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 Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 8:41 am
Michel didn’t power up as regularly as he assumed maybe he should have, but he lacked drive and ambition—and most of all, motivation. He could not remember everything he’d done in the Negaverse, and no amount of notes or storytelling from those who knew him made it feel like it was anything more than a dream. It was a reality he was struggling to accept and one that kept him up at night.
He wasn’t here to stop Chaos or make the world a better place; he was powered up now so he could try and make a little more sense of things and understand this part of him so he could sleep at night.
The Knight of Saturn was meandering through the park, mindful of his surroundings but not quite aware of the energy signatures around him. He was aware of something but he was still determining just what that nagging, tingling sensation was.
He paused midstep and slowly put his foot down; he thought he heard movement but he hadn’t seen anything; the strange sensation nagging at his consciousness was pinging loudly but he didn’t know what it meant.
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Posted: Wed Apr 12, 2017 1:07 pm
kyuseisha no hikari Imagine the Jaws theme, only way cuter. She was rapidly (by her own standards) approaching her intended target. The goal in mind this particular night was to meet someone new, she decided, and the best way to do that was to seek out Order energy signatures on the horizon. ...jingle, jingle…Sutai only intended to take a day-or-two break from studiously patrolling around the judiciary building where a certain Mister Alexei happened to work, despite his insistence that her intervention was unnecessary. However, recent events proved otherwise, and she spoke to a pair of senshi who she had happened to meet nearby and asked them to stay around the building while Sutai could stretch her legs somewhere else. At least, in her absence, Mister Alexei would be watched over by not only those two, but Mister Shiloh as well. Her radar immediately picked up the sensation of a very strong Knight nearby, and she’d hoped beyond hope that it was someone she’d never met before. She knew Delphi, Niflhel, Sessrumnir, Nysa, Valhalla and a handful of others. Sutai was unable to tell who they were simply based on the signature itself. Jingle, jingle, jingle…Ah! There they were! A man, Sutai spied, clad in purple with long blonde hair. Definitely someone she’d not laid eyes upon before. The plucky squire appeared at the edge of the park, very clearly visible at a distance, and bounced up and down furiously. ”Hellooooooooo~!!! came a delighted cry and the squire sought to close the distance between them. However, she forgot he couldn’t hear her clearly as such a distance, and began talking before she even stood before Michel. ”Oh hello, Mister Knight! I hope you don’t mind me coming to say hello to you! I’m trying to meet more Knights, you see but it can be ever so difficult to track everybody down! Everyone is so busy these days! Anyway, I could not help but see how lovely you dress and I really like your -- is that a spear? Oh no, it’s a clock hand! OH! You have that h symbol! Are you a knight of Saturn, sir???” Sutai stepped back momentarily to give Michel a curtsey. “My name is Sutai! What’s your name, Mister Knight, sir?”
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Posted: Fri Apr 21, 2017 10:18 pm
Michel turned quickly the moment he was greeted with sound and seemed immediately surprised at the Squire bounding towards him. A part of him, some instinctive part, told him to summon his weapon, but it was promptly drowned out by the more logical part of him that told him this was probably fine. He was stronger than her and she didn’t seem to be approaching with any hostility but it made him wonder—where they all like this?
Had purifying put him in some fancy club where he was immediately accepted as one of their own and, more than that, a friend? Even before introductions?
“Michel,” he answered slowly; it wasn’t his first time reciting the name but it didn’t exactly feel like his just yet. “Of Saturn, yes. You’ve got a good eye. You’ve got a lot of energy,” he noted. He scanned her outfit, looking for some giveaway symbol but she wore nothing that he recognized. “What are you a knight of, Sutai?”
He needed to mentally catalog everything; Cambria—Lysithea—had given him a solid run down but it still seemed like he had a long way to go before he understood things. He’d been feeling a little overwhelmed but, strangely, like he had a pressure off his chest, off his shoulders. He wanted to be invested, wanted to confront these things.
He wanted to know what he’d gotten himself into.
