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 Posted: Mon Feb 28, 2022 10:00 am
They came and went, the agents of the Negaverse — sometimes in a continuous stream, one after the other without so much as an hour in between, sometimes in a trickle so slow they left gaps of time as long as full days. She never knew when to expect an arrival, nor could she predict which face she might see through the bars of her cell.
Some were friendly. Most were not. Some spoke to her at length. Others kept their silence; they came long enough to give her food and water, then left without a word. Ganymede could not decide which she preferred.
Two faces eluded her. It seemed a week or more may have passed since she was brought here, but the figures she expected most had not yet come to see her, neither to question her nor to gloat. Their names passed between Ganymede and those who came in their stead, but none summoned them. She began to wonder if they kept her waiting on purpose, if that in itself was a form of torture. She half wished they’d get on with it.
Perhaps they’d changed their minds, and thought killing her was too easy.
Time escaped her, but she thought it might be late one night that she heard footsteps coming down the stairs. Her food had come long ago, the remnants pushed off to the side. Ganymede sat in one of her usual spots facing the bars, back pressed to the wall to hold up her weight.
The longer she remained here, the more tired she became. Her moon called to her, but she could not reach it.
When the figure appeared, all swirling cape and dark curls, a sarcastic smile slid onto Ganymede’s face.
“You sure know how to keep a girl waiting,” she said. “I’ve had at least two of your Generals ask me how I should be addressed. Is that a thing in the Negavese? You get some sort of royal rank and suddenly your underlings have to address you differently? What should I call you now? Your Grace? Your Excellency? Exalted One?”
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Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2022 8:58 am
“People are comfortable with familiar things,” Jet replied as he looked down at Ganymede through the bars of her cell. He could easily go inside if he wanted, but didn’t feel the need. She’d had her shoes taken away, weapons as they were. The evidence of what they could do down the side of his face in a jagged line. The bandages were off, and it was mostly healed.
“I would like to think they’d ask for your title to mock you, but…”
He left the comment unfinished, and sighed instead. He obviously didn’t know why people did the things they did. Maybe it was their way of showing sympathy (for their enemy?) or trying to prove they were more clever.
As for Ganymede’s question…
“You can call me whatever you want,” he said, knowing that she didn’t actually care. She didn’t respect him and he didn’t respect her. She caused too much trouble as it was, and the longer she was stuck in that cell, the longer she had to have more agents ask her about her title.
Hopefully soon they would be able to figure her out, but they hadn’t had as much time to prepare for her arrival as Jet would have liked.
“You know, a lot of people would rather see you dead than behind bars. But death doesn’t scare you, does it?”
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Posted: Tue Mar 01, 2022 10:00 am
“No,” Ganymede agreed.
The prospect of her own death didn’t scare her anymore. To an extent, she was even beginning to lose her fear for the death of others. She couldn’t ignore the pain it caused her to watch the end of one’s life, or the haunting weight of responsibility that lingered in the aftermath, but a decade of war had led her to certain conclusions: that some people were better off dead, that death was an inevitability no matter how fiercely she fought to protect others, and that death didn’t have to be a permanent end but, in the event that it was, it wasn’t as if a starseed’s rebirth would bring a specific individual back anyway.
Another Empyrean might awaken one day, but no one would ever be Beau Gallo again.
She thought of these things as she gazed up at Jet — death and rebirth, Chaos and its necessary destruction. Once, she might have thought someone like Jet could be a life worth saving. So many agents were young and impressionable, lured in with promises and rewards for good service, but a danger lied in treating them all as victims. Extend too much sympathy, and you might miss the evil lurking.
“Are you one of the people who want to see me dead?” she asked. “Somehow I don’t think so, or I’d be dead already.”
Jet certainly hadn’t seemed to be in any rush to see her, which seemed to indicate that he was content with the current arrangement.
Ganymede made a lot of assumptions, but she had the experience to back her up.
“You have me exactly where you want me.”
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Posted: Wed Mar 02, 2022 8:47 am
“Why would you think I don’t want to see you dead?” he wondered, his eyes narrowing a little as he tried to study her expression, to see if she was trying to lure him into thinking she was really that naive.
“Of course I want to see you dead. But there would be no point in killing you now if you’re just going to be reborn.”
Did no one seem to understand that? If they couldn’t destroy her starseed, or keep it locked away so it couldn’t return to the caldron, they would end up having to deal with a Royal Senshi again at some point. No, it was best to figure out how to break her transcendence now.
