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 Posted: Tue Aug 22, 2017 6:11 pm
It had been a while since the battle between the Negaverse and the White Moon Court for Scholomance. For Ptolemy, one of the few Dark Mirror Court members who had been present, it had been his first real experience regarding the animosity between the two other, opposing factions. Though he had aided the White Moon Court's cause, both sides had ended up assisting him with his injuries one way or another once the fight had subsided. He had been enormously grateful to them both, but the event had only made him wonder more than ever if it was possible for the two sides to ever be at peace with each other.
One of the Eternal White Moon Senshi who had been at the forefront of the fighting and at Scholomance' side had also been the one to wrap Ptolemaeus' wound with a magic ribbon she had obtained from a cosmos knight. The Dark Mirror Senshi had discovered through the Saturn Knight that her name was Scylla and that she actually had been present for the creation of his court. Prior to the Dark Mirror Court, there had supposedly been something called the Blood Moon Court - a court Ptolemaeus was intensely curious about.
As he sought information on both his own court and this other that seemed to be related to it, the tall teen finally decided to seek the Eternal Sailor Scylla out. He was a little stronger since she had last seen him - a Super rather than just a basic beginning senshi - and a little wiser, so he thought if she tried to explain things to him, at least he wouldn't be completely clueless. Also, he hoped she had forgotten or at least forgiven the fact that he had been associating with the Negaverse upon their last encounter. Thankfully, she had seemed civil enough to tolerate Huntite and even seemed protective of Ptolemy rather than angry with him, so he wasn't too worried.
Though he didn't have access to the same senshi database that the White Moon Senshi did, the teen did have the thank-you note that she had personally delivered to him one evening while he'd been out on patrol. He'd asked Scholomance where he might have been able to find her, but the knight wouldn't tell. Instead, he'd offered to find her for him - with Scylla's permission, of course - but Ptolemy hadn't wanted to put him through the trouble. So, instead, the Super Senshi had waited a few hours each night at the spot that Scylla had given him the note several months ago, hoping she might happen upon him once more. It might have been a shot in the dark, but it was all he had, and if she'd found him there before, why not again?Infinities ((Hope this works! Please let me know if there's anything I need to change~!))
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Posted: Wed Aug 23, 2017 5:28 pm
Being told that a Dark Mirror senshi was looking for her wasn't on the top of Jada's list of 'Things She Wanted To Hear' to be frank. It wasn't near the middle, and was so far on the bottom, the only thing that might be lower- well. Needless to say, she was glad that she asked which of them was looking for her, because otherwise it might not have turned out so well for anyone. But she remembered Ptolemaus; she remembered the names of everyone who had come to their aid that night against the Negaverse. The night would have ended with tragedy, but for each and every person who had stepped up to fight and risk themselves for a total stranger.
She'd not heard about him since the night she gave him the Thank-you card; he had left with the Negaverser, but she had known he was alive from that meeting. She'd seen him since then, she thought- had he been in the chaos with the greater youma? Not at the mirror wraith, though the wraith had been... the horror of what she'd seen still choked her up. Regardless- the fact he was looking for her now meant a chance for her to repay some small piece, perhaps, of the debt she owed. Jada liked to pay her debts. It took her longer to find him than she had thought it might; she came back to this spot rarely, and wandered around far more than she probably should, if she wanted to be easy to find.
She could have had someone else set up the meeting, and in retrospect that might have been the wiser course. Just how long had they been bouncing around each other? It was a stroke of luck that she thought she could see him there, the feel of the Chaos aura almost pushing her in the other direction.
"Fancy meeting you here!" she said instead, approaching the other senshi, smile guarded but still at least lukewarm. "I should have thought this would be a good meeting place. You look well, Ptolemaus."
