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 Posted: Sun Nov 08, 2015 10:44 am
 In a city where people died or disappeared constantly, at a rate that outstripped every statistic that she could figure out... it was frustratingly hard to get her fingers around the real story. The news spat out hostile buzzwords like "Terrorist" and "Gangs" constantly, but never seemed to gain any ground. Neither did she see much that resembled anything she'd been able to research into typical behavior of such groups, and heavens knew she had probably damaged her eyesight trying to investigate behavior trends on such factions. No steady uniforms, no clear territory, no 'tags'. That was the term right? Tags? Nope, the only tag she had been able to relate remotely to things was Tag Swagger, and that was only the association of his self assured, smug voice as he cheerfully said 'Terrorist' and 'Murderers' like small children said "candy" and "popcorn." She always thought that he sounded like he might kind of enjoy the activities, but maybe she just had an particular objection to that even, expensively aligned smile. "Ugh, this is so..." She sighed, heavily, exchanged some money with an vendor and sat down on a bench, tossing her book bag beside her as though offended and took a deep breath of cheap hot dog and condiments. Not normally something she enjoyed, but somehow it just sounded good about now. Junk food for a junk story. "Stupid." She addressed the hot dog, irritably, and then bit off part of it, that she assumed counted as it's head, in the absence of being able to bite someone Else's head off. At least this way she wouldn't have to share it with one of her family members, though her mother would throw a fit if she got mustard or ketchup on her Crystal uniform. Stupid, stupid uniform. It got smudged just looking at dirt. It was clearly designed for people who didn't have to worry about the cleaning bill on the damn thing, and scholarships didn't come with a dry cleaning tab.
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Posted: Tue Nov 17, 2015 5:03 pm
 It might well have been Vanhi's lucky day, because one of the exact people she was looking for was not far from her bench. Tantalus sometimes came here to gather energy, and this was one of those days. He stood out, in his new Eternal fuku, with silk wings on his hips and a shirt that threatened to slip off his shoulders. And tonight, he wasn't just draining energy - from what he understood, becoming an Eternal Senshi meant he was now capable of bringing new Senshi into the Court. Not from Order, but civilians - like Leto and Absinthe had done for him and Damocles.
So he was watching the civilians milling around, and sort of selected at random - his wraith snaked out, towards the girl with purple hair on the bench. If she didn't notice, he would get a little energy. If she did...
This evening would get a lot more interesting.Ryuthulhu IF YOU'D PREFER HE APPROACH HER DIFFERENTLY LMK
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Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 11:53 am
She almost didn't spot the thing, creepy, shadowy and undefined... like something that belonged on one of those bad specials about Shadow People creeping around peoples homes, except those were fake. She jumped straight up with a yell, waving at it ineffectually, which, even worse, launched the remains of her hot dog at it as it squirted out of the bun. NOT. ********. FAIR. UNIVERSE. "OH NO. NO YOU ******** DON'T." Nope. The weird thing with the Masks at New Years and passing out had been one level of weird far too much, and she hadn't even been able to write much of an article on it, since there just wasn't much footage or notes you could gather when you dropped unconscious. And everything had apparently gone to hell -after- she'd passed out, but she hadn't been there for it. No damn scoop. She refused to be a scoop herself, even if she'd literally been part of the story this time, and took an furious swing at the thing with her backpack, partially in vengeance for the hot dog. "I was eating that you creepy ghost-buster reject!" Noir Songbird She's gonna be mad about the hot dog for a bit.
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Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 10:08 pm
And that was exactly enough exploration. Tantalus took a few steps forward, sliding out his mirror shard to recall the wraith. No reason to risk its destruction for a little energy, even if it was insubstantial enough that the bag passed right through it. And yet he kept walking, approaching her with interest, because she was paying enough attention to notice a wraith.
And she was bold enough to fight it.
"Aren't you brave?" He said, and it was presented as a genuine compliment, as he slid the mirror shard back between his bracer and his sleeve. Hopefully she wouldn't shift her aggression from the wrath to him - because he wanted to recruit her. Anyone whose first action when confronted with the supernatural was to defend herself needed to have the power to do so.Ryuthulhu alas, poor hot dog, we knew ye well
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Posted: Wed Nov 25, 2015 10:41 am
Arguably the least effective ghost buster in Destiny City, Vanhi, alarmed, raised her backpack with the clear threat of using it as a bludgeon. After her encounter with the nega agent what felt like ages ago, she rather wished she had a nice large vehicle between herself and this stranger in black, but ... then again she wasn't entirely sure what to make of him. They both wore dark colors, but the other one hadn't looked like he was going to pose in front of a large fan after rubbing on some body oil. ... a mental image she might have tucked behind her ear to consider later when she wasn't trying to figure out her chances. "I..." She didn't know about brave, but maybe there wasn't a lot of difference between brave and deeply fed up with being powerless in this city. "Watch it buddy..." She tried to sound threatening, but it was hard when you thought about what they could do to you. "I turned one of you jerks into a s-speed bump last year, I b-bet beating you stupid with my text books would b-be a lot slower and less fun!" Maybe if she made it convincing enough it wouldn't sound like that accident still horrified her on some level, even if it had saved her life, and maybe it might even sound like it had been on purpose. "So.... SO JUST WATCH YOURSELF." She added, substituting volume for nerve and realizing that none of this sounded half as impressive as it was probably intended to. These were kind of the threats that needed something other than a pastel blue and white Crystal Prep uniform to back you up. Like maybe a Harley Davidson, a studded leather jacked and a fleet of grizzled bikers with AK-47s. Then she might sound slightly more convincing. Or at least less like she was making it up on the spot.
