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Living wit the Frequently-Bored occasionally had drawbacks of the interruptive variety- sometime pleasant and sometime trying. How, in a world full of stimulus, things to learn, skills to practice, and masteries to develop Alois managed to be perpetually in a state listless Quenton was certain he would never fully comprehend. It was one of the darker man's delightfully frustrating quirks.

Quenton looked up from a spread of bauble making equipment on the kitchenette table, all from a tidy toolbox on the floor. He paused his wire-wrapping of multiple mouse skulls. "The last time I followed that sort of request it involved jeweled sounding implements."

He still wasn't sure if that had fallen under like or dislike. That's probably the point with that sort of thing...pleasure pain. Denial as excess.

After another moment of looking Alois over with a look of hard consideration, Quenton put his work down and crossed to the bed. "As I am, or with some other directives?"

You and your bargains. It was too painfully obvious both where his sudden internal growl was seated- The only person who calls me that is my cousin. And you know its a nickname. And nicknames are annoying. Of course you're going to use it.

Telling himself to not react was a mantra of diminished value - Quenton couldn't keep the snarl from appearing garrish on his mouth with the scar, even if he managed not to give any sound to the gesture. The stakes laid out served as some distraction to sink thought to. Naked for three hours. And you need a paintbrush for this.

"Aesthetics for Aesthetics- 3 hours for 3 hours. " How would you look actually done up to the nines? I don't have all the right clothes here. There's that Okamoto friend of Stroud's that is into H. Naoto and Black Peace Now. There's the bespoke pieces. Stroud is always going to catwalks and boutiques to buy or admire. Yes. I think so.

He set to removing articles of clothing and setting them aside. Now was no more self conscious than the few times he did modelling for the figure drawing classes.

While they played the game daily, he hadn't kept any track of a longer arcing tally- how many 'wins' or 'losses' either had for their weeks together. It was all winning - they were both challenged and intrigued most of their days. His conditioning was progressing and Alois had the strength to make it through whole days without lethargy.

"I don't find drag queens embarrassing. With how they challenge the perception of social norms, I'm surprised you do." He hadn't considered making anything garish out of Alois in three hours, but it was an option. Making him look like a circus clown or prosthetic like a Muppet. Quenton let images and ideas of patterns in smoke, onyx and white pass through his mind's eye while settling, then enjoying the increased weight of his lover on his thighs.

The eventual tickle of the brush drew his mind back from patterns and to surprising subject of inquiry. I suppose that would come up eventually. Who in this city does not talk about it with others at some point, whether behind closed doors or openly at cafes. Still a cautious topic that must be approached with aplomb. Casual, as much as I ever am.

"There is more to it than the media allows. Yellow journalism and a cover up is rampant- so many attacks, widespread murder, destruction of public property and at public events, but no government or military involvement. Why has the mayor not asked the governor, or the governor themselves, not declared a state of emergency? Where is the national guard, or the state police? There haven't even been any arrests, not on the part of the 'freedom fighters' or the 'terrorists'. It is a single city under siege, but all the state does nothing."

Because...why. I'm willing to bet it isn't just this city under siege. There is wider spread influence. It has everything to do with Buddingtonite's hints. A division who's purpose is to infiltrate, influence and control the public mechanism. Some corruption of the already heinous military industrial complex. Travel would no doubt reveal Youma or agents in other places. Other states. Other countries.

"And you? "

'Local problem' was just ominous. It brought to mind the vaguest recollections of months and months prior- Super Sailor Irene. She commented offhand wondering why Destiny City. What was so special that of all the places in the world so many powers were waking here especially. It is too much a coincidence to ignore. Not just of senshi, knights and Mauvians, but the Negaverse as well. Why is everything, with a whole planet and a whole cosmos full of worlds, focused in one metropolitan area that is probably less than a quark compared to the vastness of the rest.

Are there powers of Chaos in space in the current era? The Silver Millennia seems probable, if not canonically so. I've not heard of it, but I've not had opportunity to talk to much of any other senshi about it. Or Zirconia. Someone must know, or have seen something on one of their worlds, or the Moon, or the Surrounding. That would be a nasty situation- no help to be called except if you'd already brought them by chance and luck.

The 'until someone close to them' was the rub. It was an old, deep ripple since the start of his tenure as a senshi, one of the things that most disgusted Quenton with the other senshi, knights, mauvian and agents he came across. Everyone was out for number one, or just number one's friends. Sometimes they managed to care about other people out of a general sense of 'doing good', but they were never incensed or emotionally invested. But that can all boil. I will not give you two today. Let that fire stay to thought alone.

Quenton took a deep breath, settling more and turned his face on the pillow of his forearms to look back at the other. "Tools have uses- hammer to pound, nail to fasten, scissor to shear. What would you call the use of this war...for yourself if not others?"

"I never mind music. Play on, sir."

A positive affair.
"I would argue differently, not that it is the careless and witless that are sifted out. They hide behind the walls and machines of war and direct the rest -those in love with the music and poetry of their homes. The brave are always the first to die."

