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 Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 1:17 pm
"It's just a walk, god!" Zia announced as she slammed the door and headed towards the elevator.
Staying in the suburban home she grew up in was too suffocatingly painful, retreating the the downtown penthouse was equally terrible. She didn't know what she was expecting, since it was technically owned by Caroline anyway. She remembered it was being a safe place where she ate pizza on the couch with Xanthus, but he had apparently vacated, and it was nothing like she remembered.
And her keeper followed.
She was definitely starting to rethink this attempt at resuming normal life as Zia, but she seemed to not be deterred from what was just going to be a harmless walk around the area.
Which extended itself indefinitely when she realized she didn't want to go back.
She ducked down a side street and glanced around before she exhaled and let the glamour drop and release the large aura. Just a for a moment. Just to breathe.
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 1:58 pm
Marcella was back at work, though not quite to full duties, since the cast on her dominant arm made sticking needles into other people awkward for both parties. The structure of going to work was comforting to her, though, and so in spite of how boring it was to actually be around the ER just pushing paper, the nurse in training did not terribly mind going in to do it.
As Asclepius, though, she kept her route home fairly direct. She wanted to get some patrolling time in, but she also knew she was still in no shape to be actually fighting anyone. Maybe if necessary she could call Chaonis to beat something up, but so far, at least, things had been fairly quiet.
Tonight, though, there was a different aura out, just about exactly halfway between the Destiny City hospital and Asclepius' apartment. It was not overtly Chaos, but still unusual, and quite strong-- wait, maybe she did know who that was.
Using a few intermediate buildings as steps downward from the rooftops, Asclepius descended to street level to try to find the source of the aura. Zia had been her friend for so long, and then it had been such a surprise to realize she was also Zirconia.... The Senshi of Medicine was still not totally sure how to feel about it, but it had also been a while since she had last seen or heard from her friend.
Abruptly, the aura vanished from the White Moon senshi's awareness, but she continued along, looking up and down the streets nearby until she caught sight of a figure with hair in a familiar shade of lavender.
"Zia," she called out from the end of the side street, raising her casted arm to hold it up above her shoulder in a gesture primarily intended to relieve the throbbing of the fractured bone, but that might have also passed for a quasi-greeting.
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 2:34 pm
Zia looked like she was on the verge of tears, fingers tracing her ears as if to check the repressing glamour again when she heard her name called and stopped in her tracks.
Her first knee jerk reaction was to grab her arms and take a step back, until she registered the familiarity of Asclepius. She knew her, but her memory was failing her when it came to details. "H-hi..." She said, trying to steel herself to at least not cower. The Senshi of Medicine was an ally, although tenuous, if her instincts were right.
She stepped forward this time and glanced at the super senshi once more. "Your arm..."
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 3:12 pm
Asclepius looked briefly to her casted hand where she held it up near her ear, then back to Zia. "Oh, yeah, it-" ... Kind of hurt more now that her attention was on it. "I went looking for trouble and I found it," she finished, a touch too casually. Of course she blamed herself for what had happened.
"It will heal, though, and no thanks to my sphere," the hazel-eyed girl added. "Medicine only works on magical energies for now, it seems."
The White Moon senshi took a step closer, too, now studying Zia's face. "... Are you alright? It's been a while." Asclepius could recall a more talkative and forward Zia the last time their paths had crossed. And, of course, things could change so quickly in this war.
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 3:41 pm
"Oh..." Zia seemed stilted, but she often did when faced with confusing interaction these days. "I... I'm glad it wasn't worse, then..."
She tugged at her own sweater sleeves. "Yeah, it's been a while. I'm actually," She sniffed brushed her fingers through her hair to bend into the cluster of curls pinned in her messy updo. "I'm actually not in a super good way right now? I ******** up bad and now I'm ******** up."
She made a sharp inhale that turned into a sniffle. "I-- ah... I remember, now, you were looking to uh. To cure Chaos, right? You were working off the disease concept, a sickness to eradicate. I remember. I thought you were really smart. I thought..."
