her out. “This index of yours… How will it benefit me? How will it benefit anyone? How do I know you’re not going to take all your information to the negaverse? Because you know what? I don’t trust you.
“Do you know why those people were there at that training session? Because they wanted to learn how to fight and defend themselves incase they were attacked again. I’ve seen the hard work those senshi and knights have put into learning how to deal with this war, I’ve seen their struggles, their heartbreak, their pain at watching others die while they stood helpless, and for you to wave that off...?” He let out a humorless laugh and shook his head as if he felt pity for her.
“You might think you’re being cute and all, collecting pictures and nicknames and blurbs… And I would be happy to give you a name for my… entry… but I bet you’d like that one even less than the one you have now.” His tone indicated that it probably wouldn’t be very appropriate, either.
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Posted: Mon Feb 17, 2014 5:45 pm
Ears swiveled as her head made a slight pivot tilt. "Lucky," She repeated after him, lips curling around the word before bringing back the words he had used to make his observation prior. "Lucky me."
Bright, wide yellow eyes watched him as if anticipating something. Apparently his snide laughter and grin wasn't it because one eyebrow curiously raised in response.
A repressed chirp and a grin followed, though. "Oh, you're smart."
She was honestly shocked she didn't run into this roadblock more often, with her aura on the gradient and feeling so similar to Ares', the amount of people who freely offered up information in exchange for a little bit of attention was mind boggling.
"And what did I wave off, Sir Knight? Did my lack of sympathy for poor Niflhel's wounds concern you? Or was the mention of the event supposed to make me solemn and silent? Am I wrong or were you leading up to the suggestion I had something to do with my problem child's ambush?"
She leaned closer to him with an animalistic sniff, eyes scanning him up and down thoughtfully while several wheels turned and clicked in her mind trying to needle something out at the edge of her thoughts. "Does your concern come from the fact that you have a heart or because you're testing me?"
She snapped to stand upright and rolled her shoulders. "You don't have trust me. After all, I'm not on your side. I'm not on Chaos' side either, but. I wouldn't mind an information trade, possibly? Anything you're curious about? I'll answer all the questions you have in exchange for a bit of your time."
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Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 6:53 am
”Oh, I get an upgrade for my nickname? How sweet,” he let out a short bark of a laugh. “Whether or not you had anything to do with that ambush doesn’t matter. The point is that you didn’t come back,” he clarified, his sarcastic grin fading. “You left then, and now you’re back with the expectation of me helping you now?”
He didn’t know what game she thought she was playing, and he didn’t particularly care, but he did happen to take offense to how lightly she was taking everything. “Trust me. It’s not that I have a heart — I just don’t like anyone disrespecting the dead. Your friend was lucky, just as you were, but there have been countless others who haven’t.”
People might be dead and gone, but their efforts, no matter how great or small, still had its effects.
“Honestly, you’re wasting your time,” he said, lifting his hands, palms up as he shrugged. “Any information from me you could get from anyone else. I’ve been doing this on my own from the beginning. Didn’t need help then, don’t need it now. It’s not that I don’t care about your efforts. I just… don’t like you. Even less than I trust you.”
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Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 1:28 pm
"You don't even know me," She said with one hand resting on her hip and the other spinning a jade bracelet around her finger. While there was a mild facial twitch as he announced himself presiding judge over her small window of actions and declared her disrespectful and unconcerned with the dead, she purposely held back the urge to correct him.
The dead haunted every corner of her existence. Triggers and reminders were hidden like land mines in various corners of daily life, ready to snap up and remind her about stupid little things and longing for people who were no longer there. Things that destroyed her from the inside out and made her lock herself in her room for days. People whose last moments were painful or regrettable or people who simply weren't allowed to rest in peace even as a memory. People who met their end because of her involvement and people who died because she failed to be involved. To be accused of disrespect for the dead was nauseating, because the dead were a constant and hovering presence in the back of her mind she wished she could satisfy and never felt she could.