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Posted: Thu Aug 24, 2017 8:22 pm
Though he'd hardly dared to hope that the Order energy signature he'd sensed approaching belonged to the person he sought, the sound of the woman's voice caused his expression to brighten as he looked up to see her. "Scylla! I'm so glad you came." He offered her an elaborate bow, though it seemed more playful than formal. "I am well, thank you. I hope you've been the same." Straightening up from his bow, he continued, "I wanted to talk, but I didn't have any way to contact you, so waiting around here was the best thing I could think of. Well, Scholomance offered to try to contact you for me, but I didn't want to trouble him or you unnecessarily. It wasn't exactly an urgent matter I wanted to discuss." The young man gestured to a bench on the sidewalk. "It'll probably take a while, though, so you might want to have a seat for this."
He ran a hand through his dark, wavy hair, pushing his hood back in the process, as he tried to think of where to start. "Ever since I was awakened as a Dark Mirror Senshi, I've been trying to find out all that I could about my court. There seemed precious few I could ask, however, and even with all that Prince Remarque knew, there were still a lot of things that even he didn't have the answers to." Ptolemy tilted his head to look up at the stars, his dark eyes distant. "Then I heard that there had been certain White Moon Senshi who had been present to witness the creation of our court - that there were things they knew about it that even the majority of Dark Mirror Senshi didn't know, such as how or why it came to be. Remarque told me what he could, but he was only able to tell me the story from his perspective, complete with his biases, unconscious and not."
With a soft sigh, he unceremoniously plopped onto the sidewalk bench and leaned forward so he could drape his arms across each of his knees. "That's not his fault, of course. He's only human like the rest of us. But I had hoped, if possible, to hear your side of the story in order to get a more complete picture about what actually transpired and for what reasons." Turning her way, his lips curved in a gentle smile as he said, "I've also heard that you might be able to tell me about something called the Blood Moon Court, which I'm eager to understand. Would you be so kind as to indulge me?" His shoulders rolled back in a small shrug. "I'm afraid I don't have anything to offer in exchange for your information, though, except a listening ear and my undivided attention."
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Posted: Sat Sep 02, 2017 10:19 am
Oh- his playful bow drew a laugh, and she replied with an easy curtsy of her own. Years of practicing for her debut still paid off, even when she rarely had to show those skills anymore- it was easier as a senshi, she suspected. Would Jada be able to pull it off? Maybe she should widen her exercise plan away from just jogging. "I've been good enough," she assured him when she was back up. "As for me, it is never a problem." she owed him one. "And if Scholomance makes an offer, I wouldn't- don't worry about putting him out. He's a friend of mine, contacting me wouldn't have been difficult for him." She was just a phone call away, civilian or powered. "I like company- especially company that isn't trying to kill me."
Scylla clicked her way over to the bench, taking a seat and trying to make herself comfortable. Public benches weren't designed for comfort, but she'd been getting used to it. Her bow strings made an excellent cushion, placed carefully. It took Ptolemaus a moment to get to his request, and when he did, she could almost feel her spine straightening, her shoulders tightening. She owed him one, she reminded herself. Though, information wasn't how he intended her to pay back that debt.
"Requiem. Gaia. Leto. They were all there to know the root, if they are alive and accessible to you. MuCephei too, I think? Ares, of course, though I hear she abandoned the mess she made. I've told Acubens the story before- that conversation didn't go well. The truth as I see it wasn't something that she wanted to hear." she clenched her hands together, leaned in. "There are others of the side of Order who remember. Others in the Negaverse, too." Why had he asked her? "I'm not proud of all the things we did. But I'm not White Moon. Not really." she still had the tattoo Gunn had given her, still had the scars she'd gotten as part of the Blood Moon.
She licked her lips, cleared her throat. "Whatever the Dark Mirror is now, it grew out of the pieces of the Blood Moon Court. You'll learn about one if you learn about the other." her inhale was shuddered. "I'd be willing to indulge you, I suppose. If you're willing to listen. It isn't a pretty story. There is no glamorous end."
