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 Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 11:10 am
General Painite liked to feel like she was the one in control of this city. Of course, if she was, the streets would constantly be running with blood, and not running 'as normal' while they pretended they were living human lives and keeping their fodder alive and 'happy'. Painite did not believe in things like that, and tried not to associate herself with the civilian side to life.
No, her focus was always, and would always be, on the White Moon.
Seeing them cowering in the shadows now was a beautiful and wonderful thing, but it was not satisfying enough. She needed to help their fear, to cultivate it and twist it into something even more terrible. They were suffering, but it was not enough, and would never be enough for her. Each one needed to be broken completely, and then each one needed to be killed. They were not worthy to sully the ranks with their corruption: from her experience, the truest Negaverse agents were born from an untouched, untainted innocence. Those that were corrupted, by force or choice, were always touched by the hand of Order, and could never be considered pure. Painite hated them almost as much as she did the White Moon itself. Almost.
So her feelings on those that were once Negaverse soldiers, and then chose to abandon their calling and disgrace the honor that was the power given to them, then, were understandably lower. Considerably so, in fact.
Painite delighted in her hunts. She set out with the goal of finding one special senshi or knight to spend the night with, though the intimacy of the evening ran no further than the business end of her malicious, blood stained spear. She was never seen without it now, and why should she be? They all knew, or needed to quickly find out, what was coming when they saw her and there was no better symbol of that than her beautiful, mortifying weapon. And her willing smile, of course.
The best places to hunt were often just outside the city, or along the side streets and 'forgotten' areas where she and other Negaversers might have once gone to hunt pathetic handfuls of energy in secret. The shoe was on the other foot now, and it was just lovely as far as Painite was concerned.
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 1:54 pm
Lyonesse Knight of Earth knew that he put himself at risk every time he came close to the city. He was also reminded of it regularly, both by his comrades and by his absolutely brilliant ability to get himself into a fight with an agent who recognized him nearly every time he approached.
He wondered, sometimes, if there were posters with his face in the Rift. Maybe there were, he had never actually asked.
The feeling of a General tingled his senses, and he sighed, gripping his staff tightly and approaching. He knew it was stupid, but he approached, fully prepared to engage. His magic wasn't particularly combat-useful - it kept him rooted to his spot in the center of his thicket - but it was still something. And besides, maybe he'd be lucky - maybe it was someone who would be more willing to talk.
That hope dissipated once he could actually see who it was.
"Painite," he said, and the greeting sounded mostly exhausted.
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 2:09 pm
The General was delighted to feel a Knight aura coming toward her, and she turned to wait its approach with an excitement she could hardly contain. She leaned on her staff and watched him with a keen, dangerous glare, but her expression lifted for a moment as her eyes fell over him. At first, she pondered never having seen him before. At this point, she had been in so many battles, she was sure she at least know most of them by sight. They were still making more of them?
The second thought that hit her in that short fraction of a second was that he looked familiar at the same time. How was that possible? She knew the answer, and it burned in her gut almost immediately, making fire rise up her throat. It burned as she took a breath and that, in turn, just angered her further. Who ever this was, she immediately decided she did not like him.
"I know you, don't I?" She growled out, her lightly accented tone coming out in a vicious hiss. She held her spear now in both hands, up in front of her. It was not a defensive stance, as she never believed in showing weakness through body language and was not about to let this knight think she was worried about him.
No, she stood like she wanted, and would wholly welcome, a fight. Or rather, she was fully intent on attacking him, whatever his answer was. Whether he fought back or not was not her problem.
"You know my name, after all, though I might take that as a point of pride. I want you all to know me, very personally, if I can manage it." She grinned, almost ear to ear, but it was twisted and cruel looking, her eyes glinting in a dangerous, rather than warm or honest, way.
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 4:25 pm
Lyonesse moved his staff in front of him, fingers digging into the carved and twisted wood. His heart was pounding, and he knew his palms were starting to sweat. Although he would never admit it out loud, Painite continued to inspire a form of awe and terror in him. In front of her, he would always be the scared kid she'd corrupted nearly seven years before.
"You knew me better as Natron, General," he said, and there was a tone of derision to his voice. Put up a stronger front, and maybe he would be able to shove away his fear. "It's Lyonesse of Earth now, though." Then, he took a short breath, holding it up to defend against her spear.
"You're going to try to kill me, so why don't we just get this over with, hmm?"
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 4:51 pm
The moment he said his former name, something inside Painite snapped. She did not know why or how he purified, but it did not matter, at the end of the day. He was a traitor: it was a decision to be purified, everyone knew that. It was a weakness, and he had given in to that desire. He knew what was coming for him, which saved her the breath of saying it.
Though she did not seem like she was going to, anyway.
She was leaping at him almost immediately, letting out a terrible screech of a yell as she did so. All her pain and frustration at his loss to their side, at his apparent and evident betrayal, was suddenly exploding out of her in a way she could not control. She had no will to, anyway. Charging at him, she pulled her spear up and made to swing it at him, rather than stabbing forward with it.
