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 Posted: Mon Jan 03, 2022 6:09 pm
She was still powering up. She was still out in the city. She was still trying. Maybe she wasn't going to be able to be a cool perfect General in combat situations, like Jet or even Rakovanite was. Maybe she wasn't gonna be able to take out traitors the moment their clothes turned white. Maybe she wasn't gonna be able to take them out at all. That had never been supposed to be her job anyway, though.She was Intelligence. She was behind the scenes. Her job was to gather information, to find out what made people tick, to hoard rumors like the candy she kept in her office, and to deliver her findings to the other people, the proper officers, so that they would be able to fight better when the time came. That would be okay, right? She just wouldn't watch, when they went after- No. She wasn't gonna think about that at all. She was just gonna think about the aura she felt, coming up in front of her. It was a senshi, sitting on a park bench. He was glowing, which made her lips twitch, but she walked forwards anyway, and waved, and tried to smile. "Hi," she said.
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Posted: Tue Jan 11, 2022 11:09 pm
Things had felt....strange, for the past few months. Wrong, even. Kerberos found himself powering up less, because when he was powered up, he felt off, like something was wrong with him. He wasn't entirely sure what that something was, but it left him feeling tense. Antsy. On edge. Not even visiting his planet was as soothing as he was used to, though he still made sure he went as often as he could, and the bounty that he'd found with Lyndin continued to grow.
That, at least, was good. Even if things felt strange, and wrong, and bad. Even if he felt like he was constantly having headaches, or like his temper was fraying far, far more easily than usual.
And anyway, the more things felt wrong, the more Kerberos felt that he had to do his best to do right.
So he was back at his bench, waiting and hoping, and when he spotted the General, he broke into a polite smile. At least she wasn't attacking him, and that was good.
"Hey there," Kerberos said. "Willing to have a chat, General? I'm afraid I don't recognize you, but I'm Kerberos."
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Posted: Thu Jan 13, 2022 6:38 pm
It was kind of weird, running into someone who wanted to talk. Back when she'd been a lieutenant, it had all been a little bit easier, but these days, now that she had a title and a big aura and everything, Order people always thought she was creepy or up to no good no matter how hard she tried to be sweet and nice to them. She wondered if it was maybe a trap, but in the end she decided that it probably wasn't. Nobody had tried trapping her recently. Plus, if it was a trap, at least that would be a good distraction. "Yeah," said Sylvite, and she walked over to sit cross-legged on the side of his bench. "Nice to meet you, I guess. We can talk. I'm Sylvite," she said, and she tried to smile at the introduction, but it didn't really work. She squinted at his face for a second, then added, "I think I saw you over next to Ochre and Cybele, during the whole generator thing." Then she closed her mouth quickly, but the words were already out. So much for a distraction.
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Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 12:33 am
Sylvite. That definitely wasn't a name he'd known, back when he was an officer, but that was alright. It just meant that he had someone new to try to talk to, without the history that colored many of his Negaverse relationships.
"I was with Ganymede," he admitted. "Did you know him, before he purified? Sheikh--or, I guess you knew him as Ochre?"
She didn't seem to be angry, which was interesting. Perhaps she didn't feel betrayed, the way others had. Perhaps that was an in--that she'd witnessed the brutal execution of a former comrade by a fellow General, with no hesitation and no thought. Perhaps that would make her open her heart.
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Posted: Wed Jan 19, 2022 12:10 pm
" Ochre," insisted Sylvite, and she couldn't exactly keep that sounding all nice and lighthearted. That was what he wanted to talk about, huh? She guessed that was fair. It probably hadn't been super fun for him to watch all that, either. "He was my mentor," she said. "He took over when my first General died, and he was always really sweet to me. I dunno what got into him," she said, and she tossed her head back so she could look off into the distance, and also to hide the water that was already starting to well up in the corners of her eyes. "I dunno why he'd wanna be anyone but Ochre. I always thought he believed in the Negaverse." He'd helped her believe in the Negaverse again, the first time she'd felt kinda lost. "I dunno why he'd be so desperate to get out that he'd do it in front of everyone, where, y'know-" She wiped at her face with her glove.
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Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2022 1:54 am
"Ochre," Kerberos acknowledged. He had his own feelings on the way the Negaverse pushed mineral names on their Senshi, but he supposed he'd never taken one, and if that was how Sylvite preferred to remember him, it seemed like an idiotic idea to challenge her on it.