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 11:51 pm
Tantalus was fairly used to being stared at. His uniform had always been attention-getting, and the upgraded version - with a shirt half off his shoulder - was even worse for that. So he didn't react, much, to her taking him in, instead leaving his hands spread in what he hoped was a nonthreatening gesture.
"I promise, there's no need for threats," he said. Even if she did attack him, he could have her chasing magic apples and make his getaway. "I'm not here to hurt you." Not in the slightest. That was the last thing on his mind - especially once she admitted to having gotten tangled in this before. Poor girl, running someone over was obviously not as easy as she wanted him to think it was.
He offered her a hand. "I'm here to offer you the chance to have the power to fight back. To become like me - a Senshi, we're called, of the Dark Mirror Court." He wished he had a cat with him, who could tell him for certain if this girl had the potential or not, but there was no reason not to take her to Mirrorspace and try.
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Posted: Wed Dec 09, 2015 3:25 pm
Wait... a court? They called themselves a court? That implied a structure modeled after Royalty. That was way more information than she'd had.... ...literally throughout everything she'd done digging. Which was... wait. What? "Wait. You're... -recruiting me-." She blinked, slowly, trying to walk herself through what she'd been doing that might have prompted this. Did he know she'd been trying to research the groups? "W...what do you mean by ... 'fight back'... I mean... that ...Negawhatever... What sets you apart from them?" She wanted nothing to do with that. He'd been awful. This guy seemed... different, but she didn't know how different that was. Good reporters asked questions. Good reporters went dangerous places to get the story. Imagine everything she could find out... Imagine how much trouble she could get into. But she could learn -so much-
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Posted: Thu Dec 10, 2015 11:37 pm
Tantalus wrinkled his nose at the very mention of the Negaverse. It was fairly obvious exactly how little regard he had for them. "The Negaverse is..." He exhaled, briefly. "Occasionally, we are forced to cooperate with them - but more often than not, they've treated us as at best meat shields and at worst enemies. I have no love for them, personally."
That was not a full enough answer to her question, he knew - and best to lay all the cards on the table for her either way. "There are two powerful forces in the universe - Order, and Chaos. Order claims to be the side of Good, and paints Chaos as Evil - but anyone who's ever looked at a Dungeons and Dragons alignment chart knows it's not nearly that simple." Hopefully the analogy resonated at least a little with her. "The Dark Mirror is Chaos, as is the Negaverse - but we are not the same Chaos. Their...Queen, they call her, Metallia, compels them to destroy. To suck this world dry of every bit of energy it has. I don't know about you, but I'm fond of this world, and would prefer to see it stay in one piece." Surely that was something most everyone could agree on.
"Our goal is a bit different - and this is where we get a bit into story time. Are you interested in story time, or should I skip to the short version?" His tone was light, playful, a little teasing, but he knew he could be verbose, given the chance. Had already been fairly verbose. Best to give her a minute to absorb.
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Posted: Fri Dec 11, 2015 9:01 am
She didn't play, mostly because she was never invited when her siblings started a game, and her mother thought it was a poor use of a young lady's time, and especially a waste of hers, but she knew enough to understand the reference to alignment. "...I'm interested in story time." She admitted, warily, wishing she thought she had a good way to record this. It would be -groundbreaking-, but her mp3 player was a cheap knockoff, it just played back, it couldn't record. "I've been trying to find out the scoop on this mess for -ages-. I knew there had to be more to it than the news was covering." She started cautious, but as soon as it fully clicked that she was hearing something that hadn't been on the news stations, it was hard not to sound excited, or to keep a slightly predatory look off her face, even if it was something the equivalent of an lap dog sizing up a tiger and deciding it's chances were 'reasonable', on the grounds that it was just a cat.
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Posted: Sat Dec 26, 2015 5:47 pm
"You may want to sit down, then," Tantalus offered, "because it is a very, very long and somewhat unbelievable story. But please trust that if I was going to make something up, I would pick something significantly more believable."