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Posted: Wed Sep 06, 2017 7:33 pm
Ptolemaeus nodded at the eternal's mention of Scholomance being her friend and it being easy for him to contact her. "That's something we have in common, then; liking company," he commented with his usual grin. He was pleased she seemed to feel at ease enough to sit as he had suggested, but it was hard for him to miss the tension that was suddenly apparent in every line of her body once he had spoken his purpose for wanting to meet her. Had he asked more of her than he'd realized?
As she listed names, the super senshi recognized that Scylla was telling him who he could go to for information other than her. Substitutes. It only made him more curious than ever, however, why she seemed so reluctant to reveal her side of the story. "...I'm afraid I'm not familiar with the majority of those names as belonging to senshi, much less where to find their owners," he said, genuine apology in his tone. "Remarque did mention Ares, but yes, he said she's been long gone. I'm sorry this is the second time you're being asked to recount the story from a Dark Mirror Senshi."
He wondered how Acubens had reacted. He knew she could behave rashly sometimes, but what could have stirred her up about events that had happened in the past? Even if he'd thought to ask her and she'd consented to tell him what Scylla had said, he doubted it would have matched what Scylla could have told him first hand. Dark eyes watched the eternal senshi's hands clench. "...Not White Moon?" he repeated faintly. What could that have meant? Her energy signature seemed as much of the Order as any other White Moon Senshi. Unless she meant something else by it.
Ahh...that was what he had been waiting for - information about just what the Blood Moon Court was and its connection to the Dark Mirror Court. But again, there was a certain reluctance to Scylla's words.
"I'm sorry to ask if it pains you to tell it," the tattooed senshi told her. "But if you're willing, I'll do whatever possible to make it up to you. Listening is the very least I can promise. As for not being pretty or glamorous, I never had such expectations. This is a war we're all mixed up in, after all, and I've never heard of a war being either. I only seek the truth."xInfinities ((OOPS I'm so sorry! XP This is Kitomyx! Accidentally posted with a different account! If you'd like me to delete this post and re-post, please let me know! Otherwise I'm just going to keep this as it is, I suppose...))
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Posted: Sun Sep 17, 2017 5:18 pm
She inhaled slowly, through her nose, and tried to settle the shuddering in her gut. "Company is always on point. I tend to seek it out when I can. Being a senshi is a terribly lonely life, when you can't tlk to anyone about it. Never knowing who you can trust?" It was painful. "The story as I see it is... different than others will. That's always the case, of course." Ares would tell the story of how she was betrayed, leaving out that it was a rule she had set in place. Gaia would probably say it was solidarity with one of the few people she had left in this world. Leto? Who knew.
"I shouldn't have expected you would be familiar with them," she said after another moment. "It is an old story, after all, and older characters in it. Most of the players are long gone, and I'm not sure how relevant it isto the current political spectrum. I may be the only one still-" The only one still bitter and broken enough to care. "Well." The story wasn't going to tell itself.
"A long time ago in a much less tired Destiny City, a group of Order-aligned senshi got together. Some of them, the remnants of senshi and a knight from a parallel world, who had lost their Princess and their Prince; others, Senshi who felt out of place in the ******** that was Order at the time. Some people clung to the idea that there was a Princess who would return to help us. Others thought they needed to help themselves. This group decided to distance themselves from the 'White Moon' since some of their members weren't from our world at all. They formed the Blood Moon Court. And they were the ones who were going to get their hands dirty doing what had to be done."
She leaned back. "I signed on for the long haul. I was recruited by one of my best friends. I'd known her before she became Ares. How could I not join up, try and help her? I watched her change, clung to her side, justified the violence as related to the trauma she was going through. Get rid of chaos, get revenge for someone she had cared so deeply for...." she puffed out air. "The ISS turned our losses into martyrs.But we got cakes when we killed Negaversers," she recalled with a sad laugh, "Some people lived for that celebration of their devotion to the cause. My one and only cake tasted like ashes. I'd killed to save a court member, and while I didn't regret it, I did. Does that make sense?"