The mirror seed that rested safely in subspace came to mind. "I might have some different information now, than I did. If you wanna find somewhere to talk."
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 4:03 pm
Lowering her arm to hold it across her chest, the Senshi of Medicine nodded slowly, her concern for Zia starting to put her mind off the ache in her forearm. By the sudden change in subject, she gathered that her friend did not want to go into greater detail. Much as Asclepius did not exactly want to talk about how she got her arm broken doing, of all things, picking a fight.
The new topic definitely piqued her interest, though. Last time they had discussed it, Asclepius had been suspicious, and she felt bad about it now, especially if Zia was still willing to help. "Sure, I'm always still looking for information," she replied. Then she glanced around and asked, "Where did you have in mind?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 4:32 pm
"Hm..." She exhaled and glanced around the narrow side streets and alleyways of the deserted area and waved her along.
"Come on, let's get out of the way."
No matter how far out of plain sight they got, it wasn't going to do much for the large aura about to be let loose once she dropped her human disguise again. "Some things are... different now," She mumbled as her form shifted. Mostly human features with small, subtle changes besides the outfit. She reached up to touch her pointed ears and moved one pointed canine along her lower lip.
"Don't freak out," She ominously warned, which usually assured someone was going to do something that warranted freaking out. She hoped Asclepius wouldn't offer too much resistance as she tuned in to the nearby senshi's dream mirror.
And suddenly they were standing in the palace at the center of Tartaros, which was slowly warping to resemble the moon palace on the Black Moon under Zirconia's tending.
"There, now our auras can't be tracked and I can show you this," She said, extending her arm out and holding a mirrorseed, only to retract it a bit and realize it was probably a good moment to pause and make sure Asclepius was listening after such a major shift from standing in the street talking to a human.
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 5:28 pm
Asclepius tensed at the change in aura, still not used to the different feeling that Zirconia gave off from anyone else she had ever met. But then that paled in comparison to suddenly finding herself in unfamiliar surroundings.
"Where are we?" she demanded, her tone taking a harsh edge in her confusion as she looked around. Sensing no youma offered some reassurance, however, but she was still too busy taking in the strange place to quite catch the mirrorseed part.
"Huh? Sorry, I'm ...not used to sudden travel unless it's my doing." And then Asclepius tried again, more conversationally, "What is this place?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 5:41 pm
"Well, we haven't really traveled anywhere," She confessed. "It's a dreamstate, but we aren't giving off any auras back in the White Moon's universe, so in a way it's a bit safer to talk, just for a bit."
And counteract the fact that her large aura had gotten more powerful since her soul had been unsealed.
"No more cat ears," She said, tracing a finger along the pointed earlobe that likened her more to Nehelenia or Ares' royal forms. "But more importantly is this, which is what a Dark Mirror Senshi's starseed looks like when extracted by a Negaverse officer."
She moved it from one hand to the other to show off its reflective mirror property instead of containing a little light. It had no light at all.
"It's... I believe it is infected. Your theory was correct."
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 6:19 pm
"Oh, okay," the White Moon senshi replied somewhat lamely. Since awakening as a senshi, she had gotten more accustomed to weird, but that did not stop things from still being strange when they happened. Brows furrowed still in confusion, Asclepius accepted the explanation for the moment, and turned her attention to what Zirconia was showing her.
"That's... Wow." The mirrorseed similarly left her at a loss for words, but she moved closer to get a better look. "So it's really the same as, say, my own starseed under the mirrored outside? Or do you know if it's mirror all the way through?" She shivered slightly at the thought of breaking a starseed to see what was inside.
Asclepius then started to reach for it with her right hand, glancing up to the lavender-haired sorceress as she did so. "May I? Or is the infection ... catching?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 6:38 pm
"Well that's the trick of it, I suppose," Zirconia responded, giving the mirrored starseed a small toss into Asclepius' hands. "Whether or not it's rotten to the core of if life remains somewhere inside. I don't think its contagious. It seems to need a large amount of power to spread, like the Dark Mirror Court royals or the General Kings and Queens."