"You traitor! You wretched little dog! How dare you show your face! How dare you turn your back on the Negaverse! On me!" She heard herself yelling, but she was not even aware of it. The words were just pouring out of her as she attacked, swallowed by her emotion and the drive Chaos gave her to react to those feelings.
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 7:07 pm
Lyonesse brought his staff up to block her strike, taking a step back. She was even scarier angry - it was something he had avoided stringently as an officer, but now he wouldn't be able to. Instead, he had to fight her, and there were few people he wanted to fight less.
Given his druthers, she'd be purified and fighting with him, but that was clearly impossible.
"How dare I?" He snarled. "How dare you? How dare you oppress the people you told me we were trying to save?" That had been the darkest moment for him - when he'd realized that he wasn't saving anybody by staying with the Negaverse. "You're the traitor here, Painite," he growled, shifting his grip on the staff to shift from a block to a strike, aiming the butt for her stomach.
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 7:31 pm
"I'm not a traitor! I am true to the power that awakened me! I know my place! I don't even like the people here and I'm still loyal to them! If someone like me knows how to be true, how can you stand there and tell me you, who abandoned all of us, are not a traitor?!"
She could not believe his audacity, the ringing caused by their two weapons clashing still in her ears, pounding in the drums. Or was that her heart beat? She could hardly hear, everything sounding muffled and distant, like someone shouting through a glass window.
When the weapon connected with her stomach she let out a grunt and doubled over, backing up and pulling her weapon back with her. She held it in one hand, holding her arm over her stomach mostly on instinct. Pain did not scare her, but she was so wrapped up in the battle, it was hard for her to keep her focus anyway. The pain distracted her, and she shook off the initial daze the first wave of emotions had put in her.
Her moment of clarity did not last long.
"You rat! You were my most trusted ally! You were my FRIEND! I trusted you and this is what you do?! You coward! You liar!" She charged at him again, not at her best, fighting wise. She was not focused, not watching all her angles. But she was ruthless, and she was hell bent on making him hurt the way she was suddenly hurting. She slashed at him, as she lectured him.
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 8:54 pm
"You've sold yourself out to monsters, Painite! I fighting for the right side, for the people of Earth, is betrayal, then fine!" Lyonesse smacked his staff against the ground, finally reaching for the well of magic in him that felt so strange and yet so familiar. He'd never had magic as an officer - and he still marveled every time vines ripped from the ground around him, lashing out to grasp at his enemies.
Her wild strike hit him because his own magic held him in place, forcing him to stand rooted as it worked, but it wasn't the first time he'd been slashed open by her spear.
"Am I really a coward?" He asked, and he wasn't yelling anymore. Instead his voice was soft, almost thoughtful. "I gave up everything I had, everything I was, to join a lost cause because it's the right thing, Painite. If you weren't still so blinded by Chaos, you'd see that too."
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 9:08 pm
"You believed you were fighting for the right side already! And you were! Look what they've done to you! You're spitting their dogma, just like we hated! You're disgusting to me now!"
She let out a yelp at the end of her tirade as some vines grabbed her ankles.
"You were blinded by chaos and you were happy! What makes you think they haven't brain washed you? How can you just turn your back on everything you had here!? Everything you were! You were strong. You had potential! You could have had this world! How could you betray us? How could you betray me?! I chose you! I taught you!"
She loved him. He was one of the few people she could ever really consider a friend, and the even fewer that she actually told. He was everything, and could have been the greatest thing the Negaverse had ever seen. But now he wasn't. He was nothing.
He was worse than that. He was a traitor.
Impotently, still struggling with the vines, she threw her spear at him as best she could, hurtling it at him like an Olympian. It was actually not a move she used all that often, as she hated letting go of her weapon for any reason, but she wanted to hurt him so badly, she could hardly stand it. She did not know how else to handle it besides striking out at him. If he was gone completely, then he would not be able to hurt her any more. And he would still be in a better place than on the side of Order.
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Posted: Sat Aug 02, 2014 10:11 pm
"I was wrong," he said, and there was something incredibly sad in his voice. So many years spent fighting for the wrong side. There was so much blood on his hands that he would never be able to wash away, no matter what he did for Order now.
"I couldn't do it anymore! I couldn't watch Metallia tear the world apart, and I couldn't watch people I cared about - like you - get sucked in by her lies!" He "I've killed for the Negaverse, suffered for the Negaverse, I've given up people I cared about to it - and for what? To watch the world I love get torn apart in front of me?"
Lyonesse finally released his magic when she threw her spear, so he could dodge out of the way and not get impaled. It meant that she would be free to attack him again, but he would take that over having a spear through the chest.
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2014 8:33 am
Painite did not call her weapon back to her, as wrapped up in her anger as she was. She lunged at him and slammed into him full force with her whole body the moment her legs were free, tackling him as hard as she could. And for a little person like she was, it was a surprisingly strong hit. Of course, being a General helped with that, but her emotions and how much effort she threw into that tackle likely added to it.