He leaned against the back of the bench she'd been sitting on, and started in.
"A thousand years ago and more, the solar system - the galaxy, really - was a much...fuller place. There were thousands of civilizations dotting every planet and every star, and one of the most glorious was the one built on Earth's moon, and it was ruled by a Queen and her daughter, the Princess.
Now, that long ago there was someone with enough power and influence - at least in terms of the magical galactic societies - that he could be called Prince of Earth. He was engaged to marry a beautiful young woman, whose true name has been lost, but who called herself Beryl.
But the Prince of Earth met the Princess of the Moon - and she was lovely and kind and gentle, and they fell in love. He forsook his engagement to Beryl, and pursued a romance with the Moon Princess.
Beryl was jilted and angry, and she turned to dark powers for her revenge - to a...thing called Metallia. And thus was the Negaverse born, sweeping over and corrupting the magical protectors of Earth's greatest landmarks - and eventually swelling into a tide that consumed every single galactic civilization. The Silver Millennium, as it was called, ended in a tide of blood and Chaos."
He took a breath. "The Dark Mirror wishes to restore the glory that was lost - the glory the Negaverse destroyed. We reach for the stars, to return to our planets and make them great again."
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Posted: Sun Dec 27, 2015 1:30 pm
"Well..." She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear as he talked. "... You aren't kidding. That's a hell of a story..." And she kind of appreciated, vindictively, hearing of the Negaverse smashing this mythical glory like a child throwing a tantrum. But she wasn't sure how much to believe either. "...But I'm not really clear where I come into this? Are we supposed to be like... and I'm kind of crossing into the western genre out of space-fantasy here... are you like... deputizing people to fight for these... these other worlds... or whitewater's left of them? I mean... I'm not much of a seamstress and I don't think I have enough favors to pay for the black mail of trying to ask my sister's to make me a disguise so I could... I don't even know what I could do. Take pictures? Write a few blogs? I -can't-... I mean... with the car... I can't. Not again." It had nearly gone so very, very differently. Why did she even believe this? It was unbelievable. Unless his abs had magical hypnotic power or she was far, far more desperate for a sense of purpose beyond seeing a long slow march toward frown wrinkles, lectures on settling down and making grandchildren, and a harsh debate if her career ambitions did, or did not, amount to more than smiling vacantly to a camera and writing something that was supposed to be pithy about fashion. Which was pretty grim sounding compared to 'battle to restore a mythical glory of old'.
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Posted: Mon Jan 04, 2016 10:13 pm
Tantalus laughed, just a little. "Isn't it? And that's just what happened a thousand years ago. What's happened in the last five or six, here on Earth? Even stranger." There was a blatantly amused smile on his face.
How to explain this part. Best go for the theatrical - it had worked so far. "You could say so, yes. But you won't need to make your own costume. You see," and here, his eyes lit, "all of those worlds - or many of them, at least - had guardians. Sailor Senshi, they were called - are called. All of them perished, one way or another, in that war. And their souls rested, for a thousand years - but they've begun to reincarnate. Here, on Earth. So in case you've had wonders about the afterlife, there's your answer." A faint amused grin. "You might just have that potential inside of you - and if you trust me, for just a little longer, I can help you unlock it."
Here was the most important part of the pitch - convincing her to come with him. "I'm not asking you to kill. I never have, I never want to. Right now, all I'm asking is that you come with me, and see if you might have the potential to be something greater than an ordinary person. Something magical."
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Posted: Sat Jan 09, 2016 12:36 pm
Reincarnation? Guardians? Her head almost spun with questions, and she half wanted to laugh and call it a ridiculous religious pitch. She had plenty of gods to choose from thank you..., but this... was more like telling her she was one... or could be one... or rather perhaps, what had perhaps inspired them. Come to think of it, there was quite a lot of what happened that, in another age, would have been taken as this place being a battlefield to someone's gods. "...Fine. This... is completely crazy. But show me."
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Posted: Fri Mar 11, 2016 10:55 pm
"Come on, then." Tantalus beckoned, and he turned back in the direction he'd come from, back tot he mirror he'd first stepped out of. "I'm going to be taking you to a place called Mirrorspace. It's...like a liminal space, a place between worlds. I've spent probably an inordinate amount of time there, so I'm thoroughly familiar with how it works. You'll be perfectly safe, I promise."
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Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2016 5:06 am
A place between worlds? Mirrorspace? "...I feel like I should ask if we're going to see a Cheshire Cat... or if I need to worry about the Jabberwocky" She answered uncertainly, following. She'd agreed to be shown, she wanted to see, but the level at which all of this sounded like something out of a novel or a myth made her head spin. It was so much easier, she imagined, to do what the news said and just pretend they were terrorists or gangs with an unusual obsession with complicated special effects.
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