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 Posted: Wed Aug 13, 2014 6:41 pm
It was a sad truth of the war that there were very few people who'd been purified and still lived to tell the tale. Of those, she'd managed to find news of two, to speak of: but there was only one she knew personally. One she kept running into. One who kept surprising her expectations as soon as she set them. Kairatos of Mars, she had written -- Purified Negaverse agents are hard to find. If it's not too uncomfortable for you, would you be willing to talk with me about it?
I'm in North End Park three nights a week, where you saw me before. I promise it won't be so crowded this time. (If there's already someone there, I can send them off, but I really don't get that many visitors, so hopefully it won't come up?)
Please stop by some time when you're available, if you're up for it.
Thanks,
Hvergelmir of the CosmosLike many notes she had ever attempted to write to people, this one was vague, meandering, and bordering on unhelpful -- but Kairatos had kept his head throughout their horrible adventure at Mistral, and been staid and steady even in the mess that had been Bischofite's so-called purification. She was hopeful that one awkwardly-worded letter wouldn't prove too much for him. Hvergelmir kept her vigils at the park as usual, now that she'd returned to routine -- but this time, in among the Negaverse agents she hoped to draw out with her quietly stationary aura, she hoped for the eventual arrival of a particular knight of Mars. Ryuthulhu come out, come out, wherever you are~
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Posted: Thu Aug 14, 2014 3:18 pm
Kairatos did not... normally... think he made a habit of showing up black and blue, but lately he was starting to find that it was beginning to look suspiciously like a trend, and when he approached her at the North End Park, it was a bit more gingerly than he would have liked, with new patterns of bruises and scrapes visible and not, still fresh and healing after an rather... intense... encounter with the Prince of Hail. "This a good time?" He called out, as he approached. He hated feeling so ginger, but smashing into a wall as an opener had left marks on more than just the wall. Armor was all fine and well but it wasn't much softer than the wall. "Hey... how are you doing?" She'd crossed his mind, here and there, since they'd both been at the near back to back fiasco's of Mistral and Bishophite's failed attempt to purify, and in his regard, she'd had it nearly the hardest of any of them, having been holding all that was left of Cove, his hand and part of his arm... when Mistral's wonder had out and out destroyed him. "I mean... here I am, you wanted to talk?" He didn't even know where to start. He knew he was something of an unusual creature, but he had no idea where to even go from there. He'd felt... enthusiastic.... even generally welcomed... right until Castor threw the point spread by putting a big red tack right out there in 'not welcome' territory and hammered it home with a sledge hammer and a solid wall. He just had to keep reminding himself that Castor was the glitch in the data... not the rule.
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 6:03 pm
Hvergelmir was on her feet in an instant, hands pressed together helplessly with the instinctive desire to fret and fuss over someone who was so obviously in bad shape. "Kairatos!" she called out pointlessly, trying to push down the urge to usher him into taking a seat just because he was riddled with bruises. He was, though. Riddled with bruises. "Oh my God, forget all that, you didn't have to show up like this. You look -- " There was no nice way to say it. He looked, in fact, worse than the last time she'd seen him, and then he'd been nursing a broken shoulder. "I mean, you look terrible. What happened?"
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Posted: Fri Aug 15, 2014 6:37 pm
"Well you know how people who work a lot are always talking about 'hitting the wall'?" He answered back, flashing her an uncomfortable grin, though it did, in spite of everything, reach his eyes and bring a brighter spark to their otherwise bland shade of green. "Yeah this one was a literal wall." He finished. "Don't worry about it, it's just bruising, it'll heal faster than the shoulder, it just covers more real estate." He leaned on the back of the park bench and winked at her, trying to coax a laugh out of her instead of concern. "But I gotta admit I didn't figure the first guy with an actual violent issue over realizing I used to be on the other side to be an Senshi. Though given the senshi in question... maybe less surprised than I could have been. I guess I made a pretty big impression on him as a Lieutenant." He sounded almost amused by this now, even though he was obviously tender. "But hey go ahead, what did you want to talk about? I'm all ears. It's this or I go back home and try and stealth train a puppy. Not my puppy." He added the last bit as an bit of clarification, gesturing with his hand vaguely to indicate separation between himself and said puppy.
