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 Posted: Mon Jan 18, 2016 9:56 pm
Zircon thought the panic or the pain or the isolation would get to her first, once she'd come to terms with where she was and what that meant. But no, it was thirst, the dreadful sensation that parched her throat and cracked her lips and pressed at her fingers like they might just burst. Her head was throbbing, and with no window she had little way of gauging how much time had passed, or if anyone was looking for them, or how many of the others they had taken. Occasionally, she could hear scuffling and screams from what were presumed to be other cells, but it was impossible to distinguish friend from foe.
Is this what it felt like? What they did to those senshi and knights, a year ago?
She had done her best to curl down on the ground despite her bonds, facing away from the door. It was best not to watch for enemies, lest panic get the best of her.
They had to be looking. They had to be looking.
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Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 2:18 am
Overall, Scholomance found that the whole of the operation fascinated him. Here, people who had been beaten half to death, starseeded, or kidnapped at length now enacted most of those same punishments on their foes. There was, of course, no uniformity to it beyond that all captives were being kept there at the jail; some of these gaolers took to beating the sense out of their captives, or interrogating them calmly, or resorted to dissent amongst themselves. It was, most certainly, a splintered matter from the start. The White Moon was one curious, gimped machine. Much like his leg, he wagered.
As he passed through the cell block, his cane thocking gently with every other step, he noted the state of the prisoners he passed. Some sported bloody noses, some sported bruises, others sported bloody everything. Some were untouched. Some were bound to beds with silk, to chairs with rope, or to the wall with leftover shackles. Some were left in a wad on the ground, with nowhere to go. Some he found hogtied to a nearly expert degree. Scholomance made a point of never once touching a prisoner, despite the handful of asks for assistance with bondage ties (though he wondered how they found out about his favorite pastimes - or if they did).
He strode to a stop in front of another cell. 216 it read across the top in thick, chipped black letters. The door itself was unlocked, though closed. Between the bars, he spied a single blonde in deep brown jacket and pants, curled away from the door. He wondered if she was a lieutenant or captain, for he could not feel her aura with the work of the cats about the place. "Knock, knock," he warned shortly before sliding the door open. It shut behind him with the click of a latch. Testing the door, he found he was not locked in with the captive.
"I imagine you've had a hard time of things in here." Scholomance rounded the figure carefully. He stepped over feet where he could have simply given a wider berth. Coming to a halt, he turned to face her, knowing her view was of his boots at present. Finally he crouched, though the effort was slow-going - his leg protested loudly at any effort to bend. "So, who do we have here?" While he did not pull down the garish mask that hid half his face, he held up a styrofoam cup of water before it. It was not entirely an offer, for he expected a name before he relinquished the cup.
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Posted: Wed Jan 20, 2016 3:26 pm
Click, clunk, click, clunk, click, clunk.
Zircon couldn't help it--she flinched at the sound of footfalls drawing near, threading her fingers through her hair as if she might be able to ignore the clanging tones. But a voice soon followed, and being more curious than afraid she lifted her glance to catch sight of a pair of dark boots, headed her way. Was this some sleeper agent for the Negaverse? Was she finally out?
Her senses were dulled, but she could still tell that the person above her had a vaguely clean aura, off-putting and effervescent. Order, then. How disappointing. Zircon's expression waned at the sight of the man and his mask, but only for a moment, as her eyes wandered over to the sloshing cup he carried. She exhaled, and her lips cracked. There was no room for sass when survival was now on the line.
"Zircon," she breathed, licking her lips. "I've been better."
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2016 4:56 am
"Zircon," he repeated back to her. "The Negaverse has such a strange naming convention." He did not expect her to supply any answer.
Scholomance's gaze swept their surroundings temporarily. He found walls in tatters where paint baked away, a floor remiss with the shavings and detritus, a ceiling that suffered a similar fate, and stubborn steel bars that still retained their usefulness so many years past the jail's abandonment. Its serviceable nature surprised the squire in that Destiny City didn't simply reclaim it - or that the Negaverse hadn't secured it first. Then again, few found use for demolishing old buildings when the populace of this city constantly declined. Perhaps it never mattered which side took it, for its fate remained the same in its use for powered kidnapping.