But he didn't need to be corrected. Because it was none of his business.
"There's nothing you're curious about? I'll even give you a freebie. Isn't the saying knowledge is power or something like that?" She chirped as she circled around him, hands going back to being innocently folded behind her back.
"Ask anything! I know everything. Promise."
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Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 5:34 pm
”I don’t really want to know you,” Sessrumnir countered with another shrug, snorting lightly at her insistence. If anything, he could give her credit for her persistence, but it wouldn’t help. “But since I get a freebie, here’s one for you. If you already know everything, why are you bothering me?”
There weren’t many things he was curious about. In fact, the less he knew, the happier he would probably be. Ignorance is bliss, after all. Unfortunately… he already knew far more than he would have liked. His life was just one war after another, and if he didn’t die in this one, there would probably just be another after.
He did draw in a long breath and rolled his eyes as she circled him, his arms lifting to cross over his chest as he waited until she was finished. “Even if there was something I was curious about, what makes you think I’d trust you for a correct answer? For all I know, you could be lying through your teeth.”
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Posted: Tue Feb 18, 2014 6:33 pm
"Then hoooow could you not like me?" She quipped with a cheeky grin, choosing optimism and teasing over acknowledging the sting of his previous judgement.
"I like you! You're actually the first knight I've met with a genuinely healthy amount of suspicion. I mean," She held her hand up in a wavering so-so gesture, "Suspicion varies, but none have gone so far to suggest I might be lying..." Which she found personally amusing, thanks to the subconscious acknowledgement that she lied a lot. Or at least represented her unproven theories as fact. Or pretended to favor whichever side was going to get her the most answers.
"But anyway!" She made an exaggerated shrug and laughed it off, which was the best way to move anything uncomfortable along, in her opinion.
"There's really nothing? No big things? No little things? Chaos faction leaders? Corruption? Purification? Wonders? Space? History? Mirrors? Your immortal soul? Where we go when we die? Well, I mean, as long as the Negaverse doesn't eat your soul but... Hm. Tough cookie."
She rolled back on her heels in thought, seriously debating pretending his two questions hadn't happened, but after a weird little pause, she decided answering them might be her best bet.
"I know how the organism works, I want to know about the individual cells for a more intricate understanding, and that requires a large pool of subjects to record details on. And you're all shiny, and special, and precious, and perfect."
And then the hard one.
"I could be lying. Probably. I have no way to prove anything I have to offer has any truth to it other than the fact I exist here outside of your Chaos and Order boundaries. But I have nothing to gain from lying to you, and everything to gain from telling you the truth, so on a selfish level your education benefits me.
"It's my purpose, after all. I have no side, no senshi, no home, and worst of all," She held up her hands and wiggled each individual finger, "No powers. I can't even awaken senshi in their time of need. You could kill me where I stand if you felt like it. But I'm still here, trusting you won't."
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Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 3:47 am
A grin formed as she spoke, although it leaned closer to a sneer than any kind of amusement. “And how,” he said slowly, trying not to think of all the other idiots who had apparently just given her everything she could have wanted from them, “do you know I won’t lie to you?”
If he wanted, he could always play along, give her false information, tell her his name was some random mythological place, and providing she hadn’t already met whatever name he made up, watch in amusement as she took down all the wrong information. Hell, he could make up some random s**t place and it would work — after all, who’d heard of ‘Sessrumnir’ before?
“You’re different from back during that meeting,” he noted verbally. “Your demeanor, the way you talk, your… interest in others. That alone makes me trust you even less. Maybe everyone else was naive, thinking your little information collection will benefit them in the long run, or hell, maybe they’re not as selfish as I am. But you still haven’t given me anything that will benefit me.”
Whether or not they weren’t ‘selfish’ wasn’t the point. He lived too long to spill his life story to just anyone. He had enough experience in the matter that he knew it wouldn’t end well.