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Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 5:32 am
Hvergelmir loved puppies. She also loved kittens, chinchillas, and any other small, cute animals that her parents had definitely never let her have. She'd have happily meandered down this cute puppy-related topic, if not for the fact that she was still stuck on the other one: someone from their own side had beaten up Kairatos? For being a former Negaverser? Cold distaste settled in her stomach. It was about as undesirable an outcome from their own factions as she could think of. It was what Bischofite had asked her about, that night when they'd met here so she could tell him the arrangements she'd made for his purification -- how would people on her side receive him, if he came over? They'd both known the answer, then. They'd known some of it would be something like this. But what she'd told him had been that those people would be wrong. That Order needed Bischofite and anyone else they could get more than it needed the close-minded opinions of the ignorant. Whether they like it or not -- and it's true, most of them probably won't -- we need you. We need to learn to work with people like you.From what she'd seen, Kairatos wasn't even anything like Bischofite. He never shirked their cause; he mourned and raged against their losses just like any other knight would; even covered with scrapes and bruises, wincing, he was here trying to brush off her worry and be helpful. He was, frankly, a model knight. She'd defend his worth as equal to any knight among their ranks: and she was certain she wouldn't be alone. Hvergelmir was dying to know the name of the senshi who'd dared to question him. She'd find a way to wheedle it from him when she could, she decided. For now, though, to business. "I'm sorry someone was so rude to you," she said. "He can't have stood beside you on the battlefield. I was there at Mistral -- and again, here, a few days later. That's what I wanted to talk to you about." She gestured briefly at the bench -- her bench. Neither of them were sitting in it now, so it just made for a centerpiece for their conversation: Kairatos leaning, Hvergelmir standing a few paces away. "I said in my letter I come here three days a week. This is, kind of, where I do business. I hang out here, powered up, and wait for Negaverse agents to maybe happen along and get curious enough to investigate. If they do, I try to explain my oath, show them my seal." She pointed to the glimmering tattoo on her shoulder. "If I'm lucky, once they know I'm harmless, some of them are willing to sit down and talk to me." Hvergelmir folded her arms behind her back, giving Kairatos a considering look. "You know, it's not that I don't believe in fighting for what you believe in, when you have to. That's not -- that's not the point of what I'm trying to do here. It's just that I don't believe in fighting ignorance with violence. Enough people on the other side are only there because they've been lied to or misled, or they think they're defending the Earth from some great evil. Or because they're scared or weak, and think the only thing that gives them strength is the Negaverse. Or because they were threatened or forced into joining, and just don't want to die. "There's nothing I can do for the ones that're there because they like what the Negaverse gives them, or because they want to kill and subjugate people. But for the rest of them, if there's even a chance that they might consider leaving -- I want them to see there's a better option. That what we do is honorable and decent, and those things can mean something. That people can succeed here and be free and happy. That even with all it costs to purify, people can come through better and stronger on the other side." She smiled. "So I want your help with that part."
