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 Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 8:09 pm
He found the Mercury knight quite on accident, and to say he was irritated was to put too blunt a point on it. Melanite ground his teeth together at the sight of Babylon Knight, and summoned his new weapon--a shield--to hand. “Babylon Knight,” he said, his Petrograd accent worming its way into his words. “You’ve returned from where-ever you went.” Was there a reason the man chose now? Perhaps he could sense Melanite’s lack of conviction, perhaps he was there to tempt... like he’d already been trying to do. “I trust you had an excellent time,” said Melanite, biting each syllable as if it had done something to offend him personally.
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Posted: Tue Jan 13, 2015 10:34 pm
His old acquaintance was a captain now, and Babylon felt uneasy at his presence. Melanite had never more than tolerated him, and he sounded positively ticked off now. “I sent you a note,” he said, trying his best to throw Melanite’s tone back at him but softer. The iciness felt weird in his mouth. “It was pleasant,” he added. “But all things come to an end eventually.”
It occurred to him that Melanite was not like Titan, owed him no loyalty and no friendship. Melanite would use the smallest hint to find his civilian self and hit him where it hurt. It was like standing face to face with a crocodile and waiting for the lizard to blink.
“I take it you’re not here because you want your model back,” he said thoughtfully, on the basis of it being something clever to say and he wasn’t sure how else to continue the conversation.
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Posted: Wed Jan 21, 2015 9:29 am
Sosostris “Your presence isn’t welcome here,” said Melanite. “As I believe I’ve said. Many times.” Even the thought of continuing their former discussions, of the history of the war, of the moral rectitude of either side, made something in his chest go tight. It roused warning sirens in his mind, and the comparison of the Negaverse’s unjust actions to those of the White Moon came sluggishly if at all. “This is my route.” I protect it for Metallia.
He shook his head, and pressed a gloved hand to the corner of his jaw. Through the thin leather of his gloves, he couldn’t feel his nails, but he scraped them over the bones anyway from force of habit. He jerked his arm down as if caught in the act of something private, and stared at Babylon, ice-black eyes narrowed. There was nothing to say, there was only the knowledge that he was supposed to drain and attack, and he didn’t want to--“Пошёл на́ хуй,” he burst out, hurling the circular shield away from him in a move sharp and sudden as the opening of a flick-knife. “<******** class="clear"> Babylon could have debated the semantics - he’d been here first - but Melanite seemed on-edge and not in the mood for conversing as they usually did. Not that any of their prior conversations had been anything approaching pleasant or cordial, but… it was the principle of the thing, really, whatever that might have been. And the sudden outburst in Russian and the tossed shield certainly ran that train of thought right off the tracks. Babylon flinched at the sudden movement, raising his lantern in front of him in defense. Something was clearly, clearly wrong - and while he hated to enchant someone with whom he was trying to establish trust, the situation called for using whatever resources were available to him. At his bidding, the light blazed brighter. “What’s troubling you?” he asked softly. Quote: In that moment, his rage refocused from Babylon, and Babylon’s entire existence, to the lantern. It shone too brightly, a shatteringly blue light that reached past all the dark corners in Melanite’s brain. “Something is in my mind,” he hissed through his teeth, a hand up to shield his eyes from the light. “I cannot--it will not let me think. это пиздец…” What the hell was going on? “Since they made me a Captain, it has been like this. I am not angry about the things which made me angry before. It is obvious to everyone.” Melanite straightened suddenly, and he summoned his shield back to his hand. “Are you enchanting me,” he demanded. He wanted to be grateful for it, for the opportunity to speak his mind as he knew it had been so recently, but that foreign anger ballooned inside his chest and hurt. “Put your lantern down, Knight,” he spat, unconsciously turning to expose less of himself to any attack Babylon might venture. Babylon lowered the lantern to the ground and stepped away from it, his hands raised placatingly. The light faded, back to its normal intensity, and he said, “Yes, I was.” And a whole lot of good it had done him, just to get that insight into Melanite’s state of mind. Now that he knew the other man’s honest concerns… perhaps there was a conversation to be had? “I was,” he repeated, “And now I am done. You have disarmed me and there will be no more enchantments this evening.” Could he - could he continue this conversation? It seemed like a risk, and a large one at that - but perhaps a worthwhile one. If Melanite’s new state of mind had left him so disturbed, he might be more open to considering having Chaos purged entirely. “I’d like to hear more about your troubles,” said Babylon, lowering his hands slowly to his side. Quote: No attack came. Melanite watched Babylon put down the lantern, then quickly closed the distance between them and kicked it away. The glass didn’t break, which--well, it was magical. He wasn’t sure that he had expected