“But you are correct that it’s better to keep you, or at least your starseed, here. It would make a lot of people happy if you were dead, myself included, but if you live or die doesn’t matter to me.”
For all he knew, Metallia would find a way to drench her in enough Chaos that she joined the Negaverse. Not that she would ever be trusted, but what better way to destroy the hopes and dreams of her allies than to see her with holes in her forehead and chest?
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Posted: Sat Mar 05, 2022 8:33 am
Even in captivity, Ganymede still had the audacity to roll her eyes.
“I see I’ll have to be more literal with you,” she said. “The for now was implied.”
Obviously he wanted her dead at some point. They had no use for her here, except as an energy source. They could try to corrupt her; she expected they’d make as many attempts as they needed to convince themselves it was impossible, but beyond that, the only thing that would benefit them was her eventual death. All that prolonged the inevitable was their attempts to find some means of making that death permanent.
A part of her wondered what the next Ganymede would be like, if they would gain memories of her life the way she’d gained memories of Liesel’s, if a part of her would live on that way.
Ganymede pressed her weight back into the wall and braced herself as she climbed onto her feet. Frequent energy drains kept her weak. Fatigue accomplished the same almost as effectively. She trembled slightly and her vision swam, but she breathed through it, in and out, slow and steady.
“The Negaverse isn’t as cohesive as it used to be. There’s so much division in your ranks,” she observed. “I’d argue it’s gotten worse over the years. You’ve lost so many, and not all of them to death.”
Was it a sign, perhaps, that Metallia was weakening? Ganymede would not allow herself to hope for it, but she couldn’t dismiss the thought either.
“You’ll lose more,” she warned him. “You can keep me here as long as you want to, kill me whenever you decide you’ve had enough, but it won’t change anything.”
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Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2022 9:26 am
He didn’t care if she rolled her eyes at him. He didn’t care if she decided to call him names or fling insults. She was behind bars and they were going to find a way to break her transcendence. Just as they were going to find a way to break through the protection of their Worlds. Of their Knight’s Wonders.
That she didn’t say anything about strange Chaos on homeworlds was a good thing. As far as Jet was aware, they’d only attempted the use of their new weapon on Kerberos. Perhaps Ganymede and Kerberos were not as close as he thought they would be. Or maybe Kerberos was too far gone to even contact anyone for help.
“Maybe we’re not all mindless puppets as you and your White Moon like to believe,” he pointed out, because if there was division, didn’t that mean they had their own thoughts? “The White Moon likes to accuse us of spreading propaganda and lies when you’re doing the same thing. That’s the most common one I hear. That we have no free will.”
And yet, her own observations proved otherwise. There were some without as much free will for one reason or another, but just because they had a common goal didn’t make them mindless.
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Posted: Sat Mar 12, 2022 10:50 am
“You have free will to the extent that Metallia allows you to have it,” Ganymede said. “But if you defy her, or betray her, you’ll find she keeps you on a mercilessly short leash.”
Jet would know that, of course, if he cared to examine his own actions. He made a statement with Sheikh: attempt to leave the forces of Chaos, and death would be the result. Agents could make their choices, until they made what Metallia deemed to be the wrong one.
Ganymede almost felt sorry for them, but being kept in a cage had a way of draining her sympathy.
“I’ve never lied to you, or to any of your agents,” she continued. “We could discuss the nature of Chaos all day, and I doubt we’d come to an agreement. I could feed you all the truths I know, and you would refuse to believe them, because you have allowed Chaos to take root so deeply, your capacity for seeing and understanding anything but the supposed truths Metallia feeds you has been compromised. But allow me to share one truth I think we can both agree on…”
With her waning strength, Ganymede drew herself up to her full height — unimpressive as it might be to him now that Jet had grown. Without her magic, without her wings, in a torn and bloodied dress, her presence may no longer be intimidating, but she hoped the words she spoke still carried a certain weight.
“You care for Aquamarine,” she said, like this was an indisputable fact. Jet made it so, when he took Empyrean’s starseed and threatened more in Aquamarine’s name. “I think you might care for him more than you care for anyone else, maybe more than you care for all this. I think Aquamarine is the key to who you’ve become, and to all you might be in the future. I think you’d just as easily commit atrocities against your own people as you do against mine, for his sake.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 13, 2022 8:35 am
No matter what Ganymede said, Jet had to wonder if she realized that she sounded exactly like what she was claiming the Negaverse was doing. Throwing propaganda to try and convince them that they were wrong, that their choices didn’t matter. And yet, if Metallia had as full control over them, why would she even allow anyone to decide they want to defect?
