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 Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 3:20 pm
Moving day left him in a fit. With no means to help or micromanage the situation (the movers elaborated that they were professional movers and needed no amateur guidance), Isaiah felt much like a stranger to the motions of moving apartments. He seldom felt comfortable sticking around regardless, and therefore spent much of his time in the office or otherwise dodging powered obligations. This time, he elected to relive old habits by moving into a coffee shop for the day.
Kobold Coffee may lack the sleek, modern decorum he preferred, but the coffee stood second to none. From what he learned by chatting in the owner, the man spent the better part of his youth absorbed into massive multiplayer gaming like Word of Warcraft or EVE online and thus required gallons of coffee to stay awake through raids. A discerning taste took over then, and once he managed to break out of the computer chair and adult diapers, he finally passed his classes and started a business venture. This store offered hints of those roots through collected gaming paraphernalia decorating the walls and wooden tables that looked like something out of a tavern. A plush blue and white kobold sat atop the bar as the mascot of the place. Even though he found the creature a little unsettling, Isaiah settled in for a day of retraining his hand.
Not an hour into the exercises, a naggingly familiar face strolled through the doors. Isaiah bothered him not while he ordered at the counter, but the cut of hair, set of shoulders, and body language reminded him strongly of someone he couldn't quite name. Minutes passed while he tried, frustratingly, to sketch the figure at the back of his mind. Something about vikings, perhaps…
By the time Isaiah's coffee grew cold, he thought he found a potential for how he knew this man. He took his ink pen to one of the brown recyclable napkins left on the table and inked out (albeit poorly) a telling question. Afterward, he excused himself from his table, walked past the gentleman, and tossed the napkin onto his table. A quick pass to the bathroom left the act looking slightly less suspicious. He would wait a minute or two, then come back out looking as if he did nothing out of the ordinary.
And on the napkin itself, it read — Do you remember the moon last summer?guine hope this works! you can assume isaiah has already left the bathroom in your reply, if you like!
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Posted: Sat Dec 17, 2016 9:17 pm
It wasn’t as though Chris was trying to avoid things, namely his family and obligations, but he couldn’t stand sitting around the house being looked after when he knew all those sad looks were meant for him. He needed to rest, he was told, and it was probably true. But resting made him restless and despite his lack of energy, Chris found himself more often than not venturing out into the public to get away from everything that reminded him of the life he might not be able to have.
Not liking to keep to the same coffee shop for fear of people recognizing him, Chris picked this particular shop on a whim. He’d been there only a couple times before but remembered the atmosphere and the coffee was good. He wasn’t sitting for very long when a napkin fluttered onto his table, and Chris forced himself to look up at it, confused for a moment as to where it had come from, but glanced over his shoulder after the man heading towards the restroom.
At first he didn’t think anything of it, but after a moment or so realized there was something scribbled onto it. One word in particular standing out to him.
Chris’s eyes widened in surprise and he quickly snatched up the napkin before anyone else could see, and before he could get himself wound up in something that probably wasn’t even what he thought. For all he knew, it was just some song lyric or random musing of a writer.
And yet… how could he forget last summer or the moon?
He shuffled anxiously, wondering if he should take the opportunity to get up and leave before the other had the chance to come back. Or maybe the man was friendly and just wanted to talk. This wouldn’t be the first time someone had recognized him from that night on the moon, although if he’d been able to keep his transformation longer, he would have.
Deciding to wait, Chris lifted his hand to compulsively rub at his chest, watching warily as the man exited the bathroom just a minute later. He tried to determine if he recognized him, but even with the glamour, he could not recall anyone who had only one arm, whether by injury or birth.
“Did you leave this on my table?” he asked as the man drew closer, sounding rather weary and cautious. He had no idea what to say to check if this man had been there, or if he was just fishing for potential knights or senshi. It was a huge risk to assume either way, but Chris bit his lip and nodded. “Did Cosmos bring you there, too?” he asked, his voice low and hoping it wasn’t the wrong decision.
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Posted: Wed Dec 21, 2016 8:29 am
In the bathroom, Isaiah bought himself some time for a potentially terrible interaction. He recognized the man, knew him from the moon - he was with Ganymede at the time - but contacts these days were seldom welcoming. Calling him out on the moon visit already placed the man in a precarious position, though Isaiah expected that the information he hasked after couldn't be known by agents. Still, he might need to reveal what identity he had and establish further risk factors just to create another contact.
