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 Posted: Fri Nov 24, 2017 12:03 pm
The girls of Crystal Academy did not do holidays halfway--when it came to Thanksgiving, they took the entire week to travel, visit families, see the sights of the new Christmas season and get shopping done without the ever-present threat of homework looming over their pretty little heads. It was a perk extended to its faculty and staff, who tended to be cut from the same cloth, and had Suri wanted, she could have spent her week in the dry Texas heat with the rest of the Ellis family, enjoying buttery pecan pie and deep fried turkey and a year's worth of drama that she had only been half-privy too.
Suri declined the invitation. She had her thesis to work on, she told her parents, and it was a suitably ambitious excuse to get her mother off of her back for a few days. My daughter is on the cutting edge of physics research, Kerry Ellis would say over a glass of white burgundy, and her relatives would posture and coo and clamber for recognition. It wasn't technically wrong, Suri told herself, the same way as when she told them she was going to Italy for a few months for a private conference. She'd been dancing around the word Negaverse for so long that it no longer felt like a falsehood, just a convenient series of incomplete truths. She'd been up late working on a grant proposal. She couldn't go, she had a conference party she was expected to attend. And tonight, she was out doing field work, taking measurements for a project her family wouldn't possibly understand.
Until recently, Zircon's uniform had looked plain enough to walk among the civilians of Destiny City unnoticed--an easy way to skim energy when there were quotas on the line. But meeting quotas was a lieutenant's game and a captain's problem, and she was now above such petty things, just as she watched the busy streets of the business district from the perch of a balcony several floors from the pavement. In the late afternoon light, people clutched their coats as they moved to their cars, they greeted one another, they put up decorations in windows that were faux-frosted, but Zircon was only half-watching, her mind focused on a different sense for her quarry.
In the distance, something sickly-clean passed across her senses, and Zircon's gaze snapped in that direction, thinking about the internal overlay of the district in her mind. If the aura was coming from the northeast, then there was a convenient rooftop of a low-lying bistro, just before the bus terminals...She thought of it and she was there, suddenly awash in the order signature but still not quite able to pinpoint its location. It was strong, but not impossibly strong, didn't cause her breath to hitch or her heart to beat faster. There was a certain thrill of it, to feel someone who was clearly one of Order's best and not choke up or shiver. Zircon was above such things.
"There's no point in hiding," she called out over the sidewalk, looking for signs of armor or a trademark cape, perhaps a pair of wing-shaped ribbons. "I'm looking to talk." This, like most of the things she said, was only half-truth, but it carried enough of the shape of truth to be palatable enough on her tongue. There was always some amount of talk, before it came to blows, before she was reaching for energy or a starseed. None of the White Moon she'd met had ever had the sense to remain anonymous--they always had to remind her that under the glamour existed a person, individual and living and fighting to survive. The tragedy then was that Zircon had long since regarded people as a whole to be worthless, expendable things, given only the options to set fire to others or become kindling themselves. She'd long since made that choice.
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Posted: Wed Dec 06, 2017 12:05 pm
Tristan did not have a family to visit during the holidays, not one that he could remember nor one he really thought would want anything to do with him if they knew who he had once been. He lacked a proper job, working odd photography jobs and running errands for Fiona and her firm instead of something more stable because it was all his nerves could handle on his best days. Were it not for the redhead's kindness and connections, he would have easily been a homeless man, wandering the streets and maybe begging for money or food if he could even bring himself to do such a thing.
Some days it made him feel guilty, the emotion manifesting in a knife that would pierce his stomach over and over again, but Fiona never failed to tend to the wound with reassurance and that gentle smile he didn't know how she maintained given everything they were always going through.
She made him want to be a better man, one who could stand on his own two feet, but he seemed to hit a roadblock and was forced to take a detour that lead him fifteen steps backward for every one foot forward he managed.
Still, he tried.
This Thanskgiving holiday was an exceptionally lonely one and the first of it's kind for the man that made up Tristan Lestrange, if only because he could not remember any he might have attended before. Fiona had left town, opting to visit her family in France despite them no longer celebrating the holiday with the move and he was too reluctant to reach out to either of his two friends.
They probably had families they spent time with and he didn't want to be a bother.
