That was something of a trick question. To say she was cocky, after all, would be to say she went into situations carelessly, and she did no such thing. She did, in fact, stride confidently into situations that should have been well beyond her capacity as a super senshi. But she did not do this for no reason, and she did not do this without precaution. Her crystal communicator was always easily within reach, but up until now, she'd never had much need to use it. She had challenged eternals, knights, transcended members of both, and she had come out if not on top than at least breaking even.
If seeking out such situations and challenging herself made her, in fact, cocky, then fine; but she preferred to think that she was not only capable, but confident, and confidence was something a great many of these people lacked.
That and proper combat training. That was a whole other thing.
Tonight, she was stalking a knight in particular, carefully slipping closer and closer still, waiting for them to either take the cue and approach or to retreat if they were not combat ready; but as of now, they were doing neither this nor that. Perhaps they were, too, a little cocky? A little confident that they could handle a corrupt super without breaking a sweat?
One way to find out as she slipped from the undergrowth of the park, practically on top of the knight, but with him just out of sight. "Come out, come out, wherever you are~ face me, knight!"
Guine
Posted: Sun Oct 18, 2015 10:42 am
Searching for answers was proving more difficult than it should have been. Two weeks had passed since the birth of Henry and Abigail, and Valhalla was no closer to finding a solution to fixing the broken starseed within him. The fact that he was slowly being stalked by a corrupted senshi was lost to him. He had no way of sensing her, and his thoughts were already lost as he made his way through the park.
When she spoke, he froze and took a step back from the voice. He knew that voice, and it pained him to hear her speaking to him like he was a target for her.
“I’m right here,” he offered softly, holding up his hands to show that he was unarmed, trying to see her through the darkness. And in reality, he really was unarmed. He had no weapon, no magic, and no summon. He took a risk by powering up and going out on his own, but how else was he supposed to find the answers he was searching for? He couldn’t just sit around and stare at his children and hope for the answer to fall in his lap.
Once Amphitrite heard his voice, and then saw him, she instantly recognized him - but maybe not for the reasons Valhalla would have hoped for. "Ah. You're Ganymede's knight, " she remarked cool, with a trace of a smile as she stepped closer to him, half circling him with her hands tucked behind her back, projecting a much more innocent girl than she'd been for a long time. Her eyes gave her away though, sharp and calculating.
She didn't recall his name anymore, much less the well wishes she had passed along to Ganymede back in December, the last time she'd spoken when they'd both been whole and pure. "She wasn't very kind to me, you know. The last time we met, " and she deliberately made her tone sound heavy, laced with sadness and regret. "I just wanted to be friends, you know... with both of you... "
The corrupt stopped pacing and stood staring at him, her eyes piercing. "It's not very wise, you know... waltzing around without your weapon. You could get hurt." There was a note of sarcasm, though so subtle it might have been imagined. "Your princess, she'd be awfully torn up about it, wouldn't she?"
Guine
Posted: Mon Oct 19, 2015 7:41 am
Valhalla wasn't a fighter; he preferred to keep as much peace as possible. As much as he was able to when others insisted on violence. All he could do was show that he did not intend any harm and to do his best not to be hurt in the process. He had too much to live for, especially now.
"You threatened to hurt those she loved. You threatened to hurt me," he reminded her, his voice soft and sad, wondering if she really thought he and Ganymede did not talk about their patrols, especially when something upset them as much as Ganymede's meeting with Amphitrite had upset her.
"You're wrong about her," he added, slowly lowering his hands as she circled him, but keeping an eye on her as best as he could without moving from where he was standing. "She could never be unkind to those she cares about, and you know she cares about you. It was the Negaverse who did those horrible things to you. They did horrible things to Ganymede, to me. To many others. You're not alone. I know you feel like the Negaverse is the only place you can turn to, but we will fight for you however we can."
She wouldn't believe him. She would turn his words on him as she had on Ganymede. Ganymede had cried that night after she got home for hours, and all he could do was hold her and listen to what happened, the same guilt she felt eating away at him as well. They hadn't been able to do anything, and so many were still suffering.
"Threaten? Is that what she said?" she purred out, stepping closer - learning how to be more physical had taught her a thing or two about using personal space, or the lack of, in situations like these to her advantage. The corrupt stepped closer, and closer still. "I just wanted to be friends, you know - I don't hurt her people, she doesn't hurt mine - I even said I'd give her the chance to convince me, you know... that there was a place for me with you."
She reached out, grasping his forearm with surprising gentleness, meeting his gaze intently as she eased closer. "That's sweet and all. Really. But, you see." Amphitrite laughed, tilting her head to a side. "You had your chance to fight for me. All of you. - you act as though I mattered, knight." Because she still did not remember his name. "Did I? - how long did it take you to notice I was gone, then? - did you even before I showed up that day?"