So when he exited, he wrung his hand in the pocket of his coat, and half-expected to walk by the table with a harassing comment flung his way. Instead, the man whispered urgency at him and Isaiah hesitated. An affirmative grunt came from him when asked if he left the paper on his table. A glance down, and the man looked terribly frazzled up close - dark circles settled beneath his eyes, his skin sunk with the sallow expression of exhaustion, and a feverish light remained in his gaze where he suspected ulterior motives. Isaiah wondered if he looked much the same. Perhaps he wasn't so severe in his resting bitchface, for the man continued and asked about Cosmos - another piece that no Negaverse officer could know.
"Yes," he answered, as he took a seat. "She did." Much of the bustle occurred away from the booth area, with the bar loaded and the tables occupied long before the booths were touched. They maintained a modicum of privacy for a low conversation. "I'm fairly certain I saw you there. You were with the princess?" He could think of only one princess, unless others turned out beyond his notice.
"I haven't found anyone who could - or would - talk about that night for some time. You're the first. I recall there being others, but… I've not seen them since. I imagine the Negaverse must've gotten back at them, too." He nodded toward the empty sleeve.
"So, if you feel like you can talk about it, will you humor me?"
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Posted: Thu Jan 05, 2017 7:05 pm
Chris stared curiously at the man, sure that his eyes still held some wariness as he watched him sit across from him, even though knowing that Cosmos also brought the man to the moon helped him to relax slightly. Still, Chris couldn’t tell if it was his own cautiousness that had him on edge, or because he didn’t know who this man was yet.
He swallowed down his nervousness and nodded, glancing around to make sure it was unlikely for others to overhear them, his hand clutching a bit tighter to the cup of coffee in front of him.
“Yes, so… you saw us power down,” he said, lowering his eyes to the table. This wasn’t the first time someone had approached him because of what they’d done, but at the time he didn’t have any energy left to spare to keep the transformation in place. Same with Ganymede.
Part of him wondered if this man was only curious about him because he recognized him, but when he mentioned wanting to talk about what happened that night, Chris’s eyes rose once more to meet the man’s. And then to his arm when he nodded to it.
“They did that to you?” he asked, feeling his throat tighten with emotion. Fear, anger, helplessness, concern. He wasn’t sure what was stronger. “Are you in pain?” he asked, looking him over for other injuries, but since he didn’t know this man, he wasn’t sure what was… new… and what was old. It would have been stupid to ask if he was okay. Surely he couldn’t be okay.
Once again, Chris lifted his hand to rub at his chest, his eyes searching the other man’s face once more.
“I don’t mind talking. Is there anything I can do to… help…? Make things easier for you…?” He knew it must be difficult working with only one arm.
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Posted: Sat Jan 07, 2017 1:49 pm
"I saw a lot of people power down," Ice added. "Most of them weren't lucky enough to be alive afterward." The night saw an end to many, whether senshi or agent or knight. The fact that this man powered down was perhaps not unique to that knight, but the circumstances surrounding his continued life proved it contrary to the brunt of the occurrences.
While he blanched somewhat on the questions asked about his injury, Isaiah smothed over his eatures with little effort. "Before we go launching into offers of assistance, I'd like to know your name first. Isaiah Zähne," he offered out of habit alongside his hand, and he realized his lateness in trying to correct the last name. It wouldn't matter, surely; his experience with these dimensions of the war meant he would likely never see the man again beyond this point. People proved much too proficient at vanishing. "Or, if you prefer, Scholomance." While he did not relish adding his second name, it proved a necessity often enough in interacting on a face-to-face level. People felt better knowing that he was not just a knight, but a knight with a recognizable name and planet. They needed someone to write notes to in dire circumstances, he supposed.
"Unless your wonder has the ability to replicate new arms, I doubt there's much you can do." He sighed through his teeth. "Apologies. I'm just in the middle of fighting my insurance about getting a prosthetic that's actually worth a s**t, and since there's no actual incident report to which they can attribute cause of injury, the whole thing's been a massive nightmare. No one can exactly pull a pile of money out of the sky to help me out without shouldering some attention, either - and that's the last thing I can bring on someone since the Negaverse has their eye on me.