"It's a shame, really. Of all the cells I've seen, and there were quite a lot, yours lacks every amenity. No bed, no toilet, not even a chair." Sighing, Scholomance seated himself carefully on the concrete. The bone cane evaporated once his hand left its form. When he stretched his legs out, he adjusted himself to sit parallel to her, where he could simply turn his head to speak in her direction. "Do you think aliens follow the Geneva convention, Zircon? No, I don't think they do - that much has been answered by the choices they made, I think." He retained a neutral tone of voice throughout his speculations. "It's an interesting supposition, but they're not aligned to any state of earth. All these senshi are from planets far different than this. But I digress."
Finally Scholomance relinquished the cup by placing it directly before her. The water inside belied no hint of augmentation; not even effervescence tainted its clear, if rippling, surface. "My name is Scholomance, and we're going to have a chat."
The squire rubbed at his hip in deep, firm circles, as he hoped to dislodge some of the soreness that plagued him. He did not allow his discomforts to taint his otherwise neutral countenance beneath the half-mask. "Have your water first. Then I want to know what your thoughts are on this predicament. Tell me a little about how Zircon found herself on the inside of a senshi-owned jail cell. I think it should make for quite an interesting story."AMItotic sorry if failresponse my brain refuses to work
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Posted: Sat Jan 23, 2016 6:38 pm
"They give us mineral names because we're of the Earth and we serve it," Zircon recited, but she'd been an officer far too long to believe the rhetoric they were fed as lieutenants. Still, if any amount of performance got her closer to that cup of water, then she was willing to put forth basic propaganda. "It's no stranger than naming yourself after constellations or places that never existed."
If she was off-put by the mask, she was even more so in the way he casually took up conversation with her, sliding in to sit beside her as if they might have been friends. She was missing something here, or he was toying with her, or perhaps both, but what mattered most was the cup that he held, and the puzzle she was looking to solve to obtain the bounty within. Was he looking for her opinion when he waxed poetical on the war? Or was he simply looking for an ear to listen?
He was a strange puzzle, but an interesting one at least.
She had the decency to wait for his hand to retract before she leaned forward for the water, grabbing the edge of the cup between two teeth. A few days ago, she might have been mortified at the idea of such a debasing display, but with her hands bound behind her she had no choice but to use alternate means. Perhaps this was the true test Scholomance was running, to see how desperate Zircon had become in her cage. She tilted the cup upwards with a slow lift of her chin, drinking what she could and letting the rest dribble away. It was messy, but the only way she saw to keep hydrated without asking for this man's assistance. When it came down to delicacy or survival, Zircon chose to live.
"Thank you," she wheezed, spitting the cup from between her teeth. She wasn't a complete animal about the entire affair, rubbing her face dry with the convenient scarf at her neck. She thought back to the last patrol she'd done, scanning her mental reel of it for signs of trouble she might have noticed before the world went dark.
"I was working a scouting detail," she began, "Making observations, keeping watch for lieutenants, nothing specific." It wasn't technically a lie--Zircon was always considered on patrol when she was powered up, and if she spotted something of interest, then it was a scouting mission. Mostly, though, she just liked the thrill of a good run--the wind in her hair and under her feet was enough to melt most of her mundane worries away. Except now, her nightly runs had cost her, and she was here being forced to strangely relive a tame version of what she'd inflicted on senshi a year ago.
It was all too strange.
"I don't know how they snuck up on me, I know what to feel for when Order is about," she frowned, looking at her knees. "There was a trap, a trip wire or something, and I hit it at full sprint. When I fell, someone smothered me with a...tarp? I'm not sure, I hit my head on the way down. And when I woke up, I was here, and I've been here for...a few days, maybe."
