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 Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 7:41 pm
There were a lot of things that could go wrong while out on patrol, trying to keep the city safe. Running into unfriendly youma or negaverse officers was definitely one. Getting one’s hair or clothing caught on fire escapes was another. And then getting completely lost was yet another.
As it were, Connie had no idea where she was.
“Maybe… if I go back a few blocks,” she mumbled quietly to herself, trying to see if she recognized any of the street signs. She just hadn’t been in this part of the city before. It was farther from campus than she ever needed to go, so of course she had no idea where this place was.
And she wasn’t the only one around. There was another energy close by, one that was darker in aura than her own. She bit nervously at her bottom lip as she tried to decide if she should run or if she should ask whoever it was for help. They didn’t quite feel like a Negaverse officer, but there was definitely something dark about them.
She knew some people would tell her she was being reckless, but so far she had little reason to fear these people who were supposed to be her enemy. Even lovely Captain Tourmaline wasn’t horrible, even if she was emotionally distraught and a bit rough.
“Excuse me! So sorry to bother you. Do you know where we are? I think I’m lost. Would you be so kind as to point me toward campus?” she asked into the darkness, not seeing whoever it was just yet, but knowing they were there. Somewhere. Hopefully they wouldn’t attack her because she definitely needed to finish her homework for the night once she got back.
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Posted: Thu Feb 23, 2017 11:11 pm
Almandine was getting better at this powered business. He still wasn't entirely sure how it worked, because there were a myriad of questions that were still unanswered, such as:
Was he doing this right? Debatable.
Was there a purpose for doing this? Also debatable.
Was the Negaverse in the right? Perhaps the most debatable of all.
Still, Almandine wasn't about to do nothing about it. Doing nothing would yield zero results, and he was all about the end game of things, the wide picture, the expansive knowledge of all that he could grasp. Details were important; he wanted to focus in on them, learn what he could.
And what he was learning right now was that there was someone nearby.
It was another one of the lighter power signatures; floaty and sterile and clean. Almandine started towards it, not out of any particular desire to fight - that seemed like a great deal of useless energy expended - but more out of a curiosity to see who it was.
It was a girl, bright eyed and wandering, her hair a vibrant shade of pink. Almandine scrutinized her as he came out of the shadows, his arms held loosely at his sides, long dark hair rippling behind him. There was absolutely no sense of a threat emanating from him at all.
Especially from the jingle bells.
"Good evening," said Almandine politely. "What do you need the campus for? You're way off base."
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 2:37 pm
“Oh! Hello!” she greeted, offering the other man a smile as he quietly approached her, her eyes darting towards the small chiming bells from his outfit. “Good evening, yes,” she agreed, her hands clasping behind her back as she rocked on her heels. He didn’t seem too vicious. With all the warning she’d been given about the Negaverse, they didn’t seem all that horrible.
“I think I got turned around. I haven’t been on this side of the city before. I thought that if I at least made it back to campus, I’d be able to get home from there,” she explained as she looked him over, her smile brightening with each little chime of his bells.
“I’m Connie, by the way. Well, Constantinople, but that’s a bit ridiculous, don’t you think?” she hummed. “You have lovely hair, by the way. I can’t imagine my hair that long. It’s bad enough as it is.”
This was okay, wasn’t it? There was nothing wrong with a little chat with someone who seemed to be friendly.
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Posted: Fri Feb 24, 2017 3:30 pm
He had no idea what she was. The uniform itself was bright and cheery and jangled a little - in fact, it matched her hair rather well - but he couldn't place it; not that he had much experience in that as it was, but it certainly didn't seem like his own darker, more subdued uniform. And the power signature was, of course, Order, which meant that she was also not in the Negaverse.
I'm Connie. Well, Constantinople.
Almandine's brows rose.
"Constantinople?" he repeated, a frown touching his lips. "Like the city, what is now known as Istanbul?"
That was not a senshi name. All of the senshi he had met so far - which, in all honesty, extremely limited, so maybe his judgement wasn't that good - were named quieter things, simpler things. Constantinople was a mouthful and a half.
"Thank you," Almandine said, referring to the question of his hair. "You have very pretty hair, too," he added, because it was polite, and then, "Why is your name Constantinople? Mine is Almandine."