"It's why I also want to preface this by saying it would be best to avoid me if you see me as a knight."
He ignored the question on pain, both unable to admit to it out of his own vanity and reticent to make admissions of weakness for a bad first impression. "That said…" He scooted forward and rested his arm across the table. Had he both arms, they would have folded across each other. "I want your opinion on that night. And, if you know it, I want the princess's opinion too. Everything about that night just… Doesn't sit right with me. We had a man come up out of the Rift, someone we never met before, and he gave us crystals to drain people's energy so he could go back to wherever it was he wanted to go. But not before opening a portal into the bowels of the Negaverse… and into a deathtrap. Do you think it was worth it? Do you think he set us up to die?"guine chris can feel free to ask more about his injuries, he just has a caught tongue about it~
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Posted: Thu Jan 12, 2017 4:10 pm
Chris frowned sadly, feeling a sickening twist in his heart at the thought of how many people died that night, and all those who had died, and all those who would continue to die because of this pointless war. And he knew it probably seemed counterproductive in a war, but he was saddened by the loss of life on the Negaverse’s side as well. Regardless of what some of those agents had done in the past, done to him and his family and friends, Chris was never an advocate for killing, even though he was guilty of allowing someone to be killed in order to protect his family.
He lifted his eyes in slight surprise when Isaiah offered his name, and then widened even more when he gave his knight name.
“I remember you. You helped us,” he said, his voice a strained whisper as he leaned closer to the man across from him. He paused and bit at his lip, but knew it was probably obvious who he was by now. Especially if Isaiah saw him and Paris power down.
“Chris Gallo… Valhalla,” he said. It wasn’t as though he had ever been particularly cautious about keeping his identity a secret, but he now had a family to think about, and their safety to place first. “I don’t think we were ever properly introduced, but I’ve heard your name and know you helped us,” he quietly explained, knowing there were countless people he wished he knew better, but with everything going on it was difficult to actually do. And Chris’s memories weren’t that great these days, and seemed to be getting worse, but that was another issue entirely.
The fact that Isaiah gave a warning to avoid him as a knight was concerning, not just for himself but for Isaiah as well. He nodded, but only to show complacency. He couldn’t promise not to ignore that request to stay away if the other man was in danger. Unable to stop himself, his eyes fell to the man’s missing arm, although he bit his tongue at the offer to help him, knowing Isaiah was probably right to avoid obvious help from others he wasn’t typically associated with.
“I’m not really sure what to think,” he admitted, keeping his voice low as Isaiah voiced his own concerns about Caedus. “I…don’t agree with fighting. I want there to be another way. I went along with his proposal to enter their space because I was hoping to see something that might give us leverage to negotiate with them. As for if it was worth it…”
That was a difficult question, and it wasn’t as though he trusted Caedus, either. His knee-jerk reaction was to say no, that it wasn’t worth it, that too many people died. Too many young, good people, who were caught in the wrong place at the wrong time. But then there were also the good things that happened too.
“We were able to recover a piece of the Code. And another group rescued dozens of starseeds and were able to return them to Cosmos… to the Cauldron. We put an end to the woman who ordered the kidnap and torture and corruption of our kind. I don’t know if it was worth the loss of life, but I thought… if we wanted a chance to turn the war in our favor, to give a chance for the future…”
Chris paused to take a breath, his hand pressing against his chest as it became painfully tight.
“If an opportunity like that came up again,” he continued, “I would probably take it.”
The recovered piece of Code would help bring balance, the dozens of rescued starseeds meant senshi and knights would be reborn one day, and getting rid of Apatite, one of the extremists in the Negaverse, was definitely a good thing for them. It probably meant that the Negaverse would just work on recovering their cache of starseeds and work on revenge for what happened, but after everything they’d been put through, even with how questionable Caedus was, Chris was sure there were many who would have taken the opportunity regardless. Strickenized Oh, he will! He just has to shut up so I can actually post something...