He listed to what she said. Reached up to run a thumb over his Mourner's Bloom, as a small self-soothing gesture. Part of him, too, wondered why Sheikh had done that. why he had taken such a massive risk. But there must have been a reason.
"Perhaps," Kerberos said softly, "something broke his faith. I know, once upon a time, I thought I would always serve the Negaverse. Thought it was everything I wanted. And then...I saw what the Negaverse was willing to do. To other people. To me, even."
He wasn't sure he wanted to elaborate. Certainly not unless she asked.
"I think that the fact that he did it, then and there, when it was so dangerous...means that he must have been very committed to getting out." Then, softly: "I'm sorry. That you had to lose him that way."
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Posted: Thu Jan 20, 2022 8:21 am
A second passed before Sylvite said, slowly, "Wait." She glanced up at Kerberos through the corner of her tear-filled eye. She hadn't been happy before, obviously, talking about how Ochre had died, but at this new information, she somehow seemed to deflate even more. "You're a traitor, too?" She slipped off the park bench slowly, but afterwards she took a deep breath and made herself stand up all tall and determined. She rubbed at her eyes again, more aggressively this time. "You shouldn't have said that," she said, and even though her head was buzzing, the words came out of her mouth sounding pretty determined. She summoned her knives. "You know what happens to traitors." Would she actually follow through on stabbing him? Based on how things had gone with the last three traitors she'd run into, probably not, but, like, she had to try. She had to try.
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Posted: Mon Jan 24, 2022 4:41 pm
Kerberos exhaled. This was a very fragile moment, where he could make or break his conversation with her. And so, he stayed seated. And so, he folded his hands in his lap, and made no gesture to cast his magic or defend himself, even though she was threatening him.
What would Hvergelmir have done?
He wished he'd asked her more about what she did, especially of situations like this.
"Maybe not," Kerberos acknowledged. "But I don't think we can have a real conversation unless I'm honest with you. You could just check the database and find my name anyway, and then where would we be."
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Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 7:41 pm
"I. I don't know," said Sylvite. Maybe she would've avoided him, when she saw that it was someone they already had information on. Maybe she would've teleported close and stuck one of her knives right into his chest before he could open his mouth and shown her that he was actually kinda nice. No. Not nice. Traitors couldn't be nice. Even if they had sweet, smiling faces, they'd looked at all the available evidence and chosen to join the side that tortured teenagers. Her grip tightened on her knife. It didn't change the fact that it felt like there was an invisible wall in front of her. She couldn't do it. She couldn't stab someone who was just sitting there, someone who had been the first person, basically, to talk nicely to her about Ochre since his death. Her eyes started to water. "Probably nothing. It turns out I kinda suck at killing traitors as much as I suck at keeping my friends from being traitors." The knives vanished. "But you're still wrong and bad, okay? Just like Ochre was wrong, even if he kinda was one of the nicest people in the Negaverse."
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Posted: Tue Jan 25, 2022 8:23 pm
"You've had other friends choose to leave the Negaverse?" Kerberos asked gently. That was good news, as far as he was concerned--leaving the Negaverse was always a bold step, and perhaps if she knew lots of other people had made that choice, it would be easier to bring her around to making it for herself.
Because Sylvite did not seem happy. She did not seem like one of the people Kerberos had warned Caedus and Lyndin about--the ones that, even without Chaos, would commit acts of violence and brutality.
She seemed lost. And scared. Tearing up and making threats she didn't intend to follow through on.
"I can't tell you why Ochre made the choice he did. I think it was a brave one, with a lot of risks, which means it must have meant a lot to him. But I can tell you why I did. What the Negaverse did that finally made me leave. It's a bit of a long story, and it's not a pretty one, and it doesn't always put me in the best light, but I'll tell you, if you want to listen. And then you can decide for yourself how wrong I was to leave."
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Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:27 pm
"Yeah," said Sylvite, when asked about the other traitors, and honestly at this point she sounded more tired about it than mad. She didn't think she wanted to talk about Thorite right now, though. She knew she didn't wanna talk about Cybele. Just looking at the senshi was kinda hard right now, so she stared at the frosty grass under her toes, instead. She also wasn't sure if she wanted to listen to a traitor trying to justify his and Ochre's actions, but that was something she probably should do. Since she didn't have the strength to kill him, she should at least do her normal job and see what he had to say about stuff. At the very least, it'd be something for the database. "I'll listen," she told him. "Even if it's long. That's okay." Although she made sure to add, "You know. So I can make sure nobody else feels that way and leaves."
