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 Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2022 5:41 pm
Sylvite hadn't taken the medal out of subspace once. She couldn't see it in there. She couldn't touch it. It might as well just have stopped existing or something. It hadn't, though. It was still there, and somehow, even in it's magical bubble dimension, to Sylvite it still felt like it weighed about a million pounds. It was all because the medal meant three things. First, it was a symbol that the Negaverse as a whole was deeply, systemically messed up. Not only was taking prisoners okay, it was something that you could get a reward for, especially if you got information out of them through torture or whatever. The thought of that made Sylvite wanna throw up. It made the old rope scars on her wrists itch and burn. Second, it was proof that Sylvite had done something that was terrible and messed up, no matter how much she'd tried to justify it at the time. She'd earned the medal. She was a kidnapper. She'd taken Cybele. She'd corrupted her, yeah, so it wasn't like she'd kept her in chains, but that didn't make it better. It kinda made it worse. She remembered the blank way that Cybele had looked at everything, afterwards. All that was Sylvite's fault. Third, it was a reminder that there was someone trapped and suffering in the Negaverse's castle right now.It was a fate that Sylvite wouldn't wish on her worst enemy, and she wasn't even sure that Ganymede was her enemy anymore. "You're the one who helped Cybele, aren't you," she said as she walked into the chamber, although she kept her voice quiet because she still didn't know what she was doing. She just knew that she couldn't stand for this. She was one of the Queen's trusted. She'd been given time alone with the Princess. Now she just had to figure out what to do now that she was here, and fast. "And you tried to help Ochre. I know that. I saw it." She took a deep breath and rubbed at her wrists. "This? What they're doing to you? It isn't okay."
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Posted: Sun Mar 20, 2022 7:01 pm
Bloodied and bruised, Ganymede sat — a feeble, bedraggled heap upon the ground, her gown dirtied and torn, stained by blood old and new, her hair a mess of tangled, unwashed curls. Her tiara was missing; she couldn’t remember if it’d fallen off the day she was brought here, or if someone took it from her after the fact. She remained barefoot, her glass shoes long gone. At her back, the stumps of her wings leaked fresh blood.
They’d started to grow back, so someone had taken the liberty of cutting them down again.
From her place in the corner of the cell, Ganymede looked up at an unfamiliar face. Pink hair. Black clothing with matching pink embellishments. Violet eyes. She looked almost sweet, but Ganymede knew better than to take any of these people at face value.
“This is war, General,” Ganymede said.
She’d hated that response, once. This is war, they said. This is war, as if it excused anything.
It didn’t, but it did explain things.
“This will happen, over and over again, to me, to you, to the people I love, to the ones you fight alongside, for as long as it takes for one side to win. We’ll hurt and capture and kill one another, because we’re incapable of coexisting. Whether or not it’s okay doesn’t matter much as long as it accomplishes something, as long as it turns the tide in someone’s favor. In this case... isn’t it better to keep a nuisance contained until you’ve found some way to destroy an inaccessible starseed?”
Her lips twitched into a smile, almost amused, unable to determine if the General’s apparent conscience was genuine or some sort of trick. Magic kept Ganymede’s lipstick intact — a pale pink in this form. It was the only pristine thing about her appearance.
Weakly, her hand rose to rest a single finger against her mouth. Behind it, Ganymede issued a low, shushing sound. “Metallia hears all, doesn’t she?”