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Posted: Fri Jan 13, 2017 10:29 am
'Helped' is one way to put it. While Isaiah found no shame in his behavior that night, he found no reason to call it honest assistance. Ganymede posed a large target for the General-Queen, and any magic spent keeping her alive meant that others of less notoriety had a chance to escape - including himself. Overall he supposed it mattered little in how his actions affected the intended outcome. Was it a wasted effort? Absolutely not; if he did not expend his magic to assist Ganymede, then he would not be having this conversation with Valhalla - Chris. He imagined that, if they did converse in that scenario, the subject matter would prove far more dolorous.
"Yes, I suppose I did." Momentarily Isaiah lowered his gaze to the table, where his crumpled note lay not far from Chris's palm. He wondered, then, if he should regret doing so - if Scholomance's interference there pushed Cinnabar and Schörl to disfigure him, or if his very presence there proved contradictory to their deal. He wanted to expect the latter - blaming their faulty logic bases eased the burden of guilt and rage about the matter. If he needed to blame any active choice taken, then there wasn't much for it. Ganymede and Valhalla were afforded no autonomy in the matter; he could not shift blame to them even if he wanted to.
Isaiah donned a burgeoning cryptic smile. "Yes, well, the physicalities behind war don't provide for much. If you look at population estimates for World War II, for example, you have millions upon millions of deaths and yet… The population catches up to its projected number within a few years of the war's closing. That is to say, after a few years, it's as if the war never happened. And that's just for normal people - I imagine if there are still new powered starseeds being created regardless of our actions, then all side of the war are stuck in a multigenerational stalemate with no one making tactically wise decisions to end it. A war of attrition is often the most destructive.
"But I know the Negaverse won't accept negotiations. They don't have to. It wouldn't make sense for them to. Here you have a massive weaponized force that's superior in numbers and strength - we saw this ourselves by going down there. And we're supposed to fight it using these poorly-organized and poorly-trained individuals who sport magic as their mainline tactic. It's like the war of independence all over again but with all the bloodshed and failure that they leave out of the textbooks. Why negotiate at all when they have every means to take from us what they want? Our starseeds, our allegiances, our limbs… Anything is up for grabs here and they don't have to ask for it."
Ever the pessimist, Ice placed a lower value on the items retrieved from the Negaverse's storehouses. The piece of the Code may have been the portion of one knight's wonder, or more likely some piece corrupted by the Negaverse as a means to violate the Knighthood's power network. The implications of there having been corruption within the piece of the Code nagged at him relentlessly; he did not want to dwell on the weaknesses in their faction as a whole. They still had the starseeds, and they felled one of the heads from the hydra. But the question of leverage…
"You can't say if an action was worth the loss of life without putting a price on life. That is… I think it's a discussion we're ill-suited for right now. Call me selfish, but… If I were to say life had a price, then that means my life is expendable for the right price and I prefer to think I'm famously irreplaceable." He tried to smile, though his usual confidence failed to facilitate.
Ice settled into picking at the hem of his empty sleeve. "Maybe if the offer came from a more valid entity at a better point in time - something that allowed us to spend the necessary days formulating a plan based on our reconnaissance - then maybe it's a repeatable journey. But as it stands, if I had the option of doing it again exactly as-is… I wouldn't be taking it. That's one difference between us - I find a great deal of trouble in validating my participation here. Especially given my circumstances."guine they are both chatty cathys
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Posted: Sat Jan 14, 2017 11:26 pm
Chris found himself frowning sadly as Isaiah spoke, listening to him give statistics for things like death and population and the cost of a life and it was all horribly sad to think about. He knew he was probably not the best person to talk to in terms of what happened, and he wondered if Isaiah would find him too simple minded or too naive to take seriously. He’d already made it clear that he didn’t expect the Negaverse to accept negotiations.
“You’re right,” Chris said quietly, keeping his hands on the now lukewarm cup of coffee. “They don’t have to accept negotiations. When I said that… I didn’t really mean the Negaverse as a whole,” he explained, his eyes searching Isaiah’s face for anything that might clue Chris in to what he was thinking.
“It’s not the Negaverse I want to try and get leverage to negotiate with. It’s the individuals they’ve brought to their side.”
Chris lowered his eyes to the coffee, feeling a little foolish for voicing his thoughts out loud. He knew he’d never been one of the more popular opinion voices. He knew he was probably looked at as a lost cause, especially with his broken starseed. He was essentially useless.