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Posted: Sun Aug 17, 2014 4:34 pm
Out of anything she could have asked him, he was pretty sure 'help me do what I'm doing'... which was something that didn't involve hitting things, was not one of them. Be her body guard, maybe. Answer questions about what it had been like to be part of the negaverse or be successfully purified? Sure he could have predicted that. He'd guessed those options. But 'Help me', 'Show them what they can be' was... Sure he'd been trying. He'd been yelling into the dark that you could purify and not crumble under the weight, not go crawling back to the kennel... Hver's wods said not only was someone listening, but that she at least felt he might even not be failing. That maybe he'd succeeded in striking a few sparks and that maybe with her help they could make it into a real fire. And with her help maybe they could. Her vow would probably strike some as fool hearty... and he knew he'd have taken advantage of it once. That he'd have attempted to pound a lesson into her, like he had with Medea, but then Hver wasn't Medea. Media came off as a child who thought you could hug a tiger and not get bitten. Hver went into it knowing the tiger had teeth. He imagined he looked rather foolish anyway, since he was pretty sure he'd opened and shut his mouth enough times to look like a fish while he tried to sort out the busy swirl of thoughts in his head, and if he was good enough for what this sweet young tiger tamer was asking. Castor talked about paying for your sins. Hver said you could sin and still be human. Could be a good person. "If you really think I can help..." He finally managed. "I'll absolutely help. There are people on the other side... They could use more people out there giving them their options. And coming out of you mouth instead of a guy in plate armor with a sword and shield... that's going to pack some punch." If you need me to play show girl for you, I will absolutely do that, for however long you need me to." At least until she found someone better. He liked Hver's stance on sins. This was a church that those who found themselves could find some faith in.
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2014 9:50 am
The Mars knight's agreement was met with a wash of heady relief. Hvergelmir clasped her hands together excitedly. "Thank you, I -- just, thank you so much! I wasn't sure you'd go for it, but I really do think it's going to be great to have someone like you to work with." (Particularly if he could ever manage to not be a target for apparently all the fists and other bludgeons in the universe. You, too, can be covered in bruises like Kairatos! might not be a great slogan. But that wasn't quite in his control. At least some of it was the fault of the senshi who'd gotten violent with him.) "I mean," she shrugged, like she was stating a fact of the universe, "I'm a knight too, but I know some people would just take one look at me and think about the possibility that they'd purify and turn into a magical sparkle bride and be like, 'no, entirely no.' So I'm also banking on the 'or you could be a badass Mars knight, with armor and a useful weapon' factor." She grinned again, all too delighted. This was going so well! Kairatos had that sort of everyday-person-with-normal-reactions-to-things demeanor that she hoped lots of people would be able to relate to. He was just a person, not an untouchable paladin. Just someone who fought for a good way of life. If he was a motivated knight, he could motivate other people, too. "How did the Negaverse recruit you?" she cast out a line, immediately working on building up her information. Hvergelmir cooled her cheer a little, into something more somber and businesslike. "If you don't mind my asking. It's one of the first questions I usually put to people."
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Posted: Tue Aug 19, 2014 4:02 pm
Ooh. That question. He flinched a little, trying to pull together the memories he still had of that moment. He hadn't even realized until that moment either that he almost didn't think of Hver as another knight. Not that she wasn't, not that she was... less or because she didn't fight... but you just caught yourself thinking she was somehow more. Like some glittering white saint of the Cauldron drifting through the night telling you that you could be more than you were. He was a touch embarrassed to realized he'd unconsciously assigned her this vaunted role when she clearly didn't look for it herself, but he assumed she couldn't read his mind, even if he felt sure that she would, in fact judge him when he told her what he could. "I... lost... part of those memories." He admitted. "Not all of them, but part." He didn't feel terribly badass to explain how he'd got drawn in. Like an angry child who suddenly becomes incredibly conscious of their tantrum. "I wish I felt like I was as bad a** as I come off, getting my a** handed to me by a Captain..." He joked, but that was avoiding the question a little and he knew it, rubbing his neck as he looked for the right words. "...He...Zinkenite... played me like a fiddle. I was..." How did you explain something like this when you didn't remember the details? "I was... angry. Really angry at the world, and he gave me a way to do something about it... or... well. It's pretty standard recruitment policy. You don't actually get to say no. But I was too angry to care. I think I didn't even care if I did get killed, I just wanted to make other people hurt too. It wasn't smart. It wasn't healthy, it was downright stupid but it worked on me, until it didn't." He trailed off, crossing his arms awkwardly and shrugging as though he were apologizing, but he wasn't sure you could apologize for being an angry train wreck. "I don't remember the details. It was something to do with me wrecking out on a motorcycle. I remember bits, but I looked up a bit." Shazari Congratulations Hver you didn't know you invented a whole new class, the Saint of Cosmos.