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Posted: Sat Apr 22, 2017 5:52 pm
"Oh! I'm a squire of Polaris, sir. Have you met her before? She's very lovely, and she's married to a Saturn knight. Niflhel! That's how I knew your symbol right away. You both wear purple too, I wonder if that's just part of your uniform like blue is a part of ours?" Sutai tapped her chin - something to think about for the future. With a giggle, the girl put to memory Michel's name. It was unusual, as she had never met anyone with a name that was just that - a real name. Sutai wasn't a name as far as she knew, and Delphi was a historical place. Valhalla and Nifhel were mythical places. Nysa... she wasn't so sure what or where Nysa came from, but it didn't sound like any name she knew offhand. She immediately started with the questions when Michel didn't make himself scarce. "I don't think I've ever seen you before, Mister Michel. Have you been a knight for very long? Someday, I'll be a knight too. I'm working hard but... sometimes it's difficult to be patient when you have a goal in mind, you know? Anyway, I really like your outfit - the purple is very lovely! How did you know you were ready to be a knight? I've been a squire for a very long time, you see, and sometimes I wonder if perhaps the universe doesn't think I'm ready yet..." The squire turned slightly and twiddled her fingers. With a huff, she pulled herself from the mental slump of self-pity. "Anyway, thank you for stopping to talk with me. I look up to you knights, you see. Someday, I'll be better equipped to protect people, like you do!"
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Posted: Sun Apr 30, 2017 9:01 pm
“Haven’t met her, that I recall,” he answered of Polaris. If he’d met her before, he wouldn’t have remembered anyway. He supposed though, if he had, he might not have had a good time. Princesses rarely left without making an impression—and, usually, a painful one.
He cataloged the name Niflhel but it meant nothing to him; he didn’t know any other Saturn Knights and wasn’t even entirely sure he wanted to. At least, not until he figured out a bit more about things. He didn’t like the idea that anyone could know more, be better than him. His pride was an issue he’d never really been able to wrangle in and asking for help now was almost harder than it had been because he felt like he had so much more to prove.
“I’ve been around the block for a bit,” he said—specifically, he’d walked around this block sixteen times. “I suppose I wasn’t exactly keeping count.”
Except, he had. And he’d been taking notes, in case something happened to his memory.
“What’s the rush to be a Knight?” he asked, shifting positions so he could cross his arms over his chest. “I knew I was ready to be a Knight when I needed to know. I don’t really know that there’s more to it than that. I needed to protect some people that were important to me. I needed to be there for someone.”
There were a lot of details he didn’t share, not when they could out him.
“Sometimes you can’t control what happens, you just have to do the best you can with the abilities that you’ve got. You want to be a Knight—but is that the goal? Just ‘be a Knight’? Because it doesn’t really mean much if the only reason you want more power is just to be stronger. You need a strong goal, too. Protecting people?” he shrugged. “They should be learning to protect themselves, too. Why do you want to be a Knight? What’s your end goal?”
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Posted: Tue May 02, 2017 8:12 am
What’s the rush to be a Knight?They should be learning to protect themselves.Sutai made a funny face, very briefly, furrowing her brow as if deep in concentration. Michel did have an astute point - being a Knight for its own sake was hardly a good enough reason to ask to be bestowed with such power. Simply asking such a thing of the universe could be seen as selfishness, and while Sutai wasn’t the bravest person on the block, she didn’t wish to be selfish. There must be some obstacle Sutai needed to overcome that still eluded her. Nevertheless, it was something else that Michel said that caused Sutai to giggle and gaze up at him with mischievous glee. “You said you needed to protect some people that were important to you, Mister Michel. You said that you needed to be there for someone, but then you said that people need to learn to protect themselves…” She wasn’t interrogating the Knight, no sir. Sutai was simply trying to make a point. “...but, you see, that is why I would like to be a Knight, Mister Michel. I think, deep down, you’re a good person, probably. If you were not, then you would not want to protect people! People who are selfish and self-centered, who don’t care what happens to anybody else, would not put themselves on the line and be there for someone important. That is what I think.” Fussing with the hem of her tutu, Sutai continued. “The end goal? To protect people. You see, when I was a Page, that it when I met Princess Polaris. I did not know who she was before that, and she was very inspirational. Very warm and caring, she has room in her heart even for people like me.” She looked up at Michel, clasping her hands together over her heart. There was a sweet fondness with which Sutai spoke of her beloved princess. “People like me who are not very brave or very strong, but we try so very hard for the people who are important to us. The Princess is gone right now, but I want to be strong to protect people like Mister Sessrumnir and Valhalla and his wife Miss Ganymede and their children, and Mister Shiloh and Alexei, and Miss Delphi and Mister Alphubel… all the people who are nice to me, I want to be strong to protect them too. That is the end goal.” Her little speech finished, Sutai tilted her head at the Saturn Knight, a smile on her face.