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Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 1:51 pm
"Of course," Kerberos said, easily. Let her hold onto her justifications, if that was what she needed. And maybe she could help other people. Enough stayed in the Negaverse that Kerberos knew full well it couldn't all be people obsessed with hurting others. Not everyone was Schorl.
"I would have to say that to cover the whole story, we have to start with dreams. Because about seven years ago, I had awful nightmares--visions of a possible future where I gave my whole self to Metallia. Ascended. Became a broken, cracked plaything, a doll with no soul, only the desire to wreak as much death and destruction as possible." He shivered, relaying the information, and unconsciously reached up to fiddle with the Mourner's Bloom.
"I started to doubt. To fear what the Negaverse was turning me into. And I met someone--Hvergelmir of Cosmos, a Knight. In that future, I'd killed her, but in the present--she was kind. Gentle. Tried to help me." He waved a hand. "And then she was captured by the Negaverse at the New Year's Ball. Tortured, along with other prisoners." Anmd here, he admitted it for the first time to someone in the Negaverse, other than Titanlaventite: "I helped her escape. I couldn't sit by and watch her suffer. My faith was already shaken, but that all but destroyed it.
"At the time, I was in the Special Operations division, and one of the Generals there, a woman named Schorl, had taken notice of me--or, well, of the fantastic drinking problem I'd developed, trying to cope with the weight of everything going on." A small, bitter laugh. "She decided the best way to help me was to lock me in a tiny room in Negaspace, force me to go through withdrawal under her supervision, and thereby get me sober cold turkey. She had someone with medical training keeping an eye on me, but I still could have died.
"I still hate small spaces, because of it. And the dark, though I'm lucky I'm my own lantern." He exhaled. "Before she would let me out, she made me agree to deliver her a particular Page for corruption. And I did. And lucky me, it turned out that Page was my boyfriend at the time."
He smiled, wryly and bitterly.
"I delivered someone I love to the Negaverse, giftwrapped. And when I gave him the chance to run, to get out of there, he refused. He let himself be corrupted, because he was afraid of what would happen to me if he wasn't." Kerberos swallowed. "I failed him. But after that, I...it took me a little longer to finally decide to get out, but Hvergelmir convinced me that I couldn't just let the sunk costs fallacy hold me down forever. That just because I didn't think I deserved it, didn't mean I couldn't try. To be better. To escape the monster the Negaverse so clearly wanted to make of me."
He looked Sylvite firmly in the face.
"I joined the Negaverse because they told me that Order killed my sister. But the thing I learned over my time with them was: if Order did, that was the exception. And I'll bet anything that I never got the whole story, but the person who told it to me...she's gone, now." Whatever had happened to Persephone, Kerberos no longer knew. "But with the Negaverse? The violence, the cruelty? That was the rule, I found. Harvesting ordinary citizens for energy. Bringing any dissent into line with brutal punishments. I know Order ******** up, it's the problem of a lot of individuals with a lot of goals. But the Negaverse...there's a deep rot, there. And I couldn't abide it forever."
He hoped he hadn't alienated her, preaching a little. But he couldn't help it.
"That's my story." A brief pause. "...What's yours? What brought you to the Negaverse?"
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Posted: Wed Jan 26, 2022 5:58 pm
He was talking about the Negaverse kidnapping people, just like Athene had said. Before, she'd assumed she'd misheard, but she hadn't, apparently, and the way he talked about what had happened to his friend Hvergelmir made the weird numb feeling in her head come back except worse. Now, it was past just the light, buzzy kind of numb. It felt like someone was shoving needles in there. "We don't do stuff like that. Like, we don't kidnap people just to mess with them, to torture and stuff," she mumbled against the feeling. "Maybe a long time ago, but not anymore. I get where you're coming from, maybe." She never stopped staring at the ground. "If I knew the Negaverse crossed that line, maybe I'd leave too, but they don't, now." There were a few other reasons where she could understand why people would leave, maybe, more recently, if she let herself think about them, but she didn't let herself think about them. She had other things to think about, reasons to keep fighting from years ago that she held onto, stubbornly, with her fingernails, even now. He was asking about that, now, asking about her story. She'd tell him. Just to build trust with him, so he'd tell her more personal stuff, and not because the words were already burning at her lips. Obviously. She sat down again, although not on the bench this time. Instead, she sank down to the ground and curled up, keeping her knees to her chest. "I found out about the magic back when I was fourteen. I wanted in. I was chasing youma around with weird garbage for weapons, trying to be a senshi or knight or something. I was dumb. A General found me before I could get killed, he thought I had potential." She waved at her uniform. "I started finding out that Order was actually bad, which I had questions about at first but a couple weeks later I got captured, tortured, left to die, the whole thing. A little bit after that was when they invaded the castle and murdered a bunch of people. I was there for that, too." Finally, she straightened enough to look him in the eye. "So no, it's not like, 'oh, things are so disorganized and sometimes bad people do reckless dumb things." Order can be plenty orderly when it wants to be, and you guys do messed up stuff all the time." She paused, squeezed herself tighter. "More than us. Yeah." "More bad stuff happened, but I got stronger and able to do more about it. Ochre took over after my first General died, and he got me motivated. I brought an Eternal in for recruitment, too, which I think got me to General, but that was Cybele, the girl you were fighting with, so you see how that went." She sucked in another breath, then offered an empty smile. "Do you know Thorite, too? He's a Cosmos Squire now. If you knew him, you'd have the full collection of 'people who left me for some reason so now I don't get to sleep anymore."