Her sadness, though purely manufactured, seemed no less real as her grasp on Valhalla's arm tightened, just slightly, as though perhaps desperate. "Did anyone? - did anyone even miss me? - would you have even known if I'd died? - you say I'm not alone, but in that room, that place, I - "
Guine
Posted: Tue Oct 20, 2015 7:25 am
"Of course she didn't say that, but that's the very definition of a threat," Valhalla said, his voice still soft and sad even as she approached and placed her hand on his arm. He tensed, knowing very well that without his magic he was severely handicapped. He had no intention of fighting her, but he would like to be able to defend himself if necessary.
He frowned sadly when she started saying the same things to him as she said to Ganymede. Placing the blame on them. Making herself out to be the only important person they should have focused on. Yes, they'd failed in trying to save her, but when they'd been rescued he'd lost his voice and was in shock from blood poisoning and hypothermia. No matter what he would have done to try and make sure she was rescued, it hadn't been physically possible at the time. He'd been carried out, himself. Ganymede as well.
"Hvergelmir," he said in response to her questions as she gripped into his arm, his voice still quiet but steady. "Celsus. Kairatos. Acrucis. Penthesilea, Mintaka, Pisces, Skadi, Helicon, Korlandria, Amphitrite... Ganymede. Of those names I fought for I still don't know what happened to half of them," he told her, not thinking it fair for her to place herself above all the others when they suffered too.
"I was tied down and beaten like a dog. The scars on my wrists are from the chains," he indicated, lifting the arm she wasn't touching to show her the lines across his wrists and hands. "The cut over my eye I got from Schorl, and you don't want to know what she did to my hands," he pointed to his left brow, thankful that his fingers had since healed. "Buddingtonite stabbed me before we were tied up. They wouldn't let me bleed out, but they didn't treat it properly either, so it got infected. They beat me in front of Ganymede, and when she couldn't give them the answers they wanted, beat her in front of me. They tortured all of us. They killed others. When we were rescued, Ganymede and I had to be carried out. I couldn't speak, I was barely conscious; I couldn't tell anyone the names I'd tried so hard to get, knowing that there were probably more than just us thirteen," he told her, and she was one of the only to hear just what happened to him during that time.
"Do I feel guilty? Of course I do. Do I wish I could have done something more to get you out of there? Of course, but I did what I could and I'm not going to let that paralyze me from moving forward. We're offering help to you now, and if that's something you want to refuse, then that's on you," he said, gently pulling his arm away from her and taking a step back.
The names, the list - whether Valhalla realized it or not, in that moment, he was giving her exactly the kind of information she needed for her other work in the Negaverse: gather information. To find out everything that had happened in the walls of that funhouse and beyond to find what information they'd discovered, what tactics had been useful, which had not - to make some more of it. To use it their advantage to be able to harder hit the order next time.
Hvergelmir. Celsus. Kairatos. Acrucis. Penthesilea. Yes. She had met Penthesilea already. Mintaka. Pisces. Skadi. Helicon. Korlandria. Ganymede. Ganymede's knight.
She still did not remember his name. But did it really matter?
Something he said struck a nerve, though. She wasn't sure exactly what it was. Perhaps the parading of what had happened to him in his captivity - which she would remember, too, for her records, confirm them with the necessary parties - as though this were some sort of competition. Maybe it was the insinuation that somehow she was in the wrong for not wanting the kind of 'help' they gave, too little and too late.
Maybe it was deeper than that.
Or maybe she was just looking for a reason.
Either way, it was as though a switch went off. The feigned innocence faded, because they both knew she was anything but innocent any more, in every sense of the word. Her hands fell at her sides and curled into fists. And more or less, now, since she had upgraded, become a super senshi, her bitterness was more that of bitter chocolate than anything else, smooth with sweetness underlying it.
This was not that.
She took a sweeping step forward and make an attempt to slap him, hard, her teeth gritted.
"I'm so ******** sick of you people thinking that slapping an apology and a purification could just - fix this!" she snarled, shoving at him with all she had. "It doesn't! It just doesn't and it won't and - you all need to stop pretending it will! - yes, it's on me!"
She whispered the words of her magic and summoned her shells to her arms. "Five weeks, knight. Four of them I spent alone. Why would anyone want your damn help after that?!"
Draw your weapon, she thought to herself, readying herself to attack. Let him try to get at her. Let her prove once and beyond a doubt that the Negaverse had truly made her better than even their best, let her punish Ganymede for not taking up her too generous offer.
She'd kill him; she'd offer his goddamn starseed to Umber on a ******** silver platter.
Super Sailor Scout Attack: Blessing of the Sea Rather than scallops, the shields on her arms form from the shells of pearl oysters. The inside is lined with nacre, the same material that forms pearls, thus making it more durable than the Gift of the Ocean. It will still shatter with two or three intense hits, though it handles smaller hits with much more ease. If used to augment a tackle, the shells will shatter, and the fragments could potentially be harmful to both Amphitrite and her target. Limit one use per battle, period.