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Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:06 am
"Well... I guess I don't!" She laughed. "That would be mean, though, corrupting my data. Maybe I should go harass Maia or Shangri La, whoever invited you to that training session and figure out who you are from them."
His notation she was different was just met with a nod of agreement, apparently either missing or willfully ignoring the hint of accusation in the observation.
"Things change," She ended up stating simply with a shrug. "People die. And some guardian cats finally accept they've been left behind and stop taking themselves so seriously."
Which was a lie and she knew it but she had her own secrets, damn it.
"So what's your plan, then? Learn as little as possible, get pointed in a direction and keep on fighting in it until the war stops or gets put on hold or someone kills you? You don't strategize or plan or care to work with anyone? What are you hoping to accomplish?"
Her tail swished back and forth behind her, but her smile was ever present. "Because you're not meeting me halfway here, do you want me to benefit you? I am all yours when you're ready to make a request."
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Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 5:39 pm
”I’m not meeting you halfway?” he asked with a laugh and feigned surprise. “You were the one to approach me!” She had to be getting annoyed with him. Soon she would just give up and walk away. It was just a matter of time.
“Maia…? Shangri La? Never heard of them… Oh! Were they the ones putting that thing together? Yeah, I didn’t really pay attention. Just, you know, got curious as to why a bunch of senshi and knights were converging in one place,” he said with a shrug, his palms up as he lifted his hands in exaggeration.
“That wasn’t bitterness, was it? Your little shrug of acceptance?” he pointed out, his eyes narrowing. There was something she wasn’t telling him, but why? What was it that she was hiding when she was so interested in getting information about other people?
“My plan is to stay alive. If that means avoiding everyone and fending for myself, then fine. I don’t hope to accomplish anything. I just came out because it’s fun,” he shrugged once more. That wasn’t true, of course, but she had no right to know that when she was holding back, herself.
“How about this… you tell me your story, and I’ll match it with mine. That’s the best I got.”
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Posted: Wed Feb 19, 2014 6:36 pm
"Well technically you fell for the energy beacon trap," She laughed, throwing her hands up to the open air as if the massive aura was visible to them both.
She hummed and rocked on her heels as he tried to needle out some meaning in her small gesture of a shrug and prattled on about how he had found the training event on accident, which she failed to believe entirely. It was a possible but she wasn't certain it was very probable.
Experience had taught her that everyone who wasn't immediately trying to kill her would probably break at some point if she heaped enough optimism and affection on them. His resistance was interesting, but not at the level of disheartening yet. So far he was only matching Painite in stubbornness to yield to her point, and she felt fairly confident he wasn't going to cut open her torso if she kept persisting.
"You don't sound like you're having fun," She said with a look that almost resembled pity.
But his request for her story made her sigh with exaggerated exhaustion. "But my story is so long and boring. I'm like, a hundred years old," She unconvincingly complained before she 'gave in'. Mostly because she liked preening.
"Well I suppose it's time to come clean. I'm Ares' cat."
Pause for dramatic effect and suitable attention whoring. "Well I used to be. I'm not super fond of her grieving process. See, we're mirrorwalkers from the Black Moon and when our queen and court died Ares decided that the best course of action was to use Chaos to reanimate dead White Mooners to imitate our dead loved ones and I'm not really wild about anything at all involved in the process."
Her flippant over optimism actually seemed to damper, although she was visibly trying her best to seem light and unaffected, the grimace and grief was involuntary and showed through no matter how many times she attempted to paint a fake smile over it. Grief was weakness, and she was convinced she couldn't show him that. But it was hard talking about how she got where she was, and even now that she thought it was doable to talk about numbly and easily, it was taking all of her resolve not to cower back to the shadows to indulge in the tears threatening to show. Her cheeks were hot, and her facial muscles suddenly felt incredibly tired.
"So," She cleared her throat, "It's actually pretty simple!"
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