He watched as she rose and couldn’t help but pity her. She was their enemy, of course. She had forced his hand in killing Ochre after she helped him defect. He would have gone after the others too, if he could have. If he didn’t have his duty in protecting the generator.
She was smaller than he remembered. The last time they’d been this close, other than recently, he had been just a child. That didn’t stop her from using her burning magic on him. Twice. He provoked her, of course, but it had been her decision to attack someone who was pretty defenseless back then.
Her observation that he cared for Aquamarine seemed like it was a little too obvious. Of course he cared about him, and he would be willing to do just about anything for him. Whether he would commit atrocities against his own people for Aquamarine’s sake? Well, Jet didn’t need to think about that. He had enough power now to not only protect Aquamarine, but to help others grow into their own strength.
“Is that how you feel about Valhalla? He seemed pretty desperate to try and help you. Too bad he was easily subdued by someone of our lowest rank. For a Knight, he’s pretty pathetic. But I guess he never had to fight for himself when he had you to do it for him.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2022 9:19 am
“You change the subject when Aquamarine’s brought up, I’ve noticed.”
Ganymede had no visible reaction to anything he said about Valhalla. That someone here would try to use Valhalla against her in any capacity was no great surprise. Protectiveness swirled within her, twisting her stomach, but she kept it to herself.
“As for Valhalla, you’ve known about my connection to him for years,” she said. Absently, her hands came together. With the thumb of her left hand, she stroked the golden scar on the opposite palm. “Don’t pretend as if it’s some great mystery to you. You and Aquamarine, on the other hand… I don’t recall the two of you being particularly close the last time you had me in a cage.”
She wondered what their dynamic was, who called the shots between them, whether or not Aquamarine’s loyalty was comparable to Jet’s. When they were young Lieutenants, they seemed familiar with one another, but not fond. With the way they glared and sniped at one another, Ganymede might have thought they were rivals.
Aquamarine had been a self satisfied little brat, the type to kiss a** for a little recognition, clearly anxious to earn a promotion, not necessarily for any sense of purpose; Ganymede got the impression he did it for the power. Jet had been just as cruel, but he hid it beneath juvenile attempts at an amiable facade, until it became obvious to him that she wouldn’t buy into it. Together, Jet and Aquamarine had been just as likely to clash as they’d been to work peacefully side by side.
When did that change, and why?
“Now…” Slowly, Ganymede approached the bars of her cell, wrapping her glowing palms around the metal, staring through to Jet on the other side. “... he is your weakness.”
That much she was certain of. The hows and whys and whens might be worth digging into, but nothing was so important as that one inarguable fact.
“Metallia will use him to control you. Any of your people working against you will go after him. My allies will use him to hurt you. I hope you know what you’ve done,” she said, voice soft and low, with an amused twist to her mouth. “You’ve made Aquamarine one of the biggest targets on any battlefield. No one knew about the two of you before. Now they all will. Sessrumnir will kill him the first chance he gets. He’ll make sure anyone paying attention knows the fastest way to get to you is over Aquamrine’s corpse.”
Ganymede laughed once, her eyes bright in the shadows of her cell. “Aquamarine will meet a fate much worse than the one you offered Empyrean.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2022 10:01 am
Jet listened. Tried to, at least. He was getting tired of everything Ganymede was saying. Her assumptions, her threats, the casual way she threw them around.
In an instant, he teleported behind her. He shoved her once. Harshly, against the bars that she had been holding onto. He purposefully was not careful about her wounds -- the stumps where her wings used to be on her back, nor the patched part of her shoulder where Aquamarine had stabbed her. He’d shoved her hard enough that she should have been dazed, but if not it didn’t matter. He gripped onto one of the bars himself, pinning her in between.
His other hand easily found her neck. He didn’t squeeze too hard, but enough that she knew he was holding back.
“Maybe you’re right,” he hummed, pressing his cheek against her matted hair as he practically squished her against the bars of her cell. “Maybe Aquamarine is my weakness. Or… Maybe he’s the only one capable of keeping me in check.”
If something did happen to Aquamarine, what point would Jet have to keep himself from being reckless? Even now, he only held himself back because he knew Aquamarine wouldn’t want him to get hurt. He’d given Aquamarine the final decision whether they carried out their plans or not. Without Aquamarine, Jet wouldn’t think twice about going out and hunting down every last traitor.