She shrugged, looking to Scholomance. "I don't know what you want from me. I'm not a high priority target, I have no special access to Negaverse secrets, and if this is some play at revenge, its been executed poorly."Strickenized No way, man, Schol is delightful OuO
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Posted: Mon Jan 25, 2016 6:17 pm
Scholomance watched her while she spoke. He studied the way lips moved and eyes shifted during the relay of basic information. Did she believe that herself? Was it the truth? Could she be merely extrapolating about a naming convention she never paid heed to before? The squire was curious.
He fostered his own suspicions of the convention, however. "I don't think so. Certainly there's something romantic about taking the name of a mineral and relating it to your fight for Earth, but I would have to say that the progenitor of this naming criterion was sadly misinformed. Minerals occur on a great many of the planets, and some of them remain identical to their earthly counterparts. Some of the minerals you might name yourself after aren't actually endemic to Earth. I think..." Scholomance tapped a finger to mask shortly before jerking it down off his chin. "Your naming convention has more to do with the resonant properties of minerals and the amount of energy they can produce. Energy is your game, correct? I imagine between resonance, their prevalence as building blocks, and the Rift's relation to Earth, you've got quite the solid connection to minerals as your naming scheme. Unfortunately, that strips out that devotion to the planet."
He preferred not to watch her, simply because he disliked the sound of teeth on styrofoam immensely. Mentally he thanked himself for not twitching about it. He did, however, retrieve the cup at the end. "Water isn't hard to come by. It does get hard to transport, though. Teleportation would be so convenient for this..." I wonder how they managed to prevent all these officers from simply teleporting themselves out. I can't imagine the whole of them are stuck here just because there's a couple lieutenants that haven't learned the craft.
He listened quietly to Zircon's story, noting what he could about their capture process. A tripwire, and some kind of a tarp. Something plastic? Why couldn't she teleport from that at the first sign of trouble? How bizarre.
"Well." Fingers dug into his hip again to assuage the soreness. "It is a terrible predicament to get stuck here."
He paused, though, and his attention returned from the ceiling to her when she spoke again. "Oh. Oh. To be honest with you, I'm a little offended that you consider me part of this. For one, I'm crippled, so I'm not certain how you expect me to be out and about capturing officers. For two, I don't consider myself an ally of the White Moon. I wasn't a part of this when it started - I just got an invitation not long ago to poke about and see what they've done. So that's exactly what I'm doing: poking about." He briefly considered poking her, but he didn't like the prospect of touching someone who hadn't showered in half a week. "Oh, and, for three, I'm here to make deals where I can. But, being a part of the Negaverse, and my being a Knight, I don't suppose you're interested in that?"
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Posted: Tue Jan 26, 2016 7:06 pm
"Well, it's all semantics either way," she shrugged, only mildly affronted by Scholomance's assessment. He wasn't in the Negaverse, he had no place to say what their names meant or how their naming convention worked. Like other Knights, he was simply grasping at straws for an organization he would never understand.
"I would teleport if I could," she insisted, wiping the rest of her face clean. "But something is jamming my powers, nothing seems to work down here." Zircon would have assumed every knight to understand the mechanics of whatever strange magic kept her there, but to see his befuddlement left her with an uneasy feeling. Well, there would be no ferreting that information out of him, at least.
She watched him curiously as he tried to explain himself. Being a cripple was no prerequisite for being an accomplice to the endeavor here, but declaring himself no ally of the White Moon was an interesting turn. Zircon had simply assumed a Knight's mantle to come hand in hand with their subservience to the cause, and that without it they would lose the power they'd been so gregariously granted. Were they not like the Negaverse in this way? Camelot had said his power had derived from the Earth, like theirs, so this revelation was a new and curious thing.
"As a Knight, you and I aren't so different," she responded, looking back at his strange, toothy mask. As it stood, he wasn't so far from a Negaverse costume in the first place. "And I don't have anywhere else to be, so there's no reason not to at least listen to your proposal. What did you have in mind?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 27, 2016 1:53 am
"That is bizarre," Scholomance commented more seriously. "I would imagine there's some powerful magic at work if it's able to jam an ability endemic to the Negaverse." That sort of information would be worth a pretty penny, I imagine. Still, there is perhaps more worth to leaving it in the White Moon's hands for a while. Too much information disseminated to the Negaverse and suddenly we won't have a war anymore. There's no profit in that.