Fallon hadn't understood why she hadn't been happy.
"Sometimes I don't know if she remembers me, now." her voice was soft, wistful. Leto had looked at her. Looked through her. But Leto had moved beyond the recruit who needed a desperate Eternal to bloody her hands to help her. Princess Leto, now.
"We did things that were.... horrific. And I spoke against some of it, got demoted, lost my grasp on my friend, and watched it devolve. I- well. It doesn't matter now. We no longer killed in defense. It ws killing for glory. We'd had a rule- never let a civilian die. Protect them if you could. The rule was broken by Ares. We punished her the way we were supposed to- by taking her henshin pen. Not kind, to someone who had given up everything in their civilian life, but if we were going to pretend it wasn't becoming a monarchy...."
I have been living a lie since I set foot in this place, ever since I was ripped from the Black Kingdom.
"When she came back, the woman we'd known was gone. Copprupted. She abandoned parallels who couldn't, or wouldn't, go, took who she wanted from the ones present. Abandoned the rest. She built a Court all about revenge. From the night the Queen of the Parallels died, to what the Blood Moon became, and to the night Ares threw her allies through the mirror and created the first of the Dark Mirror senshi. It was all about revenge, and she said it herself- she did it in the name of Chaos."
By the end of it, Scylla was gripping her own arms over her chest, looking straight ahead at nothing. carefully not at him. Carefully neutral. None of the rage and aggression that had been pulled out before.
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Posted: Wed Nov 01, 2017 9:02 pm
Kit nodded at the mention of how being a senshi meant a lonely life, though his loneliness extended beyond that. He had no trouble himself talking to or trusting anyone. It was his incapacity to feel emotion as others did that made him unable to bridge certain gaps. However, he wanted to try to understand the person whose point of view he was soliciting, so as usual, he nodded and agreed to encourage her to continue.
Though he had discussed the Blood Moon Court prior with Kallichore, he had wanted a first-hand, raw account from Scylla herself, who seemed to hold the court so close to her heart. There had been several questions he'd had that Kallichore hadn't known the answers to and he'd hoped to learn said answers directly from the Senshi of the Kraken's mouth.
"The...ISS?" Ptolemy repeated, wondering if there was something he had missed. Kallichore hadn't said a word about any such group. He wondered what the letters stood for.
Regret...he thought he knew enough about regret to sympathize, if not empathize. "You didn't regret having to do what was necessary to serve your cause and your beliefs, but you regret that killing was the action that was necessary," he reasoned. "Is that right?"
His brows furrowed lightly as they drew together. "You don't know if who remembers you?" he asked. "...The court member you saved?"
Ptolemy was interested to know that not all the Blood Moon Court was as blood-thirsty or even okay with killing as he'd thought, but he supposed he should have known better than to think that from the start. Everyone who had been a part of that court, even if they claimed to all serve the same cause for the same purpose, would have had different morals and different comfort levels when it came to carrying out their unified will. Naturally, some would have found it much tougher to commit murder and other crimes than others even for the sake of their court.
It sounded as though Ares, Leto, or someone else close to Scylla had been more willing to perform less morally sound things than Scylla would abide. Perhaps it led to the loss of her friendship or friendships and that was why she was so afraid to trust now.
Ahh...so that was why Ares had her henshin pen taken away, Ptolemy realized, having recalled Kallichore mention that fact but not having known the reason behind it. She had killed a civilian. I suppose even the Blood Moon Court had their boundaries.
"What do you mean by 'someone who had given up everything in their civilian life'?" he asked. It sounded like that had been an especially tough decision to make, especially since even to Ptolemy, it had sounded like Ares had almost become the equivalent of a royal to the Blood Moon Court before she had been punished. He wondered if Scylla had played a direct role in making the decision to take away her pen.