“But thank you for the warning. I suppose we will just find other things for Aquamarine to do that doesn’t involve fighting. Maybe all of your allies will be out searching for him, wasting time trying to find him. That works for me.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 8:10 am
Dazed, but not confused. Ganymede half expected the response, though she couldn’t predict when it would come. Apparently, it took very little to get a reaction out of Jet when it came to Aquamarine.
“Maybe you haven’t changed as much as I thought,” she wheezed. “Is this your thing, grabbing your enemies by the throat? Or am I a special case?”
Ganymede laughed through her pain, quiet and breathy. She wished she could make use of everything she knew, wished she could spread the information far and wide, but she trusted Sessrumnir to use what they’d learned to his advantage, once his grief gave way to anger, once he could think through the pain of loss and come to the same conclusions she had.
They had four General Sovereigns to contend with, perhaps more, if any of the rest she remembered still lived. From Folkvangr’s information, Ganymede once tried to determine which Sovereign would prove to be the weakest link, which would be the easiest to dispatch, as they’d once dispatched Apatite.
Now she knew. Not any of the other three, but Jet, and all because of Aquamarine.
“Aquamarine isn’t so important to the rest of your people that he’ll be kept out of sight forever,” she continued before her very literal guest could answer her rhetorical questions. “Go ahead, find something else for him to do. Give your lover special treatment. I’m sure that’ll go over well. Someone’ll slip up one day. You, or him, or whoever decides they won’t stand for it anymore. There’ll be a mission, or a battle like the one on the hilltop, or another invasion, and you won’t be able to keep him hidden behind a desk doing whatever menial tasks you have in mind for him. By then, word will’ve spread, and your protectiveness will’ve made him weak, or left him unprepared. Sessrumnir won’t be.”
Part of her wished she’d live long enough to see it, but Ganymede knew, even if she did, even if she was still rotting in this cell by then, she’d be in no place to witness anything.
“One day, you might have to choose between the Negaverse and Aquamarine,” she said. Pressed against the bars of her cell with a General King at her back made her position uncomfortable, but Ganymede made no move to fight it. “I wonder… which would it be?”
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 10:56 am
Jet thought it would be incredibly hypocritical for anyone to complain about his relationship with Aquamarine within the Negaverse. Until recently, very few knew that he and Aquamarine were in a relationship. They didn’t hang all over each other at meetings, nor did they advertise their closeness, because they were capable of being professional and putting the Negaverse first. Others were a little more open with how many other agents they slept around with.
“You talk big for someone who is just speculating everything,” he snorted in amusement. Her assumption that he would have to pick Aquamarine or the Negaverse was unthinkable. Aquamarine wouldn’t put himself in a position where Jet would have to pick one over the other. He was certain of that. So these questions were just annoying at worst and boring at best.
“And for someone who will only be kept alive long enough until we can determine how to break you and your starseed,” he hissed. He was tempted to squeeze harder, maybe make her pass out, but she was harmless in the cell like this. She was obviously still in pain and uncomfortable. Good. He wanted her to be uncomfortable and suffer for everything she did.
“It’s okay. We have Sessrumnir on our list to kill next. Or maybe we will just put a bunch of Chaos in him and see if he loses his knighthood, or maybe he could become a youma. That could be fun. You remember how it tastes, don’t you? A starseed? Maybe you’d like to eat Empyrean’s.”
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 12:13 pm
A rush of hatred spread through her at the mention of Empyrean’s starseed, her desire for vengeance so strong she could have choked on it. Held in place, helpless, Ganymede could do nothing about any of it, so she took her hatred and her thirst for revenge and, very carefully, set both of them aside, letting them simmer instead of explode.
“You’ve already eaten it,” she said. “I watched you do it.”
She remembered how it glittered between his teeth. She remembered the initial crack of it; the sound should have been soft with distance, but it split through the lobby, as loud as a bolt of lightning was bright. She remembered the muffled crunch after, as it broke into pieces in his mouth. She remembered the way his throat worked when he swallowed.
Empyrean was gone, until some other Gallo took up the mantle, if the Wonder still passed from one to the next the way it used to when the Gallos were the Martels. Worse than that, Beau Gallo was gone, his absence like a gaping wound. How were the others coping? Valhalla, Sessrumnir, and Oberon, who lost their father. Paradise, who lost the love of her life. Cybele, who would never know the comfort of Beau’s steady presence the way Ganymede did.