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Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2022 2:51 pm
Kerberos nodded, and crossed one leg over the other, folding his hands in his lap.
"It was a long time ago," he agreed, "but some of the people that participated in it are still around, I'd bet. Ask around, see what you can find--I encourage seeking out your own answers." He exhaled. "I'd like to know if they regret what they did." He hoped they did. That the people who tortured Hvergelmir and the others felt remorse for what they'd done. But he couldn't know for certain.
Maybe she could find out.
Sylvite had her own story. Kerberos listened, and frowned, faintly. Fourteen. She'd only been fourteen when she was drawn into this magical war. It wasn't as if Order didn't recruit young, too--they certainly did--but there was a tragedy in every one, if you asked him.
No wonder she was making excuses for the Negaverse. It had been her whole life.
"I'm sorry," he said, genuinely. "It sounds like you've suffered much--at the hands of my allies, as much as I suffered at the hands of yours. And that's wrong. Torture, kidnapping, imprisonment--it's wrong no matter who's doing it," he said, unhesitatingly. "And I'm sorry, but I don't know the name Thorite. I can try to find him, though, and pass a message on to you, if he's okay with that?"
But there was something he could do for her more immediately.
He reached around his neck, pulled off the Mourner's Bloom, gently held the chain. Stood up, and then moved to kneel in front of her, offering the flower.
"You don't have to, if you don't want to," Kerberos said, "but it sounds like you're carrying a lot of grief. If you'd like, I can help with that. This item comes from my planet--it's an ancient piece of magic, designed to help people who are hurting. It will allow you and I to experience some of the memories that are causing you the most pain and grief, and it can take on some of that pain, and lift a little of the weight from your shoulders." His expression and his voice softened.
"You're carrying a lot, Sylvite. And you have been for a long time, it sounds like."
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Posted: Thu Jan 27, 2022 6:37 pm
Sylvite nodded, weakly. If people from back then were around, she could only hope that they'd changed in the years since. She wasn't sure that she'd actually ask about the past. She wasn't sure that she actually wanted to know the answers. She blinked at that thought. It was the first time she'd admitted such a thing, even to herself. "War's a mess," she admitted, out loud. That was something she'd known from the beginning. "I still think Order's worse, but I'm not stupid. I know we all do bad things when we're desperate. I try to keep the Negaverse from doing that stuff, like the starseeds and youma and everything, but-" She took a shaky breath. "I guess I know why you left, and Thorite. Cybele for sure. I still don't get why Ochre left, that was just stupid-" the tears welled up again, and she sniffed. When she wiped her eyes this time and looked forwards, Kerberos was kneeling in front of her. She looked at his flower for a moment, then nodded. If he saw her memories, then he'd understand what had happened, and why Order was bad. Yeah. She sucked in a breath and put a hand on the bloom. The memories that were fresh in her mind from their conversation were the ones that played out. First was the warehouse that she'd been stashed in after her kidnapping, dark and cold. Her head spun and ached from dehydration, and her throat was raw from it. Under the ropes, her wrists were raw from struggling. They burned, and the scars would never quite heal. In the distance, someone was screaming. The second memory was short, but also clearer. It was Ochre's head being struck from his shoulders across the battlefield. Sylvite whimpered, even in the present moment. She made sure to pull her hand away before Kerberos would see what had happened next, when she'd gotten really mad, and sad, and she'd stabbed anyone who she could reach.
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