"Came back?" the super senshi repeated. "From where? Were all the parallel senshi part of the Blood Moon Court?" He frowned, trying to make sense of things. "Didn't...she help make the Blood Moon Court to try to fight Chaos?"
When Ptolemy looked up, though, he recognized Scylla's posture and expression. He understood that behavior; he'd seen it before. Without a word,
he closed the distance between them and embraced her with both arms. His hold was firm but gentle - gentle enough for her to break from if she so chose.Infinities ((I'm sorry this took so long. I'm also doing an rp with Ptolemy in which Kallichore just told him a bunch of stuff about the Dark Mirror Court and the Blood Moon Court, so I wasn't sure if I should have placed this one before or after the other. If think if it's alright with you, I'm going to put it after that one. There's also an rp Ptolemy has with Leto right now that takes place ICly after this, so he can ask Leto if she remembers Scylla.))
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Posted: Sat Nov 04, 2017 5:26 pm
There were questions, and Scylla half-heard, half-catalogued them. "Um- the ISS was the Inner Sanctum. They led the Blood Moon." There were no secrets left to the missing society, she supposed. It had been dismantled from within and without many years past. "It was a council. The leaders." Mostly all the parallels, with a couple others, like Gunn and Birhan. And yet Ares had set herself to the faux role of Blood Moon Queen, playing the part of leader so well that she began to believe it. And then became it, Scylla supposed. How they had gotten from start to end was just... There were so many things she hadn't been privy to, and so many places that she should have stepped in that she never had. So many opportunities to protest- she had been nothing more than a Merc, though, and while on the surface her words would have been heard... by that time she'd already been losing Fallon to the rage and loss of the soul that was inside her.
"I- You're right." It was close enough, anyways. "At the time, it was something we needed. In some ways, I think it still is. People think they can stop the killing and the corruption through peace. But there are always people who won't be willing to honor that. There's always going to be a darkness clawing at the human soul, and I don't regret fighting the people who give in to it." she regretted the blood on her hands. She regretted the sanctimonious, privileged pacifists. She regretted years of fear. She regretted... well. There was too much. "Yes. The one I saved. She was one of the ones Ares... acquired." Corrupted. Destroyed. Certainly promoted. Princess Leto, now. Was there a hint of jealousy at the other woman having acquired such power? If so, she certainly didn't envy the cost.
"From what I saw, she lived as her senshi self." Scylla's fingers were curled around her elbows. "Oh, she survived as an every day human, enjoyed the little things. Spent time with her friends, her family. But surviving isn't living. The senshi became who she was, and the civilian face was the mask and the facade. Oh, perhaps-" Perhaps Jada'd been wrong. Perhaps... "I'm sorry, I'm not giving you a very unbiased version of-"
Arms, wrapping around her, startled her, and she almost bumped them in the face with her head as she tried to look up. But... she was torn, between the discomfort of being held by someone that every instinct cried out was wrong, and her actual need to just... be comforted. Such a child, Jada. The small senshi sighed, letting the other hold her, not bothering to disguise the anxiety and sorrow that shook her frame.
"As far as I know, all the parallel survivors were part of the BMC, yes." or most of them, anyways. The ones awake. "The Blood Moon was founded to fight Chaos. But anger can darken any heart, and it's all the easier when it is already tainted. Feeling betrayed, and... I suppose she wanted to hurt us in return." But it was only a supposition. She'd not spoken to her after that night. Not her, not Leto, not Requiem, not any of the ones who had gone, willingly or stolen.
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Posted: Wed Apr 11, 2018 11:30 pm
If the ISS - the Inner Sanctum - was a council, that must have referred to the judiciary council that Kallichore had mentioned the Blood Moon having. She herself hadn't been a part of it, though, from what she'd said, and she'd only referred to it as 'the Council'. Ptolemaeus recalled that Ares had been a part of the Inner Sanctum along with others Kallichore had named such as 'Albali' and 'Birhan Isat' and now Scylla's mention of a 'Gunn' and 'Birhan'. It was these others, then, who must have decided to take away Ares' henshin pen.