Around the bars, her hands curled so tightly her knuckles went white.
“Enjoy this while it lasts,” she seethed. “You won’t catch Sessrumnir.”
She was certain of that. They wouldn’t find him. Not to kill him. Not to corrupt him. Not to turn him into a monster.
“Sessrumnir has ways to avoid detection, powers even I don’t understand.” Perhaps it was an exaggeration, but it certainly wasn’t a lie. “He managed to track down your little b***h without being noticed. You think he can’t do it again? Maybe not Aquamarine, if you keep him out of sight, but you? Or any of the rest of you? He could tail you if he wanted, and you’d never have a clue. Maybe he’ll find out who you are beneath the mask of Chaos. Or Aquamarine. A pretty face like that tends to stand out. Those sweet freckles. You know, I never noticed them before, but I could never get as close as Sessrumnir did. And those lovely eyes…”
She was running her mouth, digging for another reaction, agitated and angry and sick to her stomach from grief. She was defenseless, but not entirely powerless — if she said the right thing, if she could plant a seed of doubt and fear in him.
What she wouldn't give to see it, a General King brought down by a single Knight.
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 12:50 pm
It was good to know that Empyrean must have been important to Ganymede to pull that kind of reaction from her. How sweet. Maybe he was her father, or uncle, or maybe related to her Jupiter Knight husband.
“I’ve almost caught Sessrumnir once before. Had his starseed, too. It won’t be that difficult to catch him again. We know about his dog. We know about Valhalla’s bird. We know about that Saturn Knight -- what was his name again? -- His weird creature he summoned. We know your husband is weak. We like to consider him a low level threat, since he could be brought down by a Lieutenant easily. Sessrumnir is a bit trickier, but we have enough information about him. But that’s a good idea. Maybe we can lure him into an ambush. It won’t be difficult since we know he can avoid detection. We know all about your little smoke bombs and the Void, too. Lucky for us, we can repurpose it. Make it impossible for the White Moon to use their magic or Knight summons.”
At least that had been the plan. Arles already explained to him that there was no other way to keep them from powering it back up without destroying it.
“Ever wonder how my team was able to get me out? We have our own ways of avoiding detection.”
He was glad that she wasn’t looking at him. He could feel himself bristling with the threats to Aquamarine. They would just have to figure out a way to strengthen his protection as a civilian.
Jet let go of the bar so he could reach into his subspace and pull out a glimmering starseed. There was nothing special about it, but it was a starseed. And he knew that Ganymede tended to feel protective of them.
“When was the last time you had something to eat? Would you care for a snack?”
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 1:24 pm
Back in the nebulous before, she felt protective of starseeds. When she first came into her full power, Ganymede thought she could save them, she thought it was her duty to shield them from destruction as much as it was in her power to free them from the poison of Chaos.
In an ideal world, perhaps that would be the case.
But nothing about this world or this war had ever been ideal.
Ganymede glanced at the starseed, because it deserved at least that much respect from her, but she had no reaction to the thought of consuming it.
“You’re running out of threats, Jet,” she said. “Feed it to me if you want. Eat it yourself. I don’t care. The person it belonged to is dead or dying, and there’s nothing I can do to save them. Even if that starseed somehow made its way to the Cauldron and ended up reborn, the person you took it from will never exist again. You think I have the luxury of wasting my time or my sympathy on some other person who might exist in the future?”
The rest of his threats were more concerning, but she had already come to terms with her own inability to do anything about it. Valhalla, and Sessrumnir… she had to trust in them to keep themselves safe, to keep their family safe.
The one thing she was certain of was that there would be no repurposing the Void. Neither Jet nor any of his allies brought the device with them when they brought Ganymede before the Queen. Valhalla and Sessrumnir would secure whatever remained of it, if Oberon didn’t already have that covered. Even if the Negaverse managed to get their hands on it, they didn’t have Serge’s blueprints. It would take them time to repair it, to learn how to operate it — time enough for Valhalla and Sessrumnir to figure out how to counteract it, if necessary.
“There’s no point to this,” she said. “You can’t scare me. You can’t hurt me in any way that matters. You can kill me, but you’ll never be rid of my starseed. You hate that, don’t you? You have me here, I should be powerless, but you’re still no better off. If anything, what you’ve done will do you more harm than good in the end. My only source of disappointment is that I probably won’t live to see the day you regret it.”
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