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 Posted: Sat Jul 25, 2015 4:59 pm
A war, he thought.
Scholomance waited, or more accurately, cogitated over the connotations behind what was said. He sat with one leg crossed upon the other, bony hands laced and situated over the knee, posture proper and facing forward. His chin was of such an angle that it looked slightly posed, yet proper in the perspective of the rest of his posture. The bizarre bone ring remained on his left middle finger - and there it had been for some time now, since its miraculous rescue from the waterfront river. He hadn’t asked enough questions, naturally; its reappearance violated many laws.
Let’s have a war. His vision swept the city - it was easy to do from there - but he found no sign of the conflicts he expected to see. Do I want a Normandy type of battle, or some trench warfare? Still nothing crept within his senses. Possibly it’s most similar to guerilla warfare. I’ve not seen signs of fortifications. Sadly no trenches dug, no abandoned buildings carefully wrapped in barbed wire and reinforced against bombs. Ah, but there’s no weaponry either. A glance toward his hand meant his fingers splayed, and the bone ring remained steadfast on its perch.
And in a city like this-
Thoughts froze with a distinctly repulsive force perpetuated itself somewhere behind him, and the page most reluctantly turned his head to find its direction. Nothing to his left or right offered an ideal source for the sudden intrusion - and half-twisting meant breaking posture entirely. With the inevitable now expressed, Scholomance collected himself and stood, careful to brush all dirt and debris from pants before he about-faced to find his latest interruption.
He needn’t look far, either, for on another rooftop some distance from his, there stood a brunette in red clothing with a marked flair. The page decided that this man was his culprit and smiled accordingly.
Thine ‘enemy’ approaches. How quaint.The feel of a Page was, by now, something well and familiar to Tantalus. Order no longer felt nearly as wrong and hostile as it once had - but he was pretty sure that was just because of his experience. Order had, besides the Court, been his best allies in the war. On the whole, he had nothing to fear from them - and even less to fear from a Page, if he happened to be one of those generally hostile to Chaos with no thought whether it was Mirror or Negaverse.
He bounced easily from roof to roof, well used to the physical boosts granted by his powered form. It had been over a year, now, since he had made it to Super Senshi, and while he might once have been anxious for his wings, he found that concern had all but evaporated as he became more comfortable with the rank he did have.
He stood confidently, one hand resting on his hip and the other raised in polite greeting.
“Good evening,” he said. Closer, he could recognize the Saturn symbols adorning the man’s clothes, and for a moment he wondered - but the likelihood that any given Saturn Page was aware of the fate of another seemed deeply farfetched.Scholomance always found it intriguing how a suggestion of an image resolved in his mind. He enjoyed how shadows resolved to deer, how a collection of signposts might translate to a thin man standing near the crosswalk. But this one, as he approached, resolved from a relatively unimpressive figure to one who commanded enough aesthetic to lift the page’s spirits. His features looked androgynous to the point of effeminate, hair aglow with well-kept treatment, and the costume he wore hinted at the body type beneath with every movement.
At least he’s easy on the eyes.
“Evening it is,” he responded in kind. Bony fingers latticed together out of habit while his palms came together at waist level. “Though it was a slightly better evening before my body tried to label you an atrocious, repulsive little thing. Curious sense, that. I haven't quite gotten used to this concept of feeling someone before you see them.
But don't let me ramble - my name is Scholomance," he paused for his hands to gesture outward, and he offered a nod. "And I am quite interested to know what, exactly, about you makes you so dangerous." His hands folded back together, ring hand on top, and he began a slow pace around his visitor to inspect his appearance. It wouldn’t be so far a stretch to say that Scholomance wanted a glimpse of his a** in the process, either.
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Posted: Thu Jul 30, 2015 1:20 am
Tantalus might, lately, have been a bit oblivious to flirtation on occasion, but he was absolutely never oblivious to attention. And oh, did he absolutely love attention of any kind. Lived off it, really, and so if he preened a little when he realized the Page was very definitely paying him attention, well, what could be expected, really? He was only human.
"Ah, am I the first person with a Chaos aura you've encountered? The aura-sensing gets less weird eventually, I promise, and starts feeling more like something useful than something uncomfortable. At least, it did for me." He was definitely making an extra effort to be friendly and solicitous, because if Scholomance was unfamiliar with Chaos, that likely meant he was very, very new to the war itself, and frightening some new Page didn't exactly feel all that productive.
Even if so far it seemed he was the opposite of frightened.