The hooded super thought he knew what the eternal meant when she said that there would always be darkness found 'clawing' at the human soul. He thought he understood her perspective and didn't blame her for the actions she had taken. He wondered, however, just how much she still might have blamed herself for the blood she had spilled.
When he moved to hold her, he felt her start before looking up and sensed her inner conflict by her hesitation. Was it him; that he was practically a stranger imposing with such an intimate behavior? Perhaps partly, but it seemed to be more of something else. He was familiar enough with that sort of reaction to recognize that this was different.
Ptolemy remembered one of his fellow court members, Sinope, once mentioning one time that a White Moon Senshi had told him that his energy signature was painful. That people on the side of chaos had auras that felt prickly like cacti. Ptolemy hadn't really asked another Order members about it, though, and he since hadn't heard others bring it up, he'd wondered if maybe some were more sensitive than others or perceived the signatures in a different way. Either that or they had just kept quiet about it and endured whatever sensation it might have given them. Could that have been part of the cause for Scylla's behavior?
"I'm sorry," he apologized, dropping his gaze as one ashamed. "I rarely ask before I touch. If you're uncomfortable, whether with me or my energy or anything else, you only need say so and I'll back off." He resolved to remain as he was in the meantime, hoping he could stave off at least some of her negative emotions as best he could. It wasn't purely out of selflessness that he did so, however, for he too relished in intimately close proximity of another warm human being.
"You're giving me your version, which is all I could and would ask of you," he murmured into her dark tresses, his voice as steady and soothing as he could manage. "Don't worry about biases. Your own personal experiences, opinions, and conjectures are just as important to me as the facts."
Without conscious thought, a hand of his flew up to delicately dissuade a few strands of Scylla's hair from obscuring his view of her countenance. "...Would it be too much to ask who it was you saved?" Ptolemy inquired after a time of contemplation. "Did she change when Ares 'acquired' her? I know she must have looked different corrupting into a Dark Mirror Senshi, but I mean if she changed in personality. In her soul." He had been thinking back to Kallichore's mention of the mirror coating found on Dark Mirror Senshi starseeds and it occured to him that said coating might have had an impact on their very souls if that was, indeed, what starseeds were supposed to represent.
He accepted the answers given his questions about the parallel senshi and the Blood Moon Court, acknowledging them with a few nods. A melancholy smile began to curve his lips when she again spoke of the darkness of negative emotions and its tainting of hearts. At length, he opened those lips to speak again.
"Assuming that Ares was one of the parallel senshi you speak of, for that's what I've been told, what surprises me more than her devotion to her senshi life is that she was able to adapt here as a civilian at all." A finger absently twirled a thin lock of Scylla's hair about it, his dark gaze unfocused. "With the despair of never being able to return to her original world, I can see why she might have turned to spending most of her time as her senshi self for comfort.
"While I can understand the Inner Sanctum's decision, it must have been terribly painful to have that part of her forcefully taken away. It sounds to me like living as a senshi was one of the few familiar things left to remind her of her original home. Without her pen, she must have had few other connections to that place. And those connections, those people, had played their part in cutting her off from her main escape by 'betraying' her."
With a weary sigh, he conceded, "You're right. Survival isn't living and darkness can be found everywhere. I'll bet you're right about her having felt betrayed, but Kallichore also mentioned another feeling that she thought must have played a big role in the creation of my court. One that I believe you and I know well."
Ptolemaeus uttered a bitter laugh and his shoulders slumped. "Loneliness leaves such a void in one's heart. It's a void people seem willing to do almost anything to fill. Stuffing that hole with empty pleasures, sweet nothings, temporary indulgences...even chaotic energy seems better than staying a hollow shell." He exhaled the sorrow of the night air. "She may have wanted to hurt you and the rest of the Blood Moon Court, yes. But isn't it also possible that loneliness played a role there?