“We might be poorly-organized and poorly-trained, but we have free-will. The negaverse doesn’t have that. They still have to report back at the end of the day, whereas knights and senshi have the option to never power up again if we wanted. We have that choice, and they don’t. If the price of that is organization, then I’m okay with that. We all work together when it matters,” he said.
“Your life is not expendable,” Chris replied, but he didn’t try to smile back at him, instead lifting his eyes to meet Isaiah’s, still sad but sincere. “I don’t think anyone’s is…” And then, “What did they do to you? Your arm? Your finger?” he asked, nodding to the obviously recentish injuries Isaiah had suffered. “You told me not to approach you as a knight. What do they want from you, Isaiah? Who?”
Maybe he was prying too much, but it was definitely concerning.
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Posted: Mon Jan 16, 2017 7:37 pm
"You can go somewhere with that." Isaiah sat back against the booth, glad for the support. He closed his eyes for a long while and breathed a sigh through his nose. "The people behind the uniform are always hungry for something." He wondered if Valhalla managed to succeed with any officers yet - if he found any willing enough to give up their powers of teleportation and lethal weapons to serve a side more interested in the preservation of humanity. Perhaps it was too rude to ask.
He opened his eyes and smiled wryly at the mention of free will. "That's a whole different discussion." One that he felt ill-equipped to handle in the moment, so he refrained from commenting further.
'We all work together when it matters'. Do we? Is that why the lot of us came out so sorely damaged after the Negaverse had their way with us? Or do we make the prediction that we all would've died without the cooperation we did have? Cosmos was the one willing to pull us out of the fire. And what came of things after that? The knights dealt with the Code, the senshi with the starseeds and the lot of them went their separate ways. I'm bitter, I know, but there's some truth here.
Free will lets me choose how I suffer, but power lets me put others to suffer in my stead.
Isaiah's expression sobered at the mention of his injuries. He relished not the recount of the tale. If he could, he would write the whole story and disseminate it to as many knights as he could so that no further questions would be asked of it. Already he explained it to Ptolemaeus, to Hy-Brasil and to others, and it never grew easier with each iteration. The memory only burrowed deeper into his being in each repetition. "Most people look at me funny when they hear this. I used to make deals with the Negaverse. I won't get into why. I doubt that part's important. But, part of the reason I continued to make deals with them was to retain a sort of immunity from their actions against knights and senshi. I offered them information the night before our raid on Negaspace, and in my stupidity, I thought I could step inside their inner sanctum and be an untouchable spectator to the place.
"Someone spotted me there, though, and…" He paused. He hadn't yet determined if his mere existence or if his assistance accounted for his injuries. Scholomance left the sentence hanging.
"Later, General Cinnabar and I met to discuss another deal. General Schörl went with her. They showed me some old war antiques. As in, a field surgeon's kit for amputations. They took my finger with the signet ring on it, my arm, and then they pulled all my teeth." To illustrate his point, Isaiah popped the front row of his dentures outward an inch with the press of his tongue. A couple fingers massaged the piece back into place. "I guess they wanted me to drown in my own blood if I kept screaming." A faint quake in his voice followed his last words.
"Now they want my full cooperation through coercion. They have my signet ring and since those damned things aren't falling out of the ******** sky for me, I can't contact anyone or get into my wonder. And my wonder is the only key I have to getting out of this - if I could research and develop some kind of weapon, a real weapon, then I might stand a chance of getting back at the two."
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Posted: Wed Jan 25, 2017 9:27 pm
”They’re not bad people. Not all of them,” Chris said quietly, perhaps a bit naively. “And they end up being our neighbors or friends or family, caught in something they didn’t realize was bad until it was too late.” At least from what he could understand of it. Which probably wasn’t much. But he had to wonder if Isaiah could understand the whole… getting caught up in it and not knowing, especially after what happened to him.
Chris frowned sadly as the story was retold for him, and by his expression, Chris could tell this wasn’t the first time Isaiah had been asked to explain what happened. He knew he should be concerned about the fact that Isaiah made deals with the Negaverse, but he was more worried about his injuries and what lead up to it. Again, probably naive, but he’d already given the other his name. Both names.