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Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2014 3:03 pm
Hvergelmir nodded, not really surprised. A lot of people she'd talked to had stories like that -- or she didn't know their stories yet, but they seemed like they did. "Circumstances like that -- it's not really that uncommon. Which kind of makes sense, if you think about it. When someone's in a good place, it's hard to just walk up to them and be like, 'Hey, how's it going, can I reach in your chest and do you want to kill some people?' Anyone's easier to recruit into a gang, to convince them they want to follow other people's orders, when they're in a bad spot in life. When they're feeling unsure or unsafe, or just unhappy. When people don't need anything, what can you really offer?" She perched on the edge of the bench, spreading her arms out in a broad shrug. "So far, a lot of people have been telling me things like that. Not, like, why they chose the Negaverse, not that so much, but like -- what they got out of joining the Negaverse. What it gives them. And I try to guess at what it is that they must've needed. Chaos goes after people who are vulnerable or weak -- it deliberately preys on people who need help. I met this one homeless boy, and clearly someone just needed to help him out -- but he corrupted to the Negaverse just so he could give a bar of chocolate to a friend. A bar of chocolate. He couldn't afford it, and now he calls a man master and says he loves him. For giving him a bar of chocolate and a little bit of welcome." Her heart ached, thinking of Schreibersite. The Negaverse was going to eat him alive. "And there's Zippeite -- God, I wish you could meet him. He's just -- young and angry. I don't know how else to put it -- he's young and angry. Like he's afraid not to be. I don't know if you'd freak him out, like if he'd feel too much like we were trying to give him a role model like he's a little kid, but -- maybe he'd like you better. I feel like maybe I'm too dorky. Too feelings-y or something. "But that's the kind of people they go after, you know? People not when they're at their best, when they're at their worst. And then Chaos keeps them that way, like they'll go back to everything bad they felt before if they don't stay the course. What made you want to leave?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 21, 2014 4:45 pm
Her examples stacked up slowly, and his eyes widened slightly, eyebrows raising with each in quiet surprise. Somehow, he'd thought he was the only one in the negaverse who had come to them broken and angry. He'd certainly had it implied often enough that he was too dull and broken to be more than the most base of soldiers. Zinkenite's narrowed eyes and scorn had certainly made him feel that he had desperate amount to prove to be worthy of the name... He ran a hand over his face and sighed, blinking as he tried to digest this sudden shift in his world view. He wasn't alone, he was not the least of them, he'd been surrounded by them in this structure that... that... He'd been preyed on elaborately, and until now he hadn't realized just how incredible the trap had been. "I... s**t Wow." He glanced over at her in amazement. "I had no idea." She'd asked him another question, he was just too thrown to answer it immediately, trying to picture how close he might have been standing to someone who would have seen him as kindred soul... had they been given more chance to talk, work as teams, do something other than pointlessly paw for globes of energy and march lockstep under dismissive stares. "It...was kind of gradual." He finally answered after a pause in silence, which had been punctuated only by the drifting changes in his expression. "...I was... fighting a lot. I felt like I had a lot to prove, and it never seemed to be enough. I was never strong enough, never skilled enough, never had quite enough medals to be told I was doing anything more than scraping by. I was thrilled to make Captain for all of... I dunno... ten minutes, then I realized even that wasn't good enough. They were just.. throwing me a bone." He paused to wrinkle his nose and line up the pieces again, trying to identify the moment when he'd really started to drift. "I didn't know about purification at first, so my first idea was that goddamn it, I would get so goddamn good that Metalia herself would rank me up and I'd turn that hopped up little..." He coughed and stopped just short of swearing. "I figured I'd make them notice me, become a General King so powerful I could use Zinkenite as a foot stool, just to show him for ever looking down at me. Then there was the... the LINARITE affair. Huge amounts of resources going into finding her, trying to get her back. This person who was apparently a traitor and we should be destroying instead of tripping on ourselves trying to figure out if she'd like the fruit basket better or the box of chocolates and a 'we're sorry please come back to chaos' card. " He waved a dismissive hand. Linarite was not a success story for order. He didn't know the details. He assumed, based on the glimpses of the obsequiously perky blue haired girl, that she'd decided the Kool Aid of the Negaverse was just too damn refreshing to resist and drank it whole hardheartedly, and did not care enough to find out if