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 Posted: Wed May 28, 2014 8:29 am
Cooping herself up in the apartment, whether surrounded by research topics and articles or not, hadn't helped Angel's mood in the slightest. Ever since the occurrence some weeks ago, Angel found herself further drowned with questions that solicited more pressing answers. She knew not whether venturing out in the guise of Astarte would provide what she desperately needed, but she knew that stewing in her own sense of confusion held nothing for her.
Angel transformed within the confines of her apartment before she ventured out to her narrow balcony, hooking heeled boots on the railing before she leapt off toward the ground. The impact from her descent jarred her mildly, yet incurred little injury to those of powered persuasion. Now that she stood at street level, Astarte looked about herself for some direction in which to meander.
As she stood still, she realized that she never truly patrolled without a destination in mind.
What in blazes are you doing, Angel? You've lost your head. Pick a bloody haunting location as you always do and just get to it - you don't need to stand about like a blind hussy hoping that someone gives you somewhere to go. After breathing a sigh, Astarte chose a location from memory alone and started in its direction - a large, abandoned building that lingered on the outskirts of residential zoning, where she met a youma on the cusp of the woods. It wasn't terribly far from her location, yet she knew the route well enough to walk it without consulting a GPS.
The walk, she found, lasted very little time. The duration of her journey was spent within her own head, entertaining questions that demanded answers she never had. She wondered if finding answers even impacted her on the whole, as well, and suspected that the questions themselves never truly mattered. But if they didn't, why would they bother her? Thoroughly frustrated by her own inner ramblings, Astarte drew to a halt in front of the great wooden steps toward the entrance of the old building. With a huff, the Malice Senshi sat on the second step offered. As she looked out toward the street, she wondered just how long it would take her to realize that moping around offered no more usefulness than questioning everything.
And then she felt the keen presence of an approaching 'ally' - if such a word qualified anymore.
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Posted: Wed May 28, 2014 1:05 pm
Megrez was in roughly the opposite position of Astarte; she tended to go wherever she felt like on her patrols, or where the Chaos auras were. She rarely had a set destination or patrol area. In recent days, she had been more dedicated to chasing down Chaos auras and dusting youma than to simply wandering around; her renewed dedication to fighting (even if it was out of anxiety) made her a more persistent hunter than ever before. Even if she was more persistent, she wasn't necessarily more accurate. She had been tracking what felt like a minor Chaos aura (probably a youma) when she lost the "signal." It had either escaped back into the Rift or suddenly outrun her sensing radius. The chase had brought her to the edges of town, in a region where she didn't typically go. She was worried for a moment that she might have gotten lost despite patrolling giving her a good mental map of Destiny City. It was then she saw a familiar senshi sitting on the steps of a building: Astarte. What was she doing all the way out here? (Not that Megrez knew Astarte's typical stomping grounds.) She remembered seeing Astarte on that painful day, fighting alongside her and being led along by her. She had lost track of the other senshi as the battle went on, so it was good to see her again and know that she escaped intact. She walked up to Astarte and sat by her on the steps. "Hey, Astarte," she said with a strained smile (it was very hard for her to make a convincing smile these days). "What are you doing? Patrolling?"
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Posted: Thu May 29, 2014 3:14 pm
She offered a smile toward the new senshi. It was not warm. "Megrez, good to see you well. I was off on a touch of patrolling, but decided these steps looked terribly comfortable. Fancy that." Her gaze drifted toward the far end of the street while her hands found home laced between one another over the tops of her knees. It felt so simple to sit, as she had done in London times, with thoughts adrift and eyes fixated on the ever-changing scene below. Those were times when she had fewer layers of magic to her life. Now she struggled to sort them apart from one another.
"I take it you're out here for similar reason? I'm surprised to see anything afoot right now, considering what happened a couple weeks ago. Hell, I fought with myself to get out of the flat for a touch as it is. Running low on tea as it is, and I doubt the grocers will be too pleased to serve someone dressed like this. Everyone's a bit on edge now." Including herself. She doubted she'd ever truly view power outages in the same innocent light of someone dropping a wrench into the transformers. Astarte wondered how many other seemingly benign malfunctions were truly caused by the Negaverse.
