Welcome to Gaia! ::

Being new to this ‘page of insert planet here’ thing, Pythia knew that there were a lot of things she wouldn’t fully understand for a while. Every time she powered up would be a school day, full of lessons that she would have to take to heart, if she chose to accept this life. And every time she allowed that power to take over… well. Today, the redhead had learned something new, and it was the kind of lesson that there might not be any going back from. Thanks to a black-eyed stranger, Imbrium had learned about something called a starseed. Such a small, inconsequential-seeming thing. If she had seen someone carrying it, without the rest, then the young woman would have thought nothing more of it than being an odd little jewel, glowing in the dark. There was nothing to be seen in it that indicated what it truly was- The soul of a person, the essence of their being. She had never thought that something so vital and important might be able to be housed in a small rock not much bigger than Pythia’s thumb, if even that. There was nothing about it that told her just how much value it actually contained. "You can live without it for a time. Hours, days, maybe a week. But your body only clings to life through a beating heart and breathing lungs. One day, that clockwork gives out." Whoever the half-man half-monster had been, he had been explicit enough in his warnings to her.

They spilled through her mind now, as she stared at the small little jewel in her hand, watching a stranger’s life flickering in her grasp. Such a small thing- and she would have to work fast in order to take it back to the child who the strange, monstrous boy had taken it from. Susan, with her bat-wielding father, and the mother who had wailed her name so impotently. "I buy my days with other people's years,” he had told her, and yet he had handed her the jewel anyways. Given her the most damnable of favors. He had given her choice, and the weighty responsibility of saving a life. "What does it mean to you to save this life?" A question she hadn’t had an answer for, when she had first been asked. She still didn’t now, even as she held the life in her hand. How could she? Pythia wasn’t a hero. She craved strength for her own sake, not for the sake of others. Other people mattered little beyond the impact that they had on her own life. "You have a lot to learn. It's best you start with this." Best she start with the realization of what it seemed to be that was expected of her by so many. The few people she had met seemed so disappointed in her for her disinterest, but none had given her a tool to so easily study her ‘responsibilities.’ People… weren’t real, until they affected her personally.

The redheaded Page pushed to her feet, moving back in the direction from which she had come, her steps feeling unusually slow and heavy as she went. Her shoulder, where the bat had bitten her, was already beginning to itch, and she rubbed at the wounds idly, trying to use the pads of her finger in lieu of the nail. She would have to clean them out quickly, but you weren’t supposed to scratch… infection might set in, and lord knew that massive demon bat infection probably wouldn’t be the most pleasant thing to try and deal with...not to mention it probably wouldn’t be easy to try and explain to whatever doctor she ended up going to for medical assistance. But it wasn’t her own medical issues that were the problem at the moment.

As she approached the house, from which she and the half-youma had been chased by the father and his flimsy, limping baseball bat, she could see that the trio still sat there, framed in doleful yellow light. The mother, her daughter’s head in her lap, the splayed hair; hands, stroking their way through brightly dyed curls. The father’s hand on his daughter’s shoulder, the other on his wife’s arm. Tear-streaked cheeks. "Drop it on her chest… it'll sink in. She'll wake…” a simple enough instruction to follow, if given the chance.

Her approach was silent, and it was not until her heel clacked against the step that the parents looked up at her. The father rose, aggression and sorrow at war in his husky frame, the bat gripped in white-knuckled fingers. “I told you to get out of here!” his roar was weak, despair reasonably victorious given the situation, and his eyes were rimmed red. Behind him, the mother still held Susan close, pulling her closer still as though she thought that Imbrium was here to somehow finish the job. And perhaps she was. If she gave them hope, and this failed, it would be the cruelest thing she could have done to them.

“You also asked what happened to your daughter.” Pythia tried to keep her voice holding at least some semblance of neutrality buried amid the haughty dominance of her insecurity. “I’m here to see if I can help.” she pushed past him, ignoring the bat and its dangers, ignoring the way the mother recoiled, still clutching her spawn close to her breast. In her hand, the starseed pulsed warmly, and she pulled in a breath of cold air through her nose. Her clenched fist opened, the gem within sparkling; and she knelt, tilting her hand to let it fall towards the young woman’s chest.

It was odd. The stone fell, and in the breath between one moment and the next, it was gone. Susan’s chest rose in an inhale, and the gem fell into it; as her chest lowered, there was nothing left behind. That young, smooth face twitched, and the pale death underscoring her lips seemed to shift to healthy, living warmth. Eyelids fluttered, and both parents gave a sob of relief.

“Her parents will laud you. It's the start of your fame, Imbrium." Fame. The redhead rose, stepped back. Teal eyes watched four loving hands caress their daughter’s arms, kisses pepper hair, the confused crinkle of a daughter’s brow. Pythia enjoyed the idea of being lauded, praised, adored… but for this? The relieved sobbing of a parent, the confusion of a child who could remember nothing beyond- a boy, there was-

Pythia stepped back, one, then another. They did not see her, and in this moment, that was fine. Was this what they fought for? "Your kind needs to know- for every attempt you thwart, the cost rises higher. The attempts grow greater. There can't be an armistice."

Her brow furrowed, teeth digging into her lip, and she stepped back into darkness. When the parents turned, there was no one to thank.