he was correct. "So there was that little bomb in the whole image, and... I dunno. I don't know that would have clinched it... I just... I dunno maybe it was because I had people like Camelot telling me it was an option... I just started to notice that no matter how hard I fought, no matter how well I did or how poorly I did, even I didn't feel like I was getting anywhere. The rank didn't make me feel better. The fighting didn't make me feel better... and I... it was..." He'd tried to explain it before and it always felt like it wasn't quite it. "It was like waking up one morning and realizing that part of you has gone numb without you noticing. Not like, your hand or your foot... but part of you that would tell you that you were doing something wrong. The parts of you that tell you not to shove someone under a bus just because you can. I just woke up one day and noticed that it just... wasn't.. kind of..." He floundered a bit, dragging out the words "That it maybe wasn't gone but that it wasn't healthy. It was kind of the canary in the coal mine I guess. I woke up and noticed I was turning into people I hated, and that all the promises had been lies, and I just.. I didn't want to keep trying. I was just tired of it. I knew they'd never fall over themselves to win me back like Linarite but I didn't care. I just wanted a chance to give them one more black eye and see if they'd finally sit up and notice I'd been there at all." It sounded, to his ears, whiny and pathetic. Maybe it was, but it had felt so goddamn good when he purified. Not, that it hadn't hurt in it's own way, but it had been like ripping out a bad tooth. Once you got past the hurt and the bleeding you just -felt- the lift of not having something poisonous in you anymore. He'd lost his old identity sure, but he considered that to have been part of the bad tooth. Necessary loss. Then I started hear
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Posted: Sun Aug 24, 2014 4:26 pm
This was a perspective she didn't normally get to have. How many people had ever actually purified? Hvergelmir barely knew of any. She tried to store away everything he'd told her, pulling apart each detail to absorb and understand as much as she could. At least some of this, she was sure, was valuable information that would help her understand what the Negaverse looked like to someone who'd been both inside and then out, and what threads were still left to connect people to their humanity. "That's good," she said slowly, thoughtfully. "We can use that. Who was Linarite? Why did they want her back -- did she have information they needed...?" It seemed strange, to her, that the Negaverse would go to more effort for one stray member than another -- and worth knowing. How organized were their efforts? There was another question she usually led off with, too. It was worthwhile to ask Kairatos about it -- maybe he'd see more of the holes between the two stories. "What did they tell you about the history of the war? Who explained things to you, and did they offer it, or did you have to ask?"
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Posted: Thu Aug 28, 2014 6:55 am
"That's part of what pissed me off I think. I don't know that she knew anything of importance. Zink likes... " He wrinkled his nose to try and explain what about the general king's varried behavior had bothered him. "The only people that seemed to get near him were one agent near his rank, then a couple corrupt Senshi and her. They were like his... collection. She never talked to me, she just kinda drifted around looking bouncy and not all there. He treated her like a favorite child. She could do no wrong and the rest of us could do no right." His lips thinned to a fierce line, anger in his eyes again. "I've never even met her and I hate her. I could never live up to her in the Negaverse, and I can't forget that when most people think of a purified agent, they probably think of her. the failure." He had at best rarely tried to hide his feelings, though unburdening himself to Hver was a strange sort of confessional. Half relief and half guilt. It was that curious purity, like she shouldn't hear the word 'hate', but he didn't have another word for how he felt about Linarite. There were few people in the world he wanted to destroy, let alone ones he'd only seen in glimpses, but there was still an unashamed part of him that wanted to destroy that vapid smile because of what she represented, just as much as what it would do to Zinkenite. "The war..." He rubbed a hand over his face and thought, trying to recall the pieces he knew. "Not... not lots. We knew the Rift used to be of great importance, the city where Metalia and her rebels made their last stand before they were cast down and became Youma, something that they were quick to accuse the Senshi of, though if you thought about it long, it doesn't make sense. No one I've met in Order has the power to fill someone with chaos to that extent. That's something only another member of Chaos can do. Otherwise it was a lot about Senshi being invaders, the Moon Queen a tyrant and a destroyer, and if you were lucky bits about Endymion being a traitor. Otherwise there was no real explanation even how ripping starseeds and taking energy would actually save anyone. They just sort of expect you to buy the party line."