to. “If you summon it back, I will do you significant harm,” he promised. The muscles of his arms were so tense they shook. That the patterning was digging into the palms of his hands. But now that the magic was gone, the clarity with which he’d spoken was gone. “There is nothing wrong,” he said, flatly. He was just adapting. People did that, didn’t they? Adapt. It was natural. Except… “I was angry about Astrophyllite,” he said, with difficulty. “I wanted to hurt the one who promoted her. But now there is nothing there.” There was a wall there, in his thoughts. He couldn’t remember why he was angry. “They promoted me and now it is gone. I am out of control.” Babylon nodded to hide the fact that he was completely unsure of how to proceed. It was no small wonder that Melanite had opened up to him at all - but how could he keep him open? He saw the way his arms shook, and thought - it had to be agony, to know that there was something wrong with your mind, and have that same thing repeatedly insist to you that everything was fine. “That’s what Chaos does,” he said softly, certain that he was stepping onto fragile, fragile ground. Surely Melanite did not want to hear this, did not want… “When they promoted you, they made its hold over you stronger. So it takes all the places where you were beginning to question and… smooths them out.” He remembered how Avalon had been, in her last days as a captain, when she’d… when she’d cut his face open. Her fury. Her anguish. And then, as a general, her concentrated rage… He shrugged. “It will only get worse the longer you stay.” Quote: “No,” said Melanite, but it was a rejection born of desperation. Babylon’s words practically rang with truth, resonating with the part of him that kept track of every single deviation from his morals, from the things that had mattered to him, once. He hadn’t picked up a brush since his promotion. Only a palette knife, only to shred a canvas that he had once considered close to a masterwork, and the shield. Always the shield. It came to hand so easy now, easier than the bowl ever had. “You are lying to me,” he said. Babylon wasn’t. There were no guarantees except falling deeper into this. He exhaled through his teeth. “You know this for fact,” he said. It sounded like a question, but it wasn’t one. “You had Avalon Page. How did she come to be that way?” Babylon gritted his teeth, resisting the urge to cut Melanite off at his accusation of lying. It paid off to let him finish his thought - perhaps if anything could convince him, Avalon’s purification could. “She was sent to England,” he said, “In service to the Negaverse. And she went, because she was loyal to Chaos and would do whatever it asked of her.” She would have killed him if Chaos had asked, he thought, but held it back for not seeming relevant. “Chaos asked her to corrupt her Wonder,” he continued, “So she went to her Wonder and - I don’t know the specifics, but she tried to corrupt it and it couldn’t be done. It backfired. Sailor Cosmos got involved and purged the Chaos out of her and… it’s not usually quite so extreme as what happened to Avalon.” Perhaps she was a bad example after all, having been turned back into a page. “I’ve seen other purifications that went differently. There are senshi and knights here in Destiny City who can perform them, and it’s usually just a straight exchange. Your rank doesn’t change, you just… you have the chaos lifted. You lose some memories - not all of them, the way Avalon did.” “It’s not a power I have,” he finished. “I can only tell you what sort of knight you would be, not make you be it.” Quote: He frowned. Not quite the answer he wanted, but it seemed true. Even if no one yet knew that the General lived--which he doubted--he needed to know this, before he did anything… final. Final. It echoed in his head, and he fought the urge to smash the shining edge of his shield into Babylon’s face. He could see the blood splatter and hear the crunch of blood. He could hear belabored breathing and the fall of a body. His hands remained still at his sides. “Then tell me,” he said. “What would I be, were I like you?” Babylon pulled the alethiometer carefully from inside his coat, turning the device gently on its chain. He opened it and showed the glowing dial to Melanite, as if to say - nothing up my sleeves. That done, he adjusted the outer ring and set the dial spinning. It whirled faster than the eye could track, the glowing blue symbols turning into a ringed blur. When it finally began to slow, it spun in wide arcs - from Castor to Earth, and then Chronos to Mars, Uranus to Jupiter - and finally, firmly, rested on Saturn. Like Megiddo, thought Babylon. Like Niflhel.“You would be a knight of Saturn,” he said. “If all the Chaos were purged away.” Quote: Saturn. The word meant nothing to Melanite, and his frown deepened, shadows at the corners of his mouth. “That’s interesting,” he said, the same way he might comment on the weather, or on the performance of certain sports teams. Small talk, that’s all it was. It would never go anywhere. “Saturn is your word for the planet with the rings, is it not? Past Jupiter?” He was not much for astronomy… He let go of his shield. “It is time for you to be moving on,” he declared. “I do not want to see you again.” “Yes,” said Babylon, closing the alethiometer. This conversation, it seemed, had done no one any good whatsoever, and with a flick of his wrist, he vanished his lantern. “Good night,” he said, stepping away. He would respect Melanite’s wishes, troubling as they were.
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