She folded her arms and paced along the marble floors. "I've been operating under the theory the Dark Mirror Court is dead, simply animated by Chaos. Light is a sign of life, they project none. Things have gotten further complicated, though. I thought they were born from the Black Moon's corruption, and Nehelenia's final mirror was being used as their main tool of operation in the throne room of Mirrorspace, But that's recently been proven false. I found the true mirror uncorrupted on the moon, which means what they've been using down there has to be a forgery."
She reached a finger out towards the mirrorseed, resting on its surface and interacting with it, making it ripple until it made a small humming noise.
"It makes one wonder what else isn't exactly what it seems in this Chaos construct."
And she suddenly increased her power, and the thing let out an agonizing and almost sentient sounding scream of pain.
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Posted: Mon Jan 26, 2015 7:35 pm
In spite of being ready for the toss, Asclepius required both hands to catch the mirrorseed when it bounced clumsily off the part of her cast that crossed the palm of her dominant hand. She studied it, turning it gingerly over between her fingers, as she listened to Zirconia's words.
"So, somehow they've created a mirror of their own?" she asked, shaking her head. Asclepius had had dreams of mirrors and Mirrorspace in a distant future, but just like dreams, she could only recall enough of them now to make her uneasy but not enough to be helpful.
And then the mirrorseed shrieked.
Startled, Asclepius dropped it as she recoiled in surprise. "Holy s**t," she breathed. "What was that?" A pause. "Do normal starseeds do that, too?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 5:48 am
"No," Zirconia answered, straight to the point as the dropped starseed was brought back to her hand with telekinetic force.
"No. I can't even interact with normal starseeds, it's a totally different magical wavelength. I think," she turned it over in her hands, "I think the infection is alive, so to speak. I haven't played with it since my power increased."
The way she was looking at it showed in a lot of ways, she was still trying to figure it out too. She messed with it some more, and the surface rippled and moved again.
She held it in one hand, and the other hovered just away from it. Eventually the mirror over it started pulling, like quicksilver stretching over the surface and starting to pull towards her hand. She stopped, and it went back to acting like a solid starseed.
"...That's never happened before."
She held it out again towards the recoiling Asclepius, a little bit of a grin teasing the corners of her mouth in amusement at the poor medicine senshi's shock. "A little bit of leverage with the Negaverse has them trading me these like currency. As far as I can tell, all Dark Mirror starseeds have this quality, which probably explains why they can't purify and are locked into the court post-infection."
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Posted: Wed Jan 28, 2015 1:47 pm
Asclepius returned to attentiveness when the mirrorseed stopped screaming. Nodding slowly, she took in Zirconia's words, and noted her confusion at the manipulation of the mirror...ness of the seed.
"You can change the shape of the mirrorseed?" Again, the Senshi of Medicine took the proffered seed, this time scratching at the outside curiously with a light blue-lacquered fingernail as she examined it. "Or is the mirror only on the outside somehow?"
She tried squeezing it between her thumb and forefinger, bracing herself in case it made another sudden noise, though Asclepius had her doubts that she could have an effect on the thing. Then, handing it back to Zirconia, the hazel-eyed girl wondered aloud, "Is the infection the same as one of their mirror-wraith things? I can actually mess with those, with my magic."
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Posted: Fri Jan 30, 2015 9:46 am
"I am actually not certain what the mirror wraiths are," She said, one finger tapping against the surface thoughtfully. "I once thought that mirrorspace, and all that came forth from it, was always an integral part to the court. For some reason, past a certain point in the timeline, we all had the strange idea that it had always been there. Once the connection opened to Tartaros and to my home universe, it was like a haze lifted, and I realized it had always been alien. It was new. I don't know much about it, and it won't let me enter since that revelation.
"Mirrorspace and the creatures it seems to produce are an ongoing mystery, but at least free of the brainwashing, it is known to be a mystery now." She rolled the mirrorseed in her hands. "I'm not sure. The surface has always rippled like liquid when my magic touches them, but it's never given way like that," She said, and glanced back up to Asclepius. "Mess with them how?"
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