Instead, despite his housemate's requests that he didn't patrol alone, it was the only thing he did while everyone else was busy that helped calm the restlessness in him. For the most part the nights had been quiet and he was grateful for it, nerves soothed by the idea that even with the chaos thrumming through them people still seemed to respect the idea of holidays being sacred, to a degree.
Or maybe it was wishful thinking.
Still, it led him through the streets, boots scuffling across the pavement until someone was calling out to him and he stilled, back pressing against a wall as he tried to determine what he should do. His chest ached, the mostly healed scar aching until he realized he recognized the voice.
"That depends on your definition of talk," he paused, stepping out into the open. It was then that he realized she'd finally gotten what she wanted, that promotion she'd been so desperate to grip between her hands because it would justify everything she'd ever done in the name of cause that didn't care about her.
"I see you got the promotion you were gunning for." He sounded disappointed.
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Posted: Tue Jan 09, 2018 1:01 pm
Zircon didn't recognize the knight or his heraldry, not immediately, though she'd seen its like during her capture. She stepped forward and teleported to ground level, a respectable distance but close enough that she could still clearly make out the symbols of his pauldrons and see the conflict in his expression. Had he been there when she was captured, one of the witnesses to her suffering? Something to his countenance nagged at her, but her curiosity was not quite enough to drown out the sensibility of caution she felt about this strange knight with his sad eyes. Anywhere around them could be a cadre of pages and squires waiting for a chance to take down a broken general, hidden just out of the range of her senses.
“Talk means talk,” she started, but something about the timbre of his voice made her pause. He spoke again, some kind of judgement, and all of his uncanny features suddenly clicked into place as a face that Zircon knew. It was breathtaking--In retrospect, it was strange that she hadn't seen it all at once, but glamours were tricky that way. If not for the way he’d said promotion, he might have always stayed a stranger.
"I did," Zircon replied, flashing her teeth. She stepped forward and with a small change in the air she was suddenly just out of arm's length of the knight, eyes wide to drink in all of his features, the soft colors of the dawn on his shoulders. Perhaps she should have been angry or felt betrayed, but more than that Zircon found herself thrilled by just how juicy a plot twist she'd discovered. Reluctant captain Aluminite had apparently begrudged his promotion so much that he’d gone and left the Negaverse entirely. It was absolutely delicious, and it was even more satistying because he’d been so completely wrong about her. She had earned her place. He had shirked his. It was justice in action.
“And here I thought you’d gone and died in the Rift,” she beamed, a cold smile on the edge of her lips while she looked him up and down and found something lacking. “It would have been a kindness, instead of letting you live like this.” She wondered what his starseed would look like with all the chaos scrubbed away, but she held her hands at bay, more curious about his circumstance than eager for the kill.
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Posted: Tue Jan 23, 2018 8:12 am
Talk means talk.
Part of Midgard wanted to laugh at the ridiculousness of the statement, something bitter and ugly twisting in his chest. The scar over his heart burned, almost like it was being carved into his flesh anew and his nostrils flared as he tried to tamp down on whatever threatened to make him sick. Zircon wasn't Tourmaline or Dia. If she said talk, maybe she meant talk.
He didn't have to trust her to give her a chance.
"Did it make you happy?" He found himself asking, not thinking twice when the words spilled from his lips and he clenched his jaw in the aftermath. It was a stupid question, because what his faulty memory remembered was that Zircon wanted very little more than the ability to hold the rank that others with less tenure had gained before her.
When she teleported, he moved back automatically, green eyes narrowing when his heart rate increased.
She didn't need to know how that unsettled him, how it pushed him on the brink of an attack that could leave him too vulnerable, weak, before her. "You should know we were always more resilient than that." It was impossible to even survive in the ranks of the Negaverse if they weren't at least that.
"It would be the same kind of kindness that should have been extended to you, then, when you lost your leg."
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Posted: Mon Aug 27, 2018 4:11 pm
"Of course it made me happy," Zircon blinked, unable to fight the wicked curl at the edge of her lips. Being promoted had been its own surprise, terrifying and delightful, but most of all it had been release from the shackles of her betters, from the dread for the future where she would never know the feeling of a cape on her shoulders. Never again would anyone be able to hold her rank against her, save her sovereigns or Queen. Never again would Aluminite sneer at her decisions. She was made weak and then strong again by Metallia’s will, and no one could take that from her. It was absolutely freeing.