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Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 9:19 pm
”Yes!” she smiled brightly when he asked about her name. Well, she knew the fall of Constantinople was a major point in history, but hadn’t actually done much research on it, herself. Not yet at least. “Well, I think so! I’m not entirely sure. Sounds kinda crazy, right?” she beamed cheerfully at the man, her hands clasped together in front of her now.
“It’s very nice to meet you, Almandine! I wish I knew,” she admitted when he asked why it was her name, obviously relatively new to everything. “There are some other knights I’ve met with who had the names of places, too, so maybe that’s it?” she wondered, glancing thoughtfully up at the sky as if that would give her a better answer.
“There was a man who was part monster that attacked me, and another knight who was there who protected me, and then I found this necklace in the alley and thought it was so very pretty and it felt like it was calling to me, you know? And when I picked it up, I changed into this,” she explained, gesturing to the dogwood flower necklace she wore, and then to her outfit.
“And the name Constantinople just kind of came to me. But it really is such a mouthful. Almandine is much better. I’ve never heard of it before. Is it a place or something like that?”
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Posted: Sun Feb 26, 2017 9:49 pm
She was so cheerful it was a little hard to take in. Almandine hadn't met anyone who was as...well, he couldn't quite think of the right word, but vivacious seemed relatively accurate at present. Then again, he hadn't really met any senshi except Dia, and she didn't really count, since she was on the same side as he was.
It took Almandine a moment to respond, lost in his own thoughts, and it was only after he realized that she had sort of asked him a question that he glanced up, brows still furrowed in concentration.
"Uh, yes," he said, because it seemed like the right answer. "But - you're not a senshi," Almandine observed, gaze narrowed, as the rest of what Constantinople - Connie was so much easier to say - had just said seemed to sink in. Knight was what she had said, not senshi.
What was a knight?
Again, he lapsed into an uncomfortably long period of silence in which Almandine slowly perused his own thoughts, and then gave the young woman in front of him a long, assessing look, not exactly invasive, but probably a little weird nonetheless, since he wasn't saying anything.
"Almandine is a star, I believe," he informed her, voice slow, because everything was slow to him. Thoughts were hard sometimes. "That necklace is very pretty, yes. What's a knight?"
The abrupt change in conversation was mostly because Almandine's thoughts couldn't seem to stay in one place for very long. He tugged absently at the bow on his chest for something to do with his hands.
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Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 1:59 pm
Although she was quite prone to chatting away, the silence didn’t bother her in the least. Instead she just stood there, slowly rocking back and forth on her heels as it seemed as though Almandine was processing everything. There were a lot of things she wanted to ask him, and she was absolutely thrilled that she ran into someone else who seemed perfectly nice.
“A star?? That’s amazing!” she gushed, her hands lifting to her cheeks for a moment and then she clasped them back together over her chest. “Thank you, it’s quite lovely, isn’t it? And your little crown thing is really cute. I really, really like the little bells,” she smiled, before realizing the subject sort of changed.
“I’m – not really sure!” Connie admitted with a somewhat sheepish laugh. “I know I’m a knight. I don’t think we have any big magical powers like senshi do. You’re a senshi, aren’t you? I’ve never met a senshi who was on your side of things. I met a couple Captains and they were lovely people. I’m so glad you’re just as wonderful,” she told him, her smile impossibly bright. Nevermind the fact that one of the Captains had shoved her against a wall, but at least she didn’t really hurt her!
“Did you want to walk back towards campus with me? I’m horrible with directions and I’ll probably get lost again,” she admitted, but really just wanting an excuse to talk to this lovely senshi some more, obviously not bothered by his darker aura.
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Posted: Tue Feb 28, 2017 8:15 pm
Her enthusiasm was a little startling, if Almandine was being entirely honest; he stared at her with slightly widened eyes - though it was more out of a confusion to understand than anything else. He wasn't used to someone being so outright...bright around him.
It was vaguely daunting. Almandine tried to figure it out, head tilted slightly to the side, and then said, "My...crown thing?" in a slow sort of voice, brow furrowed, his bells jingling a little as he shifted his position. A hand lifted, Almandine touching the side of his head tentatively as though he'd forgotten what was on top of it.
"Oh, the antlers.Thank you," he said somberly, dropping his hand. "Yes, I am a senshi, I am a Negaverse senshi, or so I've been told."
Connie's cheerfulness was met with a bemused expression.