"After all, if she saw her senshi life as her real life and she could only be a part of the court while a senshi, being stripped of her pen would mean not only denying her who she was as a parallel being in a sense, but also denying her the ability to fight alongside, protect, and spend time with the people she cared about in the court. It wouldn't have been the same as a civilian."Infinities ((Please let me know if I messed anything up. OTL I'm so sorry it's been so long!))
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Posted: Sat May 19, 2018 6:56 pm
I'm sorry. The voice was gentle, as jaggedly wrong the aura felt, and Jada allowed herself to consider for a moment if she should push them away. She wasn't afraid of the other trying to corrupt her- it would probably take a bit more out of the Dark Mirror senshi to try and pull a stunt like that than it would to just leave her be. So she tried to force her narrow shoulders to relax, force her breathing to even and to push the discomfort back into its little box. Unlike the vehemence of Acubens' reaction to her story, the way the other woman had treated the darkness from which they had come as something like a creation story to her religion, seemingly insisting that the Chaos-sprung power was a blip in their narrative, Ptolemaus seemed to be listening with the air of an academic, pulled back from personal feelings and allowing Scylla to work through her own. It let her relax further still- the lack of judgment to her part in the horror. But there was what still felt like so much of it. Scylla was... Still proud of what they had wanted to do. Her Court had been willing to dirty their hands and pay the price for victory. But little by little, they had perhaps forgotten what they were paying for. Forgotten that some means didn't justify the ends.
Sometimes carrying the burden of an upsetting truth, and hiding it, is actually a gift you give to someone else. You bear that burden, so they don't have to. It was a quote from something, probably a book, but thinking of Acubens and her horror and denial, that those people she respected couldn't have come from that... Was hiding that night the gift that the former Blood Moon members had given to the innocents brought into the Dark Mirror? Why make them carry the burden of something they'd taken no part in? We don't belong to the chaos. Acubens had sounded so confident, even as she wielded the power to drain the life from others, even as her aura writhed with the darkness.
Ptolemy's hand trailed through her curls, and Scylla huffed out a small, sigh before she could catch herself. She liked people playing with her hair- it was relaxing, a source of good memories. Good memories weren't what she wanted right now, but Scylla still leaned her head heavily into the Dark Mirror's fingers. "She was my friend, even before Ares became part of her. When she was still-" Fallon. "Being lonely was the choice she made." Oh, Jada hadn't been the best of friends, awkward and confused on how to deal with this alien warrior looking out at her from Fallon's eyes. Yet... perhaps they- Ares and Fallon- had tried to bridge the gap in the only way they knew how, battle-hardened Ares caring for her people with her very Fallon congratulations on the murder cakes.
She huffed out a laugh that had tears springing to her eyes, and Scylla leaned her head back to stare up at the sky. "She wasn't gone, not at first. But I watched her slip away and I didn't know how to catch her. I'm not sure I would if it was happening again, today. I suppose it wouldn't matter, though, if she didn't even want to be caught." She wasn't the only one who was lonely. In a few short months, Jada had lost Audrey, the BMC, her family. Her ability to have a family. She'd taken a life and seen the price she'd paid come to nothing, leaving her with only jagged scars that hadn't healed properly.
Who she had saved was a question Ptolemaus had asked that Scylla had left alone. She thought on it now, in silence, the memory of blood on her hands dripping through her mind, twining with Acubens' voice, repeating - We're a family. Home and choice. And god if it didn't sting. "Who I saved doesn't matter." The Leto Scylla had killed to save had died anyways. "It didn't last for long."
Maybe none of it mattered. Maybe her heart just kept beating a dead horse. Maybe her unfinished business would never go resolved.