But one downwards sweeping look towards her broken body, and suddenly Zircon’s will began to crumble. He remembered her, so he must remember what the Negaverse did to dead weight. It did not spare fools or slackards, it consumed any who could not produce to Metallia’s needs. That assessment was no empty threat when it came to the actions of her queen, and the truth coiled around her throats with a force greater than any hand, threatening to choke the life out of her with its many terrible possibilities. Her eyes widened, and the edges of her lips curled in a snarl.
No. He had to be wrong. She was the general. He was not, would never be.
“Don’t--you dare presume to know how the Negaverse treats me, traitor,” she hissed, taking a step closer into his space. Panic struck her, being so close to an order aura, but it was transfigured by the sudden threat into fuel for a white-hot loathing, coupled with her own haughty disdain for what he’d become.
“I’m not the one who went crying off to Order at the first sign of trouble,” Zircon spat, looking him down and up. No, she’d retreated further into the Negaverse, away from Destiny City and into her work, but he didn't deserve to know that about her, to learn the ways she’d crumpled in the absence of a strong leader. “And I--I’ve earned my place. You wouldn't know anything about that. So don’t--act like you have any right to judge.”
It would be so easy, even with her broken useless hands, to reach in and shatter his starseed into pieces, and a part of her screeched for it, as payment for his defiance. But if she gave in to that impulse, he would die feeling satisfied and self-assured, and she couldn't have that. No, it would be far more gratifying to watch him squirm and suffer and force his world to collapse around him until he was left only with his mistakes. Zircon caught her breath as she formulated a plan that kept her from murdering him outright. It was harder to live than to die. She could arrange to make sure he suffered. It would be justice, even.
“You weren’t even missed,” she added, more barbs meant to sting and wound but not kill. “And now no one knows who you are, or cares to know,” she smiled knowingly. There was a benefit to the false future after all--she’d paid the price of freedom once, and found it to be too costly. He had to be feeling that too. “You gave up everything, just to be a ghost of the past.”
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Posted: Tue Aug 28, 2018 11:37 am
Of course it made me happy.
Of course it did, Midgard had known that it would as surely as he had known what the slow sweep of his expression would do to her. He didn't like causing distress, unhappiness, but Zircon had the unique ability to draw things out of him that others could not. They had always been on opposite sides of things, even when they stood on the same side and the same team.
He didn't see the glory of the Negaverse the way the woman seemed to, all he ever saw was a cage with no lock to open until someone had made a lock to unlock and wrenched the cage open for him.
But she expected him to see things her way and Midgard simply wanted her to see that her way was not the right way, not for him.
She stepped forward and he stepped back, consciously aware of the wall that could meet his back at any time. Still, he was determined to not rise to her bait even if she kept rising to his. "You still ran." It was pointed, harsh, even nearly eliciting a dark curl of his lips before it fell and he looked impassive again. "You're a liar, too," he said, tone flat.
He knew that he'd been missed. He had seen the wildness of Tourmaline when she'd seen him, he'd seen how angry Dia had been back then. Before the return, before the shifts.
Zircon's own reaction indicated that she had noticed, some part of her anyway.
"Do you lie to yourself as confidently as you try to lie to me?" Now the ghost of a smile curved his lips. "If I'm a ghost, then I am a ghost, but I didn't give up everything. I still have me." And he had Fiona, for all her generosity. He could rebuild.
He didn't have to be a ghost.
"In the end, if they took away your title, what would you have?"
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Posted: Sat Dec 01, 2018 8:49 pm
Zircon's breath slowed. Her pupils narrowed, cold and focused and furious. He stepped back, and she stepped forward, her pace too stuttered for pretense. She owed nothing to this traitor captain--he did not deserve the honor of her wrath, or the satisfaction of her terror, and so she wrestled with both behind her steady gaze, searching for the weak in him to tear to pieces.
"I dedicated my life and career to Metallia," she corrected, her voice too soft to be at ease, all her rage crushed between her gritted teeth. "You wouldn't have a clue what that means, Aluminite. Sometimes it transcends the needs of the individual. Sometimes it means doing what it takes to survive." Zircon herself had rocky relationship with the concept of the Queen that she served. It was easier to think of her as another commanding officer and not the deity that so many ascribed her to be, but the truth of it was something not quite either, an uncomfortable and unknown middle ground. Zircon had no way to measure it, to quantify the dark power and give it a name, and so she paid it no mind except to acknowledge her betters and recognize she was a very small piece of the tapestry Metallia wove. To cite her name in a place like this was a deflection, not the true belief Labyrinthite had.