"Oh, where are my manners? Have a seat!" The Demon gestured toward the expanse of stair next to her in hopes of making up for her previous tirades without playing host to a lukewarm extent. "Unless you want to stand. Or walk. I suppose I could walk too - fulfill the old duty and all that rot." It beats sitting around and dwelling on terrible dreams.
Speaking of which...
"Megrez, I've got a queer question for you: have you been having terrible dreams lately? Since the incident, perhaps?" She knew collective dreams as a facet of magic long before the advent of powered life - to solicit such questions felt second nature to her.
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Posted: Fri May 30, 2014 11:45 am
Megrez nodded at the mention of patrolling. "Yes, that's right. I was following something in this direction, but whatever it is, it's gone now. Probably. Hopefully I'll find it later." She shifted her position a bit closer to Astarte on the steps. "Huh, you think so? I'd think more things would be 'afoot,' or that the level wouldn't have changed. But I do agree with you about everyone being on edge. That event was... unnerving." She decided to keep her secrets from that day secret for the time being. When Astarte mentioned the dreams, Megrez swallowed nervously and went slightly pale. Yes, she still remembered that terrible dream she had had a few nights ago; it had not crumbled entirely away as she hoped it would. "Yes... yes, I have. Why do you ask? Are you having bad dreams, too?" She wondered if something had happened with Astarte as well. Maybe she was just desperate to know if she and Cybele were not the only ones who had been faced with a troubling fate.
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Posted: Sat May 31, 2014 8:59 pm
"Oh, they always come back. Like clockwork, they do." Spirits always gravitated to the realm of the living, no matter the occasion of their death. However these youma found themselves formed, be it through the fiery pits of hell or the wishes of the malevolent, they always crawled toward civilization. But what of the demons, the witches, the warlocks? I'm certain they follow their little creations around from time to time. if she hunted one of them, well... For such a large city, it feels terribly small.
Astarte steepled her fingers together and leaned forward to rest her chin on their apex. "What I mean by that is, I haven't seen man agents scrambling about, or their constituent youma. It's been a touch clear lately. Not terribly surprising, considering how well they mucked it up. Whole place went down in flames. Bit tragic, isn't it? Here they go disrupting the entire city with their little operation, and all that happens is a vast amount of property damage. Looks like this city's better off without us. I can't imagine anyone getting away with these tricks in London... Though it'd be much too tough to transform there." A battle on Big Ben sounded entertaining enough, and she was certain that youma would crawl through every crevice of the Tower.
The response of bad dreams caused Astarte to sit straight, wrapping her arms about herself for a moment in a quick sigh. "You're familiar with magic from our standpoint as senshi, but have you ever considered magics from other religions? Satanist rituals, tasseography, fortune telling, Wiccan spells and the like? I study it quite a bit as a civilian, one of my past times and also, partially, my job. I've read about the queer phenomener of people dreaming collectively. It's popped up here and there, usually concerning some particularly telling moment. I don't know how true it is, so I thought I'd ask. Sounded a touch interesting to explore, especially given last night. Could I trouble you to tell me your dream?"
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Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2014 11:28 am
Megrez nodded and listened. "That's true. I guess it'll show up again sometime soon. I guess I haven't really seen any human agents around, either. Maybe they're all getting punished by their superiors or something." The notion that maybe the city was better off without them made her purse her lips thoughtfully. Yes, it would be nice if there was no need for senshi and the Negaverse wasn't around, but she thought that, as long as the Negaverse was there corrupting and draining people, there would be a need for senshi to stop them. The change of topic caught Megrez a bit off guard. "Huh? Oh, no, I haven't really looked into other types of magic." The mention of collective dreaming was interesting, however. She figured that Astarte was onto or getting at something but would wait for her to deploy her conclusion on her own terms. When asked to talk about her dream, Megrez frowned. It hadn't gone away at all. She could easily call it to memory, as though it were still happening. "Well... it went liike this. At first, everything was normal, kind of. Then I looked at the people, and they all seemed terrified of something... then the darkness came, and it just obliterated everything. People, buildings... everything." A shudder ran through her body.
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Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2014 10:00 pm
"That's a shame - you should check into it sometime. No loss in knowing a bit about how other practitioners manage their arts, you know. Maybe it's an edge for us." It certainly helped me slip into the role of demon without too much trouble. I wonder how others dealt with learning of their senshi side... Might have to check into that too.