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Posted: Mon Mar 21, 2022 3:40 pm
"It's war," repeated Sylvite, reaching up to where her glove met her sleeve. "Yeah, I used to say that a lot. I mean, it was more like, 'the Negaverse is okay to do whatever 'cause we'll never be as bad as Order, 'cause, you know-'" The glove was tight enough it took a couple tugs to get it off, but Sylvite finally peeled it off of her fingers and threw it on the ground. She lifted her arm up, right next to the bars of the cage where Ganymede could see. The rope scars might have been years old by now, but they were deep and ugly and bumpy on her wrists. "Order tortures people." She'd been looking at the wall, or the floor, or everything except the caged Princess, but Sylvite finally looked up to take in the blood, and the bruises, and everything they'd done to Ganymede. Her lips twitched. "The starseeds, I mean, I never took them myself but I figured if it had to happen, at least it was a quick death. The corruptions, I thought the person wouldn't get hurt, they'd just be a blank slate who could learn stuff again, and it'd be okay." She'd been wrong about that, too, but that wasn't important right now. "But, no. You're right. It's just full on, nasty war. The Negaverse isn't better. They'll do any nasty thing they can think of to win, like you said. They'll even hand out medals for doing it. Everyone's the same. Everyone's bad." She leaned forwards so that her forehead was resting against the bars. "Metallia's gonna hear. Metallia's gonna kill me for this," she said, and there wasn't anything in her voice that said she was joking.
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Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 2:08 pm
Ganymede met the General with a small, patient smile, edged with a distant, vague sort of irritation that spoke of nothing personal; rather, she grew weary of listening to the same things pour out of agents’ mouths. That this one seemed to be going through some sort of crisis sparked some curiosity, but made little difference.
Was she supposed to feel guilt for the scars on the General’s wrist? Should she have felt sympathy? Ganymede had no energy left to muster up either one. The Negaverse kept her caged. They taunted her, harassed her, insulted her, threatened her, drained her, and beat her, then sent their friendlier faces her way for a brief lull in the violence before it began again. Free of this place, she might have cared more, might have apologized for the cruelty she knew her own allies were capable of — the cruelly she knew she could be capable of herself — but her care and concern seemed wasted here.
“I’ll be sure to keep that in mind if I ever encounter Order,” Ganymede countered. “At the moment, I only know of the White Moon, the Negaverse, and the Dark Mirror Court. And the Velencians now, I suppose. I don’t know that any one group can claim much moral superiority over the other. What makes the Negaverse worse is their adherence to Metallia.”
Who would indeed kill this General if she put a toe out of line. Still, Ganymede could not yet convince herself that this wasn’t some sort of ploy.
She’d spoken with so many of them from the depths of her cage. Some wanted answers. Some wanted memories. Some wanted to witness her pain; they craved her death, and had no desire to pretend otherwise. Some wanted simple conversation. Some wanted silence.
What did this one want?
“Why have you come here to tell me all this?” Ganymede asked. She adjusted her position on the floor, dropped her hand and sat a little forward, holding the General’s gaze intently. Anticipation bubbled up within her, but she squashed it, too tired and stubborn for hope. “If you’re having second thoughts, you’d’ve been better off seeking out Castor or Cosmos. There’s nothing I can do for you from a dungeon cell, General.”
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Posted: Wed Mar 23, 2022 5:53 pm
"The White Moon. Okay," said Sylvite, with a little bit of a shrug. Order was the term she'd been taught years ago, but she was flexible. Right now, when her entire worldview was literally falling apart in front of her eyes, she was even more flexible than she might've been otherwise. "That's not the point. Their name, or me being mad at them. Sorry. Uh," from where she was standing with her head pressed against the bars at a weird angle, she shot a sheepish look over to Ganymede. "I guess I'm procrastinating on getting to the point. It's 'cause, what I'm here for, why I'm telling you all this, it's gonna come down to me doing something kinda dumb and very, very scary. Gimme like five seconds." She wrapped her fingers around the bars, too, and she took in a deep breath before letting it out through her teeth with a hiss. What was she gonna do about the Princess? What was she gonna do about the bloodied, suffering person staring back at her from across the room? Earlier, she'd thought about just killing her. It'd be a way to get her out of all the misery without Sylvite ending up as quite so much of a traitor, but Sylvite couldn't bring herself to take starseeds in the heat of battle. Even upstairs, when she'd been running possibilities through her head, she knew that she wasn't gonna end up stabbing the back of someone caged. Now, the thought made her feel like throwing up. No. She knew what she was gonna do, even if it made her heart beat so fast that it felt like her ribs were gonna break. "I can't just, like, follow some system like the Negaverse and expect it to all work out for good in the end. I dunno that the White Moon has the answers, either." Sylvite gripped the bars with her other hand, too, and she slowly straightened. There was a glimmer in her eyes. "I just have to do what I can to be good. I have to fix the things I see that are wrong." She took one more breath, then reached her bare arm through the cracks. "Grab my hand and I'll get you out of here."