"Am I wonderful?" It came out as a question, Almandine mulling over this. He didn't think he was terrible, really, and he was a decent man, most of the time. He paid his bills on time, he looked both ways when crossing the street, he used his turn signal when driving. Wonderful seemed a little bit of a stretch, but he supposed he could accept that for now.
It took him a long moment to answer Connie's question, as it usually did. Almandine lifted his head, then nodded slowly, carefully pivoting so that he was facing in the direction of the campus.
"What do knights do, if they don't have powers?"
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Posted: Wed Mar 01, 2017 11:34 pm
“Senshi are wonderful, so you must be wonderful, too!” she said, thinking it clearly made sense in her head. She looked positively thrilled to find out that they were antlers on his head, making her even more curious about him. Senshi were not like knights, so she was definitely happy to be able to talk to one.
“I’m not really sure what knights do,” she admitted with a small frown, her eyes still wide as she scuttled along to catch up to Almandine, her hands clasped together behind her back. “I guess we’re supposed to make sure civilians are safe from those monsters that like to chase people around, but they end up chasing me around too,” she sighed.
“I was trying to follow one out this way, but that’s how I got lost. I could feel it heading towards the edge of the city, but… luckily it just seemed to be out for a walk and didn’t want to attack anyone,” she explained, but quickly realized she might be upsetting the man because these monster things were from his side of the supposed war.
“Oh, I don’t kill them or anything like that. I just have them chase me until I can escape from them,” she told him. “I’m pretty fast, and thankfully my shoes don’t have really high heels.” And if all else failed, she could just hide under a dumpster and hope that someone would help her.
“What do Negaverse senshi do? Do you have magic??” she smiled brightly at him, as though she were a child on Christmas morning.
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Posted: Thu Mar 02, 2017 3:03 pm
"Oh." Almandine considered this for a long moment, then said, "Well, all right, then, I can accept this logic."
He said it with an entirely straight face, perfectly serious about it, as though what Connie had said was what he now believed. Considering that he'd hardly even met anyone yet, he supposed it wasn't a fallacy to follow along the same vein of things; Dia hadn't been terribly bad, even if she'd taken his glasses.
Almandine's head inclined slightly towards the knight as she spoke, a slight frown of thought on his face; it was probably a permanent expression, because it seemed to fit him somehow, as though he always had his brows drawn together, eyes narrowed ever so slightly, lips quirked downwards instead of up.
"Then what's the difference between senshi and knights, if senshi also are meant to protect civilians?"
They turned down another street, the bells on Almandine's uniform jingling with every step; he wished they would quiet down, but there was no helping it. Instead, he said, sounding bemused, "Oh. I see." A pause, and then, "Do you mean the youma? I've never encountered one, but I've heard of them."
Sort of. He glanced automatically at Connie's heels, as though really making sure they weren't too high, then glanced up again, Almandine's head giving a slow shake, less of a negative answer, and more of an attempt at wrapping his head around what he was being told.
"I do have magic," he said slowly, but he added, "I've never used it, though. I suppose I just...I try and do what the Negaverse tells me to do."
Another long, drawn out pause.
"I'm not...entirely sure what that is..."
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Posted: Sun Mar 05, 2017 7:48 pm
“That’s a good question, and I’m not really sure,” Connie said with a sigh, wishing she was more knowledgeable on the topic of senshi and knights than she really was. Thankfully it didn’t seem as though Almandine knew too much about them, either.
“I think it has something to do with the magic,” she nodded, but it was pretty obvious that she had no idea what she was talking about. She liked talking to Almandine, though. He was somewhat quiet, but he had good questions.
“Oh, you have magic?” she beamed at him, clasping her hands together in excitement. “I would love to see what it does! Would you like to try it? If you’re not sure, it’s best to test it out!” she suggested, looking around for what might make a good target. She was a little wary that magic might hurt, because what if it was fire or electricity? That would be horrible. But someone with tingling jingle bells surely wouldn’t have that horrible of magic, right?
“Or,” she paused a bit hesitantly, “You could always try your magic on me. I don’t mind!” she promised with a sage nod. “If you’re supposed to be doing what the Negaverse tells you to do, then you should at least be prepared.”
She paused, not thinking for a moment that he was supposed to be doing anything nefarious. “What does the negaverse have you do?” she wondered, having never really been told what they do.
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Posted: Mon Mar 06, 2017 10:09 pm
Almandine really needed to carry around some sort of notebook or something that would let him keep all of his notes on everything in it. He had several at home, all carefully written out, on subjects from movie analyses, to recipes, to how to switch out CAT5 cables during an event without disrupting anything.