However, Megrez' brief summary of her dream arrested Astarte's attention in an instant. She bristled visibly, teeth setting on edge as the very words called to mind the terrifying visions she saw within the dream. A black darkness, complete annihilation, and then nothing. She knew it too, knew it well, and it only rendered the peculiar phenomenon that much eerier. "Yes... Sounds quite like mine." Her voice came low, bereft of panic or strain, yet wholly different from her usual animated phrases. "I was just going about my day as always, running a touch of research, when I hit the point where I had to go visit the library. Walked out, noticed something strange about everyone... They were all frozen like stone, all petrified. Then this column of darkness exploded, just as you said. End result was desolation. Not a pretty sight."
And with so many similarities...
Astarte snapped out of her almost trance-like state to regard Megrez with renewed purpose. "Megrez, do me a solid, will you? See if you can't ask around about any strange dreams - if the two of us had one, the phenomenon might've spread wider. Talk to everyone you know. Meanwhile I'll pour over my occult books and see if I can't deduce anything more about instances like these... And look into iconic representations in dreams."
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Posted: Wed Jun 04, 2014 11:27 am
"I don't know if our magic or any magic Chaos uses is anything like traditional magic, but I'll look it up. Maybe take a few wiki walks when I get home." It would be a good learning adventure, at least. When Megrez saw Astarte's reaction, she knew that they had shared the same dream, or at least a similar one. The spoken confirmation only added to that sense. When Astarte gave Megrez her task, she nodded. "Okay. I'll ask everyone I can. Can I add you to my contacts so I can text you my findings? Over senshi phone, I mean." She pulled out her senshi phone, ready to set things up. "Can you tell me what you find, too?"
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Posted: Thu Jun 05, 2014 7:47 am
"Of course! Wouldn't dream of depriving a fellow senshi of what information I might turn up." Luckily the senshi phones sported a unique feature to scan other senshi and add them to contacts instantly. It worked rather quickly, in the case of Megrez. Afterward she sent a test text of a smiley face to Megrez's phone. "It might take me a bit. My apartment's a touch messy, you see, and I've got quite a lot of material to sift through regarding magics and dreams and all that rot. In any case, I'll be on it as soon as I get home. Might have more luck with that than I do on my patrols. Funny how that sort of thing turns out."
Megrez, girl, you're a lifesaver. Our similar dream, however harrowing it is, gives me something to focus on beyond bumbling around like an idiot. If I can just get to the bottom of it...
"Actually, I might get started on that straight away. "Would you mind?" If Megrez needed the company on a patrol, Astarte found no reason to deny her; they fought together once before, and it was the least she could do to repay the favor.
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Posted: Sat Jun 14, 2014 11:38 am
Megrez did as Astarte did, taking a picture of her and adding her to her contacts. The little smiley face test made her smile a bit; it wasn't a gesture she expected from her. "Yeah, it is kind of funny how that turns out. Sometimes, I find more things come to me when I just wait around than when I actually seek them out." When Astarte asked if Megrez minded, she shook her head. "No, I don't mind at all. The faster you can find out more about what's going on, the better. And I'll do my part, too." She made a mental notes to text the other senshi in her contacts about the dreams. It would be a good start, at least.
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Posted: Mon Jun 16, 2014 2:47 pm
"Perfect! I'll see what I can dredge up from the depths of history books and all that rot. Should be something pertinent in there, at least." I could hug you right now, if that wasn't a touch askew. Astarte tucked her phone into one of the chains wrapping her outfit and she gave a quick nod to Megrez. "And you be sure to keep in touch, now." She stood up afterward, brushing the back of her skirt quickly to dislodge the dust.
"And Megrez? Good job back there. You kept your head about you once you got over the shock of it all. Keep it up and you might make a fine senshi someday." With a quick wave, Astarte headed in the direction of her apartment to pursue two of her loves combined: magic and research.
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Posted: Sun Jun 22, 2014 9:54 pm
As Astarte left, Megrez felt mixed emotions sprout up within her. She did manage a "Thank you" before the other senshi was gone, but after that a frown creased her face. Astarte didn't know about what really happened. Yes, the Megrez that Astarte had seen had in fact kept her head after getting over so many people in one place. But the Megrez that had gotten separated from her and then exited the warehouse stained with blood was an entirely different one. Astarte didn't need to know that, though. At least, not now. Head slightly in the clouds, Megrez wandered off and resumed her patrol.
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