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Posted: Sun Jun 24, 2018 11:55 am
As aware of physical sensation as he was, Ptolemy recognized not only Scylla's discomfort but her efforts to dispell it. Perhaps it was asking too much of her too soon, especially when his intention had been the opposite of his actions' effects. Furthermore, the questions he'd had for her and the stories he'd asked her to recount had obviously taken their own toll. What an awful, helpless feeling; yearning to provide solace for someone, but only being a detriment to them instead.
The sigh that escaped the eternal senshi took the super by surprise. Just as he had been about ready to draw back, she leaned into him. After a moment's hesitation, he exhaled a contented sigh of his own as he continued to drink in as much of her tale as she was able to get out.
What Ptolemaeus suspected to be forced laughter reminded him of the grin he attempted to maintain almost always and he guessed Scylla had just experienced a particularly painful train of thought. Sometimes it seemed like the way to stay strong was to feign being okay to the world when it was most painful to do so. Like if one pretended long enough, they could make it come true; but if not, at least no one else would be able to detect weakness.
"Who I saved doesn't matter." The tall sailor scout glanced at her as she gazed heavenward. "It didn't last for long."
"It may matter more than you realize," he answered softly, threading his digits more deeply through her thick locks. "People can change. If they can change to become one way, they can certainly change back. There's always a way if you have the will to perceive it. At least that's what I think."
He tenderly kissed the side of her head before moving to murmur near her ear. "I just had one more thing to ask you. If you don't want to answer, that's fine; you've given me more than enough information already and I'm grateful for every word of it.
"There's just one thing I don't understand. The parallel senshi could only have come to this world as senshi, right? So how could you have known Ares before she was Ares?"
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Posted: Wed Oct 10, 2018 6:55 pm
She adjusted her weight, tugging on her hair before tucking it behind her ear, ticking almost nervously as she tried to adjust herself, and regain personal control over an emotional situation.It had the effect of pulling her somewhat away from the Dark Mirror- Dark Moon- and allowing her to use that small distance as a barrier as emotional as physical, as he murmured his question close to her hair. The feel of his lips on the side of her head lingered, more comforting than she would likely care to admit, and she licked her lips, considering her answer.
"If it matters, it probably isn't in the way you're thinking," she said after a moment. Jada wasn't certain that Ptolemaeus would appreciate that she regretted saving one of his leaders- Scylla herself certainly wouldn't have liked hearing it when she had a leader. But then, she had thought herself close to hers, and she didn't know the relationship dynamics of Leto's new 'home'. Her scalp tingled, with the memory of hands threading comfortably through her curls, and for a moment she wished that they could rewind to the comfort of that initial moment. But time marched on, ever mercilessly.
"I'll answer. You've listened to the rest of them I'm willing to give you." she paused, trying to remember what she could remember. From Zirconia, and from Ares, from snippets with Dylan and Johnny. Things... pieced together, more than uttered outright, back then. And now... "The... original ones. Gaia, Ares, Laocoon, Zirconia, and others. They came to this world as senshi, or cava- knights- but they didn't bring their bodies with them." she paused, her bright purple eyes sliding over to him, searching in the shadows to see if he connected what she was trying to explain without her trying to actually give the science. "I honestly don't... understand all of it, I guess. And it has been a long time now, to tear things apart and try and put it back together. They weren't aliens, or anything, but we called them Parallels. Just like you can power down and become someone else, they were someone else."
Her bare shoulder lifted, fell. "I thought I knew the Ares who wasn't Ares. She was my friend. And it isn't Ares I mourn and miss." It took saying the words to connect it, she supposed. That it wasn't the warrior who had given herself to Chaos, that she missed and regretted, but the girl who had lurked inside, and whose picture still stayed in her nightstand, the night of her debut. Audrey, Fallon, and Jada, smiling into the camera, innocent and alive.
Kitomyx Sorry for the delay <3 Life's eaten my face off lately.
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