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Posted: Thu May 18, 2017 3:43 pm
Michel grumbled with her words, crossing his arms over his chest. “The people I have to protect are different. It’s complicated. But I still stand by the fact that everyone should learn how to protect themselves. It doesn’t do anything to teach them that there’s going to be someone to bail them out because—you know?—sometimes you can’t be there. And then something happens and they don’t know what to do because they spent all that time relying on you instead of learning how to rely on themselves.”
Evan was different. Evan was his responsibility. The thought wriggled in the back of his head but it wasn’t like he could just say that, or explain it.
He settled instead for trying to understand the rest of what she was saying; she listed plenty of names but none o them really meant anything to him.
“The people you mentioned though—you want to protect them? That’s fine and all, but maybe you’re looking at it from the wrong angle. Maybe you need to get stronger so you can teach them to be stronger. Maybe everyone’s not a fighter—but look at you. You’re ‘not brave’ or ‘not strong’, and yet you’re out here trying to be both? What you’re doing, maybe anyone can do. Want to be better, I mean. Obviously,” he gestured to her outfit, “There’s only one of you. But if you think you can get stronger, can’t they? Maybe they just need someone like you to inspire them, and push them, instead needing you there to protect them all the time.”
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Posted: Thu May 18, 2017 5:30 pm
She could somewhat sympathize with Michel's position. Sure, normal civilians shouldn't always rely on those who have magical powers, but what else could they do when faced with a threat that guns and police couldn't face? Rocking back on her heels, she fussed with her tutu layers. "Well... a lot of them are very strong. They're knights and princesses and I'm just a Squire, but... well, they inspire me, Mister Michel. Like you, too! You're a knight. You have a great deal of strength in you too, I'm sure of it. If you didn't, then you wouldn't be a knight at all!" But perhaps Michel was correct - perhaps Sutai's purpose wasn't steeped in strength and active protection, but inspiration. It would make perfect sense. She wasn't built for speed and sheer physical force. Her outfit was soft, crystalline, like that of a dancer - not a warrior. Even compared to Delphi and Alphubel, her fellow Knights, Sutai stood out as being incredibly different. She didn't have heavy furs or coats or boots made for treading snow. Her weapon was for discovery... It seemed Michel was more inspirational than either of them thought. With a soft giggle, Sutai curtsied to her superior. "Mister Michel, thank you. You're... very wise, I think. Even though I might not be strong, maybe there's another way for me to be... helpful. What inspired you to be a knight, Mister Michel? Do the important people that you protect... rely on you for that protection? Or are you teaching them?"
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Posted: Fri May 19, 2017 12:42 am
Another question he couldn’t truthfully answer. Michel wasn’t used to being called wise and he certainly didn’t feel it, considering the real reason why he became a Knight.
Sutai was looking at him so he realized he probably couldn’t get out of answering her question. He cleared his throat and forced what was a poor attempt at a dismissive shrug. Any lie could have come to mind, but the best lie was one that was almost the truth.
“I made a mistake, once. A bad one,” he answered. “And I did everything in my power to fix it. That’s what inspired me to be a Knight.”
He drew in a deep breath and exhaled slowly; the subject was still fairly raw but he didn’t want to let that show. It was a part of him, but not one he wanted to expose. Truthfully, he didn’t have all the answers; he didn’t fully know what sort of Negaverse Agent he’d been—but he did know that he’d been bad enough that he’d given up a chunk of his memory and dealt with a hell of a lot of pain and trouble to get to where he was, now.
He bit the inside of his cheek sharply to force himself to focus. “There are a few important people in my life. Some of them can protect themselves, but I still worry aout them. I still make sure I’m strong so I can help them—if they need me. But not all of them are strong or confident. I’ve got a few that rely on me. Some, I think I can teach.”
Adria, his brother, probably had potential. Maybe. He was sort of a non-violent wet-blanket who he had thoroughly beaten the s**t out, but maybe he could whip him into shape—assuming Adria could stand in front of him without bawling. He hadn’t done it yet, but he could just see it.