Guine
Posted: Sun Jan 17, 2016 9:14 am
Valhalla was not a violent person. He knew that there was a time in his life years ago in which he had a temper that needed to be better controlled, but he's never been outright violent. And even where his temper was concerned, there were things that anyone would expect to be set off about, but something about the whole experience with Amphitrite was sobering.
He stumbled backwards when she slapped and pushed at him, but he did nothing in retaliation. If anything he seemed to settle a bit in the realization that she was going to react like this, regardless of what he did.
When she drew out her shells, he held up his arms to protect his face, but did nothing to attack back. He winced as the shells did their damage, especially where they hit what wasn't covered by his armor and bracers.
"I don't want to fight you," he tried to explain once more. "You're not my enemy, Amphitrite."
"It's too ******** bad you think that then, knight, " she sneered, annoyed - no, beyond annoyed - why the <********> wasn't he hitting back? The corrupt took another swing at him, and surely he wasn't this stupid. Surely he could see the murderous intent in her eyes. What kind of man did not bother to defend himself against an obvious enemy?
" -- because you are mine!"
The seashell senshi kept lashing out, both with shells and with kicks of her heels. The more she lashed out, the more sporadic her attacks became, less and less rhyme or reason to them.
Don't stand there and try to pretend that you care. Not now.
Guine
Posted: Tue Feb 02, 2016 8:45 pm
Valhalla let out a cry of pain as she continued her attack. He held up his arms as a means to defend himself, but did nothing to try and lash back out at her. He refused to attack her. She had been through enough. Even as her heel caught his arm and left a bloody gash, even as the shells whipped past him, cutting up his clothing and dinging his armor and leaving bleeding lines across his skin, he didn’t fight back.
“I won’t fight you,” he called to her again, stumbling back after a particularly rough kick, his breathing heavy and body shook from the exertion of trying to hold her off without being too severely injured. His heart pounded in his chest as he prepared for her to attack again.
But he couldn’t fight back. He could see the pain in her eyes. The loneliness, the sorrow, the bitterness of being abandoned, however unintentional it had been.
“I’m sorry,” he said weakly, as he stumbled back against a tree, still trying to catch his breath. He was in over his head as it was… If she didn’t let up, he wasn’t sure how much longer he could last.
Amphitrite sneered at him. "Then you'll die, " she remarked cooly, swinging out a hand to press roughly against his shoulder. And wouldn't that just be a glorious message to send to Ganymede? She'd offered the princess a deal; it would've been in her greater interest to accept the terms. Especially with this, this sad, preachy, wish-washy knight by her side with all his hollow words and mournful eyes.
You could have saved him Ganymede. - but I guess it shouldn't come as any big surprise. She laughed shortly, seemingly out of nowhere, at her own little tasty of irony. The corrupt eased her over hand back and swung, seemingly aiming to try and plunge her hand into his chest with every intention of taking his starseed.
'... your hat's really cool, by the way.'
It was the silliest little whisper of a voice in the back of her head that was surprisingly jarring, because it did and didn't sound like her voice. Abruptly, when her hand struck, it just thudded dully, uselessly against his chest without the vaguest trace of invasion. She stared blankly at it for a fraction of a second, and then before rage could properly consume her again, a voice called out from behind her - saying what, she didn't know (minus a 'b***h' or two peppered in for flavor), until -
A circle of white came to settle around Valhalla, deftly repelling her. The corrupt gritted her teeth in agitation, although she might have been a little too eager to jump away. Eurydike's magic wasn't really that powerful.
"Next time, Valhalla, " she snapped, effectively teleporting away. It wasn't until later that it would dawn on her that she wasn't supposed to have known his name.
As for the salt senshi himself, making a face as the corrupt up and vanished straight away (man he hated these negaverse losers for being able to Houdini their way out of s**t), he wasted little time making a beeline for the knight. "Hey!" He would've asked if he was okay, but that kind of seemed like a dumbass question. "Y'need a hospital or anythin' man? - can I get you somewhere safe?"
Guine
Sorry if this was too much of an all-at-once dump. I can edit it down if it's too much. :'D
Posted: Tue Feb 09, 2016 7:32 pm
Valhalla really thought that he was done for. Amphitrite wasn’t letting up, and he wasn’t able to fight back, nor did he want to fight back if it meant hurting her in the process. But by some saving grace, someone else was close by. Valhalla stared in tired surprise at the white circle that formed around him, and then let himself breathe a sigh of relief when Amphitrite retreated.
The other senshi appeared, and Valhalla collapsed to his knees. “I’m fine,” he insisted, more afraid of what his wife would say if he called her from the hospital than what might have become of him had this senshi not shown up.
“Thank you, really,” he added, his breath labored as he struggled to get back to his feet after a few moments of rest. “Valhalla…” he introduced, looking this senshi up and down, and then, “You really saved my butt.”