"You think I'm lying?" Zircon showed her teeth when he did, though hers was a snarl and not a smile. "No Negaverse resources went into searching for you, no one says your name. You were forgotten, and for what? Some pauldrons, and a ruin on a rock in space? Pathetic. You couldn't be less yourself if you tried." No one had missed Zircon when she'd become Zoji La in the false future--sought her, perhaps, torn her down to pieces, but never missed. Never grieved. In this timeline, Zircon couldn't stomach the bitter idea that anyone could have mustered such sympathetic feelings for this traitor, not when he was so clearly unworthy of such sympathetic attentions. If even Aluminite could be missed, what did that make of her? No. He was wrong, posturing on his ill-earned high horse to try and make her ache about a timeline that had already been defeated. He knew nothing of her to make such accusations. And he had to be the weak one, or why would he leave?
The general knew he had to be nervous for all his bravado, or he'd be standing his ground against an opponent a good head and shoulders smaller than him. She took another step forward, wanting to be within arm's reach, wanting him to know how close she was to tearing his soul free. It was a moot point, really, when she could teleport closer in an instant, but she wanted his dread to build until it broke him like water over stone.
"I am my title," she snapped back, her throat so dry she almost couldn't breathe. "I fought for it until it became a part of me, and unlike some people, I don't intend to just throw it away for nothing. What do you have, Aluminite? An empty head and a new uniform? Was it worth the price you paid?" She'd paid dearly for her station, but it didn't do to dwell on what her power cost. Metallia offered no returns.
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Posted: Tue Jan 15, 2019 10:52 am
Sometimes it means doing what it takes to survive.
Those words resonated with him and Midgard wondered how she didn't understand that this, everything he was now, he had done to survive. He wondered how she had become so disillusioned to claim such bold things when he knew that they weren't true. "Does it make you feel better?" He asked, the words and the confidence - the way his voice didn't shake and how certain he sounded - feeling foreign to himself. "Lying like that, pretending it's the absolute truth, even when you know it's not?"
He wet his lips, Adam's apple bobbing when he swallowed.
Zircon was trying to unbalance him and even as he retreated in steps, he stood tall enough. "Dia's come looking for me. Tourmaline too." They'd both found him before and they'd seek him out again. He had answers they wanted and, even if they didn't miss him they still wanted something from him.
"How could you, possibly, know who I am? You pass judgement based on your own failures, your inability to reach the standards that sit just above you. What is right for you is not what is right for others." He kept his voice steady enough. "You ought to learn how to listen," he almost laughed after he said that. "Do you hear yourself? 'I am my title.'" His head shook, curly brown locks shifting with the motion. "Then without it, you have nothing and that's sad. I'm sad for you Zircon."
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Posted: Sun Apr 21, 2019 9:44 am
Dia's come looking for me. Tourmaline too.
Zircon's eyes flashed, almost like she'd been struck. Her nose crinkled in denial, then rage. He was the liar. He had to be lying. Zircon was a valuable member of the Negaverse, and in the timeline where she'd taken the plunge she remembered no one looking to see where she'd gone, no one caring the ways she'd cut herself out from chaos to feel free. Looking at Aluminite, he didn't seem broken or wilting, even as he stepped away. No, he was looking down at her...casting judgement on the way she raised her hackles.
He had no right. He had no right. He was supposed to crumble, just like she had. Why wouldn't he break?
She stepped forward and was suddenly in his space, clawing at the fabric of his robes to wrench him down to her level. "No. You listen. I have exceeded the standards set against me, and that's why I'm here," Zircon seethed, wanting nothing more than to snuff the light out of those pretty eyes, those sad eyes. She could drag him back to the general-sovereigns, she could make him bend to Metallia's will until he broke, but it would be a waste, such a terrible waste. Aluminite was ungrateful for the opportunity they'd been given, and even worse, he was trying to make her feel ungrateful, too. She wouldn't stand for it.
"Save your pity," Zircon hissed, knocking him back with a shove, and then she flickered and disappeared, somewhere far and away from that misplaced look. She had worked too hard for too long to fall under the purview of some knight's judgement. She was better than that.
Wasn't she?
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