Evan, though.
Not Evan.
“Some, I just don’t trust to take care of themselves. They’re fragile, like thin glass. I’ve got one friend who’s got the stability of a glass plate, shattered twice and poorly glued back together each time. I don’t know how much I can teach him, but if I get my way, one day he’ll be able to stand up for himself.”
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Posted: Fri May 19, 2017 10:02 am
Kyuseisha no Hikari I think we can wrap soon, if you think it's getting close! “It’s okay.” came a very simple, soft reply. Sutai didn’t know what mistake Michel had made, and really, it didn’t matter. Clasping her hands, the Squire shifted her weight slowly from one foot to the other. “The fact that you did everything in your power to fix your mistake means that you knew it was wrong. That’s remorse, isn’t it? It’s very brave of you to admit you made a mistake. Some people can’t admit when they make a mistake and they run away from the consequences. Some people don’t want to be responsible for their actions.” The Squire seemed satisfied with Michel’s answer, and his attempts to appear detached from the important people in his life (at least, from her perception). Some people, men especially, didn’t want to be so blatant with personal attachments for fear of appearing weak or needy. Sutai could understand that - she was weak and needy. “I think those important people, they appreciate your protection and your concern for them. You really must care about them, Mister Michel, if you’re staying strong in order to help and teach them. That’s very kind of you, I think.” Sutai’s concern for the person described as shattered twice and poorly glued back together, coupled with Michel’s statement of getting his way, showed plainly on her face. “I’m very sorry for your friend, Mister Michel. It must be very hard to be so… fragile? I mean, I am too! Sometimes I’m too scared to power up, but I try anyway. There’s so very many scary things in the world, things that the best of police officers and government officials can’t arrest or make laws to stop. Sometimes, Destiny City is a very scary place.” With a decisive nod, the Squire beamed warm happiness as she usually did. “But… it’s just a little bit safer with you around, isn’t it, Mister Michel?”
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Posted: Fri May 19, 2017 7:27 pm
Michel was quiet for a moment and then shrugged. “Depends on what side you’re on.”
It was safer for Order, though. He wasn’t going to go around, beating the s**t out of some unfortunate Senshi. In this new life, he was going to do things differently.
He flashed a quick grin and reach out to ruffle her hair just slightly. “I don’t think you’re as fragile as you think you are. I don’t get that impression from you. My guy,” he shrugged and chewed on his lip for a short moment. “He won’t even go outside anymore. But we’re gonna keep working on that.”
He couldn’t let him miss out on the rest of his life.
Michel didn’t exactly know how all of this was supposed to work, but it was probably good that he ran into Sutai. She seemed trustworthy, and maybe it was because of what he’d come from that he felt like he had to work extra hard to keep people like that safe. It was an odd sensation; he had always been about himself, but he’d changed so much. Partly because he didn’t like what he was turning into with the Negaverse—but he’d changed for them, too.
“I’ll tell you what, though. Maybe, if you’re ever feeling afraid but still want to power up, you let me know. I’m looking to get out more. If you need someone to have your back,” he shrugged, “I’ll be around.”
He was going to stay on the right path this time. Maybe make a difference.
For the better.
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Posted: Fri May 19, 2017 7:49 pm
The Squire giggled as her hair was ruffled. Sure, she was twenty-one years old, plenty old enough to drink and stay out all night partying if she decided to. But really, how could one be miserable while in a tutu? Sutai's outfit simply supplemented her naturally sunny disposition. Knowing Michel seemed to like her was icing on the cake. "Oh no! He doesn't go outside? Poor thing must be so scared. I can understand why - things can be scary out here. But.... you keep working with him, okay Mister Michel? I'll help too, if I can! I'm getting my signet ring soon, I think. I have to be brave and climb my mountain... but when I do, we can exchange messages!" The thought of having another Knight friend was a comforting one. "I promise to keep working too, Mister Michel. I'll keep on the lookout for you. You're very distinctive! I'm glad you don't mind having a companion in your travels. I'll bring some yummy food next time!" It was getting late, however, and she needed to get home in order to have enough sleep under her belt for her work the next day. Trotting away, Sutai turned to call out to Michel before disappearing. "I hope you like curry~!"
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