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Posted: Sat Aug 30, 2014 12:52 pm
Hvergelmir listened closely, trying to pick through everything Kairatos said and make the scattered puzzle pieces look like part of a bigger picture that she could imagine if she squinted hard enough. It wasn't easy -- there was so little she knew. But every new puzzle piece was a moment closer to a day when she'd be able to step back and say: There it is. That's the big picture.And something he'd said was intriguing. Maybe more intriguing than anything she'd learned recently. I don't think that she knew anything of importance...
...a couple corrupt senshi and her...
...she just kinda drifted around looking bouncy and not all there...
...a favorite child...
...not lots...
...no real explanation..."That's interesting, actually," she said quietly, still mulling it over with a knuckle pressed to her mouth. "Go with me on this -- it's just a theory, but. This General-King, the people he let close -- you said Linarite wasn't all there. The corrupted senshi I met... she wasn't exactly all there either. The Negaverse isn't just favoring people who don't question things, it's rewarding people who can't. It sets a... a kind of a precedent for how you become valued. I mean, one way to get people to stay somewhere is to make them worry that no one would notice or care if they left... but that part's not quite my point." She relocated her hands to her hips, staring down at her feet in consideration. "My point is -- were there a lot of meetings? Did they put you all in contact with each other a lot? Lots of teamwork and camaraderie-building? Was it easy to run into your fellow agents at the proverbial water cooler? Or was it, instead, just enough supervision to give you the illusion of more organization than you could directly see with your own eyes? Meetings wrapped up quickly before too many questions could be asked? Lots of individual missions or unsupervised work? Lots of Negaverse agents I've talked to seem to have the impression that their fellows know more than they do, because they just haven't asked -- so they don't bother to ask. They assume an answer's there, and that's good enough. I'm asking you to think back on everything and just tell me your instinct, what your gut feeling is: is that deliberate? Do they keep you isolated to keep you from cross-checking all your information with each other?"
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Posted: Sun Aug 31, 2014 8:12 am
Kairatos shot Hver another look as she stacked together pieces of a structure of power much more twisted than he'd ever originally imagined. Family, they called it, but the family he was looking at, uncovered, was the kind you moved across the country from and got restraining orders on. "Every time you open your mouth I feel more like a fool for ever being taken in by this s**t, and more glad I'm out of it." He admitted. "...Few meetings. I... got the impression talking to some agents that had been there longer that there were once more structured teams, but everything I remember doing, all lone runs, or maybe two of us if you ran into someone. Just mindless marches and quotas to fill, and ... yeah... now that I think about it? Probably deliberate. ... Definitely deliberate."
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Posted: Mon Sep 01, 2014 9:00 am
"Okay, good. So if we know that, that gives us an advantage. It means we can try to ask the right questions that'll help people who're still living in that reality start to question their system a little more." She frowned, resting her chin on her hands. "I just wish I understood why they give their lieutenants the weapons they do. Squirting flowers, plastic vampire teeth, it's all . . . dollar store junk. I feel like there must be something I'm missing -- I mean, what's the point of it? Why waste magic on something like that, why not just send them out there with nothing at all?" It was an odd mystery. The Negaverse -- a group that outfitted its Generals with deadly serious weapons, more dangerous than anything a Knight could boast -- was, for some reason, giving out gag gifts to its lieutenants. What possible purpose could there be? Hvergelmir looked over at Kairatos, wondering if he had any more perspective on the matter. "Any theories?"
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