" It is a War, but no fine catalyst. Things grow older, but they do not grow greater. Every weapon forged in every war from the beginning was sweat that could have built homes or tended the sick. Ever hour spent in the dark, every wasting drop of blood on the grass was the blood and time of genius that could have brought true, new horizons of thought and awareness to science and art. This violence only multiplies hurts, it does not solve anything- what has gotten better by it? Nor does it or they seek to, treading water years on and just multiplying by their numbers of children involved. Of people maimed and blocks burned. You call it a furnace, well enough- good for reducing kindling to ashes. It does not refine, it is no crucible for taking out impurity. A furnace isn't precise, it just diminishes."

" The terrorists feed into their own hates, all sides of them, and they hang us all in iron gallows. " All hang. And that paltry some happen to have the will to pull themselves hand over hand up the noose, and instead of bettering the world must look at desolation and try to find some way to heal it to live at all instead of advancing it.

It was pleasant to hear the verb in active form on Alois' lips- " ' am changing.' There is no antidote for uncertainty, when speaking of change. That is change existing. The past hours are safe because of that- we vanquished them long ago. We know their tricks and wiles, and so romanticize about them as better. We can only predict and choose a goal. Stroud would say a 'want', but that is so...limited to personal experience. Goals can be beyond the personal. What was it weeks ago... too private a philosophy as we stood at the door of your studio. "

Admitting to yourself or to others, or making a final decision maybe, of what it is that you act for. What matters so much that it impacts what choices you make and why. You practice safe goals- you set yourself tasks in music and complete them, ideas in sketches if what could be, should be, might be or may never. You can go whole days in thought and wakefulness, challenging mind and body at play.

"I think it was...solipsism I inquired and you denied? "

It was a heady combination to have both declarative directs and his own name regularly repeated amid the attestations of difference of opinions. Of 'mistake.' A second smile wanted to alight for the crack about age, but stayed only in the sculptor's eyes. Is that supposed to be a compliment or derision? The answer is probably 'yes'.

"Arguments on value are part of the arguments for and against Nihilism."

"I like Nihilism, as far as it goes. It does base itself heavily in 'realistic' thinking as long as you wholesale accept some of its assumptions. Value being one of them. Nihilism hinges so much on measure of value being both binary and universal, and that it must be measured in effect. If something does not have wide-ranging effect it is intrinsically less valued. It doesn't allow for measures of intensity, longevity, resurgence, echo, mutation and growth of ideas as much living things on their own. Something is valuable and provably so, or it is not- yet we know that there are preferences and values intrinsic to life, differential prioritization as base as one person liking blue and another liking green that will change their perceptions. What is the value of blue to one human or to all humanity? To life? Alternately...does something have to have value to be justified? "

There were other, more usual arguments that based wholly within other philosophies- ones that took the view that the vastness described by the taxidermist gave value to the individual pieces instead of taking it away, or that defined assumptions as life itself making intrinsic values. To have already chosen Nihilism as the most realistic, Alois would likely have read those already and disagreed with them. "Truth in logic figures different ways- from Boolean to Aristotelian, Occidental or Oriental. I can say 'All Unicorns are Blue', and some systems call it a fallacy because unicorns do not exist. Others say it is a Truth until someone can find a unicorn that isn't blue to disprove it."

"Nihilism requires the acceptance that we've come to the end of all measures- that what we know now is all that can and should be applied to make judgement from. It assumes that there even IS an end for everything to be proven from. The infinity symbol at the end of the decimal should just round up to the next nearest integer. Where is the end of pi, that throws new numbers with each place that do mean little ripples of change? Or the very influential changes in understanding that may come to be that show the merit of single existences - Newton's Laws of motion and gravity affected all the future of human science and invention...but even more they took away the idea that there is an absolute position in space. A short two hundred fifty years later relativity ended the idea of absolute time. It gave birth to the entity of space-time. And more discoveries come with every generation, feeding into each other. The Final Theory of Everything, that supposedly could end the debate of the scientific meaning of how life came to be, if not what we should be doing with it, a meaning, was predicted by some minds back in 1988, and then a little later to be the end of the 21st century. String Theory and Brane Theory are both very realistic. To declare things worthless before having all the facts of them, to call Nihilism more than a theory at philosophy, before finding the end of things is premature. "

"And that still assuming that there is an end. We are used to things having a beginning, a middle and an end in our finite and current understanding. Even that is an assumption of truth. "

"You claim its inevitability while ignoring the other options I just argued for. 'All that we are is the result of what we have thought. The mind is everything. What we think we become.' It as 'inevitably' means that every decision, value and preference becomes of paramount worth." The kiss sent a ripple of life along his spine, unexpected and gentle where teeth usually pierced. He lost the thread of Alois argument to the obliged bodily interruption, a pull of muscles along his stomach and the discomfit of the bed.

Finite ...life and validity...brain. The exercise of will at least grew easier, and his attention swung back on the now molten passion pushed away behind iron gate. Back to Nihilism-

...
"That's another for you."
"But no part or whole of you is a unicorn of any sort, blue in denial or not. But unless you're painting in white, you're losing time of your three hours to distraction."