Her willingness to accept a deal despite his opposite alignment bolstered some of his hope for these captives. She seemed the most level-headed of all he talked with, and thus the most likely to make a deal. "First, let me explain where I'm coming from in this deal. I am a knight of Saturn, not of Earth. My priorities are..." He paused, raising a spayed hand toward the ceiling slightly behind him. "Somewhere out there. My duties are to Scholomance, so anything involving this war or this planet are a little beyond my scope of personal interest right now. If Metallia wants to take over the planet, that's her business. I'm not interested in getting in the way. My civilian life is shitty enough as it is; she can't make it worse.
"That said, Scholomance gives me a peculiar power that is very tactically important. It's possible for me to allow you out of here without injury. However, doing so comes at great cost to me, as anyone with half a brain will know that I'm casting. That's bound to alienate more than a few people. But, I think there's still worth in the endeavor, that would outweigh the cost of it for me. There are two components that I am looking for here - one, that you're worth a good deal to the Negaverse, and two, that you're individually capable of some of the Negaverse's hallmark abilities. Put plainly, if I spring you from here, I expect favors. I will call on you as an individual, and since I have your name that's quite an easy feat for me, and I will call on your capabilities to coordinate with the Negaverse.
"What do you think, Zircon? Do you want to go back to peeing in a toilet, or feeding yourself dinner, or drinking something that isn't water again?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 28, 2016 2:45 pm
Zircon listened as his proposal unfolded, watching him with a metered gaze. His views of the world and their war seemed pragmatic enough--if more people shared it, perhaps, they could finally end the fighting and put away their powered glamours.
"Metallia's just trying to reclaim what is hers by right--" Zircon began, but she was quick to quiet herself. She herself had only so much tolerance for the stories of the original conflict, and Scholomance did not seem the type to care for such small marginalia. In truth, it only carried her own motivations so far. In her years as an officer, following orders had become much more of something she took a personal stake in, be it for survival or revenge or the dim hope that one day she might be able to fully climb the rungs of the Negaverse.
Her eyes widened at the thought of escape. "Would we--go to your wonder, then?" Kairatos had been little more than a dusty ruin on the dimly-lit Mars, and yet it still had been enough to capture the captain's imagination, traitorous as her thoughts might have been. But Scholomance did not know that, no one else needed to know that.
She considered her options in silence, looking down at the chains on her boots.
"I doubt I am worth a good deal to the Negaverse, or I wouldn't be here," Zircon scoffed, shaking her head. "But if I get away from this...impedence, I should be able to exercise my abilities as normal, and provided I'm able to restore my energy, I am willing to showcase what I can.
"But," she said with a tone of caution to her voice. "I will not endanger the lives of other officers with what I have to share, and I will not help you aid anyone seeking to leave the Negaverse." She dared not use the word purify--it held too many unsavory connotations. "I will make myself available to be called upon, but I need our meetings to be held with the utmost discretion. If word gets out to the my superiors...well, you'll be short a contact, at the very least."
It was bold, far too bold of her to be making these claims when they could easily get her killed, but Zircon had spent three days shivering in a cell meekly to no good effect. If she was going to leave, she needed to make it happen for herself.
"If you can make those provisions, I'll go with you," she nodded finally, looking him in the eyes. "There's nothing you can do to make this worse."
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Posted: Fri Jan 29, 2016 1:28 am
"You're right," he conceded easily. "Politically, she does hold the Earth throne." He knew not precisely where, but he doubted his information was incorrect. "What else did you have to say on that?" The captain cut herself off, though he was interested to hear the remainder of her thoughts on the matter. Seldom did he encounter a Negaverse officer in a predicament that prevented them from attacking; the last one to confront him nonviolently was Xenotime, and she was only the second person to avoid assaulting him.
Idly he wondered if they felt threatened in that he sometimes looked more Negaverse than they did.
