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 Posted: Sun Nov 19, 2017 7:09 pm
Scholomance did not often trip, but when he did, he did so with aplomb. He tripped with such grandeur, in fact, that he overshot an entire fire escape only to clip his head on the edge of one of the railings before falling legs-first into a half-full dumpster. And while the heaps of rotting vegetable and discarded food and tied-off trash bags provided ample cushioning for breaking his fall, they did nothing for his appearance or his uniform (or his state of mind). From there, he groaned at the lid that wavered precariously overhead.
From this position, staring at the evening sky framed by muck-ridden dumpster siding, Scholomance earned the rare opportunity to contemplate his life. And contemplate he did — Scholomance ruminated over the surfeit of bad decisions that led him to this point. From first awakening as a knight to meeting Alkaid to dating Gwen to making deals with the Negaverse, his knight career was comprised of a train wreck of bad decisions. He trusted too much in the Negaverse and his conniving ancestor, and trusted too little in the White Moon and the Knighthood. He trusted even less in himself, leading to the loss of his arm. And from then on, his life stagnated into a gentle dumpster fire.
An arm emerged, grasped the side of the dumpster, and pushed to haul himself out. He couldn't stand to stew in his own s**t anymore, not with his burning need to displace his self-loathing onto someone else's face.
But finding faces to which he could donate his self-loathing proved troublesome. As he righted himself and refreshed his uniform, he continued on a path along the back alleys that so seldom held youma or agents. Perhaps it was luck, or his presence actually mattered, but the streets felt fairly empty of late. And this proved a greater problem because, without company, his ruminations would pick up at blinding speed. He needed a target. Frowning, he leapt and crested a Verizon store.
Unless he was interested in leaving familiar grounds, though, where would he find one? AMItotic this turned out more tongue-in-cheek than i expected sorry
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Posted: Tue Dec 05, 2017 10:48 pm
What a night to be alive.
Zircon was, in her own way, celebrating. When she'd first been promoted to general, she'd been covetous of the news, as if telling the wrong person would reverse the magic or reveal some kind of mistake in the paperwork, sending her back to her proper place in the pecking order. But in the week following, she began to truly notice the change, mostly in the effortless nature of her connection to chaos. She rarely had to think of Metallia to feel her dark heartbeat --in fact, it was more often that it came to her without thinking at all, an itch in her fingertips and her chest to slough off the glamour of her civilian self and call to the power, be Zircon, command, revel, consume. The instinct ebbed and flowed and was comfortable like static in her veins. To spend eight hours each day as Suri was agony, knowing that any moment she could stop the aches in her bones and shakes in her fingers by accepting the siren call, but Suri did not survive for years on a lack of discipline. She was patient, she let the tension build, and when the school day was done she let herself tear free of the mundane, the thrill of chaos applicable even if she was only powering up to mill about the business district.
It left her with the sort of pent up energy that a good run would cure.
General Zircon did not run. She walked, stately and steady on the sidewalk, simply appreciating the fact that she could breathe. Just when she thought she might want to risk going for a jog, just around the block, just to the light post, she felt the brush of something Orderly and scowled. No matter her impulses, she would not risk showing the wretchedly awkward gait of her run to anyone with connections to the White Moon. Pausing between store fronts, her expression scrunched as she reached out with her senses, searching for a direction more specific than 'around' for the origin of this sickly clean signature. When she got a bearing, she looked for high ground and teleported up to a rooftop, where she could then see the swatch of purple from the next building over.
The heraldry was easy enough to pick out, as were the bones, but Zircon more clearly saw a styrofoam cup half full of water, seized by a sudden and retching thirst. She knew this knight--or had known him as a squire. They'd said a bunch of pretty words with her hands tied behind her back, and then Thraen got to her anyways. This Saturn knight, Scholomance, he'd left her to rot in a cell.
One of his sleeves waved uselessly after him, too fluid to hold substance.
Zircon teleported a second time to his rooftop, a decadent display of her power, and was struck by the smell of garbage. Her nose crinkled, perhaps from the smell, perhaps from the mix of dread and anger and morbid curiosity that fought for control of her words. What did she want to say? What could she even say? There were too many options, most pressingly the need to revel, to consume, but Zircon did not negotiate with her needs. She pursed her lips, choked it down. What she did not want was to provoke a fight without backup.
"Well, aren't you a sight," she finally croaked, inelegant and not nearly as casual as she'd wanted to sound, her eyes fixated on his empty sleeve and thinking about the metal below her left knee. She continued the visual assessment over the rest of him and found something wanting, then scoffed. "Is this how the White Moon treats neutral parties?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 09, 2017 10:09 am
A gunshot of auric energy rang out over his senses. The knight startled, a naked "<********>" lost to the air with aplomb. His heart railed desperately against his chest while he scanned gravel and tarmac and parapets for the source of the mile-wide beacon —
And there she was. Not-Schörl, not-Cinnabar. No, she was a general barely recognized from a forgettable time. He recalled her nonetheless — sitting in a chair, tied down, forced to parch her lips and throat. And they would ration water to her, or food, or beatings. Thraen was the one in charge of this one, if he remembered. And he had the audacity to strike a deal with her, to try to weasel his own information out of her unfortunate position. It never proceeded as planned, and now here she was, facing him down with a cold scowl that suggested she remembered just as well.
s**t. The knight froze shortly after calling his weapon to hand. Rage worked its molten fingers through his body, defrosting the joints, but fear held him steady.