And now he would need one for all of the information on powered life as well.
"I do have magic," Almandine confirmed solemnly with a nod of his head. Connie was given a somewhat critical look, his expression bemused. "Try it? On...you? That seems like a bad idea, I don't think I should test out my magic on you, you haven't attacked me yet."
They were on opposite sides, but she hadn't shown him any violence yet, so there seemed little point in offering it to her, as well. Almandine slowed his steps until he had come to a complete halt, frowning in thought at the question that she had asked of him.
"Gather energy," he said eventually, after he had considered it for another long while. "Protect civilians."
It sounded vaguely superhero-ish when he put it like that. Connie was given another squinty look.
"Are you sure you don't mind me trying it on you? I don't know what it does, exactly."
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Posted: Wed Mar 08, 2017 3:56 pm
Connie smiled brightly at Almandine, shaking his head when he voiced his concern, not wanting him to worry about her. “See? You protect civilians, too. So if you don’t know what your magic does, how can you protect them?” she asked, clearly thinking it was perfectly sound logic, although she could definitely understand not wanting to attack her because she hadn’t attacked him.
“Here, if it makes you feel any better, I can hit you,” she offered, reaching out with her fist to gently push at his shoulder, and then lifted her hands into an obviously untrained attempt at a defensive stance. “There, now you shouldn’t feel bad!”
He was nice and she liked that about him. He was obviously concerned about people and that was great because she was concerned about people, too. She knew that his aura meant he was on the other side of things, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t still be friends, right?
“Is gathering energy hard? It doesn’t hurt the other person, does it? You’ve helped me, so if you need extra energy, I’m told I have a lot, so I could probably spare some!” she offered as well, and then nodded enthusiastically when he asked if she was sure about him using his magic.
“Yes, please! I would like to see it. I haven’t seen senshi magic yet! Even if it hurts, that’s okay! It’s more important that you know what it does!”
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Posted: Thu Mar 09, 2017 9:23 am
There was (another) long moment of silence while Almandine slowly processed this as well.
"Fair point," he said at last, giving Connie a scrutinizing look that was probably a little more studious than it needed to be, but it was hard to turn off that side of his brain that was constantly assessing everything around him. Her enthusiasm for this whole...idea....was unusual, maybe, but it wasn't as though she was asking him to beat her up.
Mostly. He hoped not.
Her "hit" made Almandine's brows raise. "That wasn't much of a punch," he said, but she had at least tried, he supposed. He added, "It's not hard. It doesn't hurt. They just get a little tired, that's all. Sometimes if you push too much, they fall asleep, but I try not to go that far."
Almandine shifted, bells jingling. "Well...all right, then," he said cautiously, and lifted his hands.
"R-Reindeer...Ride?" he said, less of a name that came to him and more just a questioning, curious tone.guine Almandine calls on his magic and shoots a beam of light towards his opponent. They will feel as though they are being pinned to a surface by antlers - they do not actually need to be up against a surface to experience this, it is just the sensation of being pinned. This feeling will last about fifteen seconds, and feels weaker if the opponent is stronger. It is possible for this to lightly bruise but less likely if his opponent is of a higher power level. Twice per battle.
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Posted: Wed Mar 15, 2017 5:03 pm
“That’s not so bad!” Connie said with a sigh of relief to hear that the energy draining wasn’t a painful process. “I was worried for a bit, but if it just makes people go to sleep, that should be okay. I mean, as long as they’re not stuck outside at night because that could be super dangerous!” she pointed out, but she was sure the other knew that already.
She nodded enthusiastically when he verified one more time if she was okay with him using his magic, trying to brace herself for whatever was going to be thrown her way. Connie couldn’t help her eyes lighting up when he said reindeer, but the words were immediately followed by a beam of light and then the strangest sensation of being pinned.
“It’s not – so bad!” she forced a pained smile, feeling as though she had been hit with something sharp but also blunt, finding herself holding her breath as she hoped the sensation would soon fade. “It’s – like, not horribly painful, but – I don’t know if I can move,” she explained, wondering if she should attempt to move her arms, but not sure what the magic would do, so she stood still.
But more importantly –
“You said reindeer?? Does that mean…??” she looked at him with awe, thinking that a senshi of reindeer would just be absolutely lovely.
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