"We could go to my wonder, though we'd end up right back here afterward. It wouldn't help much except as a temporary escape. Scholomance isn't..." He paused as he searched for words. "Amenable to guests, really. There's some food left there for longer stays, and the temperature isn't terrible there, but it doesn't exactly have working plumbing and I wouldn't bathe in the lake lest my skin melt off from disease." He shuddered visibly.
"No, I have a special ability I planned to use. It can't get you through any doors or walls, though I can just let you out of this cell. We'll have to go out together, but if anyone tries to stop you by force or by magic, I have magic that will circumvent it. It's quite useful. I suppose it's a little disconcerting, though, to see a fist go straight through you and yet you feel nothing of it. But don't let me ramble," he finished, waving the thought away. "The point is, I should be able to help you reach a place where you can teleport to safety. And if anyone tries to stop me, well, that's where a wonder visit comes in handy." Would someone else catch onto him as Labyrinthite had? The general was persistent, and earned his way to Scholomance's wonder with a hand in his chest. Could someone else manage the same by grabbing his arm, or trying to cover his face as he spoke the last of his pledge?
"In any case, it won't be just yet. It's my hope that your complacency will earn you favors, like the ability to walk around your own cell. You'll probably need more food and water than what you've been getting. There's not much to an escape plan if you're too weak to walk." Part of his plan was left to the hands of others, unfortunately; as he had no part in the foundation of his plan, he had no say on what was to happen to any one prisoner. Zircon, however, was mild-mannered and obedient. He expected that if anyone were to earn privileges out of the bleeding hearts, she would. He rather liked this captain.
"To your terms, I accept. I have no interest in jeopardizing your place in the Negaverse by turning you against your colleagues. There may be times when I have other contacts work in tandem with you, as I make relations with the Negaverse, but it will never be in an oppositional fashion. Besides, I'm quite aware of how violent they get when you do something that offends them." He still bore the limp for it.
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Posted: Thu Feb 04, 2016 9:07 pm
Zircon paused, giving him a curious look. Was he...really asking to hear the history of the war from their side? Most members of Order never even bothered to consider the opposing point of view.
"Metallia is the rightful heir to the Earth," Zircon began slowly, thinking back on her times in the sanctums of Elysium. "She was betrothed to the Earth prince when he chose to forsake her and marry the Moon princess instead. In her rightful indignity, she gave herself to Chaos to give herself the power to claim her promised throne." The captain laughed nervously, a tired gurgle that fell from her lips. "It all sounds a bit ridiculous, really, when you think that all this suffering could have been prevented by a single man's fidelity. But ah, I find that good morals hardly make for good stories."
"It's my understanding that the Negaverse had almost completed the task of reclaiming Earth when the senshi began to show up," she continued, "And we've been fighting for about six years to clean the world of its foreign conquerors. Well, somewhat foreign--they're human, Earth-born like you or me, but they give themselves over to a constellation or a star in exchange for strange power. The Knights came later, extra cavalry in the shape of something that looked like us, but...twisted somehow, by Order magic."
Zircon looked Scholomance up and down. As a Knight, he already looked the part of a Negaverse agent more than some of her own lieutenants. She could only imagine how he might look under the proper mantle. It was an intriguing notion, if one for later. As it stood, she had no feet to stand on in terms of offering anything for his loyalties. It was hard to be a convincing recruitment officer when your hands were in chains.
She found her resolve faltering at the description of Scholomance's magic--what sort of ability would cause you to just...not be there? But unfortunately for Zircon, she had little room to be squeamish about what sort of magic got used on her body. As long as it gave her the chance to escape whole and eventually healthy, she would do just about anything.
"No one's offered me the chance to earn mobility," Zircon remarked with a pointed gaze at her feet. "Some food and water, yes, but so far no one's even thought to give me my hands as a bartering chip. I think they might be planning on discomforting me to death." She laughed again bitterly, shifting in an attempt to relieve some of the strain in her shoulders.
"It's a deal, then," Zircon nodded, looking back to Scholomance with a tilt to her head. "I have nowhere else to be, as it were, so...I'll await your signal."
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