"Sailor Tantalus, of the Dark Mirror. The reason I feel so dangerous is that, in theory, we are supposed to be enemies, and I'm rather more powerful than you - that's not bragging," he said, and he flicked a stray hair away from his face and then rested his other hand on his hip, "there's a whole magical rank system. But I have no intention of harming you. I don't enjoy fighting, it's messy and uncomfortable and not even the littlest bit productive." He turned partway, so he could still somewhat follow the other man's movements.
"How long have you been a Knight, Scholomance?"
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Posted: Sat Aug 01, 2015 3:36 am
Scholomance completed his round about the new acquaintance as he mulled over the brunette's words. Oh, how delightful. I'm even getting tutorials from the purported 'enemy'. Too cute.
There is no ******** war.
Isaiah's countenance remained at idle smile despite the bitter thoughts, and he figured Tantalus (and what a name that was) wouldn't notice while he launched into his quick explanations. "Yes, useful. I'm sure." His skepticism came out dryly. "For now, it feels like a pervasive Twitter feed going off in my head about how someone of some identification is now taking a s**t in a park three blocks to my left. That information might be useful to scat enthusiasts, but not - sadly - to me." He offered an apologetic shrug, complete with hands splaying outward. Overacting was fast becoming an idiosyncrasy of Scholomance, he figured.
Oh, and you have the flair of a Halle Berry. Do tell, Tantalus, how you came across that name. "I have heard about this step ladder association of 'ranks', yes." Hands soon clasped together into their respective interlacing. "Page-Squire-Knight. Basic-Super-Eternal, that kind of thing. One can't compare to the other, of course. But I don't see how it matters without a concrete military system - I figured that if anyone had legitimate intentions to harm another, we would see far more use of guns or tanks or massive troop movements beyond relying on... What? Magic and toys like spears and trinkets?" War was fought on three terms: threat, or land, or ideals and he had discovered none of these at risk thus far. His disbelief in the whole affair as anything dangerous proved clear with his words and his disdain for battle as a caloric waste.
Tantalus' question brought him back to the topic at hand. "Hmm? Oh, let me try to count." His respiratory system only recently recovered from the havoc placed on it, and he still woke up with an impossibly dry and sore throat in the mornings. Sometimes breathing ached terribly depending on the toxicity of the fumes he breathed. Scholomance counted on his fingers by tapping each tip against his thumbs until he was ready to issue an answer. "Maybe two weeks," he conceded finally. "I've heard there are some who have been at this for years. Quite a trouble to imagine that."
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Posted: Tue Aug 11, 2015 8:12 pm
Tantalus couldn't help himself - he laughed at Scholomance's description of aura sensing. It might not be quite that accurate, but the metaphor was clear - and if the Page was lucky enough that he hadn't tangled with the Negaverse's (or even the Mirror's, he didn't pretend there weren't members of his Court who would attack a Knight) more violent members, it probably did seem like an irritating feed of background noise that meant less than nothing.
"It's an early warning system - not everyone who feels like me is going to be as friendly as me, I'm sorry to say. My Princess used to have quite a vendetta against Knights, actually, and although as far as I know she's let it go..." He shrugged. A Page against a Princess was no contest.
"Honestly, it's a bit less like as military ranking - except, as I understnad, in the Negaverse, where their ranks do indeed mean something - and more like leveling up in a video game. More power, more strength, more speed, better magic - actual magic, in your case." At least there was something to compare it to. "And why bother with tanks or guns when there are much more efficient methods that keep us, mostly, under the radar? I don't need a gun when I can send a man off a roof chasing after my magic, or drag him into the mirror to be drained until he has no more use." He shrugged his shoulders. "Our war operates in the shadows. And it's for the better that it does. I would hate to see what happened if the general populace knew magical girl anime was more realistic than they ever suspected." It came out as a light joke, but all things considered, his greatest fear really was an angry civilian with a shotgun.
But - oh. Two weeks. That explained more than it didn't, really. Of course Scholomance had a lowered sense of scale - their perspectives were entirely different. "Years indeed. I've been doing it for two. The Princess who Awakened me has been fighting for...about five?" It felt so normal, now, to go out every night and risk his life for his Court. To be swept off into space or tangle with an evil double or be kidnapped by the Negaverse as bait.
He glanced off briefly. Lately he had been covering energy draining for two, because Amytis had fallen off wanting to do...much of anything, never mind draining. Chariklo's loss obviously wore on her. "Unfortunately, much of my evenings are claimed by duties to the Court - perhaps another time, Scholomance? I'd be happy to...fill in whatever other gaps there might be in your education." And his tone was playfully flirtatious. He gave a quick bow, and then the Senshi of Temptation was off into the night.
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