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 8:13 am
Privately, Ganymede thought this General was a bit naïve, or putting on a believable show of naïveté. Doing good, fixing wrongs — it was all so idealized. The longer Ganymede fought in this war, the more doing good and fixing wrongs seemed like unintended side effects. For so long now, the most important thing had been survival.
A part of her considered her inevitable death a relief. After everything she’d done, after everything she’d been through, she could finally rest. Death would be a release from all the pain and heartache. The war would continue long after she was gone, but the struggle would be over for her.
As the General reached her arm through the bars, Ganymede wondered which of them was more selfish — the General, for attempting to drag her back into the fight; or herself, for considering surrender.
Slowly, Ganymede rose on unsteady feet. She stumbled, but mustered up what little strength she had left and corrected her posture. In the darkness, with the press of Chaos so heavy around her, so suffocating, it wasn’t always easy to remember the things that kept her going, not when the loss of them brought her so much grief.
She thought of them now: Valhalla, and their children; her family, fractured as it often was; her father, gone for years, but a source of strength to her all the same; her friends, who deserved so much more from her; her allies, who never conceded defeat even in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds.
Perhaps this was a trick.
Or perhaps this was exactly what it looked like, and this General, naïve though she might be, would prove to be her salvation.
Ganymede released a soft, stuttering breath, then took the General’s hand.
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Posted: Sun Mar 27, 2022 3:19 pm
There was no point in dragging it out any more after this. Sylvite had made her choice. The second that she felt the warmth of Ganymede's palm against her own, she gave a little bit of a smile. She squeezed her hand tight. Then, she teleported both of them out of that gross, terrible room. They landed on a sidewalk in a neighborhood at the edge of town, one with smallish but detached houses and a single little dog staring at them from behind a chain-link fence. When Sylvite had been running stuff through her head, she figured that this place was quiet enough that nobody would be out draining and find them, but there were roads so that Ganymede could get an ambulance or something if she needed it. Something in her chest felt lighter, right then. The rest of her felt numb. She knew what she'd just done. She had a feeling about what was gonna happen to her when Jet found out that she'd run off with his prize. "It's probably gonna be like half an hour before they figure out I'm taking a long time with you," she said, and her voice came out numb, too. "Maybe less, though. I dunno if they had some kind of alert system in there. I'm not gonna need this when they find me," she added, and pulled her phone out of subspace, offering it over. "So call doctors, or a taxi or something before they come." She didn't look at Ganymede anymore. Her eyes flicked up, towards the sky and the stars, and they settled on the moon that almost looked like it was watching over them. "It's okay if you can't purify me 'cause of everything that happened. Just, keep helping people once you do feel better, okay? I think it means a lot to them, when you do." There was a pause before she said, "And tell Cybele I'm sorry about everything, if you see her again. Tell her I was being really, really dumb, and I know that now."
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Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2022 12:11 pm
The part of Ganymede that remained skeptical expected that they would appear in the throne room, set up in some facsimile of celebration for her impending execution. Maybe Laurelite would do it herself, or, deeming Ganymede unworthy of the effort, she might pass the honor to her newest General King. Maybe Jet, in an appalling show of nepotism he didn’t seem entirely against, would have his lover do it. Maybe it would be quick. Maybe they would draw it out, put on a show for their anxious minions.
Their appearance in a peaceful neighborhood was like a shock to the system. Without the weight of Chaos surrounding her, Ganymede was free to experience a full range of emotions. Confusion. Relief. Awe. Fear — so sudden and powerful it left her sick to her stomach. She fell to her knees, too tired to remain standing.