"If we didn't do it, they would have! If we didn't take this place from them, they would have taken everything from us! What makes you so different now?! You're just the same, you want us all dead! White Mooners think that because we use Chaos we're so much more evil than they do, but you lot kill without that excuse! What's your excuse, then, Lyonesse."
She was crying, tears running hot down her face, but she could not stop herself. Couldn't stop the tears, couldn't stop the words.
Taking swings at him, her feelings toward him did not stop her from trying to hurt him as badly as she could, with or without her weapon. She did not pull her punches. In fact, her being upset with him probably just made it worse for him, as she never knew how to really deal with things like this. Over the years, she had just gotten far to used to not having emotions at all.
Now was just a really good example of what a weakness they could be.
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Posted: Sun Aug 03, 2014 10:52 pm
Lyonesse staggered backwards and went off his feet, smacking the ground hard. It drove the breath out of him for a minute, and sent his weapon flying from his hands, so he was left to struggle with her weaponless and visceral, grabbing her shoulders and shoving as hard as he could.
"What the hell would we have taken? All Order has ever wanted is to live in peace - it's Chaos that makes us fight!" It was easy to slip into the language of identifying with Order. It felt easier than it sohuld have been. "I fight and I kill because I'm not going to lay down and let my planet be destroyed!"
He brought up a knee between them, aiming to hit her in the gut.
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Posted: Mon Aug 04, 2014 8:48 pm
"I don't want peace! I want them gone! And they want us gone! Or have you forgotten that? They don't want peace, so long as Chaos exists: if the Negaverse stops being a thing, if we just give up our home to them and take our place under their boots, then we can all just get along and have peace!"
She spat the words, hissing like a wild cat as she spoke to him, panting for breath and struggling to get her words to actually sound like English, and not just horrid screeches of a vicious, angered animal.
It was hard for her to even pay attention to what she was saying. She was mad for the sake of it, but nothing of what she was screaming about really covered why she was so broken hearted about seeing him purify. She missed him. Almost immediately, seeing him on the side of good, knowing they would never hunt or play together again. It was crushing, losing one of the only people she knew how to trust and care for.
It seemed that was what happened when she opened up to someone, in any capacity. They left her. They betrayed her. Even after throwing herself completely into the Negaverse, she was still finding herself being torn from things she loved. There had to be a way to stop it.
So far, the only effective method was killing the thing that upset her.
When he kneed her she gasped and rolled away from him, ending up on her hands and knees, panting as she stared at the ground. She was aching, but more than anything it was the tightness in her chest that had her struggling to get up.
"I'm going to kill you," she said, as if she only just realized it, and it was something he needed to know. She looked up at him, eyes pained and brimming with tears, but growing darker as she looked at him. "I'm going to kill you right here, if you don't stop me."
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Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2014 3:19 pm
Lyonesse shook his head firmly, but he knew there was no reaching her. She was too angry, too driven by emotion. So he would have to fight her, and take her down that way, rather than talking her around. (It pained him to realize it, but he could never be the one to talk her around - if Painite chose to come over, it would not be because of him, his betrayal had left her too furious.)
Once she was off him, he rolled away, recalling his weapon and using him to push himself up. He was breathing heavily, leaning on it, but he still had to fight.
His eyes closed, for a moment, and he felt an incredible sadness wash over him. Her threat - no, that wasn't a threat, that was a promise - wasn't even that surprising.
"Sorry, but I can't die just yet," he said, and then he pushed off his staff and shifted it. Then, he swung at her head, hoping to knock her unconscious so he could escape.
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Posted: Tue Aug 05, 2014 9:02 pm
Painite, for her part, knew the attack was coming. She knew she could have teleported, and every ounce of her fighting instinct, her anger, her betrayal, wanted to. She could teleport behind him, or beside him, or anywhere else. She could attack him while he was focusing on his own attack, and stab him through his chest or perhaps in his back.
That would be more fitting. It wasn't a knife, as the old saying went, but it was a very sharp and painful spear. That was a find substitute.
Instead of doing any of that, though, she remained on her knees and did not even lift her head as he attacked her. Something in her stopped every instinct in its track. Something much more powerful than anything she had ever felt before. She liked to pretend that she had evolved, with Chaos, well beyond any pathetic emotions, and that she could exist entirely on her own. It was a very good facade and for the most part, no one would ever see anything other than the role she played.
Except in that moment, she felt the true depth of her weakness.
He said he could not die just yet, and she didn't want to kill him.
She felt the force of the blow like a truck, his weapon colliding with her head and dropping her to the floor. She was knocked unconscious on impact, giving him the chance he needed to get away from her. It had to have been a fluke: there was no way Painite would let her prey get away from her on purpose. Except she had, because he was never her prey to begin with. He was her friend, once.
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