“Have you tried going to your wonder? I mean, I’m sure you have, and I’m sure your wonder is different than my own. I found my ring there. And before rings, I worked with Camelot and a few others in getting knights disposable phones to use,” he said, wishing he knew what else to suggest, but knowing it must be difficult feeling cut off. It was probably similar to how Chris felt, unable to feel auras, but he wasn’t about to bring that up. His problems seemed so insignificant in comparison. “There has to be other means of contact,” he said quietly, “Even if it’s just setting up a meeting place to check in.”
He didn’t like the idea of the revenge it seemed Isaiah was planning, but for now Chris didn’t say anything against it.
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Posted: Fri Jan 27, 2017 8:20 am
While Scholomance did not find the idea ridiculous, he could not fulfill it himself. To locate those with the propensity to change, to work with them on learning to change, and then folowing through with aftercare required so much patience and endurance that he could no longer call up within himself. If Scholomance was ever the type to convince others toward purification, he lost that ability by now. Suspicion informed him that he was never the candidate for such a task in the first place. So, he said nothing contrary to Chris's words - there was use in someone with the mindset of a saint. Let him do as he could and generate hope for his allies, whoever they may be.
Briefly he wondered if he could conjure that patience if one of his family turned out to be in line with Schörl and Cinnabar. He smiled to himself.
The talk of his wonder erased such a smile, necessarily so. "My wonder is locked to me without a signet ring. It's how I access the buildings." He paused momentarily. "I think… I know where I can get one. I shouldn't need it for longer than the few days I would spend there." He doubted Gwen would miss it for long. She looked at the ring as more a piece of jewelry for wear than a communications device, from what he'd seen of its use. Scholomance was the one often writing letters to knights, senshi, Negaverse agents without heed of it as an accessory. "Otherwise I suppose I'll have to appeal to Blaine." But a coward will often hide behind his walls.
"I need a reliable way of contacting people. Especially if I want to get out of this shitty situation." Again, he thought back to Caedus and his bizarre technology. Was there some means by which he could engineer another signet ring? Scholomance felt the foreign king owed him that much in the prices he paid. Disposable phones sounded promising, but everyone agreeing to support him would need one for frequent contact, and the more things they had to carry…
They carried the sky. The whole atmosphere, they carried it, the humidity, the monsoons, the stink of fungus and decay, all of it, they carried gravity.
"Caedus," he ventured slowly, "do you know where he is?"
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Posted: Mon Jan 30, 2017 3:45 pm
Chris knew other wonders were different. That there was complete possibility that only his wonder worked the way it did, and yet it was still surprising and heartbreaking to hear that without his signet ring, Isaiah was pretty much locked out of the buildings. Valhalla, on the other hand, seemed to only react to his presence there. Even when he brought others with him, the doors would only open for him, the lights only shone for him.
Whatever Isaiah was suggesting about getting one, was beyond Chris’s understanding, and he looked across the table at him curiously, but he didn’t say anything or bring attention to his comments, not wanting to make Isaiah feel obligated to explain if he was just talking to himself.
When Caedus was brought up, Chris straightened a little more in his chair, not really sure what Isaiah expected Caedus to be able to help him with. Although, he did have means for them to attack Negaspace, so maybe there really was something he could help with.
“I’m not sure. There was a hilltop close to where he first appeared that I found him again, after the initial calling. I believe many still seek him out, but,” he paused, looking over the other man with concern. “Be careful. I don’t think he’s a bad person, or… whatever he is… but we don’t know what his full intentions are. If this world is something he cares for or just a means to an end,” he said quietly, but he figured Isaiah already knew all this. Still, Chris was worried about him, especially after everything he’d gone through.
There was a long pause, and then quietly, “You haven’t heard of any way to heal damaged starseeds, have you? Other than the cauldron, I mean.” It was a long shot, but anything would help.
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Posted: Thu Feb 02, 2017 7:33 am
Isaiah spared a long sigh through his nose. Chris mentioned a hilltop, and if Caedus still had use for the people he led into that catastrophe, then prudence behooves him to remain at that spot. Isaiah wanted to believe that he could still find Caedus there, and perhaps it were so - he would make a trip to find out. With this, he gained a starting point in broaching old wounds, and soliciting some restitution for the ills that befell him.