“What are you talking about?” she said, throat so tight she could only speak in breathy whispers. “Half an hour? You have half a minute, tops.”
Metallia would know what she’d done. Someone would come for her — Laurelite herself, or one of her General Sovereigns. The General would be summoned back to answer for her crimes, and she would not make it out of the encounter unscathed. Either they would do to her what was done to Sheikh, or they’d turn her into one of their fearsome monsters.
Ganymede took the offered phone but set it down. Exhaustion left her shaking as much as fear did. She summoned her crystal. She couldn’t leave the General here, couldn’t watch her be forcibly yanked back into the darkness. She couldn’t stay here either, if she didn’t want to be found. Neither of them could.
“If you want to apologize, you can tell Cybele yourself.”
She had no idea what Cybele had to do with anything, what she meant to this General. In that moment, Ganymede didn’t care what her name was, or what she might have done as part of the Negaverse. What mattered was that the General risked everything to save her.
Ganymede had to try.
Magic flickered — within her, through her, into her crystal, but it wasn’t enough. No matter how she strained to push it outward, to envelope the General, to burn the Chaos from her, Ganymede didn’t have the strength to use it.
She could have shouted her anger and impatience into the air. Only months ago she’d managed three purifications in one evening; now she couldn’t even handle one. Her magic rose, then gave out; her crystal vanished, and her bloodstained gown vanished with it, leaving her in the attire of an Eternal Senshi.
“No,” she whispered, because it wasn’t fair.
With trembling hands, she summoned her own phone. “We have to go somewhere safe.”
To the moon? Was it full? Ganymede followed the General’s gaze to it. Almost full, or just beyond it. Not full enough. Would the General even be allowed there? To Ganymede, then? She could heal there, but would the General be safe, or could she be summoned back just the same?
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Posted: Fri Apr 01, 2022 3:20 pm
Yeah. Maybe it wouldn't be half an hour. That was why she'd handed over the phone. That was why she'd said what she needed to say. Any minute, she was half expecting the neighborhood to vanish and the throne room to show up, and that would be that, and she'd end up in a box in the ground next to Sheikh. She'd accepted that possibility before she'd even headed to Ganymede's cell. It wasn't like it was what she wanted, though. She saw the crystal that Ganymede was holding. She knew what it meant. She'd been stealing glances at it in the middle of that battle, back when Ganymede had been using it to purify all those people. She nodded. She wanted to live. She wanted to keep on doing good things, like burying Sheikh had been. Like this was. If that meant leaving behind the reputation she'd built in the Negaverse, okay. If it meant leaving behind her memories, or her identity, she could deal with that, too. Leaving her friends behind would be harder, especially her team, but even if she could go back without getting executed, she didn't think she could be a good leader to them anymore. Sylvite bit the insides of her cheeks thinking about that part of it, but she nodded at Ganymede anyway. "Okay," she said. " I'll tell her." There was a faint glow to the crystal. Her chest felt warm, and then almost hot. She squeezed her eyes shut and tried to let it all wash over her, but instead she felt it flicker out before it had even really started. She squinted towards the one glove she still had on. Still black. She looked over towards Ganymede, and saw that she was shaking. She wasn't even wearing the Princess stuff anymore. For a second there, it seemed like everything had failed. It seemed like she was gonna die tonight. Her brain started to slide back into that numb acceptance, until Ganymede mentioned going somewhere safe. Sylvite looked back up at the moon, and that was when she felt it, deep in her chest. Something was summoning her. Or, like, calling her. She wasn't just whisked away, like she would've been by the Negaverse. She had a choice. "I think there's somewhere I can go," she said. "This is gonna sound really weird, but I think something wants to help." She didn't know what she was getting into at this point, but whatever. Sylvite was desperate. Her heart was still pounding. She was willing to try out things tonight that she'd never been willing to try before. Without thinking too much about it, she reached out for Ganymede's hand again, and then she gave in and let herself be pulled away. In a flicker of moonlight, the two of them vanished from Earth.
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