She could kill him. She could teleport behind him and murder him.
But she spoke instead, and looked down on him for all she could afford. Was she always missing a leg? Fancy that, he couldn't remember. He doubted he would forget such a detail, however. Scholomance worked to unhinge his jaw enough to speak. "It's how the Negaverse treats neutral parties," he returned. "It's how they treat anyone with a shred of self-preservation." I'm half-surprised they didn't just kill her for losing a leg. Or youmafy her, I suppose. I'm certain they've got plenty of generals to mobilize these days, even after their impromptu pool party. But since she's still around as-is… She must be damned good at some part of her job.
Scholomance's reticence showed in the lines of his shoulders, the tautness of his neck. He kept his half-mask high on his face to prevent accidental expression beneath his eyes. He walked backward just enough to put her past striking distance. "But don't let me hold you up, General. I'm sure you have quite the busy day ahead of you. Starseeds to pull, skulls to crush. Probably some papers to push afterward. Trying to shoot me down would be a great waste of time."
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Posted: Mon Jan 15, 2018 8:47 am
Zircon studied the tightness of his body language, both naggingly familiar and alien without the context of his face to draw insight. She was no stranger to drawn shoulders, to a backwards shuffle, the knee-jerk pull for the weapon in his hand, but it was more a narrative she'd played the part of, not seen displayed on a fully decorated knight. There were few ways to interpret the signs, and often the simplest explanation was the truth--he was afraid. Of her? Perhaps.
It was a thrilling perhaps.
"Is that so?" Zircon hummed behind a thin-lipped smile, her eyes gliding over the empty sleeve once again. "I'm not surprised--the Negaverse doesn't take kindly to people who can't keep their promises." It was startling, to follow the jagged silhouette of his pauldrons to the sudden absense where his arm should be, but the general was fascinated by the gruesome lack all the same. It gave her the same feeling as when she ran her tongue over her broken tooth, before she'd gone and gotten veneers placed in. After consideration, Zircon supposed that was what generated her feverish interest--she'd taken strides to correct for her defects, but Scholomance was so brazen as to be caught in public with all his flaws on display. It was bold, if incredibly stupid.
"Don't sell yourself short. I don't even like crushing skulls," she continued, touching a finger to her chin. In spite of the stilted meter of her gait, she paced slowly at a respectable distance, something to distract from the terrible slippery feeling of his aura and how it clashed with the chaos under her skin. "I'd be much more interested in why you think you still have anything to gain by powering up, when you don't even have a cause to fight for."
Every part of his existence was an enigma, a puzzle she couldn't piece together. A knight with no love for the white moon, who bartered with the Negaverse and lost. Afraid, but not running. Still ever dismissive, even though she was pretty sure he was responsible for the garbage smell in the area. How did he tick, how did these parts come together to form a cohesive being? She had to know.
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Posted: Fri Jan 19, 2018 11:01 am
"Oh, come off it." Scholomance huffed, clearly tired of the line. "It wasn't about failing to keep promises. There wasn't much choice in it for me. Getting out alive doesn't always mean fighting the Negaverse." But such a notion was arguing with the wind — she had no interest in what they said. Negaverse agents never did. Standard protocol by now, he supposed.
His weapon sat coiled and waiting. Soaked in kinetic energy, he could whip it toward her false leg and catch it out from under her if he could reach her before she reacted. But agents were trained fighters, and he was a smarmy pawn shop owner. These two sides weren't terribly congruous on the battlefield.
But she prowled and preened and paced anyway. Little wastes of time. He considered summoning Zalmoxis and seting her to contend with a constructed horse. Perhaps that would buy him time, or she'd know to attack the knight instead. Really, all of it came down to a teleport and a stolen starseed. She'd only need to catch him once. How were they supposed to win? Was transcendence their only shot? And Scholomance knew nothing of what that entailed —
"I have enough of a cause," he returned, paralleling her pace. He stopped when he reached the parapet, however, and crowned a bone heel on its surface. "It's a very simple cause right now. I have business with Schörl and Cinnabar, so if you see them, do let them know I'm looking for them. I'd hate for them to miss the memo." Like they hadn't already. I haven't seen either of them in months, and I'm not even sure I'd have the guts to deal with them on sight. She's right about lacking a cause. But they titled a movie after that little stunt, and it's a classic now, so maybe there's something to be said for rebels without causes.
But then again, that's movieland and this is reality.
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