But Chris brought up a second subject that gave him pause. A threaded brow quirked, and he narrowed his gaze at the other man if only to suss out further explanation. "Damaged starseeds?" He never realized they came in a form other than 'intact' or 'shattered'. If nothing else, the question alone provided perspective that, even as a knight, Scholomance lacked great swaths of information about their own basic existence. "I don't offhand know of a way to heal them, no. Cosmos seems like the best choice in that matter, since she took that lot of starseeds stolen out of the Negaverse. But…" Isaiah clicked his tongue against teeth. "If you think about it, no Joe Blow on our side of the fence can even touch a starseed that's still in the body. I imagine then, that you might have better luck with the Royalty.
"Although, if you're interested in a longshot, you could come with me and speak about it to Caedus. He mentioned before that his technology is very advanced, and he formed that portal into the Negaverse's back yard. His crystals could drain energy. If you're looking for a more scientific fix to a damaged starseed, he might have it." Or, as Isaiah suspected, Caedus might try to use that question against them.
"Why? Did you find one that's clinging to dear life?"
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Posted: Tue Feb 21, 2017 10:10 pm
”You could say that,” Christ said quietly with a rueful smile when Isaiah asked if he’d found someone clinging to life. Isaiah had too much to deal with on his own to be bothered with what was going on with him, so Chris kept his mouth shut on whom he was speaking.
Of course, Isaiah wasn’t stupid, so if he really wanted to figure it out, it probably wouldn’t take much for him to realize Chris was asking for himself. But he also didn’t want to put that burden onto Isaiah, so if the other man wanted to pretend like he didn’t realize it was him, Chris was okay with that. It might be easier that way, anyway.
“I appreciate the offer,” he said, knowing that Caedus might not know any more than he had the first time, but Chris was sure that lots of people spoke to Caedus, so maybe he knew more than he had before.
“As long as I won’t be a hinderance to you, I wouldn’t mind meeting him again.” Maybe Isaiah was right about the crystals. Hopefully there was more that could be offered this time.
“Cosmos didn’t really have any advice for an immediate fix and,” he paused, wondering if he was talking too much on a subject that Isaiah had no interest in, “You’re right about no one on our side being able to touch a starseed. Ganymede couldn’t do anything, either.”
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Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 11:19 am
The intimation was there, but Isaiah chanced no assumptions. While he ratcheted his brow at the other man, he knew not to press an issue if Chris did not outright admit to what Isaiah expected. Doing so crossed boundaries that were perhaps better left alone. "Tell your friend with the broken starseed that they shouldn't be too ashamed in reaching out for help. The White Moon could stand to get a little more cohesive on a common concern once in a while. It shouldn't be a burden to ask."
Isaiah reached out to seize the earlier napkin. He reclaimed his pen, then started to scrawl very careful numbers upon its dappled surface. "Here's my number. Call me when you're able to go looking for Caedus and I'll meet you. We can broach him at the same time. If nothing else, there's safety in numbers." He capped the pen, then slid the note forward. While the handwriting looked shaky and unpracticed, Isaiah liked to think that it reached legible status in the past month. Melissa gained a good understanding of how to read it, at least.
"You're not a hindrance." He stated so matter-of-factly. They both needed help, so they could both help each other.
It's moments like these when we realize the fragility of our power. Cosmos can guide starseeds into a rebirth cycle. Royal senshi can purify chaos out of an individual and completely reinvent their lives. Each and every one of us breaks impossibilities every time we call upon the magic given to us. And yet, when someone suffers a fracture in their soul, all our hands are tied. All those possibilities fall away as glitter and pomp.
But Mjolnir once cautioned that impossibilities are falling away, even now. Would it be a greater folly to assume there's nothing anyone can do?
"It's troublesome, isn't it? Here we are with all this power at our fingertips, and a fractured starseed leaves everyone at an impasse. I wonder how anyone ever thought we could do anything but balk in the face of Metallia." He paused, flexed his jaw, then continued. "It sounds like you'll need to look outside the scope of the White Moon, at least. Their power might not be relevant to healing starseeds in such a way."guine i spoke to kyu, and she would be fine with a three-way between schol, val, and caedus if you wanted to pursue a followup! there are just caveats that he remains undiscovered by negaverse entities.
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