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 Posted: Sun Dec 16, 2018 6:10 pm
Quote: Fresh snow has fallen over Destiny City for the third time this week; most people seem to have stayed inside today due to a particularly heavy flurry, but you find yourself outside tonight for some reason. The weather has faded, revealing a sparkling night sky. Much of the ground is covered in a crisp layer of snow--but more than that, beautiful flowers in the shape of snowflakes have sprouted in the ground. They grow in small patches and permeate a pleasant, sweet fragrance. If the flowers are not kept in freezing temperatures, they melt, but for the duration of their lifespan they are beautiful, fragile things. In such a busy metropolis, isn't it nice to take a moment to take a moment and appreciate nature? Even if there does seem to be something a little magical about this? In few days freedom might open out to nights, afternoons and even starry mornings, once grades were handled and faculty holiday luncheons assuaged. It was a welcome carrot to the Graduate Student. More pressing to the hour, the city insisted on stupid, spirited splendour. It could be less the city and more some maneuver of Chaos, or some unknown Thing imposing for eldritch gain. That was more the likely given history. Sleep would not come, so Eternal Thraen took to streets in search of anything untoward. It wasn't a great situation, but the free senshi and knights had to do something to try to keep safe what little was left. The sun fell early, but it was now, nearing ten after rain most of the day that the temperatures fell enough to let the misting turn to tiny flakes that first dusted and then… bloomed? Thraen moved closer, hissing through his teeth in suspicion as crystalline refraction from streetlights all along the dusted sidewalks, side streets, and bus stop benches. There are lifted forms, like leaves. Leaves do not grow from plastic, stone or glass, iron. No immediate feel of power was around. His own magic had warning to be careful of getting close- vines or perfume could be a problem. The Eternal took the moment to tear part of his train and wrap it as a bandanna over his nose and mouth before slowly pacing closer to some of the frosty forms lifting up from a patch of grass between sidewalk and street. Before crouching to look closer, so far not feeling any enchantment, his hind-mind felt sick oil slick near of a sudden and not so far. A dark senshi, and no negaverse feel to it.
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Posted: Mon Dec 17, 2018 6:43 pm
After the hospital, she had been in a daze. Had she any luck in the world, it would have been the mindless, zombie-like kind that let her shuffle from class to class, but it was finals crunch, and papers were due, and all the normal hazards of procrastination were showing their faces; she had spent 48 hours in thoughtless oblivion, but now it was time to go back to Earth. Stormy didn't remember half of what she had written--or rather, bullshitted in the special way aspiring English majors could--and counted her blessings that previous quizzes for one class had been multiple choice, drilling the right answer into her brain for each copy-pasted question in the online final. Printers that were open and not out of paper. A library offering special finals week hours and had a coffee maker outside of the computer lab. Little miracles. That's what she felt she could allow herself, anyway. Divine pity to nurse the martyr narrative that let her heal, the feather soft touch of an otherwise absent deity.
And now, for just an evening, she could breathe. But who had time to do that? To stand still and just be with oneself and at peace? (When had she ever?)
Normally a creature content to hole herself up in her room, she found herself outside and away from campus. There was the dilemma of who would step off the bus, who would decide whether to walk forward undetected or go into the darkness to transform, of whether an aura signature was worth her venture after what she had been through recently--but in the end she turned the corner and became Loreley. A chance to protect herself was better than no chance at all. And it was a little silly, Loreley knew, to bother being powered up for such a passive activity, but fear and anxiety weren't logical. Her uniform gave her a sense of control, even if she was very aware now of how weak she was compared to others. Just a small trip and nothing more. Not even a mirror ghost followed her out of the alley and towards the frosty fields of flowers.
In her backpack was a pocket knife, a hand towel, and a plastic case not unlike that which had held the rose in Beauty and the Beast. A childish image hadn't left her mind since the first magical night she and her best friend had discovered this strange species of fauna. It was a small gift to herself, and a step forward, and a promise to care again.
She froze when she felt someone else's aura, whose intensity reminded her of Wolframite's and was also Order aligned, and felt a little sick. She had to be more careful. This wasn't mission important. She could try a different area or a different night, easily. And yet, Loreley continued forward until she was visible, shivering from something unrelated to the cold. This was to be her reward for trying, her carrot at the end of the stick for wanting something at all. But...was it dangerous to hope she could just take a sample and leave? The senshi seemed to be just as interested in investigating...
As a doe, she stepped forward one foot at a time, testing his reaction.
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Posted: Wed Dec 19, 2018 4:59 pm
“A certain unusual heretical perversity grows up on the Earth of the parasitic banality that calls itself Chaos...and here Maleficas steps near, lacking brass, but thus bold. What draws you here, Mirror, what do you seek? Declare yourself.” The Eternal of Gardens rose with economy of motion, stilled stone in a moment. Had this one not been coached yet? Or was it ambush? There were still no other auras; only the flowers glimmered strangely around them both with no plain allegiance. Are they Mirror spells? Are they some new devil devised by them? I will have answers.
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Posted: Thu Dec 20, 2018 10:54 am
Maleficas? She stopped, gripping the straps of her backpack tighter. There was more to all of this than she knew, that much had been made clear, but...Loreley’s expression, already somber, managed to find a new level to fall. “A fin de cuentas,” she mumbled, remembering the finality in her tío’s voice. At the end of the day indeed.
“Just a flower.” Her voice was library soft, even as her palms broke into a sweat. Just one small thing to keepsafe for herself. This was a microcosm of her approach: perhaps it wasn’t just a flower at all, but she didn’t need it to be anything more than what it presented. She should have been more suspicious. She was too tired to be. “The last one melted.”
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Posted: Tue Jan 01, 2019 6:08 pm
This one had encountered these before, whether this night or some other before. A familiarity at the least. And they melt. They are things of snow somehow then. But what more is to them; more will not be learned from this source with vinegar alone. But she is Chaos, all the same, a nature warped with or without her agency to parasitism. “Keepsakes of strange merit— Little count the magics in this city that don’t intend harm to others. A risk to keep in domesticity, even under glass? You have not found them ill?” Something your Prince and Princess want? Made?
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Posted: Wed Jan 02, 2019 7:22 pm
"It's why I want to keep it."
Something magical that didn't prove an immediate threat? A seemingly random act of supernatural beauty? If it was selfish to want a piece, to foist on it the responsibility of giving her peace of mind when looked upon, then so be it. Better an unknown thing than an unknown person, a known person, anyone at all. Ice could hold her burden; she was sure it had needled itself into her bones after those nights in captivity.
"All it wants," she said, weary and wary, "is to be."
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Posted: Thu Jan 03, 2019 5:09 pm
“Protest for the flowers or for yourself?” He risked looking away from her, piercing flame turned down at the glittering around the gaudy greens, wood and stone of his boots. “How are you sure, then, they do no harm? Creeping quiet have been the sapping strength and sleep of other guises devised by Chaos, which you serve. It does not make, but feeds only. What has told you against cold harborage?” “The Negaverse has turned on your kind before, if it is theirs. “ To blame one may bring information in correction of facts, given her seeming youth. It was a gamble of intrigues, and one none of them tended to be used to playing. He considered her again, New or old made and just quiet and slow of nature to this fool war? New would be the worse. If those cankers continue to create more with their cancer and excuses. A situation that longs for questions and a seat with Zirconia, but she has been gone into silence with no words or knowing a long time; as long as Alois has been dried in earth and dust. Who made you, creature? Which of them?
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Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2019 4:43 pm
"I'm not sure," she answered simply. "I never have been. The only thing I do know is that its sister became a puddle when I didn't freeze it. Unnatural, but it follows some rules still."
Negaverse. White Moon. Chaos. Order. She had only been part of this greater layer of the world for over half a year, and she was already tired from knowing. Every step further into it so far had been stumbling and regretful, tugged this way and that into things she wasn't given the chance to comprehend. Loreley couldn't begin to imagine what he had been through, what it meant to be that powerful. What that trade from obliviousness had meant.
Gingerly, she shouldered her backpack and made a show of unzipping and pulling out her Beauty and the Beast replica case from inside. "Should everything have to have purpose to be?" she asked as she dropped her backpack. "Is it required to ask something of the flowers that doesn't immediately answer? I won't say your suspicion isn't warranted, because it is. But I'm too tired. If it asks something of me, I doubt I'd be up to the task."
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Posted: Mon Jan 07, 2019 3:20 pm
There, if he’d every heard a thousand before from the undergrads, was a noncommittal reply that refused to think more deeply about a confrontation that held uncomfortable truths. Easier to just move on and pretend it wasn’t asked. Change the subject. Pretend for all the world that everything is fine, or will be fine, rather than take culpability or responsibility. At the least there was no itching of instinct trying to twitch his mouth to a scowl. He remained stone, ready but motionless. “So instead you put not only yourself in danger, but all your Court, your Princess, Prince...by taking that thing home and putting yourself at risk of murder, capture, draining, possession or replacement...all because you’re tired? “ In this, it wasn’t tactical to warn her. A nth power that wasn’t allied to any of them, as had happened in the past, taking out one of the forces of Chaos could only help the free senshi and knights in their battles. It said more about him as a teacher and a student, having the resource, to not reach out. Who plays false reflects themselves. Who does not help, when they see hands outstretched, paves with bone and blood. “We are given, wanted or not, Power to do that others have not. It doesn’t make us better, but it make us responsible. If your will is gone from you, your care, hope, your ideals, your Court, friends, family are all whom should be turned to for succor and healing. Even to your Self, if that is how best you heal. Not to risky, hungry, unending depths of nihilism which is, ‘I’m too tired to care,’ or ‘if something happens with this at least I don’t have to worry about tomorrow, yolo.’ “ “What